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Monday, April 11, 2022

The Docent's Memo (4/11/2022)

 

VIDEO: "Personal Protection: .30 Super Carry Evaluation"--Paul Harrell (32 min.)
On paper, the 30 Super Carry looks to be almost identical to 9 mm in terms of velocity and energy, but its performance in the "meat target" was inferior to the 9x19. 

VIDEO: "The SCAR 16S , Can it compete with high end AR15's?"--Garand Thumb (22 min.)
After watching this video, I was reminded of Timothy Mullin's book, The Fighting Submachine Gun, Machine Pistol, and Shotgun: A Hands-on Evaluation, in which he realized that a comparison of submachine guns came down to the question of whether a more modern submachine gun could really do a better job than a $10 Sten gun. In many cases, the answer was "no." So it was in this case. The $3,000 SCAR (actually $4,000 after upgrades) wasn't any better than a $1,500 AR (and the latter could be used with a suppressor without voiding the manufacturer's warranty).

Firearms, Shooting & Self-Defense:

  • Be sure to check out Greg Ellifritz's most recent Weekend Knowledge Dump. As always, there is a good selection of articles on various topics. Since Greg picks out useful articles, there generally isn't much to nit-pick about them other than sometimes they tackle issues that are difficult to cover in an article length format. But that is why you should also read books. Three of the articles that jumped out at me just because I have some experience with them had to do with pocket carry, "the skinny" on cell phone shot timers, and first time shooter and the snub-nosed revolver. 

    The author of the article on pocket carry, Paul Carlson, pretty sums up the whole issue in this one paragraph:

In general, I don’t recommend pocket carry as the primary concealment method for most people. Although pocket carry can be a very convenient and comfortable way to carry your weapon concealed, the nature of pants pockets and the typical sedentary lifestyle of most people makes the handgun difficult to access. 

I have to agree. For one thing, you need loose fitting trousers with a rather capacious pocket and a larger "mouth" or opening to provide easy access: something that a pair of blue jeans does not provide. The second problem is that pocket carry may not conceal the firearm very well, especially when seated and the fabric is pulled taut across the weapon--even if using a pocket holster. Too many holsters take on the shape of the weapon over time and/or fail to conceal the grip. On the other hand, it is convenient to slip your snubby or a small .380 in your pocket at times. And that is how I view pocket carry: a nice option to have when you otherwise might forego carrying your weapon, but not the best option for everyday carry.

    Of course, this is considering carrying in trousers or slacks and not a sports jacket or coat. An inside pocket, providing that the fabric is up to the task of the extra weight and wear and tear (and you might need to reinforce it) can actually serve pretty well for carrying a small, slim semi-auto pistol in one of the pocket holsters intended to mimic the shape of a wallet.

    The article on first time gun buyers and snub nosed revolvers seems to offer the false choice between a snub-nosed revolver or a micro-9 semi-auto.  My belief is that most first-time gun owners--if they have little or no practical experience with firearms--would probably be better served by a medium framed (e.g., K-frame) revolver shooting .38 Special or .38 Special +P in a 3-inch barrel because of the simple manual of arms and that it is large enough for easy use but still small enough to easily carry. It is too bad that S&W does not offer their Model 10 with decent sights and the thinner (lighter) barrel which used to be popular with the weapon. But even with a snubby, the choice of grips can make a big difference, speaking in particular of the Ergo Delta grips. 

    Finally, as to shot timers, the article is correct: there are no good shot-timer apps as far as actually using at the range. Although this was years ago, I tried a couple and wound up purchasing a Competition Electronics Pocket Pro II shot timer.

    Lucky Gunner did some serious and expansive testing with various loads from a Ruger PC carbine in the Self Defense Ammo for Pistol Caliber Carbines article. They fired a variety of ammunition through the platform, including some of the more popular defensive ammo types.

    What they found was that lighter bullets in the 124-grain range reach great velocities but tend to expand early and penetrate less. The 147-grain rounds fired penetrated deeply and expanded consistently. This led to superior performance from a 16-inch barrel.

    Additionally, heavier bullets tend to perform better at longer ranges, especially in pistol calibers. Since you’re using a rifle, you can make use of a little extra range, even if it’s outside of standard home defense range.

    In fact, I’d go heavier than 147 grain with a pistol-caliber carbine. A company called Seismic Ammo makes 185 grain 9mm ammo. This ammo likely does very well through a standard 16-inch barrel and strikes with some serious power and awesome range.

The 2021 USPSA survey data did not specify the calibers used, but a quick look at the bullet weights chosen show 9 mm dominates. The 147-grain slug was selected by 47 percent of shooters, 124 and 125 grains by 26 percent, 150-grain (likely the Federal Syntech factory load) by 18 percent, with the 135-grain at six percent and 115-grain at five percent.

” It used to be like a roll of the dice when it came to firearm selection. I had people showing up with small 22 caliber pistols to short .357 Magnums and once even a .44 Magnum. These days it’s mostly smaller higher capacity carry guns right out of the gate. My mind is blown how many students show up with either a Glock 43, 43X, or P365 already from the start”

  • "Is It Lawful to Come to the Door Armed?"--Clayton Cramer.  Cramer cites to a case, Knibbs v. Momphard (4th Cir. 2022), in which the court held that a sheriff's deputy did not have qualified immunity for his shooting and killing a homeowner that answered the door while armed. The court held that "Racking a shotgun inside one’s home, without more, is no more threatening than coming to the door with any other loaded firearm. Indeed, any reasonable officer would presume that an individual carrying a firearm has already loaded it." 
  • "Lessons From Handgun Defense Failures Against Bears"--Ammo Land. The author was able to find three instances where handguns failed when used against bears attacks. One incident involved a handgun in caliber .22 LR, the second involved a .357 Magnum where the shooter missed on all three shots taken, and in the third instance, the shooter fired into the air, not at the bear. 
  • "Kyle Lamb Transition From Rifle To Pistol"--The Mag Life. A couple points:
The transitions that Kyle discusses in the video are in the instance of the primary long arm going down, whether it runs dry or experiences a stoppage. At that point, the operator transitions to a handgun. Rather than attempting to remedy the stoppage or reload the long arm, the pistol transition is so much faster and more practical if the threat is close. There are a couple of different ways to train for this transition, each with a different setup.

