Category: “Your Tax Dollars At Work”

  • What “Free Speech” Really Means to the Far Left

    For your answer . . . look no further than Berkeley, California, this past Sunday.

    Now IMO, it’s kinda hard to get much farther left than the self-styled “Antifa” without joining the CPUSA.  So I’ll take what they do as indicative of the true agenda of the far left.

    In Berkeley on Sunday, a peaceful protest by a group of conservatives was assaulted by a group of hooded, masked leftist thugs from the self-styled “Antifa” group.  Five were injured.

    Here’s a link to video of the event.

    During the melee, some of those masked leftist thugs were heard to shout:  “Take his camera, take his phone” on seeing a journalist in the crowd.  Decide for yourself why a bunch of masked leftist hoodlums might not want anyone taking photos or videos of what they were doing – and why they were wearing masks in the first place.

    So where were the police, you might ask?  Well, it seems that the police stood down instead of confronting those leftist hooligans – again.  Berkeley’s police chief claimed that was a “strategic decision” made to “avoid more violence”.  He said that there was “no need for a confrontation over a grass patch.”

    Hmm.  Sounds more to me like a police department that is simply afraid to do its damn job of keeping the peace – or was perhaps ordered not to.   In either case, IMO it amounted to de facto local government support for Antifa’s unlawful mob violence.

    But that’s just me.  YMMV.

    Oh, did I mention that San Francisco’s mayor has publicly sided with those leftist “Antifa” goons?  Well, that’s what I’d call it.  He’s been reported to have called this  example of blatant intimidation through violent action a “victory” over a group “inviting hate” – the latter referring to the peaceful conservative group protesting, not the leftist “Antifa” hoodlums that violently assaulted them.

    Apparently for SF Mayor Ed Lee, free speech means “acts of mob violence committed against political enemies by those he supports, while local government stands by and does little or nothing to stop it”.  You know, exactly the same thing some Jim Crow governments in the Deep South did during the Civil Rights Era.

    Ain’t that just ever so nostalgic and lovely?

    Fox News has an article with more details.  It’s definitely worth a read.

    For some reason, when I hear about stuff like this – violence against a group the local authorities don’t like, designed to intimidate, while those same local authorities turn a blind eye to that violence and tacitly assist same –  another term also comes to mind.  So does a name.

    Now, what was that term, and that name?  Wait a minute, maybe they’ll come to me . . . .

    Oh, yeah – right.  I believe I remember the word and name now.

    The word I was trying to remember was “Kristallnacht”.  The name?  “Medgar Evers.”

    “Antifa” is so named because they claim to be “anti-fascist”.

    “Anti-fascist”?  What a crock.

    “Antifa’s” tactics (violent intimidation of political enemies) are no different than those used decades ago by the SA or the Klan.  And in some places, they seem to have the same kind of political “top cover”.

    They just haven’t gone as far as either the SA or the Klan.  Yet.

    “Anti-fascist” my ass. “SSDD” is more like it.

     

    For the record:  the Klan and other far-right idiots are no better than Antifa; historically, some of those moronic groups have been even worse.  But it wasn’t a bunch of far-right thugs that attempted to silence peaceful protest at Berkeley two days ago.

  • Another Healthcare Insurer Leaves ObamaCare Exchanges

    This time it’s Aetna.  They’ve just announced that 2017 is the last year they’ll participate in the ObamaCare healthcare insurance exchanges.  They will not offer policies for 2018 on those exchanges.

    Why?  Simple.  Last year, in 15 states Aetna lost nearly $700 million on policies issued through said exchanges.  This year, they’re predicted to lose nearly $200 million in only 4 states (VA, DE, IA, NE) – obviously, on substantially reduced enrollment.

    There’s a term for companies whose business practices consistently lose money by the ton.  That term is, “Bankrupt.”

    And no, Gruber:  this isn’t Trump’s fault.  It’s because the whole asinine system is an abomination that is so structurally flawed it cannot possibly succeed.

    “Free stuff” – isn’t.  Someone, somewhere, pays for it.

    And Aetna just said, “Find another patsy.”

