Not for nuthin'

North Korea and Iran ARE going nuclear. And 0bama wants to dismantle our missle defense.

Not for nuthin'

But I've cleaned over 700 rounds of .45ACP brass.

and I still don't have any large pistol primers or CCI #34 primers for my rifle.

Happy Independance Day everyone!

We the people of the United States,

in order to form a more perfect union,
establish justice,
insure domestic tranquility,
provide for the common defense,
promote the general welfare,
and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,

do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The 0bama Legacy (part 1)

Czars for everything.

I was going to do one big post for all the things I've seen in the government under the current administration. But it just got to be such a big thing that I'm going to have to split it up. So, here's the first part. I'm not going to say how many parts there are since the groups keep changing as I dig deeper.

There's over 20 positions that have been referred to as czars by the news, or the congresscritters or the executive branch. These are the ones I found, and I didn't have to search that hard. The parenthesis indicate which administration they were created under. Although not necessarily at the request of the then sitting president.

Drug Czar (Nixon) - Gil Kerlikowske
Energy Czar (Nixon) - Carol Browner

U.S. Border Czar (Clinton) - Alan Bersin
WMD Czar (Clinton) - Jean D. Reed

War Czar (Bush) - Lieutenant General Douglas Lute
Intel Czar (Bush) - Dennis Blair
Iran Czar (Bush)- Dennis Ross
Middle East Czar (Bush)- George Mitchell
Af-Pak Czar (for Afghanistan and Pakistan) (Bush)- Richard Holbrooke

Pay Czar (0bama) - Kenneth Feinberg
Car Czar (0bama)- Edward B. Montgomery
Culture Czar (0bama) - Kareem Dale
Bank Bailout Czar (0bama) - Herb Allison
Urban Czar (0bama)- Adolpho Carrion, Jr
Regulatory Czar (0bama) - Cass Sunstein
Stimulus Accountability Czar (0bama) - G. Edward DeSeve
Cyber-Security Czar (0bama) - Congressman Tom Davis
e-Government Czar (0bama) - Vivek Kundra

When did Czars become a good thing? The Russian Tsars or (Czars) were despotic enough that they were revolted against, violently deposed and the entire family was executed out in the woods.

The definition of Czar is a person having great power. That and NONE of them were elected. And as such, don't have any accountability to the people. Ours are appointed to the position by the president and only need to answer to him. Does anyone else see something wrong here?

Many of the articles I've read about the current crop of .gov czars talks about the need for them to help the 0 handle the, as one article put it, sprawling size of the government. Well, maybe that should be the clue that the government needs to shrink a bit, or a lot. The constitution sets out the responsibilities of the federal government in a very clear way. Go read it, I'll wait.

Can you point to the anywhere in Articles I, II or III or any of the amendments that say we should have a Pay Czar or a Car Czar or a Bank Bailout Czar? No.

And what about the law of unintended consequences? We've got all these Czars. What's going to stop them from elbowing each other, jockeying for greater positions, more power, etc. When the original supposed need for them goes away, will the position/cabinet/office go away as well. We should ask the TVA about that.

All these Czar really do is create another level of bureaucracy and paperwork and a bigger government. A bigger government not serving the people of this country as our founders intended, but serving one man as any autocracy has.

As a rule of thumb, if every time someone tells the 0 that we need another czar for some problem or issue, he asks which agency already covers it, maybe we could see this gollum that was once our representative government not turn. But who am I kidding, he hasn't seen a new government bureaucracy he didn't like.

Maybe he meant that the 600,000 jobs he would create would be in the government sector.

On a side note, the term was first coined by then Sen. Joe Biden (ol' footinmouth himself) back in 1982. Is there a certain amount of circularity emerging?

Thoughts on the "messiah"

All this talk of the "0" being the second coming or the new messiah. I do want to say this.

The "0" and God do have one thing in common. God doesn't have a birth certificate either.

h/t to Rush.

blog ideas

I have this blog rattling around in my head. I just need to organize it. BBL.

Quick Question.

Does any one know of Letterman ever apologised to Palin's daughter for his "comments" about her?

I'm hard pressed to not go off on how tasteless and completely reprehensible what he calls a joke was. So, I'm going to leave it at that.

An evil sadistic bastard

So, this weekend, the 2009 Pro/Am Shooting competition was going on at USSA Shooting Range. Having a bit of extra time, I volunteered to help the range personal cope with the weekend. The work wasn't too hard and I got to see a fair bit of the competition. To give you an idea of what it was like, this is one of the stages.




I know it's hard to see, but the guy in the red t-shirt wwwwaaaayyy down there is standing next to 4 targets, The man in the blue shirt is standing in front of a table with an ammo can on it. And the 4 blue barrels on the right side of the pic are behind the shooting station at that end. The course goes like this. To the left of the 2 near barrels is a shooting box. From this box you shoot at the 4 targets down by the man in red, they are worth 5 points each. That's 55 yards. Then you run down the 35 yard alley denoted by the yellow tape, picking up the ammo can as you go, to the second shooting box where you have 19 more steel poppers to shoot, 3 rows of 6 and a little one on the ground in the middle. There's a table down there to set the ammo can on. No limit on shots or reloads. You just have 17 seconds to do the thing. If the ammo can falls off the table, it's a 5 point penalty, every popper you shoot after time runs out is a 1 point penalty.

The rest of the stages are more of the same kind of evil sadistic fun.

The best I saw was 30 points total and someone said they saw someone get 33 points.

How fast can you run 35 yards?

The Official GunNuts:TNG Radio show drinking rules, Breda edition.

Since those hosts are getting sneaky on us and trading off hosting duties to try to foil our Tuesday night drunk. I'm going to now put up the rules for when the lovely Breda has the cam.

1. If Breda says or types "ack", everybody drink.
2. If she flips her hair, drink.
3. If she uses lipgloss, drink.
4. If she touches her sexay sexay librarian glasses, we drink... and drool a bit.
5. If she drinks, we drink
6. If one of her cats does a walk-on on the cam, we drink.
7. If the cat sniffs or licks the cam, that's a slam.
8. If she displays a gun that give us a case of firearm envy, we drink

That should do it. Oh, and if Mike dances around topless behind Breda, well you can do what you want, but I doubt we'll ever get that image out of our minds.

Link roundup.

Well, just a couple really.

I was going to mention David Carradine's passing, but Squeaky and Ahab beat me to it. I will send my sympathies to his family and friends. He was a good and respected actor.

And something everyone should read. Joe Huffman has a quick post up on "reasonable restrictions". That dog just wont hunt, as they say around these parts.

Today I spent the morning helping a friend set up his new reloading and brass supply business. He's also got an air rifle range in his shop. That's just a hoot and a half. He's a dealer for Lyman, RCBS, Lee, as well as most air rifle manufacturers.