• Chicken and dumplings are a staple in my house. They’re something in between a soup and a stew, and I usually get silly and call it Stoup. They’re incredibly easy to make, though it takes a bit of effort until you’ve learned the method. It’s filling, delicious, and you’ll get requests.

    Ingredients for the stoup:

    • 6 to 8 oz of uncooked chicken per person
    • enough water to cover the chicken
    • salt, pepper, oregano, thyme, and rubbed sage to taste
    • 1 medium carrot, diced small
    • 1 small onion, diced small
    • 1 large rib of celery, diced small
    • a teaspoon or so of butter, margarine, or olive oil
    • white wine to deglaze the pan

    Ingredients for the dumplings:

    • 3 cups all-purpose flour
    • 1.5 teaspoons salt
    • 1 cup milk
    • 1 egg

    The chicken for this recipe can be done in two different ways. First, you can use bone-in chicken pieces and make it like “pulled chicken,” meaning you cook it, then remove it from the water and shred it up until it’s the size of bits you like. Second, you can use boneless, skinless chicken breast or thighs, in which case you’re going to cube your chicken into bite size pieces. Regardless of which method you choose to use, you should sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper, then brown it in a cast iron pan (separate from the one you’ll be making the broth in). Make sure to brown all sides, but remember it doesn’t need to be cooked through. The full cooking happens in the water.

    While you’re browning your chicken in batches, add enough water to a pot that it will cover your chicken when it’s added. It’s okay if you don’t get quite enough in the pot; you can add more after. You just want to get enough in there that you can start heating it up to a boil. As you finish browning chicken parts, put them into the water. Make sure there’s enough water to cover all the chicken completely, but not much more, and then lower it from a boil to a simmer. Add in your spices, about a teaspoon of each for now. You can add more later if needed.

    As your chicken is simmering, dice up your carrot, onion, and celery. Add a bit of fat to the pan you cooked the chicken in, and saute your vegetables until the onions are soft and beginning to clarify. Add a tablespoon or so of a dry white wine to the pan, and stir and scrape well with a wooden spoon. All of the stuff you scrape off the bottom of the pan is “fond” and it’s what makes your stoup delicious. Add the veggies and fond to your chicken and broth.

    Make your dumplings. Add the four and salt into a medium bowl. In a separate bowl or measuring cup, whisk together your milk and egg. Add the liquid to the flour, and mix until it forms a dough. This should be a soft and relatively smooth dough, with very elastic qualities. It may be a bit sticky or tacky, but it shouldn’t stick to the counter when you’re kneading.

    Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface until it’s smooth and elastic. Keeping the counter lightly floured at each stage, you should then roll out your dough so it’s as thick as you like your dumplings to be. If you like your dumplings to be fat and fluffy, you’ll want to roll them out to about a half inch thick. If you want them more like noodles (my preference), roll them to under a quarter inch, basically as smooth and thin as you can manage without the dough sticking to the counter. Cut your dumplings into strips, squares, diamonds, or really any shape you like. you can use a dough cutter, or a knife, or even a rolling pizza cutter. Use a bread scraper to lift the noodles off the counter, dust them well with more flour, and let them rest and dry a bit while the rest of the food is readied.

    When your chicken is thoroughly cooked (about an hour, or longer if you like), pull any boned parts out of the broth. Shred, if you like, and return the chicken to the broth. Bring the broth to a low but steady boil, and begin adding the dumplings to it a little at a time. I usually add about a handful of dumplings, then stir and let them begin to cook. This keeps them from sticking to one another. The flour on the outside of the dumplings will help thicken the gravy in your stoup, too. Cook the dumplings until they’re tender. This can take anywhere from five minutes to 20 minutes, depending on how thick they were rolled and how dry they were when you started. They should be solid throughout, with no doughy interior. Thin ones will taste like fresh noodles (which is essentially what they are).

    If you find that your gravy isn’t thick enough, add a little water or cold broth to a tablespoon of cornstarch, stir until well combined, and then add a bit at a time to the simmering stoup. Repeat until you reach the consistency you prefer. Add in any spices you like, and if you want a fancier look, top each bowl with a sprinkle of fresh minced parsley.

    Serve your chicken and dumplings over a pile of mashed potatoes, rice, or on their own in a bowl with a spoon.

            

  • There are a few servers that are too old. There is a need for a few more servers to get a room level redundancy. These things can be expensive.

    As I’m cheap, I’ve been using older servers that accept 3.5″ disk drives. Some except 2 drives, some 6, some could accept more, but the case doesn’t.

    The fix I chose was to move to some four bay NAS enclosures. This is a reasonable size that balances with the network I/O capability.

    These enclosures all take the Mini-ITX motherboard.

    These motherboards are nothing short of amazing. In the middle tier, they have all the things a full-size motherboard has. Some have 4 memory slots, some only 2. They come with 1, 2, 4 Ethernet ports. Some have SFP ports. Some have SATA ports. The number of SATA ports ranges from 1 to 6. Some come with PCIe slots.

    Depending on what your needs are, there is a motherboard for you.

    Since this was going to be a NAS, the motherboard I selected had to have 4 SATA ports, an NVMe slot, and SFP+.

    Yep, this exists. They don’t exist at the price point I wanted to pay. It finally clicked with me. I can just put an SFP+ PCIe card into the machine.

    Thus, I picked a motherboard with 4 SATA, 1 Ethernet, 1 USB3, 1 PCIe slot, enough memory and 2 M.2 slots.

    Some NAS enclosures do not have the opening for a PCI slot, so it was important to pick a case that had the card opening.

    When I got the enclosure I was impressed.

    It is a sturdy, thick steel case. There is no plastic on the entire thing. There are for hot swap disk bays plus mounting space for 2 2.5″ drives. Exactly what I was looking for.

    When I went to install the motherboard, I was shocked to find that the CPU cooler didn’t fit. I ordered a low profile. I’m impressed with that as well.

    I get the board mounted. It looks nice. I go to close the case and the cover won’t fit on. The cover has a folded U channel that goes over the bottom rail of the case to lock the case closed.

    The problem is that there isn’t enough space between the edge of the motherboard and the bottom rail for the U channel to fit.

    My first real use of the right-angle die grinder. I don’t have a cut-off wheel for it, so I just ground the edge away and it worked.

    Of course, I gave myself a frost burn because I was too busy to put gloves on to handle the die grinder.

    Back to the worktable, the cover now goes on. I plug a wireless USB dongle into the USB 3.0 and boot. Nothing.

    It took me a couple of days before I figured it out. The case came with no documentation. The front panel connector has both a USB 3 plug and a USB 3 plug. I plugged both in. You are only supposed to plug in one. Fixed.

    The installation happens, I’m happy. It is fast enough, it is responsive enough. I just need to get it put in place with the fiber configured.

    I take the cover off the back slot. Go to put the PCI card in.

    The (many bad words) slot does not line up with the opening in the back of the case.

    The open in the back is off by 0.8 inches.

    I consider cutting another card opening in the back. That won’t work. The card would be half out of the side of the case.

    I ordered the cutoff wheels for the die grinder, I know I’m going to need them.

    I decided to cut the back opening wider. This will leave an opening that can be taped closed on the PCI side. It allows me to use the existing slot with retaining hardware. I good idea.

    All I need to do is unscrew the standoffs, drill and tap four holes in the right place, and I’m done.

    Except… Those standoffs are pressed into place. They don’t unscrew.

    No problem. I have a set of standoffs. I’ll just cut the existing standoffs off. Drill and tap holes in the right place and use my standoffs.

    Except… My standoffs are the normal length. These standoffs are a custom length. I can’t do that.

    Tools to the rescue

    First stop, the arbor press. It is a small 2 ton press. I have no problems pushing out the standoffs. The press also removes the bulge from removing the standoffs.

    Next step, the milling machine. Using the gage pins, I found the size of the holes is 0.197-0.198. Measuring the standoffs, I get 0.208. I settled on 0.201 for the hole size. I should have gone a 64th smaller.

    There is no way to clamp this thing in the vise. I do have strap clamps. The case is quickly put into position.

    The first hold is located, then drilled. No issues.

    Except I don’t have enough travel to reach the other three holes. I reposition the case on the table and go for it.

    I go back to the arbor press to put the standoffs back in. I don’t have enough height to support the case while installing the standoffs.

    Back to the mill. Square to ends of a hunk of aluminum. Punch a 3/8in hole in it. Work on the mill vise and get the standoffs put back in place.

    In the middle of this, I have an alarm, fearing that I put the standoffs in the wrong place. I do a quick test fit and everything is perfect.

    It takes me a good hour to put the case back together with all the case mods done. It looks good. I’m happy with how it came out.

    Today is search day. I have to find the 8 meter OM-4 fiber for this NAS, and I have to find the box of screws that came with the case for the hard drives. Once I have those, this can go into production.

    I know what to look for on NAS cases. I’ll be building out a few more of these boxes over the coming months. First to replace two boxes which are too old. One for the redundancy.

    The world will be good, or I’ll punch it again and again until it is good.

    P.S. This is filler, the article about Trump’s win in the D.C. District court was taking to long.

            

  • A hearing was held on Friday. I expect the judge to issue an order regarding the Preliminary Injunction on Monday.

    The TRO expired on Friday, so the judge will either issue an order regarding the case. If she is going to go rogue, she will want to have that done on Monday to stop the President from doing his duty. If she wants to respect the constitution, she will issue an order denying the preliminary injunction.

    In my businesses, I sometimes had a bookkeeper. She would receive the bills, make entries in the books, then bring me checks to sign to pay those bills.

    I could also tell her to issue a check to somebody or some business. It was never her job to tell me not to pay that person, nor to verify if that entity was supposed to get the money. It was my job to make sure that when I told her to pay an entity, that entity should be paid, and how much.

    She was supposed to tell me “no”, only if it would run afoul of the law or if we didn’t have the cash for it. If it meant we would be short later, she still did it.

    The Bureau of Fiscal Service (BFS) is that bookkeeper for the Federal Government. They are tasked with making payments. They are not tasked with verifying that the payment should be made.

    The decision to make a payment comes from other entities within the bureaucracy.

    A federal agency will develop, certify, and send a “payment file” to BFS through the Secure Payment System (SPS) with instructions on who is to be paid, when, and how much.
    —State of New York v. Donald J. Trump, No. 1:25-cv-01144, slip op. at 6 (S.D.N.Y.)

    These payment files are checked against a list of “don’t pay”. If the recipient of the payment is on any of those lists, the payment is held. The agency that sent the payment file is responsible for determining if the payment is proper.

    In the best of worlds, this would mean that no payments went to bad actors.

    Now consider the case of the President issuing an Executive Order stopping payments to purple people eaters. There are dozens of agencies that send money to purple people eaters. All of those agencies are responsible for stopping payment files from going through to pay purple people eaters.

    The BFS receives a payment file to send a payment to a PPE. If that PPE is not on the do not pay list, they will send the payment to that PPE. If the PPE is on a no pay list, the payment is held and the agency is informed.

    If that agency sends back “pay it”, the BFS pays it. And the PPE gets money, regardless of what the President ordered.

    When the bureaucracy is working with the President, every agency would have heard the “stop payments to PPEs” and would have done so. Any payment files that were already sent might be called back or stopped. If the BFS flags a payment as going to a PPE, everybody says “good job”.

    If the bureaucracy is at odds with the President, they ignore the EO and do whatever the hell they want. If BFS flags any payments, they just order them paid.

    If some agencies are attempting to obey the President, there can still be others that are not.

    Worse, in many cases, contracts are let and budgeted. Some low level GS-2 with TDS can order a payment on a contract they control, and it just gets paid. Even if all of his bosses have told him “no”.

    The President has ordered that no more payments to PPEs be made. To make this happen, he can either send people who are willing to obey him to every agency and every desk where somebody can send a payment to a PPE.

    Or, he can send a few people to the BFS, and they can analyze each payment file as it comes in, check to see if it is a PPE payment.

    Watching the bookkeepers doesn’t mean that the bookkeepers are doing something “wrong”, it is just the proper chock point in the flow of money.

    The argument being made by these former treasury officials is that “career officials” are non-partisan and can be trusted to do the right thing.

    For decades, BFS has been staffed by nonpartisan career employees led by nonpartisan career official…

    There appears to be a claim without evidence that these workers are nonpartisan. At least they left off the “nonpartisan” when describing the fiscal assistant secretary, their boss.

    They claim that all these nonpartisan career employees have undergone a security screening. Screening is one of those weasel words we see people use when they want the reader to think one thing when it isn’t true.

    When I purchase a firearm, I fill out a 4473 and a “background check” is performed. This is a type of “security screening”. Having undergone a “thorough security screening” does not mean that this person has a clearance. If they had clearances, the brief would have said they have clearances.

    This is intended to make it seem that the DOGE team’s actual clearances are not as thorough or complete as the BFS security screening. The reality is that any real clearance is likely better than the screenings these people got.

    There is more, I’ll leave you with Grok’s explanation, it isn’t bad.

    The document you’ve uploaded is a legal brief titled “BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE FORMER TREASURY DEPARTMENT OFFICIALS IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFFS’ MOTION FOR A PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION” in a case before the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Case No. 25-CV-01144). Here’s a detailed explanation:
    Case Overview
    • Parties Involved: The State of New York and others are the plaintiffs, suing Donald J. Trump, in his official capacity as President, and others as defendants.
    • Context: The case revolves around actions by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, which has been granted access to the Bureau of Fiscal Services (BFS) payment systems within the U.S. Department of Treasury. This access is controversial and forms the basis of the legal challenge.
    Amici Curiae (Friends of the Court)
    • Interest: The brief is submitted by former Treasury officials who have extensive experience with the BFS payment systems. They argue that their expertise provides valuable insight into the potential risks of the situation.
    • Purpose: Their brief supports the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction, which is a court order to stop an action temporarily until the case is decided.
    Summary of Argument
    • Background: The brief outlines how DOGE, under Musk’s leadership, sought access to BFS systems, which manage federal payments, after resistance from career Treasury officials. This access was purportedly to cut federal spending by stopping certain payments.
    • Concerns: The amici express significant concerns regarding:
      • Political Interference: The risk of politically motivated decisions to withhold payments to entities or individuals based on policy disagreements.
      • Cybersecurity and Privacy: The potential for breaches involving sensitive personal and financial data.
      • Operational Risks: The danger of disrupting the payment system, which could delay or halt critical payments like Social Security.
    Detailed Argument
    I. Role of BFS
    • Functions: BFS is responsible for disbursing federal payments, processing about 1.3 billion transactions annually, and managing sensitive information like Social Security Numbers and bank details.
    • Process: Agencies certify payment files which BFS then processes, ensuring funds go to the right recipients without determining eligibility, which is the agencies’ role.
    II. Risks of DOGE Access
    • Illegal Withholding: DOGE could illegally block payments based on political motives, bypassing the usual checks by career civil servants.
    • Data Security: Access by DOGE personnel could compromise sensitive data, leading to privacy issues or misuse of information for competitive advantage.
    • Operational Security: There’s a risk of system vulnerabilities due to inadequate vetting or training of DOGE personnel, increasing chances of cyber threats.
    • System Integrity: Even without malicious intent, changes or interference could disrupt the timely processing of payments, impacting trust and reliability.
    III. Limitations of “Read-Only” Access
    • Ineffectiveness: Even limited access could enable DOGE to influence payment decisions through existing personnel, posing similar risks as full access.
    Conclusion
    • The amici argue that the access granted to DOGE officials poses significant risks to the integrity of federal payment systems, advocating for the court to grant the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction to prevent further access or misuse.
    Key Points:
    • Legal Implications: The brief highlights potential violations of law, like illegal impoundment, where funds are withheld contrary to congressional intent.
    • Historical Context: It underscores the traditional non-political management of BFS by career officials, contrasting this with the current political oversight.
    • Public Trust: The integrity of payment systems is crucial for public trust and the functioning of government programs.
    This brief is a call for judicial intervention to preserve the non-political, secure, and reliable operation of federal payment systems against what the amici perceive as inappropriate political interference.

    — Grok

            

  • Not what I intended to write about. The Court has surprised me, again.

    Snope and Ocean State Tactical are both distributed for the conference of 2/21/2025.

    We will near nothing about these cases before then.

    This puts these cases on track for arguments in the new term. Those oral arguments could be as early as October. If the cases are heard in October, we could have an opinion by December.

    We didn’t lose this one, the Court took a time out.

            

  • Hey all, I’ve been considering a variety of topics for the next few weeks. With spring rapidly coming, I could talk about gardening, and explain how to start seeds indoors, and all the stuff that goes along with making a functioning garden that will provide actual food. I could write about raising chickens (and/or other livestock, though I have less experience with non-chicken livestock) and what that takes. I could go into how one makes staples, like bread, cheese, butter, and the like. I could talk about mending and making clothing, blankets, and such.

    What do you all want to hear about? My gut says go with gardening, but I also want to write what is of interest and useful to y’all.

            

  • At the speed of light?

    The State of New York files a suit to stop DOGE from doing its job at 2100 on a Friday night. By 0100 Saturday, a judge has issued a TRO stopping the President from performing his duties as defined by the Constitution.

    The DoJ files suit in New York to stop the state from tipping off illegal aliens when their DMV records are accessed. The court schedules the initial conference for May 14th, 90 days.

    NY v. Trump

    The state is now claiming that the state’s bank account numbers and other sensitive financial information was disclosed to members of DOGE in violation of numerous laws and regulations

    Never mind that “members of DOGE” are employees of the United States of America. Just like any other government agency.

    The state claims this these DOGE members are “unauthorized”.

    There is no proof that they are “unauthorized.” They are just outsiders.

    Why Do You Make It So Hard? Qt ORM

    The current magic term for designing applications is Model/View/Control, or MVC. With an MVC design, you have three different aspects to any object. The model of the data. The view of the data. And how the data should be manipulated.

    Consider an order for an item. The order has header information, line information, and meta information. The header information is in the “order” table. Each line is in the “order_line” table. The order_line table contains a unique id, the order_id, the product_id, the number of items, and the cost per item.

    The View of the order would show the line number, the product name, the SKU for the product, the count, the cost per, and the extended cost.

    The logic would make sure that we don’t attempt to send out more items than we have, and other things of that sort.

    The control works on the data, it doesn’t worry about how to display it.

    So what is an ORM? An ORM is an object relation model. It is how you describe the database, how you access the database, how you relate different parts of the database.

    Qt doesn’t have an ORM. Instead, it has a database API. All table creation. All data access is done by constructing and executing SQL queries. Not difficult, but not an ORM.

    And for goodness sake, please give me a method of defining tables such that when I alter that table definition, it alters the database to match. GRRR, I want my Django ORM.

    Why do they make it so difficult? Link’s in views

    I have a simple need. When the user clicks on a link in the text display, a signal is emitted with the href. What do I have now? I can’t even get the dang widget to size itself properly. And my events are limited to “Cell x, y was clicked.”

    This frustration has existed for a bit.

    Tick Tock, it keeps running

    Pretty graphs aside, it is fun to see “accurate” times showing.