  • And We Thought LA Was “La La Land”

    Headline says it all.

    Chicago inmates can now order pizza directly to their cells

    I’d say, “YGBSM” – but I long ago ceased to be amazed by idiotic policies adopted by “Progressive” cities and states.

  • And In the “WTF?!!” Department . . . .

    Yeah, the linked article’s headline – repeated in the link below – is accurate.

    Seventh grader suspended for ‘liking’
    a photo of a gun on Instagram

    Sheesh. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, the idiots come up with something even more idiotic and prove you wrong.

    Yes, I understand the school’s concern about school violence, but c’mon. Here, the district suspended a kid for “liking” a non-explicit picture – a picture of an airsoft pistol with the one-word caption “Ready” – he saw posted on Instagram while web surfing from home at 7PM. And they did it without giving the kid a chance to explain himself.

    Yeah, like the kid’s parents I kinda got a problem with that.

    Really? Do they also monitor their students to see if they visit pr0n sites late at night on the Internet while at home? Or what books they check out from the city library on weekends – or download from Amazon?

    I think Hank Hill described the behavior by the school administration here quite well. Except here, laughter isn’t IMO in any way appropriate.

    Big Brother approves. Those who value common sense and freedom . . . perhaps not so much.

    If school administrators in that school district have nothing better to do than monitor their students’ off-hours off-campus Internet usage, well, to me that suggests a very different problem. Specifically: it suggests that perhaps that district has far too many school administrators. And the fact that they’d suspend a student for liking a picture of any gun on Instagram – without even asking the kid for an explanation, and with no other indication of a problem – shows an utter lack of common sense (though that’s regrettably often the case in education these days).

    Maybe instead of playing “after hours Internet monitor”, the district should instead let a few administrators go. They could then hire a few more teachers with the money saved.

     

    (Author’s Note:  edited to reflect the fact that the “gun” in question was an airsoft pistol vice paintball.)

  • You Couldn’t Make This Sh!t Up If you Tried

    No comment is necessary.  Headline says it all.

    Berkeley Plans to Fight Left-Wing Violence With ‘Laughter Yoga’, Singing and Bubbles

    One prediction:  this will be as effective as Munich in 1938.

  • And All the Ships at Sea….

    Aircraft carriers are ‘vulnerable to attack’, per the news story. No! Really! Like, we don’t know that already? Yes, I know, that’s the USS Mahan, but I couldn’t find a bird farm photo in the bin.

    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-carriers-specialreport-idUSKBN16G1CZ

    From the article: “Trump’s expansion plans come as evidence mounts that potential enemies have built new anti-ship weapons able to destroy much of the United States’ expensive fleet of carriers. And as they have been for decades, carriers remain vulnerable to submarines.

    In a combat exercise off the coast of Florida in 2015, a small French nuclear submarine, the Saphir, snuck through multiple rings of defenses and “sank” the U.S. aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt and half of its escort ships. In other naval exercises, even old-fashioned diesel-electric submarines have beaten carriers.”

    The ignorance of this reporter and others is glaringly obvious in this story.  A task force is built to deal with these kinds of things.

    Ships at sea are and always have been vulnerable to attack and to damage, as is shown in the WWII damage report on the Enterprise CV-6.

    https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/w/war-damage-reports/uss-enterprise-cv6-war-history-1941-1945.html

    Go to page 51 in the report, photo #2 J2. This was shot during the Battle of (Midway).   Sorry, that should be the Battle of Okinawa. My bad.

    The 9-ton elevator door was blown skyward by kamikaze pilot’s suicide strike, after the bomb his plane was carrying exploded in the hangar deck. The elevator door is at the top of the explosion column in the still photo, which is a frame taken from a 16mm film being shot at the time.  While you’re at it, look at some of the damage Japanese bombs did to that old girl. Note in the damage report how many times Enterprise suffered damage throughout the battles in which she was involved and still hung in there, no matter what.

    The lesson is that the press seem to insist on being uninformed and/or misinformed, as an excuse for writing sensationalist articles like this.  Frankly, in a real war, I would expect diesel subs to be used because not every country has nuclear subs. Russia has five nuclear subs, but only one aircraft carrier.

    As indicated in the article, the Chinese are claiming they have missiles that can go 10 times the speed of sound, which is 761.2 mph (1,227.74 km/h). That means their missiles are, per their claim, able to move at 7,612 mph.. That’s their claim, no evidence that it’s true is available to date.

    Fastest missile speed to date  is BrahMos. between Mach 2.8 (3,400 km/h; 2,100 mph; 0.95 km/s) and Mach 3 (3,700 km/h; 2,300 mph; 1.0 km/s).  These are for ship, submarine, aircraft (under testing) and land-based mobile launchers. BrahMos is a cruise missile of Indian/Russian origins.

    Peak speed for ICBMs is 6 to 7 km/sec, which is 13,392 mph or 21,600kph.  Any faster, and the missile launches into space.

    Unless there’s something under development that can move that fast and track a Nork ICBM, what is our alternative?  Anyone have the answer? Anyone? Bueller?

    With Fatty Kim da T’ird getting jiggy on his side of the Chinese-Norkiland border, and the Chinese showing a bit of angst about it (because they don’t want to be bothered with him, either), it’s logical to ask if we, meaning the USA, have anything that can track and destroy an ICBM moving at 13,392 miles per hour.  Thugboy is leading up to the intercontinental stage of missile development and if he gets a hair up his ass, he’s going to launch ‘em. He won’t just be shooting at the South, or the Chinese or Japan. His aspirations go much further than that.  It would be no real loss if he accidentally took out some part of SoCalifornia, instead of Foggy Bottom.

    But to return to the story itself, the reporter misunderstands the purpose of war games, which is to test the vulnerability of your own armaments as well as those of your opponents.  His quivering, panicky prose indicates a lack of information.

    It may be that he likes to be that way.  It stokes his little adrenaline rushes, or something.  Perhaps he should watch ‘Down Periscope’ a couple of times.

  • “No ‘Wiretapping’ ”, Eh?

    Well, then it will certainly be interesting to hear what the former Occupant, 1600 Penn Avenue, Wash DC, and his defenders have to say when Representative Devin Nunes goes public later this week.

    Rep. Nunes is Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.  And reportedly he has information showing that yes, in fact some of the Trump Campaign’s post-election communications were “incidentally” intercepted – and that those intercepts were provided to the White House.

    The information was provided to Rep. Nunes by personnel within the US Intelligence Community.  It reportedly corroborates information Rep. Nunes had already obtained from other sources.

    Oh, and did I mention that the CIA Director is also reportedly interested in determining the extent of any monitoring of President-Elect Trump’s communications by the former     gang of incompetent fools running DC prior to 20 January 2017     Administration?

    Stay tuned.  This one could get interesting.

  • Anyone Surprised?

    I’ve written before about the abuse of “refugee” status to gain entry into the US, along with the possibility of terrorists and/or other US enemies using such fake “refugee” status to do exactly that.  Well, today we have a concrete example.

    Multiple concrete examples, actually.  This linked article details them.

    The “money quote”?  Here you go (emphasis added):

    U.S. officials said earlier this week that nearly a third of the FBI’S 1,000 ongoing domestic terrorism investigations involve those admitted to the U.S. as refugees.

    The linked article gives multiple examples.  Those examples each discuss “refugees” subject to “extreme vetting” and admitted to the US by the previous       <del>naive gaggle of incompetent fools formerly running DC</del>       Administration who don’t appear to have been legitimate refugees at all.

    “Refugees” my ass.  “Infiltrators” seems more like it.

    The article’s IMO worth the 5 minutes it takes to read.  Fair warning:  if you read it, the article will probably p!ss you off.

    The article also details one case in which the Justice Department seems to have “slow rolled” prosecution of one such fake “refugee” in the weeks immediately prior to the 2016 elections.  Hmm.

    Gee, I wonder why something like that might happen?  It couldn’t be because such a prosecution might reflect badly on the former       SCoaMF       Occupant, 1600 Penn Ave, Wash DC – could it?

    Wonderful.  Just freaking wonderful.