I keep two 38+P revolvers and a shotgun on hand for home defense.  All my 1911s and our rifles are in the safe most of the time.

Darwinism.  Don't try to rob a gun store, LOL!

Real nice post, Rush. I can't say I agree with all of it, but it is thoughtful and well-written.

Thanks, I see you voted Johnson.  He would have been my second choice and I might have gone with him if I'd been in one of the definitely blue states and knew my vote wouldn't matter.

I'm a lukewarm supporter. I didn't vote for him in the primary but did in the general of course, because this country cannot survive Hillary, she'd just continue the Obama slide into oblivion.

I am more hopeful about him now that he's been elected; he is becoming more "presidential" (less insane?).  But I understood all along that his extremist rants, like deporting all illegals and killing the families of terrorists, were designed to gain attention, and hence actually successfully win the election, more than literal promises he'd fulfill.  I had no problem with that.  It certainly wasn't as down and dirty and duplicitous as some of the things Hillary's campaign did.

I still have reservations about exactly how he is going to achieve the goal of bringing jobs back to the U.S.  Setting tariffs against imports for example would be the wrong way to do it. This would raise consumer prices, which has always been my beef with U.S. workers demanding the jobs stay home. They want union wages, and minimum wage laws, and the Feds set regulations about safety, environment, etc., plus high taxes, all the costs of which, naturally, manufacturers just pass along to the consumer.  To restrict imports as a way to force goods to be made on our soil, without addressing these reasons the jobs went overseas in the first place, will be disaster for the consumer's pocketbook.

And we need cheap, abundant energy. Trump needs to put an end to this movement to destroy fossil fuel.  Fuel cost impacts every single thing we buy, use, eat or do.  Perhaps no other single item is as important for him to do than to reverse what the left has done to destroy good energy in this country; closing coal plants, killing the nuclear industry, banning offshore drilling, subsidizing "green" energy so the masses do not understand how expensive and inefficient it actually is. Trump understands this but I don't know if he can fight the uphill battle of climate change hysteria.

I guess what I don't want to see is some kind of heavy handed dictatorship methods, the thing the liberals seem to think is a foregone conclusion with Trump. He's basically Hitler, you know, according to them.  Well he isn't. But like Obama, he could abuse executive powers and I'm a little wary of that. And he will have a major influence on the country for generations with the SC nominations. Trump is not going to outlaw gay marriage or any of the other stuff the snowflakes and crybabies are all panicked about. But who ends up on the SC will have an impact on these issues, and being libertarian, I'm more a social liberal, so I'm wary of that.  But I feel that economic collectivism must be avoided at ALL costs, and trumps social freedoms by a huge margin. So I fervently hope the SC positions are filled by anyone but a leftist.

Trump is not an ideologue. (This is why some on the Republican right reject him.) I guess my preference would have been a libertarian ideologue in a perfect world. But Trump is a businessman who will negotiate or bend, or change position as needed to accomplish his goal.  This is why I'm wary of him, and only a lukewarm supporter. His flip flop on some gun rights issues for example.  But, it might turn out to be a good thing because there's nothing more dangerous than a rigid thinking ideologue, on any end of the spectrum.  Those are the types who will keep a utopian ideal in mind while people around them suffer.  A pragmatic businessman on the other hand, will see the reality of the journey to the goal as well as the goal itself, and will see the nuances, variations, compromises along the way, that need to be managed to actually make the good thing happen.

For example, I expect Trump to flip flop on immigration when he sees that although Americans SAY they want the jobs that the illegals are taking, in reality they won't actually take them unless they get a high wage, which of course, means high prices for the consumer, and of course, those same Americans will then bitch about high prices.

But immigration is a touchy subject, and the real problem is cultural. When a people invade a land not to assimilate, but to replace that land's culture with their own, in the end, that country will cease to exist. This is the heart of the "nationalism" that Trump tapped into during the campaign.  Trump voters want to keep America America - no, NOT to go back to slavery - but to retain a culture supportive of free enterprise, prosperity, relative safety, and relative freedom from government molestation, that the immigrants from the century before last sought when they came through Ellis Isle. 

How Trump will reconcile these forces to result in a country with good employment, low prices, increasing wealth for the middle class, declining poverty, and a reasonable immigration policy that welcomes the hardworking, law abiding applicant who wants to actually become an American, regardless of skin color or ethnicity, remains to be seen.

I am guardedly optimistic.

I don't post any political on FB.  Nothing at all, don't reply to anything, don't LIKE anything.  No matter WHAT I posted I would piss off half my friends and nobody would change their mind.

I got into some political discussions on FB this election because I have a couple of young nieces who were voting for the first time and were being brainwashed by the zomghegrabbedpussy hysteria and needed some facts and history filled in before they lost all grasp on reality and threw their vote to the "deserving vagina".  They were undecided and I had influence and that was the platform. But it was under protest - I have grown to HATE Facebook. The only reason I haven't deactivated my account is because some people I care about use Facebook to post updates about themselves (like their progress fighting cancer).

Prevalence of depressive symptoms among high-stress occupations include 7% among emergency medical technicians, 10 to 17% among police officers, and 12% among deployed and 13% among previously deployed military personnel, the researchers estimate.

In future studies, the researchers hope to examine the risk factors for depression among pilots.

"We suspect that disrupted circadian rhythm and/or sleep disturbances may be associated with having a higher depressive score," said Wu.

Maybe it comes with the territory.  In other words, it's "normal" for this level of depression to show up in this group of people as a result of the occupation itself.

You know, they ought to require a class before you can own a gun.

Or write about guns. "Load the bullets back"... sheesh.

Oh. As far as I know he's never said he wants to deport legal immigrants.

That's correct. From my memory (dicey at my age) during the campaign he said he wanted to deport all the ILLEGAL immigrants.  At the time I said to myself, "He isn't going to do that. Where does he think he will send them? It's not like they have a house back in Mexico to which to return. He's just speaking emotionally to connect with the rage a lot of Americans have about illegal immigration. If he's elected he will modify that drastically."

And now it looks like I was right. He's saying he's only going to deport the criminal ones.  I could have sworn he admitted on 60 minutes that he exaggerated during the campaign for the exact purpose of getting people to listen to him and give him media attention, because otherwise, he wouldn't get it.  If he used that rhetoric as a tool to gain popularity among the Republicans so as to win the nomination, it makes sense to me, there may not have been another path for him to use.

I suspected he would back down to a more reasonable position once elected and it looks like that's exactly what's happening. Same with Obamacare. During the campaign he was trashing the whole thing. Now he's going to keep a couple items. 

Same with same sex marriage.  He's supposedly against it, I don't remember specifically him saying so during the campaign but I'd guess he did, again, to win with Republicans. But on 60 minutes when asked about it he said, "Look, it's a done deal. I'm not messing with it."  Which is exactly what he should do at this point; his priority needs to be ramping up the economy real fast so he's got a chance to win again in 2020.  If he has any effect on gay marriage, it will be because of whomever he nominates for the Supreme Court. I guess theoretically they could reverse it? But that is not the hill he needs to try to die on right now. And I don't think he ever would. He is NOT a traditional religious conservative. I seriously doubt he cares a fig if gays marry each other.

They way he campaigned with a lot of extreme rhetoric is part of the reason the media and the left could portray him as a complete monster. I suspected he is not, and it looks like (thank God) I was probably right. But he had to do it that way just to get himself taken seriously. 

I don't know who first said this but it hits the nail. The left took him literally but not seriously, and the right took him seriously but not literally. The latter was me (although technically I'm not right-wing; I am libertarian) I took him as a serious candidate but did not take his words literally.

I am seeing however that his extreme speech is already paying off. Mexico is coming to him now saying, let's get the wall built so we can be good with you and our trade relationship. They don't want to call his bluff, they're too scared of him. That's WONDERFUL.  He's got them off balance. Same with the rest of the world.  "I'm not gonna tell you my plan for ISIS."  LOVE IT. Keep them all guessing. We've been stupid too long and it's obvious the world doesn't respect us.  Looks like Trump might turn that around.