Clearing time again

Well. Hmm. That's an idea.

Apparently the Ukraine Defense Ministry remembers those commercials, too, because it produced a parody of sorts that reimagines the M1A2 Abrams Tank as a "recreational utility vehicle." The commercial touts the 1,500-hp tank as being "rugged," "dependable," and "powerful," all adjectives we're pretty sure Chevrolet used in at least a few of its own commercials.

I know it's January, and it won't last, but

we got some rain this morning, and now the skies have cleared and it'll be in the low 60's.  And Lord, does the sun feel good to stand in without a coat.

Seems some judges in Canuckistan are good with just killing people instead of

giving them the option of suicide.
Amanda Rojas-Silva, 42, and Shane Hutley, 35, had been charged with manslaughter and criminal negligence in Warriner’s death — charges they denied, saying they used only the force necessary to gain a hold of her.

Now, those charges have been dropped after a judge concluded there wasn’t enough evidence to take the case to trial — a decision CBC News has learned the Crown won’t appeal.

That’s despite the available video footage, two security staff who testified the accused placed weight on her upper body while she was held chest down, a forensic pathologist who testified Warriner would still be alive had she not been restrained that day — and revelations one of the guards admitted he falsely claimed Warriner threw the first punch.
I suspect 'the Crown won't appeal' boils down to "Oh, good, we can make this go away!"

These guards AND that judge deserve to be in cells.  And the other Crown officials need to be fired.  At the least.

Ever heard of putting a liner in a barrel?

Good article on doing this to an old Sharps .50-70.

Fitting under the heading of "No, BLEEP?"

CNN medical analyst and Washington Post columnist Dr. Leana Wen admitted in a column, Friday, that the medical community is “overcounting” the amount of “COVID deaths and hospitalizations.”
...
Mentioning the first, she wrote, “Robin Dretler, an attending physician at Emory Decatur Hospital and the former president of Georgia’s chapter of Infectious Diseases Society of America, estimates that at his hospital, 90 percent of patients diagnosed with COVID are actually in the hospital for some other illness.”

Dretler told the analyst, “Since every hospitalized patient gets tested for COVID many are incidentally positive.” Wen noted how people with gunshot wounds or other serious illnesses often test positive for the virus, and wrote, “If these patients die, COVID might get added to their death certificate along with the other diagnoses. But the coronavirus was not the primary contributor to their death and often played no role at all.”
Y'know, just that 'conspiracy theory' and 'misinformation' that you'd get kicked off social media for mentioning for a couple of years.

Besides the grocery store and some cleanup, did two things today*

First, rolled the motorcycle out and warmed it up(been using the battery tender regularly), and decided since it was warm for this time of year, rode it a few miles.  Which was great.  Not so great was "You're not going to do this for any greater distance for a while", which was most emphatically pointed out by the leg.

Second, I bought a bicycle a while back in January, and all I'd done was adjust things to my liking and ride it about three blocks.  So, while after got home, rode it about a mile, or a touch over if I remember correctly.  Which kicked my ass.  Made it ok, but after getting off this became another "Not for a while yet.  Hear us?"

It's good that I managed both without something bad.  It sucks that what used to be an easy ride on a bicycle  wore me out that much.  Progress, but this is going to take a while.

I, unhappily, have that understanding

So, you see, I really can understand how Sgt. Bob felt. There have been days when I've felt the same. I'm not suicidal at all (I have a very strong religious prohibition against it to sustain me), but there have been bad pain days when I've understood very clearly - experientially! - why some decide to check out rather than carry the burden any longer. I've never taken that step, and please God I never will: but I'm here to tell you from personal experience, pain can come to dominate your outlook on life to the point where it removes almost all hope, unless one has a very strong will to live. It's no surprise to me that many people in that situation say simply, "I've had enough. I can't take any more." Sgt. Bob was far from the first to make that call, and he'll be far from the last.
Mine was not nearly as bad a situation as theirs.  I had a back problem going on two years ago that was bloody awful.  I had the knowledge that there was a good chance of fixing things, or at least making them better, and in the near future, and it was STILL bloody awful.  When it won't let you sleep without meds, and getting up required two or three tries and a fair amount of cursing and screaming... oh, it's bad.  To be in that situation and see no improvement to come, just this every day and night for the rest of your life... I understood intellectually before this, that people could hit the point of "I have to stop the pain!" and kill themselves, after that it was more than intellectual.

And yes, one of my nightmares is that the problem will flare up again.  That's one flat horrible thought.  Should be treatable the same way if it does, but it would still be nasty for a while.  Funny thing to be able to think of that as somewhat of a blessing.

Let us speak of "Sanctuary City!" hypocrisy

The mayor of New York traveled to the Mexican border city of El Paso on Sunday and declared that "there is no room in New York" for busloads of migrants being sent to America's most populous city.

Eric Adams, a Democrat, was also critical of the administration of Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden, saying "now is the time for the national government to do its job" about the immigrant crisis at America's southern border.
There has been a number of these clowns crapping themselves in outrage when their 'sanctuary city' started getting a tiny fraction of the illegals who've been overrunning the border.  They do accuse the governors sending them of being inhuman, racist, uncaring, etc., which sounds a lot better to them than "We were lying, we just said that because there was no cost to doing so!"

I think a short clearing is in order

This is a strange-looking revolver

A bullpup revolver.  Interesting idea, but I want to see how it works in use.

Seventh eve is here,

my stress levels are down a bit, and now here, for your viewing pleasure,

Surprise! Fecesbook didn't even really sell out,

it whored itself to the .gov
Facebook told an official at the Biden White House that the Big Tech company not only suppressed misinformation but took action against the “virality” of “often-true content” regarding the COVID-19 vaccines.
Anything for the Party, right?

It now being time for the sixth evening data,

I will hand you over to it.

I made another try with the Berry's plated bullets

in a .300 Blackout load,  this time with a better rest and a target that didn't keep swaying a bit

Five rounds, thirty yards.  Like the load using the Sierra bullets, needs to be run over the Chrony and tried at longer distance, but for practice?  That'll do.

Well, the left has been using them for so long, was only a question of time

before a lot of Jews said "Enough."
She persevered and got the audience back. But soon she joked about how Jews don't have guns. The room was silent. "Really? No one likes anti-gun jokes?" That’s when the booing started. She was shocked.

Frankly, I was shocked.

I knew a change was happening but did not know it had arrived. What has been emerging, in Florida but also elsewhere, was a New Jew. This shift is partially political, yes. It does come with more votes moving from Democrat to Republican. But the main change is cultural.

The New Jew does not cower. He does not make excuses for those who hate him, whether white supremacist or black nationalist. She speaks plainly about threats, refuses to pretend they're exclusive to the far right when she can see with her own eyes that they are not.

This New Jew might not be conservative but they are no longer of the left. His story is laid out in "The Turn" by Liel Leibovitz. He didn’t shift, the left shifted around him. She isn’t afraid of name-calling. As Leibovitz wrote “We have a better word to describe ourselves: free.”
Don't know how many there are, but considering the crimes against Jews in places like NYeffingCity, and the attitude toward them by many politicians, I'd guess the numbers are growing.  

Years ago friend and I were at a restaurant and wound up in conversation with a man and his son, and it came out they were on their way to the range, and Jewish, which led to a conversation about the wonders of the FAL.  One of his comments was "I'm very left-wing, but not on arms.  'Never again' means something."  Never met them again, but I do wonder if he's still left-wing.

They think they've figured out how Roman concrete lasts so well

even in bad conditions.  Interesting, indeed.  You can imagine some Roman natural philosopher and an engineer breaking up some chunks of concrete to see how this mix did, and saying "Maybe if we..."

Schools, especially colleges, who silence people for 'disapproved' speech, aren't worth of the name

Academic freedom at Stanford is clearly dying. It cannot survive if the administration fails to create an environment where good-faith discussions can occur outside of a framework of ideological rigidity and the false certainties that ideologues—and governments—wish to impose on us. Stanford missed the opportunity to sponsor COVID policy forums and it deplatformed dissenting voices. Several prominent faculty exploited this environment, engaging in actions that directly violated basic academic norms.

A precedent has now been established. Faculty at Stanford should rightly worry whether their professional work will lead to deplatforming, excommunication, and political targeting. In this environment, professors and students alike would be wise to look over their shoulders at all times, in the knowledge that the university no longer has your back. And members of the public should understand that many of those urging them to “trust the science” on complicated matters of public concern are also those working to ensure that “the science” never turns up answers that they don’t like.
Too many others are on the same track.

Throw in that it was recently found that 
“Specifically, there were 15,750 administrators, 2,288 faculty members, and 16,937 students. "
at the place. Literally more admins and faculty than students.  Which would seem to indicate that the real work at Stanford is to provide jobs for brass hats and teachers, not to teach.

'Higher' Education...

It's amazing watching most of the media show what dancing monkeys they are for the Democrat Party

One of the current big ones being trying still to keep the Hunter Biden Laptop story down, and trying to say the promised inquiry into it is nothing but personal crap.

This includes after the NYeffingTimes admitted the story is real, it was Biden's laptop, and it wasn't hacked or stolen.

Just bleepin' amazing.

"Yes, your kid won this award, but

we didn't want them to think too much of their accomplishments so we didn't tell you.  Who cares if it would have helped their college application, EQUITY! is more important, it might have made some other kid feel bad."

These clowns need to be sued.  It might be the only thing that'll get their attention.

I am officially sick of my knees (added to)

One of the fun things they've come up with is if you sit in a chair that somehow has the slightly wrong height or angle, suddenly one or the other will throb and bloody hurt.  So you move around some, it eases off.  Until the other one decides to do it.

And, of course, if that doesn't happen they will stiffen up, and hurt when you get up, until the loosen up.  Standing in one place for a few minutes will do the same.  

They'd better heal out of this crap, because I'm done with this.

Added: in response to comments:
Guys, couple of things I don't want you to miss in my bitching about my condition:
Some of this discomfort for me is being caused by the fronts coming through while I'm still healing. It's been a bit over two months on the right, and it's improved a LOT from right after. I'll need more therapy for a while, probably a month or so, but I expect it to do as well as the left, which is much better than it was before. I think some of the left knee trouble is also because it's been shouldering more load than usual; when I remember to make myself walk more slowly and keep it as normal as possible, it bothers less.

They say it won't be fully healed for a year, so I've got three months on the left. When I asked the surgeon about it at a followup visit, he said the first winter, when it's still healing, not unusual to have the reaction to it I have.

So  X, if you need it, my recommendation is do it when you'll have warmer weather the first few months. It's not just a 'few days of pain', it'll take longer than that to get over the trauma to the joint, muscle, and tendons, but it does get over it. And depending on age/condition, you might well heal up faster than I.

One thing anyone who contracts with this company should consider

is it appears their security sucks.  This guy broke in to a major power station on a Tuesday afternoon and nobody noticed anything until midnight Wednesday?  Damn.

Now throw in all the other questions.  Not just a mess, but a real warning.

And while Chicago keeps circling the drain, with the Mayor blaming other people, states,

and the feds for their problems, this is going on:
Dylan Sharkey reported, "Chicago Board of Education Inspector General Will Fletcher reported 470 sexual complaints against Chicago Public School employees from students in 2022.

"The report details students being abused, groped, groomed, assaulted and threatened by school officials.

"One investigation found a former Junior ROTC staff member had sex with a 16-year-old high school student for a year. When he learned there was an investigation, the staff member threatened to kill the girl and her family if she cooperated with investigators."
And on, and on.
Now throw in
Chicago Chalkbeat reported, "Chicago Public Schools’ watchdog is raising red flags about sharply increasing extra pay for school staff in recent years, rising sexual misconduct complaints, and a troubling practice of schools mislabeling students as transfers when they’re missing school.

"The district’s Office of Inspector General detailed these and dozens of other instances of fraud, misconduct, and wrongdoing in a sweeping 120-page annual report released Thursday.
Holy freaking crap.  This is on top of most kids getting a crap 'education' in their schools.  

And the sun keeps doing what it always has,

and we'll see just how it affects us.

Seems we've escaped another Maunder Minimum, which- from what I've read of it- I was worried about.  As in 'the idea of that happening again scares hell out of me.'  However, with a sunspot cycle going on it probably means some warming on earth, which will cause the Globularists to scream at us some more.