Splendid Isolation

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Dept. Of Righteous Shootings

Righteous Shootings

Seems as though this man’s car was stolen, but the thieves were unaware that nowadays, you can track your car’s location.  Which is what Our Hero did, and confronted said scumbags in a mall parking lot.  He made them get out of the car at gunpoint and sit on the ground while everyone awaited the arrival of the San Antonio police.

Well, our Senior Scumbag wasn’t going to take this lying (sitting?) down, so he pulled his own gun and popped off at the car owner.

Whereupon Our Hero wasted the fucker AND shot Scumbag’s accomplice in the leg, I assume lest she wanted to retrieve her late partner’s gun and continue the festivities.

Quote of the day comes from the SAPD chief:

‘Certainly a case of self-defense, is what we have.’

Then, for the lawyers, he added (no doubt with a shrug):

‘We would prefer that they call the police before taking that into your own hands, but he did what he felt he needed to do.’

I think some applause for both the chief and Our Hero would be appropriate:

Texas, baby.

Of course, the family of the corpus delicti is all boohoohoo about it (sent by Longtime Friend and Reader John C.):

“Whether my brother was wrong or right, he had a gun pointed at him. I guess he took it upon himself to defend himself. The guy who shot him is a vigilante, not a hero,” Jose Garcia told KENS 5. “A vehicle is not worth taking someone’s life, I don’t care what kind of car it is. You don’t take the law into your own hands. Now my mom, my family, we all have to suffer and just deal with it.”

Errr well, I hate to break it to you, Jose, but under Texas law, self-defense during the commission of a crime is not justifiable. And the law is always in the hands of the citizen — we just deputize its enforcement to government.  But when the government is late to the scene, or absent altogether, it is absolutely the right of the citizen to enforce it.  Deputization is not the same as abrogation, despite what government wants you to think.

Also, if a vehicle is not worth a life, your deceased choirboy brother didn’t think the same way — or else he would not have been carrying a gun himself.  Clearly, he thought that a car was worth more than a life, which is why he ended up the way he did.

In any event, fuck him, he’s dead, the dangerous criminal asshole.  And while you’re right to mourn him, I’ll bet this wasn’t the first time he’d caused the family grief and heartache.  Everyone (your family included) is better off without him, as it is without all dangerous criminals.

Green Is Good

Military

…or not really, as The Greatest Living Englishman explains:

DEFENCE chiefs announced this week that British soldiers could soon be given electric bicycles so they can sneak up more quietly (and cheaply) than if they were in a tank.

Yes. But have you ever tried to ride a bicycle in soft sand? Or in a bog? It’s impossible.

So if stealth (and savings) are the main consideration, I have a better idea. Why not give them horses?  They are extremely good off-road and won’t short out if asked to cross a river.  Plus, most cost much less than a £6,500 e-bike and if properly trained, can move around very quietly indeed.  Also, you don’t need to charge up their batteries every half an hour.

And then we could go further and, instead of guns, which are noisy and also expensive, issue our troops with swords.

It’d be the most eco-friendly and modern army in the world.

And it’d lose every single battle it took part in. But in these green and cost-conscious times, it seems that sort of thing doesn’t matter.

FFS, don’t anyone tell the Pentagon about this.

Legacy Issues

Seen On Campus

Reader Mike L. sends me this little snippet:

The U.S. Department of Education has launched a civil rights investigation into Harvard University’s policies on legacy admissions.

Top colleges’ preferential treatment of children of alumni, who are often white, has faced mounting scrutiny since the Supreme Court last month struck down the use of affirmative action as a tool to boost the presence of students of color.

The department notified Lawyers for Civil Rights, a nonprofit based in Boston, on Monday that it was investigating the group’s claim that the university “discriminates on the basis of race by using donor and legacy preferences in its undergraduate admissions process.”

An Education Department spokesperson confirmed its Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation at Harvard. The agency declined further comment. 

I’ve always thought that giving alumni preference for their kids’ admissions was a nice touch, in that it established some kind of continuum or legacy (hence the name) for families.  (My old school St. John’s College absolutely thrived on such a legacy — to see fathers and even grandfathers wearing the Old Boys’ tie was a sign of belonging like few others — and legacies always got automatic admission into what was an extremely limited enrollment.)

But nowadays, tradition and (especially, it seems) father-son or mother-daughter traditions are anathema to the Egalitarian Set, who equate what is essentially a courtesy into some kind of “inheritance” Bad Thing, akin to keeping title transference within the same family.

It’s a good thing we don’t have nobility titles Over Here, because otherwise some Human Rights pests in our Gummint would no doubt call for its abolition in the name of “equity”.

A pox on all of them.

By the way, I have no dog in this fight because I happen to think that any private institution should have the right to determine whom they prefer to see inside it as members — country clubs, universities, fraternities, companies, whatever.

The fact that Harvard, of all places, is getting bitten by this is satisfying, but only because Harvard is a stupefyingly-PC and much-overrated institution, and they deserve every bad thing that happens to them, the elitist bullshit artists.

News Roundup

Bad News

And speaking of rancid and toxic women:


...just the kind you’d want your son to bring over for Thanksgiving, yes?  Also, keyword:  Michigan.


...that’s okay;  when you share custody, you can feed the kid steaks, meat pies and sausages all you want on those weekends.

In Lawn Awduh News:


...hell of a sentence just for shooting a cop who was already dead.  Uhhh wait a minute...


...why bother, when the fix is already in?


...that’s not quite what the original headline said, but you get my drift.


...in which, once again, we play “Guess The Race” of all the participants in this ghastly little situation.


...key word:  Florida — no wait, California.  Hadda be one of them.

In Medical News:


...wait:  gout in your cock?  What new hell is this?  And in the same vein [sic]:


...the one time I think “over and under” would be preferable to “side by side”.

From the Global Cooling Climate Warming Change© Dept.:


…

From the Dept. Of Tourism:


….funny, I thought that was every Italian city, but I haven’t been there for years.

From the Sports Desk:


...that would be me with baseball, and I’m not even a hermit.

Time for no-link INSIGNIFICA:

           

...no, I don’t understand any of that either.

This just has to be pissing off somebody somewhere (no link):


...can’t see why, myself.

And that’s the news.

Poking Fun

Food & Drink, Mocking Furriners

I like the way this guy works:

Ben Reid, from England, recently spent a few weeks on holiday around Italy and learned that many locals were quite specific about their food.

The English man was constantly chastised for making ‘adjustments’ to his meals – such as dipping his croissant in coffee, and pouring water into his espresso.

Ben eventually started ‘trolling’ strangers with bizarre acts. 

However, the act that evoked the most condemnation was cutting spaghetti with scissors.

Two waiters actually went up to Ben and told him he ‘wasn’t allowed’ to consume his food like that.

‘You have to roll the pasta with your fork, you cannot cut it with scissors. People will think you’re an idiot,’ the waiter said, and then confiscated the scissors.

Brilliant.  I’m just surprised he wasn’t scolded for not having a glass of wine with his dinner.

I do the same kind of thing in Chinese restaurants by using a fork instead of chopsticks.  Let ’em sneer or roll their eyes, I don’t care.