Category: Current Events

Alfalfa, Call the Roll

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Donald Trump signed an executive order that specified that the United States federal government only recognizes two sexes; male and female and these equate to the sexes identified by the biological realities of nature.  And he used this basis to forbid biological males from participating in Title IX protected women’s sports.  This provides a basis for activities excluding one sex from the other based on differences in biological identity.  So that’s part one.

But now it’s time to move forward.  Now it’s time to acknowledge that there should be activities that males want to participate without women involved.  And once again, it is based on biology.  It’s very simple.  Women are inherently irritating to men.

Now, I say this as a man whose been married to the same woman for forty-eight years.  This May I’ll have known Camera Girl for fifty years.  She is a delightful woman.  Smart, pretty, wise, witty; you name it.  She is the greatest joy of my whole existence on this planet.  But there are times when I get together with the guys that having her there would be a big mistake.  She’s a woman.  She’s not as lazy as we are.  Or as crass.  And she doesn’t care about nuclear weapons, the Roman Empire, the Lord of the Rings, William Shatner, bad movies in general or anything that would qualify her for a get together with the guys.  And if she did care about those things she would be too strange a woman for me to get involved with.

And even if she was still the same wonderful person she is now and wanted to hang out with the guys, it still would be a bad idea.  And that’s because men occasionally want to escape the company of women.  We want to be unfair and objectivize women and say things about them that they won’t like.  Basically, we want the space and freedom to act like thirteen-year-old boys again.  We want to form our own hierarchies based on whatever primitive and undemocratic criteria we decide on and we absolutely, positively don’t want to fall under the authority of a woman.  Now that’s clear enough.  We want our space.

Now how do we get it back?

It seems to me; the most logical way is to follow reason and fact.  If the Title IX laws protecting separate (but unequal) women’s programs is constitutional then it stands to reason that separate organizations based on the differences between men and women is also constitutional.  Fraternal organization can become just that again.  And sororal clubs can provide women with their own spaces.

Now whether any of the male organizations that have already been neutered by the government can be resuscitated is highly doubtful.  The Boy Scouts of America have just this month officially eliminated the word “boy” from their name.  I don’t see how that damage can be undone.  But new organizations can be started that will replace these hollowed out shells of the past.

And the time to make this happen is now.  With this Supreme Court and President Trump in charge the Justice Department could be the conduit for cases to push for the return of freedom of association.  The only real question is whether there is an organization that would be willing to be the test case.  It should be a new organization that starts fresh and goes after landmark legislation to end the present persecution of male only activities.

And I think the perfect test case should be my own favorite named organization; The He-Man Woman Hater’s Club.  The name says it all.  Now all we have to do is get that feminist Republican jurist on board; John Roberts.

Well, Another Time

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What is it that science fiction readers (and writers) like about the genre?  Is it that we escape the bounds of the familiar?  Does it somehow excite us more if the villain shoots a laser, or a blaster at the hero instead of a 9mm?  If the hero is driving an FTL (faster than light) cruiser instead of a BMW does that add to the interest in what he thinks to himself?  If an android or a robot murders a politician instead of an antifa terrorist, does it make the killing more psychologically significant?

Maybe it’s the sense that we can get at the heart of things if we aren’t trapped in the ordinariness of the here and now.  If the bad guys have capture not just a subway train but the whole Milky Way galaxy maybe we feel like we are dealing more with absolutes.  Stark choices cry out for decisions.  In the face of real evil, we will have clarity.

Or maybe it’s just the desire for freedom.  Advanced technology provides the writer with mechanisms that simplify and clean up the story line.  If the writer has painted himself into a corner in his narrative there’s no need to re-write the problem.  Just pull out a heaping helping of unobtanium and leap over the obstacle with perfect ease.

Of course that can lead to some cheesy results.  Probably 90+% of time travel stories fall into this category.  By the end of the story the protagonist is busy murdering a dozen temporal versions of himself on his way to reclaim his life in the here and now.  Heinlein did his “All You Zombies” short story all those years back but I’ve never gotten on board with all that jazz.

Maybe the thing I like about it as a storyteller is the way it allows you to build the story outward.  You can start with a future world that has interplanetary travel and terra-forming and then at some critical juncture an alien race possessing FTL capability can show up and upend this whole fictional world.  Or maybe it’s a species that just floats through space at galactic rotational speed but can live indefinitely in vacuum and when it reaches a new solar system it infects these new worlds and eradicates all other forms of life and then moves on to spread to the next system.  Or maybe a small black hole is drifting into the solar system and will destroy the Earth and Sun unless some new force can be brought to bear against this irresistible force of nature.  Or, or, or…

Of course, the danger is in pulling too many rabbits out of your hat.  You can’t have small black holes, cosmic plagues and FTL aliens showing up all in the same week.  At least not respectably.  The days of the cliff hanger are long past their prime and unless you’re serializing your book by the chapter, surprise technology needs to be believable and can’t be hauled on stage just in the nick of time.

The reason for this topic is that I was just considering the other day a subplot where the underground technology that my protagonist possesses could accidentally discover a space ship that was buried deep beneath the surface of the Earth hundreds of millions of years ago.  It would allow me to add new facets to the story but I’m afraid it will complicate and confuse the story too much.  I think I will leave that for a later story in the same world.  But I have to confess it’s fun to toy with what can be done with that kind of addition.  It would be amazing.

Well, another time.

Guest Contributor – ArthurinCali – 07FEB2025 – In the Moment

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The optimist in me understands that Trump’s superpower is that the Left, Media, and others constantly underestimate the man’s intelligence and act as if he is a barely functioning special ed student. This impression is amplified by the sycophant news outlets that produce slanted coverage of practically everything the man does; from his policies to even what the man decides to eat for dinner.

Those of us who follow politics closely can recall from memory the litany of dishonest accounts of the man. Remember “Very fine people” and “Injecting Bleach” are still told as gospel. This doesn’t even begin to include the rumors and tall tales reported as truth.

FWIW, my take on the Gaza announcement is an orchestrated strategy with a plan that hasn’t been fully revealed yet. No, we aren’t going to see American boots on the ground in Gaza. (I pray we don’t) But there is something in the works behind the scenes that should play out in the coming months. I know, I know, it sounds a little too much like “Trust the Plan” thinking.

However, I have been blown away with what the incoming administration has done so far, especially after today when they threw down the gauntlet over the DOGE kid getting doxxed and attacked from the Left. Trump, JD, and Elon coming out and telling, well, the world really, that these cancelling tactics aren’t going to work was exactly what I voted for. Many of us on the Right are done with the past, watching scalps offered to the Leftist altar of morality with no chance of absolution or grace for the offenders.

“I refuse to cut one blade of grass for my enemies delight.”

The Left has long had their radicals and vanguard of folks within the Progressive coalition. Do they routinely perform purification rituals to placate and appease the Right? No.

Have a great weekend OCF

Sorry We’re Broke

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We live in interesting times.  And I mean that both ways.  Based on the fact that Donald Trump is performing surgery on Washington DC with a pry bar and a Sawzall there are lots of interesting facts coming out about the inner workings of the Deep State.  Apparently, most of the 30+ trillion-dollar national debt is based on various agencies including USAID using the Treasury as a credit card with no limit.  So yes, very interesting.  But then there’s the Chinese proverb that uses “interesting” times as a euphemism for disaster.  Well, we’ve got that too.  Our country is overrun with illegal aliens.  Almost all of the major cities are hotbeds of crime and poverty.  Nothing works the way it’s supposed to anymore and Joy Reid is still showing her face on television.

So, yes, there are still problems as far as the eye can see.  But it is impossible to deny that there is a change coming over our country and maybe our world.  The veil has been ripped away and it’s plain to see that people are tired of being lied to and bullied by “our betters.”  And suddenly the truth is busting out all over the place.  Even establishment hacks like Marco Rubio are talking about things that they would have been afraid to mention just a couple of years ago.  Democrats are shrieking about “our democracy” and racism but no one cares anymore.  The sacred cows are being investigated and they’re being found wanting.  Maybe fifty years ago when we had at least a budget process that was followed every year we could afford to pay for a few million dollars of subscriptions to Politico and the New York Times.  Sorry, we’re broke.  Cancel our subscriptions.  Maybe when the Soviet Union was pretending to be a world power, we could afford hundreds of billions of dollars to fund proxy wars in Ukraine or Afghanistan.  Sorry we’re broke.  Let Russia have Ukraine.  They’re the only ones who can even pronounce the names on each other’s maps.  Let them sort out their differences.  Maybe when there was blatant racial discrimination happening sixty years ago affirmative action might have been tolerated.  Sorry we’re broke.  We need everybody pulling their own weight again.  Do your best.

