Lest We Forget

As Britishland totters on the edge of Brexit/ No-Brexit/ Hard Brexit/ Soft Brexit/ Whatever-Brexit, it behooves us to remember just why they hate the EU enough to want to leave its clutches warm embrace.

Example #1:   Control

‘Intelligent speed assistance’ is at the centre of a European road-safety shake-up.
These systems are capable of automatically stopping cars from exceeding the limit or cutting the speed if they pass into a slower zones. But the Department of Transport insists that mandatory systems will not physically slow a car.
It says drivers will simply be alerted by a dashboard light and an audio alert, similar to existing warnings when seatbelts are left unfastened.
The technology will have to be installed in all new cars from May 2022 and in existing models two years later. Other features include automatic emergency braking and a system which keeps a vehicle in the centre of a traffic lane.
The EU Commission claims the mandatory devices could help avoid 140,000 serious injuries by 2038.

Note the weasel word “could”.  The infernal things “could” also cause still more deaths from equipment failure, because none of this shit has ever been tested, yet.

Example #2:   Hobbling the Internet

The directive, which passed by 348 votes to 274, seeks to update the EU’s copyright legislation in light of recent technological changes. Its most controversial elements, passed much more narrowly, are Article 11, a “link tax” requiring social networks and news aggregators to pay publishers to display snippets of their output, and most of all Article 13, an “upload filter” making larger online publishers like YouTube responsible for copyright infringements in material uploaded by their users.

This is akin to the “holding gun manufacturers responsible because a few assholes murder people with guns”  rationale.

Example #3:   Unstable currency

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde told a Paris conference that the currency union ‘is not resilient enough’ to emerge unscathed from ‘unexpected economic storms’.
Lagarde acknowledged that the currency union was now ‘more resilient than a decade ago when the global financial crisis struck.
‘But it is not resilient enough,’ she said. ‘Its banking system is safer, but not safe enough. Its economic well-being is greater overall, but the benefits of growth are not shared enough,’ Lagarde told the gathering, which was organised by the French central bank.
The warning comes as signs are multiplying of slower economic growth, especially in powerhouse Germany and the bloc’s second-biggest economy, France.
On Friday, indications of a weak first quarter for the eurozone mounted as a closely-watched survey pointed to March output being dragged further down by manufacturing weakness.
Manufacturers in the 19-nation single currency bloc ‘reported their steepest downturn for six years’ as pressure mounted from trade wars and Brexit fears, data company IHS Markit said.

This is what happens when you couple one or two “strong” economies (Krautland, Frogland) to fucked-up economies (Eytieland, Spicland, Porroland etc.) and expect good results.

So the Brits want out of all this shit (they’re quite capable of fucking their country up all by themselves, without any assistance), and no wonder.

The only thing which still puzzles me is why a “hard” Brexit — in essence, just telling the Europigs to FOAD  — is seen as a Bad Thing for the UK.  I’m sure there’s some sophisticated response to that simple question, but as said response would only come from the turds who lost the Brexit referendum (a.k.a. the Remoaners Remainers), I think we’re safe in ignoring it, and them.

This Age Bullshit

I see that the Democrat Socialist Party wants to lower the voting age to 16, in the fond hope that this will give them a massive injection of (for a change) legal voters.

So… we’re going to let people who (according to the law) are too immature to drink beer, drive a car, sign a contract, have sex or get married etc., vote in elections?  (Never mind that until recently, you couldn’t vote till you were 21… (don’t get me started).

I say:  fine.  Let the kiddies vote — as long as  in acknowledging that they are mature enough to make informed decisions about our country’s political future, they are also mature enough to have sex, drink alcohol, drive a car, sign contracts, get married, leave school, buy handguns and semi-automatic rifles  — oh, and get drafted into the Armed Forces.  Also, their parents can turf them out of the house at age 16, and not be responsible for their well-being any longer.  And seeing as we’re going to be all equality and stuff, this has to apply to both girls and boys, as well as those still too fucked up unsure to decide which.

Let’s have these little fuckers see what it really  means to be an adult.  Voting is simple;  dealing with life away from elections is fucking hard.

