Obvious Things Pundits Have not Figured Out

In case anyone is wondering what’s happening with the Bidens, I can tell you, just from being old and very familiar with the baseness of human beings.

Bill O’Reilly published a big scoop right after the debate. He said Biden had decided to get out of the race, and the administration was delaying while deciding how to announce it.

I looked at that story and wondered why anyone with a hot tip would talk to Bill O’Reilly in 2024. He was a huge player before the scandal, but now he’s limited to Youtube and a personal website where he charges people to find out what he thinks. Like me, he is his own publisher. That’s fine for me, because I am obscure and not respected, but for the former king of news, it’s proof he is no longer an apex predator. These days, it makes no sense for an insider with good information to go to him. Why would you call Bill O’Reilly with red-hot news when you can call Jesse Watters or Sean Hannity?

Maybe bigger personalities got the same call before O’Reilly and turned it down because they considered it unreliable. Maybe O’Reilly took the bait because he can’t be as picky as he used to. People selling news stories often have to shop them around to find the right customers.

Shortly after O’Reilly published his scoop and promised more to follow, The Washington Post published the actual scoop: the Bidens were not giving up. They were holed up at Camp David, and Jill and Hunter were the loudest voices in the crew of what I would call abusers of the elderly. They were pushing Biden to keep going.

O’Reilly then offered a different story and admitted he was guessing.

My personal theory was that Biden would never quit, because his ego defies measurement and he has dementia. Stubborn, arrogant people with sound minds get worse, not better, when they become demented.

So what is on the minds of the Bidens? My theories:

1. Joe is humiliated and shocked. He knew he was slipping, but his handlers protected him from the full impact, as current stories show. They babied him and humored him, like managers of overrated champion prizefighters who haven’t faced any real opponents. oe is flustered, but that monster ego likes what his wife and son are feeding it, so he will keep going until enough powerful left-wingers pile on him to break his will.

Here is a sad video–no sarcasm–which may help people understand what Joe Biden has faced this week. Has it been unbearable for him, or has his staggering array of self-excusing mechanisms managed to keep his pride intact?

2. Like most women, Jill Biden really likes attention, even though First Lady is a position you can get merely by having a heartbeat. She does not want the attention to stop. Vogue just put her on the cover. Because Biden is going to lose the presidency, that will never happen again, but she thinks there is still hope, so she is doing everything she can to avoid becoming an elderly Wilmington housewife who no longer gets invited to national events.

3. Hunter Biden knows he is going to prison eventually, if only for a short time. He won’t go over the gun charge, but after that, he will face other convictions. With his father the bullying president out of the way, even some Democrats may want to investigate the Biden family in order to save face, so we could see charges extending far beyond guns and taxes. It is very unlikely anyone but Biden will pardon Hunter or commute his sentences, and no one but Biden can pressure the executive branch to go easy on him, so Hunter really, really wants Biden to win. Also, Hunter’s only immense source of income is influence-peddling, and he will never be allowed to practice law again, so once Biden is gone, Hunter has no job. No one will buy his paintings, either. At least not for $400,000 each.

4. The rest of the Bidens…see item 3. They are in the same boat as Hunter. Possible investigations and convictions. Abrupt end to influence-peddling.

What if thorough investigations fail to uncover trialworthy evidence of crimes? Hmm. That didn’t help Trump, did it? He committed no fraud, he was found guilty of sexual assault on evidence flimsier than Elvis sightings, he did nothing wrong on January 6, and look where he is. Same things can happen to a Biden who is no longer related to a president, and being tried and winning often bankrupts people.

It’s important to note that Biden never said he would not commute Hunter’s sentence. He never said he wouldn’t pardon him or commute his sentences in other matters. He never said he would go easy on the rest of the family. And he’s a horrible, shameless liar, so it doesn’t matter what he said. He may pardon Hunter on the gun charge.

I believe this is what’s happening.

I think Joe, as a man of influence, will fade quickly after he loses. He is fading now.

People keep saying he’s a decent man and that they like him. Those things are not true. Everyone over the age of 50 (most powerful people) knows Biden. He has been obnoxious all his life, even by politician standards. More recently, in 2022, he said, “No one f___s with a Biden!” Only a bully filled with bad intentions would say a thing like that, threatening people indiscriminately from the office of the presidency (or anywhere else). It’s something a drug kingpin would say.

People do not like Biden, and that includes Democrats. A lot of people, including administration insiders, will be glad to see him exiled to obscurity to have his fangs pulled. I don’t think we’ve had a president this disagreeable since Johnson. Nixon was crooked and vindictive, but he was way smoother about it. He wasn’t a shanty Irish hothead, and he didn’t extend his vengefulness to petty slights involving his family.

Nixon was never accused of influence peddling or funneling money to his worthless relations. He was never accused of going after their detractors. He and his family were not accused of receiving foreign funds in exchange for helping America’s adversaries. His daughter was never paid the price of a home by a Nixon ally for a painting. He was not unpleasant, personally. In these ways, he differs from Biden.

People will still talk to Bush and Obama because they are not senile and can be reasoned with. If you want to deal with them, it is not necessary to confine your conversations to the hours between eleven a.m. and four p.m. It is probably possible to get reasonable access to them instead of wading through layers of Howard-Hughes-style keepers who really run the free world.

Nobody of any significance is going to go through the ordeal of gaining access to an irksome, bullying, incoherent dementia patient who will never hold public office again and may be investigated for treason and bribery.

When nice people become demented, their families hire live-in help and keep them in their houses. People come to their birthday parties. Everyone looks for chances to hug them. When bullies who made people walk on eggs their whole lives fail, they get shunted off to isolation, and everyone breathes a sigh of relief. “When it goeth well with the righteous, the city rejoiceth: and when the wicked perish, there is shouting.”

Maybe I’m wrong, but I have been right sometimes.

I don’t think Democrats can push Biden out of the election. Seems like more than half of them are trying, but the rest are doubling down. It will be a contest of wills. I doubt they can get a behind-the-scenes supermajority.

I believe Hunter and Jill are squeezing Biden like a nearly-empty tube of toothpaste. I’ve seen it before. My sister tried it with both parents. “He’ll be dead soon. We have to go on living. Let’s get what we can.”

I don’t doubt that they love him, but not all love is pure, and rationalization is a hell of a drug.

I hope he stays in the race, because I think there is no way he can win, and if I’m wrong, Harris, who would take over soon, would be a great second choice. She is so unintelligent, she will be unable to function and dominate as president. She will be extremely weak, she will bring shame to her party, and she will cripple downstream Democrat candidates.

They say the other options are Whitmer and Newsom.

Whitmer put an entire state under house arrest. She is a sick, heartless tyrant. She is about as popular as norovirus. I don’t think she will be the candidate, because so many people hate her.

Newsom is slick and oily, and he lies to cameras without a trace of doubt or regret. He was one of the few people with a combination of dishonesty and boldness sufficient to permit him to say Biden won the debate. Most Americans are easy to fool, so ordinarily, he would be a great candidate. His problem is California. Streets full of human manure. Rolling blackouts worthy of a place like Namibia. Junkies turning sidewalks into tent neighborhoods. San Francisco retailers fleeing and leaving upscale shopping neighborhoods vacant. I think it will be hard to get him elected, because his opponents will just have to go to any city in California and shoot honest videos.

If Singapore annexed California, in a month, they would have to start importing canes.

As unpalatable as Whitmer and Newsom are, I would rather see Harris run, because everyone on Earth knows she’s weak and mentally slow. She has been babied all her life, failing upwards all the while. She can’t handle any kind of opposition. She runs. And she is also unable to self-monitor, so she thinks she’s smart. She talks to people much smarter than she is as though she were teaching retarded kids.

To sum up, I believe the Bidens would rather see Joe die than quit. I think Trump will win. I think everyone will start ignoring Joe in mid-November. I believe Hunter will be imprisoned.

Nonetheless, I am confident America and the rest of the world are finished.

1. Roll up Their Windows 2. Lock Their Doors

Very interesting story in the news. Fox and The New York Post have it. So do some other outlets. A dozen people claim they saw something they thought was a spaceship, hovering near a place called Red Rocks in Colorado, near Golden. Red Rocks is an outdoor amphitheatre which is relatively well known.

It was hovering somewhere above the trees. It was disk-shaped. It had three rows of what appeared to be windows, one above the other. It was hundreds of feet long. This is what they claim.

They say that when the stared at it, it appeared to react. It “tipped at an angle,” started to move, and then dissolved into invisibility.

Is it a reliable report? Probably not. It’s almost certainly a hoax. But a couple of big news organizations are taking it seriously, as of three days ago.

It’s certainly as credible as the leftist press’s Russian conspiracy nonsense and their false debunking of the Hunter Biden laptop and the Ashley Biden diary.

The report appeared on June 11, on a site called NUFORC. That stands for National UFO Reporting Center. “National” appears to mean nothing, since anyone can call their website “national” this or that. Here’s some language from the site: “The National UFO Reporting Center was founded in 1974 by noted UFO investigator Robert J. Gribble.”

Any relation to Dale Gribble from King of the Hill? He was a big conspiracy enthusiast. The pages I looked at did not say.

We now know that our government admits there have been sightings, some caught on video, that it can’t explain. Is it time to conclude there truly are real objects up there that violate the laws of physics as understood by human beings?

A while back, a family in Las Vegas told cops they saw huge bipedal beings wandering around in a backyard. At least one cop thought these people were serious. To make the story more convincing, a meteor lit up the sky during the event. Thing is, the meteor was seen in Las Vegas, but it was actually hundreds of miles away, so there is no reason to think it was related to the sighting. Except that it provided a good opportunity to make up a story.

It’s hard to believe a bunch of people saw aliens up close and didn’t take cell phone videos. We put photographs of all our meals on Facebook, but no one thought it was important to shoot creatures from outer space.

A kid who claims to be one of the Las Vegas witnesses has gotten 1.1 million views on Youtube, telling his story.

Why didn’t the people in Colorado take pictures? It takes about 5 seconds to get a phone out and start shooting. Time yourself and see.

The thing that interests me about the description of the UFO is that it reacted to observation and did so slowly. I saw this happen in my dad’s house, in 1987. I was sitting on the couch in the middle of the day, and while I did not see a spaceship, I saw a creature clinging to the wall in the upper corner of a room.

The creature was oval in shape, around 4 inches long. It was clear and colorless, like glass. Its only features were a border going around it and a line that cut across it at the northern end, toward the corner. It divided the creature into what seemed to be a body and a head. The body was about three times as long as the head.

It looked like a long theta with the bar closer to one end.

I could tell it was not in this physical universe. It was somewhere behind this universe, like a mouse under a rug in an old Tom and Jerry cartoon, except it was in a three-dimensional space that was somehow under the physical space we live in.

Like the spaceship in the Colorado story, it realized I could see it. At first, it was motionless, but after I turned and stared, it reacted. It drifted slowly off the wall, about a foot and a half into the room. It rotated counterclockwise so the head was pointing up. A line appeared down the middle of the body, like the line between a beetle’s wings.

Two wings peeled up from the body, started to spin around it, and spun so fast they appeared to be a motionless glass disk. The body that was revealed when the wings opened was sort of funnel-shaped.

The being started to rise. It didn’t rise straight up. It moved a little bit this way and a little bit that way. Maybe three inches off course in either direction, zig-zagging lazily. It started out maybe 10″ from the ceiling, and when it got to the ceiling, it passed through it.

It didn’t vanish like the ship in the story, but it did react when spotted and start to flee. It went through the ceiling, indicating it was not limited by the physics we know of. Human beings can’t make anything go through anything. Not one thing.

Why would it stick to a wall if it could pass through things? I don’t know. It could not have been held up by a physical wall, since it was able to go through them, unless it had some way of making the wall seem solid to itself.

