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.

Park Service Milgram Failure

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The National Park Service is failing a giant national-scale Milgram obedience to authority experiment. They are doing things, blocking off people from open air parks like the WW II memorial, even while individual rangers are saying that it turns their stomachs. Yet they still do it, saying they were told to, and they had no choice. It’s so bad even the Legacy Media is being forced to cover it and acknowledge it’s happening. This is government by spite, pure and simple. And the uniforms carry out their orders, even while complaining about it. And people say “you will never need guns, it can’t happen here.” Sorry to say this, but… it IS happening here, right now.

The rangers, and the rest of the government employees, DO have a choice. A hard choice to be sure, but it’s a choice they MUST make. And they are choosing poorly.

Quick update: Other than massive civil disobedience, and semi-politely getting in their faces and telling them personally they are failing the Milgram test badly, that they have become a cancerous tentacle of political dysfunction that is TRYING to infect and damage the population for spite, and calling / writing your congress-critters, what’s the best response to these toxic leprechauns?

9mm vs 45

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Another example of a thief making a bad choice. Car thief drives a stolen car to the scene, accomplice / girlfriend with him. Tries to steal a truck. Owner of said truck confronts him. Guns were drawn, shots fired. Oh, did I mention the truck owner was a former marine? A story with a happy ending, because hits with a 9mm are a more convincing argument than misses with a .45.

UPDATE: Another story with more info. Looks like the former marine drew first in an attempt to stop the thief. Legally, that make his position more dicey. OTOH, the cops may look at the dead perp’s rap sheet, the rap sheet of of accomplice / girlfriend, and weigh it against a former marine with Iraq service and a valid CPL, and say “Who are we kidding? Good job, carry on.”

Fading fast

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Looking at the headlines, it looks like the Navy Yard shooter is fading from the above the fold news with incredible speed, considering the number of bodies he left in his wake. I wonder (rhetorically) if it’s because it doesn’t fit the left’s narrative on guns and race? He’s black, obviously crazy, and used a PC weapon (a pump shotgun, perhaps purchased on “Sheriff” Joe Biden’s recommendation). So, they “see nothing to be learned,” and much egg of their face from the early blather reporting.

Say WHAT?

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They just keep coming.

I’m still wondering about Fast and Furious, and we’re what, a couple dozen scandals removed from that now, each one taking the former one off the main headlines? You couldn’t make this stuff up– It would be taken as way too far beyond believability.

Quiz

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1. In your best, logical assessment, America’s enemies would rather see American citizens;
A) armed.
B) disarmed.

2. In your best, logical assessment, America’s enemies would rather see U.S. Military personnel;
A) armed while on and off duty inside U.S. military installations.
B) disarmed while on and off duty inside U.S. military installations.

3. In your best, purely logical assessment, America’s enemies;
A) approve of the second amendment to the U.S. constitution and would like to see it protected and enforced.
B) disapprove of the second amendment to the U.S. constitution and would like to see it limited, eroded and degraded as much as possible.

4. In your best, purely logical, most detached and rational assessment, America’s enemies would rather see American citizens generally;
A) capable in the use of arms, having arms and ammunition of their own, being self sufficient and largely independent individually, largely fearless and moral, hopeful, principled, and more able to help their friends and neighbors in times of need such that outside help from official authorities is not crucial to survival.
B) ignorant in the use of arms, having no arms or ammunition of their own, being largely dependent on government programs for their sustenance, medicine, energy, education, transportation and protection, largely fearful and demoralized, unprincipled, and less able to help their friends and neighbors in times of need such that outside help from official authorities is crucial to survival.

You will be graded on your answers.

Words mean things

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I think that’s a Rush Limbaugh quote, to give credit where I believe credit is due, but maybe he got it somewhere else.

The shipyard shooting was described on the news tonight as having taken place in a “heavily secured” area. Has the term “heavily secured” been redefined while I wasn’t looking, or is that a blatantly moronic description?

Yet another mass shooting in what amounts to a gun free zone, in a long line of mass shooting in gun free zones, but in this case it can be said that this was a “heavily secured gun free zone”. In other words, the shooting took place inside a real live, physical, three-dimensional contradiction in terms. Which of course is the problem.

Last time this happened I had military vets tell me that trusting kids on the military bases with guns is not practical, which is either coming from a mental position of pre-conditioned, certain defeat, or it means we don’t have a military, which is certain defeat. Sorry guys; that’s insane. You may believe it with every fiber of your militarily experienced being, but it’s insane.

One would think we should have learned this lesson, that military bases can and do come under attack, in, say, December of 1941, but then people do forget. Fort Hood on the other hand, was in the news just within the last few weeks due to the trial. Is anyone in the military feeling a clue coming on yet, or are we simply going to ramp up the stupid, as I predict?

If we had sanity in our military, every low level grunt, every secretary, every truck driver, etc., would be a rifleman first and a whatever else, a floor polisher or cook, second. Militaries are for killing people and breaking things, and so if you don’t have the ability to kill people and break things on short notice, on any base or any boring flower planting assignment in some peaceful corner of the world, you’re not military material. (By the way there are no peaceful corners of the world. There are only places wherein the violence is taking a break and readying itself for the next push)

Which, practically, means we need the CMP back in full force and effect, jr high and high school shooting teams should be reinstated, and of course the NRA needs to be doing more of what it was born to do. If our government and military are tying their own hands, we’ll have to do it on our own.

It is being reported that the DC metro police were called in……….to protect a military installation against a single attacker (or maybe two we don’t know for sure yet). A civilian force had to go in and help save a United States military installation from one or two dumbshits.

Let that sink in for bit. We’re now telegraphing to the world, AGAIN, that a single trained squad, or two, could likely dominate an entire base inside the U.S. Could it get any worse, Mr. commander in Chief? How f-ing lame is that, you generals?

And their response appears to be that we need more restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms, i.e. more of the kind of poison that made this latest act possible. They want restrictions on the provision in the constitution that was designed to foster the security of a free state.

You know the saying; once is happenstance, twice is coincidence… Well the Fort Hood shooting was enemy action or worse. This last one (maintaining the conditions that made the Fort Hood shooting possible) borders on treason, or it leaps over that border. Conspiracy theories abound in regard to the lack of preparedness in Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. This is at least as bad, considering that Ft Hood was in the lime light just this summer.

What caliber for rampaging boat?

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A shotgun worked in this case.

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More on voter suppression

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Heh!

We’re being asked (told?) to believe that the voters who wanted Progressives in office “couldn’t get to the polls” (Where are they? I don’t know. What IS a poll anyway? Where am I? Who am I? Who are you? What planet is this? Vote for Who? Why? What’s happening and is there any way of stopping it?) while those who wanted freedom didn’t have any trouble at all finding those pesky, shifty, sneaky, evasive polls, even after the Progressives massively out-spend those who prefer freedom.

Well there you have it. When Progressives win it’s grass-roots democracy in action– a beautiful expression of The American Way and what could ever be better or more wonderful than that. When Progressives lose it’s big money corporate-funded voter suppression by mean people who suck and are probably terrorists.

The police are the only ones

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The police are not “the only ones qualified to handle guns”.

This appears to be a training issue:

When one of the women involved in the brawl took off running across the street, the officer jumped out of his patrol car and pursued her on foot and approached the woman in the parking lot of a nearby business.

In the lot, the woman refused to show her hands and show she was not armed, prompting the officer to draw his firearm. While drawing his gun, the officer unintentionally fired one shot, striking the woman in the leg.

Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot.

There have been many times I’ve had a gun go off unexpectedly but only when I was planning to shoot anyway. Your training should include drawing a gun without actually firing. And when you do plan to actually shoot you draw while keeping your finger off the trigger until the sights are on the target.

Why would you need a gun at the Dollar Store?

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From the Seattle Police Department:

A 53-year-old man set off an intensive three-hour search by police Friday after he was spotted growling, performing martial arts moves and brandishing a machete outside a dollar store on Lake City Way.

…

Officers found the man near 125th and Lake City Way, arrested him, and seized what one officer described as a “big machete.” Police intend to book the man into the King County Jail for a weapons violation, and are still looking for other victims the man may have threatened.

You can be certain the police were glad to possess firearms when dealing with this guy and his victims would have been safer if armed as well.

Ammo arrival

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The UPS guy showed up the other day. I didn’t remember ordering anything recently, so I briefly wondered what the spousal unit bought. Then I saw the box, and I had to chuckle. It was a MidwayUSA box. With some ammo. That I had ordered last year. Now that’s a backorder.

Chicago Confiscation

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On the civil-rights side, we keep saying that the there is a slippery slope that the anti-rights people want to push us down as fast as possible, and things like registration serve no purpose other than to confiscate. On the other side, the anti-rights bigots keeps calling us paranoid, saying that it’ll never happen, etc. Except for when it does.

Chicago Firearms confiscation BeginsThose that have their FOID card lapse are making pols worry that their guns are not taken away that very moment. But, because of the change in IL law recently, the number of FOID applicants is up, WAY up, so waiting times after application for renewal are also way up.

It’s not paranoia if they really ARE out to get you. It’s simply recognition of reality. On the flip side, I think delusional is a term that can be applied to the antis.

Those who support the Second Amendment should be ashamed

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This is part of the reason we got to where we did:

Anti-rights Activist Judge Caught Abusing Authority in Court

Connecticut Carry Calls for Judge to Step Down

Vernon, CT, July 16, 2013:  Prominent firearms Attorney Rachel Baird of Torrington filed a motion to recuse and disqualify Judge Edward Mullarkey from a Rockville Superior Court GA-19 case on July 15th. The Motion for Recusal and Disqualification of Judge puts forth serious and egregious ethics issues raised by Mullarkey’s courtroom behavior, who is charged with being impartial.

Without any further facts or explanation, it would appear that Judge Mullarkey took it upon himself to harass Attorney Baird in the presence of her client due to her prominent and public support of firearms civil rights. In one hearing, Mullarkey checked to make sure the court reporter had stopped recording the proceeding, and then the judge proclaimed from the bench that those who support the Second Amendment should be “ashamed”.

Judge Mullarkey also made mention of ‘The Hidden History of the Second Amendment’ by Professor Carl Bogus, a rabidly anti-gun propaganda piece written by a devoted anti-gun activist. Professor Bogus has been or is currently on the National Advisory Panel for the Violence Policy Center, the Board of Governors for Handgun Control, Inc., and the Board of Directors for the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence. These are all zealous anti-rights organizations with histories of advocating for bans on firearms.

According to the language and allegations brought forth in Attorney Baird’s Motion, Judge Mullarkey has clearly used his position as a Superior Court Judge in order to act as an activist for anti-rights in defiance of our Constitution and our Second Amendment right to bear arms. The judge’s actions are also in direct defiance of the Supreme Court decisions in DC v Heller. Legal precedent requires that Judge Malarkey is bound to uphold the rulings of the High Court, regardless of his personal advocacy mission. In addition, serious concerns about discrimination and misogyny can be raised from other behaviors that the motion describes regarding Judge Mullarkey’s conduct, whereby he appears to harass Attorney Baird about her gender and background.

Based on the above Motion for Recusal and Dismissal of a Judge, Judge Mullarkey has no place as a judge, nor in holding any position of power, when he is so willing to abuse his position of power to push an anti-civil rights agenda from the bench. Connecticut Carry calls for Judge Mullarkey to immediately step down from the bench and retire.
Judge Mullarkey is not alone in his bias and contempt for our rights. Connecticut Carry is following up on allegations of judges across Connecticut with similar prejudices.

 

Connecticut Carry is a 501(c)(4) non-partisan, grassroots, non-profit organization dedicated to advancing and protecting the fundamental civil rights of the men and women of Connecticut to keep and bear arms for defense of themselves and the state as guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Constitution of Connecticut.

 

I find it very telling that he made sure the court reporter had stop recording before revealing his disdain for the Bill of Rights.

I wonder if he also thinks those that support the 13th Amendment should be ashamed? Regardless, the punishment should be the same for both. He should be immediately removed from power, all of his previous decisions carefully reviewed, and hounded into hiding by the press.

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?)