Month: January 2023

Guest Contributor – ArthurinCali – 27JAN2023 – Observations Overseas

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Japan is high on my list of most interesting countries for several reasons. One, the aesthetics of the architecture and layout of the landscapes were so distinctly different from what we see in the US. Decorative shrines, the villages, even big cities were impressive. Attention to detail and respect for their history could be seen in a lot of things they build, if that makes sense.

I was fortunate to be there for extended periods while on detachment which allowed the opportunity to travel around during my off time. Taking the train to Hiroshima to visit ground zero of where the atomic bomb was dropped is humbling. They has an interactive museum there with many artifacts that survived.

Not one country, but the Middle Eastern region was an experience of near-total culture shock. Dubai, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE left quite an impression on me as to how different other ways of life can be from the USA.

Europe…was kind of disappointing. Yes, France and Monaco were neat, especially as I have French ancestry, but the attitudes towards Americans they display is not just a stereotype. I understand that is a strain of the culture to be a bit brisk and come off as rude, but for an East Texan raised on Southern manners and politeness it was not easy to get used to. haha

One quick example of French ‘politeness’: I was at the Cannes train station about to head to Monaco and spotted a deli with croissants. Looking in the glass display I saw that the price appeared to say €10 for one. I thought that might be mislabeled as the currency conversion meant it was over $10 for one. I asked the deli employee if that was the price. “That what it says on the paper,” he replied as he walked off. So yeah, it was an experience.

Italy is one of the countries I want to go back to one day. I spent one day in Rome seeing the sights, and would love to go back. Being able to walk right up to the Coliseum and touch it felt amazing. So much history to take in.

Steel, Lead or Silly Putty

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This week has been a crazy mish-mash of unexpected occurrences.  Extra work, surprise meetings, a pleasant event on the website, some additional weather-related work around the homestead and a couple of unexpected appointments.  Nothing bad but enough interruptions to my schedule to put me off my game.  Complain, moan groan.  But the show must go on.  So, here’s hoping I get my act together going forward.

I love Dopey Joe’s vow to veto any legislation that comes to his desk.  The stupidity of that statement truly reflects the reality of his intellect and the intellect of his voters.  The Democrats control the Senate.  Any legislation that comes to his desk for signature has to be approved by the Senate.  So, if the Republican House gets the Democrat Senate to agree on a bill, then Biden will automatically veto it?  Either he’s a moron, which is true, or he believes his voters are morons, which is also true.  Come to think of it, he’s remaining true to himself and his voters.  Gosh, he’s a paragon of integrity.  He’s the moron’s moron!

I’m very anxious to see just how far the House will go to fix the budget problems.  If they were very serious, they would write a real budget bill with realistic additions and subtractions that the Democrats would hate but could live with.  Then they could dig in their heels and only respond if the Senate provided a counter proposal that they in turn could respond to.  In other words, restore the former procedure whereby an actual budget was legislated.  And as I said they could delete most of the crap that the Democrats have filled the current budget with.  And they can write in laws to prevent things like the COVID lockdowns from happening again.  That would be a revelation.

Sure, during the lead up to such an event the media slimeballs would be keeping up an hourly drum beat on all the people of color and LGBTQ people who were, possibly, dying in the streets because a budget wasn’t in place.  People like Mitt Romney and Mitch McConnell would be on the steps of the Senate weeping and flagellating themselves over the white guilt they felt over this outrageous cruelty to the most vulnerable among us.  Think of the children!

But if McCarthy and his people could just hold together their majority, eventually Dementia Joe and Chuck Schumer would come begging with hat in hand to get the budget done.  And then we could eliminate this monthly ritual of approving the non-budget that we’ve been living with since Obama and finally get some measure of fiscal responsibility happening again.  One thing they should demand is that the budget of the FBI should be reduced by twenty percent and everyone working there also take a twenty percent pay reduction to begin the process of pulling their teeth.  Sure, there would be an enormous noise and some of our congressmen would mysteriously die but that’s not too high a price to pay for making things better.  At least not to my mind.

So, let’s just see what kind of spine Kevin McCarthy has discovered.  Is it steel, lead or silly putty.  Hopefully we’ll find out soon.

Guest Contributor – TomD – 26JAN2023 – Life on the Florida Panhandle – Part 1

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TomD

 

I live on the Florida Panhandle. I think the area is ideologically closer to being a part of Alabama than the peninsula. Add to that the heavy military, ex-military presence and relatively sparse Southern indigenous population and we’re essentially our own little time capsule.

There are damn few weirdos here to self expel, though, if they ask, we’d be happy to help.

My nearest neighbor, who lived a few hundred yards away, died a few weeks ago. He was, like me, an ex-Marine, A Sergeant Major (E-9) but he had 24 years in compared to my pitiful 4.You can’t imagine how impressive a real USMC Sergeant Major is. They are disciplined, dedicated, controlled, focused, steady and composed. Marines call it squared away. Everything we should aspire to be but almost all of us fail in some or several aspects. He had a flagpole in front of his house and played reveille and taps at appropriate times and ran the Colors up and down with appropriate ceremony EVERY day. You don’t see that in Manhattan.

 

Update:

Comment from Ed Brault

Reminds me of this great short:Reveille.
https://youtu.be/YyZ9b4My6NUhttps://youtu.be/YyZ9b4My6NU

 

Michael Anton Quotes From OCF – That’s Pretty Cool

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Back in the before time when 2016 was shaping up to be a contest between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush I first read Michael Anton’s essay “The Flight 93 Election”.  And the fact that someone with an academic background and a connection to Washington understood just how bleak the Uniparty options were for this country impressed me greatly.

And afterwards as I perceived that he was pursuing those at at the far outer edges of conservative thought to provide fresh ideas for a political movement that was hollowed out at the top I was encouraged   Because we really do need much more coordination and honest dialog if we’re even going to survive the onslaught of the monolithic Left.

Now I’m not a great thinker.  I’m just a schmoe who got tired of being thrown off of photography and science fiction websites because I didn’t kowtow to the Left’s shibboleths and put together my own site where I can say whatever damn thing I want to.  But I practiced in my own humble way what Anton was doing.  I read far and wide on the on the internet.  Back in 2015 and 2016 there were all kinds of crazy people involved in the pro-Trump movement.  And beyond the pro-Trump movement there were the dissidents for whom Trump was just a symptom.  And I learned quite a bit about the various factions and ideologies and to be honest, the various hates that exist on the Right.

And I can see that there are strengths and weaknesses in each of them.  But what is also true is that the Left’s use of surrogates on the Right to disqualify anyone dangerous to the Left has been one of their most successful strategies.  William F. Buckley was famous for this.

And the neocons tried to do it to Donald Trump to stop him from being elected.  So I made a point to keep an open mind about fringe thinkers.  And so I read people like the Z-Man.  And I’ve found him to be spot on about a whole raft of things that affect our lives.  He’s a very smart guy.

But he’s just one guy.  We need about thirty million guys working together just to stop this train from going off the cliff.  So on balance I have to give the prize to people like Anton and even Gottfried who may disagree on a multitude of intellectual points but at least are willing to hold a discussion about their differences.  To my mind honest disagreement can be enlightening for both sides.  You don’t have to convince the other guy but you do have to make an effort to clarify your position for the readers.  And I believe that’s how we’ll end up with some kind of a coalition.

So I woke up this morning and I saw I had some traffic coming over from American Greatness.  Now I wrote a couple of posts for them a few years back but nothing recently so i was interested.  and there I saw this post by Michael Anton.  He quoted a blog post I wrote a week or two ago going over my thoughts on the Anton / Z-Man war.

I won’t deny I was pretty happy thinking that somehow Michael Anton had visited my site.  After all I had read his article about seven years ago and it had been one of the inspirations for my blogging and many other activities I had engaged in over the years.  He had crystallized many of the thoughts that had been growing in my mind ever since the George Bush presidency had destroyed my belief in the Republican establishment.

But beyond my own private satisfaction in being noticed, it gives me hope that there are people trying to build something bigger than just Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis or Twitter.  We need an actual identity and a mission to save this country.  We at least have to agree on what we’re trying to save.  I think Anton believes that.

It’s a start.