Saturday was a good day at the range.

The weather was dry, but it was overcast, cold, and a sharp wind made me wish I’d brought my gloves.

I finally worked the kinks out of one of my guns, and I did some practice with off hand shooting. I discovered that I need a lot more practice with off-hand shooting.

We stayed at the range for about 2 hours before good sense took over and we packed up. It started raining ice and snow an hour or so later, so I think that was a good decision.

Only two friends braved the cold, but we had a good time. We will definitely be doing it again when spring finally rears its ugly head.

From the Onion Radio News:

“Norway Returns to Pillage-Based Economy”

Sharpen the axe, prepare the longships, and get me a map of Ireland. I’ve finally found my calling.

The Kentucky State Auditor has found a whole bunch of bad spending lately.

First, they announce that the city of Louisville has mishandled millions of dollars, some of it federal grants that had to be spent or lost. Mayor for Life Abramson had to appear on the news, drenched in flopsweat, and tell us how he’s just as surprised as anyone and how he’s going to get this fixed.

Then today, it’s announced that hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars have been used to pay for strip clubs, NASCAR driving lessons, guns, and video games by authorities at the Lexington airport.

Since I moved to Louisville, 2 of the 3 governors of Kentucky have either been disgraced, or indicted, or both.

I’m no longer even surprised when some politician in Kentucky gets caught with his pants down or her pockets lined with dirty cash. I’m of the opinion that we need to start importing our politicians from Chicago in order to clean things up a little bit.

Signs that your politicians are dirty:

1. Her boob size is a larger number than her IQ, but she started out flat as an ironing board.
2. His new SUV costs more than the addition to your local school.
3. All of a sudden, her mama is debt free.
4. He has more 5 punches on his loyalty card with the local Gulfstream dealership.
5. That local school addition cost $2 million, but it’s principal components are used FEMA trailers and new sidewalks.

Accoding to Fox News, a young boy in China has been taken to a hospital where his GLOWING EYES allow him to see in the dark. The doctors believe he has a rare condition that makes his eyes sensitive to light.

I think the good physicians are missing the point here: this kids eyes FREAKING GLOW.

You know, like Draculas do just before he rips into some young thing’s throat.

Or like Damiens in the Omen.

Time to start reading that Bible again if kids are getting eyes that glow.

ACORN, a “community activist” group that has been associated with President Obama, has begun actively helping people who have been evicted from their houses after foreclosure to break into them and “homestead” in them.

Now one of their workers has been arrested.

I feel sorry for people who have lost ownership of their houses due to misfortune, bad planning, or whatever. Your house will almost always be the biggest investment you make, and you gain an emotional attachment to your home.

But a contract is a contract. The bank gives you money to let you buy your home. You promise to pay back that money with some amount of interest. You agree that if you don’t pay back the money according to the schedule that you and the bank agree on, the bank has every right to take the house away from you and sell it to make back some part of their loan to you.

If you can’t pay your mortgage because you lost your job, or you got too sick to work, or something along those lines, I feel for you. There but for the grace of God go I and my family. There are a lot of good agencies, both public and private, which try to help good people get through bad times, and these people should turn to them, along with their family and friends, for help.

But if you get foreclosed on and evicted because you signed a mortgage you knew you couldn’t afford, or if you got a mortgage because of incorrect, read fraudulant, information, then remember: Life is hard, it’s even harder if you’re stupid. Don’t come to me for sympathy or much help if you gambled your life savings on a house that you hoped would increase in value enough to cover your bets and it bit you in the ass.

In either situation, the previous owner of the house has absolutely no rights to it. Morally, I feel for people who have to pick up the pieces and try to re-make their lives. Growing up, my family bounced from one home to another on multiple occasions, and I know how much it sucks.

But to break into what is now someone elses property and squat in it is trespassing at least. Don’t insult those of us whose ancestors were truly homesteaders by calling it “homesteading”. It’s squatting, plain and simple.

ACORN and any other group that advocates this kind of nonsense should be investigated for inducing desperate people to break the law.

Saw this over at Oddees:

Enjoy!

But you still will be made to suffer for it.

US Airways has decided that charging $2 for a soda that goes for 50 cents retail at the supermarket is pretty dumb, and is discontinuing the practice.

It’s a good start, but it won’t gain them any of my business if I can help it.

Flying to me is the quickest way to get from here to there if you’re going more than 500 miles. Anything less than that, and it’s usually either just as fast or faster to drive, and it costs a heck of a lot less. And I get to skip the coming and going cavity searches.

To be honest, I hate to fly. With a passion.

It starts with the booking process, where you get told that it costs $300 more to fly from any convenient airport than it would if you drive 2 hours to get on a 1 hour flight.

Then you go to check in for your flight. You show up 3 hours early so that you can stand in line for the 1 or 2 agents that staff the desk. After you look at the 3 unmanned desks for an hour, you finally get your boarding ticket and give up your check baggage. Of course, you have to pay for that check baggage now, so you give up even more money.

Then you go through security, which I won’t complain about. Anything that is done to make sure some whacko hasn’t shoved explosives into a body cavity before getting on my flight is OK with me.

After an hour or so in the security line, you make your way to the gate. A good percentage of the time the gate you were told to go to was just an educated guess, but the airline will be helpful and put up another educated guess on the information boards located within the terminal.

Eventually, you’ll find the correct gate, and settle in for a long wait. Remember, you came in hours early for your flight. But I hope you brought a book, because you’ll be here a while waiting for your plane to arrive. You may have been at the gate an hour before your scheduled departure time, but the airline has no problem getting the plane to the gate much later than that. About 50% of the time, your departure time will come and go with no plane in the gate and no explanation from the ground crew.

Eventually your flight will be called, and you will line up to get on-board. You are now cattle, and will be treated as such. As soon as you give them your ticket, they own you and they know it. You will be repeatedly told to hurry up and get on the plane. You will be shamed for actually bringing a carry-on bigger than a notebook, and will be threatened with even more fees if your carry-on is too big for the overhead storage.

Once you get settled, the airline will admit that it sold too many seats for the flight, and will start “suggesting” that someone give up their seat in exchange for the possibility of flying out at some later date. If no-one goes for it, they will start threatening to jettison us ungrateful slobs unless someone takes one for the team. Any other industry that sold more product than it had to sell would be brought to trial for fraud. Apparently the airlines have some deal for this.

Then you take off. They crank up the cold, dry air conditioning, so you cough up a little more money for a blanket to ward off hypothermia. If you’re smart, you bought some food for the trip, because unless you can live on a few grams of peanuts you’re going to be weak from hunger when you land.

Eventually you will land. Hopefully it will be at an airport. To paraphrase Carlin, I prefer to land at an airport, because those cornfield landings tend to mess up my schedule.

You may have to go through all of this again if you’re catching another flight since it’s just too much work to have direct flights anywhere anymore. But for the sake of this argument, let’s say you’re done flying for today.

You get off the plane, and hopefully can decipher the signs that point you to the correct exit and place to get your luggage. Mostly, I continue my cattle instinct and follow the herd. Hopefully, there’s also a restroom close by too. While the airline does provide a head on the plane, unless you’re under 4 feet or already have scoliosis, you’re not going to be able to use it without making a huge mess all over yourself.

Once you find the correct carousel for your luggage, you begin saying decades of the Rosary in hopes that your bag is there and in one piece. If it’s not there, or if it’s damaged, you get to go through the exquisite experience of trying to get the airline to admit that you ever had a bag, and then getting them to figure out where it is and get it to you.

And you get to go through all of this again on the return trip. Wheeee!

Believe it or not, you paid for this.

So I’m not impressed that an airline is not going to charge me for a soda. I’ll be impressed when these cretins learn how to treat me like a human being and give me good value for the hundreds of dollars I give them to get me from place to place. Until then, I plan on driving myself everywhere I can and laughing when the airlines whine about declining revenues.

Army Emergency Relief (AER) is the primary charity created exclusively for use by members of the Army. It receives almost all of its funding through paycheck donations from soldiers.

When a soldier has an unexpected financial emergency, such as emergency repairs to a car or the need to travel to their homes for funerals of family members, they are supposed to be able to go to AER for either a grant or a no-interest loan.

I contributed to and utilized AER when I was in the Army. Once a year, I would be “asked” to sign a form allowing AER to take money out of my paycheck. There was quite a lot of pressure to get 100% of any given unit to contribute, even if it was only a one-time $20 contribution.

When I had to go to AER for a loan to fly home from Germany when my mother became ill and wasn’t expected to survive, they handed me a re-payment contract and an Army form to have the payments taken directly out of my paycheck before they handed me the money for the tickets.

AER always got their money, but they provided something we all needed, so we contributed and made sure we repaid our loans.

Tonight I read this. Apparently AER is holding onto over $200 million that was donated by soldiers in order to provide emergency relief for other soldiers.

Before I read this article, I didn’t even know that AER gave grants. I thought everything was done by loan. Goes to show how well they advertise what they offer.

I knew several soldiers that ran into financial emergencies that weren’t their faults. Usually it was something like an emergency medical procedure for their wives or children that the Army couldn’t provide at the on-post hospital, and wouldn’t pay 100% for at the off-post hospital. If they couldn’t pay the bill themselves, they would usually be referred to AER by the commander. I’d say that about 50% of the time, AER would turn them away, and the soldier, who made less than $15,000.00 a year mind you, would have to work out something with the hospital to repay bills that regularly ran into the thousands of dollars.

Over the years, I and a lot of my fellow soldiers became quite cynical about giving money to AER. Most of us gave a small one-time cash donation to stay out of trouble, but refused to give a month-to-month donation.

AER should return this excess to the soldiers who fund it. It’s inconceivable that a charity for soldiers could refuse to give out so much money to the soldiers who are its major donors.

Everyone is familiar with the horrific case of a pet chimpanzee attacking a woman and horribly injuring her. Reports are coming out now that the chimp had bitten at least one person before, and now people are asking how this could have happened.

Hello? A wild animal bit someone, noone did much of anything about it, and now another human being has been horribly maimed. And the people in the area have the absolute nerve to act surprised?!?!?!?!

The lady who owned the chimp basically treated it like a child. She cooked steak for it, gave it wine in a stemmed glass. She bathed with it and cuddled with it in bed. If that doesn’t give you a whole body shiver, then you need to go talk to someone. She’s been keeping a wild animal as a pet for a decade and a half, and noone has tried to get her into a psychiatric facility?

What exactly did she have to do before people stopped commenting on how cute the chimp was and sent in the nice men with the butterfly nets? Dress him up in a Star Trek costume and send him to the grocery store alone?

And now I read this. Some creep decided to rob a couple of Girl Scouts who were selling cookies outside a grocery store. This waste of good protoplasm waited until these children were done selling their wares for the night, then took $250 from them.

Another example of someone who should be locked in an overused porta-potty and left in the hot Arizona sun.

Ever notice that it’s a stairway to heaven, but a highway to hell?

Seems to me these two just pulled into the passing lane on that highway.

Saw this over at Tam’s site.

It’s an extremely kewl animation made from the graph of home prices over the past 100 years. I wish there was one to show the big drop in the last year.

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-2757699799528285056&hl=en&fs=true