Via Sean D Sorrentino @SorrentinoSean:
And as Sean asks, “So I guess that’s how you see us?”
That hypothesis certainly fits the available data.
Quote of the day—Barb L.
It will be glorious!
Barb L.
March 31, 2021
[Last Friday I took the day off from work and drove to Idaho to purchase something for Boomershoot. It was delivered and installed on Monday.
It will primarily affect some of the staff making their jobs easier. It’s amazing how you do something a particular way for years never realizing how much faster, easier, and just smarter a simple change will make to your work flow.
For example, for years we made the reactive targets on a folding table (or two). Our backs hurt from bending over the tables for hours. Then one day either Ry or I realized we could put concrete blocks under the table legs and raise the table top up to a height that allowed the target makers to stand straight. Wow! Why did it take so long to think of such a simple improvement?
Another example. For the first couple of Boomershoot events the targets were placed directly on the ground. Even though the grass wasn’t very tall you couldn’t find the target from 300+ yards away. And at the end of the event we couldn’t find them as we walked the field looking for the left overs. Leaving explosives around is almost certainly frowned upon by the ATF and the neighbors. We tried double stick tape to attach them to stakes. It rained that year and the wet stakes were not stickable. The next year we make somewhat elaborate target stands out of milk cartons which were stapled to the stakes (scroll down to the fourth picture). They were time consuming to make, the staples tended to pull out, the targets would be blasted off the little stands by nearby detonations and it was hard for shooters to distinguish the target from the target stand. Finally, I realized a single #64 rubber band to hold a target on a stake worked great. It was cheap, quick, and easy to attach a target.
Those are just two of many things we have made dramatic improvements in the work flow and experience of the participants that were “obvious” in hindsight. And so it is with the latest improvement. It is a bit on the expensive side but the Biden/Harris administration (ironic, huh?) was a big help.
I’m not going to spoil the surprise for staff, but it’s going to make event setup and breakdown/cleanup a whole lot easier. Barb is correct, “It will be glorious!”—Joe]
ATF director nominee David Chipman
Tomorrow President Biden will nominate David Chipman to be the director of the ATF. Chipman is no stranger to this blog. I wrote about him as “Senior Policy Advisor” for the Gifford Group. And he was part of a set of cherry picked “experts” at a Gun Policy Summit.
It’s like nominating a Grand Cyclops of the KKK* to head the office of the African American Administration. No such branch of government should exist. And putting someone who despises the rights of the people most affected by the organization is a recipe for some very tough times for those wishing to exercise their rights.
* I didn’t know this until I was verifying the title of Grand Cyclops, but before candidates for membership in the KKK would be accepted they were asked, “Are you now or have ever been a member of the Radical Republican Party?” I could easily see identical language being used today for admission to anti-gun groups.
Quote of the day—Glenn Harlan Reynolds
Looking at the FBI’s record, it’s hard not to conclude that it is far better at pursuing press and political opponents than at actually keeping us safe. It’s enough to make you wish those TV shows were fact and the FBI we actually have fiction.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds
April 1, 2021
The FBI is very good at woke politics, not so good at catching killers
[Agreed.
Mr. Reynolds enumerates a number of humorous as well as deadly serious FBI mishandled, if not malicious, investigations. He didn’t even get to the two incidents I consider the most serious of FBI misbehaviors. These are known as “Ruby Ridge” and the “Waco massacre”. I find it very telling these FBI murderers still have not been brought to justice.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Joe Biden
I’m the only one who has ever got them passed, man. The only gun control legislation that’s ever passed is mine. It’s going to happen again.
Joe Biden
POTUS
March 28, 2021
Biden Confident That Senate Will Approve Gun Control Legislation
[I know that Biden has been in politics for a long time but I didn’t realize he had the seniority to be a major player in the infringement of civil rights with NFA34. That’s truly impressive.
And I thought Senator Feinstein and Representative Schumer were authoring and pushing the evil Brady Bill and “Assault Weapon” ban legislation instead of Biden. I guess it must be the Alzheimer’s clouding my brain again such that I remember that wrong.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Dinesh D’Souza
If “woke” banks won’t do business with us, then people like me—political conservatives, mainstream Republicans—will have to have our own banks. If “woke” companies won’t sell to us, we’ll have to have our own merchandizing sector. If “woke” digital platforms won’t carry our views, we’ll have to make our own, and if—as in the case of Parler—there is a coordinated strike to take them down, we’ll have to restore our networks in a manner completely secure from such dangers.
This past weekend, my wife and I watched the movie “The Green Book.” In it, we saw a white and black man driving through the segregated South, where blacks basically lived in their own world—their own banks, restaurants, barbershops, and public lavatories and water fountains—and all because the whites flatly refused to do business with them.
It struck Debbie and me with the force of epiphany that this is where we seem to be heading. De facto segregation, not de jure segregation. And segregation not based on race but based on political viewpoint. It might seem overdramatic to say that Republicans and conservatives are the new blacks, but Republicans and conservatives are now treated in “woke” America with the same derision, contempt, and second-class citizenship that blacks were in the first part of the previous century.
Dinesh D’Souza
March 29, 2021
My Experience With ‘Woke’ Corporations
[Perhaps he was exaggerating some when he says they just now had the epiphany. If not, then he is a little slow on the uptake. It was obvious to me, and I posted about it, regarding the treatment of gun owners in 2006.
Still, better late than never and he has a much larger audience than I do.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Zuckerman, Chung, and Farrell
Wall Street is sifting through the aftermath of the biggest single-firm meltdown since the financial crisis. Mr. Hwang alone lost approximately $8 billion in 10 days, a person familiar with the matter said, in what traders and investors say was one of the fastest losses of such a large sum they had ever seen.
The firm’s implosion has rippled through the financial world, eroding tens of billions of dollars from the shares of media conglomerates and investment banks.
Gregory Zuckerman, Juliet Chung, and Maureen Farrell
April 1, 2021
[I”m reminded of Understanding Complexity by Scott E. Page and similar content in RIckards’ books The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System and The New Great Depression: Winners and Losers in a Post-Pandemic World
The hidden interconnectedness of entities, the unpredictable tipping points,the emergent behavior, etc. The fragility of a critical component of all modern human society could be exposed and shattered in less than a week.
I doubt that this event is “the big one” but it reminds us there could be, and probably is, such a big one hidden in the non-linear, mostly opaque, complex, world financial system. And it probably is just a matter of time before the system implodes.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Ron DeSanti
It’s completely unacceptable for either the government or the private sector to impose upon you the requirement that you show proof of vaccine to just simply be able to participate in normal society.
Ron DeSanti
Florida Governor
March 29, 2021
Gov. DeSantis to Take Executive Emergency Action Against Vaccine Passports
[If internal passports hadn’t been so widely misused in the 20th Century I could see why people, in general, might think they were a good idea. As it is I can’t imagine why anyone other than tyrants and those ignorant of history could think they are a good idea.
I glad at least one politician has a clue.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Kurt Vonnegut
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law.
They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking
than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the
211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the
United States Handicapper General.
Kurt Vonnegut
October 1961
Harrison Bergeron
[I had read this short story sometime long ago but I can’t really say when. A private post on Facebook caused me to go looking for it.
While the story has elements of truth in the trajectory predicted I don’t think this is in our future. I expect before things go much further something more like a USSR dystopia or a forceful reset to something resembling a meritocracy is far more likely. And I expect to see the outcome long before 2081.
But still, it puts into words the unarticulated fears many of us have.—Joe]
Quote of the day—James Rickards
The Federal Reserve does not understand that money creation can be an irreversible process. At a certain point, confidence in money can be lost, and there is no way to reconstitute it; an entirely new system must rise in its place. A new international monetary system will rise from the ashes of the old dollar system, just as the dollar system rose from the ashes of the British Commonwealth at Bretton Woods in 1944, even before the flames of the Second World War had been extinguished.
…
When the inevitable crash came, the losses were not apportioned to those responsible—the banks and bondholders—but were passed on to the public through federal finance. From 2009 to 2012, the U.S. Treasury ran a $5 trillion cumulative deficit, and the Federal Reserve printed $1.2 trillion of new money. Similar deficit and money-printing programs were launched around the world, as derivatives creation by banks continued unabated. Only a portion of the private debt defaults were written off.
The bankers’ jobs and bonuses were preserved, but nothing was achieved for the benefit of citizens. A private debt problem had been replaced with public debt larger than the private debt had ever been. These debts are unpayable in real terms, and defaults will soon follow. The defaults by smaller nations like Greece, Cyprus, and Argentina will be through nonpayment of bonds and losses for bank depositors. Defaults for larger nations such as the United States will come from across-the-board inflation that will steal from savers, depositors, and bondholders alike.
James Rickards
2014
The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System
[I mentioned this book a month ago and said, after consuming about 25% of it, that it is a good book. I have finished the book and I stand by that assertion.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Rob Skjonsberg
Liberals being offended, by pretty much everything these days, is predictable.
Rob Skjonsberg
Chief of Staff to South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds.
March 25, 2021
Rounds’ response to Biden’s proposed assault weapon ban gets national attention
[It’s interesting how people buy into this “offended” crap.
At work they are going through all software and documentation to remove references to “White Lists” and “Black Lists”. And the code revision control systems are going to have references to “master” branch changed to “main” branch. I’m glad my boss didn’t ask me to do it and instead asked the intern.
A week or two ago I had a more or less mandatory meeting, involving some large number of people, to go over the changes and why they were important. I politely listened and didn’t say anything.
What really struck me* was they said when they finish with this effort they won’t be done. They will just be getting started. The next item on the agenda will be to remove “grandfathered” from, well, everything I guess. Apparently that is offensive ageism or something. They reported after that they will be hunting for reasons to be offended on behalf of the LGBTQ community.
If the USSR and other communist examples are any clue the purity tests will only level out when the death and Gulag incarceration rates get to the point where society is collapsing.
I need to retreat to an underground bunker (I wish!) in Idaho before I get caught and found guilty of wrong think.—Joe]
* Another thing I found very telling was the presentation was of marginal “quality”. The slides had typos and grammar errors. The presentation itself was substandard too. There were lots of hesitation and restarts in the speech patterns. I kept wondering if the person couldn’t do a real job so they were given this task.
CCRKBA UPDATES ‘DON’T FEED THEM’ ANTI-GUN BUSINESS LIST
Via email from Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms:
BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today announced it is updating its list of businesses and CEOs who push for increased gun control and prohibition, adding Kenneth Cole, Northwell Health and Mesirow to the roster.
CCRKBA’s “Don’t Feed the Gun Prohibitionists” project began last year with the creation of a dynamic list of businesses and CEOs who have been supporting new legislation designed to impair the rights of law-abiding firearms owners, said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. The current roster lists some 200 businesses and their CEOs.
“When we started this project,” Gottlieb said, “we were sometimes surprised, and in some cases disappointed, at some of the businesses we placed on the list. We discovered several brand name businesses and corporate leaders who evidently have a quiet agenda to limit gun rights. The listing is our way of letting current and potential patrons have the knowledge about what their hard earned dollars may actually be funding.”
Kenneth Cole is a global fashion brand, while Northwell Health is a health care conglomerate and the largest health care provider in the state of New York. Mesirow is a Chicago-based financial firm which supports the Giffords gun control lobbying group.
“We’re not calling for a boycott of these companies,” Gottlieb explained. “Businesses and the people who own them can support whatever kind of philosophy they want, and gun owning consumers can likewise not spend any money with those firms. Let the marketplace decide. Over 100 million American gun owners represent a sizeable consumer bloc, and they will decide on their own where to spend their money.”
Gottlieb said a free market dictates the right of consumers to know about the products they purchase, and that includes knowing whether a business they support may be working in the shadows to erode their constitutional rights.
“We encourage people buy products from companies they can count on to not support efforts aimed at curtailing constitutional rights,” he explained. “By providing this information, we hope gun owning consumers are making reasonable decisions about which businesses to patronize. This might convince some businesses to re-think their core values.”
It’s tough to avoid some of them. Costco and Microsoft, in particular, makes me very sad.
And I had a couple former co-workers trying to recruit me for Uber not long ago. I was never very keen on Uber anyway and this pretty much crosses them off the list of places I would go to work for. However, I suppose if I was desperate I would consider it.
Update to Boots on the Ground
Via email from Rofl: The Mathematics of Countering Tyranny by James Wesley Rawles.
I updated my blog post Boots on the ground with a link to the Rawles post.
My post was written in 2013. Rawles wrote his in 2018. In addition to having more up to date information it also has a lot more detail.
Quote of the day—Egon von Greyerz
In the coming bear market for currencies and bull market for precious metals, gold and silver will not just maintain purchasing power but massively outperform and become the must have investment.
But above all, do not buy gold and silver for speculative purposes. Gold and silver is your insurance against the coming end of a monetary era when all currencies and bubble assets will implode.
Egon von Greyerz
March 24, 2021
WHY BUY GOLD WHEN THERE IS BITCOIN & TESLA
[I’ve been hearing hints of the coming collapse for 20 years now. And “it has to happen soon” since 2008.
And, of course, if you dig just the tiniest bit most people, including this guy, advocating precious metals just so happen to have some precious metals they would love to sell to you.
They may still be right. But I’m very skeptical of those who have some direct gain from people taking their advice.
