This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Author: Jonn Lilyea

  • Manning garners little support in Maryland Senate race

    Manning garners little support in Maryland Senate race

    Chief Tango sends us a link to WTOP which reports that the convicted spy formerly known as Bradley Manning is way behind Ben Cardin, the incumbent Senator’s seat Manning covets.

    The Goucher College poll has Cardin with a 61-17 lead over Manning if the race were held today.

    “Ben Cardin is a really popular, long-term Senator,” said Mileah Kromer, the polling director at the Sarah T. Hughes Field Politics Center.

    In fact, nearly two-thirds of Maryland Democrats said they have a positive view of Cardin. The same could not be said for Manning.

    In fact, twice as many Democrats have an unfavorable view of Manning than have a favorable view (37-to-19), though even more (44 percent) don’t have any opinion…Manning “hasn’t really run what you would call a traditionally statewide campaign here in Maryland,” said Kromer. “I don’t know if there’s a lot of door knocking going on, or a lot of forum participating going on, or even engagement with the local media.”

    Yeah, I don’t think that “door knocking” would work well as a campaign strategy for Manning. If you can’t win among the stank-ass hippies of Maryland, you should find another way to support yourself.

    Of course, Manning can pull off another suicide attempt to attract support – that always works well in his favor.

  • Fleeing Communism…again

    Reuters grudgingly reports that Venezuelans are fleeing the latest version of Communism to Colombia. An eight-mile-long line forms at the border crossing;

    “It’s migrate and give it a try or die of hunger there. Those are the only two options,” said Yeraldine Murillo, 27, who left her six-year-old son behind in the Venezuelan city of Maracaibo, some 56 miles (90 km) across the border.

    “There, people eat from the trash. Here, people are happy just to eat,” said Murillo, who hopes to find work in Colombia’s capital Bogota and send for her son.

    The exodus from Venezuela – on a scale echoing the departure of Myanmar’s Rohingya people to Bangladesh – is stirring alarm in Colombia. A weary migration official said as many as 2,000 Venezuelans enter Colombia legally through Paraguachon each day, up from around 1,200 late last year.

    Colombian government officials estimate 4000 immigrants cross the 1300-mile jungle frontier illegally everyday.

    Luckily, for the Castros, there was 90 miles of ocean that blocked migration from that island. But that didn’t stop 14,000 from making their way to the US in the first two years of Communism in Cuba. The Germans built an 866-mile-long wall from the Baltic Sea to Czechoslovakia to stem the migration to the West. The North Koreans have their minefields.

    Mechanic Luis Arellano and his children were among the lucky ones who found beds at a shelter in Maicao run by the Catholic diocese with help from the U.N. refugee agency. The 58-year-old said his children’s tears of hunger drove him to flee Venezuela.

    “It was 8 p.m. and they were asking for lunch and dinner and I had nothing to give them,” he said, spooning rice into his 7-year-old daughter’s mouth.

    “This isn’t the size they should be,” Arellano said, raising his children’s spindly arms.

    Food has been weaponized by the Communists since Stalin used it against the Kulaks in the Soviet Union and Mao used it in his Great Leap Forward and now Maduro in his Bolivarian Republic.

  • Jump pay changes insures continuity

    Jump pay changes insures continuity

    Stars & Stripes reports that the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, Maj. Gen. Erik Kurilla, recommended changes to jump pay regs to insure that paratroopers can rely on their hazardous duty pay when they can’t jump due to conditions beyond their control;

    Paratroopers are required to jump once every three months as a standard for remaining proficient on airborne operations…Now, paratroopers can jump twice during a six-month period, including two jumps within the same month to keep pay for two consecutive, three-month periods if there are waivers for nonavailability of aircraft, adverse weather, absence for military training or education for less than 179 days, combat operations or a deployment. In lieu of jumping, paratroopers must attend airborne refresher training during the waived period to maintain proficiency.

    I remember during those wonderous Carter years when we would jump three times in one day (once for the previous three month periods, once for the current period and one for the next period) in order to stay proficient in the days lacking money for aircraft. That was for a measly $55/month.

  • Abigail Hernandez, Dreamer arrested for threatening school

    WJLA reports that 21-year-old Abigail Hernandez was arrested in Rochester, New York last week when she threatened on an area high school’s Facebook page “I’m coming tomorrow morning and I’m going to shoot all of ya b—-es.”

    Hernandez was arrested and charged with making a terroristic threat. She was remanded to the Monroe County Jail at the time in lieu of $15,000 bail.

    As officers were investigating, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents determined Hernandez was an illegal immigrant who was in the United States under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

    Officers found a shotgun in her residence when they arrested her.

    Hernandez was moved to a federal detention facility in Batavia and will be held there until a hearing is scheduled.

    [Rochester Deputy Mayor Dr. Cedric] Alexander said he is unsure if Hernandez is being charged as an adult. She has no prior arrests.

    “The quick thinking of school staff and the tenacious work of the investigators of the police department following through on this Facebook post lead to the arrest of Abigail Hernandez and the recovery of a shotgun,” a statement from the Rochester Police Department said.

    The threat was made from a fictitious Facebook account, but the Rochester Police Department was able to track it down in a matter of days. Perhaps they should show the Florida FBI office how they did that.

    Warning: If you go looking for pictures of Ms Hernandez, you’ll want to put on your beer goggle filters beforehand.

  • The case for slapping keyboards out of their hands

    Nothing gets the idiot class more spun up than a discussion about gun control. Take for example Harvard Constitutional Law professor Laurence Tribe who claims that, based on his own research, an AR-style rifle, fires 10 rounds per second, each bullet leaving the barrel at 2000 miles per hour.

    He didn’t pull that out of the air, it came from his ample ass.

    In Maine’s Press-Herald, Greg Bates tries to make the case for civilian disarmament, but I couldn’t read past this paragraph;

    But a fuzzy demand for “gun control” will likely squander this opportunity to save lives. To end gun deaths, we need to ban all civilian guns.

    You know as if Prohibition worked because we banned liquor, as if the War on Drugs worked, etc…

    Bates continues;

    Reviewing shootings that occurred in public places and killed at least four victims, Lankford found that the U.S. had 90 mass shooters between 1966 and 2012, and we have some 300 million guns.

    Thems pretty good odds. 90 mass shootings in more than 40 years and 300 million guns. I don’t think that says what he intended to say, even if his math is correct.

    We know that at least four Broward County sheriff deputies didn’t enter the school to stop the gunman eleven days ago. The Broward County Sheriff’s Office didn’t do any thing to prevent the gunman from purchasing his firearms in any of the 39 contacts they made with him because of an agreement the sheriff made with the school system to look the other way. But, somehow, it’s the fault of the National Rifle Association, and the NRA has been adamant about making the NICS check more accurate to prevent dangerous people from possessing firearms.

    I’m watching Pam Bondi, the Florida Attorney General on the news and she says that the BCSO hasn’t been honest with her while her office is investigating the BCSO and this incident. The governor has been asked to fire Sheriff Israel – it was his failures of leadership that influenced the actions of his deputies that day. One deputy not confronting the gunman is the result of him being a coward – four deputies not confronting the gunman is a failure of leadership. Israel, however refuses to resign, like a good little politician;

    The Associated Press tries to denigrate NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch with quotes from her detractors;

    In response, David Hogg, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, said students were focused on countering Loesch as they campaign for tighter gun laws.

    “If you listen to her speak, she’s not really saying anything. She’s sounding positive and confident and that’s what she wants the people in the NRA to believe, her 5 million plus members,” Hogg said on CNN. “She wants them to think that she’s on their side, but she’s not. She’s actually working with the gun manufacturers.”

    Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, said she was not in the least reassured by Loesch’s appearance at last week’s town hall, especially after she attacked the media the following day.

    “She’s younger. She’s a woman and a mom. She’s television-ready,” Watts said. “But her rhetoric is just as radicalized, if not more, than Wayne LaPierre’s.”

    Talking to David Hogg is like asking Nanny Bloomberg, Hogg is clearly in the pocket of Big Gun Control and Shannon Watts. In fact in this discussion, he’s the face of gun control.

    The gun control crowd still haven’t been able to educate themselves on that which they’re trying to regulate since their last big push to ban guns. Someone should slap the key boards out of their hands before they hurt someone.

  • Monday morning feel good stories

    Monday morning feel good stories

    From Houston, Texas;

    According to witnesses, two men got into an altercation in the club. One of the men went into his vehicle, came back inside the night club and tried to shoot the other man.

    The nightclub’s security guard shot the suspect, police said. The suspect was pronounced dead at the scene.

    The security guard and club attendees were uninjured, police said.

    From 2nd Amendment-free Canada;

    A rural homeowner has been taken into custody by Okotoks RCMP after he allegedly fired shots at a couple of people rummaging through his vehicles early Saturday morning.

    One of the alleged vehicle break-in suspects was later taken to hospital under guard after being found with a wound to his arm, and officers are still searching for the other suspect after they both fled the scene on foot.

    Police are reminding rural home owners that you cannot fire a gun at someone simply to protect your property.

    “While we, as the police, understand that firearms are an integral part of rural life, they must be properly secured and stowed when not in use in accordance with the firearms act,” Sgt. Shawn French said. “And they must be used in accordance with the criminal code or they could result in personal injury or criminal charges being laid if they’re pointed or discharged at a person.”

  • Anthony Swofford: I Was a Marine. I Don’t Want a Gun in My Classroom.

    Anthony Swofford: I Was a Marine. I Don’t Want a Gun in My Classroom.

    Yesterday, I wrote a bit about veterans rushing to the microphones of the media to get their few minutes of fame, or notoriety, by embracing the current fear-mongering about Armalite-style rifles designed by Eugene Stoner more than 50 years ago. Today’s example is Anthony Swofford, an assistant professor of English and creative writing at West Virginia University who writes in the pages of the New York Times.

    His bio says that he was a Marine Corps scout/sniper in the Gulf War, but, I have my doubts, because after a few hundred words about how restricted access to ammo and the extensive firearms training in the Marine Corps, he writes this erroneous BS which is supposed to refute the premise that by having armed teachers, that alone will keep someone with ill-intent from entering a school to kill students;

    People attack heavily armed institutions all too often, as with the mass shootings in 2009 at Fort Hood in Texas and in 2013 at the Washington Navy Yard. Assailants in such cases aren’t typically worried about losing their lives in the process. Usually, losing their lives is part of the plan.

    Folks who are not on the range, firing their weapons, are disarmed – their weapons are locked up in an arms room and the ammo is stored in a secured ammo storage facility guarded by other armed personnel charged with keeping the ammunition locked up. Military personnel are forbidden to bring their own firearms to the base where they work, unless their firearms are locked up and under the control of the unit commander.

    Swofford continues with more illiterate BS;

    At the White House on Wednesday, President Trump suggested that if a football coach at the high school, Aaron Feis, had been armed, he would have saved even more lives than he did, perhaps even his own, because rather than simply shielding students from gunfire, he could have drawn his weapon, fired and killed the assailant — putting a tidy end to the rampage.

    This is absurd. More likely, had Mr. Feis been armed, he would not have been able to draw his weapon (a side arm, presumably) quickly enough to stop the shooter, who with an AR-15 would have had the coach outgunned. Even if the coach had been able to draw his weapon — from where? his athletic shorts? — any shots he managed to fire would have risked being errant, possibly injuring or killing additional students. As some studies have shown, even police officers have missed their targets more than 50 percent of the time. In firing a weapon, Mr. Feis would have only added to the carnage and confusion.

    I’m not sure who started this utter bullshit about how someone with a pistol is automatically “outgunned” by an adversary with a rifle, but that’s just wrong. The guy with a rifle might have more bullets, he might be able to engage targets at a longer range, but if the fellow with a hand gun has been trained better than the guy with a rifle, he has the upper hand in a short range gun fight. If Mr Feis had been properly trained, the only carnage and confusion he would have brought to bear is on the gun man.

    Last month, the State Legislature in West Virginia, where my university is located, introduced the Campus Self-Defense Act. This would prohibit colleges and universities from designating their campuses as gun-free zones. If this act becomes law, I will resign my professorship. I will not work in an environment where professors and students pack heat.

    Adios, MFer. I guess you left your stones on the clerk’s desk when you picked up your DD214. Enjoy your life as a problem rather than a solution.

  • Marine Infantry Officer Course standards change again

    According to the Marine Corps Times, the standards for folks in the Marine Corps Infantry Officer Course have been lowered once again;

    Recent changes include the number of evaluated hikes required to pass the course, and the removal of the physically demanding Combat Endurance Test as a strict requirement to graduate.

    Under the new requirements, only three of those nine hikes will be evaluated, and Marines will have to pass all three evaluated hikes in order to graduate.

    The condition that Marines at IOC participate in nine hikes remains unchanged.

    Under the previous rules six of those hikes were evaluated, and Marines had to pass five of those six evaluated hikes.

    The Corps in recent years has struggled to meet its goals in graduating an adequate number of new infantry officers. Attrition rates reached as high as 25 percent in 2014.

    Yeah, well, there are plenty of military training courses which lose graduates due to physical standards at rates higher than 25%. The Corps denies that the reduction in standards has anything to do with accepting females in their ranks;

    The recent changes, the Corps argues, have nothing to do with gender integration in the combat arms job fields or a watering down of any standards.

    “Technically what we have done is we have modified graduation requirements, but we actually tie our requirements now more to the T&R [Marine infantry training and readiness manual] standards.”

    No, technically, what you’ve done is what I predicted you would do years ago – the social justice warriors demanded that you lower standards so women can compete for slots they are not qualified to occupy. I hope the enemies on our future battlefields take these lower standards into consideration, you know, just to be fair.

    Thanks to MustangCryppie for the tip.