Winning.... Sharpton?

Radio Equalizer has the quote:

SHARPTON (4:52): I would say 90% of the calls I received yesterday were in support of the Supreme Court and people say they want to bear guns. They’re tired of the violence and it’s very very interesting. I have had a few on both sides today, but yesterday was overwhelming, it was stunning to me.

I just told Attorney Lou Meyers, lady stopped me last night; I did the commencement address at Boys and Girls High. She said I listen to your show Reverend and I want you to know I’m saved sanctified by feel of the Holy Ghost, but if they come in my house I’m going to drop them right where they stand. So, and she looked like she was in her eighties.

Sharpon leftwing hack and race baiter... among other things. Even he realizes that people want to defend themselves. And right here we see the advantage of firearms. A gun is the only real way an eldery woman could win in a fight with a young, physically fit, normally male criminal.

That's what gun bans do. Not only do they keep weapons out of the hands of the law abiding while the criminals simply break the law. As said here:

Let’s be real here. With the handgun ban in effect, three were killed and more than two dozen were shot in Chicago last weekend. The weekend prior to that, some 60 people were shot, and 10 were killed.

I don’t think the bad guys are waiting around for the courts to rule so they can go out and legally purchase weapons.

The bans have another effect, they reduce self defense to a matter of muscles. Which is a boon to those that prey on the weaker, smaller, and older. On the other hand, if you are a young woman, an old man, or so on, you become prey to those stronger than you who also happen to be willing to break the law. Even if you're a strong, fit man in the prime of your life you can simply be outnumbered.

There's a reason why this saying exists: "God created man, Sam Colt made them equal."


James R. Rummel of Hell in A Handbasket addresses this issue. He teaches self defense to victims of voilent crime and while less than lethal have their place the gun still has a clear advantage in being able to stop a determined foe.


Also, I have family in Memphis. That is a city with a high crime rate, but being in a Shall Issue state, people can defend themselves. At one Memphis gun show I saw people of all races buying weapons to defend themselves. Good.

As The Prof says: This is the new Normal.

The best prevention against the gun grabbers is to have more informed and armed citizens. This has people become more aware of their rights, and makes it much easier for them to know whent he gun grabbers are lying to them.

Flying Car

I've been a bit of a meh on the flying car idea. As cool as it is, the logicstics of widespread use, especially with failsafes seems daunting.


Still a neat idea. And one that keeps getting worked on.

Like most flying cars the Terrafugia Transition is really a light aircraft that has folding wings and road wheels geared to the motor. It's a further refinement of the concept, and appears to be getting more road clearance and FAA regs worked out.

So we might one day get our flying cars... next up, jetpacks (which is a whole other stabilty and energy desnity problem)

Via Ace

Savory.

I never put too much though in what was in Lea and Perrins Worchestershire Sauce.

It was just a very handy sauce that added that something extra.

Turns out the main ingredient is fermented anchovies that give ia a savory/umani flavor.

That'll do it.

A good sauce will mix multiple sensations and savory is a very nice thing to add.

Incorporated.

5-4 Close... and it took long enough.


Here's s bit on National review.

Strict gun-control policies have failed to deliver on their essential promise: that denying law-abiding citizens access to the means of self-defense will somehow make them safer. This should come as no surprise, since gun control has always been about control, not guns

A previous post on China and their gun laws proves that one out.

Truly onerous gun control came to fruition only in a minority of jurisdictions, predominantly those run by Democrat machines. The District of Columbia enacted a registration requirement for all handguns in 1976, then closed the registry so that all guns not on the books could never be lawfully owned in the District. Chicago followed suit in 1983. With each failure of gun control, the rejoinder was to do it again, this time with feeling.

Since the Heller case invalidated the District of Columbia’s handgun ban two years ago, Chicago has served as the gun-control capital of the United States. Not coincidentally, Chicago is a dangerous place to live. Two weekends ago, 52 people were shot, eight fatally. Local politicians frequently ponder calling out the National Guard to patrol Chicago’s streets.

Three times in the last month, Chicago residents have defended their homes or businesses with “illegal” guns. In the first, an 80-year-old Navy veteran killed a felon who broke into his home. In the second, a man shot and wounded a fugitive who burst into the man’s home while running from the police. In the third, the owner of a pawn shop killed one of three robbers in self-defense, sending the other two running.

So done in Dem controled areas and failure is met with trying it
again, only harder! The dance stays the same.


Here's a roundup from Reynolds.

It's taken a long time but the cause of self defense is scrambling forward, but it's still a near thing.

When Eco-Irony Exacerbates Crisis

Glen Reynolds has a saying: "I'll believe it's a crisis when the people who say it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis."

Compare this to Rahm Emanual's line: "Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before."

In the Gulf there is a real crisis. Unfortunately the admin is not treating it as a real crisis, instead there is the delightful mix of incompetence, eco-utopianism, and simply holding back their response in order to get cap and trade.

