Tag: Evil Bastards

Couple Bugs There

Gummint, Modernism

Let’s hear it for the Surveillance Society:

Privacy advocates used Amazon’s facial recognition to scan thousands of random faces around Capitol Hill in Washington DC to highlight the dangers of this technology’s surveillance capabilities.
While walking around, the team found the facial recognition successfully identified a congressman, but also claimed to spot Roy Orbison – an American singer who died in 1988.
The demonstration was a message to Congress to ban the technology, as there’s no law preventing people from scanning your face without your consent anytime you step out in public.

Hey, I’m pretty sure that ol’ Roy did a few regrettable things in his lifetime (bonked underage groupies, etc.) so now that the gummint has found evidence of his “existence”, they can do a little retroactive post-mortem prosecution.  I’ve seen worse.

What I wanted to see was that the software identified someone who was provably somewhere else at the time — so that in times to come when this bullshit is used by the cops to break an alibi, the evidence can get tossed out of court.

Both Sides

Business, Music

There’s apparently been some nastiness between Taylor Swift and her erstwhile recording company which has turned even more unpleasant since Swift egged her fans on to torment said record company.

I don’t claim to know all the ins and outs of this issue, but the rule of thumb in any imbroglio of this nature is that the money people (in this case the record company) are always going to try to screw the ideas people (that would be Swift, here);  so the default position in all this would be to think, with lots of justification, that once again, the record industry is trying to chisel the artist.  (Think of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s John Fogerty not able to perform Proud Mary  for years  because of the record company bastards and publishing deals.)

That said, however, this is  the serial feuder and generally-spiteful Taylor Swift we’re talking about, so I think I’ll reserve judgment, just this once.  Millionaires squabbling with millionaires:

Oh, That’s Charming

Legal Stuff, The Gun Thing

I see that the Supremes have fucked up yet again:

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting can proceed with their lawsuit against gunmaker Remington Arms.
The high court decided it won’t take up the case, but said the families can still seek damages from the gun company over the 2012 Newtown, Conn., attack that killed 20 children and six adults. Justices rejected Remington’s argument that firearm manufacturers are shielded from liability in crimes.
The families argue Remington marketed the AR-15-style assault rifle in a fashion that inspired shooter Adam Lanza to plot the attack. Advertisements, they say, promoted the gun as “a highly lethal weapon designed for purposes that are illegal — namely, killing other human beings.”
The lawsuit says Remington should never have sold a weapon that dangerous to the public — and argues Remington used product placement in violent video games.
Remington has argued a 2005 federal law shields gunmakers from liability for crimes committed with their products. Tuesday, the Supreme Court justices rejected that position.

I feel I should say something about this travesty, but what I say could possibly result in an unfriendly visit from a federal alphabet agency — to be met by an extremely unfriendly reception from yours truly — so I’ll just shut up.

So much for that “conservative” Supreme Court the Left has been wailing about.

If I had the money, I would buy a fucking Remington AR-15 right now, even though I’m not a fan of AR-15s (as any fule kno) and apparently the Remington variants are not highly regarded by the AR-15 cognoscenti.

I think I am going to buy another Remington product, however, just so they can get a few bucks into their coffers to defend themselves against this bullshit.  But which one?

There’s the 1911R1 (as a possible replacement for my venerable Springfield):

Then the 870 pump, always a crowd-pleaser, and I’ve never owned one before:
And because I still  don’t own a semi-auto .22 rifle (sssshhhh don’t tell the TX state police), there’s the little heavy-barreled 592:

Or I could just go for something a little more ummm deadly (seeing as that’s what’s getting everyone upset), like the Remington Semi-Automatic Carbine in (say) .308 Win:

None of that wussy AR-15 .223 shit for Kimmy, not in my current mood.

Sadly, right at this moment I can’t afford any  gun, but I think I can formulate a plan to get one which would satisfy everyone except Michael fucking Bloomberg.

