But Killing Jews Is

Here is a guy who should run for prime minister of Israel:

Man, don’t you wish heads of state had the guts to talk that way? Well, actually, Muslim heads of state do, but everything they say is a lie.

Hat tip to Aaron.

Orange Rules

I am still trying to figure out which sliding compound miter saw is best.

Looks like 12″ is the way to go. They cut bigger stuff, which is meaningful if you’re hoping the miter saw will routinely allow you to avoid setting up your table saw.

A recent review puts Makita on top. Bosch came in second because they don’t cut accurately. Geez. That’s a deal-breaker. For me, a lot of the fun of a miter saw is making super-accurate cuts. Ridgid also did very well. The big problem with the Ridgid saw is that it tends to come open when you carry it. Do I intend to carry it? NO. The Makita saw looks like a great item, but it has a limited range of movement, which is a bummer. And my existing Ridgid tools are great, and they have that insane lifetime warranty. And the Ridgid is cheaper by far than Makita and Bosch. Let’s face it. If I get a saw, it will be a Ridgid.

Here’s some news for Bosch fans. A guy on Ebay has been listing the Bosch 5412L for $489 plus shipping. That’s over a hundred dollars lower than just about anyone. He lists the saws one at a time, and they get snapped up in a hurry, so if you search, you may not see them. The key to catching him is to search for his username, which is “mybumperpointswest.”

I don’t want a Bosch, but if you do, you will thank me for that information.

Here is the hard part of the deal. Would I be able to force myself to sell my precious 10″ Ridgid miter saw, which is in mint condition? I doubt I could get more than $75 for it. And as with all my pretty, shiny tools, I feel like it’s my baby. But clutter is bad.

Can’t I…can’t I just keep it for a while and see what happens? Wouldn’t that be okay? It wouldn’t take up much room. Honest, it wouldn’t.

I don’t think I can stand it.

Right now I have my miter saw set up on the Workmate. But if I wanted to be a real man, I would create a permanent station on the west wall of the garage, and I’d also mount my router there. I keep meaning to try to turn my old computer desk into a router table. If I could do that, maybe I could use half for the router and half for the miter saw. I don’t know if it’s true enough for a router table. It’s a thick MDF (I think) desk with a melamine top.

Here’s another strategy I might try: forget buying a new saw and go have pizza.

It has worked well for me in the past.

Question for the tool people: would I be insane to try to replace a sidewalk about 30″ wide and thirty feet long? I’m pretty sure I would have no problem creating the form. This would be to replace an old broken sidewalk which subsided and apparently snapped a waste pipe. I’m hoping that if I put in a better sidewalk with rebar or mesh it won’t crack or subside. Not sure how to prepare the dirt. Do I need some sort of giant vibrating machine to pack it down? The old sidewalk was apparently laid down with no preparation at all, over soft dirt. And no reinforcement.

I figure I’m looking at a little over 2 yards of concrete, so Sakrete is out of the question. Getting rid of the old sidewalk would not be fun. I’d have to find a way to break it in 2-foot-long chunks and cart them away on a handtruck.

Again, the pizza strategy looks viable.

Brains are in Short Supply

Walt Disney World is roughly fifteen times the size of the proposed drilling area inside ANWR. Think about that. Not one. Not two. Fifteen.

Another way to look at it: the drilling area is about twice the size of Central Park.

Liberals tell us the impact would be larger, because there would be roads and pipelines. Hmm…we already have a huge pipeline in Alaska, and it hasn’t caused any problems. And exactly how much road do you need to service a tiny patch of oil rigs? Not much. Here in Florida, we have something like six lanes of limited-access highway between Miami and Orlando, in each direction. Their impact on the environment is minimal. Would anyone seriously propose that ANWR would require more pavement than the main connections between two major US cities? Well, yes. An ignorant hippie would.

How can this still be controversial? The public supports ANWR drilling by a margin of nearly two to one. No President I can recall has won by a margin like that. Not even Reagan, who crushed Jimmy Carter like a peanut shell.

Far-left nuts also oppose offshore drilling, which has been perfected and has no negative environmental impact whatsoever. What’s that all about? Fish love oil rigs; they love any type of offshore structure. Here in South Florida, the greenies in the government deliberately sink old ships on our reefs, to increase fish populations. They’re fantastic for commercial and recreational fishermen, who contribute to the economy. Offshore rigs don’t have oil spills; they didn’t spill oil when Katrina hit them. We have technology to contain the chemicals released during exploration and drilling. Someone explain the problem to me.

The sad thing is, we’re going to have offshore drilling near our coasts. The Chinese are getting ready to do it. I would guess that the average American is too ignorant to know that we can’t regulate activity over twenty-four miles from shore. If the Chinese want to build an oil rig every fifty feet, from Key West to Maine, there will be nothing we can do to stop them. Shouldn’t oil close to our shores be our oil? We send China our money, but at least we get products in return. Should we give them our oil, too, for nothing? That oil is free for the taking. Whoever drills first will get it. And then, if we’re lucky, they’ll sell it to us.

Frankly, I support Chinese and Indian drilling off our coasts. I hope they drill the bejeezus out of those reserves. God bless them. We’re too stupid to drill; thank God not everyone has that attitude. Why do I say that? Because any increase in the world’s oil supply will depress costs on the worldwide market. It would obviously be better if we drilled the oil, but even if China gets it, it will reduce gas prices here.

Here’s an interesting fact I just learned. The “break even” price for a barrel of oil, which would make extraction from our gigantic, Saudi-dwarfing shale reserves profitable, is probably somewhere around $40 per barrel. And the reason we’re not extracting the oil is that investors are scared that the price will collapse. In other words, they invest while oil costs $140 per barrel, and then the price plunges to a point below the break-even level, and they have to close up shop. Is that likely? Are we ever going to see sub-$40 oil again? I tend to doubt it. Seems to me that if we’re going to try kooky liberal taxes and subsidies, the only intelligent ploy is to guarantee a profit to oil shale investors.

Look at the logic. As it stands now, these people have to invest a lot of capital, and they risk losing all of it. The up side is a potential bonanza, with profits beyond their fondest hopes. Do we have to guarantee an astronomical profit in order to get people to invest? No. An intelligent investor would be thrilled to get a guarantee of 20% per year, which we can easily afford. Wouldn’t you put your money in a project that guaranteed a 20% return? I sure would. I’d sink every loose dime into it and consider myself retired. In fact, I’d be thrilled with 10%.

We have recoverable reserves in the TRILLIONS of barrels. Most of the world’s reserves are in this country. Think about that. We have something like six times the reserves of Saudi Arabia. Remember now, that doesn’t include our conventional reserves, which are also huge.

Guaranteeing shale investment sure beats production-killing taxes and money-sink subsidies on oil produced by existing technology.

Now that I think about it, why do we persist in pretending we’re running out of oil, if we have enormous reserves which we are positive we can eventually extract profitably? There’s a good question for the Presidential debates.

Think how wonderful it would be. Cheap gas to keep us going until we do the responsible thing and build more nuclear reactors. To keep us afloat while we develop new energy sources that actually work. It would allow us to make a smooth transition to something like hydrogen fuel cells.

Still, the hippies have convinced many people that the answer is to slow down, do less, and kill the economy. I wish we had their PR resources and they had our standards of personal hygiene.

The great promise of the Internet is that because of it, truth can no longer be suppressed. Information can’t be controlled the way it used to be, and we should be reaping policy dividends from that change. Yet somehow we still believe in farcical concepts like global warming, ethanol, drilling bans, and the restriction of clean, safe, cheap, abundant nuclear power.

Before the Internet broke the MSM’s stranglehold on the information pipeline, we could be excused for making stupid decisions. But now we deserve whatever happens to us.

Guess I Need a Bullwhip

I have a startling piece of news. Publisher’s Weekly gave my cookbook a review which was predictably obtuse yet more or less fair. This is a far cry from the dishonest review they gave the spam book. My guess? Someone over there has finally gotten some badly-needed fiber.

Rather than quote, I’ll print the entire review and let them threaten to sue me. Which is not too likely. They’ll probably be thrilled that someone has heard of Publisher’s Weekly and is willing to mention it.

Nostalgic for a time when kitchen counters had a container marked “grease” right next to “flour” and “sugar,” author and blogger Graham (Keep Chewing Till It Stops Kicking) offers up a rambling, tongue-in-cheek, plaque-in-artery collection of recipes and essays for those dedicated to the “Art of Lard.” Graham delights in slaughtering sacred cows with his acerbic, at times wildly inappropriate humor, but also gets a terrific amount of glee from simple bacon grease, a key ingredient in ribs, chicken fried steak, hash browns and even popcorn. Predictably dense takes on macaroni and cheese, burgers and fries dominate, though more exotic fare like Turducken and Rotis with Goat Curry are also detailed. Graham’s glib instructions can frustrate; for fatty (but incredibly flavorful) twice-baked fries, “you get your fat, and you put it in a big pot, and you put it in the oven at 250 for like a day. Then you throw out the lumps that remain,” before you add potatoes for frying. Most of his dishes, however, fall within the capabilities of kitchen novices, and he peppers sound advice throughout on everything from the proper use of ham hocks to the care of cast iron skillets. Unfortunately, his wildly uneven tone and pointless digressions kill any sense of momentum, making this a comedic smorgasbord best consumed in moderation.

