A buddy of mine sent me this:

US Jewish community looks to defend itself as attacks rise

Good.  It’s about damn time.

Armed guards, safety assessments and now even a “Tactical Rabbi” to train volunteers on the use of weapons — such is the reality today at synagogues in the United States facing mounting anti-Semitic attacks.

You are your own last line of defense.

It is at a shooting range in the hills overlooking Los Angeles that a team of AFP reporters met recently with Raziel Cohen, dubbed the “Tactical Rabbi,” who was sporting a 9mm pistol on his hip and carrying a semi-automatic rifle over his shoulder.

Cohen was trying to determine how well books can stop bullets. The idea is to transform a library at a synagogue or Jewish school into a shelter in the event of an active shooter situation.

“We’re trying to bridge the gap between the time that the shooting begins and law enforcement arrives,” he told AFP.

Those critical minutes are almost always the determining factor of how many live and die.  Having a plan and being ready to execute is vital for saving lives in this time.

“The expression that goes on is that we carry guns because we can’t carry police officers, which is not just a joke,” added Cohen. “The reality is that there can’t be police everywhere all the time.”

Fact check: True.

Cohen, who has been passionate about guns since his youth, is a security expert and certified shooting instructor who has taken part in counter-terrorism courses given by retired and elite active-duty military personnel.

I like this rabbi.

Born into a religious family, Cohen is also a rabbi for the Chabad-Lubavitch community in Los Angeles. Chabad is a sect of Hasidic Judaism, and Los Angeles is second only to Brooklyn, New York in its number of Chabad congregations.

That explains it, Chabad-Lubavitch are no known for their Liberalism.  These communities are more insular and self-reliant, many Orthodox religious communities are that way.

Cohen said his expertise in security took on more meaning after the April 27 shooting at the Chabad Poway Synagogue near San Diego that left one dead and three wounded.

It came six months after a shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue left 11 people dead — the worst attack against Jewish people in the modern history of the United States.

Which is why I won’t go to synagogue without a gun, and not a pocket pistol either.  A full-size fighting pistol.  John Moses Browning’s (Peace be upon him) own, 1911A1 in 45 ACP.

“One of the Ten Commandments that’s taught very incorrectly is ‘Thou shall not kill’,” Cohen said. “It’s not ‘Thou shall not kill,’ it’s ‘Thou shall not murder.’

“In fact, in the Bible it says that you have the obligation to protect yourself.”

Yes, you do.

Anti-Semitic incidents in the United States remained at near-record high levels in 2018, according to the Anti-Defamation League, which recorded 1,879 incidents, the third-highest level since the 1970s.

2017 had marked an unprecedented rise in such incidents, with 1,986 cases of harassment, vandalism or anti-Semitic attacks recorded, the organization said.

Cohen said given the uptick, it was the duty of the Jewish community to learn to fend for itself.

Yes, it is.

But not everyone agrees with Cohen’s reasoning.

Ivan Wolkind, chief operating officer of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and founder of the federation’s security program, said some 500 groups have joined the program, exchanging information and security tips with police or the FBI.

Hooray, the Progressive Jews have an opinion.

Wolkind, a reserve officer with the Los Angeles Police Department, said while he wholeheartedly believes in prevention, he is not convinced that arming worshippers is the answer.

And a cop saying “wait for the cops.”  Also, what kind of reserve officer, because most LAPD reservists are Level III and can’t carry guns.

“I can’t make a judgment as to whether or not people should have weapons in their place of worship but what I can say is to have people carrying weapons without a huge amount of training… is potentially very very dangerous,” he told AFP.

The LAPD police qualification course is not terribly difficult.  Again, I fully believe in training, but having a cop from a police department known for poor shooting skills (albeit better than the NYPD) talk about “a huge amount of training” is hypocritical.

There is training and there is experience.

He said his program focuses on prevention rather than encouraging worshippers to arm themselves.

“So we put 98 percent of our energy into what we call left of bang,” he said. “So if you think of a timeline where there is pre-incident — everything that happens before an incident — and then the bang is what happens and then there’s everything to the right.

“We put 98 percent of our energy into left of bang — recognizing, preventing and mitigating the effects of an attack.”

That is valuable, I’m not deying that.  But if the bang happens, you are still your own last line of defense.

Wolkind said he fears that people who undergo weapons training may feel overconfident and ignore warning signs leading up to a shooting.

“They may stop looking for some of the pre-incident indicators that I feel are so important,” he said.

He said his security program has been so successful that churches, mosques and even the Church of Scientology have reached out for advice.

“We’ve got a lot of experience,” he said. “And we are absolutely open to sharing that with anyone and everyone as other people try to do the same thing in their communities.”

By all means, harden your facility.  I don’t want to get into a gunfight.  Protection comes in rings.  The outer rings are vital, but you can’t forget the inner ones too.