    I have two issues. The first is that I do not know how accurate the PPS is, and the second is I don’t know what the fudge fact for the KPPS processing should be. I can get the delay from the chip to the GPIO pin. What I do not know is how long it takes from the pin being activated and the interrupt being processed.

    This would require me to spend more time than I want to get the hardware specifications for interrupt processing. Then I would need to figure out the time it takes to process the interrupt. My mind keeps going in circles over this.

    The biggest issue I have is that I want it to be more accurate. I’m not sure if I can do that with this equipment.

    SCOTUS

    The Court is still granting cert. Our cases have been silent. We aren’t going to have an opinion before 2026.

    Question of the Week

    What do you think the NPCs will pivot to after “constitutional crisis?” We had “destroying democracy” and now “constitutional crisis.” What is next?

            

  • You might have heard that the DoJ is suing Hochul and James. This is not quite true. They are being sued in their official capacity. So the Governor, Attorney General, and head of the DMV of New York state are being sued.

    What is the suit about?

    New York will give a license to illegal aliens. I am not sure how that works, but they do.

    The license indicates that the person is an illegal alien. As an illegal alien, they have extra rights under New York law.

    In particular, the “Green Light” law requires the DMV to inform the illegal alien anytime the feds request information about them from the DMV.

    In 2019, New York amended its Vehicle and Traffic Law to include a provision known as the “Green Light Law.”
    See N.Y. Veh. & Traf. § 201.12. The Green Light Law generally bars the sharing of New York State Department of Motor Vehicles (“DMV”) records or information (e.g., addresses, vehicle registrations, identification photos) with federal immigration agencies. See id. § 201.12(a). And it requires New York’s DMV Commissioner to promptly tip off any illegal alien when a federal immigration agency has requested his or her information. See § 201.12(b). As its supporters and sponsors made clear, the Green Light Law was passed to directly impair the enforcement of the federal immigration laws in New York. And those lawmakers have achieved their objective.

    Things are happening.

            

  • The past couple of weeks have been an absolute whirlwind. So much so that I really don’t have anything specific to write about. Part of the problem I’m having is that when I write the night before (like I am now), it might be out of date by morning. That’s what happened last Wednesday. I don’t like it when that happens.

    Let’s see. First, I’ve been very happy to see what’s going on with DOGE. I have long held the opinion that “smaller government is better government” and DOGE seems to be doing just that. I’m confused as all get out over people weeping about “the poor federal workers who got canned” when those “poor” federal workers got 8 months of salary to play on. Most of them will have jobs by the end of the month, and that 8 months of salary is theirs to keep for holiday or Christmas or whatever. There’s nothing poor about them. I never got 8 months (or even 8 days) of salary when getting fired.

    NH had a bill, HB 283, put forward. If you’d like to look at it yourself, you can find it (and lots of commentary from pundits) here. Basically, as I read it, it says that NH schools will (if the bill passes) no longer require world languages, arts and music, engineering and tech, computer science, and personal financial literacy in order to graduate. The number of credits remains the same. What I read, when I looked at the bill, was that NH wanted to focus on having students who could read, write, and do ‘rythmatic, first and foremost, and so those were made most important and required. I see that schools that are struggling to put out kids who can do those very basic things can now focus on just those basic things. What the bill does NOT say is that those other subjects are being removed from the school.

    However, the NEA and other Dem groups are basically telling their folks that the Republicans want to take all those subjects out of schools. They have ads on Facebook and other places. I keep going onto them and asking people, have you actually read the bill? Most of them very obviously have not, and are simply taking their talking points and moving on. The pearl clutching is horrifying.

    I am less irritated by those who did read the bill and have constructive commentary to make about it. It’s been suggested by a friend that less requirements means people will not bother taking courses on art and engineering and such. I find that unlikely. Every high school kid I know (and I know lots of them, because my own kids are just barely out of high school) takes subjects that are not required. They take art, or “language arts in comic books” (a surprisingly robust and very good English course, I might add), or whatever other equivalent to “underwater basket weaving” there is. Art and music aren’t leaving the schools, anymore than the football team is. There’s a ton of opposition to the bill, so I am guessing it won’t pass, but I don’t see it as the major threat that the Left obviously does.

