Category Archives: Current News

This is about stuff in the mass media that generally has a short interest life span. Speculation about an election outcome a few days before the election is an example.

Changing climage- It’s the sun, in a nutshell

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Why would someone push an agenda that is wrong? Lots of reasons that most of us are familiar with: ignorance, their parents did it, being reactionary, people like to feel they are part of a bigger group (there is strength in numbers, and strength is comforting), misguided principles, etc., etc. But things like ignorance can be cured, IF the ignorant person doesn’t have a significant vested interest in maintaining their current belief.

A related but different question: why would someone push something they know is wrong? Usually, it’s because they profit from it personally in some way, via research grants, accumulation of political power, they own the “alternatives” being pushed, it is a structural part of a larger belief system, or whatever.

Most global warmists / climate-change pushers can get binned into “profit from it” or the “scaring people is good for pushing more / larger government controls and regulations” view. You know the type. So here are a couple of very short, simple things about it all.

Cause MUST come before EFFECT. This isn’t even scientific method 101, this is toddler-learning-about-gravity level stuff. And if you graph CO2 and temperature, temperature change leads CO2 change. Ergo, CO2 CANNOT be driving temperature.

OK, a warmest replies, then what alternatives are there? Answer: The sun.

But, they say, the sun is constant. Ahem. No, it is NOT.

So how does it change that we can test or measure, the smarter ones counter, what’s the mechanism; it’s 93,000,000 miles away? (yes, yes, I know – it’s a darn small percentage of them that goes here, but let’s go there anyway).

Answer: Sun-spots. Sunspots, they reply, you must be joking.

Nope. Sunspots are indicative of magnetic field activity. The stronger the sun’s magnetic field, the more Galactic Cosmic Rays it deflects from Earth. You see, GCR passing through the Earth’s atmosphere interact with it in a way and at a rate that they act to seed cloud nuclei. Clouds are white and reflective. So:

Lots of sunspots -> few GCR -> less cloud cover -> lower albedo, -> more energy absorbed from the sun -> planet warms.

Few sunspots -> more GCR -> more cloud cover -> higher albedo, -> less energy absorbed from the sun -> planet cools.

In the 400+ years of actual sunspot observation, the correlation between long-term sunspot patterns and climate is well established. Now we know HOW. We’ve tested it in the lab. (Svensmark at CERN) And hey, what do you know – 700 million years ago, the sun was in a part of the Milkey Way that had much higher levels of GCRs – and it was an ice-ball, pole to pole.

Quote of the day—Rivrdog

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This Holder speech tells me that Holder, one of the main leaders of this Government, just advocated FOR the predation of his Government ON it’s own people, and he framed that advocacy in racial terms.

US Attorney General Eric Holder has just approved of violence by blacks on other races. President Obama now must decide to remove Eric Holder from leadership, or admit that he, too, supports race-based Government predation.

We may have just seen the line between simple bad leadership and outright Tyranny crossed here, with our Government having just clearly expressed tyrannical intentions.

Rivrdog
July 17, 2013
Comment to Quote of the day—Eric Holder
[While I agree there are tyrannical implications this is far from the first “line to be crossed”.

Examples:

  • Obamacare
  • Claiming authority to kill U.S. citizens on U.S. soil without due process (drone strikes)
  • Failure to prosecute those that break laws while supporting the current administration (blacks intimidating white voters at the polls, David Gregory’s possession of a standard capacity magazine in D.C.)

These are just a few examples of a large set of “lines of significance” which have been crossed.—Joe]

Update: There are so many that I forget them… Add the IRS scandal and giving guns to the drug cartels to justify gun bans in the U.S.

Internet drama and gunternet shenanigans

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Or is it gunternet drama and internet shenanigans? Thankfully, aside from the regular stuff I’ve seen for many years and have learned to avoid for the most part, I’ve not the slightest idea what anyone is talking about. No, don’t go a-linkin’ to it here, neither. I don’t want to know. Thank you.

It’s a lovely July day here in Moscow today. Not too hot, and so my garden likes it too, and the last two evenings have been bliss, with a very gentle, cool, fragrant breeze wafting in through the open windows.

I tried to get my wife to notice, but she’s too busy with the drama in her head (and emanating from the television) and is more interested in planting said drama into my head (or the head of any who will listen, encouraging her with undue patience) than in most anything I have to say. It’s that “most” part that gives me any hope.

One thing I have learned, among the few others, is that I don’t have to coddle and germinate the seeds of drama that other people try to plant in my head. They just fall away and dry up, waiting for some other fool to pick them up off the floor and run with them (which is more often the case than not).

If it’s not actionable on my part or of some value to better understand how to live my own life or to help others live theirs, or of some value in understanding the immutable laws of physics or of human nature on the macro level, or of understanding history, I’m pretty much uninterested at this juncture I think. Mechanics and petty squabbles I mastered long ago.

Sorry there’s nothing to excite you here. I’m finding that excitement is vastly overrated and I’m of the opinion that we spend far too much time pursuing it at the expense of things that matter. It seems we spend the first half of our allotted lifespan seeking excitement and the second half, if we’re lucky, cleaning up the wreckage.

Carry on (as in, replace the “party” in the Wayne and Garth term “party on” with “carry”, so it has a nice double meaning for a gun blog).

Failure to report a crime becoming a crime?

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For those that thought it couldn’t happen, we’ll see. Obama is looking to stop insider leaks. Specifically by ordering federal workers to spy on each other, and it includes making failure to report a crime, a crime. East Germany, full speed ahead.

Can you saw “witch hunt?” Can you say “ideological purification?” can you say “regulatory capture?” I knew you could, boys and girls.

3rd Amendment case

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The 3rd Amendment is a rarely seen topic in US case law. But we now have a real 3rd Amendment case hitting the courts. For those that forget, it reads:

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Short version of the case: The police demanded a homeowner vacate his own home, so the police could use it as a lookout point in a domestic violence case. When the homeowner refused, they forced him out, and took his house over. When he tried to literally walk away, down the street, they detained him, and booked them for “obstructing justice,” though they were not formally charged.

Long form details at Courthouse News Service.

Power Problems

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Today’s post for The Stars Came Back was delayed by power problems. Specifically, this (click to embiggenate):

PowerProblems 032 PowerProblems 042

What’s wrong here, boys and girls? It seems that Novelty Hill Road was shut down for about 12 hours, starting at 4:55 PM 02July2013, because some wood failed. If you look closely at the right-side ends of the pair of 6″x6″ wooden beams hanging on to a couple bits of angle iron, you can see that the bolt that used to hold them to the power pole pulled through the end. You can also see the bolt that used to hold them on the pole, not holding anything. (You can also see a pair of wood-pecker holes lower down, but that may be the subject of a future post). When the beams fell out of place, a wire going across the road pulled free, crossed the three lower / outside 7200 volt wires, shorting them, causing them to arc, melt, and fall (still live) to the ground, right along / across Novelty Hill road (second picture; it’s a fairly major commuter road). A fire was started at the base of the wooden pole (creosote-covered wood burns pretty well) from sparks and arcing that went down something on the side of the pole. A nearby house got hit with a surge/spike, and the owner said “everything just hummed for a moment” then every fuse, circuit-breaker, GFI, power-strip fuse, fluorescent light, and a some electronics that were plugged in blew, big time. Blew as in totally defunct, needs replacement, black marks. Apparently, one or more of the falling 7200 volt wires fell across the line to his house. No one seems to have been hurt, though a person from another nearby house apparently had some of the falling / flying molten metal weld / melt itself into the windshield of her car, and some of the hood / roof panels got weld/melt/burn spots as she was sitting at the intersection right underneath the spot where it happened. I just heard a huge pair of BWAAAAAAANT! sounds, then the computer UPS started beeping and the lights went out. Fun times. Got the generator out for a while to make sure the frozen stuff stayed frozen, etc. Finally got power back around 5:30 AM.

What gets prosecuted

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Next time someone says they are OK with the NSA spying because they are “keeping us safe” and “if you do nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear” or some such fantasy, here’s something to consider. According to this, the most commonly crime prosecuted in the former East Germany in the five years before the unification was failure to report a crime you knew about. When the state knows everything, then NOT being a rat becomes more dangerous than being a criminal giving the police a cut of the action for protection, because you have no leverage. That thought should terrify folks when they realize what it really means.

(BTW – I think the Judge likely believes what he says when he reports that, but I do not have an independent verification of his reported fact- anyone know for sure the stats on that? Even if it’s not the number one “crime,” if it’s anywhere in the top hundred it is bad.)

(Later Edit: How big a step is it from “see something, say something” to “see something, you are required to say something” with some sort of nebulous protections that may, or may not, protect you if you do say something?)

NSA data used for blackmail

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If this report is true then I was right (emphasis in the original):

They went after–and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things–they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the–and judicial. But they went after other ones, too. They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of–heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials. They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House–their own people.

Syria – a win-win thought

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Just thinking out loud here. Why is the current Syria situation NOT considered a win-win? I mean, yeah, it sucks for Syria, but that part of the world has been in various stages of suckitude pretty much continuously since well before the first Persian empire threw up there. But consider a simplified view of it: LOTS of Islamic radicals go there to fight, and die in the process (i.e., they are not butchering civilians and imposing Sharia elsewhere). One side buys guns with profits from the opium trade from Russia, the other side buys guns with oil profits from us, everyone gets to export young male Islamic radicals there. Heck, seems to me Russia and the US should be ENCOURAGING it to fester in the name of national security and as a domestic jobs program…. I mean, if it’s OK for the Islamic world to deliberately leave the Israel “problem” fester and use it for  domestic political purposes, is this not simply a “balanced approach” to the region?

He Gets It

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To all you fellow racists redneck Tea-partiers and haters, who only opposes the Obama-sariat because you are racists haters (yes, there might be a tad-bit of sarcasm there), I give you a guy who gets it. Nothing new, just well-presented.

I’d sure vote for him over any of the candidates I’ve seen run in my district in the last twenty years. I’d prefer a straight-up libertarian, but he’d be a vast improvement over the statist we have now.

More on illegals

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If anyone gave a damn about the poor, poor, downtrodden Mexicans, they’d be asking why Mexico is such f^<ked up crap-hole of a country that people are so desperate to get out of it. They’d be asking themselves what might be done to fix it.

If anyone cared about people having a place to escape to, they'd be spending all their time shoring up, teaching and defending the American principles of liberty.

But they don't. Far from it, which proves they're full of shit and couldn't care less about Mexicans, or about oppressed people anywhere.

We’re still missing the point

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In all the talk about the latest scandals involving the targeting of political enemies by government, the arming of criminal gangs and Islamist groups, and government spying on American citizens, there is a lot of back and forth about security verses privacy and so on.

All of it misses the main point, the preverbal elephant in the living room– Our government can and currently does consider patriotic, pro constitution citizens a greater threat than practically anything else.

While sheepishly looking away from the Fort Hood shooter’s jihad talk, while twiddling their thumbs regarding the warning signs prior to the Boston bombing, they were crawling up the assholes of tea party groups, and targeting states like Colorado and Texas to reorient the political landscapes there.

If you’re a strong, self sufficient, productive, independent thinker who loves the American ideals, YOU are the enemy of this government. Your country is the enemy of this government. The jihadists provide a convenient excuse to have the power infrastructure in place and to build on it, to help keep constitutional limits to a minimum. To maintain this charade, they actually need the occasional terrorist attack. They need a certain amount of crime, unemployment, border insecurity and inflation.

Without pain, suspicion, fear, frustration, demoralization, anger, miseducation, dependency, hopelessness and chaos, they are nothing. In short; they’re waging a multi-front war against America’s founding principles. Top Down, Bottom Up, Inside Out.

As painful as it may be to face up to it, we must if there is to be any solution. The first step in solving any problem is to admit you have it (or that it has you). We certainly will never solve any problem we’re unwilling to define and address openly.

Former KGB operative tells us how we got here

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This interview took place in 1984. He explains his relationships as a KGB officer with the Useful Idiots, and how those Useful Idiots were often “squashed like a cockroach” after their usefulness had played out. Once the shock hit them, at the time of revolution, of what they’d done they could very well become the most staunch anti-communists, and so they were snuffed out before that could happen. “When the military boot hits their flabby butt..” the shock of seeing what they’ve helped create can turn them against the glorious idology of “Social Justice”. In other words, they’re targeted for destruction before they have a chance to wake up and smell the coffee. It’s typical, small scale gang behavior brought to the wholesale level.

But not, 29 years later, it’s much worse. There likely won’t be a military boot in the Useful idiots’ flabby butts, because we’re in such a state of degradation that we’re asking for “normalization” (of communism). We’re not fighting back.

This is about an hour and a half. Grab a cup of coffee or what have you, and listen to the whole thing .

This is a companion to Joe’s QOTD post here.

For further study, here is a domonstration of how it’s done. There is religious language in this one, but if you want to go straight to the mind control part, start at around 8 minutes.

In short, if someone knows how, they can tell you up front exactly what they’re going to do to you, they can then do it right then and there, openly, and some people will still be totally controlled by it, AND they’ll defend the utterly insane things they do as a result of being controlled. THEY are the more aware and YOU are “just too stubborn” to see what is clearly reality.

Quote of the day—Harry Reid

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Right now I think everyone should just calm down and understand that this isn’t brand new. It’s been going on for some seven years.

Harry Reid
U.S. Senate Majority Leader
June 6, 2013
Reid on reaction to furor over phone records: ‘Just calm down’
[If this was your spouse telling you to “calm down, this isn’t brand new…” that they had been fooling around with someone else for seven years would that make it okay?

Maybe that is an extreme example. Let’s try some others:

  • How about your accountant telling you they had been embezzling for seven years?
  • How about your lawyer telling you they had been working for your legal opponent for seven years and billing you for the time spent doing so?
  • How about your doctor giving you unnecessary prostate exams every three months for seven years, and charging you for it, because he enjoyed giving them?

Hmm… I’m thinking Senator Reid has a severe case of rectal cranium inversion. Too bad it not so debilitating that it necessitates immediate retirement and exile.

I also think it is very telling that in Paul Barrett Business Week article he restructured the quote in such a way that it changes the meaning. Barrett rephrases it as:

“Everybody should just calm down,” the Nevada Democrat said at a press conference in Washington. “It’s a program that’s worked to prevent not all terrorism, but certainly a vast majority of it.”

If that is the measure of success and such success is sufficient justification then one should not be surprised to soon see some “common sense” restrictions on the First Amendment. I expect Senator Reid and Mr. Barrett can surely agree our government needs to pass legislation for the following:

  • Background checks, ten day waiting periods, and proof of need before allowing anyone to own a Bible/Koran/Torah
  • Registration of all religious texts
  • Limiting the purchase of religious books to one per month
  • Ban all religious books containing more than 10,000 words

They should then give enforcement powers to the ATF and rename the organization Firearms, Alcohol, Religion, and Tobacco (FART).

It’s just common sense, for the children, to prevent terrorism.—Joe]

It’s a bird. No, it’s a drone!

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Found on Drudge. And “this is just the beginning” they say. Of what? I ask.

For some reason I’m reminded of the “Hunter-Seekers” (or were they “Hunter-Killers”? It’s been several decades since I read the series) of Frank Herbert’s Dune. They were tiny, silent, flying assassination drones that could get into your house or pretty much anywhere else. I wonder if the IRS is looking into drone technology, but then; who isn’t?

Quote of the day—Tio Hardiman

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I am Mr. Ceasefire and I got caught up in a situation and I am not here to point fingers and blame nobody. The verdict is still out. I can’t really speak about the case. Things happen for a reason and liberation comes in many forms.

Tio Hardiman
June 1, 2013
Bond set for CeaseFire head Tio Hardiman in domestic battery charge
[The organization “CeaseFire Illinois”, of which Hardiman is the director, changed their name to “Cure Violence” in September of 2012.

Some people have been calling the organization “Anti-Gun”. From what I have read about them, and I have sort of been following them for several years now, they aren’t really anti-gun. There is an undercurrent of anti-gun sentiment but I have not seen anything overt on their website although Hardiman himself has been quoted as advocating restrictions on guns. As near as I can tell they are a decent organization that attempts to prevent violence in a reasonable way. Yes, preventing violence is something that sends up warning flags for both Lyle and I (see also here and here). But these people are doing it by talking to potential perpetrators and victims when a violent situation is developing. I don’t have a problem with that.

The guy hasn’t been convicted of domestic violence yet, only accused. So I’m a little hesitant to say this anti-gun guy is a violent person. We have some strong clues and there is a strong correlation between anti-gun people and violent behavior but you should not apply statistics to an individual. So for now I’m going to glare at him and prepare to verbally lash out should the domestic battery charges turn out to be true.

Getting back to the quote. He appears to know English words but is unable to string them together in sentence in a way that make sense to me. Liberation comes from being arrested for domestic battery? But what do you expect from an anti-gunner?—Joe]

Gay bashing in Seattle

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This looks like a race and/or gay bashing:

On 5/29/13, just shortly before 10:00 p.m., a witness flagged down an officer to report that he saw 6 or 7 men assaulting an unknown black male. The witness went on to say that while the group was assaulting the man they were yelling racial and sexual orientation epithets at the victim.  The witness saw the group beating the man with their fist and kicking him. They were also striking the victim with their skateboards.

…

While officers were interviewing the suspects, a man (later identified as the victim) walked up to the scene, bleeding from a laceration to the mouth. He pointed to the group and told the officers that the suspects had assaulted him and called him names associated with his ethnic background and sexual orientation.

…

The victim stated that he did not know the suspects or why they attacked him.

The 20-year-old victim was bleeding heavily from a lacerated lip.  He was transported to HMC for further treatment of his injuries.

You could be the nicest person in the world with no known enemies in what you think is a “safe part of town” but yet people could hate you and want to inflict violence upon you. Be able and prepared to defend yourself.

The police hit their targets about one third of the time. Unless you are more highly trained than them you are unlikely to get a better hit ratio.

Getting “one shot stops” is difficult and rather rare. There are seven attackers and you only have a 10 round magazine in your gun? Tell your next of kin to blame the anti-gunners if you run out of ammo and your attackers kill you.

Update: I should have pointed out that this happened in the same Seattle area neighborhood, Capital Hill, that recently had gay/gun-rights posters criticized by the local press which claimed, “What better way to make people feel unsafe in gay-friendly Capitol Hill than by slyly referencing homophobia and hate crimes in pro-gun propaganda plastered on every street corner?”

Plastic guns are easy, try paper!

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Via an email from Paul K. we have instructions on how to make a working gun out of paper. I have duplicated the instructions here for archival purposes.

I really, really, have serious concerns about using one of these. I can see where the radial strength might be adequate when using a small gauge shotshell but the recoil could still be a problem. There is no breachface and stock to prevent the shot shell from pushing the nail (firing pin) and perhaps the case-head into/through your hand.

Use at your own risk and remember that the extent of my obligation should this result in you or a friend of yours dying an unnatural death is to nominate you for a Darwin Award. If, and only if, I am in a generous mood when I learn of your date with fate.

Interview with Defense Distributed’s Cody Wilson.

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(of 3D printed gun fame)

On theBlaze TV last night. You can watch the video at the link there.

Of course, if you were a Blaze TV subscriber you’d have seen it, and much more, Monday night.

If you’re looking only at tactics you’re missing the point

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Seen here about this;

“We’re right and our opposition is wrong. When lobbying for a cause, make sure your cause is right and just and is historically supportable. Having it already enshrined in the constitution is a big plus. Otherwise, even huge amounts of money and millions of warm bodies are going to have a difficult time getting support for your provably wrong (and unconstitutional) ideas. There is no substitute for being right.”

There are cases wherein you can never “figure out” (by tactics alone) how a person or movement achieved a particular aim. The American Revolution comes to mind. Those without principles may look at it every which way they know how and never understand it, because they’re looking in the wrong places. You can study it all your life and never be able to apply it to your own cause. It can (and does) drive people quite insane.

No, Young Grasshopper; you can not have a pet cause that you want to shove down Americans’ throats, and then “study to see how the NRA did it”.

It is not so much the “how” as the “why”.