Politics

The reports are that this is a 14 year old girl in Scotland. As you can clearly see, she is brandishing a knife and a hatchet. Both of which she is prohibited from having.

This is just another example of how the youth of the UK are becoming more and more violent. We need to make an example of them.

Maybe there is more to this story?

Such as the girl in the picture was defending her 12 year old friend who had just been assaulted by a foreign invader. That she was afraid of being assaulted herself. That there were more foreign invaders moving toward her.

If you have watched the video, you can hear that evil invader taunting her to show the knife. He knows that if he reports her for having the knife, she will be arrested.

Nothing will happen to him.

This video clip might be the start of something good for the UK.

Because I am invested in The Fort at No. 4, I see news articles from the area. Yesterday I read a press release from School Administrative Unit 6 (SAU-6) which covers Claremont, NH.

Claremont is just up the road from the Fort so I read it.

The Business Administrator has been put on paid leave; a school board member with lots of accounting (CPA) was appointed to do the job of BA.

From my weak sources, it seems like this BA wasn’t doing a good job. There are no signed Audits since 2021. They have a budget short fall over around $5 million.

Entirely the fault of this administrator and those supervising her.

This, of course, led to the comments.

We could go into the blame game. Which comes down to Trump and “local taxes.” The local taxes are property taxes. The SAUs are funded from the local property taxes. Residents of the towns that belong to the SAU have to vote on the school budget. Occasionally the proposed budgets are not approved.

The budget for my SAU has failed twice in the past 10 years. The first time I showed up at school board meetings was to find out where the money was being spent. What I did manage to get into the record was that while the teachers salaries were not increased because of the vote, the administrator’s pay still went up.

I pushed for, and I believe they passed, a resolution that says, “If the teachers don’t get a raise, the administration doesn’t get a raise.”

The last time, the school system just overextended itself doing too much non-educational stuff.

Our SAU didn’t have anything looking like abuse of the budget; it just wasn’t restraining itself.

Claremont’s issues are entirely self-inflicted. 19 new teachers to the SAU were canned. They had already signed contracts, so those teachers are well and truly screwed.

And this is the straw man. This person has never listened to a Republican; instead, they have built an image of a “Republican” where they put motives and evil.

If the federal tax rate was a flat 10% and you made $35,000/year, you would pay $3,500 per year in taxes. If you make $350,000/year, your taxes would be $35,000 per year. No leftist screams that going from 10% to 11% will cost the person with the larger income $3,500 more per year but it will only cost the lower earner $350 more.

But if the tax rate drops from 10% to 9%, it is a tax cut for the wealthy.

But I’m ignorant, according to Mr. achy_joints. He believes that everything that PragerU puts out is “bullshit.” Why? He can’t tell you why, but he knows it is BS.

It reminds me of the people claiming Glenn Beck was a horrible person for the things he said. This is a man who was on talk radio for multiple hours per day; he was on a national televised show once a day. With 10 years of history, every single “proof” lead back to the same 5 minute collection of things he said out of context.

Mr. achy_joints thinks that everything will benefit from more regulations more taxes. Taxes he is unlikely to be paying.

I just get sick over reading the straw man arguments. These are people that haven’t had an open mind in years.

Or to put it in the jingo of my youth, sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you.

In Cincinnati, a white man and a white woman were beaten badly. This wasn’t a one-on-one beatdown; it was a gang of feral hood rats attempting to murder them.

Because they are black, they are not to blame. The white folks are. They said something that justified the beatdown.

It is the white victims that need to be charged and arrested. They are responsible for 6 felonies.

I’ve been a teacher for 38 years. I still remember when I was taking my education classes early in my career, and my conservative uncle, who was a school superintendent in the Chicago suburbs, gave me a bit of advice that stuck with me. He said, “Do not join a teacher’s union.” At the time, I didn’t fully understand what he meant. I guess I was too young and idealistic. But now, decades later, I understand exactly what he was trying to warn me about.

