Lame-duck Governor Tom Wolf continues to veto pro-gun legislation at a steady clip. Late in 2021, he vetoed a permitless carry bill. In February ’22, he killed a much-needed firearm preemption legislation with the stroke of his pen. The state receives 7 points for RTC and full marks in the Black Rifle and NFA Categories. Use-of-force laws favor the victim, earning the Keystone State 8 points. Overall, Pennsylvania’s shooting culture is strong, particularly outside of the big cities. The state has a long and proud hunting tradition.
■ 50. Hawaii
Hawaii may be a tropical paradise, but that description does not extend to the states’ gun laws. Hawaii remains the most-restrictive state in the nation when it comes to issuing carry permits. Though state law does allow for their issuance, none have been granted for several years, meaning that there are no valid permits at this point. Purchasing a handgun — even from a private party — requires a background check, a permit to purchase and registration. In 2022, the duration of purchase permits was extended from 10 days to 30, a small step in the right direction. Hawaii restricts semiautos, NFA items and even “assault pistols.” Use-of-force laws are weak here. The state does have a strong hunting culture though.”
The “Iron Pipeline” refers to the nearly unrestricted flow of firearms purchased in states with lax gun laws along the I-95 Corridor from Florida to Maine. The guns are used by criminals in states with stronger gun laws.
My Uncle Lou a sergeant in Patton’s Army said the Germans had better tanks but for every Sherman tank they destroyed 10 would replace them. Back when President Roosevelt controlled production. Reagan changed that.
Also not mentioned in the New York Times article below, our national shipping infrastructure might not be up to the task of effectively shipping defense related products.
"The Pentagon last year also created a team assigned to work with contractors to identify labor and supply chain shortages — and then gave out more than $2 billion in funding to quickly help resolve them.
That team started with a focus on resupplying weapons sent to Ukraine, Mr. LaPlante said, but it has now been set up as a more permanent unit inside the Pentagon to help the Defense Department make an “overall shift away from the just-in-time mind-set.”
In a reversal of post-Cold War policy, antitrust regulators have also increased scrutiny of continued military industry consolidation, with the Federal Trade Commission for example moving last year to block a $4.4 billion plan by Lockheed Martin to buy Aerojet Rocketdyne.
“We cannot afford to allow further concentration in markets critical to our national security and defense,” Holly Vedova, the director of the trade commission’s Bureau of Competition, said early last year, after the agency sued to block the deal."
Railroads were functional when Roosevelt was president. Now unmaintained rails open wide & leave trains stuck on railroad ties. There’s not enough railroad workers to inspect rolling stock, brakes fail, trains crash & CEOs buy back stock options.
The Interstate Highway System designed in part by President Eisenhower to quickly move weapons is falling apart from lack of maintenance. Shipping defense materials over Interstate bridges ready to collapse is also a problem.
“Many bridges were built after World War II and meant to last 100 years. But they're falling apart ahead of schedule, due to combinations of extreme weather, the enormous growth of vehicle traffic, deferred maintenance and a lack of coordinated oversight.”
Meanwhile China has up to date well maintained highways spanning the Eurasian Continent. China’s rail system is well maintained & state of the art.
"Introduction
China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), sometimes referred to as the New Silk Road, is one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects ever conceived. Launched in 2013 by President Xi Jinping, the vast collection of development and investment initiatives was originally devised to link East Asia and Europe through physical infrastructure. In the decade since, the project has expanded to Africa, Oceania, and Latin America, significantly broadening China’s economic and political influence.
Some analysts see the project as an unsettling extension of China’s rising power, and as the costs of many of the projects have skyrocketed, opposition has grown in some countries. Meanwhile, the United States shares the concern of some in Asia that the BRI could be a Trojan horse for China-led regional development and military expansion. President Joe Biden has maintained his predecessors’ skeptical stance towards Beijing’s actions, but Washington has struggled to offer participating governments a more appealing economic vision.
What are China’s plans for its New Silk Road?
President Xi announced the initiative during official visits to Kazakhstan and Indonesia in 2013. The plan was two-pronged: the overland Silk Road Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road. The two were collectively referred to first as the One Belt, One Road initiative but eventually became the Belt and Road Initiative.
Xi’s vision included creating a vast network of railways, energy pipelines, highways, and streamlined border crossings, both westward—through the mountainous former Soviet republics—and southward, to Pakistan, India, and the rest of Southeast Asia. Such a network would expand the international use of Chinese currency, the renminbi, and “break the bottleneck in Asian connectivity,” according to Xi. (In 2018, the Asian Development Bank estimated that the continent faces a yearly infrastructure financing shortfall of over $900 billion.) In addition to physical infrastructure, China has funded hundreds of special economic zones, or industrial areas designed to create jobs, and encouraged countries to embrace its tech offerings, such as the 5G network powered by telecommunications giant Huawei.
Xi subsequently announced plans for the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road at the 2013 summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Indonesia. To accommodate expanding maritime trade traffic, China would invest in port development along the Indian Ocean, from Southeast Asia all the way to East Africa and parts of Europe.
China’s overall ambition for the BRI is staggering. To date, 147 countries—accounting for two-thirds of the world’s population and 40 percent of global GDP—have signed on to projects or indicated an interest in doing so.
"China’s colossal infrastructure investments may usher in a new era of trade and growth for economies in Asia and beyond. But skeptics worry that China is laying a debt trap for borrowing governments."
The former president’s team is pressuring other Republicans to show support, basking in favorable coverage from right-wing media and collecting checks. But advisers privately acknowledge many potential risks.]
"Many of the world's most notorious days in history, from the day Adolf Hitler was born to the Oklahoma City Bombing, happen to fall on April 19 or the days surrounding it.
If domestic terrorism had a name, it might be April 19 – the date that notorious events linked to violent extremism like the Waco siege of 1993 or the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 have in common. And that’s no coincidence.
‘Right around this time, we focus on April 19 and April 20,’ Associate Director Joanna Mendelson, of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, told Inside Edition Digital. ‘These dates do have symbolic purpose. This is part of the subculture of right-wing extremists and in particular anti-governmental extremists and white supremacists, who glorify really horrific acts, who glorify extremist killers and elevate them on a pedestal.”
It's almost like the corporate press is playing an imagined MATRIX game set in 1980 politics. They leave out this part:
"The description of Trump as a terrorist leader is neither metaphor nor hyperbole—it is the assessment of veteran national security experts. Trump, those experts say, adopted a method known as stochastic terrorism, a process of incitement where the instigator provokes extremist violence under the guise of plausible deniability." MOTHER JONES
The big story:
Trump is the Republican Party's Osama Bin Laden preparing to call out his terrorists, again. They're armed & make bombs.
***
The article below concerns Trump terrorist attacks since 2020. They've escalated dramatically & now include Trump's terrorists attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021:
Some may say Trump will do anything to stay out of prison, possibly calling on help from domestic terrorists to frighten prosecutors & juries.
A 'dog whistle' or a 'train whistle?'
"Former President Donald Trump – launching his bid to return to the White House even as he rallies supporters to protest against an arrest he claims is impending – chose an auspicious location for one of his earliest rallies for the 2024 election: the city of Waco, Texas.
The rally, planned for Saturday, will fall during the 30th anniversary of the siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco. Federal agents, aiming to arrest cult leader David Koresh, surrounded his walled compound in an armed standoff that lasted more than a month. It ended in a botched raid that left 76 people, including 25 children, dead...
Megan Squire, deputy director for data analytics at the Southern Poverty Law Center, scoffed at the idea that Trump would be holding a rally in Waco for anything other than the city's symbolic resonance among the far right.
"Give me a break! There's no reason to go to Waco, Texas, other than one thing – in April," Squire said. "I can't even fathom what's what that's about other than just a complete dog whistle – actually forget dog whistle, that is just a train whistle to the folks who still remember that event and are still mad about it.."
Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, cautioned it may be too early to conclude Trump chose Waco to begin his campaign because of its significance to the far right.
Pitcavage pointed out that Texas is an important state for the Republican primaries, and noted that of the major cities in Texas, almost all lean Democratic – except Waco and Forth Worth. The choice of the central Texas city of 140,000 residents could be simply a safe bet for the Trump campaign to ensure a large, enthusiastic pro-Trump crowd, he said.
The only way to know for sure that Trump chose Waco for its symbolism will be if the former president refers to the events of 1993 in his comments at the rally, Pitcavage said.
'Like, for example, comparing federal government misdeeds or persecution of the Davidians to what's going on in his cases today," Pitcavage said. Without an explicit reference to the Waco siege, he said, "I would not automatically assume that that was a likely reason (for the rally) – not compared to some of the other much more current reasons why it might be the case.'
But Pitcavage's colleague, Segal, said regardless of the reasoning behind choosing Waco, a certain proportion of Trump supporters will read an anti-government message into the choice.
'Clearly, in the current context, that is going to be understood by some extremists as a dog whistle,' Segal said. 'If Trump is promoting this idea of government overreach – of targeting him —– it's kind of the perfect place to send a message, and will be understood that way whether he intends it or not."
"Prosecutors in the special counsel's office have presented compelling preliminary evidence that former President Donald Trump knowingly and deliberately misled his own attorneys about his retention of classified materials after leaving office, a former top federal judge wrote Friday in a sealed filing, according to sources who described its contents to ABC News...
The developments described by sources illustrate another dimension of the former president's ongoing legal vulnerabilities. As Smith's classified documents probe marches forward, prosecutors in New York are mulling a separate indictment against Trump over hush payments he allegedly paid to an adult film star ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Trump also faces scrutiny in Georgia over his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in the state, and Smith is continuing his own probe into Trump's attempts to interfere in the 2020 election.
Central to Smith's efforts in the classified documents probe is determining whether lawyers who represented the former president falsely certified in response to a grand jury subpoena that Trump had returned all classified records to the government or whether Trump himself sought to conceal records that he might have unlawfully retained.
Federal prosecutors have claimed that lawyers for Trump certified in June 2022 that a "diligent search" of Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate turned up just 38 classified documents stored in a secured storage room. But two months later, when FBI agents raided the premises, they found more than 100 additional documents marked classified -- some of which were located outside of the storage room, including in Trump's office desk, prosecutors said.
In her order last Friday, Howell was unsparing in her criticism of Trump's actions since early last year in response to the government's attempts to retrieve all classified documents taken from the White House. At one point she described Trump's interactions with officials from the National Archives as a "dress rehearsal," sources said, for his later efforts at misdirection in response to the grand jury subpoena.
As ABC News has previously reported, investigators sought to compel the testimony of Corcoran and another Trump attorney, Jennifer Little, as part of their probe, citing the crime-fraud exception, which allows for attorney-client privilege to be pierced in cases where it is suspected that legal services were rendered in the commission of a crime. Sources told ABC News that Howell ordered Little's testimony as well, with the exception of one of the topics for which she sought to assert attorney-client privilege.
Sources said prosecutors have sought to question Corcoran on how he aided another Trump attorney, Christina Bobb, in drafting the June 2022 statement to the Justice Department, which Bobb ultimately signed.
Attorneys for Trump were expected to appeal Howell's Friday ruling, sources said.
Raymond A. Cawley, a man I worked with in a dental laboratory and friend was a drummer.
As a teenager Ray played in band. In Philly he sat in with Coltrane & other jazz giants when he could. Ray played in the Army Band in Germany. Ray played the pubs in Europe sitting in with U.S. jazz musicians.
Ray is survived by Raymond P. (Jillian) and Sinead Cawley.
Talking with Ray was always a wonderful experience. So many stories.
One story as I recall it:
The band leader of the Army Band wanted the auditorium dark. The band would play, then the lights would go on. That meant setting up in darkness. Ray did a drum roll and hit the cymbals. The cymbals were the signal for the lights to come on. When the lights came on the cymbals were rolling on the floor. Ray didn’t secure them. He just kept playing.
