Rebellion University

The Pipeline.

2012-01-30T13:12:00.003-05:00

There is so much dishonesty about this issue that it just makes be want to take hostages until people start acting reasonably. (Note to potential hostages: Bring a few changes of clothing. This could take a while).

1. The single most important issue that has not been discussed anywhere is that this pipeline is a private project, using private investment for a private purpose. Who the Fu** died and made Obama King and told him he had the power to forbid it? We have always known that environmental regulation had the capability to obstruct things like this to death, but for a President to unilaterally kill it in the land of the free and the home of the brave is mind boggling.

2. This picture shows a guy in a Polar bear suit.
The XL pipeline will be built over 1000 miles from the nearest polar bear (not counting those in zoos). This is a stupid argument from a stupid, ignorant person.

3. This picture shows a graphic of the existing pipeline and the proposed route for the new one.
Notice the words “EXISTING” in that sentence? That pipeline shown in black is already there.

4. For reference, here is a map of all the nation’s pipelines.
Those lines have been there for decades with no major problems. No species being wiped out (well, no more than normal by other causes). No ground water contamination blanketing the entire Ohio River basin with thick oily sludge. NOTHING BAD IS HAPPENING. NOTHING. The newer pipeline will be brand-spanking new and have expected new seals, corrosion-free pipes, modern leak monitoring equipment and remediation kitty litter prepositioned every 50 feet.

5. I have heard one suggestion that it makes no sense to transport crude to Texas refineries when it could be refined near the Canadian Border. Small problem there. No refineries near the Canadian border. Texas refineries have excess capacity. Further, the most efficient way to transport liquids is by pipeline. Then, once the materials are refined, the gasoline needs a way to get to market. From Canada, that would mean thousands of miles of new gasoline pipelines to markets. Or we could just use the gasoline pipelines that already go to the Texas refineries.

6. I have heard the argument that if we don’t build that pipeline, the Canadians will just sell their oil to China. Another stupid argument. What they really mean is that they will build their own pipeline going to the coast and sell to whoever drives a tanker ship up to the pier. Most likely, that will still be us. Then we will tanker the oil to the ports of LA, Seattle and San Francisco, where it will be offloaded in (not into) pristine scenic waters and then sent by pipeline to refineries in Texas. With just a slight added cost for handling and not using the most efficient means. Tanker ship is only the second most efficient way to transport a liquid.

7. Even if the Canadians in a fit of anger cut us off from buying that oil, it won’t matter. Oil is a global market. The more Canadian oil other countries buy, the less other oil they buy and is available for us (at a higher price). Of course, we would prefer Canadian oil. They are currently our largest provider of oil. Mexico is number 2. And Canadian oil is high quality that doesn’t take a lot of refining to get it into gasoline. We would also prefer to share our worthless money with our neighbors to the North. I like to think of it as Karma for all those years they were putting Canadian quarters in US vending machines in the northern states.

5 guns.

2012-01-30T09:26:00.001-05:00

From Og, Pick 5 guns, unconstrained.

This is so hard to do. It is like going to the dog pound and looking at all the puppies and knowing you can only have one. Though all the other guns you don’t pick don’t get put to sleep when you leave, but you get the idea.

There are so many really great guns out there. We can assume that I already have a lot of average guns and I wouldn’t want to use up my 5 on anything I already have.

1. The Quigly gun. Big bore. Heavy, slow moving bullet. Buffalo gun + Sniper .

2. The fully upgraded M1A with match grade everything.

3. The M134 mini gun with a lifetime supply of free ammo. While I can’t see any purpose to having this right now, I suspect that when I do really need one, it will be a hard to find item.

4. The HK MP5 in Full auto, with silencer.

5. I don’t know the brand name but I would like to get a really good custom made bolt action rifle in the .308 caliber for long range precision shooting.

Arts and Crafts: Tales from the Stealership

2012-01-27T15:16:00.003-05:00

Virginia requires an annual vehicle inspection to ensure road-worthiness. Mine is due. I took the 2001 Honda Accord to the Honda stealership to get my inspection done. They tend to have lots of idle mechanics so the wait is short to get this done. The Fee is state mandated $16 no matter where I take it.

It is a well known trick of the trade to offer free inspections and then "find" things that need to be repaired, so you always have to take care. But i was not expecting this:

Failure to pass the inspection.

Cost to bring into compliance: $1000
Extra repairs that I should get done: $500.

WTF? Do I have the words "FUCK ME" tattooed on my forehead in invisible ink?
The main culprit, if they are to be believed, is that the front brake calipers are locking up. The fix is to replace all the calipers, pads, rotors and brake line hoses.

For a frozen caliper? Can't we just "unstick" it?

The easiest way to "fix" this is to just take it to a different mechanic and re-inspect it hoping for a better outcome. But on the off-chance that a caliper really is frozen, it behooves me to take care of it. It goes without saying that the re-inspection will be somewhere else that doesn't already believe the car must fail unless I give them $1,000.

~~Expect the usual, complete with pictures.~~

Killing Pirates

2012-01-26T13:59:00.002-05:00

While taking time out from playing golf, our president led an attack on nasty pirates of indeterminate religion and skin color to rescue an American citizen (one)who was being held hostage.

It is now time for me to write the things you won't see other people writing.

1. I would like to join everyone else in their admiration of US Navy SEAL teams (or whatever secret name they are calling themselves this year). But let's get real. This operation should have been considered as the lower end of their specialty. Killing a few skinnies should not have proven difficult in any way.

2. Pirates have no civil rights. Not even the right to be actually declared a pirate before a SEAL team swoops in and shoots them. Remember the big stink everyone raised about the new defense authorization act that said we could indefinitely detain people with out trial for terrorism? What do Pirates get? Where is the outrage? Is there really any moral difference between a pirate who takes a hostage off a private yachts and holds them until they pay their fines (randsome) and a SEAL team that kidnaps those same pirates, transports them to the other side of the planet and holds them indefinitely with no hope of paying their fines to be released?

3. Killing pirates is a pretty good use of the US Navy. How many ships do you think the US Navy needs to kill every known pirate in the whole world. The fact that all the pirates have boats should help simplify the task. I am guessing the answer is somewhere near 1 of those LHDs and a few FFGs. Navy guys: don't pin your hopes on this event to save you in the budget fight.

4. WTF was a white American blond woman doing in Somalia in the first place? If you are stupid enough to intentionally travel to those places in the world that don't have law and order or sail your yachts into pirate infested waters... you get what you get. The taxpayers of the USA have absolutely no vested interest in squandering our blood and treasure bailing you out. Get a clue, people. Stay out of the Islamic world. Stay out of countries on the State Department "no travel" list. Stay out of countries that can't tell the difference between pirates and coast guard. Don't sail your yacht into one of those three known places on the globe that are infested with pirates.

5. Danish guy got lucky. Snowflake's chance in hell that Denmark was going to send their commandos to get him.

6. Send the rescued woman a bill for all the costs of using the US navy to rescue her. Don't sugar coat it with, "they were there anyway". She will wish she had just paid the pirates directly.

100,000 people with too much time on their hands

2012-01-26T13:13:00.001-05:00

Sitemeter reliably reports that my 100,000th visitor just strolled (trolled) through.

Congratulations to me.

Now get back to work.

Jamila Teaches The Wrong Lesson

2012-01-26T12:32:00.002-05:00

Yes. I still troll through Jamila's blog. I can't help it. It is like driving by a traffic accident and not looking to see how bad the other car looks. It is like going to the circus and promising not to look at the clowns.

Well, today, she has this to say about Facebook:

I’ll be closing my Facebook account permanently soon. I hardly ever use the ‘social network’ anymore...

So far so good. It makes perfect sense to stop using things that you don't use. Think of all the effort she will save by continuing to not use something she still won't be using.

...and because I will be searching for a job in the ensuing months I don’t want anything to pop up in my timeline that would embarrass me.

I suppose it is too late for her to NOT DO those things that would embarrass her. The point of moral living is so that you don't have to cover up your past embarrassing history because you won't have one.

This also questions the morality of concealing specifically those things about your past behavior that would tell future employers just what kind of a person you really are. Is it moral to permit them to swallow that risk without any warning? Not that it matters to you if you grew up without practicing virtue.

On an aside, despite the horror stories of people losing jobs because of facebook entries, the reality is that that hardly ever happens. Most facebooks are too painfully boring for any serious HR department to bother with. They will almost always check the facebooks of hot white girls (for personal reasons). They don't care if they see pictures of you getting wasted with your friends. Unless you are applying for a job as a nun, employers already know that you are not going to stop being young and foolish just because you now work for them. They still frown on criminal behavior, but criminal background checks are more useful to find that information. Businesses that care about drug use, don't ask you about it. They make you prove it.

Gratuitous Cleavage

2012-01-25T18:17:00.001-05:00

...will not be shown on this site just to generate ratings.

It might be shown for other reasons related to story, quality and to make a point.

The Internet is Broken

2012-01-25T13:59:00.001-05:00

That is the only way I can account for only 1 comment on the previous post. I even included a picture of a leech. You can't get good quality like that from Newsweek.

State of the Union Wrapup

2012-01-25T08:09:00.005-05:00

Didn't watch it.

Didn't have to.

The President's remarks can be summarized loosely thus:

The patient keeps getting stronger because of all the bleeding we are doing. We are also applying large number of leeches. Still his recovery is very slow. Just imagine how bad his condition would be if we were not taking these actions. We will not falter now but will continue even more bleeding the patient and applying even more leeches to remove the bad humors until the patient fully recovers. We even have plans to add trace amounts of arsenic and mercury to his diet.

The Permanent Record

2012-01-24T12:23:00.002-05:00

It used to be a joke that the things you did in school would go on "your permanent record". Most kids figure out in high school that there is no such thing. Juvenile delinquents learn this earlier and in addition learn that their courts records get sealed and later erased.

But this story tells us it is becomming true in this generation.

Just implant the chips and get it over with.

John Kerry Takes a Beating.

2012-01-24T12:06:00.002-05:00

Sure, he says it is from playing hockey. I can't really say. but either way, they really should put this kind of thing on Pay-per-view. They are missing some serious profits here.

Giffords Update

2012-01-23T12:55:00.003-05:00

Gabrielle Giffords has announced that she will be resigning from the Congress.

1. It's about time. Her congressional district has been without representation for over a year. Thus proving that Democrats don't really care about democratic representation as much as they care about "winning". In total, Ms Giffords has not worked a full day since her injury. She has continued to draw her full salary during that time.

2. With announcements in newspapers and facebook, it is easy for someone else to be doing the announcing and Giffords being credited. We the public really don't know the extent to her injuries or disability. A bullet through the brain is going to leave a mark. So we don't really know if she is competent to hold office let alone to resign from it.

3. It was the duty of the State of Arizona to remove her from office a year ago for incapacity. I cannot explain why they did not other than a misplaced sense of compassion. Perhaps they needed to work out the details of her long term medical coverage first.

4. U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is stepping down later this week so she can focus on recovering from being shot in the head just more than a year ago ...

She should have resigned for incapacity. This statement makes it look like she is just making another choice on how to spend her time.

5. Some reports are calling her "courageous". Way to lower the bar on that word. She was shot. She didn't do anything to get herself shot or to prevent it. There was nothing courageous about that event or how she lay down to die afterwards. In the immediate aftermath, she made no choices or decisions to help herself or anyone else. She was inert. Nothing that could remotely be described as courageous. Surviving a head wound like that is a significant event. She should not even be alive and yet she is. But it isn't because she did anything but bleed at exactly the expected rate of bleeding considering her injuries. I am not criticising her. I am criticising people in the media and politicians who are looking for things to praise her and are ignoring her life as a fully functional politician to focus on the period where she did nothing.

6. In the story I saw in print editions, there was also a statement that her shooter, Jered Laughner, has pleaded not guilty. WTF, people. Yah I get that whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing, but seriously? He was caught at the scene of the crime while doing the crime. He wasn't captured later. There is no possibility that it was mistaken identity or an evil twin defense. It isn't possible that he is just a patsy for a deep conspiracy. He really did it. Lots of people saw him do it. There is an unbreakable chain of custody between him, his weapons and the crime. His only defense is that he was crazy. DUH! We already knew that and I don't care The crime itself proves he was crazy. Now let's fry the bastard so we can move onto more important things like Dancing with the Stars or the latest in the Twilight Saga. This is not to say that Americans have misplaced priorities about crime and punishment, but that the certainty of Laughner's guilt, and his craziness is absolute. This really requires very little effort. We don't need a trial. We can just move along to the punishment phase. Our Constitutional civil rights were never intended to protect the guilty, but to protect the innocent. There is no possibility that Laughner is Innocent.

Why Do Women like Cheaters?

2012-01-22T14:20:00.004-05:00

Women seem to really approve of cheating men. This is self-evident, since if they didn't, there wouldn't be any cheating men.

Lately in the news is Newt Gingrich and his baggage. Why would his current wife play patty cake with him when he was still married to someone else, and then top it off by thinking he was a good catch to marry herself?

Of course, it isn't just Newt. Lots of women have affairs with married men and then marry those same men as if his cheating credentials are a plus.

Other then the recognition that all women are technically insane, I don't understand this behavior at all.

Maybe one of you can 'splain it.

Is it Rape?

2012-01-20T12:27:00.003-05:00

One of the authors at a Voice for Men poses the dilema: Rape or not? It seems that modern rules about what constitutes rape includes the scenario that women who have been drinking alcohol are incapable of giving consent to sex and so any sex that happens, even between husband and wife, is by definition, "rape". I am sure the definition varies from one jurisdiction to another. This is the current operating definition in the US Army.

But I have a solution. If your wife or girlfriend has had a few drinks and you are not certain if she is capable of legally giving consent to sex, just slip her a roofie. If she doesn't remember it the next day, it didn't happen.

Solving the Problems in the Middle East

2012-01-20T10:44:00.003-05:00

There seems to be something wrong with the entire Islamic world in general, but often it is localized to the modern state of Israel and its surrounding bloodthirsty neighbors.

I have a solution that I would like to propose. Assuming that we are the kings of the world and can dictate whatever we want and everyone else has to do it.

1. If you assume that the problem with the Middle East is that there are too many Jews there, then the answer is simple. Ask the Arabs who live there what the right number of Jews is. I am guessing that it is a number very near zero. Take all those "extra Jews" out of there and force them to move here to the United States. Why Here? Because most Israeli Jews are white, speak English and have a first-world standard of living. They would be a welcome addition to our collective. They will easily compete favorably for jobs in the USA and along the way make America better for everyone.

2. As a matter of simple fairness, move a like number of Non-citizen Islamic residents from the USA to the new nation of Palestine. Start with people who originated in "Palestine" in the first place and force them to go back to their "homeland".

3. As a further matter of fostering global harmony, we should offer (force them to take) the rest of the Islamic world the same deal. Take one of their Jews and force them to take one of our Moslems.

It will be interesting what the Arabs find to fight about when they lose the Jews as their Boogy men.

It will be interesting to see how the Islamic world will continue to hate us even though we no longer support Israel since it won't exist any longer.

One possible downside: The native American black population will cry about how the Jews are talking all the jobs in medicine, banking, retail, publishing, science, government and 500 other things. Because we all know how many unskilled black laborers would be in those jobs now if it weren't for the Jews.

America will definitely be a better place with 3.5 million more Jews and 3.5 million fewer Moslems. "Palestine" would arguably be worse off, but they would be happier in their misery than they are now.

Too bad forced relocation of ethnic populations is a crime against humanity according to The Hague.

Election Fail

2012-01-19T13:08:00.005-05:00

Two hundred million people to choose from and this is the best we can do?

The news media is salivating about "exposing" Newt's salacious details of his divorce. Big surprise here, it seems his ex-wife is bitter about how he had an affair with an office staffer and then dumped her to marry the new, younger, prettier, smarter girl who didn't have MS. Who would have thought that?

The Big Media is wringing their hands in uncertainty about the ethics of releasing the story now, or waiting until the general election. They are in the tank for Obama and want to run the story to help Him in the general election, but if they hold the story and Newt doesn't win the Republican primary, then the value of their investment in the story will turn to dust overnight. So, as a compromise, they released a story about the story, not the story itself. In the story about the story, they can examine the ethical dilemma of interfering in elections with the "people's right to know" as well as remind everyone that Newt is a cheating bastard.

This is just one more reason why guys with ex wives shouldn't go into politics unless the ex is getting a direct percentage of his pay and benefits so that her financial well-being is tied to his.

Strange things:

1. Do they really think America doesn't already know this? Most of us were alive when it happened and it was widely covered in the pro-Clinton media then. Republican voters have been discussing Newt's Baggage ever since he hinted that he might make an announcement about forming a committing to discover if he was going to raise money for a possible presidential campaign (but no commitment-- typical for Newt)

2. So much gnashing of teeth over publication ethics. I don't recall hearing a similar quandary when it came to publicising details of the incumbent's history. Nothing. And still nothing. One scandal after another and zip-zero-nadda coverage.

3. Does the media really think it matters which Rino faces Obama in the general election? The truth is that they all have exactly the same chance of winning: too close to call. Both parties have large, well-organized machines to guarantee about 45% of the vote for their guy, no matter who it is. The rest of the votes get made up by independents (people who don't care enough about the process until November to bother being involved in it throughout the year), fraud, and a few disaffected Ron Paul voters who will come in at the last minute so they don't "throw their votes away". The outcome will be the same as it has been since Clinton first got elected. The margin of fraud and error will decide who our next president is.

Election Update

2012-01-19T09:34:00.003-05:00

The Republican party race to select someone who is not Romney moves one step closer to selecting Romney. Gov Rick Perry announced he will be dropping out of the race. Or maybe he announced that he will be making an announcement later. I get confused some times. That leaves only two electable candidates remaining in the Republican field who are not Romney.

The Iowa caucus committee announced this morning that Rick Santorum and Romney officially were a tie in the Iowa Caucus. Seriously? When Mitt was 8 votes ahead, he was the clear winner, but when Santorum is 32 vote ahead, "we'll just say this is too close to call".

Too bad there aren't any conservatives running. That would make this an easy choice.

I wonder how bad a Biden/Clinton administration would be?

Horoscope, 19 Jan 2012

2012-01-19T09:09:00.002-05:00

You may not get along with someone who is calling the shots, but if you listen to what he or she is saying you can certainly get the job done.

Well, that's a no-brainer. I never get along with the people calling the shots and I always get the job done anyway. In real life, it is a normal part of the human condition to not get along with micro-managing pin-heads and still have to do what they tell you so that you don't get fired.

Come on, horoscope App. You aren't even trying with this one.

Horoscope, 18 Jan 2012

2012-01-18T12:32:00.003-05:00

You've been cultivating something of a cavelier attitude of late, but today you'll find yourself caring more than you should.

Well, that is pretty specific both in affect and in time frame. But I don't see it happening. We have already well established how much I care.

I understand "caring more than normal", but what is "caring more than I should"? Are there things in life that I should care about, but not too much? Certainly a grown man shuld not look like he cares too much about post-pubescent children. Nor should married men care too much about attractive recently divorced women. But even those standards do not really limit how much we care or how much we should care, but only how much we show we care. Our society is very shallow and hypocritical that way. Obviously, as Christians, we are called to care about all our neighbors to the point of loving them. I don't see a "too much" limitation there.

Nevertheless, I believe I am on pretty safe ground of not caring too much about anything.

Current Events: Gun News

2012-01-18T09:55:00.004-05:00

State Delegate Mark Cole in Virginia is putting forth legislation in the Virginia Legislature to eliminate the current law that requires a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Alaska and Vermont already do this.

1. It will certainly make Virginia more free when there is one less thing you will need to ask the government for permission to do.

2. I agree that concealed carry is a preferable way to carry since it is less likely to cause vapors in those people who think government and criminals (I know, it's redundant) should have a monopoly on the use of force.

3. The only downside I see is that our permit currently has reciprocity with other states. If we become a permit-less state, those other states will refuse to allow our citizens to carry concealed in their states. hopefully, Virginia will still have a reciprocity enable voluntary permit system.

4. As long as we are eliminating stupid weapon laws...
... It would be nice to be able to own without restrictions automatic folding blade knives.
... to carry a knife concealed without it being considered a concealed weapon.
... ditto for batons and other such devices for melee.

If I can already carry a lethal weapon, why restrict my ability to carry less lethal devices?

Meanwhile, NYC is looking for ways to curtail concealed carry . Gun ownership as well as carry, concealed or otherwise is already tightly controlled in NYC. The article I linked to wonders if this is a violation of civil liberties. I Opine:

1. You have already lost that fight in NYC. You have no civil liberties. If you don't have the basic right to self-preservation, what difference does it make if you also don't have a nebulous right to privacy?

2. Fight to get your rights to carry guns again in NYC then the new scanning technology will be moot and NYC wouldn't bother to invest any money in it.

3. I do not see this as a privacy issue at all. The scanning technology is only viewing the you in public in wavelengths beyond visible light and looking for the tell-tale images that guns would make when they block that light. This is exactly the same as if they noticed you were wearing a full sized 1911 under a tight sweater. You are letting it show. It is not their fault for noticing it (even though they need special cameras to do it). And, let's face it, it IS illegal in NYC.

4. Far better, this technology is easy to defeat. People can sew gun-shaped silhouettes into their clothing made from neoprene to cause the same effect. It is perfectly legal and guaranteed to run the NYCPD ragged chasing false alarms. holsters and carry gear can be cut in larger sizes of materials that don't show through to disrupt the silhouette patterns and thereby not trigger the alarms. Of course, If you are carrying in NYC, you are already a criminal so defeating NYC enforcement won't cause you to lose any sleep.

5. I also find it comical that the position of the ACLU is against the technology because they feel that your right to privacy gives you an inherent right to carry a gun illegally and not get caught. But they don't give a NY Rat's ass about your right to legally own and carry that gun in the first place. The only civil liberties they care about are sexual perversion and drug use. They should be Libertarians.

Stupid News

2012-01-17T13:35:00.003-05:00

This story tells us that a man was found dead after 5 days missing. he was found in a movie theater bathroom. A sad end to a man's life, but we all have to end somewhere. Sometimes people die in their own homes and aren't discovered for weeks.

After two days of searching the area, he was finally discovered in a locked stall in the movie theater's restroom. The coroner's office says a theater employee had to break open the lock to get inside, where DeGrazio was found slumped on the floor.

Really? Break the lock on the stall? What kind of heavy duty locks do they have that need to be broken to enter? Even pay toilets have a management key.

What this really tells me is that the theater employees do not want to clean the bathrooms and do a piss poor job of making sure there aren't any customers in there at closing time.

Still, DeGrazio's son says no excuse can make up for what happened.

"Like, come on! You just had a human being pass in your facility, in your business establishment. And you can't even stretch your hand out to apologize to the family affected by it? That's poor ethics," Dylan DeGrazio said.

No. It has nothing to do with the theater management's ethics. That word means something. Look it up. If anything, your family owes them an apology for leaving your dead relative on their property.

He says his father was a retired art teacher who had taught at the elementary, high school and college levels. He wants his father to be remembered not for the circumstances surrounding his death, but for his accomplishments in life.

Well, tough. He isn't going to get either one. No one gives a shit about retired art teachers when they die. He leaves nothing behind but his kids and grandchildren. If they can't be troubled to remember him, no one will.

"Cinemark is working closely with the Fort Collins Police and Loveland Missing Persons Department on this case. As the case is ongoing, we are not able to discuss the details of the investigation at this time.

What? What is there to "work closely" about? "He is over there officer". "Need me to grab the feet?" There isn't any investigation and there are no details. It is just an old guy who died in public instead of in his sleep. It happens all the time. Not News.

Then this at the bottom of the page:

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Arts and Crafts: Tips for Car fixing.

2012-01-17T08:08:00.002-05:00

Here are a few things I do to make fixing cars easier.

1. Start drinking early in the day. Some of these jobs are tough and will require the superhuman strength, endurance and mental agility that alcohol gives you.

2. I put my parts in individually labeled Zip-Lock bags, with the bolts that go to them. That way, the bolts go back where they should. You can label wiring with masking tape and sharpie, but most automotive wiring is in unmistakable wiring blocks that only fit one place in one way. This works well for spark plug wires to make surre they go back to the right plug.

3. As I take something apart, if it has complex internal parts like gears, spindles, washers and bushings, I lay them out onto a large sheet of scrap cardboard. Then, I can use a Sharpie to label them or write instructions. This makes putting it back together easier and when you are done putting it back together, it makes leftover parts stand out like a sore thumb. Similarly, if there were a complex pattern of bolts of various sizes, I wouldn't want to just jumble them all together in the same bag, so I would draw an outline of the part on cardboard and insert the bolts in correct order through the cardboard diagram to keep their location straight until time to put them back.

4. If I were a professional mechanic working in a large auto shop, I could not do #3 because the other mechanics would move the parts around when I wasn't looking. Professional mechanics have very refined senses of humour, especially when they are stoned. Their sense of work ethic... not so much.

5. These tips also work for fixing electronics and home appliances.

Arts and Crafts: Transfer Case Fixing.

2012-01-16T13:58:00.017-05:00

As I mentioned previously, I have developed a small leak in the transfer case (TC) of my 2003 Toyota 4Runner. I intend to fix it this weekend.

Primary objective: Fix the leak without causing a bigger leak or creating other costly damage.

Mission Complete.

Secondary objective 1: Replace 5 oil seals.

Mission 4/5 complete.

Secondary objective 2: While I have the case apart, do something about the JB weld holding my drain plug in so it is usable again.

Mission: Failed.

And now for the details.

First, we prepare to do the work:

Proper Attire for car fixing:

Organize the work space with the right tools:

Oops. Missing something. Back to the store.

Now we are ready.

Warm up the garage.

Cough--Cough. Choking on Kerosene fumes. Shut off the heater and ventilate the garage with lots of chilly outside air.

Put on the safety gear. Gloves keep skin on your knuckles where it belongs. Especially when you are breaking loose bolts that have not moved since the factory put them on 9 years ago on the other side of the planet. The glasses are polycarbonate. If the T-case falls and crushes my head, my eyes will still be useful in a donor transplant scenario. But mostly, it will keep dirt and shit from falling into my eyes while I work under the car. I wish they had invented these when I was younger.

Jack the car up onto 4 jack stands. The higher you get it the better, but you need to have all 4 wheels off the ground so you can rotate the drive shafts to get the bolts off.

This picture shows the problem. You can clearly see the drop of gear oil forming on the drain plug. It isn't the plug that is leaking. The leak is coming from uphill.

Following the instructions I got off the internet, I remove the 2 drive shafts. When I compress the shafts, I am supposed to see grease coming out. But mine are dry. Proving that no matter how many times you pay a professional to put grease in the drive train, they sometimes won't do it. It is almost as if they WANT the U-joints to fail.

I use a standard floor jack to support the transmission and then I remove the transmission frame supports.

With the supports removed, I lower the transmission so that it rests on the engine mounts. This lowers the TC to within easy reach.

So now I put the floor jack under the TC to support it and remove the 8 bolts holding it on. and remove the electrical connection and a rubber hose to the breather valve.

At this point, the whole thing should slide easily off the transmission and you can let it down on your jack to the floor and wheel it out. But that won't happen. It seems TCs do not have a stable center of gravity, so as soon as it is free of your transmission, it will evade your floor jack and fall to the floor. Good thing you head isn't under that. It is a lot heavier than it looks. I managed to control the landing by exerting muscular force in ways that will haunt me in the coming days. But it is apart and ready for disassembly.

Disassembly at this point is pretty strait forward. I took lots of pictures in case I got confused during re-assembly.

those rods you see between the two gears are connected to the actuator assembly (the black box on the outside) and that is why you can't simply remove the three bolts that hold on the assembly to change the o-ring. Those rods are held on with 3 "c" shaped steel clips. When there are 50 different kinds of metal clips that would do that function, I can't imagine why Toyota engineers would insist on using the clips they did. They have a special tool to remove them. The Toyota manual calls for "holding two screwdrivers on the ends of the clips and hitting them with a hammer". It takes a little practice to get that done. Fortunately, you will have lots of time for that because you can't go on until you get it right.

But then the box slides off (with a little help from my hammer)

At this point, accomplishing the main objective becomes trivial. Replace the old O ring with the new one.

Removing the remaining gears and you get the back half of the TC, which is surprisingly light, considering how heavy it was with all those metal gears inside.

At this point I am ready to attempt the secondary objective or restoring the drain plug. So I remove the old JB weld to expose bare metal and prepare it for brazing.

Problems arise right away. The old cracks in the case have spread (I drew them in with a Sharpie so you could see them) and made this piece unusable. Brazing isn't going to cut it any longer. It will need real welding or a replacement part. I can't afford a few thousand dollars for a TIG welder to use one time. And I don't know anyone who has one.

So anyway, I fixed it back up with more JB Weld. I let it set overnight to make sure it had a solid bond.

As I was going along, I replaced those oil seals I could find. The old ones were all in good condition. The oil seal to the transmission would not come out. I couldn't break free the oil seal housing so I could hammer the seal out from behind and I didn't have a seal puller (Toyota special tool). It was in good condition, so I left it alone.

Put it all back together. The whole thing went back together quickly and in a lot less time than it took me to take it apart. The torque wrench I got from Harbor Freight is total junk. At 28 Ft-pounds, I got a good "click" for the first 5 bolts, and then nothing even after what I felt was significantly more force. What utter crap. For $20 I expect my Chinese crap precision tools to last at least for one entire job.

So I put it back on the floor jack and re-attach it to the transmission (not as easily said as done). It did fall off the floor jack twice. and I finally had to use brute human force. to lift it into place as it was falling a third time. I would have let it fall, but my head was under it at the time. I am sore all over from abusing muscles that I haven't used for a while and don't intend to use again.

I get it all put back together and add some grease to the drive shafts. I get a half a small tube in and then my brand new cheap Chinese grease gun stops working. The nipple head was cross threaded on at the factory. The air bleeder bolt was overtightened at the factory and can't be removed. Well, I hope a half a tube is enough till next time.

Last step is clean up the garage, put away the tools and looks for left-over parts.

RATS! Well, maybe that bolt was leftover from a previous repair. Maybe the car will run better without it. I will just save it and put it back in the next time I have the car apart.

But this really isn't about the car fixing. It is about the learning. Here is what I learned.

1. Definitely not worth paying someone else $1700 in labor.
2. I will have to buy that new part for the TC, but I think I will wait until the next time something leaks. For the time being, it is working.
3. A transmission jack would really come in handy. I think I had my car up high enough to be able to use one, but the clearance would be close. If I have to do this job again, I think I will rent one.
4. Drip pans only cost $8. For a small leak that doesn't drain the TC every week, I might just let it be.
5. JB weld is a gift from God.

Preparing for MLK Weekend

2012-01-13T14:24:00.004-05:00

I think I will call it off early today. No real work left to do. It is Friday. No one has provided anything to hold my interest (stupid horoscope).

And I have not even started on my MLK holiday gift shopping yet. I am really looking forward to another day of service and reflection. I haven't even started on my Service agenda yet. I may need to take off Tuesday too just to get in all my reflecting.

The MLK torchbearers are once again calling the MLK holiday a "day on, not a day off" and we in the government will be celebrating it by taking the day off. It is as if people don't even hear the stuff that is coming out of their own mouths when they say this stuff. No cognitive dissonance at all.

Popery

2012-01-13T12:28:00.003-05:00

Gay marriage a threat to humanity's future: Pope

Pope Benedict said Monday that gay marriage was one of several threats to the traditional family that undermined "the future of humanity itself."

The office of Pope really ought to start having a mandatory retirement age. There are a lot of bad things that you can say about Gay "marriage" , but "threat to Humanity" isn't even close.

Let's list the consequences of gay "marriage".

1. It mocks real marriage. Just like celebrity marriage and serial marriage.

2. It creates a whole new area of family law that will be applied to everyone as if all parties to future divorces are exactly equal under the law. Wait... um... well that probably won't happen.

3. Insurance companies and employers that offer discounts and coverage for family members who don't want to keep track of the current fashion for what a "family member is" will just stop doing those things and instead offer a price based on the service offered.

4. Religious people who rent property out will no longer be able to discriminate against openly gay roommates. but under fair housing laws, they already can't. so no change.

5. Without the morality limitation on the definition of marriage, there is really no rational basis to have any limits at all. Gay, pedophile, group, animal... it is all equal in the eyes of the law. That slope really is slippery. It is steep and covered with grease.

6. Throughout the Islamic world, there will be no consequence at all. 13 year old Girls will still be given to 45 year old relatives after having their private parts mutilated. The "Husbands" will occasionally have sex with them until they start to look like women and then they will go back to boffing the younger boys in the family.

7. There aren't that many gay people out there (excluding Moslems--just because they like butsecks with young boys doesn't make them gay). And many of the gays in the world aren't looking to marry anyone. Marriage is a civil, financial, genetic, family, and religious partnership. Most of the real benefits of it do not confer to gays no matter how big a ceremony they have.

So, the net effect on society is practically nill.

If we have to look for events and trends that are by their very nature a threat to humanity, there are only two eggs in the basket. only two trends are large enough in scope and consequence to really matter to the human race.

Tyranny
The global spread of communism and its dim-witted siblings, socialism and Marxism destroy wealth, the family, creativity and the can crush the spirit of the living to the point that it can oppress generations of humanity in material and spiritual poverty. These things are founded on the principle that someone else (the tyrant) knows what is best for you and will make sure you do it even if he has to kill you, for the good of the others. In America, our government is full of these people and they infest both major political parties. Modern elections cannot even argue conservative ideas any more. In the Republican Primary we are seeing two "conservative" candidates attacking the third for participating in capitalism. Each of them has some new government program to fix everything, as if there is anything conservative about a new government program.

Islam
It isn't going away. It is growing and it is growing more virulent. It is also growing more intolerant of non-Moslems. It is still a death sentence to convert from Islam. That sentence will be carried out by your next door neighbor, distant cousin, or total stranger on the street. And they will get away with it. No one will testify against them. No prosecutor will bring charges. They are overwhelming old Europe with immigration. and their fertility rates are far ahead of the native populations of the industrial Western Nations. The future belongs to them and they want it now. We are not even trying to control them. An Islamic future is another thousand years of dark ages for the whole human race.

