The News from Home is not Good

A few years back, I watched a Derek Prince video in which he claimed a Spirit-baptized person should have the ability to prophesy at will. The idea seemed to be that it was like speaking in tongues, but you do it in English.

I gave it a try, and it seemed to work. It still seems to work.

Unfortunately, these days, I hear very bad things when I do it. I keep hearing that God will remove my enemies and their seed from the earth. He will destroy them. I hear he is angry over the way they’ve treated me and the rest of his children, and his patience is at an end. I hear these things over and over.

I have asked myself if I was projecting some sort of deep-seated resentment on God. Maybe I was saying things I wished would happen to people who wronged me. But that isn’t the case. I’m not the kind of person who sits and stews about somebody blackballing me from the chess team 50 years ago. I am not happy about the mistreatment I’ve received in life, but I like to think about the present and the future. Truthfully, they are just more interesting. They’re also much more pleasant.

I think being male helps. Women seem to be very bad at letting things go. Many times, during conversations with women, I’ve been startled to hear them bring up their continuing resentment over trivial things that happened decades ago. Things no one else cares about.

Women are more manipulative than men, and unforgiveness is a tool of manipulation. You can keep presenting the same bill over and over, no matter how many times it has been paid. Even if it’s imaginary.

Men use their own tools to get what they want. Women are more likely to use people.

I also hear myself saying something else, but it doesn’t come from God. I keep saying, “I hate this place.” It happens right after I think about some horrible aspect of life. Maybe I’ll see a crippled person at the grocery store, or someone who is falling apart from old age. I’ll think, “I hate this place. Look what happens to people here.” Or I’ll see irredeemable, incorrigible punks online, libeling Christians or Jews or white people or conservatives. Punks who can’t possibly be saved because they love lies and can’t be forced to admit the truth. “I hate this place. Look who is taking over.” I think about the things they’re going to do when they have a free hand. I think about the pointlessness of engaging them.

I’ll think, “I hate this place,” and then I’ll tell God, “You were right about everything.” All the horrors of this world come from our rejection of Yeshua and the Holy Spirit. They come from our hatred of correction. If we had done things right, the world would be a peaceful place full of healthy, prosperous people.

I hate this place even though my life and my wife’s life are wonderful. We pray all the time. We know God. We live among fantastic people. We are healthy. We have a son on the way. We get along. We don’t have to work. It’s not that our lives are hard. It’s just that this place is disgusting and beyond fixing. I always say it’s like we went to Mexico for a vacation and got stuck there.

Today I asked God if he was displeased because I say I hate this world, and instantly, I thought of Lot. Look at 2 Peter:

And delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked:

(For that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds;)

Lot was wealthy, and he had a family, but he was vexed anyway, because he lived in the San Francisco of the Middle East. Lot did not fit in. People like to live among their own kind.

That’s not totally true. Good people like to live among good people, and so do rotten people. Good people try to get away from rotten people, and rotten people pursue them and stay close to them so they can prey on them.

This explains a lot of the tension we have with immigrants. It explains socialism. What good is a tick without a dog?

I think God is pleased when we hate this place and look forward to growing up and moving on. Jesus said, “He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.”

Holding onto this life is sick. Fearing death is sick. Who feels that way? Terrible people. Look at Hollywood. A lot of people there would eat live babies in order to get 5 more years. We now have sick billionaires funding life extension research to save themselves. So they can be wrinkly and weak forever, getting coronavirus over and over.

What if they stop aging and then go broke? They don’t think about that. Being Jeff Bezos on a huge yacht is all right. Being centenarian Jeff Bezos working at Five Guys is not. How about being poor, paralyzed Jeff Bezos in a motorized wheelchair because he took a fall on his yacht? How about being weak, old Jeff Bezos with a crooked younger wife who has a power of attorney?

If Bezos is around when the kids with the multicolored hair take over, he will not be rich for long. Has he thought about that?

One of the great things about death is that you get to leave this place. Why would you throw that away? It’s like being 40 and preferring diapers to the toilet.

After praying, I read a Buzzfeed article. It was a collection of things people had written about events that made them realize their families were messed up. It was long, but I couldn’t stop until I read the whole thing

One person wrote about telling her friends a funny story about how her dad hit himself while trying to beat her with a belt. They didn’t get it. Another said it was weird to go to the homes of kids whose parents weren’t hoarders. One wrote about being surprised to find that other people’s parents helped them with school and homework and so on.

It really took me back. It made me realize what bad parents I had.

I hate saying that, because my mother loved me more than she loved herself, and my dad changed completely during his last months on Earth. But it’s true. You can love your child and still be a terrible parent.

Looking back, I wonder what our neighbors thought of the times the cops came to our house and had long conversations with my dad, who was standing in the front doorway in his underwear, drunk. They would try to get him to come out so they could arrest him, but he knew they couldn’t touch him in his house. My sister used to call them when he hit my mother. Eventually, we quit calling.

I also remember the little trips we took with my mother. She would put us in the car and take us to motels in places like St. Petersburg or Key Biscayne. She didn’t tell us why. She took me all the way to Kentucky once.

One day we got home from a trip to the Thunderbird Motel in St. Petersburg, and I ran into the living room to tell my dad all about it. He was sleeping face-down on the couch with no shirt. He opened one eye and stared at me in silence. When my mother came in, he got up and choked her in front of us. Here I was, expecting him to want to hear about our trip.

We lived in several neighborhoods while I was growing up, and while we had plenty of dysfunctional neighbors, none of the other men hit their wives.

I remember going to jail with my mother to pick my dad up. This was in Tampa when I was about 5 years old. I don’t know what he had done. The walls were white. We sat on a wooden bench and waited until they released him.

An elderly black man sat next to us. He started talking to me. He took out a nickel and gave it to me. I guess he felt sorry for me. I tried to give it back, and he said, “That’s your nickel.”

He must have been waiting for someone, too.

I never felt right taking things from people when I was a kid. I always
tried to give them back.

I went to the Coke machine and got myself a drink.

We did almost nothing together as a family. My dad would come home from work, take off his pants, get a drink, and lie on the couch watching TV until he went to bed. I don’t really remember what my mother did. I think she was idle when she wasn’t cooking or cleaning.

On the weekends, my dad went to the golf course.

My mother took some interest in my education. She endured all-night abuse sessions to get my dad to put me in private school so I wouldn’t be a victim of racist violence at our local public schools, and she spoke to a couple of my teachers, but that was it.

My dad never knew my teachers. He did show up for a school play, though. That was strange.

My friends told me their fathers gave them money for good grades. My dad never did anything like that. When I got a bad grade, I heard about it. I never worked to get good grades. I just tried to avoid failing.

I used to give my dad a partial pass on this, because I thought his dad had been trashy. I had heard about his dad getting drunk and beating my grandmother. I figured my dad never got any encouragement when he was young, because his dad was Eastern Kentucky white trash. When my dad was past 80, he told me his dad gave him money for every A he received. There went that excuse.

My dad and his sisters had music lessons. He played high school football. His sisters went to college. I don’t know why my dad didn’t raise his kids. his father died when he was young, but it looks like he taught him some things he didn’t pass on.

I got a degree in physics, and decades later, my dad was still calling me an engineer.

My mother definitely loved me, but she ignored me a lot of the time. She told me to shut up so many times, I started to feel self-concious about joining conversations. She wasn’t a violent person, but I got a fair number of slaps I didn’t see coming, over trivial things.

Here’s something odd: I got slapped when I broke things. If I dropped a plate or a dish, I was likely to be slapped. That never made any sense. My parents could break whatever they wanted, and it was understood that it was no one’s fault. Accidents were unavoidable. At some point in my teens, the standards changed. Somehow, breaking a dish was no longer a slapping offense.

I rarely got spanked. I can remember two spankings. But my dad kicked me in the stomach once, and he used to punch me in the back when he thought I wasn’t walking fast enough.

I would have been a lot better off if I had had defined rules and received a few predictable spankings. It would have given me self-discipline.

My wife’s life was worse. Her parents died when she was young. She was raised by her dad’s family, and they mistreated her. She had relatives who cast spells on her to destroy her. This is a popular pastime in Zambia. Everyone was poor.

Thinking about these things, and how they were caused unnecessarily by other human beings, I started to understand why God would be fed up with our enemies. My own parents, and my wife’s relatives, did us a great deal of damage they didn’t have to do.

I started thinking about how I had inherited my dad’s entire estate. On two separate occasions, he had wills drawn up to cut my sister out, and she did nothing at all to try to get back into his good graces. She got nothing whatsoever, even though she had spent time in shelters.

Recalling my dad’s behavior, and all the abuse my mother and I got from my sister, I realized something: my inheritance was no gift. Unlike most heirs, I was owed every cent. I didn’t work for it, but I was mistreated. What I received was compensation. There was a debt. And the payment was insufficient. It can never make me whole. Any intelligent person would choose a good upbringing over an inheritance.

I have a son on the way, and my biggest concern is for his safety. I am afraid I’ll love him too much. I’m afraid I’ll be overprotective. I’m concerned about all the creatures that will try to destroy him. Spirits, people, and every other type of hostile creation. I’m concerned I won’t do a good job of equipping him.

Now that I have to think about my son’s welfare, I can’t figure out what was going on in my parents’ heads. Where was their dedication? Where was their plan? How could they not feel this way? Isn’t this normal and natural? Even cats teach their young.

I can’t imagine raising a child and not teaching him every day. I can’t imagine not praying with him. How can a parent skip that? Why not just kill your child and get it over with?

How can a parent have no involvement with a child’s education? If you don’t care about your child’s future, you shouldn’t have him. I’m already planning to do homeschooling. I’m not letting the state teach my son it’s wrong to be male or that he should support perversion and hate God. If my son ever has a teacher with rainbow hair and a rainbow flag in the classroom, it will mean I’m dead.

Aside from not introducing me to God, my parents taught me nearly nothing. Did they have something better to do?

I had Jewish friends. Their parents taught them constantly. Take this course. Apply to this college. Save money. Invest. Don’t trust the government. Hide cash.

I was in a carpool with some Jewish kids, and one day while we were on our way to school, the dad who was driving us turned the radio down. He had been listening to the news, and he had heard something he thought was important. He gave us a lecture about the importance of the two-party system. I thought that was crazy. My parents never did anything like that.

Granted, one of his kids grew up to be a real mess, but at least he tried.

I should check. Well, the web says he’s a partner at a law firm in Cleveland. Hope things worked out for him.

The Buzzfeed article brought something home to me in a new and powerful way: not everything is my fault. I try to take responsibility for all the bad things that happen to me so I can have power over them, but the truth is that I have received a great deal of mistreatment in this world. Parents, my sibling, my friends, institutions, teachers, employers, strangers…they have done a lot of rotten things to me. People who should have been helpful were detrimental. Satan worked in them to give me disfavor in order to destroy me, and because I didn’t know God, I was defenseless.

When I got to know God, everything started turning around. I began living a victorious life. I received correction. I was cleaned up. These things are still happening. God keeps improving me. When I prophesy, I hear that he is helping me partly in order to torment my enemies.

