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Not The Best Idea

Travels

So London’s Arsenal F.C. have finally announced a replacement for longtime manager Arsène Wenger.  But I’m not interested in the doings of the North London Scum (as we Chelsea fans call them).  Here’s the interesting thing.  As is customary, the new guy (some Spanish dude, who cares) held up an Arsenal jersey at a photo-op to mark his new allegiance.  Anyone see anything wrong with the pic?

Of all the silly advertising… Visit Rwanda?  Rwanda?

Let’s just say it’s not on my  Travel Bucket List.

Okay, okay… before any pro-Rwandan maniacs get all bent out of shape, let me acknowledge that Kigali was recently voted “Most Beautiful City In Africa”:

…no doubt by the same people who also think that Yemen is a dandy vacation idea.  As with all things African, though, you need to step about a hundred yards outside the publicity photos to find the reality:

But hey… go ahead and fly Emirates to Rwanda, be my guest.

Me, I’m thinking about Prague…

Not So Fast, Fritzie

History

Sayeth Victor Davis Hanson:

Every 20 to 50 years in Germany, things start unraveling.  Germans feel aggrieved.  Ideas and movements gyrate wildly between far left and far right extremes.  And the Germans finally find consensus in a sense of victimhood paradoxically expressed as national chauvinism.  Germany’s neighbors in 1870, 1914, 1939 — and increasingly in the present — usually bear the brunt of this national meltdown.

Well, yeah;  except that in 1870 they had just unified Prussia’s army with those of the other German states, in 1914 they had the Imperial German Army and in 1939 they had Hitler’s Nazi war machine to boss their neighbors around.

Nowadays?  LOL.  The Alabama National Guard could whip the Bundeswehr and still be home in time for dinner.

This time, the Germans should direct all their energies inward, to fix their festering immigration population, the unions’ stranglehold on industry and the country’s  1920s-style social decadence — but they don’t have the balls to do that, even.  And I don’t see anywhere a potential  Bismarck to try it all, let alone a Hitler.

It’s not often I disagree with VDH, but this is one time I do.

Dept. Of Righteous Shootings

Righteous Shootings

Some dickhead walks into a restaurant and for reasons that will be forever unknown (see below) starts shooting indiscriminately into the patrons, wounding several.

Whereupon another patron takes umbrage at this foolishness, draws his own handgun and shoots Mr. Dickhead dead on the spot.  Because this happened in Oklahoma and not Massachusetts, California or New York, no charges will be filed against Our Hero.

[pause to let cheering and applause die down]

Of course, some people are going to be wondering Why This Man Did Such An Evil Thing, and What Are The Root Causes Of Such Behavior, and all that crap.  Me, I don’t care.  The asshole is dead, nobody else died, and all because a law-abiding gun owner was able to deal with the situation before the cops arrived, over five minutes later.

Predictably, the International Gun Control Set (IGCS) didn’t see it the way I do, arguing that if all eeeevil guns were banned, then there’d be no need for the law-abiding to carry guns of their own — based on the assumption that criminals are going to obey the law which bans guns.  Then the IGCS went off and had a meal of tasty pixie dust pie, washed down with a cool drink of unicorn tears on the rocks.

This evening, I’ll just take care of my own 1911, which will need cleaning after the Friday afternoon range session.

Then I’ll raise my glass of single malt to salute Our Hero, who did what had to be done.  Feel free to join me.

P.S.  If newspapers were truly interested in informing the public, they’d find out what gun Our Hero used, what caliber it was chambered in, what boolets he used, and where he shot the asshole.  But nooo… that would be akin to a public service, and we can’t have that.

5 Worst Things You Can Say To A Defeated Opponent

Friday Feature, The Worst

Ranked in ascending order of bad sportsmanship:

  • “Neener!  Neener!”
  • “I guess paying off the referee didn’t help you that much, did it?”
  • “Hey, never mind… after all, your side had the prettier uniforms!”
  • “Imagine what would have happened if I’d played you right-handed!”
  • “Yeah, yours was the moral victory. And that moral is:  in future, don’t play against someone so much better than you! “

Your suggestions in Comments;  the meaner the better.

(Not) Truckin’

Business

A couple weeks ago, I gave a ride to a guy in the trucking business — he was the Area VP of Operations of a large firm — and he told me that they can’t find drivers to handle just the local deliveries (stores, restaurants etc), never mind the long haul stuff.  And this in an area where a driver gets a starting salary of $60,000 plus serious benefits, after company-sponsored training and licensing.  As I recall, he said they need about 1,800 drivers, and so far had managed to get… 40 (forty).

That, folks, is a serious labor shortage, and his company isn’t the only one with this problem.

Shipping costs have skyrocketed in the United States in 2018, one of the clearest signs yet of a strong economy that might be starting to overheat. Higher transportation costs are beginning to cause prices of anything that spends time on a truck to rise. Amazon, for example, just implemented a 20 percent hike for its Prime program that delivers goods to customers in two days, and General Mills, the maker of Cheerios and Betty Crocker, said prices of some of its cereals and snacks are going up because of an “unprecedented” rise in freight costs. Tyson Foods, a large meat seller, and John Deere, a farm and construction equipment, also recently announced they will increase prices, blaming higher shipping costs.

And here, in a nutshell, is why the illegal immigrants keep flooding over the border.  Business owners (not just truckers) are facing a series of rock/hard place situations, and foreign-born workers (mostly illegal) are in many cases the only solution.  I don’t agree with what they’re doing in principle, but as a former employer myself, I can understand their actions.  Stuff’s gotta move, and nobody’s interested in the “how”.