After That Last Post . . .
Your Moment of Zen:
Our Lawmakers and Their Ignorance
This subject came up on AR15.com just recently, and I had to share. First, Caroline McCarthy getting pwned by MSNBC talking-head Tucker Carlson:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ospNRk2uM3U&hl=en&fs=1&w=425&h=344]
Immortal Quote:
“Um, no, it’s not.”
Which brings us this masterpiece:
But how about this ballistics expert, NY Assemblywoman Patricia Eddington:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRQqieimwLQ&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&w=425&h=344]
Heat-seeking bullets! Man, where can I get some of those?!?!
From the 1984 movie Runaway.
As one poster put it,
Fuck, that makes me laugh every time I see it. Until I realize that she is a real
personlawmaker and isn’t joking. She is that retarded.
And just remember: they know just as much about banking, running corporations, mortgage lending, . . .
Quote of the Day
Quote of the Day
Socrates was a philosopher. He went around pointing out errors in the way things were done. They fed him hemlock. – Anonymous
Quote of the Day
Quote of the Day
You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. - Anonymous, found at AR15.com
Zero Oversight and Insufficient Regulation
Zero Oversight and Insufficient Regulation
Mostly Cajun has a very interesting post up on government interference regulation of his industry, the pumping of natural gas from the Gulf of Mexico up North where people use it to do stuff like, oh, heat their homes. Excerpt:
One of the things I learned was that when these engines were designed, the EPA was some sort of bad dream only found in the diseased minds of abusers of heavy drugs. That was then. This is now. Students of engine operations know there is a certain proportion of fuel to air that produces maximum power. We can’t run many of our engines there. Why? Because we’re not interested in maximum power any more. We’re interested in minimum pollution, and that ‘maximum power’ thing give a higher level of oxides of nitrogen.
That’s okay, though. We learned how to operate there, and we tested our engines regularly to see that they met the goal, and if one was acting up and emissions went up, we dutifully took it off line and fixed it. Life loped along. So they changed the rules. Where we could hit a “twenty” on the spotted owl-killing scale, they dropped the number to five. Okay, you guys on the pipeline, tighten up your acts. So the engineers twiddled and tightened things even more. And goals were met. But the baby seals were still crying from their big, soulful eyes, so the number was changed again.
You know, it’s getting VERY hard to meet the numbers. And our people tell the rulemakers. And the rulemakers say “Meet the numbers or face fines.” And our people say, “We can’t meet these numbers. We’ll have to shut down horsepower.” And the rulemakers say “Meet the numbers.” And that’s where we’re heading.
The policy-makers apparently think that we’ll keep lights on and homes heated by means of windmills and unicorn farts. I’m telling you that we folk who work in a real world have real and immutable laws to work with, things like Ohm’s Law and Boyles’ Law, and these laws and others like them say that you can’t move gas from the well to the end user without horsepower. There are other laws too, and those laws, despite the attitude of the current administration, say that when it gets to the point that it costs more to do a thing, then you stop doing it, and that’s where a lot of industries, mine included, are headed.
Read the whole post. Pay particular attention to the last two lines.
Quote of the Day
Quote of the Day
I get the feeling we are in the Invasion of the Body Snatchers and there are only a few of us screaming to the wind wandering around left not yet absorbed. – Victor Davis Hanson, Recessional
Read it ALL.
Quote of the Day – SciFi Edition
Quote of the Day – SciFi Edition
From S.M. Stirling’s The Sky People:
As Marc watched, four Gigantosaurs caught a titanosaur calf – a three-year-old weighing a mere thirty tons or so – as it bent its head to drink from one of the streams that veined the plain. The great jaws gaped as the six-ton carnivore reared back, its thick, supple neck curved into an S-shape, then slammed forward.
Even at half a mile distance, the scream of the calf was ear-hurtingly loud, as if God had gotten his toe stuck in a closing door. A stampede went out from the spot like the ripple of a stone thrown into a pond as the plant eaters fled; the armored ones backed into circles, lashing the air with their knobby tail-clubs. The calf and the Gigantosaur went over into the stream in a whipping cloud of spray and flying mud; the others gathered around, dipping their heads to strike like nightmare four-story birds.
After a moment, the flurry of motion died down, and they set their great eagle-claw feet on the calf’s carcass as they worried loose chunks the size of Volkswagens and threw their heads upright to unhinge their jaws and bolt the great gobbets down, rammed backward by the peristaltic motion of their thick tongues. Now and then they would stop to make half-completed strikes and hissing roars at their pack-mates, for all the world like newly elected senators divvying up pork.
It’s now official. I’ll read anything S.M. Stirling writes.
Addendum:
The only difference I ever found between the Democratic leadership and the Republican leadership is that one of them is skinning you from the ankle up and the other, from the ear down. – Huey P. Long
Just thought I’d throw that one in.
