For weeks we’ve been hearing call after call for bans of assault rifles, high capacity magazines, and everything gun-related.

So Trump decided to finally do something:

Trump administration moves to ban flavored e-cigarettes

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the US Food and Drug Administration would be putting out “some very strong recommendations” regarding the use of flavored e-cigarettes in “a couple of weeks.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, seated in the Oval Office with the President, first lady Melania Trump and the acting commissioner of the FDA, announced that newly proposed enforcement policy would require flavored e-cigarette companies to take their products off the market.

“It’ll take several weeks for us to put out the final guidance that will announce all the parameters around the enforcement policy, and then there will likely be about a 30-day delay to effective date, as is customary,” Azar said. But “at that point all flavored e-cigarettes other than tobacco flavor would have to be removed from the market.”

What the fuck kind of big-government, nanny state, Bloombergesque bullshit is that!?!

Does he want to lose the election in 2020?  Does he have any idea what percentage of his primary demographic of white, working-class men vape?  Or that this is also the demographic with the highest use of nicotine products?

This hit the news over lunch and guys I know with Trump bumper stickers were responding with “fuck the Cheeto-in-Chief.”

Vaping has become more and more popular, especially with flavored vape products because it helps people quit and is more socially acceptable than smoking.

On top of that, Vaping is a $13 Billion dollar business in the US, and a fast-growing entrepreneur business for vape shops, as most people who vape buy in brick and mortar stores.  So, you know, fuck all those guys who put their life savings into starting vape shops out of business and their tax revenue too.

I was literally hearing guys on break saying “from my cold dead hands” about their vape machines.

They were talking about stockpiling flavored vape solution like it is AR-15’s and ammo when Obama was in office.

What the fuck is he thinking?

“Yeah prohibition worked so well, we’re going to try it again with something even more addictive.”

Sounds like a plan.  A plan to kick off a surge in black-market flavored vape solution, half of which is going to be made out of god-knows-what and will cause a shit load more harm.

Every single thing about this plan is just bad, wrong, and stupid.

Sure, Trump can relax by dipping his wick into every well he can afford to cut a six-figure hush-money check to, but the blue-collar Joe who just wants a puff of Fruit Punch flavored nicotine during his break on a 12-hour shift can’t have his fun.

What’s next?  Why not ban low cost, domestic beer sales too?

In the long list of stupid fucking things Trump could have done, this is got to be towards the top.

Last week the GOP was rightly mocking the Democrats for wanting to ban burgers and cars.  Now Trump does this?  That’s not exactly that much better.

Just wait until the first SWAT team kicks in a door because they get an anonymous tip that somebody’s house smells like Kool-Aid.

Somebody in Trump’s inner circle better get him to reverse this fast because this is one bad fucking decision that is only going to hurt him and a lot of working-class people in this country.

Via The View From North Central Idaho

Sometimes the posts write themselves:

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) — Authorities are on scene and a suspect is in custody after five people were stabbed at Dyke Industries in Tallahassee.

The Tallahassee Police Department says they responded to the 2000 block of Maryland Circle around 8:37 a.m. on Wednesday and arrested the suspect, 41-year-old Antwann D. Brown, almost immediately upon their arrival.

Investigators say Brown is an employee of Dyke Industries and “spontaneously” stabbed a total of five employees with a folding knife after getting into a verbal dispute at the office shortly after clocking into work at 8 a.m. Police say Brown was asked to leave and clocked out at 8:20 p.m. At 8:33 p.m., police were called to the scene and arrived to the area within four minutes.

5 people hurt in stabbing at Dyke Industries in Tallahassee

So I do a search on Antwann D. Brown and this result pops in the top ten of the first page:

Not helping there Antwann. And I am going with NO as the nswer to the quedtion.

Paul K was kind enough to send me the lyrics of The Battle Hymn of the Republic in PDF and we get to share on his kindness.

First is ALDI USA:

At ALDI, the safety of our employees, customers and the community is our highest priority. Alongside many other businesses, we are asking that our customers refrain from openly displaying firearms in any of our stores, except for authorized law enforcement personnel.

— ALDI USA (@AldiUSA) September 9, 2019

The other is Meijer:

The safety of our customers and team members is our top priority, so we respectfully request that our customers do not open carry firearms at Meijer. We’ve made this decision because open carry can create an environment that makes our customers and team members feel unsafe.

— Meijer (@meijer) September 9, 2019

Meijer hits close to home because I love Meijer.  It’s a big box store like Wal-Mart but the food is good, the quality of the merchandise is great, and it’s overall classier.  I’d give anything for a Meijer in Huntsville.

Just take a Gander into some of the responses to these Tweets:

Oh, they most certainly fucking can.

These are both private sector companies,  they don’t have to respect your Second Amendment rights on their property.

Here is the thing.  Meijer was my favorite place to do my regular weekly shopping trip when I lived in Illinois.  In Illinois, any business can ban concealed carry by posting the 430 ILCS 66/65 sign on their entrance.

And before any internet chest thumpers who do not live in Illinois say “but that doesn’t have the force of law” go read the statute.

Except as otherwise provided, a licensee in violation of this Act shall be guilty of a Class B misdemeanor. A second or subsequent violation is a Class A misdemeanor. The Department may suspend a license for up to 6 months for a second violation and shall permanently revoke a license for 3 or more violations of Section 65 of this Act. Any person convicted of a violation under this Section shall pay a $150 fee to be deposited into the Mental Health Reporting Fund, plus any applicable court costs or fees.

You walk past a 430 ILCS 66/65 sign with your gun and you get caught, it’s a Class B misdemeanor.  Illinois doesn’t fuck around with that.  The last time I was in a Meijer in Illinois, they hadn’t posted the signs.

So go ahead and test ALDI or Meijer and their open carry policy.  See what happens.

I can tell you what will happen, they will decide it’s not worth the trouble and will go Target on us and become gun-free zones, banning open carry and concealed carry.

Then you will have screwed over every gun owner in Illinois, whose ability to carry concealed sits on a knife-edge and the goodwill of corporate management.

Yes, you have the right to open carry.  I support that right.  But when you abuse that right and scare the mundanes, you hurt the rest of us when you force companies to react.

As seen on the Twitter:

So if we accept everything here to be true, a coworker filed a false complaint because of a personal slight, leading to this guy getting fired and treated like a criminal, even though his manager knew that he was getting screwed.

Of course, the whole being escorted off the premises by police and sent home in a Lyft is probably corporate policy that must occur under these circumstances.

In addition to this humiliation, as he looks for new employment, I can only imagine how this will affect his ability to get a job.  “Why did you leave your last job” is a common question in hiring applications.  There is no way to answer that in a way that looks good.

I’m not sure if he could sue the former co-worker for slander, and that would require him to hire a lawyer first, which is no small financial feat.

So if an angry co-worker can mess up a guy’s life just by falsely reporting him to their employer, how much worse can it get by falsely reporting someone to the police.

Consider what we’ve seen with SWATing.  We can expect the same people who would be inclined to SWAT someone abusing Red Flag laws.

We need a way to deal with these nutjobs before they kill a lot of people.  But giving other nutjobs the ability to use the law to destroy innocent people’s lives is not a fix.

Political Promises:

“I want to be really clear that that’s exactly what we are going to do,” the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate said. “Americans who own AR-15s, AK-47s, will have to sell them to the government. We’re not going to allow them to stay on our streets, to show up in our communities, to be used against us in our synagogues, our churches, our mosques, our Walmarts, our public places.”

Beto (Fake Taco) O’Rourke

American Reality:

If you want a glimpse at how gun and magazine bans might work across America, look no further than New Jersey.
The state’s ban on so-called high-capacity magazines went into effect in December of last year, but results so far show that patriotic gun owners won’t fall for government-enforced disarmament so easily.
The ban makes possession of magazines that hold over 10 rounds illegal for most people.
Punishment for owning one of the targeted magazines includes 18 months in prison and a whopping $10,000 fine.
According to NJ.com, a New Jersey State Police spokesman confirmed that not a single magazine has been turned in to the state, despite the jail time and massive fine that could come with the possession of a banned item.

NJ Magazine Ban Backfires as Not a Single One Has Been Turned In

Yes, they are the same pictures of every year, No, I won’t change them.