Tag: Tragedies

Sad things, events and people

Fiddling Time?

Freaks & Loonies, Hippie Filth, Marxists, Politics

As NYFC seems to be about to crash and burn, and given that the situation seems to be echoing in other large, similarly-Democrat-governed cities and states around the country, it raises rather an interesting discussion point.

Should the federal government even get involved?  (That explains the hidden Nero reference in the title, by the way.)

In the first instance, we all know that as a federal republic, the states have a great deal of autonomy when it comes to various policy initiatives and experiments — the famed laboratories of democracy of which USSC Judge Louis Brandeis once spoke.  Logically speaking (I know, I know), should a state like New York have no problem with abolishing the NYPD, should it not be regarded as such an experiment?  Ditto Seattle, where Pantifa seems to have created an enclave within the city and declared it a Soviet collective or something.  In both cases, the attitude of these states’ respective governors is best characterized by a “boys will be boys” laissez-faire response.

My question is:  in the absence of any state action, is there a compelling reason for the federal government to step in and end such experiments?

I’m not sure there is.  And yes, there’s a certain degree of Schadenfreude  involved, in that I know that this foolishness will end in tears;  but at the same time, I also have a kind of Let Africa Sink attitude towards the whole thing — as long as when the cities implode, the federal government is not expected to be part of either the deconstruction of said stupidity, nor the mini-Marshall Plan that will be required to rebuild the fools’ paradises.

The question arising from the above, therefore, is:  as the nation’s economy has greatly decentralized away from the large urban centers, are cities still that important to our country?  Strip away the romantic public relations veneer, and I think we can find that they aren’t.

Take Wall Street, for example.  With the growth of the Internet and the ability to conduct stock trades remotely, i.e. away from the actual floor of the NYSE, I can think of no compelling reason why the stock exchange should occupy any real estate at all.  The importance of New York as a financial center is not what it was, say, in the 20th century, and if the Wuhan virus has taught us anything, it is the degree to which the Internet has taken away the need for such centralization.

I know, it sucks for those fools  wealthy people who plonked down $5 million for that 2BD 2BA condo on the Upper West Side, and who would have to pull up the drawbridges against hordes of rampaging looters every night;  but quite frankly, I don’t think there’s going to be a great deal of sympathy for these people in the population at large — even though The Donald is one of those same people.  (His hotels, for one thing, are going to go under in such a scenario, but the vagaries of fortune of overpriced urban real estate investments are not, as a rule, the concern of suburbanites and country folk in Ohio, Missouri or Utah.)

So, to quote a one-time quasi-revolutionary:  “You say you want a revolution?”  Go ahead, have fun.  Just don’t expect taxpayers from Texas, South Dakota or Arizona to bail you out when it all goes pear-shaped;  because while you’re screwing around with anarcho-socialist communes (which have always — always — failed in the past), we Deplorables in Flyover Country will be too busy making America great again to have the time or money to waste on helping you out.  And contrary to your expectations, American greatness does not depend solely on places like Seattle or NYFC anymore.

Update

Bad News

I see that National Geographic has released a new map of Australia.

Old Map:

Since then:

New Map:

On the positive side, I note the complete disappearance of man-eating koalas, mosquitoes and poisonous snakes, all fuel for the Greens’ barbie (see below).

Now all that’s left is for the Aussies to find a way to set fire to the ocean, and the shark problem will likewise disappear.

Cute Lil Animules

Africa

I read this story with interest few days ago, and it seems like a classic case of animals striking back at humans:

“A chimpanzee came in the garden as I was digging,” Ntegeka Semata said in an interview with the publication. She noted that her four young children were with her and as she turned her back to get water, the chimp took her child by the hand and ran off.
The child screamed, which caused the other villagers to pay attention and chase after him, but it was too late. “It broke off the arm, hurt him on the head, and opened the stomach and removed the kidneys,” Semata continued, adding that the child died on the way to the local hospital.

Here’s the thing.  The article points out that chimps share about 94% of their DNA with humans — i.e. they’re the closest thing to us in the animal kingdom.  That does not make us kinfolk, by the way (just in case the above story didn’t get the point across), and chimps are total assholes:  they exhibit all the bad traits of human behavior (murder, cannibalism, torture etc.), and there’s nothing at all cute about them.  A friend back in South Africa once described their look as “trying to decide which way to kill you”, and he’s not wrong about that.

I was driving through the Kruger National Park once, and I’d stopped to take some photos of a herd of buffalo, when a young male chimp jumped on the car’s bonnet and stood peering into the car through the windshield.  As it happened, I’d left a pack of potato chips on the dashboard, and when the chimp saw it, he started to gibber and jump around, trying to reach the packet through the glass.  Of course, I burst out laughing — and when the chimp heard my laughter, he stopped dead and stared at me with that  look.  Then he ripped off a windshield wiper as though snapping a pretzel, waved it at me, then scuttled off with it like it was a trophy.  It was the most human act I’d ever seen from an animal, any animal.

I should have just shot the little prick but they take a dim view of that kind of thing at the Kruger Park, so I just drove off, seething*.

So yeah, I can quite imagine that the chimp in the article above was pissed off at humans, and destroying their habitat sounds as good a reason as any.  They know  who’s responsible, you see, and some kind of retaliatory action is not at all surprising.

The next time you see some movie where chimps are freed from a medical research facility and set about causing mayhem and murder, I’m here to tell you that it’s not at all far-fetched.

Photo credit: iStock

*Update & Correction Dept.: A couple of Alert Readers contacted me and told me that what happened to me in the Kruger Park was doubleplus unpossible because chimps are tropical jungle-dwellers and not found in Seffrica, ergo it must have been a baboon.  In high dudgeon, I went to find the pictorial evidence (i.e. a photo) that I took of the little bastard… and it was indeed a baboon.

What the hell, they all look alike to me.

No Kidding

Disaster, Weather

I know, we all have a good chuckle at stuff like this:

And then there’s this, which pushes the needle even past Code Red (click to embiggen):

I know, I make fun of our Oz friends a lot on these here pages, but this is no laughing matter:

About 100,000 homes in the Sydney area are said to be at risk, with 31,500 of those being in the city’s North Shore. Residents have been warned to take action before it’s too late.
‘Under these conditions, some fires may start and spread so quickly there is little time for a warning, so do not wait and see,’ the Rural Fire Service said on Monday.
‘There are simply not enough fire trucks for every house. If you call for help, you may not get it. Do not expect a firetruck. Do not expect a knock on the door. Do not expect a phone call. Your safest option will always be to leave early.’

Sheesh.

Looks like everything’s more dangerous Down Under:  snakes, spiders, sharks, Train Smash Women — and now, fires.

Good luck, me old cobbers.  Holding thumbs on this side of the water…