Tag: Government

Ahead Of The Game

Politics

Clearly, someone — doesn’t matter who — in the Trump administration saw something coming when the Chink Wuhan virus started to spread back in November 2019.  But that’s not as important as what POTUS did — and over at the Treehouse, Sundance explains how lucky we are.

In early 2017 President Trump and his administration coined the phrase: “economic security is national security”, and the economic team set about starting a very complex process to ensure the past three decades of trade policy was reversed.

Because the Left controls the history books as well as the media, it will never happen;  but in a saner world, Trump may well prove to have been one of the most successful U.S. presidents ever.

Once again, something to remember come November 2020.

Yeah, Just Keep On Poking

Gummint, Legal Stuff

Back when I was a young starving musician, I was driving the band’s van loaded with equipment back to our storage room after a long gig.  At about 3am I ran into a police roadblock — a common enough occurrence in apartheid South Africa.  The block was manned by a single cop who’d parked his SUV across the road and when he saw headlights approaching, would just turn on his flashers to cause the oncoming car to stop.  So I did.

“Where are you going?”
“Back home — well, back to offload all the band equipment first, then home.”
“Open up the back.”
“Now open up the side door.”
“I can’t see anything;  all that crap is blocking up the doors.”
“Yeah, we have a lot of equipment.”
“Unpack it.”
“Why?”
“I need to see that you’re not carrying anything illegal in there.”
“I’m not not carrying anything illegal.”
“Unpack it.”
“No.”
“What?”
“Look, be reasonable, can you?  It’s three in the morning, I’ve been working since 5 yesterday afternoon, and I’ve still got two more hours’ work before I can get into bed.”
“Not my problem.  Unpack the van, now.”
I lost it.  “No.  You want the van unpacked, you can fucking do it.  I’ll sit here at the side of the road, and after you’ve discovered that I’m not carrying anything illegal, you can pack it all back again, and then I’ll go home.”
I think he was more surprised that I wasn’t going to obey his orders — probably the first time it had ever happened to him.  He stared at me, I stared right back at him.  (My kids call it my “hitman” look.)
After a moment or two, he sighed and said, “Just get back in your van, and fuck off.”  (I think he figured out that he and I were alone on a deserted road in the middle of Fuck Nowhere, South Africa, and I was a LOT bigger than he was.)
So I got back in the van, and drove off.  As I did so, I touched the Colt Combat Commander strapped to my hip (which he hadn’t discovered), looked back at him in the rearview mirror, and murmured to myself:  “You don’t know it, sonny, but I just let you live.”
I was that  angry.

I told y’all that story so we could talk about this one.

We all know about the asshole who teases a normally-placid dog until it snaps at him, then beats it or kills it because “it’s dangerous”.

Feel free to read this article, then this one, and tell me if you don’t know exactly how that dog feels.

I should point out that almost every single incident of law-abiding people turning around and killing government agents or officials has been because someone’s property has been destroyed, confiscated or otherwise appropriated.

So if government agencies persist in this nonsense, do not be surprised if in desperation, angry and helpless citizens start doing stupid stuff.

Note that I’m not talking about those assholes who go round assassinating cops in cold blood — they need killing more than their victims do.  But at some point, a government official is going to fuck someone over because, in terms of Government Regulation #132-22-47, they can.

One day, the person they’re fucking with is going to snap, pull a gun and start shooting.  And of course, it’ll all be his  fault.

If you think this is unlikely, ask yourself why so many government agencies have started installing bullet-proof glass in front of their customer service counters.  They know how people feel, and still  they carry on doing it — because that’s what petty bureaucrats do when their actions are protected or even “justified” by some law or regulation.

The fucking government agencies (like those in the attached articles) need to start backing the fuck off before the shit really starts to fly.

Deal-Killer

Bad News, Politics

Oh, this is charming:

By now you’ve probably heard at least a little something about California’s shocking new “freelancer” bill that went into effect January 1, 2020.  Assembly Bill 5 (AB5) is sweeping and vague but basically it redefines the relationship between employers and employees, effectively ending independent contract work and killing the “gig economy”.
…
Independent contractors across the nation could soon be suffering the same fate as their California counterparts.  A federal version has passed through committee and now sits in the House of Representatives waiting for a floor vote.  This is not a drill.  This is real.

As someone who depends utterly on the gig economy to supplement my shitty SocSec income, let’s just say that I’m casting a very baleful eye on this development.

I can’t see this bill making it into law — I can’t believe it would make it through the House, Senate and be signed by POTUS.

Its title is H.R.2474 — the “PRO Act” — and I would recommend that everyone reading this send a letter (not email, those assholes in Congress have installed layers and layers of screeners to ignore us) telling their Congressweasel and Senator to treat this foul bill like the rabid dog it is, and shoot it on sight.

I’m not going to threaten anybody or anything, but if this bullshit makes it into Federal law, I guess we’ll see just how “real” this gets.  I’ve been destitute before, and at age 65 I have no intention of going through that again.

And if any political wiseguy tells me to learn how to code… let’s just say I already know  how to code.  I also know how to grease a fucking rope — and I’ll leave it to someone else to tell me which one I’d rather do.

Enter Stage Somewhere

Gummint, Politics, The Gun Thing

I see that the NRA has promised to “work with gun owners to swamp the first hearing of the Virginia Senate committee considering new gun bans”.

NRA spokeswoman Catherine Mortensen told the Washington Free Beacon that the gun-rights group is mobilizing its members to appear at the first meeting of the Virginia Senate’s Courts of Justice on Jan. 13. The organization hopes that pressure from constituents will make newly elected Democrats, who helped the party capture control of the state legislature, think twice about supporting gun bans pursued by the state’s Democratic governor.

Uh huh.  Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but over the past three decades or so, whenever some state government has decided to crap all over the Second Amendment, the NRA has been more conspicuous in its absence than in its action.

I remember down here in north Texas, a long-established and much-loved gun range was being targeted by a housing development, whose new residents were aghast that there was a working gun range a whole mile away from their backyards.  So said developers put pressure on the TX legislators to declare the range a public nuisance / danger and force it to close.  As it happened, there was already a weak law on the books which prevented this kind of thing, but as it was a weak law (it’s since been toughened up) it required legal representation which the gun range couldn’t afford, and the Texas State Rifle Association couldn’t afford to cover, either.  So the TSRA appealed for help from the NRA but was told that the NRA had more important things to do with its money at the national level, and as such it was up to us locals to come up with the funds (from memory, the shortfall was just over half a million dollars, or fifty of Wayne LaPierre’s shiny suits).

The range closed six months later, bankrupted out of existence by lawyer’s fees;  despite raising a goodly amount (I donated nearly a grand, as I recall), it wasn’t nearly enough and so they just said “fuck it”, moved over fifty miles away into the boonies, and we all lost a fine range and an excellent little gun shop located on the premises.  Every time I drive past the place (now a nondescript strip mall standing between the road and the McMansions of the development), I want to toss bricks through the windows of every single one of the buildings.

If I were a cynical man, therefore, I would suggest that the only reason that the NRA is suddenly so interested in what’s happening in Virginia is because that’s where NRA HQ is located, and most of the guns in their basement museum would become illegal overnight and have to be either moved or handed in.

Not so fucking funny when it happens to you, eh, Wayne?

Threatened

Culture, Patriotism, Politics

From PJMedia comes this little snippet:

I’m not going to comment on the article itself, but on the poll about which it speaks.

You see, we all know about the attacks on our Second Amendment rights — Virginians most recently, Californians, New Yorkers and Illinoisans in perpetua — and of course we are, and should be, permanently vigilant about those, especially as its the fucking government — federal, state and local — who inflict gun control on us law-abiding citizens (aided and abetted, it should be said, by the Jackals Of The Press — JOTP — who never saw a gun they didn’t hate).

Likewise, the right to a fair trial, and the presumption of innocence, is often trampled upon by the fucking government — where, for example, law enforcement officers can lie to a suspect with impunity in order to extract a confession, but lying to a law enforcement officer carries a prison sentence (ask Martha Stewart).  You could also ask the late Richard Jewell about that — the Fibbies publicly named him a “person of interest”, whereupon the JOTP pounced on that and helped them in their pretrial conviction in the public eye.

It’s the other three freedoms that concern me almost as much, because those are under attack not only by government (e.g. “hate speech” — whatever that is) but also by non-governmental  institutions such as universities, corporations and social media (once again, aided and abetted by the JOTP).  We can all agree that murdering someone is bad;  but shouting “You filthy nigger!” as you murder him, according to the gummint, is somehow much, much  worse.

And you can join a completely fascist organization like Pantifa (despite their name) without penalty, but joining the KKK is OMG so  beyond the pale.  Yeah, I know:  joining a fascist organization is just freedom of association, but joining a racist organization… well, that deserves censure, saith the scolds and bureaucrats.

And FFS:  I’m not supporting the KKK, those morons;  I’m simply saying that freedom of association means you should be able to associate freely with anyone you want.  To my mind, Pantifa is just as bad as the Klan — but if we’re going to shut down an organization because of its lawless activities, how about rounding up and arresting every known member of MS-13?  Never mind, they’re just a Hispanic social club, right?  It is, as they say, to laugh.

Oh, and try to form a men-only club, and see how long it takes for a feminazi-inspired lawsuit to hit your doorstep.

Likewise, if we are free to practice our religion, feel free to wear a yarmulkah in downtown Dearborn in Michigan, just to see what happens.  And good luck wearing that crucifix around your neck as a customer service person working, say, for an airline.  Somehow, the very sight of said religious symbols are “provocative” to the adherents of other religions.  Well, I’m provoked beyond words by those niqabs  and burkas  that Muslim men force on their women, but I’m not going to kick the shit out of the man walking next to a woman so clad — as much as I’d like to.  And I wouldn’t want to ban the stupid clothing, either, unless we have a situation where a woman refuses to remove her veil for a driver’s licence photograph.  (“No face?  No licence” should be the rule, but noooo.)

Yeah, I know that all this is full of pitfalls and contradictions, but that’s all part of living in a free society, isn’t it?

What I’m saying is that we don’t, anymore.  Somehow, we’re having our freedoms circumscribed just because some people think that freedom is fine unless they get offended by the freedom of someone else.  Then it’s time for shitty laws and even worse, penalties.

Would Flogging Be Appropriate?

Education, Nannies

Try this bullshit:

An Iowa middle school principal has apologized for being “overly strict” after he confiscated pizzas that were delivered to a class for an end-of-the-year party over fears that it could make students from other classes feel left out.
…
The principal apologized for his actions in a note to parents later that day, writing that he overreacted in an attempt to be fair to all students.
“That applies to everything from the chances they have to learn in the classroom to rewards and recognitions by our teachers and staff.”

I know what I would have learned from this particular classroom:  authority figures suck.

And by the way, if you read the whole thing (after first moving guns and/or throwable objects out of reach), you’ll see that the self-righteous prick’s “apology” was no such thing.  And:

The situation was made right Friday after Mr. Hoffman said he threw another pizza party for the class and several local businesses also volunteered to donate pizzas for the school’s nearly 750 students.

…thus negating all the incentive for performance — if everyone gets a prize, why bother trying harder?  (No doubt that’s  the lesson they’re trying to teach the kids.)

As His Excellency The Instapundit says so often:  putting kids into the public school system is no less than child abuse.