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Month: February 2020
It’s Heistin’ Time In The Old Country
Here’s yet another reason not to have anything to do with South Africa:
There has been at least one cash-in-transit (CIT) heist a day nationally since the beginning of the year.
The report is dated Feb 14, but there’s no reason to suppose that the trend hasn’t continued. And to show that the choirboys have moved with the times:
Anti-crime advocate Yusuf Abramjee said it was worrying that CIT robbers had become so brazen, and that they were using more explosives to blow up the vans.
There’s a guy with job security. It’s like being a condom salesman during Fleet Week, only the number of ships in port grows each day. (It’s also a bullshit job; other than the criminals, who isn’t an anti-crime advocate?)
And the final touch:
National police spokesperson Brigadier Vish Naidoo said that not all the CIT incidents were categorised as heists because an incident is only considered a heist if the suspects get away with money.
That’s like being held up at gunpoint, but not characterizing it as “violent” crime because the thief didn’t shoot you.
Can’t remember who sent me the article, but many thanks… I think.
Carry Revolver Followup
Following my meandering post last weekend about carrying a revolver rather than a 1911, I was wandering about the Internets when I saw this little beauty:
I know, I know… “beauty” and “Ruger” are not often sentence-mates, but I think that this particular GP100 model qualifies. And as for Ruger’s ruggedness and reliability… we’re all on the same page there, I think.
Here’s the thing. I’ve actually owned a GP100 before, and I loved the gun, except for the trigger. Oh man, that trigger was awful: sticky, stiff (it felt like a 50-lb break), and it only sorta-smoothed out after over a thousand dry-fires. (Don’t laugh; in those days I was a lot more serious about testing guns, so I kept a fairly close count.) In the end, I got sick of the finger-cramp, decided it wasn’t worth the hassle, and traded it for a Ruger Blackhawk in .30 Carbine (a story for another time).
However, in reading the various comments from people who’ve recently bought this model, only a very few complained about the trigger. So maybe Ruger has fixed that problem. What I do know is that before I would actually drop the $900-odd on the gun, I’d bring along some dummy .357 snap caps, test it right there in the store, and let its trigger make the final purchase decision.
I do know, however, that I would have absolutely no qualms about strapping this puppy onto my hip every time I left the house.
Ideological Purity
Over at Libertarian Central, J.D. Tucille offers up the standard librarian fare, claiming that both political parties are just Big Gummint:
Incumbent President Donald Trump has spent much of his first term catering to xenophobia. He demonizes foreigners, whether they want to come here as immigrants or just sell products to Americans. Immigration restrictions and protectionism inherently require a larger and more intrusive role for the state, leaving little room for a government that will just leave you alone. That trade and migration restrictions both inflict domestic economic damage seems largely irrelevant to his supporters, who embrace nativism as a cause in place of leaving people free to make their own way in the world.
Sounds more like a Democrat than a libertarian, there. Of course, it’s nonsense. Trump doesn’t demonize foreigners; he just doesn’t want them to come here illegally and change the way we run things. But libertarians espouse the “no borders” line because peeeple gotta be freeeeee, man (which is the maskirovka used by globalists, incidentally). And having no protectionism in the U.S. works fine — in theory — until you come up against the rampant protectionism set up in places like China and Europe, whose competing theories would eventually destroy us if we didn’t respond in kind.
And as always, we have the “trade and migration restrictions both inflict domestic economic damage” trope, which makes economic well-being the primary social focus — except that there’s more to life than economics; there are things such as the social fabric and societal institutions, which a lack of restriction undermines. But the nihilistic streak that runs through most libertarian theory either ignores those two benefits or else wants to destroy them — making libertarians little different from socialists in that regard, albeit for diametrically opposed reasons.
And by the way? Trump’s reduction of the regulatory burden has reduced government interference in commerce, and his trade policies have brought more economic well-being to the U.S. population as a whole than decades of globalism (which enriched mostly manufacturing corporations and financial institutions). But because trade restrictions run counter to libertarian theory, they must be wrong. Once again, the libertarians sound more like socialists, in that ideological adherence is more important than facts and outcomes. And having too little government is almost as bad as having too much government, something which libertarians always fail to see.
No wonder they only ever get a minuscule proportion of the vote, everywhere they run.
Quote Of The Day
“Caring for the environment and animal welfare are laudable ends, but when pursuit of those ends jeopardizes the health, and in some cases the lives of human beings, then those objectives must be subordinated to the larger and more important goal of the improvement in the human condition.”
And if you disagree with that statement and are prepared to sacrifice the lives of your fellow human beings for your cause, then as far as I’m concerned you’ve lost the right for me to care about your survival. It’s as simple as that.
12 Monkeys was a fucking movie, not a how-to guide.
Spoilers
I am completely hostile towards people who seem to be unable to get on an airliner without either being drunk, or getting drunk on the flight, and causing trouble either way. As with all things, as long as drunk people are quiet and keep their shit together, who cares? But then you get this kind of situation:
As Kenny would say at Knuckledraggin: straight up White trash, God bless ’em.
I can see the day coming when all flights are booze-free, and passengers suspected of being drunk (think: breathalyzers before boarding) will be denied their flight. Or, this may only happen in shithole places like Manchester UK or Las Vegas NV, which is where most of these incidents seem to arise.
Look: nobody enjoys a relaxing pint of gin more than I do, so I feel a little sorry for people such as Mr. Free Market, who routinely get completely whacked when flying — especially on the very long ones such as UK – Hong Kong or Australia – anywhere — because frankly, it’s probably the best remedy for boredom. But people like him may have to have their fun curtailed by louts such as the above prize pair, because at some point, a drunken asshole is going to pop the cabin door at 30,000 feet, with predictable consequences.
I have to say, by the way, that I myself always travel sober for the simple reason that the normal dehydration of flying + the dehydrating effect of booze has only one result: 
…so a ban on booze wouldn’t affect me at all.
But it’s always the few idiots who fuck things up for the many, isn’t it?