I ain't'nt ded yet

Just going to be off the air, as it were, for a little while.

Evil

Reuters "Exclusive: Islamic State sanctioned organ harvesting in document taken in U.S. raid"

Islamic State has sanctioned the harvesting of human organs in a previously undisclosed ruling by the group’s Islamic scholars, raising concerns that the violent extremist group may be trafficking in body parts.

The ruling, contained in a January 31, 2015 document reviewed by Reuters, says taking organs from a living captive to save a Muslim's life, even if it is fatal for the captive, is permissible.

For a U.S. government translation of the document, click here

Reuters couldn’t independently confirm the authenticity of the document. U.S. officials say it was among a trove of data and other information obtained by U.S. special forces in a raid in eastern Syria in May.

"The apostate's life and organs don't have to be respected and may be taken with impunity," says the document, which is in the form of a fatwa, or religious ruling, from the Islamic State’s Research and Fatwa Committee.

"Organs that end the captive's life if removed: The removal of that type is also not prohibited," Fatwa Number 68 says, according to a U.S. government translation.

and

The group of documents reviewed by entitled "Lessons Learned From the Abu Sayyaf Raid" - show how the Islamic State has provided a legal justification to its followers for a range of practices.

For instance, “Fatwa Number 64” dated January 29, 2015, provides detailed rules for rape, prescribing when Islamic State men can and cannot have sexual intercourse with female slaves.

ISIS/ISIL delenda est...

Merry Christmas!

For everyone who is deployed now, for everyone who has been deployed over the Christmas Holidays, and for those whose family members are or were ever deployed over the holidays, too.

Also for everyone who is working today...

Earworm, McConnell/Ryan Edition

And all across the land, millions of Americans who identify as Republicans, as fiscal conservatives, as Tea Partiers, and maybe as Libertarians, wonder...

https://youtu.be/5LGl70VGvmg

EDIT: Thought that was embedding, not linking. Trouble with posting from the phone...

Fer Pete's Sake

So, Tamara has this song she wrote, a pastiche on "A Few Of My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music. Tamara's is commonly referred to as "The Fun Show Song", and it's about the joys of going to gun shows.

Ambulance Driver and Squeaky made a music video of it as a Christmas Present for Tamara, which she posted here.

The notorious plagiarists at a certain site noteworthy for their unintentionally ironic use of the word "truth" in the title posted it without attribution; Bobbi has some details at Stop, Thief!. Be it noted that I have no idea about the whole Dead Hooker magazine thing, but since Tamara makes a living as a writer, and a writer owns copyright on the words she puts into certain order, and Dan Zimmerman and that website have infringed copyright before, I think we can certainly state that Dan Zimmerman is an intellectual property thief.

Look, it's all too easy to embed an image or video without attribution. When the copyright holder says "Hey, I own that" you should either replace the embedded code with a link, or (at least) add the proper attribution.

Linoge has a history of the infringements at the truth about the truth about guns and robert farago | walls of the city.

WOO-HOO!

SpaceX launches Falcon 9 rocket, lands booster back on land

Gee, the forecast was wrong

It wasn't supposed to snow!

An interesting -- and scary -- read (Times two)

The Intelligence Lessons of San Bernardino | | Observer

While the importance of metadata to American counterterrorism will continue to be a hot-button topic, the disastrous effect of the Snowden affair and its political aftershocks on our intelligence agencies is not up for debate. Neither is the fact, as attested to by several Western intelligence chiefs, that Snowden’s leaks have made terrorists more careful in their communications, and therefore more difficult to intercept. Just as bad, several top secret NSA programs, beyond metadata, that assisted counterterrorism have been downscaled since 2013 out of fears they may “look bad” if leaked.

“Before Snowden we had a definite bias for action,” explained a senior NSA official with extensive experience in counterterrorism. “But now we all wonder how the White House will react if this winds up in the newspapers.” “It’s all legal,” the official added, “the lawyers have approved, and boy do we have lots of lawyers – but will Obama throw us under the bus again?”

That concern is widespread in American counterterrorism circles, where the Obama administration’s worries about appearing “Islamophobic” are well known. This White House early on warned intelligence personnel about using the term “Islamic terrorism” even in classified reports that would never be released to the public. “Since 2009 we’ve opened investigations of groups we knew to be harmless,” explained a Pentagon counterterrorism official, “they weren’t Muslims, and we needed some ‘balance’ in case the White House asked if we were ‘profiling’ potential terrorists.”

