Nom de plume: Rivrdog

The Hawk is here

Blue Norther, Columbia River Gorge variety. Just in the last hour, the wind has started howling at Schloss Rivrdog, less than 6 miles form the mouth of the Columbia River Gorge. The Gorge, as I've previously pointed out, acts like a funnel to channel cold Continental air into normally-mild western Oregon (it also channels hot dry air during the summer when a Low forms off the coast). The Dew Point has dropped 6 degrees in as many hours, showing the air mass change.

Presently, there is 5.1 millibars pressure difference between Troutdale (KTTD) and the Dalles (KDLS), and only 70 miles between the two cities. That difference is progged to increase to better than 8 millibars overnight, and by the time I awake (if I get any sleep), there will be steady 30-40 mph wind and gusts to 45-50 mph.

Thankfully, it will be Severe Clear though, no snow in sight.

We're getting the back end of this Arctic Outbreak. The Midwest and New England won't be so lucky though, and a monster Winter Storm is ginning up to bring wide swaths of 1 1/2 to 2 feet of snow, just in time to completely bollix up Super Bowl travel, but that's why I have a TeeVee.

Bloomberg gang illegally buys guns in AZ

Mayor Against All Guns Michael "What Bill of Rights" Bloomberg sent some of his investigators to AZ's Crossroads of the West gunshow, where they bought a couple of pistols, it says here.

They bought the pistols illegally.

They supposedly told the seller, who is NOT identified as an FFL gun dealer, that they "probably couldn't pass a background investigation", and the seller sold them the guns anyway, according to them.

Here's what Sheriff Arpaio of Maricopa County needs to do. Find out who the seller was, and if it was a private sale. If it was a private sale, the seller committed no crime and Arpaio should publicize that fact. If it was a FFL sale, and the New York boys actually said that they couldn't pass a background investigation, write that up and turn it over to the US AG, because a crime MIGHT have been committed.

Then, the Sheriff, having identified these "investigators" by name, needs to get his District Attorney to issue warrants of arrest for the two "investigators", who have committed the State crime of a non-citizen buying weapons in the State, and the Federal crime of crossing State Lines while involved in a conspiracy to break the law, namely, violate the law about evading the background check. There may be other broken laws as well.

The Sheriff would then send an official request to New York to have those boys held pending extradition, and the Sheriff's detectives should go to New York to pick them up and find out who issued them the orders to go to AZ and break the law. Then the Sheriff needs to have the Grand Jury issue an indictment for that person or persons. If it is Bloomberg himself, he gets indicted and brought back to Phoenix for arraignment. Most likely though, Bloomberg would have been prepared for this, and would have a scapegoat take his place by making the whole "sting" thing deniable as to his office.

There's another way to accomplish this. Any citizen of New York can go to the District Attorney there and request that the DA convene a Grand Jury to examine the facts of this "sting" (it's not the first, he pulled this somewhere down South last year). I rate the chances of that proper and legal process happening at around zero, though, so it will have to be done from Arizona.

Bloomberg doesn't think much of the Bill of Rights, as evidenced by his strong stands against the Second Amendment, and his Nanny-State treatment of so-called "health issues", whereby he has deliberately violated the medical confidentiality of tens of thousands of New York residents inflicted with Diabetes by putting them into a special "registry" and hounding them about their disease, their diets, etc.

Don't forget, it was Adolph Hitler who is the father of modern "Registration", and I have no doubt in my military mind that Bloomberg has plans to totally control every aspect of New Yorkers' lives, just as Hitler had to control all aspects of German lives.

It's a Socialist thing to do that, don't you know.

Nazzofast with Egypt

...before you go all happy that Egypt has a popular uprising that might toss out the (mostly) benevolent dictator Hosni Mubarak, you need to see what organizations are behind the uprising.

From here, it looks like the Muslim Brotherhood is behind it, and if they are, all they want is to establish another Islimy Republic, one which would take it's orders from Iran's ayatollahs.

Do you REALLY want that?

Do you REALLY want $125 per barrel oil?

Do you REALLY want much of the electronics Europe uses to pay a huge Bakshish to Teheran?

Do you REALLY want Iran sitting astride the Suez Canal?

If you REALLY want these things, then by all means support the popular uprising. Obama is supporting it by punting the problem down the field.

All of a sudden, Obama is a genius in foreign affairs?

Come on people, The correct answer here is to have the Egyptian Army shut down the uprising. If the Egyptian Army won't shut it down, I'll bet the Mossad has a few ideas we could help them implement.

Stand by to Boo-Hoo

I see where the MSM are getting all teared up over the Egypt government shutting down the ISPs.

