As we all know from Junior High French, Tour d’Horizon means Hognose has too many stories in his open tabs at the end of the week. What do you expect? It’s Friday!

Guns

I don’t wanna work, I just wanna bang on my gun all day.

For the Worst Sportsman in the Trap Club

We give you a belt-fed, full-auto shotgun (if it’s on a registered lower).

Given the fact that any twist in the fabric belt seems to stop it, it has no imaginable use whatsoever, except for turning shotgun shells into noise — and grins. It was invented by a guy named Derek Miller, and he was bringing it to Knob Creek in 2009. Dunno what happened after that. He had one other video, seven years ago, for a flash enhancer, but the website it shows is dead.

Gun Stocks update

Pre-Election closings: RGR 64.40, SWHC 28.45, VSTO 38.94.  [8 Nov 16]

-10 week’s closings: RGR 53.20, SWHC 24.13, VSTO 40.02. [18 Nov 16]

-9 week’s closings: RGR 52.50, SWHC 23.82, VSTO 41.05. [25 Nov 16] [short trading day and week]

-8 week’s closings: RGR 50.25, SWHC 21.10, VSTO 39.66. [2 Dec 16]

-7 week’s closings: RGR 51.90, SWHC 21.07, VSTO 38.62. [9 Dec 16]

-6 week’s closings: RGR 53.45, SWHC 21.59, VSTO 36.81. [16 Dec 16]

-5 week’s closings: RGR 54.05, SWHC 22.11, VSTO 38.02. [23 Dec 16]

-4 week’s closings: RGR 52.70, SWHC 21.08, VSTO 36.90. [30 Dec 16] (this was the final close for SWHC, which renamed itself AOBC).

-3 week’s closings: RGR 54.15, AOBC (ex-SWHC) 21.00, VSTO 38.08. [6 Jan 17]

-2 week’s closings: RGR 51.35, AOBC 20.60, VSTO 28.70. [13 Jan 17]

Last week’s closings: RGR 50.65, AOBC 20.13, VSTO 27.78. [20 Jan 17]

This week’s closings: RGR 51.90, AOBC 20.58, VSTO 28.33. [27 Jan 17]

Everybody’s up a little this week, on a general rise in the market that brought the Dow Jones Industrial Average over 20,000 for the first time in history. But the gun stocks are not back to where they were before Vista took a hit three weeks ago.

Disclaimer: Your Humble Blogger holds RGR, bought at about 56.40 on 9 Nov 16. It bottomed in the 40s later that day. We still think it has longterm growth potential, and we like the dividend.

Gun Poly-Ticks

Do Video Games Make Kids Violent?

One paper that argued that case has been retracted, after an investigation was unable to find the data on which it stood. The author claimed that the information was lost, along with a Turkish collaborator presumed imprisoned, in the Turkish coup-countercoup in 2016. But the battle over the paper has been going on for years.

Usage and Employment

 The hardware takes you only half way. Nothing this week. 

Cops ‘n’ Crims

Cops bein’ cops, crims bein’ crims. The endless Tom and Jerry show of crime and (sometimes instantaneous) punishment.

When the Cop was a Crim

A not-so-Special Agent with the Federal Aviation Administration got his wings clipped by SA’s from another agency — and you won’t believe why. 

Agents with Homeland Security Investigations — a division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — and the Rio Grande Valley Child Exploitation Investigations Task Force arrested Jeremy David McCauley on Wednesday during a sting operation at Sunrise Mall. McCauley is a special agent assigned to the FAA Office of Security and Hazardous Materials in Fort Worth.

McCauley spent a week sending messages to undercover agents posing as a mother and her 13-year-old daughter, according to the criminal complaint.

“During the communications, McCauley arranged to meet the 13 year old minor female to have sex,” according to the criminal complaint. After the arrest, McCauley confessed.

This is the oldest sting in the book. Look, if she says: her name is Tiffani; she’s jailbaiteen; and looking for love; well, the two possibilities for her real first name are Special Agent or Detective. Thirteen’ll get ya twenty, dumb-ass hornball. Q.E.D.

Do You Keep Cash Under the Mattress?

Say, in the box spring? If you were a defendant in a money laundering case you just might do that, like Cleber Rene Rizerio Rocha did. But it wasn’t just the egg money; his mattress contained a lot of money. In fact, his Sleep Number was Twenty Million Dollars. (Say that in your best Dr. Evil voice).