And all this candor is an amazing elixir.  It’s good for everything that ails you.  Giving things their true names and facing facts is the beginning of fixing all of the problems that have been created by “our betters.”  The sad thing is we can’t make them pay for all this ruin.  We’re still the ones who’ll have to do the hard work of digging ourselves out of this hole.  But the sooner we get started, the sooner we can put all of the madness behind us.  And without the DEI lies in school and everywhere else the young people will start understanding what’s real and what’s propaganda.  No more teachers telling them they’re a different “gender.”  Or girls being told they can be fire fighters or Navy Seals.  No more quota hires and no more affirmative action.  And best of all we may be seeing the end of the “girl boss,” both in the office and in superhero movies.  I can’t decide which I’m happier to see go.

So, yeah, we live in interesting times.  Trump and his band of marauders keep raising their sights and looking at bigger and bigger game.  It’s all very exciting.  Things that a year ago seemed impossible suddenly look doable.  Could a balanced budget be on the agenda for next year?  Maybe.  All the illegal aliens deported by 2026?  Sure.  Joy Reid on the unemployment line by Fourth of July?  Well, wishes can come true.

Fingers Crossed

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I’ve been following a minor drama going on between some science fiction authors about a new publisher called Ark Press.  Most of the controversy centers around whether this new publisher is being funded by billionaire Peter Thiel and whether he originally was trying to buy another publisher Baen Books.  Baen is almost the only science fiction publisher that isn’t horribly woke.  So, from my point of view, both Baen and Ark are both the best fit for publishers I would submit my Sniper novel to.  And that’s not to say I think either one would be a slam dunk to buy my book.  But I think they are the only traditional publishing choices that are even possible.

Eventually I found a YouTube video where the main editor of Ark Press (D.J. Butler) answers a bunch of questions about Ark Press and some misinformation about the relationship between Ark and Baen.

It’s quite long and probably not that interesting to anyone who’s not writing a non-woke science fiction novel.  But I was very excited to find out there are two possible publishers I can offer my book to.

But the more generally interesting thing about Ark Press is that someone like Thiel who is a pretty heavy hitter, is getting involved in publishing conservative science fiction books.  This is exactly what I’ve been bloviating about for ten years.  This is what Andrew Breitbart was talking about way back.  Culture is upstream of politics and we are completely shut out of the culture because the institutions (book publishers, record companies, movie studios) are 99% controlled by the Left.  Literally 99%.

Hearing that someone with extremely deep pockets is dipping his toes in genre publishing is miraculous.    It’s as if all the howling I’ve done in the wilderness wasn’t in vain.  And then there is the synergism.  Peter Thiel was the guy who turned JD Vance onto the Trump train.  And he’s an old friend of Elon Musk.  The two of them were start-up partners on PayPal.  If Thiel were to persuade Musk that some of his books were very popular with young adults maybe as a lark Musk might buy some broken down movie studio like Paramount or Warner Brothers for a song and strip it down like he did Twitter and make some movies that people actually want to see.  Just imagine.

As you can probably tell I’m pretty excited about all this stuff.  Of course, it will probably lead nowhere if the people running Ark and Baen can’t recognize the obvious genius displayed in my Sniper story.  But right now, it’s fun thinking about it both from a personal angle and from the larger considerations of the wider culture.  I mean, come on!  Every boy in America used to be a science fiction/fantasy fan.  Star Wars, Star Trek, The Lord of the Rings, Marvel, DC, you name it.  It took Disney and the girl bosses they hired a whole generation to kill that excitement with the awful female-centric drivel that currently passes for science fiction/fantasy.  It’s as obvious as daylight that if publishers and movie studios produced what boys used to pay to read and watch, boys would pay to read and watch it again.

So here we are.  At the dawn of a new golden age of science fiction publishing.  It can’t be a coincidence that it is happening just as Donald Trump has declared the beginning of the American “Golden Age.”  Well, I haven’t been using any booze or drugs so maybe there is a reasonable chance that some of this may resemble reality.  If not, it was fun thinking about.  Fingers crossed.

USAID and Other Agencies Shut Down and Suddenly Politico Can’t Make Payroll

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Has the US federal government been propping up left-wing media operations like Politico?  Maybe it is.

According to Zero-Hedge:

“So 90% of “subscribers” to left-wing publications like Politico are fake and “taxpayer funded”. And then using fake subs to artificially pump up revenue, Politico gets to sell itself to German propaganda giant Axel Springer for $1 billion.”

It’s far from clear if this is exactly what’s going on.  But at the very least the feds have been throwing resources at these sites through advertising money and very large “subscription” checks.

It looks like Trump has declared war on all facets of the Left.

Good.

But Gaza?

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So, I turn around for a minute and the next thing I know Trump is annexing the Gaza Strip.  What’s next?  Will he be fighting the Pygmies of Central Africa and laying claim to the long-lost ivory of the legendary elephant burial ground?  I’m starting to get dizzy.  Now I’m all for shutting down USAID and offering golden parachutes to the whole damn CIA.  I doubt anyone in that agency ever produced intelligence that was worth the paper it was written on.

But this Gaza thing sounds crazy.  What the hell do we want with Gaza?  First of all, it’s full of Gazans who are crazy even by Palestinian standards.  If this is some kind of a bluff, I’m damned if I can see how it helps anyone.  Sending our troops there is tantamount to opening up another forever war when we’re finally rid of the ones we were stuck with.

Well, for the time being I’ll make believe that this isn’t actually happening.  I’m not ready to abandon all hope for a better world and that’s what adopting Gaza would mean.  Stay tuned.

Getting back to happier thoughts, I hear Trump is going after PBS and NPR.  They’re being investigated because they allow sponsors to air little puff pieces that tout their sponsorship.  These acknowledgements are being scrutinized to see if they come too close to being commercials which are banned under the PBS charter.  Well, that seems like quibbling.  I wouldn’t cut off their funding over that.  I’d axe them for employing Jonathan Capehart and David Brooks.  Two more pathetic “journalists” have never assaulted the airwaves with tripe less worthy of being called opinion.  And after NPR drove out Uri Berliner for telling the truth about the left-wing echo chamber that exists at the organization, Trump should shut the place down once and for all because of discrimination against intelligence.  He would be doing a favor to all of humanity.  The smarmy, unctuous, hushed tones of the boobs employed there are an obvious symptom of a hothouse environment where products of Ivy League colleges exchange congratulations for “uncovering” examples of normal people ignoring whatever pathology NPR is trying to normalize and getting on with their lives without having to apologize for doing so.

As much as I applaud the acumen that has targeted USAID as among the first departments to be dissected by Trump’s cabinet, I really want to see funding ended for NPR and PBS.  They always claim that they only receive a pittance from the federal government.  Fine then, they won’t miss it when it’s gone.  Just cut it off.

And finally, I’m very excited to see what happens to the Department of Education.  I can think of a dozen changes that would reverse the influence of that agency from negative to positive.  The first thing would be cutting off all funding to any public school that in any way advocated for abnormal sexuality.  Banning the whole LGBTQ mess should be the first order of business.  Afte that the government should stop funding for colleges that use affirmative action instead of merit-based criteria for admissions.  And finally, the federal government should buy into school choice via vouchers for parents who want a legitimate choice to the public school system.

It looks like Gabbard, Kennedy and Patel will get through this week or next.  That should allow Trump to solidify the actions he’s already taking in those departments.  There really does seem to be action almost everywhere in the government.  I hear DOGE is doing an in-depth review of the Ukraine War funding to find out exactly how many billions of dollars were stolen.  That will be a sad but important report.  Alright, that’s enough for now.

But Gaza?

Growing Pains at OCF

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I’m upgrading my plan with my site host.  Of course after I approved the plan I get a message saying it’ll take two day to implement and by the way, don’t modify the site in the interim or the changes may be lost.  If in the next couple of days you notice any monkey business this is likely being caused by “progress.”

Well, what did I expect with AI is “helping” me. I’m starting to wonder if there really are any human beings on the other side of the wire.