 Edited to add: Administration nixed probe into Southern California jihadists | TheHill

We had these two groups in our sights; if the investigation had continued and additional links been identified and dots connected, we might have given advance warning of the terrorist attack in San Bernardino. The combination of Farook’s involvement with the Dar Al Uloom Al Islamiyah Mosque and Malik’s attendance at al-Huda would have indicated, at minimum, an urgent need for comprehensive screening. It could also have led to denial of Malik’s K-1 visa or possibly gotten Farook placed on the No Fly list.

But after more than six months of research and tracking; over 1,200 law enforcement actions and more than 300 terrorists identified; and a commendation for our efforts; DHS shut down the investigation at the request of the Department of State and DHS’ own Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Division. They claimed that since the Islamist groups in question were not Specially Designated Terrorist Organizations (SDTOs) tracking individuals related to these groups was a violation of the travelers’ civil liberties. These were almost exclusively foreign nationals: When were they granted the civil rights and liberties of American citizens?

Worse still, the administration then went back and erased the dots we were diligently connecting. Even as DHS closed my investigation, I knew that data I was looking at could prove significant to future counterterror efforts and tried to prevent the information from being lost to law enforcement. In 2013, I met with the DHS Inspector General in coordination with several members of Congress to attempt to warn the American people’s elected representatives about the threat.

In retaliation, DHS and the Department of Justice subjected me to a series of investigations and adverse actions, including one by that same Inspector General. None of them showed any wrongdoing; they seemed aimed at stopping me from blowing the whistle on this problem. Earlier this year, I was finally able to honorably retire from government and I’m now taking my story to the American people as a warning.

Here we go again!

House Dems introduce bill to ban so-called ‘assault weapons’ | Examiner.com

'Twas a fortnight before Christmas... (Edit)

...And All through the gun show...

And I think I'll stop there, because I doubt I can make it either rhyme, or scan.

I've made it to gun shows too late for the rumored "great deals" before, but either I'm way too early, or this is the deadest I've ever seen a WAC show. (Although the crowd is trickling in, the line for membership is still pretty light.)(Which makes me suspect that, locally at least, there is little in the way of a gun-buying panic.)

Folks are making sales, and the pickings might be slim if you're looking for something specific in the way of a new pistol, but I'm not seeing the frenzy we've seen before.

FWIW.

Edited later for formatting (original typed on my phone) and also to add:
PMags and other AR accouterments see to be in good supply, and not overpriced. Most ARs I saw, though, were from manufacturers not in the top tier. Or even the second.

Still not a lot of .22 LR, unless you're a gun store notorious for price gouging, and also being connected with unsavory events.

FWIW², saw little if any of the jackassery I reported on in my last Gun Show Report.

Also, the Toys for Tots collection station seemed to be doing well.

Happy Birthday

Frank Sinatra.

100 years today.



I read somewhere that Frank Sinatra came to hate performing this song, because he felt it made him sound boastful.

Okay, Frank.

Point Of Order!

People keep saying that the San Bernardino terrorists' AR15s were purchased legally, and then illegally modified.

The modifications WERE illegal, but the ARs were pruchased as part of a starw sale:
San Bernardino shooter used friend to dodge gun check, may have planned larger attack, sources say - LA Times

...one of the shooters in last week’s massacre at a San Bernardino social services center, asked a friend to buy two rifles used in the attack so he could dodge a federal background check and also may have been planning an even larger assault, according to government sources familiar with the ever-widening investigation.

One of the sources said Thursday that {dirtbag who's name I will not repeat} wanted to make sure “the guns were not tied back to him” when he asked Enrique Marquez to make the purchases at a Southern California gun store in 2011 or 2012. {DwnIwnr} feared he “wouldn’t pass a background check” if he attempted to acquire the military-style rifles on his own, the source said.

Gee, illegal activity facilitated terrorism.Who'd'u thunk it?

Not that I expect this fact to penetrate the hate-filled, bigoted skulls of those engaged in the "Let's Ban Guns!" blooddance.

Observations from a rainy day

This isn't a Pineapple Express, which is heavy rains caused by fronts out of Hawaii; I guess when the weather comes to us from Japan, we call it the Sushi Express? (Virtuously avoiding tasteless jokes regarding the date it hit...)

Anyway. Traffic through Tacoma hasn't gotten any better.

