Time To Take The Car Keys From Grandma

When she starts getting a little too jiggy.

OTOH Mad Maxie has been to that point for some time. I suppose the only way to fix this is to un-elect her, which in gerrymandered Cali may be never.

Cali Mag Ban Struck Down. Now What?

A Fedral judge in San Diego has struck down Cali's newest gun ban attempt ruling that a 10-round mag capacity limit infringes the 2nd amendment. Just shows what you can do with the right judge I guess. The 15 round limit here in Colorado has been upheld to the Colo Supreme court so far so maybe Cali should have stuck with the higher round count. OTOH it would be in keeping with the never-ending push to ban guns completely to think that if they can get away with 15 in CO, then why not go for 10 in Cali? If that stands, then next will be 5.

I'll pull out my cryatal ball of very questionable reliability and make a prediction:
The case will go to the 9th circus where the law will be upheld, even if they have to resort to an en banc ruling. Next up will be SCOTUS where it will be struck down.

One can hope.

Business Opportunity - D.C.

Jason Chaffetz, R-UT who resigned this week has suggested that housing for the members of Congress is sorely lacking to the point that many of them end up sleeping on cots in their offices. Some buy houses in DC although this leads to charges that they no longer really represent their constituents back home all that well and this has gotten a couple of them unelected. Chaffetz suggests a housing allowance of $2500/mo to get the members a place to live while they're in DC and makes the case that this would probably cost less than 1 airline ticket/week to visit home. It would also make working more than 3 days a week more achievable.

Here's the opportunity: Someone in the high rise construction / real estate biz could build some high rise condos in the DC area, and get a contract to house Senators and congressmen at say $2500/month. This would be included in legislation to require all Senators and Reps to live there while they hold the office.

I would put the 2500 sq ft units on the lower floors for the Reps, the 3500 sq ft units on the upper floors for the Senators, and some 1400 sq ft units in between for indispensable staff and "secretaries". This would probably call for about 1000 total units. To reduce any rancor, the builder would NOT be allowed to put his name on the outside of the buildings in 20 ft tall gold letters.

Feinstiens Support For Antifa

Breitbart has an account of a debate between Diane Feinstein and Eugene Volokh on the topic of the hecklers veto vs actual free speech. Naturally Diane backs the brownshirts in black shirts:

Feinstein countered by suggesting that public universities might not have the resources to handle a protest on the scale of the Berkeley riots that erupted before an event featuring former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos in early 2017.
“How should a university handle this,” Feinstein asked. “No matter who comes, no matter what disturbance the University has to be prepared to handle it…To me the extraordinary circumstance is when people come in black uniforms and hit other people over the head.”

Riot cops wear black uniforms. Protesters wear black shirts. It's an important difference. Especially when the university administration sides with the black shirts and tells its campus police (blue shirts) to stand down. At that point the speakers and those who would hear them are in danger, cannot be protected, and are asked to leave for their own safety.

How Old Is Bernie Sanders?

Here is probably one of the earliest inspirations for his platform ever.

“Praxagora: I want all to have a share of everything and all property to be in common; there will no longer be either rich or poor; I shall begin by making land, money, everything that is private property, common to all.
Blepyrus: But who will till the soil?
Praxagora: The slaves.”
                                           ―Aristophanes

My guess is that Bernie was in the audience when this play debuted.

H/T to Declination. Drop on over, there's some good stuff there.

Gun Laws - The Green Light

The republicans have been exceedingly cautious on the gun bills currently languishing in assorted committees, from the individual measures like the HPA to the omnibus SHARE bill. According to my congressman, part of this is waiting foe the inevitable post-Alexandria flurry of anti gun rhetoric and bills to fade away and another part is the herd mentality of a lot of them, waiting for someone else to lead the movement. Well here it is.

My take on the Ga-6 election is that the Dems ran a perfect candidate* against a real moderate** and lost.  This should be a signal to the reps to step up to the plate and swing for the fences. Of course they won't, without some prodding from the peasants, so pull up the Washington legislative page and give your rep or Sen a piece of your mind. After all, what did we elect them for if not to push the party agenda which includes all those 2A measures.

