The Docent's Memo (December 26, 2022)

 

"Ask Ian: .223 vs 5.56 and 'Military Grade Ammo'"--Forgotten Weapons (11 min.)

 Ian says what a lot of other people are afraid to say: it doesn't matter if you are using .223 or 5.56 NATO. I've only ever seen one instance where it might have made a difference: a friend with an AR that was having problems with his AR popping primers out the back that were falling into his trigger mechanism and jamming it up. But those same rounds cycled flawlessly through the ".223" marked Mini-14 I had at the time, so who knows if the caliber was the issue?

Firearms & Self-Defense:

• Be sure to check out the most recent Weekend Knowledge Dump from Greg Ellifritz at Active Response Training. He's also published a list of the best books he read over the past year in case you are looking for something new or different to read. 
• "Ammunition Choices for 9mm Revolvers"--Active Response Training. If you have a 9mm revolver that you plan on concealed carry, Greg Ellifritz has some tips on ammo selection. The primary potential ammo issue with 9mm caliber revolvers--especially the light weight revolvers that you would be using for concealed carry--is "bullet jump": "This is a phenomenon where bullets start pulling free of their cases because of recoil and the fact that the bullet crimp is different than most revolver cartridges." As the bullets pull free, they can bind up the cylinder and keep it from turning. This issue can occur with revolvers when using other calibers, particularly magnum calibers like .357 or .44. I've experienced it myself a couple times while shooting .357 Magnum, once with handloads and another time with commercial ammunition. 

    Most revolver ammunition uses a roll crimp that presses the front edge of the case mouth into a cannelure (or the bullet if it is soft enough) to hold the bullet in place. Because 9mm headspaces off the front edge of the case mouth, a roll crimp won't work and a taper crimp is used instead. A taper crimp presses a wider area of the case up tight against the bullet to prevent movement. (See this Sierra article on crimping and this article by Mike Venturino for more information on crimping).

    Unfortunately, the amount and consistency of crimping can vary among manufacturers. While I was reading Ellifritz's article, however, I realized that the list of manufacturers and loadings recommended by Bond Arms for their Bullpup 9 pistol would also serve as a list of ammunition for the person shooting a light weight 9mm revolver. The Bullpup 9 pistol is a bullpup style pistol which has a unique method of loading a cartridge from the magazine into the chamber that can pull a bullet out of the case if there is an insufficient crimp; consequently Bond Arms has put together a list approved ammunition--both defensive and practice--to use in its handgun. I'm confident that if this ammo can avoid being pulled apart in the Bond Arm's pistol, it should be able to survive going through a revolver.

• Speaking of revolvers and bullpup handguns, The Firearm Blog notes that a company called Zenk LLC has announced its RZMK-357 revolver which has a cylinder located behind the trigger. 

Zenk RZMK-357 is a double action 6-shot top break revolver chambered in .357 Magnum. It’s made of stainless steel and will be available in black and silver colors. The revolver has iron sights and a top 4-slot Picatinny rail section. The barrel length of the RZMK-357 revolver is 4.37″ (111mm), the height is 5.67″ (144mm), the overall length is 6.85″ (174mm) and it weighs 33oz (950 grams).

It apparently uses a tip-up action to load and unload the cylinder. The company is supposed to have models to show off at the 2023 Shot Show.  I think it looks interesting--a nice mix of retro and futuristic. 

• And while we are on the topic of new pistol announcements, Savage has decided to take the plunge and is diving into the 1911 market offering models in both .45 ACP and 9mm, with MSRP ranging from $1350 to $1500 depending on finish and whether it sports an accessory rail. All will feature Novak lo-mount style tritium sights, an ambidextrous safety, VZ G10 grips, extended beaver tail, and duel recoil springs. There seems to be a great deal of disappointment in the comments that Savage is releasing a 1911 instead of a version of its 1907 pistol that almost beat the 1911 in the Army's pistol trials. 
• "The Italian Cheetah: The Beretta 80-Series Pistols" by Mike Kupari, The Mag Life. A nice overview of the Beretta 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87, 89, Browning BDA and FN 140DA pistols. The author's model is the Beretta 81 which was a .32 ACP model, so he also discusses a bit about his experience with his particular pistol and the .32 round. One of the modifications he made to his pistol was that he "replaced the scratched plastic grips with a checkered, blue G10 set from Lok Grips. Available in several colors, these grips are thinner than the factory ones and are much more vigorously textured." I have to say that the blue grips look very nice. The web site for Lok Grips is here.
• "DeSantis Nemesis Pocket Holster Review"--Loose Rounds. The author goes over the pros and cons of this holster and his review after using it with a P365. His conclusion is positive if you are the person ready and able to pocket carry a handgun. 
  

    I would add that I have several of these for various small handguns, including one for my snub-nosed revolver that I've used for over a decade, and they have worked very well and, so far, I haven't had one wear out--that is, no issue with stitching coming undone or the material wearing through. In fact, that is why I continued buying them. They retain well  compared to other pocket holsters, even if the "tackiness" on the outside of the holster becomes a little muted over time. And by "retain" I don't mean holding the pistol but in that the holster doesn't go flying out of your pocket when you pull out the handgun. By the nature of things, the main retention of the handgun, itself, in a pocket holster is gravity and the fact that is is fully enclosed by your pocket. 

 

    My only issue with the holster--and this is common with every other pocket holster I've used--is that it doesn't do a very good job of concealing the shape of the weapon when the pocket is taut against the holster/weapon, such as when sitting down. I would like a holster that has a separate square piece that would give it the appearance of a wallet when sitting. I have a holster for a P238 that tries to do this, but because of how it was stitched together, it still tends to have the outline of a handgun when sitting.

• "Ruger SFAR"--Shooting Illustrated. A look at Ruger's new AR style Small-Frame Autoloading Rifle platform that shoots .308 using a receiver set not much larger than those used for AR15s. The result is not only more compact than most AR10/308 rifles, but boasts lighter weights without having to resort to exotic materials like titanium or magnesium. The article notes some various places where Ruger has shaved off a fraction of an ounce here or there, but the big savings seems to be this: "The bolt, bolt carrier and barrel extension, while not compatible with AR-15-size units, are otherwise almost the exact same overall size. Both are machined from a high-nickel-content-alloy steel, which is stronger and lighter than traditional units on either AR-15s or AR-10s." That's probably half a pound right there. 
• "3 Things You Do That Make You a Target For Crooks"--Jim Wilson, NRA Family. The points he raises are: (i) letting your guard down when at home (he recommends locking your exterior doors even when at home and always keep a defensive weapon nearby); (ii) only carrying a defensive weapon when you think you need it; and (iii) lack of awareness (e.g., too intent on your cell phone or listening to music). 
• Massad Ayoob links to a recent article going over a deadly force self-defense case out of Washington where the not-guilty verdict was heavily dependent on a disparity of force argument. "On November 14, 2022, the Whatcom County Superior Court found Kamuran Chabuk not guilty of a 2nd Degree Assault charge nine years after a self-defense shooting in Bellingham." Also, "[t]he case presented some critical factual issues including the presence of multiple aggressors, disparity in the size of the so-called victim, and the potential for a concerted attempt on the part of at least two aggressors to take away the Defendant’s gun and use it against him." The article continues to go over relevant facts and legal arguments.

"The ORIGINAL Christmas Dessert"--Townsends (15 min.)

History as well as a recipe and how-to. This particular recipe does not need to sit for weeks as recipes from later periods seem to indicate. 

Prepping & Survival:

• "Emergency Binders: What Should Preppers Put in Them?"--Mind 4 Survival. You should obviously keep copies of important documents in a fireproof box or safe, but you also need to keep copies either in a binder or scanned and saved on a thumb drive--or, better yet, both. But what should you include as "important documents"? That is what this article is about and it has a pretty comprehensive list, although I would like to reiterate that it should include copies of all insurance policies and declaration pages (whether health, life, property, auto, and so on), and copies of the printed proofs of insurance that should be carried in your vehicles. Also, having had to deal with important documents where holes have been punched through words or corners bent and covering up information, please place the documents in pockets or sleeves before putting in a binder. That doesn't mean that every page necessarily has to be in a separate sleeve--insurance policies and mortgage papers, for instances, can run dozens or hundreds of pages--but that they be put in a pocket of some sort so the documents aren't damaged or mutilated.  
• "Vehicles As Weapons"--The Prepper Journal. As the article notes, vehicles can be used as weapons either by striking/running over people or to carry bombs. He relates:

    Vehicle bombs can be complicated, or they can be simple. As any military vet of the more recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan can tell you the use of IED (improvised explosive devices) has come a long way for the days of Viet Nam – In Viet Nam the military jeeps had the gas tank under the drivers seat, you actually lifted the drivers seat up to refuel the vehicles. The Viet Cong figured this out and used it as a weapon early on. The gas tank opening would accommodate a frag grenade so if you pulled the pin but left the handle on and used plain old scotch tape to keep the handle in place, you simply dropped this into the gas tank. It would take a couple of hours before the gasoline ate away the scotch tape and bingo, wherever the jeep happened to be at that moment.

    Another cute trick was using a flare round from the old style flare pistols. You could disassemble the old rounds, duck tape the magnesium package which has a self-contained oxidizer made of potassium chlorinate to a gas tank and then wrap the parachute around an axle. A few revolutions and the ignited gets set off by the pull, like the jerk of the parachute when it is in normal use. Modern rounds do not “facilitate” this any longer, but many other available igniters do.

    Bank robbers along the other side of our Southern border had a favorite. They would put explosives in an old vehicle attached to a 12v battery but not close the circuit – wire it to both terminals. Normally on the floor in the front seat and then set the back seat on fire and call the fire department. First thing firemen did was douse the vehicle with water, hopefully completing the circuit by soaking the battery terminals with water and “boom” – injured firefighters, police rushing to the scene, and then they would rob a bank on the other side of town. Sound far fetched? The fail-safe is the fire would eventually achieve a similar effect.

    But now, with a valid drivers license, something some states pass out like the free mints at a restaurants hostess station, and a valid credit card – for sale at every Walmart for cash, and you have rented a potential weapon. No distinguishing marks, no smoking fuse, other than the driver, no rifle barrels pointed out the window and 4,000+ pound at 6′ wide and 7′ tall, most capable of accelerating from a normal street speed to 60+ mph in seconds. From a clinical point of view, this is an excellent weapon. Inexpensive, leaves a cold/close trail, and if you survive you just walk away, and in most gun-free zones this is a possibility if for not the off-duty police officer or the on-duty policemen, moments away. The reality is that in the case of most on-duty policeman they are moments away when seconds count. And these incidents take only seconds.

• "The homestead cat"--Backwoods Home Magazine. Although the modern Ibsen woman likes cats as a substitute for the babies she will never bear, cats actually serve a useful purpose around the homestead in controlling vermin. The author relates, for instance:

It’s amazing how much damage voles, mice, ground squirrels, and chipmunks can do to your crops. They girdle fruit trees in the winter, eat into melons and squash, nibble the inside out of tomatoes, and dig up corn just after it germinates just to eat the seed below ground. And these critters are also very prolific, often having several big litters of young in one summer. Without a cat around we’d soon be run out by these little varmints.

Some additional advice:

    We’ve found it best to get a kitten. When you raise a kitten, you can quickly correct any bad habits like getting on the counter, scratching furniture, or climbing the curtains. They quickly learn to use an indoor kitty litter box while some adult cats just won’t.

    A squirt gun with water in it is a good correction for bad behavior. Keep one loaded and handy. Also provide the kitten something “good” to scratch and climb on such as a scratching post or kitty condo. If you provide an enclosed cat litter box, keep it clean of waste. The kitten will quickly learn where to go potty and have no mistakes. Mittens prefers to “go” outside and seldom uses her box.

    If you get an older cat, do make sure you keep it inside for a few days until it gets the lay of the land. It needs to know where home is and come when called. (A special treat when it does is a huge help.) When you simply release a new adult cat to the barn or house, it often will freak out and run away.

    Some say that female cats make the best mousers and that a female with kittens is the very best of all. Not really. Mittens is a female but she was spayed when she was six months old. I found out early on that when you have a female cat, she’ll soon have a litter of kittens. You quickly run out of people who want a cute kitten. Soon the leftover female kittens have a litter and you’re overrun with cats. Hungry cats are not good mousers; they’re often too weak and lethargic to chase pests.

     A male cat can be a terrific mouser. Remember Monte? But please have him neutered. Males that are not neutered have the foul habit of spraying urine around the place marking “their property.” Put bluntly, it stinks. In addition, male cats will travel great distances looking for love. This puts them in danger of becoming coyote or fox bait, being run over by traffic, getting shot, or getting bitten up by a rival male. A neutered male stays home and is a much more delightful pet/hunter.

Even neutered, my experience has been that male cats will still spray urine to mark territory. I would recommend having no more than one male cat at a time--not even a male kitten with an adult male.

• Global warming alert: "Buffalo battered: National Guard deployed and at least three dead as beleaguered EMT's struggle to cope with 30 feet drifts in one of worst Christmas blizzards in history – as unprecedented bomb cyclone leaves 200m across America shivering." From the article:

    The city of Buffalo in Western New York has been battered by the bomb cyclone that continues to lash the eastern seaboard and mid-west, bringing with it blizzards, freezing temperatures and flooding. 

    Families are pleading for help on behalf of loved ones stuck in their homes without power. Some have issued calls for aid while trapped in cars on roads and highways blanketed by several feet of snow.

    The National Guard has been deployed to help with rescue efforts after emergency services were overwhelmed and police vehicles and ambulances were left unable to travel in the Arctic conditions. Hotlines set up to help the stranded and desperate are also overwhelmed. 

• Related: A reminder that in 2000 the British Independent newspaper, relying on the settled science, ran this headline: "Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past" and featured Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, as saying:  “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”
• Related: "Rollin', rollin', rollin' blackouts in...Tennessee?!"  An article at Hot Air noting that, although Tennessee has gone through colder weather in the past without issue, the TVA has introduced rolling power blackouts to deal with this latest bout of cold. And this is what a civilizational collapse looks like: not being able to deal with emergencies that previously posed little to no issues.  
• Reuters reports: "Thousands lose power after three substations targeted in Washington state, sheriff says." Not a lot of detail other than the substations were vandalized, but nothing taken. Since the area was near Tacoma--i.e., the heartland of wokeness in the region--I would expect that some leftist group, be it eco-terrorists, Antifa, or even BLM--to be the more likely perpetrators. 
• On that note, Mike Cernovich warns us to "Brace For Impact." He notes that we have entered what Heinlein would term the "crazy years": drivers are crazy and aggressive; wearing status based goods is asking to be robbed; widespread mental illness/demonic possession; we will see an increase in murder-suicides as the economy tanks; Mexican drug cartels and other organized crime are once again on the ascendance and are carving up the country. His advice is to be more low key, especially about your wealth or success; learn from what has happened in Central and South America as they likely point how crime will develop here; avoid becoming a high profile conservative as those will likely be targeted by security services; continue self-defense/combat training; and do no despair.
• The Chinese Century: "China’s shrinking working-age population to send ripples through global economy." Two key points: "UN says number of Chinese aged between 15 and 64 will fall by more than 60 per cent this century" and "India set to overtake China as world’s most populous country next year and age much more slowly". 

"Women treat MEN the way men treat JOBS: how relationship goals change the dating process"--

PsycHacks (6 min.). In other words, to women, men are a means to an end, and if a better "job" presents itself, they will at least consider it if not completely jump ship.

"Men treat WOMEN the way women treat MONEY: how sex roles change the dating process"--

PsycHacks (11 min.). That is, to men, women are the goal.

News & Analysis:

• "FBI paid Twitter $3.5M 'to do its bidding': Taxpayers' money was used to suppress Hunter Biden laptop story and process agency's requests to silence GOP voices - as fury mounts over secret state censorship of the American people." The article reports:

    The FBI handed nearly $3.5 million of taxpayers money to Twitter to pay its staff to handle requests from the bureau to ban accounts.

    A Twitter employee wrote in a February 2020 email that the company's Safety, Content & Law Enforcement (SCALE) had 'collected $3,415,323' in less than two years from the FBI for 'law-enforcement related projects.'

    The email, which was revealed by journalist Michael Shellenberger, stated that SCALE had instituted a 'reimbursement program' in exchange for devoting staff hours to 'processing requests from the FBI'.

That shows that Twitter's SCALE people were "acting under color of law". Let slip the lawyers of lawfare!

• More: "Twittergate explained: FBI paid Twitter $3.5m to handle its requests, told it to delete accounts (after warning the site about Hunter leak), removed posts for [i.e., on behalf of] Biden campaign and shadow banned conservatives." The FBI needs to be disbanded. 
• The fairer sex: "8 teen girls charged in 'swarming' murder of man in downtown Toronto: 'You think you've seen it all'." (See also this article). According to the articles, three of the teens are 13 years old, three are 14 and two are 16. Three of them had criminal records. They stabbed a man to death when he intervened to stop them from stealing a small bottle of liquor from a women the man was sitting with. The "swarm" had been involved in another altercation earlier that evening. Although in a busy area of Toronto, near Union Station, no surveillance video of the teens has been released, nor have any names or descriptions. Nevertheless, Toronto police "are asking anyone who saw the the group of teens that night to contact police." Sort of hard to do if authorities won't describe them, but okay. All this makes me wonder if this is going to turn out to be a case of diversity.
• Do you see the problem here? "The Conservative Case for Compulsory Voting" by Adam Ellwanger, The American Mind. Ellwanger raises two main points: (i) the U.S. has very low turnout among people eligible to vote; and (ii) although the U.S. has a very high rate of registered voters that actually vote (94%), "bad actors can use the inactive 6 percent on the voting rolls in some profoundly undemocratic ways—ways that could certainly flip elections in a nation that is divided down the middle politically." His solution to the corruption is to simply require everyone to vote that is eligible to vote. To understand why his solution would work, or so he claims, you have to understand the problem; which is, according to Ellwanger, that we really can't anticipate how many people to vote so if there is manipulation of the vote it makes it harder to detect. If everyone had to vote, however, he believes that we would have a good idea of how many ballots would be cast and it would therefore be easier to detect anomalies. This sounds good in theory, but Ellwanger's solution rests on the problem being illicit voting by ballots being injected into the system from imaginary voters. And we have certainly seen this with mysterious boxes of votes suddenly appearing to bump up a trend line to favor Democrats. But that isn't necessarily the main problem. Rather, the primary problems seem to be (i) vote harvesting (i.e., Democrats going through vulnerable populations and either convincing these vulnerable people to vote in a particular way or simply filling out the mail-in ballot for these people) and (ii) manipulating the vote count. Requiring everyone to vote won't solve vote harvesting--in fact, it will make it much easier--nor will it do anything about the post election manipulation of the canvassing of the votes which, again, mostly revolves around mail-in voting. The biggest step we can take to secure elections is to follow what most other countries do: no mail-in ballots, requiring a photo ID to vote, and ensuring that people can't vote twice such as making them dip a finger in indelible ink after they have voted.
• "Biden's border crisis is fueling growing cartel armies - now armed to the teeth and rivaling Mexico's military, warns TODD BENSMAN... so why is no one talking about this threat to American interests?" Because it benefits powerful interests in the government. 
• "Major 401(k) changes will see government give some workers $1,000, impose automatic enrollment at up to 10% of pay, raise age for required withdrawals and allow rainy day savings accounts." Basically, the legislation will force people to put more money into their retirement accounts while encouraging them to delay drawing funds from their accounts. 

    Authored by US Senators Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, and Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat, the bipartisan bill seeks to expand the number of Americans participating in retirement plans. 

    The bill calls on 401(k) and 403(b) retirement accounts to automatically enroll employees starting in 2025 at between 3 percent and 10 percent of pay, which lawmakers noted will also see more low income workers have retirement savings, the Wall Street Journal reports. 

    It will also increase the savings rate on the accounts by 1 percent point each year until it hits 10 to 15 percent. 

    Older workers will also be allowed to make 'catch-up' contributions to their retirement accounts, with anyone over 50 allowed to deposit up to $7,500 a year. 

    By 2025, those between 60 to 63 years old will be able to deposit at least $11,250 extra a year. 

The article also indicates that "[t]he change would allow households earning $71,000 or less who contribute $2,000 into their retirement accounts to get a matching 50 percent government deposit." It will also raise the age that you are required to start drawing from your account from 72 (where it is currently) to 73 next year and 75 in 2033. The financial industry is the group lobbying for the changes, probably because, as the article notes, "Brokers, financial assistants and insurers are poised to benefit from the changes as they would make more money from fees of the higher-earning retirement accounts." This also tells me that there are those in government expecting Social Security to collapse and the importation of workers to stave off the collapse is apparently not working. 

• Speaking of which: "Most Syrian adult refugees in Germany depend on social welfare." This 2021 article relates: "Almost two-thirds (65%) of Syrian refugees in Germany of working-age were at least partially dependent on the social welfare scheme Hartz IV in March compared to 43% of Afghan refugees, according to the German labour agency’s June 2021 report." I doubt the situation has improved. Yet the German government continues to want to import uneducated third world people to stave off a labor shortage.
• "Exposing race-hustling fraud" by Robert Steinbuch, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. An article looking at how race-preferences in collage admissions hurt those they purport to hurt by placing less qualified or less able students into programs too difficult for them--a situation called mismatch.

    Sander argued that since professors tend to direct teaching to the middle ability in the classroom, dramatically lower-skilled students, as reflected in their admissions metrics, are left behind in the current, if not torrent, of the presented material.

    The devastating results on academic performance of being downwardly mismatched are even more dramatic in law schools, because on average they're more intense and difficult than college. These bad outcomes further manifest after law school through significantly increased difficulty passing the bar exam.

    Sander demonstrated that Black law students--who on average receive the largest admission preferences--tended to have low grades in law school and were far more likely than whites to fail the bar. Both of these phenomena were due to racial preferences, not race.

    Without set-asides, Blacks attending appropriately matched schools would earn grades comparable to Whites on average, and the bar-passage gap would substantially narrow. This would increase the number of Black lawyers in the community. Racial preferences hurt Blacks.

Well, as I've noted many times before, Liberals don't actually care if what they force on us actually help anyone so long as it makes them feel better about themselves. Case in point are the events reported in "The War on Merit Takes a Bizarre Turn" in City Journal. That article reports that "administrators at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ) have been withholding notifications of National Merit awards from the school’s families, most of them Asian, thus denying students the right to use those awards to boost their college-admission prospects and earn scholarships." Why would the school do this? "This episode has emerged amid the school district’s new strategy of 'equal outcomes for every student, without exception.'" 

• Speaking of race: In his post, "A Vibrant Christmas," Vox Popoli notes that the recent shooting between two groups at the Mall of America leaving one person dead was, as most of us already suspected, between groups of blacks. Vox comments:

    I used to love going to Rosedale, Southdale, and occasionally, the Galleria, at Christmastime. From the time I was a little boy, they were vast and magical Winter Wonderlands, where children could roam freely and window-shop. I used to wander alone from one end of the mall to the other, with particular attention paid to B. Daltons and Games by James. ...

    ...

    When I started working at Dayton’s at the age of 15, I began seeing Christmas from the other side, from the retailer’s perspective, and it was every bit as magical. Dayton’s was one of the anchor department stores at all the Dales, and it was always exciting when the Christmas decorations would start going up the day after Thanksgiving. The sights, the lights, and the smells, taken in sum, were nothing but pure and unadulterated joy.

    This sense of communal magic and wonder is one of the many things that vibrancy has cost America. Perhaps it wasn’t important, perhaps it wasn’t a significant part of the Christmas season, but I loved it as a child and it grieves me to know that it is part of the world that we have lost.

• More: "Minnesota man, 19, gunned down during a 'gang' brawl at Mall of America: Five teens are arrested after stopping for FOOD at White Castle while fleeing - as cops hunt sixth suspect in connection with shooting." Per the article, "[t]he victim of the Friday night brawl at the Minnesota complex has been identified as 19-year-old Johntae Hudson." What the article described as a "brawl" was "an escalation of 'long-standing feud' between two groups of teenagers." I.e., a gang fight. Also:

    A close friend of the victim, Hawi Abdurahman, said the shooting never should have occurred at the Mall of America in the days leading up to Christmas.

    'Street code is you don't do that stuff around families, like kids at that,' he said. 'This should not be happening in a mall where there's children, people shopping.'

Well, they're not so much rules as guidelines. 

• Black lives matter, just not to blacks: "TikTok megastar Boogie B is shot and killed in New Orleans after getting caught in crossfire while shopping for his grandma, as his grieving mom blasts city's 'corrupt' Mayor LaToya Cantrell for letting criminals run wild."
• Well this is interesting: "Utah axes degree requirement for 98% of civil servant jobs." At one time businesses and governments relied on competency exams to screen employees. But in the wake of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, such exams were determined to be inherently racist and became largely verboten. Consequently, employers increasingly turned to a college degree as a proxy for competency exams. The demand for college degrees however led to universities largely becoming diploma mills catering increasingly to feminists and other mentally ill and incompetents. Lately, however, liberals have become increasingly strident that whites be punished and locked out of jobs. But, at the same time, we are told there is a labor shortage. So it is hard to gauge what is going on here. Is it an admission that value of a college degree has become so watered down that it is now worthless as a proxy for a competency exam? Is it that Utah is so desperate for employees that it is having to lower standards? Or is it a tactical ploy by the new racialists to make it easier to hire blacks and Hispanics over whites? The article and the statements from Utah's governor seems to indicate the first option: that college degrees are largely useless for determining competency. 
• The war on Christianity: "Church cries for help as Christians are driven from the Holy Land: Fears the faith will be little more than a 'museum piece' in Jerusalem after followers of Jesus fell by two thirds to 10,000 since 1948." Hmm. I wonder what happened in 1948?
• The left eating the left: "Whoopi Goldberg doubles down and DEFENDS her Holocaust slur that led to suspension from The View: Declares genocide was NOT 'racial', calls it 'white-on-white' violence and says Jews are not a race." We've seen what the Jews can and will do to uppity blacks just earlier this year; I expect that Goldberg will be marginalized and driven into obscurity as well.
• A voice of sanity in a mob of insanity: "Swiss Government Rejects Third-Gender Option On Official Records." I've come to the conclusion that the push for multiple choice "genders" on official documents isn't just to assuage the feelings of degenerates but to interfere with future genealogy work. For those of you that are not LDS, this might come across as trivial, but to the LDS who use genealogy as a means of performing baptisms and other rites for our dead ancestors, it is literally an issue of damnation or salvation for our ancestors. This merely underscores, to me, the demonic aspect of all of this.  
• "Not lovin' the prices! McDonald's customer calls out the fast-food chain for no longer being affordable after being charged $16 for a combo meal." I've also noticed that most fast food places are now comparable in price to dine-in restaurants like Red Robin. Last time this happened on a wide scale basis was back in the 1990s and resulted in the fast food places introducing lower priced value/combo meals. The change this time will probably be a greater expansion of automation into fast food to reduce labor costs. 
• "A Few Choice Words on the Geoengineered 'Polar Vortex'" by Chris Langan (h/t Vox Popoli). An excerpt:

    ... I live on a ranch smack in the middle of the US Heartland. There are 3000 people or so in this entire county. We're a hundred miles from the nearest airport able to handle commercial jetliners. Yet last week, just prior to the "polar vortex", the sky over our property was a fluffy white tic tac toe game played by what appeared to be large jet tankers belching out ugly non-dissipating contrails which were smudged and smeared by the wind into expansive blotches that blotted out the sun. This has been going on ever since we moved here nearly 20 years ago.

    There is no way to explain this in terms of normal air traffic generating the usual vapor-laden jet contrails. The "contrails" do not look or behave like water vapor or ice crystals, and there is no reason that we should ever see more than a single jet airliner overhead, maybe two at rush hour (the usual number on a clear day is 0). I've checked the airline schedules, and there's simply no way. The government is once again trying to kill us, and you'd better believe that this record "cold snap" is taking quite a death toll.

• "Effectiveness of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Bivalent Vaccine." This paper is based on a study of employees of the Cleveland Clinic starting on the day vaccines were first made available to them and for 12 months afterward. The risk of catching Covid increased over time, even having the vaccine, giving the vaccine an overall effectiveness of only 30%. 
• "Lessons to learn from Great Britain’s declining Christianity"--The Captain's Journal. Perhaps one of the most misunderstood and misapplied scriptures in the Bible is the the parable of the lost sheep (Matthew 18: 10–14) where the shepherd with 100 sheep loses one and so leaves the 99 sheep and go to search out the lost sheep to return it to the fold. I'm sure that to those listening to Christ it was apparent that the 99 would have been returned to an enclosure or other safe location and watched over and cared for by others while the shepherd searched for the lost sheep. But what I see in practice today is a complete lack of concern for the well being of the 99 in order to locate lost one. That is, at least in my experience as a member of the LDS Church, I see too many leaders that seem willing to lose a substantial number of the 99 while they try to find (that is, woo back) the one that wondered off. Most of the time, in order to woo back the one that left these leaders will try and soften things a bit that might have "offended" the person coming back. For instance, in the 1980s--at least in my corner of the LDS Church--unwed single mothers were suddenly portrayed as "heroes" instead of sluts sinners, and if there was anyone to be held in contempt, it was the father of the unwanted baby. Similarly, women that divorced their husbands were also somehow deemed a heroic because, the belief went, they surely must have been fleeing some sort of abusive relationship. It has now progressed such that people are afraid of saying something critical about homosexuals and gay marriage. 

    So it was refreshing to read this piece from The Captain's Journal about conclusions drawn from polling on religiousity conducted in Britain. The cited article is "Lessons to learn from Great Britain's declining Christianity" in The Christian Post. 

    It begins by relating something we see in similar polling in the United States: those reporting that they belong to an organized religion are, overall, declining with the only exception being among evangelical denominations. The article continues:

    First, it is important to recognize those claiming “no religion” have risen exponentially to 37% by the 2021 Census data. The head of Humanists UK, Andrew Copson, claims the census numbers “confirm that the biggest demographic change in England and Wales of the last 10 years has been the dramatic growth of the non-religious.” The problem has not been other religions converting those in the UK, but of the British leaving the Church out of a seeming lack of commitment. Most church leaders understand this dynamic, and many mainline denominational churches have attempted to liberalize and become more “relevant” to modern society. This liberalization has invariably meant moving away from previously accepted Church doctrine based on scripture. In doing so, these denominations have brought the opposite results of what they sought.

    British researcher and writer John Hayward has studied the hard data. He particularly focuses on the numbers of the decline by denomination in the U.K. His writings give the precise current numbers and trend lines for all British denominations going back decades and have led to clear conclusions. According to Hayward's studies, “All the evangelical denominations are growing, except for the Brethren. By contrast, all the mixed denominations are declining, with the liberal ones declining the most.” In the United Kingdom, the majority of those identifying as Christian was part of the established Anglican Church, including the Anglican community of the Church of Scotland and Church of Wales.

    Other similar long-established mainline denominations, like the Methodists, contained the vast majority. Even with the rise in numbers of the scripturally faithful Evangelical Churches, the overall numbers continue to plummet as the elderly in now liberal denominations pass away.   

    Hayward studied the specific deviations in accepted doctrine of Churches seeking relevancy versus those unmoved and found:

    “To date, no growing church has adopted same-sex marriage. All of these denominations hold firm to historic Christianity. Indeed, they are all evangelical in doctrine...Not all denominations are declining (in the UK); there are growing ones: churches that stand on historic Christianity and against the progressive ideology...I can see that the growing evangelical congregations will have surpassed the liberal and mixed denominations by the middle of the century.”

    Critical to note is that other religions/denominations standing firm to established doctrines, like Orthodox Judaism and Islam, have likewise not seen the decline of those Churches moving to progressive ideology. I think it is important to note that within denominations, individual churches and even subgroupings of denominations have stood firm. That is particularly true of parts of the Anglican Community.

 As PGF, the author of the The Captain's post, comments: "Note carefully that it’s not the congregation’s lack of commitment that is causing them to wander, but church leadership’s lack of commitment to correct doctrine in truth. Casual observers appear around the edges of a church, coming and going, but those in Christ Jesus are inherently attracted to sound teaching coupled with worship in spirit and in truth (John 4:24), for God seeks such a people."

• A reminder that we live in the 21st Century: "Face Recognition Tech Gets Girl Scout Mom Booted From Rockettes Show — Due to Where She Works." The show was being presented at Radio City Music Hall. The woman in question, Kelly Conlon, worked for a law firm that had represented someone in a lawsuit against Radio City Music Hall.  This same tech can be applied to people that don't share the same political views as the owners/operators of an establishment.