Splendid Isolation

Just… Wrong

While wandering down an Intarwebz alley, I saw this and nearly choked on my gin:

I’m sorry, and you can call me a reactionary old fart (it has been said before), but red wine with fish and chips?  Out of a bottle with an actual label?

What the hell:  why not try that same booze with corndogs or BBQ?  Next thing, it’ll be Diet Coke with caviar, or Scotch with tacos.  Yerrrrgh.

BEER, DAMN IT.

‘Nuff said.

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Here’s another one of those “Wow, who’d a thunk?” moments:

The Defense Department’s chief diversity equity and inclusion officer has a history of anti-white tweets.  Kelisa Wing is the DEI chief at Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA, which provides K-12 education to the DoD community in the U.S. and all over the world), also wrote books on ‘white privilege,’ defunding the police and BLM.

“I’m exhausted with these white folx in these [professional development] sessions.” Wing wrote in a July 2020 tweet, according to Fox News. This lady actually had the CAUdacity to say that black people can be racist too… I had to stop the session and give Karen the BUSINESS… [W]e are not the majority, we don’t have power.”

“Caudacity” is a slang term to describe “audacity” demonstrated by white people specifically in reference to ‘white privilege.’

Frankly, I think that any job title containing the words “diversity”, “equity” or “inclusion” should be labeled as what it really is:  “A Worthless Job For An Otherwise-Unqualified Black Person”.

By the way, Sister Kelisa:  Black people not only can be racist — see Jesse Jackson talking about “Hymietown”, and just about every other speech uttered by that equally-foul racist, Al Sharpton — but they are racist;  ask any Korean or Indian shopkeeper for examples.

Also:  racism doesn’t stem from power, you fucking moron, if you ever gave it a moment’s thought.  (“Thought?  Wut’s that White-ass shit?)  You’re just another of those bullshit artists parlaying their private grievances into a “career”.

And just on a point of order:  if it describes a sin committed by Whites, shouldn’t it be “waudacity”, if we’re going to invent words to convey a meaning?

By the way:  she looks exactly as you’d expect her to look.

And Another One Falls Over

It’s been a while since I wrote about Chicago, and I have to admit that unlike the feeling of schadenfreude  that come over me when I contemplate the ruins of once-fine cities like San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Portland and Boston, there is a slight twinge of sadness when I see the Second City also trembling on the edge of the abyss as its civic fabric unravels.

Reader Brad_In_IL however, despite being a near-denizen of same, has no such compunction, and shares this article by the great John Kass:

It is a woman’s scream, a real scream of fear that was randomly captured the other day on a Ring doorbell security camera as she was attacked, pulled to the ground, and robbed by thugs as she walked on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Chicago’s “mostly peaceful” and leafy Lakeview* neighborhood.

Within that scream of terror hides another, buried sound, part of what the writer Matt Rosenberg, senior editor at wirepoints.org, brilliantly calls “the great unraveling.”

It is the sigh of a once-great but thoroughly exhausted city, a Chicago bone-tired, spent by decades of political corruption, hammered by the brutal application of race card politics in a city of tribes, and in 2020 Lightfoot’s City Hall failed miserably to stop the riots and looting that grew out of the George Floyd protests, and then Lightfoot endorsed the Soros-backed State’s Attorney Kim Foxx for re-election.

It is a city drained by street gang violence and political indifference, where police have been weakened and demoralized, even as private security forces crop up, paid for by those with means who demand protection. In this, Chicago is like Rome.

*Lakeview, for those who may have forgotten, was where I used to live and it was beautiful, safe and home to about four dozen (non-chain) restaurants within three blocks’ walk from our apartment.  I loved living there, and left only because of pressing family commitments.

You should read the whole of Kass’s brilliantly-written article, because it is depressingly similar to the horror shows of America’s other metropolises, and shares many of the governmental sins that are endemic to any place run by today’s Democrats.

I say “today’s Democrats” because no matter his faults, I absolutely cannot imagine that former Mayor Richard M. Daley would have tolerated today’s carnage — and his father, Richard J. Daley (of ’68 Democrat Convention fame) would have reacted even more violently.

Oh well… sic transit and all that.

Two Strikes

Oh, how pleasant.  First, from the Democratic Soviet of Minnesoduh:

About 15,000 nurses in Minnesota walked off the job Monday to protest understaffing and overwork — marking the largest strike of private-sector nurses in U.S. history.

Slated to last three days, the strike spotlights nationwide nursing shortages exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic that often result in patients not receiving adequate care. Tensions remain high between nurses and health-care administrators across the country, and there are signs that work stoppages could spread to other states.

Interesting, that.  It’s not like the hospital administrators can just round up random people in the streets and say, “Hey, wanna job?” (although I suspect that Parkland in Dallas has been doing just that for years already).

Round about now, I bet those same hospital administrators kinda regret firing all those people for refusing to be guinea-pigs for an untested vaccine.

Anyway, the next bit of end-of-summer cheer comes from the railroads:

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) said on Wednesday that its members rejected a tentative deal by its leaders intended to avoid a nationwide railroad strike.

BNSF, CSX, Norfolk Southern, and Union Pacific — four of the nation’s largest rail lines — announced embargoes on certain shipments earlier this week as negotiations continued, although 10 of the nation’s 12 largest railroad unions had tentatively endorsed an agreement outlined by the White House. However, IAM — which was originally among the 10 unions — announced its members rejected the deal.

Strikes could begin later this week if union leaders and rail companies fail to make a deal. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said on Monday that Congress, which has the authority to block strikes, would intervene “if needed.”

Supply chain bottlenecks driven by labor shortages and worldwide government lockdowns have impacted the American economy over the past two years, leading to inflationary pressures as consumer goods fail to reach shelves. The daily cost of a nationwide rail shutdown could amount to $2 billion, according to a report from the Association of American Railroads, which noted that trucking companies and other alternatives do not presently have the capacity to carry freight previously handled by rail lines.

Hands up all those who think that the current Administration has the ability to prevent either of these — oh, none of you, huh?

Me neither.