Bangity, Modding Edition

The first mod for the 22/45 was a Lam bushing. It took longer to read through the directions twice than it did to install.

Helps that I have a pin punch to push the hammer pin with, as well as a dead-blow hammer for knocking loose (and reinstalling) the bolt stop and the barrel assembly.

The Lam bushing allows removal of the magazine disconnect hardware. Empty magazines have to be pried out if the disconnect crap is left in. With it gone, empty magazines drop free, as they should on any decent semiauto. And the trigger feels less gritty and somewhat lighter.

$12 well spent, if you have a Mk.III or a Mk.III 22/45.

What the Hell Was That Thing Up There in the Sky?

Click on the image to enlarge

What is it? Good question.

The Changes in Government Snooping Are Just Eyewash for the Unwashed

So holds Bruce Schneier.

The government certainly doesn't want to make it harder for them to snoop on you. And neither do the major Internet players: Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, etc., etc.

I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of email correspondents that I have who have adopted encryption. It's easy enough to do, just download GNU Privacy Guard, or GPG4Win or pay for PGP, if you must. Thunderbird Email supports an addon called Enigmail that will run encryption.

But hardly anyone does it, trusting in security by anonymity, I guess.

If you want to communicate with some degree of anonymity, either use encryption or buy yourself one of these:

Governmental Scumbag of the Year; "Intelligence Edition"

The 2013 Rosemary Award was awarded to James "Jimmie the Perjurer" Clapper, for blatantly lying to Congress about the scope of collection of Americans' telephone data.

He had a lot of competition, including Emperor Alexander, who lied about the usefulness of what the NSA was doing, and the Department of Justice, for classifying quotes from the Constitution as "Top Secret". The list of "also-rans" for the award is impressive, including Admiral William McRaven, who ordered the destruction of Federal records (a bit of a felony) and the DoD, for classifying statements that had been made publicly during the Cuban Missile Crisis (which happened over fifty years ago).

The award is named for Rose Mary Woods, Richard Nixon's secretary, who "inadvertently" erased 18-1/2 minutes of the Watergate tapes.

(H/T)

Deflating Cloud Storage

The NSA's fuckery has taken the steam out of the move towards cloud storage of data.

Like this wasn't foreseeable.

Personally, I don't think it much matters what reforms are put in place, for I don't believe that the American Stasi NSA will give a rat's ass. They'll whatever the fuck they feel like doing, which is what they've been doing from Day One. All the so-called reforms will do is persuade most people to go watch another squirrel while the NSA gets back to work spying on everyone.

Meth Nation- Go, Indiana!

I suppose it's just a coincidence that all of the states in Meth Nation form a contiguous landmass.

Not to say it isn't a problem elsewhere*, but these are the top ten meth states.
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* Like Wasilla, AK.

Don't Let the Storm Door Hit You in the Ass, Stevie

American action movie star Steven Seagal has given state-run newspaper Rossiskaya Gazeta a whopping 2,000 word interview in which he expressed support for Russia's actions in Crimea. ... Seagal also said that although he loves the United States, it is possible — "sometime" — that he will follow the lead of French movie star Gerard Depardieu and take Russian citizenship.

Tsar Valdimir IV seems to be set to amass a nice little collection of over-the-hill actors.

Musings about 2016, or "Somebody Please Shoot Me Now".

You can find a lot of musings about 2016 all over the damn place. It's probably true, though, that one of the problems with Hillary Clinton is that she has enough political baggage to fill up a truck and that's never helpful.[1]

While Bill Maher was pinging on the number of candidates who have "waited their turn" and he used Obama as the guy who didn't wait his turn and won, there are other examples of politicians who didn't wait their turn and won: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

The outlier here, of course, is Reagan and Bush the Elder. Reagan waited his turn, but between nearly 20% inflation, a second gas crisis and the Iranian hostage crisis, even Rick Santorum would have been able to beat President Carter.[2] Bush was on his was to losing, but between an inept campaign by the Democrats, a lousy debate performance by Dukakis and the race-baiting of Bush, he turned it around.

In late 1991, it seems from the polling that Bush I was going to win in a walk. The "next turn" Democrats, like Anthony Cuomo, sat it out, figuring that they'd let some poor schmuck get buried and then come in in `96. Didn't work that way.

In 2000, there really wasn't a "next guy" for the GOP, other than Danny Quayle, and nobody was crazy enough for that.[3] And so George W. Bush won the Republican nomination[4] and the election.[5]

So yes, I think Maher is onto something. But it doesn't seem to matter. The GOP candidates for 2016, this far out, appear to be all of the same inhabitants of the 2012 Klown Kar, including Mitt Romney, and with a couple of quasi-new clowns. The Democrats seem to be, so far, Clinton and maybe Biden. Biden, well, you can just write off all but about ten states if he runs, for Shotgun Joe isn't exactly popular.

But, Jesus, why are we even talking about the intrigues in the American Political Whorehouse, now?
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[1] "Politicians are like a box of chocolates: Democrats are mostly soft and gooey and Republicans are mostly nuts."
[2] OK, maybe not Santorum.
[3] Unrepentant Nazi sympathizer Pat Buchanan might have also had a claim. Both men were interested, but pulled out before the primaries began.
[4] Like his father, his campaign used race-baiting as a tool.
[5] As for his campaign's successful theft of the two general election, let's not go there.

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

Boeing 727:

Asshole Identified

A few days ago, I asked who was the asshole who voted to kick a girl out of school for shaving her head in support of her friend who is battling cancer.

The answer is: Bill Newcomer.