Monday, July 31, 2017

Say What You Want About Hillary...

...but she never fired anyone from her team.

Goes the tweet. Follow up tweets suggest that this nice feature contributed to her defeat. My observation is that the Clintons don't fire people. They have them Whacked.

Friday, July 28, 2017

Near-Clinton Experiences

Unlike near death experiences, the  near-Clinton ones are usually fatal with causes ranging from accidental to suicide-by-5-rounds-in-the-back.

In this case its Imran Awan, one of 3 Paki brothers who worked as IT managers for the DNC until they were implicated in a bank fraud caper and multiple government computers were found in Imran's apartment with smashed hard drives. The FBI has taken an interest in this and it seems that DWS was paying Imran $1270K/yr all the way up to his arrest as he was attempting to leave the country. As a side note, no one whose computer was associated with the Awan brothers wants to talk to the press amid speculation that classified data was transferred to a server in Pakistan and personal information on the congressional persons computer was being used to blackmail them. Imran was initially denied bail as he was considered a flight risk (ya think?), but this was waived provided he wears an ankle bracelet.

So the poll of the week is this:
What will happen to Imran in the next month or so?

1. He stays in town like a good boy until he's called to appear in court.

2. His bracelet is found in his apartment and his Tweets seem to originate in Pakistan.

3. His bracelet is found on his ankle when his body is found, a suicide from multiple gunshot wounds.

4. As above, but a victim of a botched robbery.

5. His bracelet ceases transmitting and neither he nor it are ever heard from again.

UPDATE: Option 6 may well be that Imran disappears and reappears in Pakistan. Seems the US attorney heading up the investigation into the affair is Steve Wasserman, Debbie's brother.

Extreme Anti-Smoking Policy

Jefferson County, just west of me, has gone all out to discourage smoking.
Things Jefferson County has:

✔️ A smoking area outside the courthouse

✔️ Rattlesnakes!

      A sense of humor https://t.co/zCLLgZC4Mu

You can smoke, just don't expect to live as long as your non-smoking colleagues.

Thursday, July 27, 2017

Hills New Book Title

She's calling it "What Happened" although there have been many suggestions, each better than the last, as to better titles.

Here's one that didn't get used: "Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice." A bit lengthy so it got shortened, thus this version is still available.

One of the short title suggestions was "Schlonged" so maybe we can start the rumor that lengthy title #2 above was the original working title, Much shorter title #3 was what it was shortened to, and title #1 was what the committee agreed upon once Her Inevitableness' drugs had kicked in.

Sunday, July 23, 2017

The Future Of Humanity - Rocket Fuel

What rocket fuel has the highest specific impulse? That is what fuel delivers the most bang for the buck? When I was in aerospace, the most popular mix was liquid Hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Since the question was asked, a couple experiments were done and slightly better performance was shown using liquid Fluorine and liquid Ozone.

People who know anything at all about those two chemicals are probably sidling away from the screen at just the thought of this stuff in tanks in any significant quantity. Nasty stuff.

Now we may have something better: Jargon and buzzwords. The right mix of these and I'm assured we're making relativistic speeds to the next solar system. I actually do follow the gist of this, and yes, it shows promise but when producing noticeable thrust requires more power than the entire world currently produces, your enthusiasm flags.

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

You Can Lead A Pol To Congress...

...but you can't vote him a spine. Sen McConnell says he's 2 votes shy of passing Obamacare repeal. Pres Trump is suggesting the obvious path, to repeal Obamacare in its entirety and then allow the congress to create a committee to come up with a replacement. The snickering should start as soon as the word "committee" was spoken. Meanwhile, back at the ranch:


Friday, July 14, 2017

Polls - What Was The Question?

Trending right now is Trumps approval rating which is somewhere between 40 and 50%. Now how was the question asked?
So Trump is a brash, obnoxious New Yorker. So what? Most of us knew that when we voted for him. How's he doing other than that? Pretty well it looks like. Chart found here. RTWT.

UPDATE:
Now go here and take a look at how CNN and WaPo do it.

Turn Over A Rock

And watch the critters scurry for new cover.

