December 5, 1992, President George Bush orders the U.S. military to join the U.N. in a joint operation known as Operation Restore Hope, with the primary mission of restoring order in civil war torn Somalia.

January 20, 1993, Bill Clinton, takes office as President.

June 5 1993, 24 Pakistani soldiers under U.N. command are ambushed and killed in an area of Mogadishu controlled by of Mohammed Farah Aidid

June 6, 1993, the U.N. Security Council issues Resolution 837, calling for the arrest and trial of those that carried out the ambush

August 22, 1993,  after several attacks on U.S. forces, President Clinton orders an elite military strike force to deploy to Mogadishu to capture Aidid.

August 23, 1993, Task Force Ranger arrives at Mogadishu and begins operations

October 3, 1993, TF Ranger conducts a raid into the Bakaara market in downtown metropolitan Mogadishu in order to capture high value targets associated with Aidid. The raid, expected to be of a short duration, devolves into a protracted overnight fight with the Task Force suffering multiple dead, wounded, missing and captured .

Veterans reflect on Battle of Mogadishu

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A Case Report: Multifocal Necrotizing Encephalitis and Myocarditis after BNT162b2 mRNA Vaccination against COVID-19

The current report presents the case of a 76-year-old man with Parkinson’s disease (PD) who died three weeks after receiving his third COVID-19 vaccination.
The patient was first vaccinated in May 2021 with the ChAdOx1 nCov-19 vector vaccine, followed by two doses of the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine in July and December 2021. The family of the deceased requested an autopsy due to ambiguous clinical signs before death.
PD was confirmed by post-mortem examinations. Furthermore, signs of aspiration pneumonia and systemic arteriosclerosis were evident. However, histopathological analyses of the brain uncovered previously unsuspected findings, including acute vasculitis (predominantly lymphocytic) as well as multifocal necrotizing encephalitis of unknown etiology with pronounced inflammation including glial and lymphocytic reaction. In the heart, signs of chronic cardiomyopathy as well as mild acute lympho-histiocytic myocarditis and vasculitis were present.
Although there was no history of COVID-19 for this patient, immunohistochemistry for SARS-CoV-2 antigens (spike and nucleocapsid proteins) was performed. Surprisingly, only spike protein but no nucleocapsid protein could be detected within the foci of inflammation in both the brain and the heart, particularly in the endothelial cells of small blood vessels.
Since no nucleocapsid protein could be detected, the presence of spike protein must be ascribed to vaccination rather than to viral infection. The findings corroborate previous reports of encephalitis and myocarditis caused by gene-based COVID-19 vaccines.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Asked About Hurricane Ian Looters, Notes ‘You Loot, We Shoot’ Warnings.

Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis has his hands full with the aftermath of Hurricane Ian. It pretty much trashed southwest Florida and damaged homes all the way across the central part of the state.

As business owners and residents begin the massive cleanup process, he’s stressing law and order. And when discussing those who would take advantage of the destruction, the Governor noted that property owners had written “You loot, we shoot” on the plywood used to board up their buildings.

Florida Politics covered it . . .

As Florida recovers from Hurricane Ian, Gov. Ron DeSantis issued a moral plea against looting that appears to have some firepower behind it.

Speaking near Fort Myers in the leveled community of Matlacha on Friday, the Republican Governor relayed one sight he saw in Punta Gorda in neighboring Charlotte County the day prior.

“They boarded up all the businesses, and there are people that wrote on their plywood, ‘you loot, we shoot,’” DeSantis said. “At the end of the day, we are not going to allow lawlessness to take advantage of this situation. We are a law-and-order state, and this is a law-and-order community, so do not think that you’re going to go take advantage of people who’ve suffered misfortune.”

You don’t hear many Governors mention “you loot, we shoot” these days. But DeSantis isn’t like many governors and given the reality on the ground, there’s no reason to play around with vultures who would take advantage of a mass tragedy.

The story continued . . .

The Governor also commented on the grit and resilience of the community and called for “all hands on deck” regarding the rule of law. However, his dispatch was choppy, making the overall statement unclear.

Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno said he had spoken at length to Attorney General Ashley Moody, who was also on the scene.

 “We are not going to tolerate — and I mean zero tolerance — when we say anyone that thinks they’re going to thrive on the residents of this county or state when we just took a horrific hit, I can guarantee you that is not going to happen,” Marceno said.

Scam artists will likely not get off easy either, judging from the law-and-order tone from the state officials.

 

The snowflakes writing the story to wrung their hands over DeSantis’ choice of words.

“You loot, we shoot,” isn’t even new in the hurricane context, used when Hurricane Harvey struck Houston and in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. But others see the phrase as stoking violence and division.

Violence and division? The only division will be between looters and law-abiding residents and business owners.

SAF Sues to Block Connecticut’s ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban

From the Second Amendment Foundation . . .

The Second Amendment Foundation today filed suit in federal district court, challenging the ban on so-called “assault weapons” in Connecticut, and asking for declaratory and injunctive relief.

SAF is joined by the Connecticut Citizens Defense League and three private citizens, Eddie Grant, Jr., Jennifer Hamilton, and Michael Stiefel. Named as defendants are Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, plus James Rovella, commissioner of the state’s Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection; Chief State’s Attorney Patrick Griffin and several other officials. Plaintiffs are represented by attorneys Doug Dubitsky of North Windham, Conn., Craig C. Fishbein of Wallingford, Conn., and Cameron L. Atkinson of New Haven.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut. 

Connecticut’s ban on so-called “assault weapons” dates back to 1993. The state criminalizes the possession, sale or transfer of such firearms—about 160 guns named in four subsections—even though many of these guns are in common use across the country. 

“The ban was previously upheld, but that was before the Supreme Court handed down its Bruen ruling earlier this year,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “That landmark decision eliminated the ‘two-part test’ which included an interest-balancing provision that didn’t pass constitutional muster.”

According to the lawsuit, the current ban deprives “responsible citizens of their Second Amendment rights under the guise of providing a panacea for social problems that Connecticut remains unable to solve.” 

Gottlieb said there is no historical foundation for such a ban, and the complaint actually details the historical development of firearms including repeating rifles developed and manufactured in Connecticut and elsewhere. The lawsuit also mentions incidents in which modern semiautomatic rifles were used by private citizens to stop violent crimes.

Update: Man Who Ran Over Republican Teen in North Dakota Now Charged With Felony Murder

Charges have been upgraded for Shannon Brandt, the suspect who allegedly ran over 18-year-old Cayler Ellingson on September 18 for being a Republican in McHenry, North Dakota.

According to local news, Foster County State’s Attorney Kara Brinster filed new criminal charges against Brandt including Murder, which is a Class AA Felony, and Duty in Accident Involving Death or Injury, a Class B Felony. The charges of vehicular homicide were dropped in lieu of the upgrade.

Early on the morning of Sunday, September 18, Brandt is accused of running down Ellingson, of Grace City, North Dakota, after a street dance held at a local bar. Brandt told State Radio that the young man was part of a “Republican extremist group” and that his targeting of Ellingson was politically motivated.

There is “no evidence” Ellingson was part of any such group, according to North Dakota police. Witnesses have said that the two did not engage in a verbal dispute.

New details emerged from the new filings, as Brandt called 911 and spoke with dispatcher, or State Radio, and said, “I just wanna ask you a question, am I going to go to prison?”

Brandt also said “he [Ellingson] wasn’t going to let me go, I hit him” and “he’s subdued.”

“He can’t do anything to me now,” Brandt told the dispatcher.

An autopsy showed that there were no acceleration marks or skid marks near the location of the 18-year-old victim’s body, indicating no rushed or threatened vehicle acceleration.

Further, the autopsy indicates that Ellingson’s primary injuries were caused from the SUV running over him, not from an initial impact.

The 18-year-old called his mother as Brandt chased him in his SUV to ask if she knew Brandt. She told her son she was on her way to get him directly before Brandt allegedly murdered the young man by running him down.

Man Exchanges 3D Printed Guns for $21,000 at New York Gun Buyback Program

Since 2019, New York Attorney General Letitia James has been encouraging residents of her state to participate in her office’s gun buyback program, wherein the government offers money for firearms, “no questions asked.”

At an event held in Utica, NY in August, one man allegedly gamed the system, walking away with thousands of dollars after turning in over 100 guns he made using his 3D printer.

According to WKTV, the man, known only as “Kem,” had seen posts online about people pulling off such stunts, and decided to try it for himself.

Using his $200 3D printer, Kem quickly birthed a battery of plastic firearms, and drove six hours from his home to Utica, where the buyback program was holding an event.

“I 3D-printed a bunch of lower receivers and frames for different kinds of firearms,” said Kem.

Kem explained that upon arriving in Utica, he was asked how many guns he wished to turn in, to which he replied, “110.”

After spending the rest of the day negotiating with staff, Kem was presented with 42 gift cards, each worth $500, making the total payout $21,000.

“I’m sure handing over $21,000 in gift cards to some punk kid after getting a bunch of plastic junk was a rousing success,” Kem told WKTV, adding that, “gun buybacks are a fantastic way of showing, number one, that your policies don’t work, and, number two, you’re creating perverse demand.”

He argued that programs such as James’ “don’t actually reduce crime whatsoever.”

According to James’ office, the August 27 buyback event “resulted in the collection of 296 guns, including 177 ghost guns, 42 long guns, 41 handguns, 33 non-working guns, and 3 assault rifles.”

Ghost guns are firearms that are unregistered and unregulated, often built by users themselves. Kem’s 3D-printed weapons would fit into this category.

Since 2019, James’ program has resulted in the buyback of 3,500 guns, and she has no intention of stopping any time soon.

In a statement to KWTV, her office slammed Kem for his actions, and explained that they have “adjusted [their] policies to ensure that no one can exploit this program again for personal gain.”

Intruder Shot during Home Invasion in Troup County

COLUMBUS, Ga. (WTVM) – Your home is your safe place, but it also can be targeted by criminals. Now, a Troup County man is in a Columbus hospital tonight recovering from a gunshot wound.

According to the Troup County Sheriff’s Office, a man broke into a home and soon found out, the hard way, that he picked the wrong house.

“The homeowner confronted him. She had a handgun and she fired one round striking him in the lower abdomen,” says Sgt. Stewart Smith, Troup County Sheriff’s Office.

According to Sgt. Smith, 36-year-old Chadwick Lyons forced his way into a home on Ginger Circle in the Young Acres subdivision around 2 A.M. Wednesday.

Sgt. Smith says the Homeowner, a woman, in the home With two children, heard a voice in the hallway and Smith says she had every right to protect her family.

Rachael Kramer lives nearby, she says she would have done the same thing.

“It’s just me and Charlie, so if I her another voice in my home, I’m going to do the same thing. Shoot first and ask questions later,” says Kramer.

“You certainly have the right to have a gun in your home, the right to have gun on your person, the right to have gun in your car. It’s certainly your right to defend yourself in a situation like this,” says Smith.

Smith says after Lyons got shot he ran over to the neighbor’s house for help.

“Troup County 911 received a call from a resident that a man had come to their home had been shot,“ says Smith, “He was seeking assistance, they didn’t know at the time what had occurred.”

Troup County Sheriff’s Office says before the home invasion, Lyons broke into at least 4 cars in the neighborhood.

“I’m making sure my doors are locked, my screen doors are locked. You’re going to have to make a lot of noise to get in my house, you’re going to at least wake me up,” says Kramer.

What’s interesting is how the blame gets assigned to the federal, state, or territorial level depending on where the Republicans are.

Do Republicans Cause Hurricanes?
The corporate media gears up to give DeSantis the Katrina treatment.

With the grim inevitability of Greek tragedy, three things always happen when a hurricane makes landfall in the United States. First, the storm will be touted by the corporate media as evidence that anthropogenic climate change presents an existential threat to humanity and the planet. Second, anyone who dares question the accuracy of this claim will be either ignored or denounced as a dangerous anti-science “denier.” Third, if the hurricane happens to hit a state with a GOP governor, he will be blamed for causing any resultant death and destruction.

In the case of Hurricane Ian, all three commenced more than 24 hours before the storm actually arrived in Florida. On Tuesday, CNN talking head Don Lemon contradicted Jamie Rhome — the acting director of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Hurricane Center — about the effect of climate change on the storm’s intensity. Rhome tried to stay on topic and cautioned Lemon against linking any single weather event to climate change. Lemon nonetheless insisted on providing this brilliant scientific analysis: “Well, listen, I grew up there and these storms are intensifying. Something is causing them to intensify.”

Also on Tuesday, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Deanne Criswell told White House reporters that she had concerns about the complacency of some Floridians who hadn’t experienced a major hurricane, but she characterized FEMA’s interaction with state officials as “excellent.” Predictably, Politico misrepresented the administrator’s comments in order to create a false narrative about Florida’s allegedly “lax response” to storm warnings. Later, a “reporter” hit Gov. Ron DeSantis with this: “FEMA Administrator Criswell said today that she acknowledged concerns about Florida’s, as it was said, ‘lax response’ to the storm so far.” DeSantis immediately shut him down:

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Give me a break. That is nonsense. Stop politicizing, OK? Stop it. We declared a state of emergency when this thing wasn’t even formed.… Honestly, you’re trying to attack me I get, but you’re attacking these other people who have worked very hard. So, that’s just totally false. I don’t think we have ever, certainly since I’ve been governor, declared a state of emergency this early.

Politico later executed a stealth edit, replacing “lax response” with a more accurate description of Criswell’s comments. If the reporter’s question sounds familiar, it’s not an illusion. The “lax response” trope has been used by the media for decades against GOP governors and presidents when no genuine fault can be found with their reactions to natural disasters. Remember when President George W. Bush was blamed for the Katrina disaster after routing more funds to Louisiana for civil works projects than any other state? Never mind that Louisiana public officials misappropriated much of the money that was meant to reinforce the levees.

Meanwhile, back in Florida, DeSantis was taking incoming fire from the Fourth Estate as the storm was about to make landfall. The Weekly Dish’s Andrew Sullivan was generous enough to offer this inspired insight: “DeSantis now being tested as a governor not a troll.” This is unusually trite for Sullivan. His effusions, while frequently vicious and sometimes a little crazy, are usually a lot more original. Where this storm is concerned, though, he has fallen in with the theme adopted by most of the corporate media during the past 48 hours — Hurricane Ian is a timely test of DeSantis’ leadership. Here’s an example of the genre from TIME:

Ron DeSantis is about to face the most consequential 72 hours of his political career.… DeSantis, however, remains largely untested. For three years, he’s been able to pick culture-war fights with teachers and Walt Disney World without the pesky distraction of serious governing. He doesn’t have a lot of the compassionate chits that his predecessors had stored up in advance.

If the author of this piece believes that DeSantis has been “largely untested,” he should consider leaving journalism. In reference to hurricanes, DeSantis dealt effectively with the aftermath of Hurricane Michael, a Category 5 storm that hit the Florida Panhandle just before he was elected in 2018. Moreover, he responded to COVID-19 more effectively than any other large-state governor in the country, despite Florida’s huge percentage of elderly — and therefore vulnerable — residents. He has rarely received credit for that by corporate media, which will doubtless bury any good news about his response to Hurricane Ian.

As bad as the media coverage has been on Hurricane Ian, however, the dumbest response to Florida’s latest storm came from Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). During a discussion with the renowned climate experts of Morning Joe, she delivered herself of this gem: “We just did something about climate change for the first time in decades. That’s why [Democrats] have to win this as that hurricane bears down on Florida. We’ve got to win in the midterms.” Thus, ipso facto, Republicans do cause hurricanes and DeSantis must get the Katrina treatment to prevent him and the GOP from destroying Gaia.

Study: Drink 2 to 3 cups of coffee a day for longer life, better heart health.

Drinking two to three cups of coffee a day is associated with a longer lifespan and lower risk of heart disease compared with avoiding the brew, a new study suggests.

The findings from the large, observational study applied to different preparations: ground, instant and decaffeinated.

All coffee varieties “were associated with equivalent reductions in the incidence of cardiovascular disease and death from cardiovascular disease or any cause,” the study’s primary author, Peter M. Kistler, said in a news release.

The findings were published Tuesday in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology.

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“The results suggest that mild to moderate intake of ground, instant and decaffeinated coffee should be considered part of a healthy lifestyle,” said Kistler, head of clinical electrophysiology research at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia.

Kistler, who has joint appointments as professor of medicine at the University of Melbourne and Monash University, is described as “an international leader” in cardiac arrhythmia research.

Aside from caffeine, coffee contains 100-plus biologically active components, and these non-caffeinated compounds were likely responsible for the “positive relationships” observed between coffee drinking, cardiovascular disease and survival, he said.

Citing a dearth of information on how different coffee preparations affect heart health and survival, the researchers explored the associations between types of coffee and arrhythmias, coronary heart disease, congestive heart failure, ischemic stroke and death.

They used data on nearly 450,000 adults between the ages of 40 and 69 in the U.K. Biobank. All were free of arrhythmias or other cardiovascular disease at baseline.

Participants completed a questionnaire on how many cups of coffee they drank each day and whether they usually sipped instant, ground, such as cappuccino or filtered, or decaffeinated.

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They then were grouped into six daily intake categories, ranging from none to more than five cups of coffee per day. Over a follow-up period that averaged 12 1/2 years, the investigators compared coffee drinkers to non-drinkers.

They used medical records and death records to track the incidence of arrhythmias, cardiovascular disease and death, after adjusting for age, sex, ethnicity, obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, obstructive sleep apnea, smoking status, and tea and alcohol consumption, the release said.

Overall, 27,809 participants, or 6.2%, died during follow-up.

All types of coffee were linked with a reduction in death from any cause. However, the greatest risk reduction occurred from drinking two to three cups of coffee per day. Compared to no coffee drinking, it was associated with a 14%, 27% and 11% lower likelihood of death for decaffeinated, ground and instant preparations, respectively.

Cardiovascular disease was diagnosed in 43,173, or 9.6%, of participants during follow-up. All coffee types were associated with reduced heart disease but, again, the lowest risk was observed in people drinking two to three cups a day.

That, compared to no coffee drinking, was associated with a 6%, 20%, and 9% reduced likelihood of cardiovascular disease for decaffeinated, ground and instant, respectively.

Ground and instant coffee, but not decaffeinated, also was associated with a reduction in arrhythmias, including atrial fibrillation, the researchers said.

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Rob Romano

The lawsuit complains about an advertisement for a handguard:

Families of three Uvalde shooting survivors sue school district, gun makers, city officials and others

Image
“brazen and provocative marketing”Image
The lawsuit says that AR-15s “are unsuited for home defense, recreation, or casual use and possession.”Image
The lawsuit says the gun store should have known one of its customers would be a mass shooter because they were “always alone and quiet”:Image
According to the lawsuit, Daniel Defense’s guns are weapons of war, but their advertisements are misleading because they use military imageryImage
The lawsuit says that “AR-15 style rifles, rapid-fire trigger systems, and high-capacity magazines are used by most often by young adults in mass shootings.”Image
The lawsuit says that “AR-15 style rifles destroy human bodies, limbs, organs, and tissue, pulverize the human body, explode, and cause immediate death.”Image

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