Quote of the day—Stephen Kruiser

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The nagging feeling that these putrid progressive cities should be left to riot and rot long enough for people to vote with their feet keeps growing on me.

Stephen Kruiser
July 27, 2020
The Morning Briefing: It Might Be Time to Let the Liberal Riot Hellholes Burn — Let Seattle and Portland Riot Themselves Into Oblivion 
[I suppose one could say, “It worked” for Detroit.

I realize it’s not legal or practical but I fantasize about conditioning such abandonment on the building of a wall around the city to keep the vermin from escaping. It could be the inspiration and location of a movie for someone like Kurt Russell, Escape from Seattle.—Joe]

Living in a bubble

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Early yesterday Alien asked:

Random thought: Joe, are you and Barb giving any consideration to relocating?

I mentioned this to Barb as we were getting up and received the expected answer, “No.”

That’s a little more strongly worded than the reality and also deserves a bit of an explanation. Barb and I talked about it some as we went on our morning walk and I took a few pictures to help explain. As we walked along I was struck by the alternate reality she and I are living in compared to downtown Seattle only a few miles away. Barb elaborated with, “We are living in bubble.”

In this picture, a short walk from our house, you can see the U.S. flag on the left edge of the image:

20200726_085042

Below is an expanded snip of another flag near the car on the right in the image above:

image

It’s extremely rare to see a U.S. flag in downtown Seattle. Unless, of course, if someone is burning it.

Here is a common view on our walk:

image

In the distance to the south you see Mount Rainier which is over 50 miles away. The air is frequently that clear. My cell phone camera doesn’t do it justice but you can almost as frequently see Mount Baker 80 miles to the north from another location on our walk.

In the picture below you can see Seattle (click to get higher resolution and see the Space Needle) in the distance the night after the most recent “peaceful protests”. I imagine the couple on their deck reading about the riot in the newspaper as if it had happened 1000 miles away instead of 10.

image

Our reality is much different from downtown Seattle. The streets and air are clean, the neighbors are polite, the police are responsive, the views in all directions with only a short hike are a joy to behold. There is a lot of territory between us and ground zero of the riots. There are thousands of homes and a large lake between us and the terrorists. The roads into our neighborhood are few with lots of cover and concealment along the sides. It is my belief that there will be a lot of warning and a heck of a lot of “vigorous”  resistance to the terrorists migrating out of their turf into ours. And the primary resistance will be supplied by the local police department who has not been shackled like the Seattle Police.Department. When I was shooting matches I frequently had a Bellevue police officer on my squad. The next chance I get I will ask a few questions about how he thinks an attempt at a riot migration to our side of the lake might turn out.

That said, daughter Jaime asked that Barb and I take a look at houses “out in the country” with her and her spouse last Saturday. They live in Bellevue near where the nearly completed light rail from downtown Seattle terminates near Microsoft. She tends a bit toward the neurotic side of normal and her location near easy access from the communist infected downtown Seattle bothers her. She received permission from “all the way up the management chain” at Microsoft to work from home “forever”. Barb and I looked at homes with them for several hours which were an hour drive from her current location. They made an offer on a place with a one acre lot next door to a home with a “Trump 2020” sign in the yard. That might as well be an alternate universe from downtown Seattle.

Also, I have accelerated my plans to buy or build a home in Idaho. A good part of our visit over the 4th of July weekend was to look at three different homes near Boomershoot we expect to be on the market soon. In this neighborhood property seldom gets formally “listed”. It’s almost always via word of mouth that you find out something is for sale or someone is interested in buying. We drove by the homes and told my brothers and sister-in-law that we are interested. We also looked at three different potential sites on my property to build. We chose one and have contacted a potential builder/architect. Then yesterday I completed a tentative floor plan. This would be small “summer home” or bugout location if things get too dangerous or politically intolerable in our current location.

So, to answer Alien’s question in something more than one word and less than a page, we feel pretty safe where we are for now and really like what we have here. We won’t be moving unless there is some pretty drastic changes happening a lot closer to home. However, we and others, are implementing plans to deal with that scenario.

Quote of the day—Carl "Bear" Bussjaeger @BearBussjaeger

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Dear Seattle,

You’re screwed, and it’s the mayor and city council’s fault.

Best ‘luck with the riots.

Luv&Kisses,

Police

Carl “Bear” Bussjaeger @BearBussjaeger
Tweeted on July 25, 2020
[This was in response to this open letter from the Chief of Police to local businesses and residents.:

SpdLetter20200725

We live in interesting times.—Joe]

Karma

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Via Milo Yiannopoulos @m

YourNext

While I got a chuckle out of this it’s quite misleading. There is a big difference between the gun owner protests which leave the streets cleaner than when they arrived with the most “violent” exchanges are spirited legal briefs compared to the riots, looting, and destruction of the Marxists of the last few weeks.

