George Rebane

Legal CCW guns continue to save lives.  The recent spate of shootings again demonstrates that only a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun – everything else is progressive blather.  A reader’s comment highlights the FBI’s recently released ‘Active Shooter Incidents in the United States in 2016 and 2017’.  That report “indicates 16 percent (1 of 6) of crimes that qualify for inclusion in the paper were stopped by a law-abiding citizen with a gun. The figure represents more than a five-fold increase from the agency’s 2000-2013 study, when the figure was 3.1 percent. … The 2014 and 2015 report, the first biennial study on the topic released by the agency, adds statistical weight to the long-term trend. During those years, 5 percent of the attacks were stopped by armed citizens.”  That is quite a lot of potential murders prevented.

The elected Democrats continue to denigrate the intelligence of the people who sent them to Washington.  Rep Joaquin Castro (D-TX) is one of the Left’s poster children in this as he was interviewed on NPR citing the Republicans in Congress “going after” the DoJ and FBI when requesting evidential documents that they had every right to see, and accusing President Trump of “bullying” high-level Deep State bureaucrats like FBI’s Rosenstein who have done everything in their power to obstruct congressional oversight investigations.  According to Castro, Trump’s assessment of Rosenstein’s performance was bullying because Rosenstein may eventually give in and provide the needed documents because “(he) is afraid of losing his job.”  Anyone at that level who would consider doing something unethical or illegal in order to keep his job, doesn’t deserve to hold it in the first place – they should immediately resign if forced into such a position.  But these kinds of ‘obstruction of justice’ arguments are all that the Left has, now that their allegations of ‘collusion’ have run out of steam.  The pivoting Dems know that their loyal constituents have nowhere near the needed resources to evaluate what their Castros are telling them.

Trump has shown up his eager critics again with his recent letter to the Ugly Fat Kid cancelling the summit.  All kinds of historically challenged experts on diplomacy crawled out of the woodwork to point out how such a move was wrong on all counts.  As even the humble RR pointed out, Trump’s letter was just the next well considered move in response to the UFK’s sudden declaration that NK’s nuclear programs were not to be considered at the summit.  We expect this dance to go on before it gets resolved, instead of what the naïfs predicted was Trump’s clumsy mistake to torpedo progress, progress that they conveniently forgot was only due to all of the other ‘diplomatic mistakes’ that Trump has made getting us to where no other US president has even gotten close.  Stay tuned, the hourly entertainment will continue – provided by the UFK in NK, and the never-Trumpers closer to home.

[26may18 update]  Deep learning AI algos are flooding into the medical field demonstrating their abilities to monitor and predict patients’ life-critical pathologies and events.  These abilities reach far beyond what human physicians are able to do.  Some of the algos even prescribe timely treatments selected from a set of endless candidates which a human under stress and time constraints have a low likelihood of getting right.  Today, human medical personnel are still in the treatment loop, but soon they will not be and the AIs will handle the cases autonomously and report what they have done.  More here.

Yellow journalism is fast becoming the standard in lamestream media.  The latest example of this is their quiet cover-up of one of Obama’s Great Lies that he is continuing to spread on his current speaker’s circuit – namely, that his administration was scandal-free.  PJ Media is one of the outlets that will not let this atrocious claim lay unchallenged (here).  The truth of the matter is, of course, that Obama’s scandals cost lives, corrupted our political system, and demonstrably affected national security; this as opposed to the collusion allegations and sex peccadilloes that the Left is using in their attempt to hamstring the Trump administration.  But as far as the lamestream is concerned, there was no evil to see, hear, or speak of in the Obama administration – and there still isn’t.

[27may update] Former CIA head Michael Hayden explains (here) the government’s unrestricted use of spying on Americans anytime, anywhere, and for any reason, as long as it can later be claimed to have been an undercover counterintelligence effort.  Hayden described this kind of embedded spying as being “stunningly normal” in the course of our intelligence and security operations.  Inserting such paid “informants” into any activity carried out by Americans does not require any kind of special warrant or evidence of criminal conduct; just putting someone in there to poke around and see what they can find is reason enough.  I don’t think we Americans have been explicitly made aware that citizens may no longer have concerns or conduct legal activities that they can keep confidential.  All this is also fine and dandy by some Republican conservatives such as Sen Marco Rubio (R-FL).  As taught in these pages, security and freedom are seesaw benefits with no clear understanding of an acceptable balance.  The more cynical and/or distrustful the deep state, the more government spying we should expect.