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You do not need a gun. If you get attacked, all you have to do is call the cops. If your attacker will allow it, that is:

Tomlin tried to call for help, but Perkins knocked her desk phone onto
the floor and later slapped her cellphone out of her hand, officials
said.

 Now there are people who will claim that a gun would be taken away just as easily as a phone, but remember that it takes much longer to complete a call for help than it does to shoot someone in self defense. It’s pretty difficult to wrestle my gun away from me while you are struggling with that sucking chest wound that I just gave you.

Just ask Trayvon Martin.

This is a post that I put up three years ago, and I repeat it now:

What if the shoe were on the other foot?

Let’s imagine that the government signs a contract with Boeing, where
the company will provide 500 military aircraft over a ten year period.
The contract is structured so that Boeing gets $10 million for each
unit, payable on delivery, and another $5 billion at the end of the 10
year contract, as a bonus for completing all aircraft on time, bringing
the total of the contract to $10 billion.

Nine years into the project, 450 aircraft have been delivered, and the
company is well positioned to deliver the remaining aircraft before the
expiration of the contract and collect the bonus. The Air Force decides
that they cannot afford to pay the bonus, and unilaterally alters the
contract to eliminate the bonus, and decides that the original price of
$10 million per copy is sufficient. The military also announces that
while other contracts with defense contractors are unaffected by this
contract change, budgetary constraints may cause them to alter other
contracts in the future.

Boeing protests, saying that each aircraft costs the company more than
$10 million to build, and the company stands to lose money on this
contract if the previously promised bonus is not paid. Boeing further
states that had the bonus not been a part of the contract, they would
have signed other, more lucrative deals with other parties, and that the
bonus was the reason the deal was agreed to in the first place. Boeing
petitions their congressman to reinstate the original conditions of the
contract. Instead, the Democrat-controlled congress threatens to pass a
law preventing corporations who receive money from military contracts
from negotiating the terms of those contracts.

1. At this point, is Boeing justified in refusing to deliver any more aircraft?
2. Should the government be able to force them to deliver them anyway?
3. Is the law preventing defense contractors from contacting their representatives constitutional or fair?

Most would say that the Air Force and Congress are out of line. Sure,
$20 million per aircraft seems steep, but the Air Force still made the
deal, and should have considered that prior to having the work done.

How is this any different from what is being done to those who provide
labor as their product? The employees have delivered the product (their
labor), and now that the work is done 25 years later, there are attempts to alter the
agreement by eliminating the pension that they were promised. The very pension that caused them to stay when there were more lucrative jobs available.

If the state thinks that the pension is unaffordable, they should cut other projects, instead of screwing over the people that already performed their part of the bargain. For example, in the state of Florida, the entire public pension system costs about 3% of the state’s budget. Medicaid represents nearly 30% of the state budget. The people who are on Medicaid did nothing to earn that money, besides have children that they cannot afford. Why not cut that?

The answer is simple: Vote pandering.

Staff Sgt. Walter Ehlers, the last Medal of Honor recipient from the D-Day invasion in 1944, has died at the age of 92. Our nation is that much less, now that we have lost a man of his caliber.

I know that posting here has been sporadic at best, and the quality of my posts has been down. All of the regular readers of this blog know the reason. I have spent the past two weeks putting my life back in perspective, and getting myself back to the person that I used to be.

I have made quite a bit of progress. My friends tell me that I am back to the old me, the person that I was two years ago: confident, fun, and active. I met someone, and she is wonderful. I have not told her anything about what happened, and I doubt that I ever will. We have had some spectacular dates, and all I have to do is take this one day, one date, at a time.

That is hard to do, because you have to remember that you were hurt not to long ago, meaning that you are vulnerable. At the same time, you have to forget what happened so you can let it go, to prevent what happened from causing your baggage to poison the next relationship.

I have been so busy with that, pressure washing the house, updating my SCUBA equipment, and dating this new woman, that blogging has been taking back seat.

Still, I am happier than I have been in months, and she is certainly fun to hang out with.

From Capital One:
Their new credit card contract grants the bank to send people over to your home or workplace to convince you to pay, and they also reserve the right to spoof you into answering the door or phone through the use of deceptive means.

When banks pull stuff like this, they eventually get the public angry enough that they spur Congress to act. This is pure doucebaggery. There is a legal process for a creditor to get paid, and using mafia style harassment is not a part of that.

Being from New Orleans, I have always loved Harry Connick Jr. Here is a song that I have liked for a long time. Given my current circumstances, I feel a personal connection to it. Nothing connects with us better than song:

An anonymous commenter stopped by to express this opinion:

If homelessness is a problem that requires any degree of government
intervention (care under EMTALA, for example, or EBT cards, or
‘workforce skills’ classes), then it behooves the government to address
the problem with as much efficiency as possible. If giving people an
apartment keeps them out of the hospital for a hundred nights, that’s a
net win for the system. Where’s the beef? 

 Of course, he misses the entire point: Who says that someone’s problems require a government solution? Why is it my responsibility to pay for your EBT cards, your workforce training, or require a doctor to treat you under EMTALA?

The point of the post that you were commenting on is this:
If you are worried about homelessness, how much of your own money have you given to the homeless? If you work in the health field, how many hours per week do you work for free, so that the poor can be treated without cost?

If you don’t donate your own time and money, how can you have the right to demand that I donate my own? Again, that is the liberal answer to every problem: solve it by stealing someone else’s money and giving it to someone else.

Back on Halloween, I reported on the epidemic of violence against this nation’s EMS workers. It came as no surprise to me when I saw this article about the nurse that was beaten unconscious by her patient.

This ties in with comments I recently made on a local story about the ‘popcorn’ theater shooting. There were commenters on the local version of the story that were blaming the NRA, saying that if all weapons were removed from society, that things like the shooting would not happen. Setting aside for the moment the obvious fact that there is no way to remove firearms from public when anyone can make one with hand tools and supplies bought at a local hardware store, or that the shooter in that case was a retired police officer and would be exempt from such a law, I pointed out that people would still be armed with hands or feet, and that a 45 year old man could easily have killed a 71 year old opponent.

When I pointed this out, I was told that I was wrong, but no facts were cited to back up the claim. This article is proof that a person can kill with only hands and feet. What firearms do is place the 70 year old elderly nurse on an equal footing with the 40 year old deranged attacker. It is a well known fact that predators in nature only attack the weak. If a predator knows that its intended victim is capable of defending itself, the attack never occurs. So I ask you, would a person attack an elderly woman if they knew that the potential victim was capable of killing them? I would say that the odds of such an attack would be decreased dramatically.