Pay no Attention to the Posing Brats

Here’s a great D-Day read. You would expect nothing less from Mrs. K.

Dad’s Day Looms

I’m flipping out. Father’s Day is next week, and I am still lost.

I considered trying to find an M1 for my dad. He keeps telling me how much he liked those rifles. But they are not all that cheap. I love my dad, but a grand for Father’s Day? I dunno. And it would also look a little bit like buying your grandmother a Harley. “Don’t worry; I’ll make sure it gets ridden once in a while.”

I can’t believe these rifles are that expensive. How many did they make? About a billion, right?

I’m afraid I’ll end up getting him cigars again.

I got him a weird bike last year. It’s a Specialized Crossroads Sport, which has a very odd frame. The seatpost hole is very low. I’d like to get him a rack and panniers, but I have no idea whether a normal rack will fit this bike.

Remember Those who Suffered

Reader Pam reminded me via email that today is D-Day. It’s odd that I wasn’t thinking about it already, because Marv, Maynard and I watched a couple of documentaries about it last night, and they made a deep impression on me.

It’s peculiar; the farther you are from God, the more cable and the Internet seem to be tools of the enemy. The closer you get, the more they become assets that help you grow. I tend to think of the web as a devastating, unstoppable, pervasive tidal wave of porn, sexual perversion, cruelty, youth worship, and arrogance. But it’s also making the word of God available to more people than were ever reached by other means. Similarly, cable TV is full of good things, if you can figure out how to work a DVR.

What I’m leading up to here is the Military Channel. I believe the greatest thing a person can do is to give his life for God, but after that comes giving your life–or the integrity of your body–for your others. And that’s what soldiers do as a condition of their employment. They are the finest, most worthy people among us, which is why it makes my blood boil when I see pampered, ignorant, rebellious, immature people insult them. But like most people, I don’t do much of anything for the military, and I don’t think about their sacrifices nearly as often as I should. And the Military Channel is a great tool for refreshing your gratitude and restoring your perspective.

I’ve reached the point where I now longer watch any network TV. I can’t name a sitcom currently in production. I have never seen more than one or two minutes of American Idol. Thank God, literally, I have managed to find better things to allow to enter my mind. It’s not that I have discipline; that ought to be obvious to anyone who reads this blog. It just happened. If you’re still watching the video equivalent of Skittles and Froot Loops, you might consider making an effort to root through your schedule for improving things to record.

If what I have learned about D-Day is correct, many of the troops who made the initial landings suffered for days even before the attack. They were seasick and miserable. Surely they lost sleep. And their accommodations were pretty bad to begin with. After days of nausea and fatigue, they were ordered onto the beaches, where they were chewed to pieces.

Oddly, yesterday the pre-attack misery made a bigger impression on me than the slaughter. Maybe that’s because I’ve heard about the landing itself all my life, or because it’s easier for me to understand the things that happened outside of battle. Thinking about these boys confined on rocking ships, with only machine gun fire and mines to look forward to upon release, I realized how spoiled we are. Or at least how spoiled I am. If I miss an hour of sleep, I feel cheated. If I spend half a day without air conditioning, it’s a catastrophe. I have to wonder how a person like me would hold up in the belly of a ship waiting to sail for Normandy. To some people, the scary thing about war is the possibility of physical harm. To me, the scariest thing is the possibility that I would let everyone else down. I am impressed beyond words by the courage and toughness of men who slogged out of landing craft and planes and gliders, into the face of Germany’s deadliest fortifications.

Excessive violence in the media is generally a bad thing. But I believe we should be more honest in our depictions and coverage of war. Because until we see what it’s really like, we don’t appreciate the sacrifice. It’s odd; when you see footage of Iwo Jima and the Normandy invasion, you see bodies, but you don’t see the horrors veterans talk about. You never see a severed head or a set of intestines stretched out on the ground, far from a body. Maybe censors withheld the most frightening footage in order to avoid harming public morale. Our soldiers saw things like that, and they still had to plod forward and fight. And we paid them very little, and when they came home, we forgot they existed, and we didn’t even set up decent hospitals for them.

They went through that so people like me could live in a country where life is so good, it seems to make sense to complain about things like four-dollar gasoline.

The sad thing is, instead of remaining grateful and humble, we have become degenerate and proud. We don’t respect the people who bought us our freedom. We don’t respect the moral principles laid down by the God who established this country and gave us prosperity. If we keep sliding downward, we are eventually going to pay. Four-dollar gas, expensive food, a weak dollar, and foreign wars are almost certainly just the warning shots.

Here is something I came across yesterday, from The Complete Jewish Bible:

Be careful not to forget Adonai your God by not obeying his mitzvot, rulings and regulations that I am giving you today. Otherwise, after you have eaten and are satisfied, built fine houses and lived in them, and increased your herds, flocks, silver, gold, and everything else you own, you will become proud-hearted. Forgetting Adonai your God–who brought you out of the land of Egypt, where you lived as slaves; who led you through the vast and fearsome desert, with its poisonous snakes, scorpions and waterless, thirsty ground; who brought water out of flint rock for you; who fed you in the desert with man, unknown to your ancestors; all the while humbling and testing you in order to do you good in the end–you will think to yourself, ‘My own power and the strength of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.’ No, you are to remember Adonai your God, because it is he who is giving you the power to get wealth, in order to confirm his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as is happening even today. If you forget Adonai your God, follow other gods and serve and worship them, I am warning you in advance today that you will certainly perish. You will perish just like the nations that Adonai is causing to perish ahead of you, because you will not have heeded the voice of Adonai your God.

That was directed to Israel (Deuteronomy 8:11-20), but the same principles apply to everyone. One of the worst things that can happen to you is to succeed in life without realizing you owe it to God.

In the past, when I wondered why other nations were so poor and weak compared to America, I used to put too much emphasis on our work ethic and our dedication to education. And our capitalist system. The truth is, there are countries where people work and study harder than we do, and where capitalism exists (or used to exist), yet which have historically fared very badly. The real difference between us and them is that we have been blessed. And no matter how smart we are or how hard we work, that blessing can be revoked. Right now, we are probably seeing the beginning of that revocation, or at least the threat of it. It happened to England, and it can happen to us. If we continue insulting the power that put us at the forefront of the world’s nations, we are going to sink back into the pack and lose the things that make us special. Once that happens, you might as well move to Mexico or India.

The same arrogance and selfishness that make us forget God make us forget the sacrifices of others who have established us. Like our parents. And like the men who fought for us on D-Day and in a thousand other battles. That is what I have gleaned from thinking about this. I am trying to do better, and I hope that if you have been as remiss as I have, you will try, too.

At Least He Won’t Bomb Our Allies

Some truly non-progressive individuals have put up a borderline blasphemous website slandering the secular Messiah, B. Hussein Obama. I wonder whether Pope Prius I has seen this on his giant carbon-offset plasma TV at Vatican West, over in Tennessee. You’ve seen the place. It’s sort of like the other Vatican, only it has a higher electric bill.

Hillary turned us all into newts. But thanks to Obama, we will all get better. Then we won’t have to go on the cart, and we think we’ll go for a walk.

In other news, Brak has his own show. When did that happen?

I guess switching to tea in the morning has rendered me even less coherent than before.

Cheaper, Faster, Better-Smelling

As reported some time ago, I ordered two cleaning products so I could compare them to the magnificent but expensive Hornady One Shot lube and cleaner. They arrived this week, and I just tried them. The products? Break-Free Powder Blast and Sharp Shoot R Flush Out.

Powder Blast appears to be a petroleum product similar to brake cleaner or Gun Scrubber. I don’t think it has any lubricant in it, although I am too lazy to go look. Flush Out is citrus-based. It is supposed to be a degreaser, but it claims to leave a lubricant film behind. I usually think of degreasers as products that leave absolutely nothing behind, but I guess it’s possible to degrease while leaving oil behind. I didn’t see anything on the Flush Out label about removing powder residue, but I thought I’d give it a try anyway.

The verdict? I am not positive, but I think Powder Blast worked a little better. They both worked very well. Definitely a better choice than spending three times as much on Hornady. On the whole, I prefer Flush Out, because it’s made from citrus. The other stuff is a little scary, and you can’t clean a gun without getting it all over your hands. Some of it hit a plastic vegetable container in the garbage, and the container melted. I used the sprays and the Boresnake, and then I followed with Liquid Wrench spray dry lube, and I was done. Except for cleaning off the excess with alcohol.

I think from now on, it’s Flush Out and Liquid Wrench for me.

Sins Become Apparent With Distance

It looks like shooting at 50 feet instead of 7 yards is a good idea. I learned from it. I learned that I have no idea how to pull a trigger.

I shot 150 rounds. Fifty from the .45, fifty from the .38 Super, and another fifty from the .45. Unfortunately I forgot my cell phone, so I couldn’t take photos. So I took the last target home and took a photo.

