D-Day

69 years ago today, Allied forces invaded Hitler's Fortress Europa at Normandy.

Some Sad News

As most of you are probably aware, I'm a huge weather geek.  I'm involved in my local RACES/SKYWARN group and have actually deployed this spring.  Michigan isn't exactly tornado alley.

I discovered today that tornado researcher and chaser Tim Samaras, his son Paul and his chase partner Carl Young were all killed during the last tornado outbreak in Oklahoma.  You can read the Fox News article here.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the families.

Shameless Promotion

I'm going to post a little promotion for a friend.  This isn't something I do much but she just got her business started and is wanting a second store so, I thought I'd throw this out there.

If any of you make it up to Traverse City, Michigan and you're a coffee drinker, stop in to the Biggby Coffee located at 1535 South Division and have a cup.  While you're there, keep an eye out for the manager.  He's retired Detroit Red Wing Kip Miller.

Distractions

Life has been distracting me away from this blog.  Even when I come in to read through the sites on my blog roll, the posting gods have deserted me.

Finances are super tight and that causes stress of the type not conducive to creative writing.  The news is just depressing.

I missed my usual Memorial day post where I would just have posted a reminder to remember those who paid the ultimate price for liberty.

The only heartwarming thing I've seen lately was at my local WallyWorld where, wonder of wonders, they actually had 2 AR's in stock.  They didn't have jack shit for ammo, but they had the regime change rifles.  And the one was a Colt patrol rifle with an $875 price tag on it.   Not outrageous pricing.  I was shocked.  I couldn't see the face of the price tag on the other one.

I'm still alive and I still have my job, my home, my Explorer and my Cat.  If I can just get back into the swing of posting, things will get some kind of normalcy.

Ahhhh, Spring

And time for the annual spring reminders.  When the time changed, did you change the batteries in your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors?  Did you also check your weather alert radio?

A new recommendation from the National Weather Service is to program your weather radio to alert on the counties to your west and south as well as your own county.  A great idea as it gives you a little extra warning that something wicked this way comes.  Your local NWS page will provide all the SAME codes for your area.

Have you checked your shelter to make sure it has water and maybe some food for a couple days?  You know, it's always possible that you could be stuck in your shelter for a bit.  Extra meds?  Pet supplies?  A little preparedness now prevents a lot of discomfort later.

Here's a little FAQ from the Storm Prediction Center.

If you're fascinated by weather and you would like to help your community, consider getting your Ham radio license and participating in Skywarn.  The ARRL has a page which will point you to your local Ham club.  If you happen to be in Michigan and you're a ham, give me a shout if you can.  KD8UES.  In southwest Michigan, I'm on the SMARS repeater and when I'm at work in Grand Rapids, I'm probably listening to the link repeater system.  In Lansing, I'm on the local Lansing repeater.  If you're already a ham, you know where to find the frequencies and PL codes, if you're not, what are you waiting for? 

Happy Birthday You Beautiful Thing

The 1911 is 102 yrs old today.  Here's a nice snippet from the Anti Idiotarian Rottweiler.

Reading

It has recently occurred to me that I haven't taken the time to sit down for any recreational reading in quite a long time.  I'm going to have to fix that soon.

I recently discovered that I have allowed myself to fall way behind the curve in that, I have not yet read Larry Correia's  Monster Hunter International.  I really need to fix that. 

In discovering this oversight, I think I've run across a couple more authors I need to check out.  Guys like Michael Z. Williamson, Tom Kratman and Brad Torgerson.  Hell, I haven't even taken the time to look for the latest offerings of long time favorites like David Weber and John Ringo.

Yeah, I gotta fix that soon.

Just a Little Update

Remember back about January 3 when I posted about writing your congresscritters about the new Assault Weapon Ban?  Well, I got a response from Senate Whore Carl Levin.  Would you like to read it?  I thought you might.

Dear Mr. Warthog:

 

     Thank you for contacting me about gun safety issues. I appreciate you sharing your views with me.  

 

     I support sensible gun safety laws and strict enforcement of those laws to help prevent crimes, suicides and violence committed with firearms. I support the steps President Obama outlined recently to curb the gun violence that plagues our nation, and I believe Congress can and should work to enact legislation to prevent gun violence without infringing on the rights of law-abiding citizens.

 

     I was an original cosponsor of the Brady Law (P.L.103-159). This law requires prospective handgun purchasers to undergo criminal background checks before purchasing a firearm from a licensed dealer. The background check system is able to make 92 percent of background check determinations on the spot, and since 1994, has prevented more than 1.5 million firearm purchases. Additionally, according to Centers for Disease Control statistics, since the Brady Law went into effect, the number of gun deaths in the United States dropped 22 percent, from 39,595 in 1993 to 30,769 in 2007. The number of gun homicides dropped by more than 29 percent, from 17,024 in 1993 to 12,129 in 2007.  

 

     While the Brady Law has been successful in reducing gun violence, I believe more has to be done. For example, only 60 percent of all gun sales in the United States take place at licensed federal dealers, where background checks are mandatory. The remaining 40 percent of gun sales are conducted by unlicensed individual sellers, often at gun shows, and a background check is not required. This means that across our nation, any dangerous individual can go to a gun show and purchase a deadly weapon without any form of background check. To close this ‘gun show loophole,’ I am a cosponsor of the Gun Show Background Check Act. This bill would enact the common sense principle that anyone who wants to purchase a firearm at a gun show should be able to pass a simple background check. Ten national police organizations support closing this loophole.  

 

     Additionally, I am a cosponsor of the Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act, a bill that seeks to reduce gun violence by keeping firearms out of the hands of terrorists and criminals. Although hard to believe, nothing in current law prohibits individuals on terrorist watch lists from purchasing firearms, unless they fall into another disqualifying category. This “terror gap” in federal law must be closed, and this bill would do just that. This legislation would deny the transfer of a firearm when a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) background check reveals that the prospective purchaser is a known or suspected terrorist and the Attorney General has a reasonable belief that the purchaser may use the firearm in connection with terrorism. Keeping guns out of the hands of terrorists is just common sense.  

 

     I also have always supported the rights of sportsmen and hunters.  Hunting is a way of life for millions of Americans and plays an integral role in modern wildlife management. But military style assault weapons have no sporting purpose.  Because of these weapons, our nation’s citizens are in greater danger and police officers across the country are encountering criminals armed with highly lethal military style weapons.

 

     To support our law enforcement community and to save lives, I am a cosponsor of the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013.  This legislation would prevent the future possession, manufacture, sale and importation of assault-type weapons while grandfathering weapons lawfully possessed at the date of the bill’s enactment. It would ban firearms with detachable magazines and military style features, such as grenade launchers, protruding pistol grips, and barrel shrouds. It would support law enforcement officers across our nation, who should not be forced to confront lawbreakers toting military arms. And it would protect the rights of hunters by specifically naming thousands of firearms with legitimate sporting, sentimental or other value that would remain legal to possess.  

 

     This bill also would ban high capacity ammunition magazines. Studies have shown that high capacity ammunition magazines are used in 31 to 41 percent of fatal police shootings in cities across our nation. They also have been used by the perpetrators of numerous mass shootings, including at Columbine High School, Virginia Tech, the Tucson shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and 19 others, the attack on a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, and the horrifying shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The Newtown shooting alone left twenty six people dead, twenty of them children.

 

     We must not wait until more places are added to this heartbreaking list. We can and should act swiftly to protect our families and loved ones from mass shootings. These measures have the overwhelming support of law enforcement communities around our nation, who have implored us to make changes to stop the flood of these types of weapons into the hands of those who would use them for harm. I will continue to work for common-sense gun safety measures.    

 

     Thank you again for contacting me.

 

Sincerely,

Carl Levin

levin.senate.gov 

Go figure, I tell him not to support it and the bastard is a co-sponsor.

Android v. Blackberry

I've been meaning to write this for a while.

The background goes like this:  I have had 3 smartphones.  All Android based.  I started with a Samsung Moment (which I loved), wound up with an HTC Hero (which will be taped to a target at Freedom Firearms soon) and I now have a Kyocera Rise (which I also love).

Overall, I love the Android OS.  It's fairly fast, easy to work with and it does a lot in a simple manner.

I needed a work specific phone.  I have too many phone calls during the day and I'm sleeping during the day.  Someone gave me a Blackberry for free.

What.  A.  Piece.  Of.  Shit!

It's slow as hell on the same network.  It's hard to work with.  It's got too much proprietary crap in it so it won't do the most basic things, like open a word attachment in an email.  Certain numbers I have to call for work I have to call 4 or 5 times because the damn thing spontaneously hangs up.  I go to the work server to get my email and I have to try to sign in 6 times because it goes to some odd place when I type the first character of my user name then 5 or 6 more times because it does it again when I type in the first character of my password.

Half the time, the trackball just does whatever it wants to do rather than what I tell it to do.

Should I have a day come when I don't need this phone anymore, I'm going to paint it with tannerite and shoot it.

If you have a choice the choice is clear.  Fuck Blackberry, get the Android.

Militias

You may have to be patient with this rant.  It's been in my head all night but it very well may ramble and wander a bit more than my normal rantings.

Anyone who reads this blog on a somewhat regular basis probably knows that I have a fair handle on what the Constitutional Militia is and what it does.  It can certainly be said that while I'm not an expert, I'm better informed than the lamestream media is.

I have no problem with the average citizen militia and I probably would agree with them more often than not.  I'm not associated with one, but I would be willing to bet I'd probably get along with them and their goals pretty well.  Most of them are really just trying to help and many are actually used by local authorities in the case of search and rescue and other things where extra manpower is both needed and appreciated.

Sadly, I think that things are brewing.  No wait, scratch that, things have been brewing for 60 years or so now.  I think the boil over point is almost upon us.  I think that the time for the citizen militia to seriously start thinking about their original purpose is coming and soon.  Here, I'm going to talk about the one weakness I perceive in the whole militia thing and how I think it came to be.

Communication.

I believe that there are some in government currently, that are trying to incite an armed conflict in America.  I also happen to think that if those people get their way, they're going to get their asses shot off but I'll address that later.  I think that these people seriously underestimate and fail to respect the strength of the citizen militias or constitutional militias in the various states.  They truly believe that the bulk of the people will roll over and take it.  I think they're wrong and that a significant portion of the populace have just about had enough.  I have exactly no evidence to back this up, let's just call it a feeling.

The one big stumbling block is communication.  Let me run with this, it could take a bit and be a crooked line.  The mass media has been painting the militia as a very evil monster for a decade or more.  They've become very secretive and who can really blame them.  They want to do their own thing and be left alone the same as the rest of us but they've been painted as psycho demons by an uninformed and uninterested media for a long time.  This makes things difficult on a couple counts.  One of those is recruiting.  Not really a part of this but just for fun, I'll throw out that I'd love to help where I can but I don't know who to talk to about it.  The other, as I see it, would be communications.  Who is in charge in the local area?  The region?  The state?  Nationally?

At the state level, do the militia leaders ever meet?  Have they discussed what would be considered an action level event for them?  Has this been agreed upon nationally?

I read all kinds of posts about the "jack booted thugs" but never anything about when We the People start shooting back.  the only thing I've seen on this is Mike Vanderboegh's No Fort Sumters missive which I will say I agree with.  The tyrants must be the aggressors.

I know there are plenty of folks out there that don't believe that the citizen militia could stand up against the military.  I ask them this:  Are you certain?  I believe we outnumber the current military by about 4:1.  Only a small percentage of the current military is made up of actual shooters, most of them are support and supply troops.  Do you really believe that the military would call upon the full force of their technology and firepower on US soil against US citizens?  I don't.  In fact, I expect almost 2/3 of them to not participate at all.  I don't think the current administration enjoys anywhere near the support that they think they have.  Remember what an insurgency did to the Russians in Afghanistan in the 80's?  Chased them out of the country.  Top that off with all of the political correctness nonsense that is prevalent in today's military, the sensitivity training and all and I frankly don't think they're going to have much chance against an enraged uprising by We the People.  Don't forget that percentage of the current military that are going to remember and uphold their oaths to support and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.

Don't count out the 100's of 1000's of veterans that also remember that oath.  It doesn't have an expiration date.

If they haven't already, I think it would be wise for the various state militia units to start getting together and deciding on what the trigger point is going to be.  I think they're going to have to be ready because I think the current administration may well be deliberately trying to pull that trigger.  I hope I'm wrong, I really do but I fear I'm not and it's going to get ugly fast.

What Have You Done

To help stop Diane Frankenfeinstein's latest attack on law abiding gun owners?  Have you written your Senators and Representatives in Washington?  Have you written your Senators and Representatives in your home states?

You may be saying, "now wait a minute here Warthog, this is a federal bill, what good would writing my state people be?" and you'd be asking a pretty fair question.  If we could get a bunch of the states to pass State resolutions telling the federal government that they will neither accept nor enforce a weapons or magazine ban and that they will not permit registration of firearms to be enforced upon their citizens, then the whores of congress might take notice.

Leave all of the other arguments aside and think about this:  If Frankenfeinstein's bill gets passed, it will make your 1911 or Sig P226 or Glock 17 or XD an NFA weapon.  If you're not familiar with what that entails, you had better look it up in a hurry.  One does not simply travel wherever one wishes to when in possession of an NFA weapon.  You conceal carry from Michigan to Florida in your car now?  You won't if this bill passes.  You can't just cross state lines with an NFA weapon.  You have to clear the movement through BATFEieio first.

Here's a chunk from it's...I mean her website:

• Bans large-capacity ammunition feeding devices capable of accepting more than 10 rounds. 
• Protects legitimate hunters and the rights of existing gun owners by:
• Grandfathering weapons legally possessed on the date of enactment;
• Exempting over 900 specifically-named weapons used for hunting or sporting purposes; and
• Exempting antique, manually-operated, and permanently disabled weapons.
• Requires that grandfathered weapons be registered under the National Firearms Act, to include:
• Background check of owner and any transferee;
• Type and serial number of the firearm;
• Positive identification, including photograph and fingerprint;
•  
• Certification from local law enforcement of identity and that possession would not violate State or local law; and
• Dedicated funding for ATF to implement registration.

Want to take a minute to notice that there is no grandfather clause included for self defense?

Please don't take this lightly.  Start writing now.

Merry Christmas

There, I said it.  Merry Christmas. 

Merry Christmas and blessings to all of my readers.  My wish for you is that this season brings peace, love and joy to you and your families.