From a source in the craphole known as Chicago

So Conehead wants the extra police presence, but refuses to grant them the authority to....you know....actually be the police, in uniform, within city limits. And the agencies involved are rightfully hesitating sending their officers to be literal unarmed scarecrows in what may possibly be a volatile situation, especially given the fact that Crimesha would gladly let 1,000 rioters go free if she could get a single shot at imprisoning a suburban officer.
I suspect the Democrat convention is going to be a zoo with no bars, and a lot of predators looking for things to break and/or burn and people to hurt.

"These two foods will kill you!

Current version!"  The part that stands out to me:
'We advise that people eat less overly processed, high in saturated fat, sugar and salt food. This includes food like cakes, biscuits, pastries, crisps, sugar-sweetened drinks, and fast food like pizza and burgers.

'These types of food have no fibre and contain virtually no essential nutrients, they should only be eaten occasionally and in small amounts.'
Too much of most things can be bad; but burgers and pizza 'have no fibre and contain virtually no essential nutrients'?  Really?  That I would describe as a load of crap.  But it's great for the "Eat only what we say is good" people.

And gee, there's little to nothing in the media about this

until 'it's too late to do anything before the election.'

"Don't worry, commoners, we'll adjust your diet to fit.

It's all to Save Mother Gaia, y'know!"
Food production could fall by 25 per cent in England under the most ambitious plans to reduce carbon emissions, a Government study has concluded.

Experts at conservation body Natural England who looked at nine scenarios to change land use found that it was not possible to deliver a strong reduction in greenhouse gas emissions without reducing the food supply.

Their report said: 'At the UK scale, there is a strong trade-off between emissions reduction and food production.'

It added: 'Under the most ambitious climate change mitigation scenario, food production is expected to decline by up to 25 per cent.

How much would you bet that the 'elites' will still eat whatever they want?  And plenty of it.

Tell us the cartels own you without saying it outright

The United States managed to arrest Mexico’s most-wanted drug lord, but Mexican prosecutors — and the president — now say they are considering bringing treason charges against those who handed him over

Biden still insists 'my plans are working', but only true if

you want people getting screwed.

You really need to click over and watch the video for the full "This is how bad inflation really is".  I know you're aware, but having it laid out like this...

Barring a miracle*, Britain is screwed

And most of their media is cheering it along, have to be in good with the .gov, y'know.

Walz. The gift that keeps giving

and giving.
Last Friday, days after he was selected as Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate, it was reported that Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) had hosted Asad Zaman, an imam who spoke out against Israel on October 7 and shared pro-Hitler propaganda. While the Harris-Walz campaign claimed that Walz had no personal relationship with Zaman, a new report is out showing otherwise.

On Tuesday morning, the Washington Examiner's Gabe Kaminsky, who previously reported on the relationship, posted footage of remarks from Walz about Zaman. A longer version of such remarks has been shared to YouTube.
What is it with Democrat politicians either being friendly with or sucking up to "I want all the Jews dead" clowns?

And why do so many Jewish people keep giving them money?  This is truly stupid.

Our 'elites' want to follow the same path to hell Britain is

Exhibit A:An immigrant who raped a 13-year-old girl in the UK was allowed to walk free because he didn't know rape was illegal.

But posting your opinion on social media leads to years in prison.


Exhibit B: A Haitian migrant charged with the rape of a 15-year-old girl at a Massachusetts hotel was released on $500 bail last week despite ongoing requests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to transfer him to its custody.

This is going to take a lot of lamppost and cordage.

More of 'Putting your kid in public school may be child abuse.'

Given the roughly 50 million students in U.S. K-12 schools each year, the number of students who have been victims of sexual misconduct by school employees is probably in the millions each decade, according to multiple studies. Such numbers would far exceed the high-profile abuse scandals that rocked the Roman Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts of America.

For a variety of reasons, ranging from embarrassment to eagerness to avoid liability, elected or appointed officials, along with unions or lobbying groups representing school employees, have fought to keep the truth hidden from the public.


And a followon:
“I think we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg,” Oregon attorney Peter Janci told RealClear-Investigations. “There has been a lot of abuse that happened in schools, and there are more coming forward every day as public education and the sentiment to support victims has grown.”

Janci won a $3.5 million settlement against the St. Helens School District in March, the highest figure yet awarded in Oregon in a case involving sexual misconduct by school employees. He said that case and many others reflect years of shifting ideas about how victims of sexual misconduct are perceived and a growing awareness of the scale of the problem.

“Historically, there weren’t as many cases because of the stigma and because the deck was stacked against the victims,” Janci said. “Often we see this time lag where the victims have been struggling with what happened, and the biggest change now is kids are coming forward. Nationally, this trend is just now hitting the K-12 public school sector with the same force.”

At this point I'm close to flat hating Walz, and every cop involved

in this bullshit, from the clowns who gave the orders to the little Stasi wannabes who carried them out.

Here's the link so you can see the video.

I hadn't thought of it this way, but I believe Historian is correct:

What (formerly Great)Britain is doing is paying the danegeld.  And boy, are they going to pay
IT IS always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
To call upon a neighbour and to say: –
"We invaded you last night – we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away."

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you've only to pay 'em the Dane-geld
And then you'll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say: –
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say: --

"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"

No idea what the backstory on this is, but unless they've got some real good explanation

this is definitely tar & feathers time.

I have to throw in that the USSS has now skipped Clown Show and taken themselves straight to Cluster

As usual, click to enlarge

It seems Belgium has decided to pre-emptively surrender

 to the National Socialists.  Not a good look, guys.

Folks, in case it's not understood, there are some symbols

 I will not have on the blog as a sign for commenters.

I would say I need one of these, but

that price tag is way over my means.

But it is interesting.

"But I have a uniform and a shiny badge! You must respect the authority I represent!"

I don't think so, Scooter.

However much you hate the media,

etc.

Click to enlarge

I also have this from the Dem Veep candidate:

Post here

This region's weather:

Go to bed with 'high chance of showers and an occasional storm possible, 1/10" to 1/4" rain except may be heavier in some storms.'

Wake up with 'Flash flood  and flood watches and warnings, with X inches possible in some areas.'

That was yesterday.  Today will be 'Hot and so humid you may see small frogs kicking by in the air.'

Can you say 'Slanted News'? I knew you could

On X, Musk did little to calm tensions. "Civil war is inevitable," he wrote in response to a tweet blaming "mass migration and open borders" for the unrest. (It appears that most of those who've been arrested are locals.) He later responded to another tweet with #TwoTierKeir, referencing a theory where a government deals with some protests more harshly than others.
Let's see... 'most who've been arrested' because a lot of the people they're protesting can gather with swords and machetes, and assault cops, and the cops mostly do nothing.  Because the migrants are protected species.  But no mention of that.

Which also brings us to the 'two tier policing', which has been demonstrated so many times I'm surprised the Brit .gov can deny it with a straight face.

The thought occurs, when will the Brit .gov decide

to ban bagpipes again?

Click to enlarge

Breaking and entering, and trying to hide it

just like any other criminal.  Ain't the USSS grand?

A short collection of responses to the Brits

I find more, I'll add them

Added

And now, on to our usual 6+1 evening entertainment,

which starts below

An addition to the weekly stuff

down below

Civil rights victory,

also a big slap at "We don't have to go through Congress to make law":
Today another federal court rejected President Joe Biden’s war on guns, ruling against his effort to require 3 million to 7 million owners of AR-style pistols to register and pay a $200 tax on their firearms or face prison.

In the latest blow to liberal gun control politicians and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the government’s plan, claiming it was likely to get tossed by the Supreme Court.

For now, the millions of users of guns equipped with “pistol braces” can keep them without fear of being fined or jailed.
...
The court said the ATF rule was poorly written and vague and gave the agency too much leeway to go after owners of the popular firearms.

“The final rule, as a whole, is arbitrary and capricious because it allows the ATF to arrive at whatever conclusion it wishes without ‘adequately explain[ing] the standard on which its decision is based,’” said the court.

“This is much like shooting the side of a barn, drawing the target around the bullet holes, and then proclaiming, ‘Bullseye!”’ added a footnote in the decision that sent the case back to the District Court.

The ATF ruling was also rapped for putting the burden on gun owners to prove why their guns would be allowed. The court said that was wrong and it is up to ATF to better provide guidelines. “The ATF’s burden-inverting argument makes as much sense as shouldering a rifle by the barrel,” mocked the court.
Which also tells Biden, Harris & Co.- again- that they can't just do whatever they want.

Be it noted that Google has screwed things again,

the "You're signed in, but you must sign in again to load pictures, but we won't let you" crap.  Happily the workaround works.

First of those eves,

so examine

Walz being a socialist asshat like Harris,

this doesn't surprise me

There is only one proper response to this kind of crap

Go fuck yourself, Rowley.  You don't get to censor us.

If you want the video, here

As to the responsibility of asshats like him in this mess,
Here’s the thing: This is all entirely the government’s fault.

After a 17-year-old suspect was arrested for the Southport stabbing attack, the police refused to publicly identify him. Given the pattern around such incidents in England, this led a lot of people to assume that the attacker must be a Muslim immigrant, and so some of the rioters targeted mosques or facilities for so-called “asylum seekers.”

Eventually, the situation was such that officials finally identified the attacker as Axel Muganwa Rudakubana, the son of immigrants from Rwanda. Rudakubana was reportedly born in Cardiff, Wales and, whatever his motive — other than Crazy People Are Dangerous — there is no apparent connection to Islamic radicalism. Therefore, the claim is being made, “misinformation” was to blame for the riots.

No, actually, government secrecy was to blame. If the police had merely released the name and mugshot of the suspect, at least the public would have known that he wasn’t named “Mohammed” or “Abdul,” which was a conclusion many people quickly leapt to, based on recent history of such stabbings not only in England, but all across Europe. And just because it appears the attacker was a deranged teenager — apparently motivated by mental illness, rather than radical ideology — does not mean that complaints about immigration policy are irrelevant or misguided. The cultural dislocations involved in relocating Third World migrants to England (or France, Belgium, Canada, America, etc.) often result in situations like this, where the children of immigrants become alienated or hostile. Even if the immigrants themselves are grateful toward their host country, and eager to have their children take advantage of the available opportunities, the younger generation may not share that attitude, and may not be able to handle the pressure to adapt and assimilate.

It’s not “racist” or “anti-immigrant” to mention this phenomenon, which is widely acknowledged by social workers who deal with immigrant populations, and equally known to advocates of immigration. From a conservative perspective, of course, this problem points toward a simple conclusion about immigration: NUMBERS MATTER.

Assimilation is easier when immigrant populations are relatively small, and the larger the immigrant population, the greater the likelihood of violent conflict. If you have a town of 10,000 people, the arrival of one family of immigrants from Guatemala or Ghana is not going to have much impact on the social fabric; whereas the arrival of 500 or 1,000 immigrants is a whole ’nother thing. When you have mass immigration — which is what England has been dealing with for decades — the potential for trouble rises to a near certainty. Government officials don’t want to tell the truth about the results of their policies, and so a culture of secrecy arises, eroding public trust and leading to exactly the kind of situation that produced riots in the wake of the Southport stabbings.