Over the years, I’ve gone back and forth on union membership. Sometimes I joined the NEA (National Education Association), sometimes I didn’t. If there was no pressure, I stayed out. If everyone else around me was joining, I’d go along with it. For the past 15 years or so, I’ve been a member off and on. But this year, as I prepare to move to a new school in a larger city where nobody knows me, I’ve made a clear decision: I will not be joining the teachers’ union again—especially after what I’ve seen recently.

In the past few weeks, I’ve read several articles that left me stunned. One headline from the Washington Free Beacon hit me like a ton of bricks: “Largest Teachers’ Union in the United States Erases Jews From the Holocaust.” According to the article, the NEA described Holocaust victims as “12 million people from various faiths”—never once mentioning the systematic extermination of the Jewish people. That omission is not just disappointing—it’s disgraceful.

It’s become increasingly clear to me that the NEA is no longer focused on students, academics, or educational excellence. Their priority now seems to be pushing political and ideological narratives. I’ve read how they’ve voiced support for groups aligned with Hamas and use language that downplays the suffering of Jewish people while glorifying the Palestinian “Nakba” and vilifying the state of Israel. According to their 2025 handbook, they want to “educate” the public about the Nakba, which literally means “catastrophe,” framing the founding of Israel in 1948 as a disaster rather than a historic triumph for the Jewish people and a vital democratic ally of the United States.

This is not why I became a teacher.

I’ve also seen videos from PragerU, like the story of a gym teacher who was fired because she wouldn’t allow a biological male to enter the girls’ locker room. She was then investigated simply for expressing Christian beliefs in her personal life. They actually questioned whether her faith could be “accommodated.” This isn’t just anti-education. It’s anti-freedom.

I am deeply disappointed, not just in the NEA, but in how so many educators have fallen in line with an agenda that is increasingly radical, anti-patriotic, and anti-Israel. The NEA has strayed far from its mission. It is now a political machine, not a professional organization serving teachers and students.

As someone who has dedicated nearly four decades to education, I feel disillusioned. I love my country. I support Israel. I believe in the importance of free speech, faith, and honest history. But I can no longer support an organization that undermines these values.

So goodbye, NEA. I’m walking away—with a clear conscience and my eyes wide open.

The Trump Administration has announced numbers for tariffs collected. The number is huge, something like $77 billion. Of course the panic vendors are now screaming that this means that Americans paid $77 billion in taxes. They also claim that the tariffs are causing the price of everything to skyrocket.

Let’s take the case of a lowly woodworker making a stool. The stool is made from two pieces of 2×4 by 8 ft.

Because the woodworker wants to up his game, he decides to use a different wood; he chooses Canadian maple.

A quick check on wood prices shows that hard maple is running $6 per board foot. The amount of lumber needed is 2*4*8/12 = 5.33 bf.

Or, 2*4*96 / 144 = 5.33 bf

At a cost of $6 per board foot, this means the cost of the lumber will be $32.

The woodworker uses a $25/hour labor rate. It will take him 3 hours to build the stool using hand tools and rough-cut lumber. That is $75 in labor.

There is another cost for the finish and time for finishing. We are ignoring that part of the equation. He also adds a 20% profit for the business.

Putting it all together, we get $32 for the wood, $75 for the labor, and $21.40 for profit, for a total sale price of $128.40.

Now say that there is a 25% tariff put on importing that wood from Canada. This would be $8 that needs to be paid to the US government.

From a bit of insider knowledge, I know that the $8 can be paid by the company shipping the wood, making the 25% come out of their profit. They might split the cost 50/50, or they can pass the entire cost on to the buyer, our woodworker.

Assuming our woodworker gets the entire $8 passed on to them, let’s see what that does to the cost of our stool.

$40 for the wood, $75 for labor, and $23 for profit, giving a total price for the stool of $138. With a 25% tariff on the cost of the materials, we see a $9.60 increase in the price. That is a 7.5% increase in the price of the stool.

The truth of the matter is that many products only use pennies of tariffed materials in their goods. Hershey increased the price of their chocolate recently. While the left is screaming “Tariffs!” the fact is that cocoa costs went up. The tariffs are a small part of the increase in costs.

The more value added in the US, the more the profit margin is the less impact tariffs have on your costs.

I do know people who are having a difficult time because of the tariffs. Their product uses a gizmo they import from China. That gizmo is not made in the US because there was no profit in making that gizmo here.

Until there is a US competitor for those gizmos, she is going to have to pay the tariffs on those gizmos. She has announced a very modest increase in the price of her goods to cover her increased costs. She feels miserable for doing so.

Regardless, our economy seems to be doing much better in 2025 than it was in 2024.

The following is taken from his X feed. I’ve manually unrolled it into a single quote.

I read it; you have too. Sorry for that.

The senator is correct; there is a tradition of collegiality in the courts and in the congress. That is why calling a liar a liar gets you in trouble in the congress. But lying does not.

The answer to his “What if…” is itself a question, “What if you were true to the Constitution?”

Ah yes, the bogeyman argument. “Dark money” is money that Republicans get, the money Democrats ‘s get from foreigners, pensioners donating $20k per year, that’s just “the people supporting Democrats”.

“…favored parties…win victories with astounding regularity?” How about winning because that’s what the Constitution says?

“novel judicial doctrines”? Like, “Obey the Constitution as it was written and amended?” Or maybe you mean all the court cases where the courts rule that firearms aren’t arms under the Second Amendment?

Maybe those amici curiae have always supported the Constitution. The secret funding is generally properly reported and is none of your business.

How do you tell if the plain text of the Second Amendment is implicated? The Brady Bunch writes an amici curiae brief. Or is it the Everytown now?

“But if they are true?” What if it is just you slandering people? What if it is you hiding the fact that your team loses on a level playing field? What if it is just you being stupid?

I don’t believe for one moment that Justice Jackson is looking for patterns or noticing the parties that win, I think her agenda is driving her drivil.

She might be looking at “interests, motives, and connections.” What she is not looking at is the law. What she is not following is the Constitution.

Where was your concern for mischief when the liberals found every liberal cause “constitutional”? The mischief you are referring to is veiled “collegiality” regarding Thomas. The Justice that saw the rules change had it brought to his attention and reported it.

Thomas is easily more moral and honest than you have ever been.

Truth and candor are judicial values. Jackson is a DEI hire, and it shows. There is truth and candor for you.

Ah, Sheldon, put on some clothes. You are neither the emperor nor pleasant to look at.

The far left has used lawfare for decades, and now they are losing that weapon.

I do agree with you; the schemers have much more to fear, and you know it. You are a schemer.

There are people who blame their actions on “The ’tism’.

I had not heard this term until recently. My oldest son is “on the spectrum.” He barely functions, not from emotional out bursts, but because he just isn’t mature enough.

My youngest son is also “on the spectrum”, he is high function, going to collage, doing well. His issues tend to be socal in nature. In other words, he has not had much success in finding new friends.

My youngest is also on the spectrum. She is very high functioning. You would not suspect she is autistic when interacting with her. She is social and she makes friends.

I was born before the great “autism” hunt. I do not have an official diagnosis of autism. There are many indicators that I am autistic.

A side effect of this was I was able to teach some of my coping methods to my children, to help them.

What does this have to do with making friends?

It means it is hard. It takes an effort.

What you might consider to be a friend is unlikely to be a friend in my eyes.

Just because we are co-workers, and we are friendly with each other, does not mean we are friends.

Most people would have no difficulty in ticking off a dozen friends. Maybe even a dozen close friends.

I’ve had 4 true friends in my lifetime. Two of them were good friends. I say “were” because one is dead, and I am out of contact with the other.

Of the other two, one I have not seen since I left high school. The other is in prison because he is a kiddy diddler.

One I thought was a friend decided that anybody who supported the Supreme Court’s Dobbs’ opinion was no longer a friend to her. And later went as far as to say that anybody who voted for Trump was not a friend and could just fuck off.

