Category: Current Events

21JUL2020 – OCF Update

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I saw Vox Day had a link to an article and an excerpt about Red Bull firing their North American Chief Executive and Chief Marketing Officer because they were pushing a BLM diversity and inclusion racket at the company.  Apparently Red Bull is run by a billionaire CEO Dietrich Mateschitz in Austria and he’s old school.  He even likes Donald Trump.  Apparently these two were leading a social justice crusade.  They leaked a letter to the press where 300 employees complained about Red Bull’s lack of wokeness.  I’m guessing those 300 whiners may be joining the ranks of the unemployed woke very soon.  I’m not the kind to drink energy drinks but I’ll have to see how to give a boost to a company that has its head screwed on right like they do.

I’ve started reading Stanislaus Lem’s “Cyberiad.”  War Pig had mentioned it and I remember I was interested in reading some more of his stuff way back when.  It’s off-beat and very humorous and that’s something you don’t get in sf&f very often so I’m thinking this will be good.

I’m looking for someone who has a background in guns to write some articles on classic and state of the art handguns.  I’ve always thought those kind of articles will be popular and useful for the readers here.  If anyone is interested leave a comment or e-mail.

I’ll put up a review of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”  It’s not my usual movie but it was recommended and it has some interesting points.  But it is a Quentin Tarantino film and he is a strange dude.

I’ve gotten some more of Olivier’s Shakespeare movies.  I’ll throw those on the pile and watch them soon.  I’m thinking I need to do a series on classic westerns.  I should make a point of buying the dvds before the studios decide to destroy them out of woke spite.

And finally I made a point of buying a Columbus biography written before the revisionists blackened his name.  It should be just the thing for ammunition against the brainless when they screech against him.

 

Lend Me Your Ears

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“Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Lend Me Your Ears.”   Shakespeare surely could craft a line.  A few weeks ago, I was watching Brando’s take on Mark Antony in Julius Caesar.  He gave the line a different emphasis.  Instead of declaiming it as a sonorous prologue to his eulogy of Caesar he barked it out as a command for silence from an unruly crowd.  It came off odd, almost jarring.  It wasn’t what I expected.  But it could work dramatically and it went along with Brando’s portrayal of Antony.

And it occurred to me that here was a man standing in the center of the Roman Republic surrounded by the common people and willing to stir them up while his murderous enemies were just down the street.  He took his chance to wake up the people, to stir them to life.  Rome in 44 B.C. was already in the midst of a long series of upheavals as the extreme wealth made possible by the army’s conquests fueled the oligarchs in their systematic destruction of republican life which guaranteed the eventual rise of Augustus and the Empire.

So, Shakespeare read Plutarch and imagined a late republic demagogue haranguing the Roman street to incite them to mutiny against the Senate in favor of the party and friends of the murdered populist dictator of Rome.  And he throws around the words ambitious and honorable and can make the first seem like a lie and the second sound like an epithet.

It’s very unlikely that what Marcus Antonius actually said to the Roman crowd could be translated into anything like what Shakespeare had him utter but the spirit of the conflict is there.  The Roman people were being dispossessed by their ruling class.  Citizenship was being diluted by extension to the provinces and the government was ruled exclusively by and for the rich.  Staggering number of farm slaves made it impossible for the small citizen farmer to compete with the enormous plantations that the rich senators ran.  Army service became an endless and prison-like sentence.  Rome was becoming just like any eastern despotism that had preceded it.  The only thing lacking was the title of king.

A careful scholar of Roman and American history would surely tell you that history never repeats itself but merely echoes universal human themes in every age and place.  But to be totally honest, it’s close enough for me.  We’re watching free men turning into serfs before our eyes.  Just as the Roman republic was rotted out by the power of the wealthy to outmaneuver and finally enslave the plebeians, just so, we are being manipulated and disenfranchised by the elites and their globalist minions.  We are being propagandized and gaslit and being stripped of our heroes and our history.  We are being displaced and disposed of.