    (more…)

            

  • Never attribute to malice, that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, Never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake., Your enemy is not stupid.

    In 2016, I was listening to Ben Shapiro, he had a hate on for Trump. He would often say something to the effect, “The people who think Trump is playing 4D chess are wrong.”

    I think I liked his analysis better when he was anti-Trump. He is all in this time around.

    I do think that Trump was attempting to play chess during his first term. Unfortunately, people kept taking his pieces and knocking over the board. He lost.

    Trump 2.0 is moving fast. He is moving so fast that the left can’t keep up. We can’t keep up. I wake up, go on X and look for what happened in the last 8 hours. And I’m often surprised.

    As Second Amendment activists, we know exactly how the game will be played. We know that states that are anti-gun are going to pass regulations to infringe on The People. We know that the rogue lower courts will rule in favor of the state. We know that any relief will be blocked. We know that it will take years to get even one case decided.

    Since June 2022, we have not seen a single 2A win. Every win in the lower courts has been halted at the circuit level. Every “temporary restraining order” has been upheld against us. Every preliminary injunction has been stayed, against us.

    We have not won a single battle yet.

    That doesn’t mean we aren’t winning. It means that this is a war, not a battle. We have to fight. We shall go to the end. We shall fight in the Ninth, we shall fight in the Seventh and Second, we shall fight in the Forth, we shall fight to the Supreme Court. We shall never surrender. With apologies to Winston Churchill.

    Trump 2.0 came into office with a bang. The left was working hard to show a “peaceful transfer of power”, so they could club the right with the events of J6th.

    But Donald hit the ground running. I believe he signed over 200 Executive Orders on his first day. Held multiple press conferences and attended a ball. I’m tired just thinking about his day.

    There were surprises in those Executive Orders. The biggest for me was that everything was done right. When he announced the formation of DOGE, I was skeptical.

    I “knew” that it would be challenged and DOGE would be devolved because it didn’t come through Congress.

    I was wrong. He out played me as I looked over his shoulder. He didn’t create DOGE out of thin air. He renamed an existing agency. He then told the new agency to go do their job, with Elon leading it.

    The promises he made, I expected to take months to accomplish. He was keeping promises within minutes of taking office. And not in ceremonial ways.

    He issued an Executive Order giving the US AG 30 days to report what to do about the anti-2A situation within the Federal government. Last month, I would have considered this to be a shot fired over the bow of the enemy. I would have expected results sometime in late 2026.

    Today, I expect the report to hit his desk in 20 some days. I expect actions to happen the same day. This is the speed that Trump is moving at.

    As I said, in the Second Amendment advocacy space, we know what is going to happen. How do we know? We’ve seen it too many times in the past.

    Trump 2.0 is out playing the left in so many areas. Why should I assume he messed up with these court cases?

    When the state is fighting The People, they want things to move as slowly as possible.

    The case in New York was filed at 9pm on Friday. The TRO was in place by 1AM Saturday morning. The TRO was modified by 5PM Monday.

    Having set out the limits, the Trump administration has provided documentation to the court by 4PM on Tuesday to make sure that DOGE people will still have access. They have taken the “loophole” opening and driven a train through it.

    They are obeying the letter of the TRO while doing what needs to be done. They are preparing to take this to the next level.

    I believe they will attempt to combine multiple cases from rogue courts, headed by political provocateurs. These combined cases will be taken straight to the Supreme Court.

    To put a since of speed on this, the case I’m following is averaging 10 new docket entries per day. At this pace, I should be tired of this case in the next 2 days.

            

  • If you watched the DOGE commercials on Sunday, you might have been exposed to a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner.

    Here is a slightly better version: