ATF can't be trusted with the information they have NOW,

and they want to be given more?
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the go-to federal oversight agency, conducted an audit of ATF and found it does not remove certain identifiable information, despite the law explicitly mandating it do so. GAO conducted reviews for four data systems, and concluded at least two of ATF’s systems violated official protocols.
And anyone who's surprised either hasn't been paying attention, or is a fool.

You might remember that the head of BATFE announced a few days ago
What he would really like, however, is a computerized database of all gun purchases made by every buyer and seller in the country:

There’s a lot of things that don’t make sense.… Would [having such a database at the ATF] be efficient and effective? Absolutely. Would the taxpayers benefit with [improved] public safety? Absolutely. Are we allowed to do it? No.

What he doesn't mention is that they're forbidden to (legally) do so because the agency has proven it cannot be trusted to obey the law, and not abuse such information.  Now read this from the GAO post:
Accumulating and centralizing such data can become harder to maintain as time goes on. GAO recommends that ATF eliminate or at minimum obfuscate the unnecessary data to comply with federal law and to ensure that unnecessary information isn’t vulnerable to breaches or internal infractions.
ATF can't- or won't- obey the law on what they've got now; the list the ATF head wants would multiply the data by God-knows-how-many times, and we're supposed to believe they'd obey those laws then?  This would wind up like the NFA database, which is incomplete and can't be trusted to be accurate, yet there are recordings of supervisors telling agents that if asked, in court and under oath, they should testify that it's complete and accurate.

"But- Germany has those CSGV- and Mommies Want-approved gun laws,

how could this be?
Germany has some of the strictest firearms laws in Europe, although there are four illegal guns on the streets for every properly registered weapon.

According to data from the German Firearms Register, there are almost 5.5 million guns in private ownership belonging to 1.4 million people.

But research by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in January estimated there are up to 20 million illegal firearms in Germany.
And if Obama and Clinton & Co. got what they want, this would be the situation here: multiple illegal guns for every registered one.

Of course, they wouldn't actually care; they'd have they control over honest citizens they want, and that's all that really matters.

Added: borrowed from Kevin,  That's because the countries around Germany don't have strict enough laws!! (That's Chicago's excuse. And New York's. And D.C.'s. And....)

Made it to the range today,

and had some interesting results.  I'll write them up when I'm not so damn tired(being out in this heat and humidity that long takes it out of me anymore).

What's Spanish for 'kulak'?

Venezuela said private and public companies will be obliged to let their workers be reassigned to grow crops, in a dramatic move in the middle of the country’s crippling economic crisis. The Labor Ministry announced the measure as part of the economic emergency already in effect; it will require all employers in Venezuela to let the state have their workers ‘to strengthen production’ of food.
...
For the Soviets, the big targets were the kulaks, prosperous free-holding farmers, who were viewed as dangerously independent and had to be replaced by collective farms. For Venezuela, it was the supermarkets and shop-owners who were targeted as exploiters and enemies of the regime. The result is the same: a chronic shortage of food that has people scavenging in dumpsters and raiding zoos to slaughter animals for their meat.


Yes, Dear Leader is attacking firearms ownership in any way he can.  Which includes going after people who work on them.


Speaking of dirtbags who don't like the commoners owning guns, especially ones he doesn't have a list of,
Deputy Director Thomas Brandon (shown on right), head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) appeared on CBS’s Sunday Morning television show, complaining that his agency is “a small agency with a big job” and that he really needs more agents and more money to do that job.

What he would really like, however, is a computerized database of all gun purchases made by every buyer and seller in the country:
For public safety.  No other reason, honest; he's the head of BATFEIEIO, you can trust him!

There's information on just what a cluster this same kind of idea turned into in Canada, followed by this:
Brandon doesn't need a gun registration computer program to do his job. And, in fact, so much of his agency’s “mission” is outside the constitutional powers granted to the executive branch that Representative James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) is correct when he said, “I think we ought to get rid of the ATF,” and giving it additional funds to pay for a searchable database of every gun, and gun owner, in the country amounts to “de facto gun registration.”
Which is exactly what they actually want.

The Modern Service Revolver,

A Modest Proposal
This should set some people off.

When schools are more concerned with PC-approved 'history', and

'self-esteem', than facts, this is the kind of stupid that spreads:
I started giving quizzes to my juniors and seniors. I gave them a ten-question American history test… just to see where they are. The vast majority of my students - I’m talking nine out of ten, in every single class, for seven consecutive years – they have no idea that slavery existed anywhere in the world before the United States. Moses, Pharaoh, they know none of it. They’re 100% convinced that slavery is a uniquely American invention… How do you give an adequate view of history and culture to kids when that’s what they think of their own country – that America invented slavery? That’s all they know.
That miserable little communist Howard Zinn is laughing in hell at the damage he's done.

Two choices: either Hillary Clinton told Democrats what she thought they wanted to hear,

with little intention of actually doing anything, or she's playing the Bill Clinton "go over every word to try to figure out what she actually means" game.
I'm just going to focus on what she said when Chris Wallace confronted her with something she said last year, "The Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment."

WALLACE:  Now, in the 2008 Heller case, the court said there's a constitutional individual right to bear arms.  What's wrong with that? 

She responded and — forgive me — I've got to parse this pretty closely:

CLINTON:  Well, I think what the court said about there being an individual right is in line with constitutional thinking.  

Is the "constitutional thinking" she's referring to there wrong, in her view? She doesn't say. She repeats the majority's interpretation and essentially says that was an interpretation that existed out there in the legal literature. 
And on.  And on.

I’m not looking to take people's guns away...

That's just a policy — a policy the government could enact even if there were no individual right to bear arms. So we're very far from the original topic now.

... but I am looking for more support for the reasonable efforts that need to be undertaken to keep guns out of the wrong hands.  

So you are for the policy of taking some people's guns away. The wrong people. (And speaking of wrong, was the Supreme Court wrong on the Second Amendment, in your current opinion? I still don't know.)Even if it stopped there, who all does she consider the 'wrong hands'?  That phrase give you any comfort?  It doesn't me.

And it's literally the People's Republic of MA now; the law is

what Comrade AG says it is.
“This isn’t a panacea,” Roy-Gonzalez said. “This isn’t going to solve the issue of gun violence. There’s a lot more that needs to be done. There’s been a law on the books since 1998. It’s up to us to enforce the law. The point is these guns are illegal and 10,000 of them were sold last year alone.
And the most basic question: if they're illegal, why did you allow them to be sold?  Or, for that matter, brought into the state at all?
Answer: because they were legal under MA law, and you decided you didn't like it, and changed the law.  Because you're a nasty little tyrant at heart.

When a bureaucrat or politician can change what the law means, at will, NOBODY is safe in anything.

As for this being about public safety,
Cyndi Roy-Gonzalez, spokeswoman for Healey, said the office did not consider how many shootings in Massachusetts have been carried out with assault-style rifles, but insisted the ban is an effective anti-violence measure.

According to FBI statistics, rifles of any variety were used in just two of the Bay State’s 779 murders in the past five years, which were mainly carried out with handguns. In that same period, hands and feet were cited as the murder weapon 35 times.
Two.  That's their excuse for playing Stalin games.  Revealing the always-there real reason: it's about control.  Not crime, not safety, control.

Among the reasons I'm loving this election season so much,

aside from the "You're defending Trump?*  YOU HATE (fill in)!" crap,
The Stupid Party has nominated a egomaniac crony-capitalist I don't like or trust,
the Evil Party has nominated a corrupt lies-by-reflex politician who thinks the law only applies to other people,
and the Libertarian Party candidates keep coming out with crap like this, so I can't console myself with "I'll vote for them!"

Sucks, it does.





*Seems if you point out that something he's been accused of isn't quite what some idiot said, that means you worship at the Trump altar or something.  Much like with Bush 43, I don't mind people yelling about Trump, but make it about real stuff, ok?

Unless someone finds a way to make joints new again,

I'm never going to be in the shape I once was, because I can't work out like I used to.

While I'm digesting this disgusting situation, I suggest you review the information that just came in.

Further demonstration of why anything most media says about guns

needs fact-checking: they don't know their ass from a hole in the ground.
A British tabloid made an embarrassing error Friday, writing a hysterical piece that incorrectly reported the Defence Ministry had paid hundreds of millions of pounds to buy a five-inch-long gun.
“We just blew £183m on a five-inch gun, but it’s ‘a good value for taxpayers,’” read the outraged headline from The Daily Star. The subheadline also reinforced that the author believed the gun was literally five inches, calling it “the length of a toothbrush.”
The only problem? Five-inch guns are named after their caliber, not their length. They shoot munitions that are five inches in diameter, meaning the guns themselves are necessarily huge.


Remember, every time the gun bigots start screaming about castle doctrine and 'stand your ground' laws being horrible, this is what they want to happen here:
In April, a 35-year-old man from Hyvinkää, a town just 50km north of the Finnish capital, Helsinki, heard a knock on the front door of his suburban house and rushed to open it. As soon as he unlocked it, three strangers rushed in and launched at him, toting baseball bats and a gun. The man retreated to the kitchen, where he found a knife and with it was able to overpower the intruders, two men and one woman.
...
The homeowner has been convicted of “excessive self-defense and attempted manslaughter,” Helsinki news reports. He will serve an unconditional sentence for four years and two months, which he has to spend in prison. The man also has to pay damages to his attackers, with the fine totaling €21,000 (US$23,000). The newspaper does not provide information on the severity of injuries sustained by the home-invaders, however, it is known that they survived the event.

The attackers were also convicted for felony home invasion and assault, yet their punishments are much less harsh.
Much like the British mess of 'defend yourself, even in your home, with too much force, and you go to jail'.  Disgusting.


Snopes has been caught playing games before; apparently they don't mind throwing away their reputation.  Either that or they'll just insist "There were flags at SOME point, so it's good!"


So he's standing across the street, taking video, and because he mouths off you arrest him?  This kind of crap does NOT help the situation, guy.

Yes, I do understand you're sick of clowns like this 'anti-violence activist' calling you Uncle Tom; still not a good thing to do.

Whilst I decide whether I can do without the a/c tonight,

to help the electric bill(yuck), take a look at the current data; it's more fun than what I'm doing

Well, Officer, when your '11 years of training and experience' cause you do do this,

then they're not worth squat, are they?

Wonder how much this crap is likely to cost the taxpayers(because damages won't come out of the cop's pocket, oh no)?


This would be moving these fish back into part of their original range, and they'll eat the carp, so go for it.  Rabbits to Australia this is not.


Sooner or later the French and Germans are going to get tired of this crap and tell their leaders to actually do something.  Or throw the bastards out and put someone in who will.  And it's going to get interesting.
Nudists were told they would be 'exterminated' after a gang of Muslims who stormed into a German swimming pool yelling 'Allahu Akbar'.

The six men, described as being in their 20s and with beards, spat at women and children because they were swimming in the nude and called all the females 'sluts'.

The revelers were at a pool in the town of Geldern in the North Rhine-Westphalia region, known for its preference for natural form of swimming.


Clinton is now saying "I don't want to take your guns, I just want common-sense reforms!"  Yeah, you can trust that coming from the same one who said
“We’ve got to go after this. And here again, the Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment. And I am going to make that case every chance I get.”
and
Later that same month, Clinton pointed to Australia as a “good example” of how to deal with gun violence after being asked about the country’s policies by an attendee. She went on to say a mandatory buyback program is something that should be considered in the United States.
She's talking about CONFISCATION, while paying a few dollars to say "We're not just seizing your property, so shut up."

But now she doesn't want to take your guns.  Right.


One more "More guns means MORE MASS SHOOTING!" study.  And the author refuses to share data, or even just how he collected his data.

Know what that means?  It means Adam Lankford and his study are full of shit.


So it could be a solar minimum combined with some other downturn factors; what's, say, Scotland going to do when the windmills don't cut it and they can't buy enough nuclear-generated power from France because they're using it to keep their own citizens from freezing?

Get this:
There seems to be a strong possibility of a shortfall in UK energy supply in the coming years, and this reflects a pattern over much of Europe. A report from the UK Institute of Mechanical Engineers noted that it is UK government policy to close all remaining coal-fired generating capacity by 2025. They conclude that “…The loss of coal by 2025, along with growth in demand and the closure of the majority of our nuclear power stations will therefore be significant, leaving a potential supply gap of 40%–55%, depending on wind levels….” And “…we have neither the time, resources, nor the sufficient [Sic] number of skilled people to build enough CCGTs [Combined Cycle Gas Turbines] to plug this gap…”
This is critical.  And scary.  They're saying not only not enough time, but not enough people with the skills to build the stuff they'll need if there is a temp downturn.

More of Heinlein's 'bad luck', I guess.

Well, it's one reason why

"One of the ground rules that I do in a lot of my trainings, maybe you all have heard this before. I love it, but it is 'don't yuck my yum,'" she said "For some of us, there are some things that are very yummy and it hurts when people 'yuck' on us. So for example, if one issue is my core issue and it's not yours, that's cool, it's my core issue, don't yuck my yum, that's cool."
Throw in something on safe spaces and white/male privilege, you have the Millenial Trifecta of Why They're Annoying.


"We can take care of any booing, just don't have an actual vote."
“All in favor of the motion to suspend the rules and nominate by acclamation Tim Kaine as the Democratic party’s vice presidential candidate, please say aye,” Fudge said to both applause and protests.

After having deemed the measure passed, Fudge continued talking as some in the crowd could be heard protesting and demanding an actual roll call vote of all the delegates. The music inside the convention hall was then turned up to drown out the protests.

CNN’s Jeff Zeleny reported that Virginia Rep. Bobby Scott had been scheduled to give a three minute nominating speech in support of Kaine, but it was cancelled after convention officials and Hillary Clinton’s campaign were “afraid of boos from Sanders supporters and other progressive groups.

When Ayoob says 'Carry',

it might be a good idea to pay attention.

He also notes
The gun prohibitionists here in the States decry the armed citizen concept, claiming that "untrained civilians" will open fire wildly hoping to stop the mass-murderer and kill each other. The following is worth saying in all caps: NOTHING LIKE THAT HAS OCCURRED IN THE UNITED STATES, EVER!

Not even in a park

is the big kitty your friend.


Wonder if these people don't realize how they're damaging their brand with a lot of people, or just don't care?


Speaking of damaging your brand,
The Harris County District Attorney’s office on Tuesday dismissed all charges against anti-abortion activists who secretly videotaped Planned Parenthood officials in Houston.

David Robert Daleiden and Sandra Merritt were charged with tampering with a governmental record, for using a fake identification to gain access to the facility. In a surprise move before a hearing on the legitimacy of the indictment, prosecutors dismissed the charges.
Texas, you really need to clean that office out.
According to attorney for Daleiden, District Attorney Devon Anderson shared confidential information with the abortion business, which she was supposed to be investigating for running afoul of state laws prohibiting the purchase or sale of body parts form aborted babies.

Yet, in recent court filings by the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast’s attorney Josh Schaffer admitted in a sworn declaration that the Harris County DA’s office shared evidence with Planned Parenthood. That occurred even after the Texas Attorney General’s office had forbidden Anderson’s office from doing so.
Disbarment would be a good start.


While Clinton & Co. are screaming about the horrors of Citizens United, remember exactly what it was about:
In all of the bluster surrounding Citizens United, it is easy to forget what the case was truly about. Citizens United, a conservative nonprofit, produced a documentary, "Hillary: The Movie." The film excoriated then-Presidential primary candidate Hillary Clinton, urging viewers not to support her run for president. But when Citizens United wanted to air its movie in 2008, it was prohibited from doing so by federal campaign finance laws. These laws banned independent speech by corporations (and unions) if it opposed (or supported) the election of any federal candidate. And Citizens United, itself a nonprofit corporation, was partially funded with for-profit corporate funds.

The question brought before the court in 2010 was whether it was constitutional for the government to ban the airing of this political movie.
The answer was 'No'.  And that's what these dirtbags want to change.
During the argument, Justice Samuel Alito asked United States Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart, "What's your answer to [the] point that there isn't any constitutional difference between the distribution of this movie on video [on] demand and providing access on the Internet, providing DVDs, either through a commercial service or maybe in a public library, [or] providing the same thing in a book? Would the Constitution permit the restriction of all of those as well?"

Stewart confirmed he thought that such a law would be constitutional and would allow the government to ban a book published by an organization like Citizens United. There was a gasp in the courtroom.

The idea that book-banning, perhaps the quintessential act of state oppression, was something the American government thought acceptable under the First Amendment, caused quite a stir. In a second oral argument, the government’s lawyers attempted to walk back the claim — saying that books had never been banned under this statute before, and that, while a political pamphlet might be restricted, this law probably doesn’t apply to books (no definition was given as to the difference between a “pamphlet” and a “book”).
And we can trust them not to change that 'probably' to 'does', can't we?
Stop laughing.

Stuff to do,

hopefully without melting(temps are down but humidity is up), so not much this morning.

Other than "Don't expect much right now."

They really don't like Jews, do they?

At least those who stand up for themselves.
Don’t expect this to get one-tenth as much attention as the supposedly sexist pre-release attacks on the all-female Ghostbusters. But Wonder Woman is under attack from SJWs — for being Israeli.
While most of the tweets about the upcoming Wonder Woman movie’s new trailer have been positive, many are quite toxic because the lead, Gal Gadot, is an Israeli “Zionist.”
Bigoted fools.

Added: Yes, I do realize that there's a difference between 'Zionist' and 'Jew' for people who're being honest.  I've seen too much crap(mostly from leftists) where they use that as a means of deniability("Oh, I don't hate all Jews, just those!").  So I don't trust them to mean it.

Yeah, but it's a village for journalists, so

there may be a plan here.
As reporters and cameramen start to arrive ahead of the opening ceremony next month, a community of descendants of runaway slaves, known as a quilombo, has said the site of the Barra Media Village 3, close to the Olympic Park, was built on land where their ancestors were buried – and which they consider sacred.
...
“One Sunday morning a chainsaw came and devastated everything including century-old trees,” Almeida said. “I regard the ground as sacred because it is where my ancestors were buried.”
There is the temptation toward "Dammit, you should've waited until they'd arrived!  THEN start yelling, and if journalists start disappearing..."


From GFZ, on the Democrats trying to blame Indiana for the violent crime in Chicago:
The Obama administration fully admits that it doesn’t bother to prosecute these types of crimes.  For all the call by Democrats for universal background checks, the one thing that they don’t seem to discuss is how the Federal Government doesn’t actually punish people who violate current federal background check laws.
Apparently enforcing the law against criminals who want to break the law is just too much work.  It is much easier to criminalize more common behaviors and bust the law abiding citizens who accidentally violate the law and then claim victory for “doing something.”


Federal Professionals.
Now, the TSA's summer may be getting even worse: According to a recent report from the House Homeland Security Commission entitled "Misconduct at TSA Threatens the Security of the Flying Public", nearly half of the TSA’s 60,000 employees have been cited for misconduct in recent years.

The bad news doesn't stop there. Citations have increased 28.5 percent from 2013 to 2015, and in 2015, the average U.S. airport received 58 complaints each year—more than one a week. (Unsurprisingly, some of the nation's largest and busiest airports—Los Angeles International Airport, Newark International Airport, and Boston Logan International Airport—saw the highest rates of misconduct.) The complaints can come from frustrated passengers, sure, but also from fellow TSA employees and other government workers.

Perhaps even worse? The outcomes of these misconduct allegations.


Another attack in Germany.


You've got two choices: the idiot AG had no idea what all she decided to ban(with, from I can tell, zero legal authority), or she knew and wanted to ban as much as possible.

I see lawsuits in the future.  Possibly impeachment.

I'm guessing Kaine didn't run his talking points past Clinton

The one I'm speaking of, as he plays " 'Well-regulated' in the 2nd Amendment means we can ban all kinds of things":
“I can’t take classified information I get as a senator and give it to somebody with no consequence. Freedom of speech has reasonable limits.”
Bleeping Krishna on a trampoline...

If you have any doubts, the rest of this will relieve them: he wants to ban 'assault weapons', restrict what size magazine you can use, hold stores responsible if someone commits a crime with a gun, the whole works.

Screw these bastards.