Crazy Eddie, I tell you!

Los Angeles Will Fine Cargo Ships That Can't Unload

Because it's OBVIOUSLY their fault...

Los Angeles ports will fine cargo ships waiting to unload their goods in an attempt to relieve congestion that is as desperate as it is gobsmackingly stupid.

It’s a fine so pointless and wrong that, of course, Presidentish Joe Biden has chimed in with his support for it.

According to CNBC, the White House is “hopeful” that fines will “ease the intensifying logjam of cargo ships” waiting to unload at Long Beach and the Port of Los Angeles. Together, the two account for 40% of the country’s seaborne imports.

Carriers will have to pay “$100 per day for each container lingering past a given timeline” starting on the first of the month. Containers moved by truck will have nine days before they’ll start paying, and containers moved by rail will have just three days.

A New Definition for "Chutzpah"

It used to be the guy that murdered his parents begging for leniency in sentencing, due to being an orphan.

Now it's the Director General of the World Health Organization saying we should have been listening to him all along...

#BREAKING 'World should have listened to WHO' on #coronavirus: Director General Tedros pic.twitter.com/N7eua2j0JA

— AFP news agency (@AFP) April 27, 2020

 

You can't make this s*** up

Developer Shuts Down Fake Cryptocurrency PonziCoin after Things Go "Crazy Out of Hand"

Read The Label

So, did you hear the one about the two women who set sail from Hawaii on a three hour week trip to Tahiti, and got rescued of Japan five months later?

Two women rescued after 5 months adrift in the Pacific - CNN

This being the 21st Century, the story started unraveling rather quickly.
Questions raised about sailors' story after months stranded at sea

The best analysis is found here: 19 REASONS THIS “SURVIVAL” STORY SMELLS FISHY – UNREASONABLY DANGEROUS ONION RINGS (h/t Insty.)

Aside from the fact that I may have to start reading the Unreasonable Dangerous Onion Rings blog just for the name, this is essentially a detailed fisking of the entire story. In this case, go ahead and read the comments. (Note: If you're going to click through to the Daily Mail's coverage, you might want to warn your spouse lest she look over your shoulder when you reach the part about how one of the principles in this story led a "Shades of Grey" lifestyle. AMHIK.)

Anyway.

What brought me here was that, out of curiosity, I looked up de-salinators on Amazon, because, 5 months at sea you'd obviously have to have one.

The search returned 29 hits, most of which are filters or purifiers, not de-salinators.

Removing bugs and contaminants from salt water doesn't do you much good if you still can't drink the water...

Anyway, two rules:

1. Always read the product description. 
2. Never read the comments. 

Exception to 2. above:

• Unless you still have questions about the product description.

Ahead of my time

Seen at Says Uncle: SayUncle » USA Today beclowns themselves

Heh®. The Cluemeter: Mocking chainsaw bayonets before mocking chainsaw bayonets was cool!
The Clue Meter: Safety First!
Not sure, but that was probably my first "Derp" post.

Still Siggy with it.

While I was at work today, Sig posted the details of the Voluntary P320 Upgrade. (See previous post, "Damnit, man, this is the Internet!")

Got home and submitted all of ours for the program; process took maybe 5 minutes, and that included getting pistols out of the safe, and a separate submission for each of them.

No further action is required from you at this time.

You will receive an email from SIG SAUER at a later date that will include a prepaid shipping label and instructions to return your P320 pistol and any P320 caliber exchange kits that you have. It may take many weeks for you to receive this next communication, but we won’t forget about you (SIG will not begin the upgrade process for a few weeks as we prepare to make this upgrade). Once your P320 is shipped and received at SIG SAUER, the turnaround time will be approximately 4 – 6 weeks. This lengthy process is due to the high volume of pistols in the marketplace. Transit times may vary depending on your geographic location and receipt of your returned pistol. In the meantime, your SIG SAUER pistol is safe to carry and use as originally configured from the factory.

