We’ve fallen a little behind on our World War I series.  Over the next few months, we’re going to work to get caught-up to the calendar.

For almost two and a half years, the crew of the German auxiliary cruiser SMS Cormoran had sat in Apra Harbor in the U.S. territory of Guam.  The cruiser, captured from the Russians off of Korea early in the war in 1914, had stopped in Guam in December of that year in an effort to resupply themselves with coal.  With the United States a neutral power, and the island already significantly short of coal, the Cormoran‘s request was refused.  Since then, the ship had sat at anchor while the German crew settled on the island, awaiting the end of the war in tropical peace.

On April 7th, 1917, the Germans noticed that the 3 seven-inch guns on nearby Mount Tenjo had been turned to face them.  The schooner the USS Supply pulled close to the Cormoran, and demanded the ship surrender.  The Germans promptly set to work attempting to scuttle the vessel instead.

In response, the U.S. opened fire over the Cormoran‘s bow.  Fearing the Americans would soon overpower the ship’s crew, the speed of the Cormoran‘s scuttling was hazardously increased.  An early explosion would led to the deaths of 9 crew members and make Apra Harbor the Cormoran‘s final resting place.

Just hours earlier – a day earlier by the time difference from Washington – the United States had formally declared war against Germany.  America had joined the Great War.

The U.S. enters the First World War – a variety of factors had led to this eventual decision…

“It is a war against all nations…The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it….

 

The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.”

—President Woodrow Wilson, addressing Congress, April 2nd, 1917

It was an address Woodrow Wilson had fought against having to make.  The president who had “Kept Us Out of War,” and as recently as the end of 1916 believed he could negotiate an end to Europe’s bloodshed, had rapidly seen the nation’s appetite for neutrality vanish with the publication of the Zimmerman Telegraph a month earlier.  The tide towards war had been building far before that, as Wilson told crowds in October of 1916 that “this is the last war of the kind, or of any kind that involves the world, that the United States can keep out of.”  Having just been inaugurated for a second term on a platform of peace, Woodrow Wilson now stood before Congress asking for a declaration of war.   Read the rest of this entry »

…are a whole lot of people who thought Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton were just dreeeeamy…

…patting themselves on the back as they virtue-signal about Roy Moore.

(You also have a lot of people who ishould known better calling last night’s Alabama special election a “referendum on Republican policy”.  It wasn’t.  Polling showed Alabamians support the GOP (Hillary came in slightly below “None of the Above” in Alabama last year) but were uncomfortable with the allegations against Moore.

But I’ll tell you what, Democrats; pump a lot of money into Alabama for the midterms.

Side Bet:  Any action on the statement that “The allegations against Moore will fall apart shortly, but that’s OK, because they were only intended to last until December 12?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Apparently, there is an internet site called Tumblr.  Word of the Day:  Tumblrina.

From “The Other McCain blog”:

The user base of Tumblr is disproportionately female, by a 2-to-1 ratio, and Tumblr users also tend to be young, badly educated and devoted to progressive ideals of “social justice.” This gave rise to the slang term Tumblrina, defined variously by Urban Dictionary as:

An often unattractive, butthurt, and obnoxious female user of the popular site Tumblr.
Someone who complains all day on Tumblr about how oppressed they are by men, when 99% of ranting cases were provoked would be meaningless or of utmost minute significance to the average person.

Tumblr addicted female who is defined by her sensitivities and adherence to popular tumblr feminist opinions and/or trends resulting in undue drama and walls of text.

A dramatic, self-righteous tumblr-er who exaggerates prejudice and injustice . . . and tries to make other people feel shitty about existing.  Also known as a social justice warrior or sjw, the tumblrina may list ridiculous “triggers” and claim that anyone unlike them has “privilege” and should apologize for being born.

Wow, I think I know some of those people!

Joe Doakes

Noooooooooooo comment.

When I first saw  this article, I saw it as an example of how Big Left approaches dating and the courtship process,.  I figured that if this was their approach to coupling, they will stop reproducing completely within a generation.

The article is about what “intersectional feminists” should ask on first dates. And the writer establishes their authority with a bang:

As a queer femme of color…

Among “intersectional” theory buffs, calling oneself a “queer femme of color” is similar to walking into a room and saying “I am Amazon’s vice president of development”, or “I am a lieutenant general “.; It’s an exceptionally high rank within the “intersectional” hierarchy. It’s the trifecta of injury sectionalism; gay, female (or at least identifying as such) and some form of “color”.

