Tag: Evil Bastards

Eucalyptus Now

Bad News, Gummint

I often disagree with columnist Peter Hitchens (brother of the late Christopher), but I have to say that his latest column does resonate with me, because he points out what I often say:  that Gummint often uses apocalyptic messages to clamp down on our freedoms.  And he does it using facts and history (always the most difficult argument to refute).  Here’s an example:

The former editor of The Times, Sir Simon Jenkins, recently listed these unfulfilled scares: bird flu did not kill the predicted millions in 1997. In 1999 it was Mad Cow Disease and its human variant, vCJD, which was predicted to kill half a million. Fewer than 200 in fact died from it in the UK.
The first Sars outbreak of 2003 was reported as having ‘a 25 per cent chance of killing tens of millions’ and being ‘worse than Aids’. In 2006, another bout of bird flu was declared ‘the first pandemic of the 21st Century’.
There were similar warnings in 2009, that swine flu could kill 65,000. It did not. The Council of Europe described the hyping of the 2009 pandemic as ‘one of the great medical scandals of the century’.

And Hitchens’ devastating take:

In only one place – aboard the cruise ship Diamond Princess – has an entire closed community been available for study. And the death rate there – just one per cent – is distorted because so many of those aboard were elderly. The real rate, adjusted for a wide age range, could be as low as 0.05 per cent and as high as one per cent.
…
About 1,600 people die every day in the UK for one reason or another. A similar figure applies in Italy and a much larger one in China. The coronavirus deaths, while distressing and shocking, are not so numerous as to require the civilised world to shut down transport and commerce, nor to surrender centuries-old liberties in an afternoon.

Fortunately, our government in the US is not as quite as panic-stricken as the BritGov, and while we’re being warned to be careful and take healthy precautions, we’re nowhere close to facing the governmental excesses that the Brits are.

This latest Wuhan-virus pandemic may be as terrible as we’re being told;  but I agree with the above conclusions that it probably won’t be — and all our well-meaning precautions may end up costing us more than necessary:  a lot more than necessary.

This means that we should continue to be vigilant — not just against disease, but against the loss of our freedoms — and Hitchens’ article serves as a very timely warning why we should always be on our guard against the doomsayers because very often, their motives are not altruistic.

For a much, much longer examination of the thing, go here.  While the article is long, it’s definitely not too long to read — and its conclusion is even better than that of Hitchens (with my emphasis in red):

The COVID-19 hysteria is pushing aside our protections as individual citizens and permanently harming our free, tolerant, open civil society. Data is data. Facts are facts. We should be focused on resolving COVID-19 with continued testing, measuring, and be vigilant about protecting those with underlying conditions and the elderly from exposure. We are blessed in one way, there is an election in November. Never forget what happened and vote.

You may ask yourself. Who is this guy? Who is this author? I’m a nobody. That is also the point. The average American feels utterly powerless right now. I’m an individual American who sees his community and loved ones being decimated without given a choice, without empathy, and while the media cheers on with high ratings.

When this is all over, look for massive confirmation bias and pyrrhic celebration by elites. There will be vain cheering in the halls of power as Main Street sits in pieces. Expect no apology, that would be political suicide. Rather, expect to be given a Jedi mind trick of “I’m the government and I helped.”

The health of the State will be even stronger with more Americans dependent on welfare, another trillion stimulus filled with pork for powerful friends, and a bailout for companies that charged us $200 change fees for nearly a decade.  Washington DC will be fine. New York will still have all of the money in the world. Our communities will be left with nothing but a shadow of the longest bull market in the history of our country.

 

MOAR Gun Control

Marxists, The Gun Thing

From some Commie mayor in California [redundancy alert] comes this opinion:

[A]fter customers lined up around gun stores in several counties Tuesday — including outside the Bullseye Bishop in San Jose — San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo declared that “gun stores are non-essential.”
“We are having panic buying right now for food,” Liccardo said Wednesday. “The one thing we cannot have is panic buying of guns.”

