FabioC over at The Second Version has written a brief introduction to the life and politics of Italy’s Prime Minister for those of us ignorant of what’s going on over in the land of Beretta, Ferrari and spaghetti trees. Thank you, Fabio.
Tag: linkery
Quote of the Day – Clear Vision Edition
Bubba over at What Bubba Knows runs one of the best aggregation sites on the web, and also does some pretty fine commentary of his own. Commenting on a story of riots in Rome after Berlusconi won a confidence vote, Bubba hits on the heart of the subject:
Students? No, anarchists. Raised and groomed by the socialist institutions of public education. Taught to believe that anything they want is a right, that the government that refuses their ‘rights’ to anything they want is to be pulled down and destroyed.
Workers? No, unions. Unions and their members that have grown accustomed to constant reductions in production expectations and constant increases of expectations from them. More pay, more benefits in exchange for less production. When the government teat runs dry, they have been trained to rebel.
Immigrants? No, muslims. They’ve migrated, not immigrated, to European countries where they promptly enter into the welfare systems and become bloated leeches with attitudes. While contributing nothing, they feed on the resources and wealth of their host nations. When their benefactors run out of other people’s money, the muslim migrants have learned to riot and demand their ‘rights’.
All of these parasites get their concepts of rights from a single source, a single ideal. That source is the same source of the policies that have created the need for austerity. It’s name starts with a ‘C’ … and ends with a ‘nism’, and it’s the exact opposite of Capitalism.
Quote of the Day – Space Edition
There otta be a dang Hilton on the Moon right now. It pains me that there is not. — RobertaX
Me too, Bobbi, me too.
Quote of the Day – A Little Socialism Edition
Simply put, socialism is a system where citizens are promised results, not just opportunity. Our Constitution promises the “pursuit of happiness,” but does not guarantee that any particular citizen will attain anything, but will not be restricted from pursuing any legal goal. Socialism preaches that every citizen has the right to certain entitlements, and the state endeavors to provide them to its citizens. Socialists believe that under capitalism, too much wealth becomes concentrated in the hands of too few, who then exploit the less privileged. Socialists advocate a more even distribution of wealth and power, “spreading it around,” to quote a recent Obama phrase.
Under the socialist ideal, effort is rewarded, regardless of results, and accumulation of wealth by a few is prevented, so that more may enjoy the benefits of what society has to offer. The sad fact is that often even a minimal effort is not required, and everyone gets entitlements, deserved or not.
So, what is wrong with wanting to make sure that all citizens are provided for, and that more can have a better lifestyle by taking from the overabundance of the privileged few?
The problem is that to implement socialism, basic freedoms have to be curtailed or abolished. For starters, socialism is built on government ownership or very tight control of industry and commerce. This means, obviously, that citizens’ rights to freely pursue business opportunities are severely limited by the government. Property rights must also be greatly curtailed, and the personal accumulation of wealth abolished. The government becomes the arbitrator of who succeeds, and to what extent.
— Gene Retske @ I’m Sick of the Crap, “What’s wrong with a little Socialism?” from February of 2009
And, as Shepherd Book stated so succinctly in the Firefly episode “War Stories,”
A government is a body of people, usually, notably ungoverned.
Quote of the Day – Tough History Coming Edition
From Daphne at Jaded Haven in Last Call:
Today’s stark refusal of the senate to heel in their most venal, basic impulses over the country’s dire need for prudent management during our current economic implosion, a feat they foolishly orchestrated in all of their glorious incompetence, tells me we’ve crossed the abyss into no man’s land.
The crisp suits we’ve elected to spend and manage our money don’t have a single ounce of respect for the work and sacrifice we provide to fund their sickening folly. Their disdain for the republic is manifest in every piece of statist legislation under consideration, their privileged contempt for our conscripted dollars evident in every spendthrift measure they pass.
I believe it’s finally time to start discussing alternatives to our present system. The republic of the founding fathers no longer exists.
It hasn’t for quite some time, Daphne.
Quote of the Day – Tam Edition
You know, for the last hundred years there has been entirely too much Promoting of the General Welfare and Creating a More Perfect Union and way too damned little Securing of the Blessings of Liberty. – Tam, from Getting down to brass tacks…
Can I get an “AMEN!”?
Quote of the Day – Conflict of Visions Edition
From Stop Shouting!, My Rebuttal to a Progressive who Admonished Me to Play Nice ….
Realizing that you are losing your grip on the public schools, that the youth that propelled the boy-king to victory have abandoned you, that the bitter, blue collar white workers are now Tea Party grandmas and grandpas, that you have lost control of the federal checkbook and the legislative calendar,
now you want to petition for peace?
now you cry out for civility and consensus?
I have a message for you:
Go. To. Hell.
You GO girl! The pendulum has stopped its swing, and is now going back the other way. Our job: keep it from going too far.
I LOL’d. I Still Am.
You’ve GOT to see these ads over at Skippy’s List. I don’t drink, but I’d consider buying a fifth of their rum if I did.
