I have a picture somewhere of my mother having to physically remove a fawn from their kitchen. He ended up hanging out around the place for several months until he went out on the 4 lane highway and got hit.

Operation vote for anyone not the incumbent in the county council election is a go. Anyone. Hitler. Stalin. Any adherents to either belief system. If you voted to approve the newest 300 house subdivision on an already overcrowded road zoned for already overcrowded schools, it’s vote for anyone else time regardless of their other political views. Even if that means having that person on the council for a term.

We wait and see what happens.

I guess the only questions left are if we stay in Venezuela and if we do are the people who are currently celebrating willing to take casualties 10-15 to 1 for 20 years until we lose our appetite for it and leave. Those numbers being fairly consistent for previous conflicts in the past 75 years. Vietnam. Afghanistan. Iraq. Sure the people there are celebrating now. Let’s see what it looks like 6 months into a puppet ruler people who ain’t from there put in power or someone who ain’t from there being a military governor. Or a year in. Or 18 months in.

Welcome to the south! Enjoy your stay

I thought the bobbies ain’t had no guns.

That has interesting applications for deployments anywhere troops will be fighting given the last time war was declared as required by the constitution. Might be time to have that conversation though. Course there’s some might decide that they ain’t going to prison for not following an obviously illegal order when the system comes for them.

A set of my great great grandparents were cousins. 3rd cousins but cousins nonetheless. I wonder if that explains a few things…

The people in power? Yes. People who are used to the status quo and don’t think that will ever change, that the US isn’t an empire or that it will be the first one in history to not lose power? Probably. How many empires on the decline went into World War One partially to show everyone else they still had it?

That said the US can probably still blow any place into the stone age if they want to and like an animal, governments are most dangerous lashing out in their death throes.

The four pedestals mark the landing point of each of the four flights. Any bets on whether Orville ever let Wilbur forget he flew first or Wilbur ever let Orville forget he had the longest flight of the day?

Dang. I like a 20 inch barrel for 5.56 but I might have to buy one of these just to stick it to the man.

https://youtu.be/jjvEZksJKKc?si=38Kuoa7Z-VfuG1gG

Oi. You got a license for that meme mate?

Not going to lie , someone talked to someone this afternoon is all I got from that.

So basic situational awareness? I don’t worry about something happening per se but yes I know that anything can happen to anyone anytime anywhere. That is true now, has always been true and always will be true. I’m not exempt from that as I go about my business so yeah, I keep an eye on what’s around me. Shootings are pretty rare in my community and anyone that isn’t a felon can carry a gun without a permit. Been able to keep one in the glove box for years without a permit required. Mass shootings, 4 or more shot, are mostly gang violence. Though of course a stray catching you is always a possibility.

Snakes, rabid animals. Lots of reasons to own weapons of any sort. Swords. Spears. Bows. Quarter staffs. Guns. Generally best to stay current though I have examples of all of the above. Currentish anyway. I will admit to occasionally carrying a pistol manufactured in 1919.

I’d say only tax payers get to vote and if one chooses not to vote they get to opt out of taxes. It’s not immediately clear why people who aren’t paying the bill should get say or why people who aren’t putting in a say should have to pay the bill.

Dang. I got a couple pieces of that vintage including a Winchester made Model 1917 enfield that was a P14 Enfield converted to .30-06. Crazy to think about the logistics that went into that war and what it all could have been used for instead.

Biggest lie in modern society: the outcomes of an action or the outcomes of not taking the same action are in anyway relevant to the ethics of taking that action. Examples include taxing people to feed their less fortunate neighbors or to stop a foreign genocide.

One might still do it but if taxes are theft or extortion if one prefers, one will answer for it come judgement day especially since it’s a choice one will make countless times over their life. The fact that someone else does the actual taking is also irrelevant to their culpability. Merely voting for the candidate and thinking it’s a necessity to fund the system that way, even if it is a necessity, is enough to establish moral culpability.

TLDR: however necessary an action is or however much good it does, is irrelevant to the ethics of taking that action if you violate the person or property of a third party to take it.

It’s really catawampus but I’m from the south and in that dialect it becomes cattywampus.

About as good as cattywampus.

If the balloon goes up the three jerry cans of stabilized gas I have pre staged with my parents is for my dad’s generator and *not * for riding around the apocalypse on his 1976 Harley Davidson Shovelhead with straight pipes. Honest.

Every one always thinks it will be different when they do it, that they’re doing it for the right reasons, that their reason makes it necessary and that they’ll maintain control of the apparatus indefinitely. Or some combination thereof anyway. So no we haven’t and won’t ever learn anything. Not at scale. Individuals? Sure. Just not enough to stop it the next time. One of those things. I get to control how I interact with the world and the people in it. Not how the world and the people in it interact with me. None of us get to do that. That’s ok. That just means there’s other places to put my efforts and just remain aware of what they’re doing.

Side note my old reserve unit use to train once or twice a year at Fort Gordon in Georgia where the NSA has one of their centers on post and we’d drive right past it on the way to the bivouac site. Been tracking on the NSA since a couple years before the Snowden revelations.