Wednesday, September 30, 2020
I Think the Debate Went Well Enough
Tuesday, September 29, 2020
Moving to America
The anxiety faded by the time her family pulled out in a U-Haul bound for Salt Lake City on a smoky September night. Morris, 31, had still never been to Utah — her husband liked it when he worked there as a truck driver — but she had discovered a whole world of people planning similar escapes online. They posted faraway landscapes on Pinterest, smiling family photos on Instagram and memes about leaving “Commiefornia” in Facebook groups like “Conservatives Leaving California.”
“I have to keep reminding myself that I’m not moving out of California to a third-world country,” Morris said. “I’m leaving a third-world country to join America.”
Our Weather Has Emphatically Changed
Monday, September 28, 2020
About Trump's Taxes
Trump has those resources. I bet he’s got a room full of accountants, and their leader is probably a grizzled old CPA with an eye patch and a raven who sits on his shoulder. The raven also has an eye patch and an accounting degree. This man has wrestled bears, and he’s going to take advantage of every tax break in the US Code for his client, and do so gleefully, knowing that many of those laws were signed by Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
On the other side, you know damned good and well that the IRS has sent their most fearsome auditor against him. This man sold his soul to the devil, and then fined the devil for failing to list that soul as a depreciable asset. When he shows up to audit your company, he appears a flash of fire and brimstone, as a Finnish death metal band plays his theme song. He is an auditor bereft of mercy, compassion, or pity, and beneath his leathery wings serve a legion of IRS goblins, who will crawl into every nook and cranny of the Trump Corporation’s P&L looking for errors, and if a mouse so much as shits a turd large enough to unbalance that ledger, there will be hell to pay.
When Self-Centering 3-Jaw Chucks Stop Holding the Workpiece
What does that mean. I am sure that I used to be able to cut aluminum tubing. Now, even at .002" runout, the tube (2.5" long, 1.5" OD) just keeps popping out when I try to square it. I am sure that this used to work for me. I tried a new cutter. I tried sandpaper between jaws and tube. Nothing is working!
Please Invite Me to a Zoom Meeting
Someone wants me to do a presentation via Zoom. When I tell the Zoom application to use my new webcam, it crashes. Subsequent attempts to use Zoom through the browser fail because the camera is still occupied. I suspect the Zoom application is failing to release the camera as it dies. Please email me an invitation clayton@claytoncramer.com
Someone did: "internal server error": does anyone really use Zoom?
"Vassi"
Sign That You Have Moved
Sunday, September 27, 2020
BLM Creating Entirely New Subgroups
A California man has been using his family’s vineyard as a “tactical training camp” before he mowed down a group of protesters in his truck, federal authorities said.
Benjamin Jong Ren Hung, 28, was busted Wednesday on gun crimes stemming from him driving into a demonstration May 31 in Pasadena, according to a federal criminal complaint.
Federal agents detailed in the complaint how Hung drove his Dodge Ram — which was adorned with flags embraced by right-wing extremists — into a group of protesters who had been chanting, “Black lives matter here.”
”The victims were forced to run out of the way to avoid being struck,” the affidavit said.
What next? Jewish neo-Nazis? But one led the Skokie march when I was young. Not only Jewish; his father survived the Holocaust.
What Happens When the Left Goes too Far Off the Rails?
Trump Has a Ph.D.?
Saturday, September 26, 2020
Went Shooting Again Today
The Firestar has some sort of extract or eject problem, not magazine specific. It sometimes ends up stovepiped, and dropping the magazine does not work. To the gunsmith it goes.
The AR-15 iron sights are definitely hitting to point of aim. The optical sights as well.
The M1A iron sights which I have literally never used or adjusted were pretty close. Slight windage adjustment, and it was hitting 1.3" high at 25m (which is about right for a 300m battle zero).
The optical sight was disappointing. When I bought this Springfield Armory scope mount, the claim (maybe not made by them), was that because it uses the screw in the side of the receiver and has three registration bars that go into slots of the side of the receiver, it should hold zero even after being removed and restored. (This seems implausible to me now, but the AR-15 scope mount that slides in the handle works quite well like this, and I have heard similar things about the H&K 91/93 scope mounts.) Apparently, the three point of contact mounts are a better choice and even then, once zeroed, do not remove and expect it to still be zeroed. This test result for the Basset scope mount inclines me to it.
Friday, September 25, 2020
How BLM Breaks Nasty Stereotypes About Blacks as Violent Criminals
Driver passes through BLM protest and gets forced to the side by a truck.
Remember: Trump's Concern About Voter Fraud is Just Paranoia
As mail-in voting begins in many states, and President Donald Trump continues to question its validity, one of battleground Pennsylvania's three pivotal counties has been thrust into the national spotlight after a small number of mail-in ballots were found in a trash dumpster outside a board of elections office.
The U.S. Attorney's Office of the Middle District of Pennsylvania and the FBI's Scranton Office earlier this week said they "began an inquiry into reports of potential issues with a small number of mail-in ballots at the Luzerne County Board of Elections."...
"At this point we can confirm that a small number of military ballots were discarded. Investigators have recovered nine ballots at this time. Some of those ballots can be attributed to specific voters and some cannot," the U.S. attorney's office said in a statement.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in the Middle District of Pennsylvania first announced in an initial press release that all nine ballots were cast for Trump, but later corrected that number to seven and said two were resealed inside the envelope. Pennsylvania utilizes "secrecy envelopes" that cover cast ballots in addition to the larger, mailing envelope.
How many were properly destroyed before counting? And 9/24/20 KTRK:
KILGORE, Texas (KTRK) -- With top Republicans, including the president, bringing up claims of fraud involving voting-by-mail, indictments announced Thursday against a Democratic county commissioner in East Texas appear to bolster those accusations.
The office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced 134 felony charges were filed against Gregg County Commissioner Shannon Brown and three co-defendants in connection to an alleged vote harvesting scheme involving a Democratic primary in 2018.
According to Paxton's office, Brown and others targeted "young, able-bodied" voters to cast ballots by mail by fraudulently claiming the voters were "disabled," in most cases without the voters' knowledge or consent. The indictments claim this was done to increase the pool of ballots needed to swing the race in Brown's favor.
Best Political Ad Ever
I tried to embed it by using Blogger's YouTube search tool. I suspect that it is not appearing to prevent it being easily shared. I presume you know Congressman Crenshaw's eyepatch is a service-related injury.
Rittenhouse's Defense Video
YouTube seems to preventing this from being easily found. This indicates that the Rittenhouse defense fund has raised more than $2.1 million. Way more than they need, I think, but probably enough for libel suits against the new media. Imagine what that level of contributions says about the number of broken glass Trump voters (those who would crawl across broken glass to vote for Trump).
Zoom
I am supposed to do a Zoom with a small group. I have been experimenting with the host. The problem is that when I hit Share, I get a small number of screens from which to pick. If I run PowerPoint in presenter mode with the presented view on a screen other than my main monitor, it comes through fine. But I want to share JPGs. I cannot figure out how to put those JPGs on the share screen. I open them in IrfanView, but I cannot drag IrfanView onto the share screen and have it go there; it just appears on top of the share screen. This has to be a common need. Suggestions?
Thursday, September 24, 2020
The Civil War May Be About to Start
At that point, peaceful protester Alayna Melendez leapt on Gardner from behind (not subscribers to the Marquess of Queensberry rules, these peaceful protesters), knocking him down and into the street, whereupon yet another peaceful protester jumped on top of Gardner, who fired two warning shots in the air, scattering his first two assailants. Again: all on tape.
Three seconds later, as Gardner was trying to get up, Scurlock jumped on him from behind and put him in a chokehold — which I believe is considered definitive proof of intentional murder when performed by a police officer. In videos, Gardner can be heard yelling, “Get off me! Get off me!”
With his right arm pinned, and Scurlock choking him, Gardner moved the gun to his left hand and shot over his shoulder, hitting Scurlock in the collarbone, killing him....
Or as The New York Times’ Azi Paybarah explained it: “Mr. Gardner got into a fight with one man, James Scurlock, 22. The two scuffled before Mr. Gardner fired a shot that killed him.” They “scuffled.” It brings to mind the Times headline from Nov. 24, 1963: “President Kennedy Dies in Dallas After Scuffle — Albeit at Great Distance — With Lee Harvey Oswald.”
Let’s be fair, though. Maybe Scurlock jumped Gardner, or maybe Gardner jumped Scurlock. Who knows? It’s not like there are 4 million videos of the incident.
Gardner was immediately taken into police custody for questioning and held until 11 p.m. the next night.
The Democratic district attorney, Don Kleine, his chief deputy Brenda Beadle, and all the homicide detectives spent 12 hours that weekend reconstructing the incident with multiple videos. Their unanimous conclusion? That Gardner shot Scurlock in self-defense.
Despite the delusional claims posted on “social media” that Gardner used the N-word — which, as we all know, is grounds for immediate execution by any black person — none of the videos substantiate that. To the contrary, Scurlock’s own friend denied that Gardner said anything racial at all. (Apparently, you can’t believe everything you read on the internet.)
At 22, Scurlock already had a rap sheet a mile long, including home invasion, assault and battery, domestic violence — and, of course, he was in the middle of a crime spree that very night. Methamphetamine and cocaine were found in his urine.
But “the community” erupted like COVID in April. Nebraska state Sen. Megan Hunt (bisexual, graduate of a now-defunct college) repeatedly called Gardner a “white supremacist.” Another Nebraska state senator, Kara Eastman (bisexual), called Gardner’s shooting of Spurlock a “cold-blooded murder.”
(Why do I mention their sexual orientations? A lot of the hate toward Gardner seems to come from the transgender community for saying on Facebook that transgenders would be restricted to the unisex bathrooms after a man in a dress attacked a female customer in the ladies’ room.)...
Protesters besieged Kleine’s neighborhood.
Kleine responded to the mob’s demand for “justice” by calling in a black prosecutor, Fred Franklin, to make damn sure the grand jury indicted Gardner — whom Kleine (the elected D.A.) had found to be innocent. As he was expected to do, Franklin produced a series of fanciful indictments, including for manslaughter and making a “terroristic threat.” (The “terroristic threat” was Gardner lifting his shirt to show the peaceful protesters that he was armed.)
The special prosecutor’s ALL NEW EVIDENCE THAT BLEW THE OTHER FACTS AWAY was this: The night of the BLM protest, Gardner had posted on Facebook: “Just when you think ‘what else could 2020 throw at me?’ Then you have to pull 48 hours of military style firewatch.”...
Gardner’s landlord, Frank Vance, immediately evicted The Hive and The Gatsby, and sent an anguished apology letter to Scurlock’s family (“deepest sympathy … the pain and suffering … losing a child to unnecessary violence … apologize for this horrible incident … time to heal … very deepest condolences”).
Gardner was facing 95 years in prison for shooting a career criminal who was choking him, and now he had lost his source of income. So naturally his friends tried to set up a GoFundMe account to help pay for his legal defense.
GoFundMe’s response? They immediately and repeatedly took down the page, based on their clearly stated policy: We don’t like you....
Meanwhile, the family of the convicted criminal who jumped Gardner has already raised more than a quarter-million dollars on GoFundMe. (Funeral expenses can be costly!)
Poor Jake Gardner didn’t stand a chance against the raging, hate-filled multitude. Even those sworn to uphold the law, like Kleine and Franklin, leapt in with the mob. And a corporation whose business it is to enable people to raise money for just causes such as getting a fair trial refused to do business with him, not unlike the Memphis Woolworth’s treatment of black people in 1960....
Last weekend, facing death threats and a kangaroo court, and with no means to mount a defense, Gardner killed himself, rather than be killed by the mob waiting for him back in Omaha....
I’ve got nothing. The country has gone mad. I always figured the first armed civilian who ever fought back would put an end to the violence exploding all over the country — the violence that police and prosecutors can’t or won’t stop. “We have the guns,” conservatives like to say. In fact, it’s even worse now.
It’s official: You can’t protect yourself. Not even a blameless ex-Marine could defend himself from being choked to death. The D.A. will call in a “special” prosecutor to throw you to the wolves, and they’ll both be praised for railroading an innocent man in the Omaha World Herald, while the “elite” media defame you.
Has anyone seen any of the apparently many videos? Have we reached the point where self-defense means you to have to go on the run? Perhaps we do need to defund the police and the rest of the ceiminal justice system.
This 9/23/20 Lincoln [Nebr.] Journal-Star article seems to match pretty well.
9/23/20 KETV:
Responding to Franklin's press conference, Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine, who initially declined to press charged against Gardner, stated that he stands by his decision not to bring charges.
Kleine said he believes Franklin had his own agenda and that he does not believe Gardner was the initial aggressor.
Mostly Peaceful Protests in Portland
Here you can watch a mostly peaceful protestor throwing a mostly peaceful Molotov cocktail at mostly brutal police, who for some odd reason are not shooting a guy* who is now in jail for attempted murder, possession of a destructive device, attempted assault, and arson. The liberals who are bailing these mostly peaceful protesters out will need $525,000 to get him back on the street to resume mostly peaceful protesting.
*For a civilian, or a police officer in any civilized city, the second you throw it, use of deadly force is justified. I do hope Trump's campaign uses this clip to remind people what sort of people hate him, and that Democrats only started condemning this criminal lunacy when they saw for no apparent reason, it was turning most Americans in Trump's favor.
Devastating Senate Report on Hunter Biden's Sleazy Business Deals
Here. Largely ignored by national media.
Black Anodizing Aluminum
It does not look too difficult. I am not sure that I can find my nitric acid (and no, I have idea why I bought a liter of it), the power supply, or the other chemicals. Have any of you done this before? Or had experience with someone who does small jobs?
Alternatively what about Birchwood Aluminum Black Touchup? I know it is just paint, but is it pretty tough?
Tuesday, September 22, 2020
Good News
In spite of the lockdowns the national unemployment rate for August is 8.4%. Not great, but better than I could have imagined in the midst of a pandemic and Democrat effort to shut down the economy.
How You Can Tell Someone is a Progressive
They tweet #DefundThePolice, but call 911 when they are afraid. 9/22/20 Daily Mail.
The Low-Profile Focuser
I am machining it mostly from acetal (black already, low density, easy to machine). It will start as a block with the same footprint as the current focuser, so I can reuse the existing holes, and 1" tall. Then I will drill a 1.5" diameter hole through,then turn a piece of 1.75" long aluminum tube to 1.49" OD, 1.255" ID. (I want a loose fit for eyepieces; they will held in place by a 8-32 set screw.) One end of the tube will have a collar 1.6" OD and perhaps .1" long, so it cannot fall through the base block. Then drill and tap a 1/4"-20 hole in the side of the base block for a set screw to lock the tube in place. This is the coarse adjustment. The aluminum tube needs to be black. If I can talk myself into learning how to anodize at home, great! If not, flat black paint. I will likely need to see how thick the paint dries before turning final OD.
I will then buy one of the helical focusers that slide into a 1,25" focuser. This will provide fine adjustment. With this combination of coarse and fine adjustment, I really do not need a rack and pinion or Crayford focuser.
I have parfocalizing rings on most of my eyepieces so they come to same focal point in the focuser. There are a couple odd ones that are simply outside the normal range (like the 35mm Super Plossl that focuses way in from the other eyepieces. Hence the coarse adjustment. This looks like fun!
Blocking Highways
My wife has noticed supply shortages at stores such as Target, and I have noticed some items no longer appearing at my local supermarket. Why? I have mentioned this before, but leftists keep making excuses that do not involve BLM blocking the roads. Links to a few news stories about these blockages.
https://www.kktv.com/2020/07/10/more-than-a-dozen-people-cited-for-blocking-i-25-in-colorado-springs-while-protesting/
https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2020/07/24/blm-group-calls-off-second-protest-interstate-490/5504341002/
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2020/06/22/black-lives-matter-iowa-freedom-riders-statewide-action-blocking-interstate-highways/3239206001/
And predictably a Washington Post article defending it.
Monday, September 21, 2020
"The Useless Bugbreeders"
A Plug for My Wife's Blog
Here:
Before I moved to Idaho, I never really thought about water on a daily basis. I grew up in Los Angeles, and just assumed that every time I turned on the kitchen or bathroom faucet, water would come out. Our lawn was green, and the neighbor's pool was always full of sparkling blue water. We went to Malibu every weekend, and there was the ocean, proudly displaying its abundance.
Later, when I was married, my husband and I took a trip up US 395 to the Owens Valley. The area was a vast desert, with a long aqueduct running parallel to the valley floor. My husband said that in the early part of the 20th century, the developers of the San Fernando Valley and Los Angeles needed water. Lots of it. The amount available locally would not be enough to support a burgeoning area, with people and lots of agriculture. So, this aqueduct was built to take water out of Owens Lake. Once the locals realized what Los Angeles was doing, they started blowing up the aqueduct. The city of L.A. used the National Guard to protect the building project. The aqueduct was completed and the water from Owens Lake was siphoned out, until no water was left.
When I visited the area, in the early 80s, a large dust devil was all that greeted us over what was once a beautiful verdant valley and lovely lake. We traveled up the 395 further to Mono Lake. It retained some of its grandeur, and local people then were fighting L.A. tooth and nail to prevent history from repeating itself. "Save Mono Lake" bumper stickers were everywhere.
Sunday, September 20, 2020
Accomplishment
I try not to sit around on past accomplishments. I have just been using the 3" f/4.5 reflector (Baby) that I have been building and rebuilding since the 1990s. I always assumed my first (and last) mirror was not very good. I just used 86x on the Moon and it was still sharp. 114x, no. But many commercial reflectors this size are no better. The only improvement left is the focuser; not enough inward travel. This was an Edmunds focuser from the 1990s; obsolete then, but cheap. There are not a lot of focusers with less height, so I will build my own. Not tomorrow, though.
Just to clarify what I made: the primary mirror, the mirror cell,the diagonal mirror holder, the adapter to hold the rings to the mount.
I toyed with buying a low-profile focuser, but they are pricey enough that making my own sounds both more sensible and more interesting.
Great Comment
the local sporting goods store had all their pistol ammo behind the unicorn feed.
Interesting. Mid-Star Firearms has a sign that says 9mm available.
idaho Daily Infections
Why Joe Biden Will Not Be President Even If Elected
Cannot seem to find it with Blogger YouTube Video Search, but you can watch it directly here. Yes, he says 200 million will have died of COVID-19 by the time he "finishes this talk." I guess this problem is worse than I thought. I feel sorry for him, but there is no reason this guy should be allowed any decision more complicated than "Do these LEGO blocks go together?"
If This Is Satire, It Is Flawless
Why White People Owning Dogs is Racist
Saturday, September 19, 2020
If the Democrats Eventually Get Control Again and Add Two Seats to the Court
When Republican get back in control, they increase it from 11 to 13, no 51, no, the entire citizen population and we get to see democracy in action. Watch the Democrats scream then!
Crowding
In 2016, Democrats Insisted the Senate Confirm a Supreme Court Justice in An Election Year
But this is different now that Ginsburg has passed.
He May Be Old But Do Not Pick a Fight Based on Your Prejudices About Us Old Farts
It looks like the old man threw the first punch, but the Antifa yelling, "You want to fight?" at that distance qualifies as assault. Some of us old farts use firearms because we know what would be the result in the same situation. Antifa would be laughing so hard as I threw a punch that I would have time to run.
Oh, and "We are the workers." And the 99.99% of Americans who are not (yet) burning down buildings are all capitalist exploiters? I mean, I guess that I am, but I am atypical.
Did Trump Mock a Disabled Reporter?
Another leftist belief. The seemingly spastic arm waving and speech appears at many of his rallies to make fun of people he thinks are poor speakers. To assume that he was making fun of one reporter fails the silliness test:
Was Trump on the Lolita Express?
Another popular leftist belief. I grabbed the first 10 articles on news.google.com with Trump and "Lolita Express" in them. The first that mentions both (other than PR for the next offensive Borat movie), is.#2:
Bill Clinton
Obvious, but still needs to be stated. Bill Clinton was a very close friend of Epstein’s back in the day, constantly attending fundraisers and going on international trips with the mogul. None that we know of while he was president, but it’s still important to acknowledge the power and out of office president can still have.
While he does appear on the Lolita Express logs, he technically is never shown flying to Little St. James, or Epstein Island. He flew to multiple other cities with Epstein aboard his private jet, and even took a trip to Africa, but never to the Caribbean. He has allegedly had interactions with some of Epstein’s victims, though Clinton denies knowing anything about the sex trafficking activities.
Donald Trump
The current US president was in similar circles as Epstein back in the day, so it’s no surprise Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump became close. Epstein spent a good amount of time at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, and allegedly would recruit girls for his sex trafficking circle from Trump’s employees.
While Trump’s contact info was in the little black book, it seemed more casual than anything else. Trump never flew on Epstein’s plane, and there’s no connection to the president being on Epstein’s island at all.
#4:
From property brothers to property rivals
In 2004, a mansion called Maison De L’amitie, ironically translating to House of Friendship, went up for sale in Palm Beach. Being a lucrative property, both real estate baron Donald Trump and investor Jeffrey Epstein had their eyes on the prize.
The bidding war began. It nearly ended their friendship, with each accusing the other of not having enough money. Donald Trump even banned Jeffrey Epstein from Mar-a-Lago. The ban was because Epstein was being inappropriate with a guest’s underage daughter.
The friendship was well over by 2008 after Jeffrey Epstein was found guilty of soliciting a prostitute and soliciting a minor. Donald Trump now denies that he and Epstein were ever friends. According to a 2018 interview with Miami attorney Bradley Edwards, a prosecutor in the Epstein case, Trump was more than willing to discuss details with him about Epstein.
#6:
Clinton took over two dozen trips on Epstein’s Boeing 727 airborne sex den dubbed “The Lolita Express” to the island the locals referred to as “pedo island” and “orgy island.”
The man wagged his finger in the faces of Americans and lied that “he did not have sexual relations with that woman.” But we all know the truth in that lie with his impeachment and loss of his law license.
#7 claims:
Epstein and Trump were friends for years, with the latter flying the president on his private plane — nicknamed the “Lolita Express” — and Trump once telling New York Magazine he considered Epstein a “terrific guy.” They allegedly fell out in 2004 — before federal investigators started looking into Epstein the first time — over a real-estate purchase. Trump has since clarified that he was “not a fan” of Epstein’s, but Maxwell? He continues to wish her well.
It seems to be a style publication--hardly deep journalism.
#8 is a redirect to a site infected with malware and porn.
#9:
The flight logs of his "Lolita Express" private jet contain many of the same names (Bill Clinton appears on the logs over a dozen times).
Epstein's "little black book" of contacts has over 1,000 names, reports Bloomberg: "including Ralph Fiennes, Alec Baldwin, David Blaine, Jimmy Buffett and Courtney Love; media figures including Charlie Rose, Mike Wallace and Barbara Walters; former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, former British prime minister Tony Blair, industrialist David Koch and the late Salomon Brothers Chief Executive Officer John Gutfreund and his wife, Susan," in addition to Clinton and Trump.
The article tries hard to blame Trump for Epstein's "suicide" but never claims Trump flew with him.
#10 New York Magazine Intelligencer:
Underage Girls, to Her Knowledge
One of the unsealed documents is a deposition of Giuffre in which she says Maxwell directed her to have sex with Britain’s Prince Andrew and former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, among other prominent men. (Buckingham Palace has put out a statement denying this. Richardson’s spokesperson also denied this in a statement to CNBC, saying, “These allegations and inferences are completely false.”)
In a partial transcript of her deposition on November 14, 2016, Giuffre is asked to identify errors in statements attributed to her by reporter Sharon Churcher. Giuffre put check marks next to a handful of claims on a list, indicating that she took issue with them. She put a check next to this statement: “Donald Trump was also a good friend of Jeffrey’s. He didn’t partake in any sex with any of us but he flirted with me. He’d laugh and tell Jeffrey, ‘you’ve got the life.’”
The article quotes Giuffre that she never saw Trump and Epstein together or Trump at an Epstein property. It also says Trump flew on Epstein's plane at least once.
You would think if this was so clearly true it would appear in many articles not just magazine and one style magazine, and not be contradicted by other sources. This would be big news.
You can see why Trump is down on fake news. Two of 10 sources make this claim, only one of which could qualify as news. Multiple sources either make no mention of this supposed fact or reject its factuality.
Daily Mail mentions Trump might be called as a witness:
- An unnamed woman is suing Jeffrey Epstein's estate and claims that he took her to Mar-a-Lago when she was 14 and was showed to Donald Trump
- She claims Epstein 'playfully' elbowed Trump and said: 'This is a good one, right?' during the introduction
- There is no suggestion Trump knew she was underage or was involved in any abuse
- The unnamed woman claims she was the late pedophile's 'guinea pig' and named Trump as a possible witness to Epstein's years of abuse
Friday, September 18, 2020
I Went Shooting Friday
Did Trump Condemn Neo-Nazis & White Supremacists?
Thursday, September 17, 2020
Need an Article Idea
AFF's editor is pinging me for article ideas. I have been a bit busy, so I cannot immediately think of an article to write. It needs to be something that is relevant to current gun rights public policy
When In Doubt, Lie
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WZTV) — The coronavirus cases on lower Broadway may have been so low that the mayor’s office and the Metro Health Department decided to keep it secret.
Emails between the mayor’s senior advisor and the health department reveal only a partial picture. But what they reveal is disturbing.
The discussion involves the low number of coronavirus cases emerging from bars and restaurants and how to handle that.
And most disturbingly, how to keep it from the public.
If bars and restaurants are not mass spreaders, why are churches?
Twitter: For Whom Do They Work?
Yesterday, I pointed to a tweet about making caltrops from stolen rebar, which Twitter left up. 9/16/20 New York Post:
Twitter has suspended the account of a Chinese virologist who has claimed that COVID-19 was manufactured in a laboratory.
Dr. Li-Meng Yan, a former researcher at the Hong Kong School of Public Health, went dark on the platform after she accused China of covering up evidence that the deadly virus came from a lab in Wuhan.
“They don’t want the people to know this truth. Also, that’s why I got suspended, I got suppression [and] I am the target that China Communist Part wants to [sic] disappear,” she told Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Tuesday.
Wednesday, September 16, 2020
Twitter: The Pro-Violence Social Media Company
A Tweet that tells how to make caltrops from "free rebar from construction sites." If I were a twit, I would ask him where he lives so someone can come get his "free" computer or phone. Any bets on whether he calls the police? (The purpose of caltrops is to puncture tires. Someone should put some in front of his bike.)
Made in USA
I ordered some cutting fluid for tapping aluminum yesterday and it arrived today. The brand name is Tapmatic, a company here in Idaho, that makes a really neat reversing tapping head. I guess that I should not be surprised that their cutting fluid is made here. Amazon sometimes does sell non-Chinese stuff.
An Elite Preparing for Seppuku (If They Are Lucky)
9/8/20 San Francisco Chronicle:
Wine language is so often absurd that it’s a punchline. Notes of smoldering tobacco or forest underbrush or underripe Jonagold apple — it sounds almost farcical in its specificity. Even worse is when the descriptor is inedible. How many people have actually tasted a wet river stone, anyway?
But now, it’s becoming clearer than ever that the conventional language used to describe wine isn’t merely intimidating and opaque. It’s also inextricable from racism and sexism, excluding dimensions of flavor that are unfamiliar to the white, Western cultures that dominate the world of fine wine and reinforcing retrograde notions of gender.
For those who think a white majority is a bulwark against the loss of Western Civilization, how much more WASPy can you get than being the newspaper's wine writer?
The Most Distressing Article of a Very Bad Year
Between 1900 and 1917, waves of unprecedented terror struck Russia. Several parties professing incompatible ideologies competed (and cooperated) in causing havoc. Between 1905 and 1907, nearly 4,500 government officials and about as many private individuals were killed or injured. Between 1908 and 1910, authorities recorded 19,957 terrorist acts and revolutionary robberies, doubtless omitting many from remote areas. As the foremost historian of Russian terrorism, Anna Geifman, observes, “Robbery, extortion, and murder became more common than traffic accidents.”
Anyone wearing a uniform was a candidate for a bullet to the head or sulfuric acid to the face. Country estates were burnt down (“rural illuminations”) and businesses were extorted or blown up. Bombs were tossed at random into railroad carriages, restaurants, and theaters. Far from regretting the death and maiming of innocent bystanders, terrorists boasted of killing as many as possible, either because the victims were likely bourgeois or because any murder helped bring down the old order. A group of anarcho-communists threw bombs laced with nails into a café bustling with two hundred customers in order “to see how the foul bourgeois will squirm in death agony.”
Instead of the pendulum’s swinging back—a metaphor of inevitability that excuses people from taking a stand—the killing grew and grew, both in numbers and in cruelty. Sadism replaced simple killing. As Geifman explains, “The need to inflict pain was transformed from an abnormal irrational compulsion experienced only by unbalanced personalities into a formally verbalized obligation for all committed revolutionaries.” One group threw “traitors” into vats of boiling water. Others were still more inventive. Women torturers were especially admired.
How did educated, liberal society respond to such terrorism? What was the position of the Constitutional Democratic (Kadet) Party and its deputies in the Duma (the parliament set up in 1905)? Though Kadets advocated democratic, constitutional procedures, and did not themselves engage in terrorism, they aided the terrorists in any way they could. Kadets collected money for terrorists, turned their homes into safe houses, and called for total amnesty for arrested terrorists who pledged to continue the mayhem. Kadet Party central committee member N. N. Shchepkin declared that the party did not regard terrorists as criminals at all, but as saints and martyrs. The official Kadet paper, Herald of the Party of People’s Freedom, never published an article condemning political assassination. The party leader, Paul Milyukov, declared that “all means are now legitimate . . . and all means should be tried.” When asked to condemn terrorism, another liberal leader in the Duma, Ivan Petrunkevich, famously replied: “Condemn terror? That would be the moral death of the party!”
Arsonist Caught on Video in Oregon?
9/15/20 Right Scoop has a video of a woman with a gun confronting a young man on her property in rural Oregon holding matches. From Instapundit. Considering that chainsaw I blogged about a couple days ago, it will be interesting to see if this guy was arrested in Portland riots.
There is No Reason to Assume Racial Intent
The Alameda County district attorney’s office filed felony charges Monday against 60-year-old Berkeley resident Tony Walker in the June killing of 19-year-old Cal student Seth Smith.
But as Instapundit points out:
IF A BLACK STUDENT HAD BEEN SHOT IN THE HEAD BY A 60-YEAR-OLD WHITE GUY, IT WOULD BE NATIONAL NEWS.
Task Priority Under Windows?
When VideoStudio is rendering a video, it gobbles up resources like mad and other applications become non-responsive. Does anyone know if Windows 10 has a way to set application priority to reduce the CPU time an application uses? I confess to being a bit spoiled; the first multitasking system on which I worked had a fairly interesting system of setting task priority on a terminal-by-terminal basis. It was quite fun for messing with Mr. Winkenhower's junior high computer class; you just went into the Terminal Control Block (which alas, I remember started at 0528H in memory, with 18H bytes per terminal) and change the priority value.
Tuesday, September 15, 2020
Interesting Reminders of the Democratic Party's Race Obsession
This is Supposedly a Reconstruction Era Campaign Poster
I am looking for a source a bit more certain as to its authenticity than Reddit.
Not that this is atypical of the Democratic Party of the time. This one I found at the Library of Congress.
Is Some of the Burning Intentional?
Monday, September 14, 2020
What is With the Stock Market?
Great Automated Advertising Buys
Can You Find The Article From Which This Graph Came?
This page contains a very good New York Times article about the centuries old drought history of California, and this graph:
Now there is a source, but after the Bellesiles matter, I like to look things up and verify the source. I cannot find a article by E.R. Cook that contains such a graph, although I have found many articles by Cook about North American historical drought. Can you find it?
Thanks! Here. E.R. Cook. et al., "North American drought: Reconstructions, causes, and consequences," Earth-Science Reviews, Volume 81, Issues 1–2, March 2007, Pages 93-134
My librarian downloaded the full article.
The original graph, obviously modified a bit.
Sunday, September 13, 2020
What Trump Really Said
He did not say to vote twice. 9/5/20 CNN:
In a North Carolina "telerally" Friday night, which was later posted on Facebook, Trump spent the first few minutes of the call explaining in detail how he wanted his voters to vote. If they vote by mail, they should go to their polling place anyway to "see whether or not your mail-in vote has been tabulated or counted," Trump said, noting that if it's been counted, they won't be able to vote.
This Should Be A Wake-Up Call For Trader Joe's (D-urban) Customers
BLM took over a Trader Joe's to complain about lack of access to grocery stores and capitalism. the picture shows exactly the sort of customers that I would expect there. Not every Trader Joe's customer is a raging Democrat; I have even shopped there before. But if this takes off, a lot of Biden voters may be reduced to shopping at Wal-Mart!
The COVID-19 Crisis Will End on Election Day
Los Angeles County Public Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer was recorded saying the country's largest county would not reopen its schools until "after the election."
“We don’t realistically anticipate that we would be moving to either tier 2 or to reopening K-12 schools at least until after the election, in early November,” Ferrer said in a conference call with school administrators and medical staff, a recording of which was played on KFI's "John and Ken Show."
P.J. O'Rourke Has Always Been One of My Favorite Writers
He manages to combine a lot of wit with important ideas. 9/12/20 New York Post explaining why young people support socialism:
As soon as children discover that the world isn’t nice, they want to make it nicer. And wouldn’t a world where everybody shares everything be nice? Aw … kids are so tender-hearted.
But kids are broke — so they want to make the world nicer with your money. And kids don’t have much control over things — so they want to make the world nicer through your effort. And kids are very busy being young — so it’s your time that has to be spent making the world nicer.
For them. The greedy little bastards. Kids were thinking these exact same sweet-young-thing thoughts back in the 1960s, during my salad days (tossed green sensimilla buds). Young people probably have been thinking these same thoughts since the concept of being a “young person” was invented.
That would have been in the 19th century — during America’s first “Progressive Era” — when mechanization liberated kids from onerous farm chores and child labor laws let them escape from child labor.
This gave young people the leisure to sit around noticing that the world isn’t nice and daydreaming about how it could be made nicer with the time, effort and money of grown-ups.
I’m all for sending them back to the factories or, at least, the barn. If I hear any socialist noise from my kids I’m going to make them get up at 4 a.m. to milk the cows. And this will be an extra-onerous farm chore because we don’t have any cows, and they’ll have to search for miles all over the countryside to find some.
They’ve got it coming. Young people are not only penniless and powerless, they’re also ignorant as hell. They think of wealth as something that’s limited, like the number of Hostess Ding Dongs on the 7-Eleven shelf. They think rich people got to the 7-Eleven first and gobbled all the Ding Dongs, leaving poor people to lick the plastic wrappers.
Young people don’t know that more Ding Dongs can be produced. They don’t know how or why more Ding Dong production is possible. And they certainly don’t know how to get the cream filling inside....
Young people believe that the way to obtain more wealth is to take it away from rich people.
You can’t do it. Well, you can do it. But you can only do it once.
You can take the Ding Dongs from the Hostess factory for free, but once you’ve eaten them you can’t go back to the Hostess factory and take more Ding Dongs for free. The Hostess factory is out of business. (Which may protect our health, reduce environmental pollution, and preserve various species of animals such as the high fructose corn weevil, which, for all I know, is endangered. Although, considering that Pew Research claims even more millennials [69 percent] favor cannabis legalization than favor socialism, somebody’s going to be sorry when they get the munchies. But I digress again.)
Saturday, September 12, 2020
How to Make Lefties Hate the Nobel Peace Prize
Too Much Fun
8/23/20 San Jose Mercury News article about California and national government agreeing to thin the forests to reduce further disasters. One left comment was so delicious that I could not resist:
Trump's "rake the forest"
Omg! It always amazes me how Trump's diciples desperately try to find anything meaningful coming from his lips (or tweets).
Hopeless!
Did your Führer have any federal forests raked???
My response:
"The Valley of the Masters"
Civil War is Coming
The only question is whether before or after they start loading us into boxcars to ship to central Nevada. 9/3/20 WJAR:
(WJAR) — A mural painted nearly 70 years ago at the University of Rhode Island is set to be taken down after staff said students complained about a lack of diversity in the picture.
1954 was the dedication of “The Memorial Union” at the University of Rhode Island.
When veterans returned from World War II and enrolled at URI, they and other community members raised money in memory of those who lost their lives in the war....
The murals depict servicemen returning to Kingston, a class reunion, URI commencement, a South County beach scene, and students piled into a jalopy wearing letter sweaters....
“It really depicts a snapshot in time of the university’s history, important history, showing a person returning back to campus from World War II and other historical moments,” said Vice President of Student Affairs, Kathy Collins. “We’ve made a really difficult decision as we aim for the university’s future and we think about who are our students today, and who are our students going to be tomorrow.”
Collins said she’s been working for URI for the last four years and has received complaints from students.
“I have received complaints about the murals that portray a very homogeneous population predominately the persons painted and depicted on the wall are predominantly white and that does not represent who our institution is today,” said Collins. “Some of our students have even shared with us they didn’t feel comfortable sitting in that space.”
Wait until they take an Art History class, or a science class. Heads will explode. Or even worse, share a classroom or drinking fountain with one of us white devils.
So Ridiculous That Only a Prestige University Could Do It
The University of Southern California is reeling after removing a business communication professor from the classroom for his pronunciation of a Chinese “filler” word that can sound like “nigger.”
More than 100 of Greg Patton’s former students, most of them Chinese by ethnicity or nationality, accused administrators of “casting insult toward the Chinese language” and compared their action against Patton to Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in China.
They demanded the punishment of whoever filed the racial discrimination complaint against him in a Sept. 1 letter.
The filler word transliterates as nei ge. This is even worse than the ignorant sorts who freak out over the word "niggardly." 1/28/99 AP:
WASHINGTON (AP) _ David Howard could have used the word ``miserly″ to describe how he administered a Washington, D.C., government fund. Instead, he chose ``niggardly,″ and it cost him his job.
``Niggardly″ means Scrooge-like. But it sounds a lot like a racial slur, and a few of Howard’s colleagues took offense.
Mayor Anthony Williams, who is black, accepted the resignation of Howard, who is white, saying initially that his aide showed poor judgment even though he ``didn’t say anything that was in itself racist.″
The only better example of bowing to ignorance was when a Dallas County official used the term "black hole" to refer to the traffic ticket collection office. A black county commissioner showed how ignorant he is by seeing this as a racial insult, not a reference to the astronomical object (which clearly needs renaming).
There seem to be an awful lot of very ignorant and easily offended people who lack enough knowledge to play in public.
Friday, September 11, 2020
Meteorites (1998)
Remember When Reagan's Speech Mistakes Were Signs That He Was Stupid or Too Old?
Joe Biden fumbled the number of military members that died from the coronavirus during a campaign stop in Michigan on Wednesday.
The Democratic presidential candidate was in Warren, Mich. when he misspoke and said that over 6,000 U.S. military members have died from Covid-19.
The Biden campaign told Fox News that the former vice president cited the number of confirmed cases and deaths from COVID-19 in Michigan as being the numbers for the military, saying the armed forces had seen 118,984 cases and 6,114 deaths....
In June, Biden incorrectly said 120 million people in the country had died from the coronavirus. At the time the number was about 120,000.
The Trump campaign had used that slip-up as evidence that the Democratic candidate was “confused” and “not playing with a full deck.”
Gee, if you knew that there are 320 million Americans, you would not make that mistake. No wonder the Democrats, the innumeracy party, is behaving like COVID-19 is a Black Death level of problem.
I Think It Would Be Just Hilarious If Biden Miraclously Won...
and Trump received the Nobel Peace Prize. 9/11/20 New York Post:
WASHINGTON — President Trump has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for a second time this week — this time for brokering a historic peace deal between Serbia and breakaway republic Kosovo.
