Scattershooting

I don't remember who the columnist was, or even what paper he worked for but back when I subscribed to newspapers there was a feller who often ended his column with something he called scattershooting. It was always "Scattershooting While Wondering What Happened To...." and then he would name a person who once was a celebrity that we hadn't heard from in a coon's age. Anyway I am not wondering what happened to Belle Starr, Judge Parker sentence her to hang.

I wonder if we are still allowed to say a coon's age? Ah, even if they complain I won't go genuflect to Sharpton and Jackson.


Who is this person Sheryl Crow? She seems to be famous but for what escapes me. She must be young and has never been around anybody old enough to need prune juice. Or just incredibly stupid. One square indeed. Three or four on those pesky days? Idiot.

What on earth is up with these Donks? FDR and Truman had us set up for a Donk dynasty except Ike decided to run as a Republican. Yet after Ike's two terms we were set up for Donks as far as the eye could see. Then they got us into a war and decided it was too hard. As unpopular as Viet Nam was when they pulled the rug out from under the troops it was the end of that dynasty. Since then the only way Donks could win a national election was to ambush Nixon for less than LBJ did and to run as a Republican lite like Clinton did.

Now the Donks are doing it again. Yes this war in Iraq is unpopular. The Donks don't seem to realise, though, that it's unpopular because we can't hardly see any progress. (Note: every Milblogger on the scene seems to think there is progress. and not just the Officers who we expect to follow the company line but the Noncoms, and one enlistment EMs who tend to speak their minds no matter what the Generals say) The Donks think that they can ride to power by forcing us to lose a war. Americans do not like to lose wars. I do not see a political advantage to losing this war. Nor can I see a strategic advantage. The Donks may get a short term gain but what happens when the persons of explosion hit us again? On their watch? I submit that there is a much better chance of that than the Donks getting perpetual power from causing us to lose a war. Now the nutroots, the reality based community, will say that we are not losing because of what they're doing. Does anyone with an I/Q above room temperature really thing that the fighters, munitions and money would be flowing 'cross the Syrian and Iranian borders as they are today without the Donks fighting our guys every step of the way? Not that Dubya will ever say anything about what the Donks are doing. Note to Donks, Dubya isn't running next year. Republicans will be beating the Donks over the head with this for the next forty years.

I'm in a bad mood tonight. A simple little thing like a big sale when I don't have the money. Seems that Texas Jacks, down in Fredericksburg, TX is having a big sale, including the cowboy guns. They have the Cimarron Model P revolvers, the Colt Peacemaker clone in .32-20 for two for $800.00. That old .32-20 is a great old cartridge. Depending on how we load it it is a light recoiling target and small game round. Add a little more slow burning powder like Blue Dot, 2400 or H110 or Lil Gun and it is a nifty small bore magnum with actual hitting power somewhere between the .38 Special and .357 Mag. I've always thought that the gunmakers were missing a good bet by not making a modern revolver in .32-20. Say a Ruger GP 100 or K or L frame Smith. I'd love to have a '92 Winchester in .32-20, too. It'd be a great small game rifle ans would be good for our smallish Texas Whitetails if the range was fairly close.

Another Battleground

Another thing the puppies fight over is who gets the couch. They take turns winning the place of honor by the pillow. Ming The Merciless is, of course, oblivious to all that as long as the puppies stay well away from her little bed.

I Do Not Understand.

The thing I do not understand about this mass murder in Virginia is that nobody seemed to have tried to tackle this nutcase. It seems to have been bred out of our kids, the ability to attack even when losing is a foregone conclusion.

Somewhere between when I was a child and today, something important was lost. When I was born there were still a few Civil War veterans alive, not many but some. There were even more survivors of the Spanish American War, men who had charged up Kettle Hill with Teddy Roosevelt. Men who had gone up against the Spanish Mausers while they were armed with single shot Trapdoor Springfields. Men who walked uphill, unable to shoot because the Spaniards were out of range. Those Spaniards were able to shoot, though. That's the difference between their 7mm Mausers and our .45-70s.

My Grandfather's generation went "over the top" in WW1. They charged across hundreds of yards of open, muddy fields, through barbed wire in the face of machine gun fire. My Dad's generation went across the beaches of Normandy and waded a mile through the water to get to the beach at Tarawa. My generation had the hill fights and the battle of Hue City.

When I was a child we fought back. It was important that we did not start fights but we were expected to finish them. It didn't matter if the other kids was a full head taller and forty pounds heavier, we were expected to fight back. Just as those men of the civil war would, when pushed out of a position, back away. In an age where any body hit was eventually fatal because there were no antibiotics, it still meant something to those men to not be hit in the back.

Today's children are punished for fighting back. No matter how they get attacked they get punished for fighting back. So, today, when evil walks, as it will, all these kids hide helplessly. Young men and women, older than the men of Gettysburg and Tarawa not only can't fight back against one small guy with a gun but they can't even barricade the damned doors.

That guy who shot all those girls in the college up in Canada, he ordered the men out while he lined the women up. The men went. They went.

What happened? What, in God's named happened to the young men and women of our society? A whole roomful of healthy young men and women, killed. Not killed trying to drop this skinny kid under a hail of German textbooks but killed, cowering.

Who taught the grandsons of the heroes of Iwo Jima this behavior? Is it not time to purge those people from positions of authority?

Four Hundred Dollar Haircuts?

So that champion of the little guy, John Edwards, gets four hundred dollar haircuts. Hmmph. The old guy that gave me my seven dollar haircuts is gone now, I have to drive all the way to Quinlen and pay eight bucks now. This means I get a haircut every three months instead of every two and a half.

I read a comment on some blog about how much Edwards has done for the little guy. Aside from driving up health care cost it is a mystery just what he has done.

Update On Corzine...

The powers that be have rolled all of the feces to the top of the hill and it is about to roll downhill. That State Trooper who was driving lives in the valley.

The "invesigation" of this incidnet shows that the Gov's SUV was going 91 mph in a 65 zone. Furthermore they are saying that nobody told the Trooper to go fast. Right. A State Trooper driving the Governor just decided, on his own to drive 91 mph. If you believe that my number 2 boy has some ocean front property in the hills above Charlelotte, NC to sell you.

They are also saying that the Trooper should have forced the Gov and his aides to buckle up. Right. And a PFC should demand that his General should get in step. What with the civil service rules in most states that Trooper probably would not have been fired. He would, however been reassigned to the other end of the state from where his house is and would have been working last out in Resume Speed, NJ.

Democrats, the party of the little guy. Unless crapping all over a little guy saves them the slightest bit of trouble.

Virgina Tech, A Study In Failure

In 1966 a Marine Veteran rode the elevator to the top of the clock tower at the University of Texas and started blowing people away. Within minutes there were all kinds of ordinary folks blasting back at him with deer rifles and the whole Austin PD heading towards him.

Today nobody shoots back and the local LEOs fart around , excuse me, establish a perimeter, form a chain of command, no, they fart around while people die. Somehow in the forty-odd years between UT and VT we lost something. In 1966 police had commanders, today we have administrators. Supposedly this instant communication with the first officers on the scene makes for better officer safety, which would be fine if people pinned on the badge to be safe.

I blame instant communications and the new breed of administrators. That Austin bluesuit of 1966 did not have a radio on his gunbelt with a microphone/speaker on his left epaulet. Once he was out of his squadcar he was on his own, he grabbed up an armed civilian and they climbed the stairs until they found and killed Whitman.

Remember those pictures from Columbine? They looked just like the pictures from today, dozens of LEOs "forming a perimeter" while unarmed kids are slaughtered inside. By the time the "proper chain of command" is set up and they finally move in the bad guy shoots himself, just like at Columbine.

This happens because there is no downside for these administrators. They don't lose a dime for arguing whether the Campus Police, City Police or County Sheriff is in charge. No funds are lost for the people killed while the administrators are waiting for the SWAT teams to get organized.

These shootings will keep happening, I'll leave it for those with great big brains to figure out why they do now but didn't before. Instead here is a new plan for when they do happen. Forget perimeters. Forget SWAT. Forget chain of command. Just move to the sound to the gunfire. When the panicked civilians are running out, keep saying "Let me see your hands". When you see a gun, give the person holding it one chance to put it down, chances are that there is an off duty LEO or armed citizen. We'll know if it's the bad guy if the shooting stops, right?

Those folks in that mall in Utah were very lucky that off duty LEO didn't have a radio. Instead of making the bad guy duck until the cavalry got there he'd have been forming a perimeter.

Rough Week For Donks

I am usually a compassionate person, I really do hate to see anyone get hurt. Yet I broke out in a loud laugh when I saw that New Jersey Governor Corzine was badly injured in an auto wreck. We cannot go through a newscast, hardly, without some Democrat screeching about how SUVs are going to kill us all from pollution.

It was Democrats who got us into all those seatbelt laws, too. Now don't get me wrong, I am a firm believer in pulling my sissystraps tight when I'm on the road but it shouldn't be a law. Part of the problem with America is stupid people reproducing and giving more stupid people. For evidence I offer those feminist icons Bill and Hilary Clinton.

So I broke out in laughter when Corzine was injured while riding in an SUV without wearing his belt. Ah, well, he's a democrat. They make the rules, fine us or jail us if we break them. Them? They're too important to be bothered by the rules they make.

Speaking of Democrats, who knew that Don Imus, who endorsed Kerry in '04 had switched and become a conservative? I don't much care what happens to Imus, I shudder at the thought of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton having the power to decide who should be on the airwaves. At least when one of the big preachers on the Right get caught cheating on their wives they resign, Jackson just keeps goin' and goin'. And please, Sharpton having anything to do with decency? See above about the Clintons being feminist icons.

Every time I get completely fed up with the Republicans the Donks remind me of how important it is to pull the straight Pubbie ticket each election.

Doggie Friday The Thirteenth

A lot has happened this week, I may or may not get around to writing about it. I do have some dog pics, though. It's Bluebonnet season here, along with Indian Paintbrushes and other flowers. I was going to take pics of Cochise' Apache Princess in a vacant lot full of Indian Paintbrushes but we got yelled at for trespassing. Sigh.

I have some other pics but this will do for now. There are two pics of Ming because I thought I was getting an extra pic of Eddie because he is Linda Lou's baby. The pics in the preview are so small I couldn't tell. Oh well, next week I'll have two pics of Eddie for Linda Lou.

As always, click the pics for huge.

Bullet Stopping Ipod?

I noticed that both Malkin and the Puppyblender are showcasing the story of Sgt Garrad of the 3rd ID who claims the Ipod he had in his pocket slowed down an AK round enough that his armored vest stopped the slug. The armored vests are designed to stop shrapnel and pistol bullets, not close range rifle rounds.

There are many comments claiming this is impossible, the AK is too powerful. I seriously doubt that the Ipod would seriously slow an AK round down to any useful degree but I suspect it did make a difference.

I have some small experience with the 7.62x39 round from back in the '60s. Like the 5.56mm NATO round the bullet of the AK is not well balanced, it's center of mass is way back from the point. As soon as the round hits something it starts to tumble end over end. This makes for interesting wounds. As we know, it is against the Hague Conventions to use expanding bullets in warfare, among other things. So, no soft points allowed. A bullet that tumbles does the same thing, for part of it's path it is sideways, tearing a big hole.

Then the bullet continues, base first. Assuming sufficient velocity that base can expand, the base has exposed lead. Usually, though, there will be little or no expansion, the jacket metal is pretty thick. The key here is the bullet tumbling. Instead of hitting the vest point on and then beginning to tumble the bullet was already near sideways when it hit the armor. This would limit penetration, a lot.

In the comments to these posts I saw a lot of pure hooey, that our troops are poorly equipped because their normal armor won't stop a rifle round, for one thing. Well, yes, we could put the troops in armor that will stop a high powered rifle at close range, really we could. They wouldn't be able to walk or shoot and would die of heatstroke in the desert but they wouldn't get shot. I also read that an AK round will melt a railroad rail. Sigh.

The body armor our troops are wearing is the best we have, it is proof against pistol rounds, grenade and mortar shrapnel, even *some* rifle fire, say a ricochet. To get better armor we need either a big breakthrough in the compounds that will be far more resistant for the same weight or some kind of powered exoskeleton to where a hundred and sixty pound GI or one o five pound GI Jane can wear two hundred pounds of armor and gear and still function.

Me, I'm just pleased that Garrad is okay.

Brits, Dogs And Other Stories.

So, we have the Brit Sailors And Marines back home after two weeks in beautiful Iran. No trace yet of what, if anything, the Brits gave up. Why do I believe we'd end up with a far smaller death toll if we'd bombed the foo out of Iran and let them kill those fifteen Brits?

Speaking of coming death tolls how about Speaker Pelosi, that great feminist donning the hijab for those other great feminists, the Baath Party of Syria?I would really like an estimate of the number of our men and women who have been killed by weapons or personnel routed through or financed by Syria?

Abe Lincoln deported a Congresscritter for less than Pelosi did. Yet Bush is a tyrant and Lincoln a hero. My family, those who were on this side of the pond then, were all Union from what I understand but, even so, I see nothing that really allowed the Civil War. If we agree that the nation was formed from thirteen colonies voluntarily forming a Union then it only stands to reason they could volunteer to leave.

Still, I am glad we are a Union still, I just wish that Bush could do what other Presidents have done. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. Wilson jailed German sympathizers. Roosevelt was a bit more subtle, he locked people in insane asylums, except for Japanese who went to the camps. Bush, on the other hand, is worrying about his people being locked up. Meanwhile there is still a significant percentage of the one and a half BILLION Muslims in the world that want to kill my grandchildren.

It was not very many years ago that I merely disagreed with Democrats about how to reach the goal of the best for the greatest number of people. Even during Clinton I figured that Donks were okay, just wrong. Now, for over five years I have watched them side with those who kill Americans. It is past the thinking they're wrong. It is even past mere dislike. I remember what these people said in '98 when they helped pass the law making regime change in Iraq official American policy. I see what they are doing now.

I hate them. How many will die in their quest for political power?

Here are some dog pictures, only because it is not good for me to dwell on hatred.

Corporal David Emery Jr.

Corporal David Emery Jr. is in need of our prayers.He is badly injured, in the hospital at Bethesda. Hit by a suicide bomber he is barely hanging on. It will take His help to get this young man over the hump and let him see his child born.

Prayers also for the comfort and peace of the family and friends of his Battalion Sgt. Major Josheph J. Ellis who saw the suicide bomber and got between him and his Marines. Where do we find such men?

Click here for details.

The EU Declares that Calling Muslim Terrorists Muslim Terrorists Is Illegal.

I read that the EU (pronounced EWWW!) has declared it illegal to call Muslim terrorists Muslim terrorists. This means that I have to figure out what to call Muslim terrorists instead of calling them Muslim terrorists.

This is a difficult question for me since the Muslim terrorist seems to have Islam as the central part of his or her life and they seem to be quite happy to kill people for being non Muslim, the wrong kind of Muslim or even being the right kind of Muslim anywhere near a "normal" terrorist target.

I have noticed also that CAIR seems to get their panties all in a wad over calling Muslim terrorists Muslim terrorists. So do liberals.

Oddly, the only people who don't seem to be too worried about calling Muslim terrorists Muslim terrorists are Muslim terrorists. From what I've read it seems that the last words of a Muslim terrorists before (s)he pushes the button are Allah Akbar or God is great. So, it seems that the Muslim terrorist is proud to be a Muslim terrorist but everyone else is afraid to call them Muslim terrorists.

I wonder about the thinking of these EWWW types. Do they think that calling Muslim terrorists fuzzy little puppies or whatever term they come up with will make them survive an attack by Muslim terrorists?

I realise that there is a school of thought that says calling a Muslim terrorist a Muslim terrorist will make someone of low IQ think that every Muslim is a Muslim terrorist. So after a Muslim terrorist kills a bunch of people they start screeching about The Religion Of Peace. Well, yeah. The people the Muslim terrorist has just killed now have all the peace they can handle. The families, friends and those who clean up the mess aren't feeling very peaceful, though.
Me, I figure I'll have peace enough if I live another couple of decades and die of being old. I don't need to be sent away early by an emissary of the Religion Of Peace.

Instead of worrying about all these real smart people concerned about what to call a Muslim terrorist I'll just wonder why we aren't killing more of them.

It Doesn't Feel Any Different Than Fifty-Nine.

Day before yesterday I was just a kid, only fifty-nine years old. Nothing big for my birthday, a trip to WalMat for groceries and a quick visit to my pal Steve's to collect a little lead he was saving to mold into bullets.

Today nothing unusual but rain and thunderstorms, sixty doesn't feel any older than fifty-nine. Seems somebody shoulda baked a cake. Oh well, Linda Lou cooked a batch of oatmeal raisin cookies. Maybe I shoulda put a candle on one.

Semper Fi Or Semper Me?

I've been watching the saga of the James Webb aid caught with what seems to be Webb's gun. I find it very interesting that Webb, who has made a career out of being a Marine veteran and graduate of Canoe U, has forgotten "loyalty down". Of course that was one of my pet peeves when I wore Uncle's suit, half of all officers and senior NCOs expected my loyalty but had none for us peons.

Sooner or later the history of that gun will come out, it was either bought by Webb or by this Thompson fellow, then we will know. Either Thompson is a liar or Webb is a miserable scumbag who has lived a lie since swearing the oath. Given that Thompson would know he'd get caught if he had known he was carrying a gun I'm leaning toward Webb being wrong, knowing he's wrong and throwing a loyal aid to the wolves. Why? To save himself some trouble.

What's that about macaca?

Why Aren't There Loud Noises?

I do not understand why Iran has anything left that will float or fly. I do not understand why there is a single Army barracks left standing over there, nor tank left unexploded. Why are there any Mullah's homes standing?

Iran has been at war with the West since the Carter Administration. I know our ground troops are somewhat extended these days but we've lots of bombers, fighter bombers, cruise missiles and attack helicopters that seem to not be doing too much. For that matter, if Iran were full of smoking holes our ground troops would probably have a little time to take a nice nap.

I realise that this Ahmadingbat character specialises in talking ferociously but does he have anything that can stop our Air and Naval Air? How about a volley of missiles into the air and radar sites, followed by the B2s and F117s. With all of the trouble Iran has had over the last few years I doubt it would take long before we had a clear sky for our conventional aircraft.

The War Powers Act gives us some 90 days before the idiot Democrats can do anything but whine. Somehow I don't think Iran would be a problem after 70 days of air hyperwar, a three day halt and then ten days to clean up any leftovers. Then we have a week to get everyone away.

We are halfway to that old button from the hippie days. Trouble is, it's not "Suppose they gave a war and nobody came?". It's we have a war where they are fighting and we are not.

Rough Week.

It's been a rough week for people with Cancer. Cathy Seipp died at age 47 from Lung Cancer, even though she was a lifelong nonsmoker. I never really went out of my way to find her writing. I don't know why. Every time I followed a link to something she'd written I got something important from it. If she had died at age 105 she still would have died too young. My prayers go for her daughter, Maia.

It seems, too, that the Edwards family is going through a very tough patch. I simply do not understand a lot about this, the mother of two young children has a fatal disease and yet they're going to be jet setting all over, campaigning? Eh, I don't even understand how any Doctor would dare see anyone in that family. Oh well, prayers out for those children, anyway.

All that bad news calls for puppy pictures. Here is another picture of Princess looking unbearably cute and one of Eddie just beginning his hole to China. I guess being a Chinese Pug he wants to dig down to raid their refrigerators.

The Battle Of Daddy's Lap

Except for the ongoing Battle Of Daddy's Lap the dogs have pretty well adjusted to the new puppy. I would wager that they will soon solve the burning question of who gets to sit in the chair with me. If for no other reason that Princess will be too big to fit in the chair. Until then, though, I need an armored codpiece.

We were worried about how Ming would adjust to the puppy as she doesn't much like anyone but us. As it is, she seems quite happy. Eddie loves to play with Princess so he is leaving Ming alone. So she lays in her bed making little Pug grunts of contentment while they fight all over the floor, or my lap. I'm glad Ming is happy.

The fence is working well, there is a little bit too much gap in the gate, the pup can get through. The Pug's heads are too big and since the pup will be growing I should be able to take those cinderblocks down, perhaps by next Tuesday.

Speaking of growing puppies, I learned something from my Vet. Seems that the expensive "large breed puppy" food has something in it to slow the growth of the puppies. They still grow, and just as big, only more slowly. This is alleged to help prevent hip dysplasia. I don't know why he didn't tell me about it when we had George, maybe he was too big by the time we got him. The kind the Doc touts is Science Diet.

While I really missed going to DC for the Gathering of Eagles I can report that there were no moonbats protesting out here. I reckon the dogs scared 'em off. Good dogs.

Cohise's Apache Princess

We've decided on the name for the puppy, Cochise's Apache Princess, her callin' name will be princess.

She is eight weeks old, born January 15, 2007. I hope we are astrologically compatible. I believe she was born under a Speed Limit 20 sign. I was born under a neon sign. It said "HOSPITAL". Any astrology gurus are invited to comment.

I took her to the Vet yesterday for her checkup, she weighs 17.8 pounds. She got a clean bill of health. The only problem is some kind of "newborn" hernia, she has a tiny hernia around her belly button. The Doc says that he will fix that when he spays her, unless we decide to breed her, if we don't spay her it will be about fifty bucks to fix the hernia.

George was about four months old when we got him, this girl is half that, that might explain why she cries so much. It is driving Linda Lou crazy. She hated it when the kids whined, she doesn't much like Princess doing it now.

I hope Linda Lou doesn't real mad at me for a while. She was trying to push Princess down the back stairs* to go outside last night, lost her balance and fell down the stairs. Naturally, as deaf as I am, I did not hear her calling me. Boy, am I in trouble! Anyhow she has two skinned knees and a big scrape over her left eye, along with a somewhat black eye. If Linda Lou even hints that I beat her I'm off to jail. I've never raised a hand against her, though. I have never understood the mentality of someone who would hit his, or hers for that matter, spouse and then go to sleep. I REALLY do not understand the mentality of the beaten person allowing the beater to wake up.

I'm not exactly the biggest, meanest feller around. I can be beaten up but if you do, leave town. I'm coming back and I'll have something in my hand. Linda Lou believes that same thing. My proof that I don't hit her? I'm breathing.

*Princess is still trying to learn stairs.

Ever Seen A Prettier Girl?

Let's have a look at her...Ears stickin' up like Bat Dog? Check.
Feet the size of Cleveland? Check.Perfect? Close enough.

As for her name, we're thinking of Cochise' Apache Princess for formal with the callin' name of Princess.

I am, though, going to Google Cochise and see if he actually had a daughter.

Fence IsUp, Need Name For The New Puppy.

My Pard Steve came out and we put up the fence, five feet tall, 80 feed wide by about eighty feet long. We saved money by using the house as one side of the fence instead of going out to the property line.

I am scheduled to ache for the next week, maybe the next month but all the posts are in, the wire strung and fastened. Woot!

My Pard Steve didn't quite understand the hurry, some folks living a couple of miles away had a large litter of AKC German Shepherd puppies and after the bad luck we've had our large dogs being killed I wasn't allowed one until the fence was up. These folks had a price range far lower than "professional" breeders although this pup has had her first shots, wormed, etc. Plus they use the same Vet we do so we are starting out with a known quality. When we take her into the Vet for the next worming, scheduled real soon, we can have her general health looked at too and have the chance to cancel the deal. I doubt we'll need to, I met both the sire and the Dam. Both nice large, seem smart and well socialized.

We have to figure out an AKC name for her. Sire is Cochise Apache War Chief, Dam is Little Eagle. I reckon those folks like the cowboy and Indian movies. I can't think of any Apache girl names, offhand. I'll figure something out, wasn't Cochise Geronimo's father or was that Mangus Colorado? Hmm, I'd better Google up some Apache history. The Tribes I'm familiar with were somewhat east of the Apache.

Oh well, pictures will follow in the next few days.

I Forgot To Mention...

I have been meaning to mention that son and daughter in law #2 are pregnant again. This will make grandchild #nine for Linda Lou and me. Seems like Mark Steyn oughta give us a medal.

In other news I shall miss the Gathering of Eagles up in DC. Finances will keep me home where I will attend the Gathering of Turkey Vultures.

The Gate Is Up, The Stupid Dogs Still Won't Stay In

Saturday my son in law came out to help with the fence, he brought a friend, too. Good thing, as we would have been just barely getting started with the concrete when we were actually finished. So, Dean dug the postholes while his friend, Cliff, and I mixed the concrete and set the poles.

Cliff is a city feller and did not know to bring a hat, fortunatly one of my staw hats fit well enough so the Sun didn't fry his brain. City folks tend to forget that it does not have to be hot to get sunburnt. Anyhow we had all the posts up and concreted in in only a couple of hours. Now comes the fun part, ramming some twenty-five to thirty of the other posts into the ground and then stringing the wire "net". My Pard, Steve was going come out and we'd get it done tomorrow, unfortunately it rained yesterday like a brown cow peein' on a flat rock, with more scattered showers today.

