Category: Current Events

Elon Fires Rocketmen!

photog Current Events ,

This one is hilarious.  Apparently some employees at SpaceX were angered by Elon Musk’s un-PC comments and opinions, especially around the Twitter deal going on.  So they circulated an open letter berating Musk for embarrassing them.  Apparently they pressured other employees to sign the letter and some of these put-upon employees must have complained to management about being pressured.  Because the letter drafters have been fired.

Essentially they wanted people to sign onto a letter that said, “We don’t like working for Elon Musk at a company owned by Elon Musk.  Gee who would have thought that management would be unhappy with employees staging an insurrection against the boss.  Shocking!  I guess they figured that Elon would say, “You’re right.  I’m stepping down as owner and CEO and let you HR flunkies run the company.  I guess he didn’t get the memo.

 

 

 

 

H’T to the Conservative Treehouse for this Neil Oliver Video

photog Current Events , ,

Sundance over at the Conservative Treehouse started featuring Neil Oliver’s videos during the COVID  madness and I’ve become addicted to his talks.  This one is a good example of his style.  He weaves a tapestry of words that tell the story of a world being forced down a chute like cattle to the slaughter.  Kudos to Neil and kudos to Sundance.

Neil Oliver, The Great Resetters are Intent on Retaining Post-Pandemic Power and Control Through Fear and Finance

The Real Conservatism

photog Current Events, Reclaiming the Family , , ,

June is the month of graduations.  And right on schedule I attended two graduations this weekend.  The first one was a very minor but poignant event.  Our littlest grandchild, Princess Sack of Potatoes was finishing up her year of gym class.  Camera Girl and I dutifully showed up at this august occasion and watched through the glass as our little athlete tumbled and climbed and performed the baby steps version of gymnastics on balance beams and parallel bars and rings.  We applauded and made all the right noises while she and her variously gifted team mates impressed their parents and relatives.  Afterwards she got a heavy iron star shaped medal spray painted with gold to wear around her neck and then we all went to our favorite local steakhouse and enjoyed some red meat.  I got the ribeye.

Then today was a more important milestone my oldest grandson graduated from high school with high honors and full scholarship to the local college of his choice.  As was fitting for this more serious occasion, the ceremony took a few hours, if you include the process of showing up early enough to get good seats and parking spots at the outdoor ceremony.  The girl who gave the valedictory address was appropriately eloquent and choked with emotion.  Although some gusts of wind threatened to blow away the pages of her speech and her graduation cap.  But Camera Girl and I agreed that the speeches were well spoken and heartfelt, as the moment required.  We took the requisite photos as the diploma was handed to our young scholar and I even captured the capstone shot of the class tossing their caps into the air.  And afterwards we once again headed to that same steakhouse and partook of red meat.  This time I just had a burger since my son-in-law was paying and I am not unaware of the costs in raising four children in today’s brutal economic situation.

And when we got home Camera Girl and I agreed that it was the perfect weekend.  Of course, tomorrow is Father’s Day, that least understood holiday on the calendar.  When we’re young we would make a card for our father and later on we would buy him a tie and maybe at some point later in life we would get him some artifact that might be associated with one of his pastimes or for home improvement.  Now that I’ve reached grandfather status Father’s Day is sort of a stretch.  My sons-in-law are the objects of this ritual and they will be forced to express gratitude for the well-meaning but mostly useless gifts.

But all fathers know that the true gift every father is looking for is represented by the ceremony I attended today.  When a father has a son who makes the transition from boy to man that is the reward for years and decades of working to make him a functional member of society and hopefully puts him on the road to being able to have a family of his own.  And in a similar way, when a daughter grows up and starts a family of her won it is the realization of this same process.  It is the continuation of the human race.  We provide them a good home and try to teach children what a family is about and hope they’ll try to copy this pattern and produce their own home in the future.

By any definition of conservatism, that is the most essential component of conservative life; to replicate the circle of life.  To conserve the family.  In fact, regardless of what we do in the political realm as far as constitutional freedoms and rights, if we don’t manage to reproduce our families into the next generation then we have failed utterly and our story ends there.  We’ll have to step aside and let someone more adept at human relations take a whack at it.

Tomorrow I’ll get calls from my kids and maybe my grandkids (although that’s a usurpation of their fathers’ prerogatives of the day) and I’ll be pleased as can be that they remember me on the day.  But the great victory is counting those grandchildren and being allowed to share a little in their lives and their accomplishments and knowing that the circle continues and some part of me lives on both genetically and in the traditions and memories that we have built.

Whenever I talk to them, I stress (probably excessively) that they have family that cares about them and will be there if they need help.  I want them to know they are part of a group that they can depend on and that can depend on them too.