You could honestly say Harris hates Israel

 

Last I've heard she's had some spokesweasel making excuses, but nothing from her.  Which is telling.

Well, isn't this just joyous?

The FBI allowed Asif Raza Merchant, the Pakistani man charged with plotting with Tehran to assassinate Donald Trump and others, to enter the U.S. in April with special permission known as “significant public benefit parole” even though he was flagged on a terrorism watchlist and recently traveled to Iran, according to government documents reviewed by Just the News.

The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force interviewed Merchant, fingerprinted him and inspected the contents of his electronic devices when he arrived at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport, in Houston, but then let him leave with the special parole that expired on May 11, the memos state.
...
The immigration records from his arrival in Houston on April 13 clearly stated in bright red that he was flagged by the Department of Homeland Security database with the identifier “WATCH LIST” and denoted as a "Lookout Qualified Person of Interest."

Despite direct travel to a country with known terrorist activity, the memo relays that Merchant was “released without incident” into the United States and was “free to travel to desired destination,” which was listed as a family member's home in Texas.
And while this was going on, what's the TSA been up to?  Screwing with a former Representative and her husband for who knows what reason.  Because, apparently, they're dangerous.


More on the subject of 'threat to the United States',
The Biden-Harris administration is quietly floating a funding cut for a national security initiative that protects America's underwater infrastructure. At the same time, it's asking Congress for millions of dollars for equity and "environmental justice" initiatives, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.
Because protecting the US is far less important than more money for didn't Earn It and 'justice' programs.

Since Fecesbook is throttling just about anything they decide is not complimentary to Harris

and Tampon Tim in particular, and the left in general, and I want to do my part to make sure some of this gets around,

And when you plan on being the one deciding what 'misinformation is...
And isn't it interesting that the people wanting to decide what you can see/read/hear also insist that anything to prevent vote fraud is 'disenfranchising' people?

Meanwhile, in (fG)Britain,

Can you say "I know who the protected species is, and I want to keep my job"?

Once again: Dammit, Bee, you're supposed to be satire!

 

As to that "The Founders could not have foreseen these rapid-fire weapons!" crap,

I present the Kalthoff repeating flintlock

(formerly Great)Britain is screwed,

and their cops are demonstrating the surrender.  When you start an address to the British people with 'Salam Alaikum', you're telling us who you actually consider important.  It will be taken by many as your submission.  I wonder when the socialist morons they just elected will institute a dhimmi tax?

And it'll be more difficult to say anything about it with the public prosecutors so busy policing what you're allowed to say on the modern soapbox.

Yeah, Britain is so screwed.

Well, along with the crapped economy and Soros and leftist prosecutors and judges turning bad guys loose,

should be a surprise to nobody:
A new study published in the journal Injury Prevention on July 25 shows that protection is the overwhelming reason Americans exercise their Second Amendment rights. Titled, “Firearm ownership for protection in the USA, 2023: results from a nationally representative survey,” the authors from the University of Michigan found, “Of all firearm owners, 78.8%… owned a firearm for protection.”
Now, throw in this,
Gun sales hit a new record in July, the 36th straight month of firearms purchases over 1 million.

In breaking the record, people delivered a strong message to liberal Democrats, who last week passed a ban on buying the nation’s most popular firearm, the modern sporting rifle, and other semi-automatic weapons and parts.

According to industry experts, sales in July topped 1.2 million. That means sales have hit 1 million or more each month for three consecutive years.
Hm.  Idiot leftists making it more dangerous out there, and- post-Biden- both Democrats running for Pres. and Veep are gun-grabbing socialists who encouraged rioting and raised bail money for rioters... wonder why so many people are buying guns, it's a mystery...

Not to mention idiots like this Democrat:
A alarming video surfaced Monday appearing to show Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) declaring that Congress will have to disqualify former President Donald Trump on January 6, 2025 if he wins the November election, and predicting a civil war with “rampaging Trump mobs” could erupt as a result.

Raskin made the disturbing comments during a discussion about voter rights with law professor Richard L. Hasen and civil rights lawyer Sherrilyn Iffil at the Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington D.C. on February 17, 2024. The congressman’s remarks were so extreme, some journalists are wondering if the video was manipulated.
"Save us, Raskin, tell us this was faked!  Please!" plead the Professional Journalists.

“I think the office of Jamie Raskin has to comment on the veracity of a video that is circulating, said independent journalist Matt Taibbi. “If it’s in any way altered he needs to make a strong statement to that effect.”
That would be nice.  But as far as I can find he's said nothing about it.  Which is telling.

And another reason some people say either "I need a gun" or "We need more ammo, just in case."

Snork... hehehehe...

JD Vance after physically walking up to Kamala Harris’ plane to ask why she’s hiding from reporters:

"Hopefully it's going to be my plane in a few months. I also thought you guys may get lonely, because the VP doesn't answer questions from reporters."pic.twitter.com/xmXBC16MSY

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 7, 2024

Link here

Can't post the picture because Google has googled-up posting pics again

Why would you trust ANYONE connected with the feds about, well, ANYTHING?

