$1 trillion platinum coins

This reminds me of something:

There’s a loophole in the law that prescribes the types of coins that can legally be minted in the US, and it would allow the Treasury Department to mint a $1 trillion platinum coin, deposit it at the Federal Reserve, and then continue paying its bills as normal. This simple solution would let Congress sidestep what Rep. Bill Foster of Illinois told Insider was a “silly rule that we make up for ourselves,” which requires Congress to vote on raising the debt ceiling every time the US reaches the borrowing limit.

It’s an idea New York Rep. Jerry Nadler has long promoted. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told reporters on Tuesday that Nadler raised the possibility of minting the coin in a meeting with Democrats to bypass the partisan fights on raising the debt limit. In 2013, when Republicans were refusing to raise the limit under President Barack Obama, Nadler told Insider that he was disappointed the Obama administration would rule out “one of the very few bargaining chips it has,” referring to minting the coin.

.Oh, yeah, now I remember:

I’m sure it will turn out different this time. After all, this is just a few coins distributed only to the Federal Reserve. That makes it totally different, right?

It would be more honest if they made the coins out of lead. But honesty is not their strong suit.

These people can’t be so ignorant and/or stupid so as to believe this is anything other than a means to destroying the nation. This must be a deliberate plan of destruction.

I hope they enjoy their trials.

Quote of the day—Kevin Sorbo @ksorbs

We should have left our guns for the Australians not the taliban.

Kevin Sorbo @ksorbs
Tweeted on September 26, 2021
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

First treated as the Second

image

Via a tweet by JPFO.

Quote of the day—JPFO

The tyranny of BATFE must end. It’s corrupt purpose is self-evident: You would never consider leading the Aviation Administration with people afraid to fly—you pick pilots, aircraft designers, industry leaders, so the industry can flourish. By proposing an agency head who hates the industry under its thumb, it’s obvious what feds seek—not protection of our property and rights.

By trying to put people in charge who detest America’s 120 million gun owners, the federal government shows its disdain for the Bill of Rights. Can you imagine if this industry that supplies us with arms and keeps us all safe had people in government they could trust? No? Of course not, all the more reason to scrap this unconstitutional gang of criminals. We do not need hostile anti-rights partisans associated with the ungun cabal like the Bradys, Giffords, Bloomberg astroturf Moms. That’s like asking landlubbers to be lifeguards.

JPFO
September 24, 2021
WHAT IS THE LOGIC OF HAVING A FEDERAL AGENCY LED BY PEOPLE WHO WANT THE INDUSTRY TO DIE?
[It is a rhetorical question. Of course everyone knows what the logic is.

This latest insult of nominating David Chipman as the head of the ATF should go in the evidence file to be used at their trials.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Pam Carlson @PamCarlson3

Keyboard commando who has to carry a gun everywhere because his penis is so tiny says what?

Pam Carlson @PamCarlson3
Tweeted on September 24, 2021
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday! H/T to In Chains @InChainsInJail.

Keyboard commando who can’t bring anything but childish insults to the discussion says they lost the argument.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Annalee Armstrong

HIV integrates its genetic material into the genome of a host cell, meaning available therapies just can’t remove it. A team of scientists at Temple University and the University of Nebraska Medical Center managed to remove the virus completely from mice during preclinical testing using a combination of CRISPR and antiretroviral therapy. They also found no adverse events that could be linked to the therapy in the study, published back in 2019.

The company is also working on similar treatments for other viruses, including herpes and hepatitis B.

Annalee Armstrong
September 27, 2021
Excision’s CRISPR gene editing therapy for HIV is heading into human testing after FDA clearance
[A few months ago a male friend (who I suspect is bi-sexual) pointed out that COVID-19 is not the first pandemic our generation has lived through. My thinking about this enabled a quick response to different friend just a few days later who was pontificating on how COVID-19, “Hit the sweet spot of infectiveness and lethality.” I disagreed, “It could be a lot more lethal.” “Not really”, he replied, “It would be hard to be more lethal and still infect a lot of people because it would kill people before they could infect as many people as it does.” I had a three letter acronym response, “HIV”.

He immediately conceded. A disease as infectious as chickenpox with the silent latency and deadliness of HIV would have the potential to exterminate humanity.

I fear that as long as we have global trade if we don’t develop the ability to respond to new diseases in timeframes of weeks, or perhaps days, some disease will, “Find the sweet spot” (or be engineered) to close the curtain on humans.

HIV was first recognized as a new disease in 1981. At the time I figured scientists would have it figured out and curable in “five or ten years”. Forty years later a promising cure is going into human trials.

Herpes too was a pretty big deal in the mid 1980s. Like HIV, herpes is now treatable but incurable. That may be changing in the next few years.

Think of all these diseases as practice for the future.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Brandon Smith

Eventually tyranny has to put boots on the ground. A totalitarian system can function for a time on color of law and implied threats, but it will crumble unless it is able to establish a physical presence of force. Once those jackboots touch soil in a visible way and the agents of the state try to expand oppressive measures, rebels then have a free hand to disrupt them or bring them down. But this only works if there are objectives and enough decentralization to prevent misdirection of the movement.

