Relocate The U.N.

Long overdue idea to relocate the famous hive of scum and villainy to more suitable accommodations, here's a suggestion. There's a 105 story hotel needing only a bit of interior finish work to be ready to host the world's representatives in the style in which most of them would like to become accustomed.

The Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang North Korea awaits with restaurants, living quarters, office space and meeting rooms suitable to the status and dignity the organization has accrued over the years. Passing the hat among the membership would surly quickly raise the billion or two necessary to put the finishing touches on the structure with enough left over to assure the approval of DPRKs top leadership*.

*Fat Kim III** and a few close family members.

**What the Chinese call him, informally of course.

What To Do With The U.N.

Charles Krauthammer addresses the question here. Several commenters have suggestions, one of whom reminded me that the building appeared in the movie Heavy Metal as low income housing.

The whole building must be well past its usable life. Tell the occupants to find a new place, in another country, then sell tickets at $10/ea for the honor of pushing the big red "reset" button to blow the thing up.

Proceeds to be used to pay off the national debt.

I'm So Old....

That I remember when the schoolyard joke went "God bless America, 'cause the Russians won't."

Seems the Russians have changed their tune. Now they're scolding the west for abandoning their Christian roots.

It's A Plot!

It always is, of course. The alien lizard people will be revealed as our new masters in Trumps inauguration speech, and those who failed to vote for him (we know who you are) will be deported to Regulus IV where you will be sold as TV snacks to the Mucusoids.

In the meantime, there's this:


See? It all makes sense now doesn't it?

H/T to Samizdata for this catch which deserves wide circulation.

New Years Aspirations

A friend sent me this today:

Vesna Vulović (Serbian Cyrillic: Весна Вуловић; [ˈʋeːsna ˈʋuːlɔvit͡ɕ]; 3 January 1950 – 23 December 2016) was a Serbian flight attendant. She holds the Guinness world record for surviving the highest fall without
a parachute: 10,160 metres (33,333 ft), after the explosion of JAT Flight 367 near Srbská Kamenice, Czechoslovakia on 26 January 1972.

She was the sole survivor of the accident.

source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulović

10,000 meters is more than 6 miles... 

 It's people like this who challenge us in the coming year to try to push envelopes and to surpass. Being retired and not having a sufficiently anti social project like a hotrod, trike, motorcycle, death ray or some such to work on is additional inspiration. 

Not to worry, I'll think of something. 

Gun Bans And One Party Rule - Update

California now has a veto-proof one party trifecta which means that the ruling party doesn't have to listen to anybody, just whoop anything through and over ride the governor on the (very) off chance that he might disagree. Colorado went through that in 2013 and it cost the Dems the Senate, which we held this year in spite of impressively large donations from Soros, Bloomberg, and Styer. Still, they got everything they wanted and the constituents be damned.

Californians are now buying the bullet button (BB) guns before they're banned which will do them no good at all since the plan now is to ban all semi-auto rifles next year anyway, and all the BB guns will have to be registered as assault weapons starting in January.

Keeping The Riff-Raff Off The Roads

The latest attempt by CDOT to avoid building new roads is a requirement that anyone using a designated HOV lane is now required to have 3 people aboard. Since the 3 most popular vehicles in the U.S. are the Ford F150, the GM 1500, and the Dodge Ram 1500 in that order, if you plan to carpool to work, you'd better spring for one of the fancier models with 4 doors or else bold a seat into the bed. Your passengers can toss a coin to see who rides back there.

No Corvettes or other 2-seaters in the left lanes at all unless you bought the transponder option with the car. They don't call those things the Lexus Lanes for nothing.

By Federal Law, motorcycles are permitted in HOV lanes but if the HOV designation can be replaced with a tolling scheme, the motorcycles are booted out as well. Right now the extreme left lane on selected roads, formerly known as the breakdown lane, is HOV/Toll and fines are collected by camera. You'll get a bill for using the lane on your motorcycle because the software can't tell a 2 wheeler from an 18-wheeler, but you can use the lane for "free" if you buy a $35 transponder and attach it to your motorcycle presumably in a way that it won't get stolen.

I'm not sure if putting a child seat in the back of a pickup is actually legal, but at least it would be facing the right direction. If you have 2 kids and a standard pickup, both of them need to ride in the bed a la Subaru Brat as it's illegal for anyone to ride in a child seat in the front seat of anything.

At the rate we're going, in the near future, all roadways in Colorado will be toll roads unless you're transporting 2 or more illegals undocumented voters or are riding with your chauffeur and secretary.

I'm also pretty sure that except for agency vehicles, nobody who works for the Colo Dept of Transportation actually owns a car.

Endorsement - Lucky Gunner

Last minute reminder that ammo makes great stocking stuffers and Lucky Gunner has been sponsoring Gun Blogger Rendezvous for several years now. They have a wide variety of ammo at a wide variety of prices and quick delivery as well, show them and your favorite shooter some love and be prepared for the Zombie Apocalypse.

Gun Bans And One Party Rule

California is the best (worst) example of this and probably a model for what our legislature would do with the same power. Currently all magazine fed rifles sold there must have the mag release removed and require a tool to get the mag out. This is known as a "bullet button" gun as the mag release is a recessed button you press with a bullet.

Next year, your CA legal AR will have to be constructed so as to require partial disassembly of the gun to get the mag out. Furthermore mags will be limited to 10 rounds and anything larger must be turned in. We can start a pool as to the compliance rate for this one, and I'm taking 10%. They generously allow any older rifles with the button to be kept, but will be requiring that they all be registered as "assault weapons."  I'm thinking compliance isn't going to be real high on that one either.

Scuttlebutt is that next year, legislation will be introduced to outright ban all semiauto rifles.

I'm thinking that by that time Trump will have his SCOTUS judge in place and while getting through the 9th circus is a fairly safe bet, the top court will throw that law out.

Note that only the law-abiding will be required to register their weapons. Felons in possession don't have to as that would violate their 5th amendment right against self incrimination.

Rust Never Sleeps

Nor do the anti gunners. Really, we need some sort of minimum competency standard for lawmakers. Here they want a stickie to go on your car plate to identify that the car's owner has a CCW. A Republican no less! What next? Badges?

The Best Thing About Liberals

Has to be the inclusiveness.

Caution, graphic Language.

Climate Science Arguments

Scott Adams has a nice piece up on the difficulty of making heads or tails of the climate change debate which covers the bases well, but I think misses a subtle point. I'm going to take a big risk and comment on this early in the morning with only 2 cups of coffee in me.

