Happy Hump Day!

Mid-week, and the ongoing Banghazi/IRS/wiretap scandals just keep getting worse.  Some stories from around the media:

Congress hosts IRS bloodbath, slamming tax authorities for partisan targeting of conservatives, as evidence emerges of an IRS internal probe that ended in May 2012.

Top IRS official to invoke Fifth Amendment, decline to testify at House hearing.

IRS Official Lois Lerner: ‘I Have Not Done Anything Wrong’

The House’s IRS hearing: Live updates.

The Justice Department and Fox News’s Phone Records.

U.S. Attorney Investigating Fox News Donated to Obama.

PJM EXCLUSIVE: Ex-Diplomats Report New Benghazi Whistleblowers with Info Devastating to Clinton and Obama.

Officials on Benghazi: “We made mistakes, but without malice”

These serial scandals are rapidly growing past the normal second-term difficulties.  For example:  The IRS director who ran the division that investigated conservative groups, Lois Lerner, invoked the Fifth Amendment in her refusal to testify.  Now, it’s true, the First Amendment is not only invoked to prevent having to self-incriminate – but that is the reason more often than not.

Will the Congressional investigators offer her immunity in return for flipping on her bosses?  That would be the smart move.

Whatever else happens, all three of these issues show every indication of snowballing.  It’s going to make for an interesting spectacle.  Many pundits are already drawing comparisons to Watergate, and those of us old enough to remember Watergate can appreciate some of the similarities.  But there is one major difference:  In the Watergate scandal, nobody died.

 On a sadder note, we’ve probably all seen footage and news reporting on the massive tornado that destroyed swaths of some Oklahoma City suburbs.  As of this writing 51 are reported dead, (just revised down to 24 on radio coverage as I was getting ready to publish this post) and more expected.  Some more stories:

First Pictures of the Missing…

Desperate Search at Elementary School in Moore.

200MPH Winds in Moore Tornado.

Oklahoma tornado spread destruction like a ‘two-mile-wide lawnmower blade’

Photo gallery here.

I grew up in tornado country.  I remember when I was a little tad, the folks loaded me in the car and we went to see the town of my birth, Oelwein, Iowa, following some major tornado damage.  A year or so later we made a similar trip to the north-central Iowa town of Charles City, which looked like it had been barraged with 8-inch howitzers.  Only a few years ago, while I was visiting family in Iowa, my old high school buddy Dave and I went to see the town of Parkersburg which was hit by a bad twister.

Tornadoes are fickle, unpredictable and very, very destructive.  It’s informative that, whenever we humans manage to muster up a little hubris about how powerful we are, nature has a way of taking us down a peg – or several.

Our hearts go out to the families of Moore, Oklahoma.   Weather reports indicate more thunderstorms in that area today.  Hopefully nature will give them a break this time.

]]> http://www.frombearcreek.com/wordpress/?feed=rss2&p=8037 0 http://www.frombearcreek.com/wordpress/?p=8032 http://www.frombearcreek.com/wordpress/?p=8032#comments Mon, 20 May 2013 14:18:35 +0000 Animal http://www.frombearcreek.com/wordpress/?p=8032 Continue reading →]]>

Goodbye, Blue Monday.

Three Signs There’s a Cover-Up.  Excerpt:

The late columnist William Safire once said that a good clue that someone in Washington was engaged in “an artful dodge,” i.e., a cover-up, was that they used the phrase “mistakes were made.” Safire defined it as a “passive-evasive way of acknowledging error while distancing the speaker from responsibility for it.”

The phrase became infamous when both Richard Nixon and Ron Ziegler, his press secretary, deployed it to explain away Watergate without explaining who did what and when or whether any ill motive was involved.

Astonishingly, the Internal Revenue Service resurrected the Nixonian expression within hours of its clumsy revelation that it had targeted tea-party groups and other organizations with “patriot” or “9/12” in their names. “Mistakes were made initially,” the official IRS statement on May 10 read, implying that the mistakes ended after a short “initial” period. We now know that the scandal and cover-up unfolded over a three-year period, and the IRS publicly acknowledged them only after the 2012 election was safely past.

This seems a little more than just second-term shenanigans, but it’s early yet.  What’s instructive is watching officials of the Obama Administration being grilled by Congress; just below is a rare piece of footage of one such session.

In the linked article above, one of the three signs (indeed, the first) is that “nobody seems to be able to name the players.”  We’re seeing a lot of that in Washington right now.

The IRS today.

For instance, the IRS scandal:  We now know that President Obama met with the very IRS union chief days before the targeting of conservative political groups began.  What did they discuss?  We don’t know, but it’s hard to believe that the use of the IRS hammer on political opposition was not on the agenda.

It’s a long, long way to the 2014 elections, but it’s not unreasonable to think these things will have an impact.  How much?  We’ll see.

In the last segment,  we mentioned the fact that not all children need to go to college.  In this segment, let’s talk about the ones that do.

Higher education is a system that is going through a catharsis.  The rise of on-line education will forever change the college experience, reducing the importance of traditional brick-and-mortar schools and allowing new models in which classes are taught not by full-time academics but by professionals who have real-world careers in the subjects they teach.

In the meantime, our college/university system is not performing as it should.  There are a number of ways we could improve the system, and quickly:

• Institute a broad reform of degree programs.  It borders on fraud for institutions of higher learning to offer useless degrees.  “Minority Women’s Studies,” “Ethnic Studies” and so forth produce graduates fit only to do one of two things:  Remain in academia and perpetuate the fraud, or pursue a career that involves repeatedly asking “do you want fries with that?”  Working against such a reform (among other things) is the fact that a college or university charges the same tuition for a nonsense degree as for a degree in the hard sciences, engineering or business, and the latter degrees are certainly more expensive to teach.
• Continue the decentralization of higher education begun by the rise of online universities.  New online models such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) as described in a recent paper by the libertarian Cato Institute not only provide alternatives to traditional universities, they also:
  • Provide cross-border opportunities to students in other parts of the world.
  • Eliminate the need for extensive travel, housing costs and so forth for students that would otherwise have to attend a college or university in another city or state.
  • Reduce the overall cost of higher education, perhaps dramatically so, by eliminating much of the overhead costs.
  • Reduce, if not eliminate, the presence of the Imperial Federal government in higher education.  Not only is there no Constitutional provision for the Federal government to be involved in higher education – and I remind you that the Tenth Amendment specifically prohibits the Federal government from engaging in any activity not specifically allowed – such involvement has proved to be wasteful and counter-productive.  Let the states and private institutions handle college-level education, as was done throughout most of our nation’s history.
  • Likewise, the Imperial Federal government should be removed from the financial aid process.  Again, states and private foundations could deliver financial assistance and counseling more efficiently, and it has been shown that an excess of easy financial aid actually serves to drive tuition costs up; this comes as no surprise to anyone who has studied economics, but apparently it is quite a surprise to the Federal government.

Colleges and universities are tasked with producing a product.  Their customers are the students and the student’s parents.  The product should be a literate, functional adult with skills that are marketable in the private sector; the system must produce a graduate who can offer value to an employer.

A typical Occupy protester.

In recent years we have seen the rise and decline of the unfortunate “Occupy” movement, many member of which were seen waving signs decrying their student loan debt and their difficulty finding jobs.   (See columnist Zombie’s coverage over at Pajamas Media.)  Among other things, one could see signs demanding forgiveness of student debt and elimination of tuition – yes, at least one protester demanded that “knowledge should be free.”

Well, knowledge is free – you can get all you want at your local public library – but a college or university cannot be free.  Educators and administrative personnel have to be paid.  Buildings cost money, as does maintenance and utilities for same.  But that money must be earned, and to do so colleges and universities have an important task: To produce graduates capable of taking a productive place in society.

At the present they aren’t doing a very good job.

Luckily enough, the store had two boxes of Hornady Leverevolution FTX 325-grain rounds in that caliber.  I grabbed both boxes.  The Leverevolution flex-tip bullet is designed for tubular magazine lever guns; the plastic tip maintains a streamlined point while being resilient enough to avoid a chain-fire under recoil.

For those not familiar with lever-action rifles, in older designs the rounds are stored in a tubular magazine under the barrel, with the nose of one round pressed against the primer of the following round – a situation that demands blunt or flat-nose bullets, to prevent the rearmost round setting off the next round, which (as you might imagine) could result in severe damage to gun and shooter.  The new Hornady flex-tips avoid that while maintaining good sectional density and an aerodynamic profile, increasing the round’s trajectory and effective range.

I have loaded up 100 rounds of .30-30 with the Leverevolution 160-grain bullet, but have been unable to find either bullets or loaded rounds for the .45-70 – until now.

Range report to follow, once I get some time to play around.

Lately Shakespeare seems to be making something of a comeback in movies.  I can recommend a few in particular:

Kenneth Branagh’s 2006 treatment of As You Like It, done for HBO Films, stars Bryce Dallas Howard as Rosalind, David Oyelowo as Orlando, Alfred Molina as Touchstone, Kevin Kline as Jacques and the inestimable Brian Blessed as both Duke Fredrick and Duke Senior.  It’s a wonderful, lighthearted romp through (for some reason) 19th century Japan.  Trailer:

Sir Ian McKellan’s 1995 treatment of Richard III is a bit older now, but still worth the watch.  With McKellan as Richard III, Annette Bening as Elizabeth and a pre-Iron Man Robert Downey Jr. as Lord Rivers, McKellan’s mid 1930′s English setting allows the evil usurper king to evolve into an almost Naziesque figure.  Trailer:

Finally, one a bit different:  Joss Whedon is best known for Firefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and of course The Avengers, but only last year he produced a present-day, original dialogue take on Much Ado About Nothing, with Amy Acker as Beatrice, Nathan Fillion as Dogberry and Clark Gregg as Leonato.  Trailer:

Interesting, this, to see the Bard appealing to modern audiences.  Makes one almost hopeful for the future.

This, True Believers, is a Winchester Model 12, a fine classic shotgun manufactured from 1912 (thus the model number) until 1963.  Designed by that Da Vinci of firearms, John Browning, the Model 12 is still the gold standard for pump shotguns.

With my Browning Auto-5 project successfully completed some time back, I began to cast around for a new shotgun project.  I did pick up a 1900-vintage Belgian hammer double, as noted in these pages, but that gun ended up as a decorative wall-hanger.   Too many parts needed fabricating, too many uncertainties were involved in restoring the non-standard old gun to shooting condition.  So now a new project is in order – eventually, when I find the right gun – and the Model 12 seems a good candidate.

Happy Hump Day!

There are a few caveats when selecting a Model 12 for shooting and/or restoration:

1. Guns made prior to 1931 used nickel steel in the barrels.  There shouldn’t be any ultimate or yield strength issues with these guns, but nickel steel is difficult to refinish if the original bluing is gone.
2. Some of the very early guns also had short chambers, 2 5/8″ for 12-gauge, 2 9/16″ for 16-gauge and 2 1/2″ for 20-gauge guns.  I do have a chamber depth gauge, but all of these guns are likewise made before 1931 – see 1. above.
3. Collectible and good condition Model 12s command a hefty price, usually well into four figures.  I’ll be looking for a fixer-upper, since I’ll be looking to refinish/restock and probably have it cut for choke tubes.  People who have invested in these guns tend to take pretty good care of them, so fixer-uppers aren’t always easy to find.

The Model 12 is a fine scattergun.  A solid steel frame lends heft and durability, and the gun has a clean, classic look.  Competition from simpler mass-produced guns like the admittedly excellent Remington 870 and the aluminum-framed Mossberg 500 series doomed the Model 12 in the end, with general production ending in 1963.  A few special-edition guns were produced through 2006, but in that year Winchester closed down Model 12 production for keeps.  Sad, but all part of the business cycle – and, after a hundred and one years, John Browning’s design for the Model 12 is still the standard by which all pump guns are measured.  I think I should have one in the rack.

Are things coming apart for the Obama Administration, or is it just a bad case of second-term blues?  Look at some of the reporting from the normally-friendly media:

Benghazi, IRS: Son of Watergate?

Top Democrat Calls For Public Testimony on Benghazi.

IRS Head Steven Miller:  “Mistakes Were Made.”  (No shit.)

Gov’t Probe Obtains Wide Swath of AP Phone Records.

Scandal Politics Sweep Capitol Hill.

Meanwhile, as President Obama’s signature legislative achievement is being implemented, it comes to light that the package Congress had to pass to find out what’s in it isn’t so hot, now that we’re finding out; insurance premiums are now predicted to rise by 100% to 400%.

There is a good reason why the party that holds the White House almost never does it for more than two terms; Presidential overreach is almost a cliché for second terms.  Ronald Reagan had Iran-Contra, Bill Clinton was impeached for perjury, George W. Bush oversaw the largest expansion in the Federal government since Lyndon Johnson.  (The current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has doubled down on that and then some.)

It remains to be seen whether these serial scandals will damage the President and his administration beyond recovery.  But at the moment, the Oval Office looks like a pretty uncomfortable place to be.