But that last one is crazy. That's like saying the administration would neglect critical constitutionally mandated responsibilities in order to get legislation they want. And that would never happen.

But back to the Gulf.

Via Reynolds we have this from the Financial Post.

Why does neither the U.S. government nor U.S. energy companies have on hand the cleanup technology available in Europe? Ironically, the superior European technology runs afoul of U.S. environmental rules. The voracious Dutch vessels, for example, continuously suck up vast quantities of oily water, extract most of the oil and then spit overboard vast quantities of nearly oil-free water. Nearly oil-free isn't good enough for the U.S. regulators, who have a standard of 15 parts per million -- if water isn't at least 99.9985% pure, it may not be returned to the Gulf of Mexico.

When ships in U.S. waters take in oil-contaminated water, they are forced to store it. As U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the official in charge of the clean-up operation, explained in a press briefing on June 11, "We have skimmed, to date, about 18 million gallons of oily water--the oil has to be decanted from that [and] our yield is usually somewhere around 10% or 15% on that." In other words, U.S. ships have mostly been removing water from the Gulf, requiring them to make up to 10 times as many trips to storage facilities where they off-load their oil-water mixture, an approach Koops calls "crazy."

Perfect is the enemy of the good. Emphasis added. Removing nearly all of the oil from the water but at a much higher rate would remove more oil than a perfect removal that is much slower.

But hey, what's a little math and logistics when you've got "the environment" to save. Which is different from actually saving the real world. Perfection and power over industry is more important than using the fastest way to remove the oil.

Again, the U.S. government priority is on U.S. jobs, with the Dutch asked to train American workers rather than to build the berns. According to Floris Van Hovell, a spokesman for the Dutch embassy in Washington, Dutch dredging ships could complete the berms in Louisiana twice as fast as the U.S. companies awarded the work. "Given the fact that there is so much oil on a daily basis coming in, you do not have that much time to protect the marshlands," he says, perplexed that the U.S. government could be so focussed on side issues with the entire Gulf Coast hanging in the balance.

Ahh... so US jobs are more important than wetlands. Being a Leftist is hard.

And again, the goobers in charge aren't treating this as a real crisis, but instead as a phony crisis that they can use to get more control over your life. Because hey, when all you've got is a statist hammer...

Nice to see that the man that run on being rational, internationalist, scientific, and competent. Is proving to be none of those things. Here's a hint next time a politician tells you everything you want to hear: He might be lying.

Told. You. So.

How to check out a used 1911

Xavier has a great post on the step by step method to check out a used 1911.

Good advice on how to spot for various kinds of wear damage, and improper mantinance.

And many functionality tests.

I picked up a used Kimber Custom II for a song. I was able to because on feild stripping I found why the slide lock was not funtioning properly. Someone had added a buffer to the guiderod that retarded the full travel of the slide.

Took some work and replacement of extractor and the expected spring work, but got a good gun out of it.

Gun Control. Never enough. Not even in China.

That's Mitch Moxley's view on Chinese Gun Control. He seriously thinks that a communist regime isn't strict enough.

[T]he gun control laws later implemented by Mao and the Communist Party [are] some of the most severe firearms laws in the world. China has imposed a blanket ban on gun ownership, including replicas. Since 1966, the government has prohibited the private manufacture, sale, transport, possession and import or export of bullets and guns.

Possessing a single gun can yield a three-year prison sentence, while perpetrators of gun crimes are often executed.

Moxley then goes on to list criminal activities and try to link them with "gun culture". Then we get this gem of an end.

China introduced gun control in 1966, after children armed with rifles shot out a window at the Great Hall of the People at the Tiananmen Square in Beijing while trying to hit a sparrow, according to official MPS history. The government cracked down harder on gun ownership after the 1989 pro- democracy demonstrations.

It needs to crack down even harder on today's rising gun crime.

Emphasis added.

There you go, in his own words Moxley shows that gun control is done expresssly to facilitate govermental control, and he wants more. Repression in response to protest is good in this man's view.


Gun grabbers are on the side of the totalitarians, and there is no ammount of private firearms use that they condone.

Even China doesn't go far enough.

Via Uncle.

Bookends.

First chart and last image of here.


Quadruple your education expenses and get the same result. Yeah... sounds about right. It's not like the goverment has shown themelves unwilling to do other basic, constitutionally mandated tasks.

Yeah you won't get a budget this year, but if you play ball, you might get a some border "protection" in exchange for amnesty.

You see constitutional tasks aren't important. Not when salt has to be regulated, unions paid off, and suing states.

On a lighter note the science chart on the first link is ammusing.

"...and we don't know what it means, but we have proved it, and therefore we know it must be the truth."

"It is absolutely paradoxical; we cannot understand it, and we don't know what it means, but we have proved it, and therefore we know it must be the truth."

-Benjamin Peirce, American 19th Century mathematician on href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler%27s_identity">Euler's Identity

e^(i*pi)+1 = 0

I was reminded of Euler's Identity when SMBC took on "Polish Hand Magic" The comic gives a quick example of how to multiply using your fingers and then a proof of why it works, and then mocks how... insufficient that explanation is.

Similarly here's another unfulfilling explanation of the Euler Identity.


I did get a kick out of this bit: A mathematical joke asks, "How many mathematicians does it take to change a light bulb?" and answers "-e^(ipi)" (which, of course, equals 1).

Wing Recipe

Sorry for the delay but here's my recipe for wings.

After living in Buffalo I can tell you that one way to tell how good a wings is depends on how it is named. Actual wings are not called Buffalo chicken hot wings, especially in Buffalo. Since the Buffalo and hot are redundant, and really so is the chicken.

Now making true wings requires a fryer. Which can be done at home (hint always outside), but is messy and time consuming. My recipe just needs a stove.

For this you will need.


2 dozen wings (uncooked or precooked)
butter

Frank's red hot sauce
Louisiana Hot sauce
Cholula sauce
Lee and Perrins
Soy sauce.

Black pepper (preferably freshly ground in a fine mill)
Salt
Cumin
Cayenne pepper.


First you'll need to cook the wings. Precooked, but unseasoned wings work as long as they're unfrozen. For this you ready your oven to 375F and spread the wings on a cooking pan and heat at five minute intervals, flipping each time until they are cooked.

This does three things: it gets the meat cooked and safe (always a good thing with chicken), it reduces excess water and fat, and it browns the skin.

Once you have your wings set you take them off the cooking pan and have them rest in a bowl. You can turn the oven off, it's done. The rest is done on the stovetop. I prefer cooking with cast iron but any good pan will do. A thick bottom is preferable though.


The traditional wing sauce calls for 1/3 cup of butter for every 1/2 cup of Frank's. My recipe calls for a full cup of Franks.

First you'll want to melt 1/3 of a cup of butter on the pan with the stove set to medium-low. Once the butter is melted put the wings in and stir. This should get a light coating. Then you apply the dry spices in the amount you feel comfortable with. This is the phase that simulates the frying. If you want a bit of a breading effect a bit of flour can help. Garlic is also anoption.

Err on the side of less, and if you're not sure you can take a wing and cut off a piece and taste it. Since its fully cooked already, you're safe. This is wear a fine ground pepper works better as it stick to the wings better than coarse. Let the wings cook with these spices for about six minutes flipping once. You can add more spice to taste.



Meanwhile you'll work on the sauce. Take a 2 cup or greater mixing cup and pour a cup of Franks red hot into it. This is the base of your sauce. The other sauces can be added. Be especially sparing with the Lee and Perrins and use only a dash of soy sauce.

Do not add salt, the soy sauce will give more than enough. Add cumin. It should be hot enough without needing to add cayane, but if you want more heat go ahead. The sauce should be mixed.


Then melt 1/3 of a cup of butter in another measuring cup. Once it is melted pour into the sauce and immediately stir using a whisk. Because the butter will rapidly cool, it
tends to clump if not thoroughly mixed.

Now you can flip the wings, take the sauce, drizzle a thin amount onto them. You can adjust the heat here. More heat makes a more crispy wing, less heat makes a more moist and saucy wing. Though I'll give an optional finishing step that will ensure moist and saucy.

At least have the wing go for two runs of four minutes so there's sauce on each side. You should use only about a third of the sauce.

Now you can take the wings off, let rest for a couple minutes and enjoy.



Or....


You can do a proper finish. For this you take the wings off and put into a mixing bowl large enough to fit them all. Then pour the remainder of your sauce into the bowl and gently stir. Lightly close the top and let rest for 5-8 minutes.

This will have the sauce adhere to the wings and get the full flavor, at the cost of making them spicier, richer, and messier.

Know your place!

Remember how the left had paranoid fantasies of violence being committed by those scary Tea Party protestors? That those unhinged wingnuts would attack innocent public servants?


Well...





I can't help thinking of Yakov Smirnoff:

Leftwing fantasy America very different from real America. In
leftwing fantasy: you angry, entitled Wingnuts go out and attack
politicians. In reality: angry, entitled, politicians attack you!


And Glen Reynolds reminds us: "The worst part about the Etheridge video wasn’t the assault — it was the sense of outraged entitlement."

This really is an example of "Know your place, serf" thinking.

And via Geraghty's Morning Jolt we have this from David Codrea

Etheridge displays the all-too typical attitude of a public "official" as opposed to a public servant. I can't help wondering if a belief that he can slap constituents around with impunity might be one of the reasons he's big on citizen disarmament, having been rated "F" by both the National Rifle Association and by Gun Owners of America.

Gee, someone that doesn't want the common rabble armed is perfectly willing to assault someone questioning him. It's like these things are all related!

