Author: Kim du Toit

Quote Of The Day

Elections, QOTD

Talking about voting patterns:

“It’s a time-honored tradition in big Democratically controlled cities like Chicago my home town, Philadelphia, to do precisely what they’re doing now.  I’ve never seen it at such a magnitude, because I think this is an indication of just how widespread it is, how deep it is.  And I don’t think it’s just confined to Philadelphia. My instincts, and again, coming out of Chicago Democratic politics, my instincts tell me it’s going on in Atlanta, it’s going on in Detroit, it’s going on in Milwaukee, it’s going on in Las Vegas.  It’s like what Justice Power said about pornography, “You can’t define it, but you know it when you see it.”  And coming out of the Democratic Chicago political establishment, I know how they operate.  They control polling places.  They stop votes when their candidate’s behind.  And then in the wee hours of the morning, in the dark of night, the stealing starts.  And we’ve seen that in big numbers, unprecedented numbers this election in Michigan and in Philadelphia.  It’s outrageous.  The fact that they’re doing it with impunity  is because the media is simply looking the other way, the corrupt mainstream media is not interested in protecting our Constitution or the rule of law, they just want to beat Donald Trump at all costs.” — Rod Blagoyevitch (D), former Governor of Illinois.

It would really have been nice if the Guv — knowing what he did — had put a stop to it when he was still in office… but of course, he was never going to do that, was he? because he benefited from it.

Kevin has the full story.  Just put your guns away before reading it.

The Real Wonder-Nines

Gratuitous Gun Pics, Hunting, The Gun Thing

Way too much fluff has been written about the silly 9mm Europellet (a.k.a. 9mm Luger), the most egregious being its appellation as the “Wonder-Nine” [eyecross] , the only “wonder” being how people can believe all that crap.

So today I’m going to look at the two real wonder-nine cartridges that came out of Europe, i.e. the 9.3x74R and the 9.3x62mm, both well over a hundred years old and both the only serious contenders to the equally-venerable .375 H&H Magnum (blessings be upon it).

 

Both cartridges have a bullet diameter of .366″ with a typical weight of 285/286gr, and despite the different casing lengths, they are to all intents and purposes ballistically identical.  The 9.3x74R is, as the nomenclature suggests, a rimmed cartridge intended for use in double rifles such as the Beretta 689:

…while the rimless 9.3x62mm (sometimes called the 9.3x62mm Mauser) is available for both the Mauser Model 12 and 98:

…the Sako 85 Bavarian:

…the CZ 550 line:

…and SIG Sauer’s Model 100 XT plastic rifle is also available in this caliber:

No prizes for guessing which rifle I’d pick, but let’s just say that full-length stocks make me twitch in all sorts of places, while plastic stocks… never mind.

The 9.3x62mm is expensive to shoot, not so much because of the ammo cost (inexpensive Prvi Partizan sells for around $26 per box, while premium hunting ammo runs around $90 — in other words, pretty much the same as .300 Win Mag) but because the rifles thus chambered are generally super-spendy (with the exception of the Sauer 100 XT rifle, for around $700-$800;  the wood-stocked “Classic” is about $200 more).  CZ-USA doesn’t even issue the Mod 557 in 9.3mm, which is a pity.  (American hunters are already well served with other cartridge choices, which is no doubt the reason CZ didn’t extend the offering.)

As to why the smaller 9.3x62mm is often preferred over the .375 H&H, here’s a decent look at its ballistics.  Also, because the 9.3x62mm can be fired from a “standard” length bolt-action rifle, it’s still cheaper than  the longer “magnum” or “Safari” rifles — and, as the linked article suggests, its sectional density / penetration is pretty much the equal of the .375H&H, for considerably less recoil.

It’s even worse for the rimmed 9.3x74R cartridge (see here for an example), although I note that you can find the excellent Ruger #1 Medium Sporter chambered thusly, for about the same price as a regular quality bolt-action rifle.

 

I don’t think that anyone reading this is going to rush out and buy a rifle in either chambering anytime soon, but should you come across one for a decent price in a garage- or estate sale sometime, know that you won’t be making a bad buy, or buying something shooting an inadequate cartridge.

