Lee and me

Three cheers for Lee's Liquid Alox! If you are a reloader, you've likely at least heard about this concoction, if not used it yourself. LLA is a bullet lubricant that helps keep lead smearing out of a firearm's barrel when using lead bullets driven at sane velocities. Since I've only used it for lead bullets pushed to moderate speeds (approx. 750-850 fps) in the .38 Spl. cartridge, that's all I can authoritatively comment on. Prior to using LLA, I would routinely have to scrub lead--lots of lead--out of the barrels of my revolvers after firing them. The lead bullets I used were commercially manufactured and had hard lube in their lube rings, but that lube might as well have not been there for all the good it did.

Somewhere along the line, I got the idea to use LLA on my bullets to supplement the lousy lube that already came on the bullets. Since that time, I've had absolutely zero leading problems. As an added bonus, LLA couldn't be simpler to use: just take an old plastic container, place a couple of handfuls of lead bullets inside, shoot a squirt or two of LLA on the bullets, and swirl the container until they're all coated, which doesn't take long. Then, put the bullets on a piece of wax paper and let them dry overnight. After that, they're ready to load. Simple, eh?

I have heard that LLA has its limitations, mainly when bullets get much beyond about 1200 fps. Past that speed, leading can/will occur. But, since I don't plan to shoot lead bullets at that speed (that's what jacketed bullets are for), LLA suits my purposes just fine.

One other use I've read about for Lee Liquid Alox is as a rust preventative. Although I haven't used it for that purpose, I can see how it would work well in that role, and not just for guns. Anything metal that you might want to put into long-term storage could well benefit from a coating of LLA. Of course, you'll have to clean it off once the item is taken from storage, and that will take a little work since LLA dries somewhat hard, but the item should be in fine, rust-free shape afterwards.

If you haven't tried LLA, do yourself a favor and get a bottle. It's relatively cheap, about five bucks for a 4-oz. bottle, and it lasts a long time. I've coated about 1500 bullets so far and less than half of the bottle is gone.

Take care.
DAL357

With friends like these...

Do you remember in high school the nerdy kid who was so desperate to be accepted by someone, anyone, that he eventually was adopted by a group of folks who used him, mercilessly, for comic relief? But, craving some kind of companionship, even if it was twisted, the nerdy kid put up with the put-downs, lies, physical abuse, etc., just to have "friends."

If you don't, that's okay, because there is a group in our nation today that is the embodiment of that nerd: U.S. gun owners. That's right. Although they've been repeatedly shown disrespect and been taken for granted, they keep on giving their support to a Republican party that hasn't done them any favors. The Republican party treats gun owners like the friend they're embarrassed to have. Sure, they talk a good game in private, but in public they don't particularly want to be seen together.

Why? Well, the Republican party (I know there are individual exceptions, but I'm talking about the actual party apparatchik), like all politicians, are first interested in getting in and staying in power; everything else is secondary and open to negotiation. To do this, they believe, they cannot appear too strident on any issue, so they straddle the fence and never really do much of anything to actually help roll back the onerous tide of oppressive gun laws that have appeared over the last century. People like this are fair-weather friends, at best, and mortal enemies if/when push comes to shove. Still, gun owners cling to these nabobs and defend them like they're their best, and only, buddies.

Want proof? Look at the McCain campaign for president. Before he announced a running mate, gun owners gave little more than a yawn about his run, mainly because they sensed/knew, correctly, that McCain was/is no friend of theirs. But after the addition of Mrs. Palin to the ticket, why, by God, suddenly everything changed. Now, everything is hunky-dory and gun owners are acting as if all is right with the world.

But not so fast, American gun owners. Just like the recent government bailouts of insolvent financial institutions, which did nothing to change the actual crap-like quality of said institutions, the basic Republican party credo that gun owners will always back their party because, "Who else are they going to vote for, the Democrats?," is still in place. With an attitude like this, it's no wonder the Republican party can and does court the gun vote, but in actuality does nothing to deserve it. The Republican party does not respect gun owners, and why should it? No matter how many times they're abused, kicked, ignored, etc., gun owners always slavishly come back to lick the hand that beats/ignores them.

I have little reason to believe that the choices gun owners make across America this November will contradict me. Do you?

Take care.
DAL357

P.S. Can you guess which person represents gun owners in the photo above, the tall lady or the dwarf? (Hint: It ain't the tall lady.)

You want real economic damage?

Here's an excerpt from the Hurricane Ike saga.

*****

Economic damage from Ike may be less than feared

By DAVID KOENIG and ELLEN SIMON, AP Business Writers
Sun Sep 14, 12:34 AM ET

A small change in Hurricane Ike's course just before it crashed into the Texas coast Saturday may have spared the state and the nation from significantly worse economic damage...

*****

Damn! Better luck next time, newshounds. I know you were hoping for catastrophic destruction and a high body count, but they didn't happen. Darn that old Mother Nature! Oh well, we still have plenty of time left in the hurricane season.

In the meantime, reporter-folk, I suggest you put at least as much effort as you did reporting on Ike into reporting on how the American taxpayer is being forced to bail out institutions that, because of stupidity and outright venality, are fiscally and morally bankrupt. Sure, it's not as fun and glamorous as tracking a storm, mainly because it takes what many of you seem to lack, a modicum of intelligence, but its economic damage will be many times what any hurricane can muster. If you really want to report on economic damage so deep and wide that it'll hamstring America for decades, you'll find it there.

Take care.
DAL357

Surprised?

Are you surprised at the following piece about the ignorance of the average American voter? I know I wasn't.

*****

5 Myths About Those Civic-Minded, Deeply Informed Voters

By Rick Shenkman
Sunday, September 7, 2008;
Washington Post

One thing both Democrats and Republicans agreed about in their vastly different conventions: The American voter will not only decide but decide wisely. But does the electorate really know what it's talking about? Plenty of things are hurting American democracy -- gridlock, negative campaigning, special interests -- but one factor lies at the root of all the others, and nobody dares to discuss it. American voters, who are hiring the people who'll run a superpower democracy, are grossly ignorant. Here are a few particularly bogus claims about their supposed savvy.


1. Our voters are pretty smart.

You hear this one from politicians all the time, even John McCain, who promises straight talk, and Barack Obama, who claims that he's not a politician (by which he means that he'll tell people what they need to hear, not what they want to hear). But by every measure social scientists have devised, voters are spectacularly uninformed. They don't follow politics, and they don't know how their government works. According to an August 2006 Zogby poll, only two in five Americans know that we have three branches of government and can name them. A 2006 National Geographic poll showed that six in ten young people (aged 18 to 24) could not find Iraq on the map. The political scientists Michael Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter, surveying a wide variety of polls measuring knowledge of history, report that fewer than half of all Americans know who Karl Marx was or which war the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought in. Worse, they found that just 49 percent of Americans know that the only country ever to use a nuclear weapon in a war is their own.

True, many voters can tell you who's ahead and who's behind in the horse race. But most of what they know about the candidates' positions on the issues -- and remember, our candidates are running to make policy, not talk about their biographies -- derives from what voters learn from stupid and often misleading 30-second commercials, according to Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center.

2. Bill O'Reilly's viewers are dumber than Jon Stewart's.

Liberals wish. Democrats like to think that voters who sympathize with their views are smarter than those who vote Republican. But a 2007 Pew survey found that the knowledge level of viewers of the right-wing, blustery "The O'Reilly Factor" and the left-wing, snarky "The Daily Show" is comparable, with about 54 percent of the shows' politicized viewers scoring in the "high knowledge" category.

So what about conservative talk-radio titan Rush Limbaugh's audience? Surely the ditto-heads are dumb, right? Actually, according to a survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Rush's listeners are better educated and "more knowledgeable about politics and social issues" than the average voter.

3. If you just give Americans the facts, they'll be able to draw the right conclusions.

Unfortunately, no. Many social scientists have long tried to downplay the ignorance of voters, arguing that the mental "short cuts" voters use to make up for their lack of information work pretty well. But the evidence from the past few years proves that a majority can easily be bamboozled.

Just before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, after months of unsubtle hinting from Bush administration officials, some 60 percent of Americans had come to believe that Iraq was behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, despite the absence of evidence for the claim, according to a series of surveys taken by the PIPA/Knowledge Networks poll. A year later, after the bipartisan, independent 9/11 Commission reported that Saddam Hussein had had nothing to do with al-Qaeda's assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, 50 percent of Americans still insisted that he did. In other words, the public was bluntly given the data by a group of officials generally believed to be credible -- and it still didn't absorb the most basic facts about the most important event of their time.

4. Voters today are smarter than they used to be.

Actually, by most measures, voters today possess the same level of political knowledge as their parents and grandparents, and in some categories, they score lower. In the 1950s, only 10 percent of voters were incapable of citing any ways in which the two major parties differed, according to Thomas E. Patterson of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, who leads the Pew-backed Vanishing Voter Project. By the 1970s, that number had jumped to nearly 30 percent.

Here's what makes these numbers deplorable -- and, in fact, almost incomprehensible: Education levels are far higher today than they were half a century ago, when social scientists first began surveying voter knowledge about politics. (In 1940, six in ten Americans hadn't made it past the eighth grade.) The moral of this story: Schooling alone doesn't translate into better educated voters.

5. Young voters are paying a lot of attention to the news.

Again, no. Despite all the hoopla about young voters -- the great hope of the future! -- only one news story in 2001 drew the attention of a majority of them: 9/11. Some 60 percent of young voters told Pew researchers that they were following news about the attack closely. (Er -- 40 percent weren't?) But none of the other stories that year seemed particularly interesting to them. Only 32 percent said that they followed the news about the anthrax attacks or the economy, then in recession. The capture of Kabul from the Taliban? Just 20 percent.

Six years later, Pew again measured public knowledge of current events and found that the young (aged 18 to 29) "know the least." A majority of young respondents scored in the "low knowledge" category -- the only demographic group to do so.

And some other statistics are even more alarming. How many young people read newspapers? Just 20 percent. (Worse, studies consistently show that people who do not pick up the newspaper-reading habit in their 20s rarely do so later.) But surely today's youth are getting their news from the Internet? Sorry. Only 11 percent of the young report that they regularly surf the Internet for news. Maybe Obama shouldn't be relying on savvy young voters after all.

*****

Americans, in general, really do deserve the government they have. Blaming politicians for the country's ills overlooks the fact that those same pols mirror perfectly the wants and wishes of the electorate. It's no secret that the average American can tell you more about pop "culture" and sports, neither of which has any direct affect on their lives other than what they allow them to have, than they can about things that directly impact their lives, such as government fiscal policy.

Assuming the above piece is true, and I have no doubt it is, we are doomed, doomed!, I tell you.

Take care.
DAL357

9-11-01 + 7

To the right, you are viewing a photo of a Muslim man doing one of the following: displaying his sentiments towards the West; using his fingers to represent the WTC; or answering the question, "What is your IQ?" I'm betting on the latter.

Since I'm only able to get around to this heaving, wheezing example of a blog about once a week now, I did not post on Sept. 11 to commemorate that black day in our history. But I wanted to go on record as having observed the day personally; it seems as if I'm the only one who even remembered it in my sphere of daily associates, my wife excepted. I hope I am wrong about that.

The events that happened on 9-11-01 to this country still haunt me, as they should any sentient being who is a citizen here. They also left me with a permanently jaundiced eye towards all things having to do with Islam and the Middle East in general. I don't trust anyone who is associated with or practices that religion/social system, and I never will. Perhaps that's a character flaw on my part. If so, it's one I can live with.

Anyway, I hope you took at least a few moments out of your day on 9-11-08 to remember that tragic day of seven years ago when America was collectively sucker punched by what was/is essentially a feral child.

Take care.
DAL357

Watch it

Over the years, I've been continually amazed by the number of people who do not carry any type of timepiece. Often I wonder to myself, "What is the deal with these creatures? Do they not have jobs, appointments, or some other event in their lives that demands promptness? How can they possibly function in a modern society that is inextricably bound to the clock?"

I have worn a watch on my wrist since I was at least 13 years old. It's become such a part of me that I'd feel naked without it. How anyone can comfortably exist today without one on their person is a mystery I've yet to solve. Yes, I realize that there are more clocks around than ever: they are on cell phones, in cars, in malls, etc., but there are still many instances when one is not in plain view and a personal timepiece would be good to have.

Perhaps it is I who is all wet on this issue. My wife, for example, has received a couple of watches from me as gifts over the years and yet she just will not wear them. But this does not preclude her from getting to appointments on time. If I were to try that, I'd feel constantly off balance and carry just a hint of unease all the time (no pun intended).

Could it be that I'm making a big deal out of nothing? (Well, I guess that could be it, this is a blog after all.) Maybe, starting next summer, when school is out, I will try to go without a watch for a week and see if I can get used to it. I'm going to feel like an irresponsible slouch, I know, but in the interests of research, I'll try it.

My palms are already sweating just thinking about it.

Take care.
DAL357

A crude remark

The word addiction has been thrown around a lot concerning America's dependence on imported oil and it's a word I take umbrage with. The idea/philosophy behind this word comes directly from the environmentalist camp and it is used as yet another way to disparage 'merica and capitalism. Let's examine the word a little more closely.

When someone is addicted to something, they are at the point where continued use of the substance has gone beyond whatever perceived value they ever received from it and it is now detrimental to their health. Although we depend upon foreign oil to an astounding degree, we are still getting at least incremental benefit from it in the form of a relatively productive economy (at least until fairly recently). That's not to say there isn't a LOT of waste, for there surely is, but using the word addiction smacks of gross, not to mention intentional, hyperbole.

One thing I'd like to ask the know-it-all experts and environmentalists is this: Could you send me tonight's lotto numbers? I mean, you pontificate (always in retrospect) on how the world should have known better than to become dependent on the single most powerful fuel source man has ever discovered that's also relatively safe and easy to use, one that saves thousands of man-hours per gallon, so you should have an inside track on the seeing future, right? You can't? Bummer.

Look, the point of all this is not to fall for the semantic infiltration of the environmentalist movement. Just like the misnomer "assault weapon" the anti-gunners have successfully insinuated into everyday parlance, environmentalists are using the word addiction to subtly skew the argument away from honest intellectual discussion and towards their bailiwick, obfuscation and emotionalism. Since no right-thinking person wants to be fingered as an addict, they will of course listen to environmentalism's pitch, and perhaps more than a few will be swayed.

In and of itself, this probably wouldn't be that big a deal, especially if it was confined to a small segment of the population. The problem is, it's not. The reason I am even posting on this is because I heard a snippet of some speech Obama gave recently where he was apparently chiding America's "addiction" to imported crude. This means that environmentalism's philosophy has reached, and been internalized by, the very person who could well be the next president of the United States. That means environmentalism would have a big, fat thumb on the delicate scale that balances individual rights and governmental abuse of those rights, and you can bet that thumb won't be on the side of the former.

Incidentally, I have no big love or hate of petroleum. It's a commodity that helped pull and propel the world world into the modern era, but if its heyday or peak has been reached, so be it. It was a hell of a ride while it lasted.

Take care.
DAL357