One of may Markisms goes like this: "A gift is something to give to another person that they want but would not get for themselves. A present is something you give to a person that you want them to have. Know the difference" (this is important later).

I found this the other day: (Here's the link if I can't get it to play)

https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz/video/7327628729058856223

A young woman, a random media person, is lamenting on camera that the entire news media, across all networks and websites, are laying off most, if not all, of their work force. If you didn't notice, Sports Illustrated is no more.

This is what happens when you try to run news/journalism as a for-profit venture. Because profits had to be shown, news coverage had to go from balanced and in-depth, to the loud, salacious, grandstanding, inflammatory "be first now let the facts catch up later." The viewer was forced into a state of near-panic, kept on the edge of their seat, anticipating the next and new detail or word. And because when you're loud, salacious, grandstanding and inflammatory, each new story has to be even more so. And it's at this point the lies start.

Leftoids have been told for seven years, "WE'RE ON THE VERGE OF GETTING TRUMP!" and all of the other lies the other way, like "Hunter Biden's laptop is Russian disinformation." Up until now, when even these Leftoids are waking up, realizing that they've been lied to on a daily basis. Tens of thousands of proud, faithful Democrats are now collectively going, "Say it ain't so, Joe!"

In certain professions, integrity is beyond critical. Without a clear an unquestionable level of integrity, professions like journalism cannot exist. A lie once discovered, can be passed off as "an honest human mistake." When the lies go on and on, continuously repeated, unapologetic, getting exponentially bigger to cover the pile of lies already out there, the trust and integrity of those who spread the lies are destroyed permanently.

This is what happened here. The hubris of these news networks, newspapers, magazines and all the others lost sight of their true purpose. That purpose is to inform their consumers about important events. Inform them with all the facts, with as little bias as possible. Instead, they have mutated into people who think their consumers are imbeciles who need to be told what to think. They lost sight of what the consumer wanted.

I bring up Sports Illustrated to put an exclamation point on this. Since SI started in 1954, it reported the major events in all of the various sports. The primary purchaser of the magazine were men. In 1964, SI started publishing an annual Swimsuit Issue, dedicated to showing off the beautiful curves of female athletes and supermodels. In the past few years, SI lost sight of their primary consumer base and what content these men were looking for and thus their reason for buying SI to consume. In 2019, the models started having "different body types" (plus-sized), and in 2020, SI started having transgender women in the swimsuit edition.

In case you didn't know, the vast majority of men want to see healthy (i.e., thin), beautiful women in skimpy suits. Men in matters of sexual drive are visually driven, so this should be an obvious given. Men are not interested in or even repulsed by "washe" females, or women who are overweight. So, the primary consumer of this product stopped consuming it. The editors of SI were producing content that their consumers did not want.

The #1 rule of Capitalism is, "Make something people want. Make it better than anyone else and sell it cheaper than anyone else." These journalists have stopped making gifts of their product, namely giving people what the people want. They now present us with what they want us to have, which most of us didn't ask for and don't want.

I'm confused. Really, really confused. I found this article on The Economist: Why execution by nitrogen gas is so controversial. The article lambasts using nitrogen as an execution method. Reading the article, I found several rather idiotic points that I am compelled to point out.

First, according to the article, An anesthesia mask is placed over the mouth and nose of the condemned. That right there is not the best way. A helmet or a total enclosure (such as the classic cyanide gas chamber) is better for the "delivery" of the gas.

Second, this quote proves the idiocy of the source, and the author of the article:

"Moreover, if a prisoner's mask is not placed correctly, nitrogen could leak, putting other people in the room, such as a spiritual advisor, at risk."

Oxygen comprises about 21% of the air we breathe. We don't start getting into hypoxia until it falls below 17%. Math (and common sense) shows that to drop the oxygen level that much in a small room (10 feet square or so), the nitrogen would have to flood the room at several hundred liters per minute. Those kind of masks deliver 8-10 liters a minute at most. To deliver more than that risks rupturing the lungs, called a pneumothorax (collapsed lung; a very painful experience). I learned about this when I became a SCUBA diving instructor; I had to help a guy who developed one on the shore. You could run that mask at full blast while it sits there on the table by itself and no one would notice. The freaking HVAC system for that room moves more air in and out, so this is total garbage.

Then they mention the American Veterinary Medical Association in their 2020 guidelines wrote that, according to the article,

"...nitrogen hypoxia is not an acceptable euthanasia method for most mammals because it is "distressing."

The article didn't note that nitrogen hypoxia is okay with the Vets when the animal is sedated/unconscious. However. on the same page (page 58), the guidelines express approval of using carbon dioxide (CO2) as an "Inhaled Agent." Hang on, I have to step away for a moment, the stupidity is making me very angry.

If you are familiar at all with the respiratory cycle of all air-breathing creatures, you know that it is not the lack of oxygen in our system that makes us inhale, it is the build up of the waste gas CO2 that triggers the action to inhale. So when the air you breathe has more than 2% CO2, you start to feel like you're suffocating (you are). You normally exhale <1% CO2, which is why mouth-to-mouth resuscitation doesn't kill either person. When you exhale <1% and breathe in >2%, the body panics. The medical term is hypercapnia.

As a side note, carbon monoxide (CO, produced by incomplete combustion) is also approved by these quacks. CO is about 250 times more soluble in blood than oxygen (O2). The red platelets in your blood that transport the O2 from your lungs to the cells of your body can only hold on to that O2 for a few seconds before the platelet has to dump it (think that you're carrying a large box around. Not heavy, just awkward and hard to handle). The platelet is quite comfortable carrying CO around. This is why just a few whiffs of CO-laden air can kill you. All of a sudden, no platelets are available to carry O2, they're all carrying CO. And before you know it, you're in hypoxia.

By using nitrogen hypoxia, you are exhaling your CO2, so you don't notice anything. If you're inhaling >90% nitrogen, you're not getting enough O2. Again, your system is keyed to CO2 build up, not O2 intake. You get a euphoric feeling as your brain cells die. It's the same euphoria one gets taking illicit drugs, but I digress.

The article also states:

Several weeks before Mr. Smith's execution, the UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights warned that the procedure could amount to torture.

REALLY? Color me shocked. I trust/believe what the UN says less than I do CNN, and my trust in CNN can only be expressed in large negative numbers...

Then, we have an article like this: Controversial ‘suicide pod’ that ‘kills peacefully’ gets go-ahead in Switzerland. This device, called a "Sarco" is a suicide pod that the person climbs into, then answers some questions and once the questions are answered correctly, the person inside can press a button to start the process. The pod is quickly flooded with nitrogen, dropping the O2 level to about 1% in 30 seconds. Hypoxia and death quickly follow.

Before I get into my questions I would like to ask these idiots, I want to make something clear. The body of any animal will always try to survive. The consciousness may be gone (inoperative by sedation or hypoxia), but the body will fight. Muscles will twitch and contract in their death throes. if we don't shit or piss ourselves in these throes, we certainly will when those muscles die and relax, no longer holding back those fluids. It's not a pretty sight. Please, don't conflate these last spasms of attempted survival to the consciousness that once occupied that body.

So, I naturally have some questions:

• How can nitrogen hypoxia be a method of torture and an acceptable method of suicide?
• If nitrogen hypoxia is not allowed to kill animals, but CO and CO2 are, why can't we use CO or CO2 to execute people?

Personally, I agree with the Russian method of execution. Strap the condemned into a chair, let them have their last words and during it, shoot them in the "apricot," Which the medical term is the medulla oblongata in that soft area in the back of your head just below the skull. The medulla oblongata controls the autonomous bodily functions (heartbeat, et.al.,), and it relays commands from the brain to the rest of the body. It's the best "off switch" to end someone instantaneously, without pain or perception that they're dying, like if you shot them in the heart. A hostage taker with a gun on a hostage, if hit there will never have the chance to pull the trigger. The connection will be severed before the signal can be sent.

After the execution, the family of the executed are billed for the cost of the bullet.

