Category: BaconLettuceMayo

Comply, Or Be Gone

BaconLettuceMayo, Bad News, Marxists, Media Assholes

What if your research (involving actual facts as opposed to feelings and/or dogma) shows that your employer’s cultural Zeitgeist  is completely wrong?

Silly boy;  if the corporation you work for is full of Marxism and Wokedom, you’re going to get defenestrated.

Which is what happened to this guy:

Zac Kriegman had the ideal résumé for the professional-managerial class: a bachelors in economics from Michigan and a J.D. from Harvard and years of experience with high-tech startups, a white-shoe law firm, and an econometrics research consultancy. He then spent six years at Thomson Reuters Corporation, the international media conglomerate, spearheading the company’s efforts on artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced software engineering. By the beginning of 2020, Kriegman had assumed the title of Director of Data Science and was leading a team tasked with implementing deep learning throughout the organization.
But within a few months, this would all collapse. A chain of events—beginning with the death of George Floyd and culminating with a statistical analysis of Black Lives Matter’s claims—would turn the 44-year-old data scientist’s life upside-down.

By June 2021, Kriegman would be locked out of Reuters’s servers, denounced by his colleagues, and fired by email. Kriegman had committed an unpardonable offense: he directly criticized the Black Lives Matter movement in the company’s internal communications forum, debunked Reuters’s own biased reporting, and violated a corporate taboo. Driven by what he called a “moral obligation” to speak out, Kriegman refused to celebrate unquestioningly the BLM narrative and his company’s “diversity and inclusion” programming; to the contrary, he argued that Reuters was exhibiting significant left-wing bias in the newsroom and that the ongoing BLM protests, riots, and calls to “defund the police” would wreak havoc on minority communities. Week after week, Kriegman felt increasingly disillusioned by the Thomson Reuters line. Finally, on the first Tuesday in May 2021, he posted a long, data-intensive critique of BLM’s and his company’s hypocrisy. He was sent to Human Resources and Diversity & Inclusion for the chance to reform his thoughts.

He refused—so they fired him.

I love the “chance to reform his thoughts” line — straight outta 1984, minus the rat cage strapped to his face.  His only mistake was going to HR at all — what did he think was going to happen?  Now go and read the rest of it to see the full extent of the rot.

For the umpteenth time, I am truly grateful that I no longer have to work for Global MegaCorp, Inc.

And final thought:

If the wire services continue to promote myths about race, violence, and policing, they will inflict grave harm on their reputations for fairness; they will also help unleash a new wave of destruction in America’s poorest and most vulnerable neighborhoods.

Both have already happened… and I don’t care if it gets worse.

Defunding Consequences

BaconLettuceMayo, Law and Order, Marxists

Aaaaaand once again, we see “well-meaning” actions having unforeseen consequences — unforeseen only by those without common sense and / or brains, that is.

Last year, Burlington, Vermont, cut its police budget by nearly 30% through attrition. Now, people are afraid to speak up because they know they’ll be called “racist.”

It’s been more than a year and a half since the city cut its police budget, and now even the city councilor who proposed the cut is unhappy with the consequences.

Oh, and what consequences would those be in sleepy little Burlington VT, home to so many hippies, academics and Lefties? [some overlap]

The move to slash the police budget, however, has led city leaders, as NBC reported, “to reckon with the unintended consequences of that decision, including problems with public safety and quality of life, police and residents say.”
…
The unintended consequences of the resolution apparently showed up quickly, NBC reported. The council thought attrition would take years, but it was completed in months, leaving the police department understaffed. Police officers left en masse, leaving only about five to patrol at night. The police have had to shift focus to high-priority crimes and less on quality of life issues. Burglary, vehicle theft, mental health issues, and overdoses all increased with fewer cops on patrol.

You don’t say.

Local business owner Mark Bouchett told NBC that people were afraid to speak out about the problems that have arisen due to the reduced police force.
“If you speak out against defunding the police force, you’re labeled a racist,” he told NBC. “Or at least an idiot that doesn’t understand the problem.”

Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of Lefty assholes.  It’s just too bad that the good (conservative) folks of that part of Vermont have to suffer the consequences as well.

At least they’re not unarmed…

Yes, It Has

BaconLettuceMayo, Law and Order, Resistance

Here’s a headline which made me giggle like a little girl:

Rittenhouse Verdict Has Leftist Rioters Worried: “It fundamentally changed
the culture of protest”

The punchline is equally delicious:

This is still America, much to their chagrin, and in the absence of police protection and intervention, the American people can and will protect themselves and their fellow citizens from lawless mobs bent on mayhem, violence, and destruction.
…
Remove or incapacitate police, and yes, Americans can and will step up to lawfully fill that vacuum. Who couldn’t see that coming?

