Category: You Can’t Make This Up

When You Can’t Make This Up collides head on with Crap For Brains

Oregon gun access measure narrowly passes, bringing joy and sadness

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Regardless of how individual Oregonians voted, the rules laid out in Measure 114 will soon be law for all residents. But exactly what happens next is slightly unclear. A spokesperson for the Oregon State Police, the agency tasked with creating the permit to purchase system and overseeing the new background checks, said they would not be able to provide specific information about the timeline for the “rulemaking” process they will go through to work out the kinks until the election is certified by the Secretary of State……..

Michael Fuller, a Portland civil rights lawyer, had a different reason for voting yes: “My preferred concealed carry weapon does not have more than 10 rounds in its magazine anyway,” he wrote in a direct message on Twitter, “so I figured that passing 114 would make it less likely I would be outgunned if I were in a gunfight with an active shooter.”

You can’t make this up #2954
“As an important step in solving climate change, we must address the gender inequalities that persist in climate finance … “

Biden Launches ‘Climate Gender Equity Fund’ To Advance ‘Women-Led Climate Solutions’

The Biden administration unveiled a public-private partnership to help advance female leadership in searching for climate change solutions during the COP27 climate conference in Egypt.

Among other programs President Joe Biden announced during the conference was the “Climate Gender Equity Fund,” which will “leverage private sector contributions to help provide women climate leaders with technical skills, networks, and capital to develop and scale climate solutions,” according to a statement from the White House. The program was seeded by $3 million from USAID and $3 million from Amazon.

“As an important step in solving climate change, we must address the gender inequalities that persist in climate finance, and ensure female entrepreneurs have an equal seat at the table and access to the funding, networks, and technical support they need to scale climate solutions,” Amazon Worldwide Sustainability Vice President Kara Hurst said in a statement. “We’re proud to collaborate with USAID and the Biden administration to help scale women-led climate solutions globally.”

The e-commerce company argued that female entrepreneurs are “more likely than their male counterparts” to address social needs, lamenting that only a fraction of global venture capital is devoted toward female-founded companies. Amazon will commit an additional $50 million toward climate technology companies led by women.

The White House also launched the “Indigenous Peoples Finance Access Facility,” a $2 million program that will enable “continued climate stewardship by Indigenous peoples and local communities improving their access to climate finance.”

Biden attended the conference to “galvanize global action and commitments” with respect to climate change. Among other programs, the administration will also devote $150 million toward the President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience in Africa and launch a new initiative to promote wind and solar development in Egypt. The commander-in-chief similarly announced efforts to limit methane emissions from natural gas production among American energy companies, thereby rendering America the “first national government” requiring that suppliers abide by the Paris Agreement.

The Biden administration recently enacted the Inflation Reduction Act, which contains $369 billion for climate initiatives, including tax credits for new electric vehicles. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which passed at the end of last year, also includes provisions for electric vehicles and other renewable energy projects.

Disruptions from lockdown policies across the globe and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have led to constrained energy supplies, particularly in developing countries and the European continent. World leaders assembled at COP27, which is sponsored by the United Nations, nevertheless called for large and small economies to reconsider their “addiction” to fossil fuels.

“Today’s crises cannot be an excuse for backsliding or greenwashing. If anything, they are a reason for greater urgency, stronger action and effective accountability,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said. “Greenhouse gas emissions keep growing. Global temperatures keep rising. And our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible. We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.”

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Pentagon Distributes ‘Climate Literacy’ Questionnaire to Service Members, Civilian Employees

The Defense Department is asking active-duty service members and civilian employees about where they receive their climate news and whether they know enough about climate change to do their jobs properly.

The agency sent out its “2022 Climate Literacy Pulse Check” questionnaire to thousands of people, Fox News reported on Tuesday.

“As we train and educate our service members to fight and prevail against our adversaries, so too must we ensure our service members have the knowledge to ensure mission success in the face of a changing climate,” Pentagon spokesperson Cmdr. Nicole Schwegman said. The department declined to state how many personnel received the questionnaire.

Schwegman said the questionnaire was “not a survey” and it was “fully anonymous” and could be answered “at-will.”

Alabama Rep. Mike Rogers, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said: “The Department of Defense should not be wasting our service members’ time with surveys on climate change. … The military should not be distracted from its mission of maintaining the most lethal and capable force in the world.”

Now even the Washington Post, eternal suck up to anything demoncrap, is fact checking SloJoe……….

Biden Earns ‘Bottomless Pinocchio’ from Washington Post Over Multiple Misleading and Debunked Claims

President Joe Biden earned a “bottomless Pinocchio” from the Washington Post on the eve of the midterm elections in a roundup highlighting multiple recent misleading and debunked claims.

The “bottomless Pinocchio” category for fact-checks from the Post was actually created under former President Donald Trump in an effort to push back on “false or misleading statements repeated so often that they became a form of propaganda,” Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler wrote.

According to the Post:

A statement would get added to the list if it had earned a Three or Four Pinocchios rating and been repeated at least 20 times. By the end of the Trump presidency, 56 claims made by Trump had qualified.

Now Biden has earned his own Bottomless Pinocchio.

A debunked claim Biden has repeated is that he’s traveled 17,000 miles with Xi Jinping. Despite Biden repeatedly pushing the claim, it has never been proven.

“There is no evidence Biden traveled that much with Xi, the president of China — and even if we added up the miles Biden flew to see Xi, it still did not total 17,000 miles,” Kessler noted.

The fact check roundup included plenty of other misleading statements, including claiming gas prices were over $5 dollars a gallon when he took office. Only days after making this comment in New York, however, Biden made a similar statement about bringing gas prices down, but said prices were $5 dollars a gallon in June, rather than when he took office.

Biden also recently celebrated the fact that seniors are getting an increase to their Social Security checks.

“On my watch, for the first time in 10 years, seniors are getting an increase in their Social Security checks,” he said in Florida.

The White House sent out a celebratory tweet about these increases too, seemingly crediting Biden for the act. The tweet was quickly deleted after Twitter provided “context” to the statement, explaining the bump is part of a program launched in the ’70s, and it is only in response to high inflation.

A historian 50 years from now, if historians are allowed to write in this country and if there are still free publishing houses and a free press, which I’m not certain of. But if that is true, a historian will say, what was at stake tonight and this week was the fact whether we will be a democracy in the future, whether our children will be arrested and conceivably killed. We’re on the edge of a brutal authoritarian system, and it could be a week away.

Michael Beschloss
Presidential historian
November 3, 2022
NBC historian warns of a future where ‘our children will be arrested and conceivably killed’ if GOP wins

[Interesting…

Is this the same GOP which (sometimes) wants to:

  • Reduce government power
  • Require presidents to get approval of congress to change the law
  • Enable ordinary people to own and purchase weapons to protect themselves from individual criminals as well as criminal governments
  • Enable free speech on social media

It would appear one or more of the following is true about Mr. Beschloss:

  1. He is living in an alternate reality and only makes guest appearances here
  2. He is using some military grade mind altering drugs
  3. He is deliberately engaged in a “The Big Lie” propaganda effort
  4. He is engaged in the projection of his and his fellow political travelers intentions toward the GOP.

I considered adding “extreme hyperbola” to make a point, but multiplying realty by 10, 100, or 1,000 times only results in a larger vector pointing in the wrong direction from what he claims.

This is the kind of rhetoric used to justify mass killings and even genocide.

The election is only four days away. Prepare and respond appropriately.—Joe]

You can’t make this up, New Jersey edition

The last thing I want to say to people, and some of my own Democrats have committed to me, a commented that to me, this does nothing [to] stop the illegal gun trade, or the illegal criminal, illegal possessions, or criminal content and…you’re right. This doesn’t. It was never supposed to address that.

This is addressing the legal, law abiding, responsible citizens. That’s what it’s designed to do.

You can’t make this up, Delaware edition

Delaware sets dates for compensated confiscation of magazines

Earlier this year Delaware Gov. Jay Carney signed several new gun control bills into law, including a ban on so-called “large capacity” magazines. Not only are the sale of new magazines prohibited to most citizens, but most existing owners are required under the new law to either permanently modify them, remove them from the state, destroy them, or hand them over to police.

A few months ago the state announced that a series of “buybacks” would be held in conjunction with the new law taking effect, and this week we learned when and where Delaware gun owners can report to the compensated confiscation events.

Those handing over magazines with a capacity between 18 and 30 rounds can receive $15 per magazine, while those with a magazine capacity of more than 31-rounds are eligible for $25 compensation. The state police will also hand out $80 for every drum magazine that’s turned in, but in order to receive any money all participants must show the police a valid Delaware state ID card or driver’s license.

The Delaware State Sportsmen’s Association, with assistance from the NRA, is suing over the magazine ban in federal court, and DSSA president Jeff Hague says the ban is problematic on multiple levels.

“It’s not going to reduce the number of criminals using firearms in the commission of felonies,” Hague said. “It’s only going to affect law-abiding citizens because criminals aren’t going to turn in something that’s their livelihood to get money. Or if they do, they’re going to turn them in and get some money and then go buy another one.”

… Mitch Denham of the 23,000-member Facebook group Delaware Gun Rights is urging owners of 17-plus-round magazines to store them safely pending the outcome of the looming court challenge.

“When the lawsuits are over then maybe you can talk about what you think is right for you,’’ said Denham, who is exempted from the ban because he has a concealed carry permit.

The fact that concealed carry holders are exempted from the magazine ban doesn’t make any sense from a gun control perspective. After all, even those individuals can have their guns and magazines stolen, and if the goal is to remove these “accessories to war” from society, allowing concealed carry holders to maintain possession of their magazines and purchase additional magazines in the future is, if anything, only going to encourage more people to obtain their concealed carry license.

I think this law was written to pass political, not constitutional muster. In order to assure passage, sponsors attempted to water down the bill to make it palatable to more lawmakers; exempting concealed carry holders, setting the magazine limit at 17-rounds, and making a first violation a fine punishable by $100, for example. Those modifications haven’t mollified gun owners, and I’m curious to see what sort of historical precedents the state will cite to the courts in their attempt to uphold the law, because I’m certainly not aware of any longstanding laws like this at the time the Second or Fourteenth Amendments were ratified.

I’m even more curious to see what kind of turnout the police receive during their first compensated confiscation events, which are scheduled to take place on Wednesday, November 16th. Given that there’s a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the ban and a first offense only amounts to a fine, my guess is that the vast majority of Delaware gun owners are going to hang on to what they have and the state troopers running the “buyback” are going to get more rest and relaxation than “large capacity” magazines.

Things Go Way off the Rails During Joe Biden’s Trip to Puerto Rico

Joe Biden appeared in Puerto Rico on Monday to deliver remarks and to promise aid after the recent hurricane that struck the island. He also had some really head-scratching things to say. And while I realize that the president being senile and giving away your money is basically every other day of the week, the news is the news so let’s get to it.

Here was Biden’s opener, of which I can’t make heads nor tails of.

Based on his reaction, that was supposed to be a joke, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out what the punchline was. Looking at Jill Biden’s face, it doesn’t appear that she could either. The president just says random, unfunny things and looks around, expecting people to laugh. Usually, they oblige, but this instance was especially odd because there wasn’t even a semblance of an actual joke told.

In the next bit of embarrassment, Biden decided to claim that he was “raised in the Puerto Rican community at home.”

This is one of those instances I’ve mentioned before where the president tries to say something that presents himself as everything to everyone. One day he will claim to have been a member of the Civil Rights movement and the next, he’ll say he got arrested with Nelson Mandela after fighting a guy named Corn Pop. Oh, and he once drove an eighteen-wheeler while attending shul more than Jewish people do. Of course, none of that is actually true, which is par for the course regarding anything Biden says.

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It’s nearly impossible these days to tell whether they’re simply political hacking, or if they’re actually this delusional

Blumenthal claims NSSF has “secret gun registry”

For years, the NRA has been held up at the big boogieman for anti-gun lawmakers. They argue that without the organization, they could pass gun control laws by the dozen.

The reality is that the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) is a big part of what stops gun control laws from being passed.

And, unfortunately, anti-gunners are waking up to that fact.

It seems that it’s even bad enough that some are concocting conspiracy theories about them. Enter Sen. Dick Blumenthal.

This morning, the Daily Beast published a breathless story exposing the shocking — SHOCKING! — hypocrisy of the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Connecticut Senator Dick Blumenthal sent the NSSF a letter Friday afternoon, accusing the trade association of amassing a secret database — a registry, if you will — of gun owner information including personal information and the guns they own.

There’s only one problem. That’s not what happened.

Da Nang Dick leaked his letter to the Daily Beast last week in a naked attempt at an October Surprise, trying discredit them in the run-up to the election. As the Beast wrote . . .

Blumenthal’s letter cites damning details that were exposed when Cambridge Analytica emails were leaked two years ago but received little attention at the time.

“The claim by Cambridge Analytica that NSSF maintains and leverages a database, akin to a registry, of gun owners’ personal information should come as a surprise to millions of law abiding gun owners, many of whom, undoubtedly, would never have consented for firearms manufacturers or retailers to retain, share, and expose their sensitive personal data for political purposes,” Blumenthal wrote.

The claim is that the NSSF hoovers up warranty card registration data from its member companies on millions of gun purchases and they then heartlessly use this ill-gotten information to campaign against good, hard-working, pure-hearted, clean-minded Gunsense™ candidates who are only working for more Gun Safety® laws to save the lives of innocent children.

So what really gives?

Well, it seems that NSSF has a program called Gunvote that tries to reach out to voters. They contract services out to put together lists of voters who might be swayed on Second Amendment issues. These lists use…wait for it…data mining of public information.

You know, just like every other group trying to affect political change in this country does.

So why are The Daily Beast and Blumenthal bringing this up? It’s not like they actually care about the privacy of gun owners. In fact, Blumenthal would salivate at the possibility of a national gun registry. So what’s all this supposed to be about?

