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Alec Baldwin’s snuff film

Hollywood goof Alec Baldwin just gunned down an innocent person on the mismanaged set of his new movie in the making, “Rust.”

There is all kinds of analysis and hand wringing and wonderment about how this murder ever happened, and who is really responsible for it. Let’s take a look at this issue, and in the end I will present my own take on ‘what probably really happened’.

Some people say that Baldwin is 100% responsible for the murder of Galina Hutchins and the serious injury of Joel Sousa, because he ignored Rule #1 of gun use: Never point a gun at something or someone you do not want to destroy (shoot). And of course it is difficult to argue with this line of reasoning. I agree with it. But others have sought to dilute and undermine this thinking.

Other people, notably the establishment press, are trying to find anyone to throw under the bus to save a bona fide Hollywood actor from being held accountable. Remember how much effort went into protecting Hollywood scumbag Harvey Weinstein? And Weinstein really was a lecherous monster who was feared and loathed by most of Hollywood. So how much more so will the establishment wagons be circled to protect a just regular kind of gay-hating, violent jerk like Baldwin?

For example, the establishment press keep writing that the revolver was a “prop gun.” Ummm no, no it wasn’t. It was a real gun. Obviously. But that doesn’t stop the mainstream media from trying to pretend this away as some sort of non-gun-gun-non-crime.

The establishment press also tries to say that other people were more responsible for the gun and how it was loaded etc etc than Baldwin could be. Again, no, because that danged real gun was used for target practice by many of the actors and set workers in the desert surrounding the movie set. They all knew it was a real gun and that bullets had been shot out of it a lot.

Here is what I think probably really happened: Rust was a snuff film, a la Jeffrey Epstein’s way of just having fun and never being held accountable for it, no matter how evil and wicked.

Recall ol’ Jeffrey Epstein, the child sex slave trafficker whose pedophile island hideaway was frequented by the rich and famous like Bill Gates, Hillary and Bill Clinton, and others. The same Jeffrey Epstein who was strangled with a wire garrote in his prison cell while the cctv cameras were turned off and the guards mysteriously walked away. A guy with a lot of names and knowledge in his head, who had to be shut up before things got public and messy.

This is to say that with incredible wealth and power comes incredible debasement and debauchery. Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein epitomized the more openly grotesque aspects of it, as well as Epstein’s teenage girl sex party guests, and I think the murder of Galina Hutchins was probably a more subtle expression of one untouchable person’s secret desire to do something unimaginably evil, in the open, and then get away with it.

If this is true, and why not, then Alec Baldwin purposefully murdered Galina and then tried to blame it on everyone else. But inwardly he is gleefully laughing — he got away with it! With murder. And no one will ever try to hold him accountable for it. Because bully boy Baldwin is one of the many untouchables in America these days. People who commit pedophilia rape, murder, treason, and simply walk away from the scene of the crime because the entire cultural and political establishment surrounds them and protects them.

It is quite probable that Rust was actually a cheap and slovenly run movie set because it was never meant to actually be a movie. It was probably just an elaborate opportunity for Baldwin to live out one of his many sick fantasies, and never be held to account for it.

Just my theory, anyhow. It certainly is possible, because if we look at all the insane crimes that all the other American elites have gotten away with (and I am not even mentioning innocent young Mary Jo Kopechne, the sweet girl murdered by Democrat senator Ted Kennedy, another untouchable elite), murder in the open was just the next logical thing for one of them to do and then go laugh about behind their closed doors.

Talk about rust, this murder is an example of how America is becoming a diseased, corroded hell hole from all this unaccountable elitism. Like a bunch of Emperor Neros prancing around, hurting people and hurting America, with zero consequences…but unlike the Roman citizenry, we Americans do have the means to take matters under control.

But do we have the will power?

Lawless DC prison city vs. America

America is a republic, which is a highly fractured political body with checks and balances built in to the system from one end to the other. It is all spelled out in the US Constitution, as well as in almost fifty state constitutions: Local governments, state governments, the federal government, plus three co-equal branches of government (executive, judicial, and legislative) all make up a pretty messy and purposefully inefficient government.