They can’t honestly believe we would be on their side. You almost have to start looking at elderly nun demographics to find a group of people more law abiding than people who have concealed carry licenses.

The only thing that I know of which we have in common is the skill set and tools to quickly create a lot of damage. It’s just that no one has flipped our switch yet with a valid target. There are a number of scenarios where the rioting Marxist change that. But in all the futures I see the police will give the gun owners a slight nod and turn back to engage the remaining commies.

Quote of the day—Jason Sullivan and Bill Binney

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Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.

Jason Sullivan and Bill Binney
July 11, 2020
Binney & Sullivan: An Open Letter Challenge To Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey On Censorship
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

You don’t need guns

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Via Matthew Bracken @Matt_Bracken:

ThePoliceWillProtect

Quote of the day—Peter Savodnik

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We should be able to agree that, in today’s ever-coarsening discourse, there are dangerous echoes of these fictional characters who anticipated the Bolsheviks and Stalinists—the destroyers of ancient civilizations who burned it all down only so they could rebuild the world in their own image.

We know how this turned out, and for those who have forgotten, or for those who are too young or ignorant to know, we should remind them over and over: Those who questioned the revolution, objected to any of its ends or means, thought there might be something worth preserving, were deemed hostile combatants or hapless chumps whose false consciousness inhibited progress. In the end, they were all airbrushed. In the end, the way one escaped this airbrushing was to signal, with a great and inauthentic virtue, that one was not a hostile combatant by spotlighting the real enemies of progress. Whether these enemies were real or “real” was immaterial. Only idiots worried about the truth. There was no truth. What was most important was to keep one’s head down and, if need be, accuse wantonly. Accuse! Accuse! Accuse! Or as Americans like to say, the best defense is a good offense. Everyone knew this would never lead to the place they had been promised it would lead to, but what else was there to do? As the violence ratcheted up, it was necessary to signal with ever greater ferocity, to name more names, to out more wrong-thinkers, until all that was left was the pathetic, bloodless corpse of a country dislodged from itself.

When I imagine this people we are becoming, I think of old men I have interviewed, in Moscow, Minsk, Brest, Kiev, Tblisi, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, who once spent a year or two or 10 or 20 in a camp in the far north or far east of Russia. This was in the 1940s and ’50s. Their crime was usually petty or not even a crime. It often had to do with survival—stealing a stale loaf of bread. Or talking to the wrong person, or saying something impolitic. Or being accused, without any evidence, of something worse.

Peter Savodnik
July 14, 2020
Woke America Is a Russian Novel
[Via Ed Driscoll.

So, it’s not just me seeing the parallels between Russia and the U.S.—Joe]

What am I missing?

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A Seattle Times reporter claims:

When asked to elaborate on the risk she replied,

We do not work for or with the police, and it’s important that we are not perceived as doing so. Journalists have been met with increasing hostility and threats because of this perception.

But, the subjects of those pictures and video surely would expect the recordings to fall into the hands of law enforcement when they were published. That is, unless they expected them to be edited or withheld in their favor before being published, right?

So, it would seem to me, that either the criminals would have to expect reporters to be biased in their favor or expect the recordings be available to the police. Hence, either the reporters are complicit in the crime or the risk to reporters is not changed.

Am I missing something here?

Quote of the day—Glenn Reynolds

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So when do we switch from “punch a Nazi” to “punch a wokester?”

Glenn Reynolds
THIS IS, OF COURSE, THE WHOLE POINT OF “WOKENESS.”
July 23, 2020
[The context is Survey: Majority of Americans Afraid of Expressing Political Beliefs.

One of the commenters to Reynolds post brought the sarcasm with

But I’ll be 100% honest when you call me and ask who I’m voting for..

Just like the polls on gun ownership can be trusted.—Joe]

Common Barrel Thread References

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From Silencer Shop:

One question that has always been a mainstay in our most-questions-asked category is whether a specific silencer will fit a specific gun. With threading looking similar, and acronyms being thrown around like hot tamales, we understand your plight. As the suppressor industry grows, it seems thread pitch options have too.

While some thread pitches are more popular than others due to military use or it being made common by specific firearm manufacturers, the last thing you want to happen is to finally get your suppressor in and realize that it doesn’t match up with your host firearm’s threading.

The list that we are providing you is to serve as a reference for quickly locating how your barrel may be threaded. Remember that factory barrel threadings and after market threadings aren’t always the same.

Details, which are kept up to date, are here.

