Not to Confuse Anyone…

Not to confuse anyone, but in a previous post, I stated that I had ordered a Suzuki. As it turns out, I have a different direction and found it necessary to cancel that order. So that won’t be happening. We’ll see what develops…

-Popgun

Obama’s Associations and Why it Matters

Some pundits are defending Obama’s associations with domestic terrorists and, apparently, multiple activist clergymen at his church. They seem to be saying that it doesn’t matter because these people aren’t Barak Obama. This is in regard to Reverend Pfleger, and Reverend Wright, and quite a few others. They want all of us, the voters, to give Obama a pass on this.

Folks, these things matter, and this is why: We the people need to know how this man thinks, if he may become our leader.

Most people tend to spend time with like-minded people. You cannot discard Obama’s association with these people just for political convenience – and Obama apparently has a record of association with many of these people who obviously hate America. They keep coming out of the woodwork.

We don’t need a President who hangs around with people who hate America. Because he just might hate America as well, and simply be better about keeping his mouth shut about it than his friends are.

And who would be in a better position to destroy this country than a President that hates it so much he wants to change it beyond recognition? After all, that is his mantra – change, change, change. Why does Barak Obama want to change America so radically, if he really loves it?

There’s nothing wrong with change, in reasonably sized doses. However, big chunks of change are quite a bit harder to digest.

Be warned – if Obama should become President, we may all have a truly severe case of indigestion.

-Popgun

About 55 mpg, I expect

Today I ordered one of these:

Click the pic to go to the Suzuki site. It should arrive in a couple of weeks. The dealer was out of stock. I expect that, on average, I can actually recoup the payments in the gas I’ll be saving. We’ll see how that goes. Obviously, as gas goes up the savings ratio does also. Of course, this ain’t my first rodeo. There’s going to be tires every 10000 miles, and chain & sprockets every so often, and I need to buy another helmet, but still. Unless I have lost count, this will be my tenth motorcycle.

Starting 1970 – Honda CL100 (yellow)
Kawasaki 750 H2 triple (two stroke – mine was blue)
Honda XL350 (looked like the first one on this page)
Honda CB500T (as in the picture)
Yamaha XT500 (similar to the DR650SE above) (couldn’t keep the Yamaha running)
Suzuki GS550 (only bike in this list bought used)
Honda Sabre 700 (as in the picture)
2006 Honda VT1100 (bright red)
2006 Honda Gold Wing (bright red)

A great many wonderful memories and a few near-death experiences go with these. I’m MUCH more conservative a rider than I used to be. I’m one of those strange people that will ride in any weather as long as there is no ice on the pavement.

In a way, I met my wife, and thus had my family, because of crashing a motorcycle. But that’s a story for another day.

-Popgun

Drinking and Driving

I covered DWI as related to Jury Duty, but here’s some more things to think about. I did some more research, and found the national statistics. These cover from 1994 to 2006.

In 2006, the number of deaths from DWI nationally is 42,642. That’s a bit above average. Additionally, approximately 40 times that number were injured.

After averaging a few numbers, I came up with 42,219 deaths per year average in that 13 years. The total is 548,847. This number is significantly greater than the number of military deaths in World War II, as a comparison.

I found a reference for California that stated that 44% of offenders are repeat offenders.

Logically speaking, I would suggest that our legal system is not punishing first offenders severely enough. The statistics show that current efforts and methods are not resolving this problem – the numbers across the years stay about the same every year. If our current penalties were sufficiently dire as to give people pause before getting in a car, many of these dead people would still be alive.

In point of fact, the penalty for a first offense should be sufficient that very few people are willing to chance it.

Is there anybody out there that isn’t taken aback by these numbers?

Any judges or lawmakers out there listening?

-Popgun

Obama Endorsed by the Enemies of the US

Isn’t it interesting how the enemies of the U.S. are chiming in and endorsing Obama? The following people have endorsed or indicated approval of Obama for President:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez
Fidel Castro, former dictator of Cuba
Hamas advisor Ahmed Yousef
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan
the New Black Panther Party

That says a lot, I think.

I got my information from this article on foxnews.com.

-Popgun.

Jury Duty

I was called to do jury duty yesterday, in the nearest petit court. I have no problem with doing my duty, as I understand that this is part of the burden and blessing of being a citizen in this country. The judge gives you a spiel about how important this function really is, and he’s absolutely correct. This country could not stand if we did not have a generally unbiased way of establishing guilt and punishment of crimes. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than any other system so far devised.

The selection was for three six-person + one alternate juries to try three cases. The first case was a DWI case, and I was far enough back in the selection process that I wasn’t under consideration.

The second case was also a DWI case, and I was in seat #2. One of the things that happens is that the state’s attorney and the defense attorney get to ask the jury questions about their beliefs regarding anything that may affect your judgement about the subject in question.

As it happens, I take a very dim view of drinking, and especially drinking & driving. I looked up some statistics this morning: in 2006, in Texas alone, 1,569 people died as a result of accidents in which alcohol was involved. And a further 63,500 people were injured as a result. The numbers were higher in previous years.

Folks, that’s just Texas. For one year.

Just to put this in perspective, this is pretty close to twice as many Americans as those who died in Iraq in the same time period. That number was 822 soldiers in 2006. God bless them and their families.

When the defense lawyer asked us if anyone had any issues that might affect the case, I told him the simple truth. First, both my father and my sister were alcoholics, and I have a problem with anybody that drinks to the point of inebriation, most especially if driving. And he asked if I would have any problem with considering, if the person was guilty, the full range of punishment. The punishment for first offense ranges from zero to 180 days in jail, and zero to $2000 fine. I told the attorney that they really needed to hammer the first-time offenders on DWI so they won’t ever be second-time offenders. Not what he wanted to hear.

I do have a serious problem with considering zero punishment for anybody that drinks and drives. I had no idea that was even possible.

I think they took me off the list when I asked the defense attorney if he had any idea how many people had died in Texas due to DWI in the last year. He quickly changed the subject, as I’m sure he didn’t want that question raised in front of the other potential jury members. He wanted to know if we would consider allowing the defendant to keep his driver license. Snort. I told him we need to get those people off the road.

I wasn’t selected.

When the third selection came around, it turned out to be a DWI case as well. The judge told me I could go ahead and go home, no point in me sitting through the selection. I wasn’t trying to get out of it – but they didn’t want me. I understand this – I’m not impartial in this case.

At least I probably got the other potential jurors thinking about the seriousness of it. It is not a trivial thing to drink and drive, though I do believe many people think so.

-Popgun

Book of the Moment #2

Just Finished: “The Sharing Knife * Passage” by Lois McMaster Bujold. See the previous post for some background.

In this, the third book in the series, Dag and Fawn are traveling down the river, heading for the ocean. They meet new friends, including river boat boss Berry and her family, and a couple of other Lakewalkers that join the crew. They encounter many new places and obstacles in their travel, as Dag learns more about his groundsense powers. And of course, they encounter a major problem to overcome along the way – and that’s all I’ll say. No spoilers here.

I’ve enjoyed every one of this entire series of books by Bujold. I have tried some of her other books, but this series seems to me to be her best work. Highly recommended, but read the others in the series first.

Next book: “Odd Hours” by Dean Koontz. Fourth book in a series. I became fascinated by the main character, Odd Thomas, in the first book, and I’ve read all the rest of the series to date. Odd Thomas has the ability to see dead people, so this obviously affects his life. What I like about Odd Thomas, however, is his interesting outlook on life. He’s fun in a strange, laid back way.

I’ll let you know how it turns out.

-Popgun

Has President Bush Made Us Safer?

Well, actually… Yes!

What are the facts? Always – what are the facts?

This article on Powerline lays out the statistics showing that, quite clearly, we are in fact safer because of the actions President Bush took in the wake of 9/11. In spite of Obama’s constant rhetoric.

The Democrats have this refrain about how bad President Bush has been for the country; but if you look at the facts, you find that he didn’t do so badly as all that.

But it doesn’t matter what President Bush did or didn’t do, because the Democrats and Liberals set out some six years ago to crucify him, and they’ve pretty well succeeded in their despicable smear campaign.

Even his mistakes have worked in our favor. Obviously, the war in Iraq was based on faulty intelligence, and President Bush acted on it. But as it turns out, Al Queda then made Iraq the battleground, and they have been decimated.

A week after Katrina, my cousin, a nurse in Galveston, sent me a picture showing President Bush holding a stringer of fish up, with a background of the aftermath of Katrina. I knew then that the smear campaign was in full swing; and I was amazed and appalled that an educated person would send a picture like that. Yes, the government was slower than anybody would wish getting help into New Orleans; but let’s face it – Katrina was a new situation, unique in the history of the U.S.. I think it’s pretty safe to say that the entire country was taken by surprise.

And I think that those people who were complaining the most, and taking the cheap shots with photos in email, would be unlikely to do a better job.

In the face of disaster, there are always certain low-life people that will rejoice, and paint the situation as a failure of the current leadership, and try to make political hay out of it. Those people delight in any failure or crisis that they can conceivably blame on their political rivals, even when it is a stretch, such as Katrina. These people actually tried to make it look as if President Bush caused Katrina, and took delight in it! But the ones who really took delight in it were the enemies of President Bush. Low-life, all of them.

Read the referenced article. From 2004 to present, there have been zero successful terrorist attacks against Americans either abroad or within the country. I think that speaks pretty well for President Bush.

-Popgun

Practice, practice, practice…

The Wife (J) and I gathered up a couple of friends (Mr. P and Mrs. D) and went to the deer lease to do some pistol practice yesterday evening. Since I traded my Jeep and wound up driving a Dodge minivan for the time being, it was sort of interesting getting there. P&D live about 1/4 mile down an impossible dirt road – we drug bottom once, getting in to pick them up. Then, it turns out that nobody has bush-hogged the trail into the lease that goes to the cabin where we do our shooting. Imagine a minivan with grass around the mirrors, surrounded by scrub growth taller than the car, following a poorly visible track. We drug bottom once on the trail, too. There are small saplings growing in the trail that we had to go over. I’ll be checking the van for missing pieces a little later in the morning.

Anyhow, once we got to the cabin, which has a bit of a clearing about it, we set up our targets on some old real-estate signs someone had used for this previously, and got to it. Mosquitos weren’t bad, but there were a lot of flies for some reason.

J and Mrs. D both have Bursa .380’s while P has a Springfield Armory XD 9mm. I have an XD .45 and a Glock 39 .45 GAP, but I only practiced with my XD on this trip.

The ladies went first. I have to brag a bit, J can reliably hit what she’s aiming at, at a reasonable range. At around 25 feet, she was grouping around 4“. Mrs. D didn’t do so well, but this was the first time she’d fired her new Bursa, and she is still learning to run the gun. Once she figured out where it’s shooting, she tightened right up, though. Both Bursa’s have a tendency to jam if you don’t rack it just right. We haven’t figured out exactly why yet, but I suspect holding the gun left-side down and not racking it sharply may have something to do with it. Each gun did this once during our session.

I can still hit what I’m aiming at with my XD. I practiced drawing from concealment and putting two rounds into the target – somewhat cautiously, as this is only the second time I’ve tried this with live ammo. It is critical when you do this to get it right, first, then work on speed later. I intend for this to be the summer I achieve proficiency with this. I did OK, but I can improve my speed with practice.

Mr. P ran a few clips of his 9mm and he, too can still hit what he’s aiming at. He can actually group tighter groups than I do, but he takes his time. When I practice, it is to sharpen my self-defense skills; that is, my goal isn’t to precisely hit the bulls-eye – my goal is to get my first two or three bullets in a space the size of my hand in the center of the target, as quickly as possible. The others haven’t begun practicing for that type of situation yet.

Mr. P cut down two pine saplings behind the target while shooting. Wish I had it on video, it was funny. Anyhow, we all had a good time; we picked up our brass when we were finished, loaded up, and returned home.

Discussion of the various pistols, relating to self-defense: The Bursa’s are less expensive guns than the XD’s, and they have de-cockers on them that act like safeties. They are good guns, but the XD’s (and the Glock for that matter) are better suited for self defense.

The reason is that there are several different things that have to be right on the Bursa before it will fire. If you are carrying with one in the chamber, and the gun is de-cocked, you have to turn the safety off, and the gun will fire, but the trigger pull is hard for the first shot, because the hammer isn’t back already.

On the XD or the Glock, if there is a bullet in the chamber, and if you pick it up and pull the trigger, it will shoot. Nothing to fool with while somebody else is coming at you. The XD has a back-strap safety on it which the Glock does not. On these guns, which have no external safety, you are perfectly safe carrying with one in the chamber, as long as you realize that the holster is part of the system. The correct holster protects you from anything getting inside the trigger guard, including your finger, until you have drawn the gun. So in a life or death situation, you draw the gun and shoot – no worries about the state of the gun and whether it will actually shoot when you pull the trigger. This makes these guns, and others of similar design, better self-defense weapons, in my view.

Let’s face it, if you are attacked by someone, that person will be picking the time and place to give you as little warning as possible. You don’t have time to wonder about the state of your weapon, and I personally want the confidence that it’s going to do what I want it to do, on the first try, every time.

Anyhow, a good time was had by all, and we will probably do it again soon.

-Popgun

Bahia Grass

I hate bahia grass. We pronounce it ba-hay-ya around here, by the way. It’s the beginning of the seeding season for bahia grass. You have to mow every three days. On the fourth day, the stuff is 10“ tall. It can do that overnight! Seriously.

I swear, if you spit on the ground, you have to jump back out of the way so it won’t hit you in the chin. I’ve seen it move picnic tables – and dogs. Well, it seems like that, anyway.

I have two acres to mow. <Insert expletive here>.

-Popgun