November 11, 2019--A Quick Run Around the Web

"Violence of Action. John Chapman, Field Notes Ep. 17"--Sure Fire (4 min.)

• "5 Tips for Making Online Sales Transactions Safer"--Active Response Training. Don't accept checks or make change, know who you are dealing with, complete the transaction in a public place, take a friend, only deal with the buyer/seller (no intermediaries). Be especially wary of robbery if you are selling firearms or high-end jewelry.
• Maybe she should have had an AR-15: "Mother, 47, who vanished from a remote family cabin in Michigan last month was involved in a shootout with two men during her call to a friend for help - but cops were sent to the wrong address"--Daily Mail. The woman had called her boyfriend to say she was in a shootout and asked him to call police. It is not clear if the boyfriend or dispatch gave the responding officers the wrong address. Because of the mistake, instead of the response being within a few minutes, it was closer to 30 minutes. By that time, the woman was gone.
• "Drinking Container Safety: Metals"--Blue Collar Prepping. The author discusses both modern and historical metals used as drinking containers and to carry water. Obviously, lead, historically used as water pipes and used in various glazes and paints, should not be used. Galvanized steel (zinc) should not be used if you are doing any heating. The author recommends avoiding aluminum and pewter as well. And, as a side note, the author observes:

If you're using a good reverse osmosis (RO) system or a hearty de-ionization setup, the water coming out may be so clean that it can actually eat away at metal piping and containers. I've seen this on an industrial scale and it is possible on smaller sets; copper contamination in lab-grade pure water that was traced to a repair made with copper piping on a RO system.

• No, but you can buy easier ways to see where you are aiming: "Laser Sights: You Can’t Buy Shooting Competency in a Store"--The Truth About Guns. From the article:

      First of all, those with marginal skills too often quickly form a reliance on the laser dot to sight the gun. That gets them by on a square range where they have zero adrenaline flowing and an abundance of time. However, put a little pressure on them – even on a square range – and that lack of fundamental skills can delay getting the laser dot on the target.

     Instead of presenting the gun and shooting, these people tend to suspend everything to wave the gun around looking for that magic dot downrange. Countless times, I’ve watched ladies and gentlemen with laser sights spend precious seconds looking for the bright dot instead of presenting and shooting.

     Even worse, sometimes they aren’t ready with the laser turned “on.”  They don’t want dead batteries, you know. Then we wait while they remember the switch’s location and turn it on before repeating the process once again.

But laser sights can be very helpful, particularly with the very small pocket autoloaders that have only vestigial sights. They can turn a handgun that has only marginal accuracy at a few yards because of poor sights into something usable at normal pistol ranges.

• Australians are on their own: "DAY OF RECKONING: Great wall of fire bears down on Sydney as chilling graphic shows how the worst conditions in Australian history could destroy 100,000 homes TODAY - and authorities say they can't save everyone"--Daily Mail. Officials are warning residents to leave early as well as stating that there are not enough firetrucks or rescue personnel to respond to fires, knock on doors, or provide any last minute warnings.
• "KelTec’s KS7 Bullpup Shotgun"--Guns America Digest. A review of one of KelTec's newer offerings that fixes the biggest problem with the KSG: the double magazine tubes and the reliability problems it engendered. It has an 18.5 inch barrel, can hold 7+1 rounds of 2-3/4 inch shells, and has an overall length of 26.1 inches. I haven't shot the KS7, but I've had the opportunity to shoot a KSG a few times and it is very compact and handy in confined spaces. 
• "Victim uses battle axe to fend off home invader"--RochesterFirst.com. Sounds like he was skilled with the ax but not at grappling. He got in one good strike, and then was grappling with the burglar until the burglar finally fled. 
• "Hero boy, 13, reveals how Mexican cartel spared his life after Mormon massacre that killed his mom and eight other family members and describes his fear walking 13 miles for help to save his surviving siblings"--Daily Mail. From the article:

      He detailed the horrific shooting, starting with the 'bunch of bullets' which descended on his family's car. 

      'They just started hitting the car first, bunch of bullets just started shooting rapidly at us,' he said.

      He said he believes the cartel members deliberately shot out the car's engine to stop them from being able to escape. His mother, he said, frantically tried to restart the vehicle. 

      'The car didn't work so, she was trying to start to car but I'm pretty sure they shot something so the car wouldn't even start to get down right now, she was trying to pray to the Lord and start the car up to get out of there,' he said.  

      Once the men had gone, he walked 'a little while' carrying his youngest brother, nine-month-old baby Brixton, but had to put him down. 

      'I walked a little while until I couldn't carry him no more so we put him in a bush. 

     'Every one of them were bleeding really bad. I was trying in a rush to get there,' he said.

"CAESARISM: The Decline of the West"--Black Pigeon Speaks (14 min.)

BP seems to think that we are headed into the age of Caesarism, but I've considered whether we have already entered the period. I think that there is a good argument that FDR was the first American Caesar.

• Home cleaning tip: "Woman reveals how she removed stubborn bathroom mould WITHOUT scrubbing by soaking cotton wool in bleach and leaving it overnight"--Daily Mail. 
• "Cold Welcome for Veterans on Campus"--Wall Street Journal. The article discusses how veterans attending elite universities sometimes feel like suckers because the rights they signed up for to protect, including the First and Second Amendments, are being derided and torn down by the high-income elite students also attending the same institutions. Also:

In truth, many of the rich kids at elite colleges love American values, too. But they know that loving the Constitution and its first two amendments marks one as working-class or low-status, and that being against those things codes as educated. So they rail against those values to distinguish themselves from one crowd and fit into another.

• Sometimes the truth just slips out: "NY Times: ‘Tidal Wave’ of Mass Immigration Hands Virginia to Democrats"--Breitbart. Specific nationality of immigrants mentioned were Korean and Indian.
• The wages of sin socialism: "Hong Kong police officer shoots protester at point-blank range while activists set another man on FIRE after dousing him with petrol as fresh violence erupts after city's 24th weekend of protests"--Daily Mail. 
• Enjoy the decline: "San Francisco Voters Elect Radical District Attorney, Son of Cop-Killing Terrorists"--Town Hall. Voters elected Chesa Boudin as their new District Attorney. He is the son of two Weather Underground terrorists, Kathy Boudin (now a professor at Columbia University) and David Gilbert (still in prison), who murdered two police officers and a security guard during a 1981 robbery of a Brinks armored security car outside New York City. While his mummy and daddy were imprisoned, he lived with two other terrorists, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. While we aren't supposed to judge the son for the crimes of the father, there is also the long time wisdom that "the apple doesn't fall from the tree." In this case, that appears to be true:

As district attorney, Boudin plans to decriminalize crime and close down jails. He believes the criminal justice system is racist, and he plans to cut back on the time criminals serve under parole supervision, which he thinks is also racist. Boudin also wants to stop prosecuting gang members to the full extent of the law because he thinks that's racist, too. He thinks everything is racist.

• Speaking of anti-American radicals: "The Radicalizing of Eric Ciaramella"--The American Spectator. Ciaramella, as you probably know, is the alleged "whistleblower" that worked with Rep. Schiff to complain of Pres. Trump's call to the Ukraine. Ciaramella was already radicalized before he started attending Yale because his first year there, in 2005, he organized student protests to stop the University from terminating an associate professor of Arab studies, Bassam Frangieh, who went on to write poetry supporting terrorists and terrorism. Strangely, he quickly joined and rose in the ranks within the Obama Administration, a career CIA analyst and Ukraine director on the National Security Council. He ended up being a holdover from the Obama Administration and was only fired after it was learned that he was leaking information to media.
• "HUGE! Schiff Witness Vindman Testified that He 'Thought' President’s 'Policy Was Wrong So He Advised Ukrainians to Ignore the President"--Gateway Pundit. Just who the hell does he think he is?

• Related: "Praetorianism and the ‘Deep State’"--American Greatness. An excerpt:

The fact is that the deep state is praetorianism on steroids. It is based on the claim that unelected bureaucrats have a duty to undermine the policy of a duly elected president, simply because they disagree with it. Vindman is a perfect example of this mindset. He complained that “he was deeply troubled by what he interpreted as an attempt by the president to subvert U.S. foreign policy . . . .” Read that again. The problem here is that Article II of the Constitution gives the president sweeping powers to conduct foreign affairs and negotiate with leaders of other nations. It does not grant any such power to unelected bureaucrats to act in ways that demonstrate they approve or disapprove of foreign policy—even when they are “deeply troubled” by it.

• More Deep State: "Nikki Haley: Top Trump Aides Tried to Recruit Me to Help Subvert the President"--The Daily Beast. Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., claims that Rex Tillerson and John Kelly tried to get her to turn against Trump.
• "CDC Started a Vaping Panic, Now It’s Admitting Vitamin E Acetate In Illegal Products Is to Blame"--Reason. But we are still stuck with all of the bad laws passed because of the bad information from the CDC.
• "Explosions rock Zimbabwe capital as coup speculation intensifies"--Stock Daily Dish. I have been unable to verify this story from any other media outlets.