News from Virginia.

Annette Elliott, owner and president of Showmasters, a Blacksburg-based promotion company that runs about half of all gun shows across the state every year, said that since January, ticket sales are up 30%.

Walker called the current General Assembly session a “wake up call.”

“Wouldn’t otherwise vote in a local election.”  That’s part of the reason you are where you are at this moment.  Local and state politics is where it’s at, and if you don’t participate, you’ll regret it.  You simply must get past this thing of not otherwise participating in a local election.

If you don’t vote against the controllers, you’re voting for them.  Make your mind up.

CNN.

“You can increase your risk of getting it by wearing a mask if you are not a health care provider,” Adams said during an interview on Fox & Friends on Monday morning.

From Twitter, “Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!

They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!
http://bit.ly/37Ay6Cm“

Do these people actually read what they have written before posting it?  Don’t buy masks because they are ineffective, and besides, if you buy those ineffective masks, our health care professionals won’t be able to buy them.

Good Lord.

I’m not a medical professional (although I will cite one in particular), but one of my best buddies texted me to ask what I thought, so here it is.

Here’s what we know at the moment about Covid-19 (I won’t supply the copious URLs since you can find them yourself or have already studied them).  Covid-19 is probably a weaponized virus.  There is still speculation that the practice of keeping animals in close proximity that would not otherwise be that way has caused animal to animal to human transmission of mutated viruses, but in my opinion this is a least probable origin.

China sat on the information for too long to allow for containment and isolation of it, so the entire world is now dealing with it.  It shows indications of behaving like HIV, inasmuch as the method of attachment to a cell involves a “hook,” and thus it is extremely hard to get rid of.  Animals appear to be able to test “weak positive” for the virus, even if they are asymptomatic.

There is a risk of recurrence of the virus, so this has led to speculation that the virus isn’t really killed with treatment, lies dormant, and can reappear later (maybe not much later).  Then again, it’s entirely possible these patients were released and declared well without really being well.

Two dozen “first responders” have been quarantined in Washington State.  The problem with this was explained to me by my daughter, a health care provider (in surgery and emergency medicine).  Health care providers see patients with HIV, TB and Hepatitis (and various other blood borne and airborne illnesses) all the time.  One cannot isolate and contain without knowing that the patient has a disease.  Diagnosis must precede isolation.  Otherwise, it’s just the common cold.  Covid-19 can be transmitted asymptomatically.

This particular virus has a transmission vector that makes it very contagious.  It’s difficult to diagnose and contain prior to transmission of the virus to others.  Moreover, my daughter is concerned about the level of understanding and training associated with this virus, as well as hospital procedures and equipment to deal with an epidemic.  The CDC can say what they want – the hospitals in America are unqualified to deal with this, and there may be no way to deal with it without assuming that every patient who comes into the ER has this virus (an expensive, time- and labor-intensive process for which America doesn’t have the resources or personnel).

So there is much bad news.  There is some good news too.  While there won’t be a vaccine for this for a long time, it appears that anti-viral drugs (such as are used for HIV) are effective against this virus.  Of course, that’s expensive.  It would stretch the logistics chain to the breaking point, especially since all of our drugs are made in China.  This is one effect of a global economy.

Here is a real time board (Johns Hopkins) of all Covid-19 cases, along with deaths.  If you examine the plot at the lower right, it seems to be indicating (for cases in China), 1 – exp(-lambda * t) approach to an upper asymptote (saturation and approach to a maxima).  I would like to see better correspondence before saying this, and I certainly don’t go on record with this analysis saying this.  I’m paid for my analysis, and I’m getting nothing for this post.

Seeing approach to an upper asymptote would be a good thing, but it requires intensive, aggressive isolation and containment, including stay-at-home workers, travel restrictions, and absolute border controls.

As to how to prepare for this, it all depends on your perspective.  If you believe this doesn’t even approach the deadliness or risk of the common cold or flu, there would be no preparation necessary except to wash your hands and cover your mouth when coughing.  If you believe this is TEOTWAWKI, you won’t be able to do enough preparations.

Not that I’m some sort of expert, but I said I was posting this for a good friend.  I don’t recommend anything beyond your usual preparations.  Do you have guns and ammunition?  You should anyway.  Do you have freeze dried and canned foods, oatmeal and grits, and other things that are non-perishable?  You should anyway.  Do you have means to filter and purify water?  You should anyway.  Do you have batteries and multiple means of fire starter?  You should anyway.

So if you’re just now beginning to think about being prepared, ask yourself why that’s the case.

I do have one very specific recommendation.  Our buddy Matt Bracken stated that he had purchased “rubber gloves.”  This is a good idea, but we need to be more specific than that.  There is a big difference between Nitrile gloves, Butyl rubber gloves, Polyvinyl chloride gloves, and Latex gloves.

Nitrile gloves protect the skin well against nonpolar solvents.  They offer good cut and abrasion resistance, and are often used in medical applications due to puncture resistance.  They are ineffective against some polar solvents.  Butyl rubber gloves are ineffective against nonpolar solvents but protect well against polar solvents.  Polyvinyl Chloride gloves protect against water solutions, acids, some polar solvents and caustics, but not well against nonpolar solvents.  Latex – natural rubber – is ineffective against nonpolar solvents, but offers good cut and abrasion resistance against water solutions and polar solvents.

This is all very complicated.  If you’re not sure which you need, or what the risk is (water solution, acid, caustic, polar or nonpolar solvents), then look it up. If you can’t, double up on gloves to ensure protection against unknown agents.  Nitrile gloves offer good puncture resistance.  They are cheap, they can be found at your local hardware store, and they can be used in concert with other gloves to protect against most agents.  Get some.

Also get breathing air protection.  Be able to filter the air you breath.  Very fine filtration media (HEPA filters would only be available for full face respirators SCBAs and are expensive), combined with charcoal filters is your best bet.  By the way, activated charcoal filter fines are made in Sri Lanka by charcoaling green coconut shells.  Consider logistics and location.

The Washington Post editorial page.

It would be far more alarming if a local sheriff actually makes good on the threat — by refusing, for instance, to seize a weapon from a self-destructive son or daughter whose parents have convinced a judge that suicide may be imminent if law enforcement does not intervene. In that case, it would be not only irresponsible but also illegal, and quite likely would expose sheriffs personally, as well as the localities they represent, to liability in the event of an act of violence.

[ … ]

Gun-rights activists are free to denounce such laws; they are free to mount legal challenges to their constitutionality. But unless and until the laws are struck down by a court, no one is free to violate them.

Sheriffs and other law enforcement officers are sworn to uphold and enforce duly enacted laws. For a sheriff to refuse to enforce a protective order handed down by a court would be “an unspeakable betrayal” of his duties, Mark R. Herring, Virginia’s attorney general, told us.

Well now, if this is all so easy and clear, why are they so worried about it?

Perhaps because they know that it isn’t so easy and clear, and they can’t help but be controllers to the final breath.  “Can a leopard change its spots?”

The title of the opinion piece is “Virginia’s Second Amendment ‘Sanctuaries’ Can’t Ignore New Gun Control Laws.”  Well sure they can.  The question is what happens then?  This is what worries the WaPo, and it should.

The context for this is what we’ve discussed many times before.  Unlike the editors at The Washington Post, we know that rights come from the Almighty.  The constitution is a covenant between men, and  rights are only recognized by them, not created.  Thus, black robes who deny those rights are the same as legislators who deny them, i.e, it’s all tyranny, and it doesn’t make one iota of difference who enacts that tyranny.

Action to resist that tyranny is local in this case, and we’ve noted that there is a war brewing between state-level pols and local pols and Sheriffs.  We might remark that county Sheriffs should be locally funded anyway, and that sending tax monies to Richmond is the wrong way to do that.  In any case, let’s say that the legislature declares that the salaries for constitutional sheriffs is now zero ($0) per year.

What then?  Counties will have to fund county law enforcement if they want it at all.  The next step might involve armed agents of the state entering counties to apprehend and arrest county sheriffs and his deputies.  What then?

The next step might involve boys in Ghillie suits sitting in the hills and hollows of Virginia shooting tires out of vehicles, with boys in masks, black tactical gear and body armor surrounding those vehicles with the state agents inside.

The next step might involve blindfolding those agents, driving them to the county line, confiscating their phones, money, vehicles, firearms and comms gear, dropping them off, and letting them walk home after telling them that “We will allow you to get out of this unscathed this one time, and this one time only.”

Do you see how this game is played?  This is called 4GW, and it gets uglier from this point onward.  And lest you think this is some sort of exaggerated, extremist talk, remember that George Washington was an illegal, extremist militia founder.  This is all part of American history and this was all done about 200 years ago.

4GW is like tic-tac-toe.  The only winning move is not to play the game.  That’s the best bet for the controllers.  Pass the silly laws, ignore it when the laws are ignored, and try to get out of this with just a modicum of dignity left.  Or better yet, don’t pass the silly laws at all.

As always, this commentary is for the meant only for educational and instructional purposes only, all characters are fictional, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

This picture comes to us via reddit/firearms.

It is said that “Marine Sgt. Rudy Soto Jr. was atop the chancery roof, armed only with a 12-gauge shotgun and a .38-caliber revolver. The U.S. ambassador at the time did not believe the Marine Security Guard needed M-16 rifles. His shotgun jammed, and the small-caliber handgun was next to useless at that range.”

That isn’t necessarily related to this picture, although this picture appears to be of a Marine holding a revolver during the Tet offensive near the U.S. embassy.

As to the issue of a “small-caliber handgun” being next to useless at that range, whatever.  A 9mm pistol would have been equally useless.  That’s not what interests me.

Readers know that I’ve had a fascination with just how far (back and forward) in history revolver usage goes in war.

Paul Harrell is up first.

One thing we learn from this is that you need to hit your intended target to achieve slow-down and energy dump.  Walls can be very little protection, depending upon the choice of gun and round.  Next up, Shawn Ryan.

His presentation, along with Paul’s above, shows that an AR-15 is a bad choice for home defense if there is a possibility of hitting nearby (neighbor) homes.  Rifle rounds have a lot of penetrating ability.

Shawn’s presentation shows that personal defense rounds dump enough energy in the target, interior and exterior walls that persons who may be in other locations outside the home would be safe.

This all points to pistol caliber PDW (pistol carbines) being the safest gun to shoot in neighborhoods, since the lower muzzle velocity combined with the hollow nose and walls give enough energy to kill the intruder but not enough to cause penetration through exterior walls, while also providing the aiming of a rifle.

But the moral of the story is to hit your target.  That’s where the energy gets deposited.

T.L. Davis.

Social Security was America’s foray into socialism and it has done a great deal of good for people who are unable to work, but that was never its purpose. Social Security was a bribe to elder citizens so they would quit work and give those jobs to the younger generation, why? Because the United States, at the time, during the depression, was afraid that too many unemployed twenty and thirty-year-olds might do what they are afraid of in Middle Eastern countries now, foment rebellion and revolution.

[ … ]

Capitalism works, because it is not managed, directed or focused. It does not require a government directorate to decide for everyone what they will want or need. It is unwieldy, chaotic and funds flow to that which is needed, or captures the imagination. People want to be entertained, want to do things that interest them and the money flows to those things. But, what has happened to literature is that the big five publishers have decided to do exactly that, direct and decide for all of us what we want to read, thereby deciding what we will think, pushing their socialist ideas into our brains, or cause us to stop reading all together to escape it.

I’m not sure how many people, human beings, must be sacrificed on the alter of communism to prove that it doesn’t work, so far more than 100 million have not been enough. The nation of Venezuela’s utter fall from the wealthiest Lain American nation to the poorest hasn’t even caused a speed bump on the way to the Democratic nomination. It is no coincidence that it started in a democratic nation, communism focuses on nations they can vote themselves into, then slam the door on elections by making voting for anyone besides the ruler a crime of treason.

That’s an interesting take on social security, and I’d never heard that before.  Thanks to TL for the insight.

I do have something else to say about capitalism.  There is a difference between capitalism (as we see it in America today) and the free market.  The Biblical notion is the free market.

In today’s society, we see corporations who lay off older workers (with age discrimination made impossible to prove in court), share and rotate membership on boards of directors, with those members never having had a hand in building the company they now rule, use earnings to create PACs and lobbying to ensure that the laws and regulations are friendly to them and what they want to do while foisting the real long term cost onto someone else (I could supply a thousand examples here, not the least of which is the massive government-sponsored investments in solar power, which is a scam of mammoth proportions, producing massive amounts of toxic waste and which will cause massive problems for disposal).  Do you think fracking is pollution free?  Google the words “Fracking Tails Pennsylvania Roads” to see just what is being put into the earth and groundwater around you.  But there is money to be made, so the .gov is complicit as long as it’s what the corporations want.

There is nothing “free” about this market.  It isn’t free market.  It’s corporatism.  I don’t claim to know the solution to these problems, but a massive reduction in the size of the FedGov is in order, along with a set of laws and regulations that force corporations to pony-up for the costs of their technology so that others don’t have to bear the costs.

I’ll also say that the most Biblical model I can find has companies with public stock majority-owned by their workers, and we could add to this that it might be a good idea to have members of boards of directors made entirely of employees, not all of whom can be senior or management level.

One final thought is that the stock market is a gigantic gambling casino.  Investment is a Biblical notion, viz. The parable of the talents.  But short term speculation on stock prices is gambling.  Never say that the government doesn’t like gambling.  We are all controlled by professional gamblers.  Of course, gambling is immoral, and so is short term, minute-by-minute speculation in the stock market.

