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Firing The Deadwood

Bureaucracy

This isn’t about campfires, oh no.  This is so much more satisfying than a roaring fire on a cold winter’s night:

Approximately 50,000 federal workers in “policy-influencing” positions will lose specific protections against firings and become more at-will employees in the next month, per a new Trump administration rule announced Thursday.

The new rule, published by the Office of Personnel Management, will move senior career civil servants in “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating” positions into the Schedule Policy/Career category, formerly known as Schedule F.

Going forward, federal workers in those roles will lose their ability to appeal firings, suspensions or disciplinary action to an independent board.

Administration officials can dismiss those employees if they engage in “misconduct, poor performance or obstruct the democratic process by intentionally subverting Presidential directives.”

I think I speak for all my Readers when I say that while 50,000 is a nice round number, I’m thinking that 200,000 is a much nicer, rounder number.  But I’m open to other, more ambitious suggestions.

Of course, the response has been predictable:

The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union representing non-postal federal workers, said in a statement that the rule would “chill protected speech” and “weaken enforceable protections against retaliation.”

“This rule is a direct assault on a professional, nonpartisan, merit-based civil service and the government services the American people rely on every day,” AFGE President Everett Kelley said.

Two issues jump off the page.

Firstly, let’s just suggest that right off the bat, the very idea of a government-employee union is an abomination.  It’s time the AFGE was abolished.

Secondly, if the current crop of bureaucrats had actually behaved like a “professional, nonpartisan, merit-based civil service” over the past, oh, eighty years then this action wouldn’t have been necessary.  But they haven’t, so here we are.

The bitter joke is that the civil service has always been the structure whereby Democrat policy has been implemented regardless of which party is in the White House.  This new Executive Order from DJT is simply rectifying that attitude, and it’s about damn time, too.

Classic Modern Beauty: Leelee Sobieski

Classic Beauty

This lovely woman has often been called “the poor man’s Helen Hunt”.  Myself, I think Helen Hunt is actually the poor man’s Leelee Sobieski.  Why?

What makes Leelee remarkable is that she quit acting at a relatively young age, choosing instead to live a normal life.  Here are the reasons she gave:

“Actors end up going from one role to another with all this energy behind them, and you just become emptier and emptier and emptier — you end up having no real experiences,” she explained. “To cry, you end up drawing on the experiences of another character you played.

“I would cry every time I had to kiss somebody; I couldn’t stomach it. I would think ‘I like this person, so I don’t think they should pay me to kiss them,’ or ‘I don’t like this person, so I don’t want to kiss them. Why is my kiss for sale?’ It made me feel really cheap.

“It might have been acting, but it was as real for me as my first or third kiss, so it was confusing for me.”

Good for her.

Getting Wood

Gratuitous Gun Pics, The Gun Thing

…and no, we’re not talking about looking at bikini pics of Salma Hayek.  We’re talking about this nonsense, as sent to me by my so-called friend Combat Controller:

And once fitted:

Seriously?

As I pointed out to CC, the only thing stopping me from reaching for Ye Olde Credytte Carde is that said “furniture upgrade” costs nearly double what I spent on the rifle itself.

Gotta admit, though, it’s not bad-looking.

Incitement

Anarchist thugs, Riotous Assemblies

Well now, isn’t that special?

During a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) went on a tirade, during which he appeared to say that citizens would be justified in shooting ICE agents.

“But what is really the major problem in this country today is the fascism in our streets, the attacks on American citizens by masked hoodlums,” Nadler began. “If you were attacked by a masked person, you might think you were being kidnapped. You’d be justified in shooting the person to protect yourself.”

It has long been established that ICE agents wear masks because they are under threat of the radical left identifying and doxxing them. On top of that, even masked ICE agents are clearly identifiable as federal agents every single time. There is no need to suggest that it would be justified to shoot ICE agents.

“But we see people being shot, for what? For driving a car?” Nadler added.

Here we go.  Throw in a few blatant untruths or careful elisions — that would be “attacked by a masked person [wearing a clearly-identifiable law enforcement uniform]” and “being shot for driving a car [at people wearing clearly-identifiable law enforcement uniforms]” — and guess what?  According to this Nadler asshole, “You’d be justified at shooting the person to protect yourself.”

Yes.  Let’s see how that plays out in a courtroom, shall we?

But what the hell, if that fat fuck Nadler can say what he said, then I’ll say this:

I hope that in these specious cases of self-defense, the perpetrators never make it as far as the courtroom, but end up lying in a pool of their own blood right there in the streets, shot dead by law enforcement.

Enough, as they say, is enough.  The Left seems eager for a crowd of martyrs to further their little anti-ICE / anti-Trump PR campaign;  maybe it’s time we gave them what they want, in spades.

And Another Thing

Elections, Politics

Before we get dragged into another pointless argument with the Usual Suspects, let us remind ourselves what the three purposes of a secure Voter ID card are, namely that you are:

  • a U.S. citizen, and therefore entitled to vote
  • alive, and
  • can only vote once.

It’s really that simple.  Now ask yourself the simple question:  who would be against such a simple concept, and why?

The next step is a lot more, shall we say, punitive.  Considering that the above constitutes one of the principle freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution (i.e. that citizens are entitled to vote), then I would suggest one final step:

Any U.S. House Representative or Senator who votes against this measure should be immediately removed from their position because they have betrayed their oath of office, and must be subject to a recall vote in their state or district.

Frankly, I’m sick of fucking around with this nonsense — fraudulent votes, stolen elections, voter negation and all the rest — and it’s time we put an end to it.  Immediately.