Category: Crap For Brains

Biden’s Gun Control Speech Was A Mistake

Joe Biden had one real goal in Wednesday’s speech announcing a five-point plan to address the rising violent crime rate in many American cities; reassure voters that Democrats have a strategy that will reduce the increasing lawlessness and reverse the spike in crime that began last year.

Instead, the big takeaway from his rambling and semi-coherent remarks was his off-topic warning to Americans that if they want to take on the government, they’ll need F-15s and nuclear weapons. An address that was supposed to show that the president was focused on violent crime turned into a half-hearted stump speech for gun control, and maybe cannon control as well.

Recent polls have shown that Biden isn’t trusted to handle the crime issue, and I can’t imagine that yesterday’s disastrous turn at the podium made voters feel any better.

Polls signal growing unease over crime, a potential liability for Biden and Democrats in next year’s midterm elections. A Yahoo News/YouGov poll released in May found that nearly 50% of respondents said crime is a very big problem in the U.S. About 36% of respondents at least somewhat approved of Biden’s handling of crime, while 44% at least somewhat disapproved.

Republicans have accused the president of being soft on crime, saying he has not done enough to rebut some liberals who call for cutting spending on police departments. Biden has repeatedly said he does not favor defunding the police.

It’s true that Biden announced that cities can use hundreds of billions of dollars in COVID relief funds to spend on law enforcement efforts, but the officer shortage in many cities can’t simply be blamed on budget issues. Instead, as the New York Times reported a few days ago, officers are retiring, resigning, and joining suburban agencies because of the hostility towards law enforcement shown by many Democratic politicians and elected officials in cities from coast-to-coast.

“We have lost about one-third of our staff to resignation and retirement,” said Chief David Zack of the Asheville Police Department in North Carolina — more than 80 officers out of a full complement of 238. “Certainly with the way that police have been portrayed and vilified in some cases, they have decided that it is not the life for them.”

Those reductions in Ashville echo a nationwide trend. A survey of about 200 police departments indicates that retirements were up by 45 percent and resignations by 18 percent in the period between April 2020 and April 2021, when compared with the preceding 12 months. The percentage of officers who left tended to be larger for departments in big or medium-size cities, according to the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington policy institute that will release full data next week.

“It is an evolving crisis,” said Chuck Wexler, the organization’s executive director.

Biden could have engaged in a full-throated attack on the Defund the Police movement, but he can’t risk alienating the Democrats’ base, so instead he pilloried gun owners. He could have issued a stark warning to violent criminals that the Department of Justice is going to be coming after them, but instead he warned “rogue gun dealers” that the ATF will have a zero tolerance policy on violations of agency rules and regulations.

A speech that was ostensibly designed to make Americans feel better about Biden’s handling of violent crime instead left many of us scratching our heads. Even Biden defenders like Geraldo Rivera were less than impressed by the president’s remarks.

“Compassion aside, where was the passion? That speech was as laid back as the program he is proposing,” said Rivera.

The longtime journalist, who has reported on violent crime and other major issues throughout his career, said that Biden’s allocation of resources toward summertime social programs for urban and endangered youth and stemming illegal firearm sales will not go far toward solving the problem.

“This is the civil rights issue of our time, murder has become the leading cause of death, if this is not an emergency, what is it?” he later asked.

Now, Geraldo is wrong about murder being the leading cause of death in the United States (heart disease, cancer, COVID-19, accidents, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and suicides are each responsible for far more deaths than homicide), but he’s right that Biden’s speech was “laid back.” I’d actually call it somnambulate, but seeing Sleepy Joe at the podium isn’t exactly a new phenomenon either.

The biggest problem for Biden is that he can’t actually acknowledge why we’re seeing a rise in violent crime. Biden wants to blame legal gun owners and federally licensed firearm dealers, when we know that the vast majority of gun owners will never commit a violent crime and that criminals are getting their guns on the illicit market or through family and friends. The White House refers to an 18-month increase in violent crime, when we all know that shootings and homicides really increased a year ago, after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the riots and destruction that followed in many cities.

Biden’s address on Wednesday may have checked a box, but I doubt it moved the needle in terms of public opinion on his handling of violent crime. By continuing to call for more restrictions on legal gun owners at a time when millions of Americans are embracing their Second Amendment rights for the very first time and his unwillingness to get tough on those actually responsible for violent acts, the only people Biden really reassured were his gun control allies. When it comes to everyone else, Biden would have been better off politically saying nothing at all.

