Tag: Politics

Congress Playing Their Part

Anti-Gun Nannies, Asshole Cops, Government Thugs, The Gun Thing

Hey, how can you argue with proposed legislation to rein in the jack-booted thugs of the ATF — especially when it’s known as the RIFLE Act?

Under the Biden Administration, ATF’s zero tolerance policy forced small and mid-sized gun stores out of business. The agency revoked Federal Firearm Licenses due to minor clerical errors like missing a customer’s middle initial or using a state’s abbreviation rather than the state’s full name. In 2024 alone, ATF saw the highest levels of gun store license revocations in 20 years—the third consecutive year of increased license revocations under President Biden’s leadership. Last week, the Biden Administration claimed it reversed its zero tolerance policy. Upon further review of the updated enforcement guidance, it appears to remain fully in effect.

Rep. Mann (R-KS) told Breitbart News, “President Biden did everything in his power to weaponize the federal government against gun store owners in the Big First District of Kansas and across the country. His zero tolerance policy undermined the Second Amendment and trampled on the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens. Since day one, I have rigorously pushed back against this unconstitutional policy and fought for more oversight to rein in ATF’s abuse.”

He added, “On November 5, 2024, the country made it clear—our constitutional rights are not up for grabs. My bill makes that crystal clear by fortifying the Second Amendment rights of local gun stores and seeking to restore a degree of wholeness to individuals whose livelihoods were destroyed by this federal abuse. I look forward to working with President Trump to further strengthen the protection of the Second Amendment, deliver justice for our FFLs, and get our country back on track.”

Who’s the new head of the ATF, again?  (I know, I know:  a decent head of the ATF would rescind the enforcement instructions off his own bat — I know I would, if my application to head up the ATF had been successful.  But then again, considering that I’d have started shutting down the entire agency from Day 1 of my appointment, the whole issue would have been moot.)

Germany Comes to Austria, Again

Elections, Foreign Affairs

…just not at the head of a column of Panzers, this time:

As with Germany and France, losers big and small immediately decided they wouldn’t play with the party that had pulled nearly 30% of the votes cast or let the FPO ‘win’ at all. They moved to form a coalition to ice the Freedom Party out of government.

Like the National Rally in France (and the AfD in Germany — K.), all other ruling parties are uniting to keep the FPÖ out of government.

Hasn’t worked in Austria, either:

The announcement came more than three months after the legislative election on September 29. In that, the FPÖ, led by Herbert Kickl, emerged as the most popular party with 28.8 per cent of the vote.

The FPÖ had been unable to form a government due to a political cordon sanitaire imposed by other parties, labelling it as “far-right”. The ÖVP finished second with 26.3 per cent, followed by the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) with 21.1 per cent. The FPÖ has however taken part in previous government coalitions, the last time being 2019 (with ÖVP).

Austria’s President, Alexander Van der Bellen, a member of the Green Party and a vocal critic of Kickl, announced on January 5 that he would meet with the FPÖ leader on January 6.

In a brief televised address, Van der Bellen acknowledged that opposition within the ÖVP on collaboration with Kickl had softened after Nehammer’s resignation. “I have used the last few hours to speak to numerous political decision-makers. During these discussions, the picture emerged that the voices within the People’s Party that rule out cooperation with an FPÖ under Herbert Kickl have become significantly quieter,” he said.

In an emergency meeting following Nehammer’s decision, the ÖVP leadership appointed Christian Stocker, the party’s general secretary, as interim president. The ÖVP also expressed its willingness to negotiate with the FPÖ to form a coalition.

So off they go, kicking and screaming, into a political future that puts Austrian citizens first, and immigrants second.

Like the Germans, like the French, and for a bonus, like the Canuckis as well.

Of our own MAGA revolution we will not speak.

Hubba hubba.

My Thoughts Exactly

Politics, RINO/GOPe

From The Daily Wire:

Influential conservative activist Charlie Kirk says the party should make lawmakers that get in the way of the Trump agenda pay the price.

Yup.  Enough of the GOPe RINOs.  Anytime someone doesn’t support MAGA principles — or worse, sides with the socialists against the Trump agenda — we should have him/her tossed out of office, to be replaced with someone with fire in the belly.  Kirk warns, however, not to go after the Republicans who are in marginal districts — because of the “incumbent advantage” — which is a smart play.

