Just a few minutes ago.

One of the things I had to get programmed in my head was the concept of water pipes freezing. My BiL is a plumber and he told me to keep small heaters strategically placed in a couple of locations where the waters flows, including the crawlspace.

The idea of getting out in the freezing weather to plug and unplug the heaters was not very appealing to me, so last winter I added Cold Weather Thermostatically Controlled Outlets to the devices. Truthfully I never found out if they clicked in or not because the really cold spell did not last that long and temps at the heater locations apparently did not drop enough to activated them.

But today? Holy crap, you can see it did go down enough to freeze the sun. I donned my cold clothes and went to check on the heaters: Working like charm (Yes, I figured they were working before ’cause the water was running).

One small but important detail: Make sure the load of your heaters does not overwhelm the outlet. This one is rated for a max of 1,200 Watts and thankfully the heaters I use come with a setting at 750 W which is more than enough to keep the pipes from “popsicling”.

The high for today is going to be just 13 degrees, but since it is my day off, we are planning on do nothing but binge Jack Ryan and get fat.

And you guys, stay safe and warm.

We’ve been following a couple of cases in NY state regarding their CCIA law(s) where the state immediately post Bruen created a set of requirements that turned NYS from “May Issue” to “Shall Issue, but you can’t carry anywhere”.

This case was first heard by United States District Judge Glenn T. Suddaby. Judge Suddaby said that the CCIA looked bad to him but that the people suing in the lawsuit did not have standing.

GOA et all went back and got more plaintiffs to join in the suit and refiled. The state attempted to have the case assigned to a different judge. Judge Suddaby said “NO”. Took the case back.

The plaintiffs requested a temporary injunction to block the CCIA. Judge Suddaby granted the temporary injunction but held it for three days for the state to appeal. The second circuit court vacated the temporary injunction.

A short time later Judge Suddaby granted an injunction blocking parts of the CCIA. This time he did NOT hold it to allow the state to appeal.

An injunction is granted when the judge feels that the case will win on the merits. I.e. there is no evidence that needs to be presented in order for the person requesting the injunction to win.

The state, as expected, appealed to the second circuit which again overturned Judge Suddaby’s injunction.

At this point no more progress can be made on the case until the second circuit court hears the appeal. This could be next week or it could be next year or it could be years from now. It is a good bet that the second circuit would love to push it out as far as possible.

At this point the GOA threw a monkey wrench into the shinagagins of the second circuit and the state of New York.

TO THE HONORABLE SONIA SOTOMAYOR, ASSOCIATE JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES AND CIRCUIT JUSTICE FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT:

Without providing any analysis or explanation, the Second Circuit has stayed a preliminary injunction issued by a federal district court in New York that was carefully designed to limit New York’s enforcement of a sweeping gun control statute, enacted as retaliation against New York gun owners for having prevailed in this Court’s decision in N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022). The district court’s injunction was supported by a detailed 184-page opinion, meticulously tailored to follow this Court’s framework established in Bruen. In contrast, the Second Circuit’s stay pending appeal was issued based only on a single conclusory assertion, yet with the effect of indefinitely suspending the protections afforded New Yorkers by the Second Amendment and affirmed by this Court in Bruen. The Second Circuit’s stay should be vacated in order to uphold the right of New Yorkers to keep and bear arms, as well as to vindicate the authority of this Court over the circuit courts.

his Court’s Opinion in Bruen was issued on June 23, 2022. Only hours later,
New York Governor Hochul promised to “fight back”:

We just received some disturbing news … the Supreme Court … has stripped away the State of New York’s right and responsibility to protect its citizens … with a decision … which is frightful in its scope of how they are setting back this nation…. This decision is not just reckless, it’s reprehensible. It’s not what New Yorkers want, and we should have the right of … what we want to do in terms of gun laws in our state…. [O]ur governor has a moral responsibility to do what we can … because of what is going on, the insanity of the gun culture that has now possessed everyone up to the Supreme Court…. We’ve been ready for this … We’ve been working with a team of legal experts … I’m prepared to call the legislature back into session… We are not going to cede our rights that easily, despite the best efforts of the politicized Supreme Court…. No longer can we strike the balance… Shocking. They have taken away our rights…. This is New York. We don’t back down. We fight back…. I’m prepared to go back to muskets…. We’re just getting started here.

Just eight days later on July 1, 2022, the New York Legislature responded to Governor Hochul’s call to defy this Court’s authority and resist Bruen’s protection of Second Amendment rights, enacting the Concealed Carry Improvement Act (“CCIA”). After extensive briefing, a hearing, and oral argument, the district court enjoined portions of the CCIA in a 184-page opinion. Shortly thereafter the Second Circuit, without providing any reasoning or analysis, granted New York’s request first for a temporary administrative stay, and then a stay pending appeal, allowing New York’s repudiation of Bruen back into effect without so much as a brief explanation.

