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Monday, November 9, 2020

A Quick Run Around The Web (11/9/2020)

 

VIDEO: "Ruger's M16 Alternative: the Select-Fire AC-556"--Forgotten Weapons (15 min.) Some more firearms history, as well as a close look at the selector and trigger guts of this weapon.

Firearms/Self-Defense/Prepping:

  • First up, Greg Ellifritz's Weekend Knowledge Dump from this past weekend. Articles include ballistic tests of subsonic .300 Blackout loads, teaching your children to shoot, how far a slingshot can shoot, a belt designed to be used as a tourniquet (although I don't think that is the best way to carry a tourniquet), drawing from the pocket, using a folding chair for barricade drills, and more.
  • Oops! "Fresno Homeowner Shoots 17-Year-Old Burglar As He Tries to Escape"--The Truth About Guns. If you are just a regular civilian gun-owner, your job does not include apprehending criminals. If they run, let them go. The burglar in this case apparently was not even armed, so the homeowner can't even assert the fleeting felon rule. Takeaway from the article:
“The homeowner gave us some pretty good details- but we want to know a little bit more as to what caused him to fire at the suspect.” That’s copspeak for This isn’t a clear self-defense situation and we’re probably going to charge the homeowner. 

Problems would occur when troops were engaged for prolonged times and couldn’t risk breaking down their weapons to clean out all the dirt. We would simply pour in more CLP. An AR-15 type rifle will fire and function dirty as long as it is liberally lubricated. The problem is the more oil you pore down the bolt and into the chamber the more dirt it collects. What we discovered is that using Mobil1 synthetic motor oil usually in a 0w30 or 5w30 works much better than the CLP.  At $10 per quart it is on the expensive side as motor oils go.  But when compared to CLP or Rem Oil that are usually sold in 6 ounce containers at $5 to $6 it is much more cost effective. We also experimented with it on out crew served weapon systems. We found it to out perform the Lubricant, Small Arms (LSA) used on the M2 (.50 Cal Browning machinegun) and MK-19 (40mm grenade launcher).
  • "3 Things You Should Know About Close Quarters Battle"--The Armory Blog. The author advises that you don't engage in superficial dabbling with a technique or carry method, or endlessly repeat the same thing, but to study and immerse yourself in the subject. 
To master a technique you must immerse yourself in the drills. This means total concentration with body and mind. If you have not trained your body, you will be unable to execute effective techniques.

Three drills or techniques he recommends are: (i) the Dempsey Drop Step, (ii) the Applegate Drill, and (iii) the Speed Rock.
  • "5 Best Fighting Handguns Ever Made" by Richard Mann, Shooting Illustrated. The handguns that the author lists are (i) the Colt 1911, (ii) the Browning Hi-Power, (iii) Beretta 92/M9, (iv) Glock 17, and (v) SIG Sauer M17 (P320). The only criteria that the author offers is that "a fighting handgun has to have a history of, well, fighting. If a handgun has not served a major military or police force, or if it has not been used extensively in a major battle, it simply does not qualify." I'm reading Timothy J. Mullin's The 100 Greatest Combat Pistols: Hand-On Tests and Evaluations of Handguns from Around the World and I'm not sure he would agree with all those picks, and certainly he had some other criteria that he applied. For instance, he hated (loathed is maybe a better word) the safety on the Hi-Power. And while the Beretta 92 was a fine pistol for most military roles, it must be remembered that the American special forces wound up using other pistols because their high round counts in practice led to cracked or broken slides with the Beretta.
    And that is the problem of lacking any clear criteria. What may be a great handgun for an experienced and accomplished shooter may not be so good for the typical soldier or officer that would carry a handgun into combat but doesn't practice or even really think about the firearm and vice versa. 
    The P220 was adopted by the Swiss Army as the Pistol 75. It was also purchased by the Japan Self Defense Forces, Chile, Iran, Nigeria, and Uruguay. Sold in .45 ACP and ten-millimeter versions, the pistol is commercially available to civilian shooters in the United States. A slightly smaller version, the Sig P225, was classified by the West German government as the P6 and adopted by the Police Field Force Reserve, Federal Customs Police, and a number of German state police forces. Forty thousand P6s were reportedly made by Sig Sauer for the German police. It was also reportedly adopted by the U.S. Secret Service although is likely no longer in service.

    The P220’s success isn’t just measured in the fact that it is still manufactured and sold today, but in its descendants. The P226, developed for the U.S. Army’s handgun trials in the 1980s, featured a double magazine that nearly doubled its capacity to fifteen rounds. The P226 also included an ambidextrous magazine release. While the U.S. Army and rest of the U.S. armed services went on to purchase the Beretta 92SB-F, the elite U.S. Navy SEALS went on to purchase the P226 after a number of accidents involving frame fatigue on the Beretta. This was followed by the lighter, more compact P228 and the P229, chambered in .40 Smith & Wesson.
    Let's say that you follow my advice and start with a typical .22-cal. handgun, revolver or semi-automatic. After your initial training, limit every practice session to no more than 50 rounds and record your scores—good and bad. Don't change anything until your scores level out—no more improvement. At this point, change your equipment in some small way. Maybe a change to a plain black front sight is in order.

    Keep up the recording of scores, so when the scores improve, you may conclude the new sights are probably involved. In similar fashion, try other improvements one at a time. Also, I'll repeat a principle from the early writings of Jeff Cooper. The dean wanted his students at Gunsite Academy to shoot no more than 1,000 rounds in a 5.5-day course. But he insisted that every round be fired carefully. It can be done, and it does work.

    In the process of working your way conscientiously through this routine, you will be developing a gradually increasing level of skill. Experience grows slowly, and as it does, you will also be developing a fund of knowledge as to what works and what doesn't. The major point that I want to make is to avoid this business of trying to buy your way to mastery of the handgun. Accept that patience and steady work on simple principles will prevail.
    The Mozambique was supposedly made after Jeff Cooper heard an account of a soldier having to dispatch an enemy, using this technique. The enemy combatant took two rounds to the chest but needed a third to the head to be neutralized. The original intention of the drill was to fire two rounds, then make the decision of if a third round was needed. I think that this intent has been lost to some extent, as I usually see people shooting the Mozambique like they've got their gun on three-round burst while sweeping upwards. Doing this seems to game-ify the drill too much for my liking, so I change it up to keep it practical.

    I try to make the Mozambique Drill more accuracy-focused, as to bring the practicality back into the limelight. By using targets such as the Sage Dynamics thoracic and head, the required accuracy standard is increased. The idea is to fire that round into the head, only if needed, and it better damn well hit. Another thing I do to increase difficulty is to add other actions into the drill. I will practice my flashlight manipulation while shooting the drill, or move away from the target. Getting repetitions in for these valuable skills will only better your ability, as the Mozambique is an easily repeatable drill.
  • "The What & the Why – Concealed Carry Considerations" by Doug Larson, Guns America. The author notes that many new gun owners may put considerable thought into what gun to carry, but little or no thought into how they will carry the firearm. The author addresses this:
    ... And in what manner the gun is to be carried often depends on the person’s lifestyle, where he/she frequents, and the type of gun selected. So, the upshot of this is that the person carrying, and only that person, can decide where and how to carry a gun. There is no single right way to do it, although as with most things gun-related, some people think that the way they do it is the only right way.

    Probably the first place to start in making the decision of how to carry the gun is to consider the environment in which you will carry. What are the risks if someone notices that you are carrying? Generally, gun carriers worry needlessly that someone is going to see that they are carrying. While it does happen, most people are not looking that closely at you and even if they do see a bulge under your clothing, they most likely will not know what it is unless the gun is clearly outlined. Don’t disregard the possibility of the gun being detected, but it’s not something the average person needs to stress over.

    In some jurisdictions though, letting someone see a concealed gun can land you in jail. And in some jobs, carrying a gun could get you fired. So consider these things and, if you are going to carry, then decide how you are going to carry. And remember that usually the deeper the concealment, the more difficult and time consuming it is going to be to draw the gun. But everything in life is a trade-off, so consider the factors and make your decision.

    The method of carry must keep the gun in position so it is where it is expected to be, in the right orientation, when needed in a hurry. You don’t want to be fumbling around trying to find the gun or the grip. And you need to be able to draw without looking at the gun or the holster. This requires practice and training. Consider that you don’t want the holster to shift around if you are running or you get pushed to the ground.

    Some people, especially women, consider carrying the gun off the body. Usually, for a woman, that is in a purse. People can also carry off body in containers that look like a briefcase, notebook, or something else. But be aware that if you carry off body, then you might not always be in control of your gun. The container or purse may be set down or be snatched away from you. If you need the gun instantly and it is not in your hand or connected to your body, you may not be able to draw it in time.

    And the container should secure the holster with the gun in it in place so it is where you think it will be if you have to reach inside to get it. That’s right. Even a gun inside of a case should be inside a holster.

Read the whole thing. 

  • "When Does A .380 Beat A 9mm?" by Grant Cunningham, Personal Defense Network. After discussing Greg Ellifritz's research into handgun effectiveness showing that shot placement is more important than caliber size, Cunningham explains:
    The fact is that you probably can successfully defend yourself with this particular ‘mousegun’ caliber. The question is, why would you want to?

    The answer is more complicated than you might think, and revolves around your balance of speed and precision. The target dictates the level of precision you need to reach, and that part of the shooting equation never changes. The variable is how fast you can deliver rounds into that area. The more recoil the gun/cartridge combination produces, the slower you’ll be able to shoot into that level of precision. This is the balance of speed (your ability to shoot multiple rounds accurately) and precision (the area of the target you must hit).

    The less recoil you are forced to deal with, the faster you’ll be able to shoot to any given level of precision. That translates into being able to deliver more rounds on target in a specific time frame. In the case of an attacking criminal, the more rounds you can put into his vital areas, the sooner he’s going to stop being a threat to your life.

    This is why so many major defensive shooting trainers have come to embrace the 9mm over the .40 S&W and .45 ACP: you’re able to deliver more statistically identical performing rounds in any given period of time to any given level of precision. It’s a great tradeoff, because there’s almost no downside. Given a choice between shooting the bad guy three times with one caliber or five times with a different caliber that has been shown to give statistically indistinguishable performance, I know which I’m going to choose!

    Where does the .380 ACP come into this?

    If we take two guns of roughly the same size and weight, one in .380 and one in 9mm, the 9mm will recoil more than the .380. This is to be expected. A markedly heavier bullet, fired at a higher velocity, will produce substantially more recoil and will more obviously affect your balance of speed and precision. It’s also going to be painful to practice with, which means people might not do so.
  • "Do You Extra Mag, Bro?"--Men of the West. A review of the NeoMag--a clip with a magnet to support and hold the magazine upright in your pocket. That is, the magazine is attached via the magnet, and the magnet is held in place with a pocket clip. The author used it with magazines for several firearms, including a Glock.
  • Federal is releasing a line of ammunition intended for lever-action rifles in popular calibers called HammerDown. With the limited information available, it appears to be a line of ammunition intended to compete against Hornedy's Lever Evolution line of ammunition. The Federal loads appear to offer more aerodynamic bullets while still being safe to shoot from an in-line tube magazine. It is being offered in .44 Rem Magnum, .45-70 Government, .30-30 Win, .327 Federal Magnum, and .45 Colt with .357 Magnum offerings in the near future.
  • "What Scope Do I Need?"--The Art of the Rifle. The answer to this question is, without more information, "it depends...." The author outlines a process for determining what features you want (or, conversely, don't need) in a rifle scope to get to an idea of what you actually need.
  • The Tincan Bandit has a couple articles on gunsmithing the Marlin 60 .22 LR rifles. The first article describes his process in restoring an old Model 60 while the second article has links to other articles by the author on the Model 60 as well as a collection of photographs the author found of other Marlin 60 projects:
  • "Kel-Tec KSG: A Top-Selling Pump-Action Shotgun"--American Rifleman. From the article:
    Kel-Tec changed the way we think of pump-action shotguns when it introduced its KSG in 2011. The bullpup design makes it shorter than most in the category, and that improved nimbleness is a decided advantage in home and self-defense. Overall length measures 26.1" in 12 gauge, which comes with a 18.5" barrel that chambers shotshells up to 3" in length.

    There’s more than just the bullpup design that makes this tubular-magazine fed shotgun innovative, though. It has two magazines, which run parallel to one another. They give the firearm a total capacity of 6+6+1 or 7+7+1, depending on the length of ammo. Spent shotshells eject toward the bottom and once one magazine is exhausted, the shooter rotates a lever near the pistol grip to feed from the other.
    It is subjective, but based on my personal experience you can expect after 3-4 days of no sleeping during SHTF  to see things that are not there, or on the other hand not to see things that there. (Toby comment: Be aware this can happen MUCH sooner in some people, even in less than 24hrs depending on the stressors around, age of the individual and overall fatigue level, among other influences)

    This fact was reason for many deaths, and also it was reason for many scary legends in that time.

