You can kill someone with a rock. So are you going to ban rocks? What about steel pipes? Governments seem bent on banning everything.
After a machete was used in an attack in a mall, one of the Australian states outlawed machetes. Shortly after that machete attack, a car was used at a weapon at the same mall. For some reason they didn't outlaw cars.
Cars have been used as weapons on numerous occasions; so far they haven't tried to ban cars, though I'm sure they are working up to that.
A Shadiversity video with Shad Brooks and Tyranth wondering if hardware stores are next on the list on the list of things to be banned. will they try and BAN HARDWARE STORES next?!
Governments, ... they want to be seen like they're doing something, but honestly, what they do is useless. It just shows how transparent and useless they are and how pointless these laws are.
A gun turned in at a Chicago Gun Buy Back held at Saint Sabina Catholic Church went "missing." It would have been bad enough if that gun ended up in a cop's private collection. But it didn't. It ended up in the hands of 16-year-old who shot a woman. Woman shot with stolen buyback gun files lawsuit against City of Chicago
Twanda Willingham was shot in August 2023 with a Glock that had been turned in at a police buyback but went missing in transit.
She is suing the City of Chicago and unnamed officers, alleging a cover-up; the gun later surfaced with a 16-year-old tied to multiple shootings.
You can read the article, but the video is more entertaining, and only 5 minutes.
Saint Sabina is somewhat famous in gun-control circles in Chicago, being home to Father Michael Pfleger. You can look him up easy enough.
Everything about this story took place in the neighborhood of Auburn Gresham. Auburn Gresham is one of the 77 neighborhoods in Chicago. St. Sabina is in that neighborhood. The shooting was in Auburn Gresham. The police station is listed as being "just blocks apart" from the church. If they did in fact use the closest police station, it is in Auburn Gresham. So the gun didn't travel far.
Auburn Gresham is currently (data as of 4 August) in 7th place in the most dangerous neighborhood race, as reported by HeyJackass! There have been 9 murders, and 37 people have been shot and wounded. Not too bad for 3.77 square miles. Either that or it is horrible.
This is a breathtaking capsule of everything wrong with the left. This instance appears to be a genuine psychiatric incident, but it’s not far from the liberal loonies who supported Kamala Harris with a straight face.
The video at the link is four minutes.
Also the responses are worth your time; some of them are very funny.
The journalist/author was given a loaner of Volvo C40 Recharge Twin Pro by Volvo to test out. This story is from the UK, so "footballing" refers to soccer.
Every few weeks, I embark on a 350-mile round trip from my home in Cornwall to Bristol for family and footballing reasons. The question wasn't whether the journey was possible, but rather how convenient it would be, the cost involved, and how it would compare in terms of time.
I'm not sure why this was published now, since the incident he recounts is from a few years ago. Maybe it is because a few years ago no one would publish anything bad about electric vehicles. See the conclusion below.
It is a long article that details issues of charging. Costs. Speed of charging. Range anxiety. Here is one example.
I finally arrived in Bristol just past 11am, about half an hour later than usual. Upon arrival, my charge was down to 35% with a range of 60 miles.
I hastily plugged in at a relative's house for a slow recharge using a standard three-pin plug. By 6.30pm, I had managed to add another 30 miles to the car's range, costing around £5.
That was the slowest way to charge of course, but the time and the cost were telling. Even at the cheapest way to charge, 30 miles cost £5, which is $6.74 at today's exchange rate.
For those frequently embarking on long journeys, the current high costs of service station chargers remain a significant hurdle, even more than two years since I did this drive. If I had relied solely on the 79p charger, for instance, my total cost would have skyrocketed to £130 - something like four times the cost of diesel.
This doesn't even factor in two other vital considerations - the car's price tag and its environmental impact.
He then goes on to ignore most of the environmental impact. Cobalt mining. Lithium mining. Neodymium mining. Nickle mining. ...
There's nothing like a good old real world road trip in an EV story to bring a smile to your face. You ride the roller coaster of emotions with the poor driver as they anxiously plan their trip around charging stations. The highs as they realize they might just make their destination before the battery runs out. And the lows when they realize the only charging station that can save them is broken.