Well, you don't get a tissue from me, because I'm old enough to remember the past blowups in Egypt, and the media had to send real, by-God journalists over there who had to dodge the bullets and swings of the scimitars to get their stories, which they had to file by cable from probably just one cable office open to them (the US Embassy).

Nowadays, the standard for reporting an urban revolution is to suck up all the tweets and cruise the Facebook pages for footage, which the "reporter" does from his guarded hotel room, or, more likely, from his office so nice and snug right here in Freedom-land.

So, MSM, no tissue for you, wipe those tears on the back of your hand and get on an airplane for somewhere you can charter a car and driver to get you to the action. Do it the old-school way, MSM and quit your sniveling.

Trust your Equipment (NSFW)

Additional warning: NSFHE (not safe for home, either).

OK, haul the laptop out to the garage, your reloading bench, whatever. Turn the sound down, the actress is noisy...

You know the old sayings, "You've got to trust your equipment"?

Here's the perfect example of that saying (below the fold)

Gun-blogger request

I suspect that at least half of my readers are gunnies, and of that group, porbably half belong to a gunboard or two, and a few write gunblogs.

I have a request to satisfy my curiosity.

I've identified (others did, too) a trend in ammo manufacturing over the past 30-40 years, but especially in the past 20 years: the ammo is not as powerful as some which used to be sold. The ammo-makers have tried to compensate for this by building better bullets with improved wounding capabilities, but physics is physics, and my style is to return to the older proven ways when there is a question about new technologies.

Yesterday, I outlined a few loads from some old reloading guides that are WAAAAY hotter than anything sold today, and the Lyman #44 manual of 1967 actually lists the charge weights and powders in commercial ammo of that time. You can get info today on current loadings from most ammo makers' websites, so the data is out there.

My question is very simple: are the handguns of today built stronger or weaker than those of yesteryear, considering that factory ammo is not as hot as it used to be?

Or, am I all wet here, and factory ammo was always built 25-35% below SAAMI max?

All guns have to be proof-fired at SAAMI pressures, I know that much, but the cylinder (for revolvers) and the barrel (both pistols and revolvers) aren't the only parts of a gun that have to be able to stand up to the SAAMI max.

Has anyone written about which guns are the strongest, can stand up to loads at or near SAAMI max if you shoot those loads regularily? As in enough to get competent hanging on to your piece firing hot loads?

I've seen references, for the .357 caliber, that S&W's older Model 28 revolvers could take the hottest .357 you could build, and take them all day, and I've noted a few references to the Ruger SP-101, as a snubby that will take hot loads and laugh them off. How about the newer offerings? Charter Arms, Taurus, Rossi ?

I imagine that the first way to disqualify a weapon from hot loads is to have a light-weight model. I'd guess that the all-steel guns (both pistols and revolvers) are the most likely candidates to stand up to hot ammo reliably, but then, I'm no metalurgist, either.

Also, there used to be an ammo brand of HOT ammo that most of us LEO-types used in our off-duty guns, "Super-Vel". It hasn't been sold for years. Does anyone have any info or loading specs on that old ammo?

Lots of questions, but I'm in the student mode here. I want to learn about, then load and carry the hottest ammo my carry guns will safely stand, and given the lawyer-driven management of the ammo companies, I don't trust them to give me that hot ammo.

Old reloading manuals

I have a Lyman #44 and a Speer #8, from 1967 and 1970, respectively.

Looking through them, I find loads that today's information puts at the hottest end of possibility, into +P loadings, which weren't invented then. Yes, they're max loads, but the guns of those days could handle them, and today's guns are better built.

Here's an example, and Boy Howdy, I am excited by this one. Out of the Lyman #44 book:

Caliber .380 ACP. Normal SAAMI max loading (not +P or +P+). Test gun was a S&W Model 39 with 4" barrel.

Bullet is a #2 alloy cast from the Lyman #358242 mold (sorry, no picture) of 121-grains, no gas check. Bullseye, Red Dot and Unique powders are listed, my choice would be Unique. 3.9 grains gives a muzzle velocity of 1060.

Using this calculator, that's a Muzzle Energy of 302 #/ft ! Yowza! From a three-eighty! "Hot" loads of today, in the lawyer-driven environment of ammo makers, come in at maybe 225 #/ft M.E. This is 30% better than that, which should raise the chances of a one-hit stop on a baddie from around 35-40%% to over 55%.

So, my new quest will be to brew up some of these using the Hornady 9mm XTP JHP of 124-gr. I have to check on case capacity, etc, but I'm betting the XTP is shorter than the Lyman cast boolit, so it should work. In my Colt Series 80 Government Model 380 with a 3.3" barrel, I'll probably lose 40 fps, but that will still chrony at around 1,000 fps, which is enough to properly open up the XTP. The little fiddly detail of whether it will feed properly is all that remains, but at least, it will be good for the first one in the pipe. So far, the baby JMB pistol has eaten everything I've fed it.

