Ozark Huckleberry

Our nearest neighbor was Dad’s fishing and drinking buddy. Not such a big whoop in itself, but he was also the high school principal. That sucked, sometimes.

Have dealt with batteries for a few decades. Yes, they can explode. No, the average user cannot always predict when or why. Have had one battery explode on me, but it was in a riding lawn mower when I tried to crank it. The precautions (charging, jumping) are written for two reasons -- one is to prevent injury, the other is to prevent litigation. Others here are welcome to take a different view, but I wouldn't give any advice about charging or jumping a battery for the same reason I would never hand out ammunition I've reloaded -- injury might come through no fault of the advice or ammunition, but in a lawsuit that sometimes doesn't matter, and the pard isn't necessarily the one suing.

Before he acted, John Wayne worked on movie sets, was supposed to have met Wyatt Earp (ETA: even if they never actually met, they did work for Ford on the same sets) and used that knowledge to build his cowboy persona. Maybe he got the detail from Earp?

Thanks — I was trying to forget that we could be just two bad sneezes away from her in the Oval Office.

The way information about the virus has been politicized and been used as a way to manipulate, classify, and divide, ANY information from ANY expert is likely to immediately be denounced by someone with a different agenda. Moses could come down from the mountain with everything we need to know about the virus carved in two stone tablets, and right off there'd be a bunch of folks sayin' it bogus because he was known to have collaborated with the Egyptians.

If I remember some distant-past reading, blanks in western movies were usually '5 in 1' blanks, that fit 38-40, 44-40, 45 LC (don't know where they got '5' out of that). Every blank I've seen would not be confused with live ammo -- either the mouth of the case is crimped to a point, or slightly roll-crimped and a wad set deep in the case over the light powder charge. I'd always heard the, 'running low on cartridges' explanations for the 45-70 in the loops. Does anyone in SASS do it as a nod to the Duke?

I can count, it's just that sometimes my shootin' outruns my countin' and other times my countin' outruns my shootin'.

I think there are several factors overlaying each other, and none of which are particularly helpful. First, of course, there's the virus itself. Since it's a novel virus, what we know about it is evolving. Which means how we deal with it is evolving. There has been some overreaction, there has been some under-reaction. In some ways, it isn't a matter of BEING wrong, as much as it is BECOMING wrong. There is a difference. On one hand, there's the media. A large part of the media likes to weaponize any news story to push their ideology. To do that, anything negative has to be made REALLY negative to chip away at their target. Another part of the media is desperate for ratings, and choose their presentations for how sensational they can be made, which again drives the story towards the worst thing a hyperventilating news mouthpiece can offer. And finally, many in the media have found it easier to push a story that has already been scripted for them by the party with which they most closely identify. From another point, one political party has, even more than the media, tried to sharpen every aspect of the pandemic into a weapon against their opponent. With 20/20 hindsight, convenient memories, and the freedom from offering any real-time solutions of their own, the mouthpieces of the party latch on to anything they can to show a misstep, a shortcoming, and a lack of prescience by people trying to deal with the problem. To be effective, those faults have to be exaggerated, and the greater the exaggeration, the greater the effect. Which connects with another part -- getting out of a lockdown that likely could have been avoided, had some circumstances been different. Faced with their excitement at targeting their political opponents over real or imagined missteps, some governors now realize that the decision is in THEIR court, that THEY have to release control, and their politicization of other politicians' miscalculations can come back to bite them -- especially bad in an election year. So they are either falling victim to that age-old enemy of decision-making -- the 'paralysis of analysis' -- or are so eaten up with being afraid of the 'what-ifs' that they are delaying making decisions that people need made, so we can get on with our lives. Just my thoughts, take 'em or leave 'em.

I believe if there was more reason to trust government, it was run by people who were actually leaders, and we could expect to hear the truth from the media, the entire lockdown would likely have been unnecessary.

Can’t remember how large the garrison flag at NAS Pensacola was, but if I remember right, when we brought it down we accordion-folded it into the arms of two lines of four or five candidates along its length on each side, facing each other as it was lowered, then detached it from the halyard. After it was free, we sorted out the first fold as the lines stepped away from each other instead of spreading it completely out. I’ll always remember, the warning was that if we were hoisting it and the wind caught it, let go and get clear. One guy tried to hang on and I think he got flipped a good ten feet in the air and twenty sideways.

John, I am with you 100% on everything you just said. The damage to small businesses and the economy is going to ripple out far beyond the virus, which I think has been inflated for political purposes. I’m afraid that the inflation that’s going to bite us in the ass thanks to the government creating money out of thin air will possibly make the hardships caused by the shutdown seem trivial. Snitching on neighbors has been the bread and butter of enforcement by Nazi and communists for decades. And what has been gained? Turning people against each other. Making people dependent on the government. Nothing good. Okay, edited to take a little of the political bite out: I can only guess that just as when it came to a trade war, we were willing to bet on the American workers when we looked China in the eye and told them to bring it on, and now America is looking the people who think crashing the economy will give them power in the eye, and telling them, ‘Bring it on’.

I use shooting, etc. for the analogies because I figure that whatever anyone's background, profession, etc., the one thing we have in common is CAS. As for your meme, I addressed that perspective earlier. The issue of wearing masks is separate from the political, economic, and social manipulations that are going on regarding the pandemic. Why do you feel you need to belittle someone because they have a different perspective than you? If you don't want to wear a mask, don't wear one. There -- wasn't that simple?

Can’t avoid risk — have never implied otherwise. Informed decisions can reduce unnecessary risk. That’s what we’re talking about here. If you knew something about shooting — say, a particularly unstable powder — was dangerous but you saw a poster advising shooters to use it, would your response be to speak up, or just let it go? If you doing you was only about you, I’d say have at it. In fact, I DID say several posts ago that wearing a mask was an individual choice. Your response to something you disagree with is to just try to squelch the source? Sounds like a political party I know of. But while you’re standing up for your right to choose, instead of talking to me, you should be talking to the person forcing you to open this thread.

'Masks give a false sense of security'. Maybe so, but that's a problem for the people who are ignorant about masks. Deciding not to wear a mask because someone else is ignorant? Hmm. That seems like refusing to shoot a stage, because someone else's transitions suck. Again, focusing on how little protection masks likely offer for the wearer is missing the primary point of masks -- preventing the spread of infection from someone. The virus can live up to 24 hours on cardboard. Watch the video above that shows how spit flies out of peoples' mouths just by talking, and how something as simple as a washcloth stops the spit. Put a few pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic people in a store, walking around, talking without masks. The spit lands somewhere, carrying a virus load with it. Now you get to go pick it up. Think you're clear of the virus because you haven't been around anyone with symptoms? Refer to 'asymptomatic spread' in the discussion above. You could be an asymptomatic carrier, who contracted the virus from an asymptomatic carrier. And conflating the efficacy of masks with the issues of government abuse and overreach is illogical. Is there abuse of power by government? Yes. How does that effect masks? Are there cases of government overreach? Yes. How does that effect masks? Have there been unconstitutional restrictions put in place by 'leaders'? Yes. How does that effect masks? Has there been ridiculously aggressive enforcement of pandemic laws? Yes. How does that effect masks? If you want to demonstrate how much of a rebel you are, why not find some way to do it that doesn't put others at risk?

On one hand, I think of the positive benefits of term limits and how much clearing the trash out of congress would benefit the U.S. On the other hand, I look at some 'representatives' elected to congress, and wonder what they would try if they were in their last term and had absolutely no consequences to worry about in the next election.