Friday Links - 17 June

Becker News is up first with The Pentagon Reveals There are 46 ‘Peaceful’ Biolabs in Ukraine. One of my favorite SciFi series postulated a "final war" bio-war starting in Ukraine.

The Department of Defense has admitted in a recent ‘fact sheet‘ release that there are more military biolabs in Ukraine than previously known. According to the Pentagon, there are 46 “peaceful” biolabs in the wartorn nation.

Impro Guns - Colombian craft made .32 ‘Walter PPK’

A locally made “Cartagüeña” pistol from Cartago, Valle del Cauca. [A city 187 miles west of Bogotá.]

Tam at View from the Porch - Slightly Sweaty Terminators

You've got government officials telling you you don't need AR15s right about the time that Google's developing an AI but firing the guy who tried to make friends with it, while the Japanese are on the verge of building a killer cyborg for Skynet to drive.

I think it's time to make sure that every strategic weapons launch system on the planet is good and air-gapped.

It's like these scientists don't even watch movies.

Daley Gator - My dog up and died, and my heart is broke. That is all

Someone, way back in 2012, just turned a dog loose. My Brother-in-Law saw them open the door, the dog jumped out and they just drove off. That was the day I met Dugal, my dad would suggest that name a few days later He was black, with some white as well. The vet back in Texas said he was healthy, and said the breed was most likely an American Staffordshire Terrier. Big head, muscular, and lots of people would have been scared of him. He was sweet, non-aggressive, and a great family pet. A best friend.

Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog - China’s High Speed Rail Network Is A Trillion Dollar Debt Sinkhole. The litany of problems is long and problematic.

High speed rail construction has squeezed out much-needed construction of regular rail. “China’s rail freight capacity can’t meet market demand. China’s market share of road freight turnover has risen rapidly to 49% market share in 2016.” China rail has jacked up freight costs to make up for losses on high speed rail.

Ruined Leon - "Sasha Johnson & The Black Lives That Don't Matter" £20,000 Not Enough For Black Lives To Matter. A video on a shooting that took place in London. How the narrative changed as details of the shooting came to light. Including the inability to raise a modest amount of money to support the victim.

Professor David Yamane at Gun Curious - Liberals Should Avoid These Arguments About Guns in America

If we are going to make progress in reducing gun death, we need to improve our ability as Americans with diverse values and beliefs to talk to each other about guns. Arguments like those I highlight here may feel good and seem convincing. But as a long-time liberal and relatively new gun owner, I can assure you they alienate gun owners and inhibit the very conversations we desperately need to be having right now. Consequently, they impede us from progressing in our common desire to reduce gun violence.

The Other McCain - ‘The NPR Tote Bag Set’: Liberal White Guys and Their Target Audience

Thomas Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy distilled to its essence the psychological basis of liberalism, namely the belief of liberals that they are more enlightened than — morally and intellectually superior to — ordinary people. Once you recognize this as the emotional core of liberalism, everything they say or do makes a lot more sense. The “anointed” must continually demonstrate their superiority by advocating for causes and issues that contradict the values and beliefs of ordinary people.

That Eric Apler - My Next Read: “Music and Mystique in Muscle Shoals” by Christopher M. Reali

The forceful music that rolled out of Muscle Shoals in the 1960s and 1970s shaped hits by everyone from Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin to the Rolling Stones and Paul Simon.

Ace of Spades HQ - Biden Threatens Oil Companies That He Will Punish Them If They Don't Start Producing More Oil, As His Policies Have Made It Impossible For Them to Do

An incompetent tyrant is threatening his political enemies with "emergency powers."

Say, NeverTrump -- you championed Biden because he was going to stop Trump's purported authoritarianism and Restore Our Norms, right?

Again from The Other McCain - ‘Orange Man Bad!’ Trump Still Living Rent-Free in the Left’s Collective Head

Trump Derangement Syndrome exacerbated the worst tendencies of the worst people in politics. The RINOs and neocon grifters — e.g., Steve Schmidt — exposed themselves as cynical frauds who had never believed in anything except their own careerist ambitions. On the Left, the desperate panic of the #Resistance sent emotionally fragile people searching for saviors, thus creating opportunities for crooked hustlers like Michael Avenatti.

Judicial Watch - Fauci Agency Records Show China Failed to Provide Key COVID Info

The records were obtained by Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for records of communications, contracts and agreements with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (No. 1:21-cv-00696)). The lawsuit specifically sought records about NIH grants that benefitted the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

American Thinker - Those vaunted Jan. 6 hearings are bombing with the public

Why the hell would anyone want to watch this? It's obvious it's a rigged hearing with a pre-determined conclusion. Nobody wants to watch crap where the ending of the story has already been told.

Once more from The Other McCain - The J6 Smear Machine

In true Stalinist fashion, these hearings are utterly one-sided. All of the witnesses appearing live before the committee — e.g., the bloated has-been Chris Stirewalt — have been hand-picked to give testimony reinforcing the foregone conclusion that (a) there was no reason to doubt the result of the 2020 election and therefore (b) the protest against certification of the Electoral College vote was inherently illegitimate, a seditious “insurrection.” There is no cross-examination of these witnesses, no one at the hearings who represents the opposing viewpoint.

Granite Grok - Soros-Backed Dem DA Caught “Lying” to The Court

George Soros wants to see America burn, so he’s invested vast sums into electing public prosecutors who are soft on crime. Virginia State Attorney Buta Biberaj received $860,000.00 from a Soros PAC (she won by two points), but she was just tossed off a case by a Judge for concealing criminal records.

Vlad Tepes - A little personal indulgence: Freedom Convoy, Trucks for hope

In other words, while as free people we always had the right to come and go within and without our own nations, now they have become whims of the state, the right of movement to be doled out based on how well we adhere to government diktats or more likely, conform to the evolving state ideology of communism/progressivism/socialism/woke.

Ace at Ace of Spades HQ - The Market Tanks and Mortgage Rates Spike and Biden Claims None of This Has Anything to Do With Him

Biden claims that there is just no connection between him pumping trillions of fake dollars into the economy, and all of those extra trillions of dollars now being worth less now there are so many more of them: