Tag: Evil Bastards

More Troubles

Anarchist thugs, Illegal immigrants, Law and Order

Earlier, I referred to this account of the mostly-peaceful reindeer games taking place in L.A. et al., there’s an additional twist to the tale:

Some of the most horrifying images to emerge from the carnage on Sunday came from Downtown LA, where at least five Waymo self-driving cars were set alight and vandalized, prompting an indefinite shutdown of Los Angeles St north of Arcadia, and south of Alameda amid safety concerns about the lithium batteries. 

Oops.

I also liked pics of this mostly-peaceful activity:

Good question, sweetie.

Mr. President?

About Damn Time

Corporate Fuckery, The Gun Thing

I see that CitiBank may have seen the light:

We will update our employee Code of Conduct and our customer-facing Global Financial Access Policy to clearly state that we do not discriminate on the basis of political affiliation in the same way we are clear that we do not discriminate on the basis of other traits such as race and religion. This will codify what we’ve long practiced, and we will continue to conduct trainings to ensure compliance.

We also will no longer have a specific policy as it relates to firearms. Our U.S. Commercial Firearms Policy was implemented in 2018 and pertained to sale of firearms by our retail clients and partners. The policy was intended to promote the adoption of best sales practices as prudent risk management and didn’t address the manufacturing of firearms. Many retailers have been following these best practices, and we hope communities and lawmakers will continue to seek out ways to prevent the tragic consequences of gun violence.

Yeah, whatever.  Just to make myself clear:

I have absolutely no problem with “gun violence”, provided it’s of the kind where potential victims ventilate the goblins who are trying to harm them and/or take away their possessions violently and unlawfully.

And it was people like me who by extension would have run afoul of Citi’s so-called “Commercial Firearms Policy”.

So I’m glad they’ve had a change of heart — no doubt brought on by the Trump Administration’s overt hostility towards corporate fuckery of this nature — but even so, fuck ’em, the chiseling Shylocks.

I finally managed to pay off my credit card balance from Bank of America — the first and most public of the anti-gun banks — and closed the account.  My CitiAA card is next on the chopping list. It may take some time because the balance is still quite high — air tickets for New Wife’s various family visits to Australia and Seffrica, hello — but pay it down I will, make no mistake.  and then it’s bye bye, too.

Social Cancer

Immigration, Muzzies

What happens when you encourage unbridled immigration:

The truth is France is a two-tier country. There is the charming, civilised nation that has been my home for more than 25 years, a land of magnificent countryside and chilled rosé. But another France has festered inside it and now threatens to consume it – a dystopia of grim tower blocks, from which unemployed, nihilistic youths emerge to loot and terrorise at any excuse.

The headlines are relentless: gang warfare in Marseilles, synagogues and holocaust memorials attacked in Paris, two prison officers murdered in an ambush at a motorway pay station.

A sinister development that makes this worse is the proselytising of the Muslim Brotherhood, which seeks to undermine the French Republic and impose sharia law. 

According to a classified report from the Ministry Of The Interior, leaked to Le Figaro, the Brotherhood has built an extensive ideological infrastructure in France through schools, charities and mosques – infiltrating civil society under the guise of religious and educational activities.

It is not new arrivals who burn the cars and stoke the riots.

That is done by the second and third generation immigrants, the ones whose parents arrived to work but failed to integrate. A couple of decades later, their children are completely disaffected and disconnected from education.

We are experiencing a new kind of hybrid chaos, in which the state loses control of portions of the ‘indivisible France’, a term enshrined in the constitution of the Fifth Republic.

In this new world, hordes of youths descend on the cities in eruptions of arson and looting. Meanwhile, thousands of migrants arrive from southern Europe and nobody even knows how many there are in France or who and where they are.

Someone explain to me why the U.S. would be immune from this.

One Small Detail

Immigration, Terrorism

I see that ICE is doing the right thing and deporting the entire family of the Boulder Bomber (who is, lest we forget, an illegal alien).  This is a Good Thing.

