Category: Current Events

Need A Laugh?

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In the classic movie “The Caine Mutiny” the petty tyrant Captain Queeg assigns the deceptive title of morale officer to one of his unfortunate junior officers.  His responsibility in this position was to ruthlessly enforce the dress code down to the buttoning of shirts and the length of hair on the enlisted men.  Whereas this was a mockery of the concept of morale I believe that a morale officer is exactly what the country needs right now.  And to a large extent that is what President Trump has been attempting to do with his COVID-19 press conferences.  He’s trying to provide helpful information and an optimistic assessment of the progress we’re making in the dreary business of navigating through the pandemic swamp.  But we need more than that.  Trapped in our homes and deprived of even the opportunity to work we need some distractions.  We need some entertainment.

In a happier time, even just a short generation ago we could turn on the television and we would find on every network at least one show that was funny enough to distract us.  Back in the early 1990s you could watch Home Improvement with Tim Allen as a tv dad with his wife and three boys stumbling through the foibles of American family life with gentle humor and a very muted take on the battle of the sexes and the revolt of the young against their parents.  Later on, you could still laugh at the misanthropic but relatively harmless antics of Seinfeld and his neurotic associates.  Even during the 2000s you could see a show like King of Queens where the humor was more like a pitched battle between the husband and wife and the dysfunctionality of the older generation was on full display with Jerry Stiller’s portrayal of Arthur Spooner more resembling a mental patient than a normal adult.  But it was funny and the characters somewhat resembled real people.

That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.  The loss of any originality on network television seems to have killed off the sitcom.  The stupidity of the writing and the restrictions on the plot dictated by political correctness have rendered these shows unwatchable.  Maybe the better writers have moved over to cable stations like HBO and Netflix but the darkness of most of what passes for comedy on cable is pretty extreme.

And that is where we are.  As a society we are surrounded by joyless dysfunctional productions that are supposed to be entertainment.  The action shows aren’t good but they’re just supposed to tell a simple story of good versus evil.  That’s easy enough to do.  Comedy is harder.  It takes intelligence and an actual sense of humor.  Those two things are mostly absent now.  But that’s what we need.  A good laugh.

Luckily, there is a lot of old comedy available.  And there is probably something there for all tastes.  Everything from the tame antics of the Marx Brothers and Abbott and Costello and the screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s, to the early modern comedy of George Carlin, Mel Brooks and Rodney Dangerfield, to the outrageous Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy, right up to the current rants of Dave Chappelle.  Of course, the definition of funny varies enormously depending on the audience.  It’s probably safe to say that generational tastes will divide the audience into several camps.  But what is undeniable is that the modern entertainment industry has destroyed comedy.

But we still need a laugh.  So, go looking for something that is funny and put it on and have a good laugh.  You need it and the rest of us do too.

What I would recommend is do a search online for what movies, tv shows and comedy recordings are considered the funniest for the time periods when your concept of comedy was formed and see if you agree with the opinion.  Look at general lists of comedies for these time periods and make a list of your own favorites.  Then rent or buy or stream a few of these comedies together in your own film festival.  Make sure you have your favorite popcorn or other snacks and enjoy.  Maybe tell a friend or two and have a virtual movie festival in separate homes.  You can make a deal to swap favorites and compare notes after the fact.

Just to show that my heart is in the right place I’ll throw a few out.  Now mind you, I’ll start off by saying my tastes are peculiar.  But there they are.  I’ll go with two W. C. Fields movies, “It’s a Gift” and “The Man on the Flying Trapeze.”  I always enjoy his henpecked husband routine and the melodramatic actress who plays his wife in both these movies is perfect.  I love telling Camera Girl that she treats me just as badly as Field’s wife in the movies.

Add in the first installment of the “Thin Man” series.  And finish off the early movies with the Marx Brother’s “A Night at the Opera.”  For the later decades we could take a couple of Bill Murray movies, say “Ghostbusters” and “Groundhog Day.”  Maybe add a Jim Carrey movie, say the “Mask.”  And finish off with a cartoon that’s mostly a comedy like “The Incredibles.”  For a classic tv series I’d go with Jackie Gleason’s, “The Honeymooners.”

If you have any picks you’d like to volunteer leave them in the comments and share the wealth.

21APR2020 – OCF Update – The Joy of Blogging

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Keeping a website stocked with content is work.  Finding and posting a quote and a photo each day takes time and effort.  Researching and writing political posts takes time and thought.  Watching and reviewing movies and tv shows and listening to and reviewing music and reading and reviewing books takes even more time.  Keeping up with the software versions of the website plug-ins and other features is annoying and confusing.  Doing all these things while also working full time in a highly demanding profession in a very exacting company is extremely difficult.  But I consider running this website one of the more enjoyable aspects of my life.

As I mentioned in a recent post, I consider it important to socialize with like minded people.  And just as important as it is to talk about politics, I find discussing recreational and cultural topics just as important.  It’s like the feeling you get from going down to the local tavern and shooting the breeze with friends from town.  You can compare notes on what’s going on in the neighborhood and talk a little sports or discuss the local school issues or the state elections.  There will be differences of opinion but being likeminded people in similar circumstances with a similar history and world view you mostly have similar opinions.  And that’s a comfortable situation.

But nowadays people are always on the move.  We move because we lose a job and need to find a new one.  Or we move so our kids can go to a better school.  Or we move because our town has grown too crowded or because the crime rate has gotten too high.  So, we lose that circle of friends we used to enjoy so much.

Another thing that happens is your kids grow up and once they do, you lose track of the other parents whose kids used to hang around with your kids.  We all go our separate ways and before you know it, you’re pretty isolated from everyone but a small circle of family and a few very good friends.

So, you start to spend time on-line.  You get involved in websites that cater to your interests and hobbies.  And that was something that I did.  I frequented sites that had to do with my various hobbies.  Photography was one of them.  Field biology was another.  And fantasy and science fiction were a third.  And it was fun talking to people with similar interests and sharing information and experiences.  I met a number of interesting people.  But I also found out that politics was a stumbling block in all these areas.  What was true in each of these creative areas was that there existed an orthodoxy that underlaid all the other levels of thought that each of the sites was involved with.  And that orthodoxy was a progressive point of view on politics, social issues and even science.  It was anti-American (especially on sites that had a heavy European presence), anti-religious, anti-traditionalist, pro-homosexual, stridently feminist, globalist, against gun rights, anti-free speech and it rabidly believed in global warming.  I can remember on one particular photography website being banned for saying that Hillary Clinton was a criminal that deserved to be thrown in prison for life.  This was during a thread where the same sentiment had been expressed about George W Bush.  The second statement didn’t even warrant a comment from the moderator or a warning of any kind.  It was after this kind of unequal enforcement of the rules of internet etiquette that I figured out that all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.  And I figured out that if I wanted to enjoy discussing political and social subjects in a more or less free environment, I would have to own the space myself.

So that’s why this site is worth the time and expense of hosting it myself.  No one can tell me that I can’t say that Hillary Clinton is a criminal.  No one can tell me that I can’t say that global warming is a scam.  And no one can tell me that I can’t say that gun ownership is what makes this the freest country on Earth.  By the same token if someone wants to disagree and say that global warming is a very serious problem, I don’t have problem with that.  Let him state his case.  If he can prove it to me, then I’ll admit it.  If he can’t convince me then we’ll agree to disagree.

If someone believes that affirmative action is fair, let him state his case.  I’ll disagree to the last but I’m not in the brainwashing business.  If he can have the discussion without foaming at the mouth and calling me names then have at it.  I’m not afraid of people giving their opinions.  As long as they don’t go off the deep end and start ranting and raving.  This site has a definite right-wing slant.  I state that right up front.  But if someone wants to talk about photography or old movies or old books I don’t particularly care if you’re a communist as long as you can behave like a grown up and contribute to the discussion.  I’ve been in discussions about religion between atheists and priests.  And they were able to keep it polite and even friendly.  They each knew the other wasn’t going to budge but they enjoyed the chance to tell their side and have their say.  And it made for an interesting discussion.

So, this is my way of saying thanks to the regulars and to the new readers and to encourage you all to read and comment and have your say.  Give and take is fine and is the reason for the whole thing anyway.

Okay that’s enough.

How Do We Live Our Lives in an Upside-Down World?

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I think most people reading this post know precisely what I mean by the title.  And it doesn’t have anything to do with lockdowns or pandemics or even the upcoming election, even though every one of those things highlights the craziness of the world around us.  But I mean to look at the world as a whole and address the larger issue of how we can make our lives better and also add to the effort to push the world toward a course correction away from the madness we see all around us.

