Quote of the Day, Civil War 2.0 Edition

From American Thinker, What Might Civil War be Like?:

Cities cannot feed themselves under any conditions, and what food could be grown on America’s resource-starved farms would be gobbled up by people nearer and dearer to the farmers. Leftists would have to both secure vast territories around their urban strongholds and relearn from scratch the generations-lost art of food production. Liberal enclaves stranded in the hinterland would simply be untenable. We, on the other hand, would be critically short of new Hollywood movies. Without a steady supply of the works of Meryl Streep and Matt Damon, millions of conservatives would instantly drop dead from boredom – that is, according to Meryl Streep.

Wow. Just Wow.

4K, 100,000 frames per second. Lightning like you've never seen it before. Go fullscreen.


Transient from Dustin Farrell (www.dfvc.com) on Vimeo.

Your Moment of Zen

Been awhile.  The Milky Way over Yellowstone:

Lois Lerner is Frightened

The news is reporting that former IRS executive Lois G. Lerner and her deputy Holly Paz want their testimony in the Tea Party targeting investigation sealed because they're afraid of public reaction should the information be released.

They should be afraid. Everyone sitting in a seat of power in a government office should be afraid of pissing off the public. "Tar, Feathers," as Instapundit puts it, should probably be employed somewhat less than metaphorically from time to time, so as to reduce the possibility of "Rope, tree, some assembly required."

At least some of the corrupt Illinois politicians end up serving time.

Wow. Is This Thing Still On?

I see it's been awhile since I posted here.  Sorry about that.  Not intentional.  Lots to write about, not much interest in actually writing.  Maybe after Thanksgiving.  Thanks for visiting.  Read the stuff on the sidebar.

Bleg and Gun Raffle:

This year I was a first-time attendee of Blogorado, and fell in love with the Farm Fam.  One of their own - well, I'll let Old NFO tell the story:

Gun Raffle!!!

I know this is a lousy time to ask for money, but one of our extended Blogarado family is in need. FarmFam’s daughter-in-law, Andi, 33 and the mother of two small boys, suffered a stroke in mid August. Unfortunately, it wasn't diagnosed correctly for two weeks, delaying treatment.

She's facing a year to 18 months of physical therapy to get back to full function.

Therapy costs are running $200-500 per session, and she needs therapy once a week. Andi has not been able to afford health insurance, because she her husband own a small business that makes too much money for them to get assistance with health insurance, but not enough for them to be able to afford health insurance, and raising two boys.

Any help will be much appreciated, as Andi has begun physical therapy, and without health insurance she has to pay the full cost of every session.

In order to help her out, we are doing another gun raffle to try to help her with her therapy. One change from what we did for Tam is to run this through a Go Fund Me, https://www.gofundme.com/andrea-keenan-medical-fund, so that the money is immediately available to her for her therapy. One IRS change is that Go Fund Me $$ are now counted as income for the family, so we are shooting for a goal of $25,000 to offset the tax burden they will be hit with.

Here are the ‘rules’ $10 per chance, $50/6 chances, $100/12 chances, etc. Make your donation to the Go Fund Me above, and copy your donation receipt to 4anditherapy@gmail.com. This will count as your entry into the raffle. If you have already donated, we will accept prior donations to the Go Fund Me.

The raffle will run from now through the end of November, with the drawing to be held 1 December via a random drawing program. First number gets their choice, second gets their choice, etc.

The raffle packages are-

1. Taurus .44 Magnum pistol

2. Ruger MK-II bull barrel .22

3. Custom sub-MOA AR-15 - BCM 18” SPR Mk 12 upper with PRI carbon fiber handguard, BCM BCG, all Wolff springs except buffer. KNS anti-roll trigger pins, JP Enterprises Silent capture buffer and spring, Magpul PRS stock, Magpul MIAD grip, Norgon ambi mag release, Teal Blue Bravo Ambi Bolt catch, AeroPrecision lower with 45° safety, Harris bipod adapter for front rail, full length top rail, BUIS front sight, Gissele SSA-E trigger, BCM gunfighter charging handle.

4. Remington 870 Express pump in 20ga

5. Chinese copy of a 12ga coach gun

6. Springfield Range Officer .45 with 7 magazines and custom holster

7. Springfield Range Officer 9mm with 7 magazines and custom holster

8. Lawdog’s personal Rock Island 1911 9mm, reworked by Joe Speer with 6 magazines

9. A ladies package consisting of a ring (late-Victorian-style design with either high-quality glass or mid-grade garnet stones. The mount is jeweler's metal, size 6 3/4 or 7). A unicorn necklace, late 1980s-early 1990s James Avery sterling silver charm on a silver chain. A coin necklace, an 1904 Indian Head penny, silver dipped in a gold-plated mount with a gold-plated silver chain. And a handmade necklace and earrings from Phlegmmy.

10. Signed copies of Lawdog’s, Peter Grant’s, Dorothy Grant’s, and JL Curtis’ books

11. TBD (other possible packages are being discussed)

All guns will be shipped FFL to FFL for winners. Pictures of the various packages will follow in the next couple of days.

Thank you in advance, I know she will appreciate the help, and this will take a little pressure off the family!If you can help out, please do. These are good people.

EDIT:  Updates to the prize list and raffle status are being maintained by Old NFO.

Picture Dump - Cars & Coffee, 10/14/17

The second Saturday of every month, one of the high-end strip-malls in Tucson holds "Cars & Coffee" where, for a couple of hours, anybody can bring their car and show it off.  There's a wide, wide variety of vehicles at these things, but this month there was the largest turnout I've yet to see - at least a couple hundred cars.  Here are some of the highlights:

First, the exotic:

Then the classic:

Next, the unusual:

And, finally, something I've never seen in the wild before - An aluminum-bodied, right-hand drive AC Cobra:

There were also of course Camaros and Mopars, Golf GTIs and Subaru WRXs, BMWs, Porsches and Ferraris and more Mustangs than you could shake a proverbial stick at.  It's a good show every month, and gratifying to know that there are still a LOT of young gearheads out there interested in going FAST, along with us old farts who can finally afford the cars they dreamed about in their youths.

Motive

When I first heard of the details of the shooting spree in Las Vegas, my immediate thought was of Matt Bracken's Enemies Foreign and Domestic.  My second thought was of the University of Texas, Austin tower shooting.  I was not alone on either thought.

Well, preliminary reports are that there were no obvious brain abnormalities.

Mark Steyn recently received a missive from one of his fans on the incident, and in keeping with letting other people say it better than I can, I recommend you read what he had to say, but I will offer some excerpts:

This man amassed (rough figures) 24 guns in the hotel and another 19 at his home - 42 guns in total. He spent some $100,000 on buying them. The guns at his home are one thing but he also spent days filling his hotel room with more weapons and ammunition than he could ever conceivably use along with an array of advanced modifications and accessories.

Everything brand new. And very expensive. And mostly entirely redundant. Representing in effect an enormous waste of money and time and risk.

Except that is in the realm of generating massive publicity. Guaranteed massive publicity.

Yet despite having gone to enormous lengths to achieve that goal we are asked to believe this same man never troubled - never took the most elementary steps - to speak to that publicity. Indeed left behind no trace of anything that might demonstrate indicate or even hint at his motive or motives.

That would appear to make very little sense.

We would argue the opposite - that it makes absolute sense.

Because this gentleman did not simply fail to leave behind a motive; He took substantial trouble to ensure that no motive could be found - or attributed to him. All of which can lead us to only one conclusion:

It has been said that 'the medium is the message'.

In this case that is the literal truth. There is only one plausible motive for what this man did. And here it is:

This man wished to telegraph to America in graphic form the hard irrefutable evidence that guns and gun ownership and the ease of gun purchase in America are an evil and must be controlled. On that hypothesis everything now makes sense.

On the question of why the shooter scoped out other venues first, but ultimately attacked the Harvest Music Festival:

The people he chose to kill supports the hypothesis on 'guns'. Country and Western fans are virtually guaranteed to own or at least to defend the ownership of guns. By a certain logic this provides the gunman with two sound moral positions (because it is not beyond possibility he has a conscience):

First - While killing a very large number of innocent people is an horrendous crime it is nonetheless entirely justifiable - in moral terms - if it causes a restriction on guns. Because such a restriction would - it is widely held - save innumerable lives in the long run. There is no evidence for this but it is still a widely and passionately held belief.

Second - Since the people he is shooting are actively or passively defenders of guns and an obstacle to gun control they are by definition responsible in part for all the people who have been and continue to be killed by guns.

You see it in almost every story - "We may never know the motive." "The motive remains a mystery."

I don't think there was any kind of conspiracy involved, but I can't disagree with this assessment. It's almost as if he was shouting "How DARE we be allowed to be free!"

"This is Public. Please Share."

John Ringo, author of many books I've enjoyed greatly, posted something on Facebook I'm going to reproduce here.  The title of this post comes from it.

Other than that, I have no commentary:

A Theory on Las Vegas

I may be the only person in the 'pundit' world who can put what we know about the Las Vegas shooter in perspective because I've dealt with something similar before. My personal take, at this point, is 'homicidal psychotic break, rationale currently unknown, possible pharmacological.'

To debunk a few of the recent urban legends and prolapse some of the stupider arguments:

ISIS: Nothing in his electronic trail indicates any contact with ISIS despite their claims and some rumors. Nothing.

'There were multiple shooters/he was a patsy!': All the guns in the room were registered to Paddock. He was covered in GSR and even had burns on his hands from hot barrel/rounds.

'He was antifa killing Republicans!': Nothing in his electronic trail indicates the slightest political affiliation or interest. Nothing.

There weren't even angry emails. He never posted comments. Rarely read political news. Nada.

Gambling debts! He was broke!

Paddock was a habitual hobby gambler who was the sort of person casinos hate. He would set a budget on his gambling and stick to it religiously. He also rarely lost big or won big and never let either one change his habits.

He was a perfectly normal, successful, retired accountant well-invested in real estate with very little or no recent change in demeanor or actions.

Perfectly normal guy and only a ‘loner’ to the extent he wasn’t terribly socially active. ‘Loner’ apparently means he didn’t frequent wild parties. If he had the narrative would be ‘wild party animal.’

'Homicidal psychotic break means he couldn't have done the planning!'

Au contraire. Deep sigh. Been here, had someone in my life nearly do if not that than similar. With their permission I will now recount a story and show why everything about this makes a terrible sort of sense to me. The story is about my lovely and extremely loving wife, Miriam, and her descent to homicidal psychotic break due to a nasty drug interaction.

My wife has had the same doctor since she was a child. Old 'country' doctor who is the only person who has ever been able to handle Miriam's many oddities. A limited list:

My wife:

Has four kidneys and four ankles. (She ate the good twin.)

Was once listed as one of the top five Adult ADHD in the US and the only one who was clinically functional.

Has supremely bizarre drug interactions and thereby hangs this tale.

Miriam is a 'limited case pharmacological phenotype.' What does that mean? You know where on the warning label it says: 'in rare cases may cause you to grow two heads and fly to the moon'? Miriam is 'rare cases.' Every single time she tries a new prescription drug (fill in reason here) she is 'rare cases.'

This involves the 'in rare cases' effect of a drug called Cymbalta. Notably, as Cymbalta NOW states 'in rare cases may cause homicidal or suicidal psychotic break. Should not be prescribed to teenagers.' (Because it turns out in MOST cases WILL cause psychotic break in teenagers.)

