June 25, 2019 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Concealed Carry: FMJ ammo for 9mm and .380 ACP."--Paul Harrell (7 min.)

No one seems to know of cases of over-penetrating bullets injuring a bystander (well, other than the  apocryphal story from the Civil War of a woman that became pregnant from a bullet that had passed through a soldier's scrotum, or the much more likely account of a British sniper that got 3 kills with one shot). But, in testing out FMJ rounds on his infamous meat targets, Harrell shows that it easily could happen, even from the lowly .380 ACP.

• Be sure to check out this week's Woodpile Report. 
• Damned by faint praise: "Tested: Remington RP9 and RP45 Pistols"--American Rifleman. The reviewer writes:

My subjective impression of these pistols is pretty positive. They are big and on the heavy side, but they performed well with only a few failures to chamber early in testing. It is possible that these new Remingtons mimic the performance of several other modern polymer and steel service guns in that they benefit strongly from a few hundred rounds of break-in.

(Underlines added). The author also notes that "[t]he RP-series Remingtons seem to recoil a bit more noticeably than many of their contemporaries," "[t]he triggers were full of bumps and catches—hard to shoot," and "[t]hey would benefit greatly from a better trigger system."

• There is safety ... and then there is range Nazi. A comment from a Shooting Illustrated article on range safety:

The rule I would add is shown in your photo. I find it discomforting to ever see a gun with a closed chamber - for no reason. To me, an open chamber, lifted bolt or 'broken' (open) long gun is the 'default' mode, with any closed chamber to be questioned ALWAYS

This person will never be comfortable with other people carrying a firearm for self-defense. Oh, and this comment:

So, why are weapons-mounted flashlights ever safe? The ubiquitous light rails on handguns promote unsafe handling. One cannot shine such a light, looking for a target, without aiming your loaded gun at everything else that you do not intend to shoot.

My short answer: If you are caught in a situation where you have to actually use a firearm for self-defense, you will, at some point, have to actually point the firearm at the miscreant (Ed: one of the recent Marcus Wynne books I read had a character using "miscreant", and it seems to have slipped into my everyday vocabulary). That is, it's hard to shoot an attacker if you aren't actually aiming at him/her/it. If you don't want to search using the weapon light, the recommended way is to use a hand-held light, and reserve the weapon light for when you have found your evil-doer. Nevertheless, if the weapon light is all you have, you can use the flashlight's flood for searching, rather than the center or spot beam cast by the light. Also, flashlight beams don't kill, so really the issue is keeping your finger off the trigger and not jerking the trigger just because you see something move.

• Related: "Weapon Light Choices – Push Button Activation vs Pressure Switches"--The Firearm Blog. Basic summary is that it depends on your setup which will work best.

• A firearms myth: "Why You Should Avoid Handloads for Concealed Carry"--Guns America. The real reasons that you shouldn't use handloads for defensive carry are (1) reliable feeding and firing, and (2) reliable expansion and performance. The former is because factory ammo has a consistency of manufacture that is better than most handloaders can deliver; the latter is mostly due to the fact that few manufacturers sell their high-end defensive bullets to hand loaders. But this article doesn't mention either of these, instead focusing on the old trope that some wily prosecutor or his/her civil counterpart, the ambulance chaser, will make some argument that you manufactured deadlier bullets and are, therefore, somehow more culpable that if you had used factory ammunition. The comments left below the article pretty much skewer the author's reasoning.
• An elegant weapon for a more civilized age: "GUN REVIEW: THE SIG P232 PISTOL"--Guns.com. If the term svelte could apply to a firearm, this would be the one. See, also, "SIG SAUER P232, A GENTLEMAN’S CONCEALED CARRY" from Seven Gun.
• On a related note: "A Classic Rifle, Back From the Dead"--Recoil. The author describes his restoration of an old, neglected Foremost/Parker-Hale .30-06 hunting rifle. I think he actually improved on the original: he refinished the stock with a higher quality finish, glass-bedded the stock, and sent the barreled action and bolt off to have a Black Nitride finish applied.
• "Geologist Describes Uses Of Revolvers To Defend Against Bears Over Six Decades"--Ammo Land. Some of the incidents were resolved by shooting near the bear, giving it pause. But, if you have to shoot the bear: "When he has to shoot, he repeats a mantra …placement…  On bears, he aims for the aortic arch on top of the heart."

• Related: "BEAR DEFENSE: YOUR BEST BET AT SURVIVAL"--Shoulders of Giants. For a handgun, the author recommends nothing smaller than .41 caliber.

• I believe that I've cited to this article before, but it is a good read and useful to remind oneself of certain principles: "Effective Game Killing"--Terminal Ballistics Research. An excerpt:

     Approximately two to three inches forwards of dead center (foreleg) at 3 o’clock is the ball joint intersection of the scapular and humerus bones. And from the front line of the front leg through to the ball joint intersection lies the autonomic plexus. This is a major network of nerves which when hit soundly, causes instant collapse and death. A shot in this area has the potential to destroy the autonomic plexus along with the forward portions of the lungs and locomotive muscles and bones. The autonomic plexus (sometimes called hilar zone) is the most useful aiming point for fast killing. This shot placement is also particularly useful when using cartridges that have enough bullet weight to penetrate bone but not enough velocity to initiate hydrostatic shock or extremely wide wounding.

       It is important to understand that shot placement involves cultural traditions. For example, some cultures (particularly USA hunters) prefer a meat saver shot, striking the lungs behind the foreleg in an attempt to save meat. In Europe, the traditional method has been to aim forwards and although this does cause more meat destruction, this shot placement helps ensure rapid killing. Also, if you look more closely at this subject, you can see how small changes in POI may affect the hunter’s perception of a cartridge. One hunter may state that X cartridge is a very fast and emphatic killer while another may call the same cartridge abysmal - each assessment based on differing traditions or habits relative to the hunter’s point of aim. It is up to you to decide which method you wish to employ. Much will depend on the power and penetrative abilities of your cartridge. Ideally, you should be aware of both points of aim and should be able to switch from one to the other depending on the individual situation. If for example you are hunting with a high velocity cartridge using soft bullets that have the potential to suffer shallow penetration, then a meat saver shot will enable adequate penetration and hydrostatic shock can be counted on for a fast kill. On the other hand, it is very unwise to apply the meat saver shot when hunting large heavy bovines because even if you are using the likes of a .375 caliber rifle, this really is still quite a small bore diameter relative to the size of the animal you are hunting. Instead, a long heavy for caliber bullet of sound construction should be driven through the forwards portion of the chest where it can do the most damage.

(Bold in the original). Note that the author is discussing rifle bullets, not handguns.

• A 2001 article by Massad Ayoob: "Do rural homeowners need guns for self-defense?"--Backwoods Magazine. Short answer: yes. Ayoob writes:

The bad guys in the cities you fled or want to flee figured out a long time ago that the “Thin Blue Line” is thinnest in the hinterlands. America is the society that is interconnected by Interstate highways. Most of us in rural law enforcement have very strong reason to believe that a lot of burglary and violent crime in our provinces is done by out of town city punks who don’t want to crap where they live. Sure, we have our indigenous country scumbags, but we can generally stay on top of them and take care of them expeditiously.

Also:

      The overwhelming majority of encounters between armed citizens and violent criminals end just that way [no shots fired], whether in the depths of the inner city or in the wilderness. Perpetrator begins to attack. Perpetrator sees gun pointing at him. Perpetrator suddenly decides that he has made a terrible mistake, and is about to die from what I’ve come to call “sudden and acute failure of the victim selection process.” Perpetrator either flees or surrenders. End of story. Most of the time.

      Sometimes, the predator is so obsessed or enraged, so drugged out or drunk, or just so unbelievably stupid that he continues the attack. When this happens, the citizen/victim has no choice but to steady the gun and pull the trigger. This is the moment at which you will need not only the wherewithal to do what needs to be done, but the skill and familiarity with the firearm to allow you to do so.

