Must see teewee:

Jerry Doyle hits one out of the park in his speech to LPAC.  Go forth and give him a listen.

Busy busy busy...

Archiving the (original) Eclectic Dragonfly. 

I haven't found an elegant, simple or automatic method of backing up all of my posts from the old neighborhood.  So I'm using the brute force method.  If you know of a better way than - going to each post in a browser, highlighting all, copying and then pasting into word and then hit save as - I would be most appreciative if you could share it with me.

Thanks in advance!

Cafepress

I just started my first new Cafepress shop since the changeover to all premium all the time.  My other shops are all pretty basic and perhaps a bit dated.  I think I can roll in my other designs and host them under this new unified umbrella.  We'll see how this new set up works. 

BTW, this new graphic was the catalist for tonights fun:

 I call it:  Pibacus!  (I may call it something else tomorrow after a good night's sleep...)

A comment I posted at Yahoo! News:

Regarding this story The American 'allergy' to global warming: Why? I had this to say:

Why don't we buy it?  Well, there are glacial erratics all over my neighborhood.  Huge boulders that were deposited by the retreating glaciers at the end of the last ice age.  Frankly, I'd rather you DON'T roll back global warming to the point that my house is under 200 feet of ice.  Thank you very much.

Climate is not static.  It doesn't matter that it would be more convenient for some people (scientists in this case) if it were.  And while I am all for breathing clean air I am NOT for a return to some hippies utopian idea of stone(d) age bliss.

So far the vast majority of comments (well over four thousand when last I checked) were on the side of 'we don't buy it because it's junk science.' 

I suspect this is part of the reason the Legacy Media is so afraid of the free expression of ideas and instant world-wide reach of the internet.  It's really hard to control the dialogue when others who may disagree with you have an equal voice.

Playing with the Side Bars

I thought I’d try a few things with the side bars this evening to see what they look like.  For instance, that slide show of some of the graphics I’m trying to make a buck on at CafePress.  I’m not 100% convinced that I should keep that particular element.  What do you think?

Had another Dragonfly incident today

As I pulled up to the mailboxes this afternoon there came a rustling from one of the grocery bags in the way back.  (Since I never have more than one passenger but often carry quite a bit of stuff I keep the back seat of my now 13 year old “New” Beetle folded down in what I call stealth pickup truck mode.)  I turned to see if I could see where all the commotion was coming from.  It was the weirdest thing!  Only one bag was moving, and rather insistently at that! 

‘Can’t be the wind doing that, ’ I thunk to myself. 

It stopped when I popped the hatch, but had started back up again by the time I’d walked around back to investigate further.  There, in among the bananas, was one of the largest Dragonflies I have ever seen!  He (assuming…) was about five inches long from canopy to end of tail boom and had a wingspan nearly equal to his length. His fuselage was all black with green, blue and white spots in a geometric pattern and he had large white eyes.  I wish I’d had my camera with me so I could share a picture of him with you.  Unfortunately I didn’t and can’t.  :-(  Maybe next time…

I have no idea when he got in the car or where.  But I let him out over by our mailboxes.  Our local skeeters have something new to worry about!  Poor them…  (Teehee!)

Actually, he looked similar to the Dragonfly in this amazing photo:

 Found at EzWebRUs with Bing Image Search

Via Weer'd...

... and a whole slew of others we find that Media Maters has gone and created themselves a shill tag. 

This post is written as part of the Media Matters Gun Facts fellowship. The purpose of the fellowship is to further Media Matters’ mission to comprehensively monitor, analyze, and correct conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. Some of the worst misinformation occurs around the issue of guns, gun violence, and extremism, the fellowship program is designed to fight this misinformation with facts.

 Sebastian over at Snowflakes In Hell has a better writeup than I'm likely to come up with.  And Weer'd suggests you Google that quote.  I did and found that a whole lot of gun bloggers are talking about it.  So I figured I might as well add to the fun.

Teehee!

More blog stuff & a question...

Back in the olden days of the Dragonfly over at LJ I used to run a feature called HerrBGone's Toy Box..  These were posts showing off various airguns from my collection.  On the evening of November 4, 2008, after it became apparent that a former Joyce Foundation board member had sweet-talked his way into the White House, I pulled all but one of those posts down.  With that, the Dragonfly lost much of its purpose.

After seeing for the past three years just how ineffective The Light Bringer has been at imposing his bosses anti-gun agenda on the country I am left with this question:

Should I bring back the Toy Box and start posting some of my goodies herebouts, or is even the outside chance of a second term (perish the thought!) enough to not provide the .gov a de facto registration of many of my 'toys'?

