Tag: Stupid people

Enter Stage Somewhere

Gummint, Politics, The Gun Thing

I see that the NRA has promised to “work with gun owners to swamp the first hearing of the Virginia Senate committee considering new gun bans”.

NRA spokeswoman Catherine Mortensen told the Washington Free Beacon that the gun-rights group is mobilizing its members to appear at the first meeting of the Virginia Senate’s Courts of Justice on Jan. 13. The organization hopes that pressure from constituents will make newly elected Democrats, who helped the party capture control of the state legislature, think twice about supporting gun bans pursued by the state’s Democratic governor.

Uh huh.  Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but over the past three decades or so, whenever some state government has decided to crap all over the Second Amendment, the NRA has been more conspicuous in its absence than in its action.

I remember down here in north Texas, a long-established and much-loved gun range was being targeted by a housing development, whose new residents were aghast that there was a working gun range a whole mile away from their backyards.  So said developers put pressure on the TX legislators to declare the range a public nuisance / danger and force it to close.  As it happened, there was already a weak law on the books which prevented this kind of thing, but as it was a weak law (it’s since been toughened up) it required legal representation which the gun range couldn’t afford, and the Texas State Rifle Association couldn’t afford to cover, either.  So the TSRA appealed for help from the NRA but was told that the NRA had more important things to do with its money at the national level, and as such it was up to us locals to come up with the funds (from memory, the shortfall was just over half a million dollars, or fifty of Wayne LaPierre’s shiny suits).

The range closed six months later, bankrupted out of existence by lawyer’s fees;  despite raising a goodly amount (I donated nearly a grand, as I recall), it wasn’t nearly enough and so they just said “fuck it”, moved over fifty miles away into the boonies, and we all lost a fine range and an excellent little gun shop located on the premises.  Every time I drive past the place (now a nondescript strip mall standing between the road and the McMansions of the development), I want to toss bricks through the windows of every single one of the buildings.

If I were a cynical man, therefore, I would suggest that the only reason that the NRA is suddenly so interested in what’s happening in Virginia is because that’s where NRA HQ is located, and most of the guns in their basement museum would become illegal overnight and have to be either moved or handed in.

Not so fucking funny when it happens to you, eh, Wayne?

Sharing Rides

Bad News, Legal Stuff

Over in the UK, somebody had an Uber drive from hell:

Uber driver , 51, exposed himself to young female passenger and asked her to perform sex acts on him

What struck me most about the above incident was that it took a whole year to get this asshole into court.  I don’t know if that’s peculiar to Britishland, but I have to think it would have taken less time Over Here.

The other thing I noticed was that the guy was an immigrant from a Muslim country, where such behavior would probably never have seen a courtroom — in fact, the passenger might have been arrested for being out and about unaccompanied by a male relative, had she dared to report the incident.

Still more interesting was the fact that the dickhead thought he could get away with it — that he wouldn’t be reported and even if caught would be let off with a slight reprimand, if that.

No wonder some of my female passengers are a little nervous.

Of course, were I the judge, I’d have sentenced Chester The Molester to a short prison term, but with daily ball-kickings.  And publicized the sentence, pour encourager les autres pervertis.

No doubt someone would have a problem with this.

Tragedy, Repeated

Disaster, Eco-Crap, Freaks & Loonies, Lies and Untruths, Two-Minute Hate

While we all feel for the folks in Oz whose environment is being set to BROIL, it’s worth noting that many of their problems have been caused by the same people as the California genus:

But let us not allow the heartbreak and the emotion to distract us from the truth about this natural disaster: it has nothing whatsoever to do with ‘climate change’.
…[charts and graphs etc]…
So, to be clear, there is zero evidence of any change in climatic conditions that might have increased the likelihood or severity of these bush fires. This is not — repeat NOT — a man-made climate change story, and anyone who claims otherwise is either a gullible idiot or a lying charlatan.
There is, nonetheless, good reason to believe that the stupidity and irresponsibility of man is at least partly to blame for this disaster — just not quite in the way that the left-liberal MSM and the green wankerati would have you believe.

Read the article for the full story, but if you have insufficient time, here’s the executive summary:

Animal-worshipers, Greens and pyromaniacs.  Just like in California.

I feel the need for mass whippings, hangings etc. starting to build… but no doubt someone’s going to have  problem with this.

Omission, Explained

Train Smash Women

A little while ago, I asked why the Daily Mail  only features Train Smash Women Partying in northern British cities, and got this thoughtful email response from Reader Pippa D:

I believe it’s because the drinking areas and establishments in northern English cities are fairly centralised — Manchester, Deansgate; Newcastle, Bigg Market; Birmingham, Broad Street — for example. So the concentration of New Year drunks spilling out of local bars and clubs is greater. The party paparazzi duly get a lot of amusing/tragic photos as they are in the right place at the right time.
But in London, the drinking establishments are spread right across the city; they are spread across suburban areas too. Effectively, London is a swirl of lots of mini-towns with not one centralised ‘party district’. Not even Leicester Square, Piccadilly or Covent Garden. People party in Camden, Dalston, Clapham, Mayfair, etc. So if the paparazzi have to choose to wait for drunks outside a handful of pubs and bars in one small area containing only 3% of the overall nights revellers in the city, they might not get too much joy.
I don’t believe it’s a northern/southern British snobbery thing or politicised.

Makes sense to me — although I would suggest that pretty much any two-block area in London’s East End would yield similar results.

I also note, by the way, that the above pic came from the Daily Express, and not from the Mail.

Losing Your Audience

Sports

I see that Formula 1 has lost a boatload of UK viewers ever since they moved from free TV to subscription TV.  Time for Ye Olde Cluebatte:

If you’re going to require people to pay for something that they’re used to getting for free, it has be something they can’t live without, or else something which is “new ‘n improved” — i.e. that justifies the cost.

And Formula 1 has managed to go down ever since they stopped using loud, balls-to-the-wall engines, and pricing Everything F1 into the stratosphere.  In other words, the product has become tamer, less passionate and shittier, ergo not worth paying for.

I love Formula 1, love it with a passion, always have — but not  always will.  The plain fact of the matter is that after the first corner of the first lap, F1 races are nothing more than a 66-lap procession, where races can be decided on the time and number of pit stops, where refuelling midrace has been outlawed, tire types are restricted, and so on.  F1 has also become technocentric, and techno is expensive — which limits the number of teams which have the money or desire to participate.  As a result, there are essentially only three teams — Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull — who have any consistent chance of winning a given race.  Here are the teams’ points position at the end of the 2019 season, and note the points disparity between the top three and the rest:

It was more or less the same in 2018, and 2017, and 2016… and there are only four actual engines used (Ferrari, Mercedes, Renault and Honda) by all the teams.

I have some suggestions.

  • Ban all team-driver radio communication.  Let the driver figure out what’s going on with the car, and signal to him only from the pit wall.  Right now, the whole thing is just a techno-chess game, where race decisions can be made in Maranello, Woking or Surrey rather than at the track or in the car.  In fact, very few decisions are now made by the driver, which means that at some point, driverless cars are going to be suggested (and upon that  change, all F1 fans will disappear from sight.)
  • Ban remote engine changes from the garage.  Right now, the team can make changes from the pit wall to the amount of power a car can generate.  Screw that nonsense — let the driver use as much or as little as he’s got.
  • Dump the dual-engine (hybrid) formula and stick to fast, powerful (and loud) 3-liter V6 or flat-six gas engines.  Leave all the electronic stuff to Le Mans prototype cars.  Here’s the thing:  not every auto manufacturer can afford to build a modern F1 engine — but all  of them can make a fast, powerful and reliable 3-liter six-cylinder one, which opens up the race for other car manufacturers to participate.  (And the louder, the better:  F1 fans just love  the noise.)
  • Make the races longer — 80 laps (or 150 miles) minimum — so that the cars have  to stop to refuel their (mandatory) 100-liter / 26-gallon (US) tanks.  (Ignore that “safety” bullshit:  if the sports car teams can manage refueling safely, so can F1.)
  • Let the teams choose whatever tires they want, and drop the “two-type per race” mandate.  If a team wants to race the whole thing on one set of hard tires, and another wants to use three soft sets (for higher speed) or two medium sets (compromise), then let them.
  • Ditto engine changes.  Right now, F1 teams can only use three engines per season (without penalty).  What bullshit.  Let them use a new engine for each race, if they want.  The problem is that engines now cost so much that only a couple teams could afford to do that — which is part of F1’s problem.

There’s a reason that I’m suggesting all the above, and it’s not just a hankering for the old days (as is my general tendency).  As racing becomes all the more technical and much less human, people get turned off by the loss of human interaction. 

In gun terms, it would be like watching a rifle-shooting competition between remote-controlled gun platforms made by only Mitsubishi and Honda.   I wouldn’t cross the street to watch that, for free.  And nor would many others.

Now hold a competition, in any format, between humans shooting Remington, Colt, Ruger, SIG Sauer, Blaser, CZ, Mauser, Winchester and HK rifles… oh man, sign me up now.

That’s the problem, and all F1 needs to do is to bring back the human element into racing.  You heard it here first.

Have Some Cheese

Politics

Via Insty, I see that some career diplo-twerp is having a conniption fit over God-Emperor Trump’s ill-treatment of career diplomats.

Within the senior ranks, however, we watched our assignment possibilities vanish as the White House left top diplomatic positions vacant and handed out others as rewards to political cronies, campaign donors, and members of President Trump’s golf clubs. Senior jobs at the State Department which had typically been filled by career foreign service officers went to blatantly unqualified appointees. Sensitive diplomatic special envoy positions were given to people such as an assistant to Trump’s son-in-law.

Boo fucking hoo.

I don’t know where this little fart has been — warming a chair in State for three decades, apparently — but along with Custer’s difficulties in Wyoming, the news is that ambassadorships have always  been a “spoils” position — doled out to political party favorites and donors.

It’s long been a truism that the entire State Department is simply a delivery vehicle for Democrat Party foreign policy, regardless of which party’s leader sits in the Oval Office or which party controls Congress, even.  And it’s also true that State hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory, either:  I remember full well how the U.S. Embassy staff in London had this huge party planned for Hillary Bitch Clinton’s coronation in 2016, and when it became apparent that she was having her broad ass kicked by the aforementioned Trump, how that party turned into a wake when the Electoral College count was concluded.

And now these apparatchiks are amazed, nay shocked  that the President places them lower than pond scum on his daily to-do list?  Frankly, I think that Trump’s swamp-draining efforts should have started with these fuckheads, and one of the few really bad hiring mistakes he made was Rex Tillotson, who as a lifelong corporate executive was always going to go with maintaining the status quo (i.e. the State Department position) in terms of our relationships with foreign powers — which is why Trump kicked him out, eventually, because Trump’s goal always was to change the nature of those relationships.

America pays a heavy price for turning statecraft into a playground for rich amateurs. Embarrassing blunders, scandals and mismanagement are commonplace for some of the most unqualified.

Uh huh.  I remember when Bill Fucking Clinton made Senator Symbol — Carol Mosely-Braun (D-IL), the stupidest senator in living history — into an ambassador, and who was so inept that the host country’s foreign services department threw a party when she finally left.  The country?  New Zealand.  Ask me how any Trump appointee could be worse than that.  (And don’t even get me started  on other Democrat SecState failures like Hillary “Libya” Clinton and John Fuckface Kerry, or we’ll be here all day.)

So the hell with these little placeholders in State.  Their influence has been either incorrect — former bootlegger-turned-ambassador Joe Kennedy telling FDR that the Brits were going to be defeated by Nazi Germany in 1939 — or even inimical to our national interests — Alger Hiss, anyone? — and the career diplomats’ much-vaunted “expertise and experience” in foreign policy is far too overestimated.

This whole lament as linked is simply a tantrum because the President isn’t doing what they think  he should be doing — almost a textbook definition of the Swamp that Trump promised to drain.

Don’t like what the Boss is doing?  Quit and put your diplomatic formal suits to good use as headwaiters, you limpwristed pantywaists, the sooner the better.