According to CNN, there are lots of different theories on why Joe is doing so badly in the polls. But the real reason isn’t that he is an awful, no good, rotten leader that proposes horrible policies that are destroying everything. Nope, that’s not it at all.

It is:

…Biden’s support among Democrats declined from 95% at the start of his presidency to 85% by early 2022. Trump, on the other hand, had lost only 1% of Republicans over a similar time period during his presidency, going from 87% to 86% in approval. What could likely account for Biden’s comparatively worse losses among members of his own party is the insidious influence of what I call the “fan fiction left.”

See, it is these democrats writing fan fiction that is causing the low approval ratings.

See the claim that the DNC rigged the primaries for Hillary and forced Bernie out is just made up. Oh, you don’t want to talk about the superdelegates? I remember telling a Bernie fan girl he wasn’t going to win the primary. She didn’t believe me when I explained the superdelegates. She told me I was right after the election.

I just can’t parse this one:

Even though powerful Republicans believe in the neo-Nazi “great replacement theory,” voter suppression and racist gerrymandering are prevalent, and many states are passing legislative assaults on women’s rights and LGBTQ rights, concerns about racism, sexism, and homophobia are only bourgeois “identity politics.”

The fan fiction dems don’t believe that Trump supporters are hateful, irrational and violent. They are must misled in the minds of fan fiction dems.

Oh, and the fan fiction dems actually believe that Russiagate was a hoax.

The entire article is about how Joe’s approval is tanking because some dems are writing that maybe the media was lying to them for the last 6 years.

Not the price at the pump nor the prices in the grocery store. Nope, it is believing those horrible lies that Republicans tell.

Saying the quiet part outloud NPR has an article, There are 2 ways the media covers mass shootings. Here’s why the difference matters talking about to different ways of reporting on events.

The gist boils down to: Do you show individual stories that are easy to connect to at an emotional level, stories that tear at the heart strings.
Or: Do you show the larger context that puts prospective on the event?

And the answer they come up with…. Drum roll please…

Emotional manipulation…

There is no way to move forward on banning guns, oops “common sense gun regulations”, unless we get people to react to heart rending individual stores. So focus on that.

Do what is necessary to get yet more gun regulations.

A few months ago I asked permission from Miguel to post my series on the rule of threes (I’m still going on it.) He said “Yes, do it!”

Then he told J.Kb. and me that he was tired and was closing the blog and it was our job to carry on. I took the offer of being a part of what followed very seriously.

I want to contribute to the blog in ways other than just technical. Yes, I’m good at fixing hacks and such, but if I was to be a part of what followed I had to step up.

This is freaking hard!

It use to be that I’d send an article every couple of weeks to Miguel and he’d either write about it or not or just give me a brief email acknowledgement.

Now I look at every news story that flows by as a potential posting. I look at how do I add value to this article. How do I add value to the blog when reporting about something that other people report. How do I make sure I don’t just end up reading articles from one side. I have to venture into the deep dark parts of the web, like NPR, CNN and Lord help me, Vox.

It is a pain.

I know that Miguel pulls from twitter. I don’t have a twitter account and I don’t want to be following dozens of morons, just to be able to report on the latest stupid thing Moms Demand says or does.

So thank you from the bottom of my heart for the years and years of posts from both Miguel and J.Kb. You guys are freaking amazing.

Florida sheriff’s captain fired days after weapons incident at Parkland school: report

A police captain was fired. No reason given. But you should know that a SRO found guns at a school near Marjori Stoneman Douglas HS.

According to our own Divemedic (I think) reported that even though Florida passed legislation that allowed for the arming of teachers and school admin, because it requires approval by both the sheriff and the school board, no teachers have ever been given permission to carry on school property in FL. [Divemedic’s research on the Guardian Program]

This begs the question of why a school principal had guns on campus. If he was there, ready to run to the sounds of gun fire, more power to him. If he was just and idiot that happened to bring guns to school, FLORIDA MAN.

And regardless, those firearms should have been under lock and key.

Just shaking my head. Florida…

Alderman proposes tougher gun legislation for Milwaukee gun owners

Pseudo quote: I’m Doing Something!

“It’s puzzling how many people in the community have guns,” said [Milwaukee Alderman Russell] Stamper.

The proposed ordinance “requires a firearm owner to properly store and supervise the whereabouts of any firearm owned at all times to ensure the firearm is not acquired by any person and used in the commission of a crime,” according to Milwaukee Common Council records. “It also requires the firearm owner to report the theft or misplacement of any firearm to police within 24-hours of discovery.”

His idea is that the law should punish the victims that have their guns stolen and don’t know about it or don’t know they have to report it or the parent of a child that just killed themselves.

Some animal breaks into my home, takes my gun and kills somebody and I’m the person at fault because I didn’t stop the animal.

For those bleeding hearts, humans don’t break into my home to steal or harm me and mine, thus it must be an animal.

Of course this politician uses Everytown as his source for scare numbers.

And of course he doesn’t mind violating the constitution in his endeavors to “do something”

Article I, § 25 of the Wisconsin Constitution, adopted in 1998, states: “[t]he people have the right to keep and bear arms for security, defense, hunting, recreation or any other lawful purpose.”

FYI: Most states have a “right to bear arms” clause in the state their state constitutions. I just don’t know of any cases where people fought state laws on the grounds of state constitutional rights.

It is 1980. The world was really shitty. A bunch of “students” had taken Americans hostage in Iran.

The day after we heard that the embassy in Iran had been stormed, again, my friend Steve was nowhere to be found. He was a Tomcat driver. All the Tomcats that use to fly over our house were missing from the sky.

Weeks later Steve reappears. “Where were you?” “I can’t say.”

Steve was very very bitter. What happened is they launched refueling aircraft and headed them out over the Atlantic. They launched the Tomcats from the base. They refueled once they were at altitude and headed east. They refueled again somewhere over the Atlantic. I know that those Tomcats were on station within 24 hours. Steve never said as much, but from things I learned later that’s what likely happened.

Their ship arrived later after crossing the Atlantic.

Jimmy Carter, may his name be dust on our peoples lips, had just fumbled a rescue mission. The papers were reporting that the White House had gotten a call, in the clear, from the Israeli’s saying “Get some f’ing radio discipline, everybody knows you have launched a rescue mission, here’s where your team is.”

Seems, following standard Democrat military policy, Jimmy, was yapping with the mission commanders the entire time.

Gas prices looked as bad then as today. I watched gas double, then triple in price. There were lines for gas everywhere.

And the news counted the days of our embarrassment.

And then this guy, I knew him for his song The Devil Went Down To Georgia, was going to be performing on live TV. I remember it as the CMA awards but I can’t find a reference to the performance.

And Charlie stood up and sang this song. And my heart soared. This was my America. This was what I felt about America. This was a man talking to me and mine.

May your heart take flight again.

If we go with the sometimes stated goal, complete removal of firearms from the people of the US, you can find the answer to your question changes depending on how close to power a gun rights infringer is.

For people at the bottom they fall into the category of emotional response. They are either fearful of guns in the hands of those they don’t know and those that don’t have shiny badges or they think it makes “others” safer. Generally kids.

These are the people that believe that by banning guns they will remove guns from society without understanding that there will always be guns in society. The other day I had to sanitize a room for a service call. It took two large blankets and 15 minutes of double checking and I still didn’t remember a revolver until right before the service person came in.

And with all of that, my reloading bench was still exposed.

This is the reality that the emotionally driven don’t understand. They can firmly state the tutology of “If there are no more guns then there will be no guns to commit crimes with.” They firmly believe that over time all guns will be removed from society including guns owned by criminals.

They fail to understand that even if they removed all guns from society, people can still make guns. People can still make black powder, people can still make everything required to make a functional gun.

The next step closer is the people that want to control people. These are the petty bureaucrats (this includes school officials and teachers) that don’t need to be polite because they know that the person on the other side of the desk/table from them is powerless.

I watched a TV show the other day, it was sickening. A mother was trying desperately to get the police to look into the death of her son as murder. The police were unwilling. Her calls to the police were ignored. When she did get in contact with a detective in charge and her anger and frustration came through he hung up on her telling her he wouldn’t talk to her until she calmed down.

These petty bureaucrats do things like have metal detectors because somebody might have a gun, while having lots of cops with guns going around the detectors and plainclothes officers flashing badges to get in. It is intimidation.

It is the school boards that order parents silenced when they read from books from the school libraries.

If there were armed people in these situations, these petty bureaucrats would have to be polite and actually have conversations. The power would not be one sided.

The next people are people that actually understand that they might be targets if they do things that people really really dislike. These are the people that have no issue demanding you close your business “to save the children” while demanding you open to give them services. These people understand that they are angering huge parts of the country.

They are actually fearful that they will be held to account for their actions outside of judicial review.

These are the people that have no problems saying that because you hold the wrong opinion you should be removed from polite society by what ever means are necessary for the good of the people.

These people that are this close to power believe that they will be amongst the privileged. They are going to be more equal than the rest and they are going to be given the extras because their work is so important to the people.

• The original quote has been edited for better grammar as a title.