And I thought – “What prime fisking material”.

And I almost got started with exactly that – until it occurred to me:

1. This stuff fisks itself.
2. I trust you, the audience, to read this and fisk it to a fine sheen all on your own.
3. It brought something else to mind.

And that’s this:   as unlikely as it is that many children will be produced by couples who meet the requirements the author above details, it’s a big country and a bigger world; somewhere, somehow, children will be born and/or adopted.

And then raised in households run by “couples” – I hesitate to call them that, really, since those who start a “relationship” with a lecture on intersectionalism are likely emotional bullies, and those whio’d form couples with them are people who are just fine being bullied.

And then, those offspring will enter their teenage years, and encounter a real world outside the academic identity-mongering victomology-focused bubble their “parents” will raise them in.

And like any teenager, they’ll rebel.  They’ll cast about for their own identity.

All by way of saying, in about 2035 through 2040, I see a wave of popularity for Ted Nugent, for “Playboy” (the vintage ones, not the post-Hef PC variety), and fraternity drinking and hazing like we haven’t seen since the eighties.

It’s inevitable.

It was five years ago yestarday that Jacob Roberts – a loser and delusional narcissist – walked into the Clackamas Mall in Portland Oregon with an AR15, a pistol and a couple hundred rounds of ammunition, apparently intent on giving his pathetic excuse of a life a big finish.

He murdered two Christmas shoppers – Cindy Yuille and Steven Forsythe – and was by all accounts intent on murdering many more; the load of ammo was a dead giveaway.

Then, Nick Meli – an off-duty security guard with a carry permit and a concealed Glock – drew down on Roberts.

The media’s and law enforcement’s accounts vary from this point – a point that the media  holds against the notion that Meli is a hero.  But by all rational accounts, Roberts saw the gun aimed at him, and did exactly what the FBI, in its study of spree killers after Columbine, said he’d do; delusional narcissists like Roberts (as opposed to terrorists like Omar Matteen) either run away, give up, or kill themselves rather than face the consequences.

Which is what Jacob Roberts did; he retreated into a Gap store and, shortly, shot himself.

The media and Big Gun Control has done its best over the years to bury this story.  Meli himself has been very reticent about being in the public eye.

But it’s the position of this blog that Meli was, and is, a hero who saved many lives that day, and kept Clackamas Mall off the list of infamy that Sandy Hook school would join three days later.

Other than different denouements, the episodes had a lot in common; mentally-ill losers who planned to leave this mortal coil in a blaze of demented, twisted “glory”; buildings full of captive victims; and the big one – both were “gun free zones”.  Clackamas was posted (but, like the Mall of America, those postings were of dubious legal force, although I don’t plan on being the test case); Sandy Hook, being a school, was “gun free” by federal and state law, backed up by potential felony charges.

Which did those kids a lot of good, didn’t it?

Anyway – a salute.

LInwood “Woody” Kaine was part of an illegal “counterprotest” that devolved with all the spontaneity of a Hillary Clinton flash mob into an organized, violent attack on “March 4 Trump” rally attendees last.

Kaine was originally charged with “obstructing the legal process” –  a gross misdemeanor – as well as “fleeing a police officer” and “concealing identity”.   In a just world – or if he’d been a conservsative – he’d have been charged with some degree of petty terrorism or another.

Which is what the little prick got away with.   One puny misdemeanor and a $150 fine.

John Choi knew he’d never do lunch at the Lex again if the little nancyboy got slapped on the wrist too hard.   .

The patrician son of a high-ranking member of the “progressive” elite got away with being parat of a crowd of wannabe-commandos who punched a 17 year old girl, hit a woman in the head with a burning smoke bomb, and bear-sprayed a group of legal protesters in the face.

LIBERAL:  “Mitch – why does NPR put three “gun violence prevention” activists up against John Lott?”

MITCH:  Because they couldn’t find a dozen of them to make it a fair fight.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

58 Democrats in House vote to impeach Trump for bigotry, racism, and generally being deplorable.  Nancy Pelosi says no, they should wait until they have evidence of an impeachable offense.

When Nancy Pelosi is your party’s voice of reason . . . .

Joe Doakes

Pretty sure it’s more red meat for the left’s gullible hordes – but Joe’s right.