The climate argument is in reality, 2 questions, one fairly trivial, and the other much weightier in terms of costs and cultural impacts.

 Question 1 is "Does human activity have an impact on the global climate? The answer is a no brainer; Of course it does. No one argues differently. You get the same response to asking if there's Uranium in your drinking water. Any civil engineer will tell you yes, but then go on to explain just how much. That last bit is the important part and contains the answer to the second question.

2. a)How much influence does human activity actually have on the global climate, and b) what, if anything, should be done and c) at what cost?

If you are a hard core climatista, you always ask the first question first, and use the affirmative answer to force your agenda as the answer to the second question without actually having to discuss it. Ralph Nader used this approach successfully against General Motors arguing that the Corvair's suspension system was not up to the standards of say Porsche, and that when the older ones were driven like a Porsche, they spun out, sometimes with fatal consequences. By the time the suit was settled, the Corvair had been upgraded to the point that it was widely called the "poor man's Porsche" but too late and a car that GM marketed as a family economy car was discontinued.

Re: Climate, question 2a: It would appear that human activity has very little impact on the big climate swings which seem to happen on a regular basis whether we're here or not.

 The answer to 2b, what should be done, is answered by 2a, which suggests that not all that much actually needs to be done. Certainly some local areas need to be brought up to code as it were, since the smog from China is detectable here in the US and even the Chinese admit that something urgently needs to be done. We have the technology to burn coal relatively cleanly, and the Chinese could insist that this be implemented in all future coal burning plants and added to the existing ones as opportunity permits.

2c: We have already implemented the most cost-effective solutions like scrubbers on coal plants and conversion to natural gas, and are now debating the need for the less cost effective ones like subsidy hogs wind and solar while pulling off the table the best ones like advanced nuclear as being politically incorrect.

Changing peoples minds is very difficult, but not completely impossible. When conditions get harsh enough, the most hardened greenie will adjust his world view to allow the thermostat to be turned up or at least to toss a few more dried cow chips onto the fire. Perhaps sending some of them to a climate science pilot project installation in northern Saskatchewan, with heat and power supplied by burning freeze dried caribou chips would help.

Believe it or not, the EPA is supposed to evaluate its rules and regulations in terms of costs vs benefits, and keep the impact on the good side of that curve. To date, I've never heard of them actually doing this as forcing regulations on the public is beneficial to the continued growth of the EPA and thus over rides any cost to the public. Trumps appointment of a skeptic to head the EPA may help here but the resistance within the agency will run all the way to the bottom.

A Wake With A Band

The description of Hills party as "A Wake with a band" reminded me of something I was told back when I was playing in a band, that the best gig you could get was playing at an Irish wake. Everyone got drunk, the tip jar overflowed, and if the deceased was lucky, he wouldn't be stood up against a corner and used as a target for thrown fruit.


Visualizing Hills now pissed off (and pissed) megadonors standing her in a corner, to be used as a target for flying canapes.....

The World's Most Powerful People

According to Forbes anyway, #1 (Putin) thru 75 (Schumer) and somehow Soros didn't make the list. I assume he paid the people at Forbes to remove his name as the Secret Master of the DNC.

Lame Duck O'Bummer is on the list but well down on it at #48.

We Have No Hope

So says the FLOTUS. I have to believe that Hope is the family nickname for Air Force One.

Trumps Cabinet

Found this on the Shoe comics page:

I've also seen twits tweets suggesting that it's not just Perry, it's everyone Trump has nominated.

Makes it hard to not like him doesn't it?

Perry was my #2 choice for President. Trump didn't even make my top 10. FWIW Hill didn't make my top 90, coming in behind such icons of feminism as Bonnie Parker and Ma Barker.

Twits

 Found this on Twitchy. Your first clue that the news might be fake would be...


Susan @Susan4gunsense

AR15 Means "Assault Rifle - 15 rounds per trigger squeeze." Stop the right wing lies! #gunsense

11:22 AM - 11 Dec 2016

How Trump Won - XKCD Version

Back in 09 Obama had a chance to control the internets but the deal fell through.

Go here for chapter 1 and click "next" for each succeeding panel of the full 5 chapter story. Don't worry, it's only 5 panels.

Trump's superior use of the alt.media certainly went a long way towards his win.

Obama Supports Military Coup, Suspension Of 1st And 2nd Amendments

O.K. that might be just a bit overboard, but in a speech to the military, the quotes include these gems:

Characterizing the military’s mission as a fight against “violent extremism,” Obama insisted that soldiers need to rise up against Trump if they feel he is pushing policies that are ill considered.

"Ill considered", not constitutionally forbidden.

The presidential short-timer also placed blame on the Constitution’s First Amendment, hinting that he thinks free speech is too freely indulged to prevent “impressionable minds” from being warped by “extremism” on the Internet.

Examples might include film makers in L.A. making videos that incite spontanious protests by 50-70 Muslims with machine guns and mortars, and documentaries that disparage potential successors to  a sitting philosopher-king.

All this is from Breitbart coverage of a presidential address at McDill AFB and Breitbart has been labeled a purveyor of fake news by people who have been assuring us that the economy is moving forward at top speed for the last 8 years.

How Dumb Do They Think We Are?

Maybe we better not go too deeply into that, after all look who we elect. But now for people too dumb to come in out of the rain, and umbrella that tells you that it's raining. Invented in England where people carry umbrellas as a matter of course, you wouldn't think that a warning would be necessary. Still I suppose you could check the bluetooth enabled device to see if the day was predicted to be one of the rare ones on which it wasn't supposed to rain so you could go about your business outdoors with a superior look on your face at being one of the few who isn't carrying an unneeded umbrella on a clear day.

Of course the predictions are based on the National Weather Service data and we know that's never wrong don't we?

Fake News

We may be looking at a distinct reduction in the amount of  fake news we're being fed, specifically in the area of government supplied economic statistics. From Q and O.net:

Speaking of “fake news” the usual suspects have been spreading it for decades according to a new economic analysis recently published:

“Conventional wisdom — as reported in many major newspapers and media — tells us the U.S. economy is ‘recovering.’ Well-meaning economists, academics and government officials use the term ‘recovery’ when discussing the economy, implying that growth is getting stronger. The study finds there is no recovery. Since 2007, U.S. GDP per capita growth has been 1,” according to Gallup Chairman Jim Clifton.
“As this report makes clear,” added Council President Deborah Wince-Smith, “productivity growth is in a serious multi-decade-long slump that is dangerously close to stalling completely.”

