Practice

 Out walking today past a park pond, and here's the fire rescue people practicing pulling someone from the pond. 

As the "victim" was wearing a full exposure suit, it was pretty clear it was an exercise.

National Realignment

 On this date in 1845, Texas annexed the United States:

(https://twitter.com/TexCIS/status/1344470392191160320?s=03)

For their next trick, Texas will revive Louisiana borders to cover the original area, and rename it Texas Republic. Consolidation with the Republic of Dixie and the Republic of Roadrunner will follow.

A Bit Of History

 Frontpagemag has a nice historical piece on the meme going around regarding Stalins quote about counting versus voting. Also contains a historical note that possibly explains the origin of Boris Badenov. A commenter is asking for a bumper sticker. O.K.

Unfounded News

 I have it on unimpeachable authority that the first thing President Biden will be signing will be an unconditional pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell. 

The sigh of relief from Washington is expected to affect weather conditions as far away as South Carolina.

Mr. Biden will be told that the document is the lease agreement on the White House.

The Future Of Immigration

 Sock-puppet-elect Biden says he'll reverse the Trump policies on immigration, by adding "guardrails". Presumably this means the 4-lane overpasses spanning the border wall will now include OSHA-approved guardrails to prevent any unregistered democrats invading foreign infantry immigrants from falling off the edges and requiring Obamacare in the U.S.

Suggestion: He could avoid the bad publicity of ICE having to detain all those folks while paperwork is being processed by simply proposing legislation to grant statehood to all the Mexican states which would automatically make the entire population of Mexico eligible to vote. This would add some 120M new voters, and 32 new states, presumably all Democratic. Admittedly some are effectively run by violent drug cartels, but these would fit in nicely with Illinois which is run by Chicago gangs.

Trade Wars - The Other Half

 Epoch Times is reporting that the Chinese spat with Australia is having repercussions in the Chinese homeland as several cities in Chinese southern provinces are suffering from electricity shortages as a result. Of course the Chinese have alternative sources of energy but...

Zhang explained that the thermal power plants were lacking coal; hydroelectric power plants were facing low water levels; wind power plants could not operate fully due to frozen ice on the windmills; and solar power plants could not generate stable and sufficient power.

As a result, all buildings in Hunan had to set their heaters at 20°C (68°F) or lower, and elevators had to stop service. Streetlights were also cut off.

So the Green New Deal isn't working out exactly as advertised, eh? This explains the Chinese now importing coal from North Korea without even pretending that they're observing any sanctions on the country.

Pandemic Fun - With headlines!

 N.Y.Post has an article by a Yale prof speculating that once we get past the Chinky-Pox plague, the world can look forward to sex-crazed orgies and a period of wretched excesses. Sounds like fun.

At the same time, the President of Brazil. a medical authority in his own mind at least, is suggesting that the vaccines may have side effects including the feminization of men, women growing beards, and people generally mutating into Crocodiles. Kind of paints the upcoming orgies in a new light, no?

Keep your social contacts up, and keep the batteries in your phones charged as video of the above might become the next hot product. I'm visualizing a fancy house with my own lagoon where I can mate with/drag under and eat the supply of bearded bikini babes this will attract.

Georgia Elections

 Stacy (Tank) Abrams has announced that Georgia currently registers 7.7M voters. This is an impressive number as the census department counts 7.8M adults in the state and this is a raw number which includes everyone with a pulse and respiration. 

Somewhat more than that is usually required to legally vote, at least in most states, and no one has bothered to ask what number of those 7.7M voters might be either metabolically or ethereally challenged. Again it varies by state, but most states disenfranchise these sorts of people, at least to some extent.

Not to worry, as I expect that if someone in Georgia is disinclined to go to the trouble of filling out and submitting a ballot, there will be lots of people there who will be pleased to do it for them, and as many times as might seem prudent to insure that the persons preferences are properly expressed. 

At this point I would be completely unsurprised to hear, on Jan 6 (or 7th, or 10th or whenever) that Georgia had elected 2 senators with a record setting turnout of 105% or more of the states eligible voting population.

QOTD - Education

 Dr (very important) Jill Biden produced a paper back in 2006 on retention of students in community colleges that contained this gem, found at Gateway Pundit:

"Three quarters of the class will be Caucasian; one quarter of the class will be African American; one seat will hold a Latino; and the remaining seats will be filled with students of Asian descent or non-resident aliens."

 Now we all know that Harvard has been trying to reduce the number of Asian students enrolled there for the last few years by one subterfuge or another, but here's a scholarly paper on how to do it.

Future Elections

 Looking at how this election was stolen, and the efforts everywhere to cover the deed up by studiously investigating everything but the actual cause, let's look into what needs to be done to put a stop to this, or at least cause the crooks to develop better methods.

How about a mandatory forensic audit of all voting machines used in any election that includes federal office or federal level questions?

A quick plug in test to assure that what goes in is in fact what comes out would be a start although that immediately brings to mind the on-board computers in Volkswagens that can recognize a test probe and reset themselves to give the right answers. At this point it seems that a plug-in to a voting machine makes anything at all possible with the implication that the presence of a plug-in might also trigger a complete software delete and reload depending on who wrote the plug-in.

Joe Huffman has described flummery detection software as fairly easy to write, and flummery prevention algorithms as something any honest programmer could include in his work. I suspect that if such software were submitted for approval to a less than honest purveyor, that said purveyor could take that as a starting point and have his own people write the flummery into the program while carefully skirting the obvious trip wires.

Whatever, tamper resistant software is sorely needed and needs to be ready in time for the 2022 elections. 2 years should be sufficient to develop this. The big danger to Dominion &Co would be that the new programmers might discover the mechanism used in this election, blow the whistle on it, and somehow find an honest hews reporter who might publish it which would lead to jail time for someone and possibly serious imprecations for some elected officials. Might at least be fun to watch.

QOTD - Future Elections

 Found this at Indy:

UPDATE: Jim Bennett emails: “My theory is, Kamela will want Joe to stay for two years and a day, so she will be eligible for that second full term in 2028. She wants the 10-year presidency, second only to FDR. And after all, Joe’s just window dressing. No harm in keeping him around longer. Also, blame him, not her, for the red tide of the 2022 elections.”

 I have my doubts already about any red tide in '22 as afyer the Dem wins in Georgia coming up*, the fix should be comfortably in in time for the next elections.

*NOTE: Georgia is using the same Dominion voting machines and software that gave the state to Biden. This time there are only 4 candidates on the ballot for 2 offices. My prediction is that both Dems will win by about 2% which is high enough to not trigger recounts. The big question is not who will win, but by how much. Too big a sweep will trigger investigations, and too close a win would trigger recounts and possibly audits. Can't have that.

SCOTUS Rejects Texas

 "Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." - J. Stalin

"Told you.". - Stalins ghost

The Explanation

 Here's a headline from an article by a respected (they pay him) writer:

Is Biden Just Picking His Cabinet Nominees at Random?

The answer is yes. My explanation is that they're humoring him. As soon as he's inaugurated, he'll be given a "lateral promotion" to "Executive Manager of Policy*", and President Harris will move all her picks in and get down to the business of running the country into her favorite ditch. So you see, it doesn't really matter who Biden picks.

*Terry Pratchett described  a situation in which the devils in Hell ran a coup d'état against an incompetent manager in Hell. They announced that as a reward for his exemplary work, he was being promoted to Policy Manager or some such. He was given a big office with a big desk and a pile of blank sheets of parchment a pen, and 2 slots in the wall marked In and Out. His new job was to write new Policy and put it in the out slot. The same paper shortly came back through the In slot, which he then would mark up and correct and send back Out. He never noticed that the slots were connected or that his office had no doors. He was very happy.

Party Of The Rich Demands Subsidy From The Poor

 Here in Colorado, the power company, Xcel energy, has been asked to begin setting up a wide network of charging stations for the anticipated surge in electric vehicles. Zcel has estimated this would cost some $130M to do and suggests that the cost simply be blended into everyones utility bill.

I eagerly anticipate a requirement for a statewide network of gas stations to supply free gas to motorists, paid for by a tax on the O&G industry.

Arizona To Override Fraudulent Vote Count

 Having seen enough evidence to convince anyone, the Arizona legislature has filed notice that its electoral votes will be apportioned by its legislature.

This rather historic event is being roundly ignored by the MSM. Imagine my surprise.

Cheat Duplicated

 Seems in Georgia, the Trump people got a Dominion machine to examine, and after entering an equal number of votes for Trump and Biden, the machine took 37 votes away from Trump and added them to Biden. This from a modest number of test votes.

Looks pretty shifty to me.

Attention All Thriller Writers!

 I found an interesting article at medical express today suggesting that a new drug might be a quick cure for numerous debilities of mental decline. I've seen reports of breakthroughs of this sort before but nothing ever seems to come of them. Presumably the drugs are doled out to highly placed politicians which keeps them in office for abnormally lengthy periods and accounts for them only leaving their office feet first.

One of my friends wondered if this might be speeded up in time to do Slow Joe Biden any good, and if it did become available, if the VP would attempt to interfere. This could set up a behind-the-scenes catfight between the VP and the 1st lady.

There's the basis for a good political thriller: The 1st lady invites the female VP over for tea, and shortly thereafter the VP succumbs to something which the surgeon General labels "Covid". Said Surgeon General then moves into the VP slot and rumors begin to circulate that he and the 1st lady might be more than just friends. The president, who is doing well to remember his wife's name, provides distractions and comic relief.

Not being a big fan of this sort of literature, I have no idea who might be qualified to write such a thing. Might even make the basis for a dark sitcom along the lines of "Fresno".

Gun Sales - Biden Can Sure Sell Them

The curve is now back to about the shape one would expect, just 156% of what one might normally expect.

 With the news now reporting that the AG says there's no evidence of vote fraud, I expect the Dems will win both Georgia seats by a modest and predictable 2% margin. Probably the exact same margin in both races to within .002%. 

Fun Shooting Stuff

 Lord! Do I hate this gloomy election stuff.

Yesterday a friend and I went to the range to evaluate a shooting drill to use in the club PCC matches. Based on a pistol drill from Shooting magazine if I remember right, the original drill calls for a 3 in circular target at 3 yards. The shooter stands with arms outstretched forward, gun holstered and loaded. At the signal he draws and fires 3 shots at the target. Par performance is 3 hits in 3 seconds or less. 

This is based on somebody's description of a typical gunfight. 3 shots at 3 yards in 3 seconds. For us PCC shooters, the regimen needs to be somewhat different. We kept the 3 in target, started from low ready, and moved the target out until 3 seconds began to look about right. 

Turns out the distance is probably 12 yards. At 12 yards Gary was getting all hits in about 2.5 seconds. I got one string like that, but I'm famously slow.

So there's a low ammo warmup stage. We didn't get to experiment further, but the A zone for a head shot on an IDPA target is 4 inches dia. Paint the head black except for the A zone and move it back to 16 yards. Same MOA and easy target availability. I think I'll make a 4 in mask to paint some targets with for the next match.

The Last Election

 I hate to be such a pessimist, but has anyone noticed that the Georgia voting machines that "found" a big surge for Biden at the last minute, are the same ones being used for the 2 senate seat runoffs?

One should ask if the Dems will be winning in a huge landslide or by a more believable narrow margin. And what is the margin being set at?

Fun With Headlines

 Found this in an Epoch Times newsletter:

FDA Approves New Drug Combination Treatment for CCP Virus

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted an emergency use authorization (EUA) for a promising new drug cocktail for hospitalized CCP virus patients. The treatment involves combining ...  Read More Now you could click on the link and go to a boring article full of lawyer and doctor talk, or you could just read the teaser posted here and add your own conclusion to the line. Since March, plan A has appeared too many times to count, all giving false hope. Plan B sounds like a lot more fun.

Observation

 Second marriages, they say, are the triumph of hope over experience.

Like voting for democrats only with a higher success rate.

Election Update 6 - Question

 Have any of the voting machines or ballot counting servers been confiscated as evidence yet? If not, then why not?

If the electronic underpinnings of the voting process in Georgia have been jiggered to favor Biden, now that 2 counts of fraudulent totals have been counted, have the machines in question been diddled to affect the outcome of the upcoming runoffs?

Election Humor

 

Democrats today staged a dress rehearsal of the Harris/Biden Biden/Harris inauguration at an undisclosed location in Virginia featuring reenactors recruited from Antifa and BLM ranks.

The event went smoothly with no serious casualties although several of the participants expressed disappointment that this wasn't the actual storming of the White House they had been promised, and that the mockup of the White House contained no items worthy of looting.

Election Update 5 - Futile Recounts

 Several states now have cries for recounts in light of large scale skuldugery in the voting process. This strikes me as at best a delaying action and at worst, an exercise in futility. Let us posit that in some hypothetical zone, the voters cast 1M votes. At the same time, the voting machines added 20,000 votes to one of the candidates totals, giving him the win by say, 5000 votes. All evidence points to organized fraud, but what's the solution? A recount?

So you do a recount and the result is to show 1,020,000 votes cast, and the same fellow winning by 5000 votes.

So what?

Election Update 4 - Benford Curve in Colorado

 The Benford curve has been coming up a lot lately, a statistical oddity that says that in a collection of randomly assembled numbers, the leading digits of the numbers will occur normally in predictable rates.

Forensic accountants will tell you that this is a useful tool for pointing out areas of a ledger that need closer scrutiny. One can take, for example, the county-by-county vote count for either Trump or Biden and find the trump numbers closely follow the curve. In Pennsylvania, Michigan, and other select locations, Bidens curve more closely resembles a roller coaster track. This is true for the hotly debated states, but I got to wondering if there might be something going on here in Colorado. 

Actually that's a pretty good bet as we have all mail in voting coupled with ballot harvesting, and essentially zero losses for Dems on the ballot even though the tax questions tend to lose. I pulled up the county level vote totals for the Rep, Sem, Libertarian, and one obscure minor party candidate and made a graph:

The Independents data follows the predicted curve fairly well. Trump isn't too far off except for the big jump at 9 which nearly everyone seemed to have. We have 64 counties, so 21 would be what one would expect to find in the ones column. Yes, I probably could have made the X axis denominated in percentages, but I didn't. So sue me. Or divide the numbers by 64. In your head.

Note the blue Biden results with 2 outlying bumps at 3 and 7. Note that everyone had a bump at 7 and a near zero at 8. Toward the right end of the curve, the combination of this being a relatively small data set along with a low expected count anyway, means that some twitching in the 7-8-9 range should surprise no one. Nothing in this graph points specifically to any hanky-panky, but as Larry Correia points out, it strongly suggests that there is something fishy going on. Exactly what is TBD, but if one looks one will, in all likelihood, find.

NOTE The probability of anyone looking is as close to zero as not to matter. Chicago rules: If you own the cops, you won't get arrested. If you own the judge, you won't get convicted. Around here, the Dems own both.

Election Update - 3

This map from Bijourennaisanceman (sp?) tells a story of things still being way up in the air. Al Gore got 37 days and multiple recounts before he was forced to give up, so President Trump should get no less. 

 At this point it looks pretty reasonable to me although some of the tan colored states could probably be colored pink or light blue without actually assigning them to one side or the other. Is there fraud going on? Certainly! Is there any real chance that exposing it will actually change an outcome? Far less I'm thinking. Telling PA to segregate their ballots after they've been counted is a nice thought, but I suspect they've already been mixed together and the questionable ones are impossible to separate by now. Some "computer glitches" can seemingly be "unglitched"  as in MI but will that work anywhere else?

If Trump can pull this off and keep his 2 Senate seats in Georgia, there's a modest, but finite chance that some highly placed Democrats might go to jail. Otherwise nobody will be charged with anything and the green light to do this again in 2022 is given.

Election Update - 2

 Having been informed that he won the election, Slow Joe has come out and read the obligatory "I won" speech for the press. In it he invites the Nazis he just defeated to put aside the small differences that separate them from his Democratic Socialist party, and join together to rule. Upcoming festivities include a reenactment of Lenin's storming of the Russian parliament to be performed at the White House using Antifa members as stand-ins for the Bolsheviks originally used.

Here's a suggestion sure to cement his popularity: Solve the Covid problem in about 2 weeks. This is easily done through a simple business deal in which Hunter Biden is given a seat on the board of directors of the company in China that makes the vaccine, and Joe will give the Chinese an exclusive contract to supply 350 Million doses of their vaccine. 

The Chinese vaccine has been in testing in XinJiang province for about 6-8 months with the Uigher population there, and NO bad side effects have been reported. None. At all. Reported.

The Bidens have extensive experience with this sort of business deal so no problems are anticipated.

Election Update

 The MSM is now calling the election for Biden, and the Senate looks to be a 2-seat majority for Republicans. The problem with this is that both seats are subject to a runoff vote in Georgia in January. Both seats are heavily favored to go Republican BUT if they can be flipped, then the Senate would be tied with VP Harris casting the deciding vote. 

I am expecting everyone from Putin and Xi to every billionaire in the world to be contributing to campaigns for these offices in the next 2 months making these the most expensive seats ever bought, possibly right up there with the presidency itself. 

I pity the poor fools in Georgia, I really do.

Costa Rica is looking better and better.

Health Update

 It seems there's nothing wrong with me. A nodule on my liver was determined to be benign  as were a couple of nodules on my thyroid. 

I also have no Covid symptoms.

Notwithstanding anything some of my liberal friends say, there is nothing toxic about me. For a slow, arthritic, old fart, I'm in pretty good shape. D'wife is even amazed that after all the scans of every sort I've endured in the last 3 years, that I don't glow in the dark.

AOC says she wants to begin collecting FB and Twitter posts to make up a list of people who colluded with Trump over the last 4 years so they can be targeted for exclusion from polite society and maybe sent to re-education centers lest they corrupt the youth or something. I'm watching real estate in Texas in case I have to relocate.

NICS Checks - Still Record Highs

 Gotta hand it to the Dems, they can sell guns like no others.

Given the state of the elections, I expect this trend will continue for at least 3-6 more months.

On the good side, I just scored 1000 primers and enough brass to keep me in good shape for a while.

Election, Phase 1

 Here's a map showing the outcome of the election as of 7 AM Nov 4. If you don't like it, keep in mind there are several others out there with different results.

So far, so good, BUT:

Back in 1960, the contest between Kennedy and Nixon came down to who might claim Illinois. Nixon handily carried the southern part of the state, and Kennedy was favored in the Chicago area. As the results came in with more and more of the rural districts going for Nixon, Mayor Daily (remember him?) kept delaying reporting the results from Cook County, telling us that the size and complexity of the area made counting difficult. Eventually the rest of the state finishes counting and certified their results, at which point Dailys people began finding boxes of ballots in the trunks of abandoned cars scattered around Chicago. Amazingly (!) they produced enough Kennedy votes to swing the state, and thus the presidency, to the Democrats. No one was fooled by this and Nixon was encouraged to contest the results, but being a perfect gentleman, he declined, and the rest is history.

Fast forward 80 years, and here's the same thing only scattered all across the country using boxes of absentee/mail-in ballots instead of abandoned Cadillacs. The technology has advanced to make the process slightly less obviously suspect, but nothing has actually changes and in a couple of states the process for verifying ballots has been effectively done away with so all the crooks need to do is fill out enough ballots to swing the result, and truck them over to the counting sites. Voila! Electoral victory!

Meantime, I suppose, that process will be masked by rioting Antifa and BLMs to draw attention away from the obvious frauds being perpetrated in the back rooms. I do wish the country the best of luck. We're going to need it.

No Need To Vote

 We are reliably informed, by no less an authority than Nancy Pelosi that we don't need to vote in the election as the outcome has already been determined.

New Biden Slogan?

 Biden is now campaigning on the premise that he can unite the country. His speech seems to follow his theme of "borrowing" from others in that he is now calling for  "One Nation, One People, One President."

Hey! It worked before.

Reading the Auguries

 Noting that the Dow has lost 2000 points in the last 2 weeks, thousands of "migrants" are beginning to move toward our southern border, and that the Chicoms are moving troops down near Taiwan. I'm wondering if this is happening in anticipation of a Biden win. It's a rather depressing outlook.

Daily Grind

 So it's 18 degrees out with 2" of snow on the ground and my trusty snow blower has decided it doesn't want to start. I'm supposed to go get a Covid test today so the doctors can laser my colon Friday so I need to get out. OK no big deal. Just would have been nicer with the blower working.

I got a High Tower Armory bullpup stock for the Hi Point back in January and installed it. From reading the reviews, I seem to be the only person in the country having troubles with it so there's that. Andy Wentzel at HTA has been very helpful to me on this.  I made some minor tweaks to it this month which seem to have fixed the problems, and took it to a club IDPA match. 

Everything worked fine. The only problems were from me needing to adjust to the new balance and functions. Safety and mag release are in new places, the mag release needs to be padded to protect my amputated finger or I need to learn to use a different finger. Either way the process is smoother. Having learned to point shoot the stock Hi Point I now find that the same muscle memory puts the point of impact significantly higher with the bullpup. Need to work on that.

Gun shoots fine, left hand or right, but the red dot is a bit lower on the bullpup so getting on target takes a bit longer. 

Daughter got married Saturday and now I'm a step-grandpa in a vastly expanded family.

The Next Plague?

 O.K. who had this?

Escaped self-cloning mutant crayfish created in experimental breeding programmes have invaded a Belgian cemetery.

The good news is that they're tasty. I can't seem to get a decent link to the story but I found it on Yahoo news.

Link to story here.

QOTD - Gaffe?

 A Gaffe is described as when a politician accidentally speaks the truth. Joe Biden, and for that matter, John Hickenlooper, are both campaigning as though they have enough ballots ready to be dumped into the boxes to overcome any shortfall that might reault from lack of enthusiasm ao the part of their followers.

Secondly, we’re in a situation where we have put together — and you’d [sic] guys, did it for our, the president Obama’s administration, before this — we have put together, I think, the most extensive and and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.    Joe Biden

In this case I believe him. Possibly for the first time ever, but sooner or later you knew he would speak the truth about something. 

Covid Death Rate

Scott Adams asked for this information on his periscope and I thought it was a valid question, so here is the ongoing death rate for the population at large. This is done from 7 day moving average data by dividing the revised number of  deaths by the revised number of cases. That is, the data is presented as a continuously cumulative number, so I took each new update and subtracted the previous total to get the unit change. 

It's hard to read accurately, but you can see that the disease initially was quite deadly as the first victims were probably the weakest, and of course, no one had any idea what to do about it. Early on HCQ became known as a pretty good treatment to at least slow the progress and later other drugs made their appearance. The low spots are .006 (.6%) on 6/28, and .066 (.66%) on 10/12. The initial onslaught killed a lot of people while we tried to manufacture millions of ventilators which turned out to be counter productive, and the second wave, much ballyhooed by the press as a major administration failure, looks to have been dealt with fairly well with the advent of Remdesivir, extracted antibodies, and a couple of other treatments. 

You can copy the data at the link, and paste it into your own spreadsheet and massage it to suit yourself. Is the total number of cases going up? Yes, of course, it gets higher with each new case, but so what? If the fatality rate is dropping faster than the infection rate, we'll soon reach the point where very few people are left who haven't caught it and very few of those will die of it. 

About those deaths. Whose fault are they? The media will tell you Orange Man Bad, but unless they can prove that Trump was operating a bio warfare lab in Wuhan, China, I'm not inclined to assign any blame to the administration. Address your complaints to Emperor Xi.

Fun With Headlines - Thankgiving

 Dr Fauchi says:

Dr. Fauci Tells Americans to 'Bite the Bullet and Sacrifice' Thanksgiving

 Given the price of bullets, I think I'll stick with biting the Turkey

Fun With Headlines - Biden Endorses Trump

 First there's this quote from Sleepy Joe himself:

Joe Biden Tells 56% of Americans Who Say They Are Better Off Under Trump: “Maybe You Shouldn’t Vote for Me”

 When a candidate acknowledges that a significant majority feel his opponent is doing a better job than his group did when they were in power, you have to wonder why he's even still running. The honorable thing to do would be to admit you're wrong and just drop out.

Why The Left Considers Everyone Else A Nazi

 I'm thinking this stems from political nearsightedness. First consider this view of the U.S. from the POV of a Manhattenite:

Note the uniformity of everything West of the Hudson river. There is no difference between Jersey and California. O.K. there actually isn't that much today, politically, but let's not get wrapped up in that. Socially, they see no real difference.

Now consider the political landscape. On the left end, there's the Communists, exemplified by Joe Stalin. Moving to the right we next find the Socialists exemplified by Hitler and Mussolini, followed by centrists, then conservatives. Stalin complained about "right wing Nazis/Fascists", and his followers, not being able to see beyond Hitler, concluded that there really wasn't anything of consequence to the right of Der Furher. Hence all Capitalists have become Fascists somehow, and are thus to be eliminated, the sooner the better.

Rather near-sighted of them, don't you think?

The Ongoing Coup

 Speaker Pelosi has introduced a bill to set up a commission to look into the Presidents capacity to carry out his duties. This would be a “kinder, gentler coup d’etat”. Doesn’t sound like the move of someone confidant in an upcoming election victory.

Since this presumably has to also pass the Senate, it thus qualifies as election-year showboating. 

Of course Trump could conceivably declare the effort to be treasonous in light of his obvious health and sanity, and demand that everyone voting for this be arrested for treason and removed from office until the outcome of their trials.

We live in interesting times.

NICS Checks - Creeping Toward Normal?

 As of September, the curve is at least headed back toward levels where we would expect it to be but gee, nothing like a violent "idea" out there burning large areas of town down with the tacit approval of city governments to give people the idea that perhaps they are their own first responder and that there is popular support for the idea.

Still looks like a record year for gun sales and probably CCW permits where they're allowed. Those Democrats sure know how to sell guns. Hopefully this dropoff in sales will get some components and ammo back on the shelves.

Reloading Press

 A friend of mine had 2 of these things in his shop when he moved but had never seen them used, nor any idea what they were for. He figured they had to be good for something and guessed that I might think of something so he gave me one. 

It's all pneumatic and came with no tooling at all. It indexes through 8 stations and can be made to stop accurately so I thought I might try automating my reloading press. So far I've made 8 shell holders, the ring which will hold the tooling, and a frame to hold it all together. Shells are loaded at the 5 o'clock position, decapped at 6 o'clock where the tall tower is mounted, primed at 7, inspected for primer at 9, etc. 

This is proving to be a non-trivial project so don't hold your breath waiting for video of shells falling like rain at the 3 O'clock position. The primer inspection will be just a poke with a wire which will trigger a light if it goes too far up so that should be easy. All else is done from the top and might be done by mounting the tools on ball screws. I'm thinking it will be run from an Arduino controller so I can include emergency stops if one of the inspections fails or whatever

As I've warned you before, prepare for retirement by starting an unending project so you'll have a reason to get out of bed in the morning, and your immortality is virtually assured. If you don't, you'll be dead in 6 months.

New Debate Format

 I hereby propose the "Kindergarten Format for future presidential debates:

Put plexiglass shields around the candidates podiums, big enough to allow hand waving. candidate mics are normally off. Tell the candidates this is for COVID reasons. Give the moderator 2 big buttons which turn each candidate mic on for, say, 2 minutes. Candidate podiums will have 2 lights, one green and one yellow. Moderator asks a question, and presses the appropriate button. Candidate green light goes on and mic goes live. After 90 seconds, the light goes yellow. After 2 minutes, light goes out and mic goes off. The podium shielding will muffle any overtime shouting and the debate takes on an aura of adult participation. If this seems draconian, have the first debate as usual, with the threat that if it degenerates, the next 2 will happen under the "kindergarten rules".

I Live In The Nicest Neighborhood

 

My neighborhood in Littleton has to be one of the nicest in Colorado. Everyone is friendly and when you see them outside walking dogs or whatever, they always smile and wave back at you as you pass. This being an election year I happy to see the high level of involvement and enthusiasm with yard signs everywhere which of itself is good even though I have my doubts about the amount of thinking that went into some of the opinions, I'm sure I'm not alone in this.

As we all know, throwing poo is stereotypical primate behavior, and as we are all primates, a certain amount of this is to be expected. Among the higher primates, one expects this behavior to be more figurative than actual, but I suppose evolution is a slow process and manifests itself more in some than in others. Happily, even with exceptions involving throwing actual poo, the poo tossed at my yard signs is commendably not only tied shut in plastic “doggy bags” it is also obviously produced by a rather small dog, so thanks to whomever is doing it for making your point in a way that is easy and relatively sanitary to clean up.

Have a nice day!

SCOTUS Seats

 The current situation presents some interesting opportunities all around. It is widely believed that Trumps nominee for RBGs seat will be Amy Barrett. The advantage here is that Mrs Barrett has already been through the Senate confirmation process and her only drawback is that she is a practicing Catholic. This being the case, if the Republicans had half the instinct for a power grab that the Dems have, Trump could nominate Mrs. Barrett on Monday, tomorrow, McConnell could call for a vote on Wednesday, and Mrs Barrett could be warming Ruth's seat on Friday. Also on Friday, we'd have live TV footage of Dem Heads exploding and on Saturday, of several major cities in flames. 

On the other side, the news media would be able to ask Slow Joe who his 2 picks for additional Supreme court seats will be should he win and take office. 

Memory Care

 Someone posted on Nextdoor here about needing a memory care facility in my general part of town. Horrible of me I know, as my mother went that way, but all I could think was that Joe Biden was making a campaign stop in Colorado and they needed a place to put him up for a day or two.

Trumps SCOTUS Shortlist

 Trump has added a few more names to his SCOTUS short list. Swell. At this point there are only 2 justices looking at shuffling off the mortal coil in the next 4 years, and I'm pretty sure Trump already has in mind exactly who will be the suggested replacements.

If you listen carefully, you can hear the clanking of chains being yanked.

Summer Blizzard?

 OK here's the MWS prediction for the daily high temps this coming week:

Accompanying the slight cooling off will be a predicted 5.8" of snow. Note that no local trees have shed any leaves. Also lots of fruit and veggies in peoples gardens are going to take a beating. Low temps are forecast to be down to 29 degrees although only for a couple hours and with everything buried under all that snow, maybe we won't lose ALL of our home grown food.

So tons of broken limbs, damaged cars and houses, and probably power outages. Who had Early Ice Age in the disaster pool?

August NICS Checks - Another Record, But Getting Back To Normal?

 August continues the unusually high gun sales rate although the curve looks like it's returning to the traditional shape of modest summer sales.

Of course it's also possible that sales are tapering off because the vendors have run out of guns which has happened in some places. Sales could remain high as the election approaches if people give Biden any chance of winning. My favorite vendor is completely out of primers of any sort at all but if the trend is toward moderation, they should come back into stock this month or next. One hopes.

I Got Assaulted

 

Not a huge deal, but it accentuated several things I and my cohorts are doing wrong. Complacent, we have become, what with living in one of the less disrupted areas for sure. The 3 or 4 of us are wont to have breakfast once a week where we discuss the state of the world and observe the terrible decline/humor of the situation. In light of the Kung Flu, and with the onset of summer, we moved our venue from a local restaurant to a local park which featured covered benches and an open rest room.

The problem here is the rest room. Since it's open, the vagrant population finds it attractive as well. Yes, it looks about like you'd expect, but it is open.

So we're sitting at a bench, doing our thing when one of the vagrants walks by, earnestly talking to the clouds, the ducks, and anyone who might be listening. He seems to have a problem with other people as he berates us as he walks by, but he does keep walking. We pay no attention to him. He continues all around the park, and eventually circles back past us. His path takes him around behind me and he mutters about telling us once, twice, and three times about something, and as he passes behind me he sucker punches me up side the head, open handed, hard enough to knock my hearing aid out of my ear and about 10 feet away.

My initial reaction is to jump up and present a likely counter attack which seems to work as he offered to join a fight if I was willing to start it. Facing him, several things become apparent: First is that living rough leaves a person in a wiry sort of fit condition. He's about 30, I'm 73. I'm in good shape for 73, but not that good. Noting that, I look for an equalizer. Additional note: Both myself and one of the other 2 of my party have CCWs. Naturally neither one of us was actually carrying that day. Of all the stuff on the table, the best option was my thermos which, being plastic, would probably not make much of an impression on a deranged attacker. It brings to mind this:

Sean O’Leary was walking through a dim passageway when someone spoke to him.

"Good evenin’, O’Leary," said the muffled figure. "Don’t ye be knowin’ your old pal Reilly any more?"

Sean stared at Reilly, whose face was a patchwork of bandages and adhesive plasters. One arm was in a cast and he was leaning on a crutch.

"Saints!" cried O’Leary. "Was ye hit by a train, Reilly, or did ye merely jump from the trestle?"

"It could have been both," said Reilly, "considerin’ the feel of it. But the truth is, I was in bed with McClatchy’s wife and McClatchy himself comes in with a mammoth huge shillelagh in his hand and the inconsiderate creature beat the livin’ bejazus outa me."

"He did indeed," said O’Leary. "But couldn’t ye defend y’rself, Reilly, me boy? Hadn’t ye nothin’ in your own hand?"

"Only Mrs. McClatchy’s ass," said Reilly. "Tis a thing of beauty in itself, but not worth a damn in a fight."

I now know exactly how Reilly felt when McClatchy burst in. Well, OK there was 3 of us and one of him although I believe our average age was somewhere in the upper 60s. Seeing nothing useful on the table, I look to my partners, remembering the days of my wasted youth when an attack on one of our motorcycle club was an attack on the whole club. There they sit, like 2 deer in the headlights. At this point I put on my best Cohen the Barbarian and face my attacker. He sees me ready to fight but not attacking, so he takes that as a win, dares us to call the cops, turns, and walks off. So I call the cops, 3 of whom dutifully arrive and begin to search all the wrong ends of the park. Eventually we get them straightened out and they interview both of us, at opposite ends of the park. There was also a second, independent witness, so good. They ask if I wish to press charges, and I agree. When they leave, the attacker is no where to be seen so I suspect he left with one of the cops. Fine.

Lessons learned:

1, I went to all the trouble and expense to get the permit, I need to be carrying ALL THE TIME. As Churchill allegedly said “A gentleman seldom needs a gun, but when he does, he needs it very badly.”

2. My breakfast buddy is in the same boat here.

3. My breakfast buddies are not the same people I used to ride motorcycles with. They are much more respectable than that. Much like Mrs. McClatchy's ass. Only older.

4. I'm the only one of our group who doesn't have a smart phone. If you have one, you need to develop a reflex to turn on the video record mode at the first sign of trouble lest the aliens have you probed, implanted, and returned leaving no evidence.

A court appearance will happen at some point. I am inquiring as to what that will entail. More on that later I guess.

Who's In Charge Here?

 Found at Breitbart, this story about Clear Channel, the billboard division, who sold a billboard to Urban CURE, a group that promotes self help. Click the link to see the board.

Useful stuff, no? I suppose if I was a hard-core Karen, I could complain that it was cultural appropriation, with U.C. encouraging blacks to appropriate culture from whites, and maybe that's what's going on here.

Parker said the Milwaukee chapter of Black Lives Matter “didn’t like it” and “went after our boards,” alleging they were racist and sexist.

“They told Clear Channel Outdoor,” the company that approved and posted the billboards, “that they will control messaging, that they will control narrative,” she alleged.

Now when someone buys a billboard, who's in charge of the message? Would that be the buyer of the board, the seller of the board space, or any hobo walking down the street that disapproves of the message? I suppose it depends. If Al-Quaida bought one that said "Kill All Jews" there would be grounds to object coming from several sources. If the Republicans bought one that said "Vote For Trump" would a democrat have grounds to demand it be taken down? If this idea is taken to its last logical extreme, no billboard would exist anywhere. 

Superficially this is a good idea as it reduces visual clutter, OTOH a working capitalist economy demands that products be bought and sold, and advertising greases the skids. Conversely, silencing your opponents reduces the competition which goes against the 1st amendment.

Clear Channel Outdoor told the news station that the ad “did not receive proper approvals” and “lacked appropriate attribution.”

Which sounds like Clear Channel is turning an editorial function over to an outside 3rd party, BLM in this case.

 

 

The 2 Parties

 Found this screen shot on Insty with 250 comments attached:

Things you can count on: When the Evil party does something stupid, the Stupid party will just stand there in slack-jawed approval.

What Governments Are For

 Governments are formed by people primarily to do jobs that need to be done, but which have no deliverable product that can be readily sold to show a profit*. National defense for example, paving and maintaining roads, and police work. One has an expectation , in that last example, that the police will, if not eliminate crime, at least minimize it by their presence. Lately we've been getting a dose of what happens in their absence as municipal governments, for one reason or another, refuse to act to stop increasingly violent rioting and looting.

Now in Kenosha, they may have gotten what they wanted in the form of a scapegoat. Not for the looting, which they still seem to approve of, but someone to punish for acting where the government has refused. 

It's still early and the fog of war is still quite thick, but when rioters run amok and the municipal government refuses to stop them, why should anyone be surprised when the citizens step in to deal with the problem? 

*This is probably why government work is so notoriously shoddy. If you deliver a mediocre product, what would the people do, farm the work out to an adjacent government? True, the obvious solution is to vote the incompetent bums out, but how often does that happen? Governments are quite good at only one thing, and that is self-perpetuation.

Voting By Mail

 How it's done varies by state. You have to be careful in most states lest you get caught being overly flexible with the rules:

From Peter Grants page.

In Colorado the rule is that you're allowed to deposit up to 10 ballots at a time into the drop boxes, then you have to go back to your car for the next 10. Please remove the rubber band from the bundle before depositing. Finding 20-30 rubber banded bundles in a drop box raises eyebrows when they are counted as the signatures seem to be all in the same handwriting.

News Of The day - Kim Jong Un

 Again the rumors are circulating of the death of Lil Kim, the fat one, and the imminent takeover of the country by his sister. Speculation also abounded when Generalissimo Francisco Franco died with conflicting reports coming out of Spain about as fast as they could be written. This inspired Don Henley:

Can we film the operation? Is the head dead yet?
You know the boys in the newsroom got a running bet
Get the widow on the set, we need dirty laundry

So who knows. Until we see the citizens of NK out in the streets, trying to mourn convincingly at the urging of armed police, who knows. Fat Lims sister is crtainly better looking that he is but reputedly is even nastier.

QOTD - Acceptance Speech

 Best QOTD so far from Slow Joe ending his acceptance speech:

“There’s never been anything we’ve been able to accomplish when we’ve done it together”.

Frankly I admit to being surprised that he's still the nominee. I had expected that he would have been quietly shuffled off the ticket in one of the online-only votes limited to anonymous, highly placed members of the DNC Illuminati. 

DNC - Divide-N-Conquer

QOTD - Gun Law - 9th Circuit

 From the 9th circuits ruling in Duncan et al v Becerra at Joe Huffmans place:

The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press . . . and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.

Striking down Cali's ban on standard capacity magazines. What it means is that no law can be justified by citing itself. If there is a law restricting some part of an amendment, that in and of itself does not justify further infringement and may well be unconstitutional as well. 

Yet Another Ammo Shortage

 Just contacted my usually reliable supplier of powder and primers. Got told I'm out of luck. Seems the ammo manufacturers have first dibs on the output of the primer suppliers, and they're taking all of it. No rifle or pistol primers of any kind at all.

When the zombies arrive, aim carefully.

QOTD - The New Normal

 From Andrew Busch at the American Mind:

For their part, Democrats have not drifted but charged headlong so far to the left that not a single Democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee could tell Attorney General William Barr that they would stand up against Antifa if it tried to burn down the U.S. Capitol. The venerable party is now under the functional control of cancel mobs and the far Left, as if Henry Wallace had returned from the grave to take his revenge.

Looks to me like a very well organized nation wide uprising by a small group of useful idiots. I wonder if the lack of complaint from the left might be related to the power behind BLM and Antifa, exactly the same folks making big donations to the re-election coffers of the pols who are now too cowed to complain about the violence? 

It also appears that the electoral dynamic has changed. If you have the majority, you don't worry about extending it as much as you work to ram through as much of your agenda as you can while you have the opportunity. Unseating an incumbent is difficult at best in a general election, but replacing one in a primary is very easy and much cheaper. Also the public tends to see the winner of a primary as the same as the person they displaced and gives them the same advantage as the former incumbent.

Gun Law - 9th Circus

 Ennie Meenie Chillie Beanee the spirits are about to speak!

On 8/14/2020 12:32 PM, Dr Spinetwist wrote:

Looks like the 9th circuit is now more conservative than the 10th.  It didn't work out so well for Colorado as I recall... 

https://trumptrainnews.com/2020 / 08/14/9th-circuit-sides-with-nra-rules-californias-magazine-ban-unconstitutional/

This decision will be appealed to an "en banc" hearing involving about half of the 9th circus' 27 (I think) judges, and will then be appealed to the supreme court which will refuse to hear it. If we're lucky, the en-banc group will uphold the 3-judge ruling. This will create a conflict between the circuits which the Supremes will ignore as well. The 10th circuit heard a similar case here in CO and found for the government.

En Banc implies that the entirety of the court will review the case. In reality I seem to remember that only 10-15 judges actually do the dirty work, and they are selected randomly as well so this could go either way. In the happy case that we win there, the ruling will only affect the left coast, and may well be widely ignored by local DA's who have discovered that there is little consequence to ignoring higher federal courts.

SCOTUS is supposed to resolve conflicts between the circuits, but has shown no great enthusiasm for going there of late.

More Fun With Headlines - Upcoming Election

 First this from Americas Paper of Record:

Biden: 'A Black Woman Will Become President Over My Dead Body'

 Followed closely for me anyway by this one from Gateway Pundit:

Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Rule Out Serving in a Biden Administration “I’m Ready to Help in Any Way I Can”

 "Mrs Clinton, Mrs Harris on line 1"

Fun With Headlines - Upcoming Elections

 From my WaPo news feed:

Supreme Court rebuffs GOP, clears way for Rhode Island voters to cast mail-in ballots without burdensome witness requirement

The Republican National Committee had asked the high court to intervene in the case after state officials agreed to relax a witness-signature requirement because of the coronavirus pandemic. ------------------------------ With no real voter verification Rhode Island, pop 1,056,160, is now expected to cast some 3,000,000 votes in the upcoming election boosting Biden's expected popular vote count from 350,000,000 to 352,000,000. The Rhode Island DNC has placed an order for 2,000,000 drivers licenses with suppliers in Hong Kong.

New Corona Drug

 Actually it's an older drug usually used for something else but a couple of preliminary tests suggest that it works very much like HCQ in conjunction with an antibiotic and Zinc.

So far, nothing will actually keep you from getting C19, bit we now seem to have a couple of treatments that can stop it before it gets out of hand. Trump needs to endorse this quickly before the Dems do. An endorsement from OrangeManBad will virtually guarantee that no self-respecting progressive would be caught using it thus thinning the herd ahead of the election.

"We had a 14-hospital trial in Bangladesh. We got [cured] 100 out of 100. In China, they tried to reproduce it. They got 60 out of 60 cured ... So I am behind the Ivermectin, doxycycline, zinc treatment because it has very few side effects and is a real killer of coronavirus," Borody said.

This is only a bit better than outright anecdote, and adding information from China pushes your credibility in the wrong direction if anything, but it does look promising 

July Gun Sales

Sales continue at a record pace as the Antifa promote anarchy and big city mayors endorse it. As always, a NICS check does not equal a gun sale.

Gun Stuff - Clearing Squibs

I have been changing the specs on my reloads recently, and as someone else once said "Nothing is more difficult than introducing a new order of things." For the 3rd time in 30 years of reloading, I got a squib in a match. We caught it when it happened so I didn't wind up like that fellow who found he had 17 slugs jammed in his barrel, but getting the one slug in my barrel out turned out to be more difficult than anyone imagined. Gun in question is a Hi Point 4095. Brand new. .40 cal.

I had been getting failures to extract occasionally at the end of a string, and so had added a dowel to my kit to push the recalcitrant last round out of the chamber. Works fine. 

NOTE DON'T try this on a stuck bullet. All it does is jam wood down around the bullet and further wedge the slug into the barrel.

When you find a cleaning rod, which is typically aluminum, DON'T BOTHER. I first tried a 3/8" Brass rod and hammer and got nowhere. I dismantled the gun and put the barrel and the rod into a hydraulic press. Bent the rod without moving the slug. I am willing to believe that without the wood, this trick might have worked but with both feet well down the rabbit hole...

Step 2: Made a 20" long drill bit. Used some of that brass rod, and drilled it to .312" (5/16) pressed the bit in and pinned it. Put some tape around the bit near the end just to be sure. Don't want the bit wandering. Peck drilled down the barrel, and first removed about 1-1/2" of crushed wood. Eventually started removing lead. Eventually the bit dropped through. Had to pry the remains of the bullet off the bit before retracting the bit. Success! Clean the remaining debris and back to shooting.

I straightened the brass pusher rod and added a steel weight so as to have a workable tool if this happens again. 

Here's the drill bit. This one is using an aluminum tube, 3/8" OD, 1/4" ID and a .281 drill bit. This is because I lost the brass original. Don't ask. The pin is 1/8" brass so no scratches.

Here it is with the hammer rod. My first squib happened in a Model 10 S&W revolver at a gun store range. I asked the folks there if they could help me and they tried the hammer and rod trick with no success at all and believe me they were really pounding on it. I eventually cleared that one by drilling the bullet and now am convinced that the "just push it out" approach is just wishful thinking.

So how long did it take me to clear that squib? About 2 days, including the time required to make the tools.

The Uses Of Racism

An accusation of racism is the most common way a liberal concedes defeat in an argument with a conservative. The conservative response should be, at this point, to graciously accept the admission and move on, but wait!

At the urging of Department of Public Health and Environment employees, Colorado will join other state and local governments in declaring racism a public health crisis.

What might this mean? On finding him or herself on the losing end of a discussion, the long suffering liberal can now admit defeat by calling the conservative a racist, and rather than moving on, can call up the Public Health Department to come pick up the winner and quarantine them until the topic of the discussion is forgotten?

Absolute genius, I say! 

The Future Of Conquest

The Chinese are working on AI and not for your benefit. Before they conquer a new country, they will have its entire population compacted onto 3 lists:

1. Harmless

2. Watch

3. Arrest

They are developing it in XinKiang and testing it all over China. They will be selling it to foreign governments soon and you can believe that any information it collects will be copied to China.

New Debate Format

In light of the unusual circumstances we are seeing, the upcoming presidential debates will be held in a new format.

First, on the Dem side, Mr Biden will not appear in person. Rather a deep fake of his head will be put up on a computer screen mounted to the platform, adjusted to place the top of his head at the 6'6" mark. This "Max Headroom" version of Mr Biden will realistically answer any question asked with answers typed in from a small committee in his basement and run through a text-to-voice program. Voice, facial details, and most mannerisms will be perfect, except that no confusion will be permitted. Answers will necessarily be delayed as the committee needs to agree on them and insure that they don't contradict previous answers. The delay will be attributed to electronic transmission times. Odd pronunciations due to text-to-voice shortcomings will be written off as on-line noise.

Mr Trumps side will feature a similar screen, probably 80" wide and with a nice gold frame. This split-screen will be showing a still of Trump on one side and his Twitter feed, which Trump will be using to answer his questions, on the other. To keep things even, both sides will be limited to 3 Twitter length character strings per question. Trumps image will be changed from a smile, to a frown, to a contemptuous sneer, depending on his evaluation of the question or Bidens answer.

Biological Warfare - Round 2

Here's the latest shot from our friends, the Chinese:

It's a Tyvek envelope containing a handful of seeds.

Clue #1: It arrives in your mail box unsolicited, from China.

Clue #2: It's labeled as jewelry. Jewelry is not subject to inspection. Agricultural products are.

These have shown up in mail boxes in Washington State, Utah, and Virginia. Got wide spread distribution. The U.S. Dept of Agriculture is asking that if you get one of these packets, that you do NOT open it. Especially do NOT plant them to see what comes up. They are probably not magic beans. Think Round Up resistant noxious weed. A leafy version of C19.

Do NOT trust China. China is A**hole! Feel free to write the U.S. Dept of Agriculture and ask them what these things are. My guess is an attack on our food supply.

Side note: Everyone likes to talk about WWIII. Listen up folks, WWIII ended Dec 26, 1991 with the final collapse of the Soviet Union. We won, they lost. We are now into WWIV which is pitting western civilization against an unlikely alliance of Islam and Chinese Communism. The Chinese are attempting to eradicate Islam in their Western provinces, and at the same time bolstering it in Iran. Eventually both sides are going to figure out that they chose their allies poorly, but until then, they have in the U.S. a common enemy.