Old Law, Better

Also via Insty, there’s this cheerful news from Our Nation’s Capital:

The [11-year-old] Davon McNeal, a budding football star, was gunned down as he was leaving a Fourth of July cookout organized by his mother, an anti-violence advocate. The suspects are members of “the Crashout Gang.” Guns blazing, they were chasing people believed to be members of a rival gang. A stray bullet killed young McNeal, one of eleven people fatally shot in Washington, D.C. in the first week of July.

Paul  Mirengoff’s take on this is to focus on the “defund da polices” nonsense, which is fine.  Here, however, is what caused me to choke on my morning gin:

One of the gang members arrested for the killing of McNeal had been arrested in April and charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm. However, a judge, Todd E. Edelman, released him from prison in May, over strong objections from the U.S. Attorneys Office, when D.C.’s prison population was reduced in response to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.

See, under the reign of Emperor Kim, we would have returned to a more Hammurabic system of law, under which the judge would be executed for having been complicit in the murder of the boy — had he not freed this asshole (I don’t care about the reason, let ’em all die in prison), there may be one less innocent dead child.  And a neighborhood might be safer with all the Crash Out gang members either in cells or swinging from gibbets (you know where my preferences lie).

Sadly, under the Constitution, I am unable to run for election as Supreme Emperor because even though I was born American, I was in the wrong country at the time.  All that’s left for me, therefore, is to gripe endlessly, and vote where I can.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the range so that if ever I’m called on to perform that other civic duty, I can be sure that only the goblins will be shot and not an innocent boy.

Let’s Get Defunding

Seeing as how everyone’s getting all “defund this” and “defund that”, allow me to offer a few candidates out of this lot:

A U.S. Army email, sent after the Fourth of July to its military and civilian members, included a graphic which claimed saying the phrase “Make America Great Again” is evidence of “white supremacy.”
The graphic listed other behaviors it deemed evidence of white supremacy, including, “Celebration of Columbus Day,” the “Denial of White Privilege,” “Talking about ‘American Exceptionalism,’” and saying “There’s Only One Human Race.”

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL, duh) is all over this, and he:

…has sent a letter to U.S. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, demanding an investigation.
Brooks asked McCarthy to answer the following:

1. Who within the Department of the Army is responsible for the creation of the email and document?

2. Who within the Department of the Army approved the email and document?

3. Pursuant to the creation and approval of the document, was there a violation of either the Hatch Act or DoD Directive 1344.10?

4. If a violation of the Hatch Act or DoD Directive 1344.10 is found to have occurred, will those responsible be held accountable for their actions?

5. If it is found that a violation occurred (which seems pretty obvious), how will those federal employees be held accountable for their illegal conduct?

The Army needs to stamp out this bullshit toot sweet, and defund the people responsible (every single one who falls into the above five questions), i.e. either by court-martial and dishonorable discharge, by RIF-ing their asses out of existence or (if some civilian asshole is involved) fire them with loss of all benefits and privileges.  (I leave it to my .dot-mil veteran Readers, e.g. Staff Martin, to offer the precise details in Comments.)

I’m not going to go overboard and throw the “treason” word around — it’s been used way too cavalierly just recently — but if we take on faith that the “MAGA” expression belongs to the C-in-C (and it does), what’s going on here is (at best) gross insubordination.

I’m being quite serious, here.  This nonsense does not belong in our Armed Forces;  their job is to help keep America great, but if they can’t be trusted to do that — and this is a prime indicator that they can’t — there needs to be some kind of ill wind that blows all the non-essential, and even the marginally-essential, REMFs  out into the fucking trash can.

ArmySec McCarthy needs to jump on this quickly, have answers for Brooks with 24 hours, or face termination himself.

Perils Of Illiteracy

Here’s a thought which starts off well, and ends in unintentional hilarity.

“Meanwhile, moving to an unknown place is far from out of character. This time four years ago, I packed up my car in Ohio and drove out west with no plans for two months. In 2018 I hitchhiked around south Peru. Later that summer I landed in Bali with no agenda and a month to spare. While island hopping in Gili, I was caught near the center of an earthquake when I was far from sober prompting me to evacuate.”

You see, “to evacuate” means to empty out, or to be emptied out.  Towns and buildings may be evacuated (by emptying them of people, for instance), but people aren’t evacuated, unless some form of laxative, diuretic or similar are in the picture.

So when the idiot quoted says “I was caught near the center of an earthquake when I was far from sober prompting me to evacuate”, what comes across is actually “I was caught near the center of an earthquake when I was far from sober prompting me to shit myself”  — funny, but I don’t think that’s quite what he was trying to say.

And in The Federalist, too… [sigh]

Just Plain Incompetence

One of the common features of socialist leaders is  incompetence, and one of the best examples is Has-Been POTUS Obama, whose cool demeanor was actually a cover for just that — an inability to make decisions (other than those dictated by Marxist doctrine, of course).  Bad leaders don’t just make bad decisions;  bad leaders, frozen by fear and incompetence, make no decisions.

But the very best example is NYFC Mayor De Blasio who, faced with “popular” demands to “defund the police” has actually done so, even when faced with skyrocketing violence.

Commonsense, of course, is almost a tautology in this regard:  when crime is soaring, that’s precisely the wrong time to reduce police funding and manpower, but as De Blasio firmly believes that the NYPD is the problem — and has always done so — it makes perfect sense (to him) to reduce police effectiveness, whether by funding or by demoralization (which, paradoxically, he has done to perfection).

The fool still has eighteen months in power before he’s term-limited out of office, and even then, the list of replacements, such as it is, seems to indicate that his successor will be of the same ilk.

As anyone with a brain can see where this is heading, and there’s no Rudy Giuliani to ride to the rescue.  New York is sunk, and will become no different from all the other third-World socialist armpits around the world.

Given NYFC’s malevolent influence on the rest of the country (gun control, failed social policies, out-of-control welfare spending, the aforementioned crime wave and the New York Times) has been a cancer on American society for too long, and prudence would suggest that the federal government steps aside completely and lets it implode just as Detroit, Chicago and the other cities have done.  The denizens of the Big Apple have voted themselves democratically [sic]  into this situation and, to paraphrase H.L. Mencken’s Seventh Maxim, they deserve to get their comeuppance, good and hard.

Sadly, all the bad things about New York are just as prevalent in Washington D.C., a fact which De Blasio and all the other mayoral Marxists are counting on for their salvation.

Proper British

This story got a lot of attention a little while ago:

A supermarket security guard has won the internet’s hearts as he stood in the pouring rain to shelter a patient dog. Morrisons security worker Ethan Dearman was photographed braving the elements outside the supermarket in Giffnock, Glasgow on Sunday. The picture, taken by Mel Gracie, 25, shows Mr Dearman holding a green umbrella over golden retriever Freddie, who is relaxing underneath.

And the pic:

Several people have commented that this is a typically-British story.  I disagree (and my Brit Readers will back me up on this, I think).

What would have made this a typically-British story would have been if the security guard was fired for not doing his proper job — because if there’s one thing Brits excel at, it’s bossing people around just because they can.

It’s precisely the same mindset behind a parking warden booting an ambulance for parking in a No Parking zone while picking up an injured patient, or a pharmacist’s assistant denying a customer a purchase of a pregnancy test kit during a lockdown, because it’s not an “essential” item.

I love Britain and its people, and I have as many Brit friends as American or South African friends, but this is one character flaw I find particularly tiresome.