Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Happy Mother's Day?

Not if the Huffington Post has their say about it. Read it and weep. If you are celebrating the holiday with a proper sense of history, you have to cheer on feminist radicalism, which was just as bad 150 years ago as it is today, so sayeth this article. You are "cherrypicking" history if you look on Mother's Day as the event is celebrated today, says the HuffPo's religionist, Diana Butler Bass.

What happened to Mother's Day to turn it into the over-commercialized, potlatch* event that it is today?

Political correctness, that's what. The power of the Hallmark Corp's dollars for another.

Political correctness didn't start out to be a tool of radicalization. It first started as a Christian religious system for keeping the heathens "churched"**, but later morphed into a system for keeping American Values*** intact. Somehow, probably at the behest of the smart First Socialist, FDR, political correctness was morphed again, into a tool of political radicalization and for spreading the socialist manifestoes. It has remained in that role, but it wasn't always that way.

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*Potlatch, a Northwest Indian custom involving holding a holiday to demonstrate wealth and re-distribute it (among invitees). Wiki here, and the Wiki is correct, if my study of these tribes via museums in the PacNorWest has benefitted me at all.

**The early churches in America resorted to force occasionally to keep their parishoners in line and in the church and giving money to support it. The "Beadle", a religious constable, and the "Tything Man" were just two of those tools used in the forced-accptance of early religion here.

***How else do you explain the popularity of Norman Rockwell's work, almost all of which touted the "normalcy" of America?

Death dreams

Most folks think of death from time to time, and that's okay, just so that one doesn't obsess on the subject.

In fact, I happen to be one of those who believes in a Warrior's Code, and that code requires me to think of my death in advance of it happening, and come to grips with it so that such thoughts do not slow me down when I am in battle.

This is all very routine, the military makes you prepare for death so that your dependents will be properly provided for if you fall in battle.

There are some things that the military doesn't do, though. One of those is play the music of your choice at your funeral services. If anything is played, it is "Taps" at your graveside service. Very standard, too short and too frequently heard.

I want this played at my service.

The music is not ancient, it goes back less than 50 years to it's composition, but it was inspired by the great Russian composer Tchaikovsky, who wrote a LOT of music to commemorate battles of great importance in his time, a time in which the art of war was considered a high art at the least, and to many, the highest art.

As I listen to Melissa Venema play "Il Silenzio" on her trumpet, with the great Maestro Andre Rieu mostly just standing by with his orchestra and watching her, I close my eyes and I have a death dream.

My warrior personna tells me that this music is intended for a military bugler to play, over a bloody battlefield, while a short truce is called to tend the dead and dying soldiers who just fought there. In my insight, I see myself on that battlefield, mortally wounded after volunteering to be a rearguard and hold off the superior enemy so that my unit could escape. With my rifle, and my skills with it, I accomplished my task, but I was hit in the counter-attack and now lay expiring with those I slew. As the first notes of "Il Silenzio" drift overhead, I slip into my last sleep, knowing that this was how a warrior is supposed to end up, dying, out of ammo, but with his grisly coup-count close by. The irony that this music started out as a love poem set to music is not lost on me, and delicious irony is also a fine accompaniment to a virtuous death.

That's my latest death dream.

Do you have one you want to share? Comments will work for that.

Gimme that old-time...New Video Added!

Old Time police work:

Firing range work. Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office, 1938. Note the use of the old single-action Police Positive qualification course. Note the 25-yard accuracy, not taught today. Some of the double-action Combat Stages are taught today, but how about that Detective drawing from a shoulder rig, spinning to face the target and getting off 3 minute-of-heart hits in a second or so? Or the patrol officer in the "Gang Buster" stage taking out three targets in less than 2 seconds? No Glocks there, six-shooters only. At the end, a Marching Fire course by what appears to be Navy officers with 1911 service sidearms. The winner got a sword! Note that Deputies had to qualify once a month, too. Sloppy fire as the NYPD or Boston PD have displayed in modern times was not tolerated then. Note the "Thompson Typewriter" work, all aimed fire, no spray-and-pray allowed.

Motor Corps Drill team. Multnomah County Sheriff's Motor Corps Drill Team practice, 1950's or so. MCSO had the World Championship Motor Corps Drill Team for quite some time, from back in the Thirties through most of the Forties. Most MCSO patrol officers rode motors, which were far more suitable to the unimproved roadways of the County than patrol cars. Mostly, they rode Harleys, although I think there were some years on Indians, too. When I signed onto the force in 1973, there were a few old Deputies who had been on that Motor Corps still around, and the Department still had a few Harley Police Solos. Somewhere, there are some old videos of the full Drill Team performing, but I can't locate them right now. The Auld Corps were spectacular as a full Drill Team. Their Human Pyramid on motors was never equalled. This vid has a one-bike example of that pyramid, with maybe 12 Deputies hanging on to one machine. Now multiply that with about a dozen machines, and all linked together with Deputies, all moving as one. That was the Human Pyramid. UPDATE! Check out this video for more Drill Team action.

Old-time Police Work. Stirs the blood, yessir.

The Desperation Dance

As I write, Obama, the wannabe Assassin of the Constitution, is at it again, dancing in the blood of gun violence victims. 

This time, he's doubling down on his attempted murder of the Second Amendment with his usual background of gun victims' relatives looking sad behind him, complict as they are in their dance in the blood of their sons and daughters. A word to them: grief is meant to be private. When you wear your grief on your sleeve and thrust your sleeve into everyone's faces, you are a candidate for a rubber room.

Too bad we don't get to read up on these homicides which Obama showcases today. If we did, we'd probably find that most of the victims contributed to their demise in some material way*, since such is the usual finding. Gang associations, bad choices such as failure of risk assessment**, or even wearing the wrong clothes in the wrong place may have lead to many of these deaths.

Urban gun violence is scarcely addressed by the President, because that's not his real agenda. He is after the most militia-effective weapons first because his real agenda is to reduce the intended effect of the Second Amendment to provide arms for resistance to government tyranny.

I'll say that again: We are allowed to Keep and Bear arms in this nation partly for reasons of personal defense, but primarily for the reason of being able to have armed militias with which to resist government tyranny or piratical tyranny, for that matter. Sometimes those lines are blurred when the government acts like pirates.

As the President doubles down on his attempt to negate the Second Amendment, then redoubles again and again, his true motive becomes clearer and clearer.

This man is out to seize power that the Constitution does not give him.

It's really that simple.

The choices for those who love and support their Constitution have just narrowed, again. It's becoming ever more obvious that the Founders' original intent for the Second Amendment will have to be tested.

It's no longer a question of "if" it will have to be tested, but "when".

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* stranger homicides are rare. In my Police Academy, I was taught that 70% of homicide victims (of all classes, not just gun homicide victims), knew their killer(s).

** risk assessment is not instinctive. You are not born with it, it must be taught and it is the responsibility of the parents to teach it to their kids

If you're Irish...

...and I'm one-eighth blarney-slinger, raise yourself a toast of Bushmill's (none of that pisswilly Jameson's in THIS house).

I'll have to double back, though, and raise another toast, it will be Beam and Coke, for on this date, 46 years ago, I raised my right hand, took the Oath of Enlistment, and began my USAF career, as an enlisted man, Officer Trainee (OT) in Officer Training School. I got on a plane and flew off to San Antonio, TX to Lackland AFB's Medina Annex, where that school was located, and worked my butt off for the next 89 days, becoming one of the last "90-Day Wonders" on 30 May, 1967. Shortly after my class graduated, the course was lengthened a month, 30 more days to earn those butter-bar insignia of a Second Lieutenant (Ensign for you squids).

So, even though I was to become a commissioned officer, for those 89 days in OTS, I was an enlisted guy. Had I failed the program, I would have been an Airman Basic (E-1) at the point of failure, sent across the road to Boot Camp at Lackland AFB. I passed though, graduating in the bottom third of my class, but I graduated, becoming an O-1. I eventually made O-4 (Major).

Yep, I will celebrate today. Life's a bit bleak around here with the gudwife in DNIMOA status (Duty Not Involving Much of Anything), but I'll have a couple shots anyway, after the Visiting Nurse leaves this afternoon.

Since the Oregon Ducks won the PAC-12 Championship last night in Men's Roundball, I might even watch some "bracketology" to see where they get placed with their automatic berth in the Big Dance. I will have to count the shekels to see if there might be enough to make some modest wagers...

That GMO thing...

I've admired agriculture, mostly from a distance, all my life. Well, I did some grunt work on a pig farm for a little while in college. Hosing pig sheds out. 'Nuff of that...

You can't drive through a rural area anymore without seeing signs of liberal activism, literally. It's all around you. As the old family farms go broke because of envirowhacko regulation, liberals rush in with their money and buy them up, then pretend like they've been farming all their lives, and place signs advocating liberal causes along their highway fence lines. If you look at their fields, they are mostly fallow, or maybe have a cover crop on them. Seldom a cash crop. Never cattle. Posted against hunters, of course. I saw this yesterday on a trip up into Rose Valley along the Coweeman River in WA.

For liberal farm owners, raising cash crops would involve either doing it at a loss or using modern agriculture methods. Those modern methods include using hybrid seed, and that, HORRORS, means raising GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS! Horrors, can't do that. We must reject everything in agricultural science from Gregor Mendel's day up through to the present. Of course, most of these boneheads don't know Tansy from the mustard it hides in, so Tansy is coming back and making it hard for those who raise cattle. These agri-airheads totally reject the proven science of seed-hybridization to increase yield AND resist disease, and their pals in the entertainment industry all swear that dumping gluten from one's diet with make one Holy or something, so they spread these lies and damage agribusiness even further.

Look, we're approaching seven billion humans on this planet, and if we're to feed them all, we NEED every advantage that modern agricultural methods can give us.

Instead, this anti-GMO line of thinking works against the survival of those who starve. When you try to point this out to a liberal, though, you get either a blank stare, or some balderdash about "we're all better off eating the things that Mother Nature intended for us to eat". These cretins can't understand that we humans are the dominant species for ONLY one reason: we can THINK and use our brains to work with science, and so we can rise even farther above other lesser species.

One can only conclude that liberals WANT to starve a big chunk of the planet's population to death.

When you suggest to them that war works as well as famine to do that grisly job, they look at you as a barbarian. I didn't say that first, Robert Malthus did. 

The Dorner Disaster

Every so often, a teachable moment comes along. Most of them are under-appreciated for the lessons they could teach us, and the Dorner crime wave in the Los Angeles Basin will probably follow that pattern. My sense of doing good works requires me to rise to the duty of outlining this lesson, though, so here it is.

PawPaw did a good short blog on what happened, with good linkage, and I posted my take on this lesson over there as a comment, so go to his post and take a look at it (and my attached comment) from the point of view of two old cops with the experience and the writing ability to offer their own profession, then the entire Nation, a valuable lesson in self-reliance.

I haven't decided whether it's important to highlight Dorner's manifesto as to it's statements of political affiliation, because, after all, it could be disinformation, and a good analyst considers that. The statement of political affiliation does seem to check out with the guy's known personal history, though.

The politics can be set aside for the moment though, so as to consider the threat that Dorner's type of  "asymetrical warfare" poses for all of us. It doesn't really make any difference if Dorner was coming from the Left, the Right or if he was a Jihadist, the threat is the same.

Consider my statement in my comment to PawPaw's blog: this guy's rampage has turned the second-biggest Metroplex in the USA absolutely on it's ear, and the reason Los Angeles and it's near-neighbors are functioning at all this morning is because martial law hasn't been declared (yet). Dorner's plan, in his terror rampage, was to cause a lot of disruption, but he seemed to forget the physics: no matter how tactically-proficient one terrorist is, there is a limit on how large of an area he may terrorize. Five Dorners at work on their terroristic tasks would have shut down the entire metroplex. Five such large metroplexes under seige in the country would shut down the entire country.

Think about that. This is the teachable moment. Just look how few determined and trained people it takes to disrupt our way of life.

Okay, has the lesson soaked in?

Good!

What do we do about it?

There is, people, only one answer: we have to re-assume the responsibility for our own protection that we gave up when this country became heavily urbanized five generations ago. Back then, had Dorner sprung forth, life would have gone on, but men would have been a little more wary as they went about their daily routine, perhaps keeping their rifles next to them instead of in the nearby closet. They would have paid attention to the latest dispatches received via telegraph, then passed by word of mouth around their towns and cities. At some point, the terrorist would be killed, and that would be the end of it. If the terrorist was captured, he would be unlikely to have been given the opportunity to spread his poison, and he would have been executed soon, anyway. That's what would have happened if this had occurred 100 years ago.

I'm sure, if I read the blogs deep enough, I would find some that are sympathetic to Dorner, that support his position on perceived racial injustice at the least, and perhaps even some that support his "asymetrical warfare" method of dealing with it personally.

The most immediate lesson for us with the Dorner Affair?

Don't be too damn fast to surrender an iota more of your self-reliance to the Government. Yes, people, you really do need to have those semi-auto rifles that can "shoot all day", and the training, the ammo, the extra magazines, etc to employ them properly in your own defense. There aren't a lot of wannabe Dorners out there, but if they all got mass hysteria and decided to have a "Dorner Apocalypse", you would need the protection of that military-style rifle.

Too bad that in such a "Dorner Apocalypse", you would stand a much greater chance of getting killed by your own police force than by a terrorist.

"Lookism", aka, Liberal Hypocrisy

Lookism is a Liberal-invented evil going back to 1978. Back then, the WaPo coined that term to invent a new class of victims, those people thought to suffer within society because of their homliness, overweight, etc. Studies were ginned up showing the plain-as-mud-fence folks at a terrible disadvantage when compared to the "beautiful people".

Here's a Wiki on Lookism. Scan it for the origins of the concept, which is now "grandfathered" in to all the evils that conservative society (read: wealthy society) foists off on the hoi-palloi according to the Liberal set.

Okay then, we're up to speed on our word-play.

We all know that one of the main building-blocks of Liberalism is the definition of victim classes. That goes without saying. The basic building blocks of Liberal recruitment involve defining a recruit into a victim class, then convincing that newly-apprised "victim" that Liberalism/collectivism can do more for them to alleviate their victimhood than self-reliance. Even this strategy was not invented by Liberals, they stole it from religious theory on recruiting converts. To be fair, it's not all bad, this victim business. There ARE real victims, there IS real discrimination, and for us to have a fair and open society, something has to be done, some advocacy has to be made on behalf of the victims. Prejudice dies hard. Aristocracy dies harder.

So, in came "lookism". It came in at the same time that popular celebrity worship really started to take off, as the Hollywood moguls expanded mightily into the small screen. The small screen, when used judiciously to sell things and ideas, worked far better than the Silver Screen. As the fan-base of popular small-screen icons exploded in popularity, the practice we see now of total fan-worship became first a goal, then a reason-for-being of all entertainment. Now, of course, TV is being supplanted by various forms of the Internet such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkdIn, etc. Suffice it to say, the Entertainment media, in all their versions, are very good at spreading the victim-hood classism of the parent political belief, in this case, Liberalism.

Over the past 35 years, the entertainment media have both fostered AND fought against Lookism. They fostered it by promoting the boy-bands, the singers, the rising actors, etc. They fought against it by giving a ton of time before the cameras to the Liberal moguls who then decried the victim-status of Lookism victims.

Now we come to the latest Liberal political victim class, Potential Mass-shooting Victims. If you think about it, we are ALL such potential victims, which of course, MAKES us into victims. Pay no mind that just a moments' reflection will lead you to the obvious conclusion that the way to NOT be a shooting victim is clear: arm yourself with training and a weapon with which to defend yourself. This is Liberalism, and we shouldn't be bothered with logic or reason when there's emotion available to replace it, should we?

Now we come full circle.

"Lookism in guns"

WTF, Over, you cry in unison. Who in Hell cares what a gun looks like, as long as it functions?

Liberals care. They care a lot. That's why, when they introduce Civil-Rights denying, Constitution-violating gun-control legislation, they include Gun Lookism as it's main ingredient.

Senator Dianne Feinstein's complex (gun) Control Bill is mostly Gun Lookism. At it's heart is the proposition that if the gun at question looks evil, it is evil, and must be banned, because we all must fear guns. This happened before, in 1994. That gun control bill, known as the "Assault Weapons Ban" was all about lookism, but gun-makers soon learned that they could avoid the dreaded "Assault Weapon" designation simply by cosmetic changes, such as thumb-hole stocks instead of pistol grips, or "bullet-buttons" instead of magazine-release levers, or Picatinny Rails instead of permanent fore-grips.

All those tricks of the AWB-evading trade are swept away now, and Gun Lookism is more about bullet-dispensing function, although the Evil Black Rifle designations are still in there. Put a pistol-grip on a 5-shot, internal-magazine, semi-auto hunting rifle and it is banned. Put a "war-purpose" feature on a semi-auto pistol, and it is banned. We don't even know which "war-purpose" features for pistols are going to be designated (nor even how they are defined), but they are banned in the new bill, which was apparently being revised up to it's release today (and it was delayed two days).

To counter this emotion, this hysteria, we must do two things, both dealing with how YOU handle hysteria:

1. REFUSE to fear guns. You can sleep in a room full of them just as soundly as you sleep in a room without them. A gun is nothing to fear. Gun oil smell in the air works better than Ambien!
2. REFUSE to be made into a victim because you have some infinitessimal chance of being killed by bullets. All you have to do is consider all the OTHER ways you might be in danger, ways with PROVEN odds of that danger, and you won't have time to worry about gun violence.

Just do those two things. You are okay, you really are. You aren't a victim, either, and there is no need to toss out the Bill of Rights' Second Amendment because of made-up fears.

Thank you.

 

"Dieu et Mon Droit"

As I watch the POTUS' newser, I dredge up something from my European History courses, specifically British History, that seems to fit Obama. The British Monarchy has a Royal Motto: "Dieu et Mon Droit", which translates from French literally as "God and My Rights", or idiomatically as "we have the rights of God", or, realistically as "We (monarchs) ARE God".

Excuse me, but didn't we expend American blood to boot that sentiment from our shores 236 years ago?

Thank you for listening to my History lesson.

Obama used the phrase "we have to pay our bills" probably 20 times in that newser. The use of that phrase is NOT an accident, and it's ad-nauseam repetition has but one purpose: follow Hitler's Big Lie Technique. The Lie, of course, is that ALL money that Obama wants to spend is a "Bill of the US Government", and the repetition is an effort to ingrain this lie as the truth by repeating it often.

Not true, Mr. President. According to Article One, Sections 7 & 8 of the Constitution of the United States, only the Congress may make such a designation, not the President.

You are Out of Order, Sir. Please go back and read your Constitution.

(Gun)  Control came up about 4 times during the newser, and each time, the President punted. He seemed to be peeved that the liberal press kept up these questions, when the obvious purpose of his newser (to him) was to take his "pay my bills" stand on the Debt Ceiling.

"Imperial Presidency"? Naaaaah, can't happen with a (D)emocrat prexy, right?

Wrong.

 

Ignoring History

In the "conversation" about the Second Amendment and gun-control hysteria, we may be overlooking two of the best lessons from history.

Lesson One: This Nation tried Prohibition once, and found it wanting. In 1919, a political organization composed of evangelical Christian churches and women's rights advocates seized sufficient control in Congress by generating public hysteria over the evils of alcohol, that their actions were rewarded with a Constitutional Amendment, the Eighteenth, which banned alcohol manufature, sales, and eventually, possession. The history of how these people came by their political "juice" makes for an interesting read, or just view Ken Burns' excellent TV mini-series about it. Basically, alcohol itself, not the criminal behavior claimed to result from it, was demonized, both in the pulpits by the preachers who needed a hook to hold the attention of their congregants, and on the street-corners by politically active women who, well, wanted more political power. Note that women got the right to vote immediately after they had convinced the Nation to ban alcohol as the root of all present evil. The Nation put up with Prohibition and all it's accompanying problems for just 13 years, then the 21st Amendment was passed in 1933 repealing Prohibition. The Lesson from History is that the substance, alcohol, was not the cause of the hysterically over-blown social problems that the "Drys" claimed it to be, so Prohibition failed miserably, and it's unintended consequences were far worse than the "evil" itself. Cure worse than the disease. End of story.

Lesson Two: This Lesson is found in the history of the practice of Abortion, the termination of the gestation of a human foetus (fetus). The practice of abortion has been banned by most Western societies throughout their history, until just recently. Scholars may argue forever why it was banned, but it seems to be more about population management than anything else. Remember that religion itself was a construct invented to channel the thoughts of societal leaders, and societal leaders all have worried about under-population until the past century. When modern medicine and agriculture began to flourish, coupled with modern militaries making killing in war a much more efficient process so wars were less frequent, societal populations had their restrictive pressures removed. The institution of women's rights generally was the beginning of the end of restrictive abortion-bans in Western Civilization. In more modern times, abortion was facilitated by modern medical practices, even while it was still illegal. Did we ban the surgical instruments or the non-surgical methods used in abortion (coat-hangers for curettage)? I'm not here to fan the flames of the abortion "debate", but I am here to point out that the case of abortion shows that it is NOT necessary to ban the instrumentalities of a prohibited practice in order to keep the practices from occurring. For example, modern surgery would be impossible without suction devices, but those are used to facilitate abortions. If we follow the ill-logic of the gun-control advocates, we would have to have banned the surgical instruments to ban abortion. We realized that was the wrong approach in the abortion debate, pre- Roe vs. Wade, so why do we propose this failed strategy as a crime-control measure now?

With the failed experiment of banning an instrumentality of societal mis-behavior, alcohol, and the opposite and correct failure to ban the instrumentalities of the previously-banned practice of abortion, we have a complete demonstration of just why gun-bans fail all tests of logic. Add this failure of logic to the statistical proof of the failure of gun-bans to prevent gun-crimes (example: Chicago), and the case against gun-bans is complete. Any further advancement of this cause simply fails the test of logic and reason, and thereby attempts to encode hysteria as the law of the land.

I don't want hysterical people encoding hysteria as the law of MY land.

Do you?