Sticking to my Heuristic Guns

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

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

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

Per day.

In one country.

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

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

Per DAY.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The number is…27.

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

Here you go: 5%. Give or take.

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

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

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

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

See what I mean?

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

Nope. No wine for you.

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

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

That’s not scary.

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

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

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

Let’s Wait for a Better Reason to Spaz Out

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

True? I do not know. It sounds reasonable.

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

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

What Else is on the Menu?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They stand outside and knock.

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

There is always symmetry in the supernatural.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If Spiritual Gifts are Biscuits, Love is the Gravy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Funny, but true.

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

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

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

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

The Power is Yours

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That was new to me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Make of it what you will.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Knots

It’s a beautiful new Saturday, with a beautiful new hurricane forecast, depending on where you live. Dorian’s projected path has moved even farther away from Florida.

Right now, the GFS and ECMWF computer models are predicting maximum winds of 14 knots at my location. By that I mean the model which predicts the highest winds predicts 14 knots. The GFS model tops out at 11.

The new track is so far off the coast, you have to zoom out on the computer to see it.

As I keep saying, I don’t pay any attention to TV heads when it comes to hurricanes. They have a conflict of interest. They need to attract viewers more than they need to disseminate correct information, and they usually do what’s best for themselves. They’re still hysterical over Dorian. To watch TV and read stories, you would think Florida was doomed, when, in reality, there probably won’t be any severe weather anywhere in the state.

I took a look at the Weather Channel’s site today. If I ran the Weather Channel, I would hope my forecasters were saying things like, “Great news for Florida today. It appears very unlikely that Dorian will cause any major problems there. Keep taking reasonable precautions and watch the projected path, but be glad the outlook has improved so much.” That’s not what I’m seeing, however. They’re still fanning the flames of panic.

I saw something really disgraceful at Windy.com today. A meteorologist named Marshall Shepherd (from the Weather Channel) posted a full-blown berserker rant yesterday morning, and it’s still up on the website.

Some quotes:

Dorian is about to hit Florida really hard. The most urgently worded hurricane update.

Note the certainty. Dorian “is” going to hit, and it’s going to hit “really hard.” How can you justify that kind of propaganda, with a projected path as wide as it was when he wrote that? And aren’t these the same people who keep telling us forecasts are uncertain? How can forecasts be uncertain when a storm is definitely going to hit?

Totally unjustified.

Urgent, urgent hurricane update (Friday 7:00 am)

This probably going to be my most urgently worded update in some time.

So…wait while I try to understand this. I feel that you’re trying to be urgent here. Is that right, or am I taking something out of context?

Why would a weather professional tasked with informing the public talk like this? Is generating panic part of his job description?

Not “urgent”; “urgent, urgent.” Who writes like that?

You know what? I just remembered where else I’ve heard that.

The east coast of Florida, much of the state, and coastal GA/Carolinas face a major and life-threatening and sustained threat.

Again, from a person who has been through a bunch of storms, a hurricane is not a “life-threatening threat” unless you’re disabled or utterly irresponsible. Get into a strong building and wait a few hours. When you come out, don’t grab any downed power lines. You’ll be safe. I promise. If I’m wrong and you die, I’ll give you fifty dollars. But you have to ask for it in person.

A lot of people died in New Orleans during the Katrina mess. They died because they stayed where they were, at or below sea level, in structures that couldn’t protect them. Their mayor, who later went to prison, didn’t let President Bush help them. The feds sent buses, and they sat unused. You can still find a photo of the buses sitting in deep water. What happened in New Orleans had nothing to do with the dangers of hurricanes. It was all about unbelievably poor decisions made by politicians and private citizens who were fully informed. Hurricanes are not very dangerous to people who have even a sliver of common sense.

It’s not just possible to get complete protection from a hurricane; it’s extremely easy. Get in car. Drive to shelter. Wait. If no car, take bus or walk. Done.

You can go online and see photos and videos of cars in New Orleans, under water in front of houses. People had cars and still stayed where they were.

New Orleans has hosted generations of people who were trained by the left to depend on the government for everything. Many of them stayed home because they were afraid they wouldn’t be there to receive their welfare checks. You can look that up. Leftism trains people to be helpless, and this surely contributed to the death toll. People sat and waited for Uncle Sam to swoop in wearing a cape.

The same mentality was on display later at the Superdome and (after the Superdome’s flaws proved it unsuitable) the Astrodome, two stadiums where “survivors” were sheltered.

It’s amazing that the word “survivors” was used at the time. This is a great example of snowflakespeak. If you live through a hurricane, you’re not a “survivor.” That word should be reserved for things like shipwrecks and nuclear attacks. If you live through a hurricane, you’re really…nothing. You’re just a person who experienced a storm.

People at the stadiums fought and littered. They stole from each other. They raped and stabbed. They kept their surroundings filthy. One shot a National Guard soldier. They had to put barbed wire between the “survivors” and the National Guard, for the National Guard’s protection! The “survivors” stayed much longer than they should have. They kept complaining and demanding things long after they should have gone to work and gotten back to the affairs of normal life.

This is what social programs teach people to do. On the other side of the coin, the Japanese cleaned up after Fukushima in a few weeks, and we didn’t see angry Japanese citizens brawling in stadiums and demanding more help.

When Andrew came, I put my car in a concrete warehouse. I also protected my vehicles when other severe storms hit Miami. When Irma passed by the coast at my latitude, I put the vehicles in the garage and workshop. Do I deserve a patent or a Nobel Prize? Of course not. Even a goat is smart enough to head for shelter when it rains.

We have thunderstorms where I live. They are life-threatening…to people who stand outside waiting to be hit by lightning. I stay in the house. So far, I have survived. Life is full of risk. They key to survival is taking obvious steps to mitigate it.

I don’t know what more I can say about this. Either it’s already obvious, or you will never understand it.

I have two other significant concerns. First, the storm is projected to slow significantly once it makes landfall (overnight argh) around Monday evening or early Tuesday morning. The models then show it slowly meandering up the Peninsula, which means every Part of peninsula Florida would eventually be affected.

Every part of the peninsula would be…”affected.” Is that really a responsible way to put it? Yes, if the storm lands in Boca and then moves up to Georgia, it will at least rain everywhere on the peninsula. Some areas will get a real disaster, and others will get puddles. Isn’t a little nuance in order?

This slow meandering storm will pose a significant wind and storm threat but we could also see 2 to 3 feet of rain and life-threatening flooding.

Two to three FEET of rain? FEET? That has to be a typo. One foot would be a great deal. Hurricane Barry rained like crazy and didn’t hit two feet anywhere.

Are floods life-threatening? Yes. If you don’t evacuate or you try to travel in them. Otherwise, no.

I truly hoping people are making those inaccurate, cliche jokes next week (actually forecasts have a high degree of accuracy people just tend to remember the occasional miss like they do a rare field goal miss in a big game by a really good kicker), but there is nothing at this point that suggests that anything is going to change.

Actually, the forecast changed greatly ten hours after he published this conniption.

This mess is dated 7:00 a.m. on Friday, and by 5:00 p.m., the path was looking much better.

Was the information leading to the change unavailable to this connected Weather Channel employee, or was he just making things up?

It’s hard for me to understand how a grown male could get this emotional and lose his composure to the point where he ended up inciting panic instead of spreading information.

Here are two shots of computer models forecasters rely on. In these pictures, the storm is moving north. Try and reconcile them with, “Dorian is about to hit Florida really hard.”

This storm may actually end up farther offshore than the current forecast suggests, so “about to hit” was not a very responsible thing to say.

I just checked the 11:00 report, and Dorian’s path has, in fact, moved farther out to sea.

Here’s a great question: why is Marshall’s cry of distress still up, a day after the forecast changed? Where is the correction?

