The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
Remember my 3/4-life crisis when I sold my Mustang and bought an MG?
Almost a year later, I’m rid of the MG. Took a pretty big loss on the deal, but my garage now has a hole in it, thank you jeebus. The new owner seems pleased. I’m pleased. My wife is pleased.
Now I need to clean up the garage so she can park her car inside.
Going through the archives trying to clean up broken links and other things in old posts.
Damn I posted a lot back when.
From American Thinker, What Might Civil War be Like?:
Cities cannot feed themselves under any conditions, and what food could be grown on America’s resource-starved farms would be gobbled up by people nearer and dearer to the farmers. Leftists would have to both secure vast territories around their urban strongholds and relearn from scratch the generations-lost art of food production. Liberal enclaves stranded in the hinterland would simply be untenable. We, on the other hand, would be critically short of new Hollywood movies. Without a steady supply of the works of Meryl Streep and Matt Damon, millions of conservatives would instantly drop dead from boredom – that is, according to Meryl Streep.
4K, 100,000 frames per second. Lightning like you’ve never seen it before. Go fullscreen.
Transient from Dustin Farrell (www.dfvc.com) on Vimeo.
Been awhile. The Milky Way over Yellowstone:
The news is reporting that former IRS executive Lois G. Lerner and her deputy Holly Paz want their testimony in the Tea Party targeting investigation sealed because they’re afraid of public reaction should the information be released.
They should be afraid. Everyone sitting in a seat of power in a government office should be afraid of pissing off the public. “Tar, Feathers,” as Instapundit puts it, should probably be employed somewhat less than metaphorically from time to time, so as to reduce the possibility of “Rope, tree, some assembly required.”
At least some of the corrupt Illinois politicians end up serving time.
I see it’s been awhile since I posted here. Sorry about that. Not intentional. Lots to write about, not much interest in actually writing. Maybe after Thanksgiving. Thanks for visiting. Read the stuff on the sidebar.
This year I was a first-time attendee of Blogorado, and fell in love with the Farm Fam. One of their own – well, I’ll let Old NFO tell the story:
Gun Raffle!!!
I know this is a lousy time to ask for money, but one of our extended Blogarado family is in need. FarmFam’s daughter-in-law, Andi, 33 and the mother of two small boys, suffered a stroke in mid August. Unfortunately, it wasn’t diagnosed correctly for two weeks, delaying treatment.
She’s facing a year to 18 months of physical therapy to get back to full function.
Therapy costs are running $200-500 per session, and she needs therapy once a week. Andi has not been able to afford health insurance, because she her husband own a small business that makes too much money for them to get assistance with health insurance, but not enough for them to be able to afford health insurance, and raising two boys.
Any help will be much appreciated, as Andi has begun physical therapy, and without health insurance she has to pay the full cost of every session.
In order to help her out, we are doing another gun raffle to try to help her with her therapy. One change from what we did for Tam is to run this through a Go Fund Me, https://www.gofundme.com/andrea-keenan-medical-fund, so that the money is immediately available to her for her therapy. One IRS change is that Go Fund Me $$ are now counted as income for the family, so we are shooting for a goal of $25,000 to offset the tax burden they will be hit with.
Here are the ‘rules’ $10 per chance, $50/6 chances, $100/12 chances, etc. Make your donation to the Go Fund Me above, and copy your donation receipt to [email protected]. This will count as your entry into the raffle. If you have already donated, we will accept prior donations to the Go Fund Me.
The raffle will run from now through the end of November, with the drawing to be held 1 December via a random drawing program. First number gets their choice, second gets their choice, etc.
The raffle packages are-
1. Taurus .44 Magnum pistol
2. Ruger MK-II bull barrel .22
3. Custom sub-MOA AR-15 – BCM 18” SPR Mk 12 upper with PRI carbon fiber handguard, BCM BCG, all Wolff springs except buffer. KNS anti-roll trigger pins, JP Enterprises Silent capture buffer and spring, Magpul PRS stock, Magpul MIAD grip, Norgon ambi mag release, Teal Blue Bravo Ambi Bolt catch, AeroPrecision lower with 45° safety, Harris bipod adapter for front rail, full length top rail, BUIS front sight, Gissele SSA-E trigger, BCM gunfighter charging handle.