    Personally I saw couple of times people that are not falling down after clearly being shot several times, dead people walking,  strange lights, sounds, or simply let’s say ‘ghosts’.

    I learned over the time to notice and observe things like that, but not to react, otherwise I would probably have gone crazy.

    When you hear baby crying 10 meters from you in abandoned and ruined house in the middle of night and you follow the sound and go there, and there is nothing there, but now same sound coming from other room that can give you some weird feelings in your guts.

    You observe, but not react-otherwise you go crazy.

    Fear and lack of sleep will play with your mind.

My own personal experience from sleep deprivation is that things can start to "glitch" where I see fine for a few seconds, then its like my brain doesn't process the next few seconds of vision at all, and then I see for a few seconds, etc., so life seems to be passing in a herky-jerky fashion.
  • "Defending Against Mobs"--Blue Collar Prepping. The author sums up a few incidents over the past several months where things didn't go so well for the person confronted by a mob, then recommends a video from Massad Ayoob on the topic, before summarizing the main points of the video. Check it out.
  • "Trust in Combat"--Max Velocity Tactical. Fire-and-maneuver tactics require trust that the other fire-team or squad is going to do its job while you advance. But, as the article discusses, the trust just isn't there in many prepper groups because the trust comes through the shared hardship of training and combat. He adds:
The sort of unbridled and unproven EGO that destroys contemporary prepper groups only happens because the groups are NOT YET NEEDED. Your prepper group wanted to be ready for the inevitable, but you trained and prepped in a time of plenty. This is an unavoidable situation, but that time of plenty allowed the egos to play. It may seem like a good idea to train and prep in advance, but that goes against the times we are living in, and nobody is ready, not mentally. The best you can hope for is to prep as a family and survive. The time of dying is coming, but only under those situations will people wake up, shelve the BS ego, and be ready to knuckle down. Sadly, the time of training will then be over.
  • Strike Industries is poised to release a 32-round AR magazine. I guess this would allow those who believe it best to download your magazines by 2 rounds to have 30-rounds at their disposal. 
  • "Store Food Even If You have No Space"--Apartment Prepper. Some apartments are tiny with little to no storage spaces. Things are even worse if you live in a dorm room, or are sharing an apartment or home with others with only a bedroom or bed to call your own. Nevertheless, the author urges you to store at least three days worth of food and water, and gives some ideas on how to cut down on the amount of space taken up by the stored food including buying "canned" meat products that come in pouches instead of cans, packets of oatmeal instead of boxes or containers, and some other tips.
  • "Canning meat plus how to use your canned meat"--Backwoods Home Magazine. The author started canning meat after she had a deep freeze break down and was desperately trying to save the meat from spoiling. She discovered that it's actually quite a good way to store meat. 

    Another advantage is that canned meat is very tender, tasty, and handy. You don’t have to plan your meals around the freezer. If you decide on having a roast beef dinner, you just head to the pantry and pull out a quart or two of beef roast, some potatoes, onions, and carrots or other vegetables, dump them in a covered roasting pan and turn on the oven. In short order you have your dinner, fit for surprise company or your family who has been working hard all day. So easy!

    And, best of all, canning meat is very simple. You just need your basic canning equipment and supplies: canning jars, lids, rings, a pressure canner, lid lifter, jar lifter, and canning funnel. Don’t forget, most important of all, your canning book! Even though I’ve been canning all my life, I look at the recipes and instructions every time I can anything.

She provides instructions on the general process of canning meat, which will work with most anything but seafood or fish. 

  • "Comms Before The Storm" by Jim Jeffries, American Survival Guide. This is a list of some 40 tips on collecting and sharing information, and readying your group or family communications preps.
  • While it may seen too early (or too late) to think about gardening, there is actually a lot of work that can and should be done in the autumn to prepare for next spring. One of these is planning on what type of mulching you might apply to your garden plot and how that might affect the acidity of the soil. Thus, you might want to read "Testing Soil" from Backwoods Home Magazine to learn the basics of testing for soil pH and drainage. The author notes the best time to test soil is in the late fall or early spring, but you want to do your testing when the soil is fairly dry.
  • "Glass Windows and Cold Weather"--Blue Collar Prepping. Some ideas on reducing heat loss through your windows during winter months.
  • Some military and firearm history: "The Battle of Peleliu and Its Relics" by Martin K.A. Morgan, American Rifleman.
    In the aftermath of World War I, the Japanese Empire assumed administrative control of [the Palua group of islands] through the League of Nations South Pacific Mandate established by the Versailles Treaty. Through the 1920s and 1930s, they improved infrastructure in Palau, developed commerce and eventually even militarized the islands by building seaplane bases, a submarine base and airfields.

