Follow the MONEY!!!!

All this hoofaraw about the collapse of the banks, all this screaming and lamenting and beating of breasts, all this angst - and most of it coming from Democrats.

But you look closely and you start hearing a real note of calculation in it all.

They had their talking points set up before the crisis hit, and their mantra of "save Main street, not Wall street" is the same one that the Communist Party of the USA is touting. How strange.

Next time someone starts wailing on Bush about all this, ask him how the banks went down.

Was it from making bad loans to people who couldn't pay? Yup, that was a lot of it.

And who passed the regs and laws that REQUIRED that the banks to do that, or else they'd be prosecuted for discrimination?

It was Bill Clinton and THE SAME DEMOCRATS who're doing all the finger-pointing and screaming right now, that's who. And that's a fact. Read the history on it, check the voting records, read the op-eds. It's all there, it's very plain.

We need to start HOWLING on this one, and drown the bastards out!

Inside skinny on phony orgs and attacks

Over at the View from the Porch blog, Tamara K. has links to pages demonstrating that the American Hunters and Shooters Association is a complete fraud, nothing but a front group for some of the most anti-gun people in this country.

In addition, in that posting there are links to the attempt by a professional PR firm that was posting slurs against Sarah Palin on the web, which have now been "disappeared". But the tracks that the scum left have been run down, and the culprits have been ID'd. Surprise! They were people in advertising who work for the Left!

Wow! Who'da thunk it?

The truth will out.

Remembering a day of infamy

Never forget! Never forgive!

I didn't get to put anything up on the site about the anniversary of 9/11 yesterday. I was worn out from working the previous three nights, and got just enough sleep to make it to the Friends of the NRA banquet last evening. Then I came home, fed the dogs and fell out for ten hours.

But you better believe that all of us were thinking about it at the banquet, and talking about it.

I think about it all the time - the things that I saw on TV in real time, the atrocity inflicted on my countrymen, and I pray that we're worthy of the sacrifices made by the responders on that day and of all our military personnel since then.

God bless our Republic, but only as long as we show by our actions and our resolve that we deserve those blessings!

Doom to our enemies! Ruin to the foe and his allies!

Sarah Palin thumbnail rant

Why do I like Sarah Palin so much?

Because she's not John McCain or YoBama or Bidenette.

She's smart. She thinks about her answers.

She has ideas, not positions.

She's thought about the things that she says, the things that she does and she's come to conclusions based on her own values system. She doesn't just fling out the party line of the day in response to questions from reporters.

She whipped Charlie Gibson's smug ASS!!! in that ABC interview! (Find and watch the whole thing, not just the excerpts posted by the liberal jackasses who live on YouTube and do nothing else.)

She doesn't have a lick of respect for the ossified entrenched archaic fossilized personages that pass themselves off as "institutions" in the halls of Congress. She always looks like she has in the back of her mind that old truth that everyone puts their pants on one leg at a time - everyone. Not only that, now Teddy Kennedy has to have someone put his on for him, so screw him and his acolytes all together.

She strikes me as someone with whom I'd like to spend an evening, along with her husband and her kids because she IS married, by God! and anyone hitting on her without respecting that is likely to get hit hard, literally! She can cook, work on engines, raise kids, shoot and God only knows what else, and be glad to be doing it instead of bitching about how hard it all is and how the world owes her something. The world owes her nothing because she's out GETTING what it is that she wants for her family, not sitting back waiting for it to happen.

She's not part of the machine. She's not a socialist. She's not dogmatic. She asks questions and looks at the philosophy of an issue, and then asks you to give her your viewpoint, and to DEFEND it.

She uses her brain for something besides storing up slogans!

She might have decided to go into politics. to venture down into that tar pit, but she seems to have done it for the reasons that people SHOULD go into politics - to fix things they don't like, to get the bastards who annoyed them or hurt them and to turn them out of office, to make a better world for their kids. There ARE good reasons to run for office and to try hard to win, and she personifies those.

She offers no apologies for having enemies, and for seeking to punish them. She has principles, and that makes enemies. Good! Your enemies define you just as surely as your friends do. Any woman who has Gloria Steinem as an enemy is okay with me!

I like her because she is who she is, not something that a machine has created, like Obamanation. She has defined herself and continues to do that, not to let others tell her who she is.

