Many statues taken down by the crowds in cities across the country today, Saturday, June 20th.

Yet the police stand by and watch.

Blatant Destruction of Public Property. Easy to see. Easy, really, to stop.

Yet they stand there.

Are they afraid of the crowd?

Or are they under orders to stand their by the Mayors of those (generally, but not always) Blue cities?

Either way, are the police not supposed to prevent such actions? Or are they simply political police, who only enforce laws and prevent actions when it is easy and approved? 

Again, if the elected government chooses to pass legislation to remove the statues, that is one thing: But to allow a Mob to make that decision?

At what point will the Police step up and stop this behavior?

Note: these folks destroying the statues claim they are “Racist”.

Do I get to destroy things that I see as “racist”?  Just because I FEELZ that it is racist? Who gets to decide the validity of the “Felling” of something being “Racist”?

So Fed-Ex delivered my 1911 to the FFl .

On Monday, they called and said that my number had come up and I was gonna get the 1911 I had applied for. They shipped it Tuesday, and it arrived Wed

I got to see it, and handle it, but can’t take delivery until Thursday evening.

It is a Remington Rand, likely delivered in late 1944.

It has a new barrel and bushing, is nicely (re)-parkerized, and has an obviously new bit of lockwork. The trigger and hammer appear to be correct, but I’m not enough of an expert to know for sure at first glance. …The trigger is crisp, but is gonna take some shooting to smooth out and lighten up. I bet it is 6 lbs. Kinda looks like they jacked up the slide and the frame and replaced everything under the hood….

I’ll take a box of 50 ball ammo and see how well it shoots tonight. I’ts not gonna be a safe queen. Maybe not a carry gun, but few of my firearms are safe queens.

Might do pictures later. 

“Uh, Gary tower, Conqust 4588…there’s a really HUGE snapping turtle on the taxiway”

“Ok, We will send someone out”.

And a few minutes later, as I taxiied past the turtle “Gonna take take 2 or more people to move him, he’s better than 18 inches across”.

I hope they didn’t hurt him moving him off the runway. As I departed, they had a big rope they were pulling him with, one guy on each side, sliding him off the pavement. 

I bet he was more than 50 years old. 

Nearly every person who is shot by police, be they black miscreants or white miscreants, Hispanic or Asian, innocent or not, has had experience with the police and the court system before.

Example: our Black Man killed by police du jour: Mr. Rayshard Brooks.

He had been arrested and imprisoned in 2014 for FOUR charges…. False Imprisonment, Simple Battery/Family, Battery Simple and Felony Cruelty/Cruelty to Children. He was on probation. 

Not a choirboy, as they say.

And, apparently, that explains why he fought arrest. He didn’t want to go back to prison (even though it was a futile thing, they knew who he was and they had his car….they would simply have issued a warrant and added to his woes with two additional charges…resisting arrest and felony DWI…but I doubt, in the heat of the moment, he was thinking rationally.

No one, especially the media (or the BLM folks) ever seem to notice that they are backing a criminal. It doesn’t matter to them, all they see is a Black Man. Which raises the question:

Who is the racist here? 

I’m not advocating Mob Rule here, but since the Governments seem to be allowing the Mob to run rampant, perhaps others in our society should start taking matters into our own hands a bit, if only to stop the wholesale destruction of our history….

Perhaps it is time for some upstanding citizens to start defending those monuments the Mob hates so much, and that the police are choosing not to defend.

Since the police are standing by while Mobs of Black Lives Matter (or those claiming to be) are tearing down monuments. Perhaps we should stand between them and the Mob. A line of people, perhaps carrying signs (conveniently) stapled to a Louisville Slugger shaped handle. Of course, things could get somewhat …Kinetic…in the ensuing argument, but that might not be a bad thing, as long as no one died or was too seriously injured.  Not advocating violence here, but a line of people standing around these monuments, simply saying”no” and refusing to let them pass with their ropes and sledgehammers and crowbars might be a good thing.

If some folks then got bruises, it might make the others think.

We have what we have in this country because we protect it. We pay our police offers (via taxes) to do that protecting…normally. If, however, the police choose to stand by and allow a Mob to wantonly destroy our public treasures, then perhaps we, as a population need to step up.

I’d much rather the police do so, mind you. They are trained and have the tools to (more or less) properly restrain the miscreants. We don’t. But needs be when the police are absent or fail to act.

Yes, this also makes Us a Mob. But a mob bent on protecting rather than destroying.

The real reason these people do what they do is because they are no stopped nor disciplined for doing. Like a child or a puppy that is never disciplined, they never learn right from wrong.

A bit of Hickory Shampoo might teach them, if the police choose not to stop them.

Again, not advocating that we hunt them down or anything, simply that we stand in their way as they try to do illegal acts.

What happens then is up to the Mob themselves.

That the Left told us not to judge an entire group based on the actions and behavior of just a few?

Of course, that was Muslims. Followers of the Koran, the word of Mohammed the Prophet….a downtrodden minority group.

But they won’t give the same consideration to cops…police, the enforcers of the laws of the country. They are a reviled group, hated by those folks who don’t think that the rules apply to them. Instead, they judge all cops on the behavior of a few.

If you remove the Left’s double standards, they’d have no standards at all. 

So I am FINALLY getting it correct.

I can now (more or less) do a proper hold and (mostly) figure out the proper method of entry.

This has been my stumbling  block for a few moths: Flying a hold that looks something like the shape it should. Correcting for wind was just something that I could not do well.

VFR pilots have the ability to reference something on the ground to correct their flight path when it is windy….not so when IFR. Flying a hold (a more or less rectangular pattern referenced to a specific point) when one has no references except a couple of needles in a dial on your instrument panel was something that I simply could not Grok. I could fly a great hold (one that looks like a racetrack like the Indianapolis 500 track) in a no wind situation…that was easy…add in a brisk wind, and it became ugly (at least when I was flying).

Finally, after a fair bit of work, lots of frustration, lots of conflicting advice from other pilots and (did I mention?) a whole lot of frustration, it seems to have gelled for me.

Saturday, I and my instructor took off and flew on an instruction flight. There was a cloud layer (broken or worse) at 2400 feet, but we found a hole in the clouds and climbed VFR to the tops..about 6400 feet. Since we were flying in a northeasterly direction, we had to go higher..(Odd thousands plus 500 for VFR) and so 7500 it was…

The ground temp was about 74 degrees. At 7500, it was about 52 Fahrenheit. Cold for just a t-shirt. Had to actually open the heater vent to keep warm.

I did intersection holds three times along the way to the Keeler VOR (ELX), and then spent 30 minutes doing assorted holds at Keeler….this time with a layer of clouds under me. I finally seem to be getting the visualization of the geometry correct. (Finally!).

This was a great breakthrough for me. The rest of the tasks in IFR flying are actually pretty simple (for me, at least) The En-Route portion is pretty easy. Flying approaches to a runway?..cake. Filing a flight plan? child’s play. Flying on instruments alone? Easy-Peasy. Cross check of the instruments and instrument interpretation and cross check? As easy as walking on a level sidewalk…..

Soon, I will take my checkride…

Remember what it stands for.

(let me be clear, up front….I DO NOT advocate the destruction of ANY monuments nor statues)

So if I were so inclined, would the police stand by and allow me to smash, pull down , deface with paint, or otherwise vandalize the MLK statue in Washington DC?

Or, if that one is too sacred (and protected because it is on Federal property….)

Then can I deface, smash, break, topple or spray-paint graffiti on this one in Atlanta? That one should be fair game, as the Confederate statues were also on State Property…..

(All those Confederate (and other) statues that were destroyed over these past few weeks by Black Lives Matter “protesters” were on state or city property)

Why no arrests for this wanton destruction of public property? Would there be arrests if the MLK statues were destroyed in a similar manner?

Why is it OK for some people to destroy some statues?
Where are the police? Why aren’t they stopping this? Is someone in charge keeping them from intervening? If so, who?….and why?

If some “rednecks”, flying Confederate flags from the backs of pickup trucks drove into the Georgia State Capitol grounds and put a chain around the neck of the MLK statue and pulled it off the pedestal and took sledgehammers and broke the casting….would they be arrested and (hopefully) prosecuted? *(Hint: the only thing that prevents this from happening RIGHT NOW is the respect for the rule of law)…

If not, then what is the difference? Or is it simply that some forms of protest are approved and others are not? Some groups have “approved grievances” and methods of expressing it while others do not? Who decides what is approved?

Why is vandalism allowed in many cities when it is a protest by liberal groups?