Obvious to those willing to see

Thoughts for a Sunday morning

"Hillary Clinton sure got her money’s worth with the Fusion GPS deal: it induced a three-year psychotic break in the body politic, destroyed the legitimacy of federal law enforcement, turned a once-proud, free, and rational press into an infernal engine of bad faith, and is finally leading her Democratic Party to an ignominious suicide. And the damage is far from complete. It’s even possible that Mrs. Clinton will return to personally escort the party over the cliff..." - James Howard Kunstler 

More people finally waking up

Matt Taibbi's a journalist probably best known for his work at Rolling Stone.

Bernie Sanders once cited Taibbi as a journalist who "speaks truth to power."

And now?

Taibbi writes of turmoil in the federal government, a government that finds itself caught up in a "permanent coup."

I don’t believe most Americans have thought through what a successful campaign to oust Donald Trump would look like. Most casual news consumers can only think of it in terms of Mike Pence becoming president. The real problem would be the precedent of a de facto intelligence community veto over elections, using the lunatic spookworld brand of politics that has dominated the last three years of anti-Trump agitation.

If Americans were still mostly a thinking people, thoughts like this would have dominated discussions three years ago.

Instead, we've been lead down a path the nation will likely long regret.

Also saw this on social media this morning. I pretty much hate how true is rings today:

Wish I could say this was a joke

"I've held an AR-15 in my hand, I wish I had it. It is as heavy as 10 boxes that you might be moving and the bullet that is utilized, a .50-caliber, these kinds of bullets need to be licensed and do not need to be on the street" - Rep Sheila Jackson Lee.

Smooth sailing for Democrats into 2020, or will rough seas sink their socialist fantasies?

"In these horse latitudes of late summer, with the seas becalmed and the riggings a’creak, the Resistance’s ship-of-the-line (a.k.a. the Democratic Party) drifts ever further out of sight of land... Months from now, the accursed vessel may be discovered mysteriously deserted, prompting tales of mutiny and cannibalism, like the brigantine Mary Celeste of legend." - James Howard Kunstler

Deadly good intentions

"The 2003 heat wave killed 7,000 people in Germany. And, today, only 3% of German households have air conditioning. Germany’s Ministry of the Environment refused to back air conditioning as a response to global warming...  In Europe, people are dying because they’ve been told that their sacrifices will save the planet." -Daniel Greenfield, at Sultan Knish 

New Zealand's new gun control. Yeah, right...

Democrats in the US may want to follow New Zealand's path on gun control.

But even New Zealanders aren't buying into it. 

I dare say non-compliance in the US would be far more pervasive.

Texas hit by heatwave energy crisis

Seen this?

Texas Power Grid Operator Declares Level 1 Emergency Amid "Extreme Heat"

Why is Texas low on "juice"? 

Because too many coal plants were taken down too fast, without replacement capacity in place.

The warnings were plentiful.

This one from just last January:

Another Texas power plant is mothballed, raising concerns over reserves and prices

"The White Supremacy Hoax"

Via American Greatness: 

The specter of white supremacy haunts America. Let us empower the government to crush it. 

Just yesterday, “the deplorables” were to be deplored because they were “racist, sexist, homophobic,” clingers to “God and guns,” and Russian dupes to boot. Today, the agility and unanimity with which our politicians and media—heck, the ruling class—have shifted to indicting roughly 72 percent of the population as white supremacists, likely violent, would fill with envy their homologues in China, Cuba, North Korea, and other tyrannical places. By comparison, Joseph Goebbels had sloppy message discipline. Not even the Soviets in their salad days were so “on message!” 

 One may suppose that our ruling class merely intends to energize its constituencies and cower the opposition in the 2020 elections. But this is no game. Their proposals would impose pre-punishment for pre-crimes on persons accused or “suspected” of being a “white supremacist.” By whom? On the basis of what? 

In practice, a “white supremacist” is anyone whom anyone in power dislikes enough to so label him. Who would accept being outlawed at will? Our ruling class plays with matches in a house drenched in gasoline.  

