Random News and Notes 31 July

On this date in:

• 1715 – A major hurricane hits the Florida coast sinking 10 Spanish treasure ships and killing nearly 1000 sailors. The ships were carrying about $400 million worth of gold and silver.
• 1777 – 19-year-old French aristocrat, Marie-Joseph Paul Roch Yves Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, accepts a commission as a major-general in the Continental Army—without pay.
• 1790 – The US Patent Office opens.
• 1904 – The Trans Siberian railroad is completed. It runs from Moscow to Vladivostok on Russia’s Pacific coast.
• 1917 – The 3rd battle of Ypres starts. The Battle also known as Passchendaele, for the village, and the ridge surrounding it, lasted until October and led to some 300,000 british and 260,000 german casualties.
• 1964 – Ranger 7, an unmanned U.S. lunar probe, takes the first close-up images of the moon, 4,308 in total, before it impacts with the lunar surface northwest of the Sea of Clouds.
• 1971 – The crew of Apollo 15 drives 17 miles across the lunar surface in the Lunar Roving Vehicle. The crew stayed on the moon for nearly three days.
• 1975 – James Riddle Hoffa, one of the most influential American labor leaders of the 20th century, is officially reported missing after he failed to return home the previous night.

We start today’s news in North Africa. In an update to an item from yesterday, the Spanish government has finally reacted to the invasion of Ceuta. HAHA, just kidding. It’s gotten worse. Illegals have now overrun the Spanish exclave of Melilla, some 140 miles east of Ceuta.

Italy, Austria, Finland, Sweden and Denmark have all called for the suspension of Spain from the Schengen agreement. The Schengen agreement allows visa free travel across wide parts of the EU.

There may be more going on here however. Both Ceuta and Melilla are exclaves – owned by Spain, but not contiguous with Spain – on the North African Mediterranean coast. I have seen it suggested that Morocco wants them back and are using this invasion to make them. We’ll see I guess.

Records obtained by Judicial Watch show Virginia removed 6,531 declared noncitizens from voter rolls, with Prince William County leading at 710 and Virginia Beach at 293. The data covers only self-attested noncitizens, leaving questions about how they registered and if any voted, amid debates over similar issues in places like Pennsylvania.

This is a direct result of the motor voter law bullshite from 1993. I also think it is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to non-citizen voter registration.

The National Rifle Association launched a recruitment video featuring former Miss Dallas Taylor Lowery. The ad is, well watch:

Before we go any further, in the spirit of full disclosure, I am a lifetime voting member of the NRA. I did not pay for the membership, I won it at an Army competition back in the mid 1990’s. That out of the way, here are my thoughts on the matter.

Look, I have no real issue with Gun Bunnies per se. They have their place. Is it an NRA ad? I dunno, but I am not all that wound up about it. I do have issues with the organization itself however. They supported the bumpstock ban after the Harvest music festival shooting in Vegas. There are better, more active and far more successful 2A groups to give money to. The Firearms Policy Coalition is one. Gun Owners of America is another.

A document from Friends of Socialist China has emerged that has the signatures of dozens of DSA members, some directly tied to Zo

hran Mamdani. In the document there is a pledge to uphold and defend the CCP’s version of socialism.

I am speechless.