Category: Crap For Brains

Now That the Whole World Knows We’re Low on Ammunition, Frantic Effort to Re-Arm Commences

The entire world knows that the United States is low on firepower because President Joe Biden acted on his inexplicable desire to blurt out such information on CNN, telling Fareed Zakaria, “This is a war relating to munitions. And [Ukraine]… is running out of that ammunition, and we’re low on it.”

He also maintained that the shortage was one reason behind the controversial decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine.

Now the U.S. is scrambling to strengthen stockpiles, according to John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council. (By the way, what does that title even mean?)

Appearing with Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday,” Kirby described the effort:

We’re working very closely with the defense industry to try to ramp up production, particularly for artillery shells…

You saw that we gave some cluster munitions to Ukraine as a bridging solution here while we ramp up production. We’re having very, very strong conversations with the defense industry and we believe that we’ll be able to get there.

Watch:

Bream had brought up a think tank report that estimated it could take years to get back to where we were:

Kirby was responding to a segment reporting that a Center for Strategic and International Studies report found replacing inventories for ammunitions such as 155 mm shells could take between four and seven years. Replacing Javelins could take up to eight years and Stingers up to as many as 18 years, according to the report.

Meanwhile, he has to convince the manufacturers that the administration is in it for the long haul, saying:

The defense industry obviously wants to make sure that if they’re going to increase production, that production rate is going to stay elevated for a period of time. Because that means hiring more workers, it means retooling and adding capacity in their factories and manufacturing capabilities.

So we understand that and that’s sort of the central thesis here of the discussions that we’re having with them, is to get them to increase production and let them know that we’re serious about doing that for some period of time.

 

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This is legal stonewalling by a judge who purposefully flips what SCOTUS ruled in Heller, Caetano and Bruen in what she hopes will take years of legal wrangling in the off chance that either or both Justices Alito and Thomas pass on and a demoncrap administration can appoint anti-gun Justices and get all these case law restorals of the 2nd amendment protections on RKBA undone…because the unwashed masses really shouldn’t have the means to tell goobermint where to go, and make it stick.

Federal Court Ruling Upholding Oregon Gun Law Will be Appealed

U.S.A. — A federal district judge’s ruling upholding the constitutionality of Oregon’s restrictive gun control Measure 114 will definitely be appealed, the head of the Second Amendment Foundation assured via email with a terse one-word statement.

SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb, responding to an email inquiry asking, “Certainly, there will be an appeal, right?” responded bluntly: “Right.”

The ruling was immediately blasted by the Oregon Firearms Federation (OFF), one of several plaintiffs challenging the law in a consolidation of four federal lawsuits, two of which involve SAF and several partners. In a scathing reaction, OFF declared Judge Immergut’s ruling “absurd” and further said her decision was “against gun owners, the Second Amendment and a basic understanding of the English language.”

Immergut’s ruling does appear oblivious to facts involving firearms and self-defense when, on Page 120, she states, “The Supreme Court has held that Second Amendment protects an individual right to self-defense inside and outside of the home. LCMs are not commonly used for self-defense, and are therefore not protected by the Second Amendment.”

This seems to ignore the prevalence of modern semi-automatic pistols, which are commonly used for personal protection, and which come from the factory with magazines holding more than 10 cartridges.

According to The Hill, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum praised the ruling while acknowledging the law still cannot be enforced because it is still being challenged in state court. A judge in Harney County has scheduled a trial in September. By that time, Judge Immergut’s decision will likely have been appealed to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

Rosenblum, a Democrat, was quoted by The Hill, stating, “Our team looks forward to ultimately prevailing in the state courts as well.”

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KAMALA, ON A ROLL
First, Kamala Harris committed an epic “Kinsley Gaffe” (that is, where someone in Washington accidentally tells the truth) with this amazing remark a couple days ago:

Pretty sure she just blurted out what lefty environmentalists really want to do (reduce population). Even the White House saw that this could not be ignored, and tried their best to clean it up:

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Federal court rules Measure 114 constitutional despite criticism

The ruling (hold onto your hat for the legal acrobatics the judge used)

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – Oregon’s Measure 114 is constitutional, according to a ruling by the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon.

