The Docent's Memo (5/5/2021)

 

VIDEO: "Police chase with cop killer ends in violent shootout!!!" (21 minutes). The video is footage from the bodycam of Officer Adrian De La Garza during the pursuit of Omar Felix Cueva. Cueva, you might remember, killed Officer Darian Jarrott using an AR rifle on February 4. Most of the footage shows the vehicle pursuit of Cueva. The good stuff starts at approximately the 7:54 spot, when De La Garza executes a PIT maneuver forcing Cueva to lose control of his vehicle and stop at the side of the highway. As Garza exited his vehicle, Cueva opened up on him with a handgun, striking Garza at least once. Garza fell backward, was able to get up, and then let out a string of shots (necessitating a magazine change) that, together with shots from other officers, put Cueva down permanently. Garza's wound has been described as minor. A couple things of interest. First, this is another great example of how fast things can happen in a shooting incident. The entire time from when Garza exited his patrol car to when he charged Cueva and fired all shots from his handgun was less than 13 seconds. Another thing I noticed was that when Garza fell backward, his first action was not to immediately get back up, but he pushed himself backward to put more distance between him and Cueva, and he looked for a way to engage Cueva by shooting under the vehicle. Only when he saw that Cueva had gone back around to the driver's side of his truck did Garza get back up. But, again, this is going on so fast that much of what Garza did had to have been acting based on his training and practice and not thought up on the fly. A Daily Mail article about this shooting has not only the video above, but also some video apparently shot by some kids from a road running parallel to the highway which gives you a different perspective on the shooting. Watching the second vehicle, it looks to me that Cueva was initially going to advance on Garza, but then changed his mind either because Garza was still out of his view and/or the approach of other police vehicles. In other words, Garza backward crawl may very well have saved his life.

Firearms/Self-Defense/Prepping:

• "Superior Performance Under Life Threatening Stress, AKA Grace Under Fire" by Marcus Wynne. The embedded video "hilariously narrated by Officer Tatum, brilliant illustrates the difference between superior performance under stress and, well, performance lacking certain essential elements of greatness." Also, Marcus gives some additional information on his background:

    I provided a lot of training to the South African Police Force in the 1990s. I was invited to most of their specialty units, including the Task Force, the SWAT Instructor School, the Counter-Insurgency/Tracker School, the National Polygraph/Deception Detection Unit, as well as the Basic National Academy and their instructors. I had a memorable visit to their sniper school, whose coach was an Olympic Gold Medalist in shooting. While I was there I had the great pleasure of meeting, training and field testing training with many operators like Mr. Prinsloos. Their instructor cadre seemed evenly split between gigantic muscular specimens and lean quiet ectomorphs like Mr. Prinsloos. Their special operators at that time were predominantly the latter, following the older SAS model: men built for long distance endurance, though even then they were producing many massive guys. What I enjoyed most was walking into a classroom full of officers like Mr. Prinsloos — tough, smart, highly trained, and more to the point, street savvy and hardened by many years of violent experience.

    Tough audience? Yep.

    Also the best audience to give immediate feedback on what works and doesn’t work, which is why I emulated William Fairbairn and went to where the gunfighters were to study, experience, experiment and refine the training protocols i teach. In the 1990s Johannesburg was the most violent city in the world, bar none. The Police Force had over 250 deaths a month out of a force totaling about 120,000. The average time it took for a fresh out of the academy recruit to get into a gunfight (not draw his/her weapon – actually fire his weapon at a human) was two working weeks.

• Cool. "Beretta Announces the Addition Of Manurhin Revolvers to Their Lineup"--The Truth About Guns. These are supposed to be among the best revolvers ever produced, but have previously been very rare in the United States. This should change with Beretta importing the weapons to the U.S.
• Cars are not for gun storage: "Burglar shoots LAPD cop with his own gun after breaking into his car and stealing weapon and bullet-proof vest"--Daily Mail.
• Some interesting history: "Chinese Warlord Pistols: 1916-1949" by Leonardo M. Antaris, MD, The American Rifleman. I've mentioned a couple times before that after World War I, the great powers signed onto an embargo preventing the sale of military arms to Chinese in the hopes that it would limit the casualties accruing in a deadly civil war and conflicts between war lords. Handguns were not considered military weapons, and so the trade in these type of firearms boomed, including many that were machine pistols. This article goes into more detail on the background of the conflict and provides a more comprehensive survey of the pistols used in this conflict than I'd come across before.
• "The What & the Why: Flashlights & Long Guns" by Doug Larson, Guns America Digest. Good article. An excerpt:

    And here is a word of caution. If you mount a light on your long gun’s fore-end or handguard and you anticipate using that light for searching outside when it is very dark, think about shadows that may be the result of where the light is mounted.

    For example, I was once training at Gunsite Academy at night. Students were performing solo searches with AR-15s outside, and this night, there was absolutely no light. It was pitch black. I had a SureFire Scout weapon light mounted on the right side of the handguard, behind the muzzle. As a result, the light cast a black shadow caused by the barrel on the left side of the gun. A whole infantry platoon could be “hidden” by the shadow, and I would not have seen it.

    My solution was to consider where any shadows might fall. Since it was not likely that a threat would present itself from above, I moved the light mount down a few inches so the light attaches in the same place as before but at 45 degrees below and to the right of the barrel. Then any shadows cast would be at a 45-degree angle to the left and above the barrel, where a threat would be less likely to be. Those readers who are SWAT operators and could find yourself in a similar situation should take special note.

