Splendid Isolation

Tag: Evil Bastards

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.

Quelle Surprise

Disaster, Eco-Crap

Well, well, well.  Turns out that the massive fire in Hawaii which caused all those deaths has absolutely nothing to do with Global Cooling Climate Warming Change©, but instead has the grimy fingerprints of incompetent officialdom all over the place:

The Maui fire is proving to be the worst wildfire in American history, having taken over 100 lives and likely many more by the time the count is complete. The fire itself was started by downed power lines, which was poorly fought (it was declared contained before it raged out of control), was made deadly by an incompetent Emergency Management official (Karen wrote about this in her VIP column earlier today), and to cap it all off was made difficult to fight by a government official who refused to approve the use of water to fight the fire.

That’s a trifecta of terrible, right there.  But it gets worse:

It turns out that nine years ago, a report by Hawaiian fire researchers sounded the alarm that the area was at extremely high risk of burning. Many key recommendations were ignored.

Where have we heard this before?  Oh yeah, in California.

And needless to say, one of the gummint lackeys is not only incompetent, but a woketard:

During the inferno that devastated part of the island of Maui, wiping entire towns off the map and possibly killing more than a thousand people (once a full assessment can be made), people on Maui begged state officials to allow West Maui stream water to be diverted to fill up reservoirs for firefighting. That request went to M. Kaleo Manuel, Deputy Director of Hawaii’s Commission on Water Resource Management, and he delayed approval of that water for five hours – five hours in which the once-contained fire exploded. By the time the approval was received, workers were unable to reach the siphon release so that the water could be diverted. Now we’re learning that Manuel, an Obama Foundation Leader for the Asia Pacific Region, is a climate change activist and DEI devotee who’s said, “Like, we can share [water], but it requires true conversations about equity.”

Yeah, having more than a hundred people die unnecessarily sounds pretty equitable to me.  And the highlighted part  of the above goes without saying because of course this stupid tit is an Obama lickspittle.

Where It Counts

Anti-Gun Nannies, The Gun Thing

I saw this yesterday (link in pic):

…and it struck me that politicians shouldn’t ever take this at face value.  Why?

Because we gun owners seldom show up to demonstrate.  We do, however, show up at the polls, and in greater numbers than the ninnies carrying silly placards.

Wussy TennGov Bill Lee should take note.

By the way, the anti-gunners aren’t having much success, as this weepy article reveals.

Stupid Argument

Business, Celebrities, Two-Minute Hate

Loath as I would ever be to bestow any kind of acknowledgment to the Ginger Whinger’s Duchess CaringSlut, on this issue I am firmly on her side.

The Duchess of Sussex once wore diamonds grown in a lab on a royal jaunt, but jeweller Eddie LeVian is not impressed. 

‘I’m concerned people think it’s the same as a diamond,’ he tells me at the Tower of London, where his brand Le Vian hosted a show. ‘It’s misleading.’

Of course, he makes his livelihood pimping overpriced rocks for the ghastly De Beers diamond criminal cartel, so of course he would sniff at “man-made” diamonds as not being “the real thing” — although they actually are.  Even if they were grown in a clean laboratory somewhere instead of having been hauled out of the ground by child laborers in Africa, their chemical composition, their hardness and appearance make them real diamonds, absolutely indistinguishable from their bloody African cousins.

Which of course makes the diamond industry quake in their expensive handmade boots, because it means the end of their tidy little cartel which has established itself by dint of creating an artificial shortage through the imposition of “controls” mostly illegal — ask yourself why De Beers doesn’t have an office in the United States (RICO coff coff ).  And gawd forbid that diamonds should be priced at even semi-precious levels rather than as the horribly-overpriced geegaws they are.

So while the Duchess Formerly Known As Third Actress From The Right may well have worn said manufactured gems because of Evil Child Labor Exploitation — not actually a bad reason, for once — the fact remains that all the pouting about the diamonds being fake is being driven, as always, by the greed and self-preservation instincts of the fucking awful diamond industry.

Who are far, far worse a cancer on society than the Markle creature could ever be, try as she may.

Lures

Lies and Untruths, Marketing / Advertising

Last week I received in my email something from these guys:

…with the following message:

Walmart, a company who’s known to be one of the biggest supporters of conservative causes, has just bowed to evil liberal demands.  Here’s what happened…

Several major companies (including Amazon, Walmart, Barnes & Noble and more) have decided it’s against Americans’ best interests to carry a new book on their store shelves.  And the reason why should have you fuming…

The book is called The First 72 Hours.

The First 72 Hours was written by one of the world’s leading survival authors, Damian Campbell.

And the reason these companies won’t allow you to buy his book is because it exposes how the left is using the current political unrest to steal our freedom in ways we never imagined…

And it teaches you how to prepare for the coming collapse.

The secrets in this book are well-known by government insiders…

And Campbell has put them all in this book in an attempt to warn you about what is going to happen in the next few months.

Since Campbell isn’t allowed to sell this book in stores we convinced him to let us hand out a few copies at a deep discount.

Right now we have permission to give 50% OFF copies to the next 288 people who click here.

However, once you get access to this book you’ll need to review it ASAP.

I can’t tell you when the S will hit the F. But I can tell you Jesus was right that no man knows the hour – and that we should be vigilant and prepared.

Get your copy of The First 72 Hours for 50% OFF before they’re gone… and before it’s too late.

Being of a suspicious nature when people send me stuff and want me to spend money with them, I did a little investigation for myself.  I didn’t look at Walmart, because the next time I buy a book at Wally World will be the first time, and the last time I bought anything at B&N was when we were still homeschooling the kids.

So onto Teh Intarwebz I went.  A whole two minutes later, I came across this:

…so the second paragraph contained at least one lie, which kind of pissed me off right there.

But my ire having been aroused, I decided to do a little more digging, and found the following:

  • the book is under 100 pages long — and for $40, I want something a little more substantial than what is basically a bullet-point list.
  • it’s apparently published by “Prepared Patriots”, which printing house doesn’t exist.
  • However, there is a website called PreparedPatriot.com, which sells the usual tactical / survival stuff.  Are they the “publishers” of said book?  Well, no — at least, I found no mention of the book anywhere on the website.

Well, what about this “Firearm Man” guy (or org)?  Searching for “firearm-man.com” takes one here:

  • “firearm-man.com” is just a fucking newsletter;  basically, a means whereby people can send out spam to whoever.

So:

Fuck them, fuck their newsletter, and by the way, fuck Damian Campbell and his poxy little expensive brochure.  I wouldn’t accept it as a gift, now.

Caveat emptor, y’all.