Splashdown

We have returned.

The car has been unloaded and that's as close to unpacked as I'm getting tonight. Tomorrow everything reverts back to normal routine.

On the way down I dropped off Grand-dads High Standard to be fitted for a holster, and on the way back I picked it up. It is a very nice piece, but I've been asked to hold off doing a review or publishing pics until I have the matching belt. Suffice it to say that I like it well enough to order a matching one for the Sig.

Review will happen when the goods are in hand.

Note to FTC, I'm buying these with my own cash, so piss off.

Apprehension

Youngest Son will be meeting his birth father for the first time today.

I'm not quite sure how that will go, and even less sure of how I feel about it.

Ultimately it isn't about me, it is about Youngest Son, and he does deserve to know.

I just pray that the cost of knowing does not exceed the value of it.

Fun Time

Youngest Son and I hit the road bright and early Monday morning heading to Jacksonville FL for Thanksgiving.

Middle Daughter and Son In Law have recently purchased a pair of S&W semis, one in .40 and one in 9mm, so today we took them out to put them through their paces. Also along for the ride was the .22 revolver that Son In Law found at Pops.

Youngest Son begged off, but I took Grandson and his friend for their very first range time. After a 4 Rules drill and proper handling techniques they fired all that was available, but they liked the .22 the best.

The last firearm to make an appearance was a rental that Son In Law's brother just had to try; a .50 caliber Smith and Wesson 500 revolver. The rounds were $5.00 each, and after he had fired two I knew I had to try it as well.

Yeah, it was fun. I'm glad the barrel was ported though.

All in all it was a good time.

A Message From Our Sponsors

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

Happy Veterans Day

from an old fat retired squid. Thanks for your service, be it 2 years or twenty.

Gender Wars

So I was reading through a thoroughly enjoyable Attack of the Correiakin on Brad Torgersen’s Facebook page where he was destroying a troll over the whole Republican/conservative “war on women” hashtag twitter battle thing. One of the things the troll kept bringing up was the whole gender-gap pay-gap meme.

I’m not going to look for links, do your own damn homework, but that has been pretty much proven to be bunkum. It has to do with leave of absence due to child rearing, which is something that most women choose to do, combined with the fact that mothers are going to be more likely to take days off for family things and the like. The problem with that is it leaves a huge gap in your resume with the resulting decrease in pay due to less time in service and smaller paychecks due to not being compensated for all the days that are taken off.

It strikes me as funny that this should be an ongoing issue when the matter has been so thoroughly explained, but it keeps coming up time and again as proof that old white men hate women or some such thing as that. What I find so funny is that this is what the womyn have been agitating for all along...equality. If a man has a gap in his resume he also is going to experience lesser pay because of it. If he takes time off for family things he is not going to be paid for all of those days.

Congratulations ladies, you have reached parity, you have attained your goal, you are now being treated exactly as your male counterparts would be treated given the same set of circumstances. This is what you have striven for, is it not? Hear you roar! Or is that...why are you crying? Isn’t this what you wanted?

No?

Welcome to the real world. Very often what we think we want and what we actually attain are two separate and sometimes diametrically opposed things.

In this particular case you are faced with a choice, as we all are. Either your kids are worth the sacrifice so you chose a decrease in pay later on in return for the rewards of watching them grow, or you accept what has traditionally been the male parents burden of missing out on everything while you try to make a living, only to wake up one day and realize this is the day you are to walk your daughter down the aisle; that she has grown up quite without your consent and you have missed the whole thing.

I completely agree with the notion that one parent should be a stay-at-home parent, studies have proven that kids who have a parent at home are going to do better in school which translates to doing better at life in general. Traditionally this role has been filled by the female parent, but more and more the roles are being reversed. Either way, one parent is going to watch the child grow and the other is going to miss quite a bit of it as they earn the family's daily bread. The bottom line is, nothing is free, all things have a price.

Take what you have paid for.

Historical

So it was a pretty good election day for the Republicans, not so much for the Democrats.

The Republicans picked up eight seats in the Senate, sixteen additional House seats (18 new ones minus two losses), and added four new governors as well. When the new Congress is seated in January it will be firmly in Republican control once again. Time will tell if they have the sense to hold it this time.

Everyone is talking about that, but there are a few things that it seems no one is talking about. Historical things, things that are happening for the first time ever.

One of those things is the election of a black man from the South, Senator Elect Tim Scott. He is not the first black Senator from the South, there have been others that were appointed in the years following the Civil War, but he is the first one elected to his position.

In the Congress Utah now has a solid Republican bench, re-electing three and adding one, Mia Love, who becomes the first black Republican woman ever.

Elsewhere, in New York Elise Stefanik becomes the youngest woman Congressperson ever and Senator Elect Joni Ernst is the first woman veteran elected to the Senate, and with that my birth state of Iowa now has two Republican senators for the first time in as long as I can remember.

Not bad for a bunch of sexist racist mouth-breathing gun-toting sister-swapping rednecks (and those are some of the more polite names I have been called).

And on another note so long/good riddance to the junior Senator from North Carolina, Kay Hagen, who was unable to win over Republican Thom Tillis even though the Democrats poured more money into her re-election campaign than has ever been spent in any election anywhere in the US.

What makes this particularly special is...I don't even particularly like Thom Tillis, and neither do a great number of North Carolina gun owners who remember his duplicity in stalling gun related bills in the NC state house, but as long as he remembers to stay bought he should be OK.

And last but certainly not least, since it is November it is the month of Thanksgiving. In that spirit, I leave you with something to be thankful for, this month's ROTM.