Magpul Magazines

I just want to give a quick, positive review of the Magpul Glock 17 magazine I received this week.

The con, as in one, no witness holes.  

The pros:  roughly half the price of a Glock brand mag and flawless performance so far.

I can't imagine they will hold up as well as the factory mags, and I'll use them primarily for practice.  Still, excellent value and good quality.

Without Representation

As you know, Senator Ted Cruz called out Tooter Turtle, AKA Mitch McConnell, for lying about the Import-Export bank bill and the Iran deal and some other issues. 

The leadership of the Republican Party sided against national security conservatives on Iran.  They sided against fiscal conservatives with the pork-laden highway bill and the Import-Export bank.  They ignored social conservatives by not having a meaningful vote to kill funding for Planned Parenthood. 

It kind of makes you wonder what constituency they actually represent, doesn't it?

Over on The Freeman, Max Borders and Jeffrey Tucker ask, "Is Politics Obsolete?".  They offer the idea that technological advances are making the current way of doing politics and government in general obsolete.  While I'm not necessarily on-board with some of their examples, such as electric cars, the larger point is probably valid.  Politicians and government are not adapting well to the ramifications of some of these technologies. 

News is no longer controlled by the media gatekeepers.  We can all see what Ted Cruz did in context.  We can all see how duplicitous some of these politicians are, regardless of the labels they pin on themselves. 

Mitch McConnell doesn't represent the people of Kentucky.  He represents the Chamber of Commerce, Wall Street, crony capitalists and K Street lobbyists, just like Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Obama, Clinton, and the rest.  There is no difference between the actual constituencies of Blunt (R-MO) and McCaskill (D-MO).  Neither represents me.

I am still a small-government, fiscal conservative.  I am a social conservative, but I don't want the federal government setting moral standards or education standards or telling people where or how to live.  I am a national security conservative so long as national security means keeping Muslim terrorists and other invaders out of this country, profiling those who are here rather than harassing and intimidating honest citizens, and destroying potential threats abroad with extreme prejudice and rules of engagement that give the advantage and the benefit of the doubt to our troops rather than the enemy. 

In other words, I have nothing in common with the Big-Government, Establishment components and leadership of either political party in Washington, D.C. 

Politics is just another word for dealing with disparate groups of people.  I don't think it will ever be obsolete.  Centralized government is not only obsolete, it is a disease that is killing the United States.

Rocket Man

One of these days one of these crazy ideas is actually going to work.  The impossible rocket drive might be it.

The Telegraph headline says, "'Impossible' rocket drive works and could get to Moon in four hours".

There's this little problem called acceleration, but the point is that it could go really fast.  It also appears to violate the law.  No, not the posted speed limit: 

The drive, which has been likened to Star Trek’s Impulse Drive, has left scientists scratching their heads because it defies one of the fundamental concepts of physics – the conservation of momentum – which states that if something is propelled forward, something must be pushed in the opposite direction. So the forces inside the chamber should cancel each other out.

I particularly enjoy this part:

However scientists still have no idea how it actually works. [NASA] suggested that it could have something to do with the technology manipulating subatomic particles which constantly pop in and out of existence in empty space. 

Which reminds us that even physics is an approximation and not reality itself.  Shakespeare wins again:  There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophies.

Why the Post Office Can't Break Even

I ordered a couple of Magpul magazines and a polymer sport holster for my Glock from Midway.  Midway will get their orders out as quickly as possible.  UPS always does well, too.

I'm having a little trouble, though, understanding this:

I'm giving the USPS the benefit of the doubt here in saying that it may only be the notification that was sent to the Springfield depot.  I'm not really sure there is a Springfield facility anymore. 

But it sure looks like my package is being held in a Postal Service facility in Springfield and will remain there, unable to cover the last leg of the journey, until Thursday.  I can be in Springfield in less than an hour.  The only explanation I can think of is that the pack mule is on vacation.

Cholesterol, Common Sense and Denninger

The lipid hypothesis does not hold up.  For most of us, cholesterol is kind of essential.

Denninger includes this quote from NIH about cholesterol-lowering meds:

Lipid lowering drugs, particularly statins, are being more widely used to reduce the cardiovascular mortality. Recent studies show that cardiovascular risk reduction is proportional to the level of reduction of LDL. Therefore the American National Cholesterol Education Program recommends a more aggressive lipid lowering strategy for high risk patients with cardiovascular disease. This means that LDL should be <70mg/dl (1.81 mmol/l). Although cholesterol lowering to this degree is more cardioprotective in high risk patients, other possible complications may neutralize or even outweigh this benefit. For example; hypocholesterolemia was associated with increased risk of colorectal cancer [36], endometrial cancer [37], and liver cancer [40]. Furthermore, some other studies directly link the use of lipid lowering drugs to cancer development. The CARE trial, showed a significant increase in breast cancer [42], while the trial of Pravastatin in elderly individuals at risk of vascular disease (PROSPER) concluded that the significant increase in cancer mortality counterbalanced the benefit of fewer cardiovascular deaths [43]. Moreover; high cholesterol has been found to be protective against intra cerebral hemorrhage [76–78], therefore lipid-lowering medications may increase the risk of ICH (at least theoretically), and several studies have demonstrated that hypocholesterolemia is a risk factor for ICH [73–75].

As one of the comments notes, there are people who have familial hypercholesterolemia, and those appear to be the people who might be helped by this new drug. 

Falsifying History

Stalin was famous for censoring history. 

I'm sure that would never happen in an enlightened nation like America.

Group takes a shovel to a Confederate general's grave.

“If he’s gone, some of this racism and race-hate might be gone,” said Isaac Richmond with Commission on Religion and Racism. ” We got a fresh shovel full, and we hope that everybody else will follow suit and dig him up.”

No, Mr. Richmond, as long as you live there, there will be racism in Memphis -- in between your ears, if no other place. 

Nathan Bedford Forrest is dead.  Whatever sins he committed during his time on earth, he must answer for before his Maker.  What he did, how he lived, and his undeniable military genius are part of history -- the history of all -- all Americans.  You don't have to agree with his cause, his beliefs or his actions to respect that. 

Denying history is not the act of a wise people.  Desecrating a grave is not an act of the civilized.

When I see this kind of insanity being manifest and not being immediately and categorically condemned from all quarters, it really causes me to wonder what kind of new dark age we are heading for. 

 

That Much? Really.

"Experts" say Trump's border wall would cost "tens of billions".

I have no doubt the cost would be substantial.  The cost of allowing invaders to illegally flood across our southern border is substantial, too.

Perhaps night-vision equipped, armed drones or a salt-water moat with lasers mounted on sharks would be more cost-effective.  I don't know.  I don't care that much.  I just want the invasion stopped.  The problem will need to be addressed on multiple fronts.

The objection of "experts" is not to spending a few billion on a wall.  We spend more than that on pencils and rubber bands for bureaucrats -- every year.  The objection is to doing anything to stop the invasion.

Whether these invaders become staunch Democrat voters or not isn't even the issue.  They are a whole new class of government dependents in terms of social services, health care, and housing as well as law enforcement, the legal system, and the prison system.  Their presence strengthens the central government and the concept of a police state whether they are honest, hard-working leaf-blower operators and hotel cleaners or MS-13 gangbangers and drug dealers.

This is why the ruling class in D.C. doesn't want the invasion checked.

I'm libertarian enough to think that we could find a non-government solution to the problem that would not require a border wall.  I think a truly free market and the end of government intervention, the welfare state, and central control of the economy would remove much of the incentive for undesirable foreigners to pour across the border.  Until that happens, we are stuck with what we have,  and things like border security are necessary.