Question O’ The Day
‘If gun control works so well, how does this happen?’

Violent Crimes Up 60% in LA According to Latest LAPD Data Since 2019
There has been an increase in the levels of violence and and firearm use during robberies

During a Los Angeles Board of Police Commission meeting earlier this week, LAPD Chief Michel Moore revealed that violent crimes have risen exponentially in the past year, moving the city closer to San Francisco in terms of the highest crime rates in the country.

According to the LAPD, citywide robberies are up 18% compared to this time last year, and up 5% compared to 2020. City wide robberies with a firearm also went significantly up, climbing 44% from this time last year, 57% from 2020, and 60% compared to 2019. While 36% of robberies and 74% of all robberies as part of the increase from last year used a firearm, the LAPD also got into specifics, such as noting that those who wore expensive jewelry in  public have been targeted more often in armed robberies.

“Over the course of this year, the Department has experienced an increase in robberies taking place in various communities in the City of Los Angeles,” the LAPD said in a press release on Tuesday. “Most concerning is that there has been an increase in the levels of violence used during these robberies and the frequency in which a firearm was used. During the Board of Police Commission meeting on March 22, 2022, Chief Moore discussed citywide robbery statistics, crime prevention techniques, situational awareness, and mitigation.”

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The Embarrassment In Chief

Genuine leaders never have to draw attention to how good their quality of leadership is.

Likewise terrible leaders almost always have crutches they lean on to hoist themselves upon to look like they’re  leading.

This weekend was a case study in both.

After ending the somewhat mystical trip *President Biden made to NATO this week he decided to pay the troops a “surprise visit.”

He immediately gave a bizarre speech to men and women in uniform, broke all military protocol and insulted them in the mess hall, and issued a proclamation about regime change.

Meanwhile a former uniformed Captain in the US Army was busy in another struggle to pursue excellence, chase improvement, and to conduct one’s self with such discipline and effort that they literally slept that night with no regret.

Biden told the troops he leads that “When they go to Ukraine soon, and some of them had already been there, that they were going to see women stand in the middle of… er in front of a damn tank… and say ‘I’m not leavin’, I’m holding’ my ground… they’re incredible.”

Aside from the fact that our policy is that we are not sending our troops into Ukraine, it’s likely he pulled the rest of that made up imaginary scenario from stuff he saw on TV and or was from a dream that was caused by some undigested beef from the night before.

The other leader, when a camera was on him early in the week, had taken the moment to acknowledge the effort of those he labored against. “They were really tough,” he admitted. He then proceeded to give 100% of the credit to the people he leads, “but my guys, they worked so hard, and they’ve grown up so much in the past 10-12 days, and I just couldn’t be prouder. I kept thinking to myself ‘Holy Mackerel! I get to lead these guys.”

 After Biden’s speech it was time to eat and upon entering the mess hall, he wandered over to a table, saw a box of pizza, proclaimed “hey look the pizza’s here.” He then opened it, his shaky grip waving a piece back and forth he lifted it to his lips and scarfed it. The only problem being that in the military the officers eat last and the higher the rank the longer you wait. And as the commander in chief no one out-ranked him. The shock and dismay by the troops in the room was captured on video and in pictures that flooded social media.

Meanwhile as the other leader was preparing his young men for their next challenge, the most serious they had faced yet, they were effusive to the camera about their leader’s example to them. They spoke of his personal commitment to helping them become better men in all of life—not merely the pursuit of their established goal. And to a man each of them said that the success in their present challenge was driven by a desire to honor him, for his lifetime of pouring out that good example to generations of men.

Before boarding Air Force One to return to the United States, speaking on Polish soil, Biden free formed this proclamation, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” It was a reference to Putin and openly disputed current policy. But even if it is or was in the process of becoming policy one would think it pretty stupid to openly say it. Especially so when the named paranoid dictator already suspects it to be the aim of the US.

Meanwhile the other leader, former United States Army Captain, and the winningest coach in college basketball’s history, Mike Krzyzewski, when asked his strategy to defeating Michigan State, Texas Tech, and Arkansas in back to back difficult tests in this year’s March Madness, would only talk publicly about the need to respect their opponent and to use grit and smarts to out play them.

The fact of the matter is that “Coach K” has on every occasion his team has won the national championship given all the credit to his players. And in every major loss on the national stage he’s shoulder all of the blame and responsibility for not preparing them well enough.

