I saw these on the wall of a U-Haul store:
They are a little too close to the truth.
Category Archives: Politics
Quote of the day—KING 5 Staff
Seattle’s popular Piroshky Piroshky Bakery is closing its Third Avenue location in downtown “until further notice” over “countless safety concerns.”
Following a fatal shooting Sunday afternoon at Third Avenue and Pine Street, the bakery sent a series of tweets detailing problems with crime in the area. The shooting on Sunday was the third in the area in a month, according to the bakery.
KING 5 Staff
February 27, 2022
Piroshky Piroshky closing downtown Seattle location over ‘countless safety concerns’
[This is Mug Me Street in Seattle. If you look at the picture at the top of the article you will see the McDonald’s store which is ground zero of Mug Me Street. My boss, a former Seattle cop, recently told me a story of his undercover coworker shooting a drug dealer in that store several years ago when a drug deal went sour.
Defunding the police is working just as expected.
Prepare appropriately.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Alan Gottlieb
The gun prohibition lobby would have America become vulnerable to such aggression as we are now seeing on television screens from coast to coast. This isn’t some action movie Americans are watching, this is real life, and it vividly illustrates why so many of us fight day and night to protect and defend our Second Amendment rights.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the good citizens of Ukraine. We can only hope that gun prohibitionists, or at least their supporters in the establishment media, learn something from this tragedy. To live in peace, one must always be prepared to defend it.
Alan Gottlieb
CCRKBA Chairman
February 24, 2022
CCRKBA: ‘UKRAINE CRISIS UNDERSCORES IMPORTANCE OF SECOND AMENDMENT’
[I do not expect, and I doubt Gottlieb does either, gun prohibitionists will “learn something from this tragedy” that will cause them to reduce their efforts to disarm private citizens. I expect many of them would celebrate the destruction of the USA and imagine they can, and should, accelerate that destruction by eliminating or neutering the 2nd Amendment.
We live in interesting times. Prepare appropriately.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Chris Cillizza
What looked like a major flub during the 2012 campaign — and was used as a political cudgel by Obama — now looks very, very different. It should serve as a reminder that history is not written in the moment — and that what something looks like in that moment is not a guarantee of what it will always look like.
Chris Cillizza
February 22, 2022
It’s time to admit it: Mitt Romney was right about Russia
[See also what David Rutz has to say about this.
How gracious to admit his political bedmates were wrong. Isn’t he a nice guy? I wonder how they got it wrong to begin with?
One might be tempted to claim, “Never attribute to malic what can be adequately explained by ignorance and/or stupidity.”
When the hypothesis of ignorance and/or stupidity is put to the test you have consider that the political left is so much more friendly, and almost reasonable, with their political opponents after those opponents are no longer a political threat When they are a political threat they are called “Hitler”, “fascist”, “racist”, “sexist”, etc. It happened with McCain, it happened but both Bush’s, it’s a consistent pattern. It’s to the point that they come across as schizophrenic.
But, again, the hypothesis of mental illness of a wide swath of the general population needs to be tested. In my estimation the simpler, and therefore more likely, answer is the behavior is a calculated and deliberately deceptive action.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Isobel Asher Hamilton
The chip Neuralink is developing is about the size of a coin, and would be embedded in a person’s skull. From the chip, an array of tiny wires, each roughly 20 times thinner than a human hair, fan out into the patient’s brain.
The wires are equipped with 1,024 electrodes which are able to monitor brain activity and, theoretically, electrically stimulate the brain. This data is transmitted wirelessly via the chip to computers, where it can be studied by researchers.
The second is a robot that could automatically implant the chip.
The robot would work by using a stiff needle to punch the flexible wires emanating from a Neuralink chip into a person’s brain, a bit like a sewing machine.
Isobel Asher Hamilton
February 17, 2022
Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to embed microchips in people’s skulls and get robots to perform brain surgery
[This sounds like such a great idea it should be mandatory… for politicians. The data should be posted on the Internet in real time.
I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader on the feedback to be applied when the dislikes exceed the likes by a factor of two to one.
On a more serious note, I expect there will be people eager to do this. It will depend upon what sort of “apps” are available. Being able to give yourself almost instant orgasm will probably be a best seller with some people. Direct Internet access will be sufficient for others. And the math coprocessor will be the “killer app” for many of the nerds. But I don’t expect the concept will get full market penetration until virtual reality is nearly indistinguishable from the real world.
Just as with recreational drugs Darwin will provide the negative feedback and limit the adoption of this technology.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Igor Volsky
The significant increase in gun violence over the last couple of years is simply too hard to ignore and, I do believe the President when he says and when he said that this issue is a priority for him,
Igor Volsky
Founder of Guns Down America
February 14, 2022
‘We’re not asking for magical things’: Anti-gun violence groups launch campaign to pressure Biden four years after Parkland
[Completely ignoring that over 92% of violent crime in the US does not involve a gun. Completely ignoring the “defund the police” component to the increase in violent crime. Completely ignoring the lack of prosecution of violent criminals which are caught. Completely ignoring the early release of violent criminals from prison using the excuse they were in danger of catching COVID-19 while in prison. Completely ignoring gun ownership is a specific enumerated right.
It is not about crime. It is about taking Guns away from ordinary people.
Just as interesting is that there is such a new anti-gun organization. This organization was founded in late 2016. Apparently the half dozen or so other organizations, many of which have been around for decades, weren’t effective enough for Volsky.
What he doesn’t seem to understand is that his message of “building a future with fewer guns” has already been tried by many of the existing organizations. And if they ever get any traction with the politicians gun sales skyrocket. It is an “adaptive response” as explained by Chet just the other day.
And don’t let anyone get away with telling you, “No one wants to take your guns.”—Joe]
Quote of the day—StumpSmasher @SmasherStump
It’s hard to beat a sales pitch of “we’ll reduce your sentences to nothing, defund the police so they don’t stop you, disarm your victims so they can’t resist, and throw in a pile of free stuff at the expense of workers”.
The DNC’s platform is tailor-made for the criminal vote.
StumpSmasher @SmasherStump
Tweeted on February 5, 2022
[Also, as was the case in the early days of the USSR, criminals are the natural allies of the communists and are treated as such by the politicians.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Victor Davis Hanson
This governmental freefall has been overseen by a tragically bewildered, petulant, and incompetent president. In his confusion, an increasingly unpopular Biden seems to believe that his divisive chaos is working, belittling his political opponents as racist Confederate rebels.
As we head into the 2022 midterm elections, who will stop our descent into collective poverty, division, and self-inflicted madness?
Victor Davis Hanson
January 19, 2022
Is America Heading for a Systems Collapse
[I’m nearly certain that is the wrong question to ask. It is my understanding that in chaotic times people give their support to “strong” (authoritarian) people who claim they can fix the broken system. Mussolini and Hitler come to mind…
Hence, I think the better questions are:
- “How can we prevent the wrong person from coming to power?”
- “How can we dramatically reduced government power and let the free market fix the mess we are in?”
- “How can we survive the coming collapse?”
- “Where is my underground bunker?”
Prepare appropriately.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Forrest Cooper
In his book, Antifragile Nicholas Nassim Taleb describes his concept as something which gains from disorder or resistance. Having no word to accurately describe something that is the opposite of fragile, he argues that the term robust does not go far enough, and is neutral at best. Antifragility is a trait, whether it be in markets, military strategies, or bone mass, that grows off of the volatility of their environments.
…
The phenomenon that is American Gun Culture has responded to censorship in an antifragile way. This can be seen in the sudden spike in firearms purchasing whenever politicians push for banning certain firearms, as well as by continuing to grow despite political and cultural opposition. While social media platforms normalize censoring firearms-related content, the culture revolving around firearms shows that it doesn’t need their approval to continue thriving.
Forrest Cooper
February 7, 2022
Censorship and Antifragility: Aero Precision
[Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder is a good book. It is a novel, (but obvious in hindsight) way of looking at things. As an engineer it helped me think about the design of reliable systems. It can help the gun rights community think about better responses to attempts at infringements too.
Gab is a good example. They were deplatformed on multiple axis simultaneously and came back stronger than before.
One might also say Boomershoot was an antifragile response to a law introduced by Diane Feinstein. The word did not exist at the time, but it certainly fits the facts.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Emily McCormick
Consumer prices soared by the most in four decades in January, with inflation across the economy showing few signs of peaking even after months of increases.
The Consumer Price Index’s 7.5% annual surge at the start of 2022 was the biggest leap since 1982 and topped already elevated expectations for a 7.3% rise, based on Bloomberg consensus data. On a month-over-month basis, the CPI unexpectedly posted a 0.6% increase for a back-to-back month, whereas economists had been looking for a deceleration. Core inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, also exceeded estimates, showing a 6.0% year-over-year jump in January.
The report served as one of the clearest affirmations that inflation — described as recently as November by the Federal Reserve as “transitory” — has become a persistent feature of the economic recovery.
Emily McCormick
February 10, 2022
What economists are saying about soaring inflation
[We live in interesting times.
Prepare appropriately.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Natasha Abel
Based on the percent of firearms licenses, about 1 to 5 percent of adult residents had a firearms license in Massachusetts counties. But Iwama found no consistent effect of the new legislation on reducing four types of violent crime (murder or nonnegligent manslaughter, aggravated assault, robbery, rape). Her study did find that a one-percent increase in denied firearm licenses and denied firearm licenses following statutory disqualifications increased robberies 7.3 and 8.9 percent, respectively.
While the percentage of denied firearms licenses and firearms license applications had little to no effect on violent crimes, Iwama suggests state lawmakers revisit their legislation to ensure that it is being implemented as intended and address challenges identified. In particular, are these findings the result of a longer-than-expected lag in enforcement following passage of the legislation? Are they due to individuals obtaining firearms in nearby states with looser gun laws? Or is it possible that the 2014 law is being enforced differentially by county?
Natasha Abel
October 22, 2021
Study: Massachusetts Gun-Control Legislation Has Had No Effect on Violent Crime
[Or is it possible that what I and others have been saying, for almost 20 years, gun control has not and will not make the general public safer?
Study after study agrees with me but researcher Janice Iwama confirms the findings of dozens of other researchers using data from all over the country (for example: a 2018 study on background checks and my thoughts on background checks in 2013) and concludes it must be an implementation problem specific to Massachusetts. She doesn’t understand (or believe) that it was never the intention of the law to increase public safety.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Vox Day@voxday
You can cling to all the Big Tech platforms as long as you like. It’s foolish, because they WILL deplatform you. And you can jump to all the “new” gatekeeping platforms run by the same people who run the Big Tech platforms all you like, but you’re not going to find what you’re looking for there either.
Consider this: there is a reason the media, the ADL, and all the other organizations that hate you have been deplatforming and discrediting people like me, Torba, Milo, Owen, Stefan, and Razor for the last 7 years.
And maybe it’s not because we are pure and unmitigated evil haters who hate. Maybe it’s because we actually stand for the Good, the Beautiful, and the True.
Vox Day@voxday
Gabbed on February 4, 2022
[Read that carefully. He didn’t say they were the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. He said maybe they actually stood for that.
I think that is the more likely hypothesis than they are all “pure and unmitigated evil haters who hate”.
There may be some other hypothesis that fits the available evidence better than either but doesn’t matter much. What matters is those Big Tech companies deplatforming people are clearly evil haters who hate.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Adam Kredo
The ATF maintained in its response to the 2021 investigation that the “sole purpose” of its database and ongoing efforts to digitize out-of-business records “is to trace firearms used in crimes.”
More than half-a-million traces were performed in 2021, according to the ATF, and just under half a million in 2020. The ATF, however, says it does not have the ability to determine if the database actually helps solve crimes. The ATF’s National Tracing Center “has no ability to determine the successful prosecution of hundreds of thousands of crime gun traces it completes annually, nor does it have any way to link a trace for a specific prosecution for a particular year,” the agency informed Congress.
Adam Kredo
January 31, 2022
Biden Admin Has Records on Nearly One Billion Gun Sales
[There are number of things of interest in this:
- One billion gun sales!
- The ATF says they can’t even tell us if there has ever been a single crime solved via the tracing of a gun.
- Yet they continue to do a half million gun traces per year – to what purpose?
If the nearly sole purpose was to return stolen property to its rightful owner and they were successful most of the time I would wouldn’t complain too loudly.
If they were instrumental in solving hundreds of thousands of violent and/or property crimes every year I wouldn’t complain too loudly.
Neither of those two scenarios are true.. All evidence indicates the ATF are the criminals.
Prepare appropriately.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Congress of the United States
We would urge that you consider rescinding the proposed regulation that would require FFLs to preserve firearm records older than 20 years. Indeed, the evidence provided by ATF thus far demonstrates that such records likely have little utility in prosecuting crime, yet raise serious concerns about whether ATF is creating a prohibited national gun registry.
Congress of the United States
Signed by 36 members of Congress
Letter from Congress to the ATF
[See also:
- Lawmakers Investigate Biden Admin Over Database Containing One Billion Gun Sale Records (freebeacon.com)
- Biden Admin Has Records on Nearly One Billion Gun Sales (freebeacon.com)
- Biden Admin Lays Foundation For Massive Gun-Grab Exercise, 1 Billion Records Of Gun Sales (tampafp.com)
We live in interesting times. Prepare accordingly.—Joe]
Quote of the day—John R. Lott
With violent crime increasing over the last two years, Americans want a solution. But President Joe Biden constantly frames violent crime as only a gun problem. Again, it was the sole focus of Biden’s speech in New York City on Thursday. Even when he mentions police or prosecutors, it was in terms of enforcing gun control laws.
But this “guns first” approach ignores a basic fact – over 92% of violent crimes in America do not involve firearms. And while Biden blames guns for the increase in violent crime, the latest data show that gun crimes fell dramatically.
John R. Lott
February 4, 2022
Biden’s ‘guns first’ approach to violent crime ignores basic facts
[I’m reminded of the television news several decades ago. When they would report on crime an symbol of a handgun would appear in the corner of the screen during the crime report. It didn’t matter if was burglary, a stabbing, or shoplifting and no gun was involved. They were attempting to make guns synonymous with crime.
The democrats defund the police, fail to prosecute criminals, and then tell us they are going to increase restrictions on firearms. This isn’t stupidity or ignorance. This is evil. As I have said before, this the communist way.
Prepare appropriately.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Alan Gottlieb
Proponents of these laws, and especially the gun control initiatives passed in recent years, sold the public a bill of goods, and now everybody knows it. Voters were told in 2014 that Initiative 594 would reduce gun-related violence, and today’s data proves they were misled. Four years later, the Seattle-based gun prohibition lobby promised Initiative 1639 would prevent gun-related homicides, and they lied again. In Olympia, anti-gun politicians are pushing more gun restrictions right now, with the same promises.
The billionaire-backed gun prohibition lobby and their allies in Olympia claim that so-called ‘gun violence’ is an epidemic. Frankly, the intellectual dishonesty of the gun control crowd is the real public health crisis.
Alan Gottlieb
CCRKBA Chairman
January 31, 2022
CCRKBA: KING COUNTY, WA GUN MURDERS, SHOOTINGS PROVE ANTI-GUNNERS LIED
[Hmmm… I’m not sure this is true. Can evil people be a “public health crisis”? It’s at least a little bit twisted in the mixing of metaphors, so to speak.
At the higher levels the anti-gun people know restrictions on access to firearms won’t make the general public safer. You can go back for at least 25 years and listen carefully to the speeches by President Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Diana Feinstein, and the media releases by Handgun Control Inc, The Brady Campaign, etc., etc. Typically they word things very carefully such that they usually don’t actually lie with statements about increased restrictions on firearm ownership and use being a net win for public safety. They knew then and they know now that the real reason for the increased restrictions has nothing to do with public safety. They will imply public safety is the reason but they almost never say it.
There have even been cases where they come right out and say they know it. In his book Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths That Paralyze American Gun Policy page 107. Dennis A. Henigan wrote:
I am not arguing here that higher rates of gun ownership cause higher rates of crime, violent crime, or homicide. Such causation is difficult to show because so many other factors bear on the incidence of crime. For instance, simple cross-national comparisons of gun availability and crime do not control for the degree to which various countries impose legal restrictions on firearms. It also is difficult to sort out whether high levels of gun ownership lead to high crime rates or whether high crime rates lead to high levels of gun ownership.
Henigan was a HCI and/or Brady Campaign lawyer for years. And he was even acting president for a while. He admits gun ownership rates appear to be uncorrelated with crime rates.
Most of these people are not ignorant or stupid. They are evil.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Andrew Kerr
The state of Washington told Black Lives Matter in early January that it must “immediately cease” fundraising in the state because of the charity’s lack of financial transparency, but it has ignored the order, according to records obtained by the Washington Examiner .
The Washington Secretary of State Corporations and Charities Division notified BLM in a Jan. 5 letter that it could face fines up to $2,000 for each donation it solicits and receives from Washington residents until it submits records detailing its financial activities . Despite the notice, BLM has continued to accept contributions from the state’s residents as recently as Monday evening.
Andrew Kerr
February 1, 2022
BLM fundraises in Washington despite order to ‘immediately cease’
[If the Governor Inslee administration fails to hold BLM responsible for these violations it will make their allegiance with evil clear to everyone. As it is the democrat voters give their own politicians a lot of slack. I don’t think they will do that for BLM on this issue.—Joe]
Update: I wrote the above on February 2nd before finding this article early on February 3rd:
Black Lives Matter shut down all of its online fundraising streams late Wednesday afternoon, just days after California threatened to hold the charity’s leaders personally liable over its lack of financial transparency.
