Category: Current Events

Question for the Readers

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Update:  The people have spoken!  Vox populi, vox Dei.

The font size will be 14 pt.  Or actually 20 px which is similar.  And in my best Yul Brynner voice, “So let it be written.  So shall it be done.”

 

Here’s a question that I’ve been batting around.  What font should this blog use for posts (and everything else).

Currently it’s set up at 12 point.

“Well, now, the Emperor Charles has given them Malta, and all the rent he asks is one insignificant bird per annum, just as a matter of form. What could be more natural than for these immeasurably wealthy Knights to look around for some way of expressing their gratitude? Well, sir, that’s exactly what they did, and they hit on the happy thought of sending Charles for the first year’s tribute, not an insignificant live bird, but a glorious golden falcon encrusted from head to foot with the finest jewels in their coffers. And–remember, sir–they had fine ones, the finest out of Asia.” Gutman stopped whispering. His sleek dark eyes examined Spade’s face, which was placid. The fat man asked: “Well, sir, what do you think of that?”Currently it’s set up at 12 point.  Currently it’s set up at 12 point.  Currently it’s set up at 12 point.  Currently it’s set up at 12 point.  Currently it’s set up at 12 point.  Currently it’s set up at 12 point.  Currently it’s set up at 12 point.

This is 14 point.

“Well, now, the Emperor Charles has given them Malta, and all the rent he asks is one insignificant bird per annum, just as a matter of form. What could be more natural than for these immeasurably wealthy Knights to look around for some way of expressing their gratitude? Well, sir, that’s exactly what they did, and they hit on the happy thought of sending Charles for the first year’s tribute, not an insignificant live bird, but a glorious golden falcon encrusted from head to foot with the finest jewels in their coffers. And–remember, sir–they had fine ones, the finest out of Asia.” Gutman stopped whispering. His sleek dark eyes examined Spade’s face, which was placid. The fat man asked: “Well, sir, what do you think of that?” This is 14 point.  This is 14 point.  This is 14 point.  This is 14 point.  This is 14 point.  This is 14 point.  This is 14 point.

This is 18 point.

“Well, now, the Emperor Charles has given them Malta, and all the rent he asks is one insignificant bird per annum, just as a matter of form. What could be more natural than for these immeasurably wealthy Knights to look around for some way of expressing their gratitude? Well, sir, that’s exactly what they did, and they hit on the happy thought of sending Charles for the first year’s tribute, not an insignificant live bird, but a glorious golden falcon encrusted from head to foot with the finest jewels in their coffers. And–remember, sir–they had fine ones, the finest out of Asia.” Gutman stopped whispering. His sleek dark eyes examined Spade’s face, which was placid. The fat man asked: “Well, sir, what do you think of that?”This is 18 point.  This is 18 point.  This is 18 point.  This is 18 point.  This is 18 point.  This is 18 point.  This is 18 point.

There may be other sizes I can get so feel free to suggest any other font sizes.  Just leave them in the comments.

 

Update:  The people have spoken!  Vox populi, vox Dei.

The font size will be 14 pt.  Or actually 20 px which is similar.  And in my best Yul Brynner voice, “So let it be written.  So shall it be done.”

 

Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.

 

You Should Learn to Code!

photog Current Events, OCF, photog's Corner ,

So, as I mentioned a week or two ago, there’s a retroactive change I want to make to the site involving something called search engine optimization (SEO).  It’s obscure and boring and possibly make believe but I figured I should make the change to about 5, 500 older posts.  But it requires an enormous amount of manual copying and pasting so I wanted to automate it.  But the database manipulations I want to make are not routine and I thought required one of two things.  Either I have to learn how to program in the PHP and MySQL languages or I had to use two plugins (think of them as small stand-alone programs that can be added to my site’s software).  But one of the plugins costs a bunch of money so I was too outraged to pay for it.  By a stroke of good fortune, I found a different plug-in that was almost as good but much cheaper.  Yeeha!

But with all things too good to be true comes the payoff.  I also needed to upgrade my backup system and that’s going to require upgrading my cloud storage.  Gack!  Well, I’ve spent the bulk of the day setting up a link to my new storage site from the website with all sorts of problems with various layers of security programming standing in the way.  Finally, it’s uploading the backup but it’s been a humbling experience.  And I’m also getting a lesson in why working with redundantly encrypted data is a royal pain.  It uploads at the slowest rate imaginable.  But later on, tonight I’ll try to make those SEO modifications to those thousands of old posts.  If the site disappears hopefully, it’ll just be a (short) refresh to get it back to its old self.  But fingers crossed.

It’s still early in the voting but it looks like maybe some folks would like me to increase the font size on the site from 12 pt to 14 pt.  The reason I asked about this was recently I was on a website and noticed how nice the type looked.  After checking on the text I realized it was 14 pt and wondered if maybe I was making life difficult for people to read the smaller font size.  Luckily that is a very easy fix to make.  Even I can make the CSS modification.

Well back to the website salt mines for me.  Pray that my sentence is reduced down from life at hard labor.

Signed,

photog the website drudge (not to be confused with Matt Drudge).

DeSantis Appoints Conservatives to a College Board of Trustees

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Finally, finally.

A red state governor FINALLY did something to change the orientation of hyper-leftwing colleges.

“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday made six new appointments to the New College of Florida Board of Trustees, including Manhattan Senior Fellow Christopher F. Rufo.

Rufo’s work has been featured on PBS, Netflix, and international television and has been notable for challenging critical race theory.

The New College of Florida in Sarasota, is a top-ranked public liberal arts college and is the designated honors college of the state university system.

DeSantis’ news press secretary Bryan Griffin sent a statement to Fox News Digital claiming that the academic institution has been “captured by a political ideology that puts trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning.”

“All of these appointees have a firsthand understanding of the Florida education system as a product of their work with us and the Florida Department of Education on other important initiatives. We are grateful to them for lending their time and expertise to the benefit of Florida’s students,” the DeSantis office told Fox News Digital.

“The New College of Florida is a public institution with a statutorily stated mission of ‘provid[ing] a quality education.’ Unfortunately, like so many colleges and universities in America, this institution has been completely captured by a political ideology that puts trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning.”

The statement added, “In particular, New College of Florida has reached a moment of critical mass, wherein low student enrollment and other financial stresses have emerged from its skewed focus and impractical course offerings.””

It’s about damn time!  Sure this is one college in something like 3,200 colleges in America.  Sure there will be battles from day one and the feds will punish the college every chance it gets.  But it’s a step in the right damn direction.  Now every other red state governor should do the exact same thing over and over again.

This DeSantis guy is pretty good.  He’s doing the right things.  He’s thinking clearly about how things can be changed and he’s reaching out to good people to do those things.  He’s making Florida a much better place.  That’s got to be a good thing.  Whether he should be president or vice president is a different question.  Maybe he should stay as governor of Florida and maybe end up the de facto leader of the red state coalition.  But any way you look at it he’s making a real difference.  Bravo.

Latest Green Fiasco, Offshore Windmills Killing Whales

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You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried.

“A New Jersey congressman is demanding an investigation into whether offshore wind projects are killing whales off the coast of the Garden State and the state of New York.

Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., announced on Friday that he would be calling for an investigation into the increasing number of dead whales that have washed up off the coast of New Jersey over the last month once committee assignments for the 118th Congress are finalized.

In less than two months, seven dead whales have washed up along the New Jersey-New York coastline, local media have reported.”

I have to admit I don’t see how offshore wind turbines are killing whales.  Sea birds yes but unless these are flying whales I don’t get the connection between the turbines and the dead whales.  But based on the track record of the geniuses in the green clown show I wouldn’t bet against it being so.

Well I guess the whales are just going to have to suck it up to save the planet.  Maybe next time it can be the polar bears’ turn.  Or the pandas.  Thanks Gaia.

This Guy Thinks the Deep State in Going to Jettison Dopey Joe

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I’ll break it down.  They’re going to use this document thing to deep six Dementia Joe and replace him with Gavin Newsom in 2024.   Well, I guess, maybe, I dunno.  I guess I’m getting jaded.  I’ve stopped caring about all the clever things the Democrats can do to misdirect the American people.

Whether it’s Joe Biden or Gavin Newsom or Bozo the Clown the program will be the same.  As long as this goes on without opposition there’s really not much excitement about which talking head is in the center ring.

I guess for people who try to figure out exactly how the maniacs running our country manipulate the public this might be fascinating.  Well there you go.  Let the chess games begin.

Meanwhile, what I’d find more interesting is whether the House Republicans will have the backbone to start saying no to the Senate and White House when they come screaming for money in a few months.  They should hold out for a balanced budget and tell Dopey Joe to pound sand.  Now that would be fascinating and invigorating.

13JAN2023 – This’N’That

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It’s been a busy week and that plays havoc with my various schedules.  I’ve of late drawn up a list of things I try to get done at various times of the day and week.  C’est la guerre.  But all in all, things are still moving along.  And my morale is reasonable.  So onward and upward.

I see that Dopey Joe has stepped in it with both feet with this document thing.  Of course, he’ll get the Democrat treatment so there won’t be any consequences but it does make the hypocrisy of what they’re trying to do to Trump even more egregious.  Good.  Hammering home all the corrupt aspects of the banana republic we now live in is probably the only useful function that the GOP and the small independent media can perform.

I spent some time at a Selectman’s Meeting and saw what an actual government is supposed to be working on; trying to find the money to pay for a new piece of fire fighting equipment to replace one that was end-of-life twenty-five years ago or finding money to pay for Emergency Medical Services that we lost through the incompetence of the state we live in.  The people at this meeting weren’t wearing three-piece suits or sipping lattes.  They were in work boots and jeans.  And they looked tired.  They have real jobs but they work in the evenings keeping the town government going even though they’d like to quit.  But then it would be done by really terrible people.  It’s not fun being a red town in a blue state.  Well, I got some inspiration at least.  And I met some good people.  They don’t resemble the mythical First Selectman Cthulhu or the other hapless denizens of Dunwich but I can still use them as inspiration.

I’ll have to think about the Biden humor pieces I started doing yesterday.  It was brought up that’s it’s devilishly difficult to parody a president as awful as Dementia Joe.  His lying is so epic that it’s hard to see how I can outdo it.  And he’s so creepy in real life that even documenting it raises concerns over matters of good taste on a general audience website.  So, I’ll try to ensure that I create a product that is both entertaining and true to the spirit of our “Dear Leader.”  I will admit that I had a bit of fun writing it.  Biden is such a hapless loser when he tries to justify himself that I can’t help but laugh when I mock him.  And there’s so much fodder to work with.  Anywhere you stick a shovel you hit paydirt.  I could probably do a whole post just on his use of the term, malarkey.  So, we’ll see how it goes.

Seeing how annoyed all the lefties were about the outcome in the House of Representatives I have to conclude that the whole thing was a net positive.  Maybe Kevin McCarthy even learned something about dealing with free people.  Now we’ll have to see if any of the changes being instituted make a difference or whether the Republicans just roll over and obey Biden, Schumer and the vested interests who donate to their war chests.  Still, I did think there was value in seeing a little real insurrection in the House.

Well anyway, here’s to the beginning of a good weekend.  And hopefully I’ll have more to show real soon.

The Further Adventures of Hard Boiled, Two-Fisted Joe Biden – Episode I – Bullitt Files

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As the hour approached 3pm the reporters in the White House press room grew restive.  They had been waiting two hours for President Biden to appear for his one o’clock briefing on the seventh cache of top-secret documents that had been discovered in one of Joe Biden’s far-flung empire of garages housing vintage sports cars.

When the octogenarian commander in chief appeared he quickly saluted a coat rack that had a blue suit jacket on it and mounted the lectern where his voluminous notes were waiting for him.  After unclenching his porcelain phalanx of state-of-the-art dental implants and shouting out the names of one or two deceased journalists the peripatetic president walked up and down the aisle mingling with the reporters; slapping the back of one misidentified NY Times White House correspondent and sniffing the hair of a middle-aged female Marine officer who had the misfortune to be within range of the sidler in chief.  Finally, he was corralled by his press secretary and two secret service agents and returned to the lectern.

Once he settled down a little and expelled a little gas he looked out over the audience and said, “Well, here I am.  What do you want to know?”