Ally tells me that there are people attempting to be friends. I can almost see it, but I don’t feel it.

In 2008, Obama was running for office. It is the moment when I felt my country start to fracture. Friends were starting to turn on each other in ways I had not seen before.

I went to speak to a black co-worker. “Who are you voting for?” “Obama”, “Why?” “Because he’s black.”

Anybody who expressed any hesitation or discomfort about voting for a one—term senator from Illinois, who’s most common vote was “Present” was a “racist”.

It was that bad. Since I was working in a deep blue state at the time, I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t care who they were voting for. I wish they had better reasons than “He’s black.” It was their choice.

Oh, it wasn’t just the black co-workers, it was all the lefties.

How did I spot a lefty? Those were the ones openly talking politics, expressing their opinion about anyone who wasn’t voting for Obama.

From that moment on, I have been called racist, for my beliefs, constantly.

Look at Rep. Hunt. Now there is a black man. I like him. Why? Because he echos my beliefs. He stands up for America.

Now compare him to the half white Obama.

Obama’s mother was white, his father was black, he’s brown.

He ran as a black man. So what?

If every single person of color had voted for him and every single white voted against him, he would not have become the President of the United States. A majority of the people of the United States decided that he was a better man to be president than McCain.

For the next 8 years, I wasn’t allowed to say a negative thing about my President. To do so was to “prove I was racist.”

When Hillary ran for President, I suddenly became misogynistic. No change of my positions, just a different candidate by the Democrats.

And every lefty screamed at me that I was a bad person if I didn’t support every belief they held.

There was a TikTok sketch Ally showed to me. A woman says to her Republican friend that she is leaving the GOP.

Her friend responds with, “I’m sorry you feel you need to leave. We’ve been friends all our lives. You will continue to be my friend and are welcome here, anytime.”

The sketch then changes to a woman leaving the Democrat party. “I’m leaving the party. They just don’t match my core beliefs. You’ve been my friend all my life. You will still be my friend.”

The remaining Democrat woman turns to the first and, with a sneer on her face, “I’m not friends with Nazis”

That is what my life felt like during the Obama era. It was worse under Biden.

Our friendships became defined by our beliefs.

Going out in public, I would hear leftists yapping about how anybody who wasn’t like them was horrible, evil people. Nasty labels were everywhere.

I’ve seen “DemocRAT” from time to time. I’m “MAGAot”, a “fascist”, a “racist”, a “white supremest”, and every other nasty label you can think of.

Those people won’t speak with me. They can’t handle being asked for examples. They can’t handle being called on bullshit. They can’t be bothered to verify any of the narrative they spout with no evidence to back them.

I’m sorry for Ally.

She is a good person. We are good people. If you are in need, we will do our best to help you. When a “co-worker” had an emergency, she didn’t ask, “What are your politics? I only help good people.” No, she opened her pantry to them. She did it with no expectation of anything.

When they tried to repay her, she said, “Pay it forward.”

Well, they did pay it forward. Until they had to treat people by what they do instead of what they were told they do.

Make sure you keep your friends close. Make sure they know you are friends.

Stay strapped. Keep your head on a swivel. Don’t be in stupid places at stupid times.

Yesterday’s article was a surprise to me. I started the post with one mindset, and ended in a different place. Occasionally, it helps to talk out your issues.

It started with my statement, Snope should have been GVRed.

Why? Because the Supreme Court has already done a gun ban case. It is a slam dunk, easy case.

Slam dunk, easy cases, don’t make good law. Just like bad facts make bad law, easy cases don’t advance the law.

Every case the Supreme Court takes is important. They intend it to be important. While every case is important to somebody, or to a group, not every case is important to the country or the Court.

Every Second Amendment case is important to me. I want every court at every level to make a good ruling based on the plain text of the Second Amendment and this Nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation. To do anything less is to flaunt the rule of law and our founding documents.

Too many judges are agenda-driven hacks, black robed wannabe tyrants, operating their rogue inferior court as if they are the supreme authority of this nation.

When an inferior court makes a bad decision, their superior court should step in and set them right.

If every inferior court judge had every bad decision slapped down, there would be many fewer bad decisions. On Monday, the court decided 116 cases.

Of those, three cases were an invitation to the Solicitor General to file a motion on how the US Government stands in the case.

Two were, “You can proceed as a pauper, you must pay to play.” One denial of cert had two dissents written. The rest are denials. Most of which are dealt with by being put in a column titled “Denied”. Nothing more.

If the Supreme Court was capable of dealing with more cases in a meaningful way, then I could see them taking these slam dunk cases.

Unfortunately, the court has painted itself into a corner in what they feel they can say. I can wish all I want that a GVR would say more than “in light of Rahimi“, but a GVR never has more than “do it over obeying this new opinion”. This should be happening with more targeted language.

But they don’t.

Instead, they hear 65 to 70 cases per term. They decide which cases will have the most impact on our country. Which cases will bring common understanding across all the circuits.

They choose. And right now, Roberts is not going to let more than a couple of Second Amendment cases be heard per term.

I agree with Thomas and Alito, the Court should have dealt with Snope in some way other than ignoring it.

Dealing with it now might make a difference in the next few years.

More likely, it would not have accomplished anything. The Court is supposed to set guiding principles. It isn’t supposed to be fixing individual results.

Assume the Court said, “AR-15s are arms under the plain text of the Second Amendment. They are in common use. They cannot be banned.”

What would change in the Ninth Circus court? The First, Second Third, Forth and Seventh Circuit? Nothing.

“The Supreme Court has said that Semi Automatic rifles are arms under the plain text, they are most similar to machine guns which can presumptively be banned.”

Or they require a permit to own an “assault weapon”. It is no longer “banned”. Instead, you are required to register as an assault weapon owner, pay $1000/year per assault weapon.

They didn’t ban those evil assault weapons, they are just making sure that people treat the ownership of such weapons seriously.

We need to see advancement in the Second Amendment.

When Bruen was decided, multiple cases were GVRed. Those cases are making their way back to the Supreme Court. If the Court takes any of them and produces a major opinion, like Heller, or Bruen, then we are on track.

So I’m licking my wounds and preparing to fight for the rights of The People to keep and bear arms.

I was in 2nd grade when I decided I was going to make a table and chairs. I had watched my grandfather make things. It couldn’t be that hard. With my mother and grandparents providing the material, I made a table and chair.

It was a success. Was it sturdy enough for an adult to stand on? No. Regardless, for a 2nd grader, it was very much a success.

As a 4th grader, I watched my father rebuild the engine of our VW Microbus. He used the original “idiot” book to do it.

From my father, I learned how to break concrete, how foundation forms were put in place, how concrete was poured and how to frame in a room. When I say, “I learned”, it means that I had my hands on the tools doing. I had the blisters to show for it.

A few years later, 6th grade or so, I purchased my first motorcycle. When it needed work, I am the one who tore it down and rebuilt it. And then got it back together and running.

That was my success. My father didn’t lay hands on that motor or motorcycle. It was mine, and I was going to do.

Did I mess up? You bet I did. I don’t remember the failures because they were mine. I learned from them. Then I went and tried again. Today, 50 years later, I can still hear the sound of that MX-80 screaming back to life.

My parents let me own my failures, they let me own my successes. They never stole my success nor my failures from me.

Years passed. It didn’t matter what it was, I was willing to try. I was willing to fail. I tried learning how to draw. I spent four months drawing hands. In the end, I decided that I preferred photography.

When my brother and I needed to work on the VWs, we pulled the engines ourselves. We could tear down and rebuild an engine on the side of the road. How do I know we can? Because we did. It was in a gas station parking lot. Bro and I pulled the engine from the VW, tore it down enough to get to the broken, removed and replaced the broken part. Put the whole thing back together and put it back into the bus.

