Elon Musk Verbally Pummels BBC Reporter

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My opinion of Elon Musk is based on very little more than that he ticked off millions of leftist by buying Twitter.  But that alone has made him a sort of folk hero for me.  For all I know he’s an incipient Bond villain preparing to blow up the planet to sate his gargantuan ego.

But as long as he does things like this I will applaud him.  Watch the video clip.  It’s the usual hit and run interview where the reporter asks the victim if he still beats his wife.  But Musk breaks down the questioner’s accusations one by one and shows that they weren’t based on any concrete example he could provide.

Between this and the NPR incident Musk had made it a fun time to be on Twitter.  Now he’s talking of changing the name which sounds like a great idea.  Lots of people think that Musk’s eventual plans for Twitter are a lot more interesting than the current message board for the politically obsessed.  I can’t say that I know anything about that but I tend to believe it because otherwise he’d have been insane to pay $55 billion for it.

Well, anyway, Elon, you magnificent bastard, that was one funny slap down.

Catering to the Twenty Percent

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Capitalism is all about finding an unfulfilled need and then providing that need at a profit.  Well right now there is an unfulfilled need out there that’s dying to be fulfilled and anyone who provides it will make money hand over fist.  What the Right needs is someone smart who wants to capture our entertainment business.  Look at what the Left has been doing.  They’ve talked corporate America into backing their brand.  Professional sports leagues; the NFL, Major League Baseball even the NHL have kowtowed to BLM, the rainbow mafia and now men in sundresses.  Bud Light, the epitome of normal American consumerism has put the face of a TikTok crossdresser on their beer cans.  Taking the creepiest, most off-putting representatives of the Left and demanding that America embrace them is the standard operating procedure for the Leftist-Industrial complex.

Surely providing people with an alternative to this should be as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.  And it’s not like we have to win over the whole country.  We don’t even have to be the majority.  We just want someone to harness the natural market that exists for normal, healthy entertainment.

Think about it.  Without a doubt, there is easily 20% of the total population of the United States who, while they’re trying to relax and be entertained, would pay good money to forget about sexual deviants, BLM, girl bosses or any of the other depraved things that the Left bombards them with.  That’s an enormous market and it’s a motivated one.  Think of all the things you could sell them.  Sporting events, music shows, movies, books, video games, news services, tourist services, conference services, dating services, wedding services, branded apparel, beer and on and on and on.  And all that’s really required is to develop a marketing campaign that captures the imagination of the target population (us) and then delivers the promised services.

But so far no one has attempted this trick.  And that’s probably for a variety of reasons.  You see, none of the existing entertainment companies want to antagonize their leftist friends so they wouldn’t dream of providing services that appeal to normal people.  And those who are interested in doing it don’t have the deep pockets and independence needed to buck the multitude of roadblocks that the government and the woke corporations would throw in their way.

Now interestingly, someone like Elon Musk might just be the perfect combination of entrepreneur, multi-billionaire and contrarian to accomplish something like this.  And the way he would accomplish it would be somewhat different.  Instead of catering specifically to the Right he might try to provide an à la carte approach that allows people of different persuasions to purchase specifically the services and entertainment they prefer.

For instance, imagine if there were a streaming service that provided all the movies and shows that can’t or won’t be made by Netflix or Amazon.  And imagine if all the commercials on that channel were completely devoid of sexual deviancy, anti-whiteness and, in general, left-leaning causes.  Now wouldn’t that be worth more than a couple of bucks a month?  There’s nothing I would enjoy more than to take the money I currently have to hand over to my hated cable provider and instead give it to someone who could arrange that kind of service.

And that’s the point.  If instead of supporting the leftists at Amazon and the other studios and media companies, we could deprive them of all our business and instead reward someone who wants us to have our choices it would impoverish these terrible people.  Think of what would happen if suddenly we stopped sending monthly checks to Amazon and Netflix and ESPN and Disney.  The twenty percent (or more) of the country that would be shutting them out is the difference between those companies thriving and struggling.  In fact, without that group a lot of the worst offenders like Disney and the NFL might just go out of business.  Or possibly they’d have to give up their infuriating behavior and try to lure that 20% back again.

So far no one has jumped into the breach.  The closest that anyone has come to this is Fox News.  And basically, it’s Tucker Carlson that makes up the only mainstream content that speaks to the 20%.  And even Fox is full of leftist content and doesn’t provide much in the way of choice.  But at some point, there will be someone who decides that there is a lot of money being left on the table and picking it up is as easy as saying out loud that men and women are different and that it’s alright to be white.  Now that’s not so hard.

11APR2023 – OCF Update – This’N’That

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Sunday was a great Easter family get together so this week is about catching up on stuff I neglected.

Today is going to be a mixed bag.  I have some photos and quotes to do and I am behind on everything; writing, chores, you name it.  But I want to have some fun too.