 
The author is Andrew Codevilla, professor emeritus at Boston University, former U.S. Naval officer, a U.S. Foreign Services Officer, and a member of President-Elect Reagan’s Transition Teams within the U.S. Department of State. He served as a U.S. Senate staff member dealing with oversight of the U.S. intelligence services, and has held a professorial lecturer at Georgetown University and a Senior Research Fellow for the Hoover Institute at Stanford University.

Meanwhile, in Atlanta...

Democratic Socialists met for a convetion.

And seemed to have trouble deciding which they hated more: Capitalism or gendered pronouns.

A look into what happened during one part of the national convention of the Democratic Socialists of America in Atlanta this weekend. pic.twitter.com/bWekVQxPWV

— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) August 4, 2019

Out of the mouths of babes...

"Children don’t choose to advocate for political agendas. That choice is made for them. Sometimes those decisions are made by their parents. Other times it’s made by a totalitarian machine lubricated by hundreds of thousands in grant money stolen from their parents in order to brainwash their children." - Daniel Greenfield

Easter Forecast from 1910

Here's a magazine cartoon from early in the progressive era, published in 1910.

It's entitled "Easter Forecast: Increasing Cloudiness", and  shows clouds of bunnies, chicks, eggs 'n such, some of which are partially obscuring an empty cross and a crown of thorns apparently embedded on an Eucharist wafer.

Click to enlarge. Source: Library of Congress

Pretty darn perceptive for something from 109 years ago.

What should farmers be "allowed" to do?

It appears Beto O'Rourke now claims to be an expert on farming.

And he calls for changes in farming practices to "fight climate change."

Vlad Lennin and his Soviet inner circle shared a similar arrogance, and under Soviet 5-year agricultural plans, millions died of starvation in the early years of the Soviet Union.

How many mags shipped to Californians?

An injunction is now in place.

But it appears California gun owners took full advantage of the window that lawfully allowed them to buy larger magazines for their firearm.

I checked around some firearms accessory sites Friday morning, many were "sold out" of magazines.

So I have to wonder how many thousands of new mags are now in the hands of Californians, or are on their way after orders were placed prior to Friday's deadline.

March was busy. April busier

Sporadic posting only.

Wrapping up the exit from metro Atlanta.

Lots of spring to-do stuff on the home in the mountains we bought last summer.

Looking at potentially putting another real estate project in motion.

Things should settle down later this month.

No collusion, says Mueller

Via Twitter:

And yes, it wasn't just MSNBC that played fast and loose with the facts.

Satire

But too much truth to be funny.

Opinion: We Are Not Coming For Your Guns—We Just Want A Sensible Ban On All Automatic, Semi-Automatic, Bolt-Action, Pump-Action, Lever-Action, Break-Action, And Muzzle-Loading Firearms

Radical socialists walk among us

Via Twitter:

Former far-left Ocasio-Cortez campaign aide Waleed Shahid:

"Democracy should mean taking power and wealth from those who hoard it and making sure it belongs to everyone." pic.twitter.com/lHL95YKllg

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) March 14, 2019

Will Democrats give him what he wants?

UK's Sun reports the New Zealand mosque gunman published a manifesto: 

He boasted that he chose to use firearms so he could influence politics in the US. 

He wrote that he wanted to "create conflict between the two ideologies within the United States on the ownership of firearms in order to further the social, cultural, political and racial divide". 

And he ranted about his hopes that “this conflict over the 2nd amendment and the attempted removal of firearms rights will ultimately result in a civil war that will eventually balkanize the US along political, cultural and, most importantly, racial lines.” 

Democrats keep outing themselves

Via Twitter:

So just to be clear: A Somali-American Democrat engages in repeated anti-Semitism, and Democrats pass a resolution that condemns "white supremacists" (and gets in a reference to Charlottesville).

— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) March 7, 2019

Not sure where Democrats think they're going ahead of the 2020 election cycle, but becoming the party of infanticide, or the party that tries to sugar-coat and excuse anti-Semitic behavior within its congressional delegatioon, isn't anything near as appealing to voters as Barack Obama's dreamy "Hope and Change."

The Democrat path to unchecked power

Daniel Greenfield writes:

The Democrat political calculus of infanticide is so brutally grim that it makes the infant exposure of their spiritual pagan forebears seem almost humane. 