With Biden every tiny success comes from his own genius, his storied toughness, his impressive ability to do things that no one else has ever seemingly done. (Even if most of them never happened.)

And in the middle of one of the most miserable administrations we the American people have lived through he blames everyone except the very policies he’s put in place that has created the national malaise he ushered in.

Sadly we are losing the humble faithful soldiers like Mike Krzyzewski on the national stage. His enduring excellence has produced 15 ACC Tournament Championships, 13 Final Fours, 11 Coach of the year honors, 9 Gold Medals and 5 national championships with one more shot dangling before him.

Instead we’re stuck with a man who’s been in politics roughly the same length of time that the Coach has been coaching and as his own former boss would say should never be “underestimated when it comes to the ability to ‘mess’ things up.”

Character, humility, and service to others.

I know which of these two men I want my sons to emulate.

Well, until the next one. Because if there’s one thing learned, it’s that the next war will be different than can be imagined, or ‘properly’ prepared for. That’s why you always hear ‘they trained to fight the last war’

Ukraine Changes the Face of War Forever

There’s a powerful David vs. Goliath lesson emerging from Russia’s brazen, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine that should give deep pause to global superpowers who still think they can simply muscle the world into any shape they want.

Every Russian tank that gets fried in Ukraine is sending the message that traditional armies can no longer expect to dominate simply because they have more troops, weapons, and money. Russian armored vehicles are falling victim to Next Generation Light Anti-Tank Weapons (NLAWs), which can be carried by individual soldiers, unslung in seconds, and deployed with little training and fatal accuracy. There are credible reports that Russia has already lost $5 billion worth of military equipment in a month of fighting in Ukraine. The human cost for Russia is even more staggering: Nearly 10,000 soldiers have been killed in action, including at least five generals.

That’s the reality of contemporary warfare: Smaller, nimbler groups fighting back effectively against lumbering, dumb relics of the past. Despite being the fifth largest fighting force on the planet and starting the war with five times the number of active military as Ukraine, Russia has been stymied in what virtually all observers expected to be a cakewalk.

This isn’t to say that Russia isn’t also inflicting massive, horrific violence against Ukraine—or that it won’t prevail in this conflict, especially the longer things drag on. But this war underscores what James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg called the changing “logic of violence” and “the diminishing returns to violence” in their prophetic 1997 book The Sovereign Individual.

As weapons have become smaller, cheaper, more effective, and more widely dispersed, it’s harder and harder for old-style militaries and countries to quickly and effectively achieve their objectives through brute force as they meet resistance at every turn. That resistance includes “information warfare”—which includes hacking and cyber attacks—but also the use of social media, which Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy has excelled at to project an aura of invincibility and to cast the conflict in stark terms of good vs. evil.

This lesson shouldn’t be new to Americans, as our failures over the past two decades in Afghanistan and Iraq underscored the new reality that old-school invasion and occupation is more expensive and temporary than it is quick and effective. But Russia’s incompetence drives home in graphic detail to us—and, one hopes, to the Chinese officials supposedly eyeing an invasion of Taiwan—that even if Goliath does take out David, the price is too high and the victory too transient to bother undertaking.

If the collapse of the Soviet Union—that gargoyle incarnation of belief in top-down authority, power, and decision-making—was the beginning of the end of the 20th century’s romance with the nation-state, then Russia’s blundering in Ukraine and the United States’ disasters in central Asia and the Middle East may be its epitaph.

The future belongs not to the ignorant armies of the night who seek to command and control but to those who embrace and empower the decentralization of weapons, technology, information, currency, and individual ingenuity and courage.

Lasting COVID legacy: a nation of rulers, not laws

SACRAMENTO – “The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced,” noted the late musician and satirist Frank Zappa. I often think of that snarky comment as I write about the sausage-making process in city councils, state legislatures and the federal government. Did I mention that California’s state government has 518 agencies, boards and commissions?

Our system of checks, balances, more checks, additional balances, impact reports, legal challenges, voter initiatives, regulatory rulemakings and administrative hearings frustrates people who want to “get something done.” Americans spent $14 billion on the 2020 election cycle to influence political outcomes – and that was just for the presidential and congressional races.

I once ran a modest state bill to reduce the insanely onerous licensing regulations for people who shampoo hair at salons. After months of hearings and debate, the Assembly defeated it for going too far. That explains the public’s desire to cut through the red tape and, as Arnold Schwarzenegger once promised, “blow up the boxes” of government.

Yet after COVID-19, it’s obvious our democratic system of lawmaking is, as Winston Churchill put it, “the worst form of government, except for all the others.” Given the choice between a system resembling a Rube Goldberg cartoon (with his bizarre and overly complex contraptions designed to complete simple tasks) and one that’s streamlined and efficient, I’ll take Goldberg’s vision any day.

As we saw throughout the country but in California in particular, governors were happy to dispense with the usual checks and balances and impose rules by executive order and fiat. Some initial rules were defensible during a public-health crisis, but it wasn’t long before elected officials operated like czars – imposing illogical and contradictory restrictions that made no rhyme or reason.

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The Spread of Constitutional Carry Has Dealt the Moms and Everytown Their Biggest ‘L’ Yet.

A little over a year ago, I wrote about the amazing progress constitutional carry had made, though not without a number of failed efforts. The total at the time was 18 states, something that seemed unimaginable just a few years earlier. It wasn’t long ago that there were still fights to move no-issue states into the may-issue column, and may-issue states to shall-issue. No-issue is now ostensibly down to just a single state.

In other words, in the not-so-olden days, being able to carry, even with a permit, was a fight. Now an amazing amount of headway has been. With Indiana’s governor signing constitutional carry into law this week, we’re up to 24 states, making constitutional carry the most common model in the United States (it now far outnumbers shall-issue, may-issue, and no carry).

About this time last year, though, things didn’t quite look as optimistic. Yes, a few states, including “better late than never” Texas, had barely passed permitless carry laws. But Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown civilian disarmament subsidiary was only too happy to gloat about defeating constitutional carry bills in 15 states . . .

 

Now, a year later, things aren’t nearly as much fun for Everytown. We “gun extremists” managed to get the legislatures and the governors of ten of those fifteen states to pass constitutional carry either later last year, or this year. And, the legislative season isn’t over. Georgia seems poised to be next, and others may yet follow this year.

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The White House staff has to continually ‘Clean Up’ after SloJoe.
So, who’s really in charge and running things?
It sure appears that Biden isn’t.

White House Rushes To Clean Up Disastrous Remarks Biden Made About Putin During Speech.

The White House was forced to once again clean up highly problematic remarks made by Democrat President Joe Biden during his trip to Poland this week.

“A dictator, bent on rebuilding an empire, will never erase the people’s love for liberty,” Biden said on Saturday at the Royal Castle in Warsaw. “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia, for free people refuse to live in a world of hopelessness and darkness. For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

The White House had to quickly clean up the president’s remarks after they were widely interpreted in reports as him calling for regime change in Russia.

“The President’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region,” a White House official said. “He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.”

The administration also had to clean up remarks that Biden made in Poland on Friday when he appeared to tell U.S. soldiers that they would be getting deployed to Ukraine, which would represent a serious escalation in the ongoing conflict, and would draw NATO into the war against Russia.

ABC News reported that Biden “raised eyebrows when he appeared to tell the group that American troops will be going into Ukraine, though he has repeatedly said that he will not send troops there.”

“You know, with the Ukrainian people, Ukrainian people have a lot of backbone, they have a lot of guts and I’m sure you’re observing it,” Biden said. “And you’re gonna see when you’re there, and some of you have been there. You’re gonna see, you’re gonna see women, young people standing, standing in the middle, in front of a damn tank, just saying I’m not leaving. I’m holding my ground. They’re incredible. But they take a lot of inspiration from us.”

The Biden administration had to swiftly clean up after the president by issuing a statement claiming that his position on deploying U.S. soldiers had not changed.

“The president has been clear we are not sending U.S. troops to Ukraine and there is no change in that position,” the administration said.

The administration also had to clean up remarks that Biden made on Thursday when he said that if Russia were to use chemical weapons in Ukraine, “it would trigger a response in-kind.”

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the U.S. has “no intention” of using chemical weapons and that what Biden meant was that Russia would pay a “severe price.”

“And I won’t go beyond that other than to say the United States has no intention of using chemical weapons, period, under any circumstances,” Sullivan said. “I will just say, with respect to any use of weapons of mass destruction — nuclear, chemical, biological — Russia would pay a severe price.”

First-time ‘Pandemic Gun Buyers’™ support gun rights just as much, if not more than pre-pandemic gun owners

One in Five American Households Purchased a Gun During the Pandemic

Survey: First-time gun purchasers during the pandemic were more likely to be younger and People of Color, compared to pre-pandemic U.S. gun owners, but they share similar views on gun control.

CHICAGO, March 24, 2022 – Eighteen percent of U.S. households purchased a gun since the start of the pandemic (March 2020–March 2022), according to new survey data from NORC at the University of Chicago, increasing the percentage of U.S. adults living in a household with a gun to 46%. Over this period, one in 20 adults in America (5%) purchased a gun for the first time.

According to the FBI, an average of 13 million guns were sold legally in the U.S. each year between 2010 and 2019, increasing to about 20 million annual gun sales in both 2020 and 2021.

[large images linked]

Pandemic Gun Buyers Compared to Pre-Pandemic Gun Owners by Select Characteristics

“Increasing gun sales during the pandemic were driven in nearly equal parts by people purchasing a gun for the first time and existing gun owners purchasing additional firearms,” said John Roman of NORC at the University of Chicago. “New gun owners during the pandemic were much more likely to be younger and People of Color compared to pre-pandemic gun owners in America.”

Despite demographic differences between first-time and pre-pandemic U.S. gun owners, NORC’s experts found that the two groups have similar views on gun-control policies. Both first-time and pre-pandemic U.S. gun owners support more permissive gun policies than non-gun owners. These included policies such as expanding concealed carry, shortening waiting periods before gun purchases, and allowing teachers and school officials to carry guns in schools.

Support for Permissive Gun Policies

“First-time gun buyers’ attitudes toward gun control look remarkably similar to those of the pre-pandemic U.S. gun owner,” said John Roman. “Whether they bought a gun because of existing beliefs about gun control—or owning a gun changed their policy views—is unknown, but it is notable that the policy positions of new gun owners are so different from non-gun owners.”

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The lies the media refuses to call out

The media isn’t exactly friendly towards gun ownership. We all know this, so I’m not exactly breaking news here.

However, they will still occasionally take issue with outright lies, even if they ultimately agree with the position.

There are some lies they won’t bother to call out, and this is one of them:

What is known about the links among gun prevalence, gun purchasing trends and gun violence?

We’ve known for a long time that the more access there is to firearms in a society, the more firearm violence there is likely to be. It’s been shown in comparisons of societies and U.S. states with different levels of firearm ownership.

During the pandemic, as purchasing picked up across the country, we learned there was – at least early on – a relationship between an increase in gun purchases above expected levels and a later increase in violence above expected levels.

As 2020 went on, that signal was lost, except for domestic violence, because many other things were contributing to increases in violence.

We’ve known no such thing about access to firearms.

We’ve been told that such a link exists, but when you look at the studies that claim this, you can see serious problems with every single one of them.

For example, when comparing societies or even different states, it’s impossible to truly control for other variables that may somehow impact violent crime. While the prevalence of guns may exist, so do numerous other factors that can easily contribute to the problem.

Issues like jobs, education, population density, and a host of other factors all have been argued to contribute to crime. So why wouldn’t they also be a factor where guns are easily accessible?

That’s a question the media never answers.

Nor do they seem to consider why this knowledge is so unquestionable despite crime skyrocketing someplace like Los Angeles, which doesn’t have easy access to firearms?

It’s because the media simply doesn’t care about the truth.

They’ve pushed the gun control narrative with every fiber of their being. They’ll have a gun-control advocate on the primetime talk shows to calmly discuss their point of view, but gun rights advocates are often paired with another gun-control activist so they can debate the issue, tilting the balance so people are really getting inundated with one side.

Media personalities have to know what they’re doing, just like they have to know that this idea that we know definitively that increased access to guns somehow makes violent crime higher is bogus.

They know and they don’t care.

They like these kinds of lies because they can hold up those flawed studies and say they’re only spitting facts, trusting that most people wouldn’t understand why those studies are complete and utter BS. They’re hoping you’re too stupid to learn how to read a study, learn to find the flaws in a given study, then criticize it for being what it is, an attempt to push a narrative.

Frankly, I’m kind of sick of seeing this nonsense from our media. The thing is, I don’t expect to ever see them do better, either.

