Nordinger

  I read Jay every time I see him.  He's a thoughful and calm guy with many interests and a love of language.  This is one of his typical pieces.  If you don't hit National Review now and then you are missing a treat.

  Would love to read what he thinks about the Tea Party protests.

John Lott won't shut up.

  Making sense about being armed on campus, the high seas, well....anywhere.  The only place it doesn't help is on 20/20.

  It's a human right.  Just don't tell the press.

San Jacinto Surrender site found.

  You gotta love archeology.  They found the site of an organized surrender at San Jacinto.

  This is quite possibly the surrender site of Col Juan Almonte, a skilled and experienced Mexican General who had been with Santa Anna at the Alamo and throughout the Texas Campaign.  While Santa Ana fled in the uniform of a private, Almonte saved himself and hundreds of his men when he organized them and surrendered in the chaos of San Jacinto.   He seems to have given realistic council to both sides after the battle and conducted himself with honor and bravery.

  The Colonel is certainly an admirable figure in Texas and Mexican history.  

Revolution of the Pitiful.

  I think a lot of people are waking up this morning after yesterday's protest and thinking: "It's not just me."

  I've been a hardhead about government intrusion, waste and idiocy for a while now and yesterday I saw several thousand of my fellow Tylerites who were willing to come together for a few minutes to say the same thing.  This morning I got up and fired up my pitiful free blog and looked at the hit counter on the pitiful free video I put up and thought to myself, " I'm right about this.  The only threat to my personal freedom isn't seagoing Somalis or some AK waving lunatic mussleman, it's this idiotic bovine by-product of a bureacracy, JUST LIKE I THOUGHT."

  And of course, it ain't just the Fed's.  Like my Senator Eltife says, its the Appraisal district, the courts, the county, the city, the state, all of it.  Six pieces of paper to ride down the highway?  One out of ten Texans has an outstanding arrest warrant?  More people in jail than any time in history?  40% of my paycheck?

  So except for Governor Perry yesterday, WHERE WERE THEY?  The elected folks?  The folks who say they wanted office to make things better?  And the public employees who work for on the public payroll?  And the folks who say they protect and serve?  We didn't see a ONE.

  The press?  They better get their act together.  

  And where is the President who said he was going to bring hope and change?

  This isn't over.  And the hardheads are RIGHT.

Update:  Next stop, Independence Day, July 4.  Until then put your sign in your yard.

Update II:  MSNBC helpfully explains: "You're all idiots, plus, listen to all our really witty  sexual innuendos!"

Update III: Ok then: You're white power racists!  And stupid.  And not very many of you.  Plus more sex jokes!

Update IV:  I think everyone who was there will be proud to have stood up first as this movement finds it's voice and message.  I am.

Texas Hold "em with Rick Perry.

  I'll see you a 10th Amendment and raise you a secession.

  I'll have what he's drinking, plus a round for the house.

Udate:  Keith Oblermann helpfully explains:  You're an idiot!  Plus more "teabagging" jokes!

Update II:  Rasmussen poll says we love the Feds with all our hearts.  So there.

Tyler Tea Party! (and Newspaper Fail)

  Speaking truth to power.

Protest Babe.

 Ha!

  Amen.

Power to the People!

  3000 folks?  Just guessing based on my own count and asking several others.  This is about 1/5th of the crowd.  I'm going to count the heads and try and get a closer estimate.

  Very friendly crowd.  Very polite and considerate of each other.  More women than men.  Lots of kids.  All ages of people.

  Tea Party video up later tonight.  I was shocked at how many people were there...and the signs.  Wait until you see the signs in the vid.  Funniest one was: Don't Worry America!  Barney Frank is behind you!  Of course, I'm a sucker for a funny line.

  Brother, are printed signs cranked out by professional protesters going to look LAME from here on out.  Marks-a-lot that truth to power, baby!

  I don't think anyone had ever been to, (or organized) a protest before.  New folks.  Grass roots.  That's a very important fact.

  Folks standing on picnic tables, fountains, climbing trees.  I think we even trampled a little city shrubbery.

  Somebody said they saw one policeman.  That was one more than they needed, this is the law and order crowd.  Folks all seemed as surprised as I was about the fact that they weren't the only one there.

  Lousy audio system.  I bet it will be better next time.

  And newspapers? 

  The Texas Legislature passes a RESOLUTION telling the Feds to get back behind their constitutional limits.  The Governor, Rick Perry, standing in the rotunda of the capitol on the Texas Star gives a speech saying the Feds have grown too big, gotten too intrusive and need to get out of Texas affairs and business.

  Drudge headlines it.  Rush talks about it.  Glenn Beck talks about it.  

  On the front page of the Dallas Morning News this morning:  nothing.  Tyler Paper: nothing.

  This isn't news?  

  What a useless waste of natural resources the newspapers have become.  

  In the future, when I try and describe what a ridiculous thing newspapers were, I guess I'll mostly say they were good for crossword puzzles and for puppies to pee on while you were housebreaking them.

Update:  Try this.  PJTV.  If you aren't reading Instapundit, you aren't keeping up.

Update:  Tea Party Video UP!

UpdateII: Now Gov. Perry says we could secede if we wanted to.  Let's see if THIS get's coverage.  Holy Independent Republic.

  

  

Beaver Blues

  Dead Native Engineer.  

  At the Museum site the snake is consistant.  Always on his root ball.  I'm not for a second thinking that there is one snake per 500 yards of creekbottom...I'm missing snakes like mad.  That makes me a little nervous.  Perfect habitat for snakeanity.  Ought to be some monsters rolled up in the sun somewhere close.

  Too close.

  Nothing in the minnow trap except a dead minnow and a hunk of rotten venison.  I guess this minnow didn't stay in school.

  Nothing on the game cam except me and two other squirrels.  I baited it with corn.  Coon riot night tonight!

  Nice rain a few nights ago and the sandbars all boogied around.  My TJC plastic yardstick washed downstream but I retrieved it.  The beaver dam looked un-serviced and the traps are gone.  I was betting the trapper killed a couple of native engineers when I walked up on the body of one concealed under some leaves in the woods.  This is going to be stanky for a month.  Not good.  When I'm out here pursuing my artistic vision I don't want to be gassed by 50 lbs of decomposing aquatic mammal.  Maybe I ought to use him as a turtle lure instead of the trap and venison.  That would be the zen approach.  He's already past the organ harvest stage.

  If this is the CHIEF engineer, Lake Robert is history.

  I hope he had a Christian burial, though this looks more like a murder disposal.

  If I can chance upon a dead beaver, why aren't I seeing the snakes?

Eagle up.

  If you are missing the Sutton Lake eaglecam, you are missing a treat.  The chick is getting big.  They are homeschooling.  Working folks.  Traditional nuclear family.  They even eat free range, organic, fresh fish six times a day.  They are pro-life, having not given up on an egg that didn't hatch.  All the conservative values.  When this chick is old enough they are going to counsel it about sex, drugs, gangs, guns.  It doesn't get much better than this.

  Linked on the sidebar and here.

Tyler Tea Party.

  Downtown on the square at 12:00 noon.  I'm going but wondering what the police response is going to be.  Somewhere tomorrow the police are going to be gassing and beating protesters. 

   Obama trying to make conservatives the target of Homeland Security efforts and label them as terrorists.  That opens the gate for the police.

  Evidently this is going to include the State of Texas, specifically the legislature and governor.  Good for them, but I have an additional clue:  It ain't just the feds, you radical patriots.

  Hard for the police to resist breaking out all that gear and running an op I would think, but I don't care to be looked at through crosshairs.

  I hope it goes massively well tomorrow as citizens petition their government for redress of grievances.  

  Update:  Whoa, daddy!  Rush is talking about it.  Beck is talking about it.  Homeland Security want to put us in those camps!

  UpdateII: The TSRA lobbyist thought this was a useless gesture.  Fireworks are pretty but then, what do you really have?  Well, for one thing, we have the Governor of a big state saying publicly what libertarians have been yelling for years.  I think that's a good thing.

National Match Registration is open.

  Yeah, Baby!

  A nice & cute CMP Standard Products M1 currently on loan to a lethal librarian we all know.

 
  The Civilian Marksmanship Program website has online registration up and running.  Click on the National Match Information and keep clicking.  I'm shooting Garand, Springfield and Vintage rifle matches after we finish with the Texas team stuff, along with the National EIC match, the Presidents 100 and the Hearst Doubles.  We will be shooting every day for a week.

  Garand, M1 Carbine, Springfield and Vintage matches are serious matches but full of folks who are there for the fun and experience.  You could probably show up cold, register, draw ammunition and count on someone loaning you a rifle on the line.  It's that laid back.  Probably 1000 folks will shoot each match.  Heck the G, V, S matches are all at 200 yards and they pull the target and mark it to show where you hit, plus the M1 Carbine is shot at 100.  What could be better than that?  Eagles?  Yep, they got your eagles flying around.

  While you are on the CMP site be sure and drop by the auction site and bid on an M1 Carbine.  Fun to see what they go for these days.  

  Better do it now.  Powerful career politicains want all of this to be illegal as soon as they can manage it.  They would ban it all and end the 100+year tradition of the National matches today if they could.

Update:  The auction isn't the normal rifle sales.  Those are here.

Update II: One of my biggest regrets in life is not going to the National Matches starting in about 1966.  Dad would have loved this.  I'm getting to deerhunt big deer behind his lakehouse and go shoot at Camp Perry, both things he would relished.

Ann Gets it.

  I don't know what's up with the black cocktail dress though it isn't the worst look she could wear.  Perhaps she ought to talk to Michelle O's makeup and wardrobe people, but Ann sure has a firm grasp of the basics.

  ABC, 60 minutes, other idiots abound.  I guess they say " thank God my security detail has a gun."

Hot loads.

  Cranking up the old ammo factory for some practice .45acp loads.....after the first 12, just enough to work out the cobwebs, I noticed that the cobwebs were getting 9.5 grains of Titegroup under a 230 FMJ instead of 4.5 grains.  

  We're talking sonic 230s here.  HOT loads.  I moved the scale balance weight over a click to the right notch.  Can't unbuild these.  Crimped.  Sure is pretty ammo.  I go through 12 rounds in just a couple of strings shooting bullseye, but one of these suckers might be a gun-buster.

  Maybe I could mail these to Somalia, care of "Pirate Abdul Mustapha."  He probably packs a Sig 220 or knows someone who does.

  Back to the drawing board.  And into the deep trash, or somewhere good, with these.

Update:  Inertia bullet puller.  Sheesh.  Took some beating and whacking but I got them apart.  The slugs are marked up but not so marked up they can't be reloaded.  Powder back in the trickler.  Probably could use the primed cases.

Update II: Rebuilt.  Everything case gauged, so....a-shooting we will go.

Update III: Picked up my brass plus a case from a Jap 7.7.  Who was shooting that monster?  Put the case in with 10 rounds of 7.7 I have.  Who knows?

Update IV: Showed the case to Gentry, WWII Pacific vet.  He used to swim in and mark beaches for invasions.  Asked him when the last time someone shot one of those at him.  1945, he thinks.