 Obviously, the 4-6 weeks to get the pistols back after the undetermined wait to ship them off is less than appealing. (The most common number I've heard for P320 sales is ≈500,000. Not sure how accurate that is, but I can see how that would be a significant number of pistols to process...)

The fact that the entire process will be free of charge to us goes a ways to alleviating that.

FAQs about the program are at the bottom of the page linked above.

BTW, if you have caliber exchange kits in addition to one or more P320s, they recommend sending in the slides, as well, as

the striker(s) will be replaced, and the slide(s) will need the disconnector cut.

I'm honestly not too concerned about toting the P320 Sub Compact in the meantime, as I don't plan on dropping it multiple times in just the right orientation to cause an ND.

Don't really care whether the hysteria brigade thinks I'm overly optimistic or a fool.

"Damnit, man, this is the Internet!"

"Gentlemen, you can't reason here! This is the Internet!"

So, you may recall over several previous posts that I (and Ms. Drang, on my advice) have switched over the Sig P320s as out primary sidearms.

You may also be aware that the entire Gunternet is having a collective meltdown over recent "revelations" regarding the Sig P320.

The American Rifleman's The Keefe Report has published a review of the situation.

This post has few links; they'll be easy to find on your own. There is so much pants shitting hysteria over this issue that I am giving myself a time out from most gun-specific fora.

Many of my fellow bloggers, over in the right sidebar, have addressed this situation, as has The Gun Feed.. The issue has been beaten to death so thoroughly at Pistol-Forum.com that the horse is not only dead, but they had to bring in a new dead horse because the first one had been reduced to a pile of rancid jelly.

To review, for any who have not been following:

• A few weeks ago a video popped up in YouTube, on a channel with only that one video and no other content, purporting to demonstrating that, when dropped in a specific orientation, the Sip P320 would fire.
• The video had no commentary at all, including a description of how many tries it took to get this to happen, or how they reached the conclusion that dropping this pistol such that it struck the ground at a specific angle would cause it to fire.
• After a week or so, during which time people generally held to be In The Know arrived at the conclusion that the circumstances surrounding the video were so flaky as to render it suspect, at best; shortly thereafter, it disappeared.
• At approximately the same time, however, it was noted that there was language in the Sig P320 manual stating that the pistol could fire if dropped, and one should take care. 
• Note that this is standard lawyerese in most if not all firearms manuals, along with "use only quality, factory-loaded ammunition", and "modifications will void the warranty."
• Also at approximately the same time, the Dallas, TX, Police Department issued a safety warning regarding the Sig P320, due to the fact that "it might fire if dropped."  (The P320 is not issued by the department, but is authorized as a personal purchase.)
• Note that, contrary to rumors, no Dallas police officer has had a P320 fire accidentally.
• Sig released a statement which pointed out that the P320 had passed all industry standard safety testing, including all industry standard drop testing; IOW, no one ever thought they had to test a gun dropped at this specific angle before.
• Just as the furor over the original video and the verbiage in the manual was dying down, other videos popped up. These were better produced, and did seem to explain what happened better.
• Note, however, that these all built on the original video, which means that they started with the knowledge that the pistol dropped in this specific orientation could or would fire.
• Then... people started claiming that this previously unsuspected flaw applied to the M17 and M18 pistols, the Army having just awarded the contract for the Modular Handgun System to Sig for variants of the P320...
• ...despite the fact that the M17 and M18 use different internal components which avoid this issue...
• ...and which it turns out, Sig had already planned to offer as a voluntary upgrade to the P320. Details to be available the day after tomorrow. (That is, Monday, August 14th, 2017.)

 Of course, this latter fact gets reported to the effect of "What did Sig know and when did they know it?"

Notes for those who have been following along:

1. I left out the lawsuit by a Connecticut police officer who alleges he was injured when his P320 unintentionally discharged, which came to light about when this was happening, on purpose. Claim is made that his holstered pistol went off. The lead time on a lawsuit is such that the timing may or may not be suspicious, and the description of what happened is still unproven.
2. I am also not addressing the fact that one or more highly regarded personages came out and said that the P320 was as safe as any other gun, and questioned the original video, leading to their character and integrity being called into question when the full feeding frenzy hit.
3. Seriously, Gunternet-wide the knicker-twisting approached Bernie Sanders rally proportions...