Which makes the Biden Administration’s anomalous punch-you-in-the-nose efforts to centralize power and decision making in Washington, DC, a curiosity. Isn’t it curious that people who say they are Americans who are devoted to America are doing their utmost, including overt violent coercion of their political enemies, to rip power out of the hands of citizens across the continent and concentrate it in just a few hands in Washington, DC?

It isn’t very American to do this, is it? Because America is about sharing power, sharing decision making, and respecting the rule of law so that everyone is held equally accountable under the same law. America was founded in response to abuses of power and official coercion in Europe, and so America has no kings or untouchable aristocrats…right?

What is happening right now in America is a tremendous multi-pronged effort to tear away power and decision making from regular voters across America, and weld that power in place in a handful of government buildings inside Washington DC and its immediate environs. This absolute concentration of power and decision making is what all tyrants do, what all totalitarians have done, be they Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin or Mao or Pol Pot or Fidel Castro or whomever. It is fundamentally antithetical to how America was founded and why America was founded.

You could easily say that this effort to concentrate the power of We, The People into the hands of a handful of federal bureaucrats is anti-America, un-American, unconstitutional, treasonous, treacherous, villainous, evil, immoral, illegal, wrong, dumb, catastrophic, destabilizing, divisive, foolish, bold, and a crazy mad power grab, and you would be correct about every one of these words and phrases.

That is because America is undergoing an anti-America, anti-democracy revolution from within that is using the trappings of democracy to semi-legitimize itself. It is bold alright, and just boldly pure evil.

Essentially we are seeing Washington DC as the erstwhile symbol of America and American unity shoot its tentacles out across the nation and grab its political opponents, and reel them back into the clutches of the lawless bureaucratic mess and corrupt judges within the Beltway. As we know well from reporting by The Gateway Pundit and Breitbart, and some pathetic attempts to explain it all away by the Washington Post, a whole lot of political prisoners remain hidden away in secret jails deep inside Washington DC. Many of these Americans rotting in solitary confinement have never committed a crime in their lives, did not commit a crime for which they were grabbed by the Stasi-FBI-DHS-KGB, and remain uncharged by the lawless Dept. of Justice lawyers who are at the core of the coup attempt against the American voters.

Basically, Washington DC is now a prison city, where political prisoners from across America are snatched by FBI SWAT teams brandishing fake warrants from a Cracker Jacks box, and then taken to be deprived of their human rights and their constitutional rights, beaten bloody by racist prison guards, and used as political intimidation puppets.

The greatest antidote to the Biden Administration’s illegal behavior is to fall back on the greatest strength of America, which is our small towns and communities, our municipalities and counties, our state governments spread across the nation. Each one of these levels can resist and push back against the Washington DC thugocracy.

For example, county sheriffs can refuse to cooperate with FBI/DOJ/DHS thugs, can tell them to stay out of their counties, and county sheriffs can deputize thousands of county residents to take up arms to defend the county against attack or other lawless activity, as well as make arrests.

State police can outright arrest FBI/DOJ/DHS thugs engaged in patently illegal behavior within a given state. State police can also issue arrest warrants for specific FBI/DOJ/DHS thugs, making them unable to travel across the United States and extend those poisonous DC tentacles into the lives of otherwise free citizens.

Can you imagine if Florida issued arrest warrants for the seven state and federal agents who outrageously and publicly deprived Brian Kolfage of his due process and civil rights? That would send a strong signal about American checks and balances, wouldn’t it?!

There is no way that a hundred thousand armed federal employees are going to dominate a nation of 350 million legal citizens. It just is not going to happen, despite AG Merrick Garland’s best attempts to Bolshevize the DOJ and the Washington DC prison city. Every federal employee has a home, and those federal field employees engaged in this violent coup d’etat against the American voters and citizenry are especially vulnerable to being charged and arrested by either a county sheriff or a state police agency determined to bring the rule of law back into play.

There may be a hundred million enemies of the Biden state, but there are only a few hundred thousand enemies of We, The People. The power balance here actually favors We, The People so overwhelmingly and in such an enormous quantity that it is only when we contemplate this huge disparity that we understand just how big the political blinders are on Biden’s Marxists. They really do believe that all roads lead to centralized power in Washington, DC, and that they can arrest us all and throw us all in rancid dungeons and beat us and destroy our families at will. But there are not enough jail cells in DC or anywhere else for that matter to hold all of the enemies of Biden’s state apparatus.

Eventually the Washington DC prison city is going to run into a wave of people, of We, The People. That this will happen is as natural as home made apple pie. It is already happening at local school board meetings, where despite being ludicrously labeled as “domestic terrorists” by AG Garland, justifiably outraged parents are continuing to follow the law and bring accountability to their tax dollars and public schools.

It is just a matter of time before the We, The People wave builds bigger than anyone in DC can imagine. The tighter Biden squeezes, the bigger the wave becomes.

Dune 2021 Movie Review

Setting aside Regal Theaters’ ear-splitting volume emitting from every theater room as well as the one we sat in, and setting aside our thoughts on the 25 minutes of shallow woke commercial bombardment before the 2021 movie Dune even started, we did enjoy the movie, if not the venue.

A cult classic movie, like the 1984 version of Dune, is usually a cult classic for good reasons: Excellent acting, good props and sets, good costumes, and fealty to author Frank Herbert’s vision all make the 1984 Dune movie a timeless classic with a cult following. You can watch it once a year and never grow tired of it.

Yes, to follow the 1984 version, a viewer must already be somewhat familiar with the book Dune and with its general story line to begin with. But it covers and tracks well with a lot of the 1,000-page book’s territory. For example, the 1984 Dune has a highly compelling and truly evil Baron Harkonnen, literally bathing in the blood of his slain enemies and reveling in the blood of a sexually molested slave boy whose heart plug he just pulled in front of his two nephews (one of whom, the actor Sting, evinces morbid fascination and horror turned to sadistic glee all too well).

Fast forward to Dune 2021, and now our evil Baron Harkonnen is merely deeply brooding and kind of distantly menacing. That he is surrounded by black-clad ministers of evil and a brutish thug nephew, and that he bathes in black used motor oil to “heal,” makes him icky and probably really bad. But we see no blood-baths, no sadistic glee as the vulnerable innocents twitch their last under his daintily painted finger nails. He doesn’t even look for Duke Leto’s ducal signet ring as the helpless prostrate mess breathes its last, a boring scene which contrasts poorly with the believable 1984 Baron, whose unfulfilled lust for the Atreides signet ring is foiled and gives way to howls of rage.

The same distance is observed between the Duke Leto Atreides character of 1984 and 2021. One radiates nobility and dead seriousness, while Oscar Isaac acts here exactly like he acts in every movie in which he appears. Which is to say weak. Oscar Isaac is literally the same character in Dune as he was in Star Wars. He emits no gripping leadership, exudes no magnetic charisma at the head of one of the universe’s greatest armies that we admire in the book and in the 1984 movie.

And again, the 2021 movie’s lack of the Sting character, Harkonnen Feyd Rautha, nephew of Baron Harkonnen, removes what was in the book the evil Harkonnen foil to young and good Paul Atreides. As House Atreides represents good, honor, justice, fairness and clean living, House Harkonnen is everything opposite- murder, coercion, violence, cruelty, sadism, greed etc. Throughout the book Dune, and in the 1984 movie, the two nephews (who turn out to actually be related by blood) ever more tightly circle each other, coming closer and closer to an in-person showdown knife fight to the death. All of this foil effect and symbolism is absent the 2021 movie

While the 2021 movie has fantastic special effects that are blended with just enough gritty sand to make them believable, today’s movie lacks the true grit, grime, and desperate feel of the 1984 version.  The 2021 space ships are superior to the almost pathetic hand-drawn ones of 1984. However, in 1984 the freaky-looking mutant spacing guild navigator folds time and space by shooting light beams out his mouth and ass, thereby connecting two distant parts of the universe and moving an entire army across the distance between the two points “without moving.”

We get no such mouth or ass action in 2021, and it is a true loss. Because no matter how good your special effects are, and no matter how much your movie watchers are supposed to innately know that eight thousand years from now weapons and space travel are really high tech, your viewers nonetheless want to see how that high tech moment is attained. That is the point of watching a movie. Having a bunch of spacing guild navigators show up in 1960s NASA astronaut space suits with their visors filled with a pink fume just does not cut it (when the Emperor’s representatives visit Caladan). That scene is oh-so Star Trek and Star Wars, and we who are in 2021 are  supposed to be oh-so-beyond those passe genres.

As much as I expected to be bothered by the woke racial aspect of the 2021 Dune movie, because Hollywood has done such a good job of butchering otherwise ok movies on the altar of PC, I was pleasantly surprised at how well it worked. In case you missed it, Hollywood now demands that non-white-skinned people appear in all kinds of movies in roles that were originally written by, of, and for white-skinned people. As a result, this ‘woke’ virtue signaling gone super foolish now has unfunny black women trying to play the humorous roles of truly funny Italian and Jewish guys in Ghost Busters IX or whatever. Go woke, go broke making stupid movies appealing to no one but Hollywood insiders.

But here, in this movie, the roles are believable. Even the role of Dr. Liet Kynes, who in the book is a tough guy, and who in the 1984 movie is played very well by a big tough guy, is now switched to a black lady. I think she carries the role off well and believably. And so do the varied multi-racial Fremen, whose skin tones run from crusty white to deeply black. The 1984 movie had some blacks and American Indians in military roles, which was avante gard for its time. Here, the pursuit of heterogeneity is not forced, and it flows. Thank Shai Hulud.

In sum, the 2021 Dune movie is pretty good. I say A for weapons and action acting, B for acting, A for special effects, C+ for script, A for props and sets. My son said they should have simply used the 1984 script verbatim or close to it, and he is right.

It is easy for me to say that it could have been better, and I am but one lone watcher in a sea of watchers. But then again, I am a customer and my opinion is supposed to count with the people selling this movie. After all, Dune is the first movie I have gone to see in a couple years, maybe even three years. That is because Hollywood has turned out endless nonstop trash and junk that is either not entertaining, or not meaningful, or shallowly PC woke preachy and annoying. At this point, I now simply refuse to transfer my hard-earned wealth into the pockets of Hollywood America haters. When a decent movie comes along that promotes family, loyalty, fearless stoicism and fearless warriors, vision for a better future, risk and sacrifice, why then Hollywood can expect a donation from me.

This Dune was part one, and that is one of its main superior aspects over the 1984 movie, which tried to do too much in too short a time. To serve up the book well and just, one must convey it in bites that can be consumed and digested. Such is part one here. I am looking forward to part two, and hopefully more intensity and inward awareness from the protagonist, Paul M’uad Dib Atreides aka Timothee Chalamet.

PA’s Forester Jim Finley Enters the Forest Cathedral

Penn State forestry professor emeritus, department head, and all-things-forestry guru Jim Finley died yesterday. I was told that he was either felling a large tree on his property, or he was trying to dislodge a large tree that had been felled but was hung up on another tree. Whatever the actual facts are, Jim died from the tree falling on him. It is a reminder that even the best, most experienced forestry professionals are at grave risk.

As trite and awkward as it sounds to write here, the fact is that Jim Finley died doing what he loved in the environment he considered sacred. I am quite sure that had he been asked about whether he would like to die from a tree falling on him, or some more peaceful and less traumatic way, he would have given us the look he is giving below. It is that knowing “Why are you saying that, you know it is wrong” look. In his mid-70s, Jim was nowhere ready to leave us, and we were nowhere ready to let go of him.

His death is a huge loss.

Jim was a remarkable man, who I admired, and who left a way outsized hand print on Pennsylvania conservation and the practice of forestry in eastern America. He was a force to be reckoned with, an institution in his own right, a political-cultural movement, a gentle soul with a will of iron, kind and easy but also passionate and unrelenting.

He did not suffer fools easily, though he accepted honest debate and earnest dissent exactly the way an academic ought to: His eyes took on this hard laser focus, and you could tell he was actively listening and processing, not always ready to give an answer, either. His response might come tomorrow or next year, and if your argument was good, you could tell it had moderated Jim’s perspective.

