āWeāre at war, weāre at war!ā the hat squealed happily. He made whooshing jet plane noises for a full thirty seconds.
āThis is not a good thing,ā the hair said.
āSince when did you get all bleeding heart fag about it?ā
āIāve told you before, Iām an isolationist.ā
āAnd Iām a classist, what of it?ā
āI get to sleep, like maybe two hours a night,ā Donald grumbled, pulling off his kente cloth hair bonnet and sat up in bed, āCan you two just shut up?ā
āThis is serious, Donald,ā the hair said.
āThis is serious, Donald,ā the hat said.
āOK, fine,ā Donald sighed.
āWe shouldnāt be involved in Iran,ā the hair said. āLet Israel take care of them.ā
āAnd I just hate Arabs,ā the hat said.
āThey are Persians,ā the hair said, exasperation leaking from each tendril.
āWell, I donāt like them either, then.ā
Donaldās head fell forward and he jerked awake.
āI do think we shouldnāt be fighting a war on two fronts, though,ā the hat said.
āWhat two wars?ā the hair demanded.
āCalifornia,ā Donald said sleepily.
āWe are not at war with California,ā the hair said.
āOf course we are,ā the hat said.
āThey started it,ā Donald said. āI just wanted to deport Mexicans and they wouldnāt let me.ā
āOnce we get Newsom all the fight will go out of them,ā the hat said. āI still say we drone him at The French Laundry. Tasting menu, fucking tasting menu, goddamn rip-off is what it is.ā
āWe are not droning a Governor; weāre not Obama,ā the hair said.
āWe still have to deal with Iran,ā the hat insisted.
āWake me up when thereās some good bomb-sight footage,ā Donald said, sinking back into bed.

I’m oddly comfortable with declaring war on California.
I want to expel them from the union. Hopefully no shoots need be fired. But definitely need to put up a wall to prevent the denizens of CA from escaping before we can expel the state.
Of course, every military base remains US territory (might need to annex some corridors between them)….let CA defend themselves.
Hey! I resemble that escaping remark!
But then we’ll remember California has oil and invade them to secure access.
So, they become an occupied territory and not a state.
I suppose we could speed up the process by demoting them without actually kicking them out of the union.
I’ve floated that same plan of revoking statehood and making them a territory before.
They can have 29 Palms.
#metoo
I wouldn’t be surprised if they move to secede, particularly if SCOTUS lets Trump continue with the troops and deportations, particularly if Newsom gets the nomination for president and loses to Vance.
We’ve always been at war with West California.
exasperation leaking from each tendril.
[chef’s kiss]
As with so much SF…. “…. Why?!?” is all that springs to mind.
And given it has been 30 minutes… I think The Hair decided to troll the press a bit <a href="https://townhall.com/tipsheet/jeff-charles/2025/06/18/trump-slaps-down-reporter-for-asking-the-dumbest-question-ever-about-iran-n2659028"here… “Oh, please tell us exactly what time you’re going to strike, sir!” Heh.
Sigh. here (again, because I’m stupid and unobservant)… not as if y’all couldn’t figure out the link, mind you.
I gotta say, that sounds like the ‘fucking around’ stage of FAFO…
Was his aide able to tweet that with a straight face?
“Nobody knows what I’m going to do”
That was my schizophrenic ex-wife, right there.
Droning Newsom seems like overkill. A more precise attack would be to light a cigarette close to his greasy head. Or being California, maybe a bong would be more appropriate and would provide plausible deniability.
Fentanyl laced meth seems plausible too. Wouldn’t surprise me if any and all of the political elite in this state have wild meth parties. Or cocaine. Whichever.
“Oh… he must have gotten a bad batch from his dealer! Don’t do drugs, kids!”
If your goal is fixing California by removing the people causing the problems there you’re going to end up somewhere between Hitler and Mao in body count.
Truth.
And?
Sad but true. At some point the people voting for these clowns need to wake up.
And?
Maybe we need to start thinking about how to limit the franchise again?
If people don’t value economic and personal liberty, nothing can stop the slide into serfdom and poverty.
