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The Complementary Spouse Is Nurse Of The Year

October 23, 2021 by 2 Comments

The Complementary Spouse has never been one to toot her own horn. She much prefers to stay in the background and let her work speak for itself. So it falls to me to toot the horn for her.

Barb started out as a registered nurse in 1977 after graduating with her BSN from the Medical College of Virginia. She was part of a nursing fellowship program at MCV Hospital where new RNs would rotate through 2-3 departments. After a peds rotation, she moved to the burn center where she treated both children and adults who had been burned severely. She stayed there for five years.

Fast forward to the mid-1980s where she took a job in the PACU at Memorial Mission Hospital in Asheville. During the intervening years, she had worked in home health and hospice as well as with an infusion therapy company where she treated some of the early AIDS patients. During her 25 years with Mission, she earned both her certification as a Certified Perianethesia Nurse (CPAN) and her Masters in Health Sciences. At Mission, she worked both the in-patient and out-patient PACU, provided clinical support for surgical services, and finally was a Nurse Education Specialist for Patient Education where she coordinated patient education hospital-wide.

She was named a Great 100 in 1996 for her commitment to nursing excellence. It is an award given annually to the top nurses in the state of North Carolina. One must be nominated by your peers for the honor and it can only be won once.

After leaving Mission during cutbacks in 2013, she moved to UNC Health – Pardee which she now works doing pre-anesthesia screening. She was their first and only Anesthesia Navigator.

Barb has always been active with the North Carolina Association of Perianesthia Nurses and helped found the local chapter in the mountains. Even this morning, she got up before 6am to head to their state conference being held in Asheville to help work the registration table. It was going to be a busy day with many speakers plus awards for both 2020 and 2021.

What she didn’t know when she left for the state conference this morning is that she was going to get a major award. I did know and have kept it secret for almost two months. Thanks to the president of NCAPAN, I was able to sneak in the back the room as they were reading out the history of her career and her service to both the state and local chapters. I watched as her hand flew to her face as the realization dawned on Barb that the president was speaking about her.

So congratulations are in order for Barbara Richardson aka The Complementary Spouse for being the NCAPAN Nurse of the Year for 2020.

As she retires in early December, it is a fitting way to bring a long career to a close.

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An International Pronouns Day? Who Knew?

October 21, 2021 by 3 Comments

Thank to a tweet from the US State Department, I learned yesterday was the International Pronouns Day.

It is so good to see that our diplomats are keeping us abreast of the really important things going on internationally. Without their tweets, we might be stuck thinking about American citizens and our non-US allies still stuck behind in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan or the new hypersonic missile just launched by the ChiComms.

My pronouns are: ego / is / mē / eum.

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2022 NRA Board Nominees (Updated)

October 21, 2021 by 6 Comments

A friend just passed along the list of official nominees for the 2022 NRA Board of Directors.

I count at least four former NRA Presidents including the odious Marion Hammer, one sitting congressman (Don Young of Alaska), one former US Senator who didn’t run for re-election due to scandal, and two former congressmen. Then there is the Spiro Agnew of the NRA, 1st VP Willes Lee, who only first got on the Board in 2017 when he filled an open position.

The rest of the list is filled with people who can be depended upon not to make waves nor cause problems for Wayne. I wish I was wrong on that but I doubt it.

The only North Carolinian on the list is Cathy Wright of Chapel Hill. About all I know about her is that she won an award from NRA-ILA for grassroots activism in 2018 and is active with the NC Rifle and Pistol Association. From what I understand, she is their Publicity Chair.

UPDATE: I went back to check my 2019 ballot and it is interesting to see who was elected then that did not get re-nominated. The most obvious person missing is Ollie North. While the leading vote getter in the 2019 Board election, his attempt to rein in the Brewer expenses among other things led to Wayne’s sabotaging him for re-election as President. While still officially a member of the Board of Directors, he hasn’t been around since that Annual Meeting in Indianapolis.

Others current board members on that 2019 ballot who have not been re-nominated include Karl Malone, Mark “Oz” Geist, and Bart Skelton. Malone has been on the board for a number of years but has not been actually sworn in to the best of my knowledge. I don’t know what Oz Geist was left off the ballot. However, Bart Skelton obviously ran afoul of the Friends of Wayne aka the Nominations Committee when he joined Judge Phil Journal is calling for the appointment of an examiner in the bankruptcy case.

I also have learned that Andrea Cerwinske of Gainesville, VA served as the top assistant to former NRA President and former head of General Operations Kayne Robinson. She is now a VP with Aimpoint according to her LinkedIn profile. Another role she had at the NRA was as special assistant to Wayne for two plus years. I guess that says everything you will ever need to know.

My first draft of this post made mention that the North Carolina Rifle and Pistol Association could not be bothered to testify at the General Assembly hearings on the repeal of the NC pistol purchase permit. As I didn’t have confirmation of that when I first posted this, I left it out. I have since gotten confirmation. That, of course, didn’t stop them for taking credit for the repeal which is par for the course.

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Traveling For You In January

October 21, 2021 by 1 Comment

It looks I will be doing some traveling in January in an effort to bring you interesting news and posts.

The Complementary Spouse and I both got our credentials for the SHOT Show today as well as for Industry Day at the Range. It did come with a lot of legal language and waivers of responsibility as you might well imagine. I had booked our hotel reservations back in June. I still need to book our flights.

Yesterday, I also applied to the Safari Club International on behalf of both of us for media credentials for the SCI Convention which will start a day later than the SHOT Show and go on to Saturday. Keep your fingers crossed that we get approved.

Finally, I booked my room and flight today for the Dallas Safari Club Convention which is being held January 6th through 9th. As soon as they open registration for media I will be applying. I did speak with the person who has coordinated it in the past yesterday and gave her my information.

I have a couple of goals in attending both the SCI and the DSC conventions. First, they are different and I want to be able to provide a comparison between the two. Second, as I am intending to take my first hunting safari to Africa in 2023, I want to be able to give the perspective of the first time attendee as he or she goes about planning that trip of a lifetime. As my friends David Cole and Michael Bane have said, once you’ve been to Africa it gets in your blood and you have to go back.

I don’t think Big Pharma nor Dr. Fauci have come up with a vaccination for that. Thank god!

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Safari Club Convention In Las Vegas

October 20, 2021 by 2 Comments

The Safari Club was supposed to have their 50th annual convention in Las Vegas in January of this year. However, with Nevada shutting down and virtually every major convention canceled, it got postponed to 2022. As I noted back in February, both the SHOT Show and the SCI Convention will be held the same week in Las Vegas. So on one end of Las Vegas Boulevard you will have the SHOT Show in the Sands Expo Center and on the other end you will have the Safari Club Convention at the Mandalay Bay.

I have attended a number of SHOT Shows now as media but I have never attended a hunting convention like the Safari Club Convention. As my goal is to go to Africa on a hunting safari in 2023, I think it is way past time to do it. I applied today for media credentials for the Safari Club convention and, fingers crossed, it will be approved.

One of the things that makes hunting conventions like that of SCI different is that they hold banquets with entertainment and auctions every night of the convention. These are meant to raise money to support wildlife conservation here and abroad. As such, they are not exactly cheap to attend nor are they meant to be. The cost to attend all four banquets is $450. That said, they do have some big hitters from the entertainment, political, and hunting world.

From a release I received at the end of September on the banquets.

Blue Collar Comedy legend Larry the Cable Guy will kick things off at SCI’s grand opening dinner and auction on Wednesday night. The multi-platinum-selling and award-winning artist is one of the top comedians in the country. He’s starred in films like Delta Farce, the Cars franchise, and numerous stand-up specials. Laugh out loud with Larry the Cable Guy at the Mandalay Bay Ballroom on Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2022, from 6:15 pm – 9:30 pm.   

Thursday evening is the Night of the Hunter Awards and will be hosted by professional hunter and TV host Jim Shockey and writer and outdoorsman J. Alain Smith. At the Night of the Hunter Awards, SCI honors the individuals and organizations dedicated to conservation. SCI will recognize its achievements during a banquet and auction at the Mandalay Bay Ballroom on Thursday, Jan. 20, 2022, from 6:15 pm – 9:00 pm.  

Friday night’s dinner and auction will be packed full of some of the greatest defenders of American freedom. These include retired Navy SEAL and Medal of Honor recipient Master Chief Petty Officer Edward Byers and political leader, businessman and avid outdoorsman Donald Trump, Jr. The event will be held at the Mandalay Bay Ballroom on Friday, Jan. 21, 2022, from 6:15 pm – 10:00 pm.  

Country music star Craig Morgan, ​​with such hits as “Redneck Yacht Club” and “That’s What I Love About Sunday,” will start off Saturday evening’s entertainment. The grand finale event features television host and conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson, of Tucker Carlson Tonight and Crossfire. Tucker will close out the convention celebrating SCI’s 50 years of freedom at the Mandalay Bay Ballroom on Saturday, Jan. 22, 2022, from 6:15 pm – 9:30 pm.

However, what really interests me will be the exhibits and the chance to actually meet PHs from various African countries to discuss a possible trip. I understand there will be a number of seminars as well.

Being that we are gluttons for punishment, the Complementary Spouse and I are going to try and cover both the SHOT Show and the Safari Club International Convention. We have our room booked and need to book our flights. To top this off, I am probably going to go to Dallas little more than a week earlier to attend the Dallas Safari Club Convention. I understand that they are much different and I want to experience the difference.

You can accuse me of being a Fudd but really I am rediscovering some of my earlier interest in hunting from my late teens and early 20s. I really consider myself Gun Culture v1.5. Besides, I really did go a paper in college for Non-Western Civilization on Robert Ruark’s Something of Value.