• "‘Self-Selection’ Is an Often Overlooked Factor in the Debate About Guns in America"--The Truth About Guns. The author notes that when comparing the Unites States overall murder rate against other countries, we are right in the middle (otherwise known as "average"). And he poses a question similar to what one I've made: "So, with such a huge number of guns in a turbulent society, why isn’t our overall murder rate sky-high?" His explanation:

      Everyone in my large circle of friends knows I’m a gun guy. I’ve taken many novices to the range to introduce them to safe gun handling. It’s one of my passions. I’ve had many of them chat with me privately about their personal feelings regarding gun ownership.

     I’ve learned that people generally know when they are not suited to taking on that responsibility. I’d love to have a dollar for every time someone told me they don’t trust themselves to keep a gun around.

     They worry about their temper, their ability to react appropriately in an emergency, their use of intoxicants, their relationship issues and other factors that affect their mental state.

     The biggest reason we don’t have an astronomical rate of gun deaths is simple: people generally choose the best option for their own circumstances without orders from the nanny state. This “self-selection” contradicts the idea that we need to be micro-managed for our own safety.

     As a result of self-selection, much of what the anti-gun lobby claims they want to accomplish has already been done individually by the people themselves at zero cost. No tax money expended, no freedoms restricted, no need for state-mandated mental health exams.

As I've had to explain to my sons, the Left's antipathy toward firearms is largely based on self-projection: they wouldn't trust themselves with a gun, so they don't trust anyone else. (For the elites, it is more an issue that they don't want the peasants to be armed).

• Related: "Gabby Giffords Calls On Senate To Pass Universal Gun Background Checks"--The Huffington Post. Most firearm crimes in the United States are committed by minority street gangs. How would this help?

• Related: "Federal HEAR Act Would Outlaw Silencers Nationwide"--The Truth About Guns. Of course, there would be exceptions for law enforcement and federal agencies. Per Wikipedia, "Legal regulation of silencers varies widely around the world. In some nations, such as Finland, France, and New Zealand some or all types of suppressor are essentially unregulated and are sold through retail stores or by mail-order. In other countries their possession or use is more restricted." But not banned.

"The "Harrison Horror" of 1878"--The History Guy (13 min.)

So the grave robbers of the period called themselves "resurrectionists".

• Liberals are all about compassion, acceptance and inclusiveness: "Seeing poor white people makes me happy"--Race Baitr (via Internet Archive since the original article was taken down). Nicholas Powers, a self-described poet and journalist, and, apparently, an Associate Professor of Literature at SUNY, writes:

White people begging us for food feels like justice. It feels like Afro-Futurism after America falls. It feels like a Black Nationalist wet dream. It has the feels I rarely feel, a hunger for historical vengeance satisfied so well I rub my belly.

• Speaking of liberals: "Psychologists Can’t Figure Out Why Hardly Anyone Wants To Date A Trans Person"--The Federalists. 
• Ditto: "FBI Searches Home Of Embattled D.C. Council Member Jack Evans, Council To Launch Investigation". Evans is a former Clinton campaign D.C. co-chair, who is accused of "influence-peddling and conflicts of interests" (accepting bribes). 
• Pulling up the ladder: "US billionaires' group calls for wealth tax"--BBC News. The reason that they are comfortable with calling for such a tax is that they know they will never be subject to it--at least not at any scale that would discomfit them. For one thing, such a tax would probably only apply to income, not existing wealth; and even then, it wouldn't apply to income from municipal or state bonds. Another thing to understanding is that most wealthy have learned the important lesson that it is not the possession of the money that is important, but the control over the money. Thus, they can shift their wealth to various trusts, foundations, charities, etc.--avoiding taxes on the income--but still be in control of the money, and enjoy the fruits thereof. But what this tax would do is penalize anyone new that was climbing the ladder of wealth--someone that might knock the existing wealthy off their perch.

• Related: "Who Gets to Own the West?"--New York Times. Billionaires are buying up huge tracts of land in the West, including Idaho, which features heavily in this article. The article relates:

In the last decade, private land in the United States has become increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few. Today, just 100 families own about 42 million acres across the country, a 65,000-square-mile expanse, according to the Land Report, a magazine that tracks large purchases. Researchers at the magazine have found that the amount of land owned by those 100 families has jumped 50 percent since 2007.

