Splendid Isolation

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Dept. Of Righteous Shootings

Righteous Shootings

Sent to me by several Alert Readers, there’s this happy tale.

Two masked men were shot and killed during a botched robbery in Houston’s East End on Wednesday, according to the Houston Police Department.
A preliminary investigation revealed the business owner was coming back from a bank when he was hit in the back of the head. When he turned around, he saw two masked men wearing gloves and he immediately opened fire. An employee came out, saw what was going on and also fired shots at the robbers.

There’s nothing quite like a two-fer, is there?

Proving that nobody’s ever completely satisfied, however, there’s also this:

Police said a third suspect heard the shooting and took off in a newer model black Lincoln Navigator with Texas license plate RTS-3919.

Never mind.  They’ll get to him later.

Normally I’d want to get details like guns used by the good guys, caliber etc., but I think I’ll just have an extra breakfast gin to celebrate because… two-fer.

News Roundup

Bad News

And speaking of breaking things while getting screwed:


...in other news, Lindbergh makes first solo crossing of the Atlantic.  And still in that barrel of idiotic monkeys:


...”stopgap spending bills” is just another term for “let’s rape the taxpayers a little harder while we have them panicking.”


...just the latest of so many, many Republican fuckups.


...”taking a swing at Tony fucking Blair on the campaign trail” was surprisingly not mentioned.

From the Dept. of Mass Assimilation:


...wait:  people are trying to get into Saudi Arabia?  LOL I bet not too many are Christians, though.  Also:


...whatever, dude;  just don’t try to sneak your humanitarian crisis into somewhere else that isn’t.

From the Woke Chronicles:


...wait:  I thought that chess was one of those things where physical strength doesn’t matter.  Parallel thought:  why are there women-only chess tournaments?  Are chicks really less intellectually-capable than men, chessly-speaking?


...or maybe they just didn’t have enough lesbians in the team.  Makes about as much sense.


...I know;  just reading that makes you want to listen to the song, right?  Go on:  the link’s in the picture:

And from the INSIGNIFICA files:

  


...we haven’t seen this plump little pullet in a while, so:

She has a sister, by the way, who seems equally tasty:

…and that’s all the news fit for a Friday.

Mixed Reaction

Government Thugs

I’m going to tread very carefully around this one:

An agent with the IRS is dead after being accidentally shot by another agent during a training exercise Thursday at a federal gun range, according to officials.

Arizona’s Family reports a spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed that an incident occurred at its gun range in the Phoenix area. The gun range was reportedly being utilized by multiple federal agencies at the time of the shooting through an interagency agreement.

Here are my thoughts on this rather touchy topic.

If this kind of training tragedy befalls actual federal law enforcement agencies  (FBI, DEA, Secret Service, etc.) then I am truly sorry, and mourn their loss.

But far as all the other federal alphabet agencies (IRS, DoE — Education or Energy — BLM, etc.) are concerned:  I don’t care.  They shouldn’t be armed in the first place, and therefore have no business being around a federal firearms training facility.

My reason for saying this is quite simple:  what the federal government has been doing for the past seventy-odd years is turning misdemeanors or regulatory infractions into federal crimes, and ordinary citizens into criminals every chance they get.  But for all that, the latter agencies are not law enforcement departments, as much as the government would like them to be such.

Let me get specific.

It is a totally abhorrent idea that the IRS — who are nothing more than a bunch of accountants and debt collectors — should be sending their agents to get firearms training (on the use of, lest we forget, full-automatic firearms).  Who are they going to use those guns on?  And don’t insult me with the “self-defense” argument:  we ordinary folk aren’t allowed to use automatic rifles and machine guns to protect ourselves;  why should these jumped-up bureaucrats get special treatment?  Let’s be honest:  when an IRS agent is issued with an actual assault rifle — that would be a full-auto rifle, not some semi-auto AR-15 — it’s not to protect himself or his home from rampaging tax delinquents, it’s most likely because he’ll be ordered to storm someone else’s home or place of employment (that would be the very definition of “assault”).  And by the way, that’s the job of the FBI, not the bean-counters.

So no:  as much as I feel the suffering and loss of this agent’s life for his family, the plain fact of the matter was that he had no damn business being there in the first place.

And the fact that he was there is entirely the responsibility of the federal government.

By the way, should any of the alphabet agencies read this, you should know that my opinion in this is probably the mildest you’ll encounter among the vast majority of the population.  Out there, if you listen carefully, you’ll hear the popping of champagne corks.  The federal government offers little comfort to the population of this country;  they should expect little in return.

Update:  both in Comments and by email, Readers take issue with my stance on the Dept. of Energy not needing guns, in that they have to guard installations like nukes and other such power plants.

No.

If those installations are so important to the national security (and they are), they need to be guarded by the military and not by the paramilitary.  The point is that the military is Constitutionally restricted in terms of its deployment (against citizens), whereas a paramilitary force isn’t.  I’d rather that power be held by the Army (and therefore by Congress) than by a bunch of bureaucrats.

Disturbing

Music, Tragedy

I’m a little worried about all the hoopla surrounding the songs of latest phenom Oliver Anthony.  (For those who don’t know who he is, here is his story, and here are his two latest songs: Rich Men North Of Richmond and I Want To Go Home.  Listen to all of that, and what follows may make more sense to you.)

There are two points to be made here, the first being the more important.

Jeff Reynolds at PJM says that Anthony’s voice is evocative of American singers like Levon Helm, B.B. King and John Fogerty.  I am fans of all of them, but I can listen to them sing all day.  I can’t do that with Oliver Anthony, because there’s too much pain there, and it hurts to listen to him.  His voice reminds me of Amy Winehouse, whom I also find difficult to listen to for precisely the same reasons.

It’s clear that Anthony will run the risk of ending up like Winehouse (whose tragedy I explored here):  manipulated by others for their own purposes and benefit (whom, thankfully, he’s so far managed to keep at bay — not the least by telling the music industry to fuck off with their multi-million-dollar poisoned apples).  I hope he stands firm.

The second part of this is that the agony of which this young man sings is clearly resonating with millions of Americans, because what he’s talking about is real.  People are being fucked over by government and people who control the media, people are being fucked over by companies, and people are facing a future that is, frankly, as bleak and horrible as he sees his own.

And here’s where the second bunch of bloodsuckers come into the picture.  Expect soon that the political types will step forward, trying to claim the ground that Anthony and so many others like him are standing on, and making politicians’ promises to fix the circumstances that they — all of them — have been complicit in the creation thereof.

I hope that Oliver Anthony tells them, too, to fuck off.

Here’s the takeaway from all this.  The reason for Anthony’s runaway success is that millions of people not only feel his pain, but share his pain.

And unless I miss my guess, come 2024 those millions of people are going to vote for the candidate whom they think will best help alleviate it.

The political establishment had better hope that they do it through the vote, by the way, because the alternative is kinda messy.