The revolution will be photographed.

All the digital photography I've done for the last seven or so years has been done with a Nikon CoolPix 990 that was handed down to me by my friend Oleg. I figure that if you mostly take pictures of guns, a camera once owned by Oleg Volk is a good thing to have, so why change? (Plus, I am nothing if not a creature of habit; if something works, I use it 'til it falls apart.)

Guess what I forgot to pack when I drove down to Tennessee?

So the morning of the LuckyGunner shoot found me in Wally World, figuring to pick up a cheapie digicam for sixty bucks or so, just to use for the shoot. By coincidence, the Turkey Creek WalMart was having a clearance, blowing out a whole raft of discontinued cameras. In a hurry, I grabbed one that looked half decent, (a Kodak EasyShare V1073,) for eighty bucks. I started to grab a battery for it, but the clerk assured me that it came with one.

And it did. A dead one.

Thankfully WizardPC had a 12V USB adapter in his car which he was gracious enough to let me borrow, else I'd have been a sad panda for Day One of the shoot.

I'll post pics as soon as I get home.

Pessimistic. Pessimisticer. Pessimisticest.

Goldman Sachs changes economic forecast from "sucky" to "suckier", warns that perhaps "suckiest" might be more accurate:

[E]conomists at Goldman Sachs last week cut their economic growth forecast for the second time in a month, only to warn a few days later that "we already see downside risk to that estimate."

Goldman now sees the U.S. economy struggling to limp forth at a 3% pace in the second quarter, down from 3.5% just three weeks ago and 4% at the start of the year.

Don't they know that we're in the middle of a great big ol' recovery here? (I mean, we are, right? Right?)

I'm going to continue to keep a strong investment portfolio in canned food and ammunition, personally...

Technical analysis of the Guerena shooting...

...ConfederateYankee has it.

Having watched the video, I could not believe what a goat rope that "entry" was. Any scratch team of airsoft kiddies from randomly selected YouTube videos could have done as well or better. It was like the Geheime Staatspolizei meets the Keystone Kops...

It's one thing to get mowed down in your home by jackbooted thugs, but please don't let me show up at the pearly gates having been killed by clown-shoed ones.
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Look for unicorn ranch subsidies.

Germany has announced that it will pull all its nuclear powerplants off-line by 2022.

The difficulty is that many of the threatened nuclear power stations are in the south, situated conveniently for the big energy users like the cities of Munich and Stuttgart and manufacturers like Volkswagen.

If these southern nuclear generators are decommissioned, the idea is that wind farms in the north might take up the slack. But that implies new high-voltage cables with very high pylons to match.

Well, that'll certainly keep the next Bavarian tsunami from causing an ecological disaster.

How wind turbines are supposed to supply the grid of a heavily-industrialized country is never fully explained, but it doesn't need to be. Wind power is not based on reason, but faith: These aren't generators, they're prayer wheels for New Age iBuddhists.

If you look at the pictures of the protesters, you'll see the graying, tie-dyed remnants of the KGB-funded Cold War European antiwar movement. In the absence of any more Pershing missile bases, it seems that they'll reflexively chain themselves to the gates of anything that smacks of progress...

Wave after wave of my own men...

Possibly slightly piqued at being bumped out of a news cycle by Mother Nature, Barry journeyed to Joplin, MO to get in front of some cameras at what was supposed to be a memorial service and promise to spend however much Other People's Money it takes to set the place to rights. (And if that isn't enough money, we'll just print more!) At least Crazy Jimmy gets out there and swings a hammer himself; can you picture the Community-Organizer-In-Chief trying to figure out which end of the Estwing is supposed to hit the nail?

You'd think that Obama would be relieved to see that there are still some forces on the planet more effective than the Democrat party at destroying businesses and leaving people homeless.

Memorial Day 2011

Remember.

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Who down wit' O.P.A.?

Yesterday was spent at the nearest thing to Valhalla there is, turning Other People's Ammunition into noise and reloading components. I've got to hand it to LuckyGunner: They put on a show. By combining their shoot with Bulletfest, it was like having an All-Access Pass at Knob Creek, only without the massive crowd of spectators. (Actually, scratch that: I believe the firing line was longer than Knob Creek.)

I got to put a lot of names with faces, and see friends I hadn't seen in a while... Just a fantastic day.

How to top it? Why, do it again today, of course!

Hippo Birdie Two Ewe.

Happy Birthday, Roomie!
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Children of the Corn.

It's been a rough planting season in corn country. Farmer Frank explains:

Remember back earlier in the year when I said the market 'wanted' 91 million acres of corn this year? And we historically had only planted 87 million in our biggest year? And I asked "Where were they going to get the acres?"

Read his whole post.

Then watch this space.
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The Ayatollah of rock and rolla!

The Mexican Federales have apparently impounded the SUV of the Lord Humongous.

Y'know, when enough time on Craigslist or Ebay Motors can usually turn up a surplus Alvis Ferret or the like, why play Junkyard Wars when you've got piles of narcobux to spend?

(H/T to SurvivalBlog.)

Did they have to put a bridge over his desk?

So you've no doubt by now heard about the new White House "Director of Progressive Media & Online Response", right?

"For the last two years, Jesse has often worn two hats working in new media and serving as the White House's liaison with the progressive media and online community. Starting this week, Jesse will take on the second role full time working on outreach, strategy and response."

Does this job entail "liking" all positive mentions of Barry on Facebook, or what?

Seriously, it reads like the guy's job description is to be the Oval Office's official internet troll.
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I'm a bad shooter.

There are four handguns that more or less live in my range bag: My Ruger MkIII 22/45 and my Para LTC9, which serve as understudies for my CCW 1911s, and my K-22 Target Masterpiece and a 2" Model 64 (stainless .38 Special K-frame, for those who don't speak S&W) that are my revolver trainers.

And when I say "live in my range bag", I mean that they come out to get shot at the range, and then sit in there until the next range trip. (Well, the K-22 usually gets wiped down with oil every couple weeks in deference to its age and blued finish.)

Every three or four months, though, I get to feeling guilty and pull them out to be stripped and cleaned. This means that they are filthy: The Para going sometimes 600 rounds between cleanings, and the 22/45 as much as 3,000 or more.

With the Para and the revolvers, it's not too bad, but the 22/45 is a blowback-operated rimfire, and the action gets an amazing amount of gunk vented back into it over that time. Today it is time to attack the built-up cack in the interior of the Ruger. Perhaps with an air chisel.

Ooh! You are so grounded!

Say you're a 15-year-old high school student, and your dad tries to take away your cell phone. Do you:

A. Scream "You hate me!" and lock yourself in your room and write bad poetry.

B. Cry.

C. Apologize profusely and try for a plea agreement.

D. Grab your compound bow, put a broadhead through dad's brisket, gather up three dozen more arrows and lead the local SWAT team on a chase through the woods like a pint-sized Rambette.