Let’s see. “Wildly inappropriate humor.” Here is a question for liberals everywhere. And I warn liberals in advance: there is no answer that will not make you look stupid. Liberals always tell us that in the arts, anything goes. A Christ figurine soaking in urine is art. A photo of a man with a bullwhip in his rectum is art. And we are told that any criticism of art based on good taste is simply wrong. Okay. Humor is an art. That is beyond dispute. So why do liberals constantly tell us the things humorists and comedians joke about are “inappropriate”?

The only correct response is “hypocrisy.”

I wonder what they would have thought of the original version of the book, which I bowdlerized heavily for the big-time-publisher edition. It was mean to parody Hunter Thompson so soon after his death. Is that what they’re moaning about? I wanted to take that chapter out, but I made the decision too late. In any event, it’s nothing like as tasteless as Thompson’s own work. I wonder if they would refer to his humor as “wildly inappropriate.” Doubtful, since so much of it was directed at traditional liberal targets like decency, sobriety, chastity, and civility.

As for their complaint that the instructions for rendering fat are too hard to follow, my only response is “say what?” You put fat in a pot. You bake it at 250 degrees. You throw out the solids after the fat melts. What part of this is confusing? Seriously, readers of this blog, tell me where the difficulty is.

The truth is, there are some places in the book where the instructions are not really adequate. But this isn’t one of them. So why mention it in a review?

“Pointless digressions,” they say. Is absolutely everyone in publishing completely dense? The first time I showed this book to an agent, she said it would be great if only I removed the “off-topic banter.” Hello? The off-topic banter is the whole point of the book. If anything, it’s the recipes that are superfluous.

Whenever I remember the “off-topic banter” comment, I mention something it brings to mind, i.e., the Arab theater owner who showed The Sound of Music and, feeling it ran too long, edited out the songs. Without the songs, it’s just a B movie about a flat-chested babysitter who falls in love with her boss.

For a long time now, I have worried that a big percentage of the human race is simply too dumb to understand my writing. And reviews like this only reinforce my anxiety. I almost wish I could be like Dan Brown, who is–sorry to be blunt–fairly dumb. He’s dumb, therefore he has no problems writing for the dumb. It’s easy for him to figure out what the dumb will like, but for a bright person, it’s very hard. It’s like trying to guess which bad smell a dog would most like to roll in.

I don’t even understand the “momentum” comment. Why would momentum be desirable in a book of essays? The whole point of a book of essays is to present different topics one at a time. You may have noticed that I didn’t call it “The Story of Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man.” That’s because it’s not a story. The chapters are unrelated. Does The Joy of Cooking have momentum? I’ll have to check. It’s a really bad cookbook; maybe the momentum makes up for it.

Seriously, if you’re thinking of buying The Joy of Cooking, don’t. I mean, okay, do, but understand that you will have to correct a lot of the recipes. Their brownie recipe actually produces chocolate cake. If you’re a good cook, you can use The Joy of Cooking to get a general idea of how certain dishes work, but unless your experience is a lot different from mine, following their recipes to the letter will give you pretty lousy food.

Where is this reviewer’s brain? I parodied what, maybe ten writers and celebrities? How many humorists can do that? I did Al Franken, Bill O’Reilly, Christopher Walken, Frank McCourt…even William S. Burroughs. They didn’t even notice. You know what? Dave Barry can’t do that. P.J. O’Rourke can’t do it. Almost nobody can do it. Couldn’t they have said, “Wow, he’s a fat Republican with guns, but he sure knows his parody”?

You want to know the difference between the devil and a Republican in the arts? People give the devil his due.

I guess it doesn’t sound like I’m thrilled with the review, but compared to the last one, it’s a gem. They almost admitted I’m funny. Coming from people with no sense of humor whatsoever, that’s a real gift.

Send me One

Here’s an interesting fact for people who, like me, are cleanliness and order freaks.

Shut up.

It turns out that once you have an electric dishwasher, it is not possible to wash dishes by hand any more. It’s true! The dishes just pile up on the counter. How about that?

I guess now I should launch into a story about how I spent half the day under the house, talking about pipes. But I won’t.

Now that I’m not under the house, I am taking a second look at the M1 carbine.

This is an interesting gun. When I was a kid, I had a Crosman M1 replica BB gun, which I loved. The peep sight was way better than the sights on my old Daisy lever action, and the BBs flew a little faster. Believe it or not, a BB gun is pretty accurate as long as you’re shooting short distances. I liked the styling of the gun and the way it felt in my hands. I would assume that a real M1 carbine would feel the same way. Actually, I know it does, because my grandfather had one, made by Universal. But I never shot it.

