Ah, California….every time I think you’ve woke yourself into a new depth of stupidity, you one-down me.

The new law will ban the sale of all off-road, gas-powered engines, including generators, lawn equipment, pressure washers, chainsaws, weed trimmers, and even golf carts.

California, a state with a history of disaster due to being situated on the terrestrial equivalent of Jell-O, has decided that any new generator you buy can’t run on a gas engine. So, when ‘the big one’ finally hits you’re supposed to haul out your Newsom-approved generator that runs on unicorn flatus and .gov overreach.

As the article says, it bans the sale of new gas powered non-vehicles. Two things to note…’sale’ and ‘new’. So, expect Nevada to add generators to the big box of Pmags they keep by the door at the border gas stations. And, I’d expect that propane-powered generators will find a new market as well.

There’s gonna be a lot of Honda EU2000’s getting UPS’d into California from ‘private parties’ over the next few years, I’d imagine. Can’t wait to read about how the ‘reasonable’ and ‘common sense’ legislation to ban these terrible weapons of war climate change won’t aooly to ‘only ones’ like municipalities and their various agencies.

If I had the money, I’d buy a chunk of dirt right on the border with California and run a general store full of Pmags, generators, gender-specific toys, fireworks, and everything else California bans, and I’d probably make enough to retire in three years.

I wanna go hug my EU2000 right now.

During an everyday errand run, The Atlantic’s staff writer Derek Thompson said he found that snarls in the global supply chain had created an “everything shortage.” Thompson said what should have been a quick errand run for an at-home COVID-19 test, some paper towels, and prescription drugs turned into a sort of multistore scavenger hunt.

The shopper went to a CVS, whose at-home COVID-19 tests and paper towels had sold out. Then, he went to a Walgreens that had run out of everyday prescription medications, as well as a Target, whose ransacked shelves were “alarmingly barren, like the canned-food section of a grocery store one hour before a hurricane makes landfall,” he said.

Pretty much everyone, at being told we were facing a pandemic, figured “Ok..pandemic…so load up on canned goods and avoid other people”. But very few folks seem to have sat down and thought out the downstream consequences…schools close so parents stay home with kids instead of going to their truck driving job, without a driver the materials don’t get to the factories on schedule, production schedules are wrecked, whatever does get manufactured can’t get distributed on schedule, etc, etc.

I guess it’s no surprise that this sort of thing is going on. And, by and large, I’m about as prepared for it as can be, but it’s rather annoying to see the US slide into the sort of stereotpyes we used to have about the Soviets standing in line for toilet paper.

What’s worse is that some idiot somewhere is braying “Government should do something…” about these ‘shortages’ and, Crom help us, .gov might actually do just that. And if you think that having .gov manage a sector of industry is a good idea, you clearly don’t mail a lot of packages or get your paycheck by mail.

‘Tis interesting times we live in. We will all get through it, of course, but they are interesting nonetheless.

Also: Why the Supply Chain Is Tangled Up in Knots

A bow hunter looking for a shortcut on Sept. 17 stumbled upon the remains of a man missing for 53 years.

Raymond Jones, a 39-year-old from Salmon, had been missing since 1968. He was bow hunting for mountain goats in the east fork of Hayden Creek in Lemhi County when he was last seen on Sept. 7, 1968.

A lot of people don’t understand just how big and, in many places, remote it can be out here. There are more than a few planes that took off and never were seen again, cars that left the garage and disappeared, and whole lot of people that walked into the woods and no one ever saw again.

But…it’s the fact that things like that can happen out here that is part of the attraction. Sometimes, you want to disappear.

I was originally gonna subtitle this “You’ll believe a man can fly” because..well….

I’ve never been in the military, I’ve never been to Afghanistan, and I’ve never tried to ‘secure’ an airport in the middle of what is in effect the Worlds Worst Neighborhood.

But, I’ve seen ‘Blackhawk Down’ a buncha times and that makes me an armchair quarterback.

The news is full of footage that has a very last-days-of-Vietnam feel to it. And there is a really, really ugly truth in it: when you’re extracting American lives and assets, and the locals are slowing you down, whose life is more valuable? Being the ‘good guys’, we stop our airlift so no one gets run over by the planes on the runway and we fire rounds over their heads or nudge them along with helicopters. How do you suppose the Russians or Chinese would handle things? Yeah, that’s what I figured too.

