Month: August 2020

Silver lining to the NRA suit

Miguel broke the news that the NY AG was suing to destroy the NRA.

That is bad news for the NRA.  The NRA must survive (it needs to be cleaned up but that’s not the point of this post, I don’t want the comments to devolve into shitting on the NRA).

Tucker talked about the suit on his show last night and how it was a blatantly partisan act to force the NRA to spend its money to defend itself instead of using it for political activism.

Trump blasted the NRA suit at an impromptu press statement.

This lead to the WSJ publishing this headline:

Lawsuit Against NRA Thrusts Gun-Rights Debate Into Presidential Campaign

This could be good for us.

We have seen record gun sales.  Shelves are empty of ammo.

We have record new gun owners.

One of my favorite YouTubers posted this awesome rant:

He’s not wrong.

Putting gun control at the front of the presidential debate, with Antifa attacking people and the Democrats defending them as a backdrop might swing many people to the more pro-gun side.

The argument is simple:

“Dear new gun owners. You know that gun you just bought because the cops are being defunded, criminals are being let out if jail on bail reform and COVID, violent crime is up, riots and looting are going on daily, and Antifa is beating people in the streets?  Biden and the Democrats want to take your new gun away to protect Antifa, rioters, looters, and criminals from you.”

That message could really backfire on them and help us.

 

Time for a Hollywood remake

I saw this online:

Rambo: First Blood took place in Washington State too.

I think it’s time to do a remake of First Blood like they did a remake of Death Wish, updated for the current year.

Instead of Rambo being a Vietnam vet abused by corrupt police, Rambo is a Republican Iraqi Freedom vet being violently “canceled” by Antifa.

Rambo, still suffering from PTSD, drives into the outskirts of Seattle or Portland wearing a MAGA hat and American flag bumper sticker, looking for work after his non-essential job got shut down.

His car gets attacked with lasers and mortar fireworks.  It triggers his PTSD from an IED ambush in Iraq.

He drives through the protesters.  They follow him and attack him some more.

First Blood plot ensues and John Rambo kills the fuck out of Antifa.

At the very end of the movie, the cops respond and corner Rambo.

He gives the famous “they drew first blood” speech.

They say: “All the people you killed were the same ones screaming ‘all cops are bastards’ and ‘defund the police.’  The entire department came down with a serious case of the blue flu.  If you ran, we wouldn’t be able to catch you.”

The SWAT team then lowers their guns, turn around, and walk away.

The end.

I’d pay to watch that in theaters.

Brave protesters stand against White Supremacist in Portland

“He thought that the world would make more rapid progress without the burden of old people.”
― Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

Governor Cuomo killed New York City and his response is pathetic

From the Daily Mail:

Cuomo begs wealthy New Yorkers to come back to save the city and pleads ‘I’ll buy you a drink!’ as he fights off calls to raise their taxes – which he fears may scare them away forever

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is begging wealthy New Yorkers to return to the city to save it from economic ruin while fighting off calls from other lawmakers to raise their taxes – a move he fears could permanently drive the top 1 percent out of the city.

Thousands of New York City residents fled Manhattan and Brooklyn earlier this year when the city was the COVID-19 epicenter of the world.

Now they are looking at what is happening to New York City and they are wondering why they should return to that post-apocalyptic shithole.

At a press conference on Monday, he said of the wealthiest residents who have long left the city: ‘I literally talk to people all day long who are in their Hamptons house who also lived here, or in their Hudson Valley house or in their Connecticut weekend house, and I say, “You gotta come back, when are you coming back?”

“‘We’ll go to dinner, I’ll buy you a drink. Come over, I’ll cook.”

What pathetic groveling.  Absolutely pathetic.

‘They’re not coming back right now. And you know what else they’re thinking? If I stay there, I pay a lower income tax because they don’t pay the New York City surcharge,’ he said.

No shit.

What is making matters worse are the increasing calls from other lawmakers to boost taxes on the city’s highest earners to try to plug the $30billion deficit that was left by the pandemic.

Cuomo said he is resisting the idea, that will send the already transient group of taxpayers running for the hills.

‘A single per cent of New York’s population pays half of the state’s taxes and they’re the most mobile people on the globe,’ he said.

Cuomo is just figuring this out?

This next part is icing on the schadenfreude cake.

New York’s wealthy Upper East Side reports a shocking 286% increase in robberies – with armed gunmen holding up residents just feet from the homes of billionaires

New York City’s wealthiest neighborhood is grappling with a spike in armed robberies, new data reveals.

Alarmingly, a significant number of those have involved locals being held up at gunpoint.

For the entirety of 2019, the Upper East Side only reported four armed robberies. This year, 14 have already been reported.

The figures are causing alarm in the ritzy neighborhood, where residents boast an average annual income of $322,400.

With no cops around, the criminals have gotten bolder.  They are not stupid, it doesn’t net you anything to rob some working-class guy who may have $2 in his wallet.  If you are going to risk jail time for pulling a gun in a mugging, might a well try and mug some bank exec with a wallet full of hedge fund cash?

I’ll tell you exactly what this is, the Greek epic tragedy like collapse of the hubris of New York City.  In Greek tragedies, the more hubris the protagonist had, the harder he fell.

New Yorkers always believed that New York City was the center of the universe.  People wanted to live in New York City because it was New York City.  How could the rich want to live anywhere else when they had the Met on one side, the Guggenheim on the other, Broadway within walking distance, and so and so forth.

You could tax them, regulate them, abuse them with government, and they might complain, but they would never leave New York City, the greatest city on earth.

