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Compendium Of Wrong

Law and Order, Punks

It’s difficult to imagine just how much more could have gone wrong in this situation:

Jay Conway, 33, was spotted dealing drugs by two plain-clothed officers in a park in May.

They tried to apprehend him but he got away before another uniformed officer, who was on patrol in a police car nearby heard a radio alert and took up the chase.

Dramatic bodycam footage shows brave Constable Dan Clayton hauling Conway off a stolen push bike, before pulling out his taser and ordering him to “Get on the floor now.”

But Conway, who was wearing a balaclava, ignores him and instead pulls a loaded pistol out of his sock.

Conway is immediately tasered but, as he falls to the ground, he points the gun directly at Constable Clayton, who can be heard shouting, “No, no” and “gun, gun, gun,” as he sprints for cover.

Of course, all my Murkin Readers are no doubt going “WTF?  Why didn’t the cop just shoot the asshole dead when he pulled the gun?”

If I were to tell you that this didn’t happen in the U.S. but in Britishland, then it all becomes clear.

Pro tip:  If a scrote points a gun at you, the correct response should be “Blam! Blam! Blam! [repeat as necessary] ” and not “No! No! No!”

If, however, your police force refuses to provide you with a “Blam! Blam! Blam!” option, perhaps you should reconsider your career choice.

Just sayin’.

Two Chessboards

Wars & Other Fun Games

Here’s a very perceptive look at the current fun and games in Iran, and the U.S. strategy behind them:

This isn’t one war, but two.

There is a regional chessboard, on which Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the other Gulf states all play. Iran’s proxies, its drones and ballistic missiles, its nuclear ambitions, its funding of Hezbollah and the Houthis. All of that belongs primarily to this smaller game. Israel has always understood this board. So have the Saudis. So has everyone in the neighbourhood.

But there is a second chessboard, vastly larger, on which the United States and China are the primary players. On this board, the central question of the next 30 years is being worked out: whether the American-led global order survives, or whether China displaces it. Every American foreign policy decision, from the pivot to Asia to the tariff wars to the posture in the Pacific, is ultimately a move on this board.

America is in this fight because of China. Specifically, it is about dismantling the most significant Chinese forward base outside of East Asia.

Read the whole thing, I beg you, because it shows that far from being a silly cowboy playing with a loaded gun, Trump’s grasp of global strategy is so far removed from that of his political opponents (and even of most of his nominal political allies in the West) that it defies belief.

We often joke about Trump playing four-dimensional chess while his opponents are stuck to a chessboard.  The above article shows exactly how that 4-D chess game actually works.

I am very impressed that this appeared in the normally-silly Daily Mail.  As far as I can tell, not one American news publication has come close to this succinct analysis,  instead busying themselves with the minutiae of the campaign.

Classic Beauty: Deidre Hall

Classic Beauty

I’ve never watched a single episode of any daytime soap opera, in any country.  (I think the soapiest I ever got was Dallas, and that only lasted a couple seasons — when J.R. Ewing was shot, I only discovered the identity of the shooter about a week after the reveal, more or less by accident when I overheard some people talking about it like it was the most important thing in the world.)  So whenever I happen upon some totty who is or was a “soap star”, my interest barely flickers.

That’s not to say that there haven’t been a few exquisite of the type, of course — I remember thinking that Susan Lucci, for example, was quite a doll back then.  But one who did get my attention was Deidre Hall, because a long time ago I saw her being interviewed on some celebrity show or other, and not only was she gorgeous, but… freckles, by golly.  (And I think most Readers will be well aware of this particular  fetish  fascination of mine.)  Then quite recently I saw some newspaper article talking about her recently celebrating her 86th birthday (!!!!), but the teaser contained a pic of her much-younger self.  So off I went, along the highways and byways of Teh Intarwebz.

And I wasn’t disappointed.  I’ve confined myself to black & white pics, because most of the color pics are owned by the Usual Suspects, Getty, Alamy, etc., whereas the non-color pics are blessedly free of their foul little watermarks.

And for the freckles:

Of course, the tout ensemble  is excellent:

…but tucked away in some dark corner of said Intarwebz was a whole ‘nother side of Deidre, most probably before she became famous:

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Changing Cards

Corporate Fuckery, Scam Artists

Last Monday morning I went out to run some errands — nothing fancy, just dropping off a document at the tax guy, paying for the sooper-seekrit mailbox, and a quick trip to Kroger for some top-up items.  Basically my spend was less than a hundred dollars, but I knew I had way more than that in the bank account, so no big deal, right?

Wrong.  I got home, check the email and there was a warning message from the bank saying I had less than $100 in my account (I am so glad I have this feature).  When I looked at the account, there was an ATM charge from some company for $336 dollars — a company I’d never heard of nor visited, and when I looked at the details, it noted that the transaction method was a “tap”.

Didn’t happen.

I then called the bank and told them about the fraudulent claim, which got the wheels turning.  Net result:  they changed the transaction to “pending”, but then the crap began:  policy is to issue a new card number/card, which takes ta-da!  up to five business days to process and deliver.  So basically, I end up without an ATM card for that period, plus I have to contact all the autopay vendors and give them the new card number so that my life can continue uninterrupted, without such things as wifi being disconnected and so on — you know the deal.

What disturbs me about all this is that apparently there’s no guarantee that a fraudulent transaction can be “clawed back” if it’s been made against a checking account — it’s considered your problem — but with a credit card, however, it’s the bank’s problem and they have all sorts of ways to get the money back.  Seems weird, but that’s banks for you.

I remember seeing one of those EeewwwChoob videos a while ago wherein some smart money guy said that he refused to use an ATM card, ever, and only used a credit card because of just such a situation.

Here’s my take:  I don’t owe a lot of money on my credit card, and thanks to an upcoming tax refund I could pay it all off without any problem.  (I normally pay 6x the “minimum” each month, so I don’t get stung too badly by their loanshark interest rates.)

I am thinking, now, that maybe I should do what the Smart Money Guy said, do away with the ATM card and treat the paid-off credit card like it’s an ATM card, and just pay the balance in full each month.  (I don’t spend a lot of money on the Visa card so this shouldn’t be a problem, and our income — from New Wife’s job and my SocSec gets automatically transferred out of our current accounts into an interest-bearing account anyway, so we never have that much cash in the current accounts.)  I have full faith in my and New Wife’s self-discipline to do this, by the way, so on that score there should be no problem.

My question for y’all:  if I do the above and pay off the credit card balance in full each month, is there a risk that Global MegaBank Inc. will realize that they’re making no money off their loansharking, only from their transaction fees, and cancel my credit card?

All input is welcome.