The leftists are always fond of saying “act locally but think globally.”  In a sense that is what I’m saying.  But it’s more like think and act locally, think and act globally.  What we will need is a multi-track approach to existence.  We can’t use the same tactics with our family and friends as we use with the town government and PTA.  And we can’t use the same tactics with the state government as we use for our town.  And finally, we have a completely different situation on the national level.  There isn’t a one size fits all strategy.  Maybe surprisingly, the approach we take with family and friends is closer to the way we handle the federal government.  Unless you live in a deep red state there is a lot more opportunity at the national level for the kind of openness you can have with friends and family than is possible in many of the communities, we live in.

There are national organizations that are working to make government policy changes.  Look for organizations that advocate for clear cut goals.  Forget anything that’s generic Republican.  Look for someone who says “we are doing this.”  And then see if they say how they are going to do it.  And then ask them what they’ve already done to make it happen.  Some examples that come to mind are Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and the Federalist Society.  The ADF is known for defending in court individuals who are being prosecuted for laws that criminalize Christian beliefs.  Florists and wedding bakers who refuse to create products for homosexual marriages are prosecuted in blue states and forced out of business.  The ADF comes to their aid and is helping them to win their rights to religious freedom.  The Federalist Society has been a powerful force for resisting the unconstitutional actions of judges who put social advocacy above the law.  Many of the lawyers that are members of the federalist Society have gone on to careers as judges on the local and federal judiciary all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Supporting organizations that show results in the causes you believe in is an example of global action you can take.  Research the problems that you want solved and find out who is making a difference and then get involved.  Be critical and careful about who you support but don’t become pessimistic.  Donate money, time, or whatever else you have that can help.  Get to know what’s actually out there.  Educate those around you about the bad and the good.

Now what about the local side?  Obviously, you must get involved in the family and friends around you and do everything you can to protect them from the rot and confusion that surrounds everything in our environment.  For the young give them positive role models and provide normal alternatives for the debased entertainment that the popular culture and schools foist upon our young people.  Typically, you can find movies and books from the time before the progressive capture of the entertainment industries and many of these are vastly more entertaining than the propaganda currently being pumped out.  Sponsor activities that allow parents that you trust to join with you to give the kids healthy activities without the loaded messaging that the sanctioned activities always include in their program.  And make sure to get together with your family whenever you can.  A Sunday dinner with your children and grandchildren is one of the nicest ways of spending an afternoon.  A barbecue with your brothers and sisters and their families is a remarkable way to reinforce family solidarity.  Cousins talking about what’s going on in their lives is a great chance to reinforce family ties and lend help and maybe launch a family business.

And for yourself get involved in activities and social organizations that will allow you to find like-minded men whom you can befriend.  Build up a circle of friends who will make your leisure time enjoyable.  Also contacts of this type allow you to build a circle of acquaintances that may have a range of skills and occupations that you can draw on for your own needs.  After all, many of the tradesmen and business owners are on our side of the fence.  Why not throw your business to people that you like and agree with politically and culturally?

And finally, if you have the time and the inclination get involved in local politics.  This is the most difficult aspect of activism especially if you live in a deep blue state.  Basically, you will be in the belly of the beast and surrounded on every side by the enemy.  Everything you say and do will be scrutinized by progressives and measured against progressive dictates.  It would be like the scenes in that old movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” where normal humans try to pass themselves off as pod people.  Eventually some glimmer of emotion or humanity will expose them as “not of the body,” not part of the collective mind.  Working under such conditions would be painful and stressful but also has the potential of getting very important things done.

It’s important to make sure that while we’re all fighting the good fight, we also take care of ourselves and those we love.  What good is winning the culture war if we lose our happiness?  Enjoy your life and your family and friends.  Have fun and do good for those you love.  Think about what is important to you and make sure you take care of the important things.  Go outside and look at the amazing world that exists even in the hellish climate of New England.  Say a little prayer of thanks for the good things you have in your life and be grateful for your health and the health of those you love.  Use your time wisely and don’t let pessimism and depression get a hold of your mind.  Live!

I’ve listed a couple of organizations that I think are doing good work and making a difference to advance our interests, the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Federalist Society.  If you know of other organizations doing good work then please list them in the comments section along with an explanation of what their mission are.  All of us need to share information whenever we can.

Really Bad News for The Democrats and Drudge

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Unfortunately all good things must come to an end and for the doom and gloomers that has happened.  We just passed global  COVID-19 peak death.

They can fake it for a while by conflating any death with COVID-19 deaths but even that will get hard to believe even for the people locked in blue states.  When New Yorkers start seeing Floridians strolling around on beaches it’s gonna get to be a bit thick.   From now on they’re just going to have to attack the President on the economy and he knows how to turn that to his advantage as he works to re-open and revitalize American industry.  He’ll blame Nancy Pelosi for not approving unemployment and small business relief and she’ll fold like a cheap suit.

But what will Drudge do?  All I can think of is some sort of cross over articles where sexbots infected with COVID-19 disguised as ventilators attack hospital workers like some sort of sleazy direct-to-video terminator plot line.  Well Matt Drudge’s got to eat somehow.

 

 

33% of Those Tested in Chelsea MA Had COVID-19 Antibodies in Their Blood

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Mass General Hospital performed random COVID-19 antibody testing in a suburban neighborhood of Boston (Chelsea, MA) and found that 1/3 of those tested were positive.  Performing my patented back of the envelope calculations on statistics available from Massachusetts I find the following:

Massachusetts has a population of about seven million people.  1,404 Massachusetts residents have died from COVID-19 infection.  Assuming that 33.3% of the state has been infected by the virus then the death rate from COVID-19 in Massachusetts is 0.06%.  And that actually is in the range of deaths you’d expect from the normal flu.

Alright, let’s check the assumptions.  Is Chelsea representative of Massachusetts as a whole?  Probably not.  It’s more densely populated than most parts of the state.  So let’s do the calc again for Chelsea:

Chelsea has a population of about 40,000. people.  39 Chelsea residents have died from COVID-19 infection.  Assuming that 33.3% of Chelsea has been infected by the virus then the death rate from COVID-19 in Chelsea is 0.29%.  Now that is higher than the death rate for the normal flu, let’s say five times higher.  But that’s a lot less scary than the extinction event they’ve making this thing out to be.

So, here is where we are.  For most people who will “catch” the COVID-19 virus they will never know they had it.  They’ll think their allergies or a cold gave them some symptoms for a day or two.  For something like three people out of a thousand, mostly the elderly or the chronically ill, this virus will be a life or death struggle.  If society wants to spare those people from risk they’ll need to be isolated.  For everyone else we need to go on with our lives and get back to work so our taxes can pay for taking care of the vulnerable.

The Blue Bird of Happiness Gets What’s Coming to Him for Living in New England

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Exhibit A – Wednesday April 15th a beautiful sunny day

 

Exhibit B

A closeup of Mr. and Mrs. Bluebird redecorating one of Camera Girl’s deluxe blue bird apartments in the sky.

Exhibit C Saturday April 18th.

And the punch line as the happy couple take it in the teeth.

Late April in Southern New England

The moral of the story?  Global warming ain’t everything it’s cracked up to be.  Suffice it to say that for the next week or so the photo of the day will include a number of shots of spring flowers covered in show.

Opening Up America

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I watched the press conference that previewed the President’s program to restart America.  I must say it sounds a lot like my own take on how it should be done.  The President allowed his three doctors to walk us through the medical criteria that would be used to determine when a particular state had reached the health thresholds needed to progress to the first, second and third stages of the process.  One useful visual aid were three graphics that showed the United States over the last couple of months of the crisis with the states colored by the severity of the pandemic in each state.  What was apparent was that most of the country is only lightly affected by the COVID-19 disease.  And that in certain areas like the Dakotas, Wyoming and Montana the caseloads and the infection rates are so low that it will be safe to proceed directly to the first stage of the reopening process.  And the doctors used all the comforting scientific jargon about gating the progress and sentinel surveillance site testing to avoid a resurgence caused by asymptomatic cases mixed in with the unaffected.

And it was good to hear the President reassure the people in the hardest hit areas like New York and New Jersey that their states will be allowed to maintain the heightened shutdown they currently need but at the same time allow people in relatively unaffected areas to follow safe but much less restrictive protocols that will allow them to go back to work and normalize their lives again.  The President stressed that the elderly and the infirm will be the focus of quarantine efforts going forward because these are the populations where ninety percent of the deaths are occurring.