Apparently the cool thing to do out in the Seattle 'burbs these days is "D." Maybe it's just the rosy glow imparted by memory, but I seem to recall that back when I was in high school kids weren't so high-strung, (or at least we were more thoroughly cowed by the thought of something like this going on our permanent record.)

Remember: Bows don't kill people; teen drama queens do.

I don't get it either.

When I was younger, I used to think cut-down lever guns, a la Steve McQueen's "Mare's Leg" were just the coolest thing ever.

Now that I am older and actually know a little bit about firearms, I think they make about as much sense as a kickstand on a tank.

They still look cool though, and, y'know... Firefly. The worst thing is, there are people trying to sell me one now. (Well, I mean, they've always been available, but until now the whole NFA tax stamp thing was pretty good protection against dumb impulse purchases...)

Disasterhog.

Okay, California, it's time we talked about "sharing" again. I thought we'd agreed that you could have earthquakes and mudslides, we'd divvy up wildfires, floods and plagues of Democrats, and the rest of the country could have tornadoes all to ourselves?

You people are such attention hogs. "Everybody else gets a tornado, so we want one too!"

What's next? Trying to tow a hurricane from the Gulf of Mexico to San Francisco Bay?

Overheard In Front Of The TV:

Me: "When did Al Roker start moonlighting as the manager for the Cincinnati Reds?"

Gunsmith Bob: "Whoaaah! You just Al Rokered Dusty Baker!"

Me: "Poor Dusty. I hope I don't start looking like Al Roker when I get old."

When is a gaffe not a gaffe?

Remember: When it's done by a bumbling Texan who can't pronounce "nuclear", it's a national embarrassment on which pundits can feed for a week. When it's done by a suave Chicagoan who can't pronounce "corpsman", it's just cute and I have to go to BBC.com to find out exactly what happened in the first place.

At this rate, "Obama" is going to become British slang for one who cannot comport themselves properly at formal functions. "Oh, we can't have Nancy at the reception! She is such an Obama! Remember at the garden party last summer when she tried to 'fist-bump' your grandmother and we spent thirty minutes on our hands and knees under the topiary trying to find her dentures?"

Can you picture what will be, so limitless and free?

Oprah's last show is today. I don't think I've actually watched an episode of her show since I was in high school but, like a fluorescent light with a bad ballast, you couldn't help being aware of it in the pop culture background. For example, I will go to my grave unable to forget such scenes as a placenta-munching Hubbardite jumping up and down on a sofa on daytime TeeWee, even though I've only seen it obliquely referenced afterward.

You have to think that publishing houses that specialize in mediocre pop novels are bracing for impact, since millions of people are about to be bereft of book-buying instructions.

QotD: It's A Twister, Auntie Em! Edition.

Bobbi on the events in Joplin:

As a practical matter, this kind of event is a reminder that a "Bug-Out Bag" can just as easily become a Bug-In Bag, grabbed as you head to the basement or root cellar. Too, it's a reminder to ensure your emergency supplies are stored in as safe and secure manner as possible -- and that you should be planning what you'd do if you had to do without.

If your idea of preparedness is an SKS, a case of ammo, and a colander to strap on your face, then you're gonna be Sierra Oscar Lima when one of these real-life disasters comes along. After all, you can't shoot a flood. (Well, you can, but like voting Libertarian, while it may make you feel better, it's probably not going to do much good.)

Remember: So far this year over 500 people in the US have been killed by tornadoes, while there hasn't been a single confirmed zombie bite.

All things to all people...

Sales of the teeny Smart Fortwo microcar tanked after the first year of being sold in the US, causing dealerships to fold and auto and business writers to speculate at length on the reason why.

Personally, I think it's simply that in suburbia-dominated America, there's only so much of a market for a tiny, two-seat urban runabout, and it didn't take long for everybody who had a use for one to buy theirs. If your daily commute is a 50+ mile round trip dodging Kenworths on the interstate, a Smart is about as useful to you as an F350 crew-cab dually would be for me.

Some companies seem slow to pick up on this lesson, however:

These are problems we don’t encounter with hybrids and regular fuel-burning vehicles, and everyone’s learning something from the experience—some more than they’d like. After his first (and last) trip home with the electric Nissan, deputy editor Daniel Pund observed: “I had to drive like, well, like an electric-car driver, all right-lane and timid.” After driving 48 miles home, charging all night, and then returning to Ann Arbor, he got the low-charge indicator when the car reached our lot.

In a land where 40-mile commutes are a lot more common than 4-mile ones, the Nissan Leaf has a tough row to hoe.

Overheard at the Blogmeet:

RX: "...and it looks like they've moved the date for the rapture back."

Me: "That... This fascination with the end times and the tribulation that these people have, when half of that stuff isn't even in the... I mean, they'd be better off reading the actual scripture rather than stuff like Hal Lindsey, but it's... Look, Left Behind is just Twilight for holy rollers. 'My skin sparkles! I must be one of the Elect!'"

Excuses.

Woke up with a pounding headache this morning. I guess that beats waking up with the house down around your ears, though, which was altogether too common in the Midwest today.

They're calling for pop-up thunderstorms in the afternoon, so Turk and Bobbi and I bicycled to Taste for breakfast and then down as far as the State Fairgrounds where they were loading cars for the Mecum auction: The parking lot was liberally strewn with GTOs, 'Cudas, Mustangs, and even a winged Dodge Charger Daytona and a beautiful '67 Corvette 427 ragtop. I pedaled my bicycle up and down the aisles of cars in slack-jawed wonder.

Back up the Monon to Locally-Grown Gardens to check out the vegetable starts and grab a bottle of birch beer, and back to Roseholme Cottage. Now to try and get some actual errands done before the rains come.

Is the message too subtle for you, sheriff?

The Pima County sheriff's office is now claiming that the Iraq vet they pumped sixty bullets into was part of a "home invasion ring", although they still won't let anybody peek at the warrant or what, if anything, they took from the dead guy's house. As has been pointed out, apparently the Pima Co. Sheriff's department operates under looser rules of engagement than the slain Marine ever did in Iraq.

Assuming, for one moment, that this isn't a big fat stinking lie of a coverup, sheriff Dupnik, I want you to see if you can wrap your tiny mind around a simple piece of fact:

If your people weren't dressing up like masked thugs and kicking doors down and shooting people, then robbers wouldn't be able to impersonate your people by dressing up like masked thugs and kicking doors down and shooting people, in turn necessitating your people dressing up like masked thugs and kicking their doors down and shooting them.

Roll that around in your head for a bit and get back to me when you have a handle on it.

The only people skulking in my bushes and forcing my locks in the middle of the night should be soon-to-be-shot bad guys, not cops with Clouseau-like map-reading skills; I shouldn't need a scorecard to tell the masked players apart.

Overheard just outside the Art Fair:

The sky darkens and big droplets begin to fall. A couple of people start scurrying down the Monon.

RX: "Oh, man, it's really starting to rain! And I didn't bring my umbrella!"

Turk: "Don't bother running..."

Me: "You'll only die wet."