Than there was the prank on General Patton’s son. Ray & two band members put trumpet mutes on their head & saluted when Patton’s car went by. Patton was furious.They got away with it.
I hope Ray plays on with a band somewhere. The band will be laughing. I miss him.
Crime and violence in our community. A wide ranging panel discussion integrating the community, law enforcement, clergy and educators. At Abdala Park, Coatesville, PA, August 27, 2016.
Elwood Dixon, "Each of us has a talent for doing something positive. Some of us are good at communicating with others. Some are good to organize movements...In order to achieve positive results, we must have positive attitudes...
It will take the coming together of our government, law enforcement, our school system, our churches and our community... Only a joint effort will get us where we want to be."
Pastor Derrick Johnson, "Pastor 'D", "In my first conversation with President Obama;:Right at the top was violence in schools.
Right at the top was community relationships with police.
Right at the top the disproportionate ratio of black incarcerated, African American incarcerated as opposed to other ethnicities..."
In order to deal with the problems that you face. It's very, very important from here that you listen closely to these next words if you are serious about changing your community.
Let's be real... We're not talking about people you don't know. We're talking about your sons. We're talking about your daughters. We're talking about your nephews. We're talking about your grandchildren...
Pay attention, the next dead person could be your son, your grandson or somebody in your family."
“And by the way just in case you think I don't know what I'm talking about, after fifteen and one half years in prison, six and one half on death row, three and one half in one cell with twenty three and one half hours a day. For picking up a gun and shooting somebody who was a drug dealer who was attempting to beat me up and rob me in the community with that blurred line. And then fifteen years later being vindicated and extracted from prison on a self defense executive pardon. I think I know a little bit about being a scared little sixteen year old boy that made the wrong choice.”:
When Paul Janssen took office as the Coatesville City Manager his first task was to make the streets safe.
This is partly a response to the anti-Paul Janssen people: I was a Coatesville Planning Commissioner. When an alleged death threat did not work; the “Bloc of Four” arranged a different way to remove me from the planning commission. What they might not know is at the planning commission meeting two weeks after the meeting with the alleged death threat District Attorney Joe Carroll waited from before the meeting began until after it was over. If Ernie Campos and/or Richard Legree showed up again he was prepared to charge them with terroristic threats. The alleged threat is in the minutes of the Coatesville Planning Commission meeting May 10, 2006:
Paul Janssen, Director, has served as Director of the Center for Excellence in Local Government since August, 2012. Paul holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Bloomsburg University and a Masters in Public Administration from The American University. Prior to coming to the Center, Paul was a Township or City Manager for over 25 years in four municipalities in Pennsylvania. Paul also was a consultant to local government and non-profits over the past six years including a 30 month commitment as an interim Borough Manager. Additionally, Paul has served as the Coordinator for the Consortium of Communities for Montgomery and Chester County.
Coatesville is now a leader in community policing.
I was sitting at my computer and heard loud sirens. I opened the front door just as 3 police cars left. AND Lt. Rodger Ollis delivered balloons to my neighbor.
Special thanks to Sergeant Ollis, Chief Jack Laufer and Coatesville City Councilperson Marie Hess and the many adults and children who made Coatesville a little bit nicer.
Hagee - 'Hitler Was Fulfilling God's Will For Israel'
“It’s an ageing leadership. Hagee is in 80s. As the leadership turns over, there might actually be a big shift on this. But as we’re sitting here today, in 2023, the majority of the evangelical world is very pro-Israel.”
“When Israel’s former ambassador to the US said his country should worry less about what American Jews think and concentrate on Christian evangelicals as the “backbone” of support for the Jewish state, he had in mind the Texas megachurch pastor John Hagee.
Hagee founded Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a group that claims 11 million members, who have had a significant influence on Republican party politics and in hardening Washington’s already strong support for Israel.
