08:06 – The morning paper presents a false dichotomy, a poll asking if religious rights should trump gay rights or vice versa. In doing so, they’re making the false assumption that rights can ever be in conflict. As libertarians have been saying ever since there have been libertarians, your right to swing your fist ends at the other guy’s nose. Gay rights and religious rights are not and never have been in conflict.
Do gays have the right to marry and to enjoy all the benefits of that state? Absolutely, and religious people have no right to stop them from doing so. Do religious people have the right to refuse to do business with gay people, or do churches have the right to refuse to marry gay couples? Absolutely, and gays have no right to force them to do so. It’s government that’s at fault here, stirring the pot by refusing to grant rights to gays that it freely grants to non-gays, and by forcing religious people to act against their own deeply-held beliefs by providing products and services to gays. Both of those are utterly wrong, and both cause needless conflict between gays and religious people. The obvious solution is for government to treat gays and straights even-handedly and to stop forcing anyone to do business with people they don’t want to do business with.
There’s always the private club loophole. Turn your retail business (restaurant, bar, boutique, etc) into a private club. Charge 1¢ for membership and have all new members sign a membership agreement where they acknowledge their membership can be revoked at any time for any reason on the whim of the owners or other members. Then they can refuse to do whatever the hell they want and refuse to serve whomever they want and there’s little can be done about.
Example:
Joe’s Fish & Chips
Private Club – Members Only
Membership Dues: 1¢/Lifetime
Membership Requirements: Heterosexual Christian
I have no problem with that. I wouldn’t eat there, but they certainly have the right to impose those requirements. But there shouldn’t be any dodge needed. Any private business or individual has the absolute right to discriminate in any way they see fit. The government has no such right. All citizens have the same rights.
More good news from the IRS:
In other words, I could return home from a vacation or a stay in the hospital to find not only that I am being audited, but that my audit has already been closed and sent to the notice of deficiency unit. At this point I will have two choices: I can either pay the bill or file a petition with the tax court.
Will we ever get a Congress or President with the balls to do something about the IRS?
Joe’s Fish & Chips
Do they have a decent cheeseburger on the menu?
Oh, I agree with you whole-heartedly, but that’s not the world in which we live. So, loopholes must be exploited. We have this problem where the government has assumed moral superiority to the people and so feels it has the responsibility to socially engineer people who feel the same way. So, it forces, for example, a Christian conservative business owner to do business with customers he/she may find morally repugnant because by doing so the government thinks it will convince that business owner (and his/her progeny) to no longer find those customers repugnant. That is, keep forcefully exposing them to it until they’re numb to it and then they’ll no longer care. The whole country is slowly being brainwashed and politically re-educated by socialist progressives. Though, I abhor the word “progressive” as it implies progress and I don’t necessarily see their agenda as being human progress.
The “progress” it refers to isn’t human progress, obviously, but progress of their social “justice” agendum.
“The whole country is slowly being brainwashed and politically re-educated by socialist progressives.”
That’s already been accomplished, at least in terms of the majority of Murkans, a done deal. Their Long March since the 1950s has been largely successful. You’ll notice that the younger gens don’t even question any of this stuff; it’s like the air they breathe.
WRT the IRS; they can evidently do whatever they want and even if they make a mistake, tough shit, hombres. It’s on you to prove it and if they back off on it, you will still not be able to recoup the losses they caused you. We are out many hundreds of dollars now, which we can ill afford, because some low-level turd functionary focused on my SSN and decided that my wife’s SSN right below it was in invisible ink and she hadn’t filed the return by the deadline. And it took us weeks to fix this and many hours by me on the phone and snail mail.
Now imagine if they were really actively going after you. They could utterly ruin your life, permanently, and they have done so many times to people in this country. Who needs paddy wagons and knocks on the door at night and the Lubyanka when you can just ruin somebody financially and put them in the street? With zero recourse.
But now the State has given itself the prerogative of simply murdering us, too, wherever we may be in the world. You could even be a hostage somewhere, held by terrorists, and you’ll end up dead, too.
I was thinking about Baltimore, Ferguson, etc. and the “Black lives matter” meme. These people want the police disarmed rather than civilians armed. Do they not know about Obummer’s quest to have a Federal Police Force? Who do you think will be the first target of DHS tanks, drones, automatic weapons? It will be large low income welfare cities. Maybe the States will call on their National Guards to fight the DHS takeover of Baltimore, NYC, Houston, etc. Houston could become the new Fulda Gap.
Ray, interesting reading about your adventure with the Surface Pro. Would like to hear more as you have more to share. My wife will need a Windows notebook soon, to interface with her new fancy sewing machine. I doubt this will be a Surface, but still interested.
As an old “wet” photog who transitioned to digital over ten years ago, I am interested in editing, and would be interested in your recommendations. First off, as a former (mostly) slide shooter, I don’t edit much, so I have never invested in the learning curve of any of the popular tools. Besides, when I started in digital, Photoshop was a limited app rooted in the print world. I have almost never printed any of my still photos, and am not interested in doing so. I mostly display them on a computer or TV. The only editing app that has attracted me is Picture Window Pro, but it is a Windows only app, and I am (still trying to be) all Linux. Yet, a tool is a tool. But, I don’t have the pressure that a pro does, and so I can be less dependent on mainstream apps. For the past several years I have used digiKam, mostly because I use the KDE Linux desktop, and it comes with. It is pretty capable for my needs, but can be slow, because it applies all changes to the file immediately, unlike other apps. Further, I have banished Adobe from all my systems (even on Windows back then,) for personal reasons.
One add: I want serious editing, but don’t need management. I am still old school enough that I manage my photos like any other files. That said, I might be interested in editing tags, either in EXIF or in IPTC. I do share photos with family and friends, and might like to have such information embedded in the files.
Have you ever tried anything other than Photoshop, and what can you say about it? I have never talked to anyone who has used both a reasonably current version of Photoshop and anything else. There appears to be a great division.
Any private business or individual has the absolute right to discriminate in any way they see fit.
That concerns me substantially. If I am asked to photograph a gay wedding what do I do? I don’t want to photograph such a wedding. Main reason is I don’t really know how and what do with regarding posing, first kiss, etc. I don’t think I could do a good job.
My current tactic that has worked once is to quote such an outrageous rate that the clients decline. What happens next time? Do the couple find out my real rates and accuse me of discrimination? Can I refuse by simply saying I don’t know how to do a gay wedding?
Have you ever tried anything other than Photoshop, and what can you say about it?
I use Lightroom the most. I photograph in RAW format and LR allows me to process those files quickly. I gain two stop +/- in exposure with RAW and white balance is never an issue. You can apply filters with LR, correct red eye, crop, rotate and probably some stuff I have never used. It is trivially easy to white balance 500 images in just a few seconds, crop in the same amount of time. All the changes are non-destructive. A most capable program that I highly recommend.
Another good program is ACDSee Pro. It is both a manager with access to the EXIF information and provides a decent editor for quick edits.
For a really good photo editor you need something that supports layers. Photoshop Elements is fairly cheap and does a good job. I use layers any time I mess with a photograph. I always modify the layer instead of the base image. That way I can always go back. Photoshop is the king and for $10 a month you can get LR and PS. Actually a good option that is cost effective over updating every couple of years.
For me I use all three.
My workflow consists of first importing into LR. I then assign a title and a copyright to all the images. Next I white balance, either all of them if the lighting was the same, or in groups that have the same lighting. Then I quickly scan through all the images one at a time and dump the ones that are not good. After that I make a slower pass and pay more attention the images and flag the ones I want to keep. Once that is done I inform LR to only display the ones I liked. I then crop and otherwise tweak those images. I then export to JPG and then copy those to a secondary location. I then display all the images in LR and delete all the images.
Some people assign tags to images and never remove them from LR. They can quickly search for images based on the tag. My needs are met by keeping the JPG images in separate folders.
What works for me may not work for others and you have to develop a flow that works for you and your requirements.
I have found that JPG images at 80% quality setting are more than good enough for all printing purposes. 20×24 prints just fine unless you have severely cropped the image. All my images are cropped as I tend to leave more space around subjects as you can always take away but cannot put back. I probably crop about 10% off most of my images which has never affected the printing quality.
And most surprising is that the best bang for the buck in local printing is Walgreens. They have better equipment than Walmart, Sams or Costco. At least for our local store. They also print on glossy paper where the others are mat printing and I really don’t like mat printing.
Well, I’m talking about natural rights that the government has abrogated. In reality, of course, you’re likely to get your ass sued off if you refuse outright to shoot a gay wedding. Quoting higher prices for shooting a gay wedding than you do for shooting a straight wedding is pretty good prima facie evidence that you’re discriminating.
If it were me, even if I felt as you apparently do, I’d go ahead and offer to shoot the wedding at your regular price, telling them ahead of time that you have no experience shooting gay weddings and therefore can’t be held responsible for results. Get it in writing. After all, there’s no point to turning down business simply because you don’t approve of their lifestyle. If you were an auto mechanic, you wouldn’t refuse to fix their car, would you? Accepting someone as a customer doesn’t condone, let alone endorse, their personal choices.
Ray, thanks for taking the time to respond. I agree with “What works for me may not work for others and you have to develop a flow that works for you and your requirements.” I am trying to do just that, but often lack the discipline that pros need. I know, because I did work as a pro back in the 60s. What a difference between then and now! BTW, I have looked (and commented?) at some of the photos you have posted, and need to compliment you for the quality and your professionalism. It’s a tough field.
Had to get my fingerprints retaken yesterday for the background check for my CHL. I had a finger fail last time on the rollover test even though she tried six times. This time that finger passed but four fingers on the other hand failed. She did not reshoot them.
I am amazed how scarred my finger pads are. I used to work on cars a lot and have rebuilt several engines, etc. She says that she sees the scarring a lot in men my age or women who worked in the fields, etc.
BTW, I have looked (and commented?) at some of the photos you have posted, and need to compliment you for the quality and your professionalism.
Thanks. I never display my junk (photographs OFD!).
It’s a tough field.
Yes, it is. A lot of people buy a digital camera at Walmart, kit flash and lens, and embark on their professional photography path. Their clients get off color images, shadows on the right, odd poses, Marty Feldman eyes, amputated appendages. Yet somehow their clients think the images are great. I attribute that to cell phone pictures which are generally always bad except in the hands of someone that knows how to take pictures. The clients have pictures from their cell phones that are blurry (motion and focus) and see a picture from a DSLR that is in not blurry and the client is pleased as the client knows no better.
A lot of people out there will photograph a wedding for $200 and the clients jump at it. I generally will not do a wedding for less than $1,000. Factor in my venue time, my assistant I generally work with cost, time post processing I generally only make about $25 to $30 an hour.
When prospective clients balk at my price and say “Uncle Bill has a SLR and takes good pictures of the sky and he will do it for less” my only response is to tell the clients that relative to the rest of the cost of a wedding the pictures are a small cost item but are probably the most important. The DJ, the food, the flowers, the dress etc. are all gone within a couple of days. Pictures you can look at dozens of years later, pictures are what people look at. Almost no one takes the time to watch a video of their wedding. But the prospective client does not understand and will go with Uncle Bill because he will be cheaper.
Had one prospective client come to me after the wedding with pictures that were on the bad side of horrible. They asked me if I could fix the images. Many I could as the white balance was whacked and were framed oddly. I told the client that it would be $1,000 to fix the images that could be fixed. I could do nothing for the missed images or those with Aunt Ferdeys head covering half the image. They declined so I guess they will have crappy images in their album.
Will we ever get a Congress or President with the balls to do something about the IRS?
No, and in fact it is going to get a lot worse. The beast is starving and will get much more hungrier over time. The only person in the current pack that I trust to do something about the entire mess is Rick Perry and he is unelectable nationwide.
The EPA is in the process of getting ready to start charging people global warming taxes as a part of the Clean Air Act that they have never implemented. The initial tax will be $15 per ton of CO2 emitted. The only argument that they are having internally is who will pay the tax, the seller or the buyer? Right now, the highway gasoline tax is paid by the seller and I expect that to be the case when the tax is finally implemented.
BTW, $15 per ton of CO2 emitted is a half a trillion $/year in the USA. They expect to double the tax rate each year. The EPA believes that they do not have to remit the funds to the US Treasury and will use the money to rebate half of it back to “poor” people. The other half will be used to implement currently underfunded projects at the EPA. You don’t want to know what they have planned for us as they plan on hiring 100,000 people in the first year. I will give you a hint: inspectors, inspectors, inspectors, …
Well Guv Moonbeam out here in Cali is taking lessons from the pres. Executive order to cut carbon emissions. Screw the economy…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-29/california-s-brown-seeks-nation-leading-greenhouse-gas-reduction
Ray, I too have seen bad wedding pictures, but not recently. OK, in fairness, I rarely see wedding pictures, so the significance of that remark is limited. Our wedding was done by a pro, and that says something. Believe it or not, there was even color photography waaay back then. The pictures were good, and we have looked at the album many times.
Since my relatives and some friends know I take pictures, I have been asked to do weddings. Talk about pressure! I have done about five in 30+ years, but only with the provision that the couple hire a pro, AND that I get the pro’s advance permission and instructions. I know how to stay out of the way, and do. I usually only take secondary interest pictures just like other attendees, and never attempt to interfere or pose people. I also don’t use flash indoors, even though it would be helpful in some situations. Just too distracting. I have actually been complimented by one pro, but he welcomed not just me but all others to take pictures after he had done his posed pictures. I consider his approach to be smart in a time when almost everyone has a phone.
I agree on the video, and will add that it is sometimes the most intrusive because of the potential for interference. You are probably right that few videos are watched much.
Keep up the good work. Everyone needs pictures of significant events, and well done photos are something to be treasured.
My uncertainty regarding same sex marriage is what happens if SCOTUS approves same sex marriage:
If gay marriage is approved (or, state disapproval is denied), will Bruce Jenner:
1. Have to divorce Kim Kardashian to dissolve his non-same sex marriage, then
2. Remarry Kim Kardashian in same sex (female – female) marriage in context with his new persona?
Mr. Stu; my advice is to just stop right there; take it from ol’ OFD; your head will start to hurt trying to figure all the impossible angles. It’s just not worth it.
Cui bono?
Lawyers.
And people who bake cakes.
Rev Sharpless in Baltimore: “Have the Justice Department ‘take over policing in this country'”
I wonder if the race of the outgoing and incoming AG has anything to do with that statement. RACISSSST!!!! Then if a Redumblican wins the Presidency and puts WHITEY! as AG…back pedaling.
He also pushed a Faux journalist out of the way saying the Mayor is taking no questions. Isn’t he still on MSNBC? What a prick!
@Jim B
Have you ever tried anything other than Photoshop, and what can you say about it?
Maybe you already know about it but would GIMP be something you could use? I’ve never used it but others I know have used it for photo retouching. I don’t know if KDE would already have it installed but it is available on Linux platforms.
“Maybe you already know about it but would GIMP be something you could use? I’ve never used it but others I know have used it for photo retouching. I don’t know if KDE would already have it installed but it is available on Linux platforms.”
GIMP comes standard with a lot of Linux distros; if you wanna mess around with a bunch of that kind of stuff, take a look at either/both Ubuntu Studio and Fedora Live Design. GIMP has a bit of a learning curve but it’s FREE! Big community of users, also.
“…if a Redumblican wins the Presidency…”
Not gonna happen. Those days are over. One word: demographics. Teddy must be laughing his fat drunken ass off in Hell right now.
As I was just ‘splainin’ to Mrs. OFD on the phone, the Repubs have NOBODY, just that goofy krew spilling outta the clown car. Per usual. She was waxing enthusiastic about our Bernie, but as I again explained, a socialist Jew from the state that kicked off all the homosexual marriage stuff is, to put it mildly, a hard sell. Sure he’s for the veterans and working people, but that don’t cut no ice here; I told her if he starts to scare the Dem aristocracy, they’ll do him like the Repub aristos did Pat Buchanan years ago. Persona non grata. Beyond the Pale.
I also told her the Dems have nobody, either; nobody but Field Marshal Rodham.
So it’s a done deal, unless some other major shit happens to change things drastically between now and next year.
“Almost no one takes the time to watch a video of their wedding. ”
Well, that’s what I thought too. I was not interested in video of the ceremony, as we had booked a great photographer. My wife prevailed on me, and we got the shortest package available. 2hrs, which covered a little preparation, the ceremony and the arrival at the cocktail party. I ended up very glad we did it, as the GROOM misses a LOT of the ceremony. I got to see the processions (all the ladies to the alter) the parents lighting candles, and the other stuff that takes place before the groom enters.
We’ve watched it a few times, and probably should again as we just had our 10th anniversary. We see our wedding photos more often, as we have our screen savers set to slideshow mode, and the wedding is in the directory used as the source.
WRT the analogy of shooting a wedding vs working on a car. Someone recently framed this in a way that made it very clear to me. (It might have been Karl Denninger @ market-ticker.org) Wedding photography, and cake decorating are ARTISTIC endeavors. The artist puts a little of his soul into his work, and it is uniquely his. That makes them different from a shop keeper selling standard goods. The argument is that you can’t compel someone to do art while you can compel them to sell their wares to anyone who wants to buy them. It made sense to me.
In other news, I scored a great quad band mobile ham radio today at a pawn shop. They had it marked and priced as a CB, and no one could make it turn on (including me) so I got it for $20 off the listed price of $59. It’s a recent model Yaesu, with built in data port, and is in never installed condition. After reading the manual, I figured out how to turn it on and it seems to work perfectly. It was my 4th pawn shop stop today. Persistence and luck paid off!
nick
Mr Atoz said:
“In other words, I could return home from a vacation or a stay in the hospital to find not only that I am being audited, but that my audit has already been closed and sent to the notice of deficiency unit. At this point I will have two choices: I can either pay the bill or file a petition with the tax court.”
It’s been a long time since I studied tax law, but this has been the case for decades. You have two routes to judicial appeal. Pay the tax and sue for a refund in District Court or challenge the assessment and litigate in Tax Court. (This summary omits internal administrative appeals within the IRS.)
In either case, the disputed tax would have be large as litigating in either District Court or Tax Court isn’t cheap. This is not lost on the IRS, of course, so there’s not much of an incentive on their part be reasonable on small amounts.
And, of course, the IRS can refuse to accept the court decision with respect to other parties – in other words you can win your case, but if the IRS refuses to acquiesce in that decision, they can assert an identical claim against another taxpayer with identical facts.
In my opinion, it’s impossible to reform the IRS; it has to be abolished and the income tax replaced with something far less intrusive. Not going to happen, of course, as neither of the major political parties wish to shut down the spigot of cash flowing from the income tax.
” It’s a recent model Yaesu, with built in data port, and is in never installed condition. After reading the manual, I figured out how to turn it on and it seems to work perfectly.”
Outstanding! I need to get off my ass and out and about checking into stuff like this.
“In my opinion, it’s impossible to reform the IRS; it has to be abolished and the income tax replaced with something far less intrusive. Not going to happen…”
Nope. So we’re stuck with a band of thieves writ large for the foreseeable future and they’re the biggest and worst of the bunch. Until such time as the Empire finally breaks up. And it’s really only One Party and has been for a long time now. They’re thick as thieves down there in Mordor and most emphatically do NOT have our interests at heart.
This was brought home to me pretty sharply when I was still working for Uncle; when you stop and think about it, it’s bloody outrageous that we send troops around the world to fight and die and get mangled and still tax their pay.
Yep. I don’t myself advocate the execution of every IRS employee past and present, but I don’t argue against it, either. At the least, however, every IRS employee should be banned from government work for life and lose all professional licenses and certifications.
(Yes, I realize that not every IRS employee is corrupt and in general I do not support collective guilt. However, I’m long past carefully weighed judgements about employees of overreaching agencies. Allowing them to live is more than “reasonable” from where I sit.)
They tax unemployment benefits too. “Gee, you don’t have enough money to live on, so we’ll give you some, but we want some of it back.” And you automatically have to file 1040A instead of EZ which steals more of your life.
nick
The problem with discrimination is that it can only really be done by the GOVERNMENT, by force. The old Jim Crow laws were LAWS – it was the government doing the discriminating. If the government would stop discriminating, then it wouldn’t much matter if a few individuals wanted to, because at least a substantial minority of the people would not. If one particular baker won’t bake your gay marriage wedding cake, I can guarantee that there are ten other bakers in town who would be delighted to receive your business.
With Jim Crow, the government went, in a very few years, from “everybody MUST discriminate” to “nobody is allowed to discriminate”. Either course gives the government more power, more money, and more influence, when the real goal ought to be to REDUCE the power, cost and influence of government at all levels.
For years I’ve been making that point about the Jim Crow laws: they were passed because, without government coercion, not enough merchants were discriminating against black people, and that just wasn’t acceptable to rich or powerful people who wanted all white businessmen to discriminate. I’m generally poo-poohed when I say this, usually by people who want to allow discrimination on religious grounds or by people who want to prevent others from discriminating on religious grounds. Often the arguments of the poo-poohers are rather muddled, boiling down to “You’re wrong because I say so!”
“They tax unemployment benefits too.”
Yeah, I forgot to mention that; also bloody outrageous. You’re already suffering from at LEAST a 50% cut in pay, as are people dependent on you, and they fucking tax that, too. Bastards.
Thanks all, for suggesting the GIMP. I have tried it, but never learned it. I guess it’s time. Otherwise, I would not have any good reason to bad mouth it. I will say that every time I have tried it it was a bit intimidating and very unfamiliar. It also mangled or deleted some of the EXIF data. Not sure why, but that is very bad. I got started using digiKam several years ago, and it just keeps getting better. It has many of the good features that are in the GIMP. That is one of the good parts of open source: some contributors’ stuff is in both.
As for ACDSee, I used it way back when it was shareware, but haven’t tried it since. The reason was that I replaced it with IrfanView and FastStone Image Viewer. Both were free (probably still) and excellent for what they did. FastStone was particularly fast on slower hardware. In spite of their names both could do limited editing and manipulations, and were enough for my needs. But I quit Windows and am trying to use only native Linux apps (not Windows apps running under Wine or a virtual machine.) I have learned a lot. As far as I’m concerned, Linux is fine, but the apps available are its limit. As much as I admire the freedom, there is only so much that can be done to compete with companies that have a strong profit motive and want to serve a customer base. I agree with Chuck W that many Linux apps lack the polish of their Windows counterparts, and are out of date. That is both good and bad, but getting problems corrected is very slow. Not trying to start a flame war here, just my first hand observation.
Please, no offense intended. I get tired of trying things out. It takes time for me to really get familiar with something new. Picture Window Pro (Windows only) was supposedly designed for people with darkroom experience. If I still used Windows, I would try it in a heartbeat. It seems impressive. I have suggested that several friends try it (free 30 day trial,) but everyone seems dedicated to their own workflow, and doesn’t want to spend the time to try anything different. The devil you know…
Where is Chuck W, anyway? Really miss his posts, and hope he is OK. How about just a quick post so we know you’re OK?
Und wo zum Teufel, Mr. Chuck, und was hast du gemacht? Wir hoffen, Sie im Gefängnis für alles, was nicht bist oder zurück nach Deutschland zog nur, wenn die Dinge sind immer interessant hier …
I agree with ya, Mr. Jim B; Linux has too many unresolved issues still, but I find I’ve had good fun working with Ubuntu Studio and Fedora Live Design so far and yes, I have a learning curve ahead of me, too. What Linux distro/s are you using, if I may be so bold?
Mint 17 KDE 32 bit. I’ve tried the Cinnamon version, and didn’t like it as well as KDE. I have tried several other distros over the years, mostly with KDE, including Debian, Kubuntu, SUSE, Mandriva, MEPIS, and PCLinuxOS. Mint is by far my best experience. I have been tempted by Ubuntu Studio, but not enough to try it. If I did, I would probably dedicate another computer to it, but life is short.
The Mint folks are top notch, as are some of the other distros, to be fair, but the Mint team seems the most able to make and keep things working without a lot of fuss. I am not a programmer, and really want something that Just Works. Yeah, you have heard that a lot. Linux has rough edges, but I do like the spirit of it. It keeps me interested.
My philosophy is to try to use one computer and one distro for everything. I know that is somewhat limiting, but it is a goal. Most of my use is “business”: spreadsheets especially, but also light word processing. I have tried lots of applications over the years, and I am getting tired of all this change for change sake. Thanks for your interest.
Bob, if you were doing a chemistry experiment and spilled some copper (II) nitrate solution on your hands would you be worried? I would have thought washing hands for a few seconds and drying with paper towel would be enough? I’ve been told one should wash one’s hands in water for 10 minutes?
10 minutes?
“it’s bloody outrageous that we send troops around the world to fight and die and get mangled and still tax their pay”
Both halves of that are outrageous.
I’ve been having some online conversations with American acquaintances, and I’m getting the sense of more and more support for additional intervention in the Middle East – Syria or Iran being the obvious next targets. More support implies to me that the government and media must be busily prepping people’s attitudes: “we’ve gotta do something”.
In Europe, there is also a kind of false dichotomy at work. There are thousands and thousands of refugees coming over the Mediterranean from Africa. They’re coming over in totally overloaded dinky little boats, and too many of them are drowning. So what’s the European answer – or what are we being prepped to regard as the answer? Why, we’ve got to go out and rescue them! Italy is already drowning under a flood of illegal refugees. Going out and hauling more of them them in – my, won’t that put a damper on illegal immigration!
I was absolutely floored to discover that Australia has had the balls to implement the only effective solution. They go out to sea, find those boats and turn them around. By making such a trip utterly hopeless – no, you will not reach Australia – they have vastly reduced the number of people who try. That solves both ends of the problem: it saves lives and it prevents illegal immigration.
– – – – –
@JimB: For whatever it may be worth, I finally learned GIMP a few years ago. It does have a different philosophy, but it really is a very capable program. I still use Photoshop for publishing on paper, but anything for web or for presentations I do with GIMP.
I also miss Chuck’s posts. If I had any sort of real contact info, a phone number or whatever, I’d try to check up on him, but I don’t…
@Miles_Teg
No, I wouldn’t be at all concerned. As you say, just rinse it off. Copper(II) nitrate is hazardous for shipping purposes only because it’s an oxidizer. It’s not particularly corrosive or toxic.
The Howard government more or less stopped the boats, Labor got in and relaxed the policy and got floods of people, the Abbott government has stopped them again by being tough. Now, if you arrive here illegally, you’re usually assessed offshore and if found to be genuine may be settled in such wonderful places as Cambodia or Papua New Guinea. Seems to work, but the bleeding hearts don’t like it.
I read the new AG ObolaLynch’s first act will be to spend money. $20 million on body cams for the police. Why does the DoJ even get money to spend? Which police get the cams? Most violent cities, most minority, most ass kissingest? I want my fucking money back. Cities can buy their own cams if they want them.
“Seems to work, but the bleeding hearts don’t like it.”
Naturally. Our own bleeding hahts here refer to us who wish to secure our national borders and sovereignty (laughable concepts nowadays and utterly redolent of my advanced age and decrepitude) as “heartless” and “evil.” After all, as one of our comedic political aristos has told us, they do it “out of love.”
“I want my fucking money back.”
Let me know how you make out with that. We’ve not made out very well here; many hundreds of dollars in bounced checks that we sent out to pay bills, gone forever, thanks to a bumbling IRS mistake and fuck you very much, I guess. Zero sympathy from either the bank or them. And we can probably be grateful on our knees that they didn’t also seize the house and cars and put us in the street, and believe you me, they have the power to do that at any time, for any reason, no reason, or just another bumbling bureaucratic clerical mistake.
Body cams for the cops? They’ll find ways to circumvent chit they wanna do, we can count on it. And anything wireless can be hacked, just as drones can be hacked.
Australia: of course it works. If you know that getting on a leaking, over-crowded boat is not going to better your situation, then you aren’t going to get on the boat. Instead, maybe you’ll stay were you are and do something to better your own situation.
The European approach is nuts: There is a limit to the number of refugees a country can integrate – Switzerland hit that limit pretty hard during the wars in Serbia/Croatia. Now there are floods of refugees coming in from Syria, in addition to mention all the usual places in Africa. It’s just not possible to take everyone that wants to come; most of them don’t speak the language and have no skills that are useful in a Western country – what are we supposed to do with them?
Since the US turned Libya into chaos, what passes for government there is no longer in control of its borders. So refugees flood into Libya and take to the boats from there, and there’s nothing to be done about it on the African side. The only effective way to stem the flood is to make getting on those boats unattractive. I applaud Australia for having the guts to actually do that.
“…what are we supposed to do with them?”
Apparently the libturds, lefties, and progs in Europe and here believe we should just not only take them all in, but make life wonderful for them all, too. Provide housing, food, medical care, etc. No end in sight.
That old novel “The Camp of the Saints” is coming true after all. Along with “1984.”
Re bleeding heart in-country assholes and the poor, wretched bastards who “only want a chance at a better life”, the obvious solution is to deport one libtard for every “economic refugee”. They can be selected from the faculty and students at liberal arts colleges, registered Democrats, union members, and employees of foundations.
Well, hell, that’s a right dandy plan, hermano; we can rid ourselves of probably 30-million assholes right now. If not a lot more. I’ll gladly swap them for people we can train up properly, starting with the Master Language of the Universe and then converting them to traditionalist Latin Rite Roman Catholicism posthaste.