    By 1944, those installations posed a threat to the contemplated U.S. landings on Mindanao in the Philippines scheduled for later that year, so a decision was made to preempt the threat. This would be done through amphibious assaults against two Palauan islands, Anguar and Peleliu. 

    The larger of the two, Peleliu, was home to an Imperial Army airfield equipped with aircraft revetments, taxiways, a large, concrete headquarters building and a pair of intersecting runways capable of accommodating twin-engine bombers. With Mindanao just 500 miles away to the west and Guam just 800 miles away to the northeast, long range aircraft from Peleliu’s airfield could reach both the Philippines and the Marianas.

    In the end, U.S. leadership canceled the invasion of Mindanao but not the Palau operation, which kicked-off on Sept. 15, 1944, when the 1st Marine Division stormed ashore on the western beaches of Peleliu. In the weeks that followed, the fighting reached an appalling intensity that foreshadowed battles yet to come.

    It would eventually claim the lives of almost the entire Japanese island garrison of more than 10,000 men in addition to 1,794 Americans. The fighting also left Peleliu strewn with the debris of war. Even today, despite an ongoing de-mining operation, live hand grenades, mortar rounds, artillery shells and small arms ammunition litter the jungle. 

    The French Generals that had fought the Algerian war for a long time came to think that Algeria was important.  Terrible things would happen of France gave it up.

    Gee, I wonder if the chuckleheads that spent most of their professional careers in Iraq and Afghanistan are that dumb.

    Of course they are !

  • In my last "Run Around the Web" I had linked to an article about how music can affect our brain and, in particular, the pleasure centers. Marcus Wynne's latest article, "Your Brain On Music, Or Finding A Beat You Can Fight To" notes that article as well as other research on music and its impact on the brain. 

    One insight I gained early on in my research to improve training was how the power of music, rhythm, and cadence can add a powerful subliminal component to training events. It’s completely overlooked as an environmental factor in training design and presentation of critical fighting skills. I remember many years ago watching video of JKD legend Paul Vunak training West Coast SEALs while playing bongo drums. I remember the derisive commentary from “training experts” about “hippy dippy drum beating.”

    What the “experts” missed was how immersion in that rhythmic beat trained, at an unconscious level, cadence and timing during real-time drills to develop technique that relies on faster-than-normal-conscious processing to identify cadence/rhythm and BREAK it to the advantage of the attacker or defender.

    I remember the first time I tested the concept in a class of experienced and hardened combat shooters. I played a catchy rhythmic tune and got them all out of their seats doing a warm up that consisted essentially of “shadow boxing” through presentation technique with their duty weapons. They picked up on the cadence unconsciously, and enjoyed it — big grins, tapping toes, bobbing heads — and the speed of their presentation skills, when put on the timer, increased by an average of 25%.

    25%.

    With just music.

Read the whole thing.

VIDEO: "UNEXPECTED: Mark of the Beast's Meaning in Hebrew"--Nelson Walters (22 min.)

The Current Unrest:

    We remain in the gray zone between step 9. and step 10.  I will maintain the clock at 2 minutes to midnight.  Violence continues to be commonly justified by local and state authorities, but there are now premeditated, fatal attacks by the Left.  As noted in a previous update, the only thing keeping the clock ticking to full midnight is the number of deaths.  I put the total at (this is my best approximation since no one tracks the death toll from rebellion-related violence) 500 out of the 1,000 required for the international civil war definition.

    We’re close.  Avoid crowds.

Also:

    Yes.  It looks like there is much more than circumstantial evidence that vote fraud took place.  The Mainstream® Media™ used to say, “There is no direct evidence of voter fraud.”  Well, if you didn’t look up during the day, there’s no direct evidence of the Sun, either.  The system in those Democratic stronghold areas seems to be designed to prevent review.  And why not?  Is it really a crime if there’s no evidence?  It’s like Schrodinger’s election.

