The Latest Larry Correia Rant

 DO I UNFAIRLY PAINT THE LEFT WITH A BROAD BRUSH?

 ...I’m talking about YOU. Regular people. Voters. The guy next door. The masses on the internet. Just average joes. Democrats. Libs. Whatever you call yourself. Anybody who identifies as being on the left.

When your leaders pick a narrative, you drink that Kool-Aid. Even if it’s shit flavored Kool-Aid, most of you smile and tell us it’s the best fucking Kool-Aid you’ve ever tasted. It’s milk from the teat of a magic cherry flavored Unicorn. Nope. It’s shit. You all know it’s shit. But you go along with the narrative anyway.

When the insane progs among you lie their asses off, I’m talking blatant, easily disproven, painfully ham-fisted, fucking LIES… Do you call them out? Do you say, “hang on guys, that’s a little nuts”. Because if you do, the rest of us sure as fuck don’t ever see it. Pick a topic, any topic. It’s always the same.

Read the whole thing. When I got to that part, though, I laughed out loud, woke Mrs. Drang up from her  migraine-induced snooze, and further disturbed her by reading the entire thing out loud. She hasn't objected, so I guess she agrees. Either that. or she has Plans for tonight while I'm sleeping. 

(Actually, i know she agrees because she started talking Seattle politics...)

Crazy Eddie, I tell you!

Los Angeles Will Fine Cargo Ships That Can't Unload

Because it's OBVIOUSLY their fault...

Los Angeles ports will fine cargo ships waiting to unload their goods in an attempt to relieve congestion that is as desperate as it is gobsmackingly stupid.

It’s a fine so pointless and wrong that, of course, Presidentish Joe Biden has chimed in with his support for it.

According to CNBC, the White House is “hopeful” that fines will “ease the intensifying logjam of cargo ships” waiting to unload at Long Beach and the Port of Los Angeles. Together, the two account for 40% of the country’s seaborne imports.

Carriers will have to pay “$100 per day for each container lingering past a given timeline” starting on the first of the month. Containers moved by truck will have nine days before they’ll start paying, and containers moved by rail will have just three days.

They're All Crazy Eddie

 The worst part is, Crazy Eddie is in charge...

"Renner, I must tell you of a creature of legend." 

"Say on." Renner's image dialed for coffee. Coffee and stories, they went together. 

"We will call him Crazy Eddie, if you like. He is a . . . he is like me, sometimes, and he is a Brown, an idiot savant tinker, sometimes. Always he does the wrong things for excellent reasons. He does the same things over and over, and they always bring disaster, and he never learns." 

There were small sounds of whispering in MacArthur's wardroom. Renner's image said, "For instance?"

Renner's Motie's image paused to think. It said, "When a city has grown so overlarge and crowded that it is in immediate danger of collapse . . . when food and clean water flow into the city at a rate just sufficient to feed every mouth, and every hand must work constantly to keep it that way . . . when all transportation is involved in moving vital supplies, and none is left over to move people out of the city should the need arise . . . then it is that Crazy Eddie leads the movers of garbage out on strike for better working conditions."

Niven, Larry; Jerry Pournelle. The Mote in God's Eye (Mote Series Book 1) (pp. 225-226). Kindle Edition. 

Pass a law requiring Uber and Lyft to deduct taxes as if the drivers were their employees, and in the process destroy owner-operated trucking.

Pass another law essentially banning a semi truck built after 2010. 

Then wonder why you have all those fully loaded container ships anchored offshore...

Not to mention vaccine AND face mask mandates. 

And... well, you know. a lot of the stuff that has stopped me from posting more often the last year and a half. 

"Real Capitalism Has Never Been Tried"

 White House moves to reshape role of US capitalism

The White House is pushing an infrastructure bill that could reshape the discussion around capitalism as it seems to reestablish the federal government as a primary driver of how the economy should grow and function.

