Category: Politics

Trying not to start the public floggings

That’s Not The Issue

Politics

When I first came to live in the U.S., there was the usual delay while my application got processed.  I wasn’t able to work (and I wasn’t going to do any sub rosa  work because a.) it was illegal and b.) if discovered, I feared being tossed out of the country).

So I watched TV.  All day and every day, for months.  As soon as the banality of daytime TV got to me (rough guess, about four days in), I looked for something else to watch that wasn’t going to bleed me of brain cells faster than a medieval doctor, and discovered C-Span TV.  Yup, live coverage of the daily business of Congress.

I watched it obsessively, as much from fascination as from wanting to discover exactly how my soon-to-be-adopted country worked.

And one of the highlights of that time was when proceedings of the Senate Judiciary and -Foreign Relations Committees came on.  I knew hardly anything about the judicial stuff, but more than a little of world politics.  A common speaker was Sen. Joe Biden, about whom I knew nothing, and as I watched more and more of his appearances and his speeches and questions, I soon realized that this was the most stupid man I’d ever seen on TV.  When he was reading from a prepared speech, Biden was fine:  articulate, witty and engaging.  As soon as he wandered off-script, and especially when he was interrogating witnesses appearing in the Senate, his stupidity and ignorance were always in evidence.  What he said sounded  plausible and in keeping with his speeches;  but the substance  of what he said was vacuous, ill-informed and often devoid of any kind of logic, let alone rhetoric.  I actually started to cringe whenever he was handed the microphone because I thought that surely, surely he would embarrass himself.  And he did, constantly — but he never once realized that he had.  (In this regard, Biden was very similar to how Socialist Rep. Ocasio-Cortez is today, incidentally — and he’s only better than she is now because of his many years’ experience in politics.)

When Biden ran for president back in 1988, I actually had an outside opportunity to work for the outfit handling his polling in Texas (Longtime Readers may recall that I was a researcher back then).  I turned it down because I couldn’t face the thought of working for this guy, no matter how peripherally.

Given all the above, I was perhaps the only man in America who was unsurprised when the equally-vacuous Barack Obama chose Biden as his VP — anyone brighter would have shown up Obama’s intellectual vapidity, and Biden’s superficially-plausible-but-intellectually-empty speechmaking was on a par with the future president’s.

So I don’t care about all the current brouhaha surrounding Biden’s current presidential prospects:  his fondling of women, his political platform (such as it is), or his age.  I do care that we only recently emerged from eight years of a stupid president (Obama), and I have no wish to be subjected to the same weapons-grade presidential stupidity all over again.

Lest We Forget

Bad News, Behind Enemy Lines, Politics

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.

WHM II

History, Politics

Yesterday we looked at a woman whose place in history was made by taking off her clothes.

Today we’ll be looking at a woman who took on the foul labor unions of Britain and the industries once nationalized by the socialist BritGov of the late 1940s (and denationalized them, saying “To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukaemia with leeches”).  And for good measure, she kicked the shit out of the Argies when they tried to invade and hold the Falkland Islands.  A political foe once described her as having “breasts like Monroe and eyes like Stalin”, and he was right.

We all know who I’m talking about, of course:  the Iron Lady herself,  Margaret Thatcher.

Needless to say, the Commies in the UK (i.e. a substantial proportion of the population) hated her guts because in her time, she constantly flayed the monster that was “democratic socialism” both by her words and by her deeds.

Britain needs her today more than ever:  I cannot imagine that the pantywaists in the EU government and the “Remainers” at home would last more than a couple hours against her — but lamentably, she can’t be there.  And her words, most of which were said over thirty years ago, ring all the more true today:

“Left-wing zealots have often been prepared to ride roughshod over due process and basic considerations of fairness when they think they can get away with it. For them the ends always seems to justify the means. That is precisely how their predecessors came to create the gulag.”

“Do you know that one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas.”

“The choice facing the nation is between two totally different ways of life. And what a prize we have to fight for: no less than the chance to banish from our land the dark, divisive clouds of Marxist socialism and bring together men and women from all walks of life who share a belief in freedom.”

I miss her, and so should (big- and small-c) conservatives everywhere.

FIFO

Immigration

Finally, someone in Germany has woken up:

Germany will become two ‘parallel societies’ if it does not demand integration from migrants, an expert has warned.
Professor Horst Opaschowski said Germany had ‘become a country of immigration overnight’ and said the refugee issue was likely to occupy German society for the next 20 years.
Mr Opaschowski, who describes himself as a ‘futurologist’ and political consultant, said the refugees and migrants who have arrived in Germany in recent years were likely to remain there.
Writing in Bild, he said the German government had to do ‘everything possible’ to ensure integration.
…
‘…if the state doesn’t do everything possible to integrate migrants and demand integration from them, the project will fail.’

Kinda like what the Danes are doing over in Danishland, where the children of (Muslim) immigrants are put into mandatory “culture” classes to aid in assimilation.

I know, I know… the Usual Suspect are going to start wailing about how this is “oppressive” and “cultural sublimation” (I’m guessing;  I have no idea what the current buzzwords are).

I have a simple statement for immigrants — to any country — and it’s the title of this post.

And no, it’s not an acronym for “First In, First Out” either.

Pass It Around

Legal Stuff, Politics

Whatever Lindsey Graham’s been drinking these past few months, can we set up an IV line of the stuff for Senate RINOs like Susan Collins?  This is excellent:

A day after the attorney general said the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller found Trump’s campaign did not conspire with Russia, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham said: “We will begin to unpack the other side of the story.”
He said it was time to look at the origins of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant for former Trump adviser Carter Page, which was based in part on information in a dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer who co-founded a private intelligence firm.
Graham told reporters he planned to ask Barr to appoint a special counsel to investigate the FISA matter, which is already being probed by the Justice Department’s internal watchdog, Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

Give ’em a fair trial, then hang ’em.  After we’ve taken down the rotting corpses of the various mainstream media reptiles, that is.

Ye Olde Hanging Tree is going to get a workout over the next couple years… well, it should, anyway.