They're All Crazy Eddie

 The worst part is, Crazy Eddie is in charge...

"Renner, I must tell you of a creature of legend." 

"Say on." Renner's image dialed for coffee. Coffee and stories, they went together. 

"We will call him Crazy Eddie, if you like. He is a . . . he is like me, sometimes, and he is a Brown, an idiot savant tinker, sometimes. Always he does the wrong things for excellent reasons. He does the same things over and over, and they always bring disaster, and he never learns." 

There were small sounds of whispering in MacArthur's wardroom. Renner's image said, "For instance?"

Renner's Motie's image paused to think. It said, "When a city has grown so overlarge and crowded that it is in immediate danger of collapse . . . when food and clean water flow into the city at a rate just sufficient to feed every mouth, and every hand must work constantly to keep it that way . . . when all transportation is involved in moving vital supplies, and none is left over to move people out of the city should the need arise . . . then it is that Crazy Eddie leads the movers of garbage out on strike for better working conditions."

Niven, Larry; Jerry Pournelle. The Mote in God's Eye (Mote Series Book 1) (pp. 225-226). Kindle Edition. 

Pass a law requiring Uber and Lyft to deduct taxes as if the drivers were their employees, and in the process destroy owner-operated trucking.

Pass another law essentially banning a semi truck built after 2010. 

Then wonder why you have all those fully loaded container ships anchored offshore...

Not to mention vaccine AND face mask mandates. 

And... well, you know. a lot of the stuff that has stopped me from posting more often the last year and a half. 

Kenosha

 

Seen at Joe's Place.

Not gonna lie, I am happy that the young man survived, and it sounds like the choir boys he took down deserved it and will only be missed by those with twisted taste in friends or causes, but that doesn't mean I am celebrating. 

Joe's got other links, too, including a statement by the lawyer representing the young shooter. 

You know, if even the New York Times admits that the video of events shows that these were legit self-defense shootings, you gotta wonder why he was so heavily charged... well, no, actually, it doesn't. 

Joe has something for that, too. 

Meanwhile, in comments to this post at Old NFO's blog...

...Not to mention some co-workers who should know better...

Not illegal for a 17 year old to "possess" an AR15 in either WI or IL. 

And if his mom drove him to Kenosha, it was for his job as a lifeguard. He stuck around when he got off duty to help clean up graffiti. He only geared up later when things started to get sporty again -- and gave one or two interviews, in which he emphasized his trauma kit over the rifle. 

LawDog also has a few thoughts, here, and shares another video here. 

UPDATE: The original video was banned by YouTube for terms of service violation,

Here's another one:

"Hygienic Fascism"

Hygienic fascism: Turning the world into a 'safe space' — but at what cost? | TheHill

Author Aldous Huxley once said, “A thoroughly scientific dictatorship will never be overthrown.”

Even as we try to battle the COVID-19 pestilence, we may be contracting a more dangerous virus — hygienic fascism. This involves a process when our political leaders defer to a handful of “experts,” amid what Dr. Joseph Ladopo, an associate professor at the UCLA School of Medicine, describes as an atmosphere of “COVID-19-induced terror.”

Ideologically, hygienic fascism is neither right nor left, nor is it simply a matter of taking necessary precautions. It is about imposing, over a long period of time, highly draconian regulations based on certain assumptions about public health. In large part, it regards science not so much as a search for knowledge but as revealed “truth” with definitive “answers.” Anyone opposed to the conventional stratagem, including recognized professionals, are largely banished as mindless Trumpistas, ignoramuses, or worse.

I must confess, I was surprised, most of the articles I've seen at The Hill.com tend to be more on the Big Government/Social Justice Snowflakery end of the spectrum than in Rugged Individualism's neighborhood, although it is very true that I don't go there enough to be able to say that my impression of their material is conclusive.

But there they are running this article, too: Facial recognition: The other reason we may need a face mask | TheHill

Don’t get out of the hard-learned habit of covering your face, even if you live in a place that will soon no longer require it. Long after the pandemic recedes, we may still need our N-95 respirators, surgical masks and DIY bandana coverings. Marking the triumph over COVID-19, when it finally happens, should not include a bonfire of masks. This symbol of the coronavirus fight may prove just as crucial against a different foe altogether.

Also spreading fast, but largely outside of global health debates and meaningful scrutiny, is facial recognition. We’ve had Apple’s handy Face ID since 2017, of course, with its 30,000 invisible facial dots that coalesce into a phone-unlocking faceprint, but potentially more perturbing applications are already here or around the corner. Face-Six wants to reduce medical errors and fraud by promising to help hospitals “identify patients whenever necessary, conscious or unconscious.” ISM Connect has scanned crowds at Taylor Swift’s concerts to weed out stalkers and generate tour promotion metrics. Clearview AI has been used by over 600 law enforcement agencies to solve cases from shoplifting to murder. So private it listed a fake Manhattan address as its business location, Clearview AI sold a product that allows users to take a picture of someone they are curious about and obtain links to public photos and sites pertaining to this person.

The power that such apps must bestow is suggested in another purveyor’s name, iOmniscient. Its site boasts of clients in 60 countries and over 30 industries, including retail, where it measures customers’ footpaths, visit frequency and dwell time. iOmniscient “excels in uncontrolled environments with non-cooperative individuals,” which would explain its suspected use during Hong Kong’s 2019 pro-democracy protests. In response to the potential surveillance, demonstrators toppled smart lampposts believed to house the technology, destroyed CCTV cameras, hid themselves under umbrellas -- and donned face masks.

These pieces are from the Opinion pages of TheHill.com,  not "news", but still, I'm surprised.

Maybe there's hope after all.

Do You Want The Boogaloo? Because This is How You Get The Boogaloo (Updated)

(Links added to comments.)

First: If  you don't understand what is meant by The Boogaloo, well... I guess you can look it up on The Urban Dictionary.

Having said that...

In View From The Porch: People are getting edgy... Tamara excerpted a key 'graph from the rather lengthy post The COVID-19 Boogaloo Opus - Handwaving Freakoutery at Medium.

So then I see the following Tweet:

"The drones, donated by DJI, a Chinese company, have gone to 43 agencies in 22 states, all to help enforce social distancing rules."

US using Chinese drones to spy on and lecture Americans about a virus caused by communist China

Oh, and DJI "may be sending data to China" pic.twitter.com/LqH6VzonzH

— Elizabeth Harrington (@LizRNC) April 17, 2020

 Which of course, prompted a revival of the age-old questions

• Drone: Rifle or Shotgun?

and

• What Caliber for Drone?  

As infuriating as the implementation of technology in service of Big Government nannyism is,
Law enforcement is using drones to shout at people for violating social distancing.
the really bizarre thing about this story, as @LizRNC points out in her tweet above, is that these are DJI drones, a product of Communist China.

And an Internet search for the keywords "chinese drones law enforcement" will return dozens ( a conservative estimate) of articles referring to the US Government banning the use of drones from Communist China because of the predilection of the commies to have their tech phone home to the mother ship with details we'd rather the commies not have.

Seriously, what kind of an idiot elected official can be so tone-deaf in the face of Communist China's obvious responsibility for the current global pandemic and think "Hey, I know! We'll use ChiCom spy technology to nag people!" is a good idea.

Allegedly, these drones do not have the ability to transmit or record video.

Sure.

Winnie The Flu says so.

EDIT to add: And then there's this crap:

How do you report places that aren’t enforcing social distancing? It’s simple: just snap a photo and text it to 311-692. #AskMyMayor pic.twitter.com/WQdCcVf1Rl

— Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) April 18, 2020

Note: See comments for some links to news reporting on the subject. Also, statements re: No Video are probably meant to be "no recording of video or taking of photos."