It's True, Some Of Them Have Teeth
Metaphorical ones, as well as administrative, financial and judicial ones. To what am I referring? Well, none other than our trans-Atlantic cousins, the South Canadians, and their government bureaucracy. Which is known by a certain sector of their population as "Eeevil gubmint", which is usually followed by spitting out the result of a wad of chewing tobacco. Art!
O boy, am I glad I stumbled across this AI art generator! This picture is here because I changed the template to "Challenger Tank", because having a picture of a government website is a little less thrilling than watching yeast ferment.
So, one tank has a small turret and a mighty gun, and the other has a large turret and a small gun. This is not unknown, because TANK comes in many varieties. Art!
With puny human for scale
That there is the M8 Gun Motor Carriage, which is a convoluted South Canadian version of 'Self-Propelled Gun'. It mounted a short-barrelled 75 m.m. howitzer, and apologies for using metric <hack spit>. It's job was to lob low-velocity HE rounds at targets, in a parabolic arc. Art!
This is the A30 Challenger, and as is clearly visible, it carried a whopping long gun, it being a 17 pounder PROUD IMPERIAL MEASUREMENT THERE, which was intended to fire very high-velocity rounds in a flat trajectory, all the better to KO Teuton tanks.
ANYWAY back to the 'Department Of The Treasury', and if Art will stir his barely-sentient self -
This is the home page, and from here you have access to all sorts of data on innumerable subjects, such as - Art!
Just to be clear, "OFAC" is the "Office of Foreign Assets Control" and they deal with sanctions against states, institutions and individuals who are unmitigated cads and bounders. In fact, let me up the word count and deliver their mission brief in full: "The Office of Foreign Assets Control ("OFAC") of the Department of the Treasury administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions based on SC foreign policy and national security goals against targeted foreign countries and regimes, terrorists, international narcotics traffickers, those engaged in activities related to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and other threats to the national security, foreign policy or economy of South Canada."
ANYWAY I wanted to visit another Bureau of the DoT, which had been referred to by "The Daily Beast", to wit: 'Bureau of the Fiscal Services', when they were talking about DJ Tango attempting to get a bond. The BFS apparently monitors all the surety bond agencies across South Canada, and regulates how large the bonds they can post will be. Art!
That first Bureau is not to be confused with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, because that's part of the Department of Justice. Some overlap there, methinks. Art!
Generally, Conrad counsels caution over websites where everyone seems to be having a party. We'll give them a pass today. DO NOT MISTAKE MERCY FOR WEAKNESS, as Robert McNamara would agree. Art!
From here you get a choice of eight other sub-menus, including the one that Your Humble Scribe was curious about, namely Surety Bonds. Art!
Let me display the criteria displayed if you click on this option.
The Bureau of the Fiscal Service administers the surety bond program for the federal government under 31 U.S.C. 9304-9308 for companies who wish to:
- directly write federal bonds
- reinsure federal bonds
- be recognized as an Admitted Reinsurer for the companies who directly write or reinsure federal bonds
The "31 USC 9304-9308' is a list of legal definitions and requirements about federal bonds, which elaborates a whole list of further requirements to become a federally-approved surety agency, including that said agency has at least $250,000 in cash to hand. There an awful lot of these agencies, so I shall provide details of only one, to give you a flavour of the whole list.
ACSTAR INSURANCE COMPANY
(NAIC #22950)
BUSINESS ADDRESS: 30 SOUTH ROAD, FARMINGTON, CT 06032.
PHONE: (860) 415-8400.
UNDERWRITING LIMITATION b/: $1,939,000.
SURETY LICENSES c,f/: AL, AK, AZ, AR, CA, CO, CT, DE, DC, FL, GA, HI, ID, IL, IN, IA, KS, KY, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, MN, MS, MO, MT, NE, NV, NH, NJ, NM, NY, NC, ND, OH, OK, OR, PA, PR, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VT, VA, WA, WV, WI, WY.
INCORPORATED IN: Illinois.
You can see they are permitted to operate in all the South Canadian states, and I've limned in red their maximum permitted. No wonder Bloaty Bafune Biffer Boy had trouble raising a bond.
There you go, and you're welcome.
Further To The Consistent Content Creator
Thank you to Farron Cousins for the following details, which are derived not from malicious guesswork or hostile estimates, but DJ Tango's very own campaign audits. Compiled by other people, I hasten to add, I don't think the man himself can count beyond ten without taking his shoes and socks off. Art!
PROPER CURRENCY!
Yes, Grumpy Trumpy spent $230,000 in February, and before you shrug and say 'So?' let me point out that this was an average per day. So his campaign funds from the Political Action Committees blew through nearly $7 million dollars in a single month. Annually, this would be $86 million, a staggering amount and it gets worse, because the donor funds from his campaign rival Nicky Haley, are not bouncing back to Pumpkinhead, they are going instead to - er - Joe Biden. Art!
He may be far too old to deserve a second term, but Dog Buns! can he raise funds.
Keep watching this space and bring on more popcorn!
Keeping Fit
In addition to venturing into the library this morning, I also popped into Sainsbo's and their internal Argos store, on the off-chance that they had a replacement for my late lamented Fit Bit. Art!
Yes they did. It's currently - do you see wh - O you do - charging up, as it needs to hit 100% charged before one can don and run. It doesn't have the bells and whistles of my old model, most of which went unused anyway.
"City In The Sky"
Getting down to the difficulties of inter-species communication, with pictograms and clay models.
By this time the supply of kangaroo steaks
had vanished into the eager jaws and maws of the expectant dingoes, who now
began to display an unpleasantly focussed interest in his person. The pack leader became bolder, sniffing
closer and closer to the Timelord’s exposed skin; the other pack members began
to close in, slowly and warily at first, then with increasing confidence.
Moving faster than any human being would
ever be able to manage, the Doctor produced his sonic screwdriver from a pocket
with his left hand and darted forward, grasping the pack leader’s hot and slimy
tongue with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. The big animal tried to bite, found that to
do so would sever his tongue and started to buck and thrash before a
concentrated wall of sonic battery assaulted the delicate ears of the dingo
pack. They scattered and fled, yelping
and scattering urine in panic.
Seconds later the only two visible
creatures on the
‘Stay!’ warned the Doctor, pointing at the now subdued dingo. He stood upright and cast about. Nobody and nothing now present. Good!
It took a fair amount of concentration and application to sketch the
rock outcrop he stood alongside, the cringing dingo, the far
I bet you'd forgotten the sonic screwdriver, hmmm?
Thwarted!
Conrad watched a Youtuber called Tori Morrow, purely because her posted title for the vlog was "A Brief Guide To The Post-Apocalyptic Genre" and if Art will put down his bowl of coal -
She classed her list into three parts: Zombies and Vampires; Ecological Collapse; Modern Classics.
Well, Your Humble Scribe was interested in a couple mentioned that I knew nothing about - "Until The End Of The World" and "Feed", both in the ZAP category.
Predictably, they weren't on the Library shelves. Nor were they on the shelves in Waterstones, which is good as that probably saved me from spending another £20 on books <wallet squeaks in relief> so now it's time to venture on over to Abebooks and see what the damage might be there.
I'll let you know. Art!
Finally -
Glad I walked Edna earlier as the weather has proven to be remarkably changeable today, with only the cutting wind being a constant.
No comments:
Post a Comment