And finally, I heard the President reiterating the need to provide relief to the small businesses and their employees who are the primary victims of the business shutdown that we currently have.  He stressed that the end game is to get back to a point where a restaurant or a sports stadium will be able to serve its clientele as it was designed to, not half full or almost empty.  Infrastructure projects were also mentioned and that is to the good too because those types of projects have a follow-on effect for the rest of the economy in the areas where they are located.

So, from all ways of looking at this announcement, it was a winning performance.  It was scientific, authoritative and quantitative.  It was practical, flexible and not some kind of one size fits all approach.  It provided very good news for a large area of the country that is either moderately or minimally impacted by the virus, that things will be getting back to normal very soon.  But it deprived the gloom and doomers in the northeast from accusing the President of ordering them into danger.  That means the Governors in those areas will be responsible for making the difficult decision of when they will start transitioning their states back to much needed productivity.  And they probably wish they could use the President as a scapegoat because the economies in those areas are being decimated and waiting for the crisis to be completely over before loosening the quarantine is probably impossible.  So, the resurgences that are bound to occur during the loosening of quarantine are bound to be highlighted by the media.  Well, let them work that out for themselves.

A very good press conference all in all and a good day for the country in its journey back to normalcy.

An Eventful Week in a Momentous Year

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President Trump is a bold fellow.  A while ago he was saying he wanted the lockdown to end on Easter.  And predictably the media went ballistic.  They weren’t going to allow the country to get better if they could help it.  But President Trump isn’t easily discouraged so right after Easter he began hinting that things are going to change.  And now we know that he’s going to start a rolling wave of openings.  As he explained at his press conference yesterday the loosening of restrictions will begin first in the states that have not been overwhelmed by hospital cases.  A strategy will be worked out with the Governors that allows for flexibility of conditions and timing.

And the President took time this week to hit back at some of the misinformation that the Democrats and the Media have been spreading at his expense.  First off, he put to rest the alarmism that many had spread about many tens of thousands of additional ventilators that would be needed during the pandemic peak.  He provided facts that showed that the actual usage of ventilators even in the hardest hit areas like New York City was at least a factor of ten lower than the estimates claimed by some alarmists like Mayor DeBlasio.  President Trump pointed this out but also stated that the stockpile of ventilators now available would be useful as a strategic reserve.

Next, he reminded the audience that instead of the alarmist predictions of hundreds of thousands or even millions of deaths from the virus the reality would be an order of magnitude lower at least.

And the President described upcoming meetings with industry, union and political leaders to address the financial damage that has already been done to workers and small businesses by the shutdowns.  And he assured us that getting the economy going again and providing short term relief to the affected was one of his highest priorities.  In connection with this he hinted that Congress will need to take additional action to make funds available to save many small businesses and families from bankruptcy.

And one of the more amusing meetings was a White House press conference where the President ran a video clip that featured the comments from a couple of months ago where medical experts for the networks condemned President Trump for stopping flights from China because the COVID-19 outbreak wouldn’t be important enough to warrant such a racist and xenophobic action.  Now they constantly harp on how late he waited to take action on the virus.  It’s as if they suffer from selective amnesia rather than shameless hypocrisy.  And the clip finished off with various governors including partisan democrats like Andrew Cuomo thanking President Trump profusely for the assistance he has provided to the states.

All of this is just the public relations aspect of what is going on.  President Trump is preparing for the most important action of his life.  He needs to coordinate the action of fifty different Governors to make decisions that will involve life and death for their citizens.  And all this while the Democrats and the Media will try to make any setback, any tragedy into a headline to punish the President and throw the election to that demented groper Biden.  It takes a bold fellow to undertake this even if the media and the institutions were in his pocket.  To do it with every power center in the world dead set against him is not boldness it’s fearless audacity.  Bravo sir, bravo.

And Here’s a Nice Short Essay from Codevilla Calling Out the Health-Nazis

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Watching the doctors tell us how and when we can resume our lives is more than a little galling.  Trump will have to tread a fine line not to be accused of genocide by the medical elites.  But I think he’s up to it.  Nice overview by Codevilla.  Just the right amount of outrage.

Reason, Emergencies, and Self-Government

 

Matthew Peterson Over at the American Mind Has a Pretty Good Article About Leadership

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It’s a little bit long for my taste but he hammers home the point that practical decision making about going forward in the present dilemma requires someone who can weigh the risks and steer a middle course between fear and recklessness.  Bottom line something has to be done and it will take leadership and common sense to move forward.

A Time for Statesmanship