Doing the Jobs Americans Just Won’t Do
Local authorities call the wave of kidnappings an epidemic. According to the Associated Press, some of the hostages have their fingers, legs, and heads cut off; while others are bound and gagged in pools of water before being zapped with electrical devices. If the victim is female, she is often raped while her husband is forced to listen on the other end of a telephone line. If their demands aren’t met, corpses are soon discovered in the desert, gunshot wounds to the skull and body.
Do these descriptions originate from Afghanistan, a brutal Iraqi prison, or the war-torn region of Somalia? No, all these reports came directly from the southwest portion of the United States. Specifically, Brian Ross of ABC News reported, “Phoenix, Arizona has become the kidnapping capital of America, with more incidents than any other city in the world outside Mexico City, and over 370 cases last year alone.”
On average, this means there is one kidnapping every day. Arizona radio host Darrell Ankarlo says two or three abductions go unreported for every one that is. The vast majority of kidnappings are connected to Mexican drug cartels and illegal immigrants coming across the border. Phoenix Police Department detective Phil Roberts states quite clearly, “Phoenix is ground zero for illegal narcotics smuggling and illegal human smuggling in the United States.”
The motive is obvious. Whereas drug dealing and scurrying illegals through the desert brings in billions of dollars, Tim Gaynor of Reuters reported that “ransoms can range from $50,000 to $1 million.”
The reason kidnappers demand such a high price is because their targets are often “coyotes” — drug smugglers or dealers who carry large amounts of cash. As Detective Roberts said, “There’s a lot of illegal cash out there in the valley, and a lot of people want to get their hands on it.”
Kidnappings have largely been contained to the Mexican crime underworld. Although overseen by drug lords, the actual perpetrators are illegal aliens looking for a quick buck, or cheap Mexican laborers. Sam Quinones of the L.A. Times describes the process used to locate these “grunts.”
“Certain Phoenix bars are known as places where kidnappers recruit, much the way builders go to Home Depot to hire day laborers.” – Arizona as Dangerous as ‘Pakistan,’ Says Top Phoenix Cop
Read the whole thing. The “reporter” is a flake, but the facts are accurate.
I think I need to go to the local gun shop and pick me up a bazooka.
Demand is Still High
Demand is Still High
The CMP reports via email:
ORDER BACKLOG. Normally, we average receiving 2,000 – 3,000 sales orders per month and ship an order in 2-3 weeks. However, these are not normal times. Since October, 2008 we have been receiving 5,000 – 10,000 orders per month, which is several times normal. As a result, we are very backlogged and running several weeks behind on processing orders. Our staff is working up to 12 hours per day 7 days a week, and only today finished the 4,000 orders we received on 1 December alone (except for those 1 Dec orders with credit card or other problems). Customers with outstanding orders should expect orders to ship approximately 100 days from the date the order was received by CMP. We expect to recover from this surge in another 3-4 months (assuming the number of orders being received drops somewhat).
COMMUNICATION RESPONSE DELAYS. CMP is receiving hundreds of calls a day, as well as hundreds of emails. Each morning there are dozens of voicemails from the night before. Because of the large volume of constant calls in the daytime, it may take a few days for response. We have a state of the art phone system for a company our size, but the volume of calls is causing the system to do unexpected things. We apologize for any delay in responding to emails or telephone calls.
CMP STORES CLOSED 15-31 MARCH, 2009. In addition to the heavy volume of mail and estore orders, the shopping activity at both stores has been significantly higher than last year. As a result, we have had to divert more sales staff than planned from processing mail orders on the days the store is open. Both CMP stores will be closed 15-31 March. The Sales staff at both locations will work on processing mail orders in an effort to quickly reduce the backlog and shorten delivery time.
ORDERS OUT OF SEQUENCE. In normal times, CMP processes sales orders in date sequence as received, regardless of item being ordered. To help reduce the mountain of orders, we are separating the rifle orders from non-rifle orders. We have dedicated two of our staff to process the non-rifle orders without regard to dates of rifle orders still in the queue. This will result in an out of sequence delivery time for many orders, but will reduce the amount of pending orders quickly.
BUY NOW FEATURE ON CMP AUCTION. We have started using the “buy now” feature for selected items on the CMP Auction site. We are listing the M1A1 carbine, one at a time with this feature. Buy now price is $3,000. We will also list some M1A1 carbines for the regular bidding process.
LAKE CITY. .30-06 SOLD OUT. On 20 February, we posted the Lake City .30-06 ammunition as sold out. We fully expect to be able to fill all orders already in house and those in the mail on 20 February. It may take another 100 days to ship some of the orders just received.
Quote of the Day
Quote of the Day
This one, I’m sure, will be getting a lot of play. From Van Der Leun:
Man one: “Did you see that article in that magazine last week?”
Man two: “Which magazine?”
Man one: “You know, the one with Obama on the cover.”
Man two: “With Obama on the cover? Christ, they all have Obama on the cover. It’s getting so the only place I want to see Obama’s picture is on a milk carton.”
Heh.