Articles by Herschel Smith

Spend two and a half minutes watching Robert Spencer explain Hijra, or the spreading of Islam by migration.  Robert Spencer knows more about Islam that the majority of Muslims, and more than most Islamic “scholars.”

Click2Houston.com:

ROSENBERG, Texas –Alonza Gonzalez was turning right near 59 and FM 762 several months ago but just recently received the dash camera video after he filed public records requests.

“Just because I have a handgun on me and a license to carry should not be a big deal, but that is what made it the turning point,” Gonzalez said.

In the video, you can hear Rosenberg Police Officer Schnacky say, “You got your drivers license with you and insurance?” Gonzalez said, “Yeah, what’s the reason you stopped me?”

The officer then said, “I’ll tell you in just a minute.”

Schnacky continued, “You have your handgun with you today? Where is it?” Gonzalez replied, “On me, on my right side.”

At that point, the officer called for backup, seemingly because the driver had a concealed handgun.

When the backup officer arrived, he was told Gonzalez was not being cooperative and then he pulled his gun out of the holster and walked up to the truck window.

Schnacky can be heard saying, “Mr. Gonzalez, get your hands up on the wheel, both of them. Appreciate it. Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to step out of the truck for me; when you do so I want you to keep your hands on the back of your head, OK?”

Seconds later, Gonzalez was arrested: “You’re under arrest for your traffic violations.”

Video is at the link.  According to Fox News, “an internal investigation concluded the officer who pulled Gonzalez over followed all proper procedures.  It also reported that the officer had resigned and was no longer on the force.”

I think the police are lying.  I don’t think this followed procedure at all.  I don’t think it’s procedural to unholster weapons for people obeying the law.  If so, the police can produce said procedure and prove me wrong.  If I’m wrong, why is the officer no longer with the department?  And if I’m wrong and the police are being honest, why do they have a procedure that orders (or allows) them to unholster weapons against peaceable citizens when there is no threat?

Frank Miniter:

Two years ago I investigated ammunition shortages in the U.S. At the time many stores and gun ranges were rationing everything from .22 LR to 9mm to .223 Rem. ammunition. The shortage became so severe that rumors spread over Internet that the federal government was buying up ammo to purposely cause the shortages. There was so much paranoia that many ammo makers felt compelled to look into it and then publish explanations. Also, the National Rifle Association (NRA) investigated and the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the trade association for gun, ammo, and related businesses, looked into the reasons for the shortages. They all came to the conclusion that consumer demand—fueled by record high gun sales—was behind the shortages.

Since then, this strong demand has been fueling a transformation of the ammunition industry—and much of this manufacturing growth is taking place in America.

Last week, for example, Advanced Munitions International (AMI) announced it will build a new ammo-making plant in Maryville, Tenn., that will employee about 600 people. This is a $553 million development project that is expected to be completed in late 2018.

Tennessee’s Governor Bill Haslam said, “This is an industry leader creating jobs that require a highly skilled workforce and it’s the kind of company that makes it obvious we’re moving toward a simple goal for Tennessee: becoming the number-one location in the Southeast for high-quality jobs.”

There is actually so much growth in the ammo industry right now that Jim Shepherd, editor and publisher of the Shooting Wire, wrote, “In the past few days, we’ve seen the announcement of a massive ammunition project in Tennessee, and the industry’s been titillated by Hornady’s ‘hint’ that they’re about to announce something really significant. And those are on top of the announcements that Browning is going to be offering a full ammo line, Ruger’s now offering a technologically advanced line of ammo in the common personal-defense calibers, and Sig Sauer’s now shipping their expanding lines of ammo.”

This might be the only time I ever do this, but I would like to thank Mr. Obama for aiding in the financial health of the gun and in this particular case, ammunition industry.  We couldn’t have done this without you.

David Codrea:

She also sided with ATF in ruling “the Second Amendment does not extend to the unrestricted manufacture, distribution, sale, or purchase of firearms or their parts,” that regulation of the parts is “presumptively lawful …  ‘fall[ing] outside the historical scope’ of the Second Amendment,” and that ATF’s action “places only a marginal burden on the right to bear arms in self-defense of one’s home.”