“President Trump brokers peace deal between Azerbaijan and Armenia after 35 years of conflict.” Neither Russia nor Iran can be happy with how President Trump has strengthened America’s position in their own backyards…
Google Busted Sending GOP Fundraiser Emails Directly to Spam: Memo
A Republican consulting firm is warning that Google’s Gmail platform is disproportionately flagging Republican fundraising messages as spam
Mohammad Carney’s Canada: No name released. Comrade Chow’s fire department. Hamas Pride Parade.
Woke America: Shifty Schiff. Life in beautiful Washington.
Power Line: Federal workforce to shrink by 300,000, The Wilson Tindi effect, This is what fraud looks like, and Thoughts from the ammo line
Shark Tank: FL GOP Supports Trump’s New Census Excluding Illegals
Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday night rescinded Washington policies that restrict the local police from aiding in immigration enforcement, and appointed the head of the DEA as an emergency Police Commissioner
The main story, as described in that headline/title.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson faced allegations that he hid millions of dollars from members of the Chicago Teachers Union while working for the union, video footage obtained by The Last Ward shows.
Then there is following the rules. Or not, if you're a union boss.
Union rules clearly state CTU must produce an audit for members every year. Specifically, the CTU financial secretary is required by union bylaws to “furnish an audited report of the Union which shall be printed in the Union’s publication.”
But Gates and Potter have refused to do that since 2020, so members filed a lawsuit. The union then filed a motion to dismiss that lawsuit, and a Cook County judge denied the motion.
Audited financial records? Don't you trust the union bosses? (The answer is apparently, "Hell No!")
Other news includes Chicago pension sweetener. Parking mandates for new construction. Governor Pritzker running for President.
Within Temptation is a Dutch band, that sings in English, that is usually described as Symphonic Metal. The category can change depending on who is doing the categorizing, and which album is being discussed. I quite like their work. The musicianship is outstanding, the songwriting is first class, and Sharon den Adel has a beautiful voice.
This song is "The Cross" by Within Temptation. It is from their 2009 album "An Acoustic Night at the Theatre (Live)." It was originally on their 2007 album The Heart of Everything.
I am currently re-watching and studying this documentary. Anything that could go wrong and could be used by the four terrorists to achieve the high count happened here. From Gun Control to lack of planning by Government to chaos taking over rational solutions.
As the chart above shows, the average number of typhoons forming annually in the Pacific has dropped from an average of about 27 in 1951 to about 25 today. This is good news.
Why Should we not assume that the Democrat party in general and local Democrat officials in particular are not being paid off by the Cartels and/or local criminal elements to protect them?
T-Hood made headlines this week (not in a good way) and it prompted my brother Kirby to lament, “Finally, at last, somebody famous moved to Snellville, and now he’s done got shot to death.”
People have an uncanny knack of dying in the vicinity of this bizarre cult, and now the Zizian kook Teresa Youngblut is facing the federal death penalty because Trump won the election.
You can easily watch the Ariane launch and the coverage is managed by the NSF guys so that you can see everything that can be seen in both launches. When the Ariane reaches its orbit, it's on the order of 8 minutes into the 18 minutes between the launch times. The Vulcan launch had several aspects I haven't seen before
The 17-year-old gunman was inside the restaurant Raising Cane on Broadway when he got into an argument with a Citibike rider just after 1 a.m. and decided to settle his beef by leaving the eatery — and opening fire, sources said.
He went onto the street and fired three shots at a group of about a dozen Citibike riders, striking one of them — a 19-year-old — in the foot as well as a man, 65, standing on the sidewalk, the sources added.
He "fired shots into the group," probably because he had no idea how to aim a firearm. Others were shot as well.
How may laws were violated? Starting with the 17-year-olds are not allowed to own pistols, and end with the worthless "Times Square is a gun free zone" laws, quite a few. Don't shoot people unless it is self-defense. I'm pretty sure that's a law in NYC, though I'm not a lawyer. Everything else seems to be against the law in NYC.
Organized networks are infiltrating the academic publishing system to promote fake science, say experts investigating research fraud. A new study highlights the major challenge for modern science.
Researchers get rewarded for publishing. They get to add to their curriculum vitae, or CV. It is basically the academic's résumé. They get grants. They get to keep their jobs. They get hired for better positions. It is not in their best interests to pursue the truth; it is in their best interests to publish anything they can.
Since they have to publish, they publish a lot of schlock.
A new study has found that networks of bad actors work together to publish bogus research. The findings, published in the journal PNAS this week, came from analyzing more than 5 million scientific articles published across 70,000 journals.
"There are groups of editors conspiring to publish low-quality articles, at scale, escaping traditional peer review processes," said the study's lead author Reese Richardson, a social scientist at Northwestern University in the US.
And this isn't just a problem for the Universities.
For example, researchers found evidence of image manipulation in a landmark study about Alzheimer's disease. The paper was eventually retracted and the lead scientist resigned, but [Anna] Abalkina [a social scientist at the Free University of Berlin] said billions of dollars in research funding and years of research had already been invested from one bad study.
So when someone tells you to "trust the science," ask them exactly what science they are talking about, since a lot of it is fraudulent.
Click thru. It isn't a long article.
It is important to note that despite the cuts from D.O.G.E, the US government does pay for a lot of scientific research, and as you can see from the example with Alzheimer's disease, it does impact a lot of things. Years of research, and billions of dollars wasted because of a "manipulated" image and a bad study.
The Nation is not a fan of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Not by a long shot.
The case is called US v. Wilson and it involves the stop-and-frisk of a Louisiana man named Damion Wilson. (Neither the judicial record, nor basic Google searches, reveal Wilson’s race. I’m going to assume he’s Black, but your mileage may vary.) Wilson was stopped by Deputy US Marshal Michael Atkins after Atkins observed “a bulge in [Wilson’s] waist.” Atkins believed it to be a “hard object”… like, perhaps, a gun.
Now Wilson was not a nice man. But the point is that the original stop, was just based on the suspicion that he had a gun in a state where it is perfectly legal to carry a gun.
So everything else that followed, such as more searches and more warrants, was tossed out.
Now The Nation does bring up some cases where people were stopped for "walking back and forth" and other nonsense.
For a more reasonable review of the situation, try the video below.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit with a 2-1 vote reversed a lower court’s ruling that forced President Donald Trump’s administration to pay $2 billion in USAID funding.
This is a ruling made on what most people think of being a technicality. But at least the appeals court has recognized that people are not entitled to their government grants.
And if you think that USAID was just a slush-fund for Democratic operations, and that the judge in question was just trying to prop up those operations, well you are just cynical, and should chill out. Or something.
Police said the homeowner was working on his property, which is not his primary residence when he was met with an intruder on the porch who was armed with a baseball bat and a knife. Police said the struggle moved from the porch down into the yard, where the homeowner pulled a gun and shot the other man.
Kanawha County, West Virginia is about 170 miles east of Lexington, Kentucky, though it will be closer to 200 miles by car.
As for the neighbor in question...
"It is very scary," said Mindy Nichols who [lives] near where the shooting happened. "You're out here in the country. People are kind and then this happens. I don't know. It just kind of startles you."
You are not protected by your zip code.
Self-defense is a human right, and I'm willing to bet that the DA in a rural county in West Virginia believes in self-defense as your legal right, but I guess we will see.
Times square is plastered with signs declaring it a "Gun Free Zone." It is not.
New York has an “assault weapons” ban, a “high capacity” magazine ban, heightened background check requirements, a red flag law, a ban on bump stocks, and a ban on guns in Times Square that even prohibits licensed concealed carriers from being armed for self-defense.
None of the laws worked. They were not really meant to deter crime, since it is clear that NYC is not interested in detering crime. Those laws are meant to make life miserable for law abding citizens, because NY State hates gun owners.
Virgin Airlines apparently has flights from the UK to Pakistan.
Salman Iftikhar was sentenced to 15 months in jail on Tuesday for his vile threats directed at the cabin crew
I'm shocked. Are you shocked? OK, so no one is shocked.
This took place in First Class, so that isn't the refuge it used to be.
“Don’t tell me what to do, you racist f–king bitch. I know where you are from in Cardiff,” Iftikhar screamed during the flight, according to the Mirror.
He was apparently intoxicated, because why wouldn't you be in first class? And he was traveling with his wife while making these threats. "Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?"
Iftikhar attempted to fight male flight attendant Tommy Merchant by grabbing him and telling him to shut up.
“Do you know who I am? F–k off. You should know who I am. Come on, you heard me. Let’s go right now,” he told Merchant.
Iftikhar escalated the already out-of-control situation when he threatened the flight crew with the exact room numbers they’d be staying at in the Avari Lahore Hotel.
The flight attendant made a statement at the sentencing.
“Never in my entire career flying for 37 years have I not been sure what to do. I have had the best career in the world for 37 years. But he has taken that away from me,” she added.
Salman Iftikhar was not arrested in Pakistan. He was arrested one year later at his "$1.2 million home in Iver, England, just outside London."
15 months for threats of terrorism? Seems like he got off light to me. Maybe it will teach him some manners. Or maybe not.
If this guy was from Florida, I call this Peak Florida. As it stands, it is just your garden-variety, British stupidity.
The internet is facing unprecedented levels of censorship around the world from governments and private industry alike. But The Verge wants to whine about Elon Musk. (The Verge) ...
Good to see that nothing has changed.
Mentally Ill? We Can Kill You for That
Jonathon Van Maren has a piece in First Things that kinda sorta is hopeful. Canada is in a bad way, but it’s not too late, if people pay attention.
od Glasser at RCP on Building a Just and Lasting Peace In Ukraine. WarTranslated @wartranslated, "Russian Urals crude is being offered to Chinese buyers at lower prices as Indian refiners pull back after new US tariffs.
Professor Fired After Refusing COVID Vaccine Sues Minnesota Gov. Walz
Nearly five years since the COVID-19 virus took the world by storm, those claiming injury from government vaccine mandates continue to come forward with new cases for litigation.
1. BC Supreme Court gives 1800 acres of land, much of it private property, to Amer-Indian bands
2. So a $25,000.00 fine for waking your dog in the woods but…
ITEM 3: Axios reported, “Apple to invest another $100 billion in U.S. as Trump applies pressure.”
Pressure? He threatened to have Chris Christie sit on Apple CEO Tim Cook.
Lord Carney’s Canada: This will never happen – Cuts to federal workforce. Living like royalty.
Stories You Won’t Find At Carney’s CBC: No one saw this coming.
The Left loves to say that if you just give the bad guys what they want, they will leave you alone. That is demonstrably not true, and the Left never wants to talk about rape in that context.
A 35-year-old man was getting out of his vehicle when another vehicle approached him, police said. Two male suspects got out of that vehicle, took out guns and fired shots toward the man.
At that point you have to assume that they want you dead. They may also want your car, phone, wallet, or other possessions, but they first thing they signal is that that want you dead. Should you, "give them what they want?" Would doing so ensure your safety?
The victim, shot in the shoulder, was taken to Northwestern Hospital in fair condition.
And no, being armed in your own defense is also not a guarantee of safety. There are no guarantees in this life. Still, some strategies for dealing with violent encounters are better than others.
The two big issues are the time required to charge the vehicle, and the vehicle's range once it is charged. You are believing the marketing hype. Never believe the marketing hype.
A test of ten electric cars, including Porsche Taycan and Tesla Model Y, reveals the majority charge slower than advertised, causing waits at charging stations
The stated charging times are carefully worded to consider optimum conditions. Something that rarely happens in the real world.
Each car was charged from a similar starting level — about 10 to 15 per cent battery — in ambient temperatures of 13 to 14C and with no battery “preconditioning”, which involves warming or cooling the battery before charging to bring it to its optimal operating temperature.