Also:

Kyle emphasizes the need for the hammer to be dropped by pulling the trigger on the rifle so that we receive that audible “click”, indicating that the weapon is not firing. If that happens with the weapon, the hammer will be forward, and we should make an attempt to sweep the weapon onto safe. But if we have a properly functioning weapon (AR-15/M-4 platform), the weapon won’t go on Safe. Regardless of whether or not the weapon will go on safe, we still drop it and go to the pistol.

    It’ll suffice here to mention that I’m from the ‘revolver era.’ For those of us old enough to have started our journey with round guns, they provide a decent option if your hand(s) can control the trigger. I also come from a time when we were taught to move the gun from hand to hand to make better use of available cover. My habit was to carry a backup gun – nearly always a revolver – accessible to the less-dominant hand. That might be the only hand I had left that could function the gun.

    With physical infirmity, you are left having to adapt, adjust, modify – and reconcile. Thinking about it and putting a plan in place before you need it is just a smart investment.

The administration claimed that the rule would take on ghost guns in three ways:

  • To help keep guns from being sold to convicted felons and other prohibited purchasers, the rule would make clear that retailers must run background checks before selling kits that contain the parts necessary for someone to readily make a gun at home.
  • To help law enforcement trace guns used in a crime, the rule would require that manufacturers include a serial number on the firearm “frame or receiver” in easy-to-build firearm kits.
  • To help reduce the number of “ghost guns” on our streets, the rule would set out requirements for federally licensed firearms dealers to have a serial number added to 3D printed guns or other un-serialized firearms they take into inventory.

Much of the hysteria over "ghost guns" can be traced back to one person: Carlos A. Canino, former Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the ATF’s Los Angeles Field Division. Canino told anti-gun activists in 2020 that 41% of the firearms recovered by the LA field office were "ghost guns." But, as we have increasingly come to expect from our government, Canino's claims were a lie. Armed American News reached out to the ATF about these numbers and received the following response:

    “I contacted the Los Angeles Field Division earlier today after your initial email, and their Public Information Officer was unable to verify any figures provided in 2019 by former-SAC Canino without knowing the time-period(s) he used for his comments,” Longnecker said in the email. “For that reason, we rely on verifiable data generally documented on our website or obtained through a FOIA request.”

    Longnecker supplied statistics about the numbers of homemade firearms he claimed were recovered by law enforcement at possible crime scenes nationwide from Jan. 1, 2016, through Dec. 31, 2020, which were submitted to ATF for tracing – a total of 23,906 guns during the five-year period, or roughly 13 guns per day.

  • 2016: 1,750
  • 2017: 2,507
  • 2018: 3,776
  • 2019: 7,161
  • 2020: 8,712

“I am not aware of any other verified PMF (Privately Made Firearm) data that has been published by ATF,” Longnecker wrote.

As the AAN writer continues, "This is outrageous. The entire war on homemade firearms was based on alleged ATF data, which the ATF now claims it cannot verity. Civil rights are about to be violated, and gunmakers and firearm parts manufacturers are about to be put out of business, all based on spurious data from a former ATF official who the agency now appears to have disavowed." But that is how government works: never let a crises go to waste; and if there is no crises, manufacture one.

    In the AMNY report, the New York Police Department admitted that guns without serials numbers are still traceable.

    Indeed, just like traditional serialized guns made by gun manufacturers, firearms without serial numbers still leave plenty of trace evidence. They aren’t quite the untraceable unicorns that the mainstream media’s predominate narrative would have everyday Americans believe.


VIDEO: "Skinning a Deer with a Stone Knife"--Hunt Primitive (55 min.)

Prepping & Survival:

  • "Grizzly Bear Mauls and Kills Shed Hunter in Montana"--Field & Stream. Per the article, "Craig Clouatre went missing in the Six Mile Creek area of Paradise Valley, which is to the south of Livingston, on Wednesday, March 23. On Friday, March 25, Park County Sheriff Brad Bichler announced on Facebook that searchers had located Clouatre’s body." Clouatre and a friend had gone looking for antlers that had been shed by deer, and had split up.
  • "SELCO: Who Will Be Dangerous and Who Can You Trust When the SHTF?"--Organic Prepper.  The gist of the article is that when things get tough and rule of law starts to go out the window, people's true personality--the one that is currently suppressed due to living in a period of plenty and operating law enforcement--will come out and for many the results will not be pretty.
    To go back to the beginning of the article: are there more sick and dangerous people now than before? 
 
    Probably yes, because of numerous reasons, and some of the reasons are simply the fact that the world is becoming a place where sick stuff is trying to be recognized as normal.

    But for preppers, that is not the most important thing here.

    You as a prepper need to realize and understand, deeply and truly for a fact, that dangerous and sick people are all around us.

    Maybe your next-door neighbor or your co-worker, or even your family member.

    You do not see it just because the system is there, so it keeps them from acting on their true thoughts, keeps them looking normal, and functioning normally.

    When that system is gone, together with punishment and the law, only then will you see for real and recognize who is really sick or bad.

    I have seen people who use to be family men holding rape camps when the SHTF, or average folks collecting ears from people.

    Do not make a mistake – people are the same everywhere, the only difference is how bad society and the system will be stripped down.

The two points Selco raises on how to distinguish between the good and bad is to try and get to know the good people now and have enough supplies to get through the period that the bad people will start to reveal themselves. 

    One of the common uses for old pine is burning it in a campfire or a wood stove. With many types of wood to choose from, does pine burn well as firewood?

    No, pine does not make for effective firewood if you want prolonged heat. Pine burns at a low temperature that wouldn’t be effective at heating a house, so you’ll notice extensive creosote buildup in your chimney. It also burns pretty quickly.

    This doesn’t mean you should count pine out of the fire game. Pine trees are an incredible resource for starting fires and other applications.

    If you have lots of pine near you, count your blessings as these trees can bring a lot of value.

The primary problems with pine are that it produces a lot of creosote, a buildup of which can cause chimney fires, and does not have very good heat output. According to the article, "Pine firewood rates at 17 million BTUs per cord which is at the lower end of the scale for heat strength and energy output. In comparison, black locust burns at about 28 million BTUs per cord." In practice, I've found that the heat output is low enough that it is common for a fire to die out without burning the entire piece of wood. If I am using pine, I will burn it together with hotter burning wood to keep the pine burning. So, for instance, I might have a larger pine log with a couple smaller pieces of fruit tree wood in the fireplace at the same time.

You must first make sure your chain is properly tightened against the bar if you’re using a file to sharpen it. If your chain is loose or “sloppy” it will move around as you attempt to file and make keeping a consistent angle on the file difficult. For this reason, some sawyers prefer to over-tighten the chain a bit while sharpening to keep it taut, then reset to the proper tension once the job is complete.

Then clamp the bar in place so the saw won't move around. 

    Starting on the right side of the bar, etch the top of a tooth with a magic marker. You’ll use this mark as a reference to let you know when you’ve made a complete revolution of the chain and sharpened every cutting tooth. Holding the file at the recommended angle, make one stroke with the file, directly away from you. Lift the file slightly off the tooth and pull it back toward you, then make another stroke. Remember, files are not crafted to sharpen in both directions, so you’ll only be filing material as you stroke away from you. If you stroke the file both back and forth, you may damage the file. Make 4-5 strokes in one direction and stop.

    Using your fingers, move the chain ahead until the next cutting tooth is in front of you. Then file this tooth exactly as you did the one before, using the same number of strokes. Your goal is to maintain (or restore) the C-shape of each tooth with your file. Advance the chain and repeat the process until you’ve made a complete rotation on the bar.

    Visually inspect each tooth you’ve filed on this side of the chain. If the number of strokes you’ve taken hasn’t honed it appropriately, file it until you’ve removed enough material to restore the tooth to an appropriate degree. Continue this process for the length of the chain. When you’re satisfied each resembles a C-shape, with a nicely sharpened edge free of debris or corrosion, reverse the position of the saw blade in the vise and copy your actions on the opposite side.

    Check the rakers: When you’ve sharpened each cutting tooth on the chain, place the depth gauge on top of the bar, straddling the chain. The depth gauge will have a slot on it that allows you to see the top of the raker. If a raker protrudes above the depth gauge, file it with a flat file until it’s even with the depth gauge. This will optimize saw performance.

The article also has tips (and photographs) on using a sharpening guide.
US rail carriers, we have learned, are right now declaring force majeure and cancelling contracts on their obligations to deliver hundreds of thousands of rail cars of bulk grains to cattle and dairy operations in America. Right now, tens of thousands of dairy animals face starvation within weeks, and grain supplies will be gone in many areas in just a few days. Importantly, if dairy animals are culled because of a lack of grain, it will take many years to rebuild dairy operations to the present level.

The article doesn't say why carriers are asserting force majeure clauses to cancel the contracts, but I would assume it is because of the increase in fuel prices.

    "The future is not bright," hydrologist David Hoekema said. "Fifty percent of the state is currently in severe drought, and that percentage will increase in the coming months. We are predicting water shortages in every basin in Southern Idaho, including the Payette." 

    IDWR said Idaho started off with a great winter and record-breaking snowfall at the end of 2021. However, the snowpack in Idaho’s mountains has declined since Jan. 9 in every basin south of the Salmon River, leading a streamflow forecast to be 20-70% below-average for: the Snake River, Big Lost, Big Wood, Little Wood, Salmon Falls, Boise, Payette, and Weiser. 

    Depending on how the weather plays out for April, the issue may become worse or slightly better, according to IDWR. 

    "We're far enough along that there's very little chance of recovery," Hoekema said. 

    Henry's Fork, the Bruneau Basin and other tributaries in the Snake River Plain are moving toward exceptional to extreme drought, according to Hoekema. 

    However, Hoekema said that the Clearwater Basin and Panhandle region are doing better than southern Idaho regions, with runoff at or below average, but outside of drought conditions. 

    The German supermarket chains have indicated that due to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, they will be increasing the prices of some goods as the renewed conflict has had a significant impact on global commodity prices.

    Some prices are set to rise as much as 30 per cent, and in some cases as much as 50 per cent this week, and newspaper Berliner Zeitung reports the items impacted will include: “cooking oil, butter and margarine… also chocolate, crisps, preserves, sausage, spreads and cheese”.

VIDEO: "There’s an oil supply ‘100 times bigger’ than US reserve: Oil exec"--Fox News (6 min.)
A brief explanation of how the Biden Administration is keeping oil companies from drilling.

News & Current Events:

    One of the brothers in custody was freed from prison about two months ago and last year was rejected for earlier release after prosecutors argued he “clearly has little regard for human life,” documents show.

    Smiley Martin, 27, who was released on probation in February, was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of possession of a firearm by a prohibited person and possession of a machine gun. Hours before Sunday’s attack, Martin posted a live Facebook video of himself brandishing a handgun, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press.

    Police were trying to determine if a stolen handgun found at the crime scene was used in the massacre. It had been converted to a weapon capable of automatic gunfire.

    Detectives also were trying to determine whether the gun Martin brandished in the video was used, according to the official, who was briefed on the investigation but was not authorized to publicly discuss details and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Smiley Martin typically would have remained behind bars until at least May after serving a minimum of half his time for his previous arrest in 2017, but prison officials evidently used a very expansive approach to applying lockup time credits to his sentence, said Gregory Totten, chief executive officer of the California District Attorneys Association and a former Ventura County district attorney.

But the reaction of the politicians is the same as always: "California Releases Violent Criminals From Its Jails, Then Blames Guns For Their Crimes." The unspoken issue is this: the U.S. does not have a gun problem, it has a black criminal problem.

    So what we have here are two prohibited persons with stolen firearms (that’s illegal) one of whom had a machine gun (against the law). They allegedly opened fire on a crowd of people (also illegal) killing six (we’re sure there’s a law against that, too). It’s almost as if criminals don’t give a flying fornication about gun laws…or any other kind, come to think of it.

    But the Brothers Martin didn’t commit their early morning mayhem just anywhere. They did it at ground zero for gun control in America. The place where every half-baked idea for infringing on and limiting the right to keep and bear arms happens first.

    California has virtually every gun control law you can think of already on the books. They have universal background checks. A 10-day waiting period. A magazine capacity limit. A red flag law. An “assault weapons” ban. A one-handgun-a-month purchase limit. They even have background checks on ammunition purchases (for God’s sake). No firearm sales to anyone under 21. A “ghost gun” ban. Registration. All of it.

    That makes things a little awkward for the gun control lobby. Remember, the justification for all of the laws already in force in the Golden State was that each one was going to really do something to stop violent crime.

    Now, after what happened in Sacramento, how do you argue for still more gun control laws with a straight face when you have a high profile shooting by a couple of prohibited persons in the place that already has all the gun control laws?

  • Speaking of manufactured crisis, it appears that the FBI's manufactured plot to kidnap Wisconsin governor Gretchen Whitmer has become farce. The Detroit Free Press reports:

    •     The historic Gretchen Whitmer kidnap plot case ended with no convictions Friday, delivering a blow to the government as it failed to convince a jury that four militia members were domestic terrorists determined to harm the governor because of her COVID-19 restrictions.

        The jury declared two of those men not guilty, but deadlocked on the charges against the other two, who will be retried.

        Defendant Daniel Harris — the only one who testified at the trial — was acquitted on all four counts, with the judge telling the 24-year-old Lake Orion man he would be free to go Friday afternoon.  

    Not only were jurors unpersuaded by Birge’s prosecutors, the jury instead seemed to believe defense attorneys’ arguments that their clients were entrapped by the FBI. At least a dozen FBI undercover agents and informants, working out of numerous FBI field offices across the eastern half of the country and at the direction of supervising agents, concocted and funded the sting operation. Dan Chappel, the main informant compensated at least $60,000 by the FBI for “bringing people together,” as his FBI handler ordered him, took the stand to explain his role. But his testimony was lackluster and ultimately did not convince the jury the men were guilty.

    The Justice Department and FBI have lots of explaining to do—so, too, does Andrew Birge. Hundreds of hours of secret recordings and thousands of texts fail to prove what Birge said in his initial press conference: there was no evidence to support his claim that the defendants wanted to “kidnap” Whitmer before Election Day. After all, if no kidnapping conspiracy or legitimate threat existed, no deadline existed, either.

    The only people pushing to do something big before Election Day resided in the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C..

    In a redux of the 2016 Trump-Russia collusion farce designed to sabotage Trump before Election Day, the FBI used its powerful resources to again interfere in a presidential election to help the Democratic nominee for president. News of the arrests made national headlines for days; Joe Biden made the most of the political gift to his campaign. “There is a throughline from President Trump’s dog whistles and tolerance of hate, vengeance, and lawlessness to plots such as this one,” Biden said in a statement released on October 8, 2020. “He is giving oxygen to the bigotry and hate we see on the march in our country.”

Read the whole thing. 

    Emily Bridges, who formerly competed against men as Zach Bridges, was cut from the women’s British National Omnium Championship on Saturday.

    This would have been Bridges’ first race against women. The athlete only began hormone therapy last year, according to the BBC. 

    Bridges was determined “ineligible” to compete by the UCI, cycling’s governing body, after women threatened to boycott the race.

    “Bridges – who set a national junior men’s record over 25 miles in 2018 – had been due to compete against several British Olympians, including Dame Laura Kenny, in her first race in the women’s category,” The Guardian reported. “However the UCI ruled the 21-year-old, who began hormone therapy last year to reduce her testosterone levels, was currently not compliant with its regulations as she is still registered as a male cyclist – and therefore cannot compete as a woman until her male UCI ID expires.”

    The Guardian noted that the UCI’s decision “came amid a growing backlash from within the sport, with the Guardian understanding that a number of female riders were talking about boycotting the event in Derby because they felt that Bridges, who was on the Great Britain Academy programme as a male rider until being dropped in 2020, had an unfair advantage.”


VIDEO: "Zoltan Pozsar Says "Bretton Woods 3 Has Begun" (Explained)"--George Gammon (34 min.)
The sanctions against Russia and its decision to denominate future gas and oil sales in rubles suggests that the future of the American dollar as THE international reserve currency is numbered. The video suggests that China, which is looking at a gold back currency, and Russia will forge a new trade coalition that will freeze out the old Bretton Woods "Euro Dollar". According to the video, the result for the United States will be a decline in the value of the U.S. dollar.  I'm not so sure that China will be able to pull off a gold backed currency because of the massive deflationary pressure that it would put on the Chinese economy. And Russian gas dominance will only last so long as Israel is not able to develop its Mediterranean gas fields. The Biden Administration, earlier this year, killed the planned development of an undersea pipeline that would have directly connected to Europe. But Israel and Turkey are looking at constructing an alternate pipeline. (See also this story from the Jerusalem Post). This won't, by itself, make up for the loss of gas from Russia. But Israel isn't the only nation wanting to run a pipeline to Europe or otherwise supply Europe with LNG.