The amusing thing about the day was Cliff, while wearing a western hat, said "I don't know what's wrong but I feel like I just gotta shoot something." Heh. So when the work was done I got out the .22 and let him empty it at a water bottle. Not bad, he hit it seven out of ten shots. Then he tried a shot out of one of my .45 Colt clones, with a black powder round. To keep the bullet from richocheting around he pegged that shot at a concrete block, hit it dead center but he didn't want another shot with that. The last shot was out of my mule ear double twelve gauge, again a hit. I'm not sure I'm gonna let him shoot my irons anymore.

I had a Cowboy Action Shoot scheduled on Sunday so I set my clock forward like I was supposed to and went to bed earlier than normal, about midnight thirty or so, all those years on the night shift still make early to bed difficult. As always happens when I set my alarm I woke up every hour worrying about not getting any sleep. Then It started raining, I woke up again and turned off the alarm. Ever since forever just the fact of setting the alarm makes it hard to sleep. Dunno why.



Anyhow we put the gate up Sunday, after the concrete had set. I then put the dogs inside and told them that this was their new playground. Idiot dogs just ran around the gate. Stupid dogs. Meanwhile some folks that live a couple of miles away have a new litter of AKC German Shepherd puppies, only $250 per, I'm hoping that the fence is up before that one little female that fell in love with me is gone.

Stupid dogs, I shut the gate and told them to stay inside.

Busy

I've been really busy the last week or so. I have everything I need to build my fence, my son in law is coming out Saturday to help with the postholes and concrete for the big main poles and gate. Since the only gates they had that were tall enough to keep a German Shepherd in were too narrow for my lawn tractor I bought a big old panel of chain link six foot tall dog kennel. We looked kind o' funny driving around with that on the roof of the van. I'm not real sure we shouldn't have just bought a mess of these panels, bolted them together into a small kennel and then added a couple of panels per payday.

The van was kind of leaning, too, what with 400 pounds of quickcrete sacks along with the rest of everything.

I've been busy trying to cast my bullets out of my new mold, it is taking a lot of ugly words. My little ten pound electric furnace doesn't hold enough lead alloy to keep the mold hot enough to run good bullets so I'm using my six cavity mold as a two cavity until I get my twenty pound furnace. Running both furnaces I should be able to run the mold as designed.

At any rate I have a shoot this Sunday so I am busy trying to load enough black powder ammo so I can shoot my class, instead of having to fool around with that heathen fad smokeless stuff. I have the bullets cast and lubed and the cartridge cases cleaned, resized and primed. Now it's just dumping the powder, adding a half cc of dry grits and seating the bullets.

Things sure seem odd these days, Scooter Libby is headed to prison while Sandy Burglar got plea bargained down to a misdemeanor. That is just sick. Note: when dealing with the Feds, always have a lawyer and if brought before a Grand Jury, say nothing. A determined prosecutor can, with enough time, get Mother Theresa on a process crime. Have enough Feebs interview you and then haul you, a co-operative witness who durned well knew that he did not commit the "crime" of "outing" an analyst and you too can be guilty of four felonies. Give me an unlimited budget and a squad of Feebs and a grand jury and I could put Fitzfong (or is it Nifgerald?) in prison. If he was silly enough to try to cooperate.

In other news we sure are eager to throw our own people over the side. Seems that Ann Coulter has become persona non grata at all the cool parties. Let's see, the left can bring up Dick Cheney's daughter at the debates and they can, while ex(?) Klansman Byrd is the conscience of the Senate demand that because Jeff Gannon posed for pictures his livelihood is ruined. So now we throw Ann out of the boat? Sorry. I'm not going to. I don't care that all the cool people have the vapors. What the heck, I'm not good enough to be allowed to comment on Hot Air anyway. I don't remember Ann throwing Malkin overboard when the left was attacking her over her book on the Japanese internment.

Would I have phrased that comment exactly like Ann did? No. Still, I have stuck my foot in my mouth enough times in my life that I'll not hit Ann. Even if she does need a sandwhich and a milk shake.

Why I Hate The Left

I do not pretend to hide my dislike of Leftists. I do not like to hear or see them preening about how my side is the Party of Hate while they lament the fact that Dick Cheney wasn't killed in a bombing and wish the Taliban better luck next time.

I do not like the way the Democrats refused to state a position on the war leading up to the election and then, when they won a razor thin majority, claiming the American People support "their plan" on that war.

I am not particularly happy about Leftists telling me how I am ruining "Mother Earth" while their leaders flit about in private jets and build 28,000 square foot mansions, al la The Breck Girl or use twice as much electricity in a month as the average American home uses in a year, as does Algore.

I am not real happy about Leftists claiming that I hate women while they support those who would kill women for the crime of going to school or driving. I do not like Leftists telling me that my side hates gays while they support those who would kill them. I do not like being called racist while the Left sides with those killing black people in Darfur by the thousands.

Most of all I hate the Left for siding with those who wish to kill my grandchildren.

Heading Into Spring

It got warm enough this afternoon to have to run the air conditioning for a couple of hours. It's nice to know that it still blows cold.

It's been an interesting few days, that tooth that was killing me fell out with nothing left inside. This after I paid a ton of money to the dentist in advance, only to have him not return my phone calls. Grump.

Saturday was a Cowboy Action Shoot, it almost didn't happen as it was raining a little. Our range is built on that black gumbo soil, a cloud in Oklahoma sinks trucks. But it looked like the rain was just about over so we set up three sets of targets and shot six stages on those with just different courses of fire on the same targets.

There were only eight of us so we were mostly just bangin' and clangin'. As soon as the rain stopped the wind came up, blowing harder and harder. By the sixth stage the wind was gusting well over forty MPH, I know it hit fifty a few times. Driving home the wind had blown the overhang from over the pumps at a gas station on the way.

In other news I bought the posts and wire for a five foot tall fence to go around my backyard, Wednesday is my "payday" so I will buy the gate, main posts and concrete for the job. Then it is just waiting for my bud to find the time between jobs to help me put it up. Once I get the fence up I'll start looking for another German Shepherd.

Today was Delivery Day. Linda Lou had a Doctor's appointment and then wanted to visit her sister over in Fort Worth so I went and filled her car with gas, coming home I stopped at the mail box and there was my new six cavity bullet mold for the 250 grain Pigeon Roost Slim .45 Boolit. This is a Big Lube Boolit (tm) design, it carries some five times the amount of lube that conventional bullets do, very important for black powder shooting. The extra lube keeps the powder fouling soft so we don't lose accuracy shooting a lot of rounds. I am told that modern black powder is not near the quality of the stuff of the late 19th Century so the old time bullets don't carry near the lube they need. The skinny grease grooves of ordinary bullets carry plenty of lube for a few gunfulls in handguns. The same bullet runs out in a rifle barrel or all day handgun shooting.

This new mold is from Blogdaddy Harvey's neck of the woods, Hartford Wisconsin. I think they only have five more months of winter. The I think they have three days of summer and then comes winter again. The people at Lee Precision make these molds for Dick Dastardly, a riverboat gambler and midnight rambler from Sun Prarie, WI. Dick spent his pension fund building this little home based business. Anyone insterested in BP should click on Big Lube for molds and lubes.

I also got my year's supply of Black Powder off the FedEx truck today. I'm trying a new kind of BP, Graf and Son's house brand. This is supposed to be made by the Schutzen people in Germany. They use a different kind of wood for the charcoal, Alder, I believe.

The finest BP known today is Swiss, the folks shooting the long range buffalo gun matches swear by it. At the close ranges and big targets we use in CAS it is not worth the extra money, it is near twice as expensive as GOEX or Graf's. I'm told that Graf's and Schuetzen are just under Swiss. I am trying Graf's because of the free shipping. So I have ten pounds of BP for $135.00, tax, title license, dealer and destination charges. That will make a lot of .45 Colt and 12 gauge loads. Mo Smoke!

Now I have to buy a twenty pound lead furnace, the little ten pounder I have is fine for a two cavity mold. Trouble is a six cavity takes a lot of lead every time and the ten pounder can't keep the melt hot enough. Still, buying the Big Lube Boolits(tm) is such that I will save money casting after spending a hundred and fifty+ bucks for the mold, furnace and sizer die. They are over thirty bucks+ for 250 bullets.

So, that is what I'm up to, digging postholes, buying fencing materiel and getting ready to cast bullets.

I just hope I don't have have a fire in the house until I shoot off most of this BP.

He Did Not Know He Was Broken

Eddie is home now, back from the Vet. He spent the night there getting fixed. Poor little guy didn't know he was broke.

We expected him to be kind of slow and unbouncy. He is running and jumping just like before, running around like Rocket Dog.

Eddie Turns Nine Months Old.

Happy New Year, in Chinese, if you please. Eddie turned nine months old yesterday. He enters the Year Of The Boar as a teenager in people years. I don't have the energy to figure out when the Year of the Dog is, around here that is every year.

Running In Circles

I haven't done much online this week, I've been running in circles trying to get a bad tooth pulled, plus some other medical problems.

Since my stroke in August of '05 I have been on blood thinner, Warfarin to be precise. This is actually tiny doses of an old rat poison. The Germans used larger doses to kill people back in the Nazi Era. At any rate, dentists hate the stuff, it complicates things. So I am off the rat poison for now, letting my blood thicken up in hopes that the dentist will be able to pull this tooth before I drop dead.

Meanwhile my primary care Doc is all of a sudden worried about my hearing, which is still bad. They did a hearing test, my hearing loss is still "profound" and my insurance still does not cover the $2300.00 worth of hearing aids I need. These are the same hearing aids I needed back in the early '90s when they were hundreds of dollars cheaper. I wonder how come everything electronic has gotten cheaper except for medical electronics. They have risen.

Friday I have to go to an ophthalmologist and I hope I'm at least close on the spelling. The spell checker doesn't do too well on medical terms. Anyhow he is worried that my medical problems can lead to eye problems.

I have noticed that The Puppy Blender has followed my idea of blowing stuff up in Iran and killing certain Iranians. So the various big bloggers on the Left are all mad at him. They'd be all mad at me if'n they knew who I am. They can be as mad as they want, just as long as they stay out of carbine range.

I noticed that the big wheel at Virgin Airlines is offering 25 million Pounds for someone who can stop Global Warming. I do not know how to tell him about my idea to drop enough nukes to cause Global Springtime. Anybody got his address? I could buy those hearing aids.

Hate Speech

I have been reading, with only mild interest, of the adventures of someone named Amanda Marcotte. She is, apparently, some famous blogger that I've never heard of. Please note that just because I have never heard of someone does not mean that they can't, or shouldn't be, famous. I have narrow interests and do not pay much attention to most media. I have never seen an episode of American Idol, nor Survivor nor even Seinfeld. I do not watch 24. I do not watch any television series at all, my hearing is such that I cannot understand what they are saying. Oddly I can watch old movies and even old TV shows but something in modern sound, maybe the style, maybe the technology, makes me unable to hear it. I noticed this about the last year of so of NYPD Blue, that is how long I have been out of the loop.

Ooops! I need one of Drudge's Siren and Light graphics to warn everyone of a digression alert.

Anyhow this Marcotte person seems to not like men or Catholics much or women who enjoy being mothers. Her business, not mine. In looking at the things posted by others I wondered a little about what gave er such a dislike for folks who have never done her any harm, then I got interested in finding a little more information about Mysterious Dave Mather, the old west Lawman, gunfighter and outlaw. Once he got on the side of the Law he stayed a very practical sort. In the towns he worked if a notorious bad guy was in town he and his deputies would just go house to house, room to room and kill him. Whoops, I digress again. Did you know that after Mysterious Dave's career as a Lawman, gambler, and rustler in Arkansas, Kansas and Colorado he went to Canada and was a Mountie and didn't retire until 1920s? I do not know if he kept up with that same style of police work up there.

What I have noticed the most about the controversy over this Marcotte person is that everyone immediately starts talking about the equivalent "hate speech" on the Right. Rush Limbaugh is always mentioned there. Now I do listen to Rush, almost every day. I do not hear the hate. Ridicule, yes. Apparently the Left believes that playing a tape of a Kennedy or a Clinton's exact words and then commenting is hate. Insulting millions of Catholics is political commentary.

I wasn't going to vote for the Breck Girl anyway.

Update: The more I read about politics in 2007, the more I stay in the latter third of the 19th Century. Except with modern medicine.

Rudy

I am nowhere near committing to a candidate for the GOP nomination for President in '08. I am looking at everybody but that crook McCain.

I am getting a lot of information about Rudy "America's Mayor" Giuliani and his anti Second Amendment stance. Trouble is, as mayor Rudy was enforcing New York's Sullisan Law, a law having noting to do with the US Government. The Second Amendment restricts Congress. I do not know, nor do I care much, how the State Constitution deals with the right to keep and bear arms. The Sullivan Law has been in effect for generations, if there were constitutional issues, either State of Federal, they would have been found.

I may well decide to support someone else. I see no reason to lean away from Rudy because he enforced the law of his state. That is what Federalism is all about. New York may have the gun laws it wishes. I stay out of New York. Seems the both of us are happy.

A Big Disappointment

A few days ago I was online at the SASS Wire, a bulletin board for Cowboy Action Shooters and the question of gunbelts and holsters came up. I wanted to reccommend my holstermaker, Brazos Jack of Etowah River Leather but because I am still unsure of putting in urls and such I went to his website so I could write the addy down.

This is when I saw the news, Brazos Jack has retired because of poor health. This happened at the end of November. Nobody ever tells me anything. The good news is that Brazos Jack is still creating gunleather designs for Hide Crafter. So the handy can still have a Brazos Jack gunrig. Klutzes like me, though, have to find another way.

I shall drop an extra prayer or two for the health and well being of a genuine artist in leather and all around good guy.

Iran

It looks as if the Administration is finally getting serious about Iran, now that the Democrats have made sure that we can't really DO anything about them. Sigh. Anyone want to guess how peaceful the world would be now if that idiot Carter had given Khomeini a good hard whack on the peepee in 1979? For that matter, what would that area be like now had Carter sent a few B-52s loaded up with canisters of itching powder and stink bombs over the cities and then casually mentioned that next week it's nukes?

Still, talking about what we should have done then is like talking about what we should have done about Iraq during that two year plus "rush to war". We did nothing then, now we must deal with this clown Imadinnerjacket or however he spells his name.

So, what can we do about Iran? How about what they are doing to us? How about sending some of the Sneaky Pete troops, the SEALs, those Army guys in the Girl Scout Hats, a few Force Recon Marines in to blow up some of those oil pipelines that run Iran's economy, such as it is. Seems that Iran has a whole lot of valuable targets that would be very difficult to guard. Most of these targets would involve Iran's petroleum industry. Speaking of things that are vulnerable to explosives.

Back in 2003 I thought the whole purpose of going into Iraq was to get bases from which we could take the next two steps, Iran and Saudi Arabia, take your choice as to which would have been first. Little did I know that instead we would still be sitting around being targets, coming up on four years later.

Memo to the US Government. We already know that wars are uncomfortable to our guys. Fine. We can take that. The thing is, though, we are supposed to be making things MORE uncomfortable for the other guys. Someone please explain to me why we are allowing Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia to send clowns into Iraq to kill our guys when not one of these country's whole damned armys would fold to just the forces we have over there, without much in the way of reinforcements.

Our troops, their families and my grandchildren deserve a government that doesn't lose it's nerve after the fight starts.

The Mystery Of The Dissolving Noodles

Payday came along and I bought everything I thought I needed to a huge pot of chicken noodle soup. I now know that I made a couple of mistakes but it was a learning experience.

I started with two pounds of skinless, boneless chicken breasts. I sprayed the bottom of my big pot with Pam and dropped them in and cooked them until they were done enough to cut up. I cut them up with Pugs at my feet, Eddie kept trying to climb Mount Peter to get to the chicken.

Back into the pot and then a "box" of chicken broth, it comes in quart boxes now. Who knew? That didn't look like enough so I added two cans of chicken broth. The Pugs were still tormenting me so I gave them each some "chicken ice cream". The last time I needed some chicken broth I didn't need all I had so I filled an ice cube tray with the leftovers. Then I put the yellow ice cubes in a freezer bad. One will keep a pug occupied for long enough to do much in the kitchen. Or other rooms for that matter. These broth cubes don't last but a couple of minutes for a German Shepherd, though. I miss George.

Since I like lots of vegetables in my soup I then added two pounds of frozen soup vegetables, Pictsweet if the brand matters. This turned out to be a mistake on my part as Linda Lou won't eat this soup because of the tomatoes. Even after I pulled all the tomatoes out and ate them in the first bowl. I think I'm going to be sick of chicken soup by the time this is done.

That was too many ingredients for the broth in the pot so I poured in enough water and turned the fire up. Then I added a half pound of egg noodles and a half pound of wacky mac, those egg noodles that look like coil springs and are odd colored because of the various vegetables in them. That looked like plenty of noodles so I turned the fire up until the stuff started boiling, turned it down to simmer and went and listened to Rush. The spices were simple, garlic powder, black pepper, white pepper some sage to remind me that I live in the Southwest and a couple of shakes of Oregano.
An hour or so later I ate the first bowl. Now I don't think those tomatoes hurt anything but Linda Lou is firm in her prejudices so refuses to try even a spoonful. It was pretty tasty, if I do say so myself. I put the pot in the refrigerator and then reheated it for supper. Linda Lou had Hamburger Helper. What I noticed was that the second bowl had almost no noodles, though. They seem to have dissolved. I wonder what kind of secret ingredients they put in the noodles of canned soup, they last forever. A bit of concrete, maybe?

Oh well, the stuff still tastes noodley even if they are all part of the broth. Lessons learned? Use stew vegetables instead of soup vegetables. Half as much chicken, vegetables and other ingredients. Add the noodles at the last possible minute. Perhaps leave the noodles out and put them in as I reheat the soup.

I am going to be sick of chicken soup before this is gone.

So It Begins

The Democrats have been attacking the Pharmaceutical Corporations for some years now and they finally own both houses of Congress. Pfizer has cut some ten percent of it's employees, closing research facilities in Michigan, among other cutbacks.
I had a mild hope that I'd see a new drug or two to perhaps control my tremors so that I could feed myself a couple more years.

The Party that watches out for the little guy, right? I wonder how many little guys will live diminished lives so the Democrats can claim a victory over the evil corporations. Thanks, America. You showed those nasty Republicans.

Cold And Rainy

The temp is hovering just above freezing and it's nice and rainy. Today was our bimonthly Cowboy Action Shoot, canceled.At least I won't come in last today.

I'm trying my beef stew again today with a few suggestions from a recipe site I found. This time I have the same vegetables as last time but have a two and a half pound chuck roast in there. The chuck roast chunks are dissolving into tiny pieces. I found some recipe site on the 'net and one of the stew recipes called for a can of tomato soup, I put it in, good. Next time, though I'll put in a can or so of Ro-Tel tomatoes and green chili, instead. Other than that, the only difference is a little less flour and some spice variations. This time my hand fell on the Paprika so I poured a bunch of that in, in case a hungry Hungarian wanders up.

I am serving with cornbread muffins, again. This time with jalapenos in them. Note to self, a few less jalapenos next time. They are right tasty but give me a very warm feeling the next day. Speaking of hungry Hungarians, I should learn Goulash.

The major news of the last couple of days is the Duke La Cross "rape" case. Nifong has finally recused himself and it looks as if the State Attorney General has chosen another prosecutor with a documented history of prosecutional misconduct to look the case over and decide whether to drop it or to continue. I guess the honest lawyer is on vacation. It's a small state, they can't afford two honest lawyers in one department.

I do not understand Nifong and Gottlieb in this whole mess. Nifong a little, after all he had immunity from civil and criminal charges when acting as a prosecutor. I doubt though, that this immunity carries over to when he started acting as the lead investigator.

This case is not like what Gottlieb and Nifong seem to be well known for, sticking Duke students with extra big fines for underage drinking and suchlike. They should have known that these three families would retain competent counsel, with each of those kids facing multiple thirty year sentences. These families are out for blood.

The lawsuits are starting to come, they will be thicker than these Colorado blizzards we've been reading about. There are too many "little fish" with no immunity and not enough insurance to cover the coming judgements. These little fish, to protect their own families from destitution, will roll over on Nifong and Gottlieb. Not just in civil lawsuits, either. People like to forget that the civil rights of white boys are also protected. I can think of two or three federal felonies by Nifong and Gottlieb, three counts of each. Three counts of each on both of them. This will all come out during the civil suits.

Here is my question...If Nifong and Gottlieb were willing to try to railroad three well to do white kids into prison, who else have they already railroaded? Given the racial and economic makeup of that part of North Carolina, how many pour back guys are in prison while innocent?

Note, those who have not followed this case should Google "Durham In Wonderland" to learn far more than we ever wanted to know about dishonesty.

So, Now What?

We have seen the reaction of the Democrats now, the ones that insisted that we didn't have enough troops in Iraq. They are now totally against any more troops in Iraq. There is, of course, not a word on what will happen if (when?) we lose, as we shall lose if the Donks have their way.

We might look to exactly how the Christians in Bethlehem are doing as an example, not very well from what I've read. Seems as if the only Christians allowed to survive are those who trumpet the Pali's line against Israel. Of course at this rate there will soon be no Israel.

I got an E-mail the other day from an old fried, a lawyer who works for the US Government, in the Executive Branch. It was a series of really insulting anti-Bush bumper stickers. Regardless of the issue of loyalty up, something I had ingrained in me, what about the simple question of insulting me? Does it matter to him that over half of all American voters chose Mr. Bush? What on earth will he do when the Islamists win? What color Burqua will his wife wear? How long will it take him to learn to wear a turban?

I wonder what he'll say when America falls as did Constantinople? I suppose he'll file a lawsuit on the Muslim that is real close behind him. My understanding, though, is that the lawsuit will become moot as soon as he gets the bullet through the brain.

I believe that Bush and company have made many mistakes in this war, a war that was declared long before his administration began, but at least he is fighting it. I would have gone into Iran after Afghanistan. Or maybe Saudi Arabia. Be that as it may we are in Iraq with two choices, win or lose.

I am not sure what winning will look like, no way to guess what a real democratic republic will bring. I do know what losing will look like, I saw it before, the last time the Donks took both houses during a war. I saw the boat people, I read about the two million dead Cambodians. Friends who stayed in the Service told me about not having ammunition for practice. Forgive me for not having a whole lot of confidence in soldiers that can't shoot. Nor in Zoomies that can't hardly hit anything with a bomb. Navy ships sat alongside the piers for lack of fuel.

This is what is coming.

Waiting For Dubya

It is two hours before Dubya gives his speech, the one that pretty much marks his last chance to get the war right. While I do not, by any means, think that this war has been run perfectly, I notice that, unlike my war, the Soldiers, Marines, Sailors and Airmen still believe. The units engaged in this fight report reenlistments at almost 150 percent of the goals. The young men and women who have no intention of going career are extending their enlistments to go over with their buddies. This did not happen this way in the Southeast Asian War Games.

I do wonder what the high rate of reenlistment will do the the Services, long term. War is hard on the knees and back, even without any extra holes in the body, and every year the soldier carries a heavier load. With every extra man and woman who reenlists there is one less spot for a recruit to fill. It will also slow down the promotions for the first hitch types. Oh well, let the smart people worry about that.

I worry that the Democrats are going to force us into quitting while the Soldiers still believe. Aside from believing that this enemy will follow us home, not that some aren't already here, I recall my war. Now it got started under a Democrat, while this one seems to have started under a Republican. Of course most of us have forgotten about the 1998 act where Congress declared, and Clinton signed that regime change in Iraq is America's policy. Poor Dubya. Like I was in 1964 he is dumb enough to believe a Democrat. Unlike Dubya, I at least have not believed one since. Does no one in America remember that the Democrats overwhelmingly voted for this war? What is it about them that makes them commit troops and then when we've invested our lives and our allies have bet their own lives, and their family's lives, makes them want to run out?

How many Iraqis will be slaughtered if we leave? What about the next theater in this war, will one single person trust the word of America if we leave and the slaughter begins? These questions are important. There is a pretty fair percentage of the world's ane and a half BILLION Muslims that want to kill my grandchildren. I suspect that the percentage is well over ten percent. I further believe that the percentage is highest among military aged Muslims. Their schools teach them to hate us, our teach tolerance. Yep. That'll work.

Oh well, I'll listen to Dubya, I have no great hope. For too many the tens of millions of Muslims that want to kill my grandchildren are not the problem. The problem is Dubya and the rest of us evil theocrats.

Fazul Abdullah Mohammad, Rest In Pieces

The Sec Op flyboys got the feller that masterminded the '98 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. I hope that I will be forgiven for hoping that it was a painful, slow death.

Flying Hammer Of Thor

I wonder what Mogadishu and the "Blackhawk Down" incident would have looked like had the Clinton Administration sent the C-130 gunships to Somalia as the ground commanders requested. I suspect that the alQ types would not have decided we were such an easy mark. Of course I also suspect that the Euros and the Lefties would had been crying tears the size of horse droppings over the awful slaughter of the poor innocent little Somalis.

