Bringing Crazy Rumors to Life Since... Now

They really are trying to repeal the 22nd amendment and eliminate term limits for the Presidency. 

H/T 90Ninety Miles From Tyranny and Govtrack.us. 

This, of course, requires 2/3 of the states to pass, and is light years away from happening, but they're trying. 

My Congressman Responds

My US Representative is a pretty solid conservative, Bill Posey (R).  I've written him on many issues before, and the office always responds with a position statement.   The only times I've written, his response has been what I'd wanted.  Before the session started, I wrote about the coming gun ban bills and received a response that he's on our side.  I'm taking the liberty of copying some extracts of it here because I think it's pretty reasonable.


Dear <name redacted>

Thank you for contacting me in the aftermath of the tragic shootings in Newtown, Connecticut to express your concern about proposals that would restrict the Second Amendment rights of law abiding Americans. I share your concerns.

As a father and a grandfather, my heart goes out to the parents and families of these children, and the families of the teachers and school employees whose lives were so tragically cut short. 
.....
Clearly, the individual who perpetrated this terrible act (Adam Lanza) was mentally disturbed, and news sources thus far indicated that intervention was seriously lacking. The specifics of any mental or developmental disability from which he suffered must be fully understood and investigated. ....

Also, some media reports have indicated that he was on psychotropic drugs. We need to understand what drug or drugs he was on and what role, if any, these drugs may have played in his mental state and aggression. Some reports indicate that his mother was in the process of having him committed to a mental institution. Is this true? And, if so, what role may this have played? ...

Additionally, media reports indicated that Lanza spent a considerable amount of time playing violent first-person shooter video games. What role if any did this play particularly when combined with his mental instability, and possibly being on psychotropic prescription drugs? You may recall that serious mental problems and addiction to violent video games were also traits that investigators uncovered when investigating the murders carried out by James Holmes at the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado.

A Washington Post poll following this tragedy reports that a majority of Americans believe that this incident reflects a larger problem in American society.  Some have suggested that the culture of violence is poisoning the minds of children and these games are desensitizing children to the reality of violence. The Parents Television Council reports that the average child graduates from elementary school having seen 8,000 murders and more than 100,000 acts of violence on television. By age 18, the number of murders is up to 40,000. Can this level of exposure be a factor in already troubled youths committing aggressive acts, including murders?

...

Many long time advocates of restricting the Second Amendment began calling for more gun control in the immediate aftermath of the shootings.  However, one must first consider that the state in which this took place, Connecticut, already has some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the country and those laws did not prevent this unthinkable act.  Initial reports indicate that the firearms belonged to the shooter's mother, who herself was a victim of Lanza.  We need that part of the investigation to be completed so we know for certain whether the firearms belonged to Ms. Lanza.  If they do - and were in compliance with current law - then we need to recognize that broad-base firearms laws are not likely to be effective in preventing gun violence in the future.

...

Sincerely,

Bill Posey
Member of Congress

That last sentence is a bit softer than I'd like, but it could be to make sure that any anti-gun voters (there must be some) think he's not automatically dismissing the new laws. 

About That Paycheck of Yours...

Yeah... about that paycheck.  See, it's going to be smaller, no matter who you are.  You know how Obama sold the idea that only the "other guy", those "rich bastids", were going to pay more?  Not so much.

First off, do you remember that Social Security withholding has been artificially low for a few years, and it's going back up to it's regular rate, so you'll be putting 2% more into your FICA deductions.  No, not 2% of the 4.2% you've been putting in - you'll be paying 6.2% of your gross instead of 4.2%.  Now, personally I don't think they should have ever done this, it is phenomenally stupid to reduce the intake of money into the social security system with the program teetering on the verge of bankruptcy.  SocSec ran a $47.8 Billion deficit this year, and frankly looks like it will never not run a deficit again - unless something changes.  

Second, and bigger, Obamacare adds a bunch of new taxes and expenses this year.  You may recall that when it was being fought out in the Congress, they talked about collecting extra taxes for 4 years and then starting the "full tilt" system up: it was the only way they could make it not look like it was going to bankrupt the country within 10 years.  Here's a brief summary of the new taxes.  Some of these will be felt by everyone, and some only by certain people.  Courtesy of Americans for Tax Reform.

Higher payroll tax: $86.8 billion. The Medicare payroll tax is currently 2.9% on all wages and self-employment profits. Under this tax hike, wages and profits exceeding $200,000 ($250,000 for a couple) will face a 3.8% rate instead. This is a direct tax hike for small business owners, who are liable for self-employment taxes in most cases.
Flexible Spending Account (FSA) limits: $13 billion. Roughly 35 million Americans use FSA accounts to pay medical expenses not paid by the employer's health insurance with pre-tax dollars. These accounts are especially important to chronic patients with substantial out-of-pocket drug expenses.  While there used to be no (Federal) limit to how much may be put into these accounts, that went away January 1, and contributions are now limited to $2,500.  If you have an FSA, your benefit from it has been reduced.
Obamacare Surtax on investment income: $123 billion.  This increase has nothing to do with those fecal cliff negotiations we heard (entirely too much) about.  ObamaCare adds 3.8 percentage points to tax rates bringing the highest marginal tax rate up to 43.4% for individuals making more than $200,000 and couples earning above $250,000.  The new tax hits dividends, capital gains and other investment income.

	Capital Gains	Dividends	Other*
2012	15%	15%	35%
2013+ (current law)	23.8%	43.4%	43.4%

The table above also incorporates the scheduled hike in the capital gains rate from 15 to 20 percent, and the scheduled hike in dividends rate from 15 to 39.6 percent.
Limits on itemized medical expense deductions: $15.2 billion. Currently, people can deduct medical expenses in excess of 7.5% of income if they itemize. Next year, that threshold will rise to 10%. This means a higher tax burden for those who have the misfortune to have large medical bills. It is literally a tax on the sickest Americans.
Medical device tax: $20 billion. This 2.3% tax on gross sales could amount to a very large percent of after tax profit thus encouraging an industry that is providing very good domestic jobs to relocate overseas. Meanwhile, the burden of the tax will be reflected in higher prices for anyone who needs an artificial knee or hip or a pacemaker.

If you're like me, you're also likely to find that either your insurance has become more expensive, or your doctor may be restricting services in some ways.  As the rules set in, we're seeing companies with one or two employees over the 50 employee ObamaCare limit getting rid of employees, and we see employers reacting to the 30 hour limit of full time employment by restricting the number of hours employees can work to 28 hours. If you're the 51st employee that gets let go, I'd say that's a smaller paycheck!  Same if your 35 hours at the Dead Lobster are reduced to 28. 

(Kaiser Family Foundation - H/T to the Bartelists)

Gonna be a lot misery in the next couple of weeks as everyone gets a look at their new, smaller paychecks.

Couldn't Resist

Several months ago, someone posted some pictures of a Sharper Image candy dispenser loaded up with .22LR.  It's motion controlled, so you put your hand in front of it and it gives you a random amount of .22LR.  Sometimes one,  sometimes none...sometimes a handful. 

Well, Mrs. Graybeard just thought it was the coolest thing since punching hippies, and we found one on eBay for $25/free shipping, so there it is.  It doesn't work very well - I'm sure the .22LR rounds are odder in shape, and heavier than Skittles or whatever it was designed for, but I think it will be a nice conversation piece.

Now I just need to find some antis that will go apoplectic over this to invite over for coffee.

You Just Can't Make This Stuff Up

H/T to Tyler at ZeroHedge, who links to OilPrice.com about a train full of biofuels that crossed the USA/Canada border 24 times without unloading, earning millions in federal giveaways that dwarfed the value of the biodiesel.  Money quote (literally):

The cargo of the train was owned by Bioversal Trading Inc., or its US partner Verdero, depending on what stage of the trip it was at. The companies “made several million dollars importing and exporting the fuel to exploit a loophole in a U.S. green energy program.” Each time the loaded train crossed the border the cargo earned its owner a certain amount of Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs), which were awarded by the US EPA to “promote and track production and importation of renewable fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel.” The RINs were supposed to be retired each time the shipment passed the border, but due to a glitch not all of them were. This enabled Bioversal to accumulate over 12 million RINs from the 24 trips, worth between 50 cents and $1 each, which they can then sell on to oil companies that haven’t met the EPA’s renewable fuel requirements.

I don't know which gets me more, the plain overspending or this sort of corruption.  Kind of an unimportant question really.  How about this for corruption: while they're banging out important questions of just how much money they're going to confiscate from you and me, they spend valuable time adding pork to the bill to cancel out the extra taxes.  You heard all about that supposed $62 billion more revenue we'll take in because of the Fecal Cliff resolution, but do you know about the giveaways in it?  From Naked Capitalism: 

1) Help out NASCAR - Sec 312 extends the “seven year recovery period for motorsports entertainment complex property”, which is to say it allows anyone who builds a racetrack and associated facilities to get tax breaks on it. This one was projected to cost $43 million over two years.
2) A hundred million or so for Railroads - Sec. 306 provides tax credits to certain railroads for maintaining their tracks. It’s unclear why private businesses should be compensated for their costs of doing business. This is worth roughly $165 million a year.
3) Disney’s Gotta Eat - Sec. 317 is “Extension of special expensing rules for certain film and television productions”. It’s a relatively straightforward subsidy to Hollywood studios, and according to the Joint Tax Committee, was projected to cost $150m for 2010 and 2011.
4) Help a brother mining company out – Sec. 307 and Sec. 316 offer tax incentives for miners to buy safety equipment and train their employees on mine safety. Taxpayers shouldn’t have to bribe mining companies to not kill their workers.
5) Subsidies for Goldman Sachs Headquarters – Sec. 328 extends “tax exempt financing for  York Liberty Zone,” which was a program to provide post-9/11 recovery funds. Rather than going to small businesses affected, however, this was, according to Bloomberg, “little more than a subsidy for fancy Manhattan apartments and office towers for Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Corp.” Michael Bloomberg himself actually thought the program was excessive, so that’s saying something. According to David Cay Johnston’s The Fine Print, Goldman got $1.6 billion in tax free financing for its new massive headquarters through Liberty Bonds.
6) $9B Off-shore financing loophole for banks – Sec. 322 is an “Extension of the Active Financing Exception to Subpart F.” Very few tax loopholes have a trade association, but this one does. This strangely worded provision basically allows American corporations such as banks and manufactures to engage in certain lending practices and not pay taxes on income earned from it. According to this Washington Post piece, supporters of the bill include GE, Caterpillar, and JP Morgan. Steve Elmendorf, super-lobbyist, has been paid $80,000 in 2012 alone to lobby on the “Active Financing Working Group.” 
7) Tax credits for foreign subsidiaries –  Sec. 323 is an extension of the “Look-through treatment of payments between related CFCs under foreign personal holding company income rules.” This gibberish sounding provision cost $1.5 billion from 2010 and 2011, and the US Chamber loves it. It’s a provision that allows US multinationals to not pay taxes on income earned by companies they own abroad.
8) Bonus Depreciation, R&D Tax Credit – These are well-known corporate boondoggles. The research tax credit was projected to cost $8B for 2010 and 2011, and the depreciation provisions were projected to cost about $110B for those two years, with some of that made up in later years.

Finally, you must have heard the stink about Congress not passing the relief bill for Super Storm of the Moment Sandy.  They report Chris Christie ranted at Speaker Boner, and all sorts of Evil Party politicians pointed their fingers at Stupid Party members and accused politicians of playing politics, gosh darn it!  The problem is the bill was loaded down with all sorts of extraneous crap, um, pork, because they thought no one would dare not pass such a bill.  As Darrel Issa said,

“Your two senators packed this with pork,” Issa said Wednesday on “Fox & Friends,” which airs from New York City, referring to Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand. “They had the opportunity to have a $27 [billion] to $30 billion dollar legit relief package, packed it with pork, then dared us not to vote on it.”

It's being reported the bill $60 billion bill included money for Alaskan fishing, money to repair a roof at the Smithsonian, $188 million for Amtrak, the Kennedy Space Center,  $5.3B to the Army Corps of Engineers (that's more than their annual budget), $41 million for eight military bases including Guantanamo Bay, and much, much more.  

Ahhh.... the smell of politics in the morning...

Over the Cliff

The tense, yawn-inducing, talks about the fecal cliff are still unsettled, but Zerohedge presents this stunning graphic about the version sent by the Senate. If the houses passes this tonight, this is the settlement. 

That $62 billion, derived from $620 over 10 years as they usually put these things, will buy (62/1089) year or 20.8 days of federal deficit.  In reality, it's probably going to be less than $62B in the first year and depend on mythical growth to achieve $620B in 10 years. 

Nobody in their right mind should believe that any budget predicted today will unfold as planned over 10 years.

Welcoming 2013 in Pictures

In true 2013 style:

Thanks to the Flying Mcoys

Second, it was close this year, but we have a new winner in this coveted category:

It was close, with Governor Cuomo suggesting confiscation of guns, and the president starting the UN small arms treaty again, but Babs Feinstein's incessant diarrhea of the mouth on the topic has driven a sales bubble as big as any ever seen - at least from what I'm hearing.

While Waiting for Piers Morgan to Self-Deport

While sitting around waiting for Piers Morgan to self-deport because we reject his fantasy-based gun control ideas, Around O-Town Orlando links to an article originally on Pravda.  Not the New York Times, the real one: Pravda.Ru - Americans, Never Give Up Your Guns.  Complete with charmingly bad translation in places.

For those of us fighting for our traditional rights, the US 2nd Amendment is a rare light in an ever darkening room. Governments will use the excuse of trying to protect the people from maniacs and crime, but are in reality, it is the bureaucrats protecting their power and position. In all cases where guns are banned, gun crime continues and often increases. As for maniacs, be it nuts with cars (NYC, Chapel Hill NC), swords (Japan), knives (China) or home made bombs (everywhere), insane people strike. They throw acid (Pakistan, UK), they throw fire bombs (France), they attack. What is worse, is, that the best way to stop a maniac is not psychology or jail or "talking to them", it is a bullet in the head, that is why they are a maniac, because they are incapable of living in reality or stopping themselves.  (emphasis added - SiG)

Today, Russians are still under the thumb of a strongman.  They've replaced a tyrannical communist government with a tyrannical oligarchy.  Conditions are marginally better for people, but incredibly better for the well-connected.  Pravda isn't officially unamerican, but practically, the stories on Pravda blame a lot on the US.  The occasional honest reporting like this is worth keeping an eye on.

Has It Started?

Are we looking at the opening rounds of the next civil war?  The second revolution?  It started when that stupid newspaper published the exact locations of every pistol permit holder in a two county area of New York.  Christopher Fountain at For What It's Worth retaliated by publishing information on the staff of the newspaper: home addresses, Facebook pages and other information.  This is not really the same level in my mind, because this information is publicly available, although it needed to be found and correlated, while the list of license holders was probably illegal to acquire and publish (saw that stated somewhere, but can't find the link now).  A map of the locations of where the newspaper staff lives was eventually published at Talk of the Sound, a local web site. 

In what appears to be a blatant counter strike, Gannett newspapers has apparently declared war on the gun owners of New York and plans to publish the personal information on every pistol permit holder in the state.  (H/T to Sebastian).  

I don't live anywhere near New York, and I'm sure most people don't, but this affects all law-abiding gun owners.  This nothing less than intimidation, trying attach a social stigma to gun ownership.  Personally, I think it will backfire and if anyone has to worry, it's not the gun owners but the folks whose "Gun Free Zone" homes have just been identified.  Yeah, they may want to rob the gun owners, but only if they're not home to defend their possessions; the people next door who aren't armed are more likely to get the visit from the bad guys who know they'll be unopposed.

We can strike back against Gannett by cutting our business ties with them.  Drop subscriptions to Gannett newspapers or Comcast Cable, owned by Gannett.  As WRSA says "Resist" - by all means necessary.

The larger question is whether this is part of a coordinated attack that will spread nationwide.  The press, as you all know, is very strongly left leaning, and in support of the Obama agenda are nothing short of Pravda. The press could be doing the softening up aspect of the attack that is going to go really hot in January.  Sort of the equivalent of high altitude bombing to soften up the target.

Today, I found no less than four bloggers commenting on the fact that a civil war appears to be breaking out.  I think they are worth your time to read.  The first I read was Brock at Free North Carolina who says,

Americans are preparing to dig-in.  In other words they are preparing for a fight.  They are preparing for the day when the words run out, as they surely will.  They will then have no other alternative than to turn—as their forefathers have done since the country was founded—to the gun.

I bounced from there to Angry White Dude who posted a piece "Hey Senator Feinstein, You Say You Want a Revolution?"  He writes:

While showing her ignorance of the Second Amendment by believing the right to bear arms has to do with hunting, her bill proves exactly why the Second Amendment was included in the Constitution.  We have the right to own firearms to protect our liberties from tyrannists who would seize them.  Just as the chorus of leftists are currently doing. Any politicians who calls for such gun control legislation must realize they are standing at the precipice of the second American revolution. Americans will NEVER allow their guns to be taken by a federal government we do not trust.

From there, I ended up at The Middle of the Right, who posts "Siddown, Pour Yourself a Cuppa Joe", and posts some ideas on what could be coming,

This issue could well break this country. Could lead to armed revolt against our government. Lead to deaths and destruction.  Lead to a second revolution. Lead to the death of the US as we know it. Not all those who cleaned out the inventory of "assault rifles" and ammunition and pistols were first timers or investors... Many were just stocking up. Many were planning ahead. Many were looking at the same thing I am right now. 

 and includes the Solzhenitsyn quote we've all read so many times.

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? ...”

Finally, I ended up at Bob Owens' "What You'll See in the Revolution".

If we’re lucky, the United States of America, or whatever amalgam results, will again try to rebuild. If we’re very lucky, the victors will reinstate the Constitution as the law of the land. Just as likely though, we’ll face fractious civil wars fought over issues we’ve not begun to fathom, and a much diminished state or states will result, perhaps guided by foreign interests.

