What is "Country"

I only bring this up because I see that Taylor Swift has won a whole host of CMA awards for her "country" music.

Now don't get me wrong, I think that Taylor Swift has buttloads of talent. But from what I've heard of her last album, she's a bubblegum pop artist that some music director is directing at the country music market.

Hell, I think that Miranda Lambert has more "country" in one song that Taylor Swift has in her entire last album. Want proof? Compare and contrast:

Kerosene - Miranda Lambert

You Belong With Me - Taylor Swift

White Liar - Miranda Lambert

Love Story - Taylor Swift

Gunpowder and Lead - Miranda Lambert

Taylor Swift makes me think of high school cheerleaders at some Prep School on the East Coast, playing in the local talent show. Miranda Lambert makes me think of a concert at a honkey-tonk somewhere in Texas.

So what is "country"? I dunno if I can define it, but I'll take Miranda Lambert over Taylor Swift anyday.

This has been your non political post for the day. And now I'm off, because I'll be busy all friggin day.

Barack Hussein Obama still won't salute the American Flag

Not a fluke... still spitting on the entire country...

Cross Posted at DANEgerus

Obama's ploy with Afghanistan

Doing “something” in Afghanistan has no possible benefit for either anarchy or Obama. Anything that is “done” – be it sending in more troops or bringing troops out – only increases order and reduces entropy. Decisions, one way or another, direct management solutions. In Afghanistan as it is in America these days increased and directed management of problems decreases chaos and uncertainty. It is not an accident that all of Obama's domestic agenda involves replacing private sector management with government czars and bureaucracies.

If your inner goal is the destruction of established systems of governance you will seek in increase chaos and uncertainty at every turn. This is exactly what we see in Obama’s personal style of what passes for “governance.” We do not have to intuit this. We need only observe and not deny the evidence of our senses.

Veterans of dysfunctional corporations will recognize the Obama style as the one in which upper management is fond of giving middle management “All the responsibility, none of the authority, and zero resources.” It’s a time-tested recipe for failure and demoralization while maintaining an aloof, "concerned," and above the fray posture on the part of the CEO. It is what is being done to the US military, day in and day out, in Afghanistan and, as such, works to Obama’s favor as long as it can be done slowly and without alarm

Cloward-Piven strategy. Obama isn't actually trying to fix anything, folks. And Obama isn't trying to win in Afghanistan. That whole "War that needs to be won" speech that the teleprompter Jesus gave in the election? Lies, just like every other word that comes out of his mouth. Lies, lies, lies and more fucking lies.

Because Obama doesn't give a shit about the military. To Obama, the military is just another political pawn, and if more US Servicemen die under Obama's watch, so much the better. Obama will dip his hands into their blood and use it to sign yet another freedom-destroying piece of legislation, all the while blathering on about dignity and sacrifice, as if he has any idea what those words mean. The more US Servicemembers who die on Obama's watch is more blood that Obama can use for his own political gain.

This is going to be a long, long couple of years for the military, folks. I expect plenty more people to die because of Obama's choices. And I expect that those deaths will be for Obama's political purposes, not for any military decisions. And I expect that Obama will celebrate them, because that will give him MORE deaths to use in his political war.

The Commander in Chief can't stand the military he commands. And if they die, he's satisfied.

I would love to have someone prove me wrong. But I don't think that anyone can.

Random Thoughts

on custom guns. Phil links to a few folks who know a thing or two about custom guns. Phil has done work on his own guns as well.

As for me? Meh.

Look, I can appreciate a custom gun, trust me on that. But a lot of the desire to build a custom gun is the desire to say "Lookie at what I made!" And I can completely understand that, because I do that with leather and various other things. I think I bored fifty people to death showing off the holster I made for my 1911. "Look! I made it all by myself!"

Special needs also create custom guns. You go to Boomershoot, and I'm willing to bet that most the guns there are either custom or have had a substantial amount of work done on them by their owners. And if you're trying to tag a target at 1000+ meters, you pretty much need a custom gun.

Me? All I want to do is take down deer at 100 yards. And given the woods here in Wisconsin, I'll be doing it at LESS than 100 yards, just because the trees are too thick for you to have a long shot at a deer. I don't need a custom gun for that. Hell, since my Mosin is acting shitty, I'll be doing all my hunting with my muzzle loader, and a .50 cal lead roundball should be perfectly up to the task.

I can appreciate a custom gun. I just don't think I'll be owning one.

Calmer today

It's amazing how much better my mood is when I go for a run in the morning.

Although I still think that beating the ever-living fuck out of a certain person in Missouri would help sooth my nerves.

No, that's not a political rant. In fact, that's a personal note that has nothing to do with anything else than my job.

*&$%#@!

Took a co-worker shooting today. He wasn't fond of the Mosin-Nagant, so I showed him the operation of the muzzle loader, made sure he understood the rules, watched him for a while, and let him have fun. He was enjoying it quite a bit, until he shot the damn ramrod at the target.

Yeah. I heard him fire and it sounded a bit off, but he seemed OK and the gun looked fine. He complained that it had kicked hard. I thought he'd just put more powder in than he had intended. But when I went to fire the gun, the ramrod was missing. After searching for it, we saw the slash in the target board where the ramrod had gone through. Once the range went cold we walked down, and damned if you couldn't see exactly where it had gone, down to the rings on the jag. It was almost cartoonish; the outline of the ramrod in the board.

So the question I have now is this - just how much damage did my gun take from that? I cleaned and inspected the barrel, and it looks fine. The breech plug is fine. But I know that there could be damage that I can't see. What normally happens when you shoot the ramrod out?

Oh, and don't even get my started on the Mosin-Nagant. I couldn't hit the fucking broadside of a barn from the inside. I started out the day with two-inch groups, and by the end of the day I couldn't group at all. I'm not just frustrated, I'm infuriated. I'm about to take that worthless fucking gun and turn it into kindling.

So, I have a muzzle-loader that might be damaged, and I have a rifle that I can't hit anything with. I won't be able to hit the range anytime soon, today was the last chance. Which means I might not get to go hunting. Fuck. Just fuck. Fuck me gently with a chainsaw fuck fuck FUCK DAMMIT FUCK!

And this is just one fucking thing that makes me want to take a fucking axe to the smiling faces of the drones who walk around asking me how my day went. You don't want to know how my fucking day went. I don't even want to know how my worthless fucking wasted day went, I just want to drink myself into a stupor and go to sleep and pretend that this fucking day never happened, but I can't even fucking do that. Fuck. I want to destroy my fucking Mosin, but I'm holding off in the faint hope that there might be some chance of rescuing the gun into something that might resemble an actual functioning half accurate firearm. I'm hoping and praying that my muzzle-loader didn't just fucking die because my co-worker forgot to take the fucking ramrod out. But until I can confirm it, I have a grand total of FUCKING ZERO deer killing firearms. So I might as well just wipe my fucking ass with my hunting permit.

Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Veteran's Day

Thank a vet, if you know one.

And if you don't know one, go find one. It's not like VA hospitals are in short supply. I'm off to the range to blow holes in paper at long distance. It just seems fitting.

Happy Birthday to the US Marine Corps

As much as I rag on my fellow service members who picked the wrong branch, when it call comes down to it it's the "U.S." on the nametape that counts, not what immediately follows it.

Quick blog post of the day

I came back in from my run, grabbed a cup of coffee, and was about to fire up the computer for some blogging when I noticed a "puddle" in the kitchen.

Turned out the dog had vomited all over the kitchen floor. So instead of blogging, I cleaned that up. No bloggus for you today!

Oh, OK, one quick thing - political correctness is alive and well in the military. Maybe if we'd actually done some looking at that jihadist fuckwit Hasan he would have been booted out long before he went on a killing spree. But no, someone didn't want to upset the applecart. Don't rock the boat! That wouldn't be nice!

This is how civilization dies, folks. Be being unwilling to confront the threats from both within and without.

Obama Doesn't "Get" the Military He Commands

I give you Villainous Company...

Life is full of mysteries, but chief among them in this Marine wife's mind at the moment is, "Just how stupid does this White House think we are?" If the events of the past few months have shown us anything, it's that Barack Obama has little enthusiasm for - or interest in - one of the most important duties of an American President: his role as Commander in Chief of the nation's armed forces.
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Obama started his first term by becoming the first president in 56 years to snub the Salute to Heroes ball honoring Medal of Honor recipients.
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...where was our Commander in Chief when his top commander in Afghanistan was being viciously attacked? Did he step in and defend his subordinate for doing the job he was ordered to do? Of course he didn't. Harry Truman was obviously no community organizer: the brouhaha over McChrystal ensured that the buck wouldn't stop in the Oval Office this time. The McChrystal leak was followed by the revelation that our stalwart Commander in Chief had only met with his top commander in Afghanistan once. Stung by the implication that his "war of necessity" was very much on the back burner, Obama scrambled to find a mere 20 minutes to spare as he idled on a runway in northern Europe. He spent more time than that conducting a beer summit.
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Tell me something: in a moment of national tragedy is it really too much to expect the President of the United States to forego the "shout outs"?

Anybody notice Barack Hussein Obama quickly said we shouldn't judge Hasan and then just as quickly used the tragedy to push Healthcare?

Meanwhile Mr. & Mrs. 'W' dropped by the hospital in Ft. Hood to comfort the wounded.

In comments

Both at Rivrdog's and Og's is a discussion started by one Roberta X about the role religion played in the Ft. Hood shootings. What prompted this particular post is her reply to my comment at Rivrdog's, wherein she states:

Judge people by their actions (and not by the crazy stuff written in their holy book, which you can find in any religion's writings) or go stand over there with the Nazis and the Commies. It's all the same to me, because I look on you -- and my baby brother and cops, cabdrivers and co-eds -- with as much suspicion as I do Muslims.

She then goes on to accuse both myself and Rivrdog of "painting with a very broad brush".

Wow. Look at that sentance she wrote. And she thinks that I paint with a very broad brush? Yeah.

Look, I'm not a Roberta hater, so don't think that I'm getting all pissy with her. But on this subject, she's wrong. And trying to claim that all religions have weird stuff written in their holy book is intellectually dishonest. "Weird", maybe. Calling for the adherents of a religion to either convert or kill the infidels? Well, that pretty much narrows it down to one - Islam.

Does this mean that all Muslims are going to go on a shooting rampage? No. But it does mean that they have a predication for violence against non-believers. And the more power they get, the more violent they get. Ask Geert Wilders, or Theo van Gogh. Ask Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Ah, wait, you can't ask Theo van Gogh, he was stabbed to death by a Muslim for daring to make a movie about Islam. I guess that's another little "weird" thing written in a holy book, right?

Not all religions are the same. Not all religions call for their believers to kill non-believers. In fact, as far as I know only one religion does so: Islam. Islam might not be the reason for people going nuts, but it sure enourages it and nurtures it, grows it, and then lets it loose. To quote Og:

So, Ms Rx, it is unfair to paint Muslims with a broad brush that says ‘Terrorist”. But to paint them wiht a brush that says” potential dangerous kook that should be watched carefully” yes, that’s just fine by me. And it’s mathematically true that if you JUST painted muslims with that brush, you’d have made a pretty safe bet.

And I'm off for the day. Y'all have fun.