But we can't have the Pope criticising a competitor religion. That would be discrimination. nor can we have a European "news" organisation like Reuters bother to inform us what the other things the Pope said. It is as if the only thing they found important was the already widely known views of the Catholic Church, that Homosexual behavior is not good.

Horoscope of DOOOOM, Friday 13th of January 2012

2012-01-13T10:39:00.003-05:00

What another is up to is likely to hold you interest throughout much of the day-- and teach you something about your own methods.

Hmmm. Reference to "another" for a second day in a row. Horoscope App may be onto something here. It promises to hold my interest. That sounds good. I am a little cautious about that whole "learning" thing. Many of life's lessons come attached to electrodes.

So what are you all up to today that will amuse and educate me? I already ran by most of the blogs and you guys aren't getting it done. Daylight is burning. You aren't holding my interest throughout much of the day if you wait until after 5 to start.

Current Events, Friday the 13th (DOOOOM edition)

2012-01-13T08:30:00.003-05:00

1. The Drudge report is leading off this morning with a headline for this story:
APNewsBreak: Obama seeks power to merge agencies

President Barack Obama will ask Congress on Friday for greater power to shrink the federal government, and his first idea is merging six sprawling trade and commerce agencies whose overlapping programs can be baffling to businesses, a senior administration official told The Associated Press.

But he already has that power. He could have used it 3 years ago, and every day since then. All he has to do is tell his allies in Congress that certain government agencies are redundant and ask them to introduce legislation to combine them in some way. This is not rocket science.

2. Then Drudge shows us a picture of the Pentagon with the headline, "PISSED". But there is no linked story there. So I can't tell if I am supposed to be pissed about Obama's power grab over the Commerce Department (which already works for him) or some other thing, or even just the normal level of being pissed.

3. There are several stories in the news regarding a couple of Marines pissing on some dead Taliban fighters. I don't see what all the fuss is about. Are all the perpetually aggrieved people in media, government, civil rights groups, and Islamic advocates missing the key and essential point here: The Marines JUST KILLED THOSE GUYS in a violent and permanent manner. The Taliban, in their own way, had every intention of doing the same to the Marines. What form of Honors to their fallen enemies do you think the Marines could have expected? You don't have to guess. There are lots of examples (dragging through the streets, mutilation, set on fire, public display). One Marine was heard to say, "have a nice day". THE HORROR! Imagine that. A Marine, pumped full of adrenaline, giddy at surviving violent combat, standing over his dead foes, takes a moment to taunt them. And the Western world goes into a tizzy of vapors and everything. Get some perspective, people. Hearts and minds was never going to be part of that dialog. "but we are better than that. We have rules". Yes. We have rules. STUPID rules. The enemy does not. We need to change some of those rules. Keep the ones about being humane to captives and acknowledge the fact that the whole point of pointing those guns at people is to violate their civil rights and the more the better.

4. While American politicians demonstrate their all-or-nothing mentality with regard to our policy to Iran having Nukes, someone is going about taking action on a much smaller scale. Iran's nuclear scientists have been getting assassinated and it is getting harder for them to keep good help. Stupid Americans think if you aren't hitting them with laser guided bombs, you aren't accomplishing anything. Don't get me wrong, a Laser guided bomb can get a lot done in a short amount of time. But it isn't the only way. Setting back the Iranian nuclear program is really as easy as arranging a few auto accidents for the guys that know how to do it. High ranking politicians have 24 hour security details. High ranking scientists and nuke engineers do not.

5. Gallup is reporting that the largest single political group is "conservative".
Too bad they don't have any candidates running for office. It would be a landslide.

Horoscope: 12 Jan 2012

2012-01-12T12:14:00.002-05:00

What you are expecting from another is certainly not unreasonable...

WOOHOO!

... and yet you may be disappointed when all is said and done.

RATS!

Arts and Crafts: Oil Leak

2012-01-11T10:12:00.003-05:00

I got all the parts for my transfer case project. I will start it up again Friday night. Cross your fingers. Lights the candles. Pray to your Gods and Atheist non-god substitutes. I hope the weather stays reasonable warm. Knuckle banging in the cold really sucks.

America's Long Dark Night Is Ending

2012-01-06T14:14:00.002-05:00

The news tells us that a Kennedy will be running to accept Barny Frank's vacant seat in the Congress next year. Thank the god-like equivalent that Atheists pray to. America cannot survive without a Kennedy in the national government.

It will be pointless for anyone to run against him since he is a Kennedy, the seat is his for the taking. We don't even need to bother with an election. Is he old enough to be annointed President yet? The current incumbent has taught us that experience is irrelevant. And besides, he is a Kennedy. His royal blood line is all that we need to know about his fitness to rule.

It is so humble of him to agree to accept a post in the House instead of pushing out Kerry to jump right into the Senate. No doubt there are at least 30 loyal Democrats and 15 loyal Republican Senators who would gladly step aside for the honor of having a Kennedy voting on behalf of his state.

I endevour to hold ill will against no man, yet despite decades of self-destructive behavior and the accumulation of violent enemies, I feel that the Kennedy family cannot die off fast enough to free the rest of us from the promise of their personal brand of despotism and entitlement to national office.

Arts and Crafts: Fixing the Oil leak.

2012-01-06T08:13:00.005-05:00

You may remember that the Transfer Case (TC) on my 2003 Toyota 4Runner has been leaking. The previous leak fix (JB Weld permanently covering the drain plug) is still holding. But now I have a seepage coming from the seal between the transfer case and the electric actuator on the TC.

According to the internet, this is a very common problem and expensive fix. Approximately $1700 in labor costs and hundreds of dollars in parts. In some models, the seal is integral with the actuator so you have to replace the whole thing. I got lucky. My model has an O-ring ($5) that I can replace.

I won't be replacing any of the other seals since they are all still working fine.

To separate the actuator from the TC, I will have to drop the whole TC and split it in half since the actuator is held on by some clips that are accessible from inside the TC. I wish I could find a new back half of the case so I could restore a fully functional drain plug too instead of the JB Weld fix. But that is not possible. Everywhere I look wants me to buy a whole new or used TC ($2700 from Toyota, $650 used). There just are not enough 4th Gen 4Runners in junk yards.

Risks:
1. Dropping the TC may result in it falling on my head and killing me. More likely, it will just leave me in a vegetative state (as in coma, not Florida) trapped within my body, staring out at the world while an underpaid Medicare nurse blows smoke rings in my face for the next two or three decades until a government bureaucrat decides that my quality of life is insufficient to warrant my further care. Or I will die from infected rat bites. I suppose I could reduce this risk by wearing a safety helmet, but then I would look like a dork. I would rather take the risk. I will be wearing gloves and eye protection.

2. One or more of the bolts that should easily come off, won't. It will remain frozen as if welded on or it will snap off, making it impossible to reassemble. I will pray that it isn't a combination of the two that prevents me from completely taking it apart (frozen bolts) and prevents me from putting it back together (snapped off bolts). The Stealership LOVES being paid to correct your mistakes.

3. One or more of the seals that is now functioning correctly will be disturbed by all that disassembly and assembly and will start leaking. I won't notice the new leak until I get it all put back together.

4. The seam between the front and rear of the TC is sealed with orange sealant that forms the gasket in place. It might leak when I am finished.

5. The new O-ring, once installed may not correct the leak. That's why they make that black silicon sealant in a tube. Of course, I will have to take apart the whole thing again to apply it.

6. Once I have it all put back together and everything is working fine, one of the other seals may still fail in a few weeks. Like the rest of us, they aren't getting any younger.

A more timid person might just not take those risks and pay the Stealership to do the work. It is just too much money to do that. I would rather live with the slow leak than pay up to $3000 to make it go away. But I am willing to pay $5 for parts and the better part of my weekend.

I will post pictures later so that I can amaze all those metrosexuals out there who can't imagine fixing their own cars and to entertain all those professional mechanics with my rookie errors.

UPDATE: No auto repair this weekend. It makes sense to replace all the seals if I'm going to all this trouble. I have to special order them. They won't be in until next week at the earliest. In the mean time, I plan to pick up some scrap aluminum and practice my brazing.

And then there is the Gun show in Richmond this weekend. It would be nice to have a blogger meet like the guys in Indiana do, but before I could do that, I would have to have some friends. :(

Obama Out-Pauls Paul.

2012-01-05T11:41:00.004-05:00

Using his authority as Dictator-in-Chief, Obama is announcing today his plans to gut the Defense Department, starting with a change to the National Military Strategy to reduce our fictional arbitrary capacity to fight two wars at the same time into a fictional and arbitrary capacity to fight only one hypothetical war.

Good News: America will save a bundle on defense spending over the next ten years, starting next year. Obama will gut the Defense Department like the bloated fish that it is.

Bad news: None of those fish guts will be returned to the taxpayers, nor will the deficit get any smaller. Obama will just spend the savings on other things. For instance, another billion for Hamas. 80 more golf outings. Another two weeks on the Riviera for Michelle and 135 of her closest friends. And some really juicy kickbacks to Democratic party campaign coffers from corporations that will be getting some bailouts, loan guarantees and stimulus.

Ambivalent News: "Conservative" Republicans will be apoplectic that our bloated Defense Department isn't spending enough to "keep America strong". While vigorously campaigning about the rest of the bloated Washington bureaucracy and out of control spending.

Good News: America will still have the capability to fight two hypothetical wars at the same time (if they are small enough).

Bad News: If the Soviets push through the Fulda Gap at the same time North Korea kicks off their reunification plan, we won't have enough conventional forces to do anything about it.

Good News: We still have plenty of Nukes and that would put a damper on things real quick.

Bad news: All modern politicians are a bunch of pussies and wouldn't dare use nukes for anything except blasting asteroids on a collision path with Earth. And then, they would insist that all the safety protocols were still in place and they wouldn't use enough to get the job done (like we have a shortage of the things).

Good News: None of Obama's plans for defense cuts will happen until next year since this year's Defense Authorization Act is already signed. Obama might not be in office next year. The next non-Paul president will adjust the savings to keep pace with inflation.

Politics aside: Ignore the people running for office. The fact is, the military is bloated way beyond any rational needs for national defense. We can easily cut at least 1/2 of everything and still have a huge and very capable force. We can completely stop buying new stuff and still have enough modern equipment to easily defeat all planned enemies for another ten years. Then we can take another 5 years to rebuild whatever is modern then and still be way ahead of the rest of the world.

The MUST do of national defense: Being ready to fight hypothetical wars is all well and good. You can make a very credible argument that being prepared is what keeps the bad guys within their own borders. But the one bill that must be paid is the bill for the war you already fought. The broken men and women from Iraq, Afghanistan, Grenada, Panama, Vietnam and Korea need to be taken care of. They need to be made whole to the best extent that 21st century America can provide. We need to continue research and development on prosthetics, Borg implants, PTSD and traumatic brain injuries. Governments can change national priorities and defense policies on a whim. The men and women who returned broken from accomplishing the last policy cannot change their minds and take their lives down a different path. They are committed. Our government needs to be equally committed.

O'Donnel to Tea Party: Would you mind retrieving that soap bar for me?

2012-01-04T12:53:00.003-05:00

I just heard on the news broadcast that Bachmann has indeed dropped from the race and Christine O'Donnell, speaking on behalf of the Tea party, is endorsing Mitt Romney.

1. The Tea Party is not a monolithic organization with hierarchical leadership that answers to any one person and is certainly not the personal property of Ms. O'Donnell to dispose of at her whim. She is not their elected leader or authorized to speak on their behalf. She did not start the tea party, she just pandered to it for votes 2 years ago.

2. The Local Tea parties have been very careful to not endorse any candidate because that would violate their 501C3 status. They simply get together and decide as individuals to give their support to one candidate or another based on whatever motivates them that day. Most of them are still motivated by the desire to end business as usual in Washington DC and expect Mitt Romney is entirely willing to continue business and usual.

Dear Conservatives: You don't have a candidate in this election. There are four establishment Republicans and one Libertarian. you can vote protest. you can vote circus. You can even vote party loyalty. The best you can hope for is to ignore the presidential race and go vote for your local candidates who promise to be conservative this time for sure. There will also be some local referendum that might be beneficial to the population, unless it offends some liberal judge who will invalidate it if it passes.

Math is Hard

2012-01-04T10:22:00.003-05:00

The image above is screen capped from the Desmoines Register this morning.

I found it odd that there was only an 8 vote difference between Santorum and Mitt but that resulted in a full 10th of a percentage. So I did the maths myself (well, EXCEL did it).

It seems Mitt and "Rick2" indeed tied with 24.6% each. In fact, you have to come up with some pretty twisted rounding rules to force them to be different.

Romney: 0.245573701%
Santorum: 0.245508247%

Paul also seemed to suffer from an unaccountable rounding error. his actual percentage of votes was 0.214515971 which MicroSoft rounds to 21.5%.

The other entries are accurate.

Is the complex process of determining percents really that arcane to the writers at the Desmoines Register? I realize that people go into Journalism because they hate math and didn't want to do any in college, but really! That is 4th grade stuff.

Iowa Hot Wash

2012-01-04T08:57:00.005-05:00

The first primary is now over.

It is a tie between Mitt and Rick. The news really should not use just first names, particularly in a race where there are two "Ricks". Santorum came out of nowhere to tie for lead of the Republican field. With Ron Paul a distant but respectable third place.

As Vox point out, nearly 80% of the voters selected some form of status quo.

Of course the race isn't over yet. There are still contests in 56 other states to go.

It is time for some of the fringe candidates to fall out of the race. Bachmann will likely announce today. Hunstman should announce before the week is out, but he may be holding on until his last place loss in New Hampshire.

Ron Paul's popularity continues to grow. At this rate, he should be electable in 2044.

Vox's site is in an uproar about how stupid the American people are. Without a doubt, many Americans are indeed stupid. But most manage to get by and it is a rotten bunch of sour grapes to now decry the stupidity of the same people you were counting on for support just last week. I guess it is OK to be stupid as long as you are stupid for Ron Paul.

Vox is also recommending a third party run for Ron Paul, since he will most assuredly fail to win the Republican Primary.

For a smart guy, he can be pretty dense some times. If Ron Paul cannot win a simple majority in his own party primary, most of which are open and even Democrats and independents can participate, what makes you think he would fare any better in a general election against the two major party candidates? He would likely get even fewer total votes than in the primary. 1. The democrats voting in the Republican primary are going to vote for the One in the General election so RP will lose their "spoiler" votes. 2. The loyal Republicans will vote party unity so RP will lose their votes. 3. People like me who support RP in the primary will not vote for him in the general if he goes third party because I cannot stand a cheater. He accepted his chances by running in the republican primary to be the Republican candidate and lost (presumably). That is the end of it. By continuing to run, he splits the Republican vote and makes a close election easier for the Democratic opponent to win. We can count on this being a close election.

I am further infuriated by the idea that RP might be so arrogant that he thinks America can not get along without him and he simply must keep running until the stupid American voters wake up and see how wonderful he is. There is no doubt that he has enough supporters to keep sending him money so he can keep running, year after year, at no cost to himself. What an ego. Another typical career politician. As long as he has an unlimited supply of other people's money, he will keep spending it on his own campaign. The only silver lining is that those contributions are voluntary.

Science Rescues Humanity, Again

2012-01-03T10:03:00.002-05:00

This story tells us that Science has made a major breakthrough in ending the global shortage of male sperm.

Of course, the procedure only works for mice so far, so at least the shortage of vermin sperm has been fixed. No longer will the vermin population have to rely on cheap, naturally produced mouse sperm. Science can now produce mouse sperm in hygienic laboratories for only a million dollars a shot. Of course, we can expect that number to fall to only a few thousand dollars once mouse sperm production rises to meet the demand.

The real breakthrough on this came when one scientist discovered the process that the male body already used to manufacture sperm:

Scientists grew the sperm by surrounding the germ cells in a special compound called agar jelly to create an environment similar to that found in testicles

I can hardly wait for science to tackle the growing problem of Cockroach infertility. There are no limits to what can be accomplished by an unlimited amount of other people's money.

Hate Crimes History Repeating

2012-01-03T09:13:00.003-05:00

This story tells us that a local "firebug" is launching "Molotov Cocktails" at a local Islamic center.

As I recall, the last time this happened, it was a member of the Islamic center attacking his own "center" in order to create the impression that America hated Islam.

A few points:
1. The term "firebug" used by the post is too cutsy for this story. Arsonist, terrorist, or violent offender are all better descriptions.
2. While most Americans do hate Islam, the people who hate Islam the most are also the most well mannered and law-abiding, so they do not throw firebombs, or attack Islamic people on the streets.
3. Of course, NYC police are investigating this as a hate crime. Islam is a protected class in NYC so crimes against them matter more than crimes against white people. That should tell you something if you are a white person living in NYC.

