Category: Current Events

27JUN2021 – Biden’s America

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I was looking at the headlines today:

  • Amid Crime Spike, Dems’ Future Rests on Eric Adams
  • The Democrats Are Already Losing the Next Election
  • ‘Not My Intent.’ Biden Walks Back Veto Remarks in Bid to Salvage Deal
  • Biden’s Push for Equity in Govt Hits Legal & Political Roadblocks
  • Biden Cap Gains Tax Hike Would Put US Rate Among Highest in World
  • Poll: 80% See Border Disaster, Want Trump Closure Restored, Reject Teaching Critical Race Theory
  • Crime is becoming one of America’s biggest political issues
  • Portland Begs People to Come Back to the City After Months-Long Riots, Rising Crime
  • Los Angeles Crime Wave Hits Wealthy Neighborhood in Deadly Shootout
  • Sheriff in George Floyd Case Blows Up BLM and Leftists with the Truth About Minneapolis Crime
  • Chicago’s crime epidemic is exploding as Biden focuses on gun control

Ah, music to my ears.

The Democrats dynamited their own cities and now they can’t understand why they’re in ruins.  They told the white population that the only way to fix the racial divide is to indoctrinate their children with poisonous lies about how horrible their parents and ancestors are.  And now they can’t understand why these parents are up in arms to stop this.  They spent a year demonizing the police and celebrating the railroading of an officer for a murder he didn’t commit and they’re shocked, shocked that the cops are just going to stand back and watch the black underclass rob and beat their urban neighbors.  They single out their pet minorities, blacks and LGBTQ weirdos, and lavish attention and special privileges on them and wonder why the rest of the country feels no allegiance to this pathetic regime.  They locked up their populations for a year without any measurable savings in lives and now they don’t understand why people don’t trust the “science.”  They turned their cities into prison camps with roving mobs burning and looting at will with no recourse to police and they wonder why no one is returning from the suburbs and beyond.  And after all this they’re confused by the fact that their re-election prospects are dismal.

It’s impossible to say whether the stupid party will seize upon the perfect opportunity to tar the Democrats with all these disasters.  But without a doubt America is not being led by Creepy Joe.  The only way to describe the situation we are in is occupation.  And that’s good enough for now.  No one is talking about compromise, rapprochement, reconciliation or bipartisanship.  Everyone is looking for push back and resistance.  And I think the chief feeling I detect is anger.  We want Creepy Joe to fail.  Even if it means economic disaster and social upheaval we want the country to reject everything the Democrats do.  We want the blue states to suffer the consequences of what they’ve brought on.  I’d like to see New York and Chicago and Minneapolis and especially Portland reduced to a burned-out shell where all the normal people have fled and the street thugs are reduced to preying on each other for food.

All around I see anger and hatred at a country that has been betrayed.  And right now, that’s good enough.

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26JUN2021 – OCF Update

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As you can tell I’ve been spending time doing some of these macro focus stacking projects.  It’s a weird thing and much less fun than just taking photos.  But it does allow me to make images that would be impossible otherwise.  But it’s fussy and time consuming.  I’ll be doing some flower shots soon and I’ll see what else I can think of.

Camera Girl has abandoned me today to learn how to paint pictures.  She left my lunch in the microwave.  I will have to feed the dogs and push the button on the microwave and talk to myself for several hours.  I told her this was a dereliction of her wifely duties.  She narrowed one of her eyes and I think she was thinking bad things about me.  Luckily I think she lacks psychokinetic powers.  Unluckily she makes my food so you never know.

Camera Girl has become a voracious reader of fiction.  It’s mostly crime novels but recently she read a book that was recommended by a friend.  Based on the quality of that book she picked up another one by the same author.  Yesterday she told me that the plot of the book involved a black maternity nurse who gets involved in the death of an infant whose father is a white supremacist.  He even has swastika tattoos on his head.  Apparently, in the story the hospital is punishing the nurse out of consideration for the influence of the swastika guy.  I told Camera Girl I thought this was quite a stretch of the imagination.  “How many white supremacists are out there who have the local district attorney prosecuting black nurses?  I’m thinking the number is slightly lower than one.”

I tried to browbeat her into abandoning her book but she never drops a book until she finishes it, no matter how bad it is.  Well, this prompted me to remind her why I don’t bother to watch most television and movies that have a Leftist slant.  She rolled her eyes and nodded.  I told her I’ll have to find a Dissident Right author for her to read as penance for the indignity I suffered through knowing she was reading this piffle and she made a disparaging noise that was sort of a guffaw mixed with a cough.  Women!

Anyway, I’ll have some stuff up later and we’ll see how the day goes.  It looks nice out so I’ll be at play in the Gardens of the Lord.  Enjoy your day.

Speculations About a Leader

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In a recent opinion piece Angelo Codevilla discussed how state enforced nullification of anti-constitutional federal laws and programs could act as the basis for a new federalism that allows conservatives to regain their freedoms without requiring a civil war.

In the article he stresses that it will take very strong leadership from someone to make something like this a reality.  Codevilla gives Charles De Gaulle as an example of a leader attempting to restore a nation.  And he stresses that the leader has to put the cause above his own personal concerns for glory or gain.  He must submerge his personality into the cause.  Codevilla wisely refuses to speculate about whether Donald Trump will be that leader.  But I’m not that wise and I want to at least discuss what the options will look like and how we’ll know when a leader has arrived.

First off, I want to remind everyone of one thing.  Prior to Donald Trump’s appearance on the scene none, and I mean none, of the so-called Republican leaders at the state or federal level did a damn thing about challenging the Left’s narrative about anything.  When it came to immigration, they kowtowed to the supposition that illegal immigrants should be made citizens and that unlimited illegal and legal immigration was a necessity and “the right thing to do.”  Good old JEB! Bush went so far to say that the crime of illegal immigration was “an act of love.”  And so, anyone who objected to it was a heartless monster who hated children and love.  It took Donald Trump to know that this con wasn’t actually believed by the American people.  And the establishment Republicans continued to denounce his “callous indifference” to criminal aliens all the way to his inauguration and beyond.  Eventually some of these NeverTrumpers woke up and realized they had better come up with a new con that included parroting the things that Trump had shown them.  But I ask you to think about this bit of history because many of those same people are once again presenting themselves to us as the future saviors of the conservative half of the United States.

Of course, we won’t be seeing JEB! or John Kasich or Carly Fiorina or Chris Christie anymore.  They are all done.  But expect Nikki Haley and Marco Rubio to be right there explaining how they’re ready to make America Great Again by only making twenty or thirty million illegal immigrants, citizens, at least in their first term anyway.  After that I’m sure a billion will seem like the right number.  My point here is that the GOP Establishment will never disappear.  They will always bounce back with whatever spin they think will allow them to perform their gatekeeping act and prevent anything from interfering with their “opponents” running the country off a cliff.

So, anyone who tells me that what we need is Trumpism without Trump is talking about something that has never been seen before in real life.  If anyone wants to assume the mantle either in opposition to Donald Trump’s run in 2024 or in his absence if he decides not to run, I say show me what you’ve got.  Prove to me you know what we want and then prove to me that you can and will do it.  And that’s a tall order.  Even Donald Trump was stymied in his desire to “drain the swamp.”  The swamp refused to be drained and he couldn’t change that.  If someone has a plan, we’ll need to know what it is and how he proposes to do it.  In fact, I’m not sure that a lot of us even think a President of the United States can do it alone.  It might take a `       coalition of red state governors with or without a Republican president to make any progress against the combined power of the Deep State and the Globalist Corporate Cabal that currently has us by the throat.

So, anyone who wants to be the new Trump has a lot of explaining to do.  I need to know what and how.  I want to see some evidence that he actually believes in the things he claims to stand for and I want to know who he plans to fire in the Justice Department and I want to know who will be his Attorney General.

And not to be too critical of how he handled an impossible job, if Donald Trump will be running again in 2024, I want to know what he will do this time to prevent the train wreck that the Justice Department caused for his administration.  I’ll want to know what policies he will champion and who in the legislature and who in the governorships he has allied himself with to make these things realities instead of lost causes.

It’s a very long time until 2024.  I would say that anyone who waits until then to start causing changes in the direction of this country is not a leader.  I like that Ron DeSantis is enacting legislature to protect Floridians from first amendment violations by Silicon Valley and unconstitutional federal laws.  I’d love to see him form a coalition with Texas and some of the other red states.  What I’d really like is for these measures to be challenged by the feds and then see a state governor and legislation refuse a federal court’s ruling against them.  I’d like to see them win a staring contest with Creepy Uncle Joe and win!  That’s when I’ll know that here is some leadership on the horizon.  Until then it’s just speculation.

High Summer Triumphalism Collides with Amateur PVC Plumbing

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I woke up this morning with a song in my heart.  Midsummer Day, blue skies, ethereal luminous landscapes, birds singing, flowers blooming, all that crap.  And as I dawdled over my coffee and bagel Camera Girl did what all wives do best.  She toppled the towers of my fairy tale castle.  Report from the kitchen was that the repair I did to the drain line of the sink had failed catastrophically.

I was outraged!  Just a week ago I had disassembled this piece of pvc pipe and its associated o-rings, gaskets and nuts, cleaned it up, inspected the parts.  And finding them good, I reassembled it and using a very satisfyingly heavy monkey wrench I socked the brass nut down on the iron sink drain with authority.  This failure irked me.  So, I gathered my righteous wrath and got my tools out of the garage and descended on that drain line like Thor.

But the brass nut was now a brass ring and a threaded cylinder.  The damn thing had split apart.  It was almost as if someone had overtightened it.  Knowing this to be impossible I explained to Camera Girl that defective Chinese brass was the culprit.  I sighed a manful sigh and after shutting the water valves to the sink and collecting the spool piece and its attendant fittings and specialty items I headed off for replacement parts.  I was going to go to my local hardware store but since this pvc stuff only came on the scene thirty years ago I thought maybe I should try the plumbing supply place that I had seen nearby.

And it was lucky I did.  The friendly and competent employee behind the counter eyeballed the wreckage of a fitting and instantly handed me a new one.  But when I tried to install it on the pipe, we discovered a very strange situation.  The guy who owned the house before me was a very do-it-yourself kind of guy and what he had done was capture the nut between the flange end of the pipe and a tight 90° elbow that he glued up behind it afterward.  Because the old nut split apart, I could get it around the elbow.  But the new nut wouldn’t get by the elbow.  I grumbled some very uncomplimentary remarks about my predecessor but the hardware professional was unphased.  He noted that the pvc nut that tightened the other end of the pipe in place would fit over the elbow with only light violence and I could use my new metal nut on the other joint.  I thought about this for a second.  Metal to pvc?  Sure, why not?  The worst it would do was loosen and I’d put some Teflon tape on it.

I thanked him and asked him how much for the nut.  He said free.  I said, “I can’t just get it for nothing.”  He said, “Think of it as a sales pitch and come back again next time.”  I assured him I would and it wasn’t a lie.  That guy knows how to run a business.

I got home and sure enough the pvc/iron connection fit like a glove.  I made a point of not socking it down with my wrench and determined to check it periodically to see how much it loosened.  The other metal to pvc joint was equally clean fitting and wouldn’t give me any trouble.  I cleaned up the sink area and returned it to Camera Girl’s jurisdiction with noticeable gratitude on her part.  Hail the Conquering Hero.

In celebration, we took a walk around the gardens and admired the Black-Eyed Susans and roses that were blooming.  And just at that time the guy came returning my lawn tractor from repair.  I wasn’t expecting it back for at least two more weeks so this was definitely manna from heaven.  Even with my 20” push mower working again having the sit-down mower would save me four hours of sweat on a hot July morning.  So, things were really going my way now.

Knowing that good things always come in threes I checked the news to see if maybe President Trump had been recognized as the actual winner of the 2020 election while I was busy.  No soap.

Well, it could’ve been much worse.  Trying to get a plumber in my neck of the woods is difficult.  Leaving Camera Girl without a reliable and convenient kitchen sink would be suicidal.  So, this was indeed a best-case result.

So Midsummer Day was interrupted but not ruined.  Now where was that summer idyll I was dreaming of at breakfast?

O mio babino caro!

As de Blasio Takes Victory Lap as World’s Worst Mayor Lightfoot Says Hold My Beer

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John Kass, former reporter for Chicago Tribune writes a scathing indictment of the dishonesty, incompetency and suicidal nature of the Lori Lightfoot administration in Chicago.

The latest atrocity is a young Latino couple returning from the Puerto Rican Day parade are dragged from their car, assaulted, then shot execution style for the video camera while the perpetrators run or amble away.

Lightfoot goes on camera to say how unacceptable all this is and how the killers will not be given immediate release from jail pending trial.  Boy, that’ll show’em.  Of course, that’s assuming they are ever caught.  After all the police really aren’t arresting people anymore.  Why should they?  If they do, they might be prosecuted if they have to shoot it out with the criminals.

Kass provides a long list of victims that stretch back over the last year of Lightfoot’s tenure as useless mayor of a dying city.  But she’s working hard to rename the iconic Lake Shore Drive after the city’s first non-native settler, the trader Jean Baptiste Point DuSable.  That’s right she is brokering a deal to have it called Jean Baptiste Point DuSable Lake Shore Drive.  Now that’s what I call statesmanship.

I am curious to see which major city cracks first.  New York and Chicago are in the running for sure.  I’ll define crack as when the National Guard are given shoot to kill orders.  I could go out on a limb and say this summer will do the trick but who knows?  These city folks will put up with a lot.  I’m sure that murder, rape and arson are a small price to pay to put an end to white supremacy.  Diversity, equity and inclusion is tricky business.  Burning down America’s cities doesn’t seem to be too high a price to pay.  Minneapolis, it’s your turn.

Codevilla Proposes a Plan for Avoiding a Civil War – Federalism

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Anthony Codevilla lays out how he sees restoring a way of life would have to take place in the United States.  And he clearly says that neither side is going to convince the other side to go along with it.  But he thinks the only way to avoid actual warfare is for the two sides to separate along regional or even local areas and ignore each other.  In this way the larger country can still cooperate on things like roads and armed forces without having to completely split the country in two.

It’s very long but worth reading if you enjoy an historian’s recapping of the historical precedence for re-establishing a conquered nation.  He goes into the way he thinks a national leader has to act to have this movement succeed.  And he does say that a strong leader will be necessary.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Fresh Prince of Gotham

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The NYC Democratic Mayoral Primary is today and although there will also be a Republican candidate selected today that’s more or less a formality and whichever Democratic bozo is the primary winner will be installed as Grand High Exalted Leader of Gotham by the Sea.

Polls have shown that even the brainless progressives who inhabit this modern-day Rome have become spooked by the daily horrific assaults and the scope of the theft that now goes on routinely throughout their once safe metropolis and will lead to the “law and order” Democrat, former policeman Eric Adams, being selected based on his promise not to disband the NYPD.

And that may be true.  But I’m hoping for a different outcome.  I’m hoping a dark horse wins.  I’m talking about Paperboy Love Prince.  Born David Porter Jr., this non-binary candidate prefers the pronouns God/Goddess, Paperboy Prince, and they/them.

According to his Wikipedia page “they dress as “royalty” to draw attention to how politicians can hold power for longer than kings or queens.   In an interview with fashion magazine Prince explained how freedom in fashion encourages freedom in thinking and welcoming of diversity.  They often wear a Game Boy Advance SP or Game Boy Color around their neck.  Prince hosts a community center called the Love Gallery on Myrtle Avenue in Bushwick, Brooklyn.  In addition to being a place for community meetings, the Love Gallery is also a vintage clothing store, a food distribution center, and their political campaign headquarters.”

Currently Paperboy is running a little behind.  With about 2% of the vote in he has 0.4% of the vote.  That’s 958 votes out of a current 240,000.  But I sense a stirring in the force.  I know that this is the non-binary goddess New York is waiting for.  I think under a Paperboy Love Prince administration New York will get the treatment it truly deserves.  True Bill de Blasio went a long way in fundamentally transforming New York from an old-fashioned stodgy city with high paying jobs and neighborhoods that included somewhat functional schools and subways into a vibrant paradise where every moment is an adrenaline rush and you live life to the fullest as if every moment could be your last.  And that’s because, of course, it very possibly could be your last.

But that was just the beginning.  With Paperboy we will see a level of dysfunction heretofore undreamed of.  You can only imagine how this Paperboy Love Prince (PLP) will appoint incredible humanoids to head up his departments.  Undoubtedly the Police Commissioner will not have a law and order bent (or pants probably).  And the Education Commissioner will not be focused on test scores or any of that jazz.  It will be about finding the maximum number of transgender candidates hiding out in the third grade.

I assume PLP won’t have time to maintain a sanitation department or try to keep the buses and subways running.  You can’t do everything you know.  But he will probably add new innovative departments like the Commissioner of Twitter and TikTok or something cool like that.

Of course, I don’t expect PLP’s administration to go the whole four years of “their” term.  I’d say eighteen months should be long enough for black plague and cannibalism to resolve things.  But it will be a time to remember.  And by the end it will produce a cityscape familiar to anyone who’s seen “Escape From New York.”

So come on Big Apple, give Paperboy his shot.  He’s ready and he’s sure to finish off any doubts about the future.

Update: Well, Paperboy Love Prince got 0.4% of the vote (~3,400 votes).  The MAN says Paperboy lost but hold on!  If all the voters who voted for someone else happened to put Paperboy as their second choice then this thing can turn around.  Don’t give up.  Paperboy can still win!

22JUN2021 – Best Headline of the Week Goes to The Babylon Bee

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How can you beat, “Female Weightlifter Suffers Tragic Testicle Injury Just Weeks Before Tokyo Olympics“.?

Recently Babylon Bee was able to force the NY Times to retract a statement saying that the Babylon Bee was a purveyor of misinformation instead of a satire site.  If only the Republican Party had half the backbone these guys have.

These guys deserve our support.  They are a unique resource.  And I envy their talent.

My favorite line of the article is the last, “Sometimes your testicles get in the way, Hubbard said. That’s just something we gals have to deal with.”

 

 

 

High Summer

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Sunday, June 20th was the Summer Solstice this year.  That was the longest day of the year.  And Thursday, June 24th is Midsummer Day which is the traditional center of the growing season.  And that is called the beginning of High Summer.  That is the finest time of the year and unless you are afflicted in either mind or body, you’ll probably be feeling your oats about this time of year.  The Old Farmer’s Almanac says that it is the Feast of St. John the Baptist and that “the dew on Midsummer Day makes young girls beautiful and old people look younger.”  Well, it’s worth a shot.

And anyone familiar with Will Shakespeare’s, “A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream,” knows that faeries and goblins celebrate and cavort in the forests and wild places that night.  Well, we’ll see about that.  But I expect that the fireflies will make their appearance and that will suffice as far as magic for me.  I’m hoping to keep my little two-year old granddaughter up past her bedtime one night soon to see the fireflies for the first time in her young life.  She’s had so many books about them read to her.  It’s time she saw what all the hype is about.  I think she’ll be impressed.

I’ve got a couple of parties coming up, one for family, one for friends, and just thinking about them makes me feel like a kid waiting for his birthday or Christmas.  And it reinforces what I’ve been thinking about all the crazy things going on in this world we live in.  What really counts is the people you care about.  Being with them and sharing the small rituals and celebrating the things that are happening in their lives is infinitely more important than what that meathead in the White House mumbles at us on tv.  Sure, he can make our lives worse and he can help other evil men attack us but that’s no different than a lot of the other dangers that lurk in this world.

So, the world keeps circling the sun and wobbling on its axis.  We keep being born and growing up and bringing new people into this world.  All this other nonsense about white privilege and transphobia and gay marriage is all mental illness that we have to hold at arms’ length so that we don’t miss the fleeting joys that this life holds.  Be honest with your kids and grandkids.  Don’t be afraid to tell them what you believe and why.  Otherwise, they’ll assume you believe in what the teacher at school tells them is true.  Tell them what the important things in life are; family, marriage, children, work and fun.  Whether we ever reclaim our liberty in this “land of the free” is uncertain.  But stopping your life waiting for it is foolish.  Sure, pay attention to the politics and how it affects you but ruining your life fretting about defeats in Washington is madness.  You can make a much bigger impact on the world by acting on your local reality.

So, this Fourth of July I am declaring my independence from Washington.  They are a foreign power and I renounce all loyalty to them and deny their legitimacy.  I know what the Constitution says.  Those are my rights.  Anyone who denies that I have those rights isn’t an American and has no business governing a free people.  I will work to make my life meaningful and help the people that I care about.  If I find people who agree with me then we can find common cause and maybe my horizons broaden.  That’s how politics is supposed to work.

But if it comes right down to it even our side doesn’t have a claim on us unless they prove that they’re more than just talk.  Republicans have been lying to me my whole life and other than a couple of exceptions they haven’t saved a damn thing worth saving.  If they want my support then they need to support me.

So that’s my thesis.  I’m going to put summer to its highest and best purpose.  I’m going to enjoy the intensity of summer at its peak and celebrate my life with the people that matter to me.  I hope you enjoy your summer too.

The Absurdity of Republican Governors in Blue States

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The linked article describes how Andrew Cuomo’s refusal to resign following his twin scandals of killing off all of New York State’s old people with COVID and groping all the women who work for him has opened up an opportunity for a Republican to be elected as Governor next year.  Oh, joy.

I lived for decades in a state that typically goes through a cycle of one or two terms of a Democrat governor followed by four or five terms of Republican governors.  How it works is that a Democrat governor does so much fiscal and public safety harm during just a few years in office that even the ideologues in the blue state population realize that their livelihoods and lives are at risk.  So, they allow a Republican to come in and right the ship.

But the Republican governor is so grateful to be allowed to fix their mess that he bends over backward to be indistinguishable from a Democrat on social issues.  The state I refer to is Massachusetts and they brought in William Weld and his two subordinates and then Mitt Romney to clean up the Mike Dukakis mess.  Then after they let the Barack Obama Mini-Me (Deval Patrick) crash the Massachusetts Miracle for eight years they had to bring in Charlie Baker to stop the hemorrhaging and allow the state to revive.

Why exactly Blue State Republicans are willing to fulfill this role for their progressive constituencies is a mystery to me.  I suppose they are attached to their homes and always hope that a permanent equilibrium is possible.  But this is a fool’s hope.  Just looking at Massachusetts, or even more vivid, New York City’s mayoral history will demonstrate that the fiscal and public safety sanity that a Republican leader provides will eventually convince the progressive population that they have nothing to fear by installing a lunatic like Deval Patrick or Bill de Blasio.  And once the inevitable happens they still only grudgingly accept the prescription that a Republican reformer brings to them and chafe at its requirements to hold people accountable regardless of favored racial and sexual status.

So, you get this predictable oscillation, up and down, for crime and poverty and chaos.  The question remains why the Republicans bother.  It will never get better and they will never get credit for keeping their constituencies from destroying themselves.  Places like California, New York and New England should be allowed to destroy themselves without interference from the people they so obviously despise.  This is the accelerationist argument and over time I’ve come to adopt it wholeheartedly.  It will only be after one of these places crashes completely that the people who are left might learn enough to know that the things they believe in are irrational and unsustainable in the real world.

So, I wholeheartedly agree with ridiculing the people who run these states and highlighting for everyone to see how awful the outcomes of their policy choices are.  But I object to the Right, such as it still exists in these places, pulling their chestnuts out of the fire.  Things need to get so bad that even the elites that formulate these nonsensical polices are made to suffer the consequences.  Probably, from my point of view, the perfect outcome would be for the inhabitants to revert to cannibalism and eat Bill Gates and Nancy Pelosi off of a spit.  In that way they could see the racial justice they strive for brought to fruition and also do their part for sustainability.  After all, in California there is an almost inexhaustible supply of white progressives and I can think of no higher use to put them to than as entrees on a community barbecue menu.