In the wake of Trumps request for state voter rolls, which are after all public documents, some 3400 voters have suddenly decided to un-register.

Now I admit that putting your publicly available information into yet another government database might open you up to another layer of junk mail from Nigerian princes and other neer-do-wells, but just think, you'd be participating in a national effort to insure that your vote is not cancelled by some unscrupulous cad with multiple registration. Unless....

Oh wait, I've been assured that this NEVER happens.

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Making Crime Pay - Madison WI

The city of Madison is looking to implement a new gun buyback program that could make gun crime pay off twice.
The bounty program would specifically seek firearms that have been used to shoot into homes and vehicles or that were used in assaulting individuals, Soglin said. It would also allow informants to be paid confidentially and would not require an actual conviction to be made to receive the $1,000.
Let's say you're a reputable dealer in recreational pharmaceuticals, and your livelihood is being put at risk by some upstart who has moved his operation onto your favorite street corner. So you buy a gun from a burglar for $200, use it to reclaim your street corner, and give it to a confederate with no direct connection to your business, who then turns the "found" gun in to the cops for the $1000 bounty which he splits with you 60/40 which gives each of you $400 and covers your cost of the gun as well.

The cops are presumably happy as they have taken a crime gun off the streets, the original owner might be happy if the cops return the stolen gun to him, you and your confederate are happy, and the only unhappy person is the upstart drug dealer, but being dead, you can't really say if he's happy right now or not. A win all around, no?

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Bored? Try The Hillary Cure

Go here for a link to 28,882 of Hill's e-mails which you can peruse at your leisure or until you nod off as most of them are pretty dull. Still you need to refine a lot of dirt to get one ounce of gold.

Let me know if you find anything interesting.

CCW - Back To The Future

It is currently legal to openly carry a sword in Tennessee. Later this year it will become legal to do so in Texas. I suppose that the CCW version of this would be a sword cane which is currently illegal in a lot of places. Great I suppose if you're into swashbuckling in whatever form you like to do it, but swords require a good deal of training to use properly and let's face it, they don't work well at grappling distances.

I can't wait to see the new ATF rules on swords. Those with a length under 6 inches are considered knives and will not be regulated. 6-16 inches will be AOW's I suppose and subject to a $200 tax which will drive up the price of dirks, daggers, and Bowie knives. 16 to 30 inches will be considered a "sporting weapon" unless the blade is wider than 10% of the overall length in which case it will be an "assault sword" and subject to banning in some states. Likewise carrying a short sword along with a standard length one will be considered "high capacity" armament although it might be legal if your second blade is 6" long or less.

The Claymore will be classified as a "destructive device" and subject to the $200 tax stamp.

Monday, July 10, 2017

The End Of Global Warming

Michael Mann, who produced the famous "Hockey Stick" graph showing that we would all soon be done medium well unless taxes were raised to astronomical levels to fund more studies or something has been called out on the credibility of his data. Shown below are 2 versions of global temperatures over the last 1000 years.
Bit of a difference, eh? Note that Manns graph omits the well documented Medieval Warm Period as well as the Little Ice Age that followed it. Dr Ball has said that the difference between the 2 graphs has to be the result of deliberate book-cooking so Dr Mann sued him for libel.

In court, in the discovery phase, Dr Bell demanded that Mann produce all his data, sources, and methodology including analytical software. The judge agreed that this was a reasonable request. Mann has refused. Next stop: Jail for contempt of court. In any case, if the work had been legit, it presumably would have stood up to peer review, but at this point we have to take Dr Mann's word for it. M4GW's video pretty much sums it up:


If the video disappears or cannot be viewed, go here to see it. Stay on and there's a bowdlerized version that was produced when the thin skinned Dr Mann demanded the original be taken down.

Sunday, July 9, 2017

Democrats Religion Problem

Here's an article by the same name that covers the Dems problems with religion in some detail. Most Dem candidates attend some sort of church just to convince the religious constituents that they aren't really anti-religious crypto-Stalinists, even if they do subscribe to the doctrine that religion is the opiate of the masses.

You'd think that with an observation like that, they would come up with an opiate of their own to keep the masses in line with. Mohamed did.

If you like your faith, you can keep your faith, as long as it doesn't conflict with the party faith. Historically religion is the source of moral and ethical guidance and has generally served that function well. The left has no morals or ethics which is why they find the presence of the 10 commandments in front of a government building to be creating a hostile work environment.

If you're a Christian and don't want to make a rainbow frosted wedding cake with 2 brides or 2 grooms on top, a very tiny fringe group can sue you into oblivion. A Muslim bakery would probably have the same problem with making the cake but you notice that they never seem to have any problems with the LGBTQ crowd, probably for much the same reasons that PETA doesn't protest the use of leather down at the biker bar.

Thursday, July 6, 2017

Grasping At Straws - Paper Or Plastic

If this isn't the signature event marking the jumping of the Shark for the Envirowhackos, I can't quite imaging what would be. It seems the latest and no doubt greatest threat to Mother Gaia is straws, which of course need to be banned.

Next time you hear a greenie wailing about the imminent end of the world, ask him how the straw ban is coming and insist that that, as the greater threat, needs to be dealt with first.

Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Gun Law - Court Win

A win it is but to what end? A Federal judge in Texas has ruled that the part of the GCA-68 that forbids out of state gun sales is unconstitutional. His ruling, in order to actually mean anything must now pass muster in the Federal circuit court, then the SCOTUS. That's a long and winding road for sure.

A line or two of legislation would rectify the problem, perhaps attached to something else. It would fit nicely in the SHARE act, but that seems to be going nowhere so maybe onto something else. Maybe a bill naming a Post Office after Mad Maxine Waters.

Slogan Needed, Apply DNC

The Dems need a catchy slogan for the upcoming elections. Here's one they are considering:
Honest, they really are. They are soliciting suggestions right now.

The possibilities boggle the mind:
Democrats 2018 - Make America Venezuela
Democrats 2018 - California, Illinois, Venezuela
Democrats 2018 - Under 70 need not apply
Democrats 2018 - Free Stuff For Everyone
Democrats 2018 -Above the Crowd, Above the Law
Democrats 2018 -Help Keep Us Out Of Jail
Democrats 2018 -This Time Socialism Will Work
Democrats 2018 - Doing The Jobs Americans Don't Want Us To Do
Democrats 2018 -Ready For Hillary 2020
Democrats 2018 -History Will Absolve Us

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

Gun Law - Lack Of Progress Report

The Hearing Protection Act, HR 367 in the House and S 59 in the Senate continue to languish in committees with no escape in sight. In the house the bill has 154 co sponsors and in the Senate, 17. That means 70% of a passing vote in the house and 34% of a passing vote in the Senate.

I'm told that a bill will get a vote in committee if 51% of the majority party shows support for it so the bill is over due in the house. To my observation, what happens is that 33% of republicans would vote for the bill if Trump tweeted support for it in a show of partisan support, 33% would vote against it because NeverTrump, and the remainder wouldn't vote for it because it didn't go far enough. Even if it included a grant of immortality to all who voted for it.

On a related note, the SHARE act, which includes the HPA and a bunch of other much needed gun law reforms, still has not been assigned a number in the house and as such represents legislative vaporware.

Keep bugging your congressanimals. When they feel the heat, they see the light.

Saturday, July 1, 2017

Large Scale Shooting


‘Dispute’ at concert leaves 25 shot, 3 injured at Little Rock nightclub, Republican wack jobs blamed
Normally everyone who gets shot is listed as injured although some might get listed as "fatally injured". It's enough to make you wonder what the shooter or shooters were using, Nerf guns? It was a Hip Hop concert and someone has tweeted a suggestion that it was the fault of the NRA that the kids (all seemed to be under 20) had guns in the first place. No specific whack jobs were mentioned.

Related the NYT is reporting the action as taking place in Downtown Arkansas. Arkansas population, 2.98M is well under the population of NYC (8.49M) so assuming a place with about 1/3 the population of your town must have a downtown somewhere would be an honest mistake for a New Yorker.