"Geographical boundaries are of no significance to me; I owe my allegiance to a higher power."

So Barry ran the shot clock out on the War Powers Resolution and we're still dribbling JDAMs over Tripoli. Nice of the New York Times to notice.

A clue to how Barry feels about the whole thing can be gleaned from his letter to Congress:

“Congressional action in support of the mission would underline the U.S. commitment to this remarkable international effort,” he wrote. “Such a resolution is also important in the context of our constitutional framework, as it would demonstrate a unity of purpose among the political branches on this important national security matter.”

Yeah, it would demonstrate a unity of purpose. It would also demonstrate compliance with the law, you cretin.

But you see, this is a "remarkable international effort" and Barack Hussein Obama, our first post-American president, is a remarkable international kind of guy. I mean, he's got friends in Europe. He even hung out with the Queen of England and gave her an iPod, for heaven's sake, you non-arugula-havin' bitter clinger! And this mission is sanctioned by NATO, which is international, and therefore bigger and more important than Congress, which is merely national, just like being the junior senator from Illinois in Washington is bigger and more important than being the state senator from Hyde Park in Springfield.

Don't you people get it? It's all like a hierarchy of sovereignty: city, county, state, nation, NATO, UN.

(And most of the people who make up the media class feel this way too, hence the nonchalance about something that would have had them howling out of sheer partisan reflex had Obama's predecessor been doing the same thing.)

Fingers still crossed.

Apparently the deadline came and went down in New Zealand without anybody getting caught up in the air with a shout and the trump of judgment, but they're a pack of godless foreigners with strange accents down there anyway, so that doesn't necessarily prove anything.

(And then it's pretty much all wogs from there to Calais, barring the occasional sober Australian, so I'm holding my verdict until 1800 GMT... Wait, does Jesus use DST?)

Just can't kick the habit...

"He would have won re-election easily," according to Darrell West, a political scientist who has followed Kennedy's career closely since the early 1990s. Incidentally, Kennedy's departure in January marked the first time in 58 years that there is no Kennedy in the national government -- no congressman, senator or president.

Our long national nightmare is over... or is it?

Apparently the Mayo Clinic helped Patrick Kennedy out with the coke and the sleeping pills, but he's still in need of a Twelve Step program for his public trough addiction: Now he's running around calling for the neuromedical equivalent of the Apollo Program that will... I don't know, I guess have some tiny shrunken dude navigate through the bloodstream and plant a teensy American flag on the temporal lobe by 2021.

And how about that picture at the CNN piece? At first I was all like "Look out, Patrick! It's a lich! It's got its arm around you and it's gonna devour your mind!" and then I realized that "Oh, yeah, that's his dad..."

The 43-year-old Kennedy left Congress in January, after spending more than half his life in public office. Now he's outside the Carter Center, taking a break after talking up his latest plan to a group of mental health advocates, including former first lady Rosalynn Carter.

See? Even when we say we've kicked the Kennedy habit, next thing you know, we're huddled out on the veranda of the Carter Center with Rosalynn, surreptitiously huffing us some Patrick.

I wonder, can we check America in at Betty Ford? We keep turning up with high levels of Kennedys in our national bloodstream and it's time we admit we have a problem. I dream of a day when we can take a national whiz quiz and have it come back 100% Kennedy-free.

Oh what a beautiful morning!

Seventy-something and sunny and not too humid in Broad Ripple today after what seemed a week of solid overcast and rain, and so I dropped the top on the Zed Drei to run errands this morning.

At one point on my rounds I found myself sitting at an intersection next to a 911 Cabrio buttoned up like a Sherman during an artillery barrage, and I thought to myself "Y'know, I would be flat-out embarrassed to be seen driving with the top up on a day like today."

I mean, I have done so in the past for one reason or another, but I really did feel a little embarrassed by it, and I'd find myself making excuses to people for why the lid was up on the roadster... I have to go on the freeway. There's stuff in the passenger seat I don't want blowing around. Things like that.

I mean, there are starving children in India who have to drive hardtops. Show some appreciation for what you have: Lower your roof!

Genius!

Inspired by photographer/inventor Reginald Garcia and commenter Blackwing1, I have a new idea to clean up the environment!

What you do is you take powerful fans, drawing their juice from the existing grid, and blow them over electricity-generating wind turbines, thereby converting the nasty coal- or oil-produced electricity into clean, environmentally-friendly wind power!

And the best part? Well, as Blackwing1 pointed out:

"[Y]ou can make a profit by utilizing the direct 1.5-cents per kW-Hr subsidy that wind-generated electricity gets. All you have to do is make sure that your fan/windmill combination has a higher combined efficiency than the difference in price between your wholesale electricity cost for fan power, and the price you get paid for the subsidized "green" power."

Visualize a cleaner world!

Bring out the gimp.

Conventional wisdom says that with the nation still stuck in 2.5 overseas kinetic military actions and the economy circling the drain, the party out of power should be able to oust the incumbent in the White House as long as they can offer a candidate that doesn't drool on himself too much and can remain upright long enough to get sworn in.

Looking at the GOP contenders so far, however, this may be too tall of an order. This roster is making the Jim Rose Freak Show look like the Royal Shakespeare Company.

One weekend a month.

No, not the National Guard; it's that one weekend a month where the roomie gets to work strange hours and the alarm clock at Roseholme Cottage goes off at 0100, which is when civilized people are thinking about toddling off to bed, not waking up.

This is why we can't have nice things.

There was the story recently about the guy who took pictures of Michael Jackson back when he was 19 and was now trying to sell the heretofore-unpublished photos in order to supposedly raise money for his magic perpetual motion machine, an electric motor that "...generat[es] more energy recharging the battery than it actually draws from the battery":

"It's written in the stars," Garcia said. "We have a destiny of a greener earth, a door opening today that should lead us to this clean earth."

Either the guy is serious, which is a little poignant, or he's just another snake oil salesman, which is more likely because, seriously, if you've got an electric motor that puts out more juice than it takes in, you don't need to sell anything to raise the money to develop it; you just walk that little bad boy through the front door at GE and you'll be farting through silk, brother; you'll never need to work another day in your life.

But what really got to me was that I made the mistake of reading the comments at the CNN piece. Aside from the fact that, like most comments on the wider internet, half of them read like they were typed by functionally illiterate morons, utterly innocent of the most basic concepts of spelling and grammar and using their noses to strike the keys, the naivety was simply breathtaking:

"The government as well as big oil, the automotive and defense industries, and the big brokerage houses will do everything they possibly can to ensure this invention never sees the light of day, as far as being adapted."

"If his motor works, it would NOT be a perpetual motion machine. He would be using a force of nature that is there, and very real. Solar panels are NOT perpetual motion machines, they are "free energy" machines. Learn the difference before you start flapping your jaw. People used to think the world was flat, and it is thinking like yours that will keep us using oil for the rest of our lives."

"i am sure 100 years ago! people said flying airplanes in the air violated the laws of physics and gravity! As long as the saying " Laws are made to be broken" holds, i say anything is a possibility. Goodluck to you Mr. Garcia, and i hope you take down our oil dependence with your invention."