The Fox News White House anchor shouted out, “Mr. President, what kind of car was in this garage?”  Biden shot back, “It was a black 1968 Dodge Charger R/T.  It’s the very car I drove in the motion picture Bullitt back in 1968.  The reporter was taken aback, “Mr. President, you would have been twenty-six years old in 1968.  The man driving that car was in his early fifties.”  Biden flashed his biggest Joker grin and said, “That’s what they wanted you to believe.  I wore one of those latex masks that fit over your whole head.  You have to look at the scene really close to tell it’s me.  That was one of my best roles in Hollywood.”

The stunned talking head shook off his amazement and followed up, “Be that as it may Mr. President, what do you say that this latest trove of documents includes three separate CIA reports on the highly suspicious activities of your son Hunter in Russia, Ukraine and Epstein’s Island?”  Without missing a beat Dementia Joe replied, “Why there’s nothing unusual about those files being found there.  And by the way, it’s almost certain that they were planted there by Russian agents working in lockstep with Vladimir Putin and co-conspirator Donald J. Trump.  It’s like I said to Franklin Delano Roosevelt the time I visited him at the White House in his last term.  “Frank” I said, I always called him Frank, “Frank you can’t be too careful about those Rooskies.  They’re always trying to set up good honest Americans like us.””

The reporter’s mouth was sort of hanging open, “Mr. President, FDR died when you were two years old.”  Nonplussed, Biden shouted back, “That’s what they’d like you to believe.  If you believe everything THEY tell you, y’all will be back in chains, y’all.  The Asian American reporter could only reply weakly, “Y’all?”

But by then Biden was taking his victory lap, “Look it up on Wikipedia, it’s right there in black and white.  Say everybody I think we’ve wasted enough time on this trivia.  I’m late for my 1:30 military briefing on China and I hear we’ll be bombing them tomorrow so I really have to scoot.  But it was good seeing y’all.

 

Udate:

Chemist:

In reply to photog.

Proof! Here is Slow Joe driving a Semi:

Rumors Abound that Pope Francis May Resign Soon

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Shadowy claims are circulating that a secret effort is underway by “conservatives” in the Vatican to put pressure on Pope Francis to resign.  My only comment on this is, “What’s taking so long?”

Francis has been the biggest disaster for the Catholic Church since mandatory celibacy for the priesthood.  Far from being the successor to Saint Peter I’d say he’s not even a Christian in the true sense.  In fact he talks more like an atheistic communist than anything else.

His predecessor Benedict was a truly holy man and immeasurably greater.  The fact that Francis is pope at all makes me think that the apocalypse may truly be coming in the near future.

Of course, the way things are going I wouldn’t be surprised to see Francis succeeded by a someone even more depraved.  At this rate I wouldn’t be surprised if they declare Joe Biden pope just to speed up the end of the world even more.

Well, bring it on, bring it on, bring it on.

11JAN2023 – OCF Update – All Work and No Play Makes photog a Dull Boy

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There’s no rest for the wicked and I’m no exception.  Fate has conspired to render this week and next awfully busy for yours truly.  I’ll be out pocket most of this afternoon and then there’s more drama tomorrow.  I’ll be wearing a suit and tie then and doing my best to seem like that bright young photog of 1980.  Well, it’s a really nice tie.

So, I’ll do my best to fill the site with interesting content.  I’ve been enjoying the non-political stuff over the last few days.  Let’s face it, writing every day about Kevin McCarthy is not exactly an inspiring prospect.  In fact, I’d be happiest if the headline for the next two years is, “McCarthy continues to block all new spending coming from White House and Senate.”  All of his power is negative.  He can’t force Biden to do anything but he can stop him from inflicting any new damage.  And if he’s especially clever he might come up with a compromise bill that does more good than harm.  Then I would write something nice about him.  His epitaph might be, “HERE LIES KEVIN MCCARTHY, HE CAUSED LESS HARM THAN PAUL RYAN!”

I’ve been having fun mining “The Maltese Falcon” for nuggets of gold.  No work of fiction, that I know of, is all gold.  There’s always dross mixed in.  And the Falcon is no exception.  But Hammett had his moments and I enjoy picking apart some of his dialog for the sheer joy of its feel.  I especially enjoy Gutman’s elaborate banter.  But there are bits here and bits there for many of the characters.  I may do a little more digging on the Falcon if something strikes me.  And then I’ll look around to see what else is out there on the book shelf.  I noticed that some of Hammett is already in the public domain.  Well, it’s close to a century old but I wasn’t sure how much they extended copyrights the last time Disney bribed Washington.  But Hammett may not have kept up with his own intellectual property rights at the end.  I don’t think he was doing well toward the end of his life and I don’t think he had any heirs.

