Random Nuclear Strikes

Going Galt

Posted on December 20, 2013 by Alaska

That is exactly what this is, even if Ayn Rand might have looked at it askance.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

It’s basically catastrophic insurance, and we dealt with it very often during Alaska’s and Kaya’s lives, and reading this reminded me of the way it worked: every time you needed something done you would get a very detailed cost estimate in advance and commit to paying. Even in emergency situations. VCA could generate cost sheets in about ten seconds while the doc was explaining the options, believe you me. No reason that couldn’t happen in human emergency rooms, too.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

We know what’s in it now, Nancy

Posted on December 19, 2013 by Phil Kadath

You probably remember when I posted about all of the newly enrolled Medicaid recipients and wondered how we, as a country, were going to pay for it.

Turns out, they had that covered from the beginning.

Expanded Medicaidâ€™s fine print holds surprise: â€˜paybackâ€™ from estate after death

As thousands of state residents enroll in Washingtonâ€™s expanded Medicaid program, many will be surprised at fine print: After youâ€™re dead, your estate can be billed for ordinary health-care expenses. State officials are scrambling to change the rule.

Well, maybe they should try asking the President to just say the law is changed. Democrats seem to believe that works for everything.

Posted in Evil walks the earth, The Government is Not Your Friend | Leave a comment

Pull the Lever

Posted on December 18, 2013 by Phil Kadath

While I have been a born and bred gunny my whole life, one aspect of it has been missing during the adult portion of it.

Reloading.

I just never had the time or the funds or the space to get a home rig set up. That changed a couple weeks back when I walked into this for a song.

Just a Lee single-stage press, tumbler, micrometer, hand primer and some case trimmers (and there is a powder charger somewhere there too). I bought dies for both calibers the next day.

From my years of attending Boomershoot and firing factory box ammo (and doing rather well, I might add), I figure that I have collected 1000 pieces of .308 Win. brass and more than 500 pieces of .22.250 brass. I came to this realization after I got laid off and was cleaning out the garage and sheds during the end of summer.

So, after getting this sorted out and set up I went about finding bullets, brass and powder. While finding bullets has been hit and miss, I have enough primers and IMR 4064 to reload each piece of brass twice.

My current chosen projectiles for the .22-250 are the 55gr Sierra GameKing HPBT, and for the .308, the Sierra MatchKing 155gr Palma HPBT.

Mickey the MouseGun shoots the simple .22-250 Remington greenbox 55grÂ Core-Lokt into 4x4x2in boomers at and a little beyond the 500 yard line with almost frightening regularity for a factory rifle (a trigger job and an over sized stock is all I’ve had done to it).

Barak (it’s a long story) will hopefully enjoy eating a steady diet of the 155’s since that is what I built him to consume. I have been using Federal/PMC/PRVI factory loaded 168gr HPBT’s which have been working well enough. But the 27 inch long, 1-in-12 twist barrel should like the slightly lighter bullets better.

I’ve been prepping brass for a week now, off and on, and should be able to get down to actually loading cartridges today. There may be a range trip this weekend to test some different loads.

Next up, .300 Win Mag. I may be getting a T/C Encore frame from Santa and I’ve always wanted to reach past 1000yds with authority.

Posted in Have Gun, Will Travel | 10 Comments

Don’t be fooled by her populism

Posted on December 18, 2013 by Phil Kadath

So, the fake “Native American” Senator from Massachusetts (she is, sadly a real Senator), Elizabeth Warren, introduced a bill that would make it illegal for employers to examine the credit reports of prospective employees.

While this practice does suck, because some people get divorced or have a family medical emergency or get their identity stolen, and that hurts their ability to pay their bills on time, for the most part, it can be a useful tool into the background of the type of person an employer is about to hire.

Because no one lies on their resume, ever. And no one ever gets their friends to lie for them as references, ever.

However, if Ms. Warren actually cared about people’s credit rating being torn to shit by circumstances beyond their control, she would champion a law that actually regulated the credit rating agencies and made their policies and procedures reasonable and open to public examination.

I’ll never forget when, back in 2008, The Wife and I were buying our home. For the months prior to getting pre-approved we started making sure every blemish was removed from our reports to get our number up as high as it could be. We were working with a specialist for this and in the beginning we would meet with her and say something along the lines of “and I’m going to contact them and get them to fix such and such misinformation on that one.” She would respond with “oh, don’t do that. that will hurt your score. Do this and that instead.”

What a normal person would think was logical is actually deferential to your “score”. Closing a line of credit that you rarely use is more deferential to your score than maxing it out.

And one of the credit bureaus will raise your score for doing something a different bureau will lower your score if you did it. But if you do nothing, they’ll both do nothing. For a month. Then they’ll both hit you with a decrease in your score.

Shit’s cray, bro.

Personally, I’ll have Bull payed off in March and I’m going to do everything I can to never have another car payment again. Which will hurt my credit rating, I’m sure.

Posted in Dare To Be Stupid, Evil walks the earth | 2 Comments