I hate to be the bearer of good tidings, but come on. Can we please take a minute and admit that the press is deliberately spreading terror?

I know things can change. I’m not stupid. They already have changed, and I’m writing about it. Right now, Dorian could start moving right toward my house at 50 mph, it could be a category 5 when it arrives, and it could sit here motionless for a week, erasing all traces of human occupation. Sure, that could happen. But shouldn’t a forecaster talk about what’s likely to happen and not obsess on the absolute worst and least likely case?

The NHC is a little less flaky, and here is what they now say:

Although the latest guidance has shifted a little bit eastward again this morning, there are still ECMWF and GFS ensemble members that do not forecast the northward turn so soon. On this basis, NHC prefers to shift the track forecast just a little bit to the right of the previous one, and the new official forecast lies along the western edge of the guidance envelope. This will allow for further adjustments in the track during future forecast cycles.

Translation: “This thing is really unlikely to hit Florida, but it could, so we are not moving the cone as far east as most models predict.”

Here is what Marshall Shepherd meant to say, I’m sure: “Dorian MIGHT hit Florida really hard, or it could blow off into the ocean and upset a bunch of shrimp.”

I guess I write like this every time a spot pops up on the weather maps, but it’s upsetting to see these people agitate the public. They’re like fire-and-brimstone preachers, screeching at the drunks in the back of the church in order to save them from hell. Their message is totally inappropriate for most of us. They treat all of us as though we were idiots. They exaggerate and threaten as if the truth wouldn’t motivate us at all.

People are reacting, Weather Channel. You can get off the soapbox now, believe me. Try buying a loaf of bread in Florida right now. Try buying bottled water. Stores are picked clean. You can relax and start telling the truth. The people who won’t prepare are never going to listen, and you’re just scaring the others.

You’re also blowing your credibility, such as it is. You blew it with me years ago. I wouldn’t trust Jim Cantore if he told me it was Saturday.

Because my dad had dementia, he was easily upset by things he saw on TV, and he really flipped out when he saw hurricane stories. I was trying to care for him, and he would badger me over and over about preparation and so on. I would reassure him, and he would forget, and I would have to do it all over again many times. The news heads know there are people who will get unnecessarily worried by their prancing and shrieking, and they do it anyway. That’s not right. They make life hard for caregivers and the people they look after, just to sell more ads. I suffered because of their thoughtlessness, and so did my dad.

It’s time for a great video classic. Remember the guy who pretended the winds were blowing him over while people walked around unconcerned behind him?

That’s Mike Seidel. Remember that name, if you insist on watching weather news. It might save you a stroke.

The Weather Channel published a ridiculous, completely dishonest defense. They said he had a hard time standing because he was tired and situated on wet grass. Okay. It’s really hard to stand on grass, isn’t it? And he had a great, yet hidden, reason for standing on something he supposedly found slick, when pavement was a few feet away.

Here’s another gem. Anderson Cooper stood in waist-high water to show how bad hurricane flooding was, while his crew filmed him from much shallower water a few feet away. The really wild thing about this is that he got indignant and tried to defend himself, making the whole situation even worse.

Why would an honest person do that? Imagine getting dressed and going to work, and having to deal with waist-deep water. Would you jump in and mess up your clothes and shoes, or would you stand on dry ground and say something like, “That water over there is waist-deep?”

Do I have to ask that?

Put down your drink before you watch this beauty. A reporter named Michelle Kosinski got in a canoe to show how deep flood waters were, and while she was talking to Matt Lauer (I will not go down that rabbit trail), a couple of guys walked by. The water was only up to their ankles. The woman put a canoe in ankle-deep water to fool the public.

It’s sad that people keep defending the panic apparatus.

If the storm comes here and gives Ocala a pounding, will it prove I’m wrong? Of course not. The nervous Nancys on TV would still be at fault for exaggerating, lying, and mischaracterizing. If their baseless predictions came true, it would just be a random thing, and we already knew that could happen.

Look at the models. Read the NHC site. Avoid TV at all costs. You can handle this just fine, because you’re not stupid. Mike Seidel and Anderson Cooper are not the kind of people you want talking to you during an emergency.

Here I am, loaded down with survival food, and the storm is becoming less of a threat by the hour.

Maybe I threw myself on that box of Pop Tarts for nothing.

UPDATE

The models now show Dorian missing Florida and Georgia entirely. One model shows it hitting South Carolina and continuing up the coast. The other shows it missing every state except for a brief blow to North Carolina.

The models predict winds in the area of 40-50 knots when the storm lands. Hurricanes start at 64 knots. Just saying.

The last measurement I saw for Dorian’s eye was 10 nautical miles. Small, small, small.

Latest Forecast not Comforting to Pessimists

Because it’s raining and I am stalling, and because it’s hard to stop looking at hurricane updates, I am here to report on the latest projection.

They are moving the projected track of Hurricane Dorian to the east. Is this a good thing? Yes. If you’re me. If you’re not me, then no, it’s not good at all.

The new projected track takes Dorian straight up the coast. People in Florida like to be near the water, so a big long scrape up the coast will cause problems for lots of Floridians.

It could be worse. Once you get north of Palm Beach, the population thins out, which is a remarkable thing, really. Why are so many people cramming into the Miami-Palm Beach corridor when they could be living in nice places like Sebastian?

People love cities. It’s like loving dysentery, but there you go.

If the eye of the storm is close to the coast, it will be at least 50 miles from me, meaning nearly nothing will happen here.

Here’s a funny thing about storm tracks. Not only is there a trend in the expected locations the storm will occupy; there is a trend in the shape of the projected track. The track is curling up like a finger over time, as if beckoning toward the Atlantic. I wonder if that means anything. I don’t mean supernaturally. If a track tends toward a certain shape, does that mean it’s likely to keep transforming into that shape? Will it have a sort of momentum that keeps pushing it to assume that form? I guess so.

Dorian’s cone of death used to be sort of a wind sock, without much of a bend in it. Now it has a pretty good bend in it. If it keeps bending, it will miss the coast. The ECMWF model now shows Dorian missing the coast. The GFS model shows it staying close to the water.

What if it misses the United States entirely? There’s a good chance it will. That would be really funny. I get tired of the Chicken Littles who revel in despair and worry. They nibble at me like ducks every time a hurricane appears. Some get irritated when I dismiss their dire prophesies. It’s pretty clear they actually get angry when disasters fail to materialize. Like Jonah, when Nineveh was spared. They definitely get mad when you refuse to join the anxiety fest. It would do them good to see their hopes for Dorian dashed.

It would do everyone in Florida a lot of good!

I’ve made some people extremely angry by criticizing hurricane hysteria. I actually quit an online forum because of it. Many people are legitimately in love with pessimism. That’s not an exaggeration. They hold it close and cuddle it, and they lash out at anyone who doesn’t want to pet it. All I can say is this: that’s not a baby you’re holding; it’s a stinking ball of pus, and I’m not getting any on me.

God tells us not to worry. That’s actually a commandment. It may well be my favorite, although I should really prefer the first commandment.

More news as it fails to develop.

You Can do a Lot with a Dirt Bike Engine Strapped to Your Back

Today has been wonderful.

My new leaf blower arrived. Finally, I know what a real leaf blower is like.

I got a handheld Husqvarna when I lived in Miami, and it was okay for blowing stuff off the porch, but it wasn’t right for a farm, so when I moved to Ocala, I got what I thought was a serious blower: a 56-volt Ego from Home Depot. The specs were right up there with their big gas jobs, and I wanted to be spared the aggravation of dealing with yet another carburetor choked by ethanol-polluted gas.

I tried to blow my oak leaves with the Ego, and the leaves actually dropped closer to the ground, as if to hang on, when the air hit them. I concluded that my leaves were impervious to blowing. After all, I was using what was supposedly a very strong blower, and the leaves went nowhere.

Last week, I ordered an Echo that puts out about 1100 CFM at over 200 mph. The Ego comes in at 600 CFM and 145 mph. Anyway, I put the Echo together and fired it up, and just as one Internet reviewer said, it was strong enough to dig holes in the yard. It ripped up thick mats of half-composted leaves and blew them through the air. It was mesmerizing. I couldn’t put it down.

It didn’t remove every leaf, but it probably got 80% of them. I ended up with a huge pile in my driveway. It was so big, I quit trying to push the leaves. I got the utility cart and a snow shovel and filled the dump bed. I made several trips into the woods and dumped the leaves there. Beautiful.

In that photo, you can see my little freshly trimmed hedges. They look nearly normal now.

My yard has been ravaged by dead leaves I couldn’t move (without taking a rake and a shovel to the whole place), but now the grass has room to grow, so I expect to see some green soon. I’ve been uncovering areas using a harrow and a leaf sweeper, and they’re already coming back, so I expect the blower-cleared areas to do the same. In any event, the leaves won’t be a problem any more.

The blower is so strong, you can move limbs with it. You have to love that. I was blowing little branches all over the place.

My leaf problem has been a big weight on my back. It was a real stronghold. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get anywhere. Then I had some success with a harrow and yard sweeper, and now I have a blower that makes using the sweeper unnecessary. It may seem strange to see someone so relieved about a yard problem, but I feel like I just got released from prison.

I got that done, and I also sprayed a bunch of Spanish moss with a solution of baking soda, water, and Dawn. I put it in the pressure washer and let fly. I also hosed some algae on my chimney. Now we’ll see if it works. My cattle tenant says copper sulfate will do the trick, so I’ll try that if the baking soda fails.

My last achievement: I took care of some business involving the title of a house I’m selling.

I’m very, very happy. I feel like I’m a Champagne bottle and God just pulled out the cork.

Tomorrow I hope to get my moonroof fixed. God is very kind, and I think he will continue to help me.

Probate About to Begin

Today I decided to see if the court clerk would allow me to deposit my dad’s will. I had it with me, and I figured I should give it a shot even though I did not have a death certificate. The clerk has a sign that says they don’t give legal advice. But of course, they did.

They advised me against giving them the will at this point, and they mentioned various concerns regarding the way his property had to be treated. I took their advice, but I was a little disappointed. I don’t like having a will anywhere except in the hands of the court clerk.

I don’t mind getting legal advice from clericals. Sometimes they know things lawyers do not, even though they’re not qualified to practice. There is no point in being stuck-up and pretending you know everything.

I had been very concerned about the will, fearing it would be lost or that some other problem would pop up. Then I thought about it. As far as I know, the only thing that will go through probate is my dad’s car. Everything else has legally passed to me already, even though it won’t be fully documented until the death certificates are sent out. It appears that the will is relatively insignificant.

His attorney is a lifesaver. She showed me how to remove all of his real estate from probate during our first consultation, which was free. I did the work myself after I left her office. I was afraid to wait for our next meeting. The work took about half an hour and cost nothing at all.

I can’t help feeling bad because she got to do so little work. If I were a layperson, she could have billed me for more time. Those are the breaks, though. She has done some research for us since I last saw her, so she will definitely be compensated.

Today her secretary was talking about setting me up with a probate paralegal, but I don’t think I need one. To transfer a used car? Surely I can handle that. I really am a lawyer.

I don’t have any idea what I’m supposed to do with the car during the probate process. I plan to keep driving it, probate or not, unless the highway patrol comes and tells me to knock it off. My mom died, and nobody came and put a boot on her car. Same for my grandparents. I assume no one cares.

I got so used to ferrying my dad around, I quit driving my own vehicle. I still have it, but I have gotten really comfortable with his SUV. My vehicle is an enormous diesel pickup. I don’t really want to use it every time I leave the house.

There is no other beneficiary, so it’s not like I’m embezzling the use of the car from anyone. Maybe I’m embezzling it from myself. I probably won’t press charges.

Maybe I could blackmail myself and get money for not turning me in.

I donated his shower chair and the remaining medical supplies from his closet to the ALF, and I took all–ALL–of his clothes to the Salvation Army. I want all of that stuff GONE GONE GONE. It was depressing to see his favorite houseshoes on a shelf and his suits on hangers. When I put the suits in bags for the Salvation Army, I could smell him on them. They smelled the way his closet did when I was a kid. I don’t need that. This process is hard enough as it is.

While I was at the thrift store, I looked to see if they had anything good. Thrift stores are great places to buy cast iron cookware. The store was small and had very little that would interest anyone. I went next door to the Humane Society thrift store, and it was much larger. It was packed with merchandise. That upset me. People care more about dumb animals than they do about human beings. They should be ashamed. It’s despicable.

If it turns out the work I did on my dad’s real estate is sound, probate should be a snap. I was hoping to confirm it with the attorney this week, but my dad died before I made it to her office. I think we’re in the clear, though. It wasn’t a difficult legal problem to understand or solve. I’ll find out when I talk to her.

Because estate stuff isn’t my field, I will not take a chance and say I’m sure everything is fine. Good lawyers don’t shoot from the hip. They do research, or they refuse to issue firm conclusions.

This may be much easier than I had thought.

That’s all that’s happening right now. I still have a lot of pain, but it’s not like it was before. I love my dad very intensely. I feel like I lost a child. The last two days were hard, but no matter how strong grief is, time wears it down.

I was much closer to my mother than my dad, and she adored me. Somehow, losing her hurt less. Maybe it’s because my dad was so dependent and because he became so effusive with his love.

Today was good. I think tomorrow will be better.

I Will Find You, and I Will Apologize to You

I have an important warning for everyone. When it becomes public knowledge that you have worn blackface in the past, and it will become public knowledge, because apparently everyone has done it…stay away from Liam Neeson.

What a crazy news week. The governor of Virginia, Democrat Ralph Northam, was accused of wearing blackface or a Klan hood in an ancient yearbook photo. His defense was remarkable: he said he wasn’t either of the men in the picture, but he did work up an act in which he applied shoe polish and impersonated Michael Jackson (a black man who worked in whiteface, and come to think of it, girlface). We also learned that one of his medical school nicknames was “Coonman.” This was also in the yearbook. I think calling yourself “Coonman” is considerably worse than moonwalking in black loafers, but no one has ever cared what I thought.

I can’t figure out what Northam’s defense theory is. It’s as if he were accused of stealing his neighbor’s silver, and he defended himself by saying it couldn’t have been him because he was busy shooting his neighbor’s cat.

Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax, a black man, got excited because it looked like he was in for a promotion. Then a woman from his past popped up and made a credible accusation of rape. His defense is that the woman doesn’t want him to become governor. I may be mischaracterizing that a bit, but that’s the impression I got.

To compound the scandal even further, the next person in line to become governor, Attorney General Mark Herring, says he, too, appeared in blackface. To make matters worse, I got this information from an article written by Fox reporter Alex Pappas, who, according to the latest Twitter buzz, likes to darken his face with Nutella and go shopping dressed as Diana Ross.

It’s possible that I made up that last part. I make things up, and George Soros doesn’t pay me a dime.

Is there anyone in America who hasn’t worn blackface? Can we all just get it out on the table and be done with it?

It’s notable that left-wing activists Shaun King and Rachel Dolezal never appeared in blackface. They have that going for them. They did, however, get jobs as professional black people simply by telling employers they were black. Evidently, they don’t check things like that. Both activists are white. I’m trying to figure out whether they got their jobs through white privilege, but it’s making my head hurt.

What’s next? Remember when John Kerry debated George Bush in a heavy coat of orange paint? Why wasn’t he excoriated for appearing in orangeface or Oompa Loompa face or circus peanut face? President Trump always looks a little orange. Maybe they should both be exiled. Or maybe they could form a mime duo and call it Orange Man Crew.

There is a purportedly black model named Winnie Harlow, and she has cashed in on vitiligo. She has de-pigmented patches of skin which just happened to arrange themselves in an attractive pattern. Isn’t she appropriating my culture, at least partially? I think she’s guilty of at least partial whiteface, or maybe Holsteinface.

I can’t believe we care about this stuff. If Ralph Northam were currently appearing as Coonman at a local cabaret, I would understand why people were upset, but he committed his crimes over 30 years ago. It is conceivable, to most of us, that a person could change in three decades. For instance, just to make up an example, a terrorist who mailed people bombs could become a close personal friend and ghostwriter for Barack Obama, as well as a tenured university professor. Why isn’t anyone considering that? Besides, things were very different back when Northam did his act. In the 1980’s, many human beings had what scientists call “a sense of humor,” so by today’s standards, their perceptions were quite warped.

You know who’s not talking about this very much? Jimmy Kimmel. The man who helped bring us “Girls on Trampolines” has become a respected advocate for female dignity, so somehow, he is capable of getting a pass from leftists when almost no one else can. Nonetheless, he isn’t going out of his way to remind people of the videos in which he painted his whole body brown and pretended to be NBA great and confirmed negro Karl Malone.

It wasn’t just blackface. It was blackbody. If blackface is a felony, blackbody should be a capital offense.

Leftists are blowing it. If they went after Kimmel, we would finally have a capital crime for which whites were punished disproportionately. Other than driving golf carts across greens.

Not only did Kimmel suit up in Shinola; he tried to sound black and pretended to be very stupid. But it was all in good fun. Whereas Coonman was making a serious political statement when he moonwalked drunk at parties.

We have gotten so crazy, it’s no longer possible to guess what will upset us next. You can’t alter your behavior to avoid persecution, because no one really knows where the boundaries are or whether they still exist.

I’ll bet we see a wave of blackface photos and memes now. Offenders will be exposed right and left. If I were Robert Downey, I’d move to Australia as a prophylactic measure. I’d rather live in the most physically miserable country on earth than be in America with the nut horde after me in earnest.

I don’t know who the governor of Virginia will when everything shakes out. By the time they weed out all the blackfacers in the line of succession, they may have to install a guy who paints center lines on highways. And by “guy,” I mean a human being who, as of this moment, believes…themselves?…itself?…zeself?…to be male.

If the earth were a train, I’d be pulling the brake cord right now and looking for a good place to jump off. I spend a lot of my time in a memory care facility these days, surrounded by people who don’t know their own spouses any more, and I would really like to be among the rational the rest of the time. How long will it be until they vanish like the passenger pigeon? In the future, asylums will be obsolete, because the behavior inside and outside them will be nearly indistinguishable.

I appeared in blackface once. I might as well close with that confession. Many years ago, when I was in junior high, a friend of mine helped me get made up as a gorilla from The Planet of the Apes. It was Halloween. Freaked the neighbors out good. I realize gorillas aren’t people, but we all know that when white people say “gorilla” or “monkey” or even “chair,” they’re really thinking the N-word.

I don’t know what will happen to me now, but one thing is for sure. I will never be the governor of Virginia.

I think this is my stop. Hold my beer while I jump.

Big Day Draws Near

This is a former draft I published months later. The publication date, January 9, 2019, is approximate.

Things are heating up here. My dad is determined not to go to assisted living, and I have started speaking very bluntly to him about the necessity to get it done. All his life, people have walked on eggshells around him, so he is not happy to hear me lay things out for him without flinching. In the past, he could shout people down or threaten to fire them, but now he has to engage and be confronted just like the rest of us mortals. There is a lot to tell him, because he has deteriorated so much. There are many clear indications that he needs to move.

When a parent first shows signs of dementia, caring for him isn’t a big deal. Maybe you put his pills in a dispenser for him, and you help him when the computer confuses him, but he still pays his own bills and drives to stores. That’s the left end of the spectrum. On the right end, just before death, there is an area in which you become a lot like a zookeeper. Maybe 30% of your effort is dedicated to things like managing finances and driving him to doctors. The other 70% of the time, your activities involve cleaning and sanitizing, and I don’t mean sweeping up cracker crumbs.

It’s stressful. Having to remove offensive materials and sanitize everything by yourself over and over takes its toll over time. To use a popular word, the lifestyle is not sustainable. Ways have to be found to end it before the caretaker has a nervous breakdown.

We are pretty far off to the right now. He can still talk. He knows who I am. He is still capable of a certain level of reasoning. He can’t look after himself at all, however. No driving. No using the PC. No using the cell phone. No walking except in the house and at medical facilities. No cooking. No cleaning. No laundry. Nothing business-related at all. He no longer has the ability to do any of these things.

I can’t take him out to lunch any more. I was taking him to restaurants three times a week, and sometimes I took him grocery shopping, but there is just no way now. It would take him 10 minutes to walk from the car to a table, and awful things might happen while we were out. I never put him in the car unless I have no choice. I have gear to protect his seat, and I have a big gym bag full of disaster supplies, including a complete change of clothes for him.

He sleeps fourteen or more hours a day. It seems like it depends on the medications he receives; I think some drugs keep him awake. The other day I had to get him sleeping pills. It seems strange, getting sleeping pills for someone who sleeps as much as he does, but when he can’t sleep, he wanders around at night and in the morning. He wakes me up, and he’s likely to get into mischief or fall.

He got up early a couple of days ago, and he kept asking me if he had any obligations to take care of. He said he was worried about his schoolwork. He was afraid he might have exams coming up. I couldn’t convince him that he didn’t have exams any more. I asked him about it the next day, and the whole thing seemed crazy to him. The delusion had passed. There will be others, though.

He made me very nervous when I gave him his first sleeping pill. To say it worked would be an understatement. It didn’t just make him drowsy. He seemed like he was stuck halfway between sleeping and waking. I had to take him to his bedroom in a wheelchair and roll him into bed. I was afraid he would quit breathing during the night, but that didn’t happen. Evidently it didn’t affect his breathing at all.

Unfortunately, he is still able to argue energetically (in well-worn circles). The main thing he argues about is his impending departure. He doesn’t want to go live with “old people” at an ALF.

I had to let him know that a lot of the residents were in better shape than he was. He can’t see himself as he is. If he were living at the ALF, he would be around people who are stronger and peppier than he is. After all, they’re not all demented. He would draw energy from them. He’s not interested. He says he will stay here until he dies. He doesn’t understand that this isn’t an option. Unless he dies suddenly, he will get so weak I’ll be able to have him moved to a facility without any real resistance.

My friend Mike, the hospice exec, says he will be much better off if he’s already in an ALF when he reaches the point where he has to go to a live-in hospice. The ALF will be able to warn me that his needs are changing, and I’ll have time to pick a nice place and work things out. If it happens while he’s still here, there will be a rush, and the choices may not be as good. Fortunately, barring a sudden change in the very near future, that’s not going to happen. He’s going to an ALF as soon as I can get him to submit.

It’s disheartening to hear the things my dad says about me now. He says I’m selfish and that I don’t love him. He says I’m obligated to be his caregiver because I’m inheriting from him.

Mike compares dementia to drunkenness; he says alcohol is truth serum, and dementia works the same way. He’s right. My dad keeps getting worse at hiding the disappointing parts of his personality. His less-laudable thoughts pop out more often now.

I am now very direct with him. I don’t berate him, but I no longer worry about offending him. When he tells me I’m a bad son whose job is very easy, I remind him that he has never taken care of anyone in his life. He had two children, and he has never changed a diaper. When his mother’s health fell apart and caused her to move into a home, he did nothing for her, apart from giving advice on getting government money. He didn’t pay her bills. He only visited twice. He never did her laundry or changed her bed or paid anyone who did.

He didn’t take care of my mother while she was dying from cancer. He didn’t bathe her or take her to the toilet. He went on business trips and left her by herself. While I’m on the subject, my mother said my sister never came by to help. She wrote about it in a diary, which my sister stole and threw out. My sister is actually proud of that. She bragged about it.

If I left my dad alone, he would die in a week.

When my sister got lung cancer, he gave her financial help, after securing a mortgage on her house, but that was all he did. He never went to the hospital with her or met her doctors.

When I was born, he was out playing pinball. He didn’t feel like waiting in the hospital, so he left.

When he tells me I have to be his full-time caregiver forever in order to be a good son, I remind him of these things. It’s very good to clear the air. There is still enough of him left to gaslight me, so it’s important to me to let him know I’m not taken in. You shouldn’t harangue parents about their failings, but when one tries to gaslight you, you need to state the truth. Ordinarily, I don’t dredge up things from people’s pasts and throw them in their faces, but when they gaslight and try to make innocent people out to be the villains, they obligate me to respond.

Referring to my status as the only beneficiary of his will, he told me I was well-compensated for the unpleasant work I do. That was ugly, somewhat ruthless, and untrue. I asked him if I had to continue cleaning up after him and waiting on him in order to inherit from him. I reminded him that I inherited from my mother’s side of the family without doing anything at all for them. My grandparents never demanded anything from me in exchange for what they left me. Who does that? It would be sick.

He told me it sounded like I didn’t enjoy spending time with him, and he asked me if that was the case. When I was younger, I flinched when he said manipulative things like that. Abusive people count on their victims to back down and let them promulgate their fantastic versions of the truth. Today when my dad asked me that question, I gave him what he asked for. I said I didn’t enjoy spending time with him. I said that when I was with him, I was always cleaning, working, or being yelled at. I said this was the result of his refusal to let me find him better care. When you’ve spent the day having someone curse at you and make revolting messes you had to clean up, you don’t feel like getting together in the evening for s’mores or family meals (which I would have to cook).

One great thing about these conversations is that he forgets them. Some of the sense of what we talk about may stick in his unconscious mind, but right now, he doesn’t remember the discussion we had this morning. Not unless this is an exceptional day. Sometimes he gives me ultimatums and makes threats. Sometimes he tries to get me to agree to ridiculous schemes in which we will sit down with a yet-to-be-named “expert” who will tell me he doesn’t need an ALF. It doesn’t bother me, because I know his plans are like sandcastles. They collapse in short order and leave no traces behind.

It may seem strange that I argue with him at all, given his memory problems, but there are two good reasons for telling him the truth. First, it does me good to confront him and shut down the gaslighting. Second, even though he forgets conversations, it’s still possible to have a little influence over him. If you repeat things enough, little things may soak in. He needs to hear about the benefits of assisted living and the untenability of our current situation, because it may push him toward a different mindset.

I try not to have long talks with him. One way to end a conversation is to tell him we’ll do whatever it is he wants to do, as long as he reminds me the next day. Because he tells himself he has no memory problems, he agrees. He feels like he got a concession out of me, and I feel good because I know we’re done.

Sometimes I just walk away and tell him I’m all done talking with him, but I prefer to work things out so the conversation ends in a more normal manner. I don’t really enjoy leaving the room and waiting for his shouts die down gradually.

I think most people lie to the demented. It’s more efficient. I don’t do that. I could tell him he’s right about everything. I could take him to the ALF for “the weekend” and then leave him there for good. I don’t believe a Christian should lie. If I choose to be truthful, God will help me.

I am hoping to hear from the ALF people tomorrow, and if God is with me, my dad will be a permanent ALF resident before the end of the month.

I wish things had turned out better for him, but I can’t help looking forward to the end of the distasteful behavior and disgusting jobs. As his abilities have declined, I’ve been getting little tastes of the future, and they are tantalizing.

I got out of the habit of reading newspapers because he likes to read in the bathroom and throw them on the floor by the toilet. After that, who would want to touch them? Now I’m reading them again. He can’t walk to the mailbox easily, and he gets up very late. I get the papers before he gets up, and I read them myself.

I do the puzzles. I missed that. He used to do them himself, but now he can’t get through them very quickly, so he doesn’t need all of them. I keep an eye on his puzzle backlog, and when he runs low, I pass on a puzzle and give it to him when I’m done with the paper.

I don’t mark up the Jumbles. I do those without writing anything, so I don’t have to mess them up.

I can go to the grocery alone now. I love that. I don’t have to stop over and over in the aisles and let him catch up. I don’t have to worry about him falling in the store or having some kind of hygiene problem.

Some day soon, I’ll be able to use the living room. I’ll be able to burn the two chairs we got from my late aunt in 1994. Right now it’s part of his domain. He has a lift recliner and a TV table. He eats his meals there. When I go anywhere near the living room, he shouts, “STEVE!”, and insists that I drop everything to attend to some whim. In the future, I’ll be able to sit down there and relax. I’ll be able to get a couch.

I’ll be able to leave home for more than three hours. I’ll be able to travel without the ordeal of finding him temporary care. I’ll be able to go to Miami to wrap up our affairs there. I’ll be able to have friends over without making them come to my upstairs lair. They won’t have to worry about being insulted or hit on when they see my dad. They won’t have to deal with him monopolizing the conversation as though they were his friends and not mine.

The house won’t stink. I won’t have to wipe the kitchen down with alcohol, glass cleaner, and sanitizing wipes every time I go in. I won’t have to worry about stepping in mucus or worse. I’ll be able to take his mattress to the dump.

His shadow over things has been receding for some time. First he lost the ability to jump into business affairs and cause problems. Later, it became hard for him to deal with stairs, so I got the second floor of the house all to myself. Then the other things started to fall into my hands.

Maybe once he moves, we’ll be able to restore our relationship to a degree. It will be nice to be able to sit and talk with him without a mop in my hand. I’m assuming he’ll cooperate. He may be too consumed with vengeance to have a normal conversation, or, if he resists too long, he may have no idea who I am.

It’s too bad he isn’t declining with more grace. Not my fault, though. And it was inevitable; he ordained it himself. Even now, I think he could do a good deal better if he wanted to.

When you’re an extremely angry, domineering person with a huge ego, and other people have spoiled you all your life, you are pretty much guaranteed an awkward descent toward death. You can spend your youth and middle age in denial all you want, and you can push other people to accommodate you, but there is no denying disability, death, and the reduction in clout that accompanies them.

The only important thing left to do in his life is a rapprochement with God. I am hoping Christians will work with him at whatever facility takes him. God keeps telling me he will be saved, so I know there is a plan.

Misgivings are Inevitable

My dad’s transition to the ALF may be happening tomorrow. We’re buying a one-week trial that I intend to turn into a permanent stay if at all possible.

I’m not all that thrilled with the way things are going.

They offered two choices: plain old ALF care and memory care. I want him in plain old ALF care because memory care is not as appealing to new residents. The other patients are in worse shape, and there are doors that keep the patients from wandering around. It would be easier to sell him on the main area, and he would enjoy it more.

I thought the best thing was to put him in the main area at first. Then, if necessary, he could be moved to the memory care unit. They didn’t agree. Evidently, his last stay gave them the idea he might run off, so they want him in memory care from day one.

Memory care covers a wide spectrum of mental states. Some patients are nearly vegetables. My dad is in bad shape, but he can talk and read. He knows who he is. He’s not rolling a wheelchair in circles, repeating the same nonsense syllables over and over. I think he would be fine in the main area for at least a few weeks.

I’m afraid the memory care unit will hit him in the face like a brick. Passing through their special red doors may feel like walking past the sign at the entrance to Dante’s vision of hell: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

I don’t want him to suffer. On the other hand, I cannot continue caring for him by myself. I can’t exchange my life for his.

I find myself wondering if there is a better place. I suppose I’m grasping at straws. I should think about what I’ve told other people: I have learned that there is no good solution, so I need to be satisfied with the least bad solution available.

He could stay here a bit longer. I could spend $15,000 per month on 24-hour assistants until he finally sank to the point where there was absolutely no choice. Am I wrong to choose not to do it? It’s his money, after all.

I would still have no life, though. I would be policing the assistant every day. I would still have to put him in respite care over and over in order to travel for business, and he would fight. And there would be the extremely unpleasant experience of having employees share a house with us.

The big problem isn’t a lack of money. It’s a lack of relatives to share the burden. Maybe a gigantic sum of money could overcome that, but based on what I’ve seen of the elder-care industry, I doubt it. I think if you spent a hundred thousand dollars per month, hired help would still give you the same problems you get for three thousand. They just don’t care as much as relatives.

It seems I’m stuck with the ALF. There is a nicer one farther away, but it seemed impersonal, and the drive will make visiting him inconvenient.

I want to visit a lot. I hope to go every other day. Since he agreed to try it, I have come to realize his departure gives us an opportunity to have a normal relationship. Right now, he misses me even though he lives downstairs. I come down to clean up messes, drive him to appointments, and be insulted and yelled at, and then I go back upstairs. I don’t spend any more time with him than I have to. Once someone else is doing the dirty work, I’ll be able to sit down and have a normal lunch with him. We’ll be able to have conversations of a sort. Today we went for a short walk, and the sensation of novelty and relief made me realize how abnormal our relationship has become.

If it doesn’t work out, I can always look for another way.

It doesn’t matter that much. He keeps declining. If memory care is overkill right now, the situation will probably be very different in a month or two. If I make a bad choice, it probably will not affect him for long. That which is overkill today may be completely appropriate in March.

This stuff seems very real now. I used to read about the short life expectancy and the severe problems that come with the progression of the disease, and I believed what I read, but it’s different to see it coming to pass. It’s as if a long, hot summer I thought would never end is over and the first frost has come.

This is a nasty illness. It’s better to go from cancer or a heart attack. Where is the closure with dementia? You never settle anything. You battle the disease and the patient, all the way to the end.

This is how it is. It’s not good, but I accept it, and I’m glad I won’t be a full-time caregiver any more. I can’t prevent other people from reaping what they’ve sown. I’ll do my best, and if there is pain involved, I’ll keep on living. I’ve seen misfortune before.

I’ll keep reporting on things as they develop.

Plugin Eats Comments

I installed a new plugin to prevent spam comments. It sort of looks like it has been killing ALL comments without telling me. It has been deleting them, so I can’t tell how many comments have been wiped out.

I have made changes, so now it will hold comments it doesn’t like.

If you tried to comment recently and never saw your comment posted, sorry. I am working on it.

Counting his Chickens Before the Eggs Have Been Laid

I have a couple of interesting things to write about today.

First, Michael Avenatti keeps whiffing at the plate. He is coming apart like Charlie Sheen at a Mormon retreat.

Avenatti represents porn actress (“star” is not an appropriate word to use for people who compete for the worst jobs in the movie industry) Stormy Daniels. She has sued Donald Trump based on two legal theories. One is that Trump defamed her by suggesting she lied about him. The other is that a nondisclosure agreement Trump got her to sign is invalid.

When you’re a public figure, which, regrettably, Daniels is, it’s hard to sue for defamation. Not only do you have to prove someone lied about you; you have to show they did it with malice. Daniels couldn’t even clear the first bar. Her suit was rejected because Trump’s remarks concerning her were just bloviation, or “rhetorical hyperbole.” True or untrue, his remarks were not serious statements of fact.

Daniels has to pay about $300,000, including money for filing a meritless claim. No matter how you look at it, this reflects more harshly on Avenatti than Daniels.

Avenatti went to a very good law school and graduated first in his class, yet somehow, he wasn’t able to get a run-of-the-mill tort case before a finder of fact. The case never got off the ground. He should have seen that coming. A law student shouldn’t screw up this badly. I know. I did better work, before federal judges, when I was in law school.

I don’t get Avenatti. Doesn’t his academic success mean anything? How can a person who did so well in law school do such a poor job? As far as I know, the most successful lawyers are not all top students, because law school and the practice of law are not the same thing, but you would still expect a valedictorian to be able to read and apply the most basic rules of defamation law. The problems with Avenatti’s case would come up, literally, within the first four or five minutes of research.

Maybe he’s a bad lawyer. It looks that way. It’s hard to see how a good lawyer could do something this stupid. He has made a lot of money, but successful lawyers are not always good lawyers. Look at Michael Cohen. The world is full of terrible lawyers who got rich fast by chasing ambulances, running firms that were really referral services, lobbying, and so on. Maybe Avenatti is like John Edwards. Maybe he’s just an ambulance chaser with a lot of gall.

Here’s the other thing I find interesting about the legal fees award: Avenatti committed a gross, public ethics violation in a ludicrous attempt to defend himself. Responding to Twitter users who were ridiculing his failures, he called Trump’s lawyer (who beat him) “dishonest.”

Here is the text of his remarkable tweet:

Charles Harder and Trump deserve each other because they are both dishonest,” Avenatti tweeted. “If Stormy has to pay $300k to Trump in the defamation case (which will never hold up on appeal) and Trump has to pay Stormy $1,500,000 in the NDA case (net $1,200,000 to Stormy), how is this a Trump win?

It is unethical for one attorney to insult another. That may be hard to believe, if you think TV shows are a good guide to what goes on in law practice, but it’s true. Take a look at what the Florida Bar says about it:

Whether orally or in writing, lawyers should avoid vulgar language, disparaging personal remarks, or acrimony toward other counsel, parties, or witnesses.

One idiot in Florida got suspended for two years, simply because of his rudeness. It’s not a joke.

Avenatti works in other states, but I’m sure the rules are the same there.

How can you be at the top of your law school class and be unfamiliar with a basic rule of ethics?

I can’t figure out how he did so well. Did he blackmail his professors to give him good grades? It’s a mystery.

In his unethical attack on Trump’s lawyer, Avenatti said something else that was bizarre. He suggested Trump had actually lost. You just read it. He asks how Trump can claim victory if he gets $300,000 in fees in the defamation case and loses $1.5 million in the NDA case. The big problem with this argument is that Trump has not lost the NDA case, and there has been no $1.5 million verdict.

What on earth is Avenatti talking about?

He reminds me of a scene from an Albert Brooks movie. In the movie, Brooks and his wife sell everything they have, buy an RV, and start touring the country. They plan to live on their savings. At their first stop, Las Vegas, the wife loses everything playing roulette. While Brooks is yelling at her, she says, “I’ll win it back.”

Avenatti is saying, “I’ll win it back.” Actually, it’s worse. He’s basically saying he already won it back.

Meanwhile, Daniels says she was not behind the defamation lawsuit. She said he filed it without her consent. That’s unethical, too.

I admit, I don’t know the rule he broke, and I don’t remember being taught that it was unethical to file suits without getting permission, back when I was busy getting an easy A in Ethics, but come on. The rules also don’t say it’s unethical to show up in court naked, but it’s still pretty obvious that it’s a problem. He created a giant debt for this woman. She may have to take her clothes off 50 or 60 times to square it. You can’t do that to a client!

Some things are so obviously unethical, it’s not necessary to draft a rule to prohibit them. Putting a bomb in opposing counsel’s car is unethical. Hitting on a judge to get favorable rulings is unethical. Filing a lawsuit without asking your client for permission is so far out of bounds, I doubt ethics experts have even considered the question.

No, they probably have. There are so many crazy, untalented, desperate lawyers; I’m sure Avenatti isn’t the first to pull this trick.

I predict Avenatti’s other lawsuit will fail, and I can more or less guarantee that he, not Stormy Daniels, will be paying the $300,000 that just got awarded. If he doesn’t, she may hire a real lawyer and sue him. If she does, I hope he hires a real lawyer instead of trying to represent himself.

Unbelievable. How did a public figure this strange even come to exist?

Second thing for today: my dad is enrolled in hospice care.

If you have an older relative who has a serious medical problem that MIGHT be fatal soon–just MIGHT–you may be able to get a lot of free hospice stuff from Medicare. I’m surprised at what we got. We’re getting a social worker, nursing visits, possible CNA help, an oxygen concentrator (which he doesn’t need), a box of emergency morphine, and a lot of other things I can’t remember.

They’re going to work with him for a few weeks, and if it appears that he’s declining badly, he’ll stay in the program.

The only question now is this: will it make my life easier or harder?

My dad’s care is going to be pretty good no matter what. The real purpose behind the effort I’m making is to save my own life. I need backup and rest. When people come to your house to help a disabled relative, it’s not helpful unless you can stay out of it. If you have to sit and watch, or you have to answer questions, or if you have to participate in any way at all, it adds to your burden.

We’re going to see what happens. If they make things worse, I’ll send them packing.

Meanwhile, he’s all set up for a brief ALF stay. I’m going to drop him while I travel for a couple of days. I may give him up for more time than I have to. Why not live a little? Anyway, he’s going to give it a try, and this will help him get used to the idea.

He’s going to be in an ALF eventually, unless he dies suddenly. Within a few months, he will have to go, so he might as well start accustoming himself.

I’m surprised they’re bringing emergency drugs. They like to have such things in the house in case he has a sudden need. He’s very lucky I’m the one caring for him. I’m not going to break into the stash on the first day, turn off the phone, and take all the morphine. Not everyone in the family has my self-control.

When my mother had cancer, we had to buy a locking box for her Dilaudid. The day after she died, my aunt showed us the box. It was open and empty. That didn’t take long.

I’ve been reading about the nonexistent “opioid crisis.” There is no crisis for responsible people, unless it’s the crisis of being unable to get drugs they need. The crisis people are the addicts. The government is taking a gun control-type approach, attacking law-abiding people in order to control the lawless. They’re cutting back on prescriptions and even counting people’s pills. Sounds smart, but in reality, addicts will still get whatever they want. I say that as the brother of an addict. You could seal my sister in a steel box on Mars, and within an hour, she would have at least two bottles of Vicodin.

Addicts are phenomenal networkers. Addiction is an incredible motivator, and they learn fast. They have networks of friends and doctors with foreign-sounding names. They know who will write prescriptions and who won’t. They know which pharmacists are friendly and which ones are smart. They have a remarkable underworld the rest of us never see.

A whole lot of the opioids addicts take are coming in from China. Tormenting the rest of us at CVS won’t have any effect on their supply. If I were an addict, I would bypass the medical system entirely. It’s expensive, it requires a lot of acting, and it leaves a paper trail. No one ever gets prosecuted for doing fentanyl or heroin they bought on the street, and when you buy it, you don’t have to wait in line at the pharmacy.

In view of the idiotic restrictions we are now seeing, I am shocked to learn that someone is about to bring me morphine in a box. I didn’t even ask for it, and I have no idea what I would use it for. They didn’t check to see if I was an addict. They just said, “Here it comes.”

The world has never made much sense. I should learn not to be surprised so easily.

I hope hospice works out. In any case, it will be good preparation for the future, because he WILL need it before long.

It’s nice to get “free” stuff from Medicare, but I still hate socialism. I would much rather have the crazy taxes he has paid throughout his life. We could pay for his medical problems and have enough left over to buy a big house.

I’m sure I’ll write about our experiences.

More

Someone must have reminded Avenatti about the rules of ethics and the elements of defamation, because he deleted the tweet in which he called Trump’s lawyer dishonest. My bet: Trump’s lawyer called him up and gave him a law lesson plus the threat of a severe paddling.

Avenatti has spent the day firing off desperate, frenzied tweets trying to shift the attention to other people’s supposed shortcomings and misdeeds. It’s not a good look, and it doesn’t work. All he’s doing is calling attention to the blood in the water.

If You Investigate Anyone Long Enough, You Will Find a Crime

For a long time, I’ve been critical of the non-thinking extremists who have been calling for Trump’s impeachment, but it’s starting to look like they might finally have a hook to hang their hopes on.

One of the unfortunate characteristics of the impeachment enthusiasts is their lack of familiarity with the law and the concept of due process. They seem to think you can impeach a president simply because you don’t like him or because he does things you disagree with. Of course, this is not the way it works.

The Constitution says, “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Leftists need to be aware that this list does not include things like getting a draft deferment for bone spurs, banning travel to the US from Muslim countries, being rich, enforcing immigration laws, marrying models, or calling backward African countries mean names. You have to do something illegal in order to get in trouble. For example, Bill Clinton committed perjury.

It’s also important to point out that impeachment is not removal from office. If it were, Clinton would have been forced out. Impeachment is like being indicted. The House impeaches and refers the matter to the Senate, and the Senate functions as a court and holds a trial.

A lot of people who know virtually nothing about the law think Trump should be impeached based on “collusion” with Russia prior to the election. That’s wrong. Collusion is not a crime. If Trump had wanted, he could have made a promise to collude one of his campaign planks, and no one could have done anything about it.

Robert Mueller is investigating collusion; that’s true. But that’s not because collusion itself is illegal. It’s because it’s a public policy concern. We don’t want the Russians or anyone else deciding who wins our elections, even if they do it legally. We were okay with it when Obama put up websites that allowed the Chinese to contribute to his campaign without security checks, but now, somehow, we care.

Several people have been indicted, but none of them have been indicted for collusion per se. They have been indicted for illegal acts which are not collusion.

Some of those acts were not even committed until Mueller applied skillful pressure.

Mueller can’t prosecute anyone for collusion, so it’s a little weird that he was appointed in the first place. Why appoint someone to investigate something which is not a crime? I don’t know the answer. One would expect Congress to take up such matters, just like they get involved in things like protecting kids from music albums with dirty lyrics.

Here’s something else that’s weird: we don’t have a complete description of the things Mueller is allowed to investigate. Why is that? The secrecy is disturbing. Isn’t this the kind of thing the Bill of Rights was supposed to prevent? It reminds me of The Count of Montecristo.

We have some snippets from Rod Rosenstein, indicating that Mueller is allowed to see if Paul Manafort “committed crimes by colluding with Russian government officials with respect to the Russian government’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 election.” That makes it seem like there is a crime called “collusion,” but there isn’t. The wording is unfortunate. It should say, “committed crimes while colluding.” As far as I know, you can collude all you want, but if you commit crimes while you’re at it, you have a problem.

Rosenstein may have the mistaken belief that collusion is a crime. Let’s assume he thinks it is. The fact that he mentioned it in a memo to Mueller doesn’t mean anything at all. Rod Rosenstein doesn’t write our laws. He may have made a huge blunder.

Collusion could involve things like bribes, fraud, illegal contributions, and so on. On the other hand, it appears it can be done without committing any crimes at all. Banning collusion itself would probably be unconstitutional, based on all sorts of issues, including the right to free expression and the right to free association. It would also be awfully hard to define collusion well enough to put it in a written statute.

