You will never see or be involved in stuff like this.

I have been in IDPA sanctioned matches with close to 300 competitors plus the significant others and kids and the only loud voices you hear come from the Safety Officers issuing the range commands. The hardest physical interaction between people constrained to hard back slaps between friends who had not see each other for a while.  And if you think we don’t have highly competitive individuals, you would be very wrong.  I am sure it is the same thing for all other shooting sports, from clays to Cowboy Action.

Armed society is a polite society.

Another update, this time from The New Yorker:

A Sexual-Misconduct Allegation Against the Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh Stirs Tension Among Democrats in Congress

The woman, who has asked not to be identified, first approached Democratic lawmakers in July, shortly after Trump nominated Kavanaugh. The allegation dates back to the early nineteen-eighties, when Kavanaugh was a high-school student at Georgetown Preparatory School, in Bethesda, Maryland, and the woman attended a nearby high school. In the letter, the woman alleged that, during an encounter at a party, Kavanaugh held her down, and that he attempted to force himself on her. She claimed in the letter that Kavanaugh and a classmate of his, both of whom had been drinking, turned up music that was playing in the room to conceal the sound of her protests, and that Kavanaugh covered her mouth with his hand. She was able to free herself. Although the alleged incident took place decades ago and the three individuals involved were minors, the woman said that the memory had been a source of ongoing distress for her, and that she had sought psychological treatment as a result.

So The New Yorker has details that the woman claims that she was the victim of an attempted rape.

She went to Democratic legislators with this information.  I guess that is slightly better than going to the press with it.

In a statement, Kavanaugh said, “I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do this back in high school or at any time.”

Now we have a 35 year old “he said/she said.”  This is going to suck.

Kavanaugh’s classmate said of the woman’s allegation, “I have no recollection of that.”

But he’s Kavanaugh’s friend, of course he’s going to lie for his buddy [sarc].

The woman declined a request for an interview.

That’s a hell of a thing to accuse someone of and not agree to an interview over.

In recent months, the woman had told friends that Kavanaugh’s nomination had revived the pain of the memory, and that she was grappling with whether to go public with her story. She contacted her congresswoman, Anna Eshoo, a Democrat, sending her a letter describing her allegation. (When reached for comment, a spokesperson for Eshoo’s office cited a confidentiality policy regarding constituent services and declined to comment further on the matter.)

The letter was also sent to the office of Senator Dianne Feinstein. As the ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Feinstein was preparing to lead Democratic questioning of Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing weeks later. The woman contacted Feinstein’s office directly, according to multiple sources.

After the interactions with Eshoo’s and Feinstein’s offices, the woman decided not to speak about the matter publicly. She had repeatedly reported the allegation to members of Congress and, watching Kavanaugh move toward what looked like an increasingly assured confirmation, she decided to end her effort to come forward, a source close to the woman said.

This is just getting weirder and weirder.

Sources familiar with Feinstein’s decision suggested that she was acting out of concern for the privacy of the accuser, knowing that the woman would be subject to fierce partisan attacks if she came forward. Feinstein also acted out of a sense that Democrats would be better off focussing on legal, rather than personal, issues in their questioning of Kavanaugh.

That is the biggest load of horseshit.  Senator Hirono has been asking the same question of judges for a year now, why not leak this letter to her for her to challenge him with during the confirmation hearing?

They have no legal issues.  This has been nothing but personal attacks on his beliefs.  Feinstein has no room to take the moral high ground.

Sources who worked for other members of the Judiciary Committee said that they respected the need to protect the woman’s privacy, but that they didn’t understand why Feinstein had resisted answering legitimate questions about the allegation. “We couldn’t understand what their rationale is for not briefing members on this. This is all very weird,” one of the congressional sources said. Another added, “She’s had the letter since late July. And we all just found out about it.”

I bet Feinstein didn’t even believe the letter.  Now it’s an 11th hour tactic.  They could have spent months before his hearing hammering Kavanaugh with #MeToo in the media but they didn’t.  Why?  That seems like a very Democrat thing to do.

This whole thing is bizarre.  Not one media source has been able to confirm another source.

Kavanaugh denies the allegation.  His buddy backs him up on that.  The woman won’t submit to public questioning and has dropped the whole thing.  There is no evidence of other instances like this or a history of other allegations.  Clinton, Weinstein, Spacey, every man taken down has had a history of multiple similar acts.  I’ve never seen one public figure that has had a single accusation of a single act over a lifetime.

This gets more bizarre by the minute.

I have no idea what to make of it.

Article 11 would require internet companies to pay news outlets for hosting their content on their platforms. While this has been welcomed by some news corporations, others suggested that this would force social media companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter to pay news organisation in order to feature as little as two words — or a hyperlink — from their news stories.

…

Article 13 is — if possible — even more controversial, earning itself the reputation of a “meme killer.” It would require web giants to automatically filter copyrighted material — songs, images, videos — uploaded on their platforms, unless it has been specifically licensed. Despite its divisiveness, the piece of legislation passed by 438 votes to 226 with 39 abstentions in the European Parliament.

The EU has passed Article 13, but Europe’s meme war is far from over

It is not for information control for the masses, right?

Imagine millions of assholes deciding on one day to just link as many news stories from everywhere in the world in Twitter and Facebook so they would have to pay for it as payback for all the censorship measure they have taken.

They are effing insane in Europe.

From My San Antonio News:

Impoverished Venezuelans are abandoning their pets

CARACAS, Venezuela – It was Sheldon’s 6th birthday, and Mary Cruz Lema realized she had to give him up.

As Venezuela’s economic crisis had deepened, she and her husband had been struggling to feed their beloved black and white schnauzer. Their collective salaries – hers as a schoolteacher and his as a nurse – equaled no more than $10 a month, barely enough to cover meals for themselves and their two children.

Let’s put that into perspective.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median salary for a registered nurse in 2017 is $70,000, and for an elementary school teacher it’s $56,900.

In the US, a teacher and a nurse should have a combined mid-career income of over $125,00.

Caracas is the capital city of Venezuela, with a population of over 2 million.  That’s not podunk  by any measure.

Socialism has reduced what would be high middle class two income family to third world pennies per day destitution.

The last time Sheldon had had a dog treat was in November. By January, their budget was so tight that Lema stopped buying pet shampoo and begin limiting his meals to one a day. By June, his only sustenance was a few leftover vegetables from the family table. Once playful, Sheldon became lethargic – sitting in a corner in distress.

“I looked at the dog and couldn’t sleep,” Lema said. “It felt urgent.”

So she took a step that is becoming increasingly common in this collapsing nation: giving up the family pet.

I’m kind of surprised they didn’t eat him.  I guess when it’s your dog, it’s different, but people in Venezuela have turned to eating stray dogs.

If life in Venezuela has become hard for humans, it has become even harder for many pets. With inflation soaring toward 1 million percent, dog food and veterinary care have spiraled out of reach for millions of people. One kilo – or 2.2 pounds – of dog food, for instance, now costs nearly the equivalent of three weeks’ salary for a minimum-wage worker.

In the US a 52 lbs bag of dog food costs about $25 (after tax) at the local Wal-Mart.  That lasts my dogs a month.

That’s socialism for you.  Not just do a teacher and nurse get reduced to $10 per month, but dog food becomes prohibitively expensive.

“People are being forced to choose their priorities, and dogs for the most part aren’t one of them,” said Esmeralda Larrosa, owner of the Kauna Animal Foundation, a Caracas shelter. Her facility, she said, is now struggling to feed its 125 dogs – including 15 that arrived within the previous two weeks. “The rise in abandonment we are seeing is simply crazy.”

On one recent morning, dozens of dogs, many of them emaciated, languished inside Evelia’s Shelter in eastern Caracas. The smell of dog urine filled the air – a scent hard to wash away in a city where businesses and homes have running water only intermittently. A tiny, skeletal black poodle – brought in a week earlier – sat in one corner. A 1-year-old golden retriever, recently surrendered by a man unable to feed him, roamed the yard.

“Every day is incredibly sad,” said Aida Lopez Mendez, 53, one of the shelter’s owners. “We never thought the situation could get so tragic.”

Cuba, Cambodia, the Soviet Union, Ukraine, China… where has socialism not resulted in famine?  Yes, you should have thought it could get that tragic.

For pets as well as people, the crisis here is likely to get worse. This petroleum-rich country’s woes are the result of a combination of factors – including lower oil prices, corruption and failed socialist policies. In an attempt to stabilize the economy, President Nicolás Maduro – the successor of Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013 – announced a 3,000 percent minimum-wage hike last month.