And for fun here's some fun quotes from some leftwing rabble rouses that soundly approve of recording politicians, just in case they do something that can be used against them.

But wait... now that their political rivals are using these tactics....

It's all circle the wagons and blame the republicans.


Here the media not even trying anymore.

How does the Washington Post talk about a Congressman assaulting
someone peacefully questioning him? Geraghty explains:

The opening sentence? “So what really happened when Rep. Bob Etheridge ran into a couple of self-described ‘students’ on the streets of D.C. last week?”

If only there was video footage of what happened that could make it more than he-said-she-said. Oh, wait...

He continues:

In this news nugget, there is little or no description beyond ‘grabbing the wrist’ of one of the young men.

This is not even bias anymore; this is information management, designed to ensure those who pick up the print version of the Post never encounter what the blogosphere is buzzing about.

There used to be a time when people who read newspapers were the informed ones. (Or at least they could pass that way. Holodomor anyone?)

Though like Helen Thomas, Van Jones, Dan Rather, Nashville flooding, and many, many more, it's now the print readers that are the ones kept in the dark.


Clearly the problem with declining Newspaper readership is not enough FTC protection and bailouts.

People are finding out, despite what the gatekeepers try.

Rep. Bob Etheridge’s assault of student videographers clearly hit a nerve with the American public. The video of his attack was the most watched video on YouTube yesterday. How to explain that?

For months, the legacy media and national Democrats have struggled to convince the public that the Tea Party movement was a dark harbinger of violence. Yet, all acts of violence and intimidation have come from the left. We’ve seen-and reported-these events, but the Etheridge video encapsulated it better than any other. We have a political class. They don’t like criticism and have a general disdain for the American public.

How dare the rabble question them!

And all burying the story does is make the media look even more laughable, slowwitted, and clumsy.

When they're not being out and out duplicitous. Geraghty again with the "Republican" Congressman.


Meanwhile some in the media show just how broken their moral compasses are.

And the media is angry, not just that those two young men were "picking" on a Dem, but because they weren't "real" reporters, and they're livid at "ambush tactics" being used by commoners.

I guess ambush/inflammatory interview techniques — you know, what made 60 Minutes and Mike Wallace famous — aren’t to be used by the great unwashed everyday citizen-journalists.

Also follow the link to see yet more Leftists swooning at thuggery.

So have a representative of government physically assaulting a citizen peacefully questioning (since when did asking a politician if he supported his president's agenda become inflammatory?) him, and then you have said questioner who remains polite even when being manhandled
and assaulted... and the mass media doesn't even know who the "hero" is?

No wonder these goobers can't tell that the Soviet Union was up to no good or that the Jihadis might be a wee bit repressive. I mean they see an unhinged politician attacking a commoner for the sin of daring to question him and they can't figure out who's the bad guy.

And Geraghty is on fire today with even more fawning and support for the poor, congressman.

Go here for some chilling "Talking points"

This is a sampling of some of the letters in support of Etheridge:

I’m very proud of the way my congressman, Bob Etheridge, handled being accosted by a pair of video muggers. We have the right to walk the streets in peace, without being accosted by cowardly little men who refuse to identify themselves. It’s good to see that Etheridge has the backbone to stand up for himself.

...


Rather than just being a talking head, Etheridge showed a human side that is actually quite endearing. Could it be he can actually empathize with the widespread feelings of anger going around these days?

...

I have watched the video of Rep. Bob Etheridge’s encounter with the video sneak attack several times on my computer. My best description of this video is that Rep. Etheridge acted “manly.”

I guess that I am a little old-fashioned, but I have always been taught that when someone accosts you on the street, will not provide identification and covers over his face that it must be either The Lone Ranger or a crook.

Again the left shows a worship of power and thuggery. They see a government official resorting to violence when faced with a questioning citizen and they react that the questioners weren't punished enough. They complain that Etheridge didn't use enough of the power and privilege that comes with his position. It's not enough that he personally assaulted the questioner, no it's prison for those that dare question the State!

This is one step removed from cheering when Politburo sends soldiers in to crush a peaceful protest.



Geraghty continues: "Remember, there are Americans who believe that if you run into your congressman and ask him a question, the congressman has a right to not merely hit you in response, but to have you arrested. And their vote counts every bit as much as yours."

It's interesting that the left approve the idea that you have to present identification if you want to question a congressman, but they're against that law in Arizona.

And of course it's the guy that was "assaulted" with a "loaded question" that might have been is the real victim here.


The creepy part is the swooning at thuggery. Consider: "Rather than just being a talking head, Etheridge showed a human side that is actually quite endearing."

Endearing. Endearing!

Or "I’m very proud of the way my congressman, Bob Etheridge, handled being accosted by a pair of video muggers."

Proud? They take pride in that?

They admire, admire!, a politician attacking someone who dares to question them.

Gee... no wonder the Left is so comfortable with despots.