Watch this space…

Good Title

Eco-Crap, Marxists

Joel Kotkin, one of my favorite writers (among so many) at the estimable City Journal, has described the “watermelon” (Green outside, Red inside) mindset perfectly:

Climate Stalinism

The Left’s fixation on climate change is cloaked in scientism, deploying computer models to create the illusion of certainty.  Ever more convinced of their role as planetary saviors, radical greens are increasingly intolerant of dissent or any questioning of their policy agenda.  They embrace a sort of “soft Stalinism,” driven by a determination to remake society, whether people want it or not—and their draconian views are penetrating the mainstream.  “Democracy,” a writer for Foreign Policy suggests, constitutes “the planet’s biggest enemy.”

And right there, in that last quote, is the whole game given away.  As Kotkin observes, most people outside the wealthy and academia are hugely skeptical of the whole “global warming / -cooling / climate change” movement because they have correctly deduced that regardless of all those laudable intentions to “save the planet”, the final costs of doing so would be catastrophic for their own livelihoods and prosperity, e.g.:

Imagine what will happen if a President Elizabeth Warren bans fracking in places like Texas, North Dakota, Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania;  in Texas alone, by some estimates, 1 million jobs would be lost.  Overall, according to a Chamber of Commerce report, a full ban would cost 14 million jobs—far more than the 8 million lost in the Great Recession.

Confronted with the abject failure of Communism everywhere it’s been put into practice, all that’s left for these would-be Stalinists is to try to bypass democracy and enforce their control over the population by diktat  — the very definition of Stalinism — using climate change as the fig-leaf.

I’ve written about this topic so often I’m starting to bore myself;  in Maskirovka (2017) and Proper Analysis (2019), to list but two of the more comprehensive posts, I outlined the eco-freaks’ mindset and the (failed) accounting behind the move to curb “greenhouse gases” respectively.  And of course, on any number of occasions I’ve debunked the junk statistics (which Kotkin derisively calls “scientism”) that these Marxists are using to try to give their loony theories some form of respectability.

Make no mistake:  these control freaks and their lickspittle fellow-travelers in the mainstream media are not going to quit.  We’ve already seen how has-been President Urkel’s EPA passed regulations which furthered the goals of the watermelons, stopping or delaying fracking, construction of new pipelines and so on.  Expect the same, or worse, from future Administrations run by Communists of the Warren / Sanders / [insert socialist candidate here]  ilk — which is why these bastards need to be implacably opposed at every turn, whether in local / state government, Congress or the White House.

Now, more than ever, is the time when we need to deny them ever getting their hands on the levers of power because once they do, it won’t just be your guns they come after:  it’ll be your cars, your jobs and your money.

And after they get into power via the much-maligned democratic system, don’t expect them allow themselves to be voted out of office too easily, either.

Under the Communists, the First Amendment will increasingly come under attack (“hate speech”), ballot boxes will get stuffed (by illegal immigrants), and regulations will be promulgated which bypass the legal system.  And if that little shit Beta O’Rourke did nothing else, he announced with absolute clarity these would-be Stalinists’ intentions towards the fourth  box.

I can’t put it any clearer than that.

In the past, I’ve treated Nov 19 (National Ammo Day) and April 15 (Buy A Gun Day) as two separate entities.  That time, I think, has passed.

 

Not that my Readers would need any reminders or encouragement, of course…

Only 70%?

Bad News, Marxists, Politics

Found here:

A new national poll has found that upwards of 70 percent of Americans, if you can believe it, are now fully convinced that the formerly United States of America is on the brink of a second civil war.

While I probably agree with the conclusion, I have to ask the following questions of it, because the conditions under which revolution may occur in this country are quite different, depending on the political philosophy of the would-be revolutionaries.

1)  Which proportion of that 70% are conservatives, which are Marxists, and which are sorta-undecided?

2)  What are the different scenarios, for each respondent group, for a revolution to take place?