So far, though, that measure and others have seemed to backfire, with prices for basic goods almost doubling.

I guess they don’t teach economics in Venezuela anymore.  They don’t teach it at Boston University anymore either.

For Lema, the teacher, saying goodbye to her dog was one of the most traumatic experiences of her life. On that late June morning, she recalled, she walked out of the house holding Sheldon, accompanied by her two children, as representatives of an animal aid group arrived in a car to pick up the dog. The three of them were crying. Her boy, who is autistic, was especially distraught.

She gave the aid workers Sheldon’s purple pillow, his little red quilt with polka dots, and the dog. As their vehicle started to pull away, her 13-year-old son started hitting the car window, shouting for his pet.

Lema said she kept Sheldon’s dog tag.

“We miss him every single day,” she said.

Let me put this as bluntly as I can.

I have two dogs.  I love them.  I love my dogs a lot more than I love socialists.  So let this be a warning:

If you implement socialism, causing me to end up on $10 a month in wages so I can’t afford to buy dog food for my dogs.  I will not abandon my dogs.  I will grind your socialist voting ass into chopped meat and feed you to my dogs.

Forget coffee cups that say “Liberal Tears.”  You will end up in a old coffee can marked “Comrade Brand Dog Chow.”

I know, the season ends in November 30 and I just jinxed it.

PS: Yes, I noticed the title late. I took something for my back and I need a nap.

Yesterday I covered how Senator Diane Feinstein sent a secret letter from an unidentified person who heard second hand about a secret incident, involving another unidentified person who didn’t want to push the issue, to the FBI regarding something Judge Kavanaugh may have done in high school more than three decades ago.

Writing that, I’m suddenly reminded of Dark Helmet?

To be honest, that is a good approximation of Diane Feinstein: short, totally evil, incredibly stupid.

But this didn’t stop the #Resistance media from turning this third hand rumor into the crime of the century.

According to a Tweet by Ian Millhiser, a Think Progress editor and fellow at the Center for American Progress (so more than just a Lefty rando):

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh may have committed a very serious crime — possibly even a sex crime. Or maybe he didn’t. That’s what we just learned from an extraordinarily vague press statement by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).

Translation:

Kavanaugh is a rapist.  A RAPIST!!!  HE HAS A SEX TORTURE DUNGEON LIKE THE BAD GUY FROM ‘THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO!’  or it could be nothing (that last part is just a formality so I don’t get sued).

So how bad is Kavanaugh?  Does he have a pit in his basement where he keeps large women and baskets full of lotion?

Trust the British media to report this honestly.

From The Guardian:

A source who said they were briefed on the contents of the letter said it described an incident involving Kavanaugh and a woman that took place when both were 17 years old and at a party. According to the source, Kavanaugh and a male friend had locked her in a room against her will, making her feel threatened, but she was able to get out of the room. The Guardian has not verified the apparent claims in the letter. It is not yet clear who wrote it.

That’s it?  They didn’t rape her?  They didn’t assault her?  They didn’t even try to have consensual sex with her?  They just locked her in a room?  And she got out?

I did that to my sister once and I don’t even think my parents grounded me.

This could be titled “lame pranks that Eagle Scouts think up.”

That didn’t stop the #Resistance from going nuts on social media calling him a sex criminal though.  Damage done.

I know what they were hoping to accomplish, but at some point they have to understand how this backfires on them.

For the incredibly loud minority of radical Lefties, this is all red meat.  For the rest of America, this destroys your credibility.

They don’t learn, so next time they are going to scream at the top of their lungs “So-and-So is a sex offender, he assaults little girls.”  Just to find out the next day that So-and-So put gum in little Suzie’s hair when they were both in the 6th grade.

It would almost be funny if reputations built on a life time of achievements weren’t at risk.

With 2.3 million (so far) Venezuelans that have left to seek food and medicines, the welcome mat is rapidly wearing out across the sister nations in South America.

They are lynching them in Brazil (He got caught stealing, killed a grocer and the locals literally beat the crap out of him) and Colombia (stealing a cell phone, wait Am I detecting a pattern here?) Peru recently restricted the entry of Undocumented Venezuelans and accepting only those with passports.

In the meantime, if ICE catches and deports an illegal alien with a criminal record, they got called all kinds of names and Democrats want to get rid of them.

Interesting the rules do not apply the same, wouldn’t you say?

Cui Bono.