I’m talking carbines here, not the M1 Garand, which is the big .30-06 job used for combat. I had to look up “carbine” the other day, because I realized I didn’t know what the word meant, and it turns out it just means “small rifle.” I had this vague notion that it meant “semi-automatic rifle,” but I was wrong. The Winchester Model 1892 lever-action rifle (pant, pant) is a carbine.

Carbines are typically used by people who need rifles but don’t need them badly enough to justify big, heavy guns. Cooks, drivers, and officers are examples. Also cavalrymen and paratroopers. There are soldiers who don’t expect to find themselves in heavy fighting, yet who want something better than a pistol when they get in trouble.

I wonder if the horrible accuracy of military-issue 1911 pistols is part of the justification for the M1. When my father was a prison guard in the Army, they told him the best way to use a 1911 was to put it in a prisoner’s ear. Actually, I suppose all pistols are inaccurate for the majority of users. A shooter who can consistently hit you at thirty feet is well above average.

The M1 carbine shoots a little-bitty .30 caliber bullet that has a muzzle velocity of something like 1900 fps. Works okay up close, but not so great farther out, where the speed drops off. It has been compared to a .38 Special. I’ll bet that’s totally wrong. An M1 round has about 1.5 times the energy of a .357 Magnum.

The M1 carbine has been criticized for bad accuracy. That’s too bad. I can’t stand a gun that won’t shoot where I point it. I suppose there must be a way to make one shoot straight. Maybe a new gun (Auto-Ordnance/Kahr Arms) would shoot better than a milsurp. But a milsurp would have more soul. As I understand it, you can buy a carbine that was used by Americans in World War Two and then shipped to Israel for use by the IDF. Is that history, or what?

I’m checking the web…looks like the Kahr M1 shoots very well. Geez…this is a puzzle. The milsurp rifles have a reputation for bad accuracy, but the new ones are…new. And they depreciate.

The carbine is cheaper than the Garand. That’s nice.

Seems to me that this thing would be a nice step up from a .22 plinker, without the pain of .30-06 recoil. But couldn’t you say the same thing about Kahr’s delicious Thompson semi-autos in .45 ACP? The problem with those is that the accuracy is deplorable. A gun rag says the spread is over 3″ at fifty yards. I’ll bet my .45 pistol could approach that, from a machine rest. I wonder why the Tommy gun is so inaccurate.

Here’s something funny. M1 carbines were contracted out to a number of different manufacturers during the war. So you can get a carbine made by IBM or even Rock-Ola, the jukebox company. I think I’d want a Rock-Ola. How can you beat that for historic weirdness?

Some people like the Winchester-made rifles, but I have read that they had terrible QC issues.

It’s very hard, trying to get straight info on these rifles. I’d be afraid that if I bought one for what seemed to be a good price, I’d find out later that I had missed some important characteristic that lowers the value.

Anyway, I need one.

Papers in Play

Looking at Colt Woodsmans got me thinking about cruffling, so I got the process going.

This was a bad idea. I can see where the bulk of my net worth is going to end up.

Learn From my Woes

I’ve been having lots of fun over the last week. I won’t go into the details, because I don’t want to experience the psychic trauma all over again, but I can tell you some conclusions I have garnered from my ordeal.

1. While the Supreme Court reviews the constitutionality of applying the death penalty for crimes not involving killing, they should also consider applying it to anyone who embeds a drain pipe in a concrete floor.

2. Anyone who installs a roof vent for a plumbing system without putting a screen on it to keep roaches out should be forced to spend a week in a small cardboard box with said roaches. After being smeared liberally with peanut butter and honey.

3. We need to pass laws sanctioning the flogging of building contractors on sight, based on general principles.

4. The outhouse is a greatly underrated invention which deserves a second look. In fact, if I ever have a home on a big enough piece of land, I think I’ll install an outhouse purely as a precaution.

5. Having been through so many hurricanes I have lost count, and having been deprived of electricity, running water, phone service, and the Internet, I am pretty sure running water is the hardest thing to do without. When you can’t make full use of your house’s plumbing, it becomes difficult to keep your body clean. You can’t do dishes. You can’t do laundry. And the situation in your home generally deteriorates as the effects of dry living cascade into other areas.

I think number 3 was already obvious.

If you ever have to fool with your house’s plumbing, please listen to my advice. Do not run pipes under anything you can’t remove and replace in ten minutes. I read about one sap who installed a multi-thousand-dollar concrete driveway over a drain pipe that subsequently went bad; imagine the horror. Do not listen to a plumber or contractor who says it’s okay to build over pipe because “it will never have to be dug up.” As Murphy could tell you if he were here, anything that can have a problem requiring it to be dug up, will. It’s better to have a two-mile run of pipe under your lawn than a ten-inch run under a concrete slab.

Avoid cast iron pipe at all costs, even if PVC makes noise, because sooner or later, cast iron will flake off and give you permanent clogs that can only be fixed by replacing your pipes. Use the biggest-diameter drain pipes your plumber is willing to install. And whenever you have work done, take pictures while it’s in progress. It will scare the hell out of your plumber, motivating him to do the job right, and the photos will be useful later when things go wrong. Especially if you have to sue.

Plumbers still seem to know what they’re doing, but I can’t figure out what happened to all the competent building contractors. Did someone kidnap them and bury them in the Everglades? Who built all the nice old houses and buildings we see every day? These days, contractors will look you in the face and say, “It is impossible to do this job right, regardless of what you pay, because all the people who know how to do it right are dead.” That’s not an exaggeration; they actually say that.

I suspect that the single best reason for stopping illegal immigration is to keep our houses from falling down. We used to have a system of apprenticeships and exams. Now we have ignorant peasants who stand in front of Home Depot, waiting to find out what arcane areas of construction they’ll have to master on a given morning. “Enrique, what do you know about masonry?” “Todo, senor.” “Enrique, what do you know about wiring a house?” “Todo, todo.” “Enrique, what do you know about cooling gas molecules with a current-controlled CO2 laser?” “No proleng. I feex.” This is why the paint on your walls went on without primer and your shower was plumbed with half-inch electrical conduit.

That’s not completely true. American workers do horrible work, too. Inventors keep changing building materials and practices, making things simpler and easier, so less skill is required. But the American construction worker is too fast for them. He manages to lose skills so quickly, it’s impossible to for inventors to keep up. In the past, the main benefit of doing your own construction was the lower price. The quality was likely to suffer. These days, contractors are so inept, you are likely to do much better work even if you start with no skills whatsoever.

I hope we never have to say that about doctors.

More

Somebody had a tougher weekend than I did.

“Tough”

Condi Rice is upset because Israel is building new housing in the eastern section of Jerusalem, THE ANCIENT CAPITAL OF THE JEWISH NATION.

What nerve they have. After all, isn’t the land sacred to Muslims, too? I mean, a Koran verse refers to an imaginary mosque–a mosque in a dream–which kind of, sort of, in some feeble way, could be said to resemble the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, which DID NOT EXIST UNTIL LONG AFTER MOHAMMED DIED.

Never mind David and Solomon and the other JEWISH kings of Israel and Judah who ruled in Jerusalem for centuries.

The Dome of the Rock was established on the site of a Christian church, which itself was built on the Temple Mount. The Muslims put a mosque there for the purpose of humiliating Jews and Christians, much as they sealed Jerusalem’s Golden Gate and placed a cemetery just outside it. They sealed the gate to prevent the Messiah from fulfilling prophecy by entering through it, and the cemetery was intended to prevent the Messiah and Elijah (who must precede Him) from approaching the gate. The theory is that the Messiah and Elijah are both cohens and can’t legally enter a cemetery. Oh, yeah. That will work.

The Road Map to Peace is a Road Map to Appeasement. It’s a remarkable invention: a map which helps people get more lost. It’s worthless and offensive. Condi is smart, and I’m sure she has good intentions, but even the Secretary of State has to defer to God.

I can’t wait for the day when the Jew-hating con artists are back on their own soil, and their poisonous arguments are no longer taken seriously by anyone. And I truly look forward to seeing that mosque demolished and scraped off the Temple Mount.

More

I respectfully request that people quit putting the term “raghead” in comments.

Here’s Another One for History’s Dung Heap

Here is an appropriate Sabbath topic: Iran’s delightful president has repeatedly stated his intention to destroy Israel, and the MSM does a very poor job of covering it. Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has put up a page of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s threats, and if you haven’t read them, I suggest you take a look.

The Book of Enoch says people from Iran will be annihilated one day, as they approach Jerusalem. It’s not clear how much, if any, of this work should be considered scripture, but you don’t have to be a prophet to predict that Israel and Iran are going to have a confrontation.

And Then I’ll Shut Up

Why is it that EVERY Butterfinger bar I buy on impulse at Home Depot is broken in half when I unwrap it?

Also, why do I keep unwrapping them quickly, assuming nothing is wrong, only to have the upper half of the bar fall on the floor of my car?

Happy Father’s Day.

Compulsive

I finally buckled down and rooted around the web and found out exactly what kind of Colt Woodsman pistol my grandfather had. It was a second series gun with bakelite grips and a 6″ barrel. And I found a few promising old guns for sale. Looks like they range from $500 to $900 for pretty much the same item. I figure I should be able to find a good one for $600 to $700. I still wish I knew which of my cousins ran off with my grandfather’s gun. I should go ahead and send a mass email and ask. Otherwise, someone will probably trade it away. I’m the only grandson who ever shot it with him, so I’m sure it has no meaning to anyone but me.

He had a couple of big S&W .357 revolvers. I believe they had 4″ barrels. I let those go instead of buying them from the estate. They had no sentimental value to me. Now I’m kicking myself. They may have been 27-2s.

Problem with the Woodsmans I found: they all have holster wear, to one extent or other. My question: is it possible to repair holster wear on an old blued gun without ruining it?

I’ve put bluing on my Romak III, and it looks swell, but considering the finish it came with, that’s about as daring as whitewashing an outhouse.

Seems like Gunbroker has horrible prices on anything that’s popular, but obscurer weapons are not as bad.

Am I crazy to want to try a Colt King Cobra? Anaconda guts in .357…how can that be bad?

My dad used to have a Trooper Mk. III in nickel with a 4″ barrel. Marvelous gun to hold in your hand. But this is Miami, so naturally it was stolen.

Guns Answer All Questions

I think I finally figured out what to get my father for Father’s Day. This issue has driven me insane for weeks, but I have arrived at a pretty good answer. I’m going to get him a carry permit! How can you beat that? He keeps saying he wants one, but he hasn’t done anything about it. Miami has a well-known range that supposedly has quality instruction, so I plan to sign him up.

For a while I thought it would be fun to get him an M1 rifle. But a thousand bucks is a little steep for Father’s Day. More problematic: it’s always a bad idea to buy someone a present you would like to have for yourself. To provide an exaggerated example, when your aunt Susie lives in an iron lung and you’re a triathlete, you don’t buy her a racing bicycle. It looks bad.

I used to get him good cigars and expensive brandy, but I have begun to think those are questionable gifts for a Christian to give. A carry permit poses no ethical problem. After all, Jesus told the disciples to buy swords, and His followers carried them in His presence.

Actually, it’s kind of strange, how many ostensibly sound Christians love to shoot. Makes me wonder if there is some kind of divine purpose to it. And Christianity is big among the armed forces, too. The Bible predicts a lot of armed conflict in the future, and I have never seen any indication that when these conflicts occur, Christians or Jews are expected to disarm and allow themselves to be massacred. I don’t think the admonition to turn the other cheek means you have to allow your family or your country to be subjected to slaughter.

I need to figure out my moral position on cigars. There is no doubt whatsoever that using cigarettes and smokeless tobacco is immoral. Tobacco delivered by those means is an addictive drug, and it’s also abusive to the body. An occasional cigar is almost certainly harmless, judging by statistics. But is it okay to promote tobacco use in one form, when the other forms cause so much misery? Cigarette smokers are deeply affected by example and the desire to fit in; that’s why they become smokers in the first place. No one does it for the wonderful taste of cigarettes. Maybe using tobacco in front of cigarette smokers and potential cigarette smokers is wrong.

Maybe the answer is to smoke what I have and quit. I can’t remember my last cigar, anyway. The nicotine was ruining my sleep, so I had to stop.

As for brandy, I think the morality of giving it as a gift depends on the nature of the person to whom you give it. Over the last couple of years, I have cut way back on drinking. I can make a fifth of whiskey last months. I have been trying to make myself have one drink every day, and I usually forget. But for other people, booze is a challenge.

I think a permit is the way to go. Now I’m in the clear until his birthday.

Indoor Shooting the Next Step?

Today’s shooting did not go well. However I was at a gun range, in the greatest country in the world, in a red state, blasting away with two beautiful pistols. So it was still a good day.

I started out with the .45 at 50 feet. I felt good about my shooting. Last week’s big lesson was to watch the trigger pull. This week I tried to make my sight picture extremely consistent. Things went well, although the wind was rocking my target a bit. I had three duds that would not chamber. I am still the world’s worst reloader. From now on, when I reload for my semi-automatics, I plan to keep the gun barrels by the press and chamber every round before approving it. That should help me avoid chambering problems at the range.

Here are 47 shots at 50 feet.

I got out the .38 Super, and things went a bit better. I continue to suspect that this gun is more accurate than the Smith & Wesson. However, I had to quit after 20 shots because I had another damn undercharge. I have no idea how this happened. When I get one of these, the bullet goes about a quarter of an inch up the barrel and sits there, and the only way to get it out is with a dowel. So the .38 went back in the box. This was probably a round I loaded before I got the press mounted correctly.

There was a guy there with a 9mm, shooting nearly as well as I did. I was glad to see him. When everyone else shoots badly, it makes you feel great about what you’re doing, so you don’t try as hard.

I went back to the .45, and damned if the wind didn’t kick up and turn my target sideways. And the target was rocking back and forth in a four-inch arc, which drove me nearly crazy. After half a box, I had to quit and wait for the line to be called safe so I could fix the target. Between the motion and the effect it had on my concentration, I ended up with pretty big group.

The target holders at seven yards are better than the ones at 50 feet, so I moved the target closer for my remaining 25 rounds. I noticed something odd. Shooting at 50 feet made seven yards easier.

A cop showed up and took the spot next to me. He was shooting a 9mm Glock 17L, which is the 6″ target version of the 17. His shots covered an area about a foot wide at 50 feet, which is not great, but it’s much better than most people at the range can do. And he was doing a weird exercise which must be a cop thing, moving the barrel back and forth over a four-inch distance and then firing.

The target gun was clearly a waste of time. I have the 3″ Glock 26, and it shoots just fine at 50 feet.

Jim from SOTW gave me some advice on revolvers this week, and it got me thinking about a blue 5″ Smith & Wesson 27-2. This is a nice revolver about 30 years old. Supposedly better than the current production. It’s like a Dirty Harry gun, except for the caliber and length. That got me thinking about Dirty Harry, and that got me to thinking about the way Clint Eastwood’s .44 Magnum sounded in those movies. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they really sounded like that?

At least Eastwood’s movies were realistic when it came to accuracy. I’m still irritated with Mel Gibson over “have a nice day,” which is physically impossible with anything other than a rifle.

I’m not sure whether I’m still improving or not. When the wind is blowing so hard your target turns completely sideways, you probably aren’t getting optimal results that reflect your ability. But I enjoyed myself, and even if I’m not getting better, I’m definitely not getting worse.

And More Reloading Antics

South Florida is finally having what may be a decent gun show. I went to a show a while back, and it wasn’t that great. But the Suncoast gun show is coming to Fort Lauderdale this weekend, and I may check it out. If what I read is correct, it’s supposed to be bigger.

The show I went to last month was small, and I didn’t see any great bargains. I would love to pick up some .357 and .38 Super brass and maybe check out some old .357 pistols or 1911s.

While I was researching the show, I found an article from 2003. The Suncoast show was in the Tampa area, and dealers were talking about things like MREs and hazmat gear. We were really worried back then. Not as badly as they were right after 911, but much more than they are today. People were going to gun dealers to buy things like gas masks. I had forgotten, and I’m sure you have, too. No wonder we’ve all turned our backs on George Bush and pretended we never endorsed the decision to go to war. We can’t remember what it was like to be afraid of terrorism on our own soil, effected with WMDs produced by the Hussein regime. We were very nervous back then.

That story underscores the importance of gun dealers. Sooner or later, there will probably be large-scale terrorism in the US. Who will you turn to when you want to prepare? Uncle Sam? The same outfit that couldn’t even equip our soldiers with body armor? If the government couldn’t put armor on thousands of soldiers to keep their arms and legs from being blown off, it won’t be able to get millions of people the things they need to protect themselves from attack and infrastructure disruption. Most of us won’t get what we need. But the ones who do will get it from gun dealers.

And of course we’re trying to drive them out of business.

I learned something new about reloading today. If you lower your belling die so it opens the cases more, you have to lower the seating/crimping die. Otherwise you get cases that are too big around up by the bullet, and they won’t chamber. I had to run about 40 rounds through the press a second time. Fortunately I didn’t have to take them apart.

The new bench top is more rigid than the old one, so I’m not having as much trouble with the mount flexing. Guess I’ll head for the range and see how my handiwork pays off.

Consider the Alternatives

Ann Coulter is unfashionably complimenting George Bush on the job he has done. Although I think she’s bad for the GOP, and I will never be able to support her until she apologizes for calling Muslims “camel jockeys” and “tent merchants,” she is usually right on the money. Apart from the slurs. Even today she can’t resist pointing out–clearly in a pejorative way–that Detroit is full of Arabs. If she were criticizing their support for our enemies, I’d be right behind her. But that’s not what she did. She just commented on their presence and left readers to connect the dots.

The current trend is to bash old George and pretend you never supported the war. Even O’Reilly now says the war was a mistake. Which says a lot about O’Reilly but nothing about the war. I still think George Bush has been an exceptionally competent President, and I support our troops (which means I support their mission). I’m not happy with every aspect of the Bush Presidency, but think where we would be if we had elected Al Gore.

