RECESSIONAL

The Biden administration continues to prepare the battlefield for the Commerce Department’s second-quarter 2022 GDP estimate on Thursday. Administration officials must anticipate an estimate reflecting that we are in a recession, because they are making fools of themselves to deflect it in the meantime. What they really need to do is bring back the late Carter administration economic official Alfred Kahn and dub it the banana. “Between 1973 and 1975 we had the deepest banana that we had in 35 years,” Kahn famously explained, “and yet inflation dipped only very briefly.”

What we have is Joe Biden and his clown-car administration. It lacks a single official or spokesman with Kahn’s wit or wisdom. Not even close.

As for the Biden administration, that was then.

This is now

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As the article points out, it’s not just drought. We’ve had weather this hot and dry before, many times. It’s the higher cost of feed, and fuel, that is driving the problem, which is that raising cattle before economically impossible……
For this you can thank SloJoe and all his econuts friends and allies.
I’d stock up your freezers while the getting is still good.

Ranchers Are Selling Off Their Cattle in Unprecedented Numbers Due to the Drought, and That Has Enormous Implications for 2023

Thanks to the horrific drought which is absolutely devastating ranching in the Southwest, ranchers are now in “panic mode” and are selling off their cattle at an unprecedented rate.  In fact, some are choosing to sell off their entire herds because they feel like they don’t have any other options.  In recent days, seemingly endless lines of trailers waiting to drop off cattle for auction have gone viral all over social media.  Everybody is talking about how they have never seen anything like this before, and if the drought in the Southwest persists the lines could soon get even longer.  In the short-term, this is going to help to stabilize meat prices.  But in the long-term the size of the U.S. cattle herd will steadily become much smaller, and that has very serious implications for our ability to feed ourselves in 2023 and beyond.

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I’m old enough to remember when gas prices were low, Putin was sulking in a corner and China was whining about Trump being mean to them. Now we have 4.50 gas, Russian invading Ukraine, and Biden is worried China will invade Taiwan. But no mean tweets and that is what is important!

U.S. officials grow more concerned about potential action by China on Taiwan

Chinese officials have strongly asserted this summer that no part of the Taiwan Strait can be considered international waters, contrary to the views of the United States and other nations. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said in June that “China has sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the Taiwan Strait.”

American officials do not know whether China plans to enforce that claim. But Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, who is close to President Biden and deals with the administration often on issues involving Taiwan, said “there is a lot of attention being paid” to what lessons China, its military and Mr. Xi might be learning from events in Ukraine.

“And one school of thought is that the lesson is ‘go early and go strong’ before there is time to strengthen Taiwan’s defenses,” Mr. Coons said in an interview on Sunday. “And we may be heading to an earlier confrontation — more a squeeze than an invasion — than we thought.”

Chinese officials are aware that Biden administration officials, also applying lessons learned from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, are trying to shape their weapons sales to Taiwan to turn the democratic island into what some call a “porcupine” — bristling with enough effective armaments and defense systems to deter Chinese leaders from trying to attack it.

READ MORE FROM NYT 

Mississippi board of education votes to let schools set their own gun policies

The move by the state board of education isn’t likely to lead to armed staff members protecting kids in Mississippi’s few Democratic bastions like Jackson, but now that the board has said individual school districts can set their own policies when it comes to guns on campus many smaller and more rural schools may very well decide that having a few trained and vetted volunteer staffers carrying to protect the students in their care is a good idea.

Late last week the state board of education updated a 1990 policy that barred anyone other than law enforcement from carrying on school grounds, arguing that the old policy conflicts with the state’s “enhanced concealed carry” law. That law specifically allows those with the enhanced carry license to lawfully carry in some “sensitive places” deemed off-limits to those carrying with a regular license or under the state’s Constitutional Carry law, and as of now the board says that districts can choose to permit or forbid employees with enhanced permits from carrying on school grounds.

At the boarding meeting, Erin Meyer, the education department’s general counsel, said state law provides “local school districts with the authority and discretion to determine” its weapons policies. School districts can decide for themselves whether or not employees who hold enhanced carry licenses can bring guns onto school property.

School districts must also adopt policies that apply to non-employees. A 2013 state attorney general’s opinion argued teachers or administrators can refuse to meet with armed people in a “non-public” school area. Mississippi K-12 schools are closed to the public, but a school concert, play or sporting event is open to the public, Cook said.

Patricia Ice, a volunteer with the Mississippi chapter of Moms Demand Action, a gun reform organization, urged school districts to adopt policies that limit firearms on campus.

“Allowing teachers and members of the public to carry guns in our K-12 schools is a dangerous idea that will further jeopardize the safety of students and staff alike,” Ice said. “We need the adults in the room to make evidence-based policy decisions that will actually keep our children safe, rather than making decisions that will put more guns in their classrooms and put our kids at risk.”

Ice can’t point to any issue in states where teachers and staff are authorized to legally carry a firearm on campus as a deterrent to a targeted attack against students, but Moms Demand Action has long opposed the idea anyway. In fact, Moms Demand Action and their parent group Everytown for Gun Safety helped sue to overturn Ohio’s armed school staff statutes, forcing lawmakers in the Buckeye State to craft new legislation this year ensuring that districts have the flexibility to adopt the practice if they choose.

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Just to point out:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government
-Thomas Jefferson

SloJoe can take a long walk off a short pier.

Joe’s eyes don’t move or blink in this whole clip and it has to be a deepfake but it’s his official account. Please help me understand.

Those eyes

Are they taping them open?? Is it the Botox??

Is the dude amped up on Adderall???

Also, is he trying to turn cops against Americans for disagreeing with unconstitutional Democrat power grabs and calling it insurrection?

I don’t know… I can’t think about anything other than those eyes.

New Report ‘Crime in Washington 2021’ Damning Proof of Gun Control Failure

In the midst of a continuing pattern of rising crime in Washington State, a new report released by the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs (WASPC) does two things, one of them completely unintentional.

The report says there were 325 murders last year in the state, “an increase of 5.9 percent since 2020.” It is the highest number of murders recorded since WASPC began collecting data in 1980.

What the data also demonstrates is that restrictive gun control initiatives pushed through by a billionaire-backed gun prohibition lobbying group based in Seattle have failed to make communities safer, essentially putting the lie to any promises or predictions made by their proponents.

Translation: Gun control advocates misled Evergreen State voters. Their forecasts and arguments were wrong, just as Northwest gun rights leaders said they would be.

According to the Crime in Washington 2021 report, “In 2021, Violent Crimes showed an increase of 12.3% with 29,238 offenses reported; compared to 26,036 offenses reported in 2020. There were 325 murders in 2021; this is an increase of 5.9% compared to 307 murders in 2020.”

That’s even more homicides than the annual FBI Uniform Crime Report listed for 2020, the most recent year for which FBI data is available. The Crime Report is released in late September each year. For 2020, the FBI listed 298 homicides, of which 177 were committed with firearms. That was up from the 209 murders, including 141 involving guns, posted in the 2015 Crime Report.

The new WASPC report “compiles data from 232 state, county, municipal and tribal agencies,” according to KOMO News. It “is designed to give residents information on what is happening in their communities. It covers a wide variety of crime, an issue people living in Seattle say is getting out of hand.”

The report came as news from neighboring Oregon confirmed Initiative Petition 17, which seeks to ban so-called “large capacity magazines” and require Oregonians to get a permit before they can purchase a firearm, has qualified to appear on the November ballot.

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The Founders knew all about mass killings which were part of the American experience dating back to the Jamestown, Virginia  colony.

The Next Big Hurdle For Gun Controllers

Gun control lawmakers and activists now face a big problem as they pass dozens of new laws to substantially limit the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens – this new legislation will almost certainly be deemed unconstitutional.

That’s not my opinion. The Supreme Court made it clear in its recent pro–Second Amendment decision. In language that has drawn shockingly little attention, that ruling shows why many proposed gun restrictions infringe on the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

Before you can even begin a conversation about whether the proposed laws will have any meaningful effect on mass shootings (they won’t), you need to ask whether the gun restrictions are constitutional. Gun-control advocates don’t want the Constitution to get in the way of their policy objectives—but it’s the truth.

And that’s where the Supreme Court’s recent ruling comes in.

In the case of New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Court ruled that law-abiding citizens have the right to carry firearms outside the home for self-defense. The Supreme Court explicitly affirmed that the Second Amendment protects twin rights: “to keep and bear arms,” with “keep” meaning to own or possess and “bear” meaning to carry outside the home.

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Biden Continues To Lie About Firearms Liability Law

Last week the White House publicly issued a “Readout” describing a July 22 meeting between “senior advisors” to President Joe Biden and several state legislators from New York, Delaware, California and Illinois; all so-called “blue states” whose political leaders are firmly committed to restricting law-abiding citizens’ ability to exercise their rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment.