We did it between 1700 and 0200, then we drove another 400 miles the next day to get to my grandparents.

“Can do” isn’t the correct version of our attitude, it was more like, “We’ll make it work.”

Today, children aren’t allowed to fail. Even in simple things. My son made a wonderful meal the other weekend. I was asking him what went into it. We are about done, but still discussing things, when my wife pipes up to tell me a spice that was in the meal.

I knew it was there. I wanted my son to tell me. She stole his success.

I’m lucky, my kids do know how to succeed because they also know about failure.

My second wife refused to try new things. She explained the reason thus:

As a child, her mother would look at what she was going to attempt to do, then her mother would tell her, don’t bother to try, you can’t do that.

How can you succeed if you don’t try? How can you fail if you don’t try?

It is said that Edison said, “We didn’t fail, we just learned another material that doesn’t work as a filament.”

We learn so much more from failure than we do from success.

Consider a class of 20 students. We can fit a bell curve to those students. There will be a mean and standard deviation for those students. From that, we can determine which will get As, Bs, Cs, Ds, and Fs. It is standard statistics.

We do this by using an instrument to measure something about those students. If we have an instrument that gives every student a 100%, we know nothing. That instrument is useless.

We want an instrument in which nobody gets 100%. At the same time, we need to be careful of the outliers on the high end. If you have somebody who gets 100% on a test where everybody else is getting 50% or lower, you can’t design your test/instrument to have the outlier get a 95%

One of the interesting things my mentor taught me about digital cell phone communications is that the protocols strive to match a 90% raw error rate. If the error rate is higher than that, the phone uses more power to get a cleaner signal. If it is better than that, the phone reduces power until it is running at that 90% error rate.

At 90% error rate, the algorithms can repair the damage and give a perfect digital signal.

If we were running at 100%, we would never know when we were using too much power.

We live in a society where the ego of a student is much more important than long-term success. We give out participation awards. We have games where we ‘don’t keep score.’

There is an old joke: A man walks up to a baseball diamond where some kids in a youth league are playing. He asks one of the fathers/couches, “What’s the score?” “We don’t keep score. We play for the joy of the game.” One of the kids yells over from the dugout, “We’re ahead 5 to 3.”

My children know that if they ask for feedback, they will get honest feedback. If they don’t ask, they will get a proud parents’ response. My kid’s friends know the same.

It also means that when I give out a “well done”, it means something. My kids know that their mother will always praise whatever they do, no matter how bad it is.

“Everybody makes mistakes!” is something I’ve had shouted at me.

Yep, that’s true. But not everybody learns from their mistakes. You cannot learn from your mistake if you don’t know you made a mistake. You can learn from your mistakes if you’re not allowed to make mistakes.

I’m learning how to turn wood. I’ve learned not to stand in front of the work when I first apply the cutting tool. Why? Because that damn bowl coming off the spindle at 1300 RPM HURT. I’ve learned a little.

I have seen some people decock the hammer of a firearm with their thumb between the firing pin and the hammer. I thought it was stupid. It is how I do it now. I had the hammer slip one time with a loud bang when the hammer stopped moving. It will not hurt all that much to have the hammer fall on my thumb if it stops a round from going “that-a-way”.

It is easy to see how stealing their successes can be bad. Stealing their failures is worse.

This Representative is talking out of both sides of her mouth.

According to her, “they” went into the Delaney Hall premises, guided by the guards.

She claims that she has oversight authority to be there.

Let me see, what happens when you enter a federal property, look around, take pictures and selfies, then walk back out, thanking the cops on duty?

If I remember correctly, you get tossed in jail without bail to wait till a judge decides to hear your case. You are given an option to confess or to be returned to your cell.

The rest of the story is that the Mayor of Newark was arrested. He does not have any “oversight” authority.

The democrat representatives were there for a camera opportunity. Not oversight. I do not know if they even sit on a committee that oversees this facility.

So the good news, is these stunts are getting these showboating politicians arrested.