Money-Throwing Abates; Practice Begins

It’s a banner day. I shot a scoped rifle at something and actually hit it.

As noted in earlier posts, I put a new trigger spring and a Vortex Viper on my Ruger Venture in .204 Ruger. This was after some incredibly bad shooting with my AR-15. With the Ruger put together, I was ready for some redemption. Today I took it out to the pasture to zero it.

Apart from missing the paper entirely with several shots, due to a decision to turn a scope turret the wrong way, things went very well. Until the deluge started. I was only able to shoot one target before getting drenched. I’ll post a photo.

I know what you’re thinking. That looks pretty bad. Okay, yes, but it represents several groups.

I started way off to the right, turned the turret the wrong way and sent several shots past the target. Then I started bringing them in. I would love to say all the holes in the center are part of one group, but they aren’t. I startled myself by putting one there unexpectedly, and then I decided to improve the zero by giving the turret one more click.

After putting four holes in the center, I shot at a place to the left where two yellow lines crossed. I hit it square. By the time the 6th shot was off, the rain was getting out of control, so I quit. I didn’t measure, and the cattle will probably eat the target before I can put calipers on it, but I’m pretty sure that whole group is under 1 MOA. If not, it’s close enough for government work.

I can’t be positive, because the clouds will not let me shoot long enough to find out, but it sure looks like this gun and ammo will do sub-MOA pretty consistently at 100 yards, if I practice a little more. If not, well, 1 MOA is clearly doable, and that’s excellent.

It’s a major relief to confirm that I can shoot. It looks like I still have horizontal stringing, but there has to be a way to fix that.

The trigger is as good as it can be, within my ability to judge triggers. The scope is very nice. I need some way to tighten the bipod up a little; they sell aftermarket levers. Anyway, I can finally say I have a gun that will shoot well enough to let me focus on technique instead of equipment. For all I know, it would shoot even better with handloads.

This is a bad, bad day for coyotes and coons.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

INGREDIENTS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kindly Stop Breathing Near Me

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

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

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

You tell me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5 MOA!

I shot my AR-15 again today. Yesterday I got keyholing and weird performance at 100 yards with 40-grain bullets, so today I shot 50-grain Fiocchi Extrema rounds with V-Max bullets.

Yesterday, along with the keyholing, I got inconsistent accuracy, and because I managed to put nearly all of 9 rounds in one big hole, I don’t think I’m the problem, nor do I think the gun is incapable of shooting well.

Today, things did not go well at all. I didn’t get keyholing as far as I can tell, but grouping was so bad, I quit and took the gun indoors to see if I could find any loose screws on it.

Here is the first target. I always start on the bottom-left bullseye and go clockwise. I shot at each bullseye 5 times.

The first group looks like a 1.5-MOA group plus a flyer. Could be worse, as the second group, at top left, shows. The next group, at top right, looks like it’s centered around a different point of impact. The last group looks about like the first one, except that it’s centered below the center of the bullseye.

Here is the second target. Before I shot it, I fiddled with the scope’s parallax knob. I thought it could be the problem. I find it hard to adjust parallax out from a prone position.

The first group is wonderful. I thought my problems were solved. Then I tried to hit the upper-left bullseye, and it was like one of the scope’s rings had broken in half. I would call it 4 MOA, but that makes it sound better than it is, because one round hit the top-right bullseye. The highest hole in the top left bullseye looks like it may be a keyhole.

I didn’t try to put a group in the top-right bullseye. I shot at the one on the lower right, and at first, I thought I had missed completely. I had to go look at it. I stopped shooting. I can’t shoot when I have no idea where the bullets are going. I know I’m not going to hit a cow or miss the berm, but spraying and praying is not good practice.

Seems to me that the 5-round, one-hole group proves the gun and I can shoot. You can put 3 rounds in one hole by accident, but it’s not nearly as likely with 5 shots, and the other day, I put most of 9 shots in one big hole. So something is wrong.

Someone suggested the barrel nut might be loose. I took the handguard off the gun and looked at the nut, which turned out to be a special nut that works with a regular wrench (yay). The nut was very tight. I looked to see if the gas tube was hitting anything. I looked at everything I could think of.

Finally, I looked at one of my magazines. I saw an article about AR accuracy problems, and it mentioned magazines. The writer was talking about feeding issues, but it occurred to me that a bad magazine might damage bullets.

When I checked the magazine, I saw that it had sharp metal edges in front of the bullets, and the edges were shiny. It looked like they had brass or copper on them. I shoved a cartridge forward, and sure enough, the bullet hit the edge. I looked at a bullet, and I saw a couple of little marks on it. I don’t know if it was damaged badly enough to make it fall apart in flight, but I didn’t want to take chances. I cut recesses in both magazines so the bullets couldn’t touch them. I have some plastic magazines, and they were made with these recesses.

It amazes me that anyone would make a magazine that shaves metal off cartridges, but there you go.

I don’t know if this is what’s causing the accuracy problem, but it can’t be helping. I ordered a couple of short plastic magazines to replace the cheap metal jobs I modified.

After considering everything else, I have to think about the scope. It may be defective. Something inside it could be rattling around. I may put another scope on the gun and shoot it to see what happens.

This really looks like a 0.75-MOA gun, with the right ammo and good concentration. The gun and I can do 1 MOA if I can get the bugs ironed out. It’s very obvious that something other than user ineptitude or a fundamental gun problem is at work. No one goes from a 1″ group to completely missing the bullseye in one day without some kind of unusual mechanical problem.

The more I work with this gun, the more I realize the AR platform is a mess. It’s practically a religion. These guns have all sorts of problems unique to the genus, and you have to buy special tools to work on them. I can’t discount the fun, though. Buying an AR is like buying a puzzle. Making it function is part of the joy.