"Oh no, this could threaten the oil company and thier billions of profits if it worked(if?). This person will probably die of unknown causes shortly."

...and countless more in that vein. I tell you, there's nothing that will break my spirit and crush what little faith I have in humanity quicker than an open comments section that encourages readers of CNN's "entertainment" section to parade their knowledge of science. I'm going to go to sleep tonight and have nightmares about these cretins all lined up outside a voting booth...

Speaking of Osama...

Did you catch the message from his relatives last week?

Relatives of Osama bin Laden want proof that the terrorist leader is dead and are calling for an investigation into how he was killed, according to Jean Sasson, an author who helped one of bin Laden's sons write a memoir.

An investigation into how he was killed? "Shot in the face by US Navy SEALS" isn't that terribly complicated a cause of death. No need to page Dr. House to sleuth this one out.

Bin Laden's relatives "would like to have been able to have witnessed seeing the body, at least identified the body, because, you know how it is in the Middle East so many times: They really need proof or people start believing -- this has been discussed by a lot more people than me -- that many people will not believe that he's dead," Sasson told CNN Wednesday.

These are people that believe that kindly old Mrs. Goldstein next door kidnaps neighborhood children and uses their blood for cookie dough; do you really think that people who shelve The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the non-fiction section are going to be convinced by a photo on the internets? I don't mean to be harshly critical here, but the only more credulous demographic on the planet is "People Who Bought The Boxed Set Of Leonard Nimoy's In Search Of..."

"We maintain that arbitrary killing is not a solution to political problems and crime's adjudication as justice must be seen to be done," the statement said.

You know, if you'd used that one on your dad about ten years ago, it would have saved everybody a whole lotta time and effort. I'm just sayin'.

Osama's final message...

So Al Qaeda released OBL's final presser:

"My Muslim Umma, we are monitoring with you this great historic event, and we join you with your joy and delight, so congratulations on your victories, and may God have mercy on your martyrs... Hang on, somebody's at the door. I'll be right back..."

De luxe boat.

Over at Lagniappe's Lair is a wonderful photo tour of the USS Requin, a Tench-class fleet sub. One of the neatest photos shows the lever switches for three alarms on boxes on the wall. Not only is each of the three boxes a different color so you can distinguish them quickly, but each of the handles has a different-shaped knob on the end so you can distinguish it in the dark. Launched in 1944, and state of the art for its time, it's nonetheless a pretty cramped and incommodious little boat.

But what struck me was the difference between it and the last sub I toured, the U-505, a captured WWII German Type IXC U-boat. The Type IX's dated from the mid-'30s, and are a good sixty feet shorter than the Tench-class boats. The Requin is cramped, but it's cramped like a cabin cruiser or sailboat, whereas the U-505 is cramped like a space capsule. One is crowded while the other is a claustrophobe's nightmare, even brightly lit and safely parked inside a Chicago museum, let alone a hundred feet down in the freezing North Atlantic.

That has got to have an impact on the effectiveness of the crew on a long cruise; the less time you spend having to peel guys off bulkheads, the more time they can spend running the boat. I wonder how much time and skull sweat have gone into trying to figure out the optimum cubic-feet-per-man on a Virginia-class attack sub?

QotD: I've Wondered That Too Edition.

A Reddit commenter regarding all those YouTube videos of guys dressed up like action figures and committing Mall Ninjary:

Who are these people? YouTube has a bunch of guys who dress up like this and do stupid shit, but I've yet to meet anyone IRL into this whole...uh...aesthetic(?)

There's clearly some faction of gun enthusiasts who don't know where the "dork" line is.

I'll admit to owning a balaclava. It's rolled up inside my motorcycle helmet. I've never had the urge to film myself wearing it while covered in camo and doing something dumb with a gun.

It's that time again.

Roomie has the details on this weekend's Indy BlogMeet.

You should be there. It'll be fun. Honest!

That looks like about 600 giggles a minute.

S.W.A.T. Magazine video of the SlideFire AR-15 stock in action. Mindful of the Akins Accelerator fiasco, I inquired with Those Who Know and was told that the difference is that the Akins stock used a separate spring, and also that the BATFEIEIO actually got sent a sample before they approved it.

The cherry on the icing of the cake of my day.

Apparently the nine black-robed Gladys Kravitzes of the U.S. Supreme Court had all weekend to sit around pondering how they were going to top the monumental gaffe made by the Indiana supremes in Barnes v. Indiana.

Showing up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for work this morning, they gave it the old college try.

Long story short, the po-po in the case in question were in leisurely pursuit of an ambling suspect. Rounding the corner, they were faced with two apartment doors through which he could have gone. The smell of burning doobage was wafting from the one on the left, so they knocked. Nobody answered and, hearing movement inside, they busted it down, rather than going and fetching a warrant based on the probable cause of the smell of burning doobage.

Their dude wasn't inside, having gone through the other door, so they settled for the Second Place trophy of arresting the guy who was. "Sucks to be him", ruled SCOTUS in an eight-to-one decision, with only Ginsburg (?!) on the side of the angels. (Et tu, Clarence?)

This is bad farce. The only thing worse than an evil, sinister police state is the Three Stooges police state we're going to wind up with. "Hey, Moe! You're under arrest!"

Time-stretching, scope-widening kinetic military action.

"I live in a place where there is completely impossible that I am eliminated," said the Libyan leader Saturday in a message also shown by TV...

"NATO cannot come and kill me where I am. For I live in the hearts of millions," declared the Libyan leader.

Yeah, and I have the heart of a small child... I wonder how deep you have to stack cardiac muscle to make a JDAM-resistant roof, anyway?

Anyhow, l'affair Ghaddafi drags through its second month, looking less "time-limited" by the moment, and forget that no-fly zone nonsense because this is becoming less and less scope-limited, too. Further, while we're taking sides in an armed revolt in Libya, the Syrians are mowing down unarmed demonstrators with impunity without a peep from NATO, because the Syrians, unlike the comic-opera Libyans, might actually shoot back.

Barry better green-light the smoking of another High Value Target before everybody remembers what's actually happening out there.

The world is a strange, strange place...

I learned that, in Seoul, South Korea...

It is not rare, either, to come across book-vending machines stocked with classic works of Babylonian Judaism.

I had no idea. Sometimes real life can be weirder than a Mel Brooks movie.

Sulking in my tent, making music instead of war...

Friday dawned sunny, but the weather was scheduled to turn foul in the afternoon. Further, Blogger was acting wonky, and so I took it as an omen to get some work done and go to the range.

I got home from the range to find my inbox filling up with emails about the Indiana Supreme Court's decision in Barnes v. Indiana, which I would call "retarded" if it weren't for the fact that any random group of three people suffering from significantly impaired cognitive functioning could have cobbled together a better piece of jurisprudence than that steaming pile. As the afternoon wore on, some of the emails began to get more... er... hyperbolic, and I started to feel a little jaded. You know, I can only read so many insurrectionist mutterings of the sort that come on the heels of every bad law and awful court ruling before I want to yell "Fish or cut bait, dammit!" at the computer screen.

