Chickens and Unschooling

It is so fucking bizarre to me, how I can read the essay of a liberal, whose carefully chosen words, meant to be an attack on the current President and his supporters, are in actuality, an incredibly accurate condemnation of the last President, his administration, and supporters.

It's like we're living in a dual reality.

Happy Independence Day. Enjoy our freedom while we still have some!

Cleverly constructed Twitter link.

Last night Hubby reminded me of the Crime Squad puppets by ReasonTV.

Crime Squad Episode 4 even has the Qualified Immunity song at the end.

A range.

Merica

God Bless the USA

American Savage

I'd never seen this before. It's a good bit of history, especially given the current tenor of the discussions going on around the 2nd Amendment these days.

“The Arms of All The People Should Be Taken Away”

Well, a couple of weeks ago Hubby was fired. It was the same day his company sent out the email advising that by some date in December everyone must comply with the vaccine mandate or leave the company. So the disagreement with his boss over something trivial, being overblown and the company siding with management, just accelerated our schedule by 6 weeks or so. M will not comply with the illegal government mandate.

Thanks to finding Dave Ramsey on the radio over two decades ago, we are fine, at the present, financially. M is not ready to retire, though, and is looking for another job. The aforementioned illegal vaccine mandate is putting a spanner in the works, however, since defense contractors used to be his largest likely employer. That leaves small shops with a decent understanding of virology, or at least a solid desire not to invade their employees' private medical business.

We'd like to stay here, but may reevaluate next year if nothing shakes out. I have suggested, not entirely in jest, that M could apply at the local indoor shooting range. It would be a drastic pay cut but, but it would give him something to do, and they are the folks who had "No Masks Allowed" signs on their door through the worst of the mask crazy mandating done by our county last year.

Too bad, I really liked my occasional five dollar white chocolate mocha from the Starbucks in my grocery store.

http://www.starbucks.com/blog/an-open-letter-from-howard-schultz-ceo-of-starbucks-coffee-company/1268

"For those who champion “open carry,” please respect that Starbucks stores are places where everyone should feel relaxed and comfortable. The presence of a weapon in our stores is unsettling and upsetting for many of our customers."

Seriously, substitute something like "black person", "gay person", "handicapped person", "deaf person", hell even "breastfeeding", for weapon and you'll see how absurd this statement is. What if I only feel "relaxed and comfortable" when I know I have a means of protecting myself and my family if an armed psycho decides to target the place where I'm trying to enjoy my coffee?

Yesterday, M took C shooting out in the desert. They had to cut it short, though, since the mosquitoes were out in droves. C said he still had a good time, even if they only got to shoot for about ten minutes. C told me his favorite gun to shoot now is the pistol Daddy let him use - the 22 semi-auto M got a while back. C told me how it opens up when you shoot the last shot, so you know when you are out of ammo and that that was convenient.

Rocketsong knocks it out of the park.

"You want to have a Conversation?". Click the link for that gun conversation, or just keep reading since I'll quote it below, in it's entirety.

He says what I want to say, just much better. He rants a good rant. I wish I had enough readers to make this go viral.

You want to have a Conversation?

So the so-called progressives want to have a conversation do they? All right; Let's have a conversation. Let's talk about how every single mass shooting in the past decade except for one happened in a "gun free" victim disarmament zone. The sole exception was the Safeway Parking lot shooting in Tucson where Laughner was actually stopped by a concealed carry holder who tackled the shooter for fear of hitting innocent bystanders.

Let's have a conversation about how in Israel the terrorists blow up school busses full of schoolchildren because mass shootings are too damn difficult because the teachers shoot back. Let's have a conversation about how the "gun free schools act" has done nothing but create shooting galleries of live targets for any and every whack-job out there.

Let's talk about the fact that in every mass shooting that is answered by deadly force, the average body count is 9 times lower than when the shooter is unopposed. Oh, and let's talk about how the police and the government you adore so much have absolutely no duty to protect you or anyone else.

Let's finally admit to ourselves that no matter how good it sounds in theory, Gun Control simply does not work, and have a conversation about real solutions.

Real solutions like repealing the Gun Free Schools Act. Real solutions like arming the 10's of thousands of teachers in this country who are military veterans. Real solutions like training children how to resist an armed attacker and bringing firearms marksmanship classes back into the schoolroom. Real solutions like insisting that business owners who post no firearms signs be held civilly accountable for doing so.

And while we are at it, let's also have a conversation about how at the end of the day, there will always be evil, and evil has never been stopped by a sign, or a prohibition, or a law. Evil is only stopped by good men willing to use force to do so.

You want to talk? Lets talk...

Today I discovered a new sign on the door of our local (and my absolute favorite) grocery chain.

"No firearms allowed."

WTF!?

After explaining to a confused looking clerk (I didn't wait around to find a manager, but if the sign stays I'll write a letter explaining why they lost a loyal customer) why I wouldn't be shopping there after all, I then went several more miles up the road to a different grocery chain.

I called the corporate customer service number when I got home (I actually called the public relations number first, since I figured this would end up a public relations nightmare for this chain if the no firearms sign reflected a new corporate policy). The fellow I talked with is unsure about the status of the sign, had actually gotten another call about it recently, and is looking into it for me.

I actually came away from the call with the customer service representative more upset with his attitude about firearms than I had been by the presence of the sign on the door. He seemed to think it was perfectly reasonable for a store to have a "No Open Carry of Firearms." sign (something he said the local chain has always had, but I'd never seen one or I wouldn't have been a loyal customer all these years). His reasoning was that if a customer was scared by seeing a gun on another customer, then to make that customer comfortable it would be reasonable to bar everyone from carrying openly. He said it was the same as if a customer were uncomfortable with any behavior of another customer, though I expect that if they had customers with irrational fears of any other object, they wouldn't make a policy banning it.

ETA: Before I finished preparing this post the customer service fellow got back to me that the sign should be down now. Huh, that was fast. I still wonder why it made it up in the first place, but I missed the call (I was busy with the new horse at the time and didn't hear the phone) and don't want to call him back just to ask. The damage may already be done anyway. I had a craptastic day because of that sign and don't feel as warmly towards that local chain as I did this morning. I'll still shop there sometimes if the sign is really gone, but I had a really good trip to the other grocery chain and may shop there more often, even if they are farther away; they had really nice green onions and grapes.