[National Review] What was the Clinton telos? The end point, the aim of all their lying, cheating, criminality, dishonor, and degradation? Given the latest Weiner scandals coming on top of the latest WikiLeaks scandals, we wonder, what did the Clintons really wish to end up as -- and why?
Are they Goethe’s Faust or tortured souls crushed by the weight of their money bags in Dante’s Fourth Circle of Hell? For a few criminals, remorse comes with old age; but for the Clintons, near-70 was to be the capstone, the last chance to trump all their prior shenanigans.
They were artists of amorality, and the election of 2016 was to be their magnum opus. Collate the FBI reopened investigation, WikiLeaks Podesta trove, revelations about the Clinton Foundation, the e-mail‐server scandal, the DNC disclosures, and the various off-the-cuff campaign remarks of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and one then ponders what was the point of the Clinton shakedowns, the loss of reputation, the crude lawbreaking, as they neared their seventh decade.
To paraphrase Barack Obama, in his progressive sermonizing on making enough money, did the two ever think they had enough money, enough honors, enough power already? The Hillary/Bill fortune -- generated by pay-for-play influence peddling on the proposition that Bill would return to the White House under Hillary’s aegis and reward friends while punishing enemies -- hit a reported $150 million some time ago, a fortune built not on farming, mining, insurance, finance, high-tech, or manufacturing, but on skimming off money.
The Clintons are simply grifters whose insider access to government gave them the power to make rich people richer. Con't.
By this time next week the 2016 presidential election will be concluded.
Well, not really.
I suspect the following weeks right up to the presidential inauguration and possibly beyond will be a sh*t show. Both sides have deployed massive amounts of crazy to counter the massive amounts of crazy deployed by the other side. Whether the outcome is violent and for how long remains to be seen.
It has to be noted here, however, that the only class of ammunition/rifles to rise in price so far is the AR-10 .308 semiautomatic rifle. Last week prices of .308 cartridges absolutely jumped, and this week it has been the AR-10 style rifles. Maybe it heralds the application of Rule .308, or maybe it is the normal seasonal price increase. As I have written elsewhere, price increases in higher quality firearms have made themselves known, albeit in pistols, not in rifles. Those increases won't be apparent in this data compilation. I expect all classes of ammunition to rise slowly and temporarily, not more than 10 percent total for 5.56x45mm ammunition before the advent of Christmas.
Weapons Man posted a fisking of the news that the Bavarian state police confiscated a number of firearms from a man the reports said was "unreliable." This is German newsspeak for a sovereign citizen, or patriot as we may call him. The second attempt ended with three German police wounded and one dead. During the first attempt the man, identified as Wolfgang P simply refused the kops access to his residence.
But this is not about the fisking. You should peruse the comments, as they deal with gun confiscation going on and likely to increase in California. In the comments two schools of thought exist.
xFor reference, when they were first banned here in 1989, there were an estimated 100K black rifle named weapons, all semi-auto, in private hands. Less than 2K were ever registered with the state as “assault weapons”.
Once legal workarounds like goofy stocks and bullet button mag releases became commonplace, an estimated 1-2M EBRs have been sold hereabouts in the last decade-plus.
If so many as 2K of those ever get registered this time, I will be astonished.
(That’s assuming they even allow that, which as of this moment is far from clear.)
At a loss of only 1 cop per confiscatory visit (and some of us will prove much better marksmen than Herr Wolfgang P., above), they’re going to need quite a number of new cops, which takes them 12-36 months@ to recruit, select, train, and deploy) and I just don’t see it happening. After they lose five or ten, the popular sentiment will be to go all Dorner/BLM, and start picking the rest off pro-actively.
And as a rule, the average gun owner has about 5 times the tactical training and weapons-handling experience as the average cop, so that won’t go well for them either. I’d guesstimate that more than a miniscule fraction would be itching for the opportunity on both sides, and the police will be playing Custer to the general population’s Sitting Bull & Crazy Horse, for some decades.
Regarding the ‘average gun owner’s level of training and experience’ being five times that of police officers… It’s been a while since you’ve been to a public range, hasn’t it? I can assure you that the average gun owner is no better than the average police officer, and frequently worse.
I’d say out of every hundred current gun owners in the US, less than ten have any formal training on firearms, and that was probably from either the military or the boy scouts. In most cases, it was decades ago. A high percentage of American gun owners probably go months or years between shooting sessions. My brother in law, for example- he’s owned a .22 LR rifle for years, and shoots it about every two years. This summer, he bought his first centerfire rifle, an AR. He’s shot it once so far, at some cans in the desert. I explained to him the process for zeroing it beforehand; when he got back from shooting I asked him if he had any problems with zeroing and he told me that he had skipped it so he and his son could get to blasting cans.
Based off of my experiences as a firearms instructor, I’d say that maybe three out of a hundred gun owners actually pay for a firearms training class that’s not mandated by law like some states require for a CCW license. Maybe one out of those three will take more than one class.
I have read this defeatist claptrap before. The problem with such a scheme is that if it were viable, it would already have been tried. It’s all nonsense. People will have the sense to understand that whatever such games may be played, it is still a declaration of war. Those who try to implement it will be killed anyway. In fact more such people will be killed than with the old SWAT tactic, because it is hard to take a SWAT team out when you are waking up at 3AM with a flash-bang in the bedroom. It’s much easier to knock a lone, offensive bureaucrat off. People will simply lie when they do the certification you speak of, or simply do without the license that requires it. No, you have not found the magic formula that tyrants may use to disarm irate and dangerous Americans, sorry. Go back to your friends at Salon.
You really should read all the comments, some of them amusing, but most of them serious.
My head is with Mike, but Aesop owns my heart.
Loads.
Rantburg's summary for arms and ammunition:
Prices for pistol ammunition were steady. Prices for rifle ammunition were mostly steady.
Prices for used pistols were lower across the board. Prices for used rifles were mostly lower.
New Lows:
None.
Pistol Ammunition
.45 Caliber, 230 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (3 Weeks)
Cheapest, 50 rounds: Outdoor Limited, Tulammo, FMJ, Steel Casing, .24 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 500 rounds: Outdoor Limited, Own Brand, Brass Casing, Reloads, .24 per round (From Last week: Unchanged (2 Weeks))
.40 Caliber Smith & Wesson, 180 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (2Q, 2016)
Cheapest, 50 rounds: Ammo Mart, Buffalo Cartridge, RSFP, Brass Casing, .20 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 500 rounds: LAX Ammunition, Own Brand, Brass Casing, Reloads, .21 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (2 Weeks))
9mm Parabellum, 115 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (2 Weeks)
Cheapest, 50 rounds: Ammo Mart, Buffalo Cartridge, RN, Brass Casing, .16 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 1,000 rounds: FedArm, Own Brand, Brass Casing, Reloads, .16 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (2 Weeks))
.357 Magnum, 158 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (2Q, 2016)
Cheapest, 50 rounds: Outdoor Limited, Tulammo, FMJ, Steel Casing, .23 per round
Cheapest Bulk: 1,000 rounds: J&G Sales, Tulammo, FMJ, Steel casing, .25 per round (From Last Week: +.02 Each After Unchanged (2Q, 2016))
Rifle Ammunition
.223 Caliber/5.56mm 55 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (2 Weeks)
Cheapest, 20 rounds: BigHat Tactical, FMJ, Steel Casing, .23 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 1,000 rounds: LAX Ammunition, Tulammo, FMJ, Steel Casing, .23 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (2 Weeks))
.308 NATO 150 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (3 Weeks)
Cheapest, 20 rounds: Natchez Shooters Supplies, Tulammo, FMJ, Steel Casing, .39 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 500 rounds: Bud's Gun Shop, Wolf WPA, Steel Casing, FMJ, .47 per round (From Last Week: -.01 Each)
7.62x39mm AK 123 Grain, From Last Week: + .01 Each
Cheapest, 20 rounds: Ammunition Depot, Wolf WPA, Steel Case, FMJ, .25 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 1,000 rounds: Ventura Munitions, Wolf WPA, Steel Case, FMJ, .23 per round (From Last Week: -.01 Each)
.22 LR 40 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (8 Weeks)
Cheapest, 50 rounds (10 Box Limit): Ammomen, Federal, RNL, .06 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 500 rounds: Ammo2U, Federal, RNL, .06 per round (From Last Week: -.01 Each)
#3
Just a couple of pieces of Swiss K-31 rifle trivia.
If you remove the two screws holding the butt plate, do not be surprised to find a small piece of paper come floating out. It will be about 1 inch x 2.75 inches in size and will contain a name of a soldier and his home of records (Swiss city or village). This would have been the last soldier to have carried the rifle. The K-31 was used for many, many years. Some owners have successfully made contact previous Swiss owners.
The K-31 is one of the few military rifles which has an adjustable front site. The Finish M-39 is another.
[CNN] There are few more vulnerable spots along NATO's entire perimeter than the Suwalki Gap, an about 60-mile stretch of territory and a critical rail line separating Poland from Lithuania, linking Russian Kaliningrad with Putin's staunch ally Belarus. If Vladimir Putin takes comfort in NATO's waffling, or doubts US willingness to spring to the defense of the Baltic republics, it's here any shootout between NATO and Russia could start. Or even World War III.
Vice President Biden paid an urgent trip to neighboring Latvia in August to meet the presidents of all three Baltic states -- Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania -- to assure them that "we have pledged our sacred honor ... to the NATO treaty and Article 5," which says an attack on one NATO ally is an attack on all. And all three Baltics are firm members and believers in NATO. But Biden continued: "You occasionally hear something from a presidential candidate. It's nothing that should be taken seriously, because I don't think he understands what Article 5 is." Con't.
[Short Excerpt from Market Watch] Some analysts suggested that markets could sell off harshly next week if the Republican nominee Donald Trump is elected president, as investors view him as unpredictable.
#4
Some analysts suggested that markets could sell off harshly next week if the Republican nominee Donald Trump is elected president, as investors view him as unpredictable the S & P 500's still selling at an approximate 22x forward P/E ratio.
#6
The liberal crony capitalist stocks have been getting hit hard: facebook, amazon, Netflix and google lost over 100 billion in value the last 8 days.
BLUF: [National Review] We now know that the bureau plugged along despite fierce headwinds from Washington and Brooklyn, where Loretta Lynch’s favorite prosecutors were vocal naysayers. There can be only one explanation for the agents’ defiant perseverance in the teeth of opposition from the attorney general of the United States, the rest of the top brass at Main Justice, and the United States attorney for the EDNY who was directly in charge of overseeing the investigative efforts.
The agents had to know that the director of the FBI had their back.
#2
Reporting on this subject seems eerily similar to the sort of speculation that dominated the output of "Kremlin watchers" just prior to the demise of the Soviet Union.
[ISWResearch] Key Takeaway: Russia is preparing to escalate its military operations in Syria in order to tout its standing as a great power, reinforce its claims to be a credible partner against violent extremism, and reinvigorate domestic support for its continued participation in the Syrian Civil War. Russia has set conditions for a major demonstration of its military might following the completion of the latest in a long series of ’humanitarian pauses’ in Aleppo City set to end on November 4. Russia’s sole aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, is expected to arrive off the Syrian Coast in the coming days. The arrival of the Kuznetsov with its accompanying fleet of cruise missile-equipped submarines and frigates signals Russia’s likely intent to conduct a new wave of strikes against strategically significant targets in Syria. The deployment comes amidst a recent opposition offensive to break the pro-regime siege of Aleppo City as well as continued pro-regime gains in the Eastern Ghouta Suburbs of Damascus. Russia will likely exploit opportunities in both Aleppo City and Damascus to highlight its ability to project force against "terrorism" and demonstrate the continued legitimacy of its client regime.
Implications
The Russian escalation as part of a Syrian regime offensive in Damascus and a counter-offensive in Aleppo will accelerate the radicalization of the opposition. Russian strikes by air and by sea will target acceptable opposition groups as they have during previous escalations to eliminate legitimate alternatives to the Assad regime. This continued pressure will hasten the ongoing transformation of the opposition into a movement dominated by Salafi-Jihadist groups such as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria. In the absence of better options, acceptable opposition groups will increasingly cleave to extremist factions for self-preservation in the face of concerted pro-regime advances enabled by the Russian air campaign. Russia’s support to the Assad regime continues to remove potential partners for the U.S. against ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria from the battlefield. The U.S. must therefore be willing to counter the support that Russia is currently providing to the Assad regime in order to achieve its national security objective in Syria.
Posted by: Vast Right Wing Conspiracy ||
11/05/2016 00:00 ||
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Link ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[ISWResearch] Key Takeaway: Russia is preparing to escalate its military operations in Syria in order to tout its standing as a great power, reinforce its claims to be a credible partner against violent extremism, and reinvigorate domestic support for its continued participation in the Syrian Civil War. Russia has set conditions for a major demonstration of its military might following the completion of the latest in a long series of ’humanitarian pauses’ in Aleppo City set to end on November 4. Russia’s sole aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, is expected to arrive off the Syrian Coast in the coming days. The arrival of the Kuznetsov with its accompanying fleet of cruise missile-equipped submarines and frigates signals Russia’s likely intent to conduct a new wave of strikes against strategically significant targets in Syria. The deployment comes amidst a recent opposition offensive to break the pro-regime siege of Aleppo City as well as continued pro-regime gains in the Eastern Ghouta Suburbs of Damascus. Russia will likely exploit opportunities in both Aleppo City and Damascus to highlight its ability to project force against "terrorism" and demonstrate the continued legitimacy of its client regime.