Nonetheless, the world is still against me. As Yeshua predicted, it hates my wife and me. Hates us. Wants us to fail. And it also wants us to think it’s fair to us. It wants us to keep trying, playing by its rules, like gambling addicts playing rigged games. That jackpot could come on the next pull of the handle.

I’m right to hate this place and to maintain my distance from the herd. Most of them will be obliterated in the tribulation, and most will burn in hell. God can use me to pull a few aside, but that’s about it. Humanity is not going to change.

What if Kamala Harris gets elected? In that case, Christians can forget about help from their country. Our country will do its best to destroy us. America will be better for us than Indonesia or England, but it will be very hostile.

What if you’re not prepared? What if you don’t pray in tongues and you don’t have God’s full protection? You’ll be in real trouble. Just being a Christian is not enough. A whole lot of Christians just died in floods.

We need to be close to God so he, and not this twisted nation, is our protection and our provider. If you’re with him, you’re in the ark. It doesn’t matter what governments do. He is stronger than governments, and he knows more than they do.

I think God really is about to destroy the enemies of those who are close to him. I don’t think I imagined it.

#3

Incredibly, Florida has a new hurricane cone. Debby landed on August 5, Helene landed on September 27, and Milton is expected to pay a visit on October 9. Next year may be a great time to snap up a west coast home, or what remains of it, cheap.

Debby landed near Steinhatchee, which is nearly nowhere unless you live there. Helene landed near Perry. These areas are around 35 miles apart, so it’s reasonable to say the storms landed in the same place. Close enough for government work.

Right now, Milton’s projected path’s landfall area is centered just south of Tampa, so if the cone turns out to be solid, the storm will land around 150 miles away from the area where Debby and Helene landed.

They do a pretty good job with the cones these days. They blow it when it comes to storm surge and wind.

So I’m doomed, right? No.

You have to think about three things when a storm is coming. Wind, surge, and diameter. Diameter is a big deal. Storms vary tremendously in size. Andrew was a horrible storm, but it was small, so while Dade County was wiped out, Broward County, just north, didn’t really have a crisis. Businesses were open the next day.

Helene was enormous. Milton will be much smaller in comparison. If Milton goes right up the middle of the cone, the center it will land near Venice. That’s maybe 140 miles from me. That’s a long way, considering the size of the storm. The winds here will be from the east when it lands, meaning they will have to come across half of Florida before they get to me. That will weaken them.

In short, at the moment, things look pretty good here. But then this area has never had hurricane winds, storm surge can’t happen here, and flooding is nearly impossible where I am.

On the other hand, people in some coastal areas must be wondering if this is the tribulation. The area where Milton is headed is said to have experienced “up to” 7 feet of storm surge during Helene, so apply the exaggeration factor and call it 5, which is still not good. Based on my observations over many years in Florida, I would guess there are a lot of coastal structures less than 5 feet above the normal high tide line. I lived in a house close to Biscayne Bay, and I would say the yard was around 5 feet above high tide, so the floor was around 7 feet above the line.

It’s hard to get solid information, but it looks like the water inside some buildings where Milton is headed was nearly a foot deep as Helene passed. If your floor was under several inches of water on September 27, you will not be ready for a second storm on October 9.

Storms spin counterclockwise, so storm surge hits to the south of a storm’s center when the storm approaches from the west. If Milton’s cone holds up, the surge should end up in areas with low population densities compared to Tampa and St. Petersburg. That’s a plus, unless you live in those areas.

At least they don’t expect heavy surge up the coast, where Helene’s waters rose at least as high as 6 feet in some buildings.

I don’t even know what happened in North Carolina and Tennessee. I kind of tuned it out. I thought I was getting disinformation and that I would never really get the facts. I know the flooding was catastrophic, and that’s about all. My wife and I have prayed for the people, but I haven’t been reading much about the situation.

Before the storm, TV people were saying there was already flooding up there. The storm was around 700 miles away from North Carolina, and at least one source said the flooding came from another system. There was a big dry gap between the mess over North Carolina and Tennessee and the mess from Helene. It was obvious on maps.

I don’t know how a dryish hurricane 700 miles away can flood anything. It didn’t flood anything here, and I was maybe 150 miles away from the eye. We didn’t get much rain. Under two inches.

Leftists control the news, and they always exaggerate the impact of hurricanes. They always claim every storm was caused by global warming. If the flooding in the hills came from another system, we will never be told.

It’s important to be honest about what causes things like this, because good information helps people understand and prepare for hurricanes. If people in North Carolina and Tennessee get the idea that it’s normal for a huge storm to wash their houses away from 700 miles off, they’re going to make a lot of stupid decisions in the future.

Ordinarily, when a hurricane floods these places, it happens only after the storm dissipates and moves over them. I’ve never seen a storm flood Appalachia from two states away while leaving Florida nearly dry.

Not to make light of other people’s terrible suffering, but our preparation has been light. Today we bought 18 eggs and some Tennessee Pride sausage. In the past, I bought a lot of Pop Tarts, lunchmeat, bread, and unnatural foods in bags, but I can’t get motivated any more, and I don’t want to constipate myself terminally with 10 pounds of white flour and cheap corn meal. If we lose power and water, we’ll go to a hotel with Marvin and eat all our meals at Chick-fil-A for a day or two.

One likes to think we won’t get any more storms before the end of the season, which is three weeks away.

In other news, another homosexual has set himself on fire for Palestine.

Is this a trend? I read somewhere that 5 people have done this. Were they all gay?

The best-known gay self-immolater was Aaron Bushnell, a military contractor. A guy named Matt Nelson burned himself to death later. Not sure if he was gay. Now a man named Samuel Mena has set fire to his left shirt sleeve, saying he was giving Palestine his left arm.

How do I know he’s gay? I don’t, but he screamed, “I’M A JOURNALITHT!”

There must be straight men out there who support Hamas and have heavy, heavy lisps. Maybe. But effeminacy, including lisping, is a pretty strong indicator of homosexuality.

Here’s what gets me: they’re doing to themselves the kind of thing Hamas would do to them if they outed themselves in Gaza and the West Bank.

Hamas pigs raped Jewish men and boys on October 7. They have a history of gang-raping homosexuals. Wonder how that fits in with the gay agenda.

I saw a neat video in which an Israeli asked random Palestinians whether they supported the sexual deviants who claimed to be their allies, and I didn’t see a single one who didn’t say no. I stopped watching after a while, so maybe I missed one or two, but the video made it pretty obvious Hamas supporters–a term synonymous with “Palestinians”–were not at all in favor of warm relations with the deviant community.

Deviants want a world in which Christians and others who embrace ancient faiths that clearly disapprove of sexual perversion do not exist. They literally want us to be gone. But now many of them are trying to hand Israel to heartless Muslim fanatics who throw deviants off tall buildings.

How much weirder will it get? Haredi for Jihad? Lesbians for Female Genital Mutilation? Well, we already have that one, but it’s called bottom surgery. Girls are skinning and castrating themselves all over the US.

That’s it for today. Hope the power holds out until Milton is gone.

Stretching the Definition of Self-Defense

The Menendez brothers are back. New evidence could get them released from prison.

Rosie O’Donnell supports them, so I’m sure if we look at the facts, we’ll see they deserve to stay where they are.

Let’s see.

In 1989, Erik and Lyle Menendez were big, strong, athletic men over 18 years of age. They lived with their dad and mom, Jose and Kitty, who were wealthy.

It appears likely that Jose molested both sons and at least one other boy. There is good evidence he was a serial homosexual pedophile.

The brothers say they had a conversation with their parents in their parents’ home, concerning the molestation. They say their mother sided with their dad, and they feared their parents would kill them to cover up their dad’s perversion. They grabbed two shotguns and shot both parents repeatedly. One of them shot their mother in the face.

They said they killed in self-defense because they were afraid of their parents.

Here is my take.

1. When you’re a big, strong man, and your dad is molesting you, you move out of his house, tell the police, and consider filing a civil suit. If you really feel strongly, you can give him a beating on the way out, and no one will blame you.

2. When you’re afraid someone will kill you days or weeks in the future, and, again, you’re a big, strong man, you tell the police and everyone else you know. You don’t shoot anyone. Ordinarily, you can’t just shoot someone because you think they might kill you in a few weeks.

3. The claim that a fat middle-aged woman was a serious threat to two big, strong sons is not credible, but a claim that they shot her because she let their dad molest them for years, and because she witnessed his murder, is very credible.

4. You don’t shoot your mother in the face because you’re afraid of her. It sounds more like a crime of rage.

I think Jose Menendez was scum, and I don’t feel sorry for him at all. I think someone should have shot him repeatedly with a shotgun long before his sons did. Before he molested them. But often, giving people what they deserve is a crime. I believe it was a crime in this case. Doesn’t seem like a close call.

I think Kitty Menendez was a weak parent who deserved to be confronted and exposed. It is possible she was an accomplice, in which case she should have been locked up. I don’t think there was any legal ground for shooting her.

Some people say the brothers should be released but not exonerated. They think the sentences (two life sentences each, it appears) should be reduced in view of the evidence that Jose Menendez was a gay rapist.

Maybe that’s reasonable. They’ve been in prison for around three decades.

Mark Geragos says that if the Menendezes were women, they would never have been tried. I doubt that. There are many female murderers in prison. Truthfully, I think homosexual rape, especially by a father, would upset jurors more than heterosexual rape.

It’s heresy to say it, but as bad as heterosexual rape is, homosexual rape is worse. It’s more damaging.

Law aside, I would like to see them released simply as a gesture of contempt for their father. And even though I think they’re murderers, if I had been a juror, and I had been told their dad raped them, I would have held out for acquittal. They weren’t going to kill anyone else. Their dad begged for what he got. Their mother let him do what he did, over and over. It’s not like acquitting some illegal who drags a coed behind a convenience store and rapes and kills her.

It doesn’t bother me that they got a lot of money. They apparently earned it with their suffering. And I think it’s gone, anyway.

So that’s my opinion. Wonder what will happen.

I’m putting off fixing the mower, so I’m writing about trivial things.

Today I saw a video by James Reeves. This is the guy from The Firearm Blog. He’s a popular Youtuber. He is also an attorney, although I can’t say whether he practices. He gives opinions about guns and the law, but I have never heard him refer to a case he was involved in. I’ve seen him say things I thought were not smart. For example, he thinks having a Punisher skull on your grips will land you in prison, but he can’t actually cite a case.

Don’t put a Punisher skull on your gun, though, seriously. Grow up. You could be the first guy to go down for it.

He hangs around with Clint Smith, a crusty old Marine who teaches people how to shoot. Smith is practically worshiped, like Massad Ayoob, but unlike Ayoob, he has actually done something other than write magazine articles and write parking tickets. I’m not a big fan, however. Profanity pours out of him like overrated cars out of Bavaria, which tells me he’s immature. He seems to know a lot, though.

Reeves likes Glocks, and he carries a 43X. This is a single-stack 9mm compact that holds 10 rounds in the magazine and one in the pipe. Seems like a great gun.

In his video, he lists the only three Glock accessories you NEED. I think the video is useless.

Right off the bat, he says you don’t need “a titanium guide rod.” WRONG. What a bad start. It’s like he knows nothing at all about Glocks.

A Glock has a plastic guide rod you can probably break with your teeth. I have had two fail on me, and I’ll bet I have put fewer than 5000 rounds through Glocks. The rod’s ends come off. Sometimes it happens when the guns are holstered. It’s a major flaw. When the rod fails, the gun becomes completely useless until you replace it, and that takes maybe 30 seconds, which is a long time when you need to shoot somebody.

I buy Wolff products to replace my Glock rods and springs. They’re made of an amazing new invention called metal.

Glocks are famous for reliability, but the guide rods are just no good, so why wouldn’t you replace yours? I’ll tell you what; I was really shocked the first time one failed on me. I was at the range, the gun stopped firing, and the rod was hanging out of the front end. I thought I had misassembled the pistol. That gun was done for the day. It was done until I got new parts.

In the video, Reeves doesn’t recommend replacing the guide rod, but he suggests replacing a part that is absolutely wonderful just as it comes from the factory: the trigger. Glock has come up with a new Gucci trigger with a lighter pull.

A gun you actually use for defense does not need a lighter pull you can defeat accidentally because your hands are shaking. It needs a reasonably light, consistent pull which is, above all, reliable.

If a factory Glock trigger has ever failed anywhere, I have never heard about it.

Reeves went to Austria to try the new trigger. No conflict there. I’m sure they made him pay for his trip, and I’m positive he flew coach.

They put him in a range and had him shoot a 9mm at 33 feet. He fired maybe once every 1.5 seconds, so he had some time to aim.

His shots were all over the place. Two shots were off the paper. Every shot was to the left of center. Ignoring the worst shot, I would say his group was around 9″ across. I would expect 2″ here at the farm, and I would never tell anyone I could compete with a real pro.

A nine-inch group is cop-level shooting. If you ever go to a range and see cops shoot, this is probably what you will see. They’re usually not very good, and I think it’s because of their egos. A lot of men would rather shoot badly than ask for lessons.

His shooting was poor, and it looks much worse if you think about what he does for a living. He can deduct the cost of guns and ammunition on his taxes. He should be shooting at least a thousand rounds a week.

If I shot a thousand rounds of my caliber, 10mm, every week, with a factory-trigger compact Glock and Rural King ammo, I’d almost never be outside of 1.5″ at 33 feet.

Still, he shot more than well enough to kill a burglar in a hallway.

They gave him the new trigger, which I’m sure he paid for, and, neglecting the worst flyer, his group shrunk to about 4″. He stopped pulling everything to the left, too. That’s very good, but it’s not great. No one will ever stand behind you at a range and say, “Wow! Four-inch group!”

He said he was going to put the new trigger in all his Glocks.

So now he has a bunch of Glocks with very light triggers, and he still can’t shoot as well as he should. How is that helpful? He failed to improve his skills, and he equipped himself with guns that are less safe.

A self-defense pistol is not for winning medals. It’s for emergency use in places like stores and parking lots, where assailants a foot and a half wide will generally have to be within 20 feet before you can shoot them and claim you had no choice. You need a trigger that will fire every time, only when you want it to, with sufficient accuracy to put a criminal down. That’s a factory Glock trigger.

Now he has an excuse for never learning to shoot.

Why would a gun expert not learn how to shoot? That’s bizarre. It’s what he does for a living. It’s not that hard. Anyone can do it. It doesn’t require superpowers. Just humility and practice.

In the video, he used a gun with some kind of huge laser/flashlight on it. Please explain this to me.

He carries a tiny Glock with a limited capacity. If that’s your choice, it has to be because you want a small gun you can conceal easily. There is, literally, no other explanation, because apart from easy concealment, a small gun is inferior in every way.

So you buy your 43X, and then you screw on a light the size of a C battery. Now you have something the size of a Glock 17, with much less capacity and a short sight radius.

You can’t put it in your pocket unless you’re Captain Kangaroo. Put it on your belt, and it will make you look like a camel. What good is it?

He didn’t get into the topic of lasers much, but I will. I have a Crimson Trace on my carry pistol. It takes up nearly no room. It lights up automatically when I pick up the gun. It’s bright enough to see indoors 50 feet away. The bullet WILL go where the dot is, regardless of how bad my form is.

I can put the gun in my pocket, and no one will know it’s there. I carry it that way every day. I walk right by the cops. It takes less than a second to draw. The gun is still compact.

Once the gun is out, is a Crimson Trace as good as Reeves’s 737-landing flashlight? Not in certain situations I am extremely unlikely to encounter. Only in the other 95%.

I don’t get it. Is the video aimed at militia nuts who play FPS games all day and think they can clear Hezbollah hideouts with pistols? Is he trying to make a little Glock do an AK-47’s job?

A pistol is for emergencies that happen in places where you can’t carry a rifle. Period. If you can get to a rifle, you put the pistol away, unless you’re stupid. If you find yourself clearing a house with a pistol, you have probably already done about 20 things wrong.

You should have called the cops. You should have hidden yourself. You should have grabbed a rifle.

In the video, he also pushes red dot sights for carry pieces.

I am not kidding.

Imagine yourself at Publix with your James Reeves special. You have 11 rounds of puny 9mm because you went small. You have a huge spotlight hanging off the front. You have a hair trigger. But wait! There’s more! You also have an enormous unnecessary sight that looks like the hood scoop on an old Mustang, preventing you from removing your gun from concealment. Except it’s not concealed, because everyone sees the hump in your shirt.

Some people would say you don’t need a red dot if you already have a laser, but let’s go with it.

What is a red dot for? It’s for shooting people a long way off, in a hurry. Why are you doing that? The prosecutor will want to know. It’s usually murder.

It’s helpful if multiple assailants enter your yard. No doubt about it. In that situation, why aren’t you holding a rifle? Even if you hit a criminal 6 times with 9mm, he may keep coming. An AK or a shotgun will tear his organs to pieces, and you won’t need a red dot to hit him. Plus you’ll be able to shoot him through cinderblocks.

Here’s what I say, although I am not a guru and could be wrong:

1. You may not want a Glock, because just about everyone now makes a plastic gun which is as good or better, like the M&P Shield with the built-in laser, but get yourself some kind of nice plastic pistol.

2. Keep it small. Do not mount a spotlight, a red dot, a huge extended magazine, a compensator, a blender, a toaster, or anything else on it that sticks out and gets in the way.

3. Buy a Crimson Trace laser and zero it. Keep the batteries fresh.

4. Keep the stock Glock barrel, because it loves garbage ammo.

5. Use good ammunition, and don’t worry about the idiots who say you’ll get the chair for using hollowpoints. It doesn’t happen in real life, and it’s better to be alive in the defendant’s chair than dead in front of T.G.I. Friday’s.

6. Keep the stock trigger and learn to shoot. You don’t need special talent. You just have to listen.

7. Get night sights. Probably won’t help, but won’t hurt.

8. Keep your gun in your front pocket, using a pocket holster. It can be very hard to get a gun into or out of a belt holster. Ask the big girls who failed to protect Donald Trump.

9. Do not ever, ever, ever use a pistol when you can get to a rifle. I don’t care if the cops do it. It’s stupid. You will miss. If you don’t miss, the perp will probably keep coming. Get…a…real…gun.

10. Always call the cops and hide if you can. Let them face the physical and legal risk. No one ever got arrested because he was in the closet while a cop shot a burglar. You can even come out of the closet and dance around the body in your Punisher jammies, yelling, “THAT’S WHAT YOU GET!”

You should also carry the biggest gun you’re comfortable with. I’m not dedicated enough to carry a full-size Glock in town. Maybe you are.

If you can make yourself carry extra magazines, do it. No one in a gunfight ever said, “I wish I didn’t have all this ammo.”

I doubt anyone will ever put me in a self-defense situation. I sure hope it doesn’t happen. But it’s an interesting subject, and I enjoy shooting, so I think about it a lot.

Time to OD on Dangerous Veterinary-Grade Livestock Remedy

Is anyone else tired of coronavirus? I certainly am. My wife and I have traveled a lot during the last three years, and on most of our trips, at least one of us has gotten covid.

It’s never really bad. A cold is worse. But it’s a drag.

I am not sure when I got this latest case.

I divide covid symptoms into three categories: perceptible, annoying, and serious.

Perceptible symptoms aren’t trustworthy. You might feel a slight raspiness in your throat, for example. Covid, or dry winter air? Maybe it’s pollen. Impossible to be sure. If it goes away, it may have been something else, or it may have been a very mild case of coronavirus.

Annoying symptoms are things like chills, bone aches, sore throats, headaches, nausea, mild fever, and congestion. When you have annoying symptoms, you know you’re sick, but you don’t care, because you know it’s no big deal.

A serious symptom is anything that results in you having a tube down your throat.

I have had perceptible symptoms many times. Sometimes they were followed by annoying symptoms. Sometimes they went away quickly. That has happened more than once after taking ivermectin.

I’ve had annoying symptoms several times. They were just bothersome enough to make me angry. They sometimes made it harder for me to enjoy life.

I’ve never had serious symptoms. I have never had a case of coronavirus I did not prefer to the flu, norovirus, a cold, food poisoning, dysentery, or a bad day following the ingestion of Myers’s Rum, which should be classified as a poison.

It’s impossible to tell whether my wife or I got sick first this time. She had annoying symptoms before I did, after we arrived in Rome. We got there on the 12th. A day or two earlier, my voice was a little raspy, but I felt good. I was in Switzerland, and the weather was a big change for me. Sometimes it was cool and rainy, and sometimes the air was dry enough to make Carmex a good idea. A healthy person’s throat could be affected by changes in weather.

On the 13th, we took a food tour. We had to walk on cobblestones a lot. The soles of my feet started hurting.

I thought it was the new shoes I had bought in Switzerland; my old ones gave out unexpectedly. But maybe I was having bone aches and noticing them in my feet first.

We’ve been home almost two weeks, and I am still getting little reminders that I had coronavirus. Sometimes I feel like I have a baseball sitting in my stomach. Yesterday, the joints in my hands were sore for no obvious reason. Some days I have more energy than others.

At least the crud in my lungs is gone. I was wheezing and waking myself up.

I would like to move on with life. I still haven’t done anything about the debris that fell in the yard when Helene passed. Sometimes I have felt slightly faint, so I haven’t wanted to toss branches around in the heat.

Because my fingers were sore yesterday, I decided to take more ivermectin, and of course, I feel much better today. The improvement is not subtle at all. My energy is improved. My wife can’t take drugs right now, and she is still not quite as strong as she usually is.

I think I can do some outdoor work today.

I’m wondering if I should increase my ivermectin intake. When people ask me how much I take, I say, “Half an inch.” I use horse paste, and it comes in syringes that measure doses by length. A whole tube will deworm a horse. My math says half an inch will be plenty for a person my size.

A tube contains enough ivermectin to provide 200 ug/kg for a 1250-pound animal. Divide it by 5 to get down close to a human dose, and you get about half an inch. The syringes are actually marked so you can go by an animal’s weight.

I have been pretty cautious. A study says it’s safe to take 400 ug/kg per day for three days. Half an inch of horse paste is roughly 250 ug/kg for a person my size. It’s not necessary to be precise. Your body isn’t going to go haywire over the difference between 200 and 250. Medication doses are almost always approximate. I’ve been taking around 250 ug/kg once a month.

Interesting fact leftists haven’t exactly trumpeted: ivermectin may work against dengue, which we now have in Florida. It’s not like ivermectin specificially targets this or that virus. Its antiviral effects are believed to affect numerous bugs, including the flu and West Nile.

Makes you wonder if there is any reason not to take it when you have a cold, the flu, norovirus, or any other viral disease. Like I always say, it can’t hurt, and you definitely won’t have worms.

It has landed some people in the ER, but they were bad at math, and nearly every one of them got better. You can kill yourself with Tylenol if you’re bad at math, and many people have done it.

Two Extra Strength Tylenols contain 1000 mg of acetaminophen, which is the maximum safe dose. If you take two pills more than 4 times per day, you can kill yourself. No one is running around calling for Tylenol to be taken away from Trump voters.

There is an interesting story leftists are using to prove ivermectin is evil. A guy named Danny Lemoi took it for Lyme Disease, and stories on the web say he died from a side effect of ivermectin.

It all looks like BS to me. He started taking ivermectin in 2012, he died 11 years later, and he had a serious bacterial disease. He also had an enlarged heart, which is what supposedly killed him. Far as I can tell, that is not an ivermectin side effect. For example, it’s not on the Mayo Clinic’s long list of side effects. But it is a symptom of Lyme Disease.

Here’s something interesting about causes of death: when a pathologist cuts a person open, he doesn’t find a sheet of paper with the cause of death listed on it in big black letters. He has to look at the body, do tests, and figure it out. If he finds an obvious immediate cause of death, he may still have to do tests to find out what caused the immediate cause. For example, if blood clots killed the patient, were they caused by the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine or some other agent?

If Danny Lemoi had obviously been killed by ivermectin, we would know it, because the articles about him would say it and back up their conclusion. And they would also explain why it took 11 years for him to die, during which time his health seemed to improve.

Let’s say ivermectin is the evil poison Harris voters think it is. If that’s true, here is what will happen if you overdose habitually: you will get sick, exhibit known symptoms of ivermectin poisoning, and die, all within a short period of time. What you won’t do is improve for 11 years and then die suddenly from something that kills all sorts of people your age, which is not known to be an ivermectin side effect.

Leftists without medical degrees, who hate ivermectin, are the only “authorities” who have concluded Lemoi died from using ivermectin.

He’s their poster patient, and that’s really sad, because if ivermection was dangerous, they wouldn’t have to cling to a guy who took 11 years to die from an unclear cause. There would be hundreds of thousands of dead people who were indisputably killed, quickly, by ivermectin. They do not exist.

It looks like he abused ivermectin pretty badly, although it’s not clear, because none of his leftist accusers has taken the time to publish the dosage. Even if he took huge doses, it still took forever for him to expire, from an uncertain cause.

MSM outlets called his ivermectin “veterinary grade.” There is no such thing. Pharmaceutical companies don’t make bad drugs on purpose! Isn’t that obvious? They don’t put clean, pure ivermectin in tablets for people and dirty, diluted, counterfeit ivermectin in paste for horses. It’s the same thing, from the same facilities.

Hello? Pet and livestock owners aren’t potted plants. They don’t sit around and do nothing after pharmaceutical companies kill their animals. They sue. They contact the FDA. Manufacturers aren’t run by imbeciles who think it doesn’t matter if their products kill animals.

If companies were deliberately making bad drugs for animals, people would be in prison. It is amazing to me that there are morons who are paid to do journalism and think otherwise. How stupid can a person be?

When you take your cat to the vet, do you tell him to be sure to give him the human stuff and not the deadly, inferior cat medicine?

Many, many people have definitely been killed by coronavirus vaccines. That is indisputable. It is proven. It is documented. The vaccine I took is now restricted because it killed so many people. Finding people who have been killed or even harmed by ivermectin is still very, very hard.

People will read this and say I claim ivermectin cures coronavirus. Never. I have never said that. All I’ve said is that I have gotten good results with it repeatedly, I think it probably works, and I, along with virtually 100% of trained physicians, believe it’s very safe.

In any case, to get back to my point, I am tired of coronavirus, and it’s disturbing to realize most of us will probably continue to get sick at least once a year until we die. Even if it’s not serious, it’s a problem I could have done without. I can’t thank our government enough for taking my taxes and paying the Chinese to create and release this irritating virus (as the Department of Energy says). Thanks for killing so many people with your hubris.

Michael Jackson was an Amateur

The news is getting so weird.

Sean Combs is in jail right now, and he will be there until he is tried for a whole bunch of sex felonies. We all know that. But now a mid-tier celebrity is saying things that make it look like he could be the next to fall.

One of the annoying things about celebrities is that they never stop lying to us. One example: they plant stories about themselves. When you see a celebrity appearing in a torrent of stories, you can usually assume their publicity people are paying to have them placed.

Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen endless Yahoo stories about Liz Hurley posing in bikinis in spite of her advanced age. Yahoo didn’t ask for those stories. It’s not like an editor popped out of his office and yelled, “The public is begging to see an old woman in a bathing suit! Get me pictures!” No; Hurley paid somebody, and the people she paid called around and got the stories placed. Not that it helped her career, because the truth is that people don’t want to see aging women in bikinis.

Halle Berry has been doing the same thing. Over two decades ago, she got an inexplicable, undeserved Oscar for a dirty movie, and after that, her career failed to continue its upward trajectory. The placed stories and pictures seem like desperate attempts to keep her viable as a sex object and female lead while she continues to seek redeeming roles.

I don’t know anything about the country star Carrie Underwood, but for the last few years, Fox has carried endless stories about her. What she eats for breakfast. The secret to her slim, trim thighs. Her secret heartbreaks. What she likes to do with kale. Somebody was paid to place these stories. There is no way anyone at Fox discovered them and thought they were interesting.

Now Ashton Kutcher is suddenly in the news. We are told he is “terrified” Sean Combs will make up stories about him to divert attention from Combs’ own crimes.

Come on. No one believes that.

Kutcher has had a lot of bad PR in the last few years. His buddy Danny Masterson was convicted of two rapes, and Kutcher and his wife Mila Kunis got roasted for choosing to be Masterson’s character witnesses.

I don’t know if Masterson is guilty or not, because as far as I can tell, there was no physical evidence of coercion, a prior trial failed to produce convictions, and the rapes were reported long after they supposedly occurred. But Kutcher and Kunis apologized and said they didn’t question the verdicts.

Kutcher is trying to recover from the Masterson business, and now another friend has been charged with too many sex crimes and related crimes to list. Kutcher is one of the many celebrities accused to going to parties where sex crimes occurred.

I don’t think he’s afraid Combs will make up anything. Whatever Combs is guilty of, he isn’t known for making up stories in order to frame acquaintances and deflect attention from his own misdeeds. And there is no reason to think gossiping about Kutcher will help Combs in any way. What are prosecutors going to say? “Combs facilitated 300 rapes, but Kutcher went to a couple of parties and watched, so I guess we should let Combs go”?

The most likely explanation is that Kutcher did some ugly things at Combs’ parties (which may or may not have been crimes), he fully expects to be exposed, and he wants to poison the well. He wants to get in front of the scandal so when the stories come out, he can say, “See? I told you he would make up stories.”

Actually, he won’t be able to say he told us anything, because he’s having other people, who are nameless, accuse Combs. No accountability for Kutcher. He can say he had nothing to do with planting the story about Combs framing him.

Its seems childish to me, like the pathetic attempts Alec Baldwin made to defend himself and hang his friends after killing Halyna Hutchins. It seems like a strategy that would seem smart to an actor or an agent but silly to an attorney or federal agent.

I doubt Kutcher would personally violate anybody, but what if he watched approvingly while other people committed rape? People have lapses in judgment, especially when under the influence and surrounded by idiots. Kutcher used to use strong drugs.

When people hear the word “rape,” they think of illegals and homeless people dragging women into the bushes. Consensual sex with a drunk person can be rape. There are a lot of ways to rape consenting adults. At a Combs party, it would’t be hard to become an accomplice to rape, before or after the fact, while thinking you’re in the clear.

I think the big story here is that going to sex parties is not smart, even if you don’t care about sin. And it’s also interesting to see how depraved celebrities are. I’m one of those people who believed Scotty Bowers, Hollywood’s famous gay pimp, when he said just about everyone in show business back in his day was a pervert. I think showbiz has always been like this, and in the Middle Ages, people were right to drive actors out of towns.

Think about all the famous actresses who worked for Miramax and haven’t had anything negative to say about Harvey Weinstein. They’re vocal about everything else, from water bottles to global warming. Hmm.

Anyone who thinks actors aren’t low-lifes should read Errol Flynn’s autobiography. Read about Tallulah Bankhead, Mae West, Rock Hudson, and Marlene Dietrich.

MORE

Now a lawyer is accusing Combs of having a 15-year-old boy perform oral sex on him, based on the promise Combs would make him a star.

The attorney says the list of victims includes names “we all know,” so it’s reasonable to expect the list of criminals to contain familiar names, too.

Where is the bottom of the rabbit hole? Maybe it doesn’t have one.

Pick a Side

Last night I slept like a dead person. I woke up at 9:30. I had a long, weird dream.

I was in the little Eastern Kentucky town where my grandparents lived. The official population sign there read 165. Not a big place.

I went to the courthouse, which also functioned as the town hall. There were Muslims all over the place. Not American Muslims. Sullen foreigners in weird clothes. Like Afghans. I didn’t see any obvious pedophiles, though, so maybe they were not Afghans.

I was in a little vehicle, and I drove it into the courthouse. I drove by a line of men. Half of the men were Muslims. They looked like jihadis. They were silent, and they looked angry. The second half of the line was all Israeli soldiers in uniform. They were smiling. Friendly. I glared at the jihadis as I drove by, but when I passed the Israelis, I said, “Shalom!”

The Israelis and jihadis were not fighting. They were waiting for something, right next to each other.

I found myself out behind the courthouse with my dad. We were in a little miniature train with no glass in the windows. It stopped, and a grim-looking lady I took to be Indian walked up and gave me some papers. One looked like it had been written with brushes, in colored ink.

I resented the fact that she was handing me a bizarre document in a foreign language, as though she were somehow entitled. I dumped it on the ground. She had no authority.

As we left the town, I saw blocks of red brick apartment buildings in ruins. No windows, roofs, or inner walls. They looked like they had been empty for a hundred years or more, like Roman ruins.

I didn’t know why they were there. They looked like they had been built for 10,000 people.

My wife thinks it’s an end-time dream. She said the Jews were God’s army.