Anyhow, I had a pretty good funk going by the time my roommate got home, and the argument we had when she did didn't help. I made some pretty poor word choices and by the time I got my foot good and stuck in my mouth, the black cloud of depression hanging over my head was probably visible to the naked eye.

So, sporting a serious case of the Oh-What's-The-Uses, I just moped around the house and sulked for the last couple days.

But that doesn't help. Not me, nor anybody else.

Anyway.

Look, this was a colossally dumb ruling. If they just wanted to uphold the dude's conviction, they had a handy hook of Exigent Circumstances on which to hang the hat of their decision. But noooo! That wasn't good enough. Instead, in a textbook case of legislating from the bench, a couple of The-Government-Is-Your-Friend judges saw a chance to get rid of an annoying and icky antiquated bit of common law, using this case as a handy shovel to dig it out by the roots.

And what a crappy job of it they did, too: There are clumps of Fourth Amendment everywhere, not to mention specific statutory law in the form of a "Castle Doctrine" which wasn't addressed by their half-assed ruling (How's that gonna work? "Your honor, my client had no idea the deceased was a law enforcement officer, and under IC 35-41-3-2...")

Further, this is particularly badly-timed egg on Mitch Daniels' face, and as an added bonus, the thimble-headed gherkin who penned the majority opinion is facing a retention election next year.

I cannot begin to tell you how much I look forward to ticking the box marked "You're fired!"

Stupidity is a universal language.

First, make sure your drop-thigh rig is worn waaayyy low on your leg so that everyone can tell that you're a poser who's never had to run in that ridiculous piece of gear, and then, just in case anybody is still wondering if you're an idiot...



Words fail me.

And just what is the point of this particular evolution, anyway? To prove that it's a good thing your allergies didn't act up while your buddy was demonstrating how much he trusted you?

Huh?

State police Sgt. Kim Riley says nothing suspicious was found at the site about 40 miles north of Lafayette and foul play wasn't suspected.

"Nothing suspicious" other than a couple of dead guys, that is.

I don't know about you, but I find a couple of stiffs, I'm assuming they didn't die of freakishly simultaneous heart attacks.

It's beginning to smell like summer...

After a night of frost this time last week, we are witnessing our third day in a row with highs in the 80s and humidity like a sauna. The year seems to have given May a miss and skipped from April straight to June (although the TV weatherdude assures me that late April will be back with a vengeance by the weekend.)

Last night Bobbi pedaled off to Fresh Market and came back with a brace of filets, which we proceeded to toss on the grill, adding the scent of hickory charcoal and searing cow flesh to the aromas of new-mown grass and drifting pollen. Combine that with the sound of the ice cream truck driving down the block a couple streets over and a Navy F/A-18 overhead in town for the air show, and you have a modern changing-of-the-seasons ceremony easily as authentic as any "rediscovered" Beltane...

I warn you people and I warn you people...

...about the imminent danger of face-eating monkeys, but do you listen? Nooo...

Seriously, how obvious does this peril have to be before you face up to it?

(Via Twitter...)

Clearing tabs...

• Via Unc: The "Elite Tactical Advantage Devastator Shotgun". We have officially crossed the mall ninja marketing buzzword event horizon. Either that, or this is Poe's Law in action.


• In discussing musical nostalgia, I mentioned listening to The Church. Ed Foster went old school on me by saying he was breaking out "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" on 8-track. Thinking on this for a second, I realized that Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell came out in '77, and Of Skins and Heart by The Church was released in '81. Funny how, back in high school, one was "Classic Rock" and the other was "New Wave" but, looking back from 2011, '77 and '81 are practically the same year.

Three yards and a cloud of dust.

So the 2011 legislative session in Indiana was pretty good to gun owners. We went six for six, with everything from improved preemption to a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law for employers. That's right, it's illegal for employers to discriminate against you for exercising your constitutional rights here in Indiana!

Did the other side even try floating any legislation?

Meanwhile, down in Texas, they're still trying to push forward on HB 2756, which would remove the odious concealment requirements under which our oppressed Texan brothers and sisters still suffer. If you're in Texas, pester your legiscritter!

EDIT: As Shootin' Buddy points out, this was entirely accomplished by our state association, the ISRPA, with pretty much bupkis for help from the national association, which was apparently fighting sexier and more telegenic fights in other states. The ISRPA has somewhere around 1,100 members, counting dead guys, and the high-powered lobbyists consisted of three old retired dudes who hung around the statehouse and pestered legislators to vote in favor of these bills and have I showed you this picture of my grandkids? That's an amazing return on investment; imagine what they could do with more members!

Games people played..

I haven't played a game on a computer, excepting solitaire and that ilk, in years. Well, I take that back: I think I've played a little bit of Diablo or Diablo II on this machine since I moved up here.

Which is funny, because this computer, like every computer I've owned before it, was built to play games. Test Drive and Sim City on the XT; Red Baron and Civilization on the 286; Wing Commander and Eye of the Beholder on the 386; Privateer and Crusader: No Remorse on the 486; and whole weekends of LAN parties playing Quake and Diablo and US Navy Fighters and Need For Speed on a succession of ever faster Pentiums...

So I'm reading over at Popehat and Patrick is off on a nostalgic tear about one of his favorite old video games, Star Control II, which I never played, and he casually mentions a joint on the 'net called Good Old Games, which has apparently been acquiring the rights to the back catalogs of several companies. Oh, man, they have Red Baron and the first Gabriel Knight game! And no DOSBox required!

Apologies.

Some actual, you know, work-type-work clogged the nozzle of the free ice cream machine today.

On the other hand, bonus points for feeling like I accomplished something! A winner is me!

Mrrpphhll...

Overslept.

Talk amongst yourselves for a moment.

Also, how are we supposed to convince 'em Osama's dead when we can't even make 'em believe Hitler is?

Flashback.

While running to pick up my carryout at the Brew Pub last night, the cassette adapter for my iPod blew a gasket. Yes, the Zed Drei is so old that the head unit doesn't sport an input jack...

After wrenching on (and snapping) the cord, I was forced to resort to digging around in the cassette slot with my Benchmade Stryker until it spat the remains of the adapter out so violently that they bounced off my arm and landed in the passenger seat.

I suddenly realized that I had no CDs in the changer...

Frantically, I opened the console and there were a few tapes I'd grabbed at random for a roadtrip years ago and never listened to. It's been fifteen years since I had a car with a cassette player I actually used.

This morning, on the way to the store, I grabbed one at random to see what was on it. It was a mix tape nearly two decades old, and I was serenaded with "Plainsong" by The Cure and "Is This Where You Live" by The Church, neither one of which I'd heard in at least ten years, as best I can remember...

The nostalgia was nearly overpowering.

Meanwhile, in Lafayette...