So here is a group on X, called the New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence, and these guys messed up, but that’s okay, they are blessed by DOJ.

This group a while back managed to get passed into a state law NM law 30-7-7.1, requiring a background check to transfer a firearm from one private citizen to another. This is part of what you have to do when you buy a gun from a gun store. At the gun store, you fill out the BATFE Form 4473, while the store/current owner goes to a website or calls a state 800 number, giving to the operator the buyer’s name, drivers’ license number and maybe an SSN. Once the background check is completed and the buyer passes the check, the transfer may proceed.

So back on December 16^th, they apparently received three bolt-action rifles and two shotguns from a family. No paperwork was performed during this transfer. So, they’re in violation of the law they helped pass.

Then, as you see in this image, they sawed them in half. There are specific ATF approved rules on how to destroy a firearm, and this isn’t on the list. These are still firearms as long as the action works and it can chamber a round. It doesn’t matter if the round is sticking out of the weapon. What they have done in this instance is created a “Short Barreled Rifle” (SBR) and this is now a Class III weapon, and is treated just like a machine gun. You actually have to apply to the ATF and receive approval from them before you can alter the firearm to the SBR condition. Not being properly registered and not having received the appropriate paperwork, this is federal felonies #1 and #2.

THEN, according to a Tweet from them on 12/14, this group takes these Class III weapons onto a school campus, and performs a second transfer, to underage young adults, who properly destroy them by forging them into gardening tools. Felonies #2 (taking a gun into a federal gun-free zone), #3 (unapproved transfer of an unregistered Class III weapon), #4 and 5 (transfer of a weapon to a minor, transfer of an unregistered Class III weapon to a minor) and a second state transfer violation.

Here’s where the irony really kicks in. A Tweet from a person who the NMPGV “helped”, Kat’s family are ardently anti-gun. Including the dad. Yet, the anti-gun dad, apparently experienced some fear over the neighbors, or maybe the “Summer of Love” in general. There is no mention as to when he bought them, so that is all conjecture. However, he bought these weapons to protect himself and his family.

I find it typically hypocritical of a Liberal/Leftist to decry the possession and/or use of firearms, yet that’s the first thing they buy when they feel they are in danger.

Thankfully, the local Sheriff is investigating the matter. San Juan sheriff probes advocacy group's gun buybacks in Farmington.

I do not wish any ill on any person. That being said, I sincerely hope they are prosecuted to the fullest extent of all appropriate laws, local, state and federal that they have broken. Because, as Ulysses S. Grant said:

I know of no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.Ulysses S. Grant

Well, if you haven’t paid attention to things about the Nashville school shooting back in March 2023, a “Manifesto” was found, I’m not sure where. There were multiple court battles over the question to release or not release this document.

On November 6th, Louder With Crowder released images of three pages a whistleblower gave them access to. I have published them below.

This is not a “manifesto.” What makes a personal document a manifesto is the author’s desire to release it publicly. This is a girl’s diary. I snuck a peek into a couple girls’ diaries when I was an adolescent and other than the anti-white hate, there’s zero difference. The notes, the art, everything.

I can see why TPTB (The Powers That Be) did not want this released. With many of the preceding mass shooters, their writings were released in days, if not hours. After all, the MSM has to make sure everyone knows about “right-wing racism.” Yet this one was kept under lock-and-key for eight months and still has not been officially released. Because it shows the virulent anti-White racist programming that has and is going on in the name of learning indoctrination.

I do not see any significant difference between this and the Congressional baseball shooting in 2017.
Both shooters were emotionally unstable. The baseball shooter had a long history of police encounters, and both were deeply indoctrinated into Leftist ideologies and talking points. Considering that millions of people have been programmed identically, I find it amazing (in an ironic way) that there have only been two of these “events.”

I am sad that the Nashville Shooter was programmed to kill. I am sad that this two-legged animal decided to send six souls on before them.

I do enjoy some small measure of schadenfreude in the fact that she will go down into the history books under her deadname. She was convinced to run away from who she was, and now she and her legacy will be trapped by what she tried to run away from.

I was thinking the other day about the rampant crime in those deep blue cities, from shoplifting to murder. I had a 3,000 word screed already written, along my direct style of solution. Then I realized, this is what those Leftists want. The Democrats they elected to office told them what they would do. Sanctuary cities, not prosecute “the downtrodden,” and all the rest of it. As a result, the crime, the open drug use, the excrement in the streets, all this was as predictable as the sun rising in the East in the morning.

And because these rank-and-file Leftists don’t associate electing Leftists to office and the (literal) shitstorm they now suffer through, they pack up and move to places that are lower tax, less crime, more freedom and all that in places like Florida, Tennessee and Texas. The bad news is, they didn’t learn their lesson and will start voting Leftists into office, starting the cycle all over again.

So I propose an immigration test. If you decide to move from the Leftists states (California, Oregon, Washington, New Jersey, New York, et.al.) to freedom-orientated states like Florida, Tennessee, Texas, et.al., You need to show your votor registration. While who you voted for is secret and no one can know except you, if your party affiliation has been Democrat for at least the last six years, you are not welcome here. You can’t get a job, a house, an apartment, a drivers license, nothing that would infer residence. You also can’t rent a room for more than three nights without showing cause (work training, convention, visiting family, etc.).

While we heartily welcome those who wish to be free, we refuse to accept people who fouled their own places to live, and move here to repeat that process. Leftists are no longer welcome. Stay in those shitholes, vote the leftists out and vote in those who will undo the damage caused by their predecessors.

In the news, Liberty safes, one of the biggest gun safe manufacturers has just put themselves in some very deep and very hot water. A federal search warrant was issued for a suspected 1/6 participant, and handed to Liberty safes, who then provided a "secret override code" to the feds to open said safe. Except the warrant was for the property the safe is on, not the safe itself.

That secret code right there is why I will never purchase one of their safes. THE FACT THAT IT EXISTS IN THE FIRST PLACE is terrifying to me.

Then it comes out that the CEO of Liberty, who is also a founding partner of Monomoy Capital Partners that bought Liberty in 2021, Justin Hillenbrand, it has been discovered through FEC filings that both Hillenbrand and Monomoy have a long and consistent history of donating to Leftists.

All I can say is, I would not be surprised if their sales drop to zero in the next week, and any ordered but not delivered safes are cancelled.

Backdoor code, roll over on command by the feds, donating to the people who want to take guns away... Three strikes and you're out.

Before I start talking about what I want to talk about, I want to tell you a Parable/Urban Legend/Sea Story I was told as a young Sailor “by someone who was there.” This is very important for delivering the punchline at the end of this article.

In the late  60’s/early 70’s, Norfolk, Virginia did not like the Sailors and other military that would spill out of the gates every day, intent on “getting drunk, fighting, despoiling the womenfolk and other general debauchery.” This had led to the infamous “No dogs or Sailors allowed” signs.

The Base Captain finally reached a point where action had to be taken. He closed the gates. Nobody in or out. It took a few days, but the merchants came to realize how much of their income came from the base personnel and contractors. The city leaders came to the base Captain, and an agreement was reached. The sailors would behave better, and the signs would come down.

Now we come to the actual subject, which is the SCOTUS decision. Trump’s SCOTUS comes through again, 303 Creative v. Elenis, which capped off Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which I have written about several times. This finally declares that a business can refuse business if the service being requested is personally abhorrent to the owner. In both 303 Creative and Masterpiece Bake Shop, the State of Colorado was compelling these business to provide services to same-sex/ transgender people, which are in direct conflict with the owners’ Christian beliefs.

Before you declare the Colorado law “good,” here’s a couple of examples from PJ Media on the subject:

Without [303 Creative v. Elenis] ruling, a neo-Nazi group could waltz into a Jewish bakery and demand a cake in the shape of a swastika. The Westboro Baptist Church could request that a gay web designer create its new website. A church could approach a gay bakery and ask for, and expect, a large sheet cake that reads, “God Made Adam and Eve, Not Adam and Steve.” And in each of these situations, the business owner would be legally compelled to comply, despite the dictates of their consciences or beliefs.

If you don’t see all of those examples as the same as the real world actions that led to this decision, you seriously have your head up your agenda.

Now for the “Twilight Zone Twist.” I present to you this Tweet:

Which can also be titled “Tell everyone you’re a Leftist without saying you’re a leftist.” Just in case you can't tell the difference between Masterpiece Bakeshop, 303 Creative and this dipshit, Masterpiece refused to create a custom cake. He was happy to sell them pre-made cakes. For 303 Creative, a business website for the customer would have been fine, the sticking point was the "same-sex thing." This dipshit is refusing service blanketly based solely on political persuasion.

In the end, I'm sure this businessman's customers who support Trump are happy to take their business elsewhere. Just like customers who took their business elsewhere rather than Bud Light, Target or Disney.

If you didn’t hear or see it the other day, Florida sheriff’s deputy acquitted of neglect, other charges in Parkland shooting.

I told you, I told you, I told you. In my March 2018 article The ‘Why’ of the 2^nd Amendment Part 1. I first detailed the duty and mandate of Law Enforcement Officers. Then I made this comment. I described how the “Coward of Broward” fulfilled the legal obligations of his job:

“But they stood outside while people were being killed!!!” And.......? As I have repeatedly stated, the job of the police is not to protect individual people, it is to enforce the law. You and you alone are responsible for your personal safety. I fully expect for you not to believe me, so here is the SCOTUS ruling: South V. Maryland (1856). The sad news will come hard to any family who attempts to sue the Broward County Sheriff’s Office for failure to engage the shooter. Every lawyer will sadly inform them they don’t have a legal leg to stand on.

I was talking about families who would try to sue the officer or their agency for negligence or whatever. This was the DA who criminally charged the deputy. Evidently, the DA and their minions didn’t understand the law, or thought these charges would “sneak by.”

I then went on to say in the next paragraph,

Now that I have described the legal extent of their duties, what is the extent of their moral, ethical and human duties to those in the school? Undoubtedly to rush in, singly or as a team, find, engage and stop the shooter, even at the expense of their own lives. Those duties apply to LEO and legally armed citizen alike.

For the record, no law would have changed this outcome. There was no law, proposed or active, that would have prevented the shooter from obtaining their weapons, or stopped/prevented the shooter, and if the law was changed to force a “duty to engage” on the police, this coward still would not have engaged alone. When given a choice between being in prison and being dead, there are some people who would choose prison.

In the end, if you end up in an active shooter situation, your survival is dependent only on your own actions. You can be like Suzanne Hupp, who left her firearm in the car and watched helplessly as her parents and twenty other people were murdered, or you can be Elijah Dicken, who was legally armed and ended the threat in fifteen seconds, preventing more deaths.

I weep for joy over the SCOTUS decision on affirmative action last week. I do this because many people from this point forward will not suffer as their predecessors.

Let’s start with this: 40% of students who start college do not graduate in eight years. When you look at Black students, that dropout rate jumps to 54%. Millions of student loan borrowers don’t have a diploma to show for their debt.

Just so you know, every college scores the students applying to attend. SAT/ACT scores, GPA, number/type of AP classes, extracurricular activities, etc. This derives a number to rank the prospective students. The score effectively reflects your knowledge base, the ability to learn and reason, most importantly the self-discipline in order to graduate.

The college also has a statistically derived “cut-off” number for each of their majors. So students who have a score at or above that number have a 90% chance (or whatever percentage the college cares about) of graduating. That number is probably derived from all of the past accepted student’s applications and if they completed their degrees.

If the school “bends the rules” through affirmative action, this means minority students are given preference and those with lower scores are accepted. Minority students with scores below that cut-off number means they have a higher chance of quitting before they obtain their degree because they do not have the academic foundation needed to get their degree.

Here’s where the real tragedy gets rolling. If college was too hard and you dropped out, you do not have that degree and a path to a higher income. A college degree commands a 10% higher salary over those who lack a degree. You do, however, have thousands of dollars of student loan debt, that you will most likely never achieve the income stream necessary to pay it off.

That unbankruptable debt will follow them like a black cloud for the rest of their lives. It will negatively affect their ability to get a job, especially in a financial sector job. They will have a higher interest rate on any loans or credit cards they apply for, if they get approved at all. Renting an apartment, or applying to take out a mortgage for a home becomes almost impossible. 10 Ways Student Debt Can Derail Your Life.

Delivering a substandard education to minority teenagers in high school, then convincing them to take out student loans to go to college that you know they will most likely not complete, that is just another primrose path to economic slavery and to be bound as a vassal, beholden to government largesse.

And because Leftists are all about feelings, I’m throwing this out:

Michelle Obama wrote this on Twitter:

Back in college, I was one of the few Black students on my campus, and I was proud of getting into such a respected school. I knew I’d worked hard for it. But still, I sometimes wondered if people thought I got there because of affirmative action. It was a shadow that students of like me couldn’t shake, whether those doubts came from the outside or inside of their own minds. [Emphasis mine]

Now, if she got there on her own merits, I’m proud of her. No Ifs, Ands, or Buts. Good for her.

However, I agree that there is a stigma attached to affirmative action. That a student might have gotten in solely because of their skin color, I can see causing resentment. Because that ultimately means another student who did qualify was denied, basically because of their skin color. That can be a great burden of shame to bear, especially when it is self-imposed as Michelle stated. So let’s get rid of the shame. End affirmative action, make everyone get there on their achievements, not skin color. Then there is zero question as to if you deserve to be there or not.

And if you’re upset about my sentiments on this, obviously you did not read the first 400 words I wrote.

I am still up to my earlobes in alligators. I have managed to put some work into here, as reflected with a couple new articles and a major update to another.

I have conducted a major overhaul of my Everyday Carry (EDC) backpack article, detailing my equipment changes to get me home if SHTF (Shit Hits The Fan) goes down.

I have tried to explain in a relatable and understandable way what Situational Awaress entails for all of you Armed Citizens out there.

Last, but not least, I managed to finish reading The Law of Self Defense, which is critical if you want to survive a gunfight AND stay out of prison. Here's my review.

I’m not blowing smoke here. My chops are I installed Point of Sales in McDonald’s for several years. I came in, trained the managers and the crew in operation of my equipment, laid the network and installed up to 8 POS systems, along with hanging a 19” CRT monitor from the ceiling and other modules. I had to help the managers with entering food costs and other “back office” things. It took 4-5 days to go from a FedEx container full of boxes to an operational store.

That $5.00 burger you bought? The components (bun, meat, cheese, wrapper, etc.) cost about $1.25. So there is a gross profit of $3.75. That is where the payroll, building rent, equipment maintenance and replacement, franchise fee, etc. are paid. In the end, the net profit for the owner is 15 cents.

It is an economic fact that every job has to be profitable. Every worker has to bill, or help the line workers bill the customer. If I hired you and pay you $10/hour, I need to “bill you out” for $20-25/hour. Because I have to pay “my” half of the SS/Medicare taxes, my part of the benefits package and pay for those who don’t directly bill the customer for their time.

If a job isn’t profitable, the employer must do at least one of these things:

• Pay the worker less (pay or benefits)
• Charge the customer more, or
• Eliminate/automate the job.

Cutting pay or benefits usually ends in disgruntled workers, or no workers. Charging the customer more is covered under the Law of Supply and Demand: As prices go up, sales will go down because the customer has a fixed amount of money to spend on your product. If a Sausage Biscuit is $1, I can have one every day. If it’s $3, I’m only going to have it once or twice a week.

Eliminating the job does not necessarily mean less company revenue. The job could be automated. I recently learned that in the US steel industry, there are half as many workers in that industry as there were in the 80’s. The flip side is, the amount of tons of steel produced from then to now has doubled. In other words, the steel worker of today is producing four times the amount his grandfather did.

When you consider the automating of a job, you have to consider the cost of the machine to purchase and install, the cost of running it, and the cost of servicing it when it breaks. When labor is cheap, there is no profit in mechanizing or automating jobs.

So this is what we’ve come to: Welcome to the First Ever McDonald's Where You're Served by Robots—In Texas

This is a testbed McDonald’s that is almost entirely automated. The order is taken and the food is cooked, assembled, wrapped and presented without human intervention. There are still one or two people in the store, because they have to receive the truck, store the product, then load the product into the machine and clear jams.

The workers will be skilled and technically savvy, as in being able to detect abnormalities in the operation, and correct them via unjamming or actual module replacement. The regular service contract of “Call when there’s a problem and we’ll get there when we arrive” won’t fly here. A machine like this, down for even 30 minutes will cost tremendous amounts of lost sales, customer goodwill and food spoilage. The technical person there to keep things running will have to attend the manufacturer’s training school for training and maintenance. This means those workers are going to get the $15-25/hour the Leftists clamored for. The down side is, there will only be two workers instead of 6-12.

Here is the catastrophe coming down the road:

Since the 50’s and the first “fast-food” places, this has been the first job of teenagers. They were paid minimum wage, but the biggest thing they received was the “soft skills” they would need for the rest of their working lives. Those would be:

• Showing up on time
• Showing up properly dressed
• Do what you’re told, even the stuff you hate to do
• Do what you’re told to the best of your ability
• The self-control to be polite to angry people

And more.

The kids just coming old enough to hold jobs will soon not see these jobs their career ladder is missing the first rung.

And here’s the very simple reason why: #Fight for 15. There are five types of people who work fast food:

• Teenagers living at home
• Young adults who want to become management at the store
• People who are physically/mentally handicapped and this is the best job they can do well
• Adults laid off from their career and are there for some income for their household
• And last (and least) Slackers.

It’s the slackers who have instigated this. Fast food jobs are somewhat hard, and are not difficult. Any job that can be explained in pictograms is not going to be mentally challenging. You will need to have at least some attention to detail to do the job correctly, however it is not that physically or mentally demanding compared to a technical trade.

And because it’s “that easy,” the slackers like jobs like this. They don’t have to upgrade their skillsets to be worth more. They just demand to be paid more.

I still repair equipment in fast-food places, and other “first job” companies. The managers agree universally:

These kids today don’t want to work. They want to get paid, but they’re not worth what I have to pay them.

The speed and quality of their work also costs the company money. If a manager needs a worker to (properly) complete four tasks in a shift, and the kids only get three (or less) done, that means the manager has to have more people to get the jobs done.

In the end, it’s the demand for unreasonably high pay and the lower productivity that created the market for someone to design and manufacture this machine. As long as it was cheaper for employers to pay 6-8 workers at $7-9/hour to first job teenagers than it would be to buy a “whole store” machine, the kids would have jobs. Now that the employer has to pay 50% and more to have bodies in a store, it is economically viable and reasonable to automate those jobs.

Innately knowing something as defined by Merriam-Webster as, "originating in or derived from the mind or the constitution of the intellect rather than from experience."

There are certain things we know, and we know them so deep many times we do not really know that we know them. As adults, we forget what it was like when we were children. We forget because it doesn't make sense to our adult consciousness. Let me remind you.

A child is born as a blank slate. They have no preconceptions, no biases. Every day is filled with wonder, amazement and experimentation. Every day has a totally unexplored region just around the corner. They know nothing. They question everything, including about themselves. So, they experiment with everything without preconceptions. And when they want to know, and can't figure it out themselves, they ask questions of those who are older than them. And for the most part, they believe the answers.

This is where it takes the dark turn. When a child brings a question to an adult with an agenda, the child will get the agenda answer, rather than the correct answer. And this is why we have to stop this "transing" of children.

I was recently turned on to Dr, Riittakerttu Kaltiala, A medical doctor from Finland. She has performed and reviewed a dozen studies that all show the same result: 80% of children and adolescents who express a desire to transition, "reconcile" their trans questions back to their gender of birth by 18. In other words, FOUR out of FIVE children who believe they are trans, end up being the gender they were at birth.

Now you tell me. I'm giving you a chance to go down to the casino and put this month's rent down on a single bet and I promise you an 80% chance of winning. Would you do it? What if that chance was 20%? Would you do it then? Except you're not betting the rent here, you are betting on the mental and physical health of your child.

Children are fundamentally different every day of their first 15 years or so. The child you put to bed the night before is not quite the same child who wakes up in the morning. They may say they're the other gender today and a unicorn tomorrow. This is what play is all about. In the end, it is all play and "what if..?" No sensible person would destroy a child's future because of a fleeting statement.

If they want to go through the surgeries, they can do it when they're an adult. Don't do it to them before they mature.

The fact that the percentage of children who declare themselves trans goes up as the age goes down shows it's a hip and trendy thing for them, not "better diagnostic detection." We have to stop transitioning children with puberty blocking chemicals and radical surgery. If a child wants to dress, act and be named as the other gender, that's called "play." If a teenager wants to do the same thing, that would be called "teenage rebellion" and is perfectly natural and expected. Teenagers rebel because that's their way of separating themselves from their parents and family to become their own person. I know it will be a terrible time for the child who is truly trans, and I feel for them. I am concerned about the majority of the children who "grow out of that phase."

Why must we sacrifice four children to save one?

Back in June of 2021, I wrote this post, Buy from this hat store. I promised that I would personally buy my next hat from them.

This past Easter weekend, I had three specific stores I had to visit in Nashville, and hatWRKS was one of them. So early Saturday morning, I and my friend Mike loaded up and drove the three hours to Nashville. We had a wonderful Male Bonding Experience.

We pulled up to hatWRKS, and as I approached the door, my heart skipped a beat. I knew I was in love.

I had a nice and long chat with Miss Gigi, the owner and proprietor of this fine millinery. The bad news is her unvaccinated stars of David were packed away and unavailable. I purchased a nice Trilby from her (in cash, of course) and I moved on down the road.

Everything she asks you to say "NO" to above requires you to surrender a part of your freedom. Americans do not willingly surrender freedoms.

Whenever possible, always buy from a local business. Your purchase puts food on their table that night. When you purchase from a corporation, all you do is bump up their 10+ digit bottom line by an insignificant amount."

We had a tragedy in Nashville the other day. Three children and three adults were killed in a mass shooting at a Christian school. I wanted to analyze everything that went right, because this could have been so much worse.

Before I start with anything, I need to make this very clear:

EVIL WILL ALWAYS WAIT AND STRIKE WHEN THEY ARE STRONGEST AND THE TARGET IS WEAKEST. A person who is committed to accomplishing their evil task and are willing to trade their lives to complete it are nigh impossible to stop. Good can only train and be ready to react when evil strikes. Good cannot do everything they need to deter all evildoers, they can only scare off the less committed.

THE SHOOTER

The shooter was a trans person, a FtoM transsexual, who, by their final texts to friends was evidently intending to suicide by cop. And that’s all I’m going to say about that. The shooter deserves to be erased by history. May their name never be mentioned or their story receive media coverage, as it can only inspire others to likewise go out in a blaze of glory.

All of the weapons purchased were done so legally. Let me make this clear: THERE WAS NO GUN CONTROL LAW CURRENTLY IN PLACE OR PROPOSED AS I WRITE THIS THAT WOULD HAVE STOPPED THE SHOOTER. The shooter was 28, had no criminal or mental health history (other than the gender dysphoria), or anything that would have disqualified her on an BATF Form 4473.

The shooter carried three weapons, a handgun, an AR-15 Pistol and a Pistol Caliber Carbine. None of these would have been banned by any current or proposed gun-control law in any state. The “AR-Pistol” is for all intents and purposes, is an AR-15, just with a short barrel and no butt stock. It's basically a "rifle caliber pistol." Because of the short barrel and only one point of contact with the operator (the handgrip), it is inaccurate beyond a few yards, and has a significantly lower muzzle velocity and bullet spin stabilization due to the short barrel. A carbine is a firearm that has a barrel length longer than a pistol, and shorter than a rifle. It is meant for shorter-ranged engagements, generally < 100 yards. Because a carbine is shorter than a rifle, it is more effective in CQB, or Close Quarter Battle, which is indoors.  A pistol caliber carbine is a carbine that fires a cartridge usually meant for a handgun. The PCC in this case was a Kel-Tec Sub 2000, which is known as a “truck gun” and fires 9mm ammunition.  It is designed to fold the barrel back to shrink the entire package, made to fit under or behind a vehicle seat and can be quickly deployed if needed. It can fit into a backpack, and takes only a few seconds to open and make ready. A 9mm round fired from this PCC has more hitting power, less felt recoil and accuracy at longer distances than from a pistol, due to the physics of barrel, powder, rifling and sight radius, which is germain to this discussion.

In my opinion, these were not an incorrect mix of weapons for such an assault. I DO NOT IN ANY WAY CONDONE THE ACTIONS OF THE SHOOTER. That being said, the tactical choices the shooter made for their weapon choices regarding the shooter's physical strength and physical capability was not unreasonable. The AR-pistol took care of the glass in the doors, the PCC would have been very accurate and could have been rapid-fired indoors, and the pistol would have been the last-ditch defence if it came to that.

THE EVENTS

Right now, we know that this school was the “secondary” target, as the primary target had visibly armed security personnel. So, a good guy with a gun prevented the shooting from happening there. We also know that the building was hardened enough that the shooter had to actually shoot out the glass of a door to gain entry. The gunfire alerted the school staff to immediately activate the “active shooter” alarm and call 911. The school staff and students quickly closed doors and took cover. In all of the school shootings to date, no student or staff has died when they were on the opposite side of a locked door from the shooter. It looks like the shooter spent most of the time between entry and death looking for victims. The bad news is, the six who died seems to have been caught out at that particular moment. The police were on site within 10 minutes of the 911 call. The officers who arrived first immediately got together and charged into the building. They did the opposite of Uvalde, where those cowards waited until they had maximum firepower and defensive armor, which took an hour.

It took 4 minutes from the time the police opened the door until the shooter was terminated. The police quickly and systematically swept each room they encountered, until they heard the gunfire of the shooter firing on the police in the parking lot. The police immediately converged on the sound of the gunfire and engaged without hesitation until the shooter was dead.

THE CONCLUSION

I don’t know why those in anguish and want to die actively choose to end innocent lives before they themselves are put down like a rabid dog. Visibly armed security, “Good guys with guns,” saved one school from this tragedy. The lack those Good Guys at the second school allowed the tragedy to happen there. The defensive measures worked. The locked doors forced the shooter into revealing themselves early and a trained response to gunfire and the lockdown alarm locked the school down within seconds. No defensive measure can stop a determined attacker. The measures can only cost the shooter time, which allows the staff and students to go to ground, and the police to arrive. Or the onsite security/staff to armor up and take the threat on. The police did their job, in accordance with the terrible lessons taught them before. Immediate, rapid, aggressive force to locate, engage and terminate the shooter.

The only assessment question left would be about the shooter’s potential actions if they had seen visibly armed security at their secondary target. Would there have been a tertiary target? Or would the shooter have just ended themselves without hurting others? I doubt that the shooter would have lived out the day anyway considering the decisions that they made.

EPILOGUE

Like I said at the beginning, Evil will strike at a time of its’ choosing, when it has all of what it thinks it will need, and it is patient enough to not attack until it perceives its’ chances of success to be the best it can be. Good can only train, practice and remain vigilant against Evil. Good will always respond, so Good must always be ready. You cannot “burglar-proof” your home or business. You can only make it “burglar-resistant,” so it’s easier to go after your neighbor’s house than to break into your house. When the Evil is willing to surrender their life to accomplish their goal, you cannot “scare them off.” The goal of the shooter was to kill innocents before being killed. They did not attack the first school because, in their assessment, the shooter would not have achieved their goal.

Like I said, I am deeply involved with my other website and doing work for it. During one of my breaks, I wrote a review on my just finished book, The Price of Principle by Alan Dershowitz. This is a subject that weighs heavily on me personally.

I am also working on a minor redesign, namely getting rid of that scroller that's starting to irritate me. And a whole new deep dive section, once I get the last few things nailed down on it.

I couldn't say "Taking some time off," since I tell people, "I'm always at least a little off." ;-)

Due to the holidays and some projects, namely me organizing my library and trascribing it into my Alexandria Book Library module on here, I am taking a couple weeks away from the normal posting. You will see a Deep Dive or two pop up, as well as some changes to the web page itself.

On December 15^th, 2022, Heather Cox Richardson posted a note about the survivors of the Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs, CO. It was a treatise of 1,413 words, and except for one obvious and glaring error (and hopefully a typo), I’m sure she was factually correct about everything she said.

Too bad nothing was germane to the point. She provided a lot of knowledge about the gun culture, to which I must ostensibly agree with her. That being said, if there were no firearms, we might be calling this the "Club Q Bombing" or the "Club Q Fire." Because it's never about the tool. It's always about the heart. As Idris Elba’s character Roland in The Dark Tower says, “I kill with my heart.” Firearms are a tool, like knives or bombs. Tools have no ethics or morality. All it can do is perform the function they are designed to perform. The outcome of their use, for good or bad, is determined by the user. It always boils down to the heart of the tool user.

Let us not forget, the Oklahoma City Bomber killed 168 people with fertilizer and diesel, both perfectly legal and unregulated before and after that event. Taking away one tool does not the tragedy prevent. It only changes what tool is used. The assassin of PM Shinzo Abe built a firearm out of common things available at any home improvement or hardware store. Would you ban or regulate those items?

We also know laws have no effect on events like these. Laws are State-defined punitive retaliatory actions, the consequences of which are supposed to cause rational people to weigh the punishment as dictated by the law against any benefit derived from the original action. That being said, laws are no hindrance to those who are willing to trade their lives to complete the intended act. If you do not intent to survive your heinous act, then laws or punishment by the State has no meaning or consequence to you.

The shooter at Club Q was, at least in his mind, part of the LGBT+ community. How do I know this? By his own admission as being “non-binary” and using "they/them" pronouns in his booking documents.

I have looked, and the information of this particular shooter is practically non-existent. By base fact or agenda execution I do not know. We know in the past he threatened to blow up himself, his mother and a bunch of police, only because it is public record. No one is talking about who he is.

To use a bit of analogy and tie it to the title of this article, the shooter was a bomb, that exploded to kill and injure a bunch of people. My questions are, “who build the bomb,” and “who lit the fuse?”

Who built the bomb is easy. That would be all of us. By actively, tacitly or unknowingly allowing males to be denigrated, humiliated, belittled and so on. This has left young males emotionally and socially "lost." 

The pressure in that bomb was made by feminism empowering women. The Leftist Feminist Agenda has taught young women to go for the “bad guy” instead of the “steady provider.” This leaves women chasing after the 8+ Chads, leaving the average guys as incels. The more the women that lust after the Chads, who are happy to “pump and dump” every woman who spreads her legs for him, the smaller the dating pool and mate selection for the average and below guys becomes. The young feminists of today have physical requirements that challenge the top 1% of males to achieve them. Which again, leaves most males alone and not properly socialized to constructively interact with others.

Now the final question remains, “Who lit the fuse?” What combination of events lead this shooter to do what he did? Again, there is a dearth of information on this. Intentional or accidental, I do not know. Because the shooter is apparently part of the LGBT community, the Pravdas refuse to cover it. Had this been an ultra-Christian MAGA hat wearing White male, the coverage would have been wall-to-wall.

Yet, we do have two data points. The shooter considered himself to be part of the LGBT+ community, by the declared fact of being “non-binary.” The second data point is he shot up the local club for the LGBT+ community.

As someone who has had extensive experience with psychosis, there literally is, “a method to the madness.” A psychotic person has very clear and articulable reasons for their actions. The fact that the psychotic reasons do not make sense to rational people is irrelevant. And it does take some level of psychosis to let a person to kill another without a reasonable provocation.

There are many possible reasons why the shooter chose to commit the acts of which he is accused. I have but two.

1. The community spurned him. Imagine a male, who is emotionally lost, and, like all of us, desires affection and love. He doesn’t get it from the females he has contact with, so he “widens the net” and goes non-binary, hoping for love and affection from anyone. Which he doesn‘t get. It may be due to his appearance, his lack of social skills, self-introspection, or a dozen more reasons.

In the end, the LGBT+ community, in his mind, rejected him. If the community actually did or didn’t do it is irrelevant, as the only important perception is his. Because that’s how psychosis goes a lot of times. The shooter saw this community, which expresses love, openness, equity and inclusion, reject him. No matter if the exclusion was real or imagined, the end is the same. And to the psychotic mind, this offense cannot go unpunished.

2. Self-loathing. Once again, the current society teaches all masculinity as “toxic” and “aggressive.” It’s been part of our national consciousness since the 90’s that “all men are potential rapists, if not actual rapists.” This provides the impetus for self-loathing, because he is a male and thus deserving of the attacks upon “All with Penises.”  By extension, because he has a penis, HE must be “bad.” And the downward spiral starts.

And like a person who engages in self-injury, the act is not meant to actually harm or destroy themselves, but to provide a cathartic release. The primary reason people who self-injure do so, is to express a control over themselves, while they are in a situation they cannot control. The person cannot control or change the situation they are in, however they can control the amount of pain they receive. And in certain personality types, it is pain like this that provides the silencing of the internal voices of self-doubt and self-hatred.

Eventually, the inward direction of this self-hatred must eventually hit the core and start going outwards rather than inwards, resulting in the violence we see on the evening news.

In the end, these are theories, mere observations using my personal experience while looking at the facts of the matter. I am certainly at least partially wrong. I am open to any other theories as to why.

For all of these mass killers, we cannot stop at the first thing and say "This is why they did this." Because there are a multitude of triggers, injuries, insults and more that ultimately gather into one ball of hatred that explodes and leaves dead and injured in the aftermath.

I have a part 2 below, as a related addendum to this point.

Before I begin the story that prompted this post, I have to relate my first encounter with the inner workings of government.

My beautiful Bride and I had been married for just a few months. Before marrying me, she was an advocate and lobbyist roaming the halls of the Hawai’i State Legislature. We had planned to go out and have a nice dinner-date one Friday night, when she got notice that a sub-committee that was considering a bill that she was lobbying for was open for public comment that night. We grabbed “dinner” (a couple of hot dogs) at a 7-Eleven and headed for the State Capitol. There were 3 State Senators, my bride and I, and about a half-dozen others. My Bride and several other people all spoke to the sub-committee and advocated in favor of the bill, urging the Senators to pass the bill as-is to the full Senate for a vote. No one spoke against the bill. After hearing everyone, the Senators looked at each other, and agreed to table the bill.

In Robert’s Rules of Order parlance, the act of “tabling” a discussion before the group means an indefinite suspension on the issue. While it is normally used in conjunction with a set date or declared "the next meeting" to put a discussion on hold until more information can be gathered and reported back to the group to help make a decision and resolve the issue, In politics, tableing a bill means that it will sit in that committee and never be brought to an "up-or-down" committee vote to send the bill to the floor of the legislature for a vote or not. All bills in committee or unpassed on the floor of the legislative body then “dies” at the end of that legislative session. This tactic is beneficial to the politician, since there is no record of a vote for or against that their opponents can screech about in the next election.

I have had several other interactions with state and local government “behind the curtain” since then, and they all shared the same path, the citizens are not listened to very little, if at all.

Which brings us to today. Back in June 2022, I got a notice that my County Government was forming a “gun safety council” and members of the public were invited to apply to sit on the council and solve this scourge of our community. It was formed to tackle children getting shot accidentally, gun crime and suicides. I applied, listing off my years of experience of being a gun owner and my research into the subject, and I was selected.

Going into this, I was holding out zero hope that any meaningful change would happen, however I was determined to give it my best shot. I have been wrong before.

I became kind of excited about bringing facts and ideas into a discussion like this. I sent the lady who was the lead liaison for the county government a nine-page, 1,923 word “stream of consciousness” (as it came out of my brain, it went into the document with minimal editing) document. While I won’t repeat it here, I presented several problems and solutions.

My take was to satisfy the curiosity of the child about firearms, so they know what it is and why they shouldn’t touch it without Mom or Dad right there with them. You can tell a child not to touch a hot stove a dozen times, but the lesson isn’t really learned until they do. Hopefully the parent is there to prevent a tragedy from happening. My objective was to teach these children, in a controlled environment and at an age-appropriate level so they know why to not handle a firearm without Mom or Dad.

Here were my major points:

1. Locks are a time machine. The only thing a lock does is slow the access to the weapon. The teenager has to bide their time to find out where the keys are or what the safe combination is before they can gain access to the weapon. If it’s during a home invasion or a smash-and-grab on a car, the amount of time the criminal has is very short. Generally, more than they have unless they brought the necessary tools with them.
2. Defang the serpent. Children are naturally curious. It’s their job at 4+ years old to touch everything and explore the world. When the parents hide something away, the child becomes even more curious about it and seeks it out, which leads to tragedy.
3. I also advocated for Eddie Eagle, and have it repeated over and over again, not just once.
4. Teenagers need to be taught conflict resolution so they can use words and maybe fists before guns. I suggested a “duel day” where one student could call out another and they resolve it in a physical, non-fatal manner under supervision. Paintball/laser tag, boxing, math problems, I’m not picky.

Then I went with the solution that I have repeatedly talked about here. The nuclear two-parent home needs to be brought back. Absent this, an organized in-school or extracurricular “Gentleman’s Club” where children receive attention from a positive role model. Because the gangs that perpetuate most of this violence also provide a role model for the child/teenager to emulate, it’s just not a positive model.

I also pointed out the societal mores that allow, if not encourage the behavior of teens in gangs, performing a never-ending stream of drive-bys and other gang-related activities that lead to bodies on the street. I said, “Solve these and you won’t have the gun problem.”

I’m first to admit, I don’t have all of the answers, or even most of the questions. What I do know is how to observe a program in action, then analyze the results to determine if minor changes to the program are needed, or this program will not accomplish its’ goals, regardless of time and funding. I am never interested in “conventional” solutions. Simply because if they do pass the criteria of “success,” it is a modest success at best. I was throwing ideas into the ring, with the intent to see what would work and what wouldn’t. I have no idea, which is why they would have to be tried.

My initial assessment and past experience turned out to be prescient. The Liasons almost immediately started talking about gun locks. A couple of the community organizers also spoke about raising awareness. When gun locks were brought up, every gun owner shot the concept down categorically. We all described that every new firearm is already sold with a gun lock, and detailed the numerous negatives and zero positives when using these that I won’t go into.

And after my time working in the healthcare industry, I already know “raising awareness” runs out about 15 seconds before the person throws the literature away, usually within an hour of having it handed to them. The only exception to this is when the person has been personally impacted and searches for more information.

A couple days after the second meeting, I received an email from one of the other government liaisons, asking to privately connect to “share some ideas and feedback.” Once we had a phone call, his feedback was for me to get behind gun locks, because the committee had a short action period of time and budget. I of course said, “No way!”

A couple days after that conversation, I received this email from the main liaison:

I want to start by thanking you for being one of a very few Memphians who stepped up to volunteer for the Shelby County Gun Safety Council. Your enthusiasm for the topic and knowledge of the issues is very evident in our brief time together. I appreciate that you have many ideas on how to make an impact in this area in our community, and I hope you pursue them. However, in order to move forward with the specific projects in the short time we have remaining and with adequate feedback from all council members, we no longer require your participation on the council. Best of luck in your future endeavors.  Please let me know if I can be of assistance. Thank you again.

Unexpected, yes. Surprised, not at all.

So, I spent over an hour crafting this response. To give context, the bit about “a felon with a gun running around Memphis carjacking people and shooting at them randomly” refers to an incident in Memphis in September 2022, where a 19-year-old felon fresh out of prison got hold of a gun, carjacked several people to keep the police off his tail while he drove around town, randomly shooting people. He killed 4 and wounded 3 more. The city was in lockdown until he was captured:

The definition of insanity is, "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." So, your goals are to cut gun deaths, and you're going to attempt that by "raising awareness" and "advocating the use of gun locks." I could get behind such a proposal, if you could show me where it worked in the past. Just once.

What you are trying to do is place a Band-Aid on a severed artery and expecting the patient to survive. I can promise you repeating a program that has been tried hundreds of times and failed every time will fail yet again. Which is why I suggested the things I did. I have no idea how well they would work, if they worked at all, but I do know they have a better chance of success than the zero percent chance of trying what's already proven to fail. If you also notice, my proposals address the root causes. If you solve those, you won't have what we just had, a felon with a gun running around Memphis carjacking people and shooting at them randomly. If government had addressed the root causes, he wouldn't have been a felon at all, because he would have had the structure, knowledge and skills so he would have never gone down that path in the first place.

Solving problems like this can't be done in six weeks. It can't be fixed in six years, but you would start to see the trend develop by then. It will be expensive, time consuming, frustrating and ultimately rewarding if you do it properly.

I want you to know you totally met my expectations I had when I applied to this council. My prior experience with government aligns perfectly with your current path, that government deems "looking like they are trying to solve the problem" is way more important than actually trying to solve the problem. In fact, NOT solving the problem is in the interests of politicians and bureaucrats because solving the problem means politicians don't get to continue to hold press conferences to say "we are working on the problem" and to use "I am working on the problem" as part of their re-election campaign. Actually solving problems also works bureaucrats out of jobs, since the problem is now solved. The downside is you are reassigned or laid off, like us people in the private sector have to go through periodically.

I am kind of like a police officer, without the "being shot at" part. When I arrive at a site to fix critical broken equipment, the people I greet are having a very bad day. They look to me to solve their problem. I achieve results because when I repair things, I look at what's wrong, what's been done to fix it before me, what the results were and based on that try something else, then evaluate again, repeating that loop until the problem is solved. When I depart a site after I solved their problem, I say, "Don't take this the wrong way, but I hope it's a long time before you see me again." My faith in government would be partially restored if the elected officials and bureaucrats like you had that kind of a mindset.

I run a political commentary website. I am currently going through an upgrade, however once I am done with that I promise I will be relating everything that I heard and saw for this council, especially your email below and this response. It will be accurate, truthful, complete, and it will be polite. It will not be kind. Keep an eye out for it.

I have now fulfilled that promise. I have been polite, truthful, complete and contextually accurate as possible while valuing you, the reader's time. I respect the county mayor and his administration for wanting to tackle this problem. I am disappointed that while much effort will be expended, nothing significant will come of it. This post is not kind, because I have finally accepted that the needs and goals of the Citizens will always be at odds with the needs and goals of government.

It is the first priority of a politician, once they are in office, to stay in office. The only way to do that is to piss off as few people as possible. Most of the time that entails looking like they are solving the problem, even if they are perpetuating it.

It is the incentive of the bureaucrat to not work themselves out of a job by actually solving the problem. Look at our own diplomats with Israel as a prime example. Since the first day Israel was declared a country, Israel has been repeatedly attacked by their neighbors. When Israel decides to return the favor, we stop them by arranging a “cease fire” so the attackers can rebuild and reload. This "solve the immediate problem without adressing the real problem" has kept our State Department in-business and well-funded for eighty years, until Trump brokered deals between Israel and UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. None of which would have happened without a clandestine nod of assent from Saudi Arabia. Notice the Middle East has been quiet since, and not just because of the turmoil in Ukraine.

This part is a continuation for the post above, to address for one specific thing in another email from the main government Liason, sent out to the council to “get the discussion rolling.” The email had this video.

I pulled this article apart like cotton candy thusly. I have edited and clarified what I originally wrote, however the intent is the same as the original:

As far as the ABC news report, they shaved the facts pretty bad. But then again, that's what media today does.

1. The majority of the story was about prepubescent children (12 and under). Except when it came to the "7,391 children per year are hospitalized" with gunshot wounds. The problem is they are lumping teens into that number. Adolescent/teenagers are a whole different breed when it comes to emotional, social and cognitive differences compared to children. The reasons for their firearm injuries are also vastly different than children. Kind of like the often-touted "10 children a day are killed by gunfire" trope. When you look at the actual data from that, you'll see that they include 18 and 19-year-olds (adults, and by extension not children...) in those numbers and 70% of those deaths are teenagers (14+) and gang related.
2. There is no context to their number of "almost one every hour." This is designed to cause anxiety about the subject. The exact number is 71 minutes for context. The CDC has an infographic on "child injuries" (again, including 18 and 19-year-old adults, grrr...) and gives "every 4 seconds a child is treated in the ER for an injury." Again, CONTEXT, for every child that goes in with a gunshot wound, 1,064 other children are treated for other accidental injuries. According to my calculator, that's 0.00094%. Looking at the high-level data, firearms don't make this list, they are lumped in with "All other."
3. The journalists were shocked when the children looked down the barrel of the firearm. My question is, "were the children taught to not do that?" The answer is probably no. They looked at the firearm on all sides, including the muzzle end because they are curious and don’t know better.

And I must wonder how many times they did that test before they got that result. How many children did what they were supposed to do the first time? If they did this test with twenty pairs of children and this was the only time that it happened, I would call this a success, because we’re talking 95% of the kids did the correct thing. The fact that they didn’t mention the percentage of times they had to try this before they got the desired result is very telling. If it had been over 25%, the article would have mentioned it. The fact that they didn’t shows this was the exception, rather than the rule. This is like a "Man on the Street" story, where only the stupidest people make the cut.

Check my math:

525,600 minutes/year. 525,600 / 7,391 gunshot ER visits = 71.11 minutes

31,536,000 seconds/year. 31,536,000 / 4 = 7,884,000 ER visits/year

ER visit every 4 seconds = 900/hour, or 1,066.65 every 71.11 minutes. 71.11 minutes = 4,266.6 seconds / 4 = 1,066.65

7391 / 7,884,000 = 0.000937%

I understand this committee is charged with reducing these numbers and I agree and support that goal, otherwise I wouldn't be here and writing this. However in context, we will always have household deaths like this. Zero is an impossibility. We lose more children to poisoning, fire, falling and drowning then we do accidental firearm discharges.

SOLUTIONS TO TRY:

1. When a firearm is sold, have the gun store offer a free firearms safety class for 5-year-old and up children of the purchaser. Age appropriate and with live fire. This will impress upon the children the "WHY" of "don't touch."
2. Rebate for quick access biometric/pinpad handgun safes, where the firearm can be safely stored yet readily accessible. There is already a Tennessee ongoing tax holiday on gun safes and safety devices.
3. Defang the serpent by offering range discounts when a person brings their kid. I used to take my son when he was 5-7 out to shoot his .22lr rifle all the time when I went to the Shelby Farms range. One time, he accidentally pointed his (empty) rifle at the next person over. I snatched it from his hands, and told him what he did wrong. I then had him apologize to the person he pointed it at, then marched him to the Rangy Safety Officer, had my son apologize to him, then he spent the rest of the time sitting on the bench. He never did that again.

We cannot control others. We can only incentivize them to do the right and proper thing and hope they do so.

The tragedy of Feminism is that it has taught women to be the equal of men, when that is the furthest thing from the truth.

To compare the capabilities and purposes of men and women is like trying to make a Maserati and a Hummer equal. They are equal in the fact that they are human-controlled machines that are able to transport the driver and passenger(s) about, they have four wheels, protection from the elements, and an engine, And that is pretty much where the similarities end. The Maserati is meant as high-speed transport, in relative comfort. The Hummer is able to go where the Maserati can't. When in the same terrain, the Hummer moves a lot slower.

Men and women are meant to compliment each other, not compete with each other. Feminism has tossed the "compliment" concept out of the 12th story window. And we are all the poorer for it. The cry of "I can do everything a man can't do" has been replaced with "I can do everything a man can do!"

Which leads me to this video article at the end of the post. Nora Vincent was a lesbian, and a writer. She decided to write a book, Self-Made Man. She went undercover for a year as a male to understand what life is like for a man. Astonished is probably a good word for her reaction of it.

She joined a men's bowling team, and was instantly and unconditionally accepted. On the women's side of things, she would have had to earn her way into the group. Nora (as "Ned") tried dating women, and found that women treated men horribly on a routine basis. In today's world of courtship, men have to lavish praise, attention and cash just to get the woman to look at him. And the woman can and does say "no" for the smallest of reasons. Case in point, this video is a version of "in-Person Tinder." In this video, a woman starts with twenty prospective suitors, and as she puts out what she's looking for, and after putting out FIVE criteria (if she was attractive to them, likes to party/dance, likes to have a bit of rough intimacy, wants him to be taller then her in heels and older), she was left with ZERO guys. The last one leaving tossed back, "You're gonna be single for a while." They had one guy and twenty women, and ended (after all of the questions) with five women.

I have to refer you to my Fun Stuff article "The Husband Store" to reference the impossible standards women have been taught to have. And they leave as soon as "the butterflies" are gone. Statistically, of course. During a divorce, a woman gets half of everything, plus alimony and child support.

Getting back to "Ned," Nora found out how hard it is for a man to make it. Men are expected to not express their feelings (yes, men have feelings). We are expected to "Man up" and go to work to earn and provide for the (ex-) wife and children. We are not allowed to bitch or complain, except maybe in the halls of men-only social groups. Nora said she prefers to be a female, "I think it is more of a privilege [being a woman]."

This put Nora on a darker path, and trying to be a guy screwed wither head enough, that she ended up spiraling downwards, and ultimately led her to travel to Switzerland and on July 6th, 2022, ended her own life under a doctor's supervision.

Men and women are driven by different things. They contribute different things to the family. Women raise the children while men provide for the family. Women build the social network while men build the buildings. Women protect the children, while men let the children take risks while they're nearby. It is this system over the past 10,000 years that has got all of us to this point. To change all of this, so much and so quickly will destroy us. Our population is declining in every country and culture that is going for this feminism. Feminists don't want to have children because it will interfere with their career, men don't want women because she will destroy his finances as soon as the butterflies are gone.

Can we please get back to team building?

With the exception of girls starting their puberty "growth spoke" slightly earlier than boys, across the human life-cycle males are bigger, faster and stronger than females. As Serena Williams put it, "Men's Tennis is a whole different sport from Women's Tennis." 

Transgender athletes are causing havoc to no end in women's sports. When this thing started, the transgender girls had to be "post-op," meaning the "gender reassignment surgery" had been performed and two years of hormonal therapy. Which, at this point, according to the British Journal of Sports Medicine, the performance differences between the transwomen vs. women, and transmen vs. men had become negligible.

Today, however, transwomen are allowed on women's teams as soon as the transwoman "consistently states their new gender." That means no surgery and little to no "gender affirming hormones." In the end, this means the transwoman has all of the strength and speed they had prior to their becoming transwomen.

Within this context, anyone with a modicum of sense could have predicted this: Horrific moment female high school volleyball player suffers serious head injury after transgender girl in rival team lobbed '70mph' ball at her head and struck her.

A transwoman volleyball athlete from Highlands High School in North Carolina spiked the volleyball during a game into the face of an female opponent. It's only an estimate of how fast the ball was travelling, however it is safe to say the speed and power of the spike was at a men's level, not a woman's. The female athlete suffered a concussion, neck and eye injuries. Injuries that will impact the rest of  her life.

Thankfully, someone had an outbreak of common sense, as the Cherokee County school board had decided to forfeit all games against the Highlands High women's volleyball team, presumably as long as this transgender student is on the team.

To me, it is unconscionable to allow pre-op transmen and transwomen to play sports. The transwomen have a clear advantage, and the transmen have a massive handicap. In my previous article, Fixing Trans Sports, I talked about having one league with multiple performance tiers. I don't know if that is THE answer, however it's at least AN answer.

Entrapment for this context is defined as:

The act of government agents or officials that induces a person to commit a crime he or she is not previously disposed to commit.

This came out last week, and I found it over the weekend, however before I get into it, I want to reference a prior post, from January of 2022,  The enemy of the people:

Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, asked a very simple, straightforward question of Jill Sanborn, who is the Executive Assistant Director of the FBI.

Cruz asked,

"Did any FBI agents or confidential informants actively participate in the events of January 6th?"

Ms. Sanborn answered: "I can't answer that." My view here is any answer short of an unequivocal "NO" answers Senator Cruz's question as a "YES."

So this comes out: F.B.I. Had Informants in Proud Boys, Court Papers Suggest. 

I would have actually been shocked and surprised if the FBI does not have informants in the Proud Boys, the various Antifa chapters, BLM and all of the rest. That's part of their job, both as a national police and the secret police that performs intelligence operations on citizens. The FBI has self-imposed this mandate for domestic intelligence operations.

So, the new and significant question is, "How active were those CI's in the planning and executing of things? What events might have they instigated, directly or indirectly?"

Of course, our good and moral government would never entrap its' citizens, would they?

-An ATF CI hounded Randy Weaver (Ruby Ridge) for three years to cut the barrels of a couple shotguns to make them under 18"

-FBI CI's actually proposed and helped in the planning to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer.

-And now we have FBI CI's involved in the "riot" on January 6th.

I hope their full involvement and complicity comes to light and they, as well as their handlers are prosecuted and punished to the full extent of the law. It ain't gonna happen with Merrick Garland running the DOJ, but I can hope.

Good news: This website is now running under the current CMS version and PHP.

Bad news: The links are way out of whack. They work now, but the website is writing the urls the way it wants to, and my CDO (that's OCD in alphabetical order, the way it should be) is having a great difficulty with it.

Good news: lots of content (including a new section, The Armed Citizen) is coming your way.

I started this website on Blogspot, in 2003. A few years later, I got this domain and ran it under a well-known CMS (Content Management System) program. I'm not mentioning which ones to piss off the script kiddies who like to hack websites. A couple years after that, I stayed on this domain and moved to a new CMS. And, yet again, I am upgrading that CMS.

I have managed to find a utility to move my content without losses and have successfully transferred my content to a sandbox (testing site, as opposed to Production, this site you're currently visiting). Now what I need is to get some software to maintain my search engine friendly URLs and install it.

For example, the SEO version of this post you normally see is https://www.theconservativezone.com/blog/moving-the-website-again.

The Non SEO friendly version is https://www.theconservativezone.com/index.php?option=com_content&Itemid=101&catid=9&id=905&lang=en&view=article.

See what I mean Vern?

The good news is, as soon as I get the new website looking the way I like, I will transfer the Sandbox setup to Production. You'll know that happened when you see the layout change. Only slightly, as I am trying to keep the look as close as possible.

Giving you a fair warning, I am having to take a pause on posting. Not only am I working 60 hour weeks, This website is facing a forced shutdown. I'm running on an old version of PHP that will stop working soon. When I try to upgrade the PHP, it breaks the website. Add to that the CMS software itself has undergone a major revision that I must also upgrade to, with some of the modules I use not upgraded or I have to buy a whole new package. The look may change as well, as I may have to go to a new template. Hopefully not though.

So, all of my time normally allocated for posting is now forcefully allocated for doing these upgrades. Fair warning, you might come here one day and find a static webpage. Rest assured I am diligently working on making it through these trials and tribulations.

See you on the other side.