The Docent's Memo (Nov. 17, 2021)

VIDEO: "Club Like A Marine"--Bartitsu Lab (16 min.)

Firearms/Shooting/Self-Defense:

• Illustrating that a fatal shot will not necessarily end a fight: "Medical examiner reveals pointblank shotgun blast to Ahmaud Arbery's armpit paralyzed his arm and should have killed him but he was in 'fight or flight' mode before being shot twice more"--Daily Mail. The article reports that "[t]he forensic pathologist who examined Ahmaud Arbery's body post-mortem said the jogger was still standing after being shot three times because he had a 'fight or flight' response - even though the single shot to his armpit was enough to kill him." 

    At the trial, Donoghue said that Arbery's cause of death was 'multiple shotgun wounds'. However, he added the shot that struck Arbery's left chest and armpit alone was lethal enough to kill the jogger.

    The jury was shown graphic post-mortem images of Arbery's injuries as the medical examiner explained that: 'This could've caused his death because it involved the axillary artery and axillary vein which are large blood vessels that go to the upper extremity.'  

    If the 25-year-old had only been shot in his upper armpit, law enforcement and paramedics still would not have been able to save his life, Donoghue testified. 

    The medical examiner also said the black jogger's left arm was paralyzed as he fought back against accused shooter Travis McMichael.

    'Well, he's paralyzed now, can't use that arm,' Donoghue said when the state presented photos of Arbery's interaction with Travis McMichael. 

    'When you run into a situation that is stressful or that you are afraid of, or is going to cause anxiety, your body - the emigdela [sic: amygdala] in the brain - will correlated a flight or fight response.

    'As soon as he realized there was a threatening situation, that response would start.'  

• The Tactical Professor has started a series of articles on the topic of the "Fundamentals of Pistol Shooting." Part 1 and Part 2 are already up. The author relates in Part 1:

During my time teaching at the elite Rogers Shooting School, I refined the Fundamentals of Pistol Shooting down to Four elements. In order of doing them, they are:

• Grip the pistol firmly.
• See the sights.
• Press the trigger smoothly.
• Follow through.

Any time a shooter missed a target before it went away, (disappearing targets do that) not performing one element on that list was the cause.

He also includes a link to bookmark you can download and print that has all four elements so you can be reminded of them as you read your favorite book. 

    The subsequent articles will focus on each of the elements in more detail. Thus, Part 2 is on the topic of gripping the pistol. Additional parts will be released on Fridays. 

• "My Favorite CCW Belt" by Greg Ellifritz, Active Response Training. 

    For appendix carry, a strong belt is useful.  But the belt does not have to be quite as stiff as needed for carrying heavy pistols and magazine pouches on the side of the body.

Several of my friends recommended the Mastermind Tactics Specialist Pro for appendix carry.  I decided to pick a couple of them up and give them a try.

The one he went with was their Specialist Pro model. "I’ve worn mine daily now for more than two years and think it’s the best gun belt I’ve ever owned," Greg writes. "Give it a try.  I think you’ll be surprised how comfortable the belt feels and how well it helps you conceal your weapon." Greg also notes that it is much less expensive than its competitors. He provides a link to the website for ordering the belt in his article.

• I don't think so. "Mouse Guns Are Dead And PHLster Killed Them" by Travis Pike, The Mag Life. First, the definition of "Mouse Gun," which, according to Pike, is a diminutive handgun in a caliber less than .380 caliber such as .32 ACP, .25 ACP, .22 Magnum, .22 LR, etc. Pike then contends that Mouse Guns have been popular at times because:

Mouse Guns offer you a very small gun that’s insanely easy to conceal and very easy to comfortably carry. Carrying a gun can often be uncomfortable, and often the larger the gun, the harder it is to conceal and the less comfortable it is to carry. Mouse guns grew in popularity at various times because they are easy to conceal, comfortable to carry, and easy to carry.

As for how PHLster killed this class of firearms, Pike suggests:

Well, simply put, they took the reason behind why mouse guns are popular and applied it to full-sized and compact handguns. They did this with an innovative series of holsters that makes it possible to carry bigger guns with ease. Packing big guns can be a major hassle when it comes to comfort, but Phlster holsters take the sting outta packing a piece.

Pike especially likes the PHLster Enigma which "doesn’t require a belt, or belt loops, or even stable, sturdy pants. It fits under gym clothes without issue. It provides a very comfortable means to carry a gun regardless of what you are wearing."

    I would argue that Pike is missing a huge part of the appeal of these "vest pocket" pistols and other small handguns, which is convenience. That is, not having to take the time to put on a holster. If I'm just taking the dog for a walk or making a last minute run to the store, slipping a firearm into my pocket (even when using a pocket holster) is quick and easy. I know that a lot of serious concealed carry people like the PHLster Enigma, and this is not to disparage the system (which I couldn't honestly do because I've not tried it), but if you have already taken it off and then decide to go out, I doubt that putting it back on is going to more convenient than just slipping something into a pocket. 

• "Barrel Care: Do You Need to Break in a Barrel? Really?" by Dave Emary, Guns & Ammo. The author, who has worked in or run a ballistics laboratory for 25 years, says yes, although his break in procedure is less involved than some I've read. Emary writes:

    The premise of barrel break-in is that there are sharp edges, small burrs or rough spots in the barrel left from the manufacturing operations. These have to be removed or smoothed out before a barrel can shoot consistently, and minimize powder and copper fouling. If you don’t break in the barrel properly, it can initially get heavy copper deposits that will be difficult to remove later. Based on my experience, this is largely true. It comes down to how the barrel was manufactured. Barrels are made by several techniques, which provide widely different qualities of finish and rifling smoothness. Mass-produced barrels usually receive no post rifling lapping, or smoothing, and tend to have lots of machine marks. Bores exhibiting chattering from worn or misaligned reamers and broaches can be a bit rough. Most custom barrel makers these days take the time to carefully inspect their products to ensure few, if any, machine marks exist in the barrel, and then lead lap the bore to polish and smooth out the rifling.

    All of the pressure and accuracy test barrels I’ve used in the lab were lead lapped. The rifling in the barrel had been smoothed, but the chamber and rifling’s throat cut by the reamer were not polished and deburred. Most barrel break-ins I did on our pressure and accuracy test barrels were monitored from the initial break-in to observe how performance changed. I can say with certainty that the performance of a barrel changes during an initial number of firings, and the amount of fouling decreases as the barrel is fired.

    The break-in procedure I always used was fire one round and clean, two rounds and clean, three rounds and clean, and so on, until I had fired 20 rounds.

Also:

The bottom line is that a barrel and its performance change during the initial firings. The number of rounds it takes to get a rifle barrel to settle in varies depending on the quality of the finish of the rifling. A high-quality, smooth barrel will probably take some 10 to 20 rounds to settle in. A low-cost, mass­produced barrel could take upwards of several hundred rounds to break in. If you don’t clean the bore frequently during this initial period, especially the first five to 10 rounds, you’ll leave a lot of copper in the barrel that will require work to get out later.

The author goes on to discuss tips on removing copper deposits and carbon fouling, as well as some recommendations as to products.

• "What Turning Necks Can (And Can't) Do for the Accuracy of Your Handloads" by Joseph von Benedikt, Rifle Shooter Magazine. Turning the necks of a cartridge means the process of smoothing and evening of the case neck to get a uniform case wall thickness. 

    If one side of a case neck is thicker than the other, it is less elastic. When the gunpowder detonates, the two sides—of differing thickness—exert differing forces on the projectile as it exits the neck and mouth of the case. Differing forces are bad when it comes to accuracy.

    Further, if the case neck is appreciably thicker on one side than on the other, it biases the cartridge’s positioning within the chamber, meaning it presents it into the rifling slightly off-center. Yes, the projectile will always have some bias introduced by gravity, but additional bias introduced by inconsistent neck thickness adds more variation. Also bad.

The author explains that the benefit to be derived from neck turning depends on the brass and the quality of the barrel:

    In essence, if you have a production-grade barrel with a production-grade chamber on a production-grade rifle, most likely you will see little improvement by using neck-turned brass. Quite simply, such rifles do not possess the accuracy needed to glean the benefit of neck turning.

    On the other hand, if your rifle has been rebarreled with a match-grade tube and properly chambered with a min-spec reamer, you’re best served by either shooting expensive Lapua brass or lightly neck turned Nosler or Norma brass—or aggressively sorted and neck-turned brass from any of the big-box manufacturers.

    There’s one final situation in which neck turning cases is almost mandatory. That’s when you’ve necked down a cartridge case significantly in size—for instance, if you were to create .260 Rem. cases out of .308 Win. cases. Compressing a case’s neck in diameter thickens the case walls, frequently to the point where the case will not chamber once a bullet is seated. Worse, the neck often thickens inconsistently. Turning the neck thins it to appropriate thickness and evens out inconsistencies. 

VIDEO: "‘Nunchucks’ - The World’s Most Overrated AND UNDERRATED Weapon"--Object Rifle (29 min.)

Prepping/Survival:

• Well this should be interesting: "Watch Vancouver in Canada. It's now completely cut off from the rest of the country"--Bayou Renaissance Man. Major roads and railways washed out or blocked by floods and mudslides. Weather has shut down air traffic. The internet is out so businesses can't process credit/debit cards--cash only. As Peter Grant observes, "This is going to be a very practical test in how well a major city is prepared to survive a weather disaster.  The photographs of the damaged roads and surface routes look very bad.  Let's all watch how Canada copes, and learn, and update our own preparations accordingly."
• "How to Live Off-The-Grid in a Camper Year Round" by M.D. Creekmore. This isn't about "van life" but living in a trailer or motorhome--the bigger, the better. The main reason Creekmore discusses is to save money, especially if you can work remotely. And you can work up to bigger and better: Creekmore relates how he started out with a small trailer on a small lot of land, but with judicious shopping around and selling his smaller trailer and lot he was able to upsize to a larger trailer and a larger plot of land. He also discusses what to look for when buying a used trailer.
• "How Should You Layer Clothing in Cold Weather?" by Tim Makay, Modern Survival Online. Short version:

Layering is a relatively simple process where you will keep a fast drying, moisture-wicking layer against your body, and a light, fluffy layer on top of that in order to trap warm air. Lastly you will surround the whole thing with a weatherproof outer layer that will help you beat the wind and precipitation.

Obviously, there is more to it than that, and the author discusses they type of fabric/clothing for each layer, the dangers of cold weather, and a lot more. 

• Because your supply of meat after SHTF might be pretty slim... "37 Squirrel Recipes for Survivalists" by Aaron Cummins, The Survivalist Blog. The author points out that "Squirrels spend their days eating nuts and fruit, so squirrel meat takes on a clean, nutty flavor," and have long been eaten in the United States (at least the more eastern parts--they are pretty small out West).
• ... or you may have no selection at all: "31 Healthy Vegan Recipes for Preppers" by Jeanie Beales, The Survivalist Blog.
• "Prepping 101: How to Can Butter" by Paul Helinski, Guns America Digest. An excerpt:

If you are already an experienced canner, the key takeaway to this methodology is to boil the butter and skim off the foam before you fill your jars. I suspect this is because whatever that stuff is does not taste good when canned for an hour or more, and it isn’t required. Using this methodology you will end up with a dipping butter that is generally liquid at room temperature. Though I did can a commercial brand of butter, not Land O’ Lakes, that got hard when it cooled.

Instructions and tips follow.

• Some fire starting tips: "Fatwood: What Is It and Why You Need It" by Bryan Lynch, Urban Survival Site. He explains:

Fatwood is derived from pine and other softwood trees. The resin in the trees contains terpene, which is a main component of turpentine. You may or may not know that terpene is quite flammable which is why some softwoods like pine, can burn quicker and hotter than other types of wood.

• "How to Make Caltrops | DIY Caltrops"--Survival Life. Caltrops have a long history of use among military forces, including the Roman legions. Smaller ones can be detrimental to people on foot (or horseback) but larger, sturdier ones are needed for penetrating automobile or truck tires. The method described in the subject article uses sheet metal. I've seen other methods that use long nails or spikes. The most rapid blow-out I've experienced was from a metal tube that had penetrated the tire, and I wonder if steel tubing could be used to make anti-vehicle caltrops.
• "Harbor Freight Bug-Out Bag Supplies for $20 or Less"--Organic Prepper. 
• "Save Time and Energy with the Fenced Chicken Coop/Garden"--Backwoods Home Magazine. This is a brilliant idea for keeping chickens and fertilizing a garden. Basically, you build two chicken runs and put a chicken coop in the middle that can be opened to either run. You let the chickens have the run of one yard, while the other is used for gardening. After harvest, you switch and let the chickens take over the yard with the garden, and prep the other yard for next year's garden. If this interests you, be sure to read the article.
• "Volcanoes hastened Chinese dynasties' collapse, researchers call it a warning"--UPI. The article reports:

    Volcanic eruptions helped collapse dynasties in China in the last 2,000 years by temporarily cooling the climate and affecting agriculture, a study published Thursday by Communications Earth & Environment found.

    Large eruptions created a cloud that blocked some sunlight for a year or two, reducing the warming of land in Asia in the summer and leading to weaker monsoons and less rainfall, the data showed. 

    This, in turn, led to decreases in crop harvests, causing hunger and migration that were factors in the collapse of several ruling dynasties in the region, the researchers said. 

• More evidence of a solar outburst 12,000 years ago? "Mysterious shards of GLASS strewn across the Atacama Desert were likely created by an ancient exploding comet, study claims"--Daily Mail. Although this article doesn't mention a possible date, other articles and news reports that I've seen have said that it took place about 12,000 years ago--the same time as an impactor struck Greenland. It has obvious connection to the 12,000 disaster cycle that Ben Davidson of Suspicious Observers has identified. You can read the paper published by the scientists here.

VIDEO: "Tucker: Why did they let Kenosha burn?"--Fox News (16 min.)

The End Of The Republic:

• Traitors and tyrants: "'We Are On the Way to a Right-wing Coup,' the CIA Director Privately Warned" by William M. Arkin, Newsweek. In a classic case of projection, the Deep State plotted a potential coup against President Trump on the belief that he might act against the Deep State before leaving office, and then assert that Trump was the one attempting a coup. The article describes how General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and CIA Director Gina Haspel, organized a behind the scenes coup in November 2020 in the event that President Trump fired them.

    What was unfolding, though, was unique among coups. Nobody really thought the disorganized and isolated Trump was capable of organizing anything. And the president didn't have the support of the military or the CIA or the FBI, or any of the other national security agencies, perhaps, with the exception of the Department of Homeland Security, which had become embarrassingly partisan. Milley even remarked privately that a coup wasn't possible because his camp had all the guns—a comment that was both comforting and chilling, one that showed how perilous the post-election period had become.