The pictures started to come in from my correspondents in Lafayette, IN, home of renegade cows that need to be taken down by the SWAT team and giant Guinness pints that fall off parade floats:

Obviously Captain America was on the loose somewhere in Tippecanoe county!


Don't the Superhero Guild Laws require you to have a secret Fortress of Solitude or a Batcave or that fancy prep school where the X-Men hang out or whatever? Perhaps Cap's is somewhere here in Hoosierland!

Or maybe this was just a garden variety crazy, a species with which Indiana is abundantly stocked, ever since the DNR decided to reintroduce them back in the '30s, along with whitetail deer?

As it turns out, there is a method to Captain America's madness...

You go, Allen!

Just go 'head and issue the internal passports already.

Apparently Chuck "There Oughtta Be A Law!" Schumer thinks a "no ride" list for Amtrak would be a swell idea.

Someone needs to explain to Senator-For-Life Chuck that the movie Silver Streak is not actually a documentary, and the odds of anyone crashing a hijacked train into a building are vanishingly small. (Besides, I already have a list of the people who don't ride Amtrak: I call it "the phone book".)

Incidentally, I note that Chuck, like so many in our Ruling Class, has never done an honest day's work in his life. He has followed the cursus dishonorum almost to the letter (albeit skipping the icky military part that used to be required) since graduating from that wretched hive of scum and villainy, Harvard Law: State assemblyman in '75, US representative in '81, US senator in '99. He has been sucking at the public teat practically as long as I've been weaned, and people keep sending him back!

Unglaublich! And we wonder why we're in the mess we're in...


(H/T to Unc.)

Oh, man, I'm dyin' ovah heah!

Borepatch has re-written the "Dennis the Peasant scene" (my favorite*, BTW,) from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The new wookie suiter version apparently stars me and TJIC and an unnamed-yet-suspiciously-familiar "progressive elitist":

TJIC: Look, a bunch of lefty Com-Symps writing sheepskins ... that's no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power is inherent in each individual, it doesn't come from some farcical academic ceremony.

Go read the whole geeky thing. :)


___________________________
* Yeah, I know: +1000 Nerd Points for even having a favorite scene from Holy Grail.

On-trey-pren-oor.

Mark Alger is putting his mad 1337 writing skills to work polishing resumes at ResumeWorks.biz.

If you are a victim of The Great Recovery!® perhaps you should check him out.

I'll love to ride my bicycle.

SB292 (New & Improved Preemption) goes into effect in Indiana on July 1st.

July 2nd is a Saturday and would make a splendid day for a group bicycle ride on the Monon Trail, don't y'all think?

Like a black fly in your chardonnay...

Apparently the Barcelona city government unbellyfeels irony.

To quote Chairman O'Rourke, "You would be drummed out of the subtle fiction writer's guild for trying to make something like that up."

(H/T to Sebastian.)

Overheard in the Office:

This morning, Roomie peeks through the drapes in the office, causing sunshine to blast in:

RX: "Wow, they've gone and turned on the sun out there!"

Me: "Yeah, and they're gonna let the thing burn all day, too."

RX: "Don't they know we're trying to conserve energy here?"

The basic problem.

So over at Radley Balko's joint, one of the guest bloggers keeping the lights on while Radley's on vacation had a question for the masses. Since he was of a lefty-progressive sort of bent, he wanted to know "What's this libertarian stuff about?"

Now, I'll occasionally use the term 'libertarian' to describe myself, at least when I'm in too mellow a mood to have to explain 'anarcho-capitalist' to somebody who looks like they probably wouldn't get the term 'wookie suiter', and so it's the nature of the question itself that exposes the big difference between Mr. Moskos' views and my own:

That’s my basic problem. Here’s my real question: What is the libertarian answer to society’s f*ck ups? What about people who–through their own ineptitude, stupidity, laziness, or drug abuse–simply fail? What do we do about the undeserving poor?

I don’t want to see people starve in the streets. I certainly don’t want desperate people to mug me. At some point, in a rich and civilized society, don’t we just have to be compassionate… even to people who don’t “deserve” it?

Didja catch it? All that stuff about "society" and "we"? Well, as P.J. O'Rourke so aptly phrased it "There's no such thing as 'we'; there's only you and me. And sometimes I'm not too sure about me." It's important to not confuse the first person plural pronoun with an actual physical entity.

"We" are not a wealthy "society". You and I live in a place that has some rich people and some poor people and some in-between people. "We" don't "just have to" do anything. There may be things you need to do or things I want to do, but we aren't part of some borg-like collective with collective responsibilities, wants and needs.

If you want to be compassionate, go be compassionate. I know that's usually what I do when I'm feeling compassionate, not expect some entity called "the government" to go be compassionate for me. Mailing a check to the government to help the poor because you're feeling compassionate is like handing the local crackhead a twenty to fetch you a pizza because you're feeling hungry.

If you think something needs to be done, you should do it. You should not assume everybody else thinks the same way or that somebody else will take care of it for you. You and I are not sticks in a fasces or cells in a jellyfish; we are individuals with the right to live our own individual lives without someone else telling us what we have to do.

In retrospect, it was a big mistake to put e pluribus unum on the currency, instead of "You ain't the boss of me". (Vobis non me dux?)


(H/T to Random Nuclear Strikes.)

Imagine that.

Noam Chomsky is all upset at the death of Osama Bin Laden. This is my shocked face.

Meanwhile, maybe it's just a result of me getting older, but I find myself poignantly remembering those nearly-forgotten days when we still had grownups in Washington DC, rather than a pack of over-the-hill hippies so obviously trying to compensate for their shiny new bald spots...



I still remember walking into a classroom that morning to find that some wag had written on the chalkboard:

Good morning, Khadaffy,
Care to make any threats?
Go right ahead,
We have plenty more jets.

We hope you learned your lesson,
Only time will tell.
But do keep in mind,
Payback is hell.

Winning.

Apparently 33% of the audience at the latest Brady Center press conference was an NRA cameraman. Naturally, Helmke is all butthurt and lonely.

I don't get what he's whining about. You'd think he'd be happy that somebody showed up to listen to him.
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I did not know this:

The night we bombed Oklahoma:



(H/T to Chas again.)

Somewhere along the evolutionary line...

...that leads from tapeworms to lampreys and eventually to personal injury attorneys, you will find looters.

Capps, 41, said he returned to the site the day after Wednesday's tornadoes, leaving his parents in the hospital. Walking up Dogwood Lane, he saw a man carrying a rolled-up power cord that looked familiar. Then he noticed the cord had his own name on it.

"I said, `If your conscience will let you live with what you just did, then you've earned that cord.' And he kept on walking," Capps said.

No sooner did the debris stop blowing around in Alabama than thieves started stealing it. That's real classy, right there.

There was also the usual spurt of disaster-induced economic illiteracy:

Marauding thieves aren't residents' only concern. The attorney general's office in Alabama has received nearly 1,800 phone calls complaining about price gouging, Barnes said. The complaints include $2 bags of ice being sold for $5, $400 generators being sold for $1,600 on the side of the road, hotels jacking up their prices and unfair gasoline prices.

