The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
It’s for the children.
You can have my caffeine when you pry it from…you get the idea. Guns and knives clearly aren’t enough for the nanny state, now their residents want the goverment to keep them from caffeine because it’s easier than controlling their children.
According to Marginal Revolution, they report that lower-end patio sets, grills, and toilet seats are hot items at Wal-Mart in a down economy. The manager who offered up the observation believes it’s a matter of people cocooning and putting more wear into their homes.
I can’t speak to the bathroom fixtures, but I can speak to the outdoor furniture since we’re in the market for both a new grill and a patio seating set – and I’ve looked at Wal-Mart for both. As I have said previously, I was floored by how much patio furniture sets cost these days. Granted, I was looking for something a little nicer than what I bought for my balcony, but nothing too fancy. And the idea of spending more than $500 just on furniture when we also need to buy lights and a grill, plus do a little bit of landscaping just really turned me off (not to mention, Sebastian, who makes the final decisions on the matter). It’s not just because of tighter budgets, if this was a booming economy, I would have a hard time swallowing those kinds of prices for outdoor furniture.
Ironically, a notoriously overpriced store will be the likely source of our new patio furniture. It’s not online, but there are nicer chairs at Bed, Bath & Beyond that are better than anything I’ve found at Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot, & Lowe’s. Even better, they are the same price. Plus, since B,B&B is always sending out coupons, we can get $10 off each chair, making them the lowest priced option.
Although, since I’ve been looking, I have noticed that Lowe’s and Home Depot have already marked down many of their nicer sets. I guess they are seeing the same trend as Wal-Mart, and lower pieces move while their more expensive sets gather dust. Grills have also been marked down this early in the season.
Actually, on the grill front, I’m still trying to find the right size to fit our budget. So far, everything I have found is too big. The whole point of downsizing is to get something smaller so we have more useable space on the patio. But, I think I found one at Sam’s that is a little more than what we were looking at for price, but appears to be the right fit. I just need to get Sebastian over there to look at it since he’s the one who will have to cook on it.
BTW – our patio is done for now. I know I need to do another update post on that. We had some government approval adventures, and the finished product is beautiful. Now we just need to touch up a few places with paint, get a power washer to give the house a good bath, and patch some stucco, and the back will be in good shape.
For your amusement, Jim Geraghty has posted a list of at least 16 promises from Obama that have expired within his first 100 days. (For you non-mathy readers, that’s an average of one broken promise every 6 days.)
Jim notes that once his readers find the post, he will no doubt receive many more submissions. I’ll be curious to see if he can get 100 broken promises for each of the 100 days in office.
I think it’s time for a poll.
[poll id=”11″]
I found a great example of a well-written letter to the editor. It’s sharp, witty, plays off a kernel of truth with just a little exaggeration (but not too much!), and gets people thinking about the issue.
Unfortunately, it was submitted by an anti-gun activist.
That doesn’t mean we can’t learn from it. If there are any readers in south Florida, a well-written response would likely get published.
A funny thing happened on the way to Phoenix…
As I’ve been planning the Second Amendment Blog Bash, I thought it would be fun to post polls on the sidebar of the website for people to vote when they check he latest information. It’s not exactly on par with a rocking night out, but it was meant to get people excited about the Bash.
Unfortunately, I’ve learned that diehard GOP voters will hijack any poll and spam the site with fake votes and crazy comments. The first came from Mitt Romney supporters. They not only shared a link on the top Mitt websites, but one actually set up some kind of a script to vote for Mitt as their favorite invited speaker about five times every second. I changed the poll and banned everyone who voted for him after I got the first hit from the site. I also complained to the main culprits and they did honor my request to remove the links.
The latest is from a group of rabid Sarah Palin fans. Now, I like Sarah Palin. I became a much more active campaign volunteer once she was on the ticket. We waited to put a McCain sign out in the lawn until she was on the ticket. But, when people start using the Bash site comments to tell me about why they believe she’s G-d, things get a little creepy. So, again, when the kiddies over at TeamSarah.org started spamming the poll (one vote a minute – a little less demanding on the server, thank goodness), it was changed and a note went up asking them to stop. So far, they have refused to honor my registration so I can ask them to remove the link, and I’m not sure they will ever acknowledge it.
But, in telling you this, I pose the question that Sebastian asked me when I told him about the creepy comments: If Sarah is G-d, then what does that make Todd Palin?
In DC, you don’t own your driveway or lawn. Now it’s finally coming to the attention of the press since the Congresswoman with no vote started getting tickets for parking in her own driveway.
My old office suffered from this problem. There were no warnings. One day officers just started ticketing all of the cars in the parking lot claiming that it was really public space and not a parking lot. Nevermind that it had been a parking lot since the building was zoned for business or that it was completely paved. We were told we had to preserve it as open space for the city, yet we were also responsible for maintaining it in bad weather. Several very expensive “tax” payments eventually resulted in special permission for us to use it. They had to be paid quarterly, so I wonder if changing this law will finally solve the problem for my old former employer.
I was just tying up some loose ends with the Blog Bash this morning, and a thought occurred to me. This year’s banquet speaker was supposed to be Rush Limbaugh. Something in his schedule conflicted and he had to back out, but a note was sent to attendees that he promises to come to the 2010 banquet in North Carolina.
Only now, after he negotiated with NRA (presumably for a pricey speaking fee), Rush decided to become a shill for HSUS, an organization that vows to ban hunting and sponsors ballot initiatives to close down hunting seasons.
Now I suppose I have an interesting question for one of our sessions at the Blog Bash – will the staff who plan the NRA Annual Meeting for Charlotte continue to extend an invitation to (and pay) Rush to speak in light of his new support for HSUS? Will we give a stage to someone who is recording PSAs for an organization that seeks to end our hunting heritage if he does not apologize?
While I’m on the subject of pondering next year’s Annual Meeting, want to take bets on how many patriotic words NRA can fit into a banquet title? In 2007, I recall the event was simply called the National Rifle Association Annual Banquet. In 2008, it was the National Rifle Association Celebration of American Values Annual Banquet. In 2009, they have renamed it the National Rifle Association Celebration of American Values Freedom Experience Banquet.
If you can come up with a more patriotic sounding title using as many words as possible, I will submit it to NRA as a suggestion for the 2010 banquet. If there is sufficient interest and entertainment value, I’ll try to sweet talk Sebastian into awarding a prize for the best suggestion.
UPDATE: I forgot to add that another twist in the “WWNRAD” (What will NRA do?) saga is that they opted not to sign onto a letter with 28 other sportsmen’s groups asking Rush to stop supporting HSUS and their anti-hunting agenda. I will be sure to ask why they didn’t sign on to the group letter at the Bash, too. It’s quite curious considering they are usually part of these group efforts.
UPDATE: NSSF has posted the letter where you can see NRA did not join. (Before anyone asks, yes, they are on the list of groups notified when an effort like this is being organized.)
There hasn’t been much to say about our patio repairs because weather and the government have not been on our side.
With the beams finally in place, the roof on the short side finally extended out, and the new shingles on the entire thing, we were ready for our second inspection this week. What we were not ready for was the verdict.
Even though only about 5% of the actual structure is “new” (the roof extension of a few inches), the inspector refused to grandfather it in. Which means it must be up to today’s code in all ways. What does that mean? Well, hurricane clips and lag bolts to connect it the roof to the house. Now keep in mind that this structure has been sturdy and upright for years before Sebastian ever even moved into the house. Oh yeah, and we don’t get hit by hurricanes here. Or tornadoes. We get some strong winds every once in a while, but that’s it. This thing is not going to go flying down the neighborhood.
But it gets better. The inspector decided that the plans his office previously approved were no longer good enough. Remember when I posted the excitement of the replacement beams? You probably didn’t notice the footers. They were simple and subtle. They would blend in well with anything.
Well, that footer is no more. The inspector demanded that the posts be completely removed and bolted to to the concrete and more securely to the roof. He said that if I kicked it, the beams might slide out. Talk about bullshit. So our contractor, poor guy, had to buy new materials and take out the beams so they now look like this.
I am not pleased. But, at least they will be covered.
So now we’re back on track and this is what it looked like yesterday:
So let me share in my excitement. Even in a down economy, we have officially surpassed the number of bloggers who registered for the Second Amendment Blog Bash last year. Whether we wind up with more last minute no shows determines if we actually managed to grow the event. Nobody thought that would happen this year. We all assumed it would see depressed turn out. I’m happy to see that we provide an interesting enough product that folks want to come out for it anyway.
In planning for the Bash, I’ve been analyzing random stats about the publishers registered so far. For example, bloggers traveled from 18 states to attend the Blog Bash in Louisville.
In 2009, we’ve got a more notable density of publishers coming from the host state. Even though we can brag about more registrations (and hopefully higher actual attendance), we only represent 16 states this year.
I assume this will change. In 2008, fully one-half of the local bloggers in Louisville decided they just weren’t that interested. I don’t expect that many to drop off this year, but I wouldn’t be shocked if a third of the Arizona publishers didn’t show. The upside to bringing in more people from around the country is that they are more likely to show up once they commit. They have to secure hotel rooms and plane tickets in advance, so skipping out is far more costly. For local folks, it’s no loss.
Of course, I also have not closed registration for the Bash yet. We may well end up with more folks registered by the time I shut it down on May 1. I have 24 21 people left on my “thinking about it” email list this year. (Those who have said they aren’t coming were already bumped to the 2010 recruiting list.) I also plan to do one more round of invites out to regional political bloggers.
Last night, I commented to Sebastian that this is the sort of thing that should really scare the Brady Campaign. We have literally hundreds of people who are passionate enough about the Second Amendment to write or talk about it online regularly and recruit more people into our movement. And every single year the NRA draws 50-66,000 people to their Annual Meeting for a celebration of our rights. In the new media realm, we’re able to draw dozens of those folks out consistently to join in the NRA celebration and cover it as grassroots reporters. Their friends and family will read about it, their gun range buddies might follow it from home, and their readers who range from a few hundred a week to tens of thousands per day will look forward to learning more about the issue and the industry. That’s pretty impressive. That’s dedication they will never know.