Month: November 2020

In Bad Faith – When the Chumps Catch On

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In business and law there is a term “in good faith.”  It’s a translation from the Latin bona fide.  Basically, it means that the desire to defraud is not present.  One specific application of the concept has to do with a buyer who receives property from a seller who does not have a clear title to that property.  The established precedent in all fifty states is that if a good faith buyer has purchased property that is afterward shown not to have been owned by the seller then the buyer keeps the property and the seller is legally responsible to the real owner for the illegal sale.

Maybe you see where I’m going with this.  When our ancestors came to this country, we were sold a bill of goods.  In fact, we were sold the Bill of Rights.  And in exchange for these we fought in their wars and paid their taxes and helped build their mighty nation.  But now we find out that those things weren’t for us.  Freedom is only for the rich and well connected.  The rest of us can have our speech restricted and our property is dependent on the vagaries of what the government decides it wants from us.  If you want to leave the state because the taxes are outrageously high then that government will order that you surrender a huge chunk of the sale price as a penalty for trying to leave.  And the most fundamental right for Americans, freedom of religion, is the most endangered.  A judge will tell you that what you believe is bigoted hate.  And we’re told that these changes in our rights are happening because the original Constitution was illegal.  It shouldn’t have allowed us to say what we want to and think what we want to or prosper by our hard work.  Those things are evil and racist and homophobic and misogynistic and transphobic and xenophobic and blah, blah, blah.  So just forget all that freedom stuff and start getting with the program.

But guess what?  We bought into the program in good faith.  Just because the elites have decided that they couldn’t sell us what we bought doesn’t mean we have to give it back.  In fact, we’re the good faith owners of the American Dream.  Now from a practical point of view we have a problem because the elites have promised the contents of our dream to the next bunch of chumps that are coming along.  Well, the way the law works we don’t have to give it back.  And guess what?  The ones who sold us the property are the ones who are liable for the other claims.  So, if these fine, rich, ethically scrupulous, leaders of the community, the ruling elite of the greatest country on earth, want to give all these new illegal aliens all the comforts of home then they should hand over their land and money and privileges.

But of course, that’s not how they look at it.  Chumps don’t get any consideration.  They’re just a means to an end.  They’re a revolving door of indentured servants to be manipulated and tossed aside as circumstances allow.  They will always be able to justify to anyone listening including themselves why they are in the right and we deserve whatever abuse they think up.

The truth is if we want what we paid for we’ll have to fight to get it.  That’s really how these things work.  And if we’re not willing to do that then we had better leave or get used to being slaves.  Those are the only three paths.  Pick one.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 2 Episode 20 – Return to Tomorrow

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Okay let’s get through the plot outline really quick.  Three survivors of a god-like race that destroyed itself a half a million years ago and who now exist as disembodied energy fields inside of spherical containers that allow them to survive for hundreds of millennia have summoned Captain Kirk to loan them three human bodies to allow them to manufacture android bodies by means of their advanced science.  While the bodies are on loan the human minds of the volunteers will reside in the spheres.  With these android bodies the ancient beings would be available to guide humanity around the pitfalls that had eventually destroyed their own advanced race.  The head alien is Sargon.  The second is his wife Thalassa and the third is, ridiculously enough, Sargon’s mortal enemy Henoch.  Sargon gets Kirk’s body.  Thallassa gets the body of Dr. Ann Mulhall (played by Diana Muldaur who might have the prettiest face of any actress to appear on the Star Trek series).  And Henoch gets Spock’s carcass.  When the aliens inhabit the bodies of their human hosts, they cause the bodies to run hot.  Their temperature rises to 104 degrees F and their heartbeat is dangerously high.  For this reason, Henoch formulates a metabolic depressant to bring their readings back to human normal levels.  But Henoch wants to kill Sargon and keep Spock’s body permanently so he uses a poison to kill Sargon while he is inhabiting Kirk’s body.  McCoy manages to stabilize Kirk’s body but Sargon is gone.  Now Thallassa decides that she wants to keep Ann Mulhall’s body and bargains with McCoy to cure Kirk’s body of the poison and put his mind back in place in exchange for keeping the body she currently resides in.  McCoy refuses and Thallassa tortures him for a while then relents and apologizes for allowing temptation to overcome her moral sense.  Once she realizes her mistake Sargon’s voice praises her for recognizing her mistake and then explains that he isn’t dead (duh) but has taken up residence in the Enterprise (Where?  The computer?  The ventilation system?  The plumbing?).  He assures them that he will save Kirk himself and stop Henoch from taking over the Enterprise.  McCoy is locked out of the sick bay and when he is let back in Kirk and Mulhall are back in their bodies, all three energy spheres are destroyed and Nurse Chapel looks like a zombie.  McCoy laments that they destroyed Spock’s mind when they destroyed the sphere he was in, but Kirk says it had to be done.  McCoy is told to fill a syringe with enough poison to kill ten Vulcans and head to the bridge with Kirk, Mulhall and Chapel to kill Henoch.

