90 Miles From Tyranny

Wednesday, October 17, 2018

Non-Player Character (NPC) SheepThink

We no longer use the term "SJW". We now use the term "NPC" because these are not real people, they are Non-Player-Characters. Like NPC's, they have a limited vocabulary which they repeat incessantly, like "No Trump, No Wall, No USA At All", any attempt at dialogue is met with "You're a Nazi, You're A Racist" These are Non Player Characters created by George Soros, Globalists and the Deep State. ..and now, they are a Meme.

Winning: Job Openings Hit New Record High of 7.1 Million

U.S. job openings rose to a new record high in August, an indication that the U.S. economy continued to expand rapidly as the trade war with China escalated and Hurricane Florence hit the Carolinas.

The monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, released by the Labor Department on Tuesday showed job openings rose to 7.136 million. Economists had forecast 6.9 million.

The prior month was revised up to 7.077 million, the first time this number has ever exceeded 7 million. Until April of 2017, there had never been more than 6 million job openings.

This was the fifth consecutive month in which the number of vacant jobs exceeded the number of unemployed Americans.

Job openings are a measure of labor demand. Nonfarm payrolls have increased by an average of 201,000 over the last 12 months. Unemployment fell to 3.7 percent in September.

JOLTS is one of the job market metrics closely watched by the Federal Reserve. Economists expect the U.S. central bank will announce another rate hike in December, a move Fed officials describe as “normalizing” interest rates.

Fears that the central bank could move rates up too rapidly have recently caused turmoil in the stock market. President Donald Trump has criticized the Fed’s rate hikes, calling the bank’s tightening policy “loco.”

The number of hires in August reached a series high of 5.8 million.

There were 488,000 job vacancies in manufacturing in August, a...

Correction, Title Should Be:
This Is How Evil Republicans Deny Your Right To Vote Illegally.

The Five Most Important Guns In American History

From the Long rifle to the AR-15, the story of firearm innovation is inextricably tied to the story of the United States.

This piece is adapted from David Harsanyi’s new book, “First Freedom: A Ride Through America’s Enduring History with the Gun” (Threshold Editions).

1. Kentucky Rifle

Martin Meylin has been credited with being the first great American gunmaker and inventor of the Pennsylvania long rifle—which was to become known as the Kentucky long rifle (“Kentucky,” in those days, being anything in the wilderness west of Pennsylvania). Meylin’s small cobblestone workshop still stands off a two-lane road in Lancaster. Local schools are named after him. Plaques have been erected in his honor. State politicians have even written legislation commemorating his contribution to American life.

Well, while we know that Meylin left his home in Zurich, Switzerland, around 1710, and ended up in the German-speaking area of Lancaster County—a place that would become the center of American gun innovation for more than a century—we don’t know much else. And while it is tidy to give a single inventor credit for the gun, it’s probably the case that numerous inventors and blacksmiths engineered the Kentucky rifle over a period of decades.

The invention created by these German-speaking immigrants and their children changed the way Americans hunted, fought, and explored. Captain John Dillin, author of a popular book about the Kentucky rifle in the 1920s, would claim that the gun “changed the whole course of world history; made possible the settlement of a continent; and ultimately freed our country of foreign domination. Light in weight; graceful in line; economical in consumption of powder and lead; fatally precise; distinctly American; it sprang into immediate popularity; and for a hundred years was a model often slightly varied but never radically changed.”

The rifle—the word derived from the German riffeln, meaning to cut grooves—was first developed in Europe as a sporting weapon for noblemen to hunt with more precision. The invention of gun barrels with spiral grooves on the interior was likely to have originated among a number of blacksmiths in southern Germany and Switzerland. The physics of spinning propulsion as a means of improving aim was known to weapons makers for thousands of years—ever since feathers were placed on arrows to make them spin.

Muskets of early America were smoothbore weapons, and ammunition was fired at relatively low velocity. Moreover, the musket ball, which fit loosely when loaded down the muzzle, would bounce off the inside of the barrel when fired, making the final landing place unpredictable. The rifle Meylin and other gunsmiths made, on the other hand, immediately offered shooters decent accuracy at 150 or more yards—or a hundred more than an average musket.

The first German gunsmiths of Pennsylvania produced traditional Jäger rifles. Expensive and often ornate, they were short, easy-to carry, large-ammunition flintlock guns built to be quickly reloaded so that the carrier could hunt big game in dense German forests. The Kentucky rifle would feature a more elegant and elongated design. The longer barrel would increase the distance between the rear and front sights, giving the shooter a better bead on his target. A gun typically weighed only around nine to ten pounds: much lighter than a musket and therefore much easier to carry. The bore size, or “caliber”—which represents the diameter of the barrel—was reduced to save on powder and lead. The .45-caliber long rifle could deliver three times the number of shots from the same amount of powder that was used in the typically .75-caliber musket. These improvements made hunting for game—the most important use of the gun at the time—much more successful.

There were downsides to the weapon, of course, as the American revolutionaries would soon learn. For starters, rifles could be incredibly difficult to load. Fitting a projectile into a bore tightly enough to engage the rifling sometimes required hammering it all the way down the barrel. This was fine for a frontiersman who was hunting deer, but it created a perilous situation for a soldier. Another disadvantage of rifled weapons was that the black powder burned dirty and the grooves gunked up with residue after a few shots. This fouling often made loading impossible until the barrel was cleaned with a damp swab.

Yet, the imagination and techniques mastered by Meylin and others like him offered the thousands of incoming settlers and explorers the opportunity to continue to push into the wilderness of the Cumberland Mountains and surrounding areas. It was a gun that involved reengineering and reimagining Old World technology and was adapted to the rigors and uniqueness of frontier life, playing a large part in the Western mythos and becoming a standard tool of the American woodsman.

2. Colt’s “Peacemaker”

Like the Kentucky rifle, the revolver was a distinctly American invention. Unlike the Kentucky rifle, however, the revolver’s development, production, and initial popularity can be largely attributed to one man, Samuel Colt. The Connecticut native was not merely a mechanical virtuoso but a promotional and manufacturing mastermind who would become a template of the nineteenth-century American industrialist, epitomizing the exuberance and possibilities of the populist era of mid-1800s American life.

A self-made man, Colt was prodigious, a tireless self-promoter, innovator, autodidact, and mythmaker. His nose for opportunity made him one of the wealthiest men of his day. With this success came a leap forward in firearm technology. Colt invented the first hands-on, workable, mass-produced revolving firearm. And with his gun, he became one of the first industrialists to take advantage of mass marketing, celebrity endorsements, and corporate mythology to sell his product—a success that laid the groundwork for twentieth-century businessmen, including Henry Ford. In practical terms, his gun was more deadly, more accessible, more dynamic, and more useful than any that had ever been designed before it. It would play a part in carving out the West, revolutionizing war, and transforming the role of the gun in modern American life.

Although he certainly perfected the idea, multi-chambered guns already existed when Colt came up with his first revolver. Pepperbox pistols, for instance, were widely owned and used by the time Colt was first carving out his wooden model for the revolver. Named after the pepper grinders they resembled, these handguns had to be manually rotated, and were notoriously unreliable and difficult to aim because of the front-loaded weight of the multiple barrels. In 1814, the year Colt was born, the Boston inventor Elisha Collier had taken out a patent on a five-shot flintlock model pistol. Collier’s development was to invent a gun that was “self-priming”: in other words, when the hammer of the weapon was cocked, a compartment automatically released a measured amount of gunpowder into the pan for another charge.

Sam Colt

At the age of twenty-one, though, Colt decided to patent the idea he’d been toying with for years: the repeating revolver, It made a singular technical advance—what may seem obvious to us now: rather than relying on five barrels, Colt’s invention had a rotating cylinder that came into alignment with a single barrel. When cocked for firing, the next chamber revolved automatically to bring the next shot into line with the barrel. The gun included a locking pawl to keep the cylinder in line with the barrel, and a percussion cap that made it more reliable than any other gun available dominant mechanism of American weapons. The patent protected Colt’s fundamental ideas until 1857, by which time he was enormously wealthy and world-famous.

Colt would sell the Walker, Dragoon, and the Navy models. But it was the Single Action Army—more famously known as the “Peacemaker”—that would embody his legacy. An elegant gun with a practical and streamlined design, it took on near-mythological status not merely because of its easy use but because of the legendary men who claimed to shoot it. The first model gun had a solid frame that weighed around three pounds, a .45-caliber with a 7.5-inch barrel, blued steel, and an oil-stained walnut grip. It was soon one of the most popular guns ever made. In 1872, the Army’s Ordnance Board would adopt it for service.

It was likely Colt himself who came up with the moniker “Peacemaker” for his gun. It was not merely a stab at irony or an adman’s clever copy. Colt often, and vigorously, argued that this gun could empower the average American. The average man could order one through the mail for the somewhat affordable price of $17 and have a light but powerful weapon within weeks. And selling his guns to civilians—every civilian, if possible—would be Colt’s principal goal.

The weapon could be brandished for self-protection, of course, but it was a firearm so formidable that war was to become too destructive to be worth engaging in, Colt argued. The gun was, to him, an imperative tool in fulfilling the American dream on both a personal and providential scale. A Colt made one man six. “Place a revolver in the hands of a dwarf . . . and he is equal to a giant,” he said.

More Pocahontas Memes From Yesterday HERE

3.5 Million More Registered to Vote Than Live Adult Citizens

A study by the Election Integrity Project shows there are 3.5 million more people registered to vote than there are living American citizens, which is an invitation to voter fraud:

The Election Integrity Project of Judicial Watch — a Washington-based legal-watchdog group — analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011–2015 American Community Survey and last month’s statistics from the federal Election Assistance Commission. The latter included figures provided by 38 states. According to Judicial Watch, eleven states gave the EAC insufficient or questionable information. Pennsylvania’s legitimate numbers place it just below the over-registration threshold.

My tabulation of Judicial Watch’s state-by-state results yielded 462 counties where the registration rate exceeded 100 percent. There were 3,551,760 more people registered to vote than adult U.S. citizens who inhabit these counties.

“That’s enough over-registered voters to populate a ghost-state about the size of Connecticut,” Judicial Watch attorney Robert Popper told me.
These 462 counties (18.5 percent of the 2,500 studied) exhibit this ghost-voter problem. These range from 101 percent registration in Delaware’s New Castle County to New Mexico’s Harding County, where there are 62 percent more registered voters than living, breathing adult citizens — or a 162 percent registration rate.

Washington’s Clark County is worrisome, given its 154 percent registration rate. This includes 166,811 ghost voters. Georgia’s Fulton County seems less nettlesome at 108 percent registration, except for the number of Greater Atlantans, 53,172, who compose that figure.

But California’s San Diego County earns the enchilada grande. Its 138 percent registration translates into 810,966 ghost voters. Los Angeles County’s 112 percent rate equals 707,475 over-registrations. Beyond the official data that it received, Judicial Watch reports that LA County employees “informed us that the total number of registered voters now stands at a number that is a whopping 144 percent of the total number of resident citizens of voting age.”

All told, California is a veritable haunted house, teeming with 1,736,556 ghost voters. Judicial Watch last week wrote Democratic secretary of state Alex Padilla and authorities in eleven Golden State counties and documented how their election records are in shambles.

“California’s voting rolls are an absolute mess that undermines the very idea of clean...

Sweden Cancels Traditional Christmas Show; Promotes Islamic Events

“Oh Holy Night,” a traditional Swedish Christmas concert that has aired on state TV on Christmas Eve for decades, has been canceled this year, according to Swedish news reports.

Promotions for the largest outdoor Christmas concert in Scandinavia — and possibly the world — have been shelved at the same time the promotion of Islamic cultural events has been dramatically increased, according to the Swedish news reports that provide a lengthy list of similar outrages against traditional Western values in Sweden.

Is the case of the canceled Christmas concert another example of Swedish and Christian traditions being suppressed in order not to offend migrants who don’t subscribe to traditional Western values such as Christmas?

Swedish liberals are world beaters at this game. According to Voice of Europe, earlier incidents featuring Swedes annihilating their own traditions in favor of Muslim culture include:

Replacing Lucia, a folk character, with a black boy. According to the ancient Swedish Pagan Yule tradition, Lucia has always been a long haired, blonde, beautiful woman — now she is a young Somalian boy
Putting a woman in a hijab on the annual Advent/Christmas calendar
Canceling the traditional student choirs’ appearance on TV at Valborg (Swedish traditional spring celebration)
Forbidding students to wave the Swedish flag at school on graduation day
The introduction of a “prayer for diversity” at National Day celebration events

Left-wing Swedes have also been promoting the unpatriotic idea that Sweden’s National Day should not be celebrated. TV and national newspapers have been full of this leftist rhetoric in recent months.

At the same time Muslim culture and traditions have been intensely promoted:

On Midsummer’s Day (Sweden’s most important and traditional holiday) TV4 decided to let a woman in a hijab teach Swedes how to cook properly
Ramadan is now celebrated with public events in several Swedish cities as well as on state TV
Authorities are allowing Islamic call to prayer (at 110dB), while at the same time forbidding Christian churches to ring their bells

Sadly, this situation is not unique to Sweden. Similar things have occurred, and continue to occur, across much of Western Europe.

In order to save ourselves and our culture we need to start speaking up. We must stop accepting the destruction of our culture, traditions, and...

Trump's Approval Rating Is Better Than You Think

Polls: Despite the overwhelmingly negative coverage of his administration, President Donald Trump's approval rating is as high or higher than half of the previous six presidents at this point in their first terms. You won't believe who scored better.

Trump has been enjoying a rare string of good news. The economy is humming and the jobless rate just hit a 49-year low. Trump won an intense battle over Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court. He secured a replacement for Nafta. His poll numbers are edging up. And Republican prospects in the midterm elections appear to have improved.

But according to the Gallup Poll, Trump's approval rating as of his 632nd day in office was 44%.

Is that good or bad? That depends on the context. Trump has never polled well. Gallup had his approval rating at 45% the day he took office.

The mainstream press focused intensely on Trump's initial rating, which was well below those of any president since Gallup first started tracking this in 1945.

Even Gerald Ford's approval rating 90 weeks into his accidental presidency was 71%.

But the press lost interest in such comparisons as time went by.

Perhaps one reason is that, by this point in their first terms, approval ratings for most presidents had declined. Sometimes sharply.

As a matter of fact, Trump's approval rating is now higher than, or tied with, three of the past six presidents at this point in their first terms.

He's currently tied with Obama (at 44%), and above both Clinton (41%) and Reagan (42%).

Obama's approval rating on day one was 67%, but steadily declined as his economic policies failed to re-energize the economy, despite the massive stimulus, while he forced through the highly unpopular ObamaCare.

Clinton's eroded after he broke his promise on tax hikes.

At this point in Reagan's first term, the economy was in a painful recession, and unemployment was above 10%.

Needless to say, each went on to win re-election handily.

But look at who scored higher than Trump: George W. Bush (67%), George H.W. Bush (56%), and Jimmy Carter (49%). W. was coming off his sky-high approval rating in the wake of 9/11, which peaked at 90%. He ended his second term at 34% approval. George H.W. had just started building up troops in preparation for liberating Kuwait in Operation Desert Storm. Carter had recently signed the Camp David Accords.

What does all this mean?

First, it means that anyone who thinks Trump's low approval ratings today are a problem for his re-election prospects is mistaken. There's no correlation. Three presidents with ratings as low or lower than Trump's served two terms. Two with...

Davos just declared that America is great again.

The World Economic Forum, which hosts the annual conference of global elites in Switzerland, said on Tuesday that the United States is the most competitive economy in the world.

The U.S. has not held the number one spot since 2008, when the aftermath of the financial crisis and bungled recovery efforts left the U.S. economy limping.

“The United States, as one of the world’s great innovation powerhouses, is very well positioned in this new competitive landscape,” the Forum said in an article explaining its ranking. “It ranks first overall in the world in three of our twelve pillars; business dynamism, labour markets and financial system. It comes second in another two; innovation (behind Germany) and market size (behind China).”

The U.S. is followed by Singapore, Germany, Switzerland, and Japan in the top five. The top ten includes the Netherlands, Hong Kong, the U.K., Sweden, and Denmark.

Roughly 70% of the U.S. score originates from data supplied by international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank, which typically are produced with a two to three year lag, according to the Forum.

“Does this mean that the US’ ascent can solely be attributed to the far-sighted structural reforms and innovations of its previous administration? The answer here is a very firm no: some of America’s strengths predate even that period. Likewise nor can we dismiss the efforts of the current administration: if 70% of the report’s weighting comes from hard data, the remaining 30% represents the views of America’s business leaders: if they are positive about America’s competitiveness then their views will be very much based on the here and now,” the...