Tactical Tailor is one of those stores where it pays to know what I'm looking for, get in, get it, and get out. Bunches and bunches of gear I no longer have any need for...

Quantico Tactical offers manufacturer's LE/MIL prices at all retail locations. Speaking of spending money...

Despite recent events and hyperbole from the gun-banners responding to same, there does not seem to be a shortage of guns or ammo in stores.

Except .22LR. Again.

Or still, if you prefer.

WSJ OpEd: "The Liberal Theology of Gun Control"

The Liberal Theology of Gun Control - WSJ, (by William McGurn.)

...while the critiques of the president’s antigun pitch are correct, they are also beside the point. Because liberal calls for gun control aren’t about keeping guns from bad guys. It’s what you talk about so you don’t have to talk about the reality of Islamist terror. And focusing on the weaponry is part of a liberal argument that dates to the Cold War, when calls for arms control were likewise used to avoid addressing the ugly reality of communism.

Understand this, and you understand why Senate Democrats reacted to San Bernardino by putting forth antigun legislation. Why the New York Times ran a gun control editorial on its front page, and the Daily News used its own cover to feature the National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre underneath San Bernardino killer Syed Farook—labeling them both terrorists. And why President Obama used Sunday night’s address to whine about those resisting his call for gun measures that would not have stopped any of the shooters.

Put simply, today’s liberalism cannot deal with the reality of evil. So liberals inveigh against the instruments the evil use rather than the evil that motivates them.

As always, you can get to a Wall Street Journal article without paying to go behind the paywall by Googling the article title: The Liberal Theology of Gun Control.

Seen on Twitter

So, back in Formerly Great Britain, some adherent of the Religion of Peace went all Sudden Jihad Syndrome and cut someone's throat in the Tube.

A bystander informed him that he was, in fact, "no Muslim", earning said bystander all sorts of plaudits, and a hashtag of his  very own..

Member of European Parliament Daniel Hannan had some observations:

I'm all for the #YouAintNoMuslimBruv guy; but doesn't the chap who physically confronted the knife man deserve rather more plaudits?

— Daniel Hannan (@DanHannanMEP) December 7, 2015

So did I:

In the XXI Century, Hashtag Activism > Courageous Action. https://t.co/7ixmDPi3iP

— Drang (@DWDrang) December 7, 2015

NRA Responds to The Emperor's Speech

The Emperor's Speech

So, I looked at the transcript of His Imperial Majesty, Barack Hussein Obama's speech.

For anyone else who couldn't be bothered to tune in his blather -- unless they were waiting to see if he was going to pull a Heidi on Sunday Night Football -- I herewith provide the TL;DR version:

1. We shall continue our current, highly successful strategy in the war on terror.
2. The No Fly List we all hated 10 years ago for it's secretive nature and lack of due process would be just dandy if we added "can't lawfully own a gun" to "can't take a commercial flight."
3. If Congress doesn't act to restrict the right of law-abiding Americans to own certain guns we think are icky then they're a bunch of poopy-heads.

The Blood Dance

Or: What Do Progressives Do When The Narrative Collapses?

QOTD worthy, from Tamara:

Today show is wall-to-wall "workplace violence mass shooting"as they cut off the legs of jihad to fit it into the Procrustean bed of the gun control narrative.

Meanwhile, as Tamara and Bobbi both also address, the definition of "mass shooting" has been redefined again, to now mean "four people shot, not necessarily killed." Because now they can claim "more mass shootings than days in 2015!" Ignoring the reality that most of these involve gang bangers, usually of the same (non-European) ethnic background, and quite frequently many are winged but few are killed.

Naturally, His Imperial Majesty Barack Hussein Obama, in Paris to deal with the number one existential threat to modern civilization(anthropogenic climate change, in case you missed it) got up on his hind legs, ran his suck, and once again made the claim that "these things don"t happen in other coutnries." 

In Paris.

Three weeks after ISIS slaughtered over a hundred.

The French press, apparently, called him an asshole. (Although I'm not as confident of that translation as the person reporting it is. Then again, insults and swear words often just sound silly, not insulting, in translation...)

Meanwhile, this seems to have been planned: Couple Kept Tight Lid on Plans for San Bernardino Shooting - The New York Times, although the Noo Yawk Slimes still insists a motive is unknown...

A good article: Obama’s inconsistent claim on the ‘frequency’ of mass shootings in the U.S. compared to other countries - The Washington Post