Scientific Progress! Bacon Now Healthier

At least a bit healthier, and for the moment, only in England. I had to look up the word rasher which means one strip or maybe 2 strips of bacon or ham. Thin sliced.

Sorry, still not Kosher or Halal.

Cannon in D

Here's some music suitable for Christmas from Latvia. Gotta be hibrow here today and thanks to Grouchy Old Cripple for finding this.

Californian Of The Year

The Independence Institute is having a popularity contest of a sort, to select the Californian Of The Year in Colorado. This is intended for the person, who is doing the most to try to make Colorado into Eastern California, complete with all the things that make California what it is today, namely North Venezuela. Currently we have 5 candidates:

Christine Berg wants to ban the mention of sugary drinks for kids on restaurant menus.
Jared Polis wants to be Governor and make Colo. 100% dependent on "renewable" energy sources.
Brandon Rothheimer wants everyone to add several tons of dirt to their roofs so as to plant grass without regard to the design limits to installed roofs based on expected snow loads.
Jerry Sonnenberg wants to repeal TABOR, the constitutional amendment that prevents slows down runaway spending by the state government.
Aidan Cook wants to ban the popular rodeo sport of mutton busting wherein 5-year-olds under 50 lbs ride sheep.

This is fairly easy. Christine's influence is pretty much limited to Broomfield so if she want's kids ordering soft drinks off the adult menu instead of the kids lists, fine.

Brandons idea will be on a ballot initiative next election and would add some $25-$35/sq ft to the cost of building anything in Denver. Not to mention rewriting the municipal building codes. If an older house or building needed a new roof, the whole thing may need to be torn down in order to build a structure capable of supporting the heavier loads.

Jerry, who is a state Senator, is backed a measure to tax hospital stays and get around the requirement that tax increases be put to a popular vote by calling it a fee. As I recall, the tax fee is about $300/night.

Aidan Cook is the local rep of an English woman who is frightened by the violence that takes place at farm shows.

Jared is a local billionaire who wants to reduce Colorado to mud huts and burning cow chips by mandating 100% renewable energy in the near future. One supposes that he plans to have several Tesla autos in the garage of his solar panel topped mansion that will supply him with power 24/7 while the bothersome peasants freeze in the dark. Nice gig if you can get it, and here, he's got my vote.

The voting is currently agreeing with me.

Christine Berg – outlawing kid’s soda

8 Votes (3.46%)

Jared Polis – 100% renewable energy dream

106 Votes (45.89%)

Brandon Rietheimer – plants on roofs

21 Votes (9.09%)

Jerry Sonnenberg – destroying TABOR

77 Votes (33.33%)

Aidan Cook – mutton busting buster

19 Votes (8.23%)

Job Qualifications

A few days ago I had my last remaining app requiring Windows XP die aparetnly an irrevocable death. That being the case, I no longer had a reason to keep my old XP box on the desk. Except for a bunch of personal files and pictures and whatnot that I've been meaning to find and move over to the Win7 machine. Looking for an easy solution, I removed the hard drive from the XP box and installed it in the new one. As it happened, the connections were new enough that it looked like a plug and play operation with the big obstacle being the mechanical installation.

The L-shaped socket in the data cable matches the L shaped protrusion in the receptacle and

The Power cable neatly fits the larger receptacle. What could go wrong?

Got that done, plugged it all in with only having to replace one cable for a longer one, and pushed the GO button. The power supply breaker popped as soon as my finger lifted from the button. Unplug the drive and the machine starts right up. I didn't see anything wrong with the way I'd plugged everything in so I query my friends who are more computer oriented than I am. Got lots of advice, including an offer from Jed of the loan of a device that allows one to connect pretty much any hard drive to any computer regardless of connection requirements.

 He came over with the esoteric tool to connect stray drives to working computers, I showed him what I'd done, he thought it looked OK, I hooked it back up and turned it on and Voila! it works. Nothing changed except Jeds presence. 

So Jed is now a certified faith healer. I think it has something to do with the length of ones beard. The price of gold has historically followed the average length of men's beards, and whenever the media want an economist to pontificate on something they find some fellow with a beard. Economists without beards are simply non credible. As the beard gets longer, the area of expertise gets more esoteric and the job titles tend toward spiritual healer, high holy man, and wizard.

Keep in mind, before you toss your razor, that these are tricky lines of work and difficult to get in to like the NBA. There are a few successful religious leaders, mostly with titles like Ayatollah or Mufti, and a lot of less successful philosophers, many of whom adorn the busiest street corners with cardboard signs. Some of them are probably failed economists as well. I will note here that the current Pope is clean shaven. I will also note that, in my humble opinion, he isn't one of the better popes to come down the line, and he certainly knows nothing about economics. Next time, maybe one with a beard?