You and I can’t lean on rays of light or feel the edges of shadows, but this thing seemed to be able to rest on a wall when it wanted to.

So what’s happening?

I don’t think there are aliens from other planets. The Fermi Paradox is too strong. There should be trillions of advanced civilizations out there right now if life develops randomly and Earth is not special. Trillions of others should have come and gone by now, leaving traces such as radio signals. We have never seen any indication that anyone is out there. But we have seen indications that other beings are here on Earth.

If the laws of physics permit intelligent beings to overcome the speed of light, which they probably do when they are understood well enough, then trillions of civilizations should be sending ships all over the place. Various intelligent species should have met by now.

If we are seeing real signs in the heavens now, I would say we must be seeing sights produced by angels and demons. We know they exist. They are not from other planets in the physical universe. They live in the space behind our space, without physical bodies.

So are we seeing the heavenly signs Yeshua told us would be omens of the apocalypse? I don’t see why not, given that the apocalypse has started. It would be strange if we were not seeing them.

It would be great to find out the end is here. I can’t wait to leave. I don’t want to be here for cataract surgery and incontinence, especially with a medical establishment that has moved to the extreme left. I don’t want to live in a world that is even more crowded than today’s. There are twice as many people here as I feel comfortable with. The newfound ability of Chinese people to become international tourists has shown me exactly how crowded the world is. They overrun places I used to love, ruining them for everyone else. I guess Indians will be next, although they are much more pleasant. The Chinese are amazing. They spit on the floor in restaurants and defecate in the flowerbeds at Disneyland Shanghai. There are signs there, in Chinese only, telling people not to drop a deuce in the bushes.

I dream of the day I hear the horn blow.

I was talking to my wife. She was telling me about her feelings about giving up on law and dropping out of her bar-study courses. This was back in Zambia. At first, she felt it was irresponsible. Friends told her it was a mistake. But when she did it, she felt the weight of the world fall of her shoulders, and she never missed what she left behind. Later on, God told her that if she had made a disastrous mistake, he would have told her.

Hearing her story made me think of my own situation. I have lost enthusiasm for practical things. I hate dealing with business, for example. There are home repairs I dread making. Often I feel like I’m going to regret not working harder. But now I ask myself: am I just feeling the end of my relationship with the unsaved world? My wife says God raptured me away from it. Is God just preparing us to get out?

Do I dare even think it? If I’m wrong…what a letdown. Worse than anything except the realization one has been condemned to hell. Hell is the worst, and Earth is number two. Thinking you’re about to be raptured and finding out you have 30 more years to go would be like thinking you’re being sent home from a bloody war and then being sent back to the front.

I know my attitude toward this place is right. Yeshua said, “He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.” People like Joe Biden and Madonna are sick. For me, death will be a release from prison. For them, it’s a horrifying end to having their own way, having brainless people treat them like gods, and treating other people like props in a play.

On the one hand, my life and my wife’s life are very pleasant. On the other, I want out. I want to go home, to be among people who are like-minded. I am sick of death, suffering, temptation, and fighting. I feel like I’m going to be extremely traumatized the next time someone close to me dies. I am fed up with death.

Why do people want to live forever on Earth? The thought is horrible. More people and animals to love and then lose. More atrocities to witness. Less room as we multiply. The same types of unpleasant events, over and over, endured by one generation after another. The same experiences, millions of times. Imagine the boredom. Do you really think you would still be able to enjoy movies if you were 200 years old? You would have seen every possible story line 50 times.

I don’t want to be stuck here with disgraceful, infantile people who fight over garbage and excrement. The company would be unbearable. Like sharing an island with angry pigs, spewing dung on everything. It would be like moving back to Miami or New York.

I hope the stories are true. If I have to witness one more idiotic presidential election after 2024, I don’t know what I’ll do.

Don’t Say “Insured”

Let me play the salesman to any Florida readers who may be trying to get insurance right now.

Buy home insurance without windstorm (hurricane) coverage.

Financial guru Suze Orman has a high-rise oceanfront condo close to Boca, AKA the Jewish Palm Beach (built in response to antisemitic ordinances and deed restrictions), and they tried to nail her for $28,000 per year. She’s a person people look to for responsible advice, and she more or less told her audience to forget home insurance, if only by example. Why?

I spent a month in a high-rise in Boca on the beach. Belonged to a rich Jewish family. They let my mother, my sister, and I shelter there during a crisis. There is zero possibility any windstorm that isn’t the product of a nuclear blast 100 yards away will hurt a building of this type. They are 100% reinforced concrete from top to bottom. Trees can’t fall on them. Their roofs are relatively tiny compared to house roofs, and they are flat and strong. They can’t flood. It’s impossible for flying debris of any size to make it above the third floor, and flying debris is not much of a problem anyway. I went through Andrew, and even at 180 mph, the bulk of the damage was from wind against structures. I was in a house that got over 160, the front was largely unprotected glass, and there were no projectile issues.

What did the insurer want $28,000 for? Theft and fire, I guess. Way too much. They were just looking for a way to make Orman pay for other people’s hurricane claims.

When was the last time a high-rise burned down in Florida? It’s extremely rare. Theft is a problem, but you would have to have a lot of stuff in a little condo to make $28,000 per year make sense. In five years, you would pay $140,000. In 10, $280,000. Come on. If you have Klimts and Picassos, you can insure them independently.

There is no way she could ever have had hurricane damage in that place. I’m surprised she ever chose to insure against it.

A high-rise in Miami Beach collapsed a while back. Should she worry about that? Insurance is not the answer for a building that is about to fall over. The answer is to get out and avoid buying a similar home. Insurance isn’t going to lift 15 floors of collapsed concrete off you. Since the panic that followed the incident, inspectors and county officials have been in high gear, identifying and fixing dubious buildings, so you should be able to avoid properties that have issues.

What I’m getting at is this: she would have gotten nothing at all for her wind insurance premiums, and spending $28,000 to insure for wind, theft, fire and liability is ridiculous when wind is most of the cost.

I think she should have looked for fire and theft insurance. I’ll bet it would have been an acceptable deal.

Here is what Orman said: “I’m not paying $28,000 a year when the insurer will probably contest any claim I get anyway. Luckily, I have the money to self-insure.” That is true for her personalty, but she can’t rebuild a high-rise if it burns. She’ll have to eat a loss that is probably in the area of 3.5 million dollars. If she can insure against that for a few grand, it’s worth it.

If you reject windstorm coverage, suddenly your rates will implode, and insurers that gave you silly pretexts for refusing to insure you will suddenly find that you’re a good prospect.

That’s what is happening to me, anyway.

The last year I had an insurance premium I thought was reasonable, I paid about $3400. The next year (last year) I hit $8000. Too much, but I thought I had no choice. Then they said they would not renew at any cost, supposedly because I was too far from a fire station. That was a lie; it was obviously because of hurricanes.

This year, I sent my agent a request, asking for insurance without wind coverage. He expressed doubt because I was allegedly non-renewed over fire. Then on the same day, he sent me an offer. Get this: $1300.

Dude.

So much for that fire story.

It is possible I may not qualify because they may not consider my neighborhood a proper subdivision, which it, technically, is. But it shows you have to be stupid to get hurricane insurance when you are not in danger of having hurricane damage.

I have other properties that don’t have hurricane coverage because they’re not the kind of properties hurricanes hurt. There has never been a problem. The money I save could pay the mortgage on another property.

I wiped out all the trees that could conceivably land on anything expensive, and now I don’t need hurricane insurance. My roof is not going to come off in the kind of maximum sustained winds this area has suffered since the dawn of history. I made sure this area was flood-proof before I moved here. Worst case: I have to move downed trees and repair some fences. Big deal. Did that already in ’17.

I guess a claim should have been filed for the cost of debris removal. It wasn’t a big deal. Might have netted a grand or two after the deductible, but probably not. I would have had to find people to move the wood, which didn’t seem possible. They would never pay me for moving it myself.

Removing the dangerous trees this year cost me $7500. Very, very cheap. If I am able to get the insurance I was offered, paying the new rate plus $7500, I will save about $6000 in the first two years alone. And having a tree land on your house is terrible, even if you’re insured. You don’t want it. Far, far better to avoid the problem entirely. Insurers will try to cheat you after your loss. They will not be able to replace the irreplaceable. You’ll have to move for a while. Forget that. Cut the trees.

I had to remove the trees anyway. Some were rotten. All were too close. If I had decided to continue to pay for hurricane insurance, I would still have had them removed. I’m going to stay on this personally from now on cutting trees myself before they become problems.

I have a 50-foot oak beside my driveway right now. It’s sick. Bet you I can have it gone in three hours. Just me and the saws and the tractor. It’s easy, as long as nothing breaks down. A tree surgeon won’t touch it for under a thousand. I know.

What if you can’t cut the trees that endanger your house? What if you have a mortgage and have to have insurance. Move to Tennessee, I guess. I don’t know what else you can do, unless you’re so rich you don’t care.

I may have my roof bulked up from below. I have wind straps that are not the very best. Better ones can be installed in existing roofs. But it would take an extremely strong storm to remove my roofs, and we just don’t get those. A tornado would do it, but what are the odds? One in 10,000?

My choice isn’t wind insurance versus no wind insurance. It’s no insurance at all versus insurance that doesn’t cover wind. The choice seems pretty obvious.

When I travel, I want to know there is some chance I will be compensated for whatever people steal. Theft is very unlikely here, but it would cost me a lot. I want to know that if my house burns, I’ll get at least most of a new house. The other stuff is not important. Insurance payments are generally half-assed, inadequate efforts to put Band-Aids on severed limbs. I want a decent Band-Aid at a decent price. I am not stupid enough to think insurance will make me whole.

I admit, sometimes insurance is pretty good. A property of mine was damaged by leakage from an upstairs property. I wanted to have a contractor fix everything at the insurer’s expense. Easy. They wouldn’t have it. When I quibbled, they offered me over $8000 for work I thought might amount to $4000, and I took it. They wanted to settle and get out fast. But they do cheat people whenever they can.

I am no expert, but it seems to me every Floridian who wants homeowner insurance, and who can reduce hurricane damage risks to near zero, should look into getting rid of wind insurance. I’m going to do it if I can work it out.

MORE

I am blogging again in order to avoid heat stroke. I’m yanking the awful hedges the original owner of this house put in by the driveway. Should have done it 7 years ago. My mouth got dry, and in the house I came.

I thought I’d comment on a story about Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s business partner. He is supposedly worth $2.6 billion.

His advice? Never pay for insurance. He says he doesn’t have home insurance because he can write a check and build a new house.

I have mixed feelings about this advice, because he’s wrong. Sometimes insurance is great. Examples:

1. Your house’s value is NOT less that 0.05% of your net worth. This applies to a shocking number of people, Mr. Munger. To many people, losing a house is worse than dropping a pizza. If my current insurance offer goes through, I can get a new house and new stuff for $1300. I may live 30 years, so ignoring inflation for obvious reasons, I might have to come up with $40,000 over that time to pay for a house that would cost way more than that to replace, along with new stuff. I would have to be quite stupid not to take that deal. It would take me lifetimes to pay the insurer the value of what I could lose. If I were worth $2.6 billion, I would still take that deal. Fires do happen.

2. You live in an area where morons like to fall down and sue people. That covers a lot of the US. If you’re worth $2.6 billion, maybe you’re not afraid of a $2 million verdict for a con artist who says he can’t work because he fell in your driveway, but many people are worth considerably less than $2.6 billion and would feel the impact of a $2 million loss more than the loss of a coffee mug.