The Positive Side of a Ron Paul Victory

2011-12-29T14:50:00.002-05:00

If he wins the White House, will he go away? He has been undeterred by all of his previous losses. Perhaps a victory, followed by a four year term of incompetence and a record number of veto overrides will get him to shut up and stop running for president.

Virginia Elections Update.

2011-12-29T13:08:00.004-05:00

Responses by the candidates who failed to comply with Virginia election law says a lot about them and what we can expect from them as Office holders.

1. The Newt, failed to get the required number of signatures since over 1,000 of the ones he provided were fake. His campaign tried to fraudulently submit campaign materials, and thereby defraud the other candidates of fair selection in the primaries. He got caught. His response: Blame a subordinate and call Virginia's election laws out of touch and he should be permitted to be on the ballot anyway. Is ignoring the existing law because it didn't work out for you after you got caught cheating really a conservative approach?

2. Governor Perry from Texas also failed to get the required number of signatures. His response: Sue the Virginia elections board to force them to put his name on the ballot. Is ignoring the law and attempting to get your way through judicial fiat a conservative approach? What sort of judges can we expect a hypothetical President Perry to appoint? Judges who will fairly look at the law or ones that will overturn law to give him what he wants whenever the law is inconvenient for him?

It doesn't occur to either of them that they can win the nomination without winning in Virginia, especially if Ron Paul absorbs the Virginia electors. That may have been Bachmann's strategy all along, though I suspect it was really just not enough horsepower in her campaign to organize the required petition drive. I wonder what she is going to do with all the leftover money she is raising? She certainly isn't spending it on her campaign. Nor do I think she is supporting an out of wedlock child fathered by one of her campaign staffers. I would hope that she uses it to help out some like-minded congressional and Senate races where it can really make a difference.

NFA Device Update

2011-12-28T09:25:00.003-05:00

Over 2 months ago, I purchased a silencer at a gun show. Then I turned in the paperwork to the BATFE to get their rubber stamp permission to own that device. I expected to have it by Christmas.

I called the BATFE a few days ago to discover that the current processing time is 6 months.

Six months for that bureaucratic waste of air to stamp a form and send it back to me. They can already do a complete background check on me in under 30 minutes using their own on-line data base that they use for all gun purchases. It would take less time to get a full security clearance background check and they aren't doing any of that kind of thing.

One would suspect that the US government is, by an act of policy, intentionally restricting the ability to American citizens to possess such devices.

If presidential candidates are still mulling over which federal agencies they should promise to disband, I would like to propose one.

BATFE
Alcohol: Legal to produce, possess and consume without limits. Why is there a federal agency to regulate this?
Tobacco: Legal to produce, possess and consume without limits. Why is there a federal agency to regulate this?
Firearms: Legal to produce, possess and use without federal limits. Why is there a federal agency to regulate this? Even the purposes behind the National Firearms Act needs to be revisited. Is any valid puplic purpose being served by restricting the kinds of firearms the public may own? I say not.
Explosives: Again, lots of them are in use legally and without restrictions with nothing bad happening. On top of that, the chemistry to produce your own high explosives is not that complicated. So really bad guys can make their own without any regulation or oversight by the government. Local laws are alr3eady sufficient to regulate the possession and use of various classes of explosives. No federal interest at all.

You Must be THIS Tall to Ride in Virginia

2011-12-27T10:38:00.005-05:00

The deadline for applications for a candidate to participate in the Virginia primary has passed.

The Republican primary it seems will only have two names on it:
Ron Paul and Mitt Romney.

Newt and Perry failed to gather enough signatures and the others didn't even try.

Virginia Law requires candidates in the primmary to gather at least 400 signatures from each of the 11 congressional districts in Virginia. Paul and the other career self-serving politician Romney easily did this.

Newt, being the sore loser announced he will conduct a write-in campaign in the Virginia Primary. Small problem: Virginia election laws don't permit write-ins on the Primary. DOH.

Romney got his signatures by using the establishment republican calling network to crank out a few thousand signatures without even visiting the state. Similarly, Ron Paul released his minions of flying monkeys to shopping malls and gun shows around the state and got the job done.

I wrote an email to the Bachmann campaign a few weeks ago asking if she had got her petitions signed yet and I got no response. At this point I think we can write her off as a serious candidate.

So our system in Virginia may result in the Virginia primaries not counting for anything. If either Paul or Mitt wins in Virginia, it won't be an indicator of what the voting public really wants. It will just be an indicator of of who can win a hypothetical two-party race between Mitt and Paul. In Virginia, Mitt and Paul are pretty much in the same boat as the two guys that no one really wants as president, only slightly trailing Obama himself.

The problem for conservatives is that our favorite candidate, Generic Republican, didn't run. No matter who wins this next election, we lose again.

Keeping Score

2011-12-19T16:12:00.003-05:00

Bin Laden.
Qaddafi.
Mubarak.

And now Kim.

It is hard to argue with results like that.

If the Castros "die in their sleep" before the next election, I may have to vote for Obama.

Current Events, 15 Dec 2011

2011-12-15T08:23:00.004-05:00

WH OKs military detention of terrorism suspects
And by terrorism suspects, we mean US citizens.
And by Detain, we mean without warrants, Habeus Corpus, Trial by jury, Miranda warnings, or 5th amendment protections.

The White House is signing off on a controversial new law that would authorize the U.S. military to arrest and indefinitely detain alleged al Qaeda members or other terrorist operatives captured on American soil.

And by signing off, we mean metaphorical signing off, which is pointless. The President will literally sign off the bill when he turns it into a law after the house and Senate have agreed to it.

The ACLU is making lukewarm tut-tuts about this while contemplating how to rationalize the distribution of their private wealth to the Obama re-election campaign.

Satellite Takes Picture of Chinese Carrier on the Move

Although China insists the carrier is intended for research and training, its use has raised concern about the country’s military strength and its increasingly assertive claims over disputed territory.

No problem. We should take their word for it. Just like when they told us they were buying this to use as a floating casino and it would never put to sea.

Beijing has also said its carriers would be employed in international humanitarian efforts,

How very altruistic of them. Perhaps we should assist them by paying to install humanitarian missile launchers and radars on it.

Beijing is believed to be years away from being able to launch and recover aircraft from it as part of a carrier battle group.

Who writes this stuff? They have a carrier at sea. All they need to do take-offs and landings is ONE carrier enabled aircraft and all the carrier arresting and launching junk installed. They have had 11 years to do that. They don't even have to be particularly experienced at using it. They can buy an airplane from the Russians today and launch it tomorrow. The Russians have airplanes in stock that were designed to launch from than carrier. They can hire a team of Russian contractors today to check their hookups and give the pilots advice on how to do it. They can even hire Russian pilots. Where do they come up with this "years away" crap? Are they just taking the Chinese word on this too?

Nursing Home Roof Collapses, Two Die

Two people were killed Wednesday after part of a vacant nursing home collapsed on them on Detroit’s west side.

If two people were inside, it wasn't "vacant". The dead guys are assumed to have been searching for scrap, or what people in white communities call "stealing other people's stuff".

“We would like to urge residents that this is extremely dangerous way to make a living and we would discourage it at all costs,” said Atara.

Not that it is illegal or anything. Not that Detroit cares about enforcing its laws.
Will they discourage it by putting high fences around abandoned buildings? No. Electric fences? No. Hiring guards or full time police response? No. That would cost too much. By "at all costs" she just means "we will mention it in the news".

No word on if the dead salvage experts caused their own deaths by removing structural supports in the wrong order.

Firearm Sales Way Up During Holiday Season

If you’ve pulled the trigger on a new firearm this holiday season, join the club.

As in your neighborhood shooting club, because faster than a speeding bullet, guns are going out the door.

Well, not right away, of course — there is that 10-day waiting period, 11 here at TDS Guns in Rocklin, where Bob Norgard wasn’t caught off-guard.

Dear God. That is some awful writing. Four years of professional journalism school and that is the best you can do?

I would like to do a thorough analysis of the data in this story, but there isn't any. It talks about the National Firearms Association, anecdotal experience from one gun store and FBI reports, but then doesn't tell us what any of the real data is, so no fact checking is possible.

I can tell you this: There is no freaking way possible that gun sales are higher today than two years ago. Two years ago the shelves were empty. Today, the shelves are fully stocked. The same for ammo and reloading components. So it isn't possible that any records are being set.

TDS Guns says at least three women from the area have come in to buy a gun because as one victim told CBS13: “I’m gonna be ready for the next time

Typical. Most gun stores should have three customers like that every month. In a country as large as ours, with young people growing up, there is a constant refresh rate of people buying a gun for the first time. It isn't even newsworthy.

there is that 10-day waiting period, 11 here at TDS Guns in Rocklin

Ha. That still cracks me up. Good luck in the zombie apocalypse, losers.

Ron Paul is Anti-American

2011-12-14T14:43:00.003-05:00

OK, I admit it. I'm just trolling with that one. I don't really think he is anti-American.

I have written extensively already why Ron Paul is not my preferred option for President. I have just thought of another reason.

Who would be his running mate? Who would be the perfect bookend for the Party of One? Would RP sacrifice his political purity and select a running mate who is more liberal than himself (everyone else) and thereby bring down his own stature in the eyes of other purists? Or will he select an unknown who has never before held public office but is ideologically unsullied?

My guess: He will forgo having a running mate. He will announce that although having a vice president is Constitutionally permissible, it isn't required.

Also, I think you can all stop calling him "doctor". He has been a career politician for the past 20 years. I doubt he is currently licensed to practice medicine on anyone. Though in the Libertopia, no one needs a license to practice medicine since the marketplace will weed out incompetence more surely than the current system. He led his son into politics also (not medicine) so just like the Kennedy's, Clintons, Gore's and the Bush's, it is an unavoidable conclusion that Paul is a career beltway insider. He is just another incumbent that we need to pry out of his cozy seat with a crow bar and return him to the general population so that a citizen representative can give this whole "representing" thing a try.

I would not be surprised to find that his unique political niche was granted to him by the others in power. Ron Paul has the freedom to be as crazy as he likes because he can depend on the entire rest of the House of representatives to never pass anything he wants. 100% purity. 0% effectiveness.

Still, if his name makes it to the ballot, I will vote for him. I can just as easily cringe while voting for a loser as I can doing the same for a liberal Republican. Then I can claim political purity in not being at fault for whatever mess either Omaba or Mitt-Newt-Perry gets us into in the next four years.

Elections are Coming... In Winter

2011-12-14T09:39:00.003-05:00

Yes. It is that time of year again. Time for women to cover up their attractive parts under layers of fat and clothing. Time to flip a coin over buying a snow blower or risk getting through the season without one again. Time to decide which candidate for national office is least hopelessly unqualified to be President of the United States of America so we can all pretend he was our first choice all along and enthusiastically support him against the Incumbent in Chief.

It is getting harder and harder to take pride in being an American.

According to the news display in the elevator this morning (all the news you need in 140 characters or less), Newt is vowing to evangelical leaders that he will be faithful to his wife. This promise might mean a little more if he had a history of ever keeping it before. Don't conservative Christian voters EVER get tired of slick career politicians telling them what they want to hear in exchange for votes and money?

On the train platform this morning, a man with a clipboard asked me if I wanted to sign a petition to help get Newt on the primary ballot in Virginia. I answered, "no thank you". Two weeks ago, I met a similar guy from Ron Paul's campaign at the Richmond Gun show. They had gone to all the trouble to buy a table at the event. So I signed his petition. This process reminds me that the Incumbent in chief won his Senate seat by challenging the petitions of all his opponents and got them removed from the ballot, thereby running unopposed. A major party normally doesn't have any trouble getting enough signatures on the ballot to ensure that their favored nominee gets on the ballot. I would be interested in finding out how many signatures each candidate has in each state to see if they have so little support that they won't even appear on the ballot. That would be a better indicator of support than the current polls.

Advice to Grerp

2011-12-14T09:29:00.003-05:00

Grerp has some friends going through some trouble.

Been there. Done that. Left the country for a while.

I can't post this comment there because she has one of those difficult commenting schemes that requires by archaic browser (I.E. 7) to do things it was not designed to do (select a profile from a drop-down menue).

Additional unsolicited advice:

1. Don't see either one of them alone. Bring a sane person with you. Best if it is your husband.

2. There is nothing you can do to force them to be good and your good intentions can be manipulated by both of them.

3. While you cannot help them, they can certainly pull you down with them. Misery loves company. When people lose sight of what is important in their lives, they take a very short sighted view of what will make them happy in the moment. Harming you for their own amusement and emotional support is one way for them to do that.

4. Think of both of them as being sick right now with a deadly contagious disease.
you still care about them, but you don't want to catch what they have. So leave some chicken soup on their doorstep, ring the bell and run. In the future, one or both of them might be well enough to be your friend again. That is the best you can hope for. You can also pray that they don't damage their kids too much along the way.

5. If you feel the need to take sides, side with your own family. Until this is settled, they are both damaged, toxic people.

Current Events, 13 Dec 2011

2011-12-13T12:29:00.004-05:00

All from links on Drudge Report.

Axelrod on Newt: "The higher a monkey climbs on the pole the more you can see his butt."

I seriously doubt Axelrod would have used that particular metaphor to describe his previous boss. Obama is currently the highest on the metaphorical flagpole, but any association with him being a monkey would be racist.

Obama calls on Iran to give back downed US drone

Pretty darned stupid letting it fly over Iran in the first place. Every military with a technological edge wrestles with the risk of losing that technology if it falls into enemy hands. B-29 crews had detailed instructions on how to destroy their Norton Bomb sights. German U-boat captains had procedures to destroy code books. Churchill knew German bombers were on the way to bomb English cities and didn't alert the RAF because he didn't want the Germans to know we had broken their codes. But this stupid administration and the STUPID military that works for them send our best, shiny new recon drone over Iran. At the very least, we gave them a chance to try out all of their new remote control jamming technologies on our stuff. BASIC OPERATIONS RULE #1: Don't give away an advantage cheaply.

STUPID.

Obama to slash National Guard force on U.S.-Mexico border

Good. That isn't their job in the first place and according to sources, they weren't doing squat to slow illegal border crossings. Guarding the Borders is a full -time job. It requires a full time workforce that is staffed for full-time operations with the right equipment and the right training. The part of the US government that has that job is the US Border Patrol, not the National Guard. If the USBP is insufficiently staffed, then correct that problem, don't just shuffle in random people from other agencies.

Hurricane predictors admit they can’t predict hurricanes

William Gray and Phil Klotzbach say a look back shows their past 20 years of forecasts had no value.

And yet they stuck with it for 20 years. The good news is that they broke from traditional wisdom and came clean instead of sticking with it until retirement while demanding more resources to "refine their models". My guess is that they got tired of being wrong all the time. There is only so much you can blame on El Nino and El Nina.

The Future of the Internet

2011-12-12T10:54:00.004-05:00

The internet continues to grow, but there are some trends that cannot be ignored.

Trend 1. Streaming. It is estimated that 2/3rds of the total bandwidth of the internet are consumed by Netflix. It is inescapable that Netflix doesn't pay for 2/3rds of the bandwidth maintenance. Nor do Netflix customers. The obvious conclusions are that the people who really do pay for the hardware needed to build the internet will have to create some other creative way to collect revenues needed from Netflix customers. I foresee the establishment of connection plans where you pay as you use. The more bandwidth you use, the more you pay. Similar to what we now see with cell phone data plans.

Trend 2: Identity assurity. Anonymity has been a great boon in the internet to porn operators and bloggers alike. But the .gov doesn't like it. And the .com doesn't need it. The future trend is to eliminate anonymous net usage. In the near future, you will have to use login credentials that can trace all internet access and usage back to you. The real you.

Trend 3: Tax Revenue integration. Internet sales will have to pay to play. Their revenues are too tempting a target for cash hungry states that depend of sales tax revenues. One way or another, the states will force internet businesses to collect and deposit those taxes.

Trend 4: Social Networking Boom-Bust. Facebook-Myspace-googlespace is killing off bloggers. They will themselves be killed off as people discover that posting all of your personal secrets to the internet may not be such a good idea. Ans since the social media are associated with your real names, you cannot just shut it down and start a new one.

Cheap is good enough... mostly

2011-12-12T10:24:00.001-05:00

Ganked from Home on the Range

All the news that is unfit to print.

2011-12-12T08:18:00.006-05:00

A strange blog calling itself the “Conservative America Online" has posted a story accusing Michelle Obama of having an affair with a Secret Service Agent.

My Comments:

1. You really can’t use the word “Secret” in a headline where you are telling everyone the details. It kind of goes against what “secret” means.

2. I suppose that to black men (and women), Mrs Obama has got it going on, but I don’t even consider her in my species. Zero attraction potential. I am guessing that Secret Service agents, being young, attractive, fit and employed males have lots of other opportunities in the DC metro area. So the story is not credible on its face. Let's face it, Michelle is no Lady Di.

3. Far more likely, if she were having an affair, it would be with some staffer that she brought with her from Chicago and provided a job to. Sort of like the other Obama.

4. It is also not credible that she “sneaks” out of the White House, just to get away. The First Lady of the United States of America cannot just sneak anywhere. All of her get-aways are carefully scripted. When she really needs to get away, she does it with massive taxpayer support to some out of the country resort location.

