No Responsibility

Here’s a recent situation which set my teeth on edge:

Mackenzie Croxford-Cook, 14 and from Deal in Kent, died on August 3 this year after entering a fairground in Pencester Gardens in Dover before it opened to the public.

He and a number of friends gained access to the fun fair and used the dodgems and trampolines before the teen was trapped and fatally injured on a ‘superstar’ machine.

So far, so good:  irresponsible / lawless teens go exploring, start fucking around on equipment that in normal times would be responsibly operated and controlled, and find out the ultimate cost of trespass and said behavior.  Sad, but teenagers do this kind of stuff all the time (although not always with a tragic end), and we all feel for the grieving parents of said hooligans etc. etc.

Here’s what blows the cuff off my arm:

The inquest into his death was due to conclude on Monday at County Hall in Maidstone, but area coroner Katrina Hepburn adjourned the case so further information could be gathered.

The coroner would like to question ride operator, Luke Shufflebottom, as well as Dover District Council which owns the land.

Ummm what for?  Was said funfair locked up?  Were signs posted which said, “Warning: Equipment Should Not Be Operated Except By Fairground Employees”, or something like that?  If so, then we all move on — if not, then fines can be issued and so on.

Ms Hepburn wants to have ‘all of the information’ needed to both conclude the inquest and potentially issue a Prevention of Future Deaths (PFD) report, if necessary, due to any failings or shortcomings which could have contributed to the death.  She explained: ‘Mackenzie and his colleagues had access to this ride outside its hours of operation with such tragic consequences. I believe there is missing evidence looking at the fencing of this ride and questions about access to this location for these teenagers on that morning. Mackenzie was trapped in a fairground ride but I don’t have evidence about how that location was being fenced and monitored at that hour in the morning.’

Errrr no.  You’re the fucking coroner.  Your responsibility begins and ends with determining the cause of death.  If there’s any kind of culpability to be sought, that’s actually the job of the police to determine — assuming they’re not too busy tracking down and arresting perpetrators of hateful online texts, that is.

And excuse me, but it is not the responsibility of the fairground operator to have security constantly patrolling the (locked) premises just in case a bunch of thrill-seeking, irresponsible punks happen to come calling.

I’m heartily sick of criminal behavior being excused because there weren’t a thousand warning signs posted or a security guard stationed at five-yard intervals just in case some scrote feels like breaking the law.  A fence, a locked gate and a warning sign should be all that’s necessary to prevent you from accidentally getting hurt.  After that, you’re on your own and if bad things happen it’s your fault, and your problem.

Some people, such as the above coroner, are no doubt going to disagree with me, but I don’t care.  They’re wrong, and I’m right.

Clueless Moron

President Braindead issued his latest piece of stupidity a few days ago, and of course hilarity followed soon after:

President Joe Biden told NowThis News during a Sunday interview that he is pushing to limit gun owners to having no more than “eight bullets in a round.”

I know, I know;  it’s just another bit of Biden Droolspeak, and of course it’s laughable.

What’s really laughable is that an 8-round magazine capacity restriction (for that is what the First Moron is actually talking about) won’t ever pass into law, and even if it did, it’s unenforceable.

Or maybe Ol’ Stumbles really wants to turn few score million gun owners into de facto  criminals (which frankly, given the Socialists’ penchant for controlling the population, is not that far-fetched).

Roll on, Election Day 2022.

Beaten To The Punch

I was actually going to write this post, except that someone far more qualified than I wrote it first.  And with far less profanity than I would have, too.  A sample:

Fascism didn’t really come into play as a functioning ideology until Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini, defined it as the state as an organic being, controlling everything. “Everything in the state, nothing against the state, nothing outside the state” became the definition of a totalitarian state (total control over the economy, society, and culture). Where Marx envisioned the “withering away” of the state (totally skipping over human nature and the drive for power and control, whether over other people or just your own life), Mussolini and Gentile envisioned the state as the sole arbiter of life, the universe, and everything.

Small-government conservatives, by definition, are therefore not fascists.

It’s a lot easier to define “fascism” or “fascist” as an epithet by using George Orwell’s remark, written in 1944:

The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable.’

