Not As Painted

It’s often said about the .dotmil that while amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics.

And considering that the “caravan” of mopes moving through Mexico to El Norte The Promised Land has often been termed an invasion (which it is), let me point out that over at Sarah’s place, Bill Reader has been studying the logistics of said caravan.  Not to be a spoiler or anything, but the conclusion is simple:  they ain’t walking.  Bill’s details will supply you with ample ammunition — another military allusion — for any conversations you may have with scumbags of the no-border persuasion (provided you’re actually conversing with them and not kicking their asses, that is).

Example:

The caravan started in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Sources vary slightly on the exact day they set off, with Fox and USA Today saying the 12th, and Daily Mail saying the 13th. By October 23rd, according to USA Today, they were interviewing people passing through Huixtla, Mexico. We also know that the caravan didn’t take the very shortest route per GoogleMaps, because some of the places noted in the NBC photo-essay—Quezaltepeque, Guatamala, and Chiquimula, Guatemala—are on a slightly more southern route. All told the distance traveled in 12 days—and that’s being generous, counting from the 12th, counting the full day of both the 12th and the 23rd as travel days, and ignoring that the caravan seems to have stalled out for almost a full day when it hit the border starting on the 18th— was 471 miles. That’s a pace of nearly 40 miles a day.

And as Bill points out later, elite units of the .dotmil (SEALs, Rangers etc,) can only do 50 miles a day on tarred roads in perfect weather conditions.  Civilians with families?  Feel free to draw your own conclusions.

But here’s his best bit, in my opinion:

“But in recent days, officials from Mexico’s immigrant protection agency have organized rides for straggling women and children as a humanitarian effort. And police have routinely stood by as migrants piled aboard freight trucks.”

To which I will add only two other comments—while the story given here sounds plausible, isn’t it convenient that the women and children, depending on how far they get rides, could also be the first to arrive at the border, to be confronted by several Army divisions? I’m not alone in thinking this is the long game of this caravan. Sarah and I have talked at some length about this, and if it follows the history of communist organized protests everywhere (stay tuned!), we can expect a pregnant woman to be shot.  We’re calling her Maria De La Cruz, at present, as a convenient placeholder name until she presents herself.

Yup.  We’re already being shown pictures of wailing infants in the caravan, to start the knee-jerk charitable reaction of Americans when confronted with same.  I’m not taking bets on Some Pore Refugee Woman / Child getting shot or beaten — it’s a sucker bet.

This is also the same policy with Palestinians:  when it comes to conflict with an army, it’s women and children first.  “Human shields”, in other words, while the organizers sit in air-conditioned offices far away from the strife (e.g. Chicago — read Bill’s post for an explanation).

The best part, however, is that Maria De La Cruz probably won’t make it to the U.S. border before the mid-term elections on Tuesday — not unless she’s got a Ferrari to carry her the rest of the way.

Don’t bet against that, either.

Now, as for who is behind this caravan business, read Bill’s second article on the topic. (Spoiler:  Commie ratbastards.)

Gurgle News

So Google has been in the shit recently, what with their buyout of an alleged sexual molester and subsequent mass walkout, their mismanagement of private data and its subsequent system breach, their tax avoidance schemes and their lickspittle attitude towards the foul Chinese government.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of monopolistic, greedy and “woke” assholes, as far as I’m concerned.

So far, so good.  Then along comes a loathsome ex-BritPM to the rescue:

Tony Blair calls for a ‘transatlantic alliance for technology’ with the US to force giants like Facebook and Google to obey ‘ethical standards’

…and immediately most of my enmity towards Goggle and Fecesbook evaporates because if Tony Blair suggests anything, the proper rule of thumb is to do the precise opposite (that, and/or kick the little toad in his tiny balls).  And of course, when Blair talks about “fair” taxes he simply means “more”, the oily socialist fucker.

And it’s only Monday…

Lies, More Lies And The Guardian

So the Grauniad discovers that rich people fund political issues.  (Quick:  Alert The Media!  Oh, wait…)

Of course, being the Lefty bastards that they are, the Grauniad deplores that fact that most billionaires are in fact quite conservative — e.g. rich people don’t want their heirs to pay estate taxes;  quelle surprise!  Where the liberal rag indulges in its usual mendacity is that it classifies opposition to measures like the estate tax as “unpopular” — which is true if you’re a socialist like they all are, but in fact the estate tax is enormously unpopular in the United States, as poll after poll will tell you (if you do the research, which the Grauniad didn’t).

In fact, the estate tax is unpopular even amongst Americans who will likely never have to pay the tax themselves, which no doubt horrifies the Left because a.) those stupid peasants haven’t swallowed all the Left’s lies about the Eeeevil Rich and b.) said peasants think that the estate tax is wrong in that it’s simply coercive wealth redistribution.

