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Getting a little sick of all the “look at the Left exploding, aren’t they a bunch of fuckwits” videos and such.  They sucked (and still do), they lost, they don’t deserve our attention, fuck ’em, time to move forward.

Like Oz commentator John Anderson has done with Victor Davis Hanson in this podcast.  Now go and spend a couple hours to a) see how a real interviewer approaches a topic and b) bask in the clear wisdom and analysis of VDH.

By the way — and this next isn’t a political interview — go and watch Rick Beato talking with maestro keyboardist Rick Wakeman of Strawbs, Yes, etc.  As with Anderson, Beato only asks a few questions — I think it’s fewer than half a dozen over the entire 90-minute interview — as Wakeman walks us through recording techniques, musical history and how Yes put their wonderfully-complex songs together.

And finally, even if you aren’t at all interested in Formula 1 racing, spend some time as former team principal Otmar Szafnauer (American, not German) shows his considerable managerial capabilities in an interview with some guys I’ve never heard of, but who also give the interviewee the extreme courtesy of asking only a few questions, not interrupting his answers, and basically giving the audience the benefit of his insight.

It’s a common thread running through all three, and I don’t want to hear any bleats of the foul “tl;dr” genre.  Knowledge isn’t gained from bumper stickers, but from knowledgeable people giving us the benefit of their wisdom and experience.  And the more time we give them to share with us, the deeper our understanding becomes and the more our lives are enriched.

I happen to know a great deal about all three topics, and I still learned a whole lot from all three interviews.

You’re welcome.

Added Snoopery?

Government Thugs, Surveillance Society, Two-Minute Hate

I started reading this article in the DM  more for entertainment value than any other reason:

I do not have a TV license as I only watch Netflix and Amazon. However, I’ve heard I will now need to buy a license. Is this true?

I know, I know:  the premise of the question is puzzling to my Murkin Readers, in that the very concept of a “TV license” is unfamiliar not to say abhorrent.  But leaving that aside for the moment, I found my amusement turning into something else altogether as I started reading the answer:

The general rule is that under UK law you need to have a current TV license if you, or anyone within your house, flat or premises, watches live television on any channel or service, record television programs as they are being broadcast live or watch anything on BBC iPlayer.

So when you tune in to watch ‘on demand’ television, such as Netflix, Amazon and other similar streaming services, no TV license is needed.

This is because here you are not watching ‘live’ programs – i.e. shows that are being broadcast when you watch or record them but, instead, choosing from a catalogue of options.

So far. so good (well no, not at all good, but whatever).  Here’s where I started to feel a familiar itch in the old trigger finger:

What you have heard about relates to Netflix, the US streaming giant which has 17.1 million UK subscribers and has launched a new service where it broadcasts ‘live’ events – for example the former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson versus Jake Paul boxing match being broadcast on Friday.

This is therefore ‘live’ television, meaning if you watch this, or any other Netflix live event, as it is broadcast, or even if you record it to watch later, you fall squarely into the territory of needing a TV license.

To clarify, you can continue to watch Netflix without a TV license if you chose not to watch the live events.

Which begs  raises the question:  how EXACTLY does the BBC licensing Stasi know whether you’re watching a movie or a live show?

It seems quite a simple deduction that that the answer is twofold:  either Netflix is sharing the viewing choices of the subscribers with the BBC, or the BBC is able somehow to monitor the channel feed, whether terrestrial or wireless.  Either answer is fucking terrible.

I should point out that the only way the BBC can enforce this ridiculous license fee nonsense is because Brits are largely disarmed.  If some Lizenzinspektor  came to the average Texan’s door and started with the strong-arm bullshit, there’d soon be murders.

And just so we know what this is all about:

The standard TV licence now costs £169.50 per year.  If you are required to have a license but fail to buy one, you risk being fined up to £1,000, plus any legal costs and compensation you may be ordered to pay. 

Let’s hear it for the Surveillance Society.

Random Totty

Gratuitous Chick Pics

Here’s a lass named Wendy Glenn, who joined some Brit soap opera or other as a youngin, and stayed on for decades:

 

She even inspired some bloke to paint a pic of her:

And I have to say that now, some decades later, she’s still quite toothsome:

When The Traffic Lights Stopped

Mocking Furriners, Politics

For a nation that’s supposedly laden with hard-headed common sense and a strong work ethic but is in fact more left-wing than anything else, Germany has slammed into the wall that bedevils similar political philosophies all over:  they’ve run out of other people’s money to spend.

And with what is so common among nations afflicted with a multi-party political system, their latest coalition government has therefore collapsed, crucified by essentially three factors: immigration (and growing popular resistance thereto), insane socio-economic policies fueled by Green eco-nonsense (e.g. an EV mandate which has led to closure of auto factories and concomitant unemployment), and a screaming insistence (via a cordon sanitaire* ) on preventing anything resembling a “Right-wing” party (the Alternative for Germany — AfD) from coming to power, either outright or even by parliamentary coalition.  In no small part, this is because the German Left persists in labeling anything not left-wing as “Nazi” or “fascist”, which tactic may be familiar to my Murkin Readers.