The Lyman #44 manual lists some good 'ol .38 loads, too. NOT +P loads, just .38 Special.

Here one for a cast boolit I never heard of, the #358430, of 195 grains. That's a LOTTA LEAD!

You can push it with a variety of powders, but 'ol Elmer Keith liked Alliant 2400, and you use 9.5 grains of it to get 893 fps out of a 6" barrel. That gives you 345 #/ft Muzzle Energy, staying within the SAAMI Max of 19,400 CUP for .38 Special. If you bump up to the SAAMI Max for +P of 20,100, you might get another 15#/ft or so M.E.

Put 6 of THOSE into a zombie's engine room, and you will need a Shop Vac to clean up the goo, the usual Stick and Spoon won't cut it.

The somber thought: we're only talking HALF of the CUP of .357 magnum, but this .38 load would have a case-capacity issue to get that to maggy-max SAAMI. There IS a compressed-powder load using 7.5-gr of "Herco", a powder I'm not familiar with, that gives 1097 fps with that 195-gr zombie pill, for a Muzzle energy of 521 #/ft. That's OK, but it isn't top-flight. This little Oregon ammo maker has a 125-gr Gold Dot load in .357 that they claim has 624 #/ft of M.E.

The Lyman #44 book does have a 158-gr gas-checked cast boolit load that calculates to 676 #/ft M.E. using Herco, so they knew how to build hot .357 loads back in Elmer's day.

Don't scoff at "old", that's the reloading lesson for today.

Prisoner of my muse...

Da Muse says keep blogging....

POTPOURRI, item #1:

According to the Hollywood gossip, which I usually don't read, but just happened to glance at today, they're making a bio-pic about the life of Linda Lovelace, the porn diva. Kate Hudson will play Linda, it seems. I'm having a hard time getting my mind around Kate "deep throating" it. Linda Lovelace was not known for wit, which is Kate's claim to fame. What could possibly go wrong with screening the life of a famous porn queen?

POTPOURRI, item #2:

Van Jones was in town this week, whining at Portland's lefty liberal looney union, but I repeat myself. Lefty fishwrap columnist Steve Duin reported it all, said Jones whined at Portland's lefty elite for abandoning the movement, and compared himself to the O as a lefty leader. Mister Jones, a word: You got pushed out because you went all MOVEMENT on your boss, who is trying to re-invent himself as a mainstream kind of small-p progressive. You will REMAIN on the outside, Mister Jones, until you get out of the "movement" mode. "Movement", you see, implies AGENDA, implies CONTROL, implies overturning the mainstream politics, which the Center and the Right just demonstrated was a no-no. From the moment your boss swore in, he knew he was going to have to abandon the Movement, or at least make it look like he was abandoning them. In that regard, he survived, and you didn't. That is all, Mister Jones. You may go now.

/Blogger's Union mandatory coffee break here/

/break taken, coffee brewed, Bailey's added!/

POTPOURRI, item #3:

The State proposes to regulate us putting non-toilet watewater on our gardens. Starts with a $50 "permit fee" (read: TAX), and the regulations haven't even been written yet. Hey, Gummint weenies! Yeah, YOU, the ones who never saw an individual activity you didn't want to regulate. (Extends a simple Salute their way). BITE THIS! If I want to pour some dishwater onto my garden, I'm going to do it, so GET OUT OF MY WAY!

POTPOURRI, item #4:

The State of Oregon picks a new State Forester. What could possibly go wrong with this choice:

"Decker is not a professional forester -- he holds a journalism degree..." So, the State picks an apple-polisher who doesn't know a Douglas Fir from a Ponderosa Pine, and thinks the Green Chain in a sawmill is something you pull in the men's room to flush the toilet. Oregon's professional foresters RAN the entire planet's managed forests when I came to this State in the 60's, and now they put a wordsmith paper flunky in charge of the trees. How far we've gotten from the real world here.

Well, I can't find any good news here, so I guess I will go reload some more ammo. My muse is taking a nap now, anyway, so I can sneak out to the workshop....

 

Ignore the Dow-Jones

Americans for Limited Government is a site I subscribe to a news feed from, but I don't read everything that they send me, mostly because they frequently forget their mission and latch on to righty social-engineering stuff, which I can't abide.

For some reason though, I perused their list of article titles closely this morning, and I'm glad I did, because I found this article. It explains, better than I've seen it explained before, just why the big banks and their unholy alliance with the big government is a VERY dangerous thing.

The author of this piece is Simon Johnson, a senior economic writer for Bloomberg Financial, a ratings and reporting firm I trust (I don't trust Moody's), and a professor at the Sloan School of Management at MIT (one of the three major schools of finance).