Why not?  Actually, if there’s a risk of society breaking down (e.g. L.A.’s Rodney King riots), that’s precisely the time when law-abiding people have an absolute need for guns.

However, as this little Stalinist is in charge of San Jose (home to the largest per-capita population of socialists outside San Francisco or Seattle), I say:  fuck ’em.  They voted him into office, let them deal with the consequences thereof.

And when the Unwashed Horde comes a-callin’ for some impromptu undocumented property redistribution, most of the good citizens of San Jose won’t be able to defend themselves — although Hizzoner, protected by the mayor’s Praetorian Guard, won’t ever have that problem now, will he?

The same kind of thing is happening in D.C. and Philadelphia as well, but I’ve long since ceased to care about those shitholes.

However, there is one unexpected light in the looming darkness:

When Illinois Gov. J.B. [“Fatboi”] Pritzker (D) issued an executive order Friday to put a statewide shutdown in place, he exempted gun and ammunition stores by labeling them “essential.”

Illinois?  Illinois??  ILLINOIS???  Talk about unexpected.  Had you asked me earlier, I would have put Fatboi near the top of the list of socialist governors standing in line to use the Wuhan virus excuse to hack away at gun dealers’ businesses.

He’s still a total asshole, but hey… I’ll take ’em where I get ’em.

Ungrateful

Business, Friends and Family

Here’s an interesting one, and it leaves me curiously conflicted

A millionaire has revealed he refuses to help his struggling parents pay off their mortgage so they can retire because they wouldn’t invest in his fledgling company five years ago.  The unnamed son, believed to be from the UK, explained on Reddit that he started a business in 2015, and his parents refused to invest £100 because they thought it would fail.  However in the last couple of years it’s boomed – but the son, who earns ‘borderline seven figures a year’, remains bitter about his parents’ lack of support.
The son explained he quit his office job, which paid £26,000 a year, in order to start his business in 2015 – when his parents and siblings earned twice or triple what he made.
‘When I opened my business, I asked if they wanted to invest as little as £100 in it, no one did… My entire family thought that my business was going to fail, just like I failed my sixth form,’ he wrote.
However, the company turned out to be a success and the business boomed in 2018 and 2019.
The son wrote: ‘My parents still have around £200,000 in mortgage payments left and are about to retire. Yesterday at a family reunion, my aunt asked why I don’t help them out financially considering I make more in a year than they make in a decade.’
He said he told his aunt he did not want to help because his parents had shown no belief in his venture.
‘I also told her that my parents made more than enough to put aside some money each month towards retirement, but due to their unorganised spending habits they were living pay cheque to pay cheque every month. They were making TRIPLE what I was making when I was an office boy,’ he explained.

Here’s why I’m conflicted.

I myself couldn’t do this to my parents, because parents.  (And if you need me to explain that rationale, you need help.)

On the other hand:  one of my ironclad rules in dealing with people is this:  I never forget an insult, and I never forgive an injury.  I am the world’s best friend to have — I’ll do anything to help a close friend — but screw me over or betray my trust, and there is a good chance that I’ll never speak to you again.

So in that moral context, I can understand  this young guy’s attitude towards people who didn’t help him on his way up, but I can’t forgive it.  And here’s why.

What he seems to have forgotten is that if he’d never have been born, they could probably have paid off their mortgage long before now.  But they had him, raised and nurtured him, and when he’d grown up, they let him go.  All that stuff costs money, lots of it (as any parent knows).

But all that said, I have little sympathy for the parents now, because they had the chance to help their child — for a piffling amount of money — and refused.  The essence of parenthood is to give, and give, and give — sometimes even when you can’t give any more, you still give.  Because it’s your child, that’s why.  Telling him his idea was dumb and he was going to fail (again) was a dick move — and now that he’s turned out for the better, they shouldn’t be surprised by his attitude — because they created it.

He’s angry at them for refusing to support him, and  for insulting him by recalling past failures.  The hurt goes deep, and I quite understand it.  I still couldn’t do what he’s done, because the corollary to being a part of a family is that when you’re an adult, you support your parents — and give, and give, and give — sometimes even when you can’t give anymore.

That’s family, and family is the basic building block of a happy and well-ordered society.

A man stabbed his mother to death, and as she lay dying she saw the knife had turned in his hand and he’d cut himself.  With her last breath she whispered, “Oh my son, bandage thy wound lest thou bleed to death.”

Parenthood.

News Roundup

Bad News

This week, a picture’s worth a thousand words (links in the pictures):


…you see, that’s the nice thing about being a sovereign nation and not part of some unelected supranational entity:  you don’t need to get permission from anybody when your own self-interest is involved.


…oh NOES !!!  No Aintree, no Train Smash Women!  How much more must we endure?


… nobody cares what you think, you washed-up old Marxist bitch.


…STFU, you stupid name-brand nobody.  As if anyone cares what you think, either.


…yup, there go the Commies;  always with the “experts” to tell us how to run our lives.  And Congress?  I’d rather put Steve Urkel in charge.


…make it “permanent”, and at least some good will have come out of this shit.


…no, no, you silly people, you shouldn’t be buying eeeevil guns:  why, the government will look after you and keep you safe — just like they do your families back in Wuhan.


…what’s even funnier is that most of his supporters will believe him.

And finally, one pic to answer another:

  …

Crisis Not Being Wasted

Gummint, Marxists, The Gun Thing

“Never let a crisis go to waste [when furthering your own objectives]” is the mantra of the Socialists, and indeed they grab it whenever they can.  Thus:

The mayor of Champaign, Illinois has declared a town emergency over the Wuhan coronavirus that includes a potential ban on the sale of firearms and ammunition.
According to a local report from WAND 17, Champaign Mayor Deborah Frank Feinen has issued an executive order that would give her office “extraordinary powers.” She has issued the order despite the town and surrounding area not having a single case of the disease.

Of course, controlling gun- and ammo sales would do nothing, nada, zip and zilch to contain, cure or prevent the Wuhan virus, but the point is not about relevance, but about opportunity.

So of course the Marxists in government are going to grab at it with both greedy little hands.

I imagine that the road traffic between Champaign and, say, Indiana is going to increase rapidly, and Illinois is going to lose serious money in taxes stemming from lost gun- and ammo sales;  but that doesn’t matter, comrade, as long as the aims of The Movement are being satisfied.

And to all Commies, of course, if there’s a problem only Gummint can fix it:

“There should be a national approach to ensuring every factory that can make hand sanitizer should be on 24/7 shifts and the distribution could go to the places that need it most” [Chief Commissar of NYFC] de Blasio said.

You want to see real shortages?  Let the State decide on selection, production and distribution.  I can see the headlines already:

Government Announces 5-Year Plan To Make Hand Sanitizer;  Production Slated To Begin In Fall 2052

Government Hand Sanitizer Factory Sends 60,000 Empty Bottles To Restaurant In North Dakota;  Owner Mystified

Government Hand Sanitizer Factory Makes 2 Million Bottles Of Hand Sanitizer;  Government Trucking Center Has No Trucks Available To Deliver Them, And Government Railcars Busy Delivering Sand To Canada

Government Hand Sanitizer Factory Makes 2 Million Gallons Of Mouthwash By Mistake, But Has No Bottles On Hand To Fill Anyway;  Uses Mouthwash To Clean Factory Floor, Pours Remaining 1.99 Million Gallons Into Town Reservoir

Congress Appropriates $250 Billion For Hand Sanitizer Production;  Government Factories Only Able To Produce 20 Gallons, Total

And finally:

CDC Finds That Government-Formulated Hand Sanitizer Causes Skin To Blister;  U.S. Forced To Import Sanitizer From… China 

Let’s hear it from Comrade Stalin:

Poxy little statists.