Every single one of those eighteen hundred yahoos deserves a good pimp-slapping from the Invisible Hand.

(H/T to EmmaPeel.)

Perishable Skill.

So Roomie and I drove out to MCF&G to try out our spiffy new range memberships yesterday. The mercury was in the low 60s, the sun was shining, and other than the ground still being waterlogged, it was a perfect day for shooting.

I have a confession to make.

What with Eagle Creek, our local public range, not having opened yet this year, yesterday was the first time I did any live fire since Christmas.

Now, I'm a thoroughly mediocre shot under the best of circumstances. My best run on the FAST drill in Todd G's class last October was 10 seconds clean. When Caleb ran me through the IDPA Classifier with my 9mm Para, I scored "Marksman" which is the next step above "Helen Keller".

Yesterday, however, I was sucking pond water. After years of shooting pretty much every week, the effects of just a four month hiatus (and one that included a reasonable amount of dry-fire, at that) were depressing.

Due to muddy conditions in the pistol bay, we set up our firing line about ten yards back from the targets. I was using one of my "reduced scale" zombie targets, so the cumulative effect was like shooting at a normal silhouette at 20-25 yards.

Warming up with the Ruger 22/45, everything seemed okay. I have six magazines, and I'll generally shoot two each with both hands, strong hand, and weak hand. I ran through that twice and scoped the target. Hmm... A little looser than I like, and there were actually two rounds that missed the zombie...

After two more cycles with the Ruger, I started loading 9mm mags for the Para LTC9 as well. By this time I noticed that my front sight was starting to wobble all over the place: Holding a couple pound weight out at arms' length and squeezing the bejeezus out of it is actually an exercise that one doesn't normally get in the course of routine daily activities, and whatever muscle groups I have that were responsible for doing that had gone slack, slack, slack.

After just 75 rounds or so with the 9mm, I was useless. I was literally having a hard time hitting the zombie's noggin. I'd concentrate on pressing the trigger straight back and my grip would grow slack; I'd concentrate on squeezing the gun 20% tighter, and I'd find myself looking over the sights (which were wobbling worse than ever.) I was done. Rather than continue to reinforce bad habits, I ran another set of mags through the Ruger .22 and called it a day.

On a side note, while I was there I finally got to test-fire my M&P 15-22. I only put two mags through it, but it ran without a hitch. I need to get it down there and sight in the FACOG properly off the bench.

After that humiliating performance, Bobbi and I picked up the bay, leaving it cleaner than when we started (and shame on the slob who left that bowling pin there!) and headed home.

Good thing I got that range membership, 'cause it looks like I need to use it.

(UPDATE: Roomie has pictures from the trip.)
.

Getting a little Old Testament out there...

So northern Alabama's been whisked off to Oz, the heartland from Cairo to Memphis is fixing to do a pretty fair Atlantis impersonation, and Texas is on fire. Chas Clifton has been covering the drought in southeastern Colorado, including his own adventures in wildfire fighting.

What is this? Is California so broke that it can't afford to hog all the natural disasters anymore?

You have questions? We have answers.

Considering that a felony rap is apparently considered a career-boosting move in some corners of the entertainment industry these days, how do you get Marky Mark on the set of your next action movie legally without the Funky Bunch of Investigation kicking down the door, arresting him, and eating all the catering?

You have him only use magic fake guns that shoot special pyrotechnic charges!

What will they think of next?

Good Day.

After doing 'net-related scut work yesterday morn, I readied the bike for the first longer-than-around-the-block jaunt of Spring. Roomie, who has been taking her bicycle out for at least a mile every night it hasn't been raining, rode along.

The tires were still full of air, which was good, and Bobbi and I headed down into Broad Ripple proper to go get a fresh kickstand on my bike to replace the broken one. The Bike Line did a friendly While-U-Wait install with complementary brake and shifter adjustment, and we were off to the Broad Ripple Brew Pub for a late lunch.

After lunch, we pedaled to Rusted Moon Outfitters, where Roomie got a chance to try on some of those Vibram Five Fingers shoe thingies. Sadly, her toe geometry in relation to the overall length of her foot is apparently some odd statistical outlier; the ones that fit closest were tight in the toes and slack at the heel. I scored a cool new Nalgene water bottle, though.

After a quick stop at McVan's vidjo game store on Broad Ripple Avenue, we rode back to Roseholme. The Trek rode great the whole day. I'm so glad I bought it; definitely some of the best money I've spent in the last five years.

It wasn't an epic slog, but it was a decent First Real Ride of the Season for me. (Now if it will only stay dry enough for me to do it more often.)

The great American melting pot...

We will take whatever ethnic or religious holiday you happen to have and turn it into an excuse for ofay yuppies who couldn't tell a Pater Noster from a Plan of Iguala to get hammered on funny-colored beer in singles bars.

The queso fundido we ate amidst the quaint English decor of the Broad Ripple Brew Pub yesterday was delicious, by the way.

Overheard in the Kitchen:

Bobbi is fetching ice cream. Huck is being curious...

RX: "No! Cats do not go in there! Cats do not go in the freezer!"

Me: "Unless they've been very, very bad."

Overheard in the Office:

The occasional misanthropy attack occurs:

Me: "How come they're only 'regime supporters' when they belong to the Other Team? I mean, roughly half of Americans think that Obama's a swell guy and want to believe he 'got Osama', just like half believe that Bush was a great big friend of liberty and we needed to go save the world.

And it's a free country; they're allowed to believe that. You can't just shoot them out of hand; they're not evil commie traitors. Well, actually they are, but you still just can't shoot them out of hand. More's the pity, actually."

RX: "If you killed everybody that needed killing, you wouldn't be able to get arugula. And besides, who would you play with?"

Me: "There'd be peace and quiet, I'll tell you that."

RX: "But who would hold your targets?"

Me: "Once the rigor sets in, they'll hold targets just fine."

Overheard in the Car:

Sitting in the passenger seat of Roomie's car, heading down 38th Street last night, I had one of those moments that reminds me that my trains of thought don't necessarily run on the same tracks as other peoples'.

We were passing an officer who had pulled someone over in a construction zone with no shoulder, blocking the right-hand lane. Roomie edged as far to the left as she could go to give him room without actually crossing the center line. As she passed him, in that stream-of-consciousness mode which is normal for Roomie driving at night, came...

RX: "God, I hate when people do that. I always turn on the dome light and try and pull off on a side street. The police are real appreciative when you do that, too, but can you imagine how horrible it would be on a busy street like Meridian? One minute the cop's at your door, writing the ticket and then... BAM!"

Me: "I wonder what the state law is on that? Do you have to wait for another officer to come finish your ticket? Or can you just, like, go on home?"

Judging by Roomie's reaction, that was not the first thought on her mind regarding the imagined scenario, nor even the fifth or sixth thought.

