Law school at Yale: $142,500.
Annual salary as Attorney General: $110,000.
Getting swiftboated by the New York Times: Priceless.

Uncly-Wuncly has a roundup, but here are the only numbers anyone really cares about:

• Total NRA members in attendance: 72,128.
• Total number of counter-protesters: A bit less than that.

Dear Brixx:

Today I read that you fired a waitress for griping about a cheap couple who took up three hours of her time and left a whopping $5.00 tip. I was briefly relieved to learn that there had been an apology, less so after I learned it was from her to you rather than vice-versa. Rest assured that your heavy-handed response to what should have been a non-incident has generated far more negative publicity for your shitty little restaurant than your former employee’s gripe ever could have done. If anyone should have lost his/her job over this, it was the manager who made the idiotic decision to fire her rather than politely warn her not to do it again. Him, and maybe Marky Mark Zuckerberg, for screwing with everyone’s Facebook settings and sending everyone’s comments much farther and wider than the user intended them to go.

Given your policy of canning every employee who says a negative thing about any customer of your restaurant, kindly inform your staff that they are free to disparage me to their hearts’ content, as I am not now, nor will I ever be, your customer.

Love and Kisses,
Xrlq

This year’s convention was almost mandatory Charlotte is an hour away, but it would have been well worth the drive even if I lived nowhere near there. I had the pleasure of finally meeting Sister Toldjah, whom I’ve followed off and on for almost as long as either of us have been blogging. Just as sweet in person as you’d think from her blog; not a gunnie but I’m working on that. Also had the pleasure of meeting Breda, Jay G., PDB, Alan, Weer’d Beard, Unix Jedi, OrangeNeck and others whose names I’ve already forgotten. And of course it was good to catch up with Bitter B., Uncle, Sebastian, Joe Huffman, Caleb, Mike W. and Countertop again. Among the missing were Robb, Tam and Sailorcurt, along with too many others to count. As to the all stars, we were lucky enough to meet with both of the Daves, although our light blue law allowed the first Drinking With The Daves to proceed as Kopel Runneth Over, while reducing the second, a Sunday brunch while liquor was banned, to Hardly With Hardy. Both events were highly educational, however, as was Saturday night with Alan Gura. Missed opportunities consisted of John Lott, who was also there but our paths never crossed, and Paul Helmke dba Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The gunbloggers present at the Federalist Society debate, consisting of Countertop, Uncly-Wuncly, Joe H. and myself, actually chatted with the entire organization guy briefly after the debate, and I failed to ask him even once if he … um, I mean, his organization … has anti-gun ranges at their national conventions. Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.

Of course, not everyone in Charlotte this weekend was pro-gun:

The only thing worse than laughing at one’s own jokes in person is typing a joke and following it up with “LOL.” Discuss.

One of my many former hometowns, San Diego, CA, learns the hard way that lame political boycotts are better to give than receive.

Now that Blogsplat won’t let you comment the old fashioned way, I’m pretty much shut out of commenting on any Blogsplat account as “Xrlq.” Can anyone suggest a simple solution? I do not want to post under my real name, as would occur if I used my GMail account. I do not want to create another GMail account, especially if doing so would require me to log in and out of my real account just to post an occasional comment on someone’s Blogsplat account. And of course I don’t want to move my blog to another domain like WordPress.com just so that someone’s stupid blogging software will let me comment. Any simpler solutions I missed?

Starts with a silly crack about glasses and some gratuitous digs at Jane Fonda Network and Washington Compost. Moving to Twitter now.

Just took the stage.

So far the usual NRA talking points about how Hollywood liberals are to blame for gun violence, and how we don’t need more stupid, fascist, unworkable gun laws, we just need to enforce the stupid, fascist, unworkable gun laws we already have. Entertaining, though, as any Palin speech would be.

Nice quote: “In Alaska, we eat, therefore we hunt.”

Talk of press wanting to portray us all as racist rednecks. “I’m not ashamed of being called a redneck, that’s fine with me.”

Now she’s on to discussing predator control and the anti-hunting wackos, who love cute little wolves she supposedly shoots from helicopters, but don’t care about the smaller and cuter caribou they’d kill if we didn’t.

Sarah’s predicting the McDonald, like Heller, will likely be decided 5-4, which she cites to remind us all that elections have consequences. Reminds us all of John McCain’s sponsorship of legislation to force DC to finally abide by Heller. Yeah, that same McCain all the gunnies called a sellout, but I digress.

Here are pics of Alan “Mr. Second Amendment” Gura and Paul Helmke dba Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, soon to face off at the Federalist Society. More later.