No one has as yet, gotten a doctoral thesis out of this election yet, and without experts telling us, how can we know what we're thinking? Still, everyone seemed to agree that the Alexandria shooting moved people to the Republican side.

*The Dems don't like to admit it in public, but their platform is pretty much 30's style socialism with new words replacing some of the old ones. The absolute best Dem candidate therefore would be someone as young as possible with no voting record, no published positions on anything, and good hair. Once a Dem takes a position on something, their likability tends to drop.

**By the current definitions, a "moderate" republican is one willing to reach across the aisle and sell out his constituents. A real moderate seems to be one who, while possibly not being a full throated Trumpster, will at least acknowledge him as president and take positions similar to his.

Taking The Fifth

There's taking the fifth, as done by Mafia dons and other high profile criminals, then there's Taking The Fifth as practiced by senior level politicians. The pols do it by legally flipping off the congress and the justice departments, and then hiding records that might expose wrongdoing where they are unlikely to be found.

Billing records have been misplaced on a nightstand in the White House where they lay undiscovered for years. Records covering Susan Rice's unmasking of Trump campaign workers will not only not be spoken of by Ms. Rice, they've been stored in an old furniture warehouse in Chicago as part of the presidential library and if no fires break out, they will be sequestered there for the next 5 years

Mexican Pro Wrestling - As Real As It Gets

For some people it is. Here's a fellow whose ring persona is the evilest he could come up with - Donald Trump. The mask is a real work of art.

Only the SJW's don't know that pro wrestling is fake. For them it's as real as Russian rigging of the national elections. They worry that the persona will further infuriate the Mexicans but the wrestlers observation is that the average Mexican knows about as much about American politics as the average American knows about Mexican politics.

Trump should bring this guy up to the states, appear in a photo-op with him, then announce that he's the new liaison man between the White House and the Congress.

Gun Laws - In Progress

Met with my congressman, Mike Coffman today and asked him about the SHARE Bill and prospects for any other gun bills. He's on the Armed Services Committee and some Veterans affairs committees and isn't heavily involved in gun legislation as such but he doesn't see much hope of passage for pro gun bills while the left is busy demanding more gun control in the wake of the Alexandria shooting.

I like Mr Coffman, he's on our side. What I think he's seeing is a knee jerk reaction on the part of the Reps to the knee jerk reaction on the part of the Donks. Someone, inevitably a lefty of some sort, commits some terrible act using firearms, the left demands more gun control in spite of evidence that nothing they propose would have made any difference at all, and the Reps, not wanting to be scolded in the press, immediately go silent.

In this case the Alexandria shooting should only slow things down by 3-6 months, after all it was only Reps who were targeted and no one but the shooter was killed.

Alexandria Shooting Is Hillarys Fault

Just saw another headline quoting some SJW claiming that the Alexandria shooting was obviously Trumps fault for using so much inflammatory rhetoric. Right.

Here's the real truth: The shooting was Hillarys' fault. Totally and completely. If she hadn't run such a terrible campaign and come across as such a curmudgeonly crook, she would have won, and we would all be living in gun free harmony.

It could also have been the Seth Richs' Russians' fault for leaking those emails and making her overly transparent.

Armed Antifa

Remember when most of us dismissed calls by the Antifa group to arm themselves?

The ravings of lunatics can never be completely ignored. Loony they may be, but capable of passing a background check in spite of this they are.

QOTD - Shooting

Shooting of people at baseball practice anyway. From the Tweets of Sean Spicier:

Sean Spicier‏ @sean_spicier

Nope

So
As long as it remains legal to sell firearms to Democrats and Muslims, We can expect terror attacks like this to continue. Bernies Brownshirts and ISIS are not so different, eh?

New Gun Bill - Everything, and More!

Pretty much anyway. The SHARE ACT includes seemingly every pro gun and outdoors bill that ever got written in the last 5 or 10 years all in one 75 page package for your congressman to vote up or down.

Every single Rep and Sen will be able to say that he or she supported the bill except for one small detail somewhere in it that made voting for it impossible*. The other problem is that it will have to be referred to every committee in Washington as it likely impacts everything from revenue to CO2 emissions so the time is now to begin harassing your people in Washington to pass this thing and be done with it.

It Includes:
 a stop to banning lead sinkers and bullets
Repeal of the "sporting purposes" language from the GCA 68
relaxed definition of armor piercing ammo
the Hearing Protection act
stuff to make it harder for states to ban suppressors

And a ton of other stuff.

Conspicuously missing is interstate recognition of CCW permits which if we get something like that, we better be sure it's VERY carefully written so as to not impose the most restrictive requirements on everyone.

H/T to PAGunblog for the lead. Read the whole bill here. As of this instant, the bill has no number.

*Cynical? Moi?

Apples Self-Driving Car

Apple is working on a self driving car. I'm sure it will work smoothly on Apple approved roads. I'm also sure it won't recognize the presence of any Android based vehicles.

Microsoft missed out big time by not offering to develop an underlying common OS for all automotive applications, accessible through a USB port in the center of the dash.

Easy To Follow Instructions

Back in the days of my not-yet-wasted youth, there was a piece of poetry in Mad magazine on the topic of assembly instructions. It involved a fellow assembling a box kit model and started off with a line about "tab A into slot B insert" and went on at about 3 pages length covering every overused phrase in the instruction writers manual while picturing the assembler victim becoming increasingly distraught as he went along.

At the end there stands the fellow looking like he's ready for a 2-week vacation in the rubber room, next to a 3 or 4 foot tall model of the Eiffel Tower, complete in every detail as the poem ends: "Your Sherman Tank is now complete!"

In the course of my career I've had to write an instruction manual or two and I promise you that if you follow my directions, the job will be completed successfully in a minimum of time.

The fellow who wrote the instructions referenced in the Mad poem however, seems to have gone on to writing automotive service manuals. After carefully following his instructions which did NOT include mention of the special tool needed to remove the special fastener, I got the special panel, located in the wheel well to drop out, revealing that NOTHING is in fact installed behind it, the pictures in the book notwithstanding. Seems the manual was published before the last revision of my car was released even though the title assured me that everything was covered.

At this point I'm pretty certain I know what needs to be replaced and how to get to it without too much hair pulling, so the next step is to visit the friendly local dealer and see if he actually has one in stock. The car is 15 years old, and the part is a 2-3 ft long piece of rubber hose with a clever plastic locking fitting on each end. Should cost about $10.

Feel free to enter your guess as to price and availability in the comments. Worst case I suspect will be waiting for an '01-02 Camaro to appear in the local junkyard where I can get the hose for $5 eventually.

And The Winner Is: All parts for my car are out of production and out of stock unless they're still being used in something current. Field expedient repairs are indicated. The good news is that that sort of thing is probably much cheaper than the factory stuff and lasts just as long.

Anti-Sharia Rally In Denver

Not a greatly organized event with no speakers. From 3:30 to about 5 PM it was noisy but relatively uneventful so Rich and I went home. After we left, of course,it heated up a bit with 4 people getting arrested on various minor charges and one outstanding warrant. The Antifa thugs were mostly skinny kids dressed in black with bandannas and hoodies and the good guys ranged from scruffy bikers to one fellow looking like he was ready to take Falluja single handedly. 

The temps were in the low to mid 90's which discouraged too much 
activity. Denver sent a dozen or so SWAT officers who spent most to the time in their SUV's with the A/C on high. Note to ANTIFA: If you make the cops in full Swat gear get out into oppressively hot weather to deal with you, they're going to be bringing an ass-beating with them. Lots of cops there who did a fine job of keeping people apart up to the end when everyone decided to walk across the street to the same bus stop at which point things degenerated. I had left about 45 minutes earlier and so missed all the fun. I forgot my camera so you'll have to watch the news at the link.

The anti-sharia side definitely needs to get some poets to work on the slogans.

