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.

I had to, I had not choice.

From an article on Yahoo! news:

In 1994, Tom Hanks won his first of two back-to-back Oscars for his performance in Philadelphia, in which he played a gay man seeking justice after he’s wrongfully terminated by his employer for having HIV. The actor explained in an interview with The New York Times Magazine published Friday that he understands why he could never play that role today.

“Could a straight man do what I did in Philadelphia now? No, and rightly so,” Hanks said. “The whole point of Philadelphia was don’t be afraid. One of the reasons people weren’t afraid of that movie is that I was playing a gay man. We’re beyond that now, and I don’t think people would accept the inauthenticity of a straight guy playing a gay guy. It’s not a crime, it’s not boohoo, that someone would say we are going to demand more of a movie in the modern realm of authenticity. Do I sound like I’m preaching? I don’t mean to.”

Philadelphia is one of my favorite movies.

It is one of the best legal dramas ever made, and one of the very few ones that doesn’t have rape or murder as its central legal issue.

I honestly stack it up as the To Kill a Mockingbird of its era as a legal drama with civil rights as the core plot point.

Tam Hanks did a fantastic job in that film.

This bullshit from Hanks about it no longer being acceptable for a straight actor to play a gay character is both a shame and something that feels like he’s trying to keep himself and Philadelphia from getting canceled.

Hanks should have more spine than this.

Fuck Hollywood and fuck Hanks if they can’t defend a great movie from an ignorant and destructive ideology of identitarianism.

Two headlines:

Middle schoolers accused of sexual harassment for not using preferred pronouns, parents say

And

Deadnaming A Trans Person Is Violence — So Why Does The Media Do It Anyway?

Who will be the first victim of a red flag law confiscation for engaging in the “violence” of misgendering or deadnaming someone.

You don’t think it will happen?

Consider every doxxing, Twitter hate mob, swatting, and personal life ruined by internet Leftists.

Ask yourself, do you trust these people not to abuse a system that sends police to take away your guns?

Red Flag laws are their counter move to the exoneration of Kyle Rittenhouse.

They will have you disarmed for being crazy before they send the mob after you.

Refineries, microchip manufacturing plants, fertilizer plants, ore smelters, pharmaceutical plants, all of these are critical to the survival of a nation.

We have shut them down and outsourced supply overseas, often from countries that hate us.

Despite what you may have been told, American wages were not the deciding factor.  Environmental regulations largely killed these industries.

Even as our technology got cleaners, the mental image in the popular culture of the factory belching pollution, destroying the environment, persisted.

Generations raised on The Lorax and Captain Planet made us dependent on foreign nations out of ignorance.

We need these capabilities here.  It is a matter of strategic preparation.

Under my administration every EPA employee will be fired, companies will be encouraged to build critical manufacturing and processing plants in the US, and it will be legal to hire Pinkertons to beat up environmental protesters.

I’m going to make gas $1.59 again, even if I have to have a mercenary beat a hippy to death to do it.

San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin was recalled.

Loudoun County prosecutor Biberaj was disqualified by a judge.

Now in Philadelphia:

https://twitter.com/CBSPhilly/status/1536371008038391809?t=4Zv7EFSTbaTSQT0XgvEV9g&s=19

I took a good ling time but the realization has struck too many people that you need to enforce the law or society comes apart.  The Woke prosecutors may say things that sound like they have the best and most noble intentions but in practice everything goes to shit.

Yes, you and I know that it was always going to go to shit under them but Liberal/Leftist privilege means being judged on your words and not your actions.

That is until the ramifications of their actions became overwhelming and unavoidable by all but the most privileged and sheltered Leftists.

Three down.  Plenty more to go.

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.

I have a long article on this coming but I just haven’t had time to get it finished. I hate it but I have four long articles in progress for GFZ right now and never seem to have time to finish any of them

We watch as the alarmist create fake words and phrases to try and touch something at an emotional level. I remember reading about how scientist were looking at ways of spreading pure carbon over the ice caps in order to combat “global cooling” which was going to kill us all in the next 10 years as the glaciers all extended south.

10 years later the same scientist were screaming that we were all going to die in 10 years if we didn’t stop “global warming”.

Today the term is “climate change” and in some cases the same scientists are pushing this new “we’re all going to die” alarm.

The gun rights infringers use the same methods. They can’t sell the ban they want so they hide it in scary words.

Grandpas bolt action deer rifle with a 5 power scope becomes a “sniper rifle.”

A semi-automatic with a pistol grip and box magazine becomes an “assault rifle” which becomes an “assault weapon” which is now a “military-style assault weapon”.

In some places you hear this as “military-style semi-automatic weapon”.

The adjectives just get layered on until you can no longer see the actual thing.

From patch.com reporting on State Senator Steve Santarsiero (D-10) latest emotional plea.

“It’s time that we stand up with a single voice and say, enough. No one needs to have a military-style assault weapon. They just don’t,” said Santarsiero, who was joined at a press conference in Lower Makefield by political, religious, community and local school leaders from throughout Central and Lower Bucks County.

“The time has come for us to take a stand and make this a reality. This is about protecting each other. This is about protecting our loved ones. This is about protecting our community. And above all, this is about protecting the kids,” said Santarsiero.

In direct violation of the Constitution.

Article I, Section 21 of the Pennsylvania State Constitution states: “The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned.”