Month: March 2022

31MAR2022 – OCF Update – This’N’That

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Today was a down day.  Camera Girl and I were out and about on errands.  She needed to buy a replacement hamster and I needed to get some angle iron for temporary fence supports.

A few months ago our intrepid hamster Jellybean left this mortal coil.  Because he was an especial favorite of Princess Sack of Potatoes Camera girl told her that Jellybean was sick and had to go to the hospital for medical care.  And in due time he was apparently forgotten.

But this week she remembered ans seemed very sad that he hadn’t returned from the hospital.  Feeling terrible for the little girl, Camera Girl told her that he’d be returning very soon.  But after checking with her animal seller she was unable to obtain one of the same color.  Jellybean was black and the only available replacements were brown and white.

The discrepancy will be explained thus.  The new hamster is Jellybean’s cousin and because he has no home, Jellybean has agreed to switch places with him and go back with his family.

Then to move the process along we asked her to name the new hanster and she quickly settled on Terret.  At least that’s how I’m spelling it.  It sounded like it rhymed with ferret so Terret it is.  I told Camera girl that I will field any additional questions concerning Jeelybean and Terret going forward.  Camera Girl is just not a convincing liar and I am something of a natural born storyteller.

So angle iron is a lot more expensive than I remember it.  A four foot length of 18 gauge angle was twenty two bucks!  But I bought a couple and I’ll see if it’ll do the trick.  The first semi-decent day I’ll go out with the angle, a sledge hammer and some screws and put an end to one of the broken posts on the fence.  Ah, the joys of home ownership.

So I hear Dopey Joe is going to release a million barrels of oil from the strategic reserve every day until the election.  What a genius!  Next thing I guess he’ll release a million cows a day and ten million chickens a day from the strategic livestock reserve.  And to finish it off he’ll be releasing a million tons of wheat a day from the strategic grain reserve.  We really deserve a better grade of psychopaths from our ruling class.  Well, you get what you pay for.

Anyway, I’ll get back to work now and pound out some high quality outrage.  Enjoy the night.

DeSantis Versus Pence, a Contrast Worth Looking At

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Lately everything that DeSantis has been doing strikes me as right on target.  He’s passing laws to restrain the Left in multiple arenas.  And even beyond the kind of laws he champions, his interactions with the press and the corporate Left have been spot on.  He refuses to be intimidated and he pushes back at them and even attacks their motives.

And that made me think of a comparison between what DeSantis is doing with outlawing the sexualizing of very young schoolchildren and what Mike Pence did when he passed a law to protect religious freedom in Indiana.  This law was meant to protect wedding service providers; like the photographers and cake bakers from anti-discrimination lawsuits by LGBTQ advocates.

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence Says Religious Freedom Law ‘Absolutely Not’ a Mistake

Here’s a link (above) to a video of Pence being grilled by George Stephanopoulos on the bill and repeatedly attempting to get Pence to say yes or no as to whether the bill allows wedding service providers to “discriminate” against gay people getting married.  If you watch it Pence looks like a weak, whiny, wimp afraid to just say openly that religious freedom is the aim of the bill and if preventing religious people from being forced to violate their religious convictions is discrimination against the people trying to coerce them then it is justified discrimination.

 

Now compare this travesty with these three examples of Ron DeSantis dealing with the press on the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

‘Does The Truth Matter Or Not?’: DeSantis Lashes Out At Reporter Over Question On Bill

 

Gov. DeSantis signs controversial ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill into law

 

Gov. Ron DeSantis responds to leaked Disney comments about parental rights bill (on Tucker Carlson show)

In each case he counterattacks against the media narrative and hammers his point home that the truth is completely different from the version being represented by the media.  And in the second and third videos and goes farther to say that those attacking these bills aren’t trying to protect LGBTQ individuals.  They are trying to impose indoctrination or “grooming” of small children into deviant sexual practices.  They are trying to introduce to very young children extremely harmful sexual and psychological ideas that can lead to irreparable harm to their minds, bodies and even end their lives.

Is it any wonder that Mike Pence has proven to be such an ineffective representative for conservatives?  He can’t defend the things he believes in in a forceful and convincing manner.  One week after the interview with Stephanopoulos Pence amended the bill to prevent it from protecting the wedding service providers that it was meant to aid.  He is useless.

I believe Ron DeSantis is just the opposite.  He is smart and he is strong.  He can think on his feet and he can push back against the twisted logic that the Left uses to make the attackers look like the victims.  I believe if we have a man like this as president, he will find ways to reverse many of the evil laws and regulations that afflict us.  Someone with strength would even be able to push the awful people we have in Congress to follow his lead.

I don’t know whether DeSantis will be running for president or vice president in 2024.  But in either case he looks like the right man in our future.  Could the Deep State do to him what they did to Trump?  Maybe, but DeSantis has significantly better governmental experience and would bring his own team from Florida into the executive branch with him.  Trump had no team.

So, this is my case.  We’ll have to see what actually happens in 2024.

How the West Was Won (1962) – A Movie Review

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“How the West Was Won” is a Western extravaganza with enough Hollywood stars for five films.  It consists of five vignettes that are strung together out of the fortunes of a family from the East caught up in the settling of the western frontier.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Karl Malden is Zebulon Prescott, a farmer in New York State who becomes disgusted with his rocky unproductive land and sells it to go west with his wife Rebecca, (Agnes Moorehead) and two daughters Eve (Caroll Baker) and Lilith (Debbie Reynolds).  Along the way they meet fur trapper Linus Rawlings (Jimmy Stewart) who saves them from some nefarious river pirates led by Col. Jeb Hawkins (Walter Brennan) but finally Zebulon and Rebecca are killed going over the rapids on their raft and Rawlings reluctantly gives up his wandering ways to marry Eve and start a farm by the river.

In the next vignette, Lilith has become a show girl and does a song and dance act in St. Louis.  A messenger informs her that a former admirer has left her a gold mine in California.  She joins another woman Agatha Clegg (Thelma Ritter) in a wagon train headed west.

When gambler/fortune hunter Cleve Van Valen (Gregory Peck) overhears her good fortune, he follows her to California.  At first reluctantly and then gratefully, after he saves her life during an Indian attack, Lilith partners with Cleve.

But when they get to California, they discover that Lilith’s gold mine is played out.  Cleve leaves Lilith in the lurch to pursue his gambler’s life.  She receives a proposal of marriage from wealthy rancher Roger Morgan (Robert Preston) but rejects him because she doesn’t want a conventional life as a wife and mother.  But when Cleve overhears Lilith singing on a river boat, he realizes that they will both be happiest if they marry and combine their two adventurous lives together into a partnership.  And they do.

In the next story the Civil War has begun.  To dramatize this we even have a brief look at Raymond Massey portraying Abraham Lincoln.  Eve’s son, Zeb Rawlings (George Peppard) wants to follow his father into battle on the side of the Union.  Eve tearfully says goodbye and Zeb is swept along by the tides of war.

During this episode he manages to save General Grant (Harry Morgan) and General Sherman (John Wayne) from a Confederate soldier who was trying to convince Zeb to desert.  After the war Zeb returns home to find that both his parents are dead.  He leaves the farm to his brother and heads west as a cavalry soldier.

In the next vignette Zeb is a cavalry officer tasked with helping the Union Pacific Railroad cross the Great Plains.  The ruthless railroad boss Mike King (Richard Widmark) is angering the Indian tribes by laying down the track through the Indian hunting grounds.  Zeb has help from buffalo hunter Jethro Stuart (Henry Fonda), an old friend of his father.

They convince the Indians to accept the latest route but finally when settlers start filling up the area the Indians revolt and we watch as they stampede a herd of buffalo through the railroad worksite.  Disgusted with the railroad’ treachery, Zeb and Jethro leave for happier circumstances farther west.

In the last episode, we see Lilith as an old woman in San Francisco.  Cleve has died and an auction is proceeding to liquidate their estate to pay off debts.  All that will remain will be a ranch in Arizona that she hopes to retire to with her nephew Zeb Rawlings and his wife Julie (Carolyn Jones) and children.

Zeb was a sheriff and while meeting his aunt at the train in Arizona he catches sight of an outlaw Charlie Grant (Eli Wallach) that Zeb put in prison years ago.  He figures out that Grant means to rob the train when the next gold shipment is aboard.  Zeb recruits his old friend Marshal Lou Ramsey (Lee J. Cobb) to go with him to guard the train.

The train robbery scene involves Grant and eight or ten of his men boarding the train and battling Zeb and Lou as they fight them off with rifles and hand guns.  In the ensuing violence the train is battered to pieces and finally derails in catastrophic fashion but Zeb puts a final bullet in Charlie Grant.  Then he returns to take up a peaceful life as rancher with his family.

The movie ends with a panoramic view of California including Los Angeles freeways and the golden Gate Bridge with a stirring speech by the narrator (Spencer Tracy) about the epic adventure that was the taming of the west.

So, you get the picture.  This is an extravaganza.  They put every actor they had into it.  I’ve even left out a few other for the sake of brevity.  So, what do I think?  As far as spectacle, the scene of the raft on the rapids and the buffalo stampede are exciting and in the wide screen of a theater must have been fun for the audience.  Some of the landscapes are truly beautiful.  The plot is very straightforward.  It covers the various stages of the westward expansion of the United States with a personal story.  The performances vary from competent to perfunctory.  This isn’t high drama.  I would restrict my recommendation to saying if you’re in the mood for an epic western movie (and you have three hours to spare) this movie would be fine.

30MAR2022 – Quote of the Day

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Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?

Patrick Henry

The ZMan Has a Very Good Post on “The Crisis.”

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Basically his thesis is that when a government collapses during a crisis usually the external crisis is just a stressor revealing the internal crisis.  And that internal crisis is usually a long standing erosion of some quality that eventually will fail during an external crisis.  So for instance, in the Roman empire, the long term rot in the legions allowed the invading Germans and Huns to knock over the façade of military might.

It’s a very well written essay and might give people an idea of how we might see the Global American Empire begin to come apart.  America’s dominance on the world scene was predicated on the combination of American dominance in military, industrial and financial matters.  Now all three of those areas have been undermined by its own doing.  The Ukraine crisis may be the stressor that reveals America’s decline and maybe collapse.