A good article on overuse of SWAT teams by local pd's

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/381446/barney-fife-meets-delta-force-charles-c-w-cooke

Anybody that believes any of these muscled up thugs when they say, "I'm a second amendment supporter! I'll neeeeeeever confiscate anyone's gun," is naive at best.

AR parts organization

I saw a friend of mine looking at this site, Imminent Threat Solutions, a few days ago. There is a lot of surfing to be done here with articles about finding adventure all around you wherever you are, how to be tougher, and of course lots of gear porn too.

I found this article today, Organizing You AR Small Parts. This is something I've wrestled with before with AR parts as well as other assorted small gun parts. This is something I'll be doing asap.

SC requires colleges to teach Founding Documents

Liberals panties in a twist over SC requiring Constitution to be taught at college

There are several things about this article both good and bad.

First, I find no fault with requiring a school that receives tax money to teach the founding documents. Considering how mushy headed our college aged young people are today, partly because of mush headed teachers and professors, a college refresher of The Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Federalist Papers and the like could only help,.......maybe. Because I'm sure professor smarty pants will be pointing out how Ben, George, Thomas and all them cats were just old white oppressors getting rich off the suffering of others.
Second, I'm not sure I care for our Governor signing a bill because, "lawmakers spent so much time on it."  Huh?
But then she points out that the congress is micromanaging the college's boards. I mostly agree with this. Appoint the boards then get out of the way. But then they could remove the board members or the funding. Hmm, a lesson in how being in bed with the gubmint never works to your advantage.
Personally, I don't care what the gays do, unless what they are doing is rubbing the gay thing in my face. I don't care for xyz "studies" in college; women's studies, gay studies, black studies and on and on.
Culledge should be physics, chemistry, calculus, English lit, etc, etc. But then I'm crashing my way downhill through the woods headed for camp curmudgeon too.
My wife once accused me of brainwashing one of my kids after listening to me talk to him. "Of course *I* am brainwashing him. Better me than some lib-tard commie, America hating, queer recruiter, in college."

Finally got the clutch out

This is the clutch from my F350 diesel. The needle bearing in the flywheel is also toast. I'm replacing the flywheel because the last fella that worked on my clutch said I had a dual mass flywheel and that with my next clutch I'd need a new one. Well, I'm pretty sure the flywheel I just pulled out is a single mass and 100% good.
I got an exceptionally good deal on my new FW so I don't feel bad about it at all. Ill just save the used one, just in case something happens down the road.
This is the first clutch I've ever put in so discounting the moments of frustration due to inexperience, it hasn't been too bad, so far. Today I start reassembling it.

update, camping and clutches

Last week the clutch in my truck quit working. So now it's sitting in a state of semi disassembly waiting for my next day off when I will attempt to install my first ever clutch AND flywheel.
Over the weekend we went to Athens Ga and spent some time camping at Stone Mtn park instead of fixing my truck.
My daughter and I climbed the back of the mountain. That's 825 vertical feet in about 1 mile.

Got a New Kindle

I have had a Kindle Fire for 2 or 3 years now. It took me almost a year before I used it for anything other than internet browsing. I've always been a reader and have quite a few books here at home. So many, in fact, that I have to cull some every so often.
So it took some time to get used to having a book on a tablet. Eventually I did and now enjoy having many books available at once. I confess to often being in the process of reading several books at once. Right now the current list includes an electronics book, an algebra book, Colonel Roosevelt, We Were Soldiers Once, The Bear Went Over The Mountain, and Adams Smith's .......Wealth of Nations, not to mention several magazines that show up every month. The Kindle makes all of this possible and easy. Some books aren't even available in hard copy like Matt Bracken's Anthology. Now, there are some books that I still want copies of, the electronics and algebra books I'm reading now being examples. I can make notes in margins or save for later or pass on to somebody.
My older kindle had much less storage, wasn't great for magazines (print was too small) and did not do well too far from my router in my house.
My new Kindle is the 8.9 HDX 32g. The magazines are much easier to read, the keyboard is a regular qwerty type (I never got used to the punctuation above the keyboard on my other,) the resolution is better on videos and I'm typing this on the new K now. Blogging was something I gave up trying on the other one.
I'm very happy I decided to "upgrade." Amazon letting me buy it with 5 no interest payments doesn't hurt either.

The VA scandal

I am no fan of the current occupant of the White House and that is a grand understatement!

But this VA scandal is not something that the genesis of should be laid at his feet, although he is a great admirer of and promoter of the nexus of the problem. The VA scandal is the Arlington Cemetery Mismanagement Scandal, is the  Katrina response scandal is the....you get the gist.

Fed.gov is toooooo BIG! The analogy of cancer is quick to hand, the many cells consuming what the healthy need, taking over, crowding out. The Fed.gov is too corpulent to move at any rate of speed even approaching glacial.

The bosses of the VA, Arlington NC, etc, Secretaries and the like, are mostly in place due to favors owed them, always have been. These people are much too removed from their charges to care or to be feared in the main. Scandals have to reach a certain "stage" in the national media before a head will roll. Probably because up until head rolling time that person is serving as a shield for the POTUS.

The current VA situation is most likely worse now because of the many veterans we have now due to Iraq and Afghanistan, but our Veterans have deserved better for many years. Welcoming Sgt Jones home with a parade is cool, everyone can get into the rhythm of that. But when Jones starts drinking or acting different most of us want the problem to go away.

I'd also like to add that the fact we need things like the Wounded Warrior Project is upsetting. These men and women should already have the best care for anything they need, IN THE WORLD! Now, each community should band together and help their veterans, show them they are appreciated and valued. Maybe that means building a house or retrofitting a house to make a vet more independent. But we have far too many .orgs here that exist because of the hell that is red tape and denials of service that many vets face.

I'm not sure that there is any possibility that this country with as many people in it as there are now is manageable at a Federal level at all. I've said for years we should divide up into maybe 4 equal parts. With each part responsible for almost all of its own business, a vice president, elected in that section, to be part of a board of directors with the POTUS as the chair for anything like a war or some other thing that needs 300+ million peoples attention. Maybe that could be an answer. Of course the original framers had a similar idea what with the Constitution and that 10th amendment and all.

What is certain and for sure is that as long as we depend on the bloated fed.gov to administer anything it will be done wastefully, slowly, and with little compassion.