Constitutional Amendments

This seems like a popular topic for the Donks running for president, all 20,000 of them. They are offering to support amendments to do away with the electoral college, revise the definition of "speech" to exclude "hate speech*", repeal the second amendment, term limits for supreme court justices and all variety of other stuff.

Sen Rubio (R-Fla) is proposing to permanently fix the number of judges on the supreme court at 9 so as to thwart efforts by the opposition to pack the court. This seems like a good start. Drop him a line and encourage him in this. While you're at it, ask him for one establishing term limits for members of congress.

*Hate speech, like assault weapon, means whatever a judge thinks it might mean. Generally anything someone doesn't like.

More Colorado Law

As the Dems continue to ram through anything their management in N.Y. and Cali ask for, one of them is actually noticing that their party may be becoming a bit overbearing. A bill to abolish the death penalty was introduced and run through the Senate without even notifying all of the Senators, including Sen Fields who lost a son to a couple of thugs who are currently occupying death row here.

But Democrats were just getting warmed up. A bill to abolish the death penalty was introduced without even consulting Democratic Senator Rhonda Fields – whose son was murdered in 2005 by two men currently on death row. Fields, rightfully upset, tweeted to her party leadership, “No conversations with victims like me who have been harmed. Voters and victims’ voices matter. What’s the rush?” The disrespect Senator Fields has had to endure by this process is simply inexcusable.

This is rich as Mrs Fields was the Representative carrying the magazine capacity limitation bill in 2013.  Then the Dem controlled legislature didn't care what Coloradans thought and whooped the thing through even though it ultimately cost them 2 seats in the Senate. Taking one for the team is acceptable as we all know that the republicans will never get the state trifecta and even if they did, they wouldn't roll back anything.

So screw us then, screw you now. How's those shoes fit, Rhonda?

Colorado Gun Laws

Our new AG, Phil Weiser (D-Boulder) has opined that any sheriffs who have a problem enforcing our new gun confiscation law should immediately resign.

Someone needs to ask him if Attorneys General who refuse to enforce laws relating to elections, immigration, or drugs should also resign or are they above those laws once you get to that position on the food chain.

NPV Litmus Test

Here is a reference to a Twitter discussion on the National Popular Vote. If the Dems were really serious about this they would hold their party primary on one designated day nation wide, winner gets the nomination, but why quit there?

Show us you're open to diversity. Let anyone on the ballot who can raise some minimum amount of money toward their election, say $10 million, put that much money into a pot, and again, winner take all.

Even better: Let anyone vote. Citizen or not, D or R. Allow on-line voting from other countries. Who cares. The winner will most likely be selected in advance by the party central committee who will coincidentally be in charge of counting the votes. Someone with experience in vote  counting should be in charge, say Rham Emmanuel. Unless he decides to run as well in which case Robert Mueller gets the job with the proviso that he announce the winner within 2 days of primary day and any ballots arriving after the announcement will be immediately incinerated. No foot dragging. Likewise for all other ballots. Electronically cast ballots will be given the Bleach Bit treatment and the devices recording them will be shredded.

A couple of campaign managers will die of natural causes, and Hillary will get another shot at Trump. Sound fair?

Question The Pols

Always a good idea to ask pols questions, the more embarrassing the better.

In the NZ shooters manifesto is a bit that says that his choice of weapons and tactics was made with the hope that it would spawn more draconian anti-gun laws in the United States, increasing friction between U.S. citizens. We should clearly ask all pols running for office if they intend to support the N.Z. shooters aims if they are (re)elected. It's always good to know whose side the weasels are really on.

I know some people including the N.Z. PM oppose using such a criminals name in any context, but...

Calling a gun grab law "Brenton's Law" or referring to any of them as "Brenton's Laws" might possibly embarrass a lawmaker into withdrawing it or at least watering it down.

Springtime In The Rockies

Should have stocked up on Cinnamon rolls yesterday. Today it's 32 deg (not bad) Snowing (3-5" of heavy wet stuff) Wind 40 mph with gusts predicted to 70 mph!) continuing all day, Power has been flickering for the last couple hours and given the legendary reliability of that in this sort of weather, I've decided not to try to do my taxes. News is reporting 20-30 areas where it's already out.

I broke down and ordered a couple of Pro Mag 15 round mags for the Hi Point which arrived yesterday afternoon, just in time for me to toss them in the range bag and head out for an IDPA match at the local club. Yes, I know you're supposed to test your equipment before the match, but what the heck, it's just a club match and after 4 years of production, the bugs should be worked out.
This is a quick match with 2+ stages*, one a drill type thing and the other more like a regular stage. Space limitations mean that our stages are frequently abbreviated and last night the "long" stage was 13 rounds**.