President Donald Trump made no secret of his desire to keep Hagee and Christian Zionist voters happy as a key part of his base by abandoning even the pretense that the US was a neutral player in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Former South Carolina governor and current White House hopeful Nikki Haley recognised Hagee’s power within the most important religious bloc of Republican voters and their influence over political priorities, from anti-abortion laws to Israel policy, when she invited him to give the invocation at her presidential campaign launch last month.
“Pastor Hagee, I still say I want to be you when I grow up,” she enthused.
Left largely unmentioned by Haley and Hagee’s Israeli allies were his antisemitic views, including calling Hitler a “half-breed Jew” who was sent by God to drive the Jewish people to Israel. He has also suggested that Jews brought centuries of persecution on themselves by disobeying God.
None of that discouraged Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, from addressing a CUFI summit in Washington in 2019…
Former vice-president Mike Pence is an evangelical who once suggested that God sent Trump to save Israel. Trump’s top diplomat, Mike Pompeo, overturned longstanding legal advice that declared Israel’s settlements in the West Bank unlawful and then became the first US secretary of state to visit one of them.
Last month, Pompeo defended Israel’s decades-long control of the Palestinian territories by claiming it has a biblical claim to the land.
“[Israel] is not an occupying nation. As an evangelical Christian, I am convinced by my reading of the Bible that 3,000 years on, now, in spite of the denial of so many, [this land] is the rightful homeland of the Jewish people,” he said.
Even with Trump gone, the consequences linger. President Biden has not reversed the embassy move nor revived the position that Israeli settlements are illegal.
Still, Hummel said change may be on the horizon, albeit a distant one.
“There is a difference generationally. The younger, under-40 evangelical community is far less supportive of Israel and far more interested in social justice ways of thinking about the Middle East, which would side more with the Palestinians than the Israelis. And that may cause a massive change in the way we talk about evangelicals and Israel in 10 or 15 years,” he said.
“It’s an ageing leadership. Hagee is in 80s. As the leadership turns over, there might actually be a big shift on this. But as we’re sitting here today, in 2023, the majority of the evangelical world is very pro-Israel.”
"Hagee’s views on Israel are closely tied to his belief that the apocalypse is imminent and the Antichrist will soon come to power. As Sarah Posner writes, “Hagee is ultimately less concerned with the fate of Israel or the Jews than with a theocratic Christian right agenda.”
Back in 2008, John McCain was forced to reject Hagee’s endorsement after Hagee’s extreme record gained national media attention. In one sermon that came to light during the 2008 campaign, Hagee said that God sent Adolf Hitler to the world in order to be a “hunter” of Jews, advancing a divinely inspired plan to push Jews back to the land of Israel:
Theodore Herzl is the father of Zionism. He was a Jew who at the turn of the 19th century said, this land is our land, God wants us to live there. So he went to the Jews of Europe and said ‘I want you to come and join me in the land of Israel.’ So few went that Hertzel went into depression. Those who came founded Israel; those who did not went through the hell of the Holocaust.
Then God sent a hunter. A hunter is someone with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. And the Bible says — Jeremiah writing — ‘They shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and from the holes of the rocks,’ meaning there’s no place to hide. And that might be offensive to some people but don’t let your heart be offended. I didn’t write it, Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel.
When Russia was part of the Soviet Union my dentist was deeply involved with bringing Jews to the United States, many of them were Ukrainian and settled in the Elkins Park area. I worked in dental laboratories in Elkins Park. As a result I knew several people from Ukraine. None of them appeared to be interested in politics.
In about 1976 I worked with Valeri a man who came over from Ukraine. In Russia he was a dental technician making crown and bridge work. He had a clandestine business making crown and bridge work for wealthy people in Russia and Ukraine. This was illegal and if the KGB found him he could be put in a Russian Gulag.
To more than survive in the Soviet Union you needed to be an extraordinary person. Valeri was on the 4th floor of a terraced restaurant. He punched a guy and then realized the guy was KGB. Val jumped from the 4 story terrace to the shrubs below.
He said in Ukraine I was a millionaire. But the KGB was on to him and he had to come to United States to keep out of prison. His wife was Jewish and that was his ticket to the United States.
He told me the Soviet union would break up. He said the communists are all old men.
