Category: Current Events

A Voice Out of the Past – Part 1

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Today I was taking care of some paperwork and a phone call came through.  Now we only have a land line.  No smartphone paraphernalia so I have to go over to the phone to see who’s there.  Well, the phone number was from the New York City area and was unfamiliar so I let it go to voicemail.  When the caller started leaving a message, I immediately recognized the voice and as he started leaving his name, I found out I was right.  It was a guy I worked with back in 1987.  I left the City in 1988 and I guess I never expected to hear from him again.

I immediately picked up the call and we started catching up.  Apparently, he retired last year and was cleaning up some old letters and photos from the time period and he decided to try and look me up.  We did the usual back and forth talking about the people we worked with back then and it was amazing how many details were at our fingertips even after thirty-four years.  As it turned out both of us left the field we were in at the time.  Which is not surprising.  He and I had separately drifted into the securities industry by getting our Series 7 license to work in Manhattan’s Wall Street district during the bull market of the 1980’s.  The fact that we both left after the 1987 crash is hardly surprising but it is gratifying to know that he also found a safe haven in the economy of the time.

Well, we swapped stories about what had happened to us since that time and then we asked each other if we knew of any of the other people we worked with.  But mostly we had lost touch with a former life.  And then we reflected on that life.  We agreed it wasn’t a place you would want to stay in for long but that it taught you a lot about people and a lot about yourself.  We exchanged info and we plan on getting together for a reunion.

But it’s got me thinking about some of the things that went on back then.  And some of them are pretty good stories.  I think they’re worth relating.

I got involved with Wall Street when I ran out of money to complete the last few credits of my engineering degree.  I had a wife and three young kids and bills and things that needed buying.  So, I decided to become a “stock broker” and make my fortune or at least get enough money to finish my degree.

That was a different world.  You see the retail brokers of back then were being replaced by the “discount brokers.”  And shortly both would be replaced by electronic trading that would sweep away the old Wall Street completely.  But back then we still had accounts and clients and commissions and had to wear suits and ties.  We had to know the floor brokers and know how to deal with the various options exchanges and we had to at least hint to the customer that we could do magical things with his order.  There was a definite P.T. Barnum aspect to the customer relations side of the job.

And this bull market was a magnet for people looking to live in the New York City area and wanted to “get rich.”  Almost all of the brokers traded their own accounts and many of them dreamed of building up a stake and making a living day-trading.  And it was this powerful force that ensured that the entrants were a motley crew.  We had all kinds.  And some of them were quite colorful.  Some were actually crazy.  This was partly due to the drug culture of the time.  Several of the people I worked with had a cocaine problem.  One fellow in particular named Joe eventually was forced out when he started having real problems.  Joe was a colorful character.  He was always using small exercise devices to strengthen his hands and wrists and he was constantly throwing karate punches and blocks in the air around his desk.  He was quite a sight.  On Halloween he brought in a black velvet bag that had what looked like an actual human skull.  And one evening when his supervisor Rich was berating him for not handling his fair share of the work load Joe picked this little man up by the forearms and walked him over to one of the windows and asked him if he’d like to be thrown out.  Joe was a pretty big guy and we were on the 15th floor of an old building that had old style windows that could be opened.  Nobody thought Joe would throw Rich out the window, except maybe Rich, but it was a serious breach of office etiquette to say the least.  Luckily for Joe, Rich never said anything about it and afterwards gave Joe a wide berth.

Later on, I was Joe’s supervisor and he came to me to complain that people were talking about him.  You can imagine I wasn’t particularly surprised to hear this.  So, I took him into a conference room and asked him to tell me about it.  He said that he heard them talking about him in the lunch room.  He was sitting next to the soda machine so he was sort of hidden from the rest of the room.  He heard some comments about himself that were very insulting.  They made him pretty mad but rather than start a fight he came to me.  I complimented him on his restraint and then asked him who made the comments.  He said, “The soda machine.”

Well, that slowed me down.  I said, “Joe, I’m going to have to kick this upstairs to Bill.”   Bill was the senior manager for the brokers.  I said, “Bill deals directly with all vending machine related issues.”  Then I told Joe that he looked a little tired and considering what he had been through I thought he should take the rest of the day off and get some rest.  He thanked me and went home.  When I passed this along to Bill his eyes bugged out and he told me to leave this to him and not mention it to anyone.  Joe never came back to the office.  But about three months later he called me at home and told me that the company had helped him find a good rehab program to get off the cocaine.  And he had left Wall Street behind and was working for his uncle who had a printing business in Brooklyn.  He sounded as happy as I’d ever heard him.  Joe may not have been the craziest guy I worked with on Wall Street but he was surely one of the most colorful.  And he had one of the happiest endings to his story there.

Here’s an Honest Scientist Who is Talking sense About COVID

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David Livermore is a professor of medical microbiology at the University of East Anglia and in this essay he tries to use scientific logic to address the current COVID reality.

Here I paraphrase his arguments:

  1. Coronaviruses cannot be vaccinated against permanently.
  2. Because the vaccinated can catch COVID pretty soon the number of infected vaccinated patients will far exceed infected unvaccinated patients so pretending that the unvaccinated are some kind of problem is just stupid.
  3. COVID is never going away so pretending we’ll eliminate it is stupid.
  4. Locking down the population and masking up every time a new variant emerges is stupid.
  5. We’ll end up with COVID being the fifth common corona virus that gives us a cold every year or so.  And like the flu old people will sometimes die of it.

Seems like an honest scientist.  I’m sure he’ll be jailed for speaking the truth.

If Biden is President is This Still America?

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When Caligula declared his horse Incitatus a Roman Senator did that give pause to some proportion of the Roman citizenry.  Did they think, “Is this still Rome?”

I have to say that is how I currently feel, “Is this still America?”  Just look around at the madness that has enveloped almost every facet of life.  I won’t bother naming them again.  It’s too repetitive and depressing.  You can fill in the blanks.  But concisely, if someone like Joe Biden is the President then ask yourself, “Is this Still America?”

A lifelong political grifter whose drug addled son acts as a bag man to shake down foreign governments for kickbacks.  A man who can no longer make a coherent speech about the simplest things.  A man who has been lying about himself and his motives for decades and someone who can’t keep his hands off of women and even young girls even when the cameras are rolling.  If this man is the President of the United States is this still the same country we knew?

The answer is no, it’s not.  In the same way that the Roman Empire wasn’t the Roman Republic.  It was a gangster state, an oligarchy that used a once free people as conscript troops to rule a continental empire.  And that’s where we are now.  An oligarchy rules over us and you and I have about as much say over it as some plebian would have telling Caligula to leave his daughter alone.  We are a despised and unwelcome people.  The only thing we’re needed for is an army.  Soon foreign conscripts will be installed in the army and then they can disarm and enslave us at their leisure.  We are strangers in our own land and we are being dealt with as quickly as possible.

The only question worth asking at this point is whether it’s already too late to do anything other than leave.  And even leaving is questionable.  For this empire isn’t continental, it’s global.  Sure, Russia and China are on the outside, sort of, and the really backward nations are client states that only supply sweatshops and immigrants.  But the places you can go to escape this mess aren’t certain to last.  How many places can’t be pressured or bribed to bend the knee.  Recently we found out one of those places is Afghanistan.  But imagine living there?  That’s how far you would have to go to escape the Empire.

The hopeful thing is that the Empire seems to have skipped several stages in the familiar evolution.  We seem to be progressing rather quickly from Late Republic to Visigothic sack all in a day.  After all Joe Biden isn’t Augustus.  He’s not even Tiberius.  Dementia Joe is more like a 4th century emperor who has to dodge marauding armies of barbarians while avoiding assassination by his successor.  The only question is whether there is enough left in the treasure chamber to pay off the Huns for a few more years.

After that we’ll be looking at a new world.  And that will be an exciting and frightening thing.  Looking for a stable and safe refuge will be an important and difficult task.  Eastern Europe?  East Asia?  South America?  Maybe even a rump America somewhere in the red states?  It’s impossible to say.

I guess there’s some consolation in knowing that the traitors who destroyed our country have slit their own throats at the same time.  No groundswell of brave volunteers will enlist and save Creepy Uncle Joe when he bungles his way into a war with Iran or North Korea.  All he’ll have at his back will be the praetorian guard, or in his case the FBI.  But when the going really gets rough they’ll sell him out to the highest bidder.  Then Jeff Bezos can be emperor for a few weeks until a real general comes along and makes mincemeat of the Amazon Kid.

So, get ready to enjoy the ride it’s bound to be bumpy but I’m beginning to think it might be more interesting than some assumed.  One thing that might be worth considering, when the marauders overrun the country, it might be worthwhile finding out what their terms of service look like.  It might give you an opportunity for some payback.  Who knows, you could end up as the warlord of Silicon Valley.  They definitely wouldn’t be de-platforming you anymore.

12AUG2021 – OCF Update – Work, Work, Work

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Camera Girl had me in the garage setting mouse traps in anticipation of the fall return of Mouse Man.  Why mice in a garage is a big deal I don’t know but women fear rodents.  So Mouse Man must die!

I’ll be out this morning stalking the elusive hummingbird and I can already tell the heat is gonna be something.  But we all must suffer for our art so high ho, high ho.

I’ll return later to see what’s brewing.  Apparently Joe Biden wants the King of Saudi Arabia to lower the price of oil.  Yeah, right.  Maybe he can make Andrew Cuomo the ambassador to Saudi Arabia and they can chase the Saudi king’s various dancing girls around the pool.  But I think the price of oil is only going one way.

To be continued.

Man’s Prerogatives and the Naming of Names – The Power of Words

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And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. 19And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. 20And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. 21And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; 22And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. 23And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

The naming of things is our first prerogative.  Adam was given that job.  On a personal level the men of my family have always had a knack for naming things.  My paternal grandfather was very skilled at providing apt nicknames for his friends, relatives and acquaintances.  Not all of the names were complimentary or even friendly but the odd thing is they were accepted and they stuck.  Sometimes they became the only name that was used for the poor afflicted recipient.  There was a man who lived next door to my grandfather and to this day no one knows the man’s name except as Jimmie Goo.  And, so help me, when you looked at him you thought, “He looks like a Jimmie Goo!”  My father was pretty good at this also.  I have several brothers who specialize in nicknames.  And my grandson has shown a natural affinity for the job too.  Dogs and even brothers with perfectly serviceable names find themselves renamed by him and in a short time the new name becomes established.  It’s a strange gift but its existence seems undeniable to me.  We inherit it from our first father, Adam, and we do it naturally like a baby breathes air.

So that’s why women want to get rid of our legacy.  You even hear idiots like one of those morons in Congress who thought the word “amen” was a patriarchal insult.  Here were people too stupid to know that the syllable men does not refer to male human beings in every language.  A word that goes back to biblical Hebrew is confused with a word in a language that didn’t even exist during Old Testament times.  But this is what the power of stupid has brought us to.  Gibbering imbeciles get to decide how our language will be spoken because we’ve lost the courage to tell idiots to shut up.  And so it goes.  Sexual deviants with strange delusions about their bodies are making up “pronouns” out of collections of consonants that have never existed in English and couldn’t be pronounced if anyone bothered to try.  Cities, buildings, even mountains are being renamed so that women or favored grievance groups won’t take offense at history.

Well, I don’t go along.  If someone is mentioned in a spoken or written account, I say he or she, her or him.  Not they.  I can count.  One isn’t two or three.  It’s one.  One isn’t they.  The royal plural doesn’t apply to Ocasio-Cortez or Ilhan Omar or Rashida Tlaib.  They’re just meatheads whose existence barely deserves a singular human description.  I’d accept it to describe them because they are a thing.  A very weird unhealthy thing.

Words are powerful things.  Used constructively they convey meaning and provide context for understanding the underlying things.  Pennsylvania meant William Penn’s woods.  New England meant the English had found a new home.  The Confederate flag represented the states that fought a war to maintain their independence.  The District of Columbia was named after the man who discovered the Western Hemisphere.  Washington state is named after the man who led our armies to victory over King George III and refused to be a king.  People who pretend to be outraged that we honor these men and symbols are evil people or idiots.  Neither is acceptable.

Men will name the things they find and invent.  Eve knew better than to get involved in Adam’s work.  The one time she got involved in making a decision she listened to the devil and got the two of them thrown out of the Garden of Eden.  Women should stick to raising children and being sympathetic, the two things they do well.  And the rest of these idiots belong somewhere far away from America.

The Dog Day

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It’s a hot one, a scorcher.  I was out there trying to get some shots of hummingbirds and I think they were watching me from the shade of the trees saying to each other, “Is he crazy?  We’re not going out in that sun for a little sugar water!”

But this is real summer.  You can see all the moisture the ground has soaked up over the last month or so rippling into the air as currents of chromatic diffractions of the solar photons pummeling the ground.  I put on my floppy hat and brave the noonday sun in quest of photographic knowledge.  And there’s scant little of that.  Even the usually reliable bees and butterflies and even the dragonflies have taken refuge out of the sun, the cowards.

Camera Girl and Princess Sack-of-Potatoes took to the pool after lunch and of course as soon as I went in for lunch, supposedly, the hummingbirds were everywhere, on the flowers, at the feeders, even hovering between the girls at the side of the pool.  I shouted out, “Fake News!”  But her haughty sneer let me know I wasn’t fooling Camera Girl.  I knew she spoke the truth.

I will go back out after four.  At that point the sun’s blast will be merely Saharan and therefore survivable.  I will say that this tracking autofocus function still requires a fair amount of skill, of technique that I am sadly lacking.  But persevere I will.  I must know the answers.  Are my old lenses useful or ballast?  I will find out.

After conferring with my grandsons I recognized their seasonal anxiety.  They sense the end of summer vacation.  They reminded me not to waste the days that we have left.  Labor Day is right up the road and after that there’s nothing on the horizon until Halloween.  So I must get out there and see what I can see.

I think tomorrow I’ll head for the local lake.  I want to see if any water birds are around.  That would be a nice tame autofocus-tracking target.  I’m tired of trying to capture Larold running at full tilt.  The camera doesn’t stand a chance.  Last year there was a bald eagle at that lake.  I don’t suppose I’ll luck out and it’ll be there but you never know.  In an unrelated photographic idea there is an old colonial graveyard nearby and I thought I’d go over there and do some closeup photography of the old stones.  Nothing that will show the whole stones but more the texture of the erosion on the carving.

Haven’t seen much wildlife this summer.  There was a bear on the property recently but he didn’t do any damage surprisingly enough.  Last year he flattened one of our bird feeder polls.  And speaking of birds Camera girl has been reading about some mysterious bird ailment that is killing the birds.  So of course the first thing they tell her is “Stop feeding the birds!”  Blah, blah, blah.  I told her do as she pleases.  If feeding the birds is going to cause the apocalypse then let her rip.  I figure it’s bird COVID.  So why shouldn’t they get a taste of it too?

Well, the silly season is ending in three weeks or so.  Then we’ll have the atrocities in Washington to bemoan, only I’m all out of outrage for the inevitable.  I figure codified election fraud is in our immediate future so bring it on.  But it will wake up a mess of normies.  Maybe that will do some good.  So enjoy the rest of the summer and I’ll be here when you get back.

And here is the dog himself Larold the Wonder Dog.

Vox Day’s Website Shut By Google

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Vox is currently posting at Gab and says he’ll announce his new web location soon.  Vox is very outspoken about the COVID vaccine and this is especially irritating to the social media companies with their lockstep with government approach to COVID.  Vox’s other sites, Castalia House and Arkhaven are unaffected as far as I could tell.

Vox feuds with lots of folks on both sides of the political spectrum but he has been very prescient about many important things going on.  He was a very early and staunch partisan for Donald Trump.  And he has written some very useful things about dealing with SJW’s (social justice warriors).

And of course when they go after someone on the Right making believe that it couldn’t happen to you is ridiculous.  Virtue signaling can’t help people on our side of the aisle.  Sticking together can.

Edit:  And Vox must be remembered for the masterful way he punked the Hugo Awards a few years back.  His Rabid Puppy campaign had a ridiculous dinosaur pornography story named Space Raptor Butt Invasion successfully nominated for the sacred Hugo for best science fiction story and that alone should ensure him a place in history.

Update:

Vox has his backup website up

2nd update

Vox has activated his permanent new site.  Congrats for getting up and running so quickly.

 

Where, When and How Does Sanity Reappear?

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The more that happens the less sure I am that we’re near the bottom.  In fact, there does not seem to be any bottom.  When New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, Atlanta, St. Louis and Portland have all become the new Detroits and freedom of speech has been ended and Washington decides who can work and live and even walk down the street, then what further outrage is left as unthinkable?

The sex of newborns is to be left off birth certificates.  Children will be sexually mutilated by their parents or social workers if they can confuse a grade school child into acting confused about its sex.  Sexual deviants will be brought into the classroom to proselytize children about sodomy.

Voting fraud is being codified in the Congress of the United States and the President is openly abandoning the borders of this country to millions of additional criminal aliens.

Maybe it will have to get much, much worse before the citizens of this country finally reach a point where they risk taking a stand.  Maybe when the government begins confiscation of private property.  Let’s say they decide to tax 401K savings at some prohibitive rate in order to use this money for slavery reparations.  Would that be enough to trigger direct action?  How about if as part of the equity they’ve been talking about they change the tax code to punish people who suffer from the stigma of whiteness?  Perhaps taxing them at a triple rate compared to everyone else?

But maybe not.  I’ve seen no indication that large numbers of people are even close to saying, “No more!”  Maybe there is no limit.  Maybe we’ve just become empty men.  Maybe there’s no fight left in us at all.  Are we just the frog in the slowly heated pot?  Will we just let ourselves be cooked as long as it’s done nice and gradually?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.  Here we are almost five years after Trump’s election and we’re farther in the hole than we were in 2016.  I’m beginning to believe there is no point at which the people of this country will stand up and tell Washington they’ve had enough.

The only hint that anything stands between us and the Oligarchy is Ron DeSantis in Florida and maybe Greg Abbott in Texas.  So how about this, those two guys are up for re-election.  The first sign that there is no hope is if they don’t get re-elected.  Let’s call that the first test.

Next sign is if they cave or are forced by the federal government to change direction and obey Washington.  That’s the second test.

These two are both negative tests that only have to be avoided.  But even if we pass both of these the third is a positive test.  Within two years one of them has to score a major victory against the Oligarchy.  And what would that be?  For me that would have to be a showdown where the feds had to back down.  Let’s say one of those two governors crushed the Antifa/BLM movement in all the cities in his state.  That would qualify.  Or if one of them nullified one of the major unconstitutional federal laws like affirmative action or cracking down on illegal aliens.  One of those things would make me believe there was hope.

I’ll say all three of these things would have to happen before the midterms.  I think that’s long enough to wait.  If nothing happens by then I’ll assume nothing will and I’ll start looking for a new home.  If any of you are thinking about these things too, I recommend that you put some kind of time limit on these things.  Otherwise, I have a feeling you’ll end up like the slowly cooked frog, comfortably numb.

10AUG2021 – OCF Update

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Today I was on guard duty.  I fit in a little photo time and got a chance to participate in a zoom with the guys but it was a day that didn’t leave much time for writing.

But I did note a few interesting news items.

Cuomo resigned.  Too bad.  He would have driven the MeeToo girls crazy if he had hung in.  He’s such a sleazy guy that just seeing him with a D after his name makes me feel happy.  Oh well, Andy, we hardly knew ye.

But now what about Fredo?  Does CNN need the brother of a disgraced NY State Governor?  And that’s even supposing he could read and speak English fluently which he can’t.  Mother of mercy!  Could this be the end of Fredo?

I saw that Abbott in Texas successfully petitioned the Texas Supreme Court to block that leftist judge who wanted to shield the runaway Dem legislators from arrest for dereliction of duty.  That’s a good first step but he still needs to find a way to lure them back into Texas for arrest.  Maybe he can tell each of them he has won a million dollar lottery and it must be claimed in person.  Or maybe they can just tempt them with police officers posing as underage children for them to molest.  Either probably will get some results.  After all they’re Democrats.  Look at the pedo in the Arizona legislature.  He was the one celebrating his gayness.  In hindsight maybe not the ambassador for the LGBTQ movement.

I had the grandkids over today and the younger ones were in the pool but one of the senior ranks and I started watching the Lord of the Rings movies.  He’s a fan of the Two Towers so we dove in there.  A little too much Gollum in that disk for me.  He’s truly annoying.  We both decided that they should have given the Ring to Sam and he would have finished the mission before the end of the siege of Helm’s Deep.

I’ll have an installment of the photo series soon and I may have a political post later.  But right now family beckons.

Chicago PD Turns Backs to Lightfoot at Hospital of Shot Officer

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Thirty police officers at the bedside of a cop who was shot during a traffic stop along with his partner who was killed turned their backs on bug-eyed Mayor Lori Lightfoot when she came to speak to them at the hospital.  And the officer’s father who is also a retired policeman gave Lightfoot a piece of his mind.

Good.  The whole force should take a sick week and officially announce to the gangs that they’re free to go visit Lightfoot at her den and eat the City Council too if they’re hungry.  All these cities need to see what defunding the police really would look like.  It would be very educational.