Archive for the ‘Main’ Category

James and the Giant Impeachment

Tuesday, November 16th, 2021

High Crime or Legitimate Investigation?

Written on 11/15/21.

The Ashley Biden diary case is getting more interesting.

To recap: Ashley Biden is Joe’s daughter, and she went to drug rehab in 2020. Before the election, Biden’s people called the AG and claimed she had been burglarized (sure) and that her rehab diary and some other things (sure) had been taken. The DOJ launched an investigation. Two people tried to sell the diary to Project Veritas, claiming they found it after it was abandoned, and they were turned down. Project Veritas tried to turn the diary over to Ashley Biden’s lawyer, who refused it because he didn’t want to say it was genuine. They also tried to give it to law enforcement. The FBI just raided three homes searching for evidence. All the homes belonged to journalists. James O’Keefe was one. Another was a Project Veritas employee. The third was a former employee.

That’s most of it.

I blogged about the story, saying I was amazed that the DOJ was chasing a worthless diary. It looked like corruption to me. Liberal news outlets buried or ignored the story. Eventually legal experts started voicing the same concerns I had. My assertion is that this proves I’m not crazy, even though I believe the story about Noah’s ark and I keep writing about the rapture.

Additional facts: the FBI, possibly taking a cue from Dick Morris and Bill Clinton, invaded O’Keefe’s home on a Saturday, assuring that the lazy, pro-left press would have an excuse to ignore it. Dick Morris, Clinton’s former fixer, used to arrange it so the White House released problematic news on Friday afternoons, knowing journalists were too lazy to go back to work and cover it. O’Keefe’s home was invaded before dawn, and the FBI threw him against a wall outside his apartment and handcuffed him, and he remained there, in his underwear, displayed before his neighbors. Legally, if not ethically or morally, Biden has the authority to micromanage DOJ and FBI activities, so he could force them to persecute his political enemies if he wanted.

Like actual legal experts (I just blog as a hobby), I wondered how a worthless diary which the Bidens denied was genuine could ground a federal investigation. Now we have answers.

The search warrant mentions three crimes: conspiracy to move stolen property across state lines, conspiracy to possess stolen property, and movement of stolen propert across state lines. These are federal crimes that fall under federal statutes, not common law. Problem: in order for these crimes to occur, the property has to be worth at least $5000.

I read about the warrant, and my insides sank. I thought, “Biden really is that corrupt. He is forcing the DOJ to undertake a personal vendetta when he knows there is no possibility a federal crime was committed.”

I knew Biden was corrupt and dishonest, not to mention narcissistic and combative, but it was disheartening to think he would do something this brazen. It was like watching a cold war go hot. Sometimes a conflict will fester for a long time without much direct action, and then the gloves will come off and all hell will break loose. I thought this was one of this times. I’m not so sure now, but this was my mindset after reading about the warrant.

It seems like no nationally recognized expert is doing what I did yet: they don’t seem to be trying to answer the $5000 question, so I’ll do it. I think the DOJ has decided the diary is worth over $5000 because journalists offered to pay more than $5000 for it.

If you’re a TV talking head who steals ideas from blogs, you’re welcome.

The accused thieves, known as R.K. and A.H. (no giggling), claim they found the diary abandoned in a room where Ashley Biden had stayed. If that’s true, no federal case, because no theft. No theft means no conspiracy to move stolen goods, no conspiracy to receive stolen goods, and no movement of stolen goods. You can’t be a murderer if the victim was already dead when you showed up.

The DOJ must be trying to prove the diary was real, stolen, and the subject of at least one sincere offer of more than $5000. They also have to prove there was a conspiracy and that whoever received the diary knew or should have known it was stolen, and if they’re going after O’Keefe, they have to show his efforts to return the diary don’t suffice to absolve him of guilt.

Criminal cases are usually simple, and the same can be said of many criminal attorneys, but this case seems to pose some questions that are somewhat difficult to resolve. Maybe the case law has already answered them. I am too lazy to investigate, because no one is paying me and I don’t do criminal law anyway.

Here is a question: can a worthless diary be considered valuable under the statutes if a buyer doesn’t make a sincere offer until it crosses state lines?

Let’s say I steal your favorite Beanie Baby, which has a street value of nothing. Then I move to another state. Someone there, a lunatic, offers me a hundred grand for it. Did I violate the statute? What if the buyer calls me before I move, and he says, “Bring me the special edition Birthday Bear, and I’ll pay you handsomely,” but no figure is discussed until I arrive? What if he says he wants to look it over to see if it’s worth buying?

What if the buyer makes a sincere offer of $6000, I make the trip, and he then reduces it to $4000? What if that happens, and then a different buyer offers me $10,000? Am I guilty? Was I guilty when I stole the Beanie Baby, when we talked on the phone, when I took it across state lines, after the first offer was made, or after the second offer was made?

When and how is the value established?

What about proving theft?

I do not believe the diary disappeared in a burglary, because it’s not plausible. The Bidenistas told law enforcement several items, including the diary, were taken. That suggests the criminal was not a political operative. If James O’Keefe hires you to steal Ashley Biden’s diary, you’re not going to wait around in her house, picking through knickknacks and taking junk while precious time ticks away. It makes no sense.

A burglar who was not a political operative would not take the diary. Burglars aren’t clever people who try to destabilize elections. They are generally idiots who grab whatever they can in order to fund drug habits or degenerate parasitic lifestyles. I had no idea who Ashley Biden was in 2020, and I’m a fairly bright person. The notion that a crackhead or career burglar would understand the significance of her diary is not tenable.

I think Joe Biden’s people faked a burglary so the DOJ could get involved. They were probably alerted to the disappearance of the diary, perhaps by the people who possessed it. A federal investigation would have seemed like a good way to stifle the eruption by intimidating the finders and journalists. You may think a top-level politician wouldn’t commit a crime like that. Well, think about Nixon and the long list of Congressmen who have committed felonies.

Filing a false police report is easy, and it’s very hard for the police, who really aren’t very good at solving cases, to prove you did it. And how highly motivated would Deep State FBI and DOJ employees be?

No one has gone after St. Fauci, who clearly lied to Congress. That’s a crime. It shows how the system really works. Informed people are aware of many similar abuses.

My guess is that the diary was abandoned. I think Ashley Biden was done with it because she had left rehab, so she did’t keep it.

If that’s true, then why would the FBI keep hammering away? One possible answer: they may have coerced the innocent finders of the diary they were going to prison if they didn’t confess.

Surely the FBI wouldn’t try to coerce a fake confession or convict an innocent person.

Oh, wait. Michael Flynn.

News flash for lay people: cops are allowed to lie to you, and that includes federal cops. It’s perfectly legal. They can put you in one room and your best friend in another, and they can tell each of you the other one says you’re guilty. Look it up. It should be illegal, because, like torture, it leads to bogus confessions, but it’s done every day.

If the FBI could get one or both of the finders to confess and take a plea, purely out of terror, then one of the elements necessary for the issuance of the subpoena and warrants would be satisfied.

The FBI could be on a fishing expedition. That means they may be using immoral or unethical means to get evidence for an investigation which shouldn’t have started unless the evidence were already in hand.

The government can’t come to your house on a whim and look around to see if you’ve committed a crime. They have to have some reason that will make a judge happy. In the absence of evidence, they may be motivated to create false evidence, and a coerced, invalid confession will do just fine.

Maybe the FBI doesn’t know whether the journalists did anything wrong but decided to use bad confessions to bypass the Fourth Amendment and root around in the journalists’ data to see what they can come up with. The Deep State, which is very real, does not like Project Veritas, and O’Keefe and his employee surely have a lot of data the Deep State could use to derail other O’Keefe projects and, conceivably, convict Project Veritas personnel of crimes.

If the cops get permission to search my house for a stolen toaster, and while they’re ripping the place up, they see a dozen hand grenades on the kitchen counter, I’ll have to answer for the hand grenades, even if the toaster never turns up and the person who filed the police report chimes in later to say he found it in his garage.

The FBI may well be looking for metaphorical hand grenades.

O’Keefe and his lawyers know this, and it’s why they got the judge to consider appointing an “impartial” (Why do we even use that word?) special master to go over the evidence and determine what the FBI/DOJ should be allowed to see. Supposedly, the authorities have been forced to stop going through O’Keefe’s phone. Right, because it takes weeks, not minutes, to clone a phone’s data. Who knows how many copies are on FBI/DOJ flash drives already?

“The FBI would never do that!” Really? Must we go there? The vast majority of the time, any law enforcement organization will do the right thing, if not out of principle, then out of fear and because, in most situations, they don’t need to do anything sleazy. Breaking the law can require a lot of planning and effort, so that also has to be considered. Law enforcement people usually uphold the law, but exceptions are commonplace.

Look at what prosecutor Binger did in the Rittenhouse case, on national TV.

If the feds got shaky confessions, they really need to be sure the evidence won’t blow up in their faces. If the finders got scared and said things to make the feds happy, and the confiscated data proves those things are not true, it would lead to acquittals and possibly scandals which could include a presidential impeachment. The feds may be scouring the data primarily to see if coerced confessions will blow up on them later.

I think the diary was found innocently, that the journalists involved committed no crime, that the Biden gang lied about the burglary, and that the feds are trying to bootstrap. But I’m just guessing. What if serious crimes were committed?

O’Keefe has stepped in it before. He used to go into situations with inadequate legal advice, and he was charged with crimes. Maybe he, or one of the other journalists, has done it again.

How smart is O’Keefe? Has he learned from past scrapes with the law, or is he still winging it? I would expect Project Veritas to have top-notch lawyers on hand to provide prophylactic advice before the commencement of any caper. It’s hard to believe O’Keefe would risk his liberty foolishly, given his history. But he may have done it.

Remember Scott Ritter, the wacky, arrogant arms inspector who used to say inflammatory, unhelpful things about the Bush II administration and the second Iraq war? He was arrested for sexual escapades involving a sting operation he apparently thought was a girl in her mid-teens. It killed his career. He got probation and avoided conviction the first time he was charged, but years later, he got charged a second time and went to prison. Not only did he do the same basic thing again; he was so cocky, he rejected a plea and spent over two years in the federal can. People don’t always learn their lessons quickly.

Maybe, hard as it would be to believe, the diary really was stolen in the burglary the Biden crew reported, and maybe the feds have good, solid evidence that this is true. Maybe they’re just looking for data that shows one or more journalists made communications incriminating themselves. Maybe at least one of the thieves has some of those communications on his phone, and the feds want to confirm them from the other end.

What does this all add up to?

If the searches are shown to be improper, and/or the burglary turns out to be a hoax, Biden could be impeached and/or convicted, depending on the breaks. If it can be shown that he or people close to him pushed a weak, daughter-privilege investigation even though they knew it was wrong, Biden could find himself sniffing hair back in Delaware in the private sector.

Then our president would be 28% Harris. Oh, well. That will probably happen soon anyway.

The finders could turn on the feds. Whistleblowers could emerge. Anything is possible.

This would all be very bad for the cozy, smoochy relationship among Democrats, the Deep State, and the press.

If, on the other hand, it turns out one or more of the journalists are at fault, some of them might do time or at least lose their livelihoods.

I think it will not be possible to prove the diary was stolen, and I think the charges will evaporate. Then the press will generally ignore the story, until a few brave souls start pushing it, and then it may turn into a big stink, with many organizations jumping on the bandwagon and siding with O’Keefe while trying not to touch him any more than they have to.

If these things don’t happen, I think the finders will be shown to be guilty, and then there will be one or more journalist trials, and the public, which can’t even understand simple cases, will go nuts arguing about the merits.

I don’t know. I’m not an expert. I haven’t done significant research. I haven’t seen what the feds have seen. I just like to guess.

Biden’s family is remarkable. So many bad things have happened to them, they resemble the Kennedys. Three premature deaths out of seven people, plus miserable, defeated lives for the surviving adult children who are Biden’s legacy. Biden himself has had surgery for two intracranial aneurysms, and now, just when he has gotten what he has always wanted, he has dementia, an imploding country, plummeting polls for himself, disastrous polling for his vice president, and stadiums resounding with a popular chant suggesting someone perform an unwelcome sex act on him. People also ridicule him for his enhanced teeth, hair transplants, facelift scars, and motionless forehead, which suggests the use of botox.

It’s interesting to speculate on all this stuff. Maybe I should be more distressed by it, because it’s happening in my country, where I have to live. The thing is, the problems of the apocalypse, including the rapid decline of America, haven’t harmed me or my wife significantly yet, apart from making it hard for us to get together.

By the way, I just saw a scientist on Youtube, saying a Swedish team has found evidence that the spike protein from the mRNA vaccine can enter cell nuclei and affect two important genes. One gene is important in the repair of severed DNA strands. My lay understanding: the shots may result in damage to our DNA.

This is why I didn’t want to take the mRNA shot in the first place. My reasons were spiritual, not scientific.

Curses and blessings are recorded in our DNA. You may scoff, but things like good health, talent, intelligence, height, good looks, physical strength, resistance to addiction and infection, resistance to cancer, and resistance to many diseases can be largely attributed to DNA sequences. Blessings. On the other hand, Huntington’s Chorea, type I diabetes, many types of cancer, low intelligence, ugliness, dwarfism, and even sexual perversion can be carried in our DNA. Curses.

When I say blessings and curses are encoded in our DNA, I’m not expressing an opinion. It’s a medical fact.

DNA seems to have importance to God, because he flooded the earth to get rid of the genetic contribution of fallen angels. They had had sex with women, and their cursed offspring were destroying mankind. For a long time, I’ve suspected that some curses and blessings can affect our DNA. I suspect that changes can bring us closer to the children of darkness or even make us part of that group.

When the mRNA vaccines came out, we were told they could not possibly affect our DNA. They were supposed to make us make the spike protein and then dissipate. I read that, and I thought about all the other rosy medical predictions, made during the last century, that had turned out to be false. I thought, “One day, these people may turn around and tell us the shots change our DNA.” Now that day has arrived. In fact, it arrived in October.

I am no biologist. I am no geneticist. I am no doctor. I’m just a religious extremist. Nonetheless, it looks like THE SCIENCE (PBUI, PBUI*) may have been wrong, and I may have been right even though scientists had a tremendous amount of evidence suggesting they were right, and I had pretty much none to the contrary. All I had going for me was disdain for the arrogance of human beings. Remember the “unsinkable” Titanic?

So what does the Swedish study mean?

The guy who explained it in the video I saw is some sort of scientist, and he says it’s important to see if the study’s conclusions can be reproduced and proven correct, so maybe the whole thing is a fuss over nothing. But when a scary warning has a good basis in research, should you wait to see it proven right before acting on it? The general rule in life is that you err on the side of safety.

Smart people avoided cigarettes long before the first cancer report came out. They saw how unhealthy smokers were. They knew it didn’t make sense to smoke one’s lung tissue like a commercial fishery smoking salmon. They knew refraining from smoking did no harm.

The vaccine situation is different, because vaccines seem to do good, not harm, and eschewing vaccines appears to raise the risk of severe permanent damage and death. But you don’t have to take an mRNA vaccine. Yet. They haven’t banned the adenovirus vaccine. You can always take that one and avoid the mRNA shot.

I’ve had the adenovirus shot. It also makes us make the spike protein, but as far as I can determine from Googling, it hasn’t been shown to pose a risk of sticking it in our nuclei. Maybe it does. Biology is not simple, and I know little about it. I chose the J&J shot for the specific reason that it might decrease risk to my DNA, which must be really wonderful, given what a great person I am.

I prayed before I got the shot. I needed it in order to be able to visit my then-fiance and, later, my wife. I needed it to get her immigration process going. I prayed about it, and my feeling was that God was fine with it, even though it was prepared using an abortion product. I’m sitting on a chair made in China, where forced abortions are normal, and I may also own products made through slave labor. I have an Ipod. I can’t really avoid products made by evil means.

My wife got mRNA shots. That concerns me, but I left the decision to her, and she hears from the Holy Spirit, so I saw no reason to forbid it. I don’t think the J&J adenovirus shot was available in her country.

Now we are faced with the necessity of waiting to see what the ill effects, if any, are. Nothing we can do. We can shun additional mRNA shots until we get better information, but that’s about it.

I don’t want another shot. I think I’ve had covid at least once, and it was no big deal. I want to take the blood test that will tell a vaccinated person whether he has been infected. I would feel better, knowing I had already stomped covid at least once.

What does it mean if vaccinated people have inferior DNA-repair capabilities? More cancer, I guess. Isn’t that the big hazard when your DNA is cut? Radiation causes cancer by severing DNA strands. Will the spike protein do the same thing?

Will vaccinated people start having mutant babies? Most mutations aren’t good. It’s not like the X-Men. You don’t get the ability to move metal with your mind or transport yourself through solid objects. You’re more likely to be born without legs or something like that.

My wife is young (yay, sorry), so if bad things can happen to her, they would have plenty of time to manifest, unless the rapture comes first. Maybe that’s God’s plan. Maybe the shots are very bad, but they can’t affect people who are close to God, because they’ll be gone before the problems show up.

*Peace Be Upon It

Today’s Speed Bumps

Saturday, September 4th, 2021

Negotiating the Pre-Travel Obstacle Course

I am wiped out. I haven’t done anything but work on travel plans today.

It’s a shame countries and airlines don’t do a better job of laying things out for travelers. It would be simple to post comprehensive lists of entry requirements, but instead, you see one rule here and another rule there. Surprises keep popping up just when you think you’ve got things covered.

Today I found out Rhodah and I have to fill out health certificates before we enter Turkey. That was news. I found a Turkish site and filled out the forms, but they require you to do it right before you travel, so today’s forms will not be acceptable. I filled them out just so I would have the required information handy when I have to do the job over.

What do the forms say? Nothing, really. They tell who we are and which hotel we’re using. Not sure why this is helpful. I’m also not sure why these forms can’t be filled out at the Istanbul airport. I’ll bet they can.

I had a scare over Rhodah’s tickets. She is required to use an approved Turkish air carrier when she arrives, and I had her coming into Istanbul on Turkish Airlines. Today I realized she would actually enter Turkey on another airline and then switch to Turkish Airlines for a final leg to Istanbul. I thought I was going to have to cancel her flight and mine and go through the horror of trying to find new bookings that worked. That would have sent well over a thousand dollars down the chute.

I called Turkish Airlines, and they told me there was no problem. What matters is where she goes through immigration, not where she physically enters.

I have had excellent experiences with Turkish phone and email help. The Turkish government responds in minutes, and they are extremely polite. Turkish Airlines will put you on the horn with a very capable non-Indian human being in a few seconds, and their reps actually know the answers to the questions you ask. I don’t know why Americans make support such a bad experience.

Sometimes I want to find the lady who recorded all the American phone system messages that lead me in circles and give her a piece of my mind. You know her. “For English, press ONE.” She must have hung up on me ten thousand times.

You can actually see her on Youtube. It’s almost scary hearing that hateful voice coming out of a real human being. Her name is Elita Bradley.

I really hate talking to machines. I didn’t realize that until today, when I considered the issue. Being forced to talk to a machine is degrading. It tells you you’re not important enough to talk to a human being. It tells you no one cares about your problems, even when you’re paying their bills. Often, machines tell you there is literally no way to make yourself heard or stand up for yourself. It is disempowering.

When I got the arrival question answered, I moved on to another crisis. My airline has suddenly decided to impose draconian mask rules. More degrading than mask rules were to begin with. I have to wear a real mask or something that looks like one. They require N95, KN95, FFP2, or surgical masks. Last time I flew, I bought special flimsy masks that don’t work, so I could fly with as little breathing resistance as possible. I must have spent an hour and a half today, trying to find something new that would pass muster with the COVID Luftwaffe. I came up with a couple of things, but I think I’m in for an unpleasant flight to Istanbul.

I had to look at every layover location and make sure neither of us needed transit visas. I confirmed it. I wrote a long document containing that information, along with flight details and other important facts. I listed the contact numbers for all of the airlines. I listed the hotel’s address. I found out how we could get COVID tests before leaving, and I included the URL of a company that will test us at our hotel.

Neither of us has to be tested on the way to Turkey, but both of us have to be tested on the way home. Rhodah has to take a real test. The USA will let me get by with a quick antigen test. Should I do it? Antigen tests are fast, and they have the benefit of generating more false negatives. A false negative could prevent me from being trapped in Turkey. I don’t want to spread coronavirus, though.

I’m so used to resisting hysterical anti-COVID measures, resistance is my natural response. I have to remember not to resist measures that have some basis in reality.

I had to find out how to get us our tickets and boarding passes. This is a confusing area now. Near as I can tell, some airlines don’t provide tickets. They send receipts, and you can check in and get boarding passes a few days before your flight takes off, but they don’t send you anything that says “e-ticket” at the top.

Remember when you could call an airline and make a reservation without paying for it? Remember when they would mail you real tickets long before your trip? Yeah, I do, too. I remember having stewardesses tell me it was fine for kids like me to bring their pocket knives onboard.

I did all this stuff, and then I found out Turkey had just put out a new list of coronavirus restrictions. I mean within the last two weeks. The restrictions are very bad. People have to have PCR tests to travel between cities, go to crowded events, and so on.

I was pretty upset. We would have had to take at least three tests each, and what if either of us had failed one?

Then I saw this, on our State Department’s Turkey page: “The COVID-19 related restrictions apply to all citizens and residents of Turkey. Tourists are exempt from COVID-19 restrictions.”

Thank God for that.

I think I can relax now. My hope is that no new landmines will go off before the trip. I’m extremely glad we can go to Turkey without being tested. I would rather be stuck in Turkey in a nice hotel with Rhodah than stuck here without her.

Surviving Egypt

Sunday, June 20th, 2021

Tough Love for Popular Destination

Originally written on 6/19.

It’s my second day back from Egypt, and I feel great. I can’t tell if I feel great in absolute terms or I just feel great compared to the way I felt in Egypt. I’ll take it, however.

Egypt is 6 hours ahead of me, so before I left home, I decided I would try to start going to bed early. It didn’t pan out all that well. I didn’t sleep well the night before I left.

Sleeping on the flights was not possible.

My first flight took me from Orlando to JFK on Jetblue. I have heard people say nice things about Jetblue. I’m glad they had good experiences. Both of my Jetblue flights were so packed, people were forced to check their carry-on bags, and Jetblue did not let me choose my seats. It wouldn’t have helped had Jetblue been a better airline, however, because I can’t sleep on short flights.

My second flight took me to Cairo on Egyptair. Apart from the fact that Egyptair is one of the few airlines whose most effective terrorists are their pilots, I have no complaints. My economy seat was reasonably spacious, and it reclined a long way. The food was okay. The airline supplied a good entertainment console, and we also got things like sleep masks and socks. The flight staff was polite. On top of all this, I had three seats to myself.

Problem: bad parenting. A lady a few rows ahead of me had a little girl who screamed all the way to Cairo. I know what people will think: “Poor thing. Her ears hurt.” No. This kid was a brat suffering from improper instruction. She was not screaming in pain. She just enjoyed screaming. The lady holding her encouraged her. Even with silicone ear plugs, there was no possibility of sleep.

In Cairo, the tour operator liked to get started early. For some reason, Cairo is in a time zone where the sun is pretty high at 5:30 a.m., and the Egyptians like to get moving before the air heats up. I wanted to sleep until at least 7:30 to start getting over the time change, but it wasn’t happening. We had a day tour scheduled, and the pyramids could not wait.

Later in the week, in order to get to Aswan for the cruise, we had to get up at 4:00. This didn’t improve things at all. We also had to get up early for the unbelievably long drive to Abu Simbel, a destination I recommend skipping.

Egyptians like to get up early, but they also like to eat dinner late. The cruise ship provided dinner no earlier than 8:00, which is ridiculous. You eat, you run back to your room, you prepare, and if you’re lucky, you’re in bed by 10:00. It should be obvious that ship operators don’t want their tourists limited to 6 hours of sleep, but I guess no one in Egypt has thought about this. Dinner should start no later than 7:00.

When I returned to Florida, I had to get up at 4:30 in order to make a 9:35 flight. This was what the guides recommended. In reality, 6:00 would have been just fine, but there you go. It was 4:30 in Cairo, making it 10:30 p.m. the previous day in Florida, and my flight was scheduled to land in Orlando at 8:00 p.m. Thankfully, the screaming kid was not aboard my second international flight, so I did sleep a little. By the time I got home and found my car, I had been awake for about a day, after getting too little sleep in Egypt. It was not a recipe for highway safety.

I thought I would have a hard time adjusting to Florida time, but last night I fell asleep at around 10:00 without drugs, and I woke up at 5:00, which is not all that far from my target.

Rhodah’s situation was worse. We tried to work things out so we would be together as much as possible on the way home. I didn’t want her to be alone in airport waiting areas. It wasn’t possible to make the flight times work well. My flight from Cairo left in the morning, and hers left at about 7:00 p.m. We tried to get her a nice paid lounge to sit in, but Cairo International is not set up well for that. She had to sit in the main terminal. Then she had a similar wait in Dubai. Fortunately, I was able to put her in a lounge there, with a buffet and so on, but she still ended up landing in Zambia a long time after I arrived in Florida.

Anyway, we survived. I just wish I didn’t have this cold. It’s mild, but even a mild cold is a pain when you’re traveling. Rhodah’s symptoms were somewhat milder than mine, thank God.

I have some more observations about Egypt.

We were taken to a bazaar during one of our day trips. I recommend against going to bazaars that are popular with tourists. First of all, there is not much you really want in an Egyptian bazaar. Second, you will pay more in markets that draw tourists. At least this is what I deduced; one of the guides let something slip. While we were in the car, he pointed to another bazaar where locals go, and he said the prices were very good. If you’re determined to buy Egyptian scarves which may or may not be genuine, find out where the real bazaar is and go there on your own.

The bazaar we went to was called something like El Khalili. I am too lazy to look it up. The main drawing point was a small coffee shop where Naguib Mahfouz and Morgan Freeman have been known to drink. There are pictures of both of them on the walls.

I have never read a Mahfouz book, and I never will. I don’t have any interest in his books. I can’t name one title. It’s amazing that I even knew who he was. As for the sensation of being in a shop where Morgan Freeman once sat, it’s everything it sounds like it would be. But the guide and the shop employees were very nice, so I was, too. They have to make a living. I was happy to look at the photos.

There were jewelry stores in the bazaar. They made a real impression on me, like the jewelry stores in airports. I wondered who in his right mind would buy jewelry in such places. If a bazaar shopkeeper in Egypt sells you a ring, how do you know if the price is good, and what do you do when the plating comes off and you find out your ring is mostly steel? And airport jewelers…has any airport merchant anywhere ever offered a reasonable price on anything? If a Whopper costs $10.00 in an airport, why would you expect a good deal on a watch?

I suppose some people shop at these stores. They’re not for me, though.

Googling around, I don’t see much of a connection between Freeman and Egypt. It looks like he visited a few years ago while doing a documentary, so I suppose his stop at the cafe was incidental. I guess the proprietors were happy when they saw him, and they decided to make the most of his visit.

Rhodah and I stayed near the pyramids every night we spent in Cairo. I wouldn’t do it again. She was captivated by the view, which was pretty neat, but until Giza is put back together, it won’t be very comfortable for tourists. Walking around is dangerous and difficult because of the street repairs, and shopping and dining out are nearly impossible. We considered moving downtown, to the area of Tahrir Square. That would have put us near the Egypt Museum, not to mention streets with usable sidewalks and functioning shops and restaurants. If I were to go back, I think I would do Giza for one night and then move downtown.

I had no problem getting money from ATM’s, but they dispense 200-pound notes, and that made life harder for me. In Egypt, a 200-pound note is a big deal. It’s around $12. When a driver runs you around all day while touring, a good solid tip is 100 pounds. When someone carries your luggage, 50 pounds is very generous. If you’re stuck with big bills, you have to get change all the time, and it can be awkward. Not that this stopped me.

My hotel, the Steigenberger Pyramids, had some failings, and one was that they didn’t keep petty cash on hand. I could not get bills changed reliably. That’s a shame, because they should have learned to provide such routine services.

When you use a public toilet in Egypt, you can pretty much count on running into someone who wants a tip. Five pounds will do it, although I think it annoys them when Americans know how little to tip. Some bathrooms have attendants, and others are jammed up with janitorial people who pretend to be attendants, and they may tell you stories about their starving children in order to get more money out of you. They will not hesitate to try to get several dollars.

Two bad things happened to me because of the constant haggling. First, I started saying no to people even when they were trying to sell me things I wanted. I would say no and keep walking, and then I’d realize I should have bought the water or whatever they were selling. Second, I haggled when I shouldn’t have, out of habit. I’d walk away after negotiating a proper Egyptian sum, and then later, I’d realize I should have given them more, just because they needed it. By then there was nothing I could do.

Haggling is a stupid system. Egyptian merchants would make more money from tourists if they just posted reasonable prices and stuck to them. Just because you got a sucker to pay you $25 for one $3 scarf doesn’t mean you’re doing a good job. You have to think of the many people you drove away with your haggling. You might have sold dozens of scarves and made money on volume.

Haggling conditions tourists not to talk to Egyptians. How can that be helpful? It also conditions them not to visit the country again.

We got a guy in trouble at the Valley of the Kings. We went into a tomb, and he took up with us, uninvited, and started taking pictures for us. He climbed into a sarcophagus, which is highly illegal, and took photos. Then he badgered us, trying to get us to go in, too. Of course, we refused. Then he demanded a lot of money on the way out.

We had a good relationship with our guide, and I commented on what we had been through. I said the unofficial escorts in the tombs should say what they wanted up front. I wasn’t complaining, and I had no intention of trying to get money back. I was just commenting on a funny business model I found interesting. Our guide didn’t think it was funny at all. He went to the man who managed the site, and that man was irate. He dragged men out of the tombs and had us identify them so he could chew them out. He even insisted on going into the next tomb with us, to protect us. We kept telling them we didn’t want to get people in trouble, but he was adamant.

I felt like we should have told him one man was climbing into a sarcophagus and trying to get tourists to go in. He was damaging the site. I decided to keep quiet. I didn’t want to cause more trouble, and in the end, as a Christian, I don’t really care if someone damages a pagan site. The world would be better off if they were all destroyed. Rhodah agreed.

Speaking of damaged sites, we saw an interesting phenomenon in many locations. There were wall carvings of pharaohs and false gods with the faces chiseled off. Our guides told us this was done by Christians who had used the temples as churches. When Rhodah and I were alone, I told her I had no problem with it, and she felt the same way. It’s safe to say that when Jesus returns, he won’t be interested in preserving structures and artwork created to honor beings who dragged people he loved down to eternal agony.

The Egyptians don’t take good care of their treasures. You can rub your hands all over ancient carvings in every site. Many relics look dirty and worn in places because people have handled them so much. Tut’s tomb is defaced by big spots where bacteria introduced and fed by human breath have formed colonies. Between the ancient Christians, the tomb robbers, the gypsy “guides,” and tourists, many ancient artifacts are slowly being destroyed.

In the Valley of the Kings, a licensed guide can’t go with you into a tomb, but untrained attendants who crave tips practically live in them. It will not work out well in the end.

I almost feel bad about snapping a finger off a statue of Nefertari to turn into a keyring. I was going to tag the Sphinx with my Instagram handle, but they weren’t letting visitors get close to it.

Our guide told us a British man bribed tomb attendants to help him cut a placemat-sized panel out of one of the tombs. He tried to take it home to England. Somehow, I can’t help picturing a gay man who wanted a really nice board for serving cheese at parties.

When I got home, I had to go get my birds from the boarding place. The lady who helped me asked where I had been, and I told her I had visited Egypt. She practically swooned. She had been there herself, years ago. She adored Egypt. I was amazed. I found it extremely hot, very dirty, hard to get around, and, apart from the tourist sites, pretty dull. Oddly, I liked the Egyptians themselves a lot more than their country.

I can understand loving a place like Paris or Athens. If you go to Paris, you’ll have no end of things to see. You’ll also be able to walk out of your hotel and get great food in countless locations. The weather in Paris is magnificent. The shopping is great. Public transportation is great. You can even rent a car.

Egypt isn’t like that. You pretty much sit in your hotel or on your ship, waiting to be picked up and driven through security checkpoints, to see temples that all look alike, in the burning sun, with no clouds, knowing you’ll have to walk past endless merchants who will descend on you like horseflies and who will never take “no” for an answer.

Rhodah wasn’t thrilled, either. She doesn’t want to go back except possibly to celebrate the anniversary of our engagement. We met some very nice people, and we accomplished our purpose, which was to be with each other, but the country itself is a very demanding, even exhausting, destination with limited rewards to compensate visitors.

With a few changes, Egypt would be as inviting as Greece. It’s too bad the Egyptians, who can be such exceptional hosts, aren’t aware of the things they need to do.

If we had gone to Greece, we would have been filled with great food. We would have had wonderful walks in parks and on streets that didn’t smell like poop and weren’t full of constrution debris and garbage. We would have seen important historical sites. We could have been alone together without hiding in hotel rooms. Egyptians should take note. They can do anything Greeks can do. I would love to see them do better.

I Still Love Technology

Thursday, March 25th, 2021

All up in my Business

This is amazing. Someone has been surreptitiously filming me and my long-distance Zambian girlfriend.

FYI, we have decided my new pet name is The Problem of Whiteness.

Saucing the Goose

Saturday, February 27th, 2021

I Pulled Out my Beam; Pull Yours

I’m sure everyone who reads this site has been unable to sleep, wondering what became of the Kenyan lady I talked to on the dating site.

Fear not. I will escort you back into the arms of Morpheus.

To recap, I decided to take a look at interracial dating sites, for reasons already explained. I have had many amusing encounters with African Internet scammers, and I was not optimistic when I started hearing from women in Africa. I started talking to one anyway, and we had an incredible conversation. After that, I vetted her on the web. She checks out. She is the same person who has been posting on Youtube and Twitter for years. She’s a very seriously lady who hates BS, and she has put up a number of Twitter posts chewing out crooked Kenyan politicians and essentially saying God would soon smite them with boils and mighty emerods.

She didn’t literally say that, but you get the picture.

Our first conversation seemed extremely encouraging, but yesterday, I barely got a response from her.

It occurred to me that I had already failed one test as a potential leader. I had had a marvelous encounter with an extraordinary woman, and then I had failed to lead by asking her to agree with me in prayer for guidance as to whether we should continue. I emailed her and apologized, and she sent a nice email back. In it, she suggested I look into Kenneth Copeland, Jerry Savelle, and Kenneth Hagin.

AHA.

She believes in the American prosperity gospel. I said bad things about it in our initial encounter, so she withdrew to think things over. This was obvious to me.

Obviously, the thing to do was to send another email explaining that it was okay with me if she followed Copeland, and I needed to tell her I was okay with a wife who practiced the money gospel and gave money to rich preachers.

Yeah, right.

I doubled down.

This morning I sent a long email. To summarize, I said a man has to be a leader, and part of leadership is learning things first and passing them on to his wife. This necessarily means he and she will disagree on things until she agrees to submit and listen. I told her about the bad experiences I had had with greedy prosperity buffoons like Kenneth Copeland and Rich Wilkerson, Sr. I told her how I had criticized them publicly. I told her people had said I shouldn’t touch God’s “anointed.” I told her I had become wealthy while they were saying that, and they had not prospered. I told her I received the home and inheritance of a person who defended the money preachers. I said I cursed their ministries from time to time, and that I planned to keep criticizing them.

I am wondering what she’ll say if she responds.

The incel community has a useful but profane phrase. I will paraphrase it and say “poop test.” A poop test is a cruel, dishonest test a woman puts a man through in order to establish dominance and weed out men with spines. Women will say these tests are intended to screen out losers, but that isn’t true. Only losers pass these tests. They’re all about enslavement and hatred of men.

Women will do things like “running hot and cold.” This means she’ll love you one day and shun you the next. The idea is to use sporadic reinforcement to draw you closer. It’s the same thing that makes slot machines work. If a slot machine pays off every time, you’ll only pull the arm until you get what you want. If it never pays off, you’ll only pull the arm until you realize it. If it pays off unpredictably at random intervals, you may pull the arm until you get blisters and tendinitis.

Wife-beaters work the same way. A wife-beater can’t be predicted. One day he’ll be Prince Charming. The next, he’ll give you a fractured orbital. Women and kids learn to try to mold themselves in order to shape a wife-beater’s behavior. It doesn’t work, but it’s literally addictive.

Poop tests are abuse. Anyone who sticks around for them ought to donate his testicles to medical science, because he is not using them.

Poop tests are wrong, but clinging to your principles and seeing if your partner is right for you is right. It’s what I’m doing. It’s what Jesus did. He said incredibly rude things to people, and he accepted the fact that people who were offended shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

By the way, a reader recommended a video in which a dating coach gave three tests to give women. I thought it was kind of funny. Here they are:

1. Ask your true love to get you a cup of coffee.
2. Say you’re not going to do something she wants to do.
3. Ask her if she’ll sign a pre-nup.

It’s wrong to come up with contrived, dishonest tests, but I’ll say this: these are legitimate tests, not weapons of manipulation.

The second test reminds me of something that happened to me. I was dating a nutjob who will never be anything but miserable. Unfortunately, I was the love of her life. She had our future all planned out. She was smitten.

She asked me to go to a cat show. I had zero desire to do this, but I agreed, because you do things for people you love. No big deal.

On the day of the show, she arrived at my house very late, and she did not call or give me any warning. When she arrived, I said she needed to let me know when she couldn’t be on time. Again, no big deal. Off to the cat show.

On the way to the show, she had a nutjob moment in the car. The mask fell off. She started telling me I was angry. She said I had a “pissy” look on my face. She was furious. I had no idea what she was talking about. I had been wondering if there was anything interesting to see at a cat show.

I don’t recall whether we made it to the cat show. I recall that I dumped her. The cat show berserker conniption cut the cord, but it was a few days until I made it official.

She thought I ruined her life when I cut her loose, but I saved my own. She took forever to let go. I had to chase her down and force her to take the belongings she had left in my bedroom. Women leave things in men’s homes in order to mark territory and ease their way toward marriage. “If my stuff is in your house, you’re still my man, and this will blow over.”

Sometimes people give themselves poop tests. It wasn’t the first time for her. I remember sitting in the car while she berated some minimum-wage ghetto girl over a parking fee dispute that amounted to less than a Starbucks bill. The girl in the booth was not in a position to make the rules, and she was obviously very hurt. I told her to forget about it and drove off. I caught hell for that, and I learned something.

The way a woman treats other people she’s angry about is the way she will treat you when she’s angry at you. The same thing applies to men. If you like big, strong men who push other men around physically, get ready for dental caps and bruises you can’t hide with makeup. Your day is coming.

Anyway, again, poop tests are wrong, but standing up for God and the truth can perform their function for you.

Today I did exactly the right thing, so I feel good. I’m not sitting around wondering what clever move will make her love me. I wrote my email and got up and made some delicious buckwheat pancakes. She can accept me or move on. She says she believes a man should lead and a woman should submit. We’ll find out if she means it.

She is a bold person who has been rejected for telling the truth. Does she have the stomach to accept someone who speaks the truth to her?

Now you know what’s happening. Sleep well.

Honey Did

Saturday, October 3rd, 2020

Backlog of Chores Dwindling as Spiritual Warfare Takes Effect

I got loads of stuff done today.

My utility cart has been giving me problems. I did a trigger job on my Thompson Center Venture, and because of the weather, I had to wait weeks to shoot it. A few days back, the weather got nice, and I threw my mat and rifle in the cart. It would not start.

I took the carb out, which was not fun at all, and I threw it in the sonic cleaner in gasoline. I did this twice. Didn’t help. I decided to take the main jet and the float needle out and look at them.

The float is held on a pin that goes through two posts made from what I suppose is cast aluminum. Generally, float pins are not fitted tightly. They are held captive by the bowls, so there is no reason to have a tight pin. The people who made my carb didn’t know this. It was jammed in there.

I tapped it out with a punch. I really had to whack it. Unfortunately, one of the posts snapped at the base.

I was not happy. I can do a lot of things with tools, but I had little confidence in my ability to refasten a tiny broken aluminum post to its base, inside a carb bowl. I tried some Hail Mary solutions. First, I tried to get solder to stick to it. I figured I might be able to glom enough solder onto it to hold it in place. Didn’t work at all. Aluminum does not seem to like solder.

I then decided to bury it in 5-minute epoxy. Maybe that would stick. Epoxy is impervious to gasoline, and carb floats put nearly no stress on their pins, so if I could get the post to stick, it would probably stay there for years.

Unbelievably, it worked. I’ll post a photo.

How did I fix the tight pin? Two ways. First, I have a number of junk carbs. I happened to have one with the same size bowl and float. There was no possibility I would ever use it, so I took the pin out and put it in the cart carb. One hole was still too tight, so I opened it with a small drill bit.

The bowl gasket in the old carb was destroyed. I guess someone overtightened the bowl nut. Because I had a carb with the same size bowl, I had a usable gasket.

The sonic cleaner didn’t fix the jet because corrosion was the problem. Ethanol gas has water in it, and water makes things corrode. The jet was narrowed because of corrosion. It looks like sonic cleaners don’t do well with thick oxidation. I also saw something protruding into the bore of the jet. A varnish flake? I didn’t know.

My answer was to put the jet in a citric acid solution. It ate the crud, and the jet opened up. I also soaked the needle.

The plugs were black, and I replaced them, too. The old ones had the wrong number on them, so I assume they were the wrong size.

I put the carb back in the cart, and it ran better than ever.

While I was working on this, I ordered a Chinese carb from Ebay, with gaskets. Cost: $13.56. I inquired about carb gaskets on a cart forum, and some guy told me I should stick with OEM products. He said OEM carbs only cost $126 each.

You know, I would love to support American businesses, but a 9.5-to-one price differential is not acceptable. I have a bunch of cheap Chinese carbs, and they are just like OEM carbs, which are probably also Chinese. When you pay 10 times as much for “American,” you don’t get a better product. You get the same Chinese carb, at a Chinese price, from a different American vendor. Good enough.

In all likelihood, my epoxy repair will hold for the life of the cart, but I will have a Chinese carb on hand anyway, because you never know. I may install it preemptively. In any case, I will never again have to go several days with no cart to drive to the mailbox. Getting your mail on foot is just not the Southern way. It’s wrong.

I also ordered a new PCV hose and choke cable. Someone had Bubba’d the old cable with a piece of wire.

My cart is unbelievably useful. I’ve done lots of gardening and tree cutting with it, and I always use it when I shoot. I can’t risk more cart down time. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

After I fixed the cart, I put a new transmission in my Makita cordless drill. A while back, I snapped the screw that holds the chuck in. These screws are hard to get out, and while I was trying, I did something to the transmission that made it fail to work. I think I lost a ball bearing. I pictured myself trying to find the right ball bearing and paying a fortune for it, and I gave up and ordered a transmission. I didn’t know it would take weeks to arrive.

Whatever. It got here, and I installed it. Check that off the list. I also bought a backup drill. Cordless tools aren’t expensive when you buy them without batteries. Life without a cordless drill was not pleasant, so I won’t let it happen twice.

After the drill triumph, I installed a $240 Timney trigger in my Ruger Precision Rifle.

The Ruger comes with a nice trigger, but it’s not TOO nice. I think rifle makers have lawyers who tell them not to sell really soft triggers. You can adjust your RPR trigger, but you can’t really get it down to the target level.

You can make it better by simply removing the trigger spring. So I’m told. They say the trigger spring’s only purpose is to make the pull heavier. It works perfectly without it. So I’m told.

I thought about it, and I thought about all the triggers I’ve modified on my own. I decided to go first class for once.

Installing a Timney trigger is easy. You remove a few screws, pop the old trigger out, and put the new one in. It has two stages. The first stage is 8 ounces, and the second is one pound. THAT’S a trigger.

Now I’m ready to find out what the gun can really do.

But wait! There’s more!

When I was done with the RPR, I took the .204 out and shot a few rounds to see if the new trigger spring was light enough.

Here’s a funny thing about rifle triggers. They all seem light and crisp in your living room or at the counter at the gun shop. When you’re looking through a scope, aiming at a bullet-diameter spot on a target 100 yards away, they suddenly become very heavy and gritty. When I put the new spring in, I thought it was very, very light.

Today, it seemed much heavier. I was not happy at all.

I didn’t shoot all that well. I’ll put up photos. The barrel may need cleaning. I’m not sure I’ve ever cleaned it. When I took my shooting class, the instructors appeared to be in favor of leaving barrels dirty until they started losing accuracy. That’s what I’ve been doing. Whatever the problem is, I decided to do more work on the trigger.

I put the gun on my bench, yanked the new spring out, and cut about two coils out. Now it seems light and greasy-slick. I’m not fooled, though. They always seem that way in the house. I’m going to clean the barrel and try the gun again in a little bit.

I feel like this has been a productive day. Tomorrow, I hope to lube the turnbuckles on my tractor forks and put them back on the bucket. Then I can move some logs I cut.

The weather is gorgeous. Cool, not very sunny, and a little breezy. I was outside for over an hour, and my shirt isn’t even dripping on the floor. Fall is here, and fall should be more productive than summer.

I believe I’m getting a lot done because I’m remembering to do supernatural warfare against demons that try to restrain me. I do it every morning, and sometimes I do it at night. It’s funny how Christians are ashamed to fight demons. They believe God is a spirit. They believe Jesus and the Holy Ghost are spirits. Somehow, they can’t make themselves believe in other spirits! Why is that?

If demons don’t exist, neither does God, so why do you think you’re a Christian?

Christianity says we are also spirits. Do you believe you exist?

Guess that’s all I have. Hope everyone is praying for President Trump. His doctor says things are going very, very well.

Fuel for the Fire

Saturday, June 6th, 2020

59 Buffalo Cops Failed to Understand the Memo

The reasons America is devouring itself right now are not natural, and it’s counterproductive to focus too much on natural reasons. We are having problems because we turned away from God and rejected the Holy Spirit. Nonetheless, it’s interesting to look at the symptoms as long as you don’t misdiagnose the disease.

Today something very unpleasant happened. I found my self agreeing with a Cuomo and even Chris Hayes, who could arguably be said to represent 75% of what is disappointing in current American males.

I saw the video of the Buffalo incident. An old man approached riot police and waved a cell phone while he was talking to them, and one of them shoved him hard. He fell backward, and immediately, so much blood poured out of his right ear it formed a puddle beside his head. He’s alert and in stable condition, and he is urging people to react peacefully.

Here’s a Youtube of the incident.

I guess it’s a good thing the victim doesn’t appear to be black. BLM doesn’t take much notice of police brutality toward white people, so maybe the incident won’t stir the violence up very much.

Am I upset about the attack itself? Sure, but it’s not what I sat down to write about. According to the news, the two cops involved in the attack were suspended. Then 57 cops resigned from the unit…in support of the attackers.

That’s the part of the story that should bother people the most. The cops will always hurt a certain number of people without justification, no matter what we do. I accept that. But I don’t accept the culture of cops who stand up for other cops who are clearly criminals.

The cops who quit supported two criminals, and they also decided it was okay to diminish their city’s ability to control rioters. What priorities. At least they’ll be welcome in the sack race at the department’s next picnic.

As a lawyer, I don’t ordinarily like to draw conclusions from news videos or early stories, because I generally don’t have enough evidence to make up my mind. For example, George Zimmerman shot a larger attacker in what was textbook self-defense, but if I had listened to the biased initial reports, I would have thought he was a murderer. There are exceptions, though. When a Cleveland cop leapt out of a car and shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice without trying to communicate with him or give him a chance to drop his toy gun, I said it was second-degree murder. It was too obvious to allow doubt. I’m also confident that what happened in Buffalo was a crime, and there is no excuse for backing up the men who committed it.

When I learn about cases like the one in Buffalo, I always think of the time I spent working with a DV prosecutor in Miami. She said she dealt with a lot of domestic violence cases involving male cops, and she said it was very hard to get anywhere with them because other cops obstructed her work and refused to cooperate. Yes, Miami cops–the people abused women were expected to call for help–stood up for men they knew to be wife-beaters. They didn’t do it because of the evidence. They did it simply because the wife-beaters were their co-workers.

Many people will get angry with you unless you side 100% with protesters, black people who are hurt by the police, or the police themselves. The truth is that it’s a complicated picture. Life isn’t a cartoon.

Rioting can never be excused, but on the other hand, police brutality is very real. Bad attitudes among cops are very common. How many times have you had an obnoxious cop treat you rudely? I rarely interact with the police, but it has happened to me on a number of occasions. How many times have you seen a cop give orders that go beyond what he knows he is authorized to command? This stuff is normal and widespread.

The police need to operate in the sunlight. Body cameras should be used every time they interact with us, and we should always be allowed to film and record them at work, except in unusual cases where information really needs to be restricted. There are still places where shooting video of the police can get you in legal trouble. That’s astounding, and if it doesn’t violate the letter of the First Amendment, it certainly conflicts with the spirit. The primary reason the First Amendment exists is to allow us to criticize the government.

I support the police. I know they are almost always right when people accuse them. I know their jobs are very hard and that our support is necessary if we expect them to get anything done. But the complaints we are hearing about them now weren’t fabricated from thin air. They arose from a long, consistent history of abuse.

The police are probably in the right in 95% of the incidents that draw accusations. In relative terms, they’re much less culpable than their accusers. But in absolute terms, they’re wrong too much of the time. Let’s go crazy and increase the figure to 98% for the sake of argument. How long would you expect your restaurant to stay open if you gave 2% of your customers food poisoning or you got angry and called 2% of your female customers sluts?

It’s not that hard to run an organization with a very low rate of employee misbehavior. Not in the world of business, anyway. It shouldn’t be any harder for the police. It should be easier, because we expect the police to be people of good character.

All this being said, I don’t think what I’m saying is very important. If we don’t address the supernatural roots of conflict, putting cameras on cops and passing new laws won’t improve things enough to matter.

The cops who committed the battery have been charged, so things could be worse.

A Bench Called Horse

Sunday, April 19th, 2020

Elegance Isn’t Everything

The makeshift Rockwell Jawhorse reloading bench is up and running, and it’s excellent. I have more confidence in it than I would in something manufactured for the purpose.

A while back, I blogged about creating this thing. I had a Jawhorse. I needed an indoor bench. I didn’t want to cut up my nice oak benches. I grabbed some scrap wood and threw together a platform I could clamp in the Jawhorse.

Today I got the press running, and I’ve been making 10mm cartridges. The Jawhorse is a hit. It’s steadier than my homemade multi-hundred-pound wooden workbench.

I highly recommend this for anyone who has a Jawhorse and doesn’t want to have a permanent bench.

Harbor Freight has a coupon for their Jawhorse copy, the Franklin clamping station, taking it from $130 to $100: LINK.

I can remove the press and pop the platform out of the Jawhorse in a couple of minutes, so storage is not a problem. The Jawhorse doesn’t mar the floor. The long wooden top of the platform is a great place to put bullets and casings, and you can also screw a piece of plywood, an aluminum baking sheet, or some kind of tray to the wood, giving you a nice big work area. I used the wood for banging a bullet puller. Worked fine.

I managed to crank out 77 rounds of target ammo using old brass. Now I have to break into my stash of new Starline. Not sure I bought enough. I thought 500 cases would be plenty, but I have more bullets than that.

I was going to make defensive rounds first, but it turned out the press was more nearly ready for a target load, so I went with it.

Now I have to decide: do I shoot this stuff in my new Glock right away, terminating the warranty, or do I test it with some wimpy factory ammo? I guess I should see if I have any.

#MeFirst

Monday, March 30th, 2020

Will Coronavirus Improve us or Keep Making us Worse?

Here’s some crazy news: my coronavirus prediction equation is holding up beautifully after 25 days.

Do I mean I wrote the equation 25 days ago? No. If you read this blog, you know better. I fiddled with it until some time early last week. But the equation’s starting point is 25 days back, and the results are still within 20% of the actual total.

That amazes me. I keep expecting the prediction and actual total to diverge quite a bit as testing becomes more widespread, which makes the actual total rise, but after a week or so with the same coefficient, I’m within 20%.

“Actual total” is a misnomer, since no one knows the actual total. To me, “actual total” means the figure posted on the Johns Hopkins website.

The divergence doesn’t have much time left to manifest. That’s my guess, because I think the epidemic is going to plateau in April. If I’m right, the graph’s slope will decrease soon. When it does, the actual total will get closer to my results instead of diverging.

Here’s something fascinating: credible scientists, or maybe doctors (not always the same thing) are suggesting that the actual total is very, very high and that the pandemic has been with us since last year. This would be fantastic news.

The conventional wisdom is that coronavirus popped up in China in November and that it made it overseas very early this year. People are pointing out the huge flaw in this belief. China is a whale of a country, and China has airplanes (hello). There is huge air traffic in and out of China, so there is no possibility that the virus wasn’t exported very shortly after the Chinese epidemic started.

I’m thinking about that right now. It has to be true. Even with a very low infection rate (which is what China had and has), a whole lot of jets go in and out of the country every day, and infected people had to be on a significant number of them.

If the virus was abroad by December 1, then it may be true, as one medical person says, that a huge number of people have already been sick and recovered. I don’t recall who it was, but he said most UK residents might already have had the disease.

I read an article about this, and then I looked at comments. They were full of claims from people who had been sick. A typical comment might look like, “In December, I had a fever, chills, and a dry cough, and doctors assured me I didn’t have the flu. They never figured out what it was.”

In late January, I had pink eye symptoms. This is a minor disease which ordinarily runs its course in a maximum of two weeks. I had it for three. Coronavirus produces pink eye symptoms in some people.

Coronavirus typically lasts 10 to 14 days unless it affects your lungs, so it sounds like the duration is similar to pink eye’s.

I had a bunch of symptoms which were somewhat unusual. I had some vomiting on the first day. At one point I had diarrhea. I had a runny nose, fatigue, and some aches. Toward the end, I had a dry cough and some sharp but relatively faint pains in my chest.

I didn’t go to the doctor. Why would I? Doctor visits are a pain, they cost money, they jack up your insurance rates, and they generally do you no good. You shouldn’t go to the doctor every time you have a pimple. I had a mild viral disease which doctors can’t treat. I stayed home and avoided people, thinking it was pink eye, which is very contagious. I never found out what it was.

I did buy toilet paper during this time. Maybe cornavirus makes you do that.

Did I have coronavirus? I sure hope so. It wasn’t that bad.

If the epidemic is older and much more widespread than previously believed, it’s wonderful news, because it means the disease is extremely mild except for very unusual cases. Right now we think 5% of victims need ventilators, but if the actual infection number is a hundred times higher than we know, the ventilator figure would drop down below a tenth of a percent.

An old epidemic would also mean many fewer future cases, because there would be fewer people left to infect.

It’s too bad people are getting their information from celebrities and the ignorant and biased press. Someone just told me he had never seen the flu kill as many people as coronavirus. The worldwide COVID-19 death total is still far below the US flu death total for last year. Where do people hear all this nonsense?

People are talking about packed emergency rooms and doctors who are running out of masks and gloves.

If the US infection rate is far, far below that of the flu, how can ER’s be packed? There are about 5,000 known COVID-19 cases in Florida, which has 17 million people and a huge number of hospitals and ER’s. Most victims are staying home. How, then, can we have an ER crisis? Seems much more likely to me that we have a press honesty crisis. If ER’s were full, the government would be telling us to do triage at home before showing up. They would be telling us this with great urgency.

As for masks and gloves, we ran out because selfish hoarders bought them. Look it up. We still have plenty of them. Unfortunately, they’re in people’s garages. And masks are not very helpful for preventing wearers from being infected, which makes hoarders look worse.

If the epidemic is old, how can numbers be increasing? It could happen. I don’t know if the epidemic is old, but I know that the numbers are unreliable. The more people think they have coronavirus, the more people will be confirmed as victims. The tests we have now are not very good, and it’s fashionable for doctors to diagnose coronavirus. Yes, doctors are like that. Remember how they put half the country on Ritalin 25 years ago? Suddenly, there was an ADD epidemic. Journalists asked why. Was it from pollution? Was it power lines? Was it lack of sensible gun laws? In reality, there was a diagnosis epidemic.

People are likely to think they have coronavirus when they think there’s a plague. Doctors are likely to diagnose them falsely. More people will go for testing. It’s a recipe for higher numbers regardless of the actual prevalence of the disease.

Here’s a great question: why haven’t any major celebrities died from coronavirus? There are thousands of major celebrities. Where are the deaths?

Until yesterday, I was not able to find a single person Americans would call a real celebrity who had died from coronavirus. Finally, one popped up, and he was a minor celebrity. His name is Joe Diffie, and you probably don’t know who he is. He was a country musician.

Uh oh. He was about 70. He was obese. He had had two heart attacks plus a bypass. He was a chain smoker.

A cold could kill someone like that. That, or walking upstairs too fast. Not trying to be funny. He was in bad shape.

The press is frantically looking for celebrity victims, and they are dredging up “famous” casualties almost no one has heard of. A character actor from the Eighties. An obscure Spanish royal. A playwright most people couldn’t name.

If this were a plague, big names would be in the news several times a week. My own guess, which is way below what the hysteria suggests, was that several dozen would die, but we haven’t seen a single one yet. Sooner or later, some will die, but if this disease were a plague, we would have seen quite a few by now.

If you had a bit part on Family Ties and then ended up working at a gas station, and you die from coronavirus, take heart. The press will remember you as a star.

To this day, we can still name genuine celebrities who died in real pestilences. In fact, some people attribute the invention of calculus to the plague. Isaac Newton discovered it while hiding from the plague in the country. He wasn’t a victim, but he was a famous person who was affected.

Lacking actual celebrities, the press is hyping “influencers.” People who have a lot of Instagram and Twitter followers. Some influencers are saying they’ve suffered the tortures of the damned. Okay, let me ask something. Why would you trust a woman who craves attention and relies on it for her income? What do you expect such people to say during an epidemic? “I’m fine; go look at something else”?

I’ll tell you a mildly amusing story. When I was in the 9th grade, a substitute teacher made hydrogen sulfide in my biology class. He let us know that it made some people feel sick. Yes, if you put a plastic bag on your head and pump it in. Otherwise, no. Anyway, as soon as he said that, people started raising their hands. In a few minutes, the whole class was in the hallway having fun, waiting for the dangerous gas, which I could barely smell, to dissipate. Everyone knew they were pulling the teacher’s leg. Twitter and Instagram are just like that class.

It will be interesting to see what the facts are once science catches up. That’s assuming they tell us the truth *cough* *cough* *global warming*. Pandemics are wonderful opportunities for leftists and other authoritarians. Leftists have just found that they can ban gun sales, keep cars off the streets, and shut down businesses during a pandemic. They aren’t going to miss a chance to do similar things in the future, so they won’t want anyone to think coronavirus was a mild problem.

From a spiritual standpoint, I see coronavirus as a great positive.

For many years, God has been telling me the age of the church was ending. Big churches kept people away from God. They put old gay men in gowns, and greasy televangelists, between God and his children. They sent untold millions to hell by preventing them from receiving true salvation.

Now we find ourselves in a situation where people have great motivation to pray and they can’t go to church. This should lead to real revival in many areas. Once you get rid of the thieves, pedophiles, serial fornicators, atheist grifters, and old-church bureaucrats, people will have a clearer view of God.

I’m not the only one who has been saying the church age was ending. Many others have started saying the same basic thing over the last year or so.

I’ve been thinking about this, and now evangelist Mark Hemans is on Youtube, confirming it. He was going to come to the US and have a tour. I booked a spot at one of his meetings. Then the insanity started, and the tour was canceled. Now he’s teaching about the great opportunity people have to have church at home. He’s happy about the change.

Satan is using a relatively mild epidemic and a lot of lethal lies to train people to be selfish and to rely on the state. God is using Satan’s campaign to bring people closer to himself. I suppose it’s part of the ongoing polarization we’ve been seeing. Children of darkness are flocking to cities and putting their faith in Karl Marx, and the children of light are moving to rural areas and drawing closer to God.

It’s a recipe for increased power and holiness, and also for increased, state-sanctioned, brutal persecution.

Last night, I had a weird dream. I was in Miami. I think Miami symbolized our corrupt secular society.

I was with Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, about whom I know nothing. In the dream, he was a short, fat, mild-mannered guy with dark hair. I looked him up this morning, and he doesn’t look like that.

He was about to make a decision that, if it went a certain way, would please leftists and hurt the economy. For some reason, I was at his side. It was as though someone had called me in to be with him because there was something special they thought I could do.

I remember walking down a hallway with him, on a way to an appearance. People were throwing silver coins behind us. Some were very big. I started picking them up. Free silver. I’m not a fool. Gimenez said “wingers” were throwing them. He said “wingers” were people on the right wing. It’s a term of contempt, and it doesn’t make much sense, because there are leftist wingers, too. I told him I was one of the right-wingers.

He didn’t get angry. He didn’t seem to be an angry person.

We went into a room where officials were getting ready for him to speak. There was no dais or podium. There were two chairs at the side of the room, with a table between them. He sat in one chair, and I took the other. No one questioned my place there.

The room was full of handsome men in suits, wearing firearms. They were like Miami’s attempt to copy the Secret Service. One young black man was waving what appeared to be an M16. He was really pleased with it.

I realized I had my 10mm Glock in my pocket. I wondered why they hadn’t frisked me. I wondered if I should tell them I had it or keep quiet and avoid starting a fuss. I didn’t wave my pistol around like a person who had never been allowed to carry a gun before.

They gave us coffee, which wasn’t the Cuban kind. My own cup was full of instant coffee powder. I walked off to find hot water. I found a machine dribbling water, but it was lukewarm. As I walked away from it, one of the suited men told me I could drink the water. He didn’t know I needed it for coffee. I rejected it and sat back down.

By now, my instant coffee had turned into cake, so I turned it out onto a plate and ate half of it.

Gimenez said leftists expected him to do things that would hinder the economy, and we talked about it. He was not a sincere leftist. In the dream, he ran as a Democrat simply because it was the easiest way to get elected. He said maybe the best thing to do was nothing at all. He clearly believed it. In his heart, he was somewhat conservative, but he was about to betray his principles.

Across the room from us, there was a half-door. Mark Hemans was behind it. He was not allowed in the room. He was only visible from the waist up. He was wearing a veil that covered his face, like Moses. He spoke in a deep, slow voice, as though in a trance. He was talking to me. He said, “Get him on his knees.” He was telling me I needed to get Gimenez saved and baptized with the Holy Spirit.

I pointed Hemans out to Gimenez and started telling him who he was and how many amazing things he had done on Youtube through God’s power. I was working up to getting him to receive salvation and the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Gimenez got up and walked off to talk to someone. I got the feeling he wanted to avoid discussing God.

There was a building next to the building containing the room in which we sat. The buildings were only a few feet apart, and it was possible to walk from one to the other without going downstairs. In the other building, there was a bar, and men in the bar were watching us through windows. They had a great view.

Maybe the room represented the natural world, and the bar represented the supernatural realm.

I realized there would be some kind of attack. I decided I, too, could use the bar as a vantage point. I walked in and watched through the windows.

Soon, I found myself outside with John Wayne and a stereotypical cocky young male supporting actor. The ground was brown dirt, as it always is in Westerns. John Wayne was supposed to be in charge of protecting Gimenez. He expected an attack the next morning, and he was getting drunk. So was his friend. There was a big barrel of red wine, and Wayne sat in it and submerged himself up to the forehead. He was very intent on getting as drunk as he could. No one was going to tell John Wayne how to get ready for service. He was confident he could beat anyone, even with a hangover. It seemed to me that I would have to be the one who actually shot the bad guys, and John Wayne would get the credit anyway.

They ended up putting me and Gimenez in a big black limousine that loaded through a wide door on the left rear side. We sat down on the car’s rear seat, and that’s all I remember.

I don’t think God has any plans to send me to Miami. I sure hope not. I don’t think Carlos Gimenez figures in my future at all. I think Miami and Gimenez are symbols.

I have the impression that certain people who have earthly power will ask me for advice. My job will be to introduce them to the Holy Spirit, but they won’t be interested. They’ll want to involve God just enough to get what they want. They will have career hangers-on around them, with secular authority. These are the armed men. They will have great confidence in their ability to defend and support, but in reality, they will be inconsequential, weak, overconfident blowhards whose main gift is an ability to get attention.

The men in authority probably represented preachers.

John Wayne represents arrogant, titled hangers-on who think they have everything under control. They won’t prepare.

John Wayne is an interesting person. He’s a symbol of masculinity, patriotism, and toughness, but he never saw or came close to combat. Some say he avoided combat because he was having an affair with Marlene Dietrich and did not want to be distracted. There are some indications that he complained about not being near the fight, but let’s be serious. John Wayne had ample pull to get himself to the front. He wasn’t too old. He was physically able. His family didn’t need him to earn money. He could have gone.

Clark Gable was older and more famous. He flew combat missions. You can claim the brass held Wayne back because he was a big star, but they didn’t have the power to do that, and bigger stars served.

Some people theorize that he developed his tough guy image in order to compensate for his behavior during the war. This is what his third wife said. I have also read that GI’s had a very low opinion of him and booed him during appearances.

Meanwhile, actors like Glenn Ford and Jimmy Stewart were fighting.

I’ve always enjoyed John Wayne movies, but he was nothing like the men he portrayed. He was from California. He was a surfer, not a cowboy. He never faced a bad guy down, and he wasn’t equipped for it. He ran around on his wife. Supposedly, his he-man image didn’t really exist during the war. He built it later.

I should have less confidence in other people. A nice suit, a shiny rifle bristling with gadgets, a special degree, a culinary diploma, a set of tactical duds, official credentials…Jesus himself didn’t have things like these. Neither did John the Baptist or the apostles. They had anointings, and that was what mattered.

Over and over in my life, I have deferred to people who couldn’t get it done as well as I could. There are plenty of John Waynes out there sitting in wine barrels, and I give them too much slack. I have paid people a lot of money to do things I could do better, with God’s help, for nothing.

We are always surrounded by people who are better at claiming credit than walking it like they talk it. It’s hard to believe they keep fooling me at my age.

I think the silver in the dream represents accusations of betrayal. Judas took silver coins when he betrayed Jesus.

I don’t really need a dream to tell you that people in power sell us out every day. They inflate their credentials and talk a big game, but in the end, most are looking out for number one, and they are good at excusing themselves.

Interesting.

We should get close to God, get a grip on our anointings, and stop being impressed by empty shirts.

I don’t know when my equation will go off the rails, but if I get tired of writing about it, you can always check it yourself with a calculator. You probably won’t be doing it from the hospital.

My Adventures with Worst Buy

Monday, March 23rd, 2020

The Love Grows Cold

On Friday, I went to see my metal dealer (who was sick), and I spent about $33 on steel so I could build a stand for my steel gong targets. Yesterday, I finished the main part of the fabrication. Here’s the result.

I plan to paint it, since it will stand in a cow pasture permanently. Until the cows knock it over and walk around on it, which will probably happen 15 minutes after I set it up. I didn’t know cows were mischievous, but it turns out they are.

The long square bits are 1″ tubing. The round bits are galvanized conduit, which I had lying around. I also used some scrap, including two short pieces of a spear for a Hawaiian sling. Look it up.

Wait…you can’t weld galvanized steel! It gives off poisonous gas! Not to worry. If you dip it in muriatic acid for a few seconds, the zinc goes away. Cheap galvanized stuff is a great resource for hobby welders.

I have a piece of round tubing that will slip over the horizontal bar. I’m going to cut the round tubing in several pieces. I’ll weld long pieces of 1″ by 1/8″ bar to the round tubing, and I’ll fasten my gongs to the other ends. This will give me targets that can swing vertically but not from side to side.

I have considered welding the targets to the steel bar, but welding will surely anneal the gongs in small areas. Soft metal can cause ricochets. I don’t know if a tiny bit of soft steel will be dangerous enough to worry about. After all, people all over the world shoot hardened gongs held up on mild steel frames that are soft, and obviously, the frames get hit. Welding would be quick and easy compared to using bolts.

I think it would be smarter to insert bolts in the gong holes and weld the ends of the bolts to the flat bar. I wouldn’t have to drill holes in the bar, and I wouldn’t soften the gongs. I don’t want the gongs to be right up against the bar. I want to put some distance in there. This will make the gongs hang so they tilt forward a little, which may make spent lead more likely to be deflected toward the ground. I guess the bolt idea is good.

When this is finished, I will have a strong stand that comes apart with two screws.

If I were making the stand today, I would change the design a little, but it will be fantastic, so I don’t care.

People knock steel, saying it’s heavy, but they forget that it hasn’t been that long since steel was considered a wonder material. The abundance of iron and the versatility of steel have changed the world. If you think steel is heavy, try building a wooden or masonry skyscraper. We haven’t always had lighter metals, and they’re more expensive and harder to work with. Steel is an incredible material. You just don’t realize it because you’re spoiled.

In other news, when I got up this morning and checked the coronavirus numbers, my latest coeffient’s results had me within a few hundred cases of the actual toll. Shocking. Maybe the equation I constructed will work fairly well for the next couple of weeks. Sooner or later, factors like recovery and saturation should mess it up, however.

I read some very comforting news today. I don’t know if it’s true. I read that MOST Americans get the flu once a year. I had read that about 36,000,000 of us caught it this year. If “most” is correct, we’re looking at a figure over 170,000,000.

That would be comforting, because it would make coronavirus look even less significant compared to the flu.

I have my doubts about it, to say the least.

A reader has suggested that Italians screwed up their data by calling all respiratory-disease deaths that in anyway involved the new bug coronavirus deaths. I wonder if that’s true, and I wonder how many other countries are doing similar things.

Don’t forget: Chinese researchers put the percentage of false positives at 40% to 80%. How would you feel, taking a cancer test that unreliable? What if you got charged with murder, and you found out juries had a 40% false-guilty rate?

Actually, that wouldn’t shock me. I’m amazed they ever get it right.

I have finally been impacted by coronavirus. Almost. A week or two ago, I noticed that my local Winn-Dixie sold store-brand shredded whole-milk mozzarella. This is not an easy thing to get even in sane times. If the cheese is good, it would be perfect for pizza. Low-fat mozzarella turns brown in the oven. You can reduce this by covering it with provolone or some other whole-milk cheese, or you can butter your mozzarella, but it’s better to start with good cheese.

Yesterday, I thought I might get some bagged cheese and Ragu for emergency pizza, just in case. Too late. The hoarders got both. They should be forced to go out in orange vests and pick up dog poop. They should have all their toilet paper confiscated and replaced with corn cobs. Or bastard files.

Another store had plenty of sliced provolone, so I grabbed some. I bought crushed tomatoes and paste. Can’t hurt. Still low on flour, but the kind of person who hoards food isn’t likely to cook from scratch, so maybe I can find some.

Hoarders don’t eat most fruits and vegetables, either. They cleaned out my local store’s potatoes the other day, while apples and all types of green vegetables sat in a big lonely display, untouched. When you see hoarder carts, they’re full of sugar cereal, Pop Tarts, Hot Pockets, and so on. Hoarding doesn’t appeal much to people who have it together.

I wonder what’s happening with cigarettes! I’ll bet they’re gone. People with poor values hoard, and they also smoke.

If you think about it, maybe the hoarders are onto something. They eat garbage and they smoke. They tend to be obese. These are coronavirus’s favorite things. Maybe hoarders are more likely to die if they get infected, so we should let them hoard!

Hoarders seem to miss some obvious things. Stores are having temporary problems, but you can go to McDonald’s or any other takeout restaurant and get all the food you want. You would think this would be a clue that there is not going to be a food shortage.

The only thing that could cause a real food shortage would be a lack of workers at the fundamental level. If there is no one to work on farms because insane politicians have made them stay home, yes, we will have shortages. The disease itself won’t hurt enough people to cause a problem. The US food supply chain is very, very flexible, and it has a lot of backup storage built into it. People need to read about it instead of filling their homes with food other folks should have.

I have a policy. I always try new pizza restaurants that open near me. In Miami, this was usually not a fruitful effort, because Miami is a pizza desert. Cubans make very bad pizza. Ocala is different. The pizza here is as good or better than New York pizza. Don’t ask me why. And yes, there is bad pizza in New York. There is plenty of it.

There is a chain here called Five Star. They opened a location near a grocery I use. Twice, I went in and tried to get slices. This was weeks ago. They were having professionalism issues, so I could not get served in a reasonable time. Yesterday, I finally got lucky. I got a couple of slices. Wonderful. I’m thinking of heading over there today.

Coincidentally, Five Star left a flyer in my mailbox yesterday. It says they use 100% actual cheese, which is something Papa John’s and Domino’s can’t say. They use fake cheese. Look it up. They mix cheese with things like starch.

Five Star also uses tomatoes which are packed ripe. This is hugely important. It’s very hard to find this kind of tomato sauce in grocery stores. Hunt’s Contadina, Cento, and the others generally do not use ripe tomatoes, and they mistreat the green tomatoes they do use. Five Star probably uses Bonta or Stanislaus sauce, from California.

I may try to hit the store tomorrow early, because I am very curious about the bagged cheese. Oldsters get exclusive shopping rights before 9 a.m. After that, I can pounce. But maybe there are lines and fistfights in the morning. Wouldn’t surprise me.

I had another plague problem. I tried to order a GoPro from Best Buy. Ordinarily, I have very good experiences with this chain, but not this week. They’re cowering behind their counters with their doors locked, but you can still pick things up in the parking lot. My understanding is that you drive by with your hatch up, and an employee in a nomex burqa fires your purchase into the back of your car with some kind of cannon. Then he goes back in, and they give him a squirt with a flamethrower.

Anyway, I tried to place the order three times, and Best Buy canceled it every time, saying they couldn’t verify my info. Their site said to call them. I called. They routed me to someone who was in the wrong department. That person routed me to another department. That department’s system told me I could expect to wait over 60 minutes to hear a human voice.

Tomorrow, Amazon will be delivering my GoPro. They promised a Thursday delivery, but it’s going to be Tuesday.

I have a Yi-brand camera I bought in ’17, but it’s junk. It turns itself on and off. When you’re shooting video, it switches to still photos and fills your SD card with them. It takes many tries to connect it to a computer or wifi. I decided to give up and buy the real thing. Do NOT buy a Yi camera.

You can imagine my stress, missing out on unnecessary cheese and having to buy toys online instead of in person. It’s hard, but I’m a natural hero and saint, so don’t make a big thing out of it. It would embarrass me, because I’m humble. And charismatic.

This morning, I realized something really bad about the stay-home orders and business closures. When people are stuck at home and they can only shop for essentials, what are they going to do? They’ll shop out of boredom. So the bans are increasing hoarding. How about that?

I’m going to see if I can get paint for my target stand. If the hardware store has paint, I’ll just buy ALL OF IT! I HAVE TO HAVE IT! SOMEONE ELSE MIGHT GET IT FIRST! I WANT IT ALL!

Whew. I’m back now.

I guess I’ll put up a photo of the stand when I set it up. May be a couple of days.

Panic v. Fourth-Grade Math

Thursday, March 5th, 2020

Sticking to my Heuristic Guns

The other day, I predicted the coronavirus epidemic would fizzle. Time has passed, figures have changed, and now I have a chance to backpedal and save face. Here is my new prediction: the coronavirus epidemic will fizzle. In fact, I would say it HAS fizzled.

Let’s talk about a typical flu season in America. We can use 36,000,000 as a good typical number of cases, because it’s true. Let’s say the season lasts 4 months or 120 days, which is more or less true.

How many new cases do you need every day in order to maintain an epidemic? Here’s the answer: 300,000.

Per day.

In one country.

Which comprises about 1/20 of the world’s population.

COVID-19 is something like 90 days old, and it started in China, which has about 5 times America’s population. To have a typical American-style flu season–not exceptional or catastrophic–China would need 1.5 million new cases per day.

Per DAY.

As of this moment, the WORLDWIDE total for COVID-19 is about 95,000. Mind you, this is after the Chinese did everything they could to make it spread.

Am I missing something here? Did I drop a decimal point?

So, unless I made a howling error I can’t spot, COVID-19 is not doing well at all. China developed around 90,000 cases in 90 days, or…let’s do the math…1,000 per day. In America, this would correspond to 200 per day. So 24,000 per season. So imagine you went to one college basketball game, and everyone there got the flu. That’s what you’re panicking about.

I don’t get it. I’m actually using the Windows Calculator app to confirm obvious things like, “36,000,000 divided by 120 equals 300,000.” I can’t understand why people are panicking. How can the medical establishment be so wrong? How can I be right when they’re wrong? Is it really possible? Surely I’m overlooking something.

A commenter suggested the disease was underreported here. If it’s underreported, it sort of proves my point. If hundreds of thousands of Americans were down with a new bug with a high death rate, it would be impossible for it to be underreported. Doctors aren’t total idiots. They would figure it out, especially with “VIRUS” in the headlines every day.

You can say the cases weren’t reported because the symptoms were too mild. Again, I win. If the symptoms are too mild to drive people to doctors and spark record-keeping and investigation, then COVID-19 isn’t a major problem.

Today I saw a graph showing how the disease is doing. It flattens out toward the right. That means the rate of new infections isn’t going up. That’s not how an epidemic works. In an epidemic, you would expect a graph that keeps going upward until saturation is reached.

If you love worrying, and you get mad at people who discourage it, you have a common character flaw, and it will not surprise me if you get mad at me. That being said, I have to say something that will make you even madder. The epicenter of the epidemic is Wuhan, China, and Wuhan’s population is…take deep breaths…11 million. So even if every case in the world were in Wuhan, less than 1% of the residents would be affected.

You’re going to get REALLY mad when you read this next statistic. Guess what percentage of the world’s population caught the Spanish flu. Come on. Guess.

The number is…27.

Guess what percentage of the world’s population it killed. Unless you got so mad you left this page.

Here you go: 5%. Give or take.

That’s not the percentage of infected people who died. That’s the percentage of all humans on earth who died. The death rate for infected people would have been something like 20%. Again, for people who think looking up exact numbers is somehow indicative of a scientific mindset…it’s not. If the actual figure is 15% or 25%, I’m still really, really right. The Spanish flu was a bona fide plague, and so far, COVID-19 wouldn’t make a wart on its butt.

Things are looking worse and worse for people who find optimism hateful.

You can make really bad arguments like, “The actual number of flu cases in the US last year was 23,405,203, so YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID.” That won’t work. We’re not dealing with figures that have to be precise. If we’re within a factor of 10, I’m still way right. When the number you need to hit is 1.5 million or anything like 1.5 million, and the actual number, which is known, is 1000, you can’t fix it with corrections of 30% or 50%. You have failed by a factor of 1500. You can’t recover from that.

Look; imagine you went to the store to buy a jug of cheap wine, and the cashier asked you for $15, and you offered her one cent because it’s practically the same.

See what I mean?

What if it turned out you had a customer loyalty card, and the price was actually $5.00?

Nope. No wine for you.

When you couple this with the fact that COVID-19’s death rate is comparable with that of the flu, except for places where doctors are incompetent or restrained by face-obsessed Asian politicians, the hysteria looks even worse.

“Oh, no! You might get the flu, which has a low death rate that mainly affects people who are old or sick! Or you might get a somewhat similar but much rarer disease with the same kind of death rate, and which only causes minor symptoms in most people!”

That’s not scary.

Here’s something else: the spread of COVID-19 is slowing down in China. The Chinese are very dirty. Sorry to say it, but it’s true. They blow their noses in the street. They let their kids defecate in public. Their food markets are horrifying. On top of this, the Chinese have a culture of selfishness, so they’re not likely to do their best to protect each other from infection. Finally, the Chinese government has done all it could to promote the spread of the disease. Still, the rate of new infections is dropping. If the infection has been a total flop in the very place where it has the most chance of succeeding, how is it supposed to turn into a global plague?

I’m trying to find out how I can be wrong about this, but I can’t see it. I’m not a doctor, and many doctors are worried, so you would think they knew something I don’t. Where is it? How is a failed Chinese epidemic supposed to turn into a deadly worldwide epidemic?

As of today, I say the epidemic is going nowhere, barring an unforeseen mutation. This is just my common-sense guess based on a total of maybe 45 minutes of web surfing, so take it for what it’s worth. If I’m completely wrong, it will be interesting to find out what I failed to take into account.

On the Whole, I Would Prefer Heinekenvirus

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2020

Let’s Wait for a Better Reason to Spaz Out

A friend called me yesterday to ask me what I thought of the new coronavirus, AKA COVID-19 and SARS. People are getting really worried.

Here is my official prediction: the epidemic will fizzle, and people will wonder why they were scared.

In certain areas of China, this illness had a pretty high death rate. That got people’s sweat glands and kidneys working. Thing is, the death rate has been much lower in other places. It appears that in areas where people get decent health care (i.e. not Wuhan province in China) the death rate is about the same as it is for the flu, and we don’t panic over that.

Here’s something else. Last year, about 10% of Americans got the flu. So far, the Chinese have had fewer than 90,000 cases of COVID-19. China has what? Five times our population? Six? The disease has had three months to do its job, and it hasn’t spread very well.

Maybe I didn’t express that well. I’ll try again. In America, 40,000,000 flu cases. In China, fewer than 90,000 coronavirus cases. See what I mean?

I don’t pay any attention to the news, but I do watch Youtube for amusement and education, and I happened to see some videos from a South African expat who just moved here from China. He’s huge on Youtube. He lived in China for over a decade, and he married a Chinese doctor. He is hopping mad at China for various reasons, and he has been doing what I would call “post-breakup videos” in which he vents the anger he kept bottled up while he was under the watchful eye of the communist party. He has been exposing China’s asinine response to the epidemic.

Long story short: China tried to prevent people from finding out there was an epidemic. They lied. They censored. They arrested doctors who spoke out. The government response was very poor. This is probably why things have gone so badly there. “Go home. You fine. Maybe sniffle.”

Some experts are pointing out that most people who get the disease get mild symptoms, so they don’t get treatment. This means the medical establishment doesn’t deal with them or put them in databases, so the information is skewed. Doctors are treating people who are really sick, so their experience colors their opinion, which they then repeat to the public. This makes it look like the disease is worse than it is.

True? I do not know. It sounds reasonable.

I think this disease will amount to nearly nothing in the US. If it makes 10,000 people sick and kills 100, it will be extremely insignificant compared to the diseases we are used to seeing here.

If you want to follow the epidemic and see if my prediction pans out, go to the Johns Hopkins site and watch their interactive map. Best resource I’ve found.

No; I do Not Want a Demon

Monday, December 2nd, 2019

What Else is on the Menu?

For maybe 10 years, I’ve been telling other Christians it was crucial for us to get rid of demons and iniquities. One of the best pieces of evidence that I’m right is that I have been persecuted for it. If your pastor doesn’t think you’re a problem, there’s a good chance you’re doing something wrong!

In around 2008, after a long period of backsliding, I turned back to God and started attending Trinity Church in Miami. It’s a feel-good/prosperity gospel church. The pastors are obsessed with increasing membership and getting people to give them money. They live in fear. They’re afraid that if they tell the truth, membership will plummet, and their incomes will be reduced.

At Trinity, the only Bible verse that matters is, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” That’s Matthew 7:1. They use this verse incorrectly so they can forgive themselves for tolerating and encouraging sin. They say they don’t want to drive people out of the church with legalism, but the truth is that they just want money. They teach people to tithe, which is, of course, legalism. They can’t see or don’t care about their hypocrisy.

Now that I think about it, there are some other verses they like. I mean the ones about tithing and giving offerings. They make very sure everyone is familiar with those.

Trinity is located in a particularly sinful part of a very sinful city. The people who go to Trinity are generally unsuccessful and irresponsible. There is lots of fornication, even in the church’s stairwells. The kids smoke dope. Many sell drugs. Many are thieves. Unwed mothers are all over the church. The pastors don’t think they can change anyone, so they don’t try very hard. They hush things up and let people continue on the way to hell as long as the seats and offering buckets are full.

Here’s an interesting Trinity story. A young man named Alex Nicolas was prominent in the music ministry. People say he was extremely gifted. Trinity promoted him. Alex was also a car thief, and it’s extremely unlikely that this was unknown to the people around him. His Facebook page featured a photo of him in the embrace of another Trinity kid who worked at King of Diamonds, a notorious ghetto strip club. Alex lived in sin, and he probably was not saved.

One day Alex was pulled over in a stolen Mercedes. The police handcuffed him, and then he tried to run. He jumped into a canal and drowned.

Rich Wilkerson had a big memorial service at the church. During the service, he asked people for money. He has a charity called Peacemakers, and he took an offering on its behalf. People were appalled.

Did he say he regretted letting Alex down? I don’t know. People talk a lot about the offering. I don’t recall anyone saying Rich expressed concern over the boy’s soul.

That’s Trinity for you. It shows where the intentional abuse of Matthew 7 leads.

There’s a good chance Alex is in hell. Maybe he could have been corrected, had someone confronted him.

Of course, Christians have to judge. Jesus was just telling us to judge ourselves first and to be cleansed so we can help others to identify and rid themselves of their faults.

The Bible uses language in strange ways. It does not always mean what it seems to mean. For example, when a Biblical figure tells people, “Don’t do this; do that,” he may not really mean you’re never supposed to do the first thing. He may actually mean the second thing is much more important. When a Biblical figure says you should hate one thing and love another, it may not actually mean you have to hate the first thing. It may mean you should greatly prefer the second thing.

When Jesus said, “judge not,” he didn’t mean we should never judge the sins and iniquities of others. He just meant we should judge ourselves first. The Bible actually requires us to tell people about their wickedness. It says that if we do not, their blood will be required of us.

I used to tell people they needed to pray in tongues a lot, and I said people needed to get free of demons and iniquities. Over time, I became an irritant to the pastors. What I was saying was completely obvious, but it was a threat to their operation.

I suppose they thought they had everyone fooled, and that people like me were likely to wake them up and ruin everything. We did wake a few people up, but the pastors didn’t understand that many people at Trinity already knew they were teaching nonsense. People talked about the corruption all the time. One compared the Wilkersons to the mafia. Many people went to Trinity for the social life, so they didn’t care much about doctrine. Many knew what was going on, but they liked the music and the events. They came from corrupt cultures, so I doubt it bothered them to see corruption in their church.

I’ve been to a couple of Last Reformation events. I’ve seen Christians delivered from demons. I have been delivered, myself. I’ve watched Mark Hemans videos in which he cast demons out of church elders.

I was right. Deliverance isn’t just for crazy, homeless unbelievers who live in cemeteries. It’s not just for seemingly autistic or epileptic kids who cut themselves or fall down and foam at the mouth. It’s for all of us, all the time.

Jesus showed me something the other day. In the Bible, he said he stood at the door and knocked. Without deliverance, human beings are full of demons (“dead men’s ones,” as he called them), and the Spirit of Holiness is outside, asking to be let in. Once you’re delivered, the tables are turned. The Spirit of Holiness enters and dominates, and what do the demons do?

They stand outside and knock.

They don’t stop just because you threw them out. They just lose a lot of their power. A demon who is cast out doesn’t hurt you much, and if you keep Jesus out, he doesn’t help you much.

There is always symmetry in the supernatural.

Right now, you are probably dominated and inhabited by a number of demons. You tolerate it because you don’t know they’re there, or because they don’t make you miserable enough to try to get rid of them. You probably enjoy sin and the worldly lifestyle, and you may think it’s okay to go on as you are, because God forgives you. Eventually, though, there may come a time when your demons no longer seem cute, and you will be desperate to get rid of them. By then, they will have done immeasurable damage.

You may be harming yourself physically by tolerating sin and demons. A demon that helps you enjoy anger and greed, for example, may also give you heart attacks or cancer or some other physical problem. The Bible says envy “rots the bones.” Old Testament figures developed skin lesions when they slandered other people. Greed caused Gehazi to develop leprosy instantly. A spirit that helps you enjoy some particular sin may drive the person you’re supposed to marry away. Demons can work against your financial prosperity. They’re like squatters in a rental house. They don’t just live there; they wreck things.

Demons have not changed. They are the same today as they were when Elijah was on the earth, and they do the same things.

For a long time, I’ve known I needed to have a lifestyle of holiness in order to be free from demons and curses, but I didn’t know how far I had to go. Eventually, I got more serious. I threw out my blues and jazz CD’s. I threw out a lot of movies. I even quit drinking caffeine. Until I watched Mark Hemans, however, I didn’t realize just how deep I had to cut to get all the cancer.

Hemans cast a martial arts demon out of a church elder. The man had been studying karate for decades. He said his teacher took a sword and cut him from his chin to his waist, as a sort of dedication. He was a hardcore Christian, but he had to be delivered. Until Hemans talked to him, he didn’t know karate was a problem. The martial arts are full of spiritual mumbo jumbo. They’re not safe.

I saw Hemans cast demons related to rock music out of a woman. How many times have you listened to rock? We should know better. Look how rock musicians live. Many celebrate Satan overtly! They make Satanic hand signs at their concerts. They sing songs like, “Highway to Hell.” Still, I didn’t know I had to get rid of my rock albums. It’s remarkable that I missed something so obvious.

Nearly every American loves evil entertainment. We love occult movies and shows. How many Disney movies do NOT feature the occult? Almost none. All Marvel movies are based on the occult, whether they say so or not. Filling people with gamma rays doesn’t turn them into the Hulk; only spirits could do that. A radioactive spider can’t turn you into Spider-man and give you abilities that defy the laws of physics. Only spirits could. Think about Dr. Strange and the Scarlet Witch. They’re actual witches.

When you participate in the occult, demons try to get inside you, and often, they succeed. Then we wonder why we have illnesses and mental problems.

Drugs and alcohol can bring demons in. I’m not saying you can’t have one beer. I’m talking about abuse. Marijuana has caused many people to turn schizophrenic. They hear voices and hallucinate. LSD and ecstasy are even worse. Opioids make people hear music. PCP makes people think the police are devils. How obvious do things have to be?

Tobacco is a weed that was originally used (still is) in American Indian demon worship. We smoke it, have strokes and heart attacks, get COPD, and turn up with lung cancer. How can anyone think demons don’t work through tobacco?

I saw Hemans cast a tattoo demon out of a lady. It came in while she was getting her tattoo. God hates tattoos. There is a reason why tattoo shops used to be banned. God was watching out for us.

If I said demons entered people who committed rape or murder, most Christians would be willing to consider it, but how many are willing to say their “Jesus Saves” tattoos let demons in?

Some say Satan’s best trick was convincing the world he didn’t exist. A corollary is that he has convinced the world that evil is good or harmless. We pump our toddlers full of occult entertainment, and we think it’s cute. We get tattoos to honor the God who hates them. We sing in church, go home with sex partners we have not married, and pick up bongs. We read horoscopes over breakfast, looking to them instead of God to predict our futures. We insist that God is okay with homosexuality simply because the homosexuals we know don’t seem to be violent or malicious. We insist on celebrating Halloween. That’s a big one.

The Bible says, “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” This isn’t just a warning. It’s a curse! God has cursed those who call evil good and good evil. That’s us! Are you cursing yourself and your family right now?

The Bible says, “Ye that love the Lord, hate evil: he preserveth the souls of his saints; he delivereth them out of the hand of the wicked.” This is a blessing. It’s a promise. The crazy thing is that we hold onto evil while criticizing God for failing to give us this blessing. “Why did this happen to me? I’m such a good person.” Look around and see what you’re holding onto. You want to hold onto life preservers, not anchors.

I can tell I’ve been freed from some spirits lately. I had sexual drives that never seemed to be completely defeated. Now they appear to be gone. I was quick to get angry when certain types of things happened, and now I’m much better. I want to continue until every contrary spirit is gone.

A funny thing happens to me now. When I see an attractive woman, or an image of an attractive woman, a voice inside me says, “You want a demon?,” and I cut off my thoughts, right where they are. I do not want a demon.

This seems to happen automatically, so I assume it’s the Spirit of Holiness. I’m hoping it will extend to other things. If I see an entire pizza with garlic rolls sitting in front of me, after the second slice, I want to hear myself say, “You want a demon?” When I start to get angry at someone or wish them evil, I want to hear it. I want to hear it before I procastinate. The Bible says laziness is wicked.

I know I can’t perfect myself. It’s nice to try and be good, but I never get real success until a supernatural hand rises up and lifts me. That’s how life is. God gives us grace to succeed, and without it, we always fail. You can’t even breathe without God’s help.

Modern churches tell us demons don’t exist in our world. Many say hell doesn’t exist. They tell us we’re good people. They tell us to continue living in our sins. Preachers are terrified of not living well, so they will say just about anything to make us happy. Of course, they offend and drive out real Christians, so they end up with big flocks of people who are essentially unbelievers. Trinity Church is notorious for this. They have a pattern of running off everyone who can help them. God only lets his servants suffer at Trinity for so long, and then he moves them out.

Preachers like Rich Wilkerson are telling people they do not need repentance or the Spirit of Holiness. It’s like they’re selling counterfeit tickets to a show. A lot of people are going to be shocked when they show their Trinity tickets to the doorman.

I saw a guy talk about outer darkness. Jesus mentioned this several times. The man who talked about it said he had been there. He said he got a man to say the sinner’s prayer, which is not a very good prayer, but that the man continued in drunkenness and did not change. The alcoholic died, and the man who thought he had led him to Christ had his vision at about the same time. He found himself in a dark, empty place, and he was convinced he would be there forever. He believes God showed him this so he could see what happened to the man he had led.

He said outer darkness was mentioned in connection with believers. For example, believers who show up at the wedding of Christ unprepared will be sent to outer darkness. He said it was not for people who had not asked for salvation.

I don’t know if he told the truth or if his doctrine was completely right, but he seemed serious, and I am confident that hell is full of Christians, just as I am sure that the Biblical religious Jews who were against God and his prophets went to hell.

You are spirit-led right now. The only question is which spirit is leading you. You can’t be on the fence. If you think you’re on the fence, you serve Satan, and he owns you. It’s extremely important to seek deliverance and to hold onto it, yet only a tiny percentage of churches teach this.

I’ve seen pastors in supposedly Spirit-filled churches berate and cajole and manipulate people for hours, trying to get them to give money, but how many times have I seen services where Christians focus on casting demons out? Nearly none!

No one wants to talk about demons. We get furious if anyone says we have demons, as though they were saying we had syphilis. Our fear and pride put up walls to protect our demons.

Would you tell a doctor holding a syringe full of antibiotic you didn’t have syphilis? If you had syphilis, you would do anything to convince him you were infected, just to get the shot. But we deny we have demons!

Tom Loud told a Smith Wigglesworth story. Someone asked Wigglesworth if a Christian could have a demon, and he said, “A Christian can have anything he wants.” Ouch. That was God talking.

We’re like Hindus who feed rats. In India, there is a big grain warehouse full of rats. I’ve seen it on TV. The rats are not poisoned. The people who run the warehouse put water out for them. There is a temple dedicated to rats, and people put out big pans of milk for them.

That’s us. We suckle rats while driving off the Spirit of Holiness, and we wonder why the Bible’s promises don’t seem to work for us.

We are incredibly jaded. We can’t see how we destroy ourselves. We need God to throw us into icy ponds to wake us up. We sleep while spirits chew off our limbs.

I don’t want Jesus to stand outside and knock. I want him inside with me, and if someone has to stand outside, let it be the damned spirits that hate us. I’m hoping I’m still young enough for repentance and deliverance to work for me.

I hope getting cleaned out doesn’t take as long as it took for me to fill myself with filth. I worked at it assiduously for decades.

I hope people will read about this and look at themselves and their homes and businesses. I hate to imagine the filthy supernatural vermin we would see and hear if our eyes and ears were opened.

Love for Breakfast

Monday, November 18th, 2019

If Spiritual Gifts are Biscuits, Love is the Gravy

I had an exciting morning. Maybe it’s strange to type that at 10:15 a.m., but I will stick with it.

Around 8 months ago, I dreamed about a woman I know. She was on a university campus, trying to get students onto a bus for some kind of outing she thought was related to serving God. I never saw her or the bus, but I knew they were nearby.

The university was dedicated to show business, which is ironic, considering how little education you need in order to be a performer. It was as thought Disney had built a college.

I was a Jewish man, and I didn’t look like myself. I appeared to be about 65. I was wearing a sportcoat and nice pants. I was walking briskly to a place where I was expected to speak.

A warm wind arose and started blowing toward me from the front. It lifted me like a kite. It felt wonderful. Very comforting. Although it was a headwind, I was propelled forward, as though I were falling in that direction. I was moving higher, however.

Eventually I came to a cluster of water oak trees with thick, shiny foliage. I reached out and grabbed the branches to steady myself.

I wasn’t upset or scared. I was enjoying myself.

The wind felt great against the front of my body. It was like a loving, supportive caress.

I woke up, and I was lying on my stomach. My hands were up as though I were holding onto branches. I still felt the love and warmth. It was as though the mattress loved me.

Ever since I turned back to God and started thinking about the two visits Jesus paid me in the Eighties, I have been trying to get a good grip on the sensation of supernatural love. During his visits, I physically felt his love radiating toward me and through me. Sometimes I get that feeling these days. I felt it this morning. I believe we’re supposed to feel that way most of the time. Love is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, like joy and peace. If we’re supposed to feel peace and joy that come from God and flow through us to others, surely we’re supposed to feel love, too.

It’s not morning now. A friend of mine came into town, so I interrupted my writing. I’ll continue.

This morning I woke up before the alarm went off. While I was lying in bed, I felt the same sensation I felt in the flying dream. It felt as if God was somehow caressing me with the mattress. I felt the sensation on and off through breakfast. I tried to focus on it and hold onto it.

My friend showed up, and we spent a few hours together. During that time, the feeling decreased somewhat.

You would think that love would increase when you’re around human beings, but it appears that that’s not always true. There is something about the presence of other people that pushes love into the background. We have other things to talk about. We aren’t known for putting our affairs on hold so we can sit and talk about how much we love each other. Also, if you’re with someone who is not used to a warm, fuzzy version of you, it can be hard to let that version appear in front of them.

People tend to pull you backward. Their presence can pressure you to behave as they’re used to seeing you behave. The longer you’ve known them, the more likely this is to be true. I suppose this is why Jesus surrounded himself with new people instead of starting a ministry with his mother and brothers.

I can see why Jesus spent so much time alone. The purpose of love is to be shared with human beings, but human beings themselves, by their very nature, tend to make it hard for your love to flow. After you’ve been around them for a while, it makes sense that you would want to go off into the desert and recover. I guess you need to sit with God and remind yourself why you love them!

Funny, but true.

I keep getting the impression that there is going to be a love revolution in the church. We have the Holy Spirit back. We use his gifts. Lots of knowledge is being restored. It seems like supernatural love is the component which is obviously missing.

In my flying dream, God showed me that his love lifts us up to do good works. Doing good works out of obligation is not what makes him happy, and it’s tiresome, too. Yesterday I saw Mark Hemans quote a passage in which the Bible said something about faith and love working together. I just found it. Galatians 5:6: ” For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.”

There are a lot of relatively cold and even cranky people out there displaying (or pretending to display) the gifts of the Spirit. There are certainly a lot of greedy and narcissistic people doing these things. We don’t see love pouring out of many self-styled prophets and apostles, unless the love of cameras and money counts.

I think something big is happening. I certainly hope so. The church has to be cleaned up before the rapture, and it seems obvious to me that the restoration of supernatural love is a necessary part of the process.

Your Life Stinks, and it Really is Your Fault

Monday, October 7th, 2019

The Power is Yours

If you read this blog, it’s easy to get the idea that I become attached to one preacher after another, and that I abandon them quickly so I can run to to new people. This is not at all true, but most Christians and Jews are used to thinking in terms of following human leaders, so it’s easy for them to assume I’m looking for one and that I’m not faithful to the ones I find.

I gave too much of myself to Rich Wilkerson and the pedophile who ran my last church. This is true. But I did not turn them into gurus or idols. If I had, I would still be at Wilkerson’s disgraceful church, driving people’s luggage around and making pizza. Either that, or I would be visiting Albert Santiago in prison, trying to help him start a new ministry. I kept listening to the Holy Spirit and any man I thought was relaying information from him. This is why I got pushed out of two churches in a row. I challenged the cults, so I no longer fit in.

There is no man out there I can follow without reservation. There isn’t supposed to be. I am not looking for one. Occasionally, though, I come across people who relay solid information from God, so I listen to them for a while, and I recommend them to others. Most of the time, these people don’t teach me much that is new. They merely confirm what the Holy Spirit has already told me, and they may expand on it.

I spent a lot of time listening to Derek Prince. He gives people a nice, solid foundation to build on. He’s not perfect, though. He said some things that were not quite right, and he had a serious pride problem.

I watched a lot of Tom Fischer (Cardboard Box Church) videos. He was also very good, but his ministry cooled down when he got married, and he started talking about essential oils in his videos. He got into a multi-level marketing company that sells these things, and he created a second Youtube channel to promote them. If there is a reputable, sound multi-level marketing company out there, I have yet to hear of it. They tend to be snares for people who have financial issues and who may be naive.

When you join an MMA, you may find yourself pushing your wares to friends and relatives, driving them away in exchange for small commissions. The general rule is that you can’t sell enough to make a real profit, and only the company makes money.

To me, preaching is preaching, and business is business. They should not be connected at all. I never saw Paul offer a sale on new tents in the Bible. I think Fischer is great, but I feel like I know a few things that haven’t been revealed to him yet.

I went to a Last Reformation event and got baptized after listening to Torben Sondergaard. I think TLR is doing wonderful things, but it’s starting to look like a denomination with a strong flesh-based structure, and denominations are not good. I will never join another church or denomination, because I know that as soon as a ministry becomes a human organization, Satan starts finding ways to take over.

Yesterday I found out that TLR told me something that was just plain false. They only baptize in the name of Jesus. They say that this is how all baptisms in the New Testament were done. It’s not true. Jesus said his followers were to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I don’t know how TLR could have been wrong about it.

I don’t know how important the error is, but it shows you have to test everyone.

By the way, I compared the Acts 2 School to a cult the other day, because they charged for seminars, made people share quarters, and subjected them to obnoxious rules. Since then (if I understand things correctly), I have learned that they got these ideas from TLR, and they have changed their minds about them. I don’t know whether their ministry is worth anything, however.

When I went to my TLR event, I stayed in a hotel, there was no charge, and I came and went as I pleased, so it’s hard to know what the truth is.

I’m not going to go sleep in a bunk bed in a room full of strangers unless an angel wakes me up in the middle of the night and hands me a signed note from God. I can tell you that much. Not when I can have a queen-size bed and my own toilet.

It may be that TLR gave them these ideas because TLR is from Denmark, where people are used to being told what to do.

The search for sages and under-messiahs is a big problem. It wrecked Judaism and Catholicism. People get the idea that they have to find a man they can rely on, so they can give themselves completely to his teaching. That doesn’t work. Every man makes mistakes. The Jews rely on the Talmud, which is full of guesses, contradictions, and lies. The Catholics rely on a lot of weird quasi-pagan doctrine they stole from the Greek pantheists. All of this nonsense came from fallen angels, men, and men’s wild guesses. It’s extremely destructive.

Moses wished all of God’s people were prophets. He didn’t want to hog the glory. He knew it wasn’t his.

I almost feel hesitant to bring up new preachers I’ve listened to, because most Christians are determined to find one preacher or denomination and cling like barnacles.

I’ll say what I think, though. I’m not responsible for the way people take what I write. It’s 100% on them. If you’re listening to the Holy Spirit every day, he will help you understand, and if you’re not, nothing I can do can clear up your misconceptions.

You’re never responsible for how other people take things. Never.

I’ve been writing about Tom Loud and Pete Cabrera lately. I even emailed Loud to ask about visiting and doing street healing with him. Doesn’t mean I think he’s the solution to all my problems, however.

He said something I loved. He said we’re not supposed to depend on healers. He said he can’t be on call all the time for everyone because, for example, he might want to take a vacation with his wife. If you’re constantly asking strong Christians to pray for you, grow up. You should be as strong as anyone. You should be praying to God, not to Pete Cabrera. It’s not someone else’s job to be your on-call nurse. We are supposed to help other people, but we are also supposed to have our own lives. You can’t carry a grown Christian around on your back like a papoose.

Pete Cabrera begs people to go to the Bible and the Holy Spirit to check what he says. He tells them they’re not supposed to rely on him. He’s right.

Last night I watched a very good video Loud made. It was about authority. The main thing I took away from it is that God is not running the world, except perhaps in a very general way related to major events. I knew that already. God put man in charge down here, and all the evil that happens here is our fault.

Loud expanded on the question of who has what authority, and helped me learn more about it.

Very often, we ask God to do things we’re supposed to do. We’re supposed to bless and curse. We have the power to drive out demons. The apostles didn’t beg God the way we do. They just spoke his power into the earth.

Loud said something that had never occurred to me. The Bible says God doesn’t do anything without telling his servants the prophets. Loud says he does this because men have authority down here. He says God himself has restricted his own authority by turning the world over to us. He says God actually needs a prophet to say something will happen before God has the authority to get it done. He says Noah preached about the flood in order to give God the authority to cause it.

That was new to me.

I think he’s right. We seem to be more in charge than we realize, and our words are more powerful than we understand.

My life has gotten much, much better over the last few years, and I think it’s because I started speaking. I have been blessing and cursing like crazy. I speak defeat to my enemies. I speak God’s help to people. I tell my mind, body, and spirit what to do. Things keep improving for me. The Bible says, “Life and death are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.”

It’s working for me, consistently. Using words, I’ve been planting good seeds for years, and the longer I keep doing it, the more good things grow. I also planted a lot of evil seeds in the past, and I’ve had to wait for the resulting thorns and weeds to wilt.

Christians are always wondering why they don’t see God’s many promises come true. It’s probably largely because they don’t bless and curse. In many cases, God’s word is like human law. When you go into a courtroom, you don’t get any help if you remain silent. The judge agrees with your enemy, and you lose. If you win, it’s because you claimed something the law promised you. This may be why Jesus was so quiet while he was being tried. If he had spoken too much, he might have been delivered, and the whole plan would have been ruined.

He argued with hostile Jews, and they were never able to touch him. He was nearly silent when he was kidnapped, beaten, interrogated, and tortured to death, and he was not protected.

Words are extremely important. They were the tools that created the planet we sit on. A diploma is words. A contract is words. A death sentence is words. Jesus called himself the word of God.

Words are at the root of everything. Control the root, and you control everything that comes from it.

I’ll post the video here. Maybe it will help you.

Over the last two days, something very odd happened. I lost my Bluetooth earpiece. I searched the house, workshop, and car. I looked through my laundry. I searched the washer and dryer. I went over the same places over and over. I looked at clean clothes I had put away. It was nowhere to be found.

I was expecting an important call, and I didn’t want to hold the phone up the whole time. I started practicing what Tom Loud taught in a video I wrote about a day or two back. I got my carnal mind out of the way. I spoke God’s defeat to the difficulty of finding the earpiece, as well as his victory to me in finding it. I asked him to bring it to me. I commanded my carnal mind to shut up, and I told it to submit to my spirit.

I thanked God over and over for returning the earpiece to me.

Yesterday I finally ordered a new earpiece. I was not giving up, but I wanted to have a second one in case this happened again.

Last night I showered and got dressed for bed. I put on a pair of shorts I had laid out on the dresser. Later, I felt something in my pocket. I reached in, and there was the earpiece.

You can’t tell me I hadn’t looked there before. I had made a point of searching all the shorts I wear at night. And it showed up before the call arrived.

Make of it what you will.

The carnal mind is a problem. I’m not saying it hasn’t done anything for us. It gives us inventions. It helps us think so we can get through the day. Unfortunately, it also fights with God. It thinks miracles don’t happen and that anything that seems impossible is, in fact, impossible. It’s wrong about the important things.

The mind of the flesh prevents us from raising the dead and making legs grow back. Medicine can fix a lot of things, but it can’t cure a cold, make a dwarf grow, create a new eye, grow a new tooth, or do any of a number of things that would alleviate terrible suffering. Medicine is also expensive, and not everyone can get treatment. It doesn’t help humanity much when a new medical treatment pops up and only a ten-thousandth of the world’s population can get it. The carnal mind cuts us off from a world of free help our human efforts can’t begin to compare to.

I’ve had blisters healed over a period of minutes. I know it sounds insignificant, but think about it. You can go to the Mayo Clinic, offer them a billion dollars to make a blister go away, and have them tell you it can’t be done. They’ll say you have to wait. I didn’t. Didn’t cost me a penny, either. They were just blisters, but they might as well have been tumors or amputations. The same principles apply.

Carnality relies on hard work. As Adam could tell you, hard work is what happens when you give up access to divine help. Divine help is better. When you get God’s power working for you, you don’t need a medical or engineering degree. You don’t need an MBA. You don’t need an army or a fortune or any other source of earthly power. You take a shortcut around all that mess. That’s how life was before the curse.

Jesus was an uneducated handyman, and he made a withered arm grow back.

Tom Loud and some of the others aren’t teaching what we think of as “the gospel.” To nearly all Christians, “the gospel” means the gospel of salvation. We think that if we teach someone he can avoid going to hell by asking for salvation, we’ve taught the gospel. Jesus said the age would end when the gospel OF THE KINGDOM was taught all over the world. That’s what Loud is teaching. He’s talking about our authority as princes. There is more to Christianity than going to heaven.

How long can the world last, now that these ideas are spreading?

Loud said something that amazed me. He said Christians would eventually “infect” people, like sick patients spreading disease. I’ve been saying that for years. We’ve been relying on popes and preachers and big buildings, thinking we needed these tools to spread God’s kingdom. We were totally wrong. God doesn’t need a TV preacher’s cameras. He needs a bunch of anonymous believers, going around doing miracles and helping people to feel his love. It was wonderful to hear someone else use the infection analogy. It was the first time I had heard anyone else say it. It proves it came from God, not me.

This stuff will take off, and there will be a harvest. Then it will die down due to market saturation, and the end will come, because people will have heard God’s case and made their choice.

Market saturation is one of the main things that fills hell.

Technology is putting an end to free will, so we should be aware that the end is finally coming close. Without free will, there is no purpose for mankind to continue to exist. Once the earthly powers know where we are all the time, control our movements, and have the ability to decide who can buy and sell, it will be time for us to leave.

How long will that take? Based on current technology and the rate at which technology grows, I would be surprised if it takes 10 more years. Right now, the government or Google–Satan’s intelligence and control network–knows exactly where I am. It knows where I go when I take anything resembling a major road. It knows what I buy. It can record and transcribe every phone call I make, and it can have computers search the transcripts to find out if I’m saying anything it doesn’t like. I live way out in the country, and this is how little privacy I have. If you live in a city, you might as well live naked in a giant fishtank on national television.

There is no free will without privacy. When people know they’re being watched, they don’t do what they want to do, so they can’t be judged.

I hope we start seeing more miracles and, more importantly, more supernatural faith and love. We really need to go out on a high note.