Free Republic

Oh how right you are!

We buy the finished firearms we like and want because they have been plentiful, relatively affordable and available to us...NOT because those arms are difficult to make or purchase is the only way to legally obtain them...

Firearm manufacture remains a straightforward process, and the quality of end product is dependent only upon materials and machine processes employed, and the ideas and engineering skill of the humans involved...

Now imagine that all goes away, and as individuals and small groups we’re left to our own devices...The mind boggles at the innovation we’ll see when the average handy Joes have a pile of steel, a CNC mill and some novel ideas...

The third leading cause of preventable death (est up to 250K per annum) in the US is medical errors...

Does this mean you’re at much greater risk seeing a doctor than going to the rifle range?

You’re 5 times more likely to be killed by (someone’s) fists and feet than with an AR15...But of course it’s about people control, not about the guns...

A buddy who’s a Korean war vet told me the Korean people would exclaim “Miguk” (which is their word for America or American) when they’d see GIs, and the GIs thought the Koreans were saying “Me...Gook!”, and so naturally, being GIs they took to calling the Koreans “Gooks”...

Anyway, that’s one version of how the word got started...Miguk or Migook is a phonetic spelling for Korean version of the Chinese word Mei-guo, which means “beautiful country”...

Or, so I’m told...

Thanks...Made my day!

Mi General Pinochet: “As God is my witness, I thought Communists could fly!”

Thanks for expanding my vocabulary...”A contemptible person, especially an avaricious or dishonest one.”

Certainly fits, and I suspect the term means much more that’s not fit to print...

We hear constant warnings about the dangers of artificial intelligence, but almost nothing about natural stupidity...

Imagine when the full power of AI finally lands in the hands of the naturally stupid...

Perhaps more to the point (as with any weapon system), who fields the best tank crewmen?

My bet would be on the US, but then for how long as the SJWs have their way with our military...

In other news, Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho was heard discussing a possible run for the White House...

Trial scene, A Man For All Seasons, Paul Scofield as Thomas More...

Where we’re headed...Rule of Law is such a fragile thing...Without a majority “buy in” and a common desire to make it work, it withers away...

Wait and watch the goings on in Minnesota...

I believe you are exactly correct...Using a witness to excite and incite the jury with that blatant falsehood of the “blood choke” demonstrates the triumph of opinion (aka lies, in this case) over evidence...

Autopsy evidence will be heard when the defense has its turn, but the idea of a brutal “blood choke” is now and will remain firmly planted in the minds of the jury...An opinion offered by a layman witness, and not yet in evidence...

Street parlance for carotid artery restriction...

Donald Williams’ diagnosis-from-a-distance is still a neat trick though...I’d prefer the court consider the official autopsy report, unless opinion has finally replaced evidence in our criminal justice system...

I suppose Mr. William’s (aka “Deathwish”) past as an MMA fighter gives him street cred (maybe speaking from personal experience?), and the jury will ooh! and ahh! at his extensive knowledge of thuggery and its application...Which is all the prosecutor wants anyway...

Minds will be manipulated and the prosecution will have the verdict they seek, and everyone after all just wants this case to go away and someone to be to blame...George Floyd is unavailable, so...

That link is a good one and those recipes look amazing...Thanks for posting...

I’m IBM (Italian By Marriage...Anyone who marries an Italian girl learns what that means) and looking forward to trying some of the dishes...

My niece is a chef trained in Italy...Traditional Italian dishes are her specialty, and I forwarded the link...Good to preserve the old knowledge before it’s lost...

“The John Birch Society supports limited government and opposes wealth redistribution and economic interventionism. It opposes collectivism, totalitarianism, anarchism and communism. It opposes socialism as well, which it asserts is infiltrating U.S. governmental administration.” — Wikipedia

Robert Welch was and JBS has been consistently right about the Communists and their evil doctrine...

The smear against Welch and JBS started soon after its founding in 1958 and persists today...Your Dad was right about the “target on your back”...

Anyone interested in the truth about JBS can go here:

https://jbs.org/about/faqs/

Growing up in the 50s, I wore a lot of cousin’s 40s vintage clothes...Back then we called them hand-me-downs...

Ran across this Letter To The Editor in

ellsworthamerican.com/opinion

No idea true/false/in between...There’s a good deal of reading out there both ways about the little gnome that allege his and others involvement with Wuhan lab and ongoing “gain of function” research with the SARS/COVID virus...

Our tax dollars at work for us, I suppose?

Dr. Fauci: the untold story
June 4, 2020 on Letter to the editor, Opinion

Dear Editor:

As a retired newsman and incurable news “junkie” who has been around a few years and seen many big stories over the years, none that I can remember have evolved so rapidly or been so filled with misinformation and so confounding statistically as the COVID-19 global pandemic story.

As my neighbor, who is a sober, reflective guy, said, “I don’t know what to believe anymore. The longer the story goes on the more confusing and unclear it gets.”

Predictably and regrettably, the COVID-19 news reportage seems to be hoving to partisan lines more and more as well. Media literacy, which comes with using mixed sources to properly divine the truth, also requires us to be alert for stories that don’t make the mainstream press. Omissions can sometimes shed more light on a truth than a dozen in-depth stories on the same subject.

From what I can tell, a story that appeared more than a month ago in a London newspaper is the mother of all omissions when it comes to U.S. press coverage of the pandemic story. The London paper reported that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, headed by virus expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, the President’s point man for the virus task force, gave a $3.7-million grant for the study of gain-of-function research at the now-infamous viral experimental lab in Wuhan, China! Indeed, reportedly Dr. Fauci, as head of the institute, approved the grant.

What is gain-of-function research? It is not as dull or benign as it sounds. Here is a definition found on Google: “Gain-of-function research (GOF) studies, or research that improves the ability of a pathogen to cause disease, help define the fundamental nature of human-pathogen interactions, thereby enabling assessment of the pandemic potential of emerging infectious agents, informing public health and preparedness efforts.”

That is a nice, nonjudgmental way of putting it. Put simply, as I understand it, GOF is a way for mankind to take an already nasty natural virus and make it much more potent or lethal in the lab. The supposed overarching goal is to use the mutated pathogen as a way to invent an effective vaccine. Some have called these “monster germs.”

What if the super-pathogen gets out of control, you might ask? Reasonable question. Some respected scientists raised the same question: The work (GOF) entailed risks that worried even seasoned researchers. More than 200 scientists called for the work to be halted. The problem, they said, is that it increased the likelihood that a pandemic would occur through a laboratory accident. Dr. Fauci defended the work. In 2014, the U.S. outlawed GOF research in this country specifically because of the biosafety risks to mankind! Dr. Fauci apparently did an end-run around his own government’s ban of GOF research and outsourced it to the Chinese at the Wuhan viral lab, and he did it with your tax money!

The newsman in me says there is a story here, a major pandemic story largely ignored in this country. I do know that, insofar as I can tell, throughout dozens of daily press conferences that I have seen, no Washington reporter has pursued this line of questioning with Dr. Fauci. Is it because he approved the grant to the Wuhan lab during the Obama administration? Or that Dr. Fauci is a revered scientist, a media hero in frightening times, whose image and savior narrative must be protected at all costs? Anthony Fauci is a mortal, flawed like the rest of us. In January, he assured us that the COVID-19 virus was not a serious threat to the United States. And a number of his predictions have been off the mark. Early on he said that masks were not helpful either. Now he is telling us to wear them.

We don’t know what really happened at the Wuhan lab because the Chinese won’t come clean. Is it possible that we, the world and our country are in the awful throes of a global pandemic triggered by a horrendous scientific GOF miscalculation? And that Dr. Anthony Fauci, highly respected viral expert, was somehow complicit, however unwittingly?

Sooner or later the story will be told in the United States. It is just too astonishing and far reaching to be suppressed or ignored.

V. Paul Reynolds

Ellsworth

There are no rules; there is no book of instructions on how to deal with our experiences once we return to “the real world”...

I have to remind myself the veterans’ traumatic experiences actually occurred in “the real world”, and the world most of us live in daily is the actual fantasy...

You feel the need to tell it, then tell it...Your way...You’re the greatest expert on your story...Like the song said, “...Walk a mile in my shoes...”

Goes with the territory and “Report of a Fall” and “Assist Party” calls are just part of the services Fire/EMS provide the taxpayers...That some abuse this service, or use it to further a political agenda is also nothing new...

For several years, (late 80, early 90s) my crew would regularly be called to “Lift Assist” a large, mentally challenged female with an exhibitionist streak...We would usually find her in a dry tub, unclothed, having soiled herself and trying to cover up with a washcloth, giggling all the way...I supposed getting the attention of 4 healthy males with a quick phone call was what floated her boat, or maybe she simply didn’t know any better?!

We would just glove up (no masks or gowns available back then), cover her with a bedsheet as best we could, and help her out of the tub...A call to her home health aide would be made, and appropriate coverings for her body located and donned...Nobody ever complained about her, and calls stopped eventually...We later heard she had gone off to live in some group home for “Retarded Adults” as they were called back then...

Just one of the many unsavory aspects of being a fireman...Fortunately, the rewards greatly outweigh the problems...But we’ve all got tons of stories...

“The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

Groucho must have been talking about DC?!

Not sure what you’re getting at with those questions?

Your questions might better be put to your priest or rabbi, if you have one...I don’t purport to be an expert on “sin”, nor for that matter, was my original comment related to any “sin”...

The original subject was the difference between “Thou shall not kill” and “Thou shall not murder”, and my reply addressed that distinction only...

The two are vastly different, and the misunderstanding is chiefly due to an old misinterpretation of the early Hebrew that has carried on...Often employed in argument for the benefit of the anti-capital punishment and anti-self defense/disarmament crowd, as they believe/argue since (Thou shall not kill) “it’s in the Bible” that somehow makes their case for them...

If you’re one of the above, and perhaps like abortion while hating personal firearms ownership/The 2nd A, and/or capital punishment (hate the innocent while loving the guilty IOW), enjoy your cognitive dissonance...

If you’re looking for a flame war, look elsewhere...