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One Tiny Little Difference

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The snoozefest daily paper USA Today has a particularly stupid opinion piece  today by Frances Lynch comparing the beefing up of the southern border fencing, such as it is, with razor wire to the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961*. Behold: There are those who would argue that refugees are indeed criminals if they attempt to enter a country illegally. Those who tried to escape East Berlin were undoubtedly violating East German law. But whether the appropriate penalty for those trying to leave East Berlin should have been serious injury or death seems questionable looking back. You see, the Berlin Wall was constructed by the East Germans to stop citizens of East Germany leaving the workers paradise for more free, capitalist West Berlin, und so weiter. Our border fencing is being constructed to keep non-citizens from illegally entering our country. Keeping citizens in versus keeping criminal non-citizens out. I know it's such a subtle difference, that the fact b
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Wonder What Really Happened Here

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(h/t Power Line )
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An Amazing Lack of Self Awareness

I've switched over to my second blog because my readership through facebook is down about 80% for the last three postings. I'm sure I'm just being paranoid. Here is an opinion piece by Yalie math major David Leonhardt writing from Budapest. He thinks the Republicans are the authoritarian party here. He compares us to the right wing government in Hungary. Here's his complaint about the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán: What Orbán has done is to squash political competition . He has gerrymandered and changed election rules, so that he doesn’t need a majority of votes to control the government. He has rushed bills through Parliament with little debate. He has relied on friendly media to echo his message and smear opponents. He has stocked the courts with allies. He has overseen rampant corruption. He has cozied up to Putin. To justify his rule, Orbán has cited external threats — especially Muslim immigrants and George Soros, the Jewish Hungarian-born investor —
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Gun Myths in New Death Wish

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By chance the old Bronson Death Wish  (Michael Winner's last decent film) was on late night cable and I watched about half of it. I didn't like it very much in the 70s and I don't think it's improved with age. I did like the new one with Bruce Willis, but it had some stupid things in it. First, the Glock cutting up the flap of skin between the thumb and the first finger of the hand holding it. Here's a picture of a Glock 17: Look at the curve and size of the lip at the back of the gun below the slide. I have trouble believing you can get your skin in the way of the slide going back and forth. Maybe I'm being nit-picky here. OK this next one is a spoiler . Go see the movie before you read further (and I know the trailer already showed the gun in action). There is no freakin' way Bruce gets the full auto version of a custom AR-15 (BDR-15-3G). It could have been possible for him to have obtained an AR that looked that way and then make the gunsmith ch
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Best GQ Correction Ever

Edit: An earlier version of this article used a headline noting that Trump had publicly called for the death penalty in the New York attack, but not the Las Vegas shooting in particular. That discrepancy is probably related to the fact that the Las Vegas shooter is dead. We regret the error.  h/t Glenn Reynolds and Stephen Miller (not Steve "Guitar" Miller)
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Too Deep in the Bubble to See the Internal Contradiction

OK, I'm already tired of opinion pieces on guns and gun control in the wake of the horrible massacre in Las Vegas, but I try to keep my finger on the pulse of the nation so I read them from time to time still. Like this one today: We Don't Need Your Prayers in Sin City. We Need Gun Control . Of course, like all the opinion pieces on the left it contains not a single good idea for stopping very evil men (usually men are the mass murderers) from killing and wounding scores and hundreds of people. But this jumped out at me. Here's a quote from the first paragraph of the piece: I was one of the first to arrive at the Route 91 Harvest Festival on Sunday because I was there to review the concert for the Las Vegas Weekly. I passed through the metal detector without thinking about it. (Emphasis added). OK, so the concert was a gun free zone and they had ticket holders pass through a metal detector so the concert security teams could make sure none of the people there to list
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Jon Snow is a Terrible Tactician

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I like Jon Snow's character a lot but I have to say that he has not been a very able general. I'm not talking about his ability to fight with a sword (although he was stabbed to death in one episode). Let's go back to his first foray against the Dead and White Walkers in Hardhome (S5, E8). The Wildings and Night Watch gets their ass kicked and are only saved from being surrounded and killed to the last man because they have small boats available to take them out to the safety of the bigger ships. A lot of seasoned warriors know that when ever you're in enemy territory, it's probably a good idea to send out scouts, establish OPs and LPs so that the enemy doesn't sneak up and take you unawares. Snow never seems to get with the program here. Then there is the liet motiv of him letting his troops get completely surrounded so that someone has to come save him out of the blue. It happened in Battle of the Bastards and on last Sunday's Beyond the  Wall . In the
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