Gun Free Zone

I touched on this idea in an earlier post, but I want to expand on it here.

In 1941, the government passed the Berry Amendment (USC, Title 10, Section 2533a).

It mandates “preference in procurement to domestically produced, manufactured, or home-grown products, most notably food, clothing, fabrics, and specialty metals.”

I believe that because of the news of drug and supply shortages following the Coronavirus, the US Federal Government should extend the Berry Amendment to all items purchased by the Federal Government, or purchased by state governments or private corporations using federal funds or federal contract money.

American tax dollars should be spent only on items made and assembled in the US, with American sourced materials – with limited exceptions for stuff that is not available in the US.  E.g., tires have to be made in the US by a US company, but rubber has to come from somewhere else because the US lacks the climate for rubber plantations.

This will do several things:

It will boost the US economy, especially in manufacturing.

It will encourage the on-shoring of jobs because companies who want to sell to the US government would have to make stuff domestically.

It will discourage off-shoring of existing jobs.

It will protect our IP because if the US government wants to buy a piece of technology, like a cell phone, ever chip on the inside would have to be made in the US.  That would prevent China from stealing the secrets to making the chips.

It will make American made goods cheaper, as giving American made goods a guaranteed customer, will encourage reduction in cost by taking advantage of the economy of scale.

To put it bluntly, I went to my tax guy yesterday to do my taxes.  I saw just how much of my hard-earned money I sent to the federal government.

If I am allowed one bit of input on how my money is spent, this is what I want more than anything else.  I do not want one penny of my tax dollars to buy some foreign-made piece of shit for federal use.

That should go as far as every trashcan bought by the federal government being made in the US by Rubbermaid, from plastic refined by an American petrochemical company, from oil sucked out of the ground in Texas or North Dakota.

Even EBT should be limited to made in America products.  You can buy all the Florida’s Natural orange juice and Dixie Crystals sugar you want because it’s grown in Florida, but you can’t buy Tropicana that’s grown in Brazil.  Not with my tax dollars you can’t.

If you agree with this sentiment, contact your Congressional Representative and Senators.  You can use the USPS to find your full 9 digit zip code.

And if you agree with this, spread the message.

I want to flood Congress with the message that the US government should “buy American.”  Not just critical medical supplies like Trump wants, but for every single fucking thing that they buy.

“Il Distanziatore” (The Distancer). Sorry, no subtitles or dubbing.

They are saying that you should distance yourself from other at least one meter (almost 3 feet) and this gentleman created a prop that allows you to move around and keep the indicated safety space. He is obviously joking, but seeing the quality of Italian Healthcare response, he is probably better suited than the government to create a sane response.

It is official, we are done and if the Governor calls for an emergency meeting, it would probably be related to the Berr Virus scare rather than anything else.

Another year without any advancement for Gun Rights and really no reason for it.

I am getting the “housekeeping” emails with bills that have that nice tag under:
“Indefinitely postponed and withdrawn from consideration”

TRACKED BILLS

SB 94 (2020) Transfers of Firearms
http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2020/00094
SENATE – Indefinitely postponed and withdrawn from consideration

SB 114 (2020) Risk Protection Orders
http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2020/00114
SENATE – Indefinitely postponed and withdrawn from consideration

SB 134 (2020) Preemption of Firearms and Ammunition
http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2020/00134
SENATE – Indefinitely postponed and withdrawn from consideration

SB 266 (2020) Safe Storage of Loaded Firearms
http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2020/00266
SENATE – Indefinitely postponed and withdrawn from consideration

SB 270 (2020) Sale and Delivery of Firearms
http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2020/00270
SENATE – Indefinitely postponed and withdrawn from consideration

SB 310 (2020) Three-dimensional Printed Firearms
http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2020/00310
SENATE – Indefinitely postponed and withdrawn from consideration

I’ll do my own clean up in a couple of weeks.

This is a thing happening in Italy. I have been reading about it for the past couple of days: People go out their balconies or pop out their windows and belt out songs or play some instrument.

And although here we have a good singer with a great song, unfortunately 99.999% of the other performers are awfully short on talent or even ears.  It gets painful after a couple of minutes to hear these impromptu concerts, specially at night.

On this side of the puddle, such performances would have been treated to what the late Robin Williams called “The New York Echo.”

‘SHUT THE FUCK UP!’

There is virtue and peace in Silence.

No arrests were made and none are expected, said Miami Beach Police spokesman Ernesto Rodriguez. He said police impounded the drugs.

“We responded as a medical call,” he said. “Though there were narcotics in plain view, no one was in physical possession of those narcotics.”

Andrew Gillum found in Miami Beach hotel room with suspected drugs, police say

If he had been arrested, he could have used the Victim Card and have his career saved probably pulling a Marion Barry. Now he is just seen as a drunk and high Black dude who was being butt reamed by a White male escort on a Thursday night threesome in Miami Beach.

And you know how well that is gonna fly with his constituency.

The Government confirmed two cases of Wuhan Virus and nobody rushed out to buy toilet paper.

Thank you! I’ll be here all week. Try the veal and don’t forget to tip your waitress.

The missus went out with her regularly scheduled grocery shopping and just sent me this photo with the note “Worse than a hurricane.”:

It seems we do not like parboiled rice, nor basmati or jasmine rice.  Not a whole lot of Colombians and Venezuelans in the neighborhood (yellow packages are precooked corn flour, staple for both countries) and everybody has a working rice cooker.

We had already restocked what needed two weeks ago. This time around I thought about whole powdered milk for the first time since we did not want to gamble of transportation delivering fresh milk in case of the stupids. And the Boss said she could bake using milk from powder.

I got me a can yesterday and it took some internet search to find it since the local Wally World suddenly was out of it.

Fresh milk was not something easy to find when I was growing up. Tropics are not conductive to mass milk production and the quality was (and still is) crappy at best so this was the alternative. It came imported from the Netherlands and you can say it saved at lot of kids from the rickets back then.

Be careful out there!