At some point the people voting for these clowns need to wake up.
Waking the dead? The undead? The braindead?
Every conceivable way of limiting the franchise has been tried. They all suck.
As has been suggested here the least bad way to wake people up is to have incentives. Make tax day the day before Election Day. No withholding. Everybody writes a check. That would fix a hell of a lot more than just high taxes.
Here is the candidate spiel for Suthen‘s suggestion: I promise to make other people pay and you will not!
Jaime, are the people really voting for these clowns? The state was ground zero for ballot harvesting. And who knows how many non-citizens vote there.
Hitler + Mao, with a side of Stalin.
Accidental asphyxiation during an extreme BDSM session…
I wouldn’t blink an eye.
Not my thing, but you do you.
Destroying Angel in the duxelles.
I have been to CA. I have seen their oil wells. To call them chickenshit would be an understatement. Wall ’em off.
Also, Ed is correct. People who do not value liberty will forever wear chains. I had a lengthy talk with my son yesterday about that. He finds it deplorable the way he sees so many people raising their children. They never suffer. They never take chances. They never face consequences. They never have to make hard choices. The product of that are pathetic creatures with feeble character and miserable lives. Why would anyone do that to their own children?
I have seen their oil wells.
What you haven’t seen is wells tapping the Monterey shale formation: [from wiki]
You are right, I have not. Didnt know that.
My wife thinks I’m too tough on my kids, but I want my kids to be emotionally and mentally strong along with having a strong moral backbone. I want them to work for what they want and realize that life isn’t fair sometimes and you can either bitch about it or proceed and persevere.
Many of my peers are raising their children to be free from risks and consequences and while that may be keeping them safe, it’s also creating fickle ass kids who will never know the satisfaction of achieving your goals or perseverance. They want their children to be free of hurt feelings but not ever thinking that the world frankly doesn’t give a shit about your feelings.
Because theyāre emotionally and mentally arrested at age 18 and havenāt learned that adversity produces character. Their heads are full of therapy speak and the latest rendition of dr Spock, and the result is that they see neglectful parenting as good and discipline as abuse.
The participant trophy generation has come of age.
Some of it may be the parents, but I think a lot of it is social media. My son thinks everything should be perfect, things should just work out without any obstacles, that the world should revolve around his belly button, that people should cater to him, and if they don’t there’s something wrong with the world. That would all be nice, but it’s not the real world. But social media makes it easy to find like minded people with the same attitude.
My daughter on the other hand makes her own opportunities. If something doesn’t work out, she’ll keep trying. She’s generally not on social media. In fact yesterday she mocked me for commenting on Twitter. “What are you doing? Shouting into the void?”
Same parents, same schools, same upbringing. Totally different results.
My brothers and I were alike in some ways but totally different on goals. They were more go with the flow while I was trying to make things go in my direction.
A lot of it is people waiting too long to have kids. When you don’t have a kid until you are 40+, you are putting all of your eggs in one basket, so to speak, as you are not likely to have another. Also, you have moved to a point where there is little friction in your own life, and that rubs off on the upbringing, in that you have the ability to drive them around, take time off for them, and all of the other things that keep them from disappointment. And money, too, to buy the things that make them shut up.
They don’t have to fight with siblings for the last bit of dinner, share a room, take care of their shit or the older one will just take it, and so on. Mommy and Daddy make sure everything is OK.
āIn fact yesterday she mocked me for commenting on Twitter. āWhat are you doing? Shouting into the void?ā
A surprise Daily Ray, that is.
Pro-2A Federal Pre-emption clauses?
How long would those survive before being repealed later? (Assuming the pre-emption for suppressors gets back on the bill and passes)
š¤
And how would that work when colliding with, say New York’s ban on threaded barrels? Would you need a court case to say that banning the mechanism for attaching suppressors conflicts with the law forcing the unbanning of suppressors?
The big booty-full bill is dogshit, but with silencers, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and AOWs being moved to Title I…that’d be an okay consolation prize. I’d somehow make do.
Same.
I dislike a lot of the garbage in the bill. But I’ve long sought repeal of the NFA. Cutting it down to “Machine Guns” alone would be a big slice of salami in that direction.
That we have to dicker about repealing infringements, all of which are strictly forbidden, is…sad.
Sad as it may be, retaking it all in one fell swoop isn’t realistic, so one piece at a time will have to do.
You are right, of course. My ideal would be to shit-can all of the infringements and prosecute the people who have been inflicting them. That’s just not going to happen.
It wasnāt a fucking oversight. They did it on purpose.
Those laws are doubly unconstitutional – under the 2A, and as violations of the dormant Commerce Clause. Congress, though, is apparently perfectly happy to let them stand.
Eh, I will take California over any state below the mason dixon line, as fucked as it is.
It may have just been Eureka, but California gave off massive “suffering through poverty” vibes while I was there. Separating the human from the natural, the human environments just felt poor, like the worst neighborhoods I lived in because we couldn’t afford better. It was in the behavior of the people, the treatment of the buildings, the actions of the retail establishments, the gated wall around the Holiday Inn lot…. etc
What I should have said was, that the only region that gave off a worse vibe was the Navajo Reservation. Both seemed like they were just waiting to die.
South of the Maxon-Dixon has always been more alive for those regions I’ve visited.
Yup. Maybe itās just the areas I lived in and visited, but I left my time in the Bay Area wondering what all the hype was about.
It seems like a place with a bunch of somewhat interesting spots to visit and a whole lot of nothing in between. Monterey was fun. Yosemite was cool. Napa was okay. The touristy parts of SF were alright. Everywhere else was either desolate or bleakly metropolitan.
To each their own, but as I am not a conservative by any means it just isnāt for me. I have family in Tennessee and Alabama so I have been down there often enough. I am a libertarian and am not happy with either end of the spectrum.
Also, eureka has been poor forever, even when Republicans ran the state.
Eureka has had a tough go of it since we outsourced our logging to Canada. Apparently legalization of marijuana has also been a big blow to the local economy too. It’s hard to beat the weather and the scenery in California though.
I would think state income tax rates would matter to a libertarian.
They do, just as much as parking does.
Ah yes, can’t beat that California parking.
I had a LOT of fun when I lived in TX.
Admittedly, seven of those years I was living with an Asian stripper 10 years younger than me…
Go on.
Something about TX and OK that I didn’t appreciate until I moved to NY is how honest* people were. I don’t know if CA has the equivalent.
*There is a tradition of a sort of speaking that I think also in Japan, though I don’t know how explicit they are about it in the Land of the Rising Sun. There is an honest way of lying and a deceitful way of lying that is distinguished by the vocal register. It’s very similar to someone being excessively polite or formal. It is a way of communicating that Person A saying something untrue, and it would be very helpful if Person B played along and everyone can pretend that things are fine. So when someone makes an excuse to not attend an event using the “I am politely lying to you” register, it is downright rude to try and remove that purported obstacle to their attendance.
Is your premise that the New York manner of speaking has only one form of lying? That is, just lying as opposed to polite lying?
She dropped out of Sarah Lawrence to move with her drummer boyfriend to make it big in the Austin scene. They didn’t, unfortunately.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo1myePA-Zg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaMyk55evFA (direct quote from Ed Wood in the video)
In the Japanese I’m familiar with it would be the use of formal forms and set phrases in certain situations.
The literal set phrase is often the exact opposite of the meaning.
For example, “Please take your time” means GTF out my way.
UnCiv, AFAICT, yes.
Or at least, they don’t overtly communicate “I am lying” while they are lying. Or I haven’t learned to hear it.
@Not Adahn – I don’t disagree. When we lie, it’s because we don’t want to reveal the truth.
My times in California were generally in the Rocklin, with a vacation to San Fran for the girlfriend. It was very eye opening to see every billboard in the Rocklin area was for one of three things:
1) Medical Marijuana cards
2) Plastic Surgery
3) Home Hydroponics
We did make excursions to Sacramento as well as Santa Rosa to hit up some locations. But overall… never had a desire to go back. In general, the random person came across as empty or fake. The difference is that southerners (in general) are willing to leave me alone, and allow me to defend myself.
You must have been in a different part of the South. The first question out of every person I met in the South was “what church you go to?” Second question was “It’s [random day of the week], why aren’t you dressed for church?”
Just humor them, they are harmless.
“I go to church obscurica. I am dressed like this because I have to go cut my mother’s grass today. Have a blessed day brother.”
ZWAK:
I’ve been asked that just as frequently up north as down south (both the JWs and LDS have fairly strong populations here, and are usually out and about knocking on doors or setting up stands in public). I have no issue explaining that I was raised Catholic but broke from the Church in my teens, that usually stops further questions along those lines.
Also, my attire flags me as outside the gentleman class, but [most of] my speech patterns put me back in it (sorry, I have no issues with vulgarities in spoken communication).
āThe first question out of every person I met in the South was āwhat church you go to?ā
You get that a lot in Texas, where I grew up and later worked for 8 years.
āSecond question was āItās [random day of the week], why arenāt you dressed for church?ā
I have never in my life heard that.
āItās [random day of the week], why arenāt you dressed for church?ā
In honor of ZWAK, Iāll wear khaki shorts and a t shirt to church tonight. And nothing else will happen.
California is below the Mason Dixon line.
You’re welcome to it. Enjoy the descent into barbarism.
California is one of those places with gorgeaus land shame about the inhabitants.
You called?
Its fucking beautiful here, 70 degrees and an ocean breeze,
Historically that tends to result in conquest and genocide.
WTF is wrong over at SIG?
I just got my assignment to CRO a stage at A7, but they have me down to be doing that on the day I’m scheduled to shoot.
Fucking over the competition shooters has been SIG’s thing for a long time.
The absolute worst part is I really don’t have any product of theirs that I want and that they’ll sell to me as a NYer, so my 40% discount is going to be wasted on something like a box of ammo.
They won’t sell me a gun unless there is a SKU that has NY complaint mags included. And they don’t have SKUs for “gun only, no mags.” And all of their semiauto rifles are NY-style assault weapons. Even the CA compliant ones.
I gotta say, as much as I rag on SIG, the problem here sounds like New York.
Although…maybe a scope? Some of the SIG scopes are quite good.
That’s a good idea.
Interesting.
Worth the paper the condemnation is printed on, but interesting. OTH, on Aug 6th and 9th this same government will spend lots of effort explaining and holding ceremonies about how awful nuclear weapons are.
Japan condemns Israeli strikes against Iran and urges restraint
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/06/13/japan/japan-condemn-israel-strikes/
I don’t understand it what’s in it for Japan at this point. I might actually have to give OMB credit.
Nippon Steel Completes Purchase of U.S. Steel After Reaching Security Deal With Trump Administration
https://www.wsj.com/business/nippon-steel-finalizes-purchase-of-u-s-steel-after-reaching-security-deal-with-trump-administration-5d012a2e?st=tcQjo7&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Avoiding tariffs?
And transportation. But just do some kind of JV?
My expertise is financial services so this is way outside my specialty.
My now-regular “let’s see if I can make Brooks buy this” daily entry:
C5-Swapped 1990 Volvo 740 GLE Wagon āVolvetteā Track Car
That’s a sleeper if I ever saw one…
https://www.motor1.com/news/700037/honda-odyssey-tesla-model-s-sleeper/
He needs to find wheels that look worse and more beat up.
āThe van has a massive gap between the dash and the base of the windshield that will need more than a metal plate covering it. It pops up during heavy acceleration, and the vehicle also lacks most of the Model Sās interior, but thatās a project for later. The minivanās rear doors no longer slide, and a bungee cord is holding the hood down.ā
I laughed.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King for getting me tomorrow off of work.
Bless your heart, NA.
Blayss yer heaaarrt!
That kind of tonal? š
California is a big state. “In conclusion, California is a land of contrasts. Thank you.”