Gun Nut Roundup Sept. 2011

Two Concealed Carry Reciprocity Bills In Congress

Two separate bills designed to help gun owners be able to exercise their Second Amendment rights when traveling outside their home state are winding their way through the U.S. Congress.

 Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) recently introduced  H.R. 2900, “The Secure Access to Firearms Enhancement (SAFE) Act.”  This bill is being championed by Gun Owners of America (GOA) which says the bill "allows law-abiding citizens who can legally carry concealed in their home state to carry all across the country, as well."  GOA also says: "The SAFE Act also respects the Constitution and states’ powers in that it does NOT establish national standards for concealed carry, nor does it provide for a national carry permit or require a state like Vermont to move to a permit system (in order for its citizens to carry out-of-state)."

The National Rifle Association (NRA) is putting its support behind H.R. 822, the "National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act of 2011," introduced by Reps. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) and Heath Shuler (D-N.C.).  According to NRA-ILA, H.R. 822 "would allow any person with a valid state-issued concealed firearm permit to carry a concealed firearm in any state that issues concealed firearm permits, or that does not prohibit the carrying of concealed firearms for lawful purposes. A state`s laws governing where concealed firearms may be carried would apply within its borders. The bill applies to D.C., Puerto Rico and U.S. territories. It would not create a federal licensing system; rather, it would require the states to recognize each others` carry permits[.]"

DOJ To Eliminate ATF?

Katie Pavlich at Townhall.com reports of rumors that the Department of Justice may try to scrap the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.  Last week ATF offered 400 agents early retirement and sources say a plan is circulating in the DOJ to eliminate the agency and transfer its functions to other agencies.

While many gun nuts may cheer the elimination of the ATF, Pavlich suggests that DOJ may have ulterior motives.  "ATF field agents weren’t the problem with Operation Fast and Furious, high ranking officials within ATF and the Department of Justice were and still are," writes Pavlich.  "DOJ would eliminate ATF only to take the heat off of the Obama Administration. By eliminating the bureau, it makes it seem like DOJ is taking Operation Fast and Furious so seriously, they decided to 'clear out the corruption, clean house,' however, it would only be a distraction away from the people at the top of the investigation."

Court Allows Wolf Hunts To Proceed

Seeking to "win a stay of execution for wolves," several bunny hugger groups sued to halt wolf hunts in Montana and Idaho.  In late August however the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied their motion, allowing the hunts to proceed on the animals which are no longer considered "endangered" in the area.  (For a more in-depth analysis of the Western wolf issue, read Bawb's post here.)

Mike Garrity of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies (one of the groups involved) said of the ruling, “We will continue to fight to protect the wolves and enforce the separation of powers doctrine in the US Constitution.”  Garrity made no mention of the Tenth Amendment however, nor of protecting the moose and elk being eradicated by wolves, nor of protecting the livelihoods of local ranchers.

JUDGE: "NO FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT TO PRODUCE AND CONSUME FOODS."

What in the hell are they putting in the cheese these days? From Wisconsin, of all places.

In a court case sure to go down in history for one of the most bizarre rulings, a Wisconsin judge has held that American citizens do not have a "fundamental right to produce or consume foods of their choice."

The plaintiffs in the case argued that their right to privacy — which allows them to decline medical treatment, allow abortion, view pornography, and engage in consensual sex — should also translate into the right to “consume food of his/her own choice.”

Judge Patrick Fiedler remained unconvinced, claiming that the constitutionality of food rights is “wholly without merit.” He added that the plaintiffs' use of the Roe v Wade case as a precedent does “not explain why a woman’s right to have an abortion translates to a right to consume unpasteurized milk…. This court is unwilling to declare that there is a fundamental right to consume the food of one’s choice without first being presented with significantly more developed arguments on both sides of the issue.”

Judge Fiedler went on to clarify his ruling further:

1. “no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to own and use a dairy cow or a dairy herd;
2. “no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to consume the milk from their own cow;
3. “no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to board their cow at the farm of a farmer;
4. “no, the … Plaintiffs’ private contract does not fall outside the scope of the State’s police power;
5. “no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to produce and consume the foods of their choice.”

Now why do I get this mental image in my head of a top Monsanto executive in a lavish office somewhere tapping his fingers together and crooning, "Excellent."?

YOU REALLY CAN'T COMPARE OBAMA TO HITLER

By my count, and I’m sure I missed a few million, leftists created approximately 387 hillion bajillion pictures of Bush as Hitler. Bush as a Chimpanzee was a distant second. We were not a big fan of Bush pissing away our tax dollars, but now we long for the good old days when the president pissed away the equivalent of schoolyard milk money in real people dollars while the current denizen of the Whitehouse pissed (and continues to piss) away the equivalent of Palm Springs, with less to show for the money. Maybe Bush’s economy was a K-Car missing on two cylinders, but Obama’s is more like a heavy stone chiseled into a crude wheel being pushed up a steep grade.

As an aside, Jim and I once discussed how in the hell the loony left could portray Bush as a retarded half chimpanzee who had to have help putting on his pants in the morning on one hand, while portraying him as some kind of Machiavellian evil genius bent on ruling the world on the other. But that's beside the point.

We wouldn’t even still be talking about Bush 43 anymore except for two reasons. (A) Obama and his usual crony suspects are still trying to blame the bad economy on him, despite having had three years and roughly 10.479 trillion dollars in spending to “fix” the Shrub’s screw-ups and (B) While the loony left is still comparing Bush to Hitler, any comparison of Zero the Hero to Hitler is strictly verboten and considered racist, hateful, violent, wicked, terrorist, bigoted, evil, unfair, vicious, immoral, etc., etc., etc.

Not wishing to be offense, here at Das Blog we agree to stop comparing Obama to Hitler. Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini is a more apt comparison. After all, despite being evil Hitler did at least fix the German economy and make the trains run on time, which is much more than Zero has accomplished. So, let’s take a look at why Benito and Barack are comparable. Hell, with Obama’s krummholz family tree, they could be related for all we know. So here we go. Let's see how the two stack up.

Barack v Benito
or
Il Duce v Il Dunce

Vain, melodramatic narcissist who craved adoration and attention

Mussolini: Yes

Obama: Yes

Bankrupted national economy

Mussolini: Yes

Obama: Yes

Army of thugs

Mussolini: Blackshirts

Obama: Purpleshirts

Voter intimidation at the polls

Mussolini: Yes

Obama: Yes

State control of industries

Mussolini: Yes

Obama: Yes

Unsuccessfully tried to fight a depression with public works programs

Mussolini: Yes

Obama: Yes

Public Schools should be for indoctrination before education.

Mussolini: Yes

Obama: Yes

Made his country a laughingstock internationally.

Mussolini: Yes

Obama: Yes

Motto:

Mussolini: “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”

Obama: Pretty much the same

Knew how many states/provinces in his own country

Mussolini: Yes

Obama: No

Knew what language is spoken in Austria

Mussolini: Yes

Obama: No

Stance on Islam

Mussolini: "Fascist Italy wants to ensure the Muslim population of Libya and Ethiopia peace, justice, prosperity, respect the laws of the Prophet and also wants to demonstrate his sympathy to Islam and the Muslims the world over"

Obama: "Islam has always been part of America.""These rituals remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings."

Claimed his country built an Intercontinental Railroad

Mussolini: No

Obama: Yes

Bowed to foreign leaders

Mussolini: No

Obama: Yes

Veteran

Mussolini: Yes

Obama: No

Incompetent buffoon as military leader

Mussolini: Yes

Obama: Yes

So, there we have it folks. I don't know about you, but I think this one is just too close to call.

A SPECIES OF EXERCISE

“Give about two of them [hours] every day to exercise; for health must not be sacrificed to learning. A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprize, and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks.”

Thomas Jefferson

So, last week I took my gun for a walk and my dog Griz came with us. The gun in question was an Evil Black Rifle, my FAL Queenie with the Hensoldt scope. The lake where we were heading had generated reports of a big aggressive problem black bear getting into camps the last two autumns. If I spotted a bear on a far hillside foraging, I could reach out and touch him with the Hensoldt’s BDC. And if a bear waddled into camp at three o’clock in the morning, it’s nice to have twenty rounds of semiautomatic .308 close to hand and not have to mess around with all that silliness of working a bolt.

We hiked five trail miles up into the local wilderness area to our destination lake. While I was hardly adverse to filling my bear tag if the opportunity presented itself, the trip was more just to get out in the boonies for awhile.

As you can see, it was a pretty high mountain lake. We (the gun and I, the dog had no say in the matter) had originally intended to hike up and over the pass in the background of this photo, to get above timberline and spend another night up there somewhere. However, I ran into a couple of bow hunters who had come all the way from Minnesota for their grand Rocky Mountain elk hunting trip. They were hunting hard, but we were having record high temperatures in the 80’s, so the elk weren’t exactly sprinting to their calls and I figured the last thing they needed was for us to go tromping through the middle of their hunting area.

Below the lake there was a burned over area from an old forest fire, kept fairly well watered by a series of spring and seeps trickling down through the rocks. It was a berry bonanza; red raspberries, thimbleberry, black currants, elderberry, mountain ash, and rose hips, the last not a berry but a good source of Vitamin C which stays on the plant all winter. I really feasted on thimbleberry and raspberry. They were both just about done for the year. I had to be careful with the raspberries, as the ripe ones would fall off the vine at the lightest of touches. Actually, I got more berries by picking them up out of the crevices in the rocks where they had fallen. Eventually, I decided I’d better stop lest I wind up able to shit through a screen door at 20 paces that night. Griz kept pushing in and sniffing around trying to figure what I was eating, but couldn’t quite grasp the idea of eating berries.

Further up, in the shade of the timber, there were wild strawberries, Oregon grape and dwarf huckleberries. As usual, I could find no strawberries on the plants. Oregon grape are as sour as those hideous candies the kids eat which make your face shrivel and pucker up, but they are supposed to be “better” and “sweeter” after a frost. It had gotten down to 22 degrees a couple of nights before so, as usual, I tried a few grapes but certainly couldn’t discern any sweetness to them. The huckleberries were done for as well, and I only found dry shriveled up ones, but at least they still tasted good.

So as not to disturb the Uff Da’s bow hunting, we set up camp at the far end of the lake and just chilled. I had planned to have a fire-less camp and just eat my home-made survival food (pemmican, survival bread, hardtack and pinole…not as bad as it sounds and I’ll share the recipes one of these days), but I got to casting a line here and there and landed this nice rainbow. The lake was full of fish this size; you could see them cruising around in the crystal clear water. I should point out also that my K-Bar knife, used for size reference in the photo, is actually the Super Rambo He-Man Special K-Bar and is 28 inches in length. Honest.

As the sun went down behind the 8,600-foot peak behind us, I glassed for animals. I try to set up camp on a slope facing east or southeast so I can get the morning sun right away. It’s tempting to set up in the warm afternoon sun on a west slope, but you regret it in the cold air the next morning as you shiver in the dark shadows waiting for the sun to finally clear the mountain and give you a little warmth.

As the evening coolness began to seep into the air, I sat on the lake shore rocks in my Crazy Creek stadium seat with my compact binos and glassed the far shore and hillsides for wild critters as the single big shadow of the west ridge slowly moved and spread across the lake and into the mountains to the east. I didn’t see hide not hair of a damned thing. Trying to glass the old burn and the berry mother lode for my bear didn’t work well as the white bones of the dead lodgepoles were mostly still standing and pretty thick; one’s view couldn’t penetrate far into the dead timber. The dog enjoyed paddling around in lazy circles in the lake.

Not sure whether there was a fire ban in effect or not (there wasn’t) I built a tiny fire about dark using “squaw wood”, small sticks no larger than a pencil, to make an all but smokeless fire to cook the trout and make a cup of coffee in my canteen cup.

Lest I make it sound like the mountains are some kind of cornucopia of wild edibles just waiting to be picked up off the ground and stuffed into your face, I must stress this was an unusual case. I can usually find something in the high country…glacier lilies, wild onions, Oregon grape…but not enough to fill one’s belly, especially not on a regular basis. I usually end up putting some lily corms and onions in with a canteen cup of rice and soup mix as a “bonus” but that’s about it. Sometimes, you can’t find shit, but if you were starving you could peel the bark off a lodgepole or Doug fir and scrape off the soft inner cambium for a treat that tastes about like you’d expect. Hint: not ambrosia. Glassing for an hour or more and seeing absolutely nothing in the way of critters also goes to show you can’t and shouldn’t plan on living off wild game or fish on a trip into the wilds either. You sure don’t see Survivor Man coming home having gained 25 pounds after a week in the bush.

I broke the Crazy Creek chair down flat for a ground pad in lieu of an Ensolite sleeping pad or Therm-O-Rest. We used to call these things “snivel pads” in the Army when we were young and dumb and full of cum. Their purpose, however, is not to cushion the rocks and roots you’re sleeping on. It’s insulation from the cold ground. The real world’s not like ol’ John Wayne laying down on the bare ground with his saddle for a pillow, his hat pulled low over his eyes, and a trade blanket over him. You’d freeze your nards off that way in the high country.

At times packing ultra light and going without a snivel pad, I’ve built old-timey browse beds from pine and fir boughs and they work pretty good as insulation. I’ve also piled up pine duff and spread it out into a bed between a couple of lodgepole lengths.

With clear skies and no rain forecast, I just spread my East German shelter half and poncho liner on the pad and folded it over me and we slept under the stars. The shelter half has a button and eye system( rather than snaps like American, Brit or former West German shelter halves) to connect to other shelter halves or to close up the side and bottom. Those damn Commies from the former “Democratic Republic’s” Workers’ Paradise no doubt manufactured them under some kind of Collective 5-Year-Plan, kind of like Obama and Geithner running GM, and the buttons come off about as fast as you can use them. My next project is to sew some Velcro along the bottom and the edge.

I don’t take a watch with me into the wilderness, preferring to go by Boonie Standard Time, so I can only guess that it was about three or four in the morning when a small herd of elk moved through the dead timber across the hillside on the far side of the lake. When they’re just ambling along you can hear the cows and calves “talking” the whole time. An hour or two later, they ambled back the other way. Of course there was no moon so it was blacker than the inside of a cat and we never actually saw them.

In the morning, an adult bull moose came out of the dark timber on the far side of the lake and slowly worked his way through the shallows. The rack was nothing to brag about, but it was very nice to actually see a moose these days. These days, the vast majority of the moose in our neck of the woods are wolf shit. Eventually, the moose waded ashore and worked his way up the lake towards us. The dog, of course, while used to stock animals, went nuts over his first moose. He sure sounded tough and fierce, but he showed no inclination to actually run over there and tangle with the thing. His growling and barking did make the moose kick it up a gear and he trotted right past camp, although at a speed and through timber that kept me from getting a good photo.

Oddly enough, the moose was accompanied by a flying squirrel, but I shot it with Queenie and Griz ate it; a satisfying experience for all three of us.

AM I SAFER TEN YEARS LATER?

FROM

For many years I had refused to fly since 9/11, but awhile back I twisted my ankle while fighting a forest fire in Washington State and had to fly home instead of driving back later with the rest of the 20-man crew.

Into the airport I went. I was still wearing my salt-stained yellow-and-green Nomex firefighter uniform because I had no “civvy” clothes with me. My ticket had been purchased by the Federal government. I had my Federal employee scannable Smart Pass identification. This was insufficient, so I also had to show my driver’s license, National Guard military ID, passport, birth certificate, DNA sample, retina scan, and a note from the local sheriff. While fumbling around with all this paperwork, my NRA membership card fell out of my wallet. Much to my naive surprise, the TSA agent said I fit a “terrorist profile” and needed an “enhanced” search.

As I entered the scanner, which had a sign on top that said, “Arbeit macht frei", I couldn’t help but notice the fellow behind me in the cattle chute. He was a thirty-ish fellow of Middle-Eastern origin, wearing a turban from which was coming an odd ticking noise. He was sweating profusely and his eyes were darting furtively about. For identification, he showed the TSA thug an underwear label and a blank cashier’s check from the Bank of Somalia.

“Okey-dokey, g’wan through, bub” said the skinny, officious little TSA agent, sniffing and hiking up his pants.

“What about that guy?” I asked the TSA agent, nodding at Turban Man.

“We can’t use race, country of origin, religion, appearance, lack of identification or weaponry as criteria in our terrorist profiles,” he replied. "Unless, of course, you're a male WASP."

I was herded into a small room where I had to disrobe completely. For some reason, they had to search my bunghole twice. I can’t figure out how that squirrely little agent with the bad lisp was able to do that with one of his hands on each of my shoulders, but I complied like a good little sheeple.

My small revenge was that I had been living in a firefighter spike camp in the mountains for several days without a shower. When this little blue-haired female 60-plus-year old TSA agent examined my boots for explosives, the stench sent her reeling backwards, knocking down a partition and revealing my nakedness to a few dozen passengers. Several agents jumped on me and pummeled me with billy clubs while another hustled my boots away to check them for Nuclear, Biological, Chemical weapons.

When the boots came back, carried with a set of long tongs by an agent in a protective space suit, the head TSA agent came out and said, “Tough shit for the inconvenience.” Then he cited me for indecent exposure.

Having finally crossed the River Styx, I saw that, since I had reported to the airport five hours early as instructed, I still had a good three minutes to catch my flight. I hadn’t eaten since the previous evening, so I decided to grab a sub sandwich at one of the airport kiosks.

Behind the counter, a Middle-Eastern guy in his mid-twenties, displaying an airport security pass around his neck asked, “What you fuggin' want, imperialist Yankee pig-dog infidel?”

So I wasted a couple of minutes talking louder and louder in short phrases and then in single words, pointing and gesturing at the overhead menu signs, until I was able to order a deli ham and bacon sub, on white bread. After a long wait, my sub arrived, carried with a set of long tongs by another young man of Arabic-descent in a protective space suit. The guy at the counter spat on the sandwich before handing it over to me. Then we had to haggle over the price for awhile before he would accept the amount listed on the menu, and even then he kept on insisting on being paid in Saudi Riyal rather than American Dollars.

The sub was, of course, completely inedible, the bacon raw, the bread limp and wet, and the condiments unidentifiable. On the fireline, I had eaten a pine beetle on a bet, so when I say it was inedible, it was in-friggin’-edible. I tossed it into the trash can after one bite.

Now rushing to my departure gate, a janitor, in his late 20’s and of Middle-Eastern descent, looking furtively back over his shoulder as he exited from a door marked: SECURE AREA: NO ADMITTANCE, unexpectedly pushed his mop bucket out into the corridor ahead of me. I tripped over the bucket, from which protruded a mop handle and what looked suspiciously like the wood-sleeved barrel of an RPG-7 rocket launcher. The janitor hastily gathered the objects while screaming curses at me in Arabic, making sure he kept hold of his airport security pass before scuttling away.

As I arrived at the departure gate, I was the last person in line. Up ahead, in the middle, I could see two thirty-ish men of Middle Eastern descent, sweating profusely in the air conditioning and glancing nervously all around, being waved on through. When I got to the counter, the airline employee said she was sorry but that I fit their terrorist profile list and would have to go with the nice Customs and Immigration officer looming nearby. Oh boy. I was subject to another body cavity search.

This, of course, caused me to miss my flight. With a heavy sigh, I purchased a paperback book at a nearby kiosk to kill time while I waited for the next flight, six hours later. The novel made for tedious reading. The highly unlikely plot was something about Nazis hiding underground since 1945 smuggling an atom bomb into the U.S. and detonating it under the United Nations’ Islamic Peace Conference.

Growing bored with the paperback tripe, I gazed out the window. It was a hot August day, so I wondered why the baggage handlers, who appeared to be men in their late 20’s and of Middle Eastern descent, were wearing ski masks in addition to their airport security passes. I dozed off.

I was awakened by a plainclothes agent who identified himself as a Federal Air Marshall. He said that another Federal agency, despite my injury, had requested I return to my firefighting crew ASAP. A huge new forest fire had unexpectedly erupted in the mountains, already threatening two small communities and closing the Interstate. Something about a plane crash.

As I stood up, I winced in pain. In addition to the sprained ankle, I now had to walk carefully as my junk was bruised and battered from repeated searching. As I made to head out, the Federal agent explained that I fit their terrorist profile and he would have to subject me to another body cavity search before allowing me to exit the airport.

Days later, when the fire was finally contained, my employing agency offered to upgrade me to First Class if I wished to fly back home. I declined. Despite the sprained ankle and swollen balls, I started hobbling down the highway with my thumb out.

It took me three days to get home. Even though the guy in the primer-gray old van with no windows who picked me up, a man who punctuated his sentences by waving a meat cleaver and kept asking me if I liked fava beans and Chianti, made me a wee bit uneasy, I still felt much more secure than I had with the Homeland Security forces at the airport

M1 GARAND MARKSMANSHIP

Old U.S. Army training film on how to shoot "the finest battle implement ever devised"...correctly. Works for little girlie rifles too. Learn it, live it, love it.





Linkie to Sourcie.

THE BIGGEST CRIME THREAT IN MEMPHIS: GARDENING

The Morgan Quitno Awards have, for the last eleven years, rated the 25 safest and most dangerous cities to live in per crime rate statistics. This year, Memphis made the list as the second most dangerous Metropolitan Area in the nation. In the past, they have made #1, and seem to continue jockeying to reclaim that spot. According to the Memphis Commercial Appeal in 2007:

"The Memphis metropolitan area, after coming in second last year, tops this year's ranking of metro areas by the rate of violent crime -- homicide, rape, aggravated assault and robbery."

So, what are the city fathers doing about all this crime? Going after backyard gardeners, of course! I can't even comment on this without blowing a gasket, so here is the full story from Hannah Sayle of the Memphis Flyer.

Seeds of Discontent

Code enforcement targets urban garden.

by Hannah Sayle

• Left to right: Jarvis, Jovantae, Adam, and Shaquielle

Adam Guerrero and three kids from his neighborhood, Jovantae, Jarvis, and Shaquielle, hardly seem like lawbreakers as they turn over soil at Guerrero's Nutbush home.

But the city's code enforcement department has deemed their urban garden a nuisance, and a judge has ordered them to remove the small ecosystem they've been working on for the last two years.

According to the court summons, Guerrero, a math teacher at Raleigh-Egypt High School, was cited for violating city ordinances 48-38 and 48-87: He failed to "remove personal property" that is "unsightly" or a "nuisance," and he failed to maintain "a clean and sanitary condition free from any accumulation of rubbish or garbage."

Shelby County Environmental Court judge Larry Potter upheld the citation, ordering Guerrero to get rid of the "debris and personal property" stored outside his home and trim overgrown vegetation — including cutting down his 7-foot-tall sunflower plants.

"He said it's considered a neighborhood nuisance," says Guerrero, who is a member of the GrowMemphis board. "I asked him to define nuisance for me, and he said basically if it generates a complaint, it's a neighborhood nuisance."

Guerrero's home is certainly unique: eggplant, tomato, and pepper plants grow in the front yard; the backyard is lined with rows of wooden worm bins; barrels for collecting and storing rainwater are stationed next to his backdoor; his garage is stocked with equipment for making biodiesel and soap; and behind his garage are beehives quietly humming with industry. Elsewhere, passionflowers, butterflies, elderberry bushes, and sunflowers fill out the garden.

But with no visible trash or garbage and plants kept off the sidewalk and driveway, Guerrero doesn't understand why a judge would bring his operation to a halt.

"These are direct applications to math, biology, engineering," says Guerrero, who uses his garden as a sort of continuing education for Jovantae, Jarvis, and Shaquielle, the latter of whom is a former student of Guerrero's at Kingsbury High School. Jovantae and Jarvis attend the Memphis Academy of Science and Engineering (MASE). "I'm proud to know that the students I work with are probably the only students in Memphis City Schools who know how to make their own biodiesel," Guerrero says.

With the glycerin by-product from the biodiesel, the kids have learned to make soap. They suit up in beekeeping gear and harvest honey. They fill worm bins with kitchen scraps from Central BBQ and Huey's — a contract they have with Project Greenfork — and watch as it turns into nutrient-rich soil. Guerrero and the boys have also installed solar panels at the Midtown North Community Garden.

"One aspect of the schools is teaching that every child should be college-bound but [without] teaching them any skills. The kids don't even know how to use a ruler. I'm taking a different approach and teaching them skills," says Guerrero, who has his students at Raleigh-Egypt help with the garden as well, using geometry and basic tools to help craft worm bins, beehives, and small greenhouses from recycled materials.

Jovantae, a junior at MASE, estimates that he and his friends spend three or four days at the garden when school is out and at least one day a week during the school year. They are none too pleased with the judge's decision.

"I don't understand why it's a problem if it's in the backyard," says Shaquielle, a senior at Kingsbury. "We like coming here. We don't want it to go away."

Guerrero returns to court on September 23rd to demonstrate that he has complied with the judge's orders. Last Friday evening, staring out over his backyard, Guerrero was still hesitating to dismantle the project into which he's poured so much time and energy.

MORE VIOLENCE AND RACISM FROM THE LEFT? DAMN THOSE INCONVENIENT TRUTHS!

Just last time we talked, Union Thug Jimmy "Concrete Loafers" Hoffa Jr. was definitely not calling for violence when he used the word "war" five times and the word "vote" once and wound it all up saying, "Let's take these sonsofbitches out!" Then the other towering intellectual in the Whitehouse, Joe "Jobs is a 3-letter word" Biden, told other union thugs, “It is a fight literally for our right to exist. Don’t misunderstand what this is….You are the only folks keeping the barbarians from the gates.”

There was an eerie silence from the usual suspects in government and media who scream bloody murder about the Tea Party if a members farts. This, apparently, it is not "violent rhetoric" or "hateful speech" or a "lack of civility" when the Left does it. As we've noted before...HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

Shortly afterward, in Washington state, "Hundreds of Longshoremen stormed the Port of Longview early Thursday, overpowered and held security guards, damaged railroad cars, and dumped grain that is the center of a labor dispute, officials said." I suspect if such things happened and conservatives or libertarians were involved, we would still be hearing the wailing and gnashing of teeth about it on every news outlet.

Now, again only days after Hoffa and Biden violently not calling for violence, union thugs are at it again in, of all places, North Dakota, which helps explain the whole Tom Daschle thing.

"Police say union supporters have directed racial slurs and racist symbols at replacement workers and security personnel outside an American Crystal Sugar plant in North Dakota.

Traill County Sheriff Mike Crocker says there have been racial statements made to security people outside of the company's Hillsboro facility. He says he recently saw a monkey-like figure hanging from a noose attached to a large inflatable rat outside the plant. He says it was removed the next day.

A photo of the monkey hanging from the noose secured to one of the inflatable rat’s claws has also been circulating on the Internet. The photo features a sign with American Crystal President and CEO Dave Berg's name on it.

The Grand Forks Herald reported Tuesday that many of the replacement workers are from Southern states, and some are minorities."

Racism? I thought that was only a Tea Party thing? And you didn't hear of of this trumpeted from the rooftops in feigned rage by the press and the usual two-faced politicians

While on the subject of unions and inciting shit and rage, we now have "The Day of Rage" supposedly coming up on Wall Street.

"A US Day of Rage is the title given to a day of ostensibly “non-violent” civil disobedience orchestrated by a group of radicals — that reportedly include SEIU's Stephen Lerner and ACORN founder Wade Rathke (who, coincidentally, formerly served as president of SEIU’s local New Orleans branch) — targeting Wall Street and U.S. capitalism. It’s worth noting that the title of the movement — if its intentions are indeed non-violent in nature — appears to contradict itself slightly."

Nothing like non-violent rage. What, you haven't heard about this in the news? Why am I not surprised? Frankly, I'm just too damned tired to even point out the hypocrisy of it all anymore.

NO HATE FILLED RHETORIC HERE, NOTHING TO SEE, MOVE ALONG

In case no one has noticed, I should state that I don’t consider the Mainstream Press anymore reliable than reading chicken entrails or consulting an Ouija board, and slightly more biased than the old Soviet Pravda and Tass and Joseph Goebbels Propaganda Ministry. Around 1600 today, I was searching for a particular story and having trouble finding it. With all the stuff hitting the fan around the globe and especially in this country, what are our beloved Newspeak talking heads keeping us informed on instead?

From ABC News: Latest Headlines
Hunter Lost for 5 Days Ate Worms to Survive
Drunken Moose Stuck in Tree
Serial Butt Slasher Suspect Is on the Lam
‘Hysteria’ Paints Vibrator as Medical Device
Ben & Jerry’s Releases ‘Schweddy Balls’
Neil Diamond Engaged!
Iconic Supermodels, Then and Now
Is Reese Witherspoon an Extreme Exerciser?

Good ol’ CNN, the self-proclaimed “Most Trusted Name in News”, brings us up to speed on these vital news stories:
Woman Dies After exposure to odor at Georgia McDonalds
Giffords-Kelly memoir due out in November
Carol Bartz: Yahoo “f---ed me over”
‘Gumby’ robs a convenience store
Flip-flop blisters kill ‘frat star’ hopes
‘View” co-stars reminisce about kiss

And from FOX:
Belgians Deemed World’s Least ‘Cool’ Nationality
Pick Up the Phone! Woman Calls Ex 65,000 Times
Police, Mom Argue Over Child Riding Bike to School

I’m not kidding. Even I couldn’t make such crap up. As if the job situation weren’t bad enough, it seems that many satirists will be joining the ranks of the unemployed. Anyway, I finally found the particular news item I was looking for on both MSNBC and Fox.

Before we get to it, we’ll have to set the stage with Jimmy Hoffa Junior at a rally for Obama saying of the Tea Party, “Let’s Take These Sons of bitches Out!” Or, as CBS put it, “Jimmy Hoffa warns union crowd in Detroit of the ‘war on workers.’” Where is everyone from the President on down to NPR’s eight listeners screaming it to the rafters that we must tone down the hate-filled rhetoric? Where are the media talking heads bleating for “civil discourse” and an end to hate speech? Instead, we get the Loony Left attacking Fox News for “taking the quote out of context.” If ever there was a case of the pot calling the kettle black…where’s Katie Couric when you really need some good “editing”.

You see, Jimmy Jr. was only referring to voting when he said:

"We got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: The war on workers. And you see it everywhere, it is the Tea Party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They've got a war, they got a war with us and there's only going to be one winner. It's going to be the workers of Michigan, and America. We're going to win that war!"

"President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. But everyone here’s got to vote. If we go back, and keep the eye on the prize, let’s take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong."

Hmmm. Let’s see. Army. Battle. War. Win the war. Fight. Ready to march. Let’s take out these sons of bitches! Yeah, sure sounds like he was just talking about voting to me.

Fortunately, appearing immediately afterwards, “President” Obama chastised the union thug for his call for violence by saying, “And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their death helps usher in more civility in our public discourse, let us remember it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy -- it did not -- but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to the challenges of our nation in a way that would make them proud.”

No, wait, he said that after the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson awhile back, when the Dems and the press tried to blame it all on talk radio, the Tea Party, and Sarah Palin spewing out their “hate-filled rhetoric.” When Hoffa made his remarks, and VP Biden was saying at another AFL/CIO rally in Ohio, “It is a fight literally for our right to exist. Don’t misunderstand what this is….You are the only folks keeping the barbarians from the gates,” what Obama actually said in rebuttal to these calls for violence was….(sounds of crickets chirping, wind sighing in the trees). And by gum, he meant it.

Then, golly gee, just a few days later…

LONGVIEW, Wash. — Hundreds of Longshoremen stormed the Port of Longview early Thursday, overpowered and held security guards, damaged railroad cars, and dumped grain that is the center of a labor dispute, officials said.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union dispute spread to Seattle, Tacoma, Everett and Anacortes ports ahead of a court hearing scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Thursday in Tacoma, where a judge is expected to consider alleged union violations of a previous restraining order.

The Longview blockade appeared to defy a federal restraining order issued last week against the union after it was accused of assaults and death threats.

On Thursday, six guards were held hostage for a couple of hours after 500 or more Longshoremen broke down Longview gates about 4:30 a.m. PT (7:30 a.m. ET) and smashed windows in the guard shack, said Longview Police Chief Jim Duscha.

Most of the protesters returned to their union hall after cutting brake lines and spilling grain from car at the EGT Terminal, Duscha said.

"We're not surprised," Duscha said. "A lot of the protesters were telling us this is only the start."

One [police] sergeant was threatened with baseball bats and retreated, Duscha said.

No one was hurt, and nobody has been arrested.

Let’s see here; violating federal restraining order, kidnapping, destruction of private property, breaking and entering, threats to do bodily harm (baseball bats). One could even include assault, one of the definitions being, “Intentionally or knowingly threatening someone else…with imminent bodily injury.” Dictionary.com defines terrorism as, “the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.” Yet we don’t hear the word terrorist being used in conjunction with any of these acts, we hear the word terrorist given to anyone associated with the Tea Party for not agreeing with the Regime. Nope, don’t see a reason why anyone should be arrested, or even chastised.

Which only gives the green light to more of the same.

WHERE DO FISH COME FROM? YOU'LL NEVER GUESS.

I saw the story of this incredibly shallow buffoon, DAVID COPP, over at Angry's and I just had to pass the tale along so that this horse's ass can be properly ridiculed and mocked around the globe.

It seems Mr. (and I use the term lightly) Copp took his children on vacation to a seaside British fishing village where they horrified when unexpectedly exposed to...fishing and fish. Copp and the kiddies apparently found this "disgusting" and it left them all "greatly distressed." When the harbor master refused his kiss his ass over his tender sensibilities, he went to the local newspaper to snivel some more. I believe he was quoted as saying, "WAAHHH! My pussy hurts!"

But just so the Brits don't think they have a monopoly on clueless morons, here's one of my favorite letters-to-the-editors from a (surprise!) San Francisco newspaper.


And these people drive and vote! We are doomed.

DEALT YOURSELF A BAD HAND? PLAY THE RACE CARD!

What with Jesse Jackson, members of Congress, the Regime, and their slobbering lap dogs in the media trotting out the same old tired accusation of racism against the Tea Party (since they certainly can neither stand on nor extoll the merits of their own policies and achievements, if any) I thought it would be an appropriate time to pull out this golden oldie from Missourah.com.

And speaking of playing the race card...

These days, even Al Gore, rich white Tennessee cracker, inventor of the Internet, and global whining poster child is playing the race card!!!!

Al Gore Compares Climate Change to Civil Rights Fight

Too bad Robert "Sheets" Byrd (D-WV), who "learned his leadership skills" in the Ku Klux Klan, kicked the bucket. No doubt even he would be finding a way to play the race card these days.

GETTING THE MOST FROM THE BATTLE RIFLE: POINT BLANK, BALLISTICS 101

House firearms expert Representative Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) testifies before congress as to which object is a barrel shroud (she gets it wrong). Don't even bring up the subject of ballistics to these type of creatures.

Sorry, but I can't begin a firearms article without ridiculing how ignorant/stupid those "in power" are on the subject. Politicians, the media, and Hollyweird know considerably less about firearms than I know about, say, performing brain surgery left-handed behind my back while inventing faster-than-light interstellar space travel. But they are not folks who let their total ignorance and outright stupidity get in the way of posturing and blustering like they actually know something about firearms. The political whores in Washington D.C., acting upon the Mel Brooks political maxim of, “Gentlemen, we must do something to protect our phony baloney jobs immediately! Immediately! Immediately!” pass legislation on things they know absolutely nothing about so that they can appear to be “doing something” about a problem, real or imagined. For instance, good old Carolyn McCarthy, Democrat from New York, helped write the gun control legislation which outlawed "assault" weapons with barrel shrouds, even though she had no clue as to what a barrel shroud actually is.

The media always wet themselves over a good crisis and if there isn’t an earthquake, flood, or fire handy they often times make up their own "crisis". For instance, when the 12-gauge Dragon’s Breath shotgun pyrotechnic round came out, Iowa “journalists” had a hissy bitch fit about how dangerous these things were because they looked scary when fired; I am not aware of any crime ever having been committed with a pyro shell. So the press ran around screaming about how these shotgun shells were a deadly menace to everyone and everything until they had created such a stir amongst the non-gun public that the state legislature banned the ammo.

And, with a few rare exceptions such as Clint Eastwood, Tom Selleck or John Milius, Hollyweird, home of the 40-shot revolver and magazines that have an apparently unlimited capacity, has always been ridiculously ignorant of firearms and what they can do. My favorite is their following the media’s hype about “Teflon-coated cop-killer” bullets which, in Hollywood, allows a single 9mm pistol projectile to blow body armor apart like a hit from a 105-mm howitzer and shoot through the dozer blade on a D-9 Cat.

One of the big misconceptions that has made its way into common parlance thanks to such experts is “point blank” range. The way they use the term one would think that point blank range is so short that the victim gets powder burns and that the front sight hits him in the chin under recoil.

The proper definition of point blank range is the maximum distance to which the shooter can hold his sights directly in the center of his target, whether it be the vitals of a deer or a man-sized silhouette, and hit within this vital zone. The formula generally used involves the bullet trajectory neither rising above nor falling below 5 inches of the line of sight. Think of it as the range at which you could shoot straight down a 10-inch pipe without hitting the top or bottom.

Thus, the maximum point blank range of a rather anemic pistol round such as the .380 APC, firing a 90-grain jacketed hollowpoint at 1,000 feet per second, is actually 120 yards with a zero range of 100 yards. No danger of powder burns there.

Maximum point range blank is important for the high power rifle shooter; it allows one to wring the most performance out of a particular load, the longest distance at which you can hold your sights dead on and have a center-mass hit without having to hold over or otherwise adjust. Thus, military battle sight zero is usually 250 meters, which allows to shooter to hold dead on out to 300 meters. All this, of course, is based on the premise that the shooter knows what the hell he is doing in firing the rifle.

Most non-military shooters, especially the average ordinary sport hunter, zero their rifles at 100 yards and call it good. This wastes most of the modern high power rifle’s potential. Oh, the horror!

Let’s take the .308 Winchester cartridge, actually the military 7.62x51mm NATO, launching a 147-grain full metal jacket bullet at 2,800 feet per second. Zeroing the sights at 100 yards, the bullet starts dropping at that range. At just over 200 yards, the bullet has already dropped out of our 10-inch pipe, the range at which you can hold your sights dead on, and you have to start holding higher. With a 270-yard zero range to take full advantage of maximum point blank, you can hold dead on out to 330 yards, gaining yourself a full 130 yards. The average hunter who buys a 20-round box of factory ammo every year or two has no damn business shooting past 300 yards anyway.

Then there's a critter called ballistic coefficient, which deals with how streamlined and balanced a bullet is. I won't go into this too much as I've probably gotten pretty boring already. Anyway, to show what a difference ballistic coefficient can make the above trajectory was calculated using data from the U.S. Army's Aberdeen Proving Grounds, which lists the M80 ball round's ballistic coefficient as a rather pathetic .200. Every other source, i.e. all the different reloading manuals I consulted, list the BC for that same bullet at roughly twice the Army's number, around .400. Giving the political REMF butt-kissers at Aberdeen the benefit of the doubt, I used the lowest civilian BC I could find, which was .393. You can clearly see that BC makes a rather large difference in trajectory. This is just one of the reasons why snipers use heavier bullets for long range work, such as the Lake City M118 172-grain Match load, whose bullet has a BC of .468. Some of the heavier precision commercial bullets can get up to .600 BC, or even higher.

Trajectory of supposedly the same bullet, M80 ball, with a BC of .200 (blue) vs. a BC of .393 (pink). Yeah, I think Aberdeen's full of shit, too.

Military rifles only having to be close enough for government work, i.e. hitting a target the size of a man’s torso rather than a 10-inch vital zone on a deer, I still lean towards the .393 BC. For instance, my Trilux SUIT scope I like to play with so much has two sight settings, one to cover shots at 100-400 meters and one to cover 400-600 meters. The former is zeroed at 300 meters, the latter at 500. According to Aberdeen’s BC, that would mean a 7.62x51mm ball round would be well over 10 inches high at 200 meters and almost 16 inches low at 400. Using the civilian sources, it would be 7.3 inches high at 200 and only 9.3 inches low at 400. I think the British Army would be smart enough to match the SUIT scope’s ranges pretty close to the real trajectory if they expected soldiers to hit what they were aiming at.

This target was shot at 400 yards (not meters as it should have been) with my "bad" FAL and the Trilux SUIT scope. The bottom group was shot with the cam on the 100-400 meter setting, and the top with on the 400-600 meter setting, aiming center mass. Doesn't look 16 inches low to me, as per Aberdeen's BC.

If I haven’t thrown enough confusing gibberish at you, back in WWII scope technology, even the good German glass, was pretty pathetic compared to today, no graduated reticles or elevation adjustments. Plus, the U.S. Army doesn’t like soldiers to monkey around with things and wanted “soldier-proof” scopes, so essentially all you could do was zero the scope at a certain range and leave it there, then compensate for the trajectory at various ranges, which had to be estimated using the Mk I Eyeball, by aiming high or low at various ranges using only simple crosshairs. It was effective, after a fashion, but a good shooter with keen vision might do better with the range-adjustable rear aperture sight on the M1 Garand. Fortunately, today’s sniper and even sporting scopes adjust for range pretty well, and make the WWII-era scopes seem like you’re looking through a toilet paper cardboard tube.

Trajectory for the M2 Caliber .30 U.S. (.30-06) with a 400 yard zero. I think that's trying to stretch things a bit much and unnecessary with modern scopes.

Military snipers back in the 1940's-50's "stretched" the range of the .30-06 with a 400-yard zero and "hold-over" or "hold-under", which made range estimation even more important.

I can hear people by now yelling, “Get to the *#$%* POINT, Bawb!” OK, this was my long-winded way of saying zero a 145-150-grain .308 load at 270 yards for maximum point blank range.