Time to go Get the Ashes

I intended to post this yesterday.

My guests are gone.

I invited people to come on Saturday and remember my dad. Most people could not make it. The ones that made it didn’t fare well. One friend, and one of her sons, got sick. Another friend had a one-person wreck in her own yard, totaling her husband’s pickup truck and requiring x-rays. My neighbors had the strangest story of all. They went to Valdosta to see their granddaughter play in a college soccer game. When they arrived, she told them the game was on Sunday. When they tried to come home, the road was jammed, and it delayed them for an hour. To make matters worse, the wife stepped in a hole and sprained her ankle.

Sometimes it’s obvious when Satan wants to prevent something from occurring. When things started happening, I began praying for the safety of my guests.

In the end, the sick lady, her sons, the lady who wrecked the truck, her husband, and my two closest neighbors made it. This was the best we could do.

The neighbors brought food, and I made brownies and cookies. I used to take brownies and cookies to the ALF where my dad lived, so I thought I should make them for the event.

I spent about half an hour relating my dad’s amazing testimony, and people were very impressed by what God had done. It was very hard to speak at times, but I managed to push it out.

The lady who wrecked the truck is named Leah. Her husband is Scott. I’ve known them for quite a while. They drove from the Pensacola area. Leah got to know me back when I was on Facebook. She was interested in prayer in tongues. She got the baptism, and she even drove to Miami more than once to visit my church.

Scott and Leah stayed two days, and that was helpful. Had everyone simply left, there would have been a very abrupt transition, and the house would have felt very empty.

I am still working on getting my dad buried. My expectation is that I will have another grueling week, and then things will taper off. I have to travel to Kentucky, and then I have to drive back. Then I have to get to work on the estate.

Ordinarily, I don’t write about traveling until I’m finished. It’s like inviting people to rob your house. This time I’m making an exception, because before I go, I will be taking measures to protect my property.

I decided to drive. I can drive to Gainesville and then fly to Kentucky, but it’s expensive, and the drive to the airport is long. Taking a firearm will be a hassle, and the airline may make me jump through hoops in order to take my dad’s ashes. Also, I would like to see the South one more time, and I can’t do that through a plane window.

If I drive, I’ll be able to carry in every state I visit. I can also pick up whatever small items remain from my mother’s estate. My aunt is holding some things.

I carry my dad’s 9mm Glock now. Have I written about that? Years ago, I bought him a Glock for his birthday or Fathers’ Day or something. Later, I put a Crimson Trace laser on it. He hardly ever carried it. The pocket holster I got for him looks nearly new. I have been getting tired of my heavy 10mm, and I was considering carrying my own 9mm. One day after my dad died, I thought about his gun, and it seemed natural to start carrying it.

The gun was already my property. He gave me everything he owned, without exception, before he died. You don’t need a will to give someone a watch, a gun, or any other item of household personalty.

The 10mm is a far superior weapon. It fires a 180-grain Speer Gold Dot hollowpoint at 1250 FPS. I’ve been thinking about it, though. Being shot with a 9mm may not be quite the same, but it’s very bad indeed, and the reduced weight will be an improvement.

I like the laser. I used to think it was hinky because it couldn’t possibly line up with the barrel as well as a guide-rod Lasermax, but that was totally untrue. Also, a Crimson Trace turns on automatically when you grab the gun.

While my friends were here, we talked a great deal. We exchanged bits of Christian info. We prayed together, and that was pleasant, not to mention important.

There isn’t a whole lot left to do with regard to transferring stuff from my dad to me. The banks and so on only require a couple of simple forms, plus death certificates. I have to get myself appointed as the estate’s personal representative, and then I should have the authority to put his car in my name. I guess after that, I pay off his credit cards and close the estate.

I can only do so much per day, so I am not really on top of the court process yet, but I do know where to find the rules.

I now live in “my dad’s bedroom.” That’s what I’m trying not to call it. Everything here is mine now. I keep trying not to say “my dad’s” and “we.”

Having weekend guests gave me a good reason to start sleeping in the master suite. It’s not bad at all. I’m learning about the problems with the bedroom. I had to get on a ladder late at night to fix a blinking LED on a smoke alarm, and the next night, I learned that the dishwasher beeps for about half an hour when it stops running, so I had to make an adjustment for that. My dad had the ability to sleep through things like major hurricanes, so he never complained when he lived in that room.

Pretty soon I’ll be sleeping near Chattanooga, and not long after that, Winchester, Kentucky, home of Ale-9-One, the world’s finest soft drink. Then I’ll get my dad buried and head home. I may drive through the Smokies for no reason at all. I loved Gatlinburg and Cherokee when I was a kid. It will add two hours to the trip, but when will I see Appalachia again? It should be worth it.

The town where my dad will be buried (where my mother grew up) has a hotel now. As I could have predicted, their Hotels.com reviews say they have bedbugs and a bad attitude. Eastern Kentucky isn’t poor because we don’t send them enough money. It’s poor because the people make it poor. They have what I would call a “can’t-do attitude” about everything, and Lyndon Johnson wiped out their work ethic with the War on Poverty. A local humorist named Clennie Hollon called it “the War on Progress,” and he was right.

The hotel where I’m staying is part of a national chain, and it gets good reviews, so I should survive.

Raise Your Hands for Service

Couple of interesting things today.

First, I have been trying to get my .204 Ruger rifle and ATN X-Sight II night scope working again. I have had a certain amount of success.

The X-Sight is low-end for night optics, and it’s full of gee-whiz features (often an indication of a focus that is not on quality), so I don’t expect the world. I have had a few problems. First, the battery life is so bad, you pretty much have to buy their external battery pack. Second, the battery pack is hinky. Sometimes you have to unplug it and plug it back in to make the scope boot, and you can’t tell when it’s about to shut down for lack of juice. I haven’t upgraded the scope’s software in a while. Maybe they’ve fixed this.

The scope keeps shutting down after very few shots. I bought 200 rounds of ammo, I have used the rifle three times, and I am still on the first 50-round box.

That being said, it’s a pleasant rifle to shoot, when you can shoot it. I am shooting a consistent 2 MOA at 100 yards, including what I think of as flyers. I’ll post a photo of a target representing what I think is around 13 shots. It’s hard to keep count when you’re aggravated.

Will the rifle do better? I have no idea. I can’t shoot it long enough to find out. Also, my setup is not good. I have a rabbit ear rear bag, a bipod, and a cheap Caldwell front rest. Sometimes the target is at a level where neither the bipod nor the rest will allow me to aim at it comfortably, and the bag keeps sliding around on me. I don’t know what I’m doing. I have to work on that.

The ammunition is fairly cheap. It’s Fiocchi, with 40-grain V-Max bullets. Fiocchi has made a lot of inexpensive ammunition, but the quality is excellent. They have a big factory in Italy, with real machines and everything. It’s funny how you can’t assume price is related to quality.

Another “cheap” ammo maker, Sellier & Bellot, has a magnificent factory you wouldn’t believe. You can “tour” it on Youtube. They do it right. On the other hand, CCI, which is an American maker with a great reputation, has a facility that looks like a converted garage.

Anyway, the ammunition is cheap, and I don’t know what it can do. Some cheap ammo is laser-accurate. I use Hornady .17 HRM ammo, and it will do sub-MOA at $11.50 for 50 rounds. You can’t assume anything without experience.

Speaking of .17 HMR, when my ATN battery died unexpectedly, again, I got the .17 HMR out and shot a while. At first, I was all over the target. I was adjusting the scope knobs between shots, so it was not pretty. On the second target, I shot pretty well, with a couple of flyers. I was coping with the sliding rabbit bag and so on. I’m convinced flyers are caused by concentration issues, period, and when the rests slide around, it makes you want to forget about concentration and get the shot over with.

I cheap out on targets by firing off-center. I pick a place where the yellow lines cross, fire a few rounds at it, move to another place, and so on. If you fire everything at the center of the target, you go through targets fast.

I’m thinking of getting a real glass scope for the .204 Ruger. The ATN is fun, but it’s getting on my nerves. I have a couple of Burris Fullfield II scopes, and they seem very nice. I have a Leupold which cost more, and the Burrises seem just as clear. I may get a Burris Fullfield E1, which is a newer model. It has an illuminated reticle.

Magnification is hard to choose. A scope that only has one setting will be cheap, but you’re stuck with that setting and field of view. When a variable scope’s magnification is maxed out, the field of view shrinks, and it makes it hard for you to find animals that are moving around. If you have variable magnification, you can crank it down and see more of the area where you’re shooting.

Some people say nothing more than 9X is needed, up to 300 yards. I can’t believe that, but then I’m used to shooting targets, trying to get sub-MOA accuracy. I want serious detail. When you shoot animals, 3 MOA is supposedly fine. Not sure how that can be true, since it means you would be hitting somewhere in a huge 6″ circle on a little scrawny coyote, but it’s what I’ve read. Seems like it would be easy to miss.

I would like 20X, but I’m thinking maybe I should grit my teeth and settle for 14-ish.

If I knew what I were doing, this would be easier.

My Leuopold is 20X, and it’s not currently on a rifle. I took it off my .308 for some reason. I was planning to put it back on, and I don’t like playing musical scopes, so I would like to have one scope for each rifle. I could put it on the .204 temporarily, but the idea bothers me.

In other news, I seem to have stumbled onto some powerful information about God. Maybe I should say he directed me to it. There appears to be something about lifting your hands in worship that improves prayer.

Generally, God is not overly formal in his relationship with us. He doesn’t want us to buy books of prayers other people have written and recite them verbatim, for example. He doesn’t require us to use Hebrew when we address him. He doesn’t care whether we call him Jesus or Yeshua. Sometimes, however, he expects us to do things a certain way.

In 1986, Jesus visited me. I have written about it. I was trying to sleep, and a beam of supernatural energy shone down on me and roamed around over me. Wherever it touched me, I felt complete peace and joy. The beam was Jesus. I knew it, without doubt.

I didn’t know what to do, and after a while, I fell asleep. I woke up instantly, on my back, with both hands raised in worship. I felt energy running into my palms, like arcs of electricity flowing into anodes.

A friend of mine was an armorbearer at Trinity Church in Miami. His name is Cedric. He went to the hospital for heart problems. One night he had some sort of issue, and he woke up on his back, with both hands raised in worship. Like me, he hadn’t raised his arms, himself. Something raised them while he was asleep.

In Exodus 17, Moses and the Hebrews fought the Amalekites. Moses held his hand up, holding the rod of God. As long as he held his hand up, the Hebrews prevailed. When he took it down, they began to lose. Aaron and Hur put a stone under him to sit on, and they held his hand up. It was acceptable for him to sit, but it appears that human beings had to hold up his hand. Otherwise, they would have propped it up somehow.

While Job was suffering, one of his friends told him to stretch his hands out to God and prepare his heart so he would be delivered. He obviously believed the raising of the hands was important.

In Psalm 28, the author asks God to hear him “when I lift up my hands toward thy holy oracle.”

In Psalm 44, the author defends Israel, saying they haven’t stretched out their hands to a strange “god.”

Psalm 63 says, “Thus will I bless thee while I live; I will lift up my hands in thy name.”

Psalm 68 predicts that a defeated Ethiopia will stretch out her hands to God in submission.

Psalm 88 says, “I have called daily upon thee; I have stretched out my hands unto thee.”

Psalm 119 says, “My hands also will I lift up unto thy commandments.”

Psalm 134 says, “Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, and bless the Lord.”

Psalm 143 says, “I stretch forth my hands unto thee; my soul thirsteth after thee, as a thirsty land.”

Psalm 141 says, “Let my prayer be set before thee as incense, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.”

Lamentations 3:41 says, “Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens.”

Praising God, Habakkuk says, “The deep uttered his voice, and lifted up his hands on high.”

In the New Testament, believers laid their hands on people to heal them, to impart the Holy Spirit, and to initiate them into leadership.

Obviously, something is going on with hands. God moves power through them. It seems that God wants us to show him our palms when we want his power to flow.

I got this idea the other day, and I tried it. I held my hands up during prayer, for a long time. I could sense new faith and power. It was wonderful. I believe I was doing things God’s way, finally using the lesson he gave me in 1986.

Many preachers tell us to kneel. I don’t do it. I don’t like it. Kneeling is mentioned a few times in the Bible, but it doesn’t work for me.

I have no problem with lying down, sitting, or positioning myself on all fours in God’s presence, but kneeling is uncomfortable, and it makes it hard to look up or raise your hands. Daniel kneeled to pray three times a day, but he probably had a lower center of gravity than I do. Maybe he had a special piece of furniture that helped him.

The Psalms mention communing with God while lying in bed. That’s for me. That or sitting. I want to focus on God, not on effort. Also, when you’re on your back, it’s easier to raise your hands. When you stand, you have to pump blood over a vertical expanse of around six feet and when you lift your hands, you may be pumping blood seven feet up in order to reach them. It’s tiring. When you recline, your heart has less work to do, so you don’t feel burdened.

Anyway, I plan to continue raising my hands for long periods. It seems to make a big difference. I should have realized God was trying to teach me this.

Nutty Electronic Scope Finally on its Feet

I finally got the .204 Ruger out again.

I got this rifle last year, hoping to use it on coyotes and coons. I bought an ATN X-Sight II 52-20X night scope, figuring I would eventually use the gun at night. I had trouble getting the scope working, and the first time I shot the gun, I only got 12 rounds off before the battery died.

After that, I got disgusted and ordered an external battery. Then I let things slide.

Today I got the external battery working, and I fired a few rounds to see if I could work with it or not. Here are the results.

The shot at the bottom was fired at 50 yards, to see if I was on the paper. The group to the left was fired from 50 yards with a rest. The other shots were fired from 100 yards.

I’m not sure what to think of the ATN scope. As night vision goes, it’s not far from the bottom of the barrel, but then I knew that when I got it for only $600. It’s basically a cell phone in a scope body. It has GPS and Wi-Fi, and it zooms to 20X electronically, not optically.

It shoots video if you want it to. You can program it to run constantly and to save recordings when you fire rounds. If you fire a shot, it saves a certain amount of video before and after the shot. Then you can upload it to your computer.

It’s a neat toy, and you really can hunt at night with it. On the other hand, it’s not as good as a quality thermal scope.

I feel like I got my money’s worth.

Today I shot as it was starting to get dim outside. When I moved back to 100 yards, the picture was very grainy. I could see where I was aiming, pretty much, but I could not tell where the shots were landing.

You can zero the scope, obviously, but you can only do that when you know where the bullets are landing, so I didn’t bother. That’s why I shot so high.

I like the gun a lot. It seems to be well-made, and the trigger is wonderful. The bolt is still a little tight. Maybe that will clear up once I’ve fired more than 50 rounds.

When I got this gun, people told me I would be able to shoot and see the bullets landing through the scope. They said the recoil was so light, it wouldn’t move me off the target. That’s not true at all. It moves a foot or two away from the point of aim. Maybe if I gripped it as hard as I could, it would stay put. I am no rifle expert, but that sounds like a good way to kill your accuracy.

I’m going to go out on a brighter day and try again, and I’ll zero the scope at 100 yards. Right now, it’s zeroed crudely at 50.

My neighbor told me something interesting. He’s a board member or something at Ducks Unlimited, and he went to a banquet. While he was there, he saw an electronic game call. This is a machine that plays sounds to lure animals. He said I could get one and use it to draw coyotes.

It sounded fishy to me, but I went to Youtube, and sure enough, people were using them successfully. They draw coons as well as coyotes. You can lure a number of different animals. It’s illegal to use electronic calls for some animals, but Florida wants to get rid of coyotes, so they allow electronic calls for that purpose.

Needless to say, I ordered a call. It should be here Monday.

Now I’m wondering whether I should ditch the night scope. I don’t think I’ll need it for coyotes, because they are active during the day, and it’s not as nice as a real scope. I could get a 14X or 20X optical scope. I could always use the electric scope when I wanted to hunt coons.

I learned about another good product for coyote hunters: bottled pee. You can buy coyote pee online. Don’t ask me where they get it. Coyotes supposedly love it. Filthy things. I managed to resist, but if the caller doesn’t turn their crank, I may very well make a pee investment.

The ATN scope is very heavy, and it’s a little buggy. ATN makes more-expensive products which are probably less trouble to use.

The battery pack is not a great investment. You can buy the same basic item for less, if you don’t mind a different name on it. It’s a brick-shaped thing that takes a USB cord. They attach it to the rifle with a little bag you strap to the gun’s butt. You can buy pretty much the same bag for less, without the ATN patch on it. I sort of think ATN’s engineers looked around for a battery pack online, ordered a bunch, looked for a buttstock bag, ordered a bunch, and then ordered some patches.

I’m not sure how this will pan out, but I’m going to get the .204 under control tomorrow or Monday, and when the call arrives, I’m going to give it a try. I’ll set my blind up and see what happens.

Coyotes are incredible pests, so I’ll be doing God’s work.

I hope I nail a few. Ought to be fun.

Leftists Get Closer to Saying What They Feel

I read about the Christchurch shooting this morning. Quite a story.

The murderer, a man named Tarrant, is an Australian. He committed his crimes in New Zealand. I haven’t seen any explanation for that yet. He published a manifesto online; maybe it contains the answer. Australia and New Zealand may seem closely related to Americans, but they are separate countries, and New Zealand is about 2600 miles from Australia. Why would a murderer from Australia kill 49 people in another country?

It’s silly to question the logic of the mentally ill, but I will do it anyway. Tarrant killed Muslims at a mosque, referring to them as “invaders.” He, himself, was an alien. Why would he defend a foreign country from people he saw as invaders?

You can say a white man living in New Zealand shouldn’t call anyone an invader. I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know the history of New Zealand. Maybe whites invaded, or maybe the Maoris were happy to see them at first. Perhaps someone will tell me. I am not going to get sidetracked by a Google hunt.

Whites were welcomed to America, and the Indians did not see themselves as a nation with borders, so the notion that whites came as invaders (or illegal aliens) is a canard. The Indians were illiterate and unable to create a real government or its infrastructure, so they had no nation to invade.

The Americas were like the moon. Up for grabs.

No borders, no aliens. That’s how that works.

I can’t find out whether Tarrant considers himself a Christian. He published a manifesto online, but no one seems to have it. These manifestoes usually vanish within a few hours. The authorities, the tech kiddies who run the web (I repeat myself), and a few early birds get to see them, but somehow, they are censored after that. Makes you think conspiracy theorists are onto something.

Journalists are quoting the manifesto online. You would think they would publish it. Maybe they feel the rest of us–the unwashed and the potato eaters–are not mature or sophisticated enough to be trusted with it.

God doesn’t tell Christians to kill other people; he tells us to die for them. That’s the general rule. We no longer have fixed commandments in the era of the Holy Spirit as prime influencer, but I think it’s safe to say that anyone who tells you Christians need to form militias and shoot their enemies is on autopilot. He is tuning into the wrong channel.

In the Old Testament, God told the Jews to kill their enemies, sometimes including their livestock (possibly because their enemies were bestiality enthusiasts). He told the Jews to kill babies and old people. That was a different time. Christianity is the continuation of pre-Christian Judaism, but under Christianity, the requirements God makes on people are different. We don’t have to observe the Mosaic law, and we are required to love our human enemies. We are supposed to fight spirits, not people.

There is a ton of prophecy in the Bible concerning the end times (the Christian era included), and we don’t see anything there about God’s followers rising up and shooting unbelievers. Islam is full of that kind of thing, as well as institutionalized oppression and selective taxation, but Christianity is not.

The New Testament doesn’t contain a single example of God telling a believer to kill another person.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has decided to use this event as a rationale for attacking God.

In the past, we have seen many people use the trite expression “thoughts and prayers.” When bad things happen, they go on Twitter and say they are sending “thoughts and prayers.” I am skeptical. My belief is that most people who say they are praying for other people are not really doing it. I think they say it in order to show they have good intentions and to make the people they’re addressing feel better. I’m not a big fan of the “thoughts and prayers” convention, because I suspect that it’s very empty.

When tragedy strikes, people always say they’re praying for the victims, who are dead. I don’t understand that at all. Once you’re gone, you are beyond the reach of prayer. I have never prayed for a dead person.

I believe that when you say you’re praying for someone, you should do it. It’s also good to say what you’re praying for. It’s even better to pray with them.

Ocasio-Cortez is not in my camp. She is not attacking the expression for its emptiness. She is attacking belief in God.

Here’s what she said: “What good are your thoughts & prayers when they don’t even keep the pews safe?”

Leftists have a history of criticizing Christians who offer “thoughts and prayers” because many of us also support the civil right to own and carry arms. I disagree with them, but I can understand their bent logic. They think our religion bans all weapons (wrong), so they think we should be for forced disarmament, as they are. This is their rationale. In private, they are also against God (generally), but they usually try to keep that out of the conversation, just as they keep their anti-Semitism out of the conversation when they attack Israel and “bankers.”

Ocasio-Cortez is taking the gloves (and mask) off. She is going after God himself. She thinks we’re fools to trust him in a world where some churches and mosques aren’t safe.

It’s a little refreshing to see the openness. I wish more leftists would criticize God openly. I wish they would stop pretending to admire Jesus. They are against him. Jesus was against sexual sin. He was against pride and rebellion. He didn’t believe government (the left’s messiah) was supposed to fix our problems.

Maybe we are seeing a pivotal moment. Maybe more prominent leftists will go after Jesus openly. It would be a good thing. It’s not good that they’re against him, obviously, but it would be good to see them expose themselves as anti-Christian. They fool a lot of weak Christians into voting for them. They avoid abusing Jesus in order to keep those voters in their camp. If they open up, it may wake up some of those who slumber.

It’s going to happen sooner or later. Famous leftists will quit pretending. They’ll run as enemies of Christianity.

In other countries, leftists used to try to shame God all the time. They murdered and enslaved priests and nuns. They banned religion. They used to have a cute trick they used on kids. They would tell schoolchildren to pray for food. Of course, nothing happened. Then they would tell them to pray to Stalin or Ho Chi Minh or some other murderous dictator for food. Then they would wheel in carts of pastries and so on.

It’s strange that so many American Democrats don’t know who they’re in bed with.

As for the disturbing success of Ocasio-Cortez, Isaiah 3 said it best:

For behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts,
Takes away from Jerusalem and from Judah
The stock and the store,
The whole supply of bread and the whole supply of water;

The mighty man and the man of war,
The judge and the prophet,
And the diviner and the elder;

The captain of fifty and the honorable man,
The counselor and the skillful artisan,
And the expert enchanter.

“I will give children to be their princes,
And babes shall rule over them.

The people will be oppressed,
Every one by another and every one by his neighbor;
The child will be insolent toward the elder,
And the base toward the honorable.”

When we mock God long enough, he gives up on us. He lets us have our way. We see it in Romans 1:

For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.

God doesn’t make you sin, but he will let you live in rebellion and failure if you persist in rejecting him. Human parents do the same thing, when they have been pushed too far.

Ocasio-Cortez is ignorant. She is unaccomplished. She is not bright. She is immature. She is impudent. She is extremely arrogant. She is eager to take cruel, draconian action against her betters. She is the picture of the Isaiah 3 ruler.

In saner times, it would be remarkable to see leftists acknowledge her at all. Ordinarily, you would expect even the left to be sharp enough to realize she’s an embarrassment. It’s strange that they would even permit her to rise. For them to lionize her is far worse. They treat her like a sage. They revere her. They call her by her initials, just like FDR and JFK. That’s lunacy. It’s proof that God has allowed them to be deluded, like mental patients.

In 2008, we elected a former Chicago bagman with no discernible gifts and almost no political accomplishments to the highest office in the world. That was bad, but Ocasio-Cortez makes Obama look like Solomon. It makes you wonder what the next level is. Who will succeed her as Satan’s darling? Maybe we’ll elect R. Kelly.

I prayed for her today. She’s not the real enemy. She is the glove. The enemy is the hand. I don’t know whom God will choose. Maybe God can reach her.

We need to avoid anger. It’s true that we are besieged, and it’s true that we are treated unfairly by very low people, but anger isn’t helpful. When people abuse you, they also tempt you. They try to make you like them.

There is a famous saying: “Never argue with a fool. They’ll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.” It’s funny, but it’s true. It’s bad to be provoked and mistreated, but it’s far worse to become like your enemies.

God has been helping me with empathy. It’s not easy to be empathetic in this world. When you are provoked constantly, it’s hard to focus on what other people feel. It’s hard to think of them as small, weak creatures that want and need love, acceptance, and help. I suppose only the Holy Spirit can help us do it.

We need to ask God for empathy every day. It has to be important to us. Otherwise, we’ll be just like the children of darkness. When we see obnoxious people in the news, or we encounter them in our daily lives, we have to consider their status as isolated, fatherless, untaught beings who suffer just as we do. We have to try to feel what they feel. Even if we can’t reach them, we should not stew in our own bile when we think of them. It doesn’t give us revenge on them, it hurts our health, and it puts barriers between us and God.

Failure of empathy is what separates psychopaths from the rest of us.

I’m not saying we should cling to, or enable, our human enemies. Just that we need to avoid being infected by their hate.

Maybe you don’t need this change, but I do. I’m tired of feeling less empathetic than I want. I’m tired of dismissing other people’s suffering because I feel powerless to do anything about it or afraid to get dragged into their problems. I’m sure God will provide empathy, and that he will limit our burdens so empathy doesn’t destroy us. He promised us that his yoke was easy and his burden light.

I used to embrace anger. I thought it was fun. I did myself a lot of harm.

I look forward to seeing leftists speak honestly about their hatred of Jesus. In any battle, you need to know where the lines are drawn. Maybe the body of Christ will be improved once we realize we’re not among friends.

More: The Manifesto is Out There

I found Tarrant’s manifesto. I don’t know why those in power are trying to censor it. There is always a big push to prevent mass murderers from becoming famous, but it’s a sham. News outlets and social media sites promote the daylights out of mass-shooting stories, while shutting down social media pages and refusing to let us see what the killers said. Complete hypocrisy.

His manifesto is called “The Great Replacement,” and it’s a PDF that runs 74 pages.

I will present some quotations the press will not like.

He asks himself, “Were/are you a conservative?” His response: “No, conservatism is corporatism in disguise, I want no part of it.”

The question: “Were/are you a christian?” His response: “That is complicated. When I know, I’ll tell you.” He was not a Christian; you can’t be a Christian without knowing it.

The question: “Were/are you a fascist?” The response is long:

Yes. For once, the person that will be called a fascist, is an actual fascist. I am sure the journalists will love that.I mostly agree with Sir Oswald Mosley’s views and consider myself an Eco-fascist by nature.The nation with the closest political and social values to my own is the People’s Republic of China.

So he’s an environmental extremist, which means not conservative at all. He’s also inconsistent. China is a huge polluter.

Journalists claim he supported Donald Trump. Here is what he said:

“Were/are you a supporter of Donald Trump? As a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose? Sure. As a policy maker and leader? Dear god no.”

In other words, no, he does not support Donald Trump. He simply supports using Trump as a symbol of racism.

Here’s another quotation the left won’t like:

“Why do you blame immigrants and not the capitalists? I blame both, and plan to deal with both.”

Not a fan of capitalism.

He includes a little essay on conservatism. Here is part of it:

Not a thing has been conserved other than corporate profits and the the ever increasing wealth of the 1% that exploit the people for their own benefit.Conservatism is dead. Thank god. Now let us bury it and move on to something of worth.

CONSERVATISM IS DEAD, THANK GOD.

He doesn’t like mainstream leftists, either:

To Antifa/Marxists/Communists

I do not want to convert you, I do not want to come to an understanding. Egalitarians and those that believe in heirachy will never come to terms.I don’t want you by my side or I don’t want share power.

I want you in my sights.

I want your neck under my boot.

SEE YOU ON THE STREETS YOU ANTI-WHITE SCUM

He has a short essay about his “green” notions. It tends to support his claim that he’s a fascist. The title: “Green nationalism is the only true nationalism.”

People think “fascism” is a right-wing idea. That’s not actually true. It’s poorly defined, and it can apply to just about any authoritarian government.

He’s out there on the left on the issue of labor. In a bit titled “Break the Back of Cheap Labour,” he says:

Whether that is by encouraging and pushing increases to the minimum wage; furthering the unionization of workers; increasing the native birthrate and thereby reducing the need for the importation of labour; increasing the rights of workers; pushing for the increase in automation or advancement of industrial labour replacement or any other tactic that is available.

In the end human greed and the need for increasing profit margins of capital owners needs to be fought against and broken.

CHEAP LABOUR IS SLAVE LABOUR, REFUSE TO IMPORT MODERN SLAVES

Tarrant is like most people who mistreat others in the name of social causes. He was looking for an excuse to be sadistic, and he found it. It didn’t really matter what the cause was. He would have been just as happy killing for Greenpeace or Antifa as for the ascendancy of white people.

If you want to pigeonhole this man, put him in the “sadist” and “racist” pigeonholes, along with “environmental extremist” and “socialist.” Those are the best fits. “Conservative” and “Christian” don’t work at all.

And we would not know this, if someone hadn’t seen fit to download the manifesto and make it available. We would have to swallow the MSM stuff. Trump supporter! Conservative! Not hardly.

Still More

I looked into the history of New Zealand. The Maoris didn’t show up until somewhere around 1300. There were at least two groups of Maoris, and one pretty much exterminated the other.

Europeans visited in 1642, but they made their big push a hundred years later, and it was peaceful. They got along well with the Maoris.

No invasion.

God’s Presence is my Quantum of Solace

If you use the email address on my blog to get in touch with me, you may be disappointed. For some reason, it likes to put people in the junk folder, and it marks messages read, so I have no idea they’re in there. Last night I happened to check the folder, and I found a message from a college buddy. I think we last communicated in the 90’s, but I’m not sure.

We were classmates at Columbia College, back before the internal combustion engine, cell phones under 20 pounds, and lolcats. He’s a successful radiologist, which is a little funny, because he used to despair of getting into medical school. He came up with some kind of improvement in the bone marrow transplant procedure, and he was then accepted by Columbia’s medical school. I believe his invention was a very big deal, because he used to appear in TV interviews. If I recall correctly, he went to Australia to talk about it.

I don’t know why anyone worries about getting into medical school. I have high school classmates I wouldn’t trust to take a splinter out of a rat’s butt, yet who are now successful physicians. One is the son of a former mayor. I remember him as kind of a goof. Nice guy, but not someone you would bet on if he appeared on Jeopardy.

One day while I was walking around drunk during a free period, I saw him leaning against a classroom door. I had no idea what was going on. I figured he was playing a joke on a girl. He told me to hold the door for him, so I did. After he ran off, I let go, and Mr. Bond burst into the hallway. Mr. Bond was a teacher, which is why I call him “Mr.” He wasn’t all that interested in my explanation, so I soon found myself sitting in the headmaster’s office. I guess the headmaster didn’t respect Mr. Bond any more than my classmate did, because we never got past the waiting room. Mr. Bond gave me a lecture, and off I went.

Later on, he caught me in a school parking lot, riding drunk on the trunk of a friend’s car. That, I want to stress, was not my fault. Being drunk was my fault, but my friend decided to hit the gas on his own. I had no control over that.

I feel like I got framed both times. I couldn’t tell who was behind the door. It certainly felt like a girl.

My college friend is considerably smarter than the mayor’s son. Generally, doctors aren’t all that smart, so my friend should have realized he was better than the competition.

My friend gets most of the credit for getting me interested in science and math. I had entered college as a verbal person.

When I took the SAT’s, the chairman of Columbia’s English department sent me a letter, asking me to apply. I can’t understand that at all. Yes, I had a high verbal score, but how does that translate to an aptitude for studying literature? A high verbal aptitude makes you really good at crossword puzzles. It doesn’t mean you automatically want to become a leading authority on Chaucer.

The older I get, the more convinced I am that extreme verbal aptitude is useless. Maybe it’s good for cryptography? I don’t know. Nobody pays anyone to do crossword puzzles, and most English professors are middle-of-the-road intellects. You don’t need to be smart to teach people about J.D. Salinger. I don’t think brains would even be helpful.

At some point, I got the idea that I would rather be a doctor than a useless English major, and my friend…I will call him “Stan,” since I need a pseudonym…was the perfect resource. His dad was a podiatrist, and he was taking really neat classes. He told me about vertebrate anatomy, and we both signed up. Each of us got a dead cat and a dogfish, and we worked side by side at a dissection table. Stan’s dad generously supplied real scalpels so we didn’t have to use the junk most students used.

Sadly, I had no study habits, and I was clinically depressed because my disintegrating family drove me nuts. I was a real mess. I ended up bailing out and taking the class a second time. I bailed on a number of classes. I didn’t finish the class the second time around, and then I dropped out of college.

I suppose it’s a good thing I didn’t end up in medical school. Doctors tend to be unhappy, like lawyers, and they used to suffer a lot on the way up. I don’t know if I could have survived the long shifts and systematic abuse that characterized the system back then.

I couldn’t survive the pre-med experience, so I think it’s silly to even suggest that I could have made it through a residency.

Law school was a joke. Drink all you want, hang out with your friends, and then work hard for one week at the end of every semester. I quit taking notes during my third year. It was a good fit for me.

When you get out of law school, you don’t work 36-hour shifts. You go to work at 9, and you leave by 6. On the weekends, you stay home. If you work harder than that, you’re working for the wrong firm. Truthfully, I think the hardest workers are people who should not have gone to law school. If you’re not talented enough to get a good job, you would be better off doing something else.

Stan also helped me get hooked on tools. In his room in our suite, he had a special drawer with lots of fascinating items in it. Stuff from Brookstone and so on. Weird little hand tools I had not realized I needed. He may deserve a lot of the credit or blame for the fact that I own several tons of tools. He would probably like the little tool station I’ve set up in my man room.

I had a sort of family of 5 friends. Four of us shared a suite. Stan was the resident leftist, although he wasn’t very good at it. He didn’t chain himself to anything or take part in marches. He was just farther to the left than the group average. He used to have long political discussions with my friend (and fellow blogger) Aaron, who was also part of the group. We used to call Aaron “Point” and Stan “Counterpoint.” Or maybe it was the other way around.

When Stan got in touch with me, he did it through this blog, so I knew he had seen some of my writing. I wondered how a person like me could fit into his world. I’m a far-right religious nut.

Stan surprised me. He apparently has a carry permit, and he’s a fanatical bird hunter. He says he’s upset because Californian invaders are ruining Colorado, the state where he lives. My take on this is that he’s a closeted conservative. Maybe he’ll have a Dennis Miller moment and come out one of these days.

It was nice to learn he wasn’t a transsexual vegan in a micro house with hemp walls.

I think Stan and Aaron had more influence on me than my other college friends. Stan helped me rediscover my STEM roots, and Aaron got me into blogging. He also got me interested in Israel, which is why I spent four life-changing months on a kibbutz.

I don’t communicate with a couple of the guys these days. One, a Jew who went through college with a very low opinion of Arabs, became a hard core anti-Israel activist, and he seems to be an extreme leftist. Another simply wore me down. I eventually realized I was not satisfied with the way he treated me or his influence on me, and there were some things about his character that made me uncomfortable, so I let him go.

I haven’t heard from the fifth guy in some time. He was always different. I always knew he was gay, but when we were in college, he was trying to make heterosexuality work. Years later, I found out his mother had died, and I called to express my sympathy. I heard another man’s voice on his answering machine, saying “we” were not home. I knew what had happened. I had always expected him to come out once his mother was gone.

I eventually wrote him. I told him I was a Christian, and that I couldn’t exactly congratulate him. I said I still considered him a friend, and I probably said I hoped he understood. He did not. He thought I was rejecting him or putting him down. I don’t recall, exactly. Anyway, we didn’t communicate for a while after that.

We eventually reestablished contact, and we got along fine once we cleared things up. I don’t know what he’s up to now, though. I pray for him sometimes. No matter how much you care about someone in that lifestyle, as a Christian, there is a limit to how close you can get. I’m very open about my concerns about the way homosexuality and sexual confusion are being used to as tools of persecution, and I would guess that my positions would not go over well with him.

Friends are friends, but God is God. When there is a conflict, you don’t have to weigh things and make a decision. There is only one choice.

The anti-Israel guy called me after I sent the letter to my gay friend, and while ostensibly trying to catch up with me and rekindle our friendship, he told me my letter was “evil.” That killed the relationship for me. It wasn’t his disagreement that bothered me. It was the arrogance and rudeness, combined with his incomprehensible belief that the matter was any of his business. It was startling to be confronted with such nonchalant condescension and close-mindedness.

Also, it showed how much he had changed. In college, he had been interested in learning more about his Jewish faith, and when he told me my letter was evil, I knew he had given up on the God of Leviticus. It seemed to me that he had allowed politics to become an excuse for venting rage that came from other sources.

That’s how political rage and other types of activist rage usually work. You can’t resolve things with your parents, so you join Greenpeace and go around ramming whaling ships. Activism is a wonderful, classic cover for cruelty and inability to forgive. If you dream of sending people mail bombs, but you’re having a hard time justifying it, come up with a cause, and you’ll be putting tacks and dynamite in boxes in no time.

Columbia was a terrible choice for me. The people were nuts. I have blamed myself more than anyone for my problems there, but the truth is that the atmosphere was sick.

I guess things would have been different if my parents had been helpful. Many people take their kids to colleges to look them over. Most educated people discuss college and career choices with their kids. They look to see what their kids are good at when they’re young, and they spend money on their interests and help them progress. My parents didn’t do any of those things. When I filled out college applications, I only did it because I knew I needed to have something to do the following year. I only got two applications in on time: Columbia and Dartmouth. Dartmouth waitlisted me, so I went to Columbia.

I didn’t do well with girls at Columbia. I used to think that was because I was a maladjusted kid, and there is a lot of truth to that, but I have looked up some of the women I knew, and they’re a mess. I wasn’t wrong about them. Some ended up in extreme-leftist academia or activism. None I checked up on had husbands. They were poisonous. Imagine being married to someone like that and being “corrected” 24 hours a day.

I remember a beautiful young engineer named June. She used to come to my dorm and hang out in the TV lounge on my floor. She talked about rape a lot. She would pop off with gems like, “Rape isn’t a crime of sex! It’s a crime of violence!” Out of nowhere.

Okay, fine, but what does that have to do with General Hospital? Am I supposed to ask you out now, or should I just jump out the window? Very strange. And she wasn’t odd by Columbia/Barnard standards. She was well within a standard deviation of normal.

Then there was Angela. I think she was an engineer. She was a gorgeous (by Columbia standards) Italian girl. She used to hang out with my friend Sam and his pack. She seemed like an airhead when I first met her. I remember watching her stand and grin while Sam slapped her buttocks to make them jiggle. He marveled at the motion. A year or two later, she was a feminist avenger with no sense of humor at all. It was as though an emasculating spirit had entered her body and taken control.

The previous version of Angela had been disappointing because she seemed unaware that she was selling herself cheap. The newer version was a pure horror.

I recall talking to her about a couple of people we knew. I had been speaking to them while they tried to cram for exams. I told Angela the woman’s “pre-med boyfriend” wanted to study. She said, “I find it interesting that you call him ‘pre-med’ but you don’t say what she was studying.” Ouch. Where did that come from? There go all my reasons for ever talking to you again.

She ended up working for one of the networks, helping make soap operas. She made a lot of money, but I don’t think she advanced the cause of feminism. I haven’t change the world, but I’m glad I don’t have to say I spent my life making soap operas.

Anyway, most of the women were highly maladjusted and completely unacceptable, and their nature said a lot about the institution itself.

As for the academics, there was no way I could have made it in the liberal arts, even if I had studied. To make it among liberal intellectuals (a tragic misnomer), you have to join the club, and I would not have done that. I would have been blackballed right and left for years before figuring out what was wrong.

The chairman of the English department should have added this sentence to his letter: “If you’re not a leftist nut, you are still welcome to study here, but you should forget about the possibility of making a living in academia or the arts afterward.”

Who wants to teach English or literature anyway? Could anything be more boring?

If I had had a sharp person to mentor me (instead of no one at all), I would have gone into a STEM field from day one. I would still have been in a hostile environment, but I could have gotten my degree and gotten out.

My parents didn’t introduce me to God. They didn’t prepare a path for me with prayer. I was not sharp enough to get connected on my own. Things went pretty well for me, considering. I didn’t end up dead or in prison.

I should have taken up STEM pursuits in high school and forgotten all about things like writing. Then I could have gone to a relatively normal technical college and minimized the friction with the more corrosive elements of the left.

When I look back on the opportunity I had, I can’t believe I dropped the ball. Columbia, for all its problems, was the equal of Harvard or Stanford. I could have been a mechanical engineer, an EE, or a physicist. I could have done medicine, had I chosen and prepared correctly. I had a horrible attitude, and I was not prepared at all. I wish I hadn’t gone to Columbia, but once I was there, blew a gigantic opportunity. What percentage of American 18-year-olds get four years at a top-10 university, with no student loans?

I busted my butt when I went back to school for physics. I was a different person. It’s too bad it happened so late, at the wrong school. I’m glad I got my degree, and I will always be grateful to the University of Miami for giving me a chance, but it would have been great to study at Caltech or MIT instead. Or Georgia Tech. A somewhat normal place.

Interesting stuff, at least to me.

It was good to hear from Stan, and it’s great to know he did well in life. He really got me thinking, too. Maybe now I’ll have more useful input the next time a young person who is not a leftist asks me for advice.

Be Sure to Remove the Cartridges From Your Pocket Prior to Immersion

You could say yesterday was a good day for me.

Five weeks ago, I traveled to Clearwater to get re-baptized at an event held by The Last Reformation. Their Youtube videos convinced me that my first baptism was a farce, and they also convinced me that a real baptism would have positive supernatural effects. It’s not just a way to dedicate yourself to Jesus in front of a crowd. Since my real baptism, I have experienced new self-control. I feel much, much better.

The person who is most closely attuned to me on spiritual matters is my friend Travis. He’s a music student at the University of Miami. We have known each other for about 10 years now. We were armorbearers together at Miami’s corrupt and toxic Trinity Church. We both moved to another church, and that church dried up due to pride issues and a pedophilia scandal. We have had many, many prayer sessions together. God is changing both of us.

Before I went to Clearwater, I told a number of friends about it, but only Travis really got excited about it. A couple of others are interested, but Travis absolutely had to get what I got. He lives in a miserable county full of hateful people. He is constantly tempted by young college girls with post-2010 morals. He knows dozens of hostile, self-pitying victimhood junkies. He wants to have his desires changed. He wants power over his flesh.

Travis borrowed a car and drove up here day before yesterday. He had to work during the day, and then he got in the car and drove up here alone.

Yesterday morning, we had a discussion of baptism, and I did my best to help him understand what it was supposed to be. You’re supposed to repent of sin, for real (not just until the end of the current church service). You’re supposed to give your entire life to Jesus, putting all your desires on the altar and asking God to take whatever he wants (this is called “dying to the flesh”). You’re supposed to be baptized in the name of Jesus, not the trinity. You need to be fully immersed; sprinkling is a bizarre perversion that probably originated in cold countries.

You have to have complete faith in Jesus in order to be baptized; a baby can’t receive it. This is what Acts 8:37 tells us. Many Bibles don’t include this verse, but the historical record shows that it existed prior to the translations most Bibles rely on.

We prayed, and Travis put on white clothes (his idea). Then we had to decide where to baptize him.

My dad is now in an ALF, so for over a week, I have been working on cleaning up his bedroom suite. I shampooed the carpet with bleach. I mopped the bathroom floor with bleach, along with the doors, doorframes, counters, and tub. I keep going back and finding new things to clean. I don’t know when I’ll be completely done, but the bathroom is clean enough for a baptism. There is a huge jacuzzi tub in there. I had hoped we could use it (with nice warm water), but when Travis tried it on for size, it was too small for total immersion. That meant only one thing: we were going to have to use the pool.

When we went out to check the pool, the air temperature was 55 degrees. The water was very cold. We have had freezing nights. I felt vicarious terror when I thought about what Travis was about to do. He put his foot in the water and found out what he was in for. Nonetheless, he was determined. I got out some towels, turned up the heat in the house, and found myself a place on the patio where I could hold Travis by the hand and baptize him while getting as little water as possible on myself.

Hey, it wasn’t my baptism.

He did it. I could barely believe it. How desperate do you have to be, to sink your entire body in water that could be used to chill soda?

Here he is afterward.

We are hoping he’ll get the same kind of result I did.

I have never baptized anyone with water before. I baptized a friend with the Holy Spirit, which is not the same thing, and I helped baptize another person with the Holy Spirit. Travis is the first person I’ve put under. We have a friend in Miami who wants it, too, so Travis is going to baptize him. Our friend is another Trinity Church casualty. With any luck, no one else we know will have to come to my house in the winter and risk hypothermia. I can baptize people as well as the guys from TLR, and Travis can do it as well as I can.

To complete the experience, we got out a pistol and a couple of rifles and went shooting in my pasture. If only I had been able to get him to wear a MAGA hat and eat barbecue, the day would have been the perfect northern Florida Christian day.

I don’t have a MAGA hat. I was trying to be funny.

Travis has a talent for shooting, but he never gets to practice. Here is his pistol target, fired at 7 yards. Most people at gun ranges shoot a mess that spans about two feet. It’s remarkable, and what’s more remarkable is that many are content with that. They don’t look for instruction. Many men seem to be insecure about their marksmanship. They would rather put on special tactical pants and try to look like action movie heroes than actually learn how to shoot, because they don’t want to admit that they shoot badly.

It’s odd, because when your groups are huge, everyone can see that you shoot badly. You look bad no matter what you’re wearing. If you can’t shoot, no one cares how many zippers your 5.11 pants have. One would think insecure people would be more concerned about their shooting than their wardrobes.

Human beings are irrational.

I’m very happy about the way the day went. It’s tremendous. I was used to help Travis, and he will be used to help other people.

In other news, I talked to my new friend Gloria yesterday. Travis had to go to Orlando for a job interview, so I went to see my dad at the ALF, and while I was there, Gloria called me over.

She said my dad had been wandering around without enough clothing on, to put it mildly. I told her he was not a modest person and that I couldn’t do anything about it, but I said I was grateful for the information. Then we started talking about the new ALF I had picked for my dad.

Gloria does not like the current ALF, and I don’t blame her. It’s okay for ordinary old people who still have their faculties, but the memory care area, which is separate, is depressing and not as clean as it should be. She has blackouts from Parkinson’s, but her memory is fine, so she is not really like the other patients. She was put in memory care because she walked off during a blackout.

I told her about the place I found for my dad. One of their branches is literally 100 yards from where Gloria and I were standing. I told her both of their operations were extremely clean and that the branch close to me had a fanatical activity director who worked hard to keep everyone entertained. I told her it was cheaper than the ALF where she now lives.

She has an older sister who can move her, so she is considering calling her and setting up a visit.

I feel bad for her. She is tormented by an illness which may very well be demonic, and she is well able to perceive the problems with her living arrangements. Many memory care patients are so far gone, you could feed them cat food and bed them down on yoga mats in a common room, and they wouldn’t mind at all. The experience is much worse for someone who is still capable of functioning normally.

I told her that I would pray for her, and that I really meant it. I hope people who read about her will take up the cause.

My visit with my dad went well. Once again, he kept talking about how great he expected the future to be. He was pleased by my description of the new ALF, which he had forgotten about. He kept telling me what a wonderful son I was. He did ask about moving back home, but he didn’t harp on it or tell me I was selfish. I don’t know what’s gotten into him. I can’t help thinking God has been speaking to him, preparing him for salvation.

It’s wonderful to look forward to seeing my dad instead of dreading it. I didn’t think that would ever happen.

I am hoping some of the other friends I communicated with will be baptized. Everyone needs to be properly equipped in this world. I don’t want to freeze anyone, but the need for baptism is urgent. In the Bible, new believers were baptized immediately after converting. I’m sure Satan is doing his best to keep them procrastinating.

While Travis was trying to come up here, he lost his wallet in an Uber car, and he called me, distrought. I think I wrote about this already. We had already talked about the certainty that Satan would try to wreck our plans, and we had prayed about it. I spoke God’s help to Travis in finding his wallet, and I repeated the words God gave me: “I am a son of God, and this is how things are supposed to work.” I refused to worry about it.

A few hours later, I hadn’t heard from Travis, so I texted. He said he had the wallet. My response: “Ha.”

Whenever you decide to obey God, Satan will look for a way to ruin it. Never get angry at God because you tried to serve him and then ran into trouble. Expect it, and pray about it before it happens.

I don’t know what today will bring, but after yesterday, I feel like I have already received everything from this weekend that I could have asked for. Now I look forward to hearing about the people Travis baptizes.

Journalists Making Secret Retractions

This is for people who don’t believe Trump is right about fake news.

Last night, a man shot up a bar in Thousand Oaks, California. The shooter, who killed himself at the scene, has not been named yet.

Many news stories said that a witness described the shooter as “Middle Eastern-looking.”

If you go to Google right now and search the news for “Middle Eastern” and “Thousand Oaks,” you will pull up snippets from a number of news sites, relaying the information about the suspect’s description. They include the phrase “Middle Eastern.”

If you click on the stories, you will find that many of them have been SCRUBBED of the phrase “Middle Eastern.” The phrase still appears in Google results that haven’t been updated yet, but it’s gone from the stories.

Here’s a tweet from a journalist named Jory Rand:

Just spoke with a man who was at the front door of the bar when the shooter began firing. Says he had a handgun, shot the guard at the door, threw several smoke bombs inside, and then continued firing. Described shooter as middle eastern looking with a beard.

We know liberal journalists are afraid of Muslims, and after mass shootings, leftists always swarm the web, trying to convince everyone the murderers are conservative white males.

The body will tell the story. Thank goodness the authorities have it. If this man is a Muslim or a dark-skinned individual who is not conservative, we will know the truth soon enough.

Interesting thing: he killed at least a dozen people with a .45 pistol. He didn’t feel the need for an AR-15. When you’re shooting unarmed people in a crowded room, it probably doesn’t matter what kind of weapon you use, as long as it has box magazines.

More

Now websites are describing the suspect as a “white man,” and leftists are running with it. Problem: to the cops, all Caucasians are white, and that includes Arabs and Hispanics. The pastor from my last church is a dark-skinned Puerto Rican, and his criminal history lists him as white. George Zimmerman is a dark-skinned Hispanic who is part Indian and part black, and the police described him as white.

It’s amazing how people can believe what they want to believe, regardless of the facts.

I’m betting on Islam this time around, but the truth is that no one will know for sure until we get an ID.

More

Looks like it WAS a white man. The killer was David Ian Long, a former Marine who suffered from PTSD. Grist for the left’s propaganda mill. Still, it doesn’t begin to justify censoring the news.

Letting Chemistry do the Work

Today I worked on the big oak that fell over in the large pasture to the north of my house. I have had over a year to cut it up, but I made it my lowest priority because it enhanced the property’s privacy. For most of the year, it had leaves on it, and even though it was on its side, it provided a screen that was maybe 20 feet high. Hard to give that up.

I stuck a chainsaw and some other stuff in the tractor ballast box, and off I went.

Actually, that’s not true. First, I tried unsuccessfully to start my big chainsaw. I opened it up and looked at the carb. I did all sorts of things. No joy. I thought I was protecting it from leftist-mandated, CO2-generating, vehicle-destroying ethanol, but maybe I failed. Ethanol will freeze up any engine if you don’t drain the gas during long periods of inactivity. I know of three ways to get around this. First, buy real gas with no ethanol in it. Second, drain the gas whenever you stop using an engine. Third, put a product called Sta-Bil in your gas. It will buy you two years. I have a special gas can for my saws, and I always put Sta-Bil in it.

I had to give up on the 20″ saw and fall back (not literally) on the 16″ job. Frustrating. I looked up ways to de-crud carburetors, and I found an interesting method: dishwashing liquid and water, in an ultrasonic cleaner. I just happen to have two ultrasonic cleaners that belonged to my mother. I think she used them for jewelry. This gives me a strategy.

Gas was making it to the cylinder, but I don’t think it was enough.

Anyway, after I gave up trying to start the big saw, I got to work on the tree.

The first thing I tried was to lift a bunch of branches I cut recently. I learned something new. When you lift something with a tractor’s front end loader, you can turn the tractor over very quickly.

I tried to lift the branches, and the load was mostly on the right side of the tractor. As the hydraulics extended, the right side of the tractor leaned toward the ground. It was disturbing.

I never use the tractor’s seat belt, because I have an irrational fear that it will make an accident worse, not better. I have to get over that. I know the roll bar won’t fold up, but it looks so flimsy.

We are having record heat here, just as I was getting excited about cool weather. The temperature in the nearest town is 93 degrees right now. That would be a little high for August. Last year on this date, the high was 77. Tomorrow the weather is supposed to go back to normal. Not sure why I felt like I had to pick today to work in the sun.

I also wanted to work on a stump so I could prepare it for an application of stump remover, but I ran out of steam. I’ve been applying potassium nitrate (saltpeter) to stumps since August. It’s an amazing product. You drill holes in the stumps, pour in a fairly small amount of saltpeter, add water, and walk away. A few weeks later, you will find that your stump is mushy and rotten. If you put 8 or 10 holes in a stump 2 feet wide, you will find that a lot of the stump AND the roots are so mushy you can cut them up with a maul.

I have tried burning stumps with charcoal, and it will work, but it takes a long time and a lot of charcoal.

I don’t know why it works. I can’t understand how a chemical in a hole an inch wide can rot wood a foot away, but it does.

There is a problem with saltpeter, however. It used to be dirt cheap, and you could buy it anywhere, but now it’s scarce. The best price I’ve found is 8 bucks per pound, at Tractor Supply. Why is it scarce? I’m not sure, but I think it has to do with Islam, the religion of terrorism.

Saltpeter is an ingredient in gunpowder, and it appears that it has been used in other explosives for the purpose of killing the innocent. You can look around and read about a failed terrorist bomb made from saltpeter and one other ingredient.

I don’t know if terrorism is the reason why it’s so expensive for me to dissolve stumps, but it sure seems likely. What other reason could there be for the sudden scarcity of a very familiar product Americans bought in bulk for centuries?

It’s like the disappearance of Postal Service mailboxes. Remember those? We had them before 911, and then they started disappearing. A mailbox is an easy place to deposit a bomb. Not sure it’s any easier than dropping it in a post office lobby, where it will kill more people, but I suppose it’s harder to do that without being identified.

I have not been able to find any references to terrorism’s connection to the disappearance of mailboxes, but it seems obvious, and the government’s own explanation–cost cutting–seems stupid. It doesn’t cost any more to grab mail from a box than it does to take it out of a bin in a post office. Whatever. Thank you, Mohammed, for one more inconvenience.

Timothy McVeigh, one of the left’s hens’-teeth-rare white, non-Muslim terror celebrities, used ammonium nitrate, a popular fertilizer, to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma City. Now it’s hard to get ammonium nitrate. You have to fill out paperwork, apparently.

It’s a wonder we still have access to anything that blows up.

Before I realized someone had choked off the saltpeter supply, I looked all over the web, figuring someone had to be selling big sacks of it. I thought I found a source on Amazon. Someone was selling 5-pound bags of saltpeter for about $20, so I ordered one. Better than paying 50 cents an ounce. Today I found out what I actually ordered is “Chile saltpeter,” or sodium nitrate. People say it’s chemically similar to potassium nitrate, so I’m going to try it anyway. It can’t hurt anything, and it may do the job.

I have read that a lot of other chemicals will soften stumps. Epsom salt and the unobtainable ammonium nitrate have been mentioned. I would not be surprised if sodium nitrate worked and saved me some money.

I had to buy a 1″ wood auger in order to make deep holes in stumps. I also sprang for a decent lithium drill. I can’t believe the amazing cordless drills they make these days. I bought a Makita, and I made sure I checked the torque and ordered a good one. Makita makes like 400 different drills; not sure why. They could cover all the bases with a dozen.

My experience with the drill was startling. Live oaks are extremely hard, so I thought drilling holes in them would be a terrible job. I was mistaken. The auger went through oak like it was cheese. I can’t understand it.

While I was drilling more holes this week, I realized it was so easy, I could get rid of small oaks simply by hollowing them out with the drill.

Now that I know how easy it is to get rid of stumps, I wonder why most people leave stumps in the ground and walk and mow around them.

I have stumps that are sprouting suckers. I hate that. Live oaks refuse to die gracefully. I figure stump remover will put a stop to it. If the wood is falling apart, it can’t be expected to remain alive.

I spent a lot of time Googling stump-removing chemicals this week, and I ordered sodium nitrate, so I’m sure I’m on all sorts of government lists now, as if I hadn’t made them already by joining gun forums, buying ammunition online, and writing blogs critical of Obama and Islam. I know the DoD has me on a hate list; I’ve seen the block page. Nice. Thanks, guys. I wonder if Farrakhan’s website–an actual hate site–is on the list.

I hope the government isn’t wasting much energy on me, because they have limited resources, and there is absolutely no possibility that I will try to blow anyone up.

Of course, that’s exactly what I would say if I were a terrorist.

There is no way to win.

I should have waited until tomorrow to work on trees, but I wanted to get outside. Maybe tonight I can get the big saw’s carb fixed up, and later this week I can wreak some real havoc.

It was hard to be effective today. Work a little, overheat, gasp for air, stop, rest, work a little more, and so on. I was wearing steel-toed boots and jeans with a lot of heavy stuff in the pockets, and I was wrestling branches and holding a saw. The sun was fierce, and the breeze was nonexistent. Overheating took place quickly, and when you’re too hot, you feel physically weak. Your body stops supplying power in order to force you to rest.

I left my chainsaw and pole saw out in the pasture. Time to get back up and retrieve them.

I should have this huge tree cleared away by the end of the month, or, alternatively, I may be dead. I am hoping the tree loses.

That’s all the excitement for today. Be careful what you Google, or you may end up bunking with me in Leavenworth.

Clouds Dissipating?

Thank you, God. The weather is changing.

It’s 89 degrees here, but it took until after 12 p.m. to get that hot. A couple of weeks back, we were looking at low 90’s, and things heated up faster. It’s dryer now, too, and it’s much more pleasant in the late afternoon and evening.

Last night I went outside as the sun was starting to dim, and I didn’t begin sweating immediately. I could have stayed out and not suffered. I didn’t even get bitten by bugs.

I wasted a lot of good weather after the summer of 2017 died. I put outdoor jobs off. This time I plan to pounce. When it’s cool enough to work, I will cut, mow, or burn something, or I will take some guns out and shoot.

I keep thinking I would like to pull out and make a permanent move to Tennessee eventually. A few days back, I decided to check the weather up there. It was not as great as I had hoped. In fact, it was pretty close to what we were having here. Maybe September in Tennessee is just as hot as it is in Florida.

I checked the forecast for the upcoming month, and it looked considerably better. Where my area has lows in the high 60’s, Tennessee expects lows maybe 10 degrees lower. That means fewer bugs and more good weather for outdoor activity.

What I do will depend on my dad. It’s impossible to make solid plans when you’re dealing with dementia. This winter, my dad may be exactly like he is now, he may be worse (somewhat or a great deal), and he may not be around at all. As long as he’s living at home, I won’t want to move. If he’s not living here, I can do whatever I want. If he’s in a facility, I can move and then find a new facility up north. If the end comes, I’ll have no strings to consider.

There is good news regarding my dad. Yesterday we went out to lunch. I asked him if he ever thought about making plans for the hereafter. He asked what he could do, and I said he could receive salvation. He asked how to do that, and he said he was willing to listen to anything I recommended.

Did it mean anything? What demented people say varies from one day to the next. I can’t tell you whether this is an important development. I told him I would tell him all about salvation later. I didn’t want to hold a revival in an Indian restaurant.

Maybe I was wrong to hesitate. He could have passed away last night. I plan to bring it up again today.

I believe God has told me my dad will be saved, so I don’t feel I have to be in a rush. If God says he’ll be saved, it will happen.

My dad’s attitude seems to have changed during this month. I don’t know what’s going on. Maybe a stroke affected some little part of his brain that generated anger and pride. Maybe God is restraining poisonous spirits that have always controlled him. His physical therapist says he has slipped over the last week, so maybe there is a physical explanation.

It would be fantastic to have a dad who isn’t angry and proud. I can’t imagine that. He has always released his negative feelings freely. When I’m angry at someone, I remain polite and work with them, and I try to spare their feelings. My dad has always vented his inner feelings directly onto people, with no hesitation. If he suddenly started acting like the rest of us, I wouldn’t know what to do. It would be like having him replaced with a different person.

People have always walked on eggs around my dad. Imagine suddenly being able to speak freely around a person like that.

It’s a strange thing; inner changes that would help him prepare for his departure would also make it harder to let him go.

Being around an angry and very vocal person is like being struck with a whip all day. No matter how much you love the person, you get angry, over and over. Repentance is something you repeat many times per week. You can’t help looking forward to spending time away from them.

It’s not hatred or vengeance. It’s fatigue and a desire for relief. What is it like when such a person puts the whip away?

I hope he’s serious about God. I have always expected him to wait until the last possible second, but maybe it won’t be quite that bad. It would be nice to have some time with the new version of him before he goes.

Levi’s Joins the Fight Against Civil Rights

I have two points to make:

1. The Levi’s people are pushing gun control and even pressing employees to take part, so they are now on my list.

2. The CEO of Levi’s, one Chip Bergh, never washes his pants and thinks he’s doing a good thing, so he probably smells like a bum in August.

3. Levi’s jeans aren’t very good.

Okay, three points.

Today I read that Levi’s is getting on board with Michael Bloomberg’s anti-civil-rights campaign. They are going to push for “sensible” laws, i.e. the eventual confiscation of all firearms. I’m not sure how many pairs of Levi’s I’ve seen at gun ranges. A lot, for sure. I wonder if Mr. Bergh is aware that many people who stand up for their civil rights do it in Levi’s.

While I was reading about Levi’s doing its best to kill sales, I came across a disgusting article. Mr. Bergh says it’s wrong to wash jeans. EVER. If you must do something about the filth, you’re supposed to do it as rarely as possible. Says the fragrant Mr. Bergh, “A good pair of denim doesn’t really need to be washed in the washing machine except for very infrequently or rarely.”

In a way, he’s right. The jeans don’t need to be washed. They don’t need anything. The people who wear them need them to be washed.

Let’s get real. Jeans cover the pelvis. This is where genitalia and anuses are found. In an ideal world, the contents of these body parts would never, ever come in contact with one’s pants. This is not an ideal world, however. Things go wrong. Our digestions have bad days, resulting in fecal issues. Urine goes where it shouldn’t. Unfortunate things that emerge from our genitals go where we don’t want them to. Things like this happen to everyone, including people who lie about it. Over time, anyone’s pants will eventually develop smells and even stains.

Then there is sweat. It contains oil, salt, and bacteria. It lifts dead skin off and onto our clothes. You can’t just leave it there.

Wearing filthy clothes will eventually cause people to avoid you and maybe even fire you, and it also leads to things like boils and skin infections. I don’t know, but I would guess that lice prefer dirty clothes, too, and lice are not things of the past.

The fact that Bergh thinks filth is okay tells you his values are not in line with those of relatively sane people, i.e. conservatives and Christians. He is way off in that “calling evil good and good evil” area. He works for a major corporation in San Francisco, so no big shock.

Imagine standing next to a man who has defecated maybe 600 times and urinated a couple of thousand times without washing his pants. No, don’t.

If it’s not obvious to you what’s wrong with Bergh’s plan, there is no point in talking to you. Either it’s obvious, or you are under a delusion.

He’s wrong. That’s what I’m getting at.

He’s also wrong when he uses the term “good denim” to refer to Levi’s.

Levi’s uses crappy fabric. Not all cotton is the same. Some cotton has long fibers. Some has short fibers. Long fibers are stronger and nicer. I’m sure there must be other characteristics that set good cotton apart from bad.

Cheap cotton falls apart faster. The way Levi’s do. If you wear a pair of Levi’s long enough for them to fade from WASHING (Mr. Bergh), they will start to tear at the crotch. The buttonholes on the fly will start to fail. The belt loops will tear the pants. You may get other rips even if you don’t make them deliberately. This happens because Levi’s fabric is not “good denim.”

I have Carhartt jeans. I started buying them last year, when I realized dressing like a Miami boat bum was not going to work on a farm. I have some pairs that are around a year old, and I have some pairs I got last month. I wear them every single day. I wash them after almost every use. I use them for farm work and hunting. It’s hard to tell the new ones from the old ones. That’s “good denim.”

Carhartts also fit better than Levi’s. They sit at the waist, not down at the hipster level where they cut you in half every time you bend. Levi’s sit right where a beer gut makes its first fold. This is why so many men with beer guts are able to wear size 30 Levi’s, and it’s why they look so bad doing it. Levi’s make your legs look short, and they slice into you every time you move. Carhartts make your legs look longer, the way pants are supposed to.

Here’s what you can put in a pair of Carhartt jeans: a Glock, a big knife, a big cell phone, a bunch of car keys, a wallet, a bandana, some cash, and whatever fits in the remaining secret pocket. You can also put something in the hammer loop. You can put more stuff in two Carhartt pockets than all the pockets in a pair of Levi’s. You can’t even fit one Glock in there.

Carhartt jeans have triple seams. Levi’s jeans…not.

Carhartts run about $40. For that you get a pair of jeans which is stronger, longer-lasting, better-looking, more comfortable, much more useful, and less of a threat to the Bill of Rights. I don’t know what Levi’s (which are made in China in spite of their liberal pretensions) cost, but it’s more than $40.

The choice is obvious. If you’re a 9-year-old girl who wants to look like Rihanna, and your sexually ambiguous parents don’t care if your overpriced jeans fall apart in 6 months, you want Levi’s. If you’re a grown American who cares about civil rights and wants superior pants at a good price, you want Carhartt.

I can’t say I’m going to boycott Levi’s because I don’t wear them. I found something much better a long time ago, so Levi’s are no longer a factor in my life. I just thought I’d let Levi’s wearers know what they’re missing. Levi’s are the Budweiser of jeans. Great advertising, at least in the past, but no substance.

People say great things about Wrangler and Lee, which are also cheaper than Levi’s. Something to think about.

Manual’s Method Actually Works

I’m sure no one who reads this blog will care about this, but I’m blogging it anyway. If you have a Savage A22 rifle, and you can’t get the dust cover back on, I am here to help.