Those are precisely the actions to which the second amendment extends, and the judge has turned the second amendment on its head.

David Codrea:

A gun is without a doubt the most difficult product to legally buy in New Jersey,” Nappen replied when asked to comment for this article. “Nothing else requires a lengthy state and federal application, fingerprinting, background check, mental health records check, letters of reference, payment of fees, a waiting period, and written approval by a Chief of Police before a purchase of a constitutionally protected consumer good can happen.

Hey, isn’t that New Jersey governor dude running for some national office of some sort?

New Jersey senate may mandate display of smart guns in gun stores, as well as minimum inventory.  Yea.  This is what the progressives mean when they talk about giving the thing a chance.  They don’t mean letting the market dictate what happens.  They mean government bullies bossing you around.

From reader Mack, are millennials the new brown-shirts?  Yes.  Children of hippies.  The offspring of progressives are always Fascists.

Boston Globe:

The term “Daesh” is strategically a better choice because it is still accurate in that it spells out the acronym of the group’s full Arabic name, al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham. Yet, at the same time, “Daesh” can also be understood as a play on words — and an insult. Depending on how it is conjugated in Arabic, it can mean anything from “to trample down and crush” to “a bigot who imposes his view on others.” Already, the group has reportedly threatened to cut out the tongues of anyone who uses the term.

Why do they care so much? The same reason the United States should. Language matters.

With some 30,000 to 50,000 fighters, Daesh is a relatively small group, and propaganda is central to its growth strategy. Whether hijacking popular Twitter hashtags or using little known distribution channels to post videos to YouTube, their leadership knows that the war of words online is just as key to increasing its power and influence as the actual gruesome acts they commit on the ground.

By using the militants’ preferred names, the US government implicitly gives them legitimacy.

My oldest son Josh has always used that name for them, and while I was never committed to anything, now that I know they hate it, I’ll always use it and dare them to do anything about it.

See also New York Daily News.

Realclimatescience.com:

Gavin and Tom delivered their fraud right on schedule ahead of Paris, just as I predicted they would. They claim that October had the highest temperature anomaly ever recorded for any month …

Somehow, they managed to calculate Earth’s temperature within 0.01 degrees – even though they had no temperature data for about half of the land surface, including none in Greenland and very little in Africa or Antarctica.

This kind of mind-blowing malfeasance would get them fired and probably escorted out of the building by security at many engineering companies.

This is fascinating.  This writer is saying what I have essentially said about AGW and the need for a different human research and ethical paradigm when it comes to global warming.

But it’s important to be able to discern science from pseudo- or non-science or bad science.  I work in science and engineering every day.  I have for 33 years of my career.  I am a registered professional engineer.  An example of bad science might be AGW (anthropogenic global warming).  The notion that a “researcher” can prove anything about trends by claiming 1 degree C change over a half a millennia is ludicrous on its face.  Furthermore, trusting tree ring data is only valuable if your thesis doesn’t suffer from falsification of data (i.e., the “hockey stick” lie).  But even if tree rings could be a trusted source of information when we have no recorded data, the information is statistically insignificant.  No one with whom I work, engineer or scientist, not one of the hundreds I know, would actually put his or her name on such a calculation or thesis, especially if it involved affixing a PE seal to the work.  AGW is bad science.

Now to what is actual science.  If I use a computer model of a system (which involves physical and engineering calculations) and generate a curve of results from input that has been perturbed, or in other words, a sensitivity study, and I generate a curve fit with TableCurve-2D, and then put that polynomial into MathCad and integrate to a solution (because for some reason I wanted the results from integration), that is science and engineering.

Or say that I use the Bernoulli equation and information on pipes from the Crane Flow of Fluids Technical Paper No. 410, or Cameron Hydraulic Data, to build a piping network, that is science and engineering.  Or say I want to evaluate the performance of a projectile and I use Newtonian physics and ignore aerodynamic drag for simplicity, or say that I do not ignore drag and I account for it, that is science and engineering.  Or finally, let’s say that I use Henry’s law to ascertain how much of a gas is dissolved in the liquid in a system, that is science and engineering.

Note well.  I asserted that AGW, as it was being practiced, isn’t science or engineering.  So what would it take to be persuasive to me?

If you want me to give a report on science or engineering the time of day, get a registered professional engineer to prepare the calculations, seal the work with his PE seal, and send it to me for review.  Otherwise you’re just wasting my time.

As I’ve said before, give me an engineering report on the field measurements, and instrumentation used, calibration data sheets, and a data mean, prove to me that you meet the central limit theorem with the ten or so statistical tests used for Monte Carlo calculations, get it peer reviewed, and most of all, have it all done by a registered PE who can be taken to court and lose everything (including his livelihood) if he’s wrong, and then maybe I’ll take it seriously.

Otherwise, the AGW advocates are just wasting my time.  But they won’t do that, because they want to write papers in the echo chamber that is AGW “science.”  I think that’s what this author is saying too.

USA Today:

French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo published a new edition Tuesday with a defiant front cover addressing the attacks in Paris.

The cover shows a man riddled with bullets quaffing an alcoholic drink. The headline reads: “They have weapons. (Expletive) them. We have champagne.”

Something tells me that the French won’t be any better prepared for this kind of event next time.

Prior: Guns N’ Roses

silive.com:

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – An NYPD officer accidentally fired an AR-15 rifle inside the 121^st Precinct stationhouse after a weapons bust last week, the Advance has learned.

The officer was vouchering the weapon into evidence Tuesday night, a law enforcement source said, when it discharged, firing a shot into the ceiling of the Graniteville stationhouse.

The blast sent a spray of concrete into the officer’s face, resulting in a trip to the hospital for evaluation, the source said.

Any NYPD spokesman confirmed the incident took place but declined comment further, citing an Internal Affairs Bureau investigation.

The weapon came from a stash confiscated from the New Springville home of Anthony Romano, 34, the source said.

Or in other words, with a round chambered, he chose to pull the trigger with the rifle pointed in an unsafe direction.  Gosh I hate it when that happens to me.  I remember the last time I accidentally shot up a police precinct.  We all laughed and laughed and laughed.  I’m glad they were all cool and didn’t cause me a hassle about it.

News from France:

Here is Daily Kos himself:

So if those countries, awash in weaponry, couldn’t stop those terrorist attacks, then what kind of moron thinks that it would’ve made a difference in Paris?

The reality is that Paris-style attacks are surprisingly simple to carry out. It’s a blessing that they’re not more common in the West. So rather than try to create an oppressive surveillance state or pretend that more guns are a solution to anything except a lack of death and mayhem, perhaps we could focus on addressing root causes?

And maybe, just maybe, we can even try not being the root cause in the future? Crazy shit, I know.

Of course, stopping terrorist attacks isn’t the point.  Controlling borders is more to the point, i.e., not letting people in like MS13, cartel enforcers, and Syrian, Somali and other radicalized Islamic immigrants.  But you know that.

What we see in Markos is sad, pitiable, even repulsive self-loathing.  It seems like something I shouldn’t be watching, done in the privacy of his own bedroom.  But as unseemly as this is, I can’t turn away, like driving by an accident without looking at the carnage.

Markos thinks he’s responsible, or if not him directly, his kind, or his ilk, or those who share his skin color who don’t think like him, or something like that.  Only he could tell us for sure.  But ISIS is apparently someone’s fault other than ISIS.  This is the progressive sickness, to be sure.

Every sin isn’t really a sin, just a dysfunction cause by bad white Americans and colonialists and Patriarchal bigotry and wealth densification within certain demographics, and so on and so forth.  It must be tiring to live with progressive guilt and outrage.  And I’m sure based on what I know about ISIS that if we left them all alone, they would be okay just beheading women and children in Iraq and Syria and killing young people in Paris.

As for Markos and his revulsion towards guns, I share it.  I don’t want Markos to have a gun either.  Ever.  I want Markos to be as defenseless as he wants everyone else to be in the face of danger.  Markos and I actually agree on something.  As for me, I will always have weaponry.  Markos is probably smart enough to know that we would never give it up without a fight.