Let me know what you think by way of the comments.  Thanks!

UPDATE:  I just dug out my Healthways Western Plainsman that I discuss in that post from the old Dragonfly and tried it for the first time. I'd been afraid to load it with modern BB's. It works fine as a single shot muzzle-loader but it won't feed from the inline magazine. :-( Oh well.

And I'd completely forgotten about the nice western holster I had it in. I need to go into the old pistol cabinet more often...

New & Unproved!

Over at the Old Dragonfly back when I was posting on LiveJournal there was a blogroll.  It was a fairly static thing and it was a PITA to revise in any way.  Now that the Dragonfly has been upgraded to a Blogger account, and now that I am actually posting here again, just last night I discovered that Blogger has a much more betterer blogroll than I'd ever imagined possible without having to custom craft an intertube site all by my lonesome.  (Which isn't too likely for anything more technically challenging than my Punch Buggy-centric site Beetlemania...)

The New & Unproved Blogroll now features auto-sorting by most recent post. 

But wait!  There's MORE!

It even features the headline of each blog listed's most recent post!  How cool is that?

And what's more, it's a breeze to update.  If only the rest of life could be that easy!

The source of the ATF White Paper story

Last night on the intertubes - Part II

In the last five minutes of the show - nowhere near enough time to read and respond to a talkback - I sent in another one.  The subject under discussion at the time was a meeting at the UN of the Food Police.  These are a bunch of NGO's and vegan hippies that want to use the UN to force their dietary choices on the rest of us.  After all, they're so smart and good and only have our best interests at heart.  Much like the First Mommy, Michelle Obama getting Olive Garden and MacDonald's to change their menu to make her feeeeel like she's helping us provincials eat healthier.

Michelle, I am older than you.  I am smarter than your husband.*  I will make my own decisions - whether you want me too or not.

Anywho...

If I’m recalling correctly, Cam was talking along the lines of having to negotiate with the kid behind the counter who thinks you should have the tofu instead of the colossal cardioburger.  My talkback went something like this:

No, no, Cam.  You’re going to have to show your FOOD Card (kind-of like a FOID Card and almost as hard to get…) and if your cholesterol number or BMI are too high: no fries for you.

I just hope I’m not giving the .gov any ideas…

* He doesn't qualify to join MENSA.  I could if I wanted to.  I've just never been a joiner.  Compare with Bill Watterson's comments about having Calvin join the Scouts.

Last night on the intertubes

Last night I was pleased to have a talkback read on air by Cam.  Sort of...  ;-)

The subject in question was the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership's tweet plugging some basketball game that's supposed to promote peace love and understanding among the gangbangers in some city I don't now recall.  The big deal of this little 'happening' is supposed to be a couple of rappers showing up in support of the Brady's and to promote their own anti-violence agenda.

Yeah, right.

Cam played a about half a minute each of a couple of these choirboys songs (heavily bleeped out.)  That's about all we could stand of this vile, vulgar and incredibly violent noise.

My talkback (in full) was as follows:

      "Music?  (Insert rude noise here...)"

As read on-air Cam said: "Music?" with heavy stress to the incredulity of the thought - then he made a face at the camera.

That works too, LOL!

This Just In!

Via Cam & Co. on NRNews.com:

There are reports of a white-paper being floated in Washington TO ABOLISH BATFE! This apparently in an effort to cover up Operation Fast & Furious.

Watch for updates from NRA.

There’ll be blood in the streets!

So why is it that the Governor of New Hampshire and thirty of the states Chiefs of Police are siding with violent criminals over the right of the states far more numerous law abiding citizens to defend themselves?  Have these government officials, whose job it is to work for the benefit of the citizens, not heard all of the mounting evidence that the bad guys prefer not to attack hardened targets?  IE: people who are empowered to defend themselves up to and including the use of deadly force if the bad guy makes it necessary?  Or do they simply not care?

One of the chiefs quoted in this article in the local cat box liner asked (I’ll paraphrase) ‘how are the police supposed to know who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy under this new law?’

I suppose it used to be easy for them.  The one on the ground bleeding or dead may be presumed to be the victim and the one whose bloody footprints they track down the sidewalk until they loose the trail may be presumed to be the bad guy.  They can probably handle that without too much difficulty. 

But when the good guy is holding the bad guy at gunpoint waiting for the police to arrive it may tax their little minds to realize that the guy who just holstered his weapon upon their arrival, put his hands on top of his head and said “Glad to see you, Officer!  Transferring custody of the suspect to you.” might actually be the good guy even though he just had a firearm in his hand.

