Category: Good Stuff

Nailbiting

Good Stuff, Sports

I know:  most of y’all have about as much interest in Formula One as I do about soap operas.

However:  the last race of the 2025 F1 season will take place this weekend on some track in the Arabian desert #DontCare, and it promises to be quite unlike the usual formation-lap snore fest.

At the middle of the season, current (and four-time) champion Max Verstappen was 100-odd points adrift of the top of the standings, driving a car which was not in the same class as the eventual manufacturer’s champions McLaren (who clinched the title a couple races back).

Thanks to his incredible skill behind the wheel, and aided by said McLaren team totally screwing up their race strategy in the past two races, Verstappen finds himself in actual contention for his fifth (consecutive!) driver’s championship in the final race.  He’ll need some help from McLaren, of course, but given their recent screwups that’s not completely out of the picture — and as both McLaren drivers are 1-2 in the standings and are after the same title, there’s also a good chance that they’ll collide with each other and take themselves out of the picture, leaving it all to Verstappen.  One thing is for sure:  if it’s just up to his own driving, he’s an odds-on favorite

Anyway, I told you all that so I can share this, said before the Las Vegas Grand Prix:

Me, I’m rooting for Max this weekend.

Replacement Workers

Good Stuff, Illegal immigrants

I have to say that Jamie Wilson has just been clearing the fences recently.  Here’s her latest:

“Americans just won’t do these jobs.” That phrase infuriated me from the first time I heard it. I knew it was a lie. I had done the tobacco work myself. My brothers had. Every teenager we knew had. Every adult performed the hard labor that kept the region alive. Americans didn’t suddenly lose their work ethic. The jobs were taken from them — not by immigrants directly, but by American employers who built a business model on illegal labor and by a federal government that looked the other way for forty years.

What Americans “won’t do” are jobs that have been made illegal in everything but name — jobs where wages have collapsed to exploit desperation, where safety standards are ignored, where workers are paid off the books, where insurance and taxes are bypassed, and where living conditions violate every regulation on the books. When the floor is lowered that far, legal workers cannot enter the market at all. That isn’t laziness. That’s math.

And her supporting arguments are terrific.  Read the whole article.

I remember when #2 Son was looking for some minimum-wage work back when he was in his late teens.  At the time, he was living in Dallas, and when I asked how things were going, work-wise, his response was:  “I just can’t compete with all the Mexicans who are willing to work well below the minimum wage.”

Eventually he quit that, and fortunately found his niche in online gaming quality control, but had to move down to Austin, enduring a few years of contract work — chicken and feathers income — before he finally found a full-time job at a company which was later bought out and became a division of Sony.

And I know that I published a stupid article on the topic of illegal alien workers a while back, and I cringe when I think of it.  (And yes, I was crucified in the Comments by y’all, and deservedly so.  I don’t know what I was thinking.)

Anyway, I see that as ICE is starting to do their job and deporting illegals, American workers are benefiting greatly.

So I guess they were prepared to to “those jobs”, despite the lies uttered by the Democrats over the years.

Random Beefcake

Good Stuff, Men & Women

This little thing was sent to me by a longtime lady friend back in Seffrica.  (Just to elucidate, “Visagie’ is a common Afrikaans name.)

It’s for my long-suffering Lady Readers, who are woefully neglected on this back porch when it comes to eye candy:

For my Gentleman [sic]  Readers:  these are the kind of guys (and their families) who are being welcomed as refugees into the U.S. by the Trump Administration.  Once they qualify to vote, I don’t think they’ll be voting for the socialists anytime soon.

Which is why the Commies are screaming so loudly, even though their actual numbers are small.

Mighty, Fallen

Good Stuff

Chris Muir has a savage take on today’s NFL.  (For those who don’t get the first panel, this may help.)

Everyone has a website which is the first stop on their daily round of Intarwebz browsing.

Day By Day is mine, without fail.

Chris and I have a warm and cordial relationship which extends back to his very first cartoon strip.  If you’re one of the few people on the planet who have never seen his stuff before, click on the “First” tab, and read them all in sequence.  (It’s known as the “DBD Haj” to his regulars, and several of them, myself included, have done it more than once.)

And support him with yer $$$, because DBD is his job.

What Price The Big Day?

Good Stuff, Men & Women

This story got me nodding my head in agreement.

One couple ditched their plans for a conventional wedding and instead jetted off on a month-long honeymoon.  Hannah Bird and Charlie Camper, both 26, had originally budgeted £30,000 for their big day.  However, the pair from Burnham-on-Sea soon realized the huge sum would be blown on just one day and could instead be used to make more memories exploring the world. 

So they did just that:  offering their guests supermarket cup cakes instead of buying an expensive wedding cake, got the bride a free (i.e. secondhand) wedding dress and offered their guests a buffet (“grazing table”) instead of the traditional sit-down meal.  As for the venue:  they booked a woodland retreat for a whole weekend’s festivities — which ordinarily would strike some as excessive — but reduced the cost by charging their guests sixty quid, in lieu of wedding presents.  Which makes a great deal of sense, by the way:  it may sound tacky, but from a guest’s point of view, where are you going to get a weekend getaway for only sixty bucks?  A bargain for everybody, and guests wouldn’t have to mess with buying presents into the bargain.

I never bought in to the wedding-industrial complex;  it always seemed to me a cynical exercise in gyno-centric excess — the idea that a girl somehow “deserves” to have a Special Day wherein she’s the absolute center of attention.  What bollocks.  And this is especially true when one looks at the statistics and realizes that the chances of said nuptials actually producing a long and happy relationship are vanishingly small.

I have no problem with the bride’s parents paying lots of money for the occasion, by the way — it’s their money to do with what they wish, and as long as they don’t bankrupt themselves (a distressingly-common occurrence), why not?  But as with the couple in the above story, it makes so much more sense to take the money that would have been blown on fripperies such as massive flower bouquets and a one-day-use dress, and spend it instead on something worthwhile to the couple, rather than just feeding the bride’s giant ego or need for self-aggrandizement.

I actually did that with my first marriage.  As time passed, I noted with alarm that the whole thing was growing faster than a Democrat politician’s spending plan, and I did two things:  first, I secretly bought our honeymoon air tickets (to the U.S., incidentally, where neither of us had been before);  then I presented that fact to the bride’s family as a fait accompli, and said that this wedding day was going to be made on a strict budget because we needed to save money to afford a month-long’s stay in the U.S.  Unbelievably, over time pressure was brought upon me by her family to cancel the U.S. trip for a shorter honeymoon at some resort somewhere in South Africa — said pressure only disappearing when I threatened to walk away from the whole wedding (and marriage) and go to the States on my own instead.  And I meant every word.

Anyway, that honeymoon Over Here was truly beneficial for me, in that I fell in love with this wonderful, fantastic country, big time… and the rest you know.

And all because like the couple above, I refused to spend a boatload of money on some one-day extravagance.  In their case, they got a lifetime’s worth of memories;  in my case, I changed my life’s entire path.

A bargain, for both of us.

Cutting The Fat

Good Stuff, Military

SecWar (how I love that new title) Pete Hegseth has apparently read the Riot Act to the fat cats at the upper end of the chain of command:

“The era of politically correct, overly sensitive don’t-hurt-anyone’s-feelings leadership ends right now at every level,” Hegseth said at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia.

He also announced at the meeting new directives for troops that include “gender-neutral” or “male-level” standards for physical fitness as well as an end to “woke” culture in the military, according to the Associated Press.

Hegseth also said he is changing fitness and appearance standards for the military, while setting the “Golden Rule” test.

Hegseth began his speech by saying: “Welcome to the War Department.”  He also said: “The era of the Department of Defense is over.”

The secretary said the mission of the Pentagon is “warfighting: preparing for war and preparing to win, unrelenting and uncompromising in that pursuit.”

“Our warfighters are entitled to be led by the best and most capable leaders,” he said. “That is who we need you all to be.”

“We lost our way, and we became the ‘woke’ department, but not anymore,” Hegseth also said.

The secretary said that he is sending out 10 new DOD directives regarding physical fitness and grooming requirements, including a return to “the highest male standard” for combat positions.

“If you do not meet the male level physical standards for combat positions, cannot pass a PT test, or don’t want to shave and look professional, it’s time for a new position or a new profession,” he said.

Hegseth added that “it’s tiring to look out at combat formations, or really any formation, and see fat troops. Likewise, it’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the world. It’s a bad look.”

Everyone agreeing with Pete, raise your hands…

Watch what happens to recruitment numbers…