And everyone who claims gold will “preserve your wealth” seem to gloss over, at best, that Roosevelt banned the private ownership of gold by executive order and got away with it. So, what’s the path to wealth preservation when your wealth is tied up in contraband?—Joe]
Quote of the day—Sebastian
I feel like most of the politicians are pretty well polarized into one camp or another at this point, just like everybody else, and there’s not a whole lot we’re going to do other than keep some of the more soft pro-2A folks in line. Does arguing with people on social media work? Probably not. I’ve come to the conclusion social media is useful for sharing cat pictures and pictures of your rugrats for the grandparents, and that’s about it. People who spew politics all day on social media are boors, and who wants to be a boor?
Sebastian
March 24, 2021
What Activism Matters Anymore?
[I think this is a valid point.
I think that the best way to be an “activist” these days is to take new shooters to the range and keep them going back. The culture needs to change and the politics will follow.
Boomershoot is coming up in just one month. That is a great exposure to free America. Show them one or all of these videos:
Even if you and your guests just watch you will have a unforgettable experience. Do your part to restore freedom to our nation.—Joe]
Orofino Idaho is 2nd Amendment Sanctuary
Via Facebook on March 25, 2021:
Orofino is Idaho’s latest 2nd Amendment Sanctuary City, the City Council voted unanimously Tuesday evening in favor of Resolution no. 21-500 declaring it.
This is the closest city to Boomershoot (if you want to call a place with only about 3,100 people a city). This is also where I went to high school.
Mental gymnastics
Via Chuck Petras @Chuck_Petras and Austin Petersen @AP4Liberty:
True. But expecting people to be rational is irrational.
Quote of the day—Sean D Sorrentino
Someone needs to make a cartoon showing a couple dead sheep and wolves moving off in the distance. Perhaps a farmer shouting “We must do something about the wolf threat.” In the next frame a Government Man stands at the door of a suburban house with a pair of pliers explaining that since wolves are dangerous to sheep, he’s going to pull the teeth out of their family Golden Retriever.
Sean D Sorrentino
Posted on Facebook on March 25, 2021
[While accurate and applicable I doubt the majority of people that need to get it would not actually understand. Those anti-gun people that do understand would not care. This is because they know gun control is not about protecting the sheep from wolves. It’s about protecting the Government Man from the farmer and his dog.—Joe]
An open letter to “The Squad”
March 19, 2021
An Open Letter to “The Squad”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Rep. Ayanna Pressley
Rep. Cori Bush
Rep. Ilhan Omar
Rep. Jamaal Bowman
Rep. Rashida TalibWe have been in touch with Arizona’s Republican delegation to the House of Representatives, and they agree it would be commendable if members of the congressional “Squad” took daring action and joined JPFO in denouncing genocide, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 8, 2021.
More than one million Muslims are currently experiencing physical and cultural genocide at the hands of the Chinese communist government.
As always, it is consciously played down by mass media to the public, a true statement. This is also not the only atrocity happening right now on the planet. Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, a 30-year-old civil-rights group, is uniquely aware of this abomination people perpetrate. Our advocacy of individual civil liberties recognizes that the main perpetrator of genocide is government.
It’s the truth.
Your voices are louder and heard more clearly than others in Congress. This is also true. Reach across the aisle, ignore the political and religious walls.
Join us in publicly renouncing any form of and all calls for annihilating people en masse for any reason. We eagerly await your reply.
Sincerely,
Alan Gottlieb, Chairman & CEO, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership
Alan Korwin, Editor, The JPFO Bill of Rights Sentinel
Richard Busch, JPFO Ambassador
J.D. “Duke” Schechter, JPFO Ambassador
It made me smile even if no one in “The Squad” will read it or care.
Quote of the day—Kevin Baker
Progressive Leftism is a religion, with all the attendant characteristics: Dogma, the treatment of heathens, heretics, and apostates, indulgences, all of it. Government is God, legislators are the angels (remember, Satan and his demons were once angels), the “news” media are the clergy, and we proles are the laypeople, the heathens, the apostates and the heretics. And they will drag us, kicking and screaming if necessary, into their promised Utopia.
Or kill us, if they deem us too deplorable to save.
Kevin Baker
February 27, 2021
Immanentize the Eschaton!
[This is entirely consistent with the rise of other leftist states like the USSR, Cambodia, Venezuela, etc..
I hope we can take a less bloody path back to a government respecting the rights of the individual to worship, or not, whatever religion they so chose. But my assessment of the situation is rather grim.—Joe]