The Ultimate Answer to Kings

Hillary seems to have decided that those bogus “90% of all Americans think gun owners should be disarmed and ground up for compost” polls are actually real.

Hillary Clinton Believes It’s Time to Act on Gun Violence

America simply cannot accept as “normal” about 33,000 gun deaths every year. The vast majority of the American people – including law abiding gun owners – believe we can and must do better. Hillary Clinton lived in Arkansas and represented Upstate New York – she knows that gun ownership is part of the fabric of many law-abiding communities. But as a nation we can no longer allow guns to fall into the hands of domestic abusers, other violent criminals, and the seriously mentally ill.

And since anyone not working for the government who would want to own a gun must reasonably fall into one of those categories, she has decided to take Executive Action!

…by doing a whole bunch of totalitarian stuff, but here’s my personal favorite…

Tighten the gun show and Internet sales loophole if Congress won’t. If Congress refuses to act, Clinton will take administrative action to require that any person attempting to sell a significant number of guns be deemed “in the business” of selling firearms. This would ensure that high-volume gun sellers are covered by the same common sense rules that apply to gun stores—including requiring background checks on gun sales.

No, its principal effect would be chilling the hell out of anybody who thought maybe selling one of his guns without going through an FFL might be a good thing to do. Because being “in the business” without a federal license is a federal crime, the penalty for which involves being placed under the bang-you-in-the-ass federal prison. Unless you’re a California politician or somebody important like that.

What a sense of history this woman has. It was exactly the practice of allowing ATF goons to decide who was “in the business” and who wasn’t back in the seventies that made them the beloved characters in gunowner lore that they still are today. And Clinton wants to bring those halcyon days back to us, by imperial decree.

There’s also something her writers call the “Charleston Loophole,” which involves removing any assurance that, once you’ve applied for a place in her “comprehensive background check” queue, the government has any responsibility to ever complete it and permit you to legally purchase any firearm. You domestic terrorist, you.

Lots more at the link and it’s all depressing stuff, including a shiny new “assault weapons” ban, the sum effect of which is to suddenly make Donald Trump look not so bad by comparison.

That’s the get of 12 pallets of various sizes, types and levels of decrepitude. And speaking of that last thing, my back went twang while I was trying to saw through some 4X4s, and I don’t know if I’m going to finish getting it all stacked this afternoon or not. Hope so, because weather is coming and I’d rather not have to dry it out. Certainly I’ll get a start on it. Bet there’s eight wheelbarrow-loads in there. Might actually finish the job for the season, though I doubt it.

We were scheduled this morning for a big 40-bale loadout at D&L’s, but numerous misfortunes reduced us to 10. D is out of the picture, of course, and he’s the biggest of us and usually in charge of bucking the bales up into the stack. No problem, one of our other neighbors volunteered to come do that part. With three of us the way it usually works is that L hauls the bales down from their big flatbed trailer and lays it along the rear. I come along with the handtruck and haul it into the barn, and then D or a stand-in schleps it into a nice neat pile. But we lost our second third person – if that makes any sense – due to a horse accident resulting in a badly broken leg. Really, I don’t understand why people insist on riding those things when perfectly good trucks are available. But then if it weren’t for horses, I wouldn’t be fussing with hay and where would be the fun in that?

Anyhow, L needed hay but a big extravaganza was out of the question when only she, who weighs slightly less than one of the bales, and I were available. So we’re doing it in installments. She could get 10 on the back of her pickup, and plans to do it three more times this week weather permitting.

I was supposed to meet her at her place at quarter to nine, but she got delayed in town so I amused myself cleaning up the stalls. I was just finishing that when she arrived, and between the two of us we didn’t have any trouble moving the ten bales. While the boys were still happily in the Jeep I drove to Landlady’s for belated morning chicken duties and then to Ian’s to finish cutting firewood and tossing it into the trailer. So it’s been a fairly full morning, and I can still look forward to all that stacking. It’s still sunny and I could do a bucket or two of laundry, but that would really tempt the rain.

ETA: Okay, so there’s really lots left to do. I was overoptimistic by a factor of close to 25%. I can get another whole row in there. Sue me.

Morning’s extremely busy with several things, I have to be out of here with the boys in about fifteen minutes to help L unload some hay, I’m in the middle of a big firewood push, chickens need stuff (they think) desperately, breakfast is burning, and I’m trying to finish washing two pairs of trous so they’ll have time to dry in the weakening sunlight. Weather’s supposed to be coming in and I don’t want to be stuck with an overflowing hamper. One load is better than none even if I have to squeeze it in between bites of breakfast.

Which is why – between the burning and the chickens – the wash water overflowed into the drainage ditch. No big thing, as long as things are working all right well water is cheap, but I consider wasting water a sin.

Not everyone in the neighborhood agrees…

Two flocks of small birds, sparrows and some sort of finch, happened to be in the neighborhood. And they mobbed the place and threw an impromptu kegger. They really didn’t approve of my presence so the best I could do is go inside for the camera, dump some more water in the ditch, wait till they came back, shoot a bunch of stills and then post the least bad one. In all there were several dozen not shown here. Every time I moved even to adjust the camera they flew away.

That business with the llama was blown completely out of proportion.

In a year when Donald Trump is the GOP frontrunner, you have to dig deep to find political news that’s considered weird. But leave it to the intrepid Libertarians to fill that void…

Libertarian Party drama: Goat sacrifice, eugenics and a chair’s resignation

Adrian Wyllie, chairman of Florida’s Libertarian Party, resigned his post Thursday to protest the party’s U.S. Senate candidate, accusing the rival of supporting eugenics and for being expelled from a cult group for “sadistically dismembering a goat in a ritualistic sacrifice.”
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The dispute between the two has brewed for months, but finally came to a head after Wyllie was unable to persuade the Libertarian Party of Florida’s executive committee to publicly disavow Invictus, an adopted name that means something like “Invincible Sun Emperor.”

In other news, spokesmyn for the National Libertarian Party say they simply don’t understand why nobody takes Libertarians seriously.

At least that’s the way I always do it, in matters agricultural. I’m from Detroit, and grew up assuming chickens came into existence as lumps of meat in a supermarket cooler. Everything I’ve learned about actually raising chickens in the past few years, I got from a couple of books or from correcting mistakes.

Before I built the coop, I did read a couple of books. Really. But the thing is, unless the book says why you should do a particular thing a particular way, I’m probably just going to go ahead and do it (what seems like) the easy way. In this case, instead of building specific nesting boxes I saw no reason not to just wall off part of the coop’s floor and fill it with straw. No books say to do it this way. In my defense, no books told me not to. Continue reading →

L was positively giddy this morning. D got transported from the hospital in the big city far far away to the hospital in the town about 35 miles away. He could have come home, but still needs daily care and no home care nurses will work this far out. She was at the hospital before he arrived and said he walked in under his own power, he looks much healthier, his color is good and he may even be putting on a little of the weight he’s lost over the past few weeks. While still quite ill, he seems to be genuinely recovering. I helped her get her stuff squared away, and then she took off rapidly to spend the afternoon with him. I suspect she was out to the county road before I made it back to the Lair.

Normally something of a talker, today she was practically babbling and seemed to know it. “We haven’t been separated so long in 25 years,” she said. “We get on each other’s nerves sometimes, but we work well together and we love each other. It’s not a bad habit to have.”

…On breezy days, it’s a damned good thing the little town nearest where I live is what it is, or I’d be ‘splainin’ myself to more policia.

Seems like half a dozen times this morning, usually right after an encounter with another person, I’d put my hand down and find my shirt had done this…

…and nobody ever seems to give a damn. Truth, I do the CC thing whenever practical just to be conventional and less conspicuous. But I’m not going to change out the gun and holster on a quick trip to town to replenish drinking water. So it’s a good thing nobody around here craps his or her pants at a flash of pistol, and few really seem to care at all. Issa way folks ought to be.

Had a windy afternoon yesterday. Not ‘windstorm’ windy, but windy enough to tear out the hole in the Big Chickenhouse’s doorjamb…

…causing the door to blow open and stay that way, probably for several hours before I got there for evening chores.

Number of chickens that chose to escape into the scary wild: 0.

Actually they were clustered as far from that terrifying door as they could get their pudgy selves. In some ways I like Brahmas. If only they laid an occasional egg…

Woke to an email…

Was reading that NYT article you referenced, got to the end of the list:

25. The modern man has no use for a gun. He doesn’t own one, and he never will.

26. The modern man cries. He cries often.

Cause. Effect. I’d cry too if someone took all my guns.

This is the biggest-circulation outlet I’ve seen publish somebody saying it. Does USA Today qualify as MSM?

Time to talk about gun free zones

In other mass shootings, the shooters’ motivations have varied, from racism to religion to anti-religion. There has not been a single common theme, except for one.

In almost all mass shooting situations, particularly at schools, the common theme is a gun-free zone, with the shooter being the only one armed person in the building for minutes or longer. And in each case, the shooter couldn’t care less about the gun-free nature of the building, and if anything, was drawn to such a location.

Gun-free zones presume the good intentions of those entering the zone. And the overwhelming majority have such good intentions. But for those who have bad intentions, gun-free zones turn schools and other locations into shooting galleries. The good people are unarmed, the evil person is armed.

About “27 ways to be a modern man.” And if you haven’t heard about it by now you don’t use the Internet and you’re not reading this, either. It’s so spectacularly hipster I honestly wasn’t sure – I’m still not completely convinced – it wasn’t supposed to be a parody.

Whatever. Doesn’t matter. Larry Correia has stepped forward for an epic fisking which you must drop whatever else you were doing and read right now. Might be his best work ever.

D’s coming back from the big city this afternoon! This took some finagling, because he’s got a drain in his liver that needs daily servicing, and no home care nurses will work this far out. So he’s going into the little hospital in the town about 35 miles away for now. No word on how long that’ll last, or for that matter on what (other than “an infection”) is actually wrong with him. I gather that since he’s being released, they’ve stopped talking about cutting him open and excising that abscessed part of his liver. I’m not a doctor etc., but that sounded like a dangerously bad idea to me.

Also, this is what you get when you take 12 pallets of various sizes and types apart and then pile them up…

That last one has been at the bottom of a stack for several years and most of it isn’t anything you’d want in or even near your house. So I decided to leave it there and let it keep being the bottom of the stack until I’m done stacking things there.

For some reason, every time Obama opens his yap about Common Sense Gun Control^tm* I want to go out and buy another gun. Untraceably, from Somedood.

And I already own plenty of guns**.

Man protected by heavily-armed agents wants me to turn in my guns. Fails to see irony in his position. Smartest guy in the room, you bet.

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) October 2, 2015

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*common sense requires a total ban, as any sensible person can plainly see.

**though if anybody’s got a better big-bore revolver he wants to part with…

Now that I have your attention, go read Tucille’s latest. Good stuff.

[Y]ou can definitely see why governments would dislike sedition and treason, but they’re not like murder and rape, which are inherently wrong. The moral content of an act of sedition or treason is entirely dependent on the quality of its target. If a government is good, working to overthrow it is morally wrong; if it’s evil, committing sedition and treason against it might constitute your righteous deed for the decade.

…that every time one of these things makes the news my first reaction isn’t “Oh lord, how terrible!” but “Oh, lord. Here we go again.”?

Predictions:

a. Umpqua Community college is a gun-free zone.

b. The level of coverage will be directly proportional to the shooter’s level of right-wingedness. Which won’t stop “Umpqua” from being the next gungrabber battle cry.

c. Assuming this isn’t a muslim thing, the shooter will be on some antidepressant we won’t hear about. Because guns. Assuming it is a muslim thing, it’ll still be about guns.

d. After careful investigation requiring as much as 15 seconds of fevered typing on the part of opinion leaders, the whole tragic matter will turn out to be the NRA’s fault.

ETA: Apparently the prez decided he didn’t need no stinking details about … anything. He was pre-empting radio time and hollering for “common sense gun control” before the last body hit the floor. It’s almost as if his speechwriters just penciled in the name on a pre-written speech. So whatever it’s about, it’s about guns. I feel kinda naughty for listening to his enlightening words about dirty guns while actually wearing a dirty gun.

Also: Yup. Certified Gun-Free. So this couldn’t have happened, and predictions a and c have already been fulfilled and I still don’t know what if anything the shooting was even about. Gosh, I wonder if I could get a gig predicting the future on one of those supermarket papers?

Figured I’d get an early start on a busy day. It’s Battery Day, which means maintenance visits to J’s, Ian’s, Landlady’s and mine own humble battery bank.

And I’m still making firewood, which means hauling another pile of pallets to where there’s electricity and then cutting them into bite-size chunks.

And now I’m hot and hungry and headachy and not half done, and still need to bake bread. So. That happened.

…I worked on some batteries. 🙂

Turns out D normally services his batteries at the end of the month, and from his hospital bed in a city far, far away he began fretting about them. Makes sense, he has twice as much to fret over as most people…

D and L have their separate spheres of responsibility, over which (I sometimes gather) they hover jealously. The power system is deep in D’s sphere, and it took major serious illness before he’d let anybody else touch his batteries. Topping off electrolyte levels is not rocket science but it is a bit persnickety – you can make an expensive mess if you do it wrong. And L had never done it before, so yesterday morning she had me show her the ropes. Unfortunately she recently had eye surgery – on top of everything else that’s going on – and her vision hasn’t returned to the point where that proved practical. So this morning I went over and took care of it. Since he does it regularly, it doesn’t take long to bring things up to proper.

Sunlight is bad for plants. No, seriously. Stop laughing. It says so right here…

Think sunny days are good for plants? Not always. Sunlight causes #ozone to form, which harms foliage, weakens trees: http://t.co/6skU7aBsTx

— U.S. EPA (@EPA) September 29, 2015

It’s from the government AND it’s on the Internet. So it must be doubly true.

Anyway, we’ve got lots of sunlight around here and I can’t get plants to grow for anything. So I’m inclined to take the EPA’s word for this one*.

Really, where would we be without the EPA and our other fine bureaucratic institutions, always there for us with new and better things to be alarmed about?

ETA: Commenter Jabrwok points out that there are legislative precedents for action to be taken on these findings…
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*I’m lying again.

Met L this morning. Their garbage was out of control, and she’d asked me for help with a dump run.

This involves hitting the pavement a few miles to the north…

…and then hanging a right into an ash field about as desolate as anything you’re likely to encounter this side of the moon. Goes on for miles.

Once you’re there, it’s pretty much your average landfill. Though I must say – for all my criticisms of this place’s ubiquitous but dysfunctional governance – The local landfill is certainly energetically and apparently well managed.

Big piles of moldering garbage don’t seem to stay aboveground very long, ever.

Hey, cut me some slack. Unless something’s actually getting killed, this is as adventurous as my day ever gets.

On the trip she filled me in on the latest D news, which is unfortunately not good. Continue reading →

And it worked out well anyway? Old man, I’d rather have your luck than a license to steal.

74 Year Old Man Sends 3 Thieves Running For Their Lives

What caused the firearm to not discharge? Safety, bad ammunition, not one in the chamber, the possibilities could go on. Please do not be caught in a similar situation. Check your weapon’s status, buy the good ammunition, and always be prepared.

Can I get an amen? I practice with handloads, but keep the chambers loaded with carefully-hoarded commercial ammo.