And on the local front:

Violations of Missouri ‘Sunshine Law’ can result in some pretty heft fines. For the people who continually say ‘We don’t teach CRT!” they sure do a lot of complaining about people wanting proof.

Missouri Attorney General Sues Springfield School District Over Refusal To Turn Over Critical Race Training Records.

Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed suit against Springfield Public Schools for violating the state’s sunshine laws, saying SPS failed to provide documents his office requested after parents complained of lessons and curriculum based on Critical Race Theory (CRT).

On November 16, 2021, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed suit against Springfield Public Schools for violating the state’s sunshine laws. Schmitt says Springfield failed to provide documents his office requested after parents complained of lessons and curriculum based on Critical Race Theory (CRT).

In a press release announcing the action, the AG’s office said, in part:

Upon questioning by the Attorney General’s Office, Springfield Public Schools admitted that they’ve provided equity training to students in the GO CAPS program for the past three school years. In May of 2021, Springfield Public Schools reported that it had formed a “Culturally Relevant Curriculum Review” and adopted a Culturally Responsible Scorecard to implement a social justice evaluation of core curriculum, including math.

After the Springfield Public Schools School Board limited public comments and Springfield Public Schools announced that they would not release training materials to the public, the Attorney General’s Office filed a Sunshine Law request on behalf of concerned parents to find out exactly how frequently critical race theory and antiracism materials and teachings were supplied or taught to students.

In response, Springfield Public Schools provided a fee estimate that demanded an initial deposit of $37,000. The lawsuit alleges, “Springfield Public Schools violated § 610.026.2 [the Sunshine Law] by demanding a deposit for items or services other than copies as a precondition to making public records available to the Attorney General’s Office.”

Schmitt also put together a lengthy thread on twitter sharing details his office had learned about the teacher trainings.

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The political currency of the left

I’ve written about this before but the Rittenhouse trial provides us another data point.

One could assume, and rightly so, that from all the arson, looting, and thuggery involved in the “mostly peaceful” protest Rittenhouse attended the participants were no strangers to criminal activity. Usually the participants are masked and the general public doesn’t get to know their identities or criminal histories.

Because Rittenhouse ended up shooting three out of the four participants he had the closest contact with we learned much more about them that we normally learn.

Four is a small sample but that 100% of them had a serious criminal history tells us the odds of the majority of the complete set being non-criminals is very low. In fact, if we assume the sample was random (agreed, it is not true and it is biased in favor of my hypothesis) we can actually compute those odds. Given the assumption, the odds of 50% or more of them not being convicted criminals are 0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 x 05 => 0.0625. That is one chance out of 16.

The political currency of the left is violence. It is part of their nature. That is why there are twice as many people in prison who identify as Democrats as all other political affiliations combined. Rittenhouse inadvertently helped us verify that.

As Larry Correia pointed out:

Mob based political violence has been a tool of dirtbags since mankind invented politics. Quit pretending that the left doesn’t do it now.

It’s the same reason when after a summer of their continual fiery rampages with billions of dollars in damage and many lives lost, when the right got a little uppity on January 6th, the left absolutely lost their s#!+. That’s their game. That’s their tool. The left don’t share. So their rioters are heroic champions.

That Rittenhouse didn’t take a beating and discouraged their continued criminal activities is intolerable to them and is why he must be punished.

I think El Presidente better learn to live with disappointment.

Mexican President Threatens U.S. Congressmen to Support Amnesty for 11 Million Migrants

Mexico’s President issued a veiled threat to Republican congressmen who oppose an immigration deal to grant amnesty to 11 million migrants who illegally entered the U.S. Politicians who oppose the forthcoming plan will be singled out and denounced during daily press briefings, he said.

During a morning press briefing this week, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador praised President Joe Biden, claiming no other U.S. counterpart had made a commitment to address 11 million illegal immigrants.

“He had committed to 11 million, to regularize the situation for 11 million immigrants,” Lopez Obrador said toward the end of the conference, adding the plan did not rest on Biden alone and he needed support on Capitol Hill.

“It depends on the Congress–it depends on this initiative being backed up and supported by the Congress,” he said. “By legislators from the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.”

Lopez Obrador said he hoped for unified support of the future initiative, but opponents would be directly attacked.

“We will make it known from here, that one party–their legislators–did not help something that is fair and humanitarian,” Lopez Obrador said.

