Category: Current Events

FBI, Bored with Persecuting Trump, Hire Bob Menendez as Sparring Partner

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“Sometimes a politician is so utterly, openly, and shamelessly corrupt, you just have to tip your hat in admiration“

(David Burge
@iowahawkblog)

I guess it was time for the FBI to indict Bob Menendez again.  So they raided his house and found bars of gold and probably myrrh and frankincense too.  They’ll probably put him on trial too.  And, as usual he’ll be released after a mistrial because New Jersey juries are almost as dishonest and DC juries.

You know compared to Merrick Garland or Joe Biden I can feel some sympathy for Menendez.  He’s just a regular crook peddling his influence and voting according to what the bigger crooks tell him to do.  He doesn’t jail Americans for protesting election fraud and he doesn’t start wars to help his cronies make billions.  He’s just a simple ham and egger, stealing a gold bar here and a gold bar there.  Where’s the harm?

Tucker Answers the Questions

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Some Swiss guy named Urs Gehriger interviewed Tucker Carlson.  There’s a change of pace!  Being a Carlson fanboy of sorts I found the interview fairly interesting.  There were no big surprises but the questions and answers were fairly satisfying.

One of my favorite quotes is toward the very end of the interview:

Weltwoche: In general, what gives you hope in a rather worrisome time, looking into the future? 

Carlson: That the stakes have suddenly gotten so high that smart people are rethinking their assumptions. I see it all around me. I see people all around me asking themselves, “I used to believe this. Is it still true? Was it ever true? What is the truth?” People are focused on questions of truth and falsehood, I think, much more deeply than they ever have been, and that’s a good thing.

I also see an awakening of spiritual awareness and religious faith in the United States that I think is great. Not everyone is reaching the same conclusions that I’m reaching, but that’s okay. It’s better than thinking that Amazon’s going to make you happy, because Amazon is not going to make you happy, actually. That’s not true. That’s a lie. And more and more people seem to be concluding that it’s a lie, and I think that’s a great thing.

That Tucker Carlson thinks there are “smart people” who are rethinking their positions on important issues might give me some cause for hope.  He has access to some of the movers and shakers and maybe there really is a change going on among the elites.  I haven’t seen any proof of that.  In fact, the exact opposite seems to be the case.  The term “doubling down” seems to be the order of the decade.  But maybe he can see that starting to happen.  At least it leaves a sliver of hope.

The Show Must Go On

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“And as the morning light comes streaming in you get up and do it again, amen. – Jackson Browne

As we all live our lives it sometimes seems that the radical changes and disruptions in our society that the Left has instituted must overwhelm the system and everything will come apart at the seams forcing us to abandon normalcy once and for all and take up a new existence as 21st century hunter-gatherers living off the released zoo animals and other feral survivors of a better age.  As we struggle to survive, the weak will go to the wall.  When cannibalism reappears the hopeless, like John Fetterman, will be the first to go in the pot.  And he may have his finest hour as soup or stew.

But what I notice is that despite the almost unending downward spiral of our world, people get up every morning and throw some water on their faces and figure out how to put food on the table and fuel in the oil tank.  And somehow, they do it with a laugh and a joke.  Now it may be gallows humor for sure.  But they still manage to make the joke.

And they’re right.  You can’t get through life no matter how bad things get with your teeth perpetually gritted.  You can do it for a while.  But if you keep it up too long, you’ll go mad.  Sure, when the latest atrocity occurs, you’re got to rail against it and shake your fist and maybe say terrible things about your enemies.  And maybe some people finally crack and go berserk.

But if you’ve got a wife and kids or even if you don’t, somehow you have to make it to Friday and you have to do all the things that get you there.  And more than that you have to somehow find some joy in the world.  Unless you’re a Dickensian villain like Uriah Heep or Ebenezer Scrooge grinding through your entire life clutching at thorns without a friend in the world is a fate worse than death.  Even a man on death row probably talks to the guards sometimes just to break up the monotony.

And that’s something I rediscovered recently.  After the 2020 election I was morose to a remarkable extent.  Other than family I couldn’t see what was going to keep this world going for me.  Disillusionment with our government was total.  I had little interest in day-to-day events and the news from Washington was nauseating.  And I think this had a deleterious effect on my peace of mind.  Apocalyptic thinking was becoming routine.

But even though things have continued to degrade in our day-to-day life I have had a chance to reflect.  Rather than thinking that the world has truly hit some all-time low, what I realize now is that we were formally living in a kind of golden age.  And through the foolishness of malicious people, it has been stamped out.  And in reality, most of mankind’s existence has been under conditions much, much worse than even this.

If we’re not as free as we once were, at least no one has branded us and sent us to work in the salt mines.  We may not be middle class Americans anymore but we haven’t reached North Korea levels of starvation.  We’re no longer proud of our leaders and our government but so far inflation hasn’t reached triple digits.

We live under a banana republic but so far, I can still make fun of Dementia Joe and the Keystone Gestapo he employs.  No one has dragged me off to the gulag yet.  And I seem to have rediscovered my sense of humor.

So yeah, things are bad.  As Howard Beale said “We know things are bad – worse than bad. They’re crazy.”  But when things are crazy you still have to live and maybe you can laugh at the crazy once in a while, even if you laugh while cleaning up the latest result of the crazy.

New England Leads the Nation in Election Fraud Education

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Connecticut is demonstrating how absentee ballot fraud is done on a wholesale basis.  A surveillance camera captures a state employee repeatedly dumping batches of absentee ballots into a drop box.  And the Democrat state officials look decidedly uncomfortable explaining how this impossible thing; voter fraud, could end up on a video feed for all to see.  And that’s the wrong part, as far as they’re concerned, the part where they get caught.

Well, from now on I’m looking forward to hearing all the fairy tales that the Democrats are ready to tell.  Just a few bad apples, nothing to see here, blah, blah, blah.  But this was a Democrat primary and the incumbent was the one who won by the margin in the absentee vote.  Will the Democrat who got cheated just roll over?  Should be very interesting.

Rufo’s Short Film on the “Cluster B Society”

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Christopher Rufo has made a ten minute video claiming to define the current psychopathology of the Left as the “Cluster B Society.”  It describes four different personality disorders that taken together allow for the phenomena that we see at work in the world today.  And being an academic he is able to draw the clearest examples from the college campus where narcissists, border-line personalities, sociopaths and hysterics have indeed captured the campus and established their own stable institutions that everyone else there must endure.

I don’t find myself competent to judge the accuracy or the importance of the details that Rufo is using to prove his thesis about the particular personality types that he points to in this video.  But the overall effect that he describes is familiar to everyone who has lived through the last ten years.  The feminized and hysterics-driven environment we find ourselves in is all too clear to those of us who grew up in a much saner world.

I’m not sure who is the audience for this video.  Maybe those with a grounding in psychology.  Even lacking that background I found it interesting.  But I’m not sure how it can be used to change the problem.  But I acknowledge that Rufo might find this explanation for the dysfunctional campus useful for someone like himself who is attempting to purge a particular college of its shrieking madwomen.  Kudos to him for that.

Schumer Keeping it Real in US Senate

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John Fetterman, the brain-damaged hobo-senator from the great state of Pennsylvania will now be allowed to wear his trademarked ensemble of thuggish “hoody” and grimy gym shorts into the “august” senate chambers from now on.

And logically it makes sense.  Now his appearance and his utterances will match.  They will both portray the experience someone would get when approached by a deranged homeless man on the streets of Philadelphia.  Kudos to Chuck Schumer for this intelligent bit of stagecraft.  The US Senate is now a richer performance space because of his clever change.  Now all they have to do is eliminate the ordinances on lice and fleas.

“The U.S. Senate will no longer enforce a dress code for members of the upper house elected by those they serve.  “However, others entering the chamber must comply with the dress code. Coats/ties for men. Business attire for women,” tweeted Chad Pergram, Fox News senior congressional correspondent.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., quietly sent the directive to the Senate’s sergeant at arms, news website Axios reported.  The change allows Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., to continue to wear his trademark hooded sweatshirts and gym shorts while working for Americans.”

20SEP2023 – Nailed It

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Walsh provides a concise and compelling answer to the “trans community” as to why we’re fed up with them and have no sympathy for them anymore.  Well done.

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.