Rainbow Effect

Chips? Check! Salsa? Check? Little Smokies? Check! Remote? Check! Popcorn? Check! Beer? … Oh crap, are we really down to 2 beers 30 minutes before the game on Sunday?  How the hell did this happen?!   No time to worry about it now, gotta run to the gas station and grab a quick case of suds.  I know most of us have been here:  Squealing of brakes follows you into the door at the Quick Mart and you swiftly stride to your favorite brew, tug on the glass door—LOCKED!  As you stand there, inches from your goal, your breath accumulating on the cold glass with your hands curled into fists, you ask aloud:  “What is this? Some kind of sick joke?”   The voice of the cashier behind you answers curtly: “Sorry hon, no beer sales before noon on Sunday, it’s the law.”  As you stand there, cursing under your breath about what kind of barbaric, bohemian would conceive such laws, you suddenly ponder the merits of driving to the neighboring state---- “I don’t think they have these stupid laws”.

Those laws are called “Blue Laws”  The first Blue Laws started showing up in Colonial America as early as 1620.  They were written in an effort to honor the Sabbath according to doctrine specified by individual religions.  The ranged from banning business sales and travel on Sunday, to the banning of sales, including alcohol.  Over half of the states in the US still have some residual blue laws of one sort or another. They vary in times and days and content, but they all share one thing in common: They are all secular.  The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of these laws several times in the past, but that could soon all be changing. Or at least it should.

I am sure that I do not have to educate readers about the recent Supreme Court decision on gay marriage.  By now everybody has heard about it.  But what I want to point out is the logic they used to come to their conclusion.  The Supreme Court found that the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States protects gay couples from the direct discrimination applied vial laws created from religious viewpoints.  It is also Unconstitutional for individual states to have laws in place that discriminate against individuals based on their personal viewpoints. In other words, Laws that discriminate based on religious practices, are unconstitutional.   By doing this, the Supreme Court has set a precedent that so far has been unheard of in this country.  It’s a legal precedent, which we can use to come back and fight against some laws that are currently in place on the books that lay down some pretty stupid and discriminatory practices.

If you take this decision and apply it to the existing Blue Laws, you can start to see how, with a little legal wrangling, it might not take long for Blue Laws to disappear entirely in the US.   In fact, we can probably take the application even further.  “Sin Taxes” are a tax applied mostly to the sales of alcohol and tobacco.   Just the name “sin tax”  betrays itself as one of secular origin.  If religious laws are now deemed unconstitutional- then maybe there is a possibility that Illinois and New Hampshire may soon see the end to $15.00 packs of cigarettes.  It could also possibly put an end to state and local Governments illegally placing unduly large tariffs on things they find distasteful.

Bob Owens over at Bearingarms.com also sees an application of the new ruling in a much more meaningful way.  He contends that the decision by the Supreme Court could be applied to the existing variation of firearms laws in states across the country.  The Idea is that by application of the law, it would force states to adopt a universal reciprocity for concealed carry permits, thereby making it much easier for the transport and carry of legal firearms across the country.  Currently, the laws vary so much from state to state, that law abiding citizens risk prison time just for transporting firearms they legally own to another location.  Owens contends that this ruling could end all of that and apply universal legal framework for firearms in the United States.

To take this even one step further, If Owens is correct in his assertion, that means you could apply his same logic to laws regarding marijuana.   Forcing all states to recognize the legality of pot based on the recognition of just a few.  All of this might ultimately lead to an end to the war on drugs.   Of course all of this is speculation right now, but it has a legitimate basis in law, and we could and might start seeing some of these challenges pop up really soon.  That means that our great friends in Colorado who have already blazed the way for us, may have done the entire rest of the country a huge favor by getting rocky mountain high.

So if you have been trying to decide in your head if the decision on gay marriage is good for you or not, I would really wait to pass judgement until you are sitting in front of your television, gun at your side, bowl on the table, with a big cold brewski before noon on Sunday before you pass judgement…. At that point you may want to call up your gay friends and thank them for paving the way for the rest of us. 

