A FOOD LOVER’S MOST VALUABLE TOOL? Then I’m well-equipped!

BARACK OBAMA and the Deathly Midterms.

HERE’S MORE on that Zel Custom .50 rifle I mentioned Friday. Considering its immense power and impressive size, it’s really pretty easy to shoot. Shouldering it is work, since it weighs something like 35-40 pounds. On the other hand, all that weight smooths out the recoil, too, so the felt kick isn’t so bad — roughly comparable to a 12 gauge shotgun, I’d say. And, of course, it’s not really meant to be fired from the shoulder. Note that it’s actually a bolt-action, with a side-mounted box magazine. Here’s a closeup:

The small cartridge is a .45 ACP — a pretty big pistol cartridge — added for scale. It’s hard to really tell about accuracy here — we only had a 300-yard range — but the gun’s reputed to shoot quite straight out past a kilometer. I suppose I could convince myself I had a use for it (there’s a thousand-meter rifle range near here where they have competitions) but I don’t think it’s worth the $1500-$2000 price tag to me. More serious shooters will probably feel differently.

More over at SayUncle and Les Jones’s place. And yeah, the ammo’s kinda pricey at three or four bucks a pop. But (1) this isn’t really a plinking rifle, and (2) the LuckyGunner folks were buying . . . .

SAME PLANET, DIFFERENT WORLDS.

CLIMATEGATE: A side scandal.

HOW STALIN AND HITLER enabled each other’s crimes. A review of Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. Note this: “‘Bloodlands’ has aroused fierce criticism from those who believe that the Soviet Union, for all its flaws, cannot be compared to the Third Reich, which pioneered ethnic genocide.”

Bah. Comparing the Soviet Union to the Nazis only makes the Nazis look better if you don’t understand the truth about the Soviet Union. Communists are as bad as Nazis, and communist sympathizers and apologists are as bad as Nazi sympathizers and apologists.

This has been obvious for quite a while. Here’s what Robert Heinlein wrote in 1949:

Let me go on record that I regard communism as expressed by the U.S.S.R. and its friends here and elsewhere as a grisly horror, a tyranny maintained by force and terror, utterly subversive of human liberty, freedom of thought, and dignity. I regard it as Red fascism, distinguishable from black and brown fascism by differences of no importance to me nor to its victims.

That’s from a letter he wrote to Robert Bloch, quoted in William Patterson’s new biography of Heinlein, which I’m reading now. Heinlein held these anti-communist views even in the 1930s, when he was working as a leftist organizer for Upton Sinclair’s EPIC, an insurgent Democratic group that nonetheless had some Tea Party like elements.

“BURQA RAGE?” French Lady Not Sorry For Her “Burqa Rage” And Ripping The Veil Off A Muslim Woman. “To me wearing a full veil is an attack on being a woman. As a woman, I felt attacked.”

STEPHEN GREEN: Handicapping the House – Weekend Brief.

UH OH: Newspaper: Hinchey team’s lying about assault on reporter. Plus this: “The specific question that Mr. Kemble was asking prior to the incident and which apparently provoked the congressman involves Hinchey’s real estate interest in a commercial Saugerties development which was referenced in a congressional disclosure form for funding of a Hudson River ferry project. To our knowledge, Congressman Hinchey has never answered questions about that connection, which is why Mr. Kemble was posing the question to him.” Apparently, Hinchey didn’t want to answer.

Related: Hinchey Loses A Debate, Then Hits A Reporter. There seem to be a lot of angry Democrats lately. (Bumped).

NOT FITTING THE NARRATIVE: Reader Andrew Medina sends this: “Latino Tea Partiers? In my country? It’s more likely than you think. I should note that this sign sits in a Latino neighborhood right next to a Latino tire and muffler shop and about quarter mile away from a La Michoacana.”

I’m not the least bit surprised. This is from the Quincy, Illinois Tea Party last year.

Plenty of Latin American immigrants have first-hand experience with socialism, after all.

HMM: Bill Clinton back out campaigning ‘for everybody that helped Hillary run for president’ against Obama.

A BLOG WORTH READING: The Angry Pharmacist. Now featuring Angry TV! At least read The Price of Free.

REPORT FROM TODAY’S OBAMA RALLY IN MASSACHUSETTS: “Barack Obama, Deval Patrick and Barney Frank were unable on a Saturday 3 weeks before an election to outdraw Sarah Palin on the Boston Common in April on a Wednesday.”

SINCE YALE ISN’T NUMBER ONE, THESE ARE CLEARLY WRONG: Law School Rankings by BigLaw Partners.

FANNIE AND FREDDIE IN A MESS: “The foreclosure mess is now spreading to Fannie and Freddie, as our government-owned mortgage machines starts looking into what, exactly, its servicers have been doing with their loans. Meanwhile, I detect some overblown expectations on the part of various people; last night, after I gave a talk on a mostly unrelated subject, two different people asked me if this meant that they could simply walk away from their mortgages; it wasn’t clear if they were hoping, or horrified.”

JAMES LILEKS: Roy Rogers’ Empire Is Distinctly American. Plus, how to recruit gullible sailors.

HOW TO SHARPEN A KNIFE WITH A STONE.

THE MOST EXPENSIVE on-the-job training in history?

HOPE: Anti-Obama Billboard Taken Down After Owner Gets Death Threats.

Well, hell, I already get death threats so I guess it’s time for me to step up. I don’t have a picture of the billboard, but I’ll just repost this. It’s all about incentives.

UPDATE: Hey, it’s a theme!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Why am I not deterred? Read this advice to “Be afraid — be very afraid — of Glenn Reynolds.” Heh. Indeed.

Oh, and here’s that billboard. I think it lacks the artistic qualities of the pic above, but hey, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

It’s also here.

And here.

MORE: To be clear, while I’ve gotten death threats, I don’t think they’re particularly inspired by the picture above. I just thought I’d defend the billboard folks by posting something that I knew the threateners would find irritating.

CHANGE: Attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany have “utterly failed”, Chancellor Angela Merkel says.

THE OBAMA PRESIDENCY AS Mass Extinction Event for Democrats? Haven’t I been saying “don’t get cocky?” I believe that I have.

HOW TO clean up bread-dough mess.

HEH: Just Four Dudes Jamming On The Subway — With Their iPhones As Instruments [Video].

DID OBAMA toss Manchin under the bus? How big is that bus, anyway?

HEH: Praise The Blogger And Pass The Ammunition! Indeed.