3. You rent cars when you travel to other states or countries. If you can rent a car for $300 without insurance and $375 with insurance, take the insurance, especially in a foreign country. American insurance generally doesn’t work in other countries. Do you really want a rental agency in some Stan country to put you in jail until you pay for a wrecked 2004 Scion with chicken manure in the glove box? I wrecked a rental car once while traveling. The lady in the other car claimed she had medical issues. I don’t know much about it, because they gave me another car, and when my trip was over, I flew home. I didn’t know she claimed she was injured until months later, and I had zero involvement with the whole business because I paid for insurance.

4. You travel abroad. See above. You can get a huge amount of insurance for a couple of hundred dollars when you go abroad for three weeks. Medical. Evacuation. Liability. How can you turn that down? I must stress that this is another situation in which my advice is intended for people worth substantially less than $2.6 billion. Travel insurance is just too cheap and helpful to pass up, unless you are filthy rich. The potential downside of not being insured is huge.

5. Sometimes a product is so awful, insurance is a smart idea. This used to be true of laptops. Maybe it is now. They broke down all the time. I bought an expensive laptop a long time ago, and I had no problem with the price of insurance. I would never insure something like a washing machine, but some products just can’t be trusted, and sometimes the cost of insurance is unrealistically low.

You may think your homeowner’s insurance covers stuff like this. Okay, sure. Do you know what your deductible is? I had a $2000 problem, and my deductible was $2500. This is why I keep my car deductibles as close to zero as they allow. A low deductible doesn’t jack the premiums up much at all, and it makes claims pleasant.

6. Dealing with a loss is just too much of a pain. What if you’re a contractor, and your ladder or impact driver breaks? Do you want to lose work while you send it to the factory, or do you want to pay 15% extra and have them hand you a new one at the store, no questions asked? Think carefully. This is not supposed to be a tough question.

If the downside is tolerable and the insurance is expensive, don’t pay. If it’s the other way around, pay. That’s what I think.

My dad taught me never to pay to insure anything I could insure myself. Basically good advice, but oversimplified. When Best Buy asks me if I want to pay $50 to insure a $200 item, it offends me, but I pay when the deal is right.

Maybe I’m missing something here. It has been known to happen. I do think extremely rich people should pursue different strategies from the rest of us. If I were Kim Kardashian, and I wrecked a Bentley, I would have a new one brought to my house, have an assistant file a claim, and give it away when it was fixed. If I were the assistant and I wrecked my 3-series BMW, I would probably take a different course.

So This is How Other Americans Live

This year, I am having a very welcome experience. I am sitting through hurricane season with the same degree of worry as a referee in a murderous MMA match. I no longer have skin in the game.

When I moved here, there were oaks all around the house and shop, and some were well over 100 feet high. Most were rotten, because they were trash oaks. Unlike live oaks, which live hundreds of years, trash oaks grow quickly, get eaten by bugs, and fall apart piece by piece. Here, they say they live for 20 years and die for 80.

I had oaks over two feet thick at chest height, held up by cylinders of sound wood with interiors made of something like rotten papier-mache. They were close enough to the buildings to fall on them if they blew over.

People call these oaks “water oaks,” although some are other species and even hybrids. Water oaks generally don’t fall over even if they’re rotten. Instead, they start dropping dead branches from near their tops. Sometimes the branches are a few feet long. Sometimes they’re 20 feet long and weigh a lot.

A typical water oak will self-destruct more or less in place, with the dead material falling close to their bases. But sometimes they just plain fall over. They can also fall just because they’re too tall and the soil here is too weak to hold them up in a blow.

We never, ever get hit by hurricanes here, but we do get hit by winds in the tropical storm range. Former hurricanes pass over us, and hurricanes that are still strong pass by within 100 miles. Tropical storm winds can’t blow a roof off or pick up a tree and throw it. They’re not dangerous to houses unless they can blow heavy stuff onto them, and that, they can do. If they are sufficiently close to tall trees.

Every year as the season started, I watched the NHC maps, wondering if I was going to have to file an insurance claim.

This year it’s very different. I paid a crew a lot of money for a day and a half of work, and now the odds of my buildings being damaged are right up there with the odds of Biden being reelected.

The first month of the season has been a big nothing. When we finally started to see activity, I was excited. Because my house might be crushed? No. Because I thought we would get some rain to fix the yard damage the tree service did. I actually HOPED we would get a tropical storm. That felt weird.

It wasn’t a smart thing to hope for. I can still lose electricity for a few days, and I shouldn’t hope for something that will harm people who are less prepared.

I still have properties in areas where hurricanes hit with full force, but they are not houses. I don’t care what happens. Andrew hit them about as hard as a hurricane can, and they weren’t harmed.

Because winds other than tornado winds (rare) can’t hurt this house, I don’t need wind insurance, and I don’t need flood insurance because before my dad bought this house, I checked the government’s satellite maps. This property can’t flood. There is one area where I can get a little standing water, but it’s maybe a quarter-mile from the house, and we’re talking about a couple of inches of water.

I am now looking for a company that will insure my house for everything except hurricanes. I don’t want to pay for insurance I will never use. Insurers are cutting customers off, citing stupid pretexts like the distance to fire stations. The real reason is fear of paying off storm claims. It seems to me there ought to be someone out there who will want to take my money, knowing they will never have to rebuild my house unless it burns.

They ought to love insuring people in my area because the storm risk is so much lower than it is in coastal areas. I’m not sure they know what they’re doing. Maybe the problem is that so many people in areas that don’t get really strong winds let trees grow close to their homes.

I’m turning into what most Americans already are: a person who isn’t interested in hurricane news. It feels great. I pray when I read about any disaster, impending or otherwise, but from now on, I won’t feel I have a personal stake in any of it.

Senile Biden Proves Dementia-Denying Leftist Press, Politicians Have to Go

Ordinarily, I don’t watch presidential debates. They are held on a 5th-grade level, the dishonest leftist moderators always do their best to destroy conservatives, there is zero possibility I will vote for anyone other than a Republican, I acknowledge God, not politicians, as our only savior, and the whole business makes my stomach hurt.

My wife, however, feels differently, so last night I heard some of the presidential debate as she listened on her phone, and we ended up watching most of it. We would have been better off having a prayer session.

We all know what happened. Joe Biden was proven senile, beyond any conceivable effort to deny it. CNN, which disgraced itself even more than usual by agreeing to conditions which essentially held Trump down so Biden could kick him, posted this headline: “‘We are f***ed’: Democrats despair over Biden debate performance.”

Publishing that was trashy, and I’m sorry I repeat it here, but this is the world we live in now.

Biden unraveled. He was terrible. He lost like no other candidate has ever lost. Sometimes it was painful to watch. That being said, he did better than I expected. I’m still amazed he got through his first year.

People are saying Trump did well. He didn’t. He just looked great because he was debating a corpse. He exaggerated. He probably said things that could be lies or could be mistakes caused by lack of preparation. I didn’t catch any lies except the ones Biden told. He missed opportunities. He obviously didn’t prepare the way a good attorney would prepare for oral argument. Along with his opponent, he descended into childishess. But he won the debate because Biden was effectively his teammate. I guess he could have won without Joe’s help, but Joe made it effortless.

On the big picture, Trump was perfect. He keeps making it clear leftists are ruining America. That’s the big picture. Inescapably true. And he did a good job of reminding black people, repeatedly, that leftists had brought in millions of foreign lawbreakers to take their jobs. Unfortunately, most black people don’t watch debates. They get their news from gossip, Facebook, Tiktok, and black celebrities.

There is no point in going over the debate and dissecting it moment by moment. Everyone knows what happened. Go ahead and try to debunk it. The deeper you dig, the more you will realize you’re making it worse. There is no hope whatsoever of spinning this.

Most people think the big story is that Biden showed himself to be senile. It’s sad that they missed the real story, which is this: the people who control us–politicians and journalists–have been lying to us systematically since 2020, and many of them, this very morning, are repeating the same lies.

“Biden is strong and sharp behind the scenes.” “He only looks bad in videos because Republicans edit them and use AI to make them.” “The claim that his handlers limit his appearances to prevent people from seeing that he’s senile is a conspiracy theory.” The dumbest lie: “Trump is the one who is really senile.”

Trump is running a multibillion-dollar empire while running for president and beating the incumbent, while dealing with bogus felony trials ginned up by prosecutors who should be imprisoned. He gives unscripted speeches two hours long, over and over. He travels constantly, on a plane with adult-sized stairs, which, unlike Biden, he does not negotiate tentatively in special sneakers colored black so people will think they’re dress shoes. He sleeps 4 hours a night. He is most definitely not senile.

The truth means nothing to the dementia deniers. NOTHING. As long as they get socialism and perversion, they are willing to tell us absolutely any lie they think we will swallow.

In 2020, it was obvious Biden was demented. You can prove it to yourself right now. You can look at him in 2018 and 2020 videos and see the enormous change. Didn’t matter to the left. They lied and lied and lied. Now he can’t even find his way off a stage, and they are still lying. His wife had to help him off the debate stage last night.

They lie about Trump. They lie about coronavirus. They lie about illegals. They lie about perverts. They lie about inflation. You name it; they lie about it.

A while back, God told me this: “The truth has been lost.”

That’s not a small thing. It’s catastrophic. People who don’t know it’s catastrophic are ignorant. They don’t know the Bible.

Who is the truth? Yeshua. He is the way, the truth, and the life. If you abandon the truth, you abandon Yeshua. You can’t have him unless you love the truth.

I complain about homosexual behavior, pointing out that it is abomination. Guess what else is abomination? A lying tongue. A person who lies habitually is an abomination, just like a homosexual who lies back in a dark bathhouse with his legs open for strangers. Sodomy isn’t the only abomination. Check a concordance.

To have salvation, you have to have humility. A person who is proud can’t admit fault. If you can’t admit fault, you can’t repent. If you can’t repent, you can’t ask for forgiveness. Not sincerely. You can’t be improved. You will continue to rot, adding iniquity to iniquity.

This is why Yeshua says he’s the truth.

Journalists and politicians didn’t see anything new last night. They knew Biden was demented in 2020, but here they are today, pretending they just realized it.

And who saw it coming? I did. I said that if Biden didn’t collapse in office, leftists would suddenly “realize” he had dementia and try to coerce him to resign. Now you see it happening. It started last night before the debate was over.

They knew he was demented. They just assumed that with enough cheating, he would get through the debate. Now that the cheating–the conditions, venue, and, most likely, drugs–didn’t work, they are doing what I said they would do. They are pretending they just realized he has a problem.

They’re saying very stupid things. They’re saying they doubt he has the ability to make it another 4 years. Hello? He has been like this for 3-1/2 years already, in charge of our military, including nuclear weapons. He has gotten us into wars during that time. He will be president until January, unless they drag him out in a straitjacket. What is their excuse for subjecting us to this? They knew what they were doing.

I also said I didn’t think Biden would agree to withdraw. They love telling us he’s a warm, friendly, humble man. As though nobody were alive to see him during the last century. He was one of Washington’s most notorious and abrasive buffoons and liars. He had to abandon a presidential campaign because, as he admitted, he lied too much. He made a fool of himself in Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

He is vindictive. He is petty. His arrogance and self-worship are immeasurable. He raised traumatized, failed children because of his ambition. He’s not going to quit unless they find a very big crowbar. He worships at the altar of himself. He has no capacity whatsoever to admit fault.

They’ll have to threaten him with something in private. That’s the only way.

Problem is, the biggest threat is Donald Trump, who will pursue investigations into the Biden family’s obvious influence-peddling. If Biden isn’t president, who will protect the Bidens?

Dementia makes the arrogant and stubborn worse. Believe me, as the son of a dementia sufferer, I know. Arrogant people don’t admit they’re demented. They revile and even physically attack people who tell them the truth. These things are normal.

Enormous loads of lies are being piled on our heads by the left, all day, every day, and the right isn’t a whole lot better. Ordinary Americans are just as bad as their celebrity keepers. This is why the rapture has to come. The only effective vaccine that has come out during the last decade is the one that makes people immune to truth.

We’re not just a banana republic. We’re something worse. A banana republic that thinks it’s a great nation of laws and principles.

I try not to get absorbed in politics, but it’s difficult, because leftism is driven by hatred of God, and because of it, I live in a doomed, cursed country where I am persecuted. I’ll say this: I manage not to think of politicians as our deliverers.

I’m a theocrat and a monarchist. I go along with the current system because I have to. I won’t make a fool of myself by taking part in an armed insurrection, but give me a chance to vote for a religious monarchy, and I’ll do it.

I saw that Oklahoma is forcing schools to tell kids about the Bible and the Ten Commandments. I have no problem with it. If Florida had a referendum on a law banning mosques, I would vote for it. I don’t care about religious freedom, really. I care about freedom to practice Christianity and Messianic Judaism. I will vote against pagan religions every single time I get the chance, and I will always vote for people who promote Christianity.

There is a huge, ugly Hindu temple near me. I would love to see it bulldozed. I speak a curse to it when I drive by. When my wife and I went to Egypt, we saw idols ancient Christians had defaced. We thought it was great. We should finish the job. We should destroy every image, turn every temple into rubble, and build urinals on the remains. God used to do this to pagan sites.

Revile me. Say I’m against democracy. You’re right. Democracy is degenerate. Yeshua was murdered through voting. Jewish majorities killed the Jewish prophets. A majority rejected Moses. A majority rejected theocracy and chose mad king Saul. Give me my perfect king. Now.

A fallible king who promotes Christianity is much better than democracy. The one perfect king, who is also God, is best.

Last night we found out we have no real president and no hope of having one until January. Biden is playing roller derby on one skate, and Kamala Harris is, truly, quite stupid. Our republic is decapitated. Now our enemies have had it shoved in their faces by CNN. What will Putin, Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping, and the Muslims do, now that they are certain we have no leader, and they face the prospect of fighting a real man in February? I’m sure they are chattering, trying to make quick decisions.

Whatever they do, the press and our leftists will help them with lies, executive action, crooked judges, and toxic legislation. Corrupted nations always fight their friends and assist their conquerors.

I hope Trump wins, but this world is still finished.

I guess now I’ll go read the articles that are popping up, calling Trump a liar and grossly exaggerating the problems with his performance. I will definitely see them as soon as I leave this site.

You don’t always have to be a prophet to predict the future.

How Much Longer?

God keeps giving me revelation, and I will share it. I wish I could say it was good news for the world, but it’s not.

It’s hard to relate this stuff in a linear, easily-understood way, so I’ll just write and hope for the best.

I lived in Miami. As I grew closer to God, I grew to hate it. Miami is a city of pigs. People there are shallow, coarse, rude, and selfish. Racism is a big problem there. Cubans hate blacks and look down on all other Hispanics. American blacks hate non-blacks. Haitians can’t get jobs because Cubans won’t hire them. Most of Miami is a ghetto where you have to keep driving if you’re in an accident, because if you don’t, a black mob may beat you to death.

The traffic is terrible. It’s a homosexual haven. The best-known beach has been taken over by topless tramps.

When I moved up north, I found I still hated Miami. In fact, my hatred of Miami life increased every day. It still does. I never think, “It wasn’t so bad; I should go back for a visit.” I never miss anyone from Miami enough to think about visiting. I always want to kiss the ground here. I thank God over and over. I look out the windshield of my car at the trees and farms, and it’s hard for me to believe I’m really here. All this, after nearly 7 years.

God will rapture real Christians away to him during the 7 years of tribulation, and I have been raptured away from Miami for almost 7 years.

My county is a sanctuary. I love it. The people are mostly conservative Christians. Joe Biden couldn’t get a job as a school crossing guard here. People are warm and kind. They’re extremely patient. No one honks. There are interracial families everywhere. When I meet black people here, it’s not like it was in Miami. There is no sensation of uneasy detente.

Still, I hate living in this world. My county is a little oasis. It’s an aberration. The rest of America is a pile of festering excrement full of maggots. Living in my little haven is like huddling in an airlock, waiting for the mothership. My life is easy, but America is not my home. The country that produced me hates me and loves my enemies.

I have realized my feelings about this world are like my feelings about Miami. The closer I get to God, the more I will hate being stuck here. It’s not abnormal. It’s not a problem that needs to be fixed. It’s what happens when your eyes are opened to the goodness of God and the comparative filthiness of humanity and evil spirits.

God isn’t just God. He generates heaven. His presence is heaven. Wherever he goes, heaven goes with him. The more time you spend with him, the more painful it will be every time you have to go back to earthly concerns.

Most human beings bring you closer to hell. They’re full of demons, and Satan is using demons to bring hell to the surface of the earth. Miami is more like hell than most areas of the US.

There is no future for any decent person in this world. If I raise my children here, they will have no idea what a decent life in a decent country is like. They will face temptation my grandparents could never have imagined. They may know kids whose mothers have Onlyfans ads on their car windows. They will know girls who send boys nude pictures. If they go to school they will be taught that anyone who believes abomination is bad is a Nazi.

They will be under attack every day, just as I am, simply because God loves them and their parents are Christians. The government will be on the side of their enemies, and so will most people.

The government may even try to take them from me because I side with the supreme being who loves me.

I had inadequate parents. They didn’t introduce me to God. My dad ridiculed God and Christians. My mother took my sister and me to church about twice a year. She didn’t know the Holy Spirit. She had no revelation.

My parents didn’t teach us much of anything. The other day I realized something: when I needed guidance, I didn’t think to go to my parents, because they never fulfilled their obligation to guide me and help me overcome. Also, while they were smart, they were not wise.

I grew up thinking for myself, with results that should have been predictable. Failure and misery. I was a loser, meaning spirits and people who were against me won, and I lost.

The other day God gave me a revelation about his nature as a father and the attitude I should take to him.

God knows my name. He knows everything about me. He loved me before I was created. I am very important. He wants me to be victorious and happy. He wants me to come to him all through the day with my problems. When I don’t know what to do, I should do what normal kids who have normal parents do.

Now I go to him and call him “dad.” I tell him I’m his son, and I need my father to show me what to do, because I don’t want to try to figure things out on my own. That’s what got me in trouble and wasted decades of my life.

It’s one thing to know God is your father, but when he tells you this by revelation, it becomes part of your heart. It’s not the same.

Yesterday, I read a story about Portland, Maine, handing out kits to people who like shooting drugs up their rear ends. The kits come with syringes and instructions. The instructions don’t just tell them how to get it done. They give suggestions to help people get the fastest, strongest highs.

With the story came revelation. We have given up. God expounded on the revelation today.

America used to be a Christian country. People deny it, citing the Constitution, as though it really controlled us. This was a Christian country. Laws and court decisions reflected this until we turned away from God.

We passed laws about things like sodomy, adultery, and fornication. We banned drugs, gambling, pornography, and prostitution. All those things are practiced freely now, all over the US.

Why did we stop trying to fight sin? We gave up. We decided we knew better than God. We didn’t like being told what to do. We didn’t like shouldering the burden of leadership. We were only rarely able to get God’s supernatural help.

Now we promote sin. We force better countries to let us fly sodomy flags over our embassies, and we tie humanitarian aid to the promotion of abomination. We encourage doctors to make it impossible for confused kids to become real men and women who can reproduce. We encourage them to castrate adults and give them unnecessary mastectomies. Casinos are all over. We are not merely legalizing drugs; we are helping addicts get hooked and stay hooked.

We now treat people who are against sin the way we should treat people who fight it. We call evil good and good evil.

We have given up not just on God, but on each other. We are supposed to help the lost find God. Instead, we help them destroy themselves, because it’s more convenient for us.

I always say the rapture will come when we give up on God and he realizes there is no longer any point in continuing with the present evangelism model. God has shown me there is more to it. He will give up on the world when we give up on each other, and that’s what we’ve done.

Conservatives have deteriorated. Many tell us to be fiscally conservative and socially liberal. Be selfish and try to cut your taxes, but let perverts rule the country. Let them take over our government and even the church.

It’s not going to get better. If you are attached to this place, and you think real Christians who criticize our culture are self-righteous kooks you should fight, you will stay here with the demons when the rapture comes, and there will be no children of God to pray for your protection.

It’s going to keep getting worse. Go ahead and vote for Trump. I know I will. But he’s one little hemostat on a severed leg. He can’t fix things. He’s no messiah, and the real Messiah himself can’t fix things, because he has to have our consent, which he will never get during this age.

Satan always wins the popular vote. My wife said it, and it’s true. Every time humanity gets a break from God, we descend into depravity again. Eden. The Flood. Abraham’s descendants, plunging into centuries of demon worship. The rejection and murder of Yeshua, by a coalition of Romans and Jews who claimed to represent Yahweh. The church’s rejection of the Holy Spirit. We do it every time.

The rapture won’t fix the world, even if God takes us in a spectacular way and everyone else sees it. The facts don’t matter to liars. They would come up with lies to explain it away. God showed up in pillars of fire and cloud, he showered the earth with manna and quail, and most Jews still turned on him. They turned on him again while he stood before them working miracles. As they were arresting him to murder him, he worked miracles, including raising thousands of dead people and knocking the priests and temple guards to the ground with supernatural power. They still murdered him, knowing who and what he was. After the crucifixion, the church experienced many great miracles and signs, and look how it turned out in 2024.

A spectacular rapture will only move people who choose to be moved. You choose what you believe, whether you admit it or not.

Most people would ridicule a spectacular rapture and double down on blasphemy.

So when is God going to come for us? It can’t happen soon enough. I don’t want to raise kids in this world until the ungodly are removed and Yeshua is here on a physical throne. How much worse will things get before that happens? How many martyrs will there be? Is there any kind of humiliation we will be spared?

I always pray for God to help me fear him. He is listening. I fear him now. I can’t stand this place. I don’t want to be left here with people who hate me, separated from God.

Living on Earth in 2024 is like taking care of a retarded person who smears excrement on the walls and furniture and urinates in the refrigerator. It doesn’t matter whether you love that person. It doesn’t matter how fancy the house is or whether you have some clean rooms you can hide in. The situation is unsustainable.

It amazes me to see how blessed my wife and I are. We don’t have to interact much with people. We are physically isolated. We have abundance. We get to have long prayer sessions when other people are working in offices where they can be abused and fired for speaking the truth. Our lives in our little cocoon of cleanliness are great. But we still need to go home.

I really hope I’m not stuck here waiting until I die.

Why, Exactly, did we Imprison El Chapo?

Don’t ever try to tell me the world we knew isn’t finished.

Portland, Maine, is providing kits to drug users so they can shoot opioids up their anuses.

Their anuses. No joke. Fentanyl and heroin. Meth. Anuses, people.

I’m talking about a local government. A local part of the same big system that, right now, is holding drug dealers in prisons across the country. Some for smuggling heroin…you know where.

The Onion and The Babylon Bee could never have published something like this. It’s too bizarre to make good satire.

Picture this on TV in the 1960’s. On a show about local government. Say The Andy Griffith Show. Barney goes to release Otis from the drunk tank but turns away. In horror. Should have searched him the night before.

The kits come with lubricants, and Portland provides advice as to how to get the most powerful high. That’s certainly helpful. Coming from THE GOVERNMENT.

I feel like going out in the yard, looking up, and trying to spot Yeshua. Blow, Gabriel. Please blow.

You Don’t Have to be Jewish to Want to Disempower Dangerous Loonies

Why was I too blind to see this? Apparently, the Global Jewish Conspiracy is stealing elections from liberals now.

Isn’t this the same Global Jewish Conspiracy that makes about 90% of American Jews vote for liberals? It sounds like someone forgot the mission statement.

