Interesting Gun Development; CCW Edition

The Ruger LCR in .327 Magnum.

The .327 Magnum sort of reminds me of the .41 Magnum: A round that has its uses, but is mostly overshadowed by its bigger and older (and usually cheaper) brother.

In this application, though, the .327 gives the user an extra round over the .38/.357. Which has its value, for the same reason that many folks prefer a Colt Detective Special over a J-Frame Smith in .38.

Legal Bribery

Big donors are demanding that candidates listen to them and take their "suggestions" to heart.

Seems to me that "here's money, do what I want" is skating on very thin ice as far as the definition of bribery goes. But since the Federal Election Commission is more toothless than my cat, don't expect them to do anything more than watch porn and eat lunch. I'd be very surprised if those clowns do anything more than come into work at 10, drink coffee, surf the Internet, and then knock off for the day at 11:30.

It should be clear to all by now that the politicians serve the oligarchs. The only reason they listen to the rest of us is that they have to stand for election from time to time. The 99.9% get lip service and promises of hand-jobs. The 0.1% get what they pay for.

Today is a Sacred Holy Day for Sailors and Marines.

Celebrate the Elixir of Life!

(Yes, it's a thing. And as a marketing ploy, it is far less pernicious than the "Hallmark Holidays" or the parasitic sales on days to honor those who have served their country.)

More Majick Fairy Dust From the Donald

After weeks of vowing to raise taxes on "hedge fund guys" and high-income earners, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump unveiled a tax plan Monday that would cut rates across the board and reduce the amount paid by wealthiest Americans and corporations into the U.S. Treasury.It's the same old GOP elephant dung: When a Democrat is in charge, they scream "budget deficits". When they want to be in charge, or are in charge, it's "tax cuts for the rich" and "deficits don't matter."

The infrastructure in this country is falling apart. The Republicans, of course, all seem to want to spend more and more on the military and engage in new and better wars around the globe, all the while handing out more and more tax cuts to the rich and to corporations.

Where the fuck do they expect the money for the military and infrastructure to come from?

The answer is "they don't care" because they figure that enough Americans are of the mentally-challenged variety that the politicians won't have to answer it. And the bill will come due long after they are out of office (looking at you Chimpy and Ronnie).

As H.L. Mencken said:

“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”

Carly Fionia: The Pro-Torture Candidate

Carly Fiorina has swallowed and is parroting the pro-torture caucus line that torturing people works.

Oh, and she's also pro-NSA.

Shit, if we're going to elect a Californian who is pro-torture and pro-NSA, why not just elect DiFi? At least that way, there'll be somebody who understands a little bit about how the legislative process works.

I Don't Want the "Internet of Things".

I don't want it. I don't want my refrigerator, oven, dishwasher, car, garage door opener, washing machine, thermostat, lighting etc., etc., etc., going online for any reason whatsoever.

And if that means that I'm condemning myself to a world of second-hand and refurbished stuff, so fucking be it.

That is all.

"Destructive Device" Ruling in 3....2.....1.....

The XM42 Flamethrower.

If bills haven't been introduced in at least a dozen states to outlaw flamethrowers within four weeks, I'll be very much surprised.

David Cameron Denies Skull-Fucking a Dead Pig

Apparently it was a part of some upper-class college fraternity initiation.

Which Cameron now denies ever happened, after first saying he wouldn't "dignify" the allegation.

I don't know if skull-fucking a dead pig is more inhuman than another one of the rites of the tony college twits: Burning a 50-pound note in front of a homeless person.

Rowan County Asshole Shifts to the "Jeebus Hates Yer Ass" Party

A county clerk in Kentucky who was briefly jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples said on Friday that she and her family have switched to the Republican Party because the Democrats no longer represented them.

Yer welcome to her.

(H/T)

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

A G-III takes off from Van Nuys:

MS Spyware

Borepatch refers to a post about spyware that Microsoft is trying to install on Win 7/8 machines under the guise of routine updates.

You might want to disable them, if you've installed them, or block them if you haven't.

They are:

KB3068708
KB3022345
KB3075249
KB3080149

Go read the posts to find out why you should not have those updates running.

Bangity

Did the final Bullseye match of the year for my club. I shot a 750-5x with my iron-sighted K-22. That's a 51 point jump over my first outing with the gun.

I had a really good slow-fire relay at one point, shooting 90-1x at 50 yards. Too bad that I couldn't have been consistent.

It's probably not terribly rational that, with a perfectly good Ruger 22/45 that has a red-dot and a trigger job, that I'm shooting an old revolver, but that's where I'm at.

Perfect Headline

The obit.

Caturday

Kittens at a no-kill shelter. All fully-weaned.

All ready to bring maybe two decades' worth of joy to your life.

Cliffhangers

They're a widely used trick in television, carried over from the movie serials. The season ends with the hero (or some other character) in mortal danger.

Thing is, I rarely remember them. This season of NCIS opened with the aftermath of Gibbs being shot. I didn't remember that he was shot. If it wasn't for talk on one of the gun forum, I wouldn't have remembered about the question of whether it was Branch or Barlow Connolly who got shot in Longmire.

If the idea is to ensure that viewers return in the following season to find out what happened, it's wasted on me.

Away at Class, Dammit!

I'm in class and I can't react to Boehner's plan to resign. 

Live boy? Dead girl? Tired of dealing with the jackasses in his caucus? Impending indictments?

Stay tuned.....

Because It's Friday

Steel-on-steel can sometimes be a bitch for getting traction.

Sure, You're Not Selling Out. Keep Telling Yourself That; Craft Beer Ed.

Anheuser-Busch, now known as "InBev", is buying a craft brewer in Los Angeles. The co-founder of the craft brewery says they're not selling out:

"This wasn't a sellout move for me," said Meg Gill, president and co-founder of Golden Road. Gill said she hadn't planned to sell to a beer conglomerate but "as soon as we saw that vision, both companies were excited to be a part of what the other was doing."

Yeah, sure. What InBev was doing was probably offering you a boatload of cash.

Sure, it's a good fit, since InBev is mostly known for passing off watered-down horsepiss as beer. And they have a lot of cash.

Mostly because they have a lot of cash. Gill clearly found her "golden road".

Smooth Move, Shkreli

Well, it seems that the Worst Person in the World is in the sights of a Federal prosecutor for financial fuckery worthy of jail time.

According to the court records and people with knowledge of the case, the allegations against Shkreli that are under investigation involve insider trading, disguising the purpose of corporate payments for his benefit, defrauding shareholders by snatching business opportunities for himself, destruction of evidence, failure to disclose material facts to shareholders and other potential crimes.

One of the key elements of the investigation involves allegations that [Martin] Shkreli appropriated cash from Retrophin and used it to settle litigation from institutions and individuals who were investors in his hedge fund, MSMB Capital Management, and then illegally classified them in the company’s books as consulting payments. In essence, if the allegations are true, Shkreli stole money from the company to resolve lawsuits that had nothing to do with Retrophin, then lied about what he did in filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission by misrepresenting how and why the cash was spent.

His lawyers have probably been screaming "What part of 'keep a low profile' was unclear to you?"

The DoJ has been under fire for awhile for being reluctant to go after financial pirates like Shkreli. Shkreli just transformed his case from something that might have gotten a two-minute blurb on the news into a high-profile case. If there was a chance of his defense lawyers negotiating a favorable deal for him, that just evaporated.

Except he painted/tattooed it onto himself.

Free Ice Cream From Marko

The Cake Whores of Mars.

Double your money back if you don't like it!

Two! Two! Two!

That is all.

A Modest Suggestion for an Addition to the Dictionary

This is mine:

Shkrel·i n: A greedy mother-stabbing father-raper

The Difference Between a Sociopath and a Humanitarian

According to Forbes, Jonas Salk, by not patenting the polio vaccine, walked away from at least seven billion dollars in royalties. Albert Sabin, maybe up to twenty billion. It probably didn't really occur to either one of them. They were medical men, humanitarians, who saved millions of lives and improved the lives of hundreds of millions more. Their names have been revered and will be for decades, if not centuries, to come. They eliminated the scourge of polio from most of the world (pockets remain, thanks to the fucking CIA).

In contrast, people should spit on the ground after Martin Shkreli passes by. He is a walking, breathing argument for a socialized health-care system, if only to put villainous fuckers like him out of business. Hell, he even looks as though he should be a villain in a James Bond flick.

Remember, Shkreli said that he needed the money "for research", but his business model is nothing short of extortion. His idea of "research" is finding old drugs, only made by one company, buying that company, and then jacking the shit out of the prices. Because he's nothing more than an Albanian pirate, operating on the fringes of legality. His companies are nothing more than wretched hives of greed and villainy. One would hope that the shade of Alan Turing would haunt that little fucker for appropriating his name.

Shkreli, a scum-sucking, wretched, despicable bottom-feeder, just announced that he'll lower the price of the drug, but apparently he's going to wait until everybody stops hating him so much.

"Happy Birthday" is Now Free

None of the companies that have collected royalties on the "Happy Birthday" song for the past 80 years held a valid copyright claim to one of the most popular songs in history, a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled on Tuesday.

In a stunning reversal of decades of copyright claims, the judge ruled that Warner/Chappell never had the right to charge for the use of the "Happy Birthday To You" song. Warner had been enforcing a copyright since 1988, when it bought Birch Tree Group, the successor to Clayton F. Summy Co., which claimed the original disputed copyright.

Judge George H. King ruled that a copyright filed by the Summy Co. in 1935 granted only the rights to specific piano arrangements of the music, not the actual song.

They're not the first group of clowns who have tried to gravy-train on copyrights forever. The descendants of Arthur Conan Doyle got slapped down for doing that; they were charging a license fee that was small enough that most publishers opted to pay rather than fight. Until Leslie Klinger, an author, refused and sued, winning his attorney's fees in the process.

It's good to see some of the Shkrelis of the world lose these cases.

Brit Online Timewaster

The History Bunker, where you can buy uniforms spanning several centuries.

If you're in the UK and you want to kit out your wedding party in WW2 uniforms, they can do that.

I got here because of Tam's Pooh cartoon and curiosity about where one buys a pith helmet.

VW Wasn't Just Fucking with the CARB and the EPA

VW sold eleven million vehicles that were rigged to pollute more than the laws allowed, including those sold in the EU and South Korea.

There must be an unofficial requirement to be a heartless sociopath in order to run a company, as we're seeing in the pharmaceutical industry.

Our Allies. Comrades-in-Arms. Pedophiles.

Our Afghan allies routinely rape young boys. American soldiers have been ordered to shut up and ignore it. Those who don't ignore it have been punished by Big Army.

"In the United States Army, We Don't Rape Children, We Help Those Who Do."

Another Empty Seat on the GOP Short Bus

Scott Walker quit the race. He blames Donald Trump, I guess for being better at running for political office than Walker is. Since he was polling somewhere between Lindsey Graham and the Herpes virus, well, even billionaires have limits on wasting money.

His plan apparently is to resurface at a divided convention. But hell, even Willard Romney is harboring that dream.

There hasn't been a "brokered convention" in over sixty years. The hope of Dead Candidate Walker and Flip-Flop Mitt that one will come to pass is proof that the only cure for fire-in-the-belly is embalming fluid.

But beyond that, if the party bosses seize control of the convention and lock out the people who have been the force behind the GOP gaining the Congress, look for them to stay home in November in large numbers.

If Martin Shkreli is Not the Worst Person in the World, He's Certainly on the Short List

There's an old drug that used to treat a parasitic infection, the kind of infection that sometimes happens to AIDS patients. The drug, Daraprim, cost $13.50 a pill.

Or it did. Until Shkreli, a former hedge fund guy started a pharmaceutical company, bought the rights to the drug and jacked the price up to $750 a pill. And the asshole has the nerve to wonder why, all of a sudden, he's the living, breathing face of uncaring greed.

He's not the only greedy motherfuckering douchebag out there. Doxycycline, which is used to treat Lyme disease (BT,DT), went from $20 for a bottle of 500 to $1,849. That's a jump from 4 cents a pill to $3.68 a pill or, if you want, from less than the cost of a .22LR round to the cost of a .50 BMG round-- apparently, you can thank a bunch of greedy crooks operating under the name of Teva Pharmaceuticals for that.

At this point, it should be apparent that the difference between American pharmaceutical companies and the Mexican cartels is just a matter of degree.

125 Million Reasons to Legalize Pot

That's what Colorado expects to reap in taxes in 2015 on the sale of marijuana.

Don't forget that it was the promise of revenue that brought lottery games to almost every state in the country. Other states aren't going to be able to resist the pull of being able to both add hundreds of millions per year to their state coffers, as well as cut out a lot of the expenses for a segment of the Fiasco Against Drugs.

Farmer Frank's Forty-Four

A little over three years ago, I blogged a little about wanting a 5-shot .44 Special revolver. Frank W. James responded to the second posting, as you can see (2nd link).

He did indeed have a Smith & Wesson 696 that he was willing to sell. It was an early "no dash" model that S&W had sent to him for evaluation; Frank liked the gun enough to buy it. In the last few years of Frank's ownership, he used it as a farm-truck gun.

So we e-mailed back and forth about the price. I did a little research and told Frank that his asking price was too low, that he could get much more if he sold it on Gunbroker. He said he didn't care about that, he had stated his ask and did I want the gun or not?

I did.

Over time, I stopped carrying it. The value of 696s isn't anywhere near Python ranges, but they're very pricey nowadays. So the gun has been in the safe, mainly, for the last two years. This weekend, I took it out and carried it in Frank's memory. I'll put some rounds through it soon.

Frank's favorite caliber was the .41 Magnum. He carried .41s for over 40 years. So that .44 must have impressed him a little.

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

Now for something completely different:

A "blade off test" of a Rolls Royce Trent 900 engine, which power the A380.

With a service contract, those engines cost almost $50 million apiece. I'd guess the cost to RR for the engine was probably less than $20 million.

Those puppies put out around 80,000 pounds of thrust. Only the engines on a 777 are more powerful.

Shorter JEB: "I Know How to Get Involved in Pointless Wars Because I am a Bush."

Ol' Johnnie Ellis "Low Energy" Bush must be sinking pretty low in the polls if he's desperate enough to clamp onto Chimpy's legacy.

Turning a budget surplus into massive deficits. Getting the United States into two pointless wars, costing trillions of dollars. Plotting the commission of war crimes in the West Wing of the White House. Oh, and stealing elections, can't forget that. Much to be proud of.

His dad had the political guts to do what was necessary to fix the budget and he paid for that with his job. Neither Chimpy 1.0 or 1.1 have ever shown that sort of courage.

Fifty Years Ago

The Eve of Destruction was the number one song in the U.S. for the week of Sept. 19-25, 1965.

It doesn't seem as though things have changed considerably.

Arrr, Me Hearties! Today be the 19th of Septemberrrr. Arrrr.

Today is Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Why Sept 19th? That's the birthday of the ex-wife of one of the founders. The day took off when Dave Barry wrote about it.

Talk Like a Pirate Day is now a religious holiday, for those who are members of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

To corporations, every day is Talk Like a Pirate Day. For companies large and small, old and new, all seem to believe that the law doesn't apply to them.

The latest, of course, is Uber, a company that believes that wage-and-hour laws and laws regulating for-hire vehicles and their drivers don't apply to them. Because they're a corporation, or they use the internet.

Presumably Uber can't just go out and start killing people. But there doesn't seem to be anything in their logic that says they can't.

Caturday

Jake asserts his control over the bed: "Mine! Mine! Mine!"

Usurpation happened soon after.

German Engineering At Its Finest

VW and Audi had software on their diesels that could detect when the cars were being emissions tested. (If I had to guess, it could have been as simple as determining when the drive wheels were spinning and the other wheels weren't.) The software would then turn on the full emissions-control system. But when the cars were being driven normally, the software would then shut off the emissions-control system.

VW has admitted to it, because they were caught red-handed.

All of those cars, almost half-a-million, will be recalled. And VW/Audi faces fines of up to $37,500 per car, which is around $18 billion.

There was nothing "inadvertent" or "a minor oversight" about this. Sock it to them, guys.

What Do I Keep Saying, Over and Over and Over?

Never talk to the FBI.

A friend of the alleged Charleston church shooter pleaded not guilty Friday to charges of lying to investigators and concealing information and his bond was set at $100,000. ... Court documents unsealed Friday said Meek told an FBI agent that he did not know specifics about Dylann Roof’s plan to shoot churchgoers during a Bible study in Charleston, but the FBI says that was a lie.

Or, for that matter, any other Fed. (Unless you're in a regulated business and you have to.)

Good Question

Who, indeed?

Because It's Friday

Down in the engine room of a steamship.

Note the lag time between when the Bridge orders a bell change and when the engine responds. A good Conning Officer has a feel for how long it takes for the ship to respond to an engine order.

Pugulistic Punching for Pacifism

There is something rather incongruous about pacifists resorting to force to get their way.

TOKYO — Legislators scuffled in Parliament and demonstrators took to the streets on Thursday as Japan’s governing coalition moved to secure final passage of contentious legislation that would loosen decades-old limits on the country’s military.

The package of 11 bills was still tied up in Parliament’s upper house late Thursday night, past an initial deadline set by the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has spent considerable political capital trying to convince a skeptical public that Japan should play a more assertive role in global military affairs.

Scenes reminiscent of a rugby match played out in the committee chamber where lawmakers have been debating the bills for weeks. Opposition politicians tried to prevent voting by piling on top of the committee chairman and wresting away his microphone. Lawmakers from the governing party pulled them away and formed a protective scrum around the chairman to allow him to call the vote.

Punching people in the cause of peace--- Dick Cheney should sue them for copyright infringement.

Frank W. James Goes West

Frank W. James, 69, of Wolcott [Ind.], passed away at 7:34 p.m. Tuesday, September 15, 2015 at his home surrounded by his family.

Frank had a stroke early last year. For awhile, it seemed that he was improving and he had even blogged a couple of times.

