12 August 2012

Picking Paul Ryan

Unless you have been hiding under your bed or under a rock the past few hours, presumptive Presidential nominee Gov. Mitt Romney has picked Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate.

There are some things that have changed in this race, because of that, and others that remain the same.  I've said this a number of times in a few places, but it bears repeating:

This election is not about candidates, not about parties, not about personalities.  It is about the size, scope and power of the US federal government.

All else is distraction.  Your job is to keep your eye on the target, do not flinch with the exploding shiny objects as they are ephemeral.  To permanently alter the course of this Nation away from its Statist and decrepit ends, you must vote and you must make sure that everyone you know is registered to vote.  To do so go to Wall Builders as they have a site up to allow you to check the registration status of individuals.  Too many 'conservatives' are sit on the side complainers unwilling to even register to vote.  Ask them if they are willing to do the simplest thing necessary to change things so that they can stop complaining and become an active critic that matters to their fellow citizens.

Ask them if they have any honor.

Give them the low-down on what honor means:

HONOR

Do as You say.

Say what You mean.

Mean what You do.

There are no excuses brooked in this.  If they have already registered, make sure they will honor their duty to society, the thing that We the People acting as Caesar ask of you to do: vote your conscience.  This IS a rendering unto Caesar, make no mistake about it, and is a requirement of our civilized society to do with a representative democracy.

From Lincoln we have learned that you can fool all of the people, some of the time; some of the people, all of the time; and all of the people some of the time.  You can't fool all of the people, all of the time.  Sit this election out, and you are just a fool and have been fooled and will continue to be in that 'some of the people, all of the time' group.  

Your vote does matter and there is no brooking this question. 

This is not part of one's duty to God but to the service that you agree to by being part of civilization.  Civilization is not a gift but a life-long occupation you get from the moment you can rationally think.

Anyone who complains, who doesn't register or won't vote is a fool.  You may want to find a better sort of friend that no longer includes fools.  Better to be friendless and committed to the hard work of civilization and upholding your responsibilities to it than to accept authoritarian barbarism delivered with a sweet smile and a set of chains to hook you up to the chattel car.  A civilized person will be dead long, long before that point, defending their life, their liberty and their inalienable right to pursue happiness.

Do I think Mitt Romney is a hot and great candidate?  No.  Yes I have a variety of reasons on that.  I don't have to like a man to vote for him.  He has some character.  The person we have as President is a character, and a composite one, at that.

Is he a lesser evil, like all we have been presented with in the latter part of the 20th and first decade of the 21st century?  To a degree, yes.  That is a distraction.  Your job is to get good people elected locally, from the neighborhood level on up, to start removing the claws and tentacles of the beast of government, and to stop it from sucking the life blood of this Nation out and putting our inalienable rights in danger at every turn.  You can start to limit evil and start removing choices from it.  You can't get to there from here without voting.

Did I mention that YOU have to be registered to vote and have a commitment TO VOTE on the assigned day?  06 NOV 2012.  It is printed on most civic minded calendars.  It is a date.  Keep it.

The job of curbing the extent, the reach of government begins with YOU not the government.  If you self-govern, abide by the laws (at least to the degree that you can as the evil concept of making so many laws that you are in danger of violating any of them by just being alive is now seeing fruit), be a good neighbor and help your neighbor... even that smelly guy at the end of the block who passes out on the sidewalk far too frequently... yeah, that guy... do you live at the end of the block and pass out frequently?... imagine what a horror HIS LIFE must be.  Reach out to help that sot.  Once he is sober he can tell you to keep out of his life!  You will find no good deed goes unpunished.  Let that sot know that if he ever needs help, he can knock on your door and get it.

Notice the part government plays in that?  Zip.

Nada.

You are not depending on government for getting the guy into rehab.  That is HIS decision to make, not ANYONE ELSE'S which includes YOU.  You can look up the number to a rehab clinic if he asks you to do so.  But that poor sot may have other problems of which being drunk and passed out is just a minor side-effect.

Say, is he registered to vote?

Find out. 

He might not get sober enough for this election, but might make the next one... which will be a LOCAL election.  For you to create a better society you must not only be willing to help out that drunken sot at the end of the block who tends to rant too much and not take showers that often, but go and vote.  Of the two, voting is the more difficult one.  He might even be able to give you some insight into that.

Bet you thought this 'civilization' stuff was going to be easy, huh?

These critical fundamentals of being kindly to your fellow man, taking responsibility to make sure that those heading to hell in their own hand-basket know they have a hand ready to get them out of it, and upholding your duty to your fellow man by telling Caesar what to do.... these don't change.

Notice how this isn't about Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney or any other thing beyond you being a good person, saying 'hey, no thanks' to government 'help', and then being willing to help others.  And VOTE THAT WAY?  Geez, wouldn't it be great if more people did this?

The enemies of liberty seek to beguile through theft via government... taxation is legalized theft to do a few small things, but handing that hard earned money over to those  who didn't earn it because THEY DIDN'T EARN IT and are UNWILLING TO EARN IT, that is theft of a greater sort.  Beyond the mere wasteful spending of government on overhead, forms, layers of bureaucracy that yields no better results save to ask for a larger bureaucracy (and this is thievery as well)... is the belittling of our fellow man saying that they are entitled to be kept alive for the sole reason that they are ALIVE.  Sorry, you gotta earn your keep and prepare for a bad life.

Are you prepared to practice the principles necessary to get to the good ends of man helping man instead of saying, 'Hey, Caesar!  You take care of this guy, ok?'  I'm sure Jesus said to deliver the sick and poor unto Caesar... no, wait a sec.... you're supposed to take care of those folks.  So sorry!  If you want to stop having money thefted from you via taxation, that means you have to pick up your end of that deal.  And no matter how much fancy and nice language you put up to this, it is destruction of the moral will of individuals to be individual and to be a vibrant member of society and to uphold the good of society so that government can get on with the few things necessary to protect us from attack.  That in no way relieves YOU of the obligation to protect yourself, your loved ones, your neighbors or your property from attack, either.

I suggest you be well armed.  Others tend to forget that what you earn is yours, not theirs.  Government is just at the top of the list, it is not the list entire.

So what has changed in the Presidential race?

The above is now the new focus.

Remember it.

Keep your eye on the target.

Ignore distractions, and they will be outrageous.

Make sure your friends are registered to vote.

Make sure your friends vote.

Make sure YOU VOTE.

And after that be a beacon and light of liberty to others, holding out a hand in friendship and yet prepared to confront those that only have a fist ready for you.

This is not the end of the procedure.

It isn't even the beginning of the end.

It isn't even the end of the beginning.

Depending on how much of this you already do you are either in Square 1 and saying 'where the hell am I?' or a few squares down the road.  Getting to GO is a long, long, long way away and every decision you make will become a gamble on yourself, your neighbors, your life and your Nation.

Every.

Single.

Decision.

Keep your eye on the target as it is the light of liberty and freedom for all mankind.

Government can't build that.  ONLY YOU CAN.

Isn't life grand?

05 August 2012

Home workshop–Router Table–Phase 1

Put this in the list of 'things eating up my time that keep me from posting'.  Yes that is getting to be a long list.  As I have to measure out my energy and, thusly, my time, projects have to be done in small steps so that I can reach natural completion points in case life gives me something else to do.  Past postings on my SKS, putting in extra parts to my workbench and things like getting an EMP cabinet up are examples of this and I have a few more in the deck beyond this like getting EMP screens set up for some appliances, I'll have to be putting up a small shed on the back deck and then putting a solar power system in that, to name but a few.  Each is done step-wise, usually by scoping out the size of the project, making sure raw materials figured out and ordered, then getting to the project itself.  All told my workbench project ate up about 1o months, total, but had a few other things going on during it.  The idea is to use any physically productive time well to the point where downtime means complete rest.  Sometimes days of it.

For all of that the router table is finally at a point where it is no longer a bunch of cut up lumber scattered on my workbench.  Three weeks ago I would have had little to show but that.  Today I have the pieces cut and partially assembled to be well into Phase 1 of the process: getting the router portion of the internal framework nearly complete.

The objective of this router table is to take the old router bench top's table and put it onto a framework to secure it in the new table.  The new table is to have a height equal to the workbench (34") and be on casters to do that.  Much of the wood that I have on-hand is gently warped from gaining small amounts of humidity over the past couple of years, just enough to make it a hassle but not enough to commit to a major planer to get it down to flat surfaces and lose a bit of width.  Beats me how other people do it, but that's how I'm doing it: if I need planing I can take a hand planer or a block plane out for that and small stuff I can do on the table saw.

Now onto the pictures!

Entering the shop this is what greets you:

05AUG2012-RT-001

Loverly, no?

The entire thing is going to be made on 30"x48" 3/4" Baltic Birch plywood on the exterior.  The interior is whatever wood I have in the shop like the 'white wood' from HD or splendid if very dirty planks I got from a skid used to deliver some outrageously large item (those pieces are of oak and pine from what I can tell).  The very top is the support structure for the Veritas steel router table top (I got mine at Lee Valley tools) and it is in the 'just complete enough to find out where the cuts didn't go exactly right' stage.  It's mission is to sit 3/16" below the top of the table so that the router table top is flush with the rest of the top.  That larger surface will be another piece of 30x48 ply.

That large area in the center will be where my Hitachi M12V2 router (purchased reconditioned at Big Sky Tool) will be suspended under the table.  I'm planning on putting a small scissors jack there and getting the router's elevation adjusted by that, which is a much later part of the process, but I already do have the jack.

And what router table is worth its salt if it doesn't have drawers?  The carcass has space for 5 aside and a large one in the bottom (which I might sub-divide into 1 or 2 smaller drawers).  I left space above the bottom drawer and the top drawer opening for running anything from the rear of the cabinet to the face of it.  There will have to be at least 2 switch boxes (router and dust collector) and one 2.5" blast gate for getting a tube feed to the router fence (or any hose attachments I might want to use).

3/4" plywood is the base of the interior space.

From the side:

05AUG2012-RT-002

Not a lot to see here, save the drawers from the side.  I used a dado blade to put in 1.4" deep dados for those 3/4" strips that will be the supports for the drawers.  The bottom strips likewise have 1/4" deep dados for the side and interior supports, including the interior plywood base.

05AUG2012-RT-003

The rear shows a bit of spacing at the rear of the shelves for yet to be inserted pieces to give the entire thing structural stability.  Those will be nominal 4" pieces to insert, which means the drawer space from side to side is 3.5", ergo the drawers will be 3.5" square faces and up to 24" long (which seems impractical to me).

Seen is a piece with a clamp that needs just a touch more dado work as it is just about 1/16" out of alignment, which I found out by getting a clean crack on the end trying to finger place it.  What can be seen on the near end of that is the amount taken off the side (done to all the pieces) so as to fit better into the space that will be cut out of the plywood top for the router table top.

Notable on the top is oily dirt from a piece that came from the skid.  As no one is going to see it, it is left as-is.  This is true of all non-visible pieces, they are unfinished and unsanded: if they need sanding/finishing, that is a detail piece of work I'll do by hand or with a multi-tool.

05AUG2012-RT-004

Taken from the reverse angle on the other side of the workbench.

One of the problems is that the non-square, non-planed wood gives slightly out of tolerance heights when I get to the top.  This will be addressed, as the old song goes, 'Shim, shiminey... shim, shiminy... shim, shim, pushee...'  Or something like that, anyways.  Yes, shims are the answer to such things.  How the drawers can line up and the top not, that is a question I will leave for the mystics.  Still it is very close and that is all that matters.  Sanding, planing, minor rip cuts... that should take care of the rest plus shims.

What you can't see...

05AUG2012-RT-005

Casters.  Bought from Harbor Freight, cheap, on sale.  I put in knock down inserts into the plywood, pounded them home and used 1/4-20 panhead bolts to attach them.  Made sure the little brake pedal actually shows on two sides so the thing can be properly kept in place, too!  Did a quickie Tung Oil finish on the bottom, just once using a 1 part oil to 4 part thinner (limonene) ratio.  In the hot outside air it evaporated extremely fast.  I left it 'as-is' as no one will most likely see it or care about it.