At this point, especially prosecutors.
After black-clad demonstrators protested Donald Trump's inauguration in an "Anti-Capitalist/Anti-Fascist Bloc" march on January 20, 2017, federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., charged more than 200 of them with rioting. While 21 defendants pleaded guilty, all of the other cases ended in acquittals, mistrials, or charges dismissed with prejudice. One reason for that fiasco, according to recently filed disciplinary charges, was the discovery that the federal prosecutor who oversaw the cases persistently withheld exculpatory evidence and repeatedly lied about it to judges and defense attorneys.
...
According to Fox, Muyskens and Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) Detective Greggory Pemberton edited the meeting footage in ways that bolstered the prosecution's case, and Muyskens covered up the extent of those edits. Fox says Muyskens also withheld Project Veritas videos of other DisruptJ20 meetings that would have been helpful to the defense, pretending that they did not exist. And she allegedly concealed the fact that Pemberton, in testimony to a grand jury, had erroneously identified one of the DisruptJ20 defendants as a woman who appears in the video of the planning meeting.
Yes, lots more here.

Guess who's been using that non-existent vote fraud?

Link has the video so you can see it all

"We don't know who brought the cocaine into the White House"

Bullshit.
Former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle and others in top agency leadership positions wanted to destroy the cocaine discovered in the White House last summer, but the Secret Service Forensics Services Division and the Uniformed Division stood firm and rejected the push to dispose of the evidence, according to three sources in the Secret Service community.

Multiple heated confrontations and disagreements over how best to handle the cocaine ensued after a Secret Services Uniformed Division officer found the bag on July 2, 2023, a quiet Sunday while President Biden and his family were at Camp David in Maryland, the sources said.

At least one Uniformed Division officer was initially assigned to investigate the cocaine incident. But after he told his supervisors, including Cheatle and Acting Secret Service Director Ron Rowe, who was deputy director at the time, that he wanted to follow a certain crime-scene investigative protocol, he was taken off the case, according to a source within the Secret Service community familiar with the circumstances of his removal.
Their paid liar Anthony Guglielmi insists "It's all a lie!"  But, since he's been lying about the shooting, and the effed-up security, and who knows what all else, I don't think I trust him.  And yes, it's from 'three sources', but such sources have been pretty accurate about a lot of things the last few years.

If this guy was worth a damn he'd resign over his part in the cluster,

and say "We need an outside group to do a full investigation of this."  
Fat Damn Chance.  
And most of our Professional Journalists don't want to touch it, it seems.
Here are just a few inexplicable things he revealed:
the Secret Service had no radio communications not only with the local police but also with the snipers

most of the vital communications were made using texts over an overloaded cell phone network

There are no recordings of the Secret Service communications, although there are of the locals

Rowe's assertions about the responsibilities of the local snipers didn't actually come from the local snipers--it was just made up by the Secret Service (we would know much less were it not for the locals)

the Secret Service command center was not co-located with the local police

The investigators have YET to talk to the local police who were assisting the SS, including the snipers (after three weeks!)

Butler was the VERY FIRST TIME that the Secret Service provided snipers for a Trump rally this election cycle

hmm, on that last one...
And, oh yes, there's more.

Connections, connections...

The newspaper noted that Emhoff, the husband of Kamala Harris, was a partner at DLA Piper whose “lobbying clients” had included the governments of Afghanistan and Bahrain, as well as the Qatari government-funded Al Jazeera Network and the Palestine Monetary Authority.

DLA Piper was good to the Emhoff-Harris family with the family taking home $2.7 million in 2019 and $1.2 million in 2020. “To aspire to create wealth is a good thing as far as I’m concerned. If that is what one chooses. I, on the other hand, have chosen to live a life of public service,’ Kamala had claimed. But the “life of public service” led to her husband’s role at DLA Piper.

And two DLA Piper clients are connected to a flashpoint in Kamala’s foreign policy.
Ever notice how often a 'life of public service' involves collection power and lots of money?

Volcanic eruption? Plague? Both?

It was bloody awful then, and would be just as bad  now.

It's a bit early, but things to do, so the special late afternoon display

will go up now

Ah, the things Harris & Co. desperately want to make go away,

at least until after the election.
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris once threatened to use databases of gun owners to send police to their homes to confiscate firearms.


A press release from so-called Everytown for Gun Safety purports to explain what “Freedom from Gun Violence” would look like under a Kamala Harris presidency. What it really does, however, is list numerous reasons why no gun owner should even consider voting for the current vice president on Election Day.

I do wonder how much of this will be included in the EffingBI plans to “will resume regular meetings in the coming weeks with social media companies to brief and discuss potential [Foreign Malign Influence] threats involving the companies’ platforms.”

Which, I'm sure, will somehow conveniently involve trying to shut up people saying unapproved things about Harris.

Who, I'll note, is busily having drones tell everyone that she no longer wants to confiscate guns, ban whatever she decides is an 'assault weapon', ban fracking, and a bunch of other things that turn out to be VERY unpopular in a number of swing state.

The new head of the USSS was involved in denying more protection personnel to Trump,

AND since he was the head of that section all the effups are ultimately on his head, and now he's investigating himself.

And you're insulting if you have a problem with that.

This is so effed-up that even if we could trust the bastards- I include the EffingBI- to run a fair investigation, it looks like it'd take cleaning the entire command levels out to even begin to fix the agency.

It's already 'racist and misogynist' to talk about Harris's past already,

so you can't get in worse odor for bringing up her actual past.  Y'know, the stuff our Professional Journalists don't want anyone to talk about, like 
Just so we’re clear, The New York Times is confirming Harris did in fact have a relationship with Willie Brown, who was 31 years older (and, for what it’s worth, still married at the time). Harris herself admits her career benefited significantly from said relationship. Other Democrats shared the perception she did not earn her positions. And Harris, a lawyer who initially failed the bar exam, can only say that she “brought a level of life knowledge and common sense” rather than actual qualifications to the jobs Brown appointed her to. But it’s a sexist insinuation to insist these facts are rather unflattering to Kamala!