In a Friday morning tweet, Magnus Jacobsson, a member of the Swedish Parliament, announced he was nominating the Trump administration and the two European nations for their “joint work for peace and economic development, through the cooperation agreement signed in the White House.”
You will recall Obama won the 2009 Peace Prize after only a few months in office and according to Nobel officials it was a mistake. 9/17/15 BBC:
Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to US President Barack Obama in 2009 failed to achieve what the committee hoped it would, its ex-secretary has said.
Geir Lundestad told the AP news agency that the committee hoped the award would strengthen Mr Obama.
Instead, the decision was met with criticism in the US. Many argued he had not had any impact worthy of the award.
Mr Lundestad, writing in his memoir, Secretary of Peace, said even Mr Obama himself had been surprised.
"No Nobel Peace Prize ever elicited more attention than the 2009 prize to Barack Obama," Mr Lundestad writes.
"Even many of Obama's supporters believed that the prize was a mistake," he says. "In that sense the committee didn't achieve what it had hoped for".
Obama was an Affirmative Action Nobel Laureate, as near as I can tell.
California Goes Full Fascist
9/10/20 Los Angeles Daily News:
A Los Angeles Superior Court judge on Thursday, Sept. 10, granted the county’s request for an injunction prohibiting Grace Community Church in Sun Valley from holding indoor services in a ruling that emphasized the importance of following health orders to prevent the community spread of the coronavirus.
After hearing arguments Friday from attorneys for the county and the church, Judge Mitchell Beckloff ruled that Grace Community Church and its pastor, John MacArthur, are prohibited from conducting indoor worship services in violation of county health orders. The judge also ruled that the church must not conduct any outdoor worship services unless it fully complies with the county’s mandates relating to physical distancing and face coverings.
Whether this is wise or not is a separate issue, but "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" and the 14th Amendment imposes that limitations on state and local governments. The abolitionists who helped runaway slaves were similarly putting the laws of God over the laws of men. Again, a Republicans (abolitionists) vs. Democrats (the slave owners).
My church has indoor services and an outdoor service under the trees. We sit outside, even I though I think the risk is low inside where people are wearing masks.
I look forward to the video of mass arrests on Sunday. A great Trump ad. "What the Democratic Party does." And as usual, the Democrats are so insular that they do not see how this will play among moderate and conservative Christian Democrats (they do exist although I have no idea why).
Thursday, September 10, 2020
Android Voice Calling Request for Help
When I had Best Buy install a Bluetooth enabled Pioneer stereo in my wife's car we could push a button on the face and she could say Call <name in her phonebook> and it called. In the last year or so, it only recognizes a couple of names. Otherwise she has to dial by hand--neither safe nor legal in Idaho. I know the voice recognition is part of the phone, not the stereo. Neither Best Buy nor Verizon has a clue. Does an Android phone require retraining of the voice?
I wish that I could tell you why, but deleting all the Bluetooth pairing data and re-pairing both phones solved it.
Wednesday, September 9, 2020
Managing Wealth
One of the More Interesting Sci-Fi Stories I Have Read
Congratulations Democrats
Try Not to Go Into Shock: N.Y. Times Op-Ed Piece Calling Out Democrats on Their Support for Rich People
The election is a referendum not only on the moral failings of President Trump, Democrats argue, but on the economic fissures of the new economy. It is a fight, Mr. Biden says, on behalf of “the young people who have known only an America of rising inequity and shrinking opportunity.”
Why on earth, then, are Democrats fighting — and fighting hard — for a $137 billion tax cut for the richest Americans? Mr. Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer don’t agree on everything, but on this specific issue they speak with one voice: the $10,000 cap on deductions for state and local tax (better known as the SALT deduction) must go.
I cannot think of a better example of how Democrats claim to favor the poor, while actually favoring the rich, than this absurdity. The article goes onto the skewer the rest of the tax cut bill, but here is an area where this change hurt people who are paying $25,000 a year in property taxes (what do you think the property taxes are like on those $100 million houses in the Hollywood Hills and Malibu Beach are like?), and because the standard deduction increased, the vast majority of Americans came out ahead. The next time one of your wealthy liberal friends (but I repeat myself) complains about economic inequity, ask them why Democrats are trying to make Bezos, Bill Gates, and the Google billionaires better off.
Very Awesome Film: St. Helens (1981)
The High Value of Restraining Orders
"Detectives are looking for a relative of Mrs. Delano who was recently put under bonds to keep the peace because of hostile demonstrations he had been making at the Lefaro home."
Fortunately, the Sullivan Act had taken effect several months before, making this crime even less likely.
Today's Spam Special
The subject is a multidigit number such as verification code emails often use:
Do you want extra income? Are you still worried about money? Do you know the importance of money only when things happen? Don587211>'t want 10871>to get rich4524>? Th8745>e most p6268>rofita5748>ble wea817>lth pa08>ssword 4586616>in 20256>0 is 94>cryptoc166529>urren409844>cy in87>ves9828>tme0173300>nt. You0953547> only 7079>need a0106> mo83641>bile 4745>phone t1933>o foll766276>ow 728>me t009962>o l01686069>earn9010>, simple610242> and 64212>easy to824406> us512>e, low investme978>nt, l03652>arge3100348425> profi636>ts. Plea348>se co6663359>ntact whatsapp: +1（406）414-6388
I have no need for income in 20256. Or is that a logical expression: year 1?
The National Socialists were very concerned about forests, (" it depicted the forest sheltering ancient Aryan Germans, Arminius, and the Teutonic Knights, facing the peasants wars, being chopped up by war and industry, " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_and_soil) and they had some outgrowth from the Wandervogel movement. "This might be the reason why one can find significant members of the Youth Movement on both sides, among the Nazis and among the Widerstand." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Youth_Movement#Nazi_Germany
The National Socialists also did their part to reduce overpopulation, especially among groups the Democratic Party has now demonized. https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/18/us/jersey-city-school-board-member-comments-jews/index.html