If the media wants to regain its credibility it needs to begin reporting the hard facts of what Americans are really facing economically instead of collaborating with government to continue to spread what I consider to be falsehoods. Start reporting the facts.  Start doing the hard work of journalism.  Quit being a publishing tool for government propaganda.  Then, maybe, people will again invest some faith in what you have to say.

Regular readers will know that I've been complaining about this for the last 8 years, just look for the title "Cooking the Books" in this blog. Unemployment, GDP, 8 consecutive Summers of Recovery and more and we have more people out of work and not looking for work than ever. But wait! There's a new scapegoat in town and he doesn't own the media so for the immediate future we can now expect reasonably accurate economic numbers from the government and the media won't be hiding them. Growth less than 3% will be front page news and called substandard. 95M people dropped out of the work force will finally get noticed. 62% labor force participation rate will now be a crime against humanity and suggesting that the previous administration had anything to do with this will be racist.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Déjà vu all over again. Found this at Bijou Renaissance Man

and in the comments, this link here to a famous set of newspaper headlines documenting Napoleon's return to power from exile by some journalists who may or may not have liked him but who obviously knew which side of the baguette the beurre* was on.

* butter.

Science Marches Onward

Some caution may be called for here. The Japanese have reportedly discovered how the Tardigrade achieves its radiation immunity, namely by encasing its DNA in a protein sheath. Swell. If they can do it, so can we, presumably using gene-splicing techniques to add the sheath to our DNA. Just think, real estate developers will be swarming in to the now abandoned land near the Chernobyl to sell to a rather exclusive group of clients, and nuclear war will no longer threaten the existence of humanity. Just the fraction that can't afford the upgrade, who probably wouldn't be missed anyway.

My question is this: If someone is upgraded to radiation immunity, and then develops cancer of some sort, are the cancerous cells also radiation immune?

Vote Fraud? Easy To Find

All you have to do is look for it. Sometimes a basic grasp of statistics helps.

I don't know anyone who voted the presidential slot, then quits and turns in the ballot. I do know one or two who voted everything else and left the prez slot blank for which I can't blame them much.

Update: In Michigan the number of votes counted exceeds the number actually cast.

He blamed the discrepancies on the city’s decade-old voting machines, saying 87 optical scanners broke on Election Day. Many jammed when voters fed ballots into scanners, which can result in erroneous vote counts if ballots are inserted multiple times. Poll workers are supposed to adjust counters to reflect a single vote but in many cases failed to do so, causing the discrepancies, Baxter said.

In case of discrepancies, the original count stands. We are assured that the numbers will eventually match. You bet they will.

Safe Zone Update - Unclear On The Concept

Boulder County* has decided to declare all of its county buildings to be Safe Zones. To what purpose I'm not sure, but if you didn't get raped last night, come into any county building and see if you don't get a similar experience in broad daylight without even having to remove any clothing.

The experience may affect your future clothing budget, so there's that.

*Home of the Peoples Republic Of Boulder.

Coming Soon To Harbor Freight - Drones

And not just any toy-store drones either.
The CH-5 Rainbow is in the same league as the US made Reaper according to the vendor. More details here but you know these things will show up at Harbor Freight sooner or later.

Automotive

To bowdlerize a bit it's been said that "If it's got wheels or (primary sex characteristics) it'll be trouble." Also that second marriage, or second car is the triumph of hope over experience.

My car had been fitted with a "clear bra" some years ago and had been parked outdoors for quite a while. Now it's equipped with a yellow bra, and while that might be a fetching color on a lady, it's a bit tatty on the Camaro.

Getting it off turns out to be moderately difficult depending on how long its been on and what's underneath it. A heat gun from Harbor Freight will start the process but the material becomes bore brittle with age so the video of the coating being removed from a brand new high end Porsche isn't realistic.

Since heat is involved, you're probably best served to wait until spring or summer when you have a good head start on the heating process simply by parking out in the sunshine. Add heat and the glue softens.

One other caution. Those sporty stripes and logos the company put on the car when it was new? They're glued on too, using the same adhesive, with the same melting point as the bra.

The good news is that the finish under the bra seems to be like new.

The Future Of Transportation - Traffic Jams

Not the naturally occurring type either, but deliberately caused ones. The lefty thought process that goes; 1. Cars cause pollution, 2. Roads cause cars*, 3. Fewer roads means fewer cars = less pollution.

Never mind that a shortage of roads causes traffic jams that result in more pollution, the latest iteration of this is that when traffic comes to a complete halt, people will migrate to public transportation. That won't move either but if misery loves company, you'll be happier trapped in a traffic jam with 50-60 others.

In NYC the mayor there is deliberately fouling traffic in an attempt to force more people onto the already overloaded subways and buses. A picture of Manhattan from a high office will show that 80% of the jammed up cars below are bright yellow so the plan winds up fouling the public transport as well. This is also expected to encourage bicycles and walking, to which I say, I've seen pictures of NYC in winter and doing either through a foot or two of snow doesn't seem all that attractive.

Eventually I suppose the denizens of the most afflicted places will acquaint themselves with the older tradition of dealing with politicians who can't or won't serve their constituents, involving a bucket of tar, a couple of chickens, and a bit of assembly work. That or business people will eventually figure out that in the age of the internet, there is little reason for a lot of businesses to be located in any specific location. The exception to this is actual manufacturing which required supply chains of actual materials in and out. The NYSE by contrast could be physically located in central Kansas and the move would be transparent to its customer base.

* When a congested roadway is widened, for some reason it quickly becomes congested again and needs further widening. It never fails.

How To Succeed In Education

First off don't major in education. Major in something useful like deconstructionism of gay female African pottery, then get a job as the administrator of multiculturalism at the local middle school. Think I'm kidding? Check this:

The first hint is that staffing is going up faster than the student population. The second clue is that administrators are getting hired faster than teachers.

One other takeaway is that Colorado student population seems to be growing at least twice the rate of the other states in this article. People are fleeing the socialist hell holes like CA, IL, and NJ and coming here, where they vote in more socialists. Better border controls are obviously called for.

Science Marches Onward

Like it or not. Now you can experiment with DNA, then jump start yourself electrically.

What could go wrong?

Political Pranks 2 - Recounts

It has occurred to several people that the Stein-Clinton-Soros recounts are quite unlikely to alter the election results. Hill would have to flip all three states to do this and the margins, while small, amount to a lot of votes.

Thing to notice here is that Jill Steins fund-me site seemed to be getting a donation of $650,000 every day at the same time. Also her lawyer on this effort is closely connected to George Soros. Big surprise here. So given that the effort is unlikely to change anything, why do it?

Credibility. If the three states are tied up in court with a slow moving recall, they may be unable to have their electors vote with the Electoral college on the designated date. This will leave the total 223-260 or thereabouts meaning that neither candidate will have enough votes to be declared the winner so the vote goes to the legislature which is currently controlled by Republicans. The House will elect Trump, and the Senate will elect Pence and so what?

The point would be to reduce the legitimacy of Trumps win for talking point purposes. Selected, not elected all over again although that argument carried little enough weight back in 2001 that I can't imagine it carrying as much this time outside of the NYT building. Just a Soros supplied red herring.

Delaying tactics are a specialty of lawyers with weak or non-existant cases so expect  endless delays over procedures to be followed should the recount requests be granted, and remember it's all 3 or nothing here. If only one state turns down the request, it all disappears in a cloud of unicorn farts.

UPDATE: Apparently that is the strategy, although missing the application deadline in Pennsylvania negates the effort.

Bad News From Ohio State

For certain definitions of bad news within the media.

1. No one was killed. Except for the perp, and he doesn't count.
2. The perp wasn't white.
3. The perp wasn't conservative. Being a Somali refugee, it's a pretty good bet he didn't vote for Trump.
4. The perp wasn't a Tea Partier.
and worst of all
5. No gun was used. Except by the cop who shot the perp.

Didn't slow down the knee-jerk calls for gun control though. Beware fake news.

GOP Prepares To Sell Us Out

So the election is over and your party now holds the coveted legislative/executive trifecta. Congratulations! But wait, some in the legislature are still butt hurt that their horse isn't in the executive stable. What will they do? What WILL they do?

Why, switch sides of course. Notwithstanding the Dems avowed intent to abolish the filibuster to put President Clintons judges on the supreme court, several highly placed Republicans are prepared to leave it in place to prevent Trump from getting his appointments seated. This could presumably be extended to any of Trumps policies requiring legislation. This is the sort of get along, go along behavior that culminated in Trumps election in the first place.

I suppose we're now officially a 3-party country; The Socialists on the left, calling themselves Democrats, The Capitalists on the right, calling themselves Republicans, and a center-left party supporting taxes and regulation masquerading as Republicans straddling the center.

To quote a famous Italian: "Nothing is more difficult than to establish a new order of things."

Having A Good Day

Finished in the top 25% in the club IDPA match, the new microwave arrived a day early, and here's a suggestion for all those Thanksgiving leftovers.

I've heard worse.

English Lesson

Bears repeating:

Found here.

The Old Order Passes

The Democrats have now lost both the center-right pole of the party with the death of Ted Kennedy and retirement of Harry Reid, and now the center-left with the passing of Fidel. What will they do?

Oh wait, they've still got Keith Ellison and Nancy Pelosi along with wise advisors like Sheila Jackson Lee. If Hillary can stay out of jail for the next 4 years, she'll be tanned, rested, medicated, and ready for the 2020 race so maybe all is not lost for the Donks.

Political Pranks

'Tis the season for them and I'm waiting with baited breath to see what the Obama administration has planned to discomfort the incoming Trump folks. Remember when W took over just in time for the EPA to reduce the allowed levels of Arsenic in drinking water from 50ppb to 10. Sounds great, but the 50ppb had worked out just fine up to that point and was in line with levels of naturally occurring Arsenic found in the water in many areas of the south west. Bush eventually got this regulation cancelled but not before the press roasted him for upping the allowed level of Arsenic by a factor of 5.

For pranks like this to work, you have to wait until the last possible moment before the opposition ogre is sworn in, then beat him up for the consequences. In Trumps case I'm expecting Janet Yelin to announce an increase in interest rates, probably a week before the inauguration. The Obama people have been holding interest rates down for the last 8 years in an effort to get the economy going, stepping on the gas as it were. Unfortunately high taxes and additional layers of regulation are like holding the brake pedal down, so no movement. Japan has been trying this for the last 30 years or so and it hasn't worked there either.

When Obama took office, we were paying interest on $8T in debt. As of today we are paying interest on $20T in debt although at a lower rate than in 2008. If the rate is raised, we will be paying a good deal more in interest and less will be available in discretionary funding for whatever pet projects Trump has in mind. There will be pressure from the Dems to raise taxes to cover the increased debt payments and derision from the press if Trumps back pedals on lowering taxes.

Other such stunts are certainly possible and the administration has until Jan 22 to think of them. What they will be I don't know. That some sort of wrench will be tossed into the wheels, I have little doubt.

Thanksgiving

Made it through the Feast with everyone happily stuffed, including the dog who made out like the proverbial bandit when D'wife dropped a container of gravy on the floor. The only casualty was the microwave which gave up the ghost after being asked to reheat one more 5-person helping of something or other.

Endorsements:
1. Boston Market makes a fine pre-packaged and pre cooked Thanksgiving spread. Minimum fuss except for reheating the sides.
2. Beaujolais Nouveau is a fine red that goes well with turkey and goes down easily. Only available for about 2 weeks around Thanksgiving. Go grab a bottle.
3. Crown Royal Rye is over rated, at least to my taste. Suitable for Irish coffee but a bit harsh to drink straight up.  Buffalo Trace is better but I still prefer Black Grouse or Shanahans Colorado Whiskey. YMMV.

The Fix Is In

And guess who's on the wrong side of it this time? Seems the Obama just-us department has already certified the so called "sanctuary cities" as being out of compliance with federal law

Because of the foresight of a Texas Congressman, President Trump will be able to end certain funding to the largest sanctuary cities plus the entire state of California on his first day as President. Working quietly, Culberson convinced the existing Justice Department to certify those cities as non-compliant with federal law, thereby making them vulnerable to loss of money from Washington.

I suppose that no one believed that President Clinton would go so far as to insist that federal law be complied with in this case. Around here this would mean Denver, Boulder, and Aurora. 

Federal Spending Cuts

There is an e-mail going around with a long list of proposed federal spending cuts which is being attributed to Paul Ryan.

I did some digging. This is sort of an executive summary of HR 408 by Jim Jordan of Ohio. The official title is the Spending Reduction Act of 2011 which tells you how seriously anyone took these suggestions under Obama.
Ref:
http://www.factcheck.org/2012/08/about-those-republican-cuts/
and
http://www.snopes.com/politics/taxes/ryanbudgetcuts.asp
Second link includes the text you might be seeing.

It's a nice list but to my mind it's mostly just cosmetic trimming around the edges. If anyone's really interested in cutting spending, there are multiple government departments that could profitably be taken out behind the D.C. barn and shot.

Continuing Emissions Fraud

Here in Colorado and probably in most other places, we have to take our cars in periodically and have the emissions levels checked. This service adds another $25 to the price of renewing your license plates which was doubled a while back to help pay for Denver mayor Webb's Toy Train Set. Ostensibly the check is to help keep the local air cleaner and not to be an additional tax on your car, and when it was implemented, there were a significant number of older vehicles on the road that, yes, could have used a tune-up.

Today most of the pre-OBD cars are gone and pretty much everything made after 1980 has an ECU in it that monitors engine health and helpfully puts up an alarming signal on the dash if your car varies from the prescribed levels. Mine even bitches while continuing to meet the allowed pollution specs.

Channel 7 has asked some local mechanics about the efficacy of the tests since a number of people have had their cars fail the emission test even though nothing was subsequently found to be out of order. I had this experience some years back when I took my Triumph in for a check and initially flunked badly. Of course I could see this coming when the millennial whose job it was to drive the car on the dyno stalled it 4 times trying to get on to the machine. From there on his efforts to avoid another engine stall resulted in his driving the whole test on the acceleration pump of the 4-bbl carb fitted to the engine. It was also obvious to me that a stick shift was not anywhere near his comfort zone.

I was entitled to another test for free, having paid for the first one, so I took the car to another testing station where the V-8 engine raised no eyebrows at all and the tester drove the car like he owned it. Unsurprisingly it passed easily.

Though not specifically looked into, it sounded to me like a number of the test failures mentioned in the article could be easily attributed to "pilot error" on the part of the test drivers keeping in mind that erratic driving technique will worsen any vehicle's emissions. Beyond that, pretty much any car made after the introduction of electronic fuel injection has programming in it that lights up that "service engine soon" light if your car gets even a bit out of spec, so it would probably be safe to ditch the dyno-equipped warehouses we have now and simply check for the trouble lamp on the dashboard. Taking the bulb out is no longer an option as that will show up on a code reader, the whole process taking no more than 5 minutes.

BTW: The emissions program, like the red light cameras, is run by a private company that collects the money from the drivers and kicks back a percentage to the counties that subscribe to its service so it's not likely that the program will be going away any time soon. There's too much graft at stake.

Etymology - Politicly Correct

Found over at Q&O a nice article on the origins and current status of political correctness. Ever wonder where the expression came from?

“The notion of political correctness came into use among Communists in the 1930s as a semi-humorous reminder that the Party’s interest is to be treated as a reality that ranks above reality itself,” Dr. Codevilla writes in the Fall 2016 issue of the Claremont Review of Books.
Dr. Codevilla indicates that the politically correct directive began word-of-mouth as a running joke that communists told each other that went like this:
“Comrade, your statement is factually incorrect.”
“Yes, it is. But it is politically correct.”

In the 30s under Stalin being politically incorrect would get you a one-way ticket to Siberia, if you were lucky. Funny how that sort of black humor has enjoyed a resurgence in the Obama administration.

Conversational Gambits For Thanksgiving

 Found on Ace Of Spades, here's a whole great long list of conversational gambits to get you past the tearful liberals you might encounter at dinner. The whole article brings be to mind of a line from the great Girl Genius web toon from a monk who remarked "Surely my family was a gift from God, and a good thing that was for I wouldn't have given a brass farthing for any of them."

Some of the better conversation starters:
Eliciting a canned response:

He demonstrated this to me at a party by interrupting a couple of liberals talking, and announcing to them:
"You know, based on current statistics, in ten years, the entire state of California will be homeless."
"Right! I know!" came the response.

Or citing statistics, 48.7% of which are made up on the spot:

"Studies have proven that if you have a gun in your house, you are more in danger of being struck by lightning than being bitten by a rattlesnake. Think about it." 

Lots more at the link. BTW, this is a year old post, recycled. There might eventually be an update to this to account for Trumps electoral win. Here's hoping.

Budget Committee

This would make a great standing committee for an incoming president to set up with little or no fanfare, to examine the federal budget and suggest elimination of parcels that really don't need to be there. Mr Trump has noted that the Department of Education qualifies as such a parcel and has suggested that if it were to go unfunded, no one would likely notice, beyond the people working there who would suddenly find their positions to be surplus.

This isn't a big item with the current asked budget being about $126B out of about $4T or about 3.6%. Still you save a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you're talking real money. If you were looking for a topic to bring up with your congress people, here's one. Write and ask them to support abolishing the Dept. of Ed. Follow up would be to reduce federal taxes by half the amount saved, and allocate the remainder to paying off the debt. There are lots of other places, most easily identified by the title "Department of.." in front of the descriptor that would be easily done away with reaping the attendant savings. There's an interactive chart here that breaks out a lot of this.

Endless Entertainment

I swear I'd have to invent anti gravity or some such to get more entertainment than I do from the old squirrel trap. See the comments as other people seem to like it too.

Never Say Die

The DNC Brownshirts were out last night in my daughters neighborhood with BB guns shooting out windows of houses that still had Trump signs up. Similarly minded groups went out marching and blocked I-25 briefly. Todays news is full of similar reports along with calls for lethal violence.

Trump needs to address these people with a soothing quote from BHO: "I won."

Maybe then they'll quiet down and go home like whipped Republicans after O'Bummers wins.

Trump Staff and Cabinet Suggestions

With only a little thought I'm sure we could come up with lots of good suggestions for Trumps staff and cabinet positions. Here's one:

Trump needs to make Milo Yiannopoulos press secretary and let him go off on stupid questions. It would be endlessly entertaining and they'd put up with it in order to gain access.

Then when Milo got bored he could be made Secretary of Education just to screw with the Universities.

#1.1 rjschwarz on 2016-11-10

And when Milo gets bored with the Sec Ed position, he can simply turn out the lights on his way out. The individual states are fully capable of addressing the educational needs of their citizens.

Found here along with a suggestion to put Ted Cruz on the supreme court.

The End Of The World

As some people would like to know it. Last night various columnists from the New York Times, including renowned economist* Paul Krugman were staring the end of Western civilization as they understood it, wailing, rending garments, and no doubt considering becoming refugees to whatever country would take them. Here's Krugman:

It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover?

Frankly, I find it hard to care much, even though this is my specialty. The disaster for America and the world has so many aspects that the economic ramifications are way down my list of things to fear.

Still, I guess people want an answer: If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.

Last night market futures in the DJ Industrials was down some 900-1000 points so maybe they were right to be nervous. Still, today:

Dow 30
18,589.69
256.95 (1.40%)

A modest uptick overall. Pretty good recovery for 18 hours, no?

*Krugman won a Nobel in economics. He also was an advisor to Enron and helped make it the company it is today. Extinct.

