Rants of a Fuzzy Curmudgeon

I don’t know your heart
I don’t know where to begin
But I could feel you erasing the rivers I’d drawn in

We were sitting at brunch with my sainted* 91-year-old mother yesterday, when she came out with the strangest question I’ve ever heard from her:  “What do you think of this guy, I can’t remember how his name is pronounced, who’s running for president?”

“You mean Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend.”

“That’s him.”

“I think he hasn’t got a chance, because nobody is going to vote for a guy who can’t even fix up his own town.”

“Oh, you don’t mean that.”

“Oh, yes I do mean that.  There are people up there who absolutely despise him because he’s never come through on his campaign promises.  The black community up there is pretty much fed up with him.”

My wife interjected, “We don’t talk about politics.  Period.  Unless we agree on a candidate.  So let’s stop right here.”

And that’s where it stopped.  But the truth is, if you dig into Mayor Pete, he’s really not worth the candle.  What I love is how Democrats are all mad and shit about Donald Trump not having any government experience and yet he’s President of the United States, and they think a guy like Mayor Pete, who’s barely out of diapers in the sense of his political life (he’s only a second-term mayor who’s unlikely to see a third term, if I’m reading his negatives correctly) is a great candidate for their nomination.

They thought that great faux-Hispanic from Texas, Robert Francis O’Rourke, was a great candidate, too, until just a couple of weeks ago.  Now the guy can’t buy a poll.  I see Buttigieg going the same way.

Sorry, Mom.  But you’re in better shape with Donald Trump in office, much as I hate to say it 🙂

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* It was Mother’s Day.  It’s the only day she’s “sainted” other than her birthday.  Trust me on this. 🙂

According to the primary election results, Fred Glynn — who was running against 6-termer aging carpetbagging crook and lying sack of shit former Ohio Democrat Jim Brainard for the GOP mayoral nomination in Carmel, Indiana — had 44.2% of the vote vs. the incumbent’s 55.8%.

The Gannett Star calls this the closest Carmel mayoral primary “in decades”.  For once, they and I agree on something.  That’s fantastic, and in a just world would give Brainard a well-deserved conniption.

But here’s the problem:  Only 14,659 votes were cast in a heavily-Republican city that boasts nearly a hundred thousand residents. Fred’s margin was only 1,729 votes.  That means only 865 votes would have had to flip to Fred to get the win. The Bureau of the Census estimated (in 2018) that 68% of Hoosiers statewide are registered to vote, so that suggests that somewhere in the neighborhood of 65,000ish registered voters reside in Clay Township.

So where were the other 50,000 of you?

One can only imagine what might have happened if, say, those 865 votes had flipped to Fred.  Or if another couple thousand GOP voters had gotten off their dead asses on Tuesday and bothered to vote for Fred.  Did all you people out there in West Clay and Home Place who were so angry about annexation actually visit a polling place on Tuesday?

The good news is that Fred remains a Hamilton County council member.  Let’s hope that he uses that position to investigate Carmel’s finances more closely.  Perhaps even insists that a full audit take place.  Where is the money coming from and where is it going — and most importantly, what is the actual plan for paying it back once it comes due?

I have two closing thoughts.  Well, three.

One is that the primary election system in this state has destroyed democracy by killing the party convention for the two major parties.  By state statute those parties MUST choose their candidates via the primary election system.  I’m sure this was intended to end the old smoke-filled room nomination process and the cronyism that it engendered, but I’m unconvinced that primaries are actually the best way to solve that problem.  Plus, and I’ve said this before, historically we had better candidates under the old system.  There are reasons for that that I don’t intend to go into at this time, but mostly it has to do with being vetted by the party rather than simply having to fill out an application and get x number of signatures to obtain ballot access.