F-15S & NUCLEAR WEAPONS: BIDEN SHRUGS OFF 2A IN GUN CONTROL SPEECH

Just over a week before the country’s Independence Day celebrations, President Biden delivered a speech on gun control in which he ridiculed the meaning, feasibility, and intent of the Second Amendment.

In an event meant to be the kickoff for another round of anti-gun legislation and executive actions for an Administration just 155 days in the White House, Biden tried to frame the Constitutional gun rights argument to justify his proposed efforts.

“The Second Amendment, from the day it was passed, limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own. You couldn’t buy a cannon,” he said.

While the first part, about the Amendment “limiting the type of people,” is somewhat true– for example, the gun rights of enslaved and in some cases even freed blacks were often denied in the Southern States from the earliest days of the Constitution despite the Second Amendment– Biden fails the fact check on cannon ownership. As we have covered before, anyone with the desire and extra cash could acquire their own battery of fully functional cannon without any government paperwork or permission until 1968. 

With that being said, modern breechloading artillery is still available in the “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave,” provided it is registered with the federal government and properly taxed. Still, legacy artillery systems such as muzzleloading black powder field guns, do not require tax stamps.

Biden also went further into the woods against what the Second Amendment protects, arguing the enumerated right had something to do with hunting, although many in the gun rights community point out that Washington didn’t cross the Delaware to get to a duck blind.

“No one needs to have a weapon that can fire over 30, 40, 50, even up to 100 rounds unless you think the deer are wearing Kevlar vests or something,” he said, although magazine capacity restrictions have only been adopted in nine states– and have been recently found to be Constitutionally suspect by a federal court. Further, industry data suggests consumers in the U.S. own at least 230 million detachable magazines, with about half of those able to hold more than 10 cartridges, the traditional threshold for a “large-capacity magazine” in restricted states.

Then, Biden seemed to paint the Second Amendment’s potential check against tyranny, a concept that dates to the days of Constitutional framer James Madison, as ludicrous in the days of modern warfare, notwithstanding the realities of multi-domain modern insurgency.

“Those who say the blood of lib- — ‘the blood of patriots,’ you know, and all the stuff about how we’re going to have to move against the government. Well, the tree of liberty is not watered with the blood of patriots. What’s happened is that there have never been — if you wanted or if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons,” he said.

The quote Biden ramblingly alluded to, drawn a 1787 letter from Founding Father Thomas Jefferson– author of The Declaration of Independence and later third U.S. President– to William Smith, John Adams’ secretary, can be argued to be directly related to the right to keep and bear arms and was penned at the time of Shays’ Rebellion in Massachusetts.

We have had 13 states independent 11 years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure.

It is not the first time that Biden trotted out the Jeffersonian quote in relation to his view on gun policy. In February 2020, while on the campaign trail for the Democratic nomination for President, he argued at a town hall event in New Hampshire that, “Those who say ‘the tree of liberty is watered with the blood of patriots’ — a great line, well, guess what: The fact is, if you’re going to take on the government you need an F-15 with Hellfire Missiles. There is no way an AK-47 is going to take care of you.”

States he doesn’t really know what it is, but still advocates for it.
This is the intellectual level of the current military command structure.
Yes, you read Marx, Lenin and even Mao.
You do that to – as SunTzu put it – understand the enemy as well as you understand yourself.
You do not teach a theory though that is 180° opposite to what America stands for.

Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Defends Critical Race Theory

General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained in a House Armed Services Committee hearing Wednesday why he supports bringing Critical Race Theory into the American military while admitting “I’ll obviously have to get much smarter on whatever the theory is.”

“I do think it’s important, actually, for those of us in uniform to be open-minded and be widely read,” Milley said. “And the United States Military Academy is a university, and it is important that we train and we understand,” he added as a rationale for teaching Critical Race Theory.

“I want to understand ‘white rage,’ and I’m white, and I want to understand it,” said the most senior military officer in America, linking the term to the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th.

Understanding Critical Race Theory, according to Milley, is important to find out “what is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America? I want to find that out,” he said. “I want to maintain an open mind here and I do want to analyze it. It’s important that we understand that. Because our soldiers, sailors, airman, marines, and guardians come from the American people, so it is important that the leaders, now and in the future, do understand it.”

In defending the practice of including Critical Race Theory in military training, Milley noted “I’ve read Karl Marx, I’ve read Lenin, that doesn’t make me a communist. So what is wrong with understanding, having some situational understanding about the country for which we are here to defend?”Milley then criticized those who oppose the integration of Critical Race Theory, saying “I personally find it offensive that we are accusing the United States military, our general officers, our commissioned, non-commissioned officers of being ‘woke’ or something else because we’re studying some theories that are out there.”As Katie reported earlier in June, Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL) sent multiple letters to West Point in order to learn how Critical Race Theory was being implemented —not just studied or considered — and ring the alarm on CRT’s damaging outcomes.

“On the battlefield, skin color doesn’t matter. All that matters is merit & mission,” Waltz tweeted about his inquiry. “Critical Race Theory’s antithetical to the unity needed for service to our country & that’s why I’m getting to the bottom of why it’s being taught to our future leaders at our military academies.”

15 Years After Lauer’s BOTCHED Apocalypse Prediction: ‘Countdown to Doomsday’

One way in which journalists try and terrify viewers into endorsing every expensive environmental prescription is to constantly – and wrongly – predict the apocalypse is just around the corner. Fifteen years ago this week, the not-yet-disgraced Matt Lauer did exactly that with a two hour special outsourced to the SyFy Channel: Countdown to Doomsday. (We’re still here so the countdown must be continuing.)

On June 14, 2006, the then-NBC host declared, “We are the problem.” Demanding fast action, Lauer warned that anything less would mean the end of humanity:

Today, life on Earth is disappearing faster than the days when dinosaurs breathed their last, but for a very different reason….Us homo sapiens are turning out to be as destructive a force as any asteroid. Earth’s intricate web of ecosystems thrived for millions of years as natural paradises, until we came along, paved paradise, and put up a parking lot. Our assault on nature is killing off the very things we depend on for our own lives….The stark reality is that there are simply too many of us, and we consume way too much, especially here at home….It will take a massive global effort to make things right, but the solutions are not a secret: control population, recycle, reduce consumption, develop green technologies.

As Media Research Center Vice President Dan Gainor pointed out when the special aired, Lauer adopted the tired (and always wrong) trope about over population:

Had this been the History Channel instead of the SciFi Channel, someone might have pointed out to Lauer that claim has been around for more than 200 years. It traces back to 1798 and Thomas Malthus whose work “An Essay on the Principle of Population” has been proven wrong as the world population has grown.

In 2008, ABC aired a paranoid special called Earth 2100 and declared that New York City would be under water by 2015. (Spoiler alert: It wasn’t.) In a flashback to that special’s wrong predictions, I wrote:

The segment included supposedly prophetic videos, such as a teenager declaring, “It’s June 8th, 2015. One carton of milk is $12.99.” (On the actual June 8, 2015, a gallon of milk cost, on average, $3.39.) Another clip featured this prediction for the current year: “Gas reached over $9 a gallon.” (In reality, gas costs an average of $2.75.)

But don’t worry, journalist will keep predicting environmental doom. And they’ll likely keep being wrong.

Former Trump Official Slices Fauci Apart Over Hydroxychloroquine Fiasco

Donald Trump scored a major win over the liberal media. It’s a moral victory as he’s no longer president, but he can add another notch to the handle of the club that has beaten the media establishment bloody for years. Its face must be a bloody crater by this point. Hydroxychloroquine has finally been proven as an effective treatment for COVID. Russian collusion was a hoax. The Russian bounty story in Afghanistan was another whopper. Lafayette Square was not cleared for a photo op. And Hunter Biden’s laptop is real.

The hydroxychloroquine one is significant since it was weaponized heavily against the Trump administration. The president was trying to save lives and all the media did was attack him. It’s why they’re the opposition press. And Dr. Anthony Fauci’s refusal to endorse the treatment caused thousands of unnecessary deaths. That’s the allegation that Peter Navarro, Trump’s director for now-defunct Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, said he had around 60 million tablets of this stuff that could have been used to treat some 5-6 million patients. Fauci refused to budge. Navarro did not hold back, calling Fauci an “SOB,” saying that he kept to his line that hydroxychloroquine’s effectiveness was based on anecdotal evidence. Not true. Navarro slapped scores of studies noting its effectiveness.

The former Trump official went into further detail on Larry O’Connor’s show:

Navarro goes on to accuse Fauci and the liberal media of being complicit in tens of thousands of negligent homicides as this treatment has been confirmed to be effective. It’s another reason to hate Fauci. It’s another example showing how bad he is at his job. The man was wrong about testing, the vaccine (he thought we didn’t need one), and masks. He admits in emails that the masks we all wore for a year did nothing to curb the spread. Only Fauci can explain why he did what he did on COVID. He lied. He was biased. He is the poster child for the death of medical expertise. They got political. They wanted Trump gone, but now the population, except for woke liberals, have rightfully turned their backs on these political clowns. They’re not doctors. They’re DNC operatives. With COVID over, you can mute Fauci on your televisions.

The most stupid puppet ever to hold office.

We yield our rights to goobermint?

Leeme see….

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America…..

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

May be just me, but SloJoe has it so wrong, he qualifies as what the patriots back then rebeled against.

Biden Gets Lost Reading the Notes Written for Him by Someone Else, Babbles Incoherently to Stall for Time.

Elder abuse.

A curious tic Biden has, which Benny Johnson pointed out: He’s always saying he would “get in trouble” with staffers if he answers a question.

He means his handlers. That’s not my supposition, it’s what he clearly means when he says “I’d get into trouble if I answered another question” or “I’d get in trouble with Jake Sullivan if I answered that.”

He’s upfront admitting he’s being run by other people, that he’s not the real president and that he is at least aware enough to know he’s not the real president.

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Remember to keep telling yourself: President Kamala Harris

A Visibly Confused, Tired-Looking Joe Biden Mixes Up Libya, Syria Three Times In Speech On Russia

Feinstein Introduces Federal Extreme Risk Protective Order Bill

The matter of Fourth Amendment protections for firearm owners has yet to fully have its day in court. The promising outcome from Caniglia v. Strom on May 17, 2021 does point to gun owners having protection from firearm seizure when a warrant is absent. The Caniglia case was reported nearly a month ago by Cam Edwards, and in his correct estimation, it can have effects going forward concerning due process for those trapped up in such situations, and how the high court views them:

It’s encouraging to see the Supreme Court unanimously agree that Edward Caniglia’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated when his firearms were seized without a warrant, but I suspect that a challenge to a state’s red flag laws would result in a much more divided opinion.

While this case didn’t directly involve a Second Amendment challenge, it’s also good to see that even the progressive wing of the Court concluded that the seizure of Caniglia’s legally-owned firearms infringed on his constitutional rights. It may not indicate a sea change from the liberal justices, but at least in this case they declined to treat the Second (and Fourth) Amendment as a second-class right.

While I agree with Edwards’s suspicion that “red flag” laws might yield a more divided opinion, this case will in my opinion have an impact on litigation against all of the unconstitutional seizure policies. In a concurring opinion, Justice Alito conceded the Caniglia case does not address “red flag” laws directly, but I’m sure the case will be cited in case documents filed in lower courts.

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Just to point out the intellectual level of some people who believe they’re making a salient point about a subject that anyone can easily determine they are totally clueless about

Letter: What does any of this have to do with the Second Amendment?
Portsmouth Herald

June 10 – To the Editor:

In the news the past month or so:

A 57-year old retired NYC police officer is shot accidentally by a friend trying to break up a dispute outside a pizza parlor.

A 6-year old boy, a passenger in his mother’s car, is shot in a road rage incident.

Another young boy, retrieving his bike from the sidewalk near his home, is shot by a neighbor.

Several dozen are killed or wounded over a weekend in gang-related shootouts in Chicago.

An 18-year old from Ohio is found carrying an AK-47 in a NYC subway.

A woman in Texas shoots a beauty shop owner in a dispute about the cost of her pedicure.

A 5-year old boy is accidentally shot by his mother who was aiming at a dog.

Eight people are killed in Atlanta, followed by shootings in a supermarket in Colorado, an office building in California, a FedEx office in Indianapolis, a rail yard in San Jose. A total of 39 people.

Somebody….anybody….Please! Can anyone tell me what any of this has to do with the Second Amendment?

Anthony McManus

Dover

I wouldn’t necessarily call criminal being criminals as a ‘failure’ of gun control. This just confirms that these laws aren’t for controlling guns, but controlling the average law abiding citizen.

