Keep Out! Construction Zone.

I have the lumber for the ramp to replace the front steps now. Who knew lumber was so expensive these days? I mean lumber grows on trees! I didn't buy enough lumber for the whole world, two 2x10s, two 2x12s and one 4 x4 four and two 2x4s, those last for bracing. Plus a box of wood screws. One hundred and fifteen dollars! If construction wasn't dead we could have snuck 'round and, nah, no sense in me getting shot.

Who, precisely, do we have to thank for this? I wasn't buying old growth redwood or the Cedars of Sinai, I was buying plain, treated lumber. I suspect the Greenies. Somehow, we ordinary Americans need to convince Washington to listen to us for a while instead of every idiot "environmental group", mostly each of those groups consisting of three people and a fax machine, cranking out press releases having nothing to do with the real world. Is that spotted owl family (the ones that only live in old growth forest) still living in that K-Mart sign?

Anyhow, my pal Steve is coming over to do the skilled labor on this ramp contraption. We are using the 2x10s and 2x12s together to make a 44 inch wide ramp, that's what will go between the stairway bannister's. I have a few concrete blocks around and the neighbors have this pile of scrap lumber for additional bracing. I figure we're building a ramp for the ages.

Linda Lou is being discharged from the hospital on this coming Friday. It's high time. I find myself talking to her because I forget she's not sitting in her little chair by the desk. I've been telling her, several times a day, that I like coffee, for instance, just in case she forgets. For a while it made her mad, now she realizes it's just another running joke. I also tell her how I like pie but I don't get that as often as I do coffee.

Anyhow, I'm not used to being single anymore and I'm certainly not used to washing ladies' undergarments. Guy's laundry is easy. White underwear in one pile, colored tee shirts and blue jeans in another and everything else to the cleaners. Just be careful not to get into the great shop towel war with your guy roommates so you don't end up with all pink underwear. (Don't ask how I learned that.) One fairly new red shop towel will turn a whole load of underwear pink and I don't care how much bleach you put in, it takes a bazillion washings for it to be white again. But I digress.

I miss Linda Lou, the dogs miss Linda Lou and, even though I've taken the Pugs with me twice now, it's not the same. Cochise' Apache Princess also misses Linda Lou and I reckon we're stuck with her. Oh well, we'll just have to be extra careful. I'll just have to put CAP out whenever Linda Lou has to get up and wander around with her walker.

Well, it's Sunday morning and I'll be doing some work. I do believe that means I can have french toast and Little Sizzler sausages without penalty. And, if there is a penalty anyway, poo on it.

At Least Two Senators Dead And Nothing In The News!

Senator Bunning tried to make the Senate obey it's own rules to no avail. It was hard to believe Bunning would actually change things. After all, no one ever expects Democrats to follow the laws they themselves passed. Not when they can instead sit around talking about Republican being hypocrites.Turns out that a lot of Washington Republicans are hipocrites, though.

My two Senators, John Cornyn and Kay Baily Hutchinson, along with every other Republican Senator let Bunning twist slowly in the wind. The amazing thing is that every time Cornyn and Hutchinson talk to Texas they talk about what great fiscal conservatives they are. Here they had their chance and nothing. Nothing. Did they both die and since they are lowly Republicans the Washington Press Corpse didn't find it important enough to print. I would rather believe that than believe that Cornyn and Hutchinson are a couple of lying scumbags who talk one thing in Texas and do quite another thing up there in DC.

That's the problem. The whole Republican delegation in the United States Senate talked about fiscal responsibility. Over and over. At every election cycle. And then? Jim Bunning, alone. Sure, if the entire Republican caucus hadn't died and fought, instead, they would have lost. In losing, though, they would have sent a message to the electorate. An electorate that would have remembered in November. Too bad they died.

Texas Independence Day, Election Day and Other Stories.

I was back into my usual routine, still hadn't gone to bed and was getting ready to go vote and do a little shopping, then home to bed and up in time to go see Linda Lou at the hospital.

So, about 9:00 AM I was dressed and Bingo T. Pug and I went out to go. Bingo wanted to vote in Linda Lou's place and I had her voter registration card. First thing out of the box, flat tire. At least yesterday's rain had blown out but, with the wind straight out of the north, it was no fun. Even less fun is that Linda Lou has the cell phone with her so I couldn't even call the road service...

It was an open question for awhile, which would come first, a coronary or the donut spare put on and the flat put into the back. To make matters worse, the flat had rolled through some fresh dog poop. Some of you might be glad to know that I did not die, It might have been close but sorry, kids, you'll have to wait a while longer for your vast inheritance.

We finally got to the voting place, also known as a local church's special events building. The first thing I did was wash the tire goo off my hands in the "boys room". I then showed my card and voted by machine, most everybody likes those paper ballots but, hey, I'm a 21st Century kind of guy.

The Donks were also having their primary in that same room, on the other side. This is not necessarily indicative of all the precincts all of the day, all over the State, but I walked in, there were one couple at our table, getting signed in, nobody at the Donks. I washed my hands and still, nobody at the Donk's side. A new pair of voters at my side's table. I voted, told 'em about Linda Lou and said that Bingo would be glad to vote in her place, they said fine but he'd have to use the machine and no help. Eh, he probably would have voted for that truther Paultard, Medina, anyway.

From there we went to the tire shop, it took some forty-five minutes but away we went with a fresh tire and I remembered that it was Texas Independence Day so I rolled into the WalMart parking lot singing Texas, Our Texas at the top of my lungs. Bingo must have been mad 'cuz he couldn't vote because he cowered away, it couldn't have been my singing!

I got a big can of coffee, a gallon of milk and some assorted other stuff.
a can of salmon because my mama made salmon patties a lot and then I hadn't had any until I taught myself how to cook 'em. I'm not sure, after all these years, whether or not mine are as good as hers but they're good enough. I don't care how old I get, I still miss my Mama.

Anyhow, I drove home and went to bed about two-thirty or three. I brought CAP in but she had gptten so muddy in the puddles left over from the rain the day before that I put her back out, no WAY was I going to let the Mud Monster into bed with me. And, if she's in the house she at least starts the "night" in the bed. The muddy paw prints are out of control and her favorite places to lay end up covered in dried mud.

Had to get dogs, couldn't get some nice guppies, no! And the woman who said she wanted her hasn't called back so I guess that's out. Too bad.

I only spoke to Linda Lou over the phone a couple of times, depending on how tired I am after we clean out the gunroom and hallway I'll either go see her today or tomorrow. Dean doesn't know it yet but he is going home with my big Forster Bonanza Co-Ax Press will go home with him as well as the .30-06 dies and the Redding Benchrest powder measure. All he will need to load his own will be a powder scale for I am sending about a half tone of powder, bullets, cases and primers with him, as well as a couple of manuals.

I shall also speak to him about starting up a cast bullet business. I have a pal in the scrap metal biz, I think I can get enough scrap lead at a low cost, after all, he shoots the ammo I make for him.

Well, I slept until one AM and so my schedule is borked again. I must figure out a way to get back on a human schedule, I don't think I'm really meant to spend my declineing years as a vampire. Oh well, that was Texas Independence Day.

The Pugs Visited Their Mama!

I took Ming the Merciless and Bingo to see their Mama today. I got to the hospital and bundled Linda Lou into a wheelchair and off we went down the elevator and outside where they had a joyous reunion. This is where I discovered that the plan is that Linda Lou should stay in the rehab wing for TWO MORE WEEKS!!! Holy crows, I knew it was a bad break but two more weeks? Anybody know of a nice chubby girl whose hobbies are housecleaning and kinky sex?

The good news is that the county has a program to send someone out to handicap-ize the house, they'll raise a toilet and put grab rails on, and fix grab bars for the tub, plus put in a ramp. That will help a bunch.

Meanwhile I have no idea persactly how I'm going to be buying gas for daily visits to the hospital, some sixty+ miles round trip per day, we have been budgeting a tank and a half of gas a month lately. Well, I will figure something out.

Anyhow, Linda Lou is already working with the physical terrorists in the new wing, something over three hours today and this was a Saturday. I believe the pace will pick up during the week. She says she'll work extra hard so she can come home and torment me. All I know is that I'm plumb wore out from all this. As soon as she's healed I'm going to collapse and be bedridden for a month or so.

More Slow Progress

I showed up early to the hospital on my way to my Doc's appointment and they actually had Linda Lou sitting up in a chair. It takes a bit of effort getting her up and down but the hospital staff is very good at that. Maybe not so good at information but danged good at taking care of her.

Meanwhile the idiot in chief is doing his damnedest to remake our system into what the Brits face. Let's review: Linda Lou fell at about 4:30 on a Sunday morning. We live so far out in the country that we don't get the Grand Ol' Opry on the radio 'til Tuesday Afternoon. I had to mess with dogs and suchlike before I could go to the hospital, by the time I got there it was about 6:30 or 7:00, they'd already had her X-Rays and put her into one of those boot things and were working out a plan of attack.