We can only pray that she holds onto these characteristics, but I feel pretty good about the likelihood of that given how she's held up so far.
Doom to our enemies! Press on, Palin!!!

On a highway - like HELL!

I like to drive. I love cars. However, driving is, to me, an active ACT, an ACTIVITY, something that you DO!

Driving is not sitting in a car like you were on a couch at home, or lounging on an easy chair all flung out and laid back, your one hand casually flung across the steering wheel while the other is doing - what? Something else, whatever the hell it is, but not actively engaged in DRIVING! People who just hang out in their cars, taking up space on the roads while they do the LaZBoy layabout routine all sprawled out, make me crazy. And when they do it while yakking on a phone they make me stark-raving-foaming-at-the-mouth-farking NUTS!!!

I passed a guy on the interstate yesterday morning who was barely able to get his ass out of the left lane so that I could get by. I looked over at him as I went past to see what kind of slob I was dealing with. Just another redneck wanna-be ex-jock with a ball cap down over his eyes, slouched down in the seat, one arm hanging out the window with his hand just barely on the wheel and the other clutching his cell phone to his head. He was already out of tune with his surroundings and if ANYTHING had happened while he was driving like that he'd never have been able to deal with it in time. He wasn't driving, he was just hanging out in the car.

DRIVING requires concentration and focus, paying attention to the road and other cars and potential hazards, things that could get you killed if you're not watching out for them. This lout was just there. Not doing anything, not working at the task of driving his car - just THERE. Like cow crap in a pile in a pasture. As in "here I am, so what?". I admit that I use my phone while I drive. But I stop the conversation if anything requires more attention and I have a plan to drop the phone the instant that I have to do more to pilot the car or deal with an emergency. If it's a conversation that can't be interrupted I get off the road to finish it.

It makes me nuts that people are such jackasses with their phones and their driving habits in general. But then, most of humanity scores pretty low on my ratings scale. I wouldn't mind it if the morons would stay off the road or stay tucked away in one lane, designated for complete idiots only. That would suit me fine. Just get the fark out of my way.

The Sig 250 pistol - better than you think

I've read some comments from some people who were disappointed in the new modular Sig P250 pistol. They thought it not well enough made to be a Sig and had other criticisms.


Frankly, I don't see it. I examined one of the new .40 caliber P250s (only available in 9mm prior to this) today at Gilbert's Guns and found it to be a pretty fine basic pistol.

It's a typical Sig in plan, with the same slightly-too-high bore line that people learn to live with in exchange for the high reliability and durability of the Sig guns. And it has a NICE trigger!

The double action only (DAO) trigger has virtually no detectable stacking. It remains smooth with the same effort required to pull it throughout the stroke, and it's light. It's easily one of the best of the type that I've every handled. It's better than the S&W M&P, which is heavier and has a distinct stack to the let-off point. I like the M&P trigger, but the Sig is better. It's beats any H&K trigger that I've tried in the last year all to hell, and that's a fact.

And - AND! - the Sig trigger will keep hitting the primer as often as you pull it, without having to reset the slide as most other pistols require. If you drop the hammer on the round once and it's a no-go, pull the trigger and hit it again before you start the tap-rack-bang malfunction drill. That's quicker than the immediate action drill, and in many cases a bum primer will fire when it's struck a second time.

It appears to be robustly made, with heavy frame rails supporting the slide, and all the other controls and bits looking like those in all the other Sig pistols. I don't see where it gives up a great deal to any previous Sig models in any meaningful way. I somewhat doubt that the same people at Sig who made the P226 and P220 have completely lost their minds and turned out a turnip. The guys at Colt, maybe. But not Sig.

I think that Sig screwed the pooch by not having all the bits in place to enable users to swap the calibers and grip frame sizes around, which were its' big selling points. Had they had those components on the market when they brought it out I believe that they'd have already sold a boatload of these things. But to most people, on casual examination it was just another 9mm double-stack, more expensive than a Glock and not quite a Sig when it hit the shelves. It would have had all kinds of marketing mojo if you could have bought it in 9mm AND bought the other grip frames and slides and bits to make it into a .40 or .45 from day one. Sig didn't play it up enough, didn't do the demos and the advertising to get folks excited and looking at it.

Sig blew that chance to slam the market, but the concept is sound and the execution of this pistol is more than adequate. At $639 it's not horribly expensive, just a bit higher that it should be. It's still a Sig, and they make good guns. When you get the bits in hand, it'll be more than just one gun, too. You can tailor it to fit your hand and your caliber preferences.

If you do nothing else, go to the gun store, pick one up and try the trigger. Then imagine swapping out the parts to make it into a 10 or 12 round .45 ACP with that trigger, and see if it don't make you grin.

Bloggo speaks.

I don't blog on these pages for profit or gain. I don't do it to become a celebrity or to convince you guys that I'm some kinda whiz-bang. I don't care who loves me or who doesn't, for the most part.
I started doing this just to have a place to share my thinking and observations on the world, which is why blogs started out in the first place. Now some people live their lives through their blogs. They can't live without them. They "Twitter" about what they're doing every flippin' instant of their flippin' lives. Ye gods. Sorry, that strikes me as empty and pointless.
I have too much else to do. I work full time in a field that has nothing to do with blogging. I'm an ICU nurse, working nights. When I'm at work in the large university hospital surgical ICU where I'm currently contracted I very rarely have time to get to post to the blog, and when I get off work I fall asleep sitting up. When I get home, I spend time with my dogs. I intend to post more material about them here, but doing that takes time away from them. Decisions, decisions.
And I read what other people write. I consume information voraciously. I'm not a flippin' genius in love with my own voice or the voices in my head so I'm often content to read and spend time learning from others instead of blowing my own horn on here. I should post more links to those items that interest me, and I shall in future. But for now, my desire to learn what others who're more knowledgeable than I have written or said takes up time that I could use to spout my own point of view. It's a choice I make. I only have so many hours of free time in my life. I don't have Michael Bane's work ethic. I like to loaf a little and to dream and to talk to friends and to my dogs and my kids. I don't get paid to do this shit. I'm not that impressed by me to want to hear what I have to say all the damn time.
There's a lot of dreck on the web, a lot of blatant crap. I don't want to be lumped into that. Just getting on here and blowing out the bilges would put me into that category. What a waste of time.
So if some of you who've been here have been disappointed that I don't write more, I hope that this is some sort of an explanation for you.
There's more to come. I do have some material to share with you, such as the Para Ordnance LTC pistol that's en route here for testing that I'll tell you all about when that happens. I have a magazine article about holsters to finish the text for and when that's published I'll tell you where to find it. I have the shotgun ammo testing to finish posting as soon as digital images of the targets shot are done. The XDm has to be shot a bunch to see how it wrings out. So there's content to anticipate.
In the meantime, Lucie had to go to the vet for her thyroid, the pack had to go to the river and run for awhile, the NRA banquet was last night and was a ton of fun and raised money for Friends of the NRA, to help keep our culture alive. I went to the Dog Paddle to raise money for the dog park. I helped a neighbor after her house was broken into. I worked while I was getting over my gall bladder-ectomy and learned that I shouldn't have been pulling on so many fat patients while doing that. Ooops. I have a concealed carry class to teach in two weeks, in a new venue . I have to go the a gun show tomorrow to represent the Kentucky Coalition to Carry Concealed, and talk to our friends and members to try to get them motivated for the coming year and the challenges facing us. Time not blogging, but time well spent.
Life goes on. A good blog reflects that, but if it's the choice between living and blogging, the blog can wait. My friends, my family and my life come before internet pseudo-glory. Watch six.

Time just keeps rollin' along

Whew. I'm whipped. I've worked more than I wanted to in the last week, and am finishing up this shift and heading for home in a few hours.
But I shouldn't carp about it. I feel pretty decent for a guy who had surgery only two weeks ago. I've been free of any real complications, able to eat pretty much what I liked and have been living without much pain for the most part.
And then there's the news about Gov. Sarah Palin. Wow! What a woman! I caught just a bit of her speech and am hoping to be able to watch the rest on YouTube later today after sleeping for a few hours.
She has changed the whole game in this election. I intend to examine that at length in a posting later on this weekend. Got to work all that in along with playing with the dogs, taking Bodi to the Dog Paddle event on Saturday and trying to catch up on about ten different projects all in the same time frame.
Palin's gotten even me all fired up now. A smart, capable young woman who's not just another ancient slimeball from DC, who shares our values and is taking the fight straight to the scumbags on the Left - who could ask for more? Okay, we could get Palin AND chocolate and whiskey. If it means winning the election, I'll give up chocolate and whiskey for a year!