Month: September 2023

An Example of Someone Who’s Actually Doing Something That Works

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Moms for Liberty was started back in 2021 when the battles over masking kids in school were going on in Florida.  They went on to champion parents rights to keep things out of the curriculum like critical race theory, trans ideology and LGBTQ grooming efforts.

And the proof that they’re effective is who is attacking them:

“But the Southern Poverty Law Center has listed the organization as an extremist group over accusations of harassing community members, advancing misinformation about LGBTQ people and fighting to remove materials about diversity from classrooms.”

If the SPLC is calling you an extremist group then you must be doing something right.  In the linked article we hear how in state after state Moms for Liberty is getting involved at the local school board level and initiating change for the better.

Trump, DeSantis and Haley are quoted praising the group.  And the tenor of this hit piece is that parent’s rights is a powerful issue in the upcoming 2024 elections.  But then strangely toward the end of the article “expert opinion is invoked how maybe it’s really more of a local issue and might not have much effect at the national level.  I think USA Today doth protest too much.  In my opinion parents rights is an enormous winning issue and a cudgel to beat down people like Joe Biden.  His endless showcasing of trans-freaks in his administration and elsewhere is a glaring Achilles heel just waiting to be stabbed.  “Gender affirming care” for children is the place to attack the Left.  It is so criminally harmful that exposing the details to public scrutiny can’t help but destroy anyone who tries to defend it.

So here’s the point.  When you look at the specific abuses being done at the local level by the Left and you fight it at that local level it has benefits both locally and globally.  The hard work of recruiting people locally and showing up for meetings and advocating for people’s rights isn’t glamorous or lucrative.  But it benefits ordinary people directly and they can see that it has value.  It also produces grassroots results and resonates with mothers in a way that reinforces conservative values.  It’s a win/win.

So, in my book, concentrating on efforts that produce actual change at the local level is where we should be.  And these local people will be the source for candidates at the next levels up; state reps and senators.  Ten years from now, God willing, these people could be congressmen and senators.  And that’s how it works.  Otherwise we just get Jeb! an Nikki Haley.

In the meantime, maybe a Trump or a DeSantis might get the ball rolling.  But so far, even when we had a good guy in the White House, there’s always a Paul Ryan and a Mitch McConnell there to make sure nothing useful gets done.

Well, small steps.  There!  I put up a post that wasn’t doom and gloom even in the face of the crap-tastic spectacle that is “Election 2024.”  Maybe there is a sliver of hope for the world.

Regional Diversity at OCF

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I don’t think I have any regular readers in Hawaii or Alaska.  Every once in a while, someone from the 49th and 50th states show up.  But it’s uncommon.  But in every other region of the United States, I have regular readers.

In the Northeast we have folks from all of the New England States and New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

In the Midwest we’ve got folks from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin.  I see readers from Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota and, every once in a while, North Dakota.

In the South we’ve got readers in Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia and even Washington, D.C.  We have folks in Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas and once in a while Arkansas.

In the West we’ve got folks in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming and less frequently somebody from New Mexico clicks in.  And on the West Coast California and Washington are well represented and Oregon shows up less frequently.

And we have folks from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, Brazil, Argentina, the UK, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Hungary, Czechia, Serbia, Poland, Spain, Ukraine, Russia, China, Japan, India, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Australia and New Zealand.  Although the numbers are much smaller and many of these places are very infrequent readers.

To my knowledge we’ve never had a reader from North Korea even during President Trump’s attempts at détente.  But as long as they can enjoy a joke about Dementia Joe Biden and respect macrophotography as an artform then I see no reason why we couldn’t trade opinions across the interwebs together.

So, I guess you could say that diversity is Orion’s Cold Fire’s strength.  But I suspect that in terms of political diversity we may be a little deficient.  I remember long ago I had a Bernie Bro reader but I’m not sure he’s still with us.  One thing that is interesting I approximate that the ratio of commenters to readers is about 1/30.  I’ve never figured out how to increase that numerator.  When I do it will make things a lot more lively around here.

So, maybe it’s time to put out a poll and tack it to the main page of the site and find out what people consider to be their political stripe.  If I haven’t given you choice that corresponds to your politics feel free to leave it in the comments.  Maybe I’ll come up with a few other topical questions to find out the opinions of the readers.  And if anyone from the places that I say read less frequently disagrees please leave a note and correct my misconception.

 

What Would You Call Your Politics?

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Despair Among the Never-Trumpers

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Almost the only good thing coming out of the veritable tsunami of chaos that is our political landscape is how the Republican elites have been literally poleaxed by the loyalty of Trump’s voters.  I mean gob-smacked doesn’t begin to describe their horror.

Here’s an article in the despicable New Yorker that mentions a litany of super PACs and billionaire donors and how all of them are too shocked by the polls to even know where to begin.  Going over some of the advertising that is meant to sway voters away from Trump, the despair that has enveloped the political operatives is quite entertaining:.

“Miller took particular aim at a seven-million-dollar ad campaign recently launched by a pro-Tim Scott super pac, in Iowa and New Hampshire, which emphasized Scott’s likability and included an enthusiastic supporter asking the camera, “Have you seen him work a crowd?” Miller wrote, “Are you f***ing kidding me with this? This is what the money is going to?!” He went on to compare the spot to “using the playbook from a peewee football game to go up against Florida State.””

It’s heartwarming to read just how flabbergasted these soulless bugmen have become.  My favorite were the quotes when the author interviewed that neocon albatross Bill Kristol:

 He sounded pretty depressed about the Stop Trump project generally. “This is where the donors are now: ‘I don’t know, it sort of looks like he’s going to be the nominee, and it looks like he could win,’ and that’s sort of correct. And then now they’re busy talking themselves into ‘You know what? Maybe I’ll just kind of get along with Trump O.K. Why kill myself to, you know, recruit Glenn Youngkin, who’s probably not going to make it? Why don’t I just keep quiet, maybe write a polite check to Trump so I’m not on his bad side, or just stay out of it?’ ”

How hilarious is that?  The donors are thinking of groveling back to Trump.  They literally have no self respect at all.  They just turn with the wind.  And is it any wonder why the Republicans are where they are.  They don’t stand for anything and they don’t believe in anything but being in power.

Well, if Bill Kristol thinks that Donald Trump will be the nominee and could win the White House then I suppose the rest of the spineless Republicans will rally round pretty soon to try and get their piece of the pie when Trump gets back in the White House.  But with friends like these he’s better off keeping the Biden cabinet in place and simply replace them with Mexican drug lords and strongmen from other banana republics.  At least they’re ruthless and he can use them to persecute his real enemies like Bill Barr and Mike Pence.

But seriously what a farce this country’s politics has become.  The hollowness of all the politicians and the bureaucrats is nauseating.  I doubt a single one of them has anything even resembling an immortal soul.  Instead when they die a tiny puff of some noxious gas like formaldehyde or ammonia will be released and then dispersed into nothingness.  And neither heaven nor hell will notice that they ever existed.

But wouldn’t it be the greatest cosmic joke of all time if the Democrat fraud machine couldn’t manage to steal the 2024 election and Trump gets back in and has his chance to fire 60% of the bureaucracy?  I think I’d die happy just knowing that all those lying sacks of crap in the State Department and all those vicious sociopaths in the FBI and CIA were working as baristas in the local DC Starbucks.

Well, I can dream.

Update:

You know I thought I should add that enjoying the suffering of the Never-Trumpers is like a special gift I’ve been blessed with.  Seeing Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney bounced out of the federal government and hearing guys like Bill Kristol crying in their beer is a gift we’ve been given.  Letting them feel a tiny bit of the chaos that they’re responsible for in our lives just feels like justice.  Viva schadenfreude.

The Road Warrior Becomes Reality

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Some animals in Las Vegas steal a car and go on a rampage crashing into other cars and then committing vehicular homicide against a guy riding a bicycle.  He turned out to be a retired California policeman.  It was premeditated and they thought it was hilarious.  Apparently the driver was seventeen so I’m sure it will be excused because of his tender years.

So when do even the blue states realize that normal life as we used to live it can no longer exist without the rule of law?  Maybe we’re beginning to see it starting to happen in the place that was ground zero for the BLM revolution, Minneapolis.  That Democrat woman who had her leg broken during a car jacking in front of her house.  She sounded a lot like a law and order true believer after the fact.  And she used to be a “defund the police” zombie.

Maybe it happens when they realize that cops treating thugs like thugs is how order is achieved.  George Floyd died because he swallowed all the fentanyl he had in his pockets to avoid arrest.  Whatever indignities he suffered before the ambulance arrived were part and parcel of him trying to resist arrest.  When the people of Minneapolis can admit that, maybe they’ll get civilized life back in their city.  Until then they’ll be living in the war zone and getting everything they deserve.