Sunday Funnies, LeBron Removes All Doubt

We all know the old saying, “It’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt.” Or maybe one should replace ‘fool’ with ‘traitor’ or ‘coward’. but the sense remains.

fuck it. don’t post the tanks. post the aftermath pic.twitter.com/L6RPjdA428

— Kawaii Kitsune III (@wownotever) October 9, 2019

 

 

End of an era

This is the part that I always think of as some of my favorite things. This definitely qualifies 🙂

Brought to you by the American people, oh my!

And, of course

Sunday Funnies, Calizuela

Steven Hayward over at PowerLine now calls it Calizuela which seems appropriate. Let’s get going.

We spoke of this the other day, here.

Trolling done right.

One keeps hoping.

The headline of the week, from the Babylon Bee

And, of course.

The Streets of San Francisco

I’m going to assume that you all know who Heather MacDonald is. She has done some of the best research-backed work this century. Here’s some more of it, on the homeless in San Fransisco. And don’t think it’s merely Frisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, increasingly New York, and even London are starting to see the same thing. And the cause is always the same. Writing for City Journal here’s Heather. A warning this is both a very sad, and a quite long read.

Everyone’s on drugs here . . . and stealing,” an ex-felon named Shaku explains as he rips open a blue Popsicle wrapper with his teeth. Shaku is standing in an encampment of tents, trash, and bicycles, across from San Francisco’s Glide Memorial Church. Another encampment-dweller lights a green crack pipe and passes it around. A few paces down the street, a gaunt man swipes a credit card through a series of parking meters to see if it has been reported stolen yet.

For the last three decades, San Francisco has conducted a real-life experiment in what happens when a society stops enforcing bourgeois norms of behavior. The city has done so in the name of compassion toward the homeless. The results have been the opposite: street squalor and misery have increased, even as government expenditures have ballooned. Yet the principles that have guided the city’s homelessness policy remain inviolate: homelessness is a housing problem; it is involuntary; and its persistence is the result of inadequate public spending. These propositions are readily disproved by talking to people living on the streets.

Not much of a surprise there, is it? People with common sense have been saying that for 50 years, if not 500 or more.

An inadequate supply of affordable housing is not the first thing that comes to mind when conversing with San Francisco’s street denizens. Their behavioral problems—above all, addiction and mental illness—are too obvious. Forty-two percent of respondents in the city’s 2019 street poll of the homeless reported chronic drug or alcohol use; the actual percentage is likely higher. The city relentlessly sends the message that drug use is not only acceptable but fully expected. Users dig for veins in plain view on the sidewalk; health authorities distribute more than 4.5 million syringes a year, along with Vitamin C to dissolve heroin and crack, alcohol swabs, and instructions on how to best tie one’s arm for a “hit.” Needle disposal boxes have been erected outside the city’s public toilets, signaling to children that drug use is a normal part of adult life. Only 60 percent of the city’s free needles get returned; many of the rest litter the sidewalks and streets or are flushed down toilets.

Drug sellers are as shameless as drug users. Hondurans have dominated the drug trade in the Tenderloin and around Civic Center Plaza and Union Square since the 1990s. They congregate up to a dozen a corner, openly counting and recounting large wads of cash, completing transactions with no attempt at concealment. Most of the dealers are illegal aliens.

Again, no surprise. Wh it amounts to is the ruling elite have decided that these cities are only for the rich, who can one way or another protect themselves, and the very poor, who can not defend themselves against anything, but those elites talk the talk, but they do not walk the walk. All they do is signal their social justice to make themselves feel good and look good to their peers.

Actually, it saddens me as much as it angers me. I haven’t been in Frisco since the mid to late 60s but I remember how gloriously beautiful it was. Enchanting really. That was then, this is now.

There’s lots more, including ways to actually solve the problem, which undoubtedly will not be enacted, let alone enforced. So read the whole and you’ll not only know why Frisco is a shithole but what the rest of us have to do to keep from living in one too. And that is a worthy cause.

Rights are great things but they also bring with themselves responsibilities. It appears to be something our so-called elites have forgotten.

Sunday Funnies, Another Week

The title pretty much covers it.

 

And, of course

Bonus, She’s Back

 

Sunday Funnies, Around the Madhouse

So, another week, democracy is comatose in Britain, Greta makes noise, and whistles blow, while Slow Joe gets more confused. Another week in the madhouse.

 

 

And of course

Brexit and the End of Democracy

Our British cousins are now in a full-fledged constitutional crisis. Their Supreme Court has hijacked all power in the realm, from the people, the Parliament, the Prime Minister, and even the Queen.  As long as this lasts, the United Kingdom cannot really be considered a democracy, it is an oligarchy of 12 people. Maybe it would be more honest to call it simply the Politburo. This, of course, is the fact of finding the prorogation of Parliament to be unconstitutional, illegal, unlawful, or maybe fattening. Who knows, they simply made it up out of the whole cloth without any justification in law whatsoever. It is an ancient right of the government acting with the crown. I’m no lawyer, nor am I an expert on the British constitution, so, although that much is obvious, let’s let someone who knows a lot more tell you about it. That would be Titus Techera, writing in Law and Liberty.

In America, the Democratic Party that lost the 2016 elections at every level simply decided that the people do not have a right to the president they elected, in this case a Republican. So, partisans of the Left have since been trying everything they could think of to overturn the legitimate results of that election.

Yes indeed, and that’s one thing, and the President is doing a pretty fair job of upholding the Consitution, and as he says, there will be elections next year. In Britain, it is much worse.

So thank God for the Constitution, or Official Washington might simply attack elections instead of the elected. This is now happening in Britain, and it urgently demands our attention. Brexit has finally become what it was always going to be, a full constitutional crisis. This week, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, an institution younger than most people now alive in the UK, has suddenly declared its authority over Britain’s ancient constitution and actual political institutions.

This is a textbook example of judges hijacking politics. The UK Supreme Court was created when then-Labour PM Tony Blair passed the Constitutional Reform Act of 2005, explicitly in order to subordinate British politics, and especially its justice system, to the requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights. You might not think the UK’s leadership would make it their job to subject themselves and the people they swear to represent to foreign authorities, but you’d be wrong.

Thus, in 2009, the UK Supreme Court sprang forth like Athena from the skull of Zeus, fully-grown and armored for battle. And in 2019, it has unanimously decided that it, rather than the people or their elected representatives, will decide whether the Queen and the Government can prorogue Parliament. Twelve justices put a stop to British politics with the sole purpose of preventing elections where the people could choose their representatives.

The character of British law itself is therefore in question now, however hard it may be for the press to say so, or for people to realize this, as they’re facing a baffling, unprecedented, highly arcane institutional ruling. Previously, we had believed that the oldest constitutional regime in the world was dedicated to representative government. Now, we are told that power must be arbitrary and administrative rather than representative, and only official experts to whom the people never consented through elections must decide the most serious political questions.

Let us therefore present the issue in its clearest political form. Boris Johnson became Conservative Party Leader and Prime Minister this summer after his predecessor’s resignation. He was committed to implementing Brexit, because the British people voted for it in a referendum in 2016. But the Parliament has since decided that it will not do so and, instead, that European unelected officials should decide Britain’s fate against the will of the majority.

The Parliament faces an easy choice, if it understands itself as bound by the consent of the governed. If it does not trust PM Johnson, it can easily hold a vote of no confidence, since he no longer has a majority in the House of Commons. That would lead to elections and the people would choose which party they want to run the government. This is what PM Johnson wants, so he asked the Queen to prorogue Parliament and have a new election.

Prorogation is used with some frequency in British politics, but rarely for such an extended time. The truth remains that rather than some extreme measure, is a simple and recognized procedure used to suspend Parliament. The reasoning of the PM is sound and democratic. If the Parliament refuses to implement the Government’s policy, then politicians must turn to the people for their choice. Since Parliament refuses to turn to the people, the Prime Minister may have to do it for them and save democracy.

Do read it all, and yes, I do agree with him.

And just for additional flavor, this is the longest session of Parliament since the Long Parliament, the one that, after Pride’s Purge, executed Charles I, and installed Cromwell as Lord Protector. It also passed a law that it had to consent to its own dissolution. Eventually, Cromwell had enough of what was then called the Rump and closed it down saying:

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place,

which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice.

Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government.

Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess?

Ye have no more religion than my horse. Gold is your God. Which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defiled this sacred place, and turned the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices?

Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance.

Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this House; and which by God’s help, and the strength he has given me, I am now come to do.

I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place.

Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.

In the name of God, go!

Say what you want about Cromwell, mostly I’ll agree, but in this case, and again today, he was both correct, and eloquent.