Snowflakes in Hell

I took my 10/22 trigger group apart in order to clean it out and re-oil it a few days ago. And now I have no idea how to put it back together. Usually I can figure it out, but Ruger designs seem to be overly complicated, and this one has me stumped. Time to hit Google.

The ATF has never held a position it wasn’t willing to change.  Sadly, they have reneged on the deal they made with Ryan Horsley of Red’s Trading Post not to take their bogus claim of intimidation before the judge.

Ryan has some interesting peices for sale up on Gun Broker.   Go have a look!  There are some nice looking C&R pieces on there too.

I meant to get this up sooner, but I couldn’t get to my machine for half the day :)

Via John Lott, a women, frustrated with Philadelphia’s gun violence, tears up her own carry license.  Clearly she was trying to lead by example, and get the gang members to tear their carry licenses up too.

Man, it’s hard to even write that with a straight face.

I think I might need to get Verizon out here to troubleshoot some link problems with the copper portion of my FiOS connection that runs into the house.  It seems that I’m having difficulty keeping the network link to the fiber hub up.  This is the second time I’ve seen it cut out during the day with a dead link.   Both on hot days… hmm.

I mean taxes.  Congress and the Pennsylvania Legislature have been mulling over taxes on cigarettes and booze.  In principle I have no problem with excise taxes on booze and tobacco provided that those taxes are meant to raise revenue.  The government runs a real risk, if these taxes are raised too high, that they’ll create a black market.  It’s safe to guess these black markets will not to be run by the Boy Scouts.

Of course, increased taxes on alcohol would have a nice effect on the home brewing market.

Summer is usually the off season for me in regards to home brewing. For one, I generally keep pretty busy doing other things I like, most of which involves being outside. For two, it’s just too friggin hot. Brewing is pretty BTU intensive when you mash your own grain. For three, I just don’t drink much beer in the summer during the week, because of the previous two reasons. I haven’t yet drank what I made this prior winter.

I’m thinking about getting one of these. It’s a plate chiller, called “The Therminator”. It would solve one of the big problems I have making beer in summer; the water coming out of the tap is too warm. Typically, in summer, my tap water is about 65 degrees, and it takes forever to chill 5 gallons of wort down with my self-made immersion chiller. In contrast, winter time tap water temperatures are typically about 50 degrees, which gets the job done much faster.

Counterflow chillers have their downsides, in that you have to work hard to keep them clean, and keep them sanitized. Immersion chillers can just be rinsed off, and that’s about it. Not so with counterflow chillers, which must be cleaned and sanitized. But being able to get my wort chilled and into the fermenter in just a few minutes would be a big help.

I hadn’t realized in my past linkage I was actually dealing with a blog, rather than just a one off editorial.  But yes folks, it appears that Bryan Miller, President of CeaseFire New Jersey and CeaseFire Pennsylvania has a blog over at New Jersey Voices.  I notice a few people over there who I recognize, and a few I don’t.   Peter Hamm, Brady’s Communication Director, has made an appearance.   Be sure to stop over and hi (polite, respectful, yada yada).  Tell Peter to say hi to Macca for us ;)

So says The Allentown Morning Call, in regards to Rep English and Peterson’s efforts to prevent tolling on I-80.   Political posturing?  I can’t help but notice that I-80 runs mostly through counties that didn’t vote all that heavily for Ed Rendell or the Democrats.

Pennsylvania’s smoking ban is dead for now.  I actually don’t smoke, but I’m tempted to go to some public place, and light up a stogie just as a hearty up yours to our governor.

Despite Philadelphia’s out of control murder rate, our criminals at least seem to have the decency to get out of the car before they pop a cap in your ass.

Lean Left thinks SayUncle is a bit too into guns.  SayUncle responds in the comments that tgirsch’s interest in beer might come close (though not so much these days because of trying to lose weight).   I think mine does too, probably.  But my passion for guns displayed here is a direct result of the political movement to restrict or ban them.

Bring back the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and Snowflakes in Hell might very well become a beer blog :)

UPDATE: Reading that link down a bit more, the WCTU is still around!  This is a good example of how you can defeat a movement politically, even if the movements edifices remain in tact.  I had no idea the WCTU was still around and preaching against demon rum.  Thank god people have better sense today than to pay any attention to them.

Mayor Daley is apparently very pleased with the result of his latest gun buyback.