And this is just what The New York Times is admitting. In actuality, the details are far worse than the Times is letting on. Peter Schweizer, an investigative journalist who has worked with The New York Times in the past, details quite a bit on the corrupt nature of the Harris/Brown relationship in his book, Profiles in Corruption, which has been out for four and a half years. And the facts as he lays them out are damning.
And that's just the start.

That song, "If he'll drive you to the criming

he's a Fed"?  Reality based.
A declassified FBI document confirms longstanding suspicions of the agency's active involvement with Patriot Front for years. With 950 pages of details (heavily redacted), it’s evident that numerous federal assets are deeply embedded within the organization.
Link here.

It's actually pleasant outside,

the temps down a bit and a shower blew through.

Which will make it real nice later when it's in the upper 90's.

So, what, oh Stupid Party, are you going to do about it?

Or will you just stick with showing all kinds of upset and actually doing nothing?
Ernst has focused heavily in recent years on drawing public and congressional attention to the lax response of top IRS officials to a growing trend within the federal agency's own workforce of late-filing of tax returns and taxes owed but unpaid.

In the latest edition of an annual assessment of this issue by the Treasury Inspector-General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), which Ernst originally requested, more than 5,800 IRS employees and contractors were found to owe nearly $50 million in unpaid levies.

Among these tax cheats are 3,414 IRS employees, representing 4% of the agency's current 85,359-member workforce. Of those among the 3,415 IRS workers who have agreed to payment plans, $9 million remains unpaid. Employees without a payment plan owe another $12 million.
...
“We write with serious concerns regarding your agency’s recent unilateral and unauthorized action to create a permanent Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Direct File tax preparation program... The American people do not want an all-encompassing IRS acting simultaneously as the tax collector, tax auditor, tax enforcer, and tax preparer,” the senators wrote.

“Taxpayers already have access to numerous free tax-filing options and dozens of national non-profit entities offer tax preparation services at no cost…The IRS does not have unlimited resources and should focus on improving information technology systems, data privacy, and long-standing customer service issues.”

Federal agencies are not allowed simply to create a new program without prior authorization from Congress, which must also provide funding and approve staffing levels.

As Barrasso and Crapo point out, the IRS received permission to study the possibility of establishing such an initiative, not to proceed directly to creating the new program.

The British cops know who's signing their paychecks,

and it's not people who give a damn about Britain

Click to enlarge

If you want to watch the video, it's here

S&W 1854 Lever Rifle

They brought this out not long ago, and the S&W rep showed up with one for people to test fire.  Yes, I got five rounds.

There wasn't time for any in-depth study, I can tell you this:
Good rear aperture/gold bead front post.
Rail so you can put on a red dot or scope.
Smooth action.

Good trigger.

Threaded muzzle.
6.8 pounds.

Good recoil pad.
Only thing I'd add might be a saddle ring, that seems a great setup for some slings.
Here's the S&W page for it.
The one I fired was in .44 Magnum, and if I were in the market I'd have started saving.  

I like it, the Usual Suspects will have screaming fits again

to provide entertainment and annoyance.
Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced the Silencers Helping Us Save Hearing (SHUSH) Act yesterday, a legislative proposal aimed at reducing federal regulation of firearm suppressors. The bill is designed to simplify the purchase process for law-abiding citizens and eliminate bureaucratic hurdles. Senate cosponsors include Senators Rick Scott (R-FL), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and John Cornyn (R-TX).

Not perfect but would be a large step up.

A USSS sniper writes a letter saying some nasty truths about the Service,

and you'll love what the Acting Director did with it:
"Who wants to be a part of a USSS CS team that failed? That's the public perception I'm now faced with," he wrote.

The recalcitrant acting Secret Service chief told Senator Blackburn that the letter "hurt him" very much.

"I'm hurt by that email, but not in the way you think I'm saying. I'm hurt because my people are hurting right now. We need them...."

Blackburn asked, "Then when did somebody delete the email" from the agency servers so they wouldn't be discoverable?

He said he'd have to get back to her.
Right,  He'll get right back.  Sometime after hell freezes over.

Oh, he also doesn't want to name any of the people in supervisory roles over this cluster because "It wouldn't be fair."  Also, suspected, is that if he names someone they might actually face punishment, and they can't have that.

The Acting Director: just as corrupted as his predecessor, and just as big an asshole as the EffingBI director.  And chances are neither of them will face any real punishment for anything they've done.

"Why don't you trust the experts?"

Oh, I don't know, maybe things like this:
On 25 March 2020, our Crisis Team resolved to include in their dashboard and weekly reports the “epidemiological curve” illustrating new Covid infections according to “reporting date and onset of illness.” Somewhat nervously, they added that “You can see that the curve is slowly levelling off, but we should avoid drawing attention to this in our external communications, to encourage compliance with measures.” The German lockdowns were imposed as the first wave was already slowing down, and our public health authorities knew this.

On 29 July 2020, the RKI came to discuss a draft paper written by our virological-prophet-in-chief Christian Drosten, which provided “Recommendations for the autumn.” The article, they note, is “confidential,” especially because Drosten “decided in the meantime not to publish it.” This was because “his paper considered untargeted testing not to be useful, and this contradicts government policy.” Even a child could have seen that our mass testing regime was entirely pointless and provided useless data, and the scientists who were the public face of it knew this too. They didn’t say anything.
Oh yes, there's more.  Lots of proof the German 'experts' were just as full of crap as the ones here, and in a number of other countries.

And, same as here, they've thrown away trust built over decades.

A thought about Pres. Gropey's attack on the Supreme Court

One of the things in this mess is 'The President shouldn't have immunity', etc.  Well, if none, he'd be liable for someone going after him for, for instance, that effed-up drone strike in A'stan during the retreat.

However:
What if this is his way of telling Obama "Screw you for not supporting me!", because how many drone strikes did he order, and how many innocents died(remember his bragging that "I'm really good at killing people"?)?  And any other illegal acts that just might turn up?

Oh, bloody hell, how much worse is this going to get?

Click to enlarge

Story here

What? A Democrat with connections to the PRC?

You expect me to be surprised?

Click to enlarge

There's a NYeffingTimes puff piece(boy, is it) here, and the only mention(surprise!) is this:
Mr. Kelly has also not faced the harsh spotlight of a national campaign, and has potential political liabilities like a high-altitude surveillance balloon company he helped found with Chinese venture capital, Mr. Scarpinato said.

Now, wouldn't you think that would be a bit more of a big thing than they seem to think?

Two comments this morning, brought to you by

the French and a comment:

Yes, I think the French deliberately set that up to look like the Last Supper.  There's too strong a resemblance for it to have been chance.

No, I don't think AIPAC has someone assigned to every damned Rep and Senator, who have to consult with them for permission to vote.

That's all the griping I've got energy for this morning.

It being the evening, and it's been a few long days and short nights,

we shall move directly to the more pleasant type of posting

Another civil rights victory, another slap

on bureaucrats who want to make law.
On Thursday, a federal judge in Texas overturned the administration’s ban on forced reset triggers, which automatically return to their starting position after being pulled.

District Judge Reed O’Connor, who has been front and center in recent decisions to rein in the rogue agency, ruled in the case National Association for Gun Rights v. Garland that ATF overstepped their bounds in classifying guns using forced reseat triggers as “machine guns” under the Gun Control Act of 1968.

“Having considered the above-referenced filings and applicable law, the Court concludes that Defendants engaged in unlawful agency action taken in excess of their authority,” Judge O’Connor wrote in the decision.

As Kevin at Smallest Minority would say,

Analysis: true

Y'know, I started this place with the idea

of writing about blacksmithing, guns, tools, and some general stuff about other matters.

Over time, especially as it became a no-go to do any smithing, that changed: I'd pretty much passed along most, if not all, of what I could about that subject, so that started dropping off.  Guns and tools, you can always find something new(to me at least) to talk about, something new to learn of, so more of those.  But the general stuff... now, that can be almost a bottomless well.

I started writing more about politics because, well, it's important.  Once told someone who asked why I was talking so much about it, "Because I'd rather ignore it, but if I do I won't find out what the bastards are trying to do to us."  'Bastards' including politicians, activists who see controlling us as the way to go, and bureaucrats who want more power.  I'd still rather ignore the bastards.

Then came my 'Screwed by Government' and 'Screwed by Congress' categories, and bad law enforcement categories; those, unfortunately, seem damn near bottomless by themselves.  They also discourage, because sometimes it seems like NOTHING can be done about them.

The 'The Experiment' posts started because I just wanted to see if posting some loveliness would spike the hits on the meter.  They did, but were fun enough I just kept doing them, even when the meter disappeared one day(I never bothered trying to put it back in, so I have no idea what the numbers are anymore).

Now all of it's a habit, and it can eat time.  I really need to stop posting so much(insert "I CAN QUIT ANYTIME I WANT TO!!" here), but the habit is hard to break.

In the category of "Should be flogged before hanging" we have two entries

The first is 
Disturbing allegations are detailed in a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) against a large Texas-based nonprofit organization tasked and funded by the federal government for years with housing unaccompanied minor children (UMC) who are not legally present in the country.
...
ORR then uses grant funding, usually by hiring nonprofit housing organizations, to provide shelter care for the UMCs in the “least restrictive setting possible” and that “will be in the best interest of the child.”

In this case, one of those nonprofits is Austin-based Southwest Key, which from 2015 to 2023 received $3 billion in federal grant funding and operates 29 facilities in Texas, Arizona, and California, housing 6,350 children.

The DOJ said during this timeline, multiple Southwest Key employees subjected children as young as 5 years of age to “repeated and unwelcome sexual abuse, harassment, misconduct, and hostile housing environments.”

The suit further details allegations that the children were victims of sexual abuse, rape, and inappropriate touching. The perpetrators employed by Southwest Key took advantage of the multiple vulnerabilities to carry out their crimes, such as language barriers.

The DOJ also said that despite Southwest Key knowing their employees were harming the children in their care, they did nothing, violating the federal Fair Housing Act.
If half of this is correct, we have the need for floggings and a gallows.


The second:
Health and Human Services whistleblower Tara Rodas says she faced retaliation from the department after she reported concerns that unaccompanied immigrant children were being placed in the hands of sponsors who were affiliated with the notorious Salvadorian MS-13 gang.

“Interestingly, when I discovered that there was MS-13 actually sponsoring the children…. this began when a DHS whistleblower came forward and then alerted us that MS-13 and 18th Street gangs were getting the children, it only took them less than three weeks if you can imagine, to walk me off the site under threat of investigation,” Rodas said on the Wednesday edition of the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show. “That’s what happened to me.”
Considering we've had everyone from the EffingBI on down illegally screwing with whistleblowers, that part wouldn't surprise me.  Throw in other crap that's been going on with kids and the borders and gangs for years, that doesn't either.

One of the various problems with arthritis:

It really screws with my typing at times.  Which does not help matters.