I keep saying black Americans have a huge antisemitism problem, and no one believes me in spite of how obvious it is, because that’s how my life goes. No one ever believes anything I say. Look around the web, and find out for yourself. See what mainstream blacks say about Jews. A huge number of them claim they’re the real Jews. They think actual Jews are Russians and Cossacks. Popular entertainers who do business with Jews say it, proudly.

Calling a Jew a Cossack is like calling Aztecs conquistadors.

Black soon-to-be-former Representative Jamaal Bowman lost his primary election. He is a “squad” member and a close pal of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He is about as nutty and truth-immune a leftist you will ever see. Who are liberals blaming? Him and his genocidal insanity? No. They blame AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. As we all know, this is a lobbying group committed to helping Israel.

They say Bowman’s enemies are “buying” elections. Hmm…who could buy elections? Rich people who like to pull strings from behind the scenes. Which group has been accused of that the most. Let me think.

It’s a dog whistle Helen Keller could hear.

AIPAC claims it’s nonpartisan. Yeah, and it’s a total coincidence that Supreme Court justices tend to vote along with the parties of the presidents who nominated them. AIPAC is in the business of sending money from CONSERVATIVE donors to Democrat candidates who are farther to the right than their competitors. It also supports Republican candidates. AIPAC is a conservative organization no matter how much they shuck and jive.

They pretend they’re nonpartisan because Jews are political kamikazes. They attack their allies and help their enemies. Conservative Americans are pretty much the only significant allies Israel has, but most American Jews think conservatives are the ones who are out to get them. Most American Jews are more afraid of Christian conservatives, without whom they can’t survive, than they are of Muslim terrorists who admit they want every Jew dead.

If AIPAC came out and admitted it was basically conservative, many Jews would quit donating.

For conservatives and Christians, helping Jews is like feeding an injured wild animal and trying to keep the human scent off the food so it won’t reject it. But they gobble every bait the left puts out.

Okay; AIPAC is pro-Israel. But that doesn’t mean “the Jews” shot Bowman down. It means a number of conservative Christians, as well as some Jews, shot him down.

In any case, left-wing nuts are now blaming the Jews, using not-clever veiled terms to describe Jews, so they can unpersuasively deny their antisemitism. Someone should make a list of these terms. “Zionists.” “Bankers.” I wonder if “New World Order” is code for “Jews.” One Jewish organization thinks so.

Bowman has done some things in support of Israel in the past, perhaps as a nod to the necessity of wooing New York Jewish voters, but he is now an October 7 denier and says Israel is committing genocide, which is somewhat like saying European Jews committed genocide in the 1930’s and ’40’s.

The more time passes, the closer we get to the day when leftists stirring up hate in front of cameras stop saying “Zionism” and “Israel” and start saying “the Jews.” Some are already doing it.

Jews will never be popular. Never. Antisemitism is a permanent feature of human interactions, because Satan hates Jews even more than he hates most people. Most people listen to Satan. Jews keep trying to appease. It’s a pointless strategy; feeding a wolf your fingers, hoping he won’t take your arm.

The things I thought God told me many years ago are coming true. I believed they came from God, but it still amazes me to see myself proven right.

No one listens. Well, a majority put Jeremiah in a cistern for telling the truth. Nothing changes.

Now I have to go check Venmo for my payment from the Elders of Zion.

Mower Buyer Battles Iron Dome of Incompetence and Lies

Buying used stuff online seems to be getting harder now that Facebook has taken over.

I don’t have a Facebook account, so I don’t have Facebook Marketplace. If I signed up today, it would probably be 6 months before they would let me use Marketplace. They don’t accept new users, and you have to have “friends,” i.e. strangers you have no interest in knowing yet who read about your life every day. To look at items, I have to use my wife’s account, which she needs to delete for her own good.

Maybe I shouldn’t complain about the strangers, given that I blog, but here, no one is collecting my data, and I don’t have to worry about college and being looked up by old acquaintances I’m hoping I never hear from again.

Craigslist is drying up, and Facebook won’t let you play unless you join the slimy collective.

My mower saga started with a rude lady who treated me like a terrorist. Then I messaged another seller, and she didn’t even answer. She just changed her listing so it said the mower was sold. I reported her for not responding. You can do that.

I found a mower with 22 hours, listed under what looked like an individual’s account. In reality, the listing came from Crystal Tractor, one of the only two big Kubota networks here. They have a store in Deland, and that’s where the mower was, supposedly, at one time.

I messaged the account holder, and he said he would check on the mower. That was days ago. I messaged him again yesterday. No answer.

I Googled to find out who really advertised the mower. It wasn’t hard, because the ad photos and video matched photos from Crystal Tractor’s website.

Today I called Crystal Tractor, and they said the mower had sold long ago. They didn’t offer me anything else. Small wonder, because their online used inventory is pathetic.

I reported the guy who advertised the mower falsely and did not respond.

Why is Crystal Tractor advertising under individual accounts?

I think I understand why my local dealer has a whole herd of unsold mowers. It looks like Kubota doesn’t require franchisees to maintain basic competence or ethics.

I went to Ocala’s inaptly-named Florida Coast Equipment, and the nice lady I dealt with had no idea what she was doing. Didn’t know how the products worked. Didn’t seem to know Kubota made garden tractors. Didn’t know what mower buyers need. Didn’t offer to scan the chain’s inventory to see if they had anything I might want. It was like they had just hired her away from Olive Garden. How do they sell anything?

To sell people expensive machinery, you have to know your products. People don’t want to hand over 5 or 6 figures without some reason to believe they’re getting what they need and paying a fair price. You have to make them comfortable. The guy who showed me Scag mowers knew everything about them, and he clearly knew what mowing was like. If I decided to buy a mower from him tomorrow, I wouldn’t have to ask him a thing.

I’m so frustrated, I have considered the unthinkable: buying a John Deere.

I dislike the John Deere company because they treat customers so badly. Other companies make products that are just as good or better. Nearly all small tractors, for example, are of equal quality, regardless of what people with green hats and face tattoos tell you. But John Deere, like BMW, promotes a perception of nonexistent exceptionalism. As though they’re doing you a favor by selling you something exclusive and exciting, which is not an accurate description of their run-of-the-mill products.

John Deere charges way too much for parts. They fight people who want to repair machines they paid for. On the other hand, they do make good zero-turns, and if I had one, I could probably do all the repairs myself and never see the inside of a dealership.

I could paint it orange.

I like Kubotas for their quality and the easy availability of parts, but I also like a feature their zero-turns have. The decks lift up without floor jacks. Kubota builds jacks into the decks of some models. I don’t want to buy a mower without this feature if I can avoid it, because blades have to be removed and replaced once in a while.

My Bronze Age Deere tractor is repaired, maybe. I started it up, and it did not leak. I’m going to see if I can cut my waist-high grass, and I’ll keep looking for something better.

What if it keeps running? Should I forget about a new mower? I don’t think so. I don’t trust my mower, and thanks to leftists and their demented king, product prices keep skyrocketing. I think I already lost about $3,000 by not buying a couple of years back.

I really don’t like the idea of spending money on a gas zero-turn when a used diesel what will outlast it can be had for less money.

I have learned what a good used diesel should cost. With a few hundred hours, no more than $10,500. A mower with very low hours…maybe $12,000. In terms of what you get, there isn’t a big difference between new and 500 hours.

Hope the old mower will get me through a few more months. It will probably take me that long to find a replacement.

A Bargain that Robs You of Peace is too Expensive

I’m learning more about buying and selling online.

I was interested in a used mower. I contacted the person who claimed to own it. She was really rude and gave me problems over things like photographing her ID. She wouldn’t give me useful answers to questions. She did not make a normal effort to make things work, as you or I would. There was no way to work with her, so I cut her loose. I couldn’t figure out what was happening. I wondered if she was a criminal or maybe a drunk.

I discussed this with some people online, and most thought she sounded like a scammer, but some thought I was the problem. They thought it was crazy to ask someone for an ID, and one even said I looked like a scammer because I had no trailer and would have to send a truck.

These people have no common sense. They’re like people who have successfully gone through dozens of sex partners without catching a disease or getting pregnant. They recommend stupid practices because they haven’t been burned yet.

If you get on a motorcycle without a helmet right now and weave through traffic at 150 miles per hour, the odds you will be fine are over 99%, assuming you know how to ride. If you do this and come out okay, should you then tell people what you did was smart? Should you come down on people who won’t do it? If so, you’re the reason doctors call motorcycles “donorcycles.” You are not smart.

We are always surrounded by people who seem fine even though they do stupid things. People who have nice homes, cars, phones, and toys and owe hundreds of thousands or millions to credit card companies and banks. People who have had hundreds of sex partners. People who bought British cars. You have to see through the surface when you make decisions.

You don’t know who has herpes, HPV, or HIV. You don’t know whose car is leased. You don’t know who is going to end up paying $20,000 for an $8,000 couch because of interest.

I’m talking about a principle Christians should understand. We are surrounded by people who ignore God’s warnings, and most of them don’t spontaneously combust or get sucked into the bowels of the earth as soon as they sin. They seem fine a lot of the time. Many never seem to face consequences. It’s an illusion. A trap. God is not mocked, and mercy isn’t approval.

Beyonce Knowles, who promotes slutty behavior, seems fine. Taylor Swift, who promotes perversion, seems fine. Sean Combs, a proud criminal, seemed fine until recently. Kanye West, who says he is “the god of me,” appears to be in good health, and he’s still rich. Elon Musk keeps a demonic charm on his nightstand, and he’s doing well. Their current status doesn’t mean they’re not in trouble or that they’re in any position to serve as role models.

I can tell you some things I have decided. These things apply to substantial purchases, not little things like lamps and drills.

1. Always insist on an ID from a seller unless there are circumstances proving he is legitimate.

2. Never, ever do business in cash.

3. Always try to meet at a police station the first time around.

4. Accept the fact that you may have to let someone see where you live and enter the driveway. You can’t hide in a hole if you want to sell things. If you’re dealing with something large, accept the fact that someone will probably have to know someone else’s address and enter their property. That being said, don’t let anyone in your house if you can avoid it. It’s usually not necessary to let them inside. Keep your garage door closed. Don’t show them your tools or anything else they don’t need to see. You should probably avoid going into other people’s houses.

5. Be aware that if you receive stolen merchandise, you may be charged with a felony, not a misdemeanor, even if you didn’t know the merchandise was stolen. You need a signed bill of sale stating that the seller owns the property outright. You can be convicted because you didn’t do your due diligence, and a bill of sale with an affirmation of ownership will be something the court looks for. Put any guarantees or conditions on the bill of sale. Every party has to have a copy.

6. Never deal with snotty people unnecessarily, online or elsewhere. It makes you a man-pleasing self-sellout with no self-respect, and nasty people often cause problems later. They rob you of peace, and peace is not a luxury. It’s a basic need.

7. If you buy something big, and you have to send for it, give the seller a $100 deposit to hold it, good for a specified period, after which it becomes his. On the bill of sale, specify that the deposit will be refunded in full if the item disappears, regardless of how it happens. Pay in full when the item goes on the truck.

People with no common sense told me I looked like an identity thief because I wanted to see an ID. That’s just plain dumb. If I pay you 4 or more figures for something, I am eventually going to know who you are, and I will be able to find out where you live in a couple of minutes. This is the Internet age. You might as well show your ID when you meet to make the exchange, because you’re not sharing information the other person won’t eventually have, and criminals hide their identities.

You can’t sell someone a table saw or tractor anonymously. Life doesn’t work like that. They’ll see your face. Your car. Your license tag.

As for cash, look at it from a criminal’s point of view. A person is going to a known location, or departing from a known location, at a known time, with over 4 figures in cash. Let’s get rid of the police station argument right away. Who looks after you on the way to and from the station? Who looks after you when you leave the bank? A criminal who may be totally uninvolved with the purchase may force you off the road and take your money. It happens every single day. Google it.

Who will keep thieves out while you’re keeping the money in your house, waiting to deposit it?

I don’t care if you exchange the money in a bank lobby or in the White House with the Secret Service watching. Sooner or later, you will be on your own.

Even if you’re sure you won’t be robbed, don’t take cash. Counterfeit isn’t something that only exists in movies. It’s all around us. Remember George Floyd? Counterfeiters make phony bills in many denominations. Do you want to trust yourself to examine dozens of bills? You’d have to be an idiot.

That means I was an idiot, because I did it twice.

No cash. Period. There are cashier’s checks. There is Zelle. There are wires. There are credit cards. You want a data trail.

As for meeting at a police station the first time around, it will give you a chance to check each other out, exchange ID’s, and, if things are going well, exchange the item for the money electronically. You should to it if you can. But it won’t protect you from cash thieves.

If you can’t stand the idea of someone else knowing where you live or parking in your precious, secret driveway no one could ever, ever find unless you told them where it was, the burden of moving the goods somewhere else is on you, so work something out. But they will still be able to find out where you live if they want.

If you want guidance about dealing with sellers, look no further than Florida’s Pawnbroking Act. A pawnbroker has to copy a seller’s ID and make him affirm that they own whatever it is he’s selling. You should do no less.

In Florida, a pawnbroker who receives stolen merchandise and an ordinary citizen face different penalties. The penalty for you–felony prosecution–is worse. It’s not worth it just to get a good deal on a guitar. You should know the law where you live.

What if you can’t prove the seller owned what you bought? Does that sound unlikely? Women who have had breakups or divorces sell marital property every day. People who owe money on things sell them. People who are in bankruptcy sell things. Addicts sell things that belong to their relatives. Whether the thing you bought is stolen or just obtained improperly in a way that is less incriminating, you can lose it.

As for new rule 7, what do you think a seller will do if you give him $5,000 for a trailer, and when you or your agent arrives to pick it up, it’s gone? Would you expect him to give you your money? He’ll say you assumed the risk. Meanwhile, your trailer is sitting behind his brother’s house.

No delivery, no money.

People who won’t do business responsibly will make you suffer if you deal with enough of them.

This is where I am now. If anyone has corrections or additions, please put them in the comments.

More Proof Will Rogers was a Liar

I got my John Deere mower working, so I SHOULD be able to keep the lawn down until I get something better.

The repair was surprisingly easy compared to other problems this tractor has given me. I would say this should be a 45-minute repair for a professional who has done it before. I took maybe two hours. Couldn’t find my smallest inch-pound torque wrench, so that slowed me down.

In the meantime, I have experienced a big disappointment. A lady who is advertising a Kubota diesel for a very nice price appears to be a no-go. I can pay for the mower up front, right now, but she is just too weird to deal with.

When I asked if she still had the mower, she replied, “Yes,” without punctuation. No new details. No greeting.

I asked if she was okay with electronic transfers and said I couldn’t show up at a stranger’s house with cash. Check this out:

“I would never bring a stranger to my house. [My own neighborhood, misspelled] isn’t far from here”

What? What does that mean? Do you take electronic transfers or not? Why are you telling me you’re not far away? Are you planning to deliver?

I sent another message saying I would draw up a bill of sale, and I said I would need her ID. I said I would produce mine. So she would know I wasn’t a scammer, I provided evidence I was a lawyer. I also said I would need her to hold the mower until I sent a truck for it.

Here is what she said:

Great! I have no problem providing ID or signing a bill of sale. Please make sure it says the sale is “as-is.” I can take Zelle, a cashier’s check, or whatever works. We have a trailer, so we can do the sale at the police station, and we’ll drop it off at your place. Let me know if you what day is good for you.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Of course that’s not what she said. That’s what about 95% of the people in this area would have said. They’re really nice. Here is what she actually said:

You sound like a lot of work. You either pay [price] on Zelle or cash when I meet you somewhere or no deal. It’s that easy

Man, I really want that mower now. She’s a dream seller. I just know I can trust her.

It’s too bad, because the price was good.

All kinds of guesses are rolling around in my head.

Guess #1: this person is an alcoholic who is too drunk to respond coherently and too filled with bitterness and self-pity to be polite. She rolls over in bed occasionally and fires off a rude, terse response before passing out again.

Seems like self-pitying bitterness is a big thing among drunks.

Guess #2: this person is a couple of guys from Nigeria, and they want to kill me and take my money when I show up at the location of their choice.

Guess #3: her ex-husband bought the mower, and it’s obvious why he is gone. This is what his life was like every day. She says she is selling it because she moved to a smaller property, so that would be consistent with a divorce.

Guess #4: the person who owns the mower is on vacation, and her Facebook account is being used by a person who lives in her house. Maybe a junkie daughter who wants to sell it for drugs.

You can’t buy an expensive mower without the seller’s ID and a bill of sale guaranteeing the seller owns the item free and clear. You would have to be stupid. You could find yourself happily cutting your grass when a couple of big guys, at least one of whom is sleeping with the lady who sold you the mower, jump your fence and threaten to beat you up for stealing it.

I could save several thousand dollars by buying this mower, if it exists, but a long time ago, I decided not to let any more abusive people into my life. I’m not going to grovel before a person who seems like a nutcase in order to save money I don’t need. This is one of the greatest perks of not being poor.

I got a final message. She says I don’t need an ID. I assume she means her ID. Yeah, I do need it. This brings me back to guesses 2 and 4.

Her account doesn’t have any posts since 2022.

Said I had decided to buy something else. Meaning some as-yet-unidentified mower that does not involve this lady.

It’s so rare to encounter a jerk here. It’s like spotting a bird you thought was extinct.

I feel better already. It’s like this lady took me back to Miami for part of a day. It’s like my sister broke in my house and had to be removed by the police.

The account shows a lady who competed in an obscure beauty pageant. Maybe it’s just me, but I think that world is flypaper for people with narcissistic and borderline personality disorders. If you’re fortyish, which means you have no chance of winning a serious pageant, and you have to be Mrs. Acme Fertilizer Queen 2020 for Northern Idaho, and tell the world, in order to smother your self-hating inner voices, something is very wrong. You probably competed against 5 other people, none of whom is a day at the beach, or they wouldn’t have been there.

An obscure beauty pageant is a big nothing to everyone except the contestants and the people who make money from it. The whole point of a beauty pageant is to choose someone who competed against the cream, not the sour milk. Anyone who is quality will shoot for Miss America. Or would have, before they let misfits and tormented, sick men compete.

Miss America is the only real American pageant that ever existed. The rest are like Festivus, the holiday “for the rest of us.”

It’s nice to be old and know how to spot trouble. There are so many people I should have avoided when I was young. I wish I could go back, get between them and my young self, and deploy bear spray.

My Continuing Search for a Solution to a Problem God Already Solved

The mower saga drags on.

My old John Deere 430 tractor/mower is an end-of-life product, and it breaks down over and over. I need to put an end to my mowing problems.

I am torn because I love resisting impulsive purchases. I was a real spendthrift when I was a child, and I can’t help thinking of myself as one now. I like the idea of fixing things over and over and beating the repair-phobic system. It makes me feel righteous. On the other hand, I want to have faith in God’s provision. I don’t want to be cheap when I have more than enough money to spend fairly liberally.

I definitely want to give, because God has made it obvious that prosperity is connected to the generosity we show other human beings. By using the term “human beings,” I exclude greedy preachers. I think they’re another species.

Things that are rolling around in my head:

1. I can fix the JD forever if I want. I’m a machinist, so even though JD has discontinued some essential parts, I could make them when I need them. There is a guy who built his own 1935 Bugatti Aerolithe automobile from scratch. Fixing the JD repeatedly would cost very little.

2. Fixing the JD repeatedly would be a lot of hard work, and it would still mow slower than a new zero-turn mower and be a pain to maintain.

3. God does not want us to work hard. I don’t care what other Christians say. Hard work is very clearly a curse. When you have to work too hard, it means something is wrong with your walk with God. If you don’t think hard work is a curse, you should really read the Bible some day. God literally says it’s a curse. It was part of the first curse he pronounced on man.

I say “man” in order to stand up to the pronoun nuts. I will never say “humankind” except derisively.

4. If God gives you abundance, and you refuse to use it, why should he continue to send it? I can buy the nicest diesel mower on Earth without affecting our lifestyle. I don’t think I should, because it would be excessive, and it would not fit through our gates. But I could. It would be like buying a modest new car, and I can certainly afford that. The other day I was tormenting myself with mower thoughts, and I realized God had already solved the problem. I was just prolonging things by overanalyzing it, as though it really mattered whether I bought new or fixed old.

5. Ostentation is a sin. I never thought it was good, but recently God showed me it’s actually a sin. This is bad news for women, because their main goal when they get dressed is to show off clothes, shoes, and jewels in order to put other women in their places. Men are not quite as bad about ostentation. Anyway, I shouldn’t spend twice as much on a mower as I should, if people who come here will be bummed out about their own mowers if they see it.

Trying to impress people with a mower would be somewhat pathetic.

6. I don’t care too much about “waste.” I don’t think God cares. What we call waste is built into the nature of the physical universe. It’s written in the laws of thermodynamics. Unavoidable. God built it into our bodies. A man produces about 300,000,000 sperm cells every day, for example. I wonder who counted them. Even Elon Musk doesn’t have 300,000,000 kids. If an oak tree produces a hundred million acorns over its life, in all likelihood, none of them will become trees. The disciples caught a huge number of valuable fish when Yeshua showed them where to cast their nets, and then they walked off and left them to rot. God approved. Fish that could have fed the poor.

God approved when a grateful woman put maybe $30,000 worth of perfume on his feet. Judas the thief, on the other hand, practically had kittens.

God loves human beings, but he keeps creating people he knows will go to hell. Most people go to hell. It seems clear he considers it worth it in order to produce a smaller number of children he can enjoy forever.

I think destroying things for no reason is bad, and the word supports that, but I don’t think God is concerned about me throwing out uneaten food or mistakenly buying more mower than I need.

Worrying too much about economy can cause you to waste something really important and irreplaceable: your time.

7. If God doesn’t want me to work hard, why shouldn’t I hire someone to mow? That’s a good question I ask myself. I could do it, but I would feel helpless, which is something I buy tools in order to avoid. Also, it seems better to spend on something you can touch and maybe sell later than on someone else’s labor. When you pay a worker, the money goes away forever. All of it.

8. I think I blew it by not buying a new mower several years ago. Prices have gone up by thousands of dollars, for the same equipment. It’s natural to think delaying a purchase will save you money, but there are $19,000 mowers out there that seemed expensive to me when they were selling for $15,000. If I had bought one, I could have been enjoying it since maybe 2019. Do I want to have to say the same thing to myself when mowers go up another 30 or so percent?

9. I want to avoid buying too little machine, but what if I’m overcompensating because I’m not familiar with zero-turn lineups? What if I spend x and then find out 0.5x would have worked out just as well?

Sooner or later, I’ll have to reconcile all these things.

I thought I should go ahead and get a gas mower. I hate gas equipment, because it’s just plain inferior, and I have this stubborn notion that used gas engines are much less trustworthy. That’s probably true. Diesels are built for professionals, so they are built to run longer without problems. My Kubota tractor has 1,200 hours on it, and it shouldn’t need much of anything until 4,000. A low-end gas mower may start pooping out at 500, and a good one is doing well if it doesn’t need serious repairs before 1500.

I thought I should get a gas mower anyway, because they cost WAY less, and I’ll probably be all done with mowing, forever, before 1500 hours. But I hate gas. I hate it. Less torque. An ignition system full of parts that can go sour. Problems with leftist corn fuel.

A used diesel is probably better than a new gas mower, and they can be had for less. A good zero-turn can last 6,000 hours, apart from the engine, so as far as the body is concerned, it doesn’t matter much whether you buy new or used. If you buy a used diesel with several hundred hours, you still have a body which will last 20 years, and your engine is likely to last just as long in residential use, whereas a gas engine may have to be replaced, to the tune of maybe $3,500.

I was afraid of buying a used diesel because the JD was a used diesel when I got it, and it has been a spoiled, useless, sickly princess. But it was 27 years old when I got it, and in my opinion, the design was unusually stupid. JD made it hard to maintain and work on. Zero-turns are very simple, and in recent years, at least, they have been designed to be easy to deal with.

The JD has two PTO’s and front and rear hydraulics. You don’t need that junk to build a mower. The JD’s extra parts are jammed into the frame like JD was being charged by the cubic inch. A mower has more room for everything.

I’ll just reveal a figure. I looked at a $12,500 gas mower. That may not seem expensive to you, but it’s hard for me to believe a figure that high is possible. I can get a Kubota diesel with under 600 hours for a lot less. That’s a mower that runs $19,000 new. The gas mower would probably give me 1,500 more hours without real trouble. The Kubota would probably give me maybe 3,500, and then I could sell it and get more back than a gas mower with a dying engine would bring. I can save a lot by tempering my justified fear of used machinery with reason.

The local Kubota dealer is not great for repairs, but they do get the work done, and I probably would not need any work for 10 years.

I found a Kubota near me for a very good price, but the deck is 72″ wide. I wanted a 60″ deck like the one I have. I have to go out in the yard with a tape measure.

I have to have some blades spinning this week. That much is certain.

And the Stars of Heaven shall Fall, and the Powers that are in Heaven Shall be Shaken

My wife and I keep praying for God to destroy ministries, including prosperity ministries, that keep people from getting close to God. Whether or not our prayers have anything to do with it, he is doing what we asked. Tony Evans and Robert Morris are in trouble.

I don’t know much about Tony Evans, but he has a megachurch and tells Christians to tithe. Robert Morris teaches a lot about the Holy Spirit, but he also has (had) a megachurch, and he tells people they will be cursed if they don’t tithe.

I discovered Morris years ago. I saw him on some religious network, and I started watching. I bought a couple of DVD sets.

He talked a lot about giving and how God had rewarded him. He said God told him to give away all he had on at least one occasion, and he also told him to give away a new car. He said God restored more than he gave.

I actually corresponded with him via email for a while, until he quit responding. I was asking about the Holy Spirit. As I recall, he said water baptism had to precede tongues, and I sent an email saying it didn’t work that way for me. I spoke in tongues before I was baptized. I asked him about it. Prior to that email, he always responded, but when I sent him my question, he stopped with no explanation.

I believe it was only this week that I heard he believed non-tithers were cursed. I guess he’s just another prosperity preacher.

Tithing is not for Christians. It was never required of anyone but Jews. Morris says we are grafted into Israel, and that is true in some ways, but it does not make us Jews. Christianity is not Judaism. It’s not modern rabbinic Judaism, which is full of catastrophic error, and it’s not the Judaism of the ancient world. We don’t have to keep kosher. We don’t have to observe the feasts. We don’t have to sacrifice animals. Tithing is part of a set of laws we are not expected to observe.

Preachers who teach that we are supposed to tithe are either ignorant or trying to swindle us.

I don’t know whether Evans and Morris are swindlers. They may just be confused due to lack of exposure to the Holy Spirit. But it certainly looks bad when a preacher gets rich from offerings.

Evans hosts cruises. You pay 4 figures, and you get to hang out with him. That’s creepy. Imagine Yeshua charging people for, well, anything.

Evans won’t say why he resigned from his position. He just says he sinned. Someone will out him soon enough. Morris made out with a 12-year-old girl when he was in his twenties. When he discussed this with his church’s elders, he did not exactly admit it. He admitted he did something with a minor, but his church says he didn’t say she was 12.

The girl tried to get money from him after she grew up, and he threatened her with prosecution. Then she went public. This certainly appears to be extortion, but somehow she and her lawyers thought it was a good idea.

I am not interested in condemning anyone for doing something gross many years ago. If we condemn everyone who has done slimy things, nobody, myself included, would be allowed to become a Christian and move on. We let murderers preach to us, knowing what they did. I suppose we should have the same attitude toward people who commit other sins, as long as they repented and changed their ways.

Is a man who made out with a 12-year-old worse than a murderer, an arsonist, a Satanist, or a terrorist? You tell me. I have no problem accepting those types of people. After all, I am pretty bad, and other Christians have accepted me. Sometimes I lie awake thinking about my past. Things I can’t undo.

The world is full of sex offenders. Can we really say we don’t want them to repent and become God’s children? That wouldn’t make sense.

I think he should have been a little more specific with his church, though.

My big issue with him is the prosperity stuff. A person’s past sins generally are not harmful to the church, but the prosperity gospel sends people to hell and causes them to live cursed lives.

He also seems to be proud, which is the worst fault a person can have. My own pride scares me, and I say that sincerely. I spend a lot of time talking to God about it and cursing spirits that drive it. God is giving me revelations which improve me.

Pride is a habit, like heroin addiction, and it’s very hard to drop a habit instantly.

There is always symmetry in the supernatural. If pride is connected to curses and humiliation, which it most certainly is, then humility brings blessings and exaltation. If pride keeps God far from you and brings demons closer, humility grieves demons and brings God close.

Who teaches these things? Nobody. I’ve never heard anyone but me say them, and I have nearly no platform. I should have been hearing these things all my life. But you can’t watch 10 minutes of TBN without seeing some wealthy, unsaved grifter tell you God will make you rich for giving him money. They should call TBN “Future Residents of Hell Network.”

The proud can’t learn. Stupid people learn faster than the proud. If you can’t listen and learn, you can’t receive salvation. How does faith come? By hearing.

The sad thing about Morris, to me, is that he was right about giving money to other people. He didn’t just preach tithes and offerings. God really will make you prosperous if you give other people things at the behest of the Holy Spirit. He promised it in Psalm 41, and it’s not just for Jews. You’re not going to assure your prosperity by supporting rich preachers, but God says he will repay you if you give to the needy.

Maybe people who see the prosperity gospel debunked will decide giving alms is also pointless. That would be terrible. We don’t give enough as it is.

You’re supposed to give, and you’re supposed to be quiet about it.

I hope he and the lady he wronged will get past this, get closer to God, and move into lives of blessing, but it doesn’t sound like they’re making much progress at the moment.

You Only Pay for Concrete Once

I got off my behind and looked at mowers today.

My prehistoric John Deere 430 diesel garden tractor is about as reliable as MSNBC. John Deere itself has moved the 430 to end-of-life status. They haven’t announced it, but when you stop selling hydraulic cylinders for a tractor you designed to have cylinders that can’t be rebuilt, the truth is obvious. They are still selling other parts, perhaps to get rid of existing inventory or because they also fit models that are not quite at the edge of the abyss.

I ordered parts to fix the mower’s suddenly-leaking injector pump, but I think I’ll still get a new machine. I can’t keep spending months at a time with no mower and tall grass and weeds.

Somewhat remarkably, I learned that one of my concerns with the mower is, perhaps, not all that valid. I was upset because I had to remove the deck to change the blades. It’s a dangerous job for one person, and I hate it. Well, today someone pointed out that I could jack the front of the mower up and remove the blade screws from underneath.

This seems really obvious, so I’m not sure why I never tried it. I must have considered it. Maybe I had concerns about being killed by a 1500-pound riding mower slipping off jackstands in a driveway. I don’t mind dying a Southerner’s death, but that’s just too stereotypical. It’s like being in a NASCAR infield and getting hit by a flying tire.

Also, you have to get the deck maybe a foot off the ground in order to get an impact driver on the screws, and you have to find a way to hold the blades on while starting the screws with your fingers.

It doesn’t sound great. It’s not necessarily intolerable, either.

If I get a new zero-turn, I will still have to lift the mower’s front end, but the screws go in from the top, so I can knock the nuts loose and probably drop the blades even before I lift. I will need to lift it to put the blades back on, but the process will be way easier, because instead of trying to insert long screws into spindles, I’ll be putting little nuts on screws.

“Little” being a relative term.

I should only have to lift a zero-turn a couple of inches.

A while back, I made the perhaps self-indulgent purchase of a commercial-grade chainsaw, and the main reason I chose the one I did was that the dealer was more competent than his competition. Seems like the same thing is happening now.

What I have gathered from other people, and which may be completely wrong, is that the two best brands of commercial zero-turns are Kubota and Scag. I am familiar with the local Kubota and Scag dealers. I have dealt with them before.

My tractor had a problem, and I took it to the Kubota people. They are very, very nice, very, very helpful people. I’ll say that up front. They agreed to fix a problem I caused, bending the rules somewhat in order to save me a lot of money. On the other hand, they were very slow. They said I could expect the tractor in a certain amount of time, and they were way off. And they could have done it faster. It wasn’t a tough job.

They also turned it over to me with a lot of rocks and wet sand in it, and it had some bad scratches I had never seen before. They charged me hundreds more than they quoted, and they charged me extra for “shop supplies.”

To me, “shop supplies” charges are like the tipping option at a burger joint. If you want more money, just put it on the menu. Don’t wait till I order, let me relax, and then try, with no hope of success, to shame me by spinning the tablet around while you watch me choose an option. If anyone is going to be shamed, it will be you.

If you want $1500 for your work, don’t tell me $1300 and then put $200 on the bill for shop rags and WD40. It’s shady, and it makes me want to go somewhere else next time. American mechanics have a very, very old tradition of not charging extra for little things which should be part of their cost of doing business. Imagine if I were practicing law, and I charged clients to sit in my chairs. What if I charged them for coffee?

I never charged anyone for things like paper, pens, copies, stamps, or envelopes. I never charged anyone for driving time or gas. When my dad traveled for work, he got reimbursed for some travel expenses, including food, but he ate gas station bills.

The Kubota place is more or less okay, and now that I know how they operate, there will be no more surprises if I go there again, because I will have them tell me about everything they could possibly charge for. As a potential mower buyer, I am still concerned about how long they take.

The other place fixed my chainsaw. It was a small job which literally took them 20 minutes or less, unless they started learning to fix saws the same morning. They took 4 weeks to get the saw to me. They also sharpened the chain, which I asked them not to do, making it unsuitable for manual sharpening. I bought a new chain.

This means the other place is also sort of okay, but it’s somewhat more okay than the Kubota place. They delayed me, but not as badly, and the things they did wrong were not as important. And they charged me what I expected, as I recall.

My understanding is that professionals get the fastest service because they need their tools to make money. That’s great, but homeowners who can’t get their tools also lose money, and their yards and farms fall apart. You can’t let a tree fall on someone’s house or car just because he’s not a professional tree surgeon. I routinely do thousand-dollar jobs with my own stuff. What if I had to pay crews whose tools were turned around faster so they could use them?

I went to the Scag place and checked out a Tiger Cat II mower. Most of their mowers were indoors, but the Tiger Cat was in a nearby building, in the heat. They moved it to the shade outside the showroom so I could see it. It looked pretty good. It seemed to me the company had worked very hard to add thoughtful touches. They tried to make it easy to operate, maintain, and repair. It seemed very sturdy. It had a Briggs & Stratton Vanguard engine, and they are highly regarded. The guy who showed me Scag mowers knew everything about them. They quoted me a firm price which was significantly lower than prices I had seen on the web.

I went to the Kubota dealer. I had to look at their mowers in the burning sun. The lady who helped me spoke what I would call B-in-ESOL English. She was fairly fluent, but not completely. She was very nice, but she didn’t seem to have any idea what I needed or what it was like to run the machines. She tried to show me a 25-horse diesel tractor, for mowing my lawn.

They didn’t have the diesel garden tractor that interested me. She showed me pictures in a catalog and on a website. She had to ask the guys who worked there how it worked.

She showed me a Z781 mower. Very nice. Comparable to the Scag. She did not show me all the thoughtful features. I don’t think she knew what they were. She didn’t know anything about the Kawasaki engine.

The dealership sells big machines. Hundred-horsepower tractors. Real excavators unsuitable for trailering behind little pickups. Could it be that she didn’t know what she was doing because I was looking for a small machine? I don’t think so. If you can understand an excavator, you can understand a zero-turn mower and a garden tractor. A lot of the vocabulary is the same. She spoke like a salesman’s wife, not a salesman.

She wrote me up a quote for the zero-turn and said she would email me a quote for the small garden tractor. I left the dealership feeling very unfamiliar with both products.

I had to go home and Google, which is what she was supposed to help me avoid. I’ve been Googling for days. I was ready for a different experience.

When she quoted me for the zero-turn, she added a $1200 warranty extension without asking me if I wanted it. So how much of that goes to her? Maybe $400? Salesmen should not be so obvious.

It makes me wonder if the “shop supplies” thing was an honest mistake.

She never sent me the tractor quote.

I wonder if they deal with a lot of rich idiots. Travolta lives here. Maybe he goes in once in a while and buys a $300,000 excavator without looking at the invoice. There are wealthy people here who pretend to be horse farmers, and they buy Kubotas.

I don’t think I looked rich. I haven’t worn an expensive watch or any watch in maybe 25 years. I never wear jewelry of any kind because it’s dangerous and effeminate. I wear Carhartt pants, hiking shoes, and a T-shirt everywhere I go. I showed up in my old Ford.

I went home and researched more. I figured out that the Kubota was about $1000 more expensive than the Scag, oranges-to-oranges. The Scag has a better motor. The Kubota has a better warranty. Kubota is an old, solid company. Scag is newer but doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

So that’s it. I’m buying a Scag or not buying anything. There is no point in fooling with the Kubota people, because I have to have a dealer who knows what he’s doing and provides information instead of just charging a markup for delivering a machine. A dealer that doesn’t tell you anything is a lot like a vending machine. You pick your product as well as you can, put your money in, and walk away hoping for the best. I might as well buy a mower from Amazon.

If the mowers sold for the same price, or the Kubota were $500 lower, I would still go for the Scag. I’m afraid to buy from people who don’t seem to know their jobs.

I would like to see both businesses do well. It is frustrating to watch people crash and burn unnecessarily when you want to work with them. The Kubota people could do so much better. I’m sure they could sell a lot more machinery.

I wonder if the machines on the lot are paid for.

I love the name of the mower. “Tiger Cat II.” If I ever start a toilet company, I’m going to name our flagship bowl the Tiger Cat II. It sounds so dramatic. TIGER CAT II! LET YOUR INNER BEAST OUT!

It’s a lawnmower. Come on.

It even has tiger stripes on it.

I guess it can’t hurt to make a menial job seem like an adventure. It probably helps.

I can still pave the yard and paint it Hialeah Pink. That option is still on the table.

Deliver me from John Deere

I am relaxing in a recliner today, and not by choice. TMI warning for those not interested in the medical issues of strangers. I had a hideous skin thing dug out of my back earlier today, so I am not allowed to bend over or do anything strenuous because of the stitches. I guess I won’t describe the skin thing, but I will say it was not cancer. And if you ever have the same problem and your skin thing opens up, afterward, you may never again be able to eat or be in the same room with Gruyere cheese.

I didn’t get a skin thing because I’m filthy. I scrub my back with soap every day.

As a Floridian, I am not very scared of skin cancer. People up north think it’s real cancer, but except for melanoma and maybe whatever it was that got Jimmy Buffett, it’s not. The vast majority of skin cancers are squamous and basal cell, and unless you let them go practically forever, they amount to nothing. You can actually cure little ones yourself with a can of computer keyboard spray. Freeze them, and they die and peel off.

If you get squamous and basal cell and you let it go until it burrows into your body, well, then you have real cancer.

Dave Portnoy is running around calling himself a cancer survivor because he had a superficial lesion cut out of his neck. Not impressed. That’s like saying you survived the Las Vegas massacre when you were blocks away at a crap table. He announced his survivor status in a pretty lighthearted way, so he is clearly no more impressed with his lesion than I am.

I’ve frozen quite a few things off in my bathroom. For all I know, I’m a cancer survivor.

I am not allowed to do anything, so suddenly I want to do all the things I’ve put off. I want to install a new pool filter. I want to burn a few tons of yard waste. No can do. I’ll be allowed to start doing things three days from now, but then I won’t want to do them.

I want to go look at a new lawnmower. I am considering dropping what I think is an enormous sum on a commercial zero-turn, because my geriatric John Deere tractor is ready for assisted living. I’ve already written about it.

I keep turning it around in my head. Do I want the mower because I’m a covetous, pampered spendthrift who hates working on machines he should be grateful to have, which is a proposition that could be defended with a colorable argument, or is it because it is legitimately stupid and cheap to keep relying on a machine that makes me miserable?

I could get a new but not-too-expensive machine, but their engines last a third as long, and they are not as sturdy as the better models. They’re only less expensive if you die before they wear out. If they die first, they’re actually more expensive than better machines.

Having no 3D flesh and blood people to teach me anything, I have joined a lot of forums in order to learn things. Recently, I’ve been engaging on a forum related to outdoor work. People were taking about heat stroke and safety, and I offered my always-coveted and respected two cents’ worth, which I will paraphrase here, because I’m sure you want to read it.

When I’m working outside, and I start to feel like the heat is getting to me, I put my tools indoors, go inside, take a shower, and hit the recliner. If the yard is full of tree branches, I don’t care. I don’t have an HOA. I answer only to God and Ron DeSantis.

I also try not to lift anything heavy. Sometimes I’m too immature to follow my own advice, but I do try to find help or use machinery to pick up things I could pick up if I exerted myself. When it comes to trees, I cut branches and logs up to make them lighter. I never carry brush or limbs more than maybe 25 feet. I move the tractor or cart to the mess.

Young men always want to impress other people with their strength, which is usually nothing impressive and not something other people care about. I have lifted things in order to impress people, and I’m sure I failed. When I got older, I got somewhat less stupid, so I developed my current policy.

The amazing thing is that when you look out for your body, other men make fun of you.

My sister dated a deaf bodybuilder much younger than herself. One day, they were present when I needed to move a boat propeller which weighed maybe 75 pounds. I had moved it many times before, but I was getting wiser, so I suggested dividing the load between myself and my sister’s escort. He sort of smirked and picked it up by himself. Like I was some sort of disgrace even to men unlike himself who were not products of illegal drugs combined with suboptimal priorities.

I didn’t care. God bless him. I didn’t have to exert myself, and I didn’t risk injury. He thought he was putting me in my place by doing my work for me, and of course, while I didn’t think much of his attitude, I was very happy to stand by and do nothing.

I used to be an armorbearer at Miami’s corrupt Trinity Church up on 2nd Avenue. One day, we had to come in for some pretty amateurish “training.” As one of our tasks, we were supposed to pick up another armorbearer and carry him across the stage, running.

I flat-out refused. My knees were good, but not perfect. I didn’t see any reason to risk screwing them up. I didn’t care about the inappropriate, manipulative, and mindless appeals to teamwork, loyalty, and self-sacrifice. I hate manipulation more than, probably, anyone else on Earth. I don’t even like being manipulated to do things I already want to do.

If you paralyze yourself at Trinity Church, jumping in front of a bullet for Pastor Rich Wilkerson, all you will get from the church is a warm thank-you followed by stonewalling from its attorneys. They weren’t going to pay for knee surgery or back surgery, which often doesn’t work anyway.

My best friend at the church had a back problem that day. He was not supposed to lift things. I told him this in front of the other guys: “These guys won’t be around to help you if you hurt yourself.” That was a major no-no, but I said it anyway. He had kids to support, and he had to be able to move and carry things.

They kept hooting at him to do the exercise, so he picked a guy up and ran. Thanks to God alone, he was okay, but I thought he was nuts, and he probably agrees today.

You can do things faster and sometimes better and easier if you forget about safety. No doubt about it. I don’t care. You only get one body, and once you have a permanent disability, you won’t get relief until you die.

I’m writing about safety because I’m thinking about my mower. The deck under the mower weighs around 340 pounds, and it’s very difficult to remove and replace. You have to remove it in order to sharpen the blades, which should be done at least once a year. You also have to remove it to change the oil, although it is possible to suck oil out with a pump if you’re satisfied with an imperfect job, and you can install a long tube that moves the oil plug out from above the deck.

I have removed the deck several times, and I have lifted it up onto its side and removed and replaced the blades. If I keep the mower, I’ll have to keep doing this until one of us is too far gone.

This is a real problem, and the older I get, the scarier the possible consequences are. A back injury from lifting can put you on a walker and leave you peeing in a bag for the rest of your life. Or you can have both types of incontinence and end up wearing diapers.

Remember the Butterbean? He is a fierce stump of a man who overpowered opponents in mixed martial arts and the WWE. A very scary guy. Today, I could beat the daylights out of him, and so could you. He’s in a wheelchair, not because he had a disease or accident he could not avoid, but because he did not take basic measures to look after himself, like finding a better way to make a living. His problem? Back and hip injuries. Needlessly self-inflicted.

He did impress a lot of strangers who don’t care about him, though.

My best friend is a very big guy, and he has always been proud of it. He lifted things he shouldn’t have. He hurt his back throwing a jockey. He had to have two disks fused, and it didn’t work.

In no time, you can go from being a superior and intimidating physical specimen to being someone who can be bullied by average guys and who is down at the bottom of the list as a potential mate.

I feel impressed with myself when I manage to get the mower apart and lift the deck onto its side. I won’t lie. But just about any guy could do it, and it’s a stupid thing to do without a machine.

Pulling the deck out from under the tractor has to be done by hand. There is no machine that can do it. Shoving the reluctant deck driveshaft onto the PTO shaft is a recipe for back spasms and disk injuries.

The more I think about it, the more I think the best choices are to hire a lawn service or buy a new mower. But if I get a lawn service, I have no idea how high their rates will go as inflation continues. Buying a mower is a simple matter of swiping a card and paying once at the end of my cycle. The freedom and relief would be immense.

I am thinking about the mower I need. It has to be very tough, because this property is the Bermuda Triangle of mowing. New rocks seem to create themselves and pop out of the ground, and there are always sticks falling from the trees. It has to be reliable, because repairs are high on the list of reasons for ditching the old mower. It has to be very easy to work on, because when I work on the old mower, I have black thoughts about the engineers who designed it. It has to have good parts support from the manufacturer. Finally, the local dealer who services it can’t be a complete idiot. That’s a tough one.

It doesn’t have to be extremely fast. My time is roughly as valuable as that of a goldfish. I would love a diesel, but I will not live on Earth long enough to take advantage of the longevity, and if I treat a 4-stroke gas engine well, it should be willing to start when I need it.

A new diesel garden tractor is a possibility, and they cost about as much as good zero-turns. They are more versatile. On the other hand, a zero-turn will be more maneuverable, and while I don’t need light speed, I would like to move faster than I do now. I mow at a snail’s pace. I think zero-turns move faster.

The new fuel lines for the John Deere have arrived, and the other little parts should be here shortly. Maybe I’ll be able to get it put together on Sunday. After that, will my motivation to buy new stand fast, or will I, once more, cave in to a possibly misguided desire to be financially responsible?

Or I could go the Miami Cuban route, pave my yard, and coat it with pink house paint.

Ask me next week.