Guest Contributor – Chemist – 04FEB2025 – Reasons for Hope

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Points of optimism for you:
You say the Left controls most of the institutions; the schools, the universities, the Media, Hollywood, the book publishers and most of Silicon Valley.
Our schools are failing and school choice is getting bigger every day. Trump may well end the Dept of Education.
The Universities are losing students and power – that means influence as well.
The old media is dying. The new media (Twitter, podcasts, etc) is ascendant.
Hollywood is burning and will probably disperse into other states as CA is too expensive.
The legacy book publishers are becoming more irrelevant every day and will probably go through a period of consolidation and reduction. New publishers are emerging every day and self publishing is a viable option for eBooks.
The Tech Bros of silicon valley are coming over to our side.

Sometimes, all it takes is a leader. Like Trump.

Fear and Pain.  Good.

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So, I was an hour late for work clearing the stupid snow this morning.  Well, because of the snow and because I’m overly optimistic when it comes to estimating snow removal time.  Or maybe I’m too lazy to get up that early.  But it all got done and the world didn’t end and so I can move along with my day and week.

Yesterday Trump ordered sanctions against Canada, Mexico and China.  Today Canada and Mexico came to terms by agreeing to Trump’s border security requirements and got a reprieve of a month on the tariffs to prove their good faith.  And Panama has agreed not to extend China’s management of the canal.

And today I listened to Marco Rubio declaring USAID a rogue agency that will now be brought to heel for ignoring orders to account for who it has been giving money to.

Could this be “Little Marco” sounding more like Donald Trump, or at least an ally of Donald Trump and America?  Has the world gone topsy-turvy?  Or is it just that no one has ever stood his ground against the bureaucrats, influence peddlers and sycophants that infest Washington and waste our money by the imperial ton.  Seeing the progress of Trump’s seemingly endless initiatives I can’t help but think that this is the first man to stand up to the bureaucracy.  Ever!  And it occurs to me that all those impossible things we heard about; defying the FBI and the CIA, and finding out what actually gets done with the defense budget, and reining in the EPA; all of these unattainable goals can be had for the cost of doing the hard work to find out what the bureaucrats actually do all day, and using presidential power to hold them accountable.

I was reading the ZMan’s post today comparing Trump to Isaac Asimov’s character the Mule in his classic science fiction series Foundation.  The Mule was an outlier because his mutant psychic talent was not predicted by Hari Seldon’s “psychohistory.”  And so, he blew up all of the best laid plans of the Foundation.  ZMan thinks that Trump is the destructor laying waste to the managerial state (aka the Deep State).  Well, I don’t disagree with that analogy.  But maybe he’ll be more than that.  Maybe he’ll be like the child who wasn’t afraid to say that the emperor has no clothes.  And imagine if that lesson gets learned by not only JD Vance but even Marco Rubio.  Now, of course, most of these Republican Senators and Congressmen are crooks and they want the payoffs from the defense and pharma lobbyists.  But even if it’s only a handful of honest men, Trump has let the American people in on the secret and anyone who wants to inherit his mantle will have to call out the corruption, waste and inefficiency of the bureaucracy and get us our money back from the crooks that infest Washington.

I’m starting to get hopeful that Trump is going to take a chainsaw to the budget.  And he has several incentives.  Reducing government excesses will lower the debt, rein in inflation and lower taxes.  But it will also starve his enemies of funds with which to attack him.  They won’t be able to hand out millions of dollars to left-wing crazies.  And the NGOs are where most of Trump’s enemies work when the Democrats are out of the White House.  Losing their cozy perches and lucrative salaries will frighten them out of their wits.  And that is exactly when they’ll be least likely to cause trouble.  They’ll be forced to scramble to find a new source of income and they’ll lose the microphones they typically have to organize trouble for conservatives.

I don’t want to sound like a Pollyana.  It’s not as if the Left no longer controls most of the institutions; the schools, the universities, the Media, Hollywood, the book publishers and most of Silicon Valley.  But Trump has show us that controlling the White House can be incredibly helpful in throwing a monkey wrench into the gears of the Deep State.  And since the Deep State at this point is the Left, it’s causing our enemies fear and pain.

Good.