QOTD - The Election

Mike Wasylik ‏@MikeWas

BRITAIN: Brexit!

 AMERICA: Here, hold my beer.

The big winner last night in Colorado seems to have been Michael Bloomberg who won at least 2 state Senate seats and one ballot question. I hear he did well in other states as well.

We still seem to have a Republican majority in our Senate so absent Bloomberg it would have been a conservative landslide here.

A Historian's Take On The Election

Here's a post on Samizdata from a historian who points out that small omissions in speeches can leave other countries with an incorrect impression as to what exactly our country is prepared to do in some situation. Running down a detailed list of places where we announce we're prepared to intervene and leaving one small country out by oversight or design can lead to a rapidly escalating military conflict. WWI and 2 are cited.

So for the right sized contribution to the Clinton Foundation, President Clinton would have no problem with Russia taking over the "administration" of the Baltic states and Ukraine? Or perhaps if Iran were to repatriate 10% of the tribute Obama paid them to the Foundation, Iranian administration of Syria would be acceptable.

Fun With Headlines

Seen at Drudge:

ELECTION SHOCK: TRUMP OUTPERFORMS ROMNEY
+130,000 FLORIDA
+142,000 NORTH CAROLINA
JUMPS TO LEAD COLORADO

While it's nice to see the bit about leading in Colorado, one should perhaps ask President Romney just how much better Trump NEEDS to be doing in order to take those states. 

Weiner in Rehab. Hopes To Get Lucky

Anthony Weiner was spotted riding a horse while in a sexual rehab clinic. I think he's trying to see if there's any currency to the phrase "F.U. and the horse you rode in on."

Related tweet here. Click the link, it's pretty funny.

Automotive

Noticed the car was quieter than normal today if somewhat slower. Got home and noticed some stuff stuck into my tailpipes. Wondered if it was the neighbors fed up with the noise the car was making or maybe my yard signs and pulled the stuff out:

These little numbers are not hornets nests, but broken fragments of my cat converter which had worked their way down the exhaust and through the muffler. I suppose they would have eventually gotten blown out the tailpipes but these got caught in the baffles. This probably accounts for some of the rattling I hear when I go over bumps. The car is now significantly noisier.

The chunks I'm told are platinum.

The car is what GM calls the "base" model, which means it has the smallest engine and no options. I've discovered that it does come with at least most of a complete wiring harness so a couple trips to the junkyard and now I've got cruise control and push-button trunk opening. I tried for power door locks and got the right parts but the harness is not all that complete so I'm holding that project for later. Gives me something to do in my spare time.

Someone Needs A Dog

A regular program of exercise is a wonderful thing. A dog will get you out of bed at progressively earlier times and take you for progressively longer walks. Mine has me up to 3-5 miles/day and in dog years, she's as old as I am.

More Stickers

Just noticed that I seem to have not posted these. Better late than never I suppose:

There you go. Real Clear Politics is showing an Electoral College map with Hill barely squeaking out a win. Meantime Colorado is cruising to a dead heat rather than leaning blue.

New Bumper Sticker - By Popular Demand

OK Here's the update. As a reminder it was inspired by the Edwin Edwards v David Duke race in Louisiana that inspired the sticker reading

Vote for the Crook. It's important!

Print it out in landscape and tape it to your window. You can pull it off after the election or leave it up as an I Told You So piece. As of today, RCP is predicting a 273/265 Hillary outcome. If she loses a single state, she's out and I hear that Michigan is now a squeaker. Meantime here's how squeakers become no-sweat squeakers:

Early Voting

Everyone at Rancho DeBillll has now voted. I can't vouch for the ladies, but as precinct captain here's my front yard:

Yes, I did. Local vandalism has been limited to having my Trump sign uprooted and left lying in the yard, as was the one across the street. Both are back up and the evidently remorseful vandal has not been back.

Election Humor

There's always something funny about a situation, even ones that result in major catastrophe.
Take the Russian point of view in which the whole thing can be summed up with only the names of the participants:

Wiener Putin Clinton Bush

Or this one:

Although it might not seem so humorous to some. It reminds me of a Rocky and Bullwinkle scene in which an out-of-favor Badinov was calling home only to be informed by his supervisor that it couldn't be him since he was dead. A quick check revealed that his supervisor had been reading the next days paper and apologized for the error.

The Price Of A Vote

Back in the day you heard stories about ward heelers or local pols with "walking around money" which would be distributed to people who wouldn't otherwise be bothered to go to a polling place and vote. The amounts ran in the $5 to a pack of smokes range in return for a vote for the favored candidate.

Lately it's becoming harder to buy votes that cheaply as it would seem the recipients are remembering who it was whose economic policies got them there in the first place and are understandably reluctant to elect or reelect them, thus the runaway inflation in the amounts being offered, sometimes up to $300 in Cali where the cost of living is so much higher.

Flying The Friendly Skies

From an RKBA newsletter I get:

Metro Detroit Airport now has a new way to allow people to move seamlessly through airport security. It’s called CLEAR and it’s now in operation at the airport’s McNamara Terminal. Certified as a “qualified anti-terrorism technology” by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, CLEAR has been used more than five million times to move travelers quickly through airport security lines at 16 other airports. “They validate their identity using a knowledge-based quiz, they use a government identification that’s validated using technology, and then we link it to their bio-metrics – we take 10 fingerprints with a digital reader, we take a scan of their iris, and we take a high-res photo of their face,” said CLEAR spokesperson David Cohen. Cohen said the initial sign-up process takes about five minutes and after that, getting through security lines should be a breeze. He said there are special lines for CLEAR customers that can be a great time-saver for travelers, who will still have to pass through X-Rays and body scans... (At this point, this appears to be a voluntary program.)

http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2016/10/27/new-system-at-detroit-metro-airport-allows-travelers-to-move-through-airport-security-in-a-flash/

At some point in the future, there will be only one commercial airline to handle the minuscule numbers of people who actually consider an airplane a form of public transportation. Business travelers will fly on corporate jets and a company ID will be all that will be required. Demand for the remaining airline will be so low that anyone buying a ticket will be immediately arrested as a terrorist.

Greenies Replace Sage Grouse

When the lesser sage grouse was declared to be not particularly endangered, the Greenies had to immediately find a substitute to prevent drilling or production of oil and gas in Colorado and Utah. It seems they've found their savior in a flower that amazingly:

Conservation groups are celebrating a victory after a federal judge on Tuesday ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service improperly denied Endangered Species Protection to two wildflowers that live only on oil shale formations in Colorado and Utah.