In addition to traditional infrastructure projects, Biden’s $2.25 trillion American Jobs Plan would make government investments in broadband, electric vehicles, climate change, elderly care, child benefits, housing and developing future technologies. 

It would redefine classic infrastructure projects to include investments in workers and families paid for by tax hikes on corporations.

This would not be "capitalism."

An economic system in which the means of production are privately owned, but actual production is controlled or dictated by the government is called... fascism.   

You commie fucks. 

Another victim of wokeness

 

Pandemic Panic Ponders

Haven't posted as much as I might, for a variety of reasons.

For one thing Bobbi and the guys at Powerline are tracking my thoughts pretty closely, and probably more eloquently than I could.

When it comes to science, I have found Spin, Strangeness, Charm and Watts Up With That? to be excellent sources; the former, especially, posts daily (if not more often) on news reports put of Europe, translated into English, with clear explanations of the science and medicine involved, with a minimum of hysteria.


OldNFO published this meme yesterday:

There is a lot we still don't know about SARS-CoV2 and COVID19. A lot of that gets lost in the squabbling surrounding it.

How virulent is it? What simple countermeasures are effective? Are the asymptomatic contagious? are there risk factors beyond the obvious?

If you find yourself hoping people die because they identify it as coming from China, then you're an idiot and I don't care for your opinion. If you screeched because the president shut down air travel from China and then kept screeching that he was overreacting, and pivoted immediately to he wasn't doing enough then you're an idiot and I don't care what your opinion is.

It is my opinion that after a 2 or 3 week lockdown we could have started re-opening with precautions, and we would be a lot better off, because people would still be working, the economy wouldn't be tanking, and, based on the experience in certain places that did not go full "Stay in your homes or else" mode, the disease "profile" would look little different.

I am not an epidemiologist. I admit I could be wrong. But when you look into the backgrounds of the "experts", there's a lot to question there.

The Brit that claimed the USA would have 2,000,000 deaths  was not only grossly mistaken, but he was responsible for several past public health related over-reactions on the part of Her Majesty's Government. (Not to mention having his married lover visit him from across town after publicly scolding Brits to stay indoors...)

Several years ago Dr Fauci responded to legislation banning certain virological research by funneling money to... a Chinese lab in Wuhan China. (I can actually follow the reasoning here. The research involved testing certain mutations to viruses to study responses. and treatments, so the research was important. But...)

As for government reaction...

Releasing felons from prison and arresting law abiding citizens for going outside? No wonder they want 100% mail-in ballots!

Have You Kippled Lately?

Kipling Society homepage

Anent my second most recent post:
Poems - The Sons of Martha

The Sons of Martha

THE Sons of Mary seldom bother, for they have inherited that good part;
But the Sons of Martha favour their Mother of the careful soul and the troubled heart.
And because she lost her temper once, and because she was rude to the Lord her Guest,
Her Sons must wait upon Mary's Sons, world without end, reprieve, or rest.

It is their care in all the ages to take the buffet and cushion the shock.
It is their care that the gear engages; it is their care that the switches lock.
It is their care that the wheels run truly; it is their care to embark and entrain,
Tally, transport, and deliver duly the Sons of Mary by land and main.

They say to mountains, " Be ye removèd" They say to the lesser floods " Be dry."
Under their rods are the rocks reprovèd - they are not afraid of that which is high.
Then do the hill tops shake to the summit - then is the bed of the deep laid bare,
That the Sons of Mary may overcome it, pleasantly sleeping and unaware.

 The rest of the poem, as well as notes on the text, sources, references, etc.,  at the link.

This one is a perennial favorite in some corners of the blogosphere: Poems - 'The Gods of the Copybook Headings'

I Feel Dumber

I haven't been blogging as much about Pandemic Panic as I might have been because I found that Bobbi has been doing a good job of explaining some issues that my own thoughts were, shall we say, less than fully developed.