Jim Finley was an academic, and sometimes prone to the idealism that academics naturally grow into. However, he also had the ability to be hands-on practical, and even more important, he had the ability to support aggressive, hands-on, totally practical forestry practices. You know, the kinds of visual impacts that most urbanites recoil in horror from, and which many land conservation groups really did not want to see, either, no matter how scientifically they were needed or justified. It is an admirable and rare trait to be able to be honest about unpleasant things, and Jim could look at a heavily cut tract with tree tops lying all over the place, and cheerfully explain all of the wonderful things that were now going to follow on the heels of all that disturbance. Because of Jim, conservation easements in Pennsylvania are now a lot more forestry-friendly than they used to be. And a landowner who is able to manage his or her forest as aggressively as they need to under a conservation easement, is a landowner who is much more likely to sign that easement and protect their land in the first place.

Jim invited me to speak to his classes a couple of times, and we worked together when I was at DCNR and the Conservation Fund. I knew him when I was a kid in State College, I knew him as a professional forester and academic at Penn State, and I knew him as a colleague of land conservation legend and Penn State forester Joe Ibberson, whose PSU forestry department endowment Jim presided over at the end of his formal career. It is always a huge loss when someone of Jim’s high caliber leaves us, but it is even more so when he was just starting to become mature, as he would put it in the terms of a tree.

So long, old friend. Happy travels in your peaceful forest cathedral. We who are left behind mourn your untimely departure and we will miss you greatly. You were a hell of a guy, Jim.

Wooden bowls and a vase turned by Jim Finley. Photo kindly provided by forester Dale G.

Charlie Gerow is a good guy

Turns out long time lobbyist and current candidate for Pennsylvania governor Charlie Gerow experienced an odd vehicle accident earlier this year, which has just now come to light in a police report and semi-journalistic analysis by the ardently partisan PennLive.

As reported by the State Police, Charlie was driving home towards the Harrisburg area on the PA Turnpike in the stretch through Chester County, when his car was hit from the side and from behind by a motorcyclist.

The motorcyclist, Logan Abbott, aged 30, who from descriptions sounds like an awesome all-American kind of man, became deceased on the scene after he crashed his borrowed motorcycle, for which he was not licensed, into Gerow’s car at around 9:30 PM. Abbott was thrown from the bike, and then subsequently struck by multiple high-speed vehicles as he was in the Turnpike roadway; he died from one or all of those impacts. I don’t know of any good way to die other than in your sleep, and this death has to be one of the saddest ways to go. I am really sorry for Logan and for Logan’s family. I have kids; as a parent, this is about the worst thing I could hear in my life. Hugs to you from our family, Abbott family.

My friend Dan, a brain surgeon and psychiatrist, calls many young men driving motorcycles “motor donors,” because of their dangerous hot-dogging ways and the resulting high body count statistics. Young men on motorcycles make up a huge proportion of annual highway injuries and deaths. And then donating a lot of young, healthy organs.

From what witnesses saw, Gerow was driving in the right lane at regular highway speed, Abbott was passing Gerow, and then swerved into his car. The rest is sad history. The police report surmises that Abbott was inexperienced at driving the motorcycle and made a fatal error.

Gerow was eventually pulled over by State Police several miles down the road, because the motorcycle was lodged under the front of his car. Witnesses reported seeing the motorcycle stuck in the front of the car and throwing sparks. People are wondering what the hell happened after the impact, and why didn’t Charlie pull over immediately.

Here is my take on what happened:

  • The impact came from behind and from the side of Charlie’s car, where he could not see, or at least he could not see very well. We drivers are always focused in front of us when we are driving, especially so on a turnpike with a 70 MPH speed zone. Charlie did not see and could not see what happened.
  • The motorcycle driver never appeared in Charlie’s view.
  • The motorcycle never appeared in Charlie’s view.
  • The motorcycle was lodged under the hood of the car, and out of Charlie’s vision. It would be difficult to see any time, and especially at night, when you can’t see very far ahead and you are looking as far ahead as you can.
  • Charlie probably thought he had hit some road debris, of which there is a TON on the Turnpike. Back in the early 1980s, I hit a dead deer lying flat in the middle of the PA Turnpike’s right lane, and it became lodged up under the car’s carriage. My Chrysler K Car rode up on top of the deer like a skateboard for a couple hundred feet before it became dislodged and the car regained its straight trajectory. That was a close call. Today there are lots of dead deer and tons of tractor trailer tires all over the Turnpike.
  • When Charlie realized he was carrying the road debris under his car, he probably thought it would eventually break off or break free, so he kept driving.
  • He may have realized it was not going to break free any time soon, and like any sane and experienced driver, Charlie was not going to pull over on the side of the Turnpike. No freaking way! That is the most dangerous area of any highway, and especially the PA Turnpike. If you get a flat tire on the PA Turnpike, you are best served by slowly limping to the next designated pull-off area and changing your flat there. If you pull off on the narrow roadside margin and try to operate there, you stand a good chance of being hit either by accident or ON PURPOSE by passing motorists.
  • For example, back in 2003 I was driving south at night on a regional highway, when three deer suddenly stepped right in front of my truck. Going 60 MPH, there was no time to stop or avoid impact, and in one second all three deer were scattered across the highway and my truck was severely damaged (but not disabled…it was a Toyota Tacoma). The State Police were immediately on the scene, and as we tried to pull the dead and dying deer out of the roadway, so that other motorists did not strike them and have subsequent accidents, I twice had a trooper grab my belt and yank me backwards. Why? Because as the trooper grimly stated to me matter-of-factly, a surprising number of vehicle drivers actually try to hit people who are alongside the side of the road. I could feel the whoosh of air go right past my face both times, and I could see both vehicles swerve back into the middle of their lane after they had each swerved onto the side of the road to try and hit me. The cops took it in stride as part of the daily risks they face.
  • Point being here, Charlie is a smart guy and he knows that the side of the PA Turnpike is the last place you go if you have some road debris stuck up under your car, if you can help it. You wait until you can pull into a well-lit, large, safe place where you aren’t going to be hit or carjacked.
  • Troopers who pulled over Charlie’s car then checked him for driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol, and found none. Charlie was not impaired.
  • In sum, the conditions of this lamentable accident are a dark night on a busy and fast highway, in a place where road debris is common, and there are few places to safely pull over if you do have an accident or get some debris lodged up under your vehicle. The car driver was not responsible for the impact, did not see what happened at the moment of impact, and he did not see what his car was carrying up front subsequent to the impact. The driver was waiting to find the right place to pull off in order to safely inspect his vehicle, when the State Police pulled him over and told him what had happened.

I am sorry for the Abbott family on the loss of Logan. And I hope that Charlie Gerow, who is a good guy, is not artificially targeted here because of his politically incorrect political beliefs, or because of the Abbott family’s understandable grief. Logan made a mistake (his obituary notes that Logan “had just finished 14 days straight of 12-hour shifts and was looking forward to his 14 days off and camping with his family“), probably due to being exhausted from hard work, and Charlie did nothing wrong. It’s just a damned crappy tragedy, and we should not want to see an injustice done to one party because we are feeling aggrieved over the loss of the other.

And for the record, I am not committed to any candidates for governor right now, not even to Charlie. I do think Lou Barletta has already been in politics long enough and that he should be championing someone younger for PA governor, not seeking it himself. I don’t know how Charlie will fare among grassroots conservatives, because though he is a good guy, he is also a political lobbyist long associated with a political establishment many grassroots voters and activists have come to distrust and even revile.

Fake news doesn’t sleep. One of the reasons I wrote this essay is this kind of lie, from a website proclaiming itself, what else crooks and liars. Nowhere did anyone report a motorcyclist lodged in or stuck to Gerow’s car. Yet this 100% lie remains up on the website

Fake news headline…no one says a “motorcyclist was wedged to his car’s grill,” except on a website that deliberately tells lies like this. And the comments on the article show what gullible fools liberals are. No one stopped to question this outlandish claim or ask for facts.

Logan Abbott, great guy who made a small but costly mistake. Be careful on those motorcycles, folks

Charlie Gerow holding court in January 2015 with Governor Tom Corbett and PA movers and shakers. Note photo of JFK.