Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Wednesday WTFs

A blog in which I communicate my wonderment to the wider world. Contrary to the popular opinion of my other 36 personalities, I do NOT have a total handle on Life, and there ARE a few puzzlements left to me. Here are a few of them.

WTF, category Irony:

 The Secret Service scandal was discovered when a disagreement on how much a prostitute should charge for her services came to light.  

She was asking for $800.00. The Secret Service Agent offered $30.00.

 

How ironic is it that the only person in Washington willing to cut spending gets fired?

(H/T to the Coyote Kid).

WTF, category The Whole Truth:

  "If you are not legally and morally justified in taking someone's life, you have no business whatsoever pointing a lethal weapon at any part of their body."

What Tam said. Enough said. Via Uncle.

WTF, category Whacky Terbaccy:

Advocates of Whacky Terbaccy legalization (and it's already legal, with a few formalities, under Oregon's loose Medical Marijuana laws) just elected the Top Cop in Oregon, Retired Judge Ellen Rosenblum, to be Oregon AG. I served many a time as a Court Deputy in her court when she was a circuit Judge in my county. Good mind, sharp intuition, but it's a little disturbing that she seems to have been funded in the crucial late stages of her campaign almost entirely by money from the potheads. I'm anti-pothead, myself, having seen the problems firsthand that this minor drug causes (same level of problems as alcohol, really). Additionally, the fact that Socialist George Soros has poured tens of millions of dollars into MJ legalization efforts to further his Stalinist ideas of "social justice" tells me that the biggest downside of more MJ smoked by more people won't just be a shortage of Cheetos, it will likely be a "benevolent" Big Government smiling down on the stoned masses, knowing that stoners can't do much mischief, and when they try, they're easily defeated.

WTF, category Zombie Apocalypse:

I'm puzzled by the national fascination with the subject of Zombies, and the only explanation I can offer to end my puzzlement is that the craze is the result of a backlash against Unicorns, and things like Unicorn Dust (like the Big Government, Unicorn Dust falling on things makes them magically free), Unicorn Farts, which like the Green Faeries of AlGore's invention, are a majikal counter to Glow-bull Warmening.

WTF, category Take Down Guns:

Why aren't ALL sporting carbines made in take-down models? Better late than never for this model, though.

 

The B.A.G. Day Pitbull

Purchase report, and some important observations on the Manual of Arms of this snubby, over at Straight Case.

Romney kisses Bloomberg's ring: a 2A fail?

According to this, via Uncle, Romney made an unannounced trip to visit Mayors Against the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights prexy, Bloomberg, yesterday.

The subject of gun control reportedly WAS discussed.

So, if the Romnoid was there to kiss the NYC Pope's ring and get an endorsement, what part of gun control did he just agree to follow Bloomberg's lead on?

This blog is now putting Romney in the anti-2A camp, despite his schmooze at the NRA meetings a while back. Unless and until Romney will publish a transcript of the entire discussion, including both his and Bloomberg's words on the subject of gun control, this blog now takes an anti-Romney position.

As I have said, sometimes it's better to have the enemy you know on the field in front of you than the ally you don't know on the field behind you.

Ready for Marx Day?

Tomorrow is Karl Marx Day, and the forces of the Left will turn out en-masse to disrupt the centers of cities all over the Nation.

Too bad. I wonder if anyone will calculate the lost productivity and send Valerie Jarrett a bill. My guess is that she's coordinating it, as far as it could be coordinated.

What! You STILL think that all that leftoid drama is un-planned?

Silly you.

Conflict management Rule One: avoid confrontation, but be able to get yourself out of the worst one you might unavoidably find yourself in.

Tomorrow, when I travel to Clackamas, OR for the MOAA meeting, I think I'll carry my Glock model 22, and it's companion carbine, the Kel-Tec Sub Rifle 2000, both in .40 S&W. Of course, the EBC (Evil Black Carbine) will be locked folded and out of action, but I figure I can get to it and put it into action safely by use of the pistol and 3 magazines if and when the need arises...

I'd pack some extra ammo and go to the MOAA meeting early, since the Sheriff's Range is one block away from the hotel, but I notice it's closed on Tuesdays, and most of the spare Deputies will likely be detailed to downtown Portland, where the fun is supposed to break out.

It's B.A.G. Day/Tax day

...but you have two more days to pay your taxes, since today is Sunday, and tomorrow is "Lincoln freed the slaves Day" or some such, celebrated only in DeeCee, apparently (Jan 1 and June 19th are more widely celebrated nationally), but that was good enough for the PeeCee Feds, who then gave us an extra day to get their blood money tax payments in.

I've done both duties. BAG (Buy A Gun) Day as reported here, and taxes, paid my first installment of the quarterlies for next year. I got my State tax refund back in time to use it to pay the quarterly payment, first time that's ever happened. Seeing as how my electronic filing went in on 4/2, that's pretty fast. Kudos to the State Treasurer.

Normally, I would go to some sort of Tax Day Protest, perhaps even taking the M35A2 to be a setpiece of said protest, as I did last year.

Didn't go to this year's local event though, since the Oregon Tea Party, which is putting it on, got a bad case of greedy, and decided to charge $20/head for admission to it. Note to self: try to find out just how many separate Tea Party orgs there are flying under the original, non-organized, TEA party banner now. Most of them are umbrella orgs for other conservative PACs which have stalled out in their fund-raising and want to try to tap into the former TEA Party fervor. It's all about Das Gelt, nothing more.

Note to the Oregon Tea Party: Read the VERY recent political history. There was NO PAC money involved in the original Taxed Enough Already Party (TEA Party), and that was a secret of it's success. If YOU want success, don't charge admission for your "headliners", who, if they were real conservatives and not political greedos themselves, wouldn't charge any more than basic expenses to do a gig on Tax Day, anyway.

B.A.G. Day

Yes, it's that time of year. Since I didn't get the Savage Axis, I decided to get ANOTHER snubby, and scratched that itch for a Charter Arms Pitbull, the new revolver in .40 S&W, which DOES NOT use retainer ("moon") clips. There aren't any Pitbulls locally, so I had to order it. $425 is "high street", but it wouldn't get much cheaper than $350 if there were a lot of them around.

Seems to me that a light .40 S&W caliber revolver ought to be just about the perfect mouse-gun (belly-gun, backup gun). Check out these ballistics: 1200 ft/sec & 495 #/ft (estimated, I took the smallest figures because of the shorter barrel and bullet-jump). Also, it's cheap enough to shoot, usually runs less than 30 cents per round for practice ammo. The main reason to get this gun is ammo availability. Just about every PD and SO uses 40 caliber now (and Homeland Security just ordered 450 million rounds of it), so there's a ton of it out there. If the S.H.T.F., ammo won't be hard to find or trade for. Of course, it's a revolver, so any dummy can operate it, although, at 20 oz, it WILL spank the hand with stout loads. I know that because my Charter Arms Bulldog .44 (same frame and weight) is a handful after about 25 rounds or so of practice, so I generally wear light leather gloves to shoot it.

Yep, a good backup gun for the Glock 22/Kel-Tec Sub2000 carbine combo when I need to be REALLY well-armed in the short-combat-range urban CQ invironment....

You silly Savage, you...UPDATED!

Bleg: have any readers shot or owned a Savage Axis XP in .223?

I ask because there is a very attractive offer of a new one, with a 3X9X40 scope (unk scope) at Big Five, a local sporting goods emporium, for $349.

I've had this nagging feeling that not having a rifle in that caliber leaves a fairly large S.H.T.F. hole in my preparation (no, I don'treally want an AR). BTW, I can upgrade that scope, as I have a fine Nikon Deerstalker on the shelf with BDC that matches that caliber's performance out to about 300 yards.

I've heard that the Savage has a decent trigger, the "accu-trigger", but this model doesn't have it, has a standard trigger. How good would a standard trigger be? My Mom used to carry a Savage M110, made well before "accu-trigger", and that trigger worked well. Also, this model lacks the "accu-stock", a bedded stock, but I suppose that can be done later if needed.

The barrel has a 1:12 twist rate, which means it will be fine with the light bullets, but not so fine with the heavier ones such as the 62-gr Penetrator rounds, right? So say most of the gun boards, anyway. If I get this rifle (BAG Day is hard upon us), It appears that I will be limited to using varmint-weight ammo in it, up to maybe XM193. It looks like the XM855 will not work well beyond 100 yards.

I do have plenty of brass and a box of 500 old military 55-grain FMJ bullets to reload with. The rifle, being old-tech, is also 2Obama-proof, it seems to me...

100 miles east of me is sagerat country, too, to tune up my MOA skills.

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UPDATE: 04122012 1600 PDT: Decided againt the Axis. Decent enough rifle, but it is NOT a bargain at that price.

Springe is Sprunge...

...the grass is riz...

...oh, what a grass-cutting dervish my Honda HR-214 izz...

...and it's a 1982 Honda, never having been rebuilt. Soichiro Honda was a bloody genius with small engines...30 years and still putting out it's rated level of work.

...been there, cut that 4,500 ft/sq lawn for the first time this year. Survived it, but had to take the "medicinal waters", at age 68, and those medicinal waters are taken internally...they be the Waters of Life...

Next, the gudwife broke in her new skillet, it being a Calphalon Cuisinart 13" model (100 simoleans), made necessary by my FUBAR of yestiddy, having burned up the previous gen-1 Calphalon pan by inattention to the hot stove due to an exciting NBA game on the telly, then using chemicals (TSP) to try to handle the burned-on grease (yes, there was a smoke detector activation involved), but the chemicals leached out the non-stick coating instead...the first meal in the replacement skillet was penne pasta and primavera sauce al meat (no pink slime, I grind & freeze my own), and it was outstanding!

Oh, and the bottle of Chateau Ste. Michelle 2006 Estate Cabernet Sauvignon (appelation, Columbia Valley) wasn't so bad, either.

The prospective S.I.L. wants me to instruct him in the ways of Oregon big-game hunting, according to the Dr. Daughter in her Skype report from NZ today, and I have a new membership in some OR and CA hunting leases that fits his pistol perfectly...I haven't hunted much big game lately myself, so it's catch-up time for me, too. First things first, though, I'll have to check out his rifle skills. He's already a pistolero of good repute, and an OR CHL...but we'll find out how well he reaches out to touch Bambi on Long Range Thursday at DRRC...

Springe looks to be a busy season around here.

Famous last words...

"The police were there in minutes."

Will THOSE words be on your epitaph? They are the memorial words for the two people killed in the Pittsburg shooting in the psychiatric clinic, which, I bet, is a "gun free zone" (it's on the Pittsburg University campus). There are also 7 wounded in that shooting spree.

The shooter took but seconds to do his grisly work, and the police took minutes to get there.

How does THAT math work for you?

I generally don't leave my house without being armed with a handgun of one-shot-stop caliber. I try to avoid "gun free zones". If I must go into one, I carefully consider the tactical situation of entry and exit. I eyeball everyone around me (although, I admit that might not help in a Psych Clinic) as to their potential threat. I employ, in evaluating my tactical situation, all of my military training in escape and evasion.

I carry a knife suitable for fighting with, and am a graduate of Combatives training, so I know how to use it.

But, you may not have those advantages.

Start with the obvious. Stay out of "gun free zones", which are actually "victim-rich zones". Perhaps, if we stop patronizing businesses and other places in "gun free zones", someone MIGHT get the message that they aren't working.

BTW, has anyone done an analysis of recent mass shootings to determine what percentage of them were done in such victim-zones? I think that a tort exists here for those who would establish and maintain such zones. I think that these idiots can be sued into oblivion. How about it, Mr. Gura?

I love the smell...

...of Victory in the morning: it smells like NAPALM!

Chalk not one, but TWO up for the Constitution, and chalk up two more dismal losses for the gun-grabbers.

Yesterday, the Oregon Senate voted down a draconian "No guns in Schools" bill, SB 1594. Guns are already illegal in schools, there was no point to the new law, other than it danced in the blood of the 3 OH schoolchildren, almost before they stopped their death throes. It would have dramatically expanded places, many of them unknown places, where licensed CHLs could not have had guns, and it would have given the Colleges permission to ignore the Oregon Court of Appeals ruling which says that State pre-emption is exactly that, and no lesser government than the State may write law to exclude CHLs.

The other victory was to pass, in a landslide vote, the House Bill 4045 allowing Sheriffs to keep the CHL database confidential, except for those who want their data outed. Only 5 lawmakers, all from the Soviet Socialist City of Portland, voted for the Bill.

Two victories in one day!

The Oregon Firearms Federation gets credit for the Paul Revere work on this one, NOT the NRA-ILA.

Politically speaking, this is what gun-grabber Sen. Ginny Burdick did: the Senate Bill and House Bill were both going to die in committee, a mutually-assured-destruction decision by the Senate President. The Oregon Legislature is in a "short session", where it has 30 days to get the job done, and the leaders of both chambers decided that the time-intensive gun bills would not be heard, so that budget matters would be heard.

Then along came the OH school shooting, and the gun-grabbing Burdick went to the (D)onk Senate President Peter Courtney of liberal Lane County and begged him to let her dance in the blood of the murdered OH kids. He gave in, so, with only 4 days left in the Session, and no budget decisions yet made, Senator Courtney agreed. The rest is history, and the gun-banning Burdick went down to defeat, with two members of her own party voting "No". Over in the House, the popular shield-the-Sheriffs law there went over big-time, but Sheriff Staton of Multnomah County, who was a Sergeant I worked for in my last assignment 9 years ago, has some serious work to do, since all of the Metro Representatives voted NOT to shield his issued CHLs, by far the most CHLs of any County.

Yep, the smell of that napalm and the fried gun-grab attempt is mighty fine on this late-winter morning.