First, without providing any analysis of the factors for determining whether a stay is warranted, the panel nakedly asserted that it had “weighed the applicable factors … and … upon due consideration … conclude[d] that a stay pending appeal is warranted.” App.002a. Tellingly, the Second Circuit did not take issue with a single factual finding or legal conclusion from the district court’s well-reasoned 184-page opinion. Nor did the Second Circuit claim that the district court had abused its discretion or otherwise erred in any part of its opinion granting Applicants preliminary relief. The Second Circuit’s unexplained and unsupported order deprives Applicants of the “careful review and a meaningful decision” to which they are “entitle[d].” Nken v. Holder, 556 U.S. 418, 427 (2009).

The CCIA stands in direct defiance to Bruen’s central holding that governments cannot keep “ordinary, law-abiding citizen[s]” with “ordinary self-defense needs from carrying arms in public for that purpose.” Bruen at 2150. The Second Circuit’s stay of the district court’s preliminary injunction allows New York’s novel, anti-Bruen law to strip New Yorkers of their right to keep and bear arms in a sweeping and unprecedented way, along with the collateral damage of violating multiple other constitutional provisions. Applicants, along with countless others like them, are being irreparably harmed each day this patently unconstitutional law remains in place, eviscerating the right of ordinary, law-abiding New Yorkers to carry firearms in public for self-defense. Additionally, this case presents issues of national importance with respect to states that enact laws in explicit defiance of this Court’s decisions.

Nor does the district court’s opinion represent an outlier, as its decision is not the only one striking down portions of the CCIA as unconstitutional. Rather, there have been a total of three opinions issued by district courts in New York concluding that various aspects of the CCIA are unconstitutional. Yet as in this case, the Second Circuit has granted stays pending appeal in those other cases as well – again, without providing any reasoning or analysis. See Christian, et al. v. Nigrelli, et al. (2d Cir. 22-2987, Document 40); Hardaway, et al. v. Nigrelli, et al. (2d Cir. 22-2933, Document 53). One might think that the Second Circuit – being the circuit whose opinion was recently reversed by this Court in Bruen (N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Beach, 818 Fed. Appx. 99 (2d Cir. 2020)) – might find it appropriate to at least provide some basis for its decision to stay multiple lower court decisions which have faithfully applied the Bruen framework. But one would be wrong.

This Court should vacate the Second Circuit’s unreasoned, knee-jerk order granting a stay pending appeal.

This is addressed to Justice Sotomayor because she is the judge assigned to oversee the second circuit court. This will not be seen by just her but by all of the justices.

The second circuit court issuing a “stay pending appeal” is what got them in trouble. I believe that this renders any decision by Judge Suddaby moot pending that appeal being heard by the second circuit. Because the Supreme Court has ruled on multiple occasions that “a right delayed is a right denied” this appeal to SCOTUS is likely to be noticed and acted upon.

Of interest, there is no need for oral arguments or anything else on this sort of appeal. The Supreme Court can issue their decision on this request at anytime. Like tomorrow, if they want to.

Related proceedings are:

• Antonyuk v. Hochul, No. 1:22-CV-0986 (GTS/CFH), 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 201944 (N.D.N.Y. Nov. 7, 2022) (order granting preliminary injunction).
• Antonyuk v. Hochul, No. 22-2908 (2d Cir. Dec. 7, 2022) (order staying preliminary injunction).

EMERGENCY APPLICATION FOR IMMEDIATE ADMINISTRATIVE RELIEF AND TO VACATE STAY OF PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION ISSUED BY THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

This Tweet has gone viral and caught a lot of hate.

https://twitter.com/JacobAShell/status/1604872083799842816?s=19

Jacob here is 100% right.

Unfortunately, almost all of the replies are 100% wrong.

Exempli gratia:

If your parents were flying the whole family to Europe for vacations you weren't middle-class. You were UPPER-upper-middle class, or more probably lower-UPPER class. Let's have some realism here, please. Middle class *might* manage short road trips in the summer, but no more.

— Brad R. Torgersen (@BradRTorgersen) December 22, 2022

Someone explain to me exactly what the fucking purpose of Brad’s response other than some bullshit gatekeeping.

So the fuck what if Jacob was UPPER middle-class or regular middle-class?  Doesit diminish his point at all?

I understand exactly where Jacob is coming from.

He got very close you describing my childhood.

My father was a lawyer in a small firm (about 10 employees total).  My mother was a nurse.

We had a 3 bed/3 bath house, my dad drove a Chevy Suburban, my mom drove a minivan.

We road tripped to my grandparent’s house twice a year, summer and Christmas.  I never went overseas, but did vacation in Canada once.

That was the lifestyle of all my friends.  They had parents who were civil engineers, architects, accountants, one was a therapist, another was a dentist.

The federal government defines middle-class as single earners between $45,000 and $130,000 per year, family income between $65,000 and $250,000 per year.

I grew up towards the higher end of that range, but definitely within it.

We were solidly in the “professional white collar middle-class.”

Today I’m an engineer and my wife is a librarian.  Again, solidly white collar professional middle-class.  I make about the same on paper as my dad did.

