Monthly Archives: December 2010

Current events - global, Current events - national, Current events - state & local

Janus

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Having been one of those kids who actually paid attention in school, I know that “Janus” is the Roman God for whom the month of January is named. Janus had two faces, one with which to look forward, the other to look backward. Note that having two faces is a slightly different connotation than being “two-faced”, a characteristic common among politicians, wherein you have one face to show the maroons you hope will keep you in your cushy elected position, and another face which which to cut deals and feather your nest while traipsing around in the halls of power.

So today’s December 31, the last day of 2010, and tomorrow is January 1, the first day of 2011.

Allow me to steal a John Cox cartoon:

I want to be optimistic about America’s future. After all, I have kids whom I’d hope will have a brighter future than Mom and Dad presented me. I WANT to be optimistic. But I’m not.

We got a Republican majority in the new Congress. Big whoop!

While we have deprived the dimmocrats of a sixty-vote supermajority in the the Senate, the Republicans there have plenty enough RINO’s and drinkers of the bi-partisanship Kool-aid to dampen any hope I might have for that body.

Legislatively, this country needs to ROLL BACK laws and regulations. It needs to DISMANTLE “entitlements”. Neither of these will happen.

You’ve all heard the saying, “Rome wasn’t built in a day”? Let this ol’ Cajun give you the other side of that coin: It didn’t fall in a day, either.

Neither will the United States of America. You see those riots in Greece and Britain and France when the government started making noises about cutting back on the freebies? It’s gonna happen here. Maybe not this year. Maybe not the next. But it’ll happen. State governments and local governments are in many places in worse shape than the Feds as far as spending past their means.

EVERY. Not even “most”. Every big city in this nation exists in its present form only by sucking the life out of the surrounding countryside. I live in Louisiana. I watched taxes get collected all over this state and get dumped by the bucketload into New Orleans for the privilege of harboring an American version of a Third-World hell-hole whose claim to fame is an annual titty show.

Many states are in bad shape, burgeoning bureaucracies, state-funded pie in the sky government-funded retirement programs, unsustainable “services”, their own morass of regulations and licensing to stifle innovation and investment, and as each of those states and cities sidles closer to the day when they won’t be able to write even a believable IOU, they’re depending on the idea that the Feds won’t let a New Orleans or a California or a New York City go into default, and the FEDS are hoping that if they come up with exactly the right combination of strangulation, the goose that lays the golden eggs will magically produce MORE golden eggs and happily give them up.

We don’t need hordes of Vandals and Goths like Rome did. Our own “citizenry” will happily dismantle us from the inside.

A smart farmer knows you don’t eat your seed corn and you don’t keep more pets that you have to feed than livestock to provide income. Civilization was built on simple logic such as this. Today we have the vaulted halls of academe filled with people who are so smart that they can rewrite these simple rules. The trouble is, folks, that these rules are immutable. You just as well redefine the value of pi or rewrite the Pythagorean Theorem.

It’s going to come crashing down. I’d like to think otherwise. I’d like to think that enough of America will wake up. Trouble is, I think that we just saw just about as much of a wide awake America as we’re ever going to see. And it’s not enough.

Not only will we NOT vote our way out of this, even if we DID put the numbers up at the polls, there are already mechanisms in place that will prevent a peaceful halt to the downward spiral. I can point to an example: California. Several notable times in the recent past, California’s citizens have racked up poll numbers to halt the entrophy. Over taxes. Over gay marriage. Over free programs for illegal immigrants. And in each case, what the voters chose, the courts denied.

So watch California. It’s folding in on its own “generosity”. And that’s just a prescient glimpse into the rest of us. When California fails, the Feds will bail them out. At the expense of forty-nine OTHER states. And then the next state will fail. And the next.

Watch that fan over there folks. Something is definitely getting ready to hit it.

History

Today in History – December 31

1687 – The first Huguenots set sail from France to the Cape of Good Hope. Does the name “du Toit” ring a bell?

1759 – Arthur Guinness signs a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum and starts brewing Guinness.

1805 – End of the French Republican calendar; France returns to Gregorian calendar like the rest of the civilized world. If you EVER want to see what happens when the Left takes control of government and implements all its “enlightened” ideals, study the French Revolution.

1879 – Thomas Edison demonstrates incandescent lighting to the public for the first time.

1961 – The Marshall Plan expires after distributing more than $12 billion USD in foreign aid to rebuild Europe. Then we stayed there for the next thirty years making sure the commie hordes didn’t come take the place, and they treat US like crap!

2007 – The Massive Big Dig construction project in Boston, Massachusetts ends as it starts filling itself in…

Wheels of Industry

The Last Day

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The final workday of 2010 has passed. That is, of course, barring any disasters. There were maybe a half-dozen of us in the building that usually sees almost thirty. I did some email stuff, filed my last expense report for the year, installed the 2011 filler in my daytimer, struck up a couple of hallways conversations, and that was it. Anti-climatic, it was.

Next week will see the arrival of my new transformer northwest of Houston, and that’s going to take me pretty much through the week. The worst aspect of that sort of work at this time of year is weather. Much of my high voltage equipment does not play well with water, and every couple or three days is another wet storm system in January down here, so that’s one hurdle we’ll have to face. The others, things like parts and pieces, well, hey, this is HOUSTON we’re talking about here, folks, and if you can’t get it in Houston, you’re not likely to find it anywhere in the continental US. That’s a plus. I’m hoping things fall into place and we can get our 7,000 horsepower electric unit back on line by the end of the week.

And then, I think I’ll go to Florida…

History

Today in History – December 30

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1066 – Granada massacre: A Muslim mob storms the royal palace in Granada, crucifies Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela and massacres most of the Jewish population of the city. “Religion of Peace”, yeah…

1817 – First coffee planted in Kona, Hawaii. Hawaiian Kona is still a GREAT coffee. Visit Smith Farms if you want to try some.

1853 – Gadsden Purchase: The United States buys land from Mexico to facilitate railroad building in the Southwest. 29,670 square miles for $10 million. Bought it fair and square. Bite that, Aztlan!

1854 – Pennsylvania Rock Oil Co., first oil company in the US is incorporated in NYC. “Rock Oil”= “petroleum”.

1906 – The All India Muslim League is founded in Dacca, East Bengal, British India Empire, which later laid down the foundations of Pakistan. Ambitious title, but “all India” didn’t want to be Muslim, not that such feelings have any bearing to radical Muslims…

1922 – The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is formed. That’s good for about seventy years… And several million of its own people.

1953 – The first ever NTSC color television sets go on sale for about USD at $1,175 each from RCA. “NTSC” stands of “Never The Same Color”. And $1175 was a year’s worth of minimum wage in 1953.

1959 – USS George Washington, world’s first ballistic missile sub commissioned, resulting in numerous pants being shat in the Kremlin.

1980 – “Wonderful World of Disney,” last performance on NBC-TV , back when Disney was still VERY patriotic (you old f*rts remember “The Sons of Liberty”?) and very pro-science. Not like today when it’s very “let’s promote a few kiddie acts to the pre-pubescent crowd and make lots of money”.

1987 – Premier Mugabe elected president of Zimbabwe. He’s still there. Zimbabwe is almost gone, but Mugabe is still there.

2006 – Saddam Hussein is executed by hanging. “Justice” would have had him fed into a shredder, feet first.

2009 – The last roll of Kodachrome film is developed by Dwayne’s Photo, the only remaining Kodachrome processor at the time, concluding the film’s 74-year run as a photography icon. “Camera film” goes the way of “Dialing a phone”… And people will have to do research to see what the words to that song mean…

Blogging, Gun Stuff

Defending the M1911…

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Make that the M1911A1, .45 caliber, commonly known as the Colt or the “1911”.

Seems like a blogger stirred up a little controversy. “Say Uncle” (over there on the blogroll for that last several years) links to the OPINION of yet another respectable gunblogger who posts an article subtly titled “The 1911 Sucks“.

Of course, I’d already opined on the M1911A1 in “My favorite pistol – the M1911A1“, so one might suppose that I might just take umbrage at the “sucks” opinion. The write opines:

It’s a 100-year old design. It needs tools to disassemble. It has unreliable magazines. It is finicky about ammo. And, as a single-action pistol, it is unsafe for 95% of its users to carry.

So let’s look at them.

First, it IS a hundred years old. Well, ninety-nine, but who’s quibbling. Can’t argue with that. I’ve handled one made in 1918, and it’s still perfect in function.

But the second? “It needs tools to disassemble”? In what universe? I was an instructor at Fort Knox in the seventies when the M1911A1 was still the issue weapon of every armor crew member. I taught the class as an assistant instructor. You could break the thing down far enough for cleaning with the tools on the end of your hand. If you wanted to go further, not recommended to the average tanker, but well within the purview of the unit armorer, and tools? A pin punch, maybe. And a screwdriver.

Third, “finicky about ammo”? Well, for starters, you almost needn’t bother. It’s a freakin’ FORTY-FIVE! It leaves the barrel at what that 9mm europellet hopes to expand TO. And if you DO want one that expands from .45 to .60 or .70, then do what responsible gunners do, TRY the stuff first. I tried a couple of brands and found one that feeds at 100%. Ran several magazines through my personal gun to make sure. Now I keep several magazines loaded with it.

I’ll tell you a secret: The gun is a 100% gun IF YOU USE IT LIKE JOHN BROWNING INTENDED! Fort Knox had racks of the silly things. Remembering back, I remember seeing Singer and Ithaca and Colt and Remington and others, and they were all maintained by the “strip ’em all down, dump the parts in a basket, dip the basket in solvent, shake ’em dry and put ’em back together” method. WE had NO “factory original” guns. WE also had no pampered “one inch at fifty yards” target guns. Slide fits were sloppy, tolerances were loose, and you know, if you aimed at a standard military silhouette at seventy-five yards and pulled the trigger, the gun would go BANG! and the target would fall down.

I don’t know how many of my readers are familiar with the “accurizing” of other military weapons like the M-1 Garand or the M-14, but turning ANY military weapon into a precision paper-punching gun takes a lot away from the ruggedness and inherent reliability. The 1911 is no different. Yes, I’ve handled 1911 “bullseye guns”. That sharp, clean trigger, the tight slide, the lack of play in the barrel on lockup, the adjustable sights, all that is neat stuff, and the fact that the “100-year old design” reacts so well to it as to make a very accurate target gun, that’s just another tribute to John Browning’s genius.

The fact remains, though, that it was designed as a side-arm, a last resort weapon that would (in my case) ride in a leather holster strapped to a tank commander’s chest for weeks of bouncing around, then when needed, slide out and delivery “minute of chest cavity” accuracy. With ball ammo.

And that brings up another point. Yes, there ARE better pistols for other games. But you need to understand that fact in the context of the design parameters. It was never designed for high speed, low drag operators who ganged into suspect buildings. In the army up until today’s kinder, gentler military, if you wanted to clear a building (if **I** wanted to clear a building) you tossed an HE round into it if you were feeling spunky, or a grenade or a spatter of .50 caliber would soften things up.

And for the last thought: “as a single-action pistol, it is unsafe for 95% of its users to carry”, I submit that if you can’t figure out the use of a hammer and a safety, then you just might want to check your choice of weapons. Or whether you should be playing with weapons at all. If you choose the 1911, then you should PLAY with it. Shoot the darned thing. Get used to the safety. The hammer. The fact that you’re hauling around two and a half pounds of steel.

And that it does today waht it was designed to do, that whole hundred years ago.

Current events - national, Politics

Please, Folks! Somebody Tell Me!

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A year out from serious presidential campaigning, who do we have to look forward to on the Republican salte?

I try. I REALLY do try, but all I see are the guys who got beat by John “I’ve hung around long enough! It’s MY TURN” McCain. And Sarah Palin.

I tire of the Republican party using the longevity system for choosing presidential contenders.

Sure, the nation as a whole will tilt conservative, and that’s a good thing, but we can’t on “tilt”. WE actually have to see a candidate who embodies those ideals. And so far, I’m just not moved…

History

Today in History – December 29

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1170 – Thomas Becket: Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, is assassinated inside Canterbury Cathedral by followers of King Henry II; he subsequently becomes a saint and martyr in the Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Church. This is about separation of church and state.

1837 – Steam-powered threshing machine patented in Winthrop, Maine

1845 – Texas is admitted as the 28th U.S. state. 2035 – New US-Mexican border established at the Trinity River.

1890 – United States soldiers clash with members of the Great Sioux Nation in the Wounded Knee Massacre. “Clash?” Soldiers killed perhaps 200 including women and children.

1934 – Japan renounces the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930. Once out from under these restrictions, Japan builds a great navy. America and its allies sink most of it in WW II.

1998 – Leaders of the Khmer Rouge apologize for the 1970s genocide in Cambodia that claimed over 1 million. They apologized. That makes it okay… They were “giving peace a chance” anyway…

Wheels of Industry

‘Tween Week

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This is perhaps the oddest week of the year, couched between Christmas and New Year’s holidays.

This morning there were four people from our division in the office. Oh, and the boss popped in for s quick taste of his email. Everybody else took vacation. I could have tried that, but I’m sitting in between projects. I needed to review some drawings for my transformer arriving next week, and I needed to review the settings of the protective device for that transformer. I also had to ponder the replacement of a failed UPS, and I fielded a couple of calls about the new motor installation outside Tampa. I need to get over there, but my transformer is more critical right now so it looks like I will stay between here and Houston for the next week or so before I get back on the Florida run. And for Tampa, I’m flying. It’s a fifteen-hour drive from here, or a wasted day flying. Not a hard choice, really.

History

Today in History – December 28

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1612 – Galileo Galilei becomes the first astronomer to observe the planet Neptune, although he mistakenly catalogued it as a fixed star. But hey! The science was settled…

1836 – Spain recognizes the independence of Mexico. How, if only Mexico had recognized the independence of Texas, we could have saved us a whole war…

1908 – A magnitude 7.2 earthquake rocks Messina, Sicily killing over 75,000. FEMA slow to respond. Bush widely blamed.

1939 – First flight of the Consolidated XB-24 Liberator bomber prototype. It and the Boeing B-17 were the backbone of US strategic bombing in Europe in WW II. The B-17 was prettier.

1948 – The DC-3 airliner NC16002 disappears 50 miles south of Miami, Florida. Cue up the “twilight Zone” theme music. It’s one of those “Bermuda Triangle” mysteries… Or a series of human errors. Depends on which way you mind works…

1973 – The Endangered Species Act is passed in the United States. Nine-banded snorflezorts breathe easier. Tree-hugging hippies now have federal law to give meaning to their lives.

1981 – The first American test-tube baby, Elizabeth Jordan Carr, is born in Norfolk, Virginia. Yawwwnnnnn! Call me when a government welfare check is a contact birth control medication.

1999 – Saparmurat Niyazov is proclaimed President for Life in Turkmenistan. You throw off the yoke of soviet oppression and you STILL end up with a “president for life”? Duuuude! You’re doing it waaaaay wrong!

General

The Hits Just Keep On Rollin’

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It’s Monday! Let’s get STONED!

I did. No, there were not undocumented pharmaceuticals and herbals involved. This was yet another kidney stone. I didn’t go to the hospital. I went home and used a leftover painkiller from the recent (but thankfully gone) back problem. That got me to crampy, napping stage and it finally went away.

I’ll be at work tomorrow. Tonight, though… kinda drug out, you know…