What the heck, I loaded one mag up to 15 and shot the stage. Worked flawlessly.
For the low light version, I got 3 shots off and had some kind of jam. Hard to tell with the lights out but felt like a double feed. Cleared it and went on. Cost me some time, but other than that still smooth. I finished 6th out of 20 shooters so I'm not complaining. Very much.

I plan to make some time and try some practice on the 5x5 qualifier using the large new mags. My experience is that if you're going to have trouble with a mag, it will be in the first couple of rounds so 5 round strings using the top 5 of the 15 loaded.

* We set up 2 stages, frequently under 18 rounds each, shoot both stages separately, then either combine them into a super stage or shoot the longest one in low light. Or both. Last night we shot the long stage with the lights out.

** 13 rounds is a baseline number. It assumes you get through the whole thing with no makeup shots required.

QOTD - Party Platform Summary

Found this at Ace Of Spades:

"From what I've been able to tell from news reports, here is the Democrats' 2020 campaign platform in a nutshell: 'We hate you, we *really* hate Jews, we hate babies, we hate America, and we want you to starve. Now give us all your guns.'"

Pretty much sums them up don't you think? Here they also want to give our votes away to New York and California, where they favor letting illegals vote. Good thing for them the papers all support this platform.

Irish Democracy Catching On

Since my last post on this topic, more counties have joined the movement to let the State legislature know that they do NOT represent 100% of the population here.

So far, nine counties including Fremont, Custer, Montezuma, Otero, Weld, Moffat, Sedgwick, Kiowa, and Rio Blanco have passed resolutions that make them a 2nd Amendment Sanctuary County.

El Paso county, which includes Colorado Springs, is also considering such a measure.

This from the Conservative Firing Line an online conservative news outlet. They also report that the idea is becoming more popular.

UPDATE: 10 down, 12 more considering

Gun Sales - Slow Start

According to the FBI NICS check numbers, we are starting the year off at a rather modest rate:

NOTE the text under the upper graph needs updating. 2018 is final. 2019 is a projection, and this early in the year it doesn't mean much.

At the rate we're going, we'll see a drop in annual gun sales to very nearly what we saw in 2017, about 17,719,000. This is out of place with historical numbers which follow a similar shaped curve with a modest annual increase. Also some freaky jumps when it looks like some new draconian gun laws are about to be passed. Pelosi &Co are certainly ramming several of them through the House, but I guess the nations gunnies have great confidence that either the Senate or the President will save their bacon. Looking at the way the votes are shaping up on the presidents border emergency proclamation, I would say Don't Get Cocky. Those politicians in DC will switch their vote at the drop of a poll so keep the heat on. Remember an e-mail to a Senator is easy to write, and will likely only be looked at by an aide and the position will be noted with a tic mark in the appropriate column, so if you can't write deathless prose, don't let it bother you. Your position will be noted and tallied.

As a famous Senator whose name I forget, once said: "When I feel the heat, I see the light." So keep the heat on.

Science Marches Onward

Mice have been given "night vision" by injecting nano particles into their eyeballs. This works in the near infrared and persists for some 10 weeks. Rumor has it it helps red color blindness as well.

Also we now have yeasts that produce the cannaboids (sp?) found in pot. Not only that but there are a bunch of these and depending on how you treat the yeasts, you can get all the ones we know about and some we haven't seen before. No telling what the new ones do but there's a near limitless supply of hippies out there who will happily volunteer to try the stuff and tell you what happened.

One company says it has modified yeasts to produce opioids as well which would have a major impact on the drug biz as opium and its relatives might now be produced directly in beer brewing carboys in peoples basements, eliminating the growing and shipping business which accounts for most of the expense of production.

Redefining The State Lines

As a prelude anyway, the passage of onerous gun laws in several states has led to the announcement of certain of their counties as "2A Sanctuary" counties in which the questionable gun laws would not be enforced.

In Illinois, this is coming to mean that counties outside of Cook are declaring their independence from rule by the gun grabbers in Chicago. In states with a large metropolitan area, this is becoming more the norm. In Washington, the Seattle-Olympia corridor is distancing itself from the southern and Eastern parts of the state, and Eastern Oregon is following suit.

In New Mexico the southern half of the state is moving away from the northern half, and here in Colorado, as many as 4 counties either have declared or are considering declaring themselves as 2A sanctuaries.

This is a perfect example of why the founders disdained the democracy as a worthwhile form of government. In its own strange way it produces an example of why some states actually need to be broken up. If, for example, New York were to be divided into Southern NY (NYC and Long Island) and Northern NY (the rest of the state) the Senate would retain the 2 Dem senators from SNY, but pick up 2 Republican ones from NNY. Same sort of thing in other places with one big city and one big state.

