Too Polite By Half

Here’s a story which is quite heartening:

The people in question are with the American Accountability Foundation in Kentucky, and they are busily engaged in a project that I’ve been hoping to see all throughout the current presidential campaign. Tom Jones of the AAF received a $100,000 grant from the Heritage Foundation to do some important research work. They are poring through the backgrounds of federal workers, starting with the Department of Homeland Security. They are checking public comments and social media posts, looking for swamp dwellers who may be opposed to the policies of Donald Trump should he return to office next year. They plan to publish a list of as many as 100 names later this summer, and those people may have to rethink their future career prospects if Trump returns to the White House.

There are, however, a couple of things which make me do a Lemon Face.  Firstly, while “accountability” is all well and good, what I’d really like to see is some kind of awful consequences for the disloyal (and perhaps criminal and treasonous both) government stooges, especially those who proudly proclaimed that they were doing their best to undermine the Republican administration.

I’ve always said that the State Department implements the foreign policy of the Democratic Party, regardless of which party is in power.  It’s a mordant comment, good for an amused smile, perhaps.

The time for that accommodation is over, or should be.

Just as Trump came to power in 2016 with a pre-vetted list of federal judges ready to be nominated and sworn in, I want him to arrive in the Oval Office in 2025 with a similar list of judges, to be sure — but with another list of Swamp apparatchiks who need, at best to lose their jobs, but preferably with some kind of legal censure — e.g. prosecution — and not just the prospect of losing their little place at the poxy government trough.

That little totalitarian cocksucker Anthony Fauci, for example, needs to spend his last years on earth in some dank federal prison for causing — and admitting he caused — untold harm to American society by his actions as a federal employee.  And he’s just the most egregious example.  There are a lot more than “100 names” who need to be kicked out of government and punished for their disgusting behavior.  Losing one’s job is a pointless “punishment” if all it means is a well-paid talking-head job on NBC or any of the other alphabet soup socialist-supporting media companies.  These bastards need to be punished.  At the very least, they should forfeit their government pensions:  they abused their positions, and don’t deserve to reap any benefits.

I know, I know:  this is not a good precedent to set because it will make people leery of working on government.  That, my friends, is a feature and not a bug.

What I’d like to see in Trump’s very first week as POTUS is a head-of-state summit with Argentina’s Javier Milei, both as an amicable confirmation of shared principle, and an exchange of ideas as to implementation of policy.

It appears that the Socialists — people like Kathy Griffin, Joy Behar and Rachel Maddow — are scurrying around like frightened mice at the prospect of Trump throwing people in jail when he comes to power.  I would advise Trump and his advisors to do precisely that;  just not to waste time with irrelevant nonentities like the above harpies, but to get serious with the actual bad agents like James Clapper, the entire upper management of the Justice Department and the Pentagon, and the authors of this documentfor starters.  The State Department, EPA and so on can wait until Year Two of the 47th President’s term.

We don’t need an accounting;  we demand a reckoning.

Old Times There Are Quite Forgotten

“How are we going to keep the boys on the farm, after they’ve seen Paris?”

That was the plaintive question after WWI when a great many of the doughboys came home having done just that.  Actually, the really big shift came not after WWI, but after WWII as the U.S. had changed from an agricultural society to an industrial one, and the G.I. Bill almost guaranteed that the boys wouldn’t go back to the farm, but on to college (back when that was a worthwhile step) and into the great commercial-industrial complex.

And the commercial-industrial complex meant that for most men, the jobs were “white-collar” and therefore required a uniform of a suit and tie, worn each day into an office of some sort.

Now I’ve ranted about the clothing thing ad nauseam, and I’m not going to add yet another one.

But I remember talking to Mr. Free Market (whose company had had a dress code which pleased me greatly) and in those Covid Times of Working From Home, he made the comment:

“After all this is over, there is just no way any of these kids are going to wear a tie to the office ever again.”

He was right, as he usually is, but in fact that was not the really wrenching societal change which ensued.  In fact, the truly pivotal moment came about as a paraphrase of the first sentence of this post:

“How are we going to get them back into the office, once they’ve worked from home?”

