Tag: Good Guys

Worthy Cause

Patriotism, The Gun Thing

Longtime Readers may remember that the Son&Heir once belonged to a shooting club here in Dallas known as the Shooting Stars, doing air pistol, air rifle and free (.22LR) pistol disciplines. For a tiny club, their output has been impressive. When the Son&Heir was a member (he’s now emeritus):

  • Greg Markowski just missed representing the U.S.A. at the 2010 Olympics (ranked 5th, but they only took the top 3) — he started at the Stars, and was recruited into the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit, then got a place on TeamUSA, going on to several World Cup competitions
  • Taylor Gallegos was a several-times Air Pistol Champion, has been on three national teams in Air Pistol, went to the World Cup in Munich and to others since
  • Mindy Miles won collegiate championships in Air Rifle, and is now on the Texas Christian University (TCU) Women’s Air Rifle team, which is rated as the top women’s air rifle team in the world
  • and of course, there was the Son&Heir himself, who was several-times the Texas Junior State Champ in Air Pistol and Free Pistol, and made TeamUSA’s development (farm) team. Like Markowski, he missed the London Olympics despite being in the top 10 rankings.

So: the Shooting Stars need some equipment, i.e. some of the electronic targets that are used in airgun competition, which are especially needed as the club often hosts the state championships. They are looking for some angels to help them out.

That would be you lot. Once again, this is not a bunch of goofballs; they’re a serious outfit who have contributed much to the shooting sports in Texas as well as nationally and internationally. Here’s their website (check out their recent achievements, good grief!), and follow the link to their GoFundMe appeal. 

With all the nonsense that’s being thrown at us shooters these days, this is a worthy cause. I’ve sprung for $100; I just wish I could do more.

Please join me in helping them out.

Sounds About Right

Patriotism, Politics

So Viktor Orban is being painted as some kind of fascist / racist / [insert liberal epithet du jour here] because he’s not in favor of allowing his country to be swamped with foreign “refugees”, saying for example:

Hungary’s controversial Prime Minister has said refugees arriving in Europe are “Muslim invaders” who have created “parallel societies that will never unite”.

Yeah, well he’s right about that. Muslims don’t assimilate, they aren’t willing to FIFO (fit in or fuck off) and they do want to impose their backward fucking belief system on all of us. And yes, I know: Not All Muslims Are Like That — right up until they form a sizable minority (+25% or so) within their host population, whereupon the shit hits the fan and it’s shari’a-shari’a-shari’a; in other words, honor killings, murder of apostates, barbaric treatment of women and all the other revolting little items from the Islamic playbook.

More from Orban:

He claimed that most refugees were not fleeing to Europe to escape danger, but rather were “economic migrants in search of a better life.”

Well, that’s true as well, isn’t it? As a one-time economic migrant myself (albeit a legal one, unlike most of these fuckers), I can sympathize with their plight and desire to improve their miserable Third-World lives — just don’t claim to be political refugees fleeing persecution because you aren’t, mostly. If these shitbirds were truly set on improving their lot in life, they’d assimilate into their host countries and become economically viable citizens — but they don’t, of course. They live in refugee camps, take welfare handouts and create rape-gangs.

But Orban’s most telling statement is this one:

“I can only speak for the Hungarian people, and they don’t want any migration.”

Lest we forget, Orban is the democratically-elected prime minister of a sovereign nation and given that in a few months he’s going to be reelected to office in a landslide (you read it here first), he’s telling the truth — and to ignore the wishes of his voters (as former Ossi-Commie Angela Merkel has done and still does in Germany) would constitute the grossest betrayal of his people’s wishes.

And speaking of Germany, Orban has this to say:

“The reason why people are in your country is not because they are refugees, but because they want a German life.
“I’ve never understood how chaos, anarchy and illegal border crossings are viewed as something good in a country like Germany, which we view as the best example of discipline and the rule of law.
Asked to explain why Hungary accepted no refugees while Germany took in hundreds of thousands, Orban told Bild: “The difference is, you wanted the migrants, and we didn’t.”

No wonder the Euros hate him: he speaks the truth, he speaks his mind, and he represents the wishes of his people, instead of spouting feelgood liberal pablum and ignoring the voters’ concerns — which is about as succinct a description of the European Union ruling elite as I can come up with.

I think The Donald should invite both Viktor Orban and his Polish counterpart Mateusz Morawiecki (who is cut from the same cloth and is likewise loathed by the EU goblins) to a state dinner at the White House. That will do several things: stick one in the eye of the EU (always a good thing, in my opinion) and reinforce Trump’s own bona fides in the matter of bogus refugees and illegal immigrants.

Mostly, though, Trump should invite Orban over because I think we could learn at least one thing from the Hungarians:

Seems to be working quite well, from all accounts.

The Next Phase

Travels

They say that guests and fish have one thing in common: after three days, they start to stink.

I have been a guest at Free Market Towers for three months.

My stay at the Towers comes to an end today, whereafter I shall be embarking on the next phase of my six-month sabbatical. The next couple of months will be spent not relaxing in baronial splendor, but in travel to all sorts of places To Be Named Later. In the interim, I’ll be staying at The Englishman’s farm which, as it lies but a few miles from Free Market Towers, does not represent too much of a geographical change, but it will be an enormous residential change — from a mansion:

…to a humble farmhouse:

It will take some adjusting on my part: The Englishman is a more accommodating man than Mr. FM — he doesn’t flog his farmworkers, for example — but it doesn’t matter, as I’ll be there for but a couple of days before being shipped off to one of his far-flung properties on the Cornish coast for a week or so.

At the risk of causing massive embarrassment, however, I have to thank the Free Markets for their boundless hospitality, friendship and companionship. By having me as their guest, they brought me to one of my favorite parts of the world — and indeed, my late wife’s absolutely favorite part of the world — which has allowed me time to refresh my soul, regain some kind of normalcy and begin to live my life again (albeit at the expense of a battered liver).

My gift to them, as I mentioned before, will be a genuine South African sjambok made from hippo hide. I’m sure Mrs. FM will put it to good use.

 

Bloody Immigrants

Business

They come to your country, build successful multi-million-dollar companies while still in high school*… as I remarked to Mr. Free Market, he’ll probably end up marrying into the Royal Family.

Most teenagers of his age spend their school lunch breaks playing football or chatting to girls.
But Akshay Ruparelia used every spare moment to sell houses.The young entrepreneur – nicknamed Alan Sugar by his friends – set up an online estate agency while still at sixth form.
The teenager started his business after persuading family members to lend him £7,000 and already employs 12 people.
And his clever business model has been such a hit that his company doorsteps.co.uk has been valued at £12 million in just over a year.
Now aged 19, Akshay has had to put plans of studying economics and management at Oxford University on hold because the firm he set up at school is expanding so rapidly.

I’m curious as to why he’d bother with university at all, seeing as he seems to be doing quite well without the academic drag of “theory” (as opposed to actual, you know, stuff that works in the real world).

Good for him.

*For my Murkin Readers: “sixth form” is the equivalent to an extra year of high school — thirteenth grade, as it were — as a preparatory step towards university. It is one of my deepest regrets that I didn’t stay on for the Sixth myself; my life would have been considerably different had I done so.

Easy-Peasy

Men & Women

…and in a somewhat-related note to the above post:

I drive many women of my acquaintance insane with rage when I tell them that men look for only three things in a woman: Sex, Sandwiches and Silence. (Don’t chide me: enraging women is my sacred mission.)

But courtesy of Insty comes this stunning revelation from a woman who has achieved that most elusive of female goals: finding and keeping a decent man. And it’s so simple:

Food, clean clothes, tidy room, sex and a shoulder to lean on.  Yep, it’s really that simple.