He was a prolific gunwriter and a well-respected authority on submachine guns.

I had a couple of dealings with him, even though I never got to meet him. I thought he was a true gentleman.

Rest in peace, Frank.

(By the way, if somebody offers you the job of "shooting editor" at Shooting Times, run like hell. Frank James was named to that job a few months before his stroke. His predecessor was murdered.)

NaNaNaNaNaNa I'm Not Listening NaNaNaNaNaNa

The 2nd GOP debate is tonight.

The only way I would even think to tune in would be if they were to start assaulting and killing each other on the stage, and then the winners feasted on the corpses of the losers.

That would be great television. But nothing short of that.

Wasn't There Supposed to be an Invasion of Texas?

Jade Helm 15 ended yesterday.

No doubt the tinfoil-hat crowd is onto their next bit of conspiracy/wackaloon frenzy. They probably believe that the only thing standing in the way of a military takeover was a bunch of fat-assed white guys who had their tricked-out bargain-basement ARs all ready to take on the 101st Airborne.

Snake Oil. Gun Oil.

Some spectrographic testing is apparently showing that some expensive gun lubricant called "FireClean" is pretty much just canola oil. Which you can buy by the quart for just a few bucks.

FireClean. $20 for 2oz.

Walmart canola oil: $6 per gallon. Which works out to about ten cents for two ounces.

------------------------------------------------

I got an e-mail from Gun Digest touting some book written by a guy whose been a cop for a century or so and who said this:

I am convinced the .45 caliber, magazine-fed, semi-automatic pistol shooting Federal Hydro-Shock ammunition represents the apex of defensive handgun design.

If my memory serves, Hydra-Shoks were first offered over 25 years ago. They (and Black Talons) might have been the shit back in the day, but it doesn't take much research to see that bullet design has evolved significantly since the first Bush was in the White House. Sure, you can still buy Hydra-Shocks and Black Talons (now Winchester Ranger SXT*), but why would you want to?

Ammunition design changes. A few decades back, it was normal to see .38 lead round-nose cartridges used for self-defense. Then it shifted, slowly, to hollow-point .38+P semi-wadcutters, a/k/a "the FBI load". Neither are very good choices anymore.

A digression: There are some good HPSWCs cartridges. Some, like the Nyclad, aren't made anymore. Others are, but the buyer has to do a bit of research because if the lead used is too hard, then the bullet won't perform well.

Anyway, times change and so does bullet design. Worse, so does the need for someone who wants a decent-performing load to do research and find independent test results. There is a lot of snake-oil in bullets out there (the "R-I-P" bullet comes to mind).

Caveat emptor is really true in this game.
____________________________________________________________
* "SXT" = "Same eXact Thing", because the Usual Suspects got their panties in a wad over their belief that a single round of Black Talon would kill you deader than a Star Trek phaser set to "liquefy". Winchester pulled the Black Talons and then renamed the bullet to placate the hoplophobic morons.

Texas: Racist, Crazy, or Both.

So a kid in Irving, Texas built an electronic clock out of parts. He took it to school to show his teachers.

But, because the kid has the name "Ahmed Mohammed", everybody freaks out, the cops get called, the kid gets hauled off in handcuffs and they may charge him for bringing a fake bomb to school.

No matter which room that kid is in this process, including the courtroom, he'll be the smartest one in it. Which may not be hard in Texas.

NYPD Looks Stupider and Stupider Over the James Blake Fiasco

(Earlier post)

It now turns out that the man the NYPD cops thought they were looking for when they roughed up Mr. Blake was in Australia. His name was on the original photo (which the cops cropped) and it might have taken them less than a minute to figure that all out.

No points for guessing what the plainclothes cops' attitude towards that was.

75 Years Ago

On September 15, 1940, the Germans essentially lost the Battle of Britain when they tried to force the RAF into a one-day deathmatch. The Germans had switched from attacking RAF facilities and aircraft factories to daylight bombing of cities the week before. The Luftwaffe mounted it largest daylight attack on London. The RAF defeated it.

What the Germans didn't know was that they had the RAF on the ropes. The Luftwaffe was shooting down airplanes and killing pilots faster than the RAF could replace them. The Germans had their own issues with attrition and it's debatable whether or not they would have been able to outlast the RAF.

The shift of German strategy from attacking the RAF to trying to terrorize the British into submission meant that the RAF could rebuild its strength. Aircraft production began to exceed losses.

September 15th has been marked as Battle of Britain Day.

A huge-ass "flypast" was put on in England to mark the day.

(And, very soon after September 15th, The Blitz was on.)

CNN: "zOMG!! Something is Floating in the Indian Ocean!!1!!"

Nearly two months after debris from the vanished Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 washed up on Reunion Island, a large object reportedly floating off the island has piqued the interest of French officials there.

An Air France pilot reported seeing "a white object" floating in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday morning about 70 kilometers (43 miles) northwest of the French island, said Siva Vadivelou, assistant director of the French Civil Aviation Authority on Reunion.

Really? Somebody saw some big hunk of something floating and that's enough for CNN to go all, well, whatever the fuck it is that CNN does?

Which isn't, apparently, journalism.

The Martian

I won't lie about this: I probably, in essence, read the book twice in reading it once. Because I kept wanting to find out "what happens next" and skimming ahead a little, then I'd go back and read in detail. Wash, rinse, repeat. Which probably took way longer than if I had just read the damn thing.

How did they condense/strip that book down into a 2.24 hour movie?

I'm interested to find out.

As an aside, USA Today (aka "The Great American Birdcage Liner") thought the weakness of the book was the protagonist's unflappability and apparent unwillingness to contemplate existential matters. Well, no fucking shit! He's stuck on Mars with no way to contact Earth and no source of long-term food. How he deals with all that is the book, and frankly, when you're up to your neck in an alligator-infested swamp (or marooned on a barren world), contemplating your navel is not going to be very high on the agenda.

Watching the Saga of Rowan County From the Outer Space

Let's say that you're not Christian or maybe even you're some alien species listening in to what happens here.

