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.