Weekend Open Thread: DAESH’s Battle Pills, Map of Shootings, the Unbreakable Donnie Trump, and CIF Results

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Screenshot image of Slate map of shootings centered on Santa Ana.  Map's legend (showing some shootings behind it) has been moved over from west of Bristol Ave., between 1st and McFadden.

Screenshot image of Slate’s interactive map of (mostly) 2015 shootings, centered on Santa Ana. The map’s legend (showing faint images of some shootings behind it) has been moved over from west of Bristol Ave., between 1st and McFadden.

We have four stories for you this weekend; the links are in the headlines and we recommend that you consider reading each one in full.

Before You Favor Ground Troops in Syria, Give Some Thought to Captagon

[Captagon, a] tiny, highly addictive pill produced in Syria and widely available across the Middle East, its illegal sale funnels hundreds of millions of dollars back into the war-torn country’s black-market economy each year, likely giving militias access to new arms, fighters and the ability to keep the conflict boiling,according to the Guardian.

“Syria is a tremendous problem in that it’s a collapsed security sector, because of its porous borders, because of the presence of so many criminal elements and organized networks,” the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC) regional representative, Masood Karimipour, told Voice of America. “There’s a great deal of trafficking being done of all sorts of illicit goods — guns, drugs, money, people. But what is being manufactured there and who is doing the manufacturing, that’s not something we have visibility into from a distance.”

A powerful amphetamine tablet based on the original synthetic drug known as “fenethylline,” Captagon quickly produces a euphoric intensity in users, allowing Syria’s fighters to stay up for days, killing with a numb, reckless abandon.

“I felt like I own the world high,” another user said. “Like I have power nobody has. A really nice feeling.”

“There was no fear anymore after I took Captagon,” a third man added.

So the question is: would we want U.S. troops fighting without Captagon against DAESH (ISIS/ISIL) troops who are using Captagon — or do we want our troops fighting while using Captagon to stay competitive?  Problems with the former: our troops have the disadvantage of not inviting death to quite the same degree.  Problems with the latter: our troops might commit atrocities, get hooked and go through bad withdrawal, and/or suffer massive PTSD as a result.  DAESH’s veterans benefits are considerably less lavish than ours.  Not an easy problem to solve.  (Oh, and also — when we go to war with a country, we have a tendency to bring their drugs back home: see opiates, 1960s, 1970s, 2003-present; cocaine 1980s-1990s.)

An Interactive Map of Shootings by Firearms, December 5, 2014 to December 5, 2015

It is what the headline says it is.  And it’s comprehensive and astonishing — and yet also unastonishing.  You can tool around for yours on this one if you’d like not to have a good day.  Here’s a small taste of what Slate has to say about it:

Interactive Map of 2015 shootings for most of OC (not much east of the 55).

Interactive Map of 2015 shootings for most of OC (not much east of the 55).

Thanks to a nonprofit, nonpartisan project known as the Gun Violence Archive, data on gun homicides and nonfatal shootings is now available well before the federal government releases its statistics. Those data include location information that makes it possible to plot those shootings on a map showing how many have taken place in your vicinity.

Violent crime has fallen drastically since the 1990s, but guns stubbornly claim a disproportionate share of American misery, with the rate of firearms-related death largely holding steady for the past 15 years. That grim constancy has come as regulation, industry safety improvements, and public health campaigns have reduced the mortality of other products. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tables show that in 2013, guns killed 3,428  more people than falls, 4,635 more people than alcohol, and 30,876 more people than fires. Researchers have forecast that 2015 will be the year that bullets kill more Americans than car accidents, which had long been the leading cause of injury death in the U.S.

The interactive map included in this article is the result of a collaboration between Slate and the Trace, employing the aforementioned Gun Violence Archive data. It represents an attempt to close the gap between awareness and understanding. When shooting deaths and injuries are laid out geographically, one is able to assess first the sweeping reach of gun violence, and then its pernicious patterns, the dots growing ever denser as the reader scans from the countryside to the suburbs to the inner city. Finally, mapping gun violence this way makes it possible to see how often it has played out in your own neighborhood, town or city, and state—and how close it has come to touching the routes you travel in your own life, as well as those of your family members, friends, and co-workers.

In all, the map contains 30,215 incidents recorded by the Gun Violence Archive from Dec. 5, 2014, to Dec. 5, 2015. As comprehensive as it is, it’s also incomplete: Guns are used in twice as many suicides as homicides (and are the most lethal means of suicide). But because many suicides are not reported in real time by the law enforcement sites and news outlets that the GVA mines in compiling its database, they are missing from this visualization. Also not included are an additional 9,000 episodes in which no one was struck by a bullet, though some of that gunfire undoubtedly affects those who witness or hear it.

Originally, this appeared without designations of Police, Accidental, and Self-Defense shootings, which you can see in the legend of the map of Santa Ana at the top (as opposed to the map of mostly of OC except the east and south, just above.)  Readers demanded their inclusion.  It’s a good addition.  A map that breaks down all of those green markers into their own individual shootings could be accomplished — by anyone who wants to volunteer!

Trump’s Voters Sings His Praises: ‘Unbreakable!  He’s Politically Alive, Dammit!  It’s a Miracle!’

Republican pollster Frank Luntz did some intensive three-hour focus groups with GOP voters in which he flung all sorts of attacks against Donald Trump to see what might loosen his grip upon them.  Answer: everything backfires.

The broader conclusion to be drawn here — and the Luntz focus group reaffirms rather than reveals this reality — is that the people who are for Trump will almost certainly not be peeled off of him no matter what is thrown his way over the coming weeks and months. That’s amazing.

That’s like Trump and his negatives. There are so many — including so many self-inflicted wounds — that they cause people who like him to simply say some version of “Oh, that’s just Trump being Trump.” If Mr. Burns is indestructible, then Trump is un-attackable. Everything bad is already out there about him. Oftentimes, he’s said it about himself in some way, shape or form.

And it’s not simply that normal political attacks against Trump don’t work. As Luntz demonstrated in the focus group, those attacks actually make Trump stronger because they affirm for his supporters that he is different from all the politicians trying to bring him down.

That means there is absolutely zero that establishment Republicans can do other than hope fervently that Trump’s momentum slows or stops on its own or, somehow, he collapses under his own weight.

UPDATED! OJB is Your Primary for OC CIF Playoff Football!  (Please do not attempt to verify this)

It’s CIF Regional Finals this weekend, and four of the five OC Teams in the playoffs have already played.  (Note: the figure 5 includes La Mirada, because that city — along with La Habra Heights and Cerritos and unincorporated South and East Whittier — rightfully belong in OC and someday we shall have them!  But technically it’s just four.  Still, we’re rooting for La Mirada!)

OC is about 18% of the Southern part of the state.  (Note: these percentages are a little bit made up based on unverified assumptions.  This is sports, not districting!)  Very few people seem to understand the new playoff system, and I am not among them, but beneath the “Open Division” Bowl it looks like “I” is highest, “VI” is lowest, and within every numerical level “AA” is better than “A”.  (My guess is that this system is imposed because it allows the victors of, for example, the fifth-best “II-A” title to have a decent shot at convincing unwary college recruiters that it was actually the second-best of the title games.)

With 14 title games (the “Open” game for the real State Championship is the CON-COR game between De La Salle of Concord against Centennial of Corona) for 11-man teams, in a statistically just world OC should legally be entitled to between two and three of those spots — as well as about 1 of the 14 eventual titles.  So how are we doing in the CIF’s brand new and incomprehensible 14-title game regime?

I-AA

First of all, this seems to be the most prestigious division (and therefore feeds into the second-most prestigious outside of the State Championshop game.)  Mission Viejo beat 7th-ranked Helix of La Mesa to improve its record to 15-0.  The 5th-ranked California team will face 19th-ranked Bellarmine College Prep of San Jose (now 14-1) — an upset 42-35 winner over 8th-ranked Folsom in the Northern Regionals — in next weekend’s title game.

II-AA

Ranked 16th State La Habra, which until yesterday had lost only to Mission Viejo this season, lost to 9th-ranked Camarillo, which will play 28th-ranked Del Oro next weekend.

III-AA

Pride of Almost-Orange County La Mirada, ranked 29th, demolished 76th-ranked Oceanside.  It will play 121st-ranked Campolinda of Moraga next weekend, which hardly seems fair.

IV-AA

Anaheim Hills’s Canyon High, vanquisher of gutty little Brea-Olinda last week, put up its 142nd-ranked squad up against 72nd-ranked Bonita Vista yesterday and lost by a mere field goal.  The Chula Vistans advance to play 130th-ranked Hanford, which is in Hanford.  (Which is west of Visalia and Tulare, south of Frenso.)

Division V-A

12/12 @ 7:30p @ Laguna Hills HS

Orange County’s final hope for a second CIF Championship, San Juan Capistrano’s 167th-ranked Saddleback Valley Christian, faces an interloping 520th-ranked Kennedy (of Delano, not La Palma) squad this evening in Laguna Hills.  Whichever wins the Southern Regional title plays the winner of the game between St. Bernard’s of Eureka and Fall River of McArthur, who should end up ranked around 300.  It will be hard for anyone to stop the Warriors!

UPDATE, 12/13:  But maybe not that hard.  Saddleback Valley Christian will be in the title game against St. Bernard’s of Eureka, but under circumstances that don’t bolster confidence.  SVC, now ranked 179th in the state, beat now-500th ranked Kennedy last night by a score of only 59-45.  (In other words, the winner went down in the state rankings and the loser went up.)  That score may not sound too bad … until you compare it to now-245th-ranked St. Bernard’s 55-0 shellacking of Fall River, which knocked the latter down almost 200 ranks to 509th.  Beware of those Crusaders, SVC — they’ll be looking for a way to upset you and — eureka! — they may have found it!

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This is your Weekend Open Thread.  Talk about those four stories or anything else you’d like, within reasonable bounds of discretion and decorum.  Go Diablos, Maradores, and Warriors!  (And Navy!)


About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose attorney, semi-disabled and semi-retired, residing in northwest Brea. Occasionally ran for office against jerks who otherwise would have gonr unopposed. Got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012; Josh Newman then won the seat in 2016. In 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002; Todd Spitzer then won that seat in 2018. Every time he's run against some rotten incumbent, the *next* person to challenge them wins! He's OK with that. Corrupt party hacks hate him. He's OK with that too. He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.) His daughter is a professional campaign treasurer. He doesn't usually know whom she and her firm represent. Whether they do so never influences his endorsements or coverage. (He does have his own strong opinions.) But when he does check campaign finance forms, he is often happily surprised to learn that good candidates he respects often DO hire her firm. (Maybe bad ones are scared off by his relationship with her, but they needn't be.)