Author: Kim du Toit

Strike Another One

Government Thugs, Surveillance Society

Oh, that’s just dandy:

In a recent J6 case it has been revealed that Liberty Safe Co. gave the FBI background access codes to the safe and vault owned by the investigative target of the FBI, Nathan Hughes.

As the story is told, the FBI (federal govt) contacted the safe manufacturer and asked for a secret code that would open the safe. The FBI had a search warrant for the premises.  Liberty Safe Co. gave the FBI the access code that would allow them to open the safe, without relying on (or asking) the owner to open it.

Of course, Liberty Safe [irony alert]  tried to weasel out of it, but as Sundance puts it:

This is a ridiculous position easily avoided by saying, “we don’t own the safe.”  The bottom line is to avoid all the Liberty Safe products that allow them to access your private holdings, including gun safes and personal papers.  If you own a Liberty Safe, just get rid of it.  It’s compromised. Write it off to a lesson learned and forget about it.

I only use safes with a keyed lock, for more or less this precise reason.

News Roundup

Bad News

Speaking of pineapples:


...yeah, that’s the ticket:  cash to furriners’ wars instead of to disaster-struck Americans.  Speaking of morons:


...clearly, he’s sick of being governor.


…leave it off, KMac.  By the time you’ve marshaled the lawyers, got it though the House only to have it voted down by the Senate, he’ll either be dead of old age, totally ga-ga or else Clintoned.

In Political News (Brit Edition, no links because irrelevant):


...yeah, and if you idiot Brits vote him into power, every single promise he’s made will be broken, and you’ll still be bent over the desk.  (Afterthought:  Britain still makes steel?  Who knew?)

From the Dept. of Global Cooling Climate Warming Change©:


...lessee:  Africa’s principal exports (so far):  AIDS, West Nile virus, millions of criminal “asylum seekers”, hurricanes which flatten the Caribbean and eastern U.S., radical Muslim terrorists and now, searing heat to the U.K.  And people still wonder why I want to let the whole fucking continent sink.


...you don’t say.  Electrical systems short out and catch fire when submerged under water, who’d a thunk?


...wait, it wasn’t Global Cooling Climate Warming Change©?


...you had me at “Biden” and “no real intelligence”.

In the Dept. of Totally Bloody Useless Anti-Crime Measures:


...the Britcops being still too busy checking the Internet for hate speech.


...wait, he was arrested in NYC?  Clearly, Fake News.

From the Department of Education:


...and they said the Age of Romance was dead.  And finally:


...as opposed to the 95% online garbage that’s been generated by humans so far?

And now, ’tis INSIGNIFICA time:

 


...maybe if she filmed every scene in the nude, I’d watch it.

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Bolt-Action Watches

Toys

I believe I’ve ranted a few times [hyperbole alert]  on this back porch against modernity, and quite often against things that operate automatically as opposed to being physically operated by the user.

I know that automation makes things easier;  it’s just that this ease comes at the expense of control, and I don’t like that.  Here are two examples:

Bolt-action over semi-auto rifles.  I know that it’s a lot of fun shooting an M1 Garand or M1 Carbine;  I’ve done it often, and love it.  But nothing gives me more satisfaction than working a fine bolt action, whether a Mauser turnbolt or a Schmidt-Rubin straight pull.  Yes, it’s a bigger hassle to rechamber a cartridge manually than to have a mechanical doodad do it for you — although I would suggest that reloading a 30-round magazine is an even bigger PITA, as all the mag-loading assist devices on the market would suggest.

Manual transmission over automatic gearboxes.  As with the above, there is a case to be made for the labor-saving nature of the auto gearbox — in stop-start traffic, for example — but with a stick shift, one is always in better control of the vehicle.  I know, I’ve suggested that one doesn’t drive an automatic car as much as just steer it, and I’m not altogether wrong, either.

Now I’m going to add yet another category to the manual/auto dichotomy.

Some time back I was given a watch as repayment for a favor — I hasten to add that said repayment was absolutely not requested nor even expected — and this is the watch, a Tissot Heritage:

Note the supreme simplicity of the watch face:  easy-to-read numerals, no date, and… a manual action.  It’s the first manual watch I’ve owned since I was a pre-teenager, and I love it with a passion.  I even wear it around the house, unlike all my other watches.

One of the things that has always bothered me about quartz (battery-powered)  watches is that the damn batteries have to be replaced about every year, requiring a trip to the watch-repair place or jeweler.  (I purchased a lifetime replacement policy which at least takes away the nagging cost of replacement — best $100 I ever spent — but it’s still a hassle to schlep my dormant quartz watches over to the mall, every damn year.)  I have two of these things, and I love them both, for different reasons.  They are the (l-r) Tissot 1853 and Dooney & Bourke Explorer:

  
(I know, the D&B is overly-complicated and a little bulky, but when I saw it back in 2003 I fell in love with it despite all that, and bought it on the turn.)

Neither of the above cost more than $300.

My only automatic watch is a Seiko Sports (about which I’ve ranted before):

The issue I have with this watch is that when the spring runs down (and it does that overnight), it is a huge PITA to reset the day and date.  To keep it going, I would have to buy one of those winding motor thingies, and… oy, they break, stop working (just read the 1-star comments) and that would irritate the living shit out of me.  En passant, they’re all made in China except for the German ones which can cost well over $500 (!!!).  So… no.

The Seiko is the only, and last automatic watch I will ever own.

I don’t mind winding the Heritage every morning — it’s like making the coffee, pouring the breakfast gin or brushing the teeth:  a simple daily maintenance chore, and the watch-winding can be done while I’m reading the newspaper.  But it keeps time well, it looks great on my wrist, and… well, that’s really all I need from a watch.

Of course, it doesn’t end there.  Having established that principle, I immediately went to Teh Intarwebz to see what other steam-powered watches I could get if Teh Lottery Gods were to ever get their shit together:

 

And if the lottery money was BIG:

 

As a rule, I don’t like gold watches… but Vacheron’s looks fantastic — and hey, everyone should have at least one gold dress watch, right?

And finally, this one because it’s a truly eccentric way of putting the date function onto a watch:

Needless to say, it is by far the most expensive watch ($25,000) on the list, but I did say a BIG lottery win, after all.

And every last one is a mechanical-wind action.

Welcome To The Club, Huskers

Good Stuff, The Gun Thing

Finally, some good news for the Second Amendment:

It’s a new day in Nebraska, where after years of struggle lawful gun owners can now bear arms in self-defense without having to first obtain a government-issued permission slip.

Gov. Jim Pillen signed LB 77 into law back in April, declaring that the bill upheld the promise made to voters to “protect our constitutional rights and promote commonsense, conservative values” and praising state Sen. Tom Brewer for championing the bill year after year, slowly making progress until the legislation finally had the votes to cross the finish line.

“Nebraskans should not have to pay the government a fee or ask permission for constitutional rights,” said Senator Brewer. “This bill finally delivers on the promises in Nebraska and United States constitutions. I am proud to help Nebraska join twenty-six of our sister states in removing this obstacle to the right to keep and bear arms.”

While the bill was signed into law months ago, its provisions didn’t officially take effect until today, making Nebraska officially the 27th state to recognize the right to bear arms in some form or fashion without the need for lawful gun owners first receive a license.

Why did it take so long?  After all, one would think that in a rural state like Nebraska, they would have been one of the first, not twenty-seventh in line.

Alas, as with so many — maybe even all — states, Nebraska has to deal with two large socialist enclaves:  metropolitan Omaha (home of, for example, devout anti-gunner Warren Buffett), and the college town of Lincoln, home of the Usual Wokist Academia.

I’m just glad to see that the gunnies (take a bow, Tom Brewer) took a leaf from the anti-gunner assholes and never gave up, chipping away at the gun nannies’ position until victory came a-calling.

The Two-Front War

Men & Women

It was always a nightmare for the German generals’ war plans:  having to fight a war in both the West (against France, Britain etc.) and in the East (Russia).  Once in that situation, Germany was always going to lose as it lacked both the resources and the stamina to win both simultaneously — although they gave it a good old college try in WWI, and might actually have succeeded had they not been shackled to the hopeless and hapless Austro-Hungarians, and pissed off the Americans.

But I’m not here to talk about history.  What gave rise to the above is this little snippet:

A bigamist former soldier’s double life was exposed when his daughter from one of his marriages messaged his second wife on Facebook asking what her connection to him was.

Jason Hayter, 48, had five children with his two wives and lived with one family in Germany, where he was stationed with the Army, and visited the other in the UK.

Neither woman knew about the other as he explained his lengthy absences on being away with the Army and, after he left, training as a paramedic, or on mental health problems.

Mental health problems?  Speaking as one who has raised only one family (okay, maybe two, but in series rather than in parallel), I can quite imagine that having to deal simultaneously with two wives, each with children, would drive any man around the bend — especially when secrecy has to be maintained.

I can see the attraction of having a wife and family and a mistress, provided that she’s French (like Mitterrand’s Anne Pingeot) and understands the rules — FFS, his wife and mistress not only both attended his funeral but stood side by side at his graveside.

That, I can understand.  But to actually marry two women in parallel?

Our buddy the bigamist has been sentenced to seven years in jail — a blessed relief for him, to be sure — and I bet he’ll be the only prisoner in history to argue against his own parole.  Anything to get away from Wife Squared.  (And it is indeed squared, not doubled, as any man with experience will testify.)