Tamara's take (more or less) here: View From The Porch: Absolutely unprecedented!

Note that she is not commenting on the allegations or sequence of events, just that this is not the first time we've seen the "blood-in-the-water" effect of a new, successful pistol design which might have a weakness.

And as Mr. Keefe says in his article referenced above, this whole thing has gone beyond "blood in the water" into full-on Sharknado. (Naturally, the first comment on that article claims Sig bought the NRA's compliance...)

Mr. Keefe also references a report from Soldier Systems Daily: SIG SAUER Acknowledges P320 Trigger Issues With -30deg Drop, M17 MHS Unaffected, Announces Voluntary P320 Upgrade. 

Although SIG was already working toward introducing the MHS-inspired Enhanced Trigger to the P320, this -30deg drop issue has hastened their effort. They have lightened the Trigger, Striker and Sear by about 30% overall and added a Disconnect (commercial only, not MHS). The trigger pull weight is unaffected, but rather the trigger part actually weighs less. The reason they lightened those parts is to mitigate the momentum gained by the heavier parts during a drop.

Taylor laid it out, “There is a vulnerability with the P320 at the -30deg drop.” They plan to incorporate the trigger enhancements for the M17 into the P320. They’d been working on them, but implementation wasn’t imminent. Based on what they’ve found, that has been accelerated. Details on their voluntary upgrade program will follow soon.

I want to put this perspective. Since it’s introduction in 2014, they’ve sold around 500,000 P320s. There are three recorded cases of unintended discharges in LE channels . There is one additional commercial incident which I am familiar with but was not formally reported to SIG. That’s four known incidents from 500,000 weapons, many of which are used on a daily basis. Additionally, those incidents have all been within the last year.

This report concludes with the following paragraph:

My take is that despite building their pistols to industry standards, SIG has acknowledged the issue and is taking steps to fix it. They didn’t waste any time. They’ve stopped commercial production of the P320 and are concentrating on the upgrade. It’s going to be more than just swapping parts. The slide and frame will need some work as well so the pistol will need to go back to SIG. Details will soon follow on how to participate in the voluntary upgrade program.

 As I noted earlier, details of the upgrade will be available Monday.

Not gonna lie, I'm not too crazy about the idea of sending our guns to New Hampshire to be upgraded, but expect to be doing so, if only to ensure parts compatibility down the road.

This whole series of events has left me disgusted with a large swathe of humanity, though.

Challenge Accepted!

Seattle: Boy, the WTO Riots were the worst, weren't they?
Hamburg: Hold mein bier and watch this...

— Drang (@DWDrang) July 7, 2017

Dear NRA: WTF is wrong with you?!

Got wind of this, so I had to look for myself:
NRA Carry Guard | Register

*NOTE: NRA Carry Guard Level One is designed for training with a semi-automatic handgun (Glock 19/17, Sig P226/P228 or equivalent). We will not allow revolvers or 1911s as your primary firearm in this class.

Emphasis in original.

You idiots. You dolts. You elitists. This course already costs far more than the vast majority of gun-owning and -carrying Americans is willing to spend on anything, and you want to limit it that bad?

And just what is the person who only owns one gun to do, if that one gun happens to be a 1911 or a revolver?

And just WTF is wrong with a 1911 or a revolver for self-defense?

You already shot yourselves in the foot by  giving every appearance of having ripped off the US Concealed Carry Associations business model, and now this?

I can't help think the planning meeting went something like "Hey, let's give our grass roots a new reason to wish we weren't on their side!"

I must be slowing down

Today an employee -- not one of mine, but a Salt Mines employee -- told me his hours in military time.

He then apologized for using military time.

And explained what military time is.

And translated "1300 hours" for me.

I managed not to reach through the phone and choke him.

Or direct him to address me as "First Sergeant."

