Gun Free Zone

I saw Bayou Renaissance Man’s post today and I realized I don’t post enough guitars here. So, here you go, a song from the best Dreggs’ album, Unsung Heroes.

I am sadden by the “Karen-ess” among public servants.

Los Angeles fills Venice Skate Park with sand amid #CoronavirusOutbreak

pic.twitter.com/DSWyRGpx5k

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) April 18, 2020

How petty of an asshole you have to be to remove the sand from the beach and pour it an a skating park. Waste of taxpayer’s’ money all around.
And for the record, you could have achieved the same idea by spreading several bags of cheap gravel from Home Depot.

And we also include the Media.

Miserable fucks, the lot of them.

Still true. pic.twitter.com/3ooBEEVtJj

— Amnesty International USA (@amnestyusa) April 17, 2020

Apparently nobody told them we are way past giving a damn if somebody is trying to shame us, specially with politically-charged B.S.

And as friend in Facebook pointed out, using yellow related to Chinese? Really? And we are the racists.

But in the sprit of cooperation, I went ahead and fixed the ad:

You are welcome, Amnesty International!
.

Because of the server gasoline shortage in Venezuela, some have started using Mules again for transport, such as this man in Lara state #Venezuela pic.twitter.com/oWTJAXO3NP

— CNW (@ConflictsW) April 17, 2020

The gasoline shortage is getting so bad that people in the countryside are going back 100 years or more and relying on mules to move around. Notice the rider has spurs and all.

From Politico:

The Shutdown Backlash Is Coming Soon—With a Vengeance

I’m going to skip over the introduction of them making fun of Rand Paul, because it’s  tiresome.

Far from rendering Paul’s brand of politics irrelevant, it seems possible, even probable, that the wake of the coronavirus will be a powerful boost to the animating spirit of libertarianism: Leave me alone.

Among the questions looming over American politics is about the nature of what promise to be multiple backlashes over different dimensions of the coronavirus crisis. Most obvious is what price Trump pays for his administration’s tardiness in responding to the contagion in its early stages. Less obvious is what price supporters of activist government pay for the most astounding and disruptive intervention in the everyday life of the nation since World War II.

If anything I suspect that Trump will pay less of a price than Politico wants him to.  It is Democrats in the House and Democrat governors who are pushing a shut down in perpetuity.  Trump is being hounded for wanting to reopen America.

“Trump wants you to die for Wall Street” is the Left’s slogan.

What I can say about Trump is that he seems to fall on the side of as little shut down as possible for as short as possible.  It’s Democrats closing Churches and saying you can’t go fishing or buy paint.

The imminent libertarian surge is not a sure thing but it is more than a hunch. In informal conversations, one hears the sentiment even from people I know to be fundamentally progressive and inclined to defer to whatever health officials say is responsible and necessary to mitigate the worst effects of coronavirus. It is possible both to support the shutdown and powerfully resent it — the draconian nature of the response, and the widespread perception that to voice skepticism of any aspect of its necessity is outside respectable bounds.

The shutdown has be the antithesis of what it means to be American.  Hiding in our homes, not being productive, with a government micromanaging our lives.

We begrudgingly accepted it for a short period of time to save lives.  With the curve flattening, we need to get back to the status quo fast.  Drawing out the shutdown one second longer than it needs to be tells us it’s not about the lives saved it’s about politicians not wanting to give up power.

On top of that, every ridiculous and capricious decree, like the Michigan Governor banning the sale of grass seed ads to this belief that its about control.

The pandemic response arguably could represent liberal values at their best. Government, guided by scientific expertise, protected vulnerable people through a noble exercise of shared sacrifice for shared benefit.

That’s very rosy.  It also displayed the Liberal  values of repression of free speech, religion, and peaceful assembly.  It’s been anti-gun, remember that states were shutting down gun stores until Trump issued his list of essential services to include gun stores.  It’s been driven by emotional hysterics about “if you go outside you’re gonna kill grandma” instead of statistics considering population density.

So the lockdown reflects the worst of Liberal values too.

The pandemic response arguably could represent a caricature of what critics disdain about liberalism. Government, responding in a panicky way to headlines and hysteria, ran roughshod over individual freedom and the private sector, a problem whose only remedy was even more remorseless expansion of government.

I just said that.

These protesters surely would cite the widespread shaming of people who go to the beach instead of sheltering at home or refuse to wear masks as evidence of the scolding, sanctimonious character of the supposedly progressive mind.

Yes, yes they will. They are doing it now.  Just look at the memes on any moderately conservative blog.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has drawn praise, and some mockery, for driving around Chicago sternly scolding people at parks and trails to go home. But then she got skewered when she personally ignored the order that haircuts are a verboten non-essential activity. Lightfoot responded that as mayor she is the “public face of this city” and has to look good.

Hypocrisy is the worst and most significant Liberal value.  If Liberals didn’t have double standards they’d have no standards at all.

Under normal circumstances we just mock the hypocrisy.  Now the hypocrisy is unbearable because we are subjected to life altering restrictions.

When the politician who criticizes the rich gets a $1,000 we mock.  When we’re cutting our hair at home because the salon has been closed by the politician who just got her hair done, it’s not funny and now we’re angry.

Even non-libertarians, for instance, might be glad to have someone like Paul being heard about the proper rules if government proceeds with proposals to use mobile phone apps to track the movements of people who test positive for coronavirus. The pandemic may be one of those historical moments that rewrite ideological lines— but we can be sure it won’t erase them.

Sometimes I think we’ll count ourselves lucky if we get out of this without shooting.

When Nancy Pelosi calls a tax return “crumbs” during a down economy, we get offended. We’re used to that.

When the House Democrats who demanded the entire US economy be shut down by government fiat delay a program to lend money to the small businesses they forced closed and then Nancy Pelosi shows off her two $25,000 refrigerators full of $12 per pint ice cream that’s more than the usual offensive.  That’s pushing a new level of “let them eat cake” that we’re not used to.  We know how that story ended.

The writer here got a peek of the other side.  I suspect that the backlash is coming and the more resistance to American reopening there is the worse it will be.

This is some serious bullshit out of the Big Sky Country state.

From the Montana Daily Gazette:

Montana County Demands People Wear Government-Issued Arm Bands To Do Business

In what might be one of the most over-the-top and draconian responses to coronavirus yet seen in Montana, Valley County is mandating that people wear government-issued pink arm bands in under to purchase products inside of stores. The measure, enforced by the Valley County Health Department, insists that store-owners keep customers out unless they have the pink arm-bands, which denote the customer has been in the area more than 14 days and submitted to quarantine protocol.

According to the flier produced by the Valley County Health Department, out-of-towners who lack the government-issued armbands will be prohibited from stores and residents are notified to call law enforcement if they do not comply.

I have nothing witty to say about this.

This is the United States of America and no citizen should ever be forced to wear any sort of public identifier signaling they they are part of some group because the government mandates it.

Full fucking stop.

I’d have figured shit like this would have started in New York, not cowboy country, but it really doesn’t matter.

The first bureaucrat who looks at me and says “you need to wear this to walk Tina city street and engage in business with the public, and if you don’t you will be arrested” can get fucked with a bazooka.

Update:

Apparently the town council realized that was a bad idea and retracted it.

I’m not going to hold my breath that this won’t pop up somewhere else.