Thank You

It's not going to be easy to be the guy that killed a teen.

But thanks to all that is holy that he did.

http://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/379415-pavlich-a-good-guy-with-a-gun-stops-a-school-shooting

The Kind of Prediction That Is Easy

Before they start creating new single-payer systems, though, perhaps they should fix the broken single-payer systems already in place. The scandals at the Veterans Administration get plenty of coverage, especially given that the VA locks veterans into its own providers and forces them to pay retail for any outside medical care. But a report on the other major system, the Indian Health Service (IHS), shows much worse performance and for a longer period of time ...

https://hotair.com/archives/2018/03/05/socialized-medicine-almost-century-failure-already/

The problem I see is that so many of the "health care" issues don't have much to do with health, or care, it's about populations and sub-populations that eat food that makes them sick. We give them meds to moderate the symptoms but the people still have diabetes, are over fat, and are frail and inflamed. There's a cost to the patient for making themselves sick by eating food that is killing them and sitting in a chair all day, but patients are not held accountable for the damage they do to themselves because that would be victim blaming - which is apparently a far worse crime than suggesting that those who work hard to stay healthy should pay for those who have not.

In many ways I agree with that last idea, because our government has been prescribing a diet that will kill you - low fat, high grain, high sugar, and little what fat you eat is supposed to be laboratory produced poly unsaturated fats no human ever ate before the 1900s. It's a crazy world in which our government is bankrupting itself by prescribing a killer diet to the population it is supposed to be protecting.

Not Falling For It

That the cultural war may be doing even wider political damage is suggested by Zogby findings that "voters aged 18-29 (50 percent approve/48 percent disapprove) were more likely to approve of President Trump's job as commander in chief compared to older voters aged 65+ (44 percent approve/56 percent disapprove)." It seems unlikely that the president's recent incoherence on gun rights will ultimately prove attractive to voters supportive of the Second Amendment, but his critics apparently face a credibility gap of their own.
http://reason.com/archives/2018/03/05/vilifying-gun-owners-doesnt-lead-to-a-be/1

I suspect the government's numerous failings in the Parkland case have something to do with the credibility gap for those insisting that the government have more control.

Flippy is the man

"But to show readers just how similar and tribal left and right in the U.S. have become, consider the rollout of Flippy.  Flippy is a robot “employee” of the Caliburger chain, and he is apparently able to cook as many as 2,000 hamburgers per day.  Interesting about all this is that while Reagan’s backers once defended him against the assertion that his policies were only creating fast food jobs, modern members of the right are now criticizing lefty policies that are allegedly – drumroll please – destroying those same jobs.  It would be funny if it weren’t so sad."
https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2018/03/13/flippy_the_burger_flipping_robot_is_not_a_creation_of_naive_wage_floors.html

You say blue I hear green ...

Last week, for instance, an article in the Times said AR-15-style rifles are particularly deadly because they are "fed with box magazines" that "can be swapped out quickly, allowing a gunman to fire more than a hundred rounds in minutes." But that is true of any gun that accepts detachable magazines, including many models that do not qualify as "assault weapons."

Yesterday the Times reported that "military-style rifles" fire "lightweight, high-speed bullets that can cause grievous bone and soft tissue wounds," injuries worse than those typically caused by handguns. As one trauma surgeon explains, "the energy imparted to a human body by a high-velocity weapon is exponentially greater" than the energy imparted by a handgun. But that observation is true of rifles in general; it is not unique to so-called assault weapons.

While the .223-caliber round typically fired by AR-15-style rifles does have a relatively high muzzle velocity, other cartridges, fired by guns that are not considered "assault weapons," equal or surpass it. Furthermore, muzzle velocity is not the only factor in a bullet's lethality; size also matters, and so-called assault weapons fire smaller rounds than many hunting rifles. Both velocity and mass figure into muzzle energy, a measure of a bullet's destructive power. As UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh notes, "the .223 rifles that are often labeled 'assault weapons' have a much lower muzzle energy than familiar hunting rifles such as the .30-06."

http://reason.com/blog/2018/03/05/assault-weapon-banners-assert-false-dist

Facts like this are some of the reasons why when informed gun owners hear the gun-fearers talk about assault rifles, it's difficult not to think they are either uninformed or disingenuous. There is no way to define a so called assault rifle so as to distinguish it from any number of other firearms. The concept seems ridiculous.

I predict 99% of predictions will be wrong ...

... like the predictions this article is written about.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/doomsday-climate-scenarios-are-a-joke-1520800377?shareToken=st435339ed5eb547259eb78cdbf9fbec0f&reflink=article_email_share

Are You a Terrorist?

But somewhere in my attic is an old pump-action .22 rifle. Once owned by my grandfather, it’s more an heirloom than a weapon: I don’t have ammunition for it. However, if the governor of my state called me a terrorist, I’d think about buying some. I know what the government does with terrorists. It kills or imprisons them. If a prominent local activist called me a racist for even possessing it or if a billboard appeared in my neighborhood calling for my death, I might also acquire some bigger guns.
https://www.ocregister.com/2018/03/10/gun-control-advocates-bolster-the-nras-fears/

This is a good read.

Armed Teachers

Armed teachers?

Only if the teacher wants the role. The teacher that feels they are prepared should be afforded the respect to defend the kids and themselves.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/us/armed-teachers-guns-schools.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

And we think Clinton and Trump are bad ...

and they are but ...

"Several books have told the real story, but the movie Chappaquiddick may finally blow the lid off the Democrats’ cover-up. Based on the trailers, it apparently will tell the truth: that Ted Kennedy, after driving off a bridge into Poucha Pond, escaped from his car but made no attempt to save Miss Kopechne. That Kopechne didn’t drown, but eventually suffocated for lack of oxygen as she waited for Kennedy to rescue her. That Kopechne could have been saved if Kennedy had simply called the local rescue squad. That Kennedy was such a self-centered coward that he left Kopechne to die, concerned only for his own political future. That instead of calling for help, he walked back to the house where his party was still in progress. That when he arrived, he tried to convince his cousin Joe Gargan to say that he had been driving the car. That he never did call the police to report the accident, but rather spent the night trying to concoct an alibi. That the Democrats fixed the legal process so that Kennedy would pay no meaningful penalty for the death he callously caused. That Kennedy pretended to have been injured in the accident in order to excuse his cowardice, and wore a neck brace to Kopechne’s funeral to further that lie."
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/03/stormy-daniels-and-ted-kennedy.php

It's difficult now to understand how this could have happened, unless one just accepts how much power corrupts.

She'll Never Understand

I don't think this person will ever understand how alienating her campaign was, how alienating the democratic leadership has been, to non-city going folks who have been striving to play by the rules they knew. Her party says they are know nothing hicks with bad intentions who hold back progress and don't understand right and wrong. I don't think that party will get many votes absent substantial, perhaps transcendent charisma.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/03/12/backwards-hillary-clinton-still-has-no-clue-why-she-lost/

If you look at the map of the United States, there is all that red in the middle where Trump won. I won in the coasts, I win, you know, Illinois, Minnesota, places like that. But what the map doesn’t show you is that I won the places that represent two thirds of America’s gross domestic product. So I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward, and his whole campaign, “make America great again,” was looking backwards. You know you didn’t like black people getting rights, you don’t like women getting jobs, you don’t want to see that Indian American succeeding more than you are. Whatever your problem is, I’m going to solve it.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/editorial-hillary-reminds-america-why-she-lost/article/2011909

Schools are safer than almost anywhere ... and still so vulnerable

Four times the number of children were killed in schools in the early 1990s than today, Fox said.

“There is not an epidemic of school shootings,” he said, adding that more kids are killed each year from pool drownings or bicycle accidents. There are around 55 million school children in the United States, and on average over the past 25 years, about 10 students per year were killed by gunfire at school, according to Fox and Fridel’s research.

http://news.northeastern.edu/2018/02/schools-are-still-one-of-the-safest-places-for-children-researcher-says/

I never felt safe at school, the bullies were always there in the 70s, perhaps they still are. But I never imagined anyone coming with a gun to kill kids.

This is part of the strangeness that is the human experience - we accommodate to the almost routine death of kids from home poison, gang violence and automobile accidents, and lose our collective minds over an unfathomable, un-processable, unacceptable and incredibly rare risk.

"“The thing to remember is that these are extremely rare events, and no matter what you can come up with to prevent it, the shooter will have a workaround,” Fox said, adding that over the past 35 years, there have been only five cases in which someone ages 18 to 20 used an assault rifle in a mass shooting."

Immigration - About What?

This just seems too obvious, only a politician could miss these salient facts.

"Our present-day policy objectives are different. We have a populous, highly developed nation. With a declining birth rate and an aging workforce, we need young workers for a sophisticated economy and to support a growing population of retirees and our expensive retirement benefits programs. If that is our critical need, then meeting it should be the primary goal of our immigration system.

"That is exactly what Canada and Australia do. Under their merit-based “point systems,” they score applicants for admission on multiple criteria, with the most points awarded to 20-somethings, who are at the beginning of their prime work years. They accept virtually no one age 50 or older — no one with more retirement years than work years ahead of them."

http://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/374031-a-merit-based-future-beats-our-19th-century-immigration-system

This isn't what I want, I'd like to see an almost open border policy, say yes to anyone not a criminal, but also not give out social benefits like the coffers are full. But since nothing that radical will happen, here's a rationale that at least makes sense.

What is chain immigration?

Our current system is dominated by the family reunification program.

Family reunification is really a self-selection process where one immigrant selects the next, who need only be an extended family member. Thus the term “chain migration.” Essentially, the government has no selective function. It merely verifies kinship.

It is past time to abandon this non-selective element of the 19th century “come one, come all” policy designed to settle the West and develop its agrarian economy.

http://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/374031-a-merit-based-future-beats-our-19th-century-immigration-system

Economics Is Anything But Dismal

Well written econ is a delight.  Tariffs are still dumber than a post.
https://fee.org/articles/economics-was-invented-to-refute-trumps-tariff-arguments/

It Doesn't Happen Anywhere Else

A group of knife-wielding men attacked a train station in southwestern China on Saturday, killing at least 29 people and injuring more than 130 others in what Chinese officials called a terrorist strike, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/33-dead-130-injured-china-knife-wielding-spree-n41966

https://www.cnn.com/2014/03/01/world/asia/china-railway-attack/index.html

A man with a knife climbed over the wall of a kindergarten in China and attacked 11 students, according to Chinese state media. 

No children sustained life-threatening injuries, according to police.

The attack happened in the southwestern city of Pingxiang in the province of Guangxi.

A 41-year-old suspect has been caught, but his motives remain unclear, state media reported.

Knife attacks at schools in China are common. Last year, a man in the southern province of Hainan stabbed 10 children before killing himself, authorities said.

https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/04/asia/china-kindergarten-knife-attack/index.html

An attack by knife-wielding men at a railway station in Kunming in south-west China has left at least 29 dead, the state news agency Xinhua says.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-26402367
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Kunming_attack

Police in northern China say 18 people were injured when a man attacked people on a city street with a knife. The Changchun police department said on its microblog that the 50-year-old suspect in Tuesday's attack was taken into custody after being shot.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/05/10/china-knife-attack-18-injured-in-mass-stabbing-suspect-shot-and-arrested.html

A man said to be mentally ill attacked 20 people with a knife in southwest China, killing two, authorities said.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/05/29/china-knife-attack-2-dead-18-injured-in-stabbing-spree.html

Schools - More or Less Dangerous Lately?

This says less.
http://news.northeastern.edu/2018/02/schools-are-still-one-of-the-safest-places-for-children-researcher-says/

Demographics Is Destiny

Hard to know what to make of these fertility swings, but it is not comforting.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/upshot/american-fertility-is-falling-short-of-what-women-want.html