Or tell him I was using military time when his father was trying to figure out what number Mickey's Big Hand was pointing at.

Told one of my colleagues about this and she said "It's like I don't even know you anymore."

I suppose I can cite this the next time someone tells me I need to ease up on the staff...

Earworm, 04/01/2017 -- Fed Up Edition

So, I haven't discussed my new job... and I'm not going to.

But I keep running into situations where my training was rushed, partly because they needed me to take over a shift, and partly because (in all modesty) they figured I was good enough to hit the ground running and do the job.

And, (again, in all modesty) mostly they've been right, except I keep finding things they never told me.

So last night a semi-annual report needs to be run, and I do. I've used this report before, and it was a pain in the fourth point of contact, because it's always been sorted on the wrong parameter. Maybe the choice didn't exist before, but now it does, so I sort it in numerical order by account number instead of alphabetical order by division or department, because there are too many divisions within each department, and many of the divisions across different departments have similar names, so, in the words of a colleague, you'd tell a customer to go for coffee while you find their account.

She added "You're the first person to make this report usable!"

Naturally, I got bitched at for doing it wrong.

So...

Retail Derpitude

Or: How To Alienate New Shooters!

So, a friend and co-worker surprised me by casually mentioning in conversation a week or two ago that she was having trouble finding a holster for her pistol.

I suppose she thought I knew she had bought herself a pistol, but up until a month or so ago we had spent quite a while on opposite shifts, and on those rare occasions when we did have a chance to chat over coffee it was usually over the stupidity of colleagues and/or management.

Anyway, I was glad to hear that she had avoided any pressure or "advice" to go with a snub nosed revolver or a .380, which are all too often recommended as "Lady's guns", and in deciding to go with a 9mm she went with a S&W M&P 9 Compact, rather than a Glock 43 or an S&W Shield because "the extra capacity seemed like a good idea."

Not only that, but she has eschewed off-body (purse, fanny pack) carry for reasons both practical and tactical.

Now, she has decided that for her purposes a cross-draw holster will work best. We discussed the potential drawbacks, and she acknowledged them, but feels that this will serve her best, and I refuse to push lest she decide either not to carry, or not to speak to me again... 😞

Thus we come to the derpitude, to wit, not only is she having trouble finding a cross-draw holster in stock, at least one dealer said that "nobody makes those."

Not "We don't stock those as there's not much call for them, let's see what I can order", but "No such thing".

Furthermore, he implied that there weren't (m)any holsters for the M&P 9 Compact at all!

{Insert Facepalm Meme Here}

Naturally, within half an hour or so I had forwarded her half a dozen links to various and sundry holster makers' wares for the M&P 9C, including cross-draws, highlighting holster makers local to us.

I also had to keep explaining that a cross-draw holster may be worn forward of the hip, but that referring to it as an appendix holster (as Minion #1 kept doing) was going to confuse people as to where and how you are planning to place the thing. ("No, I'm going to wear it for cross-draw." "I understand, but these days when you say 'appendix carry' people will assume you mean strong-side in waist band. With practice, this can be a very good way to carry concealed, but that's not what you intend.")

Hopefully her fashionable belts will support the holster, when she finally gets it...

#TrendingOnTwitter

#trudeaueulogy - Twitter Search

So, Canada had to elect their own SCOAMF, and now he's a world-wide laughing stock because he failed to realize that nil nisi bonum doesn't mean you should praise the evil dead.

We mourn the death of Vlad the Impaler, who spearheaded initiatives which touched the hearts of millions. #TrudeauEulogies #trudeaueulogy pic.twitter.com/z1pznoHj7P

— Conservosaurus (@conservosaurus) November 26, 2016

a pox on both their houses!

with apologies to e.e. cummings.

listen; there's a hell of a good universe next door. election 2016 is ted cruz v james webb. let's  go.

— Drang (@DWDrang) October 22, 2016

Mr. Bad Example

So, what spare time I've had the last week or two had mostly been spent transcribing my notes from MAG40. I think I'll pass on posting a day-by-day AAR and just post the outstanding things from it.

When I'm ready.

In the meantime... I often pass on posting about things in the news, because others post about them so much better. But sometimes...

As seen on View From The Porch: See this? Don't do this?

Man, 20, killed by shotgun blast outside northeast Raleigh home | News & Observer

This. This right here is why we can't have nice things.

(And actually ties in with some of the things covered in MAG40.)

Acknowledging that the press almost always leaves important details out, and that events as described by friends and family of the deceased are biased and not to be trusted...

A bunch of young males in their late teens and early twenties at, or leaving, a party two doors down does not sound like "hoodlums and vandals."

The part that really caused me to face palm so hard I almost gave myself a concussion was this:

I fired my warning shot like I’m supposed to by law.

Not only is there no legal requirement to fire a warning shot, but police are generally prohibited from firing warning shots. 

And, sweet Jesus, if you HAVE to fire a warning shot, shoot into the ground!

The 911 calls include this:

12:50 a.m. “We’ve got a bunch of hoodlums out here. I’m locked and loaded, and I’m going outside to secure my neighborhood. You need to send PD as quickly as possible.”

and

“You need to send PD as quickly as possible, I’m on neighborhood watch. I’m gonna have the neighbors with me. There’s hoodlums out here racing up and down the street. It’s 1 o’clock in the morning, um, there’s some vandalism.”

and

12:57 a.m. “We have a lot of people outside our house, yelling and shouting profanities. I yelled at them, ‘Please leave the premises.’ They were showing a firearm, so I fired a warning shot and, uh, we got somebody that got hit.”

at which the dispatcher asked (reasonably enough)

“Someone was shot?” the operator asked.
“Well, I don’t know if they were shot or not, ma’am,” he told her. “I fired my warning shot like I’m supposed to by law. They do have firearms, and I’m trying to protect myself and my family.”
The operator asked who had come to his house.
“Ma’am, I don’t know who they are,” the man said. “There’s frigging black males outside my frigging house with firearms. Please send PD.”

Okay, so...

• Neighborhood Watch is no more a license to kill than a concealed carry permit. 
• The evidence as presented in this article makes it sound like no one got further than a few feet onto the idiot's property. 
• At this point, we only have the idiot's word that anyone had anything resembling a firearm besides him.
• And since the evidence makes it sound like he fired from inside the garage, through a window, it hard to see what made him feel he or his family were in such danger that discharging a shotgun was necessary.

The bad part, aside from all the people who have been writing and training about these things for years having apparently done so in a giant exercise in futility, is that there are people out there who will read this little screed of mine, and similar ones by others who are more experienced, have taken more training, and have more exposure, and excoriate us for "abandoning" this guy. (Not to mention NRA, SAF, etc.)

Make no mistake: There may be evidence to come that will change this to another "Good Guy With A Gun" story, but at this point this moron is a moron who deserves to be locked up, and only trotted out when a Bad Example is needed.

Well, that escalated quickly...

In my previous post, as I was lamenting the fact that I had discovered by day three of MAG-40 that the three "generic" stainless steel magazines for my 1911s were crap, and the feed lips had spread to the point where, not only would they not lock back the slide when empty, but I couldn't even get one of them in the mag well, I added as an aside

the blued ones actually marked as GI mags seem to be working OK.

By the time we had finished shooting the last drills and were about to shoot the qualification several of my blued steel mags were also failing to lock back the slide.

I suppose the "COLT" marked ones have an excuse, since they came with my Combat Commander, which I purchased almost exactly 30 years ago.

Annoying, but nowhere near as annoying as getting that hot brass down my back from the Marine shooting his Ruger LC9S S&W Shield next to me was. ("Mas! The blogger is doing Saint Vitus' Dance!""Is his muzzle pointed in a safe direction...?")

That and it made the Glockenspielers even more insufferable.

Note to self...

Dear Self:
Remember writing this post? 

