Comment O’ The Day

Let’s pause for a moment and consider how they are simultaneously blaming “ghost guns” (i.e. home-made firearms with no known manufacturer) at the same time they want to hold gun manufacturers liable for guns being used in crimes.

Statement by President Joe Biden on the Mass Shooting in Sacramento | The White House

Today, America once again mourns for another community devastated by gun violence. In a single act in Sacramento, six individuals left dead and at least a dozen more injured. Families forever changed. Survivors left to heal wounds both visible and invisible.

I want to thank the first responders in Sacramento, and all those across the United States, who act every day to save lives. We know these lives were not the only lives impacted by gun violence last night. And we equally mourn for those victims and families who do not make national headlines.

But we must do more than mourn; we must act. That is why my Administration has taken historic executive action to implement my comprehensive gun crime reduction strategy — from standing up gun trafficking strike forces to helping cities across the country expand community violence interventions and hire more police officers for community policing.

We also continue to call on Congress to act. Ban ghost guns. Require background checks for all gun sales. Ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Repeal gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability. Pass my budget proposal, which would give cities more of the funding they need to fund the police and fund the crime prevention and intervention strategies that can make our cities safer. These are just a few of the steps Congress urgently needs to take to save lives.

I suspect, not much, except blabber some more.

Putin Won’t Go, Russia Won’t Collapse—So What Will Biden Do About Ukraine?

Another séance with the ghost of Cardinal Richelieu explains Putin’s objectives in Ukraine: Russia will ruin and depopulate Ukraine, the way Richelieu reduced large parts of Germany to cannibalism during the Thirty Years War. Shortly after I conjured the spirit of Europe’s greatest (and nastiest) strategist, the Telegram channel of Russia’s most fanatic nationalist, Aleksandr Dugin, featured the item below:

NATO says the military phase of the conflict in Ukraine is far from over. Of course, no one will let Zelensky make peace.

Ukraine is not a subject, but an object, where the Zelensky regime is not an actor, but a tool.

Therefore, it is necessary to take into account the intentions of the enemy and use the period of the military phase of the operation to continue the methodical destruction of the military infrastructure of Ukraine, and taking into account NATO’s course of prolonging the conflict, it is advisable to consider moving on to the destruction of industrial facilities in the territories of Ukraine that lie outside our interests, especially paying attention to those objects that Ukraine, for obvious reasons, will not be able to restore. Later, such a convenient opportunity to complete the deindustrialization of Ukraine may not present itself.

An “opportunity to complete the deindustrialization of Ukraine.” Putin isn’t defeated or baffled or confused. He’s turning the crank on the meatgrinder. One doesn’t have to read too far into these lines to conclude that Putin hoped that Zelensky would cut a deal on his terms once Russia invaded, but when Zelensky refused to cut a deal, Putin moved to Option B, which is to erase most of Ukraine from the face of the earth. That’s not as difficult as it sounds. Putin will keep the bits he wants in the Southeast (Donetsk and Luhansk), leave the West to factory farming, and pound the rest to rubble with artillery and air power.

Ukraine’s national population of 45 million had fallen to just 33 million by 2020 because half the working-age population left. Another 5 million refugees have fled, and millions more will leave before Russian cannons fall silent. There won’t be enough working-age Ukrainians left to begin reconstruction. Putin claimed on Feb. 23 that the West intended to turn Ukraine into a NATO missile platform with a 300-mile distance to Moscow. If he can’t get Ukraine to accept neutrality with Russian control over its southeast provinces, he’ll eliminate the threat Richelieu-style.

It’s horrible. But what’s going to stop Putin? To flatten Ukrainian cities, all the Russians need is artillery. All the Javelin anti-tank missiles in the world won’t do any good.

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Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 3.

Immediate items to watch

  • Russian forces will likely complete their withdrawal from Kyiv along the Sumy axis in the coming days and will probably abandon their remaining positions around Konotop and Sumy thereafter.
  • Russian troops around Kharkiv will likely continue to focus on supporting the shift of the main effort via Izyum toward the southeast and may pull back from the immediate environs of the city.
  • Russian and proxy forces will attempt to increase the scope and scale of offensive operations to complete the linkup between the Kharkiv-Izyum axis and occupied Luhansk.
  • Russian forces will likely secure Mariupol in coming days, and may attempt to launch renewed offensive operations northwest from the city in an effort to seize Donetsk Oblast.

Ukraine has won the Battle of Kyiv. Russian forces are completing their withdrawal, but not in good order. Ukrainian forces are continuing to clear Kyiv Oblast of isolated Russian troops left behind in the retreat, which some Ukrainian officials describe as “lost orcs.” Russian forces had attempted to conduct an orderly retreat from their positions around Kyiv with designated covering forces supported by artillery and mines to allow the main body to withdraw. The main body of Russian troops has withdrawn from the west bank of the Dnipro and is completing its withdrawal from the east bank, but the retrograde has been sufficiently disorderly that some Russian troops were left behind.

The war is far from over and could still turn Russia’s way if the Russian military can launch a successful operation in eastern Ukraine. The current line of Russian occupation in southern and eastern Ukraine is still a significant gain in Russian-controlled territory since the start of the war. If a ceasefire or peace agreement freezes a line like the current front-line trace, Russia will be able to exert much greater pressure on Ukraine than it did before the invasion and may over time reassemble a more effective invasion force. Ukraine’s victory in the Battle of Kyiv is thus significant but not decisive.

The disorder of the Russian withdrawal suggests that at least some of the units now reconcentrating in Belarus and western Russia will remain combat ineffective for a protracted period. Russian troops attempting to refit after pulling back from around Kyiv will likely have to reconsolidate into their units, identify which soldiers are still present, sort out their equipment and assess its combat readiness, and generally reconstitute before they can even begin to receive replacements and new equipment and prepare for further combat operations.

Russian forces are likely abandoning the east bank of the Dnipro fully as well, withdrawing from around Chernihiv to the north and from Brovary to the east. Russian troops will likely seek to hold a salient around Konotop and Sumy long enough to allow their forces to complete their retrograde from near Kyiv but will then likely withdraw back to Russia from almost all their positions west of Kharkiv.

Moscow is attempting to concentrate reserves and some units pulled from the fight around Sumy to reinforce its offensive operations in the east but is encountering serious challenges in that effort. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on April 3 that Russian soldiers are resisting and in some cases refusing orders to enter or re-enter the war effort. The General Staff asserted that the two battalion tactical groups (BTGs) that moved from South Ossetia toward Donbas less than a week ago refused to fight and that plans to move them back to South Ossetia are in train.[1] The General Staff claimed that about 25 soldiers of the Russian 31st Separate Airborne Brigade refused orders to re-enter combat citing excessive losses.[2] The General Staff also asserted that commanders at various echelons in the Russian 3rd Motorized Rifle Division have refused to participate in combat operations.[3] We have no independent verification of these reports, but they are credible in light of the losses Russian forces have suffered and of independent reports of Russian soldiers killing commanders and commanders committing suicide from earlier in the conflict.

Russian efforts to advance its offensive operations in eastern Ukraine made limited progress in the past 24 hours. Fighting continues in Mariupol and on the Izyum-Severodonetsk axis.

Key Takeaways

  • Ukraine has won the Battle of Kyiv, and Russian forces are completing their withdrawals from both the east and the west banks of the Dnipro in disorder.
  • Russian forces retreating from around Kyiv will likely need considerable time before they can return to combat.
  • Incidents of refusals of orders to engage in combat operations among Russian units continue and may lead to the redeployment of two BTGs that had arrived near Donbas within the last few days to their home stations in South Ossetia.
  • The continued existence of an independent Ukrainian state with its capital in Kyiv is no longer in question at this time, although much fighting remains and the war could still turn Russia’s way.

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Hmm. seems the answer is: Have a big enough gun, know how to use it, and if you decide a bear needs shooting, SHOOT THE BEAR AND KEEP SHOOTING UNTIL IT STOPS AND GOES AWAY, OR IS DEAD, or you are.

Lessons From Handgun Defense Failures Against Bears

In 2016, this correspondent and others started searching for incidents in which a handgun was fired to defend against a bear or bears, and failed to stop the attack by driving off or killing the bear.

Access to a defensive tool, such as a shotgun, rifle, bear spray,  handgun, hatchet, or knife all present similar problems. Therefore we only considered cases where a handgun was actually fired. If we were looking at the effectiveness of bear spray, we would only look at cases where the bear spray was actually sprayed.

To prevent selection bias, all cases where a handgun was fired defensively against a bear or bears, which could be documented, were included.

People on the Internet claimed handguns were ineffective in defending against bears. Over years, we found 120 cases where handguns were effectively used in defense against bears. We found three failures.

The three failures included failures against the three bear species found in North America, one each of polar, grizzly, and black bears.

Here are the details of the three cases, presented in chronological order, followed by analysis and commentary:

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Question O’ The Day. I think the answer just might be ‘Reverse Gears!‘

California has toughest U.S. gun laws. After Sacramento shooting, what else can lawmakers do?

They’ve banned high-capacity magazines and cracked down on assault weapons. They’ve made it so Californians have to pass a background check to purchase a gun and ammunition. They’ve prohibited buyers from having ammo or “ghost” gun parts shipped directly to their homes.
When it comes to gun laws, California’s legislators have passed some of the most stringent regulations in the country, checking off nearly every box on national gun control advocates’ wishlist.
A mass shooting early Sunday that left six dead and 12 wounded just a block from the Capitol — the very building where these laws were enacted — immediately prompted new calls for legislation to curb gun violence, from California elected officials and gun-control advocates across the nation.
“The scourge of gun violence continues to be a crisis in our country, and we must resolve to bring an end to this carnage,” Gov. Gavin Newsom, who’s already signed 15 gun-control laws, said Sunday in a prepared statement.
The call for action on the federal level reached as far as the White House.
“Ban ghost guns,” President Joe Biden said, expressing his sorrow for the Sacramento victims. “Require background checks for all gun sales. Ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Repeal gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability.”
But what else can California’s lawmakers do to restrict guns that they haven’t already done — and have their laws survive the inevitable challenge by Second Amendment advocates?
Even before Sunday’s shooting, Democratic legislators planned to do more. One new bill, introduced by state Senator Bob Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, would give citizens the “private right of action” to sue gun manufacturers and suppliers. The bill, SB 1327, is modeled after an anti-abortion law enacted in Texas.
State Sen. David Min, D-Irvine, introduced Senate Bill 915, which would prohibit the sale of firearms or ammunition on state property, effectively ending gun shows on 73 state-owned fairgrounds. Previous efforts on a blanket-ban on gun shows at fairgrounds have failed.
“These are all practical actions we can take today to stop gun violence,” Hertzberg said Sunday.
But the fact is, the recent legislation pending in California is relatively modest compared to some of the sweeping reforms that gun-control advocates are demanding in other states and on the federal level — simply because most of the toughest curbs are already part of California law.

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One more indicator that SloJoe isn’t all there – if he ever really has been – and that someone else must be running things since it’s clear he’s doesn’t have the mental acuity to do it.

If they didn’t have double standards………..

Good!

NBC Report – Florida Teachers Who Promote Gender and Sexuality Lessons With Kindergarten Students Are Quitting in Protest

It looks like the Disney corporation may be getting a new batch of applicants as NBC reports that LGBTQ elementary school teachers, those who generally advocate for the promotion of kindergarten gender and sexuality discussions, are quitting their jobs in Florida.

As shared by fourth grade lesbian teacher Nicolette Solomon (pictured below), “so many kids” throughout her elementary school — even those she did not teach directly — came out to her.”

Apparently, if the LGBTQ teachers are correct, there are thousands of lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender and queer elementary aged students in Florida entering the school system every year, and the grooming teachers are now panicked they will not be able to guide them in their sexual exploration.

[Tweet Link – Story Link]

(Via NBC) – On Monday, the American Federation of Teachers, the country’s second largest teachers labor union, slammed the measure, calling it an “assault” on students and teachers.

“Make no mistake, this bill will have devastating real-world consequences—especially for LGBTQIA+ youth who already experience higher rates of bullying and suicide,” Randi Weingarten, the group’s president, said in a statement. “And for teachers and school staff who work tirelessly to support and care for their students, this bill is just another gross political attack on their professionalism.” (more)

Yikes, I don’t know what is more alarming…  Teachers quitting because they are not allowed to give sexual education discussions to Kindergartners, or the realization that it’s not an uncommon practice for teachers to talk to kindergarten students about their sexuality.

I had no idea the schools were filled with inbound confused 4 to 9 year olds looking for teachers to help them navigate their private parts.  I always thought the teachers were asking for boxes of Kleenex because the kids had runny noses.

As any honest medic will tell you, masking to to keep you from spreading your viruses & germs, not to keep you from catching someone else’s If you’re not sick, masks are useless.

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Virginia: Child COVID Cases Have Dropped by 93% Since Youngkin Lifted School Mask Mandates

Newly reported cases of COVID-19 in Virginia’s children have dropped by a whopping 93% since Governor Glenn Youngkin ordered an end to school mask mandates upon taking office this January.

A graph from the Virginia Department of Health charting newly reported COVID-19 cases in Virginians aged 0-19 was recently released showing the wild success of Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin’s executive order bringing an end to Virginia’s school mask mandates, which were enforced on children against the will of their parents.

Despite hysterical warnings from those who claimed countless teachers and children would die were face freedom restored to Virginia’s youth, newly reported COVID cases in the state’s 0-19 age bracket have dropped by a whopping 93% since Governor Youngkin’s executive order restoring parental rights went into effect. Though a number of left-wing school districts resisted Youngkin’s order, claiming that state law allowed them the right to forcibly cover kids’ faces, Youngkin later signed a bill passed by the state’s legislature that made face freedom in schools the law of the land.

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I’m sorry, when something is pushed this hard (now a 5th shot?) with so much goobermintbux being made off it, and the CEO of one of the companies making the money makes such statements, it pegs both my Horse and Bull $#!+ meters. Excuse my French.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla Describes Vaccine Skeptics as ‘Criminals’

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla described people who question his company’s experimental vaccine as “criminals” during an interview earlier this week. The Pfizer CEO recently lobbied the FDA to approve a fifth shot in the fall, which is expected to be approved.

An interviewer first drew attention to the “challenges” being faced by big tech companies in combatting “vaccine information” during a sit-down with Bourla. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe I’ve heard you talk about those who would deliberately peddle misinformation as ‘criminals.’ Is that something that you stand by?” Bourla was asked.

“Yes, I do,” replied the Pfizer CEO. “Because they are literally [costing] lives. They know what they are saying is a lie, but they do it despite that.” Bourla then referenced a vaccine injury story and characterized all vaccine injuries as “lies.”………….

There’s no need to arrest the crim. ‘He’s dead, Jim.’

Intruder fatally shot at home in St. Paul

There are no arrests and Saint Paul Police are investigating after a man was fatally shot early this morning (Fri) while attempting to break into a home in the city’s Hamline-Midway neighborhood. Responding officers found a 56-year-old man waiting for them down the street, who told them a man in his 30s kicked in his front door and threatened his daughter, with whom the intruder had a relationship. The resident was taken to police headquarters, questioned and released. This is Saint Paul’s 13th homicide of the year.

‘Close Combat Force‘ is an Army euphemism for MOSs 11B Infantry Rifleman, 12B Combat Engineer (they go out and find mines) and 19D Cavalry Scout, and there are a whole lot more than 17,052 of them, so it looks like this is – maybe – a preliminary roll out for the Ranger Regiment’s, 82nd and 101st division’s combat troops.

The US Army Program Acquisition Costs FY2023 handout notes that FY2023 sees the start of:

…funding for the procurement and fielding of 1,704 NGSW-AR, which is the planned replacement for the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) within the Close Combat Force; Procurement and fielding of 15,348 NGSW-R which is the planned replacement for the M4A1 Carbine within the Close Combat Force.US Army Set To Procure 30,000 Next Generation Squad Weapons in 2023

The whole presentation: Continue reading “”

Armed school staff bill advances in Ohio statehouse

Constitutional Carry may be the biggest Second Amendment-related bill to win approval in Ohio this year, but hopefully it won’t be the last. Nearly four months after the Ohio House approved a measure that would once again allow for school districts across the state to have trained and vetted volunteer staff serve as an armed first line of defense against attacks on school grounds, the state Senate is now taking up the issue.

House Bill 99 received its first Senate hearing Wednesday in the Veterans and Public Safety Committee, with bill sponsor Rep. Thomas Hall, R-Madison Township, saying local schools need to be able to make decisions to protect students.

“At the end of the day, what we are talking about here is empowering our local schools to make the best decision for their students and educators so that our children feel safe and are safe in Ohio schools,” Hall said. “We have worked tirelessly on this bill to do our part in protecting our schools and our communities.”

For several years districts across the state were able to have armed school staff in place with no issue, but after several parents sued the Madison School District (with the help of Everytown for Gun Safety), the Ohio Supreme Court ultimately ruled that under current state law all armed school staff must undergo more than 700 hours of law enforcement training.

Under HB 99, those training standards would be dropped to a much more reasonable 20 hours, with 4 hours of annual training. Those volunteering to protect their school don’t need to waste hours of their time learning about processing evidence, defensive driving, and a host of other activities that police officers regularly perform but armed school staff members would never have cause to do. These staff members aren’t cops, and they’re not supposed to be. They only reason they’re carrying on campus is to stop a deadly attack aimed at students or staff members. Period.

The duty of those volunteers was one of the points raised in opposition to the bill by one police union in Ohio, whose representative warned that teachers may have to abandon their students if there is a threat on campus.

“If a school employee, regardless of her position, is carrying a firearm, they are considered on duty according to [the Ohio Revised Code],” Mike Weinman testified on behalf of the Fraternal Order of Police of Ohio. “When armed, the teacher’s primary responsibility is no longer teaching but an armed first responder. She will be required to abandon her students and respond to whatever threat may be in the building at a moment’s notice.”

Six school districts and two county sheriff’s departments, however, testified in favor of the bill. “Trust the locally elected officials to do their jobs and govern on behalf of the people who elected them and put them in their positions. Trust that they care for the safety and well-being of their students and staff,” Ira Wentworth, superintendent of Indian Valley Local Schools, testified. “The school boards and those staff members who are selected and volunteer to conceal and carry are not the bad guys; they are the good guys wanting to protect others from the bad guys. Put your trust in the good guys.”

There are currently thousands of Ohio educators who have undergone the three-day FASTER training course and who were already carrying on campus before the state Supreme Court decision disarmed them on the job, and as far as I’m aware of there had been no issues reported in any of the districts that had set up an armed school staff policy. Many of these school districts are rural or smaller in size, and simply don’t have the budget to have a school resource officer in every building. In some districts it might take police ten minutes or more to arrive on campus, even in the most dire of circumstances, and that’s far too long to wait for an armed response when there’s someone actively attacking the students inside the school.

HB 99 would restore some sanity to the current law, and would be a huge boost to student safety in those districts that choose to have armed school staff members in place. I’m really glad to see the state Senate start to move on this bill, and I hope that, just like Constitutional Carry, it too will soon be sent to Mike DeWine’s desk for his signature.

Observation O’ The Day
You might conclude rational thinking is outside the area of expertise of anti-gun people. The evidence does support that hypothesis.
Another hypothesis, also supported by the same data, is that they are liars who will say whatever they think will work to achieve then objectives and at least one of their objectives is to disarm their intended victims. That would be us.
—Joe Huffman

Biden Supports Gun Rights – Just Not for Americans

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This is the same Joe Biden, after all, who orchestrated a catastrophically mismanaged surrender of Afghanistan to ragtag nomads with small arms.  Moreover, one would think that a man who came of political age during the Vietnam War would possess a better working understanding of the value of small arms in fighting off a far superior military.  Then there’s the American Revolution itself, in which patriots with small arms defeated the world’s most powerful military.

But here’s the most bizarre aspect of all.

The White House concedes that Biden personally interrupted delivery of 28 Polish MiG-29 fighter jets repeatedly requested by Ukraine in its desperate fight for survival.  According to his logic, supplying Ukrainians with deadly small arms, antitank weaponry and other deadly devices are far more effective against the Russian military than advanced fighter aircraft.   As reported by Politico, the Biden Administration determined that, “the warplanes wouldn’t materially improve Ukraine’s chances.”………

 

 

BLUF:
As a direct result of having an ersatz president without any semblance of worthwhile goals or inspired vision, daily life in America is now close to an unmitigated disaster. Absent America’s clear leadership on the world stage, uncertainty and potential catastrophe loom everywhere, around every corner because foreign adversaries are emboldened by our weakness. We are living through the debacle of not having a real president, someone with a clear plan to better the country.

Biden, the Ersatz President

The United States does not have a real president right now. There is an individual named Joe Biden who shows up occasionally and sits in the Oval Office, but in no way can he be considered to be “President” in the traditional understanding of that term. Biden is an ersatz president.

An American president is essentially the CEO of the federal government. He or she sets the overall strategy and direction of the country, outlines and articulates its major objectives and manages the subordinate elements that create the actual policy in order to achieve the big-picture goals laid out by the president. Like any CEO, that person likely doesn’t personally have the specific technical knowledge and expertise on a micro level in a given subject area that his/her subordinates have (nor should a CEO or president get bogged down in that kind of attention-diverting minutia), but the CEO must have an overriding vision of their company’s intended direction and be able to see how the various component parts work together in the proper proportion and timing needed to achieve the stated goals. That holds true as well for the President of the United States.

Donald J. Trump was the prototypically ideal president in terms of setting clear achievement objectives for the country (securing the southern border, becoming energy independent, rebuilding our military, renegotiating advantageous international trade agreements, stopping China from taking unfair advantage of America in trade matters, getting NATO to pay more of its share of its defense needs, etc.) and putting in place the laser-focused personnel required to execute the plan.  This was classic large-scale business-style vision and management at its best.

Putting aside the unfounded, irrational personal animosity that his political opponents felt for him for having defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 and for being direct, rough-edged and unapologetic in his dealings with the liberal media, recalcitrant foreign adversaries and feckless erstwhile “allies,” President Trump’s clear-eyed ambitions for the country led to a very targeted effort with unrelenting emphasis on the ultimate goal.

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Apparently Ukraine sent two (2)  – likely captured – Mi-24 helicopter gunships 25 miles inside Russia to blow up an oil tank farm in Belgorod last night.

Remember, in war, the enemy gets a vote

Observation O’ The Day

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The largest study of modern society and firearms is in progress here in the U.S. It’s called ‘constitutional’, or ‘permitless’ carry.
So far it’s a grand success. The data seen provides such a conclusion, and really, no further study is needed.
To put it simply, self defense with firearms in the hands of common people works (for everyone but government and criminals, that is)
But since that doesn’t fit the narrative, it can’t be correct.