Honestly, I wasn't trying to be morbid; I was just kinda curious to know if that was actually codified somewhere.
.

April showers bring May problems.

Hoosier farmers are hurtin', as you know if you read Farmer Frank's post. Even non-farming Hoosiers are getting disgruntled with the fact that the weather has been positively Seattle-like around here for over a month. I don't think we've had more than two dry days in a row here at Roseholme Cottage since the end of March.

Last night we finally got around to joining up down at Marion County Fish & Game. Thanks to the ongoing contretemps at the public range at Eagle Creek Park, there were about 50 people there for the new member orientation and safety briefing, including friend Jack of blogmeet fame.

MCF&G is a nice facility; it's the place that holds the bowling pin matches we used to shoot (and need to shoot again.) Its only real downsides are related to its fairly urban location which result in a justifiable paranoia of rounds launched over the berm and a 'pistols, pistol-caliber carbines, and shotguns only' policy. (The permitted rounds are on a list. Oddly, .455 Webley Auto is already listed, but I'll need to petition to get .22 Remington Jet, .32 S&W, .38 ACP and 7.62x38 Nagant added.)

Eagle Creek, which normally wends placidly along the boundary of MCF&G, was swollen by the ongoing monsoon season into a whitewater torrent that rated somewhere between Class II and III on the International Scale. Meanwhile, the club safety officer was in constant danger of being swallowed by the marsh that was forming near the new pistol bays.

Hopefully we can get a dry day or two in a row so we can go try the new place out.

Friendly KIA.

Farmer Frank's post from yesterday is worth a read in its entirety, but the money quotes are:

"Our country has paid dearly in terms of lives lost (both at the Twin Towers and on the fields of battle since then) and in terms of monetary treasure, but the greatest cost or 'Loss' actually has been to our ideals.

...

We, as citizens, have lost the virtue of "Privacy". When asked what we are carrying in our personal clothing or an accompanying bag, "NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS" is no longer a legal or acceptable response. Worse still a large percentage of the population believes you have no right to issue such a response."

The War on (Some) Drugs started it, but the War on A Noun bolted on a turbocharger. Anyhow, you should go read his whole post.

There's your problem...

Pittsburgh is allegedly plagued by ninjas?

They're obviously drawn to the baseball stadium, which they think is full of their mortal enemies, turning it into a sort of giant ninja bug-zapper. Change the name of the baseball team to something like the Pittsburgh Porpoises or the Pittsburgh Pinnipeds and the ninjas will all wander off and go pester Tampa Bay. Problem solved.

Miscellany.

• The cover of Larry Correia's Hard Magic is pretty cool, but the woman is holding what appears to be a rubber dog turd glowing with Cherenkov radiation. While I am sure that is not what it is supposed to be, you never know with Larry.


• Readers of internet gun forums should brace for the influx of txtspeaking members of DEVGRU, as the tens of thousands of sixteen-year-old veterans of this elite unit surface to supplant Clearasil-using SFOD-D members as the most common variant of Counterstrike Kiddie on the 'net.


• The Indianapolis city government is still unable to get our public range open.


• What happens if a tornado whisks your carefully-prepped bugout bag to Oz?

TSA, go away, don't come back another day...

Borepatch muses on security theater and offers up a Hail Mary scenario that might work, if the right person were to pull it off:

There is a solution, that I modestly offer here. A bold (read: media whoring) Governor should federalize airport security in his state. He should send in the State Police and arrest any TSA agent that engages in sexual assault. He can have the security outsourced to a company that will actually be responsive to the market.

The TSA, of course, will have a cow. They will threaten legal action. Andrew Jackson's dictum will prove popular: The Supreme Court has made its ruling. Now let it enforce it. It's unlikely that this visible battle royal will make the Governor less popular; on the contrary, the TSA is at best ignored and at worst despised by most of the country. Our Governor will be seen as a hero by many registered voters.

And that's just the opening gambit: RTWT.
.

Cats.

So, at night, Mittens was always "head cat", curled up against my shoulder, and Random Numbers was always "feet cat", who would make a nest down between my ankles.

With Mittens gone, Rannie has apparently decided that it's high time she try out for the "head cat" job.

What she doesn't understand is that the two most important qualifications for the position are: 1) Stillness, and 2) Quiet.

It's easy to sleep with a soft, fluffy cat curled up next to your head, purring softly. Not so much so with a cat who is constantly singing to you under her breath, getting up to change positions every thirty seconds, and occasionally frantically licking your pillow, the wall, or you.

Pants On Fire.

From the BBC:

1337: Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Pakistan's High Commissioner in London, tells the BBC World Service he "wouldn't buy the story that Pakistan would have been kept in the dark" about the operation in Abbottabad: "Pakistani authorities and the CIA and the American intelligence network have always been working 24 hours-a-day, cooperating with each other, sorting out things, so there has been total cooperation between them," he said.

You're so full of it that your eyes are brown, Wajid.

I can easily prove that the Pakistani government was not told ahead of time by the simple fact that Bin Laden was there when the door was kicked in and not somewhere miles over the horizon.

There are many ways to get information into the hands of terrorists quickly, such as telephone or television, but none are as fast as telePakistaniIntelOfficer.

It strikes me as... I don't know, a little odd...

...that the commenters at Al Jazeera (English) are so much less kooky this morning than the ones at Voice of America.

I mean, generally you can count on people who believe that nice old Mrs. Cohen next door kidnaps children and bakes them into holiday cookies to come up with some exotic conspiracy theories, but they're actually pretty calm and analytical compared to the Art Bell-grade wackiness in the comments at VoA.

Elvis has not been implicated yet there, but we're only a-hundred-and-thirty-something comments in, so I'm keeping my hopes up.

Speaking of Art Bell-grade wackiness, I shouldn't sell my fellow Hoosiers short. In a comment to a story on the recent tornado outbreak, the very first commenter said:

THIS is not hard to figure out folks,this is called pole shift,this is going to happen more as we get closer to 2012 and it will get very worse then what you see happening now a hole lot worse its not climate change like they been tell you folks,,

(All spelling and punctuation left intact so you can glory in the full impact of the looniness.)

Overheard in Roomie's Bedroom:

TeeWee Announcer: "...and this is a suburb of Islamabad, the nation's capital. An affluent suburb, in fact, where many Pakistani generals live..."

RX: "And they were shocked, shocked, to find that there was gambling going on there!"

Breaking news:

Osama Bin Laden impersonator found dead with fake Obama birth certificate in pocket...
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Crickets on the show floor.

Weer'd reports a distinct lack of traffic at the H-S Precision booth at the NRA convention.

Y'all may remember H-S Precision as the people who thought that FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi would be a swell celebrity spokesman for their products. This displays a level of tone-deafness that is simply jaw-dropping. (No word yet on their forthcoming line of John Lee Malvo signature edition AR furniture...)

Meanwhile, Lon is still walking around a free man, because using "I was trying to murder someone else and hit her by accident!" as your defense works a lot better for federal agents than it does for Ice Dog and Ray-Ray.