 For them it doesn't get any better than this unless they can find a hydrocarbon-eating bacteria that lives in deep HC deposits and get that declared an endangered species. Somehow I suspect that these flowers do not require oil shale to thrive and this will be brought up in the near certain upcoming court cases.

Top 5 Guns Hillary Hates

Let me guess:
1. Semiautos
2. Bolties
3. Pump actions
4. Percussion cap
5. Flintlocks

Now check the video. Or not as it runs 19 minutes. Looks like the ones they suggest are all EBR variants of one sort or another.

My Ballot

Got my ballot Saturday and turned it in today. There were 30 choices for the presidency crammed into 24 slots. This is done by making slot #24 the write in slot but in Colorado you have to register as a write in candidate in order for any write in votes to be counted for you. Only six people so registered so your write in for SMOD, Mickey Mouse, or me will go uncounted. Sorry.

When voting for President, you have to remember that you are not electing members of Parliament. Thus no proportional representation. You either win or you don't. We will elect either Trump or Clinton and even if the others combined get more votes than one of those two, one of them will be President.* So I voted for Trump on the premise that he would do me the least damage over the next 4 years. I mean, imagine one of these on the new quarter million dollar bill:

Makes it easier to pay her speaking fees with a single note. Of course if she does win, I assume her fees will double. still, only 2 bills to buy what you need.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

Here's a piece at Zero Hedge showing a Podesta e-mail describing how polling data can be fudged with a minimal chance that the publisher would get caught. Early on the point of polls is to encourage your own people and discourage the other side and if you can gin up a 12 point lead, that surely does the job. This is why when polls are published, it behooves the public to know at least some rudimentary math and maybe a bit about the makeup of their own country before breaking out the champagne or the seppuku knife.

If the polling sample breaks out 36-27-31 for D, R, I, that might be valid for parts of upper Manhattan, but not for the nation as a whole. The Dems have a slight lead on registered voters with their very high hold on blacks and a virtual lock on the prisons and graveyards, but the enthusiasm just doesn't seem to be there this year. Changing the break to say 34,33,31 will give a much more likely result and if it takes a 9 point bias to get Hill a 2 point win, a one point bias is going to look like  a prison sentence.

Update: And what do you do with dishonest polling data?

Hillary's Gun Violence Victim Is Fantastic

In the second or third sense of the word:

adjective

1.conceived or appearing as if conceived by an unrestrained imagination; odd and remarkable; bizarre; grotesque:

fantastic rock formations; fantastic designs.

2.fanciful or capricious, as persons or their ideas or actions:

We never know what that fantastic creature will say next.

3.imaginary or groundless in not being based on reality; foolish or irrational:

fantastic fears.

Seems the story was written by her staff and a warm body was selected to be the "author", and the whole thing was turned over to the press, who found nothing wrong with the story.

Cutting Gary Johnson Some Slack

O.K. so he didn't know where Aleppo was. Had it not been for the incompetence of Hillary and Barry, no one would have cared and the question would never have been asked.

QOTD - Election Years

Found at Maggies Farm courtesy of Insty:

"The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it."~Alberto Brandolini

I'm inclined to make that "at least" an order of magnitude.

Cyber War Against Russia

You always knew that it was unlike Obama to do anything aggressive against anyone but his political enemies, so here we are, the first move of his cyber war against Russia seems to be an effort to shut down Julian Assange's internet access.

It's working about as well as his Syria policy with Assange releasing sets 9 and 10 of Hillary's e-mails pretty much on schedule.

Hillary's suggestion was to send a drone strike against the Ecuadorian embassy in London so I guess you can assume that she will faithfully defend herself against all enemies, foreign or domestic as long as she's president.

Global Warming: Warming It Up

Cooking the books is what the latest proposal is about, in view of the dearth of hurricanes coming ashore almost as though mother Nature was making fun of Al Gore. The climatistas are asking that the rating system for hurricanes be redefined so as to artificially create more of them:

The current measure is the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale, which, according to the National Hurricane Center, provides "a 1 to 5 rating based on a hurricane's sustained wind speed." But if the intensity of a storm is redefined by using other criteria, such as rainfall and storm surge flooding, the game changes.
"So with a new metric, warmists can declare every storm 'unprecedented' and a new 'record,' " says Marc Morano, publisher of Climate Depot and producer of "Climate Hustle," a movie that "takes a skeptical look at global warming."

If this bunch of bunkum succeeds I suppose we can expect some of the weather squalls that pop out onto the plains around here to be elevated to the status of named storms mostly depending on how deep the water gets at some of the famously less-well-drained underpasses along I-25. Who knows, perhaps we can get the bigger snowstorms named which might help Mayor Hancock to shift the blame for slow snow removal.

Try To Remember...

The words to this ditty...

In a sworn deposition it seems Hillary couldn't remember much about her tenure as Secretary of State, claiming memory failure 21 times out of 25 and refusing the other 4 questions  as "out of scope" or some such.

In her responses, Clinton used some variation of “does not recall” at least 21 times.

She has a long history of memory problems going back to some questions about her tenure at the Rose law firm.

The moderators at the next debate should ask her about her stint as Secretary of Defense and see if she reflexively gives the "I can't remember" line of actually knows that she never held that office.

Winning The War, Losing The Peace

Something we have gotten very good at since the end of WWII. We didn't win the Korean war, we negotiated a settlement with the Chinese who have been using their half of Korea as a cats paw to annoy and threaten the west ever since.

Viet-Nam was won with a nice solid treaty threatening the North Vietnamese with the return of the B-52's if they crossed the border. This held up until the Dems took over the U.S. government and abandoned our former allies.

The Cold War was won when the U.S. began fighting it with our best weapon: money. Star Wars was a bunch of research projects that prompted the Russians to develop costly countermeasures, which bankrupted the Soviet Union. The Dems have been in mourning over that ever since as the USSR was one of their examples of how socialism could be made to work. When they took over the presidency in '92, no monies were allocated to helping the Russians become productive members of the world society, and we saw a return to power of the same people who had been running the USSR before, and who are now seemingly looking are reassembling the old empire.

The rest of the world, including the Russians, has learned from our success in the Cold war and has discovered that when properly placed, one can get a lot of mileage from a modest amount of money. Instead of spending on big, fancy military stuff, you simply spend modest (by comparison) sums on individual politicians.

Wretchard T. Cat sums this up nicely. Now we get to see how well this approach works.