Get your hats
Get your coats
Now go home and
F**k your goats!

I'm sure we could do better than that. The media were complaining that they couldn't get too close to anyone without jeopardizing their PG ratings.

Unity Party Now Officially Recognized In Colo

The Unity Party now has over 1000 registered voters registered under its banner so their expected to select their candidates through a nominating convention just like the big guys. Don't get your hopes up. Their platform positions are here, hust click on the line item and get a quick summary of the position.

Warning: The platform reads like it was written by a committee of Gary Johnson and Jill Stein who took turns on the items. The Term limits line was Johnson's, no frills and to the point.

Term Limits
Unity supports limiting US Senators to two six-year terms in office, and limiting US Representatives to four two-year terms in office. 

 The line about eliminating the income tax sounds great until you see that it was written by Jill Stein.

Eliminate the Federal Income Tax
Unity supports replacing federal income taxes with a revenue measure based on the carbon content of fossil fuels as a simple way of balancing the budget, combating global warming, and encouraging the development of alternative energy sources. A reduction in fossil fuel consumption would enhance American power abroad by making this nation less dependent on foreign sources of oil.

They think they can fund the U.S. Federal Government through gas and fuel taxes alone? They also seem to think they can keep the Social Security zombie alive by changing the way we get taxed to support it now.

This outfit would most correctly be called the PP Party:

For the Pushme Pullyou mascot. Note that in this configuration it's unlikely to move very fast in any direction. Click the platform link and click on individual items to see the details.

Ol' Massa Sez You Gettin' Uppity...

Sez he wants to take you out behind the barn and give you a proper whuppin'.

Com on Al, that's cultural appropriation of the worst sort.

Nobel Prize For Intercultural Relations

Today's Mallard Fillmore suggests we observe "Cultural Appropriation Wednesdays. I suggest we add Melting Pot Mondays to the list. On either of these days, feel free to appropriate any part of whatever culture you want that appeals to you personally. I plan to have a Scottish omlette* for breakfast, tacos for lunch, and Asian food of some sort for dinner.

 Remember the word "diversity" is one of those words that the left has redefined to dance around their agenda. The words they should be using are "divisiveness" or "Balkanization"
I hereby nominate Mr. Tinsley for a Nobel Prize in intercultural relations or something like that.

*Just like any other omelette, substituting Haggis for the meat.

Draining The Swamp - Not As Hard As Thought.

While shooting the breeze at the gun show today, it occured to me how to fix the unholey mess Washington has become. My partner mentioned a friend of his who had acquired an old Thunderbird that needed a good deal of work to get it back to mostly running and I likened it to some cars I'd dealt with where the best approach was described as "Jack up the radiator cap and slide a new car under it."

In Washington you may look at some agency that is infested with career bureaucrats who have NO interest whatever in seeing their fiefdom reduced and wonder what to do since they can't be fired. Think of Trumps appointed head of the agency as the radiator cap. Keep that and completely abolish the agency. Now task the agency head with rebuilding the agency with just enough people to do the job it was originally set up to do. In most cases this can be done with under 200 people. Preference should be given to ones with experience in private industry and none in government.

NICS Checks (Barely) sets a new record

NICS checks in May were 1942677 vs 1870000 for the previous May, This is the first time this year in which monthly NICS checks actually exceeded all previous years numbers for the month. The 3.8% increase id not exactly earth shaking either.

Last year, June and July showed an abnormal bump in anticipation of some sort of government skulduggery or something so this year I expect checks to be significantly below last year. Look for big press articles heralding the end of the "gun boom". I'm also going to stick my neck out and predict that August will be another new record.

QOTD - Creativity

Found today on Scott Adams' blog in a post about the presidents new word "covefefe."

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”

Being creative or inventive often enough involves making large numbers of mistakes. It's how you figure out what doesn't work on your way to that better mousetrap. Lots of things were discovered while trying to invent something else. Sometimes it's art. Sometimes it's a whole new industry.

I might add that intuition is knowing how far back to stand while testing the new product or process.