City of Enid Commission session delights us with brief moment of bad lip reading

In the last episode of the Enid Follies soap opera where a gang of 3 Commissioners conspired to do in local talent Jerald Gilbert as City Manager knowing that one Commissioner and the Mayor were going to be out of state.  This month is when the proper performance review of the City Manger's performance is supposed to happen, so let's take a look at the quality of judgment of the judges.  Yes, the result is an instance of bad lip reading.  Take a look:

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Writing this as I just get back from KNID's Agrifest, which I'm sure would amaze the City's Assistant Manager who thinks spacious parking lots nowhere near enough businesses to warrant so much unproductive space is a good thing.  That's because the spacious parking lot at the Chisholm Expo Center was freakin' PACKED all the way from the facilities' front door to the roadways.  The only time there are packed spacious parking lots downtown is when there are special events, not for retail business, and Agrifest is both a special event AND retail business.  The Agrifest booklet mapped out vendor booths and which vendor was in what booth, but it didn't show where the vendors came in from...and so I started collecting business cards (and in the absence of business cards, collected promotional items that showed that information).

I got a free tote back from Mystik Lubricants to put all the stuff into, too...and Mystik was represented by Jim Johnson Oil Co. of El Reno, Oklahoma.  So naturally I said to the vendor, "Welcome to Enid!"

What I will do at a later date is update this blog entry with an analysis of all the business cards & info I picked up and post who was from out of town, from out of state, and where applicable, the size of the large machinery on sale for this event.  Somebody is just going to have to take this  info to the City Commission to show that whatever the hell they think they're doing with the downtown area for city folk, the entire county that it's the seat of has that retail business beat to a whisper several times over.

Stay tuned.
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I've got quite a stack of business cards to scan, and here's where I kick off the scan-fest over here. What's interesting is that the stack of out-of-town cards is immensely taller than the stack of in-town cards, which should tell the Economic Development crew all it needs to know about what businesses there should be in Enid but aren't.  Here's the first batch, all in Oklahoma, but there are quite a few out of state businesses showing up here, from Minnesota to Texas, and yeah--Benson MO was represented by 2 different vendors--but--actual ag businesses from Illinois were present.

What the Enid City Commission repeatedly fails to realize is that other cities solicit Enid hunters and fishermen to spend their sports money in their communities instead of Enid's. Enid just hasn't got anything that will attract such people outside of the annual quail hunt. Enid Economic Development my ass. If you're offended by "salty language" like this, then you haven't talked to a farmer, rancher, or military person.

Showdown at Oregon's OK Corral: NRA

It's not the National Pistol Association, is it.  It's the National RIFLE Association.  When it comes to Right to Life, conservatives clam up when kids lose their lives by school massacres and at-home oopses.  Sure, charge the parent of the toddler who was playing with that deadly shiny thing he found in her purse, but good luck with that--she already got the Death Penalty.  NO biggie--the parent was an adult, so who cares.  That the toddler cares about the dead parent doesn't count.

It's also true that despite howls about how bad guys with guns get taken out by good guys with guns, ALL guys with guns haven't helped law enforcement identifying who is who, and in the case of road rage between two bad guys with guns, they both get Darwin Awards for taking each other out--but often not without taking bystanders along with them.  They're adults and kids, but who cares?

The locals here know that I've spoken up for wild game sports including the use of guns although I'm primarily a fisherman (so to speak) myself.  I've handled guns, I've shot guns (in Arizona, though), guns don't bother me as a rule, but the protection that the NRA has been providing for bad guys getting guns does.  The fact that Daesh/IS gets American guns thanks to the lack of gun law sanity does.  The anti-government clan that the NRA attracts puts the NRA on the same side as Daesh, and that bothers me, too.  Patriots that are patriotically allegianced to Daesh aren't patriots to the U.S. in MY book.  You can't swear allegiance to America and to the Republic for which it stands when you give aid and comfort to the enemy by letting it buy our arms while denying this nation its own right to self defense.

It's that simple.

The people who are against the U.S. government share common cause with the enemy.  The people who interfere with the government's ability to be able to tell good guys with guns from the bad guys getting our guns give aid, comfort, and supplies to the enemy.  You're not patriots--you're traitors.

The NRA has been great at getting riled about what they think the government shouldn't do, but denies our own government its own right to self defense by failing to propose what the government CAN do.  Just like ISIS, they're only interested in just wrecking our government.  They comfort, aid, and arm the enemy while making claims that the Constitution needs to be adhered to, when the first paragraph of that time-honored document of what they claim is American exceptionalism handed down from God says the following:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, 

establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, 

promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

There are howls now about the overreach achieved by presidential executive order because the howlers are ignoring another part of the Constitution they claim is so sacrosanct--Section 7 which gives Congress power to regulate commerce, and gun manufacturers and dealers are commerce even if the 2nd Amendment says what it does about individual ownership. Individual ownership isn't commerce, and it's the responsibility of the suppliers of commerce to the individual that is fairly and constitutionally regulated by the government.  The individual has a right to bear the armament he can make himself.  A manufacturer of armaments do not have unabridged rights to sell.

It's that simple.

Now before you start sending me death threats, permit me to say that I know that Article I does NOT apply to the Executive branch; that would be Article II.  But that's where our nation of laws, via precedent, comes into play.  Over the years between the time the Constitution was ratified and amended, we've developed precedence in case law, and if you have a problem with Executive Branch over-reach, you can start by repealing the War Powers Act, because by legislation the Congress attempted to get away with abdicating its Constitution-prescribed powers to the Executive Branch without Amending the Constitution as is called for.  Congress abdicated its Constitutional responsibilities with the first War Powers Act and has continued to do so by its own collective consent ever since.

Train your kids to handle guns, sure, that'll give the nation more gun lovers...until your kids' friends die by gunfire either by accident, by drive-by, or by a toddler attracted to that shiny loaded thing, or by a kindergartener who got mad at a playmate over something stupid.  Your highly trained kids will turn against you, too.  Count on it.

All the parents you throw in jail for each kid that gets a hold of a fire arm in the household isn't going to bring back any of the executed kids. None of them.  They stay dead.