5. There is no comparison between FLOTUS and Herman Cain. Cain is a candidate. Michelle is not. She is free to conduct her own affairs as she sees fit and it only reflects on her husband’s reputation as a wuss. But that was something we already knew. It won’t matter one bit to those people that are going to vote for him anyway. Cain, on the other hand, will depend on the votes of people who do care about such things. He dropped out of the race because it was evident that his potential supporters and voters had lost confidence in him.

6. I understand that FLOTUS is a public figure and therefore immune to the protections that slander and libel rules afford to the rest of us. But there seems to be some level of basic decency that would cause polite people to withhold such speculation from open comment in the media (dead tree and internet). It is a reflection on the coarseness of our society and of the tackiness of the author himself to have posted this in the first place. It is further saddening to accept the reality that national politics really is more about the circus than the governance of the nation.

As usual, the comments are also instructive:

Anonymous said...
Total rubbish.

Its hard to give it any credence when the writer misspells unsubstantiated not once, but three times.
December 9, 2011 7:34 PM

Right. Because we all know that spelling is the best indicator of truth.

Then there were a lot of these:

Anonymous said...
I find it hard to believe also ...... someone would have to be really hard-up to be diddling the pet gorilla.
December 9, 2011 7:36 PM

This one is also typical of the rumor that POTUS is a homosexual.

Anonymous said...
since Obama is himself a closet "pole smoker" I'm not too surprised.
December 10, 2011 10:34 AM

Such things are entertaining and titillating but they are not relevant to Obama’s supporters or his political enemies. The presidential race will not be decided by such things. Obama has done many illegal things while in office and his cabinet officers have done far more. If re-elected, there is a near-certainty of the continuation of the fundamental change to America that Obama promised. And, let’s face it, a Newt or Romney can at best hold back the collapse by a few years. Even the last, best, hope of the politically pure, Ron Paul, would at best, intentionally bring on collapse with the best of intentions, but with the same result.

The smart money is on hunkering down. Get self-sufficient. Stop squandering wealth and save a little for a rainy day. Winter is indeed coming.

Another Reason to Hate Christmas

2011-12-09T08:08:00.003-05:00

From XKCD.com

It's the same 20 songs over and over and every modern musical artist thinks they have to release their own version of them.

Damn Boomers ruin everything.

People of Undetermined Race Acting Badly.

2011-12-08T12:27:00.003-05:00

Just more youths being bad. No way to tell what race they are or that it even matters. This could happen anywhere to anyone. You smug homeschoolers? This could happen to you. Amish? You aren't immune either. Pointless violence is an inseparable part of the human condition.

...New York’s Bravest employed a truck-mounted deluge gun -- a water cannon ...

No. It was a firehose. Changing its name to "weaponize" it doesn't make it a "cannon".

The girl, who identified herself as a sophomore at the school, said the incident escalated from a "he-said, she-said" over picking sides in a gang dispute at school.

Typical bullying. When will schools stop that humiliating practice of choosing sides? Someone always gets picked last and neighborhood-wide violence is inevitable. I can't tell you all the times this happened to me.

Some of the comments are also interesting. Some commenters think that the source of the problem is "not enough police". Others blame libertarian commenters for wanting to privatize police and fire departments.

The parents kept the girl home from school for several days to keep her safe. But it never occured to them to take her out of the public schools permanently, or even send her out of state, for her own safety. This would have put school officials in a difficult spot. The girl would have been forced to return to school to avoid truancy charges, and then would have been expelled for fighting on school grounds.

Slippery Slope is Slippery

2011-12-08T09:17:00.003-05:00

I heard this morning on the radio that the new Defense authorization act that was recently passed in the Senate by a near-unanimous vote includes some interesting language.

1. It amends the Uniform Code of Military Justice to remove the law against sodomy. This was considered to be the change that was required to permit homosexuals to serve openly. But it never was all that important because normally the sodomy provision was only used to prosecute rapists and child molesters, not consenting homos. Further, it has long been considered "unenforceable" since state anti-sodomy laws were struck down by the Supreme Court, many years ago.

2. The laws against bestiality was also removed. Evidently, there is a strong and active military bestiality lobby somewhere that has been quietly working for this change. And they got almost all of the Republicans to go along with it because "they all support a strong national defense".

3. But heterosexual adultery is still forbidden.

4. It just goes to prove that law makers still do not read the laws they approve. It is a "defense bill" so everyone supports it.

5. Bell could not be reached for comment.

Observations From the Cruise

2011-12-01T15:49:00.004-05:00

I saw many interesting things:

1. When did the brothers start line dancing? Yes. Black men and women line dancing in the ship disco. No Country Western Music.

2. There are a whole lot of hugely obese black men and women taking cruises. I saw very few of them in what I would call "fighting shape".

3. Lots and lots of kids on board. Many more than expected. At what it costs per head to cruise, I would have expected more parents to find other arrangements for the little ones.

4. We stopped in Freeport and Nassau. The first was a dirty third world country. The latter was a clean "colonial" country. They were both the same country. Hmmmm.

5. There was obviously no social safety net. There were lots of churches and lots of poor people selling all sorts of crap to the tourists. They couldn't possibly be making much money that way. There were also a lot of people employed as "hawkers", steering the gullible tourists to one vendor instead of another with equally tacky and useless items. We don't have many of those people in the USA because our social safety nets ensure no one has to work that hard for so little reward.

6. Lots of drugs available. The other passengers I talked to universally told me that local drug dealers attempted to sell them products. I must look like a Fed. no one tried to sell me drugs.

7. Re-entry through US customs made no attempt to search our bags for drugs, Cuban Cigars, or exotic animals.

8. I find it strange that the cruise companies treat their customers like easy marks instead of like valued customers, and yet they get plenty of repeat business. Most of the people we met had been on several cruises before. The same thing for the off-ship activities. Get off the boat and you are targeted by slicky-boys looking to take you for every penny they can squeeze.

9. Vendors in the Bahamas will gladly take your US dollars at one-to-one exchange for their own money. In fact, that is also the official exchange rate. Almost as if they clearly understood that as a nation, they cannot exist apart from American tourism.

10. No one in the Bahamas gave me any change other than US bills and coins. But I did get a UAE Dirham at a South Carolina Gas station instead of a quarter (currently worth 36 cents). If I had anywhere to spend such a coin, I actually made out better. But since I can't spend it anywhere within 5000 miles, it is worthless. This is a lesson for all those hoarders of gold and silver who think it is a good investment if the economy collapses. It is only good if someone else wants it more than you do.

11. "All-inclusive" doesn't mean everything is included. We had mandatory tips and gratuities added to our bill including a "room fee". If it is automatically billed and mandatory, just include it in the price and stop harassing me over it. $75 for parking.

12. Internet and phone service are parts of modern life. But accessing the network on ship is prohibitively expensive. $9/minute for cell phone calls and text messages. $150 for 4 hours of internet usage. Every hotel in the USA gives this stuff away for free. Cruise ships need to also.

13. Pay-per-view. Similarly, every hotel in America sells pay-per-view channels. The ship doesn't. Every room is already hard-wired with a TV. The tech investment would pay for itself on the first day. Why don't they do it?

14. Salt water swimming pools? Really? That the best you can do? No wonder only the children were using it.

15. No Americans on the crew anywhere. Everyone spoke reasonable English but the staff was multi-ethnic from various countries around the world that do not recognize the USA minimum wage laws or union employment standards. Ship's registry: Panama.

16. BEWBS. Lots of them. All kinds. Dressed for warm weather. Fortunately I have my skills on preventing sexual harassment recently refreshed so I knew not to stare at any one rack for too long and also not to objectify any particular funbags.

Relationship Observations.

2011-11-30T08:02:00.002-05:00

Res Ipsa posted this comment in the last section. It sparked a stray thought in my mind that I thought was suitable for a post.

$8.50/drink?
What cruise line was this? They need the bad press.

Carnival.

After being married for 14 years I've just accepted that the days of doing just the stuff I want are over. After 25 years I assume you just give up all hope of doing anything you want. I was looking for an upside for our prof. I could have pointed out that the anniversary is one of the two times a year that a married man gets sex but I thought that cruel.

I have learned from cruel experience not to comment on my marriage in this blog, so the following comments are meant to be taken as observations on marriage in general.

A marriage, in the broadest sense, is a political, economic, biological, genetic, romantic, religious, and companionship partnership. Each marriage may be stronger at some points than others and each can be failing on several levels and still be a success overall. Thus, couples who are medically incapable of sex can have a good marriage. Couples who prefer to not be around each other can have a good marriage.

The choice to get what you want out of marriage or within it is your own, subject to the limitations we all face.

Most couples today do not enter into marriage with a full understanding of what it is, what its binding obligations are or what it is capable of producing. This is why women in particular grow tired of it when it stops meeting their internal demands for the eternal good date.

The secret to a long marriage is simple: Just don't quit. If you wait long enough, either you or your spouse will die and you will have succeeded.

If you want the secret to a long HAPPY marriage, you will need to ask someone else. I don't have a clue. I suspect it has something to do with multiple partners each filling one of your needs (affection, distribution of labor, financial security, lust) and/or lots of alcohol. Being old, pudgy, not wealthy and generally unattractive, I am forced to depend on the latter.

I'm Back.

2011-11-28T21:31:00.000-05:00

Let's just pretend this didn't happen.

Cruising

2011-11-21T19:52:00.003-05:00

I am taking a cruise with the wife to celebrate the fact that neither one of us has managed to kill the other for 25 years. Don't knock it, it is harder than it looks.

No internet.
No phones.
No TV.

Posting will be light. Try to get along without me. If you start Jonesing for some Quality Hale, read some back issues.

Christian Voting.

2011-11-18T10:46:00.003-05:00

Do Christians have a moral imperative to vote? Considering that for most of human history and in most of the Christian world, voting isn't possible, I would have to say "no".

But even in the limited case of 21st century America, the answer is still "no". If you are completely satisfied in your Christian conscience that the patterns and direction of your government are acceptable, then there is no need to vote to change them. Further, being Christian does not mean you must be stupid or suicidal. If you reasonably conclude that your vote is irrelevant, then you are under no obligation to go through the motions. Further, if you rationally believe your vote will be penalized, you are free in Christianity to place the lives and safety of your family higher than the civil order of the larger society.

For the Christian conservative who lives in a dominantly liberal district, his one conservative vote adds nothing. He is still going to get a liberal representative. Voting is futile and he has no obligation to participate in it. For the Christian liberal in a dominant liberal area, they are prayerfully thanking God for the election of their favored candidate and their one additional vote adds nothing. Thus, using their time more effectively supporting their family, supporting charitable works or even praying is more fruitful from a Christian POV than voting.

It is only in the rare case where the difference between the candidates is starkly drawn Good vs Evil and your one vote might make the difference in a close margin where you can possibly make the claim that there is a Christian moral obligation to participate.

But if you make the argument that you have a moral obligation to vote, then you also have the same moral obligation to support your favored candidate to the best of your ability, not limited to sacrificially giving them all of your wealth and extra time. A moral imperative is not limited to just doing those things that are easy.

Note: I can't post comments to Simon's site. The scrips and codes he uses don't work on my browser. I am forced to select a profile, but the drop down menu doesn't drop down.

I am so confused

2011-11-18T08:54:00.000-05:00

Honestly. I don't know what to make of this.

Women are Crazy

2011-11-17T13:38:00.002-05:00

According to this story, 1 in 4 women are taking prescription drugs for mental disorders.

That is all? I would have guessed a lot higher.

I have known for a long time that ALL women are insane though many of them hide it very well. Most can even function in society without open displays of their crazy-hood. But look deep enough and you will find it.

Occupy DC MIA (updated)

2011-11-15T22:23:00.008-05:00

I finally got a chance to drop in on the Occupy DC group at McPherson Park in DC. I could not trust the reports from the legacy media and had to see it for myself. You won't believe it either.

Nothing but the same bunch of homeless people we normally see. No tents. No signs. No sign that there had ever been any "occupation" going on there.

But I did find a bunch of fat moochers.

And it's not like they were getting ready to hibernate. These fat F**ks live on a steady diet of bread crusts, french fries and potato chips. They can't be troubled to run away from predators and wouldn't even recognize one. This is what living in the city will do to you.

UPDATE 16 November 2011: I don't understand this. The Washington Examiner is headlining that the DC city council is backing the Occupy protestors to stay in McPherson park. There is also an editorial calling for the removal of the protestors form the park. But I was just there yesterday and there are no protestors. WTF is going on?

UPDATE2: OOPS. Overhead google Earth pictures confirm it seems I was in nearby "Franklin Park". There may still be hippies and moochers in McPherson Square. I will try to get back there next week.

I think I see your problem right there:

Tales From the Gun Show

2011-11-12T15:35:00.004-05:00

Gun show at the Richmond Raceway this weekend. Been there. Done that. Got the hand stamp for re-admission.

I didn't buy anything, but had a few share-worthy observations.

1. Overheard young boy talking to father: We always come to this but you never buy anything.

My dad never took me to a gun show. Until I took him to one just a few years ago, he thought the gun show was some guy who sells guns out of a motel room.

2. For the WTF file. I saw an M-60 machine Gun for $16,000. Semi-automatic only. Why on God's Green Earth would anyone bother to waste the resources to produce a machine gun that only shoots semi auto? It is too heavy for hunting. It's accuracy sucks so you aren't going to win any awards with it. It's single biggest attraction, aside from being able to lay down a final protective fire line out to 600m is that is is massively cool to own a fully automatic belt-fed machine gun. As MGs go, the M-60 is one of my favorites and is one of the best produced by any nation in the 20th century. But a Semi-only version is just a mockery of everything that is good and holy about 7.62x51 shooting.

3. Addendum for the WTF file. I also saw a lot of full sized 1911 frames chambered for 22LR. Christ on a cracker! What kind of sick joke is this? You get all the weight and bulk of a full sized REAL handgun, and the cache of being manly enough to handle it, but you are only really carrying around a starter's pistol. I hope that anyone who ever used that gun to shoot a violent criminal get his gun taken away and the criminal uses it to beat some dignity and respect into the owner.

4. Adding to the discussion last week over the Taurus Judge, S&W has their own version now called the "Governor". I have no problem with any manufacturer following the market to produce something that their competitors have already dominated the market for. The S&W version costs $100 more. And I really think that the S&W marketing department was just phoning it in when they named this. Other S&W wheel guns are numbered, not given names. I hope the other gun manufacturers show a little originality or we will soon run out of public officials to name our guns.

5. A woman at the veterans' charity table called me "darling". She evidently hasn't heard about what happened to Cain. I will be watching to see if she runs for president 20 years from now, but we will probably both be dead by then. But if we are alive... CHA-CHING!

6. Add to Marketing Genius file: The gun show was occupying the big room, like they normally do at the Richmond Raceway. A few doors down, a smaller event room was occupied by the regional quilting show. So couples can pretend to be spending time together without actually having to do so.

Jessica Lynch Update

2011-11-11T13:22:00.004-05:00

Here is an interesting story about the false narrative about Jessica Lynch.

As I have said all along, the story didn't come from the Pentagon or anyone in the military. And lazy journalists piled onto a story without ever checking even the basic facts.

Not Yet Groking

2011-11-10T12:04:00.004-05:00

"There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept".

Listening to the latest group of presidential candidates and pundits supporting one over the other I am reminded of the day to day struggles in my office. The US Army is continuing on a long list of equipment modernizations and major procurement programs as if all of the old rules were still in effect. None of them understand that we don't have any money.

We haven't had a budget in three years. Continuing resolutions do not give you authority to start new procurement programs. But even if they did, the budget MUST get smaller and the Defense department will be leading the way in budget cuts.

The Army knows that things are getting tight so they are looking at a range of options that include trading personnel end strength to afford modernization and refit. They are looking at buying fewer new things and making compromises about buying new things that are not "excellent in every way" but just "good enough" to save money. All of that would have been good practice 5 years ago. But not now. Now the answer is to cut personnel, and new purchases.

In the next decade, the US military will be deciding to spend money on a new prosthetic arm for Sgt Jones or fix the pot holes at Ft Hood. There won't be room for buying ANYTHING new.

The program managers still haven't gotten that message. They lean forward to get each milestone accomplished on time for their program as if the Congress MUST fund it 3-6 years from now. Or typically, they will get 85% of the funding they wanted, but at least they still got something.

In the very near future, all they are going to get is an empty bag.

American cannot afford the military force we have. We don't have any national, international or global threat that demands we maintain armed forces at this level. There is no justification for us to continue. And the weak justifications that worked last year aren't carrying as much weight this year.

There is no threat that requires us to maintain a blue water navy in every ocean of the world.

There is no threat that requires us to maintain 10 Joint regional command centers around the world, as if we owned places like Africa (AFRICOM), Europe (EUCOM), or western Asia (CENTCOM).

There is certainly no threat that requires us to create a whole new class of Ballistic Missile submarine to replace the Ohio class, as the US Navy is proposing.

Thee is no threat that requires the USA to maintain twice as many Aircraft Carriers as the rest of the world COMBINED.

There is no credible threat that even demands the full time use of our Army, anywhere in the world.

