Tam throws down the gauntlet...

and damn, is it good.

Loved the part about the "instruction manual." It should be required reading for all.

If there were any doubts...

about what I had written about earlier, then the following should somewhat substantiate my claims.

The Stasi factor in this country is rising, almost by the minute.

And some of the reactions to that last piece are more than disturbing, considering that the whole FLDS raid appears to be predicated on nothing more than a crank phone call, and leads to this kind of shit, and it infuriates me. I can only hope others feel the same.

Is anyone asking why these kids are being used, by way of forcibly removing them from their families, when it is plainly evident that they were/are not being abused?

Yup, more tyranny on the way. Bet on it.

The new Stasi

I really have to wonder what it's going to take before the masses wake the fuck up about this kind of thing.

I mean, WTF!!!

The JBT's will start kicking down the doors of anyone, just 'cuz they can, and charge them with whatever it is they want, then let them go on lack of evidence. And a sample of your blood, while their at it, because the god-almighty state thinks it's in their best interest.

Why don't we just get the whole thing over with and line all of us line up in the gulag and give our lives to the state?

That is what they want.

The Ape in the Corner Office

I suppose that the game he is playing here is fair, on the surface at least.


Semantics is a lawyerly game, however, and I find that I just can't usually stomach lawyers, so let's look at the meat of it.


So, this Conniff asshole has the point of view that "we", somehow, don't deserve anything other than subjugation to his idea that everyone must pay just to exist. An absurd notion, to anyone with even the remotest conscience.

I also find that this douchebag is doing some of the "reframing" thing:

"With a liberal friend, I mentioned a study showing that words like “social” and “contract” make people more willing to pay their share."

This, of course, is predicated on his definition(s) of what this "share" of mine is, if such a thing even exists, which his point of view conveniently does not consider, at all, to wit:

"we need language to remind us that this is our government, and that we thrive because of the schools and transit systems and 10,000 other services that exist only because we have joined together"

"We" don't thrive from our schools, dolt. I thrive from having some intelligence, common sense, decent training and, not least of all, a good work ethic. When enough people do that in close proximity to one another, things (miraculously) get done.

Link via Billy Beck.

Another foreign-based model that "works", I'm sure

So, you've got yourself a country that has "universal" healthcare.

You're in an affluent country that obviously has modern conveniences, diets, jobs, TV, and cell phones. Your country has enjoyed an excellent economy for the last half-century, your population is astoundingly well educated, and your engineering savvy is second-to-none. You've turned a little bourgeois in the process, and the attendant waistline has become somewhat, er, corpulent, as your kids sit in front of the idiot box, or texting their friends while you are stuck in an office cubicle, and eat more Kobe beef as often as you can get your filty mitts on the stuff.

No more.

It seems that since the diet of the average Japanese has become rather Americanized in that same, aforementioned half-century, the waistlines have been gaining inches in the land of the rising sun, to no one's surprise, and an arbitrary limit has been set for such.

At 85cm.

That's 33 1/2".

How many Americans would fit in to this neat and tidy measurement, I wonder?

I'm fairly thin, myself, and have never had any weight issues, despite eating anything that isn't nailed down. I'm blessed with that sort of metabolism, and I'm one of those exercisers that you see running around and lifting weights of all sorts, though I'm not at all what you'd term a Gym Rat, honest. Still, how many here fit that metric?

So, when the next great solution, to The-Problem-that-is-America, comes along and promises that he'll fix all your health problems by waving his hand around, you'll know what it is that he's actually delivering unto thee, when the palm of his hand claps against your head. I can promise, the land of the expanding waistline isn't going to like it. At all.

You've all been warned.

Stolen from Phil at RNS.

New hardware

Been stupid-busy of late. J-O-B is going non-stop right now, and I'm stuffing five pounds of shit into the ten-pound bag.

The Kraut is coming home from an extended stay with her fam (The FIL is not doing well, cancer, again), and I must drive long distances soon to see to the safe return of her and our mutts, all of whom I've missed terribly over the last 10 weeks they've been gone.

I've found that life mostly kicks you when you're down (as I've been recently), but every once in a while, good fortunes turn in your favor, and when least expected.

I was reading an issue of Field&Stream several years ago when I ran across an article about field survival craft, and more to the point of the article anyway, a tool. I was intrigued, as the specific blade had earned the respect of an old bushcraft expert, Mors Kochanski. I have a fascination with fixed blade knives, so I cut out the article and resolved myself to finding one, sticking it in a folder I keep for just such non-sense in my armory.

I looked for a local source of this knife, only to find it generally available via internet, specifically Sportman's Guide. Now, I don't have a problem with stepping into the age of light and reason and ordering stuff online, but things like knives are, for me anyway, a personal item, and I am wont to handle such things for at least a few moments before making a decision to purchase. It's a tactile thing, needing a reading of weight and balance in the hand to determine its friendliness. Couldn't find one, so I let the issue drop and the article sat in its folder as a reminder.

Last week I needed to get a couple of tools for another project I've been wanting to tackle for a good long while (project gun, soon to be posted, I hope), so I walked a couple of blocks to a little family owned hardware store that's been running continuously since 1930. Strolling the aisles, I stumbled upon not only the particular model in the old article, but several others.

Picked up the red-handled job that I found so intriguing in the aforementioned article, the Craftsmen 561, a very elegant and simple Morakniv Classic 2, which I think will become my new favorite hunting companion blade, and a utilitarian 711, which has already found its way into my Bug-out Box.