Boomershoot Picture of the Day No. 1

Posted on March 15, 2009 by Alaska

From 1998, before he called it Boomershoot. Photo courtesy Joe Huffman.

Click to embiggen. When it starts to rain, time to break out the wet-weather gear.

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In America’s Heartland….

Posted on March 14, 2009 by Alaska

— from the Columbus, OH Tea Party. h/t: Instapundit.

Posted in Armageddon, By Ourselves, For Ourselves | Leave a comment

In Which I Resurface

Posted on March 14, 2009 by Alaska

I’ve been absent from these pages for about a week. Sorry about that. It started with an impromptu “earthquake drill” at work last weekend wherein the server crashed unexpectedly, and we discovered that our data backup plan in case of earthquake was something less than top-notch, in that we had plenty of backups of our data files — but no backup server (!!!) on which to access the backups or run the network.
This is a big problem that’s gonna be fixed really damn quickly.

However, I was keeping the next set of Boomershoot Pics of the Day at the office, so that sunk me right there.
Anyway, by Tuesday we were back up and running, but by then I got slammed by some sort of stomach bug that kept me on the pot for most of Wednesday and Thursday nights. Watch out for this thing; you don’t want it. I went to work those days, but the experience was… interesting. Let’s just say I didn’t get a stretch of more than fifteen or twenty minutes in front of my computer before I’d have to hit the little boys’ room for a spell. Posting under those conditions was impossible. I didn’t start feeling myself until last night.

Lots of stuff to catch up on, including a much-belated range report, but I’m gonna make up for my absence by posting TWO Boomershoot Pictures of the Day for a week starting Sunday.

I’ve been busy in the meantime: got a new spotting scope for Boomershoot that tested out great, and my paperless long-gun battery now consists of two Garands, the Springfield ’03, a Remington 58 semi-auto and two Winchester 12 pump shotguns, a Cugir single-shot .22 and a Remington 521-T magazine-fed .22. I think I’m about done. The only thing left would be to get another bolt-action .30-06 and turn it into a specialty pistol. 🙂 More on all of these in the coming days.
Of course, I haven’t yet started down the whole path of building paperless ARs from forged 80% lowers….

Posted in Boomershoot, Have Gun, Will Travel | 1 Comment

I think I’ve got it

Posted on March 13, 2009 by Phil Kadath

Over the years, many answers have been given to the question “Why Boomershoot?” I believe I finally came up with my own yesterday evening.

I was reading a section of Ayn Rand’s The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution titled “Apollo and Dionysis” and thinking about the Scoutten episode when it occurred to me that those two characters of Greek mythology are the perfect explanation of Boomershoot.

Apollo, representing Order and Science

Dionysis, representing Chaos and Emotion

Both, coming together in one split second.

Apollo, being the science behind the Boomerite, as well as your rifle and the projectile you and it are sending downrange.

Dionysis, being the explosion which takes place after your Apollo side has been successful and the emotion you fell every single damn time you set one off.

The two sides of your mind slamming together in a way that only really happens during things like Shuttle launches and atomic weapons testing can be made to happen at Boomershoot.

To be taken in moderation: One massive dose per year.

Posted in Kewel! | 2 Comments

RNS Quote of the Day: 03/13/09

Posted on March 13, 2009 by Phil Kadath

I’m not one to support drug testing. Personally, I don’t think it is anyone’s business how you get your “thing” on in your off hours, whether you crunch numbers or work with heavy equipment.

But, I do have a couple of reasonable exceptions:

1 – Prisoners on probation and parole: You’ve already show us you can’t be trusted and we’re only letting you out early because we’re being kind (to both you and the taxpayer’s wallets). Don’t screw this up. Play it clean and after a set period of time you can get down with your bad self in any way you want.

2 – Recipients of government assistance: You’ve screwed up enough that your fellow citizens have to fund your existence. No “Party Hearty” for you until you can pay for it yourself.

3 – Government employees: Don’t want to take the whiz quiz? Don’t work for the government. I don’t mind you wasting your income, provided by me, on liquor, beer, wine, nicotine, caffene, guarana and whatever else it takes to twist your noggin. But the moment you have no regard for our laws against banned substances (stupid as some/most of them may be) you cease being able to morally enforce any of them. Sure, I mean LEO’s there. But I also mean the person who processes my property taxes, my Concealed Pistol License application and hands out welfare checks.

And I especially mean teachers. Which brings us to our QotD.

Hawaii and Missouri are in the middle of fighting for the ability to drug test teachers. And just like merit pay, the teacher’s unions are dead set against it.

Folks who go into teaching are not the kind who use drugs.

Michael Simpson – Assistant General Counsel for the National Education Association (NEA)

Bullshit and a half. While in high school, one of the Assistance Principals was fired for being busted with a rather decent sized quantity of cocaine. I know of four teachers in two districts and three separate school campuses who were only able to keep their jobs after being busted for pot because of the Washington version of the NEA.

Do I like the drug laws? Not really. Does a society have the responsibility to enforce the laws on the books? Yes.

The current half-assing of drug laws, such as Seattle making them a “lowest priority” offense, only does harm to respect for the laws themselves. If you can’t get a law removed from the books, then you have to enforce it.

That is THE law, which we are a nation of. Or were, until Men decided which laws they could ignore.

Posted in Order of the imperial upraised middle finger., Quote of the Day | 8 Comments

The Soundboard: Fresh Asphalt

Posted on March 12, 2009 by Phil Kadath

Things are going much smoother than they were the last time The Soundboard was posted.

Now all I need is a little bit of help from Old Man Time to get the workweek over and I’ll be set, as I’m sure you all will be too.

While we’re waiting, I figure we may as well have some groovy tunage. So here are a couple of bands/artists that can really lay it down.

The Melting Pot – Booker T & the MG’s

Which just about any of these albums have included on them

The World is Coming to my Party – Cody Chestnutt

From the Headphone Masterpiece album

Enjoy!

Posted in Kewel! | 2 Comments

Letting Their Freak Flag Fly

Posted on March 12, 2009 by Phil Kadath

Ooopsie!

Your Quid Pro Quo is showing there.

An e-mail from a state labor group linking campaign donations to contentious worker-rights legislation has prompted legislative leaders to kill the bill and request an investigation by law enforcement.

The e-mail raises “serious legal and ethical questions,” Gov. Chris Gregoire and the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate said in a joint statement Wednesday. They referred the issue to the Washington State Patrol for investigation.

Lawmakers would not release the e-mail, but a copy was obtained by The Seattle Times. It was sent to several members of labor organizations as well as a small number of state lawmakers.

Essentially, it seems that an assistant to the Washington State Labor Council President twisted the arms a little too hard and broke something the state Democratic Party couldn’t handle.

Normally, the WA Dems don’t mind being the unions abused spouse. Somebody must have gotten a little counseling.

Posted in Order of the imperial upraised middle finger. | Leave a comment

How’d they get in their current state of trouble?

Posted on March 12, 2009 by Phil Kadath

By acting Just. Like. This.

A few area cities have found an alternate way to use their federal stimulus money: selling it to other cities for cash.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority has allocated a minimum of $500,000 in federal stimulus funds to each of the 88 cities in the county for transportation-related projects. Unincorporated areas will benefit, too.

Several smaller cities, some without shovel-ready projects, are making deals with others to sell or swap such funds and replenish their general funds.

“The best way to see this is as a huge windfall for us because we do have the flexibility of using the general fund money now,” city manager Shauna Clark of La Habra Heights said.

The city of Bradbury, with a population of roughly 1,000, is working on a deal to sell its $500,000 share of federal funding doled out by the MTA to the city of Torrance for $315,000 in cash for its general fund, according to Torrance officials.

Torrance, which was allocated $2.9 million by the MTA, plans to use the extra funds for a variety of street improvement projects, including a major reconstruction and expansion of Crenshaw Boulevard, one of the city’s main thoroughfares, said city manager LeRoy Jackson.

La Habra Heights, a city of 6,000, has sold its $500,000 in federal funds to the city of Westlake Village for $310,000 cash. Irwindale, population 1,500, also sold its $500,000 to Westlake Village, for $325,000 cash.

What? No!

Every official who OK’d these transfers should be tried and jailed for misappropriation of grant money. This is like selling food stamps for drug money.

How can this not be illegal?

Found via RTftWC

Posted in Too Stupid to Live | 1 Comment

Attention Whore

Posted on March 12, 2009 by Phil Kadath

Seymore Hersh must be feeling lonely or something. That is the only reason I can find for his latest revelation of bullshit.

“Yuh. After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet. That does happen.

“Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command — JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. …

“Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.

“Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.

Darth Cheney’s Executive Execution Squads. Apparently, Hersh must believe that the leftists didn’t hate Cheney quite enough, so he has to go and kick it up a notch so as to return their blood to a rolling boil.

If you don’t know the previous unfounded and unproven bullshit, you can find a mess of it here.

Posted in Useful Idiots | 3 Comments

RNS Quote of the Day: 03/12/09

Posted on March 12, 2009 by Phil Kadath

Willful ignorance is the only excuse for hatemongering demagogue, David Neiwert’s, post yesterday.

After ditching the hateful FDL blog, Neiwert is now writing at John Amato’s  CrooksandLiars blog. After watching Glenn Beck host Jason Materra, who was the guy you saw being told to “Mind his goddamned business!” by Charles “Ethically Challenged Crook” Rangel, David Neiwert posts this lovely bit of pap.

Now, Beck has never been a journalist, so no doubt his idea of what kinds of questions journalists are supposed to ask are probably formed by a combination of watching bad movies and reading Bernie Goldberg. But in case he’s wondering, no one has covered the Rangel story because there’s no there there; the only thing any reporter could ask would involve wild speculation based on right-wing propaganda.

David Neiwert

No “There” there, Mr. Neiwert?

Really?

For a guy who writes at a place called “Crooks & Liars”, he certainly doesn’t seem qualified to spot them.

Posted in Quote of the Day | 1 Comment