There’s a lot more detail, of course, but her plan is brilliant. Needless to say, the feministicals are going to go batshit crazy about JudgyBitch’s advice. I don’t care. Because it’s true, and moreover, I bet her guy does just as much to look after her (“LOTS!”). This, however, is the clincher for me:

But we’re not talking about quid pro quo here. If your first instinct was to set up a mental balance sheet and make sure all of YOUR thoughtful actions are being returned in EXACT PROPORTION to your outlay, you might as well give up now. You don’t know shit about men, or relationships of any kind.

Exactly. Give this lady a 50th wedding anniversary. I hope she gets it. (And a quick note to Mr. JudgyBitch: fuck this one up, and you deserve daily ball-kickings for the rest of your life.)

Manual Labor

Advice

I have often advised young men to get a trade before going off to college — and more especially so if they are unclear as to what career they choose to follow. There’s no point in getting into debt when a well-intentioned degree in, say, Languages does not result in decent job prospects, and even worse when you realize that your career preference is not really congruent with your degree — a youthful desire to become a recording engineer transforms into a real desire to become a doctor when maturity comes into play. (And note that I’m not even talking about worthless degrees in nonsense such as Post-Modernist Poetry or African-American Studies.)

In fact, I’d counsel young men to join the Armed Forces if they still haven’t made their mind up about their career by age 19. (My good friend Doc Russia is a case study in this scenario: shiftless yoot at 18, USMC for a few years, med school and now a respected doctor.) The military has a wonderful way of crystallizing one’s thought process and compelling maturity.

Now comes this little snippet from Over Here:

Electricians are earning as much as £3,000 a week as they cash in on a chronic shortage of skilled workers across the country.
That amounts to £156,000 a year – around six times the average wage and more than the £150,000 earned by the Prime Minister.
Plumbers and bricklayers are also benefiting, with wages rising by as much as 10 per cent in the past 12 months.
Plumbers can earn as much as £2,000 a week, while brickies can bring home £1,125 – more than £50,000 a year.

Of course, this should come as no surprise. I recall some years back when Reader Mark C., at that time an executive at a large corporation in the oil exploration / development business (think: Bechtel, Asea Brown Boveri, those kinds of companies) was bemoaning the fact that he was unable to find enough warm bodies to train as welders and oilfield technicians, even when after a two-year apprenticeship, newly-minted workers would have an internationally-portable skill set that could command a starting annual wage of over $75,000 — for a 21-year-old.

The same is true for carpenters (rough, finished or cabinet-makers), electricians (light- or heavy current) and many other such trades. All you need to do is look at the progress made by that Jason guy on the Holmes on Homes TV show — a raw, inexperienced kid with nothing but a strong back and willingness to learn; three years later a qualified construction project manager who could start his own business and make a small (or even large) fortune. Don’t even get me started on the pro electricians, plumbers and such who featured on the show: even for Canucks, they must each have made a fortune, and were worth every penny. (As I recall, Holmes used a young Polish plumber, an immigrant who could barely speak English, on his earlier shows; by the end of the third season, this same kid had his own business with lots of other kids now working for him, and spoke perfect English.)

Compared to that, a drama major or Womyn’s Studies professor look quite insignificant — which they should be.

I’ve said before that my late father always told me to work with my brain and not my hands. Considering that he started off as a welder / boilermaker and ended up as the owner of a civil engineering company, it was the worst advice I’d ever got. (He went to night school at the Tech while working his day job, and eventually graduated with a civil engineering degree. Not bad for a farm boy.) He always told me to get a degree — any degree — because I could always fall back on that if my chosen career as a professional musician didn’t work out. What he should have said was, “Do a trade apprenticeship — any trade — and you can always fall back on that if you decide that being a lawyer sucks.”

I often wonder what would have happened had I done a few years’ carpentry right after leaving school. Whatever I’d finally become, I’m pretty sure that there would have been far fewer periods of abject poverty in my life.