Tag: Politics

The Usual Suspects

Anti-Gun Nannies, Crime

Probably the only scenes I found objectionable in the classic movie Casablanca  was when Inspector Renault utters the line: “Round up the usual suspects.”

Of course, in the context of the movie, the line is heavily ironic not to say satirical because Renault knows exactly who the criminals are, but he deflects suspicion away from Rick Blaine by saying that.

In reality, however, rounding up the usual suspects is not only sound police procedure, it generally solves about 90% of the crime, as seen here (and read it all because it’s good):

Almost every perpetrator of horrific crimes is a “known wolf.” Most of the violent crime in our society is committed by a very small group of easily identified criminals, and most of them have had many interactions with law enforcement over the years.

Violent crime in U.S. cities is not evenly spread. Not culturally. Not geographically. Not mathematically.

It’s concentrated – absurdly concentrated – in fractions of fractions of the population.  This isn’t ideology. It’s decades of DOJ, PD, and academic data all pointing at the same tiny cluster:

• ~0.5% of residents linked to 50–70% of shootings
• Most homicide suspects have 8–12+ prior arrests
• Victims usually know their attackers
• Violence clusters block-to-block, not citywide

We all know this, but when I say “we”, I’m referring to people who live in the here and now and can read statistics unencumbered by dreamy and mistaken dogma and its mantras, e.g. “Ban guns and violent crime will end” or some such crap.

Honestly?  I’m heartily sick of talking about this because I’ve banged on about it so often in the past that I don’t want to talk about it ever again.

But as long as these assholes keep on with their bullshit, the more I feel I have to rebut it, again and again and again and fucking again.

I think it’s time I let off some steam, so if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the range.

Missed It By THISmuch

Bureaucracy, Gummint, Politics

…that would be the end of the Schumer Schuttdown.  I predicted that it would end two days after last Tuesday’s elections (Thursday), and it actually ended yesterday (Sunday).

How nice.  Now the Gummint so-called “workers” head back to their offices (except when “working from home”, what a boondogggle) and go back to wasting taxpayer money while doing so little to justify their existence.

Forgive me for sounding blasé about the whole thing, but at least the Republican Party Reptiles managed to maintain their soft spines and refuse (for once) to capitulate to the Socialists.  I suppose that’s something to celebrate.

So now it’s back to normal, and on we go with the never-ending story.

Bah.

Now it’s time to end ObamaCare, lower income taxes, keep up with the deportations of illegal immigrants and keep reducing the size and impact of the government on our lives.  To mention just a few.

Later, we can discuss the hangings.

Stopping The Slide

Elections, Politics

We’re all familiar with the “slippery slide’ argument when it comes to laws and social policies (a.k.a. the “camel’s nose under the tent” expression).

Yesterday in Texas we went to the polls to vote on a series of propositions that either change or underline the Texas constitution.

The one proposition was that in order to vote in the state of Texas, you have to be a U.S. citizen.  Now one might think that that is understood to be the case — except of course when shit-holes like Boston or San Francisco allow non-citizens to vote on “local “matters.

Well, that ain’t gonna happen in the Lone Star State, should our local shit-holes (like Austin) start getting any ideas.  Best of all, of course, is that by making it a constitutional issue, Texas has the right to demand that voters show proof of citizenship before being allowed to vote.  (With my very non-Texas accent, I always take my passport with me to the polls, just in case.  Of course, I do have my voter’s card and driver’s license, and I’m on the voting roll anyway, but I have absolutely no problem with producing my U.S. passport if anyone wants to see it.)  This is not an issue to mess around with, and I’m glad we’re going all hardass on the topic. [Update:  it passed, 75-%25%.]

All the other propositions / amendments had to do with taxes, and when doing my research on each of them, I grinned broadly because they seemed to fall into two camps:  “This tax is bullshit and it needs to be whacked” — e.g. that farmers have to pay a tax on animal feed.  There were a few like that.

The other group of propositions are all preventative in nature, because unlike the U.S. Constitution, a product of the Enlightenment, the Texas constitution is very much proscriptive as well, i.e. we’re not going to trust the government to abide by goodwill alone:  the damn government isn’t allowed to do this or that specific thing — in fact, a whole lot of specific things.

My favorite?  The one that bans any kind of estate tax — okay, a “death” tax.

“But Kim… Texas doesn’t have a death tax.”

Quite right.  And now that it’s expressly forbidden by our state constitution, there’s never going to be a death tax in Texas.

I voted in favor of all the propositions.

And by the way, I thought that the polls weren’t going to be too busy.  In fact, the line of waiting voters was well over 200 yards long, and it never fell below that in all the time I was there.  [Update:  all the results are here.  The margins are about what you expect.]

We take this “restricting government” thing very seriously here, deep in the heart of

Nazzo Fast, Guido (Part 2)

Foreign Affairs

I also have reservations about this one.

President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signed a rare earths and critical minerals deal Monday at the White House.

On the surface of it, this is a Good Thing in that it very much loosens the stranglehold that the fucking ChiComs have on rare earth production, which they have signaled as a boycott threat in dealing with the U.S.

However, I note with some displeasure the comment also made after the signing:

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum praised the deal.

“Critical mineral independence is essential to our national security, and thanks to @POTUS, America is finally prioritizing the resources essential to our defense, technology, and energy sectors!”

