Every small tractor I've ever seen uses lynch pins. My Kubota has four on the 3-pont hitch and needs three more to attach an implement. They are universal and cheap.
Thirty years ago, every ag supply had a cardboard box of these things near the cash register. While buying feed or fertilizer, I'd grab a couple to put in the spares box. If you are running a tractor, you need a couple of spare lynch pins. When you are out in the middle of a field and realize that your implement has fallen off our tractor, you are happy that you spent that 50 cents at the feed store last week.
I went this morning to two different ag supply stores and could not find one. I'd rather spend my money at a local business than go to the big chains, but tomorrow morning I'll head across the river to Tractor Supply. I told both of the counter folk at the feed stores that I'd rather ship wheh them, but if they couldn't stock lynch pins I'd have to go across the river.
I bought a tractor in January, a lightly used Kubota L3400. We took it to my son's place where he needed to move some dirt, and I haven't even sat on it until today. He's going to be out of town for a week, and he brought it over to my place so I could familiarize myself on it.
He had already checked all the fluids, but I wanted to learn where all the things were, so I started looking and couldn't find a dip stick for the transmission. I found the drain plugs and fill plugs, but no dipstick. So, I went inside and started Googling.
It has a sight glass. Hidden under a hole in the floorboard.
Lovely. At least it has a way to check levels. I also note that the PTO has never been used on this tractor. It's a 2010 model and still has the plastic shipping cover over the PTO shaft. Of course the grease under there has hardened in the past 12 years, so I"ll have to cut that off before we can use the PTO.
It has 390 hours on the meter, so I'll dig out the book and see what a 400 hour service looks like.
Dad called them alemites. The rest of the world calls them zerks. Whatever you call them, they are used to squirt grease into a bearing or bushing. When I was a youth, greasing vehicles or equipment was a constant chore. While waiting for the oil to drain out of the family car, we would grab the grease gun and grease the front end. As I recall, there were six on a Ford sedan. Upper and lower ball joints, and one on each tie rod.
All that required a grease gun, and I always hated grease guns. Not because I didn't understand the need for lubrication, but because the basic grease gun was horrible. Changing the grease tubes is an exercise in frustration. Compress the big spring, lock it into place, unscrew the metal tube, pull out the old grease tube, Insert the new grease tub. Invariably when reassembling the gun, something would go wrong, the spring would get loose and shoot grease all over the shop. Much cursing. Grease everywhere. I would have it from my ankles to my earlobes.
A month or so ago, I realized it was time for an upgrade before the spring greasing season. The tractor needs grease, the zero-turn needs grease and my ancient grease gun needed to go into the trash. So, I started casting about for alternatives. I came upon a German invention called the Lube Shuttle. I watched some videos and decided to order one. It's a little pricey, but it is supposed to take all the frustration and mess out of greasing. It uses plastic tubes instead of paper tubes and they screw into the gun.
I looked on Amazon and found one. I ordered it along with a case of grease. It came in yesterday, and this morning I unpacked it, assebled it and lubed the zero-turn in about fifteen minutes. Mo hassle, no problem.
Below is a video that explains how it works.
I think I'm going to like this thing a lot. I don't think that the local parts store has the grease tubes yet, but many of us have learned to shop online, so that is not much of a problem. If you are looking for a grease gun, consider the Lube Shuttle.
KPEL is reporting that yet another bill has been filed to make Louisiana a constitutional carry state. Such bills have been filed in recent years, and passed the legislature. They were vetoed by our lackluster governor, and the legislature has been unwilling to over-ride the veto.
Our legislature is a piece of work, with a huge Republican majority in both houses, but the number of RINOs in both bodies make it virtually impossible to get anything done. Louisiana is both an open-carry state and a shall-issue state but the legislature is absolutely impotent when it comes to reining in our Democrat governor. As a whole, they are worthless.
Fridays, during the season, we visit a local boiler and get some crawfish to bring home. As we did today.
It's nearly impossible for me to eat crawfish without drinking a beer, and I chose today to wash it down with a Miller High Life. It is Friday afternoon, after all. The dawg got his quota, begging from Belle.
If you are looking for wisdom today, all I can tell you is that it is Friday afternoon and I have a belly full of crawfish. God made beer because He loves us and wants us to be happy.
PJ Media is reporting that AG Merrick Garland was not having a good day yesterday on Capitol Hill. He got ripped by Senator Hawley over the rogue FBI and their investigations in Catholics who prefer a Latin Mass. Evidently, Catholics who prefer a Latin Mass are some sort of domestic terrorist group.
Garland had no good answers, and it leaves us wondering if Garland understand the First Amendment, or any portion of the Constitution.
Thank God that this idiot never made it to the Supreme Court.
Okay, we're going to put this in the "You Gotta Be Shitting Me" category.
Evidently, in the Great Blizzard of 2023, Generac whole-house generators are shutting down due to over heating. It seems that if they get covered with snow, the air-cooled engines can't breathe sufficiently to sustain operation.
I would think that if a generator gets covered with snow, it would generate enough heat to melt the snow, bathing the generator in cool melt water. But, evidently that is not the situation.
Sources are reporting that Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot has lost her reelection bid. She came in third in a field of eight. Lightfoot is the first mayor to lose a reelection bid in over 40 years.
Not that I care much. I don't believe that the internal politics of Chicago affect me on iota. Still, Chicago is a big place, filled with Democrats, and the first openly gay black woman mayor has been crushed by out-of-control crime. The voters will only take so much, and Lightfoot delivered the excesses they could not stand.
I heard this term this morning and had to look it up. Dead-Naming. Evidently, that is the practice of, when dealing with trans people, of using the name they were born with instead of the name they prefer. For edample.
Lets say you know a guy named Joe. Went to high school with him. Joe was always a little bit standoff-ish, but other wise okay. Ten years later you run into Joe on the street, and he says his name is Sally. If you keep calling him Joe, you are dead-naming.
So, this leads to problems. Did Joe go through the process of legally changing his name? Or is he just stage-acting? How seriously should we take Joe at his word. Or did I just misgender him? Oops, did it again. Did Joe get a boob job, or is he still wearing a beard? If both, he can get work in a circus.
When I was a single man, both as a young adult and later as a mature adult, I had one iron-clad rule for dating. I would never date a woman who could display a better moustache than mine. And I have a very poor moustache. I'm just sayin'.
Concerning the lab leak theory that was floated recently, some folks are warning us that it might be a distraction campaign to keep us from asking other questions. Let's remember that this was leaked from a classified report, and that leads to question about the nature of the leak itself. Who leaked it, and why?
Others have asked why the Dept of Energy was even interested in the question. Well, the Dept of Energy is interested in a lot of things that we might not surmise. They run the National Laboratories like Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos. Which means that we have a lot of geeks asking interesting questions and trying to figure out the answers.
Why didn't the CDC or NIH break the story? Well, because many believe that they were funding this research in violation of laws about gain-of-function research. If CDC or NIH broke it, then it might complicate Tony Fauci's life with indictments, imprisonment, loss of pension and other distasteful problems. To have Fauci discredited would be a huge blow to the left.
This story cuts the Gordian knot of the Covid pandemic. Many of us suspected as much, but now the truth is coming out. The question is why now? And what are they trying to distract us from seeing?
The U.S. Energy Department has concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak, according to a classified report recently provided to the White House and several members of Congress.
No shit, Sherlock. The FBI concluded as much in 2021. Those of us with common sense concluded that in 2020. Big lab in Wuhan studying corona virus. Everyone gets sick with corona virus. Where would you think it came from?? Probably not the wet market down the street.
Belle has been watching cooking videos and she says that a convection oven works the same way that an air fryer works. I'm not going to argue with her because I know nothing about air fryers. But, we do have a convection oven, and if she is correct I should be able to air fry a turkey in the oven. More research is necessary.
I was Googling five-star officers today and stumbled across a name I had never heard of. I know that Bradley and Arnold, and MacArthur, and King, and Ike and that bunch were five-star officers, but I had never heard of William D Leahy. Evidently, he was quite the sailor-man, but pretty much let the other folks take the limelight. My education is now a bit more complete.
Anon said in a comment
I've always understood that "gamey" taste is from meat poorly handled and going bad, so prompt cooling and keeping it cool makes a big difference.
That is generally true, but some animals have musk glands that mist be excised before cooking. Raccoon, for example. And some animals eat things that impart a foul taste. Lile the hogs in LaSalle parish, LA. Belle calls them piney-woods rooters and refuses to let me bring them home. She says that if she wants to eat turpentine, she will take it right out of the bottle. It's true. The hogs I've eaten out of the pine forest generally taste like pine.
Dr. Drew and Brian Klimeade talk about evangelical doctors, those who believe in a particular treatment and stick with that when the science tends to point in another direction.
I've heard other folks talking about this in the past several weeks. Those well-meaning folks who thought they had the answers and put us on a course that proved disastrous, even as the science was evolving on an answer to a novel virus.
We've learned a lot since then. That masks don't work, that keeping kids out of school is a bad idea, that some vaccines don't provide protection and may do more harm than good. These evangelical doctors meant well, wanting to save humanity from disease. But as their diagnosis began to fly in the face of common sense, what they actually accomplished was to wreck the public confidence in the public health system.
It's been reported from several sources, and maybe it's time to talk about this.
From what I understand, an off-duty police officer (female) in Chicago went outside her apartment to try to mediate a disagreement on the sidewalk. She successfully mediated the disagreement and some people left the scene, but as she turned to leave, one person tried to grab her gun. She shot him.
Warning - The video is graphic.
She said some things during the confrontation that she may have to defend in later reviews, but to her credit, she was under a great dal of stress at the time, and he successfully defended herself against a life-threatening attack.
Some have made the argument that any man who attacks a woman deserves to be shot. I won't argue with that. Had the man succeeded, we don't know how it might have turned out, but we know that a woman who is trained in self-defense with a gun is perfectly capable of thwarting such an attack. In my eyes, she is completely blameless.
I'vebeen looking for a simply dashcam since my last one died. What brand and model do you have?
Thanks for the question, Alan. I've been using it for a couple of weeks and it has issues. Not insurmountable issues, but I'm not ready to endorse it. It's an el-cheapo from Wal Mart. It does okay, but your mileage may cary.
Probably a dumb question but what happens to all that meat. Is it commercially processed or just for the group that goes with the club. Sorry but the accent is so strong I don’t know if the guy says in the video. All the hog butchering I have had to do with there has been a lot of stress about sticking to get them bled out. Obviously that is not possible with a .22 group shoot?
I understand that he gives that meat away. If a family wants a hog, he gives it to them. He calls it Feeding Families, or something.
About "sticking" the hogs. In Cajun culture we have something called a boucherie, which is a hog killing. Generally, the hogs are shot with a .22 rifle, then immediately strucg up on a single-tree and bled. Obviously, a hog trapper in north Mississippi can't do that, because he doesn't want to taint his killing ground. But, from the dozen or so videos I've watched, he tries to make sure that the protein goes to someone who wants it.
Couple of weeks ago, we were talking about feral hogs and the problem that they have become in the South. Wherever there is a problem, there is also opportunity, and some folks are trying to help make a living while eradicating feral hogs.
I fell down a rabbit hole watching this guy catch hogs. It's been a few years since I have hunted and I'm surprised at how high-tech this has become. Hogs are still a problem, but an industry has sprung up around the problem, selling traps and cameras and gear to try to manage the problem. Folks like the fellow in the video are providing a service to landowners.
You remember Susan Rice. She is the Obama apparatchik who was ambassador to something or other and made the rounds at the Sunday talk shows telling everyone who would listen that the Benghazi uprising was all about some silly anti-Muslim video. Yeah, her. Yeah, that same uprising where Hillary wouldn't send support and the Muszzies overran the consulate and killed an ambassador. That Susan Rice
In the continuing effort to reward failure and the worst attributes of government incompetence, Biden has appointed Rice as his Diversity and Inclusion czar. Because, you know, Diversity is more important than actual competence. In support of this hypothesis, I cite Janet Yellen, Mayor Pete, Lloyd Austin, the Binder Lady and a host of other incompetents appointed by Biden.
I'm sure that Rice will begin filling the ranks of the bureaucracy with Diversity appointees who are chosen based on identity politics rather than actual achievement. We used to call these Equal Opportunity hires, but now we simply call them government workers.
Surfing around the intertubes this morning, I come across this video about an interesting bit of kit. The American 180.. It was a shoulder fire, blowback submachinegun chambered in .22LR. It fed from a complex pan-style magazine that sat atop the receiver.
It was designed in the 1960s by Richard J. Casull and produced by the Voere Co. With a cyclic rate of 1200 rounds per minute, that gave you 20 per second. The magazine held 180 rounds. With a weight of just under 6 lbs, that gave you a whole lot of hate in a small, easily controlled package.
At any rate, it's an interesting footnotein American firearms design. Enjoy the video.
It's that season again, andd Belle sent me to the boiler's for a small ice chest full of crawfish.
Mighty tasty, and now my belly is full of crawfish, corn and potatoes. Belle peeled a few and offered them to the dawg. He gobbled them down, then headed to the water dish. Evidently the seasoning is a bit much for his sensitive palate.
Some of the shooters called and asked if they could come over for a few hours after work. Helly yes, that what I built this place for.
We did a little shooting, a little coaching, a little laughing, and spent a nice couple of hours hanging out together. Not a bad way to spend a Friday afternoon.
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) challenged EPA Administrator Michael Regan to drink a glass of tap water in East Palestine, Ohio, after the agency claimed the water supply was safe despite the small town’s recent Norfolk Southern train derailment and toxic chemical disaster.
Here's the deal, and Belle and I were talking about it over coffee. We no longer trust the federal government. Not since Ruby Ridge, not since Lois Lerner, not since the 51 intelligence spooks. Every word from Joe Biden is a lie.
Every fourth commercial on my TV is about a Camp Lejune water problem that they had back in the 60s. Are the folks in East Palestine supposed to believe that those chemicals did not get into the water supply?
With the weaponization of the IRS, the weaponizing or the FBI, the continuing lack of transparency from the Biden administration, the continuing inability of the Justice Department to hold people accountable and the full realization that we now have a two-tiered justice system, it is no surprise that many of us no longer trust the federal government. They have wrecked their credibility.
It seems that one of the balloons shot down last week may have been launched from a hobby club in Illinois. I shit you not.
UFO Shot Down Over Canada Probably Belonged To Hobby Group From Illinois
They are a hobby group. They launch little $12 balloons. Put a tracking device in them, then track them as they fly, It's something to do on the weekend.
The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade spoke with Aviation Week, which says the circumstantial evidence is strong that it was their balloon shot down by NORAD, a partnership between the U.S. and Canada to monitor the skies that’s perhaps most famous for tracking Santa Claus. The U.S. was on heightened alert at the time, after a Chinese spy balloon was spotted by civilians in Billings, Montana before it crossed the entire continental U.S. and was finally shot down over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4.
Heh. NORAD spent $400K to shoot down a club balloon. Oops. Much more at the link.
Second son gave me a dash cam for Christmas, and after a while I started to play with it.
It's fairly fool-proof, as I can attest. Basically, when you plug it in and start the car, it starts recording. When you turn off the car, it quits recording. That is just exactly what I wanted it to do. It saves little one-minute videos on an SD card.
It records audio, but I turned that off for the purposes of this video. Y'all don't need to hear my running commentary against the talk radio show I was listening to. I'm dipping my toe into dash cam use, but I think this thing may be a lot of fun.
It seems that Raquel Welch has died at age 82. She was an actress, icon, sex symbol and all-around class act. The younger set may not recognize her name, but in the 60s and 70s there was not a bigger name in Hollywood.
We learn today from PJ Media that the US Supreme Court will decide whether or not to hear a case about the duty of elected leaders to safeguard the electoral system.
On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) will consider for a second time whether to hear Raland J. Brunson v. Alma S. Adams, a case that alleges Congress had a duty to investigate claims of fraud and impropriety in the 2020 national election, and that member votes against doing so amounted to treason. While some of the reasoning and suggested remedies in the complaint seem hyperbolic, it is aimed at accountability for those in leadership positions who are derelict in their duty to protect the American electoral system from manipulation.
Widener's has an article talking about the differences between the venerable .308 Winchester and the much beloved 7.62 x 51 NATO cartridge.
I've been a big fam of the .308 Winchester for many years. And a big fan of the military variant. It's a great cartridge, and I consider them interchangeable. The differences can be most accurately attributed to small manufacturing issues than it can to design differences.
I did chuckle when I read this:
Though you can safely shoot 7.62×51 through modern .308 rifles, it’s wise to have a gunsmith check the headspace in your 7.62 NATO rifle before using it to fire .308 rounds. Many newer rifles probably won’t have an issue. But, as they say, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
The .308 Win was designed in 1952 and the 7.62 was adopted in 1954. I don't think we'll find any antique rifles chambered in either of these cartridges. Hence, they are all modern rifles.
I do recall that back in the early 80s the government released a batch of 7.62 into the surplus market. It was made by Lake City in 1968 and we soon learned that it was spectacularly uniform. Wonderfully accurate, we simply could not build or buy bett3er ammo than Lake City 68. It was magnificent, and fairly cheap. We bought as much as we could carry.
The F-16 pilot who took down the object over Lake Huron says he wouldn't call it a balloon. According to t the Daily Mail.
'I wouldn’t really call it a balloon': Cockpit audio reveals F-16 pilots who shot down octagon shaped object over Lake Huron did NOT know what it was - as Pentagon says $400k Sidewinder missile that missed target landed 'harmlessly' in water..
I don't know why they haven't come out with the gun camera footage. That might answer a lot of the public's questions. This administration doesn't want to answer questions. Transparency means nothing to them.
It's been a bizarre couple of weeks. First, a citizen happens to notice an object in the sky over Montana. He takes pictures, sends them to the local news outlet, and suddenly we have a Chinese spy balloon. Biden catches hell for it, and they decide to shoot it down near Myrtle Beach, He's embarrassed about the whole scenario.
This week we shoot down three more. What's up with that?
Well, evidently, NORAD cranked up the sensitivity on their radars. Now they are finding the damned things everywhere. And, the Air Force is taking war shots over the North American continent.
Cranking up the sensitivity means they see a lot more stuff. Like Canada geese, or the Snow geese that come down from the north each winter. Some of those geese have been spotted at 29,000 feet. Well in the range of commercial aviation. Which is probably why the sensitivity was low in the first place. Geese fly with the airplanes. They squawk, sure enough, but they don't have transponders.
He finally made it to the groomers this week, but naturally a cool front came through,. He was shivering like a frozen dawg, so Belle put a sweater on him.
