Finally PC

It seems that I'm finally politically correct.  After years of dumb, uneducated, deep South redneck hick, stubbornly clinging to my Bible and my guns, it seems that the language police have come around to my way of thinking.

I shit you not.  The southern second-person-plural "y'all" is now the gender neutral preferred term for indicating a group of people.  Yeah, really.

I’ve heard that people weirdly hesitate to use the word because they would feel like culture vultures, appropriating either black slang or the language of the South. And yet this is one of the only words where that kind of hesitation seems to hold any sway... If anybody gets defensive over white northerners using  y’all, it’s most likely because those same white northerners teased them for using it in the past.

So, look, I"m glad y'all are finally coming around to my way of thinking.  It's for us for generations.  You're welcome.

Larruping

It's an old, regional word, often used when referring to food. From the dictionary:

larruping adj Pronc-spp larapen, larepin, lar(ri)pin; for addit varr see quots
1  also tad-larruping; Esp of food: delicious, excellent; hence adv larruping extremely—usu in comb larruping good.

Often pronounced in the standard southern way, we lose the "g", pronouncing it larrupin'  it rhymes with terrapin.

At any rate, this morning, Belle and I awoke to a rainy day, and it looks as if the crew for lunch will be smaller than usual, so she decided to go with a perennial favorite.  Pork chops and ice.  We've talked about them before.

Of course, pork chops and rice wouldn't be a compete meal without purple hull peas, seasoned with tasso.  Oh, this is something special.

Of course, there will be cornbread.  She's already promised me cornbread.

Sunday lunch is going to be larrupin' good.

Shottist

No, that's not a mis-spelling, that's a word.  Shottist.  I was scrolling through Cooper's Commentaries this morning and stumbled across the word.

I have had the opportunity now for a couple of years to evaluate the Glock pistol with sufficient care to give me justification in an opinion. I have not used one much myself, but just enough to know that it is not for me. However, I have some good friends in law enforcement who have pretty much set matters straight. My conclusion is that the Glock pistol is a very good choice for hired hands, but not for serious pistoleros. Its proper place lies in the public sector, and the dedicated shottist is rarely found therein. (Note: That is shottist rather than shootist. Look it up.)

So, I clicked over to the Oxford Dictionary to look up the word.  Sure enough.

shottist: noun - South African: A person who is skilled in shooting and takes part in shooting competitions.

So, it's in the Oxford Dictionary of the English language, and has a South African origin.

Of course, we all remember the John Wayne movie, The Shootist, where he played an aging gunfighter battling a fatal cancer.

And, in CFDA, we have a Shootist category, where the participants use revolvers with long barrels:

The Shootist category is for competitors that use Slim Jim Holsters and revolvers with a minimum barrel length of 7-1/2”.

 Interesting the way the language changes over time, and the regional variations.  I'm not suggesting that we change the category, nor the various club names, but I found it interesting that Cooper used the term Shottist, which is decidedly archaic, over the more familiar shootist.

I also note with some interest that Cooper disdained the Glock for a dedicated pistolero, saying that it was more suited to hired hands.  If Cooper was nothing else, he was educated in firearms, and he was opinionated.

Fish as Tangible Objects

It's come to this.  Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that fish are not tangible objects. In doing so, they remanded a case that had been sent to them on appeal.  It's a convoluted tale of a fisherman catching undersized fish, a federal officer finding them, then the fisherman throwing them overboard, destroying the evidence, and his being convicted in federal court of destroying the evidence.

It seems pretty clear-cut to me, but not to the esteemed legal minds on our highest bench.  No, in a split 5-4 decision (Chief Justice Roberts joining), they have declared that fish are not tangible objects. I'm sure that this will come as some surprise to the fish.  It certainly comes as a surprise to me.  However, Madam Justice Ginsberg says that words might mean on thing in one context and something else entirely in another context.

In the Yates case, the majority decided that the term “tangible object” should be interpreted in the context of Sarbanes-Oxley, a statute aimed at preventing the disposal of records, documents, and other items that preserve information. Writing for herself and three colleagues, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg acknowledged fish might sometimes be understood to be tangible objects. “Ordinarily,” she wrote, “a word’s usage accords with its dictionary definition. In law as in life, however, the same words, placed in different contexts, sometimes mean different things.” In this context, she added, Congress didn’t intend to punish rogue fishermen under Sarbanes-Oxley.

Mr. Justice Roberts joined that opinion, which speaks volumes to the man's credibility as a sharp thinker.  Words have meaning.  While I agree that Congress might not have intended to prosecute fishemen under Sarbannes-Oxley, the idea that fish are not tangible objects is laughable on its face.

Regular readers will remember my contempt for the Chief Justice.  Appointed by President Bush as a stalwart conservative, the man sided with the administration on the Obamacare case, telling us that a tax was not a tax, or some such nonsense. The intervening years have done nothing to temper my distain for the man.   Now we learn that  a fish is not a tangible object.  We've entered the age of newspeak.