Not so clever Cleber wandered into a baited trap, in the town YHB and the Blogbrother grew up in of all places, and is awaiting trial in the US Courts in Massachusetts, whose prosecutors shared this image and the press release. Nut graf (Wanzeler is the partner in the scheme who has escaped to Brazil, which will not extradite him):

According to court documents, Rocha, acting as a courier for Wanzeler’s nephew, flew from Brazil to JFK Airport in New York City a few days ago. Yesterday, Rocha met the cooperating witness at a restaurant in Hudson, Mass., and allegedly gave him $2.2 million in a suitcase. After the meeting, agents followed Rocha to an apartment complex in Westborough, Mass., and later arrested him. That night, federal agents searched an apartment at the Westborough complex and seized a massive stockpile of cash hidden in a box spring. The cash appears to total approximately $20 million.

This was an HSI score (the investigations branch of ICE). FMI: Fox, the New York Post. (New York Post? Where’s the Boston Globe on this story? Not covering it, it seems. Probably smashing Starbucks windows in DC with their peeps).

“Get Thee to a Nuttery!”

And with those words, or their modern English equivalents, a Harvard research professor managed to get a perfectly sane graduate student that he was supposed to be mentoring, involuntary committed to a booby hatch for evaluation. Turns out he isn’t any crazier than the usual Harvard STEM PhD candidate. Interesting article about a hard case. Yes, in some states, just one person’s word can get you thrown in the nut ward. Hat tip Retraction Watch.

The Perils of Kathleen: It’s Aliiiiive

How can we miss her, when she won’t go away? Well, part of the answer is that she has gone away from the Attorney General’s office, but the evil that she does was not interred with her political bones.

  • ITEM 18 Jan: Watchdogs Call for Corruption Investigation. Two good-government nonprofits have called on incoming AG Josh Shapiro for a “full faith effort to review and correct the Kane era. The connections and interactions of Kathleen Kane, Stacy Parks Miller and Bruce Castor need to be examined.” These included a prosecutor solving a legal problem by forging a judge’s signature — and getting away with it.
  • ITEM 21 Jan: Kane’s Sister & 4 Other Kaniacs Get the Chop. Couldn’t happen to a nicer crew, as new AG (and onetime Kane supporter himself) Josh Shapiro clears the decks for his coatholders and hangers-on. Inquirer story.  Penn Live story.
  • ITEM 23 Jan: AG Shapiro Asked to Recuse Himself. A few days after the watchdogs asked him to investigate several shady Kane-era figures, they discovered that Shapiro had personal and professional relationships with several of them, and asked him to recuse himself in the light of these conflicts of interests. Shapiro has refused.

Pennsylvania politics. It wants to be Illinois when it grows up!

Vontaze Burfict may not be the Class of the Bengals

The National Football League’s dirtiest player gets in the news for all the wrong reasons, but he never did this:

Cincinnati Bengals cornerback Adam “Pacman” Jones … had some harsh words for his arresting officers.

In the video from the police car, Jones can be heard telling the officer, “Suck my d***.”

“I hope you die tomorrow,” he later added.

Jones continued to berate the cop, calling him a “b****” and “n****.”

N plus four stars? We’d get it, if there were five stars. Anyway, Jones didn’t stop at berating the cops who were arresting him, basically, for multiple counts of being a violent jerk. Taken to jail, he spat on the jail nurse. One more count, this time a felony.

And, regardless of Jones’s twisted hopes, the cop is still with us.

No doubt what’s-his-name, the lousy quarterback on the San Francisco 49ers, is proud of him. His momma, not so much.

Unconventional (and current) Warfare

What goes on in the battlezones of the world — and preparation of the future battlefields. 

Thought You Were Getting Away with Rioting

Funny. Ernst Stavro Soros paid to bus the rioters in, but they were on their own for their bail, are on their own to face serious felony charges, and at least some of them don’t like it. (Image at link full of NSFW language)

Let’s Have a Big Hand for the New State Sponsors of Terrorism

The United States Department of State (John Kerry edition), in an eleventh-hour $221-million cash dump to Hamas and the PLO, aka the Palestinian Authority. And San Francisco State University, which sponsors — we are not making this up — a program that puts convicted American terrorists together with their Arab co-belligerents to talk shop:

Participants in the “Prisoner, Labor, and Academic Delegation” to An-Najah that culminated in the workshop included four self-described American “political prisoners” who met with self-described Palestinian “political prisoners” for the purpose of sharing “presentations about the marginalized histories of colonial repression, racism, and resistance in Palestine and the U.S.

Lord love a duck.

Update — the Trump Administration seized the money. Hamas, Hezbollah, the KKK, and Samantha Power hardest hit. Does no one think about the poor Palestinian mothers? Their sons blow up so fast!

Army Corruption Gives Military Dogs to Racketeers

This story at the Washington Free Beacon defies synopsis, but it has Army crooks, Secret Service crooks, Joe Biden crony crooks, and abused and mishandled military working dogs, and dog handlers, at its core. And absolutely none of them has been called to account. Read The Whole Thing™ and see if it makes your blood burn like it did ours.

Federal Hiring Freeze Exempts Military, National Security Jobs

It also has a number of other holes but our sources in the Federal service are nervous. Given where most of them work, we think they’re okay. Emphasis ours:

The head of any executive department or agency may exempt from the hiring freeze any positions that it deems necessary to meet national security or public safety responsibilities.

This hiring freeze applies to all executive departments and agencies regardless of the sources of their operational and programmatic funding, excepting military personnel.

[T]his memorandum does not prohibit making reallocations to meet the highest priority needs and to ensure that essential services are not interrupted and national security is not affected.

This line means that Your Humble Blogger’s ox is likely to remain gored, but that’s the price you pay sometimes:

Contracting outside the Government to circumvent the intent of this memorandum shall not be permitted.

Text of the memo was posted by WSB Radio reporter, Jamie Dupree.

Sailor Seeks Pardon from President

Last year, a few political figures got a pass on mishandling classified information. This year, one of the most notorious information-mishandlers got his sentence commuted. Now, a sailor who went to prison for taking cellphone pictures of the sensitive nuclear spaces in his submarine is asking to be let off, too. Our guess is that he will have no luck with that.

Veterans’ Issues

Is it time to o disband this thing yet, and letting all its bloatoverhead seek its own level in the Dreaded Private Sector™?

Some Heads Finally Roll

Two extremely rotten eggs got their walking papers from the VA on January 20th. Luke Rosiak at the Daily Caller:

DeWayne Hamlin, who offered an employee $305,000 to quit after she played a role in exposing his drug arrest.

“Mr. DeWayne Hamlin was removed from federal service effective January 20, 2017”–inauguration day–the VA said.

They also showed the armed robbery gal in Puerto Rico the door.

Heh. They told us if Donald Trump got elected, Hispanics would lose their jobs; we guess that’s Number One.

Read The Whole Thing™ as Luke has a mind-blowing list of felons and dirtbags in the VA who still haven’t gotten the boot.

Yet.

A Small, Local Win for VA

Here in New Hampshire, something remarkable has happened. Every Single Hospital is participating in the Veterans’ Choice program, although the VA still prefers to send them to the run down and shabby facility in crime-ridden Brockton, Massachusetts, or the American Siberia of White River Junction, Vermont.

Health & Fitness (NEW Category!)

‘Nose Fitness Results

In a traveling week, working out is down, and since the New Orleans trip, the diet’s been suffering, however, since signing up with a strength trainer last summer, weight hasn’t moved much but dimensions have changed: hips -2.5″, waist -2.0″, biceps +0.5″ each. These numbers are small, but remember it’s an old body we’re talking about here (so old, AARP has stopped sending come-ons in the mail). And the numbers don’t express the change in mobility, flexibility, strength and endurance.

Why Use a Roller?

A meatworld associate sends this article with a recommendation that Your Humble Blogger acquire one.

What if You Can’t Increase Output?

Interesting findings reported in Scientific American (treebark edition) by a team that studies metabolism. In both humans and other primates, the actual caloric use of relatively idle and relatively active individuals tracks with their mass, but not with their activity level. As if your calorie burn is relatively homeostatic and … here’s the kicker! Independent of your level of activity to a great degree. The implications of this are… well, they’re not clear. It’s science; the only fixed conclusion science can reach is that more science is needed. Still, it’s very interesting.

Lord Love a Duck!

The weird and wonderful (or creepy) that we didn’t otherwise get to.

Let’s Go Out in a Wave of German Pop

When Your Humble Blogger lived and worked in Germany, he had a secret (apart from the ones at work, which he still keeps). He was a big fan of a German new wave band, Münchener Freiheit, that played sappy love songs (think Paul McCartney) in a synth-pop style (think ELO). If any of you are old enough to remember those references, you needn’t cut off a leg to count the rings: you know he’s old.