I may put a different scope on the gun tomorrow. If it shoots well, all this fuss about other sources of inaccuracy will prove to be a total waste of time.

Unfortunately, I Took Pictures of it First

I feel conflicted. On the one hand, today I got to shoot an AR-15 in my own yard, far from Miami. That’s excellent. On the other, I shot like a cop wearing tactical pants with 35 zippers.

I took the AR-15 out and shot Fiocchi Extrema ammunition from it. This ammunition has Hornady V-Max bullets. Based on my experience with Fiocchi ammo in my .204 Ruger, I have no doubt that Fiocchi makes good stuff. Still, this is what happened:

The first bullseye I shot is at the bottom left on the first target. I shot 9 rounds into it. The others got 5 rounds each. It’s pretty good, even though I forgot to extend my buttstock. I was hanging off the rear of the rifle for 9 rounds.

I always start at 7 o’clock and go clockwise. The second bullseye is not as good as the first, but it’s okay. Five rounds and 4 holes, not far apart.

The next bullseye, at top left, is not great. I got a fairly big semicircle of 4 shots, with a shifted area of impact. One shot was so bad, it’s outside the black. Three of the shots are elongated. No idea why. I don’t think bullets should tumble and keyhole at 100 yards.

The next bullseye, at 4 o’clock, is okay, but why are there only 4 holes? Sometimes I shoot two rounds through one hole out of pure luck. I certainly hope that happened here, because thinking of the alternative gives me stomach cramps.

Next, at 7 o’clock on the bottom-left bullseye on the second target, I did okay, with a flyer. After that, things went completely nuts. The bullets went in random directions, and I got elongated bullet holes. No idea what that’s all about. I’m hoping I can blame the bullets. If they’re tumbling at 100 yards, I want my money back.

I’m starting to think this may not be the most accurate gun on earth. I am not a great rifleman, but I’m better than this. If I were the problem, you would expect my shooting to improve during a session, but my last three bullseyes are scary.

It sort of looks like things went utterly sideways, with elongated bullet holes, and then things started to get normal again on the last bullseye. Is that even possible?

I’m using a LaRue trigger I installed. I liked it at first because it was a great improvement over my stock trigger. Now I like it less. It seems like a quality trigger, but the pull is just too heavy. It’s not made for precise shooting. At least I don’t think so. I think it’s aimed at people who put on plate carriers and walk around shooting at steel with their thumbs on top of their barrels. I could use something lighter.

I changed my rear bag. My first rear bag was a leather rabbit-ear bag. When I bought it, I assumed it was a useful item, because legitimate companies sold leather rabbit-ear bags. I didn’t think they would sell something no intelligent person would use. I eventually found out real shooters used soft rear bags. I bought an Armageddon Gear X-wing fabric bag, and it was not bad. It seemed too small, though. I found I was always working to lift the butt of the gun high enough. I got a larger one, and it’s much, much better. Not good enough to make me shoot well today, however.

Now I have a puzzle to solve. What’s causing the keyholing?

It may be that the gun just doesn’t like 40-grain ammo. I should shoot a little 55-grain before I give up on it. It has a 1:9 twist, and that is supposed to be a little fast for light rounds.

Actually, I read that barrel twist actually correlates with bullet length, not weight. Life is never simple.

If the twist rate is the problem, why is the keyholing intermittent? It seems to appear and then go away. Is something collecting in the barrel, causing keyholing, and then blowing out so the gun can shoot accurately again?

I feel like I should quit changing the gun until I get some more shooting time in with something that actually works. I can’t eliminate the human factor unless I’m sure I’m shooting well. Unfortunately, it will be at least Wednesday before I can shoot the .204 or the .17 HMR with new glass. I could always stick the ATN night scope back on the .204. The problem is that I’m reluctant to keep shooting with fuzzy imaging when I can wait a couple of days and use a Vortex.

I can shoot the Ruger Precision Rifle. I have a sanity-hearing-level stockpile of ammo.

I’m starting to wonder how good my Sellier & Bellot 6.5 Creedmoor ammo is. A Youtube guy appeared to shoot it into under 1 MOA with an RPR, but people have been known to lie, and ammunition doesn’t always perform the same way in different examples of the same gun.

The RPR has a new bolt shroud. I am eager to try it with live ammo. Maybe I should take it out to the pasture tomorrow.

I was not totally happy with the trigger in my Thompson Center Venture, which is my .204 Ruger gun. It seemed heavy for an adjustable trigger. I contacted Smith & Wesson (Thompson Center is a fiction) and asked about buying parts so I could upgrade to the Venture II’s trigger, which is better. No dice. They refuse to sell the parts. I guess I’m all done buying Thompson Center rifles.

I found an aftermarket spring. A company called Mcarbo sells it. Today I installed it. I was hoping for a pull weight of maybe 2.5 pounds. I don’t have a gauge, but when I was done, the trigger felt lighter than that. Mcarbo has an installation video, and their own guns came in under 2 pounds.

I like a light trigger, but I don’t want my rifle to go off every time the wind blows. If my scope rings ever arrive, I’ll take the gun out and see what it feels like in use. The impression I get is that instead of shooting this gun, I’ll be thinking the bullet into the target. I’ll think about pulling the trigger, and the bullet will take off. The pull may be lighter than desired, but the gun may turn out to be a dream to shoot.

I guess I should clean the AR’s barrel and try 40-grain and 55-grain ammo. If heavier ammo doesn’t keyhole, maybe it means the gun has a peculiar hatred for light bullets. If both weights keyhole, something abnormal must be happening.

Of course I want a new barrel. I always want new gun parts. But maybe a new barrel won’t help.

I should have known this was going to be a rough session. When I set up my first target and got settled in to shoot, a calf wandered over and started chewing on the tape holding it up. I used to think I was crazy for thinking they were eating my targets. Now I’ve seen it. I had to jump up and run him off before he ate everything.