This is a second-quality Caldwell target I got from Midway for about half price. I could not find any defects. Sweet buy.

I’m very happy with that. There are flyers, but the core seems tighter than what I’ve been doing. I experimented with different trigger pulls today, and it seems like it helped.

I was trying to get away from a ridiculously gradual pull which caused the gun to go off completely unexpectedly. But the results were spotty. You can see some wild .38 shots off the orange in this photo, which probably demonstrate my point. Going back the gradual pull sucked things into a smaller area. I think. If I’m right, I should be able to repeat this performance next week without nearly as many flyers.

I believe it may be time to spend a little cash and get some instruction. I may check out that school in Frostproof.

Last week I had problems with .38 Super rounds failing to chamber, so this week I took the remaining ammunition out, cycled every round to see if it chambered, and got rid of the duds. Then I made new cartridges to replace them. I still had a few failures toward the end of the shoot. I suspect this is caused by one of two things. Either heat makes the chamber tighter, or debris does.

This taught me something new about reloading. The sizing die has to come down until it touches the shell plate, so as much of the case as possible is resized. I believe my problem was caused by cases that had bulgy lower ends because the sizing die didn’t go down all the way.

I had adjusted the sizing die to leave maybe 3/16 of an inch alone, because I had had a bad experience with the seating die mashing the case-eject wire. The seating die had been too low, so I somehow got the idea that the casing die AND the sizing die had to be kept up off the plate. And that was wrong.

The .38 Super scared me to death today. The first five rounds went through three holes. That thing may be super accurate. If I can learn how to pull a trigger, maybe I’ll find out.

My dad got me a Caldwell HAMMR machine rest for my birthday. If the range people will allow it, I want to test my 1911s with it. I suspect that the .38 is more accurate than the .45. Proof would give the Colt worshipers a big thrill.

I am so tempted to buy that used Special Combat carry model. If I get into combat shooting, that would be a super cheap gun to fix up. Although I guess .45 is not the optimal caliber.

That’s today’s big news.

When They Won’t Buy What I Want

This is horrible. Mike still hasn’t chosen a 1911 to buy, and today he is asking me about GLOCKS.

Oh, man. Not that. Anything but that.

I have Glocks. Wonderful guns for self-defense. Accurate. Easy to shoot. Durable. Reliable. Light. They strip in five seconds. But man are they boring. And as heirlooms they’re about as exciting as shoehorns. “Here, Butch, this is your dad’s boxy, dull-finished plastic gun, which he bought because he watched too many Vanilla Ice videos. I hid this uncomfortable hunk of metal…”

This can’t be happening. I was counting on him getting a sweet new 1911 for me to shoot.

I found a sweet used Colt Special Combat carry model for the price of a new Dan Wesson. Mike thinks it’s ugly. I’m tempted to buy it myself, even though it has fixed sights. I’m not a Colt lover, but I hear nothing but good things about the Special Combat models. And if I take care of it, it should hold its value or appreciate. Does anybody out there know how big a deal it is to put adjustable sights on an old Colt with fixed sights? I might want to do that, if I buy it. If it had Novak sights, I could screw adjustable Novaks right into the same mount. But it has the old-style rear sight, which is just a bar.

I guess messing with it would hurt the collectible value.

Mike is all hot for a Glock 17L, which is the 6″-barrel competition version of the 9mm. Doesn’t do much for me, but I shoot extremely well with the 3″ Glock 26, so I would guess that the 17L is like a laser.

I think his son put him up to this.

Has this ever happened to you? You help a friend shop for a gun, you find something he should buy, and then you end up buying it yourself because he won’t listen to you?

He asked if the Glock was an okay gun to learn on. I think I gave him a complex the other day, shooting better than he did. He has been shooting twice since the 1990s, and he shot better than nearly everyone at the range, and he feels like a failure. Arrrgh.

I was wondering last night; does anyone collect Glocks? Is there any point? Wouldn’t it be like collecting cinderblocks or ping pong balls? Aren’t they all nearly the same? “Here’s my 1992 Glock 17, in black plastic with a dull finish. And here’s my 2004 Glock 22. In black plastic with a dull finish. No, wait. That’s the 17.” Ahh. What works of art.

Range time later.

These are Today’s Themes

I gritted my teeth and watched Hillary Clinton for a while last night, hoping–I know this is crazy–that she might do the humble, honest thing and make a short concession speech.

I know. I know. I am an incurable idealist.