It will not be pretty. There will be no “winners,” and perhaps hundreds of thousands to millions of dead.

All of it is worth reading.  Consider that this newspaper skirmish may be the 2012 version of "the shot heard (read) 'round the world"

Me, I went to the local gun show today, not really looking for anything, just to see if the nationwide skyrocketing demand has hit my little city.  Has it ever.  The show is here every 4 to 6 weeks; the average show gets around 3000 attendees.  They had over 5000 on Saturday afternoon, with a line to get in that lasted until 3PM (show opened at 9AM).  A friend reported seeing amazing amounts of ammo going out the doors.  It was packed today, impassable in some rows at some times.  Two or more deep at tables.

I can't say there were no ARs available for sale, but supply and demand being as inexorable as it is, guns that might have gone for $900 at the last show in November were going for $1600 today. Prices were really up. I have a habit of picking up a brick of 500 .22LR whenever I see it under $20 - today it was $30, up 50%. I saw a guy asking $900 for a case of a thousand rounds of .223. Whether he sold it or not, I couldn't say. 30 round magazines were tagged at $30 each - or more. The handgun vendors were low on stock.  Few Glocks, few XDs, few M&Ps.  Some had nothing but the low end guns, like High Points, Jimenez, Sccy and such (not that they couldn't be useful).

I always like to watch and listen to the crowd. Every size, shape, color, age, and ethnicity (as far as I can tell by looking/listening) was represented. Older couples who would look in place in a retirement community, younger 20-somethings that look like they're from Puerto Rico, plenty of "the girl next door" types, too - you name it.  And everything in between.

I think the feeling that something really bad might be coming has reached into a large section of the population.

I know that the argument isn't really going to be settled on the basis of facts when our side argues with facts, reason and logic, and they argue on emotion (and penis jokes), but you'll have a hard time coming up with a better set of facts than this article in PJ Media.  

But Everything is Fine!

Not told to me directly, but you hear it often enough.  "Why are you so down on the economy when everything is fine?  Housing prices have bottomed, and the DJIA is at 13,000, way higher than when Bush was in office, why do you think bad times are coming?" What do you say to someone like this?  They earnestly believe everything is fine.  Recovery is underway.  If we're concerned, it's just partisan politics.  Or raaaaaaacisssssmmmm. 

All of the things they mention say this person doesn't really understand price inflation, or they think it's negligible, like the official stats say.  Let's start there. 

You can ask them if they know what quantitative easing is, and if they know what it means.  Chances are they don't.  You can explain that the Federal Reserve is creating money out of thin air to buy up debt and keep interest rates down, and that they're currently creating $85 Billion per month - in addition to over a trillion already spent.  By having so many dollars available, an enormous supply keeps the price of money (interest rates) down by supply and demand.  You can explain that the federal government borrows about 40 cents of every dollar of Federal spending, and that we sell bonds to countries and banks that will buy them in order to finance that borrowing, promising to pay them their purchase price and some small amount of interest some time in the future.  Here's the first learning moment: ask them who's buying our bonds.  Chances are they'll say China, because that has been said on the news often enough that they'll have heard that, but in reality it's the Federal Reserve that is buying most of our debt, about 70%.  It's really an incredible wealth transfer from the people to the banks.  Now you can say that this is like paying your Visa with your Mastercard; maybe you can do that in the event of an emergency, but in the long run, it's not healthy.  Since the money is created by creating debt in a bank ledger, it's more like writing yourself a check to deposit so that you can write more checks.

Now you can probe: if the Fed is creating $85 Billion per month so that any demand for dollars is easily met, and interest rates kept down, does the large supply of dollars effect anything else?  Simply anyone who wants to sell you something knows that more dollars means each one is worth less, so they ask for more.  What's the real inflation rate?  The government has changed how they report it over the years, but everyone who goes grocery shopping knows prices are up.  John Williams over at Shadowstats makes a living keeping track of price inflation the way it was done before, making it easier to compare numbers over time.  Not surprisingly, he has discovered that the Federal government keeps changing the way inflation is reported to make them sound better.  Here's his latest plot.

It's obvious that there was a major shift in 2009/2010, but ignoring that, it's fair to say that inflation has averaged around 10% since 2005, and 8% from 2002 to 2005.

Going back to the original argument that the Dow is up so high, if the DJIA is approximately 13,000 today, you can reduce that by 10% inflation to say it would be 11818 if there were no inflation.  This compounds like interest.  If there were no inflation for the last two years, the DJIA would be 107413.  You can continue.  The independent investor site "Dogs of the Dow" calculates that adjusted for inflation, the Dow has not gone up since about 2000 - Y2K. 

Price inflation also affects the price of housing.  The inflation-adjusted prices for houses on the national level are just now returning to historical norms. But beware: politics is at play again, and there is thought that regulations have been created to inflate another housing bubble.  That can't end well.

A lot has been said about the Federal debt, but I think what drives it home the best is putting it into dollar values close to what people have experienced, or close to their income level.  This is easily done in a spreadsheet or with a calculator by scaling the enormous numbers involved.  Consider a family with this income and expenses ledger, derived by dividing the Federal budget numbers by 30,000,000 (and striving for nice, round numbers instead of absolute accuracy) :

	Per Year
Income	$75,000
expense	$140,000
yearly shortage	$65,000
Existing Debt	$550,000

This year they made $75,000 and spent $140,000.  They're already in debt $550,000, over 7 times their income, but instead of paying that down, they're adding $65,000 to their debt.  Who would loan this family money?  I can't imagine any bank agreeing to loan them more money without plans to get out of debt.  Does this look economically healthy?  That's where we are as a country. 

Now point out the Debt to GDP ratio of just over 100% here and other countries.  Compare to other countries:

The thing to point out about this chart is to look at the countries to our left (higher debt to GDP).  Greece is collapsed as a country, Japan is barely afloat, while Italy, and Portugal are regularly reported as being in trouble.  Look to our right.  Iceland had troubles, France is in trouble, and Spain is being reported as the possible next domino to fall.  We're not in a good place.

That's why we're concerned about the economy.  We're not trying to make Washington - the president and/or congress look bad.  They're good enough at that themselves. 

A Little AR-Foolery

If the AR-15 is Barbie for Men, then half the fun is changing Barbie's outfit.  

First step was I decided to dress up my home built AR by replacing the plastic standard foregrip with a quad rail.  Found a reasonable seller on eBay.  Next a pair of Rapid Transition Sights, from another seller.  It's my understanding Rapid Transition Sights come from the 3-gun world, where they were developed to help competitors engage targets at different distances.  The end result looks like this:

The idea is that I can use my scope for distance work and rotate onto the RT Sights, which are just iron sights, for distances more friendly to old man eyes. This should cover me from a few feet out to a few hundred yards.

Sadly, the anti-gun loonies rants about ARs are correct.  They are blood thirsty.  This one demanded a few drops before the task could be completed.

My left middle finger.  Doesn't look good for guitar practice tonight. 

Preparing for the Fight

The details of Babs Feinstein's Assault Scary Looking Weapons Ban have been posted to her website, and it's simultaneously interesting and nauseating to look at them.  Essentially she intends to criminalize any semiautomatic rifle that can accept a magazine larger than 10 rounds, except for some .22 caliber rifles.  While I don't want to waste the space quoting her, it's clear that the flying monkeys staffers who prepared this have listened to some of the criticisms of the old AWB.  For example, it has often been pointed out that the wooden-stocked Ruger Ranch Rifle Mini-14 was acceptable while the functionally identical Mini-14 Tactical version was prohibited, so they responded by calling the Mini-14 out by name and declaring it illegal.  The NRA-ILA has extracted some highlights to include here:

• Expands the definition of “assault weapon” by including:
  
  • Three very popular rifles: The M1 Carbine (introduced in 1944 and for many years sold by the federal government to individuals involved in marksmanship competition), a model of the Ruger Mini-14, and most or all models of the SKS. 
  • Any “semiautomatic, centerfire, or rimfire rifle that has a fixed magazine with the capacity to accept more than 10 rounds,” except for tubular-magazine .22s. 
  • Any “semiautomatic, centerfire, or rimfire rifle that has an overall length of less than 30 inches,” any “semiautomatic handgun with a fixed magazine that has the capacity to accept more than 10 rounds,” and any semi-automatic handgun that has a threaded barrel. 
• Requires owners of existing “assault weapons” to register them with the federal government under the National Firearms Act (NFA). The NFA imposes a $200 tax per firearm, and requires an owner to submit photographs and fingerprints to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE), to inform the BATFE of the address where the firearm will be kept, and to obtain the BATFE’s permission to transport the firearm across state lines.

Notice in particular that the definition of assault weapons is extended to pistols.  The conclusion here is that for any model pistol that comes from the factory with a magazine that holds over 10 rounds, and there must be a couple of dozen of such models, they become NFA firearms requiring a $200 tax per handgun - and, it's arguable, $200 per magazine - fingerprinting, photo ID, and permission from your local sheriff.

The only technology she appears willing to accept is bolt action rifles with built in magazines holding five or fewer rounds.  I suppose an M1 Garand with its 8 round en bloc clip would be acceptable.  And revolvers.  At least on her web page and the NRA web page, I see no talk about restricting revolvers.  Maybe modern engineers can do something with the old Belgian H.D.H. 20 shot revolver design?

(HDH 20 Shot Revolver - 1895)
There's more.  On her web page, Feinstein lists studies to back up her efforts, and predictably lies about what they say.  For example, she says:

In a Department of Justice study (pdf), Jeffrey Roth and Christopher Koper find that the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban was responsible for a 6.7 percent decrease in total gun murders, holding all other factors equal. They write: “Assault weapons are disproportionately involved in murders with multiple victims, multiple wounds per victim, and police officers as victims.”

The NRA quotes the actual paper:

On her website, Feinstein claims that a study for the DOJ found that the 1994 ban resulted in a 6.7 percent decrease in murders. To the contrary, this is what the study said: “At best, the assault weapons ban can have only a limited effect on total gun murders, because the banned weapons and magazines were never involved in more than a modest fraction of all gun murders. Our best estimate is that the ban contributed to a 6.7 percent decrease in total gun murders between 1994 and 1995. . . . However, with only one year of post-ban data, we cannot rule out the possibility that this decrease reflects chance year-to-year variation rather than a true effect of the ban.  Nor can we rule out effects of other features of the 1994 Crime Act or a host of state and local initiatives that took place simultaneously.”

GunFacts (pdf - see page 63) gives more data to back up discussions with antis. 

To paraphrase Greg Gutfeld, listening to Feinstein talk about guns is like listening to a tree talk about algebra. 

Realistically, this could be a negotiating ploy: put up the most outrageous demands she can think of and get what she can.  We need to convince our representatives not to accept anything.  None of these bans will have the desired effects.   Time to get busy contacting your congresscritters - and don't forget your local and state officials either.  The war is not coming, the war has begun.

Boxing Day Ketchup

Ketchup as in "catching up".
 
As I said we would, yesterday we smoked a pork shoulder (also known as a Boston butt), a good-sized (supermarket) duck and added some hot Italian sausage while the smoker was going.  Served with finishing sauce, and topped off with some pumpkin squares with whipped cream, it was a feast.  Virtually completely paleo for those of you in to that.  (Pumpkin squares with some artificial sweetener, and almond flour so paleo purists will scoff).

Even the leftovers are wonderful.  Cold smoked duck (not this kind of cold duck) and pulled pork is excellent with some salsa.  Had some smoked Italian sausage in an omelet this morning.

My son, by the way, says the obvious name for smoked duck and pork is "dork".  

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"Black boxes" on cars have gotten a bit of press lately, with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposing broader use of "Event Data Recorders" starting 2014.  Their "it's all for your safety" idea is to record critical parameters in the car in the moments before a crash.