Maybe I can get some Ruger redemption tomorrow. I can break out the Sellier & Bellot, and if I can’t make it work, I have two flavors of Hornady match ammo standing by.

Lee Dies Ruin my Day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So I used No.7. Not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m thinking it over.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To sum up:

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

2. Taper crimping is what you want.

3. Lehigh Xtreme Defender bullets seem pretty good.

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

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

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

MORE

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

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

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

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

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

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

If You Want the Facts, Ask God for Yourself

If you’re reading this, you missed the Creator’s Calendar rapture.

I wrote about this a day or two back. Someone came to my Youtube channel and posted an article-length comment in support of the Creator’s Calendar, which is a doctrine adhered to by certain fringe Christians. Somehow or other, it’s based on the full moon. This person asked me to take his comment out of spam so it would be published, but I felt strongly that I was not supposed to do that, so I deleted it.

His theory was that the rapture would occur today when the sun set in Jerusalem. I looked up the time. It was 12:33 p.m. Eastern. As I write this, it is 1:00, so the sun has been down in Jerusalem for almost half an hour.

I will go out on a limb and say I don’t think the rapture has taken place. If it has, no one has published anything Google News can pick up.

It will be interesting to see what the Creator’s Calendar guy says in his next video.

A lady predicted the rapture would hit on July 22. Last time I checked, after the critical time had passed, she seemed undaunted. There were people who thought the 25th was the day. Nothing happened, unless the rapture was so small no one noticed.

If you pick a rapture date, and it passes with no discernible change, you have to draw one of two conclusions. You were wrong, or you were deemed unworthy to go. If you made your prediction with great confidence, you should be humble when it turns out to be false. You shouldn’t make up a new theory to explain it.

My big issue with the Creator’s Calendar is that it appears to be the product of study. If you know the Bible, you know God doesn’t do much work through scholars. He reveals things through the Holy Spirit. This is understandable, because if people could figure things out with God’s help, they would exalt themselves. God hates pride. He does things for us so we can’t take credit. Of course, people who are proven wrong often continue exalting themselves as though nothing had happened.

Another problem with relying on study and intelligence is that it pretty much shuts people of lesser ability–a huge percentage of the population–out of intimacy with God. I can tell you from eyewitness experience that God uses lots of people who are not very bright. He fills them with smart ideas. One reason he does this is to humiliate self-anointed sages.

I look at rapture-related videos a lot. I almost always bypass the ones from channels with names like GOD’S ANOINTED MESSENGER or Holy Prophetess La-Qu’isha. I skip the ones featuring people in costumes. If you have a long grey beard, a bizarre robe, and a gold-plated cross a foot long on your chest, you’re playing a role, not hearing from God.

I like the videos ordinary people make in their poorly decorated bedrooms. Those people are less likely to be grifters and nutjobs.

I wish the rapture had been today. Would have been nice.

This morning, I tried to look something up on my phone, and somehow I ended up in a Bible app, looking at Isaiah 1. I don’t know if my fingers slipped or what. I decided to run with it. Isaiah 1 is all about the way God lets rebellious, prosperous nations have it. Along with the ensuing chapters, it seems tailor-made for 2020.

Take a look at this:

The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.

Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.

That’s us. We think our prosperity came from an imaginary innate American superiority, hard work, or other sources. God gave us everything, and we’re looking to find any other explanation.

From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.

Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.

That sounds worse than what’s happening here now, but the types of curses described are the same as some of the ones we’re enduring. Disease and burning cities. As for strangers devouring our country, that’s a perfect description of illegal immigration.

This morning I saw a clip of the 2020 Democratic presidential debate. Until today, I didn’t know Jorge Ramos was a moderator. I was stunned. Ramos is not an American. He’s a hostile alien who supports his own people and government against America. Why not have Vladimir Putin or that Chinese guy whose name I can’t spell as a moderator? It’s obscene. It’s astounding that Americans have gotten this stupid. This kind of stupidity goes far beyond what natural causes can explain. It’s too severe. It has to be supernatural in origin.

If you read the Bible, you know God allows people to be deceived. Look at Isaiah 6:

Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.

And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.

Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.

The New Testament says homosexuality comes on people as a delusion because of rebellion. Isaiah seems to say the ancient Jews had their own homosexual pride movement. Look:

For Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah is fallen: because their tongue and their doings are against the Lord, to provoke the eyes of his glory.

The shew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! for they have rewarded evil unto themselves.

The Bible says Sodom sinned through selfishness, but generally, Sodom is mentioned as a place of sexual perversion.

We do the things cursed nations have done, but we expect to be blessed, because we think the God of the Bible is like the tooth fairy. Imaginary.

That’s a strange belief, in view of the fact that we only exist because he imagined us. There was a time when we were all imaginary.

I always say the rapture is necessary for the tribulation to start, because if Christians remained on the earth, their prayers would prevent it. And God doesn’t want his children to go through it, any more than he wants them to go to hell. Here’s something from Isaiah that supports my belief:

Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah.

Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah.

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is a picture of the tribulation. Abraham got God to promise him he would not destroy these cities if there were 10 righteous men in them. If God would have saved Sodom and Gomorrah for 10 people, he will protect the world while there are hundreds of millions of real Christians here.

Notice he calls the Hebrews rulers of Sodom and people of Gomorrah. He’s not talking to the heathens. The prophesy is for Judah. He’s saying the inhabitants of Judah might as well be Sodomites.

I keep feeling the rapture will be this year. I won’t promise you anything. I won’t tell you to quit your job or load up your credit cards. I won’t claim I know more about God’s calendar than the Jews. Angels haven’t sat in my living room and given me dictation. I haven’t been summoned to the throne of heaven in a vision I will describe in my special set of affordable DVD’s. If I were certain, I would say so. Until that time, I’m not going to say anything is written in stone.

