Tag: Stupid people

Breaking Down The “Decline”

Business

Here’s an interesting take:

We’ve all seen the nonstop headlines claiming “Las Vegas is in Freefall” “Vegas is Dying” and “Vegas is Finished and Will Never Recover.”

All of which is a gross exaggeration.

First of all, Vegas is plenty busy- just like always. Just a little less busy than last year. Revenues are down single digits from last year- which was one of greatest years in the history of Vegas.

Well, to accountant types, all growth must continue and in fact increase, regardless of circumstance.  Which is a decent reason to beat accountants to death with clubs.

But compared to last year (the best year in history) business is down this year, and Vegas casinos are laying off employees. That part is true.

So, what exactly is happening? Why is business down this year? The mainstream media would never understand this, but this is another classic case of Republican success versus Democrat failure.

Not all of Vegas is down. Only the Vegas Strip is down. The off-Strip and suburban casinos and hotels in Vegas are booming. Why? What’s the difference?

The reason why is simple. All the major resorts on the world-famous Vegas Strip are owned and operated by Democrats — mostly Ivy League-educated Democrats from Wall Street, who know nothing about gambling or tourism.

And here’s the good part:

MGM is run by Democrats. Caesars is run by Democrats. Harrahs is run by Democrats. Wynn is run by Democrats (since they ran brilliant Republican billionaire Steve Wynn out of town). Even Venetian sold out to Apollo Global Management based in New York, since the death of brilliant Republican billionaire Sheldon Adelson.

Not only are the Strip casinos run by dumb, clueless Ivy League Democrats, but most of them sold the land under their casino-resorts to Blackstone- Wall Street firm that now charges them obscene annual $100 million to $300 million land lease charges.

But the off-Strip casinos and resorts are almost all owned and operated by Republicans.

Station Casinos is booming- the Republican Fertitta family owns them.  The downtown Golden Nugget is booming- it is owned and operated by Tillman Fertitta- a Trump Republican who is now President Trump’s Ambassador to Italy.  Boyd Casinos are booming. They are run by the Boyd family- who gives mostly to Republican candidates and PACS.  South Point Casino is booming- it is run by the Republican Trump supporter Michael Gaughan.

And the details:

The Vegas Strip resorts run by dumb, clueless Democrats from New York are all charging rip-off rates.  Parking your car is now $50 at any Strip hotel.  Two martinis cost $80.  A nice meal costs $500.  Resort fees will run you up to $100 extra a day on top of room charges.  At MGM properties a bottle of water in your minibar might cost you $25.  And here’s the craziest rip-off of all:  MGM (run by a bunch of dumb Democrats) now charges $25 extra for room service if you want knives, forks and napkins.

Putting Manhattan cost structures into a Western desert town.

On the other hand, at any of these off-Strip and suburban resorts owned and run by Republicans, the parking is free, the meals are reasonable, the room rates are inexpensive, and they have movie theatres, bowling alleys, food courts and babysitting. Anyone can afford a fun night out on the town! It’s still like “old Vegas.”

I have to stipulate at this point that I cannot stand Las Vegas:  Strip, off-Strip, suburban, whatever.  Every time I go there — once because I’d never been there before, the other times on business or to attend a conference — I couldn’t wait to leave, couldn’t wait to get on the plane, get in the car, whatever.  Nothing about the place attracts me, and just about everything in the place repels me.  In my own parlance:  I’d rather watch an F1 Grand Prix race at Spa Francorchamps, in the chilly rain, than the one in Las Vegas.

But as a case study in how to screw up a good thing, modern-day Vegas is surely an excellent example.  As Wayne Root memorably puts it:

Personally, I preferred the Mafia. They knew how to treat customers.

Stolen This, Taken That, Expropriated Another

Geography, History, Lies and Untruths

I’m getting heartily sick of all the bullshit surrounding this whole “stolen land” concept.  I was reminded of this while watching some Australian TV show (out of the corner of my eye:  New Wife was doing the actual watching) where the opening credits revealed that the show’s cast and producers were aware that the show was being filmed on lands that were originally the home of some unpronounceably-named tribe of Aborigines, and wanted everyone to know how they respected that “heritage”.

Given that Australia’s aborigines are amongst the most “unsettled” populations on the planet — they are nomadic to an extent almost impossible to describe — that struck me as a little rich.  Most of all, what got my goat was the tone of the statement:  semi-apologetic, cringing and guilty are the words that come to mind.

We have the same bollocks much in evidence Over Here.  The history of this entire world is a story of migration, settlement, wars over territory and Tribe A taking land from Tribe B — bloody hell, they’re still fighting the same wars in the Balkans — but it’s only recently that the arguments over who owns what have become a third-party issue rather than something that the involved parties settle between themselves.  Or, to put it in a more scholarly fashion:

Every person alive on this planet today has ancestors who were displaced by force somewhere in their lineage. Every person alive on this planet today has ancestors who displaced other people by force somewhere in their lineage. It’s an inevitable fact of human history. American natives fought with each other over land and resources, and some tribes, like the Dakota (Sioux), were notorious for attacking their neighbors. Europe’s history is rife with such, from the Vikings to the Norman invasion of Britain. In fact, few if any of the people of Europe today are the original inhabitants of the land they reside on now; the one exception may be the Basque of the Pyrenees Mountains, but even they, at some point, came there from somewhere else. The French people we know now derive their name from the Franks, a Germanic tribe, and as for the British Isles, that motley group of islands has seen so many invasions, from Picts to Celts to Romans, Saxons, Anglians, Jutes, and Normans, that it would be difficult to keep track as they go by.

Here’s the simple response to all the handwringing and aggrievement over the “stolen land” claims:  get over it, because you’re never going to get it back.  End of story.

And to a lesser extent, the same is true of “cultural appropriation”:  where White kids are somehow forbidden to wear their hair in those disgusting dreadlocks because Africans somehow have “ownership” of a hairstyle.  What bullshit.  It’s like saying that Black people can’t drink Scotch whisky because whisky is traditionally a product of the northern provinces of (lily-white) Britain, or that the Irish can’t eat chips because potatoes originally came from America.

Everyone borrows cultural artifacts and customs from everyone else.  That’s been the habit of mankind for millennia, and no cries of outrage can overturn it.

When it comes to land, the stronger group has taken it from its “original” (and sometimes not-so original) weaker inhabitants.  That this activity has become somewhat less egregious and bloody in recent times does not gainsay its basic premise — and where it has become more bloody, the weaker continue to learn its hard history — as the “Palestinians” are (re-)learning in their efforts to eradicate the state of Israel.  (They’re unlikely ever to give up, which simply means that Israel will be forced to teach them the same lesson again and again, ad infinitum.  As I’ve said many times before, the Arabs are lucky that the Jews have an inexplicable aversion to genocide, or else “from the river to the sea” could easily have changed to “from the Golan to the Suez”.  Vae victis  — a Latin expression — has particular currency here.)

So enough with the kowtowing (a Chinese expression) to the Perpetually Aggrieved.  Fuck off, all of you, and make the best of what you’ve got.  Heaven knows, most of what you can achieve comes courtesy of Western civilization.

You’re welcome.

Theft In Pursuit Of An Agenda

Taxes and Theft, UN and other scum

The redoubtable Stephen Moore brings to light this little bit of internationalist skulduggery,:

Later this week the United Nations will hold a vote on a multibillion-dollar climate change tax targeted squarely at American industry.

This resolution before the International Maritime Organization will impose a carbon tax on cargo and cruise ships that carry $20 trillion of merchandise over international waters.

The resolution is intended to advance the very “net zero” carbon emissions standard that has knee-capped European economies for years and that American voters have rejected.

This international tax that would be applied to American vessels and as such is a dangerous precedent-setting assault on U.S. sovereignty.

As with all great crimes, the first question is “cui bono” ?  And to nobody’s surprise, the answer is:

Worst of all, if the resolution passes, it will require the retirement of older ships and enable a multibillion-dollar wealth transfer to China — which has come to dominate ship building in recent years.

China strongly supports the tax scheme — even though, ironically, no nation has emitted more pollutants into the atmosphere than it has. Yet WE are getting socked with a tax that indirectly pays for their pollution.