The news release was the latest example of this administration’s pattern of deliberately mischaracterizing federal laws regarding the liability of firearms retailers and manufacturers for subsequent criminal use of products they sell or manufacture. In other words, a lie designed to further its gun-control agenda.

The federal law at issue is the “Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act” or “PLCAA,” legislation passed by the Congress and signed by President George W. Bush in 2005.

PLCAA was deemed necessary by a majority of both houses of the Congress and the president of the United States, in the wake of a series of civil lawsuits against lawful manufacturers and retailers of firearms for the subsequent use of those products by individuals for criminal purposes.

The law does not and was never intended to provide absolute protection for manufacturers or retailers of firearms. Rather, the PLCAA was designed simply to provide a legal framework according to which neither manufacturers nor retailers of lawful firearms would be treated differently from other lawful businesses, such as automobile manufacturers and dealers that never had been held liable for the subsequent use of their products (cars) by negligent or unlawful drivers.

In fact, the clear language of the PLCAA provides that so long as the firearms businesses follow the many laws governing their operations, and so long as neither the manufacturer nor the retailer knew or had reason to believe its product would be used by criminals or in an unlawful way, neither business could be sued if an individual later used the gun in such manner.

If, however, there was or is evidence to the contrary — that is that either the manufacturer or the retailer knew or had reason to believe the subsequent owner or user of the firearm would use it in an unlawful manner — they can in fact be sued civilly for damages, just like any other business.

Notwithstanding this clear language and publicly available reporting on the PLCAA at the time of its passage, the Biden administration continues to deliberately mischaracterize the statute.

For example, in last week’s news release, which noted that “President Biden has repeatedly called on Congress to repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act,” the White House claimed that the law provides “more protection from liability” than is afforded other products, and that it completely “denies” victims of “gun violence” any civil remedy in the courts — statements that are categorically untrue.

In fact, the same as before the PLCAA was enacted, a victim of gun violence has full opportunity to sue the individual who used the firearm unlawfully, as well as any other individual or business that transferred or manufactured the gun that was used to commit a criminal offense, if that business did not itself abide by the law or sold or transferred the firearm negligently or with reason to believe it would be used unlawfully.

Continuing to assert that the PLCAA provides absolute immunity from lawsuits against a firearms manufacturer or retailer is utterly disingenuous. Still, this administration and as its gun-control cohorts in the Congress, along with its enablers in the media, continue perpetrating such a deliberate lie to the American people for the sole purpose of furthering the left’s long-held goal of limiting to the greatest extent possible the manufacture, retail and individual possession of lawful firearms.

However, for an administration claiming that our country’s southern border is secure and that an economy experiencing a record level of inflation is in good shape, lying about the scope of a federal law is considered but a minor fib.

No rights are subject to the whims of a tyrannically minded majority. That’s why they’re called ‘rights‘ and not something else.

Are Constitutional Rights Subject to Poll Results?

A recent online survey conducted last month by the Oregon Values and Beliefs Center in Portland revealed “nearly 60% favored stricter federal gun regulations, and 56% said the same about the state’s regulations.”

That was from a response of more than 1,400 Beaver State adults, according to the Oregon Capital Chronicle. The story appeared as Portland-based anti-gunners were delivering petitions to the Secretary of
State in Salem to put a restrictive gun control measure on the November ballot that will ban original capacity magazines and require Oregonians to get a permit before they can legally purchase a firearm.

In neighboring Washington four years ago, a well-financed campaign by the billionaire-backed Alliance for Gun Responsibility pushed Initiative 1639 into law. That measure invented a definition of a so-called “semiautomatic assault rifle,” a gun which, according to Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich, doesn’t exist. The sweeping definition applies to every self-loading rifle ever manufactured anywhere, regardless of caliber.

These developments raise the question whether constitutional rights can be subject to popularity contests, which initiative elections actually are. That is, at least until they are challenged successfully in federal court.

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NCLA Asks Full Fifth Circuit to Toss ATF’s Bump Stock Ban and Reject Deference to the Government

Washington, DC (July 25, 2022) – Today, the New Civil Liberties Alliance filed its appellant brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Michael Cargill v. Merrick B. Garland, et al. This lawsuit could determine who has the constitutional authority to change the criminal law if changes are warranted. The appeals court in June vacated the three-judge panel’s opinion upholding ATF’s legal interpretation and granted en banc review—that is, review by all 17 active judges on the court. Adoption of the rarely used en banc procedure is a sign that the appeals court views the issues in this case as highly important. The Fifth Circuit will be the third U.S. Court of Appeals to hear this issue en banc, but it could be the first to reach the merits. The Tenth Circuit dismissed the en banc over five dissents, and the Sixth Circuit split 8-8 on the questions at stake.

