Jun 082023
 

The Constitution has of course been amended numerous times before. But amendment that curtail existing right have been few and haven’t gone well.

 

Governor Newsom Proposes Historic 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution to End America’s Gun Violence Crisis

The 28th Amendment will permanently enshrine four broadly supported gun safety principles into the U.S. Constitution:

      • Raising the federal minimum age to purchase a firearm from 18 to 21;
      • Mandating universal background checks to prevent truly dangerous people from purchasing a gun that could be used in a crime;
      • Instituting a reasonable waiting period for all gun purchases; and
      • Barring civilian purchase of assault weapons that serve no other purpose than to kill as many people as possible in a short amount of time – weapons of war our nation’s founders never foresaw.

 

Translation: deletion of the 2nd Amendment. The 1st Amendment will be “amended” shortly after, I suspect.

Of course, Newsom knows that this is going nowhere. An amendment must be ratified by three-fourths of the states; the map below suggests that that is unlikely at best. But these sort of announcements are always good; it’s useful to be reminded from time to time that some of our “leaders” are evil.

If Governor Newsom *actually* cared about gun crime victims, instead of making millions more citizens into criminals, he’d actually demand enforcement of existing laws, and would ensure that those arrested for any and all violent crimes would actually see justice. But that’s not what he’s doing.

 Posted by at 11:35 pm
Jun 082023
 

Uuuuuuuhhhhhhgh.

UK no longer able to manufacture large-calibre gun barrels, BAE Systems admits

Britain is doomed. Lack of manufacturing, wholly uncontrolled mass invasion… “Britain” will soon be relegated to the chapter of the history book filled with nations that no longer exist. But while the Soviet Union or Austro-Hungarian Empire went away, the *people* remained, as did their language and much of their culture. But England specifically and Britain as a whole? Their own government is working to erase their existence. It’s remarkable.

 Posted by at 9:26 pm
Jun 062023
 

“Woke” has becoming an ever-present word in recent years, especially since the BLM/Antifa riots and city burnings of 2020. But what does it actually mean? The original meaning, apart from “past tense of wake,” as given by dictionary.com is this:

having or marked by an active awareness of systemic injustices and prejudices, especially those involving the treatment of ethnic, racial, or sexual minorities

 

That meaning was used for some decades by those on the left, in particular black people. But recently the word has been taken up by people on the right as a term of disparagement, the second definition at dictionary.com:

Disparaging. of or relating to a liberal progressive orthodoxy, especially promoting inclusive policies or ideologies that welcome or embrace ethnic, racial, or sexual minorities.
It’s that second definition that interests me. As written, it’s fair as far as it goes… but it doesn’t really go far enough.
“Woke” is kinda like “obscenity:” you know it when you see it. But a proper definition, reasonably accurate and objective, is important for all things especially when it comes to things that will be important for policy decisions. If some classroom assignment or book is “woke,” what does it really mean, especially if “woke” is meant to mean that it should be disallowed? The fact that some statement or book or person is an “inclusive progressive” is not sufficient to be defined as “woke.” To me, this seems better:
Disparaging. of or relating to a liberal progressive orthodoxy, especially promoting policies or ideologies that preference ethnic, racial, or sexual minorities and focus to an obsessive degree on largely or entirely imaginary oppression, threats, enemies or slights
A near-universal feature of someone that most regular people would look at and call “woke” is that they are multicolored, unhinged and divorced from reality. Often shrieking about how oppressed they are while their flags are flying from every government building for an entire month out of the year and they get to dominate any and all discussion, threatening the lives and livelihoods of those who not only express differing opinions, but who use “unapproved” words. it’s not about “inclusion” and “welcoming,” but domination and madness.
Thoughts?
 Posted by at 12:02 pm
Jun 022023
 

Today I swung by “The Davenport,” the century-plus old apartment building that partially collapsed a few days ago. Roads were closed off for a radius of a block or two around it so I couldn’t get very close in my car, and I didn’t have the time to find someplace to park and walk. Ehhh, oh well. Anyway, a lot of information has come out about it; the city of Davenport has released a bunch of inspection reports and other documents going back several years showing that it has been falling apart for some time. Bricks have been popping out of the face of the building for years. It looks like the sort of place that your average person would have been able to look at and go “Nope” and run to some other accommodations.

Someone’s gettin’ sued.

 

The City of Davenport website with the documents:

https://www.davenportiowa.com/cms/One.aspx?portalId=6481456&pageId=19580321

 

In retrospect this sort of thing is not too surprising. A lot of the buildings around here are old brick structures, and The Davenport was only a few blocks from the Mississippi river. “500 year floods” seem to happen every few years now; this had *got* to have an effect. Whether water seeps into the ground that far inland I don;t know, but having tens of thousands of tons of new watery overburden from time to time has got to cause the ground to flex at least some. There are also the occasional earthquake; small by the standards of even Utah, but if you have a brick building not built with earthquakes in mind… that’s not so great.

In all honesty, “The Davenport” looks like a *lot* of buildings in this part of the midwest. Built a century ago, having seen better days. Like our roads and bridges, the infrastructure has not been well looked after. I won’t be surprised if the next few years are filled with increasing tales of buildings and bridges falling. Imagine if the dozens of trillions dumped down the black hole of welfare were instead spent on repairs, maintenance and replacements of structures that needed it.

 Posted by at 10:13 am
May 272023
 

It seems obvious by this point that a rational corporation would, when presented with the option of weighing in on politically decisive “culture war” topics, just stick their fingers in their ears and hum real loud until whatever -themed month it is ends, and spend their time trying to sell their normal merchandise to their normal customers. But, no. Due to the insidious and invasive influence of “woke” ideologies and diversity initiatives, companies have been led to believe that they *have* to build up their diversity social credit scores, or else… something.

Target stores are the latest to discover that attempting to appease a small group of weirdos ticks off a far larger group of people who don’t want to sterilize, mutilate and drive insane their children.A lot of customers have expressed outrage; a few by pestering the employees (these are just regular folk trying to earn a paycheck, leave ’em the frak alone); a few others by causing damage (come on, you’re not on the left… the law *will* go after you for vandalism). But by far, from Targets perspective the biggest threat to the corporation are the large number of customers who are simply not spending their increasingly thin dollars there. Apparently Target has lost about nine *billion* dollars so far. So Target has decided to move their displays of child-grooming-friendly products further back in the store where they’ll be less conspicuous. This, supposedly, is in response to threats to the stores, products and employees from customers who don;t like those products.

But now they’re getting threats from the *other* side… bomb threats from weirdos ticked off that Target is now attempting to appease right wingers.

 

You know who’s not getting bomb threats from *either* side? Companies that didn’t delve into goofy identity politics in the first place. There might be a lesson there.

 

Utah Target Evacuated After Reports of Trans Extremists Threatening to Bomb Multiple Target Locations for Removing Satanic Groomer Products

 Posted by at 8:32 pm
May 232023
 

… that the market for them is being filled by non-white people. There was the “white supremacist” Mexican, and now this guy who was supposed to have tried to ram his U-Haul into the White House:

19-year-old Missouri man arrested in U-Haul crash at White House security barriers

U.S. Park Police on Tuesday identified the driver as Sai Varshith Kandula, 19, of Chesterfield, Missouri.

That’s a weird name for a Whitey McWhiteGuy.

 

 

Behold, modern “journalism:”

 

19 year old who rammed White House barrier threatened president

News of the arrest just feet from the White House comes amid a climate of fear and hostility as Republicans continue to demonize diversity programs while downplaying the threat of white supremacist violence.

 

Yeah. *THAT’s* the big problem plaguing society… white supremacy that’s so

 Posted by at 3:20 pm
May 222023
 

With the release of my latest book, I went to Amazon to see if my previous works are currently available (SR-71: yes; B-47/B-52: yes; Vol 1: currently no). In the process, I was surprised to see that there is a *hardback* version of my SR-71 book available. This is surprising for several reasons…

1: No mention of it was made to me by the publisher

2: It’s a relatively slim volume for a hardback

3: There has been some discussion, so far quite preliminary, of an expanded version of the SR-71 book at some point in the future, which would be more appropriate as a hardback.

Anyway, the listing looks like this:

 

“Huh,” sez I, so I click on the “hardback” link to see what it looks like. And… it looks like this:

 

 

Wait, what?

 

Now, that’s a perfectly fine book. I have a copy myself. But it’s not *my* book.

 

I also noticed that there are 187 reviews, which is substantially more than I recall there being. And that’s because the reviews for Goodall’s book are mashed in with reviews for mine.

Somebody hit the wrong button somewhere.

So if you want to get a copy or three of my book – an urge I wholeheartedly support – just make sure you order the right book. I’ve contacted the publisher about this and they’re baffled; they’ve contacted the people they need to to try to get this weirdness resolved.

 

 

Oh, and there’s this, for whatever it’s worth:

 

Woo, and, indeed, hoo.

 Posted by at 3:25 pm
May 212023
 

History is *filled* with astonishingly bad ideas. And who would have guessed that some of the worst would come out of collectivist totalitarian systems like Nazi Germany?

The Case of The Radioactive Toothpaste

Curiously, the toothpaste in question was filled with Radium, the radioactive element of choice for insane and/or stupid product manufacturers in the early 20th century, but Thorium. Why Thorium? Well… “why not” seems to have been the answer.

 Posted by at 6:33 pm
May 202023
 

So, what is the current form of American government? To the simple, it’s a democracy. To those who actually have *some* understanding of the theoretical workings of the US Federal government, it’s a representative republic. But to those who have watched how the Feds and a startling number of state and local governments work, a more accurate descriptor is one that most probably haven;t heard of… but rest assured, you *will* be hearing it a lot so long as the means of communications remain reasonably free and accessible:

Anarcho-Tyranny

Coined in 1995, “Anarcho-tryanny” is a form of government that is characterized by taking a hands-off approach to dealing with actual criminality at all levels… but exercising draconian oppression upon the average citizens. Sound familiar? Cities that let criminals loot and burn and protest and terrorize at will… but toss people who defend themselves into the hoosegow for show trials. States that do diddly to deal with gangs and murderers of all stripes, but ban common firearms and standard magazines. Federal law enforcement agencies that welcome in whole armies of invaders, and hire armies of armed bureaucrats to hunt down small business owners who might have made small mistakes on the deviously complex tax returns.

And then there are the “glowies.”

 

If you, as an average, law-abiding citizen who wants nothing more than to be left alone to live your life and pursue happiness, fear the government descending upon you more than the guy breaking into your car or shoplifting your store does… you may be in an anarcho-tyranny.

 Posted by at 8:24 am