Shortcomings

The other evening I was watching a rather good TV bio of the Virgin wunderkind  (not so much of a kid anymore) Richard Branson.  I love “rags-to-riches” stories at the best of times, and while Branson was not really a “rags” case — comfortably middle-class, rather — the fact remains that he built the Virgin conglomerate from nothing into what it is today.  And he wasn’t schooled, much, because he’s severely dyslexic and this in no small part caused him to leave school at age 16 and never look back.

And now he’s gone and cocked it all up.

You see, he’s bought into the nonsensical “climate-change-we’re-all-gonna-diiiieeeee” philosophy hook, line, sinker and rod, as have so many successful people of his ilk.

And I can’t help thinking that it’s because he’s uneducated.  Now granted, in today’s world such stupidity can and has sprung from the academe (not to mention other Marxist ideologues), but that’s beside the point.

You see, without a proper education, someone like Branson is more likely to be swayed by plausible-but-still-nonsensical arguments, especially when uttered and backed by “experts” (scientists, doctors, academics, whatever) because uneducated people always give more credence to these mountebanks than the latter deserve.

This is why so many wealthy people buy into stupidity — they’ve been so busy making money that they’ve ignored a substantial amount of the real world (whether political, sociological, scientific or academic) unless it has a specific impact upon their business.

It’s also why the wealthy buy into the arrant bullshit as propagated by the World Economic Forum (WEF), because they feel as though only they have the power to move the lumpenproletariat  (that would be you and me) into a direction that they feel is the “proper” way, regardless of whether the way is actually proper or not (mostly not, as it turns out).  Add to this the naked and unashamed thirst for power by the usual Socialist assholes (most politicians) — who, by the way, already have the power to make the wealthy a lot less wealthy — and you have the hopeless naïveté of people like Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey who think that simply throwing money (their own money, to give them some credit) at a health- or education problem in the Third World is going to solve that problem, when they’ve never read Kipling’s White Man’s Burden  poem (or if they have, they’ve misunderstood its actual meaning — that lack of education, again).

And just to be clear:  when I say “education”, I mean it in its Nockian sense.  Many of my Readers, for example, are highly educated despite not having university degrees;  and many more have university degrees but have educated themselves way past their academic discipline.  I was able, for example, to see right through the forecasting nonsense of the Greens, despite not (yet) having a university degree because I had earlier learned how algorithms work — and more importantly, how they are tested.  When you realize that not one of the near-term doomsday prognoses of the Greens has come even close to being fulfilled, you will understand why their latest climate-change warnings are all pointed away from the near-term and towards times decades or more hence.  (Traditionally, algorithms have had a terrible time in making long-term predictions because of the instability of the world in general, but that’s been conveniently and deliberately ignored by the climate doomsayers.)

Which is why Richard Branson and his cohorts have bought into the Green nonsense completely — they have no idea why (or even that) the forecasts won’t come true, but because “scientific consensus” says they will, they believe them.

They’re as gullible as the fools who bought products from snake-oil salesmen or Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop (serious overlap), but unlike the aforementioned, who buy the products for their own benefit, the Bransons believe that their wealth will help them become world-saving philanthropists.

Idiots.

Four Down, Six To Go

Okay, maybe three and seven out of the ten listed.  (I read Undaunted Courage, about the Lewis & Clark expedition, not Lewis’s account, but that should count for something.)

Of the others, Storm of Steel  impressed me the most.  Ernst Jünger must be the greatest soldier who ever lived, if for no other reason that he survived all four years of WWI in the trenches of the Western Front, not as some staff flunky or quartermaster’s orderly, but as a front-line rifleman.  And not a whiny little brat like Remarque‘s Paul, either:  just a man of steel — which could have been the title of his book, come to think of it.

I’ve been wanting to read Last Train  for years, but just never got around to it.  Ditto Death Company, if for no other reason than to fill in the many gaps of my knowledge of the Italian Front.  Both duly ordered.

I’ll get after the rest in due course — it’s an excellent list, so thanks to the folks at Intellectual Takeout  for that.  (If they aren’t on your list of daily reads, fix that now.)

Baby Vulcan Smiles

We Texans love our guns, and therefore our gun stores.  So when some Noo Yawk assholes start fucking around with the latter, we take action:

Citigroup Inc. is once again facing an ouster from the booming Texas municipal-bond market after the state’s Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office determined the bank “discriminates” against the firearms industry. 

The ruling indicates that the New York-based bank runs afoul of a Republican-backed law passed nearly two years ago that bars most government contracts with companies that engage in anti-gun business practices. The decision appears to halt the bank’s ability to underwrite most municipal-bond offerings in the state.

It’s a whipsaw moment for Citigroup. The bank had temporarily halted its work in the Texas muni market after the law went into effect in September 2021 but had revived that business two months later, saying it complies with the law. Paxton’s ruling ends a months-long probe into Citi’s corporate policy.

“It has been determined that Citigroup has a policy that discriminates against a firearm entity or firearm trade association,” Leslie Brock, assistant attorney general chief of the public finance division, wrote in the letter. 

The determination means that Citigroup’s so-called standing letter, a document that had thus far allowed the bank to underwrite debt in one of the nation’s largest public bond markets, has been rejected, according to a Jan. 18 letter distributed to lawyers and viewed by Bloomberg.

“Therefore, until further notice, we will not approve any public security issued on or after today’s date in which Citigroup purchases or underwrites the public security, or in which Citigroup is otherwise a party to a covered contract relating to the public security,” according to the letter.

Of course, Citi’s acting all butt-hurt:

“We’re disappointed with the decision and will remain engaged with the Texas AG office to review our options,” said Mark Costiglio, a Citigroup spokesperson, in an emailed statement. “Citi has been financing public works in Texas for more than 150 years and we currently have more than 8,500 employees who call Texas home. As we’ve said previously, Citi does not discriminate against the firearms sector and believe we are in compliance with Texas law.”

Well, our legal guys say you do, and therefore you aren’t.

Yankee shitheads. Fuck ’em.

Fixed

Several people wrote to me — close to a dozen, in fact — all offering help in replacing the broken extractor from my battered but much-loved Inland M1 Carbine, and to all those people, please accept my sincerest thanks.

However, Longtime Reader Hank T. not only offered to replace the busted part, but to show me in person how simple a job it is — ha! — provided that one has the proper little G.I. tool which acts as a third hand.  As he lives less than an hour from my apartment, that meant not having to send parts to different parts of the Lower 48.  So yesterday I went over to his place, handed over said broken carbine, and within a half-hour the whole thing had been stripped, cleaned lubed and oh yes had received a new extractor.  It works!

I’m bending the truth a little here in describing the above as a half-hour job, because while the operation itself only  took about half an hour, I spent close to three hours in his workshop because he has all sorts of wonderful bangsticks in his possession.  And you know what that means, right?  I had to hold, and caress, and work the actions of said guns one by one because I’m a gun molester lover and the easiest way to make me purr is to hand me a beautiful gun with an exhortation to “just try that trigger”.

Drooling, lots of drooling, followed.  But clearly my orgasmic cries had disturbed Hank’s darling wife, who came to the workshop to see what all the fuss was about, and that added an hour onto the whole thing because a) she’s a darling and b) she has traveled to many of the places I have, so much experience-swapping took place.

I love to spend time with my Readers on a one-to-one basis, because while you’ve heard many of my stories and adventures on this back porch, I haven’t heard your stories and adventures, and I drink that stuff like I would a fine single malt.

And when I get a renewed gun out of it, as I did here, it’s all the finer.  I am the world’s worst gunsmith because I’m not mechanically-minded (rather the opposite), and I have no patience with inanimate objects — not your best qualities for a gunsmith, I think we can all agree — so I far prefer to hand my problem over to someone who knows what he’s doing and (as in this case) has the proper tools for the job.

So many thanks, Hank, and yes I absolutely want to spend some time at the range with you.  Let me know when you’re free.

Texas Ain’t Vancouver

Amid rising fears of furriners buying up Murkin land comes this little glimmer of sunshine:

Governor Greg Abbott (R-TX) vowed to back legislation prohibiting Chinese, Russian, Iranian, and North Korean citizens and entities from purchasing land in Texas.

The bill, submitted two months ago by Republican state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, states that citizens, corporations, and government agencies of the four nations “may not purchase or otherwise acquire title to real property” in the state. Abbott confirmed on Sunday that he would endorse the legislation, which has not yet been voted upon by lawmakers.

The bill should pass — and if not, I’ll be looking at the list of who voted against it.

Historical Voice Stilled Forever

I see with extreme regret that historian Paul Johnson has died.  Shit.

There is a very good case that Johnson’s History Of The American People should be required source material for high school U.S. History classes.

And his History Of The Jews and History Of Christianity (along with Jacques Barzun’s From Dawn To Decadence) should be part of World History classes in both high school and university curricula.

Oh, for heaven’s sake:  if you read all of Paul Johnson’s history books and absorb just a third of the material, you’ll still be one of the most educated people on the planet.

He will most definitely be missed.