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Cartoon Of The Day

October 12, 2021 by 4 Comments

We have all been there waiting and waiting for a file to download or upload. Some of us including me still (somewhat) remember the days before high speed internet where we had dial-up modems running at 1200 and 2400 baud. When I transitioned from a 56k baud modem to DSL at 3 Mbps I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Now if my cable modem isn’t running at close to 100 Mbps I begin to wonder what is wrong.

So at the junction of firearms and computers, we have this:

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Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil

October 11, 2021 by 2 Comments

I am sure new NRA President Charles Cotton would be pissed off to see himself represented by a trio of monkeys. However, given his performance as Chair of the NRA Board of Directors Audit Committee, it is wholly warranted.

This has become even clearer thanks to a report in the blog NRA In Danger. Several good, honest, and forthright NRA staffers sent a memo to the Audit Committee outlining “top concerns”. I’ll let NRA In Danger tell the story of how Mr. Cotton decided to neither hear nor see the problems.

A major event in the beginning of the controversy over internal corruption came when NRA Treasurer “Woody” Phillips left suddenly in 2017, and the inexplicable decision was made to hire an honest Treasurer, Craig Spray. Several employees who were deeply concerned about what was going on wrote a “Top Concerns” memo for the Audit Committee, which was presented at an emergency meeting in July, 2018. Note this is nearly a year before the scandals burst into the open (April-May 2019). The Committee’s response? Its chair, Charles Cotton, left the room before the memo was presented. Its Vice Chair, who then served as chair, never gave Cotton the memo (obviously he knew Cotton didn’t want to hear of it).(emphasis mine) The committee (which is entrusted by the board with keeping everything honest) made no mention of the event to the board. Officially, nothing happened that day in July.

Read the “top concerns” memo yourself. It was an exhibit filed by the New York Attorney General in the NRA’s abortive attempt at bankruptcy. Given Mr. Cotton’s behavior that day and many others since, I am somewhat surprised that the complaint asking for dissolution has not been amended to make him a co-defendant.

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Update On Investigation Of ATF For Waste And Fraud

October 11, 2021 by 1 Comment

Catherine Herridge of CBS News had an update on her investigation into waste and fraud at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. She reported that Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has become involved. Sen. Grassley is the Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and is very serious on protecting whistleblowers in government.

Sen. Grassley has now sent letters demanding answers to Attorney General Merrick Garland and BATFE Acting Director Marvin Richardson. He has also sent a letter asking the Office of Personnel Management about their suspension of BATFE’s ability to classify certain law enforcement positions. All the letters were quite detailed and indicated his office had significant knowledge of the affair.

It should be remembered that Sen. Grassley was one of the very first politicians that demanded an investigation into Operation Fast and Furious aka Project Gunwalker. He worked closely with then-Chair of the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee Darrell Issa to get answers.

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NRA Membership Trends

October 9, 2021 by 8 Comments

One of the cardinal rules of business is that it costs much less to keep a customer than it is to go out and get a new customer. Indeed, some studies show it costs five times as much to get a new customer than to keep an existing one. Moreover, just retaining 5% more customers can push profitability by anywhere from 25% to 95%. If your new car came with satellite radio, this explains why Sirius XM offers such incredible deals to keep you enrolled.

Now let’s apply this to the NRA. Reportedly officers of the NRA keep telling the board that they are gaining 100,000 new members monthly. This is a correct statement. However, what is not talked about much is membership retention.

Examine the chart below that was handed out in a recent NRA committee meeting. You had a million member spike in the year after the Newtown murders. However, in the next year total membership dropped by 500,000. You see and up-down pattern through 2018 when membership hit a peak of about 5.2 million members. Since 2019, the pattern has changed from the earlier up-down pattern to a continual decline. Membership currently stands at about 4.6 million as of the end of August. An earlier reported figure of 4.2 million was in error.

As Bitter has reported in a couple of posts, voting participation is down and increased secrecy about the organization’s affairs is harming it. Why would you want to be part of a group that forbids you from expressing your pride in being a part of it?

The answer is you wouldn’t. Add in that there are clubs ditching the 100% NRA membership requirement along with the willful ignorance of many Board members and you have a disaster in the making.

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Bill Wilson’s Favorite Hunting Rifle

October 7, 2021 by

As proof that not everything I post has to do with the NRA, I present this discussion between Ken Hackathorn and Bill Wilson on Bill’s favorite hunting rifle. It is a Ruger Model 77 in 9.3×62 which he has taken to Africa a number of times.

Why I was really interested in it is because I am seriously thinking of having a Remington Sportsman 78 .30-06 aka a poor man’s Remington 700 ADL rebored to 9.3×62. I could replace the barrel but I think it would be just as cost effective to have it rebored. It is a wonderful caliber to use on tough African plains game and is potentially allowed to be used on dangerous game. The latter depends on the country. Some have the .375 H&H or Ruger as the minimum while others that were under German colonial control often allow its use.