Intro
This is another of the W.O.O.D. series of semi-regular
Weekly Occasional Open Discussions.
(i.e. if I forget and skip one, no big)
Immediate prior one here:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2020/07/06/w-o-o-d-6-july-2020/
and remains open for threads running there (at least until the ‘several month’ auto-close of comments on stale threads).
Canonical list of old ones here:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/category/w-o-o-d/
For just general FYI notices, use to “tips” pages. All the old ones remain for historical reference:
“Tips Pages”
What’s Going On?
The Sloe Gin Story
At somewhere near 17 ish, a group of us, roughly 4, who were in an Eagle Scout Post, were the “traffic cops” at the Jamboree up in the hills of California. We’re talking huge…
One guy decided to pack some booze. Yup, Sloe Gin. It supposedly went well in citrus juice, but how could we pack O.J., or worse, frozen O.J., in our “backpack and tent” gear? The solution? Dehydrated orange substance mostly sugar. Yes, Tang.
Now none of us really had much of a clue at all about what drinks were supposed to taste like. I’d had a couple of beers in my life, and smelled whiskey once. And I do mean ‘a couple’. Nearly none. The others were not much more experienced. BUT one of them had older brothers & friends and got the Sloe Gin.
So we all just poured some into the Tang until it turned a rather hideous blood color, then drank it. In fairly short order we achieved the tipsy stage. At that point, we did a patrol around the perimeter of the camp. UN-fortunately, our driver, this being night time, didn’t see the tent guy ropes off the end of one set of pup tents… A significant row of tents got suddenly less tall at one end…
Needless to say, we got a bit of a talking too about that.
Now if you ever have the desire to actually TRY a “Sloe Gin & Tang”, realize that you may find yourself unable to drink Tang again for several years. To this day, it’s not easy. The flavor isn’t particularly bad, just horridly sweet and cloying. Especially when served warm (no ice in camp either…). Then there’s what happens when you combine a glycaemic bolus with ethanol…
Oddly, I’ve not had Sloe Gin since then either…
Chinese Wuhan Covid
This has been beat to death in a bunch of postings.
At present we’ve got renewed “outbreaks” based on a lot of testing with a test that has some number of false positives too. Deaths not going up much though.
Biggest issue seems to be that The Swamp wants to make this as bad as possible in the hope it will damage Trump. Rather like all their other “Do Crap And Shout” TDS efforts, it just makes them look evil. Oh Well.
Plus, folks are catching on that HCQ works, Ivermectin works, and several other things help. It is looking ever more like a fraud being committed by the Swamp Creatures and normal folks do not appreciate being pawns in a game of Political Chicken that’s killing off their friends and relatives when that could all be avoided. Oh, and the feeding of $Millions to Big Pharma for Remdesivir that only sort of works or a vaccine that doesn’t exist yet and may make it worse.
It’s just become rather obvious that it is a put up job. Only unclear bits are “by whom” and “deliberate or exploiting an accident?”.
China
There is now what is being called “The Quad”, of Australia, India, Japan, and the USA all setting up mutual support processes for both military and economic needs. The Philippines is getting in on it a little too. The UK has started dumping China from projects, and even Germany has reluctantly started to make less-than-happy noises at China.
In an interview (in Russian) Putin said they were working with China to upgrade its Early Warning systems, but stressed it was only purely defensive weapons where they were helping China AND stated that they were NOT “allies” with China. I think this means China has basically pissed off the world.
IMHO it’s going to cost them their illegal bases on the artificial islands they built around bits of rock in the South China Sea. Japan is paying $Billions for 87 or so Japanese companies to pack up and leave China. They have also, thanks to a threat a few years back to cut off supplies from China, set up and / or bought Rare Earths from mines is several other countries. India has banned something like 80 Chinese cell phone apps, Australia has stopped being neutral on the South China Sea, and the USA has put a few Carrier Battle Groups around them.
Then there’s the ongoing floods. China has started breaching levees and flooding farms to save their cities. They have lost a few city areas already and more to come. Several key farming provinces are flooded. They have stopped buying selected foods from Australia and the USA, so not sure where they expect to get food. This will get grim in fall.
Brexit
The E.U. isn’t budging much. The U.K. has rumours of giving up on a clean pure BREXIT. Time to start paying attention again. If the UK doesn’t just walk away, but gives up any sovereignty, it will be the hook used to reel you back in. It would be better to just say “We’re off” on WTO terms and let the EU come begging.
Italy is also polling majority leave now too, so exactly what will there be in the EU once that happens? And who gets stuck with all the Euro Debt?
The USA Colour Revolution
The Dimocrat Mayors of Seattle, Portland, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc. etc. are happy to let their city centres be looted and burned. They seem to think, somehow, failing in their duty to police their cities and giving a free pass to all the brats and criminals doing the looting and burning by not prosecuting them is somehow going to reflect on Trump.
Notice that when Trump was NOT doing anything, his numbers were dropping a little. When he announced more Fed Police & FBI going into some cities, his poll numbers went up a lot. Notice too that BLM Riots are resulting in falling approval of the BLM Marxist Communist movement and organization. Riots increase the Conservative vote.
I know, it’s part of the Colour Revolution Playbook. Create mayhem and chaos, try to provoke over-response from the Leader. Then claim the Leader is mean and evil and a despot. But the story just isn’t selling here. Trump is staying on the “not enough response” side and avoiding “over reaction”. Then the Stupid Yellow Stream Media tries to juice up the story with flat out lies and fabrication, the video comes out showing it’s lies and fabrication, and it just looks worse for the Democrats.
In the mean time, the USA has more guns than people and Normal People are just arming up and waiting for November. An Idiot Rioter was in the middle of an Antifa “surround the car and bang on it” while preventing the driver from getting past. UN-fortunately for him, he decided to point a big rifle at the driver. A few quick shoots later the rioter was dead.
Pointed Lesson: Even if Marxist District Attorney and Mayor let the rioters run free and lock up the Police, then charge with great crimes anyone who does use a gun to prevent a mob from attacking them: Citizens are going to defend themselves since it is “Better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6.” The driver will be judged by the system. The rioter will be buried.
I now have a loaded gun in a locked case near at hand. About 4 seconds to open it. It has been VERY quiet here compared to other cities. Seems the Silicon Valley types are too smart to be Useful Idiots. But even with that, I’ve upped the protection profile “just in case” I’m not watching the news when that changes. I know of a couple of Millennials that are now packing when at home. Once I’m in Florida, I’m going to apply for a CCW. I’m also going to order Bear Spray for the car. All that, and I”m not even in a hot spot. Just imagine what folks in the Bad Areas are doing!
Feds have started arresting 100s on Federal Charges. These will not get out of jail on the Democrat Revolving Door program. Think the Antifa BLM Marxists will be happy to keep on being Useful Idiots in a faux revolution when it consists of jail time and a few shot dead because they picked the wrong cars?
The Spouse has become aware of the car trap practice. I’m pretty sure she will pick a hole and floor it if she sees a crowd in the street. No more “just stop and let them get out of the way” because it’s now “Stop and you get pounded or killed”. Even just hitting reverse and backing up fast is worth it. That’s going to become more common too. Mob in the street getting run over or having cars just refuse to stop one way or another. I know I’m not stopping for any crowd. You have a few seconds before you are the target, during that time you pick a hole and go through it (even if that hole is behind you via reverse).
People Adapt. And there’s a whole lot of folks who are veterans, cops, fire fighters, ambulance crews, and all of their families, who are more than ready to avoid the mob attack by the best means available. The Mob attacking random citizens is NOT making their Democrat Protectors and Funders look better, nor do they make Trump look worse. They do make themselves look evil, their enablers more evil (or in some cases inept and weak) and give Trump a win when they are arrested on Federal Charges.
Oh, and in one city a Left Wing Militia was trying to put on a show of force against the local Police. Seems a pro-peace Militia group joined up with the cops. Faced with much more opposing firepower than they expected, the Left Wing folks decided to leave… Expect to see more of that. There’s a much much larger group of folks who are pro-Police. The Sheriffs in a couple of Florida Counties have outright said they would welcome help from their armed citizens. Either deputized or not. A couple of percent of armed Left Wing Nuts are more than countered by the 1/4 of the population who are both armed and support the Police. That we are being quiet is not a sign of weakness, it is a sign of good gun discipline and strategic preparation. We are not needed, yet.
I hope the lesson is learned early and hopefully just from the couple of dozen already killed and half dozen cases where the Marxist Useful Idiots discovered the meaning of Opposing Force In Strength. The folks “On The Right” (and increasingly “from the Middle, like me) are also far more disciplined and well practices in martial arts / firearms discipline. From what I’ve seen of The Left, it is largely inexperienced Wanna Bees who have not handled guns much, or very long. To the extent they succeed at making this a Shooting Colour Revolution, they will not last long. With any luck, the Dims will realize they have embraced a losing strategy and tell the nutbars to stand down, then turn the police loose to do their job and arrest any who ignored the memo…
Musings from the Chiefio 
“Older children may spread Coronavirus even faster than adults do”
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/07/older-children-may-spread-coronavirus-even-faster-than-adults-do/
E.M. wrote: “Then the Stupid Yellow Stream Media tries to juice up the story with flat out lies and fabrication, the video comes out showing it’s lies and fabrication, and it just looks worse for the Democrats.”
The interwebbies are a wonderful thing. There are tons of cellphone videos of the violent rioting property destroying looting citizen-assaulting “peaceful protesters” going around. The YSM has the gall to tell people to “Trust us. These are just peaceful protests against racist privileged whites (which is all of us, apparently) or the Bad Orange Man’s horrible policies.”
Yeah. Sure. Uh-huh. Who are we supposed to believe; you or our lyin’ eyes?
As you expanded on yourself, E.M., few people are buying it other than the zombie sheeple that only get their news from the YSM and don’t receive news from multiple sources. But every day, there are fewer and fewer zombie sheeple, thanks to the internet.
My question has always been, who do I need to ventilate, if it comes to that?
In the War Between the States, one side wore blue and the other side wore gray. It was pretty easy to figure out where to aim.
Pantifa makes it somewhat easy with their bike helmets, backpacks, and hoodies but there will be a few million ordinary looking American regressives who support the Marxist-lite Revolution, not realizing that they will be the first to be eliminated should The Revolution be successful. It has always been so. (The YSM are completely Dumbed Down Dolts as they don’t realize they are at the head of the line to be eliminated if prior Marxist takeovers are any indication.)
So that – where to aim – has been a point of concern to me as I have been contemplating the unthinkable, but quite possible, results of this Communist assault on America. The answer is simple if I’m directly attacked. It’s not so simple if it becomes necessary to root out and eradicate the Communist Cancer in order to preserve our Constitutional Republic.
Spotting Marxist indoctrinated or influenced folks?
You will know them by their language, “triggering” or support of the “triggered”, attitudes and actions.
Do they kneel? Say the BLM slogan with zeal? Talk about “privileged” classes? Push “defund” or “cancel culture” agenda and actions? Denigrate religion and traditional values? Get vapor lock when you mention hunting or venison stew?
It really doesn’t take long to spot them.
I’m sure with a little work you can come up with a set of covert screening questions. For example: “What is your preferred pronoun?” The correct answer is “Standard English” or “what?”. (I intend to answer “I like all of them. They are useful.”) Folks who smile and congratulate you for asking are outed. Especially if they answer with some nonsence word like xi or ti.
Or you could ask “What do you think of the Starbucks free trade coffee?”. Answers like “Ok but overpriced” or “Don’t know, don’t go.” are likely friendlies. A romanticized gush about helping bring social justice to poor farmers not so much.
Do they preen about their carbon footprint? Have a degree in {identitarian group id} Studies . or other useless indoctrination vehicle? Pretty good clues there. As government employees, what policies are they pushing? Just ask their agenda for their campaign. AOC and Omar are not hiding it. Biden has been absorbed by it and tries to spout the pattern phrases.
Heck, just ask if they support / what they think of nationalized health care. Pretty good sort right there in the USA.
I get what you’re saying, E.M., but I’m thinking I’d have to plug about a third of my neighbors, and that’s probably against HOA rules.
I heard something last week about the number of people under the age of 24 who have died from Wuhan Flu. It was a surprisingly miniscule number, at least to me, and no doubt there were severe underlying factors in those young people who did die.
I just got around to searching on it and I found this article in a news source I’ve never seen before.
The data is from the CDC, which makes me suspect it is off to the high side, if anything. Oh, it’s also from July 17th, so of course the numbers will be off a bit. Still the numbers are from February to July 17th, so that pretty much covers the outbreak.
It’s a very, very short read. They mostly let the CDC table speak for itself. Scroll down a smidge for the table.
https://www.cnsnews.com/article/national/susan-jones/cdc-015-covid-19-deaths-people-24-or-younger-8029-people-65-and-older
@H. R., what is somewhat surprising, given previous experience, is how few under *4* die. Previous experience shows a ‘J’ shaped survival curve. The very young and the very old are more vulnerable, in general. That said, physical bodies live as a series of hours. Even without ‘therapeutic’ abortions, many don’t survive to see birth. Historically, infant mortality was quite high; even 100 years ago. Life in the state of Nature is nasty, brutal and short. Societies and the civilizations that derive from them are rather fragile things; and human nature is a combination of good and evil. Right now, society is enhancing the evil side, to its detriment.
Interesting to read of your experience with sloe gin! I cannot imagine how ghastly it would be, mixed with Tang….yerrgh! My father used to make excellent sloe gin and we would drink it in sherry-like amounts, i.e. small :)
People are learning and arming. While the fake news has tried to hide it, the truth is seeping out. And even though the McCloskeys are total dolts on using firearms, their use of them has a lot of folks buying guns.
The folks on the right have had enough. The line is drawn. The snowflakes are going to start to fall.
I had doubts that “Tang” ™ was still being manufactured and sold. But so it is.
I wonder if it’s any better tasting now than in the 60’s. Flavor science has progressed along with everything else — sometimes forward then back, but usually forward. Most big name recognizable brands get “new and improved” every few years. Tide detergent, Pillsbury cinnamon rolls… well, and “New Coke”. It’s a gamble about changing a recipe that people are accustomed to. There is certainly enough competition to drive improvements. Crystal Light and Country Time and instant GatorAde… I see Amazon has more flavors of Tang besides orange. Maybe they have two varieties of “orange” now — traditional and enhanced. No Fizzies ™ pellets, though. Sad.
I got accustomed to the lemon-flavored “AlkaSeltzer Plus Cold Medicine” ™” before the wise and good and fully informed regulators of the FDA decided that certain over-the-counter drugs contributed to the manufacture of illicit methamphetamines and so had to to be tracked. Rather than track one ingredient in the recipe, the Bayer company re-formulated the product and omitted that particular substance. Substituted something else. And changed the flavor to “orange-zest”. HONESTLY I’m not sure whether I’d gotten addicted to the original drug, or there is some sort of anti-placebo effect going on due to the taste. But the old stuff worked and the new stuff doesn’t and I haven’t found an OTC cold medicine that helps as much since the change.
Evil resenters, ‘No lives Matter,’ Anti-Fa, funded by Soros.
https://thepostmillennial.com/three-federal-officers-may-be-permanently-blinded-after-antifa-laser-attack-in-portland
@pouncer
Reminds me of the old story of a woman who went to the Pharmacist to buy medicine and was told it wasn’t available as it had been declared addictive. “Stuff & Nonsense” she said, “Why I’ve been taking it everyday for 14 years”.
@EM: Thx for the ‘Sloe Gin’ story, mixing the Scouting escapade… priceless.
In College, the ‘Sloe Gin Fizz’ was any lemon-lime soda (preferably, in a can, to obscure the color from casual observers) into which some amount of Sloe Gin was added. Sprite and 7-up worked quite well, in my recollection.
It makes me think that powdered lemon-lime drink would work, maybe even to make sloe gin lemonade ice cubes for a summer cooler…
@philjourdan: One can hope that the DA in the McCloskey’s case will get firm opposition in the next election.
“The Media’s Political Suicide”
https://richardsonpost.com/danielg/17874/the-medias-political-suicide/
In the long run chaos is the answer, The internet is chaos winning over the organization of the MSM. The more that they try to organize the Internet the more chaotic it will become. Freedom is chaos, chaos is freedom. Welcome to the 21st Century.
This ought to cause a stir!
“Talk is cheap. Meanwhile back at the WH…
HUGE! Trump White House Implements Executive Order on Online Censorship: Prevents Tech Giants from Altering Users’ Free Speech – Demands Transparency of Moderation Practices
By Jim Hoft
Published July 29, 2020 at 5:54pm
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/07/huge-trump-white-house-implements-executive-order-online-censorship-prevents-tech-giants-altering-users-free-speech-demands-transparency-moderation-practices/ ”
Via https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/07/29/jim-jordan-opening-statement-on-big-tech-censorship/#comment-8550666
Interesting, if left to it’s own devices, chaos will self organize into it’s most effective form.
Just fascinating. The youtube channel JeffMAC picks up live feeds from the protest / riots and it is an “in the crowd” experience.
Right now doing Springfield Oregon.
Observations:
Crowd almost universally late teens / 20s.
Everybody has a grumpy to angry affect. Only happy when someone rages out and shouts or cussing.
Generally impresses me as classical losers.
What conversation is heard isn’t very content rich. Cussing, slogans. Hurtful remarks. Sniditude.
Lots of Soy Boys (though not all). Several “man buns”…
Lots of less than attractive women (though masks and anger color the appearance. )
Many (most?) Have a cell phone recording. Looking to find or make trouble.
I find it fascinating to be in the crowd but not part of it. An invisible observer.
Found another one: anteroslive.
The speaker rousing the crowd in Portland likes cussing a lot. F-bombs seem to be frequent for everyone, but his is very frequent.
Oh, new speaker. Classical socialist “we want free stuff for everyone to reach {utopian} ‘justice'”… and it’s all Trump’s fault.
“Residents are driving Black Lives Matter protesters out of Springfield, Oregon. ”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/07/30/it-begins/
E.M.Smith says: 30 July 2020 at 4:59 am
Is it good enough for identification and to take to court if necessary?
How they identified one bloke
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/07/29/all-kneel-before-the-awesome-power-of-4chan/
And links
@A.C.Osborn:
Many of them clearly are. But this event had not descended into violence (yet?).
Many without face masks. Many with identifiable clothing.
@Another Ian:
In the video I saw from the same event, it wasn’t so much locals driving them out as it was locals being pissed and agressive while others tried to prevent fighting. Police declared it an illegal assembly, and the organizers called for folks to end the event and go home.
The general point, though, that the ‘burbs are not an easy pushover, is valid. The Marxists encountered significant pushback and little local support.
It has been said elsewhere, but the point is valid. Out in the sticks, nature is wild and the people are tame. In the city, nature is tame and the people are wild. The suburbs are a mix. Some will be more like the city and others more like the sticks.
In other news:
Russia has sold S400 air defence systems to China… BUT just declined to send and install the actual missiles… claiming they don’t want to distract the PLA from Covid duties…. Yeah, right.
Putin also has deployed hypersonic nuclear capable missiles to their Pacific fleet. Nothing to do with China claiming historical rights to Vladivostok, lately, I’m sure…. /sarc;
@E.M. – China seems determined to piss off every country. They are working their way down the list.
Actually, to maintain power, it’s a tried and true strategy. The Dear Leader of whatever country has used that strategy doesn’t have a hard time getting the populace into a wartime mentality, willing to sacrifice greatly to maintain “our way of life.”
Defending the homeland against “all those countries who are against us and want to destroy us” is an easy way to get the country lined up solidly behind Dear Leader. Dear Leader just has to demonize the other countries, dehumanize the other countries’ soldiers and citizens, and Wham! Bam! Thank you ma’am! the populace is good to go.
Our SICs have been doing that to us in America for years while the GEBs make a tidy fortune by arming both sides.
A covid cartoon string starting here
https://www.redpowermagazine.com/forums/topic/128041-corona-virus/page/52/?tab=comments#comment-1455573
I made a donation to this Black reporter who was stabbed by an AF f***up. I feel that when needed, Black conservatives deserve our support, and I’m sure any help will be appreciated. This stabbing comes on the heels of the mugging of Michelle Malkin at a Back the Blue rally. It’s only a matter of time …
Black Rebel:
https://fundly.com/realblackrebel
Malkin:
https://www.unz.com/author/michelle-malkin/
Looks like a BUYCOTT opportunity!
But in a statement released this week, Trader Joe’s reversed course and defended its brands [emphasis added]:
In light of recent feedback and attention we’ve received about our product naming, we have some things we’d like to say to clarify our approach.
A few weeks ago, an online petition was launched calling on us to “remove racist packaging from [our] products.” Following were inaccurate reports that the petition prompted us to take action. We want to be clear: we disagree that any of these labels are racist. We do not make decisions based on petitions.
We make decisions based on what customers purchase, as well as the feedback we receive from our customers and Crew Members. If we feel there is need for change, we do not hesitate to take action.
[…]
Recently we have heard from many customers reaffirming that these name variations are largely viewed in exactly the way they were intended—as an attempt to have fun with our product marketing. We continue our ongoing evaluation, and those products that resonate with our customers and sell well will remain on our shelves.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/07/31/nolte-trader-joes-politely-tells-cancel-culture-to-shove-it/
I shop at Trader Joe’s, like their fun names (like using Trader Jose’s for their Mexican line), and would only NOT buy it if they go PC Woke on the whole thing.
I don’t see it as “racist” AT ALL , but rather inclusive of and embracing an ethnicity.
I grew up half my time in a Mexican household (who, BTW, gave me a sombrero, so anyone complaining if I wear one can go pound sand up their =÷×% €=.) IMHO what IS racist is to demand the extermination of ethnic folks on product lables and in media. Gone With The Wind- 1st Black Oscar. Song Of The South? Big Black cast who might want some royalties. Trader Jose’s makes me feel like I’m back with Miguel, Jose, and Cuco in the kitchen again. Think Jose minded being called Jose? NO WAY.
Oh, and Aunt Jemima was a real person who made a success of it by creating and selling her mix. So just how is exterminating a Black Success Story a good thing? To me, erasing her success and name is what’s racist.
I’ve heard it said that the folks doing this are the racists, just they feel guilty about their cushy lives. I agree with that. Erasing minorities from their view lets them feel less guily about being a closet racist.
Heeere it comes! Finally, one worth our attention here in East-Central Florida.
There was recent talk by naysaying weatherpersons, that disruptive strong highs or fronts hanging out around Santo Domingo & Cuba would keep Isaias limited to a mere ‘tropical storm’. Uh, huh.
Sooo, a hurricane-hunter‘s report just before midnight earned Isaias earned its promotion to ‘hurricane’ [✈]. NHC updated its ‘cone’ image, but I can’t show the exact one released at that time, because it’s autoüpdated on reload from their site (regardless of apparent time-specificity of URL) [🌀].
——–
Note ✈ : National Hurricane Center. 1140 PM EDT Thu Jul 30 2020. https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2020/al09/al092020.update.07310339.shtml?.
Note 🌀 :
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2020/ISAIAS_graphics.php?product=5day_cone_with_line_and_wind. I can’t show readers the exact image released at midnight, because it’s autoüpdated on reload from the NHC site (regardless of apparent time-specificity of URL, e.g.: https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at4+shtml/175432.shtml?cone#contents).
Gator, a weaker system will shift the track West. Looking at the modeling today, we should see that shift on the news later tonight. Latest ECMWF run (12z) shows the system coming into W Palm tomorrow night and exiting near Jax on Monday. I am just passing on what I see in the various modeling, not trying to forecast anything.
Here is a twitter feed that shows what I referenced.
https://mobile.twitter.com/DylanFedericoWX/status/1289263323590975490?cxt=HHwWgMCmtZHMseQjAAAA
“Jim Jordan Corners Fauci”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/07/31/jim-jordan-corners-fauci/#comment-1341976
This will go over a treat I’m guessing!
“Individuals with a cervix & gentlemen, could we have your attention please.”
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2020/07/individuals-with-a-cervix-gentlemen-could-we-have-your-attention-please.html
“Briefings Continue….”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/07/31/briefings-continue/#more-197372
@ossqss: Jax, huh? Got a TV weatherman named Corey Simma in the viewing area?
Sorry, a Florida thing to conserve discussion energy via pixels and keystrokes. They always said, work smart not hard. It is also the name of the airport for, well, planes to land in JAX ::-)
Jacksonville, Florida
Don’t drop your guard
“Three quarters of mild to moderate Covid illnesses show heart damage”
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/08/three-quarters-of-covid-mild-illnesses-show-heart-damage/
” Aunt Jemima was a real person who made a success of it”
Chef Boyardee. Famous Amos. Nathan (Franks), (Orange) Julius. Five (no-name) Guys. Colonel Sanders. There were actual “McDonalds” before Kroc brought and expanded the concept.
The EXPECTATION that a real person, some “John Galt” like figure is the fountainhead of a new idea or product, is so much a part of our culture that when the heroic origin doesn’t exist, it’s (or he or she is) invented. Mavis Beacon. Mrs Butterworth. Buster Brown. Betty Crocker. Joe Izuzu….
@Pouncer:
Looks like I was captured by a partial history. There was a real person who did the promotion, but didn’t make the product:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Green
So there was a real person, but playing a role. Did it well enough to sell it.
Chef Boyardee and Col. Sanders were real.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ettore_Boiardi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Sanders
As is Famos Amos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wally_Amos
I’d heard a radio news report that the Green family was unhappy with eliminating Aunt Jimima as she was their ancestor and was the real first Aunt Jimima who made the brand. Coupled with old memories of an Aunt Jimima person hawking the mix at fairs and such was enough to conjoin the two as “real”. Ought to have checked. Yes, she was real as the family said, but as a “living trademark” not a mix creator.
Looks like Uncle Ben is similarly based on two real people, not the creator of the process:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Ben%27s
So one guy for the image, another as rice grower.
Bob Evans and Jimmy Dean – Started with sausage and branched out from there.
Jimmy Dean was a singer – popular at our house – and got into the sausage biz, probably for cash flow and something that would continue to produce income after his popularity waned. That happens to most entertainers, eventually.
At our house it was “What the heck is he doing in the sausage biz?!? He’s a wonderful singer.” Yup. His popularity as a singer dropped off, but the sausage biz took off. Made more on ground up piggies than he ever would have made in showbiz.
Bob Evans was a hog farmer who made a wonderful sausage, sold it from his farm and drove around his region selling it door-to-door. He had a 12-seat diner. His brother, Dan, was the brains of the bunch and was the force behind the growth of Bob Evans sausage and restaurants. Dan was the longtime CEO of Bob Evans. Bob really did like making, selling, and proselytizing converts to his excellent sausages. He was very friendly, personable, and persuasive, but it was really Dan Evans who took it all to the next (and the next, and the next) level.
Oh, there’s Cheryl’s cookies. There really is a Cheryl who started that line of cookies.
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This is an interesting and fun topic.
There are a whole bunch of ‘Mrs. This’ and ‘Uncle That’ food products. A lot of the products are represented by made up people to use the home cookin’ hook to generate the “always the best… whatever… at the church pot luck” image.
Then there are those real people who made something soooo good and everybody said, “This is the best I’ve ever had. You should be selling this!” So they did.
OTOH, Any food item called Billy Bob’s I consider suspect.
The Compu Gator abalone series, despite starting on 1 August, was posted, according to long-established Internet ‘reply’ conventions, in what is now the previous “W.O.O.D.”:
(I ask readers’ forbearance for this back-link, as a concession to my declining memory: In a few months, I’ll certainly remember the date of my posting, but I’m likely to have forgotten that the “W.O.O.D.” of 28 May is where I posted it.)
Spacex Dragon return starting now, departure in about 2 hours.
Is anyone else following this story about expansionist China troop movements in the Aksai China area of what used to be Tibet ?
https://www.news.com.au/world/asia/china-caught-stockpiling-military-equipment-on-india-border-amid-tension/news-story/a6a1878f2c20994dc6365ac24da4ba84
Just one more example o CCP China being aggressive towards it’s neighbours.
No idea what it might mean to Fox-Watchers et al but just come up here that James Murdoch has quit the News Corp board.
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt
will bring up headlines, then might be paywalled
@billinoz – I’ve not followed any of the CCP sabre rattling in depth, but it has been registering with me that China is poking and prodding a whole bunch of countries in a lot of different places.
An army marches on its stomach. Wars are won by logistics more so than soldiers. The fact that there is a looming famine from internal crop failures (rain, locusts) and they are running out of money (Wu Flu trade disruption, tariffs, sanctions) to buy surplus food from other countries makes China seem more and more danger dangerous, in my view.
A starving man with a starving family will get a gun and do whatever needs to be done to get food for himself and his family. I don’t think China is at that point, but perhaps could get to that point.
I also pointed out elsewhere that I believe Xi and the CCP are making war noises to keep themselves in power. People tend to fall in behind the leader during times of war. Right now, Xi’s leadership is starting to come into question, so I’m a bit worried that one of their many skirmishes may turn into an Archduke Ferdinand-type situation.
About one hour to descent burn, 2 hours to splashdown
@H.R.:
China has a history of kicking up external trouble to mask internal failures. So expect internal propaganda saying things like the USA breached the food deal contract and Australia became beligerant so their barley was at risk of sabotage and more.
I.e. not the fault of the CCP or Xi…
If it gets really bad, China will attack India, claim self defense, and declare a national emergency due to those evil untrustworthy Indian politicians and military.
Splash down! Thd USA has returned to manned spaceflights with our own equipment.
“A favourite lie of the environmental movement takes another blow”
“As our paper showed, however, the post-war science that led to the LNT model’s acceptance was at best plain wrong and potentially even fraudulent.”
Sounds like another bloody “cholesterol” coming up
Re China/India
Back in my emails is a link to an analysis on this. I’ll see if I can find it – later.
Concludes that while China has a lot more “stuff” than India it is in the wrong place for that dust-up.
And comments
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/08/02/when-the-fbi-does-it-that-means-that-its-not-illegal-166/#comment-1342440
I say “[bleep!]” the condescending direction from the “mainstream media” on how we deplorables should pronounce the name of Isaias-formerly-known-as-a-Hurricane, which is due E. off Orlando raht now:
Sooo, the language-majority in the Continental U.S.A., i.e., native speakers of English, many of whom opened an Old Testament for their first time decades ago, and have continued to do so countless times since then, are expected to change their pronunciation of the name of perhaps the greatest prophet in the O.T., all because some faceless globalist-multiculturalist weathercrats say we must? “It’s standard!“ Really, now? That’s not how we pronounce its written name around here–the state off whose coast the former hurricane is whirling right now!
So we in the U.S.A. near the path of this hurricane must pander to the pride of distant foreigners who inhabit other hemispheres, and are nowhere near the track of this hurricane? Because it’s mostly Argentinans who happen to name their infants after major prophets in the Old-Testament, and that somehow gives them world-wide ‘dibs’ on the pronunciation? To Hey-ell with that!
Yet the credited “Multimedia Producer” author didn’t dig any deeper. Did she dig enough to satisfy herself? There wouldn’t be a weee bit of her cultural biases [🌴] mixed into her linguistic ignorance, would there?
In point of fact, “Isaias” is exactly the spelling that’s attested in St. Jerome‘s Biblia Vulgata [✞]. It’s It’s not merely “Latin American“; it’s honest-to-God Latin, yall! Roman Empire, roads, legions, gladiators, &cetera. Jerome would’ve gotten it from his original translation of Hebrew documents, completed in A.D. 405 [#]. His Latin spelling is consistent with the Greek spelling «῾Ησαΐας» [✡] (or less meticulously as «Ησαιας»), then pronounced something like English “Hā-să-yē’-ăs” (or “Ā-sī-ăs”) in the preChristian Septuagint Old Testament (a.k.a. LXX) [#]. It seems to me that the name in the Vulgate is now pronounced by English-speakers for Latin contexts more-or-less as English “Ē-sī’-yăs“. English-speaking Protestants follow whatever translation into Early-Modern English established their spelling “Isaiah ” [❀], and pronounce it as “Eye-say’-yăh”.
Nooo, the name does not mean a day-yamn thing in LXX Greek, nor in its corresponding Latin. So certainly not anything in its barbarized descendant languages Spanish or Portuguese. It has the claimed meaning only in Hebrew: “ ישׁעיהוּ ” (i.e., yod shin-with-shin-dot ayin yod he shuruk). I’m no expert, but I’ll dare to guess a pronunciation something like 4-or-5-syllables for the Hebrew: “Yə-shæ-(ə)-yɑ-hū” [✡]. Which for what it’s worth, more-or-less agrees with Wikipedia‘s “Yəshạʻyā́hû” [✡✡].
Sooo, ought we knuckle under to globalist-multiculturalist “ees-ah-EE-ahs” here in Florida? Not no way, not no how!
——–
Note × : “Tropical Storm Isaias forms–here’s how to pronounce it”.
By Gabriella Nuñez, Multimedia Producer. Published: July 29, 2020, 2:25 pm. Updated: July 30, 2020, 7:09 am.
https://www.clickorlando.com/features/2020/07/29/system-in-tropics-likely-to-become-isaias-heres-how-to-pronounce-it/. This silly “ClickOrlando.com” site-name is the Internet home of the long-established local-t.v. channel 6 (1954), owned by the (Katharine Meyer) Graham Media Group, whose flagship property was once the Washington Post.
Note 🌴 : Named “Nuñez” and from Miami? A reader need not be a fellow grad of the U. of Florida to confidently draw a conclusion about her ethnicity. Hint: It’s almost certainly a specific island in the Caribbean that’s remembered for the Maine.
Note ✞: It’s awfully tempting, nowadays, to translate Latin Biblia Vulgata as “Bible of the Deplorables“. More literally, the title’s easily misunderstood word, a participle of the verb vulg·o, -are, simply means “common”, e.g., in knowledge or usage (altho’ it can indicate the “common people” among the empire’s class-structure). The New World, the “Deplorables”, and their Walmarts would be a millennium and more in the future. Despite his scholarly talents, in translating from the Greek or Hebrew manuscripts available to him (A.D. 390–405), Jerome kept his Latin simple, to assist readers with only elementary literacy. “St. Jerome”. By Louis Saltet (1910). The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 8. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08341a.htm. How can anybody possibly call anyone’s expression of Latin “simple”? Wellllll, there was until recently the U.S. priest Reginald Foster, who was praised for his results as a teacher of Latin in Rome; he famously challenged his classes full of seminarians: “If even the dogs, prostitutes and bums in ancient Rome understood Latin, then maybe there’s some hope for us.” [✶]
Note ✶: Reginald “Reggie” Foster, O.C.D. (1939–), where “O.C.D. is the Order of Discalced Carmelites”, literally Carmelites without footwear. He was born in Milwaukee into a family of plumbers! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Foster_(Latinist). Dang! The leftists of Wikipedia allowed him a Web page!?
Note # : “Versions of the Bible”. By Anthony Maas. The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15367a.htm. Not even modern Jewish archivists have Hebrew manuscripts that are are older than those which would’ve been available for Jerome to study. The Massoretes didn’t begin their efforts until the A.D. 6th Century.
Note ❀ : William Tyndale, Miles Coverdale, or the “Authorized Version” (1611), whatevah! I’ll leave it to Protestants herein to sort ’em out.
Note ✡ : I used a version of the hardcopy bilingual dictionary (focused on Biblical or ancient Hebrew) by Gesenius (its English is a later translation from the German of Gesenius).
Note ✡✡ : Most readers herein will probably want on-line sources, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah; the pronunciation is isolated in(to) its “note a”. The “š” in Wikipedia is simply the Romanized-Slavic spelling of E.-Europe for “sh”, into which I transliterated it above. The ‘ ʻ ’ that’s shown 2 characters later is typewriter-era technology for transliterating the Semitic consonant ayin (‘ ע ’); I’ve read descriptions which claim that it sounded anciently like a sort of strangled gasp, but later a glottal stop; or it can be transcribed as the short vowel ‘e’ [✡]. Inexplicably, the article in the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1906, as hosted on line, fails to show the spelling in Hebrew: “ISAIAH”. By Emil G. Hirsch, Thomas Kelly Cheyne, Isidore Singer, Isaac Broydé. http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/8235-isaiah.
@Jim2 & EM – I am with EM on this. We got one here in this berg and I am now a customer. It is not racist to convert your name to another language! Hell, that is why my wife calls me by my middle name (2nd Generation Mexican) as my first name in Spanish sounds like a Burt Reynolds/Dolly Parton movie! I have known that since I took Spanish in the 5th grade back in 19XX (tough! Not telling you my age).
One of my favorite movies is “Duck You Sucker” (or its alternate name – “Fistful of Dynamite”). Rod Steiger plays Juan Miranda – a Mexican Bandit (he would be crucified today). Who teams up with an IRA veteran – James Coburn (Sean Mallory, or the anglicized, John Mallory). Juan comments how they have the same name! (If you have not seen it, it is a spaghetti western, but really the best one ever made – I highly recommend it).
Now that Trader Joe has told the cancel culture to shove it (as if they ever patronized the stores), I will proudly support them!
ANd I love Goya beans! Salsa picante is not bad, but the Spain influence shows.
You mean the lily white SJW snowflakes calling black cops N word are racist? I am shocked I tell you! Shocked!
You have seen the video (I think I posted on another thread):
The democrats used the KKK for 100 years to keep blacks down. Now they are using the Woke culture to do the same. As I have said, the racism has not changed, only the tactics.
Sorry EM, unless you can use a source other than Wiki, I will not believe it. Wiki is useless as a source as they are too political.
@HR – Jimmy Dean owned a large farm on the James river, here in Henrico county. I met him once at a fund raiser (I was working the craps table). His wife, Donna Meade, went to Varina High School the same year as my secretary (she was my secretary in the 90s when I worked for the school system). So I did not mention that to his wife when I met him (my secretary did not have nice things to say about her, but then I found out, she did not have nice things to say about many people).
The picture you see of him in the commercial is the Plum version. I met him when him when he was the Prune version. But still a very nice Gentleman. And always smiling! Donna was about 20 years his junior. But it was not a trophy bride, but real love.
philjourdan says: @Jim2 & EM – I am with EM on this.
I am with EM on this, too! I said BUYcott. Not BOYcott!!
@BillinOz – India just sent another 30k troops to the shared border. It looks like China is going through an internal strife period (mostly due to Corona, but also now due to boycotts), so has to create external enemies to unite the people to a common goal (Vladivostok, Nepal, TIbet, India, etc.). They have a powerful ally – US democrats. That is because Biden is the Manchurian Candidate.
@jim2 – My apologies. I meant I was with EM on it NOT being racist. I am sure you feel the same in that regard as well. I was including you as being part of the BUYcott. But EM then talked about what is and is not racism.
So sorry, I was not clearer.
And for all (and that includes the Serioso) who are interested, my definition of racism is Woke.
They are repeating the same things the KKK said 70 years ago. Welcome to the new racism, the same as the old racism, but by a different name.
ARE WE INCREASING THE CO2 LEVEL IN THE ATMOSPHERE ?
Some folks believe this implicitly. But what does the scientific evidence show ?
In Australia BOM & CSIRO measure the CO 2 concentration in the atmosphere at isolated Cape Grimm in North West Tasmania. Below is a link to the CSIRO & BOM’s CO2 measurements going back to the 1970’s.
And I’ve been wondering about the Cape Grimm CO2 data for a while. Would Cape Grimm ‘show’ the huge global Covid 19 shut down/lock down that started in March 2020 ?
The global shut down reduced human CO2 emissions drastically. People stopped using their cars. Industry stopped burning coal. And this global shut down is continuing in many parts of the world as of today the 3/8/2020.( Eg, The USA, Europe, India, Brazil, Argentina, Spain, Russia. )
But the period from March 2020 to June 2020 shows no reduction in CO2 in the atmosphere – despite the global economy virtually shutting down for three months. CO2 levels have increased from 408.3 on the 15th of February to 409.5 on the 15th of June.
HOW CAN THIS BE SO ?
It is a huge big “Black Swan” ! In fact it disproves the whole idea that humans are causing the CO2 levels to increase.
Conclusion : increases in CO2 in the atmosphere must be happening for other reasons.
( PS : Unfortunately CSIRO & BOM are only showing their measurements of CO2 at Cape Grim up to the 15th of June 2020.No July data yet !)
https://www.csiro.au/en/Research/OandA/Areas/Assessing-our-climate/Latest-greenhouse-gas-data
The latest greenhouse gas (GHG) data updated monthly from one of the cleanest air sources in the world.
@Another Ian:
The border between India and the north is one of the highest most difficult mountain ranges in the world. A natural border. Very hard for anyone to attack through. Narrow passes after a hill climb on land, with long logistics. Too high an altitude for helicopters to work well. Modern jets can now fly it, but only so much you can do by air. For China, they get to deal with that after crossing a desert from their main population areas on the coast.
@Trader Joe’s:
Every Friday we go to the same place about the same time. That Trader Joes usually has a line about 6 to 12 long outside. This week, only one only sometimes. So, OK, I’m in for the bUycot.
Bought extra this trip. More in the next one. This is near / in Asia leaning very “progressive” Cupertino (of Apple H.Q. fame) on the border of Saratoga (very expensive fru fru progressive) so likely as bad as it gets. They were still doing a descent business. Not sure exactly what city it is officially in, but doesn’t matter.
@Bill In Oz:
Interesting idea, that….
@Compugator:
I was wondering about the strange name…. figured it would be gone soon so just ignore it ;-)
I did a deep dive on bibles and their languages once. Found out both Latin and Greek had several versions not entirely mutually intelligible. Then there was EVERY SINGLE LANGUAGE I’ve ever looked into has sound shifts over time, multiple dialects, regional variations, and many are sprachtbunds.
So my answer to anyone telling me there’s one particular approved way to spell or pronounce is to blow a raspberry at them and ask if they get the pointe? Haye thee reade Chaucer? An di’thy ken it? A drouth a wourds th’n followes.
(Between my English Mum, Iowa Amish Irish Dad, local Californian dialect, and Texas inlaws: almost no words sound the same.)
@PhilJourdan:
I use them on non political things where the information is clearly correct for the reason that I avoid copyright issues. This will not change.
No, I don’t like them. But as a blog operator and non-PC, I must watch out for “attack surfaces” attractive to CancelKulture Trolls.
If you can’t be bothered to check for yourself, here’s a place with the “right” bias:
https://www.breitbart.com/social-justice/2020/06/17/nancy-green-freed-slave-and-trailblazing-corporate-model-was-1st-aunt-jemima/
I guess E.M. is leaving before it is compulsory?
Link at
“O, Sweet Saint Of San Andreas: Hear my prayer.”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/08/03/o-sweet-saint-of-san-andreas-76/
E.M.
I found that India-China email but I can’t see how to get at it on the net to forward a link
Makes the point that most of China’s resources are aimed elsewhere.
So email pruned and forwarded just now – FWIW
@phil,
Well, I’ve said PC is just the son of ol’ Jim Crow. So is ‘woke’ or ‘cancel culture’; and I agree that Antifa is not against fascism other than being pro-communist and anti-everything else. BLM likewise is the son of the KKK.
Some things will never change. That’s just the way it is.
cdquarles
More “badge engineering” then
:Every Silicon Valley company right now”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/08/03/silicon-valley-2020/
“Status Update – DOJ/FBI Investigative Research on The Road…”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/08/03/status-update-doj-fbi-investigative-research-on-the-road/#more-197428
@EM – I already knew the back story, as I had already researched it. I was merely cautioning on using WIki for anything other than bits and bytes and even then to be suspect.
As I stated above, welcome to Woke culture. Same as the KKK culture, only under a different name. Democrat rebranding.
@CD – You got an amen from me.
Silent No More! Back the Blue!!!
https://www.actforamerica.org/activism/back-the-blue
Sounds a good word to have in the vocabulary
“ultracrepidarian”
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/ultracrepidarian
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-personal-defense-rifle-few-thoughts.html
An interview of Victor Davis Hanson;
always a wise point of view…pg
Looks like a huge explosion went off in Lebanon. Beruit? Couple of city blocks worth. Perhaps a ship at the docks (cranes foreground water behind).
UPDATE:
Bloomberg says Lebanese Media attributes it to a “fireworks depot”,… because, you know, The 4th Of July is so big there….
I’d thought “Duncan Hines” bakery products were like Hewlitt Packard computers. But I was wrong. ( happens a lot ) Duncan Hines was one guy, a real life baker and restaurant critic.
Makes me wonder how much the tech industry would differ today if the Ford, Singer, Penneys, John Deere model had been applied. Wozniak Computers? Zuckerberg Virtual Communities? Brin Websearching? Would “Don’t Be Evil” be taken any more seriously if the name your father gave you that you hope to pass to your children was, you know, Out There.
Technical note on the proper technique for the deployment of pepper balls:
[video src="https://video.parler.com/C1/ie/C1ie7wbXrnKU.mp4" /]
Some more on Beruit
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/08/04/beirut-port-explosion/
The red smoke is indicative of an nitrate-based explosive. Not grain dust by a long shot.
In recent years, the toxic fumes generated by explosives have been a concern of blasters, explosive manufacturers, and mining companies. In the western U.S., blasters have been looking for ways to control the generation of NO2, a very toxic gas that can be produced by large blasts at surface coal mines. Cast blasts, some employing as much as nine hundred thousand kg (two million lb) of explosive, may generate reddish-orange product clouds. The color is due to the NO2 in the cloud (Turcotte, Yang, Lee, Short, and Shomaker, 2002).
Click to access bonoi.pdf
@Another Ian
Bonus points: “ultracrepidarian”
Big Shit Oh Crap Based upon available evidence, the Israelis found some bad stuff,
I was fat and happy in North Carolina thinking no city leader here would ever fail to support the police and federal law enforcement.
How wrong I was. We have wobbly leadership in Raleigh, Greensboro and several other cities. Usually the problem is at mayoral level but we also have some wimpy sheriffs.
This is not the first time I thought about buying a hand gun but this time I am likely to act. Given my age I can no longer handle a single action revolver like my UK army standard issue Webley 38. I need something with stopping power that is easier for an arthritis sufferer to aim and fire. Any ideas?
@GC, ya might look at some compact or subcompact 9mm or a 380. They are fairly easy to shoot and not too big or heavy. I have the Glock 19 in that category. 9mm with 15 rounds that is pretty painless and smallerish.
@GC (& Ossqss, who is right on)
Mrs. H.R. had a stroke and it was a few years after that we decided to get our concealed carry permits. I wanted to get one and start carrying because her limp/weakness made her look like an easy target, and I wanted a permit because my night catfishing put me out there all alone in the wee hours of the morning with some sketchy characters who would pop up from time to time.
Training for defense and concealed carry was an eye opener. I was a life-long shooter and Mrs. H.R. grew up shooting as well (she’s a better shot than me).
But we learned that target and hunting shooting was a whole ‘nother ball of wax from self defense, particularly the legal aspects, which vary from State to State. So I’d recommend a class or two before or after you buy if nothing but for the coaching on legalities.
That said, Mrs. H.R. has a weak left hand and left side from the stroke. She is comfortable with revolvers, which don’t require racking a slide. But she wanted a semi-auto for capacity and compact size, so she settled in on a compact Sig Sauer .380. It was easy to rack the slide with her weak left hand (she shoots right handed).
They run $500 to $600 (and up) but are worth every penny. It is a top quality firearm. They are a joy to shoot, deadly accurate, easily concealable, and very reliable. We’ve had no jambs or misfires ever.
Check out a Sig Sauer .380. You can probably rent one at the range so you can try before you buy.
You might also look into a Walther 9mm or .380. Top quality, they shoot well, they have a few no-snag models for drawing from concealment, and they are very accurate as well.
That’s all I have for suggestions. That’s what I’ve personally shot and can endorse. There are other good ones that you may like better. Go to a range with rentals so you can try before you buy.
And get training, or read up hard and carefully, particularly the legal aspects that will apply to your situation. State and local regulations vary a lot, so you will want to know what applies in your neck of the woods and the places you may frequent.
“NEW LIGHT ON BENGHAZI BLUNDER”
https://richardsonpost.com/harryrichardson/17936/new-light-on-benghazi-blunder/
Lots of links
And what’s the betting Snopes has this as “untrue”
@ossqss & H.R.,
Thanks for those suggestions. Before making a decision I will take the recommended training courses. No doubt there will be opportunities to try out the weapons you suggest before buying,
Most of my experience is with rifles (Lee Enfield Mk III and various 0.22 rifles), machine guns (Sten, Bren & Browning .300 belt fed) and 85 mm (aka 25 pounder). Hand guns are completely different so it will be like starting from scratch.
G.C. – I’d suggest looking at https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2015/05/family-defensive-firearms.html since Peter Grant has more articles on shooting than you can shake a stick at, and seems to know what he’s talking about. Articles about guns start quite a way down the right-hand side, but there are many of them. It seems that even the modern air pistols can have sufficient lethality to be useful, with lower recoil.
Maybe quite important is the shortage of supply of weapons and ammo at the moment, because a lot of people are realising that it might be necessary pretty soon. You may need to rush the decision on what to get while you still can, or to buy something non-ideal because that’s all that is available (and maybe hope to get something better when it turns up).
@Simon Derricutt – You bring up an important point regarding the current shortage of firearms and ammunition.
E.M. recently wrote a nice article on cartridge length as it relates to barrel length and getting all the energy possible out of a cartridge.
Part of the discussion in comments was that even if the cartridge/caliber/barrel length combination is not ideal, most people really don’t like getting shot and they don’t care that it wasn’t ideal. What; are they going to complain that you didn’t put a top quality hole in them? :o)
So your advice to get something, anything, if there is an acute shortage is pretty good. Even something far less than ideal is better than nothing at all.
H.R. – luckily it appears I won’t need to get any firearms here, and there are enough lethal farm implements just outside the door (and a few inside) that I feel I could cope with any normal problem. Since I’m also out in the sticks anyway, in an area where the worst crime is normally double-parking, I don’t see the need for a firearm. My brother left a crossbow here that hasn’t even been assembled yet, which would be OK for hunting if required in an EOTWAWKI situation. There are deer around here (and deer-sized animals…). I could always make a decent rail-gun anyway.
You’re right – making a perfect hole in someone isn’t critical, since any hole will act as a deterrent. For GC, maybe a bit of special needs for his wife, but if things get that bad then providing the recoil doesn’t hurt her too much to get a second or third shot in then it’s *good enough*. Maybe the first thing to check on is what ammo is actually available, and to buy a stock of that because guns to use that will probably be easier to get than something that uses a special load. Still, I have no expertise in this at all, so need to point at other people to give good advice. I’d think that pointing any gun at someone would act as a deterrent, even if it’s only a .22 air pistol. If you do have to fire it, though, you want it to hurt enough to actually stop someone, and that may need a heavier bullet even if it’s slower. It’s still going to be faster than they can run.
With a bit of luck, it will never be fired in anger. The main thing is after all not being where the problem will be. However, that’s sometimes not predictable (a friend of mine missed the Hungerford massacre by around 30 minutes, and I’ve been a couple of handshakes away from a lot of the disasters over the years) so better to have the stuff even if it’s not actually used. If I lived in the States, I’d likely have bought a gun and have practised hitting what I wanted.
An interesting idea – cheap, daily, at home testing for Covid-19. Decide weather to go out or stay home. Live talk today at 3 pm est. on MedCram.
Q/A on How to Fix COVID-19 Testing with Dr. Mina: Cheap, At Home, Rapid Antigen Tests
Swamp stirrings
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/08/05/when-the-fbi-does-it-that-means-that-its-not-illegal-167/
CTH on that
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/08/05/sally-yates-testifies-to-senate-judiciary-main-justice-deflects-pointing-fingers-at-fbi/
@G.C.:
You didn’t state just which mode caused a single action army revolver to not work for you now.
Recoil? A heavy gun with modest cartridge of low recoil. Ruger full sized revolver with .38 special.
Grip holding a heavy gun? Glock light weight with 9mm regular loads.
Grip / manipulation (fingers) to handle gun & rounds in loading or rack pistol slide? Several choices from Beretra tip up barrel semiautomatic with no need to rack the slide to a light weight .410 pump shotgun with slugs (just shove rounds in the loading gate and rack the big grip on the slide)
https://www.guns.com/news/2013/03/14/baby-berettas-a-tale-of-tip-up-barrels
I have a Beretta Tomcat in .32 ACP. With specific ammo (Winchester Silvertips or Hornady equivalent) it is just enough gun. No need to rack the slide (just a small button then press the barrel back down). At one time they made a 380 ACP but they are now hard to find.
A .410 shotgun with buck or slug is also enough gun, but capacity will be about 4 rounds then you get to use a pocket full and shove them in the loading port. A 20 gauge would be better but starts to be heavy and kick more.
My Ruger Security Six .357 Magnum with .38 Special is a bit heavy, but easy to load and near no recoil.
So it depends on what part hurts. Fingers, elbow, shoulder, everything….
Oh, and if everything hurts, get a Ruger 10/22 rifle, high capacity 25 rd magazine (or several 10s if in a PC State) and folding stock. Short enough and light weight. No recoil. Easy loading. And a half dozen or 2 of high power .22 LR rounds will stop most folks…
One Shot Stop isn’t very important when you hit with a dozen….
https://www.ruger.com/products/1022/overview.html
https://www.guns.com/news/2020/01/10/new-side-folding-stocks-for-the-ruger-10-22-and-mini-14-rifles
https://farrow.tech/ruger-22-charger-side-folding-brace-adapter/
And many more…
Ha! I thought I was the only one who had a Security 6. Love that gun. Got it from a friend who needed the cash more than 30 years ago. Most accurate pistol I own past 30′. 357 loads will bite you though :-)
On the use of proper etiquette when dealing with Antifa …
[video src="https://video.parler.com/1R/gW/1RgWYmuCvLy8.mp4" /]
Jim2:
I tried to do the URL unadorned and it still added the crap…
[video src="https://video.parler.com/1R/gW/1RgWYmuCvLy8.mp4" /]
Well worth the watching ;-)
When I copy it, it looks like a “plain” url, but then when pasted, get all the additional adornment.
It is something WordPress is doing at display time. When I edit the comnent, the adornment is not in the text of the comment as posted.
https://blog.cheaperthandirt.com/top-5-small-carry-choices-arthritic-hands/
And comments.
https://www.nrafamily.org/articles/2020/4/28/7-pistol-shooting-tips-for-people-with-arthritis/
https://www.glocktalk.com/threads/best-handgun-for-arthritis-suffers.1658286/
https://www.backwoodshome.com/blogs/MassadAyoob/arthritis-and-the-shooter/
Several folks talk about a Colt 1911 but in 9mm having a light slide racking force. Also many 380 guns from different makers with easy slide pull.
I’ve not bought a new gun in a while, so the discussion of “the new crop of 380s” with easy slides, in the last link, was news to me. Might want to visit a gun store and handle some 380s (9mm short / kurtz/ corto)… if you can find a gun store with inventory….
Looks like Mossberg makes a short barrel .410 shotgun with 6 round capacity for home defense.
https://www.range365.com/410-as-home-defense-shotgun/
Comments indicate it works for folks who don’t want kick and has large grip surfaces.
A local weatherman is pulling info from this science hack page. His pick was that there will be more potent and larger poison ivy plants due to CO2 and more ticks. What about more corn and wheat? Idiot.
https://www.climatecentral.org/
Since you brought it up, jim2 ;o) this year looks really good for corn and beans around here.
Most fields have been planted in Winter wheat, which was harvested a couple of weeks ago, and beans. They are looking really good. For some reason, both last year and this year, cornfields are a scarce commodity. Are the subsidies lapsing on ethanol or something like that? The few corn plantings I’ve seen are doing great, though.
Instead of last year’s river of rain, the pattern this year has been 2-3 days of showers with only a few downpours. Then there’s 3-5 days of sun or partly cloudy in between the rains.
It’s been a great growing season around here.
Oh, and regardless of CO2 levels, the poison ivy around my place still doesn’t seem to like Roundup. Funny that.
Willis E in good form
https://rosebyanyothernameblog.wordpress.com/
@Another Ian:
6 months from now the general top link to the site will not point at your desired posting. Is it this one?
E.M.Smith replied 3 August 2020 at 6:24 am GMT:
I use [Wikipedia] on non political things where the information is clearly correct ⟨,⟩
Wikipedia [*] articles are also worth citing because they typically provide footnotes and a list of sources, from which skeptical or distrustful readers can often (or at least sometimes) find more acceptable Web-accessible sources. Maybe not literally “trustworthy“, but at least with well-defined biases whose relevance can be evaluated for a reader’s search for info [×].
If one knows where to look, even Wikipedia & Wikimedia confess that they do not occupy the pioneering place in compuhistory that the masses assume they have:
——-
Note *: “Wiki” is a software technology invented in 1995 by Ward Cunningham [**]. Contrary to common misuse, those 4 letters are not a proper abbreviation for “Wikipedia” [†], with which Cunningham was never involved. The name he gave to his ground-breaking wiki implementation was “WikiWikiWeb” [♦]. So let’s give some respect to the inventor of the technology. And no, the common misuse is not at all in the same category as “Kleenex” vs. “tissue paper”, in which a leading brand-name replaces a generic name, i.e.: “wiki” is not a brand name.
Note **: Yet another denizen of Silicon Valley? Nope: A native of Indiana with a 1978 master’s degree in E.E. or Comp. Sci. from Purdue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham.
Note †: http://wiki.c2.com/?WikipediaIsNotWiki, aside from its obvious advice, contains extensive disparagement of Wikipedia as a bonus, from a site that ought to know. See also http://wiki.c2.com/?WikiIsNotWikipedia.
Note ♦: Still on line: http://wiki.c2.com/ (where “c2” refers to the inventor’s business Cunningham & Cunningham). Even Wikipedia itself concedes that “a convention established among users of the early network of wiki sites that followed was that using the word with a capitalized W referred exclusively to the original site.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiWikiWeb.
Note ×: E.g.: Smithsonian Mag.’s promotion of AGW & imminent coastal-inundation-disaster propaganda, which is irrelevant to their accounts of other topics, e.g., W.W.-II or Cold-War weapons development (the 60th anniversary of a long-secret Soviet rocketry disaster arrives in 2½ months).
Ditto. And this time I am not thinking, but doing.
@galloping camel (sorry, I replied to his post, but know how it does not get connected).
@PhilJourdan:
If what you mean is you are in the market for firepower, I’m sure many here can give pointers to what’s decent and what to avoid. I know I shelled out a few $Thousand trying ideas that eventually didn’t quite pan out.
So some idea what you want and what limitations you have, and I suspect some suggestions of best fit for least $$$ can be had.
There’s endless crap in the ‘Gun Magazines” and forums about best this and most that. A lot of it is to generate traffic, not solutions. But that said, I’ve read reams of it, bought $Thousands of it, and then shot it. Reality diverges….
FWIW, my favourite handguns are CZ 75 / 85 (right handed / ambi), a Sig in ..357 / .40 S&W with a bbl change, and a Ruger revolver. (Single Six with .357 / 9mm cylinder swaps). My favourite long guns: A Marlin lever gun in .357 with scope, and a Russian SKS Carbine (for very different reasons). Then, for shotguns, a nice pump in 18.5 inch bbl and long magazine… with an interchangeable rifled bbl of 27 inches (special end cap for the long magazine) and a bird barrel. Then, for just plinking, a .22 LR rifle. Ruger 10/22 or my Winchester from about 60 years ago…
What all of these have in common is that they “Just work”. Every Damn Time.
I’m also very fond of my tip-up bbl Berrettas, my single shots, my double bbl 12 gauge, the 1911, my Security Six, the Ruger Mk II, etc. etc. But some others that tended to jam or have “issues” were not of interest after a few range sessions. They’ve now “moved along”. Yet none of them is quite up with my favourites. FWIW, I have a weakness for Walther PP and knock offs. But other than being very flat and easy to carry, they don’t make the “pitty pat” list. Shoot a Cz 75 and nothing else is quite right ever again. There’s a dozen+ race guns based on that gun for a reason… Similarly, rack a pump shotgun full of buck shot in a dark hallway and nothing else gives the same degree of calm satisfaction that you are NOT outgunned….
Thanks for all the advice. I certainly came to the right place to ask about hand guns. I will be busy following up when I get beck from the Dominican Republic.
You can buy HCQ here without a prescription. I bought some “Plaquinol” 200 mg tablets manufactured by Sanofi in Cali, Colombia.
@G.C.:
Whenever you are ready, give some further guidance and I’m sure folks can help narrow the search space. For example, is it REALLY a handgun you want? Or would a folding stock rifle about 27 inches long work too? What is the “OW” point: Grip, weight, recoil? The solution then changes. Carry or home defence castle doctrine? Easy sighting without your glasses on? Bug Out Bag or “noise in the yard”?
My solution a few decades back was to buy “One of each”… but that’s expensive. I’m now moving a lot of that along to the kid and keeping what I really need. A much smaller subset.
FWIW, I’m centering mostly on 9mm / .38 Special / .357 Magnum (that all work in some of my guns) and a .40 S&W / .357 Sig just because it is a great gun… Plus a couple of shotguns. I’m keeping one SKS Carbine as an EOTWAWKI gun, and it just works well while being California PC Compliant (and as lethal as an AR-15…) along with a couple of .22 LR guns for very cheap shooting practice. Oh, and the tilt barrel Berrettas I drooled over as a kid ;-)
Maybe I need to prune a bit more ;-)
FWIW, in any AwShit bug out scenario I’d take my pump shotgun and the Marlin .357 rifle with the Ruger 9mm / .357 Single Six. IF I had room, a .22 LR too. IF there were a “riot on the street”, I’d load up the SKS Carbine (10 rounds) and drop about 50 rounds of stripper clips in a pocket. Then grab a magazine fed 9mm handgun. (Choice of a few…, yeah, over bought ;-0 some years back ;-) Bump in the hall in the night? It’s a Beretta tip up bbl near the bed and a Samurai short sword… No over penetration issues AND a sword never runs out of ammo…
Basic Rule:
ANY gun beats no gun.
Excuse rule:
Every scenario has an optimum solution and what you presently own is not it.
;-)
FYI
Ducks lined up?
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/08/06/considering-the-durham-timeline/#more-197577
As @EM said, right tool for the right job. A rifle does it further away, no matter the caliber. As a reminder, a .223 is just a .22 with more velocity. Think about it.
@E.M. re bugout pump shotgun – I have a semi-auto shotgun, a couple of pump shotguns, and a SxS double barrel shotgun.
For reliability and reparability, I’d grab the double barrel, but that’s because I don’t have a little baggie of springs and small replacement parts that are prone to wear or breakage. Same for a handgun. I tend to prefer revolvers over semiautos for reliability and reparability. That’s if I never expected to see home ever again.
However, if I was expecting to shelter in place, I’d want as much firepower as possible to defend “Fort E.M. Smith”. That’s a case where nobody is lugging around nuttin’ and if a gun fails or goes empty, just reach for the next gun up, in order of preference.
We discussed ‘If-I-only-had-1-or-2-guns’ several years ago. That discussion was one of the reasons I acquired a .357 revolver and a gate loading .357 lever action rifle; never out and if the feed mechanism goes South, you can always load it single shot. Oh, and both shoot .357 and .38 Special.
.
.
Your Excuse Rule probably applies more often than not, but concealed carry or only having the option of one gun is all about the Basic Rule. Having something beats hunting around for sticks and rocks (having nothing), particularly if confronted by a neer-do-well with a gun.
For GC – You might also want to consider buying a tilt barrel derringer or 4-shot mini-revolver in .22 caliber.
They are small, no slide-racking involved, and usually readily available since most people are looking to buy the various larger caliber semi-auto guns for their capacity.
The other nice thing about them is that they are so simple, even lower quality, cheaper off-brands are quite safe and reliable.
They are pretty much a something is better than nothing gun, but they are also easily concealed, easy to load and shoot if you have physical limitations, and they work quite well in a one-on-one close up confrontation, which is not an uncommon situation.
I keep wanting to pick up one of those, but I keep getting distracted by all of the other shiny things in the store and have yet to walk out a a shop with a nice little .22 derringer. I need to remedy that.
@H.R.:
Remember the article about cartridge length and efficiency? A .22 Long RIFLE cartridge loses much in a very short barrel Derringer. You would be better served with a short fat round. The .22 would be very cheap to shoot though!
My .22 short Beretta tip up bbl Minx has about the same muzzle energy as a similar bbl length .22 LR. I’d get a .22 short Derringer before a .22 LR. Of course, you could just load .22 shorts in a .22 LR Derringer, but then the gun is not as small as it could be and the long jump to the forcing cone is not ideal… Even a .25 ACP beats the .22 LR from very short barrels.
If anyone made one, I’d get a .32 ACP or 380 (.38 ACP, 9mm short, 9mm corto, 9mm kurtz) rather than a .22 LR. More expensive to shoot, but such guns are rarely fired. Same reasoning is why I got the dinky Berettas and have Walther PP in .32 ACP. Very small, and just enough power for close range, with low recoil, flash, and bang.
But for shooting fun, the .22 LR in a short barrel is a hoot with LOTS of muzzle flash and a big sound!
@E.M. –
I’ve pretty much settled on picking up one of these .380 derringers from Bond Arms, a very good brand. Per the cartridge length discussion, the short .380 cartridge will make the most of the short barrel derringer and I already have lots of .380 ammo for Mrs. H.R.’s carry gun.
Only $149! I thought Bond Arms guns were a little higher than that. They are 1st rate guns.
https://www.vanceoutdoors.com/products2.cfm/ID/249588
There is a huge variety of derringers. A 45 would be effective, even from a short barrel.
https://www.sportsmansoutdoorsuperstore.com/category.cfm/sportsman/derringers-for-sale
Check out this .22/.25 one:
https://www.sportsmansoutdoorsuperstore.com/products2.cfm/ID/199253
Gee… looks like 380 and .25 ACP are both made
https://www.budsgunshop.com/mobile/categories.php?cat=860
. 32 ACP exists, at least in the used market.
https://www.gunsamerica.com/992668144/DAVIS-D-32-DERRINGER.htm
Gee, I don’t own any Derringers…. surely there is some Rule 2 that applies ;-)
For G.C. there is still the issue of “which issue”?
A Derringer is good if lift weight / carry weight is the issue. Bad if grip or recoil are the issues.
Recoil is tamed by heavy guns in small calibers, so a bigger .22 revolver has near no recoil.
Grip is easier with light weight and larger grip surfaces, so alloy framed guns and aftermarket oversize grips. Oh, and Single Action Western Stye grips.
The single action Cowboy Gun grip is tapered flaring wider at the bottom. Properly held, it is not gripped so much as the hand holds a shape and the gun rotates barrel down, grip up, until it fits. The very light grip lets the gun do just a little rotation when fired, turning recoil into rotation as the fingers stop the rotation. Less into the wrist and elbow. Spread out over time.
The Ruger Single Six in .22 LR has almost no recoil to start with, then with the Western Grip, what little there is never makes it past the hand… the 6 inch or longer barrel also reduces recoil as the mass far from the rotation point strongly dampens muzzle flip / rotation. A bit heavy to hold a long time, but easy grip and no recoil to deal with. Plus, out of a 6 inch bbl, the .22 LR has most of its energy and is effective enough.
They have a 9.5 inch bbl version, but I think it runs about 40 ounces weight (!), so IMHO, the 6 inch is ideal.
For more power choices with a range from “a lot” Magnum down to near nothing .32 S&W They make a .32 caliber:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruger_Single-Six
If weight is not the issue, that gun in .327 Federal Magnum 7.5 inch bbl would be an ideal arthritic shooter choice. The .32 S&W and .32 S&W long are low velocity low recoil rounds, but more effective than .22 LR, while you can step up to the .32 H&R Magnum or the longer .327 Federal Magnum for more power if needed or you find it isn’t uncomfortable to shoot. Only real issue is that the old .32 rounds are hard to find at the Walmart like bulk stores so you end up at gun stores or ordering and waiting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.32_S%26W
(Scroll right to see energy numbers)
So roughly the same energy as the .22 LR but a bigger hole in the target…
Up one from that by a tiny bit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.32_S%26W_Long
Or for more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.32_H%26R_Magnum
Which is up there with the .38 Special.
Note: Just like the .38 Special and .357 Magnum are really the same diameter, the various .32 rounds listed and the .327 are all the same diameter, only length changes.
Not ideal in an EOTWAWKI event as ammo is not ubiquitous like the 9mm and .22 LR, but for folks who maybe shoot one box a year and want it just in case of a couple of bad guys (and buy a box in advance): it has a surprising range of power and recoil choices in a low recoil package.
Note that the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.327_Federal_Magnum goes up to 640 ft-lbs. 50% more than standard load 9mm Parabellum…
So in one gun you can choose between “about like a .22 LR” on up to “more than a 9mm”.
Covid19-84. Seen on RT.
Looks like there are still a few places where justice works:
Multiple protesters, reportedly affiliated with Black Lives Matter according to the Associated Press, were charged with felony criminal mischief for splashing red paint and smashing windows during a protest.
People in cars show their support for protesters in front of the Utah State Capitol building in Salt Lake City, Utah on June 5, 2020.(Photo by GEORGE FREY/AFP via Getty Images)
People in cars show their support for protesters in front of the Utah State Capitol building in Salt Lake City, Utah on June 5, 2020.(Photo by GEORGE FREY/AFP via Getty Images)
The charges were upgraded with a “gang enhancement,” which makes life in prison a sentencing possibility. Second-degree felony charges without the enhancement — which increases penalties for “offenses committed in concert with two or more persons or in relation to a criminal street gang” — usually come with a sentence of 1 to 15 years. (RELATED:More Than 4,400 People Arrested During Riots Across The Country)
https://dailycaller.com/2020/08/07/utah-riot-protesters-red-paint-felony-gang-enhancement-george-floyd/
I have a request for us technically oriented dinosaurs reading the Chiefio blog:
Recommendations for an introductory book that would acquaint us increasingly anxious nonshooters or self-defense gun nonowners with what we now unexpectedly need to learn from scratch. My reason to seek a recomendation from Chiefio participants is that they would have a good sense of the technical level that would be appropriate for their fellow participants. And some of them are likely familiar with the corresponding strengths-vs.-weaknesses of the various firearms or survival(ist) magazines, including special 1-time issues.
Is there, perhaps, an equivalent to the venerable & frequently updated Amateur Radio Handbook [☇] for firearms? The Amateur Radio Relay League is the national educational nonprofit org. for “ham” radio. Does, e.g., the NRA publish anything comparable for firearms owners?
This dinosaur prefers the admittedly quaint bound hardcopy known as a book, because it’s portable with relatively little risk of theft [×], requires no electricity, and provides effective visual resolution that’s significantly greater than digital displays for computers. I read once that a well-printed book or magazine has a resolution that’s approximately 1200 d.p.i. [#]. My eyes are aging in what might be an enviable way: I can still read a computer monitor without my increasingly outdated corrective lenses, but I increasingly feel eye-strain as each computing session drags on. Reading books or magazines without using the same corrective lenses doesn’t cause anything close to that intensity of eye-strain.
——-
Note [☇]: ARRL Handbook: New edition for 2020, in 6 paperback vols., or o.s.-dependent e-books: https://www.arrl.org/shop/ARRL-Handbook/.
Note ×: Ponder your chances of getting back a book or magazine that you distractedly left behind in a restaurant, vs. your chances of getting back a Kindle or a smart-phone. Hmmm?
Note #: For comparison, the free-standing device that I like to think of as my “luxury monitor” has a resolution of only 1920×1080, which, of course, is stretched over a 24-in. diagonal screen.
If you are a non-shooter, take a gun basic training course. Then join the NRA.
@Compu Gator – Here’s something every shooter should be taught before ever picking up a gun. This is a really good, short read of the basics of gun safety.
https://www.nssf.org/safety/rules-firearms-safety/
But as jim2 wrote, the best thing is to take a gun training course. Go to a shooting range/gun store and they will offer instruction appropriate to your experience. Tell them you are a non-shooter or even “never touched a gun before” and they will get you started, first with gun safety and then – usually – get you started with simple firearms.
Many reading here who were raised shooting were started on a BB gun at 5 or 6 years old. Then allowed to shoot a ingle shot .22 rifle at 7 or 8 or nine years old, depending on our adjudged maturity. All that time our dads (typically dads) were drilling in gun safety into our skulls.
And jim2’s advice to join the NRA is good, too. The NRA was founded to teach shooting safety and shooting skills as well as defend the 2nd Amendment. The NRA has well trained instructors who teach free or low cost courses to cover ammo, targets, DONUTS! and printed materials.
Also… as your comment shows that you are aware, there are different courses for different gun usages. For example, hunting safety is much different from home defense or just target shooting at the range. But first, start with basic safety and shooting basics. Everyone needs to learn those things.
Oh, and given your geeky nature, you’ll like the typical course. Every shooting course I’ve had was always, “Tell, read, do.” They’d tell you what you were going to need to know, have handouts with bullet points or short paragraph summaries to read and keep, and then you go out and under the eye of, and with the help of the instructor, you do the shooting.
Gator, go to a shooting range, rent a gun, and shoot it. You don’t need a book. You need experience and interaction with training from someone who can, in person, help the process of understanding. Simple as that.
You cannot substitute books for experience with guns. It may help build understanding, but first hand, is the only way to fully understand things in a way that is meaningful to the end result. Hands on knowledge of safe practice cannot effectively be book learned.
Then, understand the legal ramifications of use/incident, That can be book learned, and should be a requirement for any gun owner, but you can’t substitute for actual shooting of a weapon, and never should.
The recent incident of many people buying guns without any idea of how to properly use them is gonna be a problem if SHTF times do come.
Be prepared, not scared.
“Compu Gator says:
8 August 2020 at 12:00 am
I have a request for us technically oriented dinosaurs reading the Chiefio blog:”
Look around for a shooting group near you. May be on the Interwebs, or maybe thru a gun store, or at a range. Most welcome new shooters and will provide lots of guidance and hands-on supervisory assistance.
I am going out on a limb here, but 38 Special/357 is a decent choice to start with. Cowboy Shooting uses reduced loads in 38 Special, but still enough to deter or seriously injure an intruder, low recoil, or you can go up to P loads, pushing the upper end of the envelope of noise and recoil, and choices in between. The caliber and style are fun disputes, but meaningless if you don’t hit what you aim at. Gun Control means Hit What You Aim At. In any situation, stress level, light. No excuses.
There are hands on courses in the local concealed carry laws. The same people also offer active shooting classes. One way or another, you need to take a guided hands on route to learn and master the basics. Some people got it using 22′ with their parents or friends, or even BB guns at summer camp or 4-H. Some got it in the military. There is no substitute for the hands on training.
Having said this, you need to shoot hundreds, perhaps thousands of rounds to approach proficient.
If you can rent guns at the range, start with a 22 and hit the target, it helps with trigger pull and accuracy and low recoil. Then move up in caliber from there. DO NOT start with 357 or higher, or the recoil will forever spoil your aim. And always have ear and eye protection. If you have a semi-automatic, or any gun that ejects shells, do not wear a scoop neck shirt. I prefer a wide brim hat, as it catches some shells that could go inside the shirt down the back.
None of this is about a book. Sorry.
@CompuGator:
I’m going a different path than the answers already given. It is good advice, but I’m covering other things from a different angle.
You are looking for a book, but for “how to shoot” or for “what is inside guns and how they work”?
IF you want to know what is in the guns available with an engineering POV, my favorite book is the “Small Arms Of The World” by Edward Clinton Ezell. Mine is the 12th edition from years long past. List almost all small arms out there, how they work, some history, and engineering drawings for many (not full spec, but exploded parts drawings) very useful when you take a gun apart to clean it then wonder where that spring goes ;-)
There is also the less technical and more retail Shooter’s Bible.
Good for getting an overview of guns avsilable recently in general. Also has ammo tables, ballistics tables and a bit more.
IF you literally have never shot before, I strongly recommend getting an air gun first. Not the way fancy ones, just something basic. Then you can shoot hundreds of rounds for a pittance and build skill and familiarity. It also means any Aw Shit you have is far less serious. At one time I found I’d left my air pistol loaded via pulling the trigger. The result was a small dent in the closet door, not a police report. Never did that again….
Furthermore, many are now made as analogs of real firearms so practice transfers. You can practice and get good with a Sig profile before dropping a $ Grand+ on it.
$120 and in about 200 shots you have saved that much on ammo for the real deal. You can get revolvers, single or double action and more. Some as cheap as $20 or so for generic style.
https://www.airgundepot.com/co2-air-pistols.html
Same deal with long guns. Even cowboy lever action.
Comes in the mail. Not a lot of fuss. In most places you can practice in the back yard. And while I don’t reccomend it, many jerks will not know it is an air gun in your hand when you open the door.
Then if you find the whole thing is just not right for you, you are out the cost of a night out, not a months rent and Federal Paperwork. If this goes well, you have a very inexpensive and highly helpful target practice gun. Plus a better idea what you want in your firearm.
Next, I’d reccomend starting with a .22 LR gun. It is just barely enough in a real problem event, much cheaper, and ammo is way cheaper than centerfire ammo. I have fired my .22 guns about 10 times as much as my centerfires and practice matters a lot.
For example, this one is $140
https://www.cheaperthandirt.com/savage-model-64f-semi-auto-rimfire-rifle-.22-lr-21-barrel-10-rounds-synthetic-stock-satin-blued-finish-40203/FC-062654402036.html
I know. I’m telling you to buy 2 guns before you buy the gun you want. Trust me, this will save you a lot of money in the long run AND make you a safer better shooter. Some ammo types run $40 or $50 a box (of usually 50, but sometimes 20 rounds). It takes many hundreds up to thousands of rounds shot to get really good. That pays for the air gun and .22 , then it just takes a box or two to familiarize with the big firearm.
Joining the NRA gets you their magazine that includes training advice, scenarios, real world shootings described, and more. Also, buy a couple of gun magazines at the grocery store or book store. They are more drooling over equipment than the NRA magazine, but you get to learn the lingo and what folks look for in guns.
Latest Pointman
“Democrat politicians don’t care if they kill people, just as long as they can beat Trump”
I took a pistol basic training course with my wife. The instructor showed some videos that explained parts of a bullet, parts of a pistol, and various types of pistols/revolvers. The videos included gun safety and potential legal issues if one has to shoot someone. He had about a half dozen pistols from .380 to .45 caliber of various brands and models. We each loaded the magazine for each gun with fake rounds called Snap Caps. He showed us how the safety worked, if it had one, and the other features of each gun. We then inserted the magazine, racked the slide, and dry fired the guns.
The instructor took us to a gun range and we picked a few of the guns to try out. Loaded them with real rounds and fired at targets at 3, 7, and 10 yards. He also took us through the concealed carry test for our state.
After that, my wife and I went to gun ranges and rented guns that we wanted to try out. We also viewed shooting videos on line, read about various types of guns, including reviews. It was a while before we each settled on a gun.
Similar to EMS, I have a CO2 powered BB gun for practice in the back yard. It’s all fun :)
FWIW
“The Real Reason Democrats are Pushing for Mail-In Ballots”
https://richardsonpost.com/brian-c-joondeph/17958/democrats-pushing-mail-in-ballots/
Airsoft is a GREAT way to train. Using a gas blowback airsoft pistol or carbine gives a pretty good recoil simulation and can be done safely in your house or backyard. Proficiency requires hours of practice and airsoft keeps the costs reasonable.
I practice for my United States Practical Shooting Association events for both pistol and pistol cartridge carbine using airsoft. My main drill with airsoft is to practice speed and first round on target from low ready with the carbine or from the holster with the pistol. Both in my back yard garden under shade and misters.
A great vid on the subject
Can Airsoft Translate to Real Firearm Skill?
Practice, practice, practice
Back when I was very young I received a Daisy lever BB gun and a couple of years later a Bengimin 22 pump. Shot many boxes of projectiles at small birds on perch and wing. Later graduated to Mossberg 22LR, mainly used to reduce the population of Ground Squirrels in the ranch fields.Many boxes of 500 went through that 22.
Shooting Starlings on the wing with an air rifle doesn’t allow time to aim and shoot, you have to quickly point and shoot at where you think the bird will be. After a time successful connections would be made to happen.
Many years later I had some friends on the ranch to wing shoot migrating Dove passing through from a brush stand about a half mile from the house. I walked up to the blind just to see how their afternoon shoot was doing. After their brag time, my friend insisted I join them. I kept saying it was not something I enjoyed but they should continue their fun. Just then my friend thrust his 12 gauge long barrel into my hands, pointed out 3 dove approaching low and fast and demanded I take the shot.
I swung around and from the hip touched off the 12 gauge. The lead Dove fell at his feet. I handed him his shotgun, said see, this is no fun for me and walked back to the house.
LOL, No way for me to top that shot ! 8-)
Use good BBs.
When Ossqss and I were participating in the First Annual Chiefio Blog Rod and Gun Club Championship Match, he loaded up a Daisy lever action and we shot that a bit.
I was amazed and pleased that I could follow the flight of the BBs (I’m partially blind, if y’all recall). The light happened to be just right to put a shine on them.
It got me grinning and laughing because some of those BBs hooked like a Major League curve ball. Some, at the end of sight range, had curved 2+ feet off off the initial trajectory. What a hoot! It added a whole ‘nother dimension to target shooting.
It turns out that those were very old plated BBs Ossqss had lying about and they had developed some spots of corrosion here and there. The rough spot put the curve in their flight.
But the takeaway is that if you’re serious about hitting something, use good ammo; even BBs. It applies to all cartridges and projectiles.
(Oh… I believe I did mention previously that Ossqss finished next to last in the Championship Match and I came in Second Place ;o) Good times, good times.)
@P.G.:
Similar for me. Daisy at about 5, .22 rifle at about 9? Got to where I’d hit walnuts out of our tree with BBs at about 40 feet. When in high school, hit a thrown coke can at about 30 feet in the air from the hip with the .22 rifle (a couple of shots semiauto to get the hit…) Also wing shot a couple of birds with the .22 on the first shot (aimed). How? Thousands of BBs through the Daisy over years, then hundreds a year of .22 for a few years.
Probably not that good anymore. Not practiced enough the last decade… mostly at formal target ranges the decade or 2 before (low challenge fixed targets still air long aim times…) Maybe I ought to buy a new air gun and try terrorizing the squirrels ;-)
@H.R.:
Oh God, I remember seeing BBs in flight (as a kid when the dinky Daisy fit me….). I think it really helped to correct aiming problems fast. Airsoft plastic pellets are even easier to see being larger and color of your choice (white stands out on most colors).
Never had BBs hang around long enough to rust… now I have a reason to shoot them up!
Once read a book on becoming a dead on trick shot.
First! point your finger at a target, you will see that you are on target. next use a BB air gun of fair quality, don’t aim, just point and shoot. Next shoot at disks thrown up by assistant some distance away. Start reducing the size until you can shoot a wad of paper out of the hole of a 2inch washer.
At some point of your training you will get a “feel” as to where the projectile will be.relative to the targets travel. After you get fairly good at hitting a large disk with a BB gun, transfer to the 22, it will be more consistently on point of aim.
Same here. Started with a Daisy. Later got to use Grandpa’s .22 for target practice then later to hunt with him before he died. I was quite good at leading birds with a BB gun and could easily take out birds in flight or at the top of our pecan trees (or any other fruit trees). Sis was good, too. It’s been too many years now, so likely not good with an air rifle now. Nephew’s the main gun handler now.
Back then, BBs were copper, so they didn’t rust, technically. Steel ones will.
I thank all who responded, but I should acknowledge E.M. as the one who read me best.
E.M.Smith replied 8 August 2020 at 9:28 pm GMT:
[…] a book, but for “how to shoot” or for “what is inside guns and how they work”?
The latter, plus “inside bullets” (e.g., rimfire vs. centerfire).
I think I can honestly write that I already understood that “how to shoot” would need to come from in-person training & practice.
E.M.Smith replied 8 August 2020 at 9:28 pm GMT:
[….] IF you literally have never shot before,
Not exactly: I briefly participated in my high school’s “rifle club”. It focused on target-shooting .22 rifles at a local range, ultimately for some competition among local high schools. It quickly became obvious that I was not ready for any competition; my target skills needed a lot of improvement.
E.M.Smith replied 8 August 2020 at 9:28 pm GMT:
I strongly recommend getting an air gun first. Not the way fancy ones, just something basic. Then you can shoot hundreds of rounds for a pittance and build skill and familiarity. [….] Furthermore, many are now made as analogs of real firearms so practice transfers. You can practice and get good with a Sig profile before dropping a $ Grand+ on it.
Hmmm. Hadn’t thought of that, which is why I’ve risked revealing my ignorance long enough to pose questions. Right now, that seems like the best short-term approach. Recurring shooting costs will matter quite a lot, given my, um, reduced circumstances.
It would be a bonus if an air pistol analog to a real semiauto pistol firearm has enough ooompf to dispatch furry-tailed tree-rats. Under Florida law, they are not considered “wildlife”.
Not so sure about air pistols, but I do know that 60s era Daisy rifles could, especially the .177s. Grandpa with a 410 often brought home tree-rats for supper.
CG – there are a heap of BB/Pellet guns that will kill squirrels. Here’s one, but there are a lot more on Amazon. It’s single shot, but that would motivate you towards accuracy :)
You can get lots of pellet rifles suited to squirrels and other rodents. In pistols, there is a divide beteeen hunting pistols (lots of power, cool designs, expensive, not like “real guns”) and replica guns (expected to shoot targets so modest power, replica designs, wide price range, good for practice). There is a third group of mostly modest priced general purpose guns of vendor specific designs. Often cheap and low power or modest priced and medium power. But not like any “real gun”. My Benjamin pump is like this.
Cheapest and modest power are spring piston and air pump guns. These are human powered via pumps and levers. Power depends on how long you pump, and the design. Cheap to operate.
Next up is CO2 cylinder. Less expensive guns but powerful first few shots. Usually enough to do in rodents. BUT the low entry cost comes with buying CO2 cylinders…
Finally, PCP guns. Expensive external compressors, tank, and more. LOTS of power and expensive.
There’s a dispute over .177 vs .22 killing power. My belief is that .177 is better in spring and pump guns, where the smaller diameter lets the lower power still penetrate. CO2 is about the same for both, then PCP can make full use of the .22 mass and gas volume so is best.
Rifles are much more effective at rodenticide…
So you might need to chose between “practice for real gun” CO2 in .177 or Tree Ratter PCP .22 for bucks… or accept some rodents will just be really really pissed with a limp…
https://topairgun.com/22-caliber-air-hand-guns/
Good info and guns by power source
Does look like you can do it. 600+ ish fps and hunting pellets preferred.
https://www.gunandgame.com/threads/air-pistols-capable-of-killing-squirrels.63883/
E.M. – you mentioned the BB or pellet clones.
For a birthday gift, Mrs. H.R. and I took our son to a gun store and told him to pick out any handgun he wanted. We gave him plenty of heads up so he could research what he might want.
Went to the gun store, he carefully looked over the three or four guns he had narrowed down his choices to by researching on line, and then he decided on a Walther PPQ.
Fine by us. Happy birthday, son.
Within a month he found a Walther PPQ clone, CO2 powered. It is exactly like the Walther he chose and he uses that BB – wait, I think maybe it’s strictly a pellet gun – clone to practice. Anyhow, I couldn’t believe how close it was to his Walther; no real discernable difference except for weight. You can’t mimic a full clip of 9mm in a BB gun clone. But they tossed some junk weight in there somewhere so that it wasn’t too light by comparison.
I wasn’t really aware at all of the fact there were a variety of clones of popular guns until he went out and got one. When I cruise the hunting/fishing aisles at Walmart, I now see at least a dozen clones on offer right there in the store, and I’m pretty sure there are several more models available online.
Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, none of the handguns I own have clones just yet. But if one of them gets a clone, I’ll probably pick one up. They are about $50 +/- as I recall from when my son bought his.
EMSmith; Back when I was shooting my Benjamin pump 22 gauge pellet air rifle, I would oil it very well, pump it as hard as I could get it. When discharged It often would diesel, crack like a 22 short, go right through a 1 inch pine board !
@H.R.:
That Walther looks like a very good choice!
@P.G.:
Now that sounds like a fine gun to invent: The Diesel Gun!
Trigger pull dumps air into breach chamber space. Piezoelectric injector squirts fuel in. Perhaps with an auxiliary spark to assure ignition when cold….
E.M.
A drop of ether in the back of the pellet in a break-barrel or a “tap load” like a BSA Airsporter.
Hmm…
Was shooting this little bugger yesterday and it is very effective up to 36 shots for fuzzy tail rats. HR has shot this also. It is nowhere near as powerful my Benjamin nitrogen break barrell .22 pellet gun, but I get 12 tries per clip.
I picked up that Remington Tyrant break barrel gun because it was half off and I was pissed off at the squirrels tearing up the pears and the garden. Yeah, it’s a hot little number, but you really do need to be able to fire off multiple shots.
Anyhow, that Benjamin Ossqss has is a nice solution for multiple shots, and if your objective is to lay low and stay still, the CO2 power means you’re not moving around warning off your quarry.
Walmart has the Red Ryder lever action BB gun for $24.47. I’ve been meaning to snag one for backyard plinking, but I just hate paying regular price for anything. But, that’s only a bit more than pocket change, so I might break down and throw one in the cart.
Oh, they shoot just fine. It was happenstance the Ossqss filled it with those corroded BBs, but it was also fun to watch the curve balls. You shouldn’t get those with fresh BBs.
.
.
.
@Ossqss – remember we couldn’t bring my pellet gun in on target? I cranked the scope adjustments gosh knows how many turns for elevation, which finally sorta almost came in, and for windage, which never did come in. I think we finally got it within about 6″ – 8″ at best.
When I got back from Florida, I played with it a bit and I’m convinced that something got knocked out of kilter while it was in the back of the truck on the way down. I haven’t had time to look into just what exactly got knocked cattywampus on the gun, or maybe in the scope.
Hi EM,
(There does not seem to be a post on the USA presidential election as such So I’ll post this here )
I’ve been curious about the polls there in the USA : Trump & Biden etc. Here is a report from the BBC discussing the various aspects of the polls for the uninformed who don’t live in the USA. It seems reasonably balanced. I wonder what otyhers who read here think.
https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-53657174
“Published This Month In The Journal Of The Blindingly Obvious”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/08/10/published-this-month-in-the-journal-of-the-blindingly-obvious-3/#comments
And comments
FYI. Heavy.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/08/10/status-update-meet-at-the-old-mill-we-ride-at-midnight/
That article is bad in many ways, billinoz. 1. It does not describe the necessary uncertainty in the polls. 2. It does not describe how polls are done in the USA, especially model weights (change those, change the outcome). 3. It most certainly does not describe the effect of the ‘cancel culture’ and how you can game polls, directly by unrepresentative sampling (how do you sample people that don’t respond to political callers/unknown callers) or by deliberate lying in the responses (how do you account for that).
About the only thing it got right is that the election is delegates sent by the states to the Electoral College.
@Another Ian,
Dang … lets roll!
It seems to me if you poll a good sized sample, you don’t have to worry about who is a Dimowit and who is otherwise intelligent. Asking people if they are Dim or otherwise is just one more opportunity to lie. I just don’t see the need for any “adjustments”.
@Bill in Oz – Political polls in the U.S. are designed to shape voter opinion, not reflect voter opinion, period.
The only value they have is as an entertaining puzzle as you try to determine how whoever commissioned the poll is trying to manipulate you.
@Another Ian:
Heavy, but vague and cryptic.
Yes, we’ve all known for years that DC was horribly corrupt and the Dems only a little more so than the Republicans. Yes, we all know The Swamp, in cahoots with Golbalists, Communists, and likely the TLAs, are all against Trump and We The Prople.
So maybe something changes, or maybe it doesn’t. And we carry on.
@BillInOz:
The polls are conducted by calling land lines of folks who answer calls from strangers, then share their information blindly. They can not poll people who let unknown numbers roll to voice mail, and miss many working a lot. Then, in the age of Doxing and Antifa Mob Violence: What thinking conservative would share their oppinion with unknown “journalists” ? If cornered on the street, I will say I’m for Biden.
The polling agencies have not figured out how to fix this, which had them wrong last time.
Compu Gator replied 9 August 2020 at 9:00 pm GMT:
It would be a bonus if an air pistol analog to a real semiauto pistol firearm has enough ooompf to dispatch furry-tailed tree-rats.
It seems that my mention of this “bonus” sidetracked readers. The tree-rats are not enough reason for me to spend money on either a firearm nor even an, um, “airarm”(?)[✈]
Compu Gator replied 9 August 2020 at 9:00 pm GMT:
Recurring shooting costs will matter quite a lot, given my, um, reduced circumstances. It would be a bonus if an air pistol analog to a real semiauto pistol firearm [….]
The only practical reason for me to spend money on such things is home defense. I live in a complex of several multifamily dwellings. As always, I live in a unit on a floor that’s above the ground floor. So I expect that potential attacks will be frontal, i.e. thro’ my front door or the adjacent window that’s along the walkway that connects all units on my floor. That seems to call for a pistol or an easily manoeuvred shotgun.
I’ve already hinted that my disposable income is quite limited. In planning for recent years, I did not consider expenses for shooting orweaponry. So when I try to squeeze them in, they must support a specific requirement, not merely be desirable under certain circumstances. And I not know not to overlook future expenses for ammo, range time, or gun-club dues. So I will not be assembling a varied arsenal of vaguely useful firearms.
——–
Note ✈ : Not to be confused with a term for a particular level of an aviation organization in the Royal Navy.
I acknowledge the problems with organising an accurate polls. We have the same type of problems here in Australia. For example the simple fact that many people no longer have a landline phone only a mobile Or a bare landline to provide internet access and no phone as such. ( That’s what I do ) .
That’s why some polls here are all online based which brings with it a whole raft of other ‘sampling’ problems as it eliminates those who do not use the web that much.
But despite these difficulties I suggest that if a poll is big enough in size at the state level, it will reflect popular views out there – whatever they are.
As curiosity about who will win an election, ( any democratic election ) is almost universal, there will always be a ‘market’ for polls.
And as political parties know that polls also influence voting intentions in some people, there will always be pollies wanting to game the polls.
So the issue is how to guarantee transparency and honesty in polls is the key question. I don’t have any answers yo that tho’ for the USA.
@billinoz,
Not necessarily. Forget ‘cancel culture’ at your own peril. Large swaths will simply *not* answer or if they do, not answer truthfully (except on Nov. 3rd in person and even then election fraud happens).
@CD : I think you will find that cancel culture’ will be ‘cancelled’ and forgotten about. It always was a virtue signalling push by a tiny extremist left minority both here and in the USA and in the UK.
OK, home defense, close quarters, economical. For practice at general “aim and hit” in your living room, but skipping the “uplift” for matching a real gun: low cost generic air pistol in .177, best if it shoots BBs too as they can be recovered from a backstop of old towels or phone books and reused forever.
Handgun: low cost and very reliable lands you on a .22 LR at the “minimal effective” end, or for more effective, choose a revolver in .357 Mag / .38 Special or a semiautomatic in 9mm. The 9mm and .38 Special are both the most common and pretty cheap center fire ammo you will find. Everything else costs significantly more. .22 LR rimfire is cheaper by far than any other firearm ammo.
https://www.ruger.com/products/wrangler/models.html
List is $250 but folks say about $150 is possible. Single action so simple operation.
https://thegunzone.com/best-22lr-handguns/
Walther P22 best for the buck semiauto. About $279 list but IIRC closer to $200 some places.
Good lower cost revolver: Taurus .38 / .357 at about $300 ish.
https://www.vanceoutdoors.com/category.cfm/outdoors/handguns/brand/taurus/of3/38-special
For a semiautomatic 9mm, Ruger is very good and medium priced. Taurus is good and cheaper. About $300 to $400, but a Double Action Only (hard trigger pull every shot) can be as low as $170 ish for Taurus.
There are cheaper, but not all that good…
I’d rather have a good used than a crap new.
Airpistol, $38
$34 single shot but rifled bbl
They show it sold with CO2 cartridges but the description says pump…
That’s sort of the prices to expect in the lower price band. YMMV and other models may be cheaper or a better match to your needs.
If I could only afford one, it would be a 9mm semiauto. Likely Taurus or Walther, money allowing.
(My actual “only one” pistol is a very expensive Sig Saur, but what I load up for bump in the night is a cheap Chinese Norinco that works fine but I won’t care if the police confiscate it..,)
https://utahgunexchange.com/ads/tokarev-9mm/
@ billinoz,
Like the KKK was/is forgotten? /rhetorical
What’s in a phone number
https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/shady-number
Via
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/08/10/free-ms-meng/
“China is licking its chops for a slice of Tajikistan — and a side of Japan”
https://richardsonpost.com/david-archibald/17984/tajikistan-territory-to-china/
@EM, I have the powerline 415 (21 shot) and the 426 (15 shot). I can get about 60-70 shots total out of a cartridge with the 415 and over 100 with the 426 all at acceptable velocity. The chamber is apparently larger in the 415 and it gets 495 published FPS with a longer barrel, the 426 is slightly lower, IIRC 430. The big difference if used for home defense is the 426 ($19.99 at Wallyworld) has a reach through bottom grip so you can actually twist and engage the CO2 cylinder without removing anything. Pick it up twist and shoot. The 415 requires the grip to be removed in order to activate the CO2 connection. As anyone who has a CO2 gun of any sort, you don’t activate the cartridge until it is time to use it. They all leak out over time.
HR has shot both with rusted COPPER, yes you read that right, BB’s. I have since moved away from the Copperhead BB’s and to the silver ones which don’t rust. Apparently the copper coating gets friction pinholes in it and the ferrous metal under it rusts out in humid Florida garages!
The Ruger Wrangler I linked to above is like the Single Six but with an aluminum frame. In a .22 LR aluminum is more than strong enough (cylinder, barrel, trigger group are steel and such). This looks to knock about $100 to $200 off the price compared to the Single Six.
This review gives it good marks, (as expected from Ruger):
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2020/04/08/ruger-wrangler-review/
And Brownells lists it at $199-$218
https://www.brownells.com/firearms/handguns/revolver/wrangler-22lr-4-62–prod128021.aspx
I suspect you could knock another $25 off of that with patience and searching…
While not an ideal self defense gun, it would be adequate for living room defence against 1 or two folks not in body armor.
The single action was quite good enough to do in a lot of folks in the USA Old West… it is also one of the best to learn on, usually has a great trigger, and for novice shooters enforces trigger discipline. (I.E. you don’t empty your gun into the floor repeatedly working the trigger as you raise the gun… no joke, it happens. A cop friend tells of a rooky firefight: First shot next to his boot, next 3, 1 foot apart toward the perp. Next one in the car trunk, then rear window. The perp did no better. Both guns empty, perp jumps in car and takes off, later caught.)
I’d be comfortable armed only with my single six (knowing to take time to aim each shot). Most gun fights end in 3 shots or less (unless you spray and pray and miss everything…) FWIW, Clint Eastwood in The Unforgiven has the most accurate old west gunfight sceen, well worth study.
The article shows the gun both assembled and cylinder removed as for cleaning.
Then a year or 2 later, when ready, moving up to a 9mm semiautomatic would be easy… and good aiming and trigger skills set by then.
That might be the best minimal cost path…
Yeah, $180 here:
https://www.sportsmansguide.com/productlist/guns/handguns-pistols/revolver?d=185&c=32&s=701
And other revolvers…
@OSSQSS:
Wow, that’s a lot cheaper price than the $38 at Amazon…. you don’t think, maybe, Amazon is doing PC Price Gouges do you?…
At $20, I’m gonna visit WallyWorld myself! OTOH, their web page doesn’t show it…. wonder if it was hit by the China tariff stuff…
Okay. I broke down and sold off a major portion of the kid’s stock inheritance to buy a Red Ryder BB gun today. I paid the full $24.47 for it. It looks like they have added a trigger safety since the ’50s and ’60s. I don’t remember a trigger safety on the Daisy BB guns we had as kids.
It’s fun, though the curve balls down in Florida were far more entertaining and challenging. This shoots straight and the rear sight is adjustable for elevation.
The big plus is that I can cock this rifle with little risk of damage to my shoulder.
I’d love to go annoy the squirrels, but at 350 fps, it would not make for a clean kill, and I hate seeing animals suffer. Plug ’em in the noggin with stronger air gun that can deliver a lethal pellet or BB and I’m OK with that. Wounding is NOT OK.
I fixed a chuck roast in the Dutch Oven tonight; pot roast with veggies and potatoes.
While puttering about the kitchen waiting on the roast, a Cooper’s Hawk swooped through the backyard and pulled up on a branch in the locust tree, about 4+ meters above the bird feeder.
We’ve had Cooper’s Hawks hang out in the trees many times before, looking to pick off a bird too busy concentrating on the feeder. He was there quite a while, but word must have gotten around because we didn’t see any of the regulars at the feeder.
Anyhow, I’ve also noticed that our remaining chipmunk has not been seen for a week or two. I speculated that the hawk might have bagged the chipmunk. Mrs. H.R. suggested I haul him in for questioning. You know, give him the 3rd degree.
Given the destructiveness of the chipmunks, I’d give that hawk a medal if he’s the guilty party.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper%27s_hawk
Medal? I think he’d rather you put out a chipmonk feeder….
;-)
“Trump Heroically Defies a Lawless Supreme Court”
https://richardsonpost.com/matthew-vadum/18000/young-illegals-an-abomination/
@p.g.,
While I am reluctant to “One Up” you, hitting something with a 12 gauge shot gun is not a serious challenge.
There was a moment when a squirrel was running up a tree when I was holding a BSA (Birmingham Small Arms) bolt action 0.22L rifle. I shot from the hip and hit the squirrel in the head. My parents would not allow me to use either of the family 12 gauge shotguns owing to the high cost of the ammunition.
Since my mother loved pigeon pie (you need at least six pigeons) I used to shoot pigeons on the wing using the 0.22 rifle with about 10% effectiveness. Rabbit stew was pretty good too!
GC
I have a nest of BSA rifles. .22 Airsporter, .22 lr rimfire Martini target, 222R heavy barrel, .243W Viscount sporter (barrel interchangeable with original .308W muzzle brake barrel – same headspace), .308W CF2 sporter. The BSA sporting rifles are magnificent for running shots – point like shotguns. The 222R definitely not but will do 1/2 MOA.
E.M.
You might give this the economic once-over
https://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/banking-and-financial-statistics/bank-of-canada-assets-and-liabilities-weekly-formerly-b2/
Via http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/08/12/august-12-2020-reader-tips/#comment-1344829
@Another Ian:
It is just the QE On Steroids being done globally. Central Banks buying up whatever “assets” are offered and flushing train loads of currency into their economy to prevent the symptoms of the shutdown from being visible. As though printing piles of paper makes up for not having grain, flour, or chickens. .. Most of the currency goes to rich people who buy financial assets with it, so props up stock markets and real estate. Food and rent payments of middle class not so much…
It just adds $ Billions to the amount of debt that can never be repaid, so must be inflated away. Changes how soon that happens a little bit, not much else. When you are already screwed, being more screwed doesn’t mean much, IMHO.
@EM, the $20 was for the 426, not the 415. I don’t see it any longer on the Wallyworld site, so they may have purged it on their CEO’s gun control push which got rid of a bunch of stuff that was consider some kind of assault item. Including 9mm and and tons of other ammo for cryin out loud. Friggin commies!
That 426 unit is available at Bass Pro and Dicks sporting goods, but at a slightly higher price tag $29 and $27 respectively.
This pouring trillions into a dying economy just doesn’t make long term sense to me. At some point the consumption of wealth. with out matching production of more real wealth has to end. No matter the size of the printing presses this has to end. Badly.
I remember the Carter Crash and the resulting hardship to right that bit of bad judgement by both Democratic and Republican administrations. Lean times to pay for previous fat times. And this one is self inflicted. A short time, 30 days to flatten the sickness curve has morphed into a ??year?? shut down ! We are being herded by Fools or Evil people to destroy our civilization.
The middle class is being driven to consume their wealth while government and the wealthy continue to amass even more of it. Government bureaucrats are ginning up demands for heavier taxation to feed their coffers being depleted due to reduced wealth creation while maintaining or even increasing their operations. The saving rate among the well to do is skyrocketing that means runaway inflation soon followed by economic crash as the bill comes due. the ChiefIO best sharpen his pencil. .
@EMSmith; I was thinking, the creation of real wealth by mining, manufacturing and farming has not really abated while much the value added and specially services has been stifled. Mean while much of the tax burden normally falls on services and value added sectors. We are seeing local and state spend-a-crats desperately pushing for a bailout from their foolishness by proposing increased taxation of wealth accumulations of the middle class that they pose as taxation of the wealthy.
@P.G.:
I think my pencil sharp enough….
I don’t disagree with most of what you said, just more sanguin about it and see it more from a National / Global macro econ level (with some laconic sniditude) and less from a personal on the ground level (side effect of my Economics
indoctrinationdegree.First off, what wealth destruction? The land, real estate, farms, equipment, tooling, factories, labor pool, intellectual property all still exist.
What is being reduced is the immediate product of service providers (so some utility of labor lost, but those labor providers now get to directly use their own labor at home, so not all lost) and the value of currency. But our $ has lost 95% to 98% of the value in the 1970s already. Who holds large amounts of currency and currency denominated instruments? Not me. Not anyone out of the millionaire class. Mostly banks, insurance companies, and governments. So boo hoo….
The place where it hits anyone I care about is small business owners who have been shut down AND are not so leveraged as to screw the lender but lacking enough money to just tough it out. The bright ones will have extracted the value over the years and isolated it via a corporate structure, got working capital loans from the bank, and now just hand them a rented building, leased equipment, and a name. OR own it all clear and can just take a long vacation.
The losers will be personally in some debt, and have significant equity they can not protect. They will, lose that equity to the bank. Or the person with equity in a home who can’t make the payment and gets foreclosed. The middle debtor tier.
Will it be a PITA for some folks? Sure. But not dramatically different in effect from the $20 TRILLION of debt racked up before the pandemic hit. Just moving it sooner.
In the longer run, folks on retirement payments will be screwed to the extent inflation adjustments don’t match real inflation, but again: How much different is $20 Trillion vs $24 Trillion of vapor-cash? That screwage is already in the system…
So yeah, it’s a mess and yeah it adds to the currency screwage, and yeah, some folks will get hurt. Which IMHO is just a somewhat faster version of what was already on the cards.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/246268/personal-savings-rate-in-the-united-states-by-month/
Shows an interesting spike in savings rate to 33% as the Chinese virus hit. Lots of folks are still working and saving, just not spending on vacations, movies, dinner out, etc. Historical savings rate about 6 to 7 %.
“The personal saving rate in the United States amounted to 7.6 percent in 2019, compared to 11 percent in 1960. The personal savings in the United States amounted to approximately 1.3 trillion U.S. dollars in 2019.”
So a bit over a $ Trillion. How’s that compare to the rest?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States
Most of that realestate (homes) and investment vehicles being pushed up by the money printing, so not going away….
In otherwords, the “damage” is focused on service workers and service business owners in particular States, who lack the liquidity to ride it out.
Interesting paper that sampled air from a hospital room with an known infectious person in it. They detected aerosolized virions in it at what, to me, seem like low counts and below minimum infectious dose; but I may be wrong: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.03.20167395v1.full.pdf.
Human tidal volumes are generally 100ml or so, if I am remembering correctly. That said, over enough time, you could see some get exposed to a greater than minimum effective dose and given the small size of aerosolized virions, no mask would help short of a properly fitted scuba system.
From http://www.iceagefarmer.com/2020/08/12/states-secretly-stockpiling-food-for-need-ahead/
States Secretly Stockpiling Food For “Need Ahead”
by Ice Age Farmer | Aug 12, 2020 | Podcast
“Washington State has been stocking away millions of dollars of non-perishable food — so have other US states, and the federal government — in anticipation of “the need ahead.” If states are preparing, so too must you be today.”
The video shows floor to ceiling stocks of non-perishable food stuffs (apparently lots of canned beans there). Also the manager complains that it is hard to get more stock as he is currently competing with many other states and federal buyers.
Sudden hast to get lots of food stock, why?
Is there a real reason or has the madness infected all bureaucratic entities?
Just an Ob on Covid. Never once has anyone in the public spectrum mentioned anything aside from flattening the curve. Why, because the curve doesn’t go away. It just gets longer.
https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/
Another caught and bowled by Steve McIntyre
“McIntyre on Kaufman et al 2020″
E.M. Some of your tax money at Umm “not work”
“Guilty Or Not, You Will Confess”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/08/13/guilty-or-not-you-will-confess/#comments
And the link
@Ossqss re flattening the curve. Well, eventually the Number Of Cases curve has to flatten if everyone on Earth gets the Kung Flu.
The death rate curve eventually flattens as the more vulnerable are front loaded into the stats and then the steady state of new candidates for the vulnerable classes is filled at some stable rate. Every year, ‘X’ number of people move into the vulnerable class and it’s somewhat the same year over year on a global basis. That curve would be fairly flat.
.
.
.
I have not yet seen the excess mortality from Covid-19 numbers. I suppose those won’t come out until next year.
What I have noticed is that the Chinese Virus has the magical property of curing a multitude of fatal illnesses and accidents. It seem everyone is dying from Covid-19 and very few are dying from anything else.
Funny that, particularly when hospitals get extra money for patients with Xi’s Disease.
@ tomOmason: On IceAgeNow.info, Robert Felix has long commented that we will be fighting in the streets long before the glaciers cover us (I paraphrased a bit).
Last year, when they had all that flooding up north that covered so much of the cropland, I wondered then if the food shortages would become more visible. Of course, in our country, if the MSM don’t talk about it, then most people don’t give it a thought.
That’s my two cents’ worth on the reason some are stocking up quietly.
I suspect government stocking up is for economic hardship expected as the crap economy grinds down more families. They want to have “free food” to hand out to buy votes of the folks they put ouf of work. Governments are mostly incapable of planning for real physical systems collapse. Not in the wheelhouse of pampered politicians.
E.M.: “Governments are mostly incapable of planning for real physical systems collapse. Not in the wheelhouse of pampered politicians.”
Bingo! Even in the current alleged *crisis* where so many people were thrown out of work, “just in case” one person might die, government paid employees at all levels were told to stay home, but they still got their full check.
Most employees, who get their pay courtesy of productive taxpayers, think they do important *ahem* work and society couldn’t function without them. Also, the gubmint is too big to fail, so they will always get a paycheck. They might want to think again.
I’ll go out on a WAG limb here and say that most current government jobs didn’t even exist until the ’90s or ‘2000s. Patronage has always been used to reward political supporters, but now it is used by the Democrats to create a permanent Dem voting block. That’s all they are hired for. They really don’t have to actually do anything to get paid and many don’t do anything.
Any good blizzard will tell you exactly how many government employees it really takes to run things, eh? Probably 10% – 15% are considered essential.
SOOO…. I’d say government employees are in for a big surprise if civil society goes South. No pensions, no paychecks, and since they couldn’t conceive of the possibility, no preparation for a SHTF scenario. Most of them don’t realize that they will be the first to be robbed as easy, very soft targets.
Okay. I realize I’ve painted with a very broad brush, but the numbers of government employees are no exaggeration, just not particularly exact. And some are prepared and have skilz due to their outside interests, but I’m not seeing it as a common trait. On the main, the jobs discourage real thinking and do not encourage productive habits or a strong work ethic.
Some government workers are in for a very rude awakening if the Dem party they support does get into power. They’ll pretend to work and the Dems will pretend to pay them.
@H. R.,
You won’t, because that’ll never be known exactly. There will be estimates, though.
Financial realities in the hospital world make that so. You simply must have enough cash flow to survive and some of the fixed expenses are higher than generally realized. Add to that the extortion in the “negotiated” take-it-or-leave it “discounts” that must make the top line go up. Price transparency will help; but until hospitals can get much closer to $1 in cash for $1 in charges, it won’t. My doctors generally get $1 in cash from $1 in charges, so they have less incentive to raise the top line. Hospitals, in my recent experience get maybe $.10, so ….
In other news: https://twitter.com/QiaochuYuan/status/1293669529696923648.
I find this stuff fascinating and regret stopping my mathematics training at differential calculus. When my youngest son took linear algebra, I had to study it to help him.
@CDQuarles:
You might want to look into nonstandard mathmatics. Has things like 1/0 = infinity. Infinity/infinity=1 and 2 infinity + 2/0 = 4 infinity.
At least if I remember it correctly ftom 40 years ago…
I get that as a part of that link. Recalling the definition of division as serial subtraction, then if you take, repetitively, nothing from anything the series doesn’t terminate. That’s one form of infinity. Anything subtracted serially from itself, as a set, has to be one by definition. That signs imply direction, and more. And yes, for the most part, my mathematics training ended some 40 years ago (aside from studying linear algebra to help my youngest son about a decade ago).
Pingback: Wuhan Covid: It Is About How Fast, Not How Many. Time To end Lock Downs. | Musings from the Chiefio
H.R. replied 13 August 2020 at 3:59 pm GMT:
Some government workers are in for a very rude awakening if the Dem party they support does get into power. They’ll pretend to work and the Dems will pretend to pay them.
This was almost exactly one of the ways that government workers outside the major government centers of tsarist Russia expressed a common attitude toward their employment.
The other expression was kormiatsiya ot del (sp.?), customarily translated as “feeding off the land“. That was the widespread principle that government workers outside the major government centers would obtain their living expenses by skimming from their more-or-less governmentally official collections of cash or noncash money, e.g., taxes, fees and tribute [#]. Closely related was the capricious imprisonment-for-ransom of legally nonguilty people by government workers having judicial and law-enforcement powers. I fear that there are way too many government workers in the U.S.A. who would adopt those practices to preserve the life to which they’d become accustomed, instead of acknowleging their real worth by quietly fading away.
——-
Note #: In a geographic sense, Russia was enviably rich in natural resources (or reserves of them), but tsarist Russia had very little hard cash, in the sense of precious metals, until late in its history. Thus the very common use of furs, a.k.a. “soft gold”, as money, esp. as its explorers, capitalists, and officials expanded into logistically challenging Siberia (ca. 1582 ff.). Then over to the N.W. coast of N. America, all the way down to their Port Rumiantsev, modern Bodega Bay, N. Calif. (1741–1867).
“Cyclomania a Finnish movie about bicycles. Do you know what else is Finnish? Kamala means ‘horrible’ in Finnish. Horrible Harris, it has a nice ring to it.”
“Alternative translations of “kamala” are: terrible abysmal dreaded evil ghastly horrendous horrid.
All of which are appropriate in her case.”
Tucker Carlson pronounced Harris’ first name camel-lah. A bunch of left-wing nutjobs on cable news heads exploded, saying it’s comma-lah. Then, the night Biden introduced his VP pick, he asked camel-lah to the podium :)
So in conversation, be sure you pronounce it camel-lah.
I think I’m going for Camel…Ah.
Maybe nick name of Joe ;-)
One or two hump?
EM you said I suspect government stocking up is for economic hardship expected as the crap economy grinds down more families. They want to have “free food” to hand out to buy votes of the folks they put ouf of work.
I find it difficult to believe that government bureaucrats at any level are that imaginative.
IMO the much rehearsed ‘pandemic’ script is still running and a checkbox for food storage has to be implemented (or completed 6 months after pandemic announcement?), and they’re all faithfully (and blindly) following the script regardless of consequences.
~~~~~~~
I also note the Ice Age Farmer has a report on Massive “derecho” devastates US corn crop, with tens of millions of acres of corn affected. As well, many grain silos and elevators were destroyed, and with them tons of “on farm storage” — what remains of the US Strategic Grain Reserve. Yields will be reduced for ALL of those acres, particularly where damage was severe or irrigation was destroyed.
I suppose corn prices may spike for a time before settling again.
Dromedary Harris just doesn’t have that certain ring to it.
I’m going with Comma LaHarris. The Punctuation Candidate.
She might take note that it didn’t work well for that other Punctuation Candidate, Jeb Exclamation Point (Jeb!)
How about Camelah and ComaJoe?
Re PRC
“Initial Kinetic Operations”
@Tom0Mason:
Ice Age Farmer can be a bit breathless at times. Good for pointers to events, but conclusions usually a bit over amplified. Yes, a derecho happened:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/08/11/derecho-inland-hurricane-destruction-midwest-iowa-illinois-indiana/3343472001/
No, corn prices not out of normal ranges, but yes, a small spike up of 3.42%:
https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/commodities/zc
@Another Ian:
China does look like it is trying to start a war with someone, anyone. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but I’m not a Chicom Politician. Best I can figure, it is to have something to blame shortages on and distract the people from the political class failure. Plus maybe pick up a little dirt on the side. An island or two, a bit of mountains…
Only big worry I have is them doing a double EMP over the USA and creating chaos. Especially if it happened during vote counting and coordinated with the Color Revolution Globalists and Bought & Paid For Democrats. But I don’t figure they will wait 3 months or want to launch a battle in winter.
But we’ll see…
FWIW, I’ve been running down my pandemic inventory bump. I expect to be at about 3 month supplies soon. Then I’ll likely stabilize at that point.
So, in theory, we’ll see something in 2 days. OK…
How about “Camel A Cop & creepy Perp Joe”?
She certainly flip flops to match her audience..
How about Kamala Chameleon?
Ready made sound track, “Karma Chameleon”.
It appears that Durham has taken his first scalp.
Kevin Clinesmith to plead guilty in Durham probe: Clinesmith is the lawyer that changed the C.I.A. memo about Carter Page being “an asset” to being “NOT an asset” so that the F.B.I. could get a FISA warrant to spy on him and anyone he contacted.
Is Clinesmith a sacrificial Lamb or the first domino ?
Facebook owns a drilling company and
“Facebook’s “Offshore Drilling” Mishap”
H.R. replied 13 August 2020 at 3:59 pm GMT:
That ⟨Daisy Powerline⟩ 426 unit is available at Bass Pro and Dicks sporting goods, but at a slightly higher price tag $29 and $27 respectively.
So it seems. But it’s in-stock at Academy Sports for $19.90-something, incl. at their brick-&-mortar outposts.
I suppose that such news might not help people disadvantaged by standing legal barriers to incoming shipment, e.g., Kamalafornia [*].
——-
Note *: Federal trademark applied for.
Dammit!
The quote in my message immediately above, time-stamped “15 August 2020 at 5:00 am” GMT; should’ve been credited thus:
ossqss replied 12 August 2020 at 6:49 pm GMT
I thought I’d fixed that credit before posting!
“Chaos Theory”
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/chaos-theory/
So Cali is gonna get some very high temp’s again and have rolling blackouts? Why?
Too many Tesla’s?
Too reliant on intermittent energy sources?
Too ignorant to vote for politicials that actually care about the people voting?
To protest the 9th Circuit court downing their 10 shot magazine law?
Because the are really a 3rd world country?
It amazes me that one of the worlds largest economies can’t keep the power on in a heat wave. PhhhhT!
@Ossqss:
Our peak demand is for AC in summer on hot afternoons. This is a good match to solar, but lousy to wind. Our solar has reached the point where any more will bring the grid down.
Since we don’t build new reliable capacity, we depend on Palo Verde nuke in Arizona (having shut down our nukes in Rancho Seco and San Onofre and scheduled Diablo Canyon shutdown) or via the Pacific DC Intertie ftom Washington State.
BUT, we get the excess, the left overs. When is demand greatest in Washington and worse, Phoenix Arizona? While Washington has a nice winter heating demand, it also has warm summers. Phoenix is obviously summer AC.
Oh, and hydro has variation in availability based on yearly precipitation and seasonal water demand.
So that just leaves gas turbines as our native dipatchable power. We don’t have much. Greens want it torn down so trying to build more is right out. Oh, and consider the profitability of a large capital investment you get to run part of the day a couple of months a year…
It’s all downhill from here. The fifties and the sixties were peak good times. Not perfect, but good.
Buffet, Berkshire is selling banks and buying Gold companies, price of gold nearly $2,000, Stock Market is revisiting highs, and record amounts of money is in Bank savings.
I would say serious inflation is on the horizon for us.
China is courting BIG inflation and food shortages. While those on government provided income are not getting increased pay. Food prices are skyrocketing. Solders and police have begun stealing food. That last bastion of Socialism is on the verge of social collapse just like the USSR in the 1980s. I think China has more problems then most realize.
We live in interesting times it seems.
YMMV replied 15 August 2020 at 4:24 pm GMT
It’s all downhill from here. The fifties and the sixties were peak good times. Not perfect, but good.
If the curves are drawn with meticulous accuracy, and if it’s reasonable to interpolate within axes whose labelling was amazingly lazy for the points to be demonstrated, then in terms of “public debt”, the peak good times for our modern “advanced economies” were during the Nixon-Ford Administrations. Wasn’t there a major shift in prevailing U.S. federal economic theory back then?
The trend reversed to unfavorably upward just about the time Jimmy “Malaise” Carter was inaugurated (Jan. 1977). The latter overlapped the Soviet “malaise” years of Leonid Brezhnev (1977–1982). A short plateau almost fits the George H.W. “Read My Lips–No New Taxes” Bush Administration (1989–1993), before the Clinton-Gingrich balanced budget (1995 ff.). It’s surprisingly back upward almost exactly at the alleged “Break-up of the Soviet Union” (1989).
——–
Note # : Whazzamatta you? Your illustrators can’t exert themselves even as little as to provide a tick on the x-axis for each (A.D.) decade?
Compu Gator, the economy is part of it, but I mean something more, vaguely.
In previous decades, people did not lock their houses, cars, bicycles, now they do.
Of course that does not mean there was no crime. Somewhere along the way, we stopped rooting for the guys in white hats. Somewhere along the line, the imagined future stopped being good.
YMMV replied 15 August 2020 at 4:24 pm GMT:
It’s all downhill from here. [….]
⟨Graph [*]:⟩ “Record debt: Global public debt is expected to exceed the post-World War II peak.”
Where do the heavily industrialized commies fit into those 2 black-&-white categories “advanced” vs. “emerging“?
• Russia being the long-established “Arsenal of the Eastern Bloc”.
• Red China being politically categorized as only “emerging“, after its Lenovo bought out and continued to develop IBM’s PC product line [☭], and after it received tech-transfers to manufacture “advanced” Western-invented-&-developed products like routers and iPhones? And still merely “emerging” now that it has the international industrial reach & strength to push its “Belt and Road” partnerships [☭☭]?
And others?
• India having focused on developing self-reliance, via a national “Green Revolution” and emphasizing heavy industry, under the Indira Gandhi Administrations (i.e., as Prime Minister) (1966–1977, 1980–1984). “The period of 1967–75 was characterised by socialist ascendency in India, which culminated in 1976 with the official declaration of state socialism.”, as the fasted path to becoming self-reliant [☸].
——–
Note * : Source of graph/illustration unidentified. Did YMMV produce it?
Note ☭ : Lenovo later defiling their ThinkPad laptops with chicklet keyboards that are unavoidable, not merely an inferior option for bottom-of-the-line models? Bleepin’ commies! But I digress.
Note ☭☭ : “Belt and Road” being the name under which Red China markets its cold-blooded schemes to set up financially shaky national-government “partners” for financial failure, followed by territorial-or-other forms of blackmail. Those national
partnerspigeons being either clueless about how the Soviets operated the same kind of Mafia-like schemes. Or suffering crucial decisions made by national officials who were too corrupt to avoid deals arguably treasonous.Note ☸ : My grasp of the history of the Republic of India since its independence (1947) might turn out to be embarrassingly weak, so I’ll just apply the common escape of referring readers to Wikipedia, esp. this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indira_Gandhi#Economic_policy.
My reference-mark is the Wheel of Dharma (a.k.a. dharmachakra), which altho’ a symbol of both Hindus and Buddhists, has been available in Unicode (☸ U+2638) since its version 1.0.0. The Ashoka Chakra, which is the 24-spoke round symbol on the national flag of India, is derived from it, but Unicode seems not to include that variation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashoka_Chakra.
@YMMV:
I think the 70s were pretty darned good too!
Why I’m not so worried about the debt:
We’ve seen this movie a hundred times before. German hyperinflation was one. Latin defaults in S. America was another. It isn’t new and life goes on.
“We the people” get signed up to massive indebtedness to The Uber Rich lenders by sleezy politicians greasing palms of friends and pocketing a load. Eventually someone tries to collect this debt and, surprise, We Poor Deplorables can’t do it. We don’t own anything of merit (compared to the Uber Rich). Then your choices are limited. Any or all of the following may be done:
Inflate away the debt by buggering the currency. Most common by far. It can be via hyperinflation and fast, or the very slow cash burning of the $US where $1 today is about 3¢ to 5¢ of 1960. This screws cash holders, lenders, and for a very short time wages lag, but the big losers are the lenders as the debt evaporates.
Create a whole new currency. Favored by 3rd world despots. Zimbabwe for example, or a few iterations in South American countries. Usually following big inflation. Rarely lasts long.
Tax the Uber Rich heavily to “raise revenue” to then pay off the other Uber Rich. Presently being proposed by California:
https://hotair.com/archives/john-s-2/2020/08/14/california-democrats-propose-wealth-tax-taxes-even-leave-state/
As this is mostly a food fight between winners and losers of the Uber Rich, most regular folks don’t care.
Hand over sovereign assets to the lender. Fairly rare, but Chinese Debt Traps are exploiting this:
Only works if the lender has a bigger army nearby.
Just tell the lender to screw off: https://tfipost.com/2020/08/debt-trap-policy-of-china-in-papua-new-guinea-backfires-gloriously-looks-like-morrison-has-played-his-cards-well/
Yes, very rarely someone decides to make a war of it. Germany W.W.II in response to W.W.I reparations debt. Yes, inflation is a bother (unless you have fixed debt).
But outside the more rare extreme cases, the loser is usually the big lender, not Mr. Deplorable. We Deplorables will have enjoyed the use of the debt, then just kiss it off one way or another. The politician sometimes gets lynched or The French Haircut, but that’s what you get for living the high life while screwing things up. Not my problem.
We see this progressing in the EU today. Italy can’t pay the debts it has in Euros so is talking about leaving the eurozone or EU, returning to the Lira, then being free to inflate away the debt. Yes, present debt is in € but prior Lira debt was converted to euros long ago, establishing a precedent for forcing currency change.
All this time, life goes on. Fish are still biting. My house is still a house. Beer at the river still is good. My fried chicken is still nummy ;-)
Another question, even with the limitations and uncertainties inherent in modeling these things: “What is the net present value of future tax payments?”, for I’d like to see that ;p.
RE: COMMA-la 0r Camel-la. Or whatever.
They did the same thing in 08 Forbidding us from using his middle name,
When you cannot debate the law, you use histrionics
I go with Communist-la..
Yep! Occams Razor.
@PG – Re Gold. It went over 2k and then down again. Gold is a hedge, not an investment. But right now, with the fed pumping trillions into the economy (the helicopter principal), gold is good.
Buy it now.
Commiela.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/nba-fires-photographer-kamala-harris-meme
Check out his logo for the couple!
Latest Pointman
“Trump feeding recalcitrant mayors and governors just enough rope”
This was just brought to my attention, I want DNA test…….Obama too!
see Who is you daddy? https://pgtruspace.wordpress.com/2018/02/02/who-is-your-daddy/
We ran out of isopropyl alcohol and couldn’t find it at the stores around here. So ordered a gallon of 99.9% IPA from Amazon along with some 250 ml lab squirt bottles. The squirt bottles make for precise metering.
I got Ecoxall Chemicals – 99.9% Pure Isopropyl Alcohol, but don’t see it on Amazon anymore. If you order the IPA be careful to get high grade. There are some that have impurities, even in the 99.9% pure category. Just read the blub and comments.
At any rate, IPA commonly is supplied as 70 or 91 wt%. Using 0.784 as the specific gravity of IPA, the volume ratio comes out to 2.97:1 IPA:H2O for the 70% and 12.89:1 IPA:H2O for the 91%.
One caveat, if you want max precision, measure each liquid separately. IIRC, 1 volume of IPA and one volume of water equal less than 2 volumes.
“California: Weather in the 21st Century includes rolling blackouts”
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/08/california-weather-in-the-21st-century-includes-rolling-blackouts/#comment-2355099
And comments
I’m settled on:
Camel A-harrass.
The “blackness” of Commiela is truly in question. The indigenous Jamaicans were from Middle/South America or so. Then there were incursions of (white) Spaniards and Brits. Only later were Africans imported. So the maternal side, Commiela appears to be all Indian. On the paternal side, her father is a product of Irish Father and slave holder + Jamaican mother. But what type or mixture of genes of the mother? Big question. Her father could be anything between zero black genes to plenty. But at most, she would be only 25% black. Her father does appear to have black blood, but it still “whitish” in features.
I saw a CNN hit piece on a likely Georgia Congress critter, Majori Taylor Greene. They claim she’s a racist and make racist videos. So I found one framed by Politico as racist and watched it. Looks to me like she makes some valid and more importantly truthful points. Here’s the video in question:
@Jim2:
I’ve never really understood this business of calling a candidate “Black” when they are almost as white as me, have European features, and are ethnically Upper Class Elite.
Just how does that make a slum trapped midnight black “”deplorable” feel represented? It just looks like a bald faced “lie for effect”.
I note many media hacks refer to her as a woman of color, not stating she is black. That may be why.
Per LawOfficer.com, “It’s been reported that an Austin Police officer said a Mellow Johnny’s sales manager said the decision was made because three employees didn’t like the way bikes were being utilized for crowd control.” The GM “disputed that, saying it was a staff-wide store decision.” Staff-wide? The entire store’s employee base?
https://www.drewberquist.com/2020/08/mellow-johnnys-bike-shop-reneges-on-bicycle-contract-with-austin-police-still-expects-protection/
Hey! if you can call yourself a woman, with an XY, you can call yourself black (or Asian or Indian or whatever) as well!.
Just ask Rachel Dolezal or Shawn King.
Or Fauxcahontas
A second caveat on making your own alcohol solutions: Specific gravity is measured at 20 C or 68 F, So any measurement by volume of the IPA should be done close to that temperature. Or use weight to weight.
Wasn’t sure whether to put this here, or the current COVID thread. Just when we though we knew all about RNA…
https://sciencenorway.no/cells-dna-rna/rna-scientists-have-discovered-a-new-layer-in-the-genetic-code-of-life/1633809
@llanfar,
There are several epigenetic mechanisms. That’s just one of them for RNA. The genetic ‘code’ isn’t a single code, it is several and all are redundant, fault tolerant, and self-correcting, up to a point. They have to be, given how wet chemistry works. It was built into it ;p.
“Who was The Black Douglas? ”
https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/who-was-black-douglas-201229
Probably noy a good idea to meddle with Scottish history
For the geologists to ponder
“It’s Hidden Underneath Those Sedimentary Layers”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/08/18/its-hidden-underneath-those-sedimentary-layers/
‘Hey! if you can call yourself a woman, with an XY, you can call yourself black (or Asian or Indian or whatever) as well!…
‘Now heaven knows,
Anything goes!’
https://saraacarter.com/breaking-trump-to-pardon-someone-very-very-important-tuesday/
@BethTheSerf:
You may remember:
So is there any reason to be surprised Hispanic is the fastest growing “minority” in the USA?
Then, by the “one drop” rule, almost everyone in the USA can claim being Black (since genes diffuse through populations and most whites in the USA have a few African genes)) including my grandkids (maternal granddad is a relatively large dark Puerto Rican).
So it goes…
p.g.sharrow: “see Who is you daddy?”
That is a great link! I’ve always thought that the real issue about Obama’s birth certificate was who his father was, not where he was born. After reading that link, now I have doubts about everything in that birth certificate.
I have always thought that he looks like Frank Marshall Davis. In particular, the mouth area. But that photo of Muhammad Subuh Sumohadiwidjojo of Indonesia is a dead-ringer. This link has three photos
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1259692327834202114.html
(links to a twitter thread), father Sumohadiwidjojo and sons Obama and Joko Widoko, President of Indonesia. The similarity between the “alleged” brothers is striking! We want a DNA test!
Maybe Obama is not black. Not even one drop. Blacks don’t have an exclusive claim on being black. P.G.’s link thinks his mother was Kenyan, and says “his father is SUBUD cult founder Muhammad Subuh Sumohadiwidjojo of Indonesia. His American “mother” was a member of that cult as was the Hawaiian Registrar of birth records . An important money making business of SUBUD was creating American birth papers to sell.”
For more gory details about SUBUD and the Obama family connections with it, read https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2015/eirv42n48-20151204/20-24_4248.pdf Obama’s Obama’s step-father in Indonesia was Lolo Soetoro. He was in the military. “Soetoro, like all members of Suharto’s military regime, would have been called upon to participate in the slaughter, which killed somewhere between 500,000 and a million Indonesian citizens for the “crime” of supporting Sukarno and/or the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), of being of Chinese descent, or simply of not supporting the military junta. The massacres in Indonesia were barbaric,—some by gun, others by machete, others by other means.
While Obama’s step-father was engaged in the military side of this blood-lust, the Subud cult, which his mother became involved in, took part in the civilian mobs that participated in the killing.”
And to lighten things up … Obama was gay (in his head):
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/08/obama_i_make_love_to_men_daily.html
Tidbit
https://www.skoltech.ru/en/2020/08/a-method-has-been-developed-to-study-extreme-space-weather-events/
CTH happenings today
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/08/18/status-update-meeting-and-briefing-today/
@YMMV; quite an essay on the facts surrounding some of the young years of our former president. The purge of the Indonesian Communists had quire an effect on the young Barrack who was quickly sent to the States for safety to live with his white”grandmother” who called him “That African Child”. small wonder he felt disconnected to family.
About being black: I’m thinking the relatively novel concept and label ADOS (American Descendants Of Slaves) is useful. It would exclude Harry Belafonte, Colin Powell, Sidney Poitier, Barack Obama and Kamala Harris. And Shawn King or Rachel Dolezal. It seems to pin down what the culture has been trying to call “authentic”. An afflicted group who have some sort of genetic memory of being abused an exploited. Inherited victimhood is a garbage concept, of course, but it is still limiting the size of that group and preventing wanna-be victims from joining in. Sort of like how wanna-be Native First People Americans are prevented from joining “Tribes”.
@Beththeserf – I am a black female lesbian. And no one can question it since that is how I identify.
Hey Chiefio, is there an open post on China ? Here is something I just found – From the Guardian ! Worth reading. Xi Jin Ping has ‘killed the CCP and made the world an enemy of China”.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/18/cai-xia-chinese-insider-hits-out-at-xi-jinping-he-killed-a-party-and-a-country
I have not seen this reported anywhere else.
Of course they didn’t arrest them. Silly boys! Hell, the cops involved probably will be made to ride stick ponies with cardboard swords covered in aluminum foil – or worse!
The corralled group was eventually allowed to leave through a narrow exit after those with bags had them checked by officers. At least one officer filmed protesters as they were leaving the area.
Say, E.M. ‘Everybody’s Hispanic now.’
BeththeCelt.
Occupy their heads. Go, Little Red Guard!
Is everybody asleep or is this thing broken? Or, to put it another way, test.
Rhoda
Awake here
Just gobsmacked at the Dimowit’s ability to lie with such conviction.
Commiela is Hispanic now??? Maybe it should be Chameleoa.
Joe Biden’s Pick Of Kamala Harris Could Help Cement Support Among Latino Voters, Advocates Say
Rhoda – I noticed the absence of our usual small, but steady stream of interesting finds, insights that expand previous comments, and bits of jiggery pokery fun (usually me), along with the usual running commentary on how screwed up – deliberately and to our detriment – our various governments are thanks to GEBs.
I just figured that by chance, everyone was tied up in their own business all on the same day.
Me? The garden is coming on, I was tied up refinishing two table-tops which will carry over into today, and I had a bit of clearing out to do to have things out ahead of trash collection. That’s done at random times, so the junk better be out the night before.
All I had time for was a bit of fun with flying lambs.
With the laughable DNC convention this week, there will be a lot of fodder for us to express our consternation and ridicule. Perhaps Serioso will drop by with some unbridled enthusiasm and support, but if he’s more of a Bernie fan, he may have more in common with the usual viewpoints expressed here. (Bernie would be the nominee if it had been an honest primary. Just like against Hillary, Bernie would win the majority in a primary and Hillary (and Biden) would get the delegates.)
2nd night viewership of the DNC convention was down 48% over second night last convention and the ratings were lower than some variety show that was mentioned.
It’s good we’ve been discussing guns ’cause now everyone has a good idea of what caliber gun they need to hold to my head to force me to watch that fustercluck of a circus. But maybe the foreign contingent here has enough distance from the stench of to safely view and comment on the American Experiment spiraling out of control.
I’ve got another out and about day today, so I’ll be a bit quiet, but comments should pick up again, eh?
Quick note and then I’m off on another round of chores and errands.
The DOW index has been up and down a bit this week with the last three days being a bit down. During the Election cycle, nothing is coincidental. I’m think a few whales have pitched in to at least make sure the DOW, where a lot of 401ks are, is down to some extent to the Dems can wail about how terrible things are and it’s all the Bad, Incompetent, Stupid, Unqualified, Tyrannical Orange Man’s fault.
Trouble is, the numbers say no-one is watching to get that message.
.
.
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Oh! Oh! I did run across some chatter that the Bernie Bros are really pissed off and may vote Green, although I don’t who the Green candidate is this time.
I don’t have time to chase that down, but it seems to be unhelpful to the Dems at this point. I’m not sure how they will herd the Bernie Bros back into the sheep pen.
Saw a great one on the back of a minivan while oot and aboot today.
Instead of a stick family, it had a decal of text on the rear window which said:
I used to be cool
You know instantly it’ a 30-something married guy with 2.4 kids, a dog, a house in the ‘burbs, and a mortgage to meet.
:o)
When reading about the Celts in Spain, whether the musings of E.M. about his ancestors, or established published sources, it’s very helpful to keep in mind that the Celts and the Gauls are identical: Simply different names by outsiders for the same people(s) and culture(s). The Greeks preferred to call them Keltoi, whereas the Romans usually preferred Galli. I’ve long suspected that the Romans preferred the latter as a disparaging double entendre, being identical to the Latin word gall·us, -i, which means “rooster“. But I’ve never seen an authoritative statement one way or t’other.
In particular, Gallia as the ancient name for France &c., Galicia of N.W. Spain, and Galatia of the New Testament in what’s now central Turkey, all obtained their names as a consequence of their Celtic populations.
The Galicia–Volhynia of the past millenium’s ebb & flow of Ukrainian, Polish, and Ruthenian control might also have been Celtic, but predictably, many historians, presumably Slavophiles, disagree [×]. But why couldn’t their Galicians be Celtic also? The land is on the easily accessible Eurasian steppe [@], so there are no physical barriers in the region except for the rivers.
——–
Note × : For the conflicting opinions on origins, see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galicia_(Eastern_Europe).
Note @ : More specifically the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, which is N. of the Black Sea [@@], and part of the Eurasian steppe. During the Roman Republic, it was part of the extensive Sarmatian lands. “Steppe” is an Eurasian name for a widespread geographic feature that U.S. readers would call a prairie, as in our Great Plains.
Note @@ : A source of frustration for readers trying to learn the geography & history of this typically unfamiliar region: The “Pontic-Caspian Steppe” is not part of the Roman Empire’s “Diocese of Pontus“, which was more-or-less an administrative name for Anatolia, that land thus being on the S. side of the Black Sea. instead, the Pontic-Caspian Steppe is on the N. side of the Black Sea. The basis for the confusion is that the Romans adopted the name used by the Greeks for the Black Sea, which was Latinized as “Pontus Euxinus” (« Πόντος Εύξεινος »). But then, common Roman use dropped the distinguishing Greek adjective « Εύξεινος », meaning “hospitable”, and instead kept the nondistinguishing Greek common noun « Πόντος » meaning “sea”. See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontus.
A disturbing read
“The Marxists have forced out the Conservatives, now they’re coming for the Liberals”
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/08/the-marxists-have-forced-out-the-conservatives-now-theyre-coming-for-the-liberals/
Well, my excuse for not being active in the last day or so is listed in the newest Australia Friday thread. Yesterday we had the house closed up and HEPA filter running as the sky was full of high smoke off the mountains 20 miles away. Forest fire caused by heavy lightning (unusual this time of year) the day before. The sunny bits on the cement and lawn looked ORANGE.
Then there was some prepping for any rolling blackout that might hit (missed us this time). Seems that clouds of smoke covering the sky tends to reduce your solar output and wind was low. Then there was…
Well, let’s just say that after dinner I “fell into my cups” a bit much… and then it was tomorrow today already ;-)
FWIW, I’m working on the next W.O.O.D. next, so this one (being a bit slow to load) will be getting some relief soon ;-) That is, if this next bottle of wine is cooperative and isn’t empty in an hour ;-)
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@CompuGator – very interesting! Thanks for the latin lesson (my daughter took that as her “foreign language – silly me, I took French, Spanish and German).