Tesla claimed all of the problems stem from the lack of preconditioning.
The archive of the link above is at this link. The Times tends to be behind a pay wall, so this may be required.
The AAA on Wednesday released results of five EVs from the latest round of its Real-World Testing Program, which found driving ranges between 5 per cent and 23 per cent less in real driving conditions than recorded in mandatory lab tests conducted by the manufacturers.
The worst performer was the 2023 BYD Atto 3 with 23% less range than advertised. The best performance was turned in by the Smart #3 with the achieving 95% of the advertised range, and a 2024 Tesla Model 3 got 14 percent less than its advertised range. This test was in Australia.
“Just looking at the reasons why you get less than advertised on the battery — hot weather can change it, cold weather can change it, driving on different terrain can change it, stopping and starting can change it, braking can change it,” [TV host] Barr said.
I couldn't find the article that MGUY Australia referenced in his video, but this one is on the same subject. Looking at several articles, I also couldn't find a detailed description of the when/how the testing was conducted. It is currently winter in Australia, but these tests of both EVs and internal combustion driven cars have been going on since 2023 in response to the whole Volkswagen testing kerfuffle from several years back.
Another song courtesy of WXRT's Saturday Morning Flashback. In the middle of April they were Flashing Back to 1980. The year we got both Caddy Shack and Blues Brothers. (Yes, it has been stuck in drafts that long. There are things older than this!)
In 1978 Chicago Mayor Michael A. Bilandic decided to hold a music festival on Navy Pier. It would eventually prove too small, and in 1983 it would move to Soldier Field, but it was the year that ChicagoFest was born. In 1980 93XRT (Chicago's Finest Rock) decided to record and publish some of the blues artists that played the festival. The album included songs from Koko Taylor, Muddy Waters, Mighty Joe Young, and Lonnie Brooks.
This is "Sweet Home Chicago" by Lonnie Brooks, recorded live at ChicagoFest in 1980. It is from the album Blues Deluxe.
Sadly ChicagoFest ended in 1983, but the music festival would be essentially absorbed by Taste of Chciago, which except for the COVID years, has been running since 1980.
Rates for ACA plans vary widely according to age, location, benefits and other factors, but Tyson says the average monthly premium for a healthy 21-year-old is $486. For an older adult, it’s $800 to $1200 a month. The average ACA enrollee is saving $705 a year through the subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year.
There are lots of issues with Lava Ridge, like that the Biden administration did not adequately engage with stakeholders, including local residents, farmers, ranchers, and tribal nations, in the approval process and legal deficiencies in the Biden administration’s approval process.
Jimmy Fallon’s low-rated showcase, as liberal as any late-night show in the Trump era but less cruel, announced it would host Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld on Thursday. In a sane world, that’s hardly noteworthy.
There is a story in the UK media ... about how local residents in the Bournemouth area of southern England have banded together to form “vigilante” groups – working with local police, it should be noted – to deal with crime.
After six months of enduring the off-season — forced to subside on nothing but speculation and rumors from NFL commentators — we are finally approaching real football, as the pre-season exhibition games are now underway.
Brandon Herrera - I’m Running for Congress. He nearly got it done last time, but he lost by a handful of votes.
But I did it because the congressman who represented me, Tony Gonzalez, even though a Republican, kept making bad votes that just made no sense to me, like voting for Biden's gun control, opposing border security, selling out American interests on behalf of other countries, and a bunch of other things that shocked me.
According to Greenville County Sheriff’s Office, at around 3 a.m. deputies were called to a home on Lakeview Circle for an attempted burglary. According to the sheriff’s office, a resident of the home fired a weapon and the suspect in the break-in fled.
A few hours later he turned up at a local hospital with a gunshot wound. He is expected to survive his injuries.
Greenville County, South Carolina is about 100 mile drive west of Charlotte, North Carolina.
Self-defense is a human right, and in rural South Carolina I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that it will be considered a legal right.
The The Vlog Couple UK also have a follow up video on the boat fire. That video deals with some of the denial of the EV zealots about the dangers of lithium-ion batteries. That is worth a look as well.
The Federal Network Agency’s auction for 10.1 gigawatt (GW) offshore wind farms in the German part of the North Sea ended with no investor submitting a bid for any of the two proposed sites, the Federal Association for Offshore Wind Energy, BWO, said.
The auction flop signals that offshore wind power developers are wary of taking on riskier, zero-subsidy projects amid rising costs and supply chain issues.
Anyone else find it curious that the "world's cheapest source of energy" dies without a steady pipeline of subsidies flowing to the industries? I'm going to go out on a limb and say someone's not telling the truth.
That doesn't even cover the problems, like the blackout experienced earlier in the year that hit Spain in April.
Two years ago, researchers in the Netherlands discovered an intentional backdoor in an encryption algorithm baked into radios used by critical infrastructure–as well as police, intelligence agencies, and military forces around the world–that made any communication secured with the algorithm vulnerable to eavesdropping.
The algorithm in question European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), who then recommended a work-around, which also has a problem with encryption.
But now the same researchers have found that at least one implementation of the end-to-end encryption solution endorsed by ETSI has a similar issue that makes it equally vulnerable to eavesdropping.
It is almost like the ETSI, and the governments that pay the bills, don't like the idea of encryption and privacy.
All four TETRA encryption algorithms use 80-bit keys to secure communication. But the Dutch researchers revealed in 2023 that TEA1 has a feature that causes its key to get reduced to just 32 bits, which allowed the researchers to crack it in less than a minute.
Strong encryption algorithms have been known, and implemented in audited code, for a long time. There is absolutely no reason for this kind of thing.
While the old saying is "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and three times is enemy action," this is not the first time that governments and other large bureaucracies have worked to undermine privacy and/or security.
So who is it that hates the very idea of privacy? Despots. Which is begining to seem like that term describes the governments of the European Union.
The Other McCain brings a report on the University of Idaho stabbings and the sentencing of Bryan Kohberger. Demonic Forces: The Reality of Evil
This was triggered by him watching a documentary on Amazon Prime, One Night in Idaho.
Because of Kohberger’s guilty plea, we didn’t get to hear prosecutors lay out their case in the courtroom, and a lot of mystery still surrounds the motive for the murders. Kohberger was a graduate student at Washington State University in Pullman, just eight miles west of Moscow, Idaho. Given the proximity of the two university towns, there’s a substantial amount of cross-socialization — WSU kids partying in Moscow, UI kids partying in Pullman. It has been suggested that Kohberger became obsessed with Maddie Mogen after encountering her while she worked a part-time job at a popular restaurant in Moscow. Kaylee Goncalves had told friends in the weeks leading up to the murders that she believed she was being stalked. Mogen and Goncalves were very similar-looking, and it may be that Kohlberger couldn’t tell them apart, if he was watching them from a distance (as evidence indicates).
It isn't often that people discuss evil seriously, but this guy was evil. Click thru for more.
I know how much Americans hate foreign languages, so today we have an instrumental. Eisbrecher is a German band in the Neue Deutsche Härte genre. That’s “New German Hardness” in English. But there is no German in today's song.
I'm kind of surprised that I haven't featured this song in the past, because when it turns up in one of my Heavy Metal playlists, I often listen to it twice in a row. Especially if I'm driving.
Lodi Police say 33-year-old Amr Ali, a basement tenant of the home, was trying to smash his way in.
Investigators say the 62-year-old homeowner and family members confronted Ali.
Police say the homeowner ultimately fired three shots, striking Ali once.
Mr. Ali did not survive.
The homeowner and his family are traumatized. They also have no idea why Mr. Ali was trying to break in, since he didn't say anything.
The harpoon?
Police say it was around 11 p.m. Sunday when a man was trying to kick open the front door to their home Garibaldi Avenue and tried to break in using a spear-type object, a handheld harpoon.
