Today, January 12
1616 – Portuguese captain Francisco Caldeira Castelo Branco founds the city of Belém, Brazil on the Amazon River delta.
1792 – President Washington appoints Thomas Pinckney as the first U.S. minister to Britain.
1915 – The United States House of Representatives rejects a bill to require states to give women the right to vote.
1932 – Hattie Caraway becomes the first woman elected to the United States Senate.
1942 –President Roosevelt creates the National War Labor Board
1962 – U.S. Army piloted helicopters transport a battalion of South Vietnam Army troops on an assault against a Vietcong stronghold during Operation Chopper, the first major U.S. combat mission in the war
1966 – President Johnson states that the United States should stay in South Vietnam until Communist aggression there is ended.
1967 – Dr. James Bedford becomes the first person to be cryonically preserved with intent of future resuscitation.
1991 – The U.S. Congress authorizes the use of American military force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait.
2005 – NASA launches the Deep Impact probe to study comet 9P/Tempel 1 by shooting a 220 lb copper impactor that, at a impact velocity of 33,400 fps hit the comet with a kinetic energy of over 5 tons of TNT.
I have a theory why it feels like everything is getting worse (because it is). It’s deliberate and malicious.
For millennia, the gap in quality of life between the elite of society (the nobility) and the peasants was enormous.
The quality, quantity, and diversity of food, clothing, and other luxuries they had was unmatched by the peasants who lived in squalor and starvation.
But the advent of technology and capitalism changed that. In the last 200 years, the peasants have been playing catch-up.
The quality of life of the average person has increased greatly, closing the gap between the peasants and the elite. The average person lives better than a king two centuries ago, ample food, closets full of clothes, comfortable housing, the ability to travel the world.
This drives the elite mad. How dare we the people live a quality of life nearly as good as they do. Sure they can do things like afford $100 steaks at fancy restaurants, but does it taste 10x better than the $10 steak you can afford?
They have a luxury brand car, but the comforts of it are not substantially better than the comforts that come in a new middle-class car (Bluetooth infotainment, heated everything, etc.). It is an affront to them that you can live almost as well as they do.
They need to look down on us. They need to feel elevated over us. So they have been systematically reversing the trend of the last 200 years to increase the quality of life gap between us and them. They want to make us poorer so they can feel their wealth more acutely.
Their fancy home and nice steak will taste better to them when you live in a shoebox apartment pod with limited climate control heating your synthetic bug protein steak over ab electric range.
Understand that this is the whole reason for the existence of exclusive brands. Their products are not better, their value comes from only a small group being able to buy them. They want quality of life to be exclusive to the elite so it’s more precious to them.
You are being made to suffer on purpose.
Whether or not you agree with what’s going on, telling the whole world what your military plans are is beyond stupid. This had to have been ordered by SloJoe’s political puppet masters as some kind of stupid minded gambit.
Dearest Russia, here's an update on the who, what, when and where from our side. Sincerely, Da GoVeRnMeNt
— Timmay (@teamrainolds) January 11, 2023
The 3rd Circuit Considers Whether Nonviolent Crimes Justify the Loss of Second Amendment Rights
Because of a misdemeanor welfare fraud conviction, Bryan Range is no longer allowed to own guns.
Back in 1995, Bryan Range pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining $2,458 in food stamps by misrepresenting his income. He returned the money, paid a $100 fine and $288 in court costs, and served three years of probation.
Although Range did not realize it, that Pennsylvania misdemeanor conviction also came with a lifelong penalty: He lost his constitutional right to keep and bear arms. His case, which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit will hear next month, poses the question of whether that policy, which prohibits gun ownership by millions of Americans with no history of violence, violates the Second Amendment.
Federal law generally makes it a felony to purchase or possess a gun if you have been convicted of a crime punishable by more than a year of incarceration. When a state classifies a crime as a misdemeanor, that disqualification applies if the maximum penalty exceeds two years.
Range’s crime was punishable by up to five years in prison, which meant he was no longer allowed to buy or own a firearm. When he tried to buy a deer-hunting rifle in 1998, he failed the background check.
Range figured that must have been a mistake. His wife bought him a rifle, then bought him another after the first one was destroyed in a house fire. Range later tried again to buy a gun but was again turned away, which prompted him to take a closer look at the federal prohibition, which is commonly described as applying to “felons.”
After discovering that he was a “prohibited person” even though he had not been convicted of a felony, Range sold his hunting rifle to a gun dealer. But for that law, he says, he would have kept the rifle and might also have bought a shotgun for home defense.
Resident shoots, kills suspected burglar who kicked down door of North Side apartment
SAN ANTONIO – A man shot and killed a suspected burglar who kicked down the door to his apartment north of downtown on Tuesday morning, according to San Antonio police.
The incident happened at about 7 a.m. in the 500 block of W. Euclid Avenue, near San Pedro Avenue.
According to an SAPD spokesperson, an apartment resident said a man kicked down the door in an attempt to burglarize it. Since the door was bolted, police said, that man had to use immense force to kick down the door.
The resident pulled out a gun and shot the intruder, police said. The suspected burglar was pronounced dead at the scene, and his name and age were not released.
Police said the resident acted in self-defense, and there have been calls to the apartment in the past.
The incident occurred near Advanced Learning Academy, which is part of the San Antonio Independent School District.
A spokesperson for SAISD said the campus is open and SAISD police officers are present to help with traffic and student drop-off.
January 11
630 –Muhammad and his followers conquer the city of Mecca held by the Quraysh clans.
1759 – The first American life insurance company, the Corporation for Relief of Poor and Distressed Presbyterian Ministers and of the Poor and Distressed Widows and Children of the Presbyterian Ministers (now part of Unum Group), is incorporated in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1805 – The Michigan Territory is created.
1861 – Alabama secedes from the United States.
1879 – After the rejection of an ultimatum sent a month earlier to Zulu king Cetshwayo, British High Commissioner Sir Bartle Frere orders Lord Chelmsford and his army to invade Zululand in Natal, South Africa.
1908 – The Grand Canyon National Monument is created.
1923 – Troops from France and Belgium occupy the Ruhr area to force Germany to make its World War I reparation payments.
1927 – Louis B. Mayer, head of film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), announces the creation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, at a banquet in Los Angeles, California.
1935 – Amelia Earhart becomes the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California.
1949 – The first “networked” television broadcasts take place as KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania goes on the air connecting the east coast and midwest programming.
1961 – The Throgs Neck Bridge over the East River, linking the New York City boroughs of The Bronx and Queens, opens.
1964 – Surgeon General of the United States Dr. Luther Terry, M.D., publishes a report saying that smoking may be hazardous to health.
1995 – Intercontinental de Aviación Flight 256, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9, crashes during its approach to Cartagena Airport, killing all but 1 passenger, a 9 year old girl who only sustained minor injuries, of the 51 passengers and crew on board
1996 – Shuttle Endeavour is launched on mission STS-72 to retrieve the Japanese Space Flyer Unit orbital experiment satellite, launched in March of the previous year.
2003 – Due to the scandal of Chicago Police Detective Commander Jon Burge torturing criminal suspects, Illinois Governor George Ryan commutes the death sentences of 167 prisoners on Illinois’s death row.
2020 –Municipal health officials in Wuhan, China announce the first recorded death from COVID-19.
Yup! pic.twitter.com/AOWDwfqXlM
— Sean D Sorrentino (@SorrentinoSean) January 10, 2023
The Bruen decision’s ‘Text-History-Tradition’ mandate will go down as ‘the’ way we get 18 USC §922 (o) – the ‘Hughes amendment’ ban on new manufacture of automatic firearms that can be possessed by the private citizenry ruled unconstitutional.
Wyoming Man Sues For Right To Make His Own M16 Machine Gun
A Wapiti man who wants to make a machine gun is suing the U.S. government for denying his application to do so, saying a federal anti-machine gun law violates his Second Amendment right.
Jake Stanley DeWilde filed a federal complaint in the U.S. District Court for Wyoming last week, asking for the court to issue a declaration against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The Argument
DeWilde’s complaint says that on Dec. 8, 2022, he submitted an ATF form asking to make and register an M16 machine gun. But 12 days later, the ATF denied his application, citing federal law that forbids both the transfer and possession of machine guns.
The statute doesn’t apply to U.S. government and military forces or machine guns owned before 1986.
The lawsuit relies on case law from 2008, District of Columbia vs. Heller, and 2022 case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. vs. Bruen.
These cases together indicate that guns cannot be considered “dangerous and unusual,” and therefore legitimately unlawful if the guns are in “common use,” DeWilde says in his complaint.
DeWilde argues that because the M16 is in “common use” by the U.S. military, it should be made legal for the nation’s citizenry. He also argues that his Second Amendment right has been violated.
“Plaintiff desires to own an M16 machine gun for all lawful purposes, including defense of hearth and home and militia functions,” reads the complaint, which then asks the U.S. District Court for Wyoming to proclaim the ATF and the nation’s attorney general in violation of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
DeWilde filed the lawsuit on his own behalf without legal counsel.
The military has used 62 grain 5.56mm RRLP – Reduced Ricochet Limited Penetration – frangible bullets for both CQB live fire practice on steel targets, and ship boarding operations (where unplanned holes in hulls are a bad thing) for a long time. The ballistic gel tests I’ve seen show the ammo should be quite effective if used for home defense.
Frangible Ammo for Self-Defense and Concealed Carry
(and the last shall be first….)
American Heart Association: mRNA Shots Linked to Myocarditis
The American Heart Association (AHA) has published research that suggests mRNA shots are linked to cases of myocarditis.
The AHA published a bombshell report on a study conducted by Harvard Medical School.
In the study, Harvard Med researches discovered a link between the spike antigen in the shot itself and myocarditis.
The research suggests that the spike antigen could be a trigger for myocarditis, which can be fatal.
Myocarditis is inflammation of the heart muscle (myocardium), according to Mayo Clinic.
Severe myocarditis weakens the heart so that the rest of the body doesn’t get enough blood.
Clots can form in the heart, leading to a stroke or heart attack.
The newly published research from Harvard indicates that the widespread rollout of mRNA Covid vaccines could be linked to the recent spike in myocarditis cases in the past two years.
While government agencies and their allies in the corporate media and Big Tech have attempted to deny the links, many are hailing the new research as a breakthrough.
Today, January 10
49 BC – In violation of Roman law, Julius Caesar, with his 13th Legion, crosses the Rubicon river, at the time the nation’s northern border, starting civil war.
1776 – In Philadelphia, Thomas Paine publishes his pamphlet Common Sense, which advocates independence from Great Britain for the Colonies.
1791 – During the early days of the Northwest Indian War, Dunlap’s Station on the banks of the Great Miami river, about 17 miles from Cincinnati, is taken under siege by combined scouts of several indian tribes before relief troops from Fort Washington, in Cincinnati, arrive the next morning.
1812 – The steamboat New Orleans completes the first voyage on the Ohio River, and the lower Mississippi River, arriving in New Orleans 82 days after departing from Pittsburgh.
1861 – Florida becomes the third state to secede from the Union.
1920 – The Treaty of Versailles takes effect, officially ending World War I.
1946 – The U.S. Army Signal Corps successfully conducts Project Diana, bouncing radio waves off the Moon and receiving the reflected signals.
1985 –Sandinista Daniel Ortega becomes president of Nicaragua while American policy continues to support the Contras in their revolt against the communist Nicaraguan government.
2019 – 13 year old Jayme Closs is found alive in Gordon, Wisconsin, having been kidnapped 88 days earlier from her parent’s home after they were murdered.
Mother shot intruder dead after he forced his way into Hammond home
HAMMOND – A convicted felon was shot to death after he forced his way into a house while armed with a shovel and lug wrench, deputies said.
According to the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office, deputies found Robert Rheams, 51, dead at the home on Klein Road after responding to a reported home invasion early Sunday morning. Deputies later learned the victim was there with her two young children when Rheams got into the home.
The department said the woman confronted Rheams and fatally shot him.
Rheams was out on parole at the time of the shooting, having served 20 years in prison for armed robbery. Deputies also believe he tried to carjack someone just hours before the shooting.
No one was arrested, but prosecutors are expected to review the case.
Chief Deputy Jimmy Travis said in a statement that it appeared to be a case of “a homeowner exercising second amendment rights to protect herself and her children.”
an oldie, but goodie
Just one example of how the government could lose a civil conflict
Shock the system
WRITTEN BY: BOB – JAN• 15•13
Just one example of how the government could lose a civil conflict
I keep reading comments from arrogant progressives who delight in the assault on gun rights led by their elected and appointed allies in the recent weeks since a madman gunned down innocent children in a school in Newtown, CT.
They seem to think they can impose any indignity and infringement they want without repercussion, because the President of the United States is one of them, he’s the leader of the nation’s military, and he can therefore win any battle against America’s freedom fighters who might rise up to restore their constitutional rights currently under assault.
They don’t understand asymmetrical warfare in the slightest, much less how it would be waged here. Let me give you just one small example of how lone wolves or small teams can strike well beyond their size against a near defenseless leviathan.
After the Dot Com bubble burst in the early 2000s, I took a job in upstate New York for a subcontractor of Central Hudson Gas and Electric. I was part of a crew sent out to map electrical transmission line power poles and towers via GPS, check the tower footings for integrity, check the best routes for access, etc.
January 9
1431 – The trial of Joan of Arc begins in Rouen
1788 – Connecticut becomes the fifth state to ratify the United States Constitution.
1793 – Jean Pierre Blanchard is the first person to fly in a balloon in the United States.
1822 – The Portuguese prince Pedro I of Brazil decides to stay in Brazil against the orders of the Portuguese King João VI, beginning what will eventually result in Brazilian independence.
1857 – A 7.9 magnitude earthquake on the southern end of the San Andreas fault hits Central and Southern California, causing the most property damage at Fort Tejon and killing a woman in nearby Gorman in a building collapse.
1861 – While Mississippi becomes the second state to secede from the Union, cadets from the South Carolina Military Academy – now The Citadel – fire upon the SS Star of the West in Charleston harbor as it arrives to resupply the garrison at Fort Sumter. Some scholars see this as the actual first shots fired in the War Between the States.
1916 – The Gallipoli campaign ends with the last Allied forces evacuated from the Dardanelles
1918 – In Bear Valley Arizona, elements of the U.S. Army’s 10th Cavalry Regiment and a small number of Yaqui indians engage in the last official battle of the American Indian Wars
1945 – The United States Army 6th Army begins the invasion of Lingayen Gulf in the Philippines
1962 – NASA announces plans to build the C-5 rocket launch vehicle, then known as the “Advanced Saturn”, to carry human beings to the Moon.
1991 – In Geneva Switzerland, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz meet in a final attempt to find a peaceful resolution to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
1992 – Working at the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico, astronomers Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail make the first confirmed observations of extrasolar planets orbiting the pulsar PSR 1257+12 in the constellation Virgo
1997 – Comair Flight 3272, an Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia, crashes in Raisinville Township, Monroe County, Michigan, while on approach for landing at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, killing all 29 passengers and crew aboard.
2015 – The moslem terrorist perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris earlier are both killed by during a gunfight with French police in Dammartin-en-Goële
Pro-Bolsonaro protesters storm Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court, presidential palace.
RIO DE JANEIRO — Supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro who refuse to accept his election defeat stormed Congress, the Supreme Court and presidential palace Sunday, a week after the inauguration of his leftist rival, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.Thousands of demonstrators bypassed security barricades, climbed on roofs, smashed windows and invaded all three buildings, which were believed to be largely vacant on the weekend. Some of the demonstrators called for a military intervention to either restore the far-right Bolsonaro to power or oust Lula from the presidency.
Hours went by before control of the buildings on Brasilia’s vast Three Powers Square was reestablished, with hundreds of the participants arrested.
In a news conference from Sao Paulo state, Lula accused Bolsonaro of encouraging the uprising by those he termed “fascist fanatics,” and he read a freshly signed decree for the federal government to take control of security in the federal district.
“There is no precedent for what they did and these people need to be punished,” Lula said.
TV channel Globo News showed protesters wearing the green and yellow colors of the national flag that also have come to symbolize the nation’s conservative movement and were adopted by Bolsonaro’s supporters.
The former president has repeatedly sparred with Supreme Court justices, and the room where they convene was trashed by the rioters. They sprayed fire hoses inside the Congress building and ransacked offices at the presidential palace. Windows were broken in all of the buildings.
Bolsonaro, who flew to Florida ahead of Lula’s inauguration, repudiated the president’s accusation late Sunday. He wrote on Twitter that peaceful protest is part of democracy but vandalism and invasion of public buildings are “exceptions to the rule.”
Police fired tear gas in their efforts to recover the buildings, and were shown on television in the late afternoon marching protesters down a ramp from the presidential palace with their hands secured behind their backs. By early evening, with authorities’ control of the buildings restored, Justice Minister Flavio Dino said in a news conference that roughly 200 people had been arrested and officers were firing more tear gas to drive away lingering protesters.
But with the damage already done, many in Brazil were questioning how the police had ignored abundant warnings, were unprepared or were somehow complicit.
Lula said at his news conference there was “incompetence or bad faith″ on the part of police, and that they had been likewise complacent when Bolsonaro supporters rioted in the capital weeks ago. He promised those officers would be punished and expelled from the corps.
The incident recalled the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump. Political analysts have warned for months that a similar storming was a possibility in Brazil, given that Bolsonaro has sown doubt about the reliability of the nation’s electronic voting system — without any evidence. The results were recognized as legitimate by politicians from across the spectrum, including some Bolsonaro allies, as well as dozens of foreign governments.
Unlike the 2021 attack in the U.S., few officials were likely to have been working in the Brazilian Congress and Supreme Court on a Sunday.
U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters that the riots in Brazil were “outrageous.” His national security adviser Jake Sullivan went a step further on Twitter and said the U.S. “condemns any effort to undermine democracy in Brazil.”
Biden later tweeted that he looked forward to continuing to work with Lula, calling the riots an “assault on democracy and on the peaceful transfer of power in Brazil.”
British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly tweeted: “The violent attempts to undermine democracy in Brazil are unjustifiable. President @LulaOficial and the government of Brazil have the full support of the UK.”
Earlier videos on social media showed a limited presence of the capital’s military police; one showed officers standing by as people flooded into Congress, with one using his phone to record images. The capital’s security secretariat didn’t respond to a request from The Associated Press for comment about the relative absence of the police.
“Brazilian authorities had two years to learn the lessons from the Capitol invasion and to prepare themselves for something similar in Brazil,” said Maurício Santoro, political science professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. “Local security forces in Brasilia failed in a systematic way to prevent and to respond to extremist actions in the city. And the new federal authorities, such as the ministers of justice and of defense, were not able to act in a decisive way.”
Federal District Gov. Ibaneis Rocha confirmed on Twitter he had fired the capital city’s head of public security, Anderson Torres. Local media reported that Torres is currently in the U.S.
The office of Lula’s attorney general asked the Supreme Court to order Torres’ imprisonment.
Bolsonaro supporters have been protesting Lula’s electoral win since Oct. 30, blocking roads, setting vehicles on fire and gathering outside military buildings, urging the armed forces to intervene. The head of Brazil’s electoral authority rejected the request from Bolsonaro and his political party to nullify ballots cast on most electronic voting machines.
“Two years since Jan. 6, Trump’s legacy continues to poison our hemisphere,” U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, who chairs the Senate’s foreign relations committee, tweeted, adding that he blamed Bolsonaro for inciting the acts. “Protecting democracy & holding malign actors to account is essential.”
Cori Bush reveals that when Democrats talk about race, they simply mean party
Democratic Rep. Cori Bush (MO) wants you to know that Republican Rep. Byron Donalds (FL) does not count as black.
FWIW, @ByronDonalds is not a historic candidate for Speaker. He is a prop. Despite being Black, he supports a policy agenda intent on upholding and perpetuating white supremacy.
His name being in the mix is not progress—it’s pathetic.
— Cori Bush (@CoriBush) January 4, 2023
That’s the only interpretation of her comment. Donalds has been nominated to be speaker of the House. Regardless of the circumstances, and regardless of what you think of Donalds’s politics, that’s historic.
At least, this was the rule when Democrats were nominating their first black man or first woman to be president.
“Everybody ought to celebrate it, Republican or Democrat alike,” Democrat John Kerry proclaimed after Clinton won the nomination. “It’s a breakthrough.”
This was always a lie, I wrote after Giorgia Meloni and Rishi Sunak got no grand congratulations on their elections in Italy and the United Kingdom, respectively.
“When they said we should celebrate racial diversity and historic firsts, what they really meant was: ‘We should celebrate the Left’s wins and come up with excuses to call the Right racist or sexist.’”
We know for a fact that Democrats and liberals use the charge of racism dishonestly as a cudgel — as a way to shut up political enemies and increase the cost of opposing them.
Recall how liberals wrote in private emails they expected only their allies to see: “Take one of them … who cares — and call them racists.”
“What is necessary,” liberal journalist Spencer Ackerman explained, “is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [face] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear.”