They may actually have to think for themselves.

Now for the vast majority of Peace Officers in the field this shouldn’t be a problem.  But I suppose these Chiefs know their rank and file better than I ever will.  Hopefully they will institute appropriate new training for their officers to be equipped to handle these situations when they occur in the field.

It seems as if these Chiefs of Police have never heard the answer to the often asked question:  “Why carry a gun?”

“Because a whole COP is too damn heavy!”

All the other kids are doin' it...

There's a meme running around the intertubes this evening along the lines of

'what (knife) has it got in its pocketses, my Precious?'  

Well, the little Victorinox MiniChamp rides in my custom cell phone case and the Boker COP Tool rides in its sheath on my belt.  I switched to the fixed blade COP Tool after I messed up my trigger finger and was having a problem opening my Camilus Heat even with the spring assist.

BTW: The fob on the Boker came with the knife.  I made the one on the SAK myself.  Gutted 550 paracord and instructions from the web.

But they promised ...

"There will be blood in the streets!"  We've heard that cry so many times in recent years from all of the Joyce sock puppets.  Every time another state passed shall issue or castle doctrine.  Talk of full fledged Constitutional carry sent them into a PSH panic!  'Main Street will turn into the OK Coral!'

What do we find instead?  Crime rates are going down.

Told ya so!  [insert rude noise here]

The magpie strikes

Sunday was a good day at the flea market.  I got a few of things – and I didn’t spend a whole lot of cash to get them.

One of the items is a Delta 15” Scroll Saw.  This one is much nicer than the one I can now put on Craigslist.  The other saw has a power take-off that has a flat sanding wheel attachment.  I have a dedicated sander for that with a 1” belt and disk so the one on the other saw is redundant.  As is the saw itself now that I have the new one.  The Delta saw set me back all of $20.  I was at Lowe’s the other day and saw a comparable new scroll saw for something like $189 and change, plus the Governors share at 6.5%.  The sales tax alone would be more than half what I paid for my saw!

The other item of note is my new-to-me 50 channel portable scanner.  My old 200 channel scanner simply wore out.  Several buttons on the keyboard stopped working and it became uncontrollable.  We’ve been scannerless for several years as a result.  This new used one seems to work reasonably well.  And it cost me a whole bunch less than my old (formerly) spiffy one!

Another thing I picked up, for all of $2, is a nicer vintage Osterizer Cyclomatic blender than the newer 2-speed beehive one we make our breakfast smoothies with.  Our light-weight plastic cans fit the new one and it’s got ten speeds and two modes to use them in! Now if I could just find a manual for it… 

So my head won't expolde

Now that I've created an ever so slightly less craptacular masthead for this iteration of the Dragonfly, I may actually write some stuff to post here.  I'd lost interest for a while.  But if I don't find an outlet soon my head will explode.  And that would be messy...

BTW: The new masthead is alluding to the incident that lead to my choosing this name for my blog.  (Originally over at LiveJournal.)  I posted a detailed explanation over there.  I'll eventually get around to re-posting it over here.

NEVER FORGET

Photo by Sister72

Who in their right mind would think this is a good idea?

CNN is reporting that the President’s jobs plan may create as many as 1 million jobs.  They go on to add that ‘economists gave generally positive reviews’ to the President’s plan.

Um, FYI, the President gave a speech.  He hasn’t actually given us the plan.  The actual plan hasn’t even been written yet!

OK.  Now let’s look at the numbers.

1,000,000 Jobs created

$447,000,000,000.00 Estimated cost of Obama’s “plan” 

      (that $447 billion dollars!)

That’s $447,000.00 per job!

If you take that cost for each job and broke it down for one year’s paycheck for one person that’s:

$447,000.00 cost per job

divided by 52 weeks in a year

divided by 40 hours in a week

That pay rate would be $214.90 an hour!

Unless it’s the economist that’s getting paid that call it $215 an hour, how can they possibly consider this a good investment?  The President doesn’t care.  He’s spending our money on this lame brained idea, not his own!  And he’ll be out of office before the bill comes due.

Should Congress pass a cockamamie scheme like this?  With those numbers?  Where the ROI is only a million jobs?  And probably the vast majority of them will be bureaucrats overseeing the new Centralized Federal Workers Administration?  Lord help us! 

Well, I suppose the - still to be proposed - Federal Works Planning Kommittee vill need verkers…

“Und if you don’t like verre ve assigned you to verk you vill be reassigned instead to a kamp to be reeducated!”

America was nice while it lasted.