I grabbed this old Minolta zoom lens (35-105, f\3.5-4.5, macro) that has been hiding on a shelf in a closet for years and I want to play around with it as a walk-around lens for a while.  It’s a goofy lens and of course it’s on the LA-EA5 adapter so most of the autofocus stuff doesn’t work with it.  And the “macro” capability is this ridiculous switch that only allows for manual focus.  And the lens is very old so the coatings are very old technology so there’s all kinds of chromatic aberration.  But it has already been fun to walk around and use the  zoom to frame shots and to have wide angle and telephoto perspectives available.

Who knows whether the results will be terrible or even just meh but I’m having a little fun so far and maybe change is good for once.  I enjoyed my little foray into riffing on those Alice in Wonderland quotes.  It’s funny how closely the experience of finding oneself in a nightmare dreamscape resembles the actual world we find ourselves in.  Makes you wonder if the powers that be read the Wonderland books and liked what they saw.

 

Those damn bluebirds are back again and making believe they will take up residence in that same damn bluebird house.  I don’t believe it for a second but just as a diversion I’ve been taking some photos waiting for them to get kicked out by the swallows.  I daily harp on their shortcomings to Camera Girl.  I mock them constantly and call them pathetic losers and compare them to the various Republican losers that adorn our political make-believe world.  I think she’s getting tired of my obsession with them.

Cthulhu

Dunwich’s descent into political madness continues apace.  Confusion and anger are on full display and the path forward has been so muddied by the conflicting suggestions that the whole town government is paralyzed.  But we have to hope for the best.  I’m caught up in all this up to my chin so there’s nothing to do but move forward.  Onward and upward.  Or inward and downward.  Whichever works.

Well, it’s a warm, sunny day and we should all get some air today if we can.  But stay tuned and I’m sure to have something to say later.  I am an excitable kinda guy.

Sicario (2015) – A Movie Review

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Sicario is about a United States law enforcement team’s efforts to capture the head of a Mexican drug cartel.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Kate Macer (played by Emily Blunt) and Reggie Wayne are FBI agents who discover a cartel safe house in Arizona filled with corpses.  They become drawn into a task force headed by CIA Operative Matt Graver (played by Josh Brolin).  But also involved is a Mexican national, Alejandro Gillick (played by Benicio del Toro) whose precise role is unexplained.

The task force heads into Juarez, Mexico to bring into US custody Guillermo Diaz whose brother Manuel is a lieutenant in the Sonora cartel.  During the return drive a contingent of cartel foot soldiers attempts an ambush but is overwhelmed by the special forces soldiers assigned to the task force.  But Macer is troubled by the unorthodox and secretive aspects of the operation.  She surmises that Gillick is not a legitimate law enforcement agent and she suspects that the operation is really a CIA hit squad that will be violating US laws by operating in the United States.

Macer and Wayne meet a local policeman they know named Ted in a bar.  She invites Ted into her room but she discovers he’s on the cartel payroll and attempts to arrest him.  He overpowers and begins to strangle her.  But Gillick appears in the nick of time and after some “persuasion” Ted provides the task force with the names of the other American policemen on the cartel payroll.

The “interrogation” of Guillermo reveals that a tunnel is used by the Sonora Cartel and a mission is planned to capture Manuel Diaz there.  During the operation Macer witnesses Gillick executing Mexican nationals and taking a cartel-owned Mexican federale as prisoner.  When she attempts to stop him, he shoots her twice on her body armor and warns her to never point a gun at him again.

Macer is outraged by Gillick’s actions but when she complains to Graver, he warns her that the war against the drug cartels had become a real war and the CIA uses extreme tactics.  He also tells her that Gillick’s wife and daughter were executed in a horrible manner by Manuel Diaz’s boss, Fausto Alarcón.  Gillick is intent on revenging himself on Alarcón and Graver intends to use this revenge to accomplish the destruction of the Sonora Cartel.

And that’s exactly what Gillick does.  He uses the captured Mexican policeman to pull over Manuel Diaz’s car and then he uses Diaz to get himself into Alarcón’s guarded compound.  Finally he finds Alarcón eating dinner with his wife and young children.  Gillick talks about the murder of his family and then murders Alarcón’s family.  After a decent interval for his victim to suffer the loss, he shoots him too.

Sometime after this mission Gillick sneaks into Macer’s apartment and at gunpoint he orders her to sign a document confirming that Gillick’s team had followed all US laws during its mission.  At first, she refuses but when he puts the gun to her head, he tells her that to refuse would be to commit suicide.  She signs the paper.  He tells her to find a small town to live in where the law still exists.  He says, “This is a land of wolves and the wolves will kill you.”  Or something like that.

Gillick leaves and when he is across the street she comes out on her balcony with a gun.  Gillick turns to her to give her the shot but she lowers her gun and he walks away.

This movie has several problems.  The biggest one is the actress playing Macer.  She probably weighs seventy pounds sopping wet but she’s part of an assault team taking down narcotrafficantes left and right.  It’s patently absurd.  Next, the episode with Ted, the rogue cop is too contrived.  Also, Macer seems at the same time drawn to this highly unorthodox mission but also shocked to see commando operations used against foreign nationals attacking the United States.  But putting all those things aside, this is a very exciting action film.  The acting and action are highly entertaining and the plot resolution is satisfying.  I highly recommend this movie to fans of action films.