Lodi, New Jersey is about 12 miles north of Newark.
Self-defense is a human right. This took place in New Jersey, which is not the state most dedicated to individual action, or liberty, but the police seem to be treating this as a case of justified self-defense.
I'm not a lawyer, and I don't even live in Texas, but I believe that Texas has one program to arm teachers. It is known as Guardian. It dates to 2009 according to what I have seen.
These are the benefits of a Guardian program, according to the Tom Green County Sheriff Nick Hanna:
“It establishes for somebody wanting to attack that they are going to meet resistance,” Hanna said. “The fact that these schools are in the county, even if officers are nearby, our response time is going to be several minutes away. When we have Guardians, you are going to buy yourself a little bit of time, and that’s when the minutes really matter.”
There is a great image of a sign you meet on the way into one of the schools, that basically says if you come here expecting to do harm, armed teachers will do harm right back at you. You should click thru for that alone.
And while they provide a list of Guardian schools near San Angelo, Texas, they also provide a list on non-guardian schools. I suppose the the Professional Journalists™ think that second list is of superior schools, though they do note those schools have a school resource officer.
I was looking for a particular story, and not having any luck, so I changed to a more general search term. I was surprised at the number of stories. This is basically from one week, and I didn't record everything, because the incidents started repeating.
A 69-year-old woman has been upgraded to stable condition after fighting for her life following a black bear attack outside her home in rural Wisconsin
Sierra Madre, Claremont, Monrovia and other communities nestled just below the San Gabriel Mountains are a hot spot for human-bear conflict reports.
As you can imagine, the reactions in different places are very different. In California the locals are wringing their hands waiting to be saved by Sacramento, but the budget was cut for wildlife management. Can't imagine what they are spending money on.
The story I was looking for turned out to be from May, which was why I couldn't find it. (One of my searches kept giving me a video by Florida Wildlife Commission officers, which made me think it was more recent than that.
Florida Fish and Wildlife is investigating after a man and a dog died in a suspected black bear attack on May 5, 2025, just south of the Big Cypress Wildlife Management Area in Collier County.
At 7:07 a.m., the Collier County Sheriff's Office received a call regarding a potential bear mauling on State Road 29, between Naples and Everglades City.
Big Cypress Wildlife Management Area extends west roughly from about 20 miles from the western edge of Dade County and Broward County to about 55 miles west of those counties. It encompasses Big Cypress Swamp, which is just west of the Everglades, mostly. Alligator Alcatraz is on the south edge the Big Cypress Wildlife Management Area. (Alligator Alcatraz is housed at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport. It is probably about 2 miles from the Everglades proper.)
The AK Guy ran for Congress in 2024, and he came within a few hundred votes of defeating a RINO who voted for gun control in Texas. He was outspent 10 to 1 or better, and he still nearly almost won. Here's hoping he can do better in 2026.
Is it a surprise that Democrats would lie, cheat, or steal elections to gain or keep power? I'm from Chicago, so it does not surprise me.
He claimed that Dems will redistrict blue states in response to what Texas is doing. Apparently, no one has told him that Democrats have nothing left to gerrymander because they have been doing this for years.
You can't continue to promise gold-plated pensions, and then fail to fund them. Eventually the bills must be paid.
Meep at STUMP is an actuary. Her job is literally to evaluate this kind of thing. Not that the politicians will listen to the actuaries.
Unsurprisingly, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed the Chicago police and fire Tier 2 pension sweetener, bringing it in line with the downstate plans. However, this is not much of a gift to Chicago… or those pensioners… if those promises are never fulfilled.
They are adding extra costs onto the city's pensions, but no one is doing anything to actually fund those pensions.
UPDATE: Not sure what happened to the end of this post... but there was more aside from MEEP. I just can't remember the source right now. (Note to self: Don't edit posts when you're in the throws of insomnia... things won't end well.)
After the failure of the Edenville and Sanford dams in Michigan in May of 2020, Jordan Mowbray took a page out of Juan Browne's book and started documenting the rebuilding efforts.
