"NOT AUTOMATIC"

-By Jim Culp

February 28, 2016

 

Good morning readers; a merry Sunday to you all.

The shooting in Hesston, Kansas was a terrible thing, and it's way cool that a brave guy took center stage and ended it with some guts, a keen shooting style, and a GUN.

Later yesterday, I caught the five o'clock news, and this newsperson was showing us the footage of the killer (in a earlier recorded video).

It showed him shooting his rifle at a plowed field somewhere in the county side.
The newsperson immediately commented that the man had an "AUTOMATIC AK-47 Assault Rifle". Here goes that blind ignorance again.
A little about me. For several years of my Army career, I was an Armor Instructor. I was also an avid gun collector and school trained gunsmith, my collection being at a whopping 42 rifles, 12 shotguns, and 9 pistols at the time I sold most of it off. You can easily say I was a gun buff, or whatever you call it.
I worked gun shows all over Kansas for 12 years, and documented thousands of rounds of .44 Magnum, .223 Remington, and tens of other calibers on a private range that a rancher in the Davis Creek area graciously allowed me to use in exchange for killing coyotes that harassed his cattle.
When in Army mode, I taught soldiers a lot of stuff, but among the subjects I taught were pistols and machine guns, two things a tanker has to know well.
So let me impart some of that knowledge to you, and maybe that ignorant newsperson will read it too.
An AK-47 is the brainchild of Mikhail Kalashnikov, a Russian designer that had brilliant designs all of his life, and in 1948 released the early version of the rifle we know today. This rifle fires a cartridge that is a stubby 7.62 variant that is only 39 millimeters long. That makes it a 7.62 X 39 cartridge. In contrast, the coaxial machine gun (the M240C) on the Abrams Tank fires a 7.62 cartridge also, but it's the NATO version, and it is 7.62X 51, which gives it better range. Anyhoo, AK-47s are a very simple weapon, they are easy to disassemble, easy to clean, and parts for them are everywhere in the world. Millions of troops, police, and pirates across the world use these rifles. Key point here. These rifles have a selector switch that makes the rifle do one of three things; 1) Safe the weapon. 2) Allow single shot mode, or 3) fire in full automatic mode.
That's the military version of the rifle.
Then, there is a sporting version of the rifle, and it's roughly the same gun, but it only has two options, Safe and Fire. "Fire" on this rifle lets the gunner fire ONE SHOT at a time, just like a Semi-Automatic deer rifle, target rifle, or whatever rifle.
These rifles don't fire in automatic mode. They are easy to buy, as long as you do a background form, and it is approved by the BATF, and you have the scratch to pay for it, they run anywhere from $300 to $800, depending where you are and who is selling them. Now, let's get back to the AUTOMATIC version. These rifles fire automatic (if selected), but NO, they are not a machine gun. Machine guns  (of this caliber and smaller) fire at VERY rapid rates of fire (750 to 950 rounds per minute), and are highly destructive and very expensive and almost impossible to obtain without military contracts. AK-47's fire at much slower rates in automatic mode (about 100 rounds per minute), or in single shot mode (about 40 rounds per minute). THE VIDEO that was shown yesterday of the Hesston killer shooting into the crop field was in SINGLE SHOT MODE. Moving on, these rifles are VERY HARD TO OBTAIN ON THE STREET, regardless of what bullshit the media tells you. You sure as hell cant walk into a gun show and buy one. If you want to buy one legally, you obtain a Class III Machine Gun License from the BATF, pay $3,000 for that license, and sign forms that allow that agency to search your home or place of business at will.
Now, in all fairness, there are a lot of people out there that think they are gunsmiths. They do some really stupid shit, and one of the things they do is
take sporting version AK-47's and other semi-automatic rifles, and tinker them to fire automatic. Yes, you can do this. But let me explain the reality of that.
You don't take a file and scrape a surface off, and get a fully automatic rifle for life. That rifle was not built to handle the pressures of automatic fire, and it's parts were not designed to handle the wear and tear that automatic fire causes.
It's worthless after firing a few magazines. Do punks and gangs do this? Sure; for one time shootings. Do some well funded gangs have real AK-47's? Sure. Money talks, bullshit walks.
Does every Tom, Dick, and Harry have a fully automatic rifle at their disposal? Of course not. I know two people (non dealers) in the entire UNITED STATES that have automatic weapons, and they have Class III licenses. Yes, I used to know someone that owned a fully automatic AR-15; he's in Leavenworth doing 25 years as I write this.
My point through all of this is that the media LIES all the time. They may not do it with bad intent, but people who do not know guns get the wrong impression of what it out there and what isn't. I hate that. I hate ignorance. So I hope this helped.
-Jim

The Week's End of Lupercalia

-By Jim Culp

 

We, modern Pagans, have re-defined our rituals and holidays to our tastes, and taken this and that from Roman, Greek, and Celtic traditions. We don't really care whether one wants to call this weekend Lupercalia, Lykaia, or Pan. The ideas are relatively the same. The festival and ritual were about cleansing the town, community, or village of nasty spirits. Today we recognize it was a time where we purge unhealthy thoughts and give our minds new vitality. We do this in many ways. It's up to the person what they actually want to do; no one holds a gun to your head and tell you "it's what god wants."

