Thomas Sowell: Black Votes Matter

Thomas Sowell is Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow The Hoover Institution Stanford University.

Here is Sowell's column.
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Black votes matter. If Republicans could get 20 percent of black votes, the Democrats would be ruined. This is highly unlikely, given the approach used by Republicans. However, the point is that Democrats must not only continue to get nine-tenths of black votes, they also need to get a high turnout of black voters on election day.

People who expected the election of President Barack Obama to lead to racial healing and a post-racial society failed to take account of the political reality that racial healing and a post-racial society would, at a minimum, reduce black voter turnout.

Black votes matter to many politicians — more so than black lives. That is why such politicians must try to keep black voters fearful, angry and resentful. Racial harmony would be a political disaster for such politicians.

Racial polarization makes both the black population and the white population worse off, but it makes politicians who depend on black votes better off.

Hillary Clinton desperately needs black votes in this year's close election. Promoting fear, anger and resentments among blacks — and, if possible, paranoia — serves her political interest. Barack Obama has mastered the art of keeping black voters aroused while keeping white voters soothed — thanks in part to the gullibility of much of the public, who mistake geniality and glib rhetoric for honesty and good will.

Obama has repeatedly put the weight and prestige of the presidency on the side of those who denounce the police before any facts are verified — and even after facts have come out, exposing the fraudulence of such claims as the claim that the "gentle giant" Michael Brown said, "Hands up, don't shoot."

When a career race hustler like Al Sharpton, with a history of hoaxes, is a regular visitor and advisor to the White House, that is a reality that whites and blacks alike ignore at their peril.

The fact that Sharpton owes millions of dollars in unpaid income taxes ought to be a devastating revelation of what lucrative careers there are in race hustling.

Nothing reveals the political cynicism of the Obama administration like their campaign to force schools to reduce the number of black male students who are disciplined for misconduct. Because black male students are cited for disruption and violence more often than other categories of students, that is automatically taken to mean that racial discrimination is the reason.

The most obvious alternative explanation is that black male students engage in more disruption and violence than Asian females or some other students. But that possibility is implicitly ruled out.

What makes this such a farce is that many, if not most, of the teachers and administrators in ghetto schools are black themselves, and have no reason to discriminate against black males. What makes it a disaster is that only a few thugs in a classroom are enough to deprive all the other students of a decent education — which, for many, is their only chance for decent lives as adults.

If black lives matter at all to the Obama administration, they obviously don't matter as much as black votes that can be won by posing as defenders of blacks, even in situations where defenders of thugs are destroying black children's futures.

Even the thugs themselves will be worse off in the long run, if somebody does not put a stop to behavior that can lead them to prison as adults.

Hillary Clinton plays the same political game of posing as a defender of blacks from enemies threatening them on all sides, as she tries to win an election that would amount to a third term of the Obama administration's policies — most of which have left blacks worse off than before Obama took office.

The ancient phrase, "By their fruits ye shall know them" has been replaced by the current notion that by their rhetoric you should judge them — and vote for them.

One of the key questions this election year is whether black lives matter more than black votes that can be won by racial charades that undermine and endanger those lives. The answer to that question will affect all Americans, because racial turmoil is to no one's interest, except some politicians and race hustlers.

From John Lott: Do Democrats want to disarm minorities?

John R. Lott, Jr. is an economist and was formerly chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission. Lott is also a leading expert on guns and op-eds on that issue are done in conjunction with the Crime Prevention Research Center. He is the author of nine books including "More Guns, Less Crime." His latest book is "The War on Guns: Arming Yourself Against Gun Control Lies

Here is John's column.
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On Tuesday night, the mother of Trayvon Martin praised Hillary Clinton at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia for having “the courage to lead the fight for common-sense gun legislation.” Numerous other speakers also raised the gun control issue at the DNC, too. But Wednesday night was clearly “gun night.”

From Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) to former Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey to former Representative Gabby Giffords and her husband, NASA Astronaut Mark Kelly to others, a string of speakers pushed for more gun control. When President Obama addressed the crowd he also pushed the notion of changing background checks on guns.

Hillary Clinton spoke about how “We should be working with responsible gun owners to pass common-sense reforms and keep guns out of the hands of criminals, terrorists and all others who would do us harm,” on Thursday night.

Democrats are angry about what they claim to be mass, systematic racism by the police. But they overlook the discriminatory effects of background checks. These regulations disproportionately prevent law-abiding black and Hispanic males from getting guns.

Climate Change

What follows suggests that climate models may not be as accurate as many people, including some scientists insist.  Roy Spencer is very controversial, but the point he makes in the following articles seems important.

Roy W. Spencer received his Ph.D. in meteorology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1981. Before becoming a Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 2001, he was a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, where he and Dr. John Christy received NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for their global temperature monitoring work with satellites. Dr. Spencer’s work with NASA continues as the U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite. He has provided congressional testimony several times on the subject of global warming.

On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance†

Roy W. Spencer * and William D. Braswell

Published: 25 July 2011

Abstract

 The sensitivity of the climate system to an imposed radiative imbalance remains the largest source of uncertainty in projections of future anthropogenic climate change. Here we present further evidence that this uncertainty from an observational perspective is largely due to the masking of the radiative feedback signal by internal radiative forcing, probably due to natural cloud variations. That these internal radiative forcings exist and likely corrupt feedback diagnosis is demonstrated with lag regression analysis of satellite and coupled climate model data, interpreted with a simple forcing-feedback model. While the satellite-based metrics for the period 2000–2010 depart substantially in the direction of lower climate sensitivity from those similarly computed from coupled climate models, we find that, with traditional methods, it is not possible to accurately quantify this discrepancy in terms of the feedbacks which determine climate sensitivity. It is concluded that atmospheric feedback diagnosis of the climate system remains an unsolved problem, due primarily to the inability to distinguish between radiative forcing and radiative feedback in satellite radiative budget observations.

The role of ENSO in global ocean temperature changes during 1955–2011 simulated with a 1D climate model

Roy W. Spencer, William D. Braswell

Abstract

Global average ocean temperature variations to 2,000 m depth during 1955–2011 are simulated with a 40 layer 1D forcing-feedback-mixing model for three forcing cases. The first case uses standard anthropogenic and volcanic external radiative forcings. The second adds non-radiative internal forcing (ocean mixing changes initiated in the top 200 m) proportional to the Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI) to represent an internal mode of natural variability. The third case further adds ENSO-related radiative forcing proportional to MEI as a possible natural cloud forcing mechanism associated with atmospheric circulation changes. The model adjustable parameters are net radiative feedback, effective diffusivities, and internal radiative (e.g., cloud) and non-radiative (ocean mixing) forcing coefficients at adjustable time lags. Model output is compared to Levitus ocean temperature changes in 50 m layers during 1955–2011 to 700 m depth, and to lag regression coefficients between satellite radiative flux variations and sea surface temperature between 2000 and 2010. A net feedback parameter of 1.7Wm−2 K−1 with only anthropogenic and volcanic forcings increases to 2.8Wm−2 K−1 when all ENSO forcings (which are one-third radiative) are included, along with better agreement between model and observations. The results suggest ENSO can influence multi-decadal temperature trends, and that internal radiative forcing of the climate system affects the diagnosis of feedbacks. Also, the relatively small differences in model ocean warming associated with the three cases suggests that the observed levels of ocean warming since the 1950s is not a very strong constraint on our estimates of climate sensitivity.

Why banning credit checks hurts job applicants who are black or young

The following article is from The Economist.  It is a must read.  If you understand it, and you should because it is not hard to read, you will appreciate the damage some of the Progressive ideas designed to help the less well off will do.  So, why would Progressives advocate laws, regulations, etc., that damage the people they are claiming to help?  Two possibilities are power seeking by taking advantage of voters' ignorance and their own ignorance.
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In 2007 the state of Washington introduced a new rule aimed at making the labour market fairer: firms were banned from checking job applicants’ credit scores. Campaigners celebrated the new law as a step towards equality—an applicant with a low credit score is much more likely to be poor, black or young. Since then, ten other states have followed suit. But when Robert Clifford and Daniel Shoag, two economists, recently studied the bans, they found that the laws left blacks and the young with fewer jobs, not more.

Insight from some thoughtful people

I found these on Walter Williams's website.
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“The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are. Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others. Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects – his laziness, incompetence, improvidence, or stupidity.”
– Henry Hazlitt

“No tendency is quite so strong in human nature as the desire to lay down rules of conduct for other people.”
– William Howard Taft, 27th president of the United States

“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”
– Dr. Thomas Sowell

“It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.”
–Murray N. Rothbard, an American economist, historian and political theorist(1926-1995).

“Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.”
– Thomas Sowell

“Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”
– Milton Friedman

“Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society. “
– John Adams, Novanglus Letters, 1774

“I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”
– Benjamin Franklin

“Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
– James Madison

“I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity. [To approve the measure] would be contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded.”
– President Franklin Pierce’s 1854 veto of a measure to help the mentally ill.

In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia, James Madison stood on the floor of the House to object saying, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”
– James Madison, 4 Annals of congress 179 (1794)

“We must confine ourselves to the powers described in the Constitution, and the moment we pass it, we take an arbitrary stride towards a despotic Government.”
– James Jackson, First Congress, 1st Annals of Congress, 489

“It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress.”
– Mark Twain

“In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.”
– Mark Twain

FactCheck.org: Clinton's Greatest Hits

Here is the FactCheck article.
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In advance of the Democratic National Convention, which begins July 25 in Philadelphia, we present a wrap-up of some of the more egregious falsehoods from Hillary Clinton, who is set to accept her party’s nomination for president later this week.

We focused on claims most relevant for the general election and those that Clinton has repeated, or that could likely be repeated by her or others this week. For more on each statement, follow the links to our full stories. And all of our articles on Clinton can be found here.

We posted an article on claims by Donald Trump, the GOP nominee for president, on July 17 in advance of the Republican convention in Cleveland.

D'Souza Puts the Democratic Party in Perspective

Here is a column by Dinesh D'Souza that puts the Democratic Party in perspective.
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Contrary to what we learn from progressives in education and the media, the history of the Democratic Party well into the twentieth century is a virtually uninterrupted history of thievery, corruption and bigotry. American history is the story of Democratic malefactors and Republican heroes. Yes, it’s true.

I begin with Andrew Jackson. He—not Thomas Jefferson or FDR—is the true founder of the modern Democratic Party. Progressives today are divided about Jackson. Some, like historian Sean Wilentz, admire him, while others want to remove him from the $20 bill because he was a slaveowner and a vicious Indian fighter. He was, in this view, a very bad American.

I support the debunking of Jackson, but not because he was a bad American—rather, because he was a typical crooked Democrat. Jackson established the Democratic Party as the party of theft. He mastered the art of stealing land from the Indians and then selling it at giveaway prices to white settlers. Jackson’s expectation was that those people would support him politically, as indeed they did. Jackson was indeed a “man of the people,” but his popularity was that of a gang leader who distributes his spoils in exchange for loyalty on the part of those who benefit from his crimes.

Jackson also figured out how to benefit personally from his land-stealing. Like Hillary Clinton, he started out broke and then became one of the richest people in the country. How? Jackson and his partners and cronies made early bids on Indian land, sometimes even before the Indians had been evacuated from that land. They acquired the land for little or nothing and later sold it for a handsome profit. Remarkably, the roots of the Clinton Foundation can be found in the land-stealing policies of America’s first Democratic president.

The Armed Citizen

H. L. Mencken comments on Government in 1936

Here is a quote from H. L. Mencken's October 26, 1936 article.

"The state – or, to make the matter more concrete, the government – consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get, and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods."

Jonathan Turley on Justice Ginsburg's lack of ethics

Here is Jonathan Turley's column in the Sunday Chicago Tribune.  JT is on target.

Jonathan Turley is a law professor at George Washington University, where he teaches a course on the Constitution and the Supreme Court.

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In her 23 years on the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has created a legacy of important opinions ranging from protections for the mentally disabled to gender discrimination to the use of international law. That legacy, however, is in jeopardy after a series of statements by Ginsburg criticizing Donald Trump and clearly opposed his candidacy for the presidency. In addition to labeling the Republican a “faker” and calling for him to turn over his tax returns, Ginsburg criticized Republicans in Congress for impeding President Barack Obama in his final year in office and all but endorsed the confirmation of Judge Merrick Garland for the high court.

While thrilling for many on the left, Ginsburg’s tirade was a facially unethical act and she has since apologized. Unfortunately, her statements are part of a checkered history of unethical conduct on the court. Indeed, a majority of Supreme Court justices have been accused of ethical violations, but they have created a type of immunity from the ethics code that is binding for lower court judges but not for the Supremes. Ginsburg’s apology should not detract attention from the need for creating an enforceable ethical code for the justices.

Ironically, Ginsburg mocked how Trump “really has an ego.” Yet there was no small degree of ego in her comments. She was fully aware that Canon 5 of the Code of Judicial Ethics says judges shall not “make speeches for a political organization or candidate, or publicly endorse or oppose a candidate for public office.” Ginsburg has long been criticized for her penchant for speaking to ideologically supportive groups about issues before the court and hot-button topics. She embodies what I have called the age of the “celebrity justice.” Justices are increasingly embracing public personas and maintaining a type of ideological base in organizations on the right and the left. Where justices once spurred public speeches and spoke only through their opinions, various justices now go on speaking tours and hold media interviews like judicial rock stars.

The Supreme Court has long maintained that the Code of Judicial Ethics applies only to lesser jurists. Since the Supreme Court is expressly created by the Constitution rather than Congress, the justices maintain that the ethics system is the creation of Congress and enforced by lower court judges through their judicial conference. While insisting that they follow ethical principles, the ethics code remains merely advisory for the Supreme Court justices who claim to be the sole judges of their own conduct. That means the court is the only part of our federal government without an enforceable ethics code.

Instead of showing that they can voluntarily hold themselves to a higher standard, the justices have often honored the ethics code in the breach. At least five of the current justices have been accused of violations that would have been deemed ethical breaches for any other jurists. This includes three members (Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer and Samuel Alito) who have been accused of having financial interests in dozens of companies appearing before the court. The late Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Alito have all been accused of attending political fundraisers — something considered a serious violation for federal judges. Alito has repeatedly been criticized for attending political fundraisers but simply responded by saying that “it’s not important.” Justices also have accepted private plane travel and free trips that have raised ethical concerns.

They also have been accused of expressing political opinions. Alito was legitimately criticized in 2010 for expressing his disagreement with statements that President Obama made in a State of the Union address. Alito’s shaking of his head and mouthing “not true” was viewed by many as highly inappropriate and a violation of the long-standing tradition of justices attending addresses. Former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor shocked many when she reportedly exclaimed, “This is terrible” when CBS called Florida for Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election. She later voted to effectively give the state (and the election) to George W. Bush in Bush v. Gore. Yet Alito was responding to a criticism of the Supreme Court for its decision in Citizens United and O’Connor’s comment came in a private dinner party.

In the context of these violations, however, Ginsburg’s conduct stands out as nothing short of breathtaking. Even Democratic leaders denounced her statements. When this republic began, our courts were littered with political hacks who owed allegiance to Federalist or Jeffersonian interests. Our courts were merely extensions of politics by judicial means. One of our great achievements was the adoption of judicial ethical principles that maintained strict political neutrality and separation on the federal bench.

What Justice Ginsburg did was neither noble nor commendable. Her foray into politics undermined the integrity of the court and tarnished what was an inspiring judicial career. Congress should use this controversy to finally reform the court, including the establishment of an enforceable system of judicial ethics for our highest court.

Chiefs of police and Sheriffs are pro-gun

Here is the Firearms section of a survey of Chiefs of Police and Sheriffs in the United States.  Chiefs of Police and Sheriffs in the US are pro-gun, contrary to what many anti-gun groups claim.


                                                                                                Yes          No         NA
Should any vetted citizen be able to purchase
a firearm for sport or self-defense?                                              87.9%     8.9%      3.2%

Does your department support nationwide recognition
of state issued concealed weapon permits?                                    86.4%    10.6%      2.9%

Can qualified, law-abiding armed citizens help
law enforcement reduce violent criminal activity?                          76%       18.6%      5.4%

Does your department use reality based/active shooter training?      82.3%    17.1%      0.6%

Does your department sell confiscated firearms
to help meet budget needs or cover budget shortfalls?                    18%        81%         1%

A perspective on the impact of a minimum wage

Being an old guy, I have a classic microeconomics textbook in my library, “Microeconomic Theory: A Mathematical Approach”, by Henderson and Quandt. It is the Second Edition, published in 1971.

Here is a quote concerning microeconomic multimarket equilibrium.

“All the individual, and therefore the aggregate, functions are homogeneous of degree zero in prices. Consumer behavior is determined by exchange ratios rather than absolute prices. . . . . Entrepreneurs’ s excess demands are also homogeneous of degree zero in prices.”

Roughly, this means that if there is microeconomic equilibrium in real terms at one set of prices, then the same real microeconomic equilibrium exists for all sets of prices that are scaled up or down form the initial set of prices.

A wage is the price of labor. Thus, the above perspective implies that if any wage is increased, then the same real microeconomic equilibrium that existed prior to the wage increase is also consistent with all prices being increased by the same percentage. This suggests that the long-run impact of increasing the minimum wage by X% is consistent with a long-run impact of a one-time inflation of X%. If so, there is no reason to expect a long-run benefit from a minimum wage increase for the workers it is supposed to help. In contrast, the short-run impact of a minimum wage increase hurts the lowest wage workers. Minimum wage increase advocates appear to be either uninformed or insufficiently skeptical.

John Lott: Obama's false racism claims are putting cops' lives in danger

Here is John's Op Ed in the New York Post.  John is an expert in the application of statistics to crime and gun laws.
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Hours before the murders of five police officers in Dallas, Texas, President Obama was again spouting false claims about racism by the police. He sees racism whenever there is any disparity in outcomes, no matter what the cause.

Obama and others inflame passions, but take no responsibility, and instead use events to push for more gun control. Yet, shouting racism can endanger the lives of police officers. The Dallas police chief tells us one of the shooters “wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.”

After the Trayvon Martin case, there were numerous cases around the country of blacks attacking whites and invoking Martin’s name.

Let’s not forget that NYPD cops Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were executed by a black man who was angry about the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.

Obama and his administration spoke out repeatedly on the Martin and Brown cases. They repeatedly claimed racism was involved, but in fact there’s no evidence of that in either case.

Obama is also wrong, as he was on Thursday, to infer racism from higher arrest rates or prison-sentence lengths. “African Americans are arrested at twice the rate of whites,” he said. What he failed to note is that blacks commit murder at almost six times the rate whites do.

“African-American and Hispanic population, who make up only 30 percent of the general population, make up more than half of the incarcerated population,” he added. But Obama ignores the facts put out by his own Department of Justice. The FBI claims that gangs commit 80 percent of crimes in the US, and the National Gang Center estimates that 82 percent of gang members are black or Hispanic.

Obama claimed: “[Blacks] receive sentences that are almost 10 percent longer than comparable whites arrested for the same crime.” Putting aside questions as to how comparable the crimes are or the criminals’ past histories, Obama again leaves out crucial details. Whites are more likely to face other penalties — fines and restitution, loss of professional licenses, and a greater drop in legitimate earnings upon returning to the labor force after prison.

Will Obama be complaining about the “racist” aspects of these other penalties?

Of course, Obama isn’t alone in pushing these misleading claims. For example, the left-leaning ProPublica attracted massive news attention for its false allegation that 15-to-19-year-old black males die at the hands of the police 21 times as often as do white males of the same age.

ProPublica never made it clear that its claim was based on an unrepresentative 1.2 percent of all departments in the country. Or that the University of Missouri-St. Louis professor it claimed to rely on, David Klinger, reportedly warned ProPublica that the FBI Uniform Crime Report data on justifiable police homicide is “absolute garbage” — a common view among those who work with the data.

Blacks, being the most likely victims of violent crime, are also the most likely beneficiaries of police protection. This makes it especially sad that recent polls show a sharp turn for the worse in relations between blacks and police.

If black victims really believe police are so racist, why would they even bother reporting crimes? If blacks think that police are by and large incompetent, dishonest or apathetic, there would be little reason to turn to them for help.

But blacks don’t shy away from reporting crimes to the police. Data compiled by the Bureau of Justice Statistics from 2008 to 2012 show blacks are actually more likely than whites to report violent crimes to the police (54 percent to 45 percent).

Blacks consistently report violent crime at a higher rate than whites do. This is true of all income groups and of both suburban and urban areas. This higher rate of reporting is true in areas where blacks face higher violent-crime rates than whites and also when the reverse is true.

If black victims do become more reticent to report crime, criminals will find crime less risky and we will see more of it.

Inflammatory, false claims about police racism not only endanger the lives of police officers, they can also lead to higher crime rates — especially in heavily black areas. If Obama really cares about poor blacks, he should be more careful getting his facts right.

Puns

The fattest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference.  He acquired his size from too much pi.

I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.

She was only a whisky-maker, but he loved her still.

A rubber-band pistol was confiscated from a geometry class because it was a weapon of math disruption.

No matter how far you push the envelope, it will still be stationary.

A dog ave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.

Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.

A hole has been found in the nudist-camp wall. The police are looking into it.

I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.

Two fish swim into a concrete wall. One turns to the other and says, "Dam!"

Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly, it sank proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.

Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, "I've lost my electron." The other says, "Are you sure? The first replies, "Yes, I'm positive."

One difference between Coalition forces and the Enemy

An example of the medical treatment provided by Coalition forces to an enemy combatant.

Those who think that average Coalition behavior in combat is worse than or the same as the Enemy's average are deluded.

Here is the link.

John Lott on The Case for More Concealed Handguns

Here is John Lott's article in the National Review.  John has done the best research on the impact of gun laws on crime.
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Clinton and Obama don’t work or live in a gun-free zone. They should stop the lectures.

In a new Gallup poll released, a nearly two-to-one margin of Americans (64 to 34 percent) think that increasing the number of people carrying concealed handguns will help prevent terrorism. Even 45 percent of Democrats agree.

Civilians aren’t alone in these views. PoliceOne, a private organization with 450,000 members (380,000 full-time active law enforcement and 70,000 retired), polled its members in 2013 shortly after the Newtown, Conn., massacre. Eighty-six percent of respondents said that allowing legally armed citizens to carry guns in places such as Newtown and Aurora would have reduced casualties.

But not everyone has gotten the message.

While Donald Trump has called to end gun-free zones, Hillary Clinton, speaking in the aftermath of the Orlando atrocity, dismissed the idea as “reckless” and as evidence that her opponent is “temperamentally unfit” to be president.

Other Democrats have chimed in. President Obama, in his prepared remarks after the shootings at Pulse, announced: “The notion that the answer to this tragedy would be to make sure that more people in a nightclub are similarly armed to the killer defies common sense.” Bill Clinton asserted that if someone had a permitted concealed handgun at the Pulse nightclub, “it is likely that more people would have been killed.”

But there are dozens of cases, most in the last five years, in which concealed-handgun permit holders stopped mass public shootings. Last year, these cases occurred in such places as a busy sidewalk in Chicago, a volunteer fire department having a children’s day in South Carolina, a barbershop in Philadelphia, a store in Conyers, Ga., and a street in Winton, Ohio. In not one of all these cases did a permit holder accidentally shoot an innocent bystander. Nor did the police accidentally shoot these heroes upon arriving at the scene.

Time after time, we see killers consciously pick target zones in which their victims are defenseless. Look at the shootings over the last couple of years that occurred at a church in Charleston, a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., a sorority house in Santa Barbara, and in Canada. Only 1 percent of the mass public shootings since 1950 have occurred where general citizens have been able to defend themselves. 

The Sunday-morning national talk shows have made much of the fact that Pulse nightclub served alcohol. Jonathan Karl on ABC News’s This Week asked, “Is that really what you want is, people late at night, drinking at a nightclub, two–three o’clock in the morning, armed to the teeth?” John Dickerson on Face the Nation was equally incredulous.

In fact, 40 states allow people to have guns with them in bars. There is not a single example in a bar of someone getting drunk in a bar and shooting at others. Nor is there a case in which a sober person in a bar unjustifiably shot others.

In something like designated-driver laws, some states prohibit permit holders from drinking while they are carrying in bars. States also make it crime for a permit holder to carry a gun while drunk. By any measure, permit holders are incredibly law-abiding.

Unfortunately for the nightclub patrons at Pulse, Florida is not one of the states that allow concealed carry in bars.

Police are probably the single most important factor in stopping crime, but stopping mass public shootings is an extremely dangerous proposition for officers and security guards alike. Attackers will generally shoot first at any uniformed guards or officers who are present. During the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris last year, the first person killed was the guard who was protecting the magazine’s offices.

Being able to choose the time and place of an attack gives terrorists a major strategic advantage. The Orlando killer had obviously been to the Pulse nightclub many times. As a result, he clearly knew there was an armed security guard at the club’s entrance. Had some of the customers been carrying permitted concealed handguns, the terrorist wouldn’t have been able to know who might resist. This would have denied him a major strategic advantage.

It is unlikely that either the Clintons or Obama would ever put gun-free zone signs in front of their homes. They should stop telling the rest of us where to put such signs.