You might ask yourself why this matters. Because, like my discussion concerning the control of money being superior to having money, the same applies to land:

The Wilkses, who now own some 700,000 acres across several states, have become a symbol of the out-of-touch owner. In Idaho, as their property has expanded, the brothers have shuttered trails and hired armed guards to patrol their acres, blocking and stymying access not only to their private property, but also to some publicly owned areas. This has drawn ire from everyday Idahoans who have hiked and hunted in those hills for generations.

That is, owning a key parcel (or parcels) can essentially turn you into the owner of much larger tracts of land or key resources simply by keeping others out. For instance, if you look at a map of the desert regions in the dry Western states, you will see millions of acres of public land. But peer a little closer, and you will notice that the property surrounding the relatively few water sources are privately owned. Those owners essentially own the surrounding land by virtue of their control of the water. 

      To add insult to injury in the above story, the Wilkses closed roads that have been historically used to access public lands. It seems to me that there should be a public easement by prescription over these roads (for a long time, Idaho only required 5 years to obtain a prescriptive easement or ownership by adverse possession, although it has been raised to 20 years), but there seems to be little will (or money) to fight the issue. 

     For those who own a cabin (or bug-out retreat), keep in mind that people with attitudes like the Wilkses could easily shut down access to your property, particularly if you have to use a road that crosses their property. You might be in the worst of situations, having bugged out from your urban shelter, but unable to reach your rural shelter.

• "The Arab world in seven charts: Are Arabs turning their backs on religion?"--BBC. Of the eleven North African and Near East countries included, all but Yemen reported increased non-religiousness between 2013 and 2018, with a couple (Tunisia and Libya) having marked increases.
• "True Colors of Ancient Greek and Roman Statues"--Moco-Choco. While most of us tend to think of Roman and Greek statuary and reliefs being plain white, the reality was that they were painted, often quite garishly. Scientists have used various imaging techniques to determine the original colors, and this article shows some of the results.
• Of course immigrants respect our laws: "Ilhan Omar lawyer: two marriages hard to explain"--Spectator. Hard to explain away, her lawyer means. The actual explanation is easy: (1) she married her brother to commit immigration fraud while still married to another man; or (2) she married her brother while still married to another man (ew!).

• Related: "U.S. Veteran: This Is Why We Take Ilhan Omar's 'Disgusting' Black Hawk Down Tweet Personally"--Townhall. Q: "Why does this woman, who fled Somalia and came to the U.S. at the public expense because we’re a nation who is compassionate towards real refugees, then dedicate her life to attacking it?"

A: Because it is in her nature. 

• Heber C. Kimball, an LDS apostle in Brigham Young's time, stated that Salt Lake City would be "classed among the wicked cities of the world." I bring this up because Salt Lake's lesbian mayor, Jackie Biskupski, has indicated that Salt Lake will not cooperate with ICE in any roundup of illegal aliens. She is not alone: Chicago's lesbian mayor, Lori Lightfoot, has said the same. I could've pointed out that they were both Democrats rather than both were lesbians, but it doesn't matter because it reflects a common psychology. When I noted, above, that Ilhan Omar attacks the country that gave her refuge because it is in her nature, I literally meant it. She can't help but not do it, and the same is true with these respective mayors. As explained in the book, The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics: How Conservatism and Liberalism Evolved Within Humans:

The r-strategy entails five main psychological traits. Each trait is designed to help an organism out-compete peers in the r-selected environment of free resource availability. This psychology exhibits a psychological aversion to both, competition with peers and the competitive environment. It also exhibits a tolerance for, or embrace of, promiscuity, low-investment single-parenting, and early onset sexual behavior among offspring. It will also tend to not exhibit any group-centric urges, such as loyalty to in-group, or hostility to out-group.  Of these five traits, (competition aversion, promiscuity, single parenting, early onset sexuality, and aversion to group-centrism/ethnocentrism), political leftists exhibit a tolerance of, or an embrace of, all five. Indeed, as we will show, these five urges explain the entire liberal platform of issue positions.  