• vehicle speed;
• whether the brake was activated in the moments before a crash;
• crash forces at the moment of impact;
• information about the state of the engine throttle;
• air bag deployment timing and air bag readiness prior to the crash; and
• whether the vehicle occupant's seat belt was buckled.

In case you didn't know it, most cars made since about 1996 already have these.  The problem with these boxes is that there are no security provisions built into them.  Getting my Borepatch on, it's not that security was an afterthought, security was never thought of.  What does that mean? The simplest example is that if you have the ability to wipe the memory of the transponder, it can't be proven you were doing anything wrong.  And getting my Borepatch with a tinfoil Yarmulke on, if someone wanted to frame you, they can load the EDR with false information.  As the author of that Design News article says, just enter "erase crash data" into the search bar on YouTube and you'll find a page of videos on how to wipe the memory in your EDR.  A quick search on eBay finds a handful of boxes that clear the memory.  The expert quoted in that piece said, "Last time I looked, there were 23 companies making products that allow someone to erase your crash data".

If they don't put anything into the recorders to improve security, it will be a natural for a defense attorneys to dispute the control of the ERD to keep it from being filled with bogus data.  As you might imagine, it has already happened that an ERD was wiped before information useful in a vehicular homicide case could be used.

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Our friends at the JPFO link to an article at the South Dakota Shooters forums, where admin Kory has put together a graphic showing the number of school shootings since 1900.  They color code the major gun control laws.  Here's their graphic:

As Tam pointed out the other day, from about 1900 until today both semiautomatic weapons and psychotics were found in abundance in America, so what's different about today?  With one exception, all of the school shootings with more than a handful of victims have been in the last 10 years.  Further, if you go read the stories of the US school shootings, it seems that before about 1970 they appear to largely have been personal fights that took place at a school or a fight that was extended to a school: they weren't carried out by psychos intending to get famous by killing as many innocent victims as possible.  From that graph it's pretty obvious that as the number of laws layered on top of each other has gone up, the number of school shootings has gone up.
 
The media has pretty well chewed up Wayne LaPierre (warning for self-starting audio/video) for saying armed guards in schools would prevent more shootings.  Of course, most of them - like felon in fact, if not charged, David Gregory - send their children to schools under armed guards.  And, being the mainstream media, they never think to ask the police who respond, the trainers who train those police and the trainers who train those trainers what they think, probably because over 95% of them would want armed citizens in the schools.  Maybe I'm crediting LaPierre with more strategy than he deserves, but I think his overall plan was that when people say "we can't afford armed guards" the answer is "just let those people with concealed carry permits carry on campus". 

Merry Christmas

44 Years ago tonight, Apollo 8 was on the world's first mission to the moon. Like sailors sailing out of sight of land for the first time, man was leaving the safety of shore for the first time. We were becoming a space-faring population. Here on the ground 1968 had been a tumultuous year but we were united in watching the Apollo 8 mission in a way few things have united

I'll never forget that message they sent down, that Christmas eve.  Especially after roughly 1:00 into this video.  

Last year, I wrote:

Churches, like all groups, have personalities, and in the one I attend, it would be remarkable to toss a wadded up paper ball and not hit an engineer, nurse, doctor, or a other professional.  It's not news to this bunch that Jesus was probably born in the spring (or fall, depending on whom you read), that the December 25th date comes from adapting to the Roman Saturnalia or other pagan holidays; nor would they be shocked if you told them Christmas has more secular than holy traditions associated with it.  Not that we don't joyously celebrate the reason for the season, but Easter is a bigger holiday than Christmas for the simple reason that everyone has a birthday, but only one man in history has ever come back.  

Since then, I've heard another explanation for why December 25th was chosen.  It's close to the solstice, the longest night of the year - which made it the darkest night of the year in those days.  Jesus was the light of the world, and the symbolism of bringing light when things are at their darkest fits perfectly with the story.  Yes, it's become commercialized; shopping, food and football.  I love it anyway.  Thank the masters of Madison Avenue - propagandists, really - who have learned how to push so many people's buttons - to get us to buy things.

"And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more."
-- Dr. Seuss

So however you mark this day, enjoy it well.  Spend time with family or friends or both.  Things are not important; people are what it's about.  If you're LEO, or fire; Nurse or MD, and are one who must work so the rest of us may rest, thank you.

Some Things Are Worth Holding Onto

I received an email today with a story, told in a simple series of pictures, that brought tears to my eyes.  After searching online for a while, I find most of the pictures here on BuzzFeed:  the story of Taylor Morris and Danielle Kelly. 

Taylor is a young man from Cedar Falls, Iowa, who enlisted in the Navy.  Taylor is an EOD - Explosive Ordinance Disposal - officer.  On May 3, 2012 in Afghanistan, Taylor had a bad day, and you probably know that when EODs have a bad day, it can be a very bad day.  He lost portions of all four limbs.  Recovery, still ongoing, has been a long road.  Danielle has been there through it all. Go read.  More here.

As the guy who sent me the pictures said, "If he's a hero, she's an ANGEL".  I suspect they would both reject those labels.  And I wouldn't believe they aren't for a nanosecond.

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like...

Christmas dinner.  Growing up in Miami, I remember my Cuban neighbors having pig roasts, where they'd roast a whole pig, with head of course, for Christmas dinner.  A Cuban friend from work sent me this.

Well, we're not going that big, I'll just be smoking another pork butt for Christmas, so we'll start marinating it tonight.  A butt and a duck. 

Why not?

The Alternative Hypotheses

Zendo Deb over at 357 Magnum puts together an interesting posting on the role of psychiatric drugs in episodes of violence: suicide, homicide, murder/suicides and mass killings.  She offers it without much comment, but it's about 15 minutes worth of video to watch, and it is thought provoking. This (elsewhere) has been offered as a possible explanation for the Newtown shootings.

The other thing specified by name has been violent video games, and Erin over at Lurking Rhythmically talks about that.  Erin is more direct, and as far as I know, the studies that have been done categorically reject the idea that violent games lead to violence.