The federal court ruled in Oregon’s favor in a lawsuit against the gun control measure approved by voters by a slim margin in 2022. The ruling means the state may ensure Oregonians get a permit before obtaining firearms, require a state police-maintained permit/firearm database and prohibit “large capacity” ammunition magazines.

There is an exception for military and law enforcement.

The measure describes “large capacity” magazines as “fixed/detachable magazines (or functional equivalent) that can accept ‘more than 10 rounds of ammunition and allows a shooter to keep firing without having to pause to reload.’” The measure also includes exceptions for “’lever-action’ firearms and permanently altered fixed magazines, 10 rounds or fewer.”

The plaintiff’s attorney made the case that magazines are critical for the gun, so they should be considered arms, but attorneys defending Measure 114 argued that detachable magazines are accessories – not firearms – and don’t affect the operability of the gun itself.

In response to the measure’s ruling, Jess Marks, the executive director of the Oregon Alliance for Gun Safety, issued the following statement:

“We know Measure 114 is an effective and life-saving policy, and now a federal judge has ruled it is also in line with the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court has articulated that Second Amendment rights are not unchecked — they come with responsibilities — and the U.S. District Court affirmed this in our case. This victory belongs to those who have lost loved ones to gun violence and to every Oregonian who demanded change.”

“Our team looks forward to ultimately prevailing in the state courts as well,” she said. “Measure 114’s provisions – passed by Oregon voters – are common sense safety measures that will save lives.”

Judges Confused by Supreme Court’s Historical Test for Gun Laws

Confusion over the US Supreme Court’s last gun rights ruling is likely to persist even after the justices decide a new Second Amendment case next term.

Establishing a constitutional right to carry a handgun in public in a landmark 2022 decision forced lower courts to play historian and look to Colonial-era laws to justify the lawfulness of gun restrictions, a duty that has frustrated some judges.

“Judges are not historians,” Judge Carlton Reeves of the US District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi said in dismissing a case after finding no history or tradition to support upholding the federal ban on convicted felons having guns. “We were not trained as historians. We practiced law, not history.”……………….

This is rank, ripe, stinking BS.
1, It’s from Bloomberg, so should a posteriori be suspect.
2, They’re not confused. They’re not stupid. They’re subversives.
If a federal judge is incapable of looking up and analyzing legal and legislative history, they shouldn’t have a job. As an appellate judge, it is literally a core part of their responsibilities, and a big part of why our tax dollars pay for them to have clerks.

3,“We were not trained as historians. We practiced law, not history as an excuse? Judges do history all of the time. Even worse, Bruen doesn’t ask them to be historians of the 18th century in general. It only asks them to research historical laws.
One of the experts the article quoted admitted this is hard because most gun laws are from the twentieth century. That isn’t so much an attack on the Text/History/Tradition test as it is a condemnation of the last century’s purposeful rejection of a constitutional standard.

4, Historical revisionism is at the core of the modern gun control movement. It’s why Biden repeats the lie about people not being able to buy cannons and why news organizations wring their hands about how judges having to understand history is an unprecedented attack on our legal system.

5, The end goal is to make the following the only publicly acceptable opinion to hold:
a, There is no such thing as a right to own firearms
b, The very idea that there could be such a thing was created by NRA lobbyists and far-right conspiracists in the 70’s.
This is the gun control ‘Big Lie’.

 

TikTok boat jumping challenge that sees people jump off vessels moving at high speed is blamed for FOUR deaths in Alabama – as cop says victims broke their necks instantly

A TikTok boat jumping challenge that sees people jump from the rear of the vessels while moving at high speed has been blamed for four deaths in Alabama. The challenge, which has been popularized on TikTok, involves individuals engaging in dangerous water activities.