• "Concealed Carry Corner: Hybrid vs Kydex Holsters"--The Firearm Blog. Discusses the pros and cons of each. The author's conclusion is that he prefers the Kydex holsters to the hybrid. I would also note that Greg Ellifritz has recommended against hybrid holsters.
• "3 Things You Must Have for Purse Carry"--NRA Women. The author recommends against purse carry, but also recognizes that there are a lot of women are going to do it anyway because of the ease and convenience. So, with that in mind, she makes the following recommendations: (1) have the right purse, i.e., one designed for concealed carry (or, at least, "use a product like CrossBreed Holsters' Purse Defender, an option that can transform it into a CCW purse"); (2) have a plan for accessing, drawing and shooting the weapon that you have practiced; and (3) use extraordinary vigilance to make sure no one else accesses or takes the purse. 
• "Three Subcompact Shooting Tips"--Trident Concepts. The three tips are: (i) get stronger as it fixes most problems; (ii) get as much friction as possible; and (iii) take it slow, concentrate more. The first and third are pretty self explanatory, but the second needs more explanation. The article states:

While most subcompact pistols barely fit into the average size person’s palms you still need to obtain a solid firing grip. Start by identifying the five points of contact, then ensure you occupy as much surface area as possible. Using an in-line thumb grip gives you the best access to the pistol’s surface area. Your goal when shooting subcompact pistols is to create as much friction as possible through your grip. With the short frames many are tempted to use pinky extensions or extended magazines. Using these for your reload magazine is no problem. Part of the reason you are carrying a subcompact is the reduced profile for optimal concealment. Adding length to the frame produces more you need to conceal. Instead, curl your pinky finger underneath the base of the magazine. Take it one step further and press the tip of your pinky finger into the palm of your hand while applying your crush grip.

• "Oh, Spare Me!–Should You Even Bother to Carry a Reload?" by Tamara Keel, Recoil Magazine (h/t Instapundit). In this 2018 article, Keel begins:

    Let’s get this out in the open: You can count the number of private-citizen defensive gun uses in the U.S. when a rapid reload made the difference between a dead good guy and a live one without taking off both mittens.

    Reloading a handgun mid-gunfight, outside of a military or law enforcement context is pretty unlikely. Although he’s talking about carbines rather than pistols, a great quote from trainer Randy Harris springs to mind: “If you empty one 30-round mag in civilian-world USA, you’re going to be on the news … if you empty two, you’re going to be in the encyclopedia …”

    Another trainer, Claude Werner, studies the reports of private-citizen defensive gun uses as collected in sources like the NRA’s Armed Citizen column. Over time, he’s found the average number of rounds needed in these encounters is low. One month, May of 2017, the average round count across seven reported gunfights was only 1.43 rounds per incident. That’s not a lot. Unless you find yourself caught up in the middle of an action-movie shootout, you’re highly unlikely to need that reload.

She nevertheless brings up three reasons for carrying a spare magazine, from least likely to most likely: (i) it might be your lucky day where you are involved in an actual gun battle requiring more than just the ammo in your pistol; (ii) you might accidently release your magazine with the result that it drops out of the weapon; and (iii) you may have a magazine that, for whatever reason, is not functioning correctly requiring you to change out to something that does work. Although she doesn't go into what mechanical problems could occur, there is always the potential for a magazine to get bent feed lips from being dropped during practice or competition, or even a mishap when loading it at home; or the magazine body could be dented; or metal fatigue may finally rear its ugly head causing your spring to lose its springiness or break; or (and I've seen this one) the baseplate might pop off. An extra magazine is a quick fix. I would also note that the foregoing are good reasons to not use your carry magazines for competition or practicing magazine reloads. Rather, if possible, set aside magazines just for carry (and some target practice--you have to test functionality before trusting them for carry and for subsequent testing), but use a different set of magazines for dropping on the ground.

• "The .38 Special Hydra-Shok Deep Journey"--Revolver Guy. This is a lengthy and detailed journey into the history of the Hydra-Shok round, its updates and evolution over the years, and how Federal has made the new .38 Special Hydra-Shok one of the best, if not the best, self-defense round for use out of a snubby. For those not interested in a long read, here is the basic information you need to know:

When fired from the 1.875” barrel of a snubby revolver, the 130 grain, .38 Special Deep bullet clocks about 800 feet per second at the muzzle, as a result of careful powder selection. According to Federal’s Chris Laack, this energy allows the bullet to penetrate 13.2 inches of bare ballistic gelatin, and expand to 0.551 inches (1.54 times it’s starting diameter), according to Federal’s numbers.  In FBI-standard Heavy Clothing, the bullet is said to penetrate 13.4 inches and expand to 0.548 inches (1.53 times it’s starting diameter) from the same, short barrel.

• "Handloading the .45 ACP" (Part 1) (Part 2) by John Taffin, Guns Magazine. The first part addresses general reloading information and using standard bullets. The second part addresses reloading using cast bullets, including a few different recipes. 
• "+P Handgun Ammunition (.38 Special, 9x19mm, .38 Super and .45 ACP)" by Chuck Hawks. He begins: " '+P' is an official SAAMI designation for ammunition loaded to higher than normal maximum average pressure (MAP) and thus higher than normal velocity. The purpose is to increase the effectiveness of standard calibers, such as the .38 Special, 9x19mm and .45 ACP. This article is about SAAMI specification +P ammunition that is available to civilian shooters." Also:

Here are the standard and +P MAP's [i.e., Maximum Average Pressures] for [the most common +P calibers]:

• .38 Special: 17,000 psi (std.); 20,000 psi (+P) = 17% increase in pressure
• 9x19mm: 35,000 psi (std.); 38,500 psi (+P) = 10% increase in pressure
• .38 ACP/.38 Super: 26,500 psi (.38 ACP); 36,500 psi (.38 Super +P) = 38% increase in pressure
• .45 ACP: 21,000 psi (std.); 23,000 psi (+P) = 9.5% increase in pressure

• Got a new leather holster? Craft Holsters has a break-in guide using denatured alcohol--video as well as written instructions.  You don't need their break in kit, but it is a convenient way of getting necessary materials (except the plastic bag--just use a grocery bag).
• "How to Properly Fill Your 5-Gallon Bucket for 30 Years of Food Storage"--A Year Without The Grocery Store. Instructions on how to use a bucket, Mylar bag, and oxygen absorbers for sealing and protecting grain and legumes. 
• "Preparing Your Vehicle for Everyday Emergencies"--A Year Without The Grocery Store. By "prepared vehicle", the author does not mean a Bug Out Vehicle, but "a vehicle that is ready to handle any of life’s minor emergencies (not the zombie apocalypse) while you’re out and about." She gives examples of minor emergencies that weren't because she kept in her vehicle a box with snacks, bug spray, and a first aid kit. But this article is just an introduction to the concept of a prepared vehicle. In a later article, she uses a systems approach to break down the prepping into six manageable chunks: a food/water system; sanitation system; first aid system; car specific gear; comfort system; and shelter system (e.g., an emergency tarp). Certain of these are discussed in subsequent articles on food/hydration, sanitation, managing mechanical issues, comfort items (e.g., items for emotional comfort or fun, and items for physical comfort such as blankets or coats), first aid and illness prevention, and safety (addressing both situational awareness as well as weapons). Finally, she had an article on putting this all together, as well as special preparations for winter.
• When we discuss self-defense, we typically focus on equipment, tactics, or ballistics, but neglect the spiritual aspects of preparing for a deadly force encounter. John Correia, founder of Active Self Protection, often talks about the need to be "right with God" in the event you are killed, which is very sound advice. But I'm thinking about other preparations; specifically, being opened to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. I recently discovered a website--LDSCops.com--which is trying to collect stories from LDS police officers of experiences where they had assistance from the Holy Spirit. One of the accounts at this website is by Brock Bevell, who relates his experience in a vehicle chase of a suspect that ended in the suspect being shot dead when he tried to run down some of the officers with his truck. He had multiple promptings which saved his life and others. For instance, during the vehicle pursuit:

 ... As I was preparing to make my left turn onto Brown, I felt compelled to come to a complete stop. As we all know, when an officer is in route to a serious call, he/she usually breaks every title 28-code [traffic laws] in the book. As I came to a complete stop, I observed a second patrol unit making a left hand turn onto 80th from Brown. As he made the turn, he came within inches of sending me to the spirit world. He never saw me. (He later apologized.) 

He continues:

    ... I decided to parallel the vehicle from one major street to the south. This continued for approximately five miles when I felt a strong  impression to stop my vehicle and make my AR-15 combat ready. In Mesa, we do not have the means to carry our AR-15's in the front seat. We have them in the trunk in a case with additional rounds and magazines. I listened to the prompting and pulled my vehicle over. I exited the vehicle and walked to the trunk and removed my AR-15. I placed a round in the chamber and placed the gun on ready. I placed the rifle in the front passengers seat and re-entered the vehicle. With the AR-15 in the front seat next to me, I continued west and attempted to catch the pursuit.

    At this time, officers advised that they had the subject stopped in a cul-de-sac. When I arrived, I removed my AR-15 and ran to a position of cover. I noticed that I was the fourth officer on scene and that the subject was in the vehicle. I took up a position in the center vehicle. My rifle rested between the door and my eyes never left the subject. As I sat there with my finger along side the frame of the rifle, I observed the following unfold.

    The subject exited the vehicle, was shot four times in the chest by a non-lethal bean-bag rifle.

    A chemical agent was sprayed into the face of the subject with no effect.

    He was tazered on two separate occasions.

    A police K-9 bit the subject in the leg in three different spots.

    As I sat in the patrol car doorway, I had an extremely personal experience. I do not share this experience with many people because of the sacredness of it. Remember that this subject had no escape route. He was totally boxed in by three police cars and approximately 40-50 officers. He entered the vehicle and placed it in drive. The vehicle I was positioned in was directly in front of his. As he came toward me, time slowed down. I can remember intimate details of the event. The intimate details are what I find extremely sacred to me in my life. It was at this point of my life that I felt the Savior's hand close by.

    The subject placed the vehicle in drive and came toward us.  It was at this point that I had to make the decision to shoot or not shoot.

    As the vehicle came closer to me, I felt an extreme peace in my body. My senses were at high alert, my sight was better than ever and I felt a peace come over me like none I have ever felt before. I know that training and experience played a huge role in the shooting, but I can tell you without a doubt that I was blessed to have the Holy Spirit present.

    As I pulled the trigger, feelings of peace came over my body. My body felt relaxed and fear left. I know that if I had not pulled the trigger, he would have run over me and the other officers standing by my side.

    I have looked back on that night and I bear testimony of the love of our God. He is with us at all times if we stand worthy to receive Him. The Lord has promised that if we keep the commandments, we will be blessed. The Lord stands by His promise.

    I bear sacred testimony that I know that God lives. I know that He is real. I know that He cares for each and every one of us. I know that our lives are important to Him.

 

VIDEO: "Jiu-Jitsu standing rear choke defenses."-- The Basics

Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Leesburg, Virginia (7 min.). Great video on the topic.

The Coming Civil War:

• Printing trillions of dollars + mass influx of immigrants taking jobs and driving down or stagnating wages + reduced or stagnating GDP = stagflation.
• Related: "A Shocked Warren Buffett Sees ‘Significant’ Inflation: ‘The Costs Are Up, Up, Up. We’re Seeing Substantial Inflation’"--TradeGuru (h/t Anonymous Conservative). 
• "Pay Attention! Hot Summer Ahead in America, and 2022 will be far more serious"--Michael Yon. He writes:

    Since fall of 2020, I warned many times, specifically, that April 2021 would start serious violence in the United States. Witness now. It’s starting. Again, some folks try to mind read and say, “You predict violence because you want it.” This is foolish. This is accusing a doctor warning about smoking because the doctor wants to spread lung cancer.

    I am warning and warning and warning that we are steaming straight into civil war. War sucks, to put it lightly. And it rarely turns out how anyone predicts, other than bad.

    Many folks ask me about specific sparks. What could spark it? This is akin to asking which raindrop will case the flood. Which mosquito 🦟 brought the malaria. It’s about conditions.

    It’s about conditions.

• "A Cautionary Tale Of The Finnish Civil War" by Charles Haywood, American Conservative. Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution, Finland was part of the Russian Empire, albeit with a relatively high degree of autonomy. With the Communist takeover of Russia, Finland was able to achieve independence. Nevertheless there was a strong cadre of Communists in Finland who attempted to consolidate power based on their militias being the most heavily armed group in the nation and their control of the courts and academia. However, the majority of Finns were not going to take it, resulting in a short civil war in 1918 between the Communists (the Reds) and the Finns supporting parliamentary government (the Whites). Notwithstanding the Reds being better armed, they were crushed by the White forces led by a real military commander. Haywood's article is worth the read, but here are the key points (underlines added):

What does all this tell an American of today? Quite a bit. First, that the revolutionary left will never stop voluntarily. They cannot; to do so contradicts the basic premises of their world view, most of all that human perfectibility is achievable and that any price, especially a price paid by those who would deny others heaven on earth, is worth paying. Second, for the left, whenever power is not handed to them, those who do hold power are necessarily illegitimate, and any action to strip them of power justified. Third, they can be stopped, because in their nature their reach exceeds their grasp, but stopping them cannot be done with words, since to the left, words are meaningless. It will always and ever, until their hold on the human imagination is broken, be only possible to stop them by force. This is our future, whether we like it or not. We can hope it will be through the current institutions of order, to the extent those are not yet wholly subverted by the left. If not, it must be by some other mechanism, as the Finns found to their sorrow.

• Rules are just for the little people: "Gwyneth Paltrow gets the VIP treatment at the dreaded DMV: Star, 48, jumps notoriously slow line and sneaks in through the backdoor while 50 other people patiently wait their turn outside"--Daily Mail. She was also accompanied by a bodyguard who was undoubtedly armed with a firearm.
• They really do hate you: "Black Penn State profs report ‘noose’ behind house; ends up being part of neighbor’s swing set"--College Fix (h/t Instapundit). 
• Related: "No whites welcome at this university’s ‘Racial Trauma Yoga’ session"--College Fix (h/t Instapundit).
• "Watch — Open Borders Activists: ‘Cops and Borders, We Don’t Need Them! All We Want Is Total Freedom!’"--Breitbart. 
• Related: "Good-Bye, California"--The Other McCain. It used to be that white flight was limited to neighborhoods or, at worst, a city. But in California's case, white flight affects the whole state with the result that California is losing a Congressional seat. "In fact," the author notes, "if it had not been for the continuing influx of immigrants, California would have lost two seats in Congress. To put it bluntly, foreigners want to live in California; Americans do not."
• "College professors caught on hot mic gloating about teaching Marxism, social justice to students"--The Blaze. The teach education and public administration, meaning that they are training the next generation of public school teachers and administrators.

    "I mean, it's all social justice, all day, every day. I get to talk about the things I love all the time. All day [at my day classes], all night of my night classes," Harris said gleefully about her time teaching at the university. "I'm really living the life over here."

    Harris, who reportedly teaches "middle school theory and practice" to future educators at Roosevelt, called social justice "a part of everything" and a "foundation."

• "Feds Warn of Domestic Extremist and Jihadist Threats"--AlertsUSA Threat Journal (h/t Marcus Wynne). "This week the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and National Counterterrorism Center issued a Joint Intelligence Bulletin to law enforcement agencies nationwide highlighting the ongoing threat of violence from domestic extremists to federal, state, and local elected officials across all political parties and political party representatives." But AlertsUSA also points out:

What readers may find odd (or not) is that this bulletin focuses attention on right-leaning extremists and organizations. Nowhere are the violence and threats of left-leaning groups such as Antifa or Black Lives Matter referenced. Not once. This, despite many months of threats and destructive insurrectionist riots across the U.S. in 2020 and extending into this year.

When the DHS or FBI was pulling this type of crap in past years, there was at least some basis for believing right-wing groups were a greater threat based on the FBI's (self-serving) statistics showing a greater number of right-wing incidents. But after this past year, it is clear to even the most obtuse individual that left-wing groups present a clear and present danger. For the DHS and FBI to ignore that shows that the DHS and FBI have chosen sides, and should no longer even be given the benefit of the doubt that they function as apolitical organizations. 

• Related: These aren't the insurrectionist you're looking for: "Most Portland riot suspects won't be prosecuted, US attorney reveals"--Fox News. 
• "Building and Enabling Urban Resistance Networks In Small Countries - A Crucial Role For U.S. Special Forces In Great Power Competition" by Dr. Sandor Fabian, Small Wars Journal. An excerpt:

Recent conflicts such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria demonstrated that resistance networks organized in an ad hoc way during the conflicts could operate very effectively against the world's most advanced militaries. They did so without specific prior training in resistance operations, without purpose-built organizations, specifically prepared terrain, or custom-made equipment. So it is quite clear that if such resistance networks could be so effective than similar organizations created, specifically trained and equipped before conflict should be much more effective when it comes to fighting against foreign forces. Recent scholarly research supports this theory.

The issue isn't necessarily that uneducated goat herders can defeat an advanced conventional force, but that conventional forces were not able to break the will of the people to fight. This is amply shown by the fact that the coalition forces inflicted many more casualties than they received, but the military defeats of the Taliban were not enough to extinguish the will to expel the foreign invaders. In a civil war, the spirit of a large body of the populace to resist is going to be of utmost importance.

    In any event, the author goes on to describe a "tool kit" that resistance groups should have: "the ability to communicate securely, the ability to possess/acquire weapons covertly, the ability to create safe havens, the ability to conduct effective forging and the ability to identify and neutralize informers and infiltrators." History has shown that tapping into existing criminal networks is a fast way to acquire important pieces of this tool kit. 

• Yes. "Is America Led Today by Anti-Americans?" by Pat Buchanan, American Renaissance. He asks: "How can America unite again to do great things if we are led by people who believe America suffers from a great sickness of the soul, an original sin that dates back to her birth as a nation?"
• Related: "Who’s really running Biden’s White House? Step forward President Klain"--The London Times. Discussing how the country is essentially being run by the White House Chief-of-Staff, Ron Klain.
• Related: "George W. Bush: If GOP Stands for ‘White Anglo-Saxon Protestantism, Then It’s Not Going to Win Anything’"--Breitbart. Says the RINO globalist that wants to flood the U.S. with foreign immigration. 
• Related: "Jeff Flake: ‘We Need to Move on’ from Questioning Election Results — ‘We Could Do Well in the Midterms’"--Breitbart. This quisling needs to learn to embrace the power of the word "and" as in: we should focus on questioning election results and we can do well in the mid-terms. 
• "We Are Derek Chauvin" by Robert Hampton, The Unz Review.

Chauvin may not be the ideal white man nor the perfect cop. But his trial was a trial for all of us and we were found guilty. If America did not worship blacks and hate whites, he would never have been convicted. If America had a serious legal system, he would not have been convicted. If America didn’t fear mob violence over a “wrong” verdict, he would not have been convicted. The case is obviously bigger than one cop putting his knee on a black man. It now empowers the system to put a knee on the neck of white America.

• The power of the purse: "Idaho Governor Signs Law Banning Aspects of Critical Race Theory in Public Schools"--Legal Insurrection. I haven't read the bill, but the article indicates that it bans the teaching of any theories that “exacerbate and inflame divisions on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or other criteria in ways contrary to the unity of the nation and the well-being of the state of Idaho and its citizens.” (See this article for even more details). Perhaps more important, and I haven't seen anything but local coverage on the issue, is that the Legislature has decided to punish the state universities for teaching critical race theory and pushing woke agendas by cutting their budgets and, instead, using that money to give raises to teachers. 
• Heh! "Arizona School Board Flees, Parents Elect New Board, Vote To End Mask Mandate"--The Election Wizard. The school board scheduled a board meeting to discuss whether to lift a mask mandate, but freaked out when parents actually showed up and adjourned the meeting. The article continues:

Following the adjournment, the parents, under Robert’s Rules of Order, voted in a new school board. Then, the new members voted to end the mask requirement in Vail Schools. Whether this procedure to install new board members is legally valid remains in contention.

• The peasants are revolting: "'Boo all you like!': Romney hits back at 2,000-strong crowd at Utah's GOP convention as they shout 'traitor' and jeer at him for voting to impeach Trump: Narrowly avoids censure from delegates"--Daily Mail. Say what you will about "Mormons," but most of us take the Constitution and constitutional government very seriously. It is part of our theology that the U.S. Constitution was divinely inspired. See D&C 101:77 and 101:80. See also "Our Divine Constitution" by Ezra Taft Benson, then President of the Church (October 1987).

VIDEO: A great video showing a professional hit being foiled

 by an aggressive response (2 min.) (h/t Marcus Wynne)

Miscellany: 

• We're all guinea pigs: "COVID-19 alters human genes, explaining mystery behind coronavirus ‘long haulers’" by Chris Melore, Study Says (h/t Marcus Wynne). 

    For some COVID-19 patients, getting over their infection is just the beginning of the recovery. Over the last year, COVID “long haulers” have continued experiencing a variety of symptoms months after the virus clears. These include anything from skin problems, to shortness of breath, to losing the sense of taste or smell. Now, researchers say they may know why this is happening. A new study finds coronavirus actually causes long-term changes to an infected patient’s genes.




    Specifically, scientists reveal the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19, creates long-lasting changes to human gene expression. These tiny spikes cover the surface of coronavirus cells. They allow the virus to bind to certain receptors on human cells and hijack their functions — leading to COVID infection. Once the spike cuts into a patient’s cells, the virus releases its own genetic material into the cell so it can replicate.




    “We found that exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein alone was enough to change baseline gene expression in airway cells,” explains Nicholas Evans, a master’s student at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, in a media release. “This suggests that symptoms seen in patients may initially result from the spike protein interacting with the cells directly.”

Yet, the mRNA vaccines work by taking the instructions for making the spike protein and introducing those into cells so that the cells produce the same spike protein as the virus in order to fool the body into thinking it has been infected and ramping up the immune system. Logically, then, if exposure to the spike protein can cause long-term changes to how human genes are expressed (epigenetics), it shouldn't matter if the spike protein was the result of the viral infection or the mRNA vaccine. 

• Related: "SARS-CoV-2 spike protein alone may cause lung damage"--Medical Xpress.
• Related: "The Novel Coronavirus’ Spike Protein Plays Additional Key Role In Illness"--The Salk Institute for Biological Study. 

    The paper, published on April 30, 2021, in Circulation Research, also shows conclusively that COVID-19 is a vascular disease, demonstrating exactly how the SARS-CoV-2 virus damages and attacks the vascular system on a cellular level. The findings help explain COVID-19’s wide variety of seemingly unconnected complications, and could open the door for new research into more effective therapies.

    “A lot of people think of it as a respiratory disease, but it’s really a vascular disease,” says Assistant Research Professor Uri Manor, who is co-senior author of the study. “That could explain why some people have strokes, and why some people have issues in other parts of the body. The commonality between them is that they all have vascular underpinnings.”

• Related: "Immunity after SARS-CoV-2 infections"--Nature Immunology (h/t Anonymous Conservative). Basically, the study found that the majority of T cells (i.e., cells that attacked the virus and provide our immune response) were activated by non-S (non-spike) viral epitopes. Or, in other words, a vaccine that used non-spike proteins would have been more effective than the current mRNA vaccines, and, as the prior article makes clear, would have been safer.
• "Sad: THIS is what had to happen in order for Oregon's Health Authority to change their masking rules for outdoor sports"--Not The Bee (h/t Instapundit). "Maggie Williams ... passed out as she stumbled her way across the finish line. She and her coach say the mask is to blame, and now the Oregon Health Authority is updating its guidelines." Basically, she was suffering from oxygen deprivation due to having to wear a mask which caused her to black out. 
• Is France on the verge of a coup? Vox Day reported last week that 20 French generals (some retired, some still serving) signed on to a letter warning the French government that it needed to take strong action against the Islamic hordes within its borders. The Paris mayor concurred with the letter, although that didn't stop French President Macron from firing 18 serving military officers that had signed the letter. As Michael Walsh observes (go through this link if the first link doesn't work), the letter, published in the conservative magazine Valeurs Actuelles, came on the 60th anniversary of the attempted 1961 coup to overthrow then President De Gaulle after he withdrew French control of Algeria after a bloody war to keep Algeria as a French possession. Walsh adds:

    Macon’s [sic] likely opponent in the April 2022 elections, Marine le Pen, hailed the letter and called upon the signers to “join us in taking part in the coming battle, which is the battle of France.” To bolster her appeal, Le Pen has been shedding some of her far-right associations and expanding her base of support to include women and gays, along with Euroskeptics and anti-immigrationists who are her natural allies.

    For his part, Macron has been more vocal in defending French customs and traditions against Islamic incursion lately, but he’s badly underwater in the polls with a 38 percent approval rating, a result of his repressive treatment of working-class protesters. The Gilets Jaunes (yellow vests) have been demonstrating and striking against his economic and, latterly, COVID-19 policies for nearly three years.

    Whoever ultimately wins, it’s clear that France—which together with Germany forms the heart of the European Union—is at a crossroads. During the Revolution, the French pillaged churches and murdered Catholic clergy, creating a secular state. But large-scale Muslim immigration (from Algeria, among other places in the Islamic ummah) is testing that policy, known as “laïcité,” as Islam rushes into the spiritual vacuum that has followed the death of Christianity, not just in France but across Europe.

    The generals, therefore, are in reality defending “laïcité,” although the international left naturally depicts their stance as “racism,” further muddying the waters and bringing one of the oldest nations in Europe ever closer to either a coup or a civil war.

• "Former US Ambassador To Mexico: Cartels Control Up To 40 Percent Of Mexican Territory"--The Federalist. An excerpt:

    Last June, in an unprecedented and brazen display of force, dozens of cartel gunmen armed with grenades and .50-caliber sniper rifles ambushed the armored vehicle of Mexico City police chief Omar García Harfuch. The dawn attack, thought to have been carried out by the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG, took place on Paseo de la Reforma, a boulevard leading to the posh neighborhood of Lomas de Chapultepec, home to various foreign embassies and mansions — just about the last place one would expect a cartel ambush.

    Harfuch was shot several times but ultimately survived the assassination attempt (two of his bodyguards and a female passerby were killed), but the fact that the attack happened in broad daylight in an exclusive neighborhood of Mexico City underscored the impunity with which cartels now operate in Mexico. “There has never been an attack as blatant,” Landau said, “And, to my surprise, the central Mexican government basically did nothing.”

    The same could be said of the Battle of Culiacán in October 2019, when the Mexican military captured a son of jailed drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and were quickly besieged and outgunned by Sinaloa cartel forces that blocked all exits to the city, dispatched custom-built armored vehicles, and kidnapped the families of the soldiers holding El Chapo’s son. After launching more than a dozen separate attacks on government forces in Culiacán, López Obrador himself ordered the Mexican military to stand down, release El Chapo’s son, and surrender to the cartel.

    Images and footage of the battle could have been mistaken for scenes from Syria or Yemen, where central governments really don’t exercise total sovereignty over those countries. It’s not too much to say that the Battle of Culiacán marked a turning point in the collapse of the Mexican state. Unable to pull off the apprehension of a high-ranking cartel member, and unwilling to exert the force necessary to defeat paramilitary cartel forces, the Mexican government left little doubt about who is in charge of Sinaloa — or the rest of the country for that matter.

    That conclusion was bolstered by the release and subsequent exoneration in January of former Mexican defense minister Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, who was arrested in the United States late last year on drug trafficking charges. Specifically, General Cienfuegos, who served as defense minister under President Enrique Peña Nieto from 2012 to 2018, was accused of taking bribes in exchange for protecting drug cartel leaders. They apparently referred to him as “El Padrino,” or The Godfather.

    But his arrest in Los Angeles triggered a mini-diplomatic crisis. An outraged Mexican government demanded that Cienfuegos be released to Mexican authorities, and assured the U.S. Justice Department that the full weight of the Mexican justice system would be brought to bear on his case. The United States complied, turning over Cienfuegos and hundreds of pages of evidence against him. Not long after, the general was completely — and very publicly —  exonerated, and the classified evidence against was made public. In a statement, the Mexican attorney general’s office claimed, absurdly, that Cienfuegos “never had any encounter with the members of the criminal organization.”

    As shocking as it might seem that such a high-ranking member of the Mexican government was in the pay of a powerful cartel, the Cienfuegos case wasn’t isolated. In December 2019, Genaro García Luna, former security chief under President Felipe Calderon from 2006 to 2012, was arrested on charges he took millions in bribes from the Sinaloa cartel when it was under the leadership of El Chapo.

    To grasp how big of deal Luna’s arrest was, understand that he served as the head of Mexico’s Federal Investigation Agency from 2001 to 2005 (the equivalent of our F.B.I.), and from 2006 to 2012 was Mexico’s secretary of public security, a cabinet-level position under Calderon. In that role, it was his job to lead Calderon’s war against the cartels — chief among them the Sinaloa cartel, which, it turns out, he was working for all along.

• "Colombia: Civilians Take Up Firearms Against Rioters Burning Buildings"--Breitbart. As you may or may not known, Colombia has been rocked by riots over tax increases proposed by the Colombian president Iván Duque which continued even after he withdrew his proposed legislation. 

    Colombia’s RCN news network reported on Tuesday that Cali, a resort city close to the nation’s west coast, experienced especially violent incidents overnight on Monday that prompted locals to patrol streets with their personal firearms.

    “While, in some sectors, vandals attacks public forces [police] stations and private estates — according to videos distributed by citizens — police have also engaged in actions that some have qualified as abuses of authority,” RCN noted.

    RCN described as “evidence of the chaos that the [regional] capital is experiencing” the fact that “some citizens took justice in their own hands … taking the streets to confront hooded attacks who attempted to expand violence in the area.” Local civilian residents “went out to repel vandalism attacks, doing so also carrying weapons, amplifying tensions,” the network observed.

    El Tiempo, one of Colombia’s largest national newspapers, reported the alleged vigilante groups began roving neighborhoods around 9 p.m., after rioters began to burn the city’s Hotel La Luna. The hotel reportedly survived the fire but sustained significant damage. Rioters also began attempting to burn down a local bank and creating road blockades, which attracted the attention of armed residents who confronted them to reopen the roads.

    “Videos show neighbors confronting protesters and asking them to unblock the road. Citizens inform that, in addition, armed people were present,” El Tiempo relayed.

• Sometimes the universe just has it in for you: "Two dead as suicidal man jumps off building, lands on woman"--Washington Examiner.
• "What The Founders Thought About Religious Liberty Wouldn’t Please Anyone" by Vincent Phillip Munoz, The Federalist. An excerpt:

    The Founders had a different understanding [from us of what constitutes a right], at least when it came to “natural rights” such as religious liberty. “Natural” in this context means that the foundation of the right lies in our human nature as created by God. The natural right to religious liberty, in other words, is not granted by government; it is a part of the natural fabric of the created moral order, an order in which rights and duties are reciprocal. A just government recognizes this preexisting order; it does not create it.

    James Madison, the most philosophically articulate Founder on religious freedom, stated the matter most clearly. “What is here a right towards men,” Madison explained, “is a duty towards the Creator. It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him.”

    Because we are first and foremost children of the Creator, our first allegiance is always to God. The political institutions we create and the civic obligations we impose, accordingly, must recognize our preexisting sacred duties. Our politics must remain limited in its aims out of respect and deference to higher claims of religious authority. We have a political right to religious liberty because we have more sacred and sovereign duties to God.

    For the Founders, then, the right of religious liberty imposes limits on the state’s authority. “Congress shall make no law … prohibiting the free exercise” of religion because political authorities cannot legitimately exercise direct authority over religious exercises as such.

    Congress — and the states, via the Fourteenth Amendment’s application of the First Amendment against them — lacks legitimate authority to regulate any aspect of religious worship, including by whom, how, where, and when it is performed. Government officials, accordingly, have no authority to punish an individual for improper worship or to command an individual to worship.

    How, or whether, individuals worship is not, properly speaking, a direct concern of government. It cannot be, since we the people do not — indeed, could not — give government that authority. That is what it means for the people to retain their “inalienable” rights.

    This absence of jurisdiction that prohibits regulation of worship as such is also why the Founders said government cannot establish a religion. The Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause together articulate the limits on government authority needed to safeguard individuals’ natural right to religious liberty. Just as government cannot regulate religious practices, it cannot legitimately license preachers or employ official religious ministers as agents of the state, to take two classic examples of what constitutes an establishment of religion.

• Speaking of disgust: "It’s Not Fear Driving COVID-19 Panic. It’s Disgust" by Ilya Feoktistov, The Federalist. The author explains that "the emotion of disgust evolved to protect from communicable diseases by activating the body’s pathogen avoidance reflexes, such as recoiling, purging, and social distancing—defined collectively as the 'behavioral immune system.'" Interestingly, however, it is liberals that are more panicked about Covid. Although the author does not raise the following points to address why liberals are more panicked by Covid, I think it has some relevance. The author relates:

    ... Compared to past pandemics, the coronavirus is not exactly virulent. There are no bodies in the streets. Statistically, many people do not personally know anyone who died of the disease. Most, however, know someone who caught it and recovered.

    COVID-19 risk salience is largely constructed by received “expert” wisdom, in the form of media reports and government lockdown orders. In many ways, both the risk and the wisdom now appear to be illusory. From CDC to CNN, public trust is cratering from low to none, and even the skeptics might hope the illusion will soon fade away.

American liberals are more risk adverse, collectivist, and big-government oriented than American conservatives. Thus it makes sense that liberals' evaluation of risk is going to be driven more by government pronouncements and the emoting of celebrities than their own experience. And don't give me the "science says" argument since the science has been all over the place during this pandemic, but with the pronouncements of the health agencies ultimately proving to be of little benefit if not outright wrong.