Miriam was prescribed Cymbalta for 'depression' by her doctor in the early fall of 2007. I don't really remember if it seemed to work or not but she remained on it. I do recall that there as a shooting (by a teenager) that December in Nebraska in a mall. And I do recall Miriam's uncharacteristic comment.

'He only managed to kill five people in a crowded mall at Christmas time with a pistol and three magazines? He really needed to learn how to shoot.'

My wife is extremely loving and extremely Christian. Her normal response would have been 'That's terrible. God bless their souls and I hope he finds peace!' 'I could have done better' metaphorically was... not Miriam. I'll admit I didn't really notice it at the time.
Nor did I notice that over the course of the next several months (not sure when it started) we started to have a lot of 'off-brand' bleach around the house. Miriam is a lovely wife but cleaning is not her thing. But she also purchases in a very random manner. (Note the ADHD thing.) This did seem to be alot of bleach, though. I mentioned it a couple of times in jest. (We finally ran through all the bleach she bought in 2007-8 about a year ago. That much bleach.)

I didn't realize there were twenty-nine more gallon bottles in the trunk of her car.

I do recall during a rather bad time (possibly around below) that 'when she was gone' (and it had the feeling of 'soon') I wouldn't have to worry about the cats because 'they would be coming with her.' Miriam occasionally says odd things but that stood out. I'm more than aware of various forms of murder suicide and it was... discomforting. But... Miriam sometimes says odd things. (Used to. Far less these days for a variety of reasons. She's gotten SANER with menopause which is... just as bizarre as everything else.)

Things around Mother's Day got bad but they usually are. (Reasons I won't relate.) Then at a certain point I got a call from my loving wife (GF at the time) saying she was coming home from work, early, and we needed to go to Parkridge. I wasn't even sure what 'Parkridge' was.

Parkridge is one of the hospitals in the area but the specific one she mentioned was the psychiatric hospital.

I asked her on the drive over what was wrong. She didn't want to talk about it. For various 'privacy' reasons I wasn't well informed at the time. But I'll fill in the blanks for you in ways they weren't filled in for me.

She finally realized something was VERY wrong and checked herself in. Miriam had had a 'homicidal psychotic break' due to a side effect of Cymbalta. In most cases this is light and happens during the first couple of months or first month. NOW doctors are told to evaluate regularly in the first few months. THEN there was no warning. And NOBODY goes nine months. Except someone with ENORMOUS coping skills who has had to deal with madness that drove others insane on a daily basis her whole life.

(By the way, the teenager in the mall above? Guess what anti-depressant he was on? One guess and it rhymes with 'Sin Malta'. He’d been on it a few months, prescribed right around the same time as Miriam.)

So my loving wife coped. She controlled. As she slowly went ever-loving NUTS.

The specific issue was she had 'an uncontrollable desire to do harm to those who do harm to others.' Notably, she'd built up a list of persons on the Megan's (sexual predators) List and had developed very carefully constructed kill plans for each. She was tracking them and targeting them carefully. She has an extensive background in forensics and was probably going to get away with it.

Now, people may look at the targets and go 'Well... Uhm... having a hard time with that being 'bad'.' But to be very clear, my wife had shifted, subtly and without warning, from sweet, Christian, Miriam to serial killer. And I do mean without ANY REAL WARNING.

I didn't know exactly what was going on at the time. I was approached by one of the staff after a few hours sitting in a hard chair out front.

'I understand you're an author?'

'Yes. What's going on? Is Miriam okay?' (We weren't married at the time. Yes, I married her AFTER this, people.)

'She's being evaluated. But I understand you work from home? Are there frequently?'

'Pretty much all the time.'

'We can release her if she is under 24 hour monitoring...'

I had to sign to get her out pledging I would maintain '24 hour monitoring.' (Yes, I had to sign an actual release taking responsibility for the actions of an adult. They wouldn't tell me FOR WHAT ACTIONS.)

Miriam covered the big stuff on the ride home. I didn't get lots of detail til... years later. Details such as: Manson-like she had started to get the other patients, and even staff, to agree that her plan totally made sense in her first group therapy session. That was the real reason they were sending her home. They were afraid she was infecting the patients and staff and would form a 'kill sexual predators' cult.

(I guess they thought I was immune or something.)

Issues with this went on and on for months as it slowly leached from her system.

But let me relate it to Las Vegas.

Most people think of 'homicidal break' as someone suddenly 'grabbing a letter opener and carving their way out of Cost Accountancy and into forensic history.' (H/t: the late Sir Terry Pratchett.)

That's not, generally, how it works. How much planning and preparation a person does depends upon how rapid the onset is (months in Miriam's case) and how good they are at planning and preparation. (Both Miriam and Paddock were planners. He was an accountant and multi-millionaire.)

So look at the story above and break it down:

Relatively normal person, perhaps a bit odd, has minor changes in behavior that no-one in their close circle really notices.

He/she is a methodical person with an agenda. Other people who've done mass kills simply did not do it right. He/she is going to do it right. He knows they hold concerts by the Mandalay. That's the perfect venue for the most kills.

Suddenly they're a mass killer for no apparent reason.

That was what WAS going to happen with my wife.

So, Paddock doesn't really surprise me. I've seen it before.

My guess is it will be doctors who figure it out. And if they do they'll find he either was having a bad drug reaction (in which case nobody will admit nothin’ just as they’ve never admitted it was Cymbalta that caused the Westroads Mall Shooting) or neurological degeneration of some sort. (A tumor caused the University of Texas ‘Bell Tower’ shooting.) If pharmacological, the drug doesn't even have to be a definitively 'psychotropic' drug. Many drugs these days from heart medicine to anti-malarials have some psychotropic effect.

