Journalists and Domestic Terrorists Jump the Gun Again

It’s funny how police shootings tend to look a lot different after a little time passes and the facts come out.

Kenosha police shot Jacob Blake 7 times in the back as he was reaching into the driver’s seat of a car. It’s on video, and the video most people have seen doesn’t look too good.

Problem: like the edited Rodney King video that led to days of rioting in Los Angeles, the Jacob Blake video is incomplete, and it makes him look considerably nicer than he is.

Now more facts are coming out. A witness says the cops tried to restrain Blake before he walked to the side of his car and tried to enter. They wrestled with him and punched him, but somehow he got loose. The police were overheard saying Blake had a knife.

There is a new video at TMZ, and it shows Blake emerging from a scuffle and walking to his driver’s door.

Things are getting more complicated, and Blake is looking worse.

If the police had a reasonable belief Blake was armed, or if there were kids in the car (as some accounts say), and they feared he would kidnap or harm them, or if they believed he was reaching for a weapon in the driver’s area of his car, then deadly force may have been justified. You can’t always wait to see if a violent idiot is reaching for a gun or his sunglasses.

If deadly force was justified, was the level of force the police used reasonable?

That may sound like a stupid question, because deadly is deadly. You could say that if it’s reasonable to shoot someone once, it must be reasonable to shoot him 7 times. That’s not necessarily true, though. You’re only allowed to continue shooting someone as long as you reasonably believe he’s not getting the message. If one shot changes his mind or incapacitates him, and you know it, you have to stop shooting. Of course, you can’t necessarily stop and check a suspect’s demeanor between shots, so in many cases, shooting until a suspect drops is the correct thing to do.

It looks like there are a lot of questions left to be answered.

I have very little sympathy for Blake. There was no need to batter innocent police officers who were trying to prevent his dysfunctional family from destroying itself. If I fought with several cops and then reached into my car, I would expect to be shot. He worked hard to make them shoot. Still, a cop has to have a sound reason for his actions. If the cop who shot Blake didn’t have good reason to fear a very bad outcome had he not fired, or if he kept firing when a reasonable cop would have stopped, he may have committed aggravated battery or attempted murder.

There are questions about the police and Jacob Blake, but I have no patience at all with the rioter terrorists. Their act is not about justice. It’s about racism, sadism, theft, arrogance, and ignorance.

If you’ve ever looted, set fire to a building or vehicle, or physically attacked another person for disagreeing with you, you’re not a protestor. You’re a terrorist and a common criminal. It’s that simple.

It’s strange that no one is complaining about the all-too-common practice of resisting the police. If you take the list of BLM martyrs and subtract the ones who fought the police, you would end up with a much shorter document. Eric Garner fought the police. George Floyd fought the police. Michael Brown fought the police. Trayvon Martin fought a neighborhood watch volunteer who worked with the police. Life is better when you don’t fight the police. If you think they’re wrong, get in the car and ride to the police station with them anyway. Then find yourself a camera-loving lawyer. Even if you’re completely innocent before the cops show up, if you fight them or run away in a car, you become a felon, and you may be setting yourself up for a justified shooting.

My sister was convicted of felony fleeing and eluding. The cops say she ran from a traffic stop and hit the cop who was standing by her car. She was originally charged with aggravated battery. If she had taken a traffic ticket, she would have had some problems. There were issues with her insurance and so on, and she might have been arrested. She would have gone to court and apologized, the judge would have let her go, and that would have been it. Instead, she lost her law license and spent a fair amount of time in jail, and she ended up with a conviction. You can’t be your own judge and jury. When the cops have a problem with you, the appropriate place to set things straight is a lawyer’s office or a courtroom.

I remember taking a clinical course in law school. A successful defense lawyer named Bob Amsel taught us on a few occasions. He told us the same thing I’m telling you. Say, “Yes, officer,” and “No, officer,” and do what they ask. You get your turn later, in court. You can say you don’t consent to this or that, but you should still cooperate.

People need to have reasonable expectations of the police. They are generally moderately bright people who are not highly educated. If you’re too smart, you may be rejected if you apply to to join a police force, because the work is boring for highly intelligent individuals. They’re generally average people doing a hard job, dealing with laws they don’t understand as well as attorneys and judges. They make mistakes. Also, some of them are malicious and dishonest. Some don’t handle provocation well. A lot of Americans are putting the police in very difficult situations, and many of us are doing everything we can to provoke them to cross the line. It’s amazing they do as good a job as they do.

News stories say Jacob Blake is paralyzed now. Was his minute of unnecessary, childish defiance worth it? Even if it turns out the police broke the law, Blake’s life is ruined.

Improving police oversight is important. Police overreaching is one of the main reasons the Bill of Rights was written. It’s an ancient problem, and peaceful–truly peaceful–demonstrations have their place. But if I were a black parent, I’d be telling my kids 1) do NOT break the law, and 2) do NOT resist the police, and activism would be a lot farther down on my list of priorities. In other words, I’d be telling them what my white parents told me. Good behavior and cooperating with the police would save more lives than a thousand demonstrations, and besides, we’re supposed to behave well and work with the police. It’s not groveling. It’s not giving in to oppression. It’s what civilized people do.

It would be nice if the press would tell us the whole truth once in a while, and it would also be nice if terrorists and legitimate activists waited to hear the facts and let the justice system do its work. It would also be nice if my cattle pooped rubies the size of pomegranates. Too bad.

The word says God will give the world over to the sword before the rapture. Sure looks like we’re seeing it now.

Biscuit Victory Marred by Chicken FAIL

Has the civil war started? The news says a man in Pennsylvania walked out of his house and fired shots at demonstrators, hitting one in the face and inflicting a non-life-threatening wound.

The coverage is predictable. The stories say little is known about the incident, yet some outlets are proclaiming the protestors “peaceful” nonetheless. “We don’t know what happened. We don’t know the facts. And the protestors were peaceful.” Looks like cognitive dissonance to me. Or course, I don’t know what happened, and I don’t know the facts, so I may be wrong.

America is doing exactly what countries are supposed to do when they abandon God. It’s sliding into chaos because we do what we think is right instead of what God tells us is right. We cut ourselves off from our father, so we are living the lives of fatherless punks. Fatherless punks don’t know how to behave, and they get no inheritance.

Oh, well. How about another topic? I choose biscuits.

I’ve learned a few things about flour over the last few weeks. First of all, you don’t need bread flour to make bread. Some kinds of bread need high-gluten flour, but others don’t. The type of bread that surprised me is the baguette. You would think a crusty, airy loaf of bread would have to be made with bread flour, but it’s not true. Baguettes should be made with flour that is lower in gluten. That’s not my opinion. It’s the opinion of people unlike me who make prizewinning baguettes.

Today I learned that biscuit flour is the wrong flour for biscuits.

Yesterday I decided to fry chicken. I cut up a bird and put it in the fridge in a mixture of orange juice, salt, garlic, and tarragon. This morning I fried it in peanut oil and lard. Before I did this, I went online and got expert advice. I did what they said to do, and the chicken was not very good.

I think the single most important thing to do when you fry chicken is to find a small bird. I couldn’t find one smaller than about 6 pounds. That’s way too big. By the time the inside is done, the outside is too brown.

My dad represented Holly Farms, the chicken company. They sold chickens to KFC. One of the managers told him KFC required very small birds. My dad thought the purpose was to cheat customers by selling small chickens by the piece. This was probably true, but they also cook up better.

I don’t know where I’m supposed to find small chickens. Maybe it’s not possible. People in this area are not overly sophisticated, and they seem to be inclined to eat things that come out of boxes and bags. Maybe there is no market for fryers here.

I guess I can kill squirrels and forget chickens. Squirrels are actually better.

I could not fry chicken without making biscuits. When I looked at my flour supply, I was dismayed to see that I was nearly out of biscuit flour. I decided to use bread flour. How bad could it be? I also decided to give up on putting butter in my dough. I usually mix butter and bacon grease, half and half, but butter ruins the texture.

I flopped the dough onto the counter and folded it 4 or 5 times with my hands to put layers into it. They say working biscuit dough too much makes biscuits tough. I have never had a tough biscuit in my life, so that information appears to be wrong. I cut the biscuits out, greased and salted the tops, and baked them at 450°. They were very good. The texture was perfect. I’m going to quit using biscuit flour. I think it’s a mistake.

Now it looks like I’m in a position where I need bread flour so I can make biscuits, and I need biscuit flour so I can make bread. Go figure.

I know the biscuits were good because I could not quit eating them. It’s easy to lie to yourself about things you cook, but the dishes you can push away are bad, and the ones you absolutely have to finish are good. You can count on that.

I still have like 4 pounds of very mediocre fried chicken. Maybe it will be better cold. I can pull it off the bone and make chicken salad. The birds will enjoy the chicken as it is. This morning they each got a small piece, along with a biscuit fragment and gravy.

That’s the news from Free Trumpistan. Enjoy your day.

Terrorists Respond Predictably

Our domestic terrorists have a new martyr whose fate is being used as a pretext to justify racist and classist mass crime.

Police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, were called to a house because of a domestic violence problem. While they were there, Jacob Blake had a disagreement with them. They tried to detain him. He refused to cooperate. He walked to an SUV with kids inside, opened the driver’s door, and reached in. A cop who was holding him by the back of his shirt shot him 7 times in the back. News reports say Blake was unarmed. As far as I know, Blake is still alive.

Kenosha has gone insane. The usual looting is taking place. There is a video of a group of rioters obstructing a police vehicle’s path and using a rifle or shotgun as leverage to get compliance. Journalist Andy Ngo says the group was armed with semiauto rifles.

You can find the Jacob Blake video on Youtube. When I first saw it, I thought the cop who shot Blake was guilty of attempted murder. Now I’m not so sure. I’m wondering what will come out in the investigation.

We don’t know what Blake said to the cops. He may have said he was going to his car to get something to use against them. He may have said he was going to run them down. He may have threatened to kidnap the children. I don’t know about Wisconsin, but in Florida, it’s legal to shoot someone who attempts to kidnap someone else.

Maybe the police had good reason to be afraid he would commit a very serious felony if he were not neutralized. On the other hand, maybe the cop who shot him is incompetent. It’s strange that a group of cops would allow a man with an unimpressive physique to stroll to a car instead of restraining him. Whether the shooting was legal or not, it certainly looks like a tremendous failure on the part of the police. Whatever Blake may have been planning, in a country where law enforcement officers routinely tackle and subdue suspects, it’s strange that the men who dealt with Blake skipped the usual methods and went straight to lethal force.

The facts and the law don’t matter to the left. It’s an opportunity to steal, injure, and burn, so our terrorists have made up their minds, and they’ve leapt into action. BLM and Antifa are lynch mobs. The distinguishing mark of a lynch mob is a willingness to punish without due process, proof of guilt, or legal authority. That’s what BLMtifa does.

I call them terrorists because that’s what they are. I don’t like seeing dishonest journalists use the term “protestor” to describe rioters, so I’ve been using the word “rioter,” but the other day I saw a video posted by a 16-year-old conservative girl, and she used the word “terrorist,” and I realized it was more accurate. A terrorist is a person who uses violence or threats of violence to impose his will on others, and that’s exactly what the rioters are doing. People are afraid to enter their cities. They’re afraid to speak. Many are afraid to leave their homes.

The only weak part of the equation is the part about imposing their will. In order to do that, you have to have a will. You have to have demands. Our terrorists haven’t formulated articulated demands. They’re just throwing tantrums and stealing things. Say what you will about the PLO and the IRA; at least they make lists and ask for things.

I’ll tell you my theory about the tide of violence in America. The cops are in the right nearly all the time, and they are slandered constantly. That’s fact; the theory part follows. I believe Satan finds himself suggestible cops from time to time and puts them up to mischief. Then he inflames the hearts and minds of antichristians, and we get riots and ridiculous responses from liberal journalists and politicians. We always hope the fire will die down, but Satan always seems to have another blue-clad log to throw on it.

Maybe God has given him permission to keep the fire stoked.

I think the Blake shooting will more than suffice to keep American terrorism going strong through the election and into the new year. I think Donald Trump will win, largely because of the fear the terrorists are instilling in voters, and his victory will be like dropping a MOAB into ten thousand tons of ammonium nitrate.

Biden didn’t get a convention bump at the polls. That’s unheard-of. Leftist journalists are claiming he did, but it’s a lie. He got a boost in his approval rating. Not the same thing. People are saying he blew it by picking Harris to run with him. She has said she intends to ban fracking, which is a big moneymaker in more than one battleground state. She’s also an unappealing person who lacks charisma. She has hard features, and she always seems angry. And then there’s the Willie Brown thing. Some women have no problem with other women who appear to have used their bodies to energize their careers, but many women do.

Biden is going to have to come out of the bunker eventually. He has to do three debates, and he has to start talking to the press. Even liberal journalists are criticizing him for hiding. The other day, a prominent journalist for a major outlet pointed out that he had only made 4 appearances in three months. Biden has dementia, so debates and interviews are major hazards to him. A majority of voters now think he won’t make it through 4 years, let alone 8. When he is forced to start answering questions without a teleprompter, their suspicions will be confirmed. It won’t matter to people who already expect Harris to take over, but many voters prefer a president who isn’t in serious danger of being forced into assisted living.

I think Biden will lose, and after that, civil war is a real possibility. I don’t know if states will turn against states, but government participation isn’t necessary in order for a civil war to start. You can have a grassroots civil war in which the combatants who start the conflict are factionalized civilians using guerrilla tactics.

Everyone seems to be underestimating the power of civilians. We outnumber the police and the military by a wide margin, we don’t have to play nice like they do, and we have a lot of weapons. Conservatives do, anyway.

It looks like the things Christians have been saying are true. American civilization is coming to an end, things are not going to get better, and God is about to rapture us because on average, human beings are now too boneheaded to be helped.

Can it really be happening? It’s fun to watch disaster movies. I never thought I would live one. What a thing it would be, to witness the end of the age and the start of the tribulation.

Here’s something no one seems to be talking about: rioting is fun.

It may make people angry to read that, but it’s true. Many Americans think their lives are pointless and boring. When you riot, you get to put on neat helmets and masks. You get to arm yourselves and form militias. You get to go out and rumble with people you hate. It’s entertaining. It makes you feel like your life matters. It makes you feel important. As long as you aren’t killed, seriously hurt, or imprisoned, it’s like an absorbing team sport.

The fact that rioting is satisfying makes it hard to discourage. Leftists aren’t rioting reluctantly; they’re seizing on an opportunity to do something they’ve always wanted to do.

They feel inferior to Sixties relics who rioted. For decades, they’ve been listening to disgraceful old dupes wax nostalgic about shutting down cities and being dispersed with water cannons. Now, at last, they have a chance to measure up. They’re looking forward to telling riot stories to their children. They’re proud of themselves. This is why they take selfies. Rioting is largely about drawing attention to yourself so other people will praise you.

Sadly, there are people on the right who feel the same way. The Proud Boys keep popping up at riots. They generally don’t start trouble, but let’s be honest; they hope it starts. They look forward to scuffling with terrorists.

Last night I watched a number of riot videos, and I have to say that it was hard to tell who was on which side. They all wear black. They have shields and sticks. I had to look for clues, like American flags and Fred Perry shirts. When you start to look like the people who are ruining your country, you need to step back and assess yourself.

What if you win, and you end up with a country full of people who are no better than the people you defeated?

Here’s what you should be doing right now: praying and repenting. You should be asking God to help you prepare. You should be asking him to use you to help others prepare. If you’re out in the street waving a mop handle, you are functioning on a very low level of awareness. We should be having huge online prayer meetings instead of confronting BLMtifa and hoping they throw the first punches.

I get angry when I watch videos of American terrorism, but God has shown me a good way to get over it. I ask him what I can do for the people I’ve watched. I pray for all of them, regardless of which side they’re on. I think this is a lot more helpful than buying laser safety goggles and cans of bear spray so I can pretend to be an urban superhero. It’s certainly helpful to me. It’s like cold water on my anger.

Paul said faith works through love. I don’t think prayers said in anger are all that strong.

It’s amazing to see the things I have been expecting come to pass. Today I heard a Youtube pundit talking about the need to get out of cities. How long have I been saying that? Minority-heavy cities are the most dangerous, but things are also going badly in white cities where leftist insanity rules. A lot of the most unhinged BLMers are white. Are there any large conservative cities? I don’t even know. I can’t think of one.

The other day, I was trying to channel God’s words, and I heard myself say evil times were coming but that they wouldn’t affect me. I hope that wasn’t my imagination. It has held true so far. I have heard myself say God would surround me like a shield.

The main reason I have doubts when things like that come out is that I can’t figure out why God would show so much favor to me. I have done very little for him, and I don’t seem to be able to change that. There are plenty of ugly areas inside me. It would seem to make more sense for him to shelter missionaries and soup kitchen volunteers.

Are we really getting out of this place, at last? Why are we so favored when prophets and apostles have been tormented and martyred, only to die on this rotten planet long before the rapture? I don’t make the rules, so I won’t speculate. I just hope it’s true, and I hope a lot of people who are currently against us will turn around and come with us.

Are These Kids or Oompa Loompas?

My friends Alonzo and Teri–newly-minted members of the landed gentry–just left with 4 of their 5 kids. About three weeks back, I helped move them into their first home, less than an hour away. They decided to drive up and see how I was doing.

Generally, when friends visit, I have to brace. In addition to cleaning up my house so I look much neater than I really am, I have to buy food. I usually have to cook. I have to do a lot of cleaning while my friends are here. This time, it was very different. My friends brought me food, and then their kids cleaned my house.

They brought fried chicken. I hope it’s okay for a white person to have fried chicken with black people. Maybe no one will find out.

The weather was somewhat cloudy, so the kids were not allowed in the pool. There was some concern about lightning. We had lunch by the pool, and afterward, Alonzo and Teri and I sat outside and talked. My goddaughter Gabriella asked for a broom. The next time I went in the house, it looked wonderful. I had it fairly clean before they arrived, but they took it to a new level.

It should be unbearable outside, but while we talked, the sun was buffered by clouds, and it was so cool, I didn’t even sweat. It should have been about 95 with harsh sun and high humidity. It seems like we always get unseasonal nice weather when we’re together. Alonzo said he had noticed a pattern. We get together when it’s cloudy, and then the sun comes out. It happened when I went to help them move. It’s hard to explain how odd it is, having pleasant weather in Central and Northern Florida at this time of year. It isn’t supposed to happen. Warm days in winter are common everywhere. Cool days in summer in Florida are freak events.

It’s relaxing, being in a house someone else cleaned up. I haven’t had this experience since the last time they visited. Before that, you have to go back to the last time I rented a hotel room.

I don’t know where they got these kids. They don’t whine. They don’t break things. They don’t fight. They don’t talk back. They’re very quiet. They clean people’s houses for fun. I told their parents they could leave them here.

I always say I was a good kid when I was young, but I wasn’t. I was awful. I just thought I was a good kid because I was comparing myself to liars, thieves, tantrum-throwers, crybabies, dopers, and bullies. I didn’t know any families that had good kids, so I didn’t know any good kids I could compare myself to.

I did just about nothing to get ready for the visit, apart from cleaning. I had to fell and cut up a big oak this week, and I didn’t really feel like shopping and cooking after working hard outdoors.

We had a great conversation. They talked about our friendship, which is now about 12 years old. They said it was strange.

They lived in a ghetto suburb in Miami, and they seemed about like everyone else there. Then God started changing them. They moved to better and better areas as he did his work. They moved to Orlando, and now they’re in a very rural town called Tavares, in a 5-bedroom house they own. They’re surrounded by conservatives, and they’re happy.

They talked about the things we’ve gone through together. They said it was strange to be so close to an old white man and so distant from old friends and their own relatives.

It is strange, but it’s what happens when people base their relationships on God’s word instead of blood and culture. God’s word says he divides families, but it also says he puts the solitary in families. He divides us from blood relations and friends who belong to Satan, and he puts us together with people who may look different yet listen to the same Holy Spirit.

All over the US, people are fighting to protect their segments of society. People of different ethnicities are clashing with each other. People with different religious beliefs fight. Men are against women, and women are against men. It’s because churches generally reject the Holy Spirit. He is the only unifier. Where he is allowed to work, Jews and former Muslim terrorists worship together. People intermarry. National identities become less important. Where he is silenced, people behave like team athletes, fighting anyone who wears the wrong shirt. If you’re on God’s team, you don’t define yourself by the skin you wear as a shirt in this world.

Is life supposed to be like this for everyone? Can life really be this good on this cursed earth? Can every person who is Holy-Spirit-led have nice kids, a supportive spouse, friends with whom they have no friction, financial success, and a peaceful home he owns?

Maybe life really can be this good, and we don’t know it because almost none of us try doing things God’s way.

I have often told my Christian friends I didn’t want anything to do with my own sister. Once a hard core addict reaches a certain age, behaves badly enough, and proves he or she will never change, you cut the cord. It doesn’t just happen with addicts. There are many people who are so unpleasant and stubborn they have to be cut off. Today Teri said she used to wonder why I was so mean about my sister. Now she understands. Her mother has a very dark heart. She is angry. She is controlling. She is very unpleasant to be around. Alonzo and Teri had to take her in for a while, and she made their home a miserable place. They finally had to make other arrangements for her, and she calls and threatens them over it. Teri says peace left their house while her mother was there, and it returned when she left. She understands that there are some people you have to remove from your life if you want to be blessed.

It’s not just individuals. There are cities and neighborhoods people have to cut off. Nations. Entire cultures. You can only do so much to turn others around, and then you have to move on. This is what the rapture is all about. We’re not going to succeed in changing the world, and the time to break with it is approaching.

It’s hard for me to believe the relationship I have with this family. I’m so used to worldly people who can’t listen and never change. It’s strange to be accepted and agreed with. I can’t imagine what it will be like to be in heaven, where there won’t be a single person who doesn’t appreciate me, agree with me, and get along with me. Imagine a world in which you never have to walk on eggs around anyone or debate anyone.

It’s hard to believe the rapture is coming, but then it must have been hard to believe when a virgin gave birth to a man and that man was killed, resurrected, and assumed into heaven. It must have been hard to believe when the ground swallowed Korach, when God parted the Red Sea and made the sand dry so the Hebrews could walk through, and when the fire of God came down for Elijah and ate two steers and the water in the trench that surrounded them. All these things did happen, and the rapture will happen, too.

It’s going to be wonderful. I feel like I’m getting a taste of it. The peace and victory will be overwhelming. The absence of obnoxious people and spirits will be more beautiful than anything I’ve experienced in this life.

Imagine a world with no election signs and no arguments. Imagine a world with no riots. Imagine a world where there are no preppers because there is never anything bad to prepare for. No illness. No crime. No failure. No lack. No taxes. No pain. No prisons.

Actually, there will be a prison. It’s called hell. The earth is a sorting facility.

Today while we talked about the peace and prosperity we’ve experienced during the coronavirus months, I said it was as though God had separated us into a corral to wait in peace for the rapture. It’s like he put us aside so we can be cleaned up and readied.

I would love to be gone before the election. Failing that, I would like to be gone before the inauguration.

I think Trump will win, and I think there will be a Satanic leftist tantrum that will fill city streets with furious left-wing racists. I think the current riots will seem feeble compared to what’s in store. I suspect that rioting will also ramp up before the election, driving fair-weather hobby socialists to drop the pose and vote for Trump in order to restore order. I wouldn’t be surprised. I think many, many people will vote for Trump and claim they voted for Biden.

The voting booth is like the confessional booth. Or Vegas.

I can’t help wondering what Earth would have been like had people listened to the Holy Spirit. I guess we’ll find out during the Messianic Age.

If You’re Going to Collect, Collect Something Useful

I have been trying to put my ammunition in order.

For a long time, I’ve bought ammunition in bulk. It’s generally not easy to get good deals unless you buy over the Internet, and you have to buy a lot in order to avoid killing the bargains with shipping costs. It’s not unusual to pay the same price for shipping 50 or 3,000 rounds. Say you pay $10, which is not unusual. That adds 20 cents to the cost of each round in a 50-round box, but it only adds a third of a cent to the cost of each round in a three-thousand-round crate. You have to be pretty slow to miss the obvious.

My reasoning goes like this: if I know I will continue shooting a certain caliber until I croak, I might as well buy enough ammunition to get me as far into the future as possible. It won’t rot. It doesn’t have to be refrigerated. You can buy it today and use it 50 years from now, if you’re still here. If you wait, you’ll end up paying much more in the long run. Also, the Democrats are gradually destroying our rights, so who knows if you’ll be able to buy anything a couple of years from now?

If you buy now, you’ll be able to shoot until they come to your house to take your ammunition, and you will also have an investment which is guaranteed to increase in value.

I wish I had the guts to spend $50,000 on guns and ammunition. I know I would never regret it. I would have plenty to shoot, I’d be in a position to make money if I changed my mind, and I could also leave it to people I cared about if I died.

As it is, I’ve done pretty well. There are a few things I still want to buy, but I feel pretty comfortable about the next two years. If the rapture doesn’t come, I should be safe from deprivation for quite some time. I used to think I was rich if I had two boxes of ammo. A person who still thinks like that would be shocked to see what I have right now.

When I think about my policy, I think about all the stupid news stories I’ve read. “Police raid gunman’s house; find home arsenal.” I’ve written about this before.

Gun people get upset when they see the word “arsenal.” I believe this is because an arsenal is understood to be a facility maintained by a government or institution, not an individual. I kind of like “weapons cache.”

If I were ever suspected of committing a violent crime, and the police got a warrant to search my house, I know exactly what would happen. I’d become the latest “home arsenal” guy. I own more than a thousand rounds of ammunition, and that sounds like an insane amount to a person who knows nothing about guns and a lot about things like whaling moratoriums and plastic straw bans.

I don’t know why it’s so important for cops and journalists to count people’s guns and cartridges after a shooting. Even mass murderers generally don’t use more than 50 rounds to commit a crime. I don’t know if anyone has ever used 1,000. If I ran a pedestrian down intentionally, would they come to my house and count my vehicles? The number of guns you have isn’t at all relevant to the danger you pose to society. My grandfather probably owned 30 guns, and he was a circuit judge.

I took a two-day shooting course recently, and I was advised to bring 300 rounds of ammo. That’s almost a third of a home arsenal! I had it in my car for 300 miles! I shared the road with cars kids were riding in! Possibly disabled kids! Disabled transgender kids, even! When will the insanity stop?

“Trump-Loving Nutjob Roams Countryside With Military-Grade Rifle and Mini-Arsenal”! That’s how they would put it in a Huffto headline. It wasn’t a lot of ammunition for two days of classes, but you could never explain that to the guy with the flannel pajamas and hot cocoa in the famous Obamacare ad, any more than you could make him understand that testosterone serves a purpose.

It’s not hard at all to shoot 200 rounds in one day of serious shooting, and if you’re just banging away for fun, you can do it in two hours. A “home arsenal” will only get you through 5 to 10 shooting sessions. It’s not a lot of ammunition. It only seems like a lot to a person who thinks roach spray is murder.

As I have said before, my plan is to accumulate an ammo savings account. I’ll store up useful calibers and set the ammo aside. Then when I want to shoot, I’ll buy more and try to leave the stored stuff alone. I’m not preparing for the day when I can rent a hotel room overlooking the site of an Antifa rally so I can cleanse America of annoying vandals.

I wonder how many rounds of ammunition there are within a one-mile radius of me, outside of my property. I’ll bet the number is over 100,000. Buying in bulk is not an original idea that started with me. I’m a late adopter. I think my intentions may be nicer than many other people who stock up. Civil war is on many people’s minds. Whatever the truth is, I’m part of a huge demographic. We’ve been having ammo shortages off and on since Obama’s regressive reign, and many, many people have been buying in bulk. Bulk-buyers actually caused the shortages. They moved the supply from store and warehouse shelves to their homes. There must be an ungodly amount of ammo in private hands right now.

Attention, soy commandos who may be reading this blog. I didn’t buy it for you. I just enjoy shooting. Please do not bother me. And if you decide to bother my neighbors, have the courtesy to bring your own body bags. It’s a really bad idea. There is no shame in negotiation or in abiding by the results of lawful elections. It’s better than feeding the turkey buzzards.

Just in case I’m still on earth when the tofu brigade starts visiting rural properties, I’m thinking of getting some laser safety goggles. I keep researching the usefulness of lasers as weapons, and the news is very bad. For $200, you can get a laser which, in terms of its ability to cause suffering, makes an AR-15 look like a nerf gun. You can’t burn a hole through a Proud Boy with a handheld laser, but you can blind a whole bunch of Proud Boys in a few minutes. You don’t need training or ammunition, and you won’t have to wear earplugs. Just point and hit the switch. We may be heading into an era when every intelligent American takes laser safety goggles with him every time he goes outdoors.

I’m starting to think lasers are far superior to firearms as weapons. Lasers are very small and light. They run a long time on one battery. They render people helpless instantaneously, and their effects can be permanent if you use them correctly. Bullet wounds may seem impressive, but most are nonfatal and fail to incapacitate. When you’re blind, you’re all done, even if you’re still armed to the teeth. A 250-pound Navy SEAL who can’t see is a plaything for a scrawny vegetarian who can.

If lasers become really popular as weapons, things will get really ugly in America. I would hate to see it. I think it would be smart to buy some goggles. You never know when you might run across the wrong people in 2020 America. You could turn down the wrong street and find yourself in a bad situation.

Goggles may not be enough to keep you safe. I’ve read they reduce the effective power of a laser by something like 99%. Rioters commonly use 5mW lasers. It’s just as easy to get 500mW lasers, so it looks like goggles only protect you from people who use cheap weapons.

Pilots already wear laser safety goggles. Maybe they’re the canaries in the coal mine. Vicious people shine lasers at airplane windows all the time.

It’s strange that conservatives are lagging in their appreciation of lasers. I guess lasers don’t seem manly. Blinding a rioter with something that looks like a flashlight probably seems unsportsmanlike to many conservatives, like pulling hair and kicking other men in the groin. Lasers work, though. That’s why armies aren’t allowed to use them against human beings. If they didn’t work, they wouldn’t be banned.

Should I get a strong laser to protect myself? Great question. It’s the kind of question that makes me wish Jesus would come for us tonight.

I guess I should get some real shelves and get my ammo sorted and off the floor. I should probably quit thinking about disgusting new methods of guerrilla warfare. Maybe God will spare me involvement when things truly go haywire.

Trump Admits He’s not God

I suppose I should blog about God a little bit.

First of all, I wonder how many people have seen Trump’s recent remarks about God. He was in Minnesota, giving an unscheduled talk beside Air Force One. He was talking about the economy, and he said this:

“You know what that is? That’s right. That’s God testing me,” Trump explained. “He said, You know, you did it once. And I said, ‘Did I do a great job, God? I’m the only one who could do it.’ He said, ‘That you shouldn’t say. Now we’re going to have you do it again.’ I said, ‘OK. I agree. You got me.’ But I did it once. And now I’m doing it again. And you see the kind of numbers that we’re putting up. They’re unbelievable. Best job numbers ever. Three months, more jobs in the last three months than ever before.”

I think this is great. I believe he talks to God. I don’t think he’s lying. There is too much evidence out there to deny that he has turned to God in recent years, whether or not you think he’s a good example to other Christians. I am pleasantly surprised to see him show some humility. I didn’t think he knew pride was bad. If he believes God told him he shouldn’t take credit for his success, it’s an indication that he’s growing.

We all know his faults. There is no point in denying them. But Christianity is a process, not a state. We accept Christians who do yoga and have illegitimate babies in strings, but we get upset because Trump owns casinos and has a history of adultery. Who knows what he’ll be like 5 years from now? If your direction is right, your location can’t stop you.

Here’s another thing: I got a nice revelation yesterday, and it looks like it’s surprisingly powerful. It’s very simple. When I interact with another person, or I think of another person, or I see another person, I think, “What can I do for him?” Generally, there is nothing I can do by earthly means, but I can still pray, so that’s what I do.

It sounds like a big nothing, but it isn’t. When you ask yourself what you can do for someone else, it changes your inclinations. Maybe the person is someone who makes you angry. Maybe it’s someone you like. Maybe it’s someone you feel a counterproduction sexual attraction to. When you ask yourself what you can do for that person, your attention shifts away from selfish ideation, and you get a chance to pour God’s benevolence into the world through prayer or other means.

I believe in charity. It’s extremely important. It’s important to do things for people. I have felt this way for many years. Having these beliefs isn’t as powerful as asking yourself what you can do for people. I can’t explain it, but I suggest you try it. I’m making it a habit.

Praying for people isn’t a negligible service. Prayer is more powerful than anything else you can do. You shouldn’t feel you’ve done nothing because all you did was pray. That’s crazy.

The Bible says faith works through love. My sense is that love behaves like a supernatural lubricant that allows faith to flow. I suppose this is because we should be exercising our faith to get things we pray for out of love, not selfishness or duty.

We always wonder why our prayers aren’t answered. Maybe a lot of answers are stuck in the pipe because there is no lubricant. I’ve seen healers tell people they can’t be healed because they don’t forgive. It’s consistent with the notion of love as a supernatural grease.

This morning, I thought about a Bible passage:

There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.

The liberal soul shall be made fat: and he that watereth shall be watered also himself.

The second verse says the generous “soul” shall be made fat. To me, that suggests it’s important to be generous in your mind and heart, not just in your actions. If you make a practice of asking yourself what you can do for other people, you make your soul serve God.

The word translated “made fat” can mean “oiled.”

It all makes sense. The Bible says we are servants. What do servants say when they meet people? What does every clerk in every store say when you walk up? “How can I help you?” They know they’re servants, and Christians generally don’t have the same mindset. We’re always running around squawking, “God heal me! God protect me! God give me stuff so I won’t be poor!” We’re too busy on defense to think about offense. Conquest is all about offense. You can’t conquer by sitting behind a wall, hoping your enemies go away.

Anyway, try it. See what you think. It costs you nothing, and it’s as easy as a thing can be.

Final thing: something wild is going on with my shoulder. My gallbladder is not exemplary, although it’s not bad enough to cause attacks or require surgery. The main problem it causes me is shoulder pain. For some reason, gallbladder issues can generate referred pain in your shoulder, neck, or back.

For quite a while, I’ve had a problem putting my right arm behind my back. I didn’t go to a doctor. I try to get God’s healing and correction when I have a problem, and doctors are useless when it comes to gallbladder disorders. Generally, their kneejerk response is to remove your gallbladder, leaving you unable to digest fat, with a high probability of continued pain from stones. They don’t even try to fix gallbladders.

I didn’t think there was anything wrong with the shoulder itself.

The other day, I moved my arm around to loosen it up, and I heard crackling sounds. I wondered what was up. Maybe my gallbladder wasn’t the problem. Maybe the cartilage in my shoulder had disintegrated. I wondered whether I would have to give up and go to a witch doctor (my term for MD’s). I moved my shoulder vigorously, trying to reproduce the sound. The more I moved it, the less noise I heard. When I stopped, my shoulder felt better and had more mobility.

For the last few days, I’ve been doing this from time to time. It’s better than going to a witch doctor and letting him cut up and damage something God might be planning to heal.

This morning, I reached behind myself for some reason. I can’t remember what it was. Maybe I was scratching. Anyway, I realized my arm was way back there, and I wasn’t feeling pain. I did it without thinking. So now I can reach maybe a foot farther back before I feel discomfort. The change coincides with the revelation about doing things for people.

Thought I should put it out there. I don’t know what will happen next, but I’m thrilled to be feeling better. I went to a Last Reformation event in 2019 and asked for prayer for my shoulder, and I didn’t get results. Maybe God was telling me I needed to think about other people differently.

Yesterday I bucked and moved a tree by myself. I think I took 5 tractor loads to the burn pile, and a lot of the wood had to be lifted onto the tractor by yours truly. I’m out of shape. I don’t exercise. I’m old. I feel great today. I’m not sore or stiff. That’s a blessing. I’m thinking of cutting the rest of the tree down today.

I cut the tree in the middle of the day in August, in Florida. It was not raining. The temperature should have been 98 degrees, and I should have gotten a sunburn. My clothes should have been drenched with sweat. The sun was very gentle. I don’t think we ever broke 90. I didn’t sweat much at all. No problems.

I think I’m doing well for my age. I may look like Wilford Brimley’s dad, but I have a lot of energy, and everything works pretty well. I’ve seen other people my age, or younger, whose condition scared me. I keep hoping I can improve my body’s state by finding out what God is trying to get me to confess and repent of.

People get mad when you say their physical problems come from sin and ignorance. Where else would they come from? Are diseases rewards for righteousness? If the suggestion that your sins or your ignorance are making you sick makes you angry, you have exactly the kind of problem that perpetuates curses. You need to grow up and stop playing the victim.

It may be time to fire up the pole saw. Can’t wait to get the rest of that tree out of my life.

Tree? What Tree?

It’s amazing how many things you can do when the alternative is shoveling out a big wad of cash.

The people who built my house left a large mangy oak in the driveway circle out front. It was originally a double-trunked tree, but by the time I got here, one trunk was gone, and the other leaned away from the house at a 20-degree angle. This remaining trunk had a fork about 30 feet up. A few weeks back, I felt the house shake, and I went out and saw that one fork was lying in the driveway.

I was glad to see it, because I had been wanting to cut the tree, and cutting a leaning tree with a big fork is not easy to do safely.

Yesterday, I went outside and saw that the other fork had snapped off. Great news, right? Not really. It had fallen into another tree. The broken tree was bent at a 90-degree angle, and the upper fork was resting in the top of the second tree. The trees were on different sides of the driveway, so the upper fork was set to land in the driveway as soon as the joint gave out.

Trees and tree parts that hang over areas where people are likely to be found are called “widowmakers” for obvious reasons. Tree surgeous hate them. A widowmaker can fall with tremendous energy, very quickly, without making much of a sound.

I stared and stared at the tree, trying to figure out what to do. I could not cut the base of the broken tree, because that would release the widowmaker, and there was no way to tell what would happen. Also, the part of the tree that was still standing was rotten and might split, creating what’s known as a “barber chair.” A barber-chaired trunk can spring up in one direction and come down in another very quickly, and what happens to you if you’re under it is like what happens when you step on a roach.

I called a local service with great reviews. I didn’t call my usual service because they had given me a $1000 estimate to put the entire tree on the ground. I thought that was insane for 20 minutes’ work. The new outfit came out, left, and sent me an estimate: $1300. For that, they would drop the widowmaker, get rid of a nasty smaller tree nearby, and haul the debris, which I had told them I would do myself.

They also said they might not be able to do the work for two weeks. During that time, I would have to worry about UPS and Fedex drivers who might drive around my pickup, which I had parked in the driveway to keep traffic out.

Suddenly, I had a lot more enthusiasm for cutting the tree myself.

I went to Tractor Supply and bought a 30-foot tow strap, 100 feet of thin nylon cord, and one of those nylon straps you use to buckle cargo down.

I came back to the house, tied a weight to the end of a fishing line, and made a cast. On the first try, the weight went over the widowmaker and landed on the driveway. I tied the thin nylon rope to the fishing line and pulled on it, and that gave me a widowmaker with nylon rope draped over it. I joined the new strap to my old one, end-to-end, giving me a 60-foot strap. I used the nylon line to hoist the straps over the log. Then I ran a 3/8″ chain through the free ends of the straps. I tied a rope to my tractor and connected the chain to the rope.