Secord Dam was determined to be at risk of the same kind of failure, and so a lot of rebuilding was required. The work on the Secord dam was halted in 2024, after completion of the emergency spillway, because of a lawsuit filed against Four Lakes Task Force, the organization created to own the 4 dams after the disaster. (2 dams failed, 2 were either damaged or deemed to be in need of repair. There may be more dams in the mix.) That lawsuit was completed, and the work on rebuilding the main spillway was restarted.
Granted, this isn't Sheriff Grady Judd's Polk County, but Florida is not a place to mess around.
The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said a man was shot in the chest on Monday when he attempted to break into someone’s home on the city’s Westside.
According to JSO, the incident happened just after noon [August 4th] on Cahoon Road when the suspect attempted to burglarize a home and was confronted by the property’s owner.
The guy who got shot showed up at an urgent care, and was transported to a local hospital, where he is stable.
JSO added that the incident appeared to be isolated, the suspect was detained, and there is no further threat to the public.
Police don't make determinations about charges, and so did not answer the stupid questions from the media on whether the homeowner would face charges.
A man in his early 20s was bitten in the lower leg by a shark near Bean Point on the north end of Anna Maria Island on Sunday [July 27th], according to the West Manatee Fire Rescue District.
The time of day is interesting, because I always thought the middle of the afternoon was the safest time. Maybe there is no safe time. Though the Fire Marshall did say that dusk or dawn is when shark activity is greater.
The Manatee fire marshal said the victim got into the water from a boat and did not wade in from an Anna Maria Island Beach.
The boater rushed the victim to the Kingfish ramp so he could be taken to a hospital.
He was in the water off the northern tip of Anna Maria Island when he was bitten on the lower leg.
Anna Maria Island is a barrier island on the Gulf of Mexico America immediately south of the entrance to Tampa Bay. It is also just west of the entrance to the Manatee River. It has several beaches, including Bean Point, and a fair number of restaurants. Bean Point is on the extreme north end of the island. I lived about 10 miles from the island when I was living on my boat, and had the boat in a marina on the Manatee River.
The five year average for shark bites in Florida is 22 per year. Which is why I always tried to stay in the boat.
The Equal Protection Project filed a civil rights complaint against Rutgers University with the US Department of Education, claiming the scholarship programs violate federal anti-discrimination laws and are unconstitutional.
Federal law, New Jersey state law, and Rutger's own bilaws forbid discrimination based on race. So of course they are discriminating based on race.
The group’s Aug. 1 complaint filed with the Education Department accuses four different Rutgers programs of discrimination by excluding white students, a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Law of 1964, as well as the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.
This is a crazy story from May, that I didn't see at the time.
A Russian national is accused of stealing a massive luxury yacht and leading authorities in Florida on a boat chase as police feared he planned on fleeing to the Bahamas for a “smuggling venture.”
Nikolai Vilkov, 29, was arrested on May 5 after the Martin County Sheriff’s Office and other agencies had to use smaller boats to pin the stolen 68-foot, two-million-dollar yacht against the shoreline in Jupiter Island, Sheriff John Budensiek said in a press conference.
Does this constitute piracy? This was not quite a cutting-out expedition, though that may describe the law-enforcement response.
Martin County, Florida stretches from the east shore of Lake Okeechobee to the Atlantic Coast. It includes Stuart, Jensen Beach, and Indiantown. It also includes the eastern end of the Okeechobee Waterway that connects Fort Myers to Stuart by way of the Caloosahatchee River, Lake Okeechobee, and the St. Lucie Canal.
And let's be clear, because people like to say illegal immigration enforcement is about race. Nikolai Vilkov is Russian. His wife and kids were in the US, but they flew back to Russia in 2024. My guess is that he fled Russia to avoid the draft for the war in Ukraine, but it is only a guess. After the situation with the yacht is sorted out, he will be shipped back to Russia, and then probably to the Ukrainian front.
Midwest Safety is one of a few channels on YouTube to which I am subscribed, that have police chases, and other bits of video of people making questionable choices.
