Playing 3D Chess?

Well, no, not always.  A lot of times the opposition to Trump just plays itself.

Democrats Block Measure To Prevent Terrorists From Working At TSA

At the bottom of it, I am sure in some folks minds, is "Hey, we're blocking this, and if God forbid there is a terrist attack, well, Trump is in charge of TSA, he is closer to it than we are, the buck stops with him, HE will get blamed, Victory for Biden and Schumer"

Cruise Ship Passengers, Some Infected, Flown Back to U.S.

At the bottom of that, I am sure in some folks minds it is, "Hey, Trump wouldn't have let that happen, but if God forbid that is blamed for COVID19 spreading in the , well, Trump is in charge of CDC, he is closer to it than we are, the buck stops with him, HE will get blamed.   Victory for Biden and Schumer."

Except Trump didn't invent the #Resistance.  They invented themselves, and we quite vocal about it.  For years folks have been saying there is too much on .gov's plate and they have exceeded the Peter Principle.  And Trump runs and governs on streamlining regulations.

If you argue that Trump's executive branch is incompetent he just points to that and is immune.  The resistance sabotage and/or incompetence isn't in Trump, it's on them.  He CAN'T have a Katrina moment.  It's impossible.  It's not 3D chess, it's a gift from the other side.  They've sacrificed their queen for a pawn.  To mix the metaphor, they painted them ownselves into that corner.

Oh, if something goes really well, he can take credit for that, tho.  Brilliant.

Trump makes his enemies look ridiculous, but his enemies do a good job making themselves look ridiculous.

Now if he'd just throw us gunnies a significant policy victory bone.  Maybe the GOP gets the house, too, and by this time next year.  Who knows.

"I can't believe how incompetently the Trump administration is handling the coronavirus. This wouldn't be happening if the government ran healthcare!"

— It's still 2016 apparently (@jtLOL) March 7, 2020

New Jersey

You know, New Jersey could make all their gun laws a lot less complex if they just pass the one law they really mean, and get rid of all the others.   Because that's what this comes down to.

No guns for black people.

It's what this is, isn't it?

Lately they tack on "and you icky unwashed from the hinterland" but that's just tacked on. The part New Jersey gummint types really care about is the black people.

Injusticehttps://t.co/l2So3pN1pc

— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) March 7, 2020

This country need federal civil rights intervention.

Well this thread sounds too reasonable

Where's the fun in that?

If we reduce the spread, even if we ultimately have the same total number of cases, we 'flatten the curve,' which means that, at any given time, our health care system can cope with the COVID-19 cases, hopefully. 2/ pic.twitter.com/PlaRIyc94r

— Nicholas A. Christakis (@NAChristakis) March 3, 2020

Twitter isn't ALWAYS a dumpster fire

The best thing that’s happened to me on @twitter ⤵️ https://t.co/GDpJIosetO

— Ben Steel (@steel) March 5, 2020

Please be true.

Prepared

Freeze-dried food is the new .22LR ammo. https://t.co/CDc7pxBsK5

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 2, 2020

Lucky for me I have 2 dozen face masks and 2 dozen Mountain House freeze dried meals.  I am SET.

Wait, I should go buy a few dozen cases of wine....

Thursday the grocery was low on TP and paper towels, but not out. No hand sanitzer, but disinfecting wipes and bleach and rubbing alcohol was available. I think we are through that panic until a big wave strikes. In a few weeks you might get Prime deliver Purell. (Little tip: Maybe You Touched Your Genitals hand sanitizer is just relabled hand sanitizer, and has been freely available this whole time.)

Ooooo...

This is right in my wheelhouse.  So to speak.

I want to see this USN war movie more than I want to Top Gun 2.

Gov. Larry Hogan...

Is getting some bipartisan movement with his crime bill.  Gun laws that aren't execrable, target actual criminals, and are bipartisan.

PRESS RELEASE March 4th, 2020

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Hough Shepard's Bipartisan Effort to Pass Gov. Hogan's Anti-Crime Agenda

(Annapolis, MD) People say they want politicians of different parties to work together to solve problems and today we did just that in Maryland. I was proud to work together with Republican Governor Larry Hogan, Democratic Senate President Bill Ferguson, and Democratic Committee Chairman Will Smith to pass critical public safety legislation.

Tonight, the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee passed by a 10-1 bipartisan super-majority Senator Hough's legislation, Senate Bill 35, which closes a loophole that let drug dealers who use guns get lesser sentences.

Amended on to that bill are major portions of Governor Hogan's Violent Firearms Offender Act of 2020, which does the following:

-Making theft of a firearm a felony -Enhanced penalties for giving someone a gun to commit a crime -Giving prosecutors more tools to crack down on firearm offenders -Enhanced penalties for criminals who are caught repeatedly carrying guns
In addition, the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee in a bipartisan vote also passed legislation by Sen. Will Smith (D-Montgomery County) and Sen. Antonio Hayes (D-Baltimore City), which requires regional policing plans and more law enforcement resources for Baltimore City.-

It really is, tho.

I’ve had that. It’s no joke man. Allicobrabeebellyitis.

— Hellsite Denizen (@HellsiteD) March 5, 2020

Civilized Warfare

It is said that WWI ended so-called civilized warfare.  The Christmas Truce and  football games was no repeated the following season

But even at Verdun, one side refused to shell the road of the other sides supply lines.  It was just the ration train, was the justification.  Soup and bread and drinking water.  It would just bring reprisals if you did.

That's sort of the point.  Stop the logistics, stop the resistance, end the war.

But throughout it was like an understanding.  Here and elsewhere.  Don't rock the boat and make it hard on the other side. It just invites retaliatory misery.  But could extra misery have ended the horrible war 2 years sooner?

Ding Dong

So, apparently, my doorbell's batteries died. 

How do I know this?  I ordered Chinese food and the guy had to call me in order to say he had arrived. 

3 D-Cells later, up and running.  Hmmm.

I must have missed a lot of solicitors from before because they ring it every day it seems now.

Well, I happen to know a good solution and easy way to return to bliss.

And Census takers should be nosing around sometime soon...

Advertisement

Automotive supplies?  Why that looks like...

Oh, I'm not falling for THAT one, ATF!

Look at this monster

Look at it.

Severe tumblehome build for stability.  That means fat at the waterline, thinner at the gunwhale.  I like the lines, personally, but not so stable if you have some flooding damage.  12 inch main guns, but the think is bristling with varieties of arms.  Five+ sizes?  All before the HMS Dreadnaught changed the paradigm.

I love them.  But I'd hate to fight them.  Against other ships, much less Martian tripods.

Not my favorite book.  Too much anachronistic bits just took me out of the story.  But it's about HMS Thunder Child, mentioned in one page of War of the Worlds, and expands upon it's story.  I will admit the book gets a bit better in the middle.  Starts weaker, ends stronger.

Red Dawn

pic.twitter.com/PHIYp09SAJ

— The Engine (@ngintx) March 1, 2020

Revolutions

That History of Rome stuff I was into weeks back?  That was because of a podcast by Mike Duncan called...  The History of Rome.

His next set of history podcasts is on Revolutions.  Did the British one (the 1600s one, revolution, not the fake Glorious Revolution.)  The American one (good talk, but I was up to snuff on that one) and I just finished the French one.

Now I knew broad strokes of the English and French revolutions, but the podcast was a better way to get a more detailed survey of both.  Hammer down a lot more details. Put in perspective the Napolean timelines, etc.

Which is great about podcasts.  This Mike Duncan guy reads the books, and I get an oral Summae.  For a subject I like or am interested in, but don't want to get into the weeds on via the texts.

Speaking of texts.  It's hard to pick the texts to get the proper deep dive.  What is crap?  What is too simplified?  Too pop?  What is good but painfully burdensome to trudge through.  Duncan has a method of how he does it.  It's partly reading the bibliographies of books on a single subject first.  You get what THOSE people turned to, and you notice commonality so you figure out the important stuff that way.  He even did an episode on how he does it.  Twenty seven and a half minutes into the 250th episode, quick and dirty: "Google the topic you want to study and add the word HISTORIOGRAPHY." You get the OGRAPHY or the HISTORY that way.  Bam.  Good start.

Doesn't work perfectly for everything.  John Moses Browning Historiography, or Gunsmithing Historiography does return some interesting links, tho...

It's a good way to fill a commute.  But it does take me away from monitoring the kookies on NPR.  

The best is yet to come, however,  I am REALLY weak in my knowledge of the Haitian Revolution, the 1848 stuff comes soon after and I have may 3%.

But I like listening to History lectures.  If you do, or you have an interest in one of his subject, Duncan is a decent lecturers.  I've had much worse.  He is like a college professor, and could be one with THESE lectures.  All he'd need to add to his syllabus is required reading to go along with it, and tests to match.  And YOU'D have to take notes.  You don't here.  There is no test, and you still learn stuff just like college.  All the good parts of history class, without the onerous parts. 

Now lectures might not be your thing and you'd hate this.  But if you don't already hate history lectures, mainly because of boring lecturers, this is not it.

Pandemic

20 years after the start of a new Century, and during an intractible war around the world, an upstart nation born of bloody revolution had a virus breakout.  A pretty deadly virus.  The government routinely cracked down on the free flow of information, exacerbating the response.  Because of a recent burst of global travel, the virus spread like wildfire. 

No, not Covid-19 in China.  Spanish Flu, from Kansas.  1920, not 2020.  (Well, really 1918.)  Wilson had a tyrannical stranglehold on the press. 

It killed 675,000 Americans (and a lot more around the world.)  Out of a population of 107,000,000.  So, to meet those number we'd have to see 1.8 million dead in this country for this new thing.

Well, 'new.'  It's just a mutated strain of stuff that's been around forever.  Read the back of your Lysol spray can.  It kills Corona, says so right there.   

For Further Reading

Saw this linked from the Nation African American Gun Association.

Guns are specifically designed to kill: the logic error behind the whole gun debate


It delves into the logic and logical fallacies in the gun debate (and by, extension, other political debates, but I am glad it's focus is firearms, because, duh.)

It quotes James Wright (1995) inside: "gun ownership is normative, not deviant, behavior across vast swaths of the social landscape."

Some of the inconvenient-to-gun-confiscators gun research.

The money quote is this though:

"There are 423 million guns in the US. Each year, about 14,500 of them are used in a murder. Those are extensively studied, and that’s good. So now is a good time to start studying the other 99.9965721%."

Well!

THIS could turn my world upside down.

"It’s NOT your Trigger Control"

I just made a quantum leap in personal shooting performance proficiency by relaxing and doing my trigger right, finally.  Will this rabbit hole upset that apple cart and get me better by doing... well not the opposite, but...

Look at me.  Now I am excited about learning again.

"So you are telling me that while you are gripping the handgun with nine fingers (and your palms if you have built your grip correctly), that the little ole trigger finger is overpowering the other fingers in the hand and pulling the gun offline?"

Well, no.  Sorta?  It's only 10% of it?  You should see what I do with the rest of everything when I screw up my trigger control.

Oh, you get into that in the very next sentence.  I should shut up and read, and think... Ooo, and bookmarking.  Looks like the class move around the country... good.  I need to scratch an itch.

"if you are gripping the gun hard and increasing the pressure in the controlling fingers while you pull the trigger, you will be moving the gun. Switch that to gripping and THEN pulling (while maintaining the pressure) and you will fix your issue."

OK!  I will try that.  A single concrete item to test on myself.  Good good.

I am not at risk

"Democrat presidential hopeful Mike Bloomberg suggested average Americans are placed at higher risk of death or injury by having a gun in their home."

Not me.  But, as you all know, I am clearly way above average.  So he's not talking about me.

Zombie Outbreaks and Anna Corinina Virus

They used to start in Haiti.

For a time, they came from an army lab in greater Pittsburgh.

Now they always originate in China.

What do they have in common?  Right, they are from cultures alien to the Western experience.  With a dab of xenophobia/racism, or course.  Black former slaves that are also somehow French.  Treacherous Oriental types from the literal other side of the world.  And Pittsburgh.

150,000,000

In 13 years.

BREAKING: Joe Biden claims 150 MILLION people have died from gun violence in the US since 2007

pic.twitter.com/bnt1NNmFZq

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) February 26, 2020

You'd figure housing would be cheaper.