Tomorrow Christians the world over will celebrate Valentine's Day.

It is remembered officially and the Roman Catholic Church has given a person Sainthood that no one really has any clue whether the guy officially lived or when he died, only that they think he was martyred {slain for claiming belief in Christianity} at some point and that there is a grave marker in Northern Rome. No one really knows if it was one guy or two, or really who the fuck the guy was, and so forth.  

Also tomorrow, millions of people (religious and secular) worldwide will give their lovers, wives, husbands, and even children gifts of some sort. They will spend billions, yes billions (about $13.3) buying flowers, plants, candy, stuffed animals, cards, and many other things as symbolic gestures of their love to that significant person.

The whole concept is ludicrous to me, but to each his/her own.

 Yesterday, a person told me that he was sick of hearing that all Christian holidays evolved from Pagan holidays. Well shit, dude, the truth hurts, doesn't it?

Hillary Rodham Clinton

-By Jim Culp

 This article is about a very famous person that has been on our political scenes since way back; and that person is Hillary Rodham Clinton; who I will call Hillary hereafter.

In 1973, at the age of 26, Hillary received her Doctor of Law (called a J.D.; that stands for Juris Doctor) from Yale. Yes, the same college that produced her husband, William Jefferson Clinton, who I'll refer to as Bill hereafter. They met at Yale and I promise you that was no coincidence.
Hillary married Bill in 1975, and a pair was formed that would shape US politics for the next 41 years; and will for many to come. Bill was
Hillary's father was a textile man in the North; a stout Republican, and Hillary herself was a Republican until life circumstances coerced her to go Democrat, as most flip-flop people do.
I myself was a Republican until 2003, and life circumstances coerced me to become a Reformist; a radical Reformist if you want the truth. Research and events woke me the fuck up, and that probably happens to a lot of us at some point. So Hillary and I have that first flip-flop in common. After that, the others are all hers.
Hillary was involved with Law Firms and several agencies, including ties with Walmart and the Legal Services Corporation, and also the Rose Law Firm; where Hillary became the first female partner there while Bill was the Attorney General of Arkansas (1977-1979). You can only imagine the "educations" and "methodologies" that they pair gained in those years.
The first incident* I want to mention is the Whitewater scandal of 1992-1994. Everybody and their brother that can read a newspaper can tell you that they Clintons wiggled in and out of the pages of LAW 101 to get out of this thing; it stunk from day one. They got caught trying to force people out of business with big money, and lied their way out of it. This is the first time that both of their integrities were questioned, and they both used long strands of verbalisms to talk their way out of it when questioned.
Hillary was subpoenaed by a Federal Grand Jury in 1996 for Whitewater, while she was the First Lady of the US, and lied under oath.
Let me stop here for a minute. When I say that someone lied under oath, I include the person NOT ANSWERING the fucking question. I think that anytime a politician does this, they should be removed from office, and questioned by a panel of citizens, and that panel's findings taken into account.
{*: I'll mention several instances where Hillary's integrity is in severe question; but will not elaborate on the whole story; you can search and read about them online or at a library yourself; they are available from many resources..}
In 1992, Bill was elected President of the United States.
Let me say here, that although Hillary cannot control her husband's actions, I say this. A sitting President of the USA should be beyond reproach, and so should his First Lady. I don't tolerate people that say "well, he fucked up."
FUCK YOU. He's the goddamed President of the fucking USA! His wife is the First Lady, an esteemed position. I don't want to hear "well, they were just this, and well, they were just that." Bullshit. You're the fucking President; act like it or get impeached.
So Hillary becomes First Lady.
Again, she lied to a Grand Jury four years later.
In 1998, Bill was impeached for Grand Perjury about the Monica Lewinsky ordeal, where Bill had repeated John F. Kennedy's acts of having a mistress right there in the White House where his wife lays her head.
Hillary stayed suspiciously quiet. Monica was threatened with her life if she spoke outside of investigation's closed doors.
The Senate acquitted Bill and he finished his term. A sitting President of the USA had committed Grand Perjury, and it was all cool. Holy shit on a stack of pancakes. How the fuck does that shit happen?
Easy. You and your wife are lawyers. Damned good lawyers; make no mistake about it. You use legal verbalism and jargon, dance around questions, and let people take the fall for you wherever you can. That's how out government works.
So now comes 2000. Hillary is elected as Senator from the state of New York, and one year later the 911 "attacks" happen. Hillary supports the sitting President, GW Bush, in his endeavors to attack Afghanistan and Iraq, but constantly spoke in public about how old Dubya was not conducting the operations of the war as Commander in Chief. Flip-flop.
Hillary then took a long vacation, and then was re-elected to the Senate in 2006.
She ran against Obama in the 2008 election, and lost, even though she received a huge amount of votes. However, all during that campaign, she is recorded on camera hundreds (yes hundreds) of times outright lying, or "stretching" the truth when asked bout this and that.
No, I didn't say I heard that....I said it's recorded on video tape, hundreds of times. Search YouTube, you'll see.
In 2009, Obama takes up the sword of healthcare reform that Bill Clinton started years ago, and to pacify the very pissed off Hillary, awards her the prestigious honor of the being the Secretary of State, taking over that job from Condoleezza Rice, another person guilty (not charged or convicted) of Grand Perjury.
Of course, 60% of the people in that pervious administration are, because every fucking one of them lied at sometime, in some way, under oath or not, about 911 and their roles. They should all be hanging from the gallows.
So now Hillary takes up this position and starts building an enormous power base in Washington and abroad, and in March of 2011, convinces President Obama to order military intervention in Libya.
Yes, that's in Africa....If I have to tell another person that, my head will explode.
In 2012, the US Embassy in Benghazi, Libya, was attacked. a US Ambassador lost his life, as well as two contractors, and I think ten or so men were wounded.
Hillary claimed responsibility for this ordeal, but constantly lied about who gave who orders and when. She also used a private server at her home to send and store SECURE EMAILS.
Let me tell you that if I had done anything close to that during my tenure as a First Sergeant or a Movement Supervisor with the Army, I'd be in a cozy room at the Federal Penitentiary at Leavenworth for 20-30 years...not a question in my head over that...
Since that charge, Hillary constantly lies, uses that good old lawyer verbalism, and dances her way out of any conversation about Benghazi, Whitewater, Monica, or the Rose Law Firm that gets brought up. She's a professional liar.
Her husband is an ever better one, but now he's protected by Presidential pardons that Obama would certainly give him, and even if a Republican takes office in 2017, Bill will just plea the fifth, or say that he cant remember.
Hillary Clinton may very well become the President of the United States this November, but let me tell you, that will be one more step in the downfall of this country into what will inevitably be another "dark age" in the history of Democracies.

  

 

 

 

 

I am no Obama champion by any means, but people who whine all day about his use of Executive Powers annoy me, and they do it out of pure ignorance.

I've even heard statements like "he's used more than many other presidents combined." Um, yeah, if you go back to colonial times, sure.
The facts are out there; just like they are about guns, marijuana, and global warming. "All ye gotta do is read lad" is what a British friend of mine would say.
But here they are, from the President of my early childhood to the present, their name and the number of times they used Executive Orders in their presidency.

Jimmy Carter:           320

Ronald Reagan:        381

George HW Bush     166

Bill Clinton                364

George W Bush        291

Barack Obama          226

And just for comparison, a few from previous years and administrations:

 Theodore Roosevelt           1,081

Woodrow Wilson                1,803

Calvin Coolidge                   1,203

Franklin D Roosevelt          3,522

 Thank you and goodnight.

-Jim Culp, 2016

 

It's 2016.

I am not quite sure how this whole concept of work and pay got so fucked up, but let me attempt to un-fuck it in a short rant.

A man operates a machine that processes packaging of a product.

It isn't an overly complicate machine, but the operator needs to be awake, competent, mechanically minded, and willing to stand and bend for eight hours at a stretch.

You decide to pay this person nine dollars ($9 USD) per hour. He gladly accepts the wage and hours, and in one week, excels at the operation of this machine, and has perfect attendance, goal adherence, and overall employee attitude.

One month goes by. Your company makes fifty thousand dollars ($50,000 USD) from this man's efforts, minus his wages, materials, and so forth.

The man, after Uncle Sam's raping and his beloved State's ass fucking, makes a whopping eleven hundred dollars ($1,100.00 USD) that month.

After about another week, you ask that same man, a dedicated employee as of now, to be the lead person on three other persons running similar machines, and bear the burden of answering questions of operation, production, and operator errors for the next month.

He accepts this duty, with no request of raise in wages or advancement, and continues on like things are okey-dokey.

You offer this man no raise in wages, no benefits to "sweeten the pot" of his position, and even dock him twice for being late two minutes late from lunch.

He doesn't complain and drives on. He has about thirty dollars ($30.00 USD) a week left over after bills (not luxuries).

Some say that man is a good trooper, a man with the American spirit, a real good joe.

I say that man is a slave to a fucking overlord that needs to be overthrown; but I'm probably just an asshole.