I think it’s close, though.

Fake Forecast

As everyone who knows me knows, I’m a stoic kind of guy. I never complain about anything. It’s not my style. I’m just too manly. So I know people will realize it’s a big deal when I announce that my property is currently being pummeled by Hurricane Isaias, which I mistakenly called “Isaac” the other day.

It’s pretty bad. I would say we are getting gusts of up to 3 mph, if you get on the roof and run as fast as you can, and the skies are full of rain-laden clouds which could, conceivably, release some precipitation, some of which might possibly reach the ground before evaporating.

It’s exactly the kind of disaster you would expect if you had just read a story I saw this morning. Business Insider, also known as Trump Derangement Insider, says Governor DeSantis has declared a state of EMERGENCY EMERGENCY EMERGENCY in Florida, and HURRICANE Isaias is BARRELING toward the coast.

In typical alt-right fashion, the hurricane DENIERS at NOAA are calling Isaias a tropical storm, and their politicized maps show it prancing onshore in South Carolina as what I would call a Category .75.

The willful blindness is staggering. Can’t people see we need sensible gun control and a federal sensitivity commission that oversees the design of microaggressive pancake syrup bottles? How many times does this have to happen before we finally elect Vladimir Lenin’s pickled corpse president for life and declare the Salvation Army a terrorist organization?

I know what you’re thinking. Lenin was a white male. Not a problem. There is no reason why gender reassignment…I mean “confirmation”…surgery can’t take place post-mortem, and afterward, we can touch him up with a coat of brown Krylon.

I’m starting to wonder why I ever look at the news. I can’t help thinking about the old joke regarding the Soviet news agencies Tass and Pravda. “Tass” means “news,” and “Pravda” means “truth.” The Russians used to say, “The news is not truth, and the truth is not news.”

Hurricane news has been nearly worthless for a very long time. It was probably okay when we had three channels and Neil Frank used to go on the news and comfort us with his flattop, but now it’s an endless contest to see who can become most unhinged.

Every time the cone of certain death appears on NOAA’s website, a friend of mine sends me texts telling me we may have to endure the spectacle of Jim Cantore and his Land’s End jacket. I have been spared this time. I think he ought to go ahead and rig himself up with wires so he can appear to have his feet lifted off the ground. Better yet, CGI. He could lounge at home comfortably in boxers while his avatar Jim Headroom held onto a post and let his L.L. Bean duck shoes flap in a virtual breeze.

Isaias is the Smart Car of hurricanes. It qualifies for the title, but only in a way that waters down its meaning.

One of Donald Trump’s greatest achievements was coining and popularizing the term “fake news.” It condensed a pervasive understanding into a solid verbal bullet that could be fired at will from innumerable locations. It was as though America were a crime scene and Trump handed every one of us a can of luminol.

I learned something very interesting yesterday. The people who make up…I mean “compile”…our coronavirus statistics are including old cases in the total. If you get a test that says you USED to be infected, they say you’re a new case. It’s not a conspiracy theory. Bigwigs are apologizing publicly. I know coronavirus exists, and I think a big percentage of the upswing data we’re seeing is real, but I completely understand people who think the epidemic is nearly over. For all I know, they could be right.

I still don’t know a single person who has been diagnosed. We still have only two real celebrities who have died from coronavirus, and they’re not what you would call headliners. Roy Horn and that other guy. Now I have to look it up. Oh, right. Herman Cain. Of course, he was 74, he was already dying from cancer, and he was on chemotherapy. Where are the dead stars? There are none. And it’s not because they have money to protect themselves. Many very famous people are broke.

I keep having the feeling that if Obama were still in office, the MSM would be calling the epidemic itself an alt-right fantasy. I guess they wouldn’t go that far, but the coverage would be very, very different.

If you want to see coronavirus go away, just vote for Biden. A week after he’s elected, if he hasn’t already been forced to withdraw due to his suddenly obvious dementia, coronavirus will go away. It will be just like our war casualties. When Bush II was in office, the press published daily tallies of our military deaths. When Obama wafted into the White House, the stories ceased. I guess our enemies stopped shooting, out of reverence for the left’s messiah.

You have to wonder what the news will look like the day of the rapture. In many liberal cities, it won’t even be noticed, because so few people will be missing. It may take days for our city-bound journalists to realize something is wrong. Maybe they’ll accuse us of hiding. Which wouldn’t be entirely wrong.

“BREAKING NEWS: doctors add new item to coronavirus symptom list as millions of annoying people vanish. Fauci rages: ‘Masks could have prevented this!’ Scientists race to find new rationales for blaming Trump.”

It will be a looter’s jubilee. They’ll take all our liquor and jewelry and throw out the Bibles.

We finally have to wear masks here. I can’t go to Home Depot without one. Finally, I understand what other people have been going through. Masks are fine when you exhale, but when you inhale, they suck up against your nostrils and prevent air from entering. I always wondered why I saw so many people with masks slung under their chins. Now I get it. I do it, too. Expose mouth and nose. Walk down empty aisle. See someone approaching. Raise shields.

My post-upswing guess, based on the New York data, was that my county would top out at about 9,000 confirmed cases. Now I’m not so sure. We have prisons here, and the high rate of prison infections inflates the figures. If the old folks homes get hit, this county will have a major problem, because there seems to be one on every block. We might end up with an astronomical figure that has nearly no relationship to a typical person’s risk of infection. Applying data obtained from atypical people to the rest of us would be sort of like saying an average resident is likely to play shuffleboard and only wear orange.

It would be neat to find news I could trust. It would be neat if Santa and the Easter Bunny landed a Harrier sleigh in my yard and threw me 10 duffel bags full of rubies. Not sure which is less likely to happen.