The US military is a part of the federal government and they must compete against other priorities for federal funds just like the rest of the government. Entitlements has grown to absorb the entire federal budget and are continuing to grow. The military's own contribution to this is no secret. Military health, disability and retirement benefits are estimated to become an unsustainable part of the military budget, dwarfing the cost of actually manning, equipping and training the armed forces themselves. Five years ago, we could pretend that this wasn't true. But not any longer. It is unavoidable.

The US military is the largest "discretionary" item in the budget, but there just isn't enough of it to satisfy the growth in the other parts of the budget.

The solutions are simple and unavoidable:

1. Inflate the currency. Thus allowing politicians to continue spending hog wild, effectively stealing the money from everyone who saved money.

2. Default existing debts. Thus permitting politicians to borrow it all over again. The only poblem being, who would want to loan money to an agency that doesn't pay their bills?

3. Reneg on obligations. Change the Social Security "deal". Abandon Medicaid and Medicare. Pay retirees pennies on the dollar what they were promised.

4. Combinations of the above.

We cannot "grow" our way out of this. There is no magic solution that only people with PhDs from Ivy League universities know.

The saddest part is that our entire political class just doesn't care. They are all running on the efficient deck chair arrangement platform. At least the Democratic party strategy of "grab as much as you can" seems to be working well for them.

Defending the Ebony Tower

2011-11-09T09:24:00.008-05:00

Jamila, defends the Historically Black Colleges (HBCs) in her attempt to defend Herman Cain's math degree from Morehouse College in 1967.

Some of the commenters over there thought that a degree in mathematics from a historically black college didn’t mean anything because HBCU’s (supposedly) have lower standards than primarily white institutions.

Well, that is the reputation. But to defend against it, we could look at historical data and comparisons on results of standardized tests. Or we can just take Jamila's word for it.

I have attended 6 different colleges/universities in 4 different states. I have taken classes online as well as in a brick-and-mortar setting. I have never attended a historically black college. From my experience, the is no way that the standards enforced at a historically black college could be any worse than the standards at a primarily white institution–particularly when it comes to science and engineering.

She has never been to a HBC yet claims to know with certainty that their standards cannot be lower. Faultless logic. Perhaps she is commenting on the very low standards that she has observed in her own colleges and cannot fathom how HBCs could be any lower. Of course, there are also differences in "White" colleges and universities. For example, community colleges are reputed to be no better than High Schools in their level of difficulty. Comparing most Community colleges to HBCs is probably a fair comparison.

When I was in the Army, many years ago, I attended the Infantry Officer's basic course. At that course, there was also a required course in remedial English. To get into this course, you already had to be a college graduate. Why would the Infantry School need to teach English to its students, all of whom are college graduates? A: Because the graduates of the HBCs were illiterate and could not communicate in written English. Not that they couldn't parse sentences and identify adverbs. They lacked even such basic ability to use English so that they could write orders clear enough for infantry soldiers in combat to understand what they were supposed to do. The ability to do that would have been an entry requirement for students at "normal" colleges and universities. Most white 8th graders can already do that.

Further, Blacks are already welcome at all "white" universities around the country and those people who demand a good education go to those schools, just as Jamila herself does. No one goes to an HBC because of their reputation for excellence. They go because their skin color guarantees them admission.

Now back to Herman Cain. I am not willing to say that his degree in Math was total crap just because it came from an HBC. The standards can be lower and still produce a graduate who can perform basic college level math competently. Mr Cain's ability does not seem to be so deficient that he could not continue his job as a Ballistic Analyst for the Navy. Neither did he win the Nobel prize for Math. Just like all the other graduates with Math degrees, his personal abilities fall somewhere in the middle. Like most men his age, I doubt Mr Cain has been required to use any higher level math in the past several decades, yet he has has several successful careers and shows every promise of being a perfectly acceptable president.

Bottom line: math and the hard science fields are not areas where one can get by for very long pretending to know more than you actually know.

Again, Jamila isn't taking the math or hard sciences. Last I heard, her degree was in "general studies". Nor has she ever held a job surrounded by people with math and science degrees, yet she claims with certainty that everyone with such degrees in such jobs MUST be competent. She even begins her post telling us about one such person who did precisely what she claims cannot happen: getting by for a long time pretending to know more than the teacher really did. She knows for a fact that math classes can have lower standards in one school relative to another, and yet ignores it to defend the institutions of "higher" learning that she has no connection to other than skin color.

Brava!

The HBCs (and their kin the Indian colleges) are anachronisms from the time when minorities were not permitted to be educated along side whites. That time ended decades ago as Jamila's own experience in 6 colleges can attest. They are only still open because they can market their inferior product to people who have no place else to go and to people who place a higher value on racial solidarity than on education.

Dignity and Respect.

2011-11-08T13:27:00.005-05:00

I hate those words with the burning intensity of a thousand supernovas. Why do I hate them? They bring back memories of one of America's worst ever division commanders. General Larry Ellis was once the commander of America's only armored division (at the time). He later went on to get four stars and command the US Army forces command in Georgia.

I worked at his periphery and never saw him do or say anything that struck me as making him the kind of guy who deserved to be a general. But maybe he was doing all that wonderful stuff when I wasn't around.

GEN Ellis took command of the 1st AD after leaving the Army HQ staff where he worked as the senior EEO for the Army. While he was there, he managed the Aberdeen sex scandal. He brought the phrase "Dignity and Respect" with him to the division and made it his catchphrase. He had it printed on commemorative coins and made departing soldiers recite it. He believed that you should treat everyone with dignity and respect. I managed my own departure quietly so as to avoid that particular humiliation.

But every time I heard that, I was just reminded that being a general is no certainty of having any intelligence.

I was reminded of this after these 14 years when someone used the same phrase last night in the same context. It still ticks me off.

Dignity is how you feel about yourself and how you behave as a response to how you feel about yourself. No one can give you dignity or take it away.

Respect is how you feel about other people because they have earned it. You cannot demand respect and expect to get it. It must always be earned. It is in the definition of the word.

The proper word that should have been used, and is appropriate in dealing with various race-family-gender issues is "courtesy". Courtesy is how you treat other people because of how you have been reared. You learn courtesy and practice it. Other people don't have to earn courtesy. They get it because that is what kind of person YOU are.

One of the tactics of the Enemy is to control ideas by controlling language. Hillery called it "the politics of meaning". Then her husband famously asked what the meaning if "is" is. Orwell warned us about it in his book "1984". When you stop using the right words because your political opponents control the very language you use, then you lose the ability to argue, foment, or build consensus. You know you are right, but you lack the right words to describe it or convince others. Then, like cave men, you have nothing left but swinging a club (not the same thing as a club for swinging).

It’s Time For Your First Gun

2011-11-07T10:42:00.003-05:00

A friend at work has asked for my assistance in getting him gun savvy. He has awakened to the potential for the need to exercise lethal self-defense in his future and the fact that his wife and kids may someday depend on him for that. Unlike most defense-shirkers, he has a plan to get ready.

Step 1: Find a gun buddy and get him to teach you everything including letting you shoot all his guns at his expense. (check).

Step 2: Get a gun of your own.

Step 3: Expand the habits of self defense to include regular gun maintenance, shooting, and teaching the wife and kids about the same.

Well, I took him to the range and let him shoot all of my handguns at my expense and he has discovered an instant liking to guns and wants one of his own. So the next question is: What should he buy for his first gun?

First, how does an adult male find himself in such a situation that he is in his mid thirties and still does not own a gun? Most of the people I know got their first firearm when they were children. I know that that is frowned upon these days, but still plenty of parents buy guns for their kids and don’t give them official possession of them until later in life.

But still, unless your parents originally named you Moonbeam Starchild, Jr or you were raised by wolves*, you should have had some experience with guns before you hit 18.

*Seriously, wolves hate it when their adopted kids with opposable thumbs bring home firearms. It totally changes the pack dynamic.

I got my first real firearm at 12. It was a 22LR bolt action rifle from Sears (made by Winchester for the Sears label). I kept it in my room on a rack that was not locked. I had full access to the gun and ammo any time I wanted without asking anyone’s permission. It never occurred to me to use it to commit a crime, harass small animals or destroy private property with it. None of my siblings accidently took a bullet. I got my first gun that I bought myself at the age of 22. It was a S&W model 686, stainless, .357 Mag revolver. I later sold it and bought a Walther PPK/s. Then I sold that and bought several other guns. But looking back, I should have kept all the guns, since I would rather have them now than not have them.

My answer:
1. It doesn’t matter. Ultimately, within 6 months, he will discover that his gun is not the one he really wanted and he will get another one. Rinse. Repeat.

2. Guns are tools. Each performs a certain function at the expense of doing other functions less well. Just as a circular saw is a terrible way to pull nails, an shot gun is unsuitable for long range hunting. So, before you go out to buy a gun, describe what it is you want your gun to do.

3. My friend has expressed that his primary need for a gun is self defense. As such, there are few guns that meet that need in as many situations as possible as a hand gun. And in that category, there is a lot to choose from.

4. Revolvers are the simplest to own and maintain. Autos have a higher capacity and are faster to reload. People with small hands and weak people like women and children may find the spring actions on some autos too difficult for them to safely operate. But if the gun is just for the man, any good full sized auto should be perfectly fine.

5. In Virginia, you need two forms of ID to buy a gun. Both must show matching addresses and one has to have a picture. There is no waiting time. This surprises many people who don’t have guns. They think the old three day waiting lists are still the law everywhere. First time gun buyers are also surprised that they can buy a full sized AR-15 for about the same price as a high end pistol ($800).

6. In any case, the buyer doesn’t need to buy the perfect gun. No one gun does everything. And most modern guns, newly manufactured, will be perfectly adequate for most self-defense needs. I don’t suggest anyone buy crap. But if they are not buying used guns, that is unlikely to happen. Most gun choices are between good and wonderful with prices to match.

So I won’t be recommending a specific gun to my friend. He will be quite happy with whatever he buys… and then he won’t. That is the way of things.

My friend will also need ammo and I will steer him into a few boxes of FMJ from a major American manufacturer. All of them are good enough. I don’t favor JHP just because they have not been proven to be any more effective than FMJ. It seems that a few layers of clothing manage to hold the spreading action closed and you get a slug that performs just like FMJ. But he will need a box to practice with and another box to keep around the house, just in case. Guns without ammo is like have a home generator without a little gasoline stockpiled.

We will be at the Nation's gun show in Chantilly, VA on the 18th.

Covering Up the Crime

2011-11-02T22:16:00.006-04:00

This Failblog entry about a real-life incident where two ten year old boys pull guns to protect their Halloween candy. The new York Daily news clipped in a picture of a charming little white boy to headline the story and even goes so far as to "white out" their language.

But when you watch the news clip from local news, there really isn't much doubt about the real race of the kids.

While I just previously posted that Women should be armed to provide for their own self defense, I am emphatically against children being armed to do likewise. Adults are responsible for protecting children. Mainly, their own children.

News of the Obvious: Guns Prevent Rape

2011-11-02T15:45:00.006-04:00

This story tells us that a sheriff in South Carolina has made the audacious claim that women who fear being raped should arm themselves with guns.

Cue flying monkeys and predictions of the apocalypse.

While I personally think that women are chemically imbalanced and very few have the temperament to be trusted with anything more dangerous than a cooking knife, I am forced by my conscience to confirm that even women have a God-given, absolute and irrevocable right to self defense. There is no better self defense than having a loaded gun, in your hand, except perhaps having a loaded gun in your hand and 20 of your best friends, each with loaded guns in their hands. the more friends you have, the better your defense is. You have to sleep sometime.

"I don't want you to go for the Mace. I want you to go for the concealed weapons permit," the sheriff said, according to a video of his remarks.

A very reasonable and legal approach to self defense. He is recommending the one thing that has any chance at all of actually working other than staying locked inside your safe room and running on your treadmill. By telling people to get a permit, he is insuring that they will get appropriate training and background checks, just as the law intends.

"They got one called 'The Judge' that shoots a .45 or a .410 shell," he said. "You ain't gotta be accurate. You just gotta get close."

Judge in .410 and .45 Colt

He should have stopped while he was ahead. The Taurus "Judge" is an absolutely terrible idea for a purse weapon. It is big, clunky, unfashionable and overpriced. Further, EVERY weapon works well at close range. My local indoor range forbids Judges to be used. The path of the shot rounds is too unpredictable. There are tons of guns in the .380 caliber that are perfectly adequate for self defense and will easily fit in the purse or pocket of a Ladies fleece warm-up jacket. Sure, .380 is not the preferred gun for high intensity combat with MS-13, but it works perfectly fine for telling a very simple message. That message is: you have been shot, asshole. According to FBI reports and studies on such things, the single calibre responsible for the most murders in the USA is the .22. By definition, anything larger is good enough for "just in case". There are also lots of small revolvers in the .38 caliber that are easy to carry, work well at close range and have a bullet large enough to be lethal.
.38 caliber revolver
.380 auto

Now, if you are going out looking for trouble, I would consider the 9mm as minimum essential equipment. And more important than the caliber would be lots of reloads.

Wright said he knew he would "get all lit up" by anti-gun activists for his remarks, but he was frustrated that Lance kept getting out of jail.

The police can't protect you. They know that. They also know that keeping known criminals behind bars is hard. They almost always get out eventually, unless they were a 71 year old who was given 150 year sentence for white collar crime that most people don't even understand. Chances are very high that a really violent criminal with absolutely no regard for human life or empathy for small animals will get less than 20 years no matter how bad his crime was. Then he will be back on the streets. Even worse, he will likely have friends that are willing to kill you so you don't testify against their friend. The police will definitely be there to put up the yellow tape around your corpse and immediately jump to the conclusion that your ex boyfriend must have done it. Fat lot of good that will do you.

"He's blaming the victim," said Melonea Marek, executive director of People Against Rape, a nonprofit rape crisis center in North Charleston. "There's not a guarantee that a gun was going to stop that guy from hurting her."

Riiiiight. There is no guarantee that driving your car to work in the morning will actually get you to work either (just because it worked all those other times). But your chances are better than just staying in bed.

Telling girls that they have a right to defend themselves and that they should be prepared to do it is "blaming the victim".

What else can a potential rape victim do when confronted by an actual rapist do? depend on what she learned in her conflict resolution class to talk the guy out of using her as a surrogate to express his frustration with the system? Use her expensive knowledge from her Masters in Victim Studies to tell the guy that he doesn't have to be confined to the roles the patriarchy has established for him?

I can state with certainty that 90% of unarmed women who were raped by a total stranger wished she had a gun in her hand right at that time. The other 10% were beaten senseless and didn't do much thinking.

Caroline Brewer, spokeswoman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the nation's largest gun control advocacy group, said a 2009 study found that people who carry guns are 4.5 times more likely to be shot than people who don't.

I notice that statistic keeps going up. it used to be 3 times, then 4. Now it is 4.5. What they don't tell you is that when you factor out the criminals who are using guns to commit crimes and the ones being killed by police, you end up being very unlikely to be killed by a gun just by owning one. If you really want to reduce your chances of being killed by a bullet, just stop being black. But I don't think the Brady campaign wants to look under that rock. Millions of white people own guns, carry them every day and never have the chance to shoot anyone and no one tries to shoot them. That is because people who live in good neighborhoods are at very low risk of being crime victims, whether they have a gun or not. Having a gun does exactly zero to increase the chances of being a victim.

The Unelectable is Now Unmentionable.

2011-11-01T15:33:00.002-04:00

The Political Diary on the WSJ has a few notes on the latest debate.

...Ms. Bachmann and Rick Perry can't come back, Herman Cain will fade as his national sales tax gets broader scrutiny, and neither Mr. Santorum nor Jon Huntsman has attracted much voter support. That leaves Mr. Gingrich to emerge from Iowa as the main challenger to Mitt Romney.

Well, if that is all there is to choose from. Wasn't there someone else running? I can't remember his name. He probably wasn't going to win anyway.

I also find it funny that Bachmann and Perry get dismissed as "can't come back" so an obvious previous "can't come back" is the only choice left to confront Mitt Romney. It also seems that no one wants Mitt Romney to be the Republican nominee but he is still the front runner. How does that happen?

Every candidate has problems. None are perfect in all respects. Which are good enough and which are unacceptable?

If you are in any way conservative, Newt Gingrich is unacceptable. Despite anything else he says, he believes manmade global warming is a serious threat that the USA needs to divert limited resources to fight as a high priority. That means he is either too stupid to be President, or too corrupt. like Al Gore, he may have lots of personal investments in green scamming and needs a big government program to force businesses to buy his magic beans.

The only thing on the table to reduce AGW is more government regulation of emissions and higher taxes on energy production which will lead to more shortages of energy, higher unemployment in energy companies, and higher energy prices in a formerly First world nation. You can't do any of that if you believe in personal liberty and free markets. You can't do any of that if you believe in limited government or even Constitutional authority.

No doubt, Newt is an excellent speaker and a first-class brainiac. but this one issue makes him completely unsuitable to be President of the USA, even on a temporary basis.

If only there were another choice. ANYONE?