Well, the clock got turned back a notch and finally Spectre, the C-130 gunship has sung her song over Somalia. I never saw the Spectre at work, I did see her daddy, the AC-47 work. There were several different names for that bird, Puff the Magic Dragon, Snoopy and Spooky, it all depended on where one served in the Southeast Asian War Games. When the Little People were trying to get through the wire if we could hear those old radial engines throttle back to loiter we knew nobody whole would get through. We also knew to try to get our whole bodies into those helmets because bullets bounce. Up close it sounded like God unzipping His coveralls. Pretty much if we were close enough to hear all we saw was the inside of a hole or bunker, if we were far enough away we'd see a red line from the sky and a million ricochetes.

I don't know what Spectre carries now, she came along as I was leaving but back then she carried a minigun, an electricly driven 7.62 Gatling Gun, a 40 mm rapid fire gun mount, if memory serves that was simply the dual Bofors AntiAircraft gun pointed down instead of up and a 105mm howitzer. The A/C picks which gun to use depending on the target, the range and the expectation of ground fire. As most of us know, the longer the range the bigger the bullet. I would suspect that they flew over shooting the 105 at anything looking like an AA position, dropped down a bit for the smaller gun and then hosed everything down with the minigun. This is not based on anything but instinct, I do not believe an A/C would put his crew in any more danger than absolutely neccessary.

I read where there were a few "high value" targets down on the ground and we have to wait until ground troops identify the bodies. Good luck with that. It's one thing to look at a body that has been hit by one bullet, a 40mm shell going off right next to that body is a little more problemactic, to say nothing of a 105. Or twenty+ 7.62s. We may never know who all was killed. I do know it wasn't enough.

Update: I just read that the AC-130 is armed with a 20mm Gatling Gun instead of the 7.63mm Nato round. Those rounds are like three quarters of an inch accross. That's a slug that makes a big hole, even if it's not explosive or incindiary.

The Clan

Some months back we had three out of the four kids in one place, complete with spouses, or should that be spice, and seven of the eight grandkids. A professional picture was taken of the mob, it somehow took this long to scan it into the computer.

As you can plainly see, we seem to have run long on boys, three out of the four kids were boys, seven out of eight grandkids (so far) are boys. I am pleased we don't do dowry in America. I'd open a vein.

Linda Lou was brave enough to go to Chuck E Cheese for the mob o' kids bash for William's birthday. I stayed home to watch the dogs, well, that was my excuse. I missed Michael and Jennifer up from San Antone but I reckon it's worth it to skip that place.

Birdseed Thieves and Marie Callender Pies and Cobblers

Retired people must have hobbies. In addition to shooting I have started a birdseed collection. Trouble is if I try to keep my birdseed collection in the house we get those little tiny field mice and Linda Lou threatens me with dire consequences. So I got this little plastic silo that we hang in the wild plum tree in the front yard.

Now the tree is full of flying birdseed thieves and the odd squirrel. Naturally it annoys me to see my precious birdseed collection being stolen, this time of year it is the Cardinals and Blue Jays, plus every little brown bird that I can't identify. Linda Lou won't let me shoot them so my little tree is always full of red and blue birds flashing around like rubies and sapphires. I tried taking a couple of mugshots, just in case they come to your neighborhood, I don't know how well they came out, click to see.

In other news, Mrs. Who of the not famous enough House of Zathras is mad at me because I wrote of Blackberry Cobbler yesterday, when it isn't blackberry season. It seems she hasn't canned enough blackberries to make a cobbler. Well, since even wives who have never met stick together and I don't want Linda Lou to punish me, here is the trick...Marie Callender frozen cobblers. Buy 'em at Wally World. These cobblers, and her frozen pies, are the best store-bought pies and cobblers I've ever eaten. And, of course, they are never out of season.

The Marie Callender frozen pot pies are good, too.I eat them a couple of times a week, for breakfast. Linda Lou has back trouble and when her back is kicking up she sleeps on the couch. When I wake up before she does I eat the pot pies for breakfast because I can fix 'em quietly, without waking her. They come in two sizes, ten ounce, for those on a diet, and sixteen ounces, for those of us that don't care if we ever see our feet again. If your only experience with pot pies are those teeny ones from Swanson, try one of these. Their new Cheesy Chicken is out of this world.

The Navy Bean Soup Is Perfected

I've always loved Navy Bean Soup, I had never learned to cook it. Last month I made my first attempt. I learned then to never try making it with cheap bacon.

I tried again, finished it yesterday, it's perfect. This one is for Blogfather Harvey.

I put two pounds of navy beans on to soak overnight and slept the sleep of the just. In the morning I poured it all into the colander, washed and dried the bean pot. While the bean pot was drying I cut up a pound of good bacon, about one inch chunks is fine. I then sprayed the bottom of the pot with Pam, put the fire on, a medium heat is fine and dropped in the bacon.

While the bacon was cooking I cut up two medium yellow onions. After the bacon was almost done I drained the bacon grease. Note: don't cook the bacon all the way, just almost all. We want a little bit of fat left, for some reason the soup needs it. Not a lot, a little.

If there is leftover ham or pork chops, that sort of thing, it works just as well as bacon. Once the bacon is drained drop in the onion, beans and water. Fancy places like restaurants and naval vessels always have other vegetables in the soup, carrots, celery, etc. Hmm, there's a big ol' baking potato left over, cut it up and throw it in. What other veggies? Oooh, look there in the freezer, it's a bag of stew vegetables. In it goes.

Since we can't have soup without spices, let's finish up. Garlic? Sure, all I have is garlic powder. Pour it in. Put it in until you are sure there is too much, now add some more. Three or four bay leafs (leaves?), a few shakes of ground sage, a batch of orango and a little bit of thyme. Now some salt, some pepper and some white pepper. Hmm, a little more garlic.

One of my earliest memories is from before we had television where we lived, my mother loved listening to the Tennessee Ernie Ford show on the radio. One of his sponsors was Martha White's Gladiola Brand Cornbread Mix. Make this bean soup, serve with cornbread muffins and you too can say "Goodness gracious, it's pea pickin' good!" Tennessee Ernie was like two hundred years old when he died, he still died too young. The last time we went through Tennessee we stopped at the Grand Ol' Opry and one of the CDs we bought was a twenty-song one by him. If the only song you ever heard of his is Sixteen Tons you would be surprised to learn just how much of his stuff was Rockabilly. And just how racy some of it was. Baby boomers like to act like our parent's generation was so straitlaced. Forgetting, of course, that there were so damned many of us. Judging from our behavior I don't think very many of us were virgin births.

Oh, anyway, serve with cornbread. Oh, and add just a little more garlic. And put some Tennessee Ernie on. Desert should be blackberry pie or cobbler. And listen to Blackberry Boogie.

Note: It doesn't matter how cold it gets at night, don't try to sleep with your head under the covers.

Iran

I wish I had a better understanding of the terrain on the border of Iraq and Iran, I simply cannot understand why we allow weapons, money and bad guys to flow across that border. It's been over thirty-five years since I wore Uncle's suit but I still recall how to set up an L shaped ambush. I didn't have to have a funny hat, neither. Any Infantryman could do it then, why aren't we doing it now?

When we were having that two year long rush to war I looked at the map in my World Almanac and thought then that Iraq was just a step, a staging area much like Sicily in WW2. We already had troops and air bases in Afghanistan, Turkey and, I believe Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, as well as Saudi Arabia. The Gulf of Oman and Persian Gulf were each American lakes, owned by the US Navy.

So, we gone in, knock off Sodomy Hussein, then retreat to a few bases, and the oil fields, let the Shiites and the Sunnis kill each other while we protect the Kurds and go on to the next step, putting the fear of God and George W. Bush into Iran and Saudi Arabia.

There is not a square inch of either of those places that our fighter bombers can't reach, as a matter of fact our helicopter gunships can get fairly deep into each. I seem to remember, back in the day, that our Zoomies and Rotorheads used to love to see stuff blow up. I would hope that hasn't changed although with the PCification of the military I am not so sure. Have the Weapons Officers in the back seats of those jets all been replaced by JAG Lawyers yet? Or is that next?

I do not understand why there is one brick standing on another through Iran. I do not know why Halliburton doesn't have the contract to rebuild. I blame the Democrats.

Look out! It's Eddie. Everyone must watch out for Big Ed. He doesn't really understand that he's no bigger than a minute, he just knows that he is descended from wolves.

William Is Four

We had a small gathering Sunday, just the grandparents and William's parents, and, of course, William's little brother, Josiah. Next weekend is the big party, at Chuck E Cheese, I shall be too ill to show up there, actually I have permission to skip it, that many kids would be bound to give me another stroke.