…to the accuser.

SURE They Wouldn’t

Over at Bearing Arms, another silly question:

If the FBI will “mislead” to seize assets, why wouldn’t they do the same to take guns?

As the man says, to ask the question is to answer it.

I think that the time is rapidly approaching when the feds will just come in whenever they feel like it, take whatever of yours that they feel like taking, and fuck you up if you dare question them.  Hell, they probably have a drawer full of pre-signed (possibly forged) warrants that they can fill in with the necessary details, wave in your face, and then conveniently “lose” after the raid.  If they bother to do even that.

My question:  Why the fuck should we believe anything that law enforcement says, anymore?

Once again, to ask the question is to answer it.

And to quote another wise man (H.L. Mencken):

“Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”

Are we there yet, Ma?

Scratching Around

As Glenn Reynolds puts it, when it comes to violent White supremacist movements in the U.S., demand is far greater than supply — in other words, while the Democratic Socialists would just love to have a plethora of such groups around so that they can go all “Exterminate the Fascist Counter-Revolution!”, the fact is that there are no such groups extant, other than a few mopes muttering about “The Day Of Reckoning” and similar.

So they have to try to create such groups — with the support of their little Stasi underlings (a.k.a. the FBI) — with nomenclatures such as “concerned parents”, “Gretchen Whitmer kidnappers”,  “Ultra Magas” or “Jan 6 Insurrectionists”, and so on.

That effort, too, is failing.  So what next?  Step forward the post-9/11 knee-jerk agency known by the ominously-named Department of Homeland Security — the big guns, in other words.

And here is their master plan:

DHS Funds Leftist Orgs to Study ‘Radicalization,’ ‘White Supremacy’ in Video Games

Video games?

Are you kidding me?  So Call of Duty, Medal of Honor and… wait, I don’t know much about this stuff… oh yeah, World of Warcraft are the tools whereby impressionable kids are being “radicalized” and taught about the practice of White Supremacy?

I don’t know whether to chuckle, laugh hysterically or just wave my private parts at this foolishness.

What a bunch of pathetic morons.

Next they’ll be trying to link, oh I dunno, bulldog ownership to the above bogeymen (you heard it here first).  Hey, DHS / FBI fuckwits:  here’s your first candidate for a radical White supremacist bulldog owner:

Go get ‘im.

Next: The Supremes

Oh, I like this kind of thing:

A federal appeals court upheld a Texas law that bans Big Tech from censoring speech based on political viewpoint on Friday.

House Bill 20 prevents social media companies with more than 50 million monthly users banning users simply based on their political viewpoints. The law also requires several consumer protection disclosures and processes related to content management on the social media sites to which the bill applies. These sites must disclose their content management and moderation policies and implement a complaint and appeals process for content they remove, providing a reason for the removal and a review of their decision. They also must review and remove illegal content within 48 hours. House Bill 20 also prohibits email service providers from impeding the transmission of email messages based on content.

Needless to say, the Left went into full hair-on-fire mode:

The law was promptly challenged by NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association. They argued that tech companies have a First Amendment right to select and curate the content people post on their platforms. They were able to get the new law blocked, but Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed that decision — and won.

Fortunately, common sense and Constitutionalism prevailed.  In the judgment of the 5th Circuit:

The implications of the platforms’ argument are staggering. In the platforms’ view, email providers, mobile phone companies, and banks* could cancel the accounts of anyone who sends an email, makes a phone call, or spends money in support of a disfavored political party, candidate, or business. What’s worse, the platforms argue that a business can acquire a dominant market position by holding itself out as open to everyone — as Twitter did in championing itself as “the free speech wing of the free speech party.”…Then, having cemented itself as the monopolist of “the modern public square,”…Twitter unapologetically argues that it could turn around and ban all pro-LGBT speech for no other reason than its employees want to pick on members of that community…

The 11th Court found differently, hence it’s off to the Supremes we go.  And they can’t punt it back, because two federal appeals courts have conflicting rulings.

Let’s see what happens.


*Note how banks were specifically mentioned, which should make this little episode interesting.