History aside, my experience with the 11917 Enfield came in the 1980s. My first father-in-law had one that survived the war and was sporterized later when the rifles came out as surplus. The rear sight was removed, the upper handguard went away. It was drilled and tapped for scope mounts and the stock was chopped down. Whoever did the work did a good job, because I had a bit of trouble identifying it until he told me what it was. The bore was excellent and he took his deer with it, along with the occasional varmint.
When he died, it was passed down to a son, and I hope that it is still serving the family. While we tend to cringe at such things today, the fact is that thousands of these rifles were released into the civil markets after the war and served as deer rifles for the greater public. I once passed on a sporterized 1903 Springfield on the side of the road. We were hunting and a guy stopped his truck and offered it for the sum of $75.00. I didn't have that much cash in my pocket, and he drove off with it. Probably heading to a pawn shop.
We will be prepping today for the club's first ever jackpot shoot. Many of our shooters are retired rodeo cowboys and they understand a jackpot match. Everyone throws money into a hat and winner takes a portion of it. The club decided to divide the jackpot where the winner gets half, second place gets 35% and third place gets 15%. The club will not cut the pot, and that means we are doing a full payout.
It looks like it's going to be a lot of fun. We have two shooters in town from Nevada and they want to shoot, and we have three shooters coming from our parent club in Texas, so we can claim shooters from three states. Not too shabby for a piddling little club shoot. The club members are excited about it,
There is not much going on in CFDA during February, with the big matches beginning in March. This will be a good warm-up for the competition season. If it is successful, we might make it an annual event.
It looks like Americans just aren’t that into watching Joe Biden speak. A mere 27.3 million people bothered to watch his second State of the Union address on television, which is “the second smallest audience for the annual event in at least 30 years,” according to Nielsen.
That’s a drop of nearly 28% from the 38.2 million tuned in to his State of the Union in 2022.
For comparison, according to Nielsen, Donald Trump’s second State of the Union address in 2019 received 46,789,000 television viewers.
The speech was entirely predictable. If his lips are moving, he's lying. I didn't watch it. THe clips I"ve seen were enough to convince me that I made the correct decision.
Belle and I have noticed that there seems to be a shortage of bagged cat food. Last week, the Dollar store had very little, as did Wally-world. Really?
An hour ago, I was at the grocers and they had no instant mashed potatoes. Don't feel sorry for me, I know how to make mashed potatoes, and there were plenty of spuds in the produce aisle. But, instant mashed potatoes can be used for lots of things, and I try to keep a box handy.
It seems like for the past two years we've been dealing with localized product shortages of one kind or another. We can blame it on a lot of things, but over the past two years, the one constant has been Joe Biden and his lackluster cabinet officials. These are Joe's shortages.
For lunch today, I intend to serve smothered hamburger patties with mashed potatoes. So, it's time to peel some spuds. If you will excuse me.
I've known this for years. Feral hogs have been a problem in Louisiana for years. Hunting camps routinely shoot any pigs that they see, in an attempt to control the numbers. Depending on what they have been eating, feral pig might be a fine meal. The hogs we find in our piney woods normally eat a lot of pinecones, and they taste like pinecones. I won't eat a piney-woods rooter. If I wanted my meat to taste like turpentine, I'd use it as a baste.
The thing that most folks don't realize is that a big pig might be considered dangerous game. A big pig will hurt you, given the opportunity.
Some folks might also wonder what the best caliber for big pig is. While most deer-caliber cartridges are suitable, you want something that penetrates. All that having been said, the biggest pig I ever took (he bottomed-out a 350 lb scale) was taken with one shot from a .22 LR. It was a one-shot kill and the hardest part of that hunt was loading him in the truck.
Turning our eyes from the drama of the Chinese balloon, we turn to more mundane matter. Flooding. Anyone who has lived through a flood knows how devastating it can be, but it seems that some are worried that Miami might flood.
The Miami-Dade County government has some clever mapping tools to help people visualize the impending climate risks—rising seas, swelling groundwater, flooded buildings. But too much detail can distract from the bigger picture: Miami is drowning.
There is that problem, but people are not nailed to the ground. They can move, and many folks like living in Miami. We face the same problems here in Louisiana. New Orleans, for example, is below sea lavel. Much of the time it is below the level of the Mississippi river. They choose to live there, much like the folks choose to live in Miami.
For years I lived in a flood zone. I chose to live there. I loved it there. The middling threat of flooding was outweighed by the other attributes of the land. Eventually, my life changed, and I moved from there. Nowadays, I live atop a tall ridge. If this place floods, there will be a lot of people around treading water. That would be a disaster.
People, generally, will do the right thing, based on their own unique circumstances. Some folks like living in a swamp. Others don't.
So, now that we have watched the epic failure of the Biden Administration over the drama of the spy balloon, we need to ask a few questions. Its remains lie across the ocean bottom off the Carolina coast, reportedly in 45 feet of water, and the Navy will soon be sending a salvage crew out to gather the wreckage.
No one told us about it until a citizen in Montana happened to notice it and took some good photos. The Biden administration was like "Yeah, we knew it was there. We've been tracking it for a while." Yet, they didn't bother to tell the rest of us. Very transparent. Joe told reporters that he ordered the Pentagon to shoot it down, but they wanted to wait until it was over water.
From what I've read, it came in over Alaska, then traversed western Canada, thence into the lower 48. A quick check this morning tells me that Elmendorf AFB still has planes. Why was the balloon allowed to get this far?
The Chinese say that the balloon was a civilian weather balloon that strayed off course. Sure it was.
We do know that the CCP has paid Hunter a lot of money, with 10% for The Big Guy. So, it is fair to assume that Joe has already been paid for his silence. We can add this drama to the long list of military failures under Biden's watch. The larger question is whether this drama was an accident, or by design?
People are reporting and the government is silent about what sounded like a large explosion in the skies over Montana late yesterday.
Did they shoot it down?
Edit and Update** Whatever the explosion was, it wasn't the spy balloon. Fox News is reporting that the spy balloon is currently loitering over Missouri. I'm sure that it is hoovering up lots of data.
WASHINGTON – A Chinese spy balloon has been spotted drifting over the northern United States, and Pentagon officials have considered shooting it down, Defense Department officials said late Thursday.
Okay, so why not just shoot it down?
