Spring in Oklahoma:

it's raining again, and a bit chilly, but no airborn vacuums floating around.  Very good weather for study time

Government-run health care: more to look forward to

An employee at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Phoenix hospital just revealed physicians are blocking off open time slots so they can retain easy schedules, effectively increasing wait times for veterans, some of whom have waited over 400 days for an appointment.
Kuauhtemoc Rodriguez, a former Army infantry officer, has repeatedly brought the issue of physician scheduling to leadership at the hospital, only to be ignored. Now, he’s letting Congress and the media know exactly what’s happening at the facility.

Miguel took this Lancet study apart

in fine fashion.  Very short version from the weenies: "All you have to do is pass these laws, and all will be harmony!"
Slight problems: starting with them being full of crap.  Again.  So badly that
When you have somebody from the Bloomberg-paid John Hopkins’s School of Medical Gun Control and Other Ugly Stuff calls the study Full Of Shit (In scientific terms), you know there is something wrong with it.
'Something' wrong?  LOTS of things.  Including
The paper, published in the British medical journal The Lancet and written by researchers at Boston University, Columbia University and the University of Bern in Switzerland, found that one of the three most effective gun policies were laws requiring ballistic imaging or microstamping, which help law enforcement identify guns used in crimes.

Experts noted that the laws, which were on the books in only three states, were not actually being implemented in practice.

That “would be the biggest red flag, obviously, when they’re finding huge effects of a law that doesn’t exist”, Daniel Webster, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, said.
No shit.  And Maryland actually got rid of their ballistic-fingerprint database because it didn't work; they'd never solved a crime with it, and wanted to put the money and personnel into their DNA database, which DID work.  Lots of politicians screamed, they could not stand the idea of their dream being shit, but finally gave in.

So, one more BS study 'proving' all we need is a few more restrictions, etc., to solve all the problems.  So they say.  One of the responses:
Other researchers who have published major evaluations of American gun laws said it was implausible that implementing three relatively modest gun restrictions could have such a huge impact on gun deaths.
“We’ve seen much more dramatic interventions in Britain and Australia and places like that, and even they did not get those kinds of results,” said Phil Cook, a public policy expert at Duke University who was one of the authors of a major study on the effectiveness of the nation’s current federal background check law.
'much more dramatic' meaning massive bans, and confiscations, and more licensing restrictions, the whole works.  And that accomplish that.  But for some reason those results will follow here if we pass those laws...

Since these weenies are pushing the ballistic fingerprinting and microstamping crap again, seems a good place to point those who haven't seen it to Kevin's post on Why Ballistic Fingerprinting Doesn't (and Won't) Work; it's a long one, and chock full of facts the weenies don't like.

One of those pieces of history that's so inconvenient to some

that they try to ignore it.  When it can't be ignored, it's still the fault of those Evil Europeans, because(the newer 'explanation') White Privilege.  Or something.


Never liked David Suzuki, and that was before he became one of the big Gerbil Worming people.  He's now demonstrated just why he doesn't like interviews where he can't control the questions.


"You don't want to carry those authors, they don't have the Correct opinions!"
Any bookstore that drops people over this, and then bitches about Freedom of Speech, is a bloody hypocrite.


And the New Campus Red Guard marches on.

Activists have also demanded the creation of an Office for Social Transformation, which would employ 15 students—young Robespierres in training—for the purposes of monitoring “racist, anti-black, transphobic, cissexist, misogynistic, ableist, homophobic, Islamophobic, and otherwise oppressive behavior on campus.” (Anti-Semitism, one notes, is curiously omitted.) These students will be granted terrifying powers to discipline faculty members who commit microaggressions. Professors—even tenured professors—can and will be placed under investigation if they are accused of maintaining insufficiently safe spaces within their classrooms.

These measures are hailed as “progressive” by the activists—because what could be more progressive than committees of liberal extremists conducting thoughtcrime investigations?

And the author better be careful, I'm sure that pointing out the 'no anti-semitism' omission is a microaggression.



To: Director Comey, FBI
Ref: 'Why do people suspect our motives in the Apple case?'

Sir, for the moment ignore some less-than-glorious actions by FBI over the past years: when we receive this slap in the face on top of various others, can you understand why we're not ready to trust ANY agency, including the one you run, to force it to be even easier to screw around in our lives?

Sincerely, etc.

This would actually have been a nice range day,

just wear shoes you don't mind getting soaked when you walk to the targets.  But there's some mowing I'll have to do later, and crap I need to do in the house, and I really don't want to do multiple walks back & forth to the target stands yet, so.  Now to get back up and start doing some of that.

But before I get off my assstart doing something constructive,
A leaked confidential police report in Germany warns of spiking refugee crime – including drug and sex offences – and a rise in radicalisation against the state.

The report says 'immigration will lead to more crime and increased police usage' to combat it.

The number of crimes – of violence, sexual, property theft and narcotic offences – will rise, says the paper of the North Rhine-Westphalian department of the interior whose 'Immigration' project involves both individual states and central government.
I think there are elections coming in Germany; I don't think Merkel & Co. are going to enjoy the results.

If you thought Lynch was anything other than Eric Holder(2),

this crap should deny that:
Attorney General Loretta Lynch testified Wednesday that the Justice Department has “discussed” taking civil legal action against the fossil fuel industry for “denying” the “threat of carbon emissions” when it comes to climate change.
Really?  Because they don't go along with the Preferred Narrative of Lightbringer?  Why the hell would you want to open such a can of 1st Amendment worms?

Ah, because control-freak 'It's for your own good' politicians want to compare speech they don't like to smoking:
He went on to point out that under President Bill Clinton, the Justice Department brought and won a civil case against the tobacco industry, while the Obama administration has “done nothing” so far with regard to the fossil fuel industry.

That Whitehouse thinks this crap is a good idea is idiotic; that Lynch & Co. are actually considering it should be proof she has no business being in that office.

Because for Germaine Clarno and the Union,

better people die without care than they talk to someone in that icky 'R' party about it.
A former federal employee union president is wracked with regret because veterans likely died at a time when she knew about gross misconduct within her Department of Veterans Affairs facility but didn’t tell congressional leaders because they were Republicans.

“If I would’ve gone to him two years ago, who knows what kind of lives could’ve been saved,” Germaine Clarno told a radio interviewer Monday, referring to the Republican leader of a VA subcommittee.
But you didn't.  You went to Democrats who apparently didn't give a shit.
The women first went to Rep. Danny Davis, a Democrat who represented the district that included Hines, but he was not on any committees with VA oversight authority. “Danny Davis was pretty apathetic not because he didn’t know what was going on but because he felt like their was nothing he could do,” Nee said in the interview.

The two women then went to Rep. Tammy Duckworth , a disabled veteran Democrat who also represents the area and was an official at VA before being elected to Congress, but since was a new lawmaker without leadership roles on any committees, she did not help. Clarno and Nee said Duckworth wouldn’t even read a report about the situation at Hines.
Are you effing KIDDING ME?  'because he felt like there was nothing he could do'?  'since she was a new lawmaker and without leadership roles on any committees'? 

You God-damned IDIOTS!  You never heard to GOING TO SOMEONE ON A COMMITTEE?  You never heard of 'press conferences'?  You never heard of going to people and SCREAMING YOUR DAMNED HEAD OFF? 

Oh, but that would have cause problems for the union, wouldn't it?  And would have disturbed things when a bunch of Obamacare-pushers were telling everyone how well that government-run health care was working, wouldn't it?

Damn the union, damn the politicians, and damn chickenshits like Clarno who couldn't dirty themselves to talk to someone in the other party while people were dying.

"Who cares about that 'warfighting' crap, the important thing is

that these people be properly reeducated as to their privilege!"

And when a bunch of people wind up dead because time and money was spent on this bullshit instead of actual training and education, the idiots in charge won't care; because they don't give a damn about troops anyway.


What Life As A Transgender Woman Taught Me About Progressives
It's not real complimentary

And don't forget the way they treat Jenner for the crime of supporting Cruz, and seeing more to the situation than one personal matter.


And more chemical weapons use in Syria.

If this is true, Portugal has jumped through the hole

into hell.  And considering what's happening in other countries over there, it wouldn't surprise me.


This is interesting:
The S.C. House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday along a party-line vote that prevents the state from enforcing federal gun laws that took effect this year.

The Second Amendment Preservation Act directs state officials to not enforce any federal law, rule or regulation that took effect after Jan. 1 that limits access to firearms and ammunition.

From the Democrats:
“I think that there’s some merit in sending a message to Washington that we’re going to protect the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens,” Stavrinakis said. “But I don’t want to be a part of a bill that cements the rights of criminals and deranged people and terrorists to wreak havoc. After what we’ve been through in Charleston and what we’ve seen happen around the world and in this country with domestic terrorists, it’s just something I could not support.”
Yeah.  'cements the rights of criminals and deranged people and terrorists'.  No bullshit there, noooooo...


Oh, crap:
This newly released video, shot from inside Finicum's vehicle, does indeed, for those who want to blame Finicum for what happened, literally show him telling the agents that they might as well "go ahead and shoot me" when he's out of the car and right before they fire the shots that kill him.

But the most interesting and damning thing the video makes clear is that agents started shooting at him, twice, before any of the "appearing to reach in his pocket for a gun" that supposedly justified the kill shots. See starting around 5:30 of the video.
Damn. 

If this is how the West Virginia actually train their officers, (updated)

whoever runs their training needs to find a new job.  Something that doesn't threaten peoples lives.
Last week a West Virginia woman who stood between her dog and a state trooper intent on killing him was acquitted of obstructing an officer by a jury in Wood County. It took jurors just half an hour to acquit 23-year-old Tiffanie Hupp after they watched the video of the incident that Hupp's husband, Ryan, shot with his cellphone.
...
Hupp told PINAC her case hinged on her husband's video, which they did not have for weeks after the incident because Cook confiscated the phone, which he was unable to access because it was protected by a password. "Without that video, it's just my word against a state trooper," she said. "Nobody is going to believe my word over law enforcement."
Aside from arresting the woman on a bullshit charge, here's something interesting:
...Cook "testified that he was not afraid of the dog, but was following training that required him to kill all dogs that approach him, even if it was chained and wagging its tail as Buddy was doing in this case."
Really?  THAT'S their training?  Fire the bastards in charge, and make it plain that any officer who kills a dog without damned good reason will be under suspension.  Without pay.

I got curious and checked, WVSP has a Facebook page, so I messaged and asked- yes, politely- if this is actually how they train their officers.  That was yesterday, so far no response.  Apparently they figure better to ignore questions than deal with the commoners who might be troubling them.
Update:
I did get response: basically "They lied, nothing to it, if we actually said/did something like that the local media would be all over us."
Sometimes I hate the level of distrust and cynicism I've developed; I see something like 'Fictitious quote' and the local media thing, and I start thinking of all the ways that could be used to deny something that's actually got fact behind it.  I may be doing them a disservice here, but I doubt it.


And this from the PINAC link:
“After he put me in the patrol car and arrested me, he just walks up the trailer and up to the phones and, whatever devices were on chargers, he took them,” she said.
“He took my husband’s phone, he took my phone, he took my sister-in-law’s and my son’s tablet. And we don’t use those phones or tablets anymore. If my phone leaves my hands and goes into the hands of a cop, I kinda don’t trust that.”
After almost a month of constant calls to the police department, they returned her phones.
After demanding the passwords.  Indicating they'd been browsing around in them, probably illegally(from what I understand).   Now throw in this bullshit:
According to Hupp, Cook also testified that she had a crossbow in her hand, which the video clearly shows isn’t the case. He also testified that she raised her hands at him, which the video also shows didn’t happen.
In the video, Cook grabbed Hupp by the arm and spins her around and she never raised her hands at him.
As of yet, Cook has not yet been charged with perjury.
And he won't be. Because badge, he gets to lie under oath, in a court, and get away with it.

And they'll wonder why people don't trust them, or believe them.

Oh yes, FBI, let's just make things worse and worse...

The Department of Justice is investigating five FBI agents involved in the fatal shooting of Oregon militia spokesman Lavoy Finicum for allegedly covering up the details of Finicum’s January death.

One of the FBI agents allegedly lied about firing twice on Finicum, who was shot to death in the course of an attempted arrest related to the militia’s occupation of federal land. Four other agents allegedly helped that agent cover up the lie, reported the Oregonian.

Authorities revealed the investigation Tuesday, as a team of local investigators released new details about the shooting. A member of the Hostage Rescue Team allegedly failed to report the two shots in question, officials said, although neither bullet actually hit Finicum.
Isn't it just bloody wonderful?  Various distrust, suspicions, "It's a justifiable shooting, stop bothering us about it", and now this.  Yeah, that's going to help.
But news of the federal investigation into the FBI agents is sure to inflame some suspicions regarding the authorities’ conduct during the attempted arrest and fatal shooting.
You think maybe?
"So if everything is all good, no questions, justified shooting, why are these Feebs lying about what they did?"  And on from there.  It might BE a justifiable shooting, but this comes out and people will wonder "Why'd they lie?  What are they trying to hide?"

Well done, Very Special Agents.

"Why don't people like us and trust us?"

Because you act like this.
The search warrant executed at Taylor’s apartment cited no evidence of criminal activity there. Instead, in an affidavit to a judge, police argued that they should be able to search for drugs there based on their “training and experience” investigating the drug trade. They relied on an address they found in a court-records system for the woman arrested with PCP.
Gee, what could go wrong?

In a dozen instances, The Post found, officers acted on incorrect or outdated address information, subjecting such people as Taylor to the fright of their lives.
Well, that's one thing.

D.C. police, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the D.C. Attorney General’s Office defend the use of warrants based on police training and experience.
Of course they do, it lets them do fishing expeditions and screw people over.

But it's all actually WONDERFUL!!, you see:
Karakatsanis studied a year of warrants in which police searched for drugs based on training and experience and found that they recovered drugs one-third of the time. In response to Karakatsanis, then-D.C. Attorney General Irvin B. Nathan argued in 2014, “While Plaintiffs treat this success rate with contempt, finding drugs in one-third of similar police searches is strong evidence of probable cause.”
Short version: every cop, the judges who approve this crap, the USA and the AG should all be fired.  This is bullshit.  "We found something ONE THIRD OF THE TIME, that should cover everything!"  Bleep.

And I have to break this out again

No, it wasn't critical, but painful?  Oh yeah.  Left foot caught and turned, and I landed full on my right knee.  On the driveway.  I managed to roll, after the impact(which dod a lotta good), but the damage was done.  Yes, finally went to the doc; final verdict is nothing broken or cracked, just bruised the hell out of it.  'Just' being quite enough to be painful.

So an anti-inflammatory, and stay off it much as can.  Which is even more fun because there's something I need to work on in the aptly-named crawlspace, but on this knee?  Some crawling and kneeling?  Not gonna happen, unless it's to keep the Posleen from eating me.

The other sucky part of things like this is that I don't heal as fast as I used to, so that much longer before it's pretty much back to (what passes for) normal.

Yuck.  They really need to get that stem-cell treatment for joints out for people, I could really use it.

The people pushing this crap won't have their ass on the line

in some 3rd-World hellhole when the barbarians are coming over the wire; and they think the troops(especially the males) are pawns to be used however they choose, anyway, so they don't care what it does to readiness.

And when a disaster happens, they'll blame the people who WARNED them this would happen for not having sufficient enthusiasm for cause-pushing; after all, that's more important about that 'winning battles' stuff, isn't it?

And I do include the politicians in uniform helping push this crap.  There's be blood on their hands, and they won't care as long as they can protect their rank.


First drunk monkeys with knives, now buff taking over the bar...

When the clowns running your government, and the media,

both want to control you for their reasons:
Indeed, Stockholm Police confirmed to the Mail this week that since the ‘neo-Nazi’ station disturbance, no migrants – underage or otherwise – have reported any assaults on them that evening. 

This raises the disturbing question as to whether the anti-migrant rampage ever took place in the way described. A local newspaper said in the aftermath that the video showed nothing more than police chasing away the leaflet distributors. The footage has no images of child refugees – and the only sign of violence appears to involve a policeman waving a baton.
Why lie about such things?
‘The Left – that is to say the Swedish media and establishment – is not interested in debating mass immigration. They are ideologically committed to imposing it come what may, for the greater good, and anybody who disagrees is a fascist, a Nazi, or a racist.’

And while fake hate-crimes are being reported, to try to control what people think,
No-go areas have sprung up in cities where, unless police units have a back-up team to guard them, it is dangerous to attend crime scenes because Molotov cocktails are hurled at them by migrants, according to one senior inspector this week.
So the government and most media have demonstrated they're not to be trusted, and this crap keeps building; sooner or later it's going to blow up.  And the idiots who helped it get there will still be whining about 'right-wing nazis' and other bullshit to try and distract from what they've helped create.

I don't know if Sanders believes this crap,

or is just sucking for votes from the Only Black Lives Matter people.
“When you are white, you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto, you don’t know what it’s like to be poor, you don’t know what it’s like to be hassled when you are walking down a street or dragged out of a car,” Sanders argues.
This man is an idiot.  And if the DNC wasn't cheating, he'd be in the lead to be their candidate for President.


And he has apparently changed his mind on firearms, 'non-hunting guns' should be banned.  Besides being stupid, he apparently wants to challenge Obama for 'Best Gun Salesman'.


If Sweden and Germany Became US States, They Would be Among the Poorest States
"But they don't care, because Socialism!" or something.


“The act of protesting is not a denial of free speech, it is the exercising of free speech,” Stanley said. “Free speech is alive and well on university campuses.”
Yeah.  Because shouting people down, preventing them from speaking, blocking them from COMING to a campus, and getting people fired for 'offensive' speech' is 'exercising free speech'.  Things really DO mean opposites with the left.

Excellent; now find the asshats in the Pentagon

and that company who screwed all this up, and hand them their asses.
On Saturday, Army veteran Julio Muñoz finally found the dog he has been missing for three years — Ben, the canine that fought alongside him in Afghanistan.

Muñoz, 32, of The Bronx, was supposed to have been given the chance to adopt the dog after deployment. But as The Post revealed, at least two Pentagon employees, along with contractor K2 Solutions, have been secretly dumping military dogs out to civilians instead of offering them to their handlers.

Where do you find spelt flour?

I'll have to dig around, because I want to try baking this.


A new octopus, 2.5 miles down.


"Give the monkey a drink, what could go wrong?"
Rule: NEVER give the monkey a drink.  Especially if there are weapons around.


Interesting piece on the 21-foot rule.

First sounding of the bullshit alert:

On social media, the incident was described by some as a threat by the student against a black female student in a class on gender and race issues.
Actually that's three bullshit alerts.  Let's go over them, shall we?

The most basic: If it was a threat, why didn't any of them call the police?

Second: If someone actually threatened ANY female student, let alone a black one, anyone believe this wouldn't have been screamed about from the first second?  Along with names and pictures and probably video?

Third: Anyone who trusts ANY accusation out of a 'gender and race issues' class is an idiot.

Very short version: "Some Eloi at the university wet their pants at the sight of the most basic of tools, and some others want to use this to make it a racial thing."

I have to throw this in to disturb your evening:

These people are insane.
However, the relationships among gender, science, and glaciers – particularly related to epistemological questions about the production of glaciological knowledge – remain understudied....Merging feminist postcolonial science studies and feminist political ecology, the feminist glaciology framework generates robust analysis of gender, power, and epistemologies in dynamic social-ecological systems, thereby leading to more just and equitable science and human-ice interactions.

and

Water is our dreaming. It is our collective unconscious …

Don't laugh too hard; we've got idiots just as stunning here.

And a small data dump came in for the ladies

below the fold

It's been a busy day;

yardwork, garden, and I discovered that, if I'm careful, I can use the axe on that stump as part of my shoulder workout.  And my shoulders and arms feel it.  Time to relax and examine the new information.

Oh, that was a wonderful idea, wasn't it?

Those who attended the emergency meeting demanded to know who composed and sent out emails and a Facebook post this week after an out-of-school fight broke out Tuesday at a local park.

The post, which has since been deleted, called for a “Diversity Day.” Students were told to wear Gateway High shirts and “Black Lives Matter” shirts for the pre-planned event.

Parents said Friday that the post on an official district account added racial tension to what was originally a nonpolitical, juvenile dispute.
What makes this even more idiotic?
Gateway High board members asserted that the event was a personnel issue, and they were still investigating who sent out the emails and post.
Really?  Nobody knows who sent the e-mail?  You're dealing with Hillary Clinton and the State Department?

Brushed you off, did he?

“So the shift has to be made away from the animal product and away from the beef industry, but all the animal products into a plant-based diet or there will be no planet, and in the next 50 years we won’t have an ocean,” Simmons said. “When the oceans die, we die. We cannot have a lobbyist take advantage of all our natural resources to poison the planet and the people.”

He said that when he met with Sanders that he brushed off Simmons concerns. Simmons went on to blame earthquakes and hurricanes on factory farming and demanded that something must be done to prevent more from happening.
Apparently because you're too freaking stupid for even Sanders to put up with.

See all kinds of things from great heights

Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen, aboard on ISS, caught an electric view never before taken from space: a huge blue burst of optical activity — known as a blue jet — radiating from a thunderstorm over India.


If this information is correct, those wardens need charges filed against them.
The legislation stems partially from an incident on a ranch in Ryan, in southwest Oklahoma. The landowner, Rob Thornton, told Red Dirt Report that two game wardens drove a half mile onto the ranch, crossed two separate cattle guards, searched two vehicles, an 8,000-square foot barn, separated the ranch foreman from his 15-year-old son and wrote the teenager a $400 citation for shooting at a hog during hunting season.

The wardens claimed they heard gunshots, prompting them to cut the locks on a gate and drive onto private property.
They CUT LOCKS?  SEARCHED VEHICLES AND A BARN?  They think that 4th Amendment thing doesn't apply to them?


So even if you're admitting guilt and checking our privilege, you're guilty because you didn't do it JUST RIGHT and some snowflakes were offended.


Well, crap; if this is true, FN has a real problem with this pistol.

And now, it being nice outside, I shall hobble out and try to accomplish something.

Yes, it's early;

I'm tired.  So here's the data.

Two things that came in very handy while the shoulder

had the arm not-useable for these things:
Did some digging around pre-surgery, and bought this cordless can opener.  Worth every penny, and still using it on the original batteries.

Be advised, use GOOD batteries; generics run down fast, but a set of Duracells has been going since November, small cans and large.  It doesn't run quickly, but it gets the lid off.

The second came to me post-surgery, when I could used the arm a little: this chopper.  Parents had bought one to try, I saw how it worked while down there for a few days, and they gave me one.  Cut, say, an onion into quarters, throw it in, pull the cord a few times, chopped onion; how finely depends on how many times you pull.

I don't have many kitchen gadgets, but- especially what the arthritis does with my hands at times- I wish I'd thought of looking for them a long time ago.

A brave and honest man;

I can hear the screams for him to be fired all the way in my back yard.

“Racism doesn’t exist. Obviously, I’m lying. Of course it exists, but not for you. See, you don’t have to go to the back of the bus. You’re not denied the opportunity to eat at restaurants, or to enter night clubs, or to patronize businesses. You have the right to vote. You’re not being lynched. You’re not being hung. You’re not going through the trials and tribulations your ancestors recent and far beyond recent, endured so you can sit here today.”  

... You’re older, you know I’m not talking about you. But youngsters, nobody’s trying to hear that. You need to understand that white folks got problems, too. Some of them can’t pay their bills. Some of them are struggling. Some of them are being denied opportunities. And you need to understand that, because when people are going through their own problems, they are not going to lament what your trials and tribulations are

This is exactly what pisses me off about a lot of the pot people: it should be legalized, "It only makes sense", etc., but by DEITY they want tobacco banned.

Well, I know one of the things that ought to...

What causes NSA to lose sleep at night?
And one of their big problems is self-created:
I've been quite critical about how NSA's behavior over the last 15 years has alienated a large portion of the security industry practitioners.  I haven't seen anything over the last year or two to cause me to change that - and the whole FBiPhone incident is causing even more collateral damage.
NSA has a lot of smart people, and the ones who are trying to fight the Bad Guys are fighting the Good Fight.  But they have a huge branding problem to overcome.  Adm. Rogers isn't addressing that.
At this point, wonder if he thinks they CAN truly overcome the distrust?


At this point, the question must be asked: do these people rise to, or only aspire to, the level of 'whiny pussy'?
“So many of us shared in our pain. I felt I was in danger, and I felt so many people in that room were in danger,” proclaimed Marcus Robinson, student and president of the Pittsburgh Rainbow Alliance. Robinson also suggested that councilors should have been provided in another room to protect students who felt “traumatized” by Yiannopoulos’s opinions.
A homosexual male goes to a university, gives a non-compulsory and extracurricular event in which he expresses opinions they don't agree with, and they have attacks of the vapors like this?  Amazing.

I've heard Keanu Reeves is a pretty nice guy;

no personal info on that, but it appears he shoots like s sumbitch:

Last time I hit the range, the CherryBalmz-lubed

.22 conversion got another hundred rounds through it; still working just as it should.  That makes between 600-700 rounds with zero problems due to the lube.  Not bad at all; as I've mentioned before, this conversion works great as long as the lube is sufficient; if it doesn't slick things up enough, it short-strokes.  A lot.  That's on the pistol lubed with the heavier Ma Deuce Juice; the one lubed with Black Rifle Balm hasn't had quite as many rounds(yes, I'm a bad tester, should've been keeping better count), but it's working perfectly as well.

As mentioned, I flat can't afford to put, say, a thousand rounds of centerfire pistol or rifle ammo into testing the stuff, so I can't specifically speak to how it'll work in a .223 or 7.62x39 AR, or a 9mm pistol.  I've generally found that if stuff will keep those conversions running smoothly, especially after long breaks in-between without cleaning or more lube, it'll hold up in anything else I've tried it in. 

So the question becomes, is it worth the price to you?  Personally, unless it's got something REALLY special in long-term use, the answer is no, especially since(my favorite) the Lubriplate SFL-0 is so inexpensive.  It may well be worth it to you, that's your decision to make.

I'll keep shooting them(.22s are fun, and good for my rehab), and see how it does over a longer time, and let you know.

I don't think that "Come to Germany, we welcome you!" thing

is working out very well.

Sooner or later some woman/women/girls are going to wind up raped and dead, possibly tortured as well, and things are going to come apart at the seams.

Knox's Law

I’ve proposed a similar Godwin corollary to Godwin’s Law which I have none-too-modestly dubbed “Knox’s Law.”

As an online discussion of gun owners’ rights grows longer, the probability of an ad absurdum argument involving nuclear weapons approaches 1.


Also, thanks to Mr. Huffman, someone starts that "Nobody wants to take your guns!" crap, he gives lots of ammunition to respond with.

"ISLAMOPHOBIA! HATE!! FAULT OF THE REPUBL-

oh, ah, nevermind."
ANYtime you hear 'hate crime', etc., now, it really needs to be considered either a mistake or a fake until there's proof otherwise.

More fruits of Smart Diplomacy

Violent extremists, criminals and foreign fighters are part of the daily refugee flow into Europe, the top NATO commander in Europe told lawmakers, "masking the movement" of these dangerous elements and heightening the potential for an attack.

In testimony Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove said ISIS is "spreading like a cancer" within this mix, "taking advantage of paths of least resistance, threatening European nations" and the United States.
Yeah, this is going to end well.
Breedlove later told reporters that he has asked for more U.S. forces to be permanently based in Europe, which is facing threats from a more aggressive Russia as well as ISIS.
I guess that 'reset' button didn't work after all.

I don't think I've written of it before, but as a case lube

a commenter* mentioned using lanolin: take the liquid, use one part of it to about nine parts 90% rubbing alcohol in a sprayer.  Sounded interesting, so I found a bottle of liquid lanolin and a small spray bottle and mixed some up.

Oh yeah, it works.  I put the cases in a baggie, give them a few sprays, then close the bag and work them around a minute.  If I want to make sure the inside of the necks get some, I set them upright in a bag, give a spray or two, then dump them over and spray & work.  The slide through the sizing die very nicely, it takes very little lanolin to do a LOT of cases, and it washes off with Dawn dish soap(I use that and hot water to clean the stuff, rinse and dry, then run them through the tumbler to make sure I got it all).

And if your hands dry out the way mine do in winter, you can use the straight lanolin on them.




*I can't remember who, dammit, if you see this let me know so I can give you credit

A: Anti-inflammatories can be wonderful

B: I wish I didn't have to take them so often
C: at times like this I'm glad I have them, they're really helping the knee.

Today was going to be a range day, but I really don't want to stand that much, not to mention carrying the stuff in and out.  Grocery shopping must be done later, I'll save the walking and standing for that.

Times I consider just falling completely apart

and getting it over with. 

Right now.

Yesterday, foot caught on something and turned, and I landed right knee-first, on the driveway.  Yes, it hurt.  Still does.

So now I have a functional shoulder that needs work to get back to strength, and a knee that doesn't work and hurts like hell at times(swelling is down, but still stiff and painful; stairs suck).  Which makes me wonder what's going to get hurt/need work next?

In other news: ref the shoulder, hanging a pipe from the clothesline pole, at appropriate height, allows you to lean back to your chosen angle and do semi-pullups, and then lean forward to do pushups.  Which helps, but it's going to take a while.

Also, there's a gym not far from the house that's been there for years, and I stopped in to check it out: no contract, 24/7 operation, really nice setup including cardio machines, weight machines and free weights.  Lots of all of it.  But it's $30/month, and that's more than I can do.  There's a Gold's Gym about a mile away, but by the time they finish their sales pitch on signup costs, plus whatever-per-month, it's a bit high as well, and not nearly as nice a setup.  So for now, until 10Gym or someone builds a lot closer, at-home stuff it is.

There's stuff to do tomorrow, but it may get put off a day or two, as none of it is essential and I don't know how the leg is going to be.

I have made my peace with getting old: I hate it, and it wants to kill me.

Not just Neil Goldschmidt; every bastard who knew

and did nothing, or made excuses, who didn't care because 'Look at the good he did!'; every one of you miserable shits should pay for it.

Especially you, the miserable excuse for a lawman who picked her up so her rapist could screw her; damn you.


And you, McCormack, you bastard.
With his journalistic experience, McCormack knew what a huge story he had been handed. Still, he chose to do nothing. "I didn't feel like it was my business, and even though I don't like Neil, I didn't want to destroy him," McCormack says.

McCormack says he never shared the secret, even though Goldschmidt's surprise decision remained perhaps the greatest mystery in Oregon politics over the past 15 years.

So now even Hockeystick Mann admits to the pause;

anyone have a weather report for Hell?

“It has been claimed that the early-2000s global warming slowdown or hiatus, characterized by a reduced rate of global surface warming, has been overstated, lacks sound scientific basis, or is unsupported by observations. The evidence presented here contradicts these claims,” the paper in Nature Climate Change says.

Though the paper’s findings are not controversial – few serious scientists dispute the evidence of the temperature datasets showing that there has been little if any global warming for nearly 19 years – they represent a tremendous blow to the climate alarmist “consensus”, which has long sought to deny the “Pause’s” existence.

First, the study was published in Nature Climate Change a fervently alarmist journal which rarely if ever runs papers that cast doubt on the man-made-global-warming scare narrative.

 
Secondly, it directly contradicts a widely-reported study produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) last year which attempted to deny the existence of the “Pause” (also known as the “hiatus”).


The standard: "Stay on the plantation, or you won't count as black anymore."

Good. Now if Apple will show the same attitude to the PRC,

we'll be in decent shape.
A federal judge on Monday ruled the U.S. Department of Justice does not have legal authority to force Apple to develop a program to circumvent security features on a smartphone related to a drug trafficking case in New York.
I like this from the judge:
"The relief the government seeks is unavailable because Congress has considered legislation that would achieve the same result but has not adopted it," he wrote. "It is also clear that the government has made the considered decision that it is better off securing such crypto-legislative authority from the courts rather than taking the chance that open legislative debate might produce a result less to its liking."
Exactly.


Like Insty says, now when I hear about some Horrible!Racist!Attack!!, my first thought is "Evidence?  Proof?  Or it's bullshit."
Audio from two 911 phone calls and video footage of the alleged racially motivated assault at a New York college has been released, providing more evidence why the women who made the accusation are now being charged with false reporting.
There was an assault; they started it, they're the ones yelling names and hitting people.  And then
Now some of that footage has been released, but it is difficult to tell what exactly happened. The 911 audio is more damaging, showing one of the accusers saying "I think it's so funny" and "I beat up a boy" before the call connected to a dispatcher.

When the call connected, the accuser then tells the story that she was "jumped" on a bus and that it was a racially motivated attack.


One of the things that makes me so glad some of my ancestors got the hell out of Scotland.
It’s for the children — or maybe, really, for the child, singular. A toddler was murdered by an antisocial crumb using an airgun eleven years ago, and after a decade plus of wave-the-bloody-shirt publicity (and no further intervening homicides) the Scottish authorities have declared the devices contraband. Owners of the estimated half-million powderless peashooters in the quasi-country have from July to the end of the year to get a permit — which may or may not be issued, at the whim of police, and which requires them to prove, to whichever copper catches gun-ban duty, a “need” for the toy.


From the Dark and Fascist State of New Jersey:
A veteran state trooper alleges in a whistleblower lawsuit she was retaliated against by her superiors after raising objections that police academy background checks were compromised because of pressure to increase racial diversity among State Police ranks.
...
Jiras claims in her suit that her superiors, under pressure from the state Attorney General's Office to boost recruit class diversity on short notice, approved candidates who had been automatically disqualified for having suspended licenses, criminal affiliations and active warrants.
Just bloody wonderful, isn't it?

Obviously, this is unpossible: (formerly Great)Britain has laws against all this!

The kind of laws Clinton and Sanders and Obama say would make us safe!
Grenades have become the latest “must have” weapons being sold by underworld arms dealers at knockdown prices.

And a special Mirror investigation has found that the terrifying trade is booming.

Following the killing of two unarmed policewomen in a gun and grenade attack on Tuesday, we uncovered the shocking array of firepower available on the streets today.

The death-dealing “shopping list” includes guns for hire for as little as £100 and bullets priced at anything from £5 to £15.
However could this happen with all those laws? 
The source added that weapons and grenades were often smuggled in from abroad, along with drugs.

He added: “A grenade is not the type of thing you stash under a bed or have just lying about. You get one when you need one for a specific purpose.” He revealed that underworld armourers even sell gangs “assassin kits” – including a gun, silencer and bullets for £300.
Damn.  It's like those criminals don't care about or obey those laws...

Remember the kid injured when the idiot dropped a flashbang in his crib?

A federal judge has approved settlements totaling $3.6 million to the parents of a toddler who was severely injured when a flash grenade detonated in his playpen during a 2014 raid.
But guess what?
'Considering that this family was still held responsible for the medical bills is itself a travesty.'
Yep.  Not only do the cops involved get off with no punishment(other than being all upset that people don't have the proper amount of feels for them), but the family is paying the medical expenses out of the award.

Wonder if the local citizens out of whose pockets this is coming have anything to say about that?

Yeah, that British National Healthcare System is WONDERFUL!

The mother of a 19-year-old model who died of cervical cancer after doctors failed to allow her a smear test has questioned why her daughter was refused the simple examination. 

The NHS scrapped routine smears for under-25s in 2003 over concerns they could do more harm than good.
Note that that says 'routine', not "There's a problem but you shouldn't use this as a diagnostic tool", yet she could not get one.

Amazing, isn't it?

Yeah, there are actual consequences to your "For Cecil!" bullshit

As a mental exercise, let us take fifty thousand US dollars (plus all the other money, noted above), multiply that number by two hundred lions, and see how much money the bunny-huggers and the spine-less, knee-jerk politicians and bureaucrats have kept out of the mouths of starving Zimbabweans and the game reserve.
That's right, Tofu Breath:  those game parks you're dotting your cupcakes over?  A large percentage of their budget and operating capital comes right out of the wallets of hunters.
In one fell swoop -- over one idiot furry predator -- you've not only managed to take the food right out of the mouths of the families that have come to rely upon it, but you've also managed to make a significant dent in the operating capital of the park itself.
But the enviroweenies will still run around feeling virtuous; and that's more important than damage to the park and black people in Africa starving, isn't it?


Wonderful: be a 9/11 conspiritard, and "The JOOOS did it!" moron, and the head of the university defends your freedom to speak; be a conservative wanting to speak on other campuses...


Wow.  Progress, indeed.

The Defense Minister Eleuterio Fernández Huidobro, is in favor of the population is armed to defend even the government.
“For me, gun ownership is an attribute of freedom”

 This is amazing for Latin America. That a major government official, the minister of Defense no less would come out and assert armed population is like Sarah Brady coming back from the death, getting a concealed weapons permit and go on a shopping binge at her local Gun Store.