Well, imagine the delight that befalls a guy when he learns that a band, whose 80-something album Traumziel he played over and over till he wore out the LP and cassette, is still around, touring, and recording? Here’s a video from an apparent 2009 hit, Sie Liebt Dich Wie Du Bist, which is not just consciously retro in the way they throw in a couple of Beatles-at-Ed-Sullivan cues, but is also retro to the 80s, in that, as the band plays the song, the video tells a scripted story. So listen and commiserate with young Herr Martin and his bad luck with speed dating, no matter what more exciting version of himself he tries to be. You honestly don’t need to know German to understand; just that the refrain of the song translates She Loves You As You Are, the first magazine headline our hero reads is The Man Who Can Be Everything, and the form letters from the dating service tell him that, unfortunately, they were unable to find him a match. 

For a while in the late 80s they had some success singing in English — I think they charted once in England — but their German-language versions seem superior. These guys have hook, melody and harmony down.

Here’s a favorite from Traumziel. Perhaps an unofficial or fan video? The title translates to Over and Done With or Over and Gone, and the song’s as melancholy as the title, but beautiful to hear.

Thanks for visiting WeaponsMan.com this week, and we can’t wait for all next week’s posts!

About Hognose

Former Special Forces 11B2S, later 18B, weapons man. (Also served in intelligence and operations jobs in SF).

24 thoughts on “Friday Tour d’Horizon, 2017 Week 04

Trone Abeetin

I got a contact gay just from watching that music video, thank Hog.

I’m now going to watch Singing in the Rain and West Side Story. HooGah

Jacobs

Contact gay.

That’s pretty good, I’m going to have to use that. Thanks.

Quill_&_Blade

“you needn’t cut off a leg to count the rings: you know he’s old.” HA! That’s FUNNY! Anyway, in regards to fitness, I’ve been lifting weights for a year maybe, and the benefits are great. I’m toying with the idea of adding something else, mostly for fun: For years and years, I had the idea that I’d like to be able to do that Russian dance where you kind of sit without a chair and kick your feet out. So I looked online, and the first thing I saw was what they called a Cossack dance. You start from a squatting position, then stand up very quickly and kick out one or two legs and land on the heel of your foot, with the front part of the foot off the floor. I tried it and was surprised I could do it. Balance is a bit tricky, but I did it. I guess all the years of up and down ladders helped.

Encouraged by this development, I went and looked for that other kind of dance, the sitting one. Tried it, and ouch, no way Hosé, I mean NO WAY Hosé…but they show how to train for it, so yeah training on!

James

How in the hell can you call ELO “synth pop”with any seriousness?!ELO was a great band on record and not bad live,way back when saw em in the Boston Garden on a Wednesday,good show but better was that Friday/Saturday night when I saw Jethro Tull both nights,hell of a week for a high school rock n roller!

John M.

You won’t need to cut my leg off to see how old I am if I tell you that my first rock show was at the Fleet Center when it was quite new.

On a related note, there are a heck of a lot of New Englanders who hang around here, in addition to our estimable host.

-John M.

James

Ah,the fleece center!I saw Page/Plant there,first real rock show in new Garden,last show ever saw there(and first).Old garden saw well over 150 shows,place used to shake like a freight train when the bands got rolling/good parties in parking lot back then,just a lot of fun!

Yep,does seem a lot of Yankees on this site,a good thing!

gebrauchshund

That whinge from the rioter now facing felony charges was probably the most heartwarming thing I’ve seen all day. You really would need to have a heart of stone.

Thanks!

John M.

First off, allow me to give this post the John M. seal of approval: I detected no typos or incomplete paragraphs. There weren’t even any parenthesis issues of the type that make both Scott and I grind our teeth.

Now on to the meat.

Full auto belt fed 12 gauge? I seriously can’t think of a single use for such a thing, but I still want one.

Stock updates: I’m having a hard time following these in the format you’re putting them in. Any chance you can feed them to an Excel sheet and show us a line graph every week? That would be a heck of a lot more meaningful.

Cash in the mattress: Does Brazil not extradite anybody to the US, or do you have to be Brazilian in some way for them to do this? Asking for a friend.

Soros rioters: I strongly suspect that image is a parody, but Poe’s law knows no limits in 2017. And I’m DEFINITELY not yet tired of winning.

VA firings: So. Much. Winning.

Deutschepop: “If any of you are old enough to remember those references, you needn’t cut off a leg to count the rings: you know he’s old.” An entire industry of “classic rock” had grown up by the time I’d gotten old enough to care about music, so I know both of those acts, but not because I was alive to greet any of their singles when new. I did have the experience a few years back of hearing a band on “classic rock” radio that I remembered as being a “new band.” I think it may have been the Black Crowes.

-John M.

Quill_&_Blade

Would a full auto shotgun with buckshot be a reasonable substitute for SMG at close range? (buckshot not having much effective range)

John M.