Makes sense to me. When the end comes, evil spirits will be unleashed on the world in huge numbers, and spirits that serve God will rescue people who are raptured. Maybe the jihadis and Jews in the dream were not fighting because their missions didn’t conflict. God will allow evil spirits to do what they like to people who aren’t raptured, because they rejected his help, but he will send spirits to pull certain people out while the rest are tormented.

The Bible says God seals his servants on their foreheads so they will be set apart. Maybe the obnoxious lady with the documents was trying to get a person who had been sealed to give up and submit. I thought she was a contemptible idiot.

These days I don’t feel like doing anything but eating, sleeping, and praying. I’m forcing myself to look after the house and so on. That’s about it.

My belief about dreams is that the police usually represent demons, while soldiers represent God’s angels. In your homeland, soldiers are almost always your friends, but the police are dangerous. The police fight citizens, not foreign troops, and they are often corrupt and brutal. It is often necessary to remind them of our rights in order to avoid being abused. We have to remind demons, too.

The police generally go after people who have opened doors through wrongdoing, just like demons. Soldiers don’t bother citizens. They are almost always helpful.

I support the police, but I also believe in avoiding and placating them. I believe in treating them like dangerous mental patients who need to be soothed. I’m white, and my family lived in upscale suburbs, but my mother told me a lot of cops were crazy and that I should never give them an excuse to go off. That is true. There are a lot of black people who think the police are slaves to white people, but the police hurt white people more than any other group.

I am grateful for the 90% or so of police who can always be trusted, but I can’t distinguish them from the others until something goes wrong, so I treat all police like potential assailants. I’m also aware that every policeman is insulted, slandered, and threatened throughout his career, so when I interact with them, I want them to know I’m not an entitlement case with a chip on my shoulder.

I don’t worry about soldiers. They’re not interested in me, and they have no authority over me.

I don’t know if my dream means anything, but I’m passing it along just in case.

We are Riff Raff

A reader has once again recommended an interesting resource: Nomad Capitalist. This is a company that helps people with assets and income move abroad. Its motto is “Go where you’re treated best.” They help people move to places like Singapore and Malaysia, where successful individuals are not yet considered enemies of humanity.

I can’t resist fantasizing about Singapore. Today I looked at some Nomad Capitalist videos. I was just playing around, but when my wife saw me watching, she said she would not hesitate to move to Singapore.

Why would anyone move from a peaceful red state to a tiny island between two dangerous Muslim nations? Does it sound crazy?

Here is what she said: in Singapore, you can let your child ride the subway alone.

Wow. Imagine doing that in New York, Philadelphia, or any other American city. Unthinkable.

We’ve been to Singapore a couple of times. On one visit, they held some kind of outdoor celebration that featured a planned walk among illuminated works of art. Even though we were in the middle of a big city, the park where the event was held was very dark apart from the exhibits themselves.

Families were everywhere. No worries.

Consider Central Park, the 880-acre oasis in the middle of New York City, created by Frederick Law Olmsted. Would you visit at night? It would be more convenient to invite the rapists and muggers to your apartment and get it over with.

America has a huge population of mostly-minority repeat offenders, and they do whatever they want. A couple of days ago, I saw a sheriff on Youtube saying a recent arrestee had a rap sheet with 102 felonies on it. In Florida, where we are supposedly tough on crime. When you hit a hundred felonies, execution, or at least life without parole, should be on the table.

I live in the reddest county imaginable, but you never see kids here riding bikes by themselves, as I did when I was young. You can’t let your kids walk to school as I did.

My dad’s partner had a young son who was stolen from a school bus stop a short walk from his house. He was raped repeatedly, shot in the back, cut in three pieces, and buried in concrete. You could practically hit his school from his house with a rock.

If your kids survive the violent perverts here, they still have to suffer with the tenured perverts in our public schools. The people who tell them Yeshua is a myth and that their parents are basically Nazis.

What about internal strife? Well, Singapore has had riots. The last one was small, in 2013, and before that, you have to go back to 1969. And no one is putting on black pajamas and attacking conservative groups for praying in public.

What about medical care? I’m no fan of nationalized medicine, but Singapore’s universal system is something I could live with. They force you to have your own medical savings account, an idea Democrats assure us would lead to the end of the world. In the US, medical problems are probably the biggest threat to people who prefer to die with substantial estates. At my age, with a family to think about, I am open to the notion that protecting our assets is more important than getting the doctor I want, when I want him. If we had Singapore protecting our assets, we would be better able to pay for private care on the rare occasions when it was needed.

My belief is that the better a country’s inhabitants are, the easier it is to have government programs that work. Singaporeans are better than Americans. We have huge, entrenched demographics that do nothing but bleed the taxpayer, commit crime, and vote for Democrats. When we try to help them, they take advantage and ruin everything. An entitlement attitude, not entitlements themselves, is the major reason our programs are disasters.

What about drugs? Singaporeans kill drug dealers. It works for them. There are no ghettos in Singapore, and when you walk the streets, you don’t see poop, tents, or used needles. You can park your car without assuming, as you would in many American cities, that a junkie will steal everything in it. Street crime, which is driven by drug use in the US, is extremely rare in Singapore.

What about housing? It’s small and expensive. Rent is sky-high compared to a few years ago. But is small housing a bad thing, in and of itself?

I hate being close to people, so I like big properties, but then I live in the United States. Americans are not the best neighbors. They steal. They’re loud. They form abusive HOA’s. They let their dogs terrorize neighborhoods. I don’t think living close to Singaporeans would be the same, because Singaporeans love boredom. They like peace and quiet. I may be wrong, but I’ll bet they get along better with their neighbors than we do.

Eventually I’m not going to feel like cutting trees and mowing large areas, so maybe a little house among nice people would be acceptable.

What about the Second Amendment? The need for self-defense is not likely to arise in a place like Singapore, and the people are at peace with their government, so I think guns would be less important. Let me think. How many Americans do I know who have been robbed at gunpoint? Three, off the top of my head. How many shooting victims have I known? Two. How many of my relatives have shot or shot at people? Two.

The more I think about it, the more I realize something: Americans are bad people. We really are. Not all of us, but enough of us to make America different from peaceful countries. We’re not Somalis or Brazilians, but we’re not the Swiss, either.

When we decided to visit Singapore the first time around, I thought I would hate it because I hate cities. I also thought Singapore was likely to have a culture of selfishness and callousness, because most Singaporeans are Chinese, and China is horrible. Instead, I liked it a lot. The people were nice. It was safe. It was very prosperous. The food was pretty good. Everything was orderly. They even had wonderful public landscaping. I think socialism is what made the mainland Chinese what they are.

After my wife and I came home, we both had the strange feeling that somehow, part of us belonged to Singapore. It felt like home, and I can’t explain that. I guess it was just nicer than America and Zambia.

What about religion? Surprisingly, Christianity, including charismatic Christianity, is on a dramatic upswing in Singapore, having risen from about 10% to about 20%. That’s bizarre. Shocking.

Isn’t Singapore boring and distant? I don’t care if it’s boring, because I’m boring, too. My wife and I live in a boring place, and we love it. As for distance, well, there are jets. We could travel from time to time. I don’t know how soon we would get around to visiting the US, given what it is.

I like dreaming about leaving the US for a better place. I don’t think Singapore is in our future, though. You can’t just walk in and ask for residency.

They have something called the Global Investor Programme. The idea is that if you have a lot of money to invest, you can put it into a Singapore enterprise, and they may give you permanent residency. It’s very hard to understand the criteria, though. I think you need to invest S$10 million inside Singapore. Let’s see. Did I leave my S$10 million in my other pants today? Must have.

A couple of years ago, the price was S$2.5 million. Singapore has decided to keep the riff raff out, though.

My understanding is that you can move to Singapore if you have a job there. “Job.” The word makes my skin crawl. Never again, I hope.

Come Root for the Guys who Matter, Insects

I just saw a weird article. If it’s true, a college football coach just emailed his school’s entire student body and told everyone to go to the next game. He said the team needed them. He said studying could wait. That’s unbelievable. Of course, he probably has a number of players who have other people who study for them, so his perspective may be twisted.

I love writing about our national sickness of sports worship. This is a great example. His school, Indiana University at Bloomington, is supposed to be dedicated to learning, and surely there must be over a hundred extracurricular activities to choose from, but a man who gets paid over $4 million per year to coach one sport for one sex is telling kids the university needs them because his sport needs support.

I don’t get this stuff. I went to one game when I was in high school. I went to one game when I was at Columbia University. When I was getting two degrees at the University of Miami, I didn’t attend any games.

Incidentally, Columbia had an amazing won-loss record. They went at least a decade without winning a game after I left. They played at Baker Field, a tiny stadium which was mostly condemned for safety reasons. There were chain-link fences between seats, separating the safe ones from the dangerous ones.

Our band was The World’s Most Dangerous Band. They wore jeans and T-shirts. I don’t think they practiced. The game I saw (partially) took place during the Carter era, and the Hamilton Jordan cocaine scandal was in the news. At halftime, our band formed a giant nose on the field, and various band members ran up the nostril.

The coach who wrote the email is named Curt Cignetti. He says his team is trying to achieve something historic. Call me crazy, but I think winning a stupid game designed to amuse children is not historic. Groundbreaking research would be historic, though. Or how about a campus-wide revival, featuring thousands of conversions and miracles?

He doesn’t mention the other extracurricular groups. They’re not important. Don’t support the chess club or the forensics team, kids.

I really hate stories about athletes and coaches receiving worship and special treatment. These are people who don’t belong on campus to begin with.

When I lived in Miami, I knew a prosecutor. Then, as now, the main prosecutor was a lady named Kathy Fernandez-Rundle. My acquaintance told me a story about her. Is it true? Well, he “alleged” that it was.

He said a UM football player beat a smaller student severely for no reason. Felony case. From the sound of it, he deserved years in prison. My acquaintance was given the case.

He told me Fernandez-Rundle had him come to her office. He said she told him he WOULD get the victim to agree to lesser charges because the team really needed the player. So prison was not an option, nor was expulsion, nor was the nuclear option of…removing him from the football team.

When I was at Columbia, a huge baseball player named Chris Boyle beat a smaller student who wore glasses. It made the school paper, which is how I know. The story said he ambushed him from behind. He was dating a girl named Carolyn, and the story said Boyle was jealous. Boyle was not expelled.

I knew Carolyn well enough to recognize her in a hallway. She was beautiful. She started up a conversation with me one night while a bunch of us were drinking and hanging out. Good thing I didn’t follow up. I later found out Boyle and his pals hated me for some reason or other, so I guess I dodged a bullet. They used to write nasty things about me in a dorm elevator. Weird. I had no idea who was doing it. I barely knew who they were.

No, wait. Chris, in case you read this, Carolyn and I went to hotels a couple of times every month, behind your back.

Not really.

I hope she married someone who didn’t beat smaller people, including her, for that matter, up.

I decided to Google. She married a doctor with what looks like a Jewish last name. She had 4 children and died at 49.