For me it would mean that I wouldn't have to move to Texas or Oklahoma to get away from the Denver-Boulder Blissninnies, Just down to Colorado Springs.

QOTD - Basic Economics

This from Sal the Agorist

-----------------------
So what we need to do is first elect a commie, then take him out and shoot him, then abolish his regulations, then enjoy the fruits of our labors.

Oh wait...

I Told You So

At some point I expected the robots to begin replacing the talking heads employed in their thousands by every media outlet in the world. At least the TV outlets, although I don't see why internet outlets that feature podcasts couldn't do the same thing. I know I have a face made for radio and a voice made for the keyboard.. Now a Chinese TV station has a cute female news reader in what  might be advanced beta test mode. She is the latest step after they put forth a couple of male versions that were reportedly less advanced.

The day when Kent Brockman had to sit behind a fancy desk and try to look sincere while reading bullshit are coming to an end. Now an AI will seem to sit behind the desk and rattle off the most outrageous stories without ever cracking a smile or expressing any emotion at all. Of course that feature can be added later. A contemptuous sneer or a look of swelling pride and admiration will soon be programmable depending on the story or the political party of the subject.

This can be done in a messy cube farm by former newspaper writers who took the advice and learned to code or more likely learned to use the software GUI. No fancy studios will be required, and interviews with real people will be conducted remotely, cutting back and forth from the perfectly dressed "news anchor" and the interviewee, wherever he or she happens to be when the interview happens. Think of the money the media outlets will save not having to keep celebrities on the payroll.

Sitting in a bar at 5 PM watching the news, people can make a drinking game of listening for mispronunciations of words resulting from the autocorrect function of the text writers computers putting a wrong word into the script.

Colorado's Red Flag Bill

The Donks, having obtained the glorious trifecta here, will almost certainly be passing a so-called Red Flag Bill enabling the state to confiscate firearms from people for whom the "preponderance of evidence" suggests some sort of bad outcome if they continue to have access to them.

The most notable difference between Colorado’s proposed law and what other states have implemented: The measure mandates that a lawyer be provided to the gun owner at the first hearing on whether a seizure order should be extended. The sponsors also want to provide the gun owner a longer period to be able to petition the court to re-examine their case, as other states have done.
Garnett and Sullivan hope that those two elements serve as ample due process protections — a major concern for Republican lawmakers pushing back against the red flag concept. A false or malicious effort to have someone’s guns seized, under the bill, would be subject to criminal prosecution.

The descriptions in the linked article make the process sound a good bit more reasonable, and I sincerely hope it is. Past experience observing the difference between legislative intent and judicial action does not encourage. The bold text bits are elements that sorely needed to be included to mitigate abuse. 

This bit is bothersome:

Also, if a person whose guns have been seized wants to ask the court to reconsider once a long-term protection order is issued, they must show proof that they are no longer a significant risk. In 2018, the burden of proof for every hearing was on whomever was petitioning for the guns to be temporarily taken away.

Proving a negative has always been regarded as impossible. How small a risk is considered significant? How do you assign an objective value to it?

First rule of writing legislation: If a law can be abused, it most certainly will be abused. Maybe sooner, maybe later, but with the certainty of the sun rising in the East.

The last time the Donks used their trifecta superpowers against gun owners here resulted in 2 recalls and a forced resignation to avoid a rollover of control in the Senate. Threats of a rerun have already been issued.

Here's another less than charitable look at the bill from the Independence Institute.

Update: Added second article link.

The Search For Immortality Drugs

Another study is claiming at least partial success on the road to creating an immortality drug or at least a cocktail that slows the ageing process. Having worked in the medical industry, I can tell you it's never going to happen.

The FDA process for approving a drug requires a double blind study over the expected duration of a drugs use and a careful statistical analysis of the results including bad side effects and ultimately, mortality. Thus if you have a drug that imparts immortality, you must set up a double blind experiment in which half the subjects are given the drug, and half are given non dairy creamer or something. All subjects are carefully monitored, and any ailments contracted are noted, and the ultimate outcomes are recorded.

As soon as all the subjects have died, the data are compared, and safety and efficacy is determined. Of course if half the subjects never get sick or die except from misadventure, waiting for the end of the experiment is going to literally take forever. Hence, the drug will never get approved. At least not by the FDA in this country.

Medical tourism will become popular. In England and Canada, the NHS will give you the preliminary exam and prescription but the wait time to get into the hospital will quickly exceed 110 years. In Mexico you can get the stuff on any street corner, right next to the taco stand. Try to avoid the "misadventure tacos." Also the pills made from non-dairy creamer and Fentanyl.