Hat tip to Firehand for the pointer.
Oh, and don’t miss the follow-on.
Range Report: Fiocchi Primer Test
A while back (quite a while back) the folks at LuckyGunner.com asked me if I’d be interested in testing some large rifle primers by Fiocchi. They were willing to send me a sleeve if I would try them out and report on them – good, bad, or indifferent. I said I’d be happy to, but it would be some time before I’d get a chance to actually use them. I told them I would try them out in my Remington 700 5R with my pet load.
Well, that time finally came.
The Fiocchi primers are sold in sleeves of 1,500 rather than the industry standard 1,000.
You get ten packs of 150 rather than 100. The packaging is compact and fairly handy.
At the time of this writing, the Large Rifle primers go for $41/1,500, or 2.73¢ per primer, not including shipping and HazMat fees. By contrast, the CCI BR-2 Benchrest primers I normally use are $50/1000, or 5¢ each not including tax, purchased locally.
To prepare for this test, I decided I wanted everything as identical as possible. I had some Black Hills brass that had originally been the red box (new rather than remanufactured) 168 grain moly-coated match loads. I had reloaded this brass once with 175 grain Sierra Match Kings, so this would be the third time this brass had been loaded. I decapped and trimmed all forty cases to 1.950,” chamfered the inside and outside of the case mouths, and then ran them in my tumbler to make sure they were shiny clean. Afterward, I ran them all through my RCBS small-base X-die to resize them.
These had been fired through the 5R before. I could tell because they all fit into my case gauge already, albeit just a little tightly. After sizing, they fall in and out with ease, and have just a tiny bit of wiggle-room at the case head end. This is what I have to do to get my reloads to feed in my M25 gas gun. In addition to testing the Fiocchi primers, I wanted to see what the small-base sizer does to accuracy in the 5R as opposed to neck-sizing only, which is what I normally do when reloading for my bolt-guns.
After decapping, trimming, chamfering, and resizing the brass, I sat down and hand-primed twenty cases with CCI BR-2’s, and twenty cases with Fiocchi Large Rifle NIK primers using my Lee Auto-Prime. The all seated firmly and consistently, so dimensionally the Fiocchi primers are very uniform. Then, using my modified RCBS ChargeMaster (my technique with that particular device has been thoroughly revised since that post), I threw forty identical 46.4 (± 0.05) grain loads of Alliant Reloder-15 powder (Caution: use load data you find on strange web sites at your own risk!), and seated forty Lapua 155 grain Scenar hollow-point boattail bullets to a cartridge overall length of 2.80″ using my Dillon RL-450 press and an RCBS seating die.
(Note to whom it may concern: The only thing I’ve been given in this entire review is 1,500 Fiocchi primers donated by LuckyGunner.com. Everything else I mention in this post, I bought.)
Anyway, now that I had forty rounds of .308 that differ only in the primer used to light them off, it was RANGE TIME! I swapped out the Leupold scope for the Nightforce I bought awhile back, and I’ve had to play with it to get the right eye relief, but I think I’ve got it now. Still, I had to make sure the scope was on target, so I sat down and put my last eight rounds of Black Hills 175 grain through the rifle at 100 yards. Here’s that group:
The low-center hole is the cold-bore shot. Even including it, that’s a hair over an inch, center-to-center, and about what I’ve come to expect out of that ammo. Next I ran ten rounds of each test load over the chronograph, with a cooling off period between. Here’s the data:
CCI BR-2 Load
Average Velocity: 2876fps
Extreme Spread: 58.40fps
Standard Deviation: 16.52fps
Fiocchi Load
Average Velocity: 2917fps
Extreme Spread: 42.96fps
Standard Deviation: 14.83fps
Now, I’ve gotten this particular load under 10fps Sd using neck-sized Lapua cases, but those are still damned good numbers. Obviously, the Fiocchi is a hair hotter than the BR-2, but it’s every bit, if not more consistent.
How was accuracy, you ask? Here’s the BR-2 load:
If you can’t read it, that’s 0.65MOA at 200 yards for ten shots.
Here’s the Fiocchi:
If you throw out that one far-right shot, the group is easily under 1MOA. Both of these loads ran a bit hotter than I’m used to seeing. Normally that load gives me right at 2800fps, not 2880+, and that seems to be right where the rifle/bullet combination works best. I will blame the difference on the Black Hills cases, sized in the small-base sizer. UPDATE: Nope, I checked my records, and 2880 is normal. Case capacity is probably reduced compared to the Lapua cases. I still think I need to re-run the test with Lapua cases but the purpose of this test has been met: the Fiocchi Large Rifle primer is damned good, and a real value compared to CCI’s Benchrest offering. I’m glad I have a whole lot more of them to experiment with. Thanks to LuckyGunner.com for the chance to try them out!
Quote of the Day – We’re Not Voting Our Way Out Edition
The GOP once again demonstrates that they are simply the other wing of the federal bird of prey.
— Mike Vanderboegh, Explain to me why this passed UNANIMOUSLY?