It’s amazing that an Ivy League school with hopeless athletic teams would let a mediocre athlete destined for a cubicle beat another student badly and then let him get away with it. It’s the kind of thing you would expect from Ohio State.

One of my dad’s partners had a relationship with an NFL player named Najeh Davenport when Davenport was in school. I think he hoped to represent Davenport when he turned pro. That did not happen, perhaps because the partner’s law license was suspended over some interesting behavior.

One day Davenport got upset about something, broke into a female student’s dorm at Barry University in North Miami, and defecated in her closet. Should I say “allegedly”? I don’t think so, because he took a plea instead of risking a long prison term.

At the time, he was attached to the Green Bay Packers. They held onto him. After all, football is important.

She told the police she was in bed when it happened. She saw a strange man a few feet away, pooping in her laundry hamper. That must have made her feel safe. In Florida, she could have shot him, legally, without facing consequences.

America is full of athletes’ rape and DV victims who have been ignored, threatened, or paid to be quiet. It’s business as usual.

If Nicole Simpson had been married to a dentist, he would have been jailed several times instead of being turned loose by cops who asked for autographs.

Nicole Simpson was not important. She could not run very fast or catch a ball. Same goes for Ron Goldman.

I’m glad I’m not a student at Indiana University, because I would be tempted to respond to Coach Cignetti’s email, and after that, I would probably have to watch my back. Someone might poop in my closet.

This world is ridiculous.

Back in May, a court decided college athletes were entitled to be paid. The decision has not gone into effect yet, but it will probably happen later this year. It is expected to help male basketball and football players, female basketball players, and pretty much no one else.

People are saying it will destroy college sports. Man, I hope so. Nothing could make me happier. We need a system in which the hopes of 90% of universities are utterly obliterated. We need to see fans so discouraged they quit buying tickets. Athletes who simply are not smart enough to understand college courses need to be removed from campuses. Coaches who abuse people and teach aggression and dishonesty should be sent home. I suppose the new system would help a lot of these people remain in place, but maybe it would rid us of many others.

I guess I’m hoping for too much, though. The system will surely evolve to avoid reform.

What is Left to Accomplish?

Based on weather forecasts, I made plans to do nothing today, and I am sticking to my plans. But I think I made a mistake.

Hurricane Helene’s weak outer winds were supposed to produce sustained speeds of about 40 mph here. Far as I know, it never happened. I would say the situation this county ended up with is 10% worse than the aftermath of Debby, which left a few downed trees here and there. We got nearly no rain during the Helene crisis, so that’s a plus.

I have some cleaning up to do. Yesterday I checked the forecast to see when it would dry up, because nothing is worse than doing heavy yard work on a 90-degree day when the air is full of steam. The forecast pretty much said it was going to rain until next Friday. The probability figure for today is 88%.

Of course, it’s dry and breezy without much sun. The temperature is about 82 degrees, or 8 degrees lower than recent days. This would have been a good day to clean up.

I don’t understand precipitation probability, and it turns out neither do meteorologists.

At some point in the distant past, I looked it up, and I read that a certain chance of rain meant that there was that much likelihood rain would fall somewhere in the area the chance applied to. So if you were in an area with a 25% chance of rain, the chance that it would rain somewhere in that area was 25%. How much rain? Whatever I read didn’t say. I assumed it had to be a significant amount, because if not, the figure was useless.

I just checked again. A British site says a figure of x percent means x percent of sources have concluded it will rain in the area. How much? Doesn’t say. An American site says it means x percent of the area will get measurable rain.

Either meteorologists have no idea what their own metric means, or they are letting uninformed people try to explain it to us.

Experience has taught me this: if a forecast says the chance of rain will be 60% or more, expect a nasty, rainy day, nearly every time. That’s more useful than the weird things I’m seeing on the web. Anything over 20% is reason to avoid outdoor activities as far as I’m concerned.

I am sitting here doing nothing. I still feel some covid fatigue, and I’m not sure I can start the tractor, so I am in no rush.

I’m not sure what to do with my life these days. We are done traveling. I doubt we’ll go anywhere until far into next year, and we will not be able to go any place exciting because of the baby. We still need to fix the house up a little, but that’s about it. What should we be doing with ourselves?

The world has turned into an immense toilet. Americans have proven they really are stupid enough to put Kamala Harris in the Oval Office. Wokeness is getting worse, not better. We are giving birth to generations of soft, useless, cruel, incompetent, spoiled, godless perverts who will make the last decade look like the Messianic Age.

I don’t know what we’re supposed to do here. I am spending more and more time in prayer. We think about things like good food, medical appointments, and managing our practical affairs. That’s about it.

Lately I have noticed I am sometimes bored. That’s a problem I thought I had left behind decades ago. It’s strange to see it creeping up on me again. I find myself thinking, “I remember this!”

I think I had started believing I was immune to it. I took not being bored for granted for maybe 35 years.

I have zero enthusiasm about America’s future. I don’t want to live here. I don’t know how I’ll defend myself when my son asks me why we put him here, to face seventy-plus years of hiding out in a world gone insane. I can tell him God wants people to have children. Best I can do.

While we are here, we will have to devote a lot of energy to sheltering him from godless friends, Satanic entertainment, exposure to perverts, and so on. We will really have to have God’s help, because we can’t generate our own safe Christian bubble.

I don’t have any projects in mind. There is nothing I want to do here. I don’t want to start big things in a world which has no future.

I try not to imagine a future under Kamala Harris. Obama was an arrogant homosexual atheist who was hard on the church, the unborn, and Israel. Biden was dumb and without conscience, and he appointed godless nutcases to rule over us. Harris would make us miss Biden. She is a complete zero as a human being.

She’s a wonderful exhibit to use in order to prove democracy doesn’t work. When Biden gave her affirmative action and made her his running mate, she was extremely unpopular even among Democrats. That didn’t change during her time in office. Now she may get a legitimate majority in a presidential election. The people didn’t get to vote for alternatives. She was simply installed, and Democrats could either vote for her or let Trump win.

Imagine the kind of pigs she will appoint to abuse and control us if she wins. The worst choices imaginable. Disgusting, vile, incompetent, corrupt, and stupid.

It seems like there should be something to do other than praying and waiting for Yeshua, but if there is, I can’t see it.

Maybe I should prepare a rapture-ready will. Will it matter? Will the wills of raptured people be triggered when they leave? Will they be respected? Will whatever I could leave people be helpful to them in a world where demons and fallen angels are running amok?

I assume people will run around killing each other, squatting in each other’s houses, and stealing each other’s money, so I don’t think a will would be helpful.

There must be something useful for us to do right now. I just need to be told what it is.

What if the rapture doesn’t come, and I have to age and die in Satan’s America? Terrible thought. But I know from experience that if I pray in the Spirit enough, things will work out for me. I can’t do all that much for others, so it’s a limited blessing.

I can’t wait for this place to be wiped clean and remodeled. I don’t know what it is to live in a world that works. I’ve seen better times than the present, but I have always been surrounded by death, disease, injury, deformity, murder, accidents, poverty, and every type of emotional pain. I have always lived in a world ruled by Satan’s children.

My patience with suffering is gone. A couple of years ago, it didn’t discourage me as much. Now, every time I see someone with a terrible physical problem, or I hear about a terrorist attack or a natural disaster or some other cause of suffering, I think, “I have HAD it with this. Please get us OUT.” Enough. I have seen enough.

A few people can be helped, but almost everyone will continue to suffer and fail. Most of the people we try to help will turn our help into curses. They won’t turn to God. Not really. They won’t pray in tongues. They won’t repent. They won’t be accountable. Things won’t get any better for them.

The blessed will stay blessed, and the people who hold onto them like Titanic survivors holding onto floating planks will continue to hold on. Nearly everyone who leads a cursed life will continue to be cursed.

People who lead cursed lives generally don’t want to know God. They want money. They think money will fix everything and they won’t have to repent. It’s frustrating, because continued abundance comes from a relationship with God. You tell them how to fix their lives, they pretend to agree, and they don’t change.

When someone listens, it’s like you’ve found a big gold nugget in a manure pile the size of an apartment building.

We don’t have enough money or time to buy better lives for the people who won’t repent. We have to watch nearly everyone sink. Elon Musk couldn’t fix them. Look at his son, the pervert.

I like to prophesy, but I keep hearing about how God is going to destroy people who are against his children. That means the vast majority of human beings. I would love to hear about revival and miracles.

The human race is just too crooked to help. We have always been that way. God is always ready to bless, but almost no one is interested.

Guess I’ll go pray and then think about dinner.

Full Price for Half the Show

I am waiting for my wife to get dressed, so I have a lot of time to kill. I think I’ll write about Rome.

Do not go to Rome.

Before we went to Rome, I tried to get advice on the best Italian city for a week’s stay. I figured the only real choices were Rome and Florence. Art, history, and so on.

People said Rome was the best choice, but they were completely wrong. The correct answer is Florence. I will explain.

Next year, Rome has a jubilee celebration. In preparation, they are cleaning things up. A lot of restoration is going on.

If you look at videos about Rome, you’ll see exciting shots of the altar at St. Peter’s, the Senate building, and various other sights. When you go to Rome, you see something very different: sights that have been fenced in or covered with fabric.

The altar is almost completely covered. The Pieta is a fake. The Senate is fenced off. A lot of things you could walk right up to a couple of years ago are off limits.

Don’t go. In fact, don’t go in 2025, either. It will be a madhouse. Everyone who sees the Pope the way teenage girls see Taylor Swift will be there. Believe it or not, there are a lot of people who take the pope and the Vatican seriously. They think the pope is super-holy and not just a cookie-cutter secular leftist who loves attention, and they think the Vatican is a holy place. They will pack Rome to the rooftops, and you don’t want to be there. It’s obscenely crowded right now, a year before the jubilee, so the jubilee will be a nightmare.

You want to go in 2026. Rome will experience a tourism dip because everyone on Earth went in 2025. It will be cheaper and less expensive, and the restored stuff will be accessible again.

Go in winter or early spring, or wait until late fall. You don’t need warm weather to enjoy Rome, and it draws tourists.

Here’s an interesting observation, from someone who has met God: the Vatican doesn’t feel like a church at all. There is no trace of God’s presence. You’re not going to feel awed by the holiness. You’ll feel like you’re in a crowded museum that makes lots of money.

Incidentally, the Catholics have decided forgiveness isn’t something you can get wherever you are, at any time. I learned this from my tour guide. There is some touristy thing or other in St. Peter’s, and the official belief has always been that if you walk by it or under it or something at a certain time–the jubilee year, I think–you get forgiveness for everything. St. Francis, generously, changed the rule. He decided you don’t have to go to the Vatican. You still have to get the time right, however, and you have to go to a church or something. I forget.

Apparently, the Catholics believe there are a bunch of sins God will not ordinarily forgive. No wonder ex-Catholics make the best and angriest atheists. They are recovering abuse victims.

Paul was a murderer of Christians. Moses was a murderer. David was a murderer who killed a man because he had gotten the man’s wife pregnant, and he led violent, thieving raids on towns. He had a man killed for throwing rocks at him. But a woman who got an abortion at 15 goes to hell unless she can walk through a certain door on a certain day.

It’s asinine. It’s sick. Yeshua will forgive you wherever you are, whenever you ask. He will forgive you for nearly anything. He saved a Roman centurion. Think of the things that man had done.

“Wrong day. Sorry. Come back next year.” Imagine Yeshua saying that. “Hope you’re still alive during the jubilee.”

Yeshua let people torture him to death because he was so driven to save sinners. He talked about his burning desire to reach the lost. But somehow he burns repentant Christians who can’t afford a ticket to Rome?

But this is the organization that decorated churches with naked statues, burned people over minor doctrinal disputes, and tortured Jews to death. It took the church until 1965 to stop holding the entire Jewish people responsible for killing Yeshua.

Everyone who has sinned is responsible for the crucifixion. This is obvious. The pope is responsible. Mary is responsible.

Yeshua visited me twice, and he never mentioned the pope or the catechism. He poured love through me and told me nothing bad could possibly happen to me while he was there. He annihilated worry and fear. He didn’t say, “It’s too bad you’re going to hell forever for rejecting the one true church.”

It’s a pretty safe bet that Yeshua has never met the pope.

I wish we had visited Florence. The art is much better. I don’t think they’re covering it up this year. But now I can say I’ve seen Rome. Whoo hoo.

Tennessee Looks Better and Better

Things are looking good, post-Helene. God took care of us. A tree fell over in my side yard, maybe 80 yards from the house. A smaller tree snapped about halfway up near the workshop, but it didn’t hit the building. We have a lot of leaves down.

There may be some trees down farther from the house. I haven’t checked yet. the lights went out for about 30 seconds, but they came back on. People here got very serious about tree-trimming after Irma, so power outages are not as common as they once were. I checked the power company’s site last night, and I saw a total of 14 outages on their map. That’s impressive.

My wife had a doctor’s appointment set for today, and they called and said they had no power. That was a surprise.

My big complaint is the upcoming weather. We expect a nasty, rainy week, so I’m not planning to do much about the debris right away. The general rule is that the weather gets noticeably better in October. Can’t wait.

The coast is a wreck. Not the entire west coast; just the areas where the surge was bad. It looks like the 20-foot surge that was predicted failed to materialize, to no one’s surprise, but I did see video of small houses floating around. I saw a lot of structures that are just plain ruined. I don’t know where people will go.

Sooner or later, coastal people will have to get serious about building for hurricanes. The people who own concrete houses on stilts don’t have much to be upset about today, but owners and occupants of frame houses situated on the ground have lost everything.

Everyone hates insurance companies, but insurance is a business, and it’s not realistic to expect insurers to offer good rates to people who know their homes will sustain catastrophic damage every 25 years or so.

I don’t know why coastal people got in the habit of building structures that weren’t ready for hurricanes. It’s bizarre. Everyone knows storms will come. Everyone knows how to build for them.

Another interesting phenomenon: rescuers were pulling people out of flooded areas late last night. Why were they still there? Two days ago, everyone knew these places would flood. Shelters were ready.

I saw a video of an airboat that had been removing people from an area where there was a Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. I don’t understand ghetto people. They did the same thing in Louisiana when Katrina hit. Stayed right where they were.

Ghetto people have a culture of helplessness. Can’t work. Can’t get through high school. Can’t take care of their kids. Can’t stay out of prison. Can’t evacuate before storms. Can’t recover after storms.

Helping the poor is hard mainly because they respond so badly to help. They turn every blessing into a problem. They are used to being rewarded for failure, so they put their energy into failing.

My aunt was a principal in Eastern Kentucky. They used to test the kids for ADD. She found out parents were telling their kids to fail on purpose so they could get aid money. I wonder how those kids are doing today. Well, I don’t have to wonder. Everyone who could add two and two left, and now the place is full of drug addicts and professional thieves.

The failure culture is found everywhere people have gotten used to government handouts.

I don’t understand the people who left their cars in flood areas. It’s not that hard to drive a mile inland. Now they’re pedestrians, and if they replace their cars, they’ll have to pay the deductibles.

Coastals need to learn not to move into homes that can’t withstand storms. Even if you’re insured, you have to move out and throw out lots of your belongings. You probably won’t be compensated for everything, because you won’t have an inventory, and you won’t be paid replacement cost. Even if they overpay you, replacing your stuff will not be a simple matter. It will take a very long time, and many things won’t be available. While you’re living somewhere else, there’s a good chance looters will come in. It’s better to start off in a home that won’t flood or disintegrate.

Insurance isn’t God. It can make things better, but it’s no substitute for prevention.

If you look at the web, you’ll see people promoting the notion that hurricane-proof homes require magical new technology, or that they cost too much. Not true. My dad’s house down south was built in 1951, and it took about 170 mph without significant damage. There are concrete stilt houses all over the Keys, and they don’t all belong to tech billionaires. I put hurricane doors and windows in a house for under $20,000, which is not much compared to decades of insurance premiums.

Houses built for hurricanes cost more, but not that much more, and they save a fortune. It’s not unusual for a modest home to cost $700,000 today. Adding $50,000 to make it safe from storms is a reasonable expenditure.

Why don’t schools in coastal states teach kids these things? Too busy telling them Heather has two mommies and that chromosomes don’t matter.

My house is hurricane-proof, by local standards. It wouldn’t work in Cedar Key a hundred yards from the Gulf, but it will take anything a hurricane can dish out in my area. It would take a tornado to take it out. I felt pretty good when I heard a storm was coming, because I knew the odds of a serious problem were extremely low.

If I had just moved in without thinking, I could be in a flood plain right now.

Later on, I’ll look around and see if any other trees need to be cleaned up. I already know I won’t have to file any claims.

The Actual Truth Would be a Blessing

It’s about 11 a.m., and Hurricane Helene is maybe 350 miles away. Accuweather.com says the current wind speed is 39 mph, and we are under a hurricane warning.

In fact, the air is nearly still, and even the worst wind speed predictions are nowhere close to 75 mph, which is where hurricane winds begin.

You can see why I don’t trust forecasts. I think lawyers write them. Either them or advertising executives. “Come on! We have to sell those corn flakes!”

“Watch” means something is a possibility. “Warning” means it’s expected. If we’re in a hurricane warning area, it means SUSTAINED winds of at least 74 mph are EXPECTED. We should be surprised if we don’t get them. But is that correct?

The maximum forecast sustained wind speed is 54 mph, and we are supposed to see it at 3 p.m. It has been a long time since first grade, but I’m pretty sure 54 is lower than 74.

The site that predicts 54 is the same site that now says the wind speed is 39.

It looks like the eye of the storm is expected to be about 160 miles away at its nearest approach. Assuming the wind field remains the same size, that would put us inside the area where tropical storm winds (at least 39 mph) exist. Problem: to get to me, the winds will have to cross about 90 miles of land. They’ll becoming from the south, and there is a lot of land south of me. If the winds come ashore at, say, 50 mph. it’s not reasonable to expect them to be nearly as high when they arrive here.

NOAA has painted a huge portion of Georgia red. That means “tropical storm warning.” Is there any conceivable way that makes sense? Wind and rain, sure, but sustained winds of at least 39 mph, as far north as Macon? Macon is over 300 miles from the water.

During the last hour, I saw a TV station graphic that showed the red area going around me, meaning they don’t expect sustained tropical storm winds here. How can that be, if Georgia is under a warning?

I think they should tell people the truth. They exaggerate all the time, and people get used to it. Then, surely, people start assuming they’re always exaggerating, so they stay home when they should leave.

They’re now saying there could be 20 feet of storm surge to the west of me. So if you normally step sideways to get on your docked boat at high tide, some time today, the step will be 20 feet high. That’s amazing. I was in Andrew, and at something like 170 mph coming directly from the bay, we only saw about 8 feet.

Are they exaggerating again, or will the surge really be 20 feet high? Who can say?

They’re saying there will be flash flooding in the mountains. Well, maybe so, but right here in Florida, we’re expecting 2″ or less of rain, which won’t flood anything. All the flooding will come from the storm surge. So how can the mountains flood?

A dry storm like this one is a big blessing, because wet storms loosen tree roots. The dryer a storm is, the fewer trees fall.

Helene will be horrible for people on the coast between, maybe, Cedar Key and Apalachicola, just because of the surge. It doesn’t have to hit 20 feet to cause serious problems. Other than that, I don’t think it will be a big deal. Thankfully, it will be hammering an area with very few people in it.

People are saying Tallahassee is doomed, but Tallahassee is about 30 miles inland.

I don’t think we will have serious problems where I am. I think the coastal areas with storm surge will be a mess. I think Tallahassee will be fine. I think Georgia and the mountains will be fine. These are my guesses.

I’ll be bold and say I don’t expect to lose electricity. But if I do, we can get in the car and go to Daytona or some other place for two days so we can continue to have warm showers.

People are being advised to stuff their houses with supplies. I don’t do that. Stores will be open tomorrow. Wait and see. Restaurants will be open. I’m not going to fill my house with Pop Tarts and Doritos any more.

By three p.m., I should know what we are facing. Meanwhile, we will take some time to pray for people who will get hit much worse.

SITREP

It’s about 3:20. Sometimes the trees are bouncing a little. There is no rain. We had sunny skies for a while.

This is when they said we would get peak winds, so I guess that was wrong. Other sources say they’re around 7 hours away.

West coast live cameras show some wind and rough seas, but people are still driving across Tampa Bay. If we were seeing catastrophic surge, the road would be underwater.

Helene is not going to get much closer to Tampa, so I don’t see how things can get a lot worse. I think it’s peaking.

I found out why they’re predicting flooding in the mountains. It’s because it already happened. A weather system that looks to be unrelated to Helene is already causing flooding. I don’t think it’s quite fair to pin this on the storm.

We are still expecting under 2″ of rain, so is it really possible it will be worse up north? We are under the clouds they claim will flood the mountains, and it’s not happening here. Where are the clouds supposed to pick up more water? They’re going to be over land.

Someone has to Keep the Jackal Away from the Sheep

I used to think Alan Dershowitz had to be brilliant, simply because he was highly respected. Now it’s time to let that go. I keep seeing evidence he’s merely a pretty smart guy.

He is now saying Sean Combs should have been given bail.

What are the factors he considered? First, the likelihood that he will continue to commit crimes, and second, the likelihood that he will flee.

Let’s concede that Combs probably will not kidnap or rape anyone before trial. He probably won’t participate in kidnappings or rapes committed by others. I think these things are obvious. He is not likely to commit the same types of crimes for which he will be tried.

As for flight, Dershowitz says Combs could have fled already. He says that instead, he traveled to New York to surrender. That means he won’t flee.

I can’t concede there. What Combs has done so far and what he might do if the trial starts to go badly may be two different things.

Here’s the glaring problem with Dershowitz’s analysis: he ignored one of the judge’s main concerns. Combs is a disgusting criminal. He always has been. He associates with other criminals. Nothing is beneath him. The judge is concerned he will tamper with or even harm witnesses. That is a reasonable fear.

Combs is already accused of witness tampering in a civil suit. He communicated heavily with a woman who is suing him. If he’ll do that, who knows what he’ll do to people whose testimony could put him away for life?

He is accused of prophylactic witness tampering in the current case. His victims say he made video recordings of them in the process of using them as sex slaves, and he did so in order to be able to blackmail them later if they threatened to go public. That’s a form of witness tampering.

I don’t know if Dershowitz is still on top of his game. Maybe he was never a genius to begin with. Law is not that hard. It’s not math or physics. You can go to the Supreme Court with an IQ of 140, which is not rare at all.

Michael Avenatti was first in his class at one of America’s best law schools, and he committed extortion openly. Lawyers for the victim, the Nike corporation, didn’t even have to respond to a complaint. They just pointed the FBI at Avenatti and watched him disappear. You’ll never convince me Avenatti is a brain.

Think how many billable hours they saved Nike.

Completely failing to acknowledge the most important prong of the judge’s analysis would get Dershowitz a C at the worst law school in America.

Anyway, I disagree with him. Anyone who has shown an inclination to abuse witnesses should rot in jail before trial. If Michael Jackson hadn’t been allowed to mess with witnesses, he probably would have gotten what he deserved after sexually molesting multiple children.

Bottom line: I wouldn’t hire Dershowitz if I were in trouble. If he let something like this get by him, he can’t be fit to represent anyone.

You Can’t Sell Shamwows and Mighty Putty with Logic and Restraint

Another day, another Cone of Certain Death. The TV liars are brushing off their hyperbole and practicing pretending it’s hard to stand in 20-mph breezes. Anderson Cooper has a team out, looking for a deceptively-deep ditch for him to stand in.

Tropical Storm Helene is on its way up the Gulf, and it’s supposed to make its closest approach to me late Thursday night. So far, it’s not looking bad. The cone’s projected center is about 180 miles off at that time, and it would take a pretty horrendous storm to generate serious winds here from that distance.

Having butchered every big oak close to my house and shop, and currently living in what resembles a lunar landscape, I think I have little to fear. The juice could go off for a couple of days, and we could lose some trees far from the house, but the odds of anything big hitting anything important are vanishingly small.

My yard is not what it used to be. I obliterated a lot of the shade. But I had no choice. The trees were too close to the house, and they were also dying because they were worthless types of oaks that rot standing up. They looked nice and provided shade while the original owners’ kids were growing up here, but by the time I arrived, they were over the hill and could not be permitted to remain in place.

We went to Europe, which killed about three weeks. I’m still a little lightheaded from coronavirus, so I don’t feel like working in the heat just yet. A storm will be here shortly. All these things add up to an October start on fixing the yard, at the earliest.

This is about what I planned on anyway. I decided I wanted to rent an excavator for about a week and yank all the oak stumps, but I didn’t want to work in the summer heat.

If the storm knocks stuff over in my county, I may be delayed yet longer, because renting an excavator will become impossible. Everyone will want one.

Nothing can be done. You do what you can, and you relax. If I have to wait for November or December, the world will keep turning.

Choosing to cut the trees was a pretty mature decision, because the shade was really nice, and they made the property look better. I could have left them alone for a couple more years. But I would have been sweating every time a storm went by.

Yes, I have insurance, but that doesn’t mean letting trees fall on my house would be intelligent. I have a deductible, it takes time to fix things even when someone else pays, contractors are the lowest form of life not known to wear suicide vests, and some things can’t be replaced.

The sensation of NOT worrying about an approaching hurricane is hard to get used to. Florida residents get used to sweating bullets every year, over and over.

Other people are not as blessed as I. As I saw a meteorologist point out today, late-season storms tend to be wider, so this one could bring high winds and a lot of storm surge to a long stretch of coast.

Once again, homeowners will be playing developer roulette. “Did my developer care enough to put my house above the storm surge”? “Is the drainage up to par?” “Will my roof fly off?”

After the last storm, we saw a familiar site. Devastated neighborhoods right next to neighborhoods where things weren’t too bad. Some developers put homes on raised lots. Some didn’t. Some homes were built better than others. Many homebuyers didn’t do their homework. They didn’t check to see if they were in floodplains. They didn’t think about storm surge or construction quality. We saw videos of houses where the water was a couple of feet deep in the living rooms.

My house is around a hundred feet above sea level, in a place that has never seen hurricane winds, on a lot the government says can’t flood. Before my dad bought it, I made sure it was not in a floodplain. It’s also a couple feet above the the lot itself.

It’s surprising how few people make any effort to vet Florida homes for hurricane safety before buying them. It doesn’t take much time, and it saves people from disaster, literally. If it looks pretty and the price seems right, they jump in, and realtors and sellers smile quietly and take their money. It’s not fraud. You’re supposed to look after yourself and do your due diligence.

It’s sad. You can throw away your life savings so easily, and it’s not necessary.

I always expect life to bite me in the rear end, because it does, so I was very careful. I did my best.

Not many people would defoliate half of their beautiful yards like I did. I feel like a beautiful actress who got a prophylactic mastectomy.

I’m used to being concerned about myself and my dad. I’m sorry to say I didn’t think that much about people in other areas in the past. I was too disturbed by the thought of what could happen to me. Now I am making an effort to think about others and pray for them. This storm will probably be a horror for a lot of people who didn’t prepare.

If you decide to move to Florida, think first. You can avoid nearly all storm problems by staying off the coasts. Apartments are nothing like as problematic as houses. Trees near houses look nice, but they fall over. Concrete is better than wood. You can check and avoid floodplains. You can check and make sure your house is built well and not too low to the ground. You need a roof that will stay on; steel is the way to go. A whole-house generator is a big blessing. Find out about insurance costs before you buy, not after.

Do things right, and you will be at peace while your neighbors are living in hotels at night and guarding against looters during the day.

If you don’t look out for yourself, do the rest of us a favor, and don’t blame the government like the folks in the video below. Believe it or not, the government can’t control hurricanes.

Here Goes Literally Nothing

Today we have to run a medical errand, and both my wife and I almost certainly have covid, so yesterday, I had her call to find out if we should cancel or wear masks or have ourselves encased in carbonite or what. They told us to wear masks, but first they asked if we had any, which says a lot about current attitudes.

There may be one under my car seat.

As I have written, we just got back from Switzerland and Italy, where we were around all sorts of sick people. We flew home sick because there was nothing we could do to protect anyone, and staying in Europe would have been a huge and pointless hardship. The air was full of bugs everywhere, isolation has gone out the window, and our contribution to the airborn virus supply simply was not meaningful.

Yesterday I looked at the current covid stats, and today I’m looking again. According to WHO, the number of known active cases in Europe is about 70 times the number in the Americas. Not the United States. The Americas.

In the past, the case numbers were almost certainly overreported in America because we paid hospitals huge money to claim people had covid, without testing them. Now, the numbers are probably underreported. But is there any reason to think the ratio is affected significantly? I don’t know of one, except that it makes no sense for Europeans to have 70 times our rate.

Even if the data is wrong, it’s probably right enough for a person to safely conclude that coronavirus is extremely common in Europe right now.

There are so many sick people over there, doing nothing at all to isolate themselves, that removing us from the scene would have had no effect whatsoever.

Out of curiosity, I Googled to see if our overlords still want Americans to get tested. Of course they do. Why? So we can get treatment to protect ourselves from severe covid and so we can buy what are now referred to as “quality” masks.

Forgive me for chuckling. They never give up.

There is no treatment. I mean, okay, there are some things that seem to help a fraction of the people who are on death’s door, but for you and me, the mildly ill, no, there is no treatment. Except ivermectin, which does seem to help, especially when taken at the first sign of symptoms. Your GP won’t give it to you, however. You have to go to Tractor Supply. He isn’t going to pump you full of secret drugs developed for Jeff Bezos and Joe Biden just because you have the sniffles. Those drugs probably don’t exist.

If you have severe symptoms, what do you need the test for? Go to the hospital. You already know you’re sick, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s covid. Just go. If you have a fever of 104° but it’s not covid, are you going to stay home and die?

As for the masks, well, they do not work, and people who are at risk of severe covid should not be out in public where you can cough on them.

Look, if I absolutely had to be around someone who was likely to die if infected, I would get super-duper masks and make the best possible use of them. Mainly, I would avoid the person as much as I could, because that’s the only thing that really works, but, yes, in a pinch, I would wear a mask. But this is not the situation I face. I don’t know anyone like that, and if there are strangers in my area who need protection, they should be at home, because even if I put my head in a hermetically-sealed jar, other people will still expose them.

Science now tells us that the best masks made, worn 100% correctly all the time, have some impact, so there are scenarios in which I might use them, but come on. I’m not wearing one to Lee’s Famous Fried Chicken.

So why are Europeans all full of coronavirus while we are not? How can that be? There is plenty of travel both ways. It’s just about impossible to get covid on a plane, but people land eventually and move around.

It seems to defy physics.

Maybe Europeans are getting tested and we are not.

Not much has happened to us. My wife got sick first. She had a mild fever and a sore throat, plus skeletal aches.

My voice got raspy. Then days later, I had a night of chills and skeletal aches. Not bad. My butt really hurt. I never had a sore throat or much of a fever. I had another night of greatly reduced chills. I developed chest congestion, and when I tried to sleep, my breathing sounded like someone sitting on an accordion. My nose ran slightly. On the second leg of our flight home, my left ear got stopped up and would not let go, and it took a couple of days to drain. My appetite was affected, and it’s still not great. Sweet things still don’t taste quite as sweet as they are. I have been going to sleep very early, but that could be jet lag.

That’s about it.

We were able to walk around Rome and keep up with the crowds.

I think I wasted a lot of money on shoes. My Keen hiking shoes developed a leak in Switzerland the night before we left, and I had to do something, so on the morning before we took our train to Italy, I went to an incredibly overpriced sports store in Wengen and bought new hiking shoes. I believe they charged me 229 Euros for Scarpa shoes that can’t hold a light to Keens.

They felt wonderful during our train trip to Rome, but the next day, during a food tour, my feet started to hurt. Very unpleasant. I’m not used to having foot pain, so I was not happy.

They also filled up with water when rain caught us near the Pantheon, but that could have been because I got caught in the rain while wearing shorts. The water may have run down my legs and into the shoes. They were supposed to be waterproof. I always wear waterproof shoes when I can.

The next day, I went out and bought yet more shoes. Again, Scarpa. All I could find. They were much better. Only 199 Euros.

In retrospect, I wonder whether then first new pair was really a problem. Maybe I was having skeletal pain, and it made my feet hurt. Maybe the shoes are okay.

I’m afraid to try them on now. I’m out about $500.

The lesson: always check your shoes before traveling abroad. I thought my Keens were relatively new, but when I checked, Amazon said I had ordered them over two years ago.

Also, don’t wear shorts on cold, rainy days unless you like water in your shoes.

My Keens can be had for right around $100, and you can bet I’ll be getting new ones. I have no idea what to do with my Euro shoes.

I hope we don’t kill anyone at the doctors’ office.