(If this had anything to do with a drug reaction, any drug of any type, I hope the survivors sue the shit out of the drug manufacturer. Because most of these recent 'crazy' mass kills, going all the way back to the 'postal worker' epidemic (overdosage of Prozac) and Columbine (both kids were hopped to their gills on prescription anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs), have had SOMETHING to do with psychotropic drugs pushed by drug companies. Many of the murder/suicides of returning military personnel were closely linked to an anti-malarial. And nobody seems to be willing to speak truth to power on the subject. Just writing this post will probably get me sued.)

The only lesson to take from this is 'keep an eye on your loved ones especially if they have ANY changes in prescription.' Doesn’t matter if it’s heart medication. Keep an eye on their personality as well as health.

Homicidal break does not always happen quickly. Sometimes it creeps in like the fog on cats feet. It is only at the last that the cackle of madness is heard. By then it is too late.

May God rest all their souls and let them find peace.

Hunter Cressal Hits the Mark

Hunter draws the e-comic Vexxarr!  Here's today's:

More Intellectual Froglegs

Joe Dan is brilliant.  Bleeding brilliant!

91 is a Pretty Good Run

So Hugh Hefner has passed after 91 years on this earth and uncounted platinum blondes.

I hope he got the death Tyrion Lannister wishes for:

Moment of Zen

Photographer is Phil Koch:

Awww, Sonofabitch, It's Dusty in Here...

I just ran across something at Reddit most of you probably already have read, but I'm going to copy it here with attribution because I want to archive it myself.  It's titled In the final minutes of his life, Calvin has one last talk with Hobbes, by Redditor "Samuraitiger19."

"Calvin? Calvin, sweetheart?"

In the darkness Calvin heard the sound of Susie, his wife of fifty-three years. Calvin struggled to open his eyes. God, he was so tired and it took so much strength. Slowly, light replaced the darkness, and soon vision followed. At the foot of his bed stood his wife. Calvin wet his dry lips and spoke hoarsely, "Did... did you.... find him?"

"Yes dear," Susie said smiling sadly, "He was in the attic."

Susie reached into her big purse and brought out a soft, old, orange tiger doll. Calvin could not help but laugh. It had been so long. Too long.

"I washed him for you," Susie said, her voice cracking a little as she laid the stuffed tiger next to her husband.

"Thank you, Susie." Calvin said.

A few moments passed as Calvin just laid on his hospital bed, his head turned to the side, staring at the old toy with nostalgia.

"Dear," Calvin said finally. "Would you mind leaving me alone with Hobbes for a while? I would like to catch up with him."

"All right," Susie said. "I'll get something to eat in the cafeteria. I'll be back soon."

Susie kissed her huband on the forehead and turned to leave. With sudden but gentle strength Calvin stopped her. Lovingly he pulled his wife in and gave her a passionate kiss on the lips. "I love you," he said.

"And I love you," said Susie.

Susie turned and left. Calvin saw tears streaming from her face as she went out the door.

Calvin then turned to face his oldest and dearest friend. "Hello Hobbes. It's been a long time hasn't it old pal?"

Hobbes was no longer a stuffed doll but the big furry old tiger Calvin had always remembered. "It sure has, Calvin." said Hobbes.

"You... haven't changed a bit." Calvin smiled.

"You've changed a lot." Hobbes said sadly.

Calvin laughed, "Really? I haven't noticed at all."

There was a long pause. The sound of a clock ticking away the seconds rang throughout the sterile hospital room.

"So... you married Susie Derkins." Hobbes said, finally smiling. "I knew you always like her."

"Shut up!" Calvin said, his smile bigger than ever.

"Tell me everything I missed. I'd love to hear what you've been up to!" Hobbes said, excited.  And so Calvin told him everything. He told him about how he and Susie fell in love in high school and had married after graduating from college, about his three kids and four grandkids, how he turned Spaceman Spiff into one of the most popular sci-fi novels of the decade, and so on. After he told Hobbes all this there was another pregnant pause.

"You know... I visited you in the attic a bunch of times." Calvin said.

"I know."

"But I couldn't see you. All I saw was a stuffed animal." Calvin voice was breaking and tears of regret started welling up in his eyes.

"You grew up old buddy." said Hobbes.

Calvin broke down and sobbed, hugging his best friend. "I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry I broke my promise! I promised I wouldn't grow up and that we'd be together forever!!"

Hobbes stroke the Calvin's hair, or what little was left of it. "But you didn't."

"What do you mean?"

"We were always together... in our dreams."

"We were?"

"We were."

"Hobbes?"

"Yeah, old buddy?"

"I'm so glad I got to see you like this... one last time..."

"Me too, Calvin. Me too."

"Sweetheart?" Susie voice came from outside the door.

"Yes dear?" Calvin replied.

"Can I come in?" Susie asked.

"Just a minute."  Calvin turned to face Hobbes one last time. "Goodbye Hobbes. Thanks... for everything..."

"No, thank you Calvin." Hobbes said.

Calvin turned back to the door and said, "You can come in now."

Susie came in and said, "Look who's come to visit you."

Calvin's children and grandchildren followed Susie into Calvin's room. The youngest grandchild ran past the rest of them and hugged Calvin in a hard, excited hug. "Grandpa!!" screamed the child in delight.

"Francis!" cried Calvin's daughter, "Be gentle with your grandfather."

Calvin's daughter turned to her dad. "I'm sorry, Daddy. Francis never seems to behave these days. He just runs around making a mess and coming up with strange stories."

Calvin laughed and said, "Well now! That sound just like me when I was his age."
Calvin and his family chatted some more until a nurse said, "Sorry, but visiting hours are almost up."  Calvin's beloved family said good bye and promised to visit tomorrow. As they turned to leave Calvin said, "Francis. Come here for a second."

Francis came over to his grandfather's side, "What is it Gramps?"

Calvin reached over to the stuffed tiger on his bedside and and held him out shakily to his grandson, who looked exactly as he did so many years ago. "This is Hobbes. He was my best friend when I was your age. I want you to have him."

"He's just a stuffed tiger." Francis said, eyebrows raised.

Calvin laughed, "Well, let me tell you a secret."  Francis leaned closer to Calvin. Calvin whispered, "If you catch him in a tiger trap using a tuna sandwich as bait he will turn into a real tiger."

Francis gasped in delighted awe. Calvin continued, "Not only that he will be your best friend forever."

"Wow! Thanks grandpa!" Francis said, hugging his grandpa tightly again.

"Francis! We need to go now!" Calvin's daughter called.

"Okay!" Francis shouted back.

"Take good care of him." Calvin said.

"I will." Francis said before running off after the rest of the family.

Calvin laid on his back and stared at the ceiling. The time to go was close. He could feel it in his soul. Calvin tried to remember a quote he read in a book once. It said something about death being the next great adventure or something like that. He eyelids grew heavy and his breathing slowed. As he went deeper into his final sleep he heard Hobbes, as if he was right next to him at his bedside. "I'll take care of him, Calvin..."

Calvin took his first step toward one more adventure and breathed his last with a grin on his face.

Just. Damn.

9/11

I've got nothing to add to this post from 2003 except "Thank you" to the operators of the Internet Wayback Machine, and I'll be sending them a donation.

It's an Illness...

My first N-Frame was a Model 25 Mountain Gun in .45LC.

My second was a 327 TRR8.

Then I traded the Mountain Gun on a 5" heavy-barrelled, unfluted M25-7 also in .45LC.

Fourth was a Lew Horton custom 629.

Today I put $100 down on a 5" Model 24, tapered barrel, fluted cylinder.  Pictures when I finally get it out of layaway.

I'm an N-Frame junkie.

No New Blog Content for Awhile

I'm going through the archives starting at the beginning and working my way forward cleaning up links (where I can - thanks to the Internet Wayback Machine) and moving photos onto Blogger (again, where I can thanks to the backups I made and what I can pull off of Photobucket.)  There are over 6,800 posts in the archives, so this is a long-term project.

My back already hurts.

Blogorado Bound

I attended Gun Blogger Rendezvous 1 - 10, only missing the last one so I could attend Boomershoot again. Unfortunately it really was the last one, but that means I have vacation time (and money) to allow me to attend another gathering of The People of the Gun™ that I have had to miss in prior years - Blogorado.

Blogorado is an invitation-only gathering of the Clan held in an undisclosed location in Colorado, attended by a glittering list of blog-writers, their spouses (often bloggers themselves) and sometimes their families.  It is held on the ranch of Farmgirl, Farmmom, and Farmdad.  Motel reservations are made, vacation time has been requested, and now I just have to choose what portion of my arsenal will be making the trip North and East with me.

I'm really looking forward to seeing several people I haven't seen in meatspace in years, and meeting new people I haven't had a chance to meet before.

For me, this is the best part of blogging - friends you never knew you had.  As Breda Fallon once said in an episode of the podcast Vicious Circle:

I'm one of those people - I like people, I'm personable, but I don't really have "friends" friends, because I just don't connect to people really that well. But then blogs happened, and I found a whole group of people that I fit in with because I'm weird and they're weird in kinda the same way, and yea for our mutual weirdness. So, thank you for being weird with me.

The Well-Regulated Militia

Meet the Cajun Navy:

“They can handle their boats better than the average fireman, who handles a boat once a year during annual training,” says Lt. General (ret.) Russel Honore, who estimates outdoorsmen saved 10,000 from floodwaters in New Orleans while he was in command there after Hurricane Katrina. “They use their boats all the time and know their waters, and know their capacity. It’s an old professional pride. It’s like good food: Some people didn’t go to the Cordon Bleu, but they can cook like hell. That’s these fishermen and their boats.”

Buster Stoker, 21, is a heavy equipment operator for R&R Construction in Sulphur, La., and spends the rest of his time in his 17-foot aluminum Pro Drive marsh boat, fishing for alligator-gar in the heat of summer and chasing fowl through water-thickets in the winter.

“The best day on the water is every day on the water,” he said.

He and several other construction colleagues met in the company parking lot Monday morning at 5 a.m., loaded up with gas and supplies, and headed toward Houston. They launched their little fleet of 14 craft from the intersection of Highway 90 and 526, and over the next several hours they pulled hundreds of people out of their flooded homes in subdivisions, hauling them aboard like gasping bass.

This Cajun Navy is a nebulous, informal thing. It has no real corps or officers. It’s “an intensely informal and unorganized operation,” says Academy Award-winning filmmaker Allan Durand, a Lafayette, La., native., who did a documentary on the “Cajun Navy” volunteer-boats following Katrina.

It’s a movement basically founded on the realization that large government agencies aren’t quick-moving.

According to Honore, they have become utterly essential.

“The first-responders aren’t big enough to do this,” he said. “You might have a police force of 3,000, and maybe 200 know how to handle a boat.”

And that's a citizen militia.

ETA:  Watch this.

Further update:  Read this.

Quote of the Day - Thomas Sowell Redux

In keeping with the previous post, this from Thomas Sowell's Townhall January 2013 piece, The Role of Educators:

Schools were once thought of as places where a society's knowledge and experience were passed on to the younger generation. But, about a hundred years ago, Professor John Dewey of Columbia University came up with a very different conception of education -- one that has spread through American schools of education, and even influenced education in countries overseas.

John Dewey saw the role of the teacher, not as a transmitter of a society's culture to the young, but as an agent of change -- someone strategically placed, with an opportunity to condition students to want a different kind of society.

A century later, we are seeing schools across America indoctrinating students to believe in all sorts of politically correct notions. The history that is taught in too many of our schools is a history that emphasizes everything that has gone bad, or can be made to look bad, in America -- and that gives little, if any, attention to the great achievements of this country.

If you think that is an exaggeration, get a copy of "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn and read it. As someone who used to read translations of official Communist newspapers in the days of the Soviet Union, I know that those papers' attempts to degrade the United States did not sink quite as low as Howard Zinn's book.

That book has sold millions of copies, poisoning the minds of millions of students in schools and colleges against their own country. But this book is one of many things that enable teachers to think of themselves as "agents of change," without having the slightest accountability for whether that change turns out to be for the better or for the worse -- or, indeed, utterly catastrophic.

Indoctrination

I came across this the other day - the syllabus for a University of Arizona "Honors" English class, English 109H - in fact, the syllabus states:

This is an honors class with work and credit equivalent to a year’s completion of ENGL 101 and 102. Expectations are high.

This is a class for incoming Honors freshmen, straight out of high school.

Shakespeare? Milton? (*shudder*) Conrad?

Nope:

English 109H: Fall 2017

DAMN, We Will Never Know: Kendrick Lamar’s and Kiese Laymon’s Hip Hop Literacies

Course Description

Morally, there has been no change at all, and a moral change is the only real one.
–James Baldwin
On April 14, 2017, twenty-nine year-old Kendrick Lamar, an American hip hop artist known for his pop protest music, released his fourth studio album, DAMN. Four years earlier, thirty-eight year-old Kiese Laymon, an American writer known for his work on Gawker and ESPN, published his series of autobiographical essays on American racism, masculinity, hip hop, and the deep South.

Using Laymon’s essays as a framework, we will study Kendrick Lamar’s body of music to events which boomed his controversy, including #BlackLivesMatter and ongoing police brutalities, especially those publicized by social media. By studying American values connected to what we call blackness and whiteness, we’ll explore conflict, contact, and coalition and ask: How does black American and white American social media allow for critiques of race, gender, sexuality, and violence? What does it mean for a genre of music and its accompanying culture that, by "tradition," enforces heterosexuality and masculinity—in the name of legal murders?

The goal of this course is to improve your ability to critically think and write. In addition to contextualizing and reshaping the Kendrick Lamar and Kiese Laymon conversations, you will conduct library and field research on your own controversy, which will be integrated into a semester-long project consisting of a research essay, public argument, and literacy narrative. If we can listen and read carefully enough, we can occupy other subjectivities; that is, to say, we can improve our writings and civic lives, which are connected to what happens outside the classroom. We will return to the same question at the end: Can we really act as witness to another voice, even for our studies of language and its adaptations?

Course Goals Goal 1: Rhetorical Awareness
Learn strategies for analyzing texts’ audiences, purposes, and contexts as a means of developing facility in reading and writing.

Goal 2: Critical Thinking and Composing
Use reading and writing for purposes of critical thinking, research, problem solving, action, and participation in conversations within and across different communities.

Goal 3: Reflection and Revision
Understand composing processes as flexible and collaborative, drawing upon multiple strategies and informed by reflection.

Goal 4: Conventions
Understand conventions as related to purpose, audience, and genre, including such areas as mechanics, usage, citation practices, as well as structure, style, graphics, and design.

Written Assignments

• In the first unit of the course, you will study and respond to various contexts according to different rhetorical lenses and write a Contextual Rhetorical Analysis of Public Protest Spaces reframing Black lives politics re-envisioned by music videos from Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. You may defend, depart from, or combine his arguments to develop your own inquiry.
• In the second unit, you will conduct both library and field research on an approved social justice controversy of your choice, which will culminate in an analysis of the issue, or a Rhetorical Analysis of a Controversy. An Annotated Bibliography, due before the big Essay 2, will complete the “Research Portfolio.” You will closely study U.S. state or Supreme court cases to develop your controversies.
• In the third unit, you will use this research to support an argument of public interest, called a Public Argument. You will create a video catered to a mobilized audience and present it to the class.
• For the final “exam,” you will write and curate your own literacy narrative, which you will publish on a class blog. The final project is semester-long and we will NOT spend time in class on it other than one session per month; you are expected to develop, collect, and write your materials throughout the course. Please start early and utilize the class resources and office hours.
• In addition to these larger projects, you will complete a series of in-class and out-of-class smaller assignments which build into the four major assignments. Homework (readings, journals, smaller pre-essay assignments and discussions), workshops, and participation are often the decisive suasion points for borderline grades. Do the work, come to class ready and willing to discuss and participate, and you will see that reflected in what you earn.

I'm not going to go through the rest of it, but here's an example of Kendrick Lamar's art from his album DAMN:


I'm reminded of this national championship debate performance.

Just saying.

Kiese Laymon's collection of essays How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America is a required textbook.

At least there's a textbook.  The title essay is still available at Gawker.  It's prose, but I'm unconvinced that what's being taught in this class is "critical thinking" or "structure, style, graphics and design."  And since when is the purpose of an English class "problem solving, action, and participation in conversations within and across different communities"?

Oh, and remember we're paying (a lot) for our kids to go to college for this.

The professor?  Sylvia Chan.

The Long March through the Institutions has been completed for a long, long time.

Oh, and read this QotD too.  It's pertinent.

Edited to add this I found at a linking site:

Quote of the Day

New one on me:

Newsheimers, the media affliction by which you just can’t recall what you previously reported.  Especially when it concerns Democrats.

