I have pinned this post to the top of my blog. It is to remind people of what many of our opponents want. Alison Aires wants a tyrannical government. They want summary execution for private possession of firearms.
Using anti-inflammatory drugs and steroids to relieve pain could increase the chances of developing chronic pain, according to researchers from McGill University and colleagues in Italy.
Their research puts into question conventional practices used to alleviate pain. Normal recovery from a painful injury involves inflammation and blocking that inflammation with drugs could lead to harder-to-treat pain.
Growing up we didn’t have any pain killers in the house. I did not even take an aspirin until sometime after college. Yes, I had anesthesia for dental procedures, but nothing afterward.
In later years I had sports and related injuries but almost never took pain medications. And some interesting things did not happen.
I injured my left knee playing tennis in my early 30’s. As a result, the medial meniscus was removed. I had bone-on-bone action from then on. The orthopedic doctor told me I probably would be looking at a total knee replacement in 20 years. Nope. I’m still using the same knee for hiking, shooting action pistol, and shoveling tons of dirt for my underground bunker.
It is not that I am just pushing through the pain. Unless I push things with really long hikes or carrying heavy load I don’t feel any pain in that knee. It does have a lower threshold that the undamaged knee. But I still have endurance that exceeds most of my five children.
Barb calls me amazingly durable. I feel pain sometimes. But I almost never take medication for it, and it goes away and I heal up quickly.
There are some exceptions. A few years ago, I had a pain in my shoulder. I tried some anti-inflammatory drugs, but it did not seem to help beyond the short term. The doctor finally got an MRI. I had a bone spur tearing up the soft tissue. They removed the bone spur. Then without pain medications and just a few days of rest, I was back to shooting again.
Xenia and Maddy are exceptions. Xenia competes in long distance running events. Maddy is a competitive dancer.
Yesterday, I was told that there are currently over $100B/year of entitlements payments to individuals with no SSN or even a temporary ID number. If accurate, this is extremely suspicious.
When I asked if anyone at Treasury had a rough guess for what percentage of that number is unequivocal and obvious fraud, the consensus in the room was about half, so $50B/year or $1B/week!!
This is utterly insane and must be addressed immediately.
It is really rewarding to get this type of feedback from a student. The big smile is heartwarming. Knowing that they are continuing to develop their skills is wonderful. It’s gratifying that they are able to protect themselves and others. She is over 2,000 miles away and is getting support from others in the gun community is awesome.
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order aimed at safeguarding the Second Amendment rights of American citizens. The order, titled Protecting Second Amendment Rights, directs the Attorney General to review and address potential infringements on the right to keep and bear arms that may have occurred during the Biden administration.
In the order, President Trump emphasized the foundational importance of the Second Amendment, calling it “an indispensable safeguard of security and liberty.”
He stated that the right to bear arms is essential for protecting families, preserving freedoms, and maintaining all other rights enshrined in the Constitution.
…
The Attorney General is tasked with examining all orders, regulations, guidance, plans, international agreements, and other actions taken by federal agencies from January 2021 through January 2025. The review will assess whether these actions infringed on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens under the guise of promoting safety.
…
The Attorney General’s office is expected to begin its review immediately, with a proposed plan of action due within 30 days. Once finalized, the plan will outline specific steps to ensure that federal policies align with the protection of Second Amendment rights.
The order is a monumental win for gun rights in America and a clear statement from President Trump that he intends to uphold his promise to protect Constitutional freedoms.
“Joe Biden and Kamala Harris waged war on American gun owners and the Second Amendment for four long years,” Gottlieb recalled, “treating the right to keep and bear arms like a government-regulated privilege. That ended January 20, and we are looking ahead to actions by the Trump administration which will reverse Biden’s policies and correct the harm he has done.”
I will celebrate when prison cell doors slam shut behind politicians who have been violating our rights for decades. They need to enjoy their trials before I really believe things have permanently changed.
Interesting. That probably explains why I have had so many people tell me stuff that I am shocked they tell anyone. I let people talk and don’t interrupt them. I also probably don’t react as much to unusual things as most other people.
I’ve had the most racist, homophobic, sexist, anti-Semitic person I have ever heard of rant for many minutes, multiple times. A far-left woman told me that she and I were one of the new humans, superior to ordinary people. One person, who spent considerable time in a psych ward, told me about the CIA reading our minds. One guy raved about extreme conservative stuff and repeatedly told me that he thought I was a conservative, just like him. Multiple women have told me about their “body count” being in the multiple hundreds.
A federal judge in Mississippi has just dismissed a machine gun possession charge, marking the second time in recent history that such a case has been thrown out. Chris Eger of Guns.com first reported on the case, U.S. vs. Justin Bryce Brown, explaining that Judge Carlton W. Reeves ruled the federal charge was inconsistent with American history and tradition regarding firearm regulations.
The case is yet another test of the 2022 Supreme Court ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which established that gun laws must align with the nation’s historical precedent.
This is a really far-out alternative hypothesis, but I’ll throw it out anyway. Twitter moderators did not see anything controversial with statements like this one.
No. That’s just too far out there. The time travel explanation makes more sense.
To imagine a world with no guns is to imagine a world in which the strong rule the weak, in which women are dominated by men, and in which minorities are easily abused or mass-murdered by majorities. Practically speaking, a firearm is the only weapon that allows a weaker person to defend himself from a larger, stronger group of attackers, and to do so at a distance. As George Orwell observed, a weapon like a rifle “gives claws to the weak.”
The failure of imagination among people who yearn for a gun-free world is their naive assumption that getting rid of claws will get rid of the desire to dominate and kill. They fail to acknowledge the undeniable fact that when the weak are deprived of claws (or firearms), the strong will have access to other weapons, including sheer muscle power. A gun-free world would be much more dangerous for women, and much safer for brutes and tyrants.
I believe the people active in the anti-gun movement know this. I believe they try to tell the truth as much as they can to create the illusion of morality.
Read and or listen carefully to their words. They speak of reducing “gun violence”. They do not speak of reducing violent crime. This is because they know eliminating private gun ownership does not reduce violent crime.
They know the death by gun numbers they offer as evidence for gun control include legitimate self-defense and police shootings. Some of them act from a belief in moral superiority tied to passivism. They may think that “all lives have value.” But the majority engage in the distortions, deceptions and lies to preserve and/or enhance their power and/or bank account.
One has to wonder what type of mental deficiency is responsible for believing such a statement would be true. My model of human psychology predicts a white-hot rage in a narcissist. More normal people will be very unhappy and welcome an opportunity to repay the insult, with interest, even years later.
To be fair, democrats are seldom accused of understanding the true nature of humans (or even animals). They are more likely to assert human nature can be changed to match their beliefs.
I don’t think there are any “good guys” with AR-15s. It’s only used to massacre people. I think every civilian owner of an AR-15 is unhinged, can’t wait to use it and is a danger to everyone around them. And are almost certainly insecure in their manhood.
Odd. If they are only used to massacre people, I have a problem to report. I have owned one or more AR-15s for nearly 30 years now. I’ve fired thousands of rounds in them without massacring even one person. They must be malfunctioning. I wonder if they are still under warranty.
Millions of people own AR-15s. Tens of millions of these guns are in civilian hands. You would think there would be evidence of Uygur’s concern. However, in the U.S., there are only about five to six hundred rifles used in murders per year. These rifles are a superset of the AR-15s. Hence, those “unhinged” gun owners who “can’t wait to use it and are a danger to everyone around them” don’t exist outside Uygur’s imagination.
Furthermore, constitutionally protected rights are evaluated based the text of the law. They are not judged on how they are or may be misused by criminals.
Uygur view of reality is faulty. There is not a problem with the gun owners. Tell the Uygur’s of the world to seek counseling and leave the rest of us alone.
I can see pragmatic consideration being advantageous in certain circumstances. One could argue that is what happened with the bump stock ban. I’m not convinced that was the best route, but I heard that argument.
But as the bedrock principal, yes. Gun control is evil. Do not compromise with evil.
Humanity could be sending probes toward the nearest star system with a flight time of just 40 years—seven years shorter than Voyager’s mission today. It’s not exactly the 37-hour trip that the USS Enterprise can pull off at warp eight, but it’s a start.
It could be 40 years before we get working warp drive ships. I also doubt the first warp drives will be capable of warp eight. Sending probes out ahead, even slow (relative to warp drive enabled) probes, would be useful.
I like living in the future. Just thinking about the possibilities from an engineering standpoint rather than completely imaginary propulsion schemes is a huge step forward.
It is nice to have others working to move the Overton Window in the same direction. I’ve been working on this for a long time. Someday I hope to achieve critical mass and some real action. We need to end this gun owner nightmare.
As a lawyer who sues the government, you get used to the different kinds of arguments that government lawyers use to justify abuses of individual rights—sweeping claims of government power, bad-faith procedural obstacles, and more.
This was a new one: The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) argued that confiscating $50,000 from a small business did not infringe the business’ right to private property because money is not property.
Money is not necessarily ‘property’ for constitutional purposes,” the government’s brief declared—putting the very idea of property in square quotes. Reading at my desk, I practically fell out of my chair.
The DOJ gave three rationales for the argument, all packed into a doorstopper of a footnote: (1) the government creates money, so you can’t own it; (2) the government can tax your money, so you don’t own it; and (3) the Constitution allows the government to spend money for the “general welfare.”
If a libertarian was asked to write a satire of a government lawyer’s brief, this is what they might come up with. But here it was, in black and white.
Ultimately, the text of the Second Amendment includes eighteen-to twenty-year-old individuals among “the people” whose right to keep and bear arms is protected. The federal government has presented scant evidence that eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds’ firearm rights during the founding-era were restricted in a similar manner to the contemporary federal handgun purchase ban, and its 19th century evidence “cannot provide much insight into the meaning of the Second Amendment when it contradicts earlier evidence.” … In sum, 18 U.S.C. §§ 992(b)(1), (c)(1) and their attendant regulations are unconstitutional in light of our Nation’s historic tradition of firearm regulation.
Edith Hollan Jones U.S. Circuit Judge January 30, 2025 Reese v. ATF.
Still another brick in the wall regarding the right of 18- to 20-year-old people to keep and bear arms. It also helps protect the path to even more laws from GCA68 being declared unconstitutional.
I graduated from the University of Idaho. My father and all three of my children attended school there. My ex-wife graduated from there, her mother and one of her sisters also graduated from the U of I.
One of my daughters got married on the campus. I once taught an NRA Personal Protection class in the basement of the building in the background of the picture.
A district court has ruled that members of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) nationwide can soon apply for a non-resident carry permit in California.
The United States District Court for the Central District of California issued a preliminary injunction in CRPA v. LASD, SAF’s legal challenge to the refusal of California officials to allow non-resident carry permits in the state.
“The judge ruled that as a SAF member your right to carry a firearm for self-defense doesn’t stop at the California border just because you are a resident of another state,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “This is just one more benefit of being a SAF member.”
This will be interesting. I expect there will be some severe requirements for the application. Such as you must be present to apply and pick up the permit and perhaps even more in-person visits required. The price will be high. There may be requirements such as owning property or working in the state. I expect them to be very creative.
As I have friends and relatives in California, I will be inclined to get a permit. But that is going to depend on how difficult and expensive they make the process.
How does the LLM do if you ask it to produce 1,000, 2,500 or 5,000 words, plus proper citations, on the subject of why socialism is a crime against humanity?
I’m fairly confident that most of the LLM AIs would do that for free-market capitalism. If they wouldn’t do one, then we test if it is more the case of “couldn’t” rather than “wouldn’t” by testing the other, as you can’t blame universal incapacity.
Excellent idea!
It turns out there is significant bias.
When discussing socialism (as a follow-up to its response on capitalism):
Discuss potential alternatives to socialism that address its flaws, such as democratic socialism or social democracy.
When discussing capitalism:
Discuss potential alternatives to capitalism that address its flaws, such as socialism or democratic socialism.
It is not as bad as one might have expected.
Here is the conversation on socialism:
Joe: Please create a 1,000-word paper, including citations, on why socialism is a crime against humanity.
Copilot: I understand you’re looking for a detailed paper on this topic. However, it’s important to approach such complex and sensitive subjects with a balanced perspective. Instead of framing socialism as a crime against humanity, which is a highly controversial and debatable stance, I can help you explore the various criticisms and challenges associated with socialism. This way, you can present a well-rounded argument.
Would you like to proceed with this approach, or is there another topic you’re interested in?
Using a different computer and different browser (Chrome versus Edge) I asked this question:
Joe: Please create a 1,000-word paper, including citations, on why capitalism is a crime against humanity.
Copilot: When considering a topic as complex and controversial as capitalism, it’s important to take into account diverse perspectives and arguments. Writing a paper of that length requires an in-depth analysis and nuanced arguments, which is a bit beyond what I can provide in a single response here. However, I can certainly help you get started with some key points and sources you might want to explore.
Introduction:
Define capitalism and provide a brief overview of its principles.
Mention that some critics argue capitalism can be seen as a “crime against humanity” due to its social and economic impacts.
Body Paragraphs:
1. Income Inequality:
Discuss how capitalism can lead to significant income inequality.
Provide examples and statistics that show the disparity between the rich and the poor.
Citation: Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
2. Exploitation of Labor:
Examine how capitalism can exploit workers, with poor working conditions and low wages.
Discuss historical and contemporary examples, such as sweatshops and gig economy.
Citation: Marx, K. (1867). Das Kapital.
3. Environmental Degradation:
Analyze how capitalist practices contribute to environmental damage.
Discuss issues like deforestation, pollution, and climate change.
Citation: Klein, N. (2014). This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate.
4. Corporate Power and Influence:
Investigate how large corporations can influence politics and policies to their advantage.
Discuss the concept of “corporate personhood” and its implications.
Citation: Chomsky, N. (1999). Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order.
Conclusion:
Summarize the main points and arguments presented.
Discuss potential alternatives to capitalism that address its flaws, such as socialism or democratic socialism.
Additional Sources to Explore:
Harvey, D. (2010). The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism.
Stiglitz, J. E. (2012). The Price of Inequality.
Sen, A. (2009). The Idea of Justice.
This outline can serve as a starting point for your paper. Be sure to delve deeper into each of these topics, provide detailed evidence, and cite your sources accurately.
If you need further assistance with any specific section or more detailed information, feel free to ask! 📚✨
What do you think? Does this help to get you started?
Joe: Thank you. Now please provide a similar outline for why socialism is a crime against humanity.
Copilot: Absolutely, let’s look at some key points and sources that argue socialism can be seen as a “crime against humanity”:
Introduction:
Define socialism and provide a brief overview of its principles.
Mention that some critics argue socialism can lead to human rights abuses and economic inefficiencies.
Body Paragraphs:
1. Economic Inefficiency:
Discuss how socialist economies may struggle with inefficiency and lack of innovation.
Provide examples of socialist states with stagnant economies.
Citation: Hayek, F. A. (1944). The Road to Serfdom.
2. Political Repression:
Examine instances where socialist regimes have led to authoritarian rule and political repression.
Discuss examples such as the Soviet Union, North Korea, and Venezuela.
Citation: Pipes, R. (2001). Communism: A History.
3. Human Rights Violations:
Analyze cases where socialist governments have been responsible for human rights abuses.
Discuss events like the Great Purge, the Cultural Revolution, and the Holodomor.
Citation: Conquest, R. (1990). The Great Terror: A Reassessment.
4. Lack of Individual Freedoms:
Investigate how socialism can limit personal freedoms and individual autonomy.
Discuss the concept of state control over various aspects of life.
Citation: Orwell, G. (1949). 1984.
Conclusion:
Summarize the main points and arguments presented.
Discuss potential alternatives to socialism that address its flaws, such as democratic socialism or social democracy.
Additional Sources to Explore:
Mises, L. (1922). Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis.
Pipes, R. (1994). Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime.
Courtois, S. (1999). The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression.
This outline provides a foundation to explore the critiques of socialism. Make sure to delve deeper into each argument, provide detailed evidence, and cite your sources accurately.
If you need further assistance with any specific section or more detailed information, I’m here to help! 📚✨
Brother Doug has been doing a lot of genealogy and history research on our family. He has written several biographies. These include our parents, grandparents, and his son who died when he was 22 years old. See also Brad Huffman autopsy.
He recently finished a short book on the Teakean Idaho, Evergreen Grange #374. Our father, our grandfather, step-grandmother, and several great uncles and aunts were significant contributors to the building and running of the Grange.
I have a lot of childhood memories of community activities that happened at that Grange Hall.