Adjusted for inflation, my buying power is half of what his was in the 90s.

To buy a 3bd/3br house in California, South Florida, New England, Chicago, any major metropolitan area if going to start at half a million dollars and go up rapidly from there.

My parents bought the house I grew up in for $300K in 1995.  It just sold for $1.2M.

I can’t afford my childhood home making the same salary as my dad.

To have the lifestyle I had growing up in the same city I grew up in I’d need to make a solid $500K.

What Jacob describes is the quintessential American Dream.

A decent house, two cars, enough disposable income to enjoy the occasional vacation.

And depending on where you live, that can be utterly impossible to have in the income range we call middle-class.

When it costs me $1,000 to fill my heating oil tank, there goes my budget for a road trip to grandma’s.

And yet the overwhelming response has been effectively “fuck you rich kid, you’re not middle-class.”

How the fuck does that help?

The response should be “hey you fuckers in DC, why the fuck is the American Dream priced our of the hands of the middle-class?”

The response I’m seeing is nothing more than the petty mean girl envy from people who grew up towards the lower end of the middle-class range.

It’s ugly and it’s counter productive.

Let me put it to you this way.

Nearly 100% of people who work for a living, regardless of where in the middle-class range they are, could say with complete accuracy:

“I make the same income as my parents did but to have the same buying power and quality of life as they did I would have to make double what they did.”

But no.  People are too focused on telling a guy why he grew up too rich to have an opinion about middle-class lifestyles.

Guess what.  It’s okay to have empathy for someone who grew up with more money than you did, and if his Tweet makes you angry, ask yourself why and who should you be angry at.

This guy because you’re envious of his childhood, which accomplishes nothing?

Or the people in charge who made the American Dream unaffordable?

My take is this: Phillip Tattaglia met with the Corleone family so they keep helping him fight the Barzinis.

Our Grand Leader put out a request for help. He needed some primers. The problem is that a few years ago the feds changed the shipping rules on HAZMAT.

Primers qualify as HAZMAT. In order to ship HAZMAT you must take your package to a “HUB”, UPS or FedEx and do all the right paperwork. This paperwork includes your license to ship HAZMAT. What? You don’t have one of those?

That’s right, us normals can’t ship primers any more.

Anyway, I contacted our Grand Leader and after talking about what he needs I discovered that he was in need of some .45ACP to reload. Since primers are HAZMAT I couldn’t just ship him a $10 tray. Instead I have to put the primers in cases and ship the primed cases. Which are not considered HAZMAT.

Since I have some spare (sort of) .45 ACP I went to the wall of shame, I.e. Dirty cases, and pulled down some .45 ACP. It was ugly as sin.

So I decided to clean the brass again before priming and shipping. And I wanted SHINY brass, like new.

These and a bunch of other brass went into my ball mill for processing.

I use stainless steel pins as media. The first tumble is for 45 minutes with media and Dawn liquid dish soap. Be careful not to use to much Dawn as it does suds up.

About 5 to 10 minutes into the first tumble the drive belt broke. The replacement material arrived today. It is a little painful as you have to make your own belts from the material. It took 3 or 4 tries before I got it exactly right.

So 3 or 4 days after I put the brass into the water the tumble started and ran to completion.

The water in the drum is then poured out. I pour it into a bowl to catch any media or brass that might escape. Everything is rinsed two or three times and then just enough water to cover the brass and media is added.

One small squirt of Dawn and about a table spoon of LemiShine. Then the brass tumbles for another 45 minutes.

This is what went in:

This is what came out after priming:

Here are the cases ready for our Grand Leader:

All that remains is to pack them and ship them which will happen tomorrow.

And you know come this time next year, we will say we were wrong today.

Domestic terrorists are the #1 threat to our nation & they are heavily armed with weapons of war. @SenSchumer should schedule a vote ban assault weapons to keep Congress safe. If the insurrectionists were armed with AR15s, we would not be living in a democratic nation right now. https://t.co/4Cln1CcMfn

— Newtown Action Alliance (@NewtownAction) December 20, 2022

In the last month what have we learned?

There is was an FBI to Twitter employee pipeline

That the FBI used former employees and money to get social media companies to control the narrative and supress unfavorable stories for partisan political purposes.

The Hunter Biden/Biden family corruption story was worse than everyone imagined and the government got on TV and called it Russian disinformation.

Pfizer and the government knew that the COVID vaccine caused clots but suppressed the story and mandated people get them anyway.

Biden lied about creating over one million jobs by two orders of magnitude, and that really only 10,000 new jobs were created.  The false jobs numbers were used as a metric of how strong the economy was before the election and to justify interest rate increases.

Everyday we find out more and more just how much the government lied to us and manipulated us to achieve their goals.  This is only the tip of the iceberg.

And so their priority is to take away our guns to protect the government.

I swear their goal is to disarm us before we find out that QANON is accurate and they really are a Molock worshiping pedophile cult.