As for me, I’m back to fasting. I went 9 days and then skipped a day. I was not happy with the way I acted and felt yesterday, so I’m fasting again. For a long time, I’ve asked God to help me fear him, and I have to say that my prayer has been answered. I think the rapture is imminent, I think I need God’s help in the turbulent, disaster-heavy end times regardless of whether the rapture comes soon, and I do not want to be here during the tribulation.

I have been thinking maybe I should fast until 3:00 every day from now on. Maybe I should throw in some all-day fasts. I invested a lot of time in messing myself up, so I should not be surprised if getting clean is not a quick process.

I still think I had coronavirus in February. I’m probably immune. If not, I probably won’t be infected, because coronavirus isn’t very contagious. If I’m infected, I probably won’t get very sick. If I die, I’m ready to go, and I don’t care. Nonetheless, I am trying to be somewhat responsible. I don’t like being sick, and a tiny percentage of coronavirus victims survive and have problems afterward. It’s not like mild sickness and death are the only options. There is an unpleasant middle path. And there is also the possibility that I could infect others.

I should be preparing for the flu. The infection rate is something like 10%–far higher than coronavirus–and the flu is awful. Through insurance, I’ve already paid for a vaccination. I ought to get that taken care of. They say it will halve my chances of getting sick. I haven’t had a shot since 2017, unless I had one and forgot. I made sure my dad got them while he was alive.

Tomorrow is August 4, and a fringe group says it’s the real Shavuot. They say the rapture will happen on that day. I think they’re completely wrong, but wouldn’t it be nice if they were right? Nothing could make me happier. I don’t care when it happens. Tomorrow. December. Next year. Whenever it happens, take me take me take me take me. A lot of leftists brag that they were at Woodstock. The rapture is the Christian Woodstock. You don’t want to have to say you weren’t there.

Every rapture prediction sparks a flame of hope in my heart, even when the predictions are clearly crazy.

I’m glad I had a chance to let everyone know how I was doing during the hurricane. I’m sure my tale of bravery and determination will inspire millions. It’s a good thing I’m so humble, because this is the kind of thing that makes people conceited.

Thompson Center’s $460 Laser

It may sound shocking, but I went outside to shoot again today, and it didn’t rain.

Okay. It did rain. But not enough to drive me inside.

I am still working on my ammo savings account. I want to have a stockpile in every useful caliber. In order to do this, I need to know which cartridges work. You don’t want to buy a thousand cartridges your gun hates. I have been itching for a chance to shoot my Thompson Center Venture so I could find out whether I wanted 32-grain or 40-grain bullets. Today I made it happen.

The results were pretty neat.

First, I should talk about my optic. Only noobs say “scope.” I say “optic.” And “polymer” instead of “plastic.”

I used an ATN X-Sight II night scope. Optic. I got this thing a couple of years back as a lark, using credit card points. It’s cheap by night OPTIC standards. It doesn’t do thermal. It’s infrared. Infrared is not as good as thermal, but this is cold comfort to the many pigs and coons who have been infraredded to the nether region.

I am no expert, even though I say “optic,” but I’ll give you my take on the–okay–scope anyway. There is nothing wrong with it. Expensive stuff is always better, but you can take this thing out of the box, put it on your gun, and shoot very, very well. The imaging is pretty bad, but that doesn’t matter if you hit what you point your rifle at. It’s not about pretty pictures.

It’s really just a smartphone in a metal case. I don’t think it has any real lenses in it. The magnification comes from zooming the picture. As a result, you get wavy, blurry scenes. Imagine zooming your Iphone to 25x and taking a photo. That’s the deal.

It has some neat stuff in it. You can move the crosshairs around, and that makes zeroing easy. You fire a shot, put the crosshairs on your original point of aim, move a second set of crosshairs to the place where the bullet landed, and push a button. You’re zeroed. Pretty much.

It records video. It tells you which direction you’re facing. You can set it to record your shots. It will record while you shoot, and when it feels recoil, it will save all the video surrounding the shot.

I don’t know what all it does. If you want to shoot things at night, and you don’t want to spend several thousand dollars, this thing will get it done. For the price, which was $600, it’s just fine.

That being said, shooting it at targets is unpleasant because the quality of the image is so bad. I think the best thing is to save it for night hunting and use a real scope for everything else.

I will post a target photo.

I shot three 40-grain rounds at the bottom-left bullseye. You will see the holes clearly…on the top-right bullseye. I zeroed the scope and shot 6 more rounds. They clustered in a small area to the left of the bottom-left bullseye. Can’t swear they all hit the paper, but it looks like they did. The zero was still not right, but it was close. The grouping was jim-dandy. Excellent for a hunting gun. No complaints.

I worked on the zero and fired 6 more rounds at the bottom-left bullseye. As you can see, they made one little hole. That was pretty sweet. I shoot this gun better than my Ruger Precision Rifle. At least for 6 rounds, I did.

If they didn’t go through the same hole, then they missed the paper entirely, and I’m confident enough in my shooting to say that did not happen.

I put 32-grain cartridges in the gun and shot some more, at the bottom-right bullseye. I didn’t do badly at all, but as you can see, the bullets made more than one hole. I call it 1.5 MOA. Either the 32-grain ammo doesn’t shoot as well, or fatigue got to me. It’s taxing to fight with your shooting bags when you’re still working things out, and the scope kept turning on and off because a power cable was not attached tightly.

I was tired of the scope, and I was not comfortable with my rear bag setup, so I got in the cart and drove home. Now I feel very confident about ordering 40-grain rounds. They appear to shoot quite well. They have a higher BC than the little bullets. They are more powerful. I lose a little velocity, but I think 3650 (according to the box) will not be slow enough to give me buyer’s remorse.

It’s pretty cool, putting 6 rounds in one very small hole. I don’t know how fluky it was, but it means more than a three-shot group.

The gun is very good. Thompson Center guarantees 3 shots into 1 MOA, and clearly, it will do that. The ammo is shockingly good, especially considering the price. It has ballistic tips, too, so it’s useful. It’s not just for targets. It will drop coyotes where they stand. Some people shoot deer with these things. That seems like a bad idea, but they do it.

I now have 1000 rounds on the way. That should be a sufficient buffer against Joe Biden and the day when Antifa and Congress become indistinguishable.

I’m going to put a Vortex PST on the gun and keep the ATN for shooting after dark and shooting with video. It will be nice shooting through a scope that isn’t like looking through a shower door.

I have an Athlon scope on the way. Some say it’s better than a Gen II Vortex PST, and the scope I’m putting on the TC is a Gen I. The Athlon is for my Savage .17 HMR. If it turns out to be better than my Vortex Gen I, I’ll put the Athlon on the .204 and the Vortex on the Savage. Presumably, I will never be able to use the Savage from over 300 yards, so it doesn’t need as good a scope as the .204. I think.

I’m pretty happy shooting this well with what seems to be a very basic stock. I am not totally convinced of the need for fancy stocks. If your barrel is free-floated and you have a good cheek weld, how does a fancy stock help you? Not sure. The stock that came with the gun appears to work fine, and it’s indestructible.

The results I got today give me hope that I will eventually be a good rifle shot. I’m already okay, but I want to be better.

There is a Difference

One of the problems with hearing from God is that you will find yourself in competition with a lot of people who have heard from things like the devil, insanity, a craving for attention, and indigestion. It’s always important to pray for guidance when someone tells you something that supposedly came from God, or when you think you’ve heard something from him.

I’ve watched Sid Roth many times. He has a show about supernatural things that happen to Christians. He has guests who have genuine revelations and so on, but he also hosts nuts and liars from time to time. They generally have books, CD’s, or DVD’s to sell. I’ve checked three of their products out, and none turned out to be worthwhile.

Sid has a Youtube channel, and the other day, he interviewed a guy named James Goll. This man says God visits him and so on. He says Trump will be reelected and that he will appoint a female “Esther” to the Supreme Court.

I have grave doubts about this guy. For one thing, he’s a self-promoter. Look how he introduced himself to Sid:

You know who you’re talking to. I am an intercessor. I’m also a teaching prophet, not only a declarative prophet.

Isn’t that pride?

What, exactly, is a teaching prophet? Is that like the guy who taught Amos, Jeremiah, and Samuel? As I recall, God himself taught them. If the new covenant is better than the old covenant, how come Old Testament prophets were taught by God and New Testament prophets have to have teachers? Does that make any sense?

Goll seems full of himself, and he also makes weird, inexplicable grimaces while he speaks. They remind me of tics. My personal belief about tics is that demons cause them. Something other than the proper inhabitant of a body tells the muscles to do silly things. If something is controlling your muscles, and it’s not you, who is it?

His whole demeanor is off-putting. He seems effeminate. He seems very angry. He’s unpleasant to watch. Spirit-led Christians are generally pleasant to be around. The Holy Spirit always brings harmony and affection.

He reminds me of someone who vanished from my life. This person lectured people, and he was usually angry. He spoke as though he had authority. He said a lot of useful things, but he got very involved with worldly projects and didn’t pray in tongues. If you don’t pray in tongues, you lack real revelation, but you can still fill up on the false kind. You can be led pretty far astray.

He used to invite people to get involved with his projects, saying they could work for him. The projects and jobs didn’t pan out, however. The rosy descriptions never matched reality. He persuaded a big company to do a job for him, and they invested a lot of money in preparation. Then they found out he didn’t have money to pay them. They sued, and he defaulted. He also said things about his technical background which I, as a former physicist, knew could not be true.

You always have to be careful about listening to self-promoters. Sometimes they’re like balloons. Let the air out, and what you have left is surprisingly small.

I looked Goll up. He is part of the Seven Mountain Mandate crowd. Ted Cruz’s dad and Paula White are also adherents, as are the Bethel/Sozo people. They believe Christians will take over the world. Not after the rapture. Now. They want to dominate the government, education, business, and entertainment, among other things.

I’m not a Sozo guy. A friend of mine gave me a Bethel book, and I gave their doctrine the old college try, with sincerity. Nothing happened. They tell you to think back to a traumatic moment in your life and ask Jesus where he was. He’s supposed to say something like, “I was over by the window,” and he explains what was happening. Then you find catharsis and healing. There is nothing even remotely like this in the Bible, and I got nothing from it. I’ve seen Bethel sermons, and most gave me the creeps. I think they’re on the wrong track.

I don’t see Christians taking over the world. We are declining in influence, and our decline isn’t linear. It’s accelerating. The difference between 2000 and 2010 was nothing compared to the difference between 2010 and 2020.

Jesus said the world would hate us. The Bible says it’s a problem if the world loves you. Jesus said his kingdom was not of this world; he rejected efforts to make him a political or military leader. He didn’t even try to run the temple, even though he was the son of God.

In short, I think the Seven Mountain Mandate doctrine is completely wrong. I think anyone who turns the office of prophet into a job and brags about his credentials is bogus. We are clearly told not to seek our own promotion. I don’t believe anyone who boasts and promotes himself, who makes money from Christianity, and who thinks Christians should run the present world can possibly be a prophet.

Prophets hear from God every day. Wouldn’t God tell a prophet if the movement he belonged to was based on misconeptions?

Goll claims Luke 7:44 somehow proves women are supposed to be prophets and pastors and so on. This is the verse about the woman who washed the feet of Jesus with her tears and dried them with her hair. In this story, Jesus talks to a man named Simon, teaching him about what the woman is doing.

Goll says Simon is Peter. Problem: he is not. Not even close. Jesus was invited to have a meal at the home of a pharisee, and that’s where the woman washed his feet. When the Bible mentions “Simon,” it says he was the man who invited Jesus to his house. Not Peter at all. It’s not ambiguous. It’s not subject to interpretation. It’s very clear.

Paul said women should not speak in church, and he was very firm about it. It makes sense, because men bear the burden of leadership in this world, and the human race was cursed because a man let a woman take over the job of religious instruction. When it comes to idolatry, women have a long history of taking the lead. False religions tend to spread among women first. Women are more open to them. This is why they slept with angels in Genesis and gave birth to giants.

If you think women make great leaders, ask yourself where we would be if women voted and men did not. Ellen DeGeneres would be empress for life, and our GNP would be about five hundred dollars. Somalia would be sending us aid.

Paul’s credentials are a lot stronger than James Goll’s. The Bible agrees with Paul, and I agree with him, too.

I came across another person who promoted weird doctrine. I put up a Youtube video, and a commenter posted an extremely long (maybe a thousand words) comment saying he and his family loved Marvel movies and that he expected the rapture to come on August 4, or Shavuot.

Problem: Marvel movies are occult movies. The characters use magic. Dr. Strange is a witch. The Scarlet Witch is pretty obviously a witch. Thor is a false god. The Black Panther uses drugs to make himself powerful. Christians shouldn’t fool with Marvel. I did, and I quit.

Problem: Shavuot was weeks ago. It ended on May 30. It’s a spring holiday.

Christians who have high hopes for August 4 are talking about counting the omer. An omer is a dry measure, like a pint. “Shavuot” means “weeks.” It’s a holiday that takes place 7 weeks after Pesach (Passover). Jews count 50 days between Pesach and Shavuot. I think I have that right. I guess the idea is that the days fill up an omer. Shavuot is supposed to be the same thing as Pentecost, but the Gregorian calendar throws it off. “Pentecost” is a Greek word that means “fiftieth.”

There is zero ambiguity. Shavuot ended weeks ago. It will not come this month.

It appears the August 4 idea comes from an obscure concept called the Creator’s Calendar. There are a few Christians who think the Jewish calendar is wrong. Jesus had no problem with the Jewish calendar, and Paul had no problem with it, but that’s the theory. The Creator’s Calendar says Shavuot will really take place on August 4.

Problem: Shavuot is the festival of the first fruits. You can’t have first fruits of the harvest in August. Not in Israel. The wheat harvest comes in spring.

If the rapture were to come on a Jewish holiday, I would expect it to be Sukkot. This is the week when Jews build temporary booths from branches. The rapture will take us away for 7 years (one week of years), and during that time, we will be celebrating with Jesus. It will be the celebration of his marriage to the church. It looks a lot like Sukkot. On the other hand, Shavuot is the day when the first fruits of the harvest are celebrated, and the rapture looks a lot like Jesus taking his first fruits to heaven.

I don’t know whether the rapture will land on a holiday, but I do know Shavuot was over a long time ago.

The long comment went to spam, and the guy who posted it asked me to restore it. I took a look at it. I think it went where it was supposed to go. He linked to his own video and tried to take over. That’s how spam works. I felt a strong impulse to delete it, so I did.

Prayer in tongues is very important. If you go off course and start believing something that isn’t true, prayer in tongues will put you back on track. Most Christians don’t pray in tongues much, so they drive off the road, stay there, and celebrate being stuck in a ditch.

I keep feeling like the rapture will come in December. I can’t prove it. I can’t say it’s a prophecy. I don’t have a special calendar. I am not a “teaching prophet” who writes books and appears on TV shows. In my entire life, I have made $80 from Christianity, and that was because a disturbed person forced me to take it. I don’t have a jet. I don’t have a beard. I don’t wear a habit or a cross the size of a frying pan. I don’t call myself Apostle Steve. I pray a lot, and I have a persistent feeling. That’s about it. I may be wrong.

I hope I’m right. Can you imagine putting up with another year of this insanity? It gets crazier every day. They’re burning Bibles in Portland now. Finally, someone on the other side is being honest. I’m actually happy about it. I don’t approve of burning Bibles, but I’m glad some of the children of darkness are exposing their real feelings.

I wonder what’s going to happen with coronavirus this year. My best guess was that it would poop out with the hot weather, but I was wrong about that. It’s also disconcerting to see it ramping up in conservative areas. My county is up around 1.5% now.

I think God spared conservatives for a while so we would have time to repent, fast, and pray. We did not do that, however.

Interesting fact: a huge percentage of the cases in my county are among women and prisoners. This is a prison county, so there are a large number of people who are cooped up together. Women make up something like 2/3 of the cases.

It makes sense that prisoners would get it. They are cursed people. Prison is a taste of hell, for people who are headed the wrong way. I’m not sure why women are getting sick. A women’s prison got hit, so that may explain it.

If you remove the prison cases, this county is still doing pretty well. Prisons and old folks homes are outliers. They are not representative of the rest of the population. Journalists don’t like to talk about it, but prisoners and people in homes make up a tremendous part of the coronavirus statistics. Journalists want us to think we’re all equally likely to get it, and that it’s usually a severe disease. Both of those things are untrue.

If there is an up side to the prison and nursing home situation, it’s that people in these facilities don’t get many chances to infect the rest of us.

Some people think bad things have to happen to Christians first, because Peter said something about judgment beginning in the house of the Lord. If you read his words, however, it appears that he is talking about things like confession, repentance, and inner transformation. Not plagues and famines and so on. Bad things don’t have to happen to Christians first. If anything, we should be less likely than anyone to experience things like coronavirus. The fact that coronavirus hit red states hardest at first doesn’t mean it’s not a punishment from God.