It’s simple. Democrats are set to get hammered in the midterms and this is a pathetic attempt at an October Surprise.

The problem is that it’s too easily explained as a big nothing. There is no registry, it’s just a list of potential gun rights voters.

Now, is there likely to be an overlap between those voters and gun owners? Absolutely. However, not all gun owners will pop up in such data mining, and not all who are on this list are gun owners.

It simply isn’t a registry.

But this is an attempt to divide the Second Amendment community. This is like New York Attorney General Letitia James and her attacks on the NRA. She doesn’t care if gun rights advocates are being taken advantage of. She was going after the NRA because they’re in the way of gun control.

In that same vein, Blumenthal doesn’t care about you or me. He doesn’t care about our privacy. What he and The Daily Beast are trying to accomplish here is to sew discontent in our ranks, to make us distrust the NSSF. If we no longer trust the organizations we count on to defend the Second Amendment, it’ll be that much easier for Blumenthal and his buddies to push through gun control.

After all, with no concerted effort to oppose it, it’ll be easy to tell those in the middle that there’s no harm.

What’s more, they might just be right. One of the strengths of the gun community is that we can stand behind strong organizations that will defend our rights.

This is what happened with the NRA and now the target is the NSSF. Don’t let them think for an instant we’re buying it.

A lot of folks are running the White House. Joe Biden just isn’t one of them.

Joe Biden isn’t as lively as he used to be. Not exactly breaking news, but it seems to be getting worse.

At 79, Biden is our oldest president. He consistently stumbles and misspeaks, forcing his beleaguered staff to retract his statements or pretend the lapse never happened.

Speaking at a White House conference on food, nutrition and health on Wednesday, Biden acknowledged the elected officials who helped organize the event.

“I want to thank all of you here for including bipartisan elected officials like Rep. (Jim) McGovern, Sen. (Mike) Braun, Sen. (Cory) Booker, Representative – Jackie, are you here?” Biden said, looking around the crowd. “Where’s Jackie? I think she wasn’t going to be here – to help make this a reality.”

He was looking for Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-Ind., who was killed in a tragic car accident in early August. A death he commemorated at the time in a solemn White House statement.

Where’s Biden? Not often in the White House

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to acknowledge any mistake was made, despite repeated questions from the gathered reporters.

Add in Biden’s early “lids,” four-day weekends and frequent vacations, and he doesn’t seem to be running things. About 40% of his days have been away from the White House, including two-thirds of August.

I’ve known several older folks who were sharper at 80 than I was at 40. Joe Biden is not one of them. This isn’t about his age as much as his competence. To blame his behavior on a childhood stutter – a favorite excuse in 2020 – insults all Americans.

Perhaps we should be thankful. Considering inflation, energy shortages and a world teetering on the brink, maybe the less Biden is involved, the better.

Regents often ruled in place of the king

To understand what’s happening, it’s best not to think of this as a Biden Presidency, but a Biden Regency.

The term was regularly used in the age of kings and empires. If an 8-year-old princess was placed on the throne or an incapable king couldn’t perform his duties, one or several regents would handle the day-to-day operations.

Many a royal adviser would ignore a capable successor, instead crowning a child so the courtiers could run things behind the scenes.

One regency served during the reign of King George III, most famous for losing the Revolutionary War. After several concerning incidents, his mental health collapsed. George remained king on paper, but the Parliament appointed his heir as Prince Regent.

The dissolute prince decided he would rather party than rule, so he happily let the advisers run the show. The regency ran the empire for the next decade.

Whoever’s running things, they aren’t doing it well

In like manner, Biden is surrounded with longtime D.C. power players, such as Ron Klain, Susan Rice, Anita Dunn, John Podesta, Gene Sperling – a veritable “who’s who” of Beltway knife fights and insider skullduggery. Throughout their long careers, they’ve never sought credit or voter approval. Just power.

And the less Joe is around, the more their regency can accomplish.

Not that these new courtiers always agree. Journalists spend their days trying to determine which of them is rising and who is falling – D.C.’s version of Cold War “Kremlinology.”

These competing power centers explain the contradictory policies coming out of the Oval Office these days. Aggressively pushing a new Iran Nuclear Deal while Russia buys Iranian drones to fight Ukrainians. When there’s no one to say “the buck stops here,” the bucks turn up in pretty strange places.

It reminds me of the confusing end of Woodrow Wilson’s presidency. For his last 18 months in office, he was incapacitated with a stroke. First lady Edith Wilson and a handful of confidantes covered it up and ran the country themselves.

As with Wilson, historians will one day explain the Biden Regency more fully. But someone is running the country, and not very well.