The Germans can’t embark on deficit spending so beloved of Leftist governments (e.g. the UK’s Labour Party and the U.S. Democrats), because the German constitution forbids it.  Even when they try all sorts of accounting legerdemain, the German courts wag their judicial finger and say, “Nein.”

Of course, the solution is simple:  firstly, end the flood of Merkel-enabled immigration (which is proving to be, surprise surprise, an economic drain on even the well-funded German welfare state, not to mention a social flashpoint as the Muslim immigrants are violent and not assimilating into the Kultur );  and secondly, the German government should end the slavish adherence to radical Green policies which, as anyone with common sense knows, are impractical, costly and doomed to failure.

Unfortunately, those initiatives seem to be precisely the two main policies of the AfD political platform.  Oops.

For a very clear analysis of all the above, feel free to wander over here.

And thennnnn… there is the looming prospect of a Trump Administration which will refuse to bankroll any of this shit, will insist on Germany spending more on their military NATO obligations (which they can’t afford to do)  — and all this with the Russo-Ukranian war raging right on their doorstep.

An historical aside:  the leftwing SDP (Social Democrat Party) has been a political disaster pretty much since its inception, despite being traditionally the largest political party in Germany.  They pretty much enabled Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s by refusing to participate in any centrist government coalition, and they remain a political speed bump to this day.

The Krauts are in deep shit:  rocks are meeting hard places all over the polity, and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of eco-insane Socialists.

In this modern German context, a “cordon sanitaire”  is shorthand for “stop the AfD from coming to power, by any means necessary”.  Hence the parliamentary alliance between three parties with diametrically-opposed philosophies (that has just collapsed).

Stepping Up

Illegal immigrants

Via Insty, I see this:

A signature issue for Trump, the removal of illegal immigrants from the U.S. is expected to take priority. U.S. Customs and Border Protection has reported more than 10 million immigrant encounters under the Biden administration. Media outlets regularly cited an 11 million illegal immigrant figure prior to Trump’s first term and that the current number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. may exceed 20 million.

“On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program of criminals in American history,” Trump declared during a recent rally in Reading, Pa. “We’re going to get them out.”

Well, that’s all well and good, and Trump has apparently set things up to use the military to handle this effort — and that’s a good start.  Using the military to remove criminals from the country and send them back to their several shithole points of origin is clearly within their remit.

But as Americans, we shouldn’t be leaving everything to the federal government, especially on so important an issue, and let’s be honest that just as with disaster relief, it’s going to take some time to get the wheels turning and off the ground.

So I think it’s time for loyal Americans to set up an “emergency” system (as we did with the hurricane destruction relief in Florida and especially the Carolinas) and have private enterprise kick things off, so to speak.

Maybe we could come up with a more appropriate name for this umbrella organization, but that’s not important here.  The advantages of private enterprise handling the opening stages of the new and improved “Operation Wetback*” is that unlike the military, who’ll have to fly people all the way over to Latin America, the Middle East and even China, the private air wing will only have to fly a couple dozen miles out to sea, unload their cargo, and fly back to reload. Not only that, but criminal aliens ferried out by the Air Force might find their way back — it’s happened often before — whereas criminals taken out, so to speak, by our private air transportation system will never make their way back unless they’re really good swimmers.

It’s all very efficient and cost-effective, and if there’s one thing that American private enterprise does well when not encumbered with red tape, it’s being efficient and economical.

And because it’s a volunteer effort, it requires no action from government other than to step aside and let the market handle the situation.

I realize that things done in haste can often cause mistakes to happen.  But I think that if instead of just illegal aliens, a few U.S. citizen criminals are mistakenly loaded onto the choppers for their one-way ticket, we’ll just have to accept that mistakes do happen.

As the Communists are so fond of saying, “You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.”  And if those eggs happen to have names like names like Clinton, Obama, Soros and Fauci, that’s just too bad.

If the name “Operation Wetback” creates an adverse reaction from the Fainting Goats Of The Left, we can just call it “Operation Wentback” instead.

Flawed Premise

Feminazis, Men & Women, Politics

Most of this article is behind a paywall, but it doesn’t matter as its theme is apparent:

Liberal Women Vow Four-Year Sex Strike To Protest Trump’s Victory And Punish Trump’s Male Supporters

As always with these deluded idiots, they begin on a faulty premise:  in this case, that men will fuck anything, even liberal women.  The first part is generally speaking true, but the second part?

Nazzo fast, Karen.

In fact, I would imagine most men, let alone conservative men, will be relieved that they don’t have to interact with these foul harridans, with their solipsistic self-absorption, near-insanity and exaggerated perception of their own worth in the sexual marketplace.

So go ahead and delete your dating apps, womyns;  conservative men are more interested in getting married and having children anyway, so your withdrawal will simply make their job easier.  And non-feminazi women — yeah, “traditional” women — will appreciate the lack of competition even more.