Two is that I think Brainard is absolutely petrified about having to leave office in any way other than flat on his back, or “tits up” as the Brits put it.  He knows there will be audits and investigations and that there’s an excellent likelihood that he’ll end up doing time for felonies and misdemeanors connected to the rapid expansion of Carmel over the past quarter century.  At the very least his reputation will be significantly besmirched.  It is simply impossible that he has not committed crimes, and I find it amazing that nobody has ever ratted him out.  Apparently he’s really good at bribing people to keep their mouths shut and toe his line.  Brainard has always reminded me of the Wizard of Oz — “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” and head for the hills when it becomes obvious that you’re a fraud.  (The latter, sadly, is probably not in the cards.)

Finally:  Fred Glynn, you are a great County Councilman, a great husband, and a great dad.  Win or lose, you’re my hero and I expect you to keep plugging away for the benefit of your county, your lady, and your daughter.  Keep fighting the good fight, my friend, and God bless.

A Texas state senator reports via Facebook that his bill, SB 1663, the Texas Monument Protection Act, has passed the Texas State Senate.  This bill as reported “creates permanent protections for the Alamo Cenotaph so future generations can learn the story of Texas.”

Bullshit.

There is no such thing as “permanent protection” in law.  Any law you pass this session could be overturned by another law in the next session.  This is true of any law you choose to consider, including the Constitutions of both your state and the nation as a whole.  Granted it is more difficult to overturn a Constitutional requirement, other than in the breach (2nd Amendment comes to mind) than it is a paltry federal or state statute, but “permanence” in law is defined more like “will last until the barbarians get the upper hand and throw it out”.

We used to protect monuments by the simple expedient of learning and having reverence for our history, regardless of the warts and blemishes we’d rather paper over.  Violations of this social compact were treated by shaming the guilty (and sometimes by a misdemeanor charge of vandalism).  Of course this was when “shame” was a concept that actually had some weight — nobody seems to be ashamed anymore of anything they do that falls outside of the old social compacts.

Moreover it would never have occurred to a state legislature to order the removal or destruction of a monument once deemed historically important simply because a few privileged snowflakes felt offended by it.

One of the most important things that happened after the Civil War (regardless of how badly it was muffed) was the acceptance of the rebellious states and their erstwhile soldiers back into the fold, without much more than acceding to Constitutional requirements (ratification of the 14th Amendment) and swearing out amnesty oaths.  There was no requirement to strike the rebel flag into dusty corners of museums, and indeed, several Southern states to this day contain elements (or alleged elements) of their Confederate past.*

In the last few years, however, anything that reeks of the parts of American History that sets off the snowflakes has slowly been receiving progressively** worse treatment by the Left.  Monuments have been removed, or moved from public to private property, graves have been desecrated (or serious discussion of their desecration has been held in public fora), flags have been removed from statehouse lawns, and so forth — only because there exists among the current generation of young people the idea that our history doesn’t matter and only the parts of it that they deem acceptable will be allowed to stand.

Of course they got these ideas stuffed into their heads by the public schools and the universities they attend or attended.  The Gramscian damage runs deep with this generation.  But it is only the tip of the iceberg represented by students taking over the academies and demanding that this professor be fired for speaking truths they don’t wish to hear, or that this outside speaker be banned for similar reasons.  The madness infecting the academy has also long infected the media, which looks on with approval as our culture is dismanted stone by stone.

I would argue that the Texas senator means well.  But I would further argue that laws such as the one he is so proud of having shepherded through his state senate would be unnecessary had we not allowed the enemies of liberty and civilization to dominate our public discourse to the extent to which they have come to do.

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* I’m not even going to mention The Dukes of Hazzard.

** Giggle.

If you live in Carmel, Indiana, vote tomorrow for Fred Glynn Jr. in the Republican primary for mayor.  Why?

Reference:  Carmel Mayor Jim Brainard sees $1.3B as worthy investment. His challenger sees troublesome debt.

His challenger is correct.  How do you spend a town into Lucas Oil Stadium debt range when you don’t have a million-population city to stick with the bill?

Hopefully, this will be the way it goes tomorrow:

So do yourselves a favor up there in Indianapolis’s north side bedroom community, and vote the incumbent out before he spends you into even more trouble than you’re already in.

…so you get a meme.

Councilcritter in Jeffersonville, Indiana, thinks “to Jew down” is an appropriate turn of phrase for a public meeting.

Followed by:

Indiana City Council VP Apologizes For Anti-Semitic Slur

Let’s talk for a moment about that phrase, because while it’s pretty disgusting that someone in a position such as Ms. Gill holds would say such a thing in a public meeting, that characterization is unfortunately still pretty common amongst the great unwashed (i.e. the rednecks) in both parties out here in flyover country.  (As the transcript proves; she didn’t just let that slip out “inadvertently” as she claimed in her apology, she apparently said “what I call, ‘Jew them down'”.  If that’s what you call it, honey, then you must use that phrase all the time — or it’s in your head a lot.)

My first encounter with “to Jew down” was when my Dad heard it used by a minister in casual conversation when he was bidding on the air conditioning contract for a church outside of Kokomo, Indiana, back in 1972, and said minister thought Dad’s price was a little high, and pressed him to lower it. (Literally the guy said, “I don’t want you to think I’m trying to Jew you down”, and Dad’s response was, “No, I’m sure you wouldn’t want to do that,” and he left soon after and dropped his bid; he said, “I don’t need the jerk’s business that badly”.)*

Now, you’d think nearly 50 years later that the rednecks would be more enlightened, particularly those living in urban areas where they tend to encounter more Jews, but it’s pretty well cemented into the language of the people who use it — kind of like how they tend to toss off things like “n*****-rigged” (or the slightly more faux-erudite but equally scurrilous “Negro-engineered”) without thinking about how offensive they are. However…there must have been some truth in that phrase at some point in the past, or it wouldn’t have become a common phrase, right, guys?  Right?  Guys?

The fact is that Jews were and are pretty renowned for driving a hard bargain, but then Scots — either the ones who still live north of Hadrian’s Wall** or the purely ethnic ones who live in America now — are known for pinching every penny until it screams for mercy, so it’s not like Jews were or are the only ethnic group who engaged in such business practices.  But Indiana, of course, was one of the biggest Klan states (and may still be, for all I know, not that the Klan is much of a big deal anymore), and what ethnic Scottish Christian merchants did was accepted as normal, whereas if Jews did it, that was bad and Jews were evil for trying to screw patriotic Americans out of their hard-earned dollars.***  I mean, ask one of my own personal heroes, U.S. Grant, who regardless of being my hero still managed to issue the infamous General Order #11.****

On the other hand, the older Jews here in Indianapolis (by which I mean the ones who are 20-30 years older than me) have no qualms about throwing the term “schwartze” around — which I find exceedingly offensive, because I know EXACTLY what they mean by it. The term “shiksa” still gets used a lot, too, and while today it seems to have devolved to mean, simply, “non-Jewish woman”, I remember when the previous generation used it to mean “non-Jewish whore bitch trying to drag my Jewish son away from the Tribe”. So I find it offensive as well, even though my wife thinks I’m nuts on that subject.

At any rate, the phrase Ms. Gill used is mild compared to some things she could have said — and quite mild indeed compared to Yiddish things I’ve heard my parents’ and grandparents’ generation say. Which is not to say that Ms. Gill, as an elected councilcritter charged with the public trust, shouldn’t be more careful about what comes out of her mouth — because she should, and she should resign her position immediately since she’s proven she can’t keep a civil tongue in her head.

What surprises me more than anything is that the article in the Jewish Journal doesn’t state that she’s a Republican. I had to dig pretty hard to find her party affiliation, in fact. But since I consider myself neither a Republican or a Democrat, I don’t care about her party affiliation, she just needs to be gone.

Regardless of party, if you agree, then we have nothing to argue about.