So Much For Background Checks

Like everyone here I was saddened to read of the mass shooting that happened in Illinois last week.  Dude got laid off, pulled a gun and started shooting, killing six and wounding several more, including cops.  I was expecting to have ILGov Fatboi Pritzker immediately start calling for more stringent gun control laws etc., and was wondering what was taking him so long.  Here’s probably why the delay:

The chief also released new details about Martin’s criminal background and the weapon in the shooting.
Martin should have been legally barred from purchasing a gun due to his felony record. He had a 1995 conviction for aggravated assault for stabbing a woman in Marshall County, Mississippi.
However, in January 2014, Martin applied for and was issued an Illinois Firearm Owners Identification (FOI) card, which is required to own or purchase a gun in Illinois.
On March 6 2014, Martin applied to purchase a handgun at a licensed dealer in Aurora. Five days later, he took possession of a Smith & Wesson .40 caliber revolver, the same type of gun described as the weapon in Sunday’s shooting.
On March 16 2014, Martin applied for a Concealed Carry permit in an unknown location. He was fingerprinted during the background check, and his prior felony conviction came to light during the background check.
At the discovery, Martin’s CCW application was rejected, and his FOI card was revoked. He apparently retained possession of the handgun, however.
Ziman was unable to explain why the felony conviction did not prevent Martin from obtaining a FOI card in the first place, merely saying it was possible that it would not have been discovered until the more rigorous CCW check.

So much for the much-vaunted background checks we’re always hearing about.  Illinois screwed up, and six people died because of it.  I would hope that the murdered people’s families initiate a class-action lawsuit for negligence against the state, because a law unenforced isn’t a law.  Of course, Illinois is bankrupt because they’re paying off (or not even paying) excessively-high entitlements to former government workers, so the lawsuit might be a waste of time.  And needless to say, the gnomes at the IL State Police (representing “police power”, see below) won’t be fired for negligence because unions.

One last thing about the choirboy’s gun:  S&W doesn’t make a revolver chambered in .40 S&W, so it must have been a semi-automatic pistol  (Clueless Journalism 101).


State of Illinois constitution, Article I, Section 22:
“Subject only to the police power, the right of the individual citizen to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Danger On The Loose

…that would be the man known to young girls and women all over as “Carlos Danger”, of course.

Yes, The Weiner has been sprung from jail:

The former Democratic congressman from New York had faced up to 27 months in jail after his guilty plea to one charge of transferring obscene material to a minor.
Prosecutors said he broke the law by having illicit contact with a 15-year-old girl using Skype and Snapchat.
Weiner’s sexting habit destroyed his career in congress, his campaign for mayor and his marriage to Huma Abedin, a former aide to Mrs Clinton.

That was three bullets dodged (although terrorsymp and Hillary lickspittle-in-chief Huma Abedin probably deserved all she got — or didn’t get — from the little weasel).

No doubt the shameless cockroach will soon announce that he’ll be in the POTUS race for 2020… although the more I think about it, he’s really not much worse than many of the current  Socialist wannabes.

News Roundup

…wherein I’m too lazy to make a full post about stuff:

1)  Valerie is saved! — Thank goodness.  Now I can continue to add inches to my waistline by eating their pastries every time I go to Britishland.

2) Rio cops execute violent choirboys on the spot — Now quit that cheering and applause.  And no, I have no idea when ICE are going to implement the same policy when faced with armed cross-border drug smugglers.

3) “If [an active shooter] walks onto this campus, they’re going to be shot and killed.” — It’ll be interesting to see if school shootings ever occur in these schools from now on.  And if any of my south Floriduh Readers are looking for a part-time gig…

4) Sexbots could be hazardous for your health — Oh puh-leeze.  I know more than a few women (including some ex-girlfriends) who would pose a far greater threat than a collection of latex and transistors.  Think:  Terminator, with tits.  (Yes, Cheryl, I’m thinking of you.)

5) Amazon tells NYC to fuck off — These are the perils of trying to do business in a Socialist environment.  Frankly, I think Amazon should breathe a sigh of relief, because they just dodged a BIG bullet.

Spamming Response

I am totally unsurprised by this situation:

Robocallers and spam callers are getting quite good at masking their identify. They do this partly by “spoofing” local numbers, making it seem like a legitimate local number is calling to increase the likelihood that you’ll answer. That’s the reason, according to Hiya, that around 9 percent of spam calls a month actually get answered by phone owners even though they don’t recognize the number calling.
Nine percent might not sound like much, until you consider the fact that 26.3 billion robocalls were made to American phones in 2018.

Result:

The nearly 50 percent of phone calls that go unanswered jumps way up to 76 percent of calls left unanswered — a little more than three out of every four — when the call comes from an unidentified or unfamiliar number.

In my case, that would be 100 percent.  I never  answer a call if the caller is unidentified (i.e. isn’t among my saved contacts).  As a result, I always tell people to email their phone numbers to me first so I can add them to my contact list.  Otherwise, their calls will be met with indifference.

Sucks, but that’s what happens when people use technology indiscriminately and unprompted.