US Debt Soars. Now What?

As of the first day of fiscal year 2013, US debt stood at an outstanding $16,159,487,013,300.35, or 103% of GDP and rising at a handy 1.5% per month. You can read all about it on ZeroHedge if you've a mind to.

But what happens when you spend more than you have and end up massively in debt? Detroit happens.

Which reminds me of a time, long ago, when I was taking an English friend across the river from Windsor to visit the Motor City and its suburb, Troy. We reached the US border and the usual questions.

"Where you headed?"

"Troy, officer."

"Anything to declare?"

"Just me and my wooden horse, sir," quipped my English friend.

"What?"

"Nothing, officer."

There's a moral in that, if you care to draw it.

But carry on, nothing to worry about here.

LSP

Pius XII and the Lee Enfield

Pius XII said this:

“We belong to the Church militant; and she is militant because on earth the powers of darkness are ever restless to encompass her destruction. Not only in the far-off centuries of the early church, but down through the ages and in this our day, the enemies of God and Christian civilization make bold attack on  the Creator’s supreme dominion and sacrosanct human rights.”

I like that. Here's a picture of a Lee Enfield.

I like that too.

LSP

Sioux Nation Sucedes

Just learned via Drudge that the mighty Sioux Nation has left the Union. Well, what can we say?

Come on Texas, get a move on.

Cheers,

LSP

Anglican Church of Canada Declines, Members Sing and Dance!

Faced with over 50 years of continuous decline, graying membership, a second quarter deficit of 900,000 "loonies" and a mere 320,000 pewsitters per Sunday, dioceses and parishes across the Anglican Church of Canada (ACoC) are being forced to take drastic measures.

Justice Camp. That'll pack 'em in!

The Diocese of Toronto is advertising Justice Camp, where the people sing. Here's an excerpt, to the tune of My Favorite Things, apparently:

Meeting with Linda, with movers & shakers,
Activists, greenies, and health-and peace-makers,
MP’s and editors, right on the ball,
Help us respond to our fai-aithful call.
Postcards and letters and online petitions,
Rallies and sit-ins with local musicians,
Scripture reminds us to take care of all-
Working for justice can be such a ball!

Refrain 

When our greed strikes,
When our fears roar,
When we’re feeling proud,
We simply remember our fai-aithful call -
And then we can speak out loud!

Catchy, isn't it.

Some churches have turned to liturgical dance in a desperate bid to feel good, despite all those empty pews.

note the disgruntled 'subdeacon'...

And the circle just gets wider, unless you're a trad, in which case the Diocese of Huron evicts you and puts concrete blocks in front of your church so no one can get in.

Well done ACoC. Now no one gets to go to St. Hildas's. 

ACoC looks set to continue on its current trajectory away from earth and into the stellar void of deep space.

Thanks, Samizdat, for the stats and pics.

God bless.

LSP

Dialing in the Lee Enfield Sporter

It's all very well restoring a rifle but the question is, will it shoot? With that in mind I took the newly minted sporter to the range, only to find a tree blocked the path. I moved that and set up at 25 yards to dial in the scope, bore-sighting the old fashioned way, because I've been too parsimonious to buy a laser, and using the tailgate as a rest. Must get some kind of sled to put the guns on in future.

warrior on the edge of the tailgate - note cloak of invisibility

I was nervous as I took the first couple of shots. Would the gun blow up? Would the lovingly shaped and polished forestock splinter into a deadly hail of wooden shrapnel on bearing the shock of the mighty .303 Brit? For that matter, would the thing shoot straight at all after my expert gunsmithing...

getting there...

I needn't have worried. The rifle got on paper quicly, which is a good testimony to peering down the bore with the bolt removed and shot some reasonablegroups from 50 and 75 yards. Performed well offhand at a steel ram at 100.

Due to time and ammo constraint I cut the exercise a little short but I'll return with a few boxes of the right stuff and finish the job. But not a bad result at all.

Shoot straight,

LSP

Sporterizing the Lee Enfield Porch Project -- All Scoped Up & Ready To Go

It took some time, a little patience and an amount of sanding, but the venerable SMLE is finally ready to shoot.

getting ready for bed

The ATI scope mount was easy to install along with 1" medium Weaver rings from Walmart, it's topped off with a Burris Fullfield that I found second hand at a local gunshop for $50.

Now I won't bore you with the rationale behind the project other than to say that  SBW put me up to it and it seemed like a good idea -- get a beat up old sporter with some fine Empire history behind it and turn the rifle into a handy shooter with 10 rounds of .303 power. A custom gun on a budget, sort of thing.

apply the safety, for goodness sake

So how much did it cost? Less than something plastic from Walmart, with the added satisfaction of having a hand in its making.

I'll dial it in at the range tomorrow.

Thanks, Bushwacker, for the inspiration and Lukeya for chivvying me on...

Cheers,

LSP

Modern Art, Some Kind of Joke?

Aluminium Road

It's not all about guns and horses in LSPland. There's church, obviously, and trucks. But let's not forget Art and a sister that drove me away from the sensible task of weapons cleaning to visit something called the Nasher, which is a kind of modern art museum in Dallas.

sister playing about in the art

Off we went and there was modern art in all its glory. I especially liked "Aluminium Road" which evidently "captured the essence and quality of road" in a series of cast aluminium ingots placed stairwise, as though ascending to something that wasn't defined. Who knows, we ask, where the "stair" will take us as life's road climbs higher into the ineffable Other.

Such rubbish..

So here's a picture of some Selous Scouts to set things right.

Selous

Dove hunting later followed by birds on the grill and some rabbit.

God bless,

LSP

Snap Back to Reality

Some people, from England, feel that I've lived in Texas for too long and have lost touch with reality.

some kind of hat

That's absurd. You can't live too long in Texas.

put the guns in the truck, LSP

It has trucks.

defend that laptop!

It has guns.

just taking it easy in the arena

It has horses.

Sounds pretty real to me.

In nanny state England you can't even own a pistol.

Just sayin',

LSP

From Here To Qeternity

descent of the damned

Acting in solidarity with those unfortunate enough to have money deposited in Spanish banks, I decided   to cash out my spare change box, while the pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters it held still had some kind of value.

LSP savings and loans

I'd use that money, I figured, to buy some epoxy and blue tape to bed the barreled receiver of my Lee Enfield Mk. III sporter. But quickly! Before tape and steel putty cost a bergan full of worthless magicke currencie.

With a sense of fiscal cliff urgency I drove to the local supermarket, box of change in hand, and loaded it into Coinstar, which turns your metal money into a redeemable IOU, for a fee.

how much does it cost?

I didn't care about the fee. I just wanted the money, fast, while it could still buy something. So I emptied the box into the machine. Clang, clunk, went the cash. $53.65 went the Coinstar, on its screen, and then it stopped working. "Sorry, I've seen your money, but I can't give it to you," stated the mechanical thief.

"Customer Service" was no use because the talent was busy talking to a policewoman about a picture on his CCTV (close circuit television) and I began to panic. Would I ever get my money? Will I get arrested for asking? I got the cash and avoided prison, in the end, and by some miracle Coinstar Currency still had fractional buying power.

oh. dear.

But don't worry. If we print enough money then everyone will become rich!

Just like in Rhodesia Zimbabwe.

LSP

I Love dove Hunting

first birds in

Sunday evening seems to be turning into Dove Hunt Evening, which is just fine by me. It was raining this time and I wondered if the birds would be flying but didn't much care because getting out in the field with guns is fine as it is. Still, I wanted to shoot some of the avian acrobats.

two gun shoot

With that in mind, there seems to be a general consensus that dove don't much like a cold front and fly before it, the trick being to catch them them as they do. Not much chance of that, I thought, because Texas had changed to "Wales in summer" weather conditions, with rain and drizzle for the best part of a week. 

find the bird, yo.

But I needn't have worried; as soon as we parked the vehicles and loaded the guns, birds started flying like fury out of the trees where they'd been taking cover from the rain. GWB made short work of three with his old-school Browning 20 gauge. I let off a veritable flak barrage with a Mossberg 12 pump... and missed! Useless. I'd forgotten to concentrate in the right out of the gate excitement of the thing.

all hail the new truck!

So that was good and goes to show that just because it's raining you can't get out and hunt dove; we settled down on a treeline and got several more as the evening progressed and I'd like to think I redeemed myself with a decent, aimed this time, long shot or two.

Dove's in the freezer now, waiting for next Sunday and the grill and more birds... hopefully.

 I love dove hunting,

LSP

Murdering Muslim Mob

Rather than comment on the honest truly horrendous portrayal of Mohammed as a violent pedophile who beheaded Jews, which you can watch here before Youtube pulls it, I'll leave you with some pictures of Italy.

Italy

Not the European one! No, this is the It'ly that you'll find nestling by the side of I35 on the way to Waco from Dallas.

It has a McDonalds, where I stopped for two cheeseburgers, and a drive-in liquor store. For some reason gas in It'ly is 13 cents more expensive a gallon than it is in Hillsboro. But don't be fooled, Italian gas is no better than the fuel to be had further South.

Guns

I was happy I was armed.

Hadith

As you leave Italy you can look back over your shoulder and see the it recede in the rear window of your pickup.

Now, I'm not some sort of useless "all religions are the same" comsymp pacifist, but I pray there's not another war in the Middle East.

Looks to me like that might be hard to avoid.

LSP

Europe and the Faith

Belloc

Every year or so I read Europe and the Faith, written in 1920 by Hilaire Belloc. In it, Belloc sketches the history of the late Western Roman Empire, explaining its evolution under the aegis of the Church, into what, for him, was the high watermark of European civilization, the Middle Ages of the 13th Century. He then describes the Reformation and its aftermath, the dislocated culture of the past four centuries, in which the human soul and her endeavor has become increasingly alienated, fragmented and miserable. 

As an aside, the author believes that the Reformation only succeeded through the defection of a civilized Roman Province, England, to the various forces in mutiny against the Church and her culture. An interesting theory and one which, I think, originates with Belloc alone.

Whether you agree with him or not, Belloc's unconventional, clear-sighted and always sharp reading of history is certainly provocative, sometimes aggressively so, and, for me at least, always entertaining. I find his conclusion prescient:

So things have gone. We have reached at last, as the final result of that catastrophe three hundred years ago, a state of society which cannot endure and a dissolution of standards, a melting of the spiritual framework, such that the body politic fails. Men everywhere feel that an attempt to continue down this endless and ever darkening road is like the piling up of debt. We go further and further from a settlement. Our various forms of knowledge diverge more and more. Authority, the very principle of life, loses its meaning, and this awful edifice of civilization which we have inherited, and which is still our trust, trembles and threatens to crash down. It is clearly insecure. It may fall in any moment. We who still live may see the ruin. But ruin when it comes is not only a sudden, it is also a final, thing.

In such a crux there remains the historical truth: that this our European structure, built upon the noble foundations of classical antiquity, was formed through, exists by, is consonant to, and will stand only in the mold of, the Catholic Church.

Europe will return to the Faith, or she will perish.

The Faith is Europe. And Europe is the Faith.

Orthodox catholics will love this book, others perhaps less so. I count myself amongst the former, albeit from an Anglican perspective.

Stockpile ammo, go to Mass.

LSP