After a few pulls, the widowmaker came down. Wonderful. I was 40 feet away, in no danger at all. An hour or so later, the widowmaker was out in the pasture, and the cows were eating its leaves. They’re so weird. They think my tractor is the ice cream truck.

I saved myself $1230, and I came out of it with some rope, a tow strap, and a cargo strap. Instead of nothing.

I still have to cut the rest of the broken tree down. I’ll put the cargo strap around it to prevent it from barber-chairing, and I’ll drop it in the driveway. Two to three hours of easy work. The difficult job will be removing the stump.

I would have been happy to give the tree people $500 or even $600, but $1300 seemed like robbery to me. They would have been here about an hour, and they wouldn’t have saved me much work. Maybe I’m cheap. I thought the estimate was way out of line. Even if they had left the tree on the ground, they would have expected $1100, and I would have provided 90% of the labor.

If an old man like me can do a job in an hour without breaking much of a sweat, you probably shouldn’t try to charge $1300. I think they’re overcharging right now because it’s hurricane season. They said people were bugging them to cut trees because of that.

I’m so glad that tree is going away. It was a thorn in my side. I told the tree people they could give me an estimate for grinding the stump, but I have a feeling they’ll be too high. I can get rid of it myself with a chainsaw and a shovel, so I am not open to high three-figure estimates. Time to look for a second peach tree.

It was beautiful, watching that weight sail over the widowmaker in just the right place.

Of course, I prayed about everything in advance.

Now all I have to worry about is a minor roof issue. Wonder what they’ll try to charge me for that.

Protect Yourself From my Blog’s Radiation

If you are lucky enough to see this post, you may not know my website was blacklisted recently. Users, including me, have been getting a terse “IP BLACKLISTED” message on their way in. It has been an on-and-off thing.

My blog is not my life. I don’t make money from it, and no one depends on it for anything important. I started getting the blacklisting message a few days back, but I didn’t try to do anything about it until today. I contacted my host, and they said a perma-something-or-other code in my site’s software was incorrect. They say they’ve fixed it and that the site should work now.

While I was Googling, trying to figure out whether a site could be blacklisted by an ISP, I read a lot about conservatives who have been banned from social media. It’s such a trend, President Trump is trying to get the giants (great, appropriate Biblical term) held accountable for editing their sites, just as I could be held accountable for editing the posts I write. If a platform merely publishes content provided by others, it can’t get in much trouble, but if it starts banning some content and keeping the rest, based on caprice, it ceases being a mere publisher and moves into the realm of content creation.

The tech who fixed my site for me didn’t explain why my site’s code was messed up. Can a thing like that happen randomly? We know it can happen when someone tampers with it deliberately, because the tech was able to tamper with it in order to get the site working again. If it can be repaired by a well-meaning tech, it can be vandalized by an angry, biased tech with a lot of body modifications and gender questions.

I don’t know what happened, any more than I know why the Department of Defense banned this blog from its computers as a hate site. In our new virtual world, accountability is nearly nonexistent. I’ve written about this before. In my state, they block people from becoming massage therapists if they have old arrests on their records, but Satan himself can open and run a hosting company. If an angry tech kid decides to block your site, rummage through your emails, or steal your files, you will never know who did it or why, and you will not be able to do anything about it.

One of the things the founders of this nation hated was prosecution without the right to confront accusers. The right to confront accusers is so important, it’s in the Constitution, and we have used it to put terrified children in courtrooms with the men who raped them. It’s not a trivial or disposable right. The Constitution also recognizes the right to due process prior to deprivation of property. In the online world, it’s different. People will ban or shadow-ban you behind your back, and you may never know who did it or why. You may lose a blog or Twitter audience worth a lot of money to you. A social media audience may be worth millions.

It’s no different from losing a customer list, which is legally recognized as a type of property. In the realm of honorable commerce, customer lists are bought and sold. Their value is protected. It ain’t necessarily so on the Internet. You can lose your list instantly and irretrievably, with no compensation or explanation, based on the whims of hipsters who are still mired in their acne-prone years.

Luckily for me, my readers are worth nothing at all to me.

Don’t take it the wrong way.

I don’t know if I was blocked deliberately or not, but I know I would be safer if I ran a site full of sadistic porn. Tech people lean way left, and leftists adore porn. They think it’s the reason the First Amendment was written. It’s practically sacred to them. Promoting Christianity and criticizing sin are not forms of speech they want to protect. People like me are tolerated, at best.

Speaking of toleration, it’s getting much harder to coexist with leftists. The things they’re doing are astounding. I’ll give you an example, which you may know about already. Leftist rioters use laser pointers to blind law enforcement officers and people who disagree with them.

You can go to Amazon or Ebay right now and buy a laser strong enough to blind people. They’re cheap. Under a hundred dollars. Then you can take it to a rally and aim it at the eyes of a person wearing a Fred Perry shirt. In a fraction of a second, you can injure him badly enough to take him out of the fray, and if you do a good job, you can blind him permanently. In the name of love and inclusion.

It’s not a rare thing. Rioters are lighting up the night. In Portland, they’re using shields with holes for laser pointers. Three federal officers have been injured.

Leftists are not calling for laser control, and that’s an astounding bit of hypocrisy. Lasers do harm comparable to the harm done by firearms. It’s true that it’s hard to kill someone with a laser, but most gunshot injuries aren’t fatal, either. Blinding someone is a big deal. If a person aimed a laser at my face, I would be legally entitled to shoot him. That’s how serious it is. But you can buy lasers all day over the web. You can have a thousand shipped to your house next week, even in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, or Hawaii. No background check. No licensing.

A laser is a great weapon. You can hurt a thousand people on one battery charge, and then you can switch batteries, which weigh a couple of ounces each. Try that with a gun. You can hit people accurately with no training. You don’t have to worry about recoil. Your beam can’t be traced by ballisticians after the fact. You won’t get gunshot residue on your hands or clothing. Lasers are silent. They don’t give off smoke, either. Used skillfully, they incapacitate instantaneously and sometimes permanently.

It makes me wonder why I carry a heavy pistol which is hard to use and legally barred from many locations. My state has very harsh penalties for people who exhibit their guns in order to avoid violence, but you can hold a laser in your hand all day get away with it.

Maybe I should invest in a powerful Ebay laser and blind anyone who attacks me.

Anyway, the sadism of angry leftists, which seems to know no limits, makes me wonder if America is headed toward a Wild West future in which the gunslingers carry lasers and a third of the population is blind.

It’s a real equalizer for rioters and looters. Leftists are generally hopeless when it comes to guns, but lasers can level the playing field very quickly. This is why the UN has banned their use against soldiers. Leftists are using a tool that falls into the same category as mustard gas.

If you’re interested, you can buy glasses that protect you from lasers. Amazon is full of them. If you think you may have to defend your property, you might want to buy pairs for yourself and your loved ones. You might want to buy lasers, too.

I cite the laser phenomenon as an example of the way the world is becoming an unbearable place to live. Life is moving in a very unpleasant direction, very quickly. How bad will things have to get before God removes his children because he’s unwilling to let us remain in a world that resembles hell?

He pulled Enoch out. He pulled Noah out. He pulled Lot out. He pulled the Jews out of Egypt. He pulled Elijah and Jesus out. Eventually, he withdraws his children from torment. It’s a repetitive pattern, and the rapture is just another withdrawal in a long sequence of withdrawals.

I wish there were a door in this room I could walk through right now, to take my place at the wedding of Christ. At the same time, I wish I could do something to help people to be saved.

Killing Christian access to the web, along with depriving us of the right to buy and sell, will surely advance the rapture, if it hasn’t taken place by the time these things happen. God has to have a return on his investment, and he’s not going to leave his most precious capital here forever after it ceases to produce an acceptable profit.

I won’t worry about being lasered. The word says I will see the reward of the wicked with my eyes, plural. Not in my imagination. With my eyes.

We should have known the end was near when liberals started throwing feces.

Taylor and Nova Ride in on a Horse

Remember watching the World Trade Center fall? First, one plane struck. TV heads marveled and speculated, and most of us thought the attack was over and that we were already in the response phase. Then the other plane struck. Then journalists, who are generally neither bright nor knowledgeable about practical matters, tried to guess what would happen next. They wondered aloud about the future of the buildings. How bad was the damage? Would they be repaired?

Of course, every witness who had ever held a tool in his hand knew the buildings were coming down. It was obvious. But when the first tower collapsed, journalists were shocked. It also shocked some responders who had made the remarkable mistake of setting up near the bases of the towers.

Watching what’s happening to America is a lot like watching coverage of 9/11. Things we thought would last forever are being dismantled like props being torn down by invisible stagehands.

It turns out the press is ignoring a lot of what’s happening. In particular, they’re ignoring the transformation of liberal-dominated cities.

A man named James Altucher wrote a blog post about New York, and people all over the net are talking about it. He’s a New York hedge fund manager and entrepreneur. He has mentioned some things the press has surely witnessed yet chosen not to discuss. His blog post is titled, “NYC is Dead Forever…Here’s Why.”

I can give you the basic gist. New York is turning into a ghost town because coronavirus has shown people something that should have been obvious several years ago: we no longer need office buildings to do many of our jobs. People are using a service called Zoom to have virtual meetings, and presumably they also use email, texts, and calls. They’re realizing they are not merely nearly as productive, but more productive, working at home.

That’s a very big deal. Office buildings and commuting are extremely expensive. City rents are obscenely high. Even if human beings resist giving up their comfort of their old ways, and even if stodgy managers push back against telecommuting, accountants will see to it that businesses do whatever makes sense economically. If buildings are unnecessary, many people who used to work in big cities will never return.

To give you an idea of the magnitude of the problem, I’ll share this quotation: “The Time-Life Building can handle 8,000 workers. Now it maybe has 500 workers back.” He uses it as an example when he says there are buildings that are 90% empty.

You have to think about the ramifications.

When you own a big building like that, you make income from it, so you pay taxes. You also pay huge sums of money for maintenance and repairs. You may make mortgage payments to a bank. A lot of money goes in, and a lot goes out. If your occupancy rate drops by 90%, what happens? You end up in a situation where you can’t pay your taxes or your lender. You can’t pay to keep your property up. You have to slash rents in order to maximize your income. You end up with substandard tenants who can’t begin to keep you afloat. Then you abandon your property, and your corporation declares bankruptcy. If Altucher is right when he predicts people will not return to New York, we could be looking at a future in which New York looks just like Detroit.

Detroit is an amazing place. It’s strange that Americans pay so little attention to it. I suppose the liberal press suppresses information about Detroit because it’s a beautiful example of a city utterly destroyed by leftism. If conservatives had ruined it, we would hear about it every day.

As everyone knows, Detroit used to be a prosperous city. Wealthy people and companies built beautiful structures. Now many of the places look like sets from post-apocalyptic movies. That’s not hyperbole. It’s exactly what they look like. These properties can’t be given away. I’ll root around and find videos for you.

It’s not just an inner-city thing. In 2018, the median price of a Detroit house was $35,000, and that represents a huge increase from a few years earlier. I can buy a house in Detroit for less than it would cost me to renovate my kitchen in Florida, and the odds are high that I would lose money, because Detroit property values are probably benefiting from temporary optimism related to a dubious renewal campaign.

I’m not sure, but it looks like suburbs depend on cities to a large extent. If a city dries up, presumably many people, who only live in its suburbs so they can commute, will leave.

Ten years ago, people had to live in New York in order to keep corporations running. Now we are getting close to a model in which a big percentage of people can literally live in Egypt, work in New York, and never, ever have to meet their coworkers.

There are things people like about commuting. It gets you out of the house. You can socialize. You can have lunch at restaurants. You can shop after work. On the other hand, people really, really like working from their couches while wearing stained sweatpants. You don’t have to dress up. You don’t have to be around annoying coworkers and bosses. You may be able to set your own hours. You can forget about trains and traffic. You may save enough money in one year to go to Europe twice. Not that you can go to Europe in 2020, but still. You can buy nicer sweatpants and a bigger SUV.

If Altucher is right, and he surely is, then Manhattan residents should get used to blank storefronts, shuttered restaurants, and a theater scene that looks more like Knoxville than Broadway.

What will happen to the hordes of perennial government sucklings? Many, many New Yorkers live off the labor of others. Who will bums beg from? Who will fund hobby philanthropy organizations? What will happen to locally-funded poverty projects?

If the dogs leave, what will happen to the fleas? They can’t go to the suburbs or the country. People move to those places to get away from them. Dependent people have to have cities in order to thrive. Maybe they’ll be able to get by on what the feds give them.

We already knew the Internet would devastate stores. Now it looks like it will work in concert with coronavirus hysteria to gut cities and suburbs.

Many years ago, I predicted that with the advent of online retailers, people would start moving to the country. It didn’t happen. At least not when I predicted it. It was hard for me to relate to people who actually liked cities, so I think I projected my own desires onto the general public. Many people love city life. Now we may see the abolishment of that lifestyle in many places. We also see how unpleasant life is in cities during crises. Maybe my prediction will finally come true.

