RNS Quote of the Day: 06/25/09

Posted on June 25, 2009 by Phil Kadath

More on the topic

Hugh Johnson, the man Roosevelt put at the head of the National Recovery Administration, call it a “Holy Thing. The Greatest social advance since the days of Jesus Christ.”

Burt Folsom – New Deal or Raw Deal

Government as religion, anyone?

Posted in Quote of the Day | 1 Comment

A Question for the Gunnies

Posted on June 25, 2009 by Phil Kadath

OK, maybe I didn’t get the memo, or the update, or the 411, but there is a rumor going around the gunosphere that is bothering me. I’ve been reading it repeatedly over the last couple months, in posts and in comments, and I need this settled up for me.

What “tool” is needed to take down a 1911?

Other than a screwdriver or allen wrench to take the grips off and something sturdy, narrow and pointy to pop the mainspring housing retaining pin and/or the firing pin, I can’t think of a single thing needed to strip a 1911 to damn near bare bones.

Are we talking about those barrel bushing wrenches that retailers sell to people who’ve had their thumbs amputated?

If so, then feel free to go below the fold.

If not, then please ignore my ignorance by leave the name of and a link to the tool in the comments section. Apparently, I’ve been disassembling 1911’s like some sort of neanderthal for 25 years.
Continue reading →

Posted in Color me confused | 11 Comments

The Soundboard: I’ve been “approved” Edition

Posted on June 25, 2009 by Phil Kadath

Just like Suze Orman, The Wife has approved my next vehicular purchase (in a couple years, after Bull is paid for in full). I’m calling it my “Mid-Life Crisis Car”.
RM 3-04j.jpg
While this may just look like your standard off-road running trail-rail, here’s a little secret: Washington State sez that if I give it a windscreen and powered mechanical wiper, head lights, tail lights, turn signals and some sort of bumper set-up up front, I can drive this on their roads “experimentally”.

Oh yeah! Can you say summertime commuter?

I know I can.

Now, per The Wife, I have to buy it as a kit and assemble the parts onto the frame. I’m not allowed to buy a complete one from someone else. Big effn’ woop. Like I’d do it any other way.

Also, VW engines only. Nothing from a Subaru or Toyota. Oh no! VW made buses.

Lastly, the chiropractor has to give his opinion as to how to not compress my spine with it. Personally, I think he’ll like my overstuffed Corbeau seats.

I doubt that anybody’d be the wiser if it if it accidentally ends up looking like this?

seals-fav.jpg

I could just use the Obama-Excuse that he stole from Urkel “Ooops! Did I do that!?!” (Note: even a semi-auto M2 costs more than the entire vehicle, before pintel, or even ammo. To say nothing about the two M249’s)

So, in dedication to my new found “experiment”

Posted in Kewel! | 8 Comments

Feel the need

Posted on June 25, 2009 by Phil Kadath

The need to read this piece by David Deming titled Death of a Civilization.

It relays the tale of how a society ends up killing itself.

Unsurprisingly, it finds parallels with today.

Too good to excerpt.

Posted in Life in the Atomic Age | Leave a comment

RNS Quote of the Day: 06/24/09

Posted on June 24, 2009 by Phil Kadath

Continuing on with the week’s topic

I personally have long been convinced that the outright ownership of farms ought to be greatly restricted. My own view is that under intelligent state control is should be possible to introduce a planned flexibility into the congrestion and rigidity of our outdated economic system.

Rexford Tugwell – FDR’s Undersecretary of Agriculture

And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is how close our nation came to centrally planned farming.

Thankfully, as well as of course, sadly, the situations in Europe and the Far East started heating up. By the implementation of the Lend/Lease Act, Roosevelt had removed all but a scant few of his New Deal Utopians and replaced them with people who knew how to get things done.

Rexford Tugwell was also the head of the Resettlement Administration (which FDR created with an Executive Order, so think of him as the “Resettlement Czar”). If you can get past all the pages written by those who deify FDR, you’ll find that Tugwell had drawn up “planned communities” that would have put made Soviet Russia look as though they hadn’t quite gotten Communism down.

Posted in Quote of the Day | 3 Comments

A Contender

Posted on June 24, 2009 by Phil Kadath

Obama’s words below could have easily been today’s Quote of the Day, except for two things:

A. I’m already doing economic quotes this week, and

B. I don’t allow such rank disingenuousness here at RNS.

Yesterday, the President was asked about “The Public Option” portion of the health care plan being railroaded through Congress. One of the questions was about the concern of the plan putting private insurers out of business. His answer was as follows:

Why would it drive private insurers out of business? If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care, if they tell us that they’re offering a good deal, then why is it that the government — which they say can’t run anything — suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That’s not logical.

President Barack Obama

There are only two conclusions available to be drawn from that statement:

A. He hasn’t even the slightest clue that “The Public Option” having access to “The Money Tree” would be an unconquerable disadvantage to private insurance companies who actually have to break even, or

B. He thinks we’re too stupid to understand Conclusion A.

The first is grounds for impeachment.

The second should be.

The media, of course, didn’t follow up to ask which one of them was true.

Posted in The Left is Never Right | 2 Comments

In the trash

Posted on June 24, 2009 by Phil Kadath

That is where the report issued to the King County government by the Washington State Auditor’s Office will end up.

King County’s internal financial controls are a haphazard mishmash of systems with plenty of holes for potential abuse of public funds, a state audit released Monday concluded.

Investigators from the Washington State Auditor’s Office found selected country construction projects cost $26 million more than initially authorized and that jobs are often completed late but rarely with a contractor penalty for tardiness. Rare, too, was any county audit of how it spent millions on construction projects.

Auditors also discovered a vault filled with money from transit fares was left open. And they found nearly $13,000 in checks that had accumulated on the desk of one county employee who didn’t know what to with them.

It’s not their money, so why should they care what happens to it?

Posted in Dare To Be Stupid, Too Stupid to Live, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

What doesn’t he understand?

Posted on June 24, 2009 by Phil Kadath

John Aravosis, of the misnamed AmericaBlog, on the topic of Sarkozy’s statement against the Burqa:

I’m always fascinated by the burqa. From a westerner’s eye, it does seem awfully oppressive – imagine being covered, head to toe, in black in 120 degree heat. Is Sarkozy right, is this a women’s rights issue? Is it about religious freedom? Are we judging other cultures where we have no right?

What part of “If you don’t wear this floor-length sheet you will be beaten to death” does he not get?

I can think of a handful of media wenches I’d like to make wear one, but I cannot think of one reason why any woman would actually want to unless she is under duress or has been brainwashed from childhood to believe that if she doesn’t some magic sky pixie is going to condem her to whatever hell she believes in.

I have wondered before what the reaction would be to me, your average middle aged white guy, going out with The Wife and having her wear one. I wonder if, because I don’t look even slightly “swarthy”, if some uppity broad would come up to me and start flipping me shit for my wife wearing one when she wouldn’t do the same to someone obviously from a nation with an Islamic majority.

While I have not conviced The Wife that this would be a good social experiment, and therefore have not been able to test my theory, I believe that, yes, I would have at elast one person come up and want to tell me what a horrible person I was.

And without it being The Wife’s choice, I would be.

Posted in Evil walks the earth | 1 Comment

Attention Whore

Posted on June 24, 2009 by Phil Kadath

He of the faulty data and endless media interviews, former NASA bigwig, James Hansen, was feeling that he possibly had wandered away from the limelight and got himself arrest for Gaia.

James E. Hansen, the NASA climate scientist who has become an outspoken campaigner against coal burning, was among 31 protesters arrested on charges of obstructing officers and impeding traffic during a protest against mountaintop mining. They had initially sought to enter the grounds of a facility run by Massey Energy, the biggest company conducting mountaintop mining in West Virginia. But several hundred miners and relatives, along with supporters of the coal industry, blocked the entrance, according to the Charleston Gazette

I’m sure this’ll be good enough for an Indymedia exclusive, at least.

Posted in The Global Warming Death Cult | Leave a comment

Loved by the Trustafarians

Posted on June 24, 2009 by Phil Kadath

Could Barney Frank (D-Ignorantia) become a hero to the Rastafarians?

Frank has filed a bill that would eliminate federal penalties for personal possession of less than 100 grams of marijuana.

It would also make the penalty for using marijuana in public just $100.

“I think John Stuart Mill had it right in the 1850s,” said Congressman Frank, “when he argued that individuals should have the right to do what they want in private, so long as they don’t hurt anyone else. It’s a matter of personal liberty. Moreover, our courts are already stressed and our prisons are over-crowded. We don’t need to spend our scarce resources prosecuting people who are doing no harm to others.”

Frank filed a similar bill last year, but it failed.

I didn’t even know he could pronounce the words “Personal Liberty”.

It is most likely that he had a staffer look up the phrase and write it out for the reporter.

Posted in Color me confused | 1 Comment