Read the whole article, and don’t have a mouthful of coffee while doing so.

And Speaking Of South Africa

Africa, BaconLettuceMayo, Terrorism, Vermin

…we have this little situation developing in Mandelaland:

Looting broke out in several cities in South Africa this weekend after the country’s former president, Jacob Zuma, began serving a 15-month sentence last Thursday for contempt in relation to an investigation of corruption during his tenure.

I should note that Zuma — corruptus maximus  on a continent renowned for its systemic corruption — was convicted of perjury, rather than his extensive and bald-faced plundering of South Africa’s already-straitened treasury.

So why are the Usual Suspects copying their BLM counterparts in the U.S.?

Well, it’s all happening in Kwa-Zulu/Natal, because Zuma is a Zulu, you see, and so why not riot and loot all over his homeland?

Needless to say, just as Baltimore was set on fire after some strung-out Black asshole was killed by cops in Minneapolis, so Natal’s little exercise in ad hoc  property redistribution is spreading outwards, and the boys in Johannesburg aren’t going to be left out of the fun, no sirree.

The background to all of this is actually a combination of two factors:  the grinding poverty that persists in South Africa, and the fact that the hapless and incompetent government has not been able to get even close to vaccinating its people against the Wuhan Menace.  The plague that has ensued has resulted in knee-jerk lockdowns, preventable deaths by the hundreds of thousands, and a deepening of the already-critical economic slump.

The second article on the topic is priceless, and contains this gem:

Perhaps most alarming are reports of ordinary people “forming armed groups to protect businesses, homes in KwaZulu-Natal”, and videos on social media which purport to show armed, ad hoc citizens’ militias and private security out on the streets.

Alarming?  This is Africa, old son.  That’s what you get when you have this situation:

A mosque has also been set on fire in Mayville Durban.
“They were not fighting, they were running for their lives. They were innocent people. We don’t know how they died,” Ismaeel said, alleging that there are “no police” — and indeed that “Police are themselves are targets. You call police they can’t come.”
This squares with reports from Pietermaritzburg, where at least two malls have been looted and one raised [sic] by fire, with the BBC saying that riot police who attempted to disperse looters with rubber bullets were met with live ammunition in return.
Police also came under fire on a freeway near a mall in Durban, where many malls, stores, and at least one factory have been looted, with one officer being hit in the leg.

For some reason, I feel an urge to go to the range…

Pushing Back

BaconLettuceMayo, Crime, Law and Order, Resistance

Yesterday, I expressed my consternation at this little event — which took place not a mile from where I am right now, and where I drive through all the time:

In the incident, which occurred last week, BLM marchers illegally blocked a public street, trapping motorists. Such situations have happened across the nation over the past year, often resulting in violence. In the Plano video, one man emerges from his car and yells at the BLM protesters to clear the street. They not only do not clear the street, one of them also brandishes a weapon of some sort at the man. A Plano police officer looks on, does nothing to clear the street, and instead seems to side against the motorist — who is legally in the right.

Looks as though the Plano Police Chief has landed himself in the doodoo with TXAG Paxton: After reviewing the incident, our First Lawyer had this to say:

Reckon it’s time someone got fired — and I’m not talking about Paxton.

Frankly, I don’t care if you think you have to “negotiate with these people” when in fact they are breaking the fucking law.  If I’d parked my car across the intersection and refused to move it, how long do you think it would have taken for the Plano PD to have me in cuffs?  Or, if there were four of us White boys blocking the road with our cars protesting (say) the stolen election of 2020, the fuzz would have descended on us like Genghis Khan, only with better weaponry.  And if one of us had pointed something that looked like a gun — I don’t care whether it was a pepper gun, taser or toy pistol — the cops would have shot his ass dead.

And all of Plano would probably have applauded.

Let me get this straight.  While Plano is more conservative than Dallas, it’s not as conservative as the rest of Texas (thanks to the huge influx of New Yorkers, Californians, Chinese, Indians and Pakistanis into the area as we’ve become some kind of Mecca [sic]  for the Big Business flight away from, duh, California and the Northeast).  We have a Black mayor, a Black police chief, several Blacks, Chinese and Indians on the city council and school district board, and all the rest of the stuff that has allowed the hallowed “diversity” to flourish, only without any fanfare or box-ticking.

Nevertheless, Plano is still reliably conservative, and up until now, the Police Department has been too, with a strong law-and-order attitude which we citizens of Plano have supported to the hilt.

And now?  A police chief who bleats about “having to negotiate” with violent criminals?  I don’t care if the police are “caught in the middle”;  that’s their fucking job.  They are supposed to be the “thin blue line” between law-abiding citizens and criminal bandits.

Like I said, someone needs to be fired, or else the shit is really going to hit the fan.  Next time, the guy who jumps out of his car and, all by himself, shouts at protesters to clear the street, may well be carrying a handgun, or more.  (There’s a very good reason that our local gun store shelves are empty of both guns and ammunition.)  And if the cop on the scene — or his boss — aligns himself with the criminals, don’t be surprised if he’s treated like one of them, because it’s no less than he deserves.

And if the city cops are unable or unwilling to do their job, Paxton has only to unleash the state police and, gawd help us, the Texas Rangers.  We’re cool with that, I think.

This bullshit has to stop, nipped in the bud right now.  Let’s hope that Paxton gets it done, or there’s going to be a serious shit show.  Plano is not fucking Los Angeles or Chicago or New York;  we’re not even fucking Austin.  And without serious action, the powers that be are going to find that out, big time.

Neighborhood Reindeer Games

BaconLettuceMayo, Crime, Law and Order

Several people have sent me accounts (like this one) of the latest BLM “protest” which happened in Plano (!!!) last week.

Several thoughts come to mind, especially as I’ve had some dealings with the Plano PD over the past couple weeks, as every fule kno, and I came away very impressed with their attitude.

What I also learned, in chatting with our local guy while CIS was dusting for prints etc. was that the attitude of people all over (not just in Plano, but all over north Texas) has been changing for the worse, in that people getting involved with the police are being a lot more aggressive — and not just with the police, either.

Back in June last year, there was a traffic accident at a corner not three hundred yards from my old house.  I know the corner well (Legacy and Independence), and as it happened, when the accident occurred there was a Plano uniformed cop filling up at the gas station on that very corner.  So the cop walked over — no need to drive, it’s twenty yards away — only to see that the female driver of the one car was leaning into the other driver’s window, and punching her out.  So he grabbed her to restrain her, whereupon he made the unfortunate discovery that she wasn’t punching the other woman, but stabbing her.  And when he tried to restrain this bitch, she stabbed him four times.  Luckily, three of the blows were deflected by his vest, but the fourth got him a good one in the upper left arm, and he started to bleed like a stuck pig.

The situation did not end there.

The stabbist then ran around the front of the car and wrenched the passenger-side door open, so as to continue with the stabbing.

Fortunately, the officer was not massively incapacitated from his stab wound — apparently, he would faint a little later from blood loss while waiting for the paramedics — but he was still able to pull his gun and shoot the bitch four times, whereupon she lost all interest in the proceedings, assumed the proper position on the ground, and very shortly thereafter achieved room temperature.

[pause to let the cheering and hollering die down]

Just in passing, both the cop and the stabbee survived the fun and games.  He was a twenty-five-year veteran of the Plano PD and was something like six months from retirement.  (Here’s the official report of the incident.  There’s a telling detail that I didn’t mention;  see if you can spot it.)

The cop who told me this story said that this change in attitude began during the Obama administration, and had only got worse and worse since.  (I note too that the Plano PD Chief has been spotted marching in an earlier BLM protest, and that is an issue to be addressed on another day.)

After Election Day 2020 I took the AK out of the car, figuring that now that the nation’s scum had got their wish and had Communists, wokists and BLM supporters in positions of power, they’d simmer down.  Clearly, this is not the case.

So tomorrow I’ll be off to Doc Russia’s to pick up the AK and return it to its proper position in the car.  I should have done it after dinner with him last week, but that was a couple days before the BLM incident on Plano’s east side, and who knew?  But times change, and I guess we have to change with them.

Let me say right now that I will not start anything should I personally encounter a situation like last Friday’s.  I won’t even get out of my car.  Unless things get really out of control — the video of the event shows that at least one BLM supporter had a handgun out and pointed at the “counter-protester” —  in which case things might get a little more interesting.  I certainly don’t take kindly to people pointing guns at me, no matter how much they believe they are “justified” in so doing;  and any attempt to bring violence on me will meet with some resistance.

And that’s a promise.

Good grief.  If shit like this can happen in Plano, it can happen anywhere in the United States.  Be on your guard and stay safe.  Or at least get a good group.