Maybe the estate tax is generally popular in Britain — I wouldn’t be surprised — but all the numbers they quote come from the United States, so that’s the usual Lefty misrepresenting of data to reflect their dogma rather than actual, you know, reality.  There’s only one solution to these socialist bastards and their lying:

Vanishing Tech

This barely qualifies as news, I suppose:

The beginning of the end for the DVD player: John Lewis will no longer sell the gadgets as they are replaced by streaming services (joining VHS, cassette tapes and floppy disks in the dustbin of defunct technology)

As the owner of dozens of DVDs, I guess I’ll have to buy a backup (or two) DVD players for the inevitable time when you can’t find the blessed things anymore.  As it happens, I have a multi-format Blu-Ray DVD player at the moment — multi-format because I have both PAL- and NTSC-format DVDs:  a heritage of buying DVDs in Europe and Britishland during my various travels Over There.  Of course, Philips no longer makes the model I own, so I’ll have to pay the “Sony premium” for my backup.

Gah.

Look, I understand the March Of Progress and all that, and I know that technology becomes outdated after a while.  I just wish that the “while” would last a little longer.

And no, I’m not going to “stream” movies — at least, not the movies that I love and want to watch over and over again — because as any fule kno, what the “Cloud” giveth, the Cloud can take away (often without warning) and I refuse to be held hostage by the fucking movie studios (e.g. the horrible Disney Corporation, or Netflix).  The ordinary movies (i.e. most of them) I can watch once and never watch again without regret;  but the gems?  oh no, I wantssss them all, my Precioussss, so that I can enjoy them anytime I want and not when Global Entertainment MegaCorp says I can (or can’t, a pox on them).

Ditto books, by the way.  I’ve talked before about why I can’t use Kindle (see below* for the Cliff Notes version), so forget e-books of any kind whatsoever.  And I have hundreds of audio CDs, ergo I have a couple of backup CD players for the time when the poxy recording industry [50,000-word rant deleted]  decides that CD ownership is a Bad Thing.

Possession isn’t just 9/10 of the law when it comes to my viewing, listening and reading pleasure:  it’s all of the law, and I intend to keep it that way.


*I’ve never bought into e-books.  I tried a Kindle, but it might as well been kindling for all the appeal it has to me.  Here’s the reason why: my eyesight is failing [Old Fart Problem #4], which means I have to increase the font size to see the words properly.  Problem:  I read at about 2,000 words per minute (always have), which means that I get a blister on my thumb from hitting the “Next Page” button on a Kindle, and anyone in the room with me will eventually complain about the noise of the constant rapid-fire clicking.

And that’s the other problem, right there:  I love the feel of a book in my hands.  I love the ability to flip backwards to re-read a passage that turned out to be important later on.  I love the fact that once I own a book, it can’t be taken away from me electronically by some algorithm which decides that I’ve had the content “long enough” (as though there’s an expiration date on ownership).

About Those “Bombs”…

So a whole bunch of Leftist scumbags (these and these) are getting suspicious packages in the mail — said packages containing pipe bombs that aren’t really bombs, and envelopes containing white powder which turns out to be talc.

I’m going to say it right now:  the packages are not being sent by MAGA types or even nutjobs from the alt-Right;  they’re being sent by some Lefty or  a group of Lefties who are trying a Hail-Mary pass to somehow forestall the spanking that the Left are going to get in the polls next month.

It’s a desperation move by the ultra-Left, nothing more or less.

Not Your Money

Upset that multinational corporations use such things as legal tax havens and the law to minimize their tax burden, the Germans want to impose some sort of “international” tax on technology companies like Google and Amazon.

“We need a minumum tax rate valid globally which no state can get out of (applying),” Scholz, a social democrat in conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition government, told the “Welt am Sonntag” weekly.
Europe is trying to devise a strategy to tax profits from the likes of Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and digital platforms such as YouTube and Airbnb which currently manage to keep fiscal exposure to a bare minimum.
Digital platforms “aggravate a problem which we know well from globalisation and which we are trying to counter — the shifting of profits to fiscally beneficial regions,” said Scholz.

Of course they do.  In the minds of statists and the governments they support, the State owns all capital and corporations and individuals have no right to avoid (note: not evade) paying the taxes said governments feel they are owed.

Shareholders of said corporations, however, insist on the companies’ avoidance of paying unnecessary taxes.

Mind you, I’m anything but a fan of Big Tech myself, the poxy monopolists;  but given the option between Big Tech and Big Government… no prizes for guessing my choice here.  To paraphrase Trey Parker (of South Park fame):  I hate Big Tech; but I really hate Big Government, and the foul neo-socialist European governments most of all.