Apparently Rep. Frederica Willams (Communist-FL) was on her way to a speaking engagement when she discovered she’d forgotten to brush her teeth. She stopped at a Walgreens on the way, and sent her assistant into the store to get her a toothbrush.
“Can I get a toothbrush for Congresswoman Williams?” she asked the clerk breathlessly.
The clerk thought for a moment, then replied, “Sounds like a fair trade.”
In a long-ago discussion in Comments, I made the statement that if I had my preference, I’d like to die either asleep in my wife’s arms, or else on the barricades.
I think I’d better explain the latter, because someone may get the wrong impression, and I’d hate that to happen.
Although I’ve started to look like a Frenchman and am descended from the French, most Gallic qualities have long since been burned off by the passage of generations. Most especially, the need for le geste magnifique, mais inutile (the magificent, but futile, gesture) has long ago been purged from my psyche.
So don’t expect me to rush to the barricades when The Glorious Day comes, AK clutched in wrinkled grasp, with ringing exhortations coming from my lips.
I am uncomfortable in the role of “revolutionary leader”. I’m not a rabble rouser, or an agitator. I seek not to form an army, or an underground movement, or any kind of Maquis. I don’t care about glory, or notoriety, or any of that nonsense. I am, quite simply, a man who will go so far, and no further, and who will resist oppression without fanfare, without recognition, and without a qualm.
I am also not a terrorist, or “freedom fighter”, and I will never engage in any activities which are proactive against Our Enemy, The State.
I may, however, choose to resist, in a manner of my own choosing, because I have various boundaries, personal boundaries, which may or may not be the same as those of others.
So my “barricade” would be a lot simpler, and a lot more personal.
It could be at my doorstep, when agents of the State come to confiscate my suddenly-illegal guns.
It could be in a court of law, when I am forced to choose between paying a fine for disobeying an unjust law, and going to prison. (It will, I promise you, be the latter.)
It could be when the State tries to confiscate or trespass on my property.
It could be when the State threatens my family.
It could be when the State tries to load me, or any other “undesirables”, into the cattle cars (real, or metaphysical).
It could be when an agent of the State demands “Papieren, bitte” and I show them my tattoo instead.
It could be when I am restricted in, or forbidden to exercise my freedom of speech, or any of the other freedoms enumerated in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I will decide what constitutes “reasonable” when it comes to restrictions thereon, and not some Congressman, lawyer, judge, policeman or government bureaucrat.
Just like Nock before me, I’m not intent on “setting an example”, or influencing others, or making a splash of any kind. Those who wish, may do what I do, or not. Those who wish to castigate me for my choices may do so, but it will have no effect. Those who wish to use me as an example do so without my consent or blessing, and those who expect me to “lead” them will be disappointed.
I am a quiet man, a reasonable man, but I am not nor will ever be a slave to the State. I left one country to escape that, and I will not live like that in my adopted one.
So if I die on the barricades, it may be known to others, or else just an unseen spark which flickers and dies in the darkness. Either way, I am indifferent. But it will be known to the agents of the State, I can promise you that. I will not go quietly into that dark night of oppression. It may well turn out to have been a futile gesture, but it will not be futile for me.
I may have lost most Gallic qualities, as I said earlier, but the one I have most definitely lost is the impulse to surrender.
And that’s all I’ll have to say on the topic. Ever.
…which is probably a Good Thing, or else the oh-so compassionate NHS (Australia version) would have pushed this granny off on one long ago. Simple details are as follows:
Ms Manley was informed on May 12 that her application for an aged parent visa was rejected because she does not fit the criteria due to her poor health.
The health criteria state that an applicant must be free from disease and must be free of any condition which would cost the health sector more than $40,000 (£22,000) in total.
Ms Manley’s full-time care would cost about $145,000 (£80,000) for the next three years.
In case anyone’s interested, this is known as “rationed care”, something the supporters of nationalized health care always deny will happen, but which always does.
Read the whole story for the full rage to take effect.