Brandon Smith
September 22, 2021
Organizing Patriots In The Face Of Government Informants And False Flags
[Interesting post and associated comments.

See also my Boots on the ground blog post.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Michael Walsh

Loosening our bounds to reality is attractive also because calling things by whatever names serves our immediate purpose liberates us from the hard work of understanding things not of our making, and gives us the illusion of mastery over our environment. It is especially attractive to those who have power over others, because it frees them from having to persuade the rest of humanity. For society’s mob of lazy under-performers, pleasing the leaders is an easier way of securing one’s place than competing for merit. Anyhow: intellectual/moral deterioration has ever been an easier sell than the hard acquisition of skills and virtues.

Michael Walsh
September 22, 2021
The Prince: Angelo Codevilla, 1943-2021
[The redefining, or perhaps it’s better called undefining, of words is a source of great irritation to me. Words mean things. And when people start ignoring the true meanings of words we no longer have a basis of communication. Such people might as well use a few grunts and snorts rather than multisyllable words.—Joe]

Quote of the day—neo

These lies have a function that is similar to what was going on with the Soviets – the lie as mockery and insult and sadistic tease. In that regard, obvious lying is a feature, not a bug, and it helps that the lie is absurd. It’s a show of power meant for the opposition to view, a way to say, “we can state any stupidity we want as truth, things both you and I know are ridiculous, and will we say it with a straight face to illustrate the extent of our power over you. We don’t have to pretend to make sense. We’re in control and you’re not. We are laughing at you.”


That’s the point we have reached.

neo
September 21, 2021
The Biden administration: lying with impunity
[I want to say, “Maybe, but I think there is a better chance that they really believe their own untruths.”

I’m not nearly confident enough of that claim to say it with any certainty. I fear she is 100% right.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Doyle Rice

The paint reflects 98.1% of solar radiation while also emitting infrared heat. Because the paint absorbs less heat from the sun than it emits, a surface coated with this paint is cooled below the surrounding temperature without consuming power.

Using this new paint to cover a roof area of about 1,000 square feet could result in a cooling power of 10 kilowatts.

Doyle Rice
September 17, 2021
Scientists created the world’s whitest paint. It could eliminate the need for air conditioning.
[Of course it will make the building cooler in the winter as well.

Still, I love living in the future.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Accountability @Nocte_Insanire

Do not be confused. YOU are the carbon they want to reduce.

Accountability @Nocte_Insanire
Tweeted on September 19, 2021
[They’re not wrong. A good case could be made for this assertion.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Cantankerous Socialist (@Cante12175815)

you are a loud mouth pussy that would piss their pants if you had to get in a real fire fight and can’t get a hard-on without his AR15 penis extension so stop dreaming Cletus!

Cantankerous Socialist (@Cante12175815)
Tweeted on September 15, 2021
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday! H/T to In Chains @InChainsInJail.

I find it interesting that there are some people delusional enough they believe they know the sexual functionality details of someone they have never met. And yet, their friends and relatives have not insisted they spend time attempting to recover while in a comfortable facility wearing a straitjacket.

Perhaps Obama Care doesn’t fund mental health care as well as is required to help such people. But, what can you expect from socialized medicine?—Joe]

Marge Greene should attend Boomershoot

I hope she “triggers” all the right people:

Boomershoot appears to be a good match for her public persona.

Self-esteem correlated with number of sex partners

Interesting:

An analysis of data collected across 10 world regions suggests that men’s self-esteem is more strongly tied to their sexual success than women’s. The findings were published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

The study authors accordingly proposed that having a greater number of past sexual partners should increase self-esteem. They further reasoned that this positive link between self-esteem and number of past sexual partners should be stronger among men since greater sexual acceptance is more adaptive for men. That is, men’s ability to pass on their genes relies strongly on having a high number of sexual partners, while women’s success in passing on their genes rests on having higher quality sexual partners who will invest in offspring.

The first thing that came to mind when reading this was, “Correlation doesn’t mean causation. Perhaps having a high self-esteem, as a consequence of such things as job success, physical attractiveness, etc. contributed to the higher number of sexual partners.”

The authors are concerned about that as well:

The authors note that past experimental studies have found that manipulating self-esteem seems to impact sexual desire differently among men and women, suggesting that self-esteem might be “both a cause and a consequence of short-term mating success in men.”

“Future work should seek to disentangle the many functions of self-esteem within men’s short-term mating psychology,” the researchers write, “including work to identify how self-esteem may serve specially-designed functions as both a consequence, and a cause, of short-term mating success.”

Many years ago I would hear things to the effect that women with high number of sexual partners by women was frequently a result of low self-esteem. At the time I knew two young women (in their mid 20s) who that seemed to apply to but it did not appear to be a consistent pattern. More recently with women in their 50s and 60s I have talked to about numbers of sex partners don’t seem to show any correlation one way or the other. But this did not involve any accurate self-esteem measurements.

More study is required before, if ever, the head shrinks start prescribing lots of sexual partners to increase self-esteem.