If I were wrong about this, surely someone would have pointed to an applicable law by now. The left is jam-packed with people who desperately want collusion to be a crime, and many of them are attorneys, but if anyone has come up with such a law, it has not made the news.

I’m no expert, and I have done no research, but I do have a little common sense, and besides, Alan Dershowitz agrees with me. He’s a pretty sharp guy, and I have considerable faith in him.

No one has been indicted for “collusion.” All the people who have gone down have been indicted for other things Mueller discovered while he was supposedly investigating collusion.

That’s where Trump’s problem comes in.

Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen got himself indicted for a number of things. None could be considered collusion. Mueller had some issue with Cohen, which has not been revealed, and somehow the FBI was able to turn it into a warrant of astounding reach. Generally, law enforcement can’t grab all your files and then go through them to see if there’s anything incriminating. The Constitution calls that “unreasonable search and seizure.” They have to come up with evidence that you may have something juicy, and they have to limit the scope of their warrants. This is especially true when they go after a lawyer’s files, because lawyers and clients are entitled to confidentiality. In Michael Cohen’s case, they were able to barge in and take everything he had.

The feds have Cohen hanging by a hook in his nose, and Cohen knows just about everything about Trump’s dumbest move.

Trump apparently slept with Stormy Daniels, an aging porn star, and he directed Cohen to pay her to go away. The feds say this is a violation of federal campaign law, because it constitutes a contribution.

It’s a little odd. If Trump paid the money, the payment was legal, because you can spend whatever you want on your own campaign. If Cohen footed the bill, it’s a felony, but Cohen, not Trump, is the criminal. We are now being told that Cohen paid and Trump reimbursed him secretly. That brings up a question: is it legal to contribute to your own campaign through a straw man? I have no idea.

What if Trump expected Cohen to absorb the loss? Is there such a thing as “conspiracy to make an illegal campaign contribution”? Maybe that would be a crime. Still, Trump was relying on a licensed attorney’s advice. Is making a bad decision based on bad legal advice, and then committing a highly technical violation of obscure laws, something that would ground a felony conviction?

Dinesh D’Souza went to prison for straw man contributions, but he was contributing to another person’s campaign, and his scheme was his own idea. He didn’t have a leg to stand on. Trump spent money on his own campaign, which is legal, and he did it on the advice of an attorney. Can he get indicted for telling Cohen to pay, when he secretly intended to reimburse him? Is this something election law expressly prohibits? Does it fall under the general scope of catch-all laws againt fraud? If so, impeachment may be on the table after all.

Trump arrived on the scene as an amateur politician. When his campaign started blowing up, he had no idea what he was doing. He was probably amazed to see himself succeeding, and he had to rush around to find a team to guide him. In all likelihood, he knew very little about campaign laws when he paid Daniels off. He probably thought it was completely legal. Obviously, he did not consult a qualified attorney. Cohen is a fixer; he went to the country’s worst law school, and he is probably not an expert on anything. Election law is a specialty, and Cohen is not someone you can rely on to help you avoid violations.

Dershowitz (a Democrat) actually does research, and he thinks Trump has not committed any crimes. He knows much more than I do, so maybe I should just listen to him and leave it at that. Still, I have not seen anyone discussing the issues I’m bringing up, and they seem very obvious to me.

If I were on the impeachment bandwagon, I would be trying to find ways to go after Trump for fraud or conspiracy. If I were Mueller, I would be exploiting this angle. If I were a New York state prosecutor in Manhattan, I would be waiting for Mueller or other federal prosecutors to come up with something, and then I would see if I could do anything under state law (because if I were a New York state prosecutor, I would almost certainly be a leftist).

Let’s see. What would I ask?

1. Was the payment to Daniels a campaign contribution? If not, everyone goes home. If so, on to question 2.

2. Did Trump direct Cohen to make the payment? If not, Trump goes home, and maybe Cohen goes to prison. End of story. If so, on to question 3.

3. If Trump directed the payment, did he say up front that he would reimburse Cohen? If so, things look pretty good for Trump, and maybe Cohen has an out because he didn’t actually make a contribution, but we still have to ask question 4.

4. Is it illegal to make a clandestine contribution to your own campaign, using a straw man? If so, trouble for Trump and Cohen. Now comes question 5.

5. If it’s illegal to make a clandestine contribution to your own campaign, using a straw man, can you be held accountable, as an ignorant layman, when you do it on the advice of your inept attorney? If not, Trump goes home, and Cohen faces the bar association and the feds. If yes, Trump has a problem, and impeachment may happen, if Democrats decide that alienating 50% of the country and focusing America’s attention on Trump and not their own message are good ideas.

6. If Trump is impeached, will he leave office? No. Don’t be stupid. He doesn’t care at all. It’s barely conceivable that he might step down under immense pressure, in order to allow a more viable candidate to run in 2020, but that doesn’t sound like Trump. Impeachment might make him more viable, because angry Republicans would make an unprecedented effort to get to the polls to teach Mueller and the Democrats another lesson.

7. If he doesn’t leave office, will be be convicted in the Senate and forced to quit? No. The GOP controls the Senate.

Whatever the law and facts turn out to be, it doesn’t seem likely that Trump will be impeached. It’s a bad political move for the left. I think they’re stuck with him until at least January of 2021, no matter what.

It’s interesting to see the disastrous effect the ill-advised special counsel appointment has had. At the start, you would have thought Mueller would look for evidence of illegal tactics used in collusion, and that would have been the end of it. Far from it. Mueller has turned his mandate into an excuse to attack every close Trump associate with regard to every misdeed they have committed in their entire lives. I didn’t see that coming. It didn’t happen in Watergate or the Ken Starr investigation. Think of the people Ken Starr could have put away, had he been as ruthless as Mueller.

When Mueller was appointed, Trump associates who had nothing to do with Russia must have felt safe. They didn’t realize he was going to do his best to get them prosecuted for everything they had ever done.

Imagine being a Trump associate who did wrong in the past and then cleaned up his act before getting caught. Think how you would feel. At first, you would feel wonderful about cleaning up your life, and you’d be looking forward to a life of atonement and safety, Then after Mueller started taking people down for things completely unrelated to Russia, you would realize your neck was on the chopping block after all, simply because you decided to work with Trump.

The Mueller investigation is a dream come true for deep state Democrats who work for the feds. They have carte blanche to investigate people they hate, in just about every area of their lives, and they’re doing it. They’ll get some people indicted, and they’ll ruin the rest financially, because they have to pay lawyers.

Think how discouraging this will be to other conservatives who may want to work for GOP candidates. If you’re a big wheel, by the time you hit 45, you will probably have done something a prosecutor can work with. At the very least, you will have done something a deep stater can use as justification for investigating you and making you sink your entire net worth into attorney fees. There go your kids’ college funds.

When they can’t find old crimes, the investigators can create new ones. They put people in front of microphones and ask them hard questions requiring supernatural recall, and when they make mistakes, perjury charges become a threat. Once that happens, the feds make the terrified witnesses sing for their freedom. It’s a very nasty business.

The Mueller appointment was a stupid move. Congress could have handled this just fine, and they should have. After all, they’re the ones who make the laws. If reform is required, Mueller and the FBI are powerless to implement it. It requires legislation. Collusion is not a crime. If we need laws to limit it, Congress, not the FBI, will have to make them.

Wouldn’t it have been something if Ken Starr had acted this way? Federal prisons would have had to stay open late to process Clinton cronies. Whitewater, Hillary’s illegal enemies list, the corrupt use of Arkansas state troopers to procure women for Bill…the prosecutions would have gone on for years.

I hope we’re not seeing a pattern for future special counsels, but I guess we are. They will all want to measure up to Bob the Terrible.

Planning to run for office some day? I admire your guts. Maybe you should just stay in the private sector.