    But, importantly, now the Mainstream™ Media© is saying, “There is no direct evidence of widespread voter fraud.”

    Well, to swing an election, you don’t need widespread fraud.  You need fraud in the right place at the right time.  Fraud in California?  Who cares?  Fraud in Philadelphia?  In Milwaukee? In Atlanta?  In Detroit?  That’s not widespread – it’s just four places.  And it’s enough.

Read the whole thing. 

    Start with Pennsylvania.  Biden, as of this writing, is at 290 electoral votes.  Pennsylvania is 20.

    I read the Justice Alito opinion, and it is pretty clear that he wants the after election night at 8:00 P.M. votes separated for a reason.  Biden is going to lose at the Supreme Court, and they know it.  Four justices already said the Pennsylvania Supreme Court cannot adjust voting rules.   A new arrival, Justice Barrett, says she is there to apply the rules in the Constitution.  OK, wanna bet she does?

    Remove the after 8:00 P.M. ballots, and Biden loses Pennsylvania.  Biden 270.

    Let's visit Nevada.  I have lots of friends in California who have condos in Nevada to evade state taxes.  There are not a couple of people doing this; there are tens of thousands.  Everyone knows it, and California seeks them out.

    Our old pal Harry Reid knows it as well, and he apparently has them voting in droves in this election.  Probably not a big D.J. constituency.  Within 72 hours of the election, the Trump team found, validated over 3,500 of them.  I do not suspect that Trump's people stopped counting.

    Every one of these is a ballot reduction for Biden

    Nevada, as of now, is well within reach for DJ and the Trump team — particularly when the California crowd is reduced.  And a few of them may testify since a false vote is a very bad thing, with jail time if convicted.  Maybe a bigger story here.

    Remember where we are, people.  Biden is at 270 after a highly probable Supreme Court decision (read Alito and concurring opinions).

    Lose Nevada, lose the election.

    But wait: it gets better.

    Let's visit Wisconsin.  Right now, it is 20,000 votes in Uncle Joe's direction.  Lots of stories out there, well below the Google fold, that there are way more Wisconsin votes than there are registered voters.  OK, maybe the dead can vote up there — probably a Midwest thing.

    Well, last night, we found that Wisconsin election clerks were told, and followed the direction, to modify mail-in ballots and fill in the blanks where witnesses left out critical info.

    I am sure it was just a good customer service thing and they meant no harm.  The problem is every such ballot is now toast.

    There were "thousands" of such prima facie wrongful votes.  Oops.  Biden up 20,000 — now that number is in question.  No more truckloads of votes coming in, so every ballot D.J.'s team eliminates gets President-Elect Biden one step closer to former V.P. Biden who lives in a basement.  Not good here.

    North Carolina.  That one pretty much looks like as though it is over and D.J. won it.  Fox News is rumored to call it for Trump around April 2021.

Records reviewed by Just the News show that an executive branch agency called the Wisconsin Election Commission:

  • permitted local county election clerks to cure spoiled ballots by filling in missing addresses for witnesses even though state law invalidates any ballot without a witness address.
  • exempted as many as 200,000 citizens from voter ID rules by allowing them to claim the COVID-19 pandemic caused them to be "indefinitely confined."
  • failed to purge 130,000 names from outdated voter rolls as required by law.

    A Media Research Center (MRC) poll conducted by McLaughlin & Associates found that 36 percent of Biden voters were not aware of the evidence behind claims that Joe Biden was personally involved in his son Hunter’s business deals with China. Thirteen percent of those voters (4.6 percent of Biden’s total vote) said that if they had known the facts, they would not have voted for Biden.

    Such a shift away from Biden would have given Trump the election, according to MRC’s analysis of the preliminary — and contested — election results predicting a Biden win. Had the Biden-China story seen the light of day, Trump would have won the election with 289 electoral votes.
    Sources are telling The Chronicle that Senator Mitt Romney has been asked by the presumptive President-elect Joe Biden to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. He is currently discussing the nomination with his family and is expected to accept the appointment.

    Biden advisors expect that Romney — a former management consultant by training and a former CEO of Bain Capital — will be tasked with making the national healthcare system more affordable without legislation that modifies the Affordable Care Act.