Taking the second question first, there are a couple of situations in which a group would say “Fuck that shit” and go for the guns.

a)  Trump is reelected as POTUS in 2020. The Left, having failed to remove him through bullshit Russian-collusion and even-more bullshit impeachment processes, goes to volume 11 on the hair-on-fire lunacy scale, and takes to the streets in the cities (mostly Marxist enclaves like Portland), rioting, looting and causing general mayhem as seen in Ferguson MO a few years back.  Call this the “Antifa” scenario.  While these anarcho-Marxists scream loudly, I don’t see that this would be a credible threat, at least not for long because there aren’t that many of them — maybe a few thousand — and frankly, if martial law were declared (National Guard response), these fools would be squashed like bugs.  Now, even if (say) 50% of that 70% would react badly to Orange Man Reelected OMG!!!, while there would be massive outcries by the mainstream media, academia and other assorted Commies, only a tiny percentage of those would actually start a revolution.  And forget Blacks and Hispanics taking to the streets en masse ;  the Trump economy has given them jobs and income, and the loony-Leftist policies (like rampant abortion, wokeness and high taxes) put forward by the passengers in the Clown Car have disenchanted those two groups, or at least the more-conservative members thereof.  Don’t expect some Black or Hispanic guy who’s been working at a series of new construction sites for a couple years (thanks to Trumponomics) to down tools and join the Pantifa Parade, either in person or in sympathy — and especially not if he actually voted for Trump in 2020.

b)  Trump is defeated in 2020 by one of the assorted Commies in the clown car.  And let’s just say for the sake of argument that there is credible evidence of massive voter fraud by the Commies in places like Texas, California, Illinois, Florida and so on — I can’t see there being a conservative revolution even if we think that voting skullduggery is deserving of it.  (History is on my side here;  the typical conservative response to an unfavorable electoral outcome is to vote in greater numbers the next time.)

Where I think there would  be a conservative revolution is if the new Comrade President immediately embarks on the usual tired Marxist agenda of raising taxes, installing Medicare For All, oppressive ecological policies like bans on fracking, defunding the military  — you know, all those stupid initiatives that would kill the U.S. economy (pace  Venezuela).  That would not necessarily ignite a conservative revolution by itself, but it would certainly make a foundation for one.

So what could trigger a conservative revolution?

Property confiscation — say, when Comrade President and his/her Politburo lackeys appropriate savings accounts, IRAs, “excessive” wealth and so on — would cause a firestorm of not only anger, but resistance.  If you look at all instances in our history where people started shooting government agents, it was in response to property infringement.

And then we come to the Big One, the one that would guarantee a conservative populace to start shooting from the rooftops…

Gun confiscation.  I am pretty sure that the Beto Plan would not only fail, but fail spectacularly, and with massive bloodshed.  Even an incrementalist move towards confiscation of, say “assault weapons” (through “buybacks”) as the thin end of the confiscation wedge would be met with massive non-compliance.  And if the Commies then were to move to coerce compliance, that  would be when the SHTF, in no uncertain terms.

I also think that if the Marxists do take over, and their little Youth Brigades continue to riot — no bets, of course  they will — such riots would increasingly be met by armed conservative resistance.  And attempts by law enforcement to stop the conservatives shooting would end in more bloodshed than I think the authorities could handle — always assuming that the police would obey their orders, that is.  (And that is a HUGE, and so far unknown “if” — ditto for door-to-door confiscation, a.k.a. the Feinstein/O’Rourke wet dream.)

My guess, in the end, is that the “70% of the population” number is correct.  The composition  of that 70%, however, is going to depend on the circumstances.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the range.

Outcomes

Marxists

From Kruiser at PJMedia:

When I was pondering the divide between Right and Left in America last week I didn’t go over the thing that may keep us separated forever:  American liberals are now incapable of even seeing political slogans they don’t like without descending into a Sylvia Plath-ish oven-seeking madness.

Oh be still, my beating heart.  If political slogans really could push Leftists into lemming-like mass suicide, I’d want to elevate Trump into President-For-Life.