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| PawPaw hugging on Pixie Quick, a shooter out of Fort Worth. |
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| Akarate Zach, relaxing before the finals. |
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| Belle, hugging on Diamondback Billy, a shooter from Pocohontas, AR |
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| The chaos that is setting up. It will look a lot better tomorrow when we get to the matches. |
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| The Venue: We're in the Tri-State Fairgrounds. |
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| The shooting area. This place is my little slice of heaven. |
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| Our pastor, working the electronics. Pastors are great announcers. |
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| The spectators area. The ladies seem to be comfortable. |
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| Our pastor, Herb Dickerson, with a tablet studying his scripture. |
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| One of the youth, praying during the devotional. Her horse was very well behaved. |
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| One of the youth, running the barrels. |
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| Two of the leders discussing the finer points of arena mud. With all this rain lately, we're becoming expert on arena mud. |
Fifty-six percent of American adults in the Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll said referring to members of the gang as “animals” is fair, compared to 44 percent who said the characterization was unfair.Most Americans know that the president was using hyperbole. Only the screeching harpies in the media and Democratic party (sorry for the redundancy) took exception, but they are still butt-hurt that he is the president.
The American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association redefined high blood pressure at 130/80 in November, down from the previous level of 140/90, based on new evidence supporting a lower threshold.My gal, who has been a registered nurse for many years, firmly believes that this sort of thing is a cabal of doctors and pharmaceutical companies simply to sell pills. She maintains that the numbers she saw when she began nursing were much higher than they are today, and those numbers, generally across the board, caused no real problems. But, she says, as ad doctors became pill-pushers and pharmaceutical companies learned how very profitable that lower numbers could be, the numbers started dropping so that doctors could sell more pills.
[T]he state’s 20-year dominance by the Republican Party all but guarantees the meetings will be dominated by calls to boost school security and “harden” campuses — an idea backed by the NRA — instead of demands for gun restrictions, said Cal Jillson, political science professor at Southern Methodist University.As one cmmmenter said earlier, the call for solutions to this problem often come from people (reporters) who are least familiar with the problem. I'd ask which "restrictions" might have solved this problem? The shooter in Texas used a shotgun and a revolver. Both of these are technology from the 1800s. How about a law that prohibits people from bringing guns on campus? We already have that. How about a law that criminalizes murder? We already have that too.
Anyway, I just wanted to drop you a line and let you know that I now actually do want to take your guns.Uh, no, I don't think that's going to happen.
All of your guns.
Right now.
So now I’m angry. Now I’m finished trying to reason with you. So now I, a guy who was ambivalent about guns just a few years ago, want to take your guns away. All of them. I want to take them all and melt them down and shape them into a giant sphere and then push it at you so you have to run away from it like Indiana Jones for the rest of your lives. I want Ted Nugent to roam the halls of his gunless house, sighing wearily until he dies. I want to end this thing once and for all, so that all of you who have prioritized the sale of guns over the lives of children have to sit quietly and think about what you’ve done. God help me, I want to take all of your guns out of your hands, by myself, right now.We're tired of trying to reason with you too. Gun control law after gun control law, each passed with the promise of concrete change, and when nothing changed, you wanted more gun control laws.
But Granovetter thought it was a mistake to focus on the decision-making processes of each rioter in isolation. In his view, a riot was not a collection of individuals, each of whom arrived independently at the decision to break windows. A riot was a social process, in which people did things in reaction to and in combination with those around them. Social processes are driven by our thresholds—which he defined as the number of people who need to be doing some activity before we agree to join them. In the elegant theoretical model Granovetter proposed, riots were started by people with a threshold of zero—instigators willing to throw a rock through a window at the slightest provocation. Then comes the person who will throw a rock if someone else goes first. He has a threshold of one. Next in is the person with the threshold of two. His qualms are overcome when he sees the instigator and the instigator’s accomplice. Next to him is someone with a threshold of three, who would never break windows and loot stores unless there were three people right in front of him who were already doing that—and so on up to the hundredth person, a righteous upstanding citizen who nonetheless could set his beliefs aside and grab a camera from the broken window of the electronics store if every one around him was grabbing cameras from the electronics store.So, thresholds get lowered with each repetitive event, like throwing rocks in a riot. Then, the argument might be that Columbine lowered the threshold.
Then came Columbine. The sociologist Ralph Larkin argues that Harris and Klebold laid down the “cultural script” for the next generation of shooters. They had a Web site. They made home movies starring themselves as hit men. They wrote lengthy manifestos. They recorded their “basement tapes.” Their motivations were spelled out with grandiose specificity: Harris said he wanted to “kick-start a revolution.” Larkin looked at the twelve major school shootings in the United States in the eight years after Columbine, and he found that in eight of those subsequent cases the shooters made explicit reference to Harris and Klebold. Of the eleven school shootings outside the United States between 1999 and 2007, Larkin says six were plainly versions of Columbine; of the eleven cases of thwarted shootings in the same period, Larkin says all were Columbine-inspired.What has changed since Columbine? That horrific event occurred in 1999, about the time that social media started the whole Facebook/Twitter/Instagram revolution. High-scollers and college-age kids are much more conversant in social media than my generation ever was. Communication is instant, and it is easy to find sites or forums that share interests. The Columbine shooting has become nearly a template for mayhem, and the threshold had been lowered.
In other contexts, he’s elaborated further. The preparations for massacres are often extremely detailed. Shooters (and wannabe shooters) will often film videos, mimic the dress and poses of the Columbine killers, and otherwise copy the shooters who came before. Gladwell is hardly an NRA conservative — and he believes gun control “has its place” — but he also shares this grim warning: “Let’s not kid ourselves that if we passed the strictest gun control in the world that we would end this particular kind of behavior.”It's easy to scream for gun control, but in my view, it's misplaced. The events that we're seeing on a more frequent basis are not about guns, they are about how we communicate. Communication has changed drastically over the past 20 years, and we're just now starting to grasp the implications.
High-powered rifles such as the AR-15 can be fired more than twice as fast as most handguns. The standard magazine for an AR-15 holds 30 rounds, allowing a shooter to continue firing uninterrupted for longer, making the weapon more lethal than other firearms, though clearly the use of any gun can be deadly, especially a shotgun at close range.We note, for the record, that the goblin used a shotgun and a revolver. Why USAToday included the discussion of the AR is a mystery. It's almost as if they can't help themselves. This paragraph is gratuitous column-fill and has no place in the article And, we all know that the AR is not a "high-powered" rifle. At best, it's an intermediate
“Thus the possibility that cryopreserved Squid and/or Octopus eggs, arrived in icy bolides several hundred million years ago should not be discounted as that would be a parsimonious cosmic explanation for the Octopus’ sudden emergence on Earth circa 270 million years ago.”I've seen a few octopii, and those are some alien looking critters.
Samantha Ciotta pleaded guilty to having sex with a student at Beaumont High School in Beaumont, Calif., where she was a teacher. However, the plea deal offered by the California prosecutors allows her to avoid jail time and Ciotta won't have to register as a sex offender. Putting a cherry on top of the double standard, in a few years, she may be able to re-apply to teach again.One would wonder what kind of sentence a male teacher would get for the same offense. If it weren't for double standards, California wouldn't have any standards at all.
North Korea has complained often about U.S. military exercises that partner with Japan or South Korea, characterizing them as rehearsal for an invasion of North Korea.If I were Trump, I'd send Kim a firm message. Either he show up at the summit, as agreed, or the US will indeed hold joint exercises with South Korea.... in North Korea.
Dozens of funerals were expected to take place after 60 Palestinians were killed in demonstrations, according to figures provided by the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Among the dead were eight children, including eight-month-old Laila Anwar Ghandour. The health ministry said the baby was asphyxiated by tear gas.When I see a report like that, the first question that springs to mind is, "What kind of sub-human animal brings a toddler to a violent protest?" The answer, of course, is that Hamas is well known for their use of human shields. Eight children dead? Who thought that bringing children was a good idea?
The City University of New York (CUNY)-Guttman recently published a new guide for students that adds “zim,” “ver,” and “emself” to the list of acceptable “gender-inclusive” pronouns that can be used.
The “Gender Identity and Pronouns” guide tells students that the “dichotomy of ‘he and she’ in English does not leave room for other gender identities,” and to fix this, the guide offers a list of alternatives students may use instead.Academics (and I assume that CUBY has several) should know that we have two genders, male and female. If t hey are confused about the distinction, they should stand naked in front of a mirror and examine their genitalia. if you have boy parts, you are male. If you have female parts, you are female. It is really that simple.
Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.When I read earlier this week that John Kerry was giving aid and comfort to our enemies, I thought that he might be in violation of the Code.
State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman called his Sri Lankan girlfriend his “brown slave” and wanted her to refer to him as “Master,” the woman says.We could play "guess the party", but it's safe to say this guy is a Democrat. This guy liked to have sex with "brown slaves" and wanted to be called Master.
Hollywood actress Alyssa Milano, whose credits include roles in Who's the Boss? and Charmed, appeared at an anti-NRA rally in Dallas yesterday.Liberals and the Hollywood elite don't seem to understand the utter hypocrisy of such events. If you're anti-gun, that's fine, but don't bring an armed entourage with you. It makes you appear either stupid, or clueless, or both.
As unremarkable as that is, her appearance was notable because Milano showed up at the rally flanked by armed bodyguards.
Former Secretary of State John Kerry would be violating the Logan Act, if it was enforced, for secretly speaking with foreign leaders about salvaging the Iran nuclear deal during Trump’s presidency, Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz argued Saturday.No one is going to enforce the Logan Act against Kerry. Why? Because we have a two-tier system of justice in the US. If you're a high-ranking Democrat, you are safe from prosecution.
Rep. Eric Swalwell wants to have the federal government buy back all “military-style semiautomatic assault weapons,” and prosecute anyone who refuses to participate. Good idea, or basically an ad for the NRA?Eric Swalwell is a Donk who represents California's 15th District.
“The current generation aren’t as good at reading the traditional clock face as older generations,” Malcolm Trobe, deputy general secretary at the Association of School and College Leaders in England, told the publication. “Nearly everything they’ve got is digital so youngsters are just exposed to time being given digitally everywhere.”There was a story making the rounds locally several months ago. It seems that there was this young engineer, recently graduated from college, who went to work for a local firm. They had him doing basic research, looking at titles and surveys, and he had trouble doing that work because he couldn't read script and many of the public records prior to the 1950s were written in script.
Dick’s Sporting Goods, which announced in February it would no longer sell rifles to anyone under the age of 21, hired three Beltway lobbyists to lobby Congress for gun control, according to federal records reviewed by The Federalist.I'm seeing stuff like this all across conservative media, and my email inbox is lighting up from Chris Cox. Evidently, Dicks is betting that it can piss off the 2nd Amendment crowd and stay in business. I don't know what percentage of total revenue guns sales represent to Dick's, but I suppose their bean-counters know exactly how much they are set to lose.