You’re going to give up a LOT in portability over an SMG.

It’d be great for fixed-position short-range stuff. Maybe mount it on a swivel in front of the plexiglass booth at a ghetto gas station? There’s a high risk of collateral damage, and you’re going to be picking buckshot out of the ding dongs and cheetos for months, but nothing says “not today” like a near-continuous stream of buckshot.

-John M.

Ti

I always though about a sting-ball claymore. Like the heated blower thingy that keeps the bugs out of business when the doors open, you would receive a phalanx of sting balls at the push of a button. Or you are rioting on the street, burning as you go down the block, and you come to Satish’s gas station, you approach to break windows and loot said ding dongs and all of a sudden the wall turns into one giant sting-ball claymore array. That’s gonna leave a mark…

Quill_&_Blade

“There’s a high risk of collateral damage, and you’re going to be picking buckshot out of the ding dongs and cheetos for months, but nothing says “not today” like a near-continuous stream of buckshot.”

That’s funny. “Sale Now! 50% off slightly damaged merchandise” I recall a couple years ago that one city had tour buses of the ghetto. This would be a must see destination.

Scott

“There weren’t even any parenthesis issues of the type that make both Scott and I grind our teeth.”

I am not alone? Good.

If there were some way that our host could invest in stocks that would profit from premature tooth wear, perhaps he could recoup his paper losses on RGR. I’m just sayin…

P.S. Living in new digs now. Enjoying fiber optic broadband in the middle of pretty much nowhere in the Appalachian mountains. Life (except for a few maiden voyage shake down issues) is good. 🙂

John M.

Mazel tov on the new digs. 🙂

-John M.

Buckaroo

That band was surprisingly likable. It’s funny to remember how big speed dating was circa 2008. I did it for awhile without much success, although in retrospect the larger problem was the venue, or rather, the women that populated it: New York City

Here’s something that has really worked for me: The “Bulgarian bag” workout. You can make a Bulgarian bag for the cost of a car inner tube, some wood pellets, a few zip ties, and some duct tape. There are lots of different moves you can do with the bag that give you a fantastic whole-body workout in about twenty minutes. Go to YouTube and search “Bulgarian bag” and you’ll see how to use it.

Sommerbiwak

“N plus four stars? We’d get it, if there were five stars.”

He called the cop an african river of course! 😉

—-

belt fed shotgun. Probably one of the most ridiculously useless firearms of all times. maybe not, when combined with a small radar and an automated mount. You could use it as a substitute for a punt gun.

—-

Münchener Freiheit. Brings back childhood memories. They were on every radio station in eighties. Maybe with the exception of BFBS, AFN and other occupier’s stations.

Interesting that our humble blognose has such a soft spot for this music. But then a hog’s nose is very soft and sensitive.

Quill_&_Blade

In France, hogs are used instead of dogs for finding truffles. (Word Web defines Truffles as: Any of various highly prized edible subterranean fungi of the genus Tuber; grow naturally in southwestern Europe.)

The things people eat. Man. Have you ever listened to how Limburger cheese is made?

John M.

Casu marzu. That takes the cheese.

-John M.

John M.

The money quote from Infogalactic:

“When disturbed, the larvae can launch themselves for distances up to 15 cm (6 in). Some people clear the larvae from the cheese before consuming while others do not.”

-John M.

11B-Mailclerk

Re the belt-fed birdie blaster:

Those green “gun club” brand shells vary quite a bit in size, and the powder runs rather dirty. That gun ate quite a few before the first jam. I suspect using the good stuff might have worked much better.

Mike in Canada

Sir,

Just a thank you for all your efforts to keep the rest of us updated and informed regarding things that should be noted.

Especially, thank you for the music videos (I really laughed with the ‘contact gay’ comment). All I seem to be able to listen to these days is 70s and 80s, and I shall seek out this band and obtain…, well, whatever I can find of them.

With regard to the belt-fed shotgun, I remember a few years ago being directed to this video on YT, and the first comment was ‘Do you have a Class 3 licence, buddy? If not, maybe ya’ll should take this down…’ (is it Class 3 in the US for fully-automatic weapons? I forget). Got a chuckle out of that, until it dawned on me that somebody’s innocnet fun & games were being ruined by regulations…

Have a great day. God Bless America.

Hognose Post author

Mike, thanks for reading and commenting. I get great pleasure from hearing about things from “overseas” (just kidding, but at least I’m one of those Americans who recognizes that you guys have your own nation up there, and that I’m a respectful guest when I visit).