I'm reminded of the following which is attributed to Winston Churchill (falsely, unfortunately):

Churchill reportedly says to a woman at a party, “Madam, would you sleep with me for 5 million pounds?” The woman stammers: “My goodness, Mr. Churchill. Well, yes, I suppose …” Churchill interrupts: “Would you sleep with me for five pounds?” The woman responds immediately: “What? Of course not! What kind of woman do you think I am?!” Churchill replies: “Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.”

The internet began laughing at Rudy, holding a press conference on voter fraud and how President Trump is going to win over Biden. Rudy held the presser in an alley in front of the Four Seasons Landscaping company. The first theory was it was supposed to be booked at a Four Season’s hotel, somebody screwed up, and Rudy decided he had to follow through. But then anons began looking into the company, and they found it was making reams of small dollar donations to all different leftist political organizations and candidates across the country, under the names of what appeared to be imaginary employees (It also has a ton of surveillance cameras and passive IR motion detectors. as well as floodlights all around the building). Then they began to notice the same thing with other such companies.

Read the whole thing.


VIDEO:"Cosmic Rays at Max, Superflare News, Climate Fail | S0 News Nov.8.2020" (7 min.)
I set this to start at the news regarding past solar flares and how that ties into the projected 12,000 year cycle. But if you want to watch the whole thing, he discusses how the original satellite data of the Arctic see ice was off by 50 cm (!) suggesting large scale melting where there was none. A new satellite has corrected that problem, but the harm has already been done.

Miscellany:

    The UK economy is projected to shrink by 2 per cent between October and December, while GDP is set to be 11 per cent lower this year in real terms. 

    A separate study showed that the coronavirus pandemic and measures to slow its spread had cost the global economy $3.8 trillion (£3 trillion), and put 147 million people out of work. 
    Pfizer announced Monday that a coronavirus vaccine the company was working on had proven to be 90 percent effective at preventing COVID-19. It is not only great news for the country, but appeared to be a big win for the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed. Vice President Mike Pence praised the ‘public-private partnership’ for spurring development of the vaccine.

    It turns out that Fox News’s Sean Hannity was essentially right when he said that Trump could cure cancer and the media still wouldn’t like him. Pfizer immediately distanced itself from its partnership with the Trump administration. The media quickly followed suit, determining that the President deserves no credit for the vaccine’s quick development.

    Dr Kathrin Jansen, Pfizer’s head of vaccine research and development, told the New York Times, ‘We were never part of the Warp Speed…We have never taken any money from the US government, or from anyone.’

    NBC News White House correspondent Geoff Bennett piled on, writing, ‘As Pence claims credit, Pfizer says it did NOT join in the administration’s partnership.’ Twitter also had an item on their ‘trending’ section headlined ‘Pfizer is not part of Operation Warp Speed, Pfizer senior vice president says.’

    This is the type of statement that the left-wing fact checkers would describe as ‘technically true, but misleading’. Pfizer was the only US drug company to not accept money for research and development of the vaccine. They did, however, strike a $1.95 billion contract with the government.

    The deal was that the Trump administration would give Pfizer $1.95 billion for 100 million doses of a coronavirus vaccine if it was completed by the end of the year. 
If Biden were to die before December’s electoral college vote, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) would have the ability to name a replacement candidate and pressure the electors currently committed to Biden to support them instead. Presumably, although not necessarily, the new candidate would be Biden’s vice president Kamala Harris.

Also:

Once Biden is selected by the electoral college, he officially becomes the president-elect. If he were to die between the electoral college vote but before the early January congressional certification, members of congress have an opportunity to object to the electoral results in any state and, if both chambers agree, to switch that state’s votes to the opposing candidate. It’s pretty hard to imagine Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic House speaker, agreeing to hand a state to Trump in any conceivable circumstance.

    Razib Khan dredged up an article that talked about the role of Japanese intelligence and/or the Black Dragon Society in furthering the developing of black nationalist groups before WWII – one such group eventually developed into the Nation of Islam. Perhaps this accounts for some of the odd Yacub stuff, which I’m pretty sure isn’t in the Koran.