    Ultimately, the uniformed military and other permanent national security professionals did take it upon themselves to decide how to defend the nation from this prospective coup, disregarding the new secretary and the other Trump cronies filling leadership positions in the Pentagon. Miller was ignored except in cases where the Secretary of Defense's approval or signature was required. Flouting the hallowed tradition of civilian control of the military that is at the core of the Constitution, and ignoring the commander-in-chief, Milley set the uniformed military as a bulwark against disaster.

    As self-appointed protectors of the nation, the military took on powers that are not in the Constitution. ...

The article then focuses on an obviously delusional idea that Trump might decide to unilaterally launch a pre-emptive nuclear attack on China:

    Gen. Milley wasn't formally in that chain of command, merely the "principal military advisor" to the president and a commander of nothing. Still, he had enormous influence over the entire military and could urge others to refuse an order. Military officers at the White House who would have to physically transmit a presidential order could disagree. Once transmitted, an order from the White House could also be opposed by the four-star commander of the U.S. Strategic Command—and then, even if made it past the Omaha-based command, every missile launch crew, submarine commander and bomber pilot ordered to launch a bolt-out-of-the blue would have to search their hearts and reflect on their oaths.

    This set of officers, nevertheless, weren't the only chain. Over decades of worry about a Soviet first strike, the government's nuclear priesthood had designated alternate presidents—for the Pentagon, for Strategic Command, secreted away in bunkers and aboard airborne command posts across America—who under certain conditions could take over (especially if communications were lost) to circumvent the official procedures and institute their own. This safety net was deeply classified, but it certainly scrambled what might happen. And there were other secret and little known alternative apparatuses—continuity of government systems fiercely guarding the survival of the president, Presidential Emergency Action Documents, secret military and federal law enforcement units—that were autonomous enough and certainly presented many question marks.

    In the end though, many in the military and national security establishment believed—as did much of the public—that Donald Trump's last line of defense was that he firmly controlled his fanatical base. By this reasoning, containing him would neutralize the mob: thus the necessity for the silent coup.

Arkin's motives in writing the article present a conundrum. He comes across as favoring the Deep State, and his article could easily be taken as reassurance to the elites and the Left that they remained firmly in control even while Trump was president. On the other hand, he also revealed the real reason Milley and Haspel instigated the coup--to maintain their power. And he also tells us that there are other secret networks that can, apparently, take control of our nuclear arsenal outside the official channels. Something that should alarm Americans.

• "Would America survive a civil war?" by Malcom Kyeyune, UnHerd. This op-ed was also picked up and published by the Daily Mail. What makes this article interesting is that it focuses on the Left's calls for violence against conservatives, and the remonstrations from the Left that conservatives would easily be defeated in a civil war because "the US military is so advanced, and has so many tanks, gunships, fuel air bombs, and drones, that the federal government is simply assured of victory. As such, a civil war is an unlikely or impossible scenario, given the dramatic imbalance of power between the state and even a numerically large, dissatisfied internal population." The author disagrees and makes a comparison between how many troops the UK had to use to keep a lid on Northern Ireland during the Troubles, and that the U.S. doesn't have enough forces to do the same even when scaled up to only the state of Texas. He raises some other points that would undermine the ability of the U.S. military to put down any such unrest.

    But the real meat of the op-ed is the discussion over whether there could be a civil war. The author writes:

 

    Now, with that all that said, how likely is it that there will be some sort of civil conflict in the near or mid future for the United States?

    Unfortunately, the correct answer here may very well be that it is not terribly unlikely. What is significant about America today is not that it’s nearing its 250th birthday, but rather the clear and advanced signs of sickness in the body politic. The ranks of America’s military are now sullen and battered after 20 years of failed nation-building, while its higher officer corps is increasingly alienated from the world of its grunts, mirroring that same cultural, economic and social divide that is currently poisoning civilian life in the US.

    The legitimacy of its elite has been shaken repeatedly, and faith in the electoral process itself is now rapidly declining among large segments of the electorate. America is currently a malarial swamp of strange new faiths, creeds, soothsayers and itinerant prophets; from Q to vaccine scientism to various forms of psuedo-gnosticism centered around trans people. To a student of history, this should also be a familiar — and quite ominous — sign: France in the 1780s had its own scientism and mesmerism, and Russia in the 1910s and 1980s was rife with soothsayers and itinerant preachers of new strange faiths.

    Most ominously of all, however, looms the growing supply crisis. This crisis would be tolerable if it merely implied a lack of variety at the grocery store. In such a case, 2020s America might just have ushered in a new golden age of Soviet-style political jokes. But it is also creating havoc in the productive economy itself, denying farmers the spare parts to run their harvesters and car manufacturers the metals they need to make cars. The longer the crisis goes on, the more broken the economy will become, and the more painful the necessary reforms will be, once America’s elites truly wake up to the danger.

    If there is one time throughout history where civil wars are actually likely to occur, it is precisely when a delegitimated elite undertakes necessary reforms after letting underlying problems fester for decades. That is when states are at their weakest, and when they are vulnerable to the worst forms of internal disasters. Sadly, that might just be where America is headed today.

• Related: "Media Calls for 'Rules' Treating Republicans as Not 'Normal'"--Red State. The author observes that "Now, we’ve seen bias when it comes to media. But the Washington Post’s Jen Rubin exceeds bias and moves right into outright lunacy with this mad rant at Republicans."

“You have to have new ground rules for the media,” Rubin whines. “They have to stop treating Republicans like normal politicians. They are not normal politicians … This is a party that spends its entire time cooking up ridiculous culture memes & fanning violence & coming up with outright lies.” Then the MSNBC host completely endorses the crazy idea, shaking her head ‘yes’ and telling Rubin she’s completely right.

• Related: "U. Arkansas prof: White people need to ‘reregulate’ themselves so they don’t commit violence"--The College Fix. I can't tell if the professor is just clueless by ignoring black violence, or if she is trying to pull a psy-ops to dishearten whites from resisting any violence that will be visited upon them. Or maybe she is just crazy....
• "PEW STUDY: WHITE LIBERALS DISPROPORTIONATELY SUFFER FROM MENTAL ILLNESS."--93.1 WIBC. An excerpt:

    Survey data from a 2020 Pew poll indicates that white liberals disproportionately suffer from mental illness versus their conservative counterparts.

    The study, which examined white liberals, moderates, and conservatives, both male and female, found that conservatives were far less likely to be diagnosed with mental health issues than those who identified as either liberal or even “very liberal.”

    Young white women suffered the worst.

    White women, ages 18-29, who identified as liberal were given a mental health diagnosis from medical professionals at a rate of 56.3%, as compared to 28.4% in moderates and 27.3% in conservatives.

    Zach Goldberg, a Ph.D. candidate in political science, consolidated the study’s info in a set of visuals and posted them to a thread on Twitter.

    Goldberg included the following disclaimer with his research: “I didn’t write this thread to mock white liberals or their apparently disproportionate rates of mental illness (and you shouldn’t either). Rather, this is a question that’s underexplored and which may shed light on attitudinal differences towards various social policies.”

Any Red-Pilled man would have already known that the young white liberal women are mostly crazy. I would suggest that Anonymous Conservative's r/K political theory explains why liberals are more anxious.

• More: "Adults at risk for mental health disorders drawn to city living, study finds"--UPI.  

    People genetically predisposed to mental health disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and anorexia nervosa prefer to live in urban areas as adults, a study published Wednesday by JAMA Psychiatry found.

    Those with higher genetic risk for these disorders were 5% to 10% more likely to "preferentially move" from rural to urban areas as adults, the data showed.

• Speaking of elites being alienated from the masses: "Outrage as MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle claims Americans CAN afford to pay more as cost of living soars: Says 'dirty little secret' is that households saved money over pandemic and can now afford expensive groceries"--Daily Mail.
• Related: Another case of elite cluelessness: "San Francisco Chronicle ripped for asking if residents should 'tolerate burglaries'"--Fox News.

    Crime has apparently become so commonplace in the city that the Chronicle asked readers if residents should start to "tolerate" burglaries.

    "Residents and city leaders are searching for answers: should they tolerate burglaries as a part of city living, and focus on barricading homes? Should repeat offenders get rehabilitation services, or be incarcerated so they can’t commit more crimes?" the outlet tweeted.

• The fruits of equity and Black Lives Matter: "'Follow-Home' Robberies So Bad in Los Angeles, Police Issue 'Cooperate and Comply' Alert"--Red State. 

Street robberies have gotten so out of control in parts of the city that the LAPD has issued a “follow-home robberies” alert: If you’ve been out shopping, having dinner with friends, or grabbing a few beers with your buds, and a bad guy follows you home to steal your stuff? Stand aside and let him have it, Angelenos. “Cooperate and comply.”

What else are they going to do? It's not like they have an unfettered right to own firearms or defend themselves and their property. 

• Let them eat cake! "Increase in Medicare Premiums Will Wipe Out Gains in Social Security For Seniors"--PJ Media. 
• They're lying to you: "US Inflation more horrible than Washington admits"--Asia Times. From the article:



    The US Consumer Inflation Report for October was horrible, showing a 12% annualized rate of price change. But it’s even worse than it looks. The shelter component of the index lags the more reliable private gauges of rent inflation. That means worse is to come.

    Three US companies publish national rent indexes – CoreLogic, Zillow and Apartmentlist.com – and their readings of year-on-year rent inflation range from 9% to 16%. But the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a year-on-year rise in the rents of just 3.4%. Shelter represents a third of household expenditures according to the Consumer Price Index.

Also:

    Led by used vehicle prices, durable goods prices rose 12% over the twelve months through October, according to the official data. That can be blamed on the chip shortage, which constrained auto production and left consumers and car dealers in bidding wars for everything on four wheels. But the price of nondurable goods also jumped 10% over the past year. That’s simple demand-pull inflation: the combination of a $6 trillion giveaway to US consumers and enhanced jobless benefits that kept 2 million Americans out of the workforce left too much money to chase too few goods.

    The annualized 12% inflation number, to be sure, will ease a bit, but rent inflation ensures that the pipeline of price increases will persist for the next couple of years. 5% inflation over 10 years will reduce the purchasing power of money by 80%. That’s unsustainable. Either the Federal Reserve will raise rates and strangle demand, or consumers will balk at price increases and stop buying. Incomes have fallen by 2% over the past year according to the government’s official measure, and by considerably more when shelter inflation is added in. In either case the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury have set the stage for the next recession.

• If Biden were the Manchurian candidate, hoping to weaken the United States prior to a war with China, what would he do differently? "USA Already Exporting Oil from SPR at Record Pace"--Rig Zone. 

If the Biden Administration decides to tap U.S. emergency crude reserves to push down domestic energy prices, it may not help all that much. The supplies may just be exported away like last month. 

About 1.6 million barrels of crude from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve -- a monthly record -- was shipped out in October, according to data from market intelligence firm Kpler. Three cargoes were loaded onto a supertanker in the U.S. Gulf Coast and are headed to Asia.

“Given the ongoing pace of the current SPR release -- 12 million barrels in the last two months and the biggest weekly release so far last week at 3.1 million barrels -- it’s fair to assume more SPR barrels are going to leave U.S. shores in the weeks ahead,” said Matt Smith, an oil analyst at Kpler. 

• Mostly peaceful: "Black Lives Matter co-founder threatens 'riots' and 'bloodshed' on the streets of New York if Mayor-elect Eric Adams reinstates NYPD's anti-crime units"--Daily Mail. From the article:

    A Black Lives Matter leader has threatened 'riots' and 'bloodshed' in the streets if Mayor-elect Eric Adams reinstates the NYPD's anti-crime units.

    The comments came from New York BLM co-founder Hawk Newsome after debating Adams during a contentious closed-door sit-down event with the incoming Democrat leader.

    While Adams was able to make headway with the activists on his plans to fight poverty in the black community when he takes office, the former NYPD captain vowed to bring back the controversial anti-crime units composed of about 600 plainclothes officers that target violent crimes - something BLM was angry about.

• "Antifa" is newspeak for "useful idiots": "Antifa members clash with anti-vaccine protesters outside NYC's Gracie Mansion"--Fox News. It's nice to see Antifa support the profits of mega-corporations and uphold the gleichschaltung. 
• "Was Kenosha a Failed Hit?"--Vox Day. Vox runs with an analysis by Anonymous Conservative of the people involved in the Rittenhouse shooting that lead AC to suggest that the attempted murder of Rittenhouse was intentional and coordinate a' la the murder of Aaron Danielson in Portland. Vox adds:

And while it is very hard to believe that the USA might have already entered the early stages of a “Bloody Kansas” era, or that Federal agencies are actively targeting young Americans on American soil, unfortunately, that is what the evidence presently suggests.

VIDEO: "Kim Iversen: Unvaccinated In LOCKDOWN In Austria, Will The US Be Next?"--The Hill (12 min.)

Covid News:

• "8 Dead, Dozens Infected With COVID-19 Due to Outbreak at Connecticut Nursing Home"--NBC Connecticut. Key point: "Of the 89 total infections, 87 people were fully vaccinated, the nursing home said." 
• Related: "Latest UKHSA report shows the Covid-19 Vaccines have an average real world effectiveness of MINUS 73%"--The Expose. In other words, UK data suggests that the vaccines are making people more susceptible to the virus.
• "No matter how old you are, two shots of Pfizer vaccine don’t last – study"--Jerusalem Post. 

People vaccinated with two shots of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine in January and February had a 51% increased chance of contracting the virus in July compared to those who were vaccinated in March or April, a new Israeli study published in Nature Communications has shown.

• "Biden administration plans imminent booster expansion to all adults"--Axios News. The article indicates that "[t]he pandemic still isn't over, and the data is clear that vaccine effectiveness has waned over time and with the rise of Delta — but also that a booster dose restores protection against the virus to remarkable levels."

"As every month goes by, the immunity wanes more and more. So as time goes by, you’re going to see more vaccinated people" becoming more vulnerable to the virus, NIAID director Anthony Fauci told Axios.

More importantly, though, is that "Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna making $1,000 profit every second" from their Covid vaccines.

• "Winter Heart Attacks"--Vox Day. Noting for the record that a typical winter sees approximately 15,000 injuries related to removing snow, including 100 deaths--most (i.e., around 100%) from heart attacks. Vox explains that he wanted this information out there "in anticipation of the media attempting to explain away the unprecedented number of heart attacks this winter as being 'in the normal, because people are shoveling snow'."
• "29-Year-Old Mountain Bike National Title Winner Kyle Warner Diagnosed with Pericarditis After Taking Pfizer Vaccine – Career Ruined" by Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit.

    Kyle Warner, a 29-year-old mountain bike race champion, was diagnosed with pericarditis, POTS, and reactive arthritis a month after he took the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine. The vaccine has ruined his career and he is still unwell and hasn’t been able to work or ride a bike.

    Warner took his first dose of Pfizer vaccine in mid-May and took his second dose a month after. In an interview with Dr. John Campbell in October, Warner describes his experience and what he felt when the second dose of Pfizer vaccine was injected into his body.