Heh™

Right-Wing Media

I just got introduced to IntellectualFroglegs.com by a video over at American Digest.  The video is on YouTube - a wholly-owned subsidiary of Goolag - er, Google:


Watch that, if for no other reason than to appreciate the content creator's real mastery of the multimedia format.

If you had told me six years ago that the American Left would be self-destructing as rapidly and violently as they appear to be today, I'd have had you committed.  But bear in mind, their "long march through the institutions" has secured their (ever more tenuous) grasp on the reins of power.  They own academia, the media, and the entertainment industry almost completely, and that's still a lot of power, power they won't surrender easily.

The .25ACP and Defending Your Life

The third most popular piece on TSM is a reprint of an old Usenet post, written by a Florida pawnbroker who went by the handle Flimflam.  It's the story of how he was attacked in his store one day and had to defend himself from a sword-wielding nutcase.  He wasn't wearing his fully-loaded Glock, the backup .38 in his office was disassembled for cleaning, but while standing with a blade jammed through his abdomen he finally remembered the tiny Beretta .25 in his back pocket and it saved his life.

Well, yesterday someone emailed me a similar story of how a .25 saved another life:

While out walking along the edge of a pond just outside my house in The Villages with my soon to be ex-husband, discussing property settlement and other divorce issues, we were surprised by a huge 12-ft. Alligator which suddenly emerged from the murky water and began charging us with its large jaws wide open. She must have been protecting her nest because she was extremely aggressive.

If I had not had my little Beretta .25 caliber pistol with me, I would not be here today! Just one shot to my estranged husband's knee cap was all it took. The 'gator got him easily, and I was able to escape by just walking away at a brisk pace. It's one of the best pistols in my collection, plus the amount I saved in lawyer's fees was really incredible. His life insurance was a big bonus.

The .25ACP. It ain't much, but it beats harsh language!

Another Update from the Gun Retail Front Lines

Tam posted recently on what she believes is at least partially the cause of the current glut on the firearms market:

(W)hile most firearms companies are privately held and therefore inscrutable on matters fiscal, the goings-on at a few are public knowledge because they are publicly traded.

The news from American Outdoor Brands Corporation (neé Smith & Wesson Holding Corporation) tells a tale that is probably all too common in the industry right now: Shelves groaning under unsold inventory that was churned out in expectation of the mother of all gun panics following a Hillary Clinton victory.

I sent this link to my favorite local Merchant O'Death, and he recently replied:

As I mentioned in an earlier email, and, as others have pointed out elsewhere, it is definitely a buyer's market in the firearms industry right now. The big name companies continue to offer almost absurd "deals" in the form of free gear, mail in rebates and the like. One company was offering a free pair of Oakley sunglasses with he purchase of one of their AR platform rifles. I do believe that particular deal has ended but several other companies have continued deals that were only supposed to last a month or two. Ruger is currently engaged in a program for gun store employees. Sell a certain number of new Ruger firearms, send in proof to Ruger that you have done so and, upon verification that no skullduggery is afoot, they will send the gun store employee a brand spankin' new Ruger firearm of the said gun store employee's choice (from a list of firearms posted by the company of course). . There are some pretty cool choices on the list. Now to the point: the program was supposed to last for a couple of months. It has been extended for a couple more. I suppose that is one way to move product out of the warehouse.

Our distributors call us Monday through Friday with "ganga deals" on firearms we don't need either because we have them on the shelves (and in back stock) or because we have no room for them. The only firearms we have a hard time acquiring are a handful of things that were announced at SHOT earlier in the year. The CZ P-10C is much sought after though availability is getting better. Colt announced the return of the Cobra revolver at SHOT this year. I have almost a double handful of customers with money down on one. I have yet to see one. The Kimber K6S, even though it has been out for over a year is still a scarce beastie on our shelves despite the fact that we are a "Master Dealer". With rare exception ammunition is not hard to come by at all (those rare exceptions leaning toward the "semi-obsolete" cartridges like 30-40 Krag and 348 Winchester etc.) We turn down 22 rimfire ammo every day.

We are still turning customers away with firearms for sale. We are still stacked to the gunwales with black rifles, Glocks, XDs, M&Ps, Sigs, 1911s, pocket pistols and small frame revolvers. We also have a glut of heavy barrel target/benchrest rifles of varying caliber. Had to turn a guy away today with a nice Sako single-shot, heavy barrel bolt gun in 222 Rem. He couldn't understand why we didn't want to buy it even after we showed him the eight other target guns we had that had been there for longer than we wanted them to be.

The old and collectable are still flying of the shelves. Had a non-military/police Sig P-210 come into our possession from an old customer that is getting out of the firearms game due to poor health. That gun never made it to the shelf. Customer saw it as we were buying it and said that he didn't care what the price was he wanted it. Same thing with a couple of semi-scarce Colt 1911A1 models. Same story with some older S&W revolvers.

Things are selling, just not things that are collecting dust on manufacturers'/distributors' shelves.

So, interesting things are happening in the used market, but the market for all that stuff sitting in manufacturer's and distributor's warehouses? Not so much.

Quote of the Day - Gunnie Edition

Paraphrased because I can't find the actual quote at the moment, but seen elsewhere:

Handguns put holes in bodies.

Rifles put holes through bodies.

Shotguns, at the proper range and with the proper load, remove significant portions of bodies and splatter those portions all over the ground.

I'm advised that quote is from Clint Smith, President and Director of Thunder Ranch. And I think that's a pretty fair assessment.

I Wonder What the Earworm from This Would Be?

Seen at the Book of Face, had to share:

Frozen 2:  Lethal Ice

Yup, It's Official

Photobucket sucks.  I've got to find another photo hosting service.  I'm sure as hell not paying them $40/month (Or $400/yr.) just so I can link photos here.  I don't need 500GB of storage (I'm currently using 2.7G of the 24G I'm paying something like $24/yr for.