Opinion & Analysis:

    Weird how these guys never got upset when the left was lying that we are racist, but are in a tizzy when we accurately observe that the left is pro-pedo.

    They want, at best, to excuse perverts. We want perverts hunted for sport.

Also:

    And when the pearl-clutchers sputter because we point out that these people are objectively pro-pedophile – because they excuse it and refuse to protect kids from it – there’s no point in debating it. Remember that every Democrat, plus Mitt Romney (to the extent there’s a difference), voted to confirm a SCOTUS judge who thought pedos were getting a bad rap. “But the blue-haired mutant teacher is not the one personally touching the kids xisself so you can’t lump xir in with the pedos even though xe makes it easy for the pedos!” the fussy tone police whine. Hey pseudo-cons, we’re not interested in making fine distinctions between pedo-friendly, pedo-adjacent, and fully pedo-engaged. If there is any ambiguity about that sordid topic, we can defer to the experts in the Lincoln Project to the extent we care to distinguish the sex pests from the sex pest enablers. And that extent is quite limited.

    As Liz Wheeler has observed, it is not enough to not be a groomer. One must be actively anti-groomer.

    We are. If you want to use your job to contaminate our kids with your bizarre sexual obsessions, you’re a groomer and we are saying so. And if David French et al doesn’t like it, good. 

    • Related: That Liz Wheeler story: "Conservative host  TRIGGERS groomers in EPIC Twitter throw down​"--The Blaze. Some of her Twitter posts:
      • It’s not enough to be not a groomer. One must be actively anti-grooming. Those who defend themselves against accusations of grooming are simply expressing Groomer Fragility. They harbor secret groomer traits & must be shown the ways they’ve benefited from a systemic grooming.
      • Silence is violence when it comes to the grooming of children. Unless you are actively working to dismantle the systems of grooming, you are upholding the institutions that have oppressed children for centuries. It’s time to listen & learn. Know better so you can do better.
      • It’s time we stop centering groomers and work to establish anti-grooming policies and programs. I recommend a government division, The Anti-Grooming Task Force, in which unelected anti-grooming activists determine whether institutions are sufficiently anti-grooming.
    ... In accordance with a requirement of President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, in 2002 the Department of Education carried out a study of sexual abuse in the school system.

    Hofstra University researcher Charol Shakeshaft looked into the problem, and the first thing that came to her mind when Education Week reported on the study were the daily headlines about the Catholic Church.

    "[T]hink the Catholic Church has a problem?" she said. "The physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests."

    So, in order to better protect children, did media outlets start hounding the worse menace of the school systems, with headlines about a "Nationwide Teacher Molestation Cover-up" and by asking "Are Ed Schools Producing Pedophiles?"

    No, they didn't. That treatment was reserved for the Catholic Church, while the greater problem in the schools was ignored altogether.

    As the National Catholic Register's reporter Wayne Laugesen points out, the federal report said 422,000 California public-school students would be victims before graduation — a number that dwarfs the state's entire Catholic-school enrollment of 143,000.

    Yet, during the first half of 2002, the 61 largest newspapers in California ran nearly 2,000 stories about sexual abuse in Catholic institutions, mostly concerning past allegations. During the same period, those newspapers ran four stories about the federal government's discovery of the much larger — and ongoing — abuse scandal in public schools.

    But that doesn’t change the fact that the left is desperate to groom your kids, to sexualize them behind your back.

    Why?

    Well, a whole lot of leftists want to have sex with your kids, and want to normalize sex between kids and adults. The evidence of that is everywhere. Democrats know opening the southern border will mean the import of child sex slaves. And yet, Democrats still open the border. Democrats continue to release child predators and suspected predators. We’re about to be saddled with a Supreme Court Justice who shrugs at child porn. More than one left-wing publication has asked us to better understand and sympathize with child molesters. The left embraced Jeffrey Epstein for decades. The left-wing Lincoln Project shielded a suspected predator.

    The other reason for the grooming is political.

    Democrats are losing key parts of their coalition: the working class, Hispanics, and chunks of the black population. One way they see of making up those numbers is to create a lot of damaged and broken young people obsessed with their sexuality. It’s just a fact that neurotic, unhappy lunatics and narcissists who define themselves by what they do with their sex organs vote Democrat. So… Democrats want to damage your kids to create a whole lot more of them.

    There is nothing healthy about exposing prepubescent kids to sexuality. And doing it behind the backs of parents is outright demonic.

    The left does not care about kids. To serve their political ends, the left is willing to butcher babies even as they exit the birth canal. The left’s only morality is what achieves their goals, and if that means turning your kids over to perverts and degenerates in the classroom, so be it.

    If you want to know how wrong this is, think about this…

    Would you discuss any kind of sexuality with your nieces and nephews?

    Of course you wouldn’t. The very idea is revolting, and that’s family!

    Now imagine how twisted and sick you have to be to want to talk about sex to a classroom of five-year-olds.

    These are bad people, evil people, and they are coming for your kids.

    Pro-life advocates and a legislative analysis warned that Wicks’ bill would legalize infanticide as well as expand abortions. Attorney Wesley Smith has written how the bill [because it uses the term "perinatal death"] would possibly allow letting babies die as old as 6 weeks but it appears certain that infanticide would be tolerated for the first 28 days after birth.

