God Bless the Government

I guess the 4 people who read this blog are now wondering why my wife isn’t here in my house. I wrote some stuff suggesting she was going to arrive a while back.

New immigrants have to get visas in order to enter the US. Unless they’re criminal or terrorists who just walk across the border and then get many thousands of dollars’ worth of our money in order to help them remain here and burden us. Legal immigrants who do everything right have to be interviewed at American embassies or consulates. Generally, they get their visas within a few days of their interviews. Interview Monday, visa by the following Monday.

We were scheduled for an interview that was to take place almost a month ago. Then the embassy fired a bunch of employees for corruption, and perhaps not coincidentally, our appointment was postponed 10 days. She went to the appointment, they asked for a little more evidence to prove we were sincere, and they said they would get back to her within 5 business days of receiving it.

That was over two weeks ago. We emailed to ask if anything was wrong, and we got no answer. Today she went to the embassy to check on her application, and she was told to show up tomorrow at 2 p.m. “for collection.” This presumably means she is to collect her visa and green card, but she didn’t ask for clarification.

Barring the kind of miracle nobody wants, she will be on a plane this week. We are not going to wait around.

I hoped she would be here the first week of this month. Now I’ll be happy if she is here for Thanksgiving.

Of course, flight prices have gone up a thousand dollars. I don’t care any more. She’s not going to sit over there and wait so I can save a thousand dollars.

She got the impression that the people at the embassy had forgotten about her. They had to poke through their computer. Maybe they are having a hard time now that they have a smaller staff. I suppose it takes a while to replace skilled people.

We should have a visa and green card in hand by 9 a.m. tomorrow. We did everything right. We supplied tons of evidence. Normal life should start by the weekend.

After all this, of course, she will have to get familiar with operating the lawnmower and changing my car’s oil, and as for me, I will want a new recliner.

Okay; probably not.

If I never do another video chat in my life, it will be too soon. I look forward to praying with her in person for a change.

I Love You, but Stay Out of my Yard

Last night, I dreamed a blonde woman and her employees were trying to get in my house. I was yelling at them and so on from behind sliding glass doors. I gave her the finger. I opened a door to give her some more, and she somehow inserted a wire in the opening so I could not close the door. I got out a knife to cut it, and I think made a small cut on my left hand.

Anyway, I would have been better off leaving the door shut.

I think obnoxious people in dreams often represent spirits, and we all know spirits try to get inside us, like vampires asking permission to enter houses.

Maybe I am too angry these days, and it gives spirits openings. The cowardly, racist, terrorist attack on Israel, and the terrorist attacks on Jews elsewhere, and the gaslighting and cancel fever among leftists all over the world, have had me thinking a lot about how I hate bullies and liars. I hadn’t thought much about self-defense in a long time, but I started getting back up to speed. I have a wife on the way here, terrorism will definitely reach rural American gentiles, and I can’t play around.

Christians have to be people of love, and we don’t get a break when people start abusing us. That’s the time when we have to be most careful not to fall into hate.

I believe I’m right to arm up, but I also have to prepare my mind and my heart.

I cast out spirits of anger and fear. I asked God to pour his love through me and help me to be rid of adverse spirits. I spent a lot of time praying in tongues. I feel much better.

As I woke up this morning, I heard my wife’s voice say, “Now we can read Hebrews 5:11.” Of course, she is not here, because the consulate is dilly-dallying. I thought maybe I had heard from God. I looked up the verse.

Discussing Yeshua, it says: “Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing.”

I wondered the obvious wonder: “Am I resisting things God is telling me?” I’m always asking for correction as well as help in accepting it.

I still have lots of rough edges, but I don’t think I’m the main problem here. I think God was telling me and my wife what people are like.

First, Paul (assuming the traditional attribution is correct) says he has many things to say. Of course he did. He spent a lot of time alone with God, and God poured him full of information other people did not have. This happens to everyone who prays in tongues. Sometimes you get so much stuff, there is distress mixed with the pleasure, because it’s just more material you won’t be able to get anyone else to accept.

What if you lived in a country where almost everyone was dying of scurvy, God kept sending you pallets of Vitamin C, and virtually all of it went to sit in a continually-expanding warehouse, where it would never be opened?

The other day I felt like asking God to stop telling me so many things. “More stuff I can’t tell anyone.” But I immediately stopped myself and told him to give me as much as he wanted. Better for a few people to get revelation, and to feel bad about not being able to share it, than no one at all.

Second, Paul talks about how hard it is to say certain things. Wow. I know what he means. God has shown me all sorts of things, and there are pretty much two people on Earth who listen. Other people don’t respect me enough to listen. Some think TV preachers know everything. I get through to almost no one. So yes, it’s hard to make myself say certain things, because most of the time, people who get revelation are around people who won’t listen and would not understand if they did.

Yeshua told us not to cast our pearls before swine. We are his pearls, but the same principle applies to words. The best way to make swinish Christians mad at you is to tell them something God told you.

Third, Paul says the Hebrews are dull of hearing. That is true of most modern Hebrews as well as most Christians. Yeshua is the Messiah and God of the Jews, but Jews continue to suffer more than the should, because they don’t like him, they have no interest in Judaism, or they believe their confused sages have the answers. Israel would be having a much better time right now if most Jews belonged to Yeshua, but God’s help is limited because their ears are closed.

In the Tanakh, problems for Israel always indicated a state of disobedience. Somehow, most Jews think this is no longer the case. Israel is a pure victim, not in need of correction.

No confession, no repentance. No repentance, no relief. See Psalm 32.

If you are not baptized with the Holy Spirit, you are dull of hearing. Only the Holy Spirit enables people to receive truth. Reject Yeshua and you reject the Holy Spirit. It’s that simple.

Communion consists of two things: flesh and blood. The flesh of Yeshua represents his grace. Every good thing God does for you is grace. It’s charity. None of it is earned. The wine represents the sacrifice. If you share Yeshua’s cup, you agree to share in his rejection. You agree to stand up for him and be persecuted.

If you want the grace, drink from the cup. Don’t defend yourself. Don’t say God owes you anything good. He owes you hell. If you want the good, admit you deserve the bad.

Hebrews 5:11 is an interesting verse in an interesting chapter.

The enemies of Israel are in the wrong, but if you want protection from the wicked, you need to know God. America is like Israel, moving away from the one who protects it.

I will try to keep listening to correction I don’t like. I’m taking solid measures to arm my household, but I don’t need to be weighed down by anger. I will keep praying for the vicious, psychotic enemies of Jews and Christians, and I hope God takes us off this planet before I ever find myself in a situation where I have to consider picking up a weapon.

Stoner was no Browning

Suddenly I’m thinking about firearms and personal protection. I’m thinking about it because I just saw part of a surprising rap video taking up for Kyle Rittenhouse.

One of the many, many lies told about Rittenhouse is that he is a white supremacist. No idea where that comes from. He shot a Jewish pedophile in self-defense, and then he shot two more white people who were trying to harm him. One had an illegal pistol in his hand when Rittenhouse shot his arm nearly off.

Somehow that person, Gaige Grosskreutz, now known as Paul Prediger, never got charged with anything.

Anyway, it surprised me to see a rap song standing up for the victim, Kyle Rittenhouse, because in this country, black people are supposed to be against him for no reason.

A comment beneath the video mentioned something I had forgotten: Rittenhouse’s AR-15 rifle jammed while he was on the ground trying to protect himself.

Rittenhouse did a very impressive job of self-defense. He shot one attacker and then ran to tell the police, which was the correct, lawful, responsible move. Then he was attacked by a lynch mob, and they knocked him to the ground. His gun jammed. He cleared it. Then he shot two people who were trying to kill him, killing one and disabling both. After that, he resumed running toward the police, whom he eventually reached.

He did everything right. He only fired when his life was in imminent danger. He fired effectively, hitting what he aimed at. He stopped firing when the threats were neutralized, so he never crossed the line between self-defense and illegal retaliation. He also cleared a jammed weapon.

He did everything right, except for one thing. He bought the wrong rifle.

If you look at the history of AR-15 shootings, you will notice a common thread: rifles that jammed at critical moments. It has happened to criminals and also innocent people. It has also been a huge problem with the automatic versions of the AR-15 used by soldiers.

Some people get mad if you call an M16 or an M4 an AR-15. It is. It is. Shut up. No one says a semiautomatic Tommy gun is a different rifle from the automatic version. Just shut it.

Here’s a Google search for you.

I saw an Internet commenter saying AR-15 jams had saved countless lives. Pretty funny, but also true.

Try and find similar stories about AK variants or any other commonly-used semiautomatic rifles. Good luck. It won’t happen. There are millions of AK’s out there, and in a giant statistical sample, unlikely things will happen, but there is no long history of AK’s letting people down when it mattered.

Imagine what Rittenhouse went through. You’ve just been attacked by a child rapist who chased you down and tried to take your gun so he could kill you. People are firing shots around you (not often mentioned). They’re yelling, “Get him!” You’ve been knocked to the ground, your chest has been stamped on, and you’ve been assaulted with a deadly weapon (a heavy skateboard). A lowlife with an illegal Glock is running up to you. You’re on your back. And your new rifle is jammed.

It’s a wonder he lived.

I don’t get the AR self-defense craze. They’re all sorts of fun for targets and hunting, but why would you trust a gun which is famous for failure?

People blame the users. “Inexperienced.” “Untrained.” That’s really stupid. If you have to be trained in order to make a gun do what every other gun does for untrained people, you should buy a different gun.

They say poor maintenance is to blame. Good luck, trying to make an AK jam with poor maintenance.

I am an AR owner. Not for survival. Just for fun. I had to buy a special brush to clean the chamber. Never had to do that before. Where is my special AK chamber brush? They don’t exist. No need.

What happens if my AR chamber gets too dirty? It may hold onto a round so tightly it will not come out of the gun without tools. Show me where this is a problem with any other firearm.

I saw a guy on Youtube using hydraulic pressure and a special fitting to force a live round out of an AR-15. He threaded the fitting onto his muzzle, attached a grease gun, and pumped. He was a very knowledgeable guy, and he had tried everything else.

The round finally flew out and dented the wall of his shop.

What are you going to do if this happens to you while undocumented guests are rambling through your house at 3 a.m.? Short answer: surrender and possibly be raped or die.

Maybe you could use the grease gun to shoot the entire cartridge at the burglars.

A standard AR even has a feature that helps you jam it beyond field repair. It has a little thing you push to force stubborn rounds into your chamber. It’s called a forward assist. It was not part of the original design, but the military insisted it be added.

Hello…if a round is too fat to fit, the last thing you want is to force it. The proper thing is to eject the round and throw it out so you never try to use it again. If you use the forward assist, you’ll probably save the 25 cents you paid for the round, but if it gets stuck, you may be murdered by an assailant who realizes you are disarmed. Who bets a life against a quarter?

They should call it a burglar assist.

You can say, probably incorrectly, that your AR-15 will work great because you maintain and use it perfectly, so people who hate AR-15’s are stupid. First of all, you may be overestimating yourself and the gun, and second, wouldn’t you rather have a gun that works even when you screw up? I do. I want a gun I can throw to my untrained wife in an emergency.

The final thing I don’t like about the AR-15 is that it’s usually chambered in a bad cartridge: the .223/5.56. I will treat these calibers as though they were the same, because they nearly are. This cartridge has inferior stopping power compared to the AK’s standard 7.62. When you choose a rifle over a pistol, the single biggest reason is improved stopping power. Why choose a weak round over a strong one?

The 7.62 round is legal for deer hunting, probably everywhere. Go Google and read about deer and the .223. Many states will not let you use it. Why? Because it’s cruel to wound animals without killing them. State governments know the .223 is much weaker than the 7.62. How much more proof do you need?

The AR platform just isn’t very good. No one wants to admit it, but it’s obvious.

Why won’t they admit it?

I know why people continue to insist the AR-15 is a great gun. The main reason is that it’s really neat. It looks great; it makes you feel like a military guy holding a machine gun, instead of a fat Walmart employee with Cheez Doodle particles in his beard. It’s fun to customize. There are a billion parts and accessories you can install on your own.

Products people think are cool are almost always more popular than products that work.

There is also a certain amount of American pride out there. “WE BUILD GUNS BETTER THAN COMMIES!” No, we really don’t. The AK platform is a masterpiece, and the AR platform is a collection of compromises and corrections.

The AR-15 is like the Porsche 911, which was, and still is, a bad idea. Hitler had the VW Beetle designed by Ferdinand Porsche, and Porsche kept the same basic concept when he got into sports cars. Then his company held onto the butt-heavy, hard-to-drive, rear-engine format instead of moving forward like other companies. Just like Americans holding onto the AR-15. The result is that Porsches are still uglier, more dangerous, and harder to operate than other expensive sports cars, and Top Gear’s famous lap time board only has two Porsches in the top 15.

And Porsche is really trying, believe me. They don’t sit in front of the TV in Stuttgart and say, “Ze important sing is zat ve participated.”

People will rationalize in order to justify their prejudices. There are people out there right now telling pollsters Joe Biden is a fantastic president. When people claim the AR-15 is better than an AK, often, they are acting like lawyers. They look for anything they can say to bolster their case, and they forget about the truth.

I got a red dot for an AR-15. I figure it’s better to have it rigged up for self-defense than not, even if it’s my 4th choice. I mean, a golf club isn’t a weapon, but if you have one, you might put it next to the bed anyway.

I don’t have a laser on it. Those are for reliable guns.

I’m honest about the AK/AR debate. I think AR’s are really neat. I wish they worked well. I would prefer to be on the AR side because the primitive bits of my brain like them. But I’m not an idiot.

It’s sad that the AR-15 is so popular for self-defense, because intramural factional violence is going to get worse, and a lot of people who are in the right and who trust unreliable guns are going to get shot needlessly.

Troll Poo on my Shoe

The Internet is like a beautiful bipolar girlfriend who also has borderline personality and perpetual PMS.

I have a problem with my well water; it may affect the quality of the beer I brew. I had the water tested, and it has 0.68 parts per million of iron in some form or other. This is something like a hundredth of the calcium level, but beer likes calcium and hates iron. I have read that iron levels above 0.1 are bad, and I’m around 7 times that.

I started trying to decide what to do. It’s not simple, and I overthink things anyway, so it’s a puzzle.

1. Buy distilled water. This will actually work, but I don’t like the thought of paying $30 for 5 gallons of beer instead of $20. I have a really great homebrew store, so my grain is very cheap. If I buy distilled water, I will have to buy chemicals to add to it, because beer needs certain chemicals normally present in tap water. I plan to get some of those chemicals anyway, and I already have one of them: salt. My well water needs a little salt, epsom salt, and gypsum. I could buy a still and make my own distilled water, but it would be slow, and it would take maybe 20 batches of beer to make it pay for itself.

2. Get a reverse osmosis (RO) filter. This will suck iron out of my water while not harming the other mineral levels all that much. It’s a can of worms, however. I would have to decide whether to mount it under my sink, turning that area into a bigger maintenance and repair nightmare than it is already, mounting it under my laundry room sink, where it will not be much use for anything but brewing, and having some kind of mobile filter I can put away. RO filters often break, and I don’t want to have water gushing out into my cabinets in the middle of the night or while I’m on vacation.

3. Brewtan B. I plan to try this first. It’s some kind of tannic acid product. It’s made for brewers. The maker claims 1/4 teaspoon in 5 gallons of beer will chelate enough iron to protect the beer from off tastes and other issues related to iron. They claim it will not chelate the good metals enough to cause trouble. You can only use it in beers that are supposed to be clear. It will interfere with the production of cloudy beers.

If I use Brewtan B or RO water, I will have to go through the aggravation of testing again. I will need to know what’s in water that has been treated with Brewtan B or filtered. With distilled water, I would know the water only contained minerals I added.

I thought about this yesterday, and I went to the laundry room to look at the cabinet under the utility sink. I wanted to see how much room I had. When I looked, I found a wet cabinet floor with places where the Chinese melamine film had disappeared. There was some swelling, and the sawdust and boogers the fake wood was made from were escaping into the cabinet, making a mess.

I found out the cheap modern plastic pipes were the problem. The genius who installed the sink appears to have put some kind of sticky substance on the joints, and I think he also used a big wrench to tighten the collars. You’re not supposed to do any of that. The joints should be clean and hand-tight.

I had to take the P trap out, clean off the pipes, reinstall them correctly, and clean the cabinet floor. Then I left the cabinet open to dry, and I put a stainless bowl on a folded towel under the P trap. It still leaks maybe 10 drops an hour, but it will be fine until I get pipes that haven’t been abused. It only leaks when I’m using the sink, so it probably doesn’t leak enough to overcome evaporation.

My cabinets are very nice, for modern cabinets. They have wood exteriors, and they look good. The sawdust-product sides, bottoms, and shelves are sad signs of the times, but the cabinets are what would be considered relatively high end. They would not be cheap to replace.

I now have a water-damaged cabinet floor, and the sawdust will continue to get loose and cause problems if I don’t seal it in. Also, I have zero protection from future leaks. I want to fix the floor so it’s tough and waterproof.

I thought I would get some epoxy paint made for garage floors, but I wasn’t sure it would work well in a sawdust-and-melamine cabinet, so I went to a home repair forum to ask what people thought.

Of course, the thing that always happens happened. I was pounced on by a keyboard-raging numbskull.

If you frequent forums or make comments on the web, you will run into keyboard-ragers all the time, and they will be boring as well as annoying, because the stupid things they say all fall into certain well-known categories. It’s like there is one predictable guy out there, making all the stupid remarks, trying to prove his mental superiority but succeeding only in publicizing a screaming case of Dunning-Kruger.

They’re too hostile to leave people alone. They’re too dishonest to admit it when they’re wrong. They’re too stupid to know it.

I got some good suggestions from helpful people, but one guy said I should just get a piece of 1/2″ plywood. He didn’t explain how this would help. I don’t think he understood the situation.

I explained that installing plywood would mean replacing the whole cabinet, and that would mean replacing all the cabinets, and I didn’t want to spend thousands.

This ought to be obvious to anyone. You can’t just turn three screws, remove the bottom from a modern cabinet, slide a new bottom in, and replace the screws. They’re not made to be disassembled.

If I put plywood in the cabinet, I would have to remove the sink, counter, and doors. I’d have to remove the drawers and sides of the cabinet. If, by some miracle, the bottom of the cabinet was still intact and could be removed in one piece, I would have to take it out, cut the plywood to fit, install the plywood, sand the plywood, and seal the plywood with some kind of plastic coating like the garage paint I described above. If I managed to put it all back together, I would then have a cabinet fit for Ted Kaczynski’s Unabomber shack. It would be a monstrosity. I would have to remove it entirely and replace it. Then I’d need a new counter and wall cabinets to match. I’d have to paint the whole room.

It’s just a stupid idea. I was nice to the guy who offered it, but it was a really stupid idea, and it’s obviously stupid. This is a nice house. You don’t mend expensive cabinets with Home Depot plywood unless there is some way to conceal the repairs. That’s not possible in this case.

Epoxy paint would be invisible when the cabinet was closed, and it would look good when they were opened. It would look better than a new cabinet. A big slab of plywood would be right out there in view, making the house look like Jethro Bodine’s double-naught spy bachelor pad.

The keyboard-rager could not let it go. He asked how buying a cheap piece of plywood was like buying a new cabinet. Everyone else in the thread understood completely. It’s like saying, “Why would you repaint your car if all you need is a new clear coat?”

If you can’t understand why you would need to repaint the car, you should never try to tell anyone anything about body work, because you don’t know anything.

I think he understood, too, but keyboard-ragers have to do their thing. He wanted me to spend the day arguing with him, so he could dismiss a long series of proofs he was wrong, anoint himself victor, and congratulate himself on his imaginary brilliance.

I told him he was wasting everyone’s time, and I offered no explanation. I should have ignored him, but this stuff has a way of wearing on you.

He picked the wrong day. Earlier in the day, I actually thanked God for creating hell, because I was thinking of all the stupid, dishonest, arrogant, cruel people in the world. Like the people who lie about Israel and defend the Hamas baboons. There are millions or billions of people who are simply intolerable in the long term. I thanked God for creating hell so the rest of us would eventually get a break.

I don’t know if the keyboard-rager lives in a converted chicken coop or what, but he seriously wanted me to write an essay explaining why you don’t use plywood to make a new bottom for an expensive cabinet. I refused to engage. I had a surface I could restore and improve pretty easily. If I went insane and tried to replace it with plywood, I would have a major eyesore, and it would have to be sealed up, just like the surface I have now.

The Internet is as frustrating as the world that created it. The more you engage, the more abuse you have to swallow, for no good reason at all.

Nobody defended the keyboard-rager, even though he has been on the forum longer than I have. That shows what they thought of him. Traditionally, Internet forum members have always attacked newer guys, regardless of who was right. When they let the newer guy win, it means they already think the other guy is a jerk.

I use forums all the time to get good information and save myself research. Sometimes I have good experiences, but every once in a while, I rattle a troll’s cage simply by walking by. One of the great things about heaven is that there will be no Internet there and no trolls.

I learned some good stuff from the forum. They now make silicone mats you can put under sinks. They have vertical edges so a mat will hold a couple of gallons of water if there’s a leak. Some have little gadgets on the front sides that let water run out onto the floor outside the cabinet. This lets you know you have a problem. It’s supposed to keep the water off the bottom of the cabinet, but I don’t think it will work, because it will run down the side of the mat and go under it. Depends on the geometry of the little hole where the water is supposed to come out. It has to project past the bottom of the cabinet without interfering with the door.

Anyway, a silicone mat will probably take care of nearly all leaks your sink develops. The problem, other than the poor protection from really big leaks, is that they start at about $20. I would need 8 of them, I think.

At present, I think it’s a bad idea. I could order a mat and see what it’s like.

Independently, I and a forum guy came up with a great idea: vinyl flooring. It’s easier than applying epoxy. You cut a sheet of vinyl to fit the cabinet perfectly. You stick it to the bottom of the cabinet with 3M 77. You use silicone to seal the corners where the vinyl meets the sides of the cabinet. When water leaks, it can’t get into the sides. It will run out the front, onto the floor. The vinyl will look great and last for eternity. I use vinyl flooring to hold up heavy, oily CA-sized lathe tooling, and it looks new after maybe 10 years.

I think I should put vinyl under all my sinks, and I should also put it in my drawers and on my shelves. I could do the whole house for maybe $150. Beats the snot out of shelf paper, which is worthless and a scam. Home Depot sells vinyl for a dollar a square foot.

Epoxy would work. I’m sure of it. But it would be a pain to apply.

But for the brewing water problem, my sink would still be leaking, so it wasn’t just a curse. I got a blessing out of it.

I have some Brewtan B on the way. Hoping for the best.

Conventional Wisdom can get you Killed

Let’s vandalize some toxic icons.

I wrote about the great news concerning pistol braces. These things are used as rifle buttstocks, to allow shooters to use rifle-caliber pistols just like rifles, held at the shoulder. The rule banning them was just stayed by a federal judge, and it will remain unenforceable for the next few years, barring a miracle no one who can determine his own gender without professional help wants to see. The courts will be very slow to do anything about it, and they will probably leave the injunction in place and do away with the ban.

I wanted to get one of these things for a Ruger 10-22 pistol as well as an AK-47 pistol. The Ruger is for tooling around the farm in my utility cart. The AK would be for protection while on the road. In a small space, it’s a little easier to swing than a full-length AK. Also, with a short AK, you only lose about 10% of your muzzle velocity, so it’s a good trade.

Ed Bonderenka commented:

That’s good news, but my AR pistol is accurate from the hip with the green laser attached. I mean chew up the bullseye accurate.
For me a brace would just make it bulkier.
But is is a big move because of the constitutional issues, particularly standing against the administrative state.
I might buy one just because.

No argument here.

The web is full of people who parrot gun myths as though they came from Jesus himself, and one of the myths says you can’t shoot a powerful gun accurately unless you shoulder it. Total nonsense. They also say lasers are toys that don’t really work. The US military disagrees, but whatever.

I remember writing some stuff about intending to shoot a 12-gauge from the hip, using a laser. A blogger who used to write a lot about guns said he couldn’t control such a gun with his “gorilla” arms, making the obvious implication about my arms and chances.

I bought a Saiga-12 shotgun. I bought a cheap Chinese laser. I went to a gun range. I put a target up at 50 feet. I put shots in a circle the size of a tennis ball, more or less, from the hip. No problem. Child’s play. With my non-gorilla arms.

Maybe my squirrel monkey arms have something his gorilla arms don’t, but I doubt it. If he had tried what I tried, he would have said something completely different. Maybe he didn’t have lasers in mind. I can’t remember.

Interesting fact: a 12-gauge has more recoil than a .30-06, an AK has much less, and an AR is even further down the list. I’m trying to say that a 12-gauge has all sorts of recoil. Worse than most deer guns.

Another interesting fact: when you use a laser, recoil doesn’t matter much.

“Blasphemy! Blasphemy!”, I hear the gun Sadducees shrieking. They are always the last to accept the obvious truth.

Why does recoil matter when you’re defending yourself? A couple of reasons. It may teach you to flinch, and it will also knock your gun off-target, so you have to find the target in your sights again.

When you have a laser, flinching doesn’t mean much. Where is the dot when you pull the trigger? That’s where the bullet will go. It’s that simple. Try it some time. People say it doesn’t really work. It does. It’s impossible for it not to work. Flinch all you want. As long as the dot is on the mark when the trigger is pulled, you win.

When you have a laser, finding the target again, instantly, is no problem. You have a big, giant beam in front of you. Shoot. Put the beam back on the target. Done. Shoot again. Squinting at black iron sights is a lot harder. Reacquiring your target through a scope is also hard, and in many cases, it will be impossible because you won’t have enough light to see through the scope.

People are taught to obsess on iron sights and scopes. You need to be able to use these things. No doubt about it. But teaching people to rely on them is really, really stupid. Why? Because MOST VIOLENT CRIMES OCCUR AT NIGHT.

YOW. Ouch. That stings, if you’re a gun Sadducee. Make a comment and tell us I’m wrong. Tell us your secret method for using iron sights or a red dot in a dark bedroom. I can’t wait to hear.

It’s not just hard. It can’t be done. So people who advise us to rely on iron sights and scopes aren’t just shooing us away from the best optics; they’re teaching us to be totally helpless IN MOST SELF-DEFENSE SITUATIONS.

That’s pretty bad.

When I get up in the morning, I turn the burglar alarm off. Why? Because nobody is going to break in while I’m here and the sun is out. That’s just a fact. They might break in at night even though they can tell I’m here, because darkness and surprise work to their advantage. They’re not going to show up in the daytime, when the police and I can see them clearly.

It’s true that most burglaries take place in the daytime, but the primary purpose of a firearm isn’t to stop burglaries, which most commonly happen when people are at work. It’s to stop home invasions, which are burglaries that take place in occupied houses.

If you ever have to defend yourself from a criminal in your home, chances are, it will be dark out, and your house may be dark, too. Good luck trying to aim at a burglar when you can’t see your sights. You’re going to spray and pray, just like everyone else who took the bad advice.

My carry pistol has a laser that turns on by itself when I pick the gun up. Wake me up, and I can have it in my hand in one second. That’s pretty good. In one second, I can be well-armed while I pick up a rifle and turn its laser on. After that, my house is a really bad place for a burglar to be.

Burglars don’t use good optics. They don’t even learn how to shoot. They generally use polymer pistols they steal from their neighbors, with whatever ammunition was in them when they were stolen. If I have a rifle with a bright green laser, and my guest has a Taurus pistol he got by breaking into a car, who do you think will get shot the soonest and the most?

How much time do you think I’ll spend making sure I have a good sight picture or just the right grip?

“Hold on, Mr. Burglar! I have to make sure my isosceles stance is just right!” “I have to put on my tactical socks and call Massad Ayoob!” I don’t think so.

If you like spending money, you can do even better. You can get night vision plus an infrared laser criminals can’t see. You’ll see the criminal and the big dot of light, and he will not even know where you are.

That brings me to another creaky talking point: “A laser will tell the criminal where you are!”

He’s almost certainly going to know where you are anyway. I admit, it’s great if he doesn’t, but he probably will. And if you use a laser, by the time you light him up, he will not have enough time to do anything about it. He’ll have a pretty good idea where you are, as you shoot him repeatedly.

And you won’t be helpless because you’re trying to find your tiny black sights in the dark.

You don’t have to walk around with your laser on, lighting up the neighborhood like Rudolph the Green-Nosed Reindeer. You can switch it on right before you shoot.

The Sadduccees love to say lasers make you dependent on gimmicks. Isn’t that better than being dependent on sights you can’t use because it’s dark? Either way, you’re going to be dependent on something.

So to sum up, you can shoot a powerful gun perfectly well from the hip with a laser. It will not be the best answer for killing people at long distances, but if you’re shooting people far away, you’re probably what the law calls “a murderer.” If a criminal is so far away you can’t hit him using a laser, he is probably too far away to pose a threat a jury will confirm.

If lasers are so great, why consider a shouldered weapon? Lasers are pretty bad outdoors in bright conditions. Also, they can malfunction. You may be in a situation where you need to be able to use the sights.

A folding weapon with a laser, to me, appears to be the best option for defense outside the home. When it’s folded, you will be able to maneuver it in the car. The laser will be helpful most of the time. If you have to get out of the car for some reason, you can unfold the stock and use the sights.

You can also stick a red dot on a folding gun along with the laser. A red dot is fantastic for shooting a gun you can’t shoulder. You can nail anyone within a hundred feet without too much trouble.

Maybe I should listen to Ed and forget the brace. If I get a braced pistol, I can fool with it and decide for myself.

Rodent Ragnarok

Every so often, our government does something helpful. Today there are two pieces of good news.

First, it is now, once again, effectively, legal to put braces on pistols. Nationwide.

A brace can be pretty much the same thing as a buttstock. Some can be used to hold a pistol up to the shoulder to be fired like a rifle. There are also pistol braces that allow handicapped people to strap pistols to their arms so they can hold them more effectively.

The truth is that braces are popular because they allowed people to have short-barreled rifles without informing the feds. A brace can be used to turn an AR-15 or AK-47 into what is, all but legally, a rifle.

Joe Biden decided to forget about the Second Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act and order the ATF to come up with a rule banning pistol braces without expensive permits that take a year to get. To get a permit, you also give up your privacy. The feds keep a record so they can come get your guns later when the country devolves into utter chaos.

All sorts of legal tussling has taken place, and limited injunctions have been issued against the ATF. They helped some people, but not all. Yesterday, however, a Texas judge enjoined enforcement of the rule everywhere in the US.

What does this mean? It means the rule is gone for good. Probably. The injunction only applies while the case is being resolved, but the judge has made it clear he’s going to block the rule permanently. He has all but sworn it. After that, it goes to the 2A-friendly 5th Circuit. That will take a long time, and the 5th Circuit will very likely affirm. After that, the ATF will shoot for a Supreme Court review. They may not get it, and if they do, we have at least 5 justices who are usually pretty good about defending our civil rights. Some of our civil rights.

I suppose the ATF will file some kind of interlocutory appeal right away, but it probably won’t go anywhere, because the 5th Circuit will be the appellate court.

I’d say there is a 95% chance the rule will be dead for a couple of years. It should take that long for it to make it to the Supreme Court, which may or may not review the case. I’m afraid to guess how likely it is the Supreme Court will review the case or affirm. If they refuse to look at the case, it’s over. If they look at it, the odds of affirmation are definitely above 50%.

If the rule is dead for two years, it should be the end of it, because we are overwhelmingly likely to have a Republican president by then, and he will tell the ATF to let it go.

How important is this case? Probably not too important. To me, it means I can have a shouldered AK-47 6″ shorter in my vehicle. That’s great, but to be truthful, I doubt a 10″ barrel is much more likely to save lives than a 16″ barrel.

Still, the almost-certain end of the rule is a nice change. It means I can have the 10″ barrel, and I can also keep a short .22 rifle (oops–shouldered pistol) in my utility cart when I’m out and about on the farm.

And I won’t have to worry about going to prison over a gun part that has zero upward impact on crime rates.

Is it true to say using a brace is legal? I guess not, since the rule is still on the books. But if they can’t enforce it, who cares? In the unlikely event the rule survives, the ATF won’t be able to do anything to people who bought braces under the injunction. Before dusting off the jackboots, they’ll have to give everyone a chance to comply.

Now people have to ask themselves whether they should buy braces today or wait to see if there is an interlocutory appeal. You don’t want to spend $200 today and then have to discard the brace in two months.

Here is the second great thing the government is doing: they may drop the seasonal part of the squirrel hunting regulations on private land. Which is where I live.

Squirrels are horrible, and they are horrible all year round. They eat vehicle wiring. They eat patio furniture. They eat fruit and nuts. They give me dirty looks. I should be allowed to kill every squirrel I see, all the time, with anything short of an atom bomb. They are no better than rats. I should be allowed to kill a hundred a day and leave the bodies for the crows.

It is not unusual for me to look out the window and see 6 squirrels at once. This area is crawling with them. It’s infested with oaks, so it’s squirrel heaven. It’s too much. They need to go.

I haven’t been shooting them for a while. I’m a Christian. We’re supposed to be people of love. I don’t know if it’s good for me to sit in a tent and pop squirrels with a scoped rifle all day, given that I do it partly in anger. I really should start shooting them again, though. My truck won’t start, and I’m pretty sure they did it. I have a productive peach tree, and I’m lucky if they let me have three peaches a year.

I shoot them out of season, because the wildlife people told me it’s legal if they are menacing my property. This only applies near the house, though. I should be allowed to shoot them anywhere. I should be given a bounty every time I run over one.

I wish God would send a plague and make the hair on their tails fall out. Then they would look like rats, and people wouldn’t think they were cute. Animals that aren’t cute get a lot less legal protection.

They resist trapping. I’ve set various types of traps, and I’ve only trapped one squirrel. The best trap, supposedly, is a PVC pipe over a bucket of water. You provide bait, the squirrels slide down the pipe, and they drown. I don’t want to drown anything. I don’t want to sit in my living room wondering if a small animal is struggling for life in a bucket of water.

I’ve used Conibear traps. These are like little versions of the bear traps in old Warner Brothers cartoons. They crush squirrel’s heads or necks, depending on the breaks, putting an end to them fast. But squirrels avoid these traps.

I hope they make this rule change, and I also hope they grow spines and legalize bear hunting. I don’t care what anyone says; we don’t actually “need” 500-pound predators in our backyards. There is a reason why we killed them off in the first place. Every once in a while, a Florida bear kills and/or partially eats someone, and we are reminded how it feels to be prey.

We always hear the same thing. “If we kill off the grizzlies/black bears/wolves/lions/cockroaches/whatever, our ecosystem will suffer a devastating blow from which it will never recover.” What a load. The chestnut trees that used to cover the country died. Things are still fine. We got rid of wolves in most places, and it made life better. The passenger pigeon is gone, but the world keeps turning. Things would be fine if every black bear in Florida disappeared.

The same leftists that killed bear hunting also feed bears and God knows what else, teaching bears that people are food. Amazing.

I like bears, but we need fewer of them, and I will quickly dispatch any bear that bothers me whether or not I think the government will approve. Better to pay a lawyer than several teams of surgeons or a funeral home.

I’d kill Lassie if I thought she was going to bite me. I’m not going to lose the use of a hand so a dog can have a second chance. I was created in the image of God, and dogs were not. One of my hands is worth a whole lot of collies.

Me first. Those are the rules. I guess it’s only one rule. Anyway, me first. I’m more important than an animal. If Commander Biden had attacked me in the White House, they would have found him in a heap with a fractured skull. I don’t have a Secret Service career to worry about.

There are certain animals in my area that should always be killed on sight. Squirrels, rattlers, water moccasins, big alligators, squirrels, coons, bears, possums, armadillos, squirrels, bobcats, hogs, mice, coyotes, all dogs whose owners paint their toenails, and squirrels. That’s just reality.

I quit eating squirrels because they’re tiny and hard to clean, but I may resume once my wife is here. She’ll eat anything. She’s an African. She eats giant maggots called mopane worms.

Let’s segue into a criticism of the leftist media.

Right now, a bunch of people are fighting anthrax in Zambia. A story says 335 people got it. How? They ate hippo meat. Apparently hippos get anthrax.

What did NPR say about this? They claimed it was about African poverty, most of which is caused by me, personally, because I’m white and can tell I’m not a woman. My colonialism and transphobia are at the root of the problem.

NPR started out its stupid story with the claim that Zambians were so poor, they had to eat hippo meat. Instead of tofurkey meatloaf and Starbucks lemon cake like everyone else.

Poverty caused by white Steve causes anthrax epidemic among POC! Get the pitchforks and carbon-neutral torches!

The big problem with this claim is that hippo meat is expensive. It’s better than beef. Zambians love it. Stores can charge a lot. The people who got anthrax got it from a luxury product they could apparently afford. It infected affluent Zambians.

Doesn’t matter. It was my fault. Put me on the scale and find out if I weigh the same as a duck.

I don’t know if I’ll resume shooting squirrels or not, but I hope other people take it up. Hateful things. Worse than anthrax.

My Palate is Being Microaggressed

My wife is still not here. My latest beer, however, is in the keg and ready to party. I call it Wheat Privilege Ale. I keep it at 17 psi and 35 degrees, so it should contain around 3.22 volumes of CO2, meaning it’s pretty fizzy but not as fizzy as pop.

Guess I didn’t pay enough attention to making sure the phone’s camera was focused.

This is a cloudy wheat beer I came up with in around 2005. I started out with Amarillo hops, which provide a lemony flavor. This latest batch uses a new hop: Bergamot. It is named for the bergamot, a weird citrus fruit used to flavor Earl Grey tea and give scent to candles.

The names of many, if not all, hops are capitalized. I think some are even patented.

It is common for hops to taste and smell like citrus. A long time ago, the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company made a splash with Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, an amber ale brewed with Cascade hops, which are said to provide grapefruit flavors and aromas. Cascade hops became very popular with professional and amateur brewers. Now there are other citrusy hops. Some examples: Mandarina Bavaria, Amarillo, Centennial, Lotus, and Citra. Bergamot must be pretty new because it’s hard to find information from people who have used it.

To me, Amarillo hops are lemony and Centennials lean toward orange. I decided to try Bergamot because some people said the orange or tangerine flavor was really heavy.

Wheat beer is great on its own, but it also takes additions well. Germans put raspberry syrup in finished weissbier. They also put some other syrup in it. Don’t know much about it. It’s green. Belgians put orange peel in their cloudy wheat beer during the brewing process. I figured it would be better to find a hop to give me oranges.

This beer seems to have a tangeriney scent and flavor, with a little hint of zest from the rind.

I really like it, but I just bought some Citra and Mandarina Bavaria hops for future experiments.

I wonder what would happen if I put a little tangerine juice in this beer.

Well, I just got up and tried it. Really nice. Ordinarily, I think it’s kind of effeminate to put stuff in beer, but wheat is its own little world.

It’s like a beer mimosa. I guess I put an ounce and a half of juice in 16 ounces of beer, and it’s superb.

Now I’m going to feel like I can’t drink this beer unless I have tangerines.

This one is going to go great with food. It will pair with anything. I could even drink this with pizza, and I hate beer with tomato sauce.

I received a water test report today. A company called Ward Labs sends people bottles and prepaid labels, and they email reports. I found out I have almost no sulphate or magnesium. Other than that, things are okay. It turns out my water is well-suited to stouts, which I could have guessed, because my stout is what they drink in heaven. It’s not perfect for light-colored lagers, but I can buy a couple of chemicals and fix it.

I would like to learn more about beer, but I’m only one person, and I can only go through so many kegs per year at my leisurely pace. I have 6 recipes I really like, and I only have space for 5 serving kegs. I want to keep at least 4 of my favorites on tap at all times, so that doesn’t leave much room for R&D.

First world problems. Everyone should have them.

The Behar Doctrine Will Age Poorly

Still no word from the State Department regarding my wife’s visa. We figure they will give up tomorrow.

We are both tired of waiting. When you start the process and you know it will be a long time before it’s over, you don’t feel so bad. When they tell you they’ll give you an answer in 5 business days and they don’t come through, it’s worse. You feel like your life has a pause button. You don’t want to do much of anything until the wait is over. The wait absorbs your attention.

While I wait, I am watching the astounding blossoming of antisemitism across the globe. For the first time in my life, Jewish Americans are besieged right here in the country where most of them were born. That’s really something. Immigrants see America as a place of safety. Would they feel that way if they knew their American grandchildren would have to run from the same human filth that tormented them in their home countries?

I guess there must be a lot of Jews who don’t take it seriously, not realizing how terrorism works. It’s a sporadic phenomenon. They attack here. They attack there. Time passes between attacks. Things feel normal almost all the time. It doesn’t mean you’re safe. It just means you’re relying on the odds to protect you. If you’re not taking measures to protect yourself, you’re like a sheep who hopes the wolves will eat other sheep first.

Something like 100,000 Muslims and Islamist allies marched in Washington. If I were a Jew, I’d be flipping out. We will never see that many people march there in support of the Jews.

We are seeing antisemitic protests that are of the same order of magnitude as the Nuremberg rallies, and they’re happening in countries that supposedly support the Jews. Imagine 100,000 Nazis having a rally in Washington in 1942.

Well, we pretty much just saw that. And give the Nazis credit; before they decided genocide was the answer, they tried to ship Jews to other countries. For Muslims, genocide has always been Plan A.

Some Arab nut in Indianapolis just drove a car into a school building she thought belonged to Jews. Indianapolis! Not Riyadh. Not Nuremberg. Not even a city popular with Jews. The weirdest part of the story is that the building belonged to the Black Hebrew Israelites, a wacky cult that says the Jews are really Eastern European impostors who stole their heritage. They’re among the worst antisemites.

Yes, we all know the ancient Jews were actually black people from West Africa. It makes total sense. That’s why the Bible says David had red hair. Like all West Africans.

The Black Hebrew Israelites used to murder people in Miami. The cult was a gang. Their leader was a moron whose birth name was Hulon Mitchell. He called himself Yahweh ben Yahweh. “Yahweh the son of Yahweh.” In Miami, we used to call them the Yahwehs. They still have a headquarters on 2nd Avenue in the 441 Building. They assemble in the parking lot in their weird costumes and practice martial arts moves.

They’re preparing to face imaginary enemies, and the Jews are doing little to prepare to face real ones.

I wonder what I would do if I found out tens of thousands of people with no loyalty to the US had assembled in the capital city to call for my death. I guess I’d move to a conservative county in the country. I’d move into a home with a lot of land, a fence, a gate, conservative neighbors, and a 2A-loving police force. I’d buy a lot of guns and ammunition. I’d also weld up a bunch of target stands with steel gongs, and I’d practice with them erected next to my own berm.

Oh, wait. I already did all that.

I did most of it because I like shooting, not because I was anticipating an invasion, but the end result is the same. I’m safer than most people.

Every day, thousands of military-age single male Muslims enter the US without background checks, and most American Jews are sitting around thinking, “We’ll never be safe until we take Glocks and AR-15’s away from rural Protestants.” They’re letting Joy Behar set their priorities. Wonder if she’ll change her tune when they come for her.

New York contains the largest collection of Jews outside Israel, and in New York, body armor is illegal. ARMOR, which can’t hurt anyone. It boggles the mind. Are the delis really that good? Is it really that important to live near dozens of glatt kosher restaurants?

California, which is number three after Israel, has a similar ban in the works.

Let’s do it right. Make it illegal to take cover behind furniture.

California and New York have enormous Muslim populations, and because Jews insist on living in cities, terrorists in these states will not have to travel far to commit crimes.

If you put 10,000 armed Jews in an enclave in rural Tennessee, it would take the US military to defeat them. No one else could do it. Crazed Uber drivers and falafel-stand proprietors from Dearborn in rented vans wouldn’t stand a chance. And most of their gentile neighbors would jump at the chance to defend Jews. And they would know how.

If you can hit a deer 600 feet away, you can hit a terrorist whose parents are first cousins, fumbling with a cheap AR-15. And a lot of guys in the South can hit a man half a mile away.

Rich gentiles are buying homes built into missile silos in the wilderness. Rich Jews are more concerned about Trump resuming power and making more mean tweets.

My guess is that we are about to see an explosion in antisemitism. Right now, we may be looking at a lit fuse and mistaking it for the bomb. I think many millions of demon-controlled people are about to come out and say it: it’s not Israel’s policies. It’s the Jews. They have to go. And it will eventually become the policy of the majority.

After the Jews, Christians will be the targets. Not gay-church universalist “Jesus is just like Buddha” Christians. Actual Christians.

As the Muslims say, “First the Saturday people; then the Sunday people.”

The people who will be against us won’t just be Muslims. Leftists will join with them, as they are already doing.

Christians are doing a good job already, abolishing real Christianity from the world. When the violence becomes overt and sanctioned, I’m sure many of the people who kill us will identify as Christians.

What do the rest of us do when pogroms become normalized in our cities? Do we get in our trucks and go shoot antisemites? I haven’t thought about it before. Do we stay home and say, “Let the dead bury the dead,” as Yeshua did?

I don’t think God will want Christians to send armed convoys to cities, no matter what happens to urban Jews. It just doesn’t sound like Yeshua. He generally stays out of squabbles among people who don’t listen to him.

I guess I’ll sit back, watch people wait for it to blow over, and then observe their disappointment when it gets worse. My wife and I will continue to pray for Israel every day. There isn’t much more we can do.

MORE

PROFANITY AND HATE ALERT. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Wow. This is interesting. The crazy young female man-wannabee who shot up a Christian school in Nashville had a manifesto, and Steven Crowder has it. He will be reading it online. Here is the first page:

That’s for the Sunday people.

You can find more photos on the web.

Bliss in a Glass

Thought I would put up a representative photo of my new fake Belgian ale, which I call Happy Halfwit. Sadly, a considerable portion of the head broke down before I got the shot.

This is truly amazing beer. It has a perfect balance of malt flavor, yeast esters, CO2 tingle, alcohol heat, and the weird aromas and flavors that come from Sabro hops. My brew software thinks it has a bitterness level of 33 IBU’s, which is fairly strong, but I used crystal malt to give it unfermentable sugar for sweetness, so it’s almost a dessert beer. Maybe it is a dessert beer. I could see drinking this with hot apple pie and vanilla ice cream.

I call it Happy Halfwit because the grain bill is around 37% wheat. Belgians call wheat beer “witbier” because apparently they stubbornly insist on speaking some foreign language or other. Why does everyone have to be a smartass?

The software thinks the alcohol level is 8.6%, which is fairly high. Bud comes in at 5.5%. Bud is stronger than people think, and it has to be, because if it were not, no one would buy it and gag it down.

Guinness claims 4.2%.

I got the weird glass in the picture just for heavy beers. It’s called a tulip glass because the profile is sort of like a tulip shape. The stem is supposed to help you swirl the beer to get aroma moving, and it prevents you from warming the beer with your hand. Not quite sure why the glass is so wide, but I know a wide glass will produce more aroma, since aroma is related to surface area. The glass curves in at the top to shape the head. I like a lot of head on strong ales and stouts.

You can use a brandy snifter for smaller doses. The glass in the photo holds about 16 ounces. I brewed this beer to hold a decent head, so you may really get 12 ounces once the foam is gone. That’s all you need when the beer is strong. When you drink 12 ounces of this, your face feels warm.

I serve most beers with around 12 psi of CO2. This is about like the bottle of, say, Heineken you get at a convenience store. Strong ales like more gas. I have this one at about 20.

Beer fizziness is measured in volumes. One volume means you dissolve one liter of CO2 in one liter of liquid. As I understand it, volumes are a better guide to beer fizz than pressure, because the pressure in a keg of beer will vary with the temperature. Gas tends to come out of liquid as the temperature goes up. To get the same fizziness at a higher temperatures, you need more pressure.

To have a fizzy beer that tingles your tongue, you want the CO2 to be in the beer, not the foam, when you have the beer in your glass. Obviously, you want some foam, but you have to make sure the CO2 is divided correctly between foam and beer.

It’s possible to have a glass of nearly-flat beer with a huge head on it, and it’s really disappointing.

I keep all my beers at 35 degrees because I don’t want 5 beer freezers in my kitchen. To get enough fizz from Happy Halfwit at 35, I go to 20 psi to get about 3.5 volumes of CO2. That’s a lot. A typical lager might be served at 2.5 volumes, which is around 10 psi at 35 degrees.

More than you wanted to know.

Anyway, it came out great. Not sure why it’s so dark, but this is how it looked the first time I brewed it, so not a surprise.

This one came out perfect. I can imagine making changes for fun, but this beer tastes exactly as I hoped it would.

I have an idea for a darker beer that tastes almost like a fruitcake. Like raisins and dates and cloves.

I kegged my weaker wheat beer, Wheat Privilege Ale, today. Looking forward to enjoying it over the winter. I drank a little today even though it’s still slightly flat. It’s beautiful. It could stand a little more hop flavor, but a magnificent brew. I set it to 17 psi.

Happy Halfwit is really, really nice. I’m afraid it will discourage me from writing new recipes for heavy beers.

Just Give her That Green Card

In case anyone is wondering, my wife is still in Africa.

She had her visa interview week before last, and they asked for more evidence that we were really married. We emailed it the same day, but it arrived after working hours because of the time difference. They told us they needed 5 working days. I thought this meant they would finish last week, but we now think they don’t count the day they first see the stuff in their email box. So we should be seeing a response tomorrow, by God’s grace.

The word says, “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will.” We remember this in prayer. Consulate employees are not kings, but the principle applies.

My wife is nervous because she has been rejected so many times by other countries. It’s not the same thing, however. America is legally obligated to take her, and I have the right and the means to burden the system by pursuing legal remedies if the consulate blows it. They’re going to let her in. They want this application out of their pipeline. People in government jobs love getting problems off their desks.

It’s not like applying for a tourist visa to Italy, where they lie to you and verbally abuse you at the embassy and then go back on their word, knowing there is no accountability.

They wanted more proof I had been supporting her. Not hard to supply. They already had bank documents from her end. They wanted to see what I received from my bank, so I sent examples. Barring contributions from a new husband, it would be hard to explain how an unemployed woman went from living in poverty to owning a car and living in a nice rental house almost overnight, and the foreign trips would also be unlikely in the extreme without help, but they want to be sure.

They also wanted to check into the type of wedding we had. We were married online by the only county in the US that will marry a citizen to a foreign national who isn’t present in America. The embassy lady was not familiar with Zoom marriages, which is surprising, since they became very popular during the pandemic. It’s weird, but it’s 100% binding in every state.

The lady was very nice and seemed to have no doubts. I’m sure she can tell the difference between scammers and bona fide applicants, having seen many of both.

I am hoping I won’t have to buy a weekend ticket. The choices are limited, they cost more, and flights are crowded. We would really like to move her out by Thursday.

I think I’m fairly well prepared on this end. I bought 4 containers of Haagen-Dazs, and I have frozen ribs plus a beef rib roast. I have a set of large creme brulee dishes, too.

Thanksgiving will be upon us very quickly, so we will have to get ready. I’m thinking boneless turkey with cornbread stuffing and gravy, as always. Mashed potatoes with tons of garlic and butter. Cranberry relish. Yams blended with pineapple, butter, and brown sugar, with pecans on top glazed with more butter and brown sugar. One pecan pie. One pumpkin pie. Some other stuff.

The local Publix had BOGO Miracle Whip this week, so we are all set for turkey sandwiches.

I don’t know if I will be able to make her understand that you don’t eat creme brulee on Thanksgiving.

We are still planning to hit White Castle on the day she arrives.

I don’t know if her relatives fully understand their situation. They are less resourceful than she is, and she has helped them with a lot of their problems. She’s about to leave them behind, so she is having to tell them to get it together. I don’t know what will become of them. Because she will be here, her ability to help will be curtailed.

She may never see any of them again. Getting them tourist visas is impossible, and I’m not shelling out 5 figures to bring them over anyway. I have no desire at all to go to Zambia, and I don’t think my wife does, either. She’s not all that close to her siblings. Her mother and father died many years ago, the family has been shaken up, and there are age differences.

She put me on the phone with 4 of my new nephews the other day. I can’t remember their ages, but I think they’re all under 10. They asked all sorts of questions. They seemed to think they would be coming to visit. Even if it was realistic to expect us to fund a $20,000 excursion, which it isn’t, Uncle Sam would not let them come. I didn’t explain this to them. They are too young to understand. Sad.

It’s frustrating having very poor in-laws who aren’t very capable. My wife is not much like them. She gets stuff done.

She’ll have to get a Florida phone number, so a lot of relations and acquaintances who now have her number will not have it in a month. She is looking forward to the peace.

While I wait, I fiddle with trivial endeavors. Today I kegged a wheat beer, and I made it with a new hop: bergamot. Supposed to have a lot of orange flavor.

Very happy with the name I came up with.

I hope I have something good to write tomorrow night.

At Least Mel Gibson Can Say he was Drunk

Here’s what bad parents do when one of their rotten kids abuses one of their good kids: they punish the good kid because it’s easier, and it gets the problem out of the parents’ hair faster so they can go back to watching TV. The world is in the process of treating Israel like a good kid whose obnoxious sibling abuses him every day. They’re criticizing Israel for responding to a Pearl Harbor/911-level atrocity while virtually ignoring the fact that the enemy’s cowardly, cruel, unlawful actions are the sole cause of the problems other nations are whining about.

I hope that by now, we all understand that leftists are much more antisemitic than conservatives. If that wasn’t obvious to some thick-headed people a month ago, it should be by now. In America, conservatives support Israel’s right to stamp out Hamas, to a degree that is near-monolithic. On the other hand, virtually 100% of the people who are raising hell with Israel are leftists, as are virtually 100% of the American citizens and permanent residents who want to see both Israel and the Jews annihilated.

Joe Biden does not support Israel as strongly as Donald Trump or even George W. Bush, and Joe Biden’s presidency is a by-product of the Obama presidency, which was openly hostile to Israel. Obama, our first homosexual president and a former Muslim who rose to prominence by rubbing shoulders with known antisemites, once made Benjamin Netanyahu sit in a waiting room while he had dinner with his wife and kids. His administration made it clear, over and over, that Israel’s special status was on hiatus while Obama was in the White House.

Biden depends on antisemites for votes. He actually got away with saying, “If you’re not for Joe Biden, you ain’t black,” because it’s very nearly true in this country. About 87% of American blacks voted for Joe Biden, and in polls, blacks reveal themselves to be more than four times as likely to be antisemitic than whites. Biden also depends on Hispanics for disproportionate support, and antisemitism is a big problem within this bloc, possibly because of the link to Spain, a country which was invaded by Muslims, became a Muslim nation, was ruled by Muslims for over 700 years, and still has a populace largely descended from Muslim Arabs. He got about 70% of the Muslim vote, even though he supports sexual perversion, which the Koran bans. Most American Muslims say they support the Hamas attack of October 7.

Biden also depends on the Jewish vote. He got about 77% of the Jews to vote for him in 2020, which is no surprise, because Jews always commit suicide in voting booths. They seem determined to vote for whichever party will do them the most harm. Sometimes I think they would vote for Hitler if he were resurrected.

Jews say they support Israel, but in a display of incomprehensible cognitive dissonance, they vote for Israel’s enemies over and over. Biden has to make blacks, Hispanics, and Muslims happy in order to get their votes. The Jews don’t matter, because they will vote for him no matter what. As long as he doesn’t bomb the Knesset, they will stick by him.

Biden is now telling Netanyahu that if Israel doesn’t cease fighting, “the world” will stop supporting Israel. Try and imagine Donald Trump saying that. What it really means is that Biden is afraid he’ll lose a big piece of his own base if he doesn’t pander to the gaslighters and Nazis.

Why is “the world” upset? Because Israel is winning, and in the process of winning, it is unavoidably killing many of the human shields Hamas is holding hostage. Not Jewish hostages. They’re a tiny minority. Muslim hostages. Civilians, 57% of whom voted for Hamas knowing exactly what it was.

Israel begs noncombatants to leave. Hamas won’t let them. Hamas builds command centers under hospitals and steals hospital diesel for terrorist generators and vehicles. Hamas runs tunnels under schools and homes, and it fires rockets from mosques, and not inadvertently or out of necessity. Hamas goes out of its way to put noncombatants in harm’s way, and its leaders have openly admitted the reason is to discourage Israel, which, unlike Hamas, does its best to avoid harming noncombatants.

Israel warns Palestinians when it attacks. Try and picture Hamas doing that for Israeli civilians. Never. Hamas is cowardly as policy. They target civilians and run from soldiers. When they attack people who can fight back, it’s as a last resort.

Hamas is completely at fault for every single Palestinian civilian death and injury, and they can put an end to it in one day by releasing noncombatants and abandoning their positions in hospitals and mosques and so on. They won’t do it, but somehow Israel is supposed to pull back and wait for them to rearm and fortify. Israel is supposed to do this for a group of people, at least 57% of whom want to kill every Jew on Earth and force everyone else to accept Satan’s bizarre Mohammed cult.

What’s the message here? The message is this: “the world” supports the use of human shields in war. It works. It should be rewarded.

If this war goes away, what will happen the next time Islamist cowards go after Israel? They’ll have a human shield plan that makes this one look mild. Maybe they’ll strap people to the hoods of their vehicles and the walls of their buildings.

Where is the incentive for them to stop? There is none. Only overwhelming positive reinforcement.

Is this Zechariah 14? Will this be the war that pits every other nation against Israel? Biden is stupid, senile, narcissistic, flamboyantly dishonest, and willing to say anything that benefits himself and his family. Maybe it won’t be long before he counts the votes and cuts Israel loose.

Maybe Palestine itself won’t be his excuse. Maybe Israel will explode an atomic bomb in Tehran. Maybe Netanyahu will make a fateful choice, or someone in the chain of command will go rogue.

Sooner or later, the entire world will turn against Israel. A Jewish prophet predicted it in around 500 BC, so it has to happen.

It seems to me that America is the great whore of the Revelation. Perhaps Europe is included, because Europe used to be a stronghold of Christianity. In the Bible, “whore” doesn’t just mean “prostitute.” Any woman who commits adultery, which is worse than prostitution because of the betrayal and emasculation, is a whore. America and Europe were like brides to God, so now that they’re turning on him, the whore label fits perfectly. Same goes for Turkey, now that I think about it. The seven churches of the Revelation were all in Turkey.

If you look at the MSM coverage of the war, you will see all sorts of criticism of Israel’s inadvertent killing of Muslim civilians. There should be continuous, top-volume outrage over the human shield policy. It should be the UN’s number one concern right now.

Our 85-IQ, rehab-frequenting celebrities should be tweeting about it around the clock. It’s not happening. It’s cool to be for the terrorists. Satan always decides what’s cool.

We are seeing the Goebbels Jedi mind trick in action. The people who tell us how to think are ignoring the truth and repeating lies over and over. It’s going to work. Antisemitism will increase. Hatred of real Christians will increase. Virtually no one knows the Holy Spirit, so the voice of truth is underrepresented. Only the Holy Spirit cures delusion.

Israel needs to keep pummeling Hamas. It needs to continue bombing tunnels and hideouts. If it doesn’t, the alternative is to sit back, watch Hamas rightly declare victory, and wait for worse attacks. If noncombatants die, at least they won’t be Jews. The overwhelming majority will be Hamas supporters who need an attitude adjustment.

In America, if my friend and I rob a bank, and my friend shoots a teller, I’m on the hook for murder. If a cop shoots at us and kills a teller, my friend and I are both on the hook for murder. It’s funny how we embrace such laws while denying the same grace to Israel, which would not be killing anyone had it not been dragged into a fight. If a bank robber is responsible for the death of an accomplice, victim, police officer, or bystander killed by police, then Hamas is responsible for the deaths of noncombatants killed by Israel.

The willful blindness will only get worse. Blogging about it seems to serve no purpose.

We may be in for an interesting holiday season.

There is no Mammad like Yeshua

The spirit of antichrist continues to energize his shock troops.

I have to wonder what Jews are saying in private these days. Beginning at the age of three, I found myself surrounded by Jewish friends and acquaintances, and that continued for over three decades. These days, I don’t get to interact with Jews, so I have to get information from the media. Jewish people have traditionally been somewhat reluctant to tell the world everything they’re thinking, for obvious reasons, so I can’t say I know exactly what’s happening.

What I wonder is whether they’re sitting around their dining room tables asking each other whether a new holocaust is here. The answer to that question is “no.” The old Holocaust never stopped. It just went into remission.

You know how remission works. Whenever you hear a sick person say, “They told me I’m cancer-free,” you know that person will probably be dead within 10 years. “Cancer-free” is a lie. It just means they can’t find it at the moment.

Muslims in Paris just performed a little terrorist raid. They vandalized Jewish homes at least 857 times, painting the star of David on them. You can say it’s not terrorism because vandalism isn’t violent, but that isn’t true. Threats are terrorism. The word “terrorism” means trying to achieve goals by instilling terror. It’s not necessary for violence to occur as long as people are terrified.

Remarkably, Berlin has a Jewish community. It’s not large, but it’s there. Berlin Jews are now experiencing antisemitic vandalism. Muslims are tearing mezuzahs out of their doorframes.

Of course, we already know about the Jewish students who were terrorized at the Cooper Union in Manhattan, and the mob attack in Muslim-dominated Dagestan, a Russian republic. Hundreds of Muslims swarmed an airport, accosting people and asking if they were Jewish. They said they wanted to lynch Jews.

I just read a wild article under the heading “The Volokh Conspiracy.” The article appears at Reason.com. I guess Eugene Volokh moved? No idea. I have only looked at his blog a couple of times in two decades because I have zero interest in law. Funny thing for a lawyer to say, but it’s a fact. For me, it was just a way to get money, like working for Domino’s or Uber. Not the most challenging, fulfilling, or interesting job there is.

The article quoted another article, written by Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. You can find it without a paywall on the site of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.

It’s amazing that a Jew smart enough to be the law school dean at Berkeley would be foolish enough to take the job, but this is how things are. Overwhelmingly, Jews support and associate with their worst enemies.

Chemerinsky says, “I am a 70-year-old Jewish man, but never in my life have I seen or felt the antisemitism of the last few weeks.” How deep in the sand has his head been? I’m a Gentile. I live in relative safety. I had no reason to keep tabs on anti-Jewish sentiment, but he did. I knew things were bad years ago. Why didn’t he?

He was surprised when he found out he had students who supported the Hamas attack. Surpised? How is that possible? I went to Columbia about a billion years ago, and there were already punk dime store revolutionaries, including Jews, wearing khaffiyahs.

He still says, “I strongly oppose the policies of the Netanyahu government, favor full rights for Palestinians, and believe that there must be a two-state solution.” What? Is survival of no importance to this man?

He quotes other professors who have publicly threatened Jews in the US. He’s in the US. Do you think he has any idea how to operate a semiautomatic rifle? Do you think he has taken the sane precaution of taking his wife or children to gun ranges? Probably not. He’s a gun-confiscation nut who opposes carry rights. You can look that up.

Maybe he’s a hypocrite. I hope so. Maybe he’s like the leftists who scream for high taxes and then hide money illegally. Maybe he has machine guns in the trunk of his German luxury car.

What’s he going to do when a demonized student wearing Palestinian colors puts a knife to his throat? Offer to debate him? Ask for a continuance so he can submit a brief?

What does it take to convince a leftist he needs to arm himself? I mean Western leftists who live in comfort, not the millions of leftist who have already armed themselves and killed their betters.

Were there Jews like this under Hitler? Did they go around saying it was wonderful to see the German working class challenge the wealthy? Did they blame their own people for the Versailles treaty? You have to wonder.

At least one Jewish woman in Israel had her baby cut from her belly and beheaded, with the umbilical cord still attached. This is what antisemitism looks like in 2023. Kristallnacht looks pleasant by comparison. And journalists don’t care, because they’re in the tank for Islam. Journalists called the Dagestan attack a protest. It was a pogrom. Are pogroms protests now?

Atrocities can happen here. Don’t think the threats are empty. Human beings are no damn good, as my mother always said, in total agreement with the Bible. When conditions are right, they are capable of deeds that would make demons puke. If they can burn babies to death and cut people’s feet off in Israel, they can do it here. They’re not inhibited by empathy or shame. They’re just waiting to feel sufficient support from the mob.

It may be that the prediction of Zechariah 14 is just about here. The prophet clearly stated it would happen when the day of the Lord came, and the day of the Lord is the tribulation.

Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee.

For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city.

Then shall the Lord go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle.

This hasn’t happened yet, so it can’t be about the past.

Over the last half-century, hatred of Israel has become fashionable among leftists. It has built gradually. Many Jews joined right in, because the general tendency of Jews is to curry favor with the left. Our universities have been instrumental in driving the hate. Somehow, Jews either failed to notice or got on the bandwagon.

One of my former college friends is a pro-Palestinian activist. He married a gentile, and my impression is that he turned the pants over to her. When I knew him, he really disliked Arabs. He called them “rabhabs.” No idea what that meant. He started taking a few measures intended to make it look like he kept kosher. He sang prayers over meals sometimes. He supported Israel. He refused to marry the love of his life because she was Catholic. His family was against the marriage. His second wife was born a gentile, but she converted in what was probably a reform synagogue. Possibly conservative. Not Orthodox.

Reform Judaism is the branch that brought the world the first proud lesbian rabbis. You get to eat anything you want, you can be an atheist, and it’s okay for your rabbi to invite Muslim clerics to speak on Saturdays.

He’s a far-out leftist today, if he’s still alive. I wonder what he thinks about taking that path now. Muslims and other antisemites are not going to listen when he says he’s on their side. If violence comes to his door, they’ll do him and his wife just as they would do Benjamin Netanyahu.

Having known a lot of Jews, I know two things. They are the smartest and most talented people on Earth, and they are also ruled by emotion, not reason. Intelligence doesn’t help if you can’t rule your biases and the herd instinct. If you have to vote for Biden because your great-grandpa voted for FDR, you are not listening to anything above the brainstem.

Ultimately, rejecting the Messiah and the Holy Spirit caused the problems we are seeing today. The Tanakh makes it very, very clear. When Israel, meaning the body of Jews throughout the world, pleases God, things go well for Israel. When there are problems, it means investigation and repentance are in order. Something is clearly wrong when the Promised Land has been in gentile hands for nearly two millennia and one Austrian nut can stir Europeans up to kill something like a third of Israel in one decade. This is not how blessed nations live.

If this is God’s favor, what does his displeasure look like?

I challenge anyone to read the Tanakh and find periods where Israel endured major, prolonged conquest and subjugation while the Jews were pleasing God.

It’s not because people are eating shrimp or going without hats. It’s because they missed the Messiah. They missed unity with others who know God. They missed out on power and victory.

Same thing is now happening to Christians. God put up with a lot of terrible behavior from nominal Christians over the centuries, but now the stronghold is falling, and the world’s most powerful Christian nation is turning into a second-world country dominated by alien invaders we actually pay to come here. We are being dominated by men in dresses and women who have had themselves skinned so they can sport artificial penises. We are being overrun by socialists. A sick minority rules us with ease.

If you are blessed, one of you will put 10 thousand to flight. If not, it’s the other way around.

A lot of people have said the word “Babylon” refers to the Catholic church in eschatology. I feel it refers to America. Babylon is a whore. In the Bible, whores and adulteresses are pretty much the same thing. See Hosea. America was established by Yeshua, and we were made powerful and rich, but now America is a whore for Satan. Paganism, promiscuity, obscenity, pride, perversion, materialism…we decided we had created our own ascendancy, so we are abandoning God on the assumption that we can restore our country.

It will never happen. Our lifestyles are deteriorating. Unless you are blessed by God, your kids won’t own a nice house. They won’t live well on one income. They’ll always work long hours. They’ll see their country pushed around in international squabbles. They’ll live to see the dollar replaced in international business, and that will destroy their savings. They’ll have to bend the knee to the same kind of filthy mob that rounded up decent people in Cuba and Cambodia, took their homes, imprisoned them, tortured them, raped the women, and piled bodies on the ground.

If you forsake God, your sons will cut their penises off. Your daughters will grow beards. Your grandchildren will grow up in rented apartments. They’ll be indoctrinated by force. You will have nothing to say about it.

If you accept Yeshua, get baptized with the Spirit, pray in tongues, repent, confess, and grow as God’s child, you will eventually have peace, abundance, protection, and dominance. Your blessings will be separated from the curses on America. You can do well while your country is destroyed.

America is begging for a whore’s reward, and it’s already rolling in. God really hates unfaithfulness. It’s worse to be an adulteress than to be a stranger.

My wife and I have been praying for Israel every day ever since we started praying together. We pray for God to open the eyes of the Jews and show them how the rabbis have lied to them. We pray he will show them that Maimonides is in hell along with the other sages who kept them in the dark. We also pray he will defeat their enemies and give them victory. The problem is that blessings will always be connected to Yeshua, so there is a limit to what our prayers can do. There are some blessings God simply will not give to people who are against Yeshua.

Barring accepting the perfect solution, I suppose getting serious about self-defense is the best Band Aid.

It’s a terrible scenario. Many Jews knew antisemitism would prevent them from being safe in gentile nations, so they pushed for the restoration of their rightful homeland. According to Zechariah, they are going to find out they’re not safe even there. If the world rejects you, and your homeland–your mammad–turns out to be a house of straw, where, exactly, do you run?

Hamas Fans Protest Jewish Occupation of Manhattan

I’m brewing (wheat ale with bergamot hops), so I have to hang around indoors for a while. Might as well write.

We have a new thing in America. Jews cowering in terror in a university library in a major city while antisemites threaten them with big sticks, combined with an inability to get uniformed police to show up.

At first, the story was that the police refused to come, but now we are being told there were plainclothes detectives in the library.

A person called Chief of Patrol John Chell said, “There was no direct threats.”

The police must not be hearing the same things law students hear. When I was in law school, I was told that threatening a person with a weapon, while you were close enough to use it, was assault. A crime. If you look at video of the incident, you can see a moron with two big sticks, banging them together while staring at students protected only by glass and two doors the police say were not locked.

I know a little bit about Florida law. Here, if you make me mad while I’m driving, and I pick up my gun and hold it so you can see it, I commit a felony that carries a lot of prison time. I guess brandishing weapons that can easily crush skulls is no problem in New York.

People keep saying you can disagree with things Israel does without being antisemitic, and that is true. Protestors like to claim they’re against Israel, not Jews. If that’s the case, why did this herd of mouth-breathers go to NEW YORK and threaten AMERICAN Jews?

I’ll set the question apart in its own sentence.

If you’re against Israel but you have nothing against Jews, why wave weapons at Jews who are not Israelis, 5600 miles from Israel?

This happened in New York, a place where Jews feel safe. After Israel, New York has more Jews than any place. Jews love New York. Many identify with it more than they do with Israel. This happened in what may be the favorite city of more Jews than any other. More than Jerusalem. And our government did nothing.

University president Laura Sparks, clearly a crazy lady, called the event a “peaceful protest.” Waving big sticks at defenseless minority members is now a peaceful activity. Try it at a Biden press conference and see if the Secret Service thinks it’s peaceful.

Sparks comes from the same wacky leftist segment of society that says words are violence. So words are violence, but big sticks aren’t. If I remind Dylan Mulvaney he’s a man, it’s a crime of violence, but if I wave a big stick at an elderly rabbi, it’s expression. It’s beautiful. It’s “my truth.”

Here you see the political suicide of Jews at work. They chose this. They are overwhelmingly leftist. They helped create a climate of antisemitism in the world, by supporting leftism. They helped make New York City what it is. A lot of them are still marching with the pro-Hamas nuts.

They helped create a city where a person who behaves more like an ape than a human being can threaten them with weapons, but they can be imprisoned for carrying firearms. And most of them want nothing to do with firearms to begin with. They think the state will protect them. Like all the other gentile governments that have been so loyal to them.

Yesterday I read that a poll said 48% of younger Americans support Hamas over Israel, and 26% think ending the Jewish state and giving it to Arabs is the way to solve the problem. This is what happens when you embrace leftism. It infects future generations. How can American Jews be leftists? It’s astounding.

The good news is that American Jews will vote conservative, overwhelmingly, in the future. They’ve come to their senses.

No, they haven’t! They’re going to keep feeding the hand that bites them. Some will come around, but generally, they’ll continue assisting in their own destruction and punishing their friends.

My wife and I intercede for Israel and the Jews every day, but because a lot depends on their cooperation, I have extremely low expectations. I expect a majority of Jews to go down with the leftist ship, while loudly defending their stubbornness.

I think we’re seeing the Thirties all over again, and the windows of escape are slamming shut, after precious few people used them.

Because things are getting so weird, I’m considering going back to keeping a rifle in the car, along with several loaded magazines. It’s legal, and these days, it’s smarter than ever. This is an era of mob crime, and mob crimes call for rifles and lots of ammunition, as lynching victim Kyle Rittenhouse could tell you.

I’m trying to catch up on AK technology. I would never rely on an AR-pattern gun for self-defense, except as an emergency backup. AR’s are not reliable, period, and they are inferior for use at distances typical for self-defense. If you’re shooting at people beyond the range where an AK-47 is sufficiently accurate, you’re almost certainly trying to commit murder. It would be pretty unusual to find yourself in a situation where you reasonably feared great bodily harm from someone that far away.

It would be good to have a short folding AK in the car. They have new variants now, though, and it’s confusing. They have a thing called an AK-103. My understanding is that it takes optics better.

In recent years, it became possible to put a rear stock on an AK pistol without committing a crime. That would be great for a vehicle gun. Sadly, Biden ordered the ATF to ban “pistol braces” on unregistered AK pistols. He says they’re short-barreled rifles, which have to be registered. Common sense says he’s right, but legally, he’s wrong. It’s bizarre.

A case is going through the federal courts, addressing the pistol brace question. There is already an injunction that prevents the ATF from going after certain owners of braced pistols. It looks like the ATF is going to lose, big time. We’re not there yet, however.

I want no part of the coming violence, but I would also prefer not to be dragged out of my car and beaten to death, and I would like to be able to protect my wife instead of crying and shaking and wondering why the government hasn’t sent anyone to help us. A lot of Jews have suffered that fate recently, and many would have been fine–and able to kill terrorists–had they been armed instead of relying on an unrealistic conception of their government’s abilities.

Look what happens in a world where people reject Yeshua and the Holy Spirit. You have to buy products made to harm other human beings, or you have to choose to risk martyrdom.

If people were praying in the Spirit every day, God would fill them with his thoughts, emotions, and desires, and he would rid them of the Satanic excrement that drives them now. If two people are aligned with God, they are also aligned with each other. It’s axiomatic. This is why Yeshua is called the Prince of Peace. He owns it. There is no other source.

Unfortunately, Islamists and Jews believe Christianity is idolatry, and leftists prefer self-worship, government-worship, and paganism, so the situation will continue to deteriorate.

Look Out, Walmart

Looks like I’m going to have to start sleeping on the other side of the bed.

My wife had her embassy interview. We buried them with evidence. Before the interview, they demanded a tremendous amount of seemingly irrelevant information, so we were concerned. We were afraid they would try to trip her up on some minor point, like my favorite color.

In reality, they talked to her for about 5 minutes, asked for a few more bits of proof I supported her and that we had been to Hong Kong and Singapore recently, and they sent her home.

I spent some time today scanning junk I had saved. I have kept a huge number of receipts and boarding passes and so on. Now it has been emailed to Uncle Sam, so we should have a visa next week.

I have the greatest bed imaginable. It’s from Costco. I don’t know if they still sell them. It cost $500, and it came in a box. No frame. No headboard. Just a big sponge. I have wonderful pillows. I found out where Hampton Inn bought pillows, and I went to the same place. I sleep right next to the bathroom door with a rifle on the floor and a pistol on the nightstand. I have my phone and Bluetooth earpiece set up for charging there. The nightstand is at my right hand, where it should be.

Now I have to move because the other side of the bed is close to the air conditioning vent. Women don’t produce any heat, so they have to stay away from drafts. This is one reason they get married. They want to sleep next to something warm. Same reason snakes crawl into sleeping bags. But one hopes there is more to the attraction than that.

On the up side, if armed leftists invade rural areas as they say they hope to, she’ll be on the side nearest the yard, so she’ll provide some protection from small arms fire.

I can’t say enough about that bed. Memory foam beds have been around a while, but they didn’t become really popular until this century. The last mattress I bought before this one was a 1994 job, and it had the prehistoric springs and plush top. It’s a great mattress, and it’s in a guest room, but when I lie on the Costco mattress, I never feel like I have to move to get comfortable.

I had my side all broken in, and now guess who will be moving in to colonize it.

Today I sent the embassy baggage tags, boarding passes, passport stamps, e-tickets, proof of bank transfers, and a receipt for a bad in-flight meal. They already have a billion photos of us in exotic locales, but they want this stuff anyway.

I can understand. I guarantee you, there are Nigerians with shops full of green screens and backdrops, charging people for photos of them wherever they want. “HERE AM I MY GRACIOUS FRIENDS ON A LAPTOP AT MOUNT EVEREST BASE CAMP SCAMMING AN OLD LADY OUT OF $40,000!”

They have shops like that in Asia, proving human beings have lost touch with everything that matters. Why would I want you to fabricate a picture of me in Hong Kong on Victoria Peak, when I am, in fact, in Hong Kong on Victoria Peak?

I can’t believe how long this has taken. It will be wonderful to be able to pray with someone without using the phone.

The sweating is over. From here on out, it’s all small strokes. Our first meal at White Castle is so close, I can smell the grease.

Sliders and Concealed Carry: the Best America Has to Offer

The problem with brewing is that so few conclusions have been nailed down, even though homebrewers seem to know a great deal. Things that should be obvious by now are still unknown to a lot of us.

Example: which tubing to use to hook gas and beer up.

When you have a keezer, which is a freezer modified with taps and one or more tanks so you can dispense beer from it, you have to have a tank, kegs, and taps. You need tubing to get the gas from the tank to the gas regulator, from the regulator to the kegs, and from the kegs to the taps.

In the old days we used plain old vinyl from Home Depot.

After I quit brewing in ’07, people started getting anxious about oxygen.

When you brew your beer and put it in a fermenter, you want it to have oxygen in it. It makes the yeast happy. When fermentation is over, you want the oxygen gone. It interacts with beer and eventually ruins the flavor.

There are a lot of ways oxygen gets into beer. I used to run a tube from a fermenter into a keg with the lid off. That was how I got beer into the keg. Of course, oxygen got in. Wasn’t really a problem, but it could have become one if I let the beer sit long enough. Now I take a sanitized keg full of CO2 and I pump beer into it from the fermenter. Everything is sealed and pressurized.

Everything should be fine, right? No, because I have been using vinyl to get gas from the tanks to the regulators. At least I did this with one tank. I have two tanks in my keezer. One is CO2, for normal beers, and the other is a nitrogen/CO2 mix, for stout. As of a few days ago, I still had vinyl on the CO2 primary regulator.

What is a primary regulator?

I have 4 kegs of beer on one tank of CO2. The CO2’s pressure is hundreds of psi. It has to be stepped down so it doesn’t blow the kegs up. There is a gas regulator on the CO2 tank to get this done.

Most guys are happy with that. They will have the same pressure in all their kegs. Not me. Ales like more gas than lagers, and heavy beers may want a whole lot of gas. I bought a secondary regulator. This is 4 regulators in parallel. Each one can be adjusted to provide a pressure I like. Right now, three are at 12 psi, and one is at 18 psi, for my brutal fake Belgian ale.

Primary regulator on the tank. Secondary regulator between the primary and the kegs.

I had a fat vinyl tube going from the primary to the secondary.

It turns out vinyl lets oxygen in. The CO2 in the vinyl is at a minimum of 18 psi in order to get 18 psi in the fake Belgian, and atmospheric air is at 0 psi (gauge pressure), so how can oxygen get in? Doesn’t the CO2 keep it out? Apparently not. It’s sort of like osmosis. The tube sees 0 psi of oxygen inside itself, but our atmosphere is about 20% oxygen, so it sees oxygen pressure outside. The vinyl is not perfectly impermeable to oxygen, so some goes in.

This is the story, anyway.

An Australian company named Kegland makes all sorts of innovative products for brewers, and they created (or maybe found) EVAbarrier, a stiff tubing that is pretty good at keeping oxygen out. They also sell Duotight fittings to connect the tubing to beer and gas.

It’s really convenient. You don’t have to use hose clamps. You cut your tubing to the right length and shove it into the fittings. They bite down on it and seal it up.

As of night before last, my CO2 system has been connected with EVAbarrier. I was already using it for everything but the primary-secondary leg, so I only had to replace two fittings and one tube.

I resumed brewing at the end of December. I made some errors. Wrong mashing schedules. I accidentally shot lubricating oil into a batch of beer because I used a pellet gun CO2 cartridge instead of one made for beverages. Little things went wrong, but I still have one beer from early this year which is very good. As I get caught up with new technology, things get better.

I have one recipe I’m not planning to brew again. It’s just not great. Other than that, I can’t find factory beer I like as much as my own. If I had to go back to factory beer, I’d go back to my old drinking habits, meaning around a 12-pack per year.

I’m having a stout right now. It’s hard to imagine how this beer could be better.

I was thinking I should brew a wheat ale tomorrow. I have a couple of batches of grain, including a wheat recipe, and I don’t have any wheat beer except for the really heavy one I made last week. Today I realized that if I brew beer tomorrow, my wife may well be here before it’s ready to drink.

Her embassy appointment is finally upon us. She could be here 10 days from now, depending on the breaks and whether she is serious about getting her hair done before she comes.

It’s very weird, being this close. I go to the store and buy things, and I find myself thinking she may be here to eat them.

We spend a tremendous amount of time on the phone together. That’s all about to end. What will we do with our time when we suddenly find ourselves with days that aren’t broken up by calls? We’ll save at least three hours per day, and we will have nearly nothing to do.

I have to face the reality of not living like a single man. I have to get a kitchen table that doesn’t fold up. I need two real dressers instead of the awful, enormous dresser my mother got at an outlet store in the Carolinas in the Seventies. I’ll have to move my $80 Chinese Amazon headboard to a bed in a guest room.

I have talked about buying her a business class ticket. I’m looking into it. She will probably have a flight running around 35 hours. Airlines don’t have much interest in Zambia, so she will have to have a minimum of two stops.

Personally, I am an economy guy. I believe I’ve flown first class twice. I recall my dad upgrading the two of us with his endless points. That happened once. I also recall sitting in a first class seat next to a drunk who was some kind of prisoner. He cried a lot. As I recall, he was a black man in a red suit.

I was probably in college. I don’t recall how I got into first class, and I have no idea why they chose me to sit next to a prisoner. I seem to recall him being handcuffed to an armrest. That can’t be right, can it? Maybe that’s how they did things back then.

I don’t recall having a cop anywhere near us.

If I’m going to spend thousands of dollars, I want something I can touch. A piece of jewelry. A new welding table. I don’t want to spend $200 an hour for a ticket upgrade so my butt can be slightly less sore the next day.

Let’s face it. While an upgrade may be nice for a short flight, there is no such thing as a nice long flight. Moving you to business class doesn’t help. I don’t care if they give you a stateroom with a bed. It’s still going to be a miserable experience. I’d rather have the money than the 10% decrease in suffering.

I brought up business class, however, and my wife liked the idea, so now I’m on the hook. I hope she enjoys it and takes pictures, because I don’t plan on buying any more business class tickets unless Elon Musk sees my blog and decides to send me one of his spare billions.

Finding my wife a business class ticket that costs less than a major operation is a challenge, mostly because everyone hates Africans. Flights that are low on the cost scale almost always involve self-transfers. That means she will have to get off the plane at least once, get her bags, go through customs and immigration, go through security again, and board. It’s not a big problem if you’re American, but if you’re African, many countries will force you to get a visa in order to walk across their airports and change planes.

It’s idiotic. Even if her brand-new green card will motivate a country to issue a visa, it will take forever to get the visa, so it’s not practical. I would have to pay her rent in Zambia the whole time, and then she might get turned down.

West Africans are the problem. Especially Nigerians. They go to other countries, refuse to leave, and start criminal enterprises.

I can’t route her through England. Forget that. Our best bet looks like Turkey. She might have to stop in Dubai on the way. She might have to land in two different African countries.

So what will we do when she gets here?

High on the list: White Castle. The family that owns the company sadistically refuses to expand in any meaningful way, but they opened a restaurant in Orlando. The biggest White Castle on Earth. We’ll be doing that.

Sonny’s. This is a Florida barbecue chain. Pretty good, even though Bidenflation now has them putting “Market Price” beside ribs on the menu.

She loves Italian food. There’s a really good place near me. Run by Mexicans. Go figure. It’s clean. The prices are reasonable. The food is great. The staff is polite.

I’ll have to get her a driver’s license ASAP, not to mention a carry permit. Permits are not required in Florida, but if she has one, she will be allowed to carry in other states. I already have a 9mm for her with a Crimson Trace.

After all this, the dentist. And we have to get medical insurance and a new phone plan for two.

We are not doing too bad for clothing and so on. We traveled to countries with good stores.

We need to get the pickup in shape so we will have two vehicles.

That’s all I can think of. I wanted to take her to Israel, but our timing has worked out poorly. There are no good winter destinations in the US.

Okay, maybe there are, but we have no interest in skiing or beaches, and we’re not going to places that look better with leaves on the trees.

I hope to have her out in the pasture shooting steel very soon. I can taste those sliders already.