A City that isn’t falling for the budget line.

Eric Martin over at Obsidian Wings is busy mocking the city of Colorado Springs because the voters there told the city that, no, they can’t raise taxes to cover their expenses.  Thus, the city is following the time tested pattern of making very visible cuts in the primary services a city should provide (police, fire, schools, infrastructure, etc).  Unfortunately for the city, the citizens aren’t buying it and are demanding an accounting of the budget.

Good for them.

Now, it may be that the city really needs that much money to function, or the city may have way too many programs that are not essential to a functioning city.  Hopefully the voters of Colorado Springs will stay involved and decide on a budget that they can live with.

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Ooh, Speedloaders!

I’ve gravitated towards moon-clip-fed revolvers because I’ve yet to find a speedloader I could reliably and quickly index against the cylinder without fumbling a bit. This design looks like it might fix my problem:
I presume it’s cut so that your fingers should be able to index the scalloped parts with your cylinder’s scalloped parts.

h/t Linoge, from his comment on this thread.

Posted in Have Gun, Will Travel | 6 Comments

When Law Enforcement Gets Out Of Control

You get Maricopa County.

As a compensation supervisor, Darrien Ellison spends a lot of time researching money requests from the Sheriff’s Office.

In the course of his normal work over the past year, he denied two pay-raise requests for a high-ranking Sheriff’s Office employee. Later, the thought crossed his mind several times that authorities might come after him. When he had to call sheriff’s staff, he assumed he was being recorded. “Who knows what they would use from a conversation on one of their employees against me,” he said.

Fear followed employees home. Many talked with their wives, husbands and children to warn them deputies might show up or follow them around town.


Compensation supervisor Darrien Ellison and his family were away visiting in-laws last summer on the day deputies came to his house to question him.

When he didn’t come to the door, deputies talked to his neighbor. They asked about Ellison and his job at the county. Later, Ellison felt like some kind of suspicion had been cast on his family.

“Your neighbors obviously probably think something has been done wrong,” he said, asking how does anyone explain that it’s “just politics.”

Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments

SOS to the Left

Your initiative sucks.

The progressives of Washington State have gathered their signatures and submitted their petition.

If they’ve submitted enough signatures, this upcoming November residents of Washington will be asked if they would like to take on a progressive income tax on their ballots. Targeting “the Rich”, of course.

However, seventy some-odd years ago, our state Supreme Court said no to the idea and their decision said that this could only be done via an amendment to the state constitution.

The left is all wee-wee’d up in the hopes that they’ll be able to sucker enough voters to say “Yes”. They don’t care about what the previous decision said and think that if they can get this to pass and then fight it out in the courts for a couple years, that they’ll win.

Local leftist honco, Goldy at HorsesAss.Org, read about what our Secretary of State, Sam Reed, had to say about their idea.

But there could be complications with its legality. “You cannot have a graduated state income tax without amending the state constitution. The court has been clear on that,” says Dave Ammons, spokesman for the Secretary of State.

And Goldy was furious.

To which I have two main responses. First, the Washington State Supreme Court last explicitly ruled on this issue way back in 1933; our current slate of Supreme Court justices have never addressed this issue, and as the precedent flouting majority on the U.S. Supreme Court recently demonstrated, the opinions of the current justices are the only ones that matter. Second — and I mean this with all due respect to Dave Ammons, Secretary of State Sam Reed and the rest his office — it’s none of their fucking business.

To elaborate on my second point first, up until the moment the petitions are filed, the Secretary of State’s role in the initiative process is purely administrative, and even then the grounds for rejecting petitions are quite limited, so I can’t help but wonder why Ammons would comment on the measure’s constitutionality at all?

I know why he commented on it.

Because he was asked.

That is the polite thing to do.

Though I can easily understand why Goldy didn’t see that answer. He knows nothing about being polite.

Posted in Freaks, Mutants, and Morons | 2 Comments

Genius comes from necessity

It turns out that the Swiss stole the idea.

A-Fitzwilliam-01.jpg

If there is a recreation of one of these on the market today I may have to buy it.

Posted in Kewel! | Leave a comment

Are you watching Stossel?

You should be

Posted in Kewel! | 1 Comment

Mocking Eco-Socialists

Gets Audi in trouble.

Watch this video (it even has Cheap Trick goodness!)

Apparently the folks at Audi have forgotten their nation’s history. You see, there actually were Green Police in Germany during the rise of you know who.

Found via Autoblog Green

Posted in The Global Warming Death Cult | Leave a comment

Long Range Specialty Pistol Ram

One of my Specialty Pistols mentors, Steve Hugel, got himself a very nice ram. He’s an excellent writer, and the full story is worth the read, especially because of his “tactical” use of the ballistic reticle in the field. It’s not guesstimation if you make it precise. I’ve seen Steve make the reticle stadia calculations in his head, but using Exbal as he discusses makes it simpler for mere mortals.

Posted in Have Gun, Will Travel | 2 Comments

See, The Government Is Just A Big Cuddly Cat Protecting Its Citizens.

Found at ToWhichIReplied. Check out the rest of the pix from this amazing sequence here.

Continue reading

Posted in Color me confused | 3 Comments

Good Morning

Somedays, it’s worth getting up & opening the windows.

I took that from my front porch.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments