Posts Tagged ‘oklahoma’

Report from Louisiana…in Oklahoma

Posted: November 21, 2022 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

HOCHATOWN, OK – We are in Oklahoma this week, in a mountain “cabin” enjoying the great outdoors and visiting with family.

Hochatown is a small, unincorporated community in southeast Oklahoma, near the Texas border. The signs says population here is about 250 people, but with 2,500 luxury cabins in the area, and more in development, this area feels more like Branson, Missouri. The two lane highway is a constant stream of traffic as tourists check in and check out of these mountain homes.

There are multiple companies that rent these places out and the images you see make them look so secluded, so remote, but once here, you see you are in a congested, developed area. Even though as I type this and look out the cabin window I see woods, just behind that tree line is another huge cabin and next door I can see another. Driving through the neighborhood it is just that, a neighborhood.

The homes are lovely; they have open floor plans, lots of windows, fire pits, covered porches for sitting outside, and all the amenities. The one we are in has a hot tub outdoors, a shuffleboard inside, and an arcade machine with a dozen games on it. There’s a sleeping loft and two bedrooms; this one sleeps ten. The décor is your basic Hobby Lobby rustic.

I can’t help but wonder what the actual locals think, those who have lived here for decades. How do they feel about this development boom? This area has always been known for being beautiful for hiking, fishing, camping, and all things outdoors. In the past few years it has become the playground for people in Texas, specifically the Dallas area, to get away from the city for a while. With recent low interest mortgage rates, development has exploded here.

And now the Choctaw Nation is developing a huge casino (on that congested two-lane highway). The casino will bring even more tourists. It will feature 100 hotel rooms, restaurants, bars, a live music venue, and a shopping area.

So the question becomes, is all of this destroying the natural aspect of the area, destroying what people are actually looking for? I mean, you are not secluded or remote at all. And even as there are woods around us, and other “cabins,” we see deer daily in the yard. They have nowhere else to go. We are all over their natural habitat.

Because Hochatown is unincorporated, some developers play fast and loose with the building rules and some of these developments are better than others. Again, something the locals worry about. On the flip side, property values have risen some 65% in the past few years. There is no question that it is pretty country here.

For now there are still many beautiful hiking trails and we spent the afternoon watching people fly fishing in the Lower Fork River, just minutes from the house. Even in these woods we are literally two minutes from the highway, from two breweries, a couple of wineries, a petting zoo, several t-shirt shops, an axe-throwing place, and lots of restaurants and bars. Seclusion is relative.

It’s still a lovely place to get away and recharge. At least until they pave over the pines and hardwoods to build more cabins.

Opposing Sharia is now bigotry…

Posted: September 28, 2010 by datechguy in politics
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About 15 years ago when the first talk of civil unions came up when people were talking about a constitutional amendment to enshrine actual marriage explicitly in the constitution the media and the pols pooh poohed the entire idea saying that nobody is talking about Gay Marriage and the idea it was going to come up was nonsense.

People who had more sense on the state level decided not to take chances and passed constitutional amendments to their own state constitutions.

Interestingly enough we are seeing this phenom again in Oklahoma:

Oklahoma is poised to become the first state in the nation to ban state judges from relying on Islamic law known as Sharia when deciding cases.

The ban is a cornerstone of a “Save our State” amendment to the Oklahoma constitution that was recently approved by the Legislature.

The amendment — which also would forbid judges from using international laws as a basis for decisions — will now be put before Oklahoma’s voters in November. Approval is expected.

Well this is a victory for liberals surely, Sharia law being so oppressive to women and gays and restrictive on sex etc etc I’m sure that our friends on the left will be cheering the chance for the voters to reject such a set of misogynistic rules right? Apparently not:

Reps. Duncan and Moore’s “us vs. them” mentality exemplifies the mainstreaming of extreme right-wing Islamophobia. Once hawked by fringe figures, the “creeping Sharia” delusion is finding champions among staunch conservative leaders like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose crusade against all-things-Islamic culminated in his call for “a federal law that says sharia law cannot be recognized by any court in the United States” at the Value Voters Summit this month.

Ah it’s all about Islamophobia, there is actually no reason why Sharia is something to be worried about, it can’t happen here. Next thing you will be telling me is that honor killings are taking place in America or something.

Jay Nordlinger identified these people long ago:

During the Cold War, we used to speak of anti-anti-Communists. These were people (on the left) who were not exactly pro-Communist. But they so hated the anti-Communists, they were . . . well, anti-anti-Communists — the best, the fairest name for them.

Today, there are anti-anti-Islamofascists. They are not on the Islamofascist side in the War on Terror. But they hate those who are fighting, or attempting to fight, the Islamofascists more than they could ever hate the Islamofascists. They are anti-anti-Islamofascists.

The similarities between yesterday’s anti-anti-Communists and today’s anti-anti-Islamofascists would make a very good essay — perhaps by David Pryce-Jones or Norman Podhoretz. Of course, many of today’s anti-anti-Islamofascists were yesterday’s anti-anti-Communists — I mean, the same people, in the flesh.

The day these people hate actual oppressors as much as they hate their pseudo oppressors will be a marvelous day for this country, and for themselves.