Billy Joel The Definitive Biography started out as an autobiography. Joel killed the project at the last minute, however, he allowed his co-writer to redo the book as a biography. They had so much audio recorded of Billy and everybody in his life that it almost reads like an oral …

Can you be found guilty of possessing marijuana or other drugs in Virginia simply by sitting in a vehicle with the substance in plain view? © Andrew Flusche for Andrew Flusche, 2019. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

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A while back we got a voice mail from a sales rep at Yellow Freight that was so bad in every possible way that I just had to document it here. This is a lesson on what NOT to do on a cold call.

The voice mail was about 90 …

I’ve got a little over 1000 LinkedIn contacts. A lot of people would claim I have a network. A lot of people would wrong. The vast majority of the contacts are random people I chatted with once for 5 minutes at a conference, and have never spoken to again. Or …

Smooth, creamy, and satisfying! An easy Instant Pot recipe that is perfect for these cold-wintery months! Ingredients:- 2 Tbs olive oil- 3/4 cup yellow onion, chopped- 3 stalks celery, chopped- 3 garlic cloves, chopped- 24 oz. butternut squash, pe…

My web host got bought out by a large hosting company that I don’t want to deal with. So I get to migrate to a new host. This is made infinately easier by the fact that this site is just a collection of HTML files and images. Yay for not …

I am often struck by the audacious attacks on personal freedom from those who seek to interfere with the pleasures and rights of others. The anti-gun crowd in the United States is vocal, intrusive, violent and sadly, out of touch with reality and rational thought. Our 2nd Amendment fight has many parallels in the cigar world. I read the following recently in “The Ultimate Cigar Book,” by Richard Carleton Hacker,

But these growing numbers of smoking enclaves aside, there are also subtle ways to win an anti-cigar war fueled by ignorance and prejudice – the two things that cannot be swayed. Rather than pointlessly argue with militant anti-smokers, we must try to win the nonsmokers over to our side. There are people who are neither anti- nor pro-cigars. They are the middle ground and comprise the largest percentage of the American populace. If we can show them that we are more civilized that the radical anti-cigar thugs, we will have made our point. We must convince them with kindness. And courtesy. It does no good to force ourselves upon others, for we only aggravate the situation.

I get as much pleasure from the shooting sports as I do a good cigar. Although my life would not be under threat if I lost the right to smoke a cigar, replace “cigar” with “gun” and the paragraph still rings true. It’s a fight we must take on. I know I have successfully explained gun rights to more people who are “neutral” on guns, than people who are already ignorantly “anti-gun.” With the Governor of Virginia actively trying to negate the 2nd, 5th, 6th, and 14th Amendments of the Constitution, our rights are again under a direct threat.

As with the gun grabbers, the anti-smokers are unabashed in their intrusiveness. Not too long ago I was sitting in the outdoor cigar lounge area at a local brewery. A group of people moved from where they had been sitting to sit in the smoking area, ostensibly to find seats in the sun. A woman in the group promptly asked me to put out my cigar. My one word answer was a very polite but emphatic, “No.”

All of these intrusions have as their basis a claim of “for your own good.” Americans once appeared to have learned a lesson during Prohibition. Yet, I don’t for a minute think that fight will not be fought again. The nanny state and prohibitionists of any ilk are unrelenting. The next time we lose a freedom, it may not be won back.

“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” — William Pitt the Younger

Did you know that you have the right to separate the witnesses during your Virginia traffic or misdemeanor trial? It’s an important trial strategy. © Andrew Flusche for Andrew Flusche, 2019. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

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I’ve done this for the last few years – pulled out my favorite selfies from the year and put them into a slideshow. Why yes, this is a low effort blog post just posting something I already made. Why do you ask?

I was out running errands with my wife today and she wanted to stop by the Dollar Store to pick up a bottle of bubbles for the preschool she runs. Swinging by the Dollar Store to buy a bottle of bubble made me immediately think of (Whatever Happened to The …