Election Shenanigans

After reading this, I got to thinking. Ever see a Democrat lose a recount? Since Al Gore anyway.

Our Robot Overlords

The humane society in San Fran is located in a somewhat seedy part of town and has a problem with excessive numbers of street people harassing potential animal adopters. So they hired a security guard to shoo the beggars away. Provided by Knightscope, the 400 lb robot patrols the storefront of the establishment and encourages the bums to move along.

Seems it's not very imposing as the bums have smeared it with barbecue sauce and feces and tipped it over in protest. Even the city has gotten into the act, apparently seeing the bums as more reliable voters than the employees at the shelter, and threatened the shelter with draconian fines unless they remove the robot immediately.

Rolling out my l33t engineering skills, I propose a solution:
1. Paint the robot black.
2. Equip the robot with some sort of unpleasant but non-lethal armament, say a cattle prod.
3. Have the robot approach non moving human forms and inform them that they need to either move on,  pay the robot, cash or credit, a minimum of $1, or be moved by application of the prod.

Anyone paying the robot will have his or her face recorded in the bots memory, and will be left alone for the next 2 encounters. Yes, the bums will squeal to the city council, who will send threatening letters to the shelter who can then respond that the council is anti black, anti animal, and oppressive to the culture of the criminal community. I'm sure there are other accusations that can be ginned up. This should work, and the accusations can be rolled out anew for the next council election.

Note to Knightscope: Your machines command respect in proportion to the amount of coercion they can inflict.

Now this:

Gun Fun - Murphy

The only bad round in a box of 100 will somehow find its way into your magazine for the Limited Vickers string.

That's it, 4th row back, 5th from the left.

For the benefit of any non shooters, in IDPA one normally fires two shots at a threat target, then moves on. If the shooter feels he might have missed and wants to make up the miss, extra shots are permitted. Only the 2 best hits are scored. One has to balance the extra time required for the extra shots against the points lost for a miss. Most of the time it's not worth it. If you get a misfire, just eject the offending round, and resume shooting.

Limited Vickers  means that you will be presented with targets, and you will be limited to say 2 rounds per target. If you miss, tough. For a 3 target string and a 6 round limit, if you get some 1 point down hits, that's not so bad. If you miss the target completely, that's 5 points down. If one of your bullets fails to fire, that's the same as a complete miss. Points down are added to your elapsed time at 1 second per point down.

The red color is from the Dykem machinists ink I use to mark my brass in an effort to get some of it back.

Gun Stuff - Fun With Headlines

From Town Hall, this:

Cuomo Condemns NYC Attacker and His 'Amateur Level Explosive Device'

Presumably Cuomo wanted the bomber to take some time, buy the Semtex, and make a real bomb. After all if they don't have at least 5 or 6 dead, it's that much more difficult to begin crying for more gun laws.

He also calls New York a resilient city that I guess has come to terms with regular terrorist attacks on defenseless citizens. 

Gun Sales - The Hillary Effect

Gun sales in November were still a bit lower than November of last year suggesting that the prospect of President Clinton strikes more fear into the hearts of Americans than the possibility of any serious crime or terrorist attack.

A "Trump effect" may boost gun sales in December as early reduced demand results in lower prices, and increased employment results in more disposable income. Whatever. 2017 gun sales have topped 2016 only twice, and both times by only 3.7%. For only being a factor in one year, you have to think that Hillary is probably a better gun salesman than O'Bungler.

Now if only Paul Ryan weren't so anti gun.

Gun Law - CCR - The Senate

HR38, the Concealed Carry Reciprocity and Fix NICS bill has now been sent to the Senate, where legislation goes to die.

HR 38 being "ordinary" legislation, it will need 60 votes to get through the Senate which means prying off 9 Donks which I don't see happening. What we might see is the Donks peeling off the CCR part of the bill and offering to pass just the Fix NICS part so they get the Feinstein-Schumer bill they wanted, and we get nothing as usual.

Tell your Senators it's either the whole deal or no deal, period.


An offer like that would pretty much guarantee that nobody gets anything and I hate to sound like Dudly, but there it is. All I can think of that might get this bill passes would be an amendment granting a one-time amnesty to philandering Congressmen.

This might open us up to charges of supporting dubious behavior by our elected officials and Lord knows there's plenty of that to go around already. There is of course the remote chance that the Donks want Fix NICS bad enough to accept CCR but frankly I doubt it.

Email your Senators, even the Donks since we need 9 of them, and urge them to support the whole bill as currently written.

DNC - Gott Mit Uns - The Mask Slips Just A Bit

As Nancy Pelosi  assures illegal immigrants that the DNC will take care of them if it's at all possible by invoking an old leftist slogan. One can just imagine what the DNC logo will look like in 2018:

Just superimpose the D over the swastika, and voila! the party is ready for 2018.

Trumps Tax Bill - POV

Is it good? Is is bad? Depends on your point of View. EX:

Trucking fleets ordered 32,900 Class 8 trucks, the kind used on long-haul routes, in November, according to ACT Research, which compiles industry statistics. That was up about 70% from a year earlier. - WSJ today

OTOH:

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) hammered the Republicans’ tax-code overhaul Monday evening as a culture-shaking economic “armageddon” that would haunt the working class for years to come.

Flanked by other top Democrats in the Capitol, the minority leader blasted Republicans for championing a tax proposal she equated to “the end of the world.” - The Hill

So it's either the end of the world or it isn't. I suppose if your constituents are beggars looking for handouts, and some fellow comes along and offers them all jobs, you'd have to be alarmed. Advice to Congress on entitlement spending:

Dear Congressman:
Look guys and girls, we all know that entitlement spending is out of control and it's mostly your fault for not putting any limits on it to begin with. We also know that if you don't act to fix this, the country's headed for bankruptcy, possibly on YOUR watch. Additionally we understand that there are so many votes tied to getting free money from Washington that if you do anything, however ineffective, you'll lose your seat in your next election and that's if you're lucky enough to not lose your head in the riots, so here's a solution:

Enact Congressional term limits, effective immediately. 12 years in the house and/or 12 in the Senate, then either up or out. Just don't forget to include the golden parachute clause that continues your salary until you croak, tax free. Now you can pass the entitlement reform, save the country, and leave town with lots of money before anyone can connect you to a lamp post. Sound like a plan?

Your helpful constituent
Billll

Of course this probably won't fly with the party leadership who had envisioned their stern but paternal or maternal visages on portraits 20-30 feet square, hanging prominently from the Washington monument, staring at the capitol building to remind the survivors that they all have suicide notes on file in the White House.

Gun Law - CCR

HR38, the concealed carry reciprocity law is/was being debated in the House today to see what the bill will look like in its final form. I've been to hearings like this before and while I could be watching the presentations live on YouTube, there is actually little point. Barring someone committing a major gaffe in a presentation or on the part of a committee member, every ones mind is already made up.

The drill is to let petitioners drone on for their allotted 2 minutes or so, then move to the next one. At the end of the hearings (beginning of happy hour) the committee members will check with their staff to see if the constituent mail is running any different from the day before, then vote the party line.

As of last check, HR 4437, the Fix NICS bill which would allow the municipal dogcatcher to opine on your qualification to keep and bear arms, has been added to HR38, the original bill. There are proposed amendments to take 4477 off, and take the original text of 38 off so we could see either of the bills or both in one package. There is one amendment that would expand the class of our betters, sitting congressmen, to allow them to carry anywhere they like, no restrictions.

Ensures that Members of Congress are afforded the greatest latitude regarding interstate concealed carry, commensurate with that of Federal Judges under this legislation.

A complete rundown of proposed amendments appears at No Lawyers.

I suppose we'll hear what we got tomorrow. As of today, most of the bad amendments have been voted down with a few left to consider.

Nasty Flinch You Got There

This story purports to reveal additional details of a police-involved shooting in my county back in March. Seems a suspect was having some bad inter reactions between painkillers, muscle relaxants, and alcohol when she called the cops and began making strange threats. So she got pulled over with maximum caution based on the threats where she became even less rational, one of the cops who shouldn't have had a finger on the trigger just yet fired a shot, and everyone joined in to the tune of 55 rounds fired. One officer, evidently using his car for cover, managed to put 28 rounds into the roof of his own car before the shootout ended, I'm thinking from a bad flinch causing the muzzle to depress.

The report says that additional training was ordered for all parties involved. The woman being shot at was completely unharmed.

CCR - How The Game Is Played

As mentioned here earlier, HR 38 - Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017 has been sent to the House floor. It has been amended to add the Fix NICS bill which would greatly increase the numbers of prohibited persons in the NICS system. Hope your name doesn't match that of some person in an anti-gun state that has too many overdue library books or you will never get another gun or if you do, straightening the false alarm from NICS will take about 6 months per check.

More details at No Lawyers, but the plan is to dump CCR completely and pass only the anti-gun Fix NICS part. Contact your congress critters and protest this bit of back stabbing mightily. Demand a clean CCR bill.