Implants

Entertainment, Lies and Untruths, Music

No, not fake breasts, sorry.  Via Insty comes this wonderful piece:

The notion that COVID-19 vaccines will be used by governments across the globe to track the human race’s every move has long been a topic of discussion among conspiracy theorists. But now, new ‘evidence’ has emerged from Italian proponents of the idea – only it would be evidence, were it not a reworked schematic for the Boss Metal Zone.
The conspiracy theorists shared the schematic online, claiming it depicted the diagram for the supposed 5G chip. It features a section labelled “5G frequency” – clearly the source of many a theorist’s eureka moment – as well as terms guitarists will find familiar: “MT-2 Gain”, “Footswitch” among the most recognizable.
Mario Fusco, a senior software engineer at Redhat, spotted the misinformation and took to Twitter to flag it.

It’s not often that I read something that causes me to collapse in a fit of helpless laughter, but this was one of those rarities.  Hell, I’m still grinning.

Most conspiracy theorists are complete fucking idiots, but taking a circuit board schematic of a guitar pedal and claiming it’s the tracking /controlling device embedded in a vaccine?  That’s brilliance compounded by stupidity.

Music Geekery Alert:  That said, I could think of far worse things you could have implanted in your system than the BOSS Metal Zone pedal.

This little beauty can make the most awful guitar sound like anything played by Tony Iommi or Kirk Hammett, and it’s probably used by just about every lead guitarist in rock music.

In fact, the only other product of similar effect I’d agree to have implanted in me would be the venerable Ibanez Tube Screamer*, of similar renown and popularity:

I would respectfully suggest, however, that as excellent as these two pedals are, they would be piss-poor as human control devices.

*And yes, I know the difference between distortion (BOSS/transistors) and overdrive (Screamer/diodes).  I may be a bassist (who doesn’t use either), but I’m not ignorant.

Hates

Deep Thoughts, Marxists, Modernism

Bill Bryson (yes, him again) suggests that everyone should be able to have ten things (people, concepts, activities, whatever) that they can hate, without apology or explanation.

Longtime Readers will know that I would have difficulty keeping the list to ten — as Insty would say, I really need a bigger blog to contain all the things that truly make my trigger finger itch — but if I can create universal categories of hatred, I might be able to give it a try.  Let’s see how this goes, and in no specific order, my ten hates are:

  1. Anyone affiliated with the Democrat Party since 1880
  2. The music recording industry
  3. Modern architecture (brutalism, Bauhaus etc.), its creators and practitioners (Le Corbusier, Van der Rohe, Jahn, Pei etc.)
  4. All music composed and released since 2005 — performers, producers, composers, whatever
  5. Automotive design since 1990
  6. Google — everything about it
  7. Journalists, almost without exception
  8. Anarchism and anarchists
  9. Large corporations (referred to as Global MegaCorp on these pages)
  10. Wokism.

Note that I have excluded mere irritants like astrology, veganism, libertarianism, cyclists, the 9mm Europellet and similar nonsense from the above list, because they are largely the result of stupidity rather than actual evil.

As for the list itself, however, I put it to you that if by some kind of magic all ten of those things were to disappear tomorrow, the world would be a far better place to live in.

Feel free to add your own hates, in Comments.  Remember:  no explanation or justification is necessary.

So, Here We Are

Bad News, Elections, Marxists, Politics

Once again, as with that tool Obama’s election, we’re looking down the barrel of a full-bore Socialist government:  Presidency, Senate and House, all controlled by the Left.

We’re fucked.

You know, when Trump was elected, the Left screamed about how eeeevil he was and how he was going to send homosexualists into ghettos, how abortion was going to be made illegal, how People Of Other Nationalities / Races were going to be eliminated, etc. etc. etc. ad  fucking nauseam.

And none of it came to pass.

However, we know exactly what happens when the Left comes to power because we’ve had a dry run already with Urkel’s presidency:  nationalized health care, gun control, higher taxes, regulatory excess and a slumping economy.

And that will come to pass — just as it did from 2009 to 2016.

We’re going to get all that again, only worse because the Marxists have become increasingly more important in the Democrat Party, and if anyone can fuck up a country, it’s Marxists:  East Germany, the Soviet Union, North Vietnam, Venezuela, pre-Pinochet Chile… the list goes on and on.

The only difference this time is that while Urkel was a slam-dunk for two terms, Biden/Harris won’t be.  Unless the Marxists load the ballot boxes again.

Basically, we have to endure two full years of shit, and maybe — just maybe — the mid-term elections will shift the House back to Republican control and we can fight a holding action.  Unless the Marxists load the ballot boxes again.

And that’s assuming we can find somewhere a decent successor to the Trump philosophy — and I have to say, I’m not filled with optimism that we can.  If we do, however, then we have a slight chance of reversing the shit-show of the next four years.

Unless the Marxists load the ballot boxes again.