Light blogging/commenting…

No connectivity tonight… Maybe tomorrow…

Go read the folks on the sidebar.

Posted from my iPhone.

Contrasting Ads…

What a difference 26 years makes…

This first one is from 1984, with President Reagan running for a second term. The Reagan reelection campaign set the standard for modern political advertising with its fabled “Morning in America” series… This one is considered one of the best political ads ever done!



And this one is this year…



Quite a contrast isn’t it?

Need I say more?  I don’t think so.

VOTE on Nov 6th, I don’t care WHO you vote for, but please exercise your rights!

Empty Chair, Empty Suit…

I don’t see much difference… Don’t know about y’all…


Actually, I’d PREFER the empty chair, less chance of him screwing anything else up!!!

Just sayin…

Care and Feeding…

Let me start by saying this is what “I” do, each person has their own ways; but based on a conversation yesterday, I’m offering this up for comments/criticism…  OBTW, it was the Airdales against the SWOs and the Army…

How often do you take care of your EDCs???

Daily, weekly, monthly, 12th of never???

Do you have a plan? A vague thought? When ever your remember it? Or it gets too dirty to shoot anymore?

Being an old fart, and growing up with blued/wood furniture guns I’m ‘paranoid’ about rust. Any time it rains/gun gets wet, it gets wiped down at the minimum. 

Weekly (Sunday night), I bore snake the gun, lube the rails and wipe it down with a silicon cloth.  I also change out mags (both in the gun and the spare), unloading the old and loading new.  I also (now) check for primer strikes, condition of the rounds (set back), and wipe down and condition check the holster and belt too.

Monthly first weekend of the month, (if I haven’t shot in the interim), full cleaning, function check, dry fire practice with a Laserlyte from various carrys (belt, with/without jacket, ankle).

Why?  Because I want my tools to WORK!  Everybody hears about the cop or F-I-B who shows up for qualification with the gun corroded into the holster…

Also, being an ex-aviator, we were always taught attention to detail!!! Cause if you didn’t the probablility was you’d end up DEAD!

And maintenance is a routine operation in the aviation world. 

Now that the pistol is clean, what about the light?  How long since you’ve wiped it down?  Changed the batteries? Made sure it works???

Now I will tell you I consider electronics as nothing more than holders for dead batteries (too many years of cheap military goose neck flashlights and strobes that seemed to fail in the first 30 seconds)…

I figured I use my EDC flashlights on an average of 10 minutes a week, for a variety of reasons.  So every three months, I change the battery(s); this is to save me from the dead battery syndrome, and if worst comes to worst I’m going to have at least a ‘half’ charge as the worst case average. 

And knives??? Same questions, but since I’m lazy, go over to EIA’s blog HERE, on care and feeding of knives… He lays it out well, and with options.

Ammo? How old IS that ammo in your EDC?  The worst I’ve seen was my own family, my uncle left me a 1917, and I picked it up in the mid-90s from his wife.  It was still loaded!!! And the ammo, you might ask?  WCC 1943!!!

So that ammo had been in the gun for 50 years!  We did go ‘test’ it, and it fired, but I swear one round just barely made it out of the barrel!  It hit the ground about 2 feet in front of the target!!!   

Last but not least, I try to shoot both mags of carry ammo at least once a quarter through both the primary carry and the BUG.  That forces me to cycle through ammo on a fairly routine basis!

What did I miss?  Or what do you do differently???

Comments/criticism??? 

Kilted to Kick Cancer Bleg…

As you’ve noticed, there’s something new at the top of the header.  It’s that time of year, and once again I’m willing to be humiliated by Ambulance Driver, Jay from MArooned and others to try to get a few donations to support men’s cancer issues…

We don’t have a Komen for the Cure on the men’s side, so this drive was put together by some Paramedics and some of us gun bloggers.  Last year we raised over $11,000 in about three weeks. 

Our goal this year is $50,000 in a month.  The two ‘options’ are the Prostate Cancer Society (the KTKC banner), which targets specifically prostate cancer, the other option LiveStrong (the LiveStrong banner) supports testicular cancer.

It IS important for men to get checked, especially as we get older.

My ex-Father-in-law has advanced prostate cancer, and he is untreatable at this time.  He’s basically waiting for the cancer to take him…

He’d never gotten checked, nor had a physical in the past 10 years…

One of my co-workers is now a prostate cancer survivor, based on his ‘wellness’ physical last year. His PSA was 11ng/mL where 4-6 is considered normal for his age.

He had the biopsy, the chemo and is now back working and looking forward to many more healthy years!

NONE of the donations come to us, they all go directly to the selected agency.  If you can, throw a buck or two their way. 

Thanks for taking the time to read this! If nothing else, get checked; for the ladies, get your hubbies checked!!!
 
Who knows, the life you save later just ‘might’ be your own, or somebody important to you…

 

Sigh…


Kalifornia is at it again…

“The state Senate on Wednesday approved a measure allowing up to 450,000 illegal immigrants in California to get state driver’s licenses once they are awarded work permits under a new federal program providing a reprieve from deportation.”

Be prepared for more accidents and higher premiums, Californicators!

Full article HERE!

h/t JP

Over the top PCism…

I’m sorry, but THIS (go to page 8) is just beyond the pale, over the top, peter principle in action…


Watch your mouth — everyday phrases like “hold down the fort” and “rule of thumb” are potentially offensive bombshells. 
At least according to the State Department.

Chief Diversity Officer John Robinson penned a column in the department’s latest edition of “State Magazine ” advising readers on some rather obscure Ps and Qs. 

Robinson ticked off several common phrases and went on to explain why their roots are racially or culturally insensitive. The result was a list of no-nos that could easily result in some tongue-tied U.S. diplomats, particularly in an administration that swaps “war on terror” for “overseas contingency operation” and once shied away from using the word “terrorism.” 


For instance, Robinson warned, “hold down the fort” is a potentially insulting reference to American Indian stereotypes. 


He singled out another phrase, “Going Dutch,” as a “negative stereotype portraying the Dutch as cheap.” 


And “rule of thumb,” he wrote, can according to women’s activists refer “to an antiquated law, whereby the width of a husband’s thumb was the legal size of a switch or rod allowed to beat his wife.” 


You ‘really’ have to wonder if this is all these people have to do every day is sit around and think up crap like this…  I realize it IS Foggy Bottom, the bastion of oh so social and politically connected Staties, who hate the military (and do everything they can to prevent military action), but come on… GET A LIFE!

Oh yeah, class is over (YEA!), and the presentations this morning were NO questions allowed!  She was sitting over in her corner, glaring daggers at all of us, and kept trying to ‘ask’ (read pontificate) but none of the speakers ever acknowledged her!!! When I was heading for the door,  she was bending the instructor’s ear about how ‘badly’ she had been treated and how she was going to ‘report’ him for his attitude.  Ironically, the quietest guy in the course (late 40s early 50s Indian) stepped up and told the instructor (in that perfect schoolhouse English English) that he would be MORE than happy to provide the ‘truth’ of the class conduct and the treatment she received.  As I cleared the door, I heard her winding up, and I just broke and ran for the elevator!!!

One worth watching…

Got this one via the mil-email chain…

Historic pics from Kingman in 1947-48 as all the bombers were destroyed…

As you watch, take a look at the numbers of bombing missions these birds survived, and how many were patched in various ways and places!


Another thing I find interesting is the nose art, and the preponderance of female images.  Some of these birds still had crew names on the various positions, and one can only wonder the stories those birds could tell, if they could talk!!!

Things that make you go HUH???

This one just flat pisses me off… And I ‘know’ George Bush 41 or 43 would NOT and DID NOT do this…

On August 6, 2011, 30 US service members were killed when a CH-47 Chinook helicopter they were being transported in crashed in Wardak province, Afghanistan. It was the deadliest single loss for U.S. forces in the decade-long war in Afghanistan. 17 members of the elite Navy SEALs were killed in the crash.

Karen and Billy Vaughn, parents of Aaron Carson Vaughn, received a form letter from the President. It was signed by an electric pen….

That’s not all.  Karen Vaughn reached out to the parents of the other SEALs killed in that crash.
 Their letters were all the same. Form letters – signed by an electric pen.
 
Link HERE

I’m sorry, but that just @#&* pathetic! It truly shows what he thinks of the military!

This one just really makes me wonder…

What are uniformed field representatives of the Department of Justice (DOJ) Community Relations Service (CRS) doing assisting Occupy/anarchist activists outside the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Tampa?

Link HERE

And looting in NOLA… Is ANYBODY surprised???  I’m not…

Six more people were arrested in separate looting cases Wednesday in Central City, and police credit the vigilance of neighborhood residents in helping officers stop the crimes while they were still in progress.

One looting call was at a club on Martin Luther King Boulevard near South Robertson, where a man and a woman were seen breaking in by a citizen, said Lt. Frank Young of the NOPD Sixth District Investigative Unit. When police arrived, they found the couple inside, trying to steal liquor and loose change from the bar, and both were booked on looting charges, Young said.

Link HERE

And only FOUR more hours of the student from hell!  This morning, ‘somebody’ (and no it was NOT me), left a ‘present’ for her at her place in the conference room.  It was a DVD copy of the movie “Back to School”, and the ‘card’ said, “You are the Professor!”

Apparently she’s never seen it, and didn’t catch the connotation!  Tomorrow morning “may” be interesting!!! 🙂

Apocryphal Letter…

For anybody that thinks this is a joke, trust me, it’s NOT!!! I’ve added so many pages to mine, I now have to get a new one even though I have almost a year left on it… And even though I have a CURRENT passport, I’ve got to do all this crap over again…

sigh…

Dear Mrs. Ms. Sir or whatever you call yourselves:

I’m in the process of renewing my passport and still cannot believe this.

How is it that Radio Shack has my address and telephone number and knows that I bought a cable TV from them in 1987 (23 years ago), and yet, the Federal Government is still asking me where I was born and on what date.

For Christ sakes, do you guys do this by hand? Ever heard of computers?

My birth date you have in my social security file. It’s on EVERY income tax form I’ve filed for the past 30 years. It’s on my Medicarehealth insurance card and my driver’s license, it’s on the last eight damn passports I’ve had, it’s on every stupid customs declaration form I’ve had to fill out before being allowed off the plane for the last 30 years. And it’s on all those census forms that we have to do at election times.

Would somebody please take note, once and for all, that my mother’s name is Maryanne, my father’s name is Robert and I’m reasonably confident that neither name is likely to change between now and when I die.

Between you an’ me, I’ve had enough of this bureaucratic BS!

You send the application to my house, then you ask me for
my #*&#%*& address.

What is going on? You must have a gang of bureaucratic Neanderthalmorons working there!

Look at my damn picture. Do I look like Bin Laden? And “No,” I don’t want to dig up Yasser Arafat, for Christ sakes. I just want to go and park my ass on a sandy beach. And would someone please tell me, why would you give a damn whether I plan on visiting a farm in the next 15 days?

If I ever got the urge to do something weird to a chicken or a goat, believe you me, I’d sure as hell not want to tell anyone!

Well, I have to go now because I have to go to the other end of the city and get another #*@&#^@*@& copy of my birth certificate to the tune of $100.

Would it be so difficult to have all the services in the same area so I could get a new passport the same day? Nooooo, that would require planning and organization. And it would be too logical for the @&^*^%@% government.

You’d rather have us running all over the place like chickens with our heads cut off. Then, we have to find some asshole to confirm that it’s really me in the damn picture – you know, the one where we’re not allowed to smile… Hey, you know why we can’t smile?

We’re totally pissed off!

Signed
– An Irate Citizen.

P.S. Remember what I wrote about getting someone to confirm that the picture is me? Well, my family has been in the United States of America since 1776. I have served in the military for something over 35 years and have had security clearances up the ying yang. However, I have to get someone important to verify who I am – you know, someone like my doctor……. WHO WAS BORN AND RAISED IN INDIA!

I’m just having SO much fun this week… sigh… I’m thinking retirement is moving closer and closer.  Hell, depending on the election, I may just hang it up next year…