Other weekend happenings

Posted on September 10, 2007 by Phil Kadath

Before I went over to my co-worker’s place to attempt the failed repair on Saturday, I made a pit stop.

A local small chain sporting goods store had a Labor Day sale that extended to this last Saturday. I had been looking at the add all week trying to talk myself out of purchasing it.

But it was such the deal and I was tired of going “ghetto” to the rifle range.

Those who remember my last AAR from Boomershoot 07 should remember that the wind kicked up as we were packing up and that the wind had finally collapsed the shelter we were using. That poor cover had taken a beating throughout the weekend and finally gave up the ghost as we were transporting the rifles to the truck.

I had left my spotting scope on the tripod, intending it to be the next item stored, but fate was not having any of that. The tent came down and took both the scope and the tripod the remaining six feet to the ground, and not gently. The result was that the base which connected the scope to the tripod was broken off.

The first real problem though, was that that base was part of a ring system that let me rotate the spotting scope 360 degrees so that I could view the angled eyepiece from any direction: Left, right or even upside down.

Gorilla Glue is wonderful stuff, but with barely 1/32 of an inch of contact area, it just couldn’t handle the weight, so there was a ring of black duct tape connecting the parts together. The scope was black, so I’d hoped the tape would “blend in”.
The second real problem was that there was a leak somewhere and any hint of moisture in the air started the fogging process. Just in a pie slice of the objective lens, but it got progressively worse as the moisture increased. It’d probably work fine in AZ, but for a guy who lives in Washington, this meant no use in any season except summer.

So I bought me some new glass

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Its a Leupold Sequoia 15-45×60 and its dreamy.

My old rig was a Brunton 20-60×90, and while it makes this scope look teeny, I’d found that I never shot at a long enough distance to need the 60x. Not even at Boomershoot. 60x was just too much to use under 1000 yards. You could get your view all set up, look up and then look back down and had to readjust to find what you were previously looking at. Oh sure, you could count the splinters on the top of the Boomer stakes, but that was not what you were there to do.

I think I’m going to enjoy this.

Btw, even without adding shipping, I saved more than $50 from the price in the above link. That’s why I had to buy it.

Posted in Kewel! | 9 Comments

Gun Bigots in Cabelas-ville

Posted on September 10, 2007 by Phil Kadath

As some of y’all know, Washington is getting a Cabelas. It will be near the halfway point along Interstate 5 between Canada and Oregon and it is going to be huge. Oh, and The Mom lives within 3 miles it (neener).Of course, the sailing hasn’t been all smooth during the planning stages with the local government. But the notoriety and the influx of jobs and tax dollars was just too much for them to resist. You can just see it through the trees as you drive down the interstate, and when I said it was huge, I meant it. Think of a Super Wal-Mart on steroids with guns instead of groceries and you’ll just about get it.

And, because of the media’s gun-bigotry, it is the firearms that are making the news lately.

Cabela’s continues to generate community interest as about 200 people attended a Wednesday luncheon to learn more about the company and its new outdoors store. Cabela’s operations manager W. MacKenzie Phillips talked about the company’s history and the store at a Lacey Chamber of Commerce meeting at the Worthington Center.

Under construction in Hawks Prairie along Interstate 5, the 185,000-square-foot store is expected to open in late November, he said. After a video presentation on the history of the Sidney, Neb.-based company, Phillips answered audience members’ questions, including one about whether the store is hiring.

Phillips said the store still is hiring and also will be hiring during the holidays.Cabela’s expects to hire about 350 people for its Lacey store, though about 1,000 people were interviewed in August for open positions, store general manager Jason Hammeren said.

Questions about traffic levels and gun sales at the store also were raised by audience members.

Because the Cabela’s store is between Portland, and Seattle, the store is expected to be visited by up to 3.5 million people in its first year, Phillips said.

The resulting effect to Interstate 5 was not immediately known, though the Cabela’s site will be mostly served by Marvin Road, he said.

Cheryl Lynn, 63, of Lacey, said she is concerned about gun sales, noise pollution and traffic generated by the store. Lynn is not a member of the Lacey Chamber of Commerce, but she said she attended Wednesday’s luncheon to ask questions about Cabela’s.

Lynn, who has lived in Lacey for six years, said the quality of life in the area is rapidly diminishing.

“Now, they’re putting in a hunting store,” she said. “I don’t care how big and wonderful it is, people with guns worry me.”

Phillips couldn’t offer specifics on the number of guns that will be carried at the store, though the stores tend to stock bird-hunting rifles and shotguns. The store will adhere to all state and federal gun laws, he said.

“We don’t want to end up on the five o’clock news,” Phillips said. “We will follow all local policies whatever they may be.”

Phillips said his focus right now is on the store’s inventory. More than 120 truckloads of inventory will be delivered to the Lacey store in the next 14 days, he said.

That is the entirety of the article. Notice how a number of issues were mentioned, but the quotes focused on “The Gun Question”.

And what kind of bird do you hunt with a rifle anyway? I’ve shot grouse with a 22lr, but what winged creature do you hunt with a .340 Weatherby Mag?

One you don’t want to eat?

Posted in Freaks, Mutants, and Morons | 9 Comments

Scrambled or Poached

Posted on September 10, 2007 by Phil Kadath

Hopefully both, for these bastards

An injured California gray whale was swimming out to sea Saturday after being shot with a machine gun off the western tip of Washington State, officials said.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Kelly Parker said five people believed to be members of the Makah Tribe shot and harpooned the whale Saturday morning. The extent of the whale’s injuries were not immediately known.

Tribe members were being held by the Coast Guard but had not been charged, said Mark Oswell, a spokesman for the law enforcement arm of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

A preliminary report said the whale was shot with a .50-caliber machine gun, Oswell said.

While the tribes are their own nations and are allowed to own full-auto weaponry, unlike us non-tribal Washington citizens, the gun they used was not a “Machine Gun” as is described in the article. the gun the tribe owns is a Barrett 82M1 (aka: M107 heavy rifle) still rather impressive, but it’s not a mounted M2.

Coast Guard officials created a 1,000-yard safety zone around the injured whale, which was shot about a mile east of Neah Bay in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The whale had begun heading to sea Saturday afternoon, Oswell said.

Although the tribe has subsistence fishing rights to kill whales, Oswell said preliminary information indicates the whale may have been shot illegally.

“We allow native hunts for cultural purposes. However, this does not appear to be of that nature so far,” he said.

The Makah Tribe has more than 1,000 members and is based in Neah Bay.

A call to tribal officials was not immediately returned on Saturday. Tribal Chairman Ben Johnson told The Seattle Times that the tribe has been seeking an exemption from the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act so that it could take up to five gray whales per year. However, Johnson said the tribe had not yet secured that exemption for a new hunt.

The 82A1 was the rifle they used to hunt their “legally permitted” whale, but the tribe was not behind this poach and it’s participants had to bring their own firepower

The hunt started without a hitch: Less than a mile out, the men spotted a gray whale. But Johnson, 54, and the rest of the crew decided they were too close to shore to fire the .460-caliber rifle they’d brought.

Around 9:30, the crew saw another whale. This one, about 40 feet long, surfaced and came to the two boats.

“It chose us,” Johnson said.

If it had proved to be the same one that the tribe owns, it would have had some serious legal ramifications for the tribe themselves since it is owned by the tribe and not an individual and whomever let these bozos get a hold of it to go out and poach a whale would have probably been held very responsible for their oversight.

This jackass Johnson says he is not sorry in the least bit, he even says he is “kind of proud”. This old puke was even wearing his “.50 Caliber Shooting Club” jacket when he was arrested, so expect the gun bigots to possibly zero in on that. “Rifles powerful enough to shoot down jubo-jets and kill whales” will echo from the VPC halls.

And don’t believe a word of the “substinance fishing right to kill whales” bullshit. the one they shot last time was left to rot and it’s corpse had to be cleared off the beach my the state at taxpayer’s expense.

The fine to each of the guys on the water could be as high as $20,000, but that is not nearly enough for a poacher. Shot on sight and hung from trees bearing placards stating their offense is the only just punishment for that level of scum.

——————-

On a side note, but still related; in the days after AG Gonzalez’s resignation, Slade Gorton, former Washington Senator and former Washington State AG, had his name raised for the appointment.

While he wouldn’t be my first choice, since he was never a firm 2A supporter, definitely not a Reno but not an Ashcroft either, after seeing the reaction from the tribes around the state, my support for him was put on steroids. They don’t like him because during the 70’s and 80’s when the fed wasn’t prosecuting for the tribe’s violations of their treaties, Gorton tried to do it via the state courts.

Their hate of the man bolstered my respect for him. Yeah, it’s not right, but I like it.

Posted in Evil walks the earth | 1 Comment

Birds of a Feather

Posted on September 10, 2007 by Phil Kadath

So some of the major media types have noticed that Bin Laden’s latest rant sounds just like the rants at HuffPo and dKos.

Of course, that means that the lefties are victims

I don’t know why, exactly, certain media and political elites have decided that people like us don’t count as citizens, and are worthy of vitriol and dismissal, but it’s pretty clear we (still) don’t count for anything. Dissent equals treason in their view. It doesn’t matter if we are law-abiding American citizens or loyal party activists.

…

It’s pretty illustrative of how intellectually and morally bankrupt portions of the traditional media and the right wing have become that all they can do on the eve of the Bush Report is play the “traitor card” for the eleventy billionth time. The rules of this blog preclude using the only appropriate response, but if we print the words “Friedman Unit” or “F.U.” one more time you get the idea.

Since we’re not playing beanbag, maybe the only thing we ordinary citizens can do is make elites pay a heavy political price at the polls and let the chips fall where they may.

…

So I guess we better shove as hard as we can, if that’s how it has to be. We don’t have to be brutally vicious about it, but we can be insistent and work toward ensuring our future representation more accurately reflects the wishes of the citizenry. The alternative is an endless succession of F.U.’s.

And there go the threats common to leftists who feel they’ve been wronged by someone.

Anyone else hear the rumblings of someone who is looking towards “The Fairness Doctrine” to make him feel better?

Posted in Dare To Be Stupid | 2 Comments

Citizen’s Choice

Posted on September 10, 2007 by Phil Kadath

As of Friday afternoon, the Washington State Supreme Court has ruled that the citizens of the state are able to change the way their government raises their taxes.

As I’ve posted about here, here, here and here, there is a Citizen’s Initiative #960 coming to the ballot this fall that would mandate a legislative supermajority in each of the state’s houses before the legislature could raise taxes.

A fringe leftist group calling themselves Futurewise and the Service Employees Union Int’l filed suit in King County Superior Court to try and block it’s ascension to the ballot and lost. They then filed an “emergency motion for accelerated review” by the WSSC, which was accepted by the Justices.

After hearing arguments on Thursday, the Justices issued their ruling the following day that basically stated the Initiative would be on the ballot this November.

Futurewise, the SEIU and local dipshit Dems are trying to call citizen restriction of government “unconstitutional” and “out of the scope of the initiative process” and that has been their argument in front of both courts to try and keep the citizens of Washington State from being able to vote on it.

They know that they won’t be able to tax people to death if this passes, so they don’t even want the citizenry to get a look at in the voting booth.

How sad for them that their pro-government ways were foiled by their favorite form of legislative “reform”, the courts.

Posted in The Left is Never Right | 1 Comment

I suppose everyone needs a haven

Posted on September 10, 2007 by Phil Kadath

I just don’t want to live in the one this guy likes

Jack McClellan, who gained pariah status among parents because of his now-defunct Web site that featured photographs he took of little girls in public places, has moved to Portland, citing its reputation as a “haven for offbeat people.”

I’m sure he’ll blend right in. Glad to see that all the freaks aren’t attracted to Seattle.

Posted in Evil walks the earth | 1 Comment

How I spent my Saturday afternoon

Posted on September 9, 2007 by Phil Kadath

Yesterday was supposed to be taken up with a repair on the 4WD hubs on Grimm. And it was.

Unfortunately, a misdiagnoses made it so that the problem was not fixed.

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That was supposed to a the first in a line of pics documenting the repair process, but it ended up being the only pic taken yesterday.

As you can see just to the outside of the jackstand, Grimm is leaking. We had assumed that it was coming from the more common leak point of the front hub and that a removal of the brake drum and the inner hub components and replacing of the bearings and seals within would fix the problem.

Sadly, for my wallet anyway, that isn’t the problem. Once the tire was removed and a closer inspection had taken place, it appears that the leak is coming from the outer seal of the Dana 44 front axle. This will require a real shop with a mechanic who has experience in yanking out 4WD axleshafts to complete. While we had the tools to “probably” fix it, “probably” isn’t good enough for me where Grimm is concerned. Ultimate reliability is why I bought him and that needs to be payed for and not guessed at.

However, I was told that this problem isn’t very common and the 4WD experts in yesterday’s work crew had not only never had to do this repair themselves, they hadn’t heard of too many folks who have had to do it period. I’ll prolly be replacing 30+ year old factory installed parts. So, in my attempt at being an optimist, that’s a good thing.

The misdiagnoses comes, in part, because of the size of Grimm’s feet and not being able to see around them to the problem and judging it to be the more common of the two ailments. Which brings me to another point I discovered on the way home that night:

Grimm’s feet are 14 inches wide. Times four equals 56 inches of rubber on the ground.

When you have to lock them up during brake pumps to stop a damn near 6000lb vehicle because the guy in front of you is either drunk or an idiot (or most likely both) and he makes an highly unnecessary maneuver, you make so much fucking noise that people in vehicles around you recoil in horror and move away.

On a good note, Ford over engineered the braking system and the dual piston caliper means that Grimm stops well from 50MPH.

Posted in Life in the Atomic Age | 3 Comments

Video Sunday

Posted on September 9, 2007 by Phil Kadath

Sorry, domestic repairs to keep the The Wife happy have come before getting the Booty Eulogy ready for today. But here are a couple interesting vids in the stead.

The first one was sent to me by multiple firends, and is both funny and painful at the same time.

It goes by the header “.577 T-Rex” and it features a rifle that is just too stupidly powerful for it’s own good. It sets a personal record for the rifle I’ve seen dropped the most.

Apparently, the “T-Rex” portion of the caliber’s name also means “Shoulder Abuse” and/or “Flinch Inducer”.

This other vid was found over at Stop the ACLU and is one I think that both Ted of Rocket Jones and Mugwug will appreciate.

Sadly, it is also, quite probably, exactly what the lefties think of the war against murdering jihadis.

Enjoy!

Posted in Kewel! | 1 Comment

Good News and Better News

Posted on September 8, 2007 by Phil Kadath

The good news is that i survived the early work shift. It did, unfortunately, became and extended shift. I started 9 hours early and was out of there 6 hours early.

More good news is that I will blogging today, even though you can’t see it until Monday. There’ll be pictures.

The better news is that Jane Balogh will not be going to jail for showing just one of the flaws in the King County voter registration system by signing her dog up to vote.

The best news is that I’m off to attempt to get 10 hours of sleep for the first time in a long time. But if I don’t stop typing now, I’ll pass out on the keyboard you’ll only get a bunch of jumbled letters.

Don’t forget that there is an assignment below. Later.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Pavarotti Tribute Radio Broadcast

Posted on September 7, 2007 by Alaska

My very good friend Sean Bianco hosts what may be the only remaining West Coast radio program dedicated to opera, every Friday night, 8-12pm, broadcasting from Sacramento. You can listen to it live here; this week’s broadcast is dedicated to Pavarotti, as it should be. Go listen.

My mother and I were privileged to attend one of his concerts in the San Jose arena many years ago.

I’ll have more to say about him this weekend. Right now, just listen to him sing.

Posted in Heroes, Comrades and Brothers | Leave a comment