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.