• Interesting: "‘Son of Sam’ survivor claims real shooter was Satanic cult priestess"--New York Post.

    Carl Denaro lives with a metal plate in the back of his head, a macabre memento, police say, from “Son of Sam” serial killer David Berkowitz.

    Berkowitz terrified the Big Apple in 1976 and 1977 in a sadistic shooting spree that claimed six lives and critically wounded seven others. The schlubby civil servant confessed to pulling the trigger of his .44-caliber Bulldog revolver on the orders of a demonic dog.

    However, Denaro claims in a new book — co-authored with Brian Whitney — that his shooter was not the “Son of Sam,” but a mysterious “occult priestess” named “Big Breasted Wendy” or “Amy.”

* * *

    Berkowitz originally told the NYPD he shot Denaro, but years later said he didn’t, and today remains cagey about it.

    Denaro admits he never saw the shooter. His assertions of a triggerwoman echo those of the late journalist Maury Terry, who investigated the “Son of Sam” case and was convinced Berkowitz was a cog in a Satanic cabal that stretched across the U.S. Terry, who died in 2015, wrote “The Ultimate Evil: An Investigation of America’s Most Dangerous Satanic Cult,” in 1987.

• Related? "Was the Orange Socks Girl Killed by Cult Member Henry Lee Lucas?" by Lisa Marie Fuqua, Medium. An excerpt:

    Halloween 1979, the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office found the body of a young woman, face-down in a culvert along Interstate 35 north of Georgetown, Texas. It’s estimated she died only hours before being discovered.

 

    Following the blood trail from the initial scene, led investigators to the murder site. They found she had been killed close by, then drug through the grass, until she was lifted over a guardrail, and thrown from the overpass where she landed in the culvert.

 

    She was nude except for a pair of orange socks, which is how she obtained the nickname since the police could never find an ID for her.

 

    Her body was battered from the fall, and the abuse at the hands of her killer. Her neck showed visible bruises from manual strangulation. She had also been sexually assaulted. There were significant amounts of blood found at both the murder scene and the body dump area.

 

    There were no personal belongings at the scene. The killer must have taken her clothes and anything else she had, with them. The only items found nearby were two matchbooks, one was from a hotel in Henryetta, Oklahoma. Which the police believed supported their theory that she might have been a hitchhiker, or drifter moving through Texas.

 

    Around the time this body was found, there had been a string of bodies turning up along that interstate. Investigators believed it was the work of the same killers, and the victims might have been connected in some way.

The article goes on to recount that in 1982, convicted serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, confessed to killing the Orange Socks girl. The confession led to Lucas receiving a death penalty conviction, but he recanted his confession in 1984. The article continues:

    Henry Lee Lucas and his partner Otis Toole have admitted to killing over 30 people. Most of which they claim was to do with the secret satanic cult they belonged to, called The Hand of Death.

    It was this satanic cult that had trained Lucas and Toole to be killers. Lucas said he was taken to the Florida Everglades in a camp-like environment where he and the others were trained by The Hand of Death. There he was taught skills in killing, rape, car theft, drug trafficking, and other forms of organized criminal activity.

    Lucas said this cult was part of a nationwide ring, that had people killed, and children abducted and taken to a ranch in Juarez, Mexico. At the ranch, they would make child pornography and carry out ritual sacrifices.

    The Hand of Death has connections to killers such as Son of Sam David Berkowitz and the Manson’s Family leader, Charles Manson.

With advancements in DNA analysis and reconstruction of how a person looks, the Orange Socks Girl was finally identified as Debra Louise Jackson in August 2019. Her parents had never reported her missing because she had left home in 1977 and started moving around the country working at hotels. The author that additional DNA recovered from under her nails and from her socks has never been submitted for testing to find any matches. The story ends by relating: "Henry Lee Lucas died in 2001. And so it seems the world hoped his stories did too. No one wanted to look into his allegations of sex rings, satanic cults, and connections to the highest levels."

• Ah, the good old days: "Cancer rates in medieval Britain around ten times higher than previously thought, study suggests"--Medical Xpress. The researchers used x-rays and MRI scans to look for evidence of cancers in the bone. From this, they determined that 9-14% of adults in medieval Britain had the disease at the time of their death. Prior guesstimates put the rate at 1%. The article notes that "in modern Britain some 40-50% of people have cancer by the time they die, making the disease 3-4 times more common today than the latest study suggests it was during medieval times." But this is comparing apples to oranges: we live much longer due to better diet and medicine and less dangerous jobs, so of course we will survive long enough to be affected by cancer.  
• "SpaceX Crew Dragon makes 1st nighttime splashdown with US astronauts since Apollo era"--Space.com. This was on May 2. Its great news that the U.S. (i.e., Space X) again has a functioning manned space program, but sad we are still playing catch-up to what we were able to do 50 years ago.
• China is a lawless nation: "Long March 5B crash estimate as of today"--Behind the Black. The author relates that "[a]ccording to estimates this morning [Monday] by the Aerospace Corporation, the 21-ton core stage of China’s Long March 5B rocket will come crashing down to Earth sometime on May 10th, plus or minus 41 hours." The core stage at issue is as tall as a 10-story building, and its not all going to burn up in the atmosphere. "Large sections of this big piece of hardware is going to hit the ground in an uncontrolled manner. And China, a signatory to the Outer Space Treaty which forbids exactly this sort of uncontrolled reentry, launched it anyway."
• A reminder that we live in the 21st Century: "Farm Robot Zaps Weeds With High-Powered Lasers, Eliminates Need For Toxic Herbicides"--Zero Hedge (h/t Anonymous Conservative).