Gun Free Zone

Where a Redneck Jew, a Hispanic Catholic, and a Computer Geek write about Gun Rights, Self Defense and whatever else we can think about.

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Somethings should not be partisan but the Left has decided to make feminine hygiene hyper-partisan

Oct 20, 2019 J. Kb 7 comments

One of the hallmarks of modern politics is that everything, and I mean EVERYTHING is partisan.

A refrain from Second Wave feminism of the 1960’s was “the personal is political.”  This is an extension of what the Soviet author, Boris Pasternak, said about the Soviet Union, “the private life is dead.”

Everything is made political, and then partisan, and then is used to beat the other side into submission.  The problem with this is that it makes it reduces problems into partisan talking points and makes it impossible to do good.

Yesterday was National Period Day.  I don’t care about that, there is a national day for everything.

What I do care about is how the radical Left used periods as a weapon in the worst way possible, rather than address a real issue in a meaningful way.

The first thing that jumped out at me was the number of complaints about the cost of feminine hygiene products.

By 2019, feminism has gone from Rosie the Riviter saying “We can do it!” to Helen Reddy singing “I am women, hear me roar” to women in Twitter saying that it’s not fair that they have to buy tampons and men don’t so the government should have to provide them for free.

https://twitter.com/LesleyHandel/status/1185610737584091137

I don’t need her blue lipstick and bangs to tell me that she’s single.

I’ve been doing this for more than a decade.  As the primary breadwinner of the family, I pay for what goes in the grocery cart every week, hygiene products included.  I have to buddies whose wives are both stay at home moms, so they are in the same boat and for about the same amount of time.

But in partisan, feminist politics, husbands who jut buy the things their wives need don’t exist and so this need to be turned into an attack on men.

The conversation (diatribe) on the cost of hygiene products usually shifts into how they are taxed as “luxury items” and not necessities, and how that is sexist and having a period is not a “luxury.”

Of course, a sitting member of Congress and the people at NPR have no idea how taxes work.  That shouldn’t surprise me.  Nither should the lying about this topic.

To paraphrase the words of Dean Wormer “ignorant, self-righteous, and angry is no way to go through life.”

First of all, we need to address some basic tax lingo.  Items are classified three ways, necessities, luxury items, and excise items.  In tax language “luxury” doesn’t mean luxury the way we use it to describe other items like “luxury cars.”  Luxury items are subject so excise or sin taxes, like alcohol and tobacco.

Also, there is no specific tax on feminine hygiene products.  As consumer goods, they are potentially subject to state taxes.  Some states, tax them, others don’t because of their status as luxury goods.  

Different taxes tax different items in different ways.  I have lived in two of the three states that tax groceries at the regular sales tax rate.

The Huffington Post published an article in which it listed other goods that most of us would consider necessities but the government classifies as luxuries.  These include soap, shampoo, toothpaste and toothbrushes, and diapers.

One way that this attack goes even further is to compare the taxes on tampons and Viagra.

That is because Viagra is a prescription medication and tampons are off the shelf consumer goods.  Those are classed differently.

There are two states, by the way, that tax prescription drugs.  I lived in one.  Most states tax non-prescription drugs.

So again, different items sold in different ways have different tax classifications.

As a Republican, I am all for lowering taxes, and I happy to entertain a conversation about needing to reclassify all hygiene products for tax-exempt status.  That includes, but is not limited to feminine hygiene products.

Rather than having a friendly conversation about what items should be tax-exempt, they have decided to make this into a partisan issue that is used as a cudgel against men.

I guess they have to do this because they need to push this in the direction of pandering with free shit.

Fuck me, a Democrat is pushing an equity act, that means its going to be fuck-ass expensive.

What does the H.R.1882 – Menstrual Equity For All Act of 2019 do?  It requires that free hygiene products be provided to all students in public schools, in all bathrooms in federal buildings, to covered by Medicaid, and that every private employer with more than 100 employees provide them for free to employees.

This is going to be very expensive.  Especially forcing it on private employers.

If there is a concern about “period poverty” – the new thought-terminating buzzword about the cost of hygiene products to poor people – I have a better solution.

Allow hygiene products to be purchased using EBT.  The Republicans have been chomping at the bit for EBT reform for years.

I’ll make this trade in a heartbeat, hygiene products – soap, shampoo, dental items, toilet paper, diapers, tampons, etc. – can be purchased with EBT and we remove items like soda and candy from EBT.

But the point isn’t to negotiate, it’s to make issues partisan and win everything.

Lastly, because it’s 2019, every third Tweet to this hashtag was a reminder that:

https://twitter.com/nayeonIuvbot/status/1185720636737576964

 

 

And:

Sometimes a Tweet manages to capture all this in one:

This is just Woke browbeating over the 0.4% of society that is trans/non-binary.

I know I could be a Republican Congressman and say “I agree, that it is difficult for poor women who struggle financially to buy the hygiene products that they need, I’m happy to add them and other hygiene products to the what can be purchased using existing EBT and WIC benefits.”

And that rather than it be acknowledged that I’m trying to do some good, I will be savaged by the Left for implying that only women have periods.

Something like this shouldn’t be corrosively partisan, but that is what the Left has done, and it is beyond stupid and ugly.

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Tulsi Gabbard asked a dumb question.

Oct 19, 2019 Miguel.GFZ 19 comments

A very informal count on my part shows about a 95% of respondents going with “Oh hell yes!”

However I encourage you t visit and laugh at the creative answers. Here are some examples:

 

Hat Tip Dan R.

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American basketball fans are trolling the NBA in epic fashion

Oct 19, 2019 J. Kb 3 comments

As seen on the Twitter:

Previously the NBA removed individual pro-Hong Kong protesters, but now they pro-Hong Kong people in the stands are measuring in the hundreds.

Hopefully, soon they will measure in the thousands.

The NBA can’t empty its stadiums of fans and it can’t broadcast these games in China with pro-Hong Kong messages in the seats.

The NBA might have decided it was more loyal to Chinese money than American values, but American fans are going to shame them into the dirt over that.

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Downtown Miami imitating San Francisco.

Oct 19, 2019 Miguel.GFZ 5 comments

Nothing good can come up with imitating SanFran, but this is the worst.

Homeless people living on the streets and sidewalks of downtown Miami are also relieving themselves on the streets and sidewalks of downtown Miami, turning the city’s core into an outdoor toilet, merchants and residents say.

“The situation is the worst I’ve seen in my 25 years here,” said business owner Jose Goyanes. “The stench is really bad, even after you hose it down. We see people urinating against buildings or pulling their pants down and squatting because they have nowhere else to go.”

Deposits of human waste can be seen in planters, doorways, gutters — or right in the middle of the block. The pavement behind the old Macy’s department store is soaked with urine. Feces ferment in front of vacant storefronts for days when there’s no landlord to clean up. People who work and live downtown are calling in a Code Brown.

Human waste from homeless people makes downtown Miami streets unpleasant, unsanitary

Miami has always had a envy issue . It wanted to be like other “cooler” cities like New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco, but rather to be itself and develop a local color, it always tried to imitate those places they envied. A quarter of a century later, downtown “Magic City” and adjacent areas look like a Dollar Store version of a Big City.

When we moved to Miami some 20-25 years ago, there was a fierce political fight for the soul of downtown. Back then it was a busy commercial location catering to the visitors from South America that came to do shopping for either their pleasure or for resale back in their countries.  Homeless people stated to concentrate in bigger numbers and be nasty about begging and business got pissed about it. They demanded the city/county to do something about it, but all the cool kids in other cities were siding with the homeless and supporting the “Urban Hobos” (Not kidding. I was told by cops in one department that they were required to refer to them like that.) The business owners were targeted by government and Media a heartless Capitalists who did not care for the plight of poor families living in the streets and that they should be ashamed. Well, the campaign worked, business shut their moths, packed their shit and moved away.  The problem was that the people that came to buy stuff also migrated and the business space was never refilled. Who is going to open a  business there when the unofficial street enticement was homelessness?

Last time I went downtown was 7 years ago and it was already a mess. The plaza in front of Government Center was a collection of bureaucrats going from building to building and homeless doing their thing.  And the further away from the corner of 1st Avenue and 1st Street you walked, the worst it got. Fecal issues were not yet as bad as they are supposed to be now, but if the temperature and winds were right, you would get a nice strong whiff of Eau du Piss.

I feel bad for those having to work and do business down there. A lot of things you needed to do at government offices now can be done online and same for shopping including for export-only and that has made the place irrelevant to most of Miamians.  Other cities in the county were less “woke” and created regulations against aggressive panhandling and enforced public health laws.  What? You don’t think you see homeless people taking a daily dump in front of Gloria Estefan’s restaurants in Miami Beach, do you?  Take a crap in Calle Ocho and you will be chased with machetes by a horde of angry Cubans and same in Little Haiti.

 

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Even Kafka could not have come up with it.

Oct 19, 2019 Miguel.GFZ 2 comments

When Socialists/Communists have determined you are guilty, you will be found guilty of something.

‎Judge Maria Lourdes Afiuni’s five-year prison sentence for “spiritual corruption” was upheld on Friday by the court that runs the case.‎

‎Nelson Afiuni, brother of Maria Lourdes Afiuni, made the decision known via Twitter. He announced that because of this decision the defence would proceed in the Supreme Court of Justice.‎
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‎In March of this year, the court sentenced the jurist for this crime that is not established in the Constitution or Venezuelan laws. The TSJ argued that the former civil servant applied precautionary measures against defendants as an “act of pleasure.”‎

Ratifican sentencia por corrupción espiritual a la jueza Afiuni

Once again, “spiritual corruption” is nowhere found in the Venezuelan laws or Constitution. I haven’t looked, but I doubt it could be found anywhere in the world.

Her real crime was to have rendered a court decision that angered Hugo Chavez back in 2010 and the full weight of the dictatorship fell “legally” against her ever since. She already served one sentence, but apparently that was not enough.

But I am sure this will never happen in a Socialist USA.

(PS: Article translated via Edge Browser translator.)

 

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