05AUG2012-RT-006

This is my bench top router table from Veritas.  It is steel, 24" x 16" with rubber bumpers inset to the inside of the table.  Thus those will be on the inside of the top part of the larger table top.  I will be moving from the side router table supports to ones that use T-Track for the fence and anything else when I get this put into the table.  Basically this gets to transition from a very nice bench top to a more standardized table system, for things like jigs.  Or larger boards.  I have nothing against the Veritas system, save that it needs to expand a bit to give me more space so that I can reclaim shop space.

05AUG2012-RT-007

What a mess, huh?

That's the back of the Veritas system.  I have one of those cute, two-way dust collector hose systems with a cup right up under the bit and a hose to the fence.  The hose to the cup stays, the hose to the fence will be replaced with a separate 2.5" feed.  The rest of the stuff is in-process supplies, tools, and other assorted junk that needs to find a home associated with the router.  Getting all the router equipment into one place, where it is easy to find, is a massive priority.

Seen off to the right in the very first picture in all of this is the Ridgid shopvac I'm using for this affair.  It is my ersatz dust collector and general shop cleaning vac.  In off-line storage I have a small dust collector that makes a real racket (from Steel City) and it should also fit into the space in the rear of the table.  The problem is that if I run that and any other piece of equipment, I trip the breaker for the room.  If I need to really clear the air, I can turn that on using an outlet port for a Big Gulp hood and throw that on top of something and leave the room.

One of the 'nice to have' things in the table would be a special drawer for my saw blades in the rear of the table.  Neither the vac or dust collector will take up all the space and I'll have about 5" to play with under the table top in the rear.  Plenty of space for rear drawers or (if I'm really clever) to make the rear part of the table a flip-up affair to get to a storage space under it.  That may be beyond my capability at present, so drawers are a better answer.

With the front area semi-complete, I can put up the sides, internal wall (between the router area and the rear dust collection area) and begin running piping and tubing for the dust collection system, and the power cables to run everything.  Inlets with immediate single outlet boxes in the rear will allow me to run power cables back to the rear and get a single feed for each of the router and dust collector with switches in front.  Doors to get to the rear area (or lower rear area) will be cut out and concealed hinges put in for them, thus allowing easy access to the vacuum area.

When this is done all the routing tools get a home in one place, the dust collection gets centralized (and ports standardized), the table that all of this sits on gets to be folded up to go away someplace, and workflows get straightened out when everything has a home to go to.

After this comes a stand for the miter saw, a stand for my bench grinder (now sitting off-line due to lack of space) and the slow cleaning out to get at the raw materials necessary to build this stuff.  With smaller stands and a home for the dust collecting detritus (fittings, hoses, etc.) another table can come down and the stuff under it can get shelved because the shelves will then be accessible!  Glory Be!  While there will still be large pieces of equipment, they will be mobile and easy to move, and those that have work tops will have a common height so that they can serve as run-out tables, supports or other fine things as yet undecided.  I might even put together a proper stand for my drill press so that its table can be at a common height... then I might even get to put together a seamless workflow utilizing everything... what a thought!  Then, maybe, a special table for small piece finishing and firearms cleaning that I can SIT AT!

More than a body can handle, I know.

I learn a lot along the way by trial and error and this is necessary knowledge. Right now it is one step at a time.  They are small steps, yes, but steps nonetheless, until I can get to that day when I'm doing something other than building equipment to do things I want to do.  Making the tools to make the tools so I can actually get to make things I want to make.

02 August 2012

Mine eyes have seen the glory...

Yes, yet another bit of commentary by me at Hot Air (on the Ted Cruz victory) that I'm recycling into a post.  More thoughts on this at some future time, but that will be more a summation of past posts and outlooks.  This is just a short, sweetened condensed version.  Anyone having read my works over the years will know exactly where I'm coming from and all standard non-fixing of spelling, syntax, etc. is in place:

Do note that Ted Cruz didn’t win because of MONEY.

