Story Of The Day

From Knuckledragger:

I wandered into the gun shop on the public square in town yesterday afternoon about 1 PM to buy a brick of 22LR and when I went to pay for it with cash, Brett started laughing at me with, “I guess you’ve heard about that credit card bullshit too, huh?”
He told me his credit and debit card sales are down 90% lately and every single one of his sales so far that day were cash transactions.

I’m going to head over to our local merchant of death later to see if he says the same.

That Awful Colonialist Elizabeth

A whole bunch of racist assholes (and disaffected Argies) have been rejoicing at the death of Queen Elizabeth II, as a “colonialist” and all that rubbish.  Accusing Elizabeth of colonialism is the same as accusing (for example) Joe Biden of slavery — i.e. it happened a long time ago and in Elisabeth’s case, was an inherited legacy.

That nitwit in the first link says that “we should examine the role of Queen Elizabeth in colonialism.”

Okay, let’s.

Why don’t we see what happened to all those British colonies in Africa, for example, following Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953:

Sudan: 1956
Ghana: 1957
British Somaliland (Somalia): 1960
Nigeria: 1960
Sierra Leone: 1961
Tanganyika (Tanzania): 1961
South Africa: 1961
Uganda: 1962
Kenya: 1963
N. Rhodesia (Zambia): 1964
Nyasaland (Malawi): 1964
Gambia: 1965
Bechuanaland (Botswana): 1966
Basutoland (Lesotho): 1966
Swaziland: 1968

The dates following the countries’ names refer, of course, to their full independence from Britain and becoming thus fully-fledged nation-states.

And all happened during the reign of Queen Elizabeth II.

Some colonialist.

Back To Greenbacks

How convenient:

Credit card giants Visa, Mastercard, and American Express will start categorizing sales of guns from gun shops using a new merchant code from the International Organization for Standardization. Previously, individual sales from gun stores were categorized as “general merchandise.”

And:

Now, the gun control lobby will go to banks and start pressuring them not to take credit card sales from gun shops. And isn’t it convenient that the banks can now easily identify gun sales by the code that was just approved by the credit card companies? Visa, Mastercard, and other credit card companies are middlemen between the merchant and the bank, and pressuring large banks to refuse to honor credit card sales would potentially devastate the firearms industry.

Most people should have enough “spare” cash on hand for a SHTF situation which can be used for this purpose, but I appreciate that in these times of Bidenflation, that may not be the case.

My suggestion:  assuming that you don’t have enough “ready” cash on hand to make the purchase, draw cash from your credit card (up to whatever the monthly limit is) until you have enough to buy the gun you want.  Use the first cash withdrawal to “hold” the item, and pay the balance when you’ve collected enough.  Most gun stores will do this for you, as I recall.

There are all sorts of other ways to circumvent this (e.g. private sales between individuals), and I welcome suggestions in Comments.

After November, let’s start a concerted lobbying effort for Congress to write a law that disallows this practice, as an infringement on the Second Amendment.

I’m saying all this because all my other thoughts are a great deal blacker and more, shall we say, drastic, but let’s not go there.

Quick Question

Who best exemplifies the following statement:

“Queen of the official lie, expert in the art of constructed reality and disguising its crimes by attributing them to its victims.”

A.  Modern-day Russia
B.  The U.S. Democrat Party
C.  Most totalitarian regimes
D.  All the above.

Answers in Comments.  And then read this.

Pinochet Wins Again

I loved visiting Chile back in 2015.  The country was lovely, the people were friendly, and the food was not only fantastic but cheap.

The problem is that in Chile, the ghosts of Augusto Pinochet and Salvador Allende are still a presence in the country — the former in country-club toasts like “To General Pinochet:  the savior of Chile”, and the latter in the elections such as the last one, which installed a Marxist government.

Speaking of the Marxists, they wasted no time in drawing up a new (Communist) constitution for Chile, which they put up to the vote last week.

Seems as though the Chileans figured it all out, though, because they voted down the proposed constitution, 62%-38%.

Predictably, the Left had promoted the new constitution with rallies in their usual manner, such as this one:

One particularly alienating performance occurred in the city of Valparaiso just a week before the vote at an event in favor of the new constitution when “a drag queen had the national flag pulled out of his rectum while his bandmates encouraged the audience to ‘abort Chile,’” according to the Economist, resulting in widespread outrage.

Valparaiso, lest we forget, is the birthplace of Augusto Pinochet, where women place fresh flowers reverently outside his old house every day.  This is not the place for the Left to let their freak flag fly, as fellow-Lefty David Crosby once crooned;  but they did, and then wondered why the people told them to jump off a building.

I bet a lot of Chileans would support Lefties jumping from helicopters far out at sea, too.

Like I said, Pinochet’s ghost is never far away.


Update: the Communist Party (U.S. Division) are dismayed at all that democracy.

Calling Bullshit

While I’m all over the idea of some stout patriot bringing down a modern jet with a hunting rifle, this one just flat-out didn’t happen:

VLADIMIR PUTIN will be left fuming after a Ukrainian pensioner shot down a SU-35 fighter jet over the skies of Chernihiv, according to claims. Marketed as “world-beating”, the plane costs a whopping £74 million to manufacture. The jets have been deployed to Ukraine and have flown many sorties during the current war. They boast all the qualities associated with the best modern fighters in the world, such as super-manoeuvrability and supersonic speed.
Yet despite these advantages, a humble Ukrainian pensioner was allegedly able to shoot down one of the jets with his hunting rifle – leaving the Russian President incandescent with rage.

Read the article, and study the photographs to understand my skepticism.