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* Dad was a convert.  He’d grown up and been a Lutheran (Missouri Synod) all his life till after WWII, when he started questioning his faith — I suspect after he saw Dachau not long after it was liberated.  He later married Mom, who was (of course) Jewish, and converted just before my sister and I started religious school back in the ’60s.  He held no brief for anyone who would slight someone based solely on their ethnicity, and was a strong supporter of the Civil Rights movement.  He was a Democrat, of course; his family always had been.  But like Ronald Reagan in the 1950’s, by 1972 he didn’t so much leave the Democratic Party as the Democratic Party left him, by nominating George McGovern for president, and he held his nose and voted for Nixon.  Then he followed up by voting for Ford, Reagan, Reagan, Bush (although he was not impressed by Bush 41), Bush, Dole, and the younger Bush (because he knew global warming was a scam and Al Gore was unacceptable).  He had Bill Clinton’s number long before Clinton was elected and the truth started trickling out about what a horndog Billyboy was.  And he thought Jimmy Carter was a coward for the way he handled the Iranian crisis in ’79.  I hate to think what he would have thought of Obama, and I suspect he would have been sorely tempted to vote from the rooftops if Hillary had been elected.

And he thought the mill run of Jews were idiots for voting for the very people who would send them to the gas chambers given the chance.  Same for the mill run of Jews who would vote for people who would disarm them, same as the Germans did before WWII.  So if you wonder where I got that attitude, well, the seed didn’t fall far from the tree.  Dad didn’t believe in the wearing of blinders, plugging of ears, and chanting of “na na na na na I can’t hear you” as a political philosophy, and neither do I.

** Yes, I am fully aware that Hadrian’s Wall is not the political boundary between Scotland and England.  But since it was built by the Romans to keep the Scottish clans out of Brittania (something it pretty much failed at), it’s convenient to use it as at least a physical and philosophical boundary.  And I’ve read any number of times in fiction the concept of “When was the last time you were north of the Wall?” and suchlike, so fuck you if you can’t take a joke.

*** Hopefully my reader understands that I am being 100% sarcastic.

**** Although Grant wasn’t only concerned about the money Southerners were making off of sales of cotton — apparently some of the Jewish merchants in question were also bringing in medical supplies and foodstuffs that were making it harder for the Union to consolidate its gains in West Tennessee.  So while I look askance at General Order #11, I understand his motivation for issuing it, even as I wish he hadn’t written it specifically to target Jews.

Indy Arms had a nice deal on the Sig Sauer P365 over the weekend, part of their NRA weekend sale, so I wandered over with the son-in-law to see what they’d give me on my five-year-old Walther PPX that I really liked but which I rarely took out to shoot.*  I won’t say I got what I wanted for it, but it was enough to sweeten the deal on the P365 plus two 12-round magazines (so I have a total of four, two 10-round that came with the gun and the two 12-round bought separately).  This photo actually shows it oversize** on my 1920×1024 monitor:

I have a DeSantis “SuperFly” pocket holster coming for daily carry.  The gun itself fits nicely in my front pocket and barely prints without the holster, but pocket carry needs a holster if only to keep pocket lint away from the gat.  For a fat boy who isn’t comfortable carrying IWB, that will work great.

I cannot say enough about the staff at Indy Arms.  We had a great time.  The boy is looking for something smaller than his Glock for everyday carry, and the only thing that stops him from buying a P365 after seeing one is the mag capacity.  But he saw a couple of smaller Gs and some other stuff in the cases that had him thinking.  I think he has a Glock 17 in 9mm currently (and could not tell you which Gen but certainly it’s not new), which is what he carried when he was a cop.

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* With my wrists getting worse all the time and the addition of tennis elbow in my right arm since last August or so, big handguns are pretty much right out for me.  I don’t even shoot the 1911 anymore, although I keep it in my office as a holdout weapon.

** Oversize because I run the blog page at 120% magnification…if I cut it back to 100% the photo is slightly undersize.  Your mileage may vary.  You can look the specs up over at Sig Sauer’s page.