Henoch is on the bridge torturing Uhura and is just getting ready to start on Sulu when the good guys show up.  But Henoch can read their minds and after freezing them in place he orders Nurse Chapel to inject McCoy with the poison.  She starts to comply then injects Henoch instead.  Registering surprise Henoch pleads with Sargon to allow him to switch bodies then collapses to the deck.

The resolution is provided by the voice of Sargon.  The poison wasn’t a lethal dose.  But since McCoy thought it was Henoch thought so too and thus fled Spock’s body.  At that point Sargon destroyed him.  Suddenly Spock’s body awakens and we find out that Spock’s mind was sharing Nurse Chapel’s body with her.  Sargon informs Kirk that before Thallassa and Sargon allow themselves to fade into oblivion and be happy together forever (huh?) they’d like to borrow Kirk’s and Mulhall’s bodies for a last hug and kiss.  Permission is granted and after the clinch Kirk and Mulhall regain consciousness rapped in each-others’ arms.  Throat clearing and uniform straightening ensues.

Where to start, where to start?  Okay, so I’m giving extra points because looking at Diana Muldaur’s face is quite pleasant.  Secondly, Nimoy portraying Henoch as a chuckling villain is kind of fun.  I’m deducting points because we didn’t get to see Sulu tortured.  But really the episode is mostly Shatner.  And he gives generously of some of his hammiest best.  When Sargon first takes over Kirk’s body Shatner does a bunch of his spastic face and body contortions that only he can do so hilariously.  Then in the reverb voice used for Sargon he tallies up the experiences of being in a body again for the first time in 500,000 years.  “Lungs filling with oxygen, heart pumping, blood racing through arteries, eyes seeing.”  I was half expecting, “hair follicles receding on forehead, gall stones blocking bile duct, gastric ulcer tingling.”  Later on, Kirk calls a meeting of his officers to ask their opinion on allowing the body loan.  When Scotty and McCoy object Shatner gives a version of his impassioned “to boldly go where no man has gone before” speech.  What I noticed in the close up is that Shatner’s head had gotten a lot fatter than it used to be earlier in the series.  There must have been a lot of booze and cheeseburgers for Captain James T. Kirk over that first season and a half.  And finally, Nurse Chapel had some kind of wig that was almost like a blond skull cap and made her look truly ghastly.  I’ve got to take some points off for that.  So you can see this was a complex calculation.

I’m going to say   7 // 9.

The Question Has Been Answered

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For a long time I have been trying to decide if there was a way to get back to where we were even sixteen years ago when even a country divided by war and partisan allegiance could rally around the institutions of the American government and respect the processes and practices that allowed us to work through our differences in a peaceful and reasonable way.

Even after the lunacy that the Left unleashed in their cities during the BLM riots I thought that a presidential election could allow us to find a way forward based on the will of the majority.  Well, that’s been shown to be an illusion.  Based on the way the election was run in the Democrat cities in the swing states it’s crystal clear to me that there is no way forward for the United States as one nation.  Even if the Supreme Court does their duty and negates all the fraudulent votes and awards the win to President Trump there is no longer any credibility to the idea that the Left will deal with us as countrymen.  They have shown us that we are their enemies and at this point we have no choice but to reciprocate that.

I do not know how this will play out.  There are so many options that run the gamut from polite dissolution of the union to full blown civil war that I won’t even attempt to figure out how this will go.  But what it does mean is that we need to start looking at the facts on the ground and come up with strategies and tactics to start moving forward to a resolution of our status.  For those who live in occupied territory (blue states) you may want to figure out how to move to a relatively free area (red states).  You may want to start to start getting involved in the political process to try and steer the changes that will start to occur.  There will be all kinds of things we’ll have to start thinking about and doing but the first thing is to get it into your head that this isn’t going to go away.  You’re going to have to pick a side.  Even if President Trump is awarded the election win by the Supreme Court that will only provide a short respite during which you can get your affairs in order.

If Biden is allowed to steal the election then expect things to get a lot worse very quickly.  Changes in the law will curtail your freedom of speech and religion and maybe even your right to own a gun.  This site may be shut down due to government censorship.  But whatever happens try to act logically and work toward goals that minimize the impact of government control on your ability to live your life the way you want.  Look for like minded people to form a network with.  Use this network to develop a social group that can provide a community that reinforces the things you believe in and protects you and your family from the controlled external environment that surrounds us.

So, if you consider yourself on the right of the left/right divide then know that we aren’t going back to a better time when there was one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.  There are two nations and only our nation cares about the rest of those things.  Be alert and be careful.  These are going to be very challenging times.