Here's the voter spread for the proposed new congressional districts. It doesn't look as bad as I had expected with 3 Dem, 3 Rep, and 2 actually pretty competitive.
Interesting to note that regardless of any tilt in registrations between the D's and R's, the largest affiliation is a very consistent low 40's showing for unaffiliated. This seems to show that on the whole, voters are unimpressed with both parties. With unlimited ballot harvesting being allowed, those 2 competitive districts, 7 and 8, could easily become Dem blowouts unless the Reps get organized and learn to play the game, an outcome for which I hold little hope.
The U.S. has denied permission for a plane load of Americans and Afghan green card holders to land anywhere in the United States. Passengers have been stuck on the modestly sized first plane for 14 hours awaiting a bureaucratic solution to their problem, while an easy and practical solution sits right in front of them.
Simply re-route the home bound leg of the flight to Mexico, specifically to an airport on the U.S. border, from which arriving passengers can pick up their luggage, catch a cab to the border, and walk across, no questions asked. Once across, noting that they already have all the documents needed to be in the U.S., they simply call an Uber or meet a chartered bus to take them into the nearest town. Voila! Problem solved.
This article note from Fortune magazine:
Chipmakers to carmakers: Get out of the Stone Age. (Fortune)
Carmakers to chipmakers: Your old chips actually fucking worked. Well, not worked as such, but failed in documented ways. It takes years to validate a new design, and not taking the time to do that validation could get people killed.
An all-out effort to get on and hold the cutting edge is all well and good, up to a point, but it can easily get to where your technology is so edgy that it fails in unexpected and undocumented ways that are difficult and expensive to fix. If you want to inflict an example of this on yourself, simply buy a 5 year old exotic(ish) luxury car and watch the dashboard periodically light up with messages of dire import, requiring a visit to the dealer with a minimum charge of $1500 just to visit them.
At this point, I would not be overly surprised to see a picture of a PLA brigade, infantry, artillery, and armor, lined up at the border near Tijuana, to get their free California drivers licenses and (Democrat) voter registration cards.
Governor Newsom would be welcoming them as a replacement for the "racist, homophobic, sexist, etc, etc, police departments" now being dismissed all over the state.
Out: Trump A Paid Stooge Of Putin!
In: Putin A Paid Stooge Of Clinton!
No word as yet as to whether Dominion Corp provided the voting machines in Russia, but we do know that Facebook and Twitter suppressed opposition voices.
Here's a bit from the Financial Post that brings up some points I wasn't aware of.
There are some 846 registered automobile manufacturers in China, and more than 300 of them churn out new-energy cars, loosely defined as electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids. The vast majority are names unrecognizable elsewhere. In 2020 alone, the country added new production capacity of around 5 million units, about four times the actual number of EVs sold in China that year. According to regulators, almost half that capacity wasn’t in use.
This sounds a lot like where the West was in the 1920's. Hundreds of manufacturers, and not enough buyers to support them all. Also the matter of some of them being not high enough quality to survive anyway, and some being so high they priced themselves out of the market.
From the RKBA newsletter I get:
Today in History: In 1787, the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia approves the constitution for the United States of America. (Note that the Bill of Rights appears as the first ten amendments, finalized on September 25, 1789 and ratified on December 15, 1791. The Anti-Federalists demanded the subsequent addition of a bill of rights as a condition for ratification of the initial constitution. The oft forgotten Ninth Amendment – The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people – was intended to counter the disingenuous Federalist argument that the creation of a federal bill of rights would imply that Congress had the power to infringe any rights not specifically enumerated therein.)
-- Stephen P. Wenger, W2MRA
My comment:
The argument is hardly disingenuous; An entire political party is based on the supposition that the words “but” and “except” are implied at the end of each amendment, and that limitations may be applies freely and without limit if even the flimsiest excuse can be manufactured.
Treat the BOR like it's a bill of privileges', and people start getting nervous. Let select groups riot without consequences, and they start becoming rooftop Koreans. Here's a piece from an ammo supplier on how this has been affecting their sales. It's been really good to be an ammo supplier, provided of course, you have some ammo to sell. A cagy Taliban could find a few dozen pallets of 5.56 and 9mm and sell the stuff back to dealers in the U.S. for enough to retire comfortably on.
Everyone should have a copy of The Prince to hand in their book collection. It embodies the essence of every managerial course you're apt to take to get your MBA except the accounting. Labor-Management relations, HR issues etc, etc. If you don't have one, run down to a used book store and pick one up. I got the paperback for $.10.
In one of my favorite chapters he discusses the methodology of doing distasteful things, which from time to time every manager is forced to do. One of the examples was that of a noble who had successfully engineered a “hostile takeover” of some neighboring territory, and was anxious to win the love of the people of the new lands. This would not be easy, as a hostile takeover in the 1500's was quite literally a hostile act involving armies and battles. Following a victory, the winner had to move quickly to minimize dissent and deal with potential rivals among his former enemies.
To this end, the victorious prince sent one of his ambitious underlings to govern the new lands with orders to crack down hard and make sure everyone understood that no dissent would be tolerated. High taxes and public executions became the order of the day. After 6 months of this, the new prince came to visit the former capitol city in person.
His first act was to greet his deputy, and lock him up. He then went about town asking how things were going, and was told of the harsh rule and high taxes. Terrible conditions. He then called a big gathering in the town square where he assured everyone that he never intended to be anything but Mr Nice Guy, and that the doings of his underling were outrageous and unwarranted. To prove he meant well and would tolerate no abuse of his new subjects, he had the underling, whose tongue had been cut out the night before, brought out and executed by chopping him in half. He also lowered taxes back to levels similar to what they had been and was immediately acclaimed to be a swell fellow by all.
Now move forward to 2020. The Dems win an election, tainted by suggestions of foul play, and elect a demented meat puppet by the greatest margin ever. He, or more properly, the committee running him, proceed to undo everything his predecessor did, alienating about half the country, opens the southern border to anyone, no questions asked, while issuing demands to regular citizens, and imposing huge tax increases and extending regulations to micromanage everyones lives. He gives one of our enemies $80B in military gear, and throws in a couple hundred hostages in case he forgot anything and makes loyalty to his party the big item to consider for military promotions.
Remember that Mr. Biden is NOT the prince here, he's the ambitious underling. The next step, after the worst of the damage is done is the public execution, which in the here and now, will be a low key thing. Also keep in mind that Mrs Harris is also NOT the prince either, and will be run by the same committee as her predecessor. She will be in the position to roll back some of the more egregious insults from Mr Biden, and win a great roar of approval from the adoring press and anyone who still believes anything they say. This is about 30% of the population, currently. With all this favorable coverage, we will be told that polls show overwhelming support for the party, and no one should be surprised to see Dems sweep the 2022 elections by about 5% everywhere. Voting is going on right now in California where Republicans are reporting that they are being told, when they show up to vote, that they have already voted. Anyone want to guess who they've already voted for? No?
In Afghanistan anyway, the price is quite low as people are discovering that with the Taliban firmly in charge, there is little work to be had.
“I received an offer from a shop owner, a man I knew had no children,” Nazir continued. “He offered 20,000 afghans [Afghan currency, AFN] for my daughter Safia to live with him and work in his shop. If I ever get the 20,000 Afghans to buy her back, he said I could. But I can’t sell my daughter for that low a price, so I asked for 50,000. We are still discussing. She may have a better future working in a shop than staying with me, and the price may save my family.”
50,000 AFN is roughly $576.43
Taliban have been in charge now for only a couple of weeks. Care to speculate what a child might bring come winter?
Latest news suggests that Pres* Biden is not only giving the Taliban $80Bn in military hardware, he's also throwing in 6 planeloads of hostages in case they think of anything else they want. A canny terrorist would promise to return all 6 planes in return for a public statement from Slo Joe acknowledging defeat, the superiority of Islam, and a promise to convert himself. The terrorist would then let 3 planes go before thinking of additional demands that need to be met.
On the Chinese front, Joe is proposing to reduce or eliminate the penalties for dealing in Fentanyl. Emperor Xi will no doubt appreciate the gesture, and offer a seat in the Belt and Road Club in return for a large shipping port and airport facility on Catalina Island.
You do this like you abolish everything else: A little bit at a time. Someone burns down downtown in support of your party, you call for abolition of the police. If someone visits the capitol in support of the opposition party, you throw them in solitary until they agree to cop to something you can give them extra time for. If the people picked up, the day after the demonstration, turn out to be operatives from your party, you drop any charges and quietly send them home.
A few here, a few there, make a big deal out of the ones hardest to identify with, and the rest will fall in line. The Chinese are a bit ahead of us here. If you criticize the Emperor, or become more popular than him, you get picked up and held until you are ready to publicly acknowledge his superiority. If you don't or can't, you stay disappeared. A generous donation to the Emperors piggy bank probably doesn't hurt either.
/s/ Let me state here that President Biden was fairly elected by 85 million citizens, all of whom actually exist and are not dead, who recognized that Mr. Biden was the best and brightest the country has to offer, and that his running mate is eminently qualified to step in and manage things should this ever become necessary. /s/
Here's the August update, note it's still below last year, but significantly up from 2019. Having installed their sock puppet in the White House, the DNC Militias (Antifa and BLM) have been switched off, resulting in reduced gun sales.
If nothing untoward happens, I would expect sales to see a slow uptick going into December. I suppose it's even possible that ammunition manufacture might even begin to catch up with demand, although Slo Joe's move to shut off Russian ammo sales will serve to aggravate the shortages. One of my favorite memes comes from Walt Kellys Pogo comic: The shortages will be divided among the peasants.
