Category: Current Events

19FEB2022 – OCF Update – Weather Weirdness Continues

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We go from having a couple of feet of snow on the ground to nothing.  In the last three days we’ve had sixty mile an hour wind, heavy rain, sixty five degree temperatures, five degree temperatures and now snow.  All we need is frogs falling from the sky to complete the list.  Ah, whatever.  Camera Girl brought home some Chinese food for lunch after her sojourn to the empty but expensive grocery stores.  And I never look gift chop suey in the mouth.

I’ve gotten so used to high winds that I didn’t do anything in preparation and, sure enough, disaster struck.  Well, not disaster.  My barbecue grill blew off the deck and got busted up a bit.  It’ll need some straightening up but it should still get the job done.  Oh well.

So, February 19th, almost the end of the month!  Sure, March is still winter where I live but the days are getting longer and you start getting that itch to look for signs of spring.  Crocuses, daffodils, tulips.  None of those are anywhere near appearing.  But other things are happening.  New birds are starting to appear.  The turkeys have been on the move and the pond has thawed completely.  Soon frogs and salamanders will be heading for vernal ponds to breed.

So, even as the snow whips by my window I am thinking of grass and flowers.  And without the stupid mask nonsense spring and summer will be the free time they ae supposed to be.  Barbecues and soon even opening the swimming pool and the grandkids coming over to swim and even a baseball catch.  All really good things.

NYC, Deadly Environment for Women

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Not that this is a shocker but New Yorkers are rediscovering that women are the perfect target for violent predators in the urban environment.

Nicole Gelinas over at City Journal has a story about the last four women randomly murdered by violent psychopaths that stalk women in New York City:

“Even with New York’s City’s overall murder rate up 53 percent in two years— from 319 in 2019 to 488 last year—these murders are especially dislocating. In each case, there was nothing the victim could have done to prevent her death. …    It’s impossible to recall so many fatal stranger-on-stranger attacks on women in such a short time, seemingly motivated by nothing other than misogynistic and, perhaps, racial hatred. We all like to think we have some measure of control over our own public safety, but what could any of these women have done to remain alive, besides not go outside?”

Then Gelinas discusses the history of women existing in New York City in three periods.  There was the Giuliani period of law and order and the before period and the after period (now):

“A great deal of what we call public space is, in fact, male turf. . . . Fear of rape and attack, of which low-level aggravation is a reminder, plays a part in keeping women from claiming public space.” …”

“That changed. Under Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, women increasingly felt safe, and for good reason. Stranger-on-stranger violent crime, let alone murder, wasn’t nonexistent, but it became extremely unusual over a generation of remarkable public safety in New York. In December 2019, when three teenagers held 18-year-old Columbia University student Tessa Majors down in Morningside Park and stabbed her to death, the crime was rare and shocking. Not today. With Lee’s death making four in six weeks, a woman isn’t even safe walking briskly from a taxi to her own apartment.”

The article also reinforces that the City administration refuses to acknowledge that the changes in policing, prosecution and incarceration are the direct cause for all of these murders and other criminality.  Instead of acknowledging that these mega-repeat offenders who finally end up murdering random people are loose only because of these changes Mayor Adams and the other officials talk about the endemic problems of mental health and racism.

This agrees with my opinion that these cities are doomed until the general population becomes completely sick of progressive lies and demands a return to law and order.  And that won’t happen until things get even worse.  My yardstick is it will happen when the first cannibal stories appear in the New York Post.

Guest Contributor – TomD – 18FEB2022 – A Woke Thought Experiment

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Tom | Flickr

TomD

I sometimes run a purely mental “what if”: What if I time traveled back to my 1966 Senior high school class and tried to get them to understand the future. First, I’d really wow them with a few examples of 2022 technology, the phones, flat TV’s, GPS, the cars, etc. But then I’d say that the average vehicle costs in the mid-$40K range on average. In the-mid 60’s in north Metro Atlanta, that was the cost of a far above average house, on Riverside Dr, where the current lots, if you can find one, go for the millions. The specter of a 10:1 monetary inflation would be the first clue.

I’m not sure if or how I could create the image of the dystopia that this nation has become. About a tenth of the way through the multiples of insanities, I would lose them to sheer overload and disbelief. How many statements on the order of “In the 21st Century, you can decide what sex you will be that day” or “Prepubescent children can be counseled to sex change surgery by school workers without parental notification.” How about “the borders are unprotected, and millions are pouring into the welcoming arms of the government offering them free everything”. Try offering an hour or two of that and see what sort of reception you get. Just try to explain LGBTQIA2S+. I dare you. Or the democratic party publicly embraces socialism/communism, that they propose the elimination of police and jails, months long elections with no controls at all, the demonization of white people, that all the guaranteed constitutional rights can be eliminated at the whim of a governor or even mayor for whatever length of time they wish, the national media as a wholly owned arm of one political party.

Even if I could, that would be terrible thing to inflict on anyone.

What Have They Wrought?

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Since the early 1970’s I have been a witness to the devolution of the United States of America.  By all measurable objective standards, the cultural, intellectual, moral, financial and psychological well-being of this once great nation has declined.

Unsurprisingly there are some aspects of life that have shown innovation.  We have computers and cellular phones.  And that’s about it.

This process has proceeded in waves.  The first big wave was in the 1960’s and ‘70’s.  During this period the youth culture rebelled against all the moral and social norms and introduced such wonders of modern progress as widescale drug addiction, mass produced pornography and drug resistant STD’s.  It was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius or something.

As the 1970’s waned the counterculture became passe and the hippies became yuppies and went to work on Wall Street to catch up on the decade they spent stoned.  But the contingent of hippies that were too lazy to work for a living stayed on campus and became the next generation of academia.  And there they stayed to inculcate the following generations in such useful pursuits as post-modern analysis, deconstructionism, various waves of feminism, liberation theory, queer theory, Africana studies, Non-Western Cultural studies and whatever other nonsense they could make up on the fly.

And now the seeds that those cretins planted in the minds of our children have sprouted and we now have the woke generation.  And they have inherited the earth.  They are the target audience for all the tendrils of the on-line community.  Their sensibilities determine what YouTube and Facebook and Twitter will allow to be said and heard.  And it is this sensibility that has driven the changes that we have seen in the last fifteen years.

Over the course of the last sixty years or so we’ve seen the world get steadily crazier.  Illegal aliens have sanctuary cities and states where federal laws aren’t obeyed and where these people are given government assistance of various kinds and even allowed to have a driver’s license and allowed to vote.  Generations of families live on welfare payments and never work.  Anti-constitutional programs like affirmative action and laws for things like hate speech exist in defiance of the basic rights of Americans under the Constitution.  Whole groups of people have been proclaimed “protected classes” and provided with administrative regulations and laws that ensure that they are advantaged over everyone else.  These are the things we’ve grown used to over the decades.  They’re outrageous but they have become the baseline that we expect.

But let’s look at what has happened in the last few years:

  • Marriage has been redefined to include two men or two women. This includes the right for these people to adopt and raise children.
  • Men can declare themselves women and women can declare themselves men (transgender). And anyone who denies these declarations will be punished, sometimes criminally, for these beliefs.  Even failing to refer to these people by their preferred “pronouns” is grounds for arrest in some jurisdictions.
  • Children as young as toddlers can be coached by teachers to say that they are transgender and this alone will be enough for a court to mandate that the child be started on drug regimens and surgery to transition this child into the other “gender.”
  • Because George Floyd, a violent black career criminal, died while under arrest, the police across the country are no longer allowed to arrest black criminals for almost any reason. As an example, the Manhattan district attorney has declared that no crime less serious than murder or violent assault will be prosecuted.  Theft, simple assault, carjacking, sexual battery and almost anything else you can think of will be ignored by the prosecutors and the perpetrators will be released back onto the streets.  Shoplifting at a ruinous level is bankrupting all types of retail stores in cities.
  • During the George Floyd “protests,” local, state and federal law enforcement allowed mobs of violent rioters to loot stores, assault and even kill innocent people and burn down property with complete immunity.
  • Local, state and federal governments have propagandized the populations in a mantra that declares that “Black lives matter” (BLM). This maxim has been clarified to mean that it is incorrect to assume that all lives matter.  And basically, since we see that black lives are being lost on the street every day to black criminals, what BLM means is that black criminal behavior against non-black people is fully protected.
  • The normalization of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in not only colleges but even K-12 history and social studies programs.
  • The universal adoption of equity, diversity and inclusion principles in corporate and government organizing structures and practices. This is the abandonment of equal protection guarantees under the Constitution.
  • Election fraud by Democrats is protected behavior.
  • Government authority in “emergencies” like COVID is unlimited in both scope and duration even when it contradicts constitutional rights.
  • Government surveillance of US citizens is as a practical matter unchecked.
  • Social media and e-commerce companies can and will exclude anyone who does not comply with “woke” requirements around speech and behavior even if these events occur off of their platforms. This extends to virtual exclusion from banking and other necessary accommodations of modern life.

Looking at the scope and severity of these latest changes and how they violate the spirit and the substance of all the important norms of our society previous to these last few years I have to say that we have now reached a point where if there isn’t a substantive reaction that not only halts but reverses all these changes then I’ll have to conclude that the United States is a lost cause.

Any nation that negates all of its principles and even despises the identity of its majority population is no longer a nation.  It is a slaughterhouse of its own people comparable to what Stalin and Pol Pot unleashed on the Russian and Cambodian people respectively.  Only in America it is done subtly.  Instead of the gulag and the death camp, it is cancel culture.  We don’t murder you.  We indoctrinate you to murder your own descendants through cancellation.  No families, no children no future.  You hate your ancestors because they were racists and misogynists and polluters of the earth.  As penance you agree to forego family, careers and any future.

We’ll be able to see very easily if this will turn around.  If any state successfully reverses all of these things despite the attacks by the federal government, then that would be a sign of hope.  If some geographic area inside the United States becomes a haven for normal Americans to live their lives the way their parents and grandparents did then that would be a sign of hope.  If not then we’re done.  And those of us who care might as well start looking for a new place to live.

Ukraine?  Really?

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In the classic Seinfeld episode, those two morons Kramer and Newman are playing Risk on the subway.  Kramer taunts Newman on the feeble nature of his position and he states that the Ukraine is weak.  Where upon a Ukrainian émigré takes offense and smashes the board sending Kramer’s armies flying in all directions.

If you look at a map of Europe Ukraine is a large country pressed between Russia and the former Soviet block countries.  It has over 40,000,000 people living in it and among European countries only Russia has a larger area.  It has also been a part of the Russian civilization in one form or another for a thousand years.  Thinking that the Russians in their current revitalized nationalism would allow the Ukraine to join NATO is a bit daft.  The Russians can bring to bear enormous military pressure on the Ukraine.  In addition, there is a very strong Russian minority living in the Ukraine.  And NATO consists of countries that are not willing to send their armies into the Ukraine to fight the Russians toe to toe to save it.  That leaves one other alternative.  The United States would have to launch an all-out thermonuclear strike against Russia.  Whether China would have to be nuked too is debatable.

So, Dementia Joe is going to blow up the world for Ukraine.  I think not.  All that is going on is Biden is trying to distract the country from runaway inflation, COVID fascism, rampant crime in the cities and critical race theory being taught in the schools.

I doubt that anyone takes this seriously other than the Neocons.  They’re probably practically orgasmic just contemplating Ukraine (and sure why not Belarus) joining NATO.  But they’re dopier than Newman and Kramer.

To be totally honest twenty years ago when Russia was on the ropes with the Chechnya revolt in full swing, it might have been possible to consider a scenario where Russia collapsed into the arms of NATO and joined Europe as a client state.  Those days are far behind us.  A more likely future might see the Eastern European countries balancing their interests between the EU and Russia to get the best of both worlds.  Western Europe has proven itself much more problematic in terms of intellectual and cultural freedom than these eastern countries imagined.  With the Soviet Union gone, places like Hungary and the Czech Republic find threats to their freedom and cultural heritage coming from Brussels not Moscow.  In fact, Russia’s pro-Christian, anti-woke orientation is more inviting for these recently freed states than Western Europe’s post-religious, pro-immigrant stance.

And even the much wimpier claim that the West will employ trade and monetary sanctions against the Russians rings pretty hollow when you realize that Europe depends on natural gas to keep it from freezing in the winter and the Russians can increase the price of that commodity very easily.  In fact, Germany is waiting very patiently for the Americans to wake up and realize that Russia is about to become Europe’s energy provider with the Nord Stream 2 about to come on line.  At that point, Germany will become a client of Russia and knowing the Germans they will prove very cordial neighbors.

So, not that it really needs to be said but Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine is just noise.  And that noise can’t be heard over the screaming about the real problems that the Democrats have caused in this country.  That tail just won’t wag that dog this time.

16FEB2022 – OCF Update – Unmask, Unmask!

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Connecticut and Massachusetts are ending their mask mandates in the next few days.  Suddenly most New Englanders won’t be able to rob liquor stores without making their intentions known in advance.  It will be the dawning of a new age of emotional communication.  The smile and the frown will re-emerge as human tools of expression.  Now I’ll be able to warn my Dunwichian neighbors when they’ve offended me without being forced to flip them the bird.  And alternatively I no longer have to resort to the OK or white power sign when expressing approbation.  I can flash my pearly whites to get my point across.

The only one still wearing the mask will be Dementia Joe.  He is so old and brain damaged that COVID legitimately is a threat to his life.  And to ours.  If Dopey Joe should die anytime soon we’d end up with the Cackler in Chief.  Now there’s a sobering thought.  Well, he can have my boosters.  I don’t need them.  Even people who were staunch vax believers are starting to get scared about the boosters.  Too many scary stories of young healthy people keeling over afterwards.

Yesterday I wa out half of the day on an errand.  We’re going into another warmup here and I probably have to do one more cleanup day today on the earlier snow.  If I don’t get it out of the way it’ll turn to ice and will be there until April. So I might be a little behind today.

So as more and more states end the mask mandate it is important that we remind voters in the coming months just how long the Democrats kept up this charade and for no reason at all.  People should remember how Brandon predicted that this would be a winter of illness and death for the unvaccinated and how he had run out of patience with Americans who wanted to make their own health decisions without the blessing of Fauci and Biden.

I have a meeting tonight with the Dunwich Pentaveret.  We will discuss all the troubling eldritch horrors that we paid for last year and start budgeting for this year’s troubling eldritch horrors.  What with inflation and COVID restrictions we expect it will cost us 25% to 30% more than last year.  Well, as First Selectman Cthulhu always says, “It is what it is.  And put more barbecue sauce on those election volunteers.”

Alright, enough of that.  Busy, busy, busy.  Stay tuned.

Even San Franciscans Love Their Kids More Than They Want to Virtue Signal

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San Franciscans, the gold standard of woke bleeding hearts, even they can reach their limit.  Even they got tired of their kids missing school and wearing masks.  They recalled three school board members including the School Board President who refused to end the COVID nonsense.

Even the dopes in the bought and sold media are waking up to the fact that there are tens of millions of pissed off parents who want some payback:

“San Francisco’s recall has drawn widespread attention amid a year in which 25 recall efforts have been launched against 66 officials nationwide, according to tracking by Ballotpedia.

“School boards are where the rubber meets the road when it comes to Americans meeting their government,” ABC News Political Director Rick Klein said of the recall. “Schools, for better or worse, are the battlefront. They’re where the major issues of 2022 are colliding for so many Americans.””

I think we’re going to see Red State parents clean house in their schools.  Between COVID and the lefty propaganda being fed to their kids, their eyes have been opened and they’re going to want to replace people who aren’t listening.  Even in the blue states and cities, parents react to threats against their children.  Even terminally stupid progressives still have that reflex.

As the Western World Circles the Drain a Plea to the Canadian Truckers

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That mannikin Justin Trudeau or, as I think of him, the most brain damaged and least masculine of the Olsen Triplets

has declared war on the normal people of Canada.  And in case it escapes the notice of normal people in Canada their status as adults is at stake.  The American Right has already surrendered any pretense of being considered adults when we allowed Dementia Joe to occupy the White House and sniff adolescent girls and speak in tongues during press conferences.  But at least we can point to the fact that the Democrats have taken possession of the US military with its thousands of megatons of nuclear destructive potential and drone strike capability.

What can Justin Trudeau wield?  He’s got several thousand men wearing Dudley Do-Right costumes

and some snow plows.  It seems to me the truckers in Canada are supremely positioned to shock the anglosphere by telling Trudeau to stick it where the sun don’t shine.  If truck drivers even just stopped delivering fuel for vehicles and heating life as we know it would cease to exist in the Great White North.  In case any Americans forget it’s frikkin’ cold up there.  Within days everything would grind to a  halt and cannibalism would become commonplace.  It would be an arctic version of The Road Warrior.

So my Canadian brethren, don’t let us down.  Strike a blow for freedom and send that twig boy packing to some sex reassignment clinic where they can try to turn him into a proper woman instead of the tutti-frutti spectacle he currently is.  And you’ll get your country back too.  Not a bad fringe benefit.

Will the Canadian Parliament Allow the Emergency Declaration?

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If any Canadians would like to chime in, I’m curious whether they think Parliament will allow Trudeau to assume dictatorial powers against the “Bouncy Castle” occupation.  I’ve always assumed that the Canadian government was just like our Uniparty only more so.  And I guess this is the time when it’ll show its true colors.  The declaration specifies seizing bank accounts, cancelling insurance and revoking business licenses.  These are pretty serious infringements of people’s lives.

I think the Parliament has five days to ratify the declaration.  Will it?  Assuming it does ratify these moves I think this will kill the protests.  The only thing that could turn the situation around would be for the whole trucking industry to call a general strike.  That would shut the country down immediately and probably force the government to accede to the demands in a couple of weeks.  But it seems unlikely that would happen.

So, if the Parliament goes along with Trudeau and the truckers don’t call a general strike the protests will end.  The only question remaining is whether this will sit well with the general population.  Is it possible that even the go by the rules, follow the leader Canadians can become angry enough at their leaders to vote the bums out at the next election?

I tend to doubt it.  They seem even worse than us.  But the possibility remains.  Joe Brandon’s approval rating is under water because Americans have grown tired of incompetence but even more so, they’ve grown tired of the COVID fascism.  They’ve learned to distrust the inconsistent and seemingly useless dictates of Fauci and Biden.  They don’t want to be forced to take medicines that don’t work and might be dangerous.  They don’t want to wear masks that don’t work.  They don’t want to carry identification that says they’re complying with these mandates in order to have lunch at a restaurant or watch a football game or fly on a plane.  Biden knows this now and he’s back-pedaling as fast as his stuttering brain will allow him to go.  By March many of the states will have removed most if not all of the COVID restrictions and the feds will be slightly behind them.  That’s so they can hope to survive the midterms.