This may not mean much to you, and may be viewed as a whimsical distration, until you realize that later this week, the court will hear arguments in King v Burwell, which hinges on the language of the Afforable Care Act (Obamacare), and whether legislative language means what it says.  Granted, if the Court comes down on the side of plain English, that ruling might gut the law in about half the states.  That should not concern the Court, but in Roberts case, nothing is as it seems to be.  He'll do backflips and cartwheels to please his masters.

So, the Administration has nothing to fear from Roberts, who pays fealty to liberal principles, ignores common English, and doesn't own a dictionary.  Words only mean what the Court says they mean.  Today, in this context.  Those same words might mean something completely different next week.

I fart in the general direction direction of the Roberts court.  If I ever get the opportunity, I intend to piss down his leg.

HTM (What?)

I've been playing with HTML since it got too hot to work outside.  I used to be fairly good at coding web pates, but I've been trying to make columns, using the DIVcommand, and I'm having a bit of a problem with justification.  I'm trying to make an archive page for some of my writings, and I just can't seem to make it do what I want it to do.


Let's just say that my brain is fried.  Coding has always been hard for me, and I don't enjoy it a bit.  Which is why I use blogger instead of some of the other blog engines.

When Obama Loses

I'm trying to be optimistic here, but I've hijacked the title of a post over at Instapundit.  If Obama Loses ... We're all a Bunch of Racists. Elizabeth Price Foley also links to an article by David Feith, detailing why we'll all be racists if Obama loses.

If President Obama loses re-election, it won't be because of the weak economy, the unpopularity of ObamaCare, the fallout from Benghazi or any other policy-related matter. At least that isn't how many Obama supporters on the left are likely to explain it. Instead, we'll hear that he went down to defeat at the hands of America the Pathological—a country where bigotry, corruption and political dysfunction reign.

As you're reading this, I'm in my deer stand, clinging to my gun and my religion. Drinking coffee and thinking about the millions of Americans who will vote today, exercising their God-given right to choose their leaders. It's what Americans do, and I admonish everyone to vote today.  Exercise that right, stand up and be heard. But, don't worry about racism.  That has nothing to do with it.  There is no real racism in America anymore.  We elected a black man as President, and now we're trying to unelect him for all the right reasons.  His economic debacle, his bowing to foreign leaders, his unpopular Health Care act, his deplorable reactions to the Benghazi tragedy.  Racism has nothing to do with it.  The fact that he's a poor leader is all the reason we need.

Racism is hurled as an invective and has been so watered down that it no longer has any sting.  I'm personally not afraid of the adjective anymore.  It matters not, and it is almost like Godwin's Law in political discourse.  Whoever hurls the charge of racism has automatically lost the debate.

Hopefully, a nice whitetail deer will show up and I can exercise another of my rights today.  Then, after the work is done I'll go home, watch the returns, and go to bed blissfully aware that I've voted, hunted, gathered meat, and elected Mitt Romney for President.  And, I won't be concerned about charges of racism at all.  If that's the only argument you've got, you've already lost the debate.

She said What?

Evidently California House Speaker Karen Bass doesn't believe that elected officials should be accountable to the voters. Today, she said that people who hold elected representatives accountable are terrorists. Really. She said that.

The Republicans were essentially threatened and terrorized against voting for revenue. Now [some] are facing recalls. They operate under a terrorist threat: "You vote for revenue and your career is over." I don't know why we allow that kind of terrorism to exist. I guess it's about free speech, but it's extremely unfair.

So, those of us who hold our representatives accountable are terrorists.

That's what the Speaker of the California House thinks. We're terrorists in the Democratic play book. When I wrote the post Slippery Slopes, I was concerned about the government calling people who disagreed with it terrorists.

This is the face of government today. Disagree and be called a terrorist.

Hat tip to Moonbattery.com.

Swinging a Cat

We've all heard the expression: There just isn't enough room to swing a cat.

Over at Flopping Aces, we see the idiom being used and misunderstood.

Hume’s comment was, “It’s hard to swing a cat in Congress without hitting someone who is running for President.” I had an image of Brit grabbing Felix the cat fresh from a commercial, picking him up by the tail, and while the cat hissed, screamed, and clawed like mad, I envisioned the stinging furball getting smacked into the faces of different Presidential candidates. I had to laugh, but it was when I tried to imagine the sound that I really lost it. All I can say is Maker’s Mark hurts when it goes through your nose.

The expression doesn't refer to a real live breathing cat.

We're talking about the cat o' nine tails, a flogging device used in the British Navy to administer punishment. It was a short handled device with mulitiple lashes. Those lashes were sometimes tipped with knots, or lead balls. The device was swung, applying the lash to the back of the miscreant. It was not a pleasant punishment.

If you didn't have room to swing a cat, you were in a small room. If you couldn't swing a cat without hitting other people, the room was plainly crowded.

As interesting as it is to envision a person swinging a screetching feline, the idiom describes something else entirely.

I thought I'd clear that up.