Tag: Stupid people

Caught Fiddling

Elections

About that “foreign interference in U.S. elections” thing:  not Russia, this time, but… Britain’s Labour Party?  Even the Brits are appalled:

There are some basic rules in foreign policy obvious even to the most half-witted politician.

One is that you can never be seen to interfere in any way in the elections of a democratic country. You don’t state preferences about any of the candidates, and you don’t try to influence the outcome.

This cardinal rule has been spectacularly broken by the Labour Party, which has enraged Donald Trump by apparently lending support to his rival, Kamala Harris, in the presidential campaign.

Of course, having fucked around and been found out, the denials quickly followed:

Labour denies it has done any such thing, pointing out that its activists have often travelled at their own expense to help Democratic Party candidates in previous elections.

Uh huh.

Maybe. But the Trump camp has unearthed a LinkedIn post from Sofia Patel, Labour’s head of operations, encouraging ‘party staff’ to ‘help our friends across the pond elect their first female President’. Activists were invited to send Ms Patel an email. She added that she would be going to America for the final two weeks of the campaign.

What is this if not a call to Labour activists to roll up their sleeves on behalf of Kamala Harris? It would matter less if the post – which has been deleted as Labour desperately tries to cover its tracks – had come from an obscure underling.

But the head of operations is an important figure. She represents Labour. Ms Patel’s message is that activists should do whatever they can to defeat Donald Trump. This looks like a blatant attempt by the governing party to influence the election.

And it is.  Glover points out:

Donald Trump won’t be [forgiving]. He is vengeful, and likes to bear a grudge. He also has a low opinion of Labour, which his aides describe in a formal complaint to the U.S. Federal Election Commission as being ‘far-Left’. This is a characteristic exaggeration.

Except, of course, that it’s no exaggeration.  Compared to the U.S. political spectrum — which is the milieu in which Trump is active — Labour IS about as far Left as any Socialist party could be.

Doesn’t matter, one way or the other.  As Glover points out:

Of course, if Trump isn’t elected on November 5, Labour’s injudicious meddling won’t matter. But if he becomes America’s next President – an increasingly likely eventuality, which I regard with foreboding – he could bear a grievance against the British Government. That would affect us all.

Trump already knows that the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, has variously described him in the past as a ‘neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath’, a ‘dangerous clown’, and ‘a tyrant in a toupee’.

And then Glover panders to his readers by adding:

At least partly true.

Which part, Stephen?  The “neo-Nazi”, “sociopath”, “dangerous”, “clown” or “tyrant”?

Lest we forget, Trump has already been President once before, during which time he exhibited none of those traits that the Left tried to smear him with (and continues, like Glover, to do so).  And I hate to spoil your fun, you Lefty assholes, but he’s not going to do it during his next term, either.

Just don’t expect any special favors from him, Britishland — Trump’s not the only one who bears a grudge, and if nothing else, he’s keenly aware of what his supporters expect from him.

 

HOW Much?

House & Home, Lifestyle

This one made me shake my head.

Chicago is one of the most expensive cities to reside in the United States, with Angel Reese revealing she’s also a victim of those high costs, as her WNBA salary does not cover her $8,000-a-month rent.

Oh, the poor thing.

This is something I happen to know quite a bit about, because as Longtime Readers will recall, I used to live in Chicago.

“But where did you live, Kim?  That makes a difference.”

Connie and I lived in a 10th-floor apartment in Lakeview, a few blocks from Wrigley Field, which afforded us views of both Lake Michigan to the east, and the city skyline to the south.

Dawn over Lake Michigan.


That’s the John Hancock Building in the distance on the left.  Both pics were taken on a glum fall day soon after we’d moved in.

The apartment itself was massive:  around 2,800 sq.ft (3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms), it also had a basement lockup storage unit, free use of the laundromat, also in the basement, and 18-hour/day garbage pickup from the trashcan outside the goods elevator out the back door.  It was also beautiful, with bay windows and solid brick.masonry walls which were so thick, they actually impeded the wifi signal.  There were only two apartments on each floor.

It was so beautiful that when we had a couple of clients over for drinks during a conference, one — a wealthy owner of a chain of grocery stores — looked over at his wife and said, “We could do this”, and she nodded in agreement.  It was truly a place to be proud of, and only the business need to move to Dallas after 9/11 got us out of there.

At the time (early 2000s), the monthly rent for this wonderful apartment was $3,700 and even with our combined incomes, the only way we could afford it was due to the fact that we’d sold both our cars when moving from the suburbs, and the resultant savings on car payments and insurance (about $1,200 a month) made our apartment affordable.  (And the proximity to both train- and bus routes, not to mention the ubiquitous Chicago cabs, made car ownership irrelevant and unnecessary.  On the few occasions when we needed a car — to venture out of state for a client meeting, for example — there was a Budget rental office four blocks away.)

Anyway, I went online and checked on the current (2024) rentals in that building, and they’ve gone up, all right:  to $4,200 per month, just over half of what that WNBA tart is being charged.

Which begs the question:  what kind of apartment is she living in, at that rent?

I don’t know, but I can guess: some swanky modern high-rise apartment in the Loop, Streeterville or Near North neighborhoods.  Or maybe even a lakeside penthouse apartment just north of the Golden Mile.  Whatever, it’s probably too big for her, and definitely not worth what she gets paid as a WNBA player.

The point about living in Chicago, as we discovered when we looked into it, is that yes, you can pay a lot of money to live in the city;  but if you just lower your expectations a little and make a small compromise here and there, you can find affordable digs a-plenty.

Our apartment in Lakeview was just such a compromise, and I think that everyone could agree that it was not too great a sacrifice to have made.

The 20-year-old Angel Reese has clearly never bothered to look into such a compromise because her several sponsorship deals pay the bills, and not her WNBA salary (which is less than a fifth of my and Connie’s joint income at the time).  In ten years’ time, her career at an end and the sponsorships having vanished, we’ll no doubt be reading about Angel Reese having to live in her car and eating dog food — unless, of course, she manages to snag some rich dude who can afford her.

Not the best outlook, but hey.  According to the article, she has a (paid) “financial advisor” who, on this basis, ought to be fired.

The Other Side MIA

Behind Enemy Lines, Politics

The Divine Sarah has just returned from her native Portugal, and reports as follows:

One of the scariest things about the trip to Portugal was talking to people and realizing they’re living in an alternate reality.

You know, all the things that the Junta has tried to sell, and push? From “We’re in a booming economy” to “Biden is a patriot who stepped down to save the nation” to “Trump is a criminal” to “The refugee crisis is the result of global warming” ALL OF IT is being bought wholesale in Europe.

Now as a caveat to this, actually two of them: My family is now very much what would be considered “laptop class”, i.e. they are all credentialed professionals of some description, who therefore pride themselves on being “well informed” a lot of which consists of following our MSM (NYT, CNN, etc) and the Portuguese translations thereof. And I was mostly associating with them, save for listening in when we were in public, as I pretty much do all the time out of habit and because I like to know what people “really” think.

However, as far as I can tell even if not uniform, Portugal — which probably means most of Europe — at least as far as its educated classes go, is taking the pap our MSM spews as the gospel truth. You literally can’t tell them the truth without their thinking you’re a complete lunatic. I.e. the reality on the ground here in the US seems to them like something out of the left field that we’re just saying for shock value.

Keep that in mind when you hear of all the European love for Kamala-rama-lama-ding-dong.

The thing is that Europeans (including Brits) have  been accustomed to people telling them what to do (and to read, and to think, and to say) for so long that now, when it really counts, there is no “counter-culture” such as we have Over Here:  no equivalent of PJMedia, RedState or Breitbart News, no conservative radio (e.g. as practiced by the much-missed Rush Limbaugh or even the still-living Sean Hannity), or fearless “alternative” bloggers with an enormous following such as Instapundit, and precious few independnet small blogs such as this one.

So in the absence of all that, all they have is state-controlled electronic media and leftwing-sponsored newspapers like Le Matin, Der Spiegel and so on.  (I was amazed at how Lefty even Austrian newspapers were, the last time I was there, and Austria is easily one of the more conservative Euro countries.)

Small wonder that they believe the bullshit thrown at them about Glueball Wormening, Ev Inevitability and untrammeled Third World immigration as a benefit.

So of course, when confronted by the New Counter-Culture (as espoused by leaders such as Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán, Geert Wilders and Giorgia Meloni), they are utterly bewildered by such strange concepts because they have never been exposed to them before — and strangeness, as we all know, leads to fear, opposition and resistance, if not outright rejection for no other reason other than strangeness.

And as Sarah so correctly points out,the funny thing is that while European society is living in an alternate reality, they are convinced that it is we who are.

The prognosis for Europe is not heartening, just as it will not be happy for us if the upcoming vote is fixed to provide another four years of BidenHarrisObamaClinton policies.

Funniest Headline Of The Week

Funny Stuff, Journalist Scum, SHTF

From last Friday:

Well, if Black Lives Matter, Pink Pussyhats and Earth First members aren’t going to step up after a catastrophe, then someone has to.

And just a little note to the Daily Fail:  the Patriot Front isn’t a “white supremacist” organization, even though the Anti-Defamation League may think so.  (Irony Alert:  labeling the PF “white supremacist” is per ipso pretty much defamatory.)

Then there’s this:

Militia groups, such as Patriot Front, are reportedly using the devastating hurricanes to push a narrative about a failed or corrupt government hurricane response.

It’s not just “militia groups” who are calling the federal government’s response inadequate and pathetic;  it’s just about everyone who isn’t a Lefty asshole.

And we haven’t even started to discuss how the Fedgov’s agencies are blocking privately-funded aid and -supplies from reaching those ravaged areas…

Apology Universe

Race Hustlers, Snowflakes, Wokism

I fear that we are becoming a world full of apologetics.  Why?  Try this one on for size:

The ad, which shows a black woman on her wedding day marrying a white man, has caused controversy for allegedly pushing racist stereotypes.

The image shows a white mother and father, presumed to be the mother and father of the white groom. It also shows a black woman, presumed to be the mother of the bride.

However, commuters and social media users were outraged that the bride did not have a father pictured in the snap. 

Yeah… Black fathers being so notable for their appearance and involvement in their offsprings’ lives.

Actually, there’s a very simple explanation for the picture’s composition:  they’re creating a central point of interest for the product, which means there can only be three or five characters (odd numbers, there being no midpoint in even numbers).

Why did they leave out Black Daddy, as opposed to any of the other parents?  Your guess is as good as mine.

But it sure as hell is no reason for an apology, just as there is no reason to see “Black stereotypes” behind every fucking bush and every poxy door.

If we’re going to go with racial stereotypes to apologize for, here’s what we’re talking about:

Smelling salts available at all good drugstores.