This from TexGov Greg Abbott:
Well excuse me if I don’t turn a few cartwheels and stuff. Fifty years ago, you could see liquor stores’ delivery scooters putting around all over every city and town in South Africa, painted in the various stores’ livery.
And, just so everyone understands my scorn, you could order beer and wine for home delivery. Also gin, vodka, brandy, Scotch and rum. Fifty years ago. In South Africa.
I once noted that as one moves south from the northern states in the U.S., the gun laws become less stupid, and the liquor laws become more so. In Chicago, I could buy single-malt Scotch at the supermarket, but I couldn’t buy a gun anywhere. Down here, even oh-so-cosmopolitan Plano became a “liquor” retail area (as opposed to just beer & wine) only about five years ago, but I have about fifteen gun stores within a couple miles of my house.
There are a lot of things to like about the South, but their liquor laws are not among them.
So: wake me up when I can order my favorite Scotch and gin from Total Wines or Spec’s, and have them delivered to my front door.
Actually, check that. Wake me up when I can buy my booze from Amazon. Like you can in Britain (where you can’t buy anything made by Colt).
And one last thing: I don’t enjoy the paternalistic tone of government “allowing” me to do anything, and being advised to do something “responsibly“. Fuck you, fuck your responsibility, and thanks for nothing, you paternalistic asshole.
Now send the Texas State Guard down to police the Rio Grande, and stop pissing around with chickenshit like this.
Longtime Readers will be familiar ad nauseam with my constant bitching against modern automotive design and how homogeneous the cars of today appear. While a lot of it is driven by things like “wind-tunnel” performance, I’ve never bothered to talk about exactly why car makers are so obsessed with streamlining and what have you, because I’d always thought people knew why they’re thus obsessed.
Allow me then, to address this shortcoming by pointing you to this excellent article, a snippet of which reads as follows:
It hasn’t happened all at once. It’s been a bit at a time, taking place over four decades in the name of safety and the environment. The whole thing began in 1966 with creation of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, followed by the Environmental Protection Agency and dozens of others. Every regulator wanted a piece of the car.
Each new regulation seems like it makes sense in some way. Who doesn’t want to be safer and who doesn’t want to save gas?
But these mandates are imposed without any real sense of the cost and benefits, and they come about without a thought as to what they do to the design of a car. And once the regs appear on the books, they never go away.
…
Truly, this cries out for explanation. So I was happy to see a video made by CNET that gives five reasons: mandates for big fronts to protect pedestrians, mandates that require low tops for fuel economy, a big rear to balance out the big fronts, tiny windows resulting from safety regulations that end up actually making the car less safe, and high belt lines due to the other regs. In other words, single-minded concern for testable “safety” and the environment has wrecked the entire car aesthetic.
And that’s only the beginning. Car and Driver puts this as plainly as can be: “In our hyper-regulated modern world, the government dictates nearly every aspect of car design, from the size and color of the exterior lighting elements to how sharp the creases stamped into sheetmetal can be.”
You are welcome to read an engineer’s account of what it is like to design an American car. Nothing you think, much less dream, really matters. The regulations drive the whole process. He explains that the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards with hundreds of regulations — really a massive central plan — dictate every detail and have utterly ruined the look and feel of American cars.
Here’s my suggestion to the Trump administration: wherever the so-called “Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards” reside, go in there and take out 75% of them – I don’t care which ones, but I bet a random sample of my Petrolhead Readers would take care of the problem.
Here’s the money shot quote from the article:
No one set out to wreck the diversity and beauty of our cars. But that is precisely what has happened, as the political and bureaucratic elites have asserted their own value systems over the values of both producers and consumers. They are the masters and we are the slaves, and we are to accept our lot in life.
Maybe not. This is a hill I’d be glad to die on — just for the sake of automotive beauty. Here’s one example of a car that couldn’t be made in the U.S. today because regs, and we are the poorer for it:
More about Bizzarrini.
The title, by the way, is a play on a line of dialogue from Cheech and Chong’s Big Bambu album.
