Blink

Jerry Pournelle has observations on last night's house vote here.

I left my some opinions here.

My wife of twenty one years will not speak of politics or the economy with me any more. She will not understand that “Healthcare” isn’t about care, it is just another brick thrown on the back of a national economy and society about to break.

I have failed as a husband here; I cannot protect my family from a threat they will not see.

Range Day

I will be at the Lee Kay Hunter Education Center in West Valley City tomorrow, hopefully arriving between noon and one.

My veterinarian friend is coming out (if he's not needed in surgery) with his P17 and my partner from work will be there around two as well. No word at this time if Mrs. Utah will be up to a session or not, or if the Goddesses or their Fine Young Men are interested and/or available, either.

I will shoot. I will coach. I will not think much, frankly.

What a week this has been.

God bless the dead of Ft. Hood, and may He keep and comfort the survivors and the wounded.

God help us all in this country under siege. We are a nation bending dangerously under the weight of an evil and corrupt administration. We are a society weakened by generations of sloth and ignorance and these are sins that will be paid for.

We will bear the burden of a defeat by retreat in this round of the war against Islamist fascism. Our elected representatives fully intend to shove this war behind socialized health care and American Idol.

Our economy and our freedom are under attack. The crises are upon us, and they are indeed just too "good" to waste. In 1982 unemployment topped ten percent but 83 and 86 saw tremendous growth... after tax cuts, easing of government regulation across many sectors of the economy, the dawn of the information age, and most importantly the appeal from the chief executive to the citizenry to be Citizens.

The Obama insurgency is not about any of that. Incompetence or mere corruption would be bad enough but this administration truly sees itself as the instrument that will end the republic. Make no mistake about that.


God bless and keep you in the dark, dark days ahead.

Sunday (Updated)

I got her back from the smith later Thursday. I had the barrel flutes peened in hopes that she would return to reliability without the purchase of a new op rod or gas cylinder. Saturday at Lee Kay I divined that Something Was Wrong. The bolt wouldn't open far enough to lock into the receiver. Wouldn't open far enough to accept a clip, for that matter.

I took her apart on a table at Lee Kay to find that the clip release tab wasn't connected correctly over the follower assembly. It's been literally years since I've taken her down to pins and springs, so I just put her back together with the tab in the "right" spot and headed back in to see if she would shoot. The bolt went all the way to the rear but the clip would not seat. I declared surrender and waited to get back home and the reference books to figure out what was going on.

Last night I found that the follower assembly was installed backwards. The fact that it had fallen out instantly when I detensioned the operating rod spring earlier at the range should have been a give away. So I put it in correctly and loaded a dummy clip with zero problems.

This morning I fired three clips with one FTF. In the course of this action I noticed that the front sight on my rifle is no longer stamped "NM" for National Match.

***UPDATE: Upon further review of my records, I found that the only part that bore an actual "NM" stamp when I purchased this rifle in 1987 was the operating rod handle. Old age is creeping up on me.***


I will discuss these ***assembly*** issues with the smith on Monday. (That didn't happen - got home after dark again.)

Well, I Wasn't That Into The Show Anyway

CBS is trying to piggyback on the success of NCIS with a star power spin-off set in LA. LL Cool J and Chris O'Donnell work at it, but two episodes I watched before tonight required more suspension of disbelief than even a Kucinich voter might marshall.

Then tonight, the shark jumping moment came when the crack NCIS psychological profiler opines on why a former Marine, recently in the employ of a private security outfit and working Iraq, beat a victim to death and left him hanging in the back of a gun shop instead of just stealing the missing pistols.

The babe with large breasts and legs up to her shoulders ponders (paraphrasing; I wasn't listening real close): "The report says he was beaten to death; why go to the trouble? Why not just steal the guns?" And the Dr. Freud character drops this line on the room (which contains LL Cool J's character, a multi tour SEAL)

"He was an interrogator in Iraq. He might have gotten a taste for it."


And everybody in the scene nods sagely, because EVERYBODY knows that Marines just love hanging sand n**** ass from a hook and beating it all bloody, over there in the sandbox. Or where ever that Evil Boosh war is still sputtering along.

Nobody in the room of full of crime solving geniuses wonders why the dead guy was dead... or why the suspect, whose only link to the victim was that of being a childhood friend, was automatically the killer. We're halfway into the episode at this point and nobody has thought to ask why the guy was shot AT at the airport... when he wasn't a deadly threat. Or why he carjacked a car by gently pushing a woman out of the way instead of incapacitating or abducting her.

The night wasn't a total waste. From now on I get another hour on Thursday night to do something productive.

Clarity

The Obama presidency isn't merely a bumpy stretch of road in the American journey.

It is intended to be an end to the Republic and a beginning of utopia.

"Whatever Barack and the people he has surrounded himself with may profess with their mouths at any particular time, their actions show they still loathe America and our standing as most powerful nation on earth, as well as our free enterprise, individual liberty, reverence for family and local communities, Main Street, the U.S. military, Christianity, and every other hallmark of the traditional culture and values of Western civilization.

And now they think they have the power and position to do what they've always wanted to do - tear it all down and remake it in their millenarian image of Leviathan. As philosopher Erik Voegelin would say, they don't merely intend the immanentization of the eschaton, they are securing the appropriations and regulations to make it happen.

Viewed from that assumption, things become so much clearer. On foreign and military policy, Obama's dominant principle is to apologize, to reverse a previous course - thus disavowing the intrinsically moral role of America in protecting freedom - and to seek rapproachment with our enemies on their terms."

I can't talk politics or finances with my wife any more. At all.

Will I have a job a month from now? Will we have capital in any form other than what's on the shelves in the basement or in the cans next to the safe?

And I grew up thinking that watching the wall fall was the pivot of my generation. Not nearly. Not even close.

(via Instpundit)

Just Trying To Help

Somewhere in England, just before D-Day, General George S. Patton speaks to his Thrid Army:

"When you, here, everyone of you, were kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the toughest boxer, the big league ball players, and the All-American football players. Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American."

Times have changed quite a bit since June of 1944 but the sentiment expressed in Patton's words still pertains. Amphorous hope, suggesting change without purpose, and huckster populism as foundations for political power fade against stark failure on the part of The Won. Town Hall tension and TEA Parties are just the foam on the crest of the wave that is rolling across the nation.

We've elected the hind tit on a boar hog, haven't we? Pay attention, Mr. President. It's not going to get any easier.

It's turning out to be a lot more of a bummer, this bringing down the system, than TOTUS man thought it would.

Silly little Marxist. The Soviets tried for sixty years, and had nukes, armies, and half the cabinet agencies in the government, and they got beat by blue jeans, toilet paper, an actor, a British dame, and a Polish Pope.

Just who the f*** did Obama, or his handlers, think he was, to succeed where Vlad's best and brightest had failed?

It's going to get ugly... but my money is on the possibility that Team O will be going under the bus they've so readily tossed all those other folks, and a lot sooner than they ever thought such a thing could happen. The nation will not shed a tear for their absence.

Fall

Fall. Turn of the season, or something else? Who knows?

Gagdad Bob popped up on my screens ,via Van der Luen, this morning:

"Just as it is possible for a person to lose the grace, so too can a nation; in other words -- or symbols -- no (↑), no (↓). With an Obama presidency, we will find out what this will be like. It may well turn out to be as his spiritual mentor, Reverend Wright says: God damn America!

And why not? If we abandon any pretense of spiritual ideals, it is not God who will damn America. Rather, we'll do it ourselves. I'm pretty sure we'll discover what it felt like to be a Christian living in Rome, as the barbarian hordes were about to put an end to that world (which at the time was "the" world)."

Interesting times of the Chinese kind are upon us.

We are heading into a winter of discontent, boys and girls. I was going to set some fence posts today but I think I'll just grab the Mosin closest to the door of the safe and a jump bag and head across the lake instead.

We have been up on a neighbor's roof for most of the last week, after work, to help him get it sound before the weather breaks this coming Tuesday. Mrs. Utah cannot stand very well so she has spent two days scooting about on a six inch foam pad helping to hand supplies down from the crown to where ever they have been needed. We have a third of the surface done complete and lack only shingles on the other two thirds. Hopefully the owner wasn't too conservative in his estimate but we think we may need another two units of shingles. Roofing in this corner of Happy Valley is as close to an Amish barn raising as I'll ever see. Very, very good times.

I hope you have a fine week.