Obama is serious about airport security! Really!

Stolen from Traction Control who stole it from Blond Sagacity

Yow!

Overcast and Gray Today

I don't think we're using that much electricity, but ever since the PG&E guy switched us over to the new "Smart Meter" last night, it seems like the lights flicker ever few minutes as if we are about to brown-out...

GunBroker

I made my first purchases of some small parts for the 1943 NPM carbine at GunBroker.
For the uninitiated it's an interesting, humongous, gun-store kinda place that I used to visit a lot in the past for Wishbook items - things to dream about some day owning, and certain passing-fancy gun-things.
With eBay's hostility to guns and gun-things the small parts have mostly gravitated away from there but some items remain.  However PayPal's hostility makes eBay unattractive to many - but GunBroker doesn't seem to support GunPal - ?  I'd like to see that change because the delays and added costs caused by sending Postal Money Orders is an inconvenience that is undeserved today.
It also gives you an idea of market prices and costs - but for some reason I never summoned the courage (or needed-to) to buy anything, because indeed they were mostly passing interests.
I also believe there was some reticence, as expressed by a seller himself there doubting the goodwill of some of his fellow sellers - an abundance of fakers and cheaters he called them.
Such problems exists among the ardent collectors. Among experienced men working with steel it is quite a matter of trust and honesty, or of transformational magic.  It especially happens when somebody wants $50 for a "W" marked Winchester magazine catch that's smaller than your little finger, or $79.99 for a Saginaw marked one - while an unmarked one goes for $5 only.  Transformational...
The market should bear it out, whether a thing is worth $50 or $80 or not, but it is an artificial niche - so we'll see.
So, anybody want to buy a Winchester marked mag catch?   It came that way and I'll sell it for less than $50 that's for sure!

The Right to Arm Bears

Remember, we believe in and support the right to arm bears.  Thankyouverymuch.

Bits, Pieces & Markings

Hammer mark SW = Standard Products,  mag release W = Winchester


















Trigger marking SKB = IBM and sear marking RI = Inland.

Mele Kalikimaka!

And the other tree with the fishes.

New Project

Based on some email with the illustrious Neanderpundit I have decided to move forward on a stalled-out project - which is finding the bits to complete the National Postal Meter trigger housing. So I started to take apart my old one. It's easier than an AR lower.



It seems my currently in-use set-up is a Quality Hardware housing with a Standard Products hammer and a Winchester magazine catch - that's what's easily discernible.

The hardest part to dis-assembly is getting the hammer-plunger disengaged since it has that heavy spring on it, and it rides in a cut-out. Since I don't have Army ordnance tool 7160026 I slipped an appropriately small-sized Allen wrench through the little hole, and used that to compress the spring. Now having taken it down further I find a Type-II Inland sear mated to an IBM trigger.

Now I just have to figure out how to remove the magazine-catch and safety - oh, there it goes, I compressed a secondary little spring and that did it. So what I need to scratch-up now is a NPM hammer, sear and trigger - and a magazine catch.

Presto-Change-O

Zoom, Zorch, Boink - Mafigliano.

You zoom the slide back, zorch the take-down lever, boink the old upper, and mafigliano! The new one goes on.  Don't drink while preforming this act.

Quote Of The Day

From dear Phlegm Fatale, in some very pithy comments regarding the Postal Union, "What a parasitic bunch of saps. They figured out a way to leech off the workers in just the same way as so-called management. Obscene."

Lights! Lasers! Action!

Since doo-dooing up my rail with a light and stubby grip I've been paying a bit of attention to the subject, and mostly to the Crimson Trace "modular vertical foregrip" that contains all three juice-boxes.  And the price seems reasonable once you get past the MSRP and find one from somewhere around $340 or less.

Today I got some MilSpam from a new TSPO (Tactical Shooty Playa Operator) out in New Hamsha called iTac Defense.

Introducing iTAC DEFENSE – a new and innovative line of tactical accessories, built for serious shooters and law enforcement professionals. iTAC engineers studied elite military forces to create the most intelligently designed holsters, magazine pouches, lights, lasers, and other tactical shooting accessories. Produced from extremely durable materials, iTAC DEFENSE tactical accessories are rugged, reliable, and affordable.

They's got a Christmasy Sale going-on, featuring hot deals on a flashlight starting today until the 24th of this month. For the flashlight it's:MSRP $99
Each, Now only $69.95 each!



And they got some other stuff: holsters, mag pouches, magazines, sights - an interesting HK kinda looking diopter rear AR sight. The common stuff from Sig (paddle holster) has the Sig logo and looks like Sig-stuff. But they're in New Hampshire too so so it figures they're a re-seller besides innovater...
And then when I flipped to their website it seems they have a SuperbeleuctungLaserHandvorvergrifener  - and at a remarkably cheap preis of only $229.95 - and it looks familiar but I'm not sure about the claims of an LED that emits in excess of 700 lumen* of light.
That's a butt-load of pokin' in the eye. However it takes four (4) CR123 Lithium batteries and that can do the trick.
Anybody recognize this bad, eye-pokey-boy?  It could be the deal of the century - or not.  Or whatever. I dunno.

Ok nevermind I figured it out, it's Sig-stuff. And at a good price - and that's where they got my email.

Incentivized for .22's

There was a coupon in the box that incentivized me to buy some CCI Mini-Mags.

I don't have much in the way of .22LR ammo since I don't shoot it much - because I only have one .22 LR pistol or rifle, and it's not really a plinker.
The only other .22 LR pistol I have is a 1913 Smith & Wesson Third Model Perfected single-shot with the Pope "Olympic barrel."

Before I knew what it really was I bought it mainly for it's irreproducible craftsmanship, and strange but purposeful flatness.
 
It's ungainly and artless and it's not at the same time.

You be the judge, from the trigger over-travel screw, to the knurling on the hammer and the break-top release, to the adjustable sights and the ejector mechanism.


I like the details.

I don't like the way I cant stack these pictures in a cluster of four.

I like the weird flatness and the Buntline-Special length barrel.

UPDATE: His barrels could shoot:

Sig .22LR Conversion Upper

Pictures are clickable.

At the heart is a mini Sig ramped barrel - so cute.

It fits together like a regular sig - but the guide-rod is polymer.

It has adjustable sights that are better than the fixed sights on my P220.

We'll just have to see how it runs with the polymer .22LR magazine.

Happy Hannukah!

It's a festival of lights, a thanksgiving, commemorating the re-dedication of The Holy Temple in Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabeean revolt in the 2nd Century BC, who fought the tyrant Antiochus IV Epiphanes who desecrated the temple's oil.  Light one candle on your Menorah tonight, if you've got one. :-)

Menorah Lighting Instructions

Me, I'd like to thank Alan Gura for a fine year, and especially for his dedication to the civil-rights of gun owners, and wish him Happy Hannukah and good luck in the upcoming year.  Toda raba

Maybe I'll pop over to Andronico's and pick-up a bottle of He'brew Jewbelation Ale to celebrate.  It's made by Schmaltz Brewing, a small company that started in San Francisco and it's good stuff.

Climate Vikings

One of the interesting points to the Climate Hootenanny is the attempt by non-Social Scientists to hide the Medieval Warm Period, as if History were nothing.  During this time it's pretty well known that Vikings went to Greenland - and possibly much further - and populated it.  That they chose to do so is unquestionable, and an expression of their power - they were Vikings, dammit, and they could go wherever they wanted to in the world and nobody could stop them. 
They wouldn't go somewhere cold and nasty (and unprofitable) because they were forced-to, as if they were refugees on some UNESCO resettlement-plan - they went where they pleased, and when they got there they took whatever they wanted from the local population. People hated that but couldn't stop them - they were Vikings!  Hell, they went to Constantinople when they felt like it.  And when they got there they sacked it and took all the gold and jewelery the Constantinoplitans had. 
They knew what warm weather was all about - and beaches - they knew a lot about beaches.  If there had been money in it back then, I'm sure they could have fielded a competitive beach volleyball league - with swords.  And with hot Viking chicks.
So when they took-off and went to Greenland it was quite a bit different than today, it was warmer than today.  Why go to some cold, dank, gray an miserable place when you can go someplace nice?  Especially when you can go anywhere in the World and nobody can stop you??  It just doesn't make sense from a human-behavior point of view that some of the most powerful and independent people on the planet would chose to make things hard on themselves if they didn't have to.
What they didn't know is that a mini Ice-Age was about to rock the sunny and balmy beaches of Greenland and turn it into a deep-freeze.  What they also didn't know was how to get to Hawaii or Tahiti, which would have been cool.  They liked to get-down with the locals, they were not stupid - and imagine all the hot Island Viking-Chick Surfers we would have on TV today.   Way better than what we got.  Katie Couric?  Pfft.

Korea Down to Boogietown

I picked this up from Beloved Leader who hat-tipped SondraK.  At least it's something.


Apparently it's pretty old, but it has a good beat and you can dance to it.

Shootin' Glasses

Christmas Shootin' Glasses.  The optometrist assistant calls 'em "Occupational Safety Glasses" and they're gonna have the bi-focal part flipped bottom-to-top, so when you tilt your head down, chin on chest, the look-through sharply parts are in the upper inner portion.  We'll see how that works.  Has to work better than tilting your head back, chin high, and looking down your nose to pick up the front post.
As it is I can't even make out the end of the AR, and the Garand is even farther away - I can forget about the Krag with its razor-thin front blade, half a Nagant away...

Sixty-Eight Years Ago Today

Reprised from an earlier blog-post in 2005. Pearl Harbor exploded in a shower of bombs and torpedos dropped by Imperial Japanese aircraft, and the battered USS Arizona sank in an inferno. During the second wave of the attack the USS Shaw exploded:

When the 7th of December 1941 was over, it was clear that the Japanese had delivered a tremendous blow to the United States. Five battleships were sunk or sinking, three destroyers were wrecked, a minelayer and target ship had capsized, two cruisers were badly damaged and many other ships needed repairs. Hawaii-based Navy and Army aviation was also greatly diminished, feeding a sense of defenselessness and defeat that greatly exceeded the realities of the situation.

I'm sure if it happened again today (9/11 anybody?) the Left would work just as hard as they do now, to diminish our efforts and feed a sense of defenselessness and defeat that greatly exceeded the realities of the situation.
Maybe that is the lesson we ought to remember from Pearl Harbor - not for what the Japanese did back then but for what the Left is doing today. What they always do.

Snowcapped Mountains

We awoke to be surrounded by low mountains topped with snow.  Unusual to say the least for a warm and wet maritime region like the BayArea -- but maybe we should just shut-up about how cold it is and how odd that it is so cold.  Like it was last year too.  And the year before.  In fact for the past eight years at least.

You can always tell a Global Warmingist - but you can't tell 'em much.

I'm sure glad Algore and all those guys in Carbonhagen are having a rough time with nuts and bolts of Global Warming, or Climate Change, or whatever they'v cooked-up for us today at the Big Jet-Set Euro Climate Hootenanny...

Oh yeh, the last time I remember actual snow on the ground was around 1967, when The Next Ice Age was the impending disaster de-jour.

Merry Christmas Bow-wow! Meow-meow!

In a departure this year from annual gift-giving, my wife decided that for Part-1, the good Doggies and Kitties at the local Society would get Holiday treats; blankies, wubbies, used towels, and chew-toys and plush mice, Following their Donations list we went out and purchased about $400 worth of stuff, including peanut-butter to stuff in the super-indestructable "Kong" toys. And wee-wee pads.  I'm now a member of PertSmart's buyer's club and we don't even have any pets.

We agonized over seventeen dog sweaters - which colors we should pick? Sizes? Later I remember something about dogs' eyesight, they're color-blind. Well, ok not totally but evolution has left them far less acute than human primates. They make up for it in their keen sense of smell - for which I am thankful. I really wouldn't want to smell all the stuff out there that they find such a rich delight in smelling - not unless I was a dog and could roll in it too.

We delivered it today, rather anonymously as they had the bins for the donated materials sorta around back. That's fine, no solicitation letters will follow us around.  We walked around the dog park and enjoyed the new grounds of the facility - it's really state-of-the-art - and with fake "eternal" grass for dog-frolic!  Cleans-up easier I guess and you don't have to water it - unless you're doing some "spot cleaning!" :-)

Next up, Part-2...

Big Green Markers for Climate Fraud

While a lot of discussion is given to the question of, "Who put the Scientology in Climatology?" there's another side of climate fudging that needs to air, namely the real costs born by municipalities that have taken the money-bait. Someone has stacked the deck with jokers.

In a con-scheme it believe it's called a pigeon-drop, and while many people are quick to point out how rendolent California is with fruit-and-nut whackos, there's another place that is famous for it's own manure-rich scent of bogosity: Chicago.  Guess where the slick city hucksters have been preparing to fleece the numbskull country bumpkins of their carbon, at the Chicago Climate Exchange.  In fact due to the current porosity in Climatological Reality, the market's tanked. Don't people often use a futures-trading position to look at and determine cultural trends? Here's a real one:

...Volumes and prices on the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) have collapsed, with emissions permits now trading at historic lows of between 10 cents and 15 cents per tonne. That reflects the pervasive uncertainty over what kind of carbon regime the US might have and the CCX role within it.

In fact in some places it's already been happening on a big scale.  In Australia the financial piety has become a mess, with the City of Melbourne plucked for millions of real dollars buying carbon offsets for the city’s vehicles etc. at possibly $4 per unit - priced now at $0.15!  How that for you suckers?  Terrapass!?! (thanks Andrew Bolt)

What then is the centrality of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit whose staff are accused of manipulating climate change data?   Besides Algore, Britain has a huge net investment in carbon trading, Globally, the carbon trading market was worth €92bn (£79bn) in 2008, trading 5bn tonnes.

That's a lot of money tied up in tulips, but it's not like we haven't see this kind of idiotic frenzy before.  Only now it's also a religion, as a British judge has ruled in the case of a man who was fired for his extreme environmental beliefs.  All the while a report from July if this year out in Britain says that a carbon emissions trading scheme is seriously flawed and in danger of collapse, because,

So-called "hot air" carbon credits – those which do not result in any actual emissions cuts – could be so numerous that companies covered by the EU Emissions Trading Scheme would not have to make any cuts to their own emissions until 2015.

It's three-card monty, now you see it now you don't, played out in industry and on Wall Street.  Has been Green become Too Big to Fail?  Obama's performance in Copenhagen may give us the answer as to the U.S. net investment - and maybe that's where all the un-spent "stimulus" billions will finally show-up.  Wall Street-to-Wall Street is my guess.

Meanwhile the formerly prominent magazine Scientific American (good grief) went off in the fog with an absurd editorial blaming the evil and horrible and  rich Fossil-Fuel industry of a conspiracy (!!) for suborning their own collective religious belief in AGW, by buying commentary and publicizing the ongoing debate (the same way George Soros manipulates world financial markets), which they insist is settled, dammit! Settled!

Meanwhile there is a global carbon trading market that is anticipated to grow to over a trillion US dollars in the next five years, from its current size of over US$100 billion.

According to experts, the industry moved at a slower pace in the last year as a result of the financial crisis. They are also expecting clearer direction to be set after the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, which starts next week.

Ever since the Kyoto Treaty a fantasy financial market has grown up around trading non-existent items (offsets) for religious securities - actual money has traded hands and certainly fortunes have been made.

If redistribution of global assets is really what's central to this ponzi scheme, why not set up a Photon Trading market so all the poor countries in sun-drenched zones can capitalize on their new-found and sudden wealth? In just months Sudan could go from an impoverished and failed-state exporting piracy to a wealthy hub of Swiss like influence.

Ka-ching! Ka-ching!  Ka-ching!  This is the sound of settled-science, you can bank on it.

Algore Give Up Your Oscar

Congrats

And with the picture from Doug Ross comes a link to Mitchell Langbert who says of the eco-totalitarian movement: If "consensus" has been reached by using falsified data, purposely distorting programming, and suppressing opposing views, then what type of consensus is that?

Since HUGE money is involved, perhaps this is just Climatological Alchemy.

Views of Unobtanium

The tan is fading already. The next valley over to the right is Pololu Valley where the road ends. The ocean is straight ahead and Maui would be off to the left.