Will it happen everywhere? My guess is that leftist cities that reacted hysterically to coronavirus will be hit hardest. They destroyed their economies and forced people to experience a new web-based lifestyle they might otherwise have avoided trying for years. They killed businesses that were necessary to lure people back. It looks like New Yorkers don’t have much to return to. Maybe that’s true in other leftist strongholds where mayors and governors overreacted. Eventually, though, I would expect the trend to spread to other places. Freedom to choose and design your own environment and social circle is very seductive, and financial concerns are compelling.

I saw an interesting Internet comment the other day. Someone mentioned polio. The commenter said a relative had gone through a polio epidemic, and people hadn’t reacted like little girls in a room where a rat has been released. They didn’t kill local economies. People took reasonable measures and accepted the risk. We do the same thing with the flu every year, and the seasonal flu has killed millions of us over the years.

Death is bad, but it’s part of everyone’s life, and liberty and prosperity are very important.

Americans were wrong to flip out over coronavirus. If we hadn’t panicked, we probably would have lost more people, but the effects on our way of life would have been more tolerable. Look at Sweden. They didn’t have lockdowns. They’ve had a fairly high rate of infection, but so what? It has not been catastrophic, and the country keeps chugging along, just as countries do after wars and natural disasters.

It’s interesting to see how coronavirus continues to hit leftist areas more severely. My county has had an explosion in the official infection count, but it’s not a disaster, and we haven’t seen the severe shortages or economic problems places like Chicago have endured. I can think of a few things that have been hard to buy. Disinfectant wipes, alcohol, hand sanitizer, toilet paper, paper towels, and eggs. There are probably some other things I’m not recalling because they have had no significant effect on my life. I never ran out of meat. I was always able to eat nearly anything I wanted. I never had to go home because I couldn’t get in a store.

My cousin in Chicago still can’t get toilet paper. She went through a period where it was nearly impossible to go to stores. Getting inside her local Walmart took hours. Once inside, she couldn’t get meat. For all I know, she still can’t. A few weeks back, long after talk of meat shortages had ceased, I sent my cousin near Atlanta a photo of steaks on sale, and he said it had been months since he had seen anything like that.

I’ve been predicting this county would hit something like 9,000 known cases and then see a sharp dropoff. I based this guess on the New York figures. It looks like I won’t be far wrong. I was mistaken when I thought the US-case collapse we saw earlier in the year would continue, and I didn’t think this county would blow up the way it has, but even true hot spots calm down eventually, and surely that will happen here, in an area where things have never gotten very bad.

Much of our virus-figure explosion is atypical and not useful for drawing conclusions because we increased testing dramatically and because we have a big locked-down prison population that got hit very hard.

To get back to the point, it seems like God has been much gentler to rural and conservative people. We’re getting virus upticks after the nationwide shortages abated and after better ways of addressing the epidemic were learned through the painful lessons endured by New Yorkers, Bostonians, and other subjects of the leftist elite. There is no panic. There is no real deprivation. Economic damage is minimal. As an example of the contrast, South Dakota never had a lockdown, and their governor just turned down a round of government handouts because they don’t need it.

It seems like ungodly people are much more likely to suffer, and they’re much more likely to give up their freedom and dignity because they’re much more afraid of death. This is something to think about as America continues to deteriorate. We will continue to see two different schools of thought. We will see the fear-based, desperate, selfish, bestial mindset of leftists, and we will see a calmer, more altruistic, less hostile attitude among people in areas that are heavily Christian.

People who don’t love God will do nearly anything in a crisis. During famines, they have been known to kill and eat their children. That kind of thing makes sense to people who think this life is all there is and that you have to make the most of it. Real Christians, on the other hand, have a history of allowing themselves to be martyred during prosperous times. Real Christians are less likely to panic. To us, death is like being sent home from a war zone, and maltreating others in order to stay alive is a frightening, off-putting idea.

When I think about leaving this earth, I don’t get scared. I long for it. My body is not what it used to be. I use reading glasses. My appearance is deteriorating. I forget things more often. The thought of being in a renewed body far superior to my earthly body at its best moment makes me wish the end were closer, as does the thought of getting cataracts and arthritis and being unable to do the things I enjoy. I don’t want to be a 75-year-old on this earth, shuffling around in this body. The thought of making it to 90 is genuinely disturbing.

People don’t believe in God generally want to hold onto whatever they have, regardless of the cost. It’s undignified. Look at Joe Biden, with all of his age-denying cosmetic procedures. Sometimes I think he smiles just so he will have something to show the IRS in case they object when he deducts his dental expenses.

I wonder if Hollywood stars are panicking because it’s harder to get elective surgery now. The pandemic must be harder on female stars because they have much shorter shelf lives than men. It’s not unusual for an actress to get her breakthrough during a certain year and be supplanted by younger, more attractive women 5 years later. One season of diminished activity could be very hard on certain female stars; especially those in their mid-thirties.

It will be interesting to see how Altucher’s predictions hold up a month from now. It would really be something, seeing Fifth Avenue turn into the South Bronx.

Biggest Danger to American Christians: Friendly Fire

Christian pride and self-righteousness are very destructive things. They lead us to become the worst enemies of the church. I have very few problems with nonbelievers. The people who mistreat me because of my beliefs are generally Christians. This is normal, and that’s sad.

I published a Youtube video about a rapture dream I had. I’ve written about the dream here. I said my mother and I were in her parents’ house, a huge horn blew from somewhere out over the Pacific, and we rose through the ceiling. In discussing the rapture, I talk about my belief that it will happen before the tribulation. I don’t mean nothing will go badly for Christians before the rapture. I mean whatever happens prior to the rapture will be an hors d’oeuvre, not the main course. I believe the real tribulation will be much worse. Whatever I said in the video was consistent with these beliefs.

This makes me a believer in the pre-tribulation rapture. There are also people who believe it will happen in the middle of the tribulation or at the end.

Have I said I was certain the rapture would come before the tribulation? I don’t think so, because I’m not. I just have a very strong impression that God says it will happen that way, and I have a lot of evidence from the Bible.

Some character with zero Youtube content showed up and started making comments of little value. First, he said something like, “Dude, young men will dream dreams, and old men will have visions.”

Of course, that’s not what the Bible says. Joel said old men would dream dreams and young men would have visions. Everyone knows that. It’s something every Christian should know, like how many commandments there are.

Eventually, I decided to say something. I replied and said, “Have you gone back and checked that yet?”

He (gender assumption) deleted his comment. No reply. Just an effort to hide the mistake. Then he posted a big, long comment saying 2 Thessalonians 2 proved the pre-tribulation theory was wrong and evil and so on. His comment was rude, and he said something about how he would rather be dyslexic than a “pre-tribber.”

This is the kind of thing people get wound up about. Not how to get rid of pride and hate. Not how to get love to flow. Not how to become one with the Holy Spirit.

I replied again, and I mentioned the deleted comment. I pointed out that dyslexia doesn’t make you say–deliberately–things which are incorrect. He really believed the verse said old men would have visions. I said he should try to be more honest. I didn’t think deleting the comment and then lying about it was the best course of action.

The 2 Thessalonians 2 passage he referred to mentions “the day of Christ.” He thought this was a reference to the rapture. I thought about it, and I felt I had a revelation. I said “day of Christ,” which clearly isn’t necessarily the rapture, might well refer to the Messianic Age. The Bible says a thousand years are like one day to God, and there is at least one example of God using “day” to mean “millennium.”

When Eve and Adam (in that order) sinned, they faced a punishment God had ordained earlier. He had said they would die during the day they ate the forbidden fruit. Then Adam lived another 900 years. So God lied, apparently, or…he was referring to a heavenly day, not an earthly day.

Obviously, he didn’t lie.

It seemed to me that this might explain some Biblical references to “the day of the Lord.”

Anyway, the anonymous commenter got really angry and said all I had to offer were “smarmy insults.” Then he demanded I produce documentation proving something or other I said I believed, as though Internet participants were entitled to make each other write research papers. He said, “I am going to dismantle your cult.”

This is when I found out he had no content. I wondered what was setting him off, so I went to see his videos to find out if he was a nutbar. There was nothing there.

I don’t know how he plans to dismantle my cult without creating content on his channel. I didn’t even know I had a cult.

I decided the best thing was to delete his weird comments and get on with life. In a way, this was like the rapture. One of the purposes of the rapture is to put an end to the necessity of dealing with people and spirits who are irrational and emotional and not worth talking to.

It looks like there is a battle going on among the people I call “Jesus buffs.” They’re like Trekkies, except their thing is Jesus. They speak nothing but Christianese. They wear shirts with huge crosses on them. They take pride in having gone to more revivals and concerts than you have. They make a point of telling everyone how they know this or that semi-famous preacher personally. They study the Bible and listen to theorists instead of spending time with God, and they use their studies to prove their strange theories. Generally, they do not claim their ideas came by revelation. They claim they figured things out on their own. Sounds a bit like pride.

I have been lumped in with a faction known as the pre-tribbers. I’m not sure, but I think the mid-tribbers and post-tribbers think we’re going to hell. We’re not just mistaken; we’re mouthpieces for Satan himself. There are also no-tribbers and rapture deniers. I suppose they also think we’re going to hell, along with the mid-tribbers and post-tribbers.

I’m not surprised that people disagree about things. Most Christians do not believe in the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and he is the only source of knowledge. Many who do believe in the baptism and have received it don’t spend time with God or pray in tongues, so they have logins they rarely use. Most Christians don’t hear from God, so they make things up. Even the ones who hear from God don’t get complete information. Disagreement is inevitable. The thing that’s disturbing is the factionalism and hatred, over trivial things.

We are supposed to shed the works of the flesh, and the Bible says factionalism is a work of the flesh. There are times when we have to break with people, and we are often required to point out their errors, just as other people are required to point out our own. That doesn’t mean we’re supposed to hate each other and condemn each other to hell based on whether we use Shiraz or Cabernet Sauvignon to take communion.

I suspect spirits of delusion are sent to Christians because of pride. Many Christians take pride in their denominations and their doctrine, without realizing how crazy that is. In addition to looking down on other Christians, most of us have a condescending attitude toward Jews. The premise is that modern Christians would never have crucified Jesus, had they been around in Pilate’s time. Of course, most Christians would crucify him right now if he came back under an assumed name and taught the same things he taught 2000 years ago. Many feel superior to the Jews who were, and are, against Jesus. They don’t realize faith comes from God, not from innate superiority.

Pride goes before a fall, so it makes sense that so many of us would fall into hateful factionalism.

It’s a very good sign when preachers and Jesus buffs mistreat you. They’re the same sort of people who killed the prophets and clamored for the crucifixion. It’s important to be able to tell when friction from other Christians means you’re on the right track.

Disagreement over the timing of the rapture should not be so significant to us that we attack each other and tell each other we’re going to hell. You don’t have to know the date of the rapture to go to heaven. It’s very telling when a person is so deluded he becomes infuriated with people who disagree with him about relatively trivial things. When all you have to offer is anger, you ought to know you’re not serving God.

We should be living as though the rapture were coming in the next hour, all the time. Knowing when it will happen is not necessary to living a holy life.

Varmint Rifle Becomes Relatively Cheap Teaching Tool

I have .17 HMR ammo figured out.

Today I went out and fired 20 rounds of ammo at 100 yards. I used a 4-bullseye target. My goal was to decide whether I should buy 17-grain or 20-grain ammo. I wanted to get whatever was the most accurate.

Here is the target. I wrote “17” and “20” on it so I would remember what went where. I started at the bottom-left, and I moved clockwise, shooting 5 rounds per target.

The first group came in at just under 1 MOA. That proves this ammo is good enough for hunting. For all I know, it will work for target shooting, too, if I practice more.

The second group does not seem to exist. I was fooling with the scope, and I think I adjusted three shots off the target.

The third group is under 0.7 MOA. For some reason, I fired at the lower-right bullseye, and as you can see, the points of impact are pretty high. I adjusted the scope again, and I shot at the same point of aim, figuring the top bullseye was already messed up. I shot a little over 1 MOA. I think the two holes to the right may be flyers. Maybe I did something new. I felt pretty good while I shot, though.

Anyhow, it certainly looks like the 20-grain stuff is accurate in this gun, and at least one other Internet person got the same result, so I think it’s probably more accurate than the lighter bullets. The 17-grain ammo may not shoot quite as well. I’m not positive, and I don’t want to shoot all day to find out whether it’s 0.3 MOA wilder than the heavy rounds.

The 20-MOA scope base is not working out. It was fine yesterday. I had to move the scope forward last night, and when I did that, things moved around, and when I tried to fix the elevation, I ran out of clicks. Oh, well. A new base is on the way. Not a big deal.

I thought the base might conceivably have some use if I shot at really long ranges, past the subsonic transition, but it looks like it won’t work closer in if the eye relief is set correctly. I’m surprised to see how much the point of aim moved when I moved the scope up one picatinny slot.

It was not a brilliant idea. Even if I hadn’t run out of clicks, you don’t really need a super-low base if you have a mil-dot reticle.

This will give me an opportunity to use the mil dots while I wait for the new base. I’ll try to figure out which dot to place on my point of aim, and it should work.

Now I feel confident ordering more ammo.

Shooting this thing is a joy. No worries about ear damage. No recoil. Excellent accuracy. Nice glass.

