Got this via Wirecutter.  Click on the link for the video.

LOWER EAST SIDE, Manhattan — A man was brutally beaten on a sidewalk in the Lower East Side Friday afternoon as pedestrians walked by — and it was all caught on camera.

Source : Video shows man being brutally beaten on lower Manhattan sidewalk as people walk by

But thank God there was not one of them armed redneck tourists who could have pulled a gun and helped the victim. I am sure New York City is much safer without those hillbillies from Miami or Tampa.

After New Hampshire enacted Constitutional Carry, similar bills are still under consideration and a chance in Alabama, Indiana, North Dakota, and South Carolina.  The bill is still under consideration in South Dakota, but the governor in South Dakota has already indicated that he will veto the bill.  As of right now, there is still a chance for 16 to 17 states having Constitutional Carry by the end of the year.

Source: John Lott’s Website: Update on Constitutional Carry Bills becoming Law this Year, with good chances in at least three more states

And here in Florida cannot get effing Open Carry to even reach the Senate floor. I don’t think we had a decent Pro Gun bill passed in what? 3-4 years?  I am actually thinking that resetting all GOP Senators and Congresscritters ratings to zero is not enough.

If by the end of the Legislative Session we do not get Open Carry at least, no Florida Gun owner should not canvas, donate or vote for any GOP member of the Legislature.

If we have a legislature with a Republican majority that acts Democrat , might as well let the Dems take over. Why do I wast my time, money and votes on people who do not deliver?

Seriously, you’d think we were Illinois or Connecticut or some retrograde state like that.

First, a definition is necessary

An asterisk is a star-shaped symbol (*) primarily used to call attention to a footnote, indicate an omission, or point to disclaimers (which often appear in small print in advertisements, contracts, and the like).

With that out of the way…

HB 53
Restoration of Civil Rights: Designates act as “Restoration of Civil Rights Act”; provides for automatic restoration of former felon’s civil rights, other than right to own, possess, or use firearms, following completion of sentence of incarceration & community supervision; provides conditions for & exemptions from automatic restoration; provides for education concerning civil rights of people who have felony convictions; provides retroactive applicability; provides for contingent effect.

(Bold and underline are mine)

The bill was introduced by Clovis Watson Jr. and has 2 sponsors: John Cortes and Bruce Antone. I’ll give you three chances to guess what party are we talking about here. Yup, you got it.

I have mentioned before that I have no problem restoring Second Amendment rights to felons without a documented history violence, provided they completed their sentences and restoration has been made. But that is not good enough for Florida Democrats, in fact, they wish they could treat non-criminal citizens the same way. “Oh yes, honey. You can vote (several times for us if possible) participate in  demonstrations and the whole other gamut of Constitutional Right, but you just cannot defend yourself or your family.”

It is rather scummy of them, isn’t it?

(Note that I mention documented history and not just convictions. Due to the deal-making crap that goes in our courts, a violent jackass with a long history of violence can get his charges reduced or dismissed for a fine or community service but don’t get a deal for having a home-made still & couple of gallons of moonshine for personal consumption and you get 5 years in the pokey per charge.)

We need to upend this bullshit. After all the effort, one senator who secured her re-election with a letter promising to be a good girl, managed to apparently kill all Gun Right laws for this session and then laughingly have her picture taken with the head Gun Control Carpetbagger.

We do a group effort to get what we supposed to be our people elected and that includes the GOP as majority. But somehow, when a Quisling screws things up, it is only us that suffer the consequences.

Not Anymore.

My proposal is simple: Every GOP Senator’s NRA endorsement is to be considered null and set to zero.  You will get the votes and remain in the majority only by the amount of  Pro Gun laws signed into law during the season. We only pay for delivered product. Our rights are not to be treated as a Ponzi Scheme. 