The decision not to shoot down the balloon was made because of concerns that debris could injure Americans on the ground or destroy property, according to a senior Defense Department official who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity
Belle and I went to Quinton's deployment ceremony this morning at Camp Beauregard this morning. His outfit, the 3673d Support Maintenance Company is headed to Fort Hood for February and heading downrange early in March..
This will be our last opportunity to see him before he goes wheels-up. His grandma wanted one last hug before he left.
This morning, as is tradition, Puxatawney Phil emerged from his burrow on Gobblers Kob to predict the weather. He saw his shadow, and we're in for another six weeks of winter.
He wouldn't have seen his shadow in my front yard. Three days of miserable, misting, cold weather have everyone in a grand funk. Belle and I have to get out today, to attend a military ceremony. Grandson Quinton's unit is taking the first step on a deployment. They are leaving Camp Beauregard to meet the main body at Jackson Barracks in New Orleans, thence to Fort Hood for pre-deployment training. Eventually, heading to Kuwait.
I am more concerned about him being at Fort Hood during February than I am about him going to Kuwait. Fort Hood can be miserable this time of year. Still, he is off on a grand adventure and I wish I were going with them.
On this first day of February, I got out early as I normally do on the 1st. I took a non-driving buddy to do his banking and some shopping. The weather is miserable, rainy, drizzly, with temps in the 30s. According to the weather-weenies, it will remain so all day long. Thankfully, no ice in the forecast and this morning the roads were wet, but passable.
Watching weather videos, I feel sorry for my friends in central Texas. I hope y'all stay warm and safe. Likewise my buddies in Arkansas.
While running errands this morning, my friend wanted to stop by the smoke shop. While there I noticed a bottle of whiskey I have been wanting to try. Redbreast 12.
It is what they call a Single Pot Still Irish whiskey, and I understand that it is delicious. That will have to wait until the weather moderates and I am able to give it a fair assessment. This morning, I'm sipping hot cocoa and pondering lunch.
It's miserable outside by central Louisiana standards. Several days of rain have left the ground soggy, mud prevails. Right now it is misting rain with temps in the high 30s. We're not under any threat of ice or snow, but it is miserable outside. I have run my errands and will stay hunkered down for the rest of the day, trying to keep dry and warm.
Looking north a hundred miles, those folks are under the threat of ice. Bless their hearts. I hope everyone stays safe out there.
It's days like this when I believe that God is saying "Take a break." I intend to do so.
I'm sure that you have all heard, by now, about the death of Tyre Nichols in Memphis. Five officers are indicted in his death. Details are still unclear, but it appears that Nichols was stopped for reckless driving. At some point a foot chase developed, and when Nichols was apprehended, he was beaten by the officers. Nichols later died.
Nichols was black, the Chief of the Memphis PD is black, and the five officers indicted are all black. This inconvenient fact has not stopped some from claiming that "white supremacy" played a role in this tragedy. That is patently ridiculous, as most of these claims are. "White Supremacy" has become the great bugaboo of this century, used to explain everything from failing schools to covid deaths.
I admit that racism has, in the past, played a part in the culture of the United States. That is history. But, lately, "white supremacy" has become a convenient argument to explain the inexplicable. Like the monster under the bed, when you shine a light on it, it seems to disappear. It's there in the dark recesses of your mind, but it cannot explain the present.
The truth is deeper than that. And more complex. Five black officers with bodycams beat a suspect. That suspect later died of his injuries. That is what happened. We can debate why it happened, but sometimes it is impossible to explain the inexplicable. We can talk about police culture, and we can talk about the recent history of the defund movement and what that means in the broader sociological sphere, but we may not be able to explain why it happened.
Grandson Lucas gets off the school bus at our house every day, due to the schedules and routes of the school bus. His dad meets him here, and we generally chat for a bit before he goes home. You never know what question he is going to ask. Lucas is 12 years old.
Lucas is a shooter in his school's rimfire team. His dad built him a Ruger 10/22 and from all reports, he is doing well with it. Today he wanted to know about bullet speed and RPM and barrel twist rates, so we went down that rabbit hole.
It still amazes me, and I know the match, about how fast a bullet spins when it comes out of the tube. The basic equation is here. He's a budding gear-head, so we had to relate that to engine rpm. He is amazed that a CCI mini-mag spins at lot faster than a small block Chevy.
Passing on the information. That's my job as a grandfather. I wonder what he is going to ask me about tomorrow?
They do get stuck, occasionally. We're in the wet season now, and we'll have to be carful where we take the tractor. It's out now, and grandson Lucas is learning basic vehicle recovery.
It looks like the Army is considering a new armored vehicle to supplement the infantry. Something called Mobile Protected Firepower. All the details have not yet been ironed out, but think something between the Bradley and the Abrams.
As a young Cav trooper, I trained on the M5551 Sheridan and I liked it. It could not go head-to-head against a main battle tanks, but it offered good firepower and mobility. We called it the ACAV (Armored Cavalry Assault Vehicle) and we knew its limitations.
I'm glad to see that the Army is thinking about a vehicle like this. It might give a good, hacy punch to the light infantry and would be an asset on the battlefield.
We haven't had a club match since October, and the first for the 2023 season is tomorrow. I am prepping the range for the match, checking targets and electronics and making sure that all is well for when the club gets here tomorrow and we draw the first round.
This year we have decided to do a buckle series. At each match, the shooters get points toward the series depending on their placement in the match. At the end of the year, we'll total up the points and the high points winner will get a trophy buckle.
It's going to be a lot of fun. Ten matches for 2023, and we start tomorrow.
As we all know by now, pore ol' Adam Schiff has been kicked off the House Intel Committee by speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Adam made a name for himself, revealing secrets and lying to the American people. He had absolutely no business on the Intel committee because he used it for purely political purposes. Russian collusion, yada, yada, yada.
Now, he is off the committee. He f*cked around and found out. Most of us learn this lesson much earlier in life. I'd say that Schiff found out at level seven (7). At level eight (8), folks show up to whip your ass. At level nine (9), you wind up in prison. At level ten (10) people look around and wonder where you went, but no one ever files a Missing Person report.
The video below explains the matrix, but it is not safe for work.
So, Axios wrote an article on pickup trucks. Big, heavy, fuel burners. Like that is a bad thing.