Population increases in states like New York are driven by immigration. First generation immigrants are the safest political bets for Democrats. As the generations pass, the immigrants become worse bets. 

The safest pathway to a permanent Democrat majority is abortion and open borders. 

Global Warming provides the perfect political cover for a policy of suppressing births and promoting migration. Abortion will reduce our carbon footprint even as we welcome in “climate refugees”.

Are we dancing on a powder keg?

Immigrant crime in Norway

Conclusion of Norway news investigation:

TV 2's review shows that of the 140 perpetrators, 70 per cent had an immigrant background.  (Google translation)

Report also notes immigrants account for only 30 percent of Norway's population.

For now, it's still satire

But who knows who or what Democrats will next reach for in an attempt to smear Trump.

Via The Babylon Bee:

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Yesterday the long-awaited congressional testimony of expert witness Detective Pikachu took place on Capitol Hill. There have long been allegations against President Trump of connections to organized crime---particularly Team Rocket---and Detective Pikachu laid out all the evidence he had to bolster that claim.

Green New Deal = Starving masses

Patrick Moore was a co-founder of Greenpeace. He left the organisation in 1986,  but remains active in environmental causes.

Pompous little twit. You don’t have a plan to grow food for 8 billion people without fossil fuels, or get the food into the cities. Horses? If fossil fuels were banned every tree in the world would be cut down for fuel for cooking and heating. You would bring about mass death.

— Patrick Moore (@EcoSenseNow) February 23, 2019

Forgotten alternatives

Used to be, apprenticeships were a well known, often used career path. Then government came along, pushing "cheap" student loans, and the notion that everyone was "entitled to" college.

Purifying the Party

The revolution apparently not moving fast enough to please some. So, like the communists and fascists of old, Democrats move to purify their party's ranks.

Via WaPo:

In a closed-door session, a frustrated Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) lashed out at about two dozen mVia oderates and pressured them to get on board. “We are either a team or we’re not, and we have to make that decision,” Pelosi said, according to two people present but not authorized to discuss the remarks publicly.
But Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), the unquestioned media superstar of the freshman class, upped the ante, admonishing the moderates and indicating she would help liberal activists unseat them in the 2020 election.

Ready for the Mueller report?

By some accounts, it could come as early as this week. 

Meanwhile, the whole narrative that got the thing rolling seems pretty much been debunked.

A couple of thoughts I've picked from others as the report release nears:

"The #Resistance has been losing bigly in recent days as each new “bombshell” it manufactures turns out only to reveal its modus operandi, which is that the end justifies the means — the end being to evict the wicked Mr. Trump from office and the means being dishonesty and bad faith in its use of the government’s prosecutorial machinery." - James Howard Kunstler

And

"For more than two years, the United States and the world have had two competing narratives: that an elected president of the United States was a Russian agent whom the Kremlin helped elect; and its rival narrative that senior officials of the Justice Department, FBI, CIA, and other national intelligence organizations had repeatedly lied under oath, misinformed federal officials, and meddled in partisan political matters illegally and unconstitutionally and had effectively tried to influence the outcome of a presidential election, and then undo its result by falsely propagating the first narrative. It is now obvious and indisputable that the second narrative is the correct one." - Conrad Black, at the Daily Mail

Stay tuned folks. Things might get real interesting real fast.

Yet another profile in double standard

Media didn't hesitate, and jumped aboard with Jussie Smollett's story.

On the other hand, this recent story, with a suspect in custody, didn't seem to get much traction at all:

Man allegedly pulls gun on couple wearing MAGA hats at Sam's Club: 'This is a good day for you to die'

Happened again

Government allowed a violent felon to buy a handgun he should have been, by law, barred from purchasing.

Via Chicago Sun-Times, on last week's mass shooting in Aurora, Illinois:

Court records show Martin was convicted of aggravated assault in the stabbing of a woman in Mississippi in 1995. He’d also been arrested six times previously by Aurora police, most recently in 2008 for violating an order of protection, Ziman revealed Saturday. 

Ziman said the assault conviction might not have appeared on a criminal background check when Martin applied and was approved in January 2014 for a Firearm Owners Identification card. 

In March of that year, Martin applied to buy a handgun from an Aurora gun dealer, and he was approved within five days. 

Five days after that, Martin applied for a concealed carry permit. When Martin’s felony conviction was discovered during the background check for that license, his application was denied and his FOID card was revoked. 

However, his Smith & Wesson handgun — the same weapon used in Friday’s shooting — was never confiscated.

More background checks aren't the answer.

How 'bout we get a government that will effectively use laws already on the books?

The world will end by 2031, she says

I don't know which would be more scary: That she believes what she says, or that she says what she does just to get media (social and otherwise) face time.

Long arm of the law

Those who targeted Covington Catholic students with threats and harassment may face prosecution.

"It’s already underway. I’ve had detectives in and out of my office all day today. We were starting with some comments, some threats that were made in state, because those are people we don’t even have to extradite, and we are moving on to the ones that are out of state. We’ve had the detective that works in my office [who has] already been busy issuing grand jury subpoenas and composing search warrants for detectives at other agencies." - Kenton County (Kentucky) prosecutor Rob Sanders

Seems to me, this may be a milestone on the road to deeper conflict

We crossed a huge red line this week when we saw how eager media was to smear teens on a field trip in Washington DC.

Some of the kids were wearing MAGA hats, so that justifies targeting them with a smear. That seems to be how media played it.

Even the kids school threw its students under the bus until one of the student's parents hired a crisis management PR team to push back.

And it wasn't long afterword it was exposed about deceptive, deep and ugly the smear was.

The teens didn't approach and harass a party of native American activists. It was the native Americans who made the first move, who got in the kids' faces.

And we still don't know who first put the video and distorted narrative online, only that it came by way of a shadowy Twitter account that may have been operated outside the country... perhaps by an activist or foreign entity troll farm. But it seems pretty clear media didn't care where it came from, they just repeated the hoaxy, smearing narrative to a wider national audience - apparently without making a move to vet the claims presented on social media.

Wet and blustery evening

Rainy and windy on the mountain. Just hoping the rain stops, and wind dries things up before freezing temps arrive sometime early tomorrow morning. That's the downside of mountain top living. Any chance of ice on the roads means it's best to stay put until thaw arrives. Sliding off the road up here can mean either brushing against a mountainside, or going off one.

Media irritated the lie got outed

CNN's Chris Cuomo seen outraged that Mueller would dare to out a fake story the media loved and breathlessly promoted.

CNN's Cuomo: “Mueller didn’t do the media any favors tonight and he did do Trump one...this allows them to say, ‘You can’t believe it. You can’t believe what you read, you can’t believe what you hear, you can only believe us. Even the SC says that the media doesn’t get it right'” pic.twitter.com/SgJG5INo5s

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) January 19, 2019

Sounds familiar

 “I looked for someone among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found no one." - Ezekiel 22:30

Evidence of growing economic output makes the left cringe

The Left wants you to see "higher carbon output" as a cause for concern or panic.

Reality is, the sources of the carbon (power and industrial plants, trucks and aircraft) aren't running "dirtier" than they have been.

They're just running at high capacity, logging more hours, producing or moving more economic goods.

I find the new carbon stats encouraging. Hard evidence of real economic growth.

Smile for the cameras!

"It’s Nancy Pelosi’s smile that gets me…oh, and not in a good way. It’s a smile that is actually the opposite of what a smile is supposed to do: signal good will and good faith. Nancy’s smile is full of malice and bad faith, like the smiles on representations of Shiva-the-Destroyer and Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec sun god who demanded thousands of human hearts to eat, lest he bring on the end of the world." - James Howard Kunstler

Europe remains in denial

A taste of it, via Twitter...

Actually... last ten has seen the Euro in a bear market vs the dollar and the ECB was forced to borrow trillions of $ to stabilize it from collapse. Happy 2019 you drunk. https://t.co/nXBIcyGAZB

— Live Monitor (@amlivemon) January 1, 2019

Welcome to 2019

There's a growing consensus we may officially be in an economic recession before it's over.