Actually, things might not be so bad. We would have had a series of economic, military, and diplomatic catastrophes between 2001 and 2004, and then we would have elected another Republican. And we would still control Congress. Assuming we were not ruled by a caliphate.

President Bush gave the country a much-needed and highly effective shot in the arm by slashing taxes. He did a great deal to end the Clinton recession (yes, it began under Clinton). He restored the Clinton-hamstrung military and gave our troops back their dignity. He scared the living hell out of our enemies, to the point where one of the worst, Muammar Khaddafi, became a peace activist. He prevented terrorism on US soil, in spite of determined liberal efforts to remove obstacles and provide incentives. And we rewarded him by voting America-hating, venal, immature, unpatriotic Sixties holdouts into Congress, and by treating him like a lump of plutonium.

I wish he would work to establish a bigger, more powerful Israel, instead of pushing for retreat. He is criticized for criticizing appeasers, but the truth is, he has done some damaging appeasing of his own. I wish he had never hired Colin Powell. I wish he had had the common sense to abandon his ill-fated and naive “reaching across the aisle” approach, which has never been rewarded with anything but betrayal. I wish he had fired half of the CIA and the State Department, with their treacherous, left-leaning ways. And he should have gotten rid of incompetent and disloyal Clinton holdovers, and he should never have tried to help Mrs. McClellan by giving her hopeless, inept, spineless, lying, whining weasel of a son a job for which he was not qualified. But George Bush kept the ship afloat in troubled times, and that is something neither Gore nor Kerry could have done.

George Bush even tried to fix our energy problems. Bill Clinton had no energy policy. When Clinton’s term ended, George Bush wanted to expand domestic drilling. His administration met with the correct people, oil men, to get the ball rolling. And the greenies and hippies handed him his head for it. If he had gotten his way, we would have a million more barrels coming out of the ground every day. That’s a big deal. OPEC only produces about ten times that much. And did you know the affected area is only about twice the size of Cental Park? No, not if you get your news from the liberal media. For a million barrels a day, we would trade an area the size of a nice farm. That’s a good trade, even if every caribou on the parcel has to be waterboarded. And ANWR is just part of the picture. Think of the offshore sites we’re not allowed to drill.

The hippies caused our energy problems. They filled their diapers over safe, cheap, clean, abundant nuclear power, and amazingly, we treated them as though they were worthy of attention, and we stunted an industry that could have put an end to oil-fired power plants. They fought to keep refineries from being built. They crippled the coal industry. And somehow, we have decided that Big Oil and SUVs are what put us where we are. Meanwhile, France–the model nation for hippies everywhere–is something like 80% nuclear. Go figure.

You can get a nuclear plant going in under five years, if you actually want to do it. If we had started building new ones in 2000, we could have had them running by now. Think how much better life would be.

The thing no one seems to understand is that the hippies don’t want us to have energy. They think the world is a museum exhibit, and the human race is like a kid in the museum, spray-painting his name on the relics. They want us to use as little energy as possible, so we affect the planet as little as possible. Sane people want industry. They want big, safe cars. They want construction. They want retail sales to boom. Because those things generate wealth, which–the hippies will never understand–is the thing that provides us with shelter, medicine, food, education, and the hippie’s holy grail, peace. Only a fool wants the human race to do less. The answer is to do more. And to do more, you need more energy.

The earth is not sacred. It’s not an organism. It’s a ball of dirt, put here for our benefit. It has no mind. It has no soul. It has no rights. We are more important than the earth. We are more important than caribou and polar bears and snail darters. People with common sense know this without being told. Hippies will never know it, because their religion denies it. Yet we allow them to make policy. So we are being driven toward a condition in which we sit around our dilapidated homes, trying in vain to grow food without chemicals, with a shriveled economy and a vestigial national defense. The hippies won’t be happy until we live like Africans. Some realize this and think it’s a fine idea. Some are so dumb they don’t realize this is the direction in which they are pushing us.

I said France was the model nation for hippies, but that’s not true. The real model nation would be something more like rural Sudan, where people face starvation, ignorance, poverty, and anarchy. This is the left’s utopian destination, whether they realize it or not. Sudan. Or North Vietnam. Or North Korea, where educated, industrious, disciplined, law-abiding people fall down in the street, die of malnourishment, and rot in public. At best, the former USSR.

Oil men and carmakers and manufacturers blessed us with the world’s strongest economy and most powerful military. They gave us the highest standard of living in the world. They made it possible for the world to defeat Hitler and Communism. Name something of equal value greenies have done for us.

To get back to George Bush, I’m glad I didn’t abandon him the way everyone else has. He has his weak points, but like Winston Churchill in World War Two, he was the right man at the right time. Ann Coulter is right to back him up.