You'd probably get the impression that Christianity, at least as it is practiced in America, is a religion that revels in acts of hatred and discrimination towards other people. You might conclude that Christianity is a religion that is based on naked and unalloyed greed. You might even conclude that there is one peculiar sect that, until very recently, held it as a sacrament to rape, abuse and even enslave children.

Of course, if that alien observer were to come to Earth and make those observations, there would be legions of Christians who would protest that no, not all Christians are hateful, greedy, child-molesters, that the aliens shouldn't judge all Christians by those who are grabbing for gold, fucking children, or hating on others.

You see where I am going with this, don't you?

Cops Shoot Man For Recording Them

Cops in California shot a man for recording them with a cell phone.

Because, as they say "they were in fear for their lives". Apparently, the cops there can't tell the difference between this:

and this:

Eye exams should be ordered for all of those trigger-happy jerkoffs. Followed by indictments.

Shorter CIA Director: "Saying Mean Things About Us Is an Act of Treason."

CIA Director John Brennan suggested that negative public opinion and "misunderstanding" about the US intelligence community is in part "because of people who are trying to undermine" the mission of the NSA, CIA, FBI and other agencies. These people "may be fueled by our adversaries," he said.

FBI Director James Comey referred to the backlash against his lobbying for backdoors into encrypted communications provided by the technology industry as "venom and deep cynicism" that are making a rational discussion about what could and should be done nearly impossible.

And, of course, they blame Edward Snowden. Sort of like a bank robber blames an informant for snitching on him, in that the bank robber never bothers to consider that maybe he wouldn't be in prison for bank robbery if he hadn't been sticking up banks.

The overall fuckery and lies of the people running the intelligence services need hardly be discussed here. It is an established fact that they have treated the civil liberties and privacy rights of Americans as something quaint, like starched collars and high-button shoes. They either don't understand basic computer encryption theory or they are lying about it.

They bemoan the lack of trust Americans have in them, all the while forgetting that trust is something that, if bestowed, can easily be lost and is almost impossible to regain. Where they are, right now, trying to win over people who don't trust them, is in a bed of their own design.

They can all take a flying fuck at the Moon.

(H/T)

Being a "Christian Martyr" was, Apparently, No Fun

Some Asshole, who is the Rowan (KY) County Clerk, has announced that she won't interfere with the issuance of marriage licenses.

The Ferguson Commission

The report is being released today. 198 pages.

It'll probably be nicely-bound, where it will fit on a shelf besides other reports that were released with a big splash and then ignored. Like the report of the Kerner Commission.

Because the small pissant towns around St. Louis that exist for no good reason (look up St. Anne, MO sometime) aren't going away. Those towns get a lot of their funding from using the cops and the courts to shake people down.

The cops aren't interested in giving up their perceived right to abuse and kill minorities. (It's still legal in Mo for a cop to shoot a person fleeing an arrest.) The state legislature is controlled by the party of the Confederacy, which is basically just fine with the cops thumping and shooting those people.

I'd like to hope that things will change. I'm cynical about it.

Happy 5776

May you be written down for a good year!

More Do-Nothing Bullshit From the Usual Suspects

This is popping up all over Facebook and other places:

Of course, anytime somebody seriously proposes any sort of program to help veterans, what you get is the Usual Crowd carping about how much money it'll cost and that money will have to be taken from somewhere else (usually another social services program) to make up for it, because budget.

Which is all just a shipload of bullshit.

When the same clowns who say that want to propose more tax cuts for the rich (looking at you, Johnny E. Bush), they never talk about the massive hole it'll blow in the Federal budget. Because as long as the rich get richer, they don't give a fuck. They'll make up the loss by cutting social services (almost never the military, except maybe the Army's personnel budget).

Because, let's face it, homeless vets don't make political donations. Rich people do. Which is why the politicians respond to their concerns on a day-to-day basis.

The same crowd that now says "let's help our vets instead of helping foreign refugees" are the same people who have been against helping vets to begin with.

So, to the people who are so righteously passing around this image, I say to you, with all due respect:

You disgust me.

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

A look back at Kai Tak:

Police Brutality- No Other Way to Slice It

(Earlier posts)

The video of the "void arrest":

Note that Mr. Blake is leaning up up against a door pillar, with his weight on one foot, when Some Badged-Up Asshole runs up, grabs Mr. Blake and slams him first into a wall and then onto the sidewalk.

Now can you imagine that a NYPD cop, who was looking for a guy who might have committed a non-violent crime, would so accost a white guy outside of an upscale hotel?

And if you think the answer to that question is "yes", then you are either an idiot or the NYPD Police Commissioner.

Caturday

This cat will kill its owners in their sleep.

(Photo credit)

Because Its Friday

We got ourselves a convoy!

(H/T)

Had to Leave This Book at Home

The Martian.

I'm about 30 pages into it and, in my earlier days, I would have stayed up into the wee hours to finish it.*
_________________________
* I've done that before. When I was in college, on a quiet Friday night, I was browsing the stacks of the library. I checked out a 19th Century edition of The Three Musketeers and took it back to my dorm room. I thought I'd read a chapter or two before going to sleep.

Next think I knew, I had finished the book and it was 0530.

NYPD Commish: Lying or Merely Stupid?

NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton is either an extremely stupid man or he is lying though his teeth when he said this about his goons roughing up Mr. James Blake:

“Sorry, race has nothing at all to do with this. If you look at the photograph of the suspect it looks like the twin brother of Mr Blake,” Bratton told CNN. “So let’s put that nonsense to rest right now, race has nothing to do with this. We have a witness who identified Mr Blake as an individual who he had sold a phone to and had been given a false credit card.”

That ignores the central point of the entire fracas. The issue is not whether or not some snitch wrongly identified Mr. Blake. The issue is about the fact that Mr. Blake was just standing there, not running, not doing anything other than waiting for his car when a plainclothes cop bumrushed him and bodyslammed him to the sidewalk.

That's the issue: Clearly excessive force used by NYPD cops (more than one was involved) with a clear suspicion by everyone, other than Billy the Idiot, that the only reason why the cops felt free to accost Mr. Blake and slam him down on the sidewalk was because Mr. Blake is black.

UPDATE: The cop who assaulted Mr. Blake is now riding a desk and it's possible that all of them are going to be fried for not filing a "void arrest report". And the assailant has a history of excessive force complaints.

Prince of Darkness Buys National Geographic

After 127 years as a nonprofit publication, the National Geographic magazine has joined Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox as a part of a newly expanded joint venture.

Right. Does anyone not believe that Murdoch will bend the magazine's stories to suit his agenda?

The National Geographic Society sold out to the forces of ignorance and anti-science. There is no other way to put it. It would be like the AMA selling its journal to a practitioner of witchcraft.

I suppose that next, he's going to try for Scientific American.

GOP Outdoes McCarthy

McCarthy would have had his "targets" testify. Modern-day Confederates Republicans, not so much.

Conservative lawmakers who demanded Planned Parenthood executives answer for “alleged atrocities” are holding the first in a series of congressional hearings on Wednesday on the video controversy that has rallied anti-abortion Republicans, and could become the flashpoint in a battle over government shutdown .

Noticeably absent from the hearing, however, is Planned Parenthood itself.

The House judiciary committee will hear from “experts on the issues surrounding the alleged acts of Planned Parenthood”, including two women described as “abortion survivors”, but declined to invite representatives from the women’s healthcare organization.

Which makes this nothing more than a legislative lynch mob.

Doesn't Matter if You're a Sports Star, You're Rich and You Do Good Works. If You're Black, to the Cops, You're Just Another Coon.

Former tennis great James Blake was slammed to the ground, handcuffed and detained by five plainclothes city cops Wednesday outside his midtown hotel before heading out to the U.S. Open, Blake told the Daily News.

The officers, who were all white, mistook Blake for a suspect in an identity theft ring operating around the midtown hotel.

Blake was standing outside of his hotel, waiting for his ride to the U.S. Open, when he was bodyslammed to the sidewalk, proned out and handcuffed.

Betcha they allege "furtive movement" as a justification for manhandling the wrong person, or some other such shit that the cops always like to trot out when they get caught being vicious.

From the NYPD:

“In regards to the alleged improper use of force, the Police Commissioner directed the internal affairs bureau to investigate.”

Yeah, good luck with that. The NYPD buys this stuff by the drum:

Toljaso, I Did-- Christian Taliban Ed.

We saw this one coming.

After defending Kentucky clerk Kim Davis' refusal to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) on Wednesday would not say whether a Muslim flight attendant should be able to deny alcohol to passengers on a flight.

That was about as foreseeable as this morning's sunrise.

On another note, this report is just despicable. One of the founding points of this nation was that "corruption of blood" was outlawed. And that's exactly what this report is trying to do- tar The Donald with what his father did before his birth.

If there was a party given to honor the authors of that piece, it should be a blanket party.

125 Years Ago

Col. Sanders was born in Henryville, Indiana on this day in 1890.

He was 40 when Shell Oil gave him a gas station in exchange for a cut of the sales. He began serving food to his customers, then opened a restaurant. He was known for having a temper, which got him fired a lot earlier in his life. He was 45 when he got into a multi-person gunfight-- his competitor killed a Shell Oil rep during the fight, Sanders shot and wounded him and the competitor went down for murder.

Between the war and shitty business decisions (he was pretty lousy at business), Sanders was in his mid to late sixties before he got any traction selling franchises. He sold the company, or most of it, in 1965. Ten years later, he was sued by the company for describing their gravy as wallpaper paste with sludge added to it. Litigation between the company and Sanders over one thing or another was almost a way of life.

He was commissioned as a Kentucky colonel and, around 1960, he dressed the part, wearing white suits for the rest of his life. It became, as you well know, his trademark.

Sanders died at age 90 from pneumonia, a complication from developing leukemia.

(Norm MacDonald is playing the current iteration of Sanders.)

"Gun Control Will Keep Guns Out of the Hands of Criminals!"

Bullshit.

This is an improvised 9mm submachine gun:

Smoothbore and no sights, but at the distance that the makers and users would have contemplated, it would rock your world.

The Asshole of Rowan County

The judge's order makes it pretty clear that if she interferes with the issuance of marriage licenses, Asshole goes back to jail.

Quote of the Day

"Going to jail for what you believe in doesn't necessarily put you on a par with Martin Luther King, Jeffrey Dahmer was in jail because he believed in eating people."-- Larry Wilmore

Another Reason Why You Can't Find any Frakking .22 Cartridges

I wouldn't mind those things if .22LR was plentiful. But it's not. And I do.

"Spray and Pray", NYPD Ed.

An attempted murder suspect who fired at New York police was apprehended only after police engaged him in a gun fight, firing a barrage of bullets.

Of the 84 total shots cops fired, one struck the suspect.

Four cops fired 52 rounds and missed. The perp ran off. Two other cops then fired 32 rounds and hit the perp once, in the calf.

I know that the NYPD mandates a 14lb trigger pull, which must be beastly in a Glock. But the result, time after time, seems to be the same: If the NYC cops are shooting their pistols, the safest place to be (other than behind them) is where they are aiming.

(H/T)

Guess Jail Wasn't That Comfy

[Some Asshole], the Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses, walked out of jail on Tuesday after the U.S. district court judge who found her in contempt said he was satisfied licenses were being issued in accordance with a U.S. Supreme Court decision.

U.S. District Judge David Bunning ordered her release after six days in jail, saying she "shall not interfere in any way, directly or indirectly, with the efforts of her deputy clerks to issue marriage licenses to all legally eligible couples."

If she tries to interfere, "that will be considered a violation of this Order and appropriate sanctions will be considered," Bunning said.

That suggests to me that her lawyers told the judge that Asshole wouldn't block the issuance of marriage licenses if she got to go home.

In other words, wearing the cloak of a martyr didn't really suit her.

UPDATE: Her lawyers say she'll continue to block the issuance of licenses. Which will probably fast-track her right back to jail.

"Naval Justice" is an Oxymoron

Using security clearances to deny prisoners at Gitmo access to their lawyers and doctors is a bullshit move. That's the sort of Kafkaesque stunt that one might expect of some crap-ass country like Uzbekistan or Russia.