I had this problem. I took the dust cover off my gun, and when I tried to put it back on, I had lots of problems. It didn’t seem to want to go back on. I finally managed.

I must have done something wrong, because the last time I shot the gun, the dust cover came off and hit me in the face. I called Savage, and they sent me a new one. To the wrong address. But still. They backed up their product.

Today I decided to put the new dust cover on the gun, and I had problems again. I felt sure it couldn’t be done. I thought maybe the stock was interfering with it. Maybe it needed to be relieved with a Dremel tool.

It turns out you do it exactly the way the manual says to, but you have to apply a huge amount of downward pressure. The little grey cap on the end of the recoil spring has to snap upward into the cavity inside the dust cover. There is no other way to get it in there.

Squeeze like crazy, and the dust cover will go back in. You have to apply so much pressure, I wonder if female Savage owners are able to pull it off. You will think you’re breaking it.

If you came here after Googling “How to get Savage A22 dust cover back on,” you now have your answer.

Ferrari Looks; Fiat Reliability

I have been trying to be open-minded, but as of today I have drawn a conclusion: the Marlin Model 60 .22 rifle is a piece of garbage.

I bought one earlier this year. Could not hit a soda can at 50 feet, using a rest. No exaggeration. Took it back. Marlin gave up on it and sent me a new one.

When the new gun arrived, I still had to install sling studs. The Model 60 doesn’t come with them, and it’s hard to install them without using the magazine as a support. I had to modify the stock and a sling stud and nut to make it work.

The trigger in the Model 60 is horrible. I tried to buy an aftermarket trigger called a “KAT,” but the guy who makes them failed to respond to my efforts to contact him via email and Facebook, so I gave up and bought an MCarbo trigger for something like $75. Installed it myself. Result: a PRETTY GOOD trigger. Pretty good. That’s the best I can say. For the money, it should be perfect.

The iron sights were cheap and nasty, so I got a Tech Sights peep and installed it. The other day I went out to try it.

I shot a few rounds, and when I tried to reload, the magazine moved. It was loose. The magazine was held in by a little pin, and that little pin was gone. It’s somewhere in my pasture.

For contrast, I’ll discuss my new Savage A22.

I bought the A22. I installed $4 worth of scope bases in it. This took maybe three minutes. I bought a new trigger spring for around $9 and installed that. This took maybe half an hour, and it was easy. I’m done. The gun is fine.

Well, it WAS fine. The plastic dust cover on the receiver flew off while I was shooting, and it looks like a piece broke off. That may be my fault. Savage is sending me a new cover, free of charge. Minor thing.

People say the Model 60 is a great cheap .22. Oh really?

I have about $225 in the A22. Guess what I’ve invested in the Model 60. Guess. I’ll tell you. It’s $250, not including the peep sight and sling. It was cheap when I bought it, but I had to keep investing in parts to make it function.

Here’s what the extra $25 got me. It has a flimsy trigger housing or whatever it’s called (the thing that holds the moving parts). It’s two sheets of metal held together with pins and a chunk of plastic. The barrel is pressed in and held in place by a pin, which is sort of like saying it’s nailed in. The gun cannot be dry-fired safely. I had to do a lot of work installing the sling studs. I had to do a lot of work installing the new trigger parts.

What about the A22? It has a heavy-duty milled receiver. It has a heavy plastic or composite box holding the trigger stuff. It came with an adjustable factory Accu-trigger, which is wonderful. It has a super-low trigger pull weight, because I changed the spring. It came from the factory able to shoot hypervelocity rounds. It has Weaver bases. It can be dry-fired all day. It can receive a 25-round magazine if I feel like buying one. The barrel screws in, just like it does on a real gun. If I get tired of the scope, the Savage is ready. It has adjustable iron sights. Real ones. It has an indestructible free-floated synthetic stock.

That’s what I got, for $25 LESS than my modified Marlin.

The Model 60 is crap. It just is. I know it looks nice, and it’s light and handy. Doesn’t matter, when it’s put together like a BB gun. The looks and feel are insufficient compensation.

Even if I get this gun to work, it will still be more fragile than the Savage. The trigger will be much worse. Its compatibility with fast ammunition will be dubious. No matter how you slice it, the Savage is a much better deal.

If you buy one of these things for yourself or your kid, you will be missing out. It’s junk when you buy it, and aftermarket parts are scarce and expensive, so you won’t get much help mitigating the flaws. When you do what you can to fix it up, it may work better, but it will still be junk.

Most people says the Ruger 10/22 is the way to go. I have no experience with that gun. I got a Savage because I like my other Savage and the price was great. I think it was a steal. Savages are accurate. No one says that about Rugers.

It’s a letdown when you try to like something and can’t pull it off. Zillions of people praise the Model 60. I tried to see things their way. I figured they had to know something. They don’t. It’s not a matter of taste. They are wrong. They’re conning themselves. The gun is inferior by objective standards.

Will I keep the gun anyway? I plan to, unless it keeps giving me trouble. It has a peep sight. The barrel is good. It’s handy. I can keep it around for pest control and iron sight practice. Would I hunt with it? NO NO NO NO NO. When you hunt, you want a gun that works, which is another way of saying you don’t want a Marlin Model 60. You don’t want to have to say, “Squirrels were everywhere today, but the magazine keeps falling off the Marlin.”

Maybe I won’t keep it. I’m thinking about it. If it has been a disappointment for four months, it may well continue to disappoint, and I could probably get $150 for it, which I could put toward another Savage.

I’ve been wondering why Marlin still makes this thing. I figured out the answer. They make it because people buy it. But why do people buy it when it’s clearly inferior? I think it’s nostalgia. The “60” stands for “1960,” which is the year the gun was released. When you buy a Marlin 60, it’s like walking into a showroom and buying a new 1960 Chevy. It hasn’t changed much. I think guys want to have a gun “just like paw had”; the 60 was very popular back in the old days when there were fewer rifles to choose from. The problem with buying based on nostalgia is that new guns are way better. Not just different. Better.

I feel gypped. I really got suckered in. How can so many people be so wrong?

Wait a minute. The most popular beer in the world is Budweiser, and most Americans think the Kardashians have a great TV show. Of course a lot of people can be wrong.

Do not buy a Marlin Model 60. Learn from my suffering. If you absolutely have to buy a Marlin .22, make it the 795. It has a box magazine. You can load it without putting your fingers in front of the muzzle, and it has more wood in the forestock for a sling stud. It’s still junk, but it’s better junk.

Ninth Circuit Experiences Brief Spasm of Lucidity

I always tell people they’re…misguided…when they don’t realize it’s impossible to vote for an individual in a presidential election. People say dumb things like, “I vote for the man, not the party.” They don’t understand that a president isn’t just a man. He is also part of a team, and when you vote for the captain of the other team, you gut everyone on your own team. Conservatives who voted for Hillary Clinton or who refused to vote at all weren’t just attacking Donald Trump. They were attacking every conservative politician in America.

One of the president’s most important jobs is to appoint federal judges. These people are very dangerous. They are accountable to no one, and they rule for life. I say “rule” because that’s accurate. They decide what the law means. If a federal judge says a law against arson actually bans cheating at tiddlywinks, that’s what it means, until another judge overrules him. The text of a law means nothing until a judge tells us what it means.

We have a bunch of federal circuits. Each circuit is composed of areas from several states. Some circuit panels are more sane than others. The worst circuit in the US is the Ninth Circuit, which rules over California, Hawaii, and some other western states. They are completely unhinged. They routinely agree with far-left eccentrics, and their decisions can be very damaging.

This week, the Ninth Circuit did a shocking thing. An appellate panel changed the law in Hawaii, and the ruling applies to all other Ninth Circuit states. The court held that OPEN carry of weapons was protected by the US Constitution. Not concealed, mind you. They say regulating concealed carry may be okay. They decided to protect OPEN carry. We don’t even have that in Florida, which has a reputation for loose gun laws.

Believe it or not, Hawaii and California were already open-carry states. In Hawaii, you could carry openly with a carry permit. The problem was that carry permits were impossible to get. The new case makes it much easier to get permits.

Prior to the decision, Hawaiians were not allowed to have weapons in their vehicles. It was open season on people in cars. Can you believe that? Now they can walk down the street with holsters on their hips.

The opinion is startling. In its lengthy endorsement of the famous Heller case, it firmly, decisively rejects the “militia” connection liberals have tried to tack onto the Second Amendment. All cases holding that 2A doesn’t apply to individuals are now bad law in the Ninth Circuit. They were already bad law because of the Supreme Court’s Heller decision, but now the Ninth has expressly adopted Heller just about as hard as possible. Courts can play games with rulings from higher courts. They can deliberately misconstrue and delay. “Sorry; your transmission was garbled.” This new case is an unconditional surrender.

The opinion also defines the phrase “keep and bear” very clearly. As I have often said, and as some courts have said, “keep and bear” means “own and carry.” This is obvious to anyone who owns a dictionary, but liberals dispute it. The Ninth Circuit now says its subjects are allowed to carry outside their homes. It points out that the right to carry means nothing if it doesn’t apply outside the home. The founding fathers didn’t include the word “bear” so you could carry your rifle in circles in your living room.

The most satisfying part of the case is a long passage in which the court compares deprivation of the right to carry with Reconstruction-era confiscation of firearms from freed slaves! You really have to read it to believe it. Leftists want us to forget something very important: the right to own and carry arms is a CIVIL right, and people who support 2A are civil rights activists.

It’s interesting to look at the history of the case.

The suit was filed by a man named Young. He was upset because Hawaii did not like issuing permits. Hawaii would only give permits to people who were special. Security guards were able to get permits. Magnum, P.I. was able to get a permit. Probably Higgins, too, because of his MI6 connections. Maybe Don Ho. People who showed extraordinary, urgent need could (supposedly but probably not really) get permits. Mr. Young sued the state and his county.

The lower court judge is named Helen Gillmor. See if you can guess who appointed her. I’ll tell you: Bill Clinton, husband of the unelected woman who anointed herself healthcare empress. Gillmor is an undistinguished lawyer who went to school in New York and Boston. She is a former PD, which speaks volumes. PD’s are delusional in their hatred of everything good. Perhaps I exaggerate, but the job attracts real kooks.

Gillmor made some crazy rulings. She appears to have had no respect for Mr. Young’s pro se lawsuit, so she did some frivolous things in order to turf his case into a black hole, surely hoping the Ninth Circuit would back her up. For one thing, she denied that 2A granted rights to individuals. That’s not even close to what the case law says.

The appellate judges who fixed things were named Ikuta and…some Gaelic name I’m not going to go back and look up. One is a Bush II appointee, and the other is a Reagan appointee. The third judge dissented. Bush II appointed him. Oh, well.

Why talk about the judges? Because their history is more important than the law. Their biases determined what they ultimately decided. Clinton’s girl bent over backwards to distort the law to suit her frustrated wishes, and two judges appointed by Republicans straightened things out.

If you didn’t vote for Trump, you voted against your 2A rights. Even if you stayed home, you helped activist judges who don’t mind if their actions give criminals the power to kill or rape you at will. You should be ashamed of your ignorance, your childishness, or both.

One of the most beautiful things about Trump’s victory is his work to appoint conservative judges. Obama appointed all sorts of crazies. Now Trump is working to dilute the cesspool. He can’t fire the nuts, but he can fill spots with people who will fight them. That’s very important.

We’re about to see Kavanaugh seated on the Supreme Court. No one can predict what a justice will do once he has no one to answer to (Reagan appointed Kennedy), but more likely than not, Kavanaugh will be very helpful to us. Ruth Ginsburg is in bad health, and Clarence Thomas is getting old. We may have a chance to get rid of a socialist who has said she wants to repeal 2A, and we may be able to replace a faithful servant with someone younger. This is a very big deal. But the never-Trumpers don’t get that. They would rather be petty and watch their rights disappear so they can tell the rest of us they told us so.

The never-Trump plan is not working out well. The economy is strong. Trump is doing a lot of great things. He needs our help, because he runs again in two years, and the alternative will be someone like fake Indian Liz Warren or Kamala Harris. I wonder how long the pouters will sit on the sidelines and pray for Trump to fail. The more he succeeds, the dumber they look.

Enemies are bad. Treacherous friends are worse. That’s why armies have traditionally fed and sheltered POW’s while hanging spies. The GOP has a lot of spies right now.

I completely understand that Trump rubs people the wrong way, and that he is disappointing on a personal level, but that doesn’t justify turning on the rest of us.

I have never seen a candidate I supported in the primaries win a presidential election, but that didn’t drive me to sit in a corner and suck my thumb. I held my nose and voted for McCain and Romney. I preferred Cruz to Trump, but I voted for Trump in the end. You have to buy off the rack. You can’t always have the candidate you want. It’s important to grow up and do what you can.

The Hawaii case shows what can happen if we keep Republicans in the White House. Why are so many of us working against that?

I don’t know why I write about this stuff. In reality, prayer and repentance are what matter. If people are voting stupidly, it’s because we have turned away from God and opened ourselves to deception. If we don’t turn back to God, all the conservative policy in the world won’t help us. Still, it’s nice to see America’s decline retarded.

Patching a Major Hole in my Gun Collection

I may be doing it again. I have an offer in on a firearm.

When I was a kid, my grandfather used to load me in the truck and take me around to his farms. Sometimes, we would shoot. He had three .22 pistols. One was a High Standard Double Nine revolver. Another was some kind of High Standard automatic. He spoke highly of that one. The third pistol was a third-generation Colt Woodsman.

When both of my grandparents were gone, the estate lawyers gave the heirs a list of the guns. My grandfather had a fair amount of stuff. He had two Smith & Wesson .357 revolvers. He had two S&W pocket revolvers. He had an unfired WWI Colt commemorative 1911 in a glass-topped box. He had a Marlin lever action. He also had a .30 caliber “Enforcer,” which is a strange pistol made from an M1 carbine

A number of things I expected to see on the list were not there. I never expected a shot at the Colt, because my uncle bought it for my grandfather, and it made sense that his son would get that. But the other things…hmm…where did they go?

I only wanted a few things, and they weren’t particularly valuable. I wanted the Colt, because I used to shoot it with my grandfather. I wanted the High Standard revolver for the same reason. I wanted my great-great-grandfather’s flintlock shotgun, which no one else wanted. I was also interested in an old Remington 550-1 .22 rifle, because I had used it a lot.

Other than the Colt, I wanted junk. The value of the flintlock, the revolver, and the .22 rifle is probably less than $300. The flintlock is useless. The Remington is (was) not much of a gun. It has a cap on the butt end of the barrel which unscrews itself from time to time. The revolver is about as cheaply made as a firearm can be without inviting lawsuits.

I got two items: the High Standard revolver (featuring a painted aluminum frame) and the flintlock. Luckily for me, my dad already had my grandfather’s Browning Sweet Sixteen. That was not part of the estate. My grandmother gave it to my dad while she was alive, so no one else had a claim to it. It’s probably worth $600. They bring a lot more when they’re in good shape, but my grandfather threw his guns around and beat them up.

I have been told that I’ve been cheated on a couple of items that belonged to my grandparents: a watch and a Frederic Remington sculpture. Is it true? I don’t know. I hope not. I refuse to mud-wrestle over trinkets. The way people tussle over inherited wealth is disgusting and heartbreaking, so I don’t do it, even if I suspect I’m being defrauded to some extent.

I govern myself as though my relatives, apart from my sister, had done everything as ethically as they could. For all I know, that’s true. My sister is special. I have no doubts about her ethical issues.

My relatives–some of them, anyway–know more about my grandparents’ personalty than I do. They took a greater interest in looking after their cut.

I have the manual for the Colt, because whoever took it didn’t understand how important it was. It was going to be thrown out. When you sell an old gun, the more original paraphernalia you have, the more the gun is worth. That manual, with the box (now gone) may be worth $200. No one will ever see that money, however, because the gun is somewhere far away, and the manual is here.

I hope a stranger didn’t steal that gun.

I don’t think my grandparents gave any other guns to my relatives, because the recipients would have made a point of letting the rest of us know. I have mentioned the Colt, and no one has raised a hand to say they have it. I told everyone about the Sweet Sixteen, to avoid problems.

Ever since I learned my grandfather’s Colt was gone, I have wanted to get a Woodsman. It won’t be the gun I used to shoot in Kentucky, but like all of my guns, it will make me think of my grandfather when I shoot it. I didn’t appreciate him when he was alive. I miss him more now than I did during the years following his death.

I don’t want a Woodsman exactly like his. I don’t like the heel-mounted magazine release on the third-generation guns. I want a second-generation gun with a button release on the grip, like a 1911.

I found a nice one online, and I decided to see if I could buy it. The store wants more than I think it’s worth, so I sent them an email and offered them a hundred dollars less. I am waiting for their reply.

I’m doing it again. I’m buying another gun. Trying, anyway.

If I get this one, it should hold me for quite some time. I may get a bolt rifle in 6.5 Creedmoor or Swedish, for deer, but that wouldn’t happen right away. I can’t think of anything else I “need.”

As I have said before, the Woodsman will have a purpose other than making me smile because I have another gun. When you hunt, sometimes you wound animals without killing them, and you need a sidearm to finish them off. It can be hard to hit a small animal at close range when you use a scope. The bullet will be 1.5″ below the point of aim when it leaves the barrel, and five feet away, things won’t have changed much. A pistol can make things easier.

The gun looks pretty good in photos. The seller claims he can’t see any evidence that it has been shot. It has light holster wear. Seems like every Woodsman I look at has holster wear, and that means people liked these guns. They didn’t leave them at home in drawers.

I don’t really recall the condition of my grandfather’s gun. It was good, but I don’t recall how good.

If the seller will deal a little, I’ll make this happen, and then I’ll be one step closer to forgetting the many senseless problems I’ve had with my inheritance.

If you have kids and/or a spouse, you need a will, and you need to be very, very detailed about who gets what. Otherwise, your heirs may sacrifice each other in exchange for junk they could easily buy at yard sales.

If you’re an heir, you need to choose your battles wisely. Flawed relatives usually have more value than household goods.

Usually.

I am Triggered

I have sort of sad news RE the Savage Accutrigger project. I bought two light trigger springs for two rifles. One of the springs installed pretty easily and worked perfectly. The other one didn’t work.

The gun that works with the new spring is a Savage A22 in .22 Long Rifle. The new spring dropped right in without alteration. It was very soft, so I had to set the trigger pull somewhere above the lightest level. The trigger is great now.

The gun that doesn’t like the new springs is a Savage 93R17 in .17HMR.

This is a different sort of gun. The A22 is a semiauto, and the 93R17 is a bolt action. The Accutrigger assemblies are somewhat different.

When I got the 93R17 open, I saw that the spring was harder to get out. The spring in the A22 had a pin at one end that lodged in the trigger assembly housing. I lifted that pin out and screwed the spring out of the threaded hole at the other end. The 93R17 didn’t have a hole for a pin. The entire bottom end of the spring went over a pin in the trigger assembly. I guess that pin is about 3/16″ in diameter. There isn’t enough room to lift the spring off the pin and pull it out, so you have to remove the trigger and lower the trigger away from the pin to free the spring.

Another problem: the spring I ordered wouldn’t accept the pin on the trigger assembly. In order to create the pin at the end of the spring, the manufacturer bent the spring wire across the bottom of the spring and then bent a small bit outward at 90 degrees. The part that went across the bottom blocked the large pin on the assembly. I had to Dremel it off.

I got the new spring installed and put the trigger assembly together. It wouldn’t fire. The new spring was so soft, it was almost completely compressed by the pressure of the rear of the trigger.

Another customer claims the spring worked with a Savage .17 HMR. Maybe he has the semiauto version. Anyway, I got nowhere.

I decided to modify the original 93R17 spring. I was nervous about doing it, because I had read that Savage didn’t like mailing new springs to people. I pictured myself having to pay a gunsmith a hundred bucks to put a $5 spring in. I found out people had been able to get new springs from a company on the web (Sharp Shooters’ Supplies), so I decided to take a chance.

I wasn’t sure about what I was doing. Some guy on Youtube claims you shouldn’t shorten the spring because it causes other problems. There’s a video of a man taking a different route. He ground down the part of the trigger the spring sits on. He reduced it by about 0.070″. This allows the spring to relax a little.

I considered trying his solution, but I hate hacking up a gun like that.

I found a thread at Rimfire Central, the site that banned me for no discernible reason. A whole bunch of people said they had cut their old 93R17 springs with no ill effects. Supposedly, you can take an entire coil (360 degrees) off the spring. If you take off much more, you can end up with a gun that won’t fire.

The thread was very long, and a ton of people said the modification worked, so I decided to ignore the Youtube advice.

I took my old spring and mounted it in my new Panavise. That was exciting. By my standards. I took down the old Dremel I opened up and got working the other day (another triumph). I used a cutoff wheel to remove one coil from the spring, and I put it back in the gun.

It works fine. It feels just like it used to, except the pull is lighter.

Using the new workbench is a blast. I have air conditioning. I have a big screen TV. I am within easy reach of a couch and a recliner. It’s heaven.

The people on the thread suggested adding Loctite to increase friction in the threaded cavity the spring sits in, to keep the spring from turning and changing the trigger pull all by itself. I did that. I hope it will still turn when I want it to.

I contacted the outfit that sold me the spring that didn’t work, to find out if I had done something wrong. I guess they’ll email me.

Now I have two super-duper scoped rimfires. All I need is some decent weather to try them out.

I keep getting failures to fire with the A22 and Remington Golden Bullets. Not sure what that’s all about. I have a new batch, but I’m still shooting old ones. I haven’t sat down and had a real session with it since I modified the spring, but I did go out and shoot 5 rounds in the yard to make sure it worked. One of the rounds didn’t go off.

I’m not worried. If there’s a firing pin issue or something, it can be fixed. If I have to take the gun to an authorized Savage smith, I can always put the old spring back in so they don’t give me any noise about the warranty. The spring has nothing to do with the firing pin.

Maybe the A22 will work fine with my newest shipment of Golden Bullets. If so, everything is fine.

I like accurate rifles. You can’t learn to shoot with a rifle that shoots worse than you do. You end up chasing the rifle’s errors. As far as I know, I have three very accurate guns now. Not sure; I think the .204 Ruger is accurate, but I haven’t shot it enough to be certain.

I hope to get outside tomorrow and try the modified Savages out.