Updating Links

2011-11-01T12:54:00.002-04:00

I had to drop the Confederate Yankee. He had it coming, since he gave up blogging and closed the site. Not much to work with there on my part. But good bloggers come and go in the internet all thetime. It was good while it lasted.

I still regularly visit Mausers and Muffins, but my motives are not pure and have nothing to do with recipies or excellent prose, so I don't include Brigid on the blogroll.

Other sites I enjoy, I neglect to put on the blogroll because they post too infrequently.

Bad example is still on the blogroll, but he has now become NSFW, at least according to the bandwidth Nazi's where I work. Ditto for the Hawaiian Libertarian and In Mala Fide.

What Could Go Wrong?

2011-10-31T14:48:00.003-04:00

This story tells us of a plan to create and release genetically modified mosquitoes.

OWS Fails Cause and Effect Relationships

2011-10-31T09:18:00.002-04:00

What do you suppose the natural consequence would be if you announced that people caught committing certain crimes would not be reported to police?

Well, for some crimes, obviously nothing would happen. But for crimes of opportunity, where the criminal is already pre-disposed to the crime, it is like announcing "open Season".

It causes me to wonder if they are this anti-police with other crimes too, or just rape. Imagine if you will a hunting preserve of hippies. Bring your own baseball bat and club as many as you like. No worries about being reported to police. Someone will just shine a flashlight in your face and demand you leave. Then you club her too. It's all just good fun.

How do you think the 'tards will respond? Arm a militia? Not likely. Some will inevitably slink away to safer places. Others will ignore their hypocrisy and start carrying weapons. Still others will demand police protection.

One thing is certain. The entertainment never stops with these people.

Adventures in Shadenfreud

2011-10-31T07:50:00.002-04:00

From what I here, the Occupy Wallstreet crowd were ill-prepared for the cruel NY Winter. And Winter came early.

Serves them right.

But it seems that the party faithful aren't all that faithful. IR pictures show that most of the tents are in fact unoccupied at night, even befor the cold wave hit.

This is all show.

Meanwhile, in Oakland, the local Occupy group is calling for a general strike. I think they are vastly overestimating their own stature here. The only people who can afford to walk away from paying jobs are the ones that have accumulated vacation days or they have jobs like "activist" and "community organizer". I find it very entertaining that people who will be calling on others to stop working, will in fact be working and were working at their paid job when they called for the strike.

Focusing on the Priorities in the UK

2011-10-28T14:54:00.002-04:00

The news is making a big deal here in the colonies about changes to the royal succession. The new rule is that girl offspring and boy offspring will be equally considered and the oldest shall prevail to wear the crown.

I am so glad that our national media has brought this to our attention. This obscure change in British royal trivia is very important to a nation like ours that is tearing itself apart on the issue of looters versus producers now that the split between the two seems near 50-50.

I am also very happy to see that our national mothercountry has worked its way down the To-Do list this far, having first solved all those other problems that seemed important yesterday.

It is good to keep your anachronisms up to date. Thumbs up to you, blokes.

Daily, WTF

2011-10-26T12:59:00.002-04:00

PETA is suing Sea world, claiming they are infringing on the Orca's constitutionally guaranteed rights to not be enslaved.

...legal experts categorize the suit’s chance of success as “slim,”

This statement alone tells me how truly hosed we are as a nation. This suit has absolutely no merit and everyone knows that. But everyone also knows that all you need is one unelected senile tree-hugging coot on a black robe to agree with you and suddenly the "stupid" has a chance of success.

1. Any lawyer who as a party to bring this case should be disbarred. There is no legal justification for anyone who has been to lawschool to attempt this case other than two very solid legal principles. First, as long as the client is paying cash, he deserves to have his day in court. Second, the crassly cynical belief that the law and legal precedent matter no more than yesterday's losing Lotto ticket and "the Law" is whatever we decide it is today. Either position is in my estimation, unethical to such a high degree that the lawyer involved is unfit to practice law.

2. Any judge that would permit such a case into his courtroom should be removed from office as prima facia Senile.

3. Any party who would bring such a suit should be fined for contempt of court and be punched in the face as an expression of the contempt the court has for them. There are only two purposes for bringing such a suit. First, raising your profile in the national media so that your pre-Christmas fundraising (BTW, it is also CFC time too) will be large enough to pay the staff the bonuses you promised. Second, you intend to bring enough such suits to eventually wear down the system and gain a favorable ruling some day. Both motives are demonstrably not in favor of the "We the People" who are compelled by our taxes to support the legal system. The People need a system of courts that recognizes the legal right to own property, including animals.

If PETA really wants to see the Orcas returned to the wild, they should continue attempting their other unsuccessful practices: lobbying leftist moonbats in Congress, intimidating Sea World management, and buying high profile advertising.

But my personal preference is for them to do some more of those nude demonstrations, limited of course to their attractive female members only.

Great Moments in We the People

2011-10-26T12:51:00.002-04:00

From Fox News.

Go home, Commie. This isn't Canada. Your opinion doesn't count in the grand debate of the future of our great nation. When we want your opinion, we will first defeat you in a war, and then tell you what it is.

Freak Show Continues

2011-10-26T11:16:00.002-04:00

This story tells us that the DC protesters called “Occupy DC" and the normal variety of DC homeless people have a lot in common. The story talks about their ideological purity and righteous anger at a system that has turned against them. But the real similarity of the two groups is the pervasive sense of entitlement, the hand always out for someone to put “free stuff” in it and of course a 75% mental illness rate.

If Barack Obama did what he was supposed to do, we wouldn’t be in this shape,” Cruz said as he ate a few cups of stew from Martha’s Table. “He put the money for schools and jobs and he put it in Wall Street. . . . I’m waiting for a tent because I want to go protest.”

In other words, I am too poor to protest poverty. Someone needs to give me a free tent so I can protest too.

“How do you tell the difference between homeless and protester?” asked Lt. Mike Libby of the U.S. Park Police, which is trying to determine how long the camps can remain.

That is the problem with ignoring the law to permit Democratic party allies to do their demonstrations. The laws were established to prevent homeless people from occupying the parks and setting up squatter’s villages in the middle of the city. For purely partisan political reasons, the DC city government and parks department have given up their best tool for keeping the city clean and orderly while containing the homeless problem to established shelters and kitchens.

“We have learned, living like a homeless person in the park, what services they were not provided before,” said John Armstrong, 23, an Occupy D.C. organizer and Boston College graduate. “We teach them the knowledge we have and share stories.”

You know nothing. All of your needs are provided by fully funded organizers who couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the homeless before this and won’t give a rat’s ass about them once you go home and take a shower. You all do have homes. This is just a hobby for you. You all can take a break from camping out and get cleaned up, sleep in a warm bed, attend your dental appointments, get your birth control refilled, and then head back out there with a fresh cup of Starbucks in your hand to sing songs about solidarity with the homeless and how the Capitalist system failed them. If you want to see real suffering, visit any Communist country and see how many people there are warm, fed, sheltered and medicated. It isn’t a coincidence that the greater majority of the millions of people killed this century were killed by their own governments. Their own communist governments. And the primary means of murder was starvation and exposure.

Freak Show Runs its Course

2011-10-26T10:09:00.003-04:00

Chaz bono finally got voted off the island, or whatever they call the dancing with the stars equivalent. Of course she should never have even been on the show since she is neither a dancer nor a star of any kind. As I previously stated, this was all about the freak show and even freak show gets boring if you don’t add some new freaks once in a while. But there was only so much of this self-absorbed waste of skin that the DWTS audience could take. When you pay to watch a dancing bear, you do expect the bear to, at some point, pretend to dance.

“Bruno [bleep] makes comments every week ... like I’m some fat troll dancing with this beautiful woman every week, and I’m sick of it,” Chaz fumes.

The truth hurts. Fat troll pretty much covers it when you add spoiled brat

“I came on this show because I wanted to show America a different kind of man,” Chaz says. “I know that if there was somebody like me on TV when I was growing up, my whole life would have been different.”

Well, perhaps as a lesson in what not to do, there is some self-absorbed little girl out there who will decide against self-mutilation to get her parents’ attention.
Go back into anonymity, Chaz, where you belong.

To Chaz, it was and continues to be all about her. Nothing else matters but that the world cater to her whims, even to the point of calling her a "him" and pretending that "he" is a celebrity in "his" own right. But to the DWTS producers, it is all about the entertainment. Freaks are entertaining. Even petulant freaks. Up to a point. Chaz has reached that point.

Tax Plans

2011-10-25T14:08:00.004-04:00

Rick Perry has jumped under the bandwagon with his new proposal for a 20% flat income tax.

We can add this to Cains buffoonery of 9-9-9 (or 6-6-6 if you are Bachmann).

At the same time, the incumbent buffoon is touting his "tax guys like me, cause, um, I don't, um, need, um, that much money".

Even Ron Paul's "kill the IRS" plan is just libertarian wet dreaming without a congress willing to enact legislation to accomplish that purpose.

They are of course all failures. They fail to address any of the problems at hand. and they recommend solutions that the President will have no authority to enact.

In case you have forgotten, here are the main problems facing America today and what our next president can do about it.

1. The federal government is spending too much money. Taxing, borrowing, and printing are just the mechanisms. State and local government are also spending too much money, but that isn't the President's problem. His focus AND HIS CONSTITUTIONAL LIMIT is on the federal government. What can he do about it? He can tell the various regulatory departments to cut it out. He can make them lift their collective collectivist boot heels off the American neck so they can breath again. And he can ask congress for changes in legislation to eliminate roles and powers of the federal government. If you don't strip the current powers of the bureaucracy, you can't expect them to spend less doing the job Congress told them to do.

2. High unemployment. See number 1 above. There is not a damn thing the President of the United States can do to make employment go up in high quality jobs. He can use his authority to enforce existing laws wrt immigration and deport illegals, making lots of vacancies. Don't be tricked. Those are not all strawberry-picking jobs in California. Immigrant labor is filling all sorts of jobs in the USA that used to be done by natives including construction and unskilled labor (janitorial services). Further, the administration can shut off the flow of labor with skilled immigrant visas. if business want to outsource labor to Pakistan, let them do it in Pakistan, not Baltimore.

3. Unrestricted Immigration from third world countries (both legal and otherwise). We don't need it. It is demonstrably harmful to America and Americans and our government needs to make it stop. It is turning America demographically into a third world country.

4. Repeal everything that Obama passed. Every executive order on day one. Every law as soon as congress can pass repeal bills. The person who wants to be President needs to make the case and lead the charge that he needs the American people to elect people like him/her to offices all across the fruited plains.

5. Propose a balanced budget in your first year in office, not in 5 or 10 years. We have all seen that trick before. The promise of good things later after we swallow the bitter pills today, but the good never happens. We have already had plenty of tax increases, juggling the tax codes with gimmicks and stimuluses, plenty of borrowing and plenty of outright printing money. The only way to balance the budget that is acceptable is for the government to spend less... on everything. And to spend massively less on some things. If the government cannot live within its means now, then things will only get worse later.

The only thing our government needs to do to get the economy moving again is to stop intentionally strangling it. The current President, as the leader of that effort needs to be removed from office ASAFP and the new president needs to lead the legislative and regulatory charge to gut the power, scope and spending of the federal government.

There is no other way and our current crop of wanna-bees need to get that message if they want to win, and more importantly, if they want to help this country.

STOP ME BEFORE I HELP AGAIN

2011-10-24T21:13:00.008-04:00

What can I say? Everyone needs a hobby. Mine is butting in and helping strangers on the internet. Og's latest problem got me thinking. There are two ways I can help Og. I can take a few days off work, drive to Indiana, and fix his AR for him, thus depriving him of the thrill of discovery, problem solving and learning a new trade, or I can take my own M4gery apart and take some pictures and detailed measurements.

I am going to try the second approach first. It is less likely to be met with a shotgun at the front door.

So here I go.

First, this is a picture of my vice block.

Here is what it looks like with the barrel locking nut removed.

The length of the collar on the upper is 11.26mm. BTW, I did the measurements correctly using the caliper, not as shown in the pictures. I just put it in the pictures so you could see which dimension I was measuring.

The length of the threads on the collar is 9.13mm. and the threads rise above the collar so theoretically you can tighten the locking nut all the way down to the edge of the upper or 11.26mm

The spacer on the barrel is 3.40mm. If this is too thin, that might be your problem.

When you reattach everything, look inside and make sure the gas tube runs straight up the channel. This one is off-center and will strike the gas key when the carrier comes forward. It will still work, but maybe not when you need it.

You can fix it by giving the locking nut another little nudge . This one is correct.

If that doesn't do it, I suggest offering beer to your local black gun buddies to allow you to swap parts off yours to find which ones are gumming things up, then order that part. most of those are cheap, but it is a a pain in the butt ordering stuff and not knowing if that will fix your problem.

Good luck.

Current Events, 24 Oct 2011

2011-10-24T13:28:00.005-04:00

1. After dropping bombs on thousands of indiscriminate Libyans for their crimes of being on the wrong side of an arbitrary line on the map in a civil war, NATO leaders are incensed to learn that Qadaffi was captured alive, mistreated and then killed by his captors. It is also worth pointing out that Libya is "between governments". As such, they literally have no laws. They have no judges, no courts, no traffic cops. Until a new government starts doing those things, it is the proverbial "Wild West" (the real Wild West of course did have rules and law enforcement). It is a whole new level of stupid to expect European standards of battlefield behavior, drafted in Switzerland 100 years ago, to be applied in an Islamic country that has no cultural or historical inclination to behave that way and no government to force them. It is a further absurdity that the very people who were bombing people with abandon just last week are now the ones incensed that one survivor wasn't treated better.

2. The Pope named three new saints. Once again, displaying his religious prejudice, the three he named were all Roman Catholic.

3. The President of Afghanistan, declared that if the USA and Pakistan went to war, he would side with Pakistan. That was a cheap thing for him to say. It cost him nothing and he will get major points for standing up to the USA when there was never any chance that the USA would go to war against Pakistan or even hold a grudge against Karsai for saying that. Still, I think it may be time to attach an exploding collar onto Karsia's neck... just in case. Or maybe one of these things.

4.

The Vatican called on Monday for the establishment of a “global public authority” and a “central world bank” to rule over financial institutions that have become outdated and often ineffective in dealing fairly with crises.

So, the Vatican is now calling for a one world government and currency. Now we know who the "Whore of Babylon" is. I suppose it never occurred to the Vatican leaders that they could use all their personal uncounted wealth plus their global fund raising capability to marshal the efforts of Roman Catholics all around the world to meet the requirements of global crises. It is ironically funny that the descendants of the European feudal church which grew wealthy and powerful while standing on the backs of serfs for a thousand years, now finds itself in the position to tell other people how they should spend their money and how other governments ought to run themselves. Or perhaps they are doing this to be "relevant" again to American Catholics. They see that Socialism in America is on the rise. I also find it personally depressing that the leaders in the Catholic church are so ignorant of the Bible that they would think they could even suggest something like this and not scare the Bejezzus out of most of their own members.

Advice to Og on M4gery project

2011-10-24T11:53:00.005-04:00

Og is building his own M-4 clone.

He got the parts kit and lots of advice. He had some trouble torquing the barrel locking nut. He and I traded some tips.

Here are some more.

Og, first, forgive me is I am flogging this horse to death but it seems like you are not understanding my earlier position of overtorquing.

Here is a picture of the parts of the Delta assembly, which includes the barrel locking nut.

You will notice that the locking nut has 20 evenly spaced teeth around it. The gas tube can fit through any of these teeth. So at most, once your nut is torqued to 50ft pounds, you should have to tighten it less than 1/20th (18 degrees) of a circle to get to the next fully usable hole for your gas tube.

The gas tube slot on the delta ring can be turned with a screwdriver tip to line it up. Similarly, the slot on the springs can be turned manually to line them up. You don't have to tighten or loosen the locking nut to do this.

So overtorquing should never be a problem. Unless you are trying to tell me that your barrel locking nut goes from 50 to 80 ft pounds in under 18 degrees of radius.

More 1%'ers

2011-10-24T11:44:00.001-04:00

H/T SondraK

Horoscope, 24 Oct 2011

2011-10-24T10:12:00.003-04:00

You may find yourself saying things that you never thought you would say -- but the reasons you have to do so far outweigh anything else.

The horoscope generating computer has been replaced by a horoscope App. It is really reaching on this one. A very specific prediction which will be easily proven or disproven by the end of the day. Horoscopes have a much better success ratio when they predict things like, "you will discover that you are deeply disatisfied with the way you life has turned out".

But I am drawing a blank on this one. I can't imagine anything that I would not say. I have a long history of saying things that other people would never say. There are some things that I hold inside because saying it out loud would just make things worse. But even those things I occasionally unload on out of town friends.

So this must be some kind of alternate universe kind of thing. Here is a potential list of things I never thought I would say.

1. These brains taste a lot better than I thought they would.

2. Those damned commies may be right. Capitalism just doesn't work.

3. Remember, when shooting children, aim low and don't lead them as much.

4. That is one handsome dude. I wonder if he is single.

I think that about covers it.