Needless to say, the U.S. will have no truck with this nonsense — at least, the current generation of U.S. leaders won’t:

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy have jointly stated that America “will not accept any international environmental agreement that unduly or unfairly burdens the United States or our businesses.”

They call the financial impact on the U.S. of this global carbon tax “disastrous, with some estimates forecasting global shipping costs increasing as much as 10% or more.”

So fine.  But given that in the United Nations, there are seventeen likely “yes” votes to our single “no” vote, how are we to combat this nonsense?  As usual, Moore has the answer:

To prevent this sinister tax, the White House should announce a set of retaliation measures.

This could include a dollar-for-dollar reduction in U.S. payments to NATO, the U.N., IMF and World Bank. No foreign money should be directed to any nation that votes for this assault on American ships.

And as the old (paraphrased) saying goes:  “They may have passed this law;  now let them enforce it.”

My additional solution would be for the United States to leave the U.N. altogether, cease its funding thereof, and kick these assholes out of Manhattan for good.  Let them play their little reindeer games all they want, just in someone else’s backyard and with their own money.  See how long that little internationalist dream lasts.

Just. Go. Away.

Eco-Crap

…and I only used that title because my original thought (“Just. Fuck. Off.”) may have been judged as a little intemperate.

Once more unto the hysterical breach, my friends:

The planet is grappling with a “new reality” as it reaches the first in a series of catastrophic and potentially irreversible climate tipping points: the widespread death of coral reefs, according to a landmark report produced by 160 scientists across the world.

As humans burn fossil fuels and ratchet up temperatures, it’s already driving more severe heat waves, floods, droughts, and wildfires. But there are even bigger impacts on the horizon. Climate change may also be pushing Earth’s crucial systems — from the Amazon rainforest to polar ice sheets — so far out of balance they collapse, sending catastrophic ripples across the planet.

“We are rapidly approaching multiple Earth system tipping points that could transform our world, with devastating consequences for people and nature,” said Tim Lenton, a professor at the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter and an author of the report published Sunday.

In other words:

Sorry, but nobody with any form of humanoid brain should give any credence to these hysterical “Do this NOW or we’re all gonna dieeeeeee!”  doomsayings anymore.

In the first place, “climate change” is not the major consequence of human activity.  Considering that almost every “landmark study” — from Mann’s infamous (and debunked) “hockey stick” graph onwards — has been based on flawed, incorrect or fraudulent data manipulation, not least in predictive climate models, there is no reason to suggest that there is anything we as humans can do to somehow affect any form of climate change, let alone reverse it.  (Even assuming that mankind — and I’m looking at you, China and the other Third World nations — can actually act in concert, the entire activity could be reversed simply by the Sun doing one thing instead of another.)

In other words, there are greater forces in play here, and it doesn’t appear that people can do anything to affect them, even if they wanted to — and that’s a big if.  Try telling the people who own these seafront properties in Hawaii, for example, to abandon them because the properties’ existence may be harming the offshore reefs:

They’ll tell you to fuck right off, and I can’t say I blame them.

Now tell China and India to stop the pollutant-heavy flow of the Yangtze and Ganges rivers (to name but two) into the ocean, and the response will be “fuck right off, squared“.

As for the statement:  “…multiple Earth system tipping points that could transform our world, with devastating consequences for people and nature”, what’s happening here is the old extension of Murphy’s Law (If something can go wrong, it will) which states:  “If a number of things can go wrong, they will either go wrong simultaneously or else in the order best designed to create the maximum damage.”

It’s a humorous take on failure, but like “strange women lying in ponds distributing swords” is not a good basis for government, basing ecological policy on Murphy’s Extended Law is just as foolish.

Of course, the greater the preponderance of factors pointing to massive failure, the greater the need for panic and precipitous action to prevent it.  Hence the grouping of ocean current weakening, coral reef disintegration and cataclysmic weather events into one Great Big Disaster.  (They left Donald Trump out of the list of calamities, but that’s probably just an oversight.)

Sorry, but we’ve seen, and recently, the dolorous consequences of precipitous, fear-driven action as a response to perceived calamity (#Covid).  The same attitude (“we won’t be fooled again”) should apply equally to these climate loons’ dire predictions.

By the way:  if you really want to worry about something occurring in nature, try this one.  And there’s not a single thing we can do about it.  Not even selling our evil SUVs or eliminating plastics.

Countermeasures

Anarchist thugs, Riotous Assemblies

From the People’s Soviet of Portland:

An online anarchist platform encouraged people on Wednesday to shine lasers at federal helicopters in Portland, Oregon, a crime that law enforcement officials say can create extreme danger for pilots.

A post on the leftist, Portland-focused website “Rose City Counter-Info” tells viewers to scatter throughout the city’s streets on Saturday for the attack — nicknamed “Laser Tag” — as federal agents respond to demonstrations near the city’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility. The goal is to “ground” the helicopters by making it difficult to safely fly them and flash too many lasers for law enforcement to hunt down those using them, according to the anonymously-written post.

“All you need is a laser. Leave home – they can see where the laser is coming from,” the post reads. “Go to a park, a field, or some other public place, and once the clock strikes 9 unleash your beam at the cop copter. Mask up. Coordinate with friends to throw a laser party!”

“Let’s take back the night together!” the announcement continued. “It won’t take many of us to ground the helicopters!”

Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a few patriots scattered around said parks and fields, likewise equipped, so that when one of these goblins shines a laser up at a chopper, he or she could find themselves lit up in turn…

All together now:

“♫ ♪ ♫ ♪ You say you want a revolution, well you know…♫ ♪ ♫ ♪”

What Price The Big Day?

Good Stuff, Men & Women

This story got me nodding my head in agreement.

One couple ditched their plans for a conventional wedding and instead jetted off on a month-long honeymoon.  Hannah Bird and Charlie Camper, both 26, had originally budgeted £30,000 for their big day.  However, the pair from Burnham-on-Sea soon realized the huge sum would be blown on just one day and could instead be used to make more memories exploring the world. 

So they did just that:  offering their guests supermarket cup cakes instead of buying an expensive wedding cake, got the bride a free (i.e. secondhand) wedding dress and offered their guests a buffet (“grazing table”) instead of the traditional sit-down meal.  As for the venue:  they booked a woodland retreat for a whole weekend’s festivities — which ordinarily would strike some as excessive — but reduced the cost by charging their guests sixty quid, in lieu of wedding presents.  Which makes a great deal of sense, by the way:  it may sound tacky, but from a guest’s point of view, where are you going to get a weekend getaway for only sixty bucks?  A bargain for everybody, and guests wouldn’t have to mess with buying presents into the bargain.

I never bought in to the wedding-industrial complex;  it always seemed to me a cynical exercise in gyno-centric excess — the idea that a girl somehow “deserves” to have a Special Day wherein she’s the absolute center of attention.  What bollocks.  And this is especially true when one looks at the statistics and realizes that the chances of said nuptials actually producing a long and happy relationship are vanishingly small.

I have no problem with the bride’s parents paying lots of money for the occasion, by the way — it’s their money to do with what they wish, and as long as they don’t bankrupt themselves (a distressingly-common occurrence), why not?  But as with the couple in the above story, it makes so much more sense to take the money that would have been blown on fripperies such as massive flower bouquets and a one-day-use dress, and spend it instead on something worthwhile to the couple, rather than just feeding the bride’s giant ego or need for self-aggrandizement.

I actually did that with my first marriage.  As time passed, I noted with alarm that the whole thing was growing faster than a Democrat politician’s spending plan, and I did two things:  first, I secretly bought our honeymoon air tickets (to the U.S., incidentally, where neither of us had been before);  then I presented that fact to the bride’s family as a fait accompli, and said that this wedding day was going to be made on a strict budget because we needed to save money to afford a month-long’s stay in the U.S.  Unbelievably, over time pressure was brought upon me by her family to cancel the U.S. trip for a shorter honeymoon at some resort somewhere in South Africa — said pressure only disappearing when I threatened to walk away from the whole wedding (and marriage) and go to the States on my own instead.  And I meant every word.

Anyway, that honeymoon Over Here was truly beneficial for me, in that I fell in love with this wonderful, fantastic country, big time… and the rest you know.

And all because like the couple above, I refused to spend a boatload of money on some one-day extravagance.  In their case, they got a lifetime’s worth of memories;  in my case, I changed my life’s entire path.

A bargain, for both of us.