Well, let me try it on for size.  My platform isn’t the Roman Forum after the death of Caesar but it’ll have to do.  I’m not eulogizing an assassinated leader I’m mourning for the murdered American Dream.

Friends, Americans, Countrymen, Lend Me Your Ears.

What is going on now is not America.  Even during the Civil War, we had recognizable Americans on both sides fighting over issues of freedom and independence but both sides considered themselves Americans down to their toes.  Now we live in a country where almost half of the people living here hate America and all it stands for.  All they like about it is its wealth and they are quickly arranging for that to be swallowed up in a paroxysm of violence and destruction.  This is not a civil war; this is an invasion.  An alien ideology is being fostered and spread by these anti-Americans and the elites are supporting this invasion because they no longer think of themselves as Americans but as citizens of the world, or better, as the rulers of the world.

So, this harangue is for my countrymen, for those who are proud of America, not for the anti-Americans.  They can go to hell.  Think of this as an occupation.  Many occupied countries have survived and finally thrown off their conquerors.  Think of the Russians and the Mongols.  What is important is to find a way to protect you and yours from the effects of the occupation.  You have to protect your way of life and the things that make life worth living.  Take pride in your heritage and history and find others that do too and form a community with them.

And work to overthrow the invaders.  Never cooperate with their anti-American programs.  Never support their businesses or leaders.  Support anyone who shows pride in America and refuses to knuckle under to their propaganda.  Support them financially, politically and personally.

Pass along traditional values to the next generation.  Teach them the true history of the United States and tell it honestly with all the bad along with the good.  Let them know that America wasn’t a land of saints.  It was a land of free and courageous people that fought and competed in a tough world where there were winners and losers and that they created the greatest country ever seen on God’s green earth.  Tell them the truth about the subversion of this country and how it works.  Protect them from the degenerate and dishonest forces that exist to corrupt the young.  Explain to them the dangers of the world around them and how to find the good things in life that have real meaning and then support them in their journey through a world that is difficult for the young.

And enjoy life.  Find good people who believe in the things you believe in and spend as much time as possible with them.  Do all the things you enjoy and do it apart from the evil and the stupid.  There is no joy in their company only anger and disgust.  Let them spend their time among their depraved and insane allies.  They hate us but they have no love for each other.  Let them consume each other in their rage filled game of intersectional virtue signaling.  Depriving them of access to normal people is one of the best punishments you can bestow on them.

And beware of the moderates.  If they claim to be able to see the point of view of both sides of this war as equally valid then keep them out of any community of Americans you want to build.  They’re useless and worse than useless.  They will turn on you when things get tough to garner favor with their friends on the Left.  They will destroy any organization they find.  Stick with people that believe what you believe.

And most importantly don’t despair.  The ranks of our enemies are full of the weak and the stupid who have allowed themselves to be hypnotized by awful people who only want to destroy the things that they themselves cannot enjoy.  We will win if we show determination.  These people will have no legacy.  Their values do not support life.  They destroy it.  We can prosper and grow but they can only blight and wither everything they touch including themselves.  So, chin up.  You’re part of a nation of millions of people who believe what you believe and love the same good things you do.  And they’re too smart and courageous to be kept down forever.  We’ll find a way and we’ll get our country back.

Defund the Police Looks Like a Winner … for President Trump and the Republicans

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Over at the Federalist a Chinese immigrant relates how her Trump hating democrat friends have had enough of the looting and will take Trump if it saves them from the mob.

 

The “Defund the Police” movement has not only turned more Americans into gun owners and supporters for the Second Amendment, but may prove to be a boon for President Trump’s reelection campaign. Since downtown Oakland saw some of the worst riots and looting in the nation, I recently checked in with a friend who lives there to make sure she and her family are safe.

Like me, she’s an immigrant from China and experienced Chairman Mao Zedong’s “Cultural Revolution” when growing up. Unlike me, she has supported Democrats for years. She loathes everything Trump stands for, from his immigration rhetoric to positions on foreign policy. For the sake of our friendship, we typically avoid discussing domestic politics as well.

