Night of the Living Dead In Denver

The Democrats kicked their convention off to a rousing start when a white-haired cadaver with the voice of Kermit The Frog approached the podium to speak. Of course I'm speaking of former-Iowan, former-Republican, former-congressman, former-somebody, Jim Leach. He served as one of Iowa's U.S. Representatives as a "Republican In Name Only" until the voters in his district replaced this wannabe Democrat with a REAL Democrat.

I tried to watch his speech on You Tube, but it was so damned boring I just couldn't finish. During the little bit that I did watch, I kept hoping that they'd occasionally cut to a couple of grumpy old men in the balcony who would mock and laugh at him. (How about Dick Cheney and Fred Thompson?) No such luck. I had to read the transcript instead of watching, in order to stay awake.

Kermit, I mean, Jim did make a few good points. Bashing the Republicans he said, "And the party historically anchored in fiscal restraint has nearly doubled the national debt[...]." Very true Jim! But I don't see how respect for fiscal restraint would drive you into the arms of the Democrats who've never even pretended to give a crap about it. Jim also blamed this increased debt on Bush's tax cuts, not the obscene spending increases. Wrongo!

The Democrats followed up on this ribbiting... I mean riveting speech with a 10-minute silent closeup of a warm bowl of oatmeal slowly congealing. Good television! If Jim ever gets on national television again, I hope he spices it up by singing "Rainbow Connection" or something.

In other news this week: Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain announced their picks for vice president. Balancing their respective tickets Obama and McCain both picked V.P.s that are what they are not. Obama picked an old, white man and McCain picked a conservative Republican.

POSTVILLE POSTSCRIPT

Having been born and raised in Iowa and having lived in a town with a large meat-packing plant, when I heard the news about the big Immigration raid in Postville, Iowa it did not upset me. Representing the Red State hicks out here in Fly-Over Country, my response was similar to those of everyone else I know. And the usual responses were somewhere between, “It’s about blamed time!” and, “Well, it’s a start.”

OF COURSE, I should have known what the response from the Loony Left would be. I saw a particularly odious article about this small town struggling to “survive its ordeal”, so I delved further into the coverage of the event, and found it par for the course. The Usual Suspects…the Drive-By Mainstream Media, the perpetually outraged professional “protestors”, the snooty “elite” of Academia, and the rest of the Left-Wing nut cases who search the world around them for something to be offended by…were all whining like a bitch dog in heat. They are trying to portray this simple and long overdue Immigration raid as the greatest genocide since Hitler and Pol Pot.

So, since they seem to be incapable of wrapping their warped little minds around reality and are impervious to their own inconsistencies, allow me to point out the pontificating Socialists’ hypocrisy.

The same fear-mongering weenies of the Thought Police who wipe their butt with the Constitution and would have the very thoughts inside someone’s head criminalized and prosecuted as “hate crimes” don’t think that folks ought to be arrested for identity theft or Federal Immigration violations. Some animals are more equal than others. They also forgot to mention that many of the stolen/fake ID’s came from Agriprocessor’s own human resources department. There was even a meth lab operating at the packing plant, but I guess as long as Hassidic Jews and ILLEGALS are cooking the meth, it’s kosher, pardon the pun.

The sniveling Commies who detest Capitalism and would like to see oil company executives burned at the stake swoon over Agriprocessors and how they are the “savior” of the economy of Northeast Iowa. The lying liberals who pretend to stand for the working man and back unions weren’t to be found when Agriprocessors were stone-walling and fighting the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. Agriprocessors even took their case against the unions to Federal court, saying their employees couldn’t join the union or vote because they were ILLEGAL. Then there’s the subminimum wages that the original citizens of Postville could not afford to work for because they represented a pay cut from the already feeble job market in the area. Sucks to be you, Mr. American working man, we’ll bring in some ILLEGAL slave labor for the subminimum jobs you “can’t or won’t do.”

Then there are the fern-feelin’, flower-sniffin’ bunny’huggin’ Gaia worshippers who hang on every word of the Goracle, the same wacko tree-huggers who killed the American logging industry, untold family businesses and small towns all over the Northwest to save a stinking owl (90% of which, by the way, according to field surveys, did not nest in Old Growth forests anyway). These eco-weenies sure weren’t too concerned when Agri-Proccessors was dumping all kinds of nasty stuff, including 40,000 gallons of turkey blood, into the scenic and beautiful Yellow River, resulting in massive fish die-offs, or contaminating the ground water, or dumping other wastes, or violating state environmental regulations, or paying $600,000 in fines to the EPA.

The self flagellating hanky-twisters who would tax or outlaw everything in the country “for the children” and would confiscate everyone’s guns if “it saves just one child” (well, except for the unborn children; they don’t count) threw a hissy fit over La Migra “breaking up poor families” but didn’t utter a peep when Agri-Processors was violating child labor laws. The same wild-eyed slobberers who are berating ICE for their “cruel and inhumane” treatment of the ILLEGALS were not to be found while Agriprocessors were guilty of physically abusing their slave labor, as well as violating other labor and food safety laws.

I read a piece from one bile-spewing Leftist kook who was belly aching about how the money spent on the immigration busts could have been better spent on providing the ILLEGALS with universal health care and better education. I got news for you, Socialist bimbette, they already get free health care and education, at tax-payer expense, while in the process of swamping, bankrupting and ruining local medical facilities, schools, and law enforcement at the expense of the local American CITIZENS.

I hear tell we are not even supposed to call them ILLEGALS anymore. They tell me that’s a racist term now and we need to call them Undocumented Workers. Yeah, right. And a drug dealer is an Unlicensed Pharmacist.

So, my take on the whole deal is that if you are an ILLEGAL in this country and you don’t like the treatment you receive for breaking our laws, don’t let the door hit you in butt on the way out. But if the Loony Left gets its way, terrorists and ILLEGALS will have more rights than the ordinary American citizen who's supposed to be protected by the Constitution.

I.O.U.S.A .; FINANCE SO SIMPLE EVEN A SHEEPLE CAN UNDERSTAND

http://www.iousathemovie.com/about/

Throughout history, the American government has found it nearly impossible
to spend only what has been raised through taxes. Wielding candid interviews
with both average American taxpayers and government officials, Sundance
veteran Patrick Creadon (Wordplay) helps demystify the
nation's financial practices and policies. The film follows former U.S.
Comptroller General David
Walker as he crisscrosses the country explaining America's unsustainable
fiscal policies to its citizens.

A new documentary has just been released concerning the true scope and depth of the national debt. Some reviewers are calling it the "Inconvenient Truth" of our national finances. I find that a bad analogy since the national debt is real while that other thing...well...

Gazillionaire Warren "Jimmy" Buffett, who knows a little something about money, was involved in the film. Former Comptroller General David Walker quit his post in frustration and disgust to travel the country on his "Fiscal Wake-Up Tour", trying to reach "those who have eyes, but see not" and "have ears, and hear not", aka the vast majority of the American public. The movie will at least reach a wider audience than Walker's impassioned but limited speaking tour. From the interviews I've seen, Creadon and Walker have more credibility than Al Gore, Michael Moore, and, say, the United States Senate all rolled into one.

Of course, the media and Fed.Gov are treating our national financial house of cards as a non-issue. Nobody wants to notice the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Move along, nothing to see here. It hasn't even been mentioned in the presidential campaign, except by one former candidate, this crackpot representative from Texas. The government, who created this fiasco in the first place, has responded to this crisis seems along the lines of..."If we all bury our heads in the sand, maybe it will go away." The political whores who run the country seem to think we can borrow our way out of debt. Kind of like the 1700's medicine of bleeding a patient to get the bad blood out, but with less chance of success.

I'm glad to movie will open at least a few sheeple eyes. It won't, I'm sure, have any effect on the upcoming presidential elections. The vast majority of the electorate (judging by Obama campaign commercials, especially) still thinks Fed.Gov is Santa Claus, there to give them whatever "presents" they desire, and to hell with where the money (or lack of it) actually comes from.

Oh well, there's a new episode of "CSI Newark" on, there's still $57.16 left on the credit card, and there's a six-pack in the fridge. All is well.

REAL ID RESISTANCE, OR: ACTUNG! VERE ARE YOUR PAPERS?!?!

“Do you want our government to have the ability to track where you went,
how you went, how you got there and when you got home? It would be naive for someone to
think this information will not be abused in the future. Virtually every decade
these kinds of files have been used to violate people’s privacy.”-- Brian
Schweitzer, Governor of Montana

Out on the dusty Mainstreet, Homeland Security Gruppenfuhrer Michael Chertov, resplendent in his monocle and spit shined jackboots, has once again faced down Montana Governor Brian Schwietzer, wearing his bolo tie and with his faithful cow dog at his side.

Governor Schwietzer wrote the Gruppenfuhrer a letter stating that Montana would not comply with the odious Federal REAL ID Act, which would do absolutely nothing to close our porous borders as recommended by the 911 Commission, but, on the other hand, would allow Big Brother to see Winston, or any other citizen, writing in his tiny alcove. It will do nothing against terrorism, but it will sure keep us peasants in line.

Chertov called Schwietzer in response and said, "Vait till I get my chip implanted in YOUR forehead, Enemy-of-the-State! Ve vill see how cocky you are in das cooler!" Or words to that effect. He said Montanans would be ostracized, banned from airline flights, and subject to even more arbitrary and invasive TSA inspections than they are now. Like TSA isn't already enough of a joke and home for wanna-be baby dictators while contributing absolutely nothing to national security.

The Governor countered with his own threat, “How about we both go on 60
Minutes a few days after the DHS starts patting down Montana driver’s
license-holders who are trying to get on the planes and both of us can tell our
side of the story.”

At present, the only "solution" or "compromise" offered has been for Big Brother to grandiosely "extend the deadline" until the peasants decide to toe the line, or someone more easier to browbeat and manipulate gets in office.

In addition to the obvious threats to our free society, the risk of ever more sophisticated ID thieves mining information from the new REAL ID is a serious problem as well. The Fed is not known for their brilliant ability to keep information secure, not when VA, USDA, and even FBI files have all been hacked. Imagine some hacker cracking the into your all-encompassing REAL ID and gaining access to all your personal information in one fell swoop. Might as well kiss your credit rating good bye and go live in a cave while it gets "straightened out".

So far, Montana's DEMOCRATIC governor and two DEMOCRATIC Senators have actively resisted the REAL ID act while our one lone REPUBLICAN Representative has whined for us to play nice with Big Brother.

If you have not contacted your own Congresscritters to protest this piece of...legislation, now's the time. A few more governors around the country are starting to dig their heels in on the issue as well. Let your duly erected reprehensivitives know what you think about this invasion of personal privacy with all its risks of abuse and identity theft.

If not, see you in the gulag!

Gun Nut Roundup August '08

Story 1

TSA Wants To Ban Concealed Carry Permits

First the government banned citizens from carrying guns past the security checkpoints in airports and even most gun advocates didn't squawk too much. (Although there's 2,974 dead 9-11 victims that might question that policy if we could ask them.) Now the TSA wants to ban concealed-carry even in the unsecured areas of airports. So a duly-licensed concealed weapons permit holder who picks up or drops off a family member at the airport may run afoul of federal regulations, even if he is just standing on the curb out front.

Gun Owners of America is working on President Bush to reign in the TSA. You can help here.

Story 2

Bi-Partisan Effort To Stop Tyrannical DC City Gov't

When the U.S. Supreme Court recently struck down Washington D.C.'s onerous handgun ban, saying that the Second Amendment protects an individual right, the DC city council responded by telling the Supreme Court to stick it. The city council passed a new law that bans many handguns and requires that weapons be stored in ways that won't allow them to be used for self-defense and in general keeps lawful gun owners in the capitol as scarce as hen's teeth.

Some Republican and Democrat congress-critters have introduced The "Second Amendment Enforcement Act" which will help unscrew the law-abiding folks of DC. You can read more about it here.

Story 3

Ammo Prices Are Damned High

The rising cost of materials has caused the price of ammunition to soar. Prices are so high that Bawb and I have to be pretty selective about who we shoot or don't shoot these days, so if we seem irritable we apologize.

HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF ONCE AGAIN...SALUTE!!!

According to the Washington Times, fanatical supporters of Presidential hopeful Barack Hussein Obama have decided that the Illinois Senator needs his own "salute". According to the article...

"Our goal is to see a crowd of 75,000 people at Obama's nomination speech
holding their hands above their heads, fingers laced together in support of a
new direction for this country, a renewed hope, and acceptance of responsibility
for our future," says Rick Husong.



"We thought, 'Let's try and start a movement where even while walking down
the street, people would hold up the O and you would know that they were for
Obama,' "


"We want to see it everywhere, but more importantly we want this sign to
take the world by storm."

Talk about a cult of personality. What next for the Obamanites? Arm bands? Brown shirts? These sheep have only two speeds; graze and stampede. Like lemmings, the loony left will follow any "messiah" who will lead them, as long as no actual thinking is required on their parts, from Al Gore to Barack Obama. Sensationalism over substance, emotion over intellect, the herd mentality over independent thought...(War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength?)...Anything to keep people from pinning down the exact definition of "change", examining the issues, or thinking for themselves.

This kind of blind, fanatical devotion to a "leader" has always been a recipe for disaster. Anyone else remember the last time a world leader relied upon a cult of personality and had his own salute, which was emulated by cheering crowds of thousands and literally tried to "take the world by storm"? No, I'm not trying to say Obama in any way equates to Hitler, but both personalities sure led blind, unthinking packs of cheering, devoted Socialist followers around by the nose in the name of "change".

TOO MUCH GUN

In one of the greatest cinematic triumphs known to man, John Wayne's True Grit, the best country music singer turned actor until Randy Travis, Glen Campbell, uses a Sharps .56-caliber carbine to shoot a turkey. Naturally the turkey gets blowed up real good. John Wayne leans over to the girl Matty and says a trifle too loudly, "Too much gun."

So, without further ado, I will present my genius to the world on the subject. I will try to avoid getting overly technical, as outdoor writer Pat McManus complains about his friend Gary Roedl. "His gun articles are so technical they don't even have any words in them, but only numbers, abbreviations, and a smattering of punctuation." Instead I will use home-spun colloquialisms such as, "That thing's accurate enough to knock a gnat off a water buffalo's ass at a quarter mile."

I myself finally gave in to the siren's song of the big Magnums in the form of a .300 Winchester Magnum on an old P-17 action. Heretofor, I had managed to stumble through forty years without suffering a single case of "Half Moon Disease". This ailment comes from getting "scoped", i.e. the recoil of the rifle drives the rim of the scope into your eyebrow and gives you a "half moon" shaped injury. The first time I shot the .300 Win Mag with Federal 180-grainers, I got a nice case of Half Moon Disease. I no longer suffer from Half Moon Disease, but the thing is still borderline uncomfortable to shoot. The worst thing about the .300, for me, is ammo. Quality factory ammo (Remington does not fall into that category in my book) is getting up there near two bucks a pop, and even if you reload you need to pour powder out of a 5-gallon bucket into a motor oil funnel to fill those big fat cartridge cases.

About ten years ago, a friend of mine who was on the small side of hieght and weight forsook the trusty old .30-06 he had been hunting with his whole life to give in to the crooning call of the .300 Win Mag too. He came out to our place to sight it in. His first 3-shot group could have been covered by a dime; his third group couldn't have been covered by a dinner plate. Flinching. Too much gun. He hunted one season with the big Magnum and went back to the .30-06.

More recently, I helped a guy bigger and fatter than myself sight in his new .338 Winchester Magnum. He too wound up flinching and throwing lead all over the target, or merely in the general direction. He figured that was good enough since his new toy was so powerful that even a peripheral hit to an elk's left rear hoof would instantly slay it in its tracks. He was not the type of go back to the .30-06, not after he paid so much money for his new toy. Perhaps he was compensating for something.

When it comes right down to it, no amount of foot-pounds or extra velocity can replace a well-aimed shot to the boiler room. Shooting legend Jack O'Connor did just fine on nearly every game animal in North America with his beloved .270 Winchester. I'd rather hunt elk with a crack shot armed with a .243 than with some bozo with a 20-mm cannon who only shoots 6 rounds per year at the range because he's so scared of the darned thing.

There's all kinds of new Magnums on the scene these days, and it seems a new caliber gets spawned every couple of weeks, like some weird creature from a sci-fi movie reproducing in a swamp. These super-duper choco-fudgie belted short Magnums seem to be, in the words of the late great Jeff Cooper, solutions in search of a problem. For an exorbitant price, you get something that performs only marginally better than factory .30-06 ammo. About the only real "benefit" I can see is that some of them allow a rifle with a short-action to deliver long-action .30-06 performance. They also keep gun writers in the glossy magazines in business.

So, in case it is not painfully obvious by now, the good old "thirty ought six" is still my favorite. It has also been said, and this is not much of an exaggeration, that the .30-06 can be loaded for everything from "mouse to moose". (Contrast this to the M16 series of rifles, which can be loaded from "mouse to poodle".)

I just got done playing with my pre-season antelope loads. A .308 diameter 130-grain Hornady bullet backed by 46 grains of Reloader 15 turned out to be my "baby" for this sport. With a muzzle velocity chrono'ed at 3300 feet per second, my trusty, rusty old .30-06 boasts a 310 yard zero and a maximum point blank range of 370 yards. If you can't sneak up that close to an antelope, it's time to give up the sport. This load would also perform just fine for use on deer and black bear. While generally too light for elk, it would do in a pinch, at closer ranges and in the hands of a true marksman who puts 'em right where he wants 'em.

My lil' old 6.5mm Swede, a caliber that boasts a very high ballistic coefficient, launching a 100-grain Nosler at 2900 feet per second, has a zero of 290 yards and a point blank out to 340 yards. This too is more than good enough for me as antelope medicine, and once more would work on deer and lil' bear. A 140-grain .264 at 2,500 out of my carbine has a 250 yard zero and a 300 yard point blank. This load is what I consider quite marginal for elk, but I've know a few guys who do just fine with it.

For the great wapiti, I like to go with a .308 or .30-06 with the 165-grain bullet. With an ought six, you can get 'er up to 2,800 fps and a max load .308 tags along closely behind at 2,700. With controlled expansion bullets, this is my "split the difference" load for elk and deer both, and can still reach out there to a 340 yard point blank. Many people in my neck of the woods prefer the 180-grain bullet for elk. When my wife drew a moose tag, I took the .30-06 up to the big 220-grain bullet launched at a mere 2400 fps, which was still good for holding "center of mass" out to 300 yards.

So, after experimenting with the cannon, I too will be going back to the good old .30-06 this hunting season. It was an interesting journey, but wound up taking me right back to the starting point. I believe there was an old, old country song that expressed this well. "There's very few things that a man can't fix, with fifty seven dollars and a thirty ought six."

Remember The Battle of Athens!

A Special Alert from our friends at Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO):

August 1 and 2 mark the sixty-second anniversary of the Battle of Athens, Tennessee, and we here at Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership intend to observe it. And we're asking you to join us.

On those dates in 1946, residents of McMinn County, most of them recently-returned veterans of World War II, took guns in hand and rose up against a corrupt and brutal administration they'd been trying to get the state's authorities to do something about for years -- to no avail. Voting didn't help because the county elections -- and ballot boxes -- were controlled by the very criminals they were trying to dislodge.

What followed was a prime example of the reason America's Founding Fathers sought to protect the right of the individual to own and carry weapons. Without their guns, the citizens would have been nothing but helpless peasants, serfs, peons -- just like most of humanity over the last six thousand years -- ground under the thumbs of well-armed local racketeers.

To read more about this exciting story, go here - http://www.jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/athens.htm

Next time that some victim disarmament advocate argues that the Second Amendment -- and the rights and hardware it protects -- are outmoded, outdated, and obsolete, you'll have something to tell them about.

Only at JPFO!

BREAKING PRESS COVERAGE OF OBAMA SPEECH

We have been fortunate indeed here at das blog to receive a covert behind-the-scenes recording of Senator Barack Hussein Obama, live from Havana, Cuba, where he continues his world-wide Tour of Pandering to show he is not just as an American presidential candidate, but a "citizen of the world" who is deeply concerned about saving the planet and securing the Oval Office.

HUSSEIN: My friends and neighbors, we are facing a monumental chance for change here today. And change is hope, and hope is our future. Because without modulation, we cannot have change, and without change there is no hope, and hope brings assurance, and assurance solidifies our future...

CNN: Swoon! He must truly be the Second Coming! He is so wonderful!

HUSSEIN: I promise you today that as your hope for future change I will be extremely vague and amorphous in my definitions of change, hope, or even future. In this manner we, as Americans, can all work together as one, since this great sweeping promise of reassurance is sufficiently indistinct to allow each and every one of you to believe it means whatever it is that you wish to believe at this moment and, more importantly, when you vote in November...

CBS: Katie just came in her pants and passed out!

Just as our forefathers, and their forefathers before them, came to this country seeking hope...and change...to ensure themselves and their posterity a future of faith...and innovation...today we are here to proudly proclaim that...

MSNBC: I wet myself! Oh My God! He truly is the Messiah!

(TELEPROMPTER BREAKS DOWN AT THIS POINT)

HUSSEIN: And the um...well...the...you know...hope...and the...chickens...then we must...future...grapefruit...um...and...important...well...change...this...uh...liver spot...

CNN/CBS/MSNBC: We now interrupt this broadcast to take you to important breaking news in Lima, Ohio where the finalists in the Little Foofy Dogs Dressed Up Like Celebrities Contest are now arriving on stage....