That statement is quite true… but there are a couple of home truths we have to deal with here.

The first is that when it comes to rare earth reserves, the United States has the largest such in the entire world, much larger than the next two or three countries combined.

The second home truth is that while we have all the rare earth minerals we need, we are prevented from producing it because of the raft of ecological and NIMBY regulations and barriers hamstringing its mining.

So it’s all very well to sign agreements with countries like Australia, but that’s not actually “mineral independence”, is it?  Lest anyone forget, the Australia of today is far from the Australia of, say, post WWII.  Now their government is a bunch of frigging Commies — politically speaking, OzPM Albanese is at about the same level as Nancy fucking Pelosi, their diplomats are just as bad — and I don’t trust Commies of any stripe, furriners especially.

Of course, I mean no disrespect to my several Oz Readers, because judging from the tone and temper of their many emails to me, I gather that they (and many other Strylians) have an even deeper loathing for their Lefty government types than I do.  But these politicians, lest we forget, have nevertheless been elected by the populace, so my Oz readers are in the distinct minority.

From a global realpolitik  perspective, of course we should strengthen our ties with nations like Australia who are threatened by ChiCom expansion plans.  But let’s also tread carefully all the same, because in the end, Commies are Commies and there’s no telling how they may behave in future.

Lottery Odds

Elections, Foreign Affairs, Politics

No, not the lottery;  the odds against this happening by pure coincidence:

Several candidates for the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) have died in the lead-up to this month’s local elections in the country’s most populous state.

According to the German paper of record Die Welt, at least seven AfD candidates have died ahead of the September 14th elections in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Germany’s Deutsche Presse-Agentur wire service noted that a total of 16 candidates have died before the upcoming vote. Yet, no other party besides the Eurosceptic right-wing party has suffered more than one death..

And then this:

Authorities have stressed that there is so far no evidence of foul play in any of the deaths.

Considering that there’s a non-zero chance that the “authorities” may have been behind at least some of these deaths… well, okay.

Let’s look at it more closely:

Police have already confirmed natural causes in four of the AfD candidate deaths and said there are so far no indications of foul play in the others.

So (counting on fingers) that leaves a dozen or so “non-natural” causes.

Then there’s the “it happens all the time” rationale:

A North Rhine-Westphalia election commission spokesman told the DPA that the number of deaths was “not significantly higher” than in past elections, with tens of thousands of people running for seats in the state.

Speaking as a one-time analyst of data, though, I’d love to see a per-thousand number of deaths by party affiliation.

I’m not by nature a conspiracy theorist, but when I’m confronted by a low-probability / massively-coincidental series of events, I do become suspicious.  The scale of untimely pre-election and party-specific deaths here is positively Clintonian.

Let me go out on a limb and suggest that the high mortality of AfD candidates is extremely suspicious.

Burning Question

Classic Beauty, Foreign Affairs

Okay, it’s probably just me, but…

Where the hell does Trump find all these beautiful and intelligent women to work for him?  (I know, the Left is all over this, whining that he only appoints these “bimbos” — their word, not mine — as though it’s utterly impossible to be clever and beautiful, the combination of which is conspicuous by its absence on their side of the aisle.)

I mean, probably the ugliest woman working in Trump’s administration is his AG, and Pam Bondi is not at all ugly — especially when compared to leftists like OMG Janet Reno, Rosa de Lauro and that screeching lesbianist on MSNBC/MS NOW(?) with the black glasses.

The latest one to catch my eye was when reading at American Thinker about Trump’s Deputy U.S. Envoy for the Middle East, Morgan Ortagus, whose first name made me think it was a guy.  But nope, Morgan is absolutely no guy:

Now young Morgan is not just a pretty face.  Here’s what the boffins at AmThink have to say about her:

Hezbollah, rattled by her bluntness, staged demonstrations against her remarks in February, when she declared that the group had been defeated militarily and that its role in government was no longer tolerable. Many in Beirut concluded she had been sidelined, replaced by Tom Barrack’s more measured style. By June, her name was shorthand for a missed opportunity—the hawk who had pressed too hard, too fast.

Now, though, President Trump has issued a directive ordering her back, a powerful signal that Washington has not abandoned the line of pressure and accountability she embodied, but is rebalancing it, pairing Tom Barrack’s optimism with her credibility.

In the meetings with President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, and Speaker Berri, Ortagus sat quietly through most of the formal sessions, letting Barrack take the lead in public. Lebanon’s political class, however, understands that her silence was because she already knows the playbook. She has studied the system, understands the “political theatre” that governs decision-making in Beirut, and has seen how elites manipulate time and process to stall change.

That knowledge is why her return matters. Lebanese leaders thrive on ambiguity and exhausting new envoys with a maze of committees, statements, and staged “dialogue.” Ortagus, though, has already rattled the system once, and her reappearance signals she will do so again.

And I’ll bet her combination of brains and beauty confuses those Arab assholes beyond words, because they’re likely more accustomed to gargoyles like Obama’s one-time Secretary of State, who combined astounding ugliness and stupidity:

…quite the reverse of Mrs. Ortagus.

As I said, I don’t know where Trump is finding all these smart, attractive women to work for him, but let’s hope he keeps the trend going.

Oh, and by the way?  Morgan Ortagus has a twin sister named Megan.

Have mercy.