Cooking The Books - Polling

Trump down 11 post-tape? Not so fast. When you see a poll like this from the Clinton News Network, the first question should be about the methodology. When your poll is made up of 58% Dems and 41% "others", the result should be laughed out of the room. Under ordinary circumstances I would expect a poll like this to deliver all the Dems to Hillary and the "Others to be 50-50 Reps and Independents. The I's usually split somewhere near 50-50 so add another 10 to Hills column and allocate the remaining I's to the R's and expect about a 70/30 split in Hills favor.

Yet with this much built in bias, Hill could only show an 11 point lead?

It's now official; She hates you, so I suppose it's to be expected that we deplorables don't think much of her either.

The DNC is denouncing Trump's suggestion that in a more honest society Hill would be in jail as being "banana republic thinking", but their own record suggests that the banana business is flourishing here already. The Clintons are already well enough known for not actually needing anything as slow and cumbersome as a justice system especially if going to court could prove to be as damaging to them as to the target of their prosecution. Thus when Hill calls for an "intervention" against a protester, it would probably pay the protester to hire some armed guards.

Clutch Repair

I have repaired, replaced, and rebuilt clutches, both hydraulic and mechanical in the past, but this trick I had never seen or heard of. Seems one of the passages in the master cylinder on my Gen 4b ('98-'02) Camaro was made too small to pass trapped air in the system so;

If the clutch on your Gen 4b Camaro is soft, spongy, and sinks to the floor, the fix is to mechanically power suck the last bits of trapped air from the Master cylinder through the reservoir. This quick and simple process will have your clutch as firm and high as your neighbors teenage daughter in about 5-10 minutes.

There's probably a more diplomatic way of describing the process, but since I'm not running for president...

Latest Window Sticker

Bumper stickers are so last election. Today your best bet is a window "sticker" taped to a car window that can be removed after the election. Lately it seems Trump has behaved about 11 years ago, like a drunken frat boy in the locker room. He's not the first and I'm sure he's not the last. He's crude, rude, and uncultured, but so what. the people who are most bothered are of little consequence aside from having a monopoly on the news.

So Trump is capable of acting the asshole. So what I say and others agree. Remember the contest for governor of Louisiana between Edwin Edwards and David Duke which gave the citizens of LA the choice of a convicted crooked pol and a KKK wizard. The slogan was "Vote for the Crook, it's important!" Edwards being the crook.

So here we are again with history repeating itself only on a national level. So here's the sticker:

QOTD, The Decade, That Is

And in video format as well.

Hill had some poor schmuck in L.A. do a year in jail for producing a video that no one saw as scapegoat for her misfeasance in Benghazi, then got Dinesh D'Souza a part-time year in jail for producing a movie critical of her.

Seems only fair.

Found at I Own The World.

Go Nuts, Go E-Postal

The October match is from Mrs True Blue Sam and lets you shoot some nuts that obviously need shooting.

Go here to get the full sized pdf of the target and all the rules, such as they are. 10 rounds only, pretty much any gun you want as long as it's user supported.

Punkin Chunkin

The big squash tossing contest is now located in Colorado where the air is thin and hope for a 1 mile toss springs eternal. I've been advising some students at an alternative school, K-12 who have been working on a couple of trebuchets. Here's the crew, at least most of them

The bearded fellow on the right has been held back so many times that no one can remember when he started there*.  In the back you can see the beginnings of one machine and on the left, the beginnings of another. These kids have about 4 weeks to finish starting pretty much from scratch.

4 weeks later out at the fairgrounds:

Voila! her they are having finished for the day with a best toss of 428 ft. The other machine is lying on its nose awaiting some additional work. Actually quite a lot of additional work. The kids are learning about all the fiddley details of a large project like this and what happens if some of them fall in the cracks. For the most part, they are learning to successfully improvise on the spot.

Down the line a bit are the "old timers.

The nearest one was powered by air springs from semi-trailers, the far one was an exercise in complexity with a 2 piece arm.

Down on the end were the air cannons.

L-R Big 10 inch, Mikes Machine, Death Star, and Big Red 1. 4000 ft is pretty much the minimum you need to be taken seriously any more.

*Oops: He's the technology instructor.

The State Of Education

In Colorado anyway. Saw this on a car in the faculty parking lot at a middle school on my dog-walking route:

The owner should know after all, he/she teaches both of them.

Speaking of dog walking:

Doesn't this look idyllic? It's about 25 yards from one of the busier streets here. Good thing it doesn't come with a sound track.

Fashion Contest

Found at Tams, where the comments are turned off.

Award yourself one point for any garment that meets any of the following criteria:

• Military surplus
• Has MOLLE loops
• Non-hunting-oriented camo (double points for Multicam, triple for Kryptek)
• Any gun- or gun-related company branding other than Beretta or Browning
• Made by: Arc'teryx, Kitanica, Propper, 5.11, Blackhawk, et al
• Has gun-specific features like mag pouches or holster compartments
• Has epaulets

I fall into the "Not a slave to fashion*" category which means I shop at the second hand stores and other discount places. I've found this makes CCW much easier on the whole. I find I can score 2 points here in the summer, and probably none in the winter.

Summertime points come to me from #3 and #6 as I wear Aloha shirts as cover garments, the eye-watering patterns being great distraction from any printing that might happen. #6 came from the Lee brand cargo shorts which come from Sears with 2 mag pockets on the left pocket overlay.

Come winter I could probably conceal a SAW under everything else I wear.

*Heard that one referring to the wardrobe manager on the Click and Clack show on NPR. One gets the impression they were being charitable to him.

Why We Love Polls

Because with little or no effort you can get any answer you want. A lot of them right now are heavily skewed to discourage targeted voters from voting.

Reuters was reporting Trump up 2 this morning which would be a significant jump from being down 6 yesterday. It makes a good headline, but look under the hood. To get to Trump by 2, the sample included 46% democrats, 32.5% Republicans, and 13.9% Independents. In the last election, Coloradoans cast more Republican votes than Dem by a small margin. Expert gerrymandering in 2010 got the Donks the House and Governorship.

Other polls suggest that about 11% of each party is planning to vote the other party, being unable to stomach the selected candidate. If the I's break 100% for Trump (unlikely) the poll would show a 46/46.4 in Trumps favor. If the I's break 50-50 (more likely), the results look like 53/39 in favor of Hill. Right now no one sees that happening either. Adjusting for the disgruntled would move about 5.8 points from D to R and 4.3 points from R to D making the margin 51.7/40.3.

In order to get to a 2% Trump win, about 8 points of the D's would have to switch to the R side, or voter turnout would have to look more like it usually does around here. Still, if it took that big an oversampling of Dems to get Trump 2 points up, think what an approximately even split must yield.