He won because of commitment from individuals to support his campaign and to mail envelopes, place phone calls, and talk up his campaign with friends, co-workers and other like minded people. The stars of the Senate, Sarah Palin and the rest of the ‘leaders’ are only ‘leaders’ in the sense that the abolitionist movement had ‘leaders’: the movement set the tone, tenor and direction and a few were able to voice it better and help spur it on, but they in no way led the movement, itself.

This is the horrifying part to the two parties and the elite establishment. What the Tea Parties have done is coalesce, create leaderless organizations that are distributed, grass-roots and committed in a way that saves the most time to get the most results for the input given. Outspending a candidate isn’t going to change commitment for those who have had to go through the gauntlet of fire by the MFM and the simpatico elite establishment. You may not get a political ‘leader’ on the other side of that, but you do get an individual and a movement that is purified by fire in the crucible. Bring on more fire, pour it on, and the movement gets stronger as it winnows out the extras, those things that don’t fit and begins to concentrate on the pure beliefs of those involved. Then you reach out to those elements that remain unpurified, incorporate them and welcome THEM to the crucible. Not all will be allies, not all will be able to take the heat but the best from them will step forth to join with the larger movement.

In 2009 Statehouses started to change hands and not just into Republican hands but to those following the Tea Party – the beliefs of those elected were getting scrutiny and a number will be melted out by the fire.

By 2010 Scott Brown was a shot across the bow, followed up by many salvos against the elite establishment. This was not about winning elections, but to start the purification process on the elite politicians in the Republican party to start melting their power base away from the inside. You couldn’t win all those races, but you could win enough to prove the point and to establish the marker of the future.

In 2011 more Statehouses started to shift, and this was not just to Republicans but to an organized grass-roots that sought no leaders and, instead, welcomed spokesmen. By joining with other organizations and finding out what fit from them since the self-organization began, these other organizations found out that some of what is good from them gets incorporated into the larger movement, but that the movement is independent of them.

That gets you 2012 where a coalescing can get behind Ted Cruz and others, while Senators and Club for Growth now find itself against a FreedomWorks candidate in a run-off… spokesmen and ‘leaders’ are not blindly followed, and good citizens willing to risk the fire of derision and hatred spewed at them for their positions on smaller government and greater personal liberty get backed.

This is the horror to the elite establishment in both parties and the Left as a whole: the more they attack the more people come to understand those that they oppose and find them to be friends and neighbors with common-sense attitudes and simple involvement and understanding in politics that the complex fails on high, and the simple succeeds on low. Now Freedom Works reaches out to other Nations, Japan, Australia, Serbia, Israel, Italy, Greece, even into China to support those who see the rights of man as individual and personal liberty and freedom as the greatest force for good for all mankind. We will not always agree with our friends in other Nations and the venues they must choose for themselves: but we can reach out to support them in what they do.

This works.

Tyrants of the world, behold! The word of freedom and liberty with self-governance is now being whispered in the darkest corners of tyranny. And this time we vow never, ever, to forget these lessons and why freedom and liberty are the basis for the common good amongst men. The Tea Party was just the first ray of light on the horizon… soon the vast number of rays shall show the source of them and the powerful will tremble in fear.

ajacksonian on August 2, 2012 at 7:22 AM

Yes, there is something larger than just Ted Cruz, the Tea Parties and the other list of usual suspects trotted out by the MFM going on.  The establishment that they wished to yoke mankind to is falling apart because it just doesn't work.  Something that does work is already in place with each and every individual on the planet who comes to realize that they are the greatest moral actors on Earth because they are here, now, to exercise their free will to the betterment of themselves and their fellow man.

Tyrants shall tremble.

Dictators shall fall.

And the dross of tyranny will once again meet freedom and liberty unleashed not just in America, but everywhere as we uphold the promise and understanding of our Founders.  All men are, indeed, created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain, inalienable, rights – that amongst those are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness which we call Fortune.

This is the job handed to you, to me, and to each and every person on the planet.