Quote Of The Random Interval

It is difficult to fight against anger, for a man will buy revenge with his soul. Herecleitus.

Schoolhouse Rock

iTunes has 22 episodes of Schoolhouse Rock! Interestingly since it's two 11 episode packages that they don't have "Good, Good Eleven".

The American history portions are really interesting from my jaundiced modern eye. They are refreshingly upbeat, positive and patriotic! The USA is a good place, full of good people in these educational cartoons. A place one wishes to live and emulate.

Quorum Call

I mentioned a while back that very few people actually voted to plant Mr Bush's ass in the White House.

Something on the order of 50% of the people eligible to vote bother to register and only 50% of those who register bother to actually vote and then 50% plus one of them decide who is elected.

The US Congress has a quorum requirement of 50% showing up before they can vote on something. The voting public is averaging 25%, with 35% being noteworthy enough to make the news! 25% is not a quorum by Congressional standards, why is it OK during a general election?

I know that there is no requirement for a quorum, or even that anyone vote at all. It just seems that there are 225 million Americans who say, "Not those guys!" every single election (and end up with whoever the remaining 75 million pick).

NOW, my tripwire issue is firearms. There are an estimated 100 million gun owners in the US. Pretty damn clear to me that they are not out there voting because we keep getting people who are anti-gun on the ballot and winning elections.

It's The Risk I Take For Trying To Help

Michele Evermore is having a rough time.

She's found a web page that expresses the situation she's just left. That's good!

Unfortunately for me I expressed an opinion in the comments on her blog that such pages are ALWAYS about the man being the abuser.

This led to a mini-debate with another commenter.

The page Michele Evermore referenced was showing an abuse tactic where the abuser gets the abused to defend themselves and then plays the victim card. The pronouns are all male for the abuser and female for the abused. The problem I have with this is this tactic is used far more often by the fairer sex against men. Mind games and mental abuse are firmly in the female sphere. Yes, Michele Evermore has found three guys in a row who do this behavior. No, it's not common for men to be this way, it's more common for men to use physical abuse.

To understand why the page Michele Evermore found bothers me; take this phrase (not from what she referenced), "The never ending argument. A topic that angers both sides and various levels of discussion occur until an agreement is reached. To the average male, this settles things. To the average female, this signals that she is tired of fighting for now and is taking a break." Inserting gender pronouns creates an inflammatory posture that is not necessary to describe the abuse and excludes people of the offending sex from gaining solace from the advice. Saying it this way, "To one side, this settles things. To the other, this signals that they are tired of fighting for now and are taking a break." allows you to describe the behavior without assigning blame to an entire sex. If you have no problem assigning blame to an entire sex, you are a bigot.

And as a straight, white male, I am sick of the bigotry from just about every single victim class on the planet. I am white, so I am responsible for racism. I am straight so I am responsible for homophobia. I am male so I am responsible for sexism.

I am not a racist, homophobe or sexist. I refuse to accept the blame for the actions of others.

On Standards

My recent grapple with an Apple Airport Extreme wireless router brought this out.

The Airport Extreme does not talk to the Westech ADSL modem that Verizon provided us. Our Linksys router has no problem with seeing the modem, when it's working.

Tech support on both sides blamed the other side for the DHCP being implemented incorrectly.

I mentioned this to Geff, who postulated that one of them had gotten the RFC wrong. Something I said led him to say that it was even possible that Apple did it right and Westech AND Linksys did it wrong.

Since Belkin and Linksys see the modem and Apple cannot, and if the Airport Extreme is in compliance with the RFC I would say that adherence to the standard is worthless. I've done some searching online and found that it's a Verizon/Apple problem. Belkin, Linksys and NetGear have all managed to figure out how to talk to Verizon's equipment. It's just Apple, primly sitting in their Ivory tower, that cannot.

If everyone else is doing it wrong, but it works and you are doing it right and it doesn't work I don't give a shit that you did it right. Congratulations! you made a $192 paperweight that consumes electricity.

The total lack of instructions included in Apple products is also galling. Actually, there are instructions, they are useless. They are definitely geared at someone who only bought an assembled router because he didn't feel like taking the time to hit Radio Shack for the parts to make their own. Linksys, by contrast, includes screen shots of what you should be seeing as you start things up.

The single dual color status light on the Airport Extreme reminds me of something I saw on Venture Brothers. The control room of the Gargantua-1 space station has a white monolith in it with a light labled "PROBLEM"! The instructions tell me that if the amber light is blinking, there's a problem...

The Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel Saga Continues

Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel took it well when they arrested him. Resigned is how I would put his demeanor.

His eldest son, Orca Shitheel, first accused his ex-wife of calling the cops on Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel. Now he has accused Harvey in the comments on her blog.

First things first, Orca Shitheel: Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel did indeed commit the crimes that he was convicted of. Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel did indeed violate his probation by leaving Florida and moving to Iowa. The reason Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel is in jail now is not because he was turned in by an "anonymous female caller" but because he violated his probation! If he had recognized his marriage to Tracy as a lost cause two years ago and finished his probation the police would have had no cause to arrest him.

Secondly, when one is a fugitive from justice, one must accept that one might be arrested at any place or time. The likelihood of being arrested increases as you get closer to the jurisdiction that issued the warrant for your arrest. That means that even if Iowa and Florida don't wish to pay for extradition when your records are pulled that does not mean that Pasco County, Florida will not snatch you up when you drop into their laps. And when such a Sword of Damocles is over your head, you make damn sure everyone who knows you are in the area of the original warrant is someone you can trust to not call the police! EVERYONE.

It was an "anonymous female caller." That is all the hard information there is about who called. That person had to know that Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel was here and either my last name or our address. That's a pretty damn small pool of people. Additionally, they need a reason to turn him in, a motive. All of the people with grudges, don't seem to have the address.

Fishy things:

Crackwhore Shitheel (ex wife of eldest son) saw him the day before and as soon as they parted company she stopped answering her phone. She seemed unsurprised that Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel had been arrested when I asked her the next day, before anyone here had time to call anyone. She acted suspicious, but doesn't really have a reason to screw him.

Orca Shitheel and Totally Clueless Shitheel (eldest son and his wife) sure seem worked up over this. Slinging accusations all over the map. And isn't Totally Clueless Shitheel a female? It sure seems like they are protesting too much. Almost like they have a guilty conscious. But they also don't seem to have motive to do this.