Gun Control Failures Don’t Mean You Need More Gun Control

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result, then there’s no doubt about how insane gun control really is.

Over and over again, proponents of it continue to take everything as an excuse that more gun control is needed. Study says that gun control reduced crime? Then it’s proof we need more gun control. Study shows gun control doesn’t work? Then clearly the problem is that we need more gun control.

It’s not any better when you have a total failure of gun control happen in real life, either.

A month after Gov. J.B. Pritzker took office in 2019, giving Democrats complete control in Springfield, flaws in Illinois’ gun laws were exposed when a convicted felon whose state firearm owner’s identification card had been revoked opened fire in an Aurora warehouse, killing five co-workers and wounding a sixth along with five police officers.

The case became a rallying point for gun safety advocates, who’ve pushed for mandatory fingerprinting for FOID card applications, universal background checks for gun buyers, and a system that ensures people whose FOID cards are revoked hand over their weapons to authorities.

More than two years later, however, Pritzker and the Democratic-controlled legislature haven’t enacted those policies or any other major gun safety measures, even as they successfully pushed progressive measures that range from legalizing marijuana to abolishing cash bail.

“These are complicated issues,” Pritzker said of gun control last week in an interview with the Chicago Tribune.

“We have Democrats from downstate, from areas where people are deeply concerned about protecting their gun rights,” he said. “And then we’ve got people who live in other parts of the state who believe, as I do, that we need to have a greater focus on gun safety, but it’s a complicated challenge in order to get enough votes put together.”

And all of that ignores the simple fact that while the Aurora shooter was a convicted felon, he went through every hoop the state of Illinois cared to present. He got a FOID. He filled out the ATF’s Form 4473. He didn’t lie about any of his personal information–though he did lie about being a convicted felon, to be clear, but not his name, address, or other such data–and still was able to buy a gun.

Gun control failed at every single level.

That’s kind of like what happens every single day in Chicago. There, despite all the gun control laws on the books in Illinois, criminals are able to obtain firearms easily enough. Meanwhile, citizens trying to obey the law are dealing with a screwed-up system.

At what point do people look at these failures and recognize that doubling down on a failed strategy isn’t going to make anyone’s life any better? The gun control we see day in and day out in Illinois doesn’t work, and yet people are asking why isn’t there more of the very thing that has been amply illustrated to not accomplish a blasted thing.

Honestly, it makes no sense to me. It just doesn’t.

What a strategy fails to work, a reasonable person would try something new. In Illinois and far too many other states, they’re enamored with the idea of gun control that they can’t admit that it just isn’t working.

These states are like that friend in a toxic relationship who is convinced that they just need to do one more thing to make the relationship work. We all know how those kinds of things work out, don’t we?

Illinois isn’t likely to turn out the least bit better, either.

 

 

Comment O’ The Day:
“I could be down for this. Maybe it would keep those afraid of any firearm from moving away from the coasts.”

BLUF:
Virginia is concerned about a “bad” America.
The one to which she refers — one in which houses host guns — was previously known to both Republicans and Democrats as just “America.”

LA Times Writer Wants Gun Ownership Reported on Real Estate Listings, but for the Opposite Reason as You

When you’re considering moving to a new area, what are the pluses that matter most? Low crime? Good schools? Trash pickup?

A writer for The Los Angeles Times has another metric that may be worth consideration.

On Tuesday, opinion columnist Virginia Heffernan took to Twitter with an idea:

“Real-estate listings should include prevalence of gun-ownership in a 50-mile radius…”

She’d also like info on the “number of annual mass shootings in the region.”

“Time to change what a ‘bad neighborhood’ is,” she announced.

What if someone owns a modern sporting rifle, also known as the best-selling hunting rifle in America?

She believes that’d constitute a bad place for children:

“[A]nd introduce a meaningful tax on guns and gun violence. No one should say, ‘This is a great place to raise kids’ about neighborhoods where even one person has an assault rifle.”

Stop all the racializing:

“The metric would be simple. Example: Staten Island (pop 474k) has 4x the gun ownership per capita of the Bronx (pop 1.4m). If that reads as safer or more [free] to some people, Staten Island is for them. If not, maybe time for the Bronx. Take race, class, politics out of the real-estate equation.”

 

There’d definitely be a lot of items to track.

In 2018, Switzerland’s Small Arms Survey reported there were nearly 400,000,000 guns in the United States.

That was, obviously, two years before 2020’s gun-buying surge.

As for “assault rifles,” the AR-15’s certainly been vilified courtesy of impressive, dedicated effort by some on the Left side of the aisle.

Meanwhile, of course, ownership of any firearm doesn’t equal impending murder, and the lightweight modern rifle isn’t employed in most gun crimes.

The vast majority of such are, as you know, committed with handguns.

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Gun Owners of America Blast John Cornyn

Erich Pratt, Senior Vice President of Gun Owners of America sent out an email blast yesterday accusing Texas Senator John Cornyn of attempting to sell out gun owners:

We have an emergency on our hands.

While preparing to fight back against the ATF’s unconstitutional regulation of pistol braces, we learned some disturbing news…

Senator John Cornyn — a Republican who should be pro-2A — is quietly making a deal with the rabid anti-gunner, Chris Murphy, to pass universal background checks.

We need EVERY gun owner in America to take action right now to prevent what would be Armageddon for the Second Amendment.

The language seems overwrought in that direct mail we’re-all-going-to-die-unless-you-donate way. Is there some truth to it? Apparently so:

After years of failed attempts to pass a firearms background check bill, two senators think they have a path to agreement — at least on one key component of a deal.

Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, have been quietly negotiating a way to bolster background check rules by making a small but consequential tweak to current law, which they say would close an unintended loophole in the system that has led to preventable mass shootings.

House-passed legislation to require background checks on nearly all gun purchases has stalled in the Senate. But Murphy and Cornyn, who have been negotiating behind closed doors with little fanfare, believe they may have a formula that can attract broad support from both parties.

Bipartisan, of course, means that the Stupid Party and the Evil Party get together to do something stupid and evil. Or, in this case, Republicans go squishy in the face of Democrat demands.

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A Middle Class Rebellion Against Progressives Is Gaining Steam.

A specter is haunting America, a great revolt that threatens to dwarf the noxious rebellion led by Trump. The echoes of another potentially larger pushback can already be heard in progressive America. But it’s not towards socialism, as many suggest. It’s the opposite: a new middle-class rebellion against the excesses of the Left.

This new middle-class rebellion isn’t rejecting everything that progressives stand for; the Left’s critique of neo-liberal excess is resonating, as is the need for improved access to health care. But the current focus on “systemic racism,” coupled with a newfound and heavily enforced cultural conformism and the obsessive focus on a never-ending litany of impending “climate emergences” are less likely to pass muster with most of the middle class, no matter how popular they are with the media, academics, and others in the progressive corner.

And this new middle-class rebellion is being bolstered by a wide-ranging intellectual rebellion by traditional liberals against the Left’s dogmatism and intolerance. Indeed, what we’re about to see has the potential to reprise the great shift among old liberals that had them embracing Reagan in reaction to the Left’s excesses of that generation.

In a way, this should not be surprising. After all, the progressive base is limited: According to a survey conducted by the non-partisan group More in Common, progressives constitute barely eight percent of the electorate. The report also found that fully 80 percent of all Americans believe that “political correctness is a problem,” including large majorities of millennials and racial minorities.

Party line journalists may see President Biden as the new champion of the middle class, but every time he adopts central tenets of the new Left, he undermines his pitch.

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Pentagon OKs Chinese Drones Previously Banned over Espionage Concerns

After years of citing potential spying by China via sophisticated drones, the Pentagon has approved the U.S. military to acquire two Chinese-made “Government Edition” drones.

A recent Pentagon report seen by the Hill found “no malicious code or intent” in two drone models manufactured by Da Jiang Innovations (DJI), a Chinese company, and one of the world’s foremost drone makers. The May 6 report, released on Tuesday, concludes that DJI’s drones are “recommended for use by government entities and forces working with U.S. services.”

“This U.S. government report is the strongest confirmation to date of what we, and independent security validations, have been saying for years — DJI drones are safe and secure for government and enterprise operations,” DJI spokesperson Adam Lisberg told the Hill.

Almost 80 percent of all drones used in the United States and Canada are made by DJI.

The Department of Defense green-lighting controversial drones comes after escalating concerns at the federal level around the security of DJI and Chinese drones more broadly.

DJI was added to the Commerce Department’s “entity list” — i.e., the list of bodies considered a “national security concern” — late last year, effectively blacklisting the company.

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I have no idea what, but
WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING!™©®

He’s no more ‘On the Mark’ than most two year olds are in the bathroom.

On the Mark: Gun violence can no longer be ignored
Team 12 Anchor Mark Curtis discusses gun control after recent shootings in San Jose.

The comments are always predictable.

“Bad guys will always find a way to get their guns.”

“The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a bigger gun.”

In the wake of the latest mass shooting in San Jose, this pandemic of gun violence can no longer be ignored.

Now, let me be clear, I believe in the Second Amendment. I believe in the rights of Americans to own a gun. But not if they are violent, or mentally ill, or have been convicted of a violent crime.

I wish I had the answer…but I don’t.

All I know is, doing nothing can no longer be acceptable.

Today’s Logical Fallacy is… “We Have to Do Something!”

A very dangerous contemporary fallacy, this one arises when tragedies and crises triggers the response: “We have to do something!” – regardless of whether or not that “something” is an overreaction, ineffective, or even makes things works. The logic, or lack thereof, usually flows like this:

1. We must do something.
2. This is something.
3. Therefore, we must do this.

Humans are empathetic, and when a tragedy strikes, our emotional response pushes us to do anything we can do prevent it from happening again. However, just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should, and just because the situation seems to warrant an immediate response doesn’t mean it actually needs one.

Sometimes the situation does call for action, but action should be carefully considered before it is undertaken. Doing something because it is “better than nothing” will often result in unintended consequences that often do more harm than good.

Wasn’t Climate Change!™ going to kill us all in 10 years?
What about every single chair behind the desk in the Oval Office, right now.

Biden says every single hospital bed in America will be filled with Alzheimer’s patients in 15 years

 

Hello Texans. Ring up your Stunned Tater Cornyn and tell the RINO where he gets off.

A quiet bipartisan effort on gun background checks may have a path to a deal
Democrat Chris Murphy and Republican John Cornyn believe they may have landed on a new way to beef up background checks while attracting bipartisan support.

WASHINGTON — After years of failed attempts to pass a firearms background check bill, two senators think they have a path to agreement — at least on one key component of a deal.

Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, have been quietly negotiating a way to bolster background check rules by making a small but consequential tweak to current law, which they say would close an unintended loophole in the system that has led to preventable mass shootings.

House-passed legislation to require background checks on nearly all gun purchases has stalled in the Senate. But Murphy and Cornyn, who have been negotiating behind closed doors with little fanfare, believe they may have a formula that can attract broad support from both parties.

Specifically, they want to clarify who is required to register as a federal firearms licensee, or FFL, and thus conduct FBI checks on a buyer before selling a gun. The senators say an ambiguity in the law has enabled unlicensed sellers to transfer weapons to dangerous people who skirt the background check system.

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Charges against woman involved in gun-waving incident during George Floyd rally are amended

A special prosecutor said Tuesday he has amended the charges against a St. Louis woman who waved a gun at racial injustice protesters last summer, and he’ll decide soon if he’ll amend charges against her husband.

Mark and Patricia McCloskey were indicted by a grand jury in October on felony charges of unlawful use of a weapon and evidence tampering. Special Prosecutor Richard Callahan said in a statement that he filed a new indictment on Monday that would give jurors the alternative of convicting Patricia McCloskey of misdemeanor harassment instead of the weapons charge. Under that alternative, the evidence tampering count would be dropped.

The move essentially gives a jury the option of convicting Patricia McCloskey of the lesser misdemeanor charge if it sees evidence of a crime that doesn’t reach the level of the felony charges.

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License Required: The Alarming New Mantra from Gun Prohibitionists

ANALYSIS: Gun control proponents have latched onto a new mantra in their effort to reduce the number of guns—and gun owners—on the U.S. landscape, reluctantly recognizing that so-called “universal background checks” are not the solution to violent crime involving firearms, nor have they prevented criminals from getting guns.

The latter fact is underscored in a recent online GUNS magazine report covering incidents in several states where suspects have been charged with “felon in possession” of firearms. The “dirty little secret” is that criminals don’t obey gun control laws, a fact that seems elusive to gun control proponents.

So there’s a new strategy gathering momentum among anti-gunners, and according to Vox, this strategy comes from perennial gun control extremist Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), who proposed on the 2020 campaign trail to require a license before purchasing a firearm.

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