Category: Politics

Trying not to start the public floggings

Doing The Right Thing

Good Stuff, LGBTOSTFU, Resistance

Here’s some news that cheered me up over the weekend:

A girls’ field hockey team from Dighton-Rehoboth (D-R) Regional High School in Massachusetts has forfeited a planned game on September 17th because their opponent, Somerset-Berkley, has a male on their team.
Dighton-Rehoboth cited its new policy, approved on June 25, that allows players and/or coaches to opt out of competitions if the opposing team includes a member of the opposite sex.

And they’re aware of the consequences:

“We understand this forfeit will impact our chances for a league championship and possibly playoff eligibility, but we remain hopeful that other schools consider following suit to achieve safety and promote fair competition for female athletes.”

I actually know a lot about this topic.

You see, back in high school I played for the 1st XI hockey team for most of my time there — I was reasonably skilled but the fastest runner on the team, and speed made up for a lot of shortcomings.

Just for the hell of it, the coach arranged for a match against two girls’ high schools on consecutive Sundays, played on our field.  Both were considered top in the field, perennial competitors for the girls’ area championship.  We, in contrast, were no more than mediocre (we only had forty-odd boys to draw from, as most of the school played rugby).

So we approached the first match with some trepidation, because of course we’d never played against girls.

After the first five minutes we realized that our opposition was hopelessly outclassed.  We were faster, more skilled and more game-savvy, and we scored three goals in the space of a few minutes.  Thereafter we decided that we would only run backwards, and the flow of goals slowed to only a couple by half-time.

At that point, the respective coaches decided to split us up, five each of either gender per side (the goalies were irrelevant).

Only then did everyone start enjoying themselves, but even then we boys had a tacit agreement to slow down and make most of our passes to the girls (“to” not “at”, you bad people) rather than just playing to win.

And it was great fun.  But make no mistake, there was absolutely no comparison between the sexes.  Had we boys not altered the format and played like we were playing one of our bitter rivals, there’s no telling how badly we would have beaten the girls.

So I can tell you that having even one boy playing on a girl’s team is going to make a huge difference, especially if that boy plays aggressively, like the boy in the linked article did.  (Shame on him, by the way.  Even at my advanced age, I’d love to play against him and show him what real –but quite legal — aggression is like when you have it inflicted on you*.)

Some things cannot be changed, no matter how many “valid” arguments are made in favor of the change.

And good for the folks at Dighton-Rehoboth for acknowledging that fact.

*That’s a tale for another time, but someone remind me to tell the story of Kim And The Beauty Queen some day.

My Problem With Immigrants

Immigration

When I told people back in South Africa that I was planning to emigrate to the U.S., there were many comments made — “You’ll be increasing the average IQ in both countries, then” was a popular one.  But the most perceptive one was actually made by my ex-wife, who said:

“Well, Kim was born an American.  He just happened to be in the wrong country at the time.”

Actually, that was very close to the truth.  Before I was born, my parents had made plans to emigrate to Canada, and my dad had actually been granted a work permit.  Then my mother discovered she was pregnant (with me), and she couldn’t bear to leave her family, so that was the end of it.  (So I came thisclose  to saying “eh” at the end of my sentences, and pronouncing boat  as “boot”.  Small mercies.)

Anyway, I ended up here, and while living with Longtime Friend Trevor in Austin in 1986, I was invited to a party of South African expats.  I went, and it was a nightmare.  Back in South Africa, we used to call Rhodesian immigrants “when-wees” because almost all their sentences began with the words “When we still lived in Bulawayo…” etc.

Well, the South African party in Austin was full of South African when-wees, all bitching and moaning about how much better they had it back in the old Racist Republic.  And when I got sick of this shit, and asked of one particular whiner, “If it was so much better back there, why don’t you just fuck off home?”

The atmosphere became distinctly unpleasant after that little comment, and I didn’t stay long at the party.  I never went to another one ever again, wherever I lived.

Look, I understand this situation as well as anyone.  It’s a hell of a thing to change countries, to leave family and friends behind, and all the comforts of home as well.  All the customs and mores are different — and I didn’t have the same language issues as someone from, say, Serbia even.  The whole attitude to life is different in a new country, and it can be terribly lonely.

The natural instinct, then, is to gather with other people from the Old Country, so that you can commiserate with like souls, also lonely in this strange new land.  I don’t agree with it myself, but I acknowledge that it’s understandable.  (I made a conscious effort to fit into my adopted country.  I failed miserably in terms of speech — changing my fake-British accent has been physiologically impossible — but in all other aspects, I have been largely successful except for a love of cricket and biltong, which are even more ingrained than my accent.)

What gets up my nose — and I cannot stress this enough — is when someone moves to a new country, and then sets about trying to change things to fit in with their former country’s ethos and their own background.

It would be like me moving here, and then starting a pro-apartheid movement to keep the races segregated, and trying to change the laws of the country accordingly.

And if that sounds ridiculous, then I invite you to consider efforts to create a parallel legal system of Islamic shari’a in Western countries like France, the U.K. and, yes, the United States.  But because Islam is a religion and not a loathsome artificial system like apartheid, we are supposed to defer to this effort because of the freedom of religion guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, or because of a long-time reputation for tolerance (in the case of Western European countries).

The problem is that despite being based upon a set of religious beliefs, shari’a is not just a behavioral discipline, but a socio-political one.  Nowhere in Catholicism (at least, anymore) is it written that Catholics should (or even must) wage a holy war against non-Catholics without fear of reprisal at the hands of a Catholic court system.

Yet that is what shari’a not only implies, but demands.

And I’m not interested in hearing about “moderate” Muslims, either.  (The old not-so-funny joke about Muslims is that radical Muslims want to murder non-Muslims, while moderate Muslims won’t murder non-Muslims, but won’t mind if radical Muslims do.)

I have no problem whatsoever with immigrants congregating into neighborhoods of like background or ethnicity.  Like I said earlier, I understand that (even if I don’t agree with it).  What I won’t stand for is when these ghetto-dwellers somehow think that their little enclaves are somehow immune from the laws of the parent country, and are free to impose their own (transplanted) laws and customs on everyone who lives there, or even just passes through.

Think I’m kidding?  I invite young American (or British) women to walk through a predominantly-Muslim area wearing a tube top, no bra and a miniskirt, and see how they’re treated.  What would get admiring glances or even wolf-whistles in their own community will get a far harsher response in, say, downtown Bradford in England or even parts of Dearborn in Michigan.  The same clothing choice, by the way, would get disapproving looks and even a muttered comment in an Orthodox Jewish area in Chicago or New York, but it would be unlikely to result in screamed insults, assault or even worse, attempted rape, as it would in the Muslim areas.  (And further:  in Islamic countries, a woman claiming to have been raped is more likely to result in the arrest of the woman — for “temptation”.)

And this is my problem with immigrants.  (I have mentioned Islamic adherents above because it is simply the most modern manifestation of this, but I see absolutely no difference between Muslims and the Communists who came over from Eastern- and Western Europe, who set about trying to spread their foul ideology into their host country’s body politic.  We used to deny Communists entry to the U.S., but are unwilling to do so with Muslims because “religion”.)

It’s all very well to afford comfort and sanctuary to the “huddled masses, yearning to breathe free” (an inscription on a statue, by the way, and not official State policy).  It is another thing altogether to allow the huddled masses into your country, only for said huddled masses to set about changing all the good things about your country into something not only alien, but repugnant,

And for those who take issue with the word “repugnant”, allow me to offer but two words in rebuttal:  honor killings.

When it comes to immigration, I’ve always believed in the FIFO (fit in or fuck off) principle.  I’ve lived by that precept ever since I arrived here, and I see no reason why anyone else should refuse to do so — even if by doing so, your “sacred religion” is offended.  If your new country is all that offensive to you, fuck off home.

And by the way:  I can say things like the above because of the freedom of speech afforded to me by the Constitution of my adopted country, in the shape of its First Amendment.  If what I say is that offensive to you and you feel obliged to resort to other ways to demonstrate your disapproval, allow me to remind you of the existence of its Second Amendment.  I may have left behind a lot of Africa, but a response of violence to counter violence was not one of them.

Quote Of The Day

Government Thugs, Marxists, Surveillance Society

From Insty, referring to this post:

“Let’s be honest, the people running the world are not only corrupt, but spectacularly incompetent.  For their lousy performance alone they should be tarred and feathered;  for their “impudence” in attempting dictatorship they deserve worse.  But it really seems that over the past few years the ruling class of the West has been preparing for war against its owns citizenry.  Again: Why?”

Because, Professor Reynolds, the socialist state has always been better at waging war against its own people than against foreigners.  The French Revolution’s Reign of Terror was not directed at the Germans, Spanish or the Italians, but against the very French citizens the Revolution had purported to liberate.  The Communist Revolution in 1917 Russia ended up slaughtering and imprisoning far more working- and middle-class Russians than had ever been killed under the Romanovs.

And it will be far easier for the West’s ruling class to oppress the populace than t would be to, say, oppress foreigners.  The ubiquitous surveillance cameras are in London, Los Angeles, Paris and Berlin — not in Bangalore, Rio de Janeiro or Manila.  And the coming clampdown on free speech will affect Musk’s TwitterX, Bill Whittle and me and the Readers of this website, not Burmese peasants or Masai cattle herders.

Not only was it untrue that Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia;  there’s a distinct possibility that Oceania had never been at war with Eastasia — the war being simply a propaganda concoction to justify the repression of the inhabitants of Oceania.

So when the lackeys of the ruling class — that would be, say, the police forces of Britain and the FBI here in the US — start muttering darkly about the “hard-Right” or “MAGA-followers” as they prepare for mass arrests and imprisonments, it’s us they’ll be coming for.

As for Glenn’s why? the answer’s simple:  because they can.  Glenn is a thoughtful, intelligent and civilized man, and he simply cannot comprehend the feral nature of those who would rule over us.

They — to a man —  are amoral cocksuckers.  And the sooner we recognize that and start treating them accordingly, the better.

Rank

Lists, Politics

…and that means not only an order, but also the smell.

“Kim, WTF are you talking about?”

Some smart guy (Robert Graboyes, at the splendidly-named Bastiat’s Window ) decided that Teh Experts cocked it up (surprise, surprise):

Two recent BW posts (“Polls, Pols, and Poli-Sci” and “Presidential Prodigiousness Potpourri”) lambasted the Bizarro World of presidential rankings from the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey. Some of the more ludicrous findings are summarized/caricatured in the graphic above. Several readers asked me to offer my own rankings. I can’t do a 1-through-45 list, but I can lump them into five tiers: (T#1) highly positive, (T#2) somewhat positive, (T#3) neutral, (T#4) somewhat negative, and (T#5) highly negative.

Go ahead and read it before continuing here.

My only quibbles are that Obama and Biden (the latter a.k.a. Obama The Much Lesser) didn’t end up in Tier 5, the absolute stinkers;  and that Calvin Coolidge wasn’t in Tier 1 (although I will cop to being a yuge fan of Coolidge, so I may be biased).

I can’t fault Graboyes’s methodology, however, in that he refused to take into account what the presidents did when not in the Oval office (either before or after), which is good.  His example:

Madison’s role in the Federalist Papers and Constitution make him a titan, but his presidency was mediocre.

He did include some non-Presidential material, though:

…Jimmy Carter, who has made himself a national pustule for over four decades.

By the same token, therefore Obama should be likewise excoriated because “national pustule” would be too kind a judgment on his post-Presidential shenanigans.

Feel free to discuss the observations of both Graboyes and mine, in Comments.

Not Even A Perfume

Politics

Ohhh I think I have an old-man crush on Giorgio — I mean Giorgia.

The EyetiePM, not the state next door to Alabama or the similarly-named failed former vassal state of the U.S.S.R., and definitely not the perfume.

I mean, what’s not to like?

Okay, never mind all that.  When you get breathless pieces like this one written about you by a Commiesymp asshole like this guy, how bad could you be?

Dangerous far-right demagogue or free-thinking radical?

And all this was written before she became the EyetiePM.  Here was her plan:

“The top priority today goes to supporting families and businesses that have been brought to their knees by inflation and the rise of energy bills due to the Russian aggression against Ukraine.

“I think the next Italian government should fight at the EU level for a price cap to be introduced for gas. We are ready to act also at the national level if the EU should delay any longer.”

“Once the emergency has been overcome, the priorities are to cut taxes, to support families and the competitiveness of businesses, to build strategic infrastructures and to invest in a new industrial policy.”

Of course, our boy was outraged.

If all this sounds familiar, she says that “in the conservative world I think about Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher…”

…like that would be a Bad Thing.

But in the meantime:

In Italy illegal immigration by sea has witnessed a sharp decline this year owing to the strict anti-clandestine immigration policies of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing conservative government.

According to newly released official data that appeared in the local daily newspaper, Il Giornale this month, Rome recorded a shockingly sharp 62.4% drop in illegal arrivals in 2024, with 37,000 migrants landing in Italy as of August 12. Last year at the same time there were around 100,000 arrivals.

“Shockingly?”  Would it be impertinent to offer La Giorgia a job as, say, U.S. Border Czar?  (Also, Javier Milei of Argentina to be the U.S. Czar of Bureaucrat Downsizing & Retrenchment, but let me not get carried away.)

Okay, nobody’s perfect:

The Italian government approved a decree on Wednesday doubling to 200,000 euros ($218,220.00) per year a flat tax applied on income earned abroad by wealthy individuals who transfer their tax residence to the country.

By the way, the original plan to offer tax residence to rich guys was instituted by Italy’s erstwhile Socialist government in the hope that said rich guys would boost the (perennially inadequate) Italian economy.  As with so many Socialist dreams, it failed.  So Meloni has no doubt figured out that if they aren’t helping, the EytieGov may as well milk them.  It’s not like the likes of superstar footballer Cristiano Ronaldo can’t afford a lousy 200k, is her probable thinking.

Also, the EU hates Meloni and considers her a “fascist”… so when those Socialists hate you, you have to be doing something right. (#HungaryPMViktorOrban)

And she’s as cute as a button.

Proof Of Association

Elections, Politics

After wading through all sorts of stuff explaining the concept of “the power of association”, Scott Pinsker says the following:

By joining the MAGA train, RFK Jr. is helping Trump craft a narrative where The Donald is open-minded and forgiving of his former rivals. It shows he’s capable of attracting independents, moderates, liberals, practically anyone — hell, even a Kennedy joined Trump!

Yeah.  I’ll believe that about Trump when he offers Ron DeSantis a Cabinet position — and I mean a serious post like State or Commerce.

The biggest mistake Trump made — in both election campaigns — was his dismissive attitude towards the best state governor in the United States.  Regardless of his personal feelings, though, there’s no denying that in his own state, DeSantis has achieved more MAGA-type reform than anyone else.  Perhaps more even than Trump himself at the national level.

And by leaving DeSantis out of his future Administration plans, Trump will be doing the country, and himself, a grave disservice.

Trump is good for only four more years;  DeSantis will be good for more than a decade after that, if not longer.