Tag Archives: 1A

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. The First Amendment. It’s plain that the First Amendment doesn’t mean what the masses on the internet seem to think it means. The 1st protects you from the government interfering with your speech in all its many forms. It means the FBI won’t come kick down your door when someone gets butthurt about something you posted on Facebook. By contrast this amendment has absolutely nothing to do with what a business such as Facebook will let you post on their platform… that you joined voluntarily and pay nothing to use. If you’re going to crusade for your rights, perhaps it would be helpful to first know what those rights actually are… because the Constitution nowhere guarantees your right to force a 3rd party to use their property to amplify your voice.

2. The Office of Personnel Management. It’s been 41 days since the bill authorizing a pay raise for employees of my Big Bureaucratic Organization was signed into law. It apparently takes at least that long to calculate what 1.9% of 2018’s pay tables were and add those two numbers together. And don’t get me started on the fact that if the legislative and executive branches weren’t both being led by children, that raise would have started showing up my pay sometime in January. Yes it’s allegedly retroactive, which is nice and all… but that also means the tax man is going to take a massive cut out of whatever check three or four months of retroactive extra pay eventually slide into. If only there were some parts of government who’s main job was formulating and executing timely budgets for departments and agencies perhaps this wouldn’t be such a difficult exercise.

3. Extraneous logins. I have accounts on more than one system at work that exist purely so I can log on to those systems once a week in order to keep my account active. I never have any actual work associated with those accounts and yet once a week I log on just to avoid getting an angry warning that my account is about to be disabled from our IT office. Like the old coffee can full of extraneous bits and pieces you keep in the garage, I’m told to keep these accounts active “in case you need them some day.” That this is how we do business never fails to stupefy me if I dwell on it for too long.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. First Amendment. It doesn’t mean what people seem to think it means. The 1st guarantees that the government shall not muzzle or punish speech except in the most extreme or dangerous circumstances. It means that government won’t stop you from saying any stupid thing that crosses your mind. It does not protect you from the consequences of saying that stupid thing, however. It doesn’t in any way prevent popular backlash against your asinine idea. Your friends are free to shun you. Companies are free to no longer sponsor you. Other people are free to call you a sanctimonious asshat. See, you’re free to say what you will, but you are far from free of the social consequences of stupid things that fly out of your mouth. Sometimes the right to speak is best expressed by using it to say nothing at all. More people should avail themselves of the opportunity to just shut the fuck up.

2. School start date. I’m perplexed at the at why the day public schools open across the state of Maryland is this an issue for the governor. I vaguely recall Republicans being the party of small government. And this is precisely the kind of issue that’s best decided at the local level. I like Hogan. He’s an iconic red governor in a blue state. But on this one I’m just wondering why on earth he’s decided to wade into this non-issue.

3. Quite frankly I’m starting a four day weekend just now, so there is absolutely no third thing that annoys me at the moment. There may well have been earlier this week, but now it’s simply faded into the background of a million other annoying things that I don’t need to deal with or in any way think about until Tuesday.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. The phrase “Assault Weapon.” The variants of the AR-15 and AK-47 that are commonly available on the civilian market are not “assault” rifles, regardless of what people call them. Real assault rifles (read the type of rifle generally used by the military), are capable of fully automatic fire, meaning that when the trigger is held down, the gun fires until the magazine is empty or the receiver jams. A semi-automatic in the AR- style (or any other style for that matter) requires a trigger squeeze for each round to fire. An alarming number of people seem to be under the misguided impression that just because a gun is based on a military design, it’s a military gun. I’d almost have more respect for the ban supporters if they’d come right out and say that they want to ban military-looking semi-auto rifles“ because even though they don’t know a carbine from a catamaran, those AR’s are just scary looking… As if the gun knows the difference between a walnut stock and a “scary” looking black carbon body. Oh, and one more thing. Please, for the love of God, please stop calling them “machine guns”. It’s embarrassing for everyone.

2. Anyone who has ever argued a variant of “the Second Amendment only covers muskets.” Assuming for a moment that the Constitution and Bill of Rights only apply to items in existence at the time of adoption in 1789, by extension we’d also have to argue that the First Amendment only protects speech in the form of newspapers and standing in the town square spouting off about whatever is on your mind – forget about the internet, television, radio, and telephone. And forget about a right to privacy, the Framers didn’t even bother mentioning that in the text at all. You either have to accept that the Constitution is a living document and means what the courts say it means, or that the Constitution means what it says in plain text applicable only to the world as it was in 1789. You can’t have it both ways based on whatever select bit or piece fits your particular world view.

3. Grounds. Taking a big gulp of coffee only to end up with a mouth full of grounds ranks right up there with root canal on my list of bad things. Since it’s happened on two separate days this week, it might be time to break down and reevaluate my dependence on my long serving Mr. Coffee brewing station. Clearly this is a situation that can’t be endured much longer.