Then these people fled because of the virus.  Now, after hiding out in Miami for four months, they discovered that the shopping at Bal Harbor is better, the restaurants are just as good, and Florida has no income tax.  Then the realized that they haven’t actually been to the Met or Guggenheim or Broadway in years and suddenly paying a whopping shit-load of money just to be able to brag about living next to one of these places wasn’t worth the cost.

Lastly, the riots in New York City and the lack of riots in Miami really drove the point home that there is no reason to go back to New York City.

Who wants to return home to this:

All of a sudden, the great hubris of New York City catches up with itself and the tax base of the city comes crashing down in utter destruction.

He wants the federal government to step in with help in the final stimulus bill that is due to pass soon, and has warned that unless more financial aid is given, the country is on track for a ‘real recession’. 

‘If they don’t make this bill right, frankly, they shouldn’t pass it because it will be the last bill. 

‘If this bill does not have funding for state and local government you will see a real recession, not just in New York but across the country [by] forcing state and local governments to lay off people,’ he said. 

No, fuck Cuomo.  I’m not baling out New York for its shitty decisions.

America will survive New York City turning into Detroit.

Other port cities will pick up the traffic not going into New York.   Banking, which is already decentralizing because of the internet, will accelerate its decentralization efforts so that bankers can work from anywhere over the internet seamlessly and not have to pay for expensive NYC real estate.

With the popularity of Hamilton on Disney+, more live productions will go online or live broadcast into movie theaters.  There is more money to be made showing a show to tens of millions of people for the cost of a streaming service than a limited number of people who can afford ridiculous ticket prices.

The financially viable aspects of NYC will diffuse out to other cities and what will be left is the garbage that can’t escape and isn’t worth moving.

Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio will go down in history as the duo that killed New York City.

Advice about laser eyewear

I used to work with Nd:YAG lasers so I have some familiarity but this is not my area of expertise.

All protection like all security is a balance of different things.

Some of you fucking people really kill me when I talk about gun safes.  Just because you spent a lifetime of thinking how you are going to Oceans 11 your way into a safe doesn’t mean some meth-head ransacking your house is going to put in that level of work and nothing short of a $10,000 AmSecTL-30 makes you happy, but since none of you actually drop $10,000 on that TL-30, reading the comments does little more than give me heartburn.

*** Rant Over ***

So…

I’ve been looking at laser safety glasses.

I am deliberately leaving out Chineseium garbage.

Here are my balance points.

Wavelength – blue and green lasers seem to be the most popular so 445-532 nm.  I know a lot of green lasers also kick out near IR in the 808 – 1064 wavelengths from the KTP doubler.

Optical Density – more is better, these people are trying to blind you with a laser

Visible Light Transmittance – more is better so you can see to defend yourself.  Unfortunately, VLT and DO are generally counter to each other, more OD less VLT.

Impact Protection – they are using lasers but also fireworks, glass bottles, and other eye-damaging objects.  Protecting your eyes from lasers but not shrapnel doesn’t help you.

Price – if you can’t afford them, what’s the point?  Yeah, I know “no price too high for safety” so then why are you not walking around in Hesco SAPI plates?  Let’s be reasonable here, we all have budgets.

Scenario:

Let say or enemy is packing green and blue lasers in the 1000 to 5000 mW range.  That seems to be the peak for handheld laser pointers online in the $100 price range.

You are caught in a protest because they blocked the road and are shining lasers in your face through the windshield.  You need enough protection to GTFO without losing your vision.

I’ve narrowed down my selection and I am looking for advice.

Revision Military Stingerhawk GF-8.  The GF-8 are the only ones I’ve seen available for civilian sales.
OD 2.5 for green, OD2 for NIR.  50% VLT
Z87+ and military ballistic impact rating.
$200.

Philips Safety Laser Strike.
OD 2 for Blue 445-450nm, OD 2.5 for green 532nm, No NIR.  43.0% VLT.
No impact rating.
$150

Philips Safety KTP.
OD 6 for 190-532nm blue and green.  No NIR.   46% VLT
Z87+
$100

Philips Safety Diode YAG Harmonics.
OD5 190-534nm, OD5 830-1090nm, OD7 1064nm, VLT 28%.
Z87+
$265

Here is my question for the laser experts:

From what I’ve seen, most pilots laser safety glasses don’t block NIR, and blocking NIR, blue, and green cuts the VLT to very low (below 30% which is a dark pair of sunglasses).

I’m leaning in the direction of the KTP.  They have the best price at only $100, have a decent light transmission at 46%, and a very high OD for blue and green but don’t block NIR.

The YAG harmonics have the best laser blocking but a 28% transmission are probably too dark to use at night limiting their usefulness, and $265 is pretty steep.

The Revision are tactical eyewear and will protect your eyes from a lot of abuse but the OD is the weakest, although it does block the NIR with 50% VLT, it doesn’t block blue, only green.  $200 is rough but doable.

How important is NIR protection vs OD for the green light in a diode laser?  Is it worth sacrificing the NIR for high OD on the green with a VLT that isn’t too dark?

What is your advice?

 

Get yourselves laser safety glasses and a gun

This woman was targeted by the wrath of Antifa.

I’m not going to get into what she did because it doesn’t matter.  Antifa calls anyone to the right of Chairman Mao a fascist so you could be carrying an American flag and they’ll target you.

They followed her to her house, cornered her at her front door, and tried to (and probably did) blind her with lasers.

Look at how many lasers are flashed across her face.

They also prevented her from entering her house.  The guy in the blue shirt closes her door on her.

This is the newest and most dangerous tactic they are employing because currently permanently blinding people with lasers isn’t considered a serious crime.

Get yourself a par of laser safety glasses.

If they corner you like this so they can blind you, you’ll need your vision because you might have to shoot them all.