Quelle Surprise

Here’s one little story that shouldn’t really surprise anybody, but apparently it has.

This man went to a Kamala event wearing a Trump shirt, and a Trump event wearing a Kamala shirt. The difference in how he was treated was stunning.

Look, the Left (especially in the Western hemisphere) has always been characterized by its boorish (and often dangerous) behavior when it comes to dealing with people who don’t share their loony little vision of a perfect world.

Of course, that boorishness extends to “Establishment” institutions as well.  I remember Brando’s immortal line from On The Waterfront The Wild One  where he is asked just what, exactly, he has got against the Establishment (or, in the modern idiom, the belittling term “normies”).  His snarled answer of “What have you got?” typifies the attitude.

“Whatever we want is great and wonderful;  opposition to that — no matter how well-founded or realistic — is not only wrong, but evil.”

Hence the vituperative reaction of Lefties to a Trump t-shirt at one of their rallies.

Conservatives, on the other hand, tend to be a lot more tolerant, even accommodating in the opposite scenario, which is probably one reason why the Left has been able to extend and indeed entrench its various little substitutions:  free love for morality, intolerance for opposition, and so on.

Taking just one comparison:  when the Left — in the shape of the loathsome Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden and Abbie Hoffman and their cohorts — took over college campuses in the late 1960s and the decades which followed, conservatives allowed them to occupy campus administration buildings in the name of “Free Speech!”, only evicting them when their behavior became too extreme to bear.  Of course, that takeover had dolorous consequences, because those Leftists and their philosophical progeny took over campuses really took over universities and entrenched their foul little political philosophy by becoming lecturers and administrators.  (One has only to look at what the Ivy League colleges have become to see exactly how rotten this takeover has made them.)

Now, of course, as the Left occupies most of academia and the media, not to mention popular culture, any opposition to them is not treated with the same respect as they were accorded, but with feral hostility.  (One has only to see the reaction of the Left when Elon Musk turned Twitter from a Leftist organ into something more open-platformed to find evidence of such.)

One would expect such hostility from younger people, because young people are often passionate about their beliefs (even when, as is often the case, when they are demonstrably wrong).  But if there’s one unifying characteristic of the modern Left, it’s that even their older adherents are similarly intolerant, and often as violent.

The comments to the above post are quite telling, and mostly reveal the stark differences between conservatives and the Left, e.g.:

 

You see, we make jokes about tossing Lefties from helicopters (thank you, General Pinochet);  but the Left is the side which actually has the death squads, mass executions, gulags and “re-education camps”.

And if you think that such an outcome is impossible in the United States, you’re as delusional as they are.

Quiet Skies

Apparently, Tulsi Gabbard is on the dreaded “SSSS” list:

This story began two weeks ago, when the former Hawaii congresswoman returned home after a short trip abroad. In airport after airport, she and her husband Abraham Williams encountered obstacles. First on a flight from Rome to Dallas, then a connecting flight to Austin, and later on different flights for both to cities like Nashville, Orlando, and Atlanta, their boarding passes were marked with the “SSSS” designation, which stands for “Secondary Security Screening Selection.” The “Quad-S” marker is often a sign the traveler has been put on a threat list, and Gabbard and Williams were forced into extensive “random” searches lasting as long as 45 minutes.

“It happened every time I boarded,” says Gabbard. The Iraq war veteran and current Army reservist tends to pack light, but no matter.

“I’ve got a couple of blazers in there, and they’re squeezing every inch of the entire collar, every inch of the sleeves, every inch of the edging of the blazers,” she says. “They’re squeezing or padding down underwear, bras, workout clothes, every inch of every piece of clothing.” Agents unzipped the lining inside the roller board of her suitcase, patting down every inch inside the liner. Gabbard was asked to take every piece of electronics out and turn each on, including her military phone and computer.

I suspect she’s on the SSSS list because of stuff like this:

Not having flown on any airline for many a year, I wouldn’t know if I was (still) on the SSSS list (story here and here) and it doesn’t look like I’ll be doing so anytime soon either.  But should I take to the Friendly  Quiet Skies again, it will be interesting to see if my inclusion has lapsed, so to speak.

I think I’ll pack the 1911 in my checked luggage, just for giggles.

And I wasn’t aware of this little thing.

Quote Of The Day

From a Reader who was once in law enforcement:

“When I was a cadet at FLETC back in ’83 we were told (off the record):  ‘Never join any team or Task Force set up by the FBI.  They either want some information you have and they don’t or they want someone to blame when they fuck up.’

“Forty-one years later and it has become a nation-wide mantra.”

Indeed it has, and they deserve all the scorn and shunning they get.

Quote Of The Day

Here’s the background to the quote below.

This is as true in the U.S. as it is in the U.K.

“It is hard to avoid the conclusion that we are ruled by people who fear the anger of the masses following acts of inhumanity more than they do the acts of inhumanity themselves.”

Note the overreaction of the political class to the theater of Jan 6, 2020.  If what’s happening in the U.K. now were to happen in the U.S., there’s no telling how they’d react.

Oh wait;  something like that did happen, when the Antifa/BLM riots leveled whole areas of various cities and anarchy became the order of the day in places like Portland and NYC.

But those riots were virtuous riots, you see, riots that were actually supported by the ruling- and media elites.  If ever there’s a furious backlash by conservatives against — oh I don’t know, say massive and palpable vote fraud by the socialists which prevents Donald Trump from winning the November 2024 election — you can be damn sure that the Marines will be mobilized, posse comitatus  be damned.

This is going to be interesting.

About That ’65 Mustang…

I haven’t actually purchased a Ford product since 2003 (F-150 FX4 so that I could move most of our stuff to a new house and not pay movers to do so).

I sure as hell wouldn’t buy one now, because they’re a bunch of fucking cop snitches:

Ford is trying to patent a way for its cars to report speeding drivers to the police.

A patent application from the automaker titled “Systems and Methods for Detecting Speeding Violations” was published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Jul. 18 2024, and was originally filed by Ford Jan. 12, 2023.

In the application, Ford discusses using cars to monitor each other’s speeds. If one car detects that a nearby vehicle is being driven above the posted limit, it could use onboard cameras to photograph that vehicle. A report containing both speed data and images of the targeted vehicle could then be sent directly to a police car or roadside monitoring units via an Internet connection, according to Ford.

And if that doesn’t set your ass on fire, try this:

Using vehicles for speed surveillance would make cops’ jobs easier, as they wouldn’t have to quickly identify speeding violations and take off in pursuit, Ford notes in the application. It also means some of that work could be delegated to self-driving cars, which could be equipped to detect speeding violations, the automaker adds.

So it’s all-so-conveeenient for everybody, you see.

But wait!  There’s more!

Ford is now selling your driving data to a company called LexisNexis. This company is a New York-based global data broker with a “Risk Solutions” division that caters to the auto insurance industry and has traditionally kept tabs on car accidents and tickets.
However, it turns out that LexisNexis is using your driving habits (acceleration, hard braking, speed and how fast you take corners) and forwarding this information on to insurance companies that then increase your insurance rates.

And if there’s one thing that insurance companies are known for, it’s their reluctance to generate more income  increase rates wherever they can.

If I were of an inclination to buy a car from Ford (and that’s a HUGE “if”), I’d go more for this kind of thing:

…or even better:

And for those of the truck persuasion:

Yeah, they’re old and (maybe) less reliable than the newest Fords… but at least they’re not continually spying on you while you drive them.

Bastards.