Popular hotel alternative Airbnb formerly canceled bookings Tuesday for a group that planned to attend a rally in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend. Airbnb told event coordinator Jason Kessler that the group violated the company’s community standards, which requires that all members “accept people regardless of their race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, sex, gender, sexual orientation, or age.”

Source: Airbnb Cancels Bookings In Rally | The Daily Caller

And they probably have the right to do so and few people will side with nazi Assholes.

But that is not the point. What if you made a reservation and have already spend other monies for travel expenses, taken time off to be with your family and somebody in Airbnb checks your Facebook and/or Twitter accounts, finds something “offensive” and cancels your reservation when you and yours are already on travel? You are out of luck, you will have no place to stay and zero recourse.

Hotels can’t do that, and if they can get you a room, they will probably find you another similar hotel nearby and even get you a reduced rate. But you are dealing with professionals and they do not come cheap. And they understand that bonehead maneuvers like the one Airbnb pulled can cost them 20-30% of their clientele.

That is why you will not see me in Ubel, Lyft, Airbnb or any of that crap. It s just Hipster SJW Craiglist with an app.

And you know how well that usually ends.

In case it does not, the section I want to comment on starts at 3:54.

Idiots in low powered bikes having fisticuffs in the middle of the road and blocking a lane of traffic. Here comes somebody in a car, becomes a dick and runs over bikes and one of the guys. That would be a way that many people would interpret what we saw. For some of us, it is a different way to look at it.

When I saw it the first time, I found myself nodding in approval (mostly) about the car driver’s overall behavior. Am I a jerk-off anti motorcycle? I am pleading the 5th on that one, but I have been in a similar situation and it was a trap. It was an attempted carjacking.

It is interesting to see that after 20 years of continuous living in the US (Holy crap, that long?) I have not been able to shake off certain experiences. I am much better now, there was a time when a biker behind me in traffic just doing nothing but following the traffic laws would set my warning bells off. In one particular case, my wife was able to crack that particular after she saw me tense up behind the wheel and suddenly wear my cannibal face. She asked me what was wrong and I explained that we were being followed by a motorcycle.  Knowing what that mean, she looked behind us and laughed while assuring me that somebody in a Harley Davidson was a very very unlikely candidate for a carjacking or sicario attack and that probably he was just simply riding his bike.

But if my experiences were not enough, events that happened to very close friends are mental reinforcements: The wife of my childhood friend of 50 years was gunned down in traffic by a couple of motorcycle-riding assholes who were  trying to rob her and couldn’t get her to stop. Another friend and former colleague was not long ago sitting in deadlocked traffic when he felt a metallic tap on his window which turned out to be a gun aimed at his face by a rider who cleaned him up of all his belonging with exception of his glasses and the car itself. The same thing or worse has happened to acquaintances of mine through the years.

It might be silly and even selfish on my part, but it is my past experiences with motorcycles that puts me against favoring Lane Splitting laws in Florida (It is illegal in case you did not know.)

Does that mean I will run over anybody with a motorcycle doing something weird? No, although some assholes riding crotch rockets do deserve some attitude adjustment. But at the same time I know I will never be comfortable behind the wheel when motorcycle divers are acting the fool near me.

I guess the point I am trying to make is that you use your experiences to modify your tactics and adapt to future events. You do not let the experiences control your behavior and make it irrational or foolish. But it is not a simple task, specially when events like this happen :

I usually stay home that day 😀

When News Channel 8 spoke with Jones, he told us the doctor said the knife’s five-inch blade landed just millimeters from his heart. He said he hadn’t realized Watson stabbed him until deputies told him he was bleeding.

Source: Purse snatcher stabs woman, good Samaritans, outside Seminole Publix | WFLA.com

From other stories told me by people who have been stabbed, this is the norm rather than the exception. One former LEO and now instructor, told his story about being stabbed several times in the chest and other than a difficulty breathing, he did not realize he was dying till he noticed the blood minutes after the attack and after the suspect was under control.

Two things I take out of this. One:  After an encounter with a blade-wielding person, check yourself and have somebody check you. You do the same for whomever might have been attacked. You may be having a mayor blood loss and not knowing it till the eyes roll all whites and go into  hipovolemic shock. And I do not need to remind to always carry the necessary items to stop the blood loss, do I? Y’all smart cookies.

Two: How effective is a knife to stop an attacking individual? Again, we are mostly misguided by Hollywood where one simple stabbing to the guts has the damaging effect of a 20mm cannon round.  I figure that the concept of One-Stab-Kill is same as with handgun loads, a wishful thinking. My only reference on what to do with a knife in self-defense is what I have seen with Michael Janich who focuses a lot on disabling the person (thus stopping the attack) rather than going for the kill. The point is always to stop the attack and avoid injury as much as possible.

Do please use the comment section if you have experiences or advice to share. I am sorely ignorant when it comes to knife fighting even though I carry knives every day and I am going stupidly assume most of my readers fit in that category.

PS: I almost forgot. Do read the article quoted on top. It was a good resolution done by a citizen armed with a gun.

And no Sales Taxes during the event.

Since the last time I updated, we picked two:

Rep. Issa, Darrell E. [R-CA-49] 07/26/2017 &

Rep. Handel, Karen C. [R-GA-6]

We are now up to 208 sponsors.

Like a boss.

Let us talk gun training.

Mike the dipshit and not really a gun guy wrote an opinion piece for the Huffington Post called Want To Be A Gun Nut? Move To Kansas.

According to him, Kansas sucks because:

“Not only can you wander around anywhere in the Sunflower State with a gun in your pants, you don’t even need any kind of training or licensing at all. If you are what my friends in Fairfax call a ‘law-abiding’ person, go into a gun shop, buy a banger, stick some ammo into it and you’re ready to defend yourself and everyone against all enemies – foreign, domestic or anything else…

Then in 2015 the same bunch of fools in the State House erased the law which required anyone applying for CCW to first take an eight-hour training course, as if sitting around in someone’s back yard and talking about the last time you shot a squirrel or a skunk constitutes training of any kind.”  

Mike has a boner for training.  Back in July, he posted on his blog just how terrible it is that 40% of CCW permit holders have no formal gun training.  He then goes on to criticize most of the training available.

“Know where the word ’training’ comes from as it applies to guns? It’s a word first used by the NRA which was actually founded as a ‘training’ organization in 1873. Not only does the NRA continue to promote themselves as America’s premier gun-training organization, but they have launched a new training effort focusing on CCW techniques called Carry Guard, which they refer to as a “first-rate, elite program” aimed (pardon the pun) at people who lead the ‘concealed-carry lifestyle’ and want to be ready for ‘real-life situations you must be prepared to face.’

This isn’t training – it’s a sham. It’s used to entice people to purchase an insurance policy which will allegedly pay all their legal fees after they shoot someone, assuming they don’t get convicted for some kind of felony committed while they were using their gun. Along with this training program, the NRA now offers its standard training programs on video, and these programs are used by most CCW-issuing authorities in states where pre-CCW training is still required. What’s the difference between NRA video training and video games like Call of Duty that you can play on your X-Box?  There is no difference.”

Mike started that post with this statement “I have decided that it’s time for Mike the Gun Guy to become a little less polite (imagine – Mike the Gun Guy ‘less’ polite).”

So, I feel emboldened to be a little less polite myself.

Ahem…. fuck this guy.

First and foremost, the Second Amendment says that the “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”  I believe that the “and bear arms” part means the right to carry in public, and the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals agreed in Moore v. Maidgan.

The Ninth Circuit came to the opposite conclusion, but keep in mind that the Ninth Circuit is the Captain Peter “Wrongway” Peachfuzz of the judiciary.   If you want to know what the constitution really means when it comes to civil liberties, take any decision by the Ninth and do exactly the opposite.

While I am willing to accept some standards for CCW (e.g. background checks) and being told the CCW laws of the state, I am wary of restrictions.  I lived in Chicagoland when Moore was decided and I remember quite clearly how the legislature wanted to make the standards for training so high and so expensive that most people couldn’t obtain a permit.

The goal was to implement a concealed carry equivalent to the impossible literacy standards tests used to deny black people the right to vote.

What is up with Democrats using testing as a way to deny people their civil liberties?

That is all principle.

Let’s talk pragmatics.

What constitutes enough training for CCW or for gun rights in general?  Moms Demand Action bemoans that people can get guns without training.

What is their standard?  How many hours at the range and how many rounds will satisfy them?

The NYPD firearms qualification is notoriously low in its standards but officers still fail it because it is “something that is not taken seriously.”  Which is why the NYPD are notoriously shitty shots prone to hitting bystanders with a hail of bullets.

Would requiring citizens to match “America’s premier law enforcement agency” be sufficient?  I doubt it.

Beyond the appeal to authority fallacy in regards to training, there is the fact that I have never met someone who just decided to go out and get a CCW and a gun and never shot it.

In my experience, CCW is something obtained after years of familiarity with guns, be it hunting, competition shooting, or just good ‘ol target practice.

I have the feeling that Mike and the MDA crowd would strenuously object to my having an Alabama CCW permit, which required no training at all.  They would explain that without the magical blessing of goverment bureaucracy I’m an incompetent boob who is more dangerous to myself than anything else.

Now I know that no simulation is a sufficient substituent for the real thing, but I’d put my IDPA skills up against any NYPD or LAPD qualified beat cop (except last Saturday, I don’t know what happened but I had a bad week).

But of course that isn’t blessed with the magic pixie dust of goverment so the 300 rounds or so a month I throw downrange in the pursuit of accuracy at speed doesn’t count.

They, like all statists, do not trust us to be the responsible, self disciplined people that we are.  They want to impose their literacy tests training standards to keep us all where they think we belong, under the Democrat massa’s thumb.