A Very Timely Tome That Could Save Your Life

Marc MacYoung, is probably one of,  if not the, foremost practical experts on violence and anti-social interpersonal dynamics.  He has just come out with a book in a most timely manner:

Multiple Attackers: Your guide to recognition, avoidance, and survival

If that doesn't strike you as vital information for this day and age, well, go buy the book anyways and you'll figure it out.  

Available just on Kindle, it's not a traditional book but instead its rather interactive with links to videos that highlight and demonstrates the points he's getting across.

Tons of useful and timely information and concrete practical advice, and given what is going on in our urban areas today its a must-read.

Again, this is some highly recommended reading.

Detroit's Voting Rolls Ripe For Fraud

Detroit has more registered voters than actual eligible voters on their voting rolls, by a lot.

How much is a lot?  By 36,570 more than actual voters.

Crains Detroit Business: Detroit has more registered voters than residents over 18, Census finds

There's at least 2,503 dead people on the rolls with one having been born in 1823 and yet still on the voter registration list.

Considering Trump won all Michigan by only 10,704 votes, the potential for games to be played with a pool of 36,570 fake voters by the always impressively slow and inefficient Democrat-controlled Detroit Clerks office is rather high. When they have a pool of 36,570 registered but non-existent voters to play with, the potential for games is rather large.  Add to that the potential for voter fraud by mail where these 36,570 non-existent but registered voters don't need to show up and vote in person, and it can get right sporty.

So, What Are The Odds?

Approximately, and the data seems to be hard to find,  1 in 50 Wisconsinites overall has a felony record.

So whats the odds that it turns out that all 3 of the attackers of Kyle Rittenhouse had felony records?

 

 One pedo sex offender, one felony domestic abuser, and one felony burglar.  Quite the trifecta.

For those of you wondering what the answer is, and what the odds actually are, well, per a statistics person I know who just communicated the answer to me, the odds are roughly 1 in 10,000.

All The Difficulties Of High School, Little Of The Fun Parts

The kids have now been in High School for a week.

It's still online only due to everyone both teachers and parents alike going into hysterics at the thought of doing it in person.   Statistically, they're in more danger  every-time they get in a swimming pool than in a live school as far as Covid goes.  Unfortunately, unthinking fear is winning out over the statitstics.  

We actually know a few parents who have not let their kids out to play with other kids, even socially distant play - since March.  Note these are normal kids, not with any comorbidity or immune system disorders, except for their parents' hypochondria. That's just not healthy.

So, online only it is.

The kids each have a room in the house from whence they Zoom and do their online learning.

Leah is having a harder time of it, as it is hard to make friends and connect over Zoom in class and hard to connect with teachers, even with their "Zoom breakout rooms".  

Abby at least already has a good solid set of high school friends, knows her classmates and the teachers and has a good rep already established.

Both are complaining about tiredness and headaches form having to stare at the screen for hours.  We're going to get them some computer viewing screens/glasses to help alleviate that - we'll see if it helps.

The upside - no need to rush and fight traffic to get to school, no need for us to worry about Abby driving in traffic on the way to school, and they don't need to get up as early as a result.  The lunchroom is their own kitchen, and the food unquestionably beats the cafeteria food hands down.  Bathrooms are clean, private and by comparison spacious. They also have access to healthy snacks all day long whenever they get hungery and being teens that doth occur.

I still don't envy them the situation,  High School is tough enough without this online only stuff.

Gun Skool - Training With The Jedi

This weekend, I along with my buddy Tosh,  was in Holland, Michigan for a 3-day class  The Path To Performance with The Modern Samurai Project - Scott Jedlinski, aka Jedi.

Scott Jedlinski is one of the, if not the, foremost instructors on the use of the red dot sighted pistol and appendix carry.

The class was like drinking from a fire-hose.

Scott began by stating that what he was teaching was not the only way, and that unless your instructor was an actual Mandalorian, any instructor who pronounces their class to be The Way is an instructor that one should be wary of as it is only A Way.  

