Oh, Canaduh….

The solution to the jungle encroaching on civilization is to grab a machete and beat the jungle back, not spread out fertilizer and water.

From the NotSoGreatWhiteNorth:

To protect yourself from a home invasion that is oriented at stealing your vehicle, the Toronto cops say to leave your keys prominently by the front door so the bad guys don’t have to come after you once they kick in your front door. I was going to say “You can’t make this stuff up”, but it’s Canada so it actually seems pretty legit.

Look, I know that Canada is, essentially, an entire country made of Nerf and that whatever national reserve of BFYTW was exhausted long before this weasel minced into power, but this is just plain embarrassing. I have no doubt there are individuals up there in Canuckistan who are aghast at this sort of pandering and are more than happy to light someone up who tries to kick in their front door for a set of car keys…I just wish they got some air time. This isn’t a good look for you, Neville Chamberlain Canada.

Someone comes through your front door like a homicidal KoolAid man, the solution is not appeasement but rather ‘sudden battle … with utter recklessness’, as Heinlein might say. This devolution of society, where things like appeasing illegal aliens, squatters, and home invaders are going from bad ideas to actual policy, continues because we let it. There’ll be a tipping point eventually, and when it happens it won’t stop there. Those will be some interesting times.

Thoughts on ATM’s

One of the more interesting aspects of The Current Situation(tm) is that I’m having to consider things, and think through scenarios, that were heretofore not considered.

For example, a few posts back i mentioned that I decided to pull out some cash to line the gun safe with…’just in case’. Just in case of what? Well, banks runs or outright closures mostly. I was half-right…every bank in this town closed their lobbies and now it’s strictly drive-up banking.

I went to my local ATM today and when I went to select the amount to withdraw I noticed that they had upped the amounts available to $700. Hmm.

Explore this with me: As a ‘convenience’ to customers, the bank increases the amount you can withdraw to $700. Assuming that they figure people will take advantage of that, that’ll empty out an ATM faster than when the limit was the usual $350-400, right? So, and I’m guessing here because I’m not 100% of how ATM cash magazines work, the ATM’s must be packing more cash than usual in them, right? Or, at least being refilled more often than usual. Seems logical, right?

So then we see articles like this one stating that there is anticipation by some businesses that some civil disturbances may be on the way. Is it hard to imagine that the big national bank will, ‘for safety’, close down ATM’s or limit their availability (say, shutting down outdoor ATMs and leaving only ones in occupied buildings up) to preclude people robbing these flusher-than-usual ATM’s? Wells Fargo, for example, might shut down their ATM’s in the lonely drive up lanes outside their buildings to keep someone with a tow chain and a hemi from stealing it, but leave the ones in the lobby of WalMart open. That sort of thing.

Come to think of it, as people realize that you can withdraw twice as much money as usual from your ATM, I suspect robberies of ATM users will increase.

I’m sure my thoughts on this are unique and nothing is going to change in regards to ATM accessibility….but I’ve been wrong before.