December 15

530 – Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian appoints a commission to compile a code of Roman jurisprudence.

1256 – The Nizari Ismaili (Assassin) stronghold at Alamut Castle near Masoudabad Persia surrenders to the Mongol forces under Hulagu Khan

1270 – The Assassin stronghold at Gerdkuh, Persia surrenders to the Mongol forces under Hulagu Khan

1275 – The Mongol stronghold at Alamut Castle is retaken by Nizari Ismaili forces under Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad.

1791 – The United States Bill of Rights becomes law when ratified by the Virginia General Assembly.

1836 – A fire that  nearly burns the U.S. Patent Office building in Washington, D.C. to the ground, destroys all 9,957 patents issued by the federal government to that date.

1864 – The Battle of Nashville during the war between the states begins and ends the following day with the defeat in detail of the Confederate Army of Tennessee, by the Union Army of the Cumberland.

1890 – After leaving Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, Chief Sitting Bull returns to the Standing Rock Reservation and is killed during a gunfight between agency police and the Chief’s followers resisting his arrest because of fears he might support the Ghost Dance movement.

1903 – Italian American food cart vendor Italo Marchiony receives a U.S. patent for inventing a machine that makes ice cream cones.

1933 – The 21st Amendment to the United States Constitution officially becomes effective, repealing the 18th Amendment

1939 – Gone with the Wind premieres at Loew’s Grand Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia

1941 – German troops murder over 15,000 Jews at Drobytsky Yar, a ravine southeast of the city of Kharkiv in Ukraine.

1942 –During World War II, on Guadalcanal, the Battle of Mount Austen, the Galloping Horse, and the Sea Horse between U.S. forces under the command of Alexander Patch and Japanese forces under the command of Harukichi Hyakutake begins in the named hills near the Mantanikau river.

1944 – During World War II, a single engine UC-64A Norseman aircraft carrying U.S. Army Air Forces Major Glenn Miller is lost in a flight over the English Channel and never recovered.

1961 – Adolf Eichmann is sentenced to death after being found guilty by an Israeli court of 15 criminal charges, including charges of crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people, and membership of an outlawed organization. He is hanged on June 1 the following year.

1965 – The Gemini 6A mission, with crew members Wally Schirra and Thomas Stafford, launches to rendezvous with Gemini 7.

1978 – President Jimmy Carter announces that the United States will recognize the People’s Republic of China and sever diplomatic relations with the Republic of China on Taiwan.

2005 – The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor enters service in the U.S. Air Force.

2006 – The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II makes its first flight.

2009 – Oral Roberts dies of complications from pneumonia at the age of 91 at Newport Beach, California

2013 – China successfully lands a rover explorer on the moon

2015 -The Mayor of Flint, Michigan declares a state of emergency over contaminated water supplies.

 

Armed mom schools Congress on booming female gun ownership: ‘Refuse to stand by’

Women are considered one of the fastest-growing groups of gun owners in the United States, and a House Judiciary subcommittee this week will examine how gun ownership “empowers women across America” as crime spirals in many areas of the nation.

The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance will hold a hearing Wednesday morning, and a trio of female gun experts and instructors will appear to advocate for Americans’ Second Amendment rights.

Fox News Digital exclusively obtained a preview of testimony from one of the witnesses, Beth Alcazar, a U.S. Concealed Carry Association (USCCA) senior training counselor.

“I am a writer. I am an instructor. I am a doctoral candidate working toward my terminal degree in curriculum and instruction. But, first and foremost, I am a mother. And I have made a personal choice to live as a mom with a gun,” Alcazar will tell the subcommittee, chaired by Arizona Republican Rep. Andy Biggs.

Alcazar is the editor of Concealed Carry Magazine and has authored a handful of gun training documents for the USCCA, including “Women’s Handgun & Self-Defense Fundamentals” and “Children’s Firearms & Safety Fundamentals.”

She will reflect in her testimony that women across the nation have taken self-defense issues into their own hands and are refusing to become the victims of violent crimes.

“For the women who walk across a dark parking lot every night after work. For the Realtors who show houses to strangers every week. For any young women who have shadows in their past. And for moms, like me, with children in tow. I think they would all agree: They refuse to stand by, idle and helpless. They refuse to become someone’s victim. They refuse to allow harm to come to the ones they love,” Alcazar will say in her testimony.

Since the pandemic, gun sales have hit record numbers, including when an estimated 23 million firearms were sold and more than 21 million background checks were conducted in 2020. The numbers smashed records and notably spiked at the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 before jumping yet again in June of that year as protests and riots spread across the nation in response to the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.

Gun ownership has especially boomed among women. Between 2019 and 2021, as gun purchases exploded, about half of gun customers were women, according to the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Women were the most likely new gun owner demographic during those years, researchers found.

Alcazar said crime has spiraled and women face “violent criminals — many with evil intent,” who “are terrorizing us.” But where violence and crime lurks, an armed woman has a better chance of defending herself from the unexpected, Alcazar’s testimony explains.

“This shouldn’t be the way that we live,” Alcazar will tell the subcommittee. “But it serves as a clear reminder that law-abiding citizens should be able to defend themselves from danger at all times. And any solution to better protect ourselves, our children and our communities should start with our God-given right to self-defense.”

The mother of three’s testimony explains that, through her work training Americans on firearm safety, she has seen “firsthand, a rich diversity as scores of American women are purchasing, training with and carrying firearms in the name of female empowerment.”

“For many women, this self-defense awakening has resulted in a new source of certainty, security, responsibility and equality that we might not have otherwise had,” her testimony states.

The USCCA, where Alcazar serves as a certified instructor and senior training counselor, was founded in 2003 and provides American gun owners with training and education on firearms and self-defense liability insurance through its membership program. The group includes more than 10,000 instructors across the nation, many of whom have reported seeing an increase in women seeking gun training.

Fox News Digital spoke to a USCCA instructor in New Mexico earlier this year who said that Native American women specifically were increasingly signing up for gun safety classes in the face of crime and violence.

“Almost every week we have a Native woman or someone close to family saying, ‘I’m really interested in taking this class and picking up a firearm because you see the numbers with the missing and murdered indigenous women and people,’” Joe Talachy, a USCCA instructor and owner of Indigenous Arms 1680 Ltd. Co., told Fox News Digital this summer.

Alcazar argues that gun ownership and training have fundamentally changed her as a person and mother, and she finds peace knowing that she is her “own protector” and her “family’s first responder.”

“The more I’ve trained, the more I’ve realized that I don’t have to wait for someone else to care for me or protect me. I am my own protector. And I am my family’s first responder. And being able to keep myself and those I love safe? I don’t think there’s anything more important than that,” Alcazar’s testimony says.

The hearing is scheduled for 9 a.m. Wednesday. Geneva Solomon, owner of Redstone Firearms in Burbank, California, and firearms instructor Shirley Watral are also scheduled to testify.

Now New York demonstrates link between Second Amendment, other liberties

Last Tuesday, we criticized developments in Flagstaff, Arizona, where local officials seem to be allergic to the idea that gun shop owners, gun owners and people who champion the Second Amendment deserve to be afforded equality before the law and before the practices of the government entrusted to serve the interests of all its constituents.

Instead, leaders of Flagstaff were walking away from advertising revenue for displays at the city’s airport because of fears the courts might expect them to allow a gun shop the same opportunity to advertise as any other business.

Unfortunately a similar case has popped up closer to home — the American Civil Liberties Union will represent the National Rifle Association in a lawsuit contesting New York state’s Department of Financial Services is targeting the lobbying group with a campaign of harassment, discouraging banks and insurers from doing business with the NRA to punish the NRA for its advocacy.

“The government can’t blacklist an advocacy group because of its viewpoint,” the ACLU correctly notes, according to an article in The Hill.com, a Washington, D.C.-based newspaper.

As we alluded to about a week ago, many advocates for the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms explicitly cite fears that without an armed populace, the government will trample the broader array of rights individuals are given by God.

We understand many people feel these fears are overblown, perhaps even paranoid.

But we also cannot think of any way advocates could make the case that these fears are not overblown and are in fact quite reasonable better themselves than what the governments of Flagstaff and now New York state are doing.

In Flagstaff and throughout New York state, people who presumably wish the broader public to believe that the debate over the right to own firearms is about public safety and not about liberty are conspiring to deny their skeptics the right to advertise in a forum available to other constituents and to orchestrate punishment for exercising First Amendment rights in tandem with the banking and insurance sectors.

As much as some people may wish we could cordon off the Second Amendment from the more comprehensive need to preserve individual right, it is the very actions of those people who demonstrate that the violation of the Second Amendment will require violations of nearly all of our cherished, God-given liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights.

Lefty Pseudo-Think Tank Attacks Medicare Advantage In Effort to Push Americans Toward Medicare-For-All

The annual open enrollment period for Medicare Advantage passed just about a week ago, and as it did, an interesting thing happened: A benign and very academic- and intellectual-sounding group called the Center for Economic Policy and Research pushed out a negative piece about Medicare Advantage. The report was written back in September before the open enrollment period began (and ended)—but it managed to get a write-up just as the open enrollment period closed—which is curious if the point of the report was to inform consumers before they made their enrollment decision.

Even more curious is who funds the Center for Economic Policy and Research, given what the Center has to say. Although Medicare Advantage is hugely popular with senior citizens and should be with taxpayers, given that it is a big cost-saver over traditional Medicare, the Center for Economic Policy and Research really, really dislikes it. Really, really, really.

And the Center really, really, really likes traditional fee-for-service Medicare—you know, the thing that progressives are trying to establish as the health care system for all Americans in the wake of Obamacare turning out to be a disaster and other efforts at health care reform stalling out. It turns out that the donor list for the Center is a veritable who’s who of big lefty foundations. Here’s a screenshot of their current donor list:

A few names will immediately jump out at conservatives, starting with the National Education Association. That’s the biggest teachers’ union in the country.

Less known, but even more important names are the Tides Foundation and the Bernard & Anne Spitzer Family Charitable Trust.

Tides has, over the years, taken donations from a bevy of lefty donors perhaps most famously including Barbra Streisand; it had over $1.4 billion in assets in 2022. Another big backer has been George Soros, who, coincidentally, has also donated to the Center.

But what is the Bernard & Anne Spitzer Family Charitable Trust? I’m glad you asked. It turns out it’s the family trust established by Eliot Spitzer’s parents (yes, that Eliot Spitzer).

When you consider the donors, it’s unsurprising that the Center would be advocating for a policy position that shuts down a private alternative to Medicare; what progressives want is to push more Americans into Medicare and ultimately, enact Medicare-for-All—or at least a “public option,” which would probably lay the foundation for Medicare-for-All to be enacted—nationwide.

This is not likely to happen while seniors keep choosing Medicare Advantage (and a majority of them do) and while public officials keep backing it because they know that Medicare Advantage is better for taxpayers in a time of high debt and deficits. But that’s what the left wants, so intellectual- and academic-sounding reports going after Medicare Advantage funded by the left will continue to crop up.

What’s perhaps most interesting here is how healthcare providers—think big hospital systems—seem to be lining up with the left on this issue.

During the open enrollment period, there was a massive uptick in articles covering hospital systems’ displeasure with Medicare Advantage because purportedly Medicare Advantage plans pay health care providers, who we have recently learned did not in fact do financially badly at all out of the pandemic, “too little” as compared to traditional fee-for-service Medicare. What this actually means is that providers prefer the option that pays them more—traditional Medicare—even though that payment mechanism is entirely taxpayer-funded, and does little to limit cost (why the providers like it).

Traditional Medicare is what is driving debt and deficits and proving financially unsustainable. Per Money, “Medicare trustees say the Part A program will begin running deficits again in 2025, drawing down the trust fund until it depletes in 2031. After that date, the program would not be bringing in enough money to fully pay out Part A benefits.”

At the same time, Medicare Advantage is offering seniors—and taxpayers—an alternative that preserves healthcare access while affording additional benefits traditional Medicare does not provide—but makes the math work by having healthcare provider networks. That is not what hospital systems want, and it is not what the left wants—even though in vastly more socialized healthcare systems than the US (take the United Kingdom, for example) costs are absolutely minimized by limiting patients’ access to rearms of healthcare providers.

Republicans lately have seemed to be more susceptible to arguments driven by hospitals and by academic, intellectual-sounding arguments from the likes of the Center for Economic Policy and Research, that maybe Medicare Advantage isn’t actually advantageous over traditional fee-for-service Medicare. This is a major reversal from the era when the GOP was committed to fighting Obamacare because, among other things, it cut Medicare Advantage—which amounted to cutting Medicare for a ton of beneficiaries. A little caution might be warranted here, considering the very lefty philosophical and hardened financial interests at play in this debate.

Netanyahu, Israeli FM to Biden: We’re Destroying Hamas Whether You Like It or Not

Before we get to this direct rejection of the Biden/Blinken ‘credit’ argument, let’s go over the background that led to it. Under pressure from progressive anti-Semites in his party, Joe Biden growled yesterday about Israel’s supposedly “indiscriminate” bombing campaign in Gaza. His comments at a campaign event yesterday sent shock waves through the US media:

“Israel’s security can rest on the United States,” Biden stated during a campaign event Tuesday, as he touted his government’s strong support of Israel. …

“But they’re starting to lose that support by the indiscriminate bombing that takes place” in Gaza, Biden said, in a statement that implied Israel was needlessly targeting civilians.

The context of the event mattered in this case. Biden was in campaign mode, and as such, Biden apparently felt compelled to pander to his progressive wing on Israel. While agreeing that Hamas are “animals” and need to be held “accountable,” Biden then compared Israel’s campaign in Gaza to World War II, and claimed “Bibi” made the comparison:

It was pointed out to me — I’m being very blunt with you all — it was pointed out to me that — by Bibi — that “Well, you carpet-bombed Germany. You dropped the atom bomb. A lot of civilians died.”

I said, “Yeah, that’s why all these institutions were set up after World War Two to see to it that it didn’t happen again — it didn’t happen again. Don’t make the same mistakes we made at 9/11. There was no reason why we had to be in a war in Afghanistan at 9/11. There was no reason why we had to do some of the things we did.”

I’m not sure what point Biden thinks he was making. Is he criticizing the Allied war actions of World War II, which destroyed the Nazis and liberated half a continent? Would he have recommended cutting a deal with Hitler instead and leaving the Nazis in place? Is he criticizing Truman for dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? (As I explained in August, there were good reasons to make that choice, some of which apply in this conflict.) Does Biden think we “carpet-bombed” Afghanistan? If the answer to any of these is “yes,” then Biden is far more ignorant than even we assumed.

At any rate, it seems unlikely that Netanyahu actually made an argument based on “carpet-bombing,” because that is clearly not what the IDF is doing in Gaza. (That part smells like Biden’s typical self-serving fabulism.) The IDF has chosen to use ground troops and narrow targeting of Hamas-infiltrated infrastructure rather than use bunker-busters that would eliminate some of the risk to its own soldiers. Even the New York Times tacitly acknowledged the falsity of Biden’s claim in a rather useful deep-dive analysis of “proportionality” today. Steven Erlanger debunks the idea that “proportionality” has anything to do with equating body counts, as well as that “symmetry” is a legal requirement in wars, especially when one side starts it as part of an annihilation effort.

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Civilization Versus the New Nihilists
Americans must choose between civilization—or its destroyers

Nihilism is the religion of the Left. Anarchy is now at the core of the new Democratic Party.
If the Left wished radically to alter the demography of the U.S., it could have expanded legal immigration through legislation or the courts.
Instead, it simply erased the border and dynamited federal immigration law.

By fiat, nihilists ended the wall, and stopped detaining and deporting illegal aliens altogether.
Or was it worse than that when candidate Joe Biden in September 2019 urged would-be illegal aliens to “surge” the border?

As a result, through laxity and entitlement incentives, eight-million illegal entrants have swarmed the southern border under the Biden administration.
They are swamping border towns, bankrupting big-city budgets, and infuriating even Democratic constituencies.

The same nihilism applies to crime.

In the old days liberals gave light sentences to criminals or reduced bail. But today leftist prosecutors do not even seek bail. They hardly prosecute theft or random assaults.
Criminals are arrested and released the same day. Is the nihilist plan to destroy the entire body of American jurisprudence, and to ensure “equity” in being victimized?

Is the woke idea that all Americans—inclusive of diverse Beverly Hills elites, Hollywood celebrities, or members of Congress alike—must share victim equity, and thus experience first-hand street robbery, car-jacking, smash-and-grab, and home invasion?

The United States can produce annually more natural gas and oil than any nation on earth. It once pioneered nuclear power. It has vast coal reserves and sophisticated hydroelectric plants.

The old idea was to use these unmatched resources to transition gradually to other cleaner fuels such as hydrogen, fusion power, solar, and wind. That way consumers would still enjoy affordable energy. And the United States could remain independent of coercion by the oil-producing Middle East.

But that was not the nihilist way.

Instead, the left deliberately cut back on pipelines, new energy leases, and fracking. It bragged of an upcoming ban on fossil fuels. In drought-stricken, energy-short California, the state is blowing up, not building new dams.

Is the nihilist agenda to punish with bankrupcy the energy-using middle class?

Is the hope that Americans will have to beg the Saudis, Iranians, Venezuelans, and Russians to pump more of the hated goo for our benefit so we would not have to dirty ourselves helping ourselves?

When Joe Biden entered office in January 2021 the U.S. was naturally rebounding from more than a year of Covid-enforced lockdowns.

Overtaxed supply chains were still fragile. Pent-up demand was soaring. Consumers were flush with government cash. Trillions of dollars had been printed and infused into the economy to ward off a feared recession.

All economists advised not to increase the deficit, spike further consumer demand, and expand entitlements.

Instead the Left did just the opposite.

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December 14

557 – A severe earthquake in Constantinople damages the dome of Hagia Sophia.

1542 – Princess Mary Stuart becomes Queen of Scots at the age of one week on the death of her father, James V of Scotland.

1782 – The Montgolfier brothers test fly an unmanned hot air balloon in France; it floats over a mile and a half.

1799 – Former President and General of The Armies, George Washington dies, age 67, at his home, Mt. Vernon, Virginia.

1814 – During the War of 1812, the Royal Navy seizes control of Lake Borgne, Louisiana.

1819 – Alabama becomes the 22nd U.S. state.

1836 – The boundary dispute between Ohio and Michigan of the control of the mouth of the Maumee River into Lake Erie is resolved with both parties accepting Congress’ terms for admitting Michigan as a state.

1900 – Max Planck presents a theoretical derivation of his Black-body Radiation law within Quantum Mechanics to the German Physical Society in Berlin.

1902 – The Commercial Pacific Cable Company lays the first Pacific telegraph cable, from San Francisco to Honolulu.

1903 – The Wright brothers make a first unsuccessful attempt to fly the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

1907 – The Thomas W. Lawson, the largest sailing ship ever built, which was named after the American owner, runs aground and founders near the Hellweather’s Reef within the Isles of Scilly off Cornwall England, with the loss of the pilot and 15 seamen.

1911 – Roald Amundsen and his team of Olav Bjaaland, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, and Oscar Wisting, becomes the first men to reach the South Pole.

1940 –The Pu-238 isotope of Plutonium is first synthesized by physicist Glenn Seaborg at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory,  University of California, Berkeley.

1962 – NASA’s Mariner 2 probe becomes the first spacecraft to fly by Venus.

1964 – In the case of Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, the Supreme Court of the United States expands the definition of ‘Commerce between the States” ruling that Congress can use the Constitution’s clause to fight discrimination.

1972 –At 00:40 hrs EST, Apollo 17 Mission Commander Eugene Cernan enters the Lunar Module Challenger after the last of 3 lunar surface activities, becoming the last man to walk on the Moon.
At 17:55 hrs, EST, Challenger launches from the Moon to rendezvous with the orbiting Command/Service Module America.

1985 – Wilma Mankiller takes office as the first woman elected to serve as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

2012 – After murdering his mother at their home, a lone gunman murders 26 students and faculty at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown Connecticut before committing suicide a minute after Police arrive at the school.

2017 – The Walt Disney Company announces that acquires 21st Century Fox, including the 20th Century Fox movie studio, for $52.4 billion.

2020 -The Electoral College votes 306-232 to elect Joe Biden as President.

White House Hosts State Lawmakers, Launching ‘Safer States Agenda’

Approximately 100 state lawmakers were invited to the White House Wednesday for the official introduction of the Biden-Harris administration’s Safer States Initiative, which reportedly outlines “key actions states should take” to “reduce gun violence.”

The White House unveiled an eight-page “Safer States Agenda,” which includes the following recommendations:

  1. Establish a State Office of Gun Violence Prevention
  2. Invest in Evidence-informed Solutions to Prevent and Respond to Gun Violence
  3. Strengthen Support for Survivors and Victims of Gun Violence
  4. Reinforce Responsible Gun Ownership
  5. Strengthen Gun Background Checks
  6. Hold the Gun Industry Accountable

Essentially, it is Joe Biden’s gun control scheme repackaged from his 2020 presidential campaign.

There is very little in the plan about holding violent criminals responsible for crimes they commit, with or without firearms. Part of the Biden-Harris proposal is aimed at funding law enforcement efforts to “hold shooters and gun traffickers accountable.”

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Hunter Biden seeks dismissal of gun charges, saying law violates the Second Amendment
He’s accused of having a gun for 11 days in 2018, a period where he has acknowledged using drugs. It’s illegal for “habitual drug users” to own guns, but an appeals court has ruled that law unconstitutional.

Hunter Biden pushed back Monday against gun charges filed against him, challenging the case on multiple fronts as unconstitutional and politically motivated days after he was hit with new tax charges.

His defense attorney argued the gun case should be tossed out because an appeals court has found the law violates the Second Amendment under new standards set by the Supreme Court. Abbe Lowell also contended the charges against Hunter Biden violated immunity provisions that prosecutors agreed to in a plea deal they abandoned after Republicans slammed it as a “sweetheart deal.”

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For our fellow Shootists out there:

New Mexico Governor Pushing Ban on AR-15s, Other Semiautomatics

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) is pushing a ban on AR-15s and other semiautomatic rifles in an upcoming 30-day legislative session in her state.

The Santa Fe Reporter noted Grisham wants to do what Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) unsuccessfully attempted at the federal level. Heinrich, together with Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), put forward the Gas-Operated Semiautomatic Firearms Exclusion Act (GOSAFE), and it went nowhere.

Breitbart News reported the focus on the AR-15’s gas operation came some 64 years after the gun was designed to use spent gas from a shell casing to reset the bolt group and ready the gun for the next round. The rifle is still just a semiautomatic, firing one round per trigger pull just like a Glock or Smith & Wesson handgun, but the gas from a spent shell casing replaces recoil in working the action.

Grisham believes New Mexico lawmakers will be more open to banning an entire category of firearms — by highlighting gas operation, etc. — than Heinrich and Kelly’s federal colleagues were.

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham launches an effort to confront organized crime by convening a specialized commission of local prosecutors and leading law enforcement officials, on Wednesday, May 24, 2023, in Santa Fe, N.M. (AP Photo/Morgan Lee)

The Sante Fe Reporter quoted her saying, “Let’s try that vehicle in our own assault weapons ban in New Mexico. Because one thing I have that the senator doesn’t have is I’ve got a set of lawmakers that are more likely than not to have a fair debate about guns, gun violence, weapons of war, and keeping New Mexicans safe.”

Grisham made news on September 8, 2923, for issuing an executive order to ban concealed or open carry in larger cities like Albuquerque. Her ban also prohibited licensed concealed carriers from having their guns for self-defense.

On September 13, 2023, Breitbart News reported that U.S. District Judge David Herrera Urias granted a temporary injunction against Grisham’s ban. So Grisham amended her ban on concealed and open carry, saying it applied only to carrying a gun in parks and playgrounds, and on September 15, 2023, Urias allowed it to stand.

California Is Attempting an Expedited End Run Around the 2A

California is trying to sneak in a ruling that will exclude almost everyone except law enforcement from teaching a concealed carry class.

The California Department of Justice sent out a notification on Monday about some proposed changes in California’s concealed carry instructor qualifications. The changes might mean more than half of the current qualified instructors could no longer teach a concealed carry class in California.

Some instructors have told me they didn’t even get the email, and the deadline to voice any concerns or disapproval is this Friday. The DOJ will make the final decision about the rule change, and they will need no vote from the state legislature to pass it. This is being rushed through and will go into effect on January 1st.

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I Robot was supposed to be Science Fiction

Tesla unveils Optimus Gen 2: its next generation humanoid robot

Tesla has unveiled “Optimus Gen 2”, a new generation of its humanoid robot that should be able to take over repetitive tasks from humans.

Optimus, also known as Tesla Bot, has not been taken seriously by many outside of the more hardcore Tesla fans, and for good reason.

When it was first announced, it seemed to be a half-baked idea from CEO Elon Musk with a dancer disguised as a robot for visual aid. It also didn’t help that the demo at Tesla AI Day last year was less than impressive.

At the time, Tesla had a very early prototype that didn’t look like much. It was barely able to walk around and wave at the crowd. That was about it.

Tesla Optimus Humanoid robot

But we did note that the idea behind the project made sense. Of course, everyone knows the value of a humanoid robot that could be versatile enough to replace human labor cheaply, but many doubts it’s achievable in the short term.

Tesla believed it to be possible by leveraging its AI work on its self-driving vehicle program and expertise in batteries and electric motors. It argued that its vehicles are already robots on wheels. Now, it just needs to make them in humanoid forms to be able to replace humans in some tasks.

We did note that the project was gaining credibility with the update at Tesla’s 2023 shareholders meeting earlier this year.

At the time, Tesla showed several more prototypes that all looked more advanced and started to perform actually useful tasks.

In September, we got another Optimus update. In that report, Tesla said that Optimus is now being trained with neural nets end-to-end, and it was able to perform new tasks, like sorting objects autonomously.

Tesla Optimus Gen 2

Today, Tesla has released a new update from the Optimus program. This time, the automaker unveiled the Optimus Gen 2, a new generation of the humanoid robot prototype:

This version of the robot now features all Tesla-designed actuators and sensors.

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Al Gore Melts Down Over an “Inconvenient Truth” in X-Rant about UN Climate Summit Failure
The real “inconvenient truth”: The Iron Law of Electricity >>> Climate Crisis Narrative

I have been following the climate cult antics at the United Nations climate meeting in Dubai [Conference of Parties (CoP28)].

Even before the meeting began, I predicted it would be the biggest failure yet. I was wrong.

The staggering level of failure was beyond my ability to imagine, and I can imagine quite a bit. However, I did not count on pushback from the meat industry. And I didn’t foresee that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) would mount such a sweeping and effective counter-offensive from beginning to end of the meeting.

I noted that climate cultists John Kerry and Al Gore were attending in a desperate bid for relevance. As the conference wound down, Gore melted down in an X-rant about the upcoming failure of the summit to phase out fossil fuels.

It was glorious.


A rant like this deserves a good fisking, so I shall now fisk.

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