F'r instance, in Week Two Of Taking It Seriously, fresh off the Intertubes, she discusses the supply chain.

Which was timely, because I happened to get up a little early today, and walked in on Mrs. Drang while she was waking up and feeding cats and watching morning TV.

Where the talking heads were interrogating the Surgeon General of the United States about why in the world the President's Phone and Pen cannot just magically make millions of surgical masks and nitrile gloves appear in hospitals and clinics. "But it's been days since the Defense Production Act was 'invoked', why are there still shortages of Personal Protective Equipment?"

Oy.

I am not a logisitician, I did not stay at a Holiday In express last night, I do not play a logistician on TV...

...But I spent 20 years on the Army, and, as a Marine General said "Amateurs talk about tactics, but Professionals study logistics." (Quotes on logistics on this page go back to the American Revolution.)

Just because the President has authorized the DPA, does not mean that suddenly the factories are cranking these things out 24/7.

Assuming that the factories aren't already running 24/7, they have to find trained staff to run three shifts. They have to find the material. The material has to get to the factory. Workers have to be paid among other Human Resources actions, they have to be fed, the facilities have to be maintained, and kept secure.

And the finished product has to get to warehouses, or in some cases directly to the consumer. Which means trucks, mostly, which have to be maintained and fueled, and the drivers fed and paid and...

You can surge some of that. If you have trained personnel, facilities, and materials available you can go to an emergency schedule while the bean counters and paper shufflers sort out the details.

(Did I ever mention that during college I worked a couple of summers on an assembly line at one of the Big 3?)

If you have a facility that can be repurposed -- you make widgets and now there's a need for framastans -- it takes time to retool, and to ensure your staff know how to make a framastan. The assembly lines at Big 3, Inc., used to shut down for one or two weeks in the summer tor retool for the new model year of the same car model the plant had been making for years!  (One year they all shut down all the plants at the same time. Glad I was in Korea by that time...)

Watching these idiots talk to people about things that may as well be magical to them makes me feel like my IQ has declined to their level.

Which may be unfair, they're just flailing around with concepts they haven't ever had to deal with, or knew existed.  Food just appears in the store. The mechanic mutters incantations and my car works.

Grasshoppers. Grasshoppers, all of them.

***

 About those shortages of PPE. Interesting article: Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg News: Federal stockpile of N95 masks was depleted under Obama and never restocked.

Now, that sort of implies that Obama just shrugged and said "Never mind", which is highly unlikely. I'm guessing that line items in budges for the re-stocking of mundane things like surgical masks and gloves got cut because no one involved really believed they would be necessary, and anyway, there were more important things to spend the money on.

A Review Which Should Not Be Necessary

I hear Ted Cruz has introduced a bill to impose term limits on congresscritters.

Must be the beard.

Meanwhile, the ignorance on display daily among voters (or non-voters, if they make that choice) is bad enough, but the media should know better, and anyone in government, whether hired, appointed, or elected...!

Anyway.

So Nancy Pelosi claims that according to the Constitution, she is the equal of the President.



Meanwhile, I keep being told it's the President's fault that a Democratic senator filibustered the budget bill the House sent there, or that the house has since failed to send a clean bill to the Senate, so that body can send it to the President...



While we're at it...

May Day, 2018

This about sums it up:

This #MayDay, hundreds of thousands of protesters across the world will fly the flag of communist dictators who have butchered millions, demand a more authoritarian government, and be praised by the media for doing so. pic.twitter.com/bgDBcVEKEd

— Far Left Watch (@FarLeftWatch) May 1, 2018

Ignorance, arrogance, and "gunsplaining"

Seen on Twitter:

If I have this right, only climate scientists can have an opinion on climate change, but any jackass can opine on guns even if they don’t know a .22 from a 12 gauge.

— J.R. Salzman (@jrsalzman) March 9, 2018

In all modesty, I believe I have an improvement:

"...don't know an ear plug from a rubber bullet."

— Drang (@DWDrang) March 9, 2018

It is my understanding that this sort of attempt by those of us who are knowledgeable about firearms technology and terminology to correct those who are clueless about same is now derided as "Gunsplaining". Note that the link goes to what might be called a "friendly" site, as opposed to the ones that criticize "gunsplaining" as using "jargon" in "bad faith" to "bully" the gun grabbers...

Because terminological inexactitude is unimportant when The Feelz are at stake.

So, remember, next time you feel the need to correct someone on "Standard Capacity" versus "High Capacity" magazines, or to explain the difference between the independent and dependent clauses in certain articles in The Bill of Rights, or why cosmetic features make little or no difference to the actual functioning of a firearm, or why  certain firearm features are actually safety features...

...Remember, I say, that you are engaging in jargon-based, bad-faith, bullying behavior.

Make sure you capture any progressive tears that ensue, as I am assured that they make excellent firearms lubricant.

Text of HR 5087, new Federal "Assault Weapon" Ban

Text - H.R.5087 - 115th Congress (2017-2018): Assault Weapons Ban of 2018 | Congress.gov | Library of Congress

Institutes a 10 round magazine limit.

"Improves" upon the Clinton Ban by banning any semi-automatic rifle with one "Evil Feature". (Note: It even admits that a "barrel shroud" is a safety device, but still bans it...)

Co-Sponsored by The Usual Suspects. Including my own Representative, who was, at one time, rated B by the NRA.

Adds mandatory "safe storage" for grandfathered "assault weapons."

Includes a "by-name" list of banned rifles and shotguns...

...and an extensive "by-name" list of exempt rifles and shotguns, including not only semi-automatics, but pump, bolt, lever-action, break action, and even by-name list of "drillings and combinations."

(Nothing suspicious about that at all, right?)

But, hey, it lets retired Law Enforcement Officers keep their Large Capacity Feeding Devices upon retirement, IF they purchased them for on-duty use before retirement... 

'Nuff said

You can't make this s*** up

Developer Shuts Down Fake Cryptocurrency PonziCoin after Things Go "Crazy Out of Hand"

Alabama

Expanded upon from elsewhere, because, as Tamara likes to say, why waste it at an away game?

I'm laughing at all the people acting like Roy Moore was the GOP-anointed candidate for Alabama's Senator.

They clearly paid no attention to this race until last week.

I have spent little time in Alabama, too little to parse these events from the POV of a resident of The Heart of Dixie, but I have some thoughts on what this means, (some supplied or inspired by others):

• The US Senate is now 51 (R) 49 (D). 
• Since Harry Reid introduced "The Nuclear Option", this means less than it might.
• Long will be a two-year Senator. Alabama is still the reddest of states
• The Ds cannot, now, accuse the Rs of harboring a pedophile. (Whether you believe those claims about Moore or not.) I expect Franken will be out in the coming days, not weeks.
• Steve Bannon's influence is much diminished, if not completely eliminated. He owns this.
• I've been seeing items to the effect that Mike Pence, not Donald Trump, is the head of the GOP. 
• Normally, the sitting president is considered the head of the party, but Obama had little or no interest (or was an even bigger SCOAMF than we thought) and Trump has little or no influence over the GOP, being an outsider. (Arguably, being an outsider is what got him elected.) 
• So the question is, can Mike Pence take the bull by the horns elephant by the tusks and force them into a coherent, effective strategy?
• The Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution should be repealed. 
• Ironically, it was implemented in Alabama before it became national...
• Any suggestion that the mainstream media is even remotely impartial and unbiased should be met with derision and howls of laughter, followed by "...oh, wait. You're serious. Maybe you should get that looked at." 
• (Addendum)  Part of the objection to Roy Moore seems to be that he was removed from the bench for allowing his religious convictions to interfere with his judicial decisions.
• If Judicial activism is wrong for Conservative Christians, it is wrong for Progressive... Progressives. 
• Granted if it wasn't for double standards the left would have no standards at all.
• Time for a revival of A Man For All Seasons, perhaps. (I prefer the Charlton Heston version, for esthetic reasons. The Scoville version is probably more likely to get a hearing these days, though...)

