Tag: Good News

Deep Freeze

Illegal immigrants, Immigration, Trumpism

No, this isn’t a post about winter weather.  It’s about this:

President Donald Trump’s deputies have shut down the legal migration pathways for people from 19 countries, pending the completion of security checks and interviews.

And about damn time too.  When the “huddled masses” want to come over here to avail themselves of our freedoms, solely to commit crimes… we owe it to ourselves to try to stop them before they get going.

(After these ingrates commit their little nefarious wealth redistribution games, however:


…I think you get the picture.)

Just to be clear, the nineteen affected countries are:

Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.

Basically, a bunch of Muzzy and Commie countries, the lot of them, and while some of their citizens may be fleeing those shitholes for all the right reasons — and I have a great deal of sympathy for their plight, for obvious reasons — all refugees and prospective citizens should absolutely require serious (i.e. non-Biden-style) vetting to make sure that the ungodly don’t try to sneak in to, say, set up a drug network, rape women, embezzle the welfare system or murder National Guardsmen.

When I think of all the hassle and scrutiny we went through with New Wife’s citizenship a couple of years back — she having done nothing other than teach children for nearly forty years — it sticks in my craw that during that same Biden presidency, a whole bunch of criminal scumbags were given the keys to the house because… well, just because.

And yes I know, some genuine refugees are going to be inconvenienced by this deep freeze.  But that’s the nature of laws:  the innocent get shafted by the need to contain the criminals (see for an example: every single useless gun control law).

Say Wut?

Lifestyle, Real Estate

Seems as though a few areas in the U.S. have seen large growth in real estate values since the Covid thing.  Mostly, it should be said, this is because property in the area was relatively inexpensive — i.e. the growth is off a low base.  Some of the towns, though, are inexplicable.

Top 10 cities and how much the value of their homes has increased since 2019:

  1. Knoxville, TN – +86% — I’d live there
  2. Fayetteville, AR – +84.5% — low base
  3. Charleston, SC – +81.3% — I’d live there
  4. Scranton, PA – +78.4% — inexplicable;  shit hole
  5. Syracuse, NY – +77.6% — inexplicable;  shit hole
  6. Portland, ME – +75.7% — I’d live there
  7. Rochester, NY – +75.2% — inexplicable;  shit hole
  8. New Haven, CT – +73.8% — expensive became more expensive
  9. Charlotte, NC – +73.1% — sorry, nope
  10. Chattanooga, TN – +72.9% — low base, but I’d live there.

See any on the list where you’d care to live?  Your comments are welcome.

Replacement Workers

Good Stuff, Illegal immigrants

I have to say that Jamie Wilson has just been clearing the fences recently.  Here’s her latest:

“Americans just won’t do these jobs.” That phrase infuriated me from the first time I heard it. I knew it was a lie. I had done the tobacco work myself. My brothers had. Every teenager we knew had. Every adult performed the hard labor that kept the region alive. Americans didn’t suddenly lose their work ethic. The jobs were taken from them — not by immigrants directly, but by American employers who built a business model on illegal labor and by a federal government that looked the other way for forty years.

What Americans “won’t do” are jobs that have been made illegal in everything but name — jobs where wages have collapsed to exploit desperation, where safety standards are ignored, where workers are paid off the books, where insurance and taxes are bypassed, and where living conditions violate every regulation on the books. When the floor is lowered that far, legal workers cannot enter the market at all. That isn’t laziness. That’s math.

And her supporting arguments are terrific.  Read the whole article.

I remember when #2 Son was looking for some minimum-wage work back when he was in his late teens.  At the time, he was living in Dallas, and when I asked how things were going, work-wise, his response was:  “I just can’t compete with all the Mexicans who are willing to work well below the minimum wage.”

Eventually he quit that, and fortunately found his niche in online gaming quality control, but had to move down to Austin, enduring a few years of contract work — chicken and feathers income — before he finally found a full-time job at a company which was later bought out and became a division of Sony.

And I know that I published a stupid article on the topic of illegal alien workers a while back, and I cringe when I think of it.  (And yes, I was crucified in the Comments by y’all, and deservedly so.  I don’t know what I was thinking.)

Anyway, I see that as ICE is starting to do their job and deporting illegals, American workers are benefiting greatly.

So I guess they were prepared to to “those jobs”, despite the lies uttered by the Democrats over the years.

Yee Hah

Business

“Come and do yer bidness in Texas” seems to be the current thing.

Coinbase followed other companies reincorporating in Texas after the state legislature in 2023 created the first-of-its-kind specialized trial court to oversee complex business-to-business litigation. It first convened last September. 

This year, the legislature passed SB 29 to create a series of corporate reforms governing certain business entities. It “enhances the predictability and efficiency of Texas entity law and governance while maintaining strong protections for entity owners and transparency,” The Center Square reported. They include codifying the business judgment rule to allow corporations to establish a minimum ownership threshold before a shareholder or group of shareholders can pursue a derivative claim, among other provisions.

The legislature also passed HB 40 to amend state law to enhance Texas Business Court operations statewide, expanding subject matter jurisdiction to include intellectual property, clarifying its supplemental jurisdiction, allowing companies to designate the court as the exclusive venue in their governing documents for dispute resolution, among other measures.

The new laws provide business decision makers “with certainty that sound business judgments made in the best interest of shareholders will not be second-guessed by courts. Absent acts of violent crime, business decisions are to be made by the elected officers and shareholders, not by unelected judges,” Abbott said when signing them into law. “It also eliminates rogue shareholders with just a handful of shares of stock in a company from being able to hold a company hostage from the ability to make sound business decisions.”

Just make sure that your employees become Texans, i.e. they have to leave all their East-Coast politics and -beliefs behind.  Especially that Woke/DEI bullshit and fondness for Big Gummint, because we don’t do that here.

And they need to buy some guns as soon as they can — just to establish their bona fides, so to speak.

Dept. Of Righteous Shootings

Righteous Shootings

I know that Righteous Shootings, almost by definition, include the term “needed killing” somewhere in the preamble.  But here’s an excellent example of taking out someone who’s just breathing oxygen unnecessarily:

A Vietnam War veteran managed to fend off a deranged, naked intruder who broke into a woman’s California home on Friday morning.

The elderly vet was thrown to the ground by the maniac, fracturing both of his legs before he opened fire and fatally shot the intruder.

Police say the nude suspect had been wandering the neighborhood moments earlier, shouting incoherently and attempting to break into several homes.

LAPD Capt. Warner Castillo told reporters that the suspect eventually forced his way into a residence where a woman and two other people were inside, including the 79-year-old veteran, identified by neighbors only as George.

‘The 79-year-old man tells the suspect to leave, tells him I have a gun and I will shoot you. The suspect grabs the man, lifts him, throws him on the ground, and that’s where the man suffered two broken legs,’ Castillo said.

Despite being in agony having been body slammed to the ground by the intruder, the elderly homeowner managed to grab his firearm. 

And the best part:

Police said the rambling man was shot at least two or three times inside the home before collapsing.

Yeah, but:

‘I think it’s a textbook example of self-defense, and I really, really hope he does not face charges,’ neighbor Betsy Weiss said.

It’s Los fucking Angeles, so anything’s possible — but I think the “two broken legs” thing should cause even an L.A. district attorney to think twice before pressing charges.

But the locals should start warming up the tar and plucking the chicken feathers, just in case.

Welcome Back

Business, Management, Marketing / Advertising

This, I think, is Good News:

Long-defunct airline Pan Am is inching towards revival more than three decades after going out of business.

AVi8 Air Capital and Pan American Global Holdings, which owns the intellectual property rights to the Pan Am brand, have begun the certification process with the FAA. AVi8 announced they have completed a business plan for the brand’s revival efforts.

“Avi8 has assembled a world-class team to lead the certification effort and has received strong initial support from aircraft lessors and key vendors,” the company said on Thursday.

If all goes to plan, the company will be based out of Miami with a fleet of Airbus aircrafts*.

Right off the bat, let me say that I loved Pan Am, both the airline and its philosophy — well, before Juan Trippe chased after the lower-income market and cocked up the brand (as documented here).

I just hope that the New Pan Am doesn’t try to be another Spirit or JetBlue (joint motto:  We invented cheap ‘n nasty travel, and we never fail to rub your noses in that ), because that way lies utter, abject failure.

As I said earlier, Pan Am’s road to aviation success and profitability is not through the mass market, but by catering to the affluent traveler, with peerless customer service and spotless aircraft.  Like they used to.

Despite Pan Am’s earlier demise, their brand might still have some cachet left over, even now.  And if they relaunch and re-brand the airline back to its heritage and strengths (including — gasp! comely flight attendants and not grab-a-granny / tattooed slatterns, some overlap), I can almost guarantee they’ll do well.

Go for it, guys.  I for one look forward to your trip [sic] with great anticipation, and I hope that future passengers won’t be able to beat the experience…

And by the way:  resist the impulse to change your old logo.  It was wonderful then, and will serve you well now.

*Ummm… it’s aircraft not aircrafts — “aircraft” is both singular and plural, like “sheep” or “deer”, but let’s not have that interfere with the good news.