They put her into a (private) room, the only kind they have in that section and, from there into surgery the very next morning where they inserted half a hardware store, two thirds of an oil derrick and, I believe, a 1992 Buick 3.8 Liter V-6 in there to hold those bones together. I may have some minor technical details wrong, medicine is not really my field, the important thing is that Linda Lou is getting as fine a medical care as anywhere in the world where, in Canada, where medical care is "free" she'd probably not have had her surgery yet..

She is getting visits from everybody in the hospital staff it seems, the Physical Terrorists a couple times a day, naturally her Doc and her Nurse, an aide, about half the days a student nurse, even a respiratory therapist to see that she's getting enough oxygen. That woman gave me an alarmed look when I told her we hardly ever watched that channel.

I left to go to my Doc's, having extracted permission to bring Linda Lou her favorite meal, a double cheeseburger and Tater Tots from Sonic (I'm not sayin' I married her because of the cheap date factor but...)

I got to my Doc's office and eventually saw the Doc hisownself instead of Amy, the PA that I normally see. Dunno why, I didn't argue though. The Doc and Amy see both of us, that's why they call it a family practice, I guess. So we spoke about me, he poked and prodded and, as expected, bent me over the table. They always give me a funny look when I carefully look to make sure the Doc doesn't have both hands on my shoulders during this process.

I'm too polite to ask why they have to reach around my lowest intestine before they can write my prescriptions but, what the hey, I got out with my scripts and an order for some fasting blood work and pee tests and off I went. I might walk better with that KY Jelly lubing up a friction point but am kind of leery about doing some kind of scientifical test. The good news is that there is an office of the Lab we use just a few blocks from the hospital.

From there I went to the supermarket and bought Linda Lou a six pack of her beloved Diet Pepsi and a package of blueberry scones and found a lemon chess pie on the marked down rack for me. Rigorous testing by one of the finest minds in the country (mine) has proven that marked down improves the flavor of almost anything.

From there a drive up to the county seat where the hospital is. I doubt many will care but we live on the very edge of our county and we seldom go there, the distance is more or less the same to where we normally go and there is much better shopping there. As far as we live from anything but pastures, lake and trees, we try to combine as many trips as possible. Anyhow it is close enough to make no nevermind which town is closer and it's actually about five miles closer to the county seat of the next county over the other way.

A quick stop for Linda's burger and back to the hospital only to discover that she had the catheter out, more progress! Linda Lou could not eat the whole burger but the dogs did not let it go to waste. Shortly after LL finished eating the Physical Terrorists showed up to help her back to bed. They told me she'd be moving to their lair in the hospital for the rest of her stay.

Shortly after that I left to come home, dropped my scripts off on the way and came home, let the Pugs out for their evening constitutional, then let CAP in and we all took a nap. Now, come morning, I get to try to bemember how to do a load of laundry and it's getting out of hand. Let's see, rule number one, do not wash my bright red shirts with my underwear...

So, we're muddling through. I think I have found a new home for Cochise Apache Princess, I'll know this weekend. I just can't take the chance of this hardly-trained monster dog and a Linda Lou barely able to navigate. Sigh. We're really too old for a dog her size, though, we'll stick with Pugs from here on out. What the heck, as long as the Pug can wake me up I can shoot the bad guy.

The IV Is Out, That's A Little Something

Those following the saga of Linda Lou's broken leg will be glad to know there is some small progress. When I got to the hospital they had removed Linda Lou's IV drip, oxygen tube and "that ball". "That ball" is, oddly enough, a clear ball containing a local anesthetic delivered to just above the leg. I was also in the room, just before I came home to feed the livestock, when they gave her the last dose of Hillbilly Heroin, Oxycontin. I'm not persactly sure what they will give her when that wears off but I'm glad that stuff is about over. Not that it doesn't work.

As an aside, I must say I am totally amazed about how Rush Limbaugh managed to stay coherent, as much of that stuff as HE was taking. Linda Lou kept falling asleep in the middle of a sentence, nay, a word!

I have no idea of when they will let her come home, the only word is that they will soon move her from the room she's in to a room in the physical therapy wing. The fuse is lit, burning slowly toward a major tantrum if somebody doesn't tell me what's going on soon. I have a doc's appointment of my own on Thursday, just a visit with my family practice Doc to get lectured about my diet and exercise (or lack thereof) and to refill my scripts.

Speaking of prescriptions, I finally figured out why Democrats hate the drug companies. I'm retired, getting social security. There are a few scripts that literally keep me alive. Without them I would die fairly soom, with them I may even have another ten-fifteen years. And THAT is why the Donks hate those drug companies, they keep us old folks alive, actually using those benefits they promised. If the drug companies would just let me die the Donks could wail and demand more money to prevent such horrible deaths, if only there were more midnight basketball courts!

But, I digress...When I get to the hospital tomorrow, after my Doc reaches up my backside far enough to examine my tonsils and wave at all her friends over on the next block, I'm hoping Linda Lou will be coherent enough to bring me up on what's happening. Then I'll tell you.

Surgery Was A Success, Medics Allege

I left the house right about my normal (?) for me bedtime and drove up to Greenville, by the time I'd got to the hospital they'd taken Linda Lou from the room. So we sat around, waiting. The twins (our youngest) had met and driven out, too. So we sat, I spent about half the time trying to stay awake and the other half worrying.

Afterr what felt like two weeks of waiting they brought a sleeping Linda Lou into the room. They had to open up her leg and put about half a hardware store in there, screws and plates and a rod and lord only knows what else. If only they could put something in there that reminds her to watch where she puts her feet.It's not like we just had that hall put in. Shut up, Peter, while you still have a chance to survive...

We have, as yet, no idea of when she can come home. The Doc expressed the thought that the bones would knit completely, that's something. I am really worried about her mental state, I think she fears that she will never be able to get around well enough to do for herself. Or, maybe just she's fearing that she won't be able to keep trying to put me in the poorhouse. It's all right, dear, there is always internet shopping!

Seriously, she seemed pretty depressed today, I hope it's just the residual effects of the General.Please keep up the prayers.

In proof of how tired I was, and am, I was unable to tell the left from the right. It is her right leg that is broken. More later.

Fun With Broken Bones

We went to our grandson William's Blue and Gold Banquet yesterday, we have a few pictures that will have to wait.

At 4:30 AM I was minding my own business, getting ready for my bedtime snack and all of a sudden tere was a big ol thud and scream in the hall behind me. Linda Lou had woken and on her way to the john, fell and broke the Tibia abd Fibula of her right leg, just above the ankle.

This kind of spoiled my whole bedtime although not near what it did to Linda Lou. There isn't much that made me feel more helpless in this life than waiting for the ambulance. I knew there was something seriously wrong just from the swelling and the pain to the touch.

Now that we've seen the X-Rays we know the breaks are bad. The Fibula, the smaller bone in the back of the calf is a fairly simple break, the Tibia looks like a spral fracture. They will be going in and putting a plate and a rod in, probably tomorrow (Monday, 22 February.)

Anyhow, prayers would be welcome. Now that we are in our sixties we don't heal like we used to.

Cast Bullet Softness And Hardness Versus Velocity And Pressure

It's been almost forever since I wrote something about shooting here. Stupid winter. Stupid poverty. Stupid health.

I figure I might ramble on a bit about cast bullets. The art of jacketed handgun and rifle bullets is well known, the art of lead handgun and rifle bullets is rapidly being forgotten and that is a shame. A bigger shame, of course, is the way lead has been demonized but that is another story. Well, just a mention, y'all know how lead shot was banned for waterfowl a couple decades back because of the claim that ducks and geese were eating spent shot from the bottom of lakes and using it like gravel in their gizzards to help digest their food, thus being poisoned? This led us to steel shot which, being lighter, wounded more ducks and geese to die later, uncollected. Naturally though, wounded critters do not count toward the bag limit so, where is the gain? Some mighty savvy gunnies, including that grand old man of the shooting sports, Elmer Keith, claimed that we could have eliminated the problem(?) of lead poisoning simply by using larger, heavier shot for all waterfowl. Their claim was that simply by going up to number five shot as a minimum would make the shot sink a bit deeper, eliminating the poisoning problem(?), instead we got steel shot. And now a bunch of others, many costing well over two and three dollars a shot. This also leads to cripples, at three bucks a shot, how much practice do most of the shooters get? And even the fellers (and gals) who do practice, say on the trap and skeet fields, shoot the cheaper lead shot which has a slightly different drop and lead factor. Sigh.

Anyhow, about cast and swaged bullets. The most important thing about them is that the hardness or "temper" of the bullet must match the pressure and velocity of the load. The second thing to remember is that if one gets very far off, leading becomes a miserable problem. Oddly, too hard a bullet will lead as badly as too soft a bullet. A bullet that is too hard will not obdurate or swell up to seal all the powder gases behind the base. This means that those very hot gasses get to blow the lube out of the bullet's lube groove(s) and also melt bits of the lead allow which then sticks to the cooler barrel. This builds up fairly quickly and soon accuracy is lost. Not to mention the joy of scrubbing those big lumps of lead out of the barrel.

Too soft is also a problem although one can drive a fairly soft bullet out of a handgun with little lead at surprisingly high velocities. The dirty little secret is that most commercial casters concentrate on making their bullets easy to make and easy to ship so they arrive to the final shooter nice and pretty. They are also only really good for high velocities, 'way past the capabilities of, say, the .38 Special or standard .45 Colt and other cartridges where the standard velocities are less than 1,000 feat per second.

This, of course, is the range that some 75% of handloaders strive for since the vast majority of handloaded rounds are simply made for fun. These days, for instance, almost all the shooting I do is a Cowboy Action matches where all handgun ammo must be under 1,000 fps and most is lower, a lot lower. The recent hoo rah over velocity finally made a rule that no revolver bullet may go less than 400 fps and that all our reactive targets be set to fall at a 100 grain weight bullet striking at 600 fps or a 200 grain slug at 400. I shoot the standard weight .45 slug of 255 grains or, cast from my alloy 248. I could almost throw one of those fast enough to knock the target down. While I'm digressing, I have never seen them set up a chronograph at a club match and, when the sun was at the right angle I have actually seen some of the bullets in flight.

Muzzle loaders and cap and ball revolver shooters load pure lead, usually. This, the softest of bullet metals is good enough for those velocities. A black powder arm when properly cleaned at the start and used within the limits, will have no leading. The Pards in my club that shoot cap and ball revolvers can shoot a six stage match , sixty rounds total with one cap and ball revolver, switching cylinders to get to the ten rounds per stage, and have zero leading.

The next step up from pure lead is a small amount of tin mixed in the alloy. This is good for all standard handgun rounds and the big black powder rifle cartridges of the buffalo hunter days. The usual range of tin in the lead is one to forty to one to twenty. Saint Elmer of Keith used one in twenty for just about everything, including the .44 Magnum and his earlier attempts to "magnumize" the .44 Special.

This one in twenty alloy is good for even over the normal limit of 1200-1400 fps possible in the big cartridges like .45-90 and pretty much all normal handgun cartridges like the .38 and .357, the .44s, etc. This alloy will run out of steam and start leading badly in things like the .454 Casull Mag, .500 S&W Mag, things like that. In other words, even the "standard" magnum cartridges like the .357 and .44 have to be loaded at the very top of their capabilities to make these bullets match the pressure and velocities. Not one shooter in a thousand runs the mags at full charge every shot. After all, that's hard on the gun and hard on the shooter.

It's not just the recoil, either. Even with the best hearing protection available, a full load .44 Mag is hard on the hearing. There is a reason I do not watch much TV or listen to much radio. I started shooting before hearing protection was common. The BOOM! of the low pressure rounds like the .38 Special wadcutter loads, the standard .45 Colt or .44 Special, even the .45 ACP was easier to take than the hot .357 Mags, the old high pressure .38s, the .38 Super, etc. When it came to rifles, anything hotter than the .30-30 would have my ears ringing for days, even with the old chewed up Kleenex or toilet paper wadded into the ears. Of course, in those days everything was power for me. It took a lot of years before I figured out that all the bullet had to do was amble on down for 25 or 50 yards, often a lot less and fight it's way, somehow, through a sheet of paper wand some light backing, maybe a tin can and it was all done. No, in those days, everything was loaded up to stop a charging bank vault in it's tracks. It's funny. In all my born days I've never been charged by a bank vault. I digress, again.

The next step is a lead tin antimony alloy. In these the antimony does the hardening and there is usually just a tad of tin. In these alloys the tin is just used to make casting easier. There is some long metallurgical explanation for this and I have read it many times, usually either falling asleep or getting a headache. Truth is, I don't need to understand it to use it. I used to shoot a lot of wheelweight metal, cast into bullets. Wheelweights are (or were, this is fast changing) lead and antimony. By itself, wheelweight metal makes for some pretty good bullets for the 800-1000 fps loads only there are a lot of rejects going back into the pot. By adding one pound of tin to some forty pounds of cleaned and fluxed wheelweight metal the reject rate is almost zero. I could use this alloy for just about all of my smokeless powder shooting for the rest of my life and be happy.

The next level is about the hardest practical cast bullet alloy, linotype metal. This runs about 84% lead, 12% antimony and 4% tin. This is good for the highest pressure and velocity, with a gas check on the base and good lube these bullets can get up over 2600 fps in rifles. There are harder lead alloys but they tend to shatter on game.

There is one other place where lino is about the best metal for bullets, the standard autoloading pistols. This may not be the "best" metal alloy for the pressure and velocity but the self stuffers are hard on a bullet. The ride in the magazine is bad enough, every time the gun recoils the rounds in the mag bang back and forth, plus being forced up by the follower and mag spring, then the trip from magazine to chamber. After all that the gun goes BANG! Then the poor bullet hits that shallow rifling, meant for jacketed bullets. The softer alloy that is fit for, say, the pressure and velocity of a .40 S&W or a .45 ACP, would skid about halfway up the barrel, causing it's own leading. So the autoloaders require a harder bullet metal than they would otherwise use.

A trick to reduce leading in autoloading pistols is to use a wad of the right size. I use Walter's Wads although you can buy gasket materiel and make your own with the right size punch. This works even better with a small ball of bullet lube on top of the wad, this takes out the gas that would ordinarily try to blow by the bullet base. Most hand loaders don't bother, though, they simply scrub the lead or use jacketed bullets. Walters does not seem to have a website but his stuff is available through Midway, there on my side panel, plus a bazillion other places.

I am lucky enough to have a Pard in the scrap business. I "pay" for my lead and tin with bullets and loaded ammo so I can cast my bullets to the hardness that suits my needs. Folks that buy their bullets are a little less lucky. The best outfit selling bullets to shoot, rather than bullets to ship is Desparado Cowboy Bullets. These folks make the bullets that shoot easy, right up 'til about 1000-1100 fps. Not only are they great for cowboy action and paper punching but They'd be just the thing to have in your shootin' iron if a critter of the size your cartridge is good for happens along. I mean small critters if you're carrying a .32, .38, something like that or dear if you have a .357 or .45 Colt, or even a bear with the right load. Nor would I feel naked before my enemies if I had a revolver stuffed with these.

All of these bullets are soft, meaning they'll expand some, they are the round nose flat point type. In other words, instead of the old, reliable semi wadcutters that work great in revolvers but tend to hang up in a lever rifle, these have the round nose profile that feeds well, except the point is flat. We have found that this profile hits as hard as the semiwadcutter and penetrates just as straight through whatever bone and tissue it meets. If I did not cast my own, these folks would get all my business. I haven't been a customer of theirs, I tried a hundred rounds of ammo that I loaded with their bullets in a complicated trade. All I can say about them is that their bullets are as good as my best. And I'm pretty ruthless in my quality control, being retired and all. It's no trick to sitting for three hours, listening to Rush on the radio and casting a whole slew of bullets in my six cavity Big Lube Mold plus another slew of semiwadcutters for my .38s and .357s.

Another nice, soft bunch of bullets are the swaged lead bullets. I sometimes use the Remington swaged lead bullet in my .45s. With smokeless powder these bullets are wonderful. The lead is so soft that they slug up to fit the bore so there is never iny undue leading, at least up to the maximum the original .45 Colt rounds are designed for, about 950 fps or so. Do not disparage this "low" velocity, this round and this bullet will go right through both sides of an elk. The only downside to these wonderful bullets is the odd, flaky black lube on 'em. This lube works well but is kind of messy. Do not wear your best clothes will loading these bullets. And, once the ammo is loaded, take a few minutes and wipe the noses of the loaded ammo before using it, or even putting it in the box. This bullet is also great with black powder, just smear a dab of black powder lube in that slight hollow base and seat it over a wad. The ugly black lube on the bullet will last for a gunfull or two in a revolver but you'd have a real mess in your carbine. That big dab of lube, though, is just what you'll need.

There is one more, really big advantage to the soft cast or swaged bullets. In the action shooting games we shoot at steel targets. The hard bullets break up on the target and bullet fragments bounce all over. It is not unheard of that they draw blood on a competitor or spectator. The soft bullets mostly hit and spread out, expending all their energy in deforming against that hard steel. Then, energy spent, they fall. Most soft bullets are found laying there, within a few feet from the targets.At my club you'll find guys going around where the targets were with buckets, collecting those spent bullets. Why they're saving the environment from a horrible poison that just happens to come right out of the Earth but, once it's out it's an affront to Mother Gaia. They have an odd prayer to Mother Gaia, though. If you listen close you'll hear them say things like this will cast enough bullets for the next six months! Oh well, it must be some foreign language that only sounds like English. All Hail Gaia!

There are other fine soft swaged lead bullets.I'm partial to the Hornady and Speer swaged lead hollowpoints in the .38s, it's easy to work up a load just like the old FBI load, that soft lead bullet going about 900 fps from a service revolver. I have a three inch Ruger SP101 that I carry when I think I might need a little more gun than the Model 60 S&W Chief's Special .38. I have yet to convince one of the small ammo companies to make a load just for these small .357s, no luck so far. If you live where the judge worries more about why you shot the bad guy than whether or not you used a handload, a Speer or Hornady 158 grain lead semiwadcutter hollowpoint in front of 5.7 grains of Alliant's Bullseye Powder and a standard primer will give right at 1000 fps out of that three inch barrel. The recoil is very controlable, too and, bullseye being a fast burning powder, the muzzle flash is nice and low.

There are a few others, GOEX Powders has taken over the Black Dawge Bullets sales. I haven't used them but they look interesting. Their .45 handgun bullets and .38s match some weights used 'way back when, the .38 is 145 grains, much like the old .38 S&W cartridge used and the .45s are 235 grains, just about exactly what the old Cavalry load was. Load that up in front of 28-30 grains of FFG Black and not only will you have the load the Indian Fighters carried but also what went to the troops in the Philippine Islands when the local Moros took a bunch of those .38 Colt bullets and kept coming in, swinging those Bolo Knives and chopping a lot of soldiers to doll rags. They mostly fell down and stopped their antiAmerican ways when hit with the .45s.

This is also the load that John Browning copied in then modern materials to make the .45 Automatic Colt Pistol round, a short, rimless case and a nice hard jacketed round nose slug going just about as fast as that old Indian fighting load, 830 fps.

Funny, though, after a whole lot of years where the .45 acp round settled a lot of close up fights the military, in all it's wisdom, decided to go with a full jacketed 9mm load. Of course, as all the real gunnies said, that full jacketed load is about as effective in settling fights as that old .38 Colt. So, now all the Special Ops people are carrying .45s and everyone else who can put their hands on them also carry them. It's quite another story but the best hollow point rounds in 9mm, which our troops are forbidden because it is against the Hague Convention, which the bad guys never signed, is every bit as effective as the best .45 rounds. That's another story, though, since our troops can't carry the best ammo. It's some kind of rule the big brass, who no longer ever hear a shot fired in anger, have. We can't use the effective ammo while the bad guys can, except most all of them are spraying those AK rounds all over. Fortunately for us, most of them still believe that the harder they yank the trigger, the harder the bullet hits. I suppose it is racist to call a bunch of ignorant savages ignorant savages but still... It's bedtime, I have to go to a grandson's Blue and Gold Banquet. I wouldn't mind so much if I could go without going to town.

Pork

It's supposed to get more normal around here temperature wise, that's a little something. The bad news is that just about the time the mud from the melted snow dries out, we're supposed to have some rain. I have not been able to bring CAP into the house when she didn't have mud all over her for two months now.

I roasted a pork loin today, trying this recipe from the 'net. All recipes.com if it matters. Balsamic roasted pork loin. I had this five+ pound pork loin and so had do do some jiggering with the recipe, considering that it called for a two pound loin. I reckon they used piglets. Anyhow, here is the recipe as posted:

Two pound pork loin
One half cup balsamic vinegar
One half cup olive oil
two tablespoons steak seasoning rub.

Stir the steak seasoning into the vinegar and keep stirring until it's dissolved. Then mix in the oil. Put the loin into a resealable plastic bag and pour the marinade mix over it. Let it marinade overnight and then put it in a pan. Put the pan into a preheated 350 degree F oven until it reaches 145 F internally, about an hour. Baste often. Let sit ten minutes before slicing.

This recipe is from someone named Melissa S. I do not know her nor anything about her. I will say that if this Melissa person is married her husband should be a happy man. If he ever treats her wrong he'd be dumb enough to pay Al Gore to teach him about climate. Just sayin'.

Anyhow, since I had no steak seasoning rub I simply took three tablespoons of garlic powder, some paprika, sage and thyme and some ground white pepper, regular pepper and a tad of salt. Never did hold with storebought seasoning rubs, not when I have spices aplenty in the cabinet.

Anyhow, I don't have to worry about lunch for a while, I'll have pork sammiches. I probably should have cut that thing in half before I put it in the freezer, a five pound loin is a lot of meat now that it's just us. Oh well, sammiches, pork with potatoes and applesauce, I'll make it go away. The dogs have volunteered to help if needed.

As anyone can see, I don't have much going on right now. More than anything, this is just to show that we're still alive.

Update 2/19/10: If I ever make this balsamic pork again it will be a smaller piece. It's good but then I thought about some hot pork sammiches. No gravy! Arrgh!

More Glow Bull Wurming Pictures

I was on my way to bed Friday morning and took some more pictures. I took a ruler out and measured the snow in a couple-three different places where it was flat, seems that it was about seven inches. Now for someplace up north like Minnesota or Maryland or Vermont* or some other dreary place that isn't Texas, seven inches of snow may not sound like much. Here, seven inches is a blizzard. Remember, folks, we get our blizzards at Dairy Queen.

At any rate we have had the most snowfall since the mid to late '70s when all the people (that were then alive) now screeching about global warming were nattering on about the coming ice age. Well, we didn't get the coming ice age and we aren't getting any man made global warming, either.

To believe in man made global warming one must also believe our ancestors caused all those other climate changes. The didn't and we aren't. This whole global warming cult is simply those who have given up their belief in God and jumped on a new religion, the Church of global Warming, Pope AlgoreI. Well, it's true that Pope AlgoreI has made quite a bit, somewhere around a billion dollars selling Papal indulgences, er, sorry, carbon offsets, to people who aren't real smart. Here is a guy who flunked out of law school and then left divinity school "voluntarily" just before they threw him out for grades. There are a lot of rumors about saying that he was really majoring in marijuana.

Well, anyhow, it's supposed to warm to the 50s today so I reckon this will be gone by tomorrow nite at the latest. I hope the folks in Dallas took their kids to Flagpole Hill and let them slide down on sleds, big pieces of cardboard or trashcan lids.

Update: I neglected to put the thought about the asterisk at the "northern states like Maryland or Vermont. I know full well that Maryland is not northern.

If anyone cares, clicking on the bottom photo to embiggen it will show the Cardinals at the bird feeder. Putting birdseed into that feeder put me into snow deep enough to have it slop into my boot. Ugh. Double ugh since I wasn't going to be out there very long so I just pulled those old boots on over bare feet.

I call them "old boots" because they are sort of old, they were my new Justin Ropers that George the German Shepherd puppy chewed to doll rags. The soles are still "pert near" brand new, after George chewed them I only wear them while I'm on the riding lawn mower or out in the mud. That chewing thing was in early 2006. Shortly after I bought those boots Justin changed the design of their basic Ropers and the heels are now molded as part of the rubber soles. Meh. Plus they're made in China now. I'm still waiting for my loyal readers to send me to China so I can check out the Chinese cowboys.

I know that pretty much all the religions tell us to forgive those who have done us wrong but, even so, I'm still waiting for my chance to um, show the creep that shot George the error of his ways. I hope this won't keep me from going to Heaven.

Southwestern Snowcopolypse!

It started snowing last night sometime and hasn't stopped yet. I haven't seen snow like this down here since the '70s. This was when all the academics were screeching and waving their arms about the next ice age and how we're all gonna die!

Ever notice how all these oh so smart people can never figure on human ingenuity? None of these hothouse flowers has ever managed to, oh, I don't know, take a trip and see that people are thriving everywhere from Point Barrow Alaska to Tierra del Fuego.

The climate is changing, of course. Which direction? Um. Let's see. We had the Little Ice Age. We had the Medieval Warming Period. I would say that we are coming off a little warm period, heading toward a cooler time but then, I could be wrong. What I know for sure is that it has nothing to do with anything we are doing. Man's industry is not annoying Gaia.

We, in the wealthier west, have cleaned up the environment tremendously. I'm old enough to remember not being able to see for the smog and rivers so polluted that they caught fire. This does not happen anymore, no matter that we are a lot more crowded than we were back then. I am really sick of the idiots on the left saying that we conservatives don't care about the Earth. Anyone with eyes can see the difference between where the left held sway and where the good guys held power. Take a look at the former East Germany and the former West Germany, even today. For that matter, take a look at Detroit and then Dallas. And even Dallas has slums where, oddly, everyone votes left.

Anyhow, our Snowcopolypse down here is nothing compared to what they're still going through northeast of here, prayers would be welcomed.

I only went out to fill the bird feeder and take poor Ming the Merciless out to pee and poop. She did not like it at all. Bingo T. Pug was not quite sure at first but started running around and barking. Cochise' Apache Princess was out there running around and biting great gobs of snow and just playing.

I do not think we'll have Ming much longer, she is really having difficulty moving. Most days I have to carry her down the steps from the deck to the ground. She can still get from her little doggie bed to the food and water bowls, though. On a nice day she still enjoys laying in the grass in the front yard, barking. She may not know persactly what she's barking at, just tellin' the whole world who the yard belongs to, I reckon. Anyhow, she's still enjoying life now, with a little help.

It was a day to stay in so I decided to invent a recipe. I had a package of skinless, boneless chicken breasts and half a back of egg noodles. So I browned the breast on a griddle with some butter and boiled the noodles. The noodles went into a casserole dish with a can of mushroom soup and a can of cream of celery soup with a bit under half a can of water each.I cut the chicken up into small pieces and mixed it in, added some spices and a package of steamed broccoli and cauliflower and an eight ounce package of sharp cheddar cheese on top.

Please don't tell me someone else has a recipe exactly like this somewhere, I was just going with what I had. It could use a bit more veggies and noodles, though or maybe I just didn't give enough chicken to the dogs. Anyhow, this is now going to be an official bad weather meal for me. The only bad news is that we don't have a nice chubby girl with the hobbies of cleaning up and kinky sex. Okay, okay, I'll settle for cleaning up.

Well, now it seems that Debra Medina is the next thing to a 9/11 troofer. The only complaint I've seen about Perry, besides the fact that lefties don't like him, is that he is in favor of that HPV shot for kids. While I kind of sympathize with those against making those shots mandatory I'm not going to fight very hard against someone for trying to make sure our young women grow up cancer free.

The thing about this vaccine is that it seems to protect against a cancer that most often happens to girls that engage in too much sex, too young. My life experience is such that the ones screaming "my daughter won't need that!" the loudest have the girls that need those shots the most. Okay, not every girl but, enough. Don't get me wrong, I'm for parent's rights. I'm against cancer, though and I think that is a little louder in my head.

I'm not trying to pick a fight with Medina followers. I, unless there is a huge surprise, will vote perry in the Primary. If, by some chance, Medina gets the nomination, I'll work hard for her election. I do not think she will, nor should, get the nomination, though. Still, anybody but KBH or a Donk.

Update: The dogs all think I didn't give them enough of the chicken and that's what was wrong with the casserole.

A Little Bit Of Bacon...

One of the things that makes living in "genteel poverty" bearable is Wright's Bacon Ends and Pieces. It comes in a three pound bag in a box and is very reasonably priced. Cut that thing in half, freeze half and fry the other enough to get most of the grease out, pour that grease over the dog's kibble and throw the mostly cooked bacon in a pot with two pounds of whatever beans you feel like eating. Add a couple of onions and in a while, make some cornbread or cornbread muffins. Or maybe some nice rye bread with lots of butter. And here I go, drooling on the keyboard again. This batch was pinto beans. I also have two pounds of great northerns for the other half of that bacon.

I can really hurt myself with those pinto beans, though. When I get down toward the bottom of the pot I get out the skillet and cook some sliced bacon or some sausage and then refry some of those beans in the oil. serve with eggs and picante. I do believe there may be a reason that I haven't seen my feet while standing in quite some time.

There sure is a lot of hoo raw over Sarah Palin writing a few words on her hand. I am not nearly as famous as Governor Palin but I have done a little public speaking. There is very little that is as embarrassing as standing before X number of people and get asked a question, only to suddenly draw a blank. Nor does one need a room temperature IQ to draw such a blank, it has happened to a lot of very smart people. Most times it is merely uncomfortable but in business it can cost a contract or a promotion, in politics it can be career ending.

I suspect that she had her speech all set up on those little index cards, idea one, idea two, etc. Then she had these few little bullet points for question time and feared that index card might be lost in the shuffle, therefore, the hand. I dunno persactly how many little notes I've written on my hands over my lifetime but it's a lot.

Even better was the note she wrote on her hand for the Houston area blowout for Rick Perry.Hi mom. I can see her laughing at all the lefties who think it's such a big deal to write something on one's hand when durned near everyone does it. Sarah has to be asking if lefties are simply trying to alienate middle America or if they're simply dumber than yesterday's coffee grounds. Hmm, it could be both. I don't know just how Governor Palin would fare in the primaries if she decides to run for the presidency but it sure is plain to see that she has a better sense of humor than the incumbent.

The Obamanuts are claiming that Obama wiped out the Republicans in that meeting they had. I guess that's right if you call taking every question and answering something else, totally unrelated to what the question was. Furthermore, I'd really like to meet these folks Obama is talking about when he pops up with some outlandish statement and saying it's from some say. Some say, Mr. Obama? Who? Come out with some names and hometowns so we can call 'em on the phone and ask when they said it.

Some say. The some, in this case are as elusive as Obama's college transcripts. Y'know what? I'm plumb tired of the left getting all up in the air about Palin or Perry or insert conservative figure here while everything about Obama is a stinking mystery.

How did Obama travel to Pakistan when it was against the rules for an American to go there? How did a guy who, according to his own book, couldn't afford a cab in new York manage to scrape together the money for that trip? Why would a guy that age, brimming with youthful hormones, want to go to Pakistan? Okay, back then I could see a guy wanting to go to Thailand or the Philippines, even Okinawa or a bunch of other places full of girls of low morals but Pakistan? Really, Pakistan? Why? Why would anyone, much less a red blooded young man, who cannot speak any language but English want to go to freaking Pakistan where they'll throw acid in the face of any girl that so much as smiles to him? So, instead of focusing on what Sarah has written on her hand today, how 'bout some questions for Potus?

I have been asked by a couple of people who I support for governor of Texas this term. I know Rick Perry, he's actually done a pretty good job. While the rest of the country is completely in the toilet, Texas is merely kind of slow. I do not know Debra Medina. She is the Chairman of the Wharton County Republican Party, jumping from there to Governor seems like a pretty big step. Then again, George Bush went from selling his share of the Texas Rangers for a gazillion bucks and thence to the Governor's Office. He may wish he'd stayed there. I met Senator Hutchinson back when she was Kay Bailey, I believe she was a State Rep then. Dang she was good looking!

Well, I know I'm not voting for Hutchinson. It's time she spends some effort on something else. She has simply been infected with Washington. think of her as a taller, better looking version of John McCain.

I do not know Medina. She may be a wonderful person. She is also the state coordinator for some kind of Ron Paul thing. Ron Paul seems to be a nice enough fellow too but he has a lot of very strange and creepy followers. I shall do a little research before deciding to take a chance or simply go with Perry.

I have three fears about this election. Fear #1 is KBH getting the nomination and conservatives staying home and a Dem getting the Governors mansion. Fear #2 is Perry getting the nomination and the Paultards staying home and a Dem getting the Governor's Mansion. Fear #3 is Medina winning and the government getting filled with Paultards. Y'know what else is funny? How ron Paul manages to keep his House office from filling up with Paultards. I'm leaning hard toward Perry.

I'm also leaning towards my pillow. It's going to be a gray, wet and rainy day, just perfect for the bald fat guy to lay abed. and dream of beans with bacon and onion! That's something to take my mind off politics.

Update: Why is it that the left, the bunch that always claims to be for freedom, especially sexual freedom, must constantly slander folks they disagree with in sexual terms? I'm not quite sure what satisfaction is found in teabagging. My Linda Lou and I used to be pretty open with each other and if we had understood the concept years ago we might have tried it. Today? Nah, it would be too embarrassing to have to call the volunteer fire dept to get us out of the position. And now the left has decided to call Palin's scribbles a hand job.

Further update: Commenter Jennifer has taken me to task for namecalling in my comments about Debra Medina. I have called her nothing, merely stated that I don't know her. I'm a long way from Beeville, TX. I stand by my comments that there were a lot of very strange people following Dr. Paul. The term Paultards is not a blanket indictment of everyone who supported Dr. Paul, merely those strange people.

I have no way of knowing why or how these really strange people involve themselves for one candidate over another. Nor is it any particular Party. I remember the Buchanan Brigades. By the same token I remember how Senator Clinton won the most votes in the Texas Primaries but the Obamites played some very strange and dirty games in the caucuses. So, Obama "won" Texas.

So, sorry, Jennifer, I'll not apologize. I will stand by my statement that I will have to learn a lot about Medina before I switch from Perry. And I feel no guilt about the verbal shorthand of Paultards. All politicians have some weird supporters. Dr. Paul has an unusual percentage.

Corpsman Up!

There are Navy Hospital Corpsmen on duty in the White House, 24/7. Naturally the political gods that run the place never notice those guys and gals in the funny clothes and out of style haircuts.

I am not surprised that Obama can't say the word, he's probably never even looked at them, much less asked them what they do there. I don't think he's ever bothered watching a war movie with American Forces involved. After all, he wouldn't want to get caught rooting for the other side.

A lot of people want to cut Obama some slack here, after all everyone cut Dan Quayle so much slack when he got that misprinted flash card. Oh, wait. Well, how about we give him exactly as much slack as Quayle got? We are under a constant barrage about how smart Obama is, and how his administration is chock full of the smartest people in the country. They've all gone to the first rate schools, too. Not like that dreary Palin who took extra years to get a degree in some cow college.

why they're so smart that either Obama doesn't need to practice his speeches or nobody else knows how to pronounce it. Or is it the speechwriter? The people in charge of making Obama sound so smart (if one looks at Obama's numbers they ain't doin' such a hot job, there) might have actually written "Corpse Man". The more I see of Obama the more I see that he is simply an empty suit, a mass of skin held up by narcissism and hunger for power. Nor do I believe he knows what to do with that power except to command everyone to "look at me!" We could actually handle that if the rest of the government were not filled with mendicants and knaves.

My (electronic) friend Cynthia says that Obama is a malignant sociopath. She may very well be right, I lean towards that when I look at what he's doing to the economy. Still, years ago, more years than I care to think about, way back when my chest was bigger around than my belly and I had legs like tree trunks I learned to never attribute to malevolence what can be explained by stupidity. Of course there is always malevolent stupidity.

There is a very real possibility that Obama is just a convenient front for the Chicago mob and convicted felon George Soros. Soros has made a pile of money wrecking economies, he is, after all, the man who broke the Bank of England. While most people make their money either working for others or building something, there seems to be another way, destroying the savings and livelihoods of innocent, hard working people. I'm not smart enough to understand how one makes money like that but there are boatloads of bucks to be had wrecking lives. And this is at least part of the bunch behind Obama. Meanwhile he screeches about people who make money honestly.

At any rate that's about all I've got. It's been really wet here, it rains and before the ground dries it rains again. The dogs are Mud Monsters. I went to my cardio doc the other day, he lectured me about my weight, wants me to eat healthier foods. Right. I would except those waterhead looking clowns in Washington have priced healthy food out of the budget. Other than my cholesterol being way too high, I'm fine. So, now I have another pill to take. Oh, goody.

The Dogs And Their Sweet Potato Orgy

I was over at my (electronic) ladyfriend Pamibe's blog and she had a recipe and link to a dog treat recipe blog a while back, the simplest recipe was for yam or sweet potato treats. Well, I like simple and sometimes I even understand simple.

The website is The Dog Treat Kitchen and is jam packed with dog treat recipes, ranging from dead simple to super-duper complicated. The dogs here will have to go without complicated.

Preheat oven to 250 degrees F. Line a cookie sheet with baker's parchment paper.

This one, though is really simple. Take a sweet potato or three and cut it into slices about a third of an inch thick. The recipe says to wash and dry it first but you don't even have to peel them. The recipe says don't cut the slices any thinner than a quarter inch but doesn't say what calamity will befall you if you do.

Here comes the fun part, put the sliced yams onto the cookie sheet and then, wait for it....

Put them in the preheated over. Leave them there for an hour and a half or ninety minutes in metric. I think that's metric. After the timer goes off, take the cookie sheets out of the oven and turn the slices over. Let them sit in the oven for another hour and a half.

Then put 'em on a wire rack and let them cool completely. And that's it. They say keep 'em in the fridge, they also says they'll keep for up to three weeks in the fridge or four months in the freezer. I cannot imagine my critters allowing them to get stale in the fridge.

The only downside to these recipes is that that one treat recipe, baked dry yam slices took seven pages to print. I think the site is written with people who have government computers and so don't care. the rest of us can do it the old fashioned way and just write it down.

Oh, and my dogs loved loved loved them.

My next try will be the oatmeal-peanut butter dog cookies.

Just Sayin"

I have this little problem. I love being an official Ace of Spades Overnight Thread Moron but it takes up so much time I can't hardly do anything else. Since I've started I can't even get through all of the Puppyblender's site most days. This, of course, has much to do with no highspeed internet out here. Sigh.

I'm going to take a nice nap instead of trying to figure out what ol' Totus Head has to say. I know quite well the state of the union, thank you. It was, with the exception of a war, going quite well, right up 'til November, '06. Funny, after the Democrats took Congress, it got way worse. Naturally, this is considered Bush's fault. Y'all remember Bush? The guy who figured out policies to get us out of the Dot Com bust? The guy that tried to warn us all about Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac? Yeah, that guy. Thank god we had smart people like Chris Dodd and Barny Frank to tell us all how stupid Bush is. Sure is lucky we have somebody smart in the White House now.

That was a nice nap. And some nice, hot, fresh coffee. I'm ready for the long haul, now! I've looked at a couple of websites about the State of the Union speech. Did our loser in chief really call out the Supreme Court? Really? So, let me get this straight in my poor bald head. The Supremes, finally figured out that "Congress shall make no law" meant congress shouldn't make laws, and Obambi is calling out Justice Kennedy, the official swing vote on the court for doing so?

Now I'm not the smartest guy in the room, I didn't go to Occidental and then Columbia, nor did I go to Harvard Law. Still, I'm smart enough to not go picking fights with the guy that might otherwise be in my corner the next time. It's too bad his grades are such a mystery. That might explain his constant, stupid decisions.

Speaking of that court decision that has ever lib screeching about "the corporations!", how come libs, who claim to be so smart, can't figure out that corporations can't decide anything, it's people, many of whom are libs themselves. The lefties don't seem to complain about the millions that Soros has committed to change our system.

Reading what Obama has said makes me want to weep for my country. How have we manged to go from leaders like Lincoln and , yes, FDR, Ike and Truman to this?

Anyhow, I must resign from being a regular ONT Moron on the Ace of Spades Overnight thread or I'll never do any writing on my own place. Maybe, though, as a part-time Moron I can still be smarter than most of the Washington crowd.

Speaking of the Washington crowd, what's with Chris Matthews only now forgetting that Obama is black. What does he do, get up every morning and classify everyone, only today he forgot? There are a large number of people in this country that classify folks differently. Good colleague at work or a lazy bum? Friend or... Maybe fun pal or dreadful bore. Perhaps if Matthews got out of the lefty media/political cocoon and spent some time on a factory floor (if we have any left by the time these idiots are done) he'd find the world we live in is different than his.

Oh, well, I need another nap, I have to go get some blood work for the next doctor visit, which means I should sleep before I drive to town. Then I get to go to the used bookstore and, since it's a fasting thing, Taco Bueno afterwards. Mmm, Taco Bueno! That's worth getting poked with a needle.

I Don't Really Care About Ellie Light Except...

Seems that each couple of hours brings more information about this person calling himself or herself, Ellie Light.Quite frankly if "Ellie's" legs grew together and (s)he fell over every time (s)he tried to move, I would neither notice nor care.

The only thing this whole deal says to me is how dumb the left thinks we are and how incredibly stupid the left really is. Of course, we knew about the stupidity of the left, after all, we see the long death toll of the left. We see how anywhere the left is in control, things go into the toilet, which then won't flush. Leftists, though, keep trying to beat that dead horse.

This time, some leftist(s?) writes the same letter and sends it to, what is it now, 1182 newspapers and many publish it. Never mind that the normal thing for a newspaper is to call the writer before publishing. Now seeing as how the average news "professional" is somewhat dumber than a bag of hammers, I don't expect too much of them. Still, one would expect that even a news "professional" would recognize the local phone numbers and area codes. This leads me to wonder.

The other thing about leftists, besides them being dumber than stumps, is that they think they are the smartest people in the room. No matter how big or crowded that room is. I suspect it is because of the way they're "educated". A normal person goes somewhere to school and is told things. This person then looks around and if what they're told matches what they see, fine. If not, they ask themselves, do I believe what I'm told or my own eyes?

The leftist, though, simply regurgitates what is told. Then, because leftists have taken over the schools* the budding leftist gets told how smart (s)he is. So, the leftist grows up, mindlessly repeating what (s)he's been told, like a parrot and constantly being patted on their little heads and told how smart they are. Meanwhile, normal people get told they're stupid for believing their own eyes and, even worse, their parents. It doesn't take long for the normal person to shut up.

So the leftists are told, as children and then all the way up to grad school, how smart they are and, by extension, how dumb everyone else is. Now, assuming the leftist finds the way into, say, mechanical engineering, the military or police work, something like that, this will get knocked off of 'em fast. Which is why leftists go to law school, instead.

So, leftists go along, doing these idiotic things like "Ellie Light" and are always amazed when they get caught. Seems as if there isn't much difference between a leftist and a run of the mill criminal. Both are not too bright. Both are incurable optimists. Both believe, with no particular evidence, they are smarter than everyone else.

The rest of us are always amused. And angry.



*Something simply must be done about this.

A Friend Is Attacked, Unfairly

I spend a lot of time going off my (electronic) friend Cynthia Yockey's site, and not just for the great writing. She has a thing that puts the last four posts of a whole slew of blogs, just running down that list keeps me able to take the temperature of the blogosphere in a shorter time than I otherwise could. Between her and the Puppyblender I can stay abreast of what is going on in the world without subjecting myself to the morons of the MSM.

My friend Cynthia tells me that the founder of the blog Hillbuzz is under attack for being a racist. Now there is a lot I have to disagree with the founder of Hillbuzz, he is, after all a tad left of center while I am a little more than right of center. Even worse, the guys at Hillbuzz are Yankees from Chicago.

Still, I have read that blog and have seen no evidence of racism. What I have seen is a small group of men who know that Obama, and the rest of those far left thug pols from up there who have taken over the Presidency are frauds and thieves. For this they are attacked by the oh so loving and peaceful leftists at DU and Daily Koz. These people, oh so tolerant are attacking them on their sexuality.

Those that follow this blog know that I'm just a pore dumb redneck but I'm wondering why, since the left is always accusing those of us on the right of being homophobes, I keep seeing leftists attacking gays. Let's see, DU types attacking Hillbizz. Check. The Hillsboro* "Baptist Church" waving signs at soldier's funerals, check. Y'all do know that the leader of that Hillsboro* bunch ran, and lost in a Democrat primary election, right?

The men who run Hillbuzz worked hard to help Senator Brown get elected in Massachusetts. They are working hard to derail this Obamacare mess. They will work hard on a few other important issues that we agree on. When we have beaten back this far left agenda we will then have time to argue over our disagreements.

Make no mistake, I have those disagreements with Hillbuzz. While these disagreements are real I also know that the guys of Hillbuzz love this country and are fighting for the best for all citizens, just as I do and am. So, we will win this fight with the far left. After that, we can argue as friends do. I will start by asking, if I'm the homophobe, why are the DUmmies writing that they hope the Hillbuzz boyz get AIDS and die?

I support Hillbuzz in this fight. After we win it I'll go back to callin' them damnyankees.

Update: *Larry, in the comments, was kind enough to remind me that this bunch of "Baptists" up in Topeka is the Westboro Baptist Church. I knew that, it's what happens when one is tired, half senile and sometmes not real bright. Now I'm pretty sure that neither the Northern nor the Southern Baptists will be marching in the next gay pride parade, I can also confidently state that neither of the mainline Baptist Conventions hold the beliefs of the Phelps bunch.

I am not a Baptist. I know a tiny bit about them and know that They do not hold much with the gays. I suspect it's because gays dance. Me? I figure there is so little love in this world that He would not condemn people who love sincerely. Assuming there is a Heaven and a Hell I suspect that Phelps and company are in for a rather hot surprise. At any rate, the Westboro Baptist bunch are not mainline Baptists. While I am in agreement with the First Amendment and religious freedom, the downside is that anyone can start a church and call it just about anything. I've thought about forming my own Baptist Church and holding services every Sunday, the services being a couple of hours of dancing to country-western music. I haven't followed it up because I dance like a white boy.

Horror In Haiti

I do not have a whole lot to say about the ungodly horror in Haiti. Pretty much anybody writing about current events, except for Pat Robertson, will have better coverage than I do.

Still, there is one thing I've noticed. In all of the dozens and dozens of pictures I've seen of rescuers trying to dig folks out of the shattered concrete buildings I have seen no rebar. I'm seeing where there may be half a million dead. I wonder how many lives would have been saved by those simple, cheap steel reinforcing rods. I'm thinking probably 75% of those killed would be walking around, trying to help if all that concrete had the rebar in it.

And this is what is wrong with our foreign aid. We send money, which is stolen by the government types. We send weapons to the army, as if anyone would invade Haiti. What we don't send are what they really need. Building supplies. a few dozen plans for inexpensive, durable housing. A few less bureaucrats and a few more construction foremen. Someone who knows how to plant trees and other vegetation to prevent erosion, some folks who know how to rebuild the soil so people can plant crops.

By now the Lockheed Hercules planes are landing with water and our young men and women, the Navy is sending it's ships, we should have an Aircraft Carrier and a couple of ships from the Gater Navy with landing craft and helos, the Marines and Seabees will be there. And, of course, the American leftists will still be trying to tear down the military because they're all murdering warmongers.

Well, you don't need me to tell you to pray for the people of Haiti. The survivors will be a long time recovering from this, most will go to their graves with an empty spot in their hearts from dead friends and relatives. I must go pet a dog now so I don't sit here and cry.

That Was Scary.

So I forget to take my bedtime pills and woke up about four hours after going to bed. When I realized that I had not taken my bedtime pills I took them and went back to bed, woke up at five in the afternoon.

I swear, retirement is turning me into a vampire. Anyhow I fixed myself a pair of the Pioneer Woman's eggs in the hole, along with four little link sausages, I only wanted three but they were stuck together in the freezer so I cut the last one into thirds for the dogz.

Speaking of the dogz, we took Ming the Merciless to the vet at PetSmart, we had a coupon for a free visit. Since the last time we gave them beef soup bones she's had an awful cough, like she is choking on something. Anyhow the vet says it's not an infection, it's like something is pushing on her trachea. They wanted three hundred dollars for an X-ray, seeing as how we don't have three hundred dollars we brought her back home. Tomorrow, during daylight I am going to put a spoon or two of vegetable oil down her throat and see if that will help her swallow the piece of bone the rest of the way. or maybe throw it up. But I digress again.

I put a piece of the sausage under my desk, where I was eating, for Bingo, took the plate and another third out into the kitchen for CAP and gave the last third to Ming. Whatever is wrong with her has not affected her appetite.

I got back into my little study and found CAP under my desk searching for the slightest stray molecule of sausage that Bingo might have left. So, I sat down with giant dog under my desk and thought little of it except that I had no room for my feet.

We live in the country and, like everyone else who lives in the country, we have a constant battle with the field mice getting in every winter and raising their numerous little mouse families. So we put mouse and rat poison out, everywhere we think the dogs cannot reach, including behind my computer.

So, I'm sitting there, with giant dog beneath my feet and I heard a crunch. So I looked down and saw she was chewing on something green. I thought to myself, "where did she get a big Greenie?", we haven't had any of those for months.

I took another look and snapped to the fact that she had a block of mouse and rat poison. Fortunately I got it out of her mouth before she crunched the whole thing up and swallowed it. Scary. Anyhow I hope she didn't get enough to hurt her. I take the same thing in that rat poison every day to keep me from having another stroke.

So, my hope is that she only got enough to keep her from having a stroke tonight. If we can't afford an X-ray for Ming, we certainly cannot afford to nurse that idiot CAP through a poisoning. Nor do I want to dig more doggie graves anytime soon.

Okay, it's now about two hours past me taking the block of rat poison out of her mouth and she is showing no untoward symptoms. Whew! Dodged a bullet. Thank you, Lord.

Ice Age Dogs And A Birthday Party

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When it's real cold out the dogs stay inside a lot more. Please note, I mean real cold, Texas style, not that Yankee stuff they have where it drops below freezing in late September and doesn't thaw until sometime in mid August or something. I don't really want to know the exact dates of this sort of thing in Michigan or Minnesota, all I know is that, down here, we aren't equipped for the cold, we dress for and build for summers that start in mid April and end in early October and winters where temps often range in the mid 50s, and sometimes warmer.

This, is not really a piece on climate, though, but of dogs and birthdays. The dogs really have too much energy to stay inside all the time, although Bingo the Pug needs somewhat less exercize, being a Pug and all. Still, he is a young Pug.

They get most of their indoor exercize by fighting over whichever is the only dog toy in the entire universe. No human will ever know which of the dzens of toys we have is the only toy at a given time.

Their second favorite means of exercize is fighting the battle of who gets to be closest to Daddy. This is sometimes difficult for the bald fat guy. It is not easy to read when The Beast and The Mini Beast are having a no holds barred wrestleing match in the chair. Eventually, though, they settle down. Usually

CAP gets next to me, being bigger, sometimes she is next to me with Bingo on my lap. Then they lay there for awhile until something exciting happens like Linda Lou going into the kitchen. Since the kitchen is where all things holy, meaning treats, are kept, there is an emergency exit from the chair. Had to get dogs. Couldn't get a nice Parakeet, no, had to get dogs.

In other news, yesterday was William's seventh birthday party. A tragedy ensued when we were partway there and Linda Lou realized that she forgot the camera. Oh well, I just posted grandkid pics from Christmas so no one will die from that.

There were about eight thousand kids there, so it seems. I ended up with two little girls, foster children if it matters, glued to me for a while. Between my deafness and my shattered memory I do not know their names. I do know that both were cute as a bug. If we still used arranged marriages I could have the best looking great grandchildren in the history of the world. One was a nice looking blonde girl, I'm thinkig she would match up with one of the grandkids in North Carolina, and we'd have a tribe of viking looking kids, although blonde doesn't exactly run in the family but, what the hey. The other little girl is brunette with curly hair and somewhat Mediterranean features. Hopefully we'll get pics from the shindig E-mailed to us. Anyway, the little brunette is a tad older than Josiah but by the time they finish college that won't matter so much.

It is somewhat odd that those kids, whom I have never seen before, spent more time with me than any of the grandkids but, then, William had new toys, including a couple that Daddy had to assemble so they were spending time there.

Anyhow, it was a bit warmer and, most importantly, the north wind has died down, at least for a while. So, the kids got a little time outdoors, too. But then it was late afternoon and time to wend our way home. The dogs were glad to see us.

The North Pole Moves South Vs Brooks And The Intellectuals

We are in the grips of a genuine Texas Blue Norther, we don't have them every day during the winter but when we do, we might as well be Yankees. Except we mostly don't have the clothes for that job, nor that winter-weight blood. The good news, if it can be called that, is that our blue northers are dry. There is a tad of frozen water left in spots from the rain and sleet we had earlier but the sky has been that bright, hard shade of blue that is almost painful to look at. This is why they're called "blue.

They are called northers because the wind comes hard out of the north. The wind the other day had gusts of fifty miles per hour. It was like Algore standing atop a tower in Resolute, The Northwest Territories of Canada, almost exactly north of here, bellowing clouds of Global Warming right at us. Since it's so far, all the moisture is gone from those clouds, leaving us with nothing but cold, cold air. Which is just as well, most folks down here have never learned about driving on snow. Heck, we start running into one another if there is a cloud in Oklahoma just so we're ready for the mayhem in the rain. Tire chains? Fat chance.

Much of the right side of the Blogosphere is up in arms over the last David Brooks column in the New York Crimes. Please note that David Brooks is their "conservative columnist". Why he is so conservative he endorsed Obama in the '08 election. Something about pants creases. Y'all must pardon me for bein' a pore dumb redneck, and maybe a homophobe, but I go days without staring at strange men's pants. Well, I do look to see if they're carrying a gun and look as if they have evil intent but, pants? Spare me.

Anyhow, Brooks is complaining that people are turning against the "educated class" Now, you must say "educated class" as if you were a genuine New York Crimes publisher. Anyhow, let me explain to Mr. Brooks why America is turning against the "educated class".

It was the "educated class" that brought us Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It was the "educated class" that took over the banks and other financial institutions and did their best to run the country's entire economy into the ground.

It was the "educated class" that took over our schools and now overwhelm the few real teachers with tons of silly crap that mean today's BA graduates of an Ivy League University know less than a graduate of Jr. High knew back in 1915. In favor of the "educated class", though, our kids might not know how to write, read and cipher but by God, they have self esteem. And how to put on a condom, we can't forget that.

Our automobile companies were profitable until the old guard died out and was replaced by the "educated class". Our government worked pretty well, right up to the election of the first of the modern "educated class", Woodrow Wilson. Hey, Woody! How'd that war to end all wars work out for you, pal?That League of Nations was a real winner, too.

Along came a couple guys from the "educated class" a little later, Herbert Hoover and then FDR, they managed to turn a normal recession into The Great Depression. David, you might have heard of it, it was in all the papers.

Speaking of papers, the "educated class" have taken over those, too. I'm old. This means I remember when a guy could pick up the paper and find out what is going on in the world.Why, when I was a boy, if something like the climate "scientists" of East Anglia University got a mess of information released about how they were manipulating data and trying to force scientific journals to squelch opposing theories, I would have read about it in the New York Times! Oh, and if, in my youth, a bunch of Islamic nutter killed three thousand Americans and then admitted it, along with vowing to kill more, the papers would not have published so many of our secrets about fighting those nuts. Of course, back then the papers were not run by the "educated class". So they cared about American lives.

The "educated class" have also brought us the double whammy of around a million abortions per year and still the unwed mothers are increasing exponentially. I saw, but haven't yet clicked, a blurb from the Puppyblender, a member of the "educated class" that still maintains a modicum of good sense, about "should we spend taxpayer money on prisons or colleges"? If it weren't for all those kids growing up without fathers we would not need to worry about prisons. The "educated class" fetishizes unwed motherhood, probably because they help so much in tearing down America. Remember how the "educated class" beat up Dan Quayle for his Murphy Brown speech? Eighty percent of rapists are fatherless. Seventy percent of long term prison inmates are fatherless. How much tax money would we need to spend of prisons with 70% fewer long term inmates? The list is much longer on what unwed motherhood is doing to the country and, as bad, to those very children. Yet the "educated class" wants us all to kneel at the feet of the unwed mother while shoveling billions their way. Y'all will, I hope, pardon me for not being educated enough to not understand why we aren't discouraging unwed motherhood. It ain't like we don't know plenty about birth control.

How about this Global Warming "crisis" we're in the middle of? How many billions have we all ready spent? Meanwhile the "educated class" cannot explain why, if global warming is so bad, they are finding the remnants of vineyards under the retreating glaciers of Greenland. To a pore dumb redneck this might mean that climate change just happens, with or without our cars and air conditioners and heaters. The Scandihoovian history is not my main area of expertise but I am unaware that Errick The Red had a coal fired electric plant heating his home and a big ol' steam engine in his Long ships. Yet those were the days of the medieval warm period, which just happened to spark the Renaissance. Y'all might excuse me for thinking we need a bit more Reniassance and a lot smaller and less powerful "educated class".

Please do not think that I am against education. I'm not.What I am against is the mass of people, marching in lockstep, that believe in ideas so stupid that only an intellectual could believe them. Both George Orwell and Michael Levine are credited with versions of this, take your choice. There was a day when education was intended to teach people how to think. Today, education, especially in the liberal arts but also, more and more, in the sciences, does not teach anyone how to think. Hence the consideration of Obama as smart. Why is it that we know all about John McCain's low standing in his graduating class at the naval Academy but nothing at all of Obama's grades in either Columbia or Harvard Law? And why is a Harvard degree where one need take no courses that actually stretch the mind, more intellectual than a degree from Canoe U.? Funny, Canoe U has actual courses requiring the student to think. A Canoe U graduate goes where (s)he will be responsible for millions and then, perhaps, billions of dollars worth of equipment and the lives of men and women. The "educated class" Well, I woud not bet my son's lives on David Brooks. Perhaps that is why, during Algore's famed Viet Nam service, no one put him in charge of a squad. After all, this law school failure and divinity school dropout is part of the "educated class".

I have an idea. Let's take the faculties of the Ivy League, and ninety percent of the "educated class", put them on ships, take 'em out into the middle of the ocean and sink the ships. Make that last ten percent watch. Then maybe the rest of us could get down to business are rebuild the country. From there we might be able to straighten out the rest of the world.

Bad News At The Poorfarm

So, my neighbors, the ones I talk to, had the volunteer fire dept and an ambulance over there, we kind of kept an eye out but they left with no one on the stretcher so we didn't know what happened. We didn't go over, figuring a health scare is bad enough without nosy neighbors.

Well, Linda Lou went over today to see how they were and to say hello. Seems that the reason they ambulance left with no one on the stretcher was because John died. He might have pulled through, for a while, except that my neighbor called 911 on her cell phone. Where we are, right on the very edge of the county, the call went to the neighboring county and there were several minutes of confusion. By the time help got there he'd been too long gone.

It is too bad but his cancer had spread, I like to think that he was spared a lot of pain going as he did. His last words, said just before his eyes rolled up, were to his wife, Patsy. As he died he said "I love you".

Goodbye, John. You weren't our neighbor very long but you were a good friend.

If you are the kind who says prayers for the dead, say one for John. If you are the type to lift a glass, lift one to him. A man who made his last words mean something.

Trip To Town, Whee!

Today we got to go on a big adventure, we got to go to my Neurologist and then, even more exciting, to Lowes Home Improvement to buy a screen door handle and a ceiling fan. Cross your fingers, I am hoping the light thingy on the old one will transfer. Exactly who told Congress that we wanted those stupid candalabra bulbs to light the living room, anyhow. I submit that light bulbs is as good a reason as any to take to the halls of Congress with tat, feathers, pitchforks and torches.

My Neurologist has promised not to retire until after Reid-Pelosi Care takes effect. He's taking me off my antishaking medicine and putting me onto another, seems that he now believes that the numbness in my right ring and little fingers plus that side of my forearm is caused by nerve damage and not smushed discs in my neck. I don't exactly know what changing pills is supposed to do about damaged nerves, though. From what I've read there is nothing to be done about damaged nerves until stem cell treatment becomes a reality, if then.

He also wants me to start wearing those silly arm braces at night. Oh, boy.

I sure am glad Linda Lou bought me that red flannel shirt, the high temp today was supposed to be 35 degrees F. The wind was straight down from the north and when the wind blows from the north ain't nothin' between here and the North Pole but some bob wahr fences and Kansas, neither of which block the wind much at all.

Then off to Wally World to drop off my scripts and, finally, home. It's hard to handle this exciting life.