From the top, that is William and his parents, Dean and Stephanie, next is Gramps and Josiah, the next two are William, his dad and one with Pele, their mess dog. That was my New Years Eve, whoopie!

Oddball Stew

I am teaching myself to cook new things, nothing fancy, just things I have never learned to cook before. I have never really learned to cook beef stew, having always been a pot roast sort of feller. A while back though, I was at Wally World just after they had put "yesterdays" meat out, marked down and there was some really pretty looking stew meat. So I bought it and pitched it in the freezer, along with a couple bags of stew vegetables, a couple of extra potatoes and some onions, the stew veggies never have enough potato and onion.

There was also the little envelope of stew spices, probably McCormick. In reading the directions I discovered that we are supposed to put some flour in the water, that is why our pot roasts were never like Momma made, I reckon.

So I poured a little oil into the big pot and started browning the beef, added the water and then some flour, too much it turned out, so I added more water until it was still too thick but manageable,cooked it for a while, then it was time for the veggies. Trouble is, I had added so much water that the right amount of veggies made it a soup, not a stew, no problem, I added more veggies.

So I ate it until the beef was gone and I still had a lot of juice and veggies left. I was wondering what to do and then I dropped into the little "supermarket" nearest my little house, a Brookshires in Quinlan. Linda Lou wanted the Sunday paper and I wanted a can of black eyed peas to eat for good luck, it was just after they closed the deli and so they had a bunch of stuff marked down including about a foot and a half or so of smoked sausage. Did I mention that marked down tastes better? Next month sometime the brand new WalMart is opening, no more driving twenty-six miles, one way, just to go shopping! Bet the prices come down at the Brookshires, too. Ooh! And the first race of the NASCAR season! Woot!

So I cut up the sausage and dropped it in the stuff in the stew pot. I boiled the whole mess for a little bit and now I have another couple of days rations.

Of course, the real trouble is that with just the two of us anything we cook it too much for us, so we eat it until we are just tired of it and then the dogs get it. We have fat dogs. So anyway, here is a new recipe, beef stew with all the beef gone and a batch of smoked sausage toss in. I shall call it oddball stew. It tastes pretty good.

I Did Not Cry

Saddam is officially dead and I did not cry.

In new far more important, today is my grandson William's fourth birthday. We'll be going to a small party later so there will be pictures in the next few days.

Until then, happy New Year.

Thinking About Global Warming.

I took Eddie out to pee, and to fire the other barrel. To do so I had to put on my thermal underwear, my sweats, a jacket, a watch cap and a jacket and gloves. Could be worse, I could be in North Dakota or Wisconsin or some awful place where they allow snow. (Why don't the legislatures up there pass a law?)It got me to thinking about the global warming zealots (the same bunch that was convinced we were all gonna die in the new ice age) talking about how we are all gonna die because it's going to get three degrees hotter.

Here is what I don't understand, we are all going to die because the ice will melt and the seas will rise a whole foot or so. Just how much of Holland is below sea level? When did the Dutch build those dikes? Long before my time, right? Except for New Orleans, aren't the rest of us smart enough to put up some dikes? Are we not as smart as the Dutch of a couple hundred years back?

I have a lot of trouble adjusting to Algore telling us we are all going to die because it will get a few degrees warmer. We have people living everywhere from Yuma, Arizona to Anchorage, Alaska, we seem to be a pretty resilient bunch. Perhaps Algore will die over a few degrees, the rest of us will move a hundred miles north. Except, of course, in Australia. They'll go south. It warmed up at the end of the Dark Ages and our ancestors survived. I'm told that if it warms up some, the growing seasons will be longer and there will be more to eat. Of course, looking at Algore lately, maybe that is the problem. Nobody will be hurt by the heat, Algore is just worried that he'll explode.

I figure my grandchildren are pretty smart kids. If it gets too hot for them to live in Texas, Arizona and North Carolina, where they are now, they can move to Siberia and wear tank tops in January. The way the Ruskies are dying off, they might as well. There will certainly be enough room.

And another thing, in between all of us dying from the coming ice age to all of us dying from the big hot spell, were we not all supposed to die from Nuclear Winter? How's about we figure out how many nukes we'd need for a Nuclear Springtime? We could drop the first one on Tehran and just work our way down a list until we have perfect weather. One on Khartoum would stop the genocide in Darfur, a nice small one on the Aswan High Dam in Egypt would let the rest of Islam know what it means when they talk about throwing Israel into the sea.

We could start a little pool, how many nukes would it take to make for good weather and would that be enough to calm Islamic Rage Boy down a notch or three or will we have to rebuild the Napalm refineries. We can Napalm 'till there is global warming, nuke until it cools off and just repeat until the surivivors of Islam decide to play nice with the rest of the world.

There, I've solved the two big problems of the world, all from staying home today so as to not bring this cold to the grandkids. With a little luck the cold will be over by William's birthday party. If I don't get over the cold by then, somebody give me another big problem to solve.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all.

Vicious Killer Attack Pugs

Linda Lou got herself a new camera, an itty-bitty HP Photosmart M527. We are still learning to use it but here are a couple of doggie pictures. I am still not real happy with a camera with no little window to look through, especially on moving targets like children, dogs and suchlike. Oh well, our old camera has the little window so it lives hanging from my guncart so I'm not endangering the new one at a Cowboy Action Match. Not that anyone would shoot it, but Linda Lou worries about me dropping it.

Our old camera is a Toshiba PDR-M61. As far as I can tell, photo quality is the same, although I may need new bifocals. The big difference is that we can't carry the old one around in a shirt pocket. Of course I never carry it that way and Linda Lou doesn't have very many shirts with pockets.

I suppose there is some sort of scientifical reason than these electronic cameras wait when you push the button to take the picture, usually until the dog has moved so we see nothing but the dog's butt. Or maybe the camera makers are Malthusian types and just want my blood pressure way up there.

Odds And Ends

There isn't much going on down here in the Poorfarm. We had our Cowboy Action Shooting Club's Christmas dinner and get together on Saturday night. As always, Mexican Food. I will not comment about a bunch of middle-aged and older men, and their wives, in a closed room eating frijoles, we've all seen that understated masterpiece, Blazing Saddles.

We, as usual, got our share of strange looks, even in Texas people look at you funny for wearing the old-style cowboy clothers. Or maybe it was the frijoles.

It looks like I'm going to have to pay a visit to the Fabled Tequila Mines Of Cuervo. I was drinking a cherry limeade from Sonic the other day and somehow Eddie the Pug Puppy got 'hold of a lime slice. I have never seen a dog that loves lime slices before, Eddie may be the first. I tested Ming the Merciless with a lime slice, she wrinkled her nose and backed away which is more like it. Oh well, if we load him up with Margeritas we'll have a lot more peace and quiet. With my luck he'd be a fighting drunk.

Linda Lou's minivan is in the shop so we're driving a rental. A Dodge Caliber. It's okay, just another small car except to one thing. You can wear a hat inside. Most of the little moterised roller skates these day you just can't wear a real hat, there isn't room. Even the bigger cars you can't get in and out while wearing a hat. I am beminded of Walter Chrysler who, when the longer and lower craze first started said "I build cars to drive, not to p--- over."

When we bought the minivan we were also looking at a Jeep Grand Cherokee, I then drove one while the minivan was getting some kind of service, we upgraded the rental that time. I could not get in and out without taking off my hat, the roofline was too low. The new Grand Cherokee may have this fixed, the guy from the rental company was driving one for the pickup at the dealership, and, at least on the passenger side of the front, it worked for me. I didn't use to care about wearin' a hat. Right up until I didn't have enough hair left to keep my head from sunburning.

Well, that's all I have, it isn't much.

What Did They Study?

Oaky, let me get this straight. The Iraq Study Group studied Iraq by going once to the Green Zone and only Chuck Robb got out of that particular place and went to an FOB.

Meanwhile they had no testimony from a single Lance Corporal in The Corps or a Staff Sgt. in the Army, nor any Colonals running Regiments or Brigades.

After all this study they want us to involve Iran nand Syria in the solution to the problem when probably half, or more, of the fighters and weapons killing our troops come from Iran and Syria.

Did this crowd study LSD?

Name For A Dave Barry Rock Band?

Britney Spears' crotch seems to be leading the news today. Linda Lou and I are a little over 120 years old, combined and we've both gone our whole lives without either of our crotches being featured on the Drudge Report or Michelle Malkin.

Of course, I don't get out much, is Britney Spears' Crotch the name of a new rock band?