Simple answer:  mostly, we’re not.  Here’s an example:

Big tech companies are still trying to rally workers back into physical offices, and many workers are still not having it. Based on a recent report, computer-maker Dell has stumbled even more than most.

Dell announced a new return-to-office initiative earlier this year. In the new plan, workers had to classify themselves as remote or hybrid.

Those who classified themselves as hybrid are subject to a tracking system that ensures they are in a physical office 39 days a quarter, which works out to close to three days per work week.

Alternatively, by classifying themselves as remote, workers agree they can no longer be promoted or hired into new roles within the company. 

Okay, let’s leave aside the utter bastardy of Dell’s coercive diktat — as an aside, why is it that the notionally laissez-faire tech companies often prove themselves to be worse than any of the Gilded Age’s robber barons? — and see what the employees’ response was:

Business Insider claims it has seen internal Dell tracking data that reveals nearly 50 percent of the workforce opted to accept the consequences of staying remote, undermining Dell’s plan to restore its in-office culture.

The publication spoke with a dozen Dell employees to hear their stories as to why they chose to stay remote, and a variety of reasons came up. Some said they enjoyed more free time and less strain on their finances after going remote, and nothing could convince them to give that up now. Others said their local offices had closed since the pandemic or that they weren’t interested in promotions.

“Take your promotion and stick it up your ass” — not quite the expected response, eh?

Looks as though that toothpaste has left the tube.  So companies are going to be saddled with these giant, expensive glass-and-steel vanity edifices, full of empty space and echoing corridors.

And I for one, having worked in such environs for many decades, have very little sympathy.

Different Boolets

Look, I’m not some hotshot competitive shooter — never was — but I have to tell you, this has never happened to me:

I’m not nearly so particular about my magazines and ammunition after an event as I am during it. Checking the magazines on my 9mm competition pistol was proof of that.

I keep the guns immaculately clean and assiduously oiled. When I unloaded the magazines, I realized another problem waiting to happen. Instead of being filled with match-grade competition ammunition, I found it loaded with rounds from three different manufacturers in two different bullet weights. That’s NOT a recipe for consistency.

Really?  I shoot quite a bit, and I also shoot several types of ammo — of whatever caliber except my carry .45 ACP, which has been pretty much unchanged for about two years.  But all the other stuff?  I’m all over the place when it comes to ammo choices;  but I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve stepped up to the line with disparate ammo in my magazines.  In fact, the only time I’ve ever loaded different types of ammo into a mag (or cylinder, for that matter) is when I’m doing a literal comparison between two different weights or brands, and that’s a conscious action.  And when I’m done with comparing, you’d better believe that the magazine is empty.

When it’s time to reload to prepare for the next session (after spraying Ballistol then compressed air into the mag to clean out the gunk), it’s one bullet type/weight and one only.  This kinda shit?

Not gonna happen.  That’s just sloppy.

Gawd knows I’m no paragon of virtue when it comes to shooting.  But when it comes to my ammo, my discipline is ironclad.  I might not know exactly what ammo I’m shooting (especially when shooting ,22 LR), but you can bet money that the ammo will be consistent within the magazine.  Even if I’m just plinking at cans and such.

Total Agreement

This guy has produced a Top 20 Best Guns Ever Made video (delivered in a no-frills, dry-as-dust format), and it’s probably one of the first such made that I have absolutely no disagreement with, at least for the first dozen.

Basically, he’s included “popularity” as one of his criteria (hence the inclusion of the Glock), and that’s fine;  when you end up making millions and millions of a particular gun, it’s hard to argue with his reasoning.

Hell, I don’t even argue much with his ranking — if indeed it is a ranking and not just a list — and my only quibble is that he’s included both the Winchester 94 and Marlin 336 lever rifles, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s really just a double entry of pretty much the same gun.

And yes, he’s only talking about cartridge-firing guns, and repeaters (e.g. no single-shot ones like Sharps rifles).

But those are just minor quibbles.  I found myself nodding along all the way through.  And I agree with leaving the Colt Python off the list.

You may all pick your jaws up off the floor.