This time, however, she went straight to domestic politics. She told me she and her family were safe but the riots and looting in downtown Oakland were terrifying. She was heartbroken to see so many immigrant-owned “mom and pop” stores ransacked or even burned to the ground.

She conveyed that while she wanted to see justice for Floyd, night after night of destruction and lawlessness were just “too much.” They reminded her of China’s “Cultural Revolution” from 1966-1976. She told me: “I didn’t come all this way to America to re-live a ‘Cultural Revolution’ in 2020.” Then she said something I would never have thought she’d say before: “Trump is right. We need law and order.”

What can you say?  Stupid Democrats, sure, but even they can see reality when it burns their neighborhood out.

 

A Moderate Throws In the Towel at the NY Times

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Here’s what happens when a liberal journalist thinks real journalism can still be done at the New York Times.

“My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m “writing about the Jews again.” Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.”

Imagine if an actual conservative journalist was discovered on the premises.  They’d probably burn him at the stake.

Never Let Your Enemy’s Stupidity Go to Waste

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Maybe it’s because it’s July, my favorite time of the year.  And because I’m on vacation this week, which removes a very serious irritant in the way of my annoying boss.  But whatever the reason, I’m just not able to feel gloomy this week.  I’ve decided that I will look at the flip-side of all the horror going on and paint a rosy picture of the time ahead.

First of all, I read that the Federal government has declined to grant Minnesota a declaration of national emergency to allow them to receive federal funds to help them repair the estimated $500 million worth of damage done by Mayor Frey’s city sponsored arson/looting riot.  Putting that on top of the cost of all the police overtime needed to try to quell the ongoing gang wars currently depopulating the more toxic neighborhoods of Minneapolis and adding in the losses in city taxes associated with the closing of so many businesses, some leaving the city permanently and some unable to re-open at all, it paints a picture of a city on the rocks.  And just to make sure that things don’t get better, the city council’s decision to defund the police has a large number of officers opting for early retirement with the rest of them essentially refusing to perform any police function riskier than directing traffic.

The upshot of the police stepping back is the gangs have declared it open season on their enemies and their neighborhoods have become shooting galleries with, unfortunately, young children becoming a prominent part of the collateral damage to the civilian population.  The non-criminal population has complained to the city council and warned them that defunding the police is tantamount to starting a war in their neighborhoods but the council doesn’t really care about their problems so far.  They’re so excited by the whole police defunding narrative that they can’t see where this will lead.

I’m trying to guess what proportion of Minneapolis will have to leave to catch the city council’s attention.  Minneapolis has a population of 430,000 people.  If 20,000 people leave, which would be in line with what’s happening in New York (5%), that would surely put a serious dent in the tax base.  Especially since the ones leaving will be the upper middle class that has the wherewithal to leave.  Sometime this fall I’m imagining the sum total of the misery they’ve created is going to come crashing down on the mayor and city council.  That should be a sight to see.

And pretty much the same sequence of events is going to play out in all the blue states that played this game of revolution theater.  They incurred enormous costs and inflicted horrendous losses on their tax base, demoralized their citizens and destroyed their police forces.  So that come this fall when they are talking of opening school, they’ll be afraid to send their kids for fear of them not surviving the roaming bands of savages.  What a delightful time to be a law and order candidate!  Seriously, it may not matter in places like New York and California but I’m guessing that places like Minnesota, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania will be ripe for the picking for campaign ads featuring their favorite state politicians ordering the police to stand down while the mob flows over and annihilates the functional parts of their city like a column of army ants stripping the flesh off the bones of an unfortunate animal in their path.

And how about the statue nonsense?  I’m guessing the whole Columbus thing hasn’t helped the Democrats to any Italian-American votes.  And now that they’ve started taking down statues of Frederick Douglas and even Abraham Lincoln, I think it’s going to sink in for all but the stupidest that this isn’t about respect, it’s about trying to demoralize Americans and take away their heritage.  I think the President did a good job at Mount Rushmore to remind people of the heritage that men like Washington and Jefferson have left us and how stupid it would be to renounce men who created this amazing land and wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, two of the most important documents in the history of mankind.  Yes, yes.  I see amazing opportunities to point out to the voters and to Americans in general just how feckless the Democrats have become and how much damage they’ve inflicted on their own people.  And once the COVID lockdown continues in the blue states and business stays paralyzed, they are going to be in a bad place.