It goes without saying how the Left would act if it were a Republican representative that had done this.

Math!

Fred Schwarz blows apart a widely believed governmental "fact" with some simple arithmetic.

"They" say 2 million people attend NYC's annual Puerto Rican Day Parade. Well...

Now, let’s do a little arithmetic. The parade route stretches along Fifth Avenue from 44th Street to 79th Street (in years past, it went to 86th Street). Let’s call it 40 blocks. In that part of Manhattan, blocks are 20 to the mile, so that works out to two miles, or about 10,000 feet. Suppose each person in the crowd takes up two feet side to side, and that they were lined up 20 deep on each side of the street. That works out to 5,000 people times 40, for a crowd of around 200,000.

To account for any possible inaccuracies in this calculation, and to include people looking out windows or watching from side streets, kids on their parents’ shoulders, and anything else I may have missed, let’s make the heroic — nay, congressional — assumption that I’m off by a factor of 2.5. That would still be only half a million.

And then there's another way to debunk the claim

Is it really conceivable that the entire population of Manhattan (about 1.7 million) could pour out of their apartments and squeeze into 40 blocks of Fifth Avenue?

Yet every year, a government agency issues an official figure that is wildly implausible — make that impossible — and everyone in the media repeats it unquestioningly, when a few moments’ thought would reveal that it makes absolutely no sense.

Again, I stress this simple point: Whenever someone in the media or
government tells you a number, and it seems off, do some simple math
to verify it.

It does not take much to get a simple ratio out of an offered number.
Like a job per tax dollar per year or gallon per mile per ton of
freight or person per foot of parade route.

They count on people's eyes glazing over when they hear a big number,
that's human nature.

A program that "saves" a ten thousand jobs over five years at the cost
of seven billion dollars may sound sensible (or at least not porkis),
but do the math.


$7,000,000,000/(5 years)/(10,000 people) = $140,000 dollars per person
per year. That's the central problem of the "stimulus" it'd be cheaper
to simply cut people checks given the claim of "jobs saved" given the
overall cost.

So not only is the government giving money to cronies in order to buy
their votes but they do it at an exorbitant cost.

There's a reason the Soviet Union had massive famines (only some of
which were deliberately created when they had a higher grain output
than current Russia, which may not be free but they're not starving.


Free markets tend to encourage efficiency by making it profitable, governments do not have that reward structure. In fact since they are monopolies with a captive "customer" base they have less worries about gaining power via better business. In fact, growing government is a means to increase their power, since they can bribe people into voting for them via government jobs and other "redistributive measures.

From Tam here's something related and depressing.

The morality of the International Community.

Via Ace of Spades We have this bit of "cheer" from Dennis Prager

Israel is almost totally isolated. A visitor from another planet would have every reason to report back home that the greatest problem on Earth is the planet’s Jewish state. Although Israel is the size of the American state of New Jersey and smaller than El Salvador, and although its population is smaller than that of Sweden, Burundi, and Bolivia, it is the most censured country in United Nations history.

He goes on with how much "respectable thought" and civilized nations condemn those pesky Jews.

And then we get to the facts:

Though Israel is a thriving liberal democracy for all its citizens — including the one citizen out of five who is Arab (83 percent of whom are Muslim) — and has an independent judiciary and an independent press, though it signed an agreement establishing an independent Palestinian state, and though it returned to Egypt every inch of the Sinai Peninsula, a land mass larger than Israel itself with major oil reserves, the world deems Israel a villain.

Though Hamas runs a theocratic police state based on torture and terror, though it recognizes no freedom of speech and no freedom for any religious expression outside of radical Islam, though it seeks to annihilate the Jewish state, and though its state-controlled media depict Israelis and Jews as worthy of death, the world sees Israel, not Hamas, as the villain.

And yet where is the blame? Which country are all the gadflies and internationalists and "human rights" people throwing their support behind?

It gets worse.

The reason mankind has to hope that the world, its leaders, its newspapers, its so-called human-rights organizations, and the United Nations are right about Israel is quite simple: If Israel is the decent party in its war with the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, and nearly all the world’s countries, nearly all the world’s media, and the United Nations are morally wrong, what hope is there for humanity? If the world’s moral compass is that broken, are we not sailing into a dark age?

This is why the view that we must make "the world" like us, and must earn the respect of the international community is not only deluded and optimistic, but it is dangerous.

The world is not a nice place, and those fools with stars in their eyes that confuse a theocratic totalitarian regime with a freeish-marketish representative-republic of limited governance....

But we've seen it before. The useful idiots of the world love their totalitarian thugs. Because they are envious of the power of the men who control the organs of state, the men without any checks or balances, the men that can get things done.

These are the people that see the blood soaked hands of a dictator and instead of thinking "Monster", think "Wow, he's certainly strong and willing to realize the dreams of his people."

