Bills that fine people on the other side of the planet? Feh.
As a side note: twice in the last two weeks or so I’ve gotten robocalls that start yapping at me in Chinese or some such. Anyone else?
Lynn Yaeger, Vogue Editor says Melania Trumps wardrobe is tasteless, and out of fashion. Honestly, you couldn't write the script. pic.twitter.com/bnB5x1o9VT
— Dr James Kent (@DrJamesKent3) December 26, 2019
I can’t be the only one to have this particular flashback:
Snerk:
Short form: a shaman rubbed a guinea pig on a large number of people to cure them of their ailments, and likely their overly-fat wallets. No information was given about how the guinea pig felt about it; looked disturbed to me, but maybe it was just happy to be the center of attention. Also no word about whether the critter had been cleaned of plague-fleas prior to this. And the author did not render an opinion on whether it would be good or bad if a bunch of people who buy into rampagingly stupid nonsensical superstitious quackery caught some horrible life-ending, gene pool winnowing disease.
This misleading headline in Global News “Gunman in Texas church shooting owned gun range, gave lessons: state prosecutor” has since been changed to “Firearms instructor took out gunman at Texas church service” and Global has replaced the Reuters story with an Associated Press story.
It’s interesting how many times news stories get the facts wrong in particular directions. This time, the false narrative would have been handy for those opposed to firearms ownership, when the real story was that this guy not only was likely legally barred from owning a firearm, he never should have been out in public anyway. Now, I seriously doubt that this was done with intent… but instead what happened is that the reporter who wrote the false story, the editors who titled it, the publisher who ran it… they got their facts wrong initially and couldn’t be bothered to actually check, no doubt in small part because they *liked* the story.
This is hardly the first time this has happened.
He also designed the Sulaco and the Power Loader in Aliens, V’Ger, the Leonov from 2010, the AT-AT…
Passenger amenities are a bit lacking.
The “Ripsaw” series of vehicles are certainly interesting, having gotten themselves into a number of movies (GI Joe, one of those “Fast & Furious” flicks, probably others). The “M5 Electric Drive Super Tank” appears to be surprisingly quiet, though I’d certainly debate the label “Super Tank.” it is also unmanned, which you can certainly believe once you see it in side view… its hull does not appear to be deep enough for someone to actually sit in. It’s also unclear just how functional the turret and armament are. One scene shows the turret spinning quickly, but the gun barrel seems fixed.
I could see a role for a whole swarm of these things romping up and down the southern border, the sizable cannon replaced with a .50 or two. An actual border wall is not a terribly effective deterrent to the ongoing invasion; walls are readily surmounted, and they are bad for the native wildlife. But a robotank that is relatively quiet? Have them zip along, guided by an armada of long-duration overhead drones, turning coyote trucks into Swiss cheese and running down on-foot bands of invaders.
Hey, if the Governor of Virginia can call out the National Guard onto his own citizens, and if Rep. Swalwell can call for the use of nuclear weapons on US territory to eliminate those who disagree with his policies, then siccing first-generation Terminators onto foreign invaders seems an uncontroversial idea.
Two “house of worship” attempted massacres in as many days. The second time, a schmuck with a shotgun tries to take out a church in Texas. And this time, he got about five seconds into doing his thing when *he* got shot. The video makes for interesting viewing if you’re into that sort of thing… and it makes for an *impressive* bit of marksmanship, as one guy caps the badguy in the noggin with a single shot from across the room after a fast draw. The *first* guy to get shot telegraphed his draw, which is probably why he got shot. If you don’t like seeing random churchgoers getting shot, this is not a video to watch. If you want to see villains getting shot, then this is a video to watch. If you want to learn what to do and not to do, then this should prove helpful. An important lesson here: a slow draw, if someone is pointing a shotgun at you, will get you shot first. Learn to draw fast and shoot accurately… or keep your weapon out of sight. I am all in favor of open carry for those who want to, but this video points out the problem of letting badguys know that you are armed: they’ll shoot you first.
No info as yet about the who/why of the shooter. However, we do know this: Presidential Candidate Gropey Joe Biden would, had he had his way, have had this incident be a lot bloodier:
So a day or two back I visited a Barnes & Noble bookstore. One of the endcaps was covered with an array of woo-peddling nonsense, but one book truly caught my eye:
Next the the numerology handbook, sure to aid the idiots in your life to make their decision making processes that much less sensible, is “Hexing the Patriarchy.” Unsurprisingly, this book is available on Amazon, which provides this description:
Skeptics might think witchcraft is nothing more than a fad, but make no mistake: modern witches aren’t playing around. Today’s wizarding women are raising hell, exorcising haters, and revving up to fight fire with a fierce inferno of magical outrage.
Magic has always been a weapon of the disenfranchised, and in Hexing the Patriarchy, author Ariel Gore offers a playbook for the feminist uprising. Full of incantations, enchantments, rituals, and witchy wisdom designed protect women and bring down The Man, readers will learn how to . . .
This. Is. AWESOME.
If “the patriarchy” was actually a real thing, it could not come up with a better weapon to defend itself from “strong independent women” than to convince the opposition to rely on magical bullcrap. An opponent who relies on nonsensical woo rather than things that actually work is a much less effective opponent.
I recommend giving this book – or any of the wide range of similarly self-defeating titles available (such as “Revolutionary Witchcraft: A Guide to Magical Activism” and “Becoming Dangerous: Witchy Femmes, Queer Conjurers, and Magical Rebels“) to the gullible lefties in your life. Especially those who you think might, absent this “wisdom,” actually have some modest success in the political sphere.
Granted, it would be better if you didn’t actually spend money to procure these books. Perhaps they could be conjured out of thin air. Or… simply pass on the links, and let the opposition spend their own money to make themselves dumber.
The important trick, of course, will come after the immediate battle is over. After the socialists and commies and fascists and all the other far lefties render themselves irrelevant by relying upon magic rather than reason, it will be important for reason to not only emerge victorious, but to wipe the field clean of the stain of this superstitious ᚷᚩᛞᛞᚪᛗᚾᛖᛞ ᚠᚢᚳkᛁᚾᚷ ᛒᚢᛚᛚᛋᚻᛁᛏ. Allowed to gain purchase, this rubbish will lead directly either to a dark age… or to Chinese domination of the entire planet and the closing down of the era of western civilization.
Children are our future. Weep for it.
There are a few things that I suspect almost everyone of every political stripe can agree on:
We want fewer murderers. We want fewer rapists. We want fewer homeless. We want fewer (insert horrible plague HERE) victims. We want fewer forest fire/earthquake/hurricane/tornado/etc. victims. We want fewer scam artists. We want fewer quack doctors. We want fewer car thefts. And so on, fill in the blank. And government generally at least makes handwavy motions towards claiming to want policies that will, presumably, lead to fewer of these. That’s all well and good.
But there are also things we don’t all agree on. One is “we want fewer billionaires” and even “we want fewer millionaires.” For example:
The cost to our democracy of billionaires with enough wealth and power to dictate the rules of capitalism for their own benefit is incalculable
So, these people want to enact laws and regulations to make sure that there are fewer of these people that they don’t like. Note that Robert Reich, the traitorous scumbag who penned the above bloviating bullcrap article, says: “Entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos would be just as motivated by say, a $100 million or even $50 million.” Which, for anyone who has watched Elon Musk spend *far* more than that just getting SpaceX off the ground, never mind everything he’s dumped into Tesla, is an indicator that Reich is a ᚠᚢᚳkᛁᚾᚷ ᛗᚩᚱᚩᚾ who should be kept as far away from the economy as possible.
But aside from Reich, at any herd of whackadoodle moonbat protestors you’ll find people screaming about how terribly unfair it is that some people like Oprah get to have billions while they don’t, and thus billionaires should be banned. Often they crank out the meaningless factoid that “60% of all wealth today in inherited,” as if that was a bad thing… while ignoring the fact that the vast majority of that wealth will be blown to oblivion by the third generation, no need for taxation. And while you’d hope that the crazies wouldn’t have an effect on the electorate, the fact is that they do; how else to explain the repeated elections of the likes of Pelosi and Nadler? So, the “ban billionaire” bozos should be countered, and I think I have a simple way of doing so.
Take a look at that first list of things everyone wants less of… murderers and thieves and so on. How many people want *themselves* to be these things? How many people *want* to be rapists or con artists or plague victims? Few, and those who do are generally nuts. But… how many people bloviating about how terrible it is that there’s wealth inequality would *leap* at the opportunity to be filthy stinkin’ rich? Dangle a dose of cancer in front of most people, they won’t touch it; dangle a winning Powerball ticket in front of most people, they’ll feed their grandmothers to the ravenous bugblatter beast of Traal to get it. And this is as it should be: murder is bad. Wealth is good. Even if most people might not understand the intricacies of economic theory, most people understand that the economy is not a zero sum game; I’m not poorer because some tech bajillionaire came up with a process or a gizmo that a billion people all wanted to buy. It’s no skin off my nose if you get rich, and it’s *certainly* a good thing if *I* get rich.
So, apply the test to politicians. If a politician put forward a “reduce child rape” bill, it would be fair to ask Senator Pedo McCreepyBiden to please stop fondling the schoolkids. How many politicians bitching about wealth inequality are themselves substantially wealthier than the average American, own multiple homes like these:
Face it: the great majority of the complaining about wealth inequality comes from a place of pure jealousy. And while I might be jealous of the vacuous actor paid millions of dollars to just look pretty on screen… I’m not jealous of the mafia hit man or crackhead or any of the other types that government policies supposedly work to abolish.