RowdyRebel

http://www.scribd.com/doc/116435469/7th-Circuit-Court-overturns-Illinois-concealed-carry-ban

It's about damn time! So the state legislature has 180 days to pass some form of CCW permit legislation before the law prohibiting carrying concealed weapons is stricken. If the legislature fails to pass such legislation, I would think that since no law would then be on the books to prohibit it, that it would become legal for anyone who meets the qualifications for owning/posessing a firearm....basically "constitutional carry" where no permits are needed. Great here in the state, but I'd really like to see SOME sort of permit issued to allow for carry in other states....reciprocity. Today is Tuesday, December 11th. 180 days from now is Sunday, June 9. It is marked on my calendar.

Oh, I'm on a list alright....

There's a guy that works loading trucks at the lime kiln...has a "Right to work is a ripoff" bumper sticker on the back of his jeep. I keep meaning to ask him how exactly giving the worker the right to choose whether or not to pay union dues out of his paycheck is a ripoff? Personally, I feel there are ALREADY too many hands taking chunks of my paycheck...don't need another, and I shouldn't be forced to agree to pay a third party just for the priviledge of working somewhere. I don't need somebody else negotiating my wages for me, and I'd rather my pay NOT be based upon the work produced by the collective. If I do good work, I ought to be rewarded for that through higher pay and/or faster promotions. I don't want to watch the promotion be given to some incompetent slacker just because he's next in line based upon seniority because that's what the union contract calls for. If you punch a time clock at the same location for the same employer every day, there is no need for a union....and in that case, being forced to pay union dues just to be able to work is the real ripoff. However, there are still USEFUL unions. If I were in the trades...like my dad was before he screwed up his back (bricklayer) or my grandfather (carpenter), then yeah...I'd probably go the union route. The union for them served a purpose, since you'd work for whichever contractor had work....might work for one guy for 6 weeks, then another for 3 months, then another for another 2 weeks. Very rarely are you ever continuously employed by the same contractor long enough for any health insurance to kick in and you sure aren't going to be there long enough for a pension or any other benefits....so you join the union to get your health insurance and a pension through them. The union hall acts as a job placement service, too...contractors go there to find workers who know what they are doing and don't need to receive on-the-job training....and members go there to find contractors with jobs. My other grandfather was a teamster....

Sometimes I think I'm the only person NOT on facebook....but every time I've tried setting up an account, I get the same message:

http://www.washingto...dgun-hypocrisy/ I saw Emily Miller on Fox & Friends Sunday morning and was surprised to hear her point of view coming from a "mainstream media" person....so I started looking into things a bit and she's had a few common sense articles published in regards to the gun control debate. Who would have thunk a girl with her views would be writing for the Washington Times?

I used to be a Ford guy....until Ford quit putting manual transmissions in their trucks. You can't even order one as an option. As much as I like Ford trucks, I'd rather drive a Dodge with a manual transmission than a Ford with an automatic. For the time being, I've got my old Fords...but eventually, I'll wear 'em out & need a newer truck....and I gotta have a manual transmission.

I have to agree...an outrageously high price tag and I just walk away. I saw a really nice '97 F350 crew cab 4x4 long bed...7.3 diesel and a 5-speed. It was EXACTLY what I was looking for (except for the color...but I could've painted it white later). When I saw the $10,000+ price tag, I didn't even bother calling the guy...not worth my time. Even the "professional" car dealers screw up like that sometimes. I saw an '87 Ranger at the local Ford dealer and stopped to check it out. Extended cab, 4wd, same V6 that I've got in my '92, and a 5 speed. The bed was a little rough on the inside, the body lines didn't all match up in the front, and there was a fist-sized dent above the rear glass on the back of the cab. If I could have got it for $1000-$1500, I would have written a check and driven it home. When I asked how much they were asking, they came in at $3900. I laughed, asked if they were serious, and started to walk away. They tried explaining to me how those negotiations work...that they start high, and I'm supposed to come in low, and we'd agree on a price somewhere in the middle. I told him they were already twice what I was expecting them to start off with as a high-ball figure, so even if I started at $0 and we met in the middle, it would still be more than I was willing to pay. The truck was 24 years old. The 1986 Ranger parked in my garage was bought brand new off the dealer floor for $6500 out the door back in 1986...and I know vehicles depreciate over time. It's a Ford Ranger, not a rare 1-of-a-kind vintage automobile. It sat on their lot for about a month before it dissappeared. Not sure if they found a sucker willing to pay a stupid sum for the truck or if they sent it to the auction house to get rid of it.

1) Go down to the local bone yard & pull the bed off a truck that was hit in the front. 2) Paint the bed to match the truck. 3) Swap the dump bed out for the pickup bed. Problem solved. In all honesty, I doubt you're going to find anyone willing to pay $16K for a '96. That's more than 3x what I paid for my '96 F250 4x4....and I bought it a little over 8 years ago. Your best bet would be to take the truck that "anything that can go wrong has already been fixed" and convert it into the pickup truck you desire. Hell, if you want a single rear wheel, just pull the hubs off a 250/350 SRW truck while you're in the bone yard looking for a decent bed. You could probably even mount the pickup box on top of the hydraulics to have a truck that looks like a regular pickup but dumps like your dump....might have to do a body lift on the cab to get the body lines to line up....but it'd be one heck of a truck when you're done with it.

I especially like the coupler....bolted it to a 2" receiver so that it can be removed. My brother was in college at the time, so I figured he could remove the coupler, loop a cable around a tree, and use a locking hitch pin and secure the trailer to the tree to prevent it from walking off. I built it with a 1-7/8" coupler...but I've since found a 2" coupler that bolts onto the same 2" tongue, so I can change the coupler to suit the tow vehicle's ball size. F250, the Mack, and the fiance's truck both have 2" balls in 2" receivers. The Ranger has a 1-7/8" ball bolted to the bumper. Other features are the custom built license plate frame...1/8" angle iron with an 18 guage back plate...and a light. I also used 20' long piece of receiver tube for the tongue...but ran it all of the way to the back of the trailer. I fished the wiring through that...then out to the tail lights through some 1/2" pipe....so the wiring is all enclosed. The ramp is removable....and long enough with a gentle enough slope that you can load a motorcycle without it even running. The center track is 8" wide c-channel to hold a motorcycle's tires from sliding sideways, and is painted with an asphalt paint with sand sprinkled over it for traction....several layers of asphalt paint & sand....turned out pretty much like grip tape. 10K rated D-rings to secure the bike...and towards the front, there are smaller D-rings to hold the other end of the straps while you load the bike so they are handy to hook to the handlebars. Flip-up dolly leg. Spare tire carrier. I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting....I put a lot into that project....enough that I told my brother that if he ever thought about getting rid of it, it would come back to me. Funny thing was, it didn't start out as a full-on trailer build. I was originally just going to stretch an existing trailer....then I got into it and it didn't quite turn out as "easy" as I thought it would be. I hate it when that happens.

The problem with taxing the "rich" more is that the "rich" control the jobs. They are going to keep exactly what they are used to keeping...and if they need to cut a few jobs and demand more productivity from a smaller work force in order to accomplish that, it is what they are going to do. So then those people who lost their jobs will be added to the ranks of the unemployed and they'll start receiving their handout. Welfare payments go up. Tax revenues decline because the number of tax-roll drop-outs and the contributions they WOULD have made if they had remained employed outpaces the "extra" taxes demanded of the "rich". When the top 10% are paying nearly 50% of the taxes collected, how can anyone claim they aren't paying their "fair share"? Especially when 47% of people don't pay anything...or worse yet, are on the receiving end of a government handout. THOSE people ought to be asked to pay THEIR "fair share". The problem with taxes stems from the fact that the tax code is so long and complex that NOBODY fully understands it. There were 4543 words in the original US Constitution. That is all that was necessary to establish the greatest country in the world. Why does the US Tax Code have 73,608 PAGES? Something needs to be done. Scrap the whole damn thing and go to a flat tax or the fairtax or ANYTHING that the average ordinary person can understand. It shouldn't take you 3 hours just to download the friggin tax forms that you'll need to fill out every year....and then another 3 days to get them filled out. That's 3+ days of productivity LOST while you are trying to comply with the tax code.

Hell, why not do that? You see trailers all of the time going down the road and it looks like they are open....but the roll-up door is just painted to look like it is open when it is really closed. I've even seen garage doors like that, too....painted to look it is open with the car parked inside.

When I get it back, I'm debating about pulling the wood off and repainting it.....white. I went red the first time because he was driving a red car and his bike was red. All my vehicles are white...except my bike which is black. I may leave it red, though, because it'll look OK behind the fiance's truck...it's red. Chances are if we go anywhere, it'll be in her truck anyway (it's an extended cab...more room). So yeah...now that I think about it, I'll probably just leave it as it is. I will have to change up the spare tire carrier, though. He burned up the bearing on the axle that was on it, so I swapped it out for a heavier 5-lug axle (instead of the 4-lug)....only bought him 2 tires & rims, though...so I'll ahve to buy 1 more and get it mounted up and then it'll be ready for me to start pulling around. Good thing about those tires...if I'm pulling that trailer behind my Ranger, it is the same 5-on 4.5" lug pattern...which is good, because my Ranger doesn't have a spare on it. I've got 10 spares for it mounted up on rims in the garage....but none on the truck.

Dang...looking at the date stamps on the photos, it took me damn near a YEAR to build that friggin' thing! Prolly why I haven't built another one since then.....

I didn't weigh anything...but the main bumper didn't FEEL all that much heavier than the OEM bumper. I'm sure it IS heavier, but since it's all 1/8" wall tubing it isn't too bad. I'd be willing to bet the draw bar hitch components weigh as much as the main bumper....that's all 1/4" stuff. A pair of 12" long 2" receiver tubes, 4 spring tie plates for 3500# axles (cheap, quick & easy fishplate material to reinforce the weld between the frame rail and the receiver tubes)...and then the 6" drop receiver that the bumper draw bar attaches to. That's all pretty heavy stuff...but the main bumper wasn't anything to pick up and carry around. ...and yeah, as long as I can work with steel and you don't give a crap what it looks like as long as it works, I can fab up just about anything. Built my brother a motorcycle trailer a couple years ago. He sold his bike, so I'm taking the trailer back....his wife is sick of looking at it in their back yard. I just gotta go get it. I oughtta have some pics of that on this computer.... ...ok, so maybe not. I'll have to look and see if I can find 'em elsewhere.

Got it primed, too.....but by the time it was painted, it was too dark for decent pics. So, a gray primer pic will have to do (even though the bumper is black now).

...and start welding it all together...

Getting things layed out the way I want 'em....

Might need ta get me one of them there counter weights.... ...been working some more on it today. Trimming 1" slices off the 3"x3" 1/8" wall tube...

Yup...when I told 'em I wanted a 1/8" wall piece of 2.5" x 7" steel tube, they said the only thing they'd have in that size would be 1/4" wall....which would work if I were building a bumper for the Mack, but the Ranger already has a hard time hooking up on wet pavement...don't need to exacerbate that situation any more than necessary.

Yup...he told me they were superior products, so I went ahead and decided to give 'em a try. Anyway, I just picked up a pair of 1/8" wall 3"x3" steel square tubes to build a front bumper. I'm thinking I'll trim them in 1" increments so I'll have some 3"x3" risers to separate the top from the bottom (and give me the 7" tall bumper I wanted)...think that'll look better than just welding the two together. Whichever way I go with it, though, it'll be the most bad-ass bumper ever to be seen on a Ford Ranger.

I didn't even know they were wearing shoes....had to scroll back up to see what you were talking about. It was worth it, though, as I got to look at that pic again.

As long as the GOP holds the house, the senate can pass whatever legislation they want to and it still won't become law unless the house also passes it. What they should be careful of, though, is the simple fact that if they change the rules to allow legislation to pass by a simple majority, Obamacare can be repealed with 10 less votes than it would currently take. Even if Romney had won and the GOP reached 50 in the senate, the filibuster rule would have prevented the repeal legislation from ever coming to the floor....unless, of course, the GOP was willing to sink to the same tactics as the democRATs and use reconciliation to pass the repeal. That is just like Illinois (and a number of other states) have passed laws to bypass the electoral college....passed after Gore V Bush 2000....basically stating that the state will award it's electoral college votes to the winner of the national popular vote....to take effect once enough states have passed similar legislation to total the 271 electoral votes necessary to win the presidency. That would have bit the Chicago democRATs in the ass had Romney been able to eek out a popular vote victory even though he trailed considerably in the electoral college. These reactionary policies the democrats like to pass after they don't get their way very rarely work out in the long run.

Going to stop by a metal fabricating shop to order (or hopefully pick up if they have it) a piece of 1/8" wall 2.5" x 7" x 66" tube to weld onto the front of the frame rails and the top of the 2" receiver tubes that I put on there today....that'll be my front bumper. I was thinking about using 1/4" wall, but that would be REALLY heavy, and I'm not sure the front suspension would be too happy with me if I did that. It'll still be the most bad-ass Ranger bumper on the road.

Now we're getting somewhere....