Category: OCF

26JUN2020 – OCF Update

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As we head into the heart of the summer and the upcoming Fourth of July holiday I figured I’d just put together a note on how things will be going.  I’ve been extremely busy at the day job.  This unfortunately cuts into my blogging time.  I’ll be putting up a review of Larry Correia’s book “Hard Magic.”  I enjoy Larry’s Monster Hunter books and I can already say that the review will b extremely positive.  Larry has a knack for writing an enjoyable fantasy story.

I’ll have the chance to test out that new 200-600mm lens I bought and hopefully get some good photos of birds and critters.

I have some political posts that I’m working on and we’re bound to have some new BLM atrocities on the 4th so stay tuned for more to come.

16JUN2020 – OCF Update

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You folks will have to forgive me for my lack of output today.  The SCOTUS decisions have put me in a despondent mood.  Neil Gorsuch is the biggest disaster since George W Bush.  Handing the Left such a victory is stomach churning.  I’ll have more to say on that but I don’t want it to engulf the world right now.

On a positive note, yesterday the Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS Lens showed up on my doorstep and I have been playing around with it.  I guarantee that everyone will be heartily sick of hearing about this lens and equally sick of the images of birds and beasts that wander into my field of vision in the coming days, weeks and months to come.

I’m currently expecting the next installment of the Galaxy’s Edge saga to show up.  This the first volume of “Season 2.”  I’m interested to see what direction they go in this season.  This is my first foray into one of these endless series.  I had my doubts about how it would maintain quality but I have been very happy with the consistency of the story telling so far.

I am also starting on one of Larry Correia’s other series (in other words, outside of the Monster Hunter universe).  Hard Magic: Book I of the Grimnoir Chronicles is arriving soon.  That should help to keep my mind off Neil Gorsuch’s epic betrayal.

So as I said, apologies for my silence but I am only human.  I drowned my sorrow in a viewing of W.C. Field’s “The Man on the Flying Trapeze.”  In the words of the great man, “I’ll knock’em for a row of lib-labs.”

14JUN2020 – OCF Update – Things Seem to be Accelerating

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So today is the President’s birthday.  I wish it would be a more peaceful time for him but that is not in the cards.  But I wish for him the strength he’ll need to deal with the madness that is engulfing our world.

I have a post I wrote yesterday but it already is somewhat overtaken by events.  I may strengthen it or just skip it.  Things are accelerating and we may see resolution of some things and new priorities emerging.  But certain things still hold.  Ground yourself in reality and focus on the things that will be important to you regardless of the outcome of political and cultural events.

We’re getting into unknown territory.  Some of the rules we thought were laws of nature are starting to break down.  Don’t take too much for granted.  Situational awareness could be very important.  If you live in or adjacent to unstable areas be especially careful until things settle down.  Keep in touch with family members and be ready to lend support if the need arises.

So as Sgt. Phil Esterhaus used to say on Hill Street Blues, “let’s be careful out there.”

06JUN2020 – OCF Update

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The poll on yesterday’s post Which State Will Grovel the Least to the Looters?  has already accumulated over 150 votes and dozens of useful comments.  When the link to whatfinger expires sometime tonight I’ll review the results and add some comments of my own to say what I’ve learned and what I’ll do next to use the info.  But thanks to everyone who has contributed so far.

18MAY2020 – OCF Update

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Good morning folks.  As we rapidly approach summer I have had the chance to confirm certain things I believed.  The shutdown was a terrible idea foisted upon us by incompetents.  The at-risk population was the elderly and especially the chronically ill.  We have crippled our economy and possibly permanently decimated the small businesses of our independent middle class with nothing to show for it.  Very soon the Democrats will attempt to blame President Trump for doing the things they were shouting for him to do and not doing the things they forbade him to do.  So be it.  It’s his task to expose them as the liars they are.  It’s ours to support him.

One thing this whole sad spectacle has exposed is that there are way too many overweight and out of shape Americans.  Part of that is the result of an elderly baby boomer bulge in the population and the higher life expectancy today.  But our sedentary life style is extremely unhealthy.  And even a chronically lazy man such as myself will now endeavor to mend my ways.  At this point dying of the corona virus would be just too much insult to injury.

So now the part of the COVID-19 story that will interest me will be how President Trump revitalizes the areas of the country that might vote for him.  Of course he’ll want all areas to rebound but the Northeast is going out of its way to cripple its own economy by stretching out the lockdown.  He should preferentially help areas where his voters live.  And the rust belt states that got him elected should get special attention.  Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin.  Add in Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and maybe New Mexico and you’ve covered the areas where the President wants to add to supporters.

The Northeast has no electoral votes for him.  They should have the same opportunities to recover as the rest of the country but the President should direct those voters to the governors who shut their businesses down and continue to block efforts to restore life to their economies.  If they expect to escape the consequences of terrible judgement they might want to rethink their allegiance to the Left.

Surprisingly, the DOJ investigations seem to be active.  Maybe I was wrong about Barr.  Time will tell.  As far as Biden’s campaign, I think the Left can’t decide if it’s time to pull the plug by supporting Tara Reade’s story.  They are holding onto it as an insurance policy to switch candidates at the last minute.  We’ll know the moment has arrived when the networks and the newspapers suddenly discover her story’s credibility.

Looks like we’ll have a busy time ahead.  As always feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments sections.  Hard as it is to believe, there may be opinions other than my own that could be heard.

14MAY2020 – Boosting My Morale

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I remember how much fun it was to watch the compilation videos of the 2016 election and the reactions of the Left.  To hear them go from arrogant assurance to nervous uncertainty to shocked disbelief and finally crash land into wallowing misery was a comedic masterpiece on par with the best of Seinfeld or Monty Python.  The loopiness of the lefties both famous and unknown was marvelous.  Their gob-smacked stuttering shock was music to my ears.  In every way it was poetic justice.

And I’ve missed that experience.  It’s a great tonic to see your enemies driven before you in panic and derision.  At the very least, it’ll be six months until the election and even the debates, if they happen, are months away.  So, what’s a deplorable to do?

YouTube may be the Great Satan but it is the lazy man’s answer to any audio-visual search that could exist.  So, I searched under President Trump and Acosta and I found all kinds of comic gold.  It really is remarkable just how much abuse Jim Acosta has absorbed in the last three years.  President Trump has called him a hack, a liar, a purveyor of fake news, an employee for a fake news network.  The only thing he hasn’t done is make fun of his mother.  And then I saw some videos purporting to show the President attacking female reporters unfairly.  More gold.  For them his favorite line is calling their questions nasty.  One compilation claimed that the President especially attacked women of color.  And of course, that was the focus of that video.  But it’s great to see the President doling out equal derision and scorn to all fake news purveyors regardless of race, color or sex.  In fact, I like to think that the President would be proud to give the same messages of scorn to a tall muscular man in a sun dress as he does to a petite Chinese woman or a plain old doofus like Jim Acosta.  His message is one of egalitarianism.  No matter who you are and what you look like all it takes to qualify as a purveyor of fake news is a bedrock lack of honesty and an IQ of about 85.  In a way the White House Press Corps has become a sort of Ellis Island or mixing pot of dishonest talking heads.  Probably the biggest distinguishing characteristic is just how rude any particular reporter is willing to be to the President of the United States.  In this competition women have without a doubt taken the lead.  And this is another area where women’s rights could advance.  I have always harbored the hope that one day in the middle of one of Acosta’s rude outbursts against the President that he would instruct the Secret Service to drag Acosta out by the arms and legs and hurl him out the door.  If they tossed him just right, I always thought that he might bounce a couple of times like when you skip a flat stone over the surface of a lake.  The move could be nick-named the “Acosta.”  What would be great is if someday a woman could be acosta-ed just like a man without any sexism about how women aren’t just as capable of two or even three bounces on that polished White House floor.  That is my dream.  That a reporter not be judged by the choice of its pronouns but rather on the basis of its aero dynamicity and bounce elasticity.  Kinda chokes you up, don’t it?  I can almost hear the Battle Hymn of the Republic playing somewhere in the background.

13MAY2020 – OCF Update

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Looking around it looks like we’ll be hearing about the same issues for the foreseeable future:

  • The Blue and Red States will be touting their opposing strategies for weathering the COVID-19 epidemic. Currently the Blue States have selected as their strategy of inflating the death toll to include anyone who dies in their states.  Along with this they are dragging their feet on re-opening their businesses.  The Red States are moving ahead with normalizing life in their states.  Interestingly they are not seeing large numbers of deaths like we see in New York and New Jersey.  And even with the death toll inflation in the Blue States it appears they haven’t been able to hide the fact that the epidemic is receding.  I’ll predict that in a couple of more weeks even the blue States will be anxious to declare victory and start opening up their businesses and try to salvage their economies.
  • The Flynn prosecution will spawn a controversy with the Right touting the DOJ investigation into the illegal basis of the Russia-gate prosecutions and the Left condemning Barr and Durham as partisan hacks motivated by allegiance to the Trump administration. With Durham releasing information about the scope of the conspiracy this may quickly turn into the most interesting story of the summer and fall.  If the DOJ decides not to prosecute the conspirators but instead expose and embarrass them through publication of their dishonest actions it could have the effect of vindicating President Trump and vilifying Obama and his whole administration.  And that would be very bad for a Biden candidacy.
  • The Trump and Biden campaigns will spar ceaselessly over any and all issues. What you will hear endlessly is that Joe Biden is ahead by some number of points, between 5% and 10%.  It’ll never be explained how someone as universally disdained by even the Democrat voters as Biden could manage to remain perpetually popular and ahead but that is their story and they’ll be sticking to it.
  • Currently the Tara Reade story will be a lightning rod allowing the Republicans to brand anyone who condemned Justice Kavanaugh on the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford but disbelieves Reade about Biden as hypocrites. If Reade begins to gain traction with women voters, I think we’ll finally see the Democrat party either convince Biden to step aside or begin the process of selecting an alternate candidate.  And that will be a difficult process.  Bernie Sanders will be bypassed again and that is bound to alienate his many staunch supporters.  If Bernie is left waiting at the altar again the Bernie Bros will stay home in droves, or even worse, a bunch of them will vote for Trump.
  • Nancy Pelosi has assembled a three trillion-dollar bill that would allow the bankrupt Blue States to stick the federal government with the cost of the public sector union pension funds. The Senate Leader Mitchell McConnell isn’t interested in funding this.  But President Trump may be interested in additional relief for small businesses that have been crushed by the long shutdown.  He may try to broker a deal between the House and Senate.  I know that the President also favors some kind of public works projects.  This will be a large story in the fall.
  • The China story will be a continuing saga for the Trump re-election campaign. The President has indicated that he holds China responsible for the outbreak and the subsequent damage to the American economy.  It remains to be seen if this translates into a specific policy or policies.  You could imagine some kind of incentive for American companies that relocate industrial capacity from China to the United States.

As you can see these are interesting times but currently all of these issues will be moving forward in fits and starts.  Right now, none of them has a blockbuster event occurring so there will be a lot of opinion stories producing a lot of smoke and heat but little light.  I’ll try to restrain myself from piping in on every little ripple in the pond.  What I’m hoping to see is something from Durham.  As I’ve said, I don’t think we’ll get anything too spectacular.  But I would like to see something before summer.  Failing that I’d like to see the President formulate an economic rescue plan for small businesses that is more comprehensive and fairer than the halfway measures we’ve seen so far.

So, there’s my update.  Stay tuned for whatever is breaking next.

10MAY2020 – OCF Update – Happy Mother’s Day

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Greetings everybody out there.  Hope all the moms out are somewhat enjoying Mother’s Day.  Although the whole cowering-in-place has rendered Camera Girl’s Mother’s Day sort of an academic exercise.  None of her kids can come to see her.  In recognition of this injustice I have spent the weekend as her company.  Unfortunately I’m a poor stand in for her children.  But I did what I could.  She is a Scrabble fanatic so I volunteered to play several games of this bizarre pastime.  It confirmed my belief that she has somewhat unorthodox ideas about what constitutes as legitimate English word.  She used “droid” without any embarrassment.  In addition we watched some movies together.  Interestingly we watched the movies I wanted to see but I attribute that to coincidence.  But I have been incredibly attentive.  I have been talking about all kinds of stuff and asking her all kinds of questions and talking about all the good things we can do together alone.  I’ll have to say, in my opinion, her enthusiasm was somewhat lacking.  Several times she seemed to wander away in the middle of one of these displays of attentiveness.  Apparently laundry and floor sweeping are time critical in her mind.  I’ve always thought men are much more sociable creatures.  Not to mention our pleasant and even-tempered personalities.  Well what can you do?

So anyway, I’ve been unavailable for output on OCF this weekend but that interregnum is now over.  I’ve got a post cued up for tonight on the Flynn fiasco.  I think that should be a major point of discussion for folks on our side of the aisle.  The fact that the information has been transmitted to the public is in itself encouraging.  More to follow.

We had a little more snow here yesterday but it wasn’t much to talk about.  But it really makes you wonder how much later into the year it would have to snow before we could question the reality of global warming.  Would a foot of snow at the Fourth of July qualify?  I’ll have to ask one of my Green friends (if I had any).

So enjoy the holiday to the extent that circumstances will allow but I’m back on the job and content will follow.

Christmas Cooking, Sony A7 III, Sony 90mm f\2.8 macro lens

Who’s on My Side?

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Nowadays there are a thousand labels and each group will tell you that they are the real Americans.  There are the groups on the Left like the Progressives, the Socialists, the Bernie Bros and all the various identity groups that inhabit their alliance, the feminists, the LGBTQ crazies and the racial minorities.  On the Right are a similar mixed group of ideologies, the libertarians, the neo-conservatives, the fiscal conservatives, the establishment conservatives and moving farther right we have the social conservatives, the religious right, the so-called alt-right and the dissident right.  For the last forty years and more I’ve been following politics in this country and I’ve always been two steps behind the real story.  But the last five years have been extremely clarifying.  The unmasking of the establishment conservatives as the controlled opposition has made it much easier to understand why things always got worse.  But at the same time, I’ve never been sold on the whole racialist destiny where everyone will be voting their skin color and ethnicity thing either.  In my experience ethnicity, race and identity group memberships are a pretty poor way of running a society.  In fact, it’s the whole notion of basing policy on racial and sexual victim status that has gotten us into the sorry state we’re in now.  Rather than join into that mess I want it ended.  No more special rules based on race and sex.

Instead what I’ve always used as a gauge for in-group status with me is whether someone had the same goals for his children.  First of all, if somebody doesn’t think marrying a pretty girl and having a family with her is high on his priorities then he won’t be very supportive of the kind of world that I’m interested in inhabiting.  And after that if he isn’t interested in his kids following in the same pattern then he’s not in my camp.  Now granted there are people who are happier single and I’ll allow that they have the right to live their lives the way they want.  But if they don’t at least see the value of having society revolve around the family then they’re definitely not on my side.

Now once you’ve passed those hurdles what comes next is the Bill of Rights.  Your ancestors and mine could have come from the same peasant town in Campania but if you don’t think freedom of speech and the rest of our freedoms are more important than being in good with the local big shot then you’re not on my team.  After that, all I ask is that you don’t expect me to pay your bills.

So that’s how I see the political landscape.  I can probably get along with a spectrum of people who respect the merits of a traditional society.  And to use a word that has been bandied about on a few too many bumper stickers, I can “coexist” with lots of people who don’t believe in the same things I do.  I neither need nor want to convince liberals, libertarians or even establishment conservatives to think the way I do.  What I do need is for them to get out of the way while we dismantle the program, we have been subjected to for the last fifty years that systematically attacks all the things that I see as normal, necessary and fundamental for living a healthy life.  What I can’t coexist with is the radical elements of the left who are leading that attack on normal, wholesome life.  These people are indeed a cancer attacking the good things in America that have up until now given this country it’s strength and character.

So hopefully that helps define where I stand on the political spectrum and who I see as my allies, as neutral parties and my enemies.

Tell me what you think.  Have I identified the situation we live in or have I got it wrong?  I’m honestly interested in your opinions.  Do you think we can put Humpty Dumpty back together again or are we already too far gone?  Leave a comment.

 

Looking for Good Ideas

A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article called, “How Do We Live Our Lives in an Upside-Down World?”  What I said there was that we have to look at the big picture and the little picture at the same time.  So, supporting President Trump and any other leaders who show that they can get the job done is very important.  But just as important is improving your life, your family’s existence and extending out into your circle of friends and acquaintances.  And that’s how this gets to OCF.  You folks out there, the ones who like the content here, are my friends.  I put up content that I think will be entertaining, interesting and maybe even useful to people on our side of the fence.  By the same token I want anyone who comes to the site who has insights and information that I don’t have but could help me do a better job, to pass it along.  I’ll have to figure out a way to keep a wanted list of information I’m looking for.  As a for instance, I have a quote of the day that I’ve been doing for a couple of years.  You’d be surprised how hard it is to find good quotes after you’ve been digging through them for that long.  So, for readers who have favorite authors of quotes, and especially if you’ve been following the quotes for a good long time, I’m looking for more authors to search through.  If you have authors, I haven’t checked please pass them along in a comment.  And in the same way, I’m always looking for movies and books to review both old and new.  If it’s something you’ve always enjoyed or something good you recently discovered pass it along.