Ashamed Shitheel (daughter) is a female. She knows our last name well enough to tell the cops how to find here. I've heard that she's mad a Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel for something about Orca Shitheel. I don't know what, just a rumor. If she is mad, then she did have motive. I just don't see her caring enough to do anything to him.

Escapee Shitheel (ex wife #2) is a female, she's got motive, she knows where I live. She seems to have let bygones be bygones and did seem genuinely surprised that he'd been arrested when The Lovely Harvey talked to her.

Crab Slinging Skank (ex girlfriend) has motive. She's a female. I don't think she knows my last name or address, but anything is possible. This is where I would put my money since I am not exactly hiding where I live.

Mrs Shitheel No. 3 (current wife) is a female, doesn't seem to have a motive, definitely knew where he was the whole time. If it's her then she deserves an Oscar for the performance after the arrest!

Sneakey and Spiteful (former best friends of Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel's) know where I live and have a motive. I am uncertain if they knew he was coming down.

Any other women in Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel life?

If it had been us we would certainly not have allowed him to stay here. Harvey and I are none too fond of the cops and don't want them here, ever. We would also have made a point of calling the police before he could go to his football game on Sunday, we're vindictive! We took Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel at his word that things had been settled and stuff had expired.

It's The Apoxyclipse

Everything that glowbul warmering has ever caused

Well Mrs Shitheel No. 3 Is Still Here

Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel was arrested for his probation violation last night.

Two counts of probation violation and no bond because of his extreme flight risk.

Just Because It Made Me Smile

when criminals in this world appear
and break the laws that they should fear
and frighten all who see or hear
the cry goes up both far and near
for Underdog! Underdog! Underdog! Underdog!

speed of lightning, roar of thunder
fighting all who rob or plunder
Underdog. Underdog!

when in this world the headlines read
of those whose hearts are filled with greed
who rob and steal from those who need
to right this wrong with blinding speed
goes Underdog! Underdog! Underdog! Underdog!

speed of lightning, roar of thunder
fighting all who rob or plunder
Underdog. Underdog!

Pity Party For Thag

Well, not really.

Today is a bit rocky. Today is my mom's birthday. First one since she died and I am in a foul mood.

In typical man fashion I want to curl up in a cave, lick my wounds and be left alone.

Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel and Mrs Shitheel No. 3 are in from Iowa. It's not their fault, but their presence is invasive and not entirely welcome under the circumstances.

I'll be OK, this is part of the grieving process, it just sucks. Suckage is also part of the grieving process.

Belief

Dead Link to The American Interest Read the whole thing.

In affairs so dangerous as war, false ideas proceeding from kindness of heart are precisely the worst. . . . The fact that slaughter is a horrifying spectacle must make us take war more seriously, but not provide an excuse for gradually blunting our swords in the name of humanity. Sooner or later someone will come along with a sharp sword and hack off our arms.

--Clauswitz

Oh The Imagery

"Hillary says "Tom Harkin's been working like a Trojan" on a farm bill."

Prolly not the best choice of metaphor. All that pops to my mind are the Trojan Horse and condoms.

And those both mean someone is getting fucked.

Gaming

My enthusiasm for gaming dropped precipitously after dealing with Chris Underwood (a known asshole) last September.

I really stopped paying attention to the forums about GURPS.

Recently I went to peek again.

There's a thread about the new edition of High Tech where someone complains that .40 S&W does more damage than .45 ACP in the new rules (2d+2 pi+ for the .40 and 2d pi+ for the .45). .40 S&W does NOT do more damage than .45 ACP. In fact it falls almost perfectly halfway between .45 ACP and 9mm Parabellum.

The rules gods began posting justifications for the anachronism. The main argument is that the author developed a consistent system for determining damage and since GURPS only allows for two bullet size modifiers (pi+ for x1.5 damage and pi++ for x2 damage) and since pi+ begins at .40 caliber then we are just going to have errors like this. A well respected poster suggests that there really should be a x1.2 damage step to account for .40 S&W's actual behavior. The rules gods say this is too complicated, or is unneeded extra complication.

Essentially the rules gods have chosen; "It's wrong, but is wrong consistently," as an argument. The older values were not debated, it seems that the system developed by the author didn't account for the previous fiat stats being reasonably accurate and creating a system that generated numbers that matched them. Oh, the 3e values gave .40 S&W and .45 ACP identical damage (2d+ cr which would be 2d pi+ in 4e) and different ranges (150/1900 vs 175/1700). Not quite right, but nobody was complaining.

Other posters have justified .40 S&W as being a TL newer than .45 ACP, so it deserves more damage. Perhaps it does "deserve" more damage from being a more recently developed round, but it doesn't actually DO more damage. The TL advance in this round has more to do with getting the cartridge packaged smaller than could have been done with a .40 cal round in the previous TL. The authors stats for the .45 GAP match the .45 ACP, which it should. .45 GAP is two TL newer than .45 ACP and is much more compact for the same velocities with the same bullets.

I tend to wish for the x1.2 damage step but accept that the damage rules are very coarse and when rounding things can get strange around the break points.

One thing the new system allows for is .357 SIG bullets getting the same damage as .357 Magnum rounds of the same weight and velocity.

www.nrablacklist.com

I am not a big fan of the NRA. I prefer to give my money to GOA and JPFO.

But this site is just damn funny.

Awwwww, poor widdy celebrities! You state your desire to disarm about half the nation, especially "fly-over", and you end up on the largest organizations that opposes that idea's web page. Gee, I just can't find any sympathy.

Why? For one, many of you are hypocrites. Lots of celebrity gun owners who don't want me to own a gun. Lots of celebrities have armed security details.

Are you worried that I will not go to the theater and watch your latest diatribe against America? Do you think that I will miss my chance to be indoctrinated to the bloody bosom of socialism?  Or is it you merely object to someone having caught you saying what you said?

Of course, the site is just one complaining about teh eval NRA having a list, not really the celebs complaining.  Gun control works!  Just ask the mall shooter in Omaha!

The Lovely Harvey's New Gun

The Lovely Harvey's was made in 2006, mine was made in 2007. They have changed from roll markings to laser etching in that time.

Here they are together. Mine is on the right, The Lovely Harvey's is on the left. T-Shirt is from Anvil Arms of Lakeland, Florida.

SIG Pics

Some pics of the aforementioned SIG-Sauer P232.

This is a SIG-Sauer P232, 1.2 lbs loaded. It tucks right in and the grip is about perfect for me. No safety as such, just a decocker and a DA/SA operation. There's a loaded chamber indicator as part of the extractor. Magazine release is in the butt, so reloads are a bit slow. .380 ACP is just enough for most self defense applications, much better than .25 ACP!

Three unrelated guns linked through ACP. From left to right; Colt Junior in .25 ACP, SIG-Sauer P232 in .380 ACP and Springfield Armory M-1911A1 GI in .45 ACP. If I get a .32 ACP gun to round it out, Harvey WILL kill me, unless it's a gift.

New Kids In The Hall

I got me a new carry gun. The M-1911A1 doesn't sit comfortably when driving the Vette. The Colt Junior is comfortable, but can't really be counted on to stop an anemic mouse let alone a goblin. Something in .380 ACP or 9mm seemed in order.

Marv is happy with his FEG PA-63 in 9x18mm Makarov. It doesn't quite fit my hand.

I handled a couple of guns in .380 ACP. Walther/S&W PPK/S, Bersa Thunder 380 and SIG-Sauer P232. The SIG fit my hand best. I was concerned with the quality of the other two.

A friend of mine, LibtardLenny, is convinced that the S&W made PPK/S are not as well made as the genuine German Walthers. The internet is convinced of quite the opposite.

Garry has a friend he shoots with quite frequently who had a Bersa flat fail to operate. His Bersa was broken as well, but I didn't know it was merely a worn recoil spring from a couple of thousand rounds use.

The Bersa would have been the cheapest option in .380 at $265. The SIG and Walther were about the same price, SIG being $520, the Walther being $550. The PA-63 would have come to about $250 after I did the mods that Marv had done to make it a decent shooter.

There's nothing really wrong with 9x18mm Makarov, except a definite lack of variety for loads. And I don't think I have ever seen a box outside a gun show. That's a bad sign.

So, I bought the SIG P232 in blue.

The Lovely Harvey is seeking her conceal carry permit. I suggested she give the P232 a feel to see if it fits her hand, she said that it does.

Garry doesn't like his SIG P232, and is willing to sell it for $450. I think I shall get it for her.

Kinda neat, we'll have matching guns!

Dogfights

I've complained about this show before.

They are getting much better.

The control surfaces are moving now! They even seem to be moving in a manner that would cause the maneuvering shown on the show.

Problem is, the aileron on an F-4 Phantom only moves down. On a Cessna, to roll one aileron goes up, the other goes down. On the Phantom, one goes down the other stays put and a spoiler on that wing deploys.

Guess what the ailerons are doing on the show.

100 Years Apart In Design

Colt Anaconda, 6" barrel, chambered in .45 Colt.

I really like the contrast of the modern stainless revolver with a cartridge that was developed in 1872. Cowboy loads in the box and Silvertips® in the speedloaders.

Here it is with its smaller brother in the more powerfull .44 Magnum.

No matter what the caliber, a gun pointed at you looks like a sewer pipe! In this case, .45 Colt.

.44 Magnum has a scare value all it's own!

Please notice that the finger is off the trigger. The only thing in danger was the laptop, expensive, but expendable. I had a kevlar® helmet behind the Mac's camera to catch the bullet in the event of an AD.

Trent Lott Is Going To Resign

And is so well loved by people who are nominally Republican they are mostly saying, "Good riddance to bad rubbish!"

I am afraid that I must agree.

Gang In Blue

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/11/pistol-packing-positivists-our-enemy-in.html Read the whole thing. Comment. Debate. I am still waiting for the clearly defined circumstances where lethal force against a law enforcement officer is legal and justified.

Things You Only See In Florida

The neighbor walking their savanna monitor lizard...

The Bed Is Complete

Did I Put The Wrong EmPHasis On The Correct SylABBLE

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The West
The Inland North
The South
The Northeast
Philadelphia
Boston
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Nomenclature

The F-35 is all messed up. It's out of sequence.

Next in line should have been F-24.

F-35A is the conventional take-off and landing version. F-35B is the VTOL version. F-35C is the carrier version.

When a fixed wing can land vertically, it gets a V in the designation. AV-8A and AV-8B and V-22 (Harriers and Osprey). The VTOL version should be FV-24B!

Why have a system of naming if you aren't gonna use it?

Oh, the 35 is in sequence if you use the X progression. F-35 comes out of the X-35 project. That was supposed to be, like F-22A, a tech demonstration with one bidder focusing on one aspect with the other focusing on another. Pity the demo turned into a fly-off and the military changed the specs to favor the aspects focused on by Lockeed-Martin.

National Ammo Day

It was Monday, you were supposed to buy 100 rounds of centerfire ammunition, or 1000 rounds of .22 LR.

What did you buy?

I bought:

200 rounds Black Hills 69gr HP .223 Rem.
200 rounds Sellier & Bellot M193 55gr FMJ 5.56x45mm.
100 rounds Winchester USA Cowboy 250gr lead flatnose .45 Colt.
40 rounds Winchester Super X 225gr Silvertip® HP .45 Colt.
20 rounds Winchester Super X 200gr Silvertip® JHP .44 Special.
50 rounds Federal American Eagle 240gr JHP .44 Magnum.
50 rounds Fiocchi 142gr FMJ .357 Magnum.
100 rounds Federal American Eagle 125gr FMJ .357 Sig.

America FUCK YEAH

Any lower and he ties the low altitude record.

I Always Thought I Was An Idiot

Now I know I was.

No more will I debate the self evident and I recant all of my previous contrary positions.

Bed Set Part Two

The headboard pier arrived today. There is supposed to be a mirror over the window, but it was shattered in shipping. The replacement will arrive Wednesday.

A Gift For My Father In Law

Bubba was in the Navy during the Vietnam war. We don't know any more than that. We don't even know if he was anywhere near Vietnam. He doesn't talk about it, so we sort of assume he was.

To honor his service, I've made a Nam era M16A1 clone. This would be an early production version as can be seen from the buttstock's lack of a trap for the cleaning kit and the birdcage flash-hider.

Cat tested, Licorice approved!

The upper receiver (less bolt group), pistol grip and buttsock are vintage. The rest is Anvil Arms.

WWFSMD

Clicky!
Have you been touched by His Noodley Appendage?

 

Ha HA

NASA scientists now attribute Arctic warming to decadal trends having to do with ocean circulation and salinity, rather than anthropogenic global warming:

Reporting in Geophysical Research Letters, the authors attribute the reversal to a weakened Arctic Oscillation, a major atmospheric circulation pattern in the northern hemisphere. The weakening reduced the salinity of the upper ocean near the North Pole, decreasing its weight and changing its circulation.
“Our study confirms many changes seen in upper Arctic Ocean circulation in the 1990s were mostly decadal in nature, rather than trends caused by global warming,” said Morison.

This may help to explain why Antarctic ice sheets have actually grown thicker over the same time frame.

Veteran's Day

This is for the live ones! Take one to dinner. Shake their hand. Just say thanks!

Kick a liberal in the balls whenever they say, "quagmire."

I Am Going To Hell

And the hull broke open
And they all drowned like rats
As their lungs filled with
Wa-Terrrr

32 years since the wreck.

Snake Is Tamed Sort Of

I put a set of Colt stocks back on it.  The Hogue rubber stocks let the back strap cut into the palm.

There's A Shocker

HowManyOfMe.com

There are or fewer people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

INC at SSHS7

This shot took almost an hour to set up!

Global Warming by Tom McClintock

This is the source of the following, I did not write it.  I do, however, agree with it.
Global Warming, by Tom McClintock
30th, we closed the books on the biggest deficit in California’s history - more than $6 ½ billion.

You have extended to me a very dangerous invitation tonight - to speak to a gathering of political conservatives on the day that Al Gore has received the Nobel Peace Prize for discovering that the earth’s climate is changing.
I’ve heard that he’s going to contribute half of his prize money to environmental causes and use the other half to pay his electricity bill. And anything left over will come in handy to help pay for the fleet of private jets that allow him to travel around the world to tell us that you and I need to ride our bikes to work.
You have to admit, there is a certain Helmslyesque quality to it all - “We don’t conserve - only the little people conserve.”
Of course, for those in the liberal elite who jet to environmental conferences in Gulfstream Fives and drive around in Hummers singing the praises of hybrids and bicycles, the Left now sells indulgences - you can actually calculate your sins on-line and they’ll gladly tell you how much money to send them (all major credit cards accepted) to assuage your conscience.
These indulgences will be used for such activities as planting more trees to absorb carbon dioxide. After all, young trees absorb an enormous amount of this “greenhouse gas” - far more than old trees. But isn’t replacing old-growth timber with young-growth timber what lumber companies used to do until the radical environmentalists shut them down?
They’ve also forbidden the clearance of flammable brush from around your home in areas like Lake Tahoe - that’s an affront to Mother Nature. You’re supposed to either let it burn - and your home along with it - or just let it sit and rot because those are the two best ways for Nature to release lots of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Apparently natural carbon dioxide is a good thing and man-made carbon dioxide is a bad thing.
That’s also why we’re supposed to do away with chemical fertilizer and replace it with natural compost, because replacing man-made greenhouse gases with natural greenhouse gases is the wave of the future.
So are electric cars and trains. But this also gets a little complicated, because there are only two ways of generating vast amounts of clean electricity: hydroelectricity and nuclear power. But there’s no faster way to send one of these Luddites into hysterics than to mention that inconvenient truth.
The politically correct replacement is solar energy - roughly 17 times more expensive than either nuclear power or hydroelectricity - meaning, of course around 17 times LESS electricity to run electric cars and trains. Energy conservation, then, is the answer, which is why we’re being told only to use energy efficient fluorescent lights rather than the warm and fuzzy incandescent bulbs. But wait - didn’t we just ban the disposal of fluorescent lights with your trash because of the extreme environmental hazard they pose in our landfills?
So I approach the subject tonight with an admitted level of confusion as to what these people are thinking.
And I also approach it with a certain degree of trepidation. After all, at Al Gore’s rally to save the planet in New York in July, no less an authority than Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that those of us who still have some questions over their theories of man-made global warming are “liars,” “crooks,” “corporate toadies,” “flat-earthers” and then he made this remarkable statement: “This is treason and we need to start treating them now as traitors.” Ah, the dispassionate language of science and reason.
In a speech in New York several months ago, our own governor called those who question the religion of global warming “fanatics” and vowed our political extinction. I certainly don’t want to die a traitor’s death or be run out of town on a rail. So I want the record to be very clear: I believe that the earth’s climate IS changing and that our planet IS warming.
I actually figured that out in grade school in the 1960’s when our third grade class took a field trip to the Museum of Natural History and saw the panorama of dinosaurs tromping around the steamy swamps that are now part of Wyoming. They were right next to the exhibit of the Woolly Mammoths foraging on the glaciers that were also once the same part of Wyoming. And I never got a Nobel Prize for that discovery. In fact, I later found out that my third grade teacher never even nominated me!
Then I got to high school in the 1970’s and learned from the Al Gores of the time that we foolish mortals were plunging ourselves into another ice age. All the scientists agreed.
By the way, you may have seen the Washington Times story a few weeks ago about the researcher who recently stumbled upon a lurid story in the Washington Post dated July 9, 1971. It included the scary headline: “U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming.”
The scientist based this on a scientific climate model developed by a young research associate named James Hansen. They warned that continued carbon emissions over the next ten years could trigger an unstoppable ice age.
This is the same James Hansen who is one of the gurus of the current global warming movement. And it is the same James Hansen who, just three months ago, published a paper claiming that continued carbon emissions over the next ten years could trigger a run-away greenhouse effect.
Let me begin by asking three inconvenient questions:
First, if global warming is caused by your SUV, why is it that we’re seeing global warming on every other body in the solar system? For the last six years, the Martian south polar ice cap has conspicuously receded. Pluto is warming - about two degrees Celsius over the past 14 years. Jupiter is showing dramatic climate change by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit. Even Neptune’s moon, Triton, has warmed five percent on the absolute temperature scale - the equivalent of a 22 degrees Fahrenheit increase on Earth - from 1989 to 1998.
If you have any doubt, just Google “Pluto Warming” or “Mars Warming” or whatever your favorite planet might be.
Meanwhile, solar radiation has increased a measurable .05 percent since the 1970’s. Is it possible that as the sun gets slightly warmer, the planets do too? This would be a little scary in its own right, except for the second inconvenient question:
If global warming is being caused by your SUV, why is it that we have ample historical records of periods in our recent history when the planet’s temperature was warmer than it is today?
During the Medieval Warm Period, from about 900 to 1300 AD, we know that wine grapes were thriving in northern Britain and Newfoundland and that the temperature in Greenland was hot enough to support a prosperous agricultural economy for nearly 500 years.
That period was brought to an end by the Little Ice Age that lasted from 1300 until 1850. We know that during colonial times, Boston and New York Harbors routinely froze over in winter and during Elizabethan times, an annual Winter Festival was held ON TOP OF the Thames River, which froze solid every year.
And finally the third inconvenient question: If global warming is caused by YOUR SUV, why is it that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide always follow increases in global temperatures by several hundred years, indicating that CO2 is a byproduct of increasing temperatures - not a cause.
Is it possible that this is the reason Al Gore won’t debate the subject? You’ve seen the “Inconvenient Truth.” In it, he portrays himself as an indefatigable, lonely sentinel (who should have been President of course) wandering the planet trying desperately to awaken the world to the danger it faces. “I’ve given this speech a thousand times,” he says about a thousand times.
But according to the Chicago Sun Times this pious paragon of truth - who assures us he’s willing to go anywhere and talk to anybody to save us from our mortal folly - is strangely UNwilling to take up the Heartland Institute’s publicized offer to organize an international debate on the subject. The Institute has challenged our new Nobel Peace Prize laureate of the left to debate any one of three internationally recognized authorities who dispute his claims, and it’s willing to front all costs - at Oxford University, no less, and in a format of Gore’s own choosing.
After all, Gore’s new book extols the importance of science and reason in the public policy debate, so what better way to deliver the coup de grace to the “skeptics” than to expose their fallacies in front of an international audience?
And yet, Al Gore, who has given his speech “a thousand times,” won’t give it just once more in a forum where it might be questioned by a knowledgeable authority.
We’re told that the debate is over and that all scientists agree. Call this the Emperor’s New Clothes argument. But it’s simply not the case.
The ISI Web of Science is one of the most comprehensive collections of peer-reviewed scientific papers in the world. A recent survey of all papers on the subject of climate change that were published between 2004 and February of 2007 found that only SEVEN percent explicitly endorsed the position that man-made carbon dioxide is causing catastrophic global warming. SIX PERCENT explicitly rejected it and a majority of the remaining papers were neutral.
In fact, another directory of peer-reviewed scientific papers explicitly refuting the theory of human-induced catastrophic global warming lists over 500 leading climate scientists. The survey itself was conducted by a team that included Fred Singer, author of “Unstoppable Global Warming - EVERY 1,500
YEARS”, whose qualifications include being the founding director of the National Weather Satellite Service.
I believe it was Ogden Nash who wrote:
“The ass was born in March. The rains came in November? “Such a flood as this, he said, I scarcely can remember.”
But now I would like to address myself to a grim subject: the actual threat that global warming poses to our planet - and most specifically to California. And that threat is very real and it is devastating.
I speak specifically of the radical policies that the global warm-mongers are now enacting. Last year, in the name of saving the planet from global warming, California adopted the most radically restrictive legislation anywhere in the nation, including AB 32, which requires a 25 percent reduction in man-made carbon dioxide emissions within 13 years. To put this in perspective, we could junk every car in the state of California RIGHT NOW - and not meet this mandate.
Californians just approved $40 billion of bonds that California’s political leaders promised would be used for highways, dams, aqueducts and other capital improvements. They are desperately needed.
But at the same time, those same political leaders have imposed a 25 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.
Now here’s the problem: Building highways, dams and aqueducts requires tremendous amounts of concrete, the principle ingredient of which is CEMENT.
How is cement produced? It is produced by taking limestone and super-heating it into a molten state - it comes out the other side as a compound called clinker. Clinker is about 2/3 the weight of the original limestone. The missing 1/3 of that weight is carbon dioxide. And when you include the emissions required to superheat the limestone, it turns out that for every ton of cement, a TON of carbon dioxide is released.
It’s the third biggest source of carbon dioxide in all human enterprise.
But now we have a law that specifically forbids us from doing so. That was the essence of the Jerry Brown lawsuits against new highway projects that were part of the summer budget impasse.
Citing AB 32, Brown argued that unless the counties could show how they would build highways without using earthmoving equipment or concrete - and that once built, that people would not drive automobiles on them - the only legal use of the funds would be to promote mass transit, transit villages - and I’m not making this up - pedestrian trails and bicycle paths. So much for construction.
Agriculture is in big trouble, too. You can start with nitrogen fertilizer, which is a critical component of all agricultural activity. Unfortunately, it produces large amounts of nitrous oxide, another so-called greenhouse gas that must be radically curtailed in California.
The wine industry is also in for a shock. Fermentation of wine occurs when a molecule of glucose in the grapes is converted into EQUAL PARTS of alcohol and Carbon Dioxide.
But the biggest agricultural impact is the administration’s mandate for heavily subsidized use of ethanol fuel. Ethanol is produced in exactly the same way as the alcohol in wine: the glucose in corn is converted into equal parts of ethyl alcohol and CARBON DIOXIDE.
Following AB 32, the governor’s appointees on the California Air Resources Board imposed a requirement that ALL gasoline sold in California within THREE YEARS, must be comprised of at least TEN PERCENT ethanol, doubling the current mandate.
Now think about this: an acre of corn produces about 350 gallons of ethanol. There are 15 billion gallons of gasoline used in California each year. In order to meet the ten percent requirement in three years, it means converting 4.3 million acres of farmland to ethanol production. Now that’s a lot of farmland, considering that we have a total of 11 million acres producing any kind of crops.
Current ethanol mandates are already producing serious shortages in other parts of the world, as farmland that had been producing food shifts to ethanol to chase hundreds of millions of dollars of government subsidies coming out of your pocket. There were riots in Mexico earlier this year in response to spiraling tortilla prices.
And we’re seeing this across the board - including commodities like milk and beef that are responding to increased prices for corn feed. And as you see your grocery prices rise as a result of this policy, just be glad you’re not in the Third World. Food is a relatively small portion of the family incomes in affluent nations, but they consume more than half of family earnings in third world countries.
So when the global warming alarmists predict worldwide starvation, they’re right. THEY’RE CREATING IT!
While we’re on the general subject, you may have noted that Interstate Bakeries announced last month that they are completely withdrawing from the Southern California market - they are shutting down four bakeries, 17 distribution centers and 19 outlet stores - and throwing 1,300 employees out of work.
They’re the makers of Wonder Bread, Roman Meal Bread, Home Pride and Baker’s Inn. If you’re a fan of those breads, you’d better stock up now - they’ll be gone by the end of October.
They cited the high cost of doing business in California, but I believe had they stayed they would have faced an even thornier problem: bread is only bread because of the carbon dioxide produced by yeast. It’s the same chemical process we’ve been talking about, although in this case, the central ingredient IS the carbon dioxide. That pleasant smell of baking bread is the ethyl alcohol oxidizing as those gases are vented during baking.
Electricity prices are also taking a heavy hit. California already suffers the highest electricity prices in the continental United States, but that situation is about to worsen.
A companion measure to AB 32 was SB 1368 that prohibits the importation of electricity produced by coal - even state-of-the-art plants thousands of miles from California that meet all EPA requirements.
Truckee became the first victim of this law. Truckee was about to sign a 50-year contract for electricity produced by a new coal fired plant in Utah. They were forced to back off because of AB 1368. They just announced the new contracts to replace that lost power. Instead of paying $35 per megawatt hour, Truckee electricity consumers will now be paying $65 per megawatt hour.
It gets worse. Last month, the chairwoman of the Air Resources Board - which was given virtually unlimited power by AB 32 - announced that they will TRIPLE the number of AB 32 regulations this year.
The radical laws now in place in California are having a dramatic impact on energy production, agriculture, manufacturing, wine-making and construction, just to name a few sectors of our economy.
We are already seeing the economic impact in California.
Nationally, the unemployment rate is stable at 4.6 percent. Until last year, Californian’s unemployment rate tracked with the national figures, but since January - while the national rate has remained stable at about 4.6 percent, California’s unemployment rate has skyrocketed from 4.8 percent to 5.5 percent.
I was struck by the Governor’s speech to the United Nations last week. He said:
“Last year in California, we enacted groundbreaking greenhouse gas emission standards. We enacted the world’s first low carbon fuel standard.
“Do I believe California’s standards will solve global warming? No.
“What we’re doing is changing the dynamic, preparing the way and encouraging the future…”
So even the individual most responsible for this economically catastrophic public policy ADMITS that it’s not going to solve global warming. He just wants to set an example. I believe he is going to set an example, all right.
Responding to the enormous new burdens imposed on our economy, our state’s revenues have taken a dramatic turn for the worse. On June
We just got the first quarter revenue numbers for this new fiscal year. State revenues needed to grow TWICE as fast this year as they did last year to avert an even bigger deficit.
In the first quarter, though, our revenues are actually shrinking. Last year at this time, we had $1½ billion in the bank - we now have a bank overdraft of $7 ½ billion that’s being covered entirely by internal borrowing.
That’s a NINE BILLION DOLLAR DIFFERENCE. And that’s the measure of our actual year-over-year deficit spending.
Combined with the growing budget deficit projection for next year, we could be facing a two-year gap of $20 billion by May - and we don’t have the money to cover it.
There is one other thing that strikes me on this issue, and that is how puny is the amount of carbon dioxide produced by human enterprise, compared to simple, natural processes.
The AB 32 mandate is to reduce man-made carbon dioxide emissions by 170 million metric tons per year. That’s what all this tremendous economic dislocation is about.
Now let me mention one other man-made source of carbon dioxide that they don’t count.
Every one of us in this room will produce about 2.2 pounds of carbon dioxide today - by breathing.
That’s over 800 pounds of carbon dioxide per year. If anyone brought a pocket calculator, pull it out and stay with me here.
There are 6.6 billion of us on this planet. That comes to 5.3 trillion pounds or 2.4 BILLION metric tons of carbon dioxide - simply through the process of human respiration. And that’s before you count up all the cats and rats and elephants.
So all of this economic dislocation is over a tiny fraction of natural carbon dioxide emissions.
The only good news I can offer is that perhaps we’re all wrong. Perhaps the unprecedented burden now imposed upon our commerce will produce a wave of new investment and innovation and environmental purity as the Governor has so loudly promised. Perhaps the unprecedented levels of deficit spending will send our economy into paroxysms of prosperity. Perhaps.
But there’s another possibility. There’s a possibility that we’re right, and that the inevitable economic realities of these outrageous regulations are already beginning to destroy California’s once-vibrant economy in a dark and miserable example of human folly.
And we must be prepared for that possibility. In normal times, citizens don’t pay a lot of attention to public policy, and that’s why democracies occasionally drift off course. But when a crisis approaches, that’s when you see democracy engage. One by one, citizens sense the approach of a common danger and they rise to the occasion. They focus - they look beyond the symbols and rhetoric - and they begin to make very good decisions. Political majorities can shift very quickly in such times. Polls can reverse themselves almost overnight in such times. And I believe that day is now rapidly approaching.
People ask me all the time: “What can I do?” And the only answer I can offer is the answer the great abolition leader Frederick Douglass offered to a young protégé. He said, “Agitate. Agitate. Agitate.”
We have greater tools with which to communicate with our fellow citizens than ever before. The Internet and talk radio have given us powerful new ways to organize and reach people. And we have something else that’s even more important: truth and common sense.
We have based our entire form of government on the assumption that when democracies engage, they make very good decisions. The radical policies now imposed on California are already beginning to impact the economy, and will have an increasingly negative effect as they proliferate in coming days. As the impact of these policies is felt, people will begin paying close attention to policy making and the policy makers responsible, and then they’ll begin exercising something that the majority of California’s public officials have so completely lacked: simple common sense.
And at that moment, we will see a new political awakening and a new political realignment in California, and before you know it, we’ll be living once again in Reagan Country.

Alright Got A Shed

Got a bed too!

This is the bed part.  The head-pier is coming just before Thanksgiving, should take up the whole wall.

Repeated In Its Entirety

I Am NOT a Conservative.
or "Language Manipulation" is a Very Old Tool

Since the last couple of major posts have been, at least partially, about the comment threads here at TSM, I want to make what I feel is an important point that is glossed over by the modern vernacular. As I noted previously, when I find someone who says something better than I can, I let them, so the majority of this post will be other people's words - but they're important words.

The first is a quote from the introduction to David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America:

We Americans are a bundle of paradoxes. We are mixed in our origins, and yet we are one people. Nearly all of us support our Republican system, but we argue passionately (sometimes violently) among ourselves about its meaning. Most of us subscribe to what Gunnar Myrdal called the American Creed, but that idea is a paradox in political theory. As Myrdal observed in 1942, America is "conservative in fundamental principles . . . but the principles conserved are liberal, and some, indeed, are radical."

I think Myrdal was on to something there.

The second quote will be a long one. It is from the introduction to Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom, first published in 1962. Note the date of the quote contained within this excerpt:

It is extremely convenient to have a label for the political and economic viewpoint elaborated in this book. The rightful and proper label is liberalism. Unfortunately, "As a surprise, if unintended compliment, the enemies of the system of private enterprise have thought it wise to appropriate its label" (Joseph Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis New York: Oxford University Press, 1954, p. 394), so that liberalism has, in the United States, come to have a very different meaning than it did in the nineteenth century, or does today over much of Continental Europe.

As it developed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the intellectual movement that went under the name of liberalism emphasized freedom as the ultimate goal and the individual as the ultimate entity in the society. It supported laissez faire at home as a means of reducing the role of the state in economic affairs and thereby enlarging the role of the individual; it supported free trade abroad as a means of linking the nations of the world together peacefully and democratically. In political matters, it supported the development of representative government and of parliamentary institutions, reduction in the arbitrary power of the state, and protection of the civil freedoms of individuals.

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, and especially after 1930 in the United States, the term liberalism came to be associated with a very different emphasis, particularly in economic policy. It came to be associated with a readiness to rely primarily on the state rather than on private voluntary arrangements to achieve objectives regarded as desirable. The catchwords became welfare and equality rather than freedom. The nineteenth-century liberal regarded an extension of freedom as the most effective way to promote welfare and equality; the twentieth-century liberal regards welfare and equality as either prerequisites of or alternatives to freedom. In the name of welfare and equality, the twentieth-century liberal has come to favor a revival of the very policies of state intervention and paternalism against which the classical liberal fought. In the very act of turning the clock back to seventeenth-century mercantilism, he is fond of castigating true liberals as reactionary!

The change in the meaning attached to the term liberalism is more striking in economic matters than in political. The twentieth-century liberal, like the nineteenth-century liberal, favors parliamentary institutions, representative government, civil rights, and so on. Yet even in political matters, there is a notable difference. Jealous of liberty, and hence fearful of centralized power, whether in governmental or private hands, the nineteenth-century liberal favored political decentralization. Committed to action and confident of the beneficence of power so long as it is in the hands of a government ostensibly controlled by the electorate, the twentieth-century liberal favors centralized government. He will resolve any doubt about where power should be located in favor of the state instead of the city, of the federal government instead of the state, and of a world organization instead of a national government.

Because of the corruption of the term liberalism, the views that formerly went under that name are often labeled conservatism. But this is not a satisfactory alternative. The nineteenth-century liberal was a radical, both in the etymological sense of going to the root of the matter, and in the political sense of favoring major changes in social institutions. So too must be his modern heir. We do not wish to conserve the state interventions that have interfered so greatly with our freedom, though, of course, we do wish to conserve those that have promoted it. Moreover, in practice, the term conservatism has come to cover so wide a range of views, and views so incompatible with one another, that we shall no doubt see the growth of hyphenated designations, such as libertarian-conservative and aristocratic-conservative.

Partly because of my reluctance to surrender the term to proponents of measures that would destroy liberty, partly because I cannot find a better alternative, I shall resolve these difficulties by using the word liberalism in its original sense - as the doctrines pertaining to a free man.

Friedman doesn't come out and say it, but what he described was the co-opting of a term by the forces of socialism. This co-option was described by Friedrich Hayek in The Road to Serfdom in 1944, Orwell in his 1984 in 1949, and Eric Hoffer in The True Believer in 1951. But the point of this post is that Friedman was right. "Conservatism" isn't a satisfactory alternative. I am against the War on (Some) Drugs™, against the criminalization of abortion, in favor of gay marriage (but less sanguine about adoption into such pairings). I am unconcerned about what two (or more) consenting adults do sexually in the privacy of their own homes, and even less concerned about any devices those adults may use to stimulate their sexual organs, but I think pedophiles should be shot and their bodies disposed of in the nearest dumpster. I think far too many "environmentalists" in actuality hate humanity, and are disillusioned socialists looking for another attractive mass movement to attach themselves to. So too for far too many animal "rights" activists.

I am NOT a conservative. And "liberals" are NOT liberal. Nor are they "progressive," except as the term pertains to income tax rates.

My Granpappy's Guns

Grampa seems to have collected top break .32 revolvers.

The larger gun is a Harrington and Richardson "Automatic" six shot in .32 S&W Long.

The smaller is an Iver Johnson Safety Hammer "Automatic" five shot in .32 S&W.

Both are nickel plated. The Iver Johnson uses a transfer bar, the H&R has a spur hammer.

My mom's sister got his Hopkins and Allin Police Safety, I am attempting to find enough parts to return it to service. Not having much luck, it's missing a lot of parts and I can't figure out if it's a large or small frame gun.

Triumphant Return

After the heartbreaking decision to sell my 4" .45 Colt Anaconda to pay the bills, I had always wanted to get another.

The new one is a 4" Anaconda in .44 Magnum.

P.S. I am still looking for a 6" Anaconda in .45 Colt. If you spot one, buy it and I will reimburse you. And all transfers will be legal! Transferring from your FFL to one near me is not that hard. Prison is hard.

Lyrics Corner Song Virus Edition

Chris Isaak - Wicked Game

The world was on fire
No one could save me but you.
Strange what desire will make foolish people do
I never dreamed that I'd meet somebody like you
And I never dreamed that I'd lose somebody like you

No, I don't want to fall in love
[This love is only gonna break your heart]
No, I don't want to fall in love
[This love is only gonna break your heart]
With you
With you
[This love is only gonna break your heart]

What a wicked game you play
To make me feel this way
What a wicked thing to do
To let me dream of you
What a wicked thing to say
You never felt this way
What a wicked thing to do
To make me dream of you
And I don't wanna fall in love
[This love is only gonna break your heart]
And I don't want to fall in love
[This love is only gonna break your heart]

World was on fire
No one could save me but you
Strange what desire will make foolish people do
I never dreamed that I'd love somebody like you
I never dreamed that I'd lose somebody like you

No I don't wanna fall in love
[This love is only gonna break your heart
No I don't wanna fall in love
[This love is only gonna break your heart]
With you
[This love is only gonna break your heart]
With you
[This love is only gonna break your heart]
No IIIIIIIIIIIIIII
[This love is only gonna break your heart]
[This love is only gonna break your heart]

Nobody loves no one

I can't believe that Rhonda didn't give me this song with that hard drive.

Interesting

Has anyone else noticed that the "cat" names for Apple's OS X are going in the same order as World War Two and beyond German tank names?

To Receive Tolerance You Must Extend It

And this is not it.

I am officially declaring that I will no longer bother avoid offending those that are going out their way to be offensive to me.

So, do something about your hate filled organizations.

My son has a mom and a dad. I have a wife and Harvey has a husband. These are real terms describing real people in a real situation. Harvey being a mother and a wife and me being a husband and a father do not in any way affect my feelings about homosexuals; or rather, it didn't. Since you have decided that those terms are offensive, seemingly because you don't have equivalent terms, I will no longer avoid using terms that offend you.

One of the glorious things about being a white, straight, male is once I no longer want to take the effort to be egalitarian, I can just pick the hate group that matches me best and start marching. How many people have joined such organizations because of just such a small slight as this?

And before anyone gets on their high-horse about me being part of the Fundamentalist Christian Right, I am an Atheist. God doesn't enter into the discussion.

Get your hate under control and I will return the favor. Continue this bullshit and keep offending me for doing NOTHING to you, I will just be compelled to do something in return.

Oh Gee!

Thanks for this meme, Muk.  Maurice freaking Gibb and the Unibomber?

I feel like blowing up things with a synthetic beat and falsetto voice.

The Lovely Harvey's Family Ring

Our birth stones.  Mine and Harvey's framing The Boy's.

Did I Forget To Mention

That I finished The Lovely Harvey's Recce Carbine?

We dub thee Cheyenne.

16" Lightweight Del-Ton kit with a MagPul MIAD grip and Troy Medieval flash-hider.

The happy owner!

Compared with Kaylee.  Same barrel length, Kaylee is just a heavy profile with a different flash-hider.

Granpappy's Shotgun

Way back in February we sent in The Lovely Harvey's shotgun in to have the stock repaired.  We finally got it back!

Look at that wood!  The finish is like four feet deep too!

Let Us All Welcome The New Hotness

Thanks Mom. :(

Tomorrow At Noon

The Corvette will pass into my hands tomorrow at noon!

Woo HOO!

Lyrics Corner (Remember This? Edition)

"Don't Change"

I'm standing here on the ground
The sky above won't fall down
See no evil in all direction
Resolution of happiness
Things have been dark
For too long

Don't change for you
Don't change a thing for me

I found a love I had lost
It was gone for too long
Hear no evil in all directions
Execution of bitterness
Message received loud and clear

Don't change for you
Don't change a thing for me

I'm standing here on the ground
The sky above won't fall down
See no evil in all directions
Resolution of happiness
Things have been dark for too long

Don't change for you
Don't change a thing for me

Huh?

Al Gore is the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses?

Quick, someone get a generator hooked to Alfred Nobel's feet, he's got to be a spinning pretty much non-stop.

It's Been Built

"Your order number MHBJ87:
Your car was produced on 10/10. It was inspected and bayed for shipping on 10/11. As of today (10/12) it has not yet shipped. Your VIN ends with CENSORED."


So that means my new car sits in a huge parking lot in Kentucky until they find a truck to haul it here. I am getting excited!

I was going to post a generic pic of the assembly plant, but they don't seem to have one.

I am GIDDY!

Can You Think Of Anything More Embarrassing

Than dying in a plane crash while wearing a parachute?

New User Pic

It's a screenshot of my uncle Ben's personal bird I created with Wings Over Vietnam.  It's an F-8E armed with four AIM-9B Sidewinders and four 20mm Mk.12 cannon.  Last of the Gunfighters, indeed!

One Of Us One Of Us

The Lovely Harvey is now the proud, but reluctant, owner of a 15.4" MacBook Pro, 2.4Ghz!

Just like mine, in fact.

We welcome her to the hive.

Home Improvement Update

The drive is now officially finished. The epoxy has set and we can park cars there now. There was a bit of drama last week because with all the rain we'd gotten, the coating had no chance to harden. The contractor came back out and repainted it. We got three hot sunny days to help it cure and none of it peeled up when we parked on it today! Wooty woot!

Yesterday we hired the next door neighbor, who is a laid off contractor, to repair the eave over the front porch. Wendel is good! He's gonna paint it Monday. That hole has been there since we moved in, it's extremely nice to have it fixed!

We're getting lots of compliments on the improvements from the neighbors walking by; and more than a few thumbs up from people driving!

Strike Is Over

They are going back to work. Bowling Green will back to making Corvettes tomorrow.

My target production week is 08OCT07. Anticipated delivery is 14-15OCT07.

I have an order number now. I would post it and get the status number, but I worry that with posts on reality and economics and the unions that my car would get sabotaged.

On Unions

The mental disconnect that far too many people have about businesses is that a business exists to provide jobs to the workers. This is not true.

Businesses exist to provide a profit to the owners.

Jobs are a side effect of a successful business. Think about it. How many entrepreneurs started out as just them and hired workers as their business grew? Most of them. The second most common cause of business failure is from growth and the entrepreneur not being able to make the jump from doing to managing the doers. Yes, success can kill a business.

Everything in running a business comes down to a costs benefits analysis. No matter how many columns are in your accounting ledger, they all add up to one thing, is it an asset or a liability? Income or loss? Plus or minus?

Which brings us back to the price of labor. If I am forced to pay twice what my competition does for labor, and about the same price for everything else, my competition has an advantage over me. He can make his stuff cheaper than I can. That means he can sell his product for less than I can and still make a profit. If my product is interchangeable with his in the eyes of the customer, then he's going to sell more than me. To compete with him, I have to convince the customer that there's something about my product that makes it worth the extra money.

This is where the appeals to emotion begin. I cannot cite facts that my product is truly better, it just costs more because I had to spend more to make it.

If I cannot get my labor costs down to the same level as the competition, I have to find other ways to reduce the cost to make the product. Like cheaper materials. Like designs that are cheaper to make and don't last as long. This path often leads to my product being both more expensive and inferior to the competition. This situation leaves me with only the customers who have fully bought into the emotional appeals.

Remember, a business exists to make the owner money. As a side effect, workers have jobs and earn money too. If the company becomes unprofitable, for any reason, the owners will not be making money. If the owner is not making money, why keep the doors open?

No Vette For YOUUUUUUUU!

UAW is on strike.

I think I will should cancel my order and do something sensible with the money.

Finished But For The Curing

Tomorrow evening we get to park on it!

The pile of dirt is gone, and we still have to get the mailbox back up.  Need a post hole digger for that.

Almost Done

Just gotta remove their pile of dirt and get the mail box back up.  We have to give a couple of days for the decorative part to cure.

A Day Late For Shoot Like A Pirate Day

Wednesday's Progress