So Happy Father’s Day.  Make some memories with those kids.  It’s probably the most important work you’ll ever do as a conservative but more importantly as a man.

Could A Reckoning Be Coming for the Fake News?

photog Current Events ,

Sometimes it’s fun to imagine that the bad guys can lose.  I was reading an article called “Too Few People Want What Joe Scarborough Is Selling.”  The premise of the story is that despite all of the support that the left-wing institutions provide for the mainstream media the demand for their product is evaporating.

Here is the salient quote to back this assertion up:

“This might explain an odd exchange on Morning Joe last week, in which Dan Pfeiffer, former senior advisor to Barack Obama, declared that “[i]f you go to Facebook on a daily basis, the posts with the most engagement are from Ben Shapiro, Dan Bongino, and Candace Owens. It is right-wing media content. It dwarfs progressive content. It dwarfs mainstream media content — which is actually, should be the part that should scare us the most, that Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire has more followers and engagement — many times more — than the New York Times or CNN. That is a problem for democracy.””

So apparently, they admit that even with suspensions, shadow banning and demonetizing of conservative ideas they can’t get anyone interested in progressive writers.  And this doesn’t sound wrong.  It’s probably true.

But is it enough that the people prefer our ideas?  Can we win the culture wars if all the institutions close ranks against us?  I think the answer is in the long run, we’ll win.  That’s in the same way that eventually the Soviet Union couldn’t keep their lies going forever.  Eventually reality seeps in.  I guess there’s some comfort in that.  But the Soviet Union lasted seventy years.  I haven’t got seventy years.

The other exhibit the author provides is the change of strategy at CNN.  The new owners are on record as saying they want to turn the company into a straight news outlet.  Now you can imagine that Brian Stelter and Don Lemon would be poorly qualified to be retrofitted as shoe leather reporters.  Firing them wouldn’t require management to be committed to down the center objective journalism.  It would just show that they are tired of flushing money down the drain.  But if the bottom line is finally forcing the media to abandon their attacks on half of the people of this country, then I’ll count that as a very promising development.

But is it true?  And is it more than a one off?  I haven’t heard that MSNBC and ABC, CBS and NBC are turning over new leaves too.  Despite the Washington Post finally firing that demented harpy that kept calling all of her peers privileged white folk I doubt that the Post or the Times is reconsidering their editorial policy as it pertains to Left/Right bias.

Well, I can’t say that I’m a believer.  But I thought the couple of cracks in the wall provide a glimmer of hope that someday the truth shall set us free.  Read the article and see what you think and leave it in the comments.

Brian Stelter About to be Jettisoned by CNN

photog Current Events ,

Here’s a funny headline “Stelter ‘down to weeks if not days’ at CNN, causing internal turmoil at network, source claims.”  Stelter is an odious toad.  Seeing him unemployed is just another wonderful bonus from Dementia Joe’s destruction of the American economy.  Even mega-corporations can’t afford to pay someone this useless.  and it appears he’s also a boil on their flesh, “They continue: “Management is confident Stelter is the one sharing the internal pushback to fellow media reporters while simultaneously stirring discontent within the ranks“”  He’s agitating against his new bosses.

Now if they could find a way to unload Lemon they might get to a zero baseline from which to start a new operation.

Hunkering Down for the Second Half of Bidencrash

photog Current Events ,

In November we’ll have a diversion as the careers of all those RINOs and Dems get flushed down the toilet by the mid-term paroxysm of voter rage.  That will give us through Christmas to savor the schadenfreude and contemplate all the judges Biden will not get approved.

But in January as we look at the cost of the Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, we hosted there won’t be that much to feel thankful for.  As the saying goes, we’ll all be getting a little hungrier next year.  I’ve already heard that the property taxes here in Dunwich will be up a good bit and the cost of food and just about everything else will be surging very soon.  And energy and transportation costs will become horrific.

But that’s when the tough get going.  Camera Girl and I have already started to consolidate different shopping trips to save on gas.  And the last barbecue was burgers and dogs instead of ribeye steaks.  Looking to next winter I’ve decided to make the ultimate sacrifice.  I’m going to lower the thermostat from 72 (and sometimes 74) to 70 degrees Fahrenheit.  I know what you’re thinking.  Lots of people set it at 68 or even lower.  Sure, but those people have ancestors who lived in Cimmeria and Ultima Thule.  My people come from the sultry regions of the Mediterranean.  In order to survive even 70 degrees in the winter Camera Girl and I will have to wear our snow apparel indoors.  Who knows, we may even cut the cable this year.  Of course, that won’t be such a savings as it seems.  The packages that include phone, internet and cable don’t really go down all that much if you drop cable.  But we’ll see.  After all there’s nothing on and every little bit helps.

I was trying to think if there was any other savings, I could implement to weather this storm.  I am contemplating taking a position in the Dunwich town government.  There’s a part time position that would net me a few thousand dollars a year for what has been described as a few hours a week’s worth of work.  That could be a worthwhile idea.  But I hear there is an extremely annoying Democrat that would come along with the job and that would be bound to make my life more “interesting.”

And I have been on a diet for the last year or so.  Unfortunately, it’s been working pretty well so by next year I won’t have anymore weight to lose and eating less won’t be the benefit it currently is.  But knowing what a frugal shopper Camera Girl is I don’t doubt she has already started making buying decisions based on rising costs.  In fact, I know she has.  We recently planted a number of pepper plants in our garden because she informed me that peppers were now off the shopping list based on their current outrageous price.  It would be a shame if our menu featured less and less fresh produce.

But that’s reality.  I think back to when I was a kid and my parents were feeding a very large brood so vegetables were frozen peas and corn.  And when things were really going badly there was some frozen spinach which for me was impossible to swallow.  I even tried mixing it with mashed potatoes.  But nothing made it palatable.  So, I’ve got a long way to go before I’m anywhere near that level of wretchedness.

Of course, I’m so much better off than most folks out there that I feel silly even writing about making ends meet.  I think of the young families I know who are really tightening their belts.  The cost of feeding, clothing and housing a family is a crime.  When that old idiot unleashed his war against petroleum, he doomed this country to runaway inflation and recession.  We’ve got until 2025 before we can expect any relief.  That’s a really long time to hang off a ledge by your fingernails.  But when you have no choice, you do it.  And hopefully four years of misery will be enough to convince even the stupidest Millennial that rainbows and unicorns are just things you tell toddlers stories about and not the basis for an economy.

If the Jan 6th Investigation TV Coverage Was a Show It Would Be Cancelled Already

photog Current Events

The Dem’s Much-Hyped Jan. 6 Hearings Are A Flop: I&I/TIPP Poll
Many question the Jan. 6 Committee’s integrity due to its highly partisan, anti-Trump composition.

Only 21% of the public are very confident that the committee is acting in good faith.  And 55% are unconvinced there’s any there there.

Guess I’ll get back to my reruns of Firefly.  If anyone needs me I’ll be in my bunk.

15JUN2022 – Another One Bites the Dust – Tom Rice Primary-ed Out of Existence

photog Current Events ,

Tom Rice, one of the Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump lost his primary election for re-election to challenger South Carolina state Rep. Russell Fry who was endorsed by Trump.

As I’ve made abundantly clear I am a vindictive jerk who sees pay back as a very important part of life.  But just to show just how stupid this Rice guy is, look at who he brought in to help his re-election campaign.  Paul Ryan and Chris Christie!

Rice’s race has received national attention, in part because of Trump’s rally in the district. But Rice himself invited out-of-state Republicans to stump with him, such as former House Speaker Paul Ryan and ex-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, amplifying his Trump record.

Look, this guy is obviously a hack and a loser.  He’s not Mitt Romney stupid but given time and money he might have reached those exalted heights.  So let’s think of this as a mercy killing.  Well, we’re getting closer and closer to the election and that list of ten Republican Congressmen who voted for impeachment is getting shorter and shorter.  As the primary season ends I’ll do a review and we’ll savor the schadenfreude as we say goodbye to them one last time.

Adios Tom.

 

 

 

 

Woke Advocacy Groups Paralyzed by — Wokism! Hilarity Ensues

photog Current Events ,

I read most of this article.  It was long and boring and loaded with leftist jargon related to the constant in-fighting and bickering that causes organizations like Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, BLM and many others to spend all their time fighting their management over perceived racial and gender slights instead of doing their work.

That the institute has spent the course of the Biden administration paralyzed makes it typical of not just the abortion rights community — Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and other reproductive health organizations had similarly been locked in knock-down, drag-out fights between competing factions of their organizations, most often breaking down along staff-versus-management lines. It’s also true of the progressive advocacy space across the board, which has, more or less, effectively ceased to function. The Sierra Club, Demos, the American Civil Liberties Union, Color of Change, the Movement for Black Lives, Human Rights Campaign, Time’s Up, the Sunrise Movement, and many other organizations have seen wrenching and debilitating turmoil in the past couple years.

This is familiar to anyone who has worked at one of these woke corporations that spends all its time henpecking its employees about diversity, equity and inclusion.  All of the day is spent in meetings with aggrieved groups that want to litigate their grievances with the company instead of doing their work.

But think about how much worse it must be in companies where their stock in trade is leftist outrage like Planned Parenthood.  And what a delicious paradox.  They can’t take advantage of the Biden Administration to inflict even more wokism because they are busy torturing their management about their own grievances.

Here’s a quote from a director of one of these lefty organizations.

“To be honest with you, this is the biggest problem on the left over the last six years,” one concluded. “This is so big. And it’s like abuse in the family — it’s the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about. And you have to be super sensitive about who the messengers are.”  And then, sometime in the summer, the forward momentum stalled, and many of the progressive gains lapsed or were reversed. Instead of fueling a groundswell of public support to reinvigorate the party’s ambitious agenda, most of the foundation-backed organizations that make up the backbone of the party’s ideological infrastructure were still spending their time locked in virtual retreats, Slack wars, and healing sessions, grappling with tensions over hierarchy, patriarchy, race, gender, and power.  “So much energy has been devoted to the internal strife and internal bullshit that it’s had a real impact on the ability for groups to deliver.”  “My last nine months, I was spending 90 to 95 percent of my time on internal strife. Whereas [before] that would have been 25-30 percent tops,” the former executive director said. He added that the same portion of his deputies’ time was similarly spent on internal reckonings.”

Ah, the delicious schadenfreude.  Thinking about the executives at these woke companies being harangued and accused of not being woke enough by their protected minorities is hilarious.  That is the Achilles Heel of these companies.  They are filled up with nuts.  And now that they’ve been inspired by the George Floyd revolution they can’t be controlled by their employers.  Hopefully they’ll burn their companies down and then end up unemployed, starving and miserable.

Looking Back to the Future

photog Current Events ,

As the present melts down in the midst of the worst economic debacle in modern American history, I am thinking back to what it felt like during the nightmare that was Jimmy Carter’s “malaise.”  At the time I was a recent college graduate working at a large old-fashioned corporation that was known for its tight-fisted employee pay policy.  But in 1980 this company gave all of its employees an unheard-of thing, a bonus!  And it was an eight percent bonus of all things.  Along with the check was a letter that explained that this one-time largesse was provided because the company was aware that inflation would hammer all of us with much more than that percentage of our salaries.

Being young and naively optimistic I wasn’t worried about the economy.  But at the same time as the economic crisis, the Iran Hostage Crisis was occurring.  And at about the same time as that bonus we heard about the failed rescue attempt that Carter’s military team botched.  Helicopters collided in the desert outside of Tehran and dead American soldiers were left there to be pawed at by the Ayatollah’s henchmen when they reached the site of the crash.  That was the lowest day I had experienced as an American in my short life.  And I remembered thinking, “This can’t go on.  Someone has to fix this.”  And later that year that man appeared, Ronald Reagan and over the course of his presidency it appeared that he fixed a lot of what seemed to be wrong with America under Jimmy Carter.

So here we are more than forty years later and damned if we aren’t in much the same situation we were in back then.  But now it’s so much worse.  The changes we have to make are not incremental.  They’re gargantuan.  Our opponents aren’t misguided but loyal Americans.  They’re traitors and criminals.  And we’re no longer a unified dynamic powerhouse of innovation.  Our industrial base is in ruins.  Our people are at each other’s throats.  And just to top it all off, millions of illegal immigrants are pouring over our borders every year.  It sounds like a lost cause.

But by the same token, it’s only because things are so dire, so dark.  It’s only because people are so desperate that there is the chance to make a radical change.  If a visionary thinker emerges who has thought of a path out of this nightmare we’re trapped in, I believe people will roll the dice and try to save themselves by trying something radical.

What it requires is someone who can communicate simply and convincingly how we get ourselves out of this trap.  Reagan was called the “Great Communicator” because he could help common people visualize the economic and monetary problems we faced with simple images.  This is what the next man who comes along to fix this broken country will have to do.  He will have to communicate to this country what needs to be done and how and why.

So far, I don’t think anyone has come forward with a clear explanation of how we fix things.  We have so many problems that instead of a simple solution it seems like mission impossible.  We have to balance the budget, end illegal immigration, safeguard the elections, defang the Deep State and return the industrial base back to the United States.

But as I said, because things are so bad, I believe this is precisely the time that people will be willing to allow drastic measures to be used in drastic circumstances.  But where is Superman?  Who will step forward and be the hero?  Honestly, I’m not sure there is a hero.  We’re looking for an Augustus.  Someone very smart and very brave and very tough.

But things are so bad that I’ll have to add one other quality that our hero will need.  He’ll need to be very lucky.