These and other reasons are why America is not blessed by God.

David Codrea.

The first thing that’s obvious is we’re not talking about one of those “white right-wing nationalists” we’re constantly being warned are the greatest threat we face. If the killer had been one, and if he had social media posts brimming with sentiments that allow “progressives” to dismiss anyone to the right of Bernie Sanders as a Nazi, it would be headline news. It certainly would not have taken this long to release who he was, and odds are good some of his more egregious posts would have survived, at least in screenshot form. As it is, the victims are being blamed for racism, and that’s in spite of a corporate “code of conduct” policy that is now being alleged to work every bit as well as its “security safeguards.”

If I didn’t know any better, if I was an alien from another planet and could only look at the facts to inform me, I’d readily conclude that there was a concerted effort to flush the news that’s not fit for consumption because it tells the wrong story, and the news that is allowed to be printed because it comports with the form, fit and function of the intent of the people who make these decisions.

If I didn’t know any better.

Never let an emergency go to waste.

Careful reading of the coronavirus emergency funding bill that will pass Congress soon will likely also uncover a reauthorization provision for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Just don’t expect to see any of the reforms Republicans say must be enacted to prevent future recurrences of the FBI surveillance abuses against the Trump campaign in 2016.  Most important among those reforms is a ban on bulk metadata collection derived from telephone calls by individuals within and without the country.

Democrats and republicans sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.  There’s one thing we can all agree on all of the time.  The masses need to be controlled, and that can’t happen without omniscience.  We are gods without knowledge – so “all of your information and data are belong to us.”

It happens every day in America.  Hundreds of thousands of men are in prison for false confessions. Here’s a particularly bad example.

Two months ago, Robert Davis was getting ready to set up chairs for Bible study when he received some life-altering news: Within hours, he’d be walking out of Coffeewood Correctional Center, a free man for the first time in nearly 13 years.

Davis, 31, stepped out of prison December 21 to face television cameras, probably as surreal an experience as his last night of freedom in February 2003, when he was surrounded by police, slammed to the ground and handcuffed.

He was 18 years old then, a senior at Western Albemarle High and by his own admission, “naive.”

He didn’t know that he didn’t have to talk to police without a lawyer about a horrific double murder that had happened a few days earlier in his Crozet neighborhood. He didn’t know that police can lie to suspects to obtain a confession. And he didn’t know that after hours of a middle-of-the-night interrogation when he just wanted to sleep, if he told the officer what the cop wanted to hear, he wouldn’t be able to straighten things out in the morning.

Davis wasn’t familiar with the term “false confession” in 2003, and he didn’t realize he would become the face of the phenomenon to which juveniles and the exhausted are particularly susceptible. Nor could he have guessed that his story would be the subject of a national television show that aired on “Dateline NBC” February 14.

Robert Davis has learned a lot since 2003.

Snow was on the ground the morning of February 19, 2003, when the Crozet Volunteer Fire Department got the call of a blaze in Crozet Crossing, a subdivision of entry-level homes.

At 6047 Cling Ln., once the fire was out, responders discovered a sinister scene: The body of Nola Charles, 41, known as Ann to her family and friends, in a bunk bed upstairs, with her arms duct-taped behind her. It took Albemarle police forensics technician Larry Claytor a while to notice the charred handle of a knife in her back.

Another shock awaited in the smoldering house. In Charles’ bedroom, the body of her 3-year-old son, William Thomas Charles, was found under debris. He’d died of carbon monoxide poisoning from smoke inhalation.

Almost immediately, police focused on a couple of neighborhood teens: Rocky Fugett, 19, a senior at Western Albemarle, and his sister Jessica, 15, a freshman. During interrogation, the two started throwing out names of other students to deflect the blame, both later told a reporter. One of those names was Robert Davis.

In a 2011 interview at Sussex II State Prison, Rocky Fugett admitted that he’d picked on Davis, and said he never dreamed Davis would confess to being there the night Charles was killed.

In the world of television crime, wrongful convictions are a hot topic, as evidenced by the radio podcast “Serial” and Netflix’s “Making a Murderer.”

An expert in false confession who appeared in the “Dateline” episode as well as in “Making a Murderer,” Northwestern law school’s Laura Nirider, who is the director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth, has been aware of Davis’ case for years, and sent a 64-page report supporting his petition for clemency in 2012. She has called his interrogation “one of the most coercive confessions I’ve seen.”

It was after midnight when Davis was arrested at gunpoint, and almost 2am when the interrogation by Albemarle Police Detective Randy Snead began.

Snead had been the resource officer at Ivy Creek, the special ed school Davis had attended, and Davis says he trusted him.

Davis denied he had anything to do with the Charles murders dozens of times, according to the video of his six-hour interview. He offered to take a polygraph to prove he was telling the truth multiple times. And he told police if they were going to arrest him, to go ahead and do it so he could go to sleep.

Police widely use the Reid Technique of interviewing and interrogation, which says if a suspect asks to take a lie detector test, that should be taken as a sign of innocence, according to Nirider. That alone should have been a red flag to investigators, she says, but there were other details that made Davis’ interrogation a textbook case of false confession.

She points out how police fed him the details of the crime. Snead lied and told Davis police had evidence he was at the crime scene. He threatened Davis with the “ultimate punishment,” and said Davis’ mother could go to jail if he didn’t tell the truth. Finally, at nearly 7am, Davis said, “What can I say I did to get me out of this?”

“The young and those with mental limitations are most vulnerable to making false confessions,” says Nirider.

She notes a recent study that shows the sleep-deprived are way more likely to falsely confess to a crime. Exhaustion “absolutely plays a role,” she says. “There is a correlation.”

UVA law professor Brandon Garrett has examined many cases of false confession, and points out the interviews in those cases lasted over three hours. If someone is exhausted, he says, he thinks if he just goes along with the interrogation, he can clear it up later.

Today, Davis says the overriding emotion during that interview was fear. “I was scared shitless,” he says.

With Davis’ confession and the testimony of the Fugetts putting him at the crime scene, his attorney, Steve Rosenfield, says it was a “grave risk” to go to trial. He feared a jury would ask the question most people ask—why would you confess to a crime you didn’t commit?—and give Davis a life sentence.

When the commonwealth offered a deal, Rosenfield advised Davis to enter an Alford plea, in which he maintains his innocence but acknowledges the prosecution has enough evidence to convict him, and take a 23-year prison sentence.

Davis says it’s hard to recall a lot about entering that plea because he was on medication for anxiety and depression. Mainly, he thought, “At least I get to go home eventually.”

“I told Robert one day the Fugett kids might tell the truth,” says Rosenfield. “It took a long time—with Jessica especially.” She recanted her allegations about Davis in 2012.

Two years after Davis was convicted in 2004, Rosenfield received a letter from Rocky Fugett that said he had some information that would be helpful to Davis. Fugett signed an affidavit saying Davis had nothing to do with the slayings, and in 2012, Rosenfield sent a petition for clemency to then-governor Bob McDonnell.

There it lingered until McDonnell’s last day in office, when he denied the petition. According to Rosenfield, McDonnell’s administration conducted no investigation of the petition’s claims.

That was a particularly bleak time for Davis. “It was crushing having to wait so long and even more crushing when Bob McDonnell denied it without doing any investigation,” he says.

When Davis walked out of Coffeewood the day Governor Terry McAuliffe signed a conditional pardon, he pointed to Rosenfield and said, “If it weren’t for that man there fighting for me, I wouldn’t be out right now.”

He’s probably right. Rosenfield submitted six volumes of documents supporting the clemency petition. “There wouldn’t be a realistic mechanism if a prisoner tried to do that,” he says.

Rosenfield was Davis’ court-appointed lawyer in 2003, but since Davis took the Alford plea in 2004, he’s been Davis’ pro bono lawyer. He estimates he’s spent between 1,500 and 2,000 hours working on the case, legal expertise worth about $600,000. And that doesn’t include the couple of thousand dollars he’s spent out of pocket.

“I’m glad he’s out,” says the attorney. “It’s a lot less work.”

Years in prison, more than half a million dollars in legal time, the innocent get punished, the guilty go free, and the cops and attorneys couldn’t care less because they got their conviction.

By feeding him details, threatening his mother, lying about other things, all to a sleep deprived adolescent. This is why the Scriptures require the testimony of two or more witnesses to convict a man of a crime, and self incrimination isn’t allowed by the Bible.  Because our judicial system no longer recognizes the Scriptures as God’s Holy law, they make up their own system of “righteousness,” a false righteousness in God’s eyes.  A damning righteousness in God’s eyes.  For more, see Rousas J. Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law.

Torture could become the norm without Biblical law, and while they didn’t inflict physical pain on the boy, it was a form of torture.  Torture is simply not allowed by the Scriptures, and only wicked men do it, some in the name of local security, and some in the name of national security.

Teach your children, wife, and even relatives well.  Do not talk to the police.  Explain to them why.  The Scriptures do not allow self incrimination.  Do not be naive, and do not be trusting.  Do not cooperate with your own false imprisonment.