Month: October 2022

Easy Does it in the Last Two Weeks

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I was talking to the boys at lunchtime today.  That’s one of the good things that came out of the whole COVID mess.  We set up a Monday Zoom meeting between the guys who I used to take the coffee walk with in the morning.  It’s surprisingly normal at this point.  There are the usual jokes about keeping our hands visible and wearing pants around the home office for some of us.  But it’s good comparing notes with the boys once a week.

I guess it was no surprise that confidence in a good outcome for the elections was pretty high.  In fact, it was too high.  It was way out of proportion.  But we were having a good time.  We were comparing notes on our favorite desperate Dem excuse for the bad polls.  Mine was when some hairdo in a short dress was asking Pelosi about people rating inflation the top problem.  The old bag said that when someone mentions inflation, she immediately stops him and changes the conversation by saying it’s not inflation it’s prices associated with the strong economy that the Democrats produced to save us from COVID.  When she was telling this to the “journalist” Pelosi’s face was contorted in some combination of rage and excitement that made me think she was having a stroke.  But no such luck.

One of the other guys was laughing about Kari Lake slamming Hillary Clinton for being a 2016 election denier.  One of the other guys was talking about a DeSantis/Lake ticket.  I put in my two cents.  I said I was pretty sure Trump and DeSantis would be the ones sitting down talking about who was going to be what in 2024.  And I reminded everyone that there’s at least 10-15% of the electorate that won’t even vote if Trump’s not running in 2024.  That quieted them down a bit.  And I think that’s about true.  Some folks don’t trust anyone else.  That’s a pretty important detail.

Now, do I think Trump could pass the torch?  Maybe.  But I still think it would dilute the enthusiasm for a bunch of his people.  And as far as having DeSantis as the Veep I don’t think that would be wasting him at all.  I have no doubt he would be doing a good deal of the behind the scenes work to put together the team out of his Florida administration.  In fact, I worry that it would do some damage to Florida on that account.

I told them I’d be working at the elections this year and they all wanted to know if I needed assistants.  And I asked, “What, to eat donuts and drink coffee?”  And they all wanted to know when the dumpsters full of fake ballots show up and I said after midnight was the schedule, I saw for Philadelphia in 2020 and we all got a rueful laugh about that.  And then the Zoom ended and we got back to our days.

Yeah, all the bad news for the Dems has been like a whiff of laughing gas.  We’re all a little giddy and a little too confident.  But this is just the run-up.  Two weeks is a very long time.  Every day I hear rumors coming out of Ukraine of a false flag dirty bomb by the Ukrainians to justify a NATO incursion and I think to myself that’s just the stupid trick Biden might welcome to distract the voters from the disaster he’s turned the economy into.

So easy does it.  Take it all in stride.  Don’t get too high or too low.  Let’s see what new monstrosity Dopey Joe has in store tomorrow.  But smell the coffee, get your own work done, laugh at the dopes in the news as their poll numbers plunge and at least make sure you get your votes in on time.  Everything else will develop like a polaroid picture, a little at a time.  You just have to be patient.

For Prospective Guest Contributors

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For folks out there who are interested in contributing some content and want to know what I think will work best for this site here are some of my thoughts and some information.

  1. First off it’s not a paid arrangement.  Anything that is provided is for free.  All I provide is a venue.
  2. I categorize all the content from each guest contributor separately.  If for some reason you decide you’d like to remove all or some of your content from the site I will do so without hesitation.  In fact, I’ll e-mail you the data for your own use gladly.
  3. Approving content is my job.  It has to be something that fits the site.  Politics  from a non-leftist perspective, family friendly culture, Americana, history, religion, military stories, uncontroversial photography, science and technology, energy, hunting and fishing, guns, cars, human interest stories, life stories, movie reviews, tv reviews, music reviews, book reviews and even fiction writing if you have the knack would all be good.  In terms of the politics I’m sort of a civic nationalist but dissidents are allowed to voice their opinions but must keep it in the range of polite discussion.  Threats and disparagement of any groups you don’t like probably won’t be a good fit for the site.
  4. Send the content in an e-mail and I can then evaluate it and let you know what I think.
  5. I have been interested in getting some female contributors to write about child-raising, home schooling, cooking and other family subjects.  So far no luck.
  6. I would prefer the posts to be between 500 and 2000 words.  If it’s much less it might be better off as a comment to another post.  If it’s much more I’d think about splitting it up.

So I’ll leave this up on the header for those interested.  Thanks for your attention.  If you need to ask any questions just send an e-mail to orionscoldfire at charter dot net

Best regards

photog

Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 24OCT2022 – Northern Tier Winter

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“And the first time one of those cute little electric cars gets stuck in a snow storm and runs out of charge on the road”

I lived on the Northern Tier (North Dakota, Champlain Valley of NY/Vermont) for over 30 years. double-digit below-zero winters were the norm. I know some very long, lonely stretches of highway where an EV would be at a serious disadvantage. I would really like to see an honest evaluation of range and battery performance at minus-20F. Just how much of that “300-mile” range will you get at night, with the headlights, heater, wipers, and other accessories, as well as propulsion drawing power. Add in an 80-mile stretch of road that has NO cell, CB, VHF, or FM coverage. Would YOU want to be in an EV, alone, at night, in a snowstorm, with no way to call for help?

Reinforcing Stupid

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Every bad thing that’s happening right now is the result of Democrat stupidity, either direct or indirect.  In fact, some of them are the result of cascading stupidity that just keeps ricocheting against other examples of former stupidity lying around.  For instance, look at energy costs.  The original anti-petroleum executive orders, like cancelling the pipeline and cancelling the exploration leases got the ball rolling and started gas prices soaring.  And then for laughs Mushmouth Joe decided he wanted to fight a war against Russia the largest provider of energy to the West.  Then just to make doubly sure there was no way to undo the damage, he blew up the Nord Stream pipelines that provide Russian natural gas to Europe.  And when he insulted the Saudi foreign minister a year ago, he set himself up for OPEC to kick him while he is down.  That’s why they just announced a three million barrel a day reduction in oil output just to make sure prices stay high.

It’s true.  No one should underestimate Biden’s talent for hapless destruction.  But there could be a silver lining in this whole situation.  The grownups won’t be able to fix any of the stuff Biden has mucked up for a pretty long time.  He’s still got over two years to destroy our economy.  That might be long enough for the people who believe in green energy to get a real good look at what life in a green economy is actually like.

The people in Texas got a taste of it last year when the grid failed because of dependence on wind turbines that froze up.  There’s nothing scarier than losing power in a real winter storm when you don’t have your own generator and emergency fuel.  Sitting in the dark with no heat and no water is a bad feeling.  And if it becomes a recurring thing it will disrupt your life.  So much so that you’ll go out and install an expensive generator just to get back to a sense of normalcy.

Now imagine if you’re a greenie and you’ve always felt that gasoline and oil and natural gas are the devil’s own brew.  But then imagine if it turns out that your very own gas-powered generator is the only thing saving you from misery.  You might start to get confused about where your priorities were with respect to this whole climate thing.

And the first time one of those cute little electric cars gets stuck in a snow storm and runs out of charge on the road and has to be recharged by a gas-powered generator that a gas-powered truck had to haul out to do the job maybe the Gaia worshipper who gets stuck might start to put the dots together and realize he could just skip a step and buy a gas-powered car.

Of course, these are feeble hopes.  Gaia worship is a cult that seemed to get started in fifth grade when the proselytizing starts.  Really the only hope is that most of these people will need to freeze to death in a sudden storm that takes out the power and leaves them inside their well-insulated walls as the temperature reaches minus twenty.  Hopefully they’ll be too eco-pure to ask to stay with their climate denier neighbor with the 25-kW generator and large oil tank.  After all you just can’t virtue signal too much when you’re an eco-warrior.

Ronin (1998) – A Movie Review

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Ronin is some kind of crime, espionage, action-adventure movie.

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

Robert De Niro is Sam, a former CIA operative who is signing on to a heist of some kind of important property in a steel case that’s locked to a courier’s wrist and guarded by four cars-full of armed men travelling in the south of France.  We never learn what’s in the case.  Maybe very valuable military secrets maybe unobtainium.  He has been hired by a woman named Diedre with a decidedly Irish brogue.  He is joined by a team of men to pull off this assignment.  Sean Bean plays Spence, allegedly a former British special forces soldier.  Jean Reno plays Vincent a French soldier of fortune.  The last gunman is someone named Larry who never seems to display any real characteristics.  And Gregor who is a German former KGB agent is the technical asset.  He uses electronics to monitor the activities of the couriers and provides information on their route and timetable.

While retrieving the guns needed for the mission the team is ambushed and it is quickly learned that Spence is a fake and has no experience as a soldier.  He is paid off by Diedre and dismissed.  Sam and Vincent gravitate to each other as the two men who have the best idea about how this mission will go down and they have each other’s backs during the ensuing events.  Also, it’s obvious that they share a similar outlook on the world they inhabit.

We find out that Diedre’s boss is an ex-IRA soldier named Seamus O’Rourke played by Jonathan Pryce.  He hangs back from the team only contacting Diedre to monitor the team’s progress.

The attack on the courier is carried out.  Enormous quantities of bullets and other explosives are expended, incredibly difficult car chases ensue and finally all of the target team is killed.  Finally, Gregor takes the case from the dead courier.  But he makes a switch with the real case and hands off an explosive case that Sam barely discovers and tosses away in time to avoid killing the rest of the team.

Now Diedre and her team must locate Gregor before he can sell the case to his old employers the Russians.  More car chases ensue and eventually Gergor is tracked but before the team can capture him Seamus rejoins the story.  He orders Diedre to abandon the team and the two of them capture Gregor and drive off with him.  In the incident Seamus kills Larry against the feeble protests of Diedre.

Sam locates Seamus and they have an even more unbelievable car chase running the wrong way on an expressway.  Eventually Seamus, Diedre and Gregor’s car crashes.  Gregor manages to escape with the case and Seamus and Diedre barely escape the burning car.  When the authorities arrive Sam and Vincent retreat from the scene.

Now Sam and Vincent regroup while Sam has an inconvenient bullet removed from his side and they work out where they think Gregor will meet with the Russians to sell the case.  Of course, there’s a very convenient Russian Ice Ballet show in Paris so away they go.

At this point every one but Sam and Vincent betray everyone else in a hopscotch of double crosses.  Gregor has a sniper ready to shoot the Russian mobster’s girlfriend, the skater, if he isn’t allowed to leave with his money.  The Russian shoots Gregor and abandons his girlfriend to the sniper and flees the arena.  Seamus shows up as a security guard and shoots the Russians and takes the case.  He also shoots Vincent who was right behind the Russians.  Sam finds Diedre in the getaway car and warns her that he is still an active CIA agent and is after Seamus not the case.  He lets her escape and now without an escape route Seamus turns and shoots it out with Sam.  Sam is hit in the shooting arm and Seamus prepares to finish him off.  But a wounded Vincent shows up in time to dispatch Seamus.

The movie ends with Sam and Vincent saying goodbye at a bar.  Vincent reads that Sam was hoping Diedre would show up to see him.  Vincent lets him know that doesn’t happen in real life.  They part as friends.

This is a pretty wild adventure movie.  The car chases are way, way over the top.  But by the same token they’re technically very well done.  The acting is what you would expect in an action-adventure movie.  De Niro and Jean Reno successfully achieve the needed buddy-movie sympatico thing.  Even the feelings between Sam and Diedre weren’t so silly that they ruined the movie.  Seamus, Gregor and the Russians were all very acceptable bad guys.  All in all, I’d say Vincent was the most relatable character in the movie.  Which is something in a movie of this sort.  I would call this a highly recommended movie for someone looking for action adventure with a decent story to it.  For everything else it’s okay.