Happy Birthday

I am fairly certain that I spent some portion of last night with a lampshade on my head.  I honestly don’t remember.  The house is a mess, I have a four wheeler that needs some fixin, there is too much food and too many empty beer cans laying about and my boots are full of mud-on the inside. BUT DAMN IT WAS AWESOME!  I was blessed this 4^th of July to get to spend some time with my family at my home in South Florida.  There was too much food, there always is.  We grilled brats from Carroll’s Sausages in Georgia and they were fantastic.  Pasta salad that Melissa made with home made duck egg mayonnaise was out of this world.  We bought corn on the cob, but we forgot to cook it.  That’s OK though because the horses love corn on the cob-more for them I guess.    There was the screaming of small children in the house and it was music to my ears. 

We started the day at Peace River Seafood right down the road.  I want to say a special thanks to all the folks who worked on the holiday so that others such as ourselves may celebrate it.  The seafood festival that followed was no less than spectacular.  Oysters, clams, shrimp and crabs were sampled by all.   Peace River is the kind of place where when you order blue crab, its still alive and waiting on the back steps when you place the order.  I have not found a place that serves fresher, or better seafood. 

We followed this up with the age old American tradition of mixing alcohol with explosives. We broke out the firearms and headed down to the range.  I honestly can’t think of anything more American to do on America’s birthday than spending an afternoon with my nephews and cousins disposing of old communist ammunition-one bullet at a time. My nephew Blaze got to shoot a .380.  The smile on his face and the approval of the range master at our absolute application of firearm safety were awesome rewards for this venture.  (And for the record, the alcohol only came out AFTER the firearms were put back away.)

Then it was off to the mechanical horses.  We own two four wheelers and it didn't take long before people started to notice that it’s the rainy season in Florida-so there is PLENTY of mud on the ground. The younger kids squeals of delight while being toted around on the four wheelers through the pasture was food for the soul.  You cant help but enjoy the smile on the face of a child that goes from ear to ear when the get off such a fun little machine. 

  That was of course followed by my two nieces who INSISTED that they were going mudding with Uncle Boo Boo.  They paid for it…they had to ride behind me.  

Of course, my boots are still soaked through and I am not sure what I will be wearing on my feet today.  I know better than to wear my good boots on the trails, but by this point in the evening, the Allegany Mountain 140 proof moonshine liquor might have been making a few decisions for me.

I have a brother in law who is pretty sick and may not be long for this earth,

   I very much wanted to spend some time with him and I am glad I got to do it.  My only sadness comes from the fact that my children: Alex, Nicole and Steven are all off living their own lives and could not be home for this holiday.  By the way- HAPPY BIRTHDAY NICOLE!  I am sure you thought I forgot.

Too many holidays I have wasted not caring too much about celebrating them.  This year, with everything that has been happening in society around us, I kinda felt it important to celebrate everything that makes America the best place in the world to live.  A day where we can put our petty political differences aside for a few hours and just reflect and celebrate all the things that our founding fathers did to insure that we would have this opportunity.  I am not sure they intended for me to do it with a lampshade on my head, but at least I am free to do it.

Flags and Such.

I’m a racist.  There, it’s out on the table.  When I am out on the road, I purposefully chose to not spend my money at fuel stops that are owned and run by Indians.  I do so out of choice, because that’s my right.  It has been my experience that most establishments that are run by Indians are not up to par with my expectations for cleanliness and service.  So I chose not to do business with those establishments.  It’s my right, I make that decision.  When I look for good BBQ, I purposefully look for establishments that are owned and run by black people.  I do so because it has been my experience that for the most part, black people make a mean ass BBQ—end of story.   When I am looking for help around the house in the form of manual labor, I deliberately seek out employees of Mexican heritage.  I do so because it has been my general experience that they work hard, don’t complain, they show up for work on time, and get the job done.  I also get on pretty well with Mexicans- so I chose to hire them.  Do these things make me a racist?  By the definition; “A person who believes one race is superior to another”. It makes me a racist because I believe that black people are better at (among other things) cooking BBQ, Jews excel at banking and finances, Mexicans are more physically built for tolerating working in the hot sun because of the climate they hail from.  And yes, I am generally unimpressed by the hygiene

standards that I have encountered with folks from India.  So I guess that makes me a big fat cracker racist.

