Last Night, Obama Said…

Last night, Obama said “Recovery Act that has already saved or created over 150,000 jobs“

Can anyone out there point out those 150,000 jobs for me? Just out of curiosity… they may be there, but I’m wondering exactly where they are, since you can’t see any of them from where I’m sitting.

-Popgun

Fun, in an Odd Way…

I always wondered…

You can take the test here. It’s pretty short.

I found it on Are We Lumberjacks?

-Popgun

Motorcycle Tires for a Dual Purpose Bike

I’ve been riding a long time; I think I’m on my tenth motorcycle, at the moment; It’s a DR650 Suzuki dual-purpose. Dual purpose bikes are sort of a niche product – if you can only afford one bike, they are a reasonable compromise for someone that wants to commute to work, and take an occasional trail or dirt road. This Suzuki is the fourth bike in this category I’ve owned.

I’m pretty disappointed in the tire mileage I’ve gotten on this one. I have around 4400 miles on it, and the back tire needs replacing. The front tire is at about 50%.

So I did some research, and found some Pirellis that I like the looks of – the Pirelli Scorpion Trail. These are not the cheapest tires out there, but they probably aren’t the most expensive, either.

The local dealership quoted me a total of about $320 for the two tires, plus $150 to mount them. The other local dealership quoted almost the same. So, around $470 from the dealer.

I found the same identical tires online at a motorcycle on-line store, total cost $212 for both, with free shipping. So I ordered them. I’m going to take a swing at mounting them myself; I’ve done it before, although it was a long time ago. I do need to buy some motorcycle tire-irons. I don’t expect it to be easy, but I can devote this Saturday to it and maybe save around $255; my fall-back position is taking them in to the dealer to get mounted, if I just can’t do it myself.

Frankly, I’m a bit amazed at the quoted $75 per tire just to mount them. But I may be finding out why it’s so high.

-Popgun

Coffee – More Coffee…

I drank nine cups of coffee yesterday morning. I stayed awake all the way through the sermon. I think the preacher had had more coffee than I did.

Then I didn’t sleep any last night. Gee, I wonder why?

I guess I need to cut back a bit…

-Popgun

Abandoned Pets

There must be a special place in hell reserved for people who abandon their pets beside the road out in the country.

These people have no compassion – and no sense of responsibility. I wonder how many of them have kids? They may delude themselves, thinking that their pets will find a new home. This is possible, but not likely – most of us who live out in the boonies already have pets of our own. So a dog will often sit beside the road, where the owner abandoned them, waiting for their owner to come back. For days, and sometimes weeks.

Because, Mr. Pet Owner, the dog still trusts you. Until it gets hit by a car, or starves to death.

Those who do this deserve nothing more than total, utter contempt.

-Popgun

Water-boarding is NOT the Issue

Intelligence – We Has It…

It’s interesting how Obama has released the documents showing details of water-boarding – but has declined to release documents that would show the actual facts gleaned, from which we, the public, could decide for ourselves if critical data was gathered.

Now why would he do that?

Clearly, Obama wants a witch-hunt. Possibly to distract the rest of us from the slight-of-hand that he’s doing with the economics of the United States, which is a far more critical issue at this time. Let’s face it, there is no particular reason to move the water-boarding problem to the head of the line at this time – what’s done is done. We can analyze that issue at our leisure. So why make water-boarding an issue now?

Obama is a magician, and a good one. He directs your attention over here, while he’s doing things over there…

-Popgun

iBotnet and the Mac

Interesting. iBotnet is a ‘Trojan horse’ that infects the Mac. I see that the PC people are cheering.

Funny, though – you have to download and run pirated software (iWork 09) to get it. Since I don’t steal software, I’m safe from this one.

Realizing that could always change. But it’s been really nice not having to purchase antivirus software (and support it, update it, fool with it, and try to outsmart it when setting up a network) the last couple of years. Most antivirus software is nearly as bad as having the virus. You should try removing Norton Antivirus from your system sometime – not easy at all.

OS X still rules!

-Popgun

Random Thoughts

According to this article, Obama’s proposed Cap and Trade tax would cost the average household $3928 per year.

On a semi-related subject, last night I heard on ‘Hannity’ that just the interest to be paid on the $10 trillion deficit in ten years will exceed $800 billion per year. If so, and if the number I used earlier for the population of tax payers (138,000,000 tax payers) is correct, that will be about $5,797 per tax payer per year. That isn’t the amount you will pay in taxes – that’s just the amount you will pay per year to service the interest on the national debt. PLUS operating costs, and paying down the principal…

Of course, Obama, who is instigating this, won’t be president, then.

-Popgun

Mexican Guns on Fox

I watched an article on Fox last night with details on a couple of gun trafficking busts on the Mexican border. Greta Van Susteren interviewed some ATF agents, who showed her the items picked up in two busts. These guns and ammo were interdicted in the process of being smuggled into Mexico. Clearly, some guns and ammo are going into Mexico from the United States. Another source puts the amount coming from the U.S. as about 17% of the total number of guns confiscated by authorities in Mexico.

There are at least a few interesting points to make that weren’t really emphasized in the article.

• Most or all of the weapons were fully automatic. Fully automatic weapons are NOT available to the general public in the United States. At least, not without a special license – I’m not familiar with the details.
• There was a lot of ammo (24,000 rounds) purchased in one lot from one local gun dealer – legally – but it was unusual, so he called the ATF and was to that extent responsible for the gun bust.
• There was some belt-fed .50 cal ammo – for a fully automatic machine gun that they didn’t have. That machine gun, being belt fed, would be the kind you see mounted on tanks and armored vehicles. Not available at your local gun shop.
• They had a .50 cal Barrett magazine-fed semi-auto weapon which is legal to own by civilians in the U.S. I’ve seen one just like it in the local Gander Mountain – cost about $5500. This was the only weapon shown that I am certain was not fully automatic.
• I am fairly sure that I saw grenades on the table – obviously, not for sale to civilians in the U.S.
• The officer stated that all of the fully automatic weapons “are coming from Central America“.

Now this is kind of interesting. Apparently, at least the automatic weapons originated in Central America, and were on their way to Mexico – by way of the United States. It seems that at least this one smuggling route passes through the United States. It was not made clear how the weapons got to Central America or where they came from before that.

The points I’d like to make:

The weapons shown were military-grade and apparently almost all were fully automatic. The great majority of the weapons shown would not normally be available at any gun dealer in the U.S.

There are already laws against smuggling.

Passing any sort of ‘assault rifle ban’ in the United States would have ZERO effect on this smuggling, because the guns being smuggled are generally fully automatic – based on the content of this one video. Any ban in the U.S. would only ban semi-automatic weapons, which are of little interest to the drug cartel.

Note to the uninformed; frequently, the news media will refer to any magazine-fed pistol or rifle as an ‘automatic’. This can be misleading if you don’t make the distinction between semi-automatic and fully automatic. Semi-automatic weapons are legal in the U.S. – you have to pull the trigger once to shoot one round. Fully-automatic weapons are not legal in the U.S. unless you get a special license, and they are not readily available to the general public. The weapons that Greta shot in the video were all fully automatic.

-Popgun

Miss USA California

Miss USA California said that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

In our extremely confused culture, this has been labeled ‘controversial’ and ‘an outrage’ and many more. This, in itself, is pretty weird, if you stop to think about it. It is political correctness run amok.

Now let’s think about this for a minute. Every single one of us – all nearly 7 billion people on this planet – were produced by the union of a man and a woman.

The root purpose of a family is to produce children, and bring them to maturity, in a stable environment.

Homosexual couples can perform, at best, only half of this equation. It has not been established by any significant statistical analysis (that I have seen) that they can do even that half with any notable success.

So I agree wholeheartedly with Miss USA California. Marriage should be between a man and a woman. Kudos to her for having the gumption to say so.

The protections afforded by law (and church) to married couples are designed to facilitate producing and raising children and to increase the security thereof. Since homosexuals cannot fulfill this function, there is no particular reason to extend this legal protection to homosexual couples.

I will state also that I don’t care if you are homosexual; I won’t hold it against you. Frankly, I don’t care, and it’s none of my business what you do in private. But I don’t see why there should be any confusion on the marriage issue. Literally – no prejudice here against gays and lesbians – but on the issue of marriage for same, I have stated my thoughts. What you want is not what I want; and, sorry about that, but I’m not evil for saying so. What I have is a reasoned opinion, not a knee-jerk emotional one.

One more thing. I expect there may be some hateful comments coming my way because of this post. First, don’t bother – they will not be posted. Second, where is your ‘tolerance’ for my opinion, you who shout about the lack of tolerance? However, polite, sane, rational comments will probably be allowed even if I disagree with them, especially if they make good debate.

-Popgun.