Turns out that when you said

• On the one hand, my habit of buying 1911 magazines over the last year or two seems like a good one.
• On the other hand, buying the cheap ones marked and packaged as GI 1911 mags may not have been so smart.

the twinge you felt when typing the first bullet was not just your bursitis acting up at the self-back-patting, it was foreshadowing.

Bullet two OTOH, was prescient. (Except the blued ones actually marked as GI mags seem to be working OK.)

Day three of MAG 40 and I now have three fewer 1911 magazines than I came with. Turns out those "generic" stainless steel magazines simply marked ".45 ACP" weren't even worth the sawbuck each they cost me.

In mitigation, I would like to point out I bought the things strictly for use in training.

Too bad they won't even go into the mag well easily enough to use them to practice reloads.

Who thought that anyway?

Lately I've been perusing items on the website of Foreign Policy magazine. Sure, there's a lot of furriners and commies there, but think of it as my version of Tamara watching the Sunday morning talk shows. Living on the Left Coast as I do, especially now when I get home from work after midnight, pressure testing my cardio-vascular system watching the talking heads pontificate is i practical, to say the least.

So when I saw an article called Foreign Policy: Obama Was Not a Realist President, subtitled "If he had been, he might have avoided some of his biggest foreign-policy mistakes", my first thought was "No shit, Sherlock."

Realist? Abandoning Iraq, ditto Afghanistan, sucking up to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and Putin, bowing to royalty all over the place, insulting long-standing allies and friends to play footsie with enemies...

Who the hell could think Obama is a realist, foreign policy or otherwise?

Well, it turns out paragraph four givs us a clue: The kind of guy who can write about Obama in these terms:

But first, what will Obama’s legacy likely be? My view, for what it’s worth, is that future historians will rate Obama highly. He will be remembered for being America’s first nonwhite president, of course, and for conducting his office with dignity, grace, and diligence. His administration was blissfully scandal-free, and he didn’t make a lot of hasty decisions that turned out badly. He was admirably thick-skinned and charitable toward most of his critics, despite the abuse and thinly veiled racism he faced from some of them. And no matter who wins in November, he is likely to look mighty good by comparison.

 "Dignity, grace, and diligence"? It is to laugh! (And of course, the item is replete with cheap shots at Republicans in Congress...)

My guess is that Stephen M. Walt's business cards read

Stephen M. Walt

Partisan Hack

Toady

Sycophancy A Specialty!

"We don't let reality effect our views!"

It'll totally work this time, now the right people are in charge!

Obama administration pushes banks to make home loans to people with weaker credit - The Washington Post


h/t Tam 

ARRRRGGGGHHHHH! *twtch*twitch*

Some things just get to me, you know?
Instapundit » Blog Archive » NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: US Marines set up artillery base near Makhmour.

The United States Marine who was killed in an Islamic State (ISIS) rocket attack on Saturday was part of an American fire-base which had been set up near Makhmour. . . . The fire-base is home for a “couple of hundred” Marines who are living in tents on the front-line. There they have set up howitzer artillery guns...

(Source)
"Artillery howitzer guns"?  "Artillery howitzer guns"?

See, this is what happens when an MI Geek Army retiree with Asbergers reads stupid shit...

For those who may be wondering what has me twitching and curled up in a ball over here:

• Howitzers are cannon artillery which can fire with the barrel elevated at a relatively high angle, usually between 45 and 90 degrees; traditionally a howitzer has a comparatively short barrel (i.e., 30 times the bore diameter) and fires with a relatively low powder charge.
• Guns, or field guns, have a barrel that is 45 times (or more) the bore diameter in length, fires a relatively high powder charge, and at a fairly low angle.
• Some artillery pieces are technically "gun-howitzers", able to fill both roles.
• Bonus Ordnance Geek Note: The length of a cannon's barrel will often be referred to as a multiple of calibers, i.e., a field gun has a barrel that is 45 calibers.

"Artillery howitzer guns". *shudder*

Other stupidity in there:
"(A) couple of hundred Marines..." So, a battalion, then...
"Living in tents"... Which, probably seems like luxury...
"On the front line"... Sigh.