Tag: Stupid people

And About Time, Too

Law and Order, Riotous Assemblies

Here’s one that perked me up and made my morning brighter:

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed a woman on Wednesday who allegedly attempted to run over law enforcement with her vehicle amid immigration enforcement conducting a crackdown in Minneapolis.

Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said that the woman was shot in her vehicle in a residential neighborhood in Minneapolis.

The woman in a Honda Pilot SUV appeared to be blocking the road in front of an ICE squad. As agents approached the woman, she backed up and pulled forward. While pulling forward, an ICE agent in front of the vehicle pulled his service weapon. The agent fired at least one shot into the vehicle as he sidestepped the moving SUV. The vehicle then crashed into a parked car.

Good.  I’m sick of these assholes screwing around with ICE, and this was made all the sweeter by the fact that it took place in the People’s Soviet of Minnesoduh, which explains the reaction from local politicians:

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said regarding DHS’s explanation of the shooting, “So they are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense. Having seen the video … myself, I want to tell everybody directly that is bullshit.”

He added that he feels “this was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying.”

“We have been in contact with law enforcement leaders, the Attorney General, and the Governor’s Office throughout the morning and are pushing hard for a local investigation which is the only way to ensure full transparency and review by our office. We will use every available lever to ensure a local, transparent investigation takes place,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said in a statement, FOX 9 reported.

Frey posted on X, “I am aware of a shooting involving an ICE agent at 34th Street & Portland. The presence of federal immigration enforcement agents is causing chaos in our city. We’re demanding ICE to leave the city immediately. We stand rock solid with our immigrant and refugee communities.”

…against the cops, yeah, we get the picture, you Commie bitch.

Of course, if our hero ICE agent were to be treated in the same way that career criminals are ordinarily treated by Moriarty, he’d be released within minutes.  As it is…

I want ICE to go into this festering cesspit of a city harder and yet harder, in greater numbers and with even greater resolve.  And if the “residents” get out of control such as happened in this instance, I want to see more gunfire.  Let’s see if these criminal supporters [sic]  feel that strongly about their case then.

Kick Them All Out

Legal Stuff

Honestly, I just don’t have time for this kind of bullshit anymore:

The NRA filed suit Monday against the NRA Foundation, alleging rogue leadership at the foundation misused about $160 million dollars.

FOX News reported that the NRA “alleged the foundation used its trademarks without authorization and diverted donations intended for NRA charitable programs.”

The lawsuit claims that the foundation is run by a group of former NRA board members who lost control of the NRA board and are now bitter. Reuters pointed out that the lawsuit describes the former board members as Wayne LaPierre “allies.”

NRA attorneys wrote, “The Foundation has been seized by a disgruntled faction of former NRA directors who lost control of the NRA’s Board following revelations of financial improprieties, mismanagement, and breaches of fiduciary duty and member trust.”

Disband the lot:  the NRA, the NRA Foundation, and any of the rent-seekers on the periphery:  the fund-raisers, the pimps who push “NRA-approved” life insurance policies, and whoever else I’ve missed.

Keep, but rename the youth- and training programs, because that’s all the NRA is good for.

Feel free to take me to task for all the great things the NRA is supposed to have done for gun owners over the years, because in the immortal words of someone talking about something else, taken all together it doesn’t amount to a bucket of cold spit.  And that includes the NRA-ILA, which has a woeful track record in its stated purpose.

Forget about this lobbying group, and if you’re going to give money to the Cause, direct it towards the Second Amendment Foundation*, which does stuff like file successful lawsuits against the gun-grabbers — you know, things that actually work.

But the NRA?  Drop them all down a nearby well, them and their fucking “Foundation”.

*full disclosure:  I have nothing to do with the SAF and never have.  I have over the years, had plenty to do with the NRA, and the experience has left me mostly underwhelmed and unimpressed.

Giving Up

Africa, Bad News

Of course, I read this with great regret and sadness, because it’s my home town being written off:

Johannesburg: The slow death of a city that may have outlived its purpose

Johannesburg is in an advanced state of decay, destruction, ruin, crime, waste, and all of it seems, sometimes, like a mirror image of South African society. We grieve over the once-great city in a veritable cult of grief.

But we are too afraid to look in the mirror because our vanity overwhelms our misery — we are, after all, a great people, and a great people we have to remain…

In and around the city, the families and communities in its suburbs and on the periphery are struggling to live full lives. As days and weeks go by, the denizens are losing reason to value their surroundings. The taps run dry frequently, energy supply is interrupted regularly, flagship institutions, and all those little things like roads, pavements, pedestrian crossings, traffic signs, road signs and robots are bleeding like wounds that will not heal on a body in terminal decline.

The city is depleted, and lacking in the nutrients and the energy necessary to bring it back to full functionality.

We can point, as we may, to mismanagement, maladministration, lack of planning, a lack of foresight and vision. We can, also, consider Johannesburg as a city that has reached the end of its natural life and is approaching the end of its purpose.

Johannesburg, as we came to know it, was established by European settler colonists in about 1886 for the sole purpose of exploiting the gold buried in the rocks below. Those gold deposits are finite. If it’s not entirely finite, mining it is becoming more expensive, while demand may well increase.

Yeah, what the hell.  It’s just a shell of a place, an aggregation of concrete, glass and tarmac:  it’s too difficult to govern or manage, so why bother?

One might also say the same thing about Manhattan or Los Angeles.  In fact, one might say the same thing about all the major cities of the world, where concentration of the population has become too difficult and in most cases, too dangerous.

So let the animals take over and feast on the bones.  And when the bones are gone and the animals need to go further afield to survive… then what?

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I think it’s time to go to the range.

Sand In The Shoe

Corporate Fuckery, Drive Time, Technology, Two-Minute Hate

Over here, a couple of guys gripe about ten most irritating things about modern cars.  To save you time, I’ve listed them here, with my thoughts:

  • Beeping — It’s like being locked in your car with a nagging Catholic/Jewish mother:  do this, don’t do that, why haven’t you etc. etc.  Whether it’s seatbelts, lane changing (more of that later) or any one of the many things that someone else thinks that you should/shouldn’t do, I am often tempted just to cut the fucking wires to the speaker.
  • Wireless phone chargers — I haven’t come across this nonsense myself because I last bought a car in 2015, but the guys in the video sum it up perfectly:  it makes your phone hot, and doesn’t perform as advertised unless your phone is perfectly positioned.  It’s all part of making everything bluetoothed instead of cabled.
  • Artificial engine noise — First they soundproof the car, and then because some drivers would actually like to hear the sound the car makes, or want their car to sound all shouty without the necessary engine to make it so, the car pipes in fake engine noise.  If that’s not a good analogy for the A.I./fake/digital/artificial times we live in, I can’t think of a better one.
  • Voice-activated assist — I call this “creeping Alexa”, where one has to rely on some fucking software to recognize your voice (which it often can’t, with comical / disastrous consequences), all instead of you just turning a switch or pushing a button.  And speaking of which:
  • Screen buttons instead of actual switches — There’s no excuse for this, and this has nothing to do with “safety” (the usual excuse) because the plain fact of the matter is that screen switches are cheaper than mechanical switches, and that saves the manufacturer money (which savings are never passed on to the customer, needless to say).  And speaking of safety:  the screen buttons require that one be at the correct screen to enable the things to work;  if not, one has to scroll backwards or forwards until the correct screen puts in an appearance — and all this requires taking one hand off the steering wheel for an extended period, and taking one’s eyes off the road.  Anyone else see a potential problem here?
  • Modern headlights are too bright — I’ve noticed this trend, and it’s fucking dangerous to other drivers, especially in rainy and/or night-time conditions.  You’re not having to land an airliner on a narrow runway;  you’re driving down a street, FFS, with oncoming traffic.  (And if you’re out in the boonies and need brighter lights, add a spotlight bar.)
  • High-gloss finishes (e.g. piano black) — I don’t even like shiny finishes on gun stocks (hello, Browning!), and I see no need for something similar in a car that is basically a dust/fingerprint collector.
  • Subscription services / features — Once again, just another way for auto manufacturers to bleed money out of the customer once the car has been sold.  The nice part of this is that not having some of these features (seat warmers, etc.) has the effect of taking us back to earlier times when we managed perfectly well without all these luxury geegaws.  But I await with bated breath the time when things like windshield wipers, turn signals and high beams all become something you have to pay monthly fees for, instead of them just being part of the (horribly-inflated) sticker price of the car.  And when I say “bated breath”, I mean when the breath becomes “unbated”, that will be a signal to load up the AK.
  • Start/stop buttons — I have ranted about this piece of automotive excrescence more times than I can count.  Yes, I know that you can disable the thing;  but the latest wheeze from these godless fucks is to make it reset every time you switch off the car, which means you have to disable the function as part of the starting procedure every time you want to drive somewhere.   The days of getting in, turning a key and moving on are so far in the distant past that one wonders how the Three Wise Men made it to Bethlehem without satnav — which, by the way, is fast becoming yet another subscription service.
  • Lane assist / traffic distancing — It’s one thing when these functions beep at you as a warning;  it’s another thing altogether when the functions takes over the driving for you.  Apart from the foul nanny philosophy behind the thing, it can also be life-threatening.

Now go and watch the video — especially the last couple of minutes — because those guys are funny where I’m just fucking enraged.

Stupid Stupid Stupid

Corporate Fuckery, Drive Time

Yeah, this one’s going to turn out well for them:

Jaguar’s last ever petrol car came off the assembly line at the brand’s Midlands factory on Friday (19 December) ahead of its daring switch to all-electric vehicles next year.

The final Jaguar model with a combustion engine under its bonnet is an £80,000 high-performance F-Pace SVR SUV finished in black paint, according to the Jaguar Enthusiasts’ Club, which was in attendance as the Solihull factory officially signed off its last petrol model.

Under the bonnet is a burbling 5.0-litre supercharged V8 petrol engine – a stark contrast to the first ‘new Jaguar’ that will debut next year, which is a near-silent four-door GT that will cost almost twice as much, with a quoted £120,000 to £140,000 starting price.

While parent group JLR made no official announcement of the event, the Jaguar Enthusiasts’ Club says the final model is being gifted to the Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust in Gaydon, where it will be retained as a museum piece.

The club said Friday was a ‘quiet, historic full stop’ for Jaguar’s 90-year relationship with the internal combustion engine.

Yeah, and they’re celebrating this piece of boneheaded idiocy?

No wonder the car, and the staff, are all wearing black:

I think a better payoff line would be:

“Pissing Away 90 Years Of Jaguar Heritage”

Oh, and “full stop” is what’s going to happen to Jaguar’s EV sales, but let’s not spoil the party.

Stopping The Drain

Africa

Friend and Reader Hank T. sends me a link to a website I’ve not seen before (and it has a most excellent title).  The post itself shines a light on the usual totalitarian reindeer games:

After leftists fundamentally transform a country, people must be prevented from escaping. South Africa is no exception.

A storm is breaking over the South African Afrikaner remnant. What is being framed publicly as a diplomatic incident is, in reality, an act of war carried out covertly and deliberately. We are bearing witness to something far more sinister than an isolated raid. This is a convergence point, political treachery, racial targeting, and spiritual warfare colliding in the open.

On Tuesday, December 16, 2025, a U.S.-affiliated refugee processing center in Johannesburg was raided by South African officials wearing khaki uniforms. The facility had been operating quietly, processing asylum applications from white South Africans, many of them Afrikaner farmers, under provisions authorized by executive order. The raid was calculated, hostile, and executed while U.S. immigration agents were on site. It was not just interference. It was a direct act of aggression.
These agents were forced to flee.

Calls to mind the construction of the Berlin Wall, dunnit?

At this point, I’d believe anything about the foul South African government, who are doing things to the people that are far, far worse than the evil apartheid regime ever did.

In case anyone thinks I’m exaggerating on this, here’s something to ponder:  at no point during the apartheid years did the government ever allow and encourage ordinary White people to slaughter Blacks without fear of prosecution.  Ask any White farmer how that’s going right now.

What saddens me is that when you talk to White South Africans, as I do regularly, they persist with the moonbeam nonsense about how beautiful the country is and how things aren’t as bad as portrayed.

Uh huh.

Of course, this is going to end in tragedy.