Explosion that some are calling a “Failed Suicide Attack” in NYC.

Several people were injured after a device partially exploded inside a tunnel, the New York Post reports.

An officer reportedly told CBS News that cops are looking at a possible suicide bomber, although the situation is said to be “fluid”.

Berg’s Nineteenth Law is in full effect, of course. Nothing  you hear from the mainstream media, much less social media, is worth the pixels they’re printed on at this point.

These days, a lot of the “classic rock” bands that were the stuff we all sang along with at parties in the seventies and eighties – Styx, Journey, REO Speedwagon, Def Leppart, Poison, Motley Crue, Boston, Foreigner, Rush, Head East and the like – are playing the State Fair circuit.  They haven’t put out albums – or at least serious albums – in years, maybe decades.  There’d be no real point to it; do you want to hear anything Boston did after “Don’t Look Back?”.  That Foreigner did after “Jukebox Hero?”  They are playing the nostalgia circuit, slopping the trough with the stuff their fans want to hear.

Now, that can never happen to the first-generation punk rock crowd.  Because we were iconoclasts wouldn’t never, ever..ever…

Oh, who am I kidding.

If the Sex Pistols ever play the Minnesota State Fair, it’ll sound – and look – something like this:

And I’ll probably buy a ticket.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Scene:  a cluttered office, a fat, balding man chewing a cigar, reading a script and scowling at it.  A young man steps into the doorway and raps on the door, three times, quickly.

Writer:  Boss, I’ve got a great idea for a new show.  It’s a political thriller, got action, intrigue, it’s great.

Boss:  Yeah?  Siddown and lay it out for me.

Boss tosses the script he was reading onto his desk and leans back in his chair, studying the young man.  Young man sits down, butt on the edge of the seat, and leans forward, speaking eagerly

Writer:  okay, there’s the guy, see?  And he works for the FBI.  He’s a true patriot, he hates the way the country is going and he wants to help a good candidate get elected.  He makes a donation like everybody in the office, but he wants to do more.  All the sudden, he finds himself assigned to investigate his favorite candidate for breaking the law.  But he doesn’t want to do it, see?  But he has to, see?  So there’s dramatic tension.

Boss: yeah, but the law is the law.  What’s he gonna do?

Writer:  that’s the cool part.  He interviews the candidate but he “forgets” to put her under oath.  So none of her answers can be used against her, right?  And there’s a suspicious death tied to the charges but he knows this candidate has a long trail of suspicious deaths and shady dealings so he’s afraid she might be involved with this one, too.  So he doesn’t want to investigate that, see?  But he’s torn about it, see, because maybe she really is as crooked as the rest of them.  But maybe she’s not, and besides, her opponent is a real jerk.  So he calls the death a “robbery gone bad” and when his boss is going to make a press announcement saying the candidate broke the law, our guy changes it to say she did NOT break the law.

Boss: wait, why wouldn’t the boss notice the change?

Writer:  the boss isn’t a cop, he’s a political hack, a time-serving moron.  So he goes along with the charade and the candidate gets away with the crime and stays in the election.

Boss: okay, weak, but we can work with it.

Writer: wait, it gets better!  His candidate loses the election.

Boss: what the hell?  How’s that help?  The show’s over.

Writer: no, no, it’s just getting started.  The candidate was supposed to win, see?  All the polls said so. All the experts said so.  She was so far ahead, she didn’t even campaign the last week, the election was in the bag.  She booked a hall and ordered fireworks and had her victory speech written and when she lost, it was stunning.  The talking heads on tv were stunned.  The losing candidate was drunk two days, couldn’t give a concession speech.  Total disaster.  And meanwhile, the smug jerk who won the election is all over Twitter rubbing it in, offering her five cents on the dollar for the fireworks she doesn’t need anymore.

Boss: yeah, so?  Sounds like a depressing show.  Nobody wants to watch that.

Writer:  Yeah, yeah, but our guy, remember him?  He’s in the FBI.  They see all kinds of wacko stuff, all kinds of nuts and goofballs with conspiracy theories.  So he’s devastated that his gal lost and the jerk won and he’s sitting at his desk moping when he glances at this file on his desk.  Some kook claims the jerk was in cahoots with the Russians to help him steal the election and he stayed in a Russian hotel where a team of hookers gave him a golden shower right on the hotel bed.

Boss: whoa, whoa, we can’t put that stuff on television.  Not in prime time.

Writer: okay, so maybe we don’t show it on screen

Boss: but maybe a special episode on cable?  Pay per view?  Hmmmm.

Writer: yeah, yeah!  Like that.  And anyway, so our guy, he sees this folder and he knows it’s bullshit but he thinks “If only the public knew what a jerk that guy is.”  Just then his boss walks by and says “I’m headed to brief the President-Elect, anything new I should know?” And all the sudden, on impulse, our guy hands his boss the folder and says “You might want to warn him this stuff is going around, so he doesn’t get blind-sided.”  The boss, being a dope, doesn’t realize it’s a set-up, he thinks our guy is being all noble and professional, so the boss goes right along.  But one of the long-term staff people in the President’s briefing sees the dossier is political dynamite and leaks it to his buddies in the press.  Ka-boom, huge political outrage, our guy’s losing candidate gets cheered up, the president-elect looks like an idiot, our guy is grinning like crazy.

Boss: and then?

Writer:  and then things get interesting.  The losing candidate’s political party seizes on the Russian Collusion angle and demands an investigation.  The new Attorney General is a another political appointee, not used to how the game is played in the bureaucracy, so he recuses himself.

Boss: excuses himself?

Writer: no, recuses.  He steps aside and lets the long-term staffers handle it.  And they all hate the new President.  So the staffers convince the new President the only way to clear his name is to appoint a special investigator.  And they recommend their old boss, who they assure him is a straight shooter, which he is – straight in your back.  But the new President doesn’t know that, see, so the new President goes along with it.

Boss: inside baseball.  boring.

Writer: no, wait!  The special investigator hates the new President, too.  And he hires a team of assistants to help him, all of them hate the new President.  And here’s the best part – he decides that for his top assistant on the team, he needs the guy who knows the most about the collusion.  He needs the guy who discovered the folder.  He needs OUR GUY!  Our guy is now the top assistant on the team investigating the new President.

Boss:  okay, more interesting.  Keep going

Writer:  so our guy is only part of the investigation, he can’t go after the President directly.  But he remembers that during the campaign, his team used a little “creative phrasing” to convince a judge to let them wiretap some people in the jerk’s campaign.  And one of those people is now the new President’s aide.  Our guy drops by the aide’s office to chat and just happens to ask some questions about one of the wiretapped conversations.  He doesn’t tell the aide he’s under investigation, the aide doesn’t have a lawyer present, the conversation isn’t recorded, but our guy goes back to the office and dummies up some notes in the file as to what our guy claims the aide said.

Boss:  so?

Writer: so our guy walks into the special investigator’s office and says “Hey, the President’s aide lied to me.  Here’s what he said on the wiretap and here’s what he told me in person.  He’s a liar.  We can prosecute him for lying and maybe get him to roll over on his boss, testify against the President.”  So the special prosecutor is liking that and ready to run with it but our guy screws up.  See, he’s married but he’s also having an affair with an FBI lawyer – that’s the love interest and we can get some steamy scenes out of that, too – and our guy sends his lover some texts bragging about his scam.  But somehow the texts leak

Boss: how?

Writer: I’m working on that.  But anyway, the texts leak and the special investigator finds out our guy is bent so his testimony is worthless,  but the special investigator really hates the President so he quietly reassigns our guy out of the way for a bit while he tries to finesse the aide into pleading guilty so he can get something to use against the President.

Boss: wait – what happened to our guy?  I thought this show was about him?

Writer: he’s reassigned to Human Resources to lay low until it blows over.  The special investigator temporarily becomes the star of the show.  It’s like when the main star is pregnant so the co-star gets a few episodes, you know?

Boss: yeah, okay.  Then what?

Writer: well, that’s as far as I’ve gotten.  But it’s great, right?  It’s got everything – sex, crime, politics, drama . . . so when do we start shooting?

Boss;  I gotta hand it to ya, kid, I really do.  Ya got a terrific imagination.  But this stuff, it’s too much.  It’s over the top.  One guy at the center of a conspiracy to take down the President?  Nobody would ever believe it.  And what the hell kind of name is Strzok?  Fuggedaboutit, kid.  Get the hell out of my office.

End scene

Joe Doakes

It’s only fiction if you ignore the real world.

Join me from 1-3PM today on the NARN!

Today on the show:

• Adios, Al.
• Carry reciprocity.
• Matt Dean, GOP candidate for governor. .

Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1440, and Brad Carlson is  on “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays from 2-3PM.

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Al Franken resigned so that the full weight of the Democrat noise machine can turn its attention to attacking Roy Moore – thereby returning the narrative to “The Republican War On Women”.

Speaking of which – has there ever been a better Berg’s Seventh Law violation than “The War On Women”?

Anyway – this past few months, our society’s been focused incessantly on the various grades of “Sexual Harassment” – the use of un-consented flirting, “blue” conversation, touching and more aggressive sexual contact, especially that which takes place in the context of a power disparity.    Whether it’s feeling entitled to grab a little “no go zone” anatomy without consent, to trading sex for advancement, to using the resources of the state you govern to silence people who complain about what you do, and everything in between, the genera consensus is “It’s bad”.

So our society’s been lingering for a few months on every possible permutation of sexual harassment, and how society deals with it (“due process”?  “Always believe women!”?  “Always believe women, unless they’re accusing men who are key votes for abortion rights legislation”?), I think it’s time to look at another version.

On The Plantation:  “Progressivism” heaps especial scorn on apostates – Afro-Americans, Latinos, Asians and women wno leave the Progressive plantation.

And no, the right doesn’t do the same thing.    Have you ever heard a conservative rip on, say, Paul Thissen or Tom Bakk for “betraying middle aged white guys” [1] by not being a conservative?   No.  And you never will.

But you do hear mainstream “progressives” tear into black, Latino, asian and female conservatives for, I kid you not, “betraying” their race and gender.  [2]

And if any of them run for office?  They turn psychotic (which brings us to Berg’s Eight Law).

In particular, I’ve talked with a number of female conservatives who’ve related a similar pattern to me; they’ve thought about running for office, or for higher office – but demurred…

…because they knew the Democrat smear machine was going to do in terms of splashing their private life, current, past and long-past, in public.

So let’s get this straight:  to “Progressive” “feminists”, “slut-shaming” women who have had more than one partner in their lives, or who’ve gone out in public dressed as someone other than Hester Prynne, is completely unacceptable –  unless one has:

• Accused a Democrat politician of some sort of impropriety, in which it will be used to discredit you
• Run for office as a non-Democrat, in which case it will be used to assassinate your character.

Which, put another way, is using sex to preserve disparate power.

[1] Their narrative about conservatives and conservatism.  Not mine.

[2] Conservatism is never, ever about identity.  Anyone who says it is is driven by narrative, not fact.

A long time ago, in a beautiful but cold place far far away, a communist dictator built a colosseum.  Being committed to the populist flim-flam most totalitarians use to get help in seizing power, he named it “The People’s Stadium” – although “the people” only got to use it with the permission of the dictator’s cronies.

And the dictator built a train – “The Peoples’ Train” – to bring people from the miserable, decaying, crime-sodden cities to The People’s Stadium.

The dictator and his cronies planned a massive rally to celebrate their power and perspicacity; the entire world’s media would be there to see the dictator’s work.

And the dictator worried: while he put on a slick facade for the foreign press, some of the locals were unruly, and parts o the city were falling apart.

So the dictator took steps to make sure The People wouldn’t screw up The People’s  Event at the People’s Stadium before the eyes of the world.  First, he barred The Hoi Polloi from the Peoples’ Train, to make sure they’d never encounter foreign visitors.

And then, to take no chances, he deployed his Army in the People’s City, to make sure the locals stayed in line.

Minneapolis officials are calling on Gov. Mark Dayton to mobilize the state National Guard for the Super Bowl, amid questions about whether the city’s police force has enough officers to effectively patrol neighborhoods and handle other demands.

Even with dozens of departments across the state pledging to send officers to help with security, Mayor Betsy Hodges and mayor-elect Jacob Frey wrote in a letter on Tuesday that the city’s police “cannot by themselves meet of all the safety and security needs of the 10 days of Super Bowl LII while maintaining public-safety operations for the entire city.”

When I wrote my book Trulbert:  A Comic Novella ab out the End of the World as We Know It, I wrote the scene in which a thinly disguised Roger Goodell-type NFL commissioner exacted concessions out of Minneapolis’ dictator, Myron Ilktost, to be as over the top as I could imagine; a complete NFL takeover of all civic resources, free transportation, prostitutes, whatever the NFL wanted.  And when I went back and edited and re-wrote, I massaged it to make it even more over-the-top.   I was satisfied that real life could never imitate my fiction.