I was watching the movie “The Boston Strangler” last night.  I’d never seen it before and I guess I didn’t know what to expect.  I’ll put up a review soon but it certainly was a strange movie.  Maybe the best way to describe it is to say that although the events took place in 1963 the movie was made in 1968 and therefore absorbed a lot of the current day weirdness.  There are gay and lesbian characters and a tawdriness and weirdness about many of the minor characters that borders on parody.  Seeing Henry Fonda navigating this mess made me think, “How the mighty have fallen.”

Well, anyway, I’ll try to keep my nose to the grindstone in between my errands and responsibilities and we’ll see what I can come up with.  Excelsior!

09JAN2023 – I’m a Man Who Likes Talking to a Man Who Likes to Talk

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07APR2020 – Quote of the Day

… Well, sir, here’s to plain speaking and clear understanding. … You’re a close-mouthed man?”

Spade shook his head. “I like to talk.”

“Better and better!” the fat man exclaimed. “I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong things. Talking’s something you can’t do judiciously unless you keep in practice.”  …

Now, sir, we’ll talk if you like. I’ll tell you right out – I’m a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk.

(Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon))

One of the reasons I started this website was because I couldn’t find an on-line community that thought like I did.  That went for my particular personal interests like photography and science fiction.  But also, the general interest, news and political sites that I could find.  So, in addition to the sense that freedom of speech had been curtailed by the powers that be that ran the internet I also felt isolated from people like me.

From time to time, I’d run into someone who talked the way I did.  And that was fun.  But what I noticed was that these people tended to be either run off the sites that I frequented, or forced to watch what they said or outright banned.  And I got that same treatment too.

Now that I ‘ve become an old hand at this right-wing existence I begin to see what will and won’t happen anytime soon.  What won’t happen for the foreseeable future is the end of leftist domination of the media and most of the on-line infrastructure.  Elon Musk may have opened up the door a crack to our side on Twitter but Google, Microsoft, Apple, Meta, PayPal, etc. have the rest of the doors slammed shut and they can crush anyone they want as ruthlessly as can be imagined.  I’ve gotten all of that through my thick skull pretty thoroughly.  So, I’m not conquering the internet anytime soon.

But I do get exposure when maddmedic or whatfinger or duckduckgo decides to link to one of my articles.  And that’s fun because new people show up and some of them stick around.  And why that’s fun is because talking to people on the site has become my favorite part of the whole thing.  Talking to folks I’ve known for years and folks who just showed up is fascinating.  People sometimes talk about the anonymity of the internet being a bad thing.  And I guess if a hopeless troll shows up and tortures you, I could see how being anonymous could give license to him to say some pretty awful things.  But anonymity also allows people to be honest about what they say too.  And that’s something that we can’t say in real life much anymore.  And I think sometimes it’s healthy to say what you really think.  Even if it’s an unhappy truth being expressed.

So, for instance, I’ve lately been of the opinion that the Dissident Right is correct when they say we can’t vote our way out of the mess we’re in.  And that’s a discouraging fact.  And it removes a lot of what I typically write about.  After all, what exactly is there to say about 2024 if it’s highly unlikely that the Republicans will win the White House or the Senate.  Just repeating over and over again that all hope is lost is pretty obnoxious and boring.

But what I find is that there’s still plenty to talk about with people on our side of the fence.  Our local lives are real and much less constrained than what the Left has done to national politics.  There are still Red States that are trying to help their people and leaders that may begin to make a difference in our lives.

And there’s contact with people who think and talk the way I do.  And I think that’s the most important benefit of a site like this.  It sponsors camaraderie and provides enjoyment for me and possibly others who otherwise wouldn’t have a place to listen and talk about things they think are important.

And so, I’ll take this occasion to once again encourage anyone out there who has something to say to comment or even provide a post for the site.  People like to read opinions and they also like to state their opinions and I want to encourage that.  So, by all means jump in.  The more the merrier.  I’d love to hear from regulars and lurkers and new readers too.  And not just on politics there’s plenty of latitude for things to talk about out there.  In the immortal words of Caspar Gutman “I’m a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk.”