    But there was a very interesting point mentioned in that article that Razib did not notice, or perhaps did not find interesting:

    “”After Nation of Islam members participated in what was reported as a human sacrifice, NOI founder W. D. Fard was instructed by Detroit detectives to leave the city in December 1932. ”

We must therefore evaluate what is happening today with a supernatural gaze, in light of the battle that the world’s élite are conducting against Christian civilization. The attack that was initially launched from the outside against the Catholic monolith has evolved, from the Second Vatican Council onwards, into an action of widespread infiltration by means of the deep state in civil society and the deep church in the religious sphere. The enemy has succeeded in penetrating the interior of both the State and the Church, in order to rise to the very top, building a network of complicity and connivance that binds all of its members by means of blackmail, having chosen them precisely because of their corruptibility. It is not by chance that honest officials are systematically hindered, marginalized, and made the object of attacks.

Part of the problem is that the American distrust of intellectualism is itself not the irrational thing that those sympathetic to intellectuals would like to think. Intellectuals killed by the millions in the 20th century, and it actually takes the sophisticated training of “education” to work yourself up into a state where you refuse to count that in the books. Intellectuals routinely declared things that aren’t true; catastrophically wrong predictions about the economy, catastrophically wrong pronouncements about foreign policy, and just generally numerous times where they’ve been wrong. Again, it takes a lot of training to ignore this fact. “Scientists” collectively were witnessed by the public flipflopping at a relatively high frequency on numerous topics; how many times did eggs go back and forth between being deadly and beneficial? Sure the media gets some blame here but the scientists played into it, each time confidently pronouncing that this time they had it for sure and it is imperative that everyone live the way they are saying (until tomorrow). Scientists have failed to resist politicization across the board, and the standards of what constitutes science continues to shift from a living, vibrant, thoughtful understanding of the purposes and ways of science to a scelerotic hide-bound form-over-substance version of science where papers are too often written to either explicitly attract grants or to confirm someone’s political beliefs… and regardless of whether this is 2% or 80% of the papers written today it’s nearly 100% of the papers that people hear about. 

    Astrophysicists consider that around 40% of the ordinary matter that makes up stars, planets and galaxies remains undetected, concealed in the form of a hot gas in the complex cosmic web. Today, scientists at the Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale (CNRS/Université Paris-Saclay) may have detected, for the first time, this hidden matter through an innovative statistical analysis of 20-year-old data. ...

    Galaxies are distributed throughout the universe in the form of a complex network of nodes connected by filaments, which are in turn separated by voids. This is known as the cosmic web. The filaments are thought to contain almost all of the ordinary (so-called baryonic) matter of the universe in the form of a diffuse, hot gas. However, the signal emitted by this diffuse gas is so weak that in reality 40 to 50% of the baryons go undetected.

    ... In a new study, funded by the ERC ByoPiC project, they present a statistical analysis that reveals, for the first time, the X-ray emission from the hot baryons in filaments.

    This detection is based on the stacked X-ray signal, in the ROSAT2 survey data, from approximately 15,000 large-scale cosmic filaments identified in the SDSS3 galaxy survey. The team made use of the spatial correlation between the position of the filaments and the associated X-ray emission to provide evidence of the presence of hot gas in the cosmic web and for the first time, measure its temperature.

    These findings confirm earlier analyses by the same research team, based on indirect detection of hot gas in the cosmic web through its effect on the cosmic microwave background. This paves the way for more detailed studies, using better quality data, to test the evolution of gas in the filamentary structure of the cosmic web.

    The footage was filmed from the fishing boat on a river in Tres Vendas, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.  

    In the video the men spot the howler monkey swimming in the distance and realise it is tired. 

    As they approach it, they reach out an oar and the monkey clings hold of it with its hands.  

    It rides along, lifting its upper torso above the oar as it legs are pulled through the water. 

    After a short ride, the fishermen leave it near a branch which it clambers onto before being filmed disappearing into the trees. 

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2 comments:

  1. John WilderNovember 9, 2020 at 7:12 PM

    1. The Mrs. saw a .380 she wanted. Normally, when The Mrs. wants something like that, it's in the bag. But this particular .380 was a Sig, and was ~$600, mainly because it the metal finish was iridescent.
    2. Did you hear that Real Clear Politics uncalled PA for Joe, and CNN uncalled AZ for Joe? In RCP world, Joe is no longer a president-elect.

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    Replies
    1. DocentNovember 9, 2020 at 11:19 PM

      I hadn’t heard of the RCP story. The Sig .380 is a great pistol—probably the best sights on that size pistol, and very accurate.

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