Kudos, Roger Gooddell and Mark Dayton.  You’ve proven me wrong.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Congress is working on a bill to make concealed carry permits valid nationwide, same as driver’s licenses.   They’re calling it “reciprocity” but it’s really not.  Reciprocity is what happens when states mutually agree to honor each other’s licenses.  This is being imposed nationally.

Normally, I’m first in line for gun rights. I should be thrilled about this, right?  I’m not.  I’m a principled conservative.  I believe in subsidiarity first.

The right to possess a gun is a fundamental constitutional right.  The right to carry it in public is not so clear.  At this point, if the several states want to honor each other’s permits to carry, they can (and many already do, if you go through the hoops when you get your Minnesota permit to carry).

But just as each state gets to decide the minimum qualifications to pass a driver’s license exam, each state sets its own concealed carry laws.  What works in Montana may not work in Chicago.  That’s not a problem for Congress to solve.  That’s the essence of federalism.

And, of course, since it’s people traveling between states, then Congress will want to regulate it under the Interstate Commerce clause, set national standards, maintain a data-base of permitted carriers, register the serial numbers of their firearms, all administered by the non-partisan and scrupulously honest staff at the AFT or IRS or  . . . .

Joe Doakes

As the world wonders what’s going to happen with Al Franken – after 33 Senators call for his stepping down – one must give credit where it’s due.

So a big, unreserved salute to two Minnesota profiles in courage – two women who stepped out against the wind in their own party to stand up for all women.

Kudos and salutes to Senator Amy Klobuchar:

Senator Klobuchar

And to titan of industry and budding perennial candidate Angie Craig:

Angie Craig

These two women took a decisive stand against the ofay objectification of women with their unstinting demand for integrity on the part of Senator Franken and the Democrat Party.

No mean feat, this – swimming against the current that believes, all but officially, that their ends justify their means; that a rapist who “protects abortion” is a better person than the pro-lifer with scrupulous integrity.

And so I salute you, Senator Klobuchar and Angie Craig!

What?   DFL women standing up for individual women, as opposed to Progressive Women as a Collective?    Complete baked monkey doodle?

I know, right?

With the departure of Fast Eddie Schultz from the (American) national media, Cenk Uygur has taken sole possession of the role of dumbest person in American public life.

And every once in a while, when I need a little pick-me-up, I re-roll this clip of his election-night journey from entitled, Urban-Progressive-Privilege-sodden, illiterate profane smugness to prehensile, Urban-Progressive-Privilege-sodden, profane rage.

…or at least its’ “progressive” wing, was predicted 38 years ago:

Don’t believe me? Watch Pete eat Repeat.

(And at the risk of sounding ungracious, I have to say that watching “Pantsuit Nation” – a group of entitled, Urban Progressive Privilege-sodden Hillary supporters – squirting tears after Trump’s election was, alone, enough to make this non-Trump-fan smile a big, broad smile).

Dear progs:  if you wanna eat your own, I’ve got some vegan, gluten free salt you can have for a modest price.

Well, almost.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

History of the Mozambique drill for pistol shooters or, as it’s now called, the Failure Drill.

Some of the hot-shot commenters don’t understand the reason for the break in shooting between the second and third shots.  Why not keep shooting until the target is down?

Lawyers.  You are only allowed to shoot so long as the attacker continues to pose an immanent threat to you.   If you shot twice in the chest, the attacker drops his weapon and raises his hands to yell “Don’t Shoot Me, Bro!” but you continue firing until you’ve emptied your weapon, there’s a good chance some prosecutor will charge you with murder.  You were no longer in danger when you executed an unarmed man.

That’s why the Failure Drill name is important, it reminds us we only take the third shot if the first two fail to accomplish the task.  Bang, Bang, pause to assess while holding the gun on him, then Bang only if necessary.

How long is the pause?  As long as it takes to decide you’re still under attack.  Half a second seems like the bare minimum to me.  In the original Mozambique drill, you lowered your weapon to the ready position pointing at the ground after the second shot and raised it again to fire the third shot.  That cannot be done in less than a second, probably more like two seconds to reacquire the sight picture.  Since we’re not lowering our weapon, we can act more quickly but it still will take about a second to wait, assess, acquire a sight picture on the head, fire the third shot.

