Latest Posts

Stick To Souls, Padre

Religion, The Gun Thing

From Da Church:

Amid a mounting debate in America over the constitutionality of gun control, Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark has entered the fray with a different argument: That people should voluntarily forgo their Second Amendment rights for the betterment of society.

“I honestly believe it is the best thing we can do to change the culture of violence that threatens us today,” Tobin said.

“Let’s voluntarily set aside our rights in order to witness the truth that only peace and never violence, is the way to build a free society that is lived concretely in our homes, our neighborhoods, our communities, our nation and our world,” he said.

Tell you what, Yeronner:  you introduce unicorns into your liturgy first, because that’s where your “never violence” wishful thinking leads to.

And “setting aside rights” never ends well — as the revocation of the First Amendment’s freedom of worship would show you, after about half a second’s thought.

Just… shuddup, you self-righteous asshole.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the range.

News Roundup

Bad News

And in other fake claims:


...and yes, we should — except that herring and mackerel taste foul and only Scandis eat them.


...you mean like I do every day of the week?


...to avoid being Epsteined, no doubt.  Although she needs to keep her mouth shut about her new home, lest she be Putined.

From the Dept. of Education:


...key word: Manchester a.k.a. Boston North.


...didn’t we already deal with this back in the mid 2010s?  No?  Then nothing’s going to happen to these GLSEN assholes now, either.

In Immigration News:


...you fucking voted for him, you deal with him.

And South of the Border:


...seems a little extreme, although if said journalist were e.g. Nicholas Kristof or George Monbiot, I might reserve judgment.


...you don’t say.


...I warned them to stop those fucking spam calls.

In Health News, some more alarmist stuff:


...but you’ll die thinner, so there’s that.

And for our dose of Extreme Insignifica, with no links (you may thank me later):

...oh go on, I dare you, you fat fuck.

Finally:


...let’s examine the evidence:

And that’s all the news worth looking at.

Hickock’s Last Rifle

Gratuitous Gun Pics, Gun/Ammo Tests

…in which ol’ Hickock45 goes through a whole bunch of his favorite bolt-action rifles, and decides which would be the last one he’d ever sell.  Here’s the list (in case you don’t have time to watch the video):

  • Krag-Jorgensen 1899 carbine (.30-40 Krag)

  • Winchester Mod 70 (.30-06 Springfield) — a pre-WWII version

  • Mauser Gewehr 1898 (8x57mm)

  • Sako 95 Bavarian carbine (6.5x55mm) — a very “modern” rifle

  • Mauser K98k (8x57mm)

  • Mauser Mod 1896 (6.5x55mm) — “Swede”

  • Springfield ’03 (.30-06 Springfield)

  • Lee-Enfield No 4 Mk1 (.303 Enfield) — (WWII issue)

I have fired every single one of these rifles, some of them scores of times, and I love all of them beyond words.

It was an agonizing choice, and I chuckled like hell in sympathy as he moaned and grumbled during the process.

But given the choice of the rifles he had on hand, I think I’d have chosen exactly the same one he did, for pretty much the same reasons he did.

Maybe.

Dept. Of Righteous Shootings

Righteous Shootings

From the Great State of Texas comes this news:

A liquor store clerk in Leander, Texas, shot and fatally wounded a 22-year-old man allegedly stealing alcohol on Wednesday.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that police were called about a theft at the store, then a confrontation between the store clerk and one of the three alleged thieves led to shots being fired.

Twenty-two-year-old Johnny Cabrera was struck by the clerk’s gunfire.

FOX 7 Austin noted that police found Cabrera a mile and a half from the liquor store “suffering from gunshot wounds.” He died while being transported to the hospital.

…keyword: “wounds” (pl.)

The usual, please:

No Chance

Africa, Economics

A couple of people sent me this article, and I see that Insty referred to it as well:

South Africa’s power blackouts: Solutions lie in solar farms, battery storage at scale, and an end to state monopoly

Rolling blackouts are costing South Africa dearly. The electricity crisis is a barrier to growth, destroys investor confidence and handicaps almost every economic activity. It has raised input costs for producers and retailers, and has triggered a new round of inflation and interest rate increases.

Any solution will obviously incur cost because it will require the adoption of new technologies, such as large-scale grid-connected that are linked to battery energy storage. But these technologies are expensive.

…which means that none of this is going to happen.  South Africa has been plundered by the Usual Suspects until the coffers are pretty much empty, taxes are about has high as can be levied without causing collapse — what happens when only about 15% of the population is at all economically active, and only 0.5% of taxpayers contribute over 85% of tax revenues.

Even in a perfectly-ordered society (which South Africa isn’t even close to), the job of fixing its power woes would be be pretty much impossible.  As things are… not gonna happen.

And let’s not even think about foreign investment.  While the amounts are quite small, relatively speaking, one always has to factor in corruption — which takes anywhere from 40% to 60% off the top — and loans will never be repaid.  Not even China will countenance investment, given that their previous forays into Africa have been, so far, disastrous.  And South Africa is not Sri Lanka.  They can’t be bullied into compliance with the Belt & Road program because the distances are just too great and the population large and resistant.  (China could say, “Okay, you’ve defaulted on your loan;  give us all your platinum”, whereupon South Africa would just say, “We can’t get the ore to the port;  come and get it.”)

Even if South Africa were suddenly to discover vast resources of lithium (similar to its vast coal reserves), they’d never be able to get the stuff out of the ground.  One would think that in a country with huge gold mines all over the place, a few lithium mines would be no problem.  Alas, the gold mines are now producing only about 40% of what they used to produce under the eeeevil Apartheid Government.

Those giant solar farms the article talks about?  They’d be stripped for parts within a month of installation.  And yes, surround them with security guards — except that the guards would become the new entrepreneurs, flogging solar panels and batteries to householders desperate for electricity.

As with any African catastrophe, there is no workable solution, no possible way that any kind of fix will be either implemented or have any kind of longevity.  If even ESCOM, an established, one-time robust powerhouse [sic]  that once delivered South Africa’s excess electricity to all its neighbors can be mismanaged into complete collapse, why would some newfangled, sophisticated (and fragile) eco-friendly solar system fare any better?

To paraphrase some guy’s earlier words:  let (South) Africa sink.  They deserve no better.