This is like when HaloScan/Echo went pay-for-play on their "free" blog commenting service back in 2010.  I lost the better part of 40,000 comments dating back to just after this blog got started.  Through the herculean efforts of reader John Hardin, he managed to recover and host the comments to a large number of older posts, but I'm not going through anything like that again for the literally thousands of photos I've posted over the last dozen years or so.  Screw that.

Breda Fallon has said that blogging is dead.  I think she's right, and in large part because supporting industry business models simply don't work anymore.  It's just not worth dealing with bullshit like this.

Houston!

Looks like, barring unforeseen events, I'll be in northwest Houston, Texas the week of August 14-19 with my evenings mostly free.  Anybody want to get together?

Those Were the Days....

I posted this last year and the year before. Here it is updated.


On this day at 02:56 UTC 48 years ago, Neil Armstrong became the first human being to leave one of these on the surface of another astronomical body. Three years and five months later, Eugene Cernan became the last man to do so, so far.

The last Space Shuttle touched down for the last time six years and one day ago.

Elon Musk of PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX fame has said that the impetus behind the development of SpaceX came when his son asked him, "is it really true that they used to fly to the moon when you were a boy?"

Now there are two-dozen or more private space ventures around the world. There is a plan to capture and retrieve an asteroid for commercial purposes. Two companies want to mine the moon. One plans on landing a probe by the end of the year.

If we can just hold it together for a couple more decades, humanity might get off this rock, and we might do it in my lifetime.

But it's looking less and less likely to me.

As someone posted on Facebook, "They promised me that by now we would have colonies on the moon. What did we get instead?"


We got an electorate that put Barack Obama in the Oval Office - twice - and then gave us a choice between Felonia von Pantsuit and The Big Cheeto.

I hate to say it, but the nation peaked in 1969, Viet Nam and all.

I LOL'd. No, Seriously.

Interesting Data from the Trenches

While Form 4473 Background Checks are still at all-time highs, things seem to be shifting for firearms retailers and wholesalers out there. Dennis Badurina of Dragon Leatherworks owns a brick-and-mortar gun shop and reports on Facebook:

I've gotten more calls in the past two weeks by folks asking if I buy guns.

When they tell me what they are selling, and I give them a ballpark of what its worth to me, they start bitching about how much they paid, and my offer is an insult, blahblahblah...

Anyone tries to tell me that the gun industry isn't in freefall, they'll be told to go away. I don't give a rats ass about how many NICS checks are run in a given month, or gun show attendance, or other such meaningless bullshit.

Firearms industry is slowing exponentially, both manufacturers and distributors are dumping their inventory through sites like CDNN, Buds, Grab-a-Gun, etc., and folks can buy a brand-new gun for 30% less than they did last year on those same websites, and even last year those prices were low.

--

I had a customer come in and ask me to price out Wolf steel case ammo. I actually logged in to my dealer portal, he watched me put the stuff in the cart from my distributor, and saw what the ammo would cost as if I were buying it. I was going to simply have him pay me $10 over invoice, and he would WITNESS the fucking invoice being created.

He logged into SG Ammo, and the EXACT SAME FUCKING AMMO in the EXACT SAME FUCKING QUANTITY was $70 cheaper than what the distributor sells to the little mom-and-pop. He saw it with his own eyes.

The distributors are dumping inventory so as to not be left holding the bag on the long-term purchase agreements they have with the manufacturers. They entered those agreements because everyone was certain that Clinton was going to go skipping down Pennsylvania Ave. with 99% of the vote.

Now the distributors are sweating bullets (pun intended) because they bet on the wrong horse.

I sent that info to my local favorite Merchant O'Death and asked him if he was seeing similar things. His response:

That FFL is spot on.

We are buying more firearms right now (the "down season") than we have in the previous eight months. Usually the shop is damned near a morgue come summer time. We are turning people down more often than not when they bring stuff in for sale simply because we can't take another one of what they are trying to sell.
ARs are pretty much dead as are most of the other tacti-cool types of rifles

Several manufacturers have extended promos that were only supposed to last a couple months at the most by a further couple of months. S&W has a $75 dollar mail in rebate on M&P Shield pistols that has been going on since this spring and has been continued until September.

The FFL is also right about the election outcome. I have heard more than one person selling stuff to us remark that they don't need said firearms "cuz Hillary didn't win". Apparently the family vacation to the Free People's Democratic Republic of California is more important than hanging on to the firearms they already own.

Part of the problem with people bitching about low offers from dealers (at least in our experience) is that they are spending way too much time on the internet. When we make the offer, the response is often: " well, on the Internet it is going for [insert random amount of money here]). The other part of that is that they whine and snivel when we tell them we just can't but what they have because we are over stocked as it is. They whine some more and come up with some hard luck story about why they have to sell. We tell them again that we just can't do them any good. Then the same question is asked almost verbatim, almost every time: " can you offer me anything?".

That being said, we are selling quite a bit more than usual but it is largely used stuff. Anything remotely considered "collectible" disappears from the racks in short order. I am still amazed by the number of people coming in looking for Mosin Nagant 91/30s.

Nope. Nobody expected the election to go the way that it did.

Over at AR15.com the recommendation is "Stock up on ammo while it's cheap."

YMMV.

Automotif

Went to Tucson's version of Cars & Coffee this morning.  Here's some of what I saw.  First up, the unique:










The rare:








And the damned near unobtanium:








And a personal "grail" car for me:









I really have to try to get to the next one by 7AM.  By 9AM a lot of the cars had already left because the temperature was pushing 100°F. Good show anyway, though. I figure there were at least 125 cars there. Followed a C7 Vette into the parking lot with the license plate "HER401K". That was pretty amusing. Didn't see it long 'Vette Row though: