Month: July 2020

2020 Strikes Again

Disaster, SHTF

Once again, the Year From Hell is adding to the catalogue of woes:

And I think the Grand Finale will be:

…which, if it blows, will pretty much wave goodbye to Western civilization.  (The Third World is already in Dark Ages-style squalor, so not much change for them  and like cockroaches, they’ll survive.)

There’s only one thing to do, at this point:

Not my actual Cabinet ‘O Scotch*, but it’s pretty close.  So, after I’m done loading up my [number deleted]  AK- and M1 Carbine mags…

Cheers, y’all.

*Upon close inspection, there are only about a couple of those brands that I’ve never tasted, so maybe a pre-Apocalypse run to Ye Olde Liqueure Shoppe is called for…

Let’s Get Defunding

Military, Modernism

Seeing as how everyone’s getting all “defund this” and “defund that”, allow me to offer a few candidates out of this lot:

A U.S. Army email, sent after the Fourth of July to its military and civilian members, included a graphic which claimed saying the phrase “Make America Great Again” is evidence of “white supremacy.”
The graphic listed other behaviors it deemed evidence of white supremacy, including, “Celebration of Columbus Day,” the “Denial of White Privilege,” “Talking about ‘American Exceptionalism,’” and saying “There’s Only One Human Race.”

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL, duh) is all over this, and he:

…has sent a letter to U.S. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, demanding an investigation.
Brooks asked McCarthy to answer the following:

1. Who within the Department of the Army is responsible for the creation of the email and document?

2. Who within the Department of the Army approved the email and document?

3. Pursuant to the creation and approval of the document, was there a violation of either the Hatch Act or DoD Directive 1344.10?

4. If a violation of the Hatch Act or DoD Directive 1344.10 is found to have occurred, will those responsible be held accountable for their actions?

5. If it is found that a violation occurred (which seems pretty obvious), how will those federal employees be held accountable for their illegal conduct?

The Army needs to stamp out this bullshit toot sweet, and defund the people responsible (every single one who falls into the above five questions), i.e. either by court-martial and dishonorable discharge, by RIF-ing their asses out of existence or (if some civilian asshole is involved) fire them with loss of all benefits and privileges.  (I leave it to my .dot-mil veteran Readers, e.g. Staff Martin, to offer the precise details in Comments.)

I’m not going to go overboard and throw the “treason” word around — it’s been used way too cavalierly just recently — but if we take on faith that the “MAGA” expression belongs to the C-in-C (and it does), what’s going on here is (at best) gross insubordination.

I’m being quite serious, here.  This nonsense does not belong in our Armed Forces;  their job is to help keep America great, but if they can’t be trusted to do that — and this is a prime indicator that they can’t — there needs to be some kind of ill wind that blows all the non-essential, and even the marginally-essential, REMFs  out into the fucking trash can.

ArmySec McCarthy needs to jump on this quickly, have answers for Brooks with 24 hours, or face termination himself.

Get ‘Em While They’re Hot

The Gun Thing

Here’s an interesting line of thought from Mr. Free Market.  As we all know, one of the Greens’ major pushes to curb our beloved shooting fun has been to declare that Eeeeevil Lead Boolets are poisoning the Earth and We’re All Gonna Die Even The Cute Lil’ Animules Boo Hoo.

Now granted, lead is kinda yucky stuff, but I do feel that the Great Lead Poisoning Scare is probably overblown, like so many of the other claims of the Greenies.  And places like Califuckingfornia have already enacted bans on things like lead shot in shotgun shells and so on because OMG when we shoot birds and such, the lead pellets eventually soak into the ground and watershed etc. etc. etc. but we’re all familiar with that whine and that’s not what I wanted to talk about anyway.

Here’s the interesting part.  Over in Britishland, lead shot has been banned (if not outright, then nearly enough so to make the difference irrelevant).  Certainly, all I ever saw Over There was steel shot-filled shells, and don’t even talk about taking your own stuff over there because you would be lying facedown on the tarmac at Heathrow as soon as some enterprising twerp from H.M. Customs discovered your wickedness.  It’s steel shot, or nothing.

Now as we all know, steel shot does all sorts of nastiness to your shotgun barrels over time, especially if you are a keen shotgunner like Mr. FM (who each year buys his cartridges by the pallet rather than by the case).  It’s all fine and dandy, though, because if you’re shooting a boring old Beretta or similar (as he does — according the manager at James Purdey & Son, Mr. FM has terrible taste in firearms), it just means that every five years or so you either replace your shotgun altogether, or just buy a new barrel set and have them fitted to the old action.

As I said, this is no big deal if your guns are made by Armas Tsheep Y Nasti in Spain or some such place.  Nobody cares if your ugly old gun has to get replaced by another ugly gun (see:  Kim’s old No-Name Brand 16ga side-by-side, long overdue for replacement).

But what if you are a man of refined taste and deep wallet?  What if your shotguns are of this pedigree?

This 5-gun set of matched Holland & Holland guns (two 12ga, two 20ga and one 28ga) are selling, secondhand, for just under $300,000.  Yup: three hundred thousand Washingtons.

I’m not going to debate whether said guns are worth it* — actually, given the price of new H&H side-by-side guns, $60 grand per gun isn’t that out of line — but even hardened shooters like me, who shoot their guns instead of locking them up in a bank vault somewhere, are going to wince every time they pull the trigger and send steel shot scraping their way down the barrel.

In other words, these are not guns whose barrels will be replaced — they have become literally too expensive, and too much of an investment, to be used.  And if they are used, the depreciation of the investment is going to be horrendous.

What this means for Purdey, Holland, McKay Brown and all the other makers of bespoke guns is that the demand for their merchandise is going to evaporate.  Mr. FM reckons that in twenty years time, you’ll not see any of these fine guns out in the field anymore;  and I for one think that’s a very bad thing.

I know, I know:  this is probably the very epitome of a First World problem.  But it’s not just that.  It’s that the eventual  disappearance of quality workmanship and gunmaking is going to make the world a little less fine, and a lot more ugly and common.

It’s as though Ferrari, McLaren, Rolls-Royce and Bentley were to disappear, leaving us only the choice between Kia, Honda and Ford.   Or if cars’ engines, regardless of manufacturer, were restricted only to the “sensible” upper limit of 120hp.  What kind of world would that be?

I don’t like that thought, and I really don’t like the idea of a world without fine guns.

*even if I had that kind of money to spend on shotguns, I wouldn’t buy those Hollands because they have single triggers and pistol grips (ugh, and no).  My choice, of all the guns at Steve Barnett’s place, would be this matched pair:

…and a bargain they are, at only $72,500 for the pair. [/eyecross]

But I would never — ever — take them over to Britishland for some birdshooting in Dorset with Mr. Free Market.  Not if I’m going to destroy those beautiful barrels with poxy steel shot, that is.  (I know, bismuth / plated shot.  I’m too old to learn how to shoot lighter loads.)

Finally, the usual caveat applies:  I accept no responsibility for empty bank accounts, ruined relationships and other such bad things should you follow those links.

Bunny Boilers

Men & Women

Over at Britain’s The Sun  litterbox-liner, there’s a regular column devoted to sex (of course) under the monicker of “Dear Deidre”.  Now I happen to think that the “letters” are total fiction (see:  Penthouse Letters etc.), but that doesn’t mean that the situations are irrelevant. [/Dan Rather]

Here’s one example:  a guy starts bonking someone not his wife, for all the usual reasons.  At first, it’s happy-happy-fun-fun times:

She was wearing just a dressing gown when I got there. She led me to her bedroom and we had sex. She clearly loved it and so did I.

But:

…she became very demanding and started expecting sex three or four times a week.
I found it difficult to keep up with her and even got Viagra-type pills off the internet.

I know:  we should all be so lucky, right? Read on:

I’ve tried to cut down seeing my lover to once a week but she says that isn’t enough.
She wants us to get together properly and drops hints that she will tell my wife what we have been doing if I attempt to back away.
It was great at first but she scares me now.

Yeah, he deserves everything that happens to him, the louse etc. etc.  But let me tell you:  something like this happened to me many years ago — not as a husband, thank gawd, but as a boyfriend with a sorta-steady girlfriend — and it was a horrible situation.

It ended badly (no details necessary) — at least in a more-or-less civilized fashion — but I should point out that this doesn’t happen every time.  More often than not, lives are ruined by shit like this.  It’s the obverse of the jilted ex-boyfriend stalking the woman and his replacement, and the really bad thing about situations like this is that they sometimes don’t end violently, but they often do.

And it’s easy to be all virtuous and self-righteous, but if I know one thing about men, it’s that we fuck up, sometimes even when we know better.

I have a theory that every man has lurking out there, at least one woman who has the power to make him lose his reason.  Some men never meet that woman, and they are the lucky ones.  Others do, and fall.  I have encountered four.  The only positive thing about getting to my age is that after while you get to recognize these dangerous women and are prepared for the thunderbolt.  And even then, you could still screw up.  There are no guarantees.  It’s a jungle, and sometimes we men are not the predators, but the prey.

As Desk Sergeant Phil Esterhaus used to say every day:  be careful out there.

Just Shoot A Few

Anarchist thugs, BaconLettuceMayo, Law and Order

I see that GeorgiaGov Kemp has mobilized the state’s National Guard:

“Peaceful protests were hijacked by criminals with a dangerous, destructive agenda. Now, innocent Georgians are being targeted, shot, and left for dead,” Kemp said in a statement Monday. “This lawlessness must be stopped and order restored in our capital city.”
The National Guard troops will “provide support” at state buildings, including the Georgia State Capitol, Georgia Department of Public Safety Headquarters, and Governor’s Mansion, the governor’s statement said. The additional support is aimed at freeing up state law enforcement to increase patrols on roads and in communities, particularly in Atlanta.

I wish the Guard wasn’t being sent to protect the governor’s mansion;  I’d pay good money to see Kemp himself standing outside the place, holding an Evil Black Rifle like that muppet in St. Louis.

Government Told To Fuck Off

Gummint

There are times when one should feel sorry for the apparatchiks of our beloved federal- and state governments, because few people are taking them seriously anymore.

Okay, that was a joke;  1) nobody loves them except the Swampies themselves, and 2) there’s no reason to feel sorry for them because, in the manner of idiots everywhere, their problems are self-inflicted by poor choices.  Here’s one (of many).

After  having clamped down on our freedoms with the excuse of OMG The Chinkvirus, many local gummints outlawed all private firework displays for July 4th.  Result:  the skies lit up like it was WWIII — even (or especially) in liberal havens like Los Angeles.

Now, amidst breathless shrieking from the Jackals Of The Press (never missing any excuse to foretell doom ‘n gloom because headlines / clickbait), Gummint is threatening to enforce another lockdown, Just In Case And If It Saves Just One Life It’s Worth It, Seriously.  Here’s my own prophecy of America’s likely response to said coming lockdowns:

As a rule, we Murkins are a law-abiding lot (excepting Leftist assholes, always), but the laws have to make sense before we follow them — and indeed, the (un-Constitutional) regulations and such laid down by Leftist fuckwits like CalifornicateGov Newsom, MichigaNazi Witmer and ILGov Fatboi all had one thing in common:  they fucked up the economy for very little tangible benefit.

Add to that the propensity of the aforementioned and their minions to be the lickspittles of lawless mobs like Pantifa and BaconLettuceTomato, and it’s small wonder that ordinary Americans looked at all this carnage and Wokedom, and said in unison:  “Fuck that shit.”  Then they went out and let off fireworks, and cheered our President’s stirring July 4th speech to the echoes.

Even here in Texas, where we kinda-sorta don’t mind TexGov Abbott, we still don’t trust our local bureaucrats much (it’s in our state constitution: the most restrictive social compact in the world).  I note with interest that local entities are going softly-softly on the lockdown business, mostly because 1) while the infection rate seems to be climbing, the death toll is dropping and b) I suspect that most Texans are going to ignore any Chinkvirus: Round Two Everybody Panic, other than doing what makes the most sense:  wearing PPE masks, sanitizing common areas and not sneezing all over other people in public.

We could have prevented most of the infection uptick, I suspect, by shooting all the Pantifa Commies and rioting looters  as soon as they started with their reindeer games in the streets, then hosing down their twitching corpses with hydrochloric acid  bleach, but no doubt someone would have had a problem with this.

Or we could have just nuked all those Democrat-controlled cities (quit that cheering) at the very beginning, but some might call this remedy too extreme as well.

Just nobody on this Internet back porch.