Interesting demographics

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It’s time for me to renew my Arizona concealed weapons permit (so I can carry in Nevada). While looking for the renewal application I found this:

Chart
last updated: 07/19/2020

  ACTIVE SUSPENDED REVOKED
PERMITS 360666 4834 1259

PERMITS 19-20 21-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-69 70-79 80+
ASIAN 0 147 412 548 498 273 95 8
BLACK 0 186 492 651 562 333 105 9
INDIAN 0 97 194 225 266 188 90 14
UNKNOWN 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
WHITE 4 4270 8979 11539 18469 21471 12639 1698
FEMALE TOTAL 4 4700 10077 12963 19795 22265 12930 1729

PERMITS 19-20 21-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-69 70-79 80+
ASIAN 3 777 1926 2595 1974 1176 429 79
BLACK 5 903 1888 2415 2399 1650 754 133
INDIAN 1 251 520 522 544 506 326 90
UNKNOWN 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
WHITE 32 15051 31188 39480 52869 62273 52958 13343
MALE TOTAL 41 16982 35522 45012 57786 65605 54468 13645

Notice the peak age category for both female and male?

I would not have guessed that would be the case.

Peaceful protestors

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Portland Mayor yesterday:

I keep thinking that nearby rooftops occupied by small teams with suppressed AR’s would calm things down quietly and quickly.

Apparently nothing really changed because we didn’t get a fresh batch of truly peaceful protestors last night. It was the same stuff with “peaceful protestors” trying to barricade the exits of the Federal building then setting it on fire with law enforcement officers inside.

Historic

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A few minutes ago the price of gold reached a new high in relation to the U.S. dollar. Or, one could be equally accurate to say that the U.S. dollar reached a new low relative to gold. Click for a higher resolution version:

GoldHistory

In the mid to late 1990’s gold was selling for $300/ounce. I was making more money than I am now (contracting work for Microsoft with unlimited amounts of overtime allowed at 1.5X base rate) and bought a few ounces. But most of my money went into paying down the house mortgage and putting a new roof on it. And then half of that, which wasn’t very much to begin with, went to my ex-wife in the divorce. I wish I had bought more now. It would be worth a lot more than what the house appreciation was.

Gold surging is generally an indicator of troubling times which certainly describes 2020. But what is interesting now is that vaccine trials are looking pretty good and the economy is doing okay considering the circumstances. But yet, the price of gold continues to climb. I suspect the huge surge in the “printing” of money is a major contributor.

We live in interesting times. This year will be one for the history books.

Quote of the day—Glaeser and Shleifer

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By differentially taxing different groups of voters, the incumbent leader can encourage emigration of one of the groups, and maximize the share of the voters who support him. While benefiting the incumbent, these taxes may actually impoverish the area and make both groups worse off.

Edward L. Glaeser and Andrei Shleifer
2013
JLEO, V21 N1 1T he Curley Effect: The Economics of Shaping the Electorate
[Via a comment by Richard in regard to Cascading failures in policing where he said:

Look up the Curley Effect. This was perfected by Coleman Young, mayor of, you guessed it, Detroit

I haven’t read the whole paper yet. The Appendix looks particularly interesting. It starts with:

ProofsOfPropositions

I was going to make a big blog post after reading this paper and several others on the topic address the current situation in Seattle, Portland, and other cities, then extrapolate the concepts to corporate cultures. I didn’t get around to it because I worked late on some work stuff then one of my daughters called and we talked for quite a while. Maybe tomorrow.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Rawhide Wraith@olddustyghost

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Democrats want to eliminate the electoral college, the Senate, the 1st amendment, the 2nd amendment for sure, and the rest of the constitution, our borders, citizenship, carbon based fuels, cars, cows.

And the first step in their scheme is to eliminate Trump.

We better fight like hell or those of us who aren’t shot during the disarmament or who don’t starve when fuel and food are eliminated are going to be slaves.

Rawhide Wraith@olddustyghost
Tooted on September 28, 2019
[There’s far too much truth in this.—Joe]

A reasonable idea

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I had read this earlier in the day but it didn’t occur to me to reinforce it with a link from my own blog until it was suggested via email from John H.

No In-Person GRPC But You Can Still Support The Second Amendment Foundation

Why can’t the U.S. be more like England?

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Ever since I can remember anti-gun people have used England as an example of how guns should be regulated/banned. Here is what you get, UK Knife Crime Hits Record High, Murder Surges in Khan’s London

Knife crime in England and Wales reached a historic high in the year leading up to the end of March, as murders climb again in Sadiq Khan’s London.

…

London Assembly Member David Kurten said in response to the surge in crime: “There must be an end to politically correct policing — more stop & search, more arrests of burglars and violent gang members, less hassling people for having the wrong opinions.”

Former Brexit Party MEP Martin Daubney added: “All this while London’s dismal Mayor, Sadiq Khan, orders an urgent review into… ‘racist’ statues.”

The proportion of crimes actually being solved in England and Wales also fell to a record low, with just 7 per cent of criminal acts resulting in a court appearance for a suspect, down from 8 per cent last year and 16 per cent in 2014-15 when such records began to be compiled.

The Home Office report said that the fall represented some 33,460 fewer offences resulting in a criminal charge or court summons compared to the year prior. The number of sexual offences that resulted in charges fell from 5.2 per cent two years ago to just 3.2 per cent last year.

The number of rapes that ended in prosecution was just 1.4 per cent.

This is why we have the Second Amendment.

Just say, “No!” to gun control.

Cascading failures in policing

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I recently had an opportunity to play a card I had been holding for a few weeks. I waited until a former Seattle police officer I know grumbled* again about his current job. So I asked, “I’ll bet you really wish you still had your old job back at the Seattle Police department.

This triggered a five minute monologue which began with “Absolutely not!” on the consequences of the political situation in regards to police in general and Seattle and surrounding areas in specific. He described it as “cascading failures”. Here is a synopsis of what he told me:

As of a couple years ago there were about 1350 people in SPD which was considered significantly understaffed. This number included support staff and rookies patrol officers up through to the captain level.

SPD is currently losing hundreds of people via retirement and them finding different jobs. Officers that have 20+ years on the job can’t take their pensions yet (I think he said they have to be 53 years old before they can do that) but they can quit and still get their full pension when they do cross the age threshold. Replacements are nearly impossible to get. Not because of defunding, but because no one wants those jobs. Detectives and other high skill areas are especially hard hit because those are the people most likely to have 20+ years on the job.

Some skill areas have mutual aid packs with surrounding areas. But while the surrounding areas have not had as severe political stress as SPD they have been affected. The mutual aid packs increase the stress on the surrounding areas and is causing people to leave their law enforcement positions there as well. It’s a cascading system of failure that affects the entire area.

Even some rural counties are pushing people out of law enforcement. One such country recently removed all U.S. flags from their patrol cars. This was to avoid offending anyone.**

SPD is rapidly approaching the situation where when you call 911 the only time someone will show up is if there is a life and death situation.

I’m now extrapolating from his observations.

If the police only show up for life and death situations and detectives are among the skills sets hardest hit by personal shortages then law enforcement protection of property is going to asymptotically approach zero. If a cold body with no obvious signs of foul play and/or no hot leads is found it will essentially ignored. Even clear murder cases will have low closure rates. Assault and battery will be ignored. Without justice for the victims of violent crimes and reduced odds of being punished self administered “justice” will become common.

These cascading law enforcement failures will trigger other cascading failures. This is city killer type stuff. Seattle is highly dependent upon high tech money. Most of those jobs can be performed by people 100s of miles away as easily as they can be performed by people within commuting distance. People and companies will leave the immediate area in droves. The property values, and all tax bases will crash. City services of all types will suffer. This could create Detroit like conditions within a few years.

* I think, overall, he actually likes his job. He just likes to grumble about things.

** I expect the people insisting the flags be removed are bewildered as to how the police could have a “real” issue with this. This probably extends to at least some of my readers.

A significant number police are former, and even current reserve, military. The U.S. flag is more than a piece of red, white, and blue colored cloth to members of the U.S. military. I have never been in the military and I only sort of understood this. A former Army Ranger described the depth of that meaning when he told me that if he were on the jury of someone accused of murdering a person who was burning a U.S. flag he would not vote to convict even if there numerous witnesses and video of the event, fingerprints in the neck bruises, and matching shoe prints in the blood. He wouldn’t kill someone burning a U.S. flag. But he could understand why someone would.

Science proves leftists are not normal people

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From Correlates of discriminatory behavior:

Left-wing prejudice, however, does not manifest itself in discrimination against minorities. Rather it tends to be against white people. Additionally, conservatism appears to be becoming less of a predictor of anti-black bias of some sort, whereas the left wing version of prejudice may be becoming stronger. A somewhat small study of 88 students in a Californian university tested the effects of ideology on consequentialism, particularly when said consequentialism is racially based (Uhlmann et al., 2009). The researchers had the students report their political orientation on a scale basis. They gave the students two of the same moral dilemma, the Trolley problem, but with the race of the people in it being flipped. Some participants had to make the following decision: kill one white person or 100 black people; other students had to make this decision: kill one black person or 100 white people. Liberals were more likely to endorse consequentialism, meaning kill one person for the sake of 100 people, when the person being killed was white. Conservatism had no effect on this distinction.

Some other studies show similar results. Tetlock et al. (2000) showed liberals felt non-whites shouldn’t pay more for home insurance for living in a high-risk area but they were neutral when asked if whites should. And Goldberg (2019) shows white liberals are the only group which has an in-group distaste.

goldberg-2019

As people have been saying for many years now, it’s a mental disorder. These people just aren’t right in the head.

Via Milo Yiannopoulos @m.

Sign of the times

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Via Milo Yiannopoulos @m:

ModernEvolution

Nice!

Evolution in action. There are scenarios where we see Darwin awards being handed out with similar pedigrees in the next few years.