What Have We Learned from Kyle Rittenhouse?

The verdict just came in for this 18-year-old kid and like most everyone on our side I am greatly relieved that at least for now, this kid’s life has been given back to him.  It’s still possible that Merrick Garland and the rest of the vampires in the Biden Justice Department may still decide to persecute him under some bogus civil rights charade but maybe their plate is full right now persecuting the poor bastards from Jan. 6th and the school parents in Virginia.  But if he is free and clear what is the takeaway we have from this incident?

Well, for me the takeaway is that the Antifa/BLM organization is a paramilitary group that has weapons and tactics that can only be resisted by individuals armed and trained to do so.  Which tells me that the only way to avoid being subject to their attacks and harassment is to live in a jurisdiction where the police will arrest them if they riot.  That was Kyle Rittenhouse’s mistake.  He assumed that because he was heavily armed and fairly proficient with his weapon that he would be immune from harassment by the protestors.  That mistake could have cost him his life either at the scene or later in a court of law.  He was only saved by luck,  the copious video evidence of his actions being self-defense, the skill of his attorney to portray this evidence clearly and convincingly and the fact that he had an honest judge.

As far as I know, Florida is the only state that has passed laws to protect its citizens against municipal governments that decide to empower BLM rioters by handcuffing the police.  But that is the only way to prevent places like Atlanta, St. Louis, Houston and all the other blue cities in red states from harming red state citizens.  So, short of moving to Florida the strategy is living far enough from a blue city in a red state to avoid a barbarian invasion.

And honestly that’s the only lesson.  Anyone who attempts to do what Rittenhouse did will end up no better than he did and most probably a whole lot worse.  This problem can only be addressed by the united front of a whole community.  And that doesn’t exist in places like Wisconsin or Virginia and certainly not in New York or California.  In places like that BLM is the legitimate militia.  They are recognized to have the right to burn, loot and kill people who happen to be in the path of their swarm.  Maybe someday a counterforce will emerge on its own and challenge BLM and its protectors but that is far in the future.  That won’t happen until the people being attacked have nothing to lose and just rise up against their tormentors.  Maybe that’ll be in California.  Probably it’ll be the Hispanic people living in areas adjacent to the inner-city no-go zones.  When no one else will help them, they’ll pay protection money to the gangs and the gangs will handle the swarm by fighting fire with fire.

But that won’t be of any help to us.  Our lives are wrapped up in the fabric of civilized society and so we will have to live where that society still exists.  So that’s my takeaway from the Rittenhouse story.  Live where the majority of people will support the police protecting citizens from barbarians.  It’s a cautionary tale and an object lesson about where not to live.

A Golden November Day

Sun with no clouds, sixty-three degrees and a light breeze.  Well, you can’t stay in on a day like that.  Camera Girl and I took a walk in the woods today.  We haven’t since September.  It was quiet.  Then we saw why.  The streams that came off of the big lake had dried up.  The spillway from the lake was dry.  November hasn’t been completely without rain but the number of heavy rain days has drastically lowered from previous months.  So, it was quiet and that was fine.  Sun filtered more easily through the trees with only the conifers green.  We talked about the menu for Thanksgiving and we talked about leaves to be raked.  We noticed that none of the few people in the forest we met wore masks and I said that was a good sign.  She told me that very few people in the supermarket wore masks and most of those were elderly.  And I said that sounds good.  But before we knew it we were back at the car.  Just a short hour’s walk, up and down a few hills in the woods.  But it was a fitting tribute to God for gifting us a day this bright and warm, a week before Thanksgiving in New England.

 

AUTUMN (by Aleksandr Pushkin) (translated by Peter France)

…

A mournful time of year! Its sad enchantment

flatters my vision with a parting grace –

I love the sumptuous glow of fading nature,

the forests clad in crimson and in gold,

the shady coolness and the wind’s dull roaring,

the heavens all shrouded in a billowing mist

and the rare gleams of sun, the early hoarfrosts,

and distant grey-beard winter’s gloomy portents.

…

Aleksandr Pushkin (translated by Peter France)

Biden Declared Major Emitter of Green House Gases at Enviro Summit

This one’s too good to leave alone.

He is supposed to be committed to reducing emissions – but when President Joe Biden produced a little natural gas of his own at the COP26 summit, it was audible enough to make the Duchess of Cornwall blush.

An informed source has told The Mail on Sunday that Camilla was taken aback to hear Biden break wind as they made polite small talk at the global climate change gathering in Glasgow last week.

‘It was long and loud and impossible to ignore,’ the source said. ‘Camilla hasn’t stopped talking about it.’

It’s good to see that Dementia Joe has restored the dignity of the United States presidency abroad.  It’s no wonder that the press conferences now take place on a virtual reality set.  Hopefully Dr. Jill will equip the “Big Guy’s” pants with extra soundproofing after this.  Possibly Joe will be given a new acronym FOTUS.  I’ll let the reader do the math.

Larry Correia Exits Facebook Jail and Provides an A to Z Summary of the Last Month

Larry’s summary of what has been going on for the last 30 days is amusing and a useful marker.  It’s remarkable just how bad the last month has been for Dementia Joe and his clown-car administration.

I especially enjoyed mention of Joe’s various digestive tract outbursts.  Maybe having the first commander in chief who wears Depends will chasten the American voting population next time a doddering dementia patient is wheeled out as the supposedly smart, competent alternative.

Well done Larry.

 

 

 

16NOV2021 – OCF Update – Thoughts for This Morning

A fine Tuesday morning in mid-November; cold, windy and bright sun.  A perfect day to be viewing the world from the warm side a of a window.  Camera Girl is her usual busy, efficient self.  I can hear her banging around some pots and pans in the kitchen.  She says the noise is incidental but I don’t know, I think she must enjoy the violence.  Maybe she’s thinking of me while she’s beating on them.

I took care of some paperwork and also approved some preventive maintenance on the heating system that needs to be completed before the heavy snows begin.  That one I should’ve done last week.  I can feel the snow in the air.  It won’t take much for a few inches to find its way onto the ground and that would make the work much harder.  But for someone as lazy as I am the fact that I’m not waiting for spring and hoping for the best is a major victory.  So, on the home front things aren’t too far off course.

Looking at the news articles I see more bad news for Dementia Joe.  The country rightly blames him for moronically shutting down oil production and thereby unleashing high energy cost inflation on the already suffering country.  The left-wing media is whistling past the graveyard trying to convince themselves that the infrastructure bill or the reconciliation bill will make everything go back to rainbows and unicorns and 2022 won’t be the bloody rout that everybody knows it will be.  But with $5 a gallon gas already here in parts of the country and with no place for the price to go but up Good Old Joe looks to be headed for single digit approval ratings sometime soon.

The consensus is Biden won’t run for re-election.  Well, duh!  And since Kamala is about as dumb as a hammer and half as popular as cancer there’s going to be one hell of a fight for the nomination.  And one of the best parts of it is that any white male Democrat who runs will be accused of racist misogyny just for running. Who knows?  Maybe Hillary will run again and we’ll get a 2016 rematch.  Oh, the fun that would be!

The Rittenhouse case has gone to the jury.  Whichever way it goes it will stand as another marker of when defending yourself from the mob became a crime.  Even if he’s vindicated, it’s just one more nail in the coffin of a free America.  A government sanctioned riot was burning down an American city and the only allowable choices for the blameless white populace is flee or stay and be assaulted, burned out or even murdered.  And if you resist, the full weight of the government is brought to bear to send you to prison.  And the media will help the process along by distorting the facts and egging on violent partisans to threaten the judge and jury into finding you guilty.

But seeing what a mess the idiotic Left is making of the government they stole is an invigorating experience.  If discontent became widespread enough there is always the chance that someone will take the opportunity to win over the people to real reform.  And not just the Left-sanctioned Bush version where nothing happens except tax cuts for the rich and foreign wars for us.

Well, that’s enough for now.  When some real news breaks out, I’ll have more specific things to say and I’ll have more reviews soon too.  Have a great day.

Guest Contributor – TomD – Thoughts on Energy

In Reply to Energy Equates to Wealth

and Guest Contributor – Chemist – Thoughts on Energy

You don’t need to be all that intelligent to realize that the entire green movement is built on extremely shaky engineering underpinnings. And I’m pretty sure those at the top fully realize the sheer unreality of the movement. But, I think it’s a decoy and that the base impulse behind the entire thing (at the top levels anyway) is Malthusian in nature. There are just too many people, increasing at an exponential rate and that trend will not end well.

I have sorta had those leanings myself for a good portion of my live. Decades ago, I remember watching some documentary showing the world population through history. During the Napoleonic wars in 1800, it was around 1 billion, with the GREAT majority of that in China. Over 200 years later, during WWI, it had only grown buy around 15%-20%. I remember thinking that, whatever the problems of the early 20th century world, very few people ascribed them to a lack of population.

When I was born after WWII, the number was around 2.75 billion. What’s it up to now? 10 billion?

I’m not wise enough to know if there is a optimum human population or what it is. I do know that if there is a provable optimum and that population level is significantly below current (as I suspect), I am not aware of any method of getting from here to there by any means that I could condone or tolerate.

I’m not sure that last statement applies to the top elites of the green movement. I think they just may want to bring the whole structure down and let the chips fall where they may as long as they are protected.

Eggs, after all, must be broken.

15NOV2021 – OCF Update

 

Sony A7 III, Minolta 200mm F\4 Macro lens

 

“The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere—
The leaves they were withering and sere;”
…
From “Ulalume” by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

I took a walk around to see if there were any photos to be had. And there were a few.  Mostly trees holding onto a precious few dead leaves.  And the sky and the leaves reminded me of those lines from Poe.  And looking it up I noted that Poe was only forty years old when he died.  Well, he was a very strange man with many problems.  But he did capture some very vivid imagery in some of his work.  And late fall is his special time of year.  October, November and December seem to be the time and mood of his prose and poetry.  Maybe Poe could qualify as one of Ray Bradbury’s “October People.”

Autumn is a very good time of the year to be in a warm house and sharing good food and good talk with friends and family.  And Thanksgiving is sneaking up on us so I checked up on Camera Girl’s holiday planning and indeed she assures me that a twenty five pound turkey will be included and that ample and various pies and other desserts will appear on the menu, so everything seems to be in order.

She informed me that Walmart has begun playing Christmas music outside the building.  Apparently broadcasting it will attract holiday shoppers by some sort of sympathetic vibration.  I asked her if the music put her in the holiday spirit and she rolled her eyes at me.  Despite her clear lack of spirit I will be starting my annual Christmas music marathon very soon.  The centerpiece of this program is the album that my parents used to play when I was about ten, “The Little Drummer Boy” by the Harry Simeone Chorale.  When I hear those versions sung I might as well be ten years old again.  For a little while I can forget the horrors of the world around us and bask in the old remembered warmth of being a kid in Real America.

14NOV2021 – A Reflection on the State of the Our World

Since the end of August when Biden’s catastrophic blundering of the Afghanistan Retreat put his approval numbers into free fall, I have noticed that a large swath of the voting population seems to be waking up from the delusion that the Democrats are normal Americans.

As the radical left tries to implement deeply un-American policies like vaccine mandates at work and critical race theory in grammar schools even moderate leftists have become worried and even angry that the country is headed for a place that they neither intended nor approved of when they elected Joe Biden.  And now with the economy suffering from multiple serious problems; high inflation, shortages of basic foods and goods, disruptions in the supply of labor for small businesses; people are using the ballot box to register their anger.  In purple states like Virginia and even in deep blue states like New York and New Jersey safe Democrat seats are going to Republicans both to change policy and also to punish the Democrats for what they’ve already done.

And I will admit it has improved my mood and my opinion of what our future looks like.  But by improved I mean it has gone from utter despair to forlorn hope.  After all it was just ten years ago when we watched as the Tea Party candidates cashed in their election success to become Paul Ryan’s RINOs.  The idea that the gutless, soulless Republicans in Congress will fight to restore our rights in a fight against the FBI and the rest of the Justice Department seems absurd.  The idea that bought and paid for Senators will write legislation to regulate Google and Facebook into respecting our free speech rights is laughable.  The idea that the swamp dwellers in the FBI and the Justice Department will obey the orders of a President or Attorney General who tries to reform or clean out their corrupt gangs has been shown by recent example to be a fantasy.  So why should I be even forlornly hopeful that we’ll be even marginally better off in the near future than we are now?

I think the answer is awareness.  The number of people who are finally aware that the whole political system is a set-up by both parties is orders of magnitude higher than what it was just a few years ago.  Millions more people are now aware that men like Mitch McConnell are not on our side.  They now know that Mitch McConnell is on Mitch McConnell’s side.  He’s a crooked politician whose only priority is to hold onto the political power he has in order to benefit monetarily by it.  And if somehow, he is responsible for an action that benefits people on the Right it is simply a coincidence.  This is the reason that I have any hope at all.  Without awareness of the actual situation someone like me voted for the supposedly conservative politicians at every election.  Often these politicians won and took control in Washington.  And yet year by year, decade by decade nothing got better.  In fact, it got so bad that it seemed like some kind of nightmare where the absolutely worst outcome was always the result.  And that is such a debilitating condition that many on our side just gave up thus making the outcome certain.

But when people know they’re being played they start recognizing the fakes.  People like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio.  Nikki Haley and Mitt Romney.  John McCain and John Kasich.  These people don’t want the things we want.  They believe in the same things our enemies believe in.  That is if they actually believe in anything at all other than money and power.  And knowing that is the only chance we have of getting results.  We can look for someone who actually accomplishes any of the things he promises.  A particularly good way to spot a phony is to see if other phonies start claiming that this guy is the real deal.  Sort of like when the New York Times decides who is the leader of the New Conservatives of the Dark Web.  If that isn’t the kiss of death nothing is.

So that’s kind of why I think we’re in a slightly better place now than a year ago.  The 2020 election, the COVID farce, the BLM riots and Dementia Joe’s lamentable failures have red pilled a goodly chunk of the non-leftists in America.  From my point of view, I’ll at least have a better chance of knowing when it is time to give up all hope and find a new place to live.  So if you can consider that good news then rejoice my people!

Guest Contributor – Chemist – Thoughts on Energy

In Reply to Energy Equates to Wealth

You are more correct than you know. The green revolution is powered by oil. Oil to make diesel fuel for the giant tractors and combines that plant and harvest the crops. Oil to make energy to make the fertilizers that turn marginal soils into high yield soils.
Without petroleum we would be poorer, hungrier and there would be fewer of us. Millions would have starved to death over the last 100 years that, instead, thrived due to petroleum.

If you want carbon free energy you have to look at nuclear. The greens may not like it, but its the only real solution if carbon is the problem. The newly designed modular reactors are incredibly safe and the Thorium cycle reactors are not only safe but do not use nor do they produce material that can be weaponized.
Ah, but: Nuclear bad! (Insert image of Frankenstein’s monster near a torch.) Its dangerous right? Deadly even! More Americans were killed when Biden abandoned Afghanistan than have died due to Nuclear power accidents in the US since the first reactor. That’s a pretty damned good safety record.

Solar? Its a boondoggle. Here is something they don’t talk about a lot wrt solar panels: They only last about 20 years. And the output drops every year. So if you are getting 5KW your first year you are getting about half that a decade later.
Oh, and its damned near impossible to recycle a solar panel.
Its been a lot of years since I did the math (College undergrad research project) but the last time I ran the numbers, it took more energy to make a solar panel that it ever generated in it’s lifetime. It turns out that it takes a crap ton of energy to make, purify and melt silicon. Who knew?

Wind? Another boondoggle. Look into disposing of damaged or end of life turbine blades. There’s a nightmare for you. And the vibrations from the turbine destroy the land they are mounted on to the degree that you can never put another turbine there. If you love nature, don’t look at the number of birds and bats killed by these things.

Geothermal? Maybe. I don’t know how many locations are suitable for it though.

If we could get past the fear of nuclear power, we could build a golden age with cheap, plentiful power and yes, make long chain molecules from water and CO2.

Tweaking the Narrative – How Asians Have Become White Supremacists

The University of Maryland has figured a way to deal with the refusal of Asian American kids to suffer from systemic racism.  They’ve thrown Asians out of the People of Color (POC) club.  It’s been a real embarrassment to race hustlers that Chinese and Indian kids haven’t been held down by the supposed shackles of a white racist education system here and instead have excelled.  So their success has interfered with the affirmative action blueprint that the Left used to divvy up spots in top colleges.  So the University of Maryland has fixed the problem by kicking the Asian kids out of POC and forcing them into the White category where they can be discriminated against and demonized for all it’s worth.

Now that’s progress!  So if you take all the kids whose ancestors were from Europe (the white kids) and lump them together with the Asian kids does that make them the Eurasians?  And then does that mean Eurasian Supremacy is the new devil we all have to fight against?  And what about Madagascar?  It’s close to Africa but it’s in the Indian Ocean does that make them suspect of being hidden Eurasians.  It’s confusing.