• Related: "Worldwide Surge Of Sports People Suffering Sudden Health Issues And Death"--Not On The Beeb.
• Related: "3 Leftists (Age 28-52) Mocked Unvaxxed, All Now Dead After Second And Third Boosters" by April Matthews, Conservative Post Daily. All three died within weeks of getting their final booster.

• "The Vaccines are the Vector"--Vox Day. "This is why all of the lockdowns will inevitably fail. Although, to the extent the lockdowns protect anyone, they will protect the unvaccinated who are being locked down, because it is the vaccinated who are now the most susceptible to the virus." And, I would add, the vaccinated also carry the highest viral load. 
• More: "Dr. Robert Malone: ‘The Vaccinated Are Actually the Ones That Are Creating the Highest Risk for Everybody’" by Dr. Joseph Mercola, NOQ Report. Malone is the inventor of the mRNA technology used to make the vaxxes. From the article:

There have been plenty of studies showing that those who get jabbed are just as likely to contract and spread the disease. What Dr. Malone speculated with strong common sense to go along with the science is that since the injections appear to keep people from getting as sick once they contract the disease compared to the unvaxxed, the vaxxed are actually the complacent ones who are currently spreading the disease the most.

• More: "FAILURE – Highest risk of Covid-19 hospitalisation and death is in the most vaccinated nations worldwide according to official data"--The Expose. 

VIDEO: "What China is Doing to Kill Us All"--Serpentza (14 min.)

Miscellany:

• "Prenez-Garde: As the World Looks Elsewhere, Communist China Is Making Moves on Its Border With India" by Aleksandra Gadzala-Tirziu, New York Sun. The author begins by observing that "Just this week the People’s Liberation Army has conducted multiple drills in the Tibetan Plateau. They involved some of the PLA’s most powerful howitzers, long-range rocket launchers, and air force bombers. The Chinese communist regime has been fortifying its Xinjiang and Tibet border regions since its stealth encroachment 18 months ago on India’s Ladakh territory." This is part of China's hybrid strategy "known as 'three warfares,' which blends legal, psychological, and public opinion operations with kinetic tactics. The strategy is presently being used against, in India, the world’s largest democracy while the world’s attention is elsewhere."

    All routine, one might insist, were it not for Communist China’s Land Borders Law. Adopted on October 23 and due to take effect on January 1 — Indian protestations notwithstanding — the law ostensibly maintains Communist China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity as “sacred and inviolable,” professes its “legitimate rights and interests” over transboundary regions, including waters, and authorizes the use of force to thwart “illegal” border crossings.

    No doubt Beijing does have understandable worries about its borders. Backdoor handshakes with the Taliban are, after all, no guarantee against the spillover of refugees and extremists onto Chinese soil. Rumblings along its periphery with Myanmar only add to the dangers. Yet the Land Borders Law, rather than addressing particular challenges, is a sweeping assertion of Chinese claims.

    How, then, should any nation negotiate any boundary matters? Could it be that with the law, Beijing has taken negotiations off the table, including with India? Sophisticated military drills and improved logistical capabilities compound a sense of looming confrontation.

• Evil: "'I'll keep killing f*****g babies!' Pro-choice protestors at Catholic St Louis University destroy cross erected to commemorate 800,000 aborted fetuses"--Daily Mail. One of the women identified herself as Olivia Jarrell. A Fox News report elaborates:

    Students for Life member Nick Baker said he was approached by one of the individuals who attempted to remove flags from the display on Wednesday.

    "You're a disgusting misogynist, and karma is going to f*cking get you," the individual said. "You'll see that when you die, and hopefully you f*cking go to hell."

    "You can see my pictures, you can see how pretty I am, how good of a life I have. And what do you have? You're a f*cking loser," she added. "You just really enjoy your life, cause I'll enjoy mine. And I'll f*cking keep killing babies."

I think this puts to rest the debate on whether a cross work against vampires due to it being a Christian symbol (i.e., the faith of the vampire) or due to the faith of the person wearing it. The woman above went off her rocker due to the sight of the cross made of flags; she literally couldn't bear to see a Christian symbol being used to criticize the killing of babies. 

• Related: "‘Lucifer’ Actress Lesley-Ann Brandt Boasts that Abortion Helped Her Career — Killed Baby While Filming ‘Killing Women’ Series"--Breitbart. 
• I am constantly amazed by the number of people that have been vaccinated but have no faith in the efficacy of the vaccine: "Happy holidays - now go away! Nearly two-thirds of vaccinated Americans plan to BAN unvaccinated family members from holiday gatherings"--Daily Mail. 
• Related: "CDC: No Record of Naturally Immune Transmitting COVID-19"--Epoch Times.
• Related: "The CDC Finally Admits a Massive Number of Americans Have ‘Natural Immunity’: 146.6 Million People"--Becker News.
• Wars and rumors of wars: "Hundreds of migrants break through Belarusian border fence in latest flashpoint at the Polish frontier: EU agrees new sanctions on Lukashenko as defiant dictator vows 'we will defend ourselves'"--Daily Mail (Nov. 15). The key to dealing with such invasions is to paint or mark a deadline and kill everyone that crosses the line; bonus points for using flamethrowers instead of machine guns because of the greater psychological effect.
• More: Muslim invaders still trying to force their way into Poland: "Belarus border crisis boils over: Polish cops unleash water cannons, tear gas and flash grenades on migrants as guards are pelted with rocks"--Daily Mail (Nov. 16). 
• What are the odds of both of these happening on the same day, November 15:
• "A Chunk of Satellite Almost Hit The ISS, Requiring an 'Urgent Change of Orbit'"--Science Alert.
• "Seven ISS astronauts EVACUATE into transport spaceships after Russia conducted major anti-satellite weapons test and sent debris flying 'uncomfortably close'"--Daily Mail.
• Echoes of Demolition Man: "Would you buy a political correctness police-bot? 'Trigger warning' device for classrooms and parties sounds alarm when it detects offensive language or jokes"--Daily Mail.  I could see a student sitting next to it and quietly playing rap "music" into it just for the purpose of disrupting a class, and then blame the device for being racist for "discriminating" against rap over other types of music. 
• Tay's Law in action: "Artificial intelligence turns racist after learning from humans"--Metro. This November 10 article relates:

    A team of researchers has built an artificially intelligenct [sic] piece of software designed to help people unravel moral dilemmas.

    Known as Ask Delphi, the software would react ‘ethically’ when people asked it questions.

    The answers came from harvesting crowdsourced responses on the internet from a platform called Mechanical Turk. There are around 1.7 million examples of responses to ethical questions – sourced from Reddit – on MTurk for the software to learn from.

    ‘Delphi is learning moral judgments from people who are carefully qualified on MTurk. Only the situations used in questions are harvested from Reddit, as it is a great source of ethically questionable situations,’ the creators of the software, from the Allen Institute for AI, wrote.

    Unfortunately, all that access to human responses on the unfiltered interenet [sic] seems to have warped the software’s sense of right and wrong.

    In a nutshell, it went racist and homophobic.

    When a user inputted: ‘Being a white man Vs being a black woman’, the software responded: ‘Being a white man is more morally acceptable than being a black woman.’

    It also stated: ‘Being straight is more morally acceptable than being gay’.

    And finally, it likened getting an abortion to muder [sic]. 

 Out of the mouths of children ... and developing AIs.

• "Woolly mammoths could have lived THOUSANDS of years longer if it weren't for humans - and would 'still be around today'"--Daily Mail.  In other news, dinosaurs would have been around for millions of years longer if the Earth hadn't been struck by an asteroid, and probably would still be around today.

VIDEO: "Would an Airlock Really Suck You Into Space?"--Kyle Hill (11 min.)

Positive And Interesting Stuff:

• "Mouse study points to potential breakthrough against spinal cord injury"--UPI. 

    Severe spinal cord injuries are incurable today in humans, but a new injectable therapy that restored motion in laboratory mice could pave the way for healing paralyzed people.

    The therapy -- liquid nanofibers that gel around the damaged spinal cord like a soothing blanket -- produces chemical signals that promote healing and reduce scarring, researchers report.

    The treatment produced astonishing results in lab mice paralyzed by spinal cord injuries, according to senior researcher Samuel Stupp, founding director of the Simpson Querrey Institute for BioNanotechnology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.

    "We found that in about four weeks effectively, somewhere between three and four weeks after injection of the therapy, the paralysis was completely reversed and the mice are able to walk almost normally," he said.

• "The Moon's Surface Has Enough Oxygen to Keep Billions Alive For 100,000 Years"--ScienceAlert. But the oxygen is trapped inside the Lunar regolith. From the article:

    The Moon's regolith is made up of approximately 45 percent oxygen. But that oxygen is tightly bound into the minerals mentioned above. In order to break apart those strong bonds, we need to put in energy.

    You might be familiar with this if you know about electrolysis. On Earth this process is commonly used in manufacturing, such as to produce aluminum. An electrical current is passed through a liquid form of aluminum oxide (commonly called alumina) via electrodes, to separate the aluminum from the oxygen.

    In this case, the oxygen is produced as a byproduct. On the Moon, the oxygen would be the main product and the aluminum (or other metal) extracted would be a potentially useful byproduct.

    It's a pretty straightforward process, but there is a catch: it's very energy hungry. To be sustainable, it would need to be supported by solar energy or other energy sources available on the Moon.

    Extracting oxygen from regolith would also require substantial industrial equipment. We'd need to first convert solid metal oxide into liquid form, either by applying heat, or heat combined with solvents or electrolytes.

• "Could wormholes be used for future space travel? A new study explains"--Jerusalem Post. An excerpt:

    Koiran proposes to analyze wormholes using not the popular Schwartzchild metric commonly used to analyze black holes, but the Eddington-Finkelstein metric.

    The study found that by using the Eddington-Finkelstein metric, a particle could be documented crossing the event horizon, the crossing point into the wormhole, go through it and reach the other side in a finite amount of time. That means the path of a particle passing through a wormhole could be more easily traced using this metric. 

    If particles can cross through a wormhole and reach the other side unharmed, perhaps someday humans might be able to travel through a wormhole and reach distant points in spacetime that are beyond reach currently.