It would be delusional to try to convince yourself that there is such a thing as a person who is not racist to some extent.  General life experiences will mold your thoughts and feelings about different groups of people.  That’s just the way things are.  I am sure that we all harbor some resentment somewhere about something.  Some people resent entire races based on skin color, nationality, sexual preferences, and more people have been systematically slaughtered throughout history because they do not share beliefs in the same deity.  The divide in the United States between black and white has a long and ugly history.  It is where we see and hear the most about racism in the news and in our conversations.  Racism has again been brought to the forefront of our lives by a wicked act in one of our oldest and most beautiful cities.  Now, I see my friends and neighbors pointing at a flag in South Carolina while screaming “RACISM!”.   It’s this cry of “racism” and what it really implies, that I want to address.

I don’t want to even discuss the heritage of the Southern Cross flag.  I will acknowledge that it was used in our Civil War by the Confederacy.  It represented the mindset that black people were property and not human.  Yep, it was carried by people who fought and died for a very backward and distorted viewpoint of other human beings.  Presently that battle standard is on display in front of the State Capitol in South Carolina and it is causing a media firestorm.  Countless pundits and officials have been propped up in front of cameras to call for the flag to be brought down.  They talk about how demeaning it is and how it only serves as a reminder of the hatred of the slavery and Civil War.  “It’s insensitive” I have been hearing over and over again.  “It flies in the face of the entire black community to fly the Confederate flag over the state capitol…..”   I disagree.

The thing that we keep seeing over and over again: “Confederate Flag still flying over South Carolina State Capitol”.  Usually accompanied by a carefully cropped pictures like these:

Usually the text of those articles stops just shy of calling Law Makers and residents of the state “Racist Cracker Klansmen”, but it sure wants to imply it.  People are asking how it is possible in this day and age that we are flying such a symbol of hatred over a government building…..well we’re not.

Here is the image that the media does not show you:

The Northern Virginia Battle Flag does indeed fly AT the state capitol building.  It flies over a war memorial that is dedicated to soldiers who paid the ultimate price in one of our bloodiest wars.  It does NOT fly over the State buildings as the media would have you believe.   In fact, because the flag is not actually flying over a government building, it requires a legislative vote just to lower it to half staff.   So despite what you are being told, the calls from the media are nothing short of demands to desecrate a war memorial to fallen soldiers. Think about that long and hard for a minute because history will quickly tell you what comes next.  We start with the flag, we find it offensive, so we rip it down.  Well the rest of the memorial is still there—it also offends me, so we should just take it out.  Well now that I think about it, aren’t we spending tons of money every year to keep a museum open at Gettysburg? 

Good lord, this only serves as a reminder of all the hatred.  It hurts my feelings so we should stop spending federal dollars on such a thing.  Let’s close the doors.  Hell, we should probably go ahead and plow over the battlefield there and build a strip mall because such things only serve as a reminder-and that hurts my feelings.

COMING SOON: STARBUCKS!

Well, now that we have cleansed our society of the remind----OH WAIT, we have that other thing.  All those pesky Civil War graveyards, with markers and tombstones.  Well they represent hatred and slavery right?  We certainly can’t have all those graves out in plain sight for our children to see.  We really do need to just plow those over and build some low income housing there.  It would be a much more efficient use of the space and we would not have to have all those stones there reminding us—serving as beacons of hate.  Right? 

If you think I am being sarcastic, this is what people are talking about doing.  This is where it leads.  You are currently talking openly about desecrating a war memorial.  Where do you think that slope really leads?  What we are doing is blaming the actions of one sick individual on a war memorial to fallen soldiers, and I don't agree with that.  So if it makes you feel better to label me a racist because I don’t agree that it’s a good idea to start burning flags in South Carolina—go ahead, I guess I’m a racist.