He encouraged us from the start to question all of the technique and to take from the class what worked for us, and to only adopt what we had thoroughly tested and found to work.

Thorough testing there was.

The class began the first day with appendix carry and why he posits the method of carry is superior to strong side carry in terms of ergonomics and efficiency.  Scott is fully focused on being efficient via technique.

First we discussed body mechanics and why appendix carry makes the most sense in terms of efficiency.

Then on to body positioning.  Scott is critical of the isosceles stance both in terms of foot positioning hampering movement and forward and rearward stability, and how with locked out elbows recoil management suffers.  

Let's put it this way, my default stance prior to this class was indeed the isosceles.  Not anymore. 

Based on actually comparing the isosceles to the stance setup by Scott which is somewhat of an improved weaver type stance (support foot forward a step,  not over-bending the knees, arms bent at elbows, extended forward equally) in the drills we performed, it is very clear that there is significant improvement in recoil control, mobility, and efficiency by dumping the isosceles.  It is now so dumped by me.  Learning occurred.

Then on to the grip.  I have a trash panda grip  (an old style crush grip) that I must continue to work on changing as it is the main thing holding back my performance. Scott promotes a very high grip, with the strong hand only holding the pistol loosely with the support hand, and thumbs high up on the slide.  With the support hand,  especially the pinky of that hand, strongly gripping the gun for recoil control and dot management - with his technique, the dot on the draw drops perfectly from 12 o clock to the center of the sight -- every damn time.  Life changing. This was a revelation.

I still need to work on my draw and grip though until this change is ingrained. I keep reverting and even worse seem to bang my support hand into the gun, stopping it for a moment on the draw which is damn weird to watch on video.  Scott is very big on having you video your practice so you can see what you're doing well or not, and it helps.

Scott first demos each exercise, often several times based on what he is trying to convey, then has the students do it as he watches each student perform the drill, and he gives you immediate personal feedback.   This leads to a lot of reps as he walks the line working with each and every student.  This is not a go off and do drills class while he watches in the distance. He is hands on with each and every student diagnosing issues and helping students get better.   The class then discussed after each exercise if the technique worked for them, what they saw/felt during the technique and what they felt they did right or need to work on.

A few students then tried his Black Belt Standards Test.  There were some amazing shooters there, and while they got close, no one cleared it.  The test as you can see is kinda spicy.

After the first day of class, a bunch of the students and Scott headed into Holland for some food together and we ate some wings, had beer, and chatted.

The next day we met at the range and got on to focus on red dot shooting - everything from 3 yards to 25 yards.  Zeroing was discussed and he put forth his reasons why a 10 yard zero makes the most sense in terms of time and efficiency over a 25 yard zero and he had very cogent points for saying so.  Again he stated you can choose as you like and decide for yourself after trying both and xo long as you know the reasons why for both.

We did the 3x5 drill, and single shot drills at 7, 10, and 25 yards along with multiple other exercises.

Then 11 students in the class decided to try the Black Belt Test -Tosh and I among them.  None of us made it. I wasn't even close, and that's ok.

In the 3x5 my time was 2.51 but had misses, so no good.

At 7 yards I had a 1.12 time with a hit.  Which was pretty darn good for me, but it may have been luck and not skill.

On the Bill Drill I did a 2.48 but with half missing the A Zone.

And the one shot at 25 yards I had a 1.69 and a hit on the A Zone.

Saturday night quite a few of us met at the class host's house for a cookout and a BYOB party.  This was fun and lots of great conversation with some seriously interesting people. 

Since Tosh and I both do Jiu-Jitsu and Jedi is an accomplished practitioner as a 4-stripe purple belt, the talk turned to jitsu and some techniques, and then he offered to show us some pointers.

Yes, I got to learn some jitsu from the Jedi.   Way cool.

We headed to some mats the host had in the basement, and I got some great pointers on technique and really changed my mindset - as a result in rolls yesterday I was a lot more active, dynamic, and controlling in the rolls and won more than I lost, and had much better movement.  Simply amazing.

Sunday was about 25-yard distance shooting, Bill Drills, shooting on the move, and other activities. Lots of shooting and multiple exercise, all useful and learned a lot. 

We shot B8 targets at 25 yards, and I tended to hit in the high 80s, low 90s - it needs some work and it's the grip that is the culprit.

Then on to Bill Drills. I shot a clean Bill Drill in 3.0 seconds exactly during the testing phase of the drill, which was nice.  

Then the class ended with another Black Belt test.  Again, no one cleared it but a few came darn close (no, I wasn't one of them) and my scores were:

3x5 my time was 2.53 clean - while not close, this was still happy making for me as it was a solid clean run.

At 7 yards I had a 1.11 time with a hit. 

On the Bill Drill I did a 2.41 but with misses out of the A Zone.

And on the one shot at 25 yards I had a 1.66 and a hit to the C Zone so it doesn't count. Drat, but at least I hit the target.

The test is humbling and an excellent corrective should you ever think you're too good to get out and practice.  I need more practice and more practice will occur.  

In other news, that was 845 rounds through the IWI Masada with zero malfunctions this weekend, which is nice.

Then the class picture and the class ended with us each receiving a  class patch and everyone gave their thoughts as to how the class went and what was learned.  Yes the class mascot was a well trained K9 Dutch Shepard named Rip, brought to the class by a dog trainer that was attending the course - he's an amazing fur missile.

In short, I cannot recommend this class highly enough.  

As a red dot class, it blew Sentinel Concepts Red Dot class away in terms of content, technique, methodology, and instruction.  

The Class is simply fantastic and well worth the cost. If you want to learn a way to be better with your red dot and appendix carry, Jedi would be highly recommended as an excellent way to learn both red dot and appendix carry.

Stupid Criminals - The Case Of The Criminal Self-Correcting Problem

Today's stupid criminal demonstrates what not to do when he decided to attempt to resist arrest by shooting at police.  Our stupid criminal of the day, Coleman Lamar Sample, managed to remove himself as a sample of the human race and from the gene pool all by himself.

MSN.com: Virginia man fatally shoots himself while firing gun at state troopers

A Virginia man fleeing from state troopers whipped out a gun during the ensuing struggle and fatally shot himself in the process, authorities said.

Yet another example of where resisting arrest never leads to anything good.

Nothing of value was lost.   Not sure if BLM will be protesting this own goal.

Figures Lie and Liars Figure - Michigan COVID Numbers Edition

You can't keep a state in crisis mode if the data shows the crisis is being alleviated.

 So to fix that, you change how the figures are collected to shows there's a continuing crisis.

Crains Detroit: Commentary: Michigan's change in COVID-19 hospitalization rates renders past data useless

Timely and reliable data about COVID-19 in Michigan has been the cornerstone justification by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for just about every one of the restrictions she has placed on the economy, specific businesses and ordinary human movement for the past five months.

That's why a recent change in how the state of Michigan reports the number of COVID-positive patients occupying hospital beds undermines the last five months of data that has shaped Whitmer's extraordinary executive orders and the management of hospitals and nursing homes.

Around Aug. 4, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services started requiring hospitals to report their daily patient counts for both confirmed cases of COVID-19 and suspected cases.

The newly combined number skews all other previous data about hospitalizations, effectively rendering this key data point utterly useless for comparison purposes over time.

On Aug. 3, the last day that just confirmed cases of COVID-19 were counted, there were 460 people hospitalized for the virus.

As of Friday, the newly combined number of confirmed and suspected cases is 675.

On paper, that would look like a 46 percent increase in hospitalizations in just 11 days. That sounds alarming.

  It does seem alarming, and this on-paper manipulated increase has been used to both justify the continuing restrictions and keep people afraid that the contagion is unchecked and expanding and we need further restrictions as a result to "stop the spread".

Go read the whole thing, and note how deaths and hospitalizations have been on, and continue to be on, a steady decline, calling into question this new impetuous based on these skewed figured for further restrictions or rolling back the easing of restrictions, maintaining this state of emergency and keeping Gov Half-Whit as our unaccountable ruler.

Gov Half-Whit: The Epitome Of Class

Or not, as the case may be.

The Detroit Free Press: Whitmer mouths expletive in 'hot mic' moment before DNC convention speech

Following along with the example of Rashida Tlaib, yet another classy Michigander, Governor Whitmer decided the drop the M-F bomb prior to speaking at the DNC convention.  Unfortunately (or not as the\ case may be,  she "forgot" her microphone was on. 

"It's not just Shark Week, it's Shark Week, mother ******," Whitmer is heard saying with a smile, to laughter from those in the room, as she waits to go live from a Lansing union hall. . .

Nothing like a little classless swearing to earn your cred as a gritty but incompetent governor.  

Probably keeps her in the running to be Kamala's Vice President once Joe Biden drops out.

Pure Michigan, Pure Half-Whit.

Do Check Your Ammo

With the current super-high demand for ammo and all manufacturers going at capacity, some slips are going to happen.

 

From a recent box of Federal American Eagle 9mm:

One bullet was not like the others:

Yes, it's a bullet perfectly loaded into a case - backwards.  Makes for an interesting 9mm hollow point.  

Did not try firing it.

Even 99.999% quality control means something will eventually slip by 0.001% of the time and when you're producing billions of rounds. . . .

No damage done, but it pays to actively look at your ammo from the box as you're loading it.

Another Birthday Takes Place

Leah turned 14 today.

The day began, as all of our family birthdays do, with a home-made cherry cheesecake.

Excellent as always.

Then on to opening some presents.

I then had to go to work in the morning, so Tash and the kids went to do some fun shopping.  Then in the afternoon we had pizza for lunch, and then had Dairy Queen ice cream and took it to a local park to sit by the lake and relax.

Then for dinner we went to Soora, an excellent Korean restaurant.  

About the only nice thing about the whole COVID mess - we had the entire restaurant to ourselves.  While they were doing a brisk carryout business, no one else ate inside. Kinda an introvert's dream restaurant.

 

The Galbi was awesome, as was the Japchae, Bulgogi and Bim Bim Bap that we had.  We have leftovers.

Service, as you might expect given the level of activity at the restaurant, was fabulous. The food was magnificent, and we left a larger than normal tip.

Then home to relax, and a few more presents arrived in the mail for her, so she had a very good birthday, and she declared that she enjoyed turning 14.  

Unfortunately her first day and few weeks of high school will be virtual, and there will be no homecoming festivities which is a definite downer for her this year.  Strange times indeed but she'll get through it all.

That's A Weather Scratch

I was planning on a special flight today (actually yesterday too).   I had actually convinced, cajoled, intrigued, and enchanted the entire family to flying with me.

This took some doing as Abby had previously declared she would not fly with me until she graduated high school, on the grounds that she had to accomplish that first.  Tash refuses to fly woth me unless all 4 of us are in the plane as sbhe doesn't want the two parents in one airplane potential problem.  So this took quite a bit of work to pull off.

Destination will remain a secret until I pull it off successfully, but it was to the north to a neat spot the kids have never been to before.

First I booked for yesterday but the forecast was for rain at the planned destination and  thunderstorms here around the time for our return.  Forecast remained the same yesterday morning, so I cancelled and I went to the range instead as a consolation.

And the weather yesterday was, of course, flying perfect. No thunderstorms or rain at either location all day, great visibility, and high ceilings.  It could have worked.

Today's forecast looked great.  All yesterday and yesterday night the forecast was for VFR all the way through.

So, of course, this morning I woke up at 7am to loud bangs from the thunder and great big flashes of lightning. 

Conditions were low IFR with heavy thunderstorms at Pontiac and points to the north along the way with the final destination being clear - but there's no safe way to get there so there's no way we're going.  It's going to improve but will still be marginal VFR most of the day and well below my personal minimums - especially so with the family on board for their first flight.

Another weather scratch.

Argh.

Range Trip - Some Drill Improvements Noted

So Today I met up with Tosh and his friend Duffy at the range for some more focused practice.

Tosh had ordered and on Friday received a steel A-Zone target, so this was going to be fun. It made scoring the targets much easier and the ping was the thing - if you didn't hear it you missed.  No need to recover the A zone or wonder if you hit it at 25 yards.

We first did 3x2 Drills on paper targets at 3 yards. Typically I was shooting them pretty clean in about 3.5 seconds but was having trouble getting faster than that today.

For the 7 yard 1 shot from concealment, my best time today was down to 1.1 seconds which was happy-making, considering last time I was doing my best at 1.5 seconds so that was a nice improvement. 1.0 is the goal there, and I'm getting close.

Then for the Bill Drills, but the best time I think I had today shooting it clean was 3.71 so I still need to work on that. 

Seems like I'm now having the most problems on the multiple shot drills.  So, more stuff to practice.

For the single shot at 25 yards from concealment my best time was 1.58 seconds which was must better than my best time of 1.98 the last go-round:

 

That felt pretty good, and if I can shave off .08, I can meet my goal on that drill at least. 

A very good time was had by all and we all saw some improvement in our shooting by practicing these drills. A lot of dryfire practice also seems to be paying off as well.

 That's another 350 rounds through the Masada with no issues.  Now, I need to find more ammo.

A Taxing Insult Added To Injury In Minneapolis

Minneapolis Businesses got hammered in the BLM riots, with over 100 business properties destroyed or heavily damaged in the riots.

But in order to get a demolition permit in the city, you have to first prepay your property taxes, money that is supposed to be spent on things like police protection that was rather absent during the riots.

The Star Tribune: Landscape of rubble persists as Minneapolis demands taxes in exchange for permits

 Waiting for the property taxes to be paid when they come due in October, would give the victims of the riots an opportunity to rebuild and actually attempt to recover and perhaps make some money so they can pay the property tax.  But no, Minneapolis is requiring they pay it before a demolition permit is issued so they can't rebuild until that happens.

It's yet another great way to drive business out of the city - if the riots didn't tell you it was time to go, the taxman demanding his due before you can even clean up the damage form the riot surely will.

You Don't Often See That In A Deed

Doing a deed for a client to put her husband on the title to the property, and I came across a rather unusual restriction in the prior deed.

The property is here in Oakland County in southeast Michigan and has the following reservation of rights:

Excepting therefrom all rights to uranium and other fissionable material reserved by the United States of America, as recited in instruments recorded in ......, Oakland County Records.

Certainly not a reservation of rights that you come across in deeds everyday, and its the first time I've seen it. 

Well, Southeast Michigan is rather famous for radon gas issues, and since radon is from decaying uranium, it makes sense that there may be some decent uranium deposits lurking underneath the property, and the Feds have got first dibs on it if needed.

So, don't be going off digging up the uranium and then building your own reactors at home, ok?

The Annual Birthday Post - Now With USPSA, Steak, And Premium Ice Cream!

So today I turned 48.

The traditional birthday cherry cheesecake was served to me in bed along with coffee, which was a great start to the day.

Presents included an ESS Crossbow shooting Glasses kit, and a set of SureFire EP4 Sonic Defenders. This was a very timely gift as I was signed up for a local USPSA match today.  A great replacement for my current eye pro, and the Surefires are a nice supplement for wearing under the ear pro.

In short, the ESS Crossbow is amazing - much more clear than any other eyepro I've had - better by far than the Sawfly Revisions I've been using, and the clarity offered by the copper lenses is pretty darn amazing and not appreciated until you try it.  

The copper lens color also worked just fine with the red dot.  The frame is also a lot more comfortable under the ear muffs than any other that Ive tried, and I had them on all day at the match and they were great.  Highly recommend these.

The Surefire ear pro are kinda neat.  They are a pain to get to fit into the ear, but once there really cut down on the noise.  With the plugs they have open you can hear normal conversation no problem but the gunfire is attenuated.   I wore them  under the ear pro all day and could still hear the beep, but there was much less noise otherwise and makes it more pleasant to shoot and be around shooting going on all day.

I had a good match, the classifier I ended up doing a respectable performance and shooting into the middle/high C class which was good with no misses or mess-ups, which was nice.  A very fun match with a pretty high round count of 230 through the Masada with zero issues at all.

After the match I showered and changed (as it was a hot day out) and rested a bit and then we headed out to Fogo De Chao - a Brazilian Steakhouse. It was a proper birthday dinner with meat delivered to your table on skewers and cut to your liking in front of you.  I then got to eat meat until the meat sweats occurred and then ate some more and it was all fantastic  - a carnivore and paleo diet dream.

Thence off to some matcha ice cream at Premium Matcha Cafe Maiko and it was fantastic.  Not paleo, but hey, Birthday.

I split a green tea and Vanilla Matcha ice cream with Abby as Tash and Leah shared a Hoji-cha ice cream. 

For my birthday we added the edible gold leaf option:

Yum!

It was a great birthday.

Weird History: Holy Mother Russia!

Mother Russia indeed:

The greatest officially recorded number of children born to one mother is 69, to the wife of Feodor Vassilyev (b. 1707–c. 1782), a peasant from Shuya, Russia. In 27 confinements she gave birth to 16 pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets

-The Guinness Book of World Records

Forget it takes a village - This unnamed mother of 69 kids made a dang village!

Feodor, not content to rest and just have 69 kids, then apparently went on to have another 18 kids with his second wife for a total of 87 children in 35 total births.  

Whereafter he died, most likely of exhaustion, at the age of 75.  

No one else has been insane enough to try and beat that record in the past two hundred and thirty-eight years, and for good reason.

Morning At The Range: Drills and More Drills

Tosh and I met up at the range this morning to get in a couple hours of focused practice.

First, we started at 3 yards with the 3x2 drill - 3 to the A Zone and 2 to a 3x5 card in the head box.

Drawing from concealment, after practice we were getting it down regularly to under three seconds, but want to get it down to two seconds, which is going to take a heckuva lot more practice.

Second, we did a single shot drill at 7 yards to the A zone.  Again from concealment we were able to get it under 1.5 seconds, but again to improve it is going to take a heckuva lot more practice.

Third we did a Bill Drill at 7 yards.   Again from concealment draw and 6 shots to the A Zone. At times we could get it under 2.5 seconds but not always consistently. Again, to improve it is going to take a heckuva lot more practice.

Finally we did a single shot drill at 25 yards.  Accuracy s generally sucked so lots of hits outside the A zone which didn't count for the purposes of the drill, but we were able to get it on occasion down to 1.98 with a hit on the A box. Again to improve it is going to take a heckuva lot more practice.

So yep, if you haven't guessed, the takeaway from this morning's endeavors was that to improve it is going to take a heckuva lot more practice. 

We've tentatively scheduled another range trip for an early morning next week assuming more ammo arrives in time.

Then, off to get some actual work done.  A range trip was not a bad way to start the day.

That's another 250 rounds through the Masada, and some good practice in before the next USPSA match that is set for this Sunday.

No, The Democrats Going Even Farther Leftward Won't Be An Improvement For The County

Nolan Finley of the Detroit News believes it is a good thing that Oakland County's current Democrat Prosecutor Jessica Cooper lost her primary to Democrat Karen McDonald.

He should be careful what he wishes for and what he's thankful for as he may just get it good and hard.

The Detroit News: Nolan Out Loud: Good riddance Jessica Cooper

Unfortunately, unless he believes that the Democrats, by selecting an even more progressive prosecuting attorney candidate than Cooper will help persuade the county's law and order voters to go for the Republican candidate, he couldn't be more wrong.

Ms. McDonald is far more "progressive"  than Cooper, backs BLM, claims to be against "mass incarceration" - the buzzword meaning  criminals and especially criminals of a minority hue shouldn't be locked up for crimes. 

She also promises to protect "immigrants"  read illegals. 

She is also pushing the criminal justice Overton window ever leftward towards anarcho-tyranny - complete with a plan to eliminate cash bail to let offenders go free which has been such a smashing hit success in New York, if you count the number of repeat offenders constantly released after offenses to go forth and offend again and again.  No content with the elimination of cash bail, she at the same time promises to establish an Orwellian hate crimes unit.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, the people of Oakland County will know have a stark choice between McDonald and Republican Lin Goetz for the prosecuting attorney spot.

Given how this county has been turning Blue, with an influx of former Wayne County residents who desire the same policies that made them want to leave Wayne County adopted here, that choice may not go how Finley would prefer and Oakland County residents will be the worse off for it.

In Other Election News: A Democrat Get Out The Vote Effort Comes To A Screeching Halt

This particular get out the vote effort lasted all of two minutes.

The Detroit Free Press: 3 men captured attempting escape from Upper Peninsula prison

Gotta try and get that felon vote out and active, but the effort was all for naught.

Three prisoners, assisted by two others, ran for the fence at an Upper Peninsula prison Monday night, but were captured, officials confirmed.

Caught in 2 minutes flat and stymied by the border fence of the prison.  

"It was all over in less than two minutes," he said. "The officers did an excellent job."

All three men climbed to near the top of the first fence before falling and trying again, Gautz said. One had a device he tried to use to help get over the wire at the top of the fence, but it did not work, he said

The three felons, all prime Democrat voters, with resumes including home invasion, armed robbery, and assault, will not be voting in today's primary after all.

Easy In-Person Voting In The Age of Covid

Went and voted in person today in the primary.

No line, there were only two other voters there at the same time I was there.

Checking in, you were requested to wear a mask, and only handle one pen and keep it with you through the entire process.

My id checked (though being n a mask it wasn't exactly a detailed check, but the drivers license matched the info on the voter registration so, it was apparently good enough).  Then in I went. 

I was then handed a ballot and headed to a voting stand to do my voting duty.

Afterwards, I put the ballot in the machine, put the pen in the container marked dirty and voila, done. 

Very easy, no big deal, and no reason not to vote in person at all.

Yep, The Woke Won't Stop At Confederate Statues

Detroit, has  an unsurprising lack of confederate statues (attention woke folks who don't know their history - Michigan is in the North and on the Union side in the Civil War, neh?).  So what is a woke Detroiter supposed to do?

Well,  the progressives must proclaim the need to get down with the struggle, and for eradicating any name of anyone that has any association with slavery, regardless of their historical importance.

People Like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and more must be removed from the names of buildings per the progressive diktat. Yes, the very the founders of our country and of the freedom and  liberty these progs currently enjoy, reduced to their being nothing more than slaveholders, and therefore bad and in need of being removed.

The Detroit Free Press: Detroit teachers want slaveholders’ names removed from 3 charter schools

Some educators are calling for these schools to be renamed, arguing that it’s wrong to ask students, especially those whose ancestors were enslaved, to attend school in a building that pays tribute to slave owners.

The legacies of historical figures including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison “are deeply rooted in the soil of racism and separatism,” a group of teachers at Cornerstone Schools, a network of charter schools in Detroit, wrote in a letter to the network’s CEO this month.

The teachers pointed out that the school names in question — Washington-Parks, Madison-Carver and Jefferson-Douglass academies — link slaveholders with the names of prominent Black Americans Rosa Parks, George Washington Carver, and Frederick Douglass. They noted that almost every student at Cornerstone schools is Black.

 Maybe figure out how to teach history in a sensitive way rather than sweeping it under the rug? Maybe understand that George Washignton, Jefferson and Madison are not solely defined by the fact that they owned slaves?  What happened to all that nuance that progressives proclaim that they have?

Or maybe, instead of caterwauling about the founding fathers and that hisotry isn't always a perfect tale with everyone and everything either 100% right or 100% wrong,, maybe work on teaching them to read history and since Detroit is about 47% functionally illiterate, you're doing one helluva bad job at that.

Renaming buildings when the students in them and 478% of those who graduate from them likely can't even read the names on the buildings is a bit of a waste of an effort best directed elsewhere to the problems of the here and now.

At least some alumni of Detroit institutions are pointing out changing the names are stupid - such as Cass Tech, perhaps the best high school in Detroit - named after Michigan's former governor before it became a state, Democrat, and someone who was not nice to American Indians and gasp, actually owned a slave before the Civil War.

“The kids are coming to get a great education,” said Monique Bryant, a member of the [Cass Tech Alumni] association and the founder of the Triangle Society, a nonprofit that supports the school and its students. “Nobody is thinking about Lewis Cass. I would think that any memory of Lewis Cass would be overshadowed by what the more than 80,000 alumni have been able to do.”

A rather enlightened attitude that makes sense rather than whitewashing history.

The teachers of Cornerstone Schools would be far better off spending their energy and time educating their students and maybe taking a history class or two rather than jumping on the simplistic year zero erase history bandwagon.

Tired But Lots More Organized

Well today was a clean-up and reorganizing day.  Since there was scattered thunderstorms and rain coming through we stayed home and got to cleaning.

I moved my office to the basement so the kids will have the family room turned into a 1-room schoolhouse for school.  It's already been announced, mainly due to the hysteric parents loosing their you know what at the thought that schools might reopen, that the first two weeks of school will be virtual. 

That's just a great way for Leah to start high school.

So we did that and I've been moving stuff accordingly.  We also cleaned pout the basement storage area and went over things that have been on boxes for about 10 years now. 

The rule adopted in going through the boxes was that unless it was some important docuemnt or memorabilia, if you haven't looked at it or needed it in 10 years, it went.  This led to multiple trips with garbage bags down the Driveway of Doom™.  I got in over 11,000 steps going up and down the stairs and up and down the driveway today, along with a decent bicep workout from hauling the junk to and fro.

In short we really don't need the maintenance and insurance records for a car we haven't owned for five years, among many other things, and if I haven't read those gun magazines from 2000 recently I'm not likely going to peruse them anytime soon - although looking at one with a Glock 30  being newly introduced, and another proclaiming the Ruger Mini-14 was just the thing for the police rifle was kinda interesting - we've certainly come a long way.

The garbagemen due to pickup the trash tomorrow are really going to hate us.

On the upside, it looks pretty good.  I've got a nice office spot in the basement and the kids have two desks all set to go until they finally get back to school.  Need to by a platform to raise my computer up as I figure its going to be mainly a standing desk setup for when I'm home.

Still a lot to rearrange and reorganize but much less junk and clutter.

Overall a good and productive day.

Range Trip - Smile, Wait For Flash

Went to the range yesterday morning with some friends.

Tosh brought his AR15 that he had built, complete with a rather impressive muzzle brake.

Not only does it push the muzzle blast to the sides and away from the shooter, it gives off some very worthy muzzle flash fireballs.

Lots of fun.  Also easy to hit targets at 100 yards.  Just put the dot on the bottom edge of the target and you'll hit it.

I then brought my AR in 300 Blackout for comparison.

That was fun.

Also shot the 6.5 Creedmoor at 100 yards and put most shots into the x ring of a B8 target, which was happy making.  Its functioning great, especially after I gave the bolt some more oil.

We also did some pistol shooting, included some timed drills which were good as they indicated we need more practice. Which we will get in.

A great time had by all, then I went home to be productive and get some work done.