Interesting job title

One would think they would have known a job title of “Isolation & Quarantine Strike Team Consultant” would raise a few eyebrows. They must be deliberately feeding the conspiracy theorists.

Via Chuck Petras on Twitter here and here.

Boomershoot Field reviewed

From here:

image

“Can be noisy at times.” Smile

Quote of the day—Kevin D. Williamson

Gun control is not about gun crime — gun control is about gun culture.

That culture-war mentality produces a great deal of sloppy thinking and ignorant commentary. Consider the case of Gail Collins in Thursday’s New York Times. Collins is hopping mad about gun shows, about which she seems to know . . . not a whole lot. “Yeah,” she writes — really, “yeah” — “right now one easy way to buy a gun without having anyone check to see if you have a history of criminal convictions, mental illness or a domestic violence restraining order is to just plunk down some cash at a gun show.”

This is — and this part still matters! — not true.

Because this is a culture-war issue rather than a crime-reduction issue, Collins apparently has not bothered thinking much about the most obvious and most relevant question: Are guns bought at gun shows a significant contributor to crime?

Kevin D. Williamson
September 16, 2021
Gun-Control Laws Aren’t about Preventing Crimes
[The obvious and relevant questions are also inconvenient for people such as Collins. Other questions not mentioned by Williamson include, “Do you realize you are advocating for infringements on a specific enumerated right?” And, “Are you aware that conspiracy to infringe upon rights is a serious Federal crime?”

Perhaps such questions will come up at their trials.—Joe]

Complacency

Via email:

I write once in a great while when something hits me that I think you might be interested in putting in the blog, or just doing research on…
today is one of those days.  Usually I comment on the blog as “The Patriarch”

22 years ago, my father passed (no, not 22 years ago today).  A veteran of WWII, he brought home a bunch of weapons – a couple of Mauser 8mm bolt action rifles, and a single shot .22, which was apparently used for training on the Mauser.

And  Walther P-38. Matching serial numbers, and holster (it was found with a German Medical officers uniform).

When he passed, I got the pistol, and one of the Mausers.  Having hit a few rough times financially, I decided that I’d offer the pistol to my brother.  My brother has been hunting and fishing and general outdoors kind of guy (more so than I am, sadly, for many reasons)  We struck a deal and he said “ship it to me”.  This should have been my first clue.

I informed him that the law won’t allow me to ship it directly to him, so unless he wanted to drive from MN to Seattle, he needed to find an FFL to transfer it through.  This apparently surprised him.  So he sends me the address of a dealer.  Then I explained to him that I needed a copy of their FFL (for the shipper to verify the address), and why.  I called them, and they promptly got my that.

Now it gets even more interesting.  The FFL is asking for *my* FFL, but it’s not required, when shipping from WA, to ship through an FFL< only TO an FFL… which they researched and agreed with me about.  So, I ship it to them.

My brother goes to pick it up – I offhandedly mentioned that he would need to fill out the 4473 and do the NICS … a couple hours later he texts me and says that they informed him that he needed a permit to purchase.  He was way upset because he is moving at the end of the month and it will take time to get this permit.

I told him I thought it was weird he needed a permit to purchase when he wasn’t actually purchasing, and that this was weird because I thought WA firearm laws were wacky…

I was biting my tongue because I wanted to go on a rant about voting and getting people in gov’t that would respect the 2nd amendment, etc… but he wasn’t in the right frame of mind.

I was just a bit surprised that he hadn’t done the research first.

Anyway, it would seem that there are a lot of owners out there that are a bit complacent.  Not aware of what is going on in the halls of government.

Use it or not.

“The Patriarch”

I fear far too many gun owners don’t have a sufficient clue as to what is going on in many of the states. I’ve essentially given up on the legislatures and am betting (with thousands of dollars in donations each year to SAF and FPC) on the courts to reverse the infringements.

Quote of the day—Zachary Faria

The surge in new gun owners could have a political impact that lasts far longer than the pandemic and the surge in homicides that inspired it.

Between January 2019 and April 2021, approximately 7.5 million people became first-time gun owners. Nearly 50% of them were women. More than 40% are black or Latino. This is bad news for the gun control movement and, perhaps in the long term, for the Democratic Party.

Gun control, despite polling well as a collection of general platitudes, is already a losing issue throughout the country. Each time someone becomes a first-time gun owner, the chances of passing the strict gun control measures that the gun control movement and the majority of the Democratic Party want to see implemented go down. The pandemic will go away, and homicides will decline — but this will continue to shape our gun control politics for years to come.

Zachary Faria
September 17, 2021
The pandemic and the homicide surge will have a lasting effect on our gun control politics
[Help the trend to continue. Take a new shooter to the range.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Chinese Communist Party

We will use nuclear bombs first, We will use nuclear bombs continuously. We will do this until Japan declares unconditional surrender for the second time.

Chinese Communist Party
July 19, 2021
China threatens to nuke Japan over Taiwan in video played on CCP-sanctioned channel
[We live in interesting times.

Prepare appropriately.—Joe]