The Mexican leader said that he would not accept a negative result and opponents would be made famous in his morning conferences.

A ‘puzzling’ recent trend in the U.K. shows that the vaccinated are more likely to be infected with Covid than the unvaccinated.

 

Negative Vaccine Effectiveness Isn’t a New Phenomenon – It Turned Up in the Swine Flu Vaccine

The Daily Sceptic has for some time been reporting on the apparent negative vaccine effectiveness visible in raw U.K. health data. Despite some age ranges now showing that the vaccinated are more than twice as likely to get Covid as the unvaccinated, this is routinely adjusted out, leading UKHSA to un-intuitively claim that the vaccines are still highly effective even against symptomatic disease. A recent post by new contributor Amaneunsis explains the Test Negative Case Control approach (TNCC) used by authorities and researchers to adjust the data, and demonstrates that while a theoretically powerful way to remove some possible confounders, it rests on an initially reasonable-sounding assumption that vaccines don’t make your susceptibility to infection worse:

A situation where this assumption may be violated is the presence of viral interference, where vaccinated individuals may be more likely to be infected by alternative pathogens.

Chua et al, Epidemiology, 2020

Amanuensis then compares results between the two different statistical approaches in a Qatari study to explore whether violation of this assumption is a realistic possibility and concludes that the multi-variate logistic regression found in their appendix supports the idea that viral interference can start happening a few months after initial vaccination.

What other angles can we explore this idea through? One way is to read the literature on prior epidemics.

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Support For Handgun Ban Hits Record Low As Gun Violence, Sales Soar During Pandemic, Poll Finds

Americans’ support for a complete ban on handguns is the lowest on record, according to a new Gallup poll, part of a wider dip in support for stricter gun control measures as gun sales, violent crime and gun violence soared during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Less than one in five (19%) Americans supported a complete ban on handguns in the U.S., except for police and authorized persons, according to the poll of 823 adults living in all 50 states, conducted between October 1 and 19.

It’s the lowest level of support since Gallup began polling the issue in 1980 and down six points from last year, the poll found.

While no political party surveyed indicated majority support for a ban on handguns, Gallup found marked political differences—40% of Democrats were in favor compared to just 14% of Independents and 6% of Republicans—with the overall drop in support “largely attributable to political independents,” which has fallen 16 points since 2019.

A slim majority of Americans support stricter gun control laws—52%—the poll found, the lowest point since 2014 and down from 67% in 2018 after the Parkland, Florida school shooting.

Political differences are more stark regarding support for stricter gun laws, Gallup found, and near unanimous support from Democrats (91%) contrasts with less than half (45%) of Independents and fewer than a quarter (24%) of Republicans.

While more Democrats and Republicans supported stricter gun control laws this year—rising 6 and 2 points, respectively—a 15-point drop in support from Independents, coupled with a 14-point drop among Republicans the year before, drove the overall level of support down.

KEY BACKGROUND

Last year was one of the deadliest for gun violence in decades, with violent crime rising for the first time in four years. Gun sales hit an all-time high during the pandemic and nearly 23 million were sold during 2020 alone, a two-thirds jump from the year before. While sales have dropped in 2021, they remain well above pre-pandemic levels, and researchers are divided over whether the surge is responsible for the increase in violence.

BIG NUMBER

31%. That’s how many American adults say they own a gun, according to Gallup. While this figure has remained unchanged in decades, the reasons people give for doing so have. Some 88% said they own a gun to protect themselves against crime, up from 67% in 2005. Protection supplanted target shooting (70%) as the dominant reason for owning a gun, Gallup found, which gained four points since 2005. The number of Americans citing hunting as a reason for owning a gun (56%) dropped two points from 2005.

Unless demoncrap goobernor Wolf has an ephiphany, my guess is he vetoes this, but that’s politics.

Bill to Make Pennsylvania 22nd Constitutional Carry State Heads to Gov. Wolf

Legislation that would make Pennsylvania the 22nd constitutional carry state passed the state house yesterday and is heading to Gov. Tom Wolf’s (D) desk.

The Associated Press reports that the legislation would do away with any municipal-level permit requirement for open carry and end the statewide requirement that law-abiding citizens get a permit in order to conceal carry.

ABC 27 describes the legislation, House Bill 565, as “polarizing.” Republicans support the bill, Democrats largely oppose it.

House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff (R) commented on HB565, saying, “The legislation to assert Pennsylvanian’s constitutional right to carry firearms without a permit protects the Second Amendment and Article 1, sec. 21 state constitutional rights of legal gun owners. The bill changes nothing regarding who can legally own a gun and takes nothing away from law enforcement from going after those owning and using guns illegally.”

State rep. Jordan Harris (D) voiced opposition to the bill.

Harris said, “We’re wasting time on a piece of legislation that’s gonna be vetoed. We know there’s no votes to override the governor’s veto, we’re literally wasting time when Pennsylvanians have sent us here to address the issues that are of the utmost importance to them and I personally believe this is not one of them.”

The other 21 states with constitutional carry are: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

Alleged burglar shot by homeowner with shotgun in Camp County

CAMP COUNTY, Texas (KETK) – A burglar was shot twice by a homeowner while attempting to break into a storage building around 4:30 a.m. on Saturday.

Not long after, the homeowner heard a noise and discovered a man breaking into his storage building with tools that belonged to the owner. Officials said the homeowner then went to get his shotgun and shot the intruder.

“However, the man got up and they then struggled for the gun. The suspect was shot again before he managed to take the gun and flee,” said the CCSO Facebook post.

Investigator Randy Huggins also responded to the scene and several of the homeowner’s tools were found along with blood from the intruder.

The subject was then identified as 39-year-old Tony Gross.

That’s Not How Research Works

The NRA calling research papers “anti-gun” may sometimes come across as dismissive or reflexive, or both. Some researchers work to keep their papers sterile, no matter their findings. Others grant themselves leeway to be more bombastic, particularly when it comes to developing theories that explain their findings. Researchers from the University of Central Missouri and the University of Alabama at Birmingham posted a paper online that makes their anti-gun slant abundantly clear through both their text and their model specifications.

David B. Johnson and Joshua J. Robinson posted their paper, “Gun Dealer Density and its Effect on Homicide,” online earlier this month. It has not been peer-reviewed or published in a journal. Johnson and Robinson make several emotional, hyperbolic claims about gun ownership and gun dealers that would likely not be accepted if written in a research paper turned in by a student. The variables excluded from their preferred models initially suggest unfamiliarity with crime data or research, but the use of some variables in later models shows the exclusion was by design. The variables that were included in their preferred model suggest problems with specificity and the exaggeration of small changes in rates shows a commitment to their narrative over sincere analysis.

Let’s start at the beginning of this 32-page paper – a count that excludes the abstract, references, and appendices. In the first paragraph, Johnson and Robinson utilize the tragedy at Sandy Hook to categorize the difference in the number of “gun-related deaths” per year between the individual years 2000 and 2019. The authors make no mention of the fact that most “gun-related deaths” are self-inflicted, or that the population of the U.S. grew by about 50 million people between those years. They also forgot to mention that the homicide rate was lower from 2009 through 2014 than it was in 2000 but that’s a detail that doesn’t promote gun-grabbing.

As is the state of existing research: “Much of the literature on firearms – particularly concerning its connection to homicide and crime – is full of null and mixed results.” Johnson and Robinson set out to resolve that unacceptable problem, which just must be the result of a misunderstanding of the relationship between gun availability and homicides, by “creating” a new metric: the number of federal firearm licensees per mile. They do not differentiate between types of FFLs or volume of sales, so a small home-based FFL that transfers a few guns a year is treated the same as a large-volume retailer like Cabela’s.

Instead, they correlate the number of FFLs per mile with the number of NICS checks. NICS checks, readers may know, are the background checks dealers are required by law to run before a sale. The authors correlated required background checks with those required to run background checks. Groundbreaking.

To validate their measure of gun dealer density, they compare metrics using heat maps. Theirs is the only metric that shows north-central Colorado with a high density, and it includes several communities that suffered mass murder attacks, so theirs must be the best. These professors actually used a small number of rare, high-profile incidents to validate a measure they’re using in an analysis spanning decades and the entire contiguous United States. That isn’t a validation – it’s a confirmation of bias.

Alaska and Hawaii are excluded for some reason. Oh, and any year prior to 2003 is also excluded. Their key variable is lagged, for some reason. The authors claim that NICS data is available from 2004 on, but the FBI has data from November 1998 through the present readily available. Also readily available are variables known to be associated with crime in generals and homicides specifically – variables like law enforcement resources, arrest rate, crime itself, poverty rate, unemployment rate, and alcohol consumption.

They tout the effect of gun density they supposedly found, but this model found that homicide increases as income increases and decreases as the percent of men in a population increases.

Those are backwards. Think about it. Men commit most homicides, and crime is known to be associated with lower incomes or poverty. It does not make sense for there to be less homicide as there are more men in a community or there to be more homicide as income increases.

Those are the results of the choice the researchers made, and they clearly made those choices to find a connection between firearms and a negative outcome.

They got what they wanted, but it’s a sadly transparent effort.

The authors seem to believe that “secondary markets” in places like Chicago contribute to violent acts, despite all guns sold by an FFL requiring a background check whether the gun is new or used. They also think that the ATF-reported “time to crime” that shows criminals use a firearm, on average, more than 10 years after it was legally sold, is irrelevant because gun dealers “regularly sell used guns.” Dealers are required to run a NICS check on used guns, too, and criminals don’t buy their guns from dealers. Johnson and Robinson are aware of this research, but it doesn’t support an anti-gun narrative so it’s discounted.

Comments on this paper could easily fill more space than we have. We’ll leave readers with this statement from the authors: “The decrease in the percentage of corporate retailers in these communities also may indicate an increase in the percentage of nearby dealers willing to bend or break federal gun laws.”

That’s not a good way for FFLs to stay in business – and nothing invites ATF and FBI scrutiny quite like breaking federal law.

The researchers may be well aware of that fact and willing to ignore it. They’ve certainly demonstrated their willingness to ignore reality throughout their paper.

M&P®10MM

What’s one millimeter more? 9mm vs 10mm… Number’s wise, it might seem minor at best, like having $9 vs $10, but as far as ammunition calibers are concerned, that increase of one millimeter makes all the difference.

The average grain weight of a 9mm bullet is around 115 grains, and the average 10mm is around 180 grains. Making the 10mm bullet 63% heavier of a round over the 9mm, that one digit millimeter difference, is really the equivalent of 63% more mass.

M&P10mm

Now, you might also be familiar with .45 ACP, a long-standing low velocity, high powered round. Surprisingly enough, the 10mm and the .45 look an awful lot alike when you put them side by side, they’ll pack a similar punch but perform in different ways. The muzzle velocity of .45 is 840 feet per second, versus the 10mm’s 1008 feet per second. With greater muzzle velocity also comes added benefits, such as flatter shooting and better accuracy at further range. Advantages like these are why the 10mm caliber has become widely regarded as the ideal round for personal protection in the backcountry.

The new M&P®10mm M2.0™ pistol was designed to match the M&P®45 M2.0™ pistol frame size, with new aggressive front serrations traditionally only seen on law enforcement M&P® firearms. Working your way back on the slide, you’ll notice that the 10mm comes standard with the C.O.R.E.™ (Competition Optics Ready Equipment) slide and optics mounting kit. But let’s not forget one of the most recognizable changes to the M&P®10mm M2.0™ pistol, the new flat face trigger geometry. Following the success of the Shield™ Plus pistol flat face trigger, the 10mm is the first in the M2.0™ pistol lineup to feature a newly updated trigger.

With a capacity of 15+1, backcountry bears and cougars won’t stand a chance against your M&P®10mm M2.0™ pistol. You can now rest assured that your ideal backcountry sidearm will have your covered.

 

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves Calls for Elimination of Critical Race Theory in Budget Proposal

Republican Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves released his Fiscal Year 2023 budget proposal on Monday, recommending that the teaching of critical race theory be eliminated from taxpayer-funded schools.

Under a section in the budget proposal titled “Improving Education,” Reeves headlined a section “Eliminate Critical Race Theory” and outlined how he believed the teaching to be a “vicious lie.”

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Using their own rule book against them.
Rule #5 “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.”

Biden tormented by Republican guerrilla campaign and ‘I did it’ stickers

If you see Joe Biden’s picture on a gas pump these days, it’s not a tribute to his amazingly successful energy policy.

The stickers — with Biden pointing to the $3.50 a gallon gas price and saying “I did that!” — are part of a Republican guerrilla campaign to undermine the Democratic administration. They’ve gone viral online.
And it’s cheap and easy. A 100-pack of the stickers is going for just six bucks on Amazon. You might see the derisive stickers up in New Hampshire, the swing state Biden is set to visit on Tuesday to promote his $1.2 trillion infrastructure package that just passed Congress.

The Democratic president may not get the overwhelmingly positive reception he was hoping for, though.

New Hampshire is a blue state that’s in danger of going red in the 2022 mid-term election and, like the colorful leaves that fall before winter, it’s often a harbinger of chilly political winds to come. Biden’s approval rating in the Granite State is the same as it is nationally — abysmal. And the passage of the infrastructure bill won’t change that, no matter how much the Democrats and CNN celebrate it.

The gas pump stickers are similar tactics to what Democrats did to Republican presidents like Trump. Remember those “Not my President” bumper stickers? So in a way Republicans now are just returning the favor.
Biden opponents have also adopted the “Let’s Go Brandon” chant to taunt the president. It’s a PG way of saying something much more crude that has the same number of syllables, but it’s a clever tactic and it drives Democrats crazy.

This is what passes for grass roots political strategy these days. The “Let’s Go Brandon” chant and “I Did it” stickers went viral on social media platforms like TikTok.

New Hampshire is a hotbed of politics, because of the first in the nation primary. Voters have become accustomed to getting up close to presidents and candidates and aren’t afraid to confront them in person.

That’s why Biden’s visit contains some risk, although he’ll be protected in his trip to Woodstock, far out of major cities like Nashua and Manchester.
Biden is also planning to spend some quality time in the little middle class enclave of Nantucket over the Thanksgiving holiday. Nothing like going to an ultra exclusive vacation island to showcase how the infrastructure bill will help the little people in the middle of an economic crisis.

Air Force One is expected to fly right into Nantucket’s tiny airport, and Secret Service will be crawling all over the island, which I’m sure the locals will appreciate.

Something down Paul’s neck of the woods

Hezbollah planned to murder Israeli in Colombia to avenge Soleimani 
Target said to have been ex-diplomat and intelligence operative; Mossad officials reportedly visit country amid fears of rising terror activity

Hezbollah planned to assassinate an Israeli national in Bogota as part of an operation that also targeted Americans to avenge the January 2020 killing of Iranian al-Quds Force commander General Qassem Soleimani, a Colombian newspaper reported Sunday.

The El Tiempo newspaper said the Israeli targeted by the Lebanese terror group was a former intelligence officer who had been stationed in the city as a member of the diplomatic corps, then opened a company involved in the import and sale of surveillance cameras and technology.

The report, citing unnamed sources in Colombia’s military intelligence services, said Israel’s Mossad security service discovered that the businessman had been spied on at a number of locations.

The Colombian daily said an intelligence dossier on the matter, including information provided by Mossad, indicated that in addition to the Israeli, members of a US delegation in the city were also under surveillance by the terror group.

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Your Next Car May Refuse To Start if It Thinks You’ve Had a Drink
Get ready to pay for new nanny-state technology and for bypassing the unwelcome intervention.

Warning lights and noises are a regular part of the driving experience in vehicles that increasingly nag us about tire pressure, seatbelts, and engine status. Sometimes the alerts are helpful, but a new round of innovations mandated by the infrastructure bill might disable our cars if built-in technology determines that we’re intoxicated—or if, as seems inevitable, it just goes haywire. The one guarantee is that we’ll have to pay for the added complexity as we’re forced to use nanny-state systems jointly developed by the auto industry and the federal government.

“Not later than 3 years after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall issue a final rule prescribing a Federal motor vehicle safety standard under section 30111 of title 49, United States Code, that requires passenger motor vehicles manufactured after the effective date of that standard to be equipped with advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology,” reads language buried in the massive and recently passed federal infrastructure bill.

The bill defines the technology as a system that can “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired” and “passively and accurately detect whether the blood alcohol concentration of a driver” is above 0.08 percent. If the system decides that a driver is being naughty, it will “prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if an impairment is detected.”

Certainly not coincidentally, the auto industry recently unveiled technology that would satisfy the requirements of the bill by basically building a breathalyzer into every car.

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I briefly commented on this awhile back.
This is a better look into the flaws of the underlying ‘research’.

Fatal Flaw In Ph.D. Thesis On Second Amendment Suppressing First Amendment

The Atlantic has been on an anti-Second Amendment tear lately. After a couple of pieces by David Frum, which I’ve addressed before, they have an article (Archived) that employs the newfangled theory that the Second Amendment somehow threatens the First Amendment. We saw this in the ACLU amicus brief in the NYSRPA v. Bruen case, which Cam addressed recently.

This article goes one step further. It cites “research” by two parties to make broad claims about how open carry protests chill free speech. The crux of the article is as follows:

Some protests involving open carry firearms have resulted in violence. The presence of firearms at a protest causes some people to be scared. Due to this fear, they are unable to express their opinions freely. Therefore – you can guess where this is headed – open carry at protests must be ‘regulated’.

Lest we forget, this argument has already been employed in the Campus Carry debate, that concealed carrying of guns inside a classroom would somehow stifle discussions. There is no evidence that those fears materialized. Yet, that argument is being laundered and reused against open carry at public protests, with calls to “further study” the chilling effect of concealed carry.

The article states:

What most people do not realize is that the Second Amendment has become, in recent years, a threat to the First Amendment. People cannot freely exercise their speech rights when they fear for their lives. […] Diana Palmer, one of the authors of this article, conducted a study […] found that participants were far less likely to attend a protest, carry a sign, vocalize their views, or bring children to protests if they knew firearms would be present.

There are two underlying studies this article is based on. The first one is from Everytown/ACLED, and the second one is a Ph.D. dissertation by Diana Palmer, one of the authors of the article. Everytown’s research is shoddy; it has been taken apart thoroughly before. Their new “research” needs to be tackled, but I will focus on the Ph.D. dissertation, which you can download and look at yourself here.

The abstract of the dissertation states the following:

In this mixed-methods study, 1,205 participants were surveyed about their likelihood of engaging in First Amendment behaviors at a protest with and without firearms and asked to explain what factors they considered when selecting their answers. […] In the quantitative element of the study, differences in expressive behavior were analyzed in the condition with no firearms and the condition with firearms. The analysis showed that participants were less likely to engage in expressive behaviors when firearms were present.

The abstract only talks about public protest scenarios in which guns are either present or not present. I looked through the dissertation, and found that it lacks any questions on weapons that aren’t firearms. Participants were never asked what they would do if knives, swords, clubs, pepper spray, brass knuckles, bike locks, etc. would be present. Any chilling effect of non-firearms weapons on assembly is not considered in the dissertation.

Weapons aren’t the only things that people can react to negatively. Participants weren’t asked what they would do if there were head-to-toe incognito, masked protestors at an event. Anyone following the news knows that antifa mobs have been showing up at “protests” in all-black, covering their faces while violating journalists’ First Amendment right to record them. Likewise, would people show up to a protest if there were people wearing Klan hoods?

Another topic that wasn’t addressed is crowd density. Personally, I avoid crowds and wouldn’t be surprised if survey participants would factor in high crowd density as a deterrent… if they had been asked about it.

Lastly, the timing of a protest was not included in the surveys; there are people who avoid “protests” at 1 AM. Too bad the dissertation didn’t ask about that.

These are questions that should have been part of the research, and the Ph.D. advisor or members of the committee should have caught these misses. This is a fatal flaw, in my opinion, especially given what the dissertation lays out in conclusion:

The first recommendation is that the carrying of firearms at protests should be regulated separately from other forms of open carry.

Given all the important questions that were missed, I take objection to the singling out of open carry at protests. If it’s a matter of regulating open carry at protests with, say, having your gun unloaded, mag out, chamber flag in, that’s one thing. But I doubt that’s the sort of benign regulation the writers of The Atlantic piece are asking for.

Going back to the article in The Atlantic, the writers also want to study concealed carry:

Research thus far has focused on open display of firearms, but further study is needed to evaluate the public safety concerns that may still be present when protesters or counterprotesters bring concealed firearms to demonstrations.

Unfortunately, this looks like agenda-driven, or at a minimum, bias-distorted research to me. Watching the press amplify it is unfunny to say the least.

Observation O’ The Day

As near a perfect exemplar of Cooper’s *Condition White*, as can be asked for.

*You are totally unaware of your surroundings and totally unprepared for even the prospect of danger.*

My first squad leader in the Army put it like this: “Experience is the best teacher and the best experience is someone else’s, because it’s usually less expensive and less painful.”

Joe Biden’s sacrificial presidency
He governs like a man who knows he’s not running again

The worst kept secret in Washington, DC is that Joe Biden is a one-term president — whether he knows it or not. This weekend, palace intrigue stories from Politico and CNN pitted Vice President Kamala Harris against Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. The kids are fighting over Grandpa Joe’s inheritance before he’s even cold.

Biden doesn’t acknowledge this. He’s signaled multiple times that he intends to run for a second term in 2024. He has been trying to capture the White House for over thirty years. He’s not just going to give that up willingly as he managed to go from party punchline to party patriarch in the span of one election.

But to believe the choice is up to him is to believe that his staggering fall in poll numbers is imaginary. It’s to believe that Biden is not facing the largest electoral wipeout in Congress in decades, or that those behind his presidency are not going to pull him aside — particularly Jill Biden, who has been extremely protective of her husband. It’s to wave away his advanced age and possible cognitive decline. Joe Biden is a dead man walking, electorally speaking. Perhaps he always was.

Usually a politician would shy away from policies likely to inflict pain on the country. But that all changes if he isn’t planning on standing for reelection. He could inflict real reform — and real harm, the kind of harm we are seeing right now with both an inflation crisis and oil prices spiking.

The infliction of this pain appears to be very intentional. When press secretary Jen Psaki returned to the podium last week, she acknowledged this. In response to a question about skyrocketing gas prices, she said: “Our view is that the rise in gas prices over the long term makes an even stronger case for doubling down our investment and focus on clean energy options.” Psaki said that as world leaders flooded Glasgow vowing to eliminate fossil fuels over the next nine to twelve years. That is not a coincidence.

If you want to force a population off of meat consumption because you think it’s harming the planet, you simply make things like meat too expensive. If you want to force people into electric vehicles because you believe they’re harming the planet, you let gas prices soar to astronomical levels, to the point where people don’t drive and opt for public transportation.

To the Democrats, this is the Biden sacrifice. He will be a one-term president, but in his one term, he’ll be able to transform the country in a way no politician who cared about his political future would ever dare to attempt. It’s a deal that a 79-year-old Joe Biden would take, if it meant the national press speaks his name in the same breath as FDR.

[and he and his family get that permanent Secret Service security detail that goes along with being President]

Joe Biden is not the future. He might not even be the present. That’s why his administration is governing like he has months to live, sweeping through a bucket list of progressive wishes. Doing so is already causing enormous harm, but in the end it will be worth it for the Democrats, and it will be worth it for Biden.

BLUF:
Climate change is real, but adapting to it, mitigating it with technology is the most realistic solution. Will China and India just give up on coal, gas and oil overnight? No, and neither will the United States. But emissions already are falling in Western countries, the world is innovating.

We predict things are going to get better. Ten years. Twenty years, tops. Maybe 30.

50 years of predictions that the climate apocalypse is nigh.
The “end of the world” has been just around the corner for years.

Apocalypse . . . now?

For the past two weeks in Glasgow, Scotland, world leaders have gathered at COP 26, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, to listen to the same message: Disaster is just around the corner.

“The world has to step up, and it has to step up now,” former President Barack Obama said. “When it comes to climate, time really is running out.”

Professional yeller Greta Thunberg demanded the United Nations declare a “systemwide climate emergency,” and force countries to take action.

Press accounts were similarly Chicken Little-esque. If developed nations don’t phase out oil and gas and give $100 billion in “climate financing,” Paul Behrens, professor in environmental change, told Politico that “the only fact about the future I can declare with certainty is that the world as we know it is coming to an end.”

If it all sounds slightly familiar, consider this news story from 1972:

 

“We have ten years to stop the catastrophe,” said the UN’s environmental protection boss. That’s one of the headlines collected by Bjorn Lomberg, author of “False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.”

Lomberg notes that, for more than 50 years, the United Nations and the media have regularly predicted we’re on the verge of calamity. And they always seem to forget about the last warning.

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Loser Beet Zero runs for Governor of Texas.

Seattle is so dangerous, King County security will escort employees to bus, train, ferry

Downtown Seattle and Pioneer Square have become so dangerous that the King County government will now have security escort employees to the bus, train, or ferry for their commute home.

The county’s Walking Bus pilot program was announced internally to employees on Wednesday at the downtown campus, located at the King County Courthouse. Two security escorts will walk employees from the courthouse to the King Street Station and the Colman Dock. Additionally, they will escort staff for several blocks to get to their cars or bus stops safely.

The move comes after years of security complaints from county staff due to the growing and aggressive homeless population that has consumed the neighborhoods.

Seattle isn’t safe for county workers

The pilot program launches on Nov. 15 and will offer two dedicated security escorts for the group walks.

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