Five Finger Discount

At risk of appearing to be piling-on it would seem you cannot get enough of the ethical lapses from those Moms For Liberty mommas.

Keri Blair, former Tennessee school board member, and member of the book banning, Critical Race Theory conspiracy-mongering, COVID-denying and LGBTQ-hater organization - Moms For Liberty - was arrested on January 5th after allegedly shoplifting from Target on seven different occasions.  According to the Collierville Police Department Blair purportedly engaged in skip-scanning items at Target self-checkout stations seven different times between November 25 and December 20.

Collierville Police Department

The 43-year-old, self-described staunch conservative, was just over a year into her first term on the Collierville school board, resigned last Tuesday citing personal, family reasons.

Blair's departure follows Moms For Liberty-backed candidates being swept out of office late last year in Philadelphia's suburban Central Bucks and Pennridge school districts despite the group holding their annual conference in the Pennsylvania city.     

Listen-up moms, if you live in a glass house; don't throw stones.  And for the love of God and all that is holy, don't engage in retail theft.  Closed circuit security footage is admissible in court.

Sheesh...

Jihad On The Written Word

In case you missed this ongoing skirmish in the larger culture war there's plenty of folks working overtime to make sure they control what you and your children or grandchildren read. 

Beginning in July of 2021 PEN America began tracking public school book bans and has documented nearly 6,000 instances of banned books including 3,362 bans affecting 1,557 unique titles covering the 2022-23 school year.  This included 1,480 authors, illustrators and translators.

New Christmas Ornament for 2023

This represents an increase of 33% from the 2021-22 school year.  Having wrested the title from Texas, Florida now leads the nation in book bans.  

Drivers of these trends include vaguely-worded legislation, national advocacy groups pressuring local school boards with the threat of penalties, lawsuits and criminal prosecution escalating the book bans to record levels.

In the first nine months of 2023 the American Library Association reported more than 1,900 titles challenged, a 20% increase over the same period in 2022. 

Singled-out for particular attention are people of color or anything associated with the LGBTQ community.  When the final three months of 2023 are included the total will certainly rise.

Major findings:

• More than 40 percent of all book bans occurred in school districts in Florida.   Across 33 school districts, PEN America recorded 1,406 book bans cases in the sunshine state, followed by 652 bans in Texas, 333 bans in Missouri, 281 in Utah and 186 bans in Pennsylvania.

• Overwhelmingly, book bans target subject matter on race or racism or featuring characters of color as well as books with LGBTQ characters.  Banned books also include books on physical abuse, health and well-being and themes of grief and death. Notably, most instances impact young adult books, middle grades, chapter books, or picture books specifically written and selected for younger readers. 

• Punitive state laws, combined with pressure from vocal citizens and local and national organizations have created difficulties for local school districts forcing them to either restrict access to books or risk legal and financial penalties for educators and librarians.

In the face of this there is a small measure of poetic justice to be found between the pages of banned books.  Bridget Ziegler, book ban queen and Moms for Liberty member from Florida, and her husband Christian Ziegler, now former Florida Republican Party Chairman, have found themselves embroiled in the fallout from a police report of a consensual sexual threesome including sexual battery allegations against the deposed GOP chairman.

Sniff Sniff.  Do you smell what I smell?  I suspect it's a whiff of schadenfreude in the Florida air. 

A free people do not censor speech or ban books.

Hunting Ethics

There is debate that never ends in the hunting community about the merits of a headshot.

You know - one shot, one kill - to the head. 

With a turkey it is almost the only shot - and is typically taken with a shotgun chambered specifically with a turkey load to drop a cagey and difficult to kill bird.  Scattershot is preferred.  With a bow it is nigh impossible in which case a heart-lung shot is advised.

The debate chiefly centers about the application of a headshot when hunting deer.  For obvious reasons an arrow to the head is ill-advised.  Easy to miss and penetration iffy.

With a gun a perfectly placed headshot is always fatal.  The operative term is 'perfectly-placed'.  Anything less can range from a clean miss to a dead deer or somewhere in between such as a badly maimed deer with a jaw blown-off and left to suffer a horrible and drawn-out death.

For those reasons - here at The Platz - we've discussed the matter at length and the crew has concluded that an ethical deer kill is always a bullet or arrow to the high probability heart lung part of the deer anatomy.  Preferably broadside.

This pic showed-up on a trail camera the other day.  It is poorly-composed and over exposed by the IR flash yet it clearly shows a doe with an ear hanging by a thread.  Likely a result of someone attempting a low-probability headshot.  This is not funny.

click on image for a closer look



She'll survive as whitetails are a tough species with documented recoveries from car crashes, legs being blown-off and worse.  Moreover, this is clearly the external part of the ear.  Nevertheless, it's unnerving and I'm posting this to illustrate an example of what not to do.

Animal deserves more respect than this...

Saving Hunting

Can bows and arrows save hunting in America?

The Economist just published a fascinating piece on America's egalitarian hunting and wildlife ethic.  Including the role that (my favorite president) Theodore Roosevelt played in advancing our culture of respect for wild things, fair chase and a deeply-rooting hunting ethic.  Teddy characterized the role of hunting in America as  —“to keep men hardy, so that at need they can show themselves fit to take part in work or strife for their native land.”

Of course Roosevelt could never have imagined the technological advancements that modern hunters can avail themselves of.

Even bow hunting as we know it is now under assault from the popularity of the modern crossbow.  Of course bow hunting today is a far cry from stick and recurve bows of several generations ago.  Flint-tipped arrows have been replaced by modern arrowheads that can expand upon impact with deadly results.  I recently acquired a crossbow - so perhaps this is just another technological advancement in a long line of evolutionary changes for hunting enthusiasts.

It's a very good read - learn more about it here.