No, only the proggies in Oklahoma are ‘tired’.
I think they’re tired of their losing streak.

Propaganda O’ The Day

Advocate: Oklahomans tired of lawmakers catering to gun lobby

Public Radio Tulsa | By Elizabeth Caldwell elizabeth_caldwell.jpg

(Again, nice for the author to provide positive ID for future use )

A bill allowing people to carry guns at state fairs and into government buildings is paused in the state legislature.

Don Spencer of the Oklahoma Second Amendment Association said he “worked” on HB 4138 and he’s very excited about it. He published a video on Saturday boasting to his club that one intent of the proposed law was to let people carry rifles into traditionally quiet places.

“The concern was that when we have this bill passed, the question was, would a person be able to carry an AR-15 rifle into a library? My answer was yes,” said Spencer.

Spencer said as a concession the bill was altered to allow concealed handguns in libraries. But he reassured his club it was just a first step.

“Remember folks, 2012, we couldn’t even see guns in Oklahoma. In ten years we’re going from not just seeing them to no license required.”

Beth Furnish of Moms Demand Action said legislators betray Oklahomans when they pass laws for lobbies instead of citizens.

“Oklahomans started paying attention to what our lawmakers were doing after they passed permitless carry, which was opposed by a strong majority of Oklahomans, even gun owners and Republicans. Oklahomans are getting tired of our lawmakers passing the wish list of the gun lobby,” said Furnish.

HB 4138 was written by Sen. Warren Hamilton of McCurtain and Rep. Sean Roberts of Hominy. A long list of coauthors has also been added.

It was not heard in the House before deadline Thursday. Neither Roberts nor Hamilton responded to requests for comment on their plans for their bill.

Clear Thinking About Taxing Guns

We are strange creatures. We see the world and build mental models of how the world works. Soon, those models become more significant to us than reality itself. That is dangerous when so much of our “experience” is from the news and entertainment media. We think our tiny screens show us what is really happening. We want to be carful about what we put into our heads.

Here in the USA, there are over a million violent crimes a year. The vast majority of them do not involve the criminal using a gun. At the same time, honest citizens like us defend ourselves with a firearm over a million times. Each year criminals also kill a few thousand people with a firearm. Mass murderers kill a few hundred of us. That isn’t what we see on our small screens.

The media inverts those proportions. We might think that mass murder is common and armed defense is rare. That lets special interests with a political agenda play on our distorted view of reality. That distortion is dangerous for all of us.

Three states recently passed constitutional carry legislation. That means that people who legally own a gun are allowed to carry their gun in public without asking for a permit and paying a tax. The new law won’t change how armed criminals behave since criminals who were not allowed to own a gun were already carrying their guns illegally. Breaking the law is what criminals do every day. Our gun laws disarmed the people who obey the law, and now we’ve reduced those infringements on honest people in three more states.

Now that constitutional carry passed, more law-abiding citizens will carry a legally owned firearm in public and at home. That makes life harder for criminals since the thugs don’t know if their intended victims are armed. The criminal’s uncertainty makes all of us safer. We are safer if we choose to carry a personal firearm and if we choose to go unarmed.

I studied the effects of concealed carry licensing across the United States. As you’d expect, fewer of us get our license to carry as that license becomes more expensive and more time consuming. What surprised and pleased me was that more of us take firearms training when the costs of a license go down.

That sounds counter intuitive from one point of view. If we drop the state mandate to take a firearms training class then more of us will take a class? I see why you could be skeptical.

Now consider another perspective. The state not only required a class, but they taxed us if we wanted to have a carry permit. No one would be surprised if more of us got firearms training if the state gave us a few hundred dollars. That is what happens when licensing fees decrease. We were able to spend our safety budget on firearms training rather than on paying state taxes and fees. We’re wealthier because the state isn’t taxing us as much, and now we can afford to take more firearms safety training.

That isn’t what the anti-gun Democrat politicians told us would happen. They said that blood would flow in the streets. They say the same thing each time a state considers removing the taxes and regulations on honest people who want to defend themselves with a personal firearm.

Whether we believe the politicians or not depends on the models of human behavior we carry in our heads.

Ask yourself if these anti-gun politicians were right. Did disarming the law-abiding victims make us safer? We already have over 23 thousand firearms regulations. In contrast, there were 21 states that already allowed ordinary citizens to carry a firearm in public without a permit. When you listen to the news and hear stories of violent crime, are those stories from states where honest citizens are armed or from states where honest citizens have been disarmed? Does the disarmament model actually make us safer?

It is nearly impossible to get a carry permit in parts of California, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and in Maryland. Cities like Los Angeles, New York City, Springfield, Camden, and Baltimore are some of our most violent cities. If disarming honest citizens made us safer then we should see the results on the nightly news. What do you see?

We all want to stop violent criminals. Some people decided that guns were bad so they passed laws that disarmed the people who obey the law. I think that model of human behavior is incomplete. I like it when the good guys can defend themselves. That happens over a million times a year. I think that model of human behavior gives us better results than disarming the victims.

There is a bit of good news that we don’t see reported yet. We are not all the same. Some of us were able to pay the thousand-dollar tax in order to protect our families with a firearm. Many of us couldn’t afford that much. Removing some of the fees and regulations on armed defense means that more of us can now afford a gun and self-defense training. More of us will be armed at home and in public. Fewer of us will be unarmed victims. More poor people can defend themselves from violent criminals.

That helps the people who need help the most. I like that, and so do most of you.

Constitutional Carry in Indiana

Finally, after a dozen years of trying during which it died in House or Senate committees time and time again, constitutional carry legislation was signed into law by Governor Eric Holcomb yesterday. [the 21st]

The permit repeal, called “constitutional carry” by gun-rights supporters in reference to the Second Amendment, was criticized by major law enforcement groups who argued eliminating the permit system would endanger officers by stripping them of a screening tool for quickly identifying dangerous people who shouldn’t have guns.

Twenty-one other states already allow residents to carry handguns without permit — and Ohio’s Republican governor signed a similar bill last week.

Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter joined leaders of the state’s Fraternal Order of Police, police chiefs association and county prosecutors association in speaking out against the change.

Carter, wearing his state police uniform, stood in the back of the Senate chamber as the bill was being debated. He said after the vote that approval of the measure “does not support law enforcement — period.”

That bit of performative BS from Superintendent Carter was just gratuitous. “Bad guys might carry a gun without a permit!” is just an idiotic argument. Bad guys already carry guns without permits, because they’re bad guys. They don’t care about gun carry permits any more than they care about robbery or murder permits. That’s how you know they’re the bad guys. The permit process, no matter how streamlined, is only an impediment to lawful citizens who’d like a chance to shoot back.

With Ohio and Alabama having passed constitutional carry laws this year as well, that brings the total number of states with permitless carry to twenty-four, just one shy of half the country. Remember when it was just “Vermont Carry”? Heck, when this blog was started back in 2005 there was just Vermont and Alaska; Arizona didn’t become the third state until 2010, and that’s when the floodgates really opened.

Soon you’ll be able to drive from Mobile to Coeur d’Alene, Cleveland to Brownsville, Tucson to Bismark, or Harpers Ferry to El Paso, all with no permission slip for your blaster.

Flashback:
Biden warns of ‘winter of severe illness and death’ for the unvaccinated.

You don’t hear anyone trying to attribute this crap-for-brains jabber to a speech impediment anymore, do ya?

BIDEN WARNS OF FOOD SHORTAGES IN WAKE OF RUSSIA–UKRAINE WAR: ‘It’s Going to Be Real.’

President Biden warned that the Russian invasion of Ukraine will likely cause food shortages in some parts of the world because both countries are major exporters of wheat, in remarks to reporters in Brussels on Wednesday.

“It’s going to be real. The price of these sanctions is not just imposed upon Russia; it’s imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and our country as well,” Biden said. “Both Russia and Ukraine have been the breadbasket of Europe in terms of wheat, for example — just to give you one example.”

Biden added that the heads of the G-7 nations discussed potential food shortages and ways to alleviate them, raising the possibility that the U.S. and Canada could increase exports.

“We had a long discussion in the G-7 with both the United States, which has a significant — the third largest producer of wheat in the world, as well as Canada, which is also a major, major producer. And we both talked about how we could increase and disseminate more rapidly food shortages,” Biden said.

Ukraine and Russia combined export over a quarter of the global supply of wheat and one-fifth of the world’s corn supply, Bloomberg noted earlier this month. Several Mediterranean nations could face a major supply crunch. Over 80 percent of Lebanon’s wheat imports come from Ukraine, while over 60 percent of Turkey’s wheat imports come from Russia, according to U.N. Comtrade data cited by the Financial Times.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at a press conference earlier this week that the U.S. is itself not expecting a food shortage for Americans.

“While we’re not expecting a food shortage here at home, we do anticipate that higher energy, fertilizer, wheat, and corn prices could impact the price of growing and purchasing critical . . . food supplies for countries around the world,” Psaki told reporters.

Daily coffee may boost heart health, lower mortality.

In yet another finding that highlights the health perks coffee can brew, new studies show that having two to three cups a day not only wakes you up, it’s also good for your heart and may help you live longer.

In this largest ever analysis of nearly 383,000 men and women who were part of the UK Biobank, researchers discovered that, over 10 years, drinking two to three cups of coffee a day lowered the risk for heart disease, stroke, dangerous heart arrhythmias, dying from heart disease and dying from any cause by 10% to 15%.

“Observational analyses have shown that coffee drinking is associated with lower rates of cardiovascular events and lower all-cause mortality compared to individuals not drinking coffee,” said Dr. Gregg Fonarow, director of the Ahmanson-University of California, Los Angeles, Cardiomyopathy Center.

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Senility strikes again, and wars have started from crap-for-brains blather like this.

If people try to say; ‘he means when they’ll see this when they’re in Poland’ They are ALREADY IN POLAND.

Biden Just Stuck His Foot Straight in His Mouth in a Way That Could Set off WWIII

Joe Biden arrived in Poland on Friday to meet with the Polish president. While there, he also met with the U.S. military members who are stationed there as part of the NATO defense of Poland. He met with some of the 82nd Airborne. Some of what he said during the visit was very concerning and is likely to excite all kinds of comments. Biden frequently says embarrassing things and it’s bad. But this time, what he said is even worse and could blow back on us big time………………..

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extraneous, not on point, preliminary stuff. read the article if you want
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But here’s the bad thing he said that could blow back on us big time and he needs to explain what the heck he is talking about here. He appeared to tell the members of the 82nd Airborne what they could expect when they arrived in Ukraine. What?

“You’re going to see when you’re there — some of you have been there — you’re going to see women, young people standing in the middle, in the front of a damn tank saying ‘I’m not leaving,’” Biden declared.

So they’re going to Ukraine and some have already been there? Or where else is he talking where they would be sent with people standing in front of tanks? Big problem. Biden has previously said he would not be sending any troops to Ukraine because it could set off World War III.

Andrew Feinberg of the Independent caught Biden’s comments and asked the White House what was going on. He didn’t include the “some of you have already been there” comment that the video captures.

The White House tried to clean it up, claiming he had been clear that we were not sending troops.

 

Then why did he say what he said? Biden is anything but clear. He’s just a mess. And what is he talking about with the “Some of you have already been there” comment? Did Joe reveal something he shouldn’t have? Or is he just being a mess yet again? He had loose lips yesterday when he leaked he would be visiting Ukrainian refugees at the border and someplace else. That endangers his safety

Now you know Russia is going to interpret his comments as us having troops in Ukraine and that’s not a good thing if you’re trying not to kick off World War III. So once again, Joe has stuck his foot in it big time but in an extremely dangerous way.

Hillsdale College Action Shooting Team Dominates Competition At 2022 SASP College Nationals
Led by top shooter Greg Clement, Hillsdale College’s Varsity Action Pistol team was a force to be reckoned with at the 2022 SASP National Championship

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Hillsdale College’s Varsity Action Pistol Team performed well at its first competition of the year, securing first place in the 1911 division with a team score of 210.64 and also earning runner-up in the stock service pistol division scoring 227.50 at the 2022 Scholastic Action Shooting Program College National Championships, held March 11-13 at the CMP Talladega Marksmanship Park in Talladega, Alabama.

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Dollar General Manager Shoots, Kills Attempted Robber Inside North Philadelphia Store

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — A store manager turned the tables on a would-be thief during an attempted robbery at a North Philadelphia Dollar General on Thursday night. The manager shot and killed the suspect.

Police say a 36-year-year old man was attempting to rob a dollar store when he pulled out what appeared to be a weapon.

The weapon, police say, was in the shape of a gun and covered in plastic.

The manager, who has a license to carry, then took out a gun and shot the suspect in the head. The shooting unfolded at the dollar store at 9th Street and Girard Avenue just after 8:30 p.m. on Thursday.

The 36-year-old walked in wearing all black and approached the cashier demanding that she open the register. Investigators say the cashier then signaled to the manager what was happening.

CBS3 has been told the manager stepped in and tried to speak with the would-be robber. But that’s when the situation escalated.

The suspect again said he had a gun, and demanded the money. The manager then pulled out his own gun and fired two shots, hitting the suspect in the head.

Police say the whole encounter was caught on surveillance video.

“It appears that everything that was reported by the victims of this robbery is legitimate,” Inspector D.F. Pace, of the Philadelphia Police Department, said. “The shooter did in fact have a simulated weapon, which he communicated that to the store employees.”

Police will be reviewing that video again Friday to see if there was anyone else in the store at the time. Investigators say there may have been one other employee there as well. But no other injuries were reported.

Taxi driver shoots attempted carjacking suspect on West Side

CHICAGO — A taxi driver shot one of three attempted carjackers Thursday night after they entered his vehicle, police said.

Just after 6:30 p.m., police responded to the 5400 block of West Van Buren following a report of a shooting.

Police said a 30-year-old man was providing a taxi service in a red Mitsubishi when he was called for a fare at the above address.

Three males entered his vehicle and one allegedly produced a gun to demand the car, CPD said. At that moment, the driver pulled out a gun, which authorities said he had a valid CCL for, and shot the attempted carjacking suspect.

The suspect was placed into custody and the other two fled, CPD said. After the shooting, the driver collided with two vehicles near the scene.

He was transported to Stroger Hospital in good condition

Ukraine: The small town which managed to block Russia’s big plans

Voznesensk defenders

It was one of the most decisive battles of the war so far – a ferocious two-day struggle for control of the farming town of Voznesensk and its strategically important bridge.

Victory would have enabled Russian forces to sweep further west along the Black Sea coast towards the huge port of Odesa and a major nuclear power plant.

Instead, Ukrainian troops, supported by an eclectic army of local volunteers, delivered a crushing blow to Russian plans, first by blowing up the bridge and then by driving the invading army back, up to 100km, to the east.

“It’s hard to explain how we did it. It’s thanks to the fighting spirit of our local people and to the Ukrainian army,” said Voznesensk’s 32-year-old mayor, Yevheni Velichko, standing in body armour with his guards outside the town hall.

But almost three weeks after that battle, the mayor warned that another attack by Russian forces was probably imminent and that the town’s defenders lacked the weapons to hold them off a second time.

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BLUF:
Immediate items to watch

  • Russian forces will likely capture Mariupol or force the city to capitulate within the coming weeks.
  • Russia will expand its air, missile, and artillery bombardments of Ukrainian cities.
  • Ukrainian officials suggest that Ukrainian forces may launch a larger counterattack in western Kyiv Oblast in the coming days.
  • The continued involvement of the Black Sea Fleet in the Battle of Mariupol reduces the likelihood of an amphibious landing near Odesa, Russian naval shelling of Odesa in recent days notwithstanding.

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Russian forces continued to settle in for a protracted and stalemated conflict over the last 24 hours, with more reports emerging of Russian troops digging in and laying mines—indications that they have gone over to the defensive. Ukrainian forces continued to conduct limited and effective counterattacks to relieve pressure on Kyiv, although the extent of those counterattacks is likely less than what some Ukrainian officials are claiming. Russian efforts to mobilize additional forces to keep their offensive moving continue to be halting and limited. Russian progress in taking Mariupol city remains slow and grinding. Increasing Russian emphasis on using air, artillery, and rocket/missile bombardments of Ukrainian cities to offset forward offensive momentum raises the urgency of providing Ukraine with systems to defend against these attacks.

Key Takeaways

  • Russian forces continue to go over to the defensive, conducting restricted and localized ground attacks that make little progress.
  • Ukrainian forces are conducting limited and successful counterattacks around Kyiv to disrupt Russian operations to encircle the city (which has now become extremely unlikely) and relieve the pressure on the capital.
  • The Battle of Mariupol continues as a block-by-block struggle with fierce Ukrainian resistance and limited Russian gains.
  • Russia is likely struggling to obtain fresh combat power from Syria and elsewhere rapidly.

Click here to expand the map below.

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