After maybe fifteen minutes of what was clearly a Bizarro victory speech, I had to change the channel. While observing politics, I have seen cheerful losers. I have seen gracious losers. Until last night, I had never seen a loser who was cheerful and gracious because she couldn’t tell the difference between defeat and victory. It is as though Al Gore laid his hands on her and transferred his special spirit of craziness.

Only a liberal could be so unacquainted with the concept of rules that she would persist, at this point, in thinking she was the nominee. You have to give liberals credit. We give up when we know we’re wrong. Liberals get back up and yell “‘Tis but a scratch!” Imagine playing Monopoly with a person like that. Every game would end only after a costly lawsuit, with David Boies arguing that everyone knows you get money when you land on Free Parking.

I guess it’s good for Republicans. John McCain can sit around and wait while Hillsy and Snobama eat each other alive. I haven’t contributed a dime to the campaign, simply because I haven’t seen any need to. If McCain gets the money now, he’ll blow it on ads that will run way too early. He needs to wait until the Democrats have a candidate the public takes relatively seriously.

I am getting comments about the Colt Python revolver. One commenter seems to think I own one. I don’t. I was Windows-shopping out of boredom, and that’s how I came across the Python. I knew it existed, but I hadn’t really read much about it until yesterday.

I was complaining because my Googling brought a disturbing revelation: Pythons are too weak to stand up to real .357 ammunition. One reader says Ruger is the answer. I know I’ll catch it from Ruger owners, but some of those guns are a bit frumpy. Even the grips are awful. In fact, I think that’s the main problem. Why didn’t Ruger pay an industrial designer five hundred bucks to pretty up the plans before they went into production?

I guess they look pretty good once you get new grips, and quality makes up for a certain amount of ugliness. Hey, I own Glocks.

A GP100 is a tempting item. Available for under $500. Very tough. Accurate. I think I paid around $650 for my 6″ Smith. You can get an old Security Six for like $300. Some people claim the Security Six is better than the GP100. Don’t ask me. No idea. Here’s a GP100.

That one comes with Hogue grips. Same ones I have on the Smith, I think. I don’t like them–I think they feel wobbly–but they look better than Ruger’s own grips.

Here is what would be fun. Buy a 6″ GP100 and have it ported and shortened to 5″. And I don’t see anything on Ruger’s site about an idiotic internal lock on the gun (like the one Smith shoves down your throat). I found a site where some guy shows you how to do your own Ruger trigger job. That might be fun.

Is it okay to have a blued gun ported, or will the gases eat the barrel’s finish? I know Mag-na-port will do it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea.

Incidentally, it looks like Cabela’s is a much better place to look for used guns than Gunbroker.

I don’t know why I’m writing about this trivial stuff, since today is WINN-DIXIE EMAIL AD DAY. Let’s see what I can buy with my Customer Reward card.

Oh, man! They’re having a “MEGA-MEAT SALE!”

Pork chops (assorted), buy one, get one. Same deal for boneless chicken breast.

Drumsticks, 99 cents per pound. Wish I knew how to get the “cents” character out of this keyboard.

Center-cut pork chops, buy one, get one.

Wings, $1.79.

Hickory Sweet bacon, buy one, get one. This is good bacon.

Lamb chops, buy one, get one. Oh, yes. It may be time for lamb stew.

They also have boneless top sirloin for cheap. If that’s the same thing as palomilla steak, I am in business.

Sure Looks Like It

Og says the Colt Python will not suit his manly shooting needs. I put a photo of the Python up, before I learned of its shortcomings.

I was reading about the Python today, and it seemed like many gun enthusiasts were so excited about it, their zeal was pretty much sexual. It was worse than Chris Matthews and Barack Obama. They practically squealed. One noted guru called it “the Mercedes-Benz of revolvers.”

Funny thing, saying that about a gun which, I later learned, isn’t strong enough to put up with prolonged shooting of real-world loads. The Python has a wimpy frame. Seems like a major design flaw to me. Would you want to worry about the size of your bullets every time you shot your expensive pistol? I sure wouldn’t.

Weirder still, Colt used to make a “budget” .357 which was actually tougher than the Python. I am referring to the mighty King Cobra, which has the guts of the .44 Magnum Anaconda. Apparently, the King Cobra was not as slick and polished as the Python, so it sold for less. And it’s cheaper, used. But the up side is that it won’t shake itself apart when you use it for the thing it was designed to do.

Seems to me–I am guessing–that the smart Colt revolver buy, for a person who actually shoots, is a King Cobra. If you want it pretty, you spend three hundred bucks having it customized. Buy it in stainless, get a trigger job, crown the barrel, put grips on it, have it refinished, and be done with it. Or you could get a Python and shoot quasi-squib 38 Special loads. Or just polish it real nice and put it in your safe. No way do I want a Python now. If it can’t stand up to real ammunition, it’s junk. Or…let’s be nice…it’s an excellent .38 Special, mislabeled at the factory. A marvelous, attractive pistol. For old ladies.

And for some reason, people are paying a thousand dollars apiece for used ones. I guess when someone tells you he paid a grand for a gun that won’t do its job, you know he’s a collector, not a shooter.

My Smith & Wesson 686 Plus is supposedly tougher than a Python, but the 8-shot Model 627 has a heavier frame and ought to last for eternity. And it has that sweet 5″ barrel. A 6″ barrel is heavy. A 4″ barrel has a shorter sight radius than 5″. I think 5″ is the way to go. It’s just a feeling.

Colt worship is really something to behold. If it can make you ignore a gun with an inadequate frame, it must be pretty powerful.

I am Perspiring

Colt Python Elite, 4″ barrel, blue!

Buttery and Burned

Here, try this.

INGREDIENTS

8 golf-ball-sized red potatoes cut in eighths
1 stick butter
1-2 cloves garlic, pressed
salt
pepper

Melt the butter. Put the potatoes, butter, and garlic in an oven-safe dish. Add salt and pepper to taste. Toss until mixed. Bake covered at 400 degrees for about an hour, until the potatoes soften. Remove the cover and bake until they get a little burned. If you want, hit them with grated cheese.

Really good. And it’s extremely easy. The big problem is, you’ll make more than you need, and you’ll have to throw them out to keep from eating them.

This recipe will make a decent side dish for maybe three hungry people.

Nice

Don’t mind me.

Forgot

I guess I’m a giant idiot. I forgot to tell everyone that June 2 was Jerusalem Day. It’s the day when Jews celebrate the 1967 reunification of Jerusalem, much of which had been off-limits to Jews since the 1948 attack by Israel’s relentless, savage, and unprincipled enemies. I assume the date is solar, not lunar.

I’m not sure why they celebrate, since they give back every piece of God-given land their enemies force them to conquer. They gave much of Jerusalem back. Sooner or later, though, the world will have a better Jerusalem Day to celebrate, because the entire Holy City will be controlled by the Jews. And so will Israel–the real Israel, not the little sliver we call “Israel” today. And it will stay that way.

In a related matter, Ed Koch reveals a mind worthy of a good yeshiva, as he explains why it is stupid and completely backward to accuse John Hagee of anti-Semitism.

Hagee thinks God played a part in the Holocaust. Perhaps he’s wrong. But either way, why do people get upset every time a preacher says God may have been involved in something resembling punishment?

Read the Bible before you react without thinking. The Babylonian captivity, the Egyptian captivity, the siege of Jerusalem, numerous failures in battle, famine and plagues in Egypt…the Bible says God caused or allowed these things. Where is it written that He has changed?

And before you claim that ended with the Old Testament, ask yourself when the last temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, and who predicted it.

Hagee thinks the Holocaust ultimately had a purpose. Is it somehow better to believe it was absolutely meaningless?

One of the big tactics enemies of religion use is the denial that God could do or consciously allow anything that would cause anyone pain. One goal: it helps them deny that sin exists. It excuses all human behavior and contributes to touchy-feely moral relativism. And the worst thing is, many issue this denial from pulpits, while claiming to be Christians.

I don’t think Hagee claims the Holocaust was punishment. But I think people are trying to twist his words and make it look as if he were blaming the Jews for their pain. Not all misfortune is punishment. I’m sure John Hagee knows that. The Egyptian exile was not a punishment, for example.

It irritates me, seeing people try to drive a wedge between Jews and their most powerful allies, American conservative Christians. But it doesn’t surprise me. To the enemy, we are a dangerous combination. The slanders tend to suggest that the threat has been recognized.

If only more Jews understood. I still can’t believe there are American Jews who think the anti-Semitic left will protect them from the Israel-loving right.

Might as Well Buy Him Caviar

Marv just can’t stop blogging. Today he gives more information on bird cookies.

He Embodies It

Sondra has a funny up. Bill Clinton continues his weird act.

I never realized how much he looks like Al Gore. AKA Pope Prius I.

I don’t care if no one else thinks “Pope Prius” is funny. I love it.