4. Remington 870 Express pump in 20ga
5. Chinese copy of a 12ga coach gun
6. Springfield Range Officer .45 with 7 magazines and custom holster
7. Springfield Range Officer 9mm with 7 magazines and custom holster
8. Lawdog’s personal Rock Island 1911 9mm, reworked by Joe Speer with 6 magazines
9. A ladies package consisting of a ring (late-Victorian-style design with either high-quality glass or mid-grade garnet stones. The mount is jeweler’s metal, size 6 3/4 or 7). A unicorn necklace, late 1980s-early 1990s James Avery sterling silver charm on a silver chain. A coin necklace, an 1904 Indian Head penny, silver dipped in a gold-plated mount with a gold-plated silver chain. And a handmade necklace and earrings from Phlegmmy.
10. Signed copies of Lawdog’s, Peter Grant’s, Dorothy Grant’s, and JL Curtis’ books
11. TBD (other possible packages are being discussed)
All guns will be shipped FFL to FFL for winners. Pictures of the various packages will follow in the next couple of days.
Thank you in advance, I know she will appreciate the help, and this will take a little pressure off the family!If you can help out, please do. These are good people.
EDIT: Updates to the prize list and raffle status are being maintained by Old NFO.
The second Saturday of every month, one of the high-end strip-malls in Tucson holds “Cars & Coffee” where, for a couple of hours, anybody can bring their car and show it off. There’s a wide, wide variety of vehicles at these things, but this month there was the largest turnout I’ve yet to see – at least a couple hundred cars. Here are some of the highlights:
First, the exotic:
Then the classic:
Next, the unusual:
And, finally, something I’ve never seen in the wild before – An aluminum-bodied, right-hand drive AC Cobra:
There were also of course Camaros and Mopars, Golf GTIs and Subaru WRXs, BMWs, Porsches and Ferraris and more Mustangs than you could shake a proverbial stick at. It’s a good show every month, and gratifying to know that there are still a LOT of young gearheads out there interested in going FAST, along with us old farts who can finally afford the cars they dreamed about in their youths.
When I first heard of the details of the shooting spree in Las Vegas, my immediate thought was of Matt Bracken’s Enemies Foreign and Domestic. My second thought was of the University of Texas, Austin tower shooting. I was not alone on either thought.
Well, preliminary reports are that there were no obvious brain abnormalities.
Mark Steyn recently received a missive from one of his fans on the incident, and in keeping with letting other people say it better than I can, I recommend you read what he had to say, but I will offer some excerpts:
This man amassed (rough figures) 24 guns in the hotel and another 19 at his home – 42 guns in total. He spent some $100,000 on buying them. The guns at his home are one thing but he also spent days filling his hotel room with more weapons and ammunition than he could ever conceivably use along with an array of advanced modifications and accessories.
Everything brand new. And very expensive. And mostly entirely redundant. Representing in effect an enormous waste of money and time and risk.
Except that is in the realm of generating massive publicity. Guaranteed massive publicity.
Yet despite having gone to enormous lengths to achieve that goal we are asked to believe this same man never troubled – never took the most elementary steps – to speak to that publicity. Indeed left behind no trace of anything that might demonstrate indicate or even hint at his motive or motives.
That would appear to make very little sense.
We would argue the opposite – that it makes absolute sense.
Because this gentleman did not simply fail to leave behind a motive; He took substantial trouble to ensure that no motive could be found – or attributed to him. All of which can lead us to only one conclusion:
It has been said that ‘the medium is the message’.
In this case that is the literal truth. There is only one plausible motive for what this man did. And here it is:
This man wished to telegraph to America in graphic form the hard irrefutable evidence that guns and gun ownership and the ease of gun purchase in America are an evil and must be controlled. On that hypothesis everything now makes sense.
On the question of why the shooter scoped out other venues first, but ultimately attacked the Harvest Music Festival:
The people he chose to kill supports the hypothesis on ‘guns’. Country and Western fans are virtually guaranteed to own or at least to defend the ownership of guns. By a certain logic this provides the gunman with two sound moral positions (because it is not beyond possibility he has a conscience):
First – While killing a very large number of innocent people is an horrendous crime it is nonetheless entirely justifiable – in moral terms – if it causes a restriction on guns. Because such a restriction would – it is widely held – save innumerable lives in the long run. There is no evidence for this but it is still a widely and passionately held belief.
Second – Since the people he is shooting are actively or passively defenders of guns and an obstacle to gun control they are by definition responsible in part for all the people who have been and continue to be killed by guns.
You see it in almost every story – “We may never know the motive.” “The motive remains a mystery.”
I don’t think there was any kind of conspiracy involved, but I can’t disagree with this assessment. It’s almost as if he was shouting “How DARE we be allowed to be free!”