I've been driving trucks since I started driving. Normally, the wife would drive the family sled, and I would drive the truck. For a time I was in the cattle business, and we abslutely needed a truck, for towing trailers, for hauling feed, for hauling fuel.
The Axios article complains that folks who drive trucks don't normally use then for truck things, like hauling or towing. They are normally used for commuting or running errands.
With jumbo trucks, you’d think people were hauling and towing more than ever — not so. Survey data from vehicle research firm Strategic Vision shows a third of today’s pickup owners rarely or never use their truck for hauling, while two thirds rarely or never use it for towing. So what are people using their trucks for? Shopping, errands, commuting and Sunday drives.
Uuuh, yeah. If I need the truck once a week for towing or hauling, then those other days I"m running errands, shopping, or commuting. Even in my cattle-business days, most of the hours I spent in that truck were not related to the business. Such is the nature of owning a pickup truck.
I still own a tuck, but I am fortunate that I also own other vehicles and the truck is only used when I need a truck. I keep the battery hot and the oil changed. I don't need it today, but I might need it tomorrow.
We learned yesterday that our former vice president, Mike Pence, had classified documents in his home in Indiana. Pence is a guy who is so squeaky-clean that he wouldn't have lunch with a woman who was not his wife. It's called the Pence Rule
Evidently there is so much classified information floating around the halls of power that it is impossible to avoid it. And that does not bode well for an open society.
I always wondered when I would attend a classified briefing, exactly which part of the information was classified. Too much of our government wants to keep secrets. Like, for instance, why some documents from the Kennedy assassination are still classified.
Maybe it is time to start looking at how we classify documents. There are some secrets that we need to safeguard, but I suspect that most of classification protocols are simply over-reach.
It's raining out there today, and the weather-weenies tell me that it will keep raining for most of the rest of today. We can't do anything outside, so the dog and I are in the shop.
I cut up a little chuck roast and we're making a beef stew. Good beef, a roux-gravy, with onion, carrots and potatoes. I'll wander past the stove and stir it occasionally, and when we get closer to lunch, make a pot of rice.
I had a chance to visit with grandson Quinton yesterday. He's preparing for deployment with the Louisiana National Guard. They are leaving here in early February and heading to Fort Hood for a couple of weeks, then going to Kuwait. The eventual destination is some place called Camp Buehring. From what I can see online, it is an American Army base in Kuwait. He's a young, single E-4 and this should be a grand adventure. His grandmother is heartily relieved that we're not in a shooting war right now. He tells me that they had to do some cultural sensitivity training and he's talked to folks who have been there. The one thing he thinks he is going to miss is bacon. Evidently they don't import much pork into Kuwait.
The Louisiana governors race is heating up. We vote in the fall. Our senator, John Kennedy was considering a run, but has decided against it, which throws the race open. So far, our AG, Jeff Landry has announced that he is running, and this gal Katie Bernhardt, is throwing her hat in the ring.
Katie is a Democrat, but that don't mean nothing in Louisiana. For the past two terms, Louisiana elected a radical Democrat, John Bel (hack, spit) Edwards. Louisiana needs closed primaries, but the folks who benefit from them most are in office so they won't change our voting system.
Right now, Louisiana leads the race to the bottom, with a struggling education system, a hostile business climate, massive out-migration, and a host of other problems. Why Louisiana can't simply take a few pages from the playbooks of states like Texas, Florida, or Tennessee to improve our state is beyond me. Less government, lower taxes and more personal freedom seem to be a winning message.
At any rate, Katie has joined the fray. I'll never vote for her. She is a Democrat.
Bob Bauer, Biden’s newly acquired personal lawyer, said the Justice Department took six documents marked classified and some of Biden’s notes during a Friday search that lasted 13 hours.
Newley acquired personal lawyer? That is an interesting choice of words, which leads one to ask a number of questions which will probably never be answered.
But it is easy to see that Joe takes classified documents really seriously. Like he takes border security very seriously. Which is to say, not at al. And, I'm wondering what happened to Joes's other lawyers that he had to "newly acquire" another one? All sorts of scenarios come to mind.
He's asleep in the shop at the scoring table. This is where the scorer sits during a match. I've tried to teach him to score, but he can't read or cipher, and he doesn't have any thumbs.
What sounds good on a rainy, cold Saturday? I found a couple of pounds of ground meat, chopped an onion, and made some sauce. Sloppy Joes. You can pour the sauce out of a can, or make it yourself. Either way works, and your taste might vary from mine, so suit yourself.
I didn't have any burger bus, but I did have hoagie buns, so there you have it.
Belle dolled hers up with a little jalapeno relish. I should have put a couple of tablespoons in the sauce, but I forgot.
Tomorrow night, Belle and I are invited to a Mardi Gras ball. She has her decided which of her gowns she will wear and is trying to decide on shoes. Choices and decisions.
For myself, it's a simple matter of putting on a tux. Standard black tuxedo, it's clean and hanging int he closet. After the ball, I'll take it to the cleaners, and it will be ready for the next time. The shoes are shined, and the shirt is white. The only real decision is whish vest I will wear. There are several available, and I must be sure not to "clash" with her gown.
Belle and I do not belong to a krewe but are a perpetual guest. So once a year, we dress up and go out to let the ladies sparkle. It's a good time.
As the world elites descend on Davos this weekend, the rest of us wonder what the big deal is? Evidently, it's all about global warming climate change. Net carbon, yada, yada.
It's hard to get a firm number. Somewhere between 1700 and 200 private jets. Those guys spew carbon worse than 99.9% of the world's population. Yet, they talk like spewing carbon is a bad thing. Hypocrisy at its finest. I don't begrudge them their private jets. If I could afford one, I'd fly it right into bankruptcy.
It's not the jets so much as them telling me that my diesel engines are going to kill the planet. That my gasoline lawnmower is bad for the planet.
I am somewhat amused to learn that hookers are also in attendance. Evidently, the world elites cannot get laid the old-fashioned way. Then again, I don't think like an elite. I had a rich uncle once tell me that "If it floats, flies, or f*cks, you are better off renting it."
It's not so much that the global elites get together at Davos that bothers me. Good for them. It's the arrogance and hypocrisy. When they start acting like it's a problem, I might start believing it's a problem.
Back in the early '70s, Brother-in-law Bill was dating a gal from Quebec. Yeah, that Quebec. She and Bill were visiting in Jena, LA and stopped to get gas.
A fellow noticed the license plate on the car and asked Bill, "Kew-beck? Where is Kew-beck?"
Bill deadpanned. "Up north of Monroe."
The fellow nodded his head and went about his business. Bill was right, of course. Quebec is north of Monroe.
Last week I was listening to a podcast about egg prices. Evidently, they are up.
Past weekend, the ladies in the family were talking about egg prices. They are definitely up.
Belle sent me to the store this morning. I paid $5.33 for a dozen white, large eggs. Not the brown, free-range eggs. The standard white eggs. Five dollars and thirty-three cents. Before tax.
Evidently there has been an outbreak of avian flu in the egg laying population. Fewer chickens, fewer eggs.
Couple of weeks ago, I bought a tractor. It's a low-hour Kubota L3400 with a front loader. It's at my son's house right now, because he is an equipment guy, an ace mechanic, and he needs to do some dirt work around his place. He will use it until the spring moving season, then we'll trailer it out to the family property.
I was remembering some tractors from my youth, and those that had loaders were often accessorized to make it more convenient. Chain hooks and clevises were the two most often seen, but I've been watching YouTube videos and it seems that a receiver hitch might also be a useful accessory. Now I have to figure out what I want and how I want to mount it.
Welding directly to the bucket is always an option, but I've seen other guys wend the hooks to plate steel, then either bolt or burn the plate to the bucket. Choices and decisions.
While watching YouTube videos, I saw something that intrigued me. That big ol' steel tube that reinforces the loader is wasted space. That might be a capital place to store chain. There are a couple of hacks to make this space useful and keep wasps out of it when the tractor is not in use.
If I could find an end-cap to fit that hole, that might be just the ticket. Other guys have made a sliding drawer from PVC pipe to use that space. Options and decisions.
Oh, and that tiny tool box that Kubota put behind the seat. Yeah, we need to do something about that too. I'll need a place for a handful of hitch pins, a couple of crescent wrenches, and a screwdriver.
If more retail stores dealt with problem customers like this, there might be a few fewer problem customers. Getting physically taken to the floor, then dragged out to the curb sends a message to people who don't comply with customary etiquette.
So, we all know that Huter Biden knocked up a stripper in Arkansas. This is not news. He's paying child support. He wants it reduced because he is a sleaze bag.
Hunter is resisting, because he is a sleaze bag. As far as I know, paternity is not at issue. By every social convention that is right and proper, the child is entitled to use the Biden name. Even if Daddy is the ultimate sleaze bag.
Joe Biden admitted yesterday that he kept classified documents in his garage, his locked garage, where he keeps his 'Vette. He admitted that live to Peter Doocy. That is not a place to store classified documents.
When I was a soldier, we had a special, heavy filing cabinet that met the requirements for storing FOUO and SECRET documents. It stayed in the S-2 (Intelligence) shop. It was purged regularly and there was a huge paperwork train that went with even opening the cabinet. We were not allowed to keep TOP SECRET documents in that cabinet.
Careers have been wrecked over the mis-handling of classified documents. Trump was wrong, Joe is wrong, and that simply is the way it is. Trump does have the defense that, as a sitting president, he has the authority to declassify documents. Joe does not have that defense. Joe did not also have a SCIF, which can store those documents.
But, we must remember that we cannot indict a sitting president. We couldn't indict Nixon, we couldn't indict Clinton. Nor Bush, nor Obama, nor Trump. We cannot indict Biden as long as he sits in the chair. This is purely a political issue at this point, and Joe has to reap the whirlwind.
We're learning that ol' Joe has been leaving classified documents lying around the house. Stored in the garage with his Corvette.
Joe is an old white man who has been making noises about running again for President. Old white men don't do well in the Democrat party. Ask Andrew Cuomo. The younger generation wants to have a shot, and as long as the old white men hang around, well.... you know.
Merrick Garland (bless his heart), rather than sweeping this under the rug, is appointing a special counsel. Sitting presidents don't normally fare well when a special counsel is sniffing around.
Evidently, the rocket scientists in the Biden administration are considering a ban on gas stoves. Yeah, really.
A federal agency is considering a ban on gas stoves amid rising concern about the health risks associated with indoor air pollution from the appliances, particularly among children.
Hih! The use of gas vs electic stoves has been a long source of contention between me and Belle. She liked electric stoves. I prefer gas. She wins She wins when the appliance is technically a stove. I win when the appliance can be defined as "outdoor". Our two stoves are electic. The griddle, the fish cookers, the big burner I use to boil crawfish are all gas.
The fed agency in question is the Consumer Product Safety Commission. This bunch of regulatory fascists are the same ones who make it impossible to pour gas out of a can. This is pure regulatory overreach, and a pox on them all.
I'm sure that everyone has beard by now, about that robber in southwest Houston wo went into a taco shop and started robbing people at gunpoint. Until one patron took our his own gun and ended the robbery. THe bad guy is dead and the customers at the store are all okay. That seems about right to me.
It seems that there is a bill pending that would abolish the IRS, repeal the national income tax, and replace it with something called a consumption tax. Fox Digital reports:
Republicans in the House of Representatives will vote on a bill that would abolish the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), eliminate the national income tax, and replace it with a national consumption tax.
This is a debate we need to have. I'm not sure what a national consumption tax will look like, but we knew that the IRS targets conservatives. Ever since Lois Lerner was allowed to take the 5th before Congress and slip into retirement, we have been aware that the IRS is a corrupt organization. I have no reason to believe that they have amended their practices.
However, I am a bit leery of what a national consumption tax might look like.
This bill is probably doomed in the Senate, and I doubt that Biden would sign it into law, but it is a discussion that we need to have.
You don't have to convince me about the power of prayer. I've seen it, I've lived it, I believe it.
I don't follow football. I couldn't name many teams in the NFL, much less any players, but last week I was shocked to hear that a player, Damar Hamblin, had suffered a heart attack on the field. Like many of you, I lifted up a prayer of hope and healing for the young man.
I do remember when Tim Tebow was mocked and ridiculed for offering prayer on the field, but I am heartened to lern that Hamblin is doing well, and that players everywhere are offering prayers for his spedy and complete recovery. More importantly, offering these prayers publicly, on the field.
The unconvinced tend to mock us for prayer, but many of us have seen it work in our daily lives. I believe that God works in mysterious ways and perhaps the travails of Damar Hamblin are part of God's plan. I do not presume to know the mind of God, but I am heartened that prayer is once again part of the NFL.
“The Chinese military is reportedly alarmed by a new tactic being employed by the US Air Force. During a live-fire exercise over Norway, the service showcased the ability to deploy Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSM) from cargo aircraft, such as the Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules, via the Rapid Dragon Palletized Weapon System. . . . Along with allowing the US Air Force to initiate attacks from outside of dangerous areas, it means cargo aircraft can be temporarily repurposed as standoff bombers, a cost-effective measure.”
If the C-130 alarms the Chinese, we need a lot more C-130s.
He needs a grooming bad. The grooer we have used for a while recently learned that she is allergic to dog dander, which required that she close her shop. Bad for her, and bad for us.
Reported everywhere, Kevin McCarthy was sworn in this morning as Speaker of the House. Lots of political drama, lots of wrangling, but he finally got it done. I suppose it is fitting that he was sworn in on January 7th. January 6th is, as you know, a day that will live in infamy. A day when a great boisterous crowd visited the Capitol. It is also the day celebrated in Christianity as the day that Jesus was manifested to the Gentiles. I find a great deal of irony in the conjunction of these two anniversaries.
Cajuns celebrate epiphany by the baking of King cakes. A sweet pasty, often braided before baking, into which a small figurine of the Christ is hidden. We will eat King cakes until Lent. Many diets will be wrecked, and pounds gained because of these things. The season ends at the stroke of midnight on Fat Tuesday, beginning the season of repentance and fasting of Lent.
Taking charge of the family property, I knew we would need a tractor to pull a mover (bush hog, shredder, whatever you call them). So, I started looking around and found a fairly low hour Kubota on a tractor lot. With a loader. It's a 2010 Kubota L3400 with less than 400 hours on the clock. I talked to some tractor folks I knew who said the price was decent, so I pulled the pin on it.
That is second son, tying it down. Grandson on the operator's chair. Second son is an ace mechanic by trade. He owns a mini-hoe and has some dirt work to do around his place, so he will use it until he is done, and is able to make sure that everything is tight and right. Then we'll move it to the family property when the spring mowing season arrives.
I haven't owned a tractor for over 20 years, and the ones they are making today sure have a lot of bells and whistles. My old tractor was a Yanmar with a geared transmission and served me well. This Kubota has a hydrostatic transmission. That will take a little getting used to, but I feel like I am up to the challenge.
I bet that both the Democratic Whip and the Republican Whip are busy critters this morning.
Insty reports that the Democrat members have to ask permission to leave the floor during a vote.
Louisiana's very own Steve Scalise is the Republican Whip. I can't imagine the conversations that he has been having lately with Kevin McCarthy. Twenty holdouts who refuse to move in lockstep with the rest of the caucus. Some are pissed off personally at McCarthy, some are asking for change that they don't feel McCarthy can offer. It's hard to run roughshod over a fellow one day and expect for him to support you later. That takes a delicate political touch, and I don't think at this point that McCarthy has that ability.
I get it. There are people I will never vote for. McCarthy is going through a rough time right now, and I suspect it is of his own making. These decisions are not made in a vacuum, and the longer it goes on, the greater the change that McCarthy will have to make. Both compromise and conciliation requires time, and trust. The conciliation should have been done a long time ago.
The bank that has held my mortgage for the past 20 years has lost their damned minds. The over-corotational mindset of the organizational hive is killing us all. It used to be I could walk into a bank, talk with an officer, and get a problem solved. Not any more. Call 1-800-EAT-SH*T.
I'm buying a little piece of land. It's heir property and I an an heir. I am conflicted about it, but the majority of the family wants to close this deal so that it won't become an issue later.
Because I'm buying the land, I'm buying a tractor, too. About to close a deal on a clean, used Kubota with less than 400 hours on the engine. That will let me mow the place, which is mixed meadow and timber.
The US House still has no Speaker. I am conflicted about this. As long as the Congress is crippled, they can't hurt us. But, that lets the executive branch run wild, and there are no adults in charge.
This morning I started planning the state championship that I host every year. It's in July, so we're not in a crunch for time, but the closer it gets, the crunchier I will get.
The US House is still squabbling about who is going to be Speaker. This isn't a good look for the Republicans, but it is a process, and it is sometimes messy. At some point, they will figure it out and we can move forward.
Moscow's defense ministry said late Tuesday that the unauthorized use of mobile devices allowed Kyiv's forces to identify the soldiers' location via phone signals. It also raised the confirmed death toll to 89 from the weekend strike on the base at a school in Makiivka, a town in a Russian-occupied area of the eastern Donetsk region.
That is a fairly sophisticated use of cell data. They were watching cell data, saw a concentration, and loosed a rocket at it. There should be a lesson there for all of us.
Until we have a Speaker, gridlock ensues, and chaos becomes inevitable.
It is interesting to watch. What I think is interesting is that the Speaker administers the oath to the other member of the House, and until there is a Speaker, no one is sworn in. They are all Representative-elect until the Speaker gets the gavel.
At this point, Kevin doesn't have the votes. I think that he knew that going in, so what is the endgame? If he can't get the votes, why is he in the race?
The question becomes: Who is going to be the Speaker of the House?
It seems that Kevin McCarthy has enough opposition in the Republicans party to keep him away from the gavel. So, the next question is: If not McCarthy, who?
The use of DNA evidence in criminal investigation is fairly well accepted. Each person has a unique DNA signature that tends to eliminate the rest of the human species. It's really specific. As evidence goes, it's just about the gold standard. Of course, there may be many reasons for one person's DNA to be in the vicinity of another person, not all those reasons are nefarious.
So, the investigators still have work to do, but it appears that the suspect in the Moscow, ID murder case (and I will never use his name) might have been identified through the use of familial DNA. The closer a suspect might be to a family member, the more closely they will share a DNA signature. While the suspect may have been unknown to police and the police were unable to precisely match his DNA in a database, there might have been a family member who had given a sample that closely matched his.
This case is becoming truly interesting from a number of perspectives. The suspect himself was a doctoral student of criminology. On the face of the case, this seems to be his first run-in with police. That flies in the face of other mass murderers, who often work up to this sort of crime. One wonders what set of circumstances led us this point. Are there other murders out there?
