Headlines

House Intel to work through recess on impeachment inquiry

White House deliberates block on all US investment in China

McConnell: If House acts, Senate must have trial ...

Senate ‘assault weapons’ has ban outlaws 205 guns

Audio of private meeting shows oil industry ripping into Trump administration

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says Attorney General William Barr has ‘gone rogue’

13 House Dems don’t support [impeachment]!

John Kasich on Trump-Ukraine call: ‘Nobody talking about this’ in Ohio

Cuomo clarifies he supports impeachment inquiry after blaming ‘leftists’

Bitcoin nosedives 22% this week to lowest level since June

Epstein butler dishes on Paris pad guests including Bill Gates, Steve Bannon

Dam breaking? MSNBC says ‘Biden got a nice little deal for his boy’

Gun Control

“We must do something to stop this gun violence!” — suburban women and Mr. Wimpples all across America

Every time some demented youth shoots up a venue ... for any reason ... the knee-jerk public shouts the above ... and suggests that more gun controls will fix things  ... “even if they save just one life.” The following are a few of the insisted solutions ... then some generally unknown or little-known facts about each:

Universal background checks — The gun grabbers often cite the gun show and Internet loopholes as the way that guns are sold without background checks. Not true. Federally-licensed gun dealers at gun shows (only ones allowed there) must do background checks on any gun sales. And any retail outlet Internet gun sales must ship guns purchased to a federally-licensed dealer who then does a background check before the purchaser can pick up said gun.

Yes, I can sell a gun to you, dear reader, without a background check. But how the federal government is going to restrict realistically such transactions is beyond me ... after all how are all the Chicago gang-bangers going to get their gats? No matter what federal restriction might next be put in place, the only ones suffering would be legitimate sales between known parties. The back-alley deals between bad actors will go on and not be restricted.

Banning “assault rifles” — This pejorative primarily refers to AR-15 and AK-47 semi-automatic  rifles ... which are also cleverly dubbed “weapons of war.” The rifles are both basically 22-caliber guns ... the lowest caliber there is. Yes, their bullets are higher velocity, but they never would be used in serious battle situations today where greater lethality is required. The real hit on these weapons is that they look “scary.”

However, hunters and target shooters love these weapons because they are light-weight and have little recoil. (They would also work against home invaders and oppressive government.)

Bump stocks — These devices convert semi-automatic (need a trigger pull for each shot) into fully-automatic weapons. They have been banned by the Trump administration by executive order.

High capacity banana clips — most semi-automatic rifles and pistols already logically have 16 bullet magazines as standard. Banning ammunition clips of higher capacity makes some sense ... but it is mostly illusionary because standard clips can be changed in a matter of seconds. If banning these larger capacity clips satisfies the rabid hunger of the gun grabbers (of course it won’t), then they might be outlawed. Then the next mass shooting will blame some other Second Amendment “loophole”  ... excepting, as always, the copy-cat shooter.

Gun Control

Governor Rick Scott of Florida and President Trump both have proposed raising the age requirement to buy "assault weapons," like the AR-15, to 21. (Governor Scott would include all guns.) This age would match the current age limit for the use of alcohol and pot ... but  not for drivers' licenses (16), voting (18) or serving in the military (18).

Now, I think this AR-15 stricture may be a good idea ... and I also think that the three other lower age limits should be re-examined:

- Nobody should bee allowed to vote before 21 ... and they should also be able to name all three branches of our government.

- No one should be able to drive before 21 .... unless of course they are driving Teslas.

- The age for military service can stay at18 as long as such recruits are limited to using broomsticks as weapons until they are 21.

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E
WH: 'We haven't closed doors' on assault weapons ban

State Dept.: No coordination with Trump Jr. on speech in India

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LIVE FOREVER: Bezos reveals massive 10,000-year clock being built inside mountain

Rush: Democrats focused on politicalization of attacks, not school safety

White House: Trump supports stronger background checks for gun buys

Olympics filled with athletes who aren't that good ...

'BLACK PANTHER' packed with action, diversity -- but no gays ...

Russia's Foreign Minister Lavrov condemns Iran for calling for Israel's destruction

Success!

When Obummer first took office, Rush Limbaugh issued that famous quote, "I hope he fails." Well, unfortunately, Rush was wrong ... and Obummer, over seven years, has experienced fairly wide-ranging successes with his objectives ... many, I am sure, we will hear about this Tuesday night.