I have no great love for Trump, but he is still a vast improvement over either Sanders or (shudder!) Clinton.

I have even less love for Roy Moore. His emails go directly to my spam folder, where they belong.

I don't know if his personal politics go over well in Alabama these days, but I do know they do not play well on the national stage. (FWIW, I noted that while in Alabama this past September on my way to Florida for a date with Irma, I saw only one sign for Judge Moore, and that was handmade.)

I'm not sure the fact that he has (or had) a habit of dating women young enough to be his daughters matters; I note that the "evidence" of his one alleged relationship with an underage woman is, to say the least, dubious. (And is now admitted to have been altered. Anyone who actually used the term "pedophile" should probably be leery of lawsuits, just sayin'...)

I do know that this election in and of itself is not a great victory for the left, and hardly spells the death knell for the right. There are aspects of this election, however, that could be symptoms of just what is wrong with politics in the USA.

I am glad I live in a country where we can hash these things out in public without resorting to wholesale violence.

So far.

"Down mit Kapitalism!"

Ooh, great selfie, bro...

Self-absorbed fascists in Hamburg

And here we thought the Occupy Wall Street cry bullies were pathetic...

Challenge Accepted!

Seattle: Boy, the WTO Riots were the worst, weren't they?
Hamburg: Hold mein bier and watch this...

— Drang (@DWDrang) July 7, 2017

Mayday, Mayday!

May first in Seattle is always a pain in the fourth point of contact. Traditionally (so to speak) the pro-illegal immigrant faction has shown solidarity and tried to win hearts and minds by blocking rush hour traffic on Interstate 5. Here's a report from last year: Seattle May Day protests marred by violence - CNN.com

So this headline isn't exactly going out on a limb: Seattle May Day Protests Might Create Traffic Headaches - Seattle, WA Patch

The only honest commie on the Seattle City Council -- meaning she's the only member who actually admits to being a commie -- has called for "civil disobedience" (WARNING!: Link goes to commie web site.) Thus: Seattle Councilmember Sawant under fire, accused of trying to incite problems on May Day | KOMO

(Gotta love this quote:

"I barely believe that the anarchists are going to be barely a blimp in the whole process," said Juan Jose Bocanegra, Co-chair of the May 1st Coalition.

What does that even mean?)

I'll be at work, and I try to avoid Seattle in any case, but I suspect things will get sporty at this event:  Stand Against Communism

Retail Derpitude

Or: How To Alienate New Shooters!

So, a friend and co-worker surprised me by casually mentioning in conversation a week or two ago that she was having trouble finding a holster for her pistol.

I suppose she thought I knew she had bought herself a pistol, but up until a month or so ago we had spent quite a while on opposite shifts, and on those rare occasions when we did have a chance to chat over coffee it was usually over the stupidity of colleagues and/or management.

Anyway, I was glad to hear that she had avoided any pressure or "advice" to go with a snub nosed revolver or a .380, which are all too often recommended as "Lady's guns", and in deciding to go with a 9mm she went with a S&W M&P 9 Compact, rather than a Glock 43 or an S&W Shield because "the extra capacity seemed like a good idea."

Not only that, but she has eschewed off-body (purse, fanny pack) carry for reasons both practical and tactical.

Now, she has decided that for her purposes a cross-draw holster will work best. We discussed the potential drawbacks, and she acknowledged them, but feels that this will serve her best, and I refuse to push lest she decide either not to carry, or not to speak to me again... 😞

Thus we come to the derpitude, to wit, not only is she having trouble finding a cross-draw holster in stock, at least one dealer said that "nobody makes those."

Not "We don't stock those as there's not much call for them, let's see what I can order", but "No such thing".

Furthermore, he implied that there weren't (m)any holsters for the M&P 9 Compact at all!

{Insert Facepalm Meme Here}

Naturally, within half an hour or so I had forwarded her half a dozen links to various and sundry holster makers' wares for the M&P 9C, including cross-draws, highlighting holster makers local to us.

I also had to keep explaining that a cross-draw holster may be worn forward of the hip, but that referring to it as an appendix holster (as Minion #1 kept doing) was going to confuse people as to where and how you are planning to place the thing. ("No, I'm going to wear it for cross-draw." "I understand, but these days when you say 'appendix carry' people will assume you mean strong-side in waist band. With practice, this can be a very good way to carry concealed, but that's not what you intend.")

Hopefully her fashionable belts will support the holster, when she finally gets it...

Mr. Bad Example

So, what spare time I've had the last week or two had mostly been spent transcribing my notes from MAG40. I think I'll pass on posting a day-by-day AAR and just post the outstanding things from it.

When I'm ready.

In the meantime... I often pass on posting about things in the news, because others post about them so much better. But sometimes...

As seen on View From The Porch: See this? Don't do this?

Man, 20, killed by shotgun blast outside northeast Raleigh home | News & Observer

This. This right here is why we can't have nice things.

(And actually ties in with some of the things covered in MAG40.)

Acknowledging that the press almost always leaves important details out, and that events as described by friends and family of the deceased are biased and not to be trusted...

A bunch of young males in their late teens and early twenties at, or leaving, a party two doors down does not sound like "hoodlums and vandals."

The part that really caused me to face palm so hard I almost gave myself a concussion was this:

I fired my warning shot like I’m supposed to by law.

Not only is there no legal requirement to fire a warning shot, but police are generally prohibited from firing warning shots. 

And, sweet Jesus, if you HAVE to fire a warning shot, shoot into the ground!

The 911 calls include this:

12:50 a.m. “We’ve got a bunch of hoodlums out here. I’m locked and loaded, and I’m going outside to secure my neighborhood. You need to send PD as quickly as possible.”

and

“You need to send PD as quickly as possible, I’m on neighborhood watch. I’m gonna have the neighbors with me. There’s hoodlums out here racing up and down the street. It’s 1 o’clock in the morning, um, there’s some vandalism.”

and

12:57 a.m. “We have a lot of people outside our house, yelling and shouting profanities. I yelled at them, ‘Please leave the premises.’ They were showing a firearm, so I fired a warning shot and, uh, we got somebody that got hit.”

at which the dispatcher asked (reasonably enough)

“Someone was shot?” the operator asked.
“Well, I don’t know if they were shot or not, ma’am,” he told her. “I fired my warning shot like I’m supposed to by law. They do have firearms, and I’m trying to protect myself and my family.”
The operator asked who had come to his house.
“Ma’am, I don’t know who they are,” the man said. “There’s frigging black males outside my frigging house with firearms. Please send PD.”

Okay, so...

• Neighborhood Watch is no more a license to kill than a concealed carry permit. 
• The evidence as presented in this article makes it sound like no one got further than a few feet onto the idiot's property. 
• At this point, we only have the idiot's word that anyone had anything resembling a firearm besides him.
• And since the evidence makes it sound like he fired from inside the garage, through a window, it hard to see what made him feel he or his family were in such danger that discharging a shotgun was necessary.

The bad part, aside from all the people who have been writing and training about these things for years having apparently done so in a giant exercise in futility, is that there are people out there who will read this little screed of mine, and similar ones by others who are more experienced, have taken more training, and have more exposure, and excoriate us for "abandoning" this guy. (Not to mention NRA, SAF, etc.)

Make no mistake: There may be evidence to come that will change this to another "Good Guy With A Gun" story, but at this point this moron is a moron who deserves to be locked up, and only trotted out when a Bad Example is needed.