And on top of the negative ads it should go without saying that a positive message is even more important at a time like this.  It should be highlighted that recovery from the economic damage of the COVID lockdown is moving rapidly to bring us back to a strong economy in 2021.  Going along with this should be message for the base in terms of pushing back on the tech companies in their assault on the Right and protecting religious liberties.  Hopefully Barr and his team won’t prove to be completely useless and will finally move to punish the intelligence agency conspirators who caused chaos during the President’s whole first term.

So, cheer up.  The Democrats have left open their flank to incoming fire to such an extent that it will make the Battle of Marathon look like a game of pattycake.  Creepy Uncle Joe will be completely at a loss as to what to say.  I’m guessing he’ll just take a knee and stay there until the election is over.

11JUL2020 – OCF Update

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Sorry for the posting drought but it couldn’t be helped.  I have off for the next week and had to pay the piper for it.  In other words the day job.  In addition, nothing grabbed my attention enough that I had to write.  The waking world has taken on a strange dream-like or nightmarish quality that disorients the chronicler.  What formerly would have been astounding events has now become mundane.  More riots?  Sure.  Statues toppled?  Check.  Cities burned?  Are there still any un-burned?  Supreme Court outrages?  Whatever.

I just finished Spellbound, the second volume in Larry Correia’s Grimnoir series.  I’ll write up the review but right upfront I’ll say it’s very good.  I’ve always liked his Monster Hunter books but this historical urban fantasy is even better.  I’ll rave about it soon in a post but now I’ve got to get the third volume on order to see how it turns out.

Believe it or not, I haven’t done my taxes yet.  Actually this is my signature move.  I always wait until the deadline. It’s a family tradition.  But this year my laziness has actually driven me to take advantage of one of the tax services to prepare my forms.  I can only imagine how painful this will be.  But they say suffering is good for the soul.

A week off in July is the high point of my New England year.  It is the least likely place in the calendar for snow and full of the things that are most likely to make me smile.  There are lightning bugs (or fireflies if you like), fireworks, watermelon, barbecue, ninety degree days, dragonflies, butterflies even a swimming pool if I want.  I might even find a preying mantis in my garden.  I can spend hours trying to get a good shot of a hummingbird or a fox or a tiny golden bee.  I can watch favorite old movies way into the night and make believe I’m a kid again.

So forgive me if I’m a little delinquent here at the site.  I’m sure to have some good stuff this week.

“If I had my way, I’d remove January from the calendar altogether and have an extra July instead.”

Roald Dahl

 

Me and My Shadow

 

If Robert Redford is Against You Then You Must be Doing Something Right

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I saw the headline, “Joe Biden Gets My Vote in 2020.”  And the byline, “Robert Redford.”  How could I resist?  But save yourself the trouble.  It’s not worth the couple of minutes it takes to read.  It starts off with Redford hearkening back to when he was just a wee lad listening to FDR during WWII.  He heard a voice that combined strength with compassion and a call to unity.  Then he fast forwards to now and disparages President Trump for being divisive.  And then he ends up with an encomium of the FDR-like Joe Biden.  It’s quite a tour de force of nonsense.  FDR’s ability to bring everyone together must have been a real comfort to the Japanese that he interned.  And did FDR ever have J Edgar Hoover planting false evidence against his cabinet officers?  I doubt it.  And the idea of Joe Biden projecting a patrician dignity under any circumstances is not even a joke.  It’s more like a reversal of reality.  The idea that the hair-sniffing, shoulder-rubbing conqueror of Corn Pop could be anything other than a delusional sociopath is ludicrous.

It’s clear that Redford is just writing whatever sounds good in his own head regardless of the absurd divergence from reality.  A couple of sentences will highlight this departure from the real world, “You can see it in the peaceful protests of the past several weeks — Americans of all races and classes coming together to fight against racism. You can see it in the ways that communities are pulling together in the face of this pandemic, even if the White House has left them to fend for themselves.”

Peaceful protests?  That might surprise those in the graveyard after the riots put them there.  And the pandemic has certainly given some blue state governors the chance to show how little they care for their constituencies.  Favoring rioters over churchgoers in terms of social distancing rules is just one example of how division is what the Left sows.

Robert Redford stars in two or three movies I really enjoy.  But true to form, he is a dishonest Hollywood nitwit.  If he were on my side, I would start to doubt myself.  But it is a good reminder to read what he has to say about important issues of the day.  Someone who can call the two weeks of rioting “peaceful protests” reveals all you need to know about the delusional nature of his thinking.  And this is right in line with what you’ll hear from the rest of the entertainment industry.  Actors and artists can paint pretty pictures out of thin air and try to convince the feeble-minded that it’s reality they’re providing.  And being delusional maybe they actually believe it themselves.  That’s harder to know.

But one thing I’ll guarantee, for all his talk about peaceful protests, if the mob ever came down his street and headed for his door, Mr. Redford would sell his soul and even his Oscars for a platoon of policemen with automatic weapons.  And if that meant he had to call Donald Trump on the phone and grovel through an apology for all the foul things he’s said about him, Redford would do it in a heartbeat.  After all what’s the good of being an actor if you can’t give the performance that’s needed?

Defund the Universities

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This article aligns with my own feelings on the subject.  The universities are hotbeds of anti-Americanism.  Why should our tax dollars be used to fund their hatred of us?  Starving them of funds is the perfect solution to weakening antifa and BLM.  Let these revolutionaries look for real jobs.  While we’re at it we should send a contingent of BLM to burn down Harvard, Yale and the other Ivies.  They’ve got plenty of statues to offend the savages.  We would lose nothing and gain a great deal.

 

 

 

07JUL2020 – Battlefield Report

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One thing that can be said for open war.  It provides moral clarity.  Once the barbarians have begun looting and burning, all but the truly certifiable lunatics stop talking about reaching common ground and start talking about guns and ammo.

The lower echelons of the urban elite are starting to get nervous about their vulnerability to roving mobs.  They’re asking their right-wing friends, the ones that have them anyway, how exactly you go about obtaining a gun.  The ones that only have leftists for friends will have to ask Siri or Alexa.  That should be an interesting lecture on gun control.

The major cities with their handcuffed police departments and Democrat mayors are begging the gang-bangers to stop shooting little kids.  Funny how that doesn’t seem to have much effect on hardened criminals without the threat of arrest.  The murders during June skyrocketed and we can only assume that the long hot summer will provide little in the way of relief.  Now you would think that all this dysfunction would get a bunch of Republicans elected as mayors.  But you would be wrong. Places like Atlanta and Chicago will keep voting in Democrats until their cities turn into Detroit.

The idiot leftists have now started to tear down statues of black heroes like Frederick Douglass.  Can we assume that MLK and Malcolm X are next?  Honestly, the true stupidity of these people must be breath taking.  We are dealing with paleolithic levels of social ignorance.  How do these people even survive from day to day?

All this is very interesting but the important question is how this should be handled by the President over the summer and fall to provide the maximum opportunity for a teachable moment for voters who suddenly aren’t so sure that electing Bill de Blasio or Jacob Frey was such a good idea after all.

I linked to that article about Minnesota’s governor asking President Trump to declare Minneapolis a national disaster area to allow $500 million worth of damage from the looting and burning to be paid for by the federal government.  I’m guessing that the answer to that one should be no.

And how about New York City?  The looting alone must have been hundreds of millions of dollars of losses and the arson damage to mid-town Manhattan property would be an astronomical sum.  I’d have to go with no on this one too.

Seattle?  St. Louis?  Atlanta?  Baltimore?  Chicago?  Los Angeles?  Funny thing, we’re batting a thousand here.  All no!  Anyplace where a mayor and or a governor decided to stand the police force down and just let the mob loot and burn, I’d say was a clear-cut case of government abandonment of public safety.  Those places need to impeach their elected officials and then elect someone who won’t allow the mob to run riot.

But in reality, no amount of contrition will help.  These cities are ungovernable.  As long as you have a culture that subsidizes hundreds of thousands of people who don’t work, you’ll find votes for the party handing out the welfare money.  And when these people don’t consider themselves Americans then you will have a mob ready to riot when the excuse surfaces.  It’s probably realistic to assume that these places are destined to become like Detroit.  If that is the case it is best to figure out how to manage that situation instead of pretending, we can fix them.

What President Trump has to do is provide the country with a vision of how the productive and law-abiding sections of the country can avoid being victimized by the non-productive and criminal elements.  He’ll need to target BLM and antifa and dismantle them.  Unfortunately, this will require AG William Barr to do something constructive and in less than a decade which currently doesn’t seem to be his strong suit.  But it has to be done.  The hard working and long-suffering people of this country are exhausted from all this chaos.  We’ve had enough.  And we don’t want to hear that all this is our fault.  We don’t believe that anymore.  If a criminal like George Floyd was murdered by a criminal cop then the cop should be treated just the way Floyd was.  He should have his day in court and then probably spend several decades in prison.  But if the mob decides that this is an excuse to burn down their city then it is up to the city to stop them with force, up to and including lethal force.  If they won’t then any normal individual will reason that these cities are war zones and only a fool would live and raise a family in a place like that.

This should be an interesting week.

2020 Choice – Stand or Grovel

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This election will be the perfect indicator of whether or not we have been overwhelmed by the rot that has beset our institutions for the last hundred years.  A starker choice could not be imagined.  The foaming-at-the-mouth Left has dropped the mask completely.  They have embraced the mob in all its nihilistic rage and unleashed it on the citizens of the blue states and the blue cities.  Seattle has gone as far as setting up a killing zone in their capitol where the mob patrols with machine guns and doles out death to the black lives that supposedly they are representing.  It’s like something out of Pol Pot.

If the election does go to Biden you can argue whether voter fraud, or dislike of President Trump by white women or demographics was the deciding factor but what will be undeniable is that a new nation will be dominant inside the geographic boundaries of what used to be America.  The millennials will soon be the dominant cohort within the American demographic and if they decide that what is going on in the streets of our cities is acceptable then nothing will deflect us from the course that the Left is plotting.

So let’s take it one step further, even if President Trump wins this election but only just barely, that still tells me that we are changing for the worse.  What happened in 1968, the rioting and the arson, was still an aberration that shocked the country and galvanized the population to support a law and order candidate in President Nixon, to clean up the problem.  If we don’t see the same reaction to the even more disturbing violence and anarchy gripping our cities this year then it speaks of a loss of will.

Someone might say that it is the propaganda by the media and the kowtowing by the corporations that is misleading Americans.  That these normal people have been fooled by the narrative that the rioting is a reasonable reaction to systemic racism in the police and in American society.  But that is nonsense.  Only someone already brainwashed by the Left could mistake what is happening for reasonable.  Anyone with even a trace of self-respect and an iota of common sense would see what’s happening as an attack on the foundations of our identity and the symbols of the greatest and best country in the history of mankind.

If we do not see a resounding victory for the Right then we are heading down a road to serfdom.  It is possible that through the efforts of a Trump administration we can begin to change direction and change the institutions that have brought about this problem.  With the right Supreme Court and with legislation and enforcement by the DOJ many harmful practices could be suppressed.  But with the current slender majority in the Senate and the Democrat majority in the House and the unreliable nature of the Supreme Court it seems unlikely that much will be done.

So that is why I see this election as a barometer.  If President Trump wins a decisive victory and we pick up seats in the Senate and retake the majority in the House then I see a sliver of hope that there is still enough of the silent majority to allow us to try and turn this thing around together as the United States of America.  If that happens, we stand.  Anything else tells me that the future will require groveling and that is something I won’t stick around for.