Im not sure why anyone who was capable of leaving on their own would have stayed to the last minute like that (unless they were crazy enough to believe President Dementia when he said it wouldn’t be exactly what it turned out to be) when the smart money was hitting the road a good while ago. Who is left? Those poor SOB’s who bought the line that the US would stand by them for their efforts (ask the Hmong how that worked out), and anyone too poor to steal a Toyota pickup and drive in virtually any other direction out of the country.

And now the US is in the unenviable position of either a) having an airlift turn into a fizzled operation that leaves planes, people, and materiel at the mercy of the Taliban, or b) go old school and drop in troops who have been tacitly told it’s okay to kill literally anything that moves onto the runway that doesn’t have wings. Antipersonnel mines, WP grenades, whatever…gloves off as long as the planes can keep taking off. And the resultant media optics will be…bad.

Prediction? C) None of the above – drop in troops, hamstring their ROE, and watch it become BlackHawk Down II: Electric Fubaroo. And blame Trump.

Oh, and there’s now a metric boatload of veterans out there clamoring “What the hell was I over there for in the first place if we’re just gonna roll over like that?”.

Interesting times.

I was going to say that I apologize for the slow posting but then I realized, I actually don’t owe you guys anything so..why apologize?

Just had some distractions lately and then this amazingly absurd heat isn’t helping.

Anyone else notice that it seems like nowadays there’s (supposedly) a shortage of everything? I mean, it seems like overnight we went from a nation that has 98 different types of breakfast cereal on the shelves to a nation where newsmedia keeps telling us that there are shortages of…well..everything.

Global infrastructure logistics failures or some such technobabble being the words du jour. Objectively, I can see a few hiccups.. The Kung Flu reduced manpower (or person-power if you think along those lines) at ports, terminals, and other transport hubs. Ok, makes sense. Some  nations closed their borders, thereby making trade more difficult. Okay, still with ya on that. And there was, naturally, unprecedented demand as people suddenly realized that toilet paper and rice might suddenly vanish. Ok, still seems legit.

So where is all this sky-is-falling media blitz coming from and, more interestingly, why? Are we being groomed to become used to ‘getting by with less’ in some sort of sneak attack on ‘consumerism’? Is it jockeying by our larger trading ‘partners’ (cough*China*cough) to flex a little and see how much the markets cringe when they raise their hand? Or is it just the delayed effect of all the other stuff I mentioned finally catching up?

Personally, I’ve not seen shortages of anything that I use except for, of course, ammo and related materiel. My neighbor has been building a garage and has had a helluva time finding lumber, trusses, etc. But in my world? No…no shortages I’ve noticed. But then again, I tend to live a fairly simple lifestyle at the moment. I buy my groceries, I get new clothes every other year, I fill my vehicle twice a month, and thats about the extent of my shopping.

Still, I’m quite curious about these supposed shortages and if there is something more sinister going on here.

Give the power company access to your smart house and….

Power companies in Texas are remotely raising temperatures inside of some customers’ homes amid the state’s ongoing energy shortage.

…….

English appears to have enrolled the thermostat, operated by the company EnergyHub, an a program known as “Smart Savers Texas,” KHOU 11 notes. The program, which customers have to opt-into, allows power companies to remotely adjust thermostats when energy demands are high.

Upon realizing the details of the program, English says he immediately unenrolled: “I wouldn’t want anybody else controlling my things for me.”

I love the idea of just saying “Shields up!” or “Activate Barn Door Protocol” and have all my locks, shutters, and access points suddenly armoured up. But, as Scotty said in Star Trek, the more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is to jam up the pipes. Anytime you give someone access to your personal server, your personal phone, your personal security system, your personal life….you create a possibility of risk. Sometimes the risks are minimal and are outweighed by the rewards. But…it never seems that way when the risk actually catches up. Moral of the story: don’t give the rest of the world freakin’ access to your critical systems.

The Ninth Circus? Really? That Benitez guy is gonna be the patron saint of Ballistic-Americans at the rate he’s going. The meme AR lowers are sure to be out next week.

Assault weapons have been banned in California since 1989, according to the ruling. The law has been updated several times since it was originally passed.

According to the ruling by US District Judge Roger Benitez of San Diego, the assault weapons ban violates the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms and deprives Californians from owning assault-style weapons commonly allowed in other states. Benitez issued a permanent injunction Friday so the law cannot be enforced.

“Like the Swiss Army Knife, the popular AR-15 rifle is a perfect combination of home defense weapon and homeland defense equipment,” Benitez said in the ruling. “Firearms deemed as ‘assault weapons’ are fairly ordinary, popular, modern rifles.”