From what I’ve seen of Rabbi Cohen’s presentations, he covers preparedness as well.  He just goes the extra step of teaching people how to respond if and when shit goes south.

Over-reliance on the outer rings of security creates its own blind spots.  Relying on others to protect you, causes you to respond poorly when that protection fails.

I’m going to have to look into this Rabbi some more.

I’ll end with this.  I shoot in Huntsville, Alabama.  I know some of the shooting community down here.  There are a number of Churches that have gone in for parishioners to be armed as volunteer security.

You drive by a church on a Sunday morning and every other car in the parking lot is a truck with an NRA window sticker.  Come hunting season, half of them are still covered in mud from Saturday’s drive out to the tree stand or blind.

A mass shooter might be inclined to try to rack up a body count at one of these houses of worship, but I don’t think it will go well for him.

Only if Synagogues were the same way.

The story is simple: Old man Conrad was found dead and after an investigation, the local sheriff arrested the two sons. The town folk wanted to lynch them, but authorities convinced them to let the justice system work. The trial was done and the sons were found not guilty.

That was not what the people wanted, so several nights later, a mob (some sources said “whitecaps” were the leaders) congregated and went to the house to “speak” with the  sons who responded with shotgun shot and revolvers. No lynching.

Helping doing this research I am involved with, has allowed me to read more about lynchings than anybody should as there are some seriously horrifying  cases I wish I have never knew about. Only two things I have seen that have frustrated a mob from committing this evil deed:  A sheriff moving the prisoner from jail to a secret location ( the minority of times and with about a 50% failure rate) or the use of firearms and the dropping of bodies.

The lesson for today: Keep your guns and keep your very high capacity magazines to help you keep mobs in check.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Tuesday painted a bleak picture of the United States’ current efforts and ability to halt the influx of drugs from foreign countries.
Pompeo appeared before a Senate committee focused on ways to stop the flow of illegal drugs into this country.
…
“I know many people that have been impacted by this set of issues,” Pompeo said. In a 10-hour period last month, the former Kansas congressman said, seven Kansans died from drug overdoses.
An estimated 70,000 Americans died of overdose deaths in 2017.

As overdose deaths rise, Pompeo says the U.S. struggles to halt drug trafficking

Item One: Imagine if there were 70,000 homicides by firearms happening in the US. We would be talking Martial Law, 24 hours a day bombardment in the media against guns and gun owners. And if 70% of those guns were coming from Mexico? There would be M1 Abrams cruising around the remains of Mexico City, the Marines ransacking every bottle of tequila and Honduras with a huge refugee problem.  How many of you heard about Pompeo going to the Senate yesterday? How much pomp and circumstance was given in the media?

70,000 OD deaths a year translates to 191 overdose deaths a day.  Las Vegas shooting is the deadliest active shooter event with  58 deaths and we were bombarded with hate for months with it. We have three times the Las Vegas amount of deaths by overdose  every day and the Media barely stops their coffee break to mention it.

Item Two:  Why is Pompeo appear to be laughing? This is a very serious issue, right? Wait, the article states he was addressing a Senate Committee and that does not look like the Senate chambers.  Are we trying to convey (once more) that Republicans are cold hearted, uncaring individuals that want to see people dead?

Scrappycrow sent me this link of a letters to the editor at the Boston Globe.

The recent shooting in Virginia Beach, Va., shows that the most severe gun-related problem facing our society is the proliferation of guns containing a semiautomatic mechanism. The gun used in this incident was a .45-caliber handgun, not an “assault rifle.” The connection between the handgun used and an assault rifle is the incorporation of a semiautomatic mechanism in both. This mechanism automatically ejects spent cartridges and loads new ones. Both styles of weapons accept high-capacity magazines and can handle large-caliber ammunition. While we focus on AR-15 style weapons, literally tens of millions of semiautomatic handguns are sold to the general public. These are the weapons that function exactly the same as the Virginia Beach gun.

The Virginia Beach handgun shares a deadly feature with assault rifles. 

My guess is that Mr. Richard Duby, President of the Falmouth Gun Safety Coalition (your guess is as good as mine) heard about the Virginia Beach shooting and had this long press release ready hitting the usual point about NRA White Supremacists with Assault Weapons and high capacity magazines mass killing poor innocent people. So it hd to be a cussin’ disappointment when the shooter turned out to be a Muslim African American using pistols.

I guess Duby racked his brain trying to come up with a righteous outrage to write about and the Triple A Maglite incandescent light bulb went on: “Semi automatic pistol? Semi automatic rifle? ZOMG! How come nobody has spoken about this! It is a conspiracy that I will denounce and be famous!  Yes!” So Duby went to write about mechanical principle in firearms that became available in 1885 or 58 years before the first assault long gun, the Sturmgewehr 44. Good for him because that was a secret kept for 76 till he unearthed it and no we all be saved from violence.

