Chemist is a long time reader of OCF and a self-avowed Shatner aficionado. He added this link to my last ShatnerKhan post and I just had to share it with the rest of the site viewers.
Enjoy.
Category: Current Events
30NOV2019 – OCF Update
So we’ve survived Thanksgiving and have today and tomorrow to recover sufficiently to stagger back into work on Monday. Bravo, congratulations!
Looking ahead, The British General Election is a week from Thursday (December 12th) and by all accounts Boris Johnson will get his majority and the Brexit that it’s based on. Supposedly he has all the Tory candidates sworn to a blood oath to vote for Brexit when they are elected. As always, wait for the outcome but there may be some very good news for the English people by Christmas.
My article “Reclaiming the Family – Part 3 – Recruit Grandma and Grandpa” seems to have been well received when I posted it on Tuesday. I take particular pleasure in this because, from my point of view, advocating for practical and constructive action is greatly preferable to just spouting anger and predicting gloom and doom. Not that there isn’t plenty to be angry and worried about but if you’re not going to do anything about it then just dig a hole and jump in. I’ll try to expand the series when I have something useful to add.
Like everyone else I’m waiting impatiently for Durham to show some progress on his investigation. Your guess is as good as mine on this whole thing. We’ll just have to wait.
On the 2020 election things seem to be moving in the right direction. The House is stuck with their impeachment fiasco. Even the MSM has sort of gotten bored and wandered away from their freak show. I don’t want to get too positive but it’s starting to look like the 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidate field is barren. Even if Mrs. Clinton or Mrs. Obama “surprises” us by joining the race I don’t think that it will move the needle much at all.
So between now and Christmas there may be several very interesting stories developing. Once I recover fully from the several hundred thousand calories I ingested this week I’ll diligently report on and bloviate about what I think they mean.
And of course I’ll faithfully update my Star Trek series. The schlock shall not dry up.
Stay tuned.
Guest Contributor – War Pig – On Family
War Pig put up a comment on my Reclaiming the Family thread so I asked him if I could add it to his folder and so here it is for anyone who didn’t see it on the comments. – photog
We moved to California from Ohio in the 60s when dad got transferred from North American Aviation to Rockwell/Rocketdyne and went to supervise the making of the boosters for the space program. Mom took a fall at the ice-skating rink at the Topanga Plaza and had to have bone chips removed from her brain. Her father came out to stay with us kids until mom was back on her feet. Six months. Dad had to keep working to provide the health insurance and also to feed us and pay the rent (even back then California rents were horrible compared to Ohio). Since papaw was retired and his other daughter lived across the street from his home, he could leave mamaw there while he came out. He cooked, made us kids clean, took us to school functions and all the rest of the things mom would have done. He took us to visit mom at the hospital so she could remember us (she had temporary amnesia and did not know she was married or had kids, initially). She had lost twelve years or memory in the fall and skull fracture.
Papaw was always a hoot. He had a little larceny in his heart and was a lot more lenient than mom had been about what we did. He aided and abetted me and my brother’s carbide cannon incident, for instance. We had fruit trees in the yard and he’d go out and pick oranges and make fresh squeezed OJ for us at breakfast. He makes pancakes and biscuits using buckwheat flour.
Later, after the space program ended and massive layoffs happened in the aerospace industry, we moved back to Ohio. Dad got a supervisor job at a plant that made wheels for US military vehicles. We were close to both sets of grandparents. We kids worked on our paternal papaw’s farm and also rode with our maternal papaw when he delivered frozen chickens. Me and my brother loaded and unloaded chickens and papaw drove the truck. On the farm we drove tractors and other farm equipment and the pickup truck, too. We baled hay and straw and put it up in the barn. Me and my brother ate like starving Clydesdales but worked it all off on the farm or the chicken runs. Sis stayed with mamaw on the farm and helped her. At our other papaw’s house, she helped mamaw bake pies for the local restaurants while we helped papaw with the chickens.
Later, when I was a papaw, I took care of my grandson. My wife got to see and hold her grandson before she passed. Since I had no wife and was retired, I concentrated on being papaw for my grandson. I babysat while my daughter and her husband worked. They dropped him off for breakfast and picked him up after supper. All day we played and did things together. To the playground, fishing, walking in the woods. When he was school age, I picked him up from school and we goofed off or I helped him with homework and we had supper together. I would not trade my time with him for a billion dollars. This year he graduates college. Hopefully, I’ll live to see some great grandchildren.
Thanksgiving Message – 2019
How the year does fly. Another remarkable journey around the sun is almost complete and so of course we get to the two Great Holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas. These are the times when we gather together with friends and family and enjoy rich food and good company. And Thanksgiving is supposed to be the day we count our blessings.
The last couple of years have been happier and more prosperous thanks to President Trump’s policies. The economy has recovered from the Bush/Obama Depression and a number of his executive actions and judicial selections have given us something to be hopeful about. The “Resistance” has seemed to reach the point of open absurdity with impeachment now looking like a losing issue for the Democrats instead of the President.
So, all of that is reason to be thankful and I agree it is. But what I’m most thankful for is that I can see.
I can see through the GOP Establishment in the government and in the press and recognize them as just part of the enemy that we must beat. They are the ones who have been responsible over and over for snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory and selling us down the river to the Progressives for money. The Republican politicians did it for the money they get from lobbyists to vote for sending our jobs and industries to China and allowing endless immigrants to replace us. The Republican Pundits (and judges) sold us out for the right to go to the Left-Wing dinner parties and rub elbows with the Cloud People.
That knowledge is what I’m thankful for. Now I know who my enemy is and I also know what I have to do to protect me and mine from their agenda. Donald Trump showed us what it means to be unafraid of being called a deplorable. If all they can do is call you a racist or misogynist or homophobe or transphobe then we can ignore them and get on with our lives. We can search out like minded individuals and form our own society. It won’t be easy or without pain but so what? What good thing ever is? And we won’t vote for anymore McCains or Bushes or Romneys. No more mealy-mouthed losers who call themselves Christians or Conservatives or whatever they want to pretend to be but vote for depravity and defeat. No more.
This year I took the whole Thanksgiving week off and was able to enjoy time with family and help prepare a little for the feast. This year we have family from near and far arriving and Camera Girl has risen to the challenge and will have a total of 48 pounds of turkey and two refrigerators full of other mouth-watering delights including cornbread and sausage stuffing, mashed potatoes, turkey gravy, sweet potatoes, candied yams, buttered rolls, buttered corn, cranberry sauce, cranberry jello mold, peas and onions, roasted Brussel sprouts and cranberries and string beans and almonds. For dessert there will be apple pie, pumpkin pie, cocoanut custard pie, blueberry pie, home-made ricotta cheese cake, ice cream and chocolate covered fruit. And lots of strong coffee
After that we’ll collapse in the living room and watch Laurel and Hardy in the 1934 movie, “March of the Wooden Soldiers” and the 1939 animated version of, “Gulliver’s Travels.” Then I’ll spend time playing with my grandchildren and making plans with them for the holidays.
So, tomorrow may not see much in the way of posting unless something earth shaking occurs.
But Happy Thanksgiving to all you folks out there and may you and your family enjoy a feast and a wonderful time.
Link to Part Two of Curtis Yarvin’s “The Clear Pill”
Without a doubt Yarvin must have a dizzying intellect. Reading his narrative is like taking a graduate course in sociology from Einstein. I feel like I’ll need to read it three more times to make sure I followed all his points. Basically he’s explaining why Progressives believe the nonsense they believe. He used climate science as an example and it is interesting. Support for the Progressive worldview allows Leftists to feel good about themselves by believing that the warming narrative makes sense. It’s a dense read but if you liked Part 1, you’ll have to continue down the rabbit hole..
Reclaiming the Family – Part 3 – Recruit Grandma and Grandpa
Reclaiming the Family – Part 1 – Bring Back the Dowry
Reclaiming the Family – Part 2 – The Family Business
At least going back a generation or more a pattern of behavior has become established in the colder areas of the country that once people reach retirement age they head south to Florida or Arizona and live out their days in a retirement community. And I suppose if you are sufficiently wealthy this would not prevent you from supporting and staying in touch with your descendants back North.
But in today’s world of limited opportunities and constrained resources another choice is to use your retirement and the resources you have accrued to reinforce and enhance your family’s opportunities. Think about how difficult it is for a family with two working parents to provide the opportunities and attention that their kids need to grow up right. If they manage to check their kids’ homework and get them to sports practices and games that’s probably taking up their whole free time left over from work and sleep.
Now as touched on earlier in this series it is much to be preferred that children have a stay at home mom to take care of them and make sure they’re staying out of trouble but even then, kids should have a lot more of their family’s time and attention. For instance, who says a father is the only one who can bring the kids to a baseball game or a museum or a movie. Why can’t grandpa do that? And grandma is about a million times better at babysitting babies than a 15-year-old girl who will spend all her time on the phone while the baby sits glued to Sesame Street.
With respect to school work many of the baby boomers are STEM professionals and can not only help out with homework but can provide real world insights to children on what career paths make sense and which are dead ends. For instance, if one of my grandsons asked me whether he should major in computer science or intersectional gender studies I think I’d be able to give him a very clear answer!
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Even the tradition of having the Sunday dinner at Grandma’s house does more for bonding the family than an occasional phone call to Florida provides. And it may provide the opportunity for a request for financial or other help that otherwise wouldn’t happen.
And what are you sacrificing if you forego the condo in Florida. Playing shuffleboard with other old people that you don’t even know? Missing out on skin cancer? Sure, maybe your arthritis won’t hurt quite as much but don’t forget those alligators that are waiting to pick you off at the mail box. And how does that stack up against teaching your grandkids how to fly a kite or telling them about the time their great-great grandfather shot it out with armed robbers from the running board of a car.
And there may even be a payback for you besides satisfaction. When the day comes when you are against it and your time is up maybe there will be someone to shed a tear and say a kind word at your bedside instead of just a text message from up North to say goodbye.
Electoral College Calculus – November 2019 Installment
Trying to handicap a presidential election is far from an exact science. So, let’s have some fun.
Here is a map of the 2016 presidential results in terms of the electoral college votes. Trump won by 77 electoral votes, 304 to 227.
A few things come to mind. That 77 electoral college vote lead in 2016 translates into a lot of flexibility in 2020. The three big surprises in 2016 were Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Well a 77 electoral college vote lead means you can lose additional states with up to an additional 38 electoral votes and still win the election. For instance, Pennsylvania and Michigan have big cities like Detroit and Philadelphia where voter fraud is almost the rule. Together those two states have 36 electoral votes. If President Trump won all the states he won before except for Pennsylvania and Michigan, he’d still win. That’s pretty good. It would be very close but he’d still win. But you might say what about Wisconsin and its 10 votes? Well, the folks in Minnesota and Wisconsin are still relatively honest and in fact the blue-collar workers up there have actually increased their support for President Trump over the last several years. I’ll say that it is possible that Wisconsin could go too but let’s look at those two states together.
Now look at some of the “close” states he lost.
Notice in each case that a third-party candidate (either Libertarian or Never-Trump or both) represented more than enough votes to turn the race around if shifted to the Republicans.
The first item up is Minnesota. Trump lost by less than 45,000 votes. McMullin who was a Never-Trumper protest candidate took over 53,000 votes. That tells you there were over 53,000 extra republican voters available in 2016. Well in 2020 McMullin won’t be running or if he is only Bill Kristol will be voting for him. But most of those 53,000 Republicans will be voting. Not to mention all the other blue-collar Democrats who now know that President Trump is pro-worker. My strong opinion is that President Trump will pick up Minnesota’s 10 electoral votes in 2020. So, going back to an earlier scenario, let’s say that Wisconsin flips, well it’s just as likely that we’ll snag Minnesota this time instead. That’s pretty good.
The other states are a lot harder to handicap until we know who the Democrat candidate will be. If Bernie or Liarwatha is the Democrat candidate then either one of their socialist platforms will be a big problem for the libertarians. And if that’s the case then Gary Johnson’s pot head voters might vote their pocketbooks and in Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada, Maine and Colorado that should be more than enough to tilt all those states to President Trump.
In theory that would change the Electoral College scores (all other things being equal) to 337 to 194. Of course, this assumes that the Democrats would allow their daft electorate to choose their own candidate. In actuality the politburo wants Creepy Uncle Joe or Bloomberg or Deval Patrick to be the candidate. And that’s the big question mark. Can they make the switch at the convention? The way things are going Biden may not make it to the convention. He may be an indicted co-conspirator along with his nincompoop son Hunter for the Ukraine mess. So that would require either Bloomberg or Obama’s mini-me shadow Patrick to play candidate. Neither is really the perfect candidate. Bloomberg is an insufferable rich guy trying to get the votes of the urban poor that he subjected to the stop and frisk program in New York City which in Progressive circles is considered an abomination. Patrick is a short squeaky voiced doofus that will be less than inspiring to the same urban crowd. I’m guessing neither of them will bring out the Obama sized voting crowd.
But let’s say it is Bloomberg or Patrick. That will cut into the Gary Johnson vote for sure. But does it really change the overall situation on the ground? In either of those scenarios I see Minnesota and the states he won in 2016 still going to President Trump and the rest of those states above toss-ups that, let’s say, go to the Dems. Final Electoral College total 314 to 217. That’s almost a hundred-point difference. That means President trump has a pad of 46 points that can go against him and still win. That’s more electoral votes than in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan combined. That’s as much as Texas and Wisconsin combined.
So those are the rosiest projections. Between now and Election Day a lot of bad things can happen. But you would have to borrow a lot of trouble to assume at this point that the odds are against us. The economy, the stupidity of the Democrats, the obvious falseness of all the Deep State machinations against the President’s administration all add up to an advantage at the polls. The items like voter fraud and changing demographics all existed almost identically in 2016. Plus, the president has energized his base and they are behind him 100%. Even the independents are starting to break his way. A lot can go wrong but right now is not the time for fretting. The wind is at our backs and the prospects for even better things seem to be there.
The Rust Belt Stands Pat
Back in May I read Salena Zito’s book “The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics,” in which she interviewed a varied sample of Trump voters in the rust belt and identified why they abandoned the Democrat Party.
Well, in this article she went and checked back with these same voters to see if they had changed their minds. Apparently their resolve is even stronger than in 2016 that Trump is their man. And this jibes with the polls taken in these vitally important states. Formerly, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin were part of the Great Lakes Blue Wall that would prevent any Republican from ever entering the White House again. But instead of adding Ohio to that Blue Wall it looks like Minnesota may be turning red instead.That would complete the Red Wall from Lake Erie to Lake Superior. Or let us say from the Atlantic Ocean in Philadelphia to the Mississippi River at Lake Itasca in Minnesota. Apparently the demographic future we’ve all heard so much about isn’t quite there yet.
Zito is a personal writer. Her story isn’t about statistics. It’s about individual people. It’s like the Trump rallies. There’s a personal connection.
Saint Greta’s Chinese Children’s Crusade Beckons (or Killing Two Birds with One Stone)
I just want to start off this post with a simple statement. Greta Thunberg is emblematic of all that is wrong with our age. Here is a confused mentally unstable child who instead of being instructed in the realities of her world is encouraged by her parents and teachers to indulge her flights of fancy and assume a mantle of wisdom with which she harangues her elders for providing her with the modern advantages that allow us to avoid cold, starvation and exhaustion, things that were the realities of human life for untold thousands of years before renaissance civilization discovered the secrets of modern physics. This post is dedicated to mocking the world view that attaches importance to the petulant ranting and raving of this disturbed and disturbing child.
I recently read a report that China will add enough new coal fired power plants in 2020 to increase their electrical output by the total amount currently produced by all of Europe. That means even if Europeans stopped using power completely and went to live in caves and kept themselves warm by donning squirrel pelts the Chinese would already have added back all that power usage in CO2 emitting coal for them. Hmmmm!
This really got me thinking. I’ll bet Saint Greta of Thunberg hasn’t heard about this. She’s not going to like it. That’s a lot of CO2. I’ll bet she’d really like to start a children’s crusade in China to shut down those coal fired plants. Why I’ll bet that there are millions of Chinese environmentalists just waiting for Saint Greta to show up in Beijing and harangue the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee on their use of coal. Being screeched at by a stunted Scandinavian kobold; isn’t that something that the highly principled leadership of a transparent and humanistic administration like the Chinese Politburo would relish? Hmmm!
But how to make this happen? I mean Saint Greta is really busy practicing her scowling-in-a-mirror exercises, and the Chinese really have their hands full with helping out the happy citizens of Hong Kong. How can the gig be set up?
Then it hit me. Let’s tell her it’s the United States that’s adding the coal plants and she’ll be over here like a shot. But what we can do is replace her billionaire’s catamaran with a Shanghai junk and send her on a voyage of discovery as she sails through the Suez Canal, around India and into the Pacific Ocean on her way to straightening out Xi Jinping. That two-year trek, which will include scurvy, rickets, interaction with pirates and very little in the way of modern annoyances like electricity and modern sanitary conditions, should give her a lot to think about.
And when she finally arrives in China, she can spread the gospel of renewable resources and let the people there know that they were much better off back in the Cultural Revolution when they survived on their daily five ounces of rice and their buffalo dung heating stoves. That should really turn them around on this whole industrial revolution thing.
And once she’s converted the countryside and marches into Beijing in front of her army of millions, I’m sure Saint Greta will be installed in the Forbidden City on a Throne of Jade and televised across the Middle Kingdom with her patented “How Dare You!” speech. Oh yeah, there’s nothing tyrannical despots like better than to be upbraided in front of their slaves by a demented dwarf.
But what would really make the whole thing special is if Saint Greta could find the authentic life style she is hoping to give to the rest of us. I’m sure the Chinese would be thrilled to lead Saint Greta to their neighbor North Korea and let her see what the glories of pre-industrial life are really like. If you’ve ever seen those night time satellite photos of the Korean peninsula you’ll know exactly how well the North Koreans are following Saint Greta’s example. And with respect to food, if memory serves me correctly Greta actually resembles the way a North Korean looks after living on the diet and lifestyle fostered in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
And after Saint Greta has had a chance to reflect on the virtues of starvation and frostbite maybe President Trump can use her as a bargaining chip in his negotiations with Kim Jong Un. He can threaten to send wave after wave of demented dwarves into North Korea if they won’t come to terms on their weapons program. Yep, it’s a win-win for sure.
Rudy Giuliani Want the Senate to Investigate Biden
Rudy Giuliani is a pitbull when he talks to the press. He won’t let them buffalo him and he always has the right answers. Listen to him here refuting the official narrative and getting his story out. He says he has the goods on Biden and Son in the Ukraine. Testimony like this would be amazing. Let’s hope the Senate doesn’t weasel out of it.