I don’t know the schedules of the Canadian election cycle.  Maybe they’ve got years before they come up for reelection.  And I don’t know the details of their Stupid Party.  Maybe they’re even stupider than ours.  But I’m about to find out if there is a beating heart of freedom left in Canada.  If they allow the Truckers’ Rebellion to be chloroformed without a fight and leave Trudeau and his henchmen in charge then that will answer the question perfectly.  That will line up with other areas of the anglosphere like New Zealand and Australia where the COVID fascists have crushed all dissent and exposed the majority of their citizens as the powerless and cowardly lackeys of the gynocracy.  Now granted, Justin Trudeau is nominally a man but if you look at him, he’s girliest of girlie men.  The contrast between him and the type of people making up the Truckers’ Protest couldn’t be starker.  Canada is getting to choose what kind of men represent their nation.  I hope they choose well.

Update:

At least one Canadian newspaper (Toronto Sun) is opposed to Trudeau’s fascism.  I’ll call this a sliver of hope.

What Do the Poll Numbers Tell Me?

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For decades I’ve noticed that political polls in the United States had a very noticeable bias.  Depending on whether they were ridiculously partisan polls or just slightly biased they would skew more or less to the Left.  They were able to produce this bias by overestimating the percentage of the population that is Democrat and underestimating the Republican share.  And it was just assumed by me that we had to throw our own fudge factor in when trying to make sense of the actual political situation from these flawed measures.

But look at Joe Biden’s approval ratings on RCP now.

Polling Data

Poll Date Sample Approve Disapprove Spread
RCP Average 1/10 – 2/13 — 40.6 53.8 -13.2
Rasmussen 2/9 – 2/13 1500 LV 42 57 -15
Reuters 2/7 – 2/8 1005 A 43 51 -8
YouGov 2/5 – 2/8 1255 RV 41 51 -10
Susquehanna 2/3 – 2/9 800 LV 42 52 -10
Politico 2/5 – 2/6 2005 RV 41 55 -14
IBD/TIPP 2/2 – 2/4 1355 A 38 48 -10
CNN 1/10 – 2/6 1257 RV 42 57 -15
Monmouth 1/20 – 1/24 735 RV 38 55 -17
Insider Advantage 1/21 – 1/23 850 LV 40 59 -19
Harris 1/19 – 1/20 1815 RV 39 53 -14

 

These are horrible numbers.  And they’re close to accurate.  Rasmussen is one of the few pollsters that doesn’t favor Democrats.  He’s got Dementia Joe at 42 – 57.  CNN which is perpetually in the tank for the Dems has 42 – 57.  That’s not an accident.  Those are real numbers.  And why are they doing this?  Because Biden’s numbers with Democrats are terrible too.  Or in another way to look at it, a lot of the people who voted for Biden have switched parties.  The proportion of voters who claim to be Democrats has shrunk.  They’ve shifted to the Republicans or at least to Independents.  And they mean that they’ll be voting for Republicans even though they don’t want to be called Republicans because they’re women and they don’t want their friends to judge them harshly.

All this tells me that the midterms are going to be very bad for the Dems.  They will lose the House and the Senate.  I think that’s a given.  Does it mean anything more?  Only maybe.  It’s completely within the control of the Republicans to do what they typically do and blow this golden opportunity.  They can use their control of the Congress to collect fees from the donors and lobbyists, as usual.  They can ignore their duty and not thoroughly investigate and document for the American people the blatant and systematic voter fraud that happened in 2020.  Or they can for once act like the leaders of a free people.

Normally I’d say the chance of them doing the right thing was zero.  But things are significantly different this time.  Donald Trump refuses to let sleeping dogs lie.  He continues to rally the people to support efforts to investigate the 2020 election.  He continues to call out the RINO’s like Liz Cheney who support Democrat lies like the “Insurrection.”  And some of the state leaders are making the right noises too.  They are attempting to safeguard their election processes.

Putting all this together I’d say we’re at about a fifty percent chance of something good coming out of the present situation.  Admittedly that’s not a glowing prospect but compared to how things have gone for most of my life, it’s a reason to hope.

The polls actually give us good information for the first time in decades.  The people are pissed off.  Now it will take the politicians to get their act together.  Let’s pray that some actual leaders will emerge and use the opportunity.