Maybe by the end of the month, I’ll be able to post some targets showing that I’ve improved.

Angry Armed Civilians will Make Cops Look Like Wet Nurses

What’s going on here at the compound today? I know people want the inside dope.

I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of my EGW 20-MOA scope base. It would be neat if I could plop it, and my new scope, on the Savage 93R and start shooting beautiful little .17 HMR rounds today. I don’t think that will happen. The mail arrives late in the afternoon, and there is apparently a new county ordinance that says it must rain torrentially at 4 p.m every day. It will take me an hour just to get the rifle set up. Looks like tomorrow will be the day.

I feel like I should order even more ammunition. I saw some guy on a forum apologizing for only having 20,000 rounds of .22 LR, and I felt inferior. I have a lot of .17 HMR, but Joe Biden just picked Kamala Harris to be the Democrats’ real candidate for the presidency, and supplies may get even tighter than they are now. I enjoy shooting a great deal, and I don’t want to have to quit.

I want to find out whether 17-grain or 20-grain bullets shoot better before I commit. Should I wait for the scope to arrive, or should I use my old one to get it over with? Is it safe to wait a couple of days? Maybe not.

Biden, who is getting an MSM/MeToo pass on exposing himself to female Secret Service agents, will be dead by the 2024 election, and he will probably have his public appearances limited during 2021. Not that anyone will want to see him after he is forced from office. The left will want to move on ASAP so they don’t have to talk about lying about Biden’s illness. They’ll want to pretend they were all about electing a semi-black woman all along.

If Biden wins, we will soon be able to say we’ve had a black president. Obama was half black, and Harris is half black, so together, they make one president. As it stands now, we’ve only had half of one, and his black half wasn’t really black. It was African. His ancestors never worked in the Americas as slaves. They had no idea what cornbread or biscuits were. They made no contributions to the blues, ragtime, or jazz. They never participated in civil rights marches. Obama has no idea what it’s like to part of American black culture, but he could tell you about the comfortable suburban culture of the white grandparents who raised him when his parents ran off.

People are claiming Biden’s selection is groundbreaking. Everyone forgets Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. They forget Herman Cain’s flirtation with the presidency, which was embraced by conservatives. They forget the fact that Democrat cabinets tend to look like Romney family reunions.

Well…I shouldn’t say that. There is at least one non-white Romney.

I keep asking God whether I should spend money on guns and ammunition. I feel he wants me to do it. I have asked him why. I now think the answer is that it’s for the people who don’t make it in the rapture. Lots of Christians, and nearly all Jews, will still be here, surrounded by violent, infantile people who are no longer restrained by the prayers of the people God removed. They will need guns and ammo to stay alive until they can get right with God. Or maybe God will give them a choice between using the weapons and accepting martyrdom in order to be saved.

I still feel like December will be the month, and somehow, the 11th seems like the day. Not pretending I’m certain, though. I haven’t seen a scroll appear with the date written on it in flames.

Imagine the simian behavior we will see from the left after the election, regardless of who wins. If they win, they’ll gloat and march and riot. It will be remarkable if leftist pogroms don’t begin in November. In January, the DOJ will give them license to riot all they want. If they lose, they’ll riot for months as their way of throwing a tantrum. Ruling by tantrum is their goal already.

I’ve been thinking about what they’re up against. They will need serious supernatural help from Satan. Leftist men tend to be feminine and soft. They tend to be unacquainted with weapons and tactics. Leftist women are women, and women don’t fight very well. On the other side, there are countless conservatives who have been stocking up on equipment since Obama was elected. Some started earlier.

I have been wondering who buys things like plate carriers. A plate carrier is a garment that holds bullet-resistant armor. I’ve wondered who buys dozens of AR-15 and AK-47 magazines. I think I know the answer. People aren’t preparing to protect their houses. You will never need a dozen magazines to put down a deer or a burglar. They’re preparing for civil war, and they’re doing a fine job.

I used to think people would give up their guns, just like Australians and the British. Now I don’t think so. I think the left taught conservatives they didn’t have to obey the law as long as they had numbers. I think tens of millions of conservatives will tell the police to jam it when they ask for their weapons. If you can take over a city with rifles and not be arrested, you can keep your AR-15 collection and your bump stocks and binary triggers.

It looks like leftists will be taking pepper spray, bags of feces, and bottles of urine to gunfights. To harm conservatives in a post-election scenario, you will need to be able to strike from at least 600 yards away, because that’s how far a cheap AR-15 will shoot effectively. No one in history has ever been able to throw pee that far.

Leftists can’t magically become competent at warfare in a month or two, and conservatives have been getting ready since they were born. Rioters do well in cities, where people are disarmed and conditioned to wait for the police to protect them. The farther out looters and arsonists go, the worse things will get for them. We’ve already seen small towns run them off.

They should start wearing camo instead of black.

The antichrist’s troops may have a false sense of safety because they’ve prepared to engage the police in cities. The thing is, the police are pussycats. They have to obey orders. They have to wear cameras. They’re forced to use non-lethal weapons. Civilians aren’t like that. They have real guns and zero oversight.

Because suburban and rural homes and businesses are relatively hard targets compared to urban ones, one would expect the leftist carnage and cruelty to be focused in cities. Of course, that has historically been the case. Rioters and looters are like animals that defecate in their own nests. Cowards who run from the strong attack the weak, and people who are too sorry to work will often be too sorry to travel. Also, many urban guerrillas don’t own cars.

Many people on the left and right seem delighted by the prospect of civil war. I suppose this is how people who have never seen real war think. It may sound like fun while you’re sitting at home cleaning your guns or filling bottles with pee, but it’s not fun when bodies start dropping and survivors have to be fitted with artificial limbs and colostomy bags.

Anyway, if the rapture comes, maybe nominal Christians who live nearby will need to use what I leave behind, to buy themselves time. I hope I’m not here with them.

On a personal level, I keep trying to get God’s help cleaning up my inner filth. I’m much better than I was 10 years ago, but the standard is Jesus, not my old self. I still let God down substantially from time to time.

I had a wonderful revelation. I think all improvement comes through divine revelation and impartation.

I’ll explain the revelation. I thought about gifts I had received from people who loved me. For purposes of this blog entry, you can think about things your mother gave you. You know how that works. She gives you something that really doesn’t work out, but 20 years later, you can’t throw it out, because your mom gave it to you. She saw it on the shelf, and she thought about her baby. She thought about how much she missed you, and she thought about you opening your present and remembering how much she loved you.

Then it turned out you didn’t have all that much use for a bread machine, so you put it in the garage and told yourself you would give it away. But you didn’t.

Every good thing we have is like that bread machine, except that the good things God gives us work.

It’s easy to get used to thinking of God as an enraged father who is fed up with your shenanigans. Things look different when you remember he’s a warm-hearted, generous father who delights in choosing things for you. It makes you feel bad about complaining and about not taking care of his gifts.

This is the person I let down when I sin. Maybe I have made him angry on occasion, but the Bible says I am like a son in whom he delights. My mother and father certainly had faults, but I know what it is to have two parents who delight in me. If I appreciate what they did for me, in their imperfection, how much more should I appreciate what God has done for me?

Thinking about this helps me with gratitude, humility, and obedience.

America is turning into a toilet because we have made ourselves fatherless. What do you see when you watch Antifa and BLM agitators hitting old people, breaking windows, stealing in mobs, and burning buildings? Punks. People who would never, ever do those things if their fathers were beside them. People who need guidance and discipline.

People are like dogs. When you walk a dog, it will see and smell interesting things, and it will try to run off to investigate. That’s when you yank the leash, tighten the choke collar, and make it clear that kind of behavior isn’t allowed to happen. People get stupid, disgraceful ideas. We pursue them. If we’re young and our parents are nearby, we get taken to the woodshed, and that helps prevent us from becoming useless punks. Fathers are generally the most effective dispensers of discipline.

Human fathers are extremely important, but they are just shadows of the father we really need. We cut off his influence when churches slandered the Holy Spirit and did away with the Holy Spirit baptism and prayer in tongues. We reduced God’s ability to correct us. This is why so many Americans think it’s okay to defecate on police cars and take over cities. It would be a great help if God sent out millions of angels who looked just like John Wayne, to shatter tailbones with steel-toed boots. It would save a lot of punks from destruction. Unfortunately, this is not the way God works. Bringing his order into the world has always been man’s job, not God’s.

I can think of a lot of occasions on which a devastating kick to the rear end would have changed the course of my life for the better.

My parents failed me. My dad was an atheist, and he was selfish and brutal. My mother was a nominal Christian. They didn’t put me in touch with God. They often spoiled me, because it was easy for them. Spoiling is a form of neglect.

Systematically, they failed to correct me. It’s a wonder I’m not worse than I am. Fortunately, God gave us this promise: “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up.” That’s the only reason I am not headed for destruction.

My guess is that people see that verse and think it means God will protect them and give them things. I suppose that’s correct, but fathers and mothers are supposed to prune and shape us like trees. Apart from salvation, these are the best things God does for us. He takes us up and fixes the things our parents ruined.

For a long time, I’ve prayed for God to help me and the people on my prayer list not to be punks.

Churches don’t seem to talk about this. They let the punks teach them. Churches are full of awful ghetto music. Preachers and even their wives cover themselves with trashy tattoos. They try to turn Jesus into an MTV host. When the Holy Spirit is ignored, things like prophecy and healing stop, and church becomes painfully boring. Then preachers try to tart it up by adding worldly features. Meanwhile, the Bible reminds us to “remain unspotted from the world.”

The purpose of the crucifixion was to lift us, not to lower Jesus.

I can still see across the gun room, so maybe it’s time to buy more cartridges. Hope we meet in a better place while someone else is shooting up my ammo.

The End of Days Is no Excuse for Bad Cooking or Poor Shooting

I dare anyone to say I don’t make great use of my time.

Today two wonderful things happened. I got over the local-pizza-ingredient hump, and I put a new scope on my Thompson Center Venture rifle.

I probably should not be thinking about pizza, but the pandemic and the mythical food shortages associated with it shift one’s thoughts in the direction of shopping and cooking, and I am a casualty. Early in the crisis, flour disappeared from shelves, and when it reappeared, bread flour lagged by at least two months. I bought some wheat gluten before everyone else thought of it, and I started fooling around with it. I tried to make baguettes, for example.

Pizza is a mysterious food. It only has three major ingredients, and preparation is extremely simple, but it’s one of the hardest things to figure out how to make. I figured it out when I lived in Miami. It turned out ingredients were extremely critical. I had to use certain things, or it didn’t work. Then I moved north, and I was no longer able to get those things.

You can use just about any flour to make a great Sicilian pizza, but for some reason, thin pizza doesn’t work that way. Most of the flour at your local grocery just won’t cut it. The texture or the flavor or both will be off. Bread flour works well, and some bread flours are better than others. Some people insist on Caputo 00 flour from Italy. It’s a low-ash flour without much gluten. I tried it, and I didn’t think much of it.

A local store started stocking King Arthur bread flour a couple of weeks back, so naturally, I have been making pizza. The flour gave me good results, but I was not completely happy.

I researched, and I decided I should try diastatic malt powder. This is a dough conditioner. You add a small amount to your flour, and it makes the product blow up better and brown better in the oven. I couldn’t find it around here, but Amazon sells it. Today I put a little bit in my flour, and the result was very good. The dough browned earlier, it blew up better, and it wasn’t as chewy as it had been in previous efforts. It rose fast, and the flavor was good.

I knew something good was happening when I rolled the proofed dough out and started tossing it. It had a silky feel to it, and it opened up beautifully. It didn’t even try to tear. Tossing a 10″ pie took less than a minute. It was a snap. I don’t know how malt works, but it worked great today, and I plan to keep using it.

I also tried a new tomato product. Nearly all of the tomato products stores sell are useless for pizza. The manufacturers use unripe tomatoes or the wrong varieties. It’s easy to get or make a sauce that looks red and tasty, but when you take a bite of a slice, you will know you’ve been had.

My go-to sauce is Saporito, from the Stanislaus company. It’s tomato paste, basil, and citric acid. It’s very sweet and fruity. I doctor it up with a few things, and it’s excellent. But I can’t get it around here.

I’ve been trying various items from local stores. Today I decided to try Muir Glen “organic” paste. I put “organic” in quotation marks because “organic” is an empty Pavlovian stimulus which motivates people to spend three times as much for food that isn’t any better. There are no real standards for organic food production, except that you have to put “organic” on the label.

The can says Muir Glen is made in Central California, and the Muir Glen website shows big Roma tomatoes, just like the ones Stanislaus uses. Stanislaus is a California company.

I combined some paste with garlic powder, oil, salt, oregano, and a couple of other things, and I put it on a crust made with diastatic malt. I used sliced Sargento mozzarella and sliced Boar’s Head fontina. I sprinkled oregano and salt on top of the cheese, and I baked at 500° on a preheated stone. I can’t do better than 500° with my oven.

The pizza was very nice. I used too much cheese and not enough sauce, but it was a lot better than pies I had made earlier in the week. I feel like my suffering is over. Not that I plan to make a lot of pizza. I was just frustrated because I couldn’t figure out how to do it with things I could buy here.

I really want to make garlic rolls with malt, but I have to maintain some self-control.

I can supply the ingredient list, if you want to try it.

INGREDIENTS

125 grams King Arthur bread flour
80 grams warm water
2 tsp. instant yeast
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. diastatic malt

You can add oil to make it softer. My understanding is that you should knead, add oil, and knead again. Some food reason I no longer recall.

I gave it a pretty decent “kneading” in the food processor, going for at least 30 seconds after it formed a ball. I prepared the pizza on a square of non-stick foil, which I removed from the stone after two minutes. You just pull it out from under the pizza. If you use this method, you won’t have to try to shove a sticky raw pizza off a peel. You put it on the foil, and the foil slides off, taking the pizza with it. After two minutes of cooking on the foil, the crust is strong enough to tolerate having the foil yanked out.

As for the rifle, some Seekins scope rings arrived today, and I was able to mount a Vortex Viper PST 6-24×50 on it. This is a discontinued scope I bought accidentally. I was going to return it, but I decided it would be more than adequate for .204 Ruger, which is only useful at or below 400 yards. I think I did a good job of mounting it. I used a torque wrench and all that. I changed the trigger spring two days ago, so now I have a killer varmint rig with a very light touch. I still have my ATN night scope, so I have the Vortex for daytime, and if I ever decided to try shooting coons at night, I’ll have the ATN ready to go.

Very nice. It’s wonderful when you get a firearm working correctly. I can’t wait to zero the scope and see what the gun can do. Based on earlier results with a scope which is hard to use, I have high hopes of being able to put 10 rounds in a 1″ circle at 100 yards.

People call the Venture a cheap gun. Maybe so. I have never shot an expensive bolt rifle, so I don’t know what I’m missing. I think the most expensive bolt guns I’ve shot were a 6mm and a 30.06, probably Remington, when I was a kid. With the Venture, I have what appears to be a phenomenal trigger and a highly accurate gun, so what’s not to love? The bolt has been very sticky, and that led me to blow a hole in the pasture while trying to close it, but I have been running it back and forth in order to loosen it up, and it seems to be working. I should be able to make it nice and slick with some effort. After that, it will be really hard to see what an additional thousand dollars would have bought me.

On Wednesday, the scope base for my .17 HMR should arrive, unless it’s in the mailbox already. Then I can put an Athlon scope on my Savage 93R, and I’ll be all set for inexpensive, nearly recoil-free 100-yard practice.

Scoped rifles have been a source of frustration for me, and a lot of it has been equipment-related. By the end of the week, I should have 3 rifles set up well with MRAD scopes, and I may even have my AR-15 set up correctly. After that, I should be able to focus on learning to shoot instead of subduing uncooperative weapons.

I’m not shooting today because I don’t want to make my neighbors miserable. Any sane person should be satisfied with three sessions a week.

That’s what I’m telling myself at the moment.

I’m blessed to have a few readers who give me good advice and save me from myself. Jim from the now-defunct Smoke on the Water pops in from time to time to cut through the BS I’ve read and heard. Recently, he provided some tips on leveling scopes, which is a BS-intensive topic from one end to the other. I believe I will only need such information for my Ruger Precision Rifle and LR-308, because nothing else I have will shoot far enough to make leveling matter. Anyway, his comment will be there when I need it.

I still want to get a Tikka T3x in 6.5 Creedmoor. I do not hunt at all, apart from small annoying creatures of the sort taxidermists hide in their back rooms, but I have dreams of getting out there and trying, and I need at least one rifle for large game. The hunting picture is not rosy for me. There is nothing worth shooting (legally) on this property, and I feel funny about wandering around on public land wearing day-glo overalls, surrounded by beer-drunk weekend warriers with itchy trigger fingers and cataracts. Even if I did get out there and try, I don’t know what to do with a whole deer, and I can’t make myself shoot a bird smaller than a turkey. That’s what owning parrots will do to you. It’s really too bad pigs don’t come to visit.

I could pay for a guide and shoot some pigs on a hunting property, but that’s a little bit like going outside and shooting one of the cattle. I hope they would at least let me get out of the truck.

I shouldn’t joke. I remember shooting a rabbit from my grandfather’s Buick Riviera. He was a great grandfather.

My 6.5 Creedmoor dies arrived. I’m waiting for a case trimmer. I think I ordered bullets and powder. Yes, I remember it now. Primers are on their way to the nearest Bass Pro. Once my rifles are functioning, I’ll be able to think about making my first rifle rounds.

That’s all that’s happening here, apart from the apocalypse. Hope you’re enjoying it as much as I am.

Kindly Stop Breathing Near Me

What’s going on with coronavirus? I wish I knew.

My county is up to 6,573 known cases, or about 2.2% of the population, based on a mental calculation I just did, which I am too lazy to check.

Does it mean the virus is spreading as quickly as the number suggests, or does it mean we’re just testing a lot?

You tell me.

The number of coronavirus deaths here is currently 89. That’s about 5 times what it was a couple of months ago. The known-case number has multiplied by something roughly like 20, but the death number is not keeping pace. That seems to suggest that the real infection rate has probably only multiplied by about 5, and that suggests testing is the main driving force behind the known-case number.

Of course, there are reasons why no one can rely on any of these figures. For one thing, medical institutions have big financial incentives to attribute deaths to coronavirus. Because medical people lean left, they also have political incentives. People in my area are talking about falsified records, and I have no reason to doubt what they say. The tests aren’t very good, and people lie.

Another problem: roughly a third of our known cases come from prisons. That’s a freak thing. This county has a lot of prison–not just jail–beds. Compared to other counties, we have more prisoners per capita. Prisons are not normal environments. The residents are confined in very small spaces, and that’s the single most important factor in coronavirus transmission. Also, a disproportionate number are black, and black people are more susceptible to infection.

Prisons are getting a disproportionate death rate. I suppose people in prison are more likely to have underlying conditions. They are not responsible people. A lot of them are probably former smokers. Many are probably obese. Then there is AIDS. And hepatitis C.

Another strange thing: women make up a big portion of the known cases. Is that because we have women’s prisons? Search me.

Anyway, you can’t look at a 2.2% known-infection rate and draw solid conclusions.

For months now, I’ve been hoping the bug would turn out to be more contagious than it appeared. The experts kept telling us it was more contagious than the flu, but the infection numbers are still nowhere close to those we see in an average flu year. The flu takes around 120 days to generate the bulk of its statistics. The consensus is that Coronavirus has been in America for at least 7 months, but a smart person who knows there is air travel between here and China pretty much has to conclude that it actually got here by December 1, 2019. Whether the correct guess is 7 months or over 8 months, if this had been the flu, we would have had something like 40 million known cases by May 1, and unless we are failing to detect cases, that hasn’t happened.

If coronavirus really is more contagious than the flu, then maybe half of Americans have already had it. If that’s true, then it’s typically very, very mild. If it were not, we would have noticed the huge wave of sick people.

We have moderately large wave of people who are known to be infected, and we have a much smaller wave of people who have had symptoms.

The other day, some expert said he thought we probably had 50 million cases. I hope he’s right. That would mean the disease was not as severe as the hype suggested, and it would also mean we were pretty far into the process and therefore much closer to recovery than official figures suggest.

But you can’t trust any of the numbers, so what do I know?

The people who ALLEGEDLY died from coronavirus here were almost all afflicted with “underlying conditions.” We have 89 deaths, including 86 victims with preexisting health problems. That’s a comforting 97%. Unless you have an underlying health condition. Then it’s an extremely alarming 97%.

The news says nearly every infected person here has a known source of infection. That sounds very encouraging. It suggests you’re not likely to wake up sick with no explanation, and that suggests you have some control.

It looks like the local mask ordinance is gone. The city Karens or whatever they’re called passed an ordinance for the city, but the mayor vetoed it. Not sure why. I would have to pay money to read the story; forget that. I don’t think it matters, because businesses have signs up. No mask, no Big Mac. As is so often the case, the private sector is well able to look after itself without government coercion.

I read some interesting stuff today. They say the polio vaccine and pneumonia vaccines may confer some resistance. I’ve had a bunch of polio vaccines. I don’t know if that’s normal. Either you’re supposed to get more than one, or my mother let them give them to me because we moved around and didn’t keep my medical records. I know I’ve had more than one, because I remember how they tasted.

I wonder if I should get a pneumonia vaccine. I don’t see how it can hurt. I should definitely get a flu shot.

I have also read that they suspect that asymptomatic people don’t get sick because they’ve had other coronaviruses, or similar viruses, in the past. That would be great news. When I was a kid, I got a cold about once a month. I must have had everything by now. It would also suggest that vaccines will be incredibly effective. If a cold I had 5 years ago can protect me, surely a vaccine can.

I don’t worry. I think I already had coronavirus, I think God will look after me even if I’m wrong, I have no underlying conditions, I do well with respiratory stuff, and I do not care at all if I die. And besides, worry is sin, it’s faith in Satan, it’s unpleasant, and there is nothing good about it. Not one thing.

Do I worry about other people? Well, if worry is wrong, it’s wrong, no matter who you’re worrying about. I don’t worry about other people. I can’t do anything for them anyway, apart from prayer. I’m doing that.

I keep feeling that the rapture is coming this year. I now, officially, hope this is true. I don’t want to see anyone go through the tribulation unnecessarily, but the more I see of 2020 humanity, the more I am weary of us, and the more weary I think God must be. It must be unpleasant, watching us at each other’s throats over a mild disease, knowing almost none of us will get the message and fast and repent. He offers us all the solutions to our problems, and we are scrapping over masks and disinfecting wipes.

A sea of lies is spewing from leftists these days. It reminds me of the red dragon story from the Revelation. I’m so tired of lies. It doesn’t bother me that people are wrong, but many lies demand a response. Lying works, at least in the short term. I’m tired of contending with liars.

When I think of lies, I think about my sister. She never took responsibility for anything that happened to her. Everyone was out to get her. She was a saint, surrounded by villainous scum. She lied constantly, aggrandizing and exonerating herself and accusing other people of dishonesty. She denied she was a drug addict. She denied being arrested in Florida and Kentucky, even though the whole family knew what had happened. She accused my dad of raping her, in front of two people who had no idea whether it was true or not. She almost got him in serious trouble by accusing a mafioso’s kid of raping her; my dad went to the kid’s house to give him a beating, and fortunately, no one was home. She accused my dad of breaking her arm. She tried to get me in trouble, claiming I kicked her dog. My dad was also accused, and he wasn’t even in the room when the incident supposedly occurred.

You can imagine how tiresome it is, dealing with someone like that for decades. You can never address a problem involving a person like that in an efficient way. First, you have to have an elaborate trial, with testimony, proving that person’s version of the facts is a lie. Then you have to deal with the people that person convinced. Then when you get past one smokescreen of lies, that person puffs out another one, and you’re off to the races again.

Lying is quick and easy. That’s why Satan does it. Refuting lies is a big, big job.

Antifa is based on lies. BLM is based on lies. Leftism is based on lies. Anti-white and anti-Christian bigotry are based on lies. We swim in lies all day. In a healthy society, the truth would be settled and widely known, and people would work together for common ends. We can’t do that. We have an adversarial system. The group that lies and yells the loudest and the most persistently wins.

I’m tired of arguing and refuting. I don’t do nearly as much of it as I used to. I try not to do it at all. Imagine how tired God must be.

We all want immunity these days. Unfortunately, immunity can be fatal. Many, many of us have become immune to the truth. We treat it like a disease. We social-distance from people who spread it. This is what will bring the rapture to pass. When God decides people are so bone-headed the effort of persuading them is no longer worth tolerating the contempt, dishonesty, arrogance, and cruelty, he will pull the plug. Our presence here has to serve a purpose, and once it becomes clear we can’t serve that purpose to a satisfactory degree, we will be pulled out.

Today. Tomorrow. Ten minutes from now. I’m ready. If we can get a real revival worth the abuse we’ll put up with, I’m all for staying, but things do not look good.

I’ve often said the flood was like a flea dip for the earth. I’m sure Noah and his family grieved for the people who died, but imagine the peace they had when they came out of the ark. Imagine having all the annoying, venomous people in your life disappear. That’s what the rapture will be like. People who are removed will find themselves in a world where everyone is in agreement with them, and the rest will be like a swarm of gnats with no one left to bite and drain except each other.

I am not going to worry about other people. I will speak the truth and pray for them, but that’s it. I’m not going to stress myself. If they want to stay here after the rapture and go through hell on earth, that’s their choice. They will still be able to be saved. Maybe when the trees burn up and the fish die and people beg for death, they’ll change their minds. If not, they were not worth pursuing in the first place.

I have no doubt that there are many people in hell who still accuse God and his children and refuse to admit fault. The willful irrationality of human beings knows no limits. I think many, many people will realize God is real during the tribulation yet will continue to revile and defy him. The fact that people are going to be lost shouldn’t destroy our peace. It’s a normal part of the human experience, and it can’t be helped.

Lee Dies Ruin my Day

I have an extremely important message for all users of the Internet.

Do not use Lee carbide 9mm dies on a Hornady Lock n Load AP progressive press.

A while back, I loaded up on 9mm semiwadcutter bullets. I wanted them for practice, and they’re also not bad for self-defense. Then I found out I didn’t actually have 9mm dies.

All the dies I had were made by Hornady, and I wondered if I was cheating myself by not trying companies like RCBS, Lyman, Lee, and Redding. I ordered a set of Lee carbide dies.

The carbide was what got me going. If you use carbide dies, you don’t have to use case lube, and presumably, carbide dies will last a long time.

I took these things out of the package a few days ago. The first thing I noticed was that they didn’t have Hornady-style locking rings. They had weird rings with slots cut into them for grip. It took me a minute to realize they were locking rings.

I stuck the dies on my press, and guess what. They didn’t fit. The threaded parts of the dies were maybe 3/8 of an inch too short. When I screwed them into the press deeply enough to make them work, the locking rings, which were on the upper side of the press (where they should be) were barely engaged. Only a thread or two held them on. At least one of the dies seemed to wobble when I pushed on it.

I Googled around and learned that this is a well-known design flaw. It’s amazing that Lee let it happen. There are probably less than 8 prominent companies that make reloading equipment, and they don’t make a huge number of products. Hornady’s press is very popular, Lee knows about it, and they made no effort to make their dies work with it.

I’ll tell you how you solve the problem. You buy new dies. That’s what I did. But you can also move the locking rings from the top of the press to the underside of the die platform. It allows you to screw the dies down where they need to be without sacrificing locking rings.

The problem with this crude solution is that you end up with dies that take a long time to swap. With Hornady dies, you just twist the die and the whole assembly pops out. The locking ring comes with it. With Lee dies, you have to remove the locking ring first, and Lee makes them tight and puts some kind of sticky goop on the threads to make the rings harder to turn. It’s probably great when you use a Lee press and you’re able to put the rings where they should be, but it’s a royal pain if you own the press I have.

I managed to crank out a few rounds, but I ordered Hornady dies anyway.

Figuring out which dies I wanted took hours. It’s not as simple as it sounds. When I bought dies years ago, they all came with roll crimpers. A roll crimp turns the mouth of the casing inward, and if your crimp is too heavy, it makes the metal bulge out slightly below the mouth. Then you get a round that won’t chamber. This is not a great design for most pistols I own.

There are a couple of other options. One, which I’ll get rid quickly by discussing it first, is the Lee Factory Crimp die. I’m not sure I understand this thing completely, but my understanding is that it pushes a sort of sleeve down over the casing and sizes it from the mouth down. This tightens the casing on the round and makes it less likely that the cartridge won’t chamber. It also makes it less likely that the bullet will be pushed deeper into the casing while its being handled and chambered and so on.

Problem: it’s a Lee product, and it has short threads. Forget that.

The other option is a taper crimp. This compresses the mouth of the casing without forming a rolled area or a bulge. I decided I wanted this.

Now I had to decide. Did I want a set with a separate crimping die, or did I want a set with a single die that crimps and also seats the bullet?

It turned out I had no choice. The Hornady set with the dual-function die cannot be had. The apocalypse has dried up the supply. But I learned that this was a good thing, because a separate crimping die produces better results, and it’s easier to adjust two dies than one dual die.

I found what may have been the last Hornady three-die set on earth, and I ordered it. Before you ask, I could not find other brands. That may not be entirely true. Redding may have a set that costs $200. I didn’t bother with products like that. I also ordered a Hornady taper crimp die.

The set comes with a dual-purpose die, but I can fix it so it seats bullets but does not crimp them. It will go size and decap, expand, fill, seat, crimp.

There will be no room for a Powder Cop, but I think they’re stupid for short casings anyway.

I the end, if I manage to sell the Lee dies, I figure I will come out $50 in the hole. That’s life.

I’ve only made 5 charged rounds, and something is going on with the press. When I pull the handle, the press moves until it gets to a certain point, and then it stops. Then if I push it harder, something gives way, and it finishes the cycle. That’s not good. I seem to produce good ammo, but I have to be very careful with every turn of the handle. I think I’ll end up producing a lot of rounds that have to go through twice. I’m going to leave it alone and start over with the new dies.

I’m using Missouri Bullet cast semiwadcutters. The Missouri Bullet company is not brave like other companies. They will not publish load data. This may be why other bullet makers are more successful. Oregon Trails, for example, wrote a whole handbook which you can download for nothing. Missouri Bullet is cowed by lawyers, so you have to find data for similar bullets and do your own work-ups.

I couldn’t find anything that was really good. I admit, I forgot to check the Lyman manual. Accurate publishes load data (brave) which you can download, and I found a recipe that looked okay. It was for an Oregon Trail bullet I had on hand. Problem: that bullet is shorter than the Missouri SWC. That means using the same overall length will push the bullet farther into the casing. This can increase the pressure and cause problems. How big would the problems be? How would I know?

I measured the bullets and found that the Missouri SWC was 0.06″ longer. I decided to increase the OAL by a fraction of that number, and I used a conservative charge. I ended up with bullets that did about 1080 fps, which is fine for 9mm. The casings looked good, so I don’t think I have pressure issues.

These bullets have lube grooves. Lube is wax. Lube grooves are deep, wide slots that go around the bases of bullets, and they are packed with wax. Because of my long AOL, my bullets each had one groove exposed.

I had to read about this. I found out it’s not a big problem. The cartridges will work. Wax can get on things, however, and I don’t like that. I’m thinking I’ll decrease the OAL and see what happens. I read the SAAMI specs, and I will be well within them. That doesn’t mean it will work, but it means I’m not off the reservation.

I would like to get up to maybe 1175 fps. That figure appears in published loads. It would be really nice to go that fast with 9mm.

You’ll never guess which powder I ended up using. Not unless you’re a stalker who actually reads everything I write and remembers it. I found that Accurate No.7 was a top choice. Is there anything that powder can’t do? If you have No.7 and Unique, you can load just about anything. No.7 is extremely versatile, and it’s also flash-suppressed.

So I used No.7. Not.

I have a bunch of BE-86, and I didn’t have a use for it. It’s also flash-suppressed, and it works for this bullet. It’s what I decided to use. I am very happy.

Now my press is set up for 9mm, but I can’t use it. I have to find another firearm job to do while I wait for new dies.

I’m thinking of buying Lehigh Defense bullets for self-defense. I keep reading about them. They look like Phillips screwdrivers, and they’re solid copper. They have provided very destructive results in testing. They also go through barriers like crazy. Ordinary hollow points have problems with things like windshields and drywall, and if they clog with fabric on the way into a perp, they don’t expand. A Lehigh Defense Xtreme Defender will go right through a windshield, even at an angle, and it doesn’t have to expand, so it doesn’t care about clothing. Bonus: they only weigh 65 grains, so the recoil is light, assisting with followup shots.

A guy on Youtube shot right through heavy bulletproof glass with Lehigh bullets.

A lot of people sneer at these bullets. Yeah. I remember sneering at Facebook. Look where it is now. I saw a Youtube expert say he wouldn’t trust them until they had been tested on live animals and so on. So I guess he only buys hollowpoints that were tested on live animals using the scientific method? What brand would that be?

One of the most lethal and experienced police gunfighters wrote about the real-life problems he had in shootouts. His name is Jim Cirillo. He made it clear that failure to penetrate was a huge problem. He shot a man in the skull with a .38, and the bullet slid around his head under the scalp and never entered the cranium. He and a partner shot a man in the face a number of times, and the same thing happened. The man got up and walked to the police car with them. If he had been up against unarmed women, he could still have raped and murdered them.

Cirillo thought developing bullets that actually get inside criminals was extremely important, and he dedicated years to trying to develop something that worked. He came up with something similar to the Xtreme Defender, but he never perfected it. He wanted something that penetrated auto glass and sheet metal. It looks like Lehigh and some other companies are following his lead.

Lehigh says its bullets are extremely destructive inside a body. This may or may not be true in practice. Maybe they’re no better than hollowpoints. But they have the advantage of piercing things like leather and heavy fabric much better, and right or wrong, testing suggests they will do more damage than hollowpoints. They may be a smart bet.

I’ve seen Paul Harrell, the Youtube guru, test these things. He shot what looked like a 2″ group at 10 yards. This is not great by his standards, and he said as much, but on the other hand, how much will 1″ groups help you when punks attack you in a parking lot? You, the punks, and the coroner will never see the difference between 1″ rounds and 2″ rounds.

Harrell uses a hilarious meat target to evaluate rounds. Xtreme Defenders tore it up like nothing else. He uses watermelons to simulate lungs, and the bullets destroyed them. The issue here is that watermelons aren’t stretchy. Does that mean Xtreme Defenders won’t do all that much damage to lungs, which can stretch and recover? Well, he had pork on both sides of the watermelon, and the pork was ripped up pretty badly. Pork is like human flesh. It suggests, but doesn’t prove, the bullets will work.

Job 1 is to be able to hit important body parts by shooting well. Job 2 is to get the bullets inside the criminal so they can do their work. Everything else takes a backseat.

I’m thinking it over.

As I’ve often said, I have zero interest in shooting anyone, and I have doubts about my willingness to send unsaved people to hell in order to survive on this miserable earth, but when you own equipment designed for a certain purpose, the natural thing is to try to make it work well.

I received a new bolt shroud for my Ruger Precision Rifle. This is a part that attaches to the bolt, obviously. The stock part lets the bolt rattle around a lot. This is annoying, because when you pull the bolt back and then try to move it forward to chamber a round, it may actually bind and get stuck. I don’t mean it gets stuck to where you need a hammer, but you may have to wobble the bolt and push a second time. It’s amazing that Ruger let this happen.

Should I care about a sticky bolt? Yes. I don’t like moving around between shots. You want things to be consistent. If you take your face off your buttstock (that sounds bad) between rounds, you upset everything. I want “BOOM-click-click-BOOM,” not “BOOM-click-rattle-rattle-curse-shove-BOOM.” I don’t actually curse, but the temptation is there.

Today I’ll install the bolt shroud. That should take almost two minutes.

I look forward to trying it. I also got a larger rear bag, and I’m hoping the improved bolt and less-fiddly bag will close up my groups.

I’m also going to see if I can set my Savage 93R in .17 HMR up with a new Athlon scope. I did all the math for the scope, base, and rings, but when I tried putting them together on my AR-15 for laughs, I found out there was an additional factor. Even if your rings and rifle work with your tube and bell, things can bump into the eyepiece, which has a larger diameter than the tube. I couldn’t check the scope on the Savage because I was waiting for a suitable base to attach.

I made an error when I ordered the base. Reflexively, I ordered a 20-MOA base. This is a base with a 20-MOA downward slope toward the front. When you shoot long distances, you may have to drop your barrel over 40 MOA, and you can run out of clicks. An angled base will help. Sadly, I forgot that no one shoots .17 HMR at really long distances. For prey, you can do 300 yards at best. You can shoot longer distances if you’re just happy to hit anything. So I have a 20-MOA base I don’t need. When I set up at 100 yards, I’ll be starting out 20 MOA in the hole.

I don’t know if it will matter. I think I’m going to attach it and use it. If it turns out to be wrong, I can change it later.

If the rings I bought work with the Savage, I’ll be able to set it up today, and I might even be able to zero it.

I already entered the Savage and my Thompson Center .204 in my Kestrel calculator. You have to name your guns. I chose Betty and Veronica. When it comes to the Ruger, I’m torn between Naomi and Tyra.

The weather people are making horrible predictions. I choose not to believe them. It will NOT rain heavily for 10 consecutive days. I’m not having it. I’m going to get the Ruger zeroed, I may get somewhere with the Savage, and there is hope that I will even make it to a gun range.

To sum up:

1. Do not ever buy Lee dies for any reason.

2. Taper crimping is what you want.

3. Lehigh Xtreme Defender bullets seem pretty good.

4. Rings that fit your tube may bump into other things, so don’t throw out the packaging your rings come in.

5. Do not buy a 20-MOA base for a rifle that can’t shoot longer than 400 yards. I think.

6. Accurate No.7 is the flubber of powder. It does just about everything.

MORE

It’s like something is trying to prevent me from shooting.

I installed the new Anarchy Outdoors titanium bolt shroud on the Ruger Precision Rifle, and it’s wonderful. Installation literally takes 10 seconds once you have the bolt out. Now the bolt slides in and out like greased glass. But when I tried to put the new scope base on the Savage 93R, it turned out Amazon had let me down. I needed a base with a 1-5/8″ ejection recess, as described in the ad, and they sent me one with a 1-3/8″ recess. In case you have a Savage 93R with a 1-5/8″ port, you need the EGW base, model 41602. That’s assuming you want 20 MOA.

I have a Smaug-like mass of .17 HMR, and I can’t shoot it because of scope problems. I could just slap the old Burris back on the rifle, but I really want to use an MRAD scope.

On the up side, the low Seekins rings I bought for the Athlon scope are the perfect height, so I don’t have to go through with an Amazon return. I ordered two sets of higher rings. I’ll send one set back and keep one for the T/C Venture. I was concerned Amazon would give me problems because I had already messed up the packaging on the low rings.

I can’t reload 9mm. I can’t shoot the Savage. I can’t shoot the Venture.

I have a jug of Vihtavuori powder for .45 ACP. I have enough bullets to crank out about 300 rounds of JHP. I guess I could do that. I can still shoot the AR-15 and the RPR, and of course, there are always .22’s. Life could be worse.