But those who represent deep-Red districts but still play footsie with the Left?

Open season.

At Long Last

Two-Minute Hate

…we’ve got rid of that asshole Jimmy Carter.  I know, I know, one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but the hell with that:  I never said anything good about the sanctimonious, vapid Carter when he was still alive, and I see no reason to stop now that he’s croaked his last.

The only reason he won the 1976 election was because of the post-Watergate blues, and the minute he came up against a serious candidate (Ronald Reagan) he had his ass handed to him.

And his presidency was a total and utter disaster — only recently surpassed in its muddled neo-socialism by that of soon-to-be-ex-President FuckJoeBiden.

Good riddance, and I hope we never see his like again — although with the Democrats, I fear that this hope will be forlorn because there’s no telling who they’ll come up with next.  (H’Angus The Monkey, no doubt, who come to think of it would have been a better President than FJB or Carter.)

Alliances And Such

Politics

I see that the French government has collapsed, for what seems the umpteenth time.  Coming hard on the heels of the German government’s problems, there is of course a common thread:  both were coalition governments, where two (of the many) political parties — some with diametrically-opposed platforms — decided to create an alliance to govern the country.  Both, of course, were doomed to fail, especially, as in the case with the Frogs, that the opposition party, the much-reviled Front National (or National Front, in English) was almost as large as either of the two melded parties, so the non-confidence vote brought by the FN needed only the support of one of the coalition parties to topple the government.  (The fact that the coalition, cobbled together simply to prevent the FN from assuming power, was always doomed to fail except in the minds of the idiots with the anti-FN mindset.)

I’ve often spoken with Americans who think that our two-party system is flawed, in that each party is often riven by various key issues which actually find favor with a small (or large) proportion of the other one.  Abortion, for example, is one such issue:  where there may be a small minority of pro-abortion politicians in the Republican Party whose ideology thereof is closer to a majority of abortion supporters over on the Evil Side of the room.  The problem, of course, is that these are generally single issues, around which it would be impossible to form, say, a Pro-Abortion Party to be pitted against an Anti-Abortion Party.  Ditto the Greens, ditto guns, ditto Trump, etc. etc.

Honestly, while our current two-party system is not ideal, it sure is better than the European multi-party.  Small, contained chaos around single issues is, I think, far preferable to the systemic instability of a multi-party system, almost without regard to the relative merits of their various  positions.

I should also point out that a fragmented polity is generally vulnerable to external threats or danger — witness the chaos of the French Third Republic in the 1930s, which in no small part enabled France’s crushing defeat by Nazi Germany in 1940.  (A sizeable proportion of Frenchmen, and their parties, actually welcomed the prospect of a strong national government on the lines of Hitler’s Nazi Germany or Mussolini’s Fascist Italy, simply because they were sick of dealing with the decades-long chaos of multi-party politics and weakness.)

In passing, imagine there was a single-issue party named, oh, the Anyone But Trump Party in our polity (composed of both Democrats and Republicans), and toss that into the standard Democrat/Republican mix.

Ugh.  If you can see only chaos resulting from that little political soup, then you’ll understand the European situation.

Shocker

Gummint

Oh, this is rich:

A paltry 6% of the federal workforce “report in-person on a full-time basis” while almost one-third of federal workers are remote on a full-time basis, in a sharp turn-around from the pre-pandemic era in which only 3% teleworked daily.

Of course, Elon Musk (the man who is aiming to fix this kind of shit) has the truth of it:

If you exclude security guards & maintenance personnel [i.e. the folks who have to be there — K.], the number of government workers who show up in person and do 40 hours of work a week is closer to 1%!

Furthermore:

Sen. Joni Ernst’s audits are finding as many as 23[%] to 68[%] of teleworking employees for some agencies are boosting their salaries by receiving incorrect locality pay.  Some employees live more than 2,000 miles away from their office and one “temporary” teleworker collected higher locality pay for nearly a decade.

Yup;  nothing like claiming D.C. cost-of-living support whilst living in W. Virginia, is there?  Or, as Harris Rigby puts it:

Get paid for big city expenses, live in the cheap suburbs, pocket the difference.

My thoughts on the above:

Hey, it’s not firing squads. (Which would have been my solution.)