The wife and children of Egyptian illegal alien Mohamad Soliman, the terrorist who firebombed Americans peacefully walking on the street in downtown Boulder Sunday, have been taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody and will be deported soon. The family is being processed for expedited removal, which allows rapid deportation without a hearing before an immigration court/judge.

I just hope that on the way out, the State Department remembers to revoke any U.S. citizenship that may have resulted from in-country births.  (Note:  this is one good reason why Trump is attempting to end the “citizenship-by-birth” boondoggle, which hardly exists outside the U.S. anyway.)

Fire With Fire

Terrorism, Two-Minute Hate

A thought occurred to me after that Muslim illegal alien threw firebombs at a bunch of peaceful Jews up in Boulder.

Seeing as these extremist Muzzies (and for that matter, all their non-extremist buddies) are so keen on introducing foreign law principles into the U.S. of A. (#shari’a),  their comrades-in-arms (#LeftistFilth) should have no problem with us introducing some other set of foreign legal stuff as well.

I’m thinking here of some Hebraic Law (Old Testament style) along the lines of “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” principles.

Which would mean that this Egyptian fuckwit would be doused with gasoline and set on fire in the public square.

All in favor?

Too harsh?  Okay, then…

…or a group affair with his buddies:  

I will entertain alternatives in Comments.  Hate speech welcome.

And a final thought:  just one bubbeh  with a gun could have prevented this whole sorry business.

Connectivity Assholes

Corporate Fuckery, Drive Time, Two-Minute Hate

Normally I reserve the above epithet for people who have their phones surgically attached to their hands, or bosses who insist that employees Stay.In.Touch.At.All.Times., yeah even unto night time, weekends, and vacations.  (Just because you’re attending your sister’s wedding or mother’s funeral — requiring use of paid time off [PTO] instead of compassionate leave, FFS — doesn’t mean that your boss shouldn’t be able to demand your time to attend to That Pressing Corporate Need.)

No, the connectivity assholes I refer to here are “services” like GM’s OnStar, Hyundai’s Blue Link, NissanConnect, AcuraLink and Toyota Connect.  Via Insty, I see the following is happening (from the annals of Corporate Automotive Bastardy):

Connected services is a catch-all term for everything your car can send and receive over the internet. It includes features such as automatic 911 call-outs after an accident, roadside assistance after a breakdown, over-the-air (OTA) software updates, vehicle health reports which can be sent to your dealer, wi-fi hot spots in the vehicle, and phone apps that allow you to connect to and even control some of your car’s functions.

They’re also big business. Most connected services require a paid subscription once the free trail (usually three months to a year) runs out. As more and more of them are added to your dashboard, automakers hope to make billions of dollars annually just on subscriptions. That doesn’t mean older vehicles will be supported forever, though.

Anyone who’s ever touched a device with a computer chip in it knows that device will eventually be obsolete. Cellphones, even if they still work fine, will eventually stop receiving software updates. Right or wrong, this is the way of the world. The average American, though, keeps their car for much longer than they keep their phone, and the average age of a vehicle in America is nearly 13 years old. Meaning, a lot of people could potentially be affected if other automakers follow Acura’s lead in cutting off cars newer than the average. And that’s not to mention those who own used examples of older models.

While it’s arguably bad customer service, there’s no law or contractual obligation requiring automakers like Acura to continue supporting older models with outdated hardware and software. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

Yeah, click HERE to accept the (300 pages of) Terms & Conditions Of Service.  (Wait;  you all do read those before clicking, right?)

Somebody tell me how many times I’ve ranted on these pages about people handing over their privacy and freedom of action in the name of “conveeeeenience”, because I can’t be bothered to look it up.

This is why, in all my lottery dreams, I am convinced that I would never buy a modern car, but would pay a premium (in service / maintenance costs etc.) just to own a car that is completely and utterly under my personal control.  I have actually come to the point where I would buy any car — in reasonable working condition — that has an ordinary key to start it, whose operating system contains not a single chip and does not send my usage data to just anyone who wants to see it, for whatever reason — which includes insurance companies, the police, the State, the advertising industry and all the other forms of bureaucratic bastardy that have infested our personal lives like some creeping fucking cancer.

A pox on all of them.