I guess that’s all I have. Keep praying, and don’t let anyone sneeze on you.

Shoot Accurately with Cheap Ammo

It has not rained today. Hard to believe. I actually got to shoot my Ruger Precision Rifle.

I’ll post the target. I started at the bottom left and went clockwise. I shot 30 rounds.

Things are looking up. That may not be the most impressive target on earth, but I see a big difference since the last time I shot the gun.

The stuff at bottom left generally went into one inch. I think the three outliers are flyers caused by technique failure. I think this gun will shoot sub-MOA with this ammo all day, provided the shooter has it together.

I zeroed the scope as well as I could on the previous outing. It rained, so I was not able to do everything I wanted. Today I decided to move the zero around. That explains the second group (top left), which is still a lot better than I used to shoot with other rifles.

The flyer at right is me adjusting the scope, and the farthest shots to the left were also caused by scope adjustments. That means the rest, fired at the final zero setting, were very close together.

I think the shots that piled into the center of the bullseye on the top right represent the rifle’s actual zero. I was fiddling with technique, and I was getting annoyed with my rear bag. I think that’s why the entire 10-round group takes up so much space.

I love 6.5 Creedmoor. It shoots as well as .17 HMR, but it reaches a lot farther out and kills things like deer and bears. And the recoil is a joke.

While I was in the pasture shooting, I ordered a bigger rear bag. I think it will make things much easier.

The ammunition is wonderful. I bought a lot of it. As mentioned in an earlier post, a Youtuber with a Ruger Precision Rifle shot it into a small gong, over and over, at 656 yards, so I have a lot of faith in it. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong when I take the gun to a longer shooting lane.

I’m learning more about long-range shooting. I learned that an expert’s advice was not very good.

I bought a book by Ryan Cleckner, a former sniper who teaches people to shoot. I also watched him on Youtube. In a video, he provided his method for aligning a scope’s reticle with a rifle. Most scopes have flat surfaces on their undersides, and many rifles have flat surfaces on top of them. Cleckner says to stick a rectangular object between the scope and rifle so both are pressing against it. This aligns the rifle’s top surface and the scope’s bottom surface.

Problem: it doesn’t align the reticle with anything. Not accurately, anyway.

Scope manufacturers don’t align their reticles perfectly with the housings of their scopes. Some have tolerances of up to 3°. If you’re shooting at a target 1000 yards off, your bullet will drop maybe 30 feet. Thirty feet times the sine of 3° is about 19″. That means you can be aiming 19″ to the side of your intended impact point. That’s a big deal.

I don’t think this applies when you’re using your turrets to change your point of aim, but I can see how it would be a problem if you were using your reticle. Or maybe I’m wrong. Are the little things inside scopes that move reticles really aligned with the reticles? Now my head hurts.

I am amazed that a person who holds himself out to be an expert would drop the ball like that, but I shouldn’t be. Am I saying I know more than he does? No. I got the information about scope reticle tolerances from other experts, and I have concluded, tentatively, that they know more than he does.

Maybe I’ll read something tomorrow that will convince me he’s right. That would be nice, because otherwise, I have to get some of my scopes leveled. I don’t think it will matter for .17 HMR, because it pretty much dies before it drops 20 inches, but it could be worth the trouble for .204 Ruger, .223, and .308.

In his book, he says he doesn’t believe in rifle levels. He says he has no faith in them because they may have more internal error than the people and equipment they’re supposed to help. Maybe that’s a gadget I can forgo.

I don’t know the answers. Right now, I just want to be able to hit a gong 900 yards away on the first try with every one of my high-powered rifles. Surely I should be able to gather enough sound advice to get to that point, even if the people I listen to aren’t right about everything.

Whatever. I now have a very nice shooting platform that blocks most of the sun and rain, I have a good deal of cheap, accurate ammo, and I have my rifle set up well enough to hit a few things. Onward and upward.

Enough of This Place

For some reason, I decided to look up Michael Avenatti today. If you doubt the existence of evil spirits, or you doubt that God defends his servants, the Avenatti story should clear up your doubts. Avenatti’s self-destructive, self-deluding behavior is so bizarre, it could be considered insane, and his fall suggests he offended God himself.

As people who watched the news a few years back know, Avenatti dedicated his life to persecuting President Trump. He represented a trashy woman Trump had sex with, and for a time, he was constantly threatening to bring Trump down with other purported bombshells. He said something ill-considered, which later became famous in a way he didn’t like: “Enjoy your time in prison.”

Avenatti appeared to be an extremely successful individual. He drove racing cars and spent money as though there were no end of it. Then he tried to extort money from the Nike corporation, he was convicted of a felony, and it also turned out he was a huge tax alleged evader. The IRS accused him of a number of fraudulent actions. He is also accused of stealing from clients. I can’t recall whether he has been convicted of the tax and theft charges. You can Google and find out.

Apart from Trump himself, he may well have been Twitter’s most well-known participant, baiting and insulting everyone who disagreed with him. He seemed to think he occupied a lofty seat of judgment, as though anointed and invulnerable. Then in 2019, the tweets dried up instantly and permanently. He is barred from using the Internet, and he has gotten in trouble because he is suspected of violating the ban.

I can only imagine what it feels like, having that kind of personality and knowing there are tweeters out there running roughshod over you every day, unrestrained and unpunished. Unblocked.

His account is still up. That says a lot about his pride.

The things we know he did, setting unproven things aside, suggest mental illness. No lawyer or competent law student would commit extortion in writing. How could it have happened? He graduated first in his class at a very good law school. Unless he paid someone to take his classes for him, he had to know he was setting himself up for prison time and a permanent end to his legal career, not to mention intense public humiliation.

The contrast is stark. On the one hand, he was extremely arrogant and self-righteous in his condemnation of others, calling for severe punishments. On the other, he was busy