He closes his letter even more stupid:

These are weapons that were designed for military and law enforcement purposes only and not for the general public. Revolvers, lever-action, pump-action, and bolt-action guns cover the full spectrum of civilian needs, whether they are hunting, personal protection, or home protection. The semiautomatic mechanism for guns has no place in civilian hands.

Beside the obvious part that revolvers, lever-action, pump-action, and bolt-action guns have been used as and some even started as for military and law enforcement, what should scare you about the idiocy of this published letter is that somebody in the Boston Globe found worthy of publication.

That is sad.

PS: Am I the only one that keeps reading Scrapycrow and Scrapy Cow”? 🙂

This Tweet by Now This has been going around the Internet.

The Trump administration is rejecting requests to fly the Pride flag at these U.S. embassies pic.twitter.com/g3NVoC62iX

— NowThis Impact (@nowthisimpact) June 10, 2019

The Pride Flag should not be flown in an official capacity by any US Embassy or any Federal or state building or department.

That is not an anti-LGBT attitude.  That is an anti-“stop the division of American through identity politics” attitude.

The Pride Flag is the only flag of which I am aware that is representative of a single demographic that is regularly flown by government offices.

There is the Pan-African flag, the red, green, and black tri-color flag designed by Marcus Garvey in 1920.  It is associated with Black Liberation or Afro-Separatism and is not flown in February.

There is no Jewish flag.  Jews often fly the Israeli flag, but there is no flag representing purely the Jewish Religion.  There is a Christian flag.  It is known as the Pentecostal Flag and is a red Latin cross in a blue field on a white canton.

Flying the Pentecostal Flag above a government building, say for the month of Lent, would be a clear violation of the First Amendment as an endorsement of a specific religion.

By that logic, flying of the Pride Flag by a government agency would be an official endorsement whatever the Pride Flag is supposed to represent.

So how did we get to this point where for the month of June, the Federal and many state governments endorse, by way of displaying the flag on official flag poles, one demographic of Americans, and for the remaining eleven months of the year, no other demographic of Americans get equal treatment.

And look at how Now This frames this.  As bigotry.  Saying that US Embassies should fly one flag, the flag of the United States, a flag the represents all American citizens equally and without playing demographic favorites isn’t an anti-LGBT act.

If you want equal rights and to be treated like everyone else, that means you don’t get a special endorsement by the Federal Government one month out the year that nobody else gets.

No, you demand to be treated special where the government flies your flag and paints it into city street crosswalks and lights up government buildings in your colors.  That is not equality and don’t be surprised when there is pushback.

There is already a flag that represents gay Americans.  It is called the American flag and it represents all Americans everywhere.

I need to stop checking in with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Twitter.  It is a cornucopia of bad ideas.

Her latest: why she should get paid more for being useless.

Yep. Voting against cost of living increases for members of Congress may sound nice, but doing so only increases pressure on them to keep dark money loopholes open.

This makes campaign finance reform *harder.*

ALL workers deserve cost of living increases, incl min wage workers. https://t.co/fCdgHKx4G1

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 11, 2019

See, the reason they are greedy grifters who figure out how to turn public service into a money tree is that we don’t pay them enough to be fucking worthless out of our tax dollars.

A salary of $174,000 per year plus pension is practically minimum wage, which is why they turn to glad-handing, sinecures, and graft as soon as they possibly can.

The ONLY thing Congress is any good at is lining their own pockets at taxpayer expense.

Personally, I think we should do away with the Congressional salary.  Make it a per diem for every day that Congress is in session.

What is clear is that she is the archetypical socialist.  She is absolutely useless but believes that she deserves a raise from public money.

Somebody else called her out on her bullshit and she doubled down on the stupid.

In democratically socialist businesses (like worker co-ops) or methods (like collective bargaining) you actually CAN vote for a worker pay increase.

Many do!

We can’t pass these laws bc of big money. This is how you chip at it.

Like I said, it’s not popular but I’m being ? https://t.co/toFwbs56x0

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 11, 2019

And now you understand how Toyota, Mazda, BMW, and Mercedes can make cars in the USA and Chevy and Ford have to make them in Mexico.  Because the UAW voted themselves raises and benefits disproportionate to what the business could handle.

I can’t tell you how many stories I have read of small business or coops that have tried this model just to find out that then the low skill employees vote themselves $20 per hour wages and 30 hour work weeks, the company ends up folding and going under a few months later.

The reason Congress can vote itself a raise is that it comes from taxpayers, and if we don’t pay our taxes, the IRS takes us to prison.  They have a guaranteed source of income.

When the local coop sells bananas at ten times market rate because the part-time banana stocker voted himself “a living wage,” they can’t force you to shop there.

But what do I know, I was radicalized into the alt-right by Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman.

I know that sometimes what we are forced to wear and do seems silly. But probably there is a long-standing reason why it is being done, usually terminal.