…
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita previously said BLM’s refusal to answer basic questions about its finances and operations fits a common and disturbing pattern.
“It appears that the house of cards may be falling, and this happens eventually with nearly every scam, scheme, or illegal enterprise,” Rokita, a Republican, said in an interview with the Washington Examiner. “I see patterns that scams kind of universally take: failure to provide board members, failure to provide even executive directors, failure to make your filings available. It all leads to suspicion.”
I did not expect that. I expected BLM would continue fundraising until people were actually arrested.
Quote of the day—Laura Cannizzaro Rodrigue
What started as a temporary means to protect the community from unknown risks of a virus has turned into a circus of mandates that no longer make sense to any rational person. Enough is enough. People all over our great State who live, work, and worship in New Orleans are united in this effort to take back control of their lives and families.
Laura Cannizzaro Rodrigue
February 1, 2022
New Orleans Mayor Sued Over COVID-19 Vaccine Passports
[I’m interested to see the result of this. The entire State of Washington has a mask mandate, could such a lawsuit be successful in Washington?
Here is the legal basis in Rodrigue’s lawsuit:
This is an action for declaratory and injunctive relief challenging Defendants’ issuance and enforcement of mandates for vaccination and mask usage in the City of New Orleans in violation of individual constitutional liberties and the separation of powers. First, the vaccinate-or-test mandate violates La. Const. art, I, § 5 by infringing on the fundamental right to privacy with overly broad restricts lacking no accommodation for religious objections, personal or philosophical choice, natural immunity, medical contraindications, or the wide range of factors influencing the severity of the disease process. Second, the vaccinate-or-test mandate denies equal protection under La. Const. art. 1, § 3 by classifying persons based on vaccination status and threatening to punish the exercise of a fundamental right in order to coerce compliance. Third, the mask mandate is unconstitutionally vague and overly broad, and thus fails due process under La. Const. art. 1, § 2. Fourth the third-party enforcement provisions offend due process under La. Const. art. 1, § 2 by unlawfully conscripting private persons into the role of public enforcement officers under the threat of criminal and regulatory sanctions and the denial of municipal services. Finally, the Mayor’s emergency orders violate the separation of powers under the State constitution and the City Charter by purporting to enact law without legislative authorization.
I found this interesting and may mean such a lawsuit in other jurisdictions would fail even if this one succeeds:
Louisiana’s constitutional right to privacy “is one of the most conspicuous instances in which our citizens have chosen a higher standard of individual liberty than that afforded by the jurisprudence interpreting the federal constitution.”
…
The right to privacy under Article I, § 5 includes “the right to decide whether to obtain or reject medical treatment.”
And, of course, the city will drag their feet for months or years and try to make the case moot before it can be decided.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Downtown Seattle Association
For far too long our city has essentially ceded Third and Pike to criminal enterprises and it’s time to put these people out of business. We need urgent action to get rid of the illegal activity in this area before more people are hurt and more lives are impacted.
Downtown Seattle Association
January 19, 2022
Notorious Seattle intersection in spotlight after recent shootings
[This is on what Barb and I call “Mug Me Street”.
On Second Street just south of Pike, a little over a block away, is a Target store. The shoplifters hit them multiple times a day and the local communists admire the thieves:
John Ray Lomack is a prolific shoplifter who is charged with brazenly stealing a 70″ television from Target. It was all caught on video surveillance. Kreig thought it was pretty cool.
“You gotta admire the boldness of walking out with a box the size of a smart car,” Kreig wrote.
After learning Lomack was released on his own personal recognizance, despite his nearly four-decades worth of criminal behavior, Kreig offered to buy light-on-crime Judge Kuljinder Dhillon a drink. Then she implies low-income and poor people are criminals and that Target will survive, so it’s no big deal.
We are going through the same transformation as was witnessed in the Soviet Union and elsewhere.
Prepare appropriately.—Joe]
Of course is it California
This was in the package with a recent purchase I made:
One might be inclined to give someone a pass on this if it were a label on something like a household cleaner with a pleasant smell. Or maybe even your gun oil. But I don’t think you would arrive at the actual produce even with a game of twenty questions.
It is a cell phone holster:
How many trees will be cut down, how much electricity will be used in the creation of those paper inserts, how much landfill space will be used, to save zero people from consuming the cell phone holster and causing a birth defect or have other reproductive harm? Anyone stupid enough to eat that piece of plastic is going to be too stupid to read and remember what the warning was about.
Of course it is California. It is not about saving lives. It is about exerting control and demoralizing the populace.