Category: Comment O’ The Day

Let’s require the Secret Service and FBI to switch to this technology exclusively for a 4-year test period. After that we can talk. Of course, they won’t.
– Tom Gresham

The First Smart Gun Is Finally Coming to Market. Will Anyone Buy It?
Gun makers have been working for decades on a weapon that can only be fired by an authorized user

Sasha Wiesen sleeps with a .40-caliber handgun in a safe by his bed. The commercial real-estate broker from Florida recently preordered a new type of firearm he hopes will make the safe unnecessary.
The new weapon is the Colorado startup Biofire’s 9mm Smart Gun, which can only be fired if it recognizes an authorized user with a fingerprint reader on the grip or a facial recognition camera on the back.
“I’m usually an early adapter,” said Wiesen, 46 years old. “It might be the gadget part of me that made me buy it, but it’s also the safety aspect.”
Guns that use technology to ensure that they can only be fired by their owners, called smart guns, have been developed and debated since the 1990s. The Biofire Smart Gun will be the first widely available for sale if it ships in December as planned.
Proponents tout smart guns as a way to reduce accidental shootings and firearm thefts. Gun-rights supporters have been wary, in part over concern that governments could outlaw sales of weapons that don’t have smart-gun technology.
Earlier efforts to bring smart guns to market have failed, largely because of pressure from gun-rights activists or because they didn’t work as promised.
As with other technologies such as electric cars that changed long-established products, the question for smart guns is whether they can work at least as well as the traditional versions they replace and find customers behind affluent early adopters.
The Biofire Smart Gun costs $1,499. Similar handguns without high-tech features typically cost between $400 and $800.

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Think about what he just said. In his mind, and the minds of most Democrats, we’re not a constitutional republic with three branches of government accountable to the people. We should instead be ruled by un-elected bureaucrats and intelligence agencies who do their bidding. Mfume just completely epitomized everything that is wrong with our government.
– Greg Price

We’ve let these schools raise up a generation or two of snowflake pansies.

If you need therapy after a court rules against you, you shouldn’t be a lawyer.

Make SCOTUS great again: Boston University law students offered therapy after recent rulings.

The work week ended with monumental rulings from the Supreme Court. The hot takes coming from the media are heavy with doom-and-gloom vibes because most of them are liberals.

There is no denying the rulings on the three big cases that deal with affirmative action, religious freedom, and student debt forgiveness, will “re-shape America for generations to come,” as one CNN anchor said this morning. A Washington correspondent for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said the rulings were made “strictly along ideological lines.” Another anchor noted that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, opined that the rulings show that it may be time for “re-shaping the Court.’

The drama. The Supreme Court is following the Constitution and the liberals are emotionally distressed. They have become so accustomed to the Court randomly making law instead of following the Constitution, like Roe v Wade back in 1973, that justices who are originalists are seen as oddities of the right. For example, Joe Biden, who has been humiliated by the rulings, especially the one on student loan bailouts, said the Supreme Court interpreted the Constitution wrong. Imagine the ignorance and arrogance of Biden, who barely graduated from law school, saying the Supreme Court just didn’t understand the Constitution.

The big affirmative action case where the Court ruled that the admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina “violate the Equal Protections Clause of the 14th Amendment,” was a punch in the gut to those who think discrimination is bad if it is against black and brown students but ok against Asian and white students. That is an over-simplification but it is the core of the system that routinely denied admission to qualified Asian students so that preference could be made for black and Hispanic students. Picking winners and losers based on skin color in college admissions always results in discrimination against someone. We long ago abandoned the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr. that his children would be judged on the content of their character, not the color of their skin. In other words, meritocracy is back in college admissions and that is a good thing. Students deserve admission based on merit, not skin color, and the ability to check a box on an application.

Boston University is trying to cope with the fact that we now have a Supreme Court that follows the Constitution.

“The rulings of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS)—in cases addressing the admissions practices at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina—are profoundly disappointing because they take us backward, potentially creating less diverse college campuses and a less just America,” Boston University President Robert A. Brown wrote in a letter sent to the University community shortly after the decision Thursday. “These decisions are antithetical to Boston University’s values and mission.”

Brown added that the University would continue to review the decision “to better understand what it means for our admissions and academic practices and the changes we may be required to make.”

Whenever I think of affirmative action, I am reminded of a line George W. Bush often used in speeches about education – the soft bigotry of low expectations. It is insulting to black and brown students to assume that because of their skin color, they need special consideration. It assumes that all black and brown students come from poverty and few opportunities that others are afforded. Perhaps back when affirmative action first began but not now. There are more middle-class and upper-class minorities now than ever before. Affirmative action was never meant to be a forever policy. It is no longer needed as it once was.

There are ways for colleges to make their own admissions policies, something that Chief Justice Roberts notes. One associate professor at BU School of Law notes the lack of guidance in the ruling.

“It’s hard to say what this means for other colleges and universities because the majority opinion wasn’t all that clear in a lot of important ways,” says Jonathan Feingold, an associate professor of law at the BU School of Law.