    The bill would prohibit authorities from charging a mother for “actions or omissions” related to her pregnancy, “including miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion, or perinatal death.” Anyone who “aids or assists a pregnant person” also would be exempt from prosecution. Additionally, the bill would allow the woman to sue police and other authorities who arrest or charge her in such cases.

    According to the California Family Council, the “perinatal death” language in the bill would exempt mothers who kill their newborn babies from prosecution.

A lot of leftist had a hissy fit over articles like this, contending that the bill did not legalize infanticide; it merely prevented law enforcement from using a death certificate as evidence, and the "perinatal" language was intended to only refer to "pregnancy related" not a time period. Nevertheless, "To clarify the term, Wicks added a new amendment to the bill on Monday, changing the wording to, 'perinatal death due to a pregnancy-related cause.'" I guess it was intended to be a bill that you had to pass to know what was in it.

    Colorado Democrat Governor Jared Polis signed a bill into law on Monday that legalizes the murder of babies in the womb until birth, citing that “a fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus does not have independent or derivative rights under the laws of the state.”

    Governor Polis signed the Reproductive Health Equity Act (HB22-1279) as preparation for the possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court could overturn the Roe v. Wade precedent in the coming weeks, Colorado Sun reported.

    In Ukraine, Russia began the war by mounting a complex multipronged offensive using land, air and seaborne forces. It quickly lost steam ... more than 170,000 Russian troops are estimated to have been committed to Ukraine in about 130 units, known as battalion tactical groups. When the U.S. and its allies invaded Iraq in 2003, similar numbers of U.S. troops were committed in fewer than 50 BTGs. The reason for the difference: the large proportion of the U.S. force being used for logistics and the transportation of fuel, ammunition, water and food.

    Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, said military experts may have been deceived by the “lavish logistical system” employed by the U.S. in the past three decades. “What the U.S. has done has made people immune to looking at the reality of logistics and just assuming it will get done,” he said.

As one of my friends put it, Russia has turned out to be a paper tiger. It is not even clear but that the Russian may be a paper tiger even as to its nuclear force. Certainly, if the same care taken to ensuring that vehicles were maintained apply to the Russian nuclear force, it is not clear that the Russians would even be able to launch the majority of their ICBMs, or if launched, the warheads be anything other than expensive dirty bombs. Those warheads have to be reprocessed every 7 to 10 years in order to work. Has it been happening?

    My impression is that Russia has maintained an illusion of power by advertising their advancement in weapons--weapon systems that are roughly on par with those of the West--but that they haven't actually had the money to manufacture those weapons in sufficient quantity to arm their forces. Thus the reasons we see reports of Russian troops being issued 1940's era AK47 rifles instead of even 1970's era AK-74 rifles. 

    And as bad as conditions are for the Russians, I suspect that China's military is in even worse shape. 

    On June 18, 2021, an evolutionary biologist named Jesse D. Bloom sent the draft of an unpublished scientific paper he’d written to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to the president of the United States. A bespectacled, boyish-looking 43-year-old often clad in short-sleeved checkered shirts, Bloom specializes in the study of how viruses evolve. “He is the most ethical scientist I know,” said Sergei Pond, a fellow evolutionary biologist. “He wants to dig deep and discover the truth.”

    The paper Bloom had written—known as a preprint, because it had yet to be peer-reviewed or published—contained sensitive revelations about the National Institutes of Health, the federal agency that oversees biomedical research. In the interests of transparency, he wanted Fauci, who helms an NIH subagency, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), to see it ahead of time. Under ordinary circumstances, the preprint might have sparked a respectful exchange of views. But this was no ordinary preprint, and no ordinary moment.

    More than a year into the pandemic, the genesis of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was still a mystery. Most scientists believed that it had made the leap from bats to humans naturally, via an intermediary species, most likely at a market in Wuhan, China, where live wild animals were slaughtered and sold. But a growing contingent were asking if it could have originated inside a nearby laboratory that is known to have conducted risky coronavirus research funded in part by the United States. As speculation, sober and otherwise, swirled, the NIH was being bombarded by Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits. Fauci himself needed a security detail, owing to death threats from conspiracy theorists who believed he was covering up some dark secret.

    Bloom’s paper was the product of detective work he’d undertaken after noticing that a number of early SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences mentioned in a published paper from China had somehow vanished without a trace. The sequences, which map the nucleotides that give a virus its unique genetic identity, are key to tracking when the virus emerged and how it might have evolved. In Bloom’s view, their disappearance raised the possibility that the Chinese government might be trying to hide evidence about the pandemic’s early spread. Piecing together clues, Bloom established that the NIH itself had deleted the sequences from its own archive at the request of researchers in Wuhan. Now, he was hoping Fauci and his boss, NIH director Francis Collins, could help him identify other deleted sequences that might shed light on the mystery.

    Bloom had submitted the paper to a preprint server, a public repository of scientific papers awaiting peer review, on the same day that he’d sent a copy to Fauci and Collins. It now existed in a kind of twilight zone: not published, and not yet public, but almost certain to appear online soon.

    Collins immediately organized a Zoom meeting for Sunday, June 20. He invited two outside scientists, evolutionary biologist Kristian Andersen and virologist Robert Garry, and allowed Bloom to do the same. Bloom chose Pond and Rasmus Nielsen, a genetic biologist. That it was shaping up like an old-fashioned duel with seconds in attendance did not cross Bloom’s mind at the time. But six months after that meeting, he remained so troubled by what transpired that he wrote a detailed account, which Vanity Fair obtained.

    After Bloom described his research, the Zoom meeting became “extremely contentious,” he wrote. Andersen leapt in, saying he found the preprint “deeply troubling.” If the Chinese scientists wanted to delete their sequences from the database, which NIH policy entitled them to do, it was unethical for Bloom to analyze them further, he claimed. And there was nothing unusual about the early genomic sequences in Wuhan.

    Instantly, Nielsen and Andersen were “yelling at each other,” Bloom wrote, with Nielsen insisting that the early Wuhan sequences were “extremely puzzling and unusual.”

    Andersen—who’d had some of his emails with Fauci from early in the pandemic publicly released through FOIA requests—leveled a third objection. Andersen, Bloom wrote, “needed security outside his house, and my pre-print would fuel conspiratorial notions that China was hiding data and thereby lead to more criticism of scientists such as himself.”

    Fauci then weighed in, objecting to the preprint’s description of Chinese scientists “surreptitiously” deleting the sequences. The word was loaded, said Fauci, and the reason they’d asked for the deletions was unknown.

    That’s when Andersen made a suggestion that surprised Bloom. He said he was a screener at the preprint server, which gave him access to papers that weren’t yet public. He then offered to either entirely delete the preprint or revise it “in a way that would leave no record that this had been done.” Bloom refused, saying that he doubted either option was appropriate, “given the contentious nature of the meeting.”

    At that point, both Fauci and Collins distanced themselves from Andersen’s offer, with Fauci saying, as Bloom recalled it, “Just for the record, I want to be clear that I never suggested you delete or revise the pre-print.” They seemed to know that Andersen had gone too far.

    Both Andersen and Garry denied that anyone in the meeting suggested deleting or revising the paper. Andersen said Bloom’s account was “false.” Garry dismissed it as “nonsense.” Sergei Pond, however, confirmed Bloom’s account as accurate, after having it read aloud to him. “I don’t remember the exact phrasing—I didn’t take any notes—but from what you described, that sounds accurate. I definitely felt bad for poor Jesse.” He added that the “charged-up” atmosphere struck him as “inappropriate for a scientific meeting.” A spokesperson for Fauci declined to comment.

The bulk of the article describes the NIH grant to Eco-Health and the efforts by Eco-Health officers to quash any mention of a possible lab origin for the virus. Read the whole thing.


VIDEO: "Swords Not Words"--Adorea Olomouc (5 min.)

And Now For Something Completely Different:

    If you’re unfamiliar with the M56 Smart Gun from the movie, it is basically a dressed-up and modified MG42 machine gun mounted to a Steadicam mount. The in-universe firearm is supposedly capable of firing 10x28mm caseless ammunition at 1,200 rounds per minute and is also capable of tracking and engaging targets via its M56 Combat Harness (real-world Steadicam), and a self-tracking infrared helmet-mounted sight. While the in-universe gun is quite impressive by our real-world standards, in the movies it isn’t very effective against the alien threats the United States Colonial Marine Corps face.

    KetzuKhan’s real-life M56 Smart Gun still makes use of an MG42 but instead of a Steadicam chest harness, he opted to use the similar but slightly different (and possibly cooler) Flycam Galaxy rig. The videos he has posted so far demonstrate that his M56 Smart Gun does indeed work and is capable of firing blanks and being both controllable and portable by a single man just like in the movies. According to his YouTube posts, his M56 is still a work in progress but it is still impressive nonetheless. ...

    The USS Kearsage is latest vessel to have reportedly had a UFO encounter as the US military begins to open up about the mysterious phenomena.

    Documentary filmmaker Dave C. Beaty - who produced 2019 film The Nimitz Encounters about the famous 2004 US Navy encounter with the "Tic Tac" object - revealed the reported sighting from October 2021.

    At least two objects are said to have lurked near the 40,500 ton amphibious assault ships for several nights while it was on a training exercise off the east coast of the US.

    The phenomena - described by sources familiar with the encounter as odd and menacing "balls of light" - are said to have been following around half a mile behind the ship and around 200 feet above the ocean.

    Mr Beaty was contacted by a now retired US Marines officer named only as "Mark" regarding the strange episode.

    There was a time when UFOs were for cranks. A time when serious news organisations wouldn’t cover them. A time when congress wasn’t demanding Defense Department reports on them. A time when their existence wasn’t freely acknowledged by American presidents (“There is footage and records of objects in the skies that we don’t know exactly what they are,” said Barack Obama in May) and also by ex-spy chiefs (“There are a lot more sightings than have been made public,” said former director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe in March). When it came to UFOs, there was a time when the US government’s official line was that it didn’t study them. 

    Luis Elizondo was instrumental in changing that.

    In late 2017, he met with the freelance journalist Leslie Kean and revealed the existence of a $22 million (£16m) Pentagon programme investigating military reports of UFOs – a programme he had been in charge of since 2010. He had left the job the day before and decided to turn whistle-blower in the name of national security. As he put it in his resignation letter to secretary of defense Jim Mattis: “Bureaucratic challenges and inflexible mindsets continue to plague the department at all levels... The department must take serious the many accounts by the Navy and other services of unusual aerial systems interfering with military weapon platforms and displaying beyond next-generation capabilities... There remains a vital need to ascertain the capability and intent of these phenomena for the benefit of the armed forces and the nation.”

    Kean joined forces with two other reporters, one from the New York Times, and on 16 December 2017 the story appeared on the paper’s front page. It detailed the “Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program” set up in 2007 to investigate unidentified aerial phenomena or “UAP”, the term that has replaced the now stigmatised “UFO”. Many UAPs, the Times reported, appeared impossible to explain, lacking any visible means of lift but able to travel at unfathomable speed. What’s more, the story stated, Elizondo and his colleagues had “determined that the phenomena they had studied did not seem to originate from any country”. 

    But the reader didn’t have to take the Times’ word for all this. There were videos. An ally of Elizondo’s, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence Chris Mellon, had helped the reporters obtain footage shot from the cockpits of US Navy fighter jets. One of the videos corroborates arguably the most compelling UAP episode ever to come to light.

    According to reports, it took place in November 2004, when pilots were flying training missions from the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier. While squadron leader commander David Fravor was in the air, he was asked to intercept a mysterious aircraft. Upon arrival at its coordinates, what he saw was extraordinary: a 40-foot object, resembling a huge white Tic Tac, that had no visible propulsion system, rotors, wings or exhaust plume. Yet Fravor says it was able to jam radar, react to his movements and run rings around his F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet – turning so sharply it was as if the UAP had no inertia – before flying away faster than anything he had ever seen. Simply put, it defied the known laws of physics. Not only were there multiple eyewitnesses – including another pilot who filmed the Tic Tac using his plane’s targeting camera (this was the footage passed to the Times) – but the UAP was also detected by the radar of the nearby USS Princeton, an Aegis-class missile cruiser with state-of-the-art sensor systems.

    In December 2017, Fravor also went on the record with the New York Times and later, in 2019, so did further Navy pilots, who said that in 2014 and 2015 they encountered UAPs “almost daily”. The Times’ reporting radically changed the conversation. After decades of ridicule and taboo, UAPs were suddenly a legitimate political and journalistic talking point. Elizondo ran with the momentum, discussing his work with the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) on major TV networks and, in tandem with the likes of Mellon, briefing officials behind the scenes in Washington and facilitating meetings between them and military members who had experienced UAPs. Through keeping the story alive, he hoped to compel the government to finally establish a more transparent, coordinated, thorough investigation into the phenomenon. 

    It hasn’t all been plain sailing: in 2019, a Pentagon spokesperson called into question Elizondo’s claim to have worked on AATIP. In response, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent a letter to NBC News vouching for Elizondo’s story. “As one of the original sponsors of AATIP, I can state as a matter of record Lue Elizondo’s involvement and leadership role in this program,” Reid wrote.

    Now, Elizondo’s hopes for government action have started to be realised. On 27 April 2020, the US Department Of Defense confirmed the veracity of the Times’ UAP videos and released them officially into the public domain. In a statement, the Pentagon said, “The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as ‘unidentified’.” In August that same year, the Pentagon announced a new UAP Task Force “to detect, analyse and catalogue UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to US national security”. And in June 2021, the Office Of The Director Of National Intelligence released a report to congress about the government’s work on the UAP issue. Of the 144 encounters studied, it stated, 143 could not be explained. It didn’t blame extraterrestrials, but nor did it rule that explanation out.

    The report, obtained by The Sun from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) as part of a huge Freedom of Information request, investigates the health impact on humans who have had paranormal experiences.

    The report - titled Anomalous Acute And Subacute Field Effects on Human and Biological Tissues - investigates injuries to "human observers by anomalous advanced aerospace systems".

    And the report - prepared for the DIA - warns that such objects may be a "threat to United States interests".

    Humans have been found to have been injured from "exposures to anomalous vehicles, especially airborne and when in close proximity", it reads.

    The report noted that often these injuries are related to electromagnetic radiation - and links them to "energy related propulsion systems".

    It lists injuries such as heating and burn injuries from radiation, damage to brain, and the able to impact people's nerves.

  • We didn't start the fire: You probably have seen or heard news stories concerning the "Havana Syndrome"--mysterious neurological issues and injuries that were first reported to have occurred among diplomats serving in Cuba and, later, in China. NBC News reported symptoms thusly:
Havana Syndrome is believed to have emerged in late 2016, when U.S. diplomats and spies serving in Cuba began reporting bizarre sounds and sensations followed by unexplained illnesses and symptoms, including hearing and vision loss, memory and balance problems, headaches and nausea.

I just came across this description of similar symptomology made by a 18th Century politician, James Tilly Matthews, who is often credited to being the first scientifically described case of schizophrenia. From the Wikipedia article: 
 
    Matthews believed that a gang of criminals and spies skilled in pneumatic chemistry had taken up residence at London Wall in Moorfields (close to Bethlem) and were tormenting him by means of rays emitted by a machine called the "Air Loom" or gaseous charge generator. The torments induced by the rays included "Lobster-cracking", during which the circulation of the blood was prevented by a magnetic field; "Stomach-skinning" and "Apoplexy-working with the nutmeg grater" which involved the introduction of fluids into the skull. His persecutors bore such names as "the Middleman" (who operated the Air Loom), "the Glove Woman" and "Sir Archy" (who acted as "repeaters" or "active worriers" to enhance Matthews' torment or record the machine's activities) and their leader, a man called "Bill, or the King".

    Matthews' delusions had a definite political slant: he claimed that the purpose of this gang was espionage, and that there were many other such gangs armed with Air Looms all over London, using "pneumatic practitioners" to "premagnetize" potential victims with "volatile magnetic fluid". According to Matthews, their chief targets (apart from himself) were leading government figures. By means of their "rays" they could influence ministers' thoughts and read their minds. Matthews declared that William Pitt was "not half" susceptible to these attacks[3] and held that these gangs were responsible for the British military disasters at Buenos Aires in 1807 and Walcheren in 1809 and also for the Nore Mutiny of 1797.

    In 1814 Matthews was moved to "Fox's London House", a private asylum in Hackney, where he became a popular and trusted patient. His delusions appeared to have stopped. The asylum's owner, Dr. Fox, regarded him as sane. Matthews assisted with bookkeeping and gardening until his death on 10 January 1815.

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2 comments:

  1. John WilderApril 12, 2022 at 10:16 PM

    This is your scariest memo yet. Dark times.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. DocentApril 13, 2022 at 9:55 AM

      I try to focus on the positive. E.g.: hyperinflation? Just means that I can more easily pay off my mortgage.

      Delete

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