Serious Error in Judgment

Kind of busy at the moment, but Uncle Chris just posted.

Only in America

What a horrendous day it is turning out to be.

Mike and I went to El Exquisito and had fried pork lumps, moros, yuca, plantain, Cuban bread, and espresso. Then we went to Gordon Food Supply, purely for the fun. Mike thought he had died and gone to heaven.

We’ll be heading out to see An American Carol shortly.

Here’s a clue what the day has been like:

In addition to a gallon can of Hershey’s syrup, I’m holding two S.W. “Red” Smith products. Mike bought the Big John sausages, and I bought the pickled pig’s feet.

The syrup was just for show.

Now I have to go to a conservative movie, with a loaded pistol in my pocket.

I love this country.

By the way, Mr. Walken is annoyed. Guess we should have picked up a ham.

I’ll Ride Behind it on the Vincent Black Shadow

Mike has just gotten off the plane in Fort Lauderdale, so he’ll be here in an hour, and soon afterward, we will be hitting El Exquisito for a Cuban feast. I’ve been messing with domain issues all morning, so I haven’t eaten much of anything. I am READY.

Mike is a great guy to dine with, because he is one hundred percent enthusiasm. Even at Man Camp, I sometimes hear whiny things like, “Are you really going to eat that?” With Mike, you never have that problem. Mike understands.

I can’t wait to see An American Carol. It has occurred to me that David Zucker and the Friends of Abe might be the beginnings of an entertainment homologue to Fox News.

When Fox arrived on the scene, it had no competition. Conservatives were nearly invisible on news channels. You know how it was. You’d see one liberal after another, and then, to appear fair, they’d wheel Bob Novak out in a cage, and people would poke him with sticks. And Fox took the lead! Because it had the best programming? No, sorry, I wish I could say so. They do a lot of solid work on the other stations. The reason is the cultural difference. Centrists and conservatives can watch Fox without feeling like they’re under attack by lying weasels.

Right now, it’s tough to find movies that don’t reflect the amoral, America-hating coastal culture. It may be that there is a pent-up, unsatisfied desire for entertainment people who aren’t effete socialists can watch. If that’s the case, An American Carol will succeed, even if it’s merely okay. If it’s really good, it could be a monster hit.

I’d kill to work with these people. I wish they had been around twenty years ago. I would have moved to California and slept in the gutter in front of David Zucker’s house to get an interview.

These days I wouldn’t move to California unless the alternative was being boiled alive.

By the way, Christopher Walken hasn’t blogged yet today, but he is awake and full of Bosco and responding to comments. If you haven’t read his blog yet, you are already into him for a thou. And the juice started running in July.

And I Know You Do

Uh oh.

Food, Guns, Hippie Abuse

My buddy Mike is coming down this weekend, so I expect chaos and entropy until Monday. We’ll be hitting El Exquisito for Cuban food for lunch tomorrow. After that, I may force him to watch An American Carol.

We have to support this movie. I know, I didn’t support Fox’s “humor” show. This is different. That show was a disgrace and an abortion. This movie can’t possibly be as bad or as embarrassing. For one thing, the people involved are qualified to do comedy. That’s the main difference. David Zucker has a proven humor track record. Unlike Joel Surnow and his…associates. It’s worth supporting even if it stinks, because there is some possibility that Zucker will eventually hire the right people and make really funny conservative movies. Again, this distinguishes him from Joel Surnow.

It’s probably funny, though. The trailer is a riot.

We’ll be hitting the range on Sunday. Mike now lives near DC, so he is gun-starved. Very sad. I should make him go to Samco with me tomorrow and watch me buy another K31.

Life is great. Over and out.

Moore

Sure looks funny to me!

I Better Buy a Lottery Ticket

Finally, a decent review for my book: CLICK.

Brute Force is Always the Answer

With Chris Byrne’s help, I got the side plate off my revolver.

Everyone on the web says not to pry it, but he gave me the go-ahead, so I gave it a try. I stuck a flat screwdriver in the hammer slot and twisted very gently, and the plate slid off.

I put Wolff springs in the gun. The kit came with three trigger springs, ranging from 13 pounds to 15 pounds. That doesn’t mean the trigger pull will be that heavy. All of the springs were noticeably lighter than the original. I decided to try the 14-pound spring.

The trigger pull seems half as hard as it used to be. Much better. I exercise my hands every day so I’ll shoot well, but the original trigger on the 27-2 was way too stiff to shoot with any kind of confidence.

Let me horrify you by telling you how I got the gun back together. There’s a doodad in there that fits in a groove on the side plate. It seems like the best way to make it line up was to put it in the groove, hold the revolver with the plate side down, and raise the plate and the doodad into the gun.

The plate would not go on all the way. It turns out the Pachmayr grip I bought (on Jim’s advice) makes a very good rubber mallet, but it wasn’t enough to do the job. So I used…a VISE.

Yes, that’s right. I put my nice excellent-condition Smith & Wesson 27-2 revolver in a vise. With rubber jaws. And I put paper towels between the gun and the jaws, in case there was grit on the rubber. I mashed the gun twice, and then I tightened the screws one at a time–carefully–until the plate went on.

I can see how this would be a bad thing to do, if the parts inside didn’t line up. But the gun was functioning fine before I mashed it, and I was sure the parts were aligned. It’s amazing how tightly the side plate fits.

I just wish I hadn’t taken so many other parts of the gun off, trying to find the nonexistent fourth screw that held the plate on. But I learned a whole lot about how the gun is put together.

Seems Like It

There are three screws in the side plate of my Smith & Wesson 27-2. I have removed them. I have removed the grip, too. And I took out the mainspring.

The side plate will not budge. It’s like it’s welded in there.

What’s the deal?

Starts With “W”

Og is off on an adventure, so he asked me to help keep his blog going while he’s away.

I think I am doing a good job.

Luntz has Spoken

I know I should try not to be so obnoxious to swing voters. I am working on it. I need to stop making references to animals like monkeys and flatworms.

These individuals may not be giant brains, but I’m sure that many, many of them are fine people. You don’t have to be brilliant to be a good person. People sometimes criticize Christianity because you don’t have to be very smart to be a Christian. Judaism, for example, is much more cerebral. For a long time, I’ve believed that the accessibility of Christianity is part of its design and one of its great virtues. I think it bolsters the argument that Christianity is God’s creation.

Surely, there are a lot of people out there who don’t understand debates, yet who are morally superior to me. I am going to try to keep that in mind. Really.

I’m not saying it will be easy.

With those prefatory remarks, let me direct you to Frank Luntz’s swing voter focus group.

You know what this proves? It proves Sarah Palin won the debate. Overwhelmingly. The debate wasn’t a test to see who knew the facts better, or whose reasoning skills were better. It was a test to see who could make people want to vote for them. By that standard, there can be no doubt. Sarah Palin won.

I see Sarah Palin as a champion provided by God. Sort of like David. She’s not merely religious; she is part of a very sincere Christian movement. We’re not talking about a Catholic who goes to mass twice a year, or a Baptist who has forgotten the way to the church. Sarah Palin appears to be about as devout as politicians get. I see Obama as a huge threat to Christian values, and I think his judges and executive appointees will be hostile to the church. I think God brought us Sarah Palin as an antidote to Obama. As I have said before, and as others have said, Sarah Palin truly is what Barack Obama only pretends to be. A fresh-faced, sincere Washington outsider who will govern with a conscience and try to bring reform.

The Bible says God chooses our leaders. So when I see a candidate I can approve of, I pray for that candidate to succeed. And I prayed before the debate. When it was over, I thought things had gone badly, and I reminded myself that sometimes we get the leader we deserve, instead of a leader who will be a blessing to us. We are becoming a nation of perverts, self-worshipers, and pagans. We celebrate greed and selfish ambition and empty fame. I can’t say we deserve a good President or Vice President. Many of us would simply turn on a person like that, the way the BDS crowd turned on George Bush. The way the PDS crowd has already turned on Sarah Palin, her husband, and her children.

Oddly, I now find that my prayers were answered. I am sure tens of millions of Americans were praying for Sarah Palin last night, and clearly, we were heard. Never criticize God’s patience to my face. It’s not that you’ll make me angry. I just don’t want to be standing near a person when he says something that ungrateful and offensive. I don’t want people to think we agree. Hundreds of thousands of convenience abortions every year, an official policy of slicing Israel up and selling her to her enemies, a judiciary which seems bent on eradicating all public mention of God, churches which tell us Jesus was just a philosopher, churches which tell us the Jews are no longer God’s people…there are plenty of reasons to abandon us and let us rot. But we have not been scrapped yet.

It’s funny that this happened during the Days of Awe, which include Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and the days between them. At this time of the Jewish year, Jews are supposed to reflect and repent. These things still matter, regardless of whether Christians are required to observe the Jewish holidays. They still have significance. The Jewish holidays were never abolished. We ought to be thinking about the way we act, at this sensitive, pivotal moment. It may not be mandatory, but it certainly can’t hurt.

I wish Governor Palin hadn’t agreed that the “two-state solution” is the answer to Israel’s problems. I don’t like the use of the word “solution” in the context of Jewish issues; see if you can guess why. And it isn’t a solution; it’s a concession to the Arab strategy of whittling Israel down until there is nothing left. But unless she is a very strange or superficial representative of modern, Bible-believing Christians, Sarah Palin is not happy about giving away Jewish land, and she will work hard to minimize the damage. Contrast this with Obama, who favors dividing Jerusalem. One day he said Jerusalem should be undivided. The very next day, he said he didn’t mean it wouldn’t be portioned out and governed by different authorities. I.e., that it wouldn’t be…divided. And remember, Palin belongs to a movement known for its unwavering, fanatical support of Jewish Israel, while Obama spent twenty years in an openly anti-Semitic church, becoming so close to the pastor that he chose the pastor to officiate at his wedding.

I think she answered that way because there was no way to avoid it. And “two-state solution” is pretty vague. It leaves her a lot of wiggle room to exploit. In any case, she’s a better choice than a close associate of a prominent anti-Semite.

Increasingly, conservatives dismiss religious issues as inconsequential and tangential. That’s wrong, and it will hinder us in the long run. In fact, the things that happen in the natural world are just reflections of what goes on in the spiritual world. The natural is like a tree, and the supernatural is like the roots. Bad things that happen there eventually produce bad consequences here.

No candidate is perfect, but McCain and Palin are clearly the least offensive choice, by a wide measure. I hope we are not so far gone that we will not be permitted to put them in the White House.

Funny how Obama is still running against McCain’s Vice Presidential pick. But then Goliath was killed by David, not Saul.

More Confused Than Ever

I am going to have to quit watching debates.

Last time, John McCain chewed Obama up and spit him out. Obama lost his composure. He couldn’t land a glove on McCain, and McCain yanked his chain all night. Obama got so angry he blanched over and over again, actually turning grey on camera. He came off as petulant, ignorant, arrogant, spoiled, and immature. And by a slim margin, people thought he won the debate!

This time, Sarah Palin was clearly unprepared. She’s a busy governor. She had five weeks to learn things Biden and Obama and McCain have been studying for years. She also had to maintain a grueling campaign schedule. I’m sure she crammed hard, but let’s face it. Random governors, even smart ones, given five weeks to prepare to debate seasoned Presidential candidates are always going to have problems. We know from her past debates that she has formidable skills, but she didn’t really have a chance to show them tonight. She repeated herself a lot, she wandered off topic so she could find things she felt safe talking about, and she added a lot of filler. And she was light on facts.

And people are acting like she won. Even liberal journalists are complimenting her.

I’ll take it. No complaints here.

Maybe my problem is that I’m fairly smart, and I can actually tell who won a debate. That could be it. Maybe 85% of Americans only care about who seems more likeable.

I give Biden credit. I thought he was a complete fool before the debate, and by the time it was over with, I liked him so much I felt sorry for him for somehow winding up a Democrat and therefore wrong on every issue. He didn’t impress me as a brain, but he seems more sane than I thought, and maybe less of an ambitious and soulless creep than Obama. Maybe age has mellowed him. Or maybe I’m wrong. On IM, someone is telling me Biden has already been caught in a bunch of horrendous lies.

The journalists even liked it when Sarah winked. I thought that was a huge mistake on her part. It seemed contrived. But the public is not bright, and journalists are notoriously dim, and no one seemed to mind.

Ifill did fine. At least I was right about that. She still should have turned down the job. Her willingness to take it proves she has no understanding of basic ethical principles.

I can’t understand it, but if this is what makes the public happy, who am I to complain? Maybe this is exactly what it takes to please swing voters.

Maybe John McCain was smarter than I realized, picking someone who knew how to do well in beauty pageants.

Debate Overshadowed by Mickey Mouse Ethics

Here is my prediction on the Ifill thing.

First of all, what she’s doing is one hundred percent unethical. Gwen Ifill has written a book about “post-Obama” politics, and it will not be released until the inauguration. Obviously, if he loses, no one will buy the book. It would be somewhat unethical to moderate the debate if she were known to be an Obama supporter, and it would be worse if she had written a favorable book about him. But the situation we have before us is worse. She has written a book which will fail if he loses. There would be a conflict of interest if she merely hoped he would win. The actual conflict is much, much worse, because her own success depends on his.

Second thing: I think she’ll be pretty fair. I thought she was reasonably fair the last time she moderated a debate. If she has tried to be fair in the past, she will probably try tonight.

You have to be a little bit of a lawyer to understand what I’m saying. The conflict of interest is huge, and it’s unquestionably highly unethical for her to moderate the debate. At the same time, my best guess is that she will try hard to overcome her bias.

A lawyer could never get away with what Ifill is doing. Well, okay. I’m pretending bar associations do their jobs. THEORETICALLY, a lawyer could never get away with it.

A McCain shill appeared on Fox just now and pointed out that Sarah Palin’s interviews were cut down very heavily. The interviews took hours, but we didn’t get hours of footage. Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric almost certainly used the least flattering material they had. Even Man O’ War lost when he was boxed in. Tonight, Sarah Palin will be able to run, unless Gwen Ifill has lost her mind. And Governor Palin has a wonderful debating style. And Joe Biden…I’ll say it politely…does not. So maybe we’re in for a good night.

Join me in praying that she does great, and that Ifill is fair, and that Biden does a terrible job. We can’t afford to have a hardcore socialist in the White House when our finances are shaky. Obama’s creaky, ancient, discredited ideas could drive us into a depression, and I think we can also count on him to sell the Jews to the Muslims. He has already expressed a willingness to divide Jerusalem up.

Comforting Illusion

You people have completely corrupted me.

Today I was looking at my new carbon steel machete from China, and I realized I didn’t want it to rust, even though it has a street value of about seven dollars. I wanted to coat it with something. But it had sap on it. Because I punished some shrubs and trees.

Because my readers have pumped my head so full of tool crap, it wasn’t even challenging. I hit it with alcohol and then Windex, and then I blasted it with brake cleaner, and then I wiped it down, spritzed it with Eezox, and put it in my vise to dry.

I’m planning to sharpen it. And wouldn’t you know it? I just happen to have a beautiful 1750-rpm grinder that won’t overheat the metal.

This is the kind of situation I have been aiming at, getting all these tools. Often, in the past, I’ve thought of things I needed to do, and I didn’t even try, because I didn’t have the tools, or I had tools that were only good enough to allow me to succeed with great and prolonged suffering. Or sometimes I paid a fortune to rent stuff. What I want is to be able to waltz into the garage, lay my hand on the right doodad, and utterly crush and dominate every challenge. I am like 25% there, which is saying a lot.

By the way, Windex is the only thing that will take tobacco juice off your hands. I discovered that. People in Eastern Kentucky think I’m a genius. I don’t mean tobacco spit. I mean the sticky stuff that adheres to you when you cut tobacco.

Steel Awaits my Mighty Touch

I need a new railing for the back steps. There are only a couple of steps. The old railing is steel, and whoever made it sunk the upright parts in the concrete. He apparently shoved them into round holes and then filled the holes, but he didn’t fill them enough to make them level with the surrounding concrete, so they hold a little water. Naturally, the steel rusted away.

I’m fairly sure it’s impossible to extract the old steel and do it this way again. I think the best thing is to ream the holes out until I can put some patching stuff in there and sand it off level. Then I can attach the new railing with bolts through flanges, like an intelligent person.

Help me out here. I’m considering buying some sturdy steel pipe, cutting it to size, and welding it together. Then I’ll weld flanges to the bottoms of the upright bits and bolt them to the step with lag shields, or I’ll sink the bolts into epoxy, which would probably be better.

Think this will work? Galvanized fence posts weld up nice once you get the zinc off, but I’m thinking I could find something heavier. It wouldn’t be any harder to work on, because I am Tool Man and have no fear of thick steel.

I refuse to pay for regular steel at Home Depot. Twenty bucks for a frigging six-foot square tube? Insane. I can get better stuff out of people’s trash for nothing.

Charlie Don’t Mulch

All hail ME.

I have poisoned as much of my St. Augustine grass as possible, without risking giant patches of bare dirt. I have re-established the ant poison perimeter. I have obtained a machete, the need for which I should not have to explain. And I am about to fertilize.

I also took a look at rotary hammers while I was at Home Depot. They kind of scared me. I have ordered a rotary hammer. I chose it because it was in the price gap between my cordless hammer drill and a full-throttle demo hammer. There were smaller rotary hammers that were very close in price to my existing tool, and I figured it was stupid to get something so similar to it. For about fifty bucks more, I found a nicer, bigger one which has gotten rave reviews. Then I went to Home Depot and checked out some Bosch models which cost less than the Makita I ordered and which should therefore be smaller. And they were quite huge. In fact, they were not a whole lot smaller than the giant Hitachi demo hammer I rented last year to bust concrete slugs. So now I’m wondering what kind of monster tool I ordered. I mean, I’m hoping to use this thing to drill a bunch of 1/4″ holes this month. That may be like using a shovel to stir a martini.

I don’t care! Tools are almost always a good deal, compared to hiring idiots. I’ll find a use for it.

Now I must go add more non-organic, hopefully radioactive chemicals to the yard.