Qadaffi is Stable Condition

2011-10-24T09:35:00.004-04:00

1. The people of Libya, after killing their dictator, were not satisfied to circulate camera-phone pictures of his body on the internet. They put his rotting corpse on public display and sold tickets to see it. This will make it hard for anyone to later claim that he is still alive.

2. It is strange that a country that is majority Moslem and ony a handspan away from imposing Sharia law, doesn't have a problem with leaving Qadaffi's rotting carcas on public display, while infidel countries like the USA goto great expense to ensure our enemies are burried according to strict islamic tradition before the sun sets. Maybe in the future, we could look to Islamic people to see how we should treat their dead and captives instead of just taking their word for it.

3. Also, compare and contrast the treatment the likely killers of Qadaffi will get against that of the likely killers of Osama and Saddam. The civil rights activists from Europe and the USA go to great lengths to demand that everyone get a fair trial, before we inevitably kill them. The Libyan way is much simpler and fore efficient. The outcome is the same. People are trying to discover who shot Qadaffi, but ony to buy him a drink (or the Sharia compliant equivelant: buy him a small boy).

4. The Libyans still have not burried Quadaffi. There doesn't seem to be any hurry to get this done at all. So while his soul is hopefully rotting in hell, his body is still rotting on public display.

5. Does anyone know if NATO is still patrolling the skies above Libya?

Qadaffi Dead, DOW Jumps 200 Points.

2011-10-21T13:14:00.003-04:00

Evidently, death is good for business. There seems to be a cause and effect relationship between news that former Libyan dictator Mohamar Qadaffi is dead and the billions of individual shares that were traded since then.

Actually, as I pointed out before, there is no relationship whatsoever. Similarly, there is no relationship between the economic news that gets reported and the daily ups and downs of the market. But try telling that to the Financial Analyst with the degree in "communications" whose main college achievement was winning second runner up for Rose Bowl queen.

I would like to say a few words on behalf of the Libyan rebels. Bravo guys. That is how you deal with your former dictator. None of this agonizing about his civil rights being violated or some farcical attempt to give him a fair trial before you execute him. The whole point of having a rebellion is that you already prejudged him as guilty. The thousands of your own men who died to get to this point speak more eloquently than any jury to condemn him. This is the way it ought to be done. Further, they posted pictures on the internet for all to see. not squeamish at all about demonstrating to the world that they got the job done (unlike some major superpowers who were so solicitous of the feelings of their dead enemy they continued to shield him even in death). The Libyans know they got their man. And now, everyone else knows too. No doubts remain.

I would also like to add my congratulations to Col Qadaffi. BRAVO. Way to go dude. That is how you go out. Fighting to the last. We won't count that last hour of pissing yourself against you. Perfectly normal response. but at least you didn't flee. You continued to hold onto your lost cause until the very end. you also proved you were not stupid and got your family to safety. Well done. But then, it didn't take a rocket scientist to see how this was going to go down. Your friend next door in Egypt thought he could get a fair shake from his new boss. He thought that European bank deposits holding his personal fortune would be safe. And he also thought shaking hands with the President of the United States would give him some level of immunity. Qadaffi learned quickly that the penalty for losing would be death and an unmarked grave.

I hope other dictators and rebellions are watching this. If you want to really get serious about overthrowing a brutal dictatorial regime, all you need is your own blood, sweat, determination, and the unrestricted use of NATO air power (paid for by American taxpayers).

So the promise that it would be "days, not weeks" has been fullfilled in only months. The war dragged on without the US legacy media ever using the word "quagmire" to describe the slow pace of operations. I also doubt they will take notice of the internal power struggle that will take place for the next couple of decades. They will not harp incessantly about the cost of this war and what wonders of social good could have been bought with that money spent here at home.

Meanwhile, on the other front, Obama is set to announce that all American troops will be withdrawn from Iraq "real soon". This is of course not the same thing as the announcement that all American combat forces would be withdrawn last year, followed by American combat brigades being renamed as "training assistance brigades". But congratulations are in order. Obama got the job done... by following the Bush plan. Kill Saddam, deny sanctuary to Al Qaida, make Iraq stable and nonthreatening to its neighbors, and then go home. All according to plan and right on time, just as predicted. Not the McCain plan of 100 years, or the Kerry plan of a never ending quagmire.

Stunned

2011-10-20T14:57:00.004-04:00

WOW!

I totally did not see that coming. Who could have possibly imagined such a thing? It is so totally outside the realm of possibility that no one except the most irrational tin-foil hat wearing Neo-cons would have even suggested it.

Bis was just 21 when, in 2005, she volunteered to undertake a suicide mission in Israel.

Makes perfect sense. At 21, she was already 10 years over the hill. She really had nothing to look forward to.

Now that I have seen her picture, I completely understand her desire for self-death. In a land overpopulated with ugly women, she is setting a new standard for ugly. If her parents could not force her into an arranged marriage by now, she is finished. The genetic lottery was not kind to her.

Religious Interlude

2011-10-20T10:07:00.004-04:00

Professor (a real one) Phi at Delenda Est Carthago asks, "what is a fundamentalist?"

A good question. The answer, like the question itself, is rooted in our use of language.

In modern American discourse, the term Fundamentalist is used to describe anyone who takes Christianity more seriously than the person using the term. So, rightly, every can deny that they are one, but those wackoes in the church next door certainly are.

But etymologically, a Fundamentalist is anyone who believes the fundamentals of Christian faith. That ought to include about 99% of professing Christians. Once expression of what the fundamentals are is the Nicene Creed. It was specifically written to define what the fundamentals were to bring harmony to the church and establish a basis for identifying heresy. Since almost every modern Christian church still uses this creed and members routinely recite it, all of those members can rightly be said to be "fundamentalists".

But beyond the Nicene Creed (there are other creeds too) there are considered to be five fundamentals of historic Christian faith. If you lack any of the five, you cannot consider yourself to be a Christian. If you hold to all four, you are a "fundamentalist Christian", believing in the fundamental principles of historic Christianity.

1. Deity of Christ. This should be a no-brainer. If you don't believe that Christ is God incarnate, then WTF are you doing pretending to be a Christian? Yet the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) split away from the larger PCUSA over this very issue.

2. Virgin birth. You have to accept that this was a miraculous conception, literally told.

3. Inerrancy of Scripture. That the Bible is the inspired word of God and factually and literally correct. Note that this makes no claims whatsoever about the inerrancy of the Zondervan publishing company or the inerrancy of the hundreds of divines who translated the King James Version. Nor does God make any guarantees that men will not add extra parts for their own benefit or intentionally mistranslate parts. This has been done on multiple occasions in the past and the potential for further such mischief in the future will grow geometrically. For a long time the Mormons and the Jehova's witnesses both used their own versions of the Bible and attempted to pass it off as genuine. The good news of Bible translation is that the original languages are not lost to history. Dedicated study makes it possible to read the original words and discover the real original meaning. Further, there are hundreds of surviving texts from the first century that you can use to check your work, so the myth of centuries of accumulated translation errors is easily refuted. There was a time when translation of your own Bible from Hebrew, Greek and Latin were considered to be part of every educated man's curriculum.

4. His substitutionary atonement. A.k.a, He died for our sins. No further sacrifice of birds or bulls is required or authorized.

5. His physical resurrection and future bodily return. He is coming back in a real physical body.

I recognize that the modern term fundamentalist has become tainted with a sort of militant zeal for spreading the Gospel. But in truth, anyone who takes Christianity seriously and accepts the basic principles of historic Christianity can easily lay claim to the title fundamentalist and can be labeled as such by everyone who takes it less seriously.

According to the militant atheists (pretty much all of them), anyone who mentions Christian faith in public or uses their faith to support an argument on the internet is a "fundi".

Or you can just google the term and get a lot of long-winded dissertations about the history of the fundamentalist movement in America.

Bachmann, Pro and Conn

2011-10-19T11:00:00.003-04:00

I like Michelle Bachmann and I would vote for her for president, but sometimes I just have to shake my head as a subtle sign of disapproval.

First, every candidate says things that are awkwardly worded, wrong or taken out of context.

Vox notes today that she is just too stupid because she mentioned that "Israel is our greatest ally". Vox rightly points out that this statement is wrong in every way that is can be considered wrong and thereby demotes bachmann to "too stupid" to be president. I personally just see this as a statement of support, but I agree that the chief diplomat of the USA (or someone running for that job) should strive for more accuracy and less emotional outburst. For the record, I think the list of our greatest allies right now would include Great Britain and Australia, and the first of those invaded us twice.

I wish to remind the audience that the bar for "too stupid" is currently set at "Obama".

Her 6-6-6 remark in the last debate was without a doubt, Stupid.

But let's look at what she stands for, in her own words. That's right. Nothing. How hard is it to put together a web site if you are running a national campaign for president?

Cain has one
Perry has one
Santorum has one
Mitt has one
Even Paul has one.

The only things on her website are a link to sign up for spam, a link to donate money, and a circular link that directs you back to the same page. My first blog on it's first day was better than that. Is the Bachmann campaign really so devoid of staff that they can't spend 30 minutes to slap together a web page that says where she stands on the issues? ANY issues?

UPDATE: Never Mind. As a commenter pointed out, she is using the same web design as everyone else, an initial screen to sign up for spam, followed by a going to the main site the next visit. The only difference is that other sites had a visible link to skip the spam signup and go directly to the propaganda. But in all particulars, her web site is just like everyo one else. This proved Difster's model in that "she has one too".

Daily WFT

2011-10-19T09:45:00.004-04:00

Diaper Man Exonerated
The baby-man who made news recently as a Social Security Fraud recipient has been exonerated and will continue receiving his Social Security Disability benefit payments. And he is demanding an apology from Sen Coburn, who called for the investigation.

W.T.F !!!!

The article and previous reports did not mention that the man has any disabilities other than his perversion-hobby of pretending to be a baby. He seems to be healthy and employable otherwise. But the government has certified that he is indeed disabled and cannot work.

When The Times first contacted Mr. Thornton about the investigation, he acknowledged thoughts of suicide, saying he had “no problem killing myself” if his benefits were taken away.

We must acknowledge that baby man is indeed an adult and if he is dead set on killing himself, he should not be repressed by our own arbitrary moral standards of right and wrong. Indeed, he should be encouraged to follow his dream. I would personally send him a new "adult-sized" footy sleeper if he will kill himself by Christmas.

Normally, I would say that the mentally deranged need treatment and sympathy, but the Social Security department disagrees with me. The official position of the US government is that people with loose screws need to be coddled and supported and encouraged to indulge their delusions. I can live with that, provided I get to pick which of baby-man's delusions we get to coddle.

If the only way that order will be restored to the universe is for this man to kill himself, then I would favor him getting on with it. The sooner the better.

But let's be serious. He has no intention of killing himself. His suicidal threats were nothing more than attempts to manipulate. It probably worked really well with his mother. It is typical childish behavior, the kind everyone else grows out of when they discover that no one else cares.

He said his mother first applied for benefits for him when he was 16.

It seems that his mother got him his first taste of Government teat milk.

More your speed

2011-10-18T14:04:00.001-04:00

Since no one wants to comment on all my high quality commentary on world events, here is this, shamelessly ganked from somewhere else on the internet, and posted here with very little work or thought on my part.

And He Means it This Time

2011-10-18T12:59:00.003-04:00

Israel's prime minister has warned the Palestinian militants freed in a prisoner swap that they will be punished if they return to violence.

I can hear them quaking in their sandals from here.

He said, "We will continue to fight terror and every released terrorist who returns to terror will be held accountable."

Not like last time. Because we all know that the Hamas would never take another Israeli soldier hostage and use him to bargain another release. Nope. This is a one-time deal. Never to be repeated. So just watch it or you will be in big trouble, Mister. I really mean it this time. Really.

I am the 4.75%

2011-10-18T09:12:00.000-04:00

Less than 99%

2011-10-17T14:22:00.001-04:00

You know you are finished as a political movement when the mockery begins.

From some place called the slacktory.

Current Events, 17 Oct 2011

2011-10-17T13:59:00.002-04:00

1. Israeli soldier Galad Shalit is to be released from Hamas in exchange for over 1000 Palestinian terrorists. This can’t be good. There is a non-zero % chance that Shalit or a member of his family will be murdered by one of the men who is to be released. Those being released have not forsworn violence or agreed to never again serve Hamas. Shalit, on the other hand, is very unlikely to ever wear the Israeli Army uniform again. There is a near certainty that over a hundred of the men to be released will participate in attacks against Israelis again. There is a near certainty that other Israeli soldiers and civilians will be kidnapped specifically to arrange for similar trades in the future. No doubt, this was a good deal for Shalit and his family. Of equal certainty, this will cost someone else’s life. The reason we don’t deal with terrorists (or pirates, or kidnappers) isn’t because we are such moral purists with clean hands. It is because doing so is ultimately self-defeating. When the enemy profits from your behavior, you teach them to do more of what is working.

2. Detroit is going dark. Get your minds out of your racist gutter. I meant the lights keep going out (it has been the other kind of dark for decades). What the article fails to point out is that the reason the lights are out isn’t simple maintenance neglect. The residents of the city prefer it that way and intentionally sabotage the lights as soon as they are fixed. This is why they can’t have nice things.

"This city…it's dark without streetlights," said Wicks, who lives on Iroquois. "You look down Iroquois at night now, it's black. It's very dangerous."

THAT's Racist.

3. Last week the Libyan anti-Gadaffi forces announced that they were going door to door to root out Gadaffi loyalists. Hmmm. Didn’t NATO intervene to stop Gadaffi from doing the same thing? So I guess this was never really about preventing humanitarian suffering on a huge scale then.

4. Over the weekend, the Obama administration announced that we were invading Nigeria. Evidently, there is an armed thug there and the locals are incapable of handling the matter. Of course, the purpose of the US Army is to go everywhere around the world and handle things for foreign countries when they can’t handle it themselves. And this comes at a particularly good time when we aren’t doing anything else particularly important and we have lots of extra money, supplies and growth capacity.

5. The Obama administration announced today that is was cancelling a major part of the Obamacare program. Wait, what? He can do that? I thought it was a bill, passed by congress and signed into law. How can he just “cancel” part of it? Don’t get me wrong, I would like to see all of it cancelled for the abomination that it is. But were in the law does Obama get the authority to amend the law without going back to Congress? Doesn’t Obama know ANYTHING about how government works? Isn’t ANYONE in Congress just the least but concerned that he acts like an omnipotent dictator?

Unless large numbers of healthy people willingly sign up during their working years, soaring premiums driven by the needs of disabled beneficiaries would destabilize it, eventually requiring a taxpayer bailout.

Well, there’s a startling revelation. Isn’t that the one line summation of the entire Obamacare program? Without forcing millions of healthy people to pay the bills of millions of sick people, it can’t work.

Heard at the Occupy, II

2011-10-17T12:33:00.002-04:00

Dismiss all charges or we will clog up courts, lawyers for Occupy Wall Street protesters say

What a great strategy. I think when they are done with that, they should clog up the jails and bail bondsmen for a few years too. The way I look at it is that if these people are behind bars, they won't be committing other crimes, like voter fraud.

If the DA pursues the remaining cases, protesters will be marching into the courtrooms en masse beginning Nov. 15 - when 60 demonstrators are set to appear before one judge.

The Manhattan criminal courts deal with about 90,000 cases a year, and prosecutors say they will have little trouble absorbing the extra work load.

Evidently, the defense lawyers are not real good at maths. If they think that even a few hundred cases is such a big stick that NYC should listen to cave to their demands.

If they were serious about this, they would intentionally commit crimes (more crimes) in NYC, forcing the police to arrest even more of them. If 100 people to too many for the system to handle, then a thousand arrested would really make their point. Heck, 2000 people would be bullet proof. If this is really their strategy that they think can't lose, why aren't they doubling down?

C'mon ya bunch of pussies. I dare you to get arrested. Put your skin in the game. Throw some rock at the police. Spray-paint a police horse. Slash the tires of a police cruiser. Raise yourselves above the level of nuisance and see who is really on your side.**

Go ahead and taunt the NYPD into playing Whack-a-mole on your head.

Good news: The revolution WILL be televised.
Bad News: It will probably be on pay-per-view or crappy low resolution YouTube.

**I realize how this could be perceived as inciting to riot or inciting to commit crimes. I wish it to be known that my first inclination to everyone everywhere is to obey all of the laws in your jurisdiction, even the laws you are ignorant of. I am merely pointing out that people who are already lawbreakers should take public and affirmative steps to be caught and punished for their crimes. I believe that this is also the policy of the NYPD. If a person in the Occupy Wall Street movement or any of its wholly owned subsidiaries of the Communist Party USA are inclined to refrain from criminal behavior then I applaud you and wish you every success in continuing to stay on the right side of the law. To those who will seek their advancement "by any means necessary", I also offer the advice to limit your violence and destruction to property. If getting arrested and clogging up the courts is your intention, there are mutliple ways for even unimaginative people to do so without harming other people or working animals employed by the NYPD.

Heard at the Occupy

2011-10-17T11:14:00.001-04:00

A world without war is worth fighting for.

Just let that sink in.

Ron Paul is Getting Smarter.

2011-10-17T10:03:00.002-04:00

It's getting harder to argue with a guy who agrees with me on every point.