NCLA is seeking invalidation of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) Bump Stock Final Rule, in which the agency declared that non-mechanical bump stocks are “machineguns” within the meaning of the relevant statute. Because the Final Rule is not a valid legislative rule, ATF may not seek judicial deference to its statutory interpretation. Moreover, the agency expressly waived any deference claim for the Bump Stock Rule under Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.

Plaintiff Michael Cargill alleges that: (1) the Final Rule conflicts with the statutory definition of a machinegun and thus exceeds ATF’s authority; (2) ATF’s construction is not entitled to Chevron deference; (3) to the extent that the courts determine that the definition of machinegun is ambiguous with respect to bump stocks, they should apply the rule of lenity to determine that bump stocks are not machineguns; and (4) if the statute were interpreted as authorizing ATF’s declaration that bump stocks are prohibited machineguns, then it would be an unconstitutional delegation of Congress’s legislative powers.

The district court’s erroneous construction of the statute has been rejected by a significant majority of federal appellate judges outside the Fifth Circuit who have considered the same question. The best reading of the statute is, in fact, the one espoused by ATF before December 2018: non-mechanical bump stocks are not “machineguns.” A separate NCLA lawsuit, Aposhian v. Garland, also challenges the Final Rule. That suit is pending in the U.S. Supreme Court on a petition for a writ of certiorari.

The current statute, adopted in 1986, prohibits “machineguns” in a manner that does not include non-mechanical bump stocks. The evidence at trial demonstrated conclusively that a semi-automatic rifle equipped with a non-mechanical bump stock is not a weapon that “shoots, is designed to shoot, or can readily be restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot … by a single function of the trigger.” It is impossible to square the Final Rule’s conclusion that bump stocks are machineguns with the uncontested evidence that every shot fired by a bump-stock-equipped semi-automatic rifle requires a separate “function” of the trigger. Furthermore, it is unlawful for a prosecutorial entity like ATF to rewrite existing law. Congress itself must initiate any change in gun control laws. The Court should enjoin ATF’s brazen effort to enact a new criminal law on its own.

NCLA released the following statements:

“Two appeals courts—the D.C. and Tenth Circuits—have upheld the Final Rule. But they did so only after placing a thumb on the scale by deferring to the Government’s interpretation of the ‘machinegun’ statute. Any court that conducts a truly independent analysis of the statute will quickly discern that bump stocks do not fit within the statutory definition of a machinegun.”
— Rich Samp, Senior Litigation Counsel, NCLA

“Like a majority of federal appeals judges who have weighed in on the merits, NCLA believes the federal statute banning machine guns does not encompass bump stocks. But if there is any ambiguity in the statute, then the rule of lenity still dictates construing the statute in Mr. Cargill’s favor to exclude bump stocks. Under no circumstance may ATF rewrite the statute to create new criminal liability for bump stock owners.”
— Mark Chenoweth, President and General Counsel, NCLA

For more information visit the case page here and the case video here.

Download the full document

Home invasion turns deadly in northeast Albuquerque

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Police have opened an investigation, after a Sunday morning incident led to a death in northeast Albuquerque. Homicide detectives are at the scene, but it is not clear if they consider the incident a homicide.

An APD spokesman says the incident occurred near Morningside Dr. NE and Mescalero Rd. NE. A suspect allegedly broke into one home in the neighborhood. After being detected by a homeowner, the suspect tried to steal a set of keys, but was unable to flee the scene.

The suspect then tried to break into a second residence. That led to an altercation, during which at least one gunshot was fired, killing the suspect.

The case remains under investigation.

Thoughts on the Swamp.

Where’s Cato the Elder when you need him?

Around 150 B.C., the grumpy Roman senator took to ending every speech, no matter what the topic (grain allotments for the plebs, plans for a new aqueduct, whatever) with the injunction “Ceterum autem censeo Carthaginem esse delendam”: “And another thing, I think that Carthage ought to be destroyed.”

That refrain has come down to us as a lapidary, three-word imperative: “Carthago delenda est”: “Carthage must be destroyed.”

Daniel Hannan, the British commentator, euroskeptic, and sometime member of the European Parliament, took a page from Cato’s book and for a time ended all his speeches with the formula, “Pactio Olisipiensis censenda est”: “The Lisbon treaty must be put to the vote.”

There’s something to be said for repetition.

In 146 B.C., Rome besieged and then sacked Carthage. According to some accounts, the only thing left standing was a funerary monument. The European Union is still moldering along, but at least the proximate goal of Hannan’s campaign, Britain’s exit from that soul-sucking leviathan, has been accomplished.

With those victories in mind, I’m thinking of concluding all my speeches with the phrase “Palus delenda est”: “The swamp must be destroyed.”

What’s the swamp? The word has a long history, aided by the serendipitous contingency that Washington was actually built on a literal swamp. But the term, like a Chinese virus, underwent a “gain-of-function” makeover in 2015 when Donald Trump first strode onto the center stage of American political life.

“The swamp”: That is the bureaucratic Washington establishment, the alphabet soup of agencies whose personnel, though unelected and largely unaccountable, run our lives right down to the latest permit, regulation, tax, fee, impost, and woke government requirement or interdiction.

But it’s also something more. “The swamp” names an attitude, an assumption, about power, about politics, but also about certain basic human realities. Above all, perhaps, “the swamp” rests and feeds upon the progressive assumption that the mass of citizens is incapable of self-government.

I call that assumption “progressive” because from the time of Woodrow Wilson on down to the latest Davos mandarin, the neo-feudal bifurcation of humanity into elect and (ever the majority) subservient has been the guiding, if unspoken, nutrient.

The litany of Trump’s policy achievements is long and distinguished. It begins with his judicial appointments, some fruits of which we saw last month with the Supreme Court decisions on Roe v. Wade, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Second Amendment, and includes his attention to our southern border, energy, taxes, the Middle East, and a host of other issues.

But more than any particular achievement, Trump was the tocsin that awakened millions of people—those whom Hillary Clinton dismissed as “deplorables”—to the two-tier reality of political life in the United States.

In “Nicomachean Ethics,” Aristotle wrote that “the good life of man” was the “end of the science of politics.” Trump showed us how fond that idea had become. In brief, Trump was the agent of a mass consciousness raising.

It was that spectacle, the prospect of the people suddenly awakened to the reality not only of their bondage, but also to the identity of their putative masters that stood behind the astonishing hatred Trump aroused among the self-appointed elect.

The frenzied machinations of the Jan. 6 committee to destroy anyone and anything touched by the populist spirit Trump aroused show how desperate our rulers and their scribes and Pharisees have become.

They’re terrified lest Trump return to complete the task of (in Steve Bannon’s memorable phrase) “deconstructing the administrative state,” which the former president began in 2016. Trump might not be the person capable of carrying that standard, but he is, despite all his quirks and crotchets, likely to be the most effective.

The fury unleashed against him will probably never end, though the midterm elections will probably deprive the rancid anti-Trump mafia of much of their armament.

The point is that the genie that Trump released won’t be coaxed back into the bottle. Expect the anti-Trump furor to continue and grow in volume and vituperativeness. Expect the population of the Washington gulag to swell with people indicted for “parading” in or around the Capitol. Expect more dawn raids and unannounced arrests of former Trump associates. We might even see the Jan. 6 committee making a criminal referral to the “Department of Injustice.”

The silver lining is that the more hysterical that agents of the regime become, the more stalwart will be the response of the newly awakened populace. A reckoning, that is to say, is coming. It can’t come too soon.

In the meantime, join me in chanting “Palus delenda est.”

Woman Fires Gun at Dallas Love Field Airport, Police Shoot Back

Authorities are reporting that a woman at Dallas Love Field Airport emerged from a restroom brandishing a gun and firing at the ceiling. A police officer responded, shooting the woman in the lower extremities.

Paramedics took the woman to nearby Parkland Hospital. No injuries have been reported other than to the shooter.

NBC DFW reports that “Dallas Chief of Police Eddie Garcia said the woman, identified only as a 37-year-old, was dropped off at the airport just before 11 a.m. and that once inside she went into a restroom and changed clothes.”

“Garcia said the woman exited the restroom wearing a hoody, pulled out a gun and started firing several shots,” the report continues. “Most of the shots, Garcia said, appeared to be directed toward the ceiling.”

Authorities evacuated passengers from the airport.

“Cell phone video shared with NBC 5 showed travelers on the ground, behind chairs at the gates and sheltering in place while the shooting unfolded,” reports NBC DFW. “The investigation is ongoing and Garcia said he expects elements to change as more is learned about what happened. Agents with the Dallas FBI’s field office were seen at the airport along with Dallas Police.”

This is a developing situation, and we’ll update this story if additional newsworthy information becomes available.