Don't even get me started about the inherent legitimacy and possessive objectification that comes with saying "his people" when revering to the oppressed populace under the heel of a murderous thug.

That's why there is the worship of power and debasement before the "noble savage".

And that's why to some there is no greater sin than demanding to be left alone. There is no greater obstacle than limiting government. And there is no greater threat than a skeptical, informed, self reliant populace.


For more information on how the world works. I recommend James F. Dunnigan's and Austin Bay's work: "A Quick and Dirty Guide to War."

Told you so.

Remember how the President promised over and over again that "You'll get to keep your healthcare plan if you like it"? And remember how those of us not on the left laughed.... well...

Administration: 51% Of Companies’ Health Plans Won’t Pass Muster

Yeah, anyone shocked, at all?

Now that it's been passed the truth can be told.

This is what happens when you trust politicians to tell you what a bill will do, when even they have not read the bill.

Physical Comedy.

Bill Whittle does a masterfall bit of comedy.

4 minuts in.

Sad though... but at least funny.

Tonight's Entertainment

I was having ejection issues with my 1911 (stovepiping on some mags with stiff springs and on the second to last round. Also same issue on very chewed up snap caps but not fresh) and I thought it was an extractor issue.

This is a bit of a daunting thing as extractors are a bit of a pain to remove, and to replace you need a gunsmith or to file your own retaining notch into the extractor pin.

But I found that my 4in 1911 did not have this problem. So I decided on a swap.

To do this I needed a thin drift to push the retaining pin out of the frame to allow the removal of the extractor from the frame. I went to the hardware store to get some tools, specifically a thin drift, some small files, and a punch.

Then I found the drift was too big, so I spend the evening filing it down until it was small enough. That was fun making a new tool but time consuming.

Finally, I got to removing both extractors... swapped them and... the problem did not swap.

So... it wasn't the ejector. This confused me for a bit. Looking at what it could be I was dumfounded, the problem could be narrowed to a few types of cartridges and was magazine independent.

Thinking I wondered if it was the extractor. That seemed not likely, but it was all that was left. A bit on the difference: The extractor grabs the end of the cartridge and pulls it out of the chamber of the barrel. This pulls the cartridge until it hits the ejector flinging it out of the gun.

Here's the twisted part, the extractor is trivially easy to remove. You take out a retaining plate that holds the firing pin assembly in, and the extractor slides straight out.

And... it turns out it was the extractor, despite the to parts looking nearly identical to my eye. But the extractor is a spring based part and does get worn out.

So, let that be a lesson to all your amateur gunsmithing. Be safe, be careful, don't force parts, and sometimes the problem can be something you didn't think of so it pays to be patient and methodical.

The mask slips

Apparently Mayor Daley is giving his fellow gun grabbers a bad name.

Prof Reynolds quips: "Yeah, when an obviously corrupt machine’s
thug-in-chief preaches citizen disarmament, it’s just a little too
obvious what it’s about . . . ."

Meanwhile the rest of Illinois isn't doing so hot financially.
And yet the Dems want to expand these failed policies to the whole nation.


Change!


Also via Insty, the power of the citizen media and exposing other "masks".

Mark Steyn goes:

Helen Thomas was an unreadable and unread columnist, and the only time she generates so much traffic that it crashes the site is the announcement that her career's self-destructed. That tells you a lot about American newspapering right there. Good thing two columnists didn't say something dumb or the site could have been out for weeks.

And here's the other side to that FTC "advice" and the looming newspaper bailout

A guy with a flip camera just took out one of the most storied names in American journalism. Presumably US newspaper managements have been assured by Obama, Pelosi, Frank et al that that bailout's a-comin' any day now. The alternative is that they're inept timeserving mediocrities too dullwitted even to know they're going over the falls.

If you go to a protest, if you hear a politician speak, if you
question a reporter. Record it.

These flip and other cameras are pretty cheap and they're allowing the
citizen to take down these corrupt "elites".

Victims

What happens when you become serfs and subjects.

Some Notes On The Cumbria Shootings by pdb

# Derrick Bird spent three and a half hours shooting people with (presumably) a sporting double with birdshot. Yet in all that time, he was tailed by police and they never closed to engage! Are cops over there cockless cowards or what?

# In the hands of a psychopath, even a Fudd-friendly, slow to reload sporting double with wimpy birdshot can rack up a big score

He goes on to predict the doom of UK gun culture (what little there is with under 1% ownership).

And some lessons the key one being:

# You are on your own! The police may be restrained by lack of testicular fortitude or bureaucratic sanction. Their only official job is to count the bodies, not to actually protect you or your loved ones.

Go and read the final warning.

The comments are good as well.


Note that when you make the populace meek and unable to resist a several hour rampage of one man with a 22 and a shotgun, consider how weak they'd be at the hands of a government with aims of control.

If you the public is totally helpless at the machinations of one nut, what will they do against a state with totalitarian goals?

Or is it as most of us fear, already far, far too late?

Reality, "Reality", and Winning.

So the History Channel has a new reality TV show: Top Shot.


And unlike ones like their fishing or trucking ones this is less of "camera records stuff that would happen anyway" and more "gameshow!".

Now the nice thing is that this is a shooting game show. A bunch of contestants do shooting challenges for the grand prize. The history fig-leaf comes in the use of historical weapons and talking about their history. So more historical than their –oh- show about a Pawn Shop.

The winning comes from the continued mainstreaming of firearms and firearm competitions.

On a personal note I've meet Caleb at a couple of blogmeets and it was a pleasure to see him in action
The show does have some of the expected reality show nonsense, but it does have a fun subject matter, and does deal with the safety and other operating details.

Here's Tam's thoughts on the show.

What shall we do with these uppity Jews?**

Charles Krauthammer on some blockade history and the intent of the "global community".

In World War II, with full international legality, the United States blockaded Germany and Japan. And during the October 1962 missile crisis, we blockaded (“quarantined”) Cuba. Yet Israel is accused of international criminality for doing precisely what John Kennedy did: impose a naval blockade to prevent a hostile state from acquiring lethal weaponry.

And other than the blockade there's something else wrong:

Oh, but weren’t the Gaza-bound ships on a mission of humanitarian relief? No. Otherwise they would have accepted Israel’s offer to bring their supplies to an Israeli port, be inspected for military materiél, and have the rest trucked by Israel into Gaza — as every week 10,000 tons of food, medicine, and other humanitarian supplies are sent by Israel to Gaza.

Why was the offer refused? Because, as organizer Greta Berlin admitted, the flotilla was not about humanitarian relief but about breaking the blockade, i.e., ending Israel’s inspection regime, which would mean unlimited shipping into Gaza and thus the unlimited arming of Hamas.

Israel has already twice intercepted weapons-laden ships from Iran destined for Hezbollah and Gaza. What country would allow that?

But even more important, why did Israel even have to resort to blockade? Because blockade is Israel’s fallback as the world systematically delegitimizes its traditional ways of defending itself — forward and active defense.

Via Steven Green who quips: "What Krauthammer gets wrong here, of course, is that Jews defending themselves is inherently illegal. And racist. Or at the very least, unacceptably outrageous."

Related, Brittan's own history with blockades and Jews.


In my experience I've found European and Canadian friends wrapping themselves up in this "international waters" line.

And it's a very easy narrative to make. If Israel was wrong because they enforced the blockade in international waters then it doesn't matter that that Turkish ship was part of a blockade runner, it doesn't matter that the ship was full of armed goons there for the purpose of martyerdoom, it doesn't matter that they had night vision goggles and other military equipment.

What you do is you hold onto that specific legal bit and focus on that.

I did bring up the Cuban Missile crisis and that was promptly ignored with a derisive "Might makes Right" comment. Which makes me wonder if they were against that measure too. Also it shows a quaint view of the world, while Might does not always "make Right". You do need Might to enforce Right. It's in the wording itself: en force.

What was truly revealing was what my Euro friend, who is a bit to enamored in international law for his own good (Though in fairness he is a sailor (as in sail boats) and his knowledge is mostly in maritime law, which is applicable here.), said. He said that there's no such thing as a blockade under international law. A little slip, but revealing.

Since I'm sure that if Israel had boarded the ships within the magic distance, the Euros and the Left would simply cry that those waters are Gazin and not Israeli and thus the Israelis had invaded. I presented that view and for the record was met with silence on that part.


Now here's the darkly amusing part. He's fascinated by firearms on a historical, tactical, and mechanical level, but states he has little interest in owning or even operating one.

Which is good because he's pro strong gun control and lives in a country thusly regulated. His argument is that sure weaker (elderly, women, and so on) and the simply outnumbered are unable to really defend themselves, but that's the price worth paying to reduce a criminal's "power". He sees a disarmed but physically and potentially numerically superior criminal having less power over a potential group of victims.

When confronted with mass shootings his idea is always more restrictions, at the cost of the woman who wants to defend herself from a stalker ex-boyfriend that has 50lbs of muscle on her.

So, his whole gun control argument depends on depriving people of weapons that enable large scale violence.

Let that sink in. In his country he's okay on having strong, strong border enforcement to inspect and quarantine weapons, but for Israel? Nah.

On an interesting twist he is big on nuclear proliferation by responsible states as a stabilization measure. So not all the stereotypes apply.


And then there's Hellen Thomas and her "Jews Go back Germany" insanity. Roger L. Simon has more. In short "It's the 30's all over again."

Joy....


** Title is adapted from the Kids in the Hall Sketch: Dr. Seuss Bible

Though I prefer the raw sensless of their God Is Dead and Jesus, the bad carpenter sketches.

I am Shocked! Shocked! To find gambling here!

Well... replace gambling with one lefty institution drafting up a bunch of taxes to fund money into another lefty institution.

Given the left-leaning proclivities of the MSM, of course, it amounts to not just a bailout of a "broken business model" but also a subsidy for the left's propaganda machine. Taxing me to subsidize the NY Times would be like taxing George Soros to subsidize Rush Limbaugh.

Basically, the FTC wants Washington to tax the hell out of broadcasting, consumer electronics, advertising, and cell phones, then use this money to "fund" local news, give tax credits to news organizations, and other goodies.

And all this to "save" the Mass Media.

So, they take money from consumers that didn't want to pay those news organs, cycle it through the .gov and then give it to those failing companies as a bribe... err stipend.

But it's all for a good reason, to ensure that the proper media exists. A media that that doesn't have to worry about such grubby things as ensuring people are still willing to pay for their services.

No, they just have to worry that the government keeps paying them for their services.

Ahhh.... elitism, crony capitalism, and state propaganda.

Why does everything have to be a reality TV show?

Grousing asside this looks really cool.


Congrats to Caleb, and he's got a good screen presence.

Should be a good watch.

In California, feelings trumph all...

Now that they've gone after the 2nd amendment again, you better be careful with the 1st.

After all if they can ban one public expresion of one part of the Bill of Rights, why not another?

Should people really have to deal with being exposed to speech that makes them feel uneased?

Also gotta love how Open Carry goes up as a form of protesting Cali gun laws, and Cali responds by banning it.


Change!

Spending?

From Insty, here's Sayanything blog:

Under President Bush? Debt growth was at over $1.6 billion per day.
Now, that $1.6 billion isn’t a good number, but it’s better than the
$4.8 billion per day under Obama.

Now ask yourself this: Does the government have a revenue problem,
meaning that we’re not taxed enough? Or does the government have a
spending problem?

Change!

Continuing a theme... or "Mean Old Reality"

Austin Bay on Strategypage on what happens when Smart Diplomacy hits reality.

Consider this list of major crises President Obama confronts -- and
this is a list, not a rank order, for events within the next 24 hours,
a North Korean nuke striking Seoul, for example, or a Greek default,
could radically order any precedence:

1) The economy, 2) the Middle East, 3) Gulf of Mexico oil spill, 4)
Korea on the brink, 5) Global War on Terror (GWOT), 6) illegal
immigration and border security, 7) divisive domestic agenda (health
care, taxes, cap and trade).

Let's see how long the administration takes to figure out what's going wrong with all of these events...

Obama confronts converging crises -- crises exacerbated by the
perception he is weak. Hope has turned to cope, and just barely so.
How Obama succeeds or fails in each of these immanent crises will
either make or break his administration.

Well... we're boned.

Tam's facts of life.

Three important things to remember.

How you feel on these items says a lot about you and how you view your fellow man.

Program Notes...

I finished Dr. Dalrymple's Life at the Bottom.

If you want a reall depressing synthesis of the failures of leftism, welfare statism, tolerance of crime, and police corrosion... well... it's worht the read.

Very depressing but it does assemble many ideas and concepts quite well. Much of the saddness comes from the book's age. Things have gotten worse. As mentioned here

Still, I recommend the book if you want to see what happens when the Left gets their dreams.

In happier news I took some photos of some homemade wings (Buffalo wings to you heathens) and some Italian sausage and sauce I made over the weekend.

Just have to resize the photos and do a writeup on the process.

The noblest of intentions....

Richard Fernandez talks of the dangerous addiction of the west.


On the "flotilla" and the sinking of the Chenonan...

Both cases demonstrate that nothing is more paramount either to the establishment nor to the politically correct sections of the media than the maintenance of a lie. For the lie is in the service of the greater good. High reasons of policy will be invoked to explain why the truth should not be so. But the extreme reliance on fantasy by parts of the Western establishment goes well beyond surrounding a kernel of the truth with a “bodyguard of lies.” Instead it is the lie itself which is guarded by even more falsehoods. Gradually and inexorably, an entire political class has staked its existence on continuation of falsehood. The greater good is the fiction. Deception has become a necessity in itself.

As a result, any moderately well informed individual knows that there is no Islamic extremism, nor even terrorism. There are only man made disasters. Everybody knows that we can borrow our way out of debt, that the welfare state is the sustainable wave of the future; that Egypt has no border with Gaza through which it can provide supplies if it wanted; that the UN has kept Hezbollah from importing hundreds of missiles into Lebanon; that the thought of a handful of Jews has kept hundreds of millions of oil-rich Muslims from attaining prosperity; and that Global Warming is the main danger facing the planet Earth. That these assertions are untrue hardly matters; that they are indisputable is what seems to count. For who shall dispute them?

Reality might. And therein lies the problem.

It's all connected. And when utopian dreams and sincerity of rhetoric count more than reality... this is what you get.

Mean old reality.

The butcher's bill is coming due.