He has pulled our troops out of Iraq. He has orchestrated a surge of troops in Afghanistan, "the good war." He has gotten his health care reform, Obamacare, passed and now implemented. He has opened our borders to many tens of thousands of "dreamers," or young illegal Mexican and Central American immigrants. He has also admitted tens of thousand of legal Muslim immigrants. Through the Muslim Brotherhood, he helped spawn the Arab Spring and all the changes it caused in the Middle East. He overthrew the Kadaffi government in Libya. ዕብያ።With the generous help of the Federal Reserve Bank , he has reduced the national unemployment rate to 5 %. He has drawn attention to possibly illegal police shootings throughout the country.  He has waged a relentless war on domestic "assault weapons." He has negotiated a nuclear limitation agreement with Iran. At the Paris Climate Conference he has focused world attention on global warming. He has gone a long way toward closing the Guantanamo Bay prison. He has championed a new free-trade pact with the Far East. He has gotten his most recent $1.1 trillion omnibus budget passed ... funding most of his residual objectives.

All this while enjoying himself immensely and playing hundreds of rounds of golf all around the United States.

Of course many of these successes have also had a dark side ... but we will leave them for another time.

Language

Retail stores are going to school on our political establishment. They have learned that language or even just words can be used to influence the masses. Recently I received a brochure from Kohl’s that listed “performance tops” for $19.99 whereas its T-shirts were listed for $9.99. Essentially the same garment, Kohl’s has found a way with words to extract another $10 from its gullible customers.

Of course politicians learned this legerdemain a long long time ago. The “Affordable Care Act” (Obamacare) is anything but affordable. The only adjective that the Democrats seem to use is “extreme” or their noun is “extremists.” A number of years ago Republicans realized that “liberal” was a political killer and it was used to help defeat Dukakis’s presidential hopes. Rifles magically become “assault weapons.” When “global warming” started to lose its ability to sway, it was morphed into “climate change” … which was harder to debate. Such words are opinion-panel tested to a fair-thee-well and then disseminated to their apparatchiks to drum into the American psyche. The sad truth is that it works … facts be damned.

I have often opined on this subject under the term “Orwellian” … see: Red Flags, More Newspeak and Weasel Words. Once one’s ears are attuned to this political ruse, one cannot watch or hear a newscast or read a media message (mine included) without being bombarded with such subliminal syllabic slyness. “Illegal immigrants” become “undocumented workers.” (What happens if they are not working?) A terrorists attack at Fort Hood becomes “workplace violence.” Attempts to stop voter fraud becomes “voter suppression.” The Tea Party is besmirched (even by our President) with the smirked slur “tea baggers.” I sometimes wonder if Noam Chomsky is not on the Democrat payroll?

All I ask of you, dear reader, is please learn to filter out and ignore such blather.

Assault Weapons

Bushmaster .223

As a result of the horror that transpired last Friday in Newtown, Connecticut (see: Huffington Post) Congress will very likely re-institute the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 … plus a few other palliative measures.  Will this stop such senseless violence?  Unlikely … certainly not the mayhem in the gangland battlegrounds like the south side of Chicago where dozens of teenagers die each week.  Even Connecticut currently has a state-wide ban on assault weapons.  This clearly did not stop Adam Lanza from his twisted vengeance.

But our short-sighted Washington solons will adjourn sometime in January after having put a plaster on the gaping wound of such insanity.  What they likely won’t address are:

-         the culture of extreme violence that pervades Hollywood, the U.S. computer-gaming industry, and all too much of our television programming

-         our country’s turning its back on our need for more mental-health institutions and a reasonable process for keeping our society’s blatantly-psychotic misfits from walking among us.  The notion that every weirdo needs to be “main-streamed” is a sick societal construct that is supported by … and supports the fringes of the  legal profession.  Nonsense!

-         a serious investigation into the effects of many of our psychiatric drugs on large populations of our male teenagers … particularly when dosages are varied or abandoned.  (I happen to believe this well could be the primary reason for the outbreaks of these teenage killings.  To me, there seems a correlation between the hyperbolic increased in the use of such drugs and these Columbine-type events.)

And lastly ... almost as an aside, I fully support the use of drone air-strikes on the hideouts of Muslim terrorists … who too often insinuate themselves among civilians … often resulting in the incidential killing of innocent young children.  With this, I wonder if President Obama thought of the tots that he has killed by proxy when he shed a tear for the youngsters massacred in Newtown, Connecticut?  Life is full of such enigmatic ironies.