First, let me categorically reject the idiotic "if saves one life..." argument out of hand.  What follows will be a little pondering, an open-page rambling.  I hope it's a little interesting to you. 

In the "after action" analyses of these events, it gets hard to say anything analytically because as horrific as these things are, they're also horrifically rare.  I've heard, but can't confirm, that every school shooter we know of was on a psychotropic drug.  If someone is on such a drug, it gets hard to statistically “tease out” cause and effect. You need big samples and rigorous controls. You can’t data mine old studies. You can't say that any particular person killed themselves because they were on the drug without knowing more than you have available.  Put another way, maybe if they weren’t on Zoloft or whatever, maybe they would have killed themselves sooner. People on antidepressants kill themselves, but depressed people kill themselves: which is the cause? Did they kill themselves because they were taking the drug, or because the dosage was wrong, or because it didn't work in their body?  What if the drugs just mask another, bigger, underlying problem?

The problem with my argument is that you’d need many thousands of school shooters to conclude that the drugs cause their behavior to the kind of certainty that would be demanded, which (of course) is unacceptable.

One obvious problem is that when drugs are tested for efficacy, they're tested in isolation: that's the essence of a controlled trial.  No attempt is made to see if interactions between the drugs with other drugs or other factors change results, because the tests become so complex and expensive that they simply can't be done. (This problem - of interactions between combinations of drugs - is pervasive in medicine).
 
The problem that is never discussed, and here I put on my “olde farte” hat, is that these drugs – even if they were perfect – may be keeping kids from developing what we old timers call “character”. While I fully understand there are real brain chemistry issues that may require medication, these drugs seem to be massively over used. I read once they’re prescribed up to 20 times more in the US than in other countries. Trouble paying attention? Take this! Depressed because that boy or girl rejected you? Take this! Not “suck it up, it builds character”. Afraid of embarrassing yourself in band? Take this pill! Not practice harder, or work harder, or just plain “everybody gets that”. It’s one reason I oppose marijuana for kids. I’ve seen too many 40-something stoners living in mom’s spare room.  Adults who never developed “character” as a child.  Some times it takes hard determination to get through the day.  That's reality.

Both of these have been offered up as alternative hypotheses to explain spree shooters.  It's an attempt to keep shooters from being created.  There is no doubt that no matter what the cause, the way to stop a bad guy with a gun is for a good guy with a gun to be there. 

The truth here is that we may never be able to know with certainty, on a scientific basis, if either of these is a cause.  I can imagine there might be a sub-population of people, maybe just one in over a hundred thousand, who could be influenced by a bad rap video, a movie, or, yes, a game combined with the influence of a psychotropic drug.  I couldn't prove that wild-assed guess with a billion dollars worth of studies. 

One in a million kids will face a shooter.  All of them will face this.

Stupid Maya! "Assault Weapons" Ban 2 and More

I had to work today.  Then, because it's my last day of work for two weeks, I wanted to leave slightly early so I went to do my online time card around 3:30.  And spent the better part of an hour fighting with some sort of system error.  Not only did I not leave early, I left late enough to be one of the last few cars still in the lot (out of over 200).

Yeah, I know.  No cheese with that whine. 

Let me join the crowd referring everyone to read Larry Correia's piece on the coming gun control fight.  He really does cover it well. 

Some other time before the first, listen to Michael Bane's Down Range Radio podcast, largely on the same subject. 

Today, I got an email from the NAGR saying Marco Rubio, my senator, is backing off his support for gun rights and it's time to bombard him.  They cite this article from "The Hill", which simply begins "Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is open to a "comprehensive study" of gun laws, an aide said."  The actual text of the statement sounds quite different to me.  It reads:

"In the aftermath of the unspeakable tragedy in Newtown, Sen. Rubio, like millions of Americans, is looking for public policy changes that would prevent such a horrible event from happening again," Conant said in an email to The Hill. "He remains a strong supporter of the Second Amendment right to safely and responsibly bear arms. But he has also always been open to measures that would keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill.

"The challenge with gun laws is that by definition criminals do not follow the law. For example, Connecticut's gun laws, some of the strictest in the nation, were not able to prevent this atrocity. Nevertheless, he supports a serious and comprehensive study of our laws to find new and better ways to prevent any more mass shootings."

Frankly, that sounds pretty sane.  As long as by "serious and comprehensive study", they include  the elimination of gun free zones almost everywhere and ensuring teachers, janitors or other staff who can legally carry will be encouraged to do so.

Listen, I like NAGR, and I send money to them every year, but it's no small coincidence the abbreviation can be pronounced "nagger".  They are the biggest nags for money of all of the gun rights groups.  Every day is a couple of emails over another crisis and another demand for more money.  They are worse than the NRA, and that's saying a lot.  At least those come by snail and can be tossed on sight.  By contrast, I've never heard a word from the SAF asking for anything.  I have to put reminders in my calendar to remember they exist. 

And speaking of AWB2, the reaction to the anti-gunners has been nothing short of stunning.  Tam has an excellent perspective, based on working in gun stores, and links to these pretty impressive pictures.  SurvivalBlog posts a link that Brownells has sold out of - what they thought was - a three and a half year stock of AR magazines in three days.  The NRA, demonized and threatened with personal attacks (note to twits writing this: do you think they're not able to defend themselves?) has been having new members sign up at an all time record pace, 8000 per day.  Kevin at The Smallest Minority reports from a friend in the biz who talks of selling out over 9300 Magpul Pmags in 12 hours, and one Magpul distributor selling 70,000 last weekend.  Stores everywhere are reporting being out of, well, just about anything newbies have heard of.  Americans don't take well to being told what they can and can't buy.  God love us for that.  At least some of that still exists. 

So no magazines, no AR uppers, minimal parts for AR builders, almost sold out of handguns, Mosins moving like hotcakes.  Way to go Babs, you're creating the country you want.  Whether you know it or not.   

Everyone's favorite AR.  I've had this picture mailed to me since this all started.

Politifact Fact Checks - Sort of

Received this link in my email today:  PolitiFact Fact Checks on Gun Control and Gun Violence. 

