Tar + Feathers + Senator. Light assembly required.
A Democratic senator is introducing legislation for a bailout of troubled union pension funds. If passed, the bill could put another $165 billion in liabilities on the shoulders of American taxpayers.
The bill, which would put the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation behind struggling pensions for union workers, is being introduced by Senator Bob Casey, (D-Pa.), who says it will save jobs and help people.
As FOX Business Network’s Gerri Willis reported Monday, these pensions are in bad shape; as of 2006, well before the market dropped and recession began, only 6% of these funds were doing well.
They should quit renting buses and having logo shirts made up for their harassment parties. That would save them a small fortune right there. Then maybe the unions and their members could learn to live within their means and not depend on others for their sustinence.
Yeah, I know. It’ll never happen. But this bill passing will get me voting from the rooftops.
But for those who have
Firefly takes flight again with “Browncoats: Redemption”
Sadly, Joss Whedon’s stellar sci-fi western Firefly remains grounded for now. But Trekkie-like die-hard fans called Browncoats are nevertheless taking flight with their own film Browncoats: Redemption. It hits the convention circuit starting with New England’s Granite-Con on May 23.
“Browncoats: Redemption was made by the fans for the fans,†director Michael Dougherty explained to Wired.com by e-mail. “But we view this as an independent film; we had Firefly fans travel from all over the U.S. to volunteer their time as extras and other supportive roles in its production. Without them, this film would not exist, and it will only be successful with their continued help and support.â€
Browncoats picks up the story on Miranda, three months after the events of Whedon’s film Serenity, with fans volunteering as cast and crew. It’s not a documentary of Firefly, but meant to be a sci-fi feature on its own based on the world Whedon created.
Anyone local going to see this thing when it comes to town? I might like to tag along.
Kid uses Facebook to drag down allegedly corrupt towing company.
Hello. I’m Dave and I’ve attended Boomershoot along with Phil and David for a few years now. We share several shooting positions under the canopy affectionately called the Boomeragio.
Who else but Phil would think of having a couch at the firing line?
It has become an annual pilgrimage for me to load up the truck and head out to Idaho to hunt Boomers with Phil and David (and eat at the local Mexican restaurant). I’m not a pro picture shooter by any stretch of the imagination. I usually put the old camera on full auto and point and shoot. Sometimes I get lucky and the camera grabs something that some folks appreciate. David and Joe seemed to like this one.
It was taken in 2007 at the Boomershoot “clean-up†activity, now known as the “High Intensity†event. There are a bazillion good photographers out there on the intarweb and I won’t be trying to outdo National Geographic or anything like that. I’ll just run some photo essays from time to time dealing mostly with firearms and such.
So, without further ado, let’s git ‘r done.
Swapping External Mounts on a Lyman TargetSpot Scope
While at one of my BPCRS matches I had overheard some fellow shooters talking about some new external Unertl-type mounts that one of them was using on his single shot rifle. (BPCRS = Black Powder Cartridge Rifle Silhouette. Matches are shot with the old single shot buffalo rifles from the late 1800’s, such as Sharps, Remington, Winchester, Ballard and others. To see an example of a Sharps, go rent ‘Quigley Down Under’ if you’ve not seen it. )
The mounts were made by an outfit in Oklahoma by the name of D.Z. Arms. I was intrigued enough to contact them and order a set to use with a Lyman TargetSpot scope.
This next view shows the DZ mounts along with the Lyman rear mount. The DZ rear mount (center) is taller and has more vertical adjustment than the Lyman (left). The short tube sections in the DZ mounts are just dummy tubes to keep the plungers contained. Caution: you may have to make a change in the height of the mounting blocks as the increased adjustment won’t help much if you point the end of the scope into the barrel near the muzzle.
In order to remove the Lyman mounts, some disassembly is necessary. I had never attempted this before and I don’t know if I performed the task as well as the experts at Parsons Scope Service would, but it seems to have turned out alright.
DISCLAIMER: If you decide to try and do this and you mess it up, you’re on your own. This little essay is just to show you all what I did and is not offered up as a shop manual.
We’ll continue below the fold……
If I’d had these magnificent glasses five years ago when the IRS agent auditing our company told us within minutes of walking in the door that we should just sign off on his conclusions so he wouldn’t have to look at our data and could have some play time in the Bay Area before heading back to Sacramento early to beat the traffic, I’d have won a gigantic settlement with little effort. Instead it took five years of fighting, and we’re pretty close (knock wood) to getting to much the same place.
You never know when the beady little eyes of civil servants’ inner rat-fink will pop into view. It’s good to have surreptitious audio & video recordings when that happens.
OK, not really, it’s a whole new vehicle.
How long before the civilian version comes out, do ya think?
A Calgunner’s comment: “There’s a possibility that she came blazing out her house wearing a bandoleer of shotgun shells, with two sawed-off Mossbergs in each hand, screaming “I’ve always wanted to bag me some cops…looks like now I got me a chance to do so!”, but I don’t think that happened. I think she was scared and blinded by their spot lights, and because of the good ‘ole federal employee deciding what he wanted to do was more important than what anybody else wanted, an old lady is dead before her time.”
Shortly before sunset, a census worker knocks at the door of an upscale home where a 67-year-old sister of a judge and former D.A. lives. Not the criminal type exactly.
The census worker reported a manwith a gun answered the door… pointed a firearm at her, said they would not answer any questions, then closed the door.
So of course she reports it to the cops, who arrest the guy more than three hours later “on suspicion of assault with a firearm on a peace officer.” Grandma, no doubt freaked out, approached the door with a shotgun and they kill her. Yeah, the officers were in uniform. Yeah, they say she refused orders to put it down and pointed it in a threatening manner. Maybe so, but I’m also thinking there’s a good chance she might not have heard their commands due to age, seen their uniforms in the dark, or just been too slow. Moreover, since when the fuck do census workers count as peace officers?
One of the biggest reasons to promote the awareness of the gun culture in the media is that when it vanishes under the radar, as it has in California, you get government regulators, census workers, and cops who all think that if you have a gun, that’s a bad thing that needs to be Reported to Someone.
In my enlightened town, firing airguns (much less actual firearms) in your back yard is frowned upon. There’s an exception for dispatch of pest animals, and I’ve mercy-whacked my share of skunks and the like with .22LRs after the dogs chewed on them for a bit. (I use a Ciener .22 upper — pic here — on one of our Beretta 92s, and no-gunpowder Colibris to keep the noise down; head shots still do the job nicely.)
Anyway, when the back yard remodeling’s finished I’m likely to have a nice backstop for setting up a mini-Steel Challenge course. But to keep the noise way down I’d likely need to use an airgun, more’s the pity. I have a blued version of the below that I picked up last year; it’s a pretty cool toy. This may be my weekend to test it out.
If I put a salt lick behind the steel targets to draw out the tree rats, maybe I could even do it legally. 🙂