Not Much Coverage For The Story About Cops Killing People in CA

Black men have been killed by police in California at eight times the rate of other residents over the past decade, according to records released under the first in a series of new state initiatives to disclose data on the use of deadly force by law enforcement.

Statistics published by the California attorney general, Kamala Harris, stated that about 19% of almost 1,000 homicides by law enforcement recorded between 2005 and 2014 were against African American men, who made up only about 3% of the state’s population.

Part of the devolution of the issue of the treatment of minorities by law enforcement has been driven by the Twitterization of the debate. I suspect that if the saying had been "Black Lives Also Matter", that there would have been harder for the Right Wing Noise Machine to get their collective panties in a wad.

And get them in a wad, they did. Nobody makes the assumption that saying "save the whales" means that it's OK to slaughter every other sea mammal. But that's precisely the assumption that the Wingnuts have been making.

The `60s are Dying Off

Judy Carne is dead. She was 76.

It's hard to imagine that anyone would think that her "Laugh-In" bit of "sock it to me" was funny by today's perspective. Times were different.

Carne became addicted to heroin; her career never came back after that.

W00T!-- Gunnie Ed.

Score from the local Walmart this morning:

Buying .22 at the Walmart is like shopping for stuff in the USSR, for you always have to be ready to jump on stuff. I've been stopping by every morning. That may seem like a lot of rounds to a non-.22 shooter, but at my current burn rate, that'll last maybe three to four months.

There is one thing that I can say in praise of Walmart: During both of the ammunition shortages, from when you couldn't find anything (other than .300 Magnum and .357 Sig) until now, when only rimfire rounds are in short supply, they didn't jack up their prices.

EOW for 1-Adam-12

Martin Milner has died. He was 83.

Unclear on the Concept; Caribou Barbie Edition

Sarah Palin seems to be a little unclear as to what is the name of her native language:

It is to John McCain's eternal damnation that he wanted to put her a heartbeat away from the Oval Office.

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

BAC-111!

Betcha the Canadian Usurper Isn't Speaking Up for Her

After all, isn't it the same principle as that claimed by the Asshole of Rowan County?

A Muslim flight attendant says she was suspended by ExpressJet for refusing to serve alcohol in accordance with her Islamic faith.

This is the sort of shit that is going to spread far and wide if it's not tamped down.

I have a deeply-held religious belief: Thou Shalt Not Hold a Job Which Conflicts With They Religious Beliefs. For Doing So is Hypocrisy and a Sin Against Thy Dear and Fluffy Lord.

But I digress.

I'll bet that you won't see Bobby Jindal, Mike Huckabee or Ted Cruz leading marches to the door of ExpressJet's corporate offices to demand that the FA be reinstated.

And Yet, This Did Not Enrage the Wingnuts

Denali travel trailers, which prominently feature a picture of the mountain:

Nobody seemed to be upset that they weren't called "McKinley" trailers.

Stupid Cop Tricks

A cop in Massachusetts shot up his own road car and then claimed that he had been shot at.

An arrest warrant was issued Friday for the Millis police officer who investigators say made up a claim that a gunman fired at his cruiser before it crashed into a tree and caught on fire.

The officer, [Some Asshole], 24, is facing charges of misleading a criminal investigation, communicating false information to emergency services, malicious destruction of property and unlawful discharge of a firearm.

He apparently crashed his cruiser and then, fearing for his job, concocted a bullshit story about being shot at. So now, instead of being out of a job, he's out of a job, facing felony beefs and he'll be arrested once they release him from the local Ding Ward.

Some people's kids.....

(H/T)

Stupid, Stupid Republicans

When the Supremes decided Obergefell v. Hodges, they gave the GOP a "Get Out of Jail Free" card on the issue of gay marriage. The GOP could have said, to their batshit component: "Look. We're not in favor of gay marriage, either. But it's now the law of the land. And we're never going to get a constitutional amendment passed on this. So fuggedaboudit. Let's move on."

But no.

I'll bet that Rince Prebus is chugging a triple of Scotch every time he sees a story about the Asswipe of Rowan County. He knows that there is a large cohort of younger voters who not only don't give a shit about this issue, they get more and more turned off by the GOP brand as idiots like the Canadian Usurper blather on how someone's particular religious beliefs entitle them to break the law.

Interlude:

Here at Our Lady of Metallic Cartridges, we believe that Our Lord has commanded us to carry firearms at all times. So when you are stopped by the TSA for carrying a 1911 (praise John M. Browning!) through the checkpoint, inform them that you have a deeply-held religious belief that requires you to be armed as you go about the land.

We now resume our regularly-scheduled program.

About the only Republican running for the White House who not only understands that, but is speaking out about it is..wait for it... Donald Trump.

Republican front-runner Donald Trump said Friday that he wished a Kentucky county clerk, Kim Davis, was not jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, but he added that the Supreme Court has ruled and it is "the law of the land."

"You have to go with it. The decision's been made, and that is the law of the land," the real estate mogul said Friday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

The Donald may be despicable on many issues, but he's had enough experience with courts and the law to know that when a case has gone through its final appeal, you suck it up and move on.

Which is what they all should have said. But most of them aren't that smart.

John E. Bush, of course, is trying to find middle ground in an issue with no such space. Because one thing about ol' ¡JEB! is that he's allergic to is taking a stand that might imply that he has to is to provide leadership (and stick his neck out). Oh, he's very good at running to get out in front of the torch-bearing mob, but he's not good for much else.

Caturday

An outdoor tomcat relaxes.

Guns and the Asshole of Rowan County

The asswipe county clerk's term of office ends in January, 2019. So one might expect the judge to keep her in jail until then, or until she agrees to follow the rule of law.

If you got a job at Denny's and then you refused to serve the Lumberjack Slam because it's a sin to eat pork products, you'd be out of a job in a femtosecond. If a Muslim at the DMV refused to issue driver's licenses to women because it's a sin for women to drive, the same worthies who are backing Asswipe would be marching on the DMV with torches and ARs.

If you work for the government and you can't follow the law because it conflicts with your morality, you have two and only two choices: Obey the law or quit. You don't like the law, work to change it. You can't change the law, then hell, try for a revolution. But no, you don't get to hold down your cushy job and deny services to people because you don't approve of them.

The wingnuts who are trying to compare Asshole to Rosa Parks are so full of shit that it's coming out their ears. Parks wasn't asking to kick honkies off the bus. No, Asshore is better compared to George Wallace's infamous stand in the schoolhouse door or Orval Fabus's closing of the Little Rock schools to keep black kids out of white schools.

----------------------------------------------

I'm late to the party on this one, but there is now a new method of carrying a handgun that is even more unsafe than Mexican carry.

----------------------------------------------

My training regimen for the Model 17 is this: One relay, slow-fire, weak hand; one relay, slow fire, strong hand; two relays, rapid fire, strong hand. I don't anticipate having to shoot a match with my weak hand, but it wouldn't hurt to better my ability to shoot with that hand.

I've gotten into the high 80s from time to time in rapid fire. I changed from getting my first shot off single-action to all double-action, only because I don't end up relocating my trigger finger.

This week, on slow fire, I shot an 88 and a 79 with my strong hand. I was routinely shooting high 50s, low 60s, so this is and improvement (Winchester white-box bulk-pack ammo).

Because It's Friday

A steam shovel:

79 Years Ago

Beryl Markham took off from England in a Percival Vega Gull to become the first woman to fly the Atlantic westbound. He goal was to fly to New York, but her fuel tank vents iced over and she was forced to crash-land in Nova Scotia.

Shorter Judge to KY Clerk: "(A) Do Yer Job, or (B) Go to Jail."

She chose Option B:

A defiant county clerk was sent to jail for contempt Thursday after insisting that her "conscience will not allow" her to follow a federal judge's orders to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.

"God's moral law conflicts with my job duties," Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis told U.S. District Judge David Bunning. "You can't be separated from something that's in your heart and in your soul."

The judge said she left him with no alternative but to jail her, since fines alone would not change her mind. A federal marshal escorted her, without handcuffs, out of the courtroom.

Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the way judges run their courts would have been surprised by any other outcome.

As for the other clerks:

The judge also told all five of the clerk's deputies, including her son, Nathan Davis, that they are free to issue licenses to all applicants while Davis is held in contempt, but would also face fines or jail if they refuse to comply. He told them to meet with lawyers and consider their fates before returning to his courtroom later Thursday to reveal their decisions.

Davis sought to impose her own version of Sharia Law on her little office. The judge wasn't having any of her bullshit.

And, not that it much mattered, but it turned out that Davis's adherence to the laws of her particular Dear and Fluffy Lord was a little bit squishy when it came to her behavior.

Belicheat Wins Again, Somewhat

A judge overturned Asswipe's suspension for cheating.

As far as I can see, the finding that the Patriots cheated was not disturbed. Nor was the fine or the loss of draft picks.

If your team plays the Patriots, assume that the Patriots are cheating. It's what they do. And yes, GEICO should make a commercial about that.

Ten Years Ago

Such a "heckuvajob" that, in ten days, Brownie was out of a job.

Never forget that "Bush's Katrina" was, in fact, Hurricane Katrina.

---------------------------------------------

In other news, the best insult that Johnnie "Low Energy" Bush can come up with against Trump is that he's a germophobe? Really?

Shorter FAA: "We Think ADS-B is Essential for All Aircraft, But We'll Let the DoD Fuck With It Anytime They Want."

TCAS and ADS-B is "unreliable" all over the coastal Southeast U.S. for this entire month:

!FDC 5/2402 ZJX SC..SPECIAL NOTICE...DUE TO MILITARY ACTIVITIES ON
1030/1090 MHZ, THE TRAFFIC ALERT AND COLLISION AVOIDANCE SYSTEM
(TCAS) AND AUTOMATIC DEPENDENT SYSTEM BROADCAST (ADS-B)
SURVEILLANCE MAY BE UNRELIABLE IN THE AIRSPACE OVER THE STATES OF
VIRGINIA, NORTH CAROLINA, SOUTH CAROLINA, GEORGIA, AND FLORIDA, AND
EXTENDING APPROXIMATELY 200NM OFFSHORE. SFC-FL500.
PILOTS ARE ADVISED THAT THE TRAFFIC ALERT AND COLLISION AVOIDANCE
SYSTEM (TCAS) MAY FAIL TO ESTABLISH TRACKS ON NEARBY AIRCRAFT AND
MAY FAIL TO RECEIVE TRAFFIC ALERTS (TA) AND/OR RESOLUTION ADVISORIES
(RA). FURTHER, PILOTS ARE ADVISED THAT TRACKS MAY FIRST APPEAR
WITHIN CLOSE PROXIMITY TO THEIR AIRCRAFT AND MAY IMMEDIATELY GO INTO
TA/RA STATUS. FALSE ALERTS ARE NOT EXPECTED TO BE GENERATED BY THIS
MILITARY ACTIVITY AND ANY ALERTS SHALL BE TREATED AS REAL. PILOTS
ARE ADVISED TO MAINTAIN AN INCREASED VISUAL AWARENESS IN THIS AREA.
IF THE PILOT BELIEVES THAT AN AIRCRAFT SHOULD HAVE TRIGGERED AN
ALERT, THE INCIDENCE SHOULD BE REPORTED TO AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL AT
THE EARLIEST OPPORTUNE MOMENT.
1509020500-1510100459

So the Foes of All Aviation want us to spend many AMUs to upgrade our airplanes to use ADS-B, which they want to use as the foundation of ATC, but then they'll allow the military to fuck with it whenever it suits them?

How does this make sense? (Yeah, I know, expecting the FAA to make sense is a fool's game.)

Talking to the Cops

Always a bad idea. Not just the Feds, but all of them.

Shorter KY Clerk: "Respect My Right to Discriminate Against You Feelthy Faggots."

"To issue a marriage license which conflicts with God's definition of marriage, with my name affixed to the certificate, would violate my conscience. It is not a light issue for me. It is a Heaven or Hell decision," [Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis] said through her lawyers.

If she can't, in her conscience, do her job, then she should fucking quit.

Or go to jail. Either works.