Tag: Evil Bastards

Black Lists Matter

Business, Marketing / Advertising

Boycotting things and businesses has traditionally been a tool of the Left — flood a TV show’s advertiser with calls, threatening to boycott the company’s products unless they stop supporting [Tucker Carlson], etc.

We on the conservative side have had a few ourselves — anyone remember the anger when gun writer Dave Petzal  Jim Zumbo (sorry, Dave)  said that nobody needed an AR-15?  or the boycott of Smith & Wesson when the hapless gunmaker made a deal with the Clinton junta?  We will not even speak of Dick’s Sporting Goods, etc.

I myself have a list of businesses and brands that I will never consider, mostly because of their anti-gun positions:

  • Levi Strauss
  • Leatherman
  • REI
  • Patagonia
  • Starbucks
  • California Pizza Kitchen
  • AARP
  • Dick’s
  • Ben & Jerry
  • Doordash
  • GrubHub
  • Hallmark
  • Jack In The Box
  • Domino’s, Pizza Hut and Walgreens (they fire employees who protect themselves with guns)
  • Sara Lee
  • Costco
  • Panera
  • Waffle House
  • Target
  • Whole Foods

There are some companies that I “semi-boycott”, e.g.:

  • CitiBank:  I have a Citi Visa because I get airline miles from using it — but I only use it to make firearms-related purchases.  And if they stop accepting custom from the places which sell me those products, I’ll pay it off and cut it up.  I sent their marketing department a letter to that effect a couple years back.
  • Target:  I buy two products (and only two) from Target, simply because it’s the only place in Plano that carries them.
  • Waffle House:  I used to go to Waffle House weekly.  Now I only go there when I’m on the road, absolutely starving and there’s nowhere else to go.  (Maybe twice in the past three years.)

Some of the companies are easy to boycott, because I dislike their products, period (e.g. Starbucks, whom I treat like a public toilet facility, but never buy anything from), or I prefer the alternative anyway (Swiss Army knives over Leatherman, etc.).

Also, while a number of companies have official “don’t bring your gun in here” policies, the local branches (especially in Texas) adopt a “you must be kidding” attitude instead.  (Our local Kroger hadn’t even heard about Kroger’s policy when I asked the manager about it, and he just said, “Don’t worry about it.  I’m not about to risk losing half my business because of Corporate.”)

Anyway, that’s my blacklist.  Feel free to add your own, in Comments.

Control

Bad News, Technology

Regular Readers all know that I treat the Internet Of Things (IOT) with deep and hostile skepticism.  I hate the idea of driverless cars, “remotely-controlled” appliances and -household systems, and don’t even get me started on “smart” guns with embedded chips.

Here’s a decent takedown of the concept:

After a week of tinkering, he effectively turned the coffee maker into a ransomware machine.  When the user tries to connect it to their home network, it triggers the machine to turn on the burner, spew hot water, endlessly spin the bean grinder, and display a pre-programmed ransom message while beeping incessantly.  The only way to get it to stop?  Unplugging your now seemingly possessed coffee maker entirely.

I know that all this is The Coming Thing, and we should all just bow down and accept its inevitability.  My standard response to this kind of attitude has always been quite simple:

  or the more heated

or even

Stick shifts and car keys, bolt-action or pump action rifles, revolvers, “dumb” coffee machines, house keys, pen and paper… y’all get my drift, right?

Fuck automation, and fuck the Internet Of Things or Skynet or whatever the hell they want to call it.

This post comes to you courtesy of the Internet… goddamn it.

Translation

Politics

From one of the Socialist Party’s prime gun-confiscators:

Translation:  we can’t dig up any dirt on this chick, so there’s no point trying to hold up her nomination.  Therefore, I’m just going to hold my breath till my face turns blue.

Quote Of The Day

QOTD

From Angelo Codevilla:

Let there be no doubt: the ruling class’s focus on Donald Trump has been incidental.  America’s potentates do not fear one pudgy orange-haired septuagenarian.  They fear the millions of Americans whom they loathe, who voted for Trump, who gave his party control of House and Senate, and who will surely vote for folks these potentates really should fear.

Which is all the more reason for millions (upon millions) of Americans to vote for Trump in November, and for people who support his agenda.

Do not refuse to read Codevilla’s article because it’s “too long”.  It isn’t, because his exposition can’t be fitted onto a bumper sticker, and the stakes are too important.

 

Lockdown Blues

Good Stuff, Gummint, Nannies

Over a month ago I went to Trader Joe’s to buy a couple of things, but was told to go to the back of the (100-yard) queue because the store was only allowing a dozen or so customers at a time to go in.  The outside temperature that day was August-In-Dallas (i.e. there were lizards frying gently on the sidewalks), so I said (quite loudly) to the officious little asshole at the door:  “This is total and utter bullshit, and you guys are acting like hysterical children.  I don’t need your stupid products that much,” and walked away.

A couple of people cheered and gave me the thumbs-up — and a few even nodded and walked away themselves.  (Sometimes, it only takes one, and — this may come as a surprise to many — I’ve often been that one, in my lifetime.)

It’s bad enough when Nanny Government can’t stop telling you what to do:  stay out of here, only six people allowed to be together there, family reunions or events are banned, can’t shop here but there is okay, this work is allowed but that isn’t and so on, but don’t forget to wear your face-condom everywhere or else you’ll be fined / arrested / publicly scolded / tossed out.

When stores start fucking with people’s lives, however, it’s probably too much.  At least, it was too much for this wonderful woman, who after having been bullied by everyone in Government or a uniform for months, decided that being told to follow in-store one-way signs was a Nanny Too Far, and showed her displeasure:

Shopper becomes furious after Co-op staff in Lingfield, Surrey, ask her to observe social distancing rules and starts throwing items and knocking bottles of wine off the shelves. The video that was captured in CCTV shows the woman screaming at the shop’s workers, after being asked to use the one-way system.

And just to put this in perspective, here are a few pics of Lingfield:

   

Not exactly the kind of place where one might find agitators and troublemakers, is it?

If you follow no other link today, this would be the one.

Bravo, Madame.

Blowing Against The Wind

Anti-Gun Nannies, The Gun Thing

…or to be more precise, against a hurricane.  First, we have this situation:

The trifecta of coronavirus fears, George Floyd protests, and the push to defund the police has resulted in surging gun sales in Minnesota.
…
The number of background checks conducted in Minnesota in March represented a 20-year high.
Then came the May 25 death of George Floyd and the subsequent riots, after which Frontiersman Sports owner Kory Krouse said the demand for guns went through the roof.
Krouse said, “People are really scared coming in here. We had a three, four hour wait just to get up to the counter during the height of … the rioting.”
As a result of the surge, gun store inventories are down and ammunition is scarce.

So one would think that a savvy politician would read the tea leaves (or, the actual statistics), and say, “Hmmm… this is probably not the right time to be pushing for gun control.”

Step forward, Minneso-duh! senator Tina Smith:

Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) is pushing an “assault weapons” ban, a “high capacity” magazine ban, and an expansion of background checks that would outlaw private gun sales.
According to her campaign website, Smith cosponsored the “Assault Weapons Ban of 2019,” which would have banned 205 commonly-owned semiautomatic firearms and all ammunition magazines holding more than ten rounds.
Smith also cosponsored the Background Check Expansion Act (BCEA). The BCEA was a push to expand retail background checks to private sales as well. In doing that, BCEA would have criminalized private sales, making it illegal for a neighbor to sell a five-shot revolver to a lifelong neighbor without first finding a Federal Firearms License holder and having a background check performed.

You have to be in the grip of a special kind of stupid to do this kind of thing in the current circumstances.  But that’s the deal with doctrinaire Socialists:  it’s all about the intentions, never about the outcomes and consequences.  And never mind what the proles think:  the Party is always right, comrades.

Even when they’re horribly, hopelessly wrong.