Recently, while trying to give some reality to their studies of the World War II Battle of Britain, administrators of a school in England told the children that London was being bombed, took them to an air raid shelter, and set off fireworks to make the children believe that they were being attacked.

Now, I grew up next to SAC bases.  Bombers flew over my school all the time, and my best friend’s farm backed up to the missile fields.  We knew that if the balloon went up, we were all toasted cheese.  We went through regular and frequent “civil defense” drills, some announced, some unannounced.  Basically, they taught us to all get into the basement cafeteria/fallout shelter in the event that the Soviets and the Americans ever came to blows.  Even to an elementary school kid, they were sobering reminders that the world is a dangerous place, and the only way to survive was to go down to the lunchroom and sing “This Little Light of Mine” with the 1st graders until the principal re-opened the 3 foot thick concrete and steel doors and let us out to swing on the monkey bars.

But even the unannounced drills didn’t include authority figures telling us that Washington was a smoking hole and that we were under actual attack.

I love history.  I want my children to love it and learn it as much as or more than I do.  But I don’t want them to have their wits scared out of them. There are better ways to bring the reality of history to a young person.

If these educators want their students to learn something, why not re-enact the manner in which Londoners sought shelter during the Blitz?  Go to London and sleep in the subway stations.  Trust me, they’ll learn more from one night in the Picadilly Square tube station than they will crying softly in the dark thinking that their families are dead.  You might not like what they learn, but trust me, it’ll be educational.

Dear Kentucky People,

Let’s all take a deep breath here.  In….. and out.  Feel better? Repeat that if you want to.

OK, now that we’ve all stopped hyperventilating, let’s get some perspective here.

It’s January, and it’s going to snow today.  Qel Surpris!  We’re going to get a not insignificant amount, but it’s not the end of the world.  No-one is going to drown in the white horror, and glaciers are not pushing their way through Indiana on their way to hit the Ohio River.  If we all keep our heads and look out for those of us who are less fortunate, no-one is going to die.

Here are a couple of tips:

• Slow the hell down.  Yes, you’ve got four wheel drive, but that means precisely diddly over squat on snow and ice.  
• Drive courteously.  Yes, I see the big number 8 decal on your back window.  I know that you fantasize about being a NASCAR driver when you grow up. Today is not that day.  Quit tailgating the school bus, cutting off the little old ladies, and driving up the median/shoulder when traffic slows down.
• Dress properly.  Yes, you’re smoking hot in those low-rise jeans and crop top. You have great abs and men have a hard time not looking down your shirt.  But it’s not August.  Put on a couple more layers.  You can still look good in boots, jeans, and a sweater.  Trust me.  I lusted after many young ladies in the winter when I lived in North Dakota.
• Learn how to shovel some darn snow.  Yes, you bought that Acme brand Ultra Snow and Ice Destroyer.  That crackling sound you hear when that stuff gets wet is your $15,000 aggregate driveway dissolving.   Also, that stuff probably melts the ice and snow great when it’s 29 degrees out, but won’t stop the resulting water from re-freezing when it dips down to 15 degrees at night.  Good luck driving down that hockey rink.  Get yourself a $20 grain shovel and a broom, scrape the snow off your porch, driveway, and sidewalk, then use the broom to brush off what’s left.  You may have to do this a couple of times, but you need the exercise.  If you’ve got a kid living with you that’s old enough to push a lawn mower, they can push snow too.  Builds character.  And for heaven’s sake, unless we get 3 to 6 feet of snow instead of the 3 to 6 inches we’re projected to get, you do not need the Binford 4000 Fuel Injected V8 snow blower. 
• Check on your neighbors, both old and young.  Times are tough.  People are turning down their thermostats in an effort to save a few dollars.  Sometimes they go too far.  Walk over to the homes near you and see how folks are doing. If it seems chilly in their home, ask them over for dinner or a cup of coffee.  The warm up will do them good and you probably need the company.
• Either send that teenager over to shovel some snow for the older neighbors or do it yourself.  They lived through the hard times of the Depression, World War II, Woodstock, and the Carter administration.  They deserve better than to die of a heart attack clearing off their driveway.
• And finally, for the weather and news people on the TV and radio, please stop scaring the hell out of the Kentucky people.  I know, good news or non-dire predictions don’t grab eyeballs and ratings, but you’re freaking out the herd.  Kroger was Lord of the Flies last night.  Schools are being closed because of a couple of inches of snow.  Stop sensationalizing normal winter weather.  What you people hype as “The Great Blizzard of 1994” is what we called Wednesday back home.  Get some perspective.

Now, if we all stop, think, and act rationally for the next day or so, this is going to be fun.  Please don’t make it worse than it needs to be.

Borepatch has a good post up about the controversy over something that TJIC put up on his blog.  TJIC made a joke in poor taste, the local police read it, over-reacted, and took away his license to own a gun.  Glossing over the fact that he needed such a license in the first place, let’s examine the free speech angle here:

A citizen of the United States, exercising his constitutionally guaranteed right to say things that other people find objectionable, is penalized by his local government for saying them, and is deprived of his right to keep and bear arms.  Yes, the joke was disrespectful, but the Bill of Rights was put in place to protect our rights, especially when we exercise them in a way that is objected to.

If you make a joke about speeding on I-64 in Louisville, LMPD doesn’t come along and impound your car.  If you joke about voting for Mickey Mouse because the slate of candidates you are presented with sucks, they don’t take away your right to vote.

But because TJIC said something the locals didn’t cotton to, he got his guns taken away.

I’m passing this on because the more hell we raise, the more sunshine we shine on these cockroaches, the better off we all are.

If one of us is attacked, we are all attacked.  If one of us loses our rights, we all lose our rights.

I am TJIC.

Presented without comment:

As you can see from the blog roll on the left, I read a lot of stuff.  Through the magic of Google Reader, my goofing off is very efficient.  I try to add everyone who comments here to my blog roll.  Hey, if you’re willing to come here, read my meanderings, and add your own thoughts, you deserve a little free advertising.

If you’re reading the blog, follow it, or blog roll me and you’re not on the blogroll, drop me a note here and we’ll get that corrected.

Today we commemorate the birth of Reverand Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Since our birthdays are so close together and I’m a history buff, I’ve always been interested in the life and ideas of MLK and have admired him as a man and leader.  He was no saint. He was not a messiah.  He was a man, broken and flawed, but in a lot of ways a better man than I have become.  I may not agree with everything he said nor every stand he took, but he at least had the courage to stand up for what he believed and take the beating that those beliefs might bring.

I believe that due at least in part to his life’s work, even though we still have a long way to go, the racial problem of our country is closer to a solution than it was when he began his work in the early 1950’s.  He kept enough of a lid on the parts of the civil rights movement that wanted to break out in armed revolution, and was able to hold enough feet to the fire that major strides were made in our nation’s search for equality. 

I listened to several of his speeches today.  Here are two of his more famous speeches, but I urge you to seek out his others, especially the ones you will disagree with, and give them a listen. They are a window on a time where “civil discourse” could still be found with the progressive left and a man who could make an argument without it becoming an attack. He could discuss why he opposed the Vietnam War without making it into an attack on the soldiers fighting it.  He could speak out for the poor without calling for the destruction of the rich.

Don Surber hits one out of the park, out of the parking lot, and out of the county.

Sometimes you read things that sound so right you just can’t imagine why you didn’t think to write them yourself.

The deer bow-hunting season here in Kentucky ends tomorrow.  It runs pretty much non-stop from late September until mid-January.  During the season, when I was able to get out to the woods, I saw precisely three deer, only one of which I could have gotten a legal shot at.  Of course, that doe ran off before I could bring my gun to bear.

Occasionally, I would see small groups of deer here and there as I drove around. Luckily none of them tried to play chicken with my car again.

This morning, the day before bow season closes, and knowing full well that I will not be able to get out to the woods before hunting light ends this afternoon, I saw two groups of no less than 20 does apiece in fields near my home.  While driving the interstate to the office, I saw between 5 and 10 other deer in pairs or singly, including one buck that had a big enough rack to make a grown man stare.

My question is this:  Who gave the deer a bloody calendar so they’d know when it’s safe to come out?

For my 10th birthday, I got a Flexible Flyer sled.

For my 20th birthday, I got Operation Desert Shield and 100 extra pushups.  (Thanks Uncle George!)

For my 30th birthday, one of my buddies in the 101st Airborne arranged for me to fly as cargo in the co-pilot’s seat of an Apache gunship.

I wonder what’s going to happen today?

Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York and noted Toole, has decided to try and get the Army to act as a stooge for the ATF.

“After Jared Loughner was interviewed by the military, he was rejected from the Army because of excessive drug use. Now, by law, by law that’s on the books, he should not have been allowed to buy a gun,” Schumer told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“But the law doesn’t require the military to notify the FBI about that, and in this case they didn’t. So I –this morning — I’m writing the administration and urging that that be done, that the military notify the FBI when someone is rejected from the military for excessive drug use and that be added to the FBI database,” Schumer said.

So basically, Chuckie wants military recruiters to inform on prospective recruits if they admit to drug use so that they can be deprived of their constitutional right to keep and bear arms.  This is to be used to feed the list of people who can’t have a gun.  In this instance they would be put on it without a trial, adjudication, or whatever.  If a recruiter made the subjective decision to reject someone due to an unacceptable amount of drug use in the past, they would lose a constitutionally protected right.


You see, when someone who wants to join our military talks to a recruiter and they get to the point they’re filling out paperwork, a series of questions is asked. When I went in, among a lot of others, were such things as:


Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
Are you now or have you ever been a homosexual?
Do you now or have you ever used an illegal drug?


The Army uses these questions to weed out recruits who, in the eyes of military leadership, shouldn’t be in uniform.  The Communist question went away a few years after the Berlin Wall went away.  I imagine that if the homosexual question is still asked its days are numbered.


If Congress and the ATF pressure DOD to inform on their own recruits, then I say they stop asking the drug question.  Anyone who has been using in the months prior to recruitment will be caught out when they take a drug test anyway.  


Chuckles, I’m going to explain this to you, and I’ll try to use small words, but I’ll provide links to any advanced concepts:


Two words:  Posse Comitatis.  The United States Military is not now, nor has it been for a century and a half, a police force charged with enforcing the laws of the land on the civilian population.  If Congress and the courts want to exclude drug users from buying a gun from a licensed gun dealer, so be it. But soldiers are not policemen.  The job of a military recruiter is to find young people who have the potential to make good service members and convince them to join up.  They are not there to watch out for people who use drugs and inform a law enforcement agency.  If they start doing this, I expect that even kids who are squeaky clean will stop walking down to the recruiter office.


Senator Schumer, I suggest that before you start using the blood of American citizens to further your agenda, you figure out if what you want to do is legal, and whether it actually makes sense.  Is it worth making every recruiter who comes to a high school into a narcotics officer in order to keep people from buying a gun?