January 10, 2017--A Quick Run Around the Web

I'm feeling somewhat melancholy today, so today's video pick is "The Turn of a Friendly Card, Pt. 2" by The Alan Parsons Project. This is from their Turn of A Friendly Card album, the first Alan Parsons album I ever heard (one of my older brothers had a copy, which I would sometimes borrow when he wasn't around) and still one of my favorite. 

Firearms/Self-Defense/Prepping:

• During the past few days I've been citing to various articles and videos concerning the use of a shotgun for home-defense applications. I should add a disclaimer that I am somewhat biased against shotguns since I'm better with the handling and shooting of rifles. But I stand by my comments. Here are some more articles addressing the use of the shotgun:

• "Bird Shot for Self Defense and Some Stopping Power Statistics"--Active Response Training.  Consistent with what I had mentioned the other day, bird shot does not have the necessary penetration to reliably stop a threat.

• "Your Tactical Training Scenario- Racking a Shotgun"--Active Response Training. It might work, but probably not. Ellifritz explains: 

A motivated attacker isn’t going to be deterred by anything less than using more force against him than he is willing to experience.  Rape whistles, yelling the word “no”, or racking a pump shotgun WILL NOT deter a motivated attacker.  For that job, ruthless violence is the only solution.

• "Shotgun Tips from John Motil"--Active Response Training. Some various tips on shotguns generally, as well as particularly. One item, different from my comments, is that the author recommends a rear ghost ring sight and front high visibility sight, although I would add that if going that route, make sure the comb of your stock will be such to put your head in the proper position for using those types of sights.

• "Reflections on Weapon Cool -- Reprise"--Diplomad. An interesting anecdote about a certain Colonel in an unnamed Central American country who insisted on the .45 Colt because it was more manly of gun than the Beretta M-9; and a discussion of what makes a weapon "cool." 
• "Rheinmetall and Steyr Mannlicher unveil RS556 assault rifle"--Jane's. From the article:

     Rheinmetall and Steyr Mannlicher have partnered to offer the RS556 assault rifle in 5.56 x 45 mm to the Bundeswehr as a potential replacement for the service's G36 standard issue rifle.

     The RS556 (RS stands for Rheinmetall Steyr in 5.56 mm calibre) is a derivative of the AR-15 and a variant of Steyr's STM556 rifle....

     The RS556 uses a short-stroke gas piston system, driving an operating rod to force the bolt carrier to the rear, and is locked by a rotating bolt.

     The upper and lower receivers are made from aluminum, strengthened with steel bolt carrier guides to prevent the bolt tilting. The fire selector, magazine catch, and bolt catch are located on both sides of the weapon to support right and left handed shooters. The RS556 is equipped with a seven-position telescopic polymer butt-stock.

Photograph at the link.

• "Useful information for knife novices"--Bayou Renaissance Man. The article begins by discussing the overall usefulness of a short (12-inch or so) bladed machete. But he goes on:

Also, the nature of blades - their steel, their shape and their maintenance - is something of a religion in America, whereas in Africa (at least in my experience) it was much more hit-or-miss.  Need to sharpen your blade?  Over there, you picked up a suitable stone from a stream or river bed and went at it.  Fancy operators used proper sharpening stones, but they were heavy to carry through the African bush for any length of time, particularly if you carried everything you needed on your back.  However, outside that continent, if I offered to sharpen a high-quality blade such as a Randall, Fallkniven or Boker using a river stone, I'd probably be excommunicated from the knife fraternity on the spot - and possibly physically assaulted by the knife's owner, too!

Interestingly, the standard practice in Africa was apparently to buy a cheap Mora knife, use it until dull, then toss it out and buy another.

• The one that works for you? "What’s the Best Slide Serration Technique?"--Patrick Sweeney at Guns & Ammo. Sweeney discusses the different ways to grab and operate the slide on a semi-automatic pistol: "sling-shot" style; over the top; and (if using forward serrations) the forward hand. For me it depends: if I'm just target shooting or plinking, I use the the "sling-shot" style because it gives me the greatest purchase on the slide and allows me to clearly view the chamber. If I'm firing under speed, however, and have the slide locked back, I use the "over the top" method to unlock the slide.

Other Stuff:

• A new Woodpile Report.
• What should be America's relationship with Israel? Pat Buchanan doesn't answer this question in "Israel First or America First?" at the American Conservative, but warns that an Israel first policy will inevitably collide with an American first policy. He suggests that, yes, Israel is an ally, but it is not our only ally and it does need to understand who is in charge in the relationship. 
• "Israel's military investigating why its soldiers RAN AWAY from truck driver terrorist who killed four people, leaving a hero tour guide to shoot the attacker dead"--Daily Mail. Being in the military does not, in and of itself, make one brave or a hero.
• "Pravda: ‘Scientists Now Warn Of A New Ice Age’ As Temperature Plummets to – 80°F In Russia"--Climate Depot. Russian scientist dispute that the threat is a collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation but, rather, the decrease in solar activity.
• "White-on-black homicides are much rarer than black-on-white homicides."--PJ Media. Looking at 2012 statistics, blacks committed 85% of the interracial crimes between blacks and whites, even though they are only 13 percent of the population. Those statistics are from the National Crime Victimization Survey. The Justice Department stopped making public interracial crime statistics in 2008 after Obama came into office.

• Related: "The Crime Of The Hour"--Liberty's Torch. Another article on the kidnapping/torture of a mentally handicapped white teen by four blacks in Chicago. He also declares that "The peaceful majority [of blacks] are irrelevant. It’s a greater tragedy than anything in history that didn’t result in a world war or a Communist revolution. Yet there it is...and there’s nothing we can do about it but part company."

• "Trail of slaughter in prisons shocks Brazilians as gang war explodes"--The Guardian. From the article:

     The men on the prison roof laughed as they raised a hand-painted flag emblazoned with the initials of two of Brazil’s most dangerous drug gangs. In the yard below, other gang-members hacked the heads off prisoners from a rival mafia faction and lined them up in a row.

     The horrific scenes were filmed on a mobile phone during a jail riot on 1 January in which 56 prisoners were butchered near the Amazon city of Manaus – the first in a string of violent incidents in Brazilian prisons this year.

     The next day, four more inmates were killed at another prison in Manaus. Five days later, 33 prisoners died at a prison outside Boa Vista, in Roraima state in the far north of Brazil. Then, early on Sunday morning, four more prisoners were killed in another Manaus jail which had been reopened to accommodate prisoners transferred after the 1 January massacre.

     In a country long used to violent crime, the savagery has appalled Brazilians: local media reports have included footage of of dismembered corpses, and messages scrawled in human blood.

     Police and prosecutors have warned that a war between rival gangs to control Brazil’s lucrative drug trade has escalated to a new level of brutality – and there are signs that the battle has already moved from the country’s overwhelmed prison system to Rio de Janeiro, where it threatens to destabilise a city already reeling from a rise in violent crime.

• The swamp fights back: "The Intelligence Community versus Donald Trump"--American Thinker. A discussion of the possibility that the leaders of the American intelligence community are attempting to discredit Trump through their unsupported accusations of the Russian hack of the DNC. 

• Related: "Federal workers worry about their jobs under Trump"--MSN.

• Related: "Someone is trying to take down the Drudge Report, and it's a mystery who's behind it"--Business Insider. According to the article, Matt Drudge doesn't think it is a mystery: he is pointing his finger at the United States government. The Anonymous Conservative gives some additional thoughts:

     A lot goes on in government that would be unbelievable these days. Clearly Obama is not pulling people aside and asking them to crash Drudge’s servers. But I will bet most of the top domestic intel positions are now manned by Obama’s people – who do not need to talk to Obama to get word of what the party wants them to do. 

     Additionally, there might be another reason Drudge suspects government involvement. Drudge is probably bumping up against the surveillance state, and he may be bucking against their pressures periodically in ways they don’t like. It wouldn’t surprise me if he saw correlations with things he is doing to piss off his own watchers, and the onset of his DDOS attacks. These attacks could be ways to bring him to heel, by costing him advertising revenue when he pisses them off.

• "Obama leaves with the world in flames"--George F. Will at the New York Post. In his polite way, Will calls Obama a simpleton that has left the world worse than when he came to office. He writes:

Many progressives believe in humanity’s natural sociability. This disposes them to believe that peace among nations is natural and spontaneous, or it would be if other nations would cleanse their minds of the superstitions that prevent them from recognizing the universal validity and demonstrable utility of American principles.

In not so many words, progressives are conflict-averse rabbits that are too stupid to comprehend the real world.

• "No Spouse, No Kids, No Caregiver: How to Prepare to Age Alone"--U.S. News & World Report. This 2015 article notes that women that decided to go it alone--sans husband or children--are now afraid that they are going to "go it alone" through their declining years. I'm sure the proposed solution will be some government subsidy, since that is how feminists roll.
• Another benefit of illegal aliens: "The Great California Earthquake of 2018: First State To Default"--American Thinker. From the article:

     ... Employers who utilize labor pay into the FUTA, or the federal unemployment tax, at a rate of 6% and are credited back an offset of 5.4% that they previously paid the state, leaving a small federal liability of only 0.6%.  

     However, if the state-run U.I. [unemployment insurance] trust gets overdrawn, as it did in California for going on its third year now, it automatically pulls an emergency loan out from the federal government to service the underfunded account.  And if that is not repaid by November 10, and it defaults, then the government forces employers to pay it.

     They just defaulted.  Our company received a mystery bill in the mail two weeks ago, explaining our new $15,000 owed. ...

The author explains: "California's U.I. trust is being kneecapped because of arms-wide-open amnesty that is removing jobs from those born here, and thus sending the U.I. rate ever higher." Read the whole thing.

• A reminder that we live in the 21st Century: "Scientists are recreating extinct mega-cows"--The Week. The species they are recreating are aurochs, an elephant sized bovine, the last of which was apparently killed in the 17th Century in Poland.