That also gives us a better story for the witness stand.  “I only shot him because I was under attack.  And when he persisted, I had to shoot him again.  It’s entirely his decision to continue the attack that ended his life so I am innocent of murder.”

In contrast, this guy is doing it completely wrong.

Joe Doakes

Learn from others’ mistakes.

Billy Bush is starting the left’s standard career rehab treatment – with an appearance on “Colbert“:

The visit marks the first late-night appearance for Bush since the former Today host was fired over the infamous Donald Trump “grab them by the pussy” audio that surfaced ahead of Trump’s election. Bush’s appearance comes amid the tape, recorded on a live mic before a 2005 segment on Access Hollywood, resurfacing in the news cycle, due to a report that the president has been questioning the authenticity of the recording, and just days after Matt Lauer’s disgraced departure as longtime Today co-anchor.

13 months exile from polite prog society is the new norm.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Article examines why Alabama voters shifting back toward Moore.  Weakness of claims, distracting news accounts (Weinstein, Franken, Lauer), traditional Republican state, all likely true but I suspect the real reason is timing.

The Washington Post released the article as an October Surprise, intended to create the drop in the polls that it did create.  But they dropped the bomb too early.  They were relying on the traditional news cycle of print and monopoly television to get out damaging information while guarding against exculpatory information.  The plan was to keep voters upset at Moore until the clock ran out. That’s the way it always worked in the past.

They miscalculated the way people now get their news, instantly, from multiple sources.  Using those faster sources, Moore had time to recover.  The recovery was helped by all the other factors in the article, sure, but if the Post had dropped the bomb closer to the election, the recovery would have come too late for Moore and the plan to smear him into losing the election would have succeeded.

Count on Liberals to remember it next time.

Joe Doakes

My two cents:  It’s a collective FU to the establishment that gave Clinton and the like a pass on things just as bad as Moore is accused of.

It’s been in all the papers – Manny Laureano, the prinicpal trumpeter of the Minnesota Orchesta (and a friend of this blog, of the NARN and incidentally of me) walked off the stsge  at a MNO gig supporting Rufus Wainright the other night.

Wainright – son of 70s country-rock eccentric Loudon “Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road” Wainright III – was in the middle of one of several apparent tirades about Republicans when Laureano, one of the Orchestra’s few conservatives, walked offstage.

“The evening was already too snarky,” Laureano said. So by the time Wainwright got around to the political talk, the trumpeter added, “It got incredibly self-indulgent.”

“He’s an angry dude that seems to have life all figured out, not the kind of guy we need to look to for philosophy,” he said. “I found it to be beyond the pale of what that evening should be about. It’s a time of the year we’re supposed to all come together.”

As is the Twin Cities’ meida’s wont, the writer – the Strib’s longtime music writer Chris Riemenschneider, who is not immune to misplaced and not-overly-interesting political “insides” of his own – verges on editorial writing for a moment:

I’m so tired of you, America,” is famously/infamously the refrain in the Juno Award-nominated 2007 song, which also offers lines questioning Christians intolerant of same-sex marriage. (Wainwright, a Toronto native and New York resident, has been married to husband Jörn Weisbrodt for five years and they are raising a daughter together, Viva).

Wainwright actually kept his comments relatively brief and, by his standards, rather innocuous, saying he had refrained from political talk at shows in prior months but was “a little in shock over what happened last night,” a reference to the GOP tax plan that passed in Congress overnight.

Consequences?

He had not yet heard about any repercussions for his protest from orchestra management, but he said, “Obviously my contract says I’m not supposed to walk off stage during a performance.”

Of course there’ll be repercussions; Wainright’s fans – who resemble Alan Dershowitz’s description of the Harvard Law School faculty, people who think diversity is “Hiring someone with different colored skin, or wearing a skirt, who thinks just the same as you do” – are about as diverse as a Klan rally.

It used to be that when you waited for the Green Line train, a little billboard on the platform told you how many minutes away the next train was.

Today?

The time is nice, if you have a schedule and the trains are on time (which you don’t and they’re not).

The track number?  There’s one track going in that direction.

But along with the news that mere citizens will be barred from the trains on Super Bowl week, I suspect it’s just another way of telling the peasants “be happy we grant you this much largesse, peasant! Be grateful!”