Winter Storm

 The big news today is a winter storm that hit us last night.  Down here in the Deep South, it's not snowing, but temps have dropped considerably since sundown yesterday.  At one point yesterday afternoon, I was wearing only a pocket tee shirt, but today I'm wearing several more layers.  Temps are hovering around freezing and I doubt they will climb much today.  The weather weenies tell us that temps will be in the teens overnight.

Grandson Zach works for a major shipping company and he tells is that the truck from Memphis failed to arrive at the docks this morning. 

I made a big gumbo last night, and leftover gumbo is on the menu for lunch.  It's always better the next day, and a big bowl will hit the spot around noon.

Auditing The Gold.

 Rumors are flying that Elon Musk is going to take his team to the US Bullion Depository at FOrt Knox to audit the gold.  I can't tell you the last time that place was audited, but the last inspection I am aware of happened in 1974 by members of Congress.

The inspection by Members of Congress on September 23, 1974, of U.S. gold stocks stored at the Fort Knox (Ky.) Bullion Depository marks a unique departure from the long standing and rigidly enforced policy of absolutely no visitors, Mrs. Mary Brooks, Director of the Mint, announced today.

When I got there in 1976, the place was still abuzz about the inspection, and the rumors about what they may or may not have found there.  We know that they stored some crown jewels from eastern European nations that were then behind the iron curtain. 

The security around the Depository is probably the tightest in the nation.  Easily seen by travelers on US Highway 31W, it looks like a small building sitting in a field.  Don't let that deceive you.

At one time I was tasked with providing a platoon of tanks on two-hour notice to protect the Depository in case of a national emergency.  They would test us occasionally, and yes, one day I drove a platoon of tanks up to the gate before Treasury came out, told us we did good, and sent us away.  That screwed up a Sunday afternoon.

Fort Knox is no longer the home of Armor, but I see that they have a smattering of units, to include the 4th Cavalry Brigade, along with some Engineer units.  I bet that those guys have the same mission we did back in the 1970s.  Protect the Depositoory.

Teutonic Order

 It looks like Germany is cracking down on hate speech, that is, anything that might offend or insult someone.  Especially politicians. Insty covers it here.  And CBS 60 minutes highlights it here.

Watching the 60 Minutes segment was chilling.  The German prosecutors say that a large portion of the German pubic has quit engaging online because of hate speech.  More likely, a large portion of the populace has quit engaging because they don't want the police banging on their door in the early morning.

Hate speech is free speech. It may be deplorable or detestable, but it is free speech.  The only antidote is universal condemnation, not pre-dawn police raids.  Germany has tried that once.  They called it Kristallnacht, followed by The Night of the Long Knives.

Germans should know that history often rhymes.  They should be very careful about criminalizing speech.

Questions Answered

 A couple of questions about the post below, where I'm tumbling brass in a concrete mixer.  Juvat asks:

Just a bit of a question, what is walnut media?

Walnut media is a fine abrasive made from ground walnut shells. I get it at Harbor Freight.  It's great for cleaning and polishing brass. 

Rob asks:

4,000 rounds? How long will it take you to reload all 4,000? Heck, how long will they last when the shooting starts? I'm just curious...

That's just what I'm cleaning today.  I already have 6000 cleaned. This is specialty ammunition used in Cowboy Fast Draw.  CFDA rules require that at sanctioned shoots, all competitors use the same ammunition.  One rule of thumb is that the host provide 100 rounds for each competitor.  All this ammunition will be shot in three days at the Texas State Championship to be held in Richmond, TX on the second weekend of March.  Through an inter-club agreement, we are supplying the loaded ammo and they will replace the wax bullets and primers.  Then, we will clean all the brass again and reload it for Louisiana State, which will be held in Pineville, LA over Memorial Day weekend.

We're having a club meeting tomorrow night to load ammo.  We'll be done in about three hours, then we'll eat gumbo and potato salad.

Everything you might want to know about Cowboy Fast Draw is in the video below.

The sport is a lot of fun.  If you are interested, go to Cowboy Fast Draw for more information.

Presidents Day

 It's Monday, which is traditionally the day to do laundry, and I've done two loads.  Belle and I agreed years ago that we married each other for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. The vows included nothing about laundry.  She does heres, I do mine.  It works out well for us.

It's also Presidents Day, a day that is a federal holiday, a day to reflect on a purely made-up holiday that allows government workers to take the day off.  It's always on a Monday, which led my father to declare it George Birthington's Washday.  

The dog and I are out in the shop now, and I'm tumbling brass.  I have just over 4000 pieces of .45LC brass to clean for a shoot next month.  We've found that the best way to clean large batches of brass is with a concrete mixer.  2000 pieces of brass, 25 lbs of walnut media and two hours.  They come out clean and shiny.

Yep, that is a trick I learned five or six years ago.

Tank Names

 Younger son sends this proto of a bunch of what appear to be Abrams tanks with tank manes.  Anyone who folows WWII  movies has probably seen the movie Fury, which focuses on one tank crew during the latter stages of the European theater.  Tank names, traditionally, are based on the unit that the tank is assigned.   Traditionally, tank companies are assigned to Company A, B, C, or D.  Whereas cavalry troops are assigned to Troop E, F, G, or H.  That tells me that the fictitious tank "Fury" was assigned to a cavalry unit and was in F troop.

I digress.  The photo my son sent me is below.

It seems that these tanks are assigned to Company A and B of some unit, and someone has a sense of humor.  The tank with the red arrow is "ASVAB WAIVER".  That is funny.

My first tank, and M60A1 in 4/37th Armor was "Cap'n Crunch".  Naming tanks fell out of favor in the '80s and I didn't see much of that.  In my last unit, 1/156 LANG, we could name tanks, but I was in a staff position and didn't have a tank.  However, on dark night during gunnery, our Batallón Commander stuck his tank in the pre-dawn hours and got off it to let the Master Gunner retrieve it.  When it came out of the ditch sometime around dawn, it had been renamed "Ditch Witch".  The old man laughed it off, he had a good sense of humor.

Naming tanks is a morale thing.  Good commanders laugh it off.

Bulk Primers

 Reloading ammo is a huge cost savings and many of us enjoy had-crafted ammo f or better accuracy, cost savings and more range time.  Running a Cowboy Fast Draw club, I buy a lot of shotgun primers for the club and sanctioned events.  If any of you are buying primers in bulk, eventually you will run into something that looks like this.

That box contains 10,000 shotshell primers.  Not in nice boxes, but in trays of 1000. They look something like this.

That is one tray of 1000 primers, all neatly in their little holes.  The big box holds 10 trays like that, but tray number 1, on top, always gets bobbled in shipment and comes out looking lie tis.

Pain in the butt.  You have to take all the trays  out of the box and find the loose primers that got rattled out of their tray during shipment.  I've never lost a primer, I've always been able to fill all the little holes, but it's just part of a large primer shipment.

Nitrogen Hypoxia

 CBS News is reporting that Louisiana has scheduled its first execution in 12 years, settling the debate over lethal injection.  The method used will be nitrogen hypoxia.

There are technically three execution methods approved in Louisiana. Lethal injection is the default method, and electrocution and nitrogen hypoxia are alternatives. State legislators last year authorized nitrogen hypoxia, an experimental procedure tried just four times before in the nation's recorded history, as a means to execute death row prisoners. Their decision came shortly after Alabama introduced the method to the public in January 2024, during the controversial and disputed execution of Kenny Smith, whose death was described by several witnesses, including reporters, as potentially torturous.

Nitrogen is an inert gas, composing the majority of the atmosphere we breathe. 

Wednesday Weirdness

 I see that the US Mint is thinking about stopping production on the US penny coin.  It takes 2 cents to make one.  They literally cost more than they are worth.

Pete Hegseth, or SecDef, has renamed Fort Bragg. He found a US Army Private First Class named Roland L Bragg who earned a Silver Star and a Purple Heart during the Battle of The Bulge.  For a PFC to earn a Silver Star, that is some hero activity right there.  Good on Hegseth.  Now, if we can find a hero named Polk, or Hood, maybe we can start setting things right.

I see breaking news that Tulsi Gabbard has been confirmed as DNI.  The very idea that Lieutenant Colonel Gabbard was a Russian plant was lunacy.  Lunacy, by the way, tends to define the Democrat party today.  Now, let's get RFK confirmed.  He is a Democrat and confirmation should be a shoo-in, but again, lunatic Democrats.

UPDATE:  How could I overlook this?  Federal retirement paperwork is done manually, on paper at a mine in Pennsylvania.  Elon talks about it here in the early part of the interview. An old limestone mine with manila folders. Truly archaic