Category: Politics

Trying not to start the public floggings

Not Your Money To Spend

Politics

Great Britain has in its budget several billion dollars earmarked to the  Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development for “development”, so one would think that such money could be spent in rebuilding its Caribbean islands that were flattened by Hurricane Irma.

One would be wrong. In fact, the OECD has ruled that the three islands are classed as “too rich” and therefore do not fall within the “allowable” target parameters for the development money. Here’s how it works:

Britain is free to spend its aid wherever it wants – what is at issue is whether it counts towards the Government’s 0.7 per cent target.
Last year, the UK spent £13 billion on aid, money which went towards the target to spend 0.7 per cent of national income on international development. But aid money only counts towards the target if it meets rules set by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
So under current rules, any money we give to the three overseas territories cannot count towards this total. Cash is only eligible if it goes towards a country on the OECD’s list of states which are deemed poor enough.
Countries are ranked according to need, which is intended to ensure the poorest countries take priority. While some UK territories are on this list, the three affected by Irma are not.

I’m sure this will come as welcome news to the British Virgin Islanders:

…and that’s just one town’s damage. Needless to say, various Brit politicians are spitting mad and demanding that the rules be “ripped up” — i.e. they’re advocating anarchy because, after all, rules are rules — but so far the OECD hasn’t budged, which means that the Brits will have to find the budget allocation somewhere else in the budget.

Didn’t one of our Founding Fathers warn against “foreign entanglements”? I think that this one would qualify as a good example thereof.

Required Reading

Politics

Mr. Free Market lent me this book, and if you read no other non-fiction works this year, this should be the one you do.

Marshall explains, in fine detail, what underlies the political (and even socio-political) goals of most of the world’s nations. It should be a required textbook in high schools or failing which, in college-level Politics 101 courses.

Do I agree with everything he writes? Hell, I don’t agree with everything that anyone writes —  but as I was reading it, I found myself nodding in agreement a lot more often than not. I’m going to buy my own copy as soon as I get back home.

No need to thank me: it’s all part of the service.

 

Sinking Ship, Fleeing Of

Politics

I note that conservative activists are leaving California in ever-greater numbers, and while I understand the impulse that makes people want to stay and fight, I sympathize more with those who have given up California as a lost cause and just want to get back to living in freedom.

I left Chicago for precisely those reasons.

I note that one of the conservative folks in the article landed up in McKinney, which is just a town or so over from my adopted home of Plano, TX. This is a good thing. As more and more people are discovering the joys of living in a conservative, well-planned and -managed area, it’s inevitable that the creeping cancer of liberal asswipes are also going to infiltrate the place; so it’s good to get a few firebrand gun-lovers (like, errr, myself) moving in to maintain the conservative imbalance, as it were.

I note with some alarm that Hillary Bitch Clinton got more than a few votes in our voting district, which meant that the outstanding Rep. Sam Johnson (PBUH) only squeaked in with 62% of the vote — his lowest margin ever, as I recall. (To put this in perspective, the next district north of us went 78% for Trump.)

So to all conservative Californians of that ilk — please come on over: Plano, McKinney and Allen will welcome you with open arms. And I bet you’ll just love the indoor range in Frisco (not the cesspit y’all know in the north of CA, but a good conservative town). This invitation is especially aimed at those Loyal Readers who are marooned in a rising tide of Blue liberalism — you know who you are.

Screw California. Let the place circle the bowl and sink without a trace. And if, in terms of the heading of this post you’re called “rats”, let me remind you that it’s the rats who first leave a sinking ship. You’ve done your bit as much as you could; now come and relax in freedom’s welcoming arms. Oh, and speaking of arms: you can ditch those stupid California-compliant semi-automatic rifles; we prefer the real thing here.

Speed Bump

Culture, Politics

Via Insty, I was reading this article which talks about how the First Amendment is designed to protect unpopular speech, and everyone’s speech in general, when this little sentence stopped me in my tracks (with my emphasis on the part which did so):

For White and Czjetanovic, being white nationalists has no impact on their ability to do their jobs. Had they held other jobs in which their white nationalism would directly affect their job performance, perhaps the internet mob would be justified in its quest to take heads (white nationalists shouldn’t be teaching WWII history to impressionable middle school students, for example).

Here’s where this little thing falls apart. We conservatives have been aghast at how “impressionable middle school students” have, for decades now, been taught by Frankfurt-School socialists, who have been busy with their little Gramscian plan of inculcating Marxist principles and Weltanschauung into our kids — and now I’m supposed to bristle at the thought of white nationalists teaching in middle-school classrooms?

The author (Bethany Daniel) has done precisely what she argues against in her article: she’s conflated white supremacists with Western Civ devotees (like myself). Frankly, if a white nationalist teacher kept herself in check and kept the racist shit to herself while extolling the value of Western Civilization when teaching history to middleschoolers, I’d rather see that than some vapid socialist twerpette interpreting WWII as a struggle between the patriotic proletariat of the glorious Soviet Union and the oppressive capitalist systems of the West.

The difference is that socialists are quite unapologetic about their propagandizing — even while teaching impressionable middle school students — while we Western Civ boosters have to be constantly on the defensive about our position lest we offend someone in the Perpetually Offended Set because racism.

Screw that. Given that bias is inevitable in any teaching system, the goal should be to stop not just white nationalists from teaching, but Marxists as well. Sadly, the education hierarchy in the West is only doing half the job.

Beat Down

Politics

I came late to this little party because I was doing things like drinking with The Englishman and Mr. Free Market, and watching football with Mr. Sorenson — and also, because for some reason (ha!), the Miller/Acosta fracas never made the news Over Here — but I love it.

Basically, this is what happens when a grownup debates a foolish child: in this case, logical, factual and historical arguments applied to a peevish and foolish “open-borders” attitude complete with straw-man arguments. Miller achieved all this despite Acosta interrupting him constantly and changing the terms of the argument when he sensed he was losing.

Here’s what it’s like to debate liberals:

Acosta’s ass must be hurting like hell right now, because Miller metaphorically bent him over a desk and beat him like a red-headed stepchild. The only way this could have been any better was if he’d actually done so.

Sound And Fury, Signifying Nothing

Politics

That’s been my general media attitude to the breathless headlines about Trump, Russia and all that jive. I have been getting wearied of it all, because it seems endless. But The Coldly-Furious One nails it, right here:

And that’s what it all comes down to now, I think. The Left’s target isn’t Trump now; maybe it never was. The target is Trump’s supporters. They hope to demoralize us, to make us disengage, to inspire us to resignation and defeatism and acceptance of the eternal status quo. They want us to believe that the Swamp can never be drained, to believe that Trump is a fraud who never had any intention of draining it in the first place. They want us to throw up our hands and walk away.

Remember: the lie told often enough becomes truth. What the Left is doing is not uttering the same lie, but different shades of the same lie — Trump did something with Russia that enabled him to steal the election, and if it wasn’t this, then it was that, or that, or that. And all along, all those thises and thats were baseless, groundless and in many cases, pure fabrications and/or wishful thinking.

Using yet another old cliche: throw enough mud, and some of it will stick — to the point where even cynics like myself start thinking yet a third cliche: with all this smoke, there must be fire. But there’s no fire. There’s just noise and incoherent rage, and no substance to any of it. Which is the paraphrase of this post’s title.

Ignore this nonsense, therefore. In fact, ignore what Trump’s doing, too. Let’s focus instead on the Republican Congress, and ask them why the fuck they haven’t been able to come close to fulfilling a single one of their party leader’s campaign promises? Tax reform? Not a word. Repealing ObamaCare? Nothing.

The only thing the Republican Party has been able to do since Trump was elected has been whatever Trump has done by himself.

And guess what? Next year is primary season. Maybe it’s time for We The Voters to start draining the Republican swamp, and installing people who really do want to make America great, again.