And a GOP Senator may say: “But I am in the Widgets and Unicorns Committee! I don’t see any Gun Bills! That is unfair!” Well Sparky, life is unfair. The best NFL Special Team in the 2016 belongs to the Philadelphia Eagles, but they didn’t even make it to the Superbowl, right? They paid the price for the incompetence of the rest of their teammates. Why should you be spared? Your “company” did not deliver the products promised and we can’t get a refund, why should we continue to patronize your company? You want to be re-elected? Go to that committee, kick some ass and get them to do the right thing…or start looking for employment in the Civilian side.

That is my idea: GOP Senate delivers signed Gun Bills or everybody gets DeLaPortillaed. If you gonna allow your party to act Democrat, why should we bother to vote for you? We’ll stay home, thank you.

A blog reader was kind enough to allow me to share it with everybody

Dear Senator,

In light of recent events in the Florida Senate, namely the actions of Senator Anitere Flores, I find myself appalled and concerned.  She mentioned respect in a meeting of the Judiciary Committee.  But, how do you respect someone who openly betrays those they represent and the trust they have placed in her?  Sen. Flores obviously violated that trust and has disappointed many people.

I cc’d an earlier email to Senator Joe Negron to you, so I’ll respect your time and not repeat everything here.

I believe your position was clear, but so was Sen. Flores’ as recently as last year when she was running for reelection.   The time has come to ask some very direct questions of those we place our trust in.  So, please indulge me and restore my confidence in my representation.

SENATOR, I HAVE TWO SIMPLE AND DIRECT QUESTIONS FOR YOU AND THEY ONLY REQUIRE A YES OR NO RESPONSE.

 DO YOU SUPPORT THE 2^ND AMENDMENT AND PRO GUN RIGHTS LEGISLATION IN FLORIDA? 

 SECONDLY, DOES THE PRESIDENT PRO TEMPORE ANITERE FLORES’ CURRENT NEW-FOUND ANTI-GUN STANCE REFLECT YOUR POSITION OR THAT OF THE FLORIDA SENATE GOP?

Thank you for your time at this busy time for you.

Respectfully,

D. J.

Lehigh Acres, FL

D. J. has a correction to make: “Senator Flores comments were in the Rules Committee not the Judiciary she is on both.”

It is a great letter and use it to come up with your own version. I love this part:

I believe your position was clear, but so was Sen. Flores’ as recently as last year when she was running for reelection.

A very polite way of saying “I am not sure, but you might be another sack of lying excrement.”

Two thumbs up.

Well, Flores told the News Service of Florida it was the attack on the Pulse nightclub that made her change her mind about gun rights, and that “no one should be surprised by her stance.”

“I think to say that it came as a surprise to the NRA — I’m surprised they’re surprised,” she said during an online interview.

So, if you take Sen. Flores at her word, it was the June 12 terrorist attack that killed 49 people and wounded 53 more that made her switch camps.

Well, that doesn’t quite jibe with the facts.

On July 6 — more than three weeks after the attack — Flores sent a gushing letter to Marion Hammer, past president of the NRA, a current board member and executive director of the Unified Sportsmen of Florida.

Nowhere in the letter does Flores mention the terrorist attack or her newfound anti-gun stance. In fact, her letter indicates quite the opposite.

“I have always been and will continue to be a fierce defender of our constitutional rights,” Flores wrote. “The Second Amendment, in particular, guarantees a fundamental individual right to keep and bear arms that government has no right to infringe upon. During my years in public service, my record shows that I have acted in accordance with these beliefs and values.”

Flores sent the letter in lieu of completing one of the candidate surveys, which Hammer sends out every year.

“Your survey covers many issues and topics that I have addressed over my ten years in the Florida legislature,” Flores wrote. “I encourage you to review my record, as it is the best reflection of my position on each of these policy items.”

Source: When trying to justify why she turned on gun owners, Sen. Flores flubs the facts

Shall we revisit the letter?

It is becoming clearer and clearer somebody or some organization came to her with enough “motivation” to suddenly switch sides and get her to find a home among Gun Control. Was it cold hard cash? No idea. Was it a promise of “Hey! We got Terry McAuliffe to be the Governor of Virginia. We can make you Mayor of Miami-Dade easily!”? Again, no idea.

And don’t forget to demand for answers from the Senate President, Joe Negron and at least your local Senator even if they are not in that committee.  Pressure must come from all sides to make the GOP develop a backbone.

I caught this article in The New Republic: BLUEXIT, A MODEST PROPOSAL FOR SEPARATING BLUE STATES FROM RED.

It starts exactly like this:

Dear Red-State Trump Voter,

Let’s face it, guys: We’re done.

For more than 80 years now, we—the residents of what some people like to call Blue America, but which I prefer to think of as the United States of We Pay Our Own Damn Way—have shelled out far more in federal tax monies than we took in. We have funded massive infrastructure projects in your rural counties, subsidized your schools and your power plants and your nursing homes, sent you entire industries, and simultaneously absorbed the most destitute, unskilled, and oppressed portions of your populations, white and black alike.

All of which, it turns out, only left you more bitter, white, and alt-right than ever.

Can’t you just feel the contempt flowing off the screen?

In the Hindu tradition, there is a caste system called the Varna.  Up at the top are the Brahmin, the priestly class, and at the bottom are the Shudras, the labor class.  The Brahmin believe they were placed at the top by the God Brahma himself, and everybody else is stacked below.  In the Hindu tradition, the Brahmins are represented by the head, and the Shudras are represented by the feet.

When I read “Dear Red-State Trump Voter, Let’s face it, guys: We’re done,” I am inclined to agree.  

Mr. Baker explains that we are done because the Blue States are tired of carrying the dead weight of the idiot Red States.

Some folks here in self-supporting America like to believe that there must be a way to bring you back to your senses and to restore rational government, if not liberal ideals, sometime in the foreseeable future.

In the past, he has explained that the “Smug Liberal” is a myth.  They are not out of touch people who live in bubbles, it is that everyone else who is not a liberal is the problem.

There is something more pernicious going on here, part of the longer right-wing project to label anyone in the opposition as somehow deracinated, unnatural, unconnected to “the homeland.”

Why are we done?  Is it Red State vs. Blue State?  Is it Rural vs. Urban?

No.

It is Head People vs. Feet People.  Self appointed Brahmin vs. those they identify as Shudras.

Despite his supposed working class background, Mr. Baker is a member of the Head People.  He is a low budget version of Michael Moore.

Like the Brahmin of the Varna, the Liberal Elite feel it is their duty to direct the culture.  They create the moral code for society that we Feet People must follow.  They are wiser and know better, because they went to a handful of the right colleges, were taught the right thoughts to have, work in the right careers, and are therefore blessed – the the American sense with fortune and sometimes fame.

The rest of us are Shudras.  We are feet people.  We didn’t go to the right schools and learn the right thoughts.  We don’t peddle influence or bullshit, or fondle money for a living.  We labor.  We grow the food, mine the coal, refine the petroleum, make the goods, pave the roads, and keep the lights on.  We are Feet People.

The Head People believe that they have every right to micromanage the lives of the Feet People.  Why not?  If we knew what was best, wouldn’t we be rich and famous like them?  Our middle class or working class incomes is proof positive that we need them to guide us and tell us how to live.

This is why the Left has come unglued and gone totally batshit since November.  We Feet People were supposed to vote for the Queen of the Head People.  We were supposed to want to be ruled over and managed and be told how to live our lives.

We rejected that.  We told the self-appointed gods to get fucked.

They just can’t understand why we voted against their iron-fisted, boot-to-the-face beneficence.  We must be bigoted, horrible, racist, misogynistic monsters not to know our own place in the world.

But if you actually came down and asked the Feet People what we want, 90% of the answer is quite simple.

WE.  WANT.  TO.  BE.  LEFT.  THE.  FUCK.  ALONE.

As Douglas Adams said about god “and without faith I am nothing.”  The election of Trump showed the Head People that the Feet People have no faith in them as priests anymore.  This is exactly the same reason why the Oscars had such abysmal ratings.  The Feet People didn’t tune in to listen to the Head People’s sermon on a Liberal high holy day.

The Head People are screaming and yelling and trying to shame the Feet People into revering them again.  They are not coming to terms with the discovery that the gospel they preach is becoming more and more irrelevant to the Feet People.

So what is the other 10% of the answer?  Do what we think the job of government should be: take care of our people.

When the Feet People send our sons and daughters, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters off to war, when they come back and we see them waiting in line and dying at the VA but illegal immigrants getting a substantial portion of welfare and instate or free tuition it pisses us off.  When we see our bridges falling down and potholes in our highways and green energy companies owned by Head People get billions of dollars to go bankrupt, it pisses us off.  When we are told we are bigots because we have some concern about a  high school boy who wants to expose his twig and berries in a girls locker room, it pisses us off.  All of this reminds us that the Head People look down on us Feet People and don’t understand us, and don’t want to, and want to force their beliefs on us.

So what does Mr. Baker want to do about not being listened to by the Feet People anymore?

In short, we’ll take our arrogant, cosmopolitan, liberal-elite football—wait, make that soccer ball—and go home.

What an insufferable prick. What benefit is it to him?

For starters, we now endorse cutting the federal income tax to the bone—maybe even doing the full Wesley Snipes and abolishing it altogether. We will raise our state and local taxes accordingly to pay for anything we might need or want. We ask nothing more from you and your federal government. Nothing for infrastructure, or housing, or the care of the poor and sick—not that you gave us much, anyway. All we want is our money, and you can keep yours, dollar for dollar.

Expect reality is not on his side.  Take California.  It is hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs, Nestle and Toyota have pulled out.  The “land of startups” is the worst in the country for small business entrepreneurs.  California Head People welcome big, Liberal, dotcom Head People startups with their investment money.  If you are a middle class or blue collar worker, the Head People don’t want you there.  God forbid you toil in the dirt and grow anything other than Head People wine, they will destroy you for a fish.

Mr. Baker wants to live in Head People land, surrounded by only other Head People, who do Head People jobs.  Too bad for him, it is the Feet People that keep the lights on.

With all the extra money we’ll have, we can set up our own Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid systems once Paul Ryan manages to “privatize” them for you Trump Staters. And what city is all that privatized money likely to come to, on its way to the markets? Oh, right, New York, which you hate so much! All those extra Wall Street bonuses and dividends will really help the local economy.

Wall Street dividends paid for by the labor of Feet People.  This fucker doesn’t even understand that without Feet People making things, companies have no value.  He is so disconnected from reality that he seems to believe that companies just sort of make money.

Mr. Baker wants to push Head People land even further left, because they think that is the remedy.  It will destroy them.  I can do my job for the rest of my life without seeing another new movie.  It won’t affect me.  How will Hollywood Head People fare if Feet People just stop watching movies?

The Brahmin of the Varna live off the labor of the Shudras.  The priests do no labor.  The Head People need the Feet People to survive.  The Feet People will do perfectly fine without the sermons of the Head People.

Here is where America and Hinduism separate.  America was not founded on a caste system.  So much of what is happening in America today is a rejection of the de facto caste system that has been created.  The Feet People are tired of being seen as Feet People, to be subordinate to the whims of the elite.

The Feet People voted for Trump as an exercise against the elite.  The more push back against that  by the elite, the more they harden the resolve of the Feet People.

The only smart thing Mr. Baker said was:

We won’t formally secede, in the Civil War sense of the word. We’ll still be a part of the United States, at least on paper.

We own the guns.  We are the military, at least the non-flag officer ranks of it.  Keep beating us and tormenting us and shaming us and we will start to itch for the Civil War you want to avoid.

Remember this Mr. Baker, the Kings of France thought that they too were ordained to rule by god.  That didn’t work out so well for Louis the XVI.