Bloggo, the dog boy

Is there life after blogging?

2012-01-15T14:41:00.002-05:00

Has it really been that long since I posted anything here?

Yes, I guess it has been. Lots of reasons for that. I've changed jobs. I've succumbed to my annual bout of seasonal affective disorder. I've been so bummed out over losing Fooss that just seeing his photo on the blog reminds me again of the need to write his obituary and throws me for a loop. I've been busy with the dogs I still have, and fostering a new dog who went to her new home this week. I've been posting on Facebook, the fast and easy way to keep up in a very superficial fashion with your friends. I'm caught up in the politics of firearms here in Kentucky again, with the legislative session opening now and lots of work to do to get a special bill passed in this session. Add that to all the usual demands of life and critters and house maintenance and the business of living every day and it seems to leave precious little time for a blog. And there are so many blogs already out there - what would this one add to the world?

All kinds of excuses and reasons.

But I also have had to ask myself, am still asking myself, what do I want to do with this blog?

I realized after starting it that I'm more private a person than I thought I was. I'm not interested in the comments that people want to make about it, or me. I'm not interested in sharing my most intimate moments or thoughts. Some things aren't meant to be shared with the world at large, at least not in my world. I have thoughts that would likely cause problems if I were simply to blurt them out on a blog, opinions about people and work and the world that are too strong to put online.

So what's it for? Jeff Cooper said that was the salient question to ask about a firearm, or any tool. What's it for? What do you want to do with it?

I'm sure that I still want to write on this site, and I have some debts to pay, such as that long overdue ammunition report and Fooss's tribute. So there will be things on here in future. But the long range plan is still very uncertain. That's life.

The Pit Bull, America's nanny dog!

2011-06-04T11:40:00.003-04:00

For decades, Americans knew the pit bull not as a fighter, but as the loyal and loving companion of their children.

What a shame that assholes who abuse them have changed the world's perception of this wonderful breed.

When my daughter was a toddler, I had a roommate who had a handsome pit bull named Ted. I would say "Ted!" and he would look at me. I would point to Julia and say "Watch her!" and he looked at her, then back at me and you could almost see him nod and say "Gotcha!". Then he followed her around, never more than two steps away and inspecting everything that she picked up or got near. When he was with her in the yard I knew that nothing that walked on the North American continent could touch or harm that child. Ted would not allow it. He would have died to protect her.

Take a look at this web page and see what pit bulls really are all about. This is where they should be again, in our homes and caring for our precious children!

Do your part. Speak out to stop breed-specific legislation and stop the senseless slaughter of dogs whose only crime is to be "that breed" - a pit bull, the child's companion!

Why was Bin Laden's house so tacky?

2011-05-10T16:29:00.001-04:00

Amid all the huffing and puffing in the aftermath of the SEAL team 6 raid that killed Bin Laden (Go SEALs!) there were several comments about the relative scuzziness of the compound that supposedly cost $1,000,000 to build.

Obviously the commentators had never spent any time in the Arab or eastern Asian countries or they'd know more about this.

I worked over two years in Saudi Arabia back in the late '80s and saw some very expensive houses that had pretty much the same appearance that Bin Laden's house did. The stucco over the concrete block was patched or peeling, there was no grass or landscaping in the yards and the overall appearance was of dilapidation and disrepair. Quite simply, that's very normal in those places.

The Saudis didn't do much for external appearances anywhere that I could see. Part of that was the climate and the difficulty of keeping plants watered and thriving in that desert environment. But a lot of it was cultural. The Saudis and Pakistanis and their brethren simply don't have the same aesthetic sensibilities about their living quarters that Westerners do. That sounds pretty xenophobic or racist, but it's true. I saw homes that had to have cost hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of dollars, that were pretty ragged on the outside and very poorly maintained on the inside. I also spoke with Americans who had worked inside the big palaces of the royal family in Saudi Arabia who told me about finding towels that were gray and grungy, not washed properly at all, and of a general level of slovenliness in the homes. The elderly members of the royals who'd never spent time in the West were especially unconcerned with the condition of their personal spaces, unless it was something that the hired domestic help was taking care of for them.

What to blame for this? Could it be that it hasn't been long enough since these tribes moved into what we could consider 'modern' housing from the tents and rude huts that are still the norm in large parts of their countries? That's my guess. They just haven't developed the same sense of housecleaning and appearance that most Americans take for granted.

So I have no doubt that the Bin Laden compound was very expensive to build, and was then allowed to fall apart like so many of the other homes that I saw when I worked in Riyadh. As anyone who's watched American TV can tell you, having money doesn't give you good taste, and it's the same in the Middle East with their homes.

Speaking of ammunition testing ...

2011-05-02T01:03:00.003-04:00

.... Reminds me of this anecdote from many years ago.

When I got home from the Army in 1979 I got a KSP surplus M65 S&W from my Dad for a carry/home gun, then when I could I got a box of the hot-shit .357 125gr loads from Federal that were supposed to be the end-all of defensive ammunition and were KSP issue at the time. It was popularly referred to as the KSP 'death ray' for the stopping stats they were racking up with it.
Brought 'em home to the farm we lived on, loaded up the revolver and in the waning twilight touched off the first one.
WHAM! and a fireball six feet in diameter and I was looking around for the 155mm howitzer that someone had towed onto the farm and fired at the same time I did the .357. Not finding it, I proceeded to commence again and WHAM! Holy Crap! It was my revolver!!!
I fired the remaining four rounds, observed that accuracy with the gun was pretty dismal, that every cow on the farm was running somewhere - anywhere! - in the fields below and was pondering the utility of that round for personal carry when the air was turned blue around me by the stream of imprecations in French being hurled at me by the petite dame in the doorway of the farmhouse. I wasn't able to pick out much of the high-velocity Gallic content but the tone and volume of it, the words of English and German interspersed into it and the tearful enraged delivery made it plain that she was most unhappy with my taking artillery practice with that damned gun and that damned ungodly ammunition without warning her goddammit!
Since the consensus opinion of the household was that that gun with that ammo (apparently loaded before the advent of flash suppressants in the stuff) was far too unpleasant to shoot and still be able to concentrate on the task at hand, it was forthwith traded for a GI-stye 1911 built by my Dad on an Essex frame and stoked with hardball. Nothing sexy about it, but it worked, was easy to shoot and didn't require EPA certification or sunscreen.
Kinda missed those fireballs at night, though. Kept the cows on their toes.

Ammunition testing

2011-04-26T09:08:00.002-04:00

Awhile back I was contacted to do some ammo testing for an online vendor.

The gent who runs Bulk Ammo emailed me and asked if I'd be interested in trying out some of the stuff they sell and putting the testing results on my blog. Sure! What red-blooded guy guy wouldn't jump at that? So he shipped several boxes of ammo to me and I got ready to go to the range on my day off.

Then the rains came. Oh Lord, did they come. The road to the range entrance was washed out - twice! And I refuse to try to staple soggy targets, so the whole thing was on hold.

But yesterday we endeavored to persevere and made it out to the range. We had on hand several handguns in different configurations to try out the Magtech ammunition that we'd received, which is loaded with both all-copper bullets and a more conventional JHP in both .38 Special and .45 ACP. Then last night I went out to a friend's to get some photos of the muzzle flash.

So the basic data for the report is in hand and when I get back from working this week I'll get it and the photos we took posted up here on the blog for you guys to check out. But for now, the bottom line is that this stuff is very good, and I'd use it!

There's a special place in hell for someone....

2011-03-23T08:57:00.002-04:00

Specifically, the person who did this to this poor dog -

Watch these videos here and here to see an appalling, unbelievable example of cruelty.

Words fail me.

Pray for this poor pup, please, and pass on his story so that he can continue to get the help he needs.

Do you like to eat?

2011-03-12T08:03:00.003-05:00

Of course you do!

I've been spending more time on Facebook lately, mostly for the immediacy of the information and the feedback that I get from friends so quickly. That means neglecting the blog, which I'm going to start using for longer think pieces in addition to some ammunition testing that I'm going to be doing for an online sales company.

One site that I got from a FB correspondent is this one from Pioneer Woman - she has several topics on her page, but this one about cooking is great! It's like having another Brigid (but not quite and without the insightful writing you get at Home on the Range and without the guns and......)

Worth a look if you like to cook!

Haiku

2011-02-01T08:34:00.001-05:00

Like a yellow ghost

Over forms of sleeping dogs

tiny Yoshi glides

Veterans Day

2010-11-11T20:19:00.003-05:00

My thanks to all of you who served our nation in the Armed Forces, especially to those who served in combat or time of war. And I'd like to acknowledge our great debt to my father's generation. Thank you, Tech Sergeant Shelby Riggs, for your combat service in the US Army in World War 2 in the fields and hedgerows of Europe, and your time as a POW at the war's end. Our nation's character is built of the fiber and toughness of these men and women.

France is already there, and we're heading that way

2010-10-26T01:13:00.001-04:00

Belmont Club » Gone With The Wind

Europe's Guilty Conscience by Pascal Bruckner, City Journal Summer 2010

2010-10-25T14:38:00.000-04:00

Europe's Guilty Conscience by Pascal Bruckner, City Journal Summer 2010

Five Signs Your Party Is Doomed

2010-10-25T13:46:00.000-04:00

Five Signs Your Party Is Doomed

Long time, no postee...

2010-07-19T11:19:00.004-04:00

It's been a busy summer. I'm working 50+ hours a week, all of it on nights and all of it 12 hour shifts, picking up overtime. It means a lot of time away from the house and the dogs, and precious little for the chore of blogging.

Lots has changed here. We have a new dog living with us as a foster child who was pulled from a pound where he was slated for death, now named Rudy - Rudy the Red, Rudy the Rude Boy - a young brash lively (and how!) bird dog mix of some sort who never slows down and never stops checking out things. He managed to get himself into something that tore a hole in his chest a couple of weeks ago and cost me $400 for that, but he's healing well and we'll be trying to find a home for him. I like him, but he's just too lively for this group and for me with all that I have going on right now and I don't have the time for him that I should. He deserves someone who's going to take him out and run him ragged and put him to bed at night worn out and dreaming of critters to pursue.

And at the end of May we lost Fooss, my grand old man of a dog. After ten wonderful years with this special handsome beast , he reached the end of his run. I still haven't put up a tribute to him because the wound is too deep, too painful and I don't want to skimp on his story, of what a great friend he was and how much he taught me about dogs and love and devotion. It'll come, but when I slow down enough to do him justice and I can stand to open that wound again.

Things change - life goes on, sometimes bittersweet, sometimes happy, often deeply sad - but there's no choice about it. Work to do, critters to care for, causes to defend - and more to say about it all in the weeks ahead, when I get my breath.

If you're interested I'm posting now on FaceBook, more often than here because it's easy to post blurbs and URLs. The blog is for more thoughtful things.

Bis spater.

Note to myself ....

2010-06-13T23:48:00.005-04:00

.... put feather pillows where TeeTee the young girl mastiff won't find them.

Something simply beautiful

2010-06-12T20:40:00.000-04:00

Amazing what dedication and love can do with a dog

2010-05-02T10:31:00.000-04:00

This little guy had aggression and fear problems so his owner spent a lot of time teaching him tricks so she could get him to focus on those and turn him away from his aggression. She certainly did a great job with him, he has quite a repertoire now!

Helmet-cam video of Dutch commandos storming a cargo ship

2010-04-30T23:04:00.000-04:00

They are NOT messin' 'round and those are NOT blanks they're shootin'!

This is the only way to deal with hijackers and pirates - SURRENDER OR DIE!

Demo of pic thumbnail for a friend

2010-04-29T14:36:00.004-04:00

A fellow Raven is helping a friend who's putting some of her art on a new blog and wants to see how to make thumbnails that open to larger images.

So as a demo, click on the thumbnail below to open the full sized file. This is a photo of two of my big girls chewing on bones. The file is 1.7MB and is opened via this small thumbnail -

On The Rocks - Bad Romance - 4/23/10

2010-04-28T21:36:00.000-04:00

Great version of the Lady Gaga song - these guys are da bomb!

Einstein - The Smallest Horse In The World

2010-04-27T11:24:00.000-04:00

Original story about the Iranian moron who blames seismic activity on women

2010-04-26T18:06:00.002-04:00

Is there a reason why we just don't bomb them now? I mean, they're ALREADY in the Stone Age with this kind of thinking!!!

Iranian cleric blames women's immodest dress, promiscuity for earthquakes, urges repentance - chicagotribune.com

Posted using ShareThis

Boobquake!!!

2010-04-26T18:04:00.003-04:00

American blogress makes a response to these bozos who think that immodesty in women causes earthquakes - see it at this link -

Head of Iran's Guardian Council supports Sedighi's earthquake hypothesis

Posted using ShareThis

Wonder where the money goes? Here's one place to look.

2010-04-24T10:48:00.001-04:00

EDITORIAL: Public-sector unions bankrupting America - Washington Times

Time’s Klein: Beck, Palin Potentially Committing Sedition against U.S. Government; Heilemann Adds Limbaugh | NewsBusters.org

2010-04-18T23:54:00.000-04:00

The left can do as they please, use whatever abusive language they like but boy, they can't stand it when the right speaks up!

Time’s Klein: Beck, Palin Potentially Committing Sedition against U.S. Government; Heilemann Adds Limbaugh | NewsBusters.org

Obama zombies

2010-04-15T14:49:00.003-04:00

There's a new book out about them, but I liked this graphic better

You can find the book, by Jason Mattera, on Amazon and an excellent video about his work on Pajamas Media TV - See it HERE

Study: Networks snub, malign 'tea party' - Washington Times

2010-04-14T09:54:00.000-04:00

Study: Networks snub, malign 'tea party' - Washington Times

Democrats want anti-Bush loyalist for GAO director - Washington Times

2010-04-14T09:44:00.000-04:00

Democrats want anti-Bush loyalist for GAO director - Washington Times

From the WSJ about how you CAN cut taxes and costs!