“I wouldn’t take this opinion as a reason to take off the table ever considering race again,” Feingold says. “Colleges and universities may just have to do it in a more careful, defined way than what Harvard and UNC did.”

To that end, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, writing in the majority opinion, notes: “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.” In other words, “the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race,” he writes.

In order for Boston University law students to be able to cope with a Supreme Court that follows the Constitution, mental health resources are being made available to help them “navigate these times.” The resources are not specialized counseling for students but resources that are already available.

Two of the resources were BU Behavioral Medicine and BU Student Wellbeing. According to its website, BU Behavioral Medicine offers therapy, on-call service for mental health emergencies and mental health diagnoses, among other services.

The student government criticized the decision in 303 Creative LLC. v. Elenis, which gave a Christian web designer the right to deny services to same-sex couples. It also condemned Biden v. Nebraska, which ruled President Biden’s proposed student loan forgiveness plan was unconstitutional.

“These three decisions form part of a lengthy sequence of this court’s ruling which steadily erode the rights of marginalized communities and undermine the very diversity upon which our nation was built,” the SGA argued.

The group that has benefitted the most from affirmative action policies is women. On today’s college campuses, women students often outnumber men. In 2022, for example, there were almost two women attending college for every man. It was the highest recorded gender imbalance favoring women in U.S. college enrollment. To hear the left speak, affirmative action was solely about skin color. That was never true.

It is the Supreme Court of Clarence Thomas now and that is a remarkable change. The correction is long overdue. The left is just going to have to learn to cope with getting back to the Constitution as it was meant to be, not as the left wanted it to be.

Is there an equivalent Russian term for “kabuki theater?”
Mario Nawfal
BREAKING: THE COUP IS OVER | WAGNER’S RETREATING
This official statement from Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner group and the leader of this coup, says it all. I don’t think anyone expected this: “They were going to dismantle PMC Wagner. We came out on 23 June to the March of Justice. In a day, we walked to nearly 200km away from Moscow. In this time, we did not spill a single drop of blood of our fighters. Now, the moment has come when blood may spill. That’s why, understanding the responsibility for spilling Russian blood on one of the sides, we are turning back our convoys and going back to field camps according to the plan.”
The President of Belarus, Lukashenko, has been in talks with Prigozhin all day and has taken credit for the peace agreement. Prigozhin accepted the terms of Lukashenko’s agreement and agreed to halt the movement of his forces and return back to his bases. The agreement also guarantees security for fighters of PMC Wagner. It seems that the attempted coup has come to an end, and Prigozhin, along with his men, will return to their bases.
Reports of Wagner forces not only leaving Moscow Oblas, but also leaving Rostov. Russian media reports that criminal cases have already been dropped from Yevgeny Prigozhin and that Prigozhin and his forces will receive FULL IMMUNITY Restrictions on the movement of vehicles have been lifted from the Voronezh region which saw clashes earlier during the coup.
MY THOUGHTS: – I did not expect this would end peacefully with a deal as it seemed both sides seemed at the point of no return – I have no idea how Prigozhin and Putin can both operate in Russia with what just transpired, and I also have no idea what will happen with the war in Ukraine but I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a peace deal reached.
Today was another example of citizen journalism replacing mainstream media with UNBIASED and UNCENSORED live breaking news. 
I am fried, been awake for more than 30 hours, initially doing a piece with former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan before shifting to the Coup piece which is at 21 hours and counting. Time for me to finally sleep!

Comments O’ The Day

Again, just like in NY SCOTUS has chosen their procedure preferences over the rights of millions of Americans

Justices will not get involved with lower courts giving the anti-gun states whatever they want. We get screwed until a case on the merits reaches cert petition.

Comment O’ The Day
As with electric cars, the environmental benefits of fake meat are more claimed than proven.

Eat Meat! (2)

In today’s developed world, average people can achieve a higher standard of living than has ever before been possible. In fact, the difference between an “elite” standard of living and that enjoyed by people of average, or a little more than average, means, has dwindled to near-insignificance. It is fair to say that today, an “elite” American has little more chance of living a satisfying and happy life than the average American.

Our “elites” consider this situation intolerable, a fact that explains much of our current political turmoil. Liberals are trying to drive down the standard of living for all Americans. True, their own standards will suffer slightly. But if you are a multi-millionaire, how much do you care if your electricity bill doubles? The salient fact is that a general decline in standards of living will increase the disparity between the “elite” and the rest of us. That, I think, is the goal of many liberal policies, and the main reason why most rich people are liberals.

Today, a person of ordinary means can toss some steaks on the grill on Memorial Day. That is a good thing, in most people’s opinion, but it galls “elite” leftists, who eat steak themselves but are annoyed that the rest of us can afford to do so, too. Hence the Left’s war on meat, the point of which is to drive up prices so that they can afford steak, pork chops, bacon, etc., but you can’t.

As always, “the environment,” in the form of CO2 emissions, is the excuse. But does that actually make any sense? One of the alternatives to cows, pigs and chickens is lab-grown meat, which has been touted as an environmentally-friendly substitute for the real thing. But a recent study casts doubt on that claim:

Lab-grown meat has been touted as a way to save the planet, but a new study suggests its green credentials are not as solid as many believe.

Researchers have revealed that lab-grown or ‘cultured’ meat, produced by cultivating animal cells, is up to 25 times worse for the climate than real beef.

Which is to say, it produces up to 25 times the CO2 emissions. What are we talking about here?

Lab-grown meat is different from plant-based ‘meat’, which is not meat at all but uses vegan ingredients such as vegetable protein to replicate the look and taste of real meat.

Lab-grown or ‘cultured’ meat is generally seen as more ethical than real meat because it requires a sample of body tissue rather than the death of the animal, although many vegans and vegetarians will not touch it because it is made of animal.

I won’t touch it either, but not for these reasons:

In the study, the scientists estimated the energy required for stages of lab-grown meat’s production, from the ingredients making up the growth medium and the energy required to power laboratories, and compared this with beef.

They largely focused on the quantity of growth medium components, including glucose, amino acids, vitamins, growth factors, salts and minerals.

They found the global warming potential of lab-grown meat ranged from 246 to 1,508 kg of CO2 equivalent per kilogram of lab-grown meat, which is four to 25 times greater than the average global warming potential of retail beef.

Whatever. If it didn’t come from a cow, a pig, a sheep, or a fowl or fish, I don’t want to eat it.

And scientists are pushing back against the Left’s attack on meat:

[T]he war on meat is only just getting going – and it has some very powerful supporters. ESG (environmental, social and governance) rankings and corporate social responsibility checklists reward companies for creating vegan products, even if nobody buys them. Meat taxes are being considered to price it out of our reach. The Dutch government is spending €25bn (£22bn) to buy out its livestock farmers and close down their farms. But it’s all based on some very dubious pseudoscience.

Now the scientific establishment has begun to fight back. Last month, over 900 scientists signed the Dublin Declaration, a milestone in the defence of livestock farming. The declaration explains how ruminants, such as cows and sheep, rescue marginal land.

“Well-managed livestock systems applying agro-ecological principles can generate many other benefits, including carbon sequestration, improved soil health, biodiversity, watershed protection and the provision of important ecosystem services.” They add that a drastic reduction in animals “could actually incur environmental problems on a large scale”. It will also hurt three billion of the world’s poorest, who could use the iron and protein that comes from real meat.

Plus, meat is nutritious, and it tastes good. The author of the Telegraph piece explains the war on meat with a classical reference:

I wonder if even the most compelling rational arguments for meat will wilt when faced with such furious medieval zealotry. The motivation is not really saving the climate, or concerns about nitrogen – it’s simply that something so nutritious and delicious should be being enjoyed at all.

As Macauley wrote of the Puritans: they “hated bear-baiting not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.”

Exactly. The spectators here being ordinary people who can afford to buy meat. In the eyes of our “elites,” that can’t be allowed to continue.

Comment(s) O’ The Day
If it contained something bad for Republicans, it would have been leaked by now. Is that cynical of me? Yeah, and also correct.

If they don’t want you to know about it, it’s because they don’t want you to think and feel the things you’d think and feel if you did know about it.

Nashville Police Deny Daily Wire’s Request For Trans Shooter’s Manifesto.

Nashville police have denied The Daily Wire‘s request for a copy of a manifesto or diary from the transgender killer who shot up a Christian school March 27, leaving six dead, including three 9-year-olds.

It has been 25 days since the shocking shooting spree, in which the killer — a woman who identified as a man and who this publication is not naming to avoid giving notoriety to shooters — carried out the massacre at the Covenant School before being gunned down by police. City Council members said shortly after the incident that there was a “manifesto” and that it would be released. But since then, state and local police have gotten “assistance” from the FBI in psychologically profiling the killer, which has been used as a reason to block release of the materials.

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You simply can’t make up this kind of crap-for-brains judicial double talk.

Comment O’ The Day:
This is exactly what happens when you allow the courts to go outside the original text as Scalia did in the Heller ruling.
Since when did the 2A say anything about dangerous and unusual weapons?
And no one in the decision asked; If it wasn’t dangerous, it wouldn’t be considered a weapon? Thus, not even under the purview of the court?
The problem is political bias. It’s time the courts started calling it plain.
Nothing about 2A is a difficult decision. Just an unpopular one in certain circles.
So much for even the thin veil of democracy they hide behind.
Bans aren’t unusual? That’s basically what started the revolution!

Second Amendment Roundup: An Opening Judicial Salvo in Defense of Illinois’ New Rifle Ban

The latest salvo in America’s “assault-weapon” wars is the decision of February 17 by Judge Virginia Kendall of the Norther District of Illinois in Bevis v. City of Naperville finding that plaintiffs are not likely to prevail on their challenge to the bans under the city’s ordinance or under Illinois’ just-passed Protect Illinois Communities Act.

Just last year in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, the Supreme Court said that “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms,” and that the term “arms” “covers modern instruments that facilitate armed self-defense” and “weapons that are unquestionably in common use today.” None of those three phrases found its way into the district court’s decision approving the prohibition of the AR-15, America’s most popular rifle, and many other semiautomatics.

The court started out on the right track recognizing that the plaintiffs had standing and that the harm they sought to alleviate was redressable. It made the interesting point that the Second Amendment “differs from many other amendments in that it protects access to a tangible item, as opposed to an intangible right,” and that makes it similar to the First Amendment, under which “individuals can sue when the government bans protected books or attempts to close a bookstore based on content censorship.”

While five appellate courts had upheld “assault weapon” bans, Bruen pulled the rug out from under them with its text-history approach and rejection of the two-part balancing test. The Seventh Circuit had gone its own way in Friedman v. City of Highland Park (2015), holding that the banned arms were not common at the time of ratification, had no militia nexus, and were not needed by citizens for self-defense. As Judge Kendall wrote, “Friedman cannot be reconciled with Bruen.” Per Bruen, protected arms are not limited to those that existed in 1791 or that are useful in warfare, and “the arguments that other weapons are available and that fewer assault weapons lower the risk of violence are tied to means-end scrutiny—now impermissible and unconnected to text, history, and tradition.”

So far so good, but that’s where the opinion goes awry. It states: “The text of the Second Amendment is limited to only certain arms, and history and tradition demonstrate that particularly ’dangerous’ weapons are unprotected.” For that it cites Heller at 627, but on that page Heller said that the Amendment protects arms that are “in common use at the time,” which is a limitation “fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ’dangerous and unusual weapons.’”

For that proposition, Heller cited a dozen historical sources, only one of which substituted “or” for “and”—Blackstone referred to going armed with “with dangerous or unusual weapons.” But Bevis read too much into that conjunction. Bruen repeated the basic distinction between arms that are “in common use” and those that are “dangerous and unusual.” The Court in Staples v. US (1994) made a similar distinction between machine guns and commonly-possessed arms like the AR-15, noting that the latter are no different than cars in potentially being dangerous. And in Caetano v. Massachusetts (2016), Justice Alito wrote that “this is a conjunctive test: A weapon may not be banned unless it is both dangerous and unusual.”

So Bevis begins with the fundamentally wrong criterion that being particularly “dangerous,” alone, justifies banning a type of firearm.

The court goes on to justify the ban under a historical test, arguing that, unlike today, gun restrictions weren’t needed at the founding: “In the 18th century, violent crime was at historic lows; the rate at which adult colonists were killed by violent crime was one per 100,000 in New England and, on the high end, five per 100,000 in Tidewater, Virginia.” For that the court cites Randolph Roth, American Homicide 61–63 (2009). But as that book says, those were the rates “between the mid-1670s and the mid-1690s,” the low rate ended in “the revolutionary crisis of the 1760s and 1770s,” and “the extremely high homicide rates persisted until the end of the War of 1812 ….”

In arguing that guns were not a problem at the founding, the court describes muskets as being slow and fairly useless, and that “only a small group of wealthy, elite men owned pistols, primarily a dueling weapon.” This history is starting to read like Michael Bellesiles discredited Arming America. As I’ve shown in The Founders’ Second Amendment, long guns and pistols alike were in common use. For instance, just after Lexington and Concord, British General Thomas Gage confiscated 1,778 long guns and 634 pistols from the citizens of Boston.

Since there were no gun bans at the founding, the Bevis court turns to Bowie knives, citing restrictions in a minority of states in the antebellum period that focused mostly on banning concealed carry. An 1837 Georgia law made it unlawful for a merchant to sell a Bowie knife or to carry such knife or a pistol about the person, and Bevis states that “State-court decisions uniformly upheld these laws.” Not so. In Nunn v. State (1846), the Georgia Supreme Court held that the law violated the right to bear arms to the extent it prohibited open carry.

Nunn called the law an “absurdity” because it banned the sale and keeping of Bowie knives, pistols, and spears (!), but then exempted those who “openly wear” such arms. It then stated: “The right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, and not such merely as are used by the militia, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in upon, in the smallest degree ….”

Bevis next cites Aymette v. State (1840), in which the Tennessee Supreme Court affirmed a conviction for concealed carry, but upheld the right openly to carry swords, muskets, and rifles. Not exactly a precedent for banning such arms. And it cited the Texas Supreme Court decision in Cockrum v. State (1859), which upheld a law with enhanced punishment for murder using a Bowie knife, but added: “The right of a citizen to bear arms, in the lawful defense of himself or the state, is absolute.”

Bans on trap-guns set to discharge by tripping a cord are next cited by Bevis, but the guns themselves were not banned, just the dangerous practice. The next cited precedents were Prohibition-era bans on arms with certain firing capacities, but most referred to discharge “by a single pressure upon the trigger device,” i.e., machine guns, not semiautomatics.

The Illinois ban not having a basis in Bruen’s text-history approach, Bevis resorts to the disapproved means-ends scrutiny to show: “Assaults weapons pose an exceptional danger, more so than standard self-defense weapons such as handguns.” While “they fire quickly,” so can handguns.

The most puzzling statement of Bevis comes next: “The muzzle velocity of an assault weapon is four times higher than a high-powered semiautomatic firearm.” Moreover, the “injury along the path of the bullet from an AR-15 is vastly different from a low-velocity handgun injury ….” But now the court is comparing, depending on the cartridge type, all rifles with all handguns. No difference exists between the muzzle velocity of an “assault weapon” and any other rifle with the same cartridge and barrel length. While most AR-15s fire the .223 caliber cartridge, deer hunting rifles generally fire far more powerful rounds.

The Bevis court does not articulate any of the defined features of an “assault weapon” that make it so dangerous that it must be banned. Other than quoting the statute, it doesn’t even mention them. “A pistol grip.” And that makes it too powerful? A telescoping stock that makes it adjustable to the user. That makes it fire faster? Go down the checklist of verboten features. None have anything to do with the alleged ability to obliterate a victim.

We are left with who-knows-who’s definition of “assault weapon” as the court claims: “While a high number of assault weapons are in circulation, only 5 percent of firearms are assault weapons, 24 million out of an estimated 462 million firearms.” Avoiding Heller’s test that arms in common use by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes are protected, the court assets that “just under 45 percent of all gang members own an assault rifle (compared to, at most, 15 percent of non-gang members) ….” Ignoring that the test is common use by law-abiding citizens, the “experts” have seriously misinformed the court in representing that such a large number of “gang members” own rifles of any kind.

Instead of addressing whether the banned items are “dangerous and unusual,” Bevis changes the criterion to say that “Assault-weapons and high-capacity magazines regulations are not ‘unusual,’” because eight states ban them. Since 42 states don’t, that sounds kind of unusual. And the FBI agent who said that “shotguns and 9mm pistols” are best for self-defense means nothing in view of the right, as Heller recognized, that the American people make that choice.

In denying the motion for a preliminary injunction, Bevis adds: “No binding precedent, however, establishes that a deprivation of any constitutional right is presumed to cause irreparable harm.” That doesn’t sound too promising for future protection of constitutional rights in general.

 

Disarming a populace is more than just literally. It begins with their minds.
“You only need guns for hunting”
“You only need guns for recreation”
“You don’t actually need to hunt or recreate”

 

Comment O’ The Day:
It is amusing watching Democrats in power walk the tight rope of pretending to know everything while at the same time being completely ignorant.
Nobody believes this overt and public anti-Semite. Nobody.

I mean, politicians lie all the time, but at least she could have tried to make this one sound somewhat reasonable.

Rep. Ilhan Omar: “I Wasn’t Aware That There Are Tropes About Jews And Money”

Rep. Ilhan Omar said Sunday morning on CNN said that she didn’t know about the offensive nature of antisemitic tropes regarding “Jews and money” when she made comments that have been cited by House Speaker McCarthy as the primary reason she was removed from the House Foreign Affairs committee.

REP. ILHAN OMAR: I might have used words at the time that I didn’t understand were trafficking in anti-semitism. When that was brought to my attention, I apologized. I owned up to it. That’s the kind of person that I am. And I continue to work with my colleagues and my community to fight against anti-semitism.

Now, I’ve never compared or made any comparisons, what I was referencing was a case that was in front of the ICC. If you want to debate political differences, that’s something that we should all have the opportunity to do so, but to smear someone and their character, their love for their country and the work they get to do on a committee is wrong, and it is politically motivated. And in some cases, it is motivated by the fact that many of these members don’t believe that a Muslim refugee, an African, should even be in Congress, let alone have an opportunity to serve on the Foreign Affairs Committee….

I certainly did not or was not aware that the word hypnotized was a trope. I wasn’t aware of the fact that there are tropes about Jews and money. That has been a very enlightening part of this journey. To insinuate that I knowingly said these things when people have read into my comments to make it sound as if I have something against the Jewish community is so wrong.

To insinuate that I knowingly said these things, when people have read into my comments to make it sound as if I have something against the Jewish community, is so wrong. If you remember, when I first got elected to Congress, it was when the FBI report came out on the rise of antisemitism. As a rep-elected, the first op-ed I wrote was on that report, which I talked about how it was important for us, as a community, to coalesce around the Jewish community and fight against antisemitism.

I voted for every single resolution — no Republican can say that — condemning antisemitism. My work is clear. The collaboration and work that I do with my Jewish colleagues is very clear. The reason that the Democratic Caucus has not removed me and will not support my removal on the Foreign Affairs Committee is because I have done the work to make sure that I do not support any bigotry.

An friend terms posts like this übërpösts™ (in other words: It’s looong)
I’ll append commentary and observations from around the net.

Observation O’ The Day
It’s a look into the smartest minds of the enemy. Joe Huffman

The Ad Industry’s Plan to Fix America’s Gun Crisis

If you want a crude sketch of the biggest corporate players in a given year of TV, look no further than the Emmy Award for best commercial. Twenty-five years of winners form an ensemble cast of petty bourgeois preoccupations: Nike, Chrysler, Bud Light. This year’s nominees included a commercial for Meta (the artist formerly known as Facebook), one for Chevy (repping the still-muscular auto spend), two for Apple (a perennial contender), and two for the prevention of school shootings—one of which won the Emmy.

PSAs Killed Cigarettes. Can They Help End Gun Violence?

PSAs Killed Cigarettes. Can They Help End Gun Violence?© Getty; The Atlantic

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Comment O’ The Day:
The ultimate bow to China

Biden and Trudeau Beclown Themselves by Parading Around Asia in Commie Mao Jackets

What better way to show the world you suckle at the teat of the globalists’ New World Order than to dress like the most “successful” mass-murdering communist in history?

Joe Biden and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, North America’s one-two punch of Marxism, were filmed happily flouncing around the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in matching Mao starter kit jackets.

FAMINE-O-RAMA! Some leftists believe dressing like a geisha on Halloween is “super not cool.” Yet Biden and Trudeau were happy to bend their weak knees and dress like Chairman Mao, the commie dictator responsible for more deaths than Hitler and Stalin. Democrats have said nothing.

Most of the people on Mao’s victim list died of starvation. Now is a good time to remind you that the Dutch want to close 30% of their livestock farms in the name of “climate change” and they want this done by 2030.

Holy cow farts, Batman: 2030 is the same year the commie swine (heh-heh) at the World Economic Forum (WEF) predict plan to cut most meat out of our lives.

The embarrassing, planned sartorial bum-licking comes just before North America’s Uriah Heeps are expected to meet with China’s leader Xi Jinping. Some Canadians expect Trudeau to confront Jinping on civil rights involving the Uyghurs and China’s possible involvement in Canada’s 2019 election.

FACT-O-RAMA!  A man suffering from cognitive disabilities was recently fired for dressing as Hitler in a mocking way. But when a president suffering from his own issues dresses as Mao, leftists say nothing.

Biden will meet Jinping for the first time on Monday to discuss, among other things, the tension between China and Taiwan. What better way for Trudeau and Biden to stand up to the pinkos than by dressing like their exalted, draconian leader? It reminds me of Jen Psaki wearing a Soviet hat in Russia.

Comment O’ The Day
People know the system is total baloney. Yet the GOP does little or nothing to fix it, even to help itself! At some point, we have to assume this level of loserdom is deliberate.
Robert Shibley

“I’m Sick of Losing, I Hope You Are Too.”

While votes are still being counted, and there could be a few, rare bright spots left for Republicans, one thing is clear: The red wave didn’t materialize in 2022.

Ironically, some accused me of being too conservative when I predicted the GOP only getting to 235 seats in the House. Now, the Republican Party might end up with a majority far less than that. The Senate is pretty much a wasteland as well, with Mehmet Oz, despite a strong push down the stretch, not being able to overcome his unfavorables in Pennsylvania. Don Bolduc got trounced in New Hampshire, Georgia is headed to a runoff, and Masters is an underdog as counting continues in Arizona.

Far from the optimism of suggesting that 54 senate seats were on the table, my “low” prediction of winning 51 seats would actually be a minor miracle for Republicans now. I whiffed, not because I was too conservative, but because I was too bullish. That’s an outcome that seemed improbable just a day ago.

What happened on Tuesday can’t be left to lie. There has to be a reckoning, and it’s going to be uncomfortable and challenge some deeply-held priors. Republicans can’t keep running the same play over and over, hoping that the next time things will be different. No one should escape accountability.

On the congressional side, Kevin McCarthy did not earn the mandate necessary to be handed the role of Speaker of the House. There should be a real battle for the position. In the Senate, Mitch McConnell, even though he should be lauded for raising and spending a ton of money this cycle to help elect Republicans, is 80 years old and is deeply unpopular with most Americans. For Republicans to escape their current malaise, new leadership is needed.

The recriminations don’t stop with elected officials, though. Donald Trump is the de facto leader of the Republican Party. He is the face, he does the rallies, he makes himself the center of attention, and he is the kingmaker. He has now failed in that role for three straight elections. Frustratingly, he refuses to take any responsibility for his failures, pointing to no possibility of change on his part as the standard-bearer.

For example, after Don Bolduc lost in New Hampshire, Trump trashed him despite the fact that he was one of the former president’s endorsed candidates. He also bashed Mehmet Oz after that race was called. Worse, in the midst of Republican struggles becoming clear late on election night, Trump took to Truth Social to celebrate the loss of Joe O’Dea in Colorado’s senate race. Later, he bragged about his supposed endorsement record, calling the disappointing night a “great victory.” That’s not leadership. It’s self-serving buck-passing, and it’s especially off-putting given Trump was attempting to take credit for the red wave right up until the moment that it ceased to be.

This excerpt from Spencer Brown’s post-election write-up over at Townhall is correct.

It’s also impossible to separate the national GOP political apparatus from former President Donald Trump, who, before the election, circulated a memo hyping up the number of rallies, candidate endorsements, fundraising numbers, and primary wins for which he claimed responsibility.

For Trump, his biggest win on Election Day was arguably J.D. Vance’s victory in Ohio. But losses for his candidates, including Oz, Walker, Bolduc, and numerous others, call into question his role in picking candidates and getting them across the primary finish line — something he’s bragged about endlessly.

After all, the rest of the GOP machinery ended up pouring money and time into the races where Trump-endorsed primary candidates advanced to the general, but that’s all downstream from Trump (and in some cases, Democrats who backed the same candidates in a now proven theory that those candidates would be easier to beat).

Meanwhile, in Florida, Ron DeSantis turned a state he won by 30,000 votes four years ago into a 20-point blowout. It was the most shocking shift in a single state in decades, with Republicans actually winning Hispanic voters outright. In a sea of terrible, what happened in Florida showed a better way. It showed what issues voters care about. It showed that being likable and effective as a leader matters. I don’t know if DeSantis runs in 2024, but Republicans would be foolish to pass over him for a nearly 80-year-old man with extremely high unfavorable ratings.

I realize saying that definitively is going to ruffle some feathers, but I assure you that’s not my goal. None of what I’m saying means that 2016 wasn’t special. It doesn’t mean that the big rallies weren’t fun when they actually meant something and weren’t just irrelevant spectacles. It doesn’t mean Trump didn’t accomplish a lot in the White House.

What it does mean is that times change, appeals diminish, and not adapting going forward would only guarantee another gut-wrenching loss in the next election. Republicans need a course correction just as they needed one after the George W. Bush era (which ended with Mitt Romney). It’s not about establishment vs. Trump because, to be frank, both sides have shown themselves incapable of winning at this point.

It’s going to take a combination of inspirational fight and extreme competence that hasn’t been shown by the party’s national leadership, from McConnell to Trump, to turn this ship around. And while I may personally think that’s DeSantis, I’m not trying to browbeat anyone into that position. I encourage people to support whoever they feel convicted to support, and if we end up agreeing on 99 percent of everything else but disagreeing on that one issue, there should be no hard feelings. All I ask is that people step back, look at the whole picture, and think critically about how we got to where we are. Changes have to be made because I’m tired of losing, and I hope you are too.

Comment O’ The Day
No government has ever seen an area of human activity they couldn’t make worse given sufficient budget. This is an important first step in misallocating vast oceans of human and monetary capital.

Soon we will look back fondly at today’s straightforward and streamlined regulatory environment as “The good old days, when it was fast and easy to get stuff done”.

FCC proposes new bureau for space activities

WASHINGTON — The chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission announced plans Nov. 3 to reorganize the agency and create a bureau devoted to the its increasing work with space systems.

In a speech at a Satellite Industry Association event, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced her intent to reorganize the commission’s International Bureau into a new Space Bureau and a standalone Office of International Affairs. That reorganization, she said, would give satellite licensing and regulatory work greater prominence and access to more resources.

“The organizational structures of the agency have not kept pace as the applications and proceedings before us have multiplied,” she said, saying that the FCC has applications under consideration for systems totaling 64,000 satellites. “You can’t just keep doing things the old way and expect to lead in the new.”

Having a bureau devoted to space, she said, would go hand-in-hand with efforts to increase staffing and develop new regulations for space systems. “This organization will help ensure that the new Space Bureau and the Office of International Affairs stay relevant, efficient and effective over time.”

Continue reading “”

Comment O’ The Day
They’re idiots, and when you put idiots in charge, the result is disaster.

Massachusetts offshore wind project “no longer viable.”

A wind energy company named Avangrid has been in the process of developing a massive offshore wind farm called the Commonwealth Wind project, working with the support of the state of Massachusetts for several years. When completed, it was to be a 1,200-megawatt energy source. A second offshore project from Mayflower Wind was to produce an additional 400 megawatts. But now, the companies behind both of these projects have asked the state to put the plans on hold.

The reason given was that the projects are “no longer viable” under the current conditions and they will be unable to move forward for the time being. But the reason for hitting the brakes has little to do with technology or weather and a great deal to do with the economy. (New Bedford Light)

A major offshore wind project in the Massachusetts pipeline “is no longer viable and would not be able to move forward” under the terms of contracts filed in May. Both developers behind the state’s next two offshore wind projects are asking state regulators to pause review of the contracts for one month amid price increases, supply shortages and interest rate hikes.

Utility executives working with assistance from the Baker administration last year chose Avangrid’s roughly 1,200-megawatt Commonwealth Wind project and a 400 MW project from Mayflower Wind in the third round of offshore wind procurement to continue the state’s pursuit of establishing cleaner offshore wind power. Contracts, or power purchase agreements (PPAs), for the projects were filed with the Department of Public Utilities in May.

As noted above, these wind farms aren’t being put on hold because the wind suddenly stopped blowing offshore. (Though that does happen from time to time.) Nor were the developers running into problems with their turbines, or at least no more than usual. As with so many things in American politics and the industrial sector… it’s the economy, stupid.

The problems being cited by the developers are no doubt familiar to almost all of you by now. They are describing global commodity price increases, sudden increases in interest rates, and supply chain woes that are slowing production and driving up costs. Declining labor force levels are adding additional concerns. All of these factors are combining to make the construction of the project unsustainable.

There’s an obvious bit of irony in seeing the same state and federal government actors who have pushed “green energy” down everyone’s throats sitting on this particular sideline. Those same people whose policies helped drive this collapse in the supply chain and the labor market, along with the spike in the prices of pretty much everything, are now watching as one of their signature “clean energy” achievements falls victim to the conditions they created.

In their brief, the developers suggested possible solutions to get them back on track. These included cost-saving measures and government tax incentives. But the only way these projects ever got off the ground initially was because the government was already massively subsidizing the wind energy industry in general and these proposed wind farms in particular. Wind energy is not profitable in and of itself without huge government subsidies. And now that the economy has largely collapsed over the past two years, those chickens are coming home to roost, assuming they avoid getting chopped up in the blades of a wind turbine like the eagles.

Here’s an exit question for the peanut gallery to consider. Has anyone checked to see how well these turbines would hold up if a category 4 or 5 hurricane blew through? It doesn’t happen often off the coast of the northeast, but I’m sure that the people there still remember Sandy. I did some checking, and the developers claim that those sorts of weather events have been “taken into consideration.” But those towers look rather spindly to be standing tall in 150-mile-per-hour winds. But hey… maybe that’s just me.

Comment O’ The Day
“Looking at the news today, if Elon wants an idea of what else Twitter can do, setting up a Twitter Book Mart and selling books (including, or especially those dropped by amazon) would be a good and useful one. The actual physical distribution of books is straightforward; publicizing them is the hard part. And the one thing Twitter does really well is publicize.”

Amazon Fascists Ban Another Book That Leftists Hate.

The battle for the freedom of speech is heating up this week, with Elon Musk chasing out the Twitter fascists and beginning to open up the platform for free discussion and dissent (amid howls of rage from the Left), but the other social media giants are showing no signs of retreating from their fascism. New English Review Press announced Sunday that a book it published back in 2017, The Islam in Islamic Terrorism: The Importance of Beliefs, Ideas, and Ideology by the renowned ex-Muslim scholar Ibn Warraq, has been pulled for sale from Amazon without explanation or the possibility of appeal.

It’s a strange move. I have the privilege and honor of having known Ibn Warraq for many years and calling him my friend. I’ve also read The Islam in Islamic Terrorism. Before I met him, his groundbreaking and courageous work Why I Am Not A Muslim was a powerful influence on me in the 1990s and had a great deal to do with my beginning to write about jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women myself. Ibn Warraq is a gentle soul, a careful scholar, a superb writer, and a profound and original thinker. The Islam in Islamic Terrorism is not some flame-throwing hate screed but a carefully documented exploration of the elements of Islam that jihad terrorists use in order to justify violence and make recruits among peaceful Muslims.

Amazon, however, is run by Leftists, and for Leftists, any criticism of Islam, including any hint that it may have some connection to Islamic terrorism, is “Islamophobic” and thus to be rejected out of hand without any discussion of the actual evidence. For years now, the notorious far-Left smear machine, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), has defamed opponents of jihad violence and Sharia oppression as “hate group leaders,” and Amazon has banned counter-jihad 501c3 charitable organizations from its Amazon Smile charity program on the basis of the SPLC’s “hate” listings.

Amazon has also shown a readiness to ban books that counter the Left’s nonsense. A few years back, the Leftist behemoth banned Ryan Anderson’s When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment. It has also banned other books that jihadis and their allies would find offensive, such as Peter McLoughlin’s Easy Meat: Inside Britain’s Grooming Gang Scandal, and Mohammed’s Koran by McLoughlin and British activist Tommy Robinson.

Leftists will say, as they always say to criticism of the social media giants, that Amazon is a private company that can do what it wants and that if patriots don’t like it, they can start their own bookstore. Remember bookstores? There used to be many in every American city. They all had different selections, based on the owners’ perspectives and interests. But now they are almost all gone. Amazon dominates the book market, and Barnes & Noble takes most of the rest. If Amazon decides that your book is not acceptable, then most people who are interested in books will never have the opportunity to see it at all.

In earlier, less polarized times, the U.S. government determined that several monopolies — Standard Oil, American Tobacco, AT&T — were not in the public interest and compelled them to break up. It would be a great boon for the freedom of speech if Big Tech were subjected to this treatment, but the U.S. government as it is currently constituted is more likely to act against Musk for protecting the freedom of speech on Twitter than against the other social media giants for suppressing that freedom. The American people would also benefit immensely from the breakup of Amazon and reconstitution of bookstores that reflect differing points of view with selections that reflect not just Amazon’s doctrinaire Leftist line, but other points of view as well.

The Islam in Islamic Terrorism can still be found here. But it’s clear that Amazon is intending to shut down debate on a highly controversial issue. Even if you don’t care for the works of Ibn Warraq (which would be odd, as it would mean you don’t care for lucid, elegant prose, compelling reasoning, and a broad command of the salient facts), make no mistake: anytime Amazon pulls a book for political reasons, we are all threatened. The precedent has been set by the only bookseller that really matters today that books that are offensive to the Leftist elites can be deep-sixed at will. This precedent is dangerous and corrosive to a free society. In this age of the Biden regime’s creeping authoritarianism, it’s ominous in the extreme.