Month: January 2023
26JAN2023 – Quote of the Day
A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly.
Samuel Johnson
25JAN2023 – Shoveling Various Things
So, I’ve been under a form of coercion for the last three days. Between shoveling snow and shoveling paperwork I’ve been buried alive. Now I’ve been reading the news and opinion for the last few days and thinking about what might be interesting. There are developments on both sides of the Ukraine war and there are interesting developments in Kevin McCarthy locating his backbone but I just haven’t had any time to contemplate, cogitate, and rhapsodize on these themes.
Instead, I’ve been concentrating on just what awful people inhabit the cesspool that is the Uniparty. Schiff, Swalwell and Schumer. And that’s just the esses. The bees, ems and the pees are no better. It’s a whole alphabet full of sleazebags, crumb-bums and crooks. But at some point, during my second day of shoveling I wasn’t too cold from the weather or too hot from the exertion and I was feeling curiously relaxed by the rhythm of throwing the snow over my shoulder that I started thinking about the bright side of our present situation.
For one thing McCarthy said categorically that Schiff and Swalwell were disqualified from being on the Intelligence committee because they were, respectively, a documented liar about classified information and a purchaser of sexual favors from Chinese spies. And I thought, “Hey that’s right, McCarthy said these two guys are scumbags and he wasn’t afraid of hurting their feelings like that RINO Paul Ryan would have been. He just said it as a matter of fact. That’s kind of fun.
And he’s going to try to keep Ilhan Omar off a committee too. He’ll have to whip his whole party to make it happen but he’ll probably succeed because she’s a lousy human being and probably almost no one likes her anyway. And that’s kind of fun too.
And McCarthy looks like he’s going to at least try to negotiate with the White House on some kind of budget deal. Sure, he may cave and go along with the continuing resolution on the obscenely bloated so-called budget because all the media outlets are screeching every hour on the hour that the sky is falling because we won’t be able to send out the welfare checks to the illegal aliens. But at the least he won’t just roll over and add another $100 billion for Ukraine as far as I can see. And he won’t ban guns by calling them assault weapons so that’s pretty good too.
And then I heard that Mike Pence found classified documents in his fanny pack or his nap room and I started to laugh. Now Mike Pence is a threat to our democracy. Who’s next, Jimmy Carter, Henry Kissinger? Should they rifle through Grant’s Tomb to see if there were any Civil War secret weapons that might end up in Russian hands? Our Deep State have beclowned themselves in the last few months. Sure, they’re a metastatic cancer on the lifeblood of our republic but they’re also the Keystone Cops. Certainly, they destroy the lives of many innocent Americans but they’re also pathetic losers. And it’s almost certain that they’ve already sown the seeds of their own destruction.
Any society that descends down the path of surveillance state eventually implodes from loss of legitimacy. Eventually everyone pretends to believe the lies but no one actually does. And one day pretend loyalty won’t be enough to save the state from a catastrophe and after that you get the Soviet Union and East Germany and Romania in the 1990’s. And if they’re not careful they’ll end up with what Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu got, a kangaroo court like they gave their victims and a firing squad.
So, there’s no big news this week. Just little stuff. But I must be in a good mood because I had all these pleasant thoughts while shoveling. Well, exercise is good for you. Maybe it’s good for the soul too.
25JAN2023 – Country Song for the Afternoon
The Man in Black sings about the Man Upstairs. This was on the last album he recorded before he died.
Very apocalyptic.
25JAN2023 Photo of the Day – 2022 Yellowstone Trip
25JAN2023 – Quote of the Day
Pleasure of itself is not a vice.
Samuel Johnson
More Proof that DeSantis is on the Right Track in Florida
Now weirdos are self-expelling themselves from Florida. Forget Disney. Florida is the happiest place on Earth. But honestly it’s all just talk. They’ll stay because they need the security and safety that comes from living under a sane and realistic government. If they went to California or New York they might be “officially” favorite citizens but they would still have to worry that the people even crazier than them might decide to attack them just for fun.
Keep up the good work Ron DeSantis. As the saying goes, “You know you’re over the target when you’re taking flak.”
More than half of LGBTQ parents in Florida say they are considering leaving the state
24JAN2023 – Afternoon Country Song
Tyler Childers is probably some variety of hippie commie but he has some good songs including this murder ballad. I guess my advice to him would be shut up and sing.
Contractions in the Media World
I saw a couple of articles about companies off-loading media properties. ABC is trying to sell Nate Silver’s 538 site. And it’s rumored that Jeff Bezos needs to sell off the Washington Post as part of a deal to buy a football team.
These are smaller parts of a bigger story. ABC is trying to shed costs because Disney is looking to sell ABC and ESPN and wants to make them look less like money-losing properties than they are.
And this same loss of profitability is a general situation. CNN is tanking and its competitors; MSNBC and Fox are also suffering ratings slumps. Even streaming giant Netflix is feeling the pinch. And Amazon is seeing red ink in various entertainment departments.
And how is any of this surprising? These media companies don’t provide valuable products either as journalism or entertainment. They despise their customers and provide content that is poorly done and rarely helpful to its consumers. Watching what passes for network news is painful and rarely rises to the level of professional journalism or even honest reporting of the facts.
And what Hollywood tries to pass off as entertainment is an outrage. Except for a very small proportion of the cable shows everything is hopelessly derivative and completely lacking in interest. The network television shows, the police procedurals and situation comedies have fallen below the level of high school theatrical productions. The scripts are worse than hack work. The actors are uninspired and amateurish. The only thing that keeps the whole thing from completely imploding is the low expectations of the Millennial viewers and the desperation of the sponsors who need some outlet for their commercials.
Back in the 1960s they called television the “great wasteland.” If those culture critics could have foreseen what passes for television to day they would have begged the forgiveness of the network executives who provided a product that was at least geared to people of average intelligence. Their modern day successors have crafted a product that even marching morons would run screaming from.
And that’s why I buy DVDs. If I find a good show I buy it and add it to the Noah’s Ark of entertainment that I maintain. Re-watching a one or ten or eighty year old movie is infinitely preferable to suffering through some new piece of tripe that will insult my intelligence and my morals. And that’s why I’m so grateful for conservative critics who can pass along news of that rarest of unicorns, something new that’s worth watching.
So let ABC and the rest of the alphabet soup go out of business. Let Disney’s next fifty gay rom-com cartoons crash and burn on the runway. There’s plenty of old entertainment to watch and there will be some good things made by someone, somehow.
The big problem is finding reliable news. The truth is not something that corporate America allows. For that you have to go to small venues and the rare big media exception like Tucker Carlson.
But you always have OCF (Orion’s cold Fire). What could be better than that?
24JAN2023 – Quote of the Day
Attack is the reaction; I never think I have hit hard unless it rebounds.
Samuel Johnson