Those participating in the challenge launch themselves from the rear of a boat and into the wake behind it, as the boat continues to move.

Now, officials in Alabama have said the new fad has claimed the lives of four people, after they broke their necks instantly. Officials said in the last six months, they had to deal with four drownings that were ‘easily avoidable’.

Those participating in the challenge launch themselves from the rear of a boat and into the wake behind it, as the boat continues to move

Captain Jim Dennis with the Childersburg Rescue Squad told WPDE said: ‘Last six months we have had four drownings that were easily avoidable.  ‘They were doing a TikTok challenge. It’s where you get in a boat going at a high rate of speed, you jump off the side of the boat, don’t dive, you’re jumping off feet first and you just kinda lean into the water. The four that we responded to when they jumped out of the boat, they literally broke their neck and, you know, basically an instant death.’

Capt. Dennis continued: ‘I think people, if they’re being filmed on camera, I think they’re more likely to do something stupid because they want to show off in front of their friends for social media.

He said one incident was in February when the victim was a father with his three children, wife, and other loved ones in the boat – with his death being recorded.

WPDE said the most recent incident in Alabama occurred in May and involved a middle-aged man.

One video is believed to have been captured on Lake Norman, North Carolina, and shows five people jumping and black flipping into the water.

Social media users expressed their concern over the videos, citing the rest deaths related to the craze After the news from Alabama over recent days, the footage, which was originally shared in 2021, has been inundated with comments warning of the deaths.

One person commented: ‘That’s so dangerous, not cool.’ Another posted: ‘So dangerous! Four people have broken their necks and died from this.’

It is not the first trend to claim lives that has gone round the social media app, with two teens dying after participating in the Benadryl Challenge. It sees people, usually kids, swallow multiple antihistamine tablets to induce hallucinations before posting videos of their experience.

Jacob Stevens, 13, died in April of this year after Chloe Marie Phillips, 15, died in August 2020 after partaking in the trend.

Yes, he’s always been stupid. Now he’s also senile

Joe Biden Is Not Senile — He’s Stupid.
Now people chalk up to age what we all knew way back was IQ.

Joe Biden, like Forrest Gump, is not a smart man. His latest Ron Burgundy moment comes as Exhibit 1,322b.

On Monday, he quoted a woman calling high-speed internet “the best thing that has happened to rural America since the Rural Electrification Act brought electricity to farms in the 30s and 40s.” When he finished reading that off a teleprompter, he read the words: “End of quote.”

When you lead the No. 1 news team in San Diego, this sort of thing can lead to job loss, beard growth, alcoholism, depression, and drinking milk from the carton on a hot day. But Joe Biden merely serves as president of the United States. And Monday’s teleprompter snafu does not come as the first, anyhow. Must one repeat the line about “repeat the line”?

From dressing protectors as the Easter Bunny to screening “journalist” questions in advance, there seems no easy solution. Certainly going off teleprompter without a safety net strikes his on-edge handlers as no solution at all.

Earlier this month, for instance, the president startled League of Conservation Voters by announcing, “We have plans to build a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean.”

Hmmm.

Why not sail a boat all the way across the Indian Ocean instead? Aviation exists as an option, too. Biden may or may not have traveled more than 1 million miles on Amtrak. But that’s not good reason to cover ocean with track. And what happens upon the occasional derailment?

If only he had added an “e” to potato or failed to cite a publication he read regularly — perhaps then the press, Saturday Night Live, and every late-night comic would have associated him with his gaffes forever. As it stands, the notion of building a railroad across the ocean does not indict one as a dullard the way misspelling a word does.

A few days before floating the idea of a transoceanic railway, the president, in non sequitur fashion, punctuated remarks with “God save the queen.”

Not just June but every month one could pen a column on all the president’s blunders. Still, books, not columns, remain the appropriate format in which to document the president’s gaffes.

They fuel speculation about his fitness for office that implicitly revolve around his age. Even Chuck Todd on this past weekend’s Meet the Press raised to Sen. Amy Klobuchar the question of the president’s mental and physical fitness for office.

Is it possible that the same man unfit for office at 80 was also unfit for it at 45? If so, it means that stupidity, not senility, disqualifies him from high office.

Consider Joe Biden at 45.

When a voter asked about his academic credentials, Biden showed not just a massive inferiority complex but a tiny brain. “I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do, I suspect,” he said in New Hampshire. “I went to law school on a full academic scholarship, the only one in my class to have a full academic scholarship.” He went on to boast about his “three degrees,” how he “ended up in the top half of my class” in law school, and how he won “outstanding student” in the political science department.

None of it was true. All of it was checkable. Unlike, say, Bill Clinton, Biden did not understand that even politicians required the good sense about what lies to tell and which ones to avoid telling. Biden seemed to tell his lies on impulse because of a bruise to his ego and not out of any Machiavellian reason.

During that same presidential run, he infamously expropriated British Labour Party Leader Neil Kinnock’s life story. Again, the lies seemed quite disprovable not only because whether Biden came from a family of coal miners struck as either true or false but because Kinnock ran against Margaret Thatcher for prime minister two years earlier largely on that tale. He delivered the speech on his life not in Cameroon or some other distant place, but in the U.K., which witnessed television commercials showing Kinnock telling the story of his life that Biden adopted, verbatim at times, as his shortly thereafter.

This required recklessness. It also required a degree of stupidity. How does one think one could get away with that?

Fifteen years ago, then-Sen. Claire McCaskill conceded, “My friend Joe Biden has a tendency to talk forever and sometimes say stuff that’s kind of stupid.”

Now people chalk up to age what we all knew back then was IQ. There’s no fool like an old fool.

BLUF
One final point: imagine how much further along the world would be today if the $4.1 trillion spent on wind and solar over the past 18 years had, instead, been spent on developing and deploying the next generation of nuclear power plants. That would be an energy transition worth writing about.

The Energy Transition Isn’t.

We are inundated with claims about the “energy transition.”

In February, E&E News, reporting on the State of the Union speech said,  “President Joe Biden laid out his vision for the energy transition Tuesday night.” In March, a reporter for Politico declared “The U.S. energy transition is well underway.”

Also in March, during a speech at the CERAWeek conference in Houston, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said that “As this transition progresses, our energy mix will change.” Or consider the March 9 press release from the White House, which said “The Administration is continuing to implement the Inflation Reduction Act, which is already galvanizing our clean energy transition and making clean and energy efficient technologies more affordable for American families.”

I could list many more examples like the ones above. But the hard truth is this: the energy transition isn’t. The numbers from the just-released Statistical Review of World Energy show, once again, that despite rapid growth in wind and solar, those two forms of energy are not even keeping pace with the growth in hydrocarbons. That’s true both globally and in the U.S.

And here’s the key point: hydrocarbons are prevailing despite staggering amounts of spending on wind and solar. According to a January report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, some $6.7 trillion was spent on alt-energy globally between 2004 and 2022, with the vast majority of that, some $4.8 trillion spent on renewables. And the vast majority of that $4.8 trillion — about $4.1 trillion — was spent on wind and solar.

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Philadelphia Shooting Perp Says He Opened Fire to Help the City Do Something About ‘Gun Violence’.

On Monday, Kimbrady Carriker, a self-described computer engineer, opened fire across several Philadelphia residential blocks, killing five people and wounding four more. Carriker apparently prepared for a hell of a shootout with police before going on his murder spree. . .

Police said the 40-year-old male suspect was armed with a rifle, pistol, extra magazines, a police scanner and bulletproof vest when he fatally shot four men on the street and then chased and killed a fifth man inside a home.

A 2-year-old boy was shot four times in the legs, while a 13-year-old boy also suffered gunshot wounds to his legs, according to cops.

The gunman had fired at police as they chased him for several blocks before he eventually surrendered in an alley, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said.

When police took the reported BLM supporter alive, he was complimentary of their work. From the Philadelphia Inquirer . . .

The shooter accused of killing five people during a harrowing rampage in Southwest Philadelphia Monday night told police the shooting spree was an attempt to help authorities address the city’s gun violence crisis, and that a deity would be sending more people to help, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

The assertions by Kimbrady Carriker were made to police in the hours after Carriker was arrested on the 1600 block of South Frazier Street, said the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation.

Carriker first told responding officers who made the arrest that they had done a good job, the sources said. Carriker also told them the gunfire — which spanned several blocks and struck people, including two children, who had no apparent connection to one another — was an attempt to help police because “all these guys are out there killing people,” the sources said.

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Gavin Newsom Says Something So Mind-numbingly Stupid, Only a Leftist Could Believe It

With our country more divided than most everyone alive has ever seen it, we’re keenly aware that Leftists seem to live in an entirely separate reality from our own. In their world, it’s perpetually the hottest year evuh, Klansmen rove the streets in gas-guzzling trucks, murdering unarmed black youth, women are both superior and oppressed, and men have babies. So we shouldn’t be too surprised when one of them says something that manifestly isn’t so. Nonetheless, occasionally one of the luminaries of the Left will utter something so extraordinarily stupid that I am compelled to call it out. Today’s honoree is California Governor and 2024 Democrat presidential understudy Gavin Newsom.

Newsom recently posted a video on social media that was filmed while he was in Idaho over the weekend, allegedly stumping for Biden but coincidentally building up his own base. Anyway, the video shows Newsom browsing in a bookstore, while a white text overlay reads, “Visiting a bookstore with banned books in Boise.”

Let’s pause a minute and think this through.

When something is banned, it is removed — like a Republican president can be banned from social media platforms. It becomes illegal and cannot be found or obtained. Yet, here is Governor Nuisance, clowning around in a store full of so-called banned books, prominently displayed for sale. In a dark red state, no less. How is he able to do this?

Because, as with so many other words, “banned” does not mean what the Left says it means. To the Left, a book becomes “banned” if a responsible adult points out that it’s pornographic and not appropriate for minors.

“Book bans are at a record high — there have been over 1,200 challenges in the last year…” tweeted Gov. Tiresome, giving away the game by conflating “banned” with “challenged.”

The rest of the video is similarly idiotic. The text changes to “2022 set a new record…” while the image behind it shows the books The Color Purple by Alice Walker, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, and a book by Judy Blume. Of course, Toni Morrison has received more awards and honors than I have space to list in this article. Walker and Blume have sold millions of books, been widely read by multiple generations, and have even reached the writers’ pinnacle of having major motion pictures made from their books. But, you know — they’re “banned” or something.

Newsom’s video could not be any more nonsensical or patronizing, but progressives will eat it up and preen:

…and this is the guy they’re probably gonna slip into the race when Biden finally implodes like an experimental submersible that wasn’t designed by boring 50-year-old white guys.

Watch These Clips and Tell Me You Really Think Biden Will Make It Through the 2024 Campaign

Joe Biden has faced questions about his physical and mental health for a long time now. He managed to avoid being too accessible to the public in 2020 because of the pandemic, but now he doesn’t have the pandemic as cover for avoiding playing the role of the president daily. The amount of pressure that Joe Biden is under to appear in control is just as high as (if not higher than) the exposure he has. There’s simply no easy way to hide him away, save for clearing his schedule and giving him time to recharge out of sight — and that’s a really bad look.

As president, Ol’ Joe has a lot of public obligations. On Independence Day, the birthday of our nation, he was front and center a lot and was as big a gaffe machine as you’d expect. During a National Education Association event in Washington, D.C., Biden became a garbled mess trying to read his script off the teleprompter.

The White House did what it could to cover for Joe, publishing a cleaned-up version of that mess. “You know, I’ve often say — and you’re tired of hearing me saying it, probably, but — children are the kite strings — they’re not somebody else’s chi- — they’re all our children — are the kite strings that lift our national ambitions aloft, and you hold those strings,” the official transcript reads. “You hold those strings. And our job is to make sure you have what you need to do what you do best.”

Is that how Biden sounded? Not to those who listened to him.

Oh, but there is more. Later on, Biden proudly highlighted the achievements of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, claiming that it has successfully helped teachers pay off student loan debt. In addition to getting the name of the program wrong, when he attempted to explain to the educators present how to find information about the program, he completely lost track of what he was trying to say.

“And, by the way, the program is still there,” he said. “Go to — anyway, you ought to contact us to make sure you know exactly how to qualify because you deserve that forgiveness.”

It should come as no surprise that Joe didn’t answer any questions, and Jill Biden was on hand to make sure Biden successfully exited the stage without embarrassing himself further.

The 2024 presidential campaign has technically already started, but Election Day is roughly a year and a half away. When you watch these videos, do you think that Joe Biden will make it until then? It’s not looking good.

The whole point of the 2nd amendment is that the people most certainly have the right to keep and bear arms that are most useful for military purposes, i.e. WAR. It always amazes me that people don’t get, or have lost, the spirit the patriot founders possessed to stand up to a tyrant government.

A conversation about gun ownership

Tennessee Republican Fudd Explains:

The basics

Many are familiar with basic weapons handguns, rifles, shotguns, and machine guns.

Gill (Bo Gill, chair of the Bedford County [TN] Republican Party and a self-described “amateur gunsmith,”) said firearms are broadly categorized into two main types: automatic and semi-automatic. The difference lies in their firing mechanisms, which significantly impact their functionality and practical applications.

Semi-automatic firearms are designed to fire one round with each pull of the trigger. After firing, the expended cartridge is ejected, and a fresh round is automatically loaded into the firing chamber for the next shot. Unlike automatic firearms, the trigger must be released and pulled again to fire subsequent rounds.

For reference, the transgender shooter at The Covenant School used a semi-automatic, which is the most common type used for recent mass shootings.

“Any semi-automatic firearm cannot be readily converted into an automatic firearm,” though bump stocks, which the 2016 Las Vegas shooter used, can mimic an automatic.

Automatic firearms, commonly known as machine guns, are capable of firing rounds continuously as long as the trigger remains depressed. These firearms use the energy from each fired round to automatically load and fire subsequent rounds without the need for additional manual manipulation.

Often automatic weapons are $10,000 and up and not readily available in gun stores but are available online.

You know it’s coming, or it wouldn’t be a “news” article. Ah, yes, the, however!

However, like some gun owners, Gill agrees, “I don’t think automatic firearms have a place anywhere but war. They’re not practical and they’re a waste of ammo.”

It’s a Bill of Limited Ammo Use. What he’s saying is that the government should have a sole monopoly on force. He’s for self-defense and “sporting,” which is a totally made-up word. But he misses the purpose of the Second Amendment if he thinks the government is the only acceptable entity to make war. That’s scary to the modern weak, prissy Western man of which America has an epidemic.

There is also much discussion around “military-style” weapons.

Gill explains, “Visual resemblances do not necessarily indicate an increase in functionality or lethality beyond that of other semi-automatic firearms.”

Military-style firearms, also referred to as “assault weapons,” feature certain cosmetic characteristics that resemble firearms used by military or law enforcement agencies. These features can include folding or collapsible stocks, pistol grips, flash suppressors, and detachable magazines, among others.

The article indicates those are not “genuine” firearms. Only Fudd purposes are genuine.

Then there are genuine firearms that come in a multitude of designs and models, serving various purposes such as self-defense, sport shooting, hunting, and collecting.

Gill explained, in an opinion letter he wrote in 2020, that, “It is important to evaluate the firearm’s functional characteristics rather than solely relying on its appearance to determine its intended purpose or danger level.

He said, “The main thing is the guns are not the issue. It’s the intent, the person that does it.”

The intent of a person, in Western Jurisprudence, is determined solely by courts of law in a trial by jury. Red Flag laws are a usurpation of the right to a fair trial. You can’t possibly know the intent of somebody or their mental condition. You could, however, stop giving psychotropic mind and mood-altering chemicals falsely labeled as medicine (which they are not) to people.

“Now the ease of mentally ill getting a gun, it could be tightened.” Gill added, “I think private sales is something that could be done more responsibility.”

Who get’s to define mentally ill? What is the definition?

He explained those purchasing firearms in private sales are asked for the receipt, name, and number. This information is then run through the sheriff’s office.

If you’re in Tennessee you should check to make sure, but I don’t think that’s the law. You need to verify TN state residency with a Driver’s License.

“That is what a law-abiding citizen should do,” said Gill. “But, see, that’s not going to happen with ‘no guns allowed.’ All the responsible gun owners are going to put their guns back and that’s going to create soft targets.”

Often, places that do not allow for guns on the premises, such as schools, some churches, and movie theatres, are the targets of mass shootings.

“I don’t think the solution is taking away guns. It’s a societal issue that independent families have to fix,” said Gill.

Disarmed men create soft targets. There’s more at the link. Anyway, what’s the rule? Never talk to the press! The guy probably feels bad. I’m certain they mischaracterized some of what he said, but some are quoted. He’s a Fudd.

I don’t know whether this is real or not, but it sure sounds nice.

Ask Amy: We told him not to come to the wedding, but we still wanted his money

Dear Amy: Four months before my daughter’s wedding, she told me that her uncle (my brother, “Dave”) would make her feel unsafe if he was a guest. She asked me not to invite him.

My daughter is very politically progressive, as are many of her friends, and although she and Dave have always had a good relationship (I thought), he is a conservative voter and has supported candidates we all abhor. Dave has always been very nice, so my daughter’s request surprised me.

I wrote Dave a very nice note, telling him that we would not be comfortable with him at the wedding and that he would not be invited. Dave did not respond and did not attend. Afterward, I sent him a card and pictures from the wedding, all in an effort to make him feel like he was not being totally left out. I have not heard from Dave since then. When my siblings found out what I had done they were angry with me. That is just one problem.

Another problem is that Dave has not sent my daughter and son-in-law a wedding gift. In the past, Dave has given family members wedding checks in excess of $1,000. She says she was counting on receiving the same type of gift. My husband says I should drop it – but I can’t. Dave’s behavior is upsetting and embarrassing to me. How can I get my brother to recognize and change his petty behavior?

Please don’t tell me that I’m the one who started this by not inviting my brother to the wedding. After all, he’s a grown man, while my daughter is young and just starting out.

– Angry in Philadelphia

Dear Angry: Let’s recap: Your delicate daughter is too frightened to be near a conservative voter to allow her uncle “Dave” to attend her wedding. She then asks you to do her dirty work for her, and (of course) you do!

Fine – so far, we have only a bride’s prerogative to create her own guest list, and her mother’s choice to protect her from any consequences, which is your prerogative. You then rub the excluded guest’s nose in this wedding by sending him photos of the event to which he has pointedly not been invited.

But it’s your second “problem” which I believe will enter the Bridezilla Hall of Infamy. In short: Brides who are too afraid of family members to invite them to a family wedding don’t then get the pleasure of receiving their money.

You seem almost as afraid of your daughter as she is of your brother, but I hope you’ll find a way to courageously tell her that the Bank of Uncle Dave is closed, at least to your branch of the family. So far, your silent brother is the only family member who is behaving appropriately. He’s steering clear, which is exactly what you have asked him to do.