If you honestly approach scripture, you will note that the wicked and decadent cultures and individuals exhibit most, if not all, of these five traits as well. The election of women, such as those mentioned above, is not a sign of progression or advancement, but of a culture circling the drain. Isaiah looked on a decadent culture and proclaimed, in his woe: "As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them." (Isaiah 3:12).  Those that are pro-immigration lack in-group loyalty toward their fellow countrymen--their own nation--and if you poke around, you will probably find that they have the other r-selected traits as well.

• Related: "Sexual Victimization by Women Is More Common Than Previously Known"--Scientific American. 

     In 2014, we published a study on the sexual victimization of men, finding that men were much more likely to be victims of sexual abuse than was thought. To understand who was committing the abuse, we next analyzed four surveys conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to glean an overall picture of how frequently women were committing sexual victimization.

     The results were surprising. For example, the CDC’s nationally representative data revealed that over one year, men and women were equally likely to experience nonconsensual sex, and most male victims reported female perpetrators. Over their lifetime, 79 percent of men who were “made to penetrate” someone else (a form of rape, in the view of most researchers) reported female perpetrators. Likewise, most men who experienced sexual coercion and unwanted sexual contact had female perpetrators.

     We also pooled four years of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data and found that 35 percent of male victims who experienced rape or sexual assault reported at least one female perpetrator. Among those who were raped or sexually assaulted by a woman, 58 percent of male victims and 41 percent of female victims reported that the incident involved a violent attack, meaning the female perpetrator hit, knocked down or otherwise attacked the victim, many of whom reported injuries.

     And, because we had previously shown that nearly one million incidents of sexual victimization happen in our nation’s prisons and jails each year, we knew that no analysis of sexual victimization in the U.S. would be complete without a look at sexual abuse happening behind bars. We found that, contrary to assumptions, the biggest threat to women serving time does not come from male corrections staff. Instead, female victims are more than three times as likely to experience sexual abuse by other women inmates than by male staff.

     Also surprisingly, women inmates are more likely to be abused by other inmates than are male inmates, disrupting the long held view that sexual violence in prison is mainly about men assaulting men. In juvenile corrections facilities, female staff are also a much more significant threat than male staff; more than nine in ten juveniles who reported staff sexual victimization were abused by a woman.

• "The Federal Reserve Continues to Get it Wrong"--The Futurist. From the article:

      The most recent employment report revealed 279,000 new jobs (including revisions to prior months), and an unemployment rate of just 3.6%, which is a 50-year low.  Lest anyone think that this month was an anomaly, the last 12 months have registered about 2.6M new jobs (click to enlarge).  

     Over the last two years, the Federal Reserve, still using economic paradigms from decades ago, assumed that when unemployment goes below 5.0%, inflation would emerge.  With this expectation, they proceeded on two economy-damaging measures : raising the FF rate and Quantitative Tightening (i.e. reversal of Quantitative Easing, to the tune of $50B/month). 

* * *

     President Trump, seeing what is obvious here, has not just pressured the Federal Reserve to stop raising rates (which they were about to do in late 2018, which would have created the inverted yield curve that they supposedly consider to be troubling), but has recently said that the Fed should lower the Fed Funds rate by 1%, effectively saying that their last four rate hikes were ill-considered.  He rightfully flipped the script on them.  

     Now, normally I would be the first to say a head of state should not pressure a central bank in any way, but in this particular case, the President is correct, and the ivory-tower is wrong.  The correct outcome through the wrong channel is not ideal, but the alternative is a needless recession that damages the financial well-being of hundreds of millions of people, and destroys millions of jobs.  He is right to push back on this, and anyone who cares about jobs must hope he can halt and reverse their damage-causing trajectory.  

• The wells of the deep opened up ... "Mysterious freshwater reservoir found hidden beneath the ocean"--Fox News. The article reports:

     Scientists have found a gigantic freshwater aquifer hidden deep below the ocean.

      The surprising discovery, from a new survey of the sub-seafloor off the northeast U.S. coast by researchers from Columbia University, appears to to be the largest formation of this type anywhere in the world — stretching from Massachusetts to New Jersey and extending continuously out about 50 miles to the edge of the continental shelf.

      Researchers said that if it was discovered on the surface it would create a lake covering some 15,000 square miles.

The researches briefly explained how the aquifers were created:

"Some 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, toward the end of the last glacial age, much of the world’s water was locked up in mile-deep ice; in North America, it extended through what is now northern New Jersey, Long Island and the New England coast. Sea levels were much lower, exposing much of what is now the underwater U.S. continental shelf. When the ice melted, sediments formed huge river deltas on top of the shelf, and fresh water got trapped there in scattered pockets. Later, sea levels rose."

• Related: "Earth may have underground 'ocean' three times that on surface"--The Guardian. This 2014 article reports:

       After decades of searching scientists have discovered that a vast reservoir of water, enough to fill the Earth’s oceans three times over, may be trapped hundreds of miles beneath the surface, potentially transforming our understanding of how the planet was formed.
      The water is locked up in a mineral called ringwoodite about 660km (400 miles) beneath the crust of the Earth, researchers say. Geophysicist Steve Jacobsen from Northwestern University in the US co-authored the study published in the journal Science and said the discovery suggested Earth’s water may have come from within, driven to the surface by geological activity, rather than being deposited by icy comets hitting the forming planet as held by the prevailing theories.
      “Geological processes on the Earth’s surface, such as earthquakes or erupting volcanoes, are an expression of what is going on inside the Earth, out of our sight,” Jacobsen said.
      “I think we are finally seeing evidence for a whole-Earth water cycle, which may help explain the vast amount of liquid water on the surface of our habitable planet. Scientists have been looking for this missing deep water for decades.”
     Jacobsen and his colleagues are the first to provide direct evidence that there may be water in an area of the Earth’s mantle known as the transition zone. They based their findings on a study of a vast underground region extending across most of the interior of the US.

• I like the cut of his jib: "Can't Kill Enough to Win? Think Again"--Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute. The author writes:

     The United States has been at war with radical Islamists four times longer than it was with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in World War II. And those previous enemies were far more competent and aggressive than the terrorists. It is time to kill a lot more of them.

      Too many commanders and their “operational law” judge advocates have neutered U.S. military forces with far too restrictive rules of engagement and investigations. One Army infantry battalion commander reported that during a 15-month command tour in Iraq, he had to endure 600 AR 15-6 investigations (equivalent to a Navy JAG manual investigation), most of which examined the use of force by his troops. When asked when he had time to command, he answered, “Exactly.”

     Human behavior has not changed much in recorded history. Neither have the basic tenets of war. It takes killing with speed and sustained effect to win wars. The notions that the U.S. military can win with “precision strikes” or “winning hearts and minds” are fantasy. Even the great victory in Operation Desert Storm was a bloody killing field. Just ask the remnants of the Tawakalna Division of the Iraqi Army.

      During the American Civil War, the Union literally bled the Confederacy dry of fighting-age men. General Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Potomac killed its fellow Americans by the tens of thousands until General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia could not resist. It was that pressure that led Lee—arguably the greatest tactician on either side—to surrender. Grant killed his way to victory. He had the manpower advantage as well as the economic and industrial power to do so.

      This country’s “Greatest Generation” killed enormous numbers of the enemy’s military servicemen and civilians in World War II. General Curtis LeMay knew that if he killed enough Japanese they would quit. While brutal by 2017 standards, his approach yielded lasting results—a productive peace with Japan that has lasted since 1945. The legal justification then—the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor—is the same casus belli as the one in the current war against al Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL): the 11 September 2001 sneak attack on the United States.

     Had the United States not killed Japanese soldiers, sailors, and airmen in the hundreds of thousands, it is likely they would have fought on and the U.S. military would have been forced to kill millions in close ground combat until they finally quit. The United States and its allies did the same against Nazi Germany. While victory required taking and holding territory, the Germans and Japanese fought until it became clear to them that the Allies would keep killing them until they quit.

After receiving some criticism regarding is article, the author responded:

      There is nothing new about insurgencies. Moreover, we are the insurgents in Afghanistan, not the counterinsurgents. To suggest otherwise is painfully arrogant and ignorant of the British and Russian misadventures in that country. We ought to have done as suggested by noted author, military historian, and Korean War veteran Beven Alexander, who in his 1995 book The Future of Warfare called for the use of overwhelming force to end resistance by eliminating the enemy’s intelligence, communication critical nodes, and supply structure; by killing or capturing their leaders and then leaving. And if the conduct that led us to attack them arises again, we must do it again and again, until they stop. Nation-building will fail in cultures that are fundamentally different from ours, such as the honor-killing tribal cultures of Afghanistan. Permanent war has never been a laudable goal for anyone other than defense contractors. We ought to stop worrying about ISIS recruiting or whether the populace will like us. As Patrick McCrory points out in The Fierce Pawns concerning the First British Afghan Campaign, “They will never like us.”

      Let battalion-level commanders focus on the close fight. If we overwhelmingly and consistently win the close fight, recruiting will no longer be an issue. Most people don’t want to join a team that is consistently on the losing end.

I agree with this because it is essentially what I've said before: the whole Afghanistan affair should have been a punitive expedition to kill as many as we could, as quickly as we could, and then withdraw, rinse and repeat as necessary.

• "Poll finds support for closing border to migrants and deployment of National Guard -- But a majority don't agree that Mexico should accept asylum-seekers returned by US"--Mexico News Daily. From the article:

      Almost two-thirds of respondents to a new poll believe that the [Mexican] government should close the southern border to migrants, and an even higher percentage support the deployment of the National Guard to enforce stricter immigration policies.

      The poll published today by the newspaper El Financiero found that 63% of the 410 people surveyed would like to see the border with Guatemala closed to migrants, a 9% increase compared to two weeks ago.

      In contrast, 35% of respondents believe that the government should support migrants and facilitate their journey through the country to the northern border.

     Mexico’s commitment to send 6,000 National Guard troops to the southern border as part of an agreement with the United States that ended President Donald Trump’s tariff threat found support among 68% of poll respondents while 29% opposed the move.

      Three-quarters of those polled said that Mexico should deport undocumented Central American migrants and 67% said that the southern border should be militarized.

     While the deployment of the National Guard found strong support, another aspect of the deal with the United States – Mexico’s agreement to accept the return of a greater number of asylum seekers as they await the outcomes of their claims in the U.S. – was rejected by a majority of respondents.

      Just 36% said that migrants should be accepted under the so-called “Remain in Mexico” policy while 60% said that they should not.

• "The Roman Emperor, The Navy SEAL, Elizabeth Warren, and Your Future"--Wilder, Wealthy and Wise. Some words of wisdom:

Two men, writing about the same thing centuries apart, come to the same conclusion through different methods on escaping the paralysis of fear in day-to-day life:  action is vital for you to be the best you.  You can’t dwell on what might happen if you make a bad decision – but you have to be afraid of the person you’ll be if you don’t take action, or, worse yet, don’t have a goal.

• A reader sends: "Tampering Past The Tipping Point"--The Deplorable Climate Science Blog. This one sentence pretty much sums up the article and accompanying graphs: "The next graph overlays all three versions, and how they quadrupled warming primarily by cooling the past and warming the present." They being NASA and the NOAA. It reminds me of the old Soviet joke: "The future is known. It’s the past that keeps changing."
• Speaking of lies and liars:"Google Execs Suddenly Go Into Hiding After Project Veritas Exposes Trump Destruction Plans"--The Lid.

     All of a sudden, a group of Google executives deleted their social media presence after a new expose revealed their plans to use their Internet search engine to destroy President Donald Trump’s 2020 election campaign.

     The sudden disappearance of the Google executive’s social media accounts came on the heels of the latest undercover exposé by Project Veritas that reveals that Google is programming its machine learning algorithms (or AI) to prevent the “next Trump situation.”

      The Project Veritas video reveals that instead of merely doing its job as the world’s leading Internet search and archiving tool, Google is using its power over what Americans see on the Internet as a partisan political weapon to force extreme, un-American leftism on all of us.