I wonder why it is, you almost never find a gun control advocate who immigrated here from a nation controlled by a tyrannical goobermint?

Arizona campus carry advocate motivated by childhood in Communist country

Can you imagine if Cambodia had the Second Amendment?’

Legislation currently pending in Arizona would allow faculty members and students to “carry or possess” firearms while on campus, as long as they have their gun permits.

Young Americans for Liberty is supportive of the legislation because the libertarian organization believes it will help reduce crime on campus.

But the legislator behind the bill has a bigger concern too – preventing tyranny, like what he saw as a child during the Fall of Saigon during the Vietnam War.

The chief sponsor of House Bill 2447, Quang Nguyen, said he is motivated by his childhood in Vietnam.

“I came from a Communist country where people were actually killed at will,” he said. “Can you imagine if Cambodia had the Second Amendment? We wouldn’t have two million people killed by Pol Pot,” he said at the February 9 hearing.

The Republican legislator is also a concealed carry instructor and the president of the Arizona State Rifle and Pistol Association.

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An Opportunity Second Amendment Supporters Must Not Waste

It’s time for Second Amendment supporters to channel Rahm Emanuel for a moment. In fact, there is a chance to hoist the one-time Obama Chief of Staff, who urged people to “never let a crisis go to waste,” on his own petard.

Right now, if you believe polling by the Wall Street Journal, Second Amendment supporters could deliver a metaphorical death blow to the hopes of anti-Second Amendment extremists over the next few years. However, it will take a lot of hard work to make that happen, and time may not be entirely on our side.

About 20 years ago, the political home of anti-Second Amendment extremism made a bet. They thought that there was a demographic doomsday coming for their opposition. However, that bet has not quite worked out for them over the long haul. Yes, Obama did win in a landslide in 2008, and won re-election solidly in 2012 (with an assist from the IRS targeting the Tea Party), but in the decade since 2012… how have things worked out?

We’ve discussed some of the signs that their bet on demographics isn’t working out the way they hoped. The lessons from last year’s Virginia gubernatorial election should give Second Amendment supporters and pro-Second Amendment organizations a blueprint for how to carry out the outreach.

This outreach is important. As things stand right now, for many of those who voted Youngkin in 2021 (and those of a similar mind across the country), support for the Second Amendment became a “non-dealbreaker” in the face of the current situation. While that might be sufficient for the short-term, would it not be better to make support for the Second Amendment a positive among those voters who currently consider it a “non-dealbreaker” in the face of a crisis?

Blowing the opportunity that Gun Culture 2.0 is presenting would be to repeat the very mistake that those in charge of the political home of anti-Second Amendment extremism made. We know that anti-Second Amendment extremist organizations like the Brady Campaign have had regrettable levels of success in dividing gun owners, often by hijacking the concept of “responsible” gun ownership. Reclaiming that term from anti-Second Amendment extremists is crucial to defeating their “divide and conquer” strategy.

Most important, though is to be willing to reach out to the new gun owners. Like any beginner in a new sport, they will need instruction and help from those who have more experience. The process of welcoming them should start from the moment they are at their first visit to an FFL and it should have no endpoint.

There are big tasks up ahead. Second Amendment supporters have to defeat anti-Second Amendment extremists at the federal, state, and local levels via the ballot box this November and in 2024. The process starts today by not wasting the opportunity that Biden’s blunders are giving us.

Took him long enough. He likely had his finger in the air and it took him this long to figure it out which way the wind was blowing.

Buckeye Firearms Association (BFA) summarized the new law in layman’s terms:

  • Obtaining a concealed handgun license will become optional, so if you are able to legally carry a concealed handgun with a license, you will also be able to carry without a license. The same rights and responsibilities apply in either case.
  • You will no longer have the duty to “promptly” notify every law enforcement officer during an official stop. Instead, you must disclose that you are carrying a concealed handgun only when an officer asks, unless you have already notified another officer.
  • If you choose to obtain a concealed handgun license, you will no longer be required to carry the license on your person.

DeWine signs bill allowing ‘constitutional carry’ in Ohio.

Ohioans will be able to carry concealed handguns without a permit, known as “constitutional carry.”

Gov. Mike DeWine on Monday signed into law Senate Bill 215, which passed the General Assembly on March 2 and was hailed by supporters as a historic Second Amendment victory.

The bill allows anyone at least 21 who is legally allowed to have a gun be able to carry a concealed handgun without a permit. It also removes the requirement for eight hours of gun safety training and potentially without a pre-purchase background check.

Also, if a driver is stopped by police, that person would not longer be required to inform officers of the concealed weapon unless specifically asked.

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Which predator do whitetail deer fear the most?

I suspect this reaction depends a lot on the area and the past hunting pressure. Yes, man is the most lethal predator on the planet, but different experiences can mean different reactions in prey species.
When Dad & I were living in Kentucky, we had a literal herd – often up to 21 deer – that moved back and forth across the properties, inside the city limits, and often stayed and grazed right outside the back door. Dad could sit on the back porch and the newer fawns would often play around within feet of him, only being warned by their does if they got to close for their liking, and Dad quite often talked to them, giving them ‘lectures’ about the coyotes we had pass by from time to time. Sometimes they actually seemed to pay attention to him.

You have his word as a Biden.

Biden pledges: We won’t fight a war against Russia in Ukraine.

A leftover from Friday. Hawks are complaining about this statement on grounds that it implicitly invites Putin to grab any non-NATO country he likes and to pummel Ukraine into submission using whatever conventional means he can muster.

 

SECURITY GUARANTEES, REAL AND IMAGINED

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused a number of European countries–probably all of them–to reconsider their military defense postures. If Russia attacks them, will they be able to resist? And whom can they count on to come to their aid?

Responses vary. Germany is talking about abandoning its post-WWII de-militarization. France, in Gaullist tradition, wants the EU to take the lead on security. Others rely on a presumed airtight NATO guarantee of military assistance.

Sweden is an interesting case. Sweden is not a member of NATO, although it has collaborated closely with NATO’s central command. Instead, Sweden has allied itself with the U.S. and, to a lesser extent, the U.K. This interview with Björn Fägersten, head of the Europe program at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, sheds considerable light.

The threshold question posed is, since Sweden is not a member of NATO, will the European Union come to its aid if Russia attacks?

Does the EU’s mutual defence clause have a similar effect to Nato’s Article 5?

Björn Fägersten: In a purely legal sense they are equivalent – in some ways the EU is a bit sharper. But on the other hand, the EU’s clause has a sub-clause that makes clear that it doesn’t affect member states’ individual choices on security policy, for instance for those countries that are neutral.

A key difference between the EU and Nato is that the EU has no real apparatus. Nato has a joint military headquarters, SHAPE, but the EU doesn’t have an equivalent.

Within the EU there are also expectations that Nato will be at the centre of European planning – most EU countries are members. In the EU’s Global Strategy from 2016 it is made clear that Nato is the cornerstone of the EU’s defence.

So the EU has a mutual defense pledge, but no coordinated defense apparatus. But that could change. What follows is especially interesting in view of the weak state of Russia’s military that seems to have been revealed over the last couple of weeks:

Looking to the future, many in the EU, not least Macron, have long spoken about the need for strategic autonomy, where Europe will take a more independent line in defence from the US. Last week Germany announced a huge increase in defence spending. How will that change the equation for Sweden?

BF: If in the long term Europe starts taking greater responsibility while the US takes the main responsibility for handling China, that would change Sweden’s calculation. Sweden would like there to be an American interest in its security, but if, for example, a new president was elected in the US in 2024 who had a more doubtful approach to European security, Sweden would be forced to rapidly reevaluate its defence strategy.

It is highly unlikely that we will elect a president more feckless than Joe Biden, but it it useful to see how that possibility weighs on the minds of European decision makers. But the key point here is that the Europeans might be able to defend themselves while the U.S. focuses on the Pacific.

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Below The Radar: Stopping the Fraudulent Sales of Firearms Act

Second Amendment supporters often have to make difficult decisions. Not in the sense of Glock vs. Colt vs. Springfield Armory, but more along the lines of how to address a given piece of anti-Second Amendment legislation.

Take for instance the Stopping the Fraudulent Sales of Firearms Act, known as S 3776 and HR 6997. The legislation purports to prohibit the importation, sale, or manufacture of firearms “by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises.”

On the face of it, this seems unobjectionable. Nobody wants to be sold a firearm on the basis of misrepresentation or a false promise, right? But there are red flags when Second Amendment supporters think things through some more.

For starters, the Senate bill is sponsored by Dianne Feinstein, a long-standing enemy of our Second Amendment rights. So that is a red flag right there. Her co-sponsors include Cory Booker and Richard Blumenthal, also committed opponents of the Second Amendment.

Aside from who sponsors it, there is one other question: Who decides what constitutes “false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises?”

This is a big deal on multiple fronts. Remember how the CDC is getting back into the gun-control business? They worry that it will be used to justify censorship by Silicon Valley is big, but this legislation could add another threat.

Suppose some anti-Second Amendment extremist decides that those who advertise firearms for self-defense are making ““false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises?” That now becomes a new way to hit someone with a five-year jail term and a felony conviction.

This also is a way to “legalize” suits like the one brought against Remington over Sandy Hook. Never mind that the rifle used was stolen (after the shooter killed the rightful owner), the claim from the suit was centered around the advertising. In other words, prove there was “false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises” in the advertising, and all of the sudden, it becomes easier to sue gun manufacturers.

This is a dangerous end run around the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. Again, we need to remember what Feinstein said so long ago on 60 Minutes. She wants an Australia-style ban, but if she can’t have it, she’ll figure out what she can get legislatively (see the Age 21 Act). Or she’ll enable other attacks outside the legislative process.

What makes it doubly hard is that this bill seems very reasonable, so Second Amendment supporters have to be very careful about the optics while opposing it. After all, nobody wants to support those who sell anything (including firearms) with “false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises.”

Second Amendment supporters need to contact their Representative and Senators and politely urge them to oppose the Stopping the Fraudulent Sales of Firearms Act. Then. They need to work to defeat anti-Second Amendment extremists via the ballot box this November.

How do you know the numbers of Hispanic voters are increasingly seen as going Republican?
The lieberal media hauls out the broadest smear brush they can find.

The rise of white nationalist Hispanics.

Nick Fuentes, identified as a “white supremacist” in Justice Department filings, made headlines last week for hosting a white nationalist conference in Florida. His father is also half Mexican American.

Driving the news: Cuban American Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, a group the Anti-Defamation League calls an extremist group with a violent agenda, was arrested Tuesday and charged with conspiracy in connection to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

What they’re saying: Experts tell Axios far-right extremism within the Latino community stems from three sources: Hispanic Americans who identify as white; the spread of online misinformation; and lingering anti-Black, antisemitic views among U.S. Latinos that are rarely openly discussed.

Blah, blah, blah, blah…………

Yes, they know. They’ve always known. They just approve.

Project Veritas Torches the New York Times and Explodes the January 6 Narrative
Serious journalists know that our oligarchs used Jan. 6 as a Reichstag fire, to target political dissidents.

A Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times reporter has been caught in a video by the conservative group Project Veritas admitting his colleagues vastly exaggerated the danger of the election integrity protest on Jan. 6.

The reporter, Matthew Rosenberg, also called his colleagues names that questioned their courage and manliness.

January 6 Was in Fact “No Big Deal”

Rosenberg, the national security correspondent for the New York Times, said the media’s coverage of the Capitol riot was “overblown” and that the events of Jan. 6, 2021 were “no big deal,” according to undercover video released Tuesday by Project Veritas.

In print, Rosenberg and his colleagues have described the claim that there were FBI plants instigating the protestors outside of the U.S. Capitol a year earlier as a “reimagining” of the “attack.” But in the Project Veritas video, which appears to have been recorded without his knowledge, Rosenberg paints a different picture. Here he admits that “there were a ton of FBI informants amongst the people who attacked the Capitol.”

warning, some foul language

This is how ridiculous weapon laws are in Merry Olde Englande

Pennsylvania man returns home to find armed burglar, shootout erupts

COATESVILLE, Pa. – Authorities say a Pennsylvania man had a brief shootout with a burglar who stole two guns and a video game console from the victim’s apartment Friday morning.

Officers from the City of Coatesville Police Department were called to a property on East Lincoln Highway for reports of a shooting.

According to investigators, the victim returned home to find a man armed with an AR-15 standing in his doorway.

After a brief struggle, police say the suspect fired at least 7 shots and the victim returned fire with his legally-owned firearm.

No one was struck during the brief shootout, according to police.

The AR-15 used in the shooting was stolen from the victim’s home along with another gun and a Playstation 5, police said.

Authorities did not provide a description of the suspect.

WaPo columnist says “fans of Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill have a new favorite word: ‘grooming'” … and I think someone hit a nerve.

You can always tell how insular a person has become in their politics when a term that has been used regularly regarding a topic that has been in the news for years strikes them as something “new.”
Of course, people who don’t share columnist Monica Hesse’s Bryn Mawr value system have actually been using the word for some time.
Okay, I shouldn’t be so hard on Bryn Mawr. After all, it has a politically diverse student body with only around 42% identifying as “liberal” and the rest identifying as Marxists.
Not only that, but, you know, grooming happens.
A lot.
Do a quick search and you find stories like these.
So, you’ll excuse us if we’re a tad sensitive about the teacher grooming issue.
I’m sorry, did I say “sensitive?” According to Hesse, it’s an obsession.
Anti-gay activists are obsessed with talking about “grooming.”
People wouldn’t be obsessed with talking about grooming if leftists weren’t obsessed with talking about sex with five-year-olds.
Elite NYC school is using the creepiest video of all time to teach first graders about masturbation and I have questions.

Of course, the most obvious question is, will there be an AP Program for the advanced students?

And note the term she uses to defame proponents of the Florida bill: “anti-gay activists.”
As is well known outside MSNBC newsrooms and the confines of blue-city newspapers, the word “gay” does not appear anywhere in the bill. Nor does “LGBTetc.”
Were Hesse truly interested in knowing what was in the bill, she would have bothered to read it. It’s very short and easily found. (pdf)
Of course, had she done that you know what would have happened.
Not only does the bill not have the word gay in it, but search for the words “gender” and “sex” (and its variations) and you’ll find they appear only twice each.

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BLUF:
The problem, in an age of political polarization, is that about 40% of the population will automatically believe anything a Democrat tells them, even if it contradicts the most basic principles of economics, and there is a vast media establishment which won’t even question Biden’s bizarre counterfactual claims about inflation, energy policy, etc. All that matters to them is the cynical question, “Cui bono?” Who benefits from a particular belief — Democrats or Republicans?……..

Thus does “truth” become a partisan prize, over which one party claims a monopoly. By selling their souls to advance this belief system, the media destroy their own credibility. Then they wonder why we don’t trust them.

‘Simply Not True.

Joe Biden believes he is honest, and that anyone who disagrees with him is lying, or is ignorant, or has been deceived by liars.

So deeply convinced is Joe Biden of his own honesty that he thinks his very name is synonymous with truth-telling:

“I give you my word as a Biden: I will never stoop to President Trump’s level.”
— Nov. 20, 2019

“I give you my word as a Biden: If I am elected president I will do everything in my power to protect our children from gun violence.”
— March 10, 2020

“I give you my word as a Biden: When I’m president, I will lead with science, listen to the experts and heed their advice, and always tell you the truth.”
— March 18, 2020

When I first noticed him using this “my word as a Biden” phrase during the 2020 campaign, I was puzzled. Has the Biden family been so prominently associated with honesty that when Joe says this, most Americans say, “Well, that settles it”? Of course not. In fact, Biden’s first presidential campaign, in 1988, collapsed in disgrace specifically because of Joe’s dishonesty, when he was caught plagiarizing others — most notably British Labour leader Ne0l Kinnock — in his speeches:

Democratic presidential candidate Joseph R. Biden Jr., a U.S. senator from Delaware, was driven from the nomination battle after delivering, without attribution, passages from a speech by British Labor party leader Neil Kinnock. A barrage of subsidiary revelations by the press also contributed to Biden’s withdrawal: a serious plagiarism incident involving Biden during his law school years; the senator’s boastful exaggerations of his academic record at a New Hampshire campaign event; and the discovery of other quotations in Biden’s speeches pilfered from past Democratic politicians.

Joe Biden lies about a lot of things, including his own biography. It is fair to say he is notoriously dishonest, and yet he seems to believe that nobody knows this, and that he enjoys a reputation as a truth-teller.

[Well, that ‘he seems to believe’ goes along with the delusions of senile dementia and SloJoe believing his own propaganda. Sucks for us to have a Commander In Chief who for the time, is no more than a meat puppet, It makes you wonder what might happen if one day Joe decides that his handlers are wrong and he’s going to do something other than what they want him to, and Jill – and the secret service – decide to back him up.]

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Oregon and Washington lift mask requirements today

PORTLAND — After spending a majority of the pandemic under statewide indoor face covering requirements, Washington and Oregon will be lifting their mask mandates Saturday — marking a significant step in restoring normalcy.

The milestone, which comes two years after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, is on trend with the rest of the country as public health orders were dropped in droves. Oregon and Washington are among the last states to lift mask requirements.

“We’re turning a page in our fight against the COVID virus,” Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said during a recent news conference.

Last month — as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations drastically declined, following a surge caused by the omicron variant — Oregon and Washington’s Democratic governors announced that they would be lifting rules requiring masks in indoor public places and schools on March 12.

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Quip O’ The Day
“Hope we spend more time on propulsion than on pronouns.”

Moon battle: New Space Force plans raise fears over militarizing the lunar surface.

The battle is on for the moon.
The U.S. military is investing in new technologies to build large structures on the lunar surface. It’s designing a spy satellite to orbit the moon. And it just announced plans for a surveillance network — what it calls a “highway patrol” — for the vast domain between Earth’s orbit and the moon, known as cislunar space. Top military strategists and documents, meanwhile, now consistently refer to this region as a new realm of operations.
The funding is also starting to flow. The government spending bill passed by Congress this week added $61 million for the military to pursue projects in cislunar space.
“That’s basically the first significant chunk of money that we’re putting towards this,” said Space Force Col. Eric Felt, commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Space Vehicles Directorate at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico.
He likened it to “putting the toe into the water, but we think this is an important potential future tech area.”
“From the Space Force’s perspective,” he added, “they don’t know how big of a deal this is going to be in the future, but it could be a big deal.”
The Pentagon maintains these new pursuits, all launched since the creation of the Space Force three years ago, are primarily designed to help secure a growing private space economy and safeguard civilian astronauts. In all, the newest branch believes nation-states and commercial companies will fly nearly 100 missions — both crewed and uncrewed — to the moon between now and 2030.
But space policy and security experts also fear that the armed forces could outstrip NASA in space exploration and thrust what has largely been a peaceful competition into a military contest.
Aaron Boley, co-director of Outer Space Institute at the University of British Columbia, says the Pentagon already plays an outsized role in Earth orbit, where satellites are used to support military operations and global security.
“But once we move to the moon, this should really be driven by civilian organizations to ensure that peaceful purposes are maintained,” he said.
Some leading military strategists, however, say there is simply too much at stake in the space race to leave it to civilians, and that the Pentagon will likely be compelled to take on a bigger role.
China’s space agency has made significant strides in its plan to develop the moon, including landing the first spacecraft on the south pole in 2019. It also plans at least three additional robotic missions, beginning in 2024, to build a lunar base, with missions involving taikonauts to follow.
Proponents for a more muscular U.S. military say they fear China cannot be trusted to pursue only peaceful aims and could use its space program for both economic and military advantage, including a new partnership with Russia to build a moon base.
“Power abhors a vacuum,” said Peter Garretson, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and space strategist who is now a senior fellow in defense studies at the American Foreign Policy Council. “You should expect that other actors will act in ways that favor their interests to the exclusion of others.”
“I think we all hope that NASA will rise to the occasion again and be able to perform that traditional exploration role,” he added. “But with the slipping of budgets and slipping the timelines, I think there is some concern as to whether or not NASA is scaling its efforts and will be able to rise to the occasion.”
The Space Force maintains it is interested only in developing the means for “domain awareness,” not exploration.

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Comment O’ The Day

As much as I was starting to enjoy Ms. Stadtmiller’s anti-trannies on women’s teams rant, she completely ruined it when she wrote:

“If you’re a female athlete you are defying the patriarchal odds.”

It was then that I thought to myself: nonsense, sister, you’ve missed the point entirely. It was the patriarchy that had men and women competing in separate sports leagues in the first place. And it’s feminism and its logical conclusions that have led us to our present situation, in which women are forced to compete with athletes with penises and substantial strength and hormonal advantages over them, and to refer to such athletes with penises as “she” or get kicked off the team, and in which women’s sports are being destroyed.

As the patriarchy might say (if it were a human individual): “Miss me yet?”
—JPL

University of Pennsylvania Systemically Abuses Young Women By Forcing Them to Compete with and Undress In Front Of a Man Who Physically Humiliates Them and Makes Them Call Him a Woman.

I’m doing my best to be kind. –Mandy Stadtmiller

This is a man. I am a woman who knows what a man looks like. You cannot scare me out of my instincts into saying otherwise. I know what reality is. This is what a cheating man who enjoys cheating against women looks like.

Do you remember what it is like at all to be a young woman?

Just how overwhelming and mortifying and embarrassing so much of it all is?

Embarrassment can feel like death. Banishment from a social circle is death. Sex and puberty and bodily changes cause so much shyness and nerves and uncertainty and stimulation.

And then sometimes…a miracle occurs.

Sometimes a young woman finds something instead of consumerism and hypersexuality and the light glossy sociopathy of modern life.

Sometimes she becomes a female athlete.

If you are a young woman who competes in sports, there is a certain thrilling power that comes with it.

You learn confidence and leadership and even where you are weaker and where it might be up to you to work harder, to see if you can push yourself that much more, to get out of your own way.

If you’re a female athlete you are defying the patriarchal odds.

You’re standing out as a woman for physicality that is not sexual but instead based on pure force and performance and strength and POWER that comes from taking your own biological body to the limits of training and perseverance and domination and self-belief.

Fair competition is an indisputably glorious thing.

Fair competition is female bodies competing against female bodies.

As everyone knows and understands, women compete against women because otherwise competition would be patently unfair.

Women do not have the same athletic advantages as the male body and the benefits of a male puberty and the strength that comes from a male body.

“Male bodies have 10-30 percent greater muscle strength, greater bone density, better oxygen efficiency, larger heart and lungs, more efficient pelvic Q-angle and elbow angles, as well as 10 percent more overall body mass,” explains Ross Tucker, of the Science of Sport podcast.

Can you imagine the psychological travesty if we were to force young women to compete with men and tell them to simply “try harder”?

And that their eyes and inner knowledge is wrong?

That the man with the penis undressing in front of them is actually a woman?

What institution could be so torturous and cruel as to punish elite female athletes by forcing them to shower and change next to a man who doesn’t cover up his intact penis and is stealing medals that rightfully belong to women—and then also be forced to call that man with the penis undressed in front of you a “woman”?

That would be abusive and insane, cruel and unusual.

Except it’s exactly what is happening in the Ivy League right now.

That’s what Penn is doing. They don’t want you to know.

I’m begging you: Know.

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It’s like the goobermint’s policies depend on which way the politics might affect the next election (which is really all that most politicians worry about anyway…keeping that cushy seat on the .gov gravy train)

From “After 2 Years of Pandemic Life, Turn Toward Normalcy Is a Shake-Up/As the Omicron variant recedes, cities and states with the longest mask and vaccine mandates are rapidly lifting them. The abrupt shift has unsettled the most vigilant Americans” (New York Times):

“Several people said they felt whipsawed as Democratic mayors and governors who once championed safety measures as a public good and emblem of civic virtue now seemed ready to turn the page…”

“… on a pandemic that, while easing, is still killing more than 1,000 people every day across the United States…. ‘It feels like we’ve truly been left to die,’ said Elizabeth Kestrel Rogers, a writer in Mountain View, Calif., with cystic fibrosis. ‘It seems too much too soon, like people are giving up because they can’t be bothered anymore.’… ‘We just haven’t learned,’ Dr. David Goldberg, 32, an internal medicine physician, said as he and his wife took their 1-year-old daughter, Isabel, for a walk through their neighborhood in Richmond, Va. Parents of children younger than 5, who are not eligible to be vaccinated…. He said he was standing in line at a grocery store recently when a man next to him complained that he did not feel well. ‘I was like, Dude, what are you doing?’ Dr. Goldberg said. ‘I feel for parents who are just waiting. They feel left behind. Kids can get sick and they can die.'”

 

BLUF:
My guess is that the Russian infantry massing around Kiev isn’t even going to enter the city. They know what sort of losses they’d take in urban combat; there’s no reason to think they could outfight the Ukrainians on their own streets. More likely is that they’re going to lay siege to the capital a la Mariupol and wait for a surrender. The outcome of the war may turn on whether Russia is capable of doing that successfully or whether Ukrainian troops outside the city can mount the sort of counteroffensive described above to break the siege. If they can, the Russians will be faced with a scenario in which they can neither starve the Ukrainians into submission nor overpower them in combat. Maybe that’s when Fukuyama’s prediction of morale “vaporizing” comes true.

But it’s also when things would get really dangerous.

Is Russia going to lose?
One way to answer the question in the headline is “It already has.” Even to a rank amateur like me, it was clear by *day three* that Putin was facing a strategic debacle. He misjudged Ukraine’s desire and ability to resist, he misjudged the strength of his military, and he misjudged the west’s willingness to paralyze Russia’s economy with sanctions. “No Russian leader since Tsar Nicholas II has done his country so much harm, so fast, as Vladimir Putin,” David Frum tweeted a few days ago, marveling at how diminished Russian power has been by Putin’s folly in the span of a few weeks.

Nothing that happens in Ukraine from this point will undo that. It’s a fiasco.

But a strategic defeat is distinct from defeat on the battlefield. Even optimists have assumed that Russia would eventually brute-force its way to controlling Kiev and other major Ukrainian cities. The “real” fight for Ukraine would come after that when Russia’s occupying forces and Ukraine’s insurgency would wage a war of attrition. Eventually Moscow would run out of patience and withdraw, but “eventually” could take months. Years. Decades, conceivably.

But what if the optimists were too pessimistic? What if Russia is facing near-term defeat on the battlefield as well?

Realistically, there are three ways in which the Russian army might lose:

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“Appear strong when you are weak.” ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

What If Everyone Is Wrong About The Russian Military?

As a kid, the only thing close to as tough as the United States military was those communist bastards they were protecting us from. We were tougher, of course, but since we were the good guys we didn’t even consider invading them. Should they invade us, which we knew they wanted to do, we’d be ready to kick some commie ass! At least, that’s what we told ourselves, mostly to avoid thinking about the complete, total and world-wide nuclear annulation. Times have changed, and so has the Russian military…or has it?

We always assumed they were as strong militarily as we were, but mostly because of parades and their size. Everyone has seen the footage of battalions marching through Red Square, huge intercontinental ballistic missiles rolling along with them in a sea of soldiers and tanks. They sure projected strength and readiness. But maybe they weren’t ready?

All we really had to go on was the Soviet Union’s word, their propaganda videos, and the fact that they could push around so small countries. But maybe they were a super-power based solely on their huge nuclear arsenal?

We never really saw the Soviets take on another organized military, their power was largely acquired through propping up dictators and intimidation – they were very good at disappearing the disloyal and beating up the weak.

We were told they were strong, minus the nukes, mostly because they were big, and that assumption continues to this day. But their actions in Ukraine are not that of a world-class military, not by a long-shot. It’s more like a drunken douchebag indiscriminately launching rockets, quite possibly because they lack anything with precision. We can drop a missile down a chimney with the accuracy of Santa Claus, but what if the Russians couldn’t even hit a brick in a brick factory?

Remember what we were told about the Republican Guard in Iraq? They were the “best of the best.” Pick your Gulf War, when they started the story was about how we’d have no real issues with the regular Iraqi troops, but when we encountered the Republican Guard things would get hairy. They never did. The Republican Guard was as insignificant as the regular army. Both times the people in charge were completely wrong about what we were up against, the RG folded like a cheap tent. Could history be repeating itself with Russia?

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Why do laws that restore rights take so long to come into effect, but laws that restrict rights, quite often go into effect immediately?

Virginia Switchblade Ban Repeal Bill Signed!

Knife Rights’ Virginia Switchblade Ban Repeal Bill, SB 758, that passed with broad bipartisan support, has been signed into law by Governor Glenn Youngkin. We sincerely appreciate Gov. Youngkin signing this bill after nearly 5 years of effort to repeal the ban.

NOTE: Repeal does not become effective until July 1st. Until that date, possession of automatic knives remains illegal in Virginia.

NOTE: The concealed carry knife bans in Virginia, including of switchblade (automatic) knives, will still remain in effect: “If any person carries about his person, hidden from common observation, (i) any dirk, bowie knife, switchblade knife, ballistic knife, machete, razor, … or (v) any weapon of like kind as those enumerated in this subsection…”

Knife Rights will never stop until all archaic knife restrictions in Virginia are repealed.

Our sincere thanks and congratulations to sponsor Senator Todd Pillion for his efforts that have resulted in the repeal of Virginia’s longstanding irrational switchblade ban.

With the repeal in Virginia, only five states remain with a complete ban on civilian possession of switchblade (automatic) knives. Knife Rights has led the effort to repeal switchblade bans or restrictions in 19 states, starting with New Hampshire in 2010. Repeals have since been enacted in Alaska, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin and now in Virginia.

Altogether, Knife Rights’ efforts have resulted in 36 bills enacted repealing knife bans in 25 states and over 150 cities and towns since 2010.