Ah, as the Eagles said(almost), One of these Nights

And this is the first of the pair

I'm going to link a few things, partly so I don't lose them an addition

and partly because they have information you might be able to use.

It's Been Easy To Forget How Bad Kamala Harris Is

A fascist rally in Washington, DC
Really a flat-out Nazi rally


A whole bunch of links of media weenies then calling Harris the Border Czar and such, since they're now saying she never was


A nice piece on some of the weapon-handling problems during the assassination attempt.
And it has this at the close:
Here’s what you should really be contemplating…
One of the best trained and equipped law enforcement agencies in the entire world failed at their jobs to protect the former president in a public place despite a virtually unlimited budget. Why do you think your local cops can protect you and your family from violent crime? You are on your own. You should train with this concept in mind.


On the EffingBI, would any of you be surprised by this?
Police departments throughout the United States have stopped sharing information with the FBI due a “disturbing loss of trust” in the Bureau, an alarming new whistleblower report has found.

An alliance of retired and active duty FBI special agents and analysts examined the attitudes of the Bureau’s “local law enforcement partners,” drawing on the testimony of more than 30 “independent, highly credible law enforcement sources and sub-sources” across the country.


Speaking of LE, the local cops offered drones to the SS before the rally, and were turned down.


Man, they're REALLY trying to change history to protect Harris:

Added: No, I do not think AIPAC has a guy assigned to every member of Congress telling them how to vote.  I don't think you're a National Socialist if you believe that, I do think that's dumb.

Yes, we have been warned

And they keep telling us themselves, and the PC-at-any-cost morons keep calling you names if you take note of it

The full picture is here

Sounds interesting. Problem is it can also be used

to make sure nobody has video of what the cops are doing except the cops.  If they bother to wear cameras.

I very much get wanting to protect your officers; I also get that there's been enough garbage and flat-out lawbreaking by some agencies that, anymore, I automatically look for "Can they use this to hide any of their own criminal/possibly criminal acts?"

Found at Tam's place

This is the Director of the EffingBI, folks

Despite hours of questioning, Wray claimed twice that the FBI still hasn't figured out what exactly grazed Trump's ear at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. He told Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.), "My understanding is that either it [a bullet] or some shrapnel is what grazed his ear."
You can add this to all the dancing he's done to avoid giving a flat answer to, well, damn near everything.

A bit of a roundup, because there's a lot going on

The media fix is in:
– Axios deletes calling Harris the border czar
– GovTrack deletes calling Harris the most liberal Senator
– Harris was a shining example of DEI; now calling her a “DEI candidate” is false and racist
The last included some D politician blowing up that calling her a DEI hire is 'the N word', etc.

This is a whole collection of media weenies insisting "Harris was never the Border Czar", with lots of media weenies in the past saying she was exactly that.
Yes, it's on X, don't have to have an account or sign in to watch it.


A bunch of protesters decide to protest Netanyahu speaking by burning US flags and flying Palestinian ones.

The bastards did this, too:

How many are foreign citizens?  And why are they not being deported after this? 


And last,
Last week, Chairman of the House Oversight Committee James Comer (R-Ky.) fired off a letter in response to the White House’s political gamesmanship. In short, Chairman Comer demanded that Stefanie Feldman, the Director of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, quit stalling and provide answers over “potential collaboration” between Biden administration officials and Everytown for Gun Safety.
If this goes as usual, this will produce squat.  In large part because Congress overall doesn't have the balls to say "You received a subpoena and ignored it/lied under oath, and you're being charged for it", let alone actually carrying it out.
Short version: Chicago and the usual suspects want to charge Glock with not making it harder for crooks to convert pistols to machine pistols, and Biden/Harris & Co. are all about screwing gun companies for any reason possible.

I may have to take up popcorn again

Donald Trump scored a significant court win Saturday as a state judge in Florida turned down attempts by the Pulitzer Prize Board to toss out a libel lawsuit Trump filed in 2022 relating to a series of reports in the New York Times and Washington Post on the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

In a 14-page ruling issued Saturday, Senior Judge Robert Pegg turned down arguments from the prominent journalism awards panel that their decision to bestow the national reporting prize on the staffs of the two newspapers in 2018 amounted to a statement of “pure opinion” rather than fact.

The libel suit does not hinge directly on the articles the Times and Post published about the Trump campaign’s links to Russia or on the decision to award the Pulitzer to the newspapers.

Instead, the case focuses on the board’s decision in 2022 to publicly reaffirm those awards despite repeated complaints by Trump that the the stories contained numerous falsehoods and were undermined by the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year investigation into those issues.

Trump appears to have zeroed in on the board’s 2022 statement about the reviews it ordered of the earlier prizes because Florida law has a two-year statute of limitations for defamation cases.

This means the Trump team now has right to discovery.

Yes, let's talk about Harris's time as Californicated AG:

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), a leading candidate to be Joe Biden’s running mate, repeatedly and openly defied U.S. Supreme Court orders to reduce overcrowding in California prisons while serving as the state’s attorney general, according to legal documents reviewed by the Prospect. Working in tandem with Gov. Jerry Brown, Harris and her legal team filed motions that were condemned by judges and legal experts as obstructionist, bad-faith, and nonsensical, at one point even suggesting that the Supreme Court lacked the jurisdiction to order a reduction in California’s prison population.

The intransigence of this legal work resulted in the presiding judges in the case giving serious consideration to holding the state in contempt of court. Observers worried that the behavior of Harris’s office had undermined the very ability of federal judges to enforce their legal orders at the state level, pushing the federal court system to the brink of a constitutional crisis. This extreme resistance to a Supreme Court ruling was done to prevent the release of fewer than 5,000 nonviolent offenders, whom multiple courts had cleared as presenting next to no risk of recidivism or threat to public safety.
...
This era of Harris’s tenure as attorney general escaped the recent close re-examination of some of the higher-profile cases in her prosecutorial past. During her brief presidential run, a memo from the tail end of this battle resurfaced; in late 2014, lawyers from her office claimed that nonviolent offenders needed to stay incarcerated, lest they lose bodies for fire camps in the wildfire-plagued state, as Jackie Kucinich of the Daily Beast reported.

Harris was quick to disavow the memo, claiming she had no knowledge of it and telling BuzzFeed News she was “shocked” by the argument. But it squares firmly with the sort of arguments her office was putting forward for multiple years preceding it. Harris, meanwhile, was known to run an extremely centralized attorney general’s office, with few things coming in or going out without her express sign-off. With a ruling handed down from the country’s highest court, this was one of the highest-profile cases she managed in her role as attorney general. An extremely high-stakes case involving a decarceration order she spent years resisting is unlikely to have escaped her awareness.
So, at the least, she'd be just as bad as Biden about "I don't care what the courts say, this is what I want to do!"   Ain't that a wonderful thought.

Why am I not surprised...

FBI whistleblower Steve Friend tweeted last week, “Little birdies are telling me there is more concern about ‘right-wing’ violence as a response to the Trump assassination attempt than the attack itself within the IC community. That's probably something Congress look [sic] into. 🤔” He added on Tuesday, “More of my @FBI moles are confirming. Their joint terrorism task forces are almost exclusively focusing on anonymous tips about a ‘right-wing’ response to the failed assassination attempt.”

Remember that old joke about "Muslim groups worried about islamophobic incidents following the next terrorist attack"?  This fits right in, doesn't it?

It appears there has been a perambulating Biden sighting

walking from a car to an airplane.  So he's not dead yet.

I wonder how he likes being screwed by his party the way he's screwed so many others?

Meanwhile, in Californicated,

AQMD urged California residents to stay indoors, avoid physical activity and stray from adding to the air pollution by lighting other fires.

'Avoid burning wood in your fireplace or firepit and minimize sources of indoor air pollution such as candles, incense, pan-frying, and grilling,' Newsweek reported the alert said.
Bold mine.
So, how long till the anointed Harris starts pushing to ban grilling and smoking 'to save us from globular climatey changes'?

This was a couple of hours yesterday

That's the chain slider that goes around the swingarm on the bike.  Which announced it was done when I was backing into the driveway and that lower portion fell off.

Yeah, that's what I'd ordered from the parts place.  Less of a pain to replace than I'd feared, but still took a while, as I'm not that good at kneeling and rolling around on the driveway anymore.

Speaking of "This does not make you feel good",

the SS mess just keeps getting further into "Oh, hell" territory

If they did record and lost or destroyed them accidentally, further incompetence; if they didn't, why the hell not?  And if they did and deliberately destroyed them, that has to be counted as evidence of guilt.  

Of what is to be determined.

This is one of those 'Does this mean something, or not?'

things:

That wording is not something that will make you feel good.
Link to the video

This was getting really weird,

what with his "I'm not running" being sent out on social media, apparently without his staff being informed, followed by the current "Where's Gropey?": no news conference, no pictures, no video.  

Now there's been a call to Harris, but still no video or stills.  I could be wrong but the voice sounded like someone who's medicated.

And now this, apparently pandering for the terrorist and terrorist sympathizer votes:

Sonuvabitch, Google is now playing 'Sign in to add this image' again.  Bastards.  Harris is declining to meet Netanyahu while he's here addressing Congress.

Ho-ly shit, this is bad.  As Insty put it 'The Democrats are committing that coup they always scream they're afraid of.'

From the Party of Inclusion

CNN commentator said that one of the Democrats who is being considered as Kamala’s VP is Jewish and his ethnicity/religion creates “some risks” for the party. “He’s jewish — there could be some risks putting him on the table.”

Well, they've been courting the terorist vote for a long time, why would this surprise anyone?
Screenshot in case you don't want to go to the link

"We didn't deny any requests for additional security! Well,

we did, but-" etc. ad Bullshit.

It's not just the director of the SS who needs to resign.  Or, preferably, be fired.

And I still want a flat no-BS reason why their rifleman didn't fire BEFORE the assassin pulled the trigger.

Something you know the Democrats would love to do here

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has been urged by policy wonks to consider an inheritance tax raid on pension pots, amid rising pressure to meet public spending targets. Leading think tanks have told her the move could raise up to £2 billion a year in takings from grieving families.

Experts warn that such a move would be disastrous for millions of families' retirement plans and could prompt a race to empty large pension pots.

Those who don't act could be slapped with 40 per cent tax bills on money left over in pensions when they die, worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

One former pensions minister even says the tax raid would 'potentially destroy pensions' altogether.
Which is probably their ultimate aim.  Much like various bastards here have wanted to 'fold private pensions into Social Security to shore up the system'.  Which is a fancy way of saying "WE can use your money better than you can, so hand it over!"  
I repeat my thought at the time: First politician who tries to grab private pensions should be flogged and then hanged.  Publicly.

So Biden decided to bow out, or else

he was given a deal he couldn't refuse, which could mean "We'll keep the family from going to jail" or "We'll paint you as a great stateman, or a crack-brained old man, your choice."  No telling.

Ever media clown who's been following their orders will now start pumping up Harris, or whoever they've been told is the Democrat savior, at least for now.

I wonder if they'll manage to cool down their convention, or it'll be maybe worse than it was going to?

I'm getting tired of interesting times.