So, The Voices We On The Right Listen To Must Be Approved By Harry Ried And George Soros.

So, I should have predicted this. Y'all remember when Ann Coulter got all that poo flung at her for being less than enthusiastic about John Edwards manliness? I tried to warn everyone about letting them have an inch. Now Tom Harkin is doing to Limbaugh what Kerry tried to do to the active duty military back in the '70s.

Now I have no problem with those who do not like Rush Limbaugh, There are a lot of folks that I don't like and more than a few who I do not listen to. This does not mean I want them removed from the airwaves. This is why I hate leftists. They go around saying that we on the right are a threat to free speech while trying to silence those who do not agree with them.

Now, Harry Reid is complaining about Limbaugh, trying to get him thrown off Armed Forces Radio. Worse, Tom Harkin has the gall to complain about Limbaugh's phony soldiers comment. Harkin! The guy who tried to pass himself off as a combat pilot over the skies of North Viet Nam when he never served there.

Now I have no problem with those who put on Uncle's suit during that war but never served in 'Nam, we went where we were sent and did what we were told. I do object to lying about it. Now I always figured it took a pair of big brass ones to fly a Navy Jet and had anyone asked me I would have said that it took a lot of courage to ferry planes to the big bases for service. What is the one thing we know about ferrying an airplane for service? It needs service, ie. there is something wrong with it.

I can see it now..."Peter, this airplane needs servicing, fly it over the ocean to get that work done." "Get your Momma to fly that airplane!" Nope, I wouldn't have done it.

But why lie? All Harkin would have to have done was say I flew Navy Jets. I never went to Viet Nam, the Navy needed me elsewhere. Harkin signed up, Like George Bush he flew the airplanes Uncle wanted him to fly and flew them where he was told to fly them. Bush told the truth, Harkin lied.

Now, Harkin wants Limbaugh thrown off the air. Reid wnats Limbaugh thrown off the air. Soros, too. John Kerry says that Limbaugh is denigrating soldiers. It is enough to make Jesus weep.

Time To Start Driving.

Well, it's time to begin the blogcrawl. Since it's been twenty two years, one month and four days since my last drink I am a designated driver. But since I got the location of the Fabled Tequila Mine of Cuervo before I quit drinking I loaded up a few cases of their best in the trailer. You drunks can have a few drinks at each stop.

o, here we go, in alphabetical order starting with the Bad Example Family. And no throwing up in the backseats!

Blogcrawls And Other Stories

The Bad Example and Frizzen Sparks Families are having a blogcrawl starting tomorrow, the object is to go to every blog in the two blogfamlies and leave a comment. Assuming that one is of drinking age and drinks, the idea is to leave a drunken comment. Others may be designated drivers.

My pal Contagion of Miasmatic Review is considering murder, drop by his blog and leave any good ideas of how to get away with it.

I'm noticing the big flap about Rush Limbaugh and the "phoney soldiers" comment. The Democrats and, sadly some conservatives, are all over the alleged antimilitary bias of Limbaugh. Unfortunately Limbaugh was speaking of real phoney soldiers, the Jesse McBeths. Remember him? The guy who claimed to have become an Army Ranger, a Corporal and a combat weary veteran breaking the news about the horrible war crimes by US forces. The guy who actually washed out of Basic after 44 days?

Now considering that Rush was speaking to a professional soldier, just back from Iraq, at the time, if there was an objection to his comment it would have come up right then, and not from lefty pols, either. Am I the only one who finds it disgusting to have John Kerry talking about someone being disrespectful of the troops?

Oh, and yesterday was my 300th post. To celebrate I'm having chili dogs.

I'm Important Now!

I guess I am getting almost as important as The Puppyblender now. I just got my first free book to review. Now I never have been important, outside the house, anyway. Does this mean I have to start drinking tea with my pinkie finger stickin' out?

Anyhow I got the sorta-autobiography of an old west lawman and shootist. I say sorta-autobiography because it was written by his friend and partner Eva Gillhouse, I haven't read enough to know yet just how he meant the word "partner". I'll write that up when (if) I figure it out.

Anyway this old lawman, one of the "Hanging Judge" Parker's Deputy US Marshalls, is mostly unknown today although his caricature is well known. He is the mascot of the Oklahoma State University Cowboys.

I am a lucky man. Born into the days of antibiotics and the Polio Vaccine and many other medical miracles, I still knew many people of the old west. When I was very young there were still some (very) old Civil War Vets around. Some of the older Mexicans around still remembered Pancho Villa. I had some neighbors from Roswell, New Mexico who had stories of Billy The Kid riding through and sometimes stopping. Now Roswell is known mainly for Youfoes.

And now this, the story of Frank "Pistol Pete" Eaton. Born in October of 1860, he lived to die in 1958. Born when the steam engines pulled trains he lived to see supersonic jets. I googled him and it seems that there is some controversy about how many people he killed, it seems to be between 11 and 15. I'll have to look and see if he counted Indians, everyone didn't back then.

Anyway I look forward to reading and reviewing this, stay tuned.

More Information

More information about Jena Louisiana is trickling out, not from the driveby media of course, they have their story and are sticking to it. It seems that the kids who strung those nooses said, and the school board believed them, that those nooses had nothing to do with race. It seems that it was a football deal, the team that they were about to play was named The Cowboys and the nooses were an old west thing.

Now I can believe that, my Cowboy Action Shooting Club has a gallows as one of the stages. We shoot from off and around it. See the picture. Note that none of the people in that picture are wearing white, pointy hoods and freshly laundered bedding.

I have never heard anyone go near our gallows and suddenly holler "let's go oppress black people!", including the occaisional black "cowboy".

Oh and sort of off the subject but not really, the cattle drives of 1866-1880 or so? About one quarter to one third of those cowboys driving those herds were black. Much of the trouble in those Kansas cowtowns was because the "Yankee" Kansans didn't want much to do with the integrated cowboys. Oh, and Brown vs Board of Education? Topeka, Kansas.

So, there is a lot more to Jena that meets the eye. That poor innocent kid that got fifteen years from the all white jury? Was that four cases of assault that he already had? Oh and would the jury have been all white if the black people had answered the jury summons?

Now, I don't know, I've seen cases where black kids have gotten the book thrown at them for minor fights while white kids got a talking to, but I've also seen a ton of thugs get away with things until nobody could ignore it anymore. Whichj is it this time? We don't know and the media won't tell us.

Petraeus And The Senate

Let's get this staight in our heads. The Senate voted unanimously to confirm Gen. Petraeus to command in Iraq. Unanimously as in all of them except the guy who's brain half disolved and the couple others who were too important to vote. Unanimously.

Now, about a year later 25% of them couldn't condemn this moveon.org slander. Twenty-five, all in one Party could not remember a whole year. Scumbag Democrats can't even honor their own votes. How is that battle against the Culture Of Corruption (tm)going? How about those earmarks, weren't you supposed to have a handle on them by now?

I've Never Heard Of Jena, LA But It's Coming Apart

So I was wondering why the Reverend Jackson wad complaining that Obama is acting like a white man. Naturally Brother Jesse tends to get a bit overwrought so I wasn't wondering real hard but still, wondering.So I put it in the back of my mind and went about my business. I mean Jackson and Obama, if they fight one would root for both of them to lose by a knockout.

So I was looking at the puppyblender's site and found out what Jackson is so excited about, seems that the '60s and '70s bypassed Jena and they are having those same kind of troubles the rest of us in the south went through forty years ago.Well, Jena is off the main highways but one would think they'd heard something by now.

Seems the trouble started over the white tree. Now I don't think it was covered with snow, I think the white kids liked to congregate in the shade of one tree. This is, beforof course, unthinkable. After all they can have black tables and black dorms at universities but white kids can't congregate, it's racist. And we don't get separate but equal trees, either.

So the black kids tried taking over the white tree. Trouble is, white and black still don't get along in groups. Individually most of us get along, I don't think David Duke of Louis Farrakhan (sp?) have many friends of a different hue but most everyone else does. As individuals. Most black folks I know get a tad nervous when they're surrounded by whites, most whites have the same problem in reverse. Note: before screeching about my horrible racism please note that the black tables and black dorms in college don't come from white folks. I notice trends and comment, doesn't mean I approve.

Now came three nooses hanging from the now bi-color tree. It seems the school authorities "knew" who did the nooses and expelled three white kids, the school board turned the expulsion into three day suspensions.

Then somebody burned down the building where the school board met. Now conventional wisdom says that the nooses were hung up by whites, although many of the recent examples seem to have come from blacks trying to call attention to racism. Much of the perceived racism lately has been not paying enough attention to how bad the situation that blacks find themselves in. Some how it is my fault when black kids beat each other for "acting white" if they study. And it is certainly my fault that 70some percent of black kids grow up in fatherless homes. Seems I would have noticed getting all that stray poontang but it's all my fault.

So now I'm noticing that a town of less than three thousand at the last census had a demonstration of thousands. Now I don't believe those six black kids ought to be facing felonies and it seems strange that I read of a white kid pointing a shotgun at black kids in a convenience store. Last I heard there were rules about kids running around town with a gun.

What I would really like is some honest news. It's no surprise that folks don't get along, there are entire industries built on making things worse. I would like to think that no DA would be dumb enough to try to railroad black kids but then there is Nifong. I would like to think I'm getting straight info about Jena but there is the whole of the mainstream media at Duke.

What I'd really like is for us all to fire all those bright young kids who went to J-school to "make a difference" and hire some bright working class kids who can spell "cat" and would like to make a nice middleclass income telling us what is happening, we could all decide on our own what to think about it. We'd all think something different, of course but we'd have a chance at making informed decisions.

Arrr! What if they'd waited?

Suppose the Campus Police had waited until today to Taze Andrew Meyer. Would he have screamed like a girl in Pirate Talk? Maybe "Avast with the Tazer!"

Seriously, though, he seems to have done everything but beg to have a large can o' whoopass opened up on him. I'm not sure but I believe that before he was tazed he got that one arm that was cuffed free and was flailing around with that cuff slicing through the air like a small mace. Ever seen a bluesuit that got a loose cuff 'cross the face? Lost teeth, fractured cheekbones, jaws and skulls happen, and on a regular basis. The least that happens is multiple stitches.

Now Meyer had his chances. The Police were just trying to escort him out. He then fought. So they tried arresting him. He fought some more. Now perhaps in 1971 they wouldn't have had to use a lot of physical force. Of course back in 1971 the LEOs would have been men. Men who met a minimum height requirement. There is a certain calming effect when one looks straight out and there is a badge at eye level.

There was one a day when average sized men who pinned on a badge knew full well they'd have to fight a lot more than those beefy old Irishmen. Today we've lost the size restrictions so that women and small statured men get to work the streets. Now this wouldn't be so bad, there are a lot of situations where a women can calm things down, or someone who speaks, say Vietnamese, can keep a fight from starting.

Unfortunately, we've gone way too far. Everyone isn't going to be reasonable. In the pictures and short videos I saw there wasn't a big Irishman or a very large black guy. From my screen it looked like an out take from "When Midgets Attack". I have no quarrle with hiring women for law enforcement. But can't we team them up with someone who has the size to stop trouble?

Now come the civil libertarians, none of which have ever been on the losing side of a fight to get someone into the back of the Patrol Car. Sorry, he asked for it. He got it. Now, maybe ninety days on a road gang in high summer, he might think about what he's doing.

Cochise' Apache Princess turned Eight Months Old

So I was wishing to be up in DC with the Gathering of Eagles, instead I was down here in Texas celebrating CAP's eight month B'day. Actually if the truth were known I would suspect that most of the guys and gals at the GoE would have rather been with some good dogs instead of near those protesters. Or cats. Or hyenas, jackals and buzzards.Or leeches and cockroaches or...what? Oh, sorry, I digress.

So I finally finished the last Harry Potter. Somehow, because I was retired I got to see if the first one was grandchild safe and got interested in Harry and Hermoine, Ron and the rest of that crowd. At any rate I finished the series and judge that it is granchild safe, with the following caveat. The series starts with Harry at age eleven or so, and goes with the main charecters aging a year per book. I would not suggest that this series go to a child much younger than the main charecters in each voluume.

In other news I've been rereading some old handloading books, the other month I got an E-mail wanting some information so I had to dig through the library. It is amazing the differences in the last forty years or so. It was "just yesterday" that The Answer to bluesuits being outgunned by criminals was the .41 Magnum. Now it is known that the only police problem the .41 solved was that it was heavy enough to solve the lack of backaches cause by gunbelts being too light.

Gloves Are Off, On One Side

So, The Viet Nam Memorial in DC has been defaced, so has the one in Sacramento. Someone smashed the War Memorial in Beeville, Texas, BEEVILLE!

The New York Times gave a super low rate for the slander against Gen. Petraeus and no prominent Dem has denounced it.

Hillary has hired Sandy Burglar in for her campaign.

Is it okay to question their patriotism yet?

Trip To The Vet

Today we had to take Eddie T. Dog to the vet for his annual shots. It's hard to believe we've had him well over a year. Or has he had us?

Awk! We got Eddie in late July of '06. I should have written something. Oh well, nobody tell Eddie and Ming,

We took Cochise' Apache Princess along because we had run out of Heartworm Medication for them and I needed to have them weigh her. The heart worm pills are taken according to weight. Eddie is twenty five pounds now, that's just about the right weight for a near-grown Pug.

We bought enough heartworm pills to last until February, six for CAP and a dozen for the Pugs...$238.00. TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-EIGHT DOLLARS! Eighteen pills. Holy Crows. We spent only about twenty bucks more for a water heater. That's the good news, the bad news is that it will be a week or more before we get the water heater installed. The fellow that is going to help me is in the middle of remodeling a bathroom.

What we are doing is turning the water off at the meter and only turning it on twice a day and filling gallon jugs for general use. So far it's working. It does remind me of living a hundred and thirty years ago.

Oh, CAP now weighs sixty and a half pounds, she will be nine months old a week from tomorrow. I don't think she will get much taller than she is now but I believe she will get about twenty pounds heavier before she is through growing. She is a lot skinnier than the other German Shepherds I've lived with. She is like teenagers used to be, all feet and appetite. Oh yeah, and ears.

Josiah's First Birthday Party

So we drove up to Plano yesterday to Josiah Dean's first birthday party. I don't exactly know what a one year old thinks about a birthday party, he seemed to be sightly nervous about the whole thing.

His big brother, who will turn five on New Year's Eve and his friends all enjoyed it. Except that William was slightly disappointed that none of those gifts were his. A near five year old is a natural Democrat, everything is about him.

Hunting season is here, Dove season to be exact. Now to get to Plano from my place, I take county roads and Farm To Market Roads until I hit Rockwall, Texas on Interstate 30, then I drive on Interstates the rest of the way. I moved up to North Texas in '74. Back then there was quite a bit of distance between the smaller towns surrounding Dallas, now it is wall to wall suburbs. I drove through miles and miles of prime dove hunting territory. Now built up, the hunting gone.

Meanwhile the press is lamenting the drop in the number of hunters, well, duh. The less land for hunting, the more expensive the cost to lease some land to hunt on.
I remember when day leases for bird hunting was well under five bucks a day for some pretty good land. I don't know how I'm going to teach these boys to hunt. When I was a boy the most common sight in the world was a boy or three on bicycles with .22s or single shot shotguns, usually with a dog running alongside.

Now they'd call the SWAT Teams. For that matter, how many kids ride bikes unsupervised anymore?

The Body And Fender Shop.

If you haven't yet, drop over to the sidebar and click on Quality Weenie's Site. She just got out of some surgery and could use a little company. She is lucky enough to be home now. I'm not quite sure she's up for a comment party yet, though. Maybe next week...

I've spent enough time in the body and fender shop to know that it's a pain, although it's better to go in as a civilian that as an enlisted man in the Service. A mistake the military made was to give medical people rank. When I went to the hospital in early '67 I had a couple of stripes, I finally left the same rank as that Beauchamp character was when he got published...

This was not unusual. It wasn't just the real silly stuff, laying at attention was always a pain but there is something about medicine that attracts bossy people in general. Now I got hurt in February of '67 and eventually ended up at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California, after the stabilisation work in other places.

I was just about 20 when I got to that hospital, they sent me there because I had family near there, otherwise I would have ended up in one of the other big hospitals, Maybe Balboa down in 'Diego or Bethesda outside of DC. The one thing the Services did good back then was as soon as you were able to travel they'd put you in the closest hospital to your family that was able to handle your condition. If it had room, of course.

Oak Knoll was huge, at the time, dozens of buildings spread all over a hilly section of Oakland. These buildings were all connected by ramps for ease of moving in a wheelchair or gurney. Now a military hospital is different from the civilian hospital. Most of the patients are young and, especially in wartime, injured rather than sick. Now a patient was kept longer than a civilian, too. Most of the civilians were sent home as soon as possible we, on the other hand mostly had no civilian homes nor was our pay enough to handle going back and forth as outpatients. Most of us were two years in before our pay got more than a hundred and ten bucks a month, outside of the whopping $55.00 bucks a month combat pay. Yanno, back then lots of us volunteered for 'Nam for that $55.00 a month.

Now, imagine this great big place full of (mostly) young, healthy men recovering from injuries. Even when hurt, young men have energy. Young men in the Services haven't lost their competitive zeal just because of an injury. I was in the ortho ward, my right leg was badly broken. The other guys had broken bones, amputations, etc. My ward had few men with internal injuries, those of us that had bullets through lungs and bellies were on a different ward.

It wasn't long at all before we had to go to the Mess Hall for our meals, first in wheelchairs or gurneys, then walking or on crutches, depending on the injury. Now it wasn't so bad with an injury to the lower leg or foot or an arm, or ribs, it got bad though when it was a spine or upper leg injury. A broken thigh or hip required a spica (sp?) cast, a cast from the toes to above the belly button on one side and down below the knee on the other, with the um, elimination ports uncovered. There was a plaster covered piece of broomstick between the knees to keep everything good and rigid. Imagine the itching during the summer, those wards weren't air conditioned.

The Navy, being what it was, did not bring these guys their meals, either. Nor did they push us to the mess hall. Instead they'd put us on gurneys and give us one crutch, we'd use it like a stick on a raft, poling ourselves from place to place. Others were on wheelchairs or crutches. Given the competitive nature of young men, racing was real common. Crutch races, wheelchair races and the most fun of all, gurney races.

It was always an adventure, a new guy learning to use crutches or a wheelchair, or even a guy in an upper body cast trying to learn the new balance, and here come two guys racing gurneys down the walkway at a full tilt boogie.

All Docs and Nurses are Officers plus all kinds of other Officers running around, medical supply, medical services, etc. Every one of them would have hysterics at the racing, arm wrestling, etc. This led to a lot of fines and demotions. It alawys started the same way...."Don't you know you know you could get hurt?" "Why didn't you think of that before sending me to get shot at?" "You have a Bad Attitude!" "Why yes, I do. There is something about having to lay in bed at attention for a bunch of people who have never heard a shot fired in anger that gives me a Bad Attitude. And why can't you do something about my pain meds being late, again and why am I trying to mop a floor from a gurney?" "Why can't these important people do their damn' jobs?"

Boom! Another Article 15. I've been a civilian for a lot of years now, and hospitalized a few times since. It's still hard not to "lay back, tall when the Doc comes in the room.

I wonder if the military hospitals are still such a mess. Probably, they're big on tradition.

I just read that the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital was closed in '96. Part of the Peace Dividend. So wounded, injured or sick Sailors and Marines from that part of the country won't be anywhere near their families.

Free Ice Cream

I've made no secret that we've been broke. When Linda retired gas was a buck and a half a gallon, prices have gone up a little since then. We knew we really couldn't afford for her to retire right then but she was just flat out tired of the grind. So we've been living on my little pension plus the $276.00 or so left from paying our medical insurance from her federal pension.

Well the other day we were cleaning out something and lo and behold we found a store coupon for a free half gallon of ice cream. When I went to pick up my cholesterol medicine I also got a half gallon of Peaches and Cream. Yum!

Today we finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, financially. We went and applied for Linda Lou's Social Security today, she turns sixty-two this November. We expected some two hundred a month less than she will actually be getting. It's no body's real business the exact dollar figures, let's just say that the way the tax system is set up we'll be taking home almost as much money as we did when we were both working. Without having to drive fifty-odd miles, one way.

So, anyway, unless that light I see is a train, the fourth Wednesday in January our money problems start shrinking fast. I'm ready. Of course we wouldn't have had this problem had we saved our money instead of peeing it away on food and house payments. Oh well, at least we paid off the house and land before she retired. All through this whole thing I've been saying that we might starve in a house with no utilities but we aren't going to lose the house.

I'm not the most financially savvy guy in the world but at least I didn't get more house than I could afford, with three mortgages or whatever is going on with all these gas station attendants and their McMansions. It ain't much but it's mine. Not mine and the banks but mine.

Unless prices go really crazy we'll be able to take one big trip a year plus several smaller ones.

I did two smart things in this life, I married Linda Lou and I paid off the house.

Oh, Larry.

So, Senator Larry Craig really stepped in it. I have no particular animus toward closet queens but it seems that somebody smart enough to be elected to the United States Senate could at least cruise adult bookstores instead of men's rooms in airports.

I would normally not care about a Senator from Idaho, even a stalwart Republican. After all, there are not many places more red than Idaho. Trouble is, Craig has always been one of the firmest defenders of the Second Amendment. I guess I shouldn't say firmest. There are lots of Republicans, not so many that are strong for the NRA.

It's time to show some courage, Larry. Resign. Resign now so the Republican who replaces you will have a little more seniority come the next Congress.

And please, Congress. We give you plenty of money for staff. If you can't keep your zipper up, hire someone to service you. Just keep quiet about it.

A Quiet Sunday

Things are pretty quiet around the Poorfarm today. Yesterday was my AA Birthday, 22 years since my last drink. Better still, it's now been two years since that stroke. And two years since my last cigarette. I've never considered myself as all that brave but I was, and am, surprised at how frightening a stroke is. To find myself unable to speak and not knowing why, or if I'd recover...I owe the Docs, Nurses and other medical types a huge thanks. Especially the drug companies.

To celebrate all this I'm cooking a massive pot of red beans and rice with ham and red onions. I bought a football ham last Wednesday and cooked it and candied yams, two meals worth there, now I'm cooking some more of this ham with the beans. There are still four thick slices for ham 'n eggs. Food sure lasts longer now that there are just the two of us. Of course the dogs are trying frantically to tell us that three of those four slices are theirs. Fat chance.

I'm fixing cornbread muffins to go with, a half dozen plain and a half dozen cinnamon-apple. The plain to go with the beans 'n rice, the cinnamon-apple to go with ham 'n eggs. Of course I'll have to do without eggs for a couple of weeks after to get my cholesterol back down. Such is the joy of aging. I wonder how all those farm people lived so long eating eggs and biscuits and gravy and stuff every day. Probably they worked it off.

It's always funny when the NASCAR Race is on Saturday Night instead of Sunday. Linda Lou was asking who is subbing for Rush today since he is golfing in Hawaii. Oh, yeah. Nobody, today. Carl Edwards did his backflip, somehow he got to be King Of The Concrete. Whatever, his team sure has that car working on concrete tracks.

I'm staying out of politics today, I read the usual blogs and just wanted to pound my head on the desk. Actually I don't have anything to say but the blog must have posts, so...

How To Avoid Embarasing Yourself At The Shootin' Part Of The Blogmeet, Part One.

It seems that some blogmeets have shooting involved, no not the kind that would happen if the laws were to change and us righties got within range of the Koskids (bottom photo), but shootin' at targets or tin cans, etc. Some of us would LIKE to shoot but for one or another reason, don't. Perhaps it's a case of living where gun ownership is difficult, perhaps it's a lack of finances, perhaps there are other reasons.

The bad news is that there is no substitute for practice. There are ways to limit the shame, though. There are some tricks.

First, start with your brain. Not everyone bringing a shootin' iron to a meet has your best interests in mind. If you are familiar with cliches there is: don't run before you learn to walk. Do not grab the gun with a barrel the size of a sewer pipe. It is impossible to shoot well when you have a flinch. Save the earghesplitzen loudenboomers for the end of the session. I've been shooting some fifty years now, I still save the big loads for last.

Make sure you are wearing ear and eye protection. Every Cowboy Action Shoot I go to I get some birdshot or bullet fragments bounced back on me. It seldom breaks the skin but would not be good for my eyes. Even a .22 pistol will damage hearing.

Shooting starts with your hands and feet. You should start with your feet about shoulder width apart with your weak-side foot slightly forward. (See second photo from top)Now, take the shootin' iron and put it firmly in your strong hand, the back of the butt should not be against the web of the thumb but should be in the meat of the palm (see third photo from top).

Your trigger finger should be off the trigger until you are ready to shoot. Then, just the tip of the finger goes on for any shootin' iron with a light, single action pull. Double actions require more of the finger on the trigger (See fifth and sixth photos).

The weak hand wraps around the strong hand (fourth photo). There are two main shooting stances, the Weaver Position and the Isosceles. In the Weaver your elbows are slightly bent, this helps absorb recoil. The body is at an angle to the line of fire, the weak side foot slightly forward. (Fourth Photo again)

The Isosceles has the arms straight out, although the elbows still aren't locked, the body is more or less square with the line of fire. Note that in a scenario with several targets we will almost naturally flow from Weaver to Isosceles or vice versa as we switch from target to target.

Now, the sights. The rear sight is a notch, or groove. It may be adjustable, it may be fixed, that doesn't matter unless it's your gun. I get downright testy when someone messes with the sights on my guns. The sight picture should look like a picket fence. There should be an equal amount of light showing on the front sight and the front sight should be even with the top of the rear sights. The target is balanced on top of the front sight. Our eyes are not able to focus on the rear sight, front sight and target so focus on the front sight. The target will be slightly blurry, that's okay.

Now, hold the gun, close your eyes and bring the gun up to firing position. Open your eyes and look through the sights.If the sights are not on the target, move your feet. Repeat this process until you raise the gun and your sights are on the target. Now you're ready to shoot. Finger goes on the trigger, press and "click". Watch the sights. If you are jerking the trigger they'll go away off. A good trigger pull the sights will barely twitch.

Okay, now load 'er up and make some noise! Note, when I was learning to shoot the rule of thumb was that it takes five thousand rounds to make a pistol shooter. With the modern shooting schools this number is much smaller but still the only real way to be a good shot is to shoot. Back when I was shooting competition I would shoot one day, handload ammo the next, then shoot, then handload. Every day got some dryfire practice.That is what it took to be at the top of my game. After I gave up competition I went to shooting once a week, my scores dropped about 10-20 percent. Now, of course, since the stroke, I can't hardly hit a bull in the butt with a base fiddle. Still, I'm a better shot that 99% of the criminals out there because I've learned the fundamentals.

Since there is nothing about rifles in this post the top photo is of a rifle, specificly a Ruger 10/22 with a Shilen Barrel and Hogue overmolded stock, plus a lot of internal parts like trigger, sear, etc. How to turn a $100.00 used rifle into a $400.00+ tack driver in one fell swoop. If you REALLY need to hit something, grab a rifle.

Arrgh!

Okay, so I wrote a long post and finally illustrated it with photos. You just don't KNOW how long it takes to upload a lot of photos with this dial up I have, either, only to discover that Blogspot put the whole thing into last month's archive because that's when I started it.

So, if you want to see pictures of me waving a few guns around, and how to wave them, step into the archives and see July 24, 2007.

I never really understood people complaining so bitterly about Blogspot, I mean it's free, it's simple to use. Okay, now I'm starting to understand.

Oh well, here is your how-to, Harv, if you want it.

Traffic Jam

I got my sitemeter Stats report today as I do every Friday. Traffic is up by a factor of some two and a half, from 60 visitors a day to one hundred and fifty-six. Woot! Seems that that link from Patterico helped, but not near as much as Blogpappy Harvey linking me to IMAO. I may become the most famous feller nobody ever heard of.

Now, if I can just manage to write something good a couple times a week I might just someday make it all the way up to Marauding Marsupial in the TTLB Ecosystem. Trouble is, I don't always have a whole lot to say.

I am about 2/3s of the way through a long article on shooting, it should be up Monday. I have to shoot the photos. I wish I knew how to caption a photo, it would make the article easier to follow, I think. Oh well, I just do the best I can.

No new dog pictures this week, soon. CAP, the most beautiful German Shepherd Puppy in the universe tuned seven months old Wednesday. I'll shoot a few photos of them while I'm taking pictures.

Other than that I got nothin'.

We Wait And We Pray

Just about everyone has heard that we've lost another Chinook Helicopter and five aircrew over in Iraq. Some may not know that my friend Teresa, the proprietress of Technicalities, has a son serving in Iraq. That son is a flight engineer on a Chinook.

As I sit and pray for the safety of my friend's son I can't help but know that five sons (or daughters) ARE dead. So we pray, hoping that He will understand that we are not praying for someone else's world to crumble, although someone's has. Just once, Lord, five unmarried, surly orphans. No? Then, please, not my friend.

Note: If you are antiwar or antiBush, please pray anyway. We, the nation decided on this war, right or wrong. The decision was made with plenty of discussion, lots of information. Every congresscritter had access to the same information that Bush and Rumsfeld had. Some of that information was wrong. Some was right. Just like in every war in history. Just, please, don't drop a bunch of Bush lied! comments here. Not now.

Welcome Home, Karl.

Well, the television airways were dripping with hatred yesterday, Karl Rove will be leaving at the end of this month. The Left is heartbroken, he'll be walking out swinging his arms, not being frogmarched in handcuffs.

I found it really interesting the media types talking about how the Democrats beat him on immigration, the Dubai Ports Deal and the '06 electiom. Hmmph. When did Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Michelle Malkin join the Democrats?

I am really looking forward to the Congressional hearings, the Donks are sure to subpoena him "investigating" those US Attorneys. I can just see Karl answering those "probing questions"..."What part of serves at the pleasure of the President don't you understand"?

I've never really understood the hatred for Rove, or Bush either, for that matter. Those two are a lot of things, classic conservative is not one of them. Ted Kennedy wrote the Education Bill, he had much to do with the Medicare drug benefits, too. Yet with all this cooperation from Rove, and Bush, there has been no reciprocation.

I am really wondering what the Donks will expect if they ever win another Presidential election. Do they not realize that the Republicans can, and probably will, behave just like the Donks have since 2000? Now, that would be fine by me, I figure the more gridlock, the better. Just remember, if the Donks won't let a Republican President appoint judges, why should the Republicans not do the same for a Democrat?

Anyhow, Karl will come home, to a fairly small town near San Antonio. I'll be sure to wave as we go down to visit our youngest son and his wife and kids just south of San Antone.

The Party Of Tolerance.

Okay, so Jerome Armstrong got into trouble with the SEC and has to pay some $30,000.00 in fines. Now I know, because they always tell me, that only Republicans are interested in money. Armstrong, being a honcho at My DD, a far-left website, cannot be interested in money, it must have been a mistake.

Here is what I don't understand, though. After the news got out the Koskids answered with "closeted gay, Matt Drudge". Now, I don't know Mr. Drudge and have never seen his closet. I check his website several times a week, it used to be several times a day but the popups and popunders are annoying, so I found other paths to the news.

Why is it that gays spend their political money on Democrats? The Donks claim that we Republicans are the intolerant ones. Yet when the Beauchamp saga hit the news, what was the reaction from the Left? "Matt Sanchez starred in gay porn!" Now, folks on my side of the aisle didn't know that, mostly, and those of us that did, kept it quiet. Now, the only way I know Sanchez is through his reporting as an embedded feller checking out Iraq. Gay porn is not my particular kink. It's not that I'm perfect, I'm nowhere near. I have my own particular kinks, everyone does. I don't talk about them with just anyone. The kids didn't need to hear them, they got to grow their own when they got old enough. Whatever they may be. They keep quiet about them out of respect for the grandkids, who will get their own kinks when they're old enough. Hopefully the grandkids will be Republicans and Only they, and their sweeties, will know what those kinks will be.

Why is it that it is always the Left screeching about who is, or might be, gay? And please don't call Fred Phelps a man of the Right, I've never seen him at a Republican gathering. Yet the gays shovel the lion's share of their political money to the Party that sides with the Palestinians, the people who throw gays off the roofs of tall buildings. They donate to the Party that is against us doing anything to the Iranians, who hang gays from construction cranes.

Of course, the gays aren't the only ones going against their own interests in supporting the Party Of Tolerance. Remember James Byrd and the NAACP ad against George Bush in 2000? Under the governorship of George Bush, we Texans caught, tried and convicted those three peckerwoods that killed Byrd. One got a chance to turn on his "friends", he was sentenced to life, without parole. The other two? They'll get the needle, unless the Donks stop it. Yet it's the Republicans who hate blacks, notwithstanding that the Donks are the only Party with a KKK Kleagle in the Senate.

Women send the lion's share of their money to the Party of Ted Kennedy and Gary Condit. Have any Republicans in Congress killed any women lately?

The world is insane.

More Pictures

Somehow I made a mistake trying to clear a picture out of the last entry and lost the pictures of the other dogs. Not lost forever, mind, just out of that entry. It being almost naptime I blew it off until now. Naptime is important.

The three sided dog war still goes on. Ming The Merciless is still the Alpha Dog, it is the funniest thing in the world to see her chasing CAP across the living room, CAP running with her tail between the legs. Ming convinced them both when they were puppies just who the boss dog was and won't ever let them realize how much they've grown.

CAP and Eddie stay locked in constant battle over the only toy in the world or the last bone in the house. It doesn't matter that there are piles of other toys and bones, whichever toy or bone one has is the only one and must be fought over.

Speaking of bones, my ankle is about half healed, now. I can actually stand up for ten minutes or so before it starts hurting, maybe twenty minutes of sitting with my feet on the floor. Speaking of twenty minutes, that time is about up. Stupid dog, kicking me like that.

She Still Hasn't grown Into Those Ears

We took some new dog pictures. CAP is a week short of seven months old. She is still growing like a weed. If I grab her by the front paws she can easily give me a kiss and the face, and does.

Eddie T. Dog is just about full grown.By this time next year he will be as big as he'll ever get as long as we pay attention to his diet.

In other news, our water heater has sprang a big leak. I was really hoping to avoid more catastrophes until December or January, when Linda Lou should start getting her social security. If anyone cares I'm getting real tired of being broke. It's too bad we threw so much money away when we had it. Oh well, another five months.

On Strike!

So, it seems that the Lefty Blogosphere wants to start a union so they can get health insurance. Well, I've always had a curious sort of mind so I tried an experiment.

You see, I am somewhat unhappy with the pay and benefits of blogging. Not only don't I get any money but I have to pay for my connection to the Internets, plus buy my own computers. So, I started a union. The Amalgamated Brotherhood Of Bloviating Underwearclad Peters, local #1. The first thing was to organise, so I talked to myself for a while, my wife shook her head.

Then the ABOBUP asked management for a raise. Management (me) told the Union (me) that there is no money for a raise (or much of anything else). Infuriated, the Union had a strike vote, the vote was 100% for the strike. So, the Union made up a picket sign and the entire membership of ABOBUP, local #1 walked off the job. The Union membership started a picket line, marching up and down the living room with the picket sign, shouting Union slogans and singing "Solidarity Forever" that famous old IWW song by Joe Hill, that feller that got hanged for murder, way back when.

The picket line started off okay, the entire Union membership (me) was walking the picket line, the dogs following, right up until I started singing. That's when the strike fell apart, Cochise's Apache Princess started howling and Eddie T. Dog and Ming the Merciless crossed the picket line to get to their Mama for protection from the awful noise. The picket line being broken, the strike ended.

Management's only concession was a bowl of Navy Bean Soup and a cornbread muffin. The union foiled again.

Update 08/08/07: Commenter Triticale reminded me that Joe Hill was shot by firing squad instead of hanged. Union lore claims that he may have been innocent, I know that all the prisons in the USA are filled with innocent men, many caught in the act.

The claim is that the firing squad used soft point (dum dum) bullets, which is actually no problem. Soft points are not supposed to be used in warfare because if a soldier is wounded the powers that be want him to have a reasonable chance of recovery. The whole point of a firing squad is that the feller doesn't survive, hence the Officer coming up with a pistol to check to see if the feller is moving. There is no recovery.

Beauchamp, Again

Okay, now TNR is offering as proof of Beauchamp's truthiness that his story of how his horrible treatment of a woman wounded in an IED accident happened in Kuwait. Yes, the war is so horrible that it robbed him of his decency before he even set foot in the country.

We have a new problem, PTSD to watch out for. Yes, friends, Pre Traumatic Stress Disorder. Please write your Congresscritter, we'll need to spend a few billion studying this disease. Since it affected Beauchamp before he ever set foot in Iraq I volunteer to take a few million to study this new form of PTSD, I'm qualified because I haven't been to Iraq, either.

And Another Thing

Since this round of Jihad started up Westerners have been killed by Hamas, Hib'zhallah, Islamic Brotherhood, AlQ, the PLO, and a host of other outfits. Islamists with no apparent connection to any organised groups have killed us, look at the DC Snipers, that African American Muslim couple of white loners.

So, with this evidence before us, why do we let the Democrats get away with saying the entire fight is with the Bin Laden bunch? When I was a kid reporters were curious, that is why they went into that business. Today it seems like their only job is to repeat Donk talking points.

Imagine if the Republicans of WW2 were like the Democrats of today...North Africa never bombed Pearl Harbor. Guadalcanal never bombed Pearl Harbor. Normandy never bombed Pearl Harbor. Iwo Jima never bombed Pearl Harbor...

We never landed ground troops on Japan until after they surrendered, thank the Lord. Actually FDR put the bulk of our forces into the ETO, against Germany and Italy, the Japanese got what was left over. You remember the Japanese? The ones that bombed Pearl Harbor.

Obama Wants To Invade?

Okay, let me get this straight in my head. Obama wants to pull our troops out of Iraq and invade Pakistan. I confess that I am no expert on the thought processes (if any) of Democrats but if they claim that our Military can't handle the 26 million people in Iraq, a country that is fairly flat, with navigable rivers, what on earth makes him think that we can swing an invasion of a mountainous, nuclear armed, country of over a hundred and fifty million?

Y'all must forgive me for bein' a poor dumb redneck but why is it that Democrats never support our military's operations that are actually happening but are always very supportive of potential operations. Kind of like how in '98 the Democrat Administration, the Democrat-led Senate and the then-Republican led House declared regime change in Iraq to be US policy.

So, Obama wins and the troops pour into Pakistan, greeted by the Paki Army, Air Forces, etc. How long before the Donks turn on the military?

The Birthday Bone

It was Ming's birthday, we did not make a cake. Instead I bought a couple of packages of beef soup bones, the ones with meat and lots of marrow. Eddie and CAP like to fight over the bones, they both leave Ming The Merciless alone.

In other news, the dogs have actually dug a hole through the back door and now run in and out at their discretion, at least until I find some good thick plywood to patch the door. Who knew the back door was made of plastic? Good grief, I leave guns around and someone could have dug through the door with a pocketknife. Or a set of claws.

The house is full of mosquitoes and I am somewhat handicapped, we were cleaning the mud off CAP's paws and somehow she kicked me, right on that lump of bone on the inside of my ankle. She put the claw right there and it's swollen and extremely painful. There is no broken skin. Sure hurts, though. When (if) this ankle heals I'll cut up a couple of pieces of plywood and screw them to what is left of the door. I hope a skunk doesn't sneak in before I fix it.

Beauchamp

I haven't written anything here about this "Scott Thomas" feller, now we know who he is, an Army E-2 name of Scott Thomas Beauchamp. From what I've read he has been in the Army far longer to have been promoted so it looks as if he's been busted, at least once. From what I've been reading getting busted is now a bigger deal than in my day.

I don't know much about what is happening over in the Sandbox, I read a few Milblogs and Michael Yon, Badgers Forward, Acute Politics, Mudville and Blackfive, a few others. I read Army Wife and Teresa of Technicalities. Truth is, though, I can't really visualise this war, too many things have changed since I wore Uncle's suit.

What hasn't changed are the men, and now women. If anything they are a higher caliber than in my day. When I served a battle scar would not been jeered at. No one would dare speak loud insults about a woman's burn scars, even if someone did get back to the sandbox with scars like that.

I served with men who'd been burned, burned in those older gas powered vehicles, aircraft and shipboard fires, back then the reconsructive plastic surgery wasn't as advanced, either. I knew a man who died after an AK burst went through a WP grenade or two in a pouch he was wearing.

We had a lot of rough , even gallows humor. We did not ever speak badly to those injured. Some of us might have, our buddies would not stand for it.

I would not be surprise about ugly things being done to bodies, assuming there were no NCOs or Officers around. I'm told that there is no way to wear a Fritz helmet with an extra skull in there. If anyone could, it'd be Beauchamp, he seems to be a pinhead. Still, folks who wear those helmets say it can't be done. I don't know, I do know that it would be odd for one guy to be able to do this all day, sooner or later an Officer or NCO would show up and the feces would interface with the rotary air moving device.

Dean Barnett Is Not Even Half Right

So if you read Blogs you've read of us baby boomers not answering the phone when the Country called, unlike the greatest generation.

Sorry, Dean. Woodstock got the ink, far more of us were in Viet Nam at that time. Here is a hint that most people don't know, most of us that served in the Southeast Asian War Games were not draftees. Less that half of the Army guys were drafted, none of the Navy or Air Farce and there was only a short time when a few draftees were allowed to join the Corps.

I'm real tired of the face of my generation being that of those spoiled kids in the protest marches, yeah those marches were pretty big. If you totaled up the whole bunch of people who ever attended any of them you'll get almost half of the young men who went to Viet Nam in 1968. Nor does the number of us who "answered the phone" stop there. We had our young men in Germany holding back the Soviets, we had them freezing their hineys off in Korea and chasing the girls of low repute in Okinawa.

The young men and women of this new generation are doing a fine job but there aren't near the numbers that served in my time.I doubt we could put half a million American troops into one combat zone while keeping another quarter million at the ready in Europe, and another couple hundred thousand spread around Asia as we did in my day.

Sorry, Barnett, go count the names on that black wall in Washington.

A Modest Proposal, Sorry J. Swift

We have a problem in America, we can't get anything done. The only way to file taxes, without being in severe danger of being "got" by the IRS is to file the short form, there are so many different addendums to the tax laws that anyone not taking the standard deductions is in danger. Every year we get the news stories about calling the IRS for tax advice and some large percentage is always wrong. Worse, the IRS isn't even required to come flip cigarette buts through the bars to you if you get jacked up over their advice.

The Government asks us to report suspicious behavior yet the Congress has just rejected the "no sue" provision. So, the "flying Imams" have sued everyone in sight, Congress thinks this is okay. So the next time, and there will be a next time, will a bunch of oddball folks succeed in scaring everyone half to death, without reprisal? What if the Imams WERE really a dry run?

No one, even lawyers understands the laws. Worse, lawyers have messed up things written in plain English. The United States of America has a Constitution, written in plain, although somewhat obsolete, English. This Constitution gives certain powers to the Congress, certain powers to the Executive Branch and certain powers to the Judicial Branch. The Constitution also forbids the Government from a whole bunch of things that it is doing, right now.

Nowhere, for instance, does the Constitution give any role for the Federal Government for education. None. Now I think everyone ought to be education at least to reading, writing and 'rithmatic but the Feds should butt out.

I am not sure, having never been to law school, but there seems to be a syllabus in those schools in ignoring plain English. A couple of examples...

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Someone please explain how we get things like the recurring "fairness doctrine" out of that. Or McCain Feingold. How about no baby Jesus at Christmas. A country that is some ninety percent Christian and we lack the ability to put up a manger scene, yet our schools are filled with examples of anti-Christian activity. Something is wrong.

Another example?

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. This seems pretty clear, it doesn't say the right of the National Guard, it doesn't say with the proper permits, it doesn't say after being checked by the ATF, it doesn't say after the waiting period, it says "shall not be infringed".

So, where do we get waiting periods? Where do we get not being able to write, or say that McCain and Feingold are scumbags of the worst order sixty days before the election? Here is a question, if the Constitution says Congress shall make no law about religion, how do the Federal Courts get involved? If Congress can make no law, how does a Federal court get involved? The clear meaning of the Constitution is that the Federal Government should butt out of religion. Period. Especially since many of the States DID have established religions back then. The proper thing for the Federal Court to do would be to say, "we have no jurisdiction, read the Constitution". The Tenth Amendment is pretty clear, if the power doesn't belong to the Feds, it belongs to State or Local Governments, or to the people, that's us. Now I don't need a bunch of lawyers on the Supreme Court telling me that the Constitution permits McCain Feingold. I haven't been to law school so I can still read English.I don't need Ted Kennedy telling me that my guns should be regulated, my guns have killed fewer people than his driving. My guns have stolen far less money that his programs.

Here is my proposal, it's a two parter:

Part One. Close half the law schools. Most of the folks going into law schools are fairly bright, let them enter industry where they can do some good.

Part Two. No lawyers in any branch of Government. Let ordinary people write the laws. Let ordinary people run the courts. If an ordinary, educated human being can't understand a law, send it back to the legislature. Here we have a case where a feller got fired from his job and evicted from his office, IN CANADA, and a Federal Prosecutor in Chicago, USA gets a conviction for obstruction of justice. Excuse me? Someone please explain to me, in simple words, what in the everlovin' blue eyed world gives him the power to convict someone for an act in Canada? Isn't that like some kind of act of war? Last I looked, Canada had it's own laws. I looked at my copy of the Constitution again, had to to get the exact wording of those Amendments and, although it was just a quick glance I saw nothing there about hew a Federal Prosecutor has the power to bust someone for following Canadian law in Canada.


I'm not quite to the point where I like the idea of "First kill all the lawyers", that seems somewhat harsh. We do, however, have too many, doing too much. That's the problem, we have all these lawyers and only so many horse thieves. Each lawyer wants to make a living. So, since there aren't enough horse thieves that need defending they have to sue someone. Or, worse, get elected so they can write a law so complicated that not even other lawyers can understand it.

Don't get me wrong, we need lawyers. Trouble is, just as too many cooks spoil the broth, too many lawyers spoil the laws.

I Don't Understand

So, our guys captured a major AlQ in Iraq bigwig, the news released after the Donk's snoozefest. Heh.

Here is what I don't understand...we have this bunch of moose-limbs that are always saying they will win because they are eager to die. Now I have never claimed to be the smartest guy in the world but if they are so eager to die, how come we capture so many?

If the Democrats are so sure the war is wrong, why don't they stop the funding?

A Prayer And A Thank You

Every day we don't get a call from the kids telling us that something awful has happened to the grandchildren. They don't call every day to tell us that the grandkids slept safe in their beds, we know that they did from the lack of a phone call.

We owe a lot of people thanks for that, from the cops to the people keeping the power grid up and the water flowing. And those wearing Uncle's suit, the Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and Airmen, serving all over.

I worry about these young Americans but I am glad that they are killing this enemy overseas, an enemy that has proven a desire to kill us here. I'm sorry that innocent Iraqis are being hurt in this fight but I can be cold blooded enough to think "better them than mine". I keep reading these Great Humanitarians blathering about how we shouldn't be killing these Muslim murderers, that it's wrong. I am not a Great Humanitarian, I'll trade every one of them to save a scraped knee on any of my grandkids.

I, of course, would prefer no war. The best use of the United States Armed Forces is when they are all just standing around looking so durned mean that nobody in the world wants to mess with us. This is, of course, against the rules, instead we have a government that starts wars and then pulls the rug out from under our young men and women.

I don't want to talk about that, tonight, though. Anyone who has ever seen or read me knows how I feel about those who wear the uniforms of our country. I was once allowed to stand with them and I sometimes measured up. There is another group of Americans, just as important, though, perhaps even more important that I shall speak of. Families, the wives, and now husbands, the children and the parents of those who wear Uncle's suit. In many ways THOSE are the toughest jobs in the Services. When I was overseas my job was sometimes dangerous, not real often, though. Mostly it was tiring and boring. The military invented hurry up and wait, after all. Thing is, my family never knew whether I was filling sandbags or trying to do something stupid. I knew when it was time to be frightened, I'm pretty good at being frightened. Most of the time I was busy being a young American. Even in the combat zone we had time to play.

The wife or mother of a Serviceman never gets to know that today my husband is busy filling sandbags (or supervising that operation for Officers and Sergeants) so is able to relax. There will be a hundred hours of sandbag filling for every minute of fighting, even for an infantryman. For the Rotorheads there will be a hundred "ash and trash" flights for every hot LZ.

We can tell the Service family members this from now until we get hungry, they all know this, intellectually. It doesn't matter. Daddy or Son, and now Mom and Daughter are over there, in danger sometimes and those family members won't know when.

I'm not all that sure that todays improved communications helps or hurts. Didn't get an E-mail or call? Busy? Jammed commo? Or that communications blackout because of an injury or death? Would waiting weeks for a letter be easier?

My blogroll, small as it is, has families of those in harms way, protecting my grandchildren. KD of Life Of The Wife's hubble, Army Wife, Toddler Mom's DH is in school getting ready to go again, Teresa of Technicalities son just left for Iraq to fly around in a fifty year old state of the art airframe, all of those, many thousand more, families get to wait, and worry. And pick up the slack of that family member being thousands of miles away.

I dunno, all I can do is keep praying and hope, with all my heart, that these families know that at least some Americans care. Oh, and thanks.

Dear Washington

I've noticed that everyone is mad at you, Dubya's poll numbers are down, Congress has even worse numbers. Let me send you all a clue. Congress, President Bush is not the enemy, we, the voters elected him. Your constant screeching about how he stole the election is insulting to everyone that voted for him.

Congress, you now belong to the Democrats, fine. This was not a repudiation of the war, though. You did not run on the war, you ran on elimination the earmarks and sleaze, remember? The sleaze is thicker than ever, so are the earmarks. Meanwhile you talk about how the election was about the war. Sorry, I was there, remember? The election was not a thousand years ago, it was less than a year.

Congress, I am curious about how Dubya worked so well with the Democrats in Texas. Yet he is unable to work with the Democrats in Washington, even when he lets Ted Kennedy write his bills. Yet you say he is dividing us. Dubya has vetoed exactly how many of the laws you passed? Just who is being divisive? You complain that Bush's tax cuts hurt the deficit yet revenues are through the roof. You complain that Bush's tax cuts hurt the poor when the cuts removed millions of the poor from the tax rolls entirely. Explain, please, how come the rich pay a higher percentage of total taxes now than before those cuts, that hurts the poor. Please use real numbers, not sound bites.

Please explain why you are yelling at Exxon and the other oil companies. Why can China and Cuba drill for oil off Florida's coasts while our companies cannot. Please use small words here because it's very confusing. From here it looks as if you are tripping our companies and then cursing them for falling. When you are through with that, explain why you think you can run the car companies better than Ford, GM and Chrysler.

I read where you have been trying for TWO YEARS to come up with a new intelligence estimate of the actual danger of extremist Muslims. Meanwhile I keep reading about The Religion Of Peace. You know, Washington, I have never claimed to be a particularly peaceful feller but in my sixty years of life I've never strapped explosives to my butt and exploded myself in a crowd of people. Why is it that only The Religion Of Peace do this?

There are about a billion and a half Muslims in this world. You, Washington, claim that only a minority of them are dangerous. Fine. That is nice to hear. I would like a best guess as to how big a minority, though. When I was going to school I read that 49% is a minority, so is one percent. Muslims have been killing us since the '70s, that should be long enough for you to give a better figure than "a minority", I mean if it's one percent there are a million and a half who want to kill my kids. Somehow though I don't think it's only one percent. Ten percent? That's fifteen million potential splodeydopes out there. Twenty percent? Come on Washington, we are paying you trillions of dollars every year, PLEASE tell us what the real risk is.

We'd kind of like to know what you plan on doing about that risk, too. The bigwigs of alQueda are talking about how important it is that they win in Iraq, you are saying that alQ isn't in Iraq. What's wrong with this picture? You claim that Iraq isn't doing any good yet the Soldiers, Marines, Airmen and Sailors keep reenlisting. Washington, I know you think that our military is stupid but here is a clue, they are smarter than the average civilian, look how many fail the entrance exams. I do believe that a rifle squad will have a higher IQ than a similar sized group on a college campus. Or Senate committee. Nobody that didn't enlist before 9/11/01 has an excuse for not knowing what they were getting into. This means almost everyone.

We would kind of like it, too, if you will stop trying to lock up Border Patrolmen, Deputy Sheriffs and Marines for doing the jobs we send them out to do. If you don't want Border Patrolmen to try to catch border jumping drug smugglers, fine. Change the law. Put on paper that those drug smugglers can't be shot in the ass after pegging a shot at the Border Patrol. Instead, after the whole Border Patrol Sector is out investigating the shooting, you lock up the Border Patrolmen for not reporting the shooting. I realize that you are lawyers, of course, but the rest of us can't quite understand how they were all investigating that shooting that wasn't reported.

Well, Washington, I have a lot more questions but since you have been trying for TWO YEARS to tell us how serious the splodeydope problem is, get started on those.

Love, Peter.

New Links In The Sidebar

Anyone who is interested in shooting or hunting should note the two new links on my left sidebar. The link to Handloader actually links to three magazines, Rifle, Handloader and Successful Hunter. Clicking those links gives us the cover, the table of contents and two complete articles. Each magazine comes out every other month, Rifle one month, Handloader the next. Not being much of a hunter I don't mess with Successful Hunter. I will say that Rifle and Handloader are hands above better than the run of the mill gunzine. Why I don't recall ever seeing a which is best, 9mm or .45acp in either magazine. (hint, the nine is better for some purposes, the .45 for others)
Anyhow the Handloader articles are John Barnsess writing about Berger's VLD bullet for hunting and Brian Pearce's tome on the S&W Model 19/66 and hot loads. Then there is a nice article by Duke Venturino about loading pistol ammo in lever action carbines and an article about the effect of different primers in the .223, on the other end of the caliber spectrum there are articles on Ruger's new .357 Ruger and Marlin's .45-70.

Now, Rifle Magazine is geared more toward the shootin' irons rather than the ammo. Anyhow, click 'em, see what you think.

The other new link is to Handloader's online database. Some years back they started a project of putting every piece of loading data they ever published online, in a searchable set of tables. They claim to have over 100,000 different loads, I haven't counted. There sure are a lot and in cartridges many of us have never heard of, cartridges that haven't been made new since that fracas with the Kaiser, oh, heck, some cartridges that haven't been made new since Geronimo. Still, if you can find, or form, the case, Load Data will have the info. Do you have that old Winchester Model '76 in .45-75? The data is there. Did grandpop bring home a 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Schoenauer from an attic in Germany? A couple of hundred different loads. If it goes, or once went "BANG!" there should be a load.

There are also articles, separate from the magazines.

Check it out, there is a free set of data each month, just to show what they have. Not a bad deal for $29.95 a year. Price one of the big loading manuals.

Update 07/13/07: Thanks for catching that typo, Harv.

Farmer Brown And The Summer Hay

It finally quit raining long enough to start mowing. The grass and weeds were so tall it is still wet down toward the ground, after three or four days of sun. I could only mow like six inches at a stroke, still the mower kept clogging up with wet grass.

It took a good meal to get this operation started so I had a boneless, kinless chicken breast and a mountain of mashed potaoes and gravy, peas on the side. Ming the Merciless was fasciniated by that meal.

Well fortified I climbed on the tractor and start hacking away. About twice a cut I had to stop and clear the mower discharge. I mowed until I was just about to die and then took a shower and a nap.

The next day I waited until well after six PM before trying to mow some more, and got about half of the front and side yards mowed, then the rain came again.

If anyone cares I am about ready to scream from all this rain. I'm sick of wet, muddy dogs. There just ain't nothin' in this world friendlier than a wet muddy dog.

Sorry, Mother Earth

I forgot about Live Earth or whatever Algore's series of concerts was called. So I don't know how much "awareness" was raised. Seems to have been a whole lot of jetting, limo-riding and concert fan traveling involved, though.

I did sit home and watch the NASCAR race, instead. Jamie McMurray won his first race in forever, good for him.

I wonder how many earth killing NASCAR races we could have for the carbon footprint of this one big earth saving set of concerts? I wonder if an earth destroying NASCAR race could become green if Algore collected a profit? Seems that since Dale Jr. is moving into Kyle Bush's ride next year maybe Algore could sponsor Kyle's next ride and that four mile a gallon race car would become green...even if it's painted yellow.

I really wish I understood this ecology business. I live in a small house, I drive somewhere two or three days a week. Algore lives in a mansion, flies around in private jets. Shouldn't Gore shup up and let me talk about the environment?

I have thought about this, though. My theory is that if it's good for Algore, either financially or politically, that's environmental. If it's good for ordinary people, who don't live in mansions or fly in private jets, it's detroying Mother Earth. What I don't understand is how come Gore isn't covered in tar and feathers, riding a fence rail out of town.

Saturday Dogs

Today is supposed to be an especially lucky day, 7/7/07. I simply contend that every day is a lucky day for me. I've mentioned how lucky I was to have been born in The United States, then the amazing luck of latching on to Linda Lou. (Don't tell her I said that, I'm still complaining about the wheel)

Today is Robert A. Hienlein's 100th birthday. I've never been a real big sci-fi fanatic but I did love Hienlein. He could still be writing books if it weren't for that stupid death thing.

That Princess critter is still growing. It seems like yesterday that she was smaller than Eddie.
My best guess as to her eventual size is midway between Paris, Texas ans Paris, France. She'll be braver than Paris, France, though. Nothing scares her but Ming.

Help! Help! A Horrible Hefflelump!

Well, actually there are no horrible hefflelumps but I do need a little help. First I need someone who understands code to put two text links up here. It seems the folks from Rifle/Handloader Magazines want a text link here. Rifle/Handloader are the only Gunzines that I even read any more. I sometimes will buy one of the other gunrags when I'm caught out with nothing to read, I go through their articles looking for idiot mistakes, I frequently find them, too. Not in Handloader or Rifle. They also have Load Data, an electronic database of every handload they have published since they started out. In the last month they've put up new loads for fourteen different cartridges.

They are publishing some of my favorite gunwriters, including Mike, "Duke", Venturino, the dean of black powder writers. I do not know if I stole the title of my Blog from him, he stole the title of his column from me or if we just speak the same language and thought them up independantly.


Aside from riches beyond my wildest dreams, well, ten bucks each, the big dogs noticed poor little me. Thing is, I keep screwing up trying to put those things in. Anybody want to put them in for me?

Next, I have a phisher or other crook putting comments in, how do I make them go away?

Thanks.

The Lake Tahoe Fire Is Contained

I read where the Lake Tahoe fore is completely contained, now.

Sixgun Shorty and his collection are all okay. A lot of homes were destroyed and it seems that the idiot government types will be jackasses about some of the rebuilding. Of course the fire was a lot worse that it should have been, no one is allowed to pick up dead wood, etc. Government environmentalists, lamp post, rope. Some assembly required.

Lucky Me

I am one of the three hundred million luckiest people in the world. You see I was born in Golden America. Before my ancestors left the Old Country, that is what they called her, Golden America. It doesn't matter where the Old Country was, we are all lucky.

I was born in a lower middle class family yet we owned our own house, not something you see every day, elsewhere. For that matter, not many other countries even HAD a middle class back then.

Two hundred and thirty one years ago our ancestors started an experiment. It isn't perfect yet, it may never be perfect. I doubt it ever will be as people aren't perfect. I have traveled a lot, though, back in my younger days, courtesy of my Uncle Samuel. Even the places I went where I wasn't blowing stuff up were awful compared to Golden America.

Happy Birthday, America.