My Grendel will take the name of the wife of a good friend of mine.
Bobbie-Jo.
Tuesday, 8 January 2008
QFTD, New Hampshire Primary edition
[Fred Thompson]’s flailing because he is running his campaign the way people say they want to see a campaign run, not the way they actually do. (In-depth policy positions, not sound-bite politics). The American people are like the chick that says she wants a nice guy but invariably runs off with the womanizing prick.Yu-Ain commenting at Jeff Soyer's place.
Not an original observation, necessarily, but succinctly and balefully put.
Tuesday, 1 January 2008
a feature, not a bug
John Fund:
We nutcase Libertarians thought we were doing the rest of the world a favor by holding a nominating convention instead of primaries. We spared the gummint the expense of helping us select our candidates. We suffered the divisions and defections that come with nominating a controversial candidate. And to the extent possible we aired our dirty laundry among ourselves.
Despite it all, we kept nominating people we thought had their heads in the right place.
Some disadvantages we suffered, or could have, such as a well-financed but philosophically crippled candidate who flooded the convention with his people (the annoying example of Howard Stern in NY). Mitt Romney is doing little different, but through a government-sanctioned primary process that culminates before the convention. Not much left to do in Minneapolis but get hammered and make the back rooms smoky.
Attracting party activists and donors and giving them a disproportionate influence was a feature, not a bug. If it mattered enough to you to send yourself and bring money, you had a place and a voice. People who tacitly disagree with you from the comfort of home need not be counted, rational ignorance keeps some people out of the caucus or convention, and some people to whom it genuinely matters still won't make a showing for whatever reason.
Libertarians do not consider money an 'evil' but a badge of accomplishment, so donors didn't automatically evoke images of hook-nosed financiers chomping cigars.
I'll concede that weird rules of conduct of the caucuses, such as standing in a corner to be counted, seem to be skewed to make their outcome favorable to party hacks. But every human institution, large or small, seeks to manipulate the processes toward a given result chosen by insiders.
It comes with the territory, it is a flaw inherent in all public dealings. State Libertarian parties tend to be too small and too poor, and probably too quarrelsome, for such a thing as "party insiders" to emerge and take power over them. Lucky us.
I'd rather see fewer primaries and more quirky local processes wholly in the hands of parties, than the spectacle of States trying to preempt one another by moving primaries earlier.
If anyone criticizes the Iowa caucuses, do so over who's running them and how, stressing the importance of ground rules to the perceived fairness and efficacy of the process, and perhaps shaming their party officers into adjusting them. Don't criticize them for failing to have a primary---though it carries the imprimatur and regulation of the government, it is just as fallible.
The caucuses are run by the state parties, and unlike primary or general elections aren't regulated by the government. They were designed as an insiders' game to attract party activists, donors and political junkies and give them a disproportionate influence in the process.He makes it sound like a bad thing.
We nutcase Libertarians thought we were doing the rest of the world a favor by holding a nominating convention instead of primaries. We spared the gummint the expense of helping us select our candidates. We suffered the divisions and defections that come with nominating a controversial candidate. And to the extent possible we aired our dirty laundry among ourselves.
Despite it all, we kept nominating people we thought had their heads in the right place.
Some disadvantages we suffered, or could have, such as a well-financed but philosophically crippled candidate who flooded the convention with his people (the annoying example of Howard Stern in NY). Mitt Romney is doing little different, but through a government-sanctioned primary process that culminates before the convention. Not much left to do in Minneapolis but get hammered and make the back rooms smoky.
Attracting party activists and donors and giving them a disproportionate influence was a feature, not a bug. If it mattered enough to you to send yourself and bring money, you had a place and a voice. People who tacitly disagree with you from the comfort of home need not be counted, rational ignorance keeps some people out of the caucus or convention, and some people to whom it genuinely matters still won't make a showing for whatever reason.
Libertarians do not consider money an 'evil' but a badge of accomplishment, so donors didn't automatically evoke images of hook-nosed financiers chomping cigars.
I'll concede that weird rules of conduct of the caucuses, such as standing in a corner to be counted, seem to be skewed to make their outcome favorable to party hacks. But every human institution, large or small, seeks to manipulate the processes toward a given result chosen by insiders.
It comes with the territory, it is a flaw inherent in all public dealings. State Libertarian parties tend to be too small and too poor, and probably too quarrelsome, for such a thing as "party insiders" to emerge and take power over them. Lucky us.
I'd rather see fewer primaries and more quirky local processes wholly in the hands of parties, than the spectacle of States trying to preempt one another by moving primaries earlier.
If anyone criticizes the Iowa caucuses, do so over who's running them and how, stressing the importance of ground rules to the perceived fairness and efficacy of the process, and perhaps shaming their party officers into adjusting them. Don't criticize them for failing to have a primary---though it carries the imprimatur and regulation of the government, it is just as fallible.
Saturday, 29 December 2007
One piece at a time
An AR15 flattop upper is being assembled around an Alexander Arms 6.5mm Grendel 16" barrel. I lack the muzzle device, gotta work that yet. Acquired like Johnny Cash's automobile, one piece at a time.
TCM is pushing me toward a 1.5x long-eye-relief optic and I have one picked out.
Thursday, 27 December 2007
We're callin' out the Cabinet Man . . .
TCM and I have exchanged a few hairy eyeballs over the last few weeks. He's a Paulist, I'm For Fred. TCM has seen the sights a girl can see from Brooklyn Heights, what a crazy pair!
I'm hoping he'll go back over the last few emails and assemble them into a manifesto, and we can bat this topic back and forth in this space.
Looks like only my devoted other five regular readers can draw him out. I keep pointing him to this and that criticism or commentary on Ron Paul's pursuit of the GOP nomination.
What'll it be, and why: Dr No With The Veto, or the Frederalist?
Note that my commenting system still sucks. If anybody can tell me how to scoop up all my comments from enetation and transfer them to the commenting engine here at Blogger, I'm all ears.
I'm hoping he'll go back over the last few emails and assemble them into a manifesto, and we can bat this topic back and forth in this space.
Looks like only my devoted other five regular readers can draw him out. I keep pointing him to this and that criticism or commentary on Ron Paul's pursuit of the GOP nomination.
What'll it be, and why: Dr No With The Veto, or the Frederalist?
Note that my commenting system still sucks. If anybody can tell me how to scoop up all my comments from enetation and transfer them to the commenting engine here at Blogger, I'm all ears.
Monday, 17 December 2007
Maybe it was for The Children
Hooooweeeeee!!! The very green United States Air Force chose to recycle their spent fifty-cal brass:
The empty cartridge case of the .50 Browning Machine Gun weighs about 900 grains give or take, yielding 7 3/4 cases to the pound (corrections? please email).
I am presuming that Gummint-contract .50 BMG brass is indeed brass, rather than steel or aluminum, meaning it can be reassembled a couple more times before it's worn out and has no value over the material of which it's made. I am also presuming that when Uncle Sugar buys new .50 BMG ammo, he pays about the same for that new case by the trainload as a private citizen does for once-fired in boxes of 100. If I'm off, it's not by far.
The Air Force got snookered, which isn't surprising, or didn't want that brass to find its way to the market for reloading by private fifty-cal citizens, which isn't surprising either. Whether this brass would be sent back to Uncle Sugar's mills to become new .50 BMG or jobbed out to the market, USAF still screwed themselves, and You, Mr and Mrs Taxpayer, out of about $300k per year at just one base.
By destroying it.The 1st Special Operations Wing at Hurlburt Field, Fla., has found an innovative way to turn spent brass into cash for the wing’s quality of life programs.
The wing just set up an “ordnance deformer machine” that will recycle about 240,000 pounds of spent ammunition casings each year. Then the base can sell the scrap for about $70,000.The cases go for about $.20 each to recreational shooters, with no processing. Ammo prices are up recently, due to cost of materials, so $.20 might be ridiculously low.
The empty cartridge case of the .50 Browning Machine Gun weighs about 900 grains give or take, yielding 7 3/4 cases to the pound (corrections? please email).
I am presuming that Gummint-contract .50 BMG brass is indeed brass, rather than steel or aluminum, meaning it can be reassembled a couple more times before it's worn out and has no value over the material of which it's made. I am also presuming that when Uncle Sugar buys new .50 BMG ammo, he pays about the same for that new case by the trainload as a private citizen does for once-fired in boxes of 100. If I'm off, it's not by far.
The Air Force got snookered, which isn't surprising, or didn't want that brass to find its way to the market for reloading by private fifty-cal citizens, which isn't surprising either. Whether this brass would be sent back to Uncle Sugar's mills to become new .50 BMG or jobbed out to the market, USAF still screwed themselves, and You, Mr and Mrs Taxpayer, out of about $300k per year at just one base.
They have their own funny salute, too
HT Instapundit, Ricketyclick notes that if the Second Amendment speaks only to "members of a well-regulated militia" then it is incumbent on us to get ourselves well-regulated.
He hits the nail on the head, even down to the prized amateur radio license.
Too bad this idea is, what, a century old? It's called Scouting.
Though I imagine the Boy Scouts of America have allowed some creep into their mission and let marksmanship fall from favor; if this is so, it is also reversible with concerted effort.
He hits the nail on the head, even down to the prized amateur radio license.
Too bad this idea is, what, a century old? It's called Scouting.
Though I imagine the Boy Scouts of America have allowed some creep into their mission and let marksmanship fall from favor; if this is so, it is also reversible with concerted effort.
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