2010-04-14T09:23:00.000-04:00

This article raises some points and shows some ideas that other cities have used. Private sector money does things public tax money can't. If they run a civic center, then they can DEMAND good behavior from those who go there, something state-run centers can't or won't do. The less affluent don't have to be left out, but they DO have to toe the line of good conduct, something sadly lacking in most tax-funded venues. If citizens are paying for it out of their pockets, instead of indirectly through taxes, they're going to be more involved in making sure it'd done RIGHT and that people don't abuse it - Charles

ECONOMY
APRIL 13, 2010

Strapped City Cuts and Cuts and Cuts

By LESLIE EATON

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—Like many American cities, this one is strapped for cash. Tax collections here have fallen so far that the city has turned off one-third of its 24,512 street lights.

But unlike many cities, this one is full of people who are eager for more government cutbacks.

The town council has been bombarded with emails telling it to close community centers. Letters to the local newspaper call for shrinking the police department and putting the city-owned utility up for sale. A commission is studying whether to sell the municipal hospital. Another, made up of local businessmen, will opine on whether to slash the salaries and benefits of city employees.

"Let's start cutting stupid programs that cost taxpayers a pot of money," says Tim Austin, a 48-year-old former home builder now looking for a new line of work. "It's so bullying and disrespectful to take money from one man's pocket and put it in another's."

Almost a decade ago, voters imposed strict limits on how much the city government can spend. Last November they turned thumbs down on a property-tax increase, despite warnings from city officials about a projected $28 million shortfall requiring at least a 10% cut in an already shrunken budget.Such sentiments, which might draw cheers at a tea-party rally, are pretty much a mainstream view here in the state's second-largest city, the birthplace of Colorado's small-government movement.

And so, faced with dwindling revenues, intransigent voters and widespread distrust of government, this city of 400,000 has embarked on a grand experiment: It is trying to get volunteers and the private sector to provide services the city can no longer afford.

Taxi drivers have been recruited to serve as a second set of eyes for stretched police patrols. Residents can pay $100 a year to adopt a street light. Volunteers are organizing to empty the garbage cans in 128 neighborhood parks. The city is asking private swimming programs to operate its pools, and one of the city's four community centers soon will be run by a church.

Other cities are making similar efforts to harness community spirit to provide or pay for services, albeit on a smaller scale. Duluth, Minn., last year relied on the YMCA to pay for life guards at its city beach. Phoenix trains volunteers to remove graffiti that city workers used to erase. Many public libraries are asking donors who used to finance special programs to pay for basic operations.

As cities around the country try to find new ways to deliver services, Colorado Springs could be an interesting model, says Christopher Hoene, research director at the National League of Cities in Washington. "It raises the question of what the contribution of residents will be, time or tax dollars?"

Most of Colorado Springs's efforts are so new no one knows if they will work. There have been short-term successes. The Pioneers Museum, city-run since 1937, has raised enough money to keep its doors open this year and to hire consultants to develop a plan for it to go private.

But some efforts already are stumbling. Poor neighborhoods, it turns out, have trouble raising enough money to cover the costs of popular municipal programs like after-school child care.

Some skeptics say it is unfair and ultimately impractical to expect a few volunteers to shoulder burdens while everyone gets the benefits of their work—what economists call the free-rider problem. "If people are not contributing their part, there needs to be a broad community-wide solution," says Richard Skorman, a prominent local businessman who for many years was the sole liberal on the city council.

Boosters think the moves by Colorado Springs will be adopted elsewhere. "We're a model of how cities can creatively adapt to budget adversity," says Sean Paige, a self-described libertarian on the city council. "You can have great quality of life without a great big government at the heart of it."

Many people here say the proper role of government should be limited to paving streets, paying police and firefighters and, if there's money left over, frills like parks. Those are, in fact, the only projects for which Colorado Springs voters have been willing to approve tax increases in recent years.

Mr. Hoene of the National League of Cities says there are plenty of potential pitfalls to relying on the community to provide services. Programs that might work for small, homogeneous towns, he says, may falter in big, fast-growing cities like Colorado Springs, where an increasingly diverse population tends to have varying wants and needs. Low-wage workers and the businesses that employ them may rely on a transit system, for example, while wealthier residents see no need to pay for a service they do not use.

But residents say the city is more diverse than it first appears. It has an unusually high percentage of veterans, and also is home to a big branch of the University of Colorado. The U.S. Olympic Training Center attracts athletes and tourists, and the spectacular scenery draws outdoor enthusiasts.Colorado Springs is a conservative bastion that is home to the evangelical New Life Church, the influential Christian ministry Focus on the Family, and five military installations, including the U.S. Air Force Academy. In a state that helped put Barack Obama in the White House, Colorado Springs and its surrounding county voted overwhelmingly for John McCain. Households here are whiter, richer and far more likely to speak English at home than in Denver, 70 miles to the north, Census data indicates.

At 8.9%, the unemployment rate isn't particularly high compared to the national average. But the area has never regained the high-paying jobs and the tax revenues lost after the high-tech bust in 2001, says Fred Crowley, an economist at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. It has lost more than 23,000 jobs since the start of the recession.

The Colorado Municipal League says most of its towns and cities are facing drops in revenue, most of which comes from sales taxes, though Colorado Springs's problems are particularly severe. Some experts say local and state limits on taxes and spending may have made the situation worse. Those measures likely will prevent Colorado Springs from returning to previous budget levels anytime soon, even if tax revenues rebound.

Over the last two years, the city has taken some fairly standard measures to cope with lower tax collections, cutting hundreds of vacant positions, encouraging early retirements, and reducing parks maintenance. But it wasn't enough, so the city asked voters to increase the property-tax rate.

Residents, however, weren't in a generous mood. The property-tax proposal was resoundingly rejected, and the city soon announced what the then city manager described as "drastic service and program reductions." Firefighter and police jobs were cut, and city buses no long run on weekends and at night.

Then came the plan to turn off the streetlights. Even that had its fans. While many people called to ask to have their lights turned back on, says Sue Skiffington-Blumberg, the city's spokeswoman, about 10% of the callers actually wanted their streetlights to go dark.

The steepest cuts were in the parks and recreation department, where dozens of workers were laid off. The city would continue to manicure a few big parks, but the smaller neighborhood ones would lose trash-collection. City officials hope to negotiate a deal with a big-box retailer that would allow residents to get discounts on riding mowers for voluntarily cutting grass in the parks.

Mayor Lionel Rivera drew the line at allowing the animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to plaster park trash cans with photos of a buxom woman wearing a lettuce-leaf bikini. But he says if the group would help pay for park maintenance, a low-key logo would be fine—and he is making the same offer to the Colorado Cattlemen's Association. "Maybe we can get a little competition going," he says.

Dave Munger, president of the Council of Neighbors and Organizations, which includes about 180 neighborhood groups here, worries that neighborhoods with fewer resources will fare worse than those that are more affluent or better organized. "We're looking at the possibility of a culture of haves and have-nots if this lack of income extends," he says.

Case in point: the city's plan to close all four of its big community centers, founded years ago to keep kids out of trouble.

That decision put Mr. Paige, the libertarian councilman, in an awkward position. He has been a longtime advocate of shrinking government, first as editorial-page editor at the daily Colorado Springs Gazette and then through his Web site, Local Liberty Online.

But when the city council tapped him to fill a vacancy last summer, Mr. Paige says, he promised to represent the views of the residents of his district, who want the centers to remain open.

"I'm dealing with the city as it exists," he says, "not in theory or as I desire it to be."

Mr. Paige's change of heart hasn't gone unnoticed. "Mr. Paige has gone over to the dark side," grumbles Douglas Bruce, who wrote both the local and state "Taxpayer Bill of Rights" initiatives that limit government spending.

Late last year, Mr. Paige not only backed a proposal to spend $400,000 to keep the centers open through March 31 while supporters tried to raise private funding, he became their chief fund-raiser.

But coming up with the cash has proved hard. Just ask Brian Kates, who manages the Meadows Park Community Center, a converted strip mall with a cinder-block gym southwest of downtown. The center, which gets about 50,000 visits a year, serves a low-income neighborhood of low-rise apartments and bungalows.

Mr. Kates has slashed the budget, laid off much of the staff, and raised fees. Supporters have sponsored everything from pizza dinners to jewelry-making lessons to bake sales. A chili cook-off "didn't make more than $50," Mr. Kates says with a sigh, "but it brought a lot of people in."

The city would save $1 million this year by closing the centers down. Backers have raised no more than $12,000, says the city spokeswoman.

Late last month, the city council learned that a large evangelical church with an active community-service program has agreed to operate one center.

At Mr. Paige's urging, the council tentatively agreed to dip into its reserves to cover bare-bones operations at the other centers through the end of the year. Last week, the U.S. Olympic Committee said it would donate $250,000 over two years for sports programs, including summer camps at the centers.

Another "rethinking government" initiative is Proud of Our Parks, which Steve Immel, an unemployed technology executive, created to empty the trash cans in neighborhood parks. Mr. Immel says he got the idea one day when he was walking his mutt, Timber, in Judge Lunt Park in his neighborhood northeast of downtown, and he noticed the trash cans were gone.

Participants sign a contract with the city agreeing to make sure the cans get emptied, and then try to round up their neighbors to help. Mr. Immel has set up Web sites that allow the parks groups—38 have been organized so far—to communicate and post schedules. The first cans were returned the last weekend in March.

Mr. Immel says he isn't sure how long the volunteer efforts will last. But he thinks they will be educational. After a while, "people will probably think, 'Gosh, we ought to hire someone to do this,'" he says. "Well, you did: the Parks Department."

Write to Leslie Eaton at leslie.eaton@wsj.com

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Speaking of dogs

2010-04-12T21:49:00.011-04:00

I still miss Seamus. Every time I see a photo of him smiling at me, those brown eyes glistening, I talk to him and tell him how much I miss him. Can't help it. He was so sweet.
But to use a phrase both trite and oh, so true - life goes on. The pack survives.
Last fall we added two girls to the family, a mere two years after we got Bodi from the woman who rescued him. He'd been on a chain and neglected, occasionally even beaten by people who kept him tied out and isolated. He's the sweetest guy you can imagine, always smiling, always happy to say hello to everyone, powerful as a bull and boy, has he got FOCUS!

(click on pictures to view enlarged)

Then there was TeeTee. Since last summer I'd been trying to rescue this girl from her chain. The woman who had her said that she wanted to find a home for her, but she was dragging her feet about giving her up to me, saying her children would be heartbroken if she gave her away. I guess that may have been so, but it wasn't doing anything for poor TeeTee. She pined away on a chain, staring at the house, wondering why she was being left outside while everyone else was inside together and she was alone. For a mastiff, this kind of isolation is a slow death. They live to be your companion.

(click to view enlarged)

So for months there was no progress, while I kept going out to see her and taking treats to her and waiting for the woman to relent and let her go. I began to wonder if she ever would.
During that time I found Josie at Holly's Place rescue. The woman who was fostering her loved her, but she was proving to be too much of a physical challenge for her. I wanted a big girl to play with my boys and was getting nowhere liberating TeeTee so I asked to adopt her. What a beauty! She's likely a Golden Retriever and either St. Bernard or Great Pyrenees mix, long and tall and athletic, bullheaded and determined and protective as all get out! She's my new velcro dog, never far from me, always wanting to see what I'm doing, wanting to be in the middle of things. I know it was hard for Katy to give her up, and we're doing our best to keep her happy here with us. Look at that grin! -

And then three weeks after Josie came to live with us, the woman who had TeeTee called me and asked if I still wanted her. I already had six BIG dogs, since Josie had joined us, but how could I say no? She had to come off that chain so I drove out and got her and brought her home. I think she looks a lot happier now -

Just like Josie (heck, just like the whole flippin' crew!) she loves to lie next to me on the bed and press herself against me and settle in snugly to sleep. Wherever we are she leans close and has me rub her ears and scratch her soft coat. We're still getting her neck healed up where the lesions were from the chain and the collar rubbing her raw. It's slow, but much better than it was the first time I saw her -

But more importantly, she has a home where it's warm and dry and she has companions to play with and treats and affection, goes for rides in the car and romps at the river and all the things that a sweet girl like her deserves.
And while I still miss Seamus sorely, daily, my furbies keep me grounded and sane and happy. God love 'em!

Help Holly's Place help dogs and cats - visit the link and they get $1 per visitor

2010-03-24T19:23:00.003-04:00

This is a great animal rescue group that I support -

Going to this link, registering and then visiting a store costs you NOTHING, but if you do it before noon on Thursday then Holly's Place receives $1 from iGive!

Noon Today Until Noon Thursday we have the opportunity to raise $5,000!
Together, you and iGive.com can make times a little less tough for Holly's Place Animal Rescue. But we have only less than 24 hours! Please help spread the word! IGive.com will give Holly's Place Animal Rescue $1 for each person who joins iGive using the special link below and visits one store via iGive between noon Wednesday, March 24, 2010 (Chicago time) and noon Thursday, the next day.

This is the link to the iGive page for Holly's Place :

Dogs - more amazing every day!

2010-03-17T13:00:00.004-04:00

This is a story from the London Times Online about dogs going to war with their specops handlers - you can read it here.

They say the dogs don't have depth perception like we do so they don't have a fear of the fall, they just hang out and enjoy the view on the way to the ground. Wow.

Why I reject the climate alarmists' hysteria

2010-03-03T09:28:00.004-05:00

I have a friend who thinks I'm just a running dog lackey for the Republican party, despite my protestations that I'm not a slave to the GOP but a conservative person who only cares about the future of his country.

I've been sending him emails about the ongoing expose of the fraud of 'climate science' and the global warming alarmists - the Chicken Littles and their lemming supporters. Today he replied to one of those emails and I whipped out a response that pretty much lays out my thinking on the subject.

There's no way that one email or even one essay can encompass this subject, but I think that this is a fairly comprehensive statement in a brief form about why I object to the charlatans in the climate alarmist camp.

On Mar 3, 2010, at 07:30 AM, my friend wrote:

"So is it your position that we are, in fact, undergoing significant climate change -- but it's simply not the result of anything man has done? Or is it your position that disappearing glaciers, ice-caps and cold-climate wildlife are photographic illusions generated by skilled PhotoShop techies?"

And this was my reply -

Ask yourself - during the Medieval Warming Period, when the Earth was WARMER than it is now, where did the polar bears go? Where did the glaciers go? Did they vanish?

Quite obviously no, they didn't. Yet the Earth was substantially WARMER then than it is now. And it was a time of great improvement in the living conditions of humans in Europe, when the Dark Ages ended and the Renaissance began.

So did manking cause that warming, with the fires that they burned for heat? With the cars that they didn't have, the factories that didn't exist? Of course not.

So the Earth has always had periods of warming and cooling, long before humanity had ANY ability to cause it.

But the climate alarmists have tried to ignore this reality, have tried to suppress this evidence and have tried to stampede us into believing that we alone are responsible for it and if we don't change our entire way of life that the Earth is DOOMED.

If you dig around, you'll find that not all of the ice is melting, that many of the things that you've heard in Gore's movie and quoted in the media are false, deliberate lies that they avoid discussing and will not acknowledge. The polar bear population is as large as it's ever been and some scientists say that it's increasing! But Al Gore, who is NOT a scientist, still goes around telling the lie that the polar bears are going to drown if we don't stop our carbon use. He and others are telling us that our coasts will be covered with water when the icecaps melt. But does your glass overflow when the ice in it melts? Hmmm.

And some very distinguished scientists have called into question the entire notion of carbon dioxide being bad for the atmosphere or even being capable of causing climate change. They point out that CO2 is a TINY percentage of the gases involved in our atmosphere. Those graphs and that information are out there, if you pay attention to the science journals and go beyond listening to ABC or NBC or any of the mainstream media outlets who are busily repeating the lies and distortions of the climate alarmist.

The people who want most desperately for us to change our world, to go green, to give up oil have a vested interest in lying to us. They aren't content with way things are so they're willing to engage in any deception to force public opinion their way, to drive change in the direction that THEY choose.

Did you know how much mercury is in the compact fluorescent bulbs that they want to force us to use? Do you know that it's far more than the quantity that's in the fish that scares them so much? That if I spilt that much mercury on the floor in a hospital that I'd have to call for a hazmat cleanup? Yet they don't say a word about it because THEY want to force us to use them! And while they're screaming about nuclear waste disposal, they don't say a word about those bulbs going into landfills, or that they don't work in cold weather, because they believe that you MUST do things that way or the Earth is DOOMED! Next time you can't see outside in your driveway in cold weather because the CFLs you put into your patio lights during the summer won't work in the winter, think about it. Ooops. Didn't tell you about that before they changed the statutes to outlaw incandescent bulbs, did they?

And that's just one example of their duplicity, old buddy.

I was part of the anti-war movement during the Vietnam war, and I learned then that the Left was willing to tell any lie, engage in any deception to drive public opinion against the war. It wasn't good enough that there were valid reasons to oppose the war, they had to lie and to this day they still won't admit that they did, that they were funded and supported by Russia (ever read about the Venona intercepts?) and that they were most concerned with trying to destroy our country, not stop the war. Read David Horowitz's book "Radical Son" for something that will really open your eyes about what the Left has done and is doing in this country. I have a copy and I'll loan it to you.

So I know how some people are willing to lie to make us toe their line. Yes, everybody lies, the republicans lie, the corporations lie, the politicians lie, blah, blah, blah. I'm not saying that one side is blameless and the other hopelessly corrupt.

What I AM saying is that responsible scientists who care about truth and fact and reality, who oppose distorting data to support a political agenda, have been speaking out for a long time against what Gore has been touting, what his shills in the 'scientific' community have been doing. They only want that we examine the facts and find the TRUTH and not make decisions based on lies. There are a lot of men and women out there who have taken a look at the data and have said that it's fishy, it's corrupt and it's being used to force policies that aren't valid or smart.

So yes, I'm for taking the toxins out of our environment. I skipped school to attend the very first Earth Day celebration at UK way back when, took my chances on being suspended because I BELIEVED that it was the right thing. And since then, I've watched as some real nut jobs have hijacked the ecology movement. They could have stayed with the true facts and worked to teach people what we're doing to the planet, but for the most extreme of them the progress wasn't fast enough, wasn't going in the right direction and so they've embarked on a campaign of deliberate deception to try to force the world to take the path that they think is the ONLY right way, just like some kind of religious fanatics.

THAT is what I object to, my friend. I object to lies and to being bullied by deceivers, to people who are willing to cripple our economy to make it bend to their bizarre world view, to engage in any deception that furthers their goals. I object to morons who support them, who don't take the time to examine and challenge the science, who parrot the foolishness because they don't know how to think critically.

If they were content to sit at home wearing their hair shirts and tin foil hats and leave me alone I wouldn't care. But they're out there insisting that we bankrupt ourselves with poorly conceived so-called 'solutions' like ethanol while willfully denying the science and studies that point out their errors, trying to shout down the voices that are critical of their dangerous schemes. THAT is what I object to! THAT is what I oppose!

Just as the church's suppression of Galileo was wrong, just as the opposition to Darwin is wrong, this climate hysteria is WRONG. I love science and learning and investigation and I OBJECT when people misuse the scientific process in order to advance their corrupt agendas.

So in a very brief nutshell, friend, that's why I send you these clippings and news stories, so that you'll understand how the climate alarmists are lying to you and the world at large, and hoping that you and everyone else who gets these things will stand up and demand that they PROVE their theories before they try to dismantle our economy.

Just like that famous leftie John Lennon - "All I want is the truth" - Charles

"You can ignore reality. What you cannot ignore are the consequences of ignoring reality." - Ayn Rand

Losing your point man

2010-02-22T12:55:00.004-05:00

I'm obviously not the only one who loves big dogs, who's had them in his life and had to make the decision to let them go.

This is from a friend, a combat Marine, SWAT officer, great firearms instructor and a soft-hearted Irishman who's as fond of his big critters as we are of ours. It touched me to read it on this first day without Seamus' big smile in the house.

Losing Your Point Man

Many of you have known my over-large and sometimes over-protective canine buddy Ralph. He has been my companion on hundreds of miles of hikes … my “point man” … running ahead and on the flanks with a speed that belied his size and strength, making sure, as a good point man does, that I was not taken unawares. He traded recovered deer antlers for biscuits, and ate whatever of my MREs that I didn’t want.

He came to me an adult dog from an abusive home, and as some of you know, while he was great with women and kids he had problems with men he did not know for a while. Bob, you did more to help with his trust of others than anyone, and I will never forget that fact.

He was very protective toward my family in my (frequent) absence, however, and let me sleep better when far away. He had few vices other than a hyperactive prey instinct that is typical of the Rhodesian Ridgeback, and a tendency to take the best spot closest to the fireplace, for which he is forgiven. He chased and caught small game and fought boldly with javelina (he did not like them for some reason), asking and giving no quarter.

This afternoon, my lap holding that great head with its terrible jaws and beautiful intelligent eyes, he left me to scout ahead again. All his great strength and courage could not conquer the condition that weakened his back and legs, and I could no longer bear to see the humiliation in his eyes at his inability to walk and run and do for himself. Ironically, but appropriately, the same veterinarian that undoubtedly saved his life after his most difficult javelina battle was there, gently and compassionately, when it ended. Terry could not get arrested in my county if it were up to me. She understands.

Many of you whom I know have lost one of those dear friends who cannot speak but still communicate with our hearts so eloquently, and have felt this same hollowness. There will be a good many more tears for a while as some comment or event brings memories flooding back of all the fine times we shared, but it will pass eventually. Life will go on and we will continue, because that is what we do … but life is much harder without someone good on point.

Seamus has gone ahead

2010-02-22T04:15:00.020-05:00

"If there are no dogs in heaven,

when I die I want to go where they went"

- Mark Twain

Seamus, our big guy, our sweet man, our loving lovable magnificent hulk of a dog has left us and gone ahead on the trail that we all will follow someday.
He'd been sick on and off for the last few weeks, given antibiotics, got better and got sick again. He spent the night at the vet's on Friday getting IV fluids, then after coming home on Saturday was sick again - throwing up, incontinent, unable to eat or drink. I took him to the small animal hospital in Lexington and he was given IV fluids and antibiotics again, had more x-rays and labs and was holding his own. But by this evening he wasn't gaining ground and we went ahead with an exploratory laparotomy.

He had an intussusception, a telescoping of his bowel, which was something that could be resected and repaired. There would still be concerns about his recovery, but that was survivable.
What was not survivable were the very large and ugly nodes on his spleen and some other organs. Almost certainly hemangiosarcoma, and fatal. The vet could have removed his spleen and we could have taken our chances with his post-op course, but that would have been a crap shoot and the odds were not at all good for him. So I let him go. He just kept on sleeping, and glided on over to eternity.

Seamus was as happy a dog as ever lived. He had a wonderfully expressive face and you never had to guess about his mood. He'd chase a tennis ball until his legs were wobbly and then carry it around some more. He's bring his rawhide chew to show to me, and wag his tail while I told him how lovely it was, then bring it back to me again ten minutes later so we could repeat the conversation. When we were out in the car and I'd go into a store, when I looked out Seamus would be standing in the car window, staring at the door I'd gone into - never looking away, always waiting for me to come back, ecstatic when I reappeared.

I've never had a dog as devoted to me as that cheerful hulk was. He loved me with an intensity and purity that no other dog has. He would body block all the other dogs so that he could monopolize my attention, have me all to himself. He would stand by the bed and whine, in the dark and for an hour, until I told him to come on up. Then he'd lurch that great frame up onto the bed, stretch out against me and let out a deep sigh, happy to be close to the one he adored.
He was my special buddy and I marveled at his devotion. He wagged all over when I told him what a good boy he was.

(click on photo to enlarge)

He loved following scent trails down by the river -

Seamus was a star, even appearing on the radio with me with Sue Wiley. There was no one who didn't love his joyous face and didn't think him handsome, striking, imposing. He was the biggest puppy ever, thrilled to be alive and with us.
If there is any sense or order to this universe, I'll see him again when I cross over, along with Sergei and Vanya and Lucie. My pack on the other side of the bridge is growing, slowly and painfully. My heart is sore and now my comfort is the pack that remains, those great warm beasts, the puppy pile I can lie with and hug and caress, wishing that our happy giant was still here, still sharing his joy with us.

Requiescat in pace, my buddy.

Super new essay by VDH

2010-02-18T08:49:00.002-05:00

Victor Davis Hanson has one of the great minds of this age, IMO, and this new essay by him is yet further fine thinking.

He examines our current economic state and points out that we can't continue down this reckless path where we have no real wealth, only manipulated wealth and false impressions of well being that are falling apart around our ears. Read it here.

What, 2010 already?

2010-01-25T10:07:00.002-05:00

I'm baaaaaaaackkkkkkk! Didja miss me?

Since that last post in July the world has turned almost upside down. In Haiti it DID turn upside down. But I've been holding back from posting anything because I was busy with new dogs and having surgery on my knee and KC3 and work and you name it. Plus, I always get nervous whenever I feel like I'm under pressure to perform. This blog is supposed to be fun, right?

So now we have SEVEN dogs in the pack, with the addition of Josie from the Holly's Place rescue, and of Teetee who was rescued from her life on a chain out in the boonies. Both of these lovely girls weigh 100 pounds and are as gentle as the day is long, and you'll see more of them here.

Aside from that, I've lost 20 pounds from a combination of deliberate dieting and of lack of appetite from pain pills after surgery. They used to call it "the heroin diet" when celebrities and supermodels became ghastly gaunt from their drug habits. Nothing so very interesting here - you take pain pills, you don't eat. Simple. But now the knee is moving wonderfully well and the pain is much less, thank you. Got to keep that weight loss going, though, toward a goal of 40 pounds down.

The Kentucky Coalition to Carry Concealed (KC3) is moving to introduce a bill in the legislature that will extend the right to carry to college campuses, where they can at present ban it in defiance of common sense and logic. If you follow our blog then you'll be able to see how we're doing with that.

There's lots more, of course, including thoughts on the political process as it's being played out here in the US, but no time to write about it now. Just wanted to say 'hi!' and tell you that we're still here and getting ready to get back into it once more.

Sinking to the lowest common denominator

2009-07-27T21:39:00.003-04:00

What bothers me about all this business with the black Harvard professor, and about the race situation in the US in general, is that many of what SHOULD be the better, more educated elements of the black community have decided that their 'identity' is defined by adopting the habits and demeanor of the lowest elements of black society.
I recall the elegance and grace of men like Duke Ellington, and compare that with Al Sharpton. There is no comparison.
While most whites of my acquaintance would be intensely embarrassed to be represented by the redneck jerks in our racial demographic, and most of them wouldn't adopt their mannerisms other than to growl 'git-r-done' or some other comic slogan, the black community has decided in their leap to the left that the worst of them have to be embraced in toto, as a statement of solidarity against "the man".
So while black America was once represented in the public mind by some amazing people, people with style and manners and quality, now they're content to let Ice Cube or Snoop Dog be their public face. I grant you that standards have slipped a lot across the board, and whites are too content to let Britney Spears be the face of white America, but not to the degree that black America seems to have fallen.
For a college professor to sink to a phrase like "yo mama" in dealing with a police officer, aping the style and words of a ghetto thug, is proof that they really do need to 're-calibrate' their thinking. He could have and should have tried to impress the officer with erudite phrasing and quality of behavior, but he was conditioned to act like a moron by his own doctrine of resentment.
I was raised to be embarrassed by such conduct. There was a time when black America was as well, but it's slipping away with the rise of the race pimps and the entitlement generation.

Where's Bloggo?

2009-07-22T11:58:00.002-04:00

When even the bloodhounds can't find him, you know it's serious!

So what's going on? Well, I'm working a lot in the hospital and staying busy with that. I've been corresponding on the Gunsite alumni email list with the amazingly well-informed folks in that group, and have been spending a lot of time with the dog pack at home. I've even been putting in some time for the Kentucky Coalition to Carry Concealed, the personal rights group I helped to found back in 1995, the outfit that got concealed carry passed into law here in Kentucky in 1996.
This is also the season that I make a kind of attempt at doing a little gardening, and with the usual maintenance chores that go into keeping up a house that dates back to about 1850 it's enough to keep me busy.
But I also have been spending a lot of time just watching things happen. I keep up with the news and try to spend a good bit of time online, running down current events.
With the Obamanation working overtime to run this nation into the ground and impoverish us while reducing us all to the same level of misery in the time-tested socialist fashion, there's a lot for me to follow.
I didn't start this blog to spew out my own take on every damn thing that happens in the world, and I'm not compelled to write each and every day. For those of you who enjoy the work of really good writers, see the links at the left of the page to Frank James blog "Corn, Beans, Spent Brass, etc.", and to Brigid's "Home on the Range". Both of them can write. Both of them LIKE to write!
I write when I see something I really want to talk about, even if it's only a blurb, or to point to a photo that I like. Unlike some who inhabit the blogosphere, I'm not compelled to natter on about every minor item that crosses my mind. For one thing, I'm still a pretty private person. There are things that routinely end up on some blogs that you will NEVER see on this page. I might share some thoughts and opinions with close friends, but this blog is not a confessional.
I spend a lot of time just thinking about things, and absorbing information. I read voraciously about subjects that interest me, just for the joy of reading and learning and seeing what's out there. I have no illusions that I'm some kind of genius who will lead you to the light about every damn topic that crops up. Ain't gonna happen, and I'll be the first to tell you that.
I started this blog to be part of the 2nd Amendment Bloggers Bash at the NRA convention in Louisville in 2008, and to have fun with writing about guns and dogs and people. I did NOT start it to make a living at it. I don't have ads on here. While I'd like to test more gear and get more notice for that, it doesn't compel me. I'm taking my own sweet time on the Para LTC test, but it will be a GOOD and complete test when it's done, not something whizzed out for a deadline. I also have a lot of political news to keep up with, and things to do in support of KC3 which occupy my time. There are some here in Kentucky who still haven't gotten the word about our rights and our freedoms, and we have to keep reminding them, keep them off our backs and out of our way.
With all the new Tea Party groups and more being done to take back our rights at the personal and state level, there's always something more and something new to take up my time, things that can't be ignored and that require diligence on the part of every citizen.
I used to draw a lot when I was younger, and a lot of people encouraged me to become a commercial artist. I never gave it serious consideration. One, I knew that I didn't have that special spark that I see in the best work of the best artists, and didn't want to turn out mediocre work.
Two, I was doing if for myself. It was to help me get through a long string of difficult years while I was growing up and I did it for expression and for an outlet for my emotions and my growing pains. I refused to put myself on a deadline, and to have to work to the demands of a third party to do something that I loved and needed to do.
This blog is like that. When it starts to feel like work, when I have to sit down and force myself to post items to it, I balk and withdraw. I read for days, and scan news online, and spend time with the dogs. I will not do this blog as a chore any more than I would sell my art work, or my photographs.
I will continue to post here, and hope to have several items to put up this weekend. Sorry if I've disappointed anyone, and hope that you keep checking back and that you'll find something here that piques your interest and stirs your soul.
Yr obdnt srvnt - Bloggo.

Why do Mini-14s get such a bad rap?

2009-06-28T22:54:00.004-04:00

This question was asked on an email list to which I belong -

"Why is it that Ruger Mini-14s that typically group 3 to 5 MOA for the older model and 2 to 4 for the new & improved model are such bad rifles, yet AKs that typically group 3 to 6 MOA, have bad triggers and funky safety levers are good?"

To which I replied -

My own take on it is that we expect that any gun chambered in .223 has to match the benchmark for semi-auto accuracy in that caliber, which is the AR platform.

The AK gets a pass on accuracy because of its reliability and the effectiveness of the 7.62x39mm round both in wounding and in shooting through things. Not a lot of people bother with AKs in .223, and the 5.45x39 AK hasn't been as popular as the .30 version. Even the Russians are switching back to the 7.62x39 in some cases. I'm of the opinion, which I think the majority of gun buyers share, that if I'm going to have to put up with the deficiencies of the AK as a platform then I'm going to choose it in the caliber I prefer for fighting at the distances that I envision using it for fighting, not just plinking.

People assume that you can reach out further with the .223 than you can with the 7.62x39, which is generally true. For longer ranges, the AR is a better platform and the .223 a better round than the AK and its cartridge. Not necessarily more effective when it hits you 'way out past Fort Mudge, mind you, but easier to use to make the hit. It's a varmint shooter mentality, really.

Will most of us ever employ the intrinsic accuracy of the AR and the .223 at really long ranges? No. We keep carbines for engagements under 200 yards, pretty much. But if we are going to shoot a .223 it damn well better be capable of those long shots or we spurn it.

Ergo, if you're going to settle for a .223 it has to be in a gun that has enough inherent accuracy to justify that selection. The Mini-14 doesn't make the grade in that respect. It's not as accurate as the AR, so not as many shooters want it.

That, and Americans have always leaned toward choosing the same guns that the military uses. Shooters idolize M1 Garands and M1As, from whence sprang the Mini-14, so it isn't that they don't like the type or the mechanism. But until the Marines or the Army adopt the Mini-14 it will lack style points, no matter that George Peppard and the A-Team thought it was hot stuff.

Then, of course, there's all that crap about the magazine ban and Bill Ruger, may he rot in hell, etc. but that's another subject and not part of my own decision-making.

What would be wonderful is a gun that has the ergonomics of the AR combined with the reliability of the AK that shoots a bullet that lands with a solid whack. I believe that the FN SCAR Heavy is that rifle, but only time will tell.

And that's what I think about it. But what do I know? I'm just a white boy lost in the blues.

Guns go to church

2009-06-28T11:25:00.003-04:00

No one gets shot.

God does not strike them with lightning.

Amazing (but only to a hoplophobe).

200 citizens showed up at the New Bethel church in Louisville, Ky. to celebrate our traditions and history wearing firearms openly on their sides. More info and a photo here.

Blowing holes in the sky

2009-06-27T19:51:00.003-04:00

A view from space of a volcano blowing a hole in the clouds as it erupts.

Amazing clarity. See it here.

Pit bull on an innocent cyclist's back

2009-06-27T19:38:00.003-04:00

A guy can't even ride his bike without a pit bull jumping on him!

Ghosts!!!

2009-06-23T16:20:00.003-04:00

Last night there was a sudden scurry and flurry through the middle of the room that sent the dogs scrambling to their feet in alarm, and then it went under my feet and sent me out of my chair.

It was white and flapping like a sheet in a windstorm and it spooked all of us before running out of the room. I shouted at the dogs because I thought they were chasing a cat or something, and they were looking at me because they knew that they weren't doing it and it had to be some trick that I was pulling!

Then it came roaring back through the room and I could see that it was a plastic grocery bag, sailing along over the floor, crackling like a spinnaker in a hard blow.

I figured it was one of the younger cats playing with it, pushing it ahead of them. But BOY, was it moving! I'd never seen one get going at that speed!

It went back and forth through the downstairs on and off for another couple of hours, and I thought boy, that cat's having a good time with that thing.

Then it came by my feet again and I could see that it was NOT having a good time.

It was Nikita, running like the Devil had her by the tail. She'd gotten her head through the handle of the bag, and it was around her waist and when she ran, it was chasing her, flapping like a drag chute behind a jet and spooking her. The harder she ran, the more it rattled and flapped and the harder she ran, under the bed, through the living room and under the couch and over the dogs, who were leaping up to get away from whatever it was that was trying to eat Nikita.

Then she'd stop, worn out, and just lie there and it was okay - until she started to walk and that bag started trying to eat her again and ZOW! she was off, making the rounds like a steeplechase and the whole joint was in an uproar once more.

Everything settled down later and I figured she'd gotten it off of her. The dogs weren't really amused but they got over it. The other cats just went to high ground and stayed there. I was snickering all night when I thought about it and I could see in my mind that bag running through the room. It was funny to me, anyway.

But Nikita has been looking daggers at me all morning, and she won't even go into the kitchen where the grocery bags are lying on the floor.

What a complete and total IDIOT!!!

2009-06-18T08:48:00.001-04:00

I have rarely seen anything as stupid as the photographer is in this video.

He's squatting down, DOWNRANGE, next to a group of targets being fired on by a shooting class. Live fire, live ammo, amateur students - what a recipe for disaster.

I'm a graduate of the Gunsite training center and other firearms training, and I would NEVER countenance this on any range where I was training or conducting training. The potential for disaster is too great.

The person who is teaching this class fancies himself to be a high-speed, low-drag kind of guy. In my trained and experienced opinion, he is a dangerous idiot who does a disservice to his students and to the shooting community at large with this insanity.

We should be ashamed

2009-06-15T08:53:00.005-04:00

Last night, while watching the news I couldn't help but notice the contrast between what's happening here in the United States and what's happening in Iran.

In Iran, which is almost a police state and a theocracy, the people are furiously marching in the streets in protest against the recent elections, which they perceive as corrupt. In a nation that barely has a tradition of democratically elected leaders, they're defying the government to speak out. They're risking imprisonment and death to demand that their votes be counted fairly and honestly, and the scoundrels be turned out of office.

By contrast, in the USA, which has for two centuries enjoyed the fruits of a republican form of government, the Obamanation is busily destroying our economy and transforming our political system into something that the Founders would never recognize - and we sit on our collective butts and let him do it. We should be out in the streets every day, just like the Iranians, but doing that might mean that we'd miss the latest editions of our favorite soaps or reality shows.

Sure, many of us are holding Tea Parties, and more people are starting to wake up and speak out and contact their representatives, but if we had half the spirit that the Iranians are showing, we'd already have been camping out in the offices of all of our elected officials, sleeping on their doorsteps and banging on their doors and windows, never letting them rest until they took action to STOP this madness!

The sad part is that, only a few decades ago, we did have that kind of spirit in the USA, and people in other lands looked to this country for inspiration while they took those first baby steps toward a representative form of government.

It's time to stop pissing and moaning about how bad it all is, how someone needs to do something about it. It's time to reach down deep inside and find the spirit that once energized this nation, that made it a beacon to the world and the arsenal of democracy, and to get out into the streets, onto the internet, into the mails and faxes and EVERYWHERE and end this slow awful careening slide into corruption and destruction.

And we, my friends, are the only ones who can do it. It's OUR COUNTRY and we're the ones who must do it. The ghosts of the Founders are hovering about us, waiting for us to rise up and speak out and demand that our elected officials do their proper jobs. Their hands are on our shoulders, urging us to be the men and women who deserve to inherit this great nation, and not some namby-pambys who stand by while it's stolen from us by a pack of unprincipled thieves.

When we see what's happening in the streets of Iran and then turn our eyes to events in Wall Street and Washington, DC we should be ashamed.

Gun store recon

2009-06-15T07:56:00.007-04:00

Went to Bud's Gun Shop in Paris, Ky. yesterday to drop off some KC3 newsletters and took a couple of hours to look at everything in the place to see what was available.

I spent some time handling and manipulating one of the Sig 556 Commando carbines. I like the gas-piston system that's in it, but the pistol grip angle is too steep (almost like the original FAL grip), the safety lever is hard to reach if you're gripping the gun, the trigger is very spongy and the overall feel is very clunky, just for starters. I have yet to examine any version of the Sig carbine that felt handy in my hands. Despite my belief that the gas-piston system is the way to go in modern carbines, the Stoner direct-gas-impingement system AR in its present form has evolved into a very user-friendly modular platform and the Sig just doesn't measure up to its ergonomics. I understand that it's reliable as all get out, but it sure is a brick to hold and those itty bitty flip-up backup sights are a bad joke!

Speaking of ARs, I handled one of the new S&W M&P15 MOE types with the Magpul furniture and BUPS on it. The rear sight is really sleek and is made almost entirely of a resin of some sort. It folds down readily but has to be unlocked to be raised. I guess that's good so that if you bash it really hard it'll just flop down rather than break. The sight is well designed and has a small profile. The question now is will it hold up to hard use, being made as it is? The other furniture is very good stuff, being Magpul, natch, and the shape of the Magpul fore end is excellent. It fits my hands very naturally, and it should retrofit to any carbine with the slip ring. You can add Picatinny rails to it if you must have lights and such, but if you DON'T need or want those things you won't have the rails in the way, messing up the gripping surface. Good idea. S&W has a very nice carbine in this one, IMO. It feels good in the hands, a marked contrast to the Sig!!!

ARs are cropping up everywhere in stores and gun shows these days as the supply lines start to fill up and the initial panic buying is subsiding, and ammo is starting to come back into the system. I bought some of the 200gr solid copper Corbon DPX .45 defensive ammo to try out in the XD45, and some basic 9mm Remington JHP stuff to shoot in the long term testing Para LTC. The 9mm is part of the effort to see what will work in this gun since JHPs aren't uniformly feeding well in it, with either the factory mags or the Wilsons on loan. Found the Winchester generic white box 9mm 115gr ball, 100 rounds, $27. All the ammo I saw was at pretty much normal pre-panic prices, no huge markups in the pistol stuff that was available.

They even had primers! Wow. Remember what primers looked like?

Lastly, I handled one of the Mossberg M930 SPX semi-auto 'tactical' shotguns (scroll through the versions on the web page to find the 8-shot with the standard stock). It's very much like my FN SLP, fitted with the LPA iron sights and a fiber optic front inside the protective wings, but the buttstock is very slightly too long and the very soft rubber butt pad snags on clothing. I'd like to have one here to shoot for T&E, but to date the people at Mossberg haven't shown the common courtesy to respond to my emails or phone calls to discuss it. Nonetheless, it looks and feels good.

And that's all for today - Respectfully, Yr obdnt srvnt - Charles "recon wanna-be" Riggs

A quiet moment observing nature

2009-06-07T14:38:00.007-04:00

Early one calm morning I found this group of very delicate new mushrooms growing out of a patch of dead grass from where the field had been recently mown.

(click on photos to enlarge)

You can see the fragile structures that.....wait.
What's that noise?
What's that rumbling and crashing?

AIYEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
DOGZILLA!!!

There goes Tokyo.

So much for the delicate mushrooms.

(and he slobbered on my camera lens, too.)
Oh well.

Put a little smile in your day!

2009-06-01T08:06:00.003-04:00

Got the link to this video from a friend. Too sweet!

Click on the link here to see it, then you can go to their home page after that to see what the group is all about. Pit bull lovers especially will be interested in their efforts to stamp out animal cruelty and support Best Friends, among others.

I'm sure they probably have some softheaded stuff in some of the things that they support in there somewhere, but I'm still grinning from watching the video so I don't care!

Prvi Partizan ammo test

2009-05-31T23:36:00.008-04:00

I'm not a bad marksman, but my riflery skills are kinda corroded.

So when I wanted to know what kind of accuracy could be expected from the Prvi Partizan and Fiocchi .308 ammunition that I had bought, I enlisted the assistance of fellow Raven Eric Eisiminger. He's been to a couple of long range shooting classes at Thunder Ranch as well as a passel of other courses out there, and has a really nice box-stock Remington light tactical rifle topped with a Leupold scope that is just the thing for this sort of shooting. We fired two loads in his precision .308, a 168 grain open tip hollow point match load by PP and a 150 grain soft point hunting load from Fiocchi. The results were very surprising.

(click pictures to enlarge)

While it's true that the two initial groups fired with the 168gr load were the first of the day when Eric was just warming up and getting into his groove, nothing prepared us for the accuracy of the 150gr loading in the third and fourth groups.
After seeing the results, he decided to try again and bear down with that load, and came very close to putting 5 rounds into 0.5 inch in the next group. I was spotting for him and I said nothing to jinx him and tip him to how well this group was going, right up until the flyer with the last round!

Bummer!

Still, a very nice group. Note that three rounds went into that one large ragged hole!
Properly motivated by then, Eric loaded up with the 168gr cartridges again and gave it one more try, getting this group in his last attempt -

At slightly over one inch, it wasn't nearly as amazing as the groups from the 150gr load but would be adequate for general purposes and for training use. Precision marksmen (okay, snipers) generally demand accuracy of under one inch with their duty loads and in some rifles this round might do that, but not in Eric's Remington and not on this day.
I didn't have either my .308 Remington 600 or Savage Scout with me, having brought the FAL in order to test some other basic milspec ball that I'd bought at the same time as the two other loads, but given that my Savage is a very accurate rifle I would expect it also to do well with any of these.
In the FAL with iron sights the accuracy of the 150gr PP ball ammo was typical and it functioned without any stoppages, so we can add that to the data base. We'll have to conduct accuracy testing on it another time.

And what may we conclude from this abbreviated exercise?

The Prvi Partizan and Fiocchi ammo I've examined to date in all calibers appears to be of very high quality and is at least the equal of commercial ammo currently being made in the USA. Fiocchi is now producing a lot of their ammunition in the United States in a bid for more of this market, and they appear to be quite serious about this effort.

The cases in all of the three types were annealed and clean, the bullets were free of visible defects and the accuracy ranged from adequate to amazing! There were no failures to fire and no problems noted with any of the ammunition.

The PP 150gr ball ammo would do very well for general tactical requirements in a semi-auto such as the FAL.

The PP 168gr would suffice for training for precision shooters and possibly actual duty use in some rifles.

The Fiocchi 150gr load would do for just about anything you'd like in a .308!

I'm gonna get more of all three of these, and the Fiocchi ammo in particular, if and when I can ever find any of it!

Sinuous sleeper

2009-05-31T18:02:00.002-04:00

The pack on our porch

2009-05-31T17:50:00.006-04:00

I've never had anyone try to steal my yard signs when these guys were out on the front porch, watching the passing parade.
Wonder why?

Top to bottom - Churchill, Sunny, Fooss, Seamus and Bodi
(click on picture to enLARGE it)

Fuzz filter, feline, foto, Mk 1, mod 0

2009-05-31T17:41:00.004-04:00

(klik pic, make big)

Kings of the hill

2009-05-31T17:26:00.005-04:00

"Harken, Sir Churchill, dost thou hear the rumble of troops massing to lay siege to our hilly bastion?"

"Naw, it's just Bodi barkin' in the front yard."

"Oh. Well, you coulda fooled me."

Truth in packaging

2009-05-31T17:07:00.002-04:00

Peach(es) segments, in box, no syrup.

Lord, how I miss that dog

2009-05-31T14:45:00.008-04:00

Seeing a post on another blog today made me think about Vanya, the Fox.

Vanya was running around loose in a neighborhood in Louisville where she'd been dumped, literally. A guy in a pickup truck slowed down and threw her out. She was about six months old.
I got a call from a co-worker who knew that I loved Huskies, asking if I could catch her. She wouldn't let anyone touch her in the two weeks that she'd been running around in her mom's neighborhood. I used a Golden Retriever to decoy her in close and grabbed her by the legs and brought her home with me.
Vanya was SMART. We guessed that she was a Golden and Husky mix. To me, she was 'dog' personified, exemplifying all the things that make up those complex and wonderful creatures. She was really sweet and affectionate, very much in tune with what you were doing and how you felt. She was very gentle with people and small creatures. She didn't pick fights with other dogs, preferring to observe and make decisions about what would best benefit her, but she would NOT back down from a challenge.
She would trick other dogs into abandoning a toy so that she could get it by making a big fuss over another toy or bone and then when the unsuspecting pooch came over to see what was going on she'd swoop in on the one she wanted and scamper off to her den with it.
We called her kennel 'the Vanya cave' for all the things she cached in it and the fact that it was where she hung out all the time. She even carried her food bowl into it at feeding time so she could eat in peace.
She loved stuffed toys, and whenever we were at a yard sale we'd bring home a stuffed toy for her to adopt as her 'baby'. I would have loved to see her mother a litter, but she was already spayed when we got her.

She was my daughter Julia's favorite dog from the very start.

But for all her gentle nature, when she hunted she was a stone killer. And she NEVER stopped hunting, from the moment she first came to our house. Whenever she was awake, she was listening and watching and scenting - especially scenting. She found things that the other dogs never knew were there by following her nose. No mole was safe from her if the air and ground were the least bit warm so that she could follow their scent. If we got near the woods and I wasn't watching her like a hawk to call her back, she'd get her nose down on something, bolt off on the track and there was nothing I could do but wait for her to come strolling back in, tail wagging and that big grin on her face about the deer she'd just run to exhaustion, or the raccoon she'd treed.
She had no vices. I expected her to live forever, because in my heart I could never think about what I'd do when she died. But she did, after collapsing one day in a field like she'd been struck a blow. She was diagnosed with hemongiosarcoma at the age of ten years during an exploratory laparotomy done to see what was wrong with her. We let her go and she never woke up.
I still grieve for that sweet lady. After almost two years, her kennel still stands empty with her toys in it. I can't stand to let another dog sleep in it. Maybe someday, but not yet. Not yet.
I have a tuft of her hair that I found a few weeks after she died in the grass in the field where I take the pack to run, left there from when I was 'plucking feathers' from her undercoat poking through her outer coat.
It sits on the desk, a sad little 'Vanya ghost', next to Julia's picture.

I do miss her so.

Think those Para mag springs have marinated long enough?

2009-05-31T13:59:00.004-04:00

Chef Bloggo does.

So at the end of the week we'll try to get out to the range to see how the long-term test LTC and all the mags are going to handle JHPs now, after a couple of weeks of compressing the springs by leaving them fully loaded per the suggestion of John May at Wilson Combat. It would help a TON if ammo prices weren't still through the roof and if I could actully FIND any 9mm JHPs, but that's how it goes. We might have to content ourselve with shooting ball just to get some rounds through el pistole, and defer the JHP testing bis spater.

Ain't it the truth?

2009-05-31T11:20:00.002-04:00

Pinocchio, Snow White, and Superman are out for a stroll in town one day.

As they walk, they come across a sign: "Contest to find the most beautiful woman in the world."
"I'm entering!" said Snow White.
After half an hour she comes out and they ask her, "Well, how'd you do?"
"First Place!" said Snow White.

They continue walking and they see a sign: "Contest for the strongest man in the world."

"I'm entering," says Superman.
After half an hour, he returns and they ask him, "How'd you make out?"
"First Place!" answers Superman. "Did you ever doubt?"

They continue walking when they see a sign: "Contest to crown the greatest liar in the world!"
"I'm entering," says Pinocchio.
After half an hour he returns with tears in his eyes.
"What happened?" they asked.

"Who the hell is Nancy Pelosi?" asked Pinocchio.

One good thing leads to another

2009-05-31T11:15:00.010-04:00

Got a comment on a post that led to all kinds of good things this morning.

"Come on Bob, don't die on me now!"

I'm still just barely posting here at the ol' blogstead because of a new job that keeps me away from home, and not having a laptop I can't post from out on the road. Bummer.
But this morning I got a comment on the photo of the Rottie puppy doing CPR and that led to the photo above from Smartdogs' blog, which led to another couple of dog blogs and now they're posted on the 'blogs we like' link on the left of the page. If you love dogs, give 'em a gander.
'Blogs we like' is a reference to an album called "Things we like" that Jack Bruce, best known for his work with Cream, did in 1970. The album cover is pictured below. You can imagine why Bloggo likes it.

I always liked Jack Bruce's work, most especially his voice.
So check out these blogs. Some really amazing things on them about dogs and dog training and pit bulls and other breeds, and in the case of the LASSIE, GET HELP blog a very beautiful design and format.

In memory of our fallen warriors

2009-05-25T12:25:00.003-04:00

I served several years in combat arms in the Army and then as a nurse in the Kentucky National Guard, but I was fortunate in that I was never called to war.

I came close to being killed in a couple of training mishaps while on active duty, but I never had to serve under fire. That can be counted as a mixed blessing, though most who've spent time under fire will tell you that they'd just as soon have skipped the experience.
But on Memorial Day, we remember those who not only served, but who paid the ultimate price and made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation.
God bless those who have given their lives so that our freedoms endure.
May God always bless those who serve our nation now in their struggle against the savages who would destroy our way of life.

God give victory to our fighting forces and bring them safely home.
God save our Republic!

When riches are gone and friends have fled....

2009-05-25T12:19:00.002-04:00

Your dog will still be with you.

(homeless man on the street in Toronto with his dog)

Not just working on our tan 'round here.

2009-05-18T09:43:00.006-04:00

Okay, so the weather has been really nice lately, even with all the rain that's blown through, and it's been a great time to be a bit lazy.

Truth is, I just started a new travel assignment and had to go to orientation all one week, then work a bunch of night shifts in the last two weeks. All that driving, working both days and nights and keeping up with all the stuff that goes with a new gig with a new company has tied up my time. When I get home, I just want to collapse.
All kinds of stuff going on - the NRA annual meeting just concluded and the Second Amendment Bash Bloggers were in full view this year, even had an article posted about them in the MSM.
Woulda been nice to be there, but things didn't work out.
Gotta go! Catcha later!

Dogs now being trained for CPR

2009-05-10T11:05:00.003-04:00

A new generation of specialized companion dogs are actually being taught how to perform CPR on their owners if they have a cardiac arrest.

They have to start them in training as young puppies in order to be able to accomplish this.

"Don't you die on me, damn you!"

Beeee Happy

2009-05-10T00:26:00.003-04:00

"It's wonderful to be alive,

To be a bee in this beehive.

It's tough as nails, it's smooth as silk.

It's milk and honey - without milk."

(Loudon Wainwright - "B-side")

Not just another pretty gun

2009-05-04T22:20:00.007-04:00

I was able to get out to the range with the Belleau Wood 1911 despite the intermittent rain that came and went all day.

I set up one of the Riposte-1 targets, designed by our friend and Gunsite alumnus Jim Higginbotham for use by the Kentucky National Guard, at seven yards. I figured that was about the range that most soldiers would have used a gun like this in the trenches of WW1.
I loaded the plain Jane Colt factory magazine with seven rounds of S&B 230gr ball, chambered a round and topped off the magazine. I took up a basic one-handed offhand bulls-eye stance of the sort that they likely would have taught to doughboys in 1917, took aim with the front sight obscuring the 'A' on the target and pressed the trigger. This is how the target looked after the first 8 rounds - (click on picture to enlarge)

It seemed to be hitting just a bit high and to the right, even at seven yards, but eight rounds of hardball in a group that size would likely have sufficed to unsettle even the most determined German shock troop, I venture.
Loading up again, I fired another 17 rounds, for a total of 25 fired at 7 yards. Here's how it looked then -

Okay, so I got a little sloppy and let two shots drift high and right. I was shooting at a fairly brisk pace, about the cadence of rapid fire in bulls-eye competition, and the front sight was picking up some glint even in the diffuse light of this overcast day. Still, while Higginbotham will never forgive me for such sloppy shooting, I suspicion that even those high hits would have inconvenienced or at least annoyed our imaginary German infantryman.
Moving the target out to 25 yards, I fired the remaining 25 rounds using a two-handed grip and a slightly more deliberate cadence, though still not as slowly as slow fire in bulls-eye. I began to notice a problem -

When I wasn't seeing the hits in center mass like I wanted them to be after I'd fired about five rounds, I deliberately held low and aimed at the center of the bottom line of the 'B' zone where the 'X' is marked on the target.
It became apparent that the pistol was printing about 5-6 inches high and 3-4 inches right at 25 yards. Some of the error might have been the light on the front sight, but I would attribute most of it to the short front sight, of the type that some refer to a the classic 'thumbnail'. Still, once I'd found where it was hitting, it wasn't that hard to bring the rounds down where they should have been and get hits that would have done for most combat situations.
A doughboy issued this pistol wouldn't have won any formal pistol matches with it, perhaps, but if he'd taken the time to find out where the sights were regulated he'd have been able to get adequate hits at what would have been considered any reasonable range for a pistol in that era. And at close range, belly-to-belly and nose-to-nose in the slop and slime of the trenches he would have had no trouble hammering down an enemy with it.
Other observations from today:
The trigger was crisp and predictable.
While I sometimes have problems tripping the standard grip safety on a 1911, this one worked for me in the limited and controlled firing done today.
The tang on the safety chewed a nice blister on the web of my hand the same way that every stock 1911 I've ever shot more than seven rounds through has done.
The fall of the hammer is magically musical on this gun. It must be the combination of solid carbon steel that's blued, not parkerized, and the harmonic convergence of the parts of Browning's genius.
With a little practice and a little tuning, I could have used this gun to win the pistol matches that my Dad and brother and I used to shoot in with the KPOA (Kentucky Peace Officers Association) long ago.
And right now, today, I have no doubt that I could pick it up, charge it with hardball and go out into the dark to win a fight with it.
It has the feel, it has the accuracy, it has the power. It's a 1911!

Belleau Wood 1911 pistol

2009-05-04T12:30:00.013-04:00

In the late 1960s Colt's Mfg. company released a 50th Anniversary commemorative set of 1911 pistols, comprising four pistols for four battles - Belleau Wood, Chateau Thierry, Meuse Argonne and the 2nd Battle of the Marne.

My father ordered a full set, but somehow by the time I inherited them in 2006 one of them, the Meuse Argonne, had gone missing. I vaguely remembered a story about how the other one got away, but since it won't be coming back it doesn't matter. What does matter is the three that remain.
Over the last few months I often thought about selling them in order to raise funds for more modern gear as a hedge against the anticipated Holder-Dark Lord axis. I'm not much for fancy guns and commemoratives as a whole never set me on fire. I started researching the prices being offered for them on the web and was surprised to learn that they were only going for about $1000 per gun, even if you had the entire set of four. Mine were still in their cardboard shipping boxes and brand new, but how would I settle for getting only $1000 each when a current production Colt 1911 pistol, which is nowhere near as nice as these guns, is going to fetch about that much anyway?
Then I got them out, looked at them and handled them - and changed my mind. Let go of three 1911s of this type, made the way that Colt used to make them, for that little money?
No way.
These pistols have a beautiful deep almost-black bluing. The surfaces are polished almost mirror-bright. The metal is solid and the hammer falls onto the firing pin with a ringing musical sound like no other 1911 I own. Where would I ever replace them for that money?
Straight out of the box, they'd do to fight with.
They're staying here.
The pistol shown here today is the Belleau Wood version - a classic 1911 with a solid long trigger, lanyard ring, straight mainspring housing and small but usable sights. There's no checkering on the grip frame anywhere, and the stocks are smooth dark wood of an unknown species.
Later on today I hope to take it to the range.
If I'm gonna keep 'em, you better bet that I'm gonna shoot at least ONE of them if not ALL of them, friends!

After opening the carton and unfolding multiple layers of cardboard, like a Russian doll, you come to this very plain and unadorned paper box.
Nothing in it hints at the treasure hidden inside.

(click on pictures to enlarge them)

Lifting off the lid, you see a brochure that could have been printed many decades ago, with drawings and text which would have been consistent with those enclosed with the first 1911s.

And here it is, the Belleau Wood Colt Model of 1911 Caliber .45 pistol -

The gun is gorgeous, pure and simple. When lighting conditions permit I'll have better photos of all three of them here on the blog. The overcast on this day just doesn't do justice to the polish and lustre of this pistol.
These guns commemorate the actions of the American Expeditionary Force that went to the aid of the Allied powers in 1917. Their vigor and determination turned the tide of the war. They were more than the German army, exhausted but still dangerous after years of trench combat, was able to handle, and they earned the name "Teufel Hunden (Devil Dogs)" from the Germans who fought against them. The Marines in particular were regarded as fierce, savage fighters.
Retired Colonel of Marines Jeff Cooper is said to have owned and carried one of these Belleau Wood commemoratives at some point in his life.
I like to think it's true.

Neues accessories fur den Obama Jugend

2009-04-24T14:01:00.008-04:00

All those who will be part of the Dark Lord's Youth Legions in future will be required to have snappy uniforms, I bet.

And what's snappier than your very own Obama Jugend dagger?

(photo courtesy of Mr. Fixit)

Somali souvenir

2009-04-24T09:36:00.000-04:00

Stand up, speak out, fight back!

2009-04-24T08:26:00.004-04:00

It's hard for me to decide which is more chilling - the blatant attempts by the Obama administration to transform the character of this nation, the arrogance and shamelessness of their maneuverings or the apparent total lack of concern on the part of the Congress and the majority of the American public.

In a story at the Investor's Business Daily (here) they lay out what has already been done by the Obamas, both the Dark Lord and Michelle, to lay the groundwork for the new 'voluntary' youth indoctrination program that's sailing through the Congress even as you read this. From long before his ascendance to the throne, these two have been working to twist the minds of young men and women, teaching them to hate their own country.

There's more about it here on the National Review blog.

As bad as the plain implications of this program are, what is worse is that no-one seems to give a damn about it!

How hard would it be for someone in the House or Senate to stand up in front of the TV cameras and spell out, one by one, the individual elements of this systematized brainwashing so that people could see it and know how dangerous and insidious it is? Surely to God some brave souls in the Congress can muster up enough reporters at a press conference to denounce this, or at the least start releasing a blizzard of press releases and going onto the talk shows!

Yet this dark hulk of a death ship glided through through vote after vote in Washington, like a ghost in the night, under a fog of willful indifference on the part of our so-called representatives.

We know already about the corruption and rank illegality of the actions of ACORN in the last several years, yet here's a program that will do exactly what ACORN has done, and more, and all of it funded by the taxes we pay. We are buying the chains that will enslave the minds of our children and in the end reduce this nation to a holding of vassals to socialism. And it's all happening right in front of our faces while we gaze on, chewing our cud, content as cows mindlessly awaiting the hammer blow to the head that begins our trip to the slaughterhouse!

Some days I'm in awe of the sheer audacity of what Obama and his allies are methodically doing to this country, but that awe is rapidly transformed into fury. We are standing by with our hands in our pockets while a coterie of anti-capitalism maniacs is dismantling our system and using our money to pay for their wrecking crew.

Read the article and ask yourself how, in the name of all that's holy, can we be duped into paying for a system that will teach our children, is already teaching our young men and women, that the ills of this nation can all be laid at the feet of white men and capitalism, and that the government is the balm for all our ills?

We sit like frogs in a pot of slowly warming water, being cooked in increments, contemplating where to put our favorite lily pad while these radicals in nice suits slowly turn up the heat beneath us. We are acquiescing in our own destruction and unless all of us wake up and begin to resist this rolling wave of legislation and regulation with all of our being then when we do finally open our eyes, we won't recognize the country in which we find ourselves.

It will be too bleak and hostile and drear to bear.

Read it. Get mad. Get ACTIVE!

Some things make me wanna SCREAM!

2009-04-23T09:30:00.007-04:00

I carried a pistol openly on my person for several years, back before we passed our concealed carry law.

Now that I can carry concealed, I do so the vast majority of the time. Sometimes people were a bit concerned to see that .45 on my hip, most times they ignored it.

Very rarely did I have any encounters with law enforcement who weren't happy about my being armed.

I'm glad to see the numbers of people who've started carrying openly in the free exercise of their right to self-defense. Being unafraid to speak out and advocate in public for your freedoms is an essential first step to educating the public and to preserving those rights. If we don't start pushing back, making the non-gun-owning gun public and the gun-haters understand that we're not going away and that we're tired of their phobias, then we WILL lose our rights.

But in the process, people, PLEASE don't make yourselves out to be MORONS.

I refer to the phrase that some who are big in the community of open-carry advocates are using, which is usually expressed as "I open carry."

AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We will NOT make a positive impression on the world at large if we continue to use this stupid phrasing.

'To carry' is the infinitive form of the verb 'carry'. I CARRY a gun. I CARRY it openly. I CARRY it concealed. I OPENLY CARRY the pistol. I CARRY the pistol OPENLY on my person. The words 'open carry' describe an act or action, they are NOT a verb!!!

I've event contacted the national group that's doing the most for this effort, Open Carry.org (their web site is here) about this VERY sad misuse of the language, telling them the same things I've written here and they basically said, 'Yeah, so what, we like it.' They plan to carry on with this ignorance!

Friends, when we use bad language and bad grammar we look like morons. Let the LEFT butcher English and invent stupid phrases and bad usages. No matter what your cause, you should first maintain certain standards of intelligence and quality. Saying "I open carry" makes you sound like a DUNCE, and the media will damn sure take advantage of whatever you do wrong to make fun of you and your cause. Why give them an opening by which they can attack and ridicule us?

We would all make fun of a gang-banger wannabe for saying "I be packin' heat." but he's not one damn bit more stupid than the doctor or lawyer who says proudly for the camera "I open carry."

It's WRONG - it's BAD ENGLISH - period, zip, end.

"I carry a pistol openly" uses the verb and ADVERB in the proper manner. "I open carry" means that you OPEN a CARRY - for what? What IS a 'carry' in the first place? Well, firstly it is NOT a noun. Properly used, 'Carry' is the VERB and 'openly' is the ADVERB.

I've been involved in the politics and media circus of gun rights for a good while. I'm acutely aware of how crucial it is that you put forth a good message and a good image.

Using this utterly stupid form does nothing to enhance our image. It makes us look like semi-literate redneck dolts. Why would ANYONE deliberately advertise the fact that they don't even know how to speak the damn language if they're out there trying to make a positive impression for their cause???

If you agree with me, that this is STUPID and something that we as gun owners and advocates for our rights need to fix in our own house before the media uses it against us, please contact the folks at OpenCarry.org and tell them about it. If enough of us do this then maybe they'll start to pay attention and speak English as it's supposed to be!

Getting back into the swing of things

2009-04-22T10:57:00.007-04:00

I spent the most wonderful weekend at the wedding of some friends in North Carolina, so no posting on the blog. Wonderful people, amazing food and some very stimulating discussions with some very smart folks.

They even let me join in and didn't make me stand in the corner.

Of course, the world kept spinning and things were happening and there's ample fuel for observations and discussions, so I'll be getting back to it. Most of the last two days since coming home have been spent getting documents together for a new job with a new company, and since a reduction in cash flow makes it hard to think about hobbies like this page, I tend to believe that the pursuit of employment has a higher priority.

But there will be things to read later today.

New Navy flag

2009-04-16T18:15:00.002-04:00

Tea Party postscript

2009-04-16T18:06:00.003-04:00

The Frankfort, Ky. Tea Party went really well - an enthusiastic crowd showed up with lots of signs and flags and attitude!

There's no other way to say it - people were pissed! The crowd was unhappy with Washington, DC, and with the legislature in Frankfort and with politicians in general. They brought their children, who had signs of their own, and sounded off loudly in response to the speakers who addressed the gathering.
We didn't have any counter-protesters, but then, I didn't expect any. The left isn't that energetic around here, and they damn sure know better than to try anything physical with Kentuckians.
I plan to post pictures of the event later on, have several irons in the fire just now and am hopping around going crazy. For now I just wanted to say that the turnout was good and that the people of this state were in harmony with the tens of thousands of others who turned out nation-wide to tell the government to get off our backs!
For those of you who support this kind of effort, don't forget to go to the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solution's event at Applebee's park in Lexington this Saturday, April 18th - The Bluegrass Tax Liberation Day! See their web site here for more info.

Yo, skinny, say 'cheese'!

2009-04-14T21:26:00.004-04:00

Here's a video that shows what the pirates off Somalia were up against. They never had a chance once these men were in the loop.

Shoulda left well enough alone.

(hat tip to Michelle Malkin for the video link)

RIP Deputy Jack Weaver

2009-04-13T09:34:00.004-04:00

This just in from Jim Shepherd at The Shooting Wire

Jack Weaver, from "leatherslap" to legend.

On a completely unrelated note, the shooting world lost one of its best-known names last week. Former Los Angeles County Deputy Jack Weaver, 80, died Tuesday in Carson City. Weaver, for those of you not familiar with the name, is the man for whom the Weaver Shooting Stance is named.

After experimenting with a variety of shooting stances and modifications, Weaver decided the best position for reaction shooting was simple: two hands on the weapon, gun up a foot or so above the vertical centerline of the body, and head slightly dropped. This gave him what he called a "flash picture" of the target. It also gave him the 1959 "Leatherslap" gunfighting title. As he explained "it looked kind of stupid, and everybody was laughing at me, but it worked."

After three years of losing to Weaver, Guns and Ammo writer and legendary shooting expert Jeff Cooper proclaimed the Weaver Stance "decisively superior" to anything else. In fact, Cooper incorporated Weaver's stance into his Modern Technique of the Pistol.

On Saturday evening, I spoke with Weaver's son, Alan, about his father and learned that this last year of his life had been one "of a rock star" after American Handgunner published a story about Weaver and his stance in its May issue. "All last year," Alan said, "Dad got letters, videos, patches from police departments and shooting clubs, tons of mementos that made him realize that people did remember him and his contributions."

We all remember Weaver's contribution to shooting -every time we take a two handed Weaver, or modified Weaver or whatever you call it. - Jim Shepherd

Tax Day Tea Party in Frankfort!

2009-04-13T09:21:00.004-04:00

We're going to have our very own Tea Party on the steps of the state capitol this Tax Day!

It kicks off at 12 noon and runs till 2 PM on Wednesday, April 15th. Bring your signs and your tea bags and your outrage at what our elected representatives are doing to our country with this profligate spending and unjust taxation! See you there!

(I was going to post a graphic that I received, but Blogger doesn't want to let me post a .pdf file for some reason.)

What kind of scum kills a man's dog?

2009-04-09T22:45:00.003-04:00

(Luttrell's dog Dasy, shown here as a puppy)

Even worse, the dog that was given to him to help him forget his losses from his duty as a Navy SEAL?

Marcus Luttrell has written a book, "Lone Survivor" about his experiences as a SEAL in Afghanistan. He's been through hell. Friends gave him this puppy four years ago to help him get over the grief.
Then these low life scum killed her. For kicks.
You can read one of the news stories about it here.
There is no punishment in the legal system of this country commensurate with what these sub-humans deserve to receive.
May they rot in hell.

TEA party in Richmond, Kentucky this Saturday, April 11th!

2009-04-09T16:36:00.003-04:00

T.E.A PARTY
(TAXED ENOUGH ALREADY)

Come out and join in Richmond's first T.E.A. Party this
Saturday! Come be seen, heard, and counted as we have
a peaceful protest of corporate bailouts, the trillions of
dollars the Federal Government is putting our country in
debt, and other tyranny that is running amok in
Washington! Join fellow Americans and enjoy a great line
up of special guest speakers, best costume and best
protest sign contest and lot's of fun!

WHERE: Wallingford Broadcasting parking lot
128 Big Hill Ave. Richmond (across from Swifty)
WHEN: Saturday, April 11,2009 from 4-6 pm.

Pirates? We can fix your stinking pirates!

2009-04-09T16:26:00.003-04:00

Amazing story of a dog's resilience

2009-04-09T12:48:00.004-04:00

I love dogs. Every day my pack shows me their amazing intuition, loyalty and devotion. They force me to think about my responsibilities to them and to being a better person.

This is a great story about a cattle dog lost at sea, who survived on her own until returned to her family. Read it here.

Excellent piece about guns and responsibility

2009-04-08T22:57:00.005-04:00

Over at the Winds of Change group blog, "Armed Liberal" writes an extremely intelligent piece about why more laws restricting guns won't change the environment in which we live.

It's one of those bits of clear thinking that come along only so often. Very well written, concise and tight. It's as well-stated an argument with which to rebut the anti-gun crowd as any I've read.

Read it here.

With the present outbreak of all these mass shootings we need something like this to state the case for principle in guiding our actions and responses.

New advisor to the President coming to DC

2009-04-08T07:46:00.008-04:00

Rex the giant worm will soon be moving to Washington, DC.

In keeping with the tradition begun by many already serving in the new administration and by well-known Democrat consultant Bob Beckel (frequently seen sliming up the airwaves on Fox News) , Rex will be advising the president and his cabinet on lapses in ethics, broken campaign promises and egregious misconduct.
Rex has previously worked with members of Congress such as Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Harry Reid, Chris Dodd and John Murtha among others (many others) but will now be concentrating his efforts in the White House.
"The Dark Lord will require all of my time for the immediate future since he has so many things he hopes to have the audacity to have the courage to say 'yes we can' to in order to be clear about his determination to change. He'll need my full-time input to know how low he can go." hissed Rex in an interview. "Transparency in government, the ruinous budget, bankrupting the nation - all of those things will require a level of slime and sleaze and belly-crawling that only I can bring to the cabinet. Then there's all those additional trans-nationalist slugs we intend to put into vital government positions. They'll have to be oozed and schmoozed through their confirmation hearings. And that doesn't even mention the obsequious groveling to foreign despots and America-haters during this last trip overseas. I'll have my work cut out for me!"
Rex will soon have his own salt-water tank in the Oval Office so that he and the Dark Lord can mind-meld at their leisure.
No comment was available from NObama at the time of this interview because his teleprompters were out of service.

They who also served with honor

2009-04-06T05:27:00.002-04:00

Lies, damn Lies and Holder's statistics!

2009-04-02T13:35:00.003-04:00

Everybody who knows anything about guns knows that the full auto weaponry being used in the drug wars in Mexico and shown on the nightly news in all its gory grandeur didn't come from the USA.

You can't just amble into the local Dick's or Walmart and toddle out with armloads of rocket launchers and explosives and full auto weapons.
No, those things are being sold to the drug lords by other nations who have no scruples about taking their money, or by the Mexican army soldiers who are going AWOL and stealing the guns from their own arsenals on the way out the door.
The mainstream media have have once again been complicit as organs of state propaganda by parroting the false statistics being spouted by Clinton, Holder and others in order to push the drive for a re-enactment of the so-called assault weapons ban. The claim that 90% of the guns used in the drug wars in Mexico is a crafty distortion of the numbers designed to stampede the unwitting public into supporting the new ban.
Fortunately for those who care about the truth and our freedoms, the Fox News Network has investigated this disinformatzia and has put the story exposing the lies on their web page here!
They've analyzed the BATFE data and taken the time to get more of the story from the Mexicans themselves in order to tell us that it's more like 17% of the guns being seized come from the US, and that is only the ones with serial numbers that they can trace. The other, full-auto guns don't come with serial numbers and they don't come from the USA!!!
Fox will be running this story all day on their TV news network, so keep following the story!

Get your TEA party postcards to mail in to the taxation tyrants!

2009-04-01T18:11:00.003-04:00

Go here - http://www.wrock.ws - and buy postcards printed with an image of the US flag and a tea bag that you can mail in to the Congress and to the Dark Lord's administration and anyone else you want to tell that we're TEA - "Taxed Enough Already!".

I bought a bunch of them today and they're a great way to get your message across. You can't send a real tea bag because it won't be delivered but this postcard will be!

"Of those men who have overturned the liberty of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants." - Alexander Hamilton

Kentucky Bluegrass Tax Liberation Day!

2009-04-01T11:32:00.005-04:00

I'll have more info about this in the days to come, but I wanted to put something on here now to so that people would know about it and start passing the word!

There are going to be all kinds of activities for kids and adults at this thing, and if you want to start taking back our country and our future from the control of the morons who're running things in DC right now, come out and meet a lot of folks who share your point of view!
You can get more information at the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions web page here.

Bloggo no likee recoil

2009-04-01T10:27:00.005-04:00

I recently bought a Hogue overmolded shotgun stock which has the Knoxx recoil reduction system in its innards.

Hogue no longer lists this item in their catalog, which may be because Blackhawk now owns the Knoxx stock company - see their web page here. I got this thing used but almost new, and yesterday I gave it a whirl at the range. I mounted it on a Remington M870 that's pretty basic - 20 inch stock factory barrel with rifle sights, Mesa tactical sidesaddle and a sling. The Knoxx stock has the same dimensions as the Speedfeed unit I took off of it, though I wish it was a bit shorter.
I compared the firing characteristics to a Mossberg M500 that I've had for a long time - factory ghost ring sights, an 18.5 inch barrel, sling and TacStar sidesaddle. It's been through a couple of classes with me, is stone reliable and is close enough in size and weight and stock geometry to the M870 to be a reasonable type for comparison.
I fired 4 rounds of Fiochhi plated 00 buckshot through each gun. The difference between them wasn't remarkable, with the M870 seeming to have a slightly reduced impulse. It was hardly enough to make a scientific comparison, but time was tight and I only had so many rounds of the same type on hand that I could afford to use up. I'll do this again and fire more ammo next time, but for now I can say that the Knoxx system seems to work though not as dramatically as I'd thought it might.

The murderous hypocrites at PETA

2009-03-30T10:44:00.002-04:00

Ingrid Newkirk and her fanatical minions at PETA would like you to believe that they exist only to benefit animals. They spend millions of contributed dollars to persuade you not to eat meat or wear fur. You'd think that any critter fortunate enough to be taken in by them would be set for life.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, they have killed THOUSANDS of animals that were surrendered to them so that they could place them for adoption. Instead, they euthanized almost 95% of them at their headquarters. Last year, some of their employees were caught dumping the bodies of dozens of dogs into a garbage dumpster, and were prosecuted for it.
Now a group has done the research to get their records showing the extent of their treachery. You can read it here.
You can see the web page of the group that released this info at - http://www.PetaKillsAnimals.com/
The explanation seems to be that PETA would rather kill a dog or cat rather than have it be adopted and become the slave of a human master. Better dead than under human dominion. However, PETA isn't talking or responding to questions about their activities, so we can only guess about their motivations. I don't have to know what they're thinking to know that they're a bunch of filthy murderous bastards.
If you know anyone who contributes to their cause, pass this on to them so that they know the truth about these foul scum.

Hillary makes the case for gun ownership!

2009-03-29T18:49:00.003-04:00

... And she doesn't even have a clue that she did it!

A really good piece that explains how by contending that the problem with violence in Mexico has to do with guns from the USA in reality makes the case for gun ownership by citizens - really clever! Read it here.

The Para feeding problems - talking with the pros

2009-03-27T23:23:00.008-04:00

When you get bogged down and can't find the answers, go to the experts.

I spent some time on the phone yesterday with John May at Wilson Combat, getting his input on what might be causing the feeding problems with the Para LTC. Along the way he told me some things about magazine design and the peculiarities of the 9mm in the 1911 which were very helpful.
I told him that when the mags were fully loaded that the nose of the cartridge was almost horizontal, so that when a hollowpoint came off the stack it went straight into the ramp, stuck the nose in and failed to feed. He wasn't surprised. Seems that the tapered case of the 9mm makes for trouble because each succeeding round loaded in forces all the rounds to lie more horizontally, tipped down by virtue of the case taper. After two or three rounds have been fired, the nose magically comes up and the rounds will feed. Not a problem with ball ammo at any point in the sequence, but a real hassle with most hollow points. In addition, trying to get the magazine capacity up to 10 rounds in a 1911 pistol can exacerbate this situation, but he and Bill Wilson agreed that fewer than 10 rounds wasn't enough. He said that they worked a LONG time to get that magazine right!
He suggested that I load all the magazines up to capacity and leave them that way in order to put some fatigue on the springs and take out just a bit of their tension, and see if that gave any relief.
He also suggested that the problem with the last round staying on the follower was a function of the cartridge case rubbing up against the slide stop, and to look for brass marks on the slide stop. Sure enough, there was a small bright stripe on it, just barely visible. I'm going to have to think about taking just a smidge of metal off of it and see if that fixes it. This doesn't happen with the Wilson mags, which allow ZERO lateral movement of the cartridge in the feed lips, but the Paras let the round wiggle just a little bit and that might be all that it takes to trip the stop.
I hadn't talked with John in a long time, not since way back when I used to shoot IDPA and we ran into each other at the Nationals where I worked as a Safety Officer, and later when I was writing about the match for the now-defunct 'Gun Games' magazine. Guys like John made the sport fun. They were good to talk to and were always ready to help you out with technical problems. If all the folks in the shooting sports had been like John and Ken Hackathorn and some others I'd likely never have dropped out of it. We yacked about guns and gun companies, the new Wilson 9mm pistol and our mutual love of the Wilson synthetic-frame KZ45, a 1911-pattern gun with great potential that never quite took off in the marketplace. We could have burned up a lot of phone time on those subjects.
We'll wait and see if the mags lose a little of their 'oomph' after a week or two of full compression, and in the meantime order up some other brands of hollowpoints to see what WILL feed in this puppy. Thanks, John!

New York Times cuts jobs, pay

2009-03-27T03:57:00.003-04:00

Gee, I wonder if this has anything to do with their arrogance, disdain or condescension toward ordinary Americans?

I wonder if anyone here in Kentucky is getting the message? Newspapers cannot mock and ignore events such as the Tea Parties that are springing up around this nation without paying the price. Story is here.

Still feeding problems with the Para 9mm LTC

2009-03-26T09:22:00.004-04:00

I took the LTC back out the range after its cleaning, feeling fairly good about the likelihood that it would feed the 124gr Speer hollowpoints.

No such luck. In both the Para and Wilson brands, the first few rounds in the magazine are presented to the feed ramp almost horizontally and the hollow points run up against the base of the ramp and stick there. The ball ammo, with its pointy ogive, toddles up the ramp and does fine.

As shots are fired and the ammo is expended, at a certain point the rounds are presented with a more nose-up attitude, which allows the hollow points to slide on up the feeding ramp. The problem is the first three or four, which don't sit at the angle necessary for proper feeding.

I've tried loading one round less than capacity, but that doesn't fix it. You have to be not less than three down in the mag before the nose tilts up enough to make a difference.

I'm going to try some other hollow points, such as a box of Corbon 115gr solid copper DPX I found in the ammo locker, as well as some others with a more pointed nose if I can find them.

I'm not sure is this isn't a magazine problem as well, so might be consulting with Bill Wilson to get his input on it and any suggestions that he might have. More to come.

Coulda been worse, I guess

2009-03-26T09:11:00.003-04:00

Well, the two mini-reports that aired last night on WLKY were a bit of a let-down.

The coverage was reasonably fair, although they gave one of our resident anti-gun hacks, a professor of criminal justice at U of L, more time than they should have. I used to demolish this guy in debates when we were passing the concealed carry bill in 1996, and in subsequent discussions about it later. He just doesn't have any legitimate arguments, only his vague, free-floating 'feelings' about violence and all that.

They interviewed me for 30 minutes and used about 5 seconds of it in only the first segment, nothing at all in the second. It's better than nothing, though I did have a good bit to say about the issue. The best thing was that it wasn't blatantly anti-gun and gave some pretty good air time to some other folks on our side of the issue.

The decline and fall of the paper media

2009-03-25T10:29:00.004-04:00

Now even NObama, the Dark Lord, is part of the dissing of the print media.

In his press conference he did not call on ANY of the reporters from the major traditional newspapers for a question. Read about it at Politico.com here.
Here in Kentucky, we're at day FOUR since the Tea Party rally and still no mention of the event in any of the three papers in Frankfort, Lexington or Louisville.
What troubles me most about this is the apparent lack of ethics and conscience demonstrated by the people running these rags. Do they think that they control the news anymore? Do they think that they can get away with this kind of arrogance? Newspapers no longer control public opinion. They don't make events happen, nor make them go away. How do they reconcile their purported interest in truth and facts with this deliberate shunning of an event of significant public interest?
Pretty soon they'll join the ranks of the buggy whip makers in yesterday's news.

On local TV for KC3

2009-03-25T00:04:00.002-04:00

WLKY channel 32 TV in Louisville, Ky is running a program about the economy and firearms and politics for which I was interviewed on behalf of KC3.

The segment will air at 5 PM and again at 11 PM on Wednesday, March 25th, in case any of you who get that station are interested in watching.
Don't know how much of what I said they'll use, but it could be interesting.

Walmart and ammunition shortages

2009-03-23T18:05:00.006-04:00

A lot of people have become accustomed to buying their ammunition at Walmart. Good brands, good prices.

For instance, the Winchester 'white box' value packs have been a staple for those of us who attend pistol and rifle training classes. It's a convenient way to get ammo in bulk without paying shipping charges. But in the last year, since it began to appear that NObama (all hail the Dark Lord!) would be elected people have been buying ammunition even more than they've been buying firearms. After all, if you can't feed 'em, what's the good of having 'em?
The fact that the shelves have been mostly bare for the last couple of months in most of the Walmart stores which my friends and I frequent has led to fear and speculation: fear that no more ammo would be forthcoming, and speculation that Walmart had decided to get out of selling ammo the same way that they had dropped the sale of firearms in some of their stores.
On some email lists there have been stories of men coming into the local Walmart not less than twice a day to see if more ammo had arrived on the trucks, and then buying every round that was delivered - not just .40 and 9mm and .45 but everything. The assumption is that at least some of that was being resold, but who knows? Maybe some guys just have really big garages where they're storing this stuff!
In addition, other big box stores such as Cabelas seem to be getting ammo into stock again, as have some vendors that are only a fraction of the size of Wally World. If they're finding ammo to sell, why can't Walmart, with its incredible buying power, get more into the pipeline? Is something nefarious going on?
So today I called the media relations number at Walmart corporate. The young lady there took my name and number and said someone would return my call. Sure as shootin', this afternoon I got a call from Jason Wetzl, a spokesman for the company. After I told him who I was and something of my bona fides and history, and outlined our questions and concerns, he very forthrightly responded.
The bottom line is this - Walmart is buying all the ammo that they can get, but the manufactuers simply can't make it fast enough to meet demand. He pointed out that Walmart sells vastly more than anyone else, including Cabelas and all the rest, and that with the traffic that they get in their stores they just have more people buying whatever is there.
In the end there are two salient points to what he told me:
One, Walmart has its buyers out there buying all the ammo that they can get so they can stock their stores, and:
Two, Walmart is NOT getting out of the ammo business, has no intention of that, isn't doing anything fishy. They just can't sell what they can't get delivered to them.
Big thanks to Mr. Wentzl for taking the time to call and answer my questions, and to Walmart for continuing to support American gun owners.

(Now I just have to get out to my local store and find those two guys who've been buying up all the stuff, catch them in the parking lot, knock 'em on the head and slash their tires so the rest of us have a chance at it .....)

Still nothing about the Tea Party

2009-03-23T10:05:00.003-04:00

Well, there's still nothing about the Kentucky Tea Party in any of the three newspapers in this area.

There's plenty about basketball, and about global warming and planting gardens, but NOTHING about citizens turning out to raise their voices in protest at the fiscal madness that threatens to engulf this nation and bankrupt us.
I guess they figure that we're gonna need those gardening tips for when there's no food on the shelves in the grocery, or we can't afford what's there.

Good news about the Para LTC

2009-03-22T19:46:00.003-04:00

After having feeding problems with hollowpoints in the LTC the other day, I tore it down and gave it the once-over.

I found that there was a significant accumulation of carbon fouling on the feed ramp which had hardened in place, but was still soft enough to wipe off with a rag. I had seen it on the ramp when we were at the range and had assumed that it was contributing to the failures to feed. I hadn't cleaned the gun since we'd started shooting it in order to see if any problems would develop and at what point, so now I know. By the time it choked on the hollowpoints it had run through several hundred rounds of ball ammo, which had left a fair amount of crud on the interior of the pistol. I wiped the feed ramp clean, wiped down the rest of the gun and put it all back together after lubing it with Slip 2000. Like I said before, this stuff is slick. Hope it's this good in the long run. I put a few rounds of the Speer Gold Dot 124gr bonded hollow point +P ammo that had failed to feed properly at the range into the factory magazines and attempted to chamber them. This time, whether I loaded the pistol by dropping a locked-back slide on a loaded magazine, or by retracting the closed slide on the pistol with a loaded magazine in place and chambering the round in that manner, the Speer cartridges fed smoothly into the chamber, straight up the ramp and never a bobble. I plan to take it to the range tomorrow and see if it shoots them as consistently as it chambered them tonight but at this moment it appears that the problem is fixed with a wipe down. Should have taken a photo of the feed ramp before I cleaned it, but didn't think about it until just now. Oh well. I'm not getting paid for this, and I'm buying my own ammo so who's gonna carp about my lack of diligence? OTOH, a visual examination of the magazines failed to reveal any obvious flaws that would account for the occasional failure to feed the last round in the magazine in the one magazine. I was hoping that an irregularity in the follower which would have actuated the slide stop would be apparent, but no such luck. Guess I'll have to keep at it, and at some point put a micrometer on the things to see where there are variances in the dimensions that may cause it. That, or get some rum and a chicken and a cigar and work some mojo on 'em and see if that sets it right.
Now where's that book on Santeria that I picked up in Haiti......?

An OUTRAGE perpetrated by the media!!!

2009-03-22T16:13:00.018-04:00

Yesterday, March 21st,

ONE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED PEOPLE showed up in downtown Lexington, Ky. to participate in the Kentucky Tea Party protest against the continuing fiscal madness in Washington, DC.

And how many front page stories were there in the newspapers in Lexington and Louisville, or in our own home town paper, the State Journal, about this event?
NONE. ZERO. ZIP.
In one of the most blatant examples of media manipulation that I have ever witnessed in my entire life, the mainstream media have chosen to ignore a mass protest by over a thousand Kentuckians, speaking their minds about an issue of major importance in our lives.
When that putrid hate-monger Louis Coleman held a rally at which only a handful of his sycophants showed up, they covered it like it was the second coming. If it had been 1500 NON-CITIZEN ILLEGAL ALIENS demonstrating for rights that they do not possess, demanding benefits for which they have not paid in a country NOT their own, they would have been all over it. But let 1500 men and women who love their country and are tired of being abused by their elected officials show up in one place, hold a PEACEFUL rally and what do they write about it?
NOTHING. RIEN. ZILCH.
You can bet your sweet keister that if there had been violence they'd have trumpeted that fact, but no such luck for the fourth estate - no blood, no foul, no headlines. You'd have thought that in the wake of the very recent Tea Party in Cincinnati which drew FIVE THOUSAND people they'd have been interested in another rally of the same sort, driven by the same motivation, attended by the CITIZENS of this state, part of a movement that is popping up in cities all over the United States that it would have been a natural lead-in to their coverage.
Uh-unh. Not for the lackadaical lollygaggers of the print media in central Kentucky.
Some TV crews were there to witness it, but not even all of the local stations showed up. Couldn't be bothered. And will the local voice of NPR at UK offer any coverage of it on Monday? I doubt it. Too busy droning on about whatever it was that Cheney did half-a-political-lifetime ago.
You want to know what DID get coverage in Kentucky's Sunday papers?
Well, of course, there was basketball. You gotta have that. When there's no bread on the shelves because the fools running the Congress have spent the nation into a sinkhole there will still be roundball circuses for the hoi polloi. And there was an article about a homeless shelter planting a garden, and more about basketball, and an article about the basketball coach and another article about basketball and some guy who did something else of no consequence whatsoever.
God in Heaven, talk about fiddling while Rome burns. In a nation where citizen activism is supposed to be what pushed the new Great Leader into Washington, when the excitement is all about how people are starting to participate in their government again, this is what we get? When citizens get active on the wrong, non-politically-correct side of an issue the editorial grand poobahs just ignore it. "They deviate from the party line, therefore they do not exist" must be their guiding principle. If anyone ever wished for a more glaring example of the arrogance of the archaic intelligentsia, I don't know where they would find it. And they wonder why no one wants to read newspapers anymore?
ONE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED PEOPLE.
If fifteen hairy-legged women in Peruvian ear flap hats had shown up for a fertility festival for Gaia in Oregon, or to tell us all to junk our cars to save the planet there would have been coverage.
If ONE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED KENTUCKIANS had turned out to hold yet another anti-war Bush-bashing they would REALLY have been jubilant, jumping up and down to write that story, if only because the last one held around here only drew about 50 people and was really a yawner.
If it had been a rally for the UK basketball program, which by the way ended up in the basement this season, you KNOW they'd have been on that one. You can name just about any inconsequential topic that springs to mind and bet that they'd have had eager scribes interviewing the participants but ZIP - ZERO - NADA. That's what they wrote about the Tea Party.
There will be more to say about this in the days to come, believe me. I am as outraged and disgusted as I have ever been over this. Ye gods, even the SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER has written about this phenomenon of citizen activism! See it here.
But the nomenklatura of the press in Kentucky are too good to stoop to reporting to you about a local event signifying a growing phenomenon in a time of national crisis. Might take too much attention away from Rick Pitino or the garden club.
It is to weep.

Kentucky Tea Party on Saturday!

2009-03-20T11:53:00.003-04:00

The Kentucky Club for Growth and other groups are banding together for a Tea Party to tell the government that citizens are tired of taxation and misuse of our resources!

See the Ky Club for Growth web site here for more details. It's going to be in downtown Lexington at noon on Saturday March 21st. The one in Cincinnati last week was attended by 5,000 people!
Show up, speak up, shout it out!

The Para USA pistol goes to the range with the newbie

2009-03-19T20:39:00.008-04:00

My nephew just turned 21, and for his birthday present I'm going to certify him for his concealed carry permit.

We went to the range today so that he could do his shooting test for his permit and he did great! After some jitters yesterday when he was shooting with his Dad and me, leading to his snatching the trigger and some flinching, he took to heart some pointers I had for him and he was center-punching the silhouette with every round.
Before we left the house this morning I talked with him about the need to concentrate on the basics, to remain focused on the front sight and to use that focus to shut out all the other things around him. I pointed out to him that all the things he takes for granted now - walking, feeding himself, driving a car, EVERYTHING - once were new tasks that required complete focus and total concentration when they were new to him.
Shooting is the same way. You have to bear down at the beginning, but as time goes by, practice (PERFECT practice, not just practice!) and repetition will gradually get it grooved into his brain. But equally important, when he finds himself starting to get sloppy, to throw shots and snatch the trigger and be distracted, all he has to do is to take a deep breath and go back to the basics and he'll find his way. Slow down, shoot each shot as a single event, watch the front sight - easy, basic, necessary.
He apparently listened and took heed. By the end of our session today, in addition to getting a perfect score on his qualifier he was hitting the 3-foot diameter rock set out there at 150 yards on our local range with almost every round he fired, from both handguns we had along. The boy is good. Must be something in the family genes after all. He's not as good as Julia, of course, but hey, she's had more practice so he's got some catching up to do. :-D
(Snicker - now if I can just get him into the Gunsite basic pistol off-site class with Ken Campbell in Indiana in May. Heh-heh-heh.....boy, am I gonna cost his Daddy some bucks......)
After he shot his qualifier, I gave him the Para USA 9mm LTC pistol to try out and like just about every other person who shoots a 1911 for the first time he commented on what a nice trigger it has. Now, his newly acquired personal pistol, a birthday gift from his Dad, is a Springfield XD(m) in .40 caliber, which I think is a fine gun. I've carried an XD45 as my primary sidearm for the last couple of years, and did okay with it at the Gunsite Alumni Shoot (GAS) last time I went. They're solid, reliable guns and the XD(m) has a slightly better trigger than the XD45. Still, it's interesting that he immediately picked up on the greater ease of shooting the SA trigger in the LTC. John Browning rules!
We were both dinging the rock with the LTC, and he was getting good groups with it at 7 yards when we were working on basic marksmanship prior to playing around with some long distance plinking.
Now the down side -
I regret to report that the LTC doesn't handle the Speer Gold Dot 124gr +P bonded hollow point very well in some situations.
I loaded both the Wilson Combat magazines and the Para factory mags with a mix of CCI Blazer 115gr ball, Federal American Eagle 115gr ball and Gold Dot 124gr HPs. When the Gold Dot was the first round in the magazine, regardless of which magazine I was using, it didn't feed reliably. It would go forward into the base of the feed ramp, then stick there. The ball ammo - no sweat. It ate 'em up. When I put the Gold Dots further down in the magazines, the problem went away. Apparently both brands of magazines, Para and Wilson, hold the first few rounds at such an angle that they hit the ramp almost horizontally, and when a few rounds have been fired the angle changes to more nose-up and the hollow points will feed just fine. Not a problem for those pointy-nosed ball rounds but not good for the hollow points. The problem was slightly less present with the Wilson mags, but still there. From three rounds down to the end of the magazine, the Gold Dots would feed and shoot. Loaded higher in the round stack or as the first round in the magazine, they stuck on the base of the ramp. Bummer. I really like that round in 9mms and it runs like a scalded cat in our Glock 19s.
We'll stay at this, give the gun its first cleaning and lube it with some of the Slip 2000 we just started using and see if that changes anything, in addition to trying some other brands of hollow points.
Lastly, one of the Para mags persists in not chambering the last round in the mag. It locks the slide open without feeding the last cartridge, which just sits there on top of the follower until you hit the slide stop or pull the slide back and let it fly, at which time the round chambers and fires. Not sure why, but the mag is marked and I'll try to see if it's a follower problem or us hitting the slide stop or - what? Today it only happened once, and that was with the nephew shooting it, but even so we don't need that.
I still like the LTC. Nephew likes the LTC. Everyone who's shot it likes the LTC. When it's fed ammo that functions in it, which most ammo does, it's very nice. Just gotta get them bugs ironed out.