Except for his infatuation with the dangerous Sheila Bair, FDIC chairwoman, a love affair I don't understand, Johnson seems spot-on in his analysis of the Street, Big Banking and the state of the economy.

Reading just a bit between the lines, I'm now going to follow my hunch and totally ignore the Dow-Jones Insustrial Index as a measure of the health of the economy. In fact, I'm now on a hunt for an index which CAN be trusted to monitor the mind of the Street with, because with Johnson's warnings, all the big investment houses and all the big banks which extend them credit are in cahoots with Turbo-Tax Timmy Geithner and "Bugsy" Bernanke, and THEIR combined goal is to run a sub-rosa economy that bears as little resemblance to reality as possible.

What is MY reality in economics? It's very basic. REAL things are all things that can be worth REAL money. A share of stock in a company that REALLY produces REAL merchandise and REALLY lists all their costs of production is a real thing. Land is a real thing. Gold is a real thing. Commodities like grain are real things, but only if it's the current crop being harvested, or at least planted and growing.

What is NOT real? Most of the "spiders" or ETF's, are not real, because they are bets on betting houses, essentially. Day Trading is not real, because all you are doing with the buy-and-sell in an hour trades is trying to harness momentum in the market, which is another gamble. Currency trading isn't real, all you are doing on Monex is riding small ripples caused by large chunks of currencies moving between central banks.

All this un-reality has to go somewhere, and it gets reflected as market activity. It ISN'T market activity, so when it gets reflected, it skews the trading indexes which reflect it. As those indexes are skewed (upwards, mostly), more phony "trades" result, with more false-positive index reporting generated.

And THAT, boys and girls, is how the Dow-Jones Industrial Average has pretty much doubled in under three years. Has our economy actually doubled in strength or size? Hell no! According to wages paid, unemployment claims filed, workers on unemployment (all REAL factors for an index), this economy is only marginally better than it was in the depth of the "severe recession" (read: Depression) that we are SLOWLY coming out of.

Don't trust the Dow. If you have money to invest in stock equities, buy actual equities, not false-front instruments like ETFs or long-term commodity contracts. Buy your stocks to HOLD and realize VALUE from, not to keep for a few minutes and make a nickel on a Benjamin when some big investor scratches his ass and the stock moves up marginally.

In other words, be REAL. You WILL make money with your investments. You won't make as much as fast as some of the flashy people who suck up to all the latest rumors, etc and feverishly throw chunks of money at passing images of financial progress, but you WILL make money by buy-and-hold, or by buying land (especially now that it's a bargain), and buying gold. Gold's currently about 9% off it's high of the year, and is a relative bargain. If you want to gamble on commodities, buy short-term contracts, no more than 90 days. There are bargains in commodities as well, but know the bacon market before you buy your first contract for 5 tons of pork bellies, or you'll get greased!

Whatta Maroon #6 - Bonus! Congressional Maroon!

OK, if you had to pick a congresscritter that would be most likely to make my "Maroons" list, who would YOUR pick be?

/the scribe dutifully writes down the hundreds of names/

Ta-Da! Mine is none other than Rep. Dennis Kucinich of OH.

Here's why.

Yep, this rumpkin (polite police code-word for asshole) just sued the companies who run the heavily subsidized Congressional Cafeteria because he got an olive pit in a "wrap" sandwich (metrosexual version of a soft taco), bit on it and broke a tooth/teeth.

Before you get all sobby about poor Representative Moonbeam (yep, he's the one who supports all the wild & weird stuff to come across Congress' desks), remember these facts:

1. He was eating a subsidized meal. Taxpayers have always supported this cafeteria, and have since I worked on the Hill over 50 years ago, so he's (indirectly) suing you and I.
2. He has outstanding dental care, so, other than some time spent getting his choppers fixed up, he isn't out much of his own money. Again, you and I have already footed his dental bills, since the health/dental plan premiums for Federal workers are at least 75% paid by Uncle, or he could get FREE dental care at any local military hospital (except the anti-military buttwipe wouldn't ever go on a military post unless he had a bayonet prodding him along).
3. It's difficult to imagine how fixing a broken tooth/teeth (if he broke more than two, he was trying to break them) could cost $150K, even with dental surgery, so it would seem that the "Honorable Gentleman from Ohio" is mounting a fraud on you and I.

 So, Rep. Kucinich, get into your 1968 VW Microbus hippie bedroom, drive out to Oregon and I'll give you your award of Congressional Maroon. Pick any dope-smoker's cafe in the hippie section of Portland, and I'll meet you there.

Oh, BTW, if you are supporting House Resolution 5, the Federal Tort Reform bill, strike Rep. Kucinich off it's list of supporters, but you CAN add him as a direct reason this legislation is needed.