My first reaction was "put on the hip waders; the BS is gonna be deep".  After all, when they start talking Gun Violence and Gun Homicide, you know they're only concerned about the instrument and not the crime or its victims.  It didn't disappoint. 

So I wrote back to the emailer:   Ooooh!  Can I play? 

"We do not have any limitation on the number of guns and bullets we can buy. (True)"  Why would any restriction on the number of guns or bullets that a law-abiding individual can buy matter?  Do you know professional competitive shooters (yes, there are such folks) will burn one to two thousand rounds of ammunition in a week just practicing?  How does restricting law abiding people help anyone?  (to be pedantic, Politi-Fact is sounding stupid here: the bullet is the portion of a cartridge that leaves the barrel.  The correct term in not how many bullets one has, but how many cartridges or rounds of ammunition)

"The U.S. gun homicide rate is 20 times the combined rate of other western nations. (Mostly True)" Why does the "gun homicide" or "gun violence" matter?  It's okay to bludgeon someone to death?  Knife attack?  Poison?  Something like 2 million people were killed in the Rwandan genocide in 1994.  Do you know what the most common weapon was?  A machete.  A few cents worth of scrap steel.  A friend of mine who has worked in China recently says dismembered bodies (hacked up with blades of some sort) are common occurrences - but it's not gun homicide so that's OK?  In terms of actual homicide rate, which is what we should care about, the US is 108th place, not "20 times the combined rate of other western nations."  Wiki statistics, plotted by Sean Sorrentino at 
http://www.ncgunblog.com/2012/12/20/how-murderous-is-the-usa-anyway-or-piers-morgan-really-is-racist/

What's important in the case of something like the Newtown massacre is whether you make anything better by changing the existing thousands of laws.  An Assault Weapon Ban?  The 1994 AWB, which banned magazines over 30 rounds, was in effect when Columbine High was attacked by those two psychos - who had written their state representatives to oppose Coloado's concealed carry law.  Why should a new AWB be any more effective?  I have read a lot of sources on this and not one, from UC Berkeley to the FBI, says the 1994 AWB had any effect on crime.  Some sources say crime went down when it expired, although since violent crime has been in nationwide decline since concealed carry started to spread across the country in the early 1990s, I think it may just be part of that trend. 

I did more, but I'm sure you can, too...

Not scary.  Just (1) it won't help the situation (2) criminals won't obey it (3) honest people will be under armed if they really need one (4) nobody knows what an "assault rifle" or "military style weapon" is (5) about 10 million legal owners will be inconvenienced.  For starters. 

Space - It's Genuinely Scary Out There

On many of the sites aimed at those trying to be more self reliant and self sufficient, people talk about solar flares causing global catastrophes.  It's a topic I've written about several times, because I believe that while the danger is real - in the sense that flares are real and really big ones are capable of causing damage here on the Earth - the media and (strangely)  NASA itself over hypes them. 

The granddaddy solar flare of all time has, until very recently, been regarded as the Carrington Event in 1859, the dawn of the telegraph age. The event was witnessed in real time by British astronomer Richard Christopher Carrington.

"Two patches of intensely bright and white light broke out," he later wrote. Carrington puzzled over the flashes. "My first impression was that by some chance a ray of light had penetrated a hole in the screen attached to the object-glass," he explained, given that "the brilliancy was fully equal to that of direct sun-light."

Note that these flashes were so much brighter than the projected image of the sun in his dark room that he thought daylight was somehow getting into the room.  The story itself is amazing.  That evening, when the Coronal Mass Ejection hit, telegraph operators were able to run without batteries; the flare-induced voltages on their wires working better than batteries.  The aurora display was global, even in the deep tropics.

If such a flare were to happen today, I believe it would take out the power grid on at least the hemisphere facing the sun when the CME hit.  What we have in our favor is that our modern monitoring systems would allow grid operators to shut down some to all of their gear: force the world into a black out, so that the equipment could be reconnected when the storm was over. 

Now comes a story that there appears to have been a flare that could have been 20 times stronger than the Carrington event. 

Everybody loves a good “whodunit?” How else could you explain the number of television shows with the prefix “CSI”? So when a study in Nature identified a previously unknown (and very large) spike in carbon-14 around the year 774 AD, it raised a lot of eyebrows. This radioactive isotope of carbon is created when energetic particles from beyond the Earth transform atmospheric nitrogen to a form of carbon with two neutrons more than the most common isotope.

There are a couple of known mechanisms for creating C14 in the atmosphere, one is a massive solar flare.  774 AD was 600 years or so before the first telescopes were used, so there was no Carrington to be watching.

So when a college student from UC-SD found a record of a “red crucifix” in the skies over Britain in that year, Nature published his note.

The story diverges a bit here, because the original group who tried to calculate how big a flare would have to be to cause the measured amount of carbon-14 in tree rings made a mistake and ended up with a preposterous result, 1000 times bigger than Carrington's granddaddy flare. 

A pair of researchers from Washburn University and the University of Kansas published a comment in Nature pointing out that the solar flare calculations included a rather fundamental error. Working backwards from the intensity required to produce the right amount of carbon-14 in Earth’s atmosphere, they mistakenly calculated the total size of the event as if the flare was emitted in all directions from the Sun, forming an expanding bubble of charged particles.

CMEs, are fairly localized, so the amount of spread would be much less than calculated and a powerful enough flare much smaller than the original calculations.  These researchers derive a number closer to 20x the size of Carrington's flare. 

A flare this size is genuinely scary; I don't know how much bigger it would be than the one pictured here, from November 2003, the largest flare observed since the space age began, but it would fry an entire hemisphere's grids, and if the grids are connected better than I think, would plunge the entire world into darkness.  I don't know if anyone on the Space Station could survive that. 

You can put together an entire catalog of potential TEOTWAKI disasters: a flare like this, a super volcano like Toba or Yellowstone, a nearby supernova, and more.   Something like any of those things or these mega flares is highly unlikely (yeah, I disagree strongly with this and briefly explained why here). 

But you know how a bunch of those UN Agenda 21 freaks want to kill off 95% of the humans on earth?   This just might do it.