Because It's Friday

A steam engine rally:

Walmart Hates the Poors

That is pretty clear when you look at the implications of Walmart's decision to stop selling all non-Fudd types of ammunition.

I'm not going to name the gun store that I went into a few months ago, but the cheapest .38 Special on the shelf was $20/box. $33 would get you a box of 100 at Walmart. $68 would buy a bulk pack of 250. So for just a less than a 250-round bulk pack, you'd pick up three boxes (150 rounds) at a gun shop. A similar price differential existed for 9mm.

That's good for the local gun shop. It's not so good for the guy who has an old Browning High Power or a Model 10 for whom a box of ammo is a non-trivial purchase.

But that's the thing about gun restrictions, they land, by design or default, on people with less means. The whole "Saturday Night Special" fracas of the 1960s was to make it harder for people at the lower levels of the economic period to own guns. The various ideas of the hoplophobes to require licensing, training and insurance are all pointing to the same goal: Make firearms ownership unaffordable for people who don't have discretionary income or time.

Those at the lower levels of the economic strata are often minorities. Imposing gun control regimes that land more heavily on minorities is no accident.

The CEO of Walmart, some clown appropriately named "McMillion", can afford to buy whatever his heart desires. Walmart would probably give him his own security detail if he asked. He doesn't give a shit if he makes it harder for those in suburban and rural America, who have problems sometimes making ends meet, to go pop off a box of practice ammo.

Sam Walton's probably spinning in his grave.

Trump Administration: "Goddamn Your Eyes For Catching Us Lying!"

Trump's now doctoring maps to explain away his flubs.

In a White House video released Wednesday, Trump displays a modified National Hurricane Center “cone of uncertainty” forecast, dated from 11 a.m. on Aug. 29, indicating Alabama would in fact be affected. The graphic appears to have been altered with a Sharpie to indicate a risk the storm would move into Alabama from Florida.
...
White House deputy press secretary J. Hogan Gidley later confirmed that the drawing was made using a black Sharpie, while criticizing the media for focusing on it.

This is Trump holding the doctored map:

The guy sitting at the Resolute Desk is suffering from some serious drain-bamage if he thinks that nobody would fucking notice that he had taken one of his crayons to the forecast map. He's also following his standard script: Lie, double down on the lie, blame the press for catching him lying, and watch his sycophants defend him.

Best snark: Boning and then paying off a porn star named Stormy does not make Trump a weather expert.

Done With Walmart

Walmart says it will stop selling handgun and short-barrel rifle ammunition, while requesting that customers not openly carry firearms in its stores, even where state laws allow it.

I bought stuff at Walmart, in part, because I could buy practice ammunition for my handguns. But the fact of the matter is that everything else I bought at Walmart I can buy elsewhere.

And so I shall.

When it comes to guns and ammunition, Walmart is now "By Fudds, For Fudds".

What it means to me is that, instead of dropping by Walmart for a couple of boxes of range fodder, I'll probably go to a bulk online seller and buy a thousand rounds at a throw instead of a hundred here and there.

For a company that has connived for decades in hollowing out American manufacturing and has profited by exploiting its workers, this is a pretty odd way for Walmart to all of a sudden signal that they are virtuous.

Fuck you, Walmart.

Wait, What?? Congratulations on Being Invaded??

Q Mr. President, do you have a message for Poland —

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.

Q — on the 80th anniversary of the Second World War? What (inaudible)?

THE PRESIDENT: I do have a great message for Poland. And we have Mike Pence, our Vice President, is just about landing right now. And he is representing me. I look forward to being there soon.

But I just want to congratulate Poland. It’s a great country with great people. We also have many Polish people in our country; it could be 8 million. We love our Polish friends. And I will be there soon.

That's the transcript from the White House.

What the hell flitters through his mind?

They're Still More Afraid of Witchcraft Than Kiddie-Diddling Priests

The students at St. Edward Catholic School in Nashville can no longer checkout the popular Harry Potter book series from their school's library.

The seven-book series depicting the magical adventures of a young wizard and his friends was removed from the library because of their content, the Rev. Dan Reehil, a pastor at the Roman Catholic parish school, wrote in an email.

"These books present magic as both good and evil, which is not true, but in fact a clever deception. The curses and spells used in the books are actual curses and spells; which when read by a human being risk conjuring evil spirits into the presence of the person reading the text," the email states.

Reehil goes on to say in the email that he consulted several exorcists in the U.S. and Rome who recommended removing the books.

The only thing resembling "magic" in the Potter books is how much money has been made from the books, the movies, and the theme parks.

The forces of ignorance are still strong within the RCC. Some of them would still be burning witches if they could.

Cruelty Isn't a Bug, It's the Point

The Trump administration on Monday announced that it would reconsider its decision to force immigrants facing life-threatening health crises to return to their home countries, an abrupt move last month that generated public outrage and was roundly condemned by the medical establishment.

On Aug. 7, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, without public notice, eliminated a “deferred action” program that had allowed immigrants to avoid deportation while they or their relatives were undergoing lifesaving medical treatment.

The agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, had sent letters informing those who had asked for a renewal, which the immigrants must make every two years, that it was no longer entertaining such requests. The letters said that the immigrants must leave the country within 33 days, or face deportation.

In other words: "Go Home and Die."

This has Stephen Miller's and Trump's fingerprints all over it. I'd call them "monsters", but Godzilla and Frankenstein would probably then have a claim for defamation.

"Reconsidering" means that they'll still do it, after everyone has moved off to Trump's next outrage. Such as his clear idiocy.

An Argument on Guns That Proves Too Much

As a hunter who has owned firearms since adolescence without breaking any laws or feeling under-gunned, I think I am equipped to offer a modest proposal that could produce a safer America and also break the maniacal hold of the National Rifle Association on the nation’s recreational shooters, not to mention Congress.

My proposal is simply that we revert to the gun laws that prevailed in the United States around 1960. From a public-safety standpoint, that was far from a perfect world. The cheap revolvers called “Saturday night specials” ruled the night in many cities. Loopholes as to the sale and registration of long arms allowed the importation of the mail-order rifle that Lee Harvey Oswald used to kill President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

You know what didn't exist in 1960? Background checks. There was no prohibition against buying handguns in other states. There was no prohibition on mail-ordering handguns. You could send in an order form and a money order to Herter's and buy anything that you wanted, which your mailman would happily deliver. If you were a kid and you wanted to blow your lawn-mowing money on a box of .22 or .410 shells, you were free to do so. If you wanted to buy a 20mm cannon, have at it. While you still had to go through the paperwork hoops, you could buy a fresh-off-the-manufacturing-line submachine gun and yes, sports fans, those had large-capacity magazines. High schools had rifle clubs; kids brought their target rifles to school on the buses. Sure, concealed carry wasn't much of a thing, but as long as you met the primary qualifications of being an adult and Caucasian, nobody bothered you very much.

That was the "flawed status quo" that Mr. Raines is advocating be restored. Fat chance of that happening.

Beyond that, his argument is dangerous. If Second Amendment rights can be limited by tying them to a specific year, then so can other rights. In 1960, to the extend that CATV systems existed, their function was to bring signals to those people who lived in places where home antennas wouldn't work: People who lived where terrain blocked the signals or whose who lived in cities and so close to the powerful broadcasting antennas that the reflections from buildings caused "ghost" images. There was no Internet, so if you wanted to read a paper, you either subscribed or you trucked your happy ass to the local library or to the newsstand.

Raines is nothing more than a Fudd, a supposed hunter who is fine with any gun restrictions that don't affect him. With friends like these, gun owners don't need enemies.

The Evidence is Clear: Trump Hates Muslims

As China locks a million-plus Uighurs into concentration camps and prisons and India aggressively seeks to declare millions of its Muslim citizens to be stateless non-persons, the most that one will hear out of the Trump Administration is mild tut-tuts.

Oh, sure, it's probably the official policy of the Trump Administration that they're only concerned about terrorism, that they don't hate all Muslims, but their inaction and radio silence about the blatant discrimination against millions of Muslims in Asia speaks volumes.

For if the people being discriminated against there Christians, you can bet your last farthing that Trump and Pence would be all over those situations. Not to mention that there would be wall-to-wall coverage on Fox News.

Then again, maybe not, as far as Fox News go. Rupert Murdoch seems to be solidly in the pocket of the Xi regime.

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

breaking up the Lear series with a Cessna Citation 501:

The Cessna 500 family, also known as the Citation I, was in production for sixteen years.