Know what? If study had been this interesting in school,

I'd have had much better grades.

And now, my first really cheerful post for the year: (addition)

But Chicago isn’t under martial law or military occupation, is it? Nor is it an apartheid state, with apartheid enforced by domestic martial law and military force, is it? To a normal civilian-oriented mind, one would think it is not under military occupation or martial law.

Yet, under Mayor Emanuel, a former civilian volunteer on an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) base, and Garry McCarthy, the now former Chicago Police Superintendent (Emanuel fired him Dec. 1), it seems that parts of Chicago were treated as if they were occupied territory under police or paramilitary rule.
...
This collaboration between Israel and U.S. police agencies, including Chicago, emerged after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. Since then, by one count, at least 300 high-ranking sheriffs and police from cities both large and small have received counter-terrorism training in Israel. For instance, in January 2003, 33 senior U.S. law enforcement officials from Chicago and other major American cities flew to Israel for sessions on “Law Enforcement in the Era of Global Terror.”
...
Why this matters is that Israel doesn’t have a domestic civilian policing model but instead applies a counter-insurgency policing model intended for a population under military occupation, or otherwise considered as hostile under martial law.
Lots more at the link, and it does seem to explain some things.

Including(worse in some places) cops treating the average citizen as 'the enemy'.  Not just because "I work a beat in a bloody awful neighborhood" but because they may have been trained to do that.  And the long-term consequences of that...

The only solution I can see is nasty.  You've got a couple- in some places more- generations that've been trained in "The Man owes us": welfare, food stamps, unemployment.  You've got a couple or more generations that've been passed through school not because they could pass the tests to move up a grade, but because "It would be harmful to their self-esteem to be held back, and that's more troublesome than graduating kids who can't read or write or know history(REAL history, not the PC bullshit that passes for such in too many places).  And the only way to fix it, barring Jeannie popping up and doing the nod, is to stop it.  "From now on, no child is passed to the next grade until they actually meet the qualifications.  No exceptions.  And we will be using the same qualifications used in the 1950's."  That would also mean firing teachers who don't teach and don't want to, and telling parents "From now on, if your kid disturbs the class, they go to the office.  They do it too much, they'll be expelled.  No exceptions." 

Can you imagine the screaming?  The RWPPs would be out in force calling this racist, the Democrats(mostly) would be screaming "The (whoever is doing it, no matter what party they do or do not belong to, would be lumped in 'Republican' for ease of demonization) hate the poor!  They hate your children!"  Because getting people to vote for them is far more important than actually trying to fix the problems.

So we've got lots of people who think they shouldn't have to work, who think they're owed, who think the response to any demand that they act like civilized beings is to scream "RACIST!!"; a lot of them HAVE little or no job skills, and unless they decide they want them, it would be a waste to put resources in on them.  Only fix I can see that might actually work would be "Ok, here's the deal: your kids will be held to standards that your great-grandparents would approve of.  They go to school, they meet standards, when they graduate they'll actually be able to go out and do something.

You, for the rest of your life, can get your welfare payments and such.  IF you behave.  Start rioting and burning, they'll be cut off.  Period.  And we don't care if you starve."

It'd be painful as hell.  Standards in most schools have slipped horribly, which is why so many colleges- in fields that actually demand you have the basic skills, at least- have to send new students to classes to get them up to speed on things they should've been ready for before they left high school. 

And yeah, the worst effect in all this would be on blacks in inner-city areas.  They've been the ones most shit-on by the 'Self-esteem above all else' crap and- the worst- the "Because of slavery/Jim Crow/all kinds of crap that doesn't exist anymore, your children can't be expected to meet the same standards as white and (now)Asian kids, so we need to make it easier for them" garbage.  I swear, the people who actually believe in and push this have done more damage to blacks than the KKK could ever have dreamed of.  Add in the destruction of the family, and they're screwed.  The soft bigotry of low expectations.

I have to wonder how the teachers and principals and parents of black kids in the 50's would react to that?  Being told their kids weren't able to make it without things being made easier, "YOUR kids should have lower standards because (fill it in)."  I think most of them would've gone off like a BLEVY in a propane storage yard.  Dealing with real legal racism, segregation, Jim Crow laws and all, an average black kid who got through high school then got a better education than a lot(maybe most, the way things are) of kids in general get now.  But you tell people "Your kids should have special considerations, your kids shouldn't be held to the same standards because they can't cut it" long enough, enough people will start to believe it.  I swear, I think some of these "We want to help you" morons really did think blacks inferior and wanted to prove it by making them fail.

Also part of the solution: start holding cops and prosecutors accountable.  Take away that qualified immunity, so one who deliberately does something illegal and/or unethical no longer gets away with it.  Prosecutors proven to have withheld exculpatory evidence?  Who knowingly prosecuted someone innocent of the crime?  Who lied under oath?  Disbarred and prosecuted.
Cops who lie on the stand?  Who fake or destroy or plant evidence?  Prosecuted.  You're caught on camera acting illegally, even killing people?  Arrested and prosecuted by someone who isn't their good friend who wants them to get off.
You use the SWAT team when you shouldn't have?  You don't make damn sure you have the right place/right person?  You shoot the family dog right next to a kid because Procedure?  NO immunity.  You get sued, you lose, the damages come out of YOUR pocket.  And you get, depending on circumstances, either demoted or fired.  Screw the union.
Because if you don't give people reason to trust the cops, that part of this is going completely to hell everywhere.

Added: The idea behind qualified immunity is good.  The problem is it too often is treated as if it were something in the Constitution that cannot be changed.  It's not.  Yet even when faced with prosecutors and cops who commit flatly illegal and unethical actions, the judges won't yank it.  That's bullshit.  Which adds into the category of "People things need to be done about" judges who misuse/abuse their powers and the law.

So now we've got cops in a lot of cities treating- trained to- large parts of the population(and if you think it doesn't bleed over to everyone else, dream on) as the enemy in a low-level war zone, and RWPPs who I think actually like that, because it makes it easier to keep people stirred up.  Throw in the Only Black Lives Matter insurgents.  Add a dollop of Calypso Louie and his "We need a few thousand black men to go out and start killing whites."  Season with far too many police departments who protect and defend officers who should be fired or in prison for what they do.  Layer that on an underclass that's been trained to consider dependency their right.

You have an easier solution?  If you do, I'd really like to hear it.


More here.

Data

New arrival.

Something I plan to write more about later

This trigger set.
There's enough drop-in triggers for ARs out there to boggle the mind, everything from milspec(which range from 'not bad' to 'execrable', and from a few bucks to hundreds.  Well, at the range the other day a guy had a AR in .300 Blackout that he'd built that had this trigger set in it.  Comes with two hammer springs, one for 4.5#, one for 5.5#.  He was very happy with it.

I got to put a few shots through it.  This was left-handed from a rest(so no pressure on the right arm/shoulder), and I was impressed.  Absolutely clean, no creep or drag.  I really want to try this again when I can shoot more.

Bet yer ass there's a consensus on Globular Warmering;

you wouldn't want to deny Settled Science, would you?
Don’t look now, but maybe a scientific consensus exists concerning global warming after all. Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies. By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem.

The survey results show geoscientists (also known as earth scientists) and engineers hold similar views as meteorologists. Two recent surveys of meteorologists (summarized here and here) revealed similar skepticism of alarmist global warming claims.


And I certainly hope so.


So an advanced form of Irish Democracy... interesting.


Sweden(some of it) appears to be getting the idea that there have to be limits to tolerance.  Question is, is it too late?  And if it's not, just how messy is it going to get straightening things out?

Tab clearing

Monday’s Washington Post featured a PostEverything commentary titled, “I’m an evangelical preacher. You can’t be pro-life and pro-gun.” The subhead is “The American obsession with guns just doesn’t square with biblical teaching.”
The basic response is 'Bullshit.'  Mr. Kopel fills that out a bit.


Salon gleefully posts article that 'Muslims in Texas are being terrified!' after a mosque was set on fire.
Turns out arsonist was a member of the mosque.
Article disappears.
Publicity.
"Oh no, it was just reverted to draft so we could edit it!"
At this point I wouldn't believe Salon if they said Obama was President.  So I still lean toward 'You took it down?  Crap, do you realize how that looks?  Change it suitably and put it back up!'


Another response to "We should license guns like we do cars!"


More video of that squid
Which must've been feeling very tolerant.  And not hungry.


Top 30 cities in the US so far as murder rate; guess what party politicians are mayor in most of them?


Yeah, Sweden is in deep poop.


ANN COULTER: This is a really important story. And I so love that you're pitching it just as a Clinton sex scandal, but it is so much more than that. And it's appalling that the only place that covered it last night -- I watched TV, every station -- was Megyn Kelly. God bless her. At least we got it out there. This is not just a Clinton sex scandal; this is the elites getting cozy and covering up and protecting one another. It also involves the Bush administration, it involves Ken Starr, the lawyers for Epstein.


Also from Miguel, what he thinks the SJWs and gun bigots/hoplophobes may try next year.  Including this:
Expect the Opposition to SWAT you. I wish I could say that people like CSGV have reconsidered their attitudes, but frankly I think we are going to see an increase in SAWTting cases. CSGV in particular has been invaded by the Social Justice Warriors and they hate you and cops; getting both sides to shoot and kill each other is the perfect Birthday/Easter/Christmas gift. Texas, you are going to be a particular target for at least the first three months.

"Didn't you listen to Napolitano a few years ago?

The border is more secure than ever! So stop these silly worries.

Besides, when some do get in and commit some atrocity, we'll use it to claim we need more guns laws."

Yes, I do think that's how a bunch of these bastards think.

Just a very unusual occurance, or...

The Beginning?


On the subject of "Which?", Death is on vacation,

or Rincewind is on a boat up ahead?

The 'Justice' Department strikes again

Federal prosecutors have decided not to press criminal charges against two former executives at the Department of Veterans Affairs who were accused of manipulating the agency's hiring system for their own gain.
They've let ATF brass and the former AG and a bunch of others off, why would they start actually charging the bastards now?

But we can trust them to be unbiased and fair, etc.  Just like the IRS.


While whiny social justice bitches scream about 'the legacy of slavery' and 'war on women' and such here, they're either ignoring or making excuses for this:
Islamic State theologians have issued an extremely detailed ruling on when "owners" of women enslaved by the extremist group can have sex with them, in an apparent bid to curb what they called violations in the treatment of captured females.

The ruling or fatwa has the force of law and appears to go beyond the Islamic State's previous known utterances on slavery, a leading Islamic State scholar said. It sheds new light on how the group is trying to reinterpret centuries-old teachings to justify the rape of women in the swaths of Syria and Iraq it controls.


Californicated has officially told every employer that a high school diploma from that state means shit.  That may not be their intention, but that's the outcome.
SB 172: High school seniors will receive their diploma whether or not they pass or even take an exit exam; the law also applies retroactively to students who have graduated since 2004;


"But the NSA can be trusted not to read our mail and such!"
Bullshit.
I imagine some congresscritters(many of them backstabbing bastards themselves) are a bit upset about this.  As if that oathbreaker in the Oval Office. cares.

It being a natural beastie(I'm assuming) there'd be no PUFF,

but it'd be something real interesting to find.
One such series of events that I remember vividly to this day, were a series of reports of 'flying monsters' that came out of Texas in our nation's Bicentennial year (1976).


Sounds more and more like Bill Gates needs his 'upgrades' shoved up his ass.


Our last nasty weather, in my area, was 'Rain like hell, then sleet/snow/freezing rain'.  Not nearly as much ice as last time, happily.  But go west and it got worse, and west of that snowed like hell.  East of here, record rainfall, which means flooding all over.

December in Oklahoma.

Glad as I was the ice didn't get too bad, I was also glad of not much snow; trying to shovel the stuff with one arm isn't fun.

Shoulder's improving, but every time the weather shifts the ache sets in again(though not as badly as before).  I'm going to be real glad to see spring for another reason this year.

Awww, is the poor widdle muslums offended? Updated

Muslim prisoners in Michigan filed a lawsuit against Pamela Geller for “wearing a Poke a Dot Bikini In Front of our eyes. We are offended.” They demanded their freedom claiming their civil rights were violated. This Islamic supremacism is one and the same shared by the Muslim shooters at our free speech event in Garland, at the Christmas party in San Bernardino, the Paris concert hall, the jihad against Israel, the 9/11 terror attacks, and on and on. Same motive, same piety.
Yes, there will be a response to this later.


Wouldn't surprise me.
Prediction: I’ll put the odds at 75% that we learn of an important Clinton health issue before the general election. That estimate is based on my own track record of guessing things about people without the benefit of knowing why. I think Trump is picking up the same vibe. He has already questioned Clinton’s “stamina.”
There's been concern about it for quite a while.  Question is, is she planning to raise lots of money and then announce as her reason for dropping out, or does she think she can- with the help of lapdog media- manage to hide it?



Update: for the offended
Screw you

My new contribution to the 'Point-shooting sucks and will get you killed!' noise:

“Jelly” Bryce, one of the greatest police gunfighters of the first half of the 20th century, was famous for his point-shooting skills. He killed many an armed criminal firing that way. Being able to fire and hit without the sights in a perfect sight picture is, without question, a useful survival skill. As with so many elements of gunfight survival, it’s not a question of this or that—it’s a mandate for this and that.
That's from Ayoob.  Now go tell him he doesn't know what he's talking about.

Also: things to do after the shooting ends.

(Yeah, I think I've posted these before: they're worth pointing to again)

Walked outside right at sunset,

and the sun and trees and ice were doing this

And for once I figured out the right setting

This isn't simply bullshit; this is DANGEROUS bullshit,

because one of two things will happen:
Someone else will get hurt- or killed- trying to cover for what she can't do, or
They'll try to keep her out of actual firefighting because the brass know she can't do the job, and-again- someone else will have to try to cover for their being shorthanded.  And what'll THAT do to morale?

And if someone winds up crippled, or killed, Comrade Mayor and his minions will do all they can to cover it up.  Because nothing counts more than filling their 'minority' list, and if it takes unqualified people to do it, well, that's just fine.  It'll almost certainly be some white male who pays the price, and they don't give a rats ass about them.


Paglia is an interesting sort; she'll vote for people like Obama and wants to vote for Sanders even after noting their, ah, shortcomings.  But she also comes out with things like this:
Paglia: ‘Rape culture’ is a ridiculous term – mere gassy propaganda, too rankly bloated to critique. Anyone who sees sex so simplistically has very little sense of world history, anthropology or basic psychology. I feel very sorry for women who have been seduced by this hyper-politicised, victim-centered rhetoric, because in clinging to such superficial, inflammatory phrases, they have renounced their own power and agency.
Which drives the socialists and "We must be protected!" feminists up the walls.


Piece by Kipling I'd not seen before.  Truly there's nothing new under the sun.

“THIS is the State above the Law.
    The State exists for the State alone.”
[This is a gland at the back of the jaw,
    And an answering lump by the collar-bone.]
...
“There is neither Evil nor Good in life
    Except as the needs of the State ordain.”
[Since it is rather too late for the knife,
    All we can do is to mask the pain.]

Using cash annoys the socialists;

one more reason to keep some handy.
They also are worried that paper money inhibits the government’s ability to “stimulate” the economy with artificially low interest rates. Simply stated, they’ve already pushed interest rates close to zero and haven’t gotten the desired effect of more growth, so the thinking in official circles is that if you could implement negative interest rates, people could be pushed to be good little Keynesians because any money they have in their accounts would be losing value.
...
…authorities would do well to consider the arguments for phasing out their use as another “barbarous relic”…even a little physical currency can cause a lot of distortion to the economic system. The existence of cash — a bearer instrument with a zero interest rate — limits central banks’ ability to stimulate a depressed economy.
Control.  Just like with guns, it's ALWAYS about control.  Cash limits their control over you, so they'd like(VERY much) to get rid of it.

One of the winning quotes:
Citi’s Willem Buiter looks at this problem, which is known as the effective lower bound (ELB) on nominal interest rates. …the ELB only exists at all due to the existence of cash, which is a bearer instrument that pays zero nominal rates. Why have your money on deposit at a negative rate that reduces your wealth when you can have it in cash and suffer no reduction? Cash therefore gives people an easy and effective way of avoiding negative nominal rates. …Buiter’s solution to cash’s ability to allow people to avoid negative deposit rates is to abolish cash altogether.
I'd say Buiter needs to be added to the list of future tree or lamppost ornaments.

I have absolutely no desire to write about anything this morning.

Bit short on sleep, just dragging and no interest.  See you later.

I will leave you with these: