Quote Of The Day

From Austin Bay:

“As for escaping to Texas, please stay away. It’s absolutely terrible down here. We have hurricanes and tornadoes and sweltering summers and gazillions of feral hogs. The worst of it:  increasingly terrible traffic thanks to tax migrants fleeing California.”

What he said.  Our local traffic around Plano/Frisco/McKinney looks on occasion like the traffic I encountered in L.A. back in the late 1990s/early 2000s.

He forgot to mention guns.  We have lots and lots of evil guns here too, and a bunch of rednecks who love them.

The Name Thing

This one had me howling, in Comments:

I’m grateful for this opportunity to voice a question which has nagged me for many years: is Kim Du Toit really an American?

Look, I know you faced the choice: legally immigrate to America or be beaten to death in a cargo container. Anyone who has not faced that situation has no standing to say which is the moral choice. Nevertheless, your choice is questionable.

No reasonable person can doubt your commitment to constitutional, republican governance; to the public order so essential to the thriving of civilization; to entrepreneurship and the creative power of capital; to national defense; and ultimately to the rights and prerogatives of the individual.

However, you have certain… cosmopolitan tendencies, which cast doubt on your true allegiance. You have traveled to England and maybe even to Stockholm; places where child molesters are tolerated. We patriotic, heartland Americans might overlook such peccadilloes… except for one thing.

We can’t pronounce your name. Americans have made no secret of this: we cannot hear or pronounce French vowels or terminal consonants, and we understandably become violent when anybody points this out.

Previous generations of immigrants had the good sense to Americanize their names, is all I’m saying.

All good stuff, and it gave me much amusement. Let me take them in reverse order.  Firstly, here’s the story of the name.

When I became a U.S. citizen — I mean, on the very day I was sworn in — I was asked if I wanted to change my name.

It was the first I’d heard of this option;  nobody had ever told me I could do it when I became a citizen.  All I had to do was give a new name right there, and that would be the one on my passport and naturalization certificate (and SocSec database, automatically).

Had I changed it — one option was “Dalton” because it sorta sounds like “Doo-twah” and had two syllables, but I needed to think about it — it’s a big deal, changing one’s name —  and I had to make a decision right there and then.

So I didn’t.

And lo and behold, I found over time that people liked it — they said it sounded really cool and exotic — and it was quite a hit with the ladies, along with this kinda-fake Brit accent that I picked up at school.

Interestingly enough, when I asked both my American wives (Son&Heir’s mom, and Connie) if they wanted to keep their respective surnames instead of being saddled with this strange French thing, they not only refused, but refused loudly and emphatically.  (New Wife, when I asked her the same question, just gave me That Look so I changed the subject hastily.)

As to the other charges:

However, you have certain…cosmopolitan tendencies, which cast doubt on your true allegiance. You have traveled to England and maybe even to Stockholm; places where child molesters are tolerated. We patriotic, heartland Americans might overlook such peccadilloes…

(I chuckle helplessly again, even as I type this.)

I realize that the charge of “cosmopolitanism” is a serious one, especially to Middle America (the class to which I aspire, and the one with which I identify the most strongly).

But FFS, just because I speak several other languages that most Murkins can’t, and I like visiting foreign lands, and can tell the difference between Baroque- and Norman architecture, and likewise between Academy- and Romantic art, and Chopin and Schubert’s music, does this make me less American?

I even admit to preferring croissants over Wonder Bread, sausage rolls over hot dogs, and Victoria sponge cake instead of apple pie.  (I draw the line at BBQ, however:  no other food can compare.)

And I’m really sorry, but Wadworth 6X is just a better goddamn beer than fucking Budweiser or Coors.

Frankly, I think that Americans could do with a little more cosmopolitanism, if for no other reason than to break the bonds of bullshit American marketing of mediocre/awful products like the above (and let’s not forget “American” cheese, which is truly fucking horrible and no man should).

And I’m happy to do my bit to advance that cause, on these here pages and on this back porch of mine.

By the way:  I’ve never been to Stockholm, and I think child molesters should be burned at the stake, after extensive torture.

Wake Up, Lil’ Susie

…in which we see that at long last, some kind of realization is beginning to dawn that the Great Multicultural Assimilation Project is not living up to its promise.  From Brit HomeSec Suella (Susie) Braverman:

“Uncontrolled immigration, inadequate integration, and a misguided dogma of multiculturalism have proven a toxic combination for Europe over the last few decades. I’m not the first to point this out. In 2010, Angela Merkel gave a speech in which she acknowledged that multiculturalism had utterly failed, and then, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British PM David Cameron echoed similar sentiments shortly thereafter.

“Multiculturalism makes no demands of the incomer to integrate. It has failed because it allowed people to come to our society and live parallel lives in it. They could be in the society but not of the society, and in extreme cases, they could pursue lives aimed at undermining the stability and threatening the security of our society.”

Yeah, like nobody of sane mind could have seen this coming.

Meanwhile on the other side of the Channel:

Germany plans to halve the federal aid it allocates for states to cover expenses of receiving and integrating refugees next year as part of budget-tightening amid soaring inflation after years of generous spending.

And why so?

Germany has ‘hit the limit’ of the number of migrants the country can take, the country’s president Frank-Walter Steinmeier has warned. 

Steinmeier said that the fact that a third of all migrants who reached the EU in the first six months of this year went through Germany first means the nation, ‘like Italy, is at the limit of its capabilities’. 

His warning comes seven years after Steinmeier called for ‘open borders’ in a move that saw a million people enter Germany in 2015 and 2016.

Yeah, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea, Frank-Wally old chap, especially as those newbie “citizens” don’t have the exactly the same ideas as yer average Volksdeutsches when it comes to  things like robbery, murder, rape and similar forms of criminality — not to mention those other little peccadilloes like their savage treatment of women, honor killings, religious intolerance and tribalism.

Next thing the Germans (and Brits) will be re-commissioning nuclear power stations and overturning the Duracell car mandates.  I await such developments with bated breath, but I’m not holding my breath.

Such profound stupidity, especially when encased in law, takes a long while to be tossed out.

As we Over Here are going to be finding out soon.

Clawing Back

Best news, ever (and read it all for the full flavor):

Laid-off American professionals, who say they were replaced with foreign H-1B visa workers imported from India, scored a $4.65 million settlement against their former employer last week, Indian outsourcing firm Larsen & Toubro Infotech (LTI).

I’ve ranted on my back porch about this nonsense before (here), so I don’t have to repeat myself.

I’m just glad that this bullshit is being shoveled out of our pickup.

Melting Pot

Ah, once again we see the joys of immigration and cultural assimilation:

An Afghan migrant who raped and sexually assaulted multiple young boys and girls defended his vile abuse as ‘normal’ cultural practice in his home country.

He did get 15 years for his “first” offense (raping a 12-year-old boy) and is due to get his pee-pee whacked for a slew of other such atrocities.  Even for the French, this appears to be too much.

I await the wails of the cultural apologists, with interest.

As for the “melting pot” issue so beloved of the open border crowd, allow me to suggest that this melting pot is what I would have in mind for offenders such as the above:

…although no doubt some people would think that this is A Step Too Far, Kim.

Cockroaches

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO:

Zuckerberg’s company, Meta (formerly Facebook), announced it would lease offices in a massive new building in Austin, Texas.

Looks like we executed Timothy McVeigh too soon.

Do we really need that kind of company in Texas or, more to the point, hundreds of their insufferably-woke Gen Z employees to poison the voting pool?

If these little shits can ban someone from their poxy spy platform for calling Fauci an insufferable motherfucker, can we not ban them from Texas for meddling in elections?

Some good news, if it can be called that, is that they’ll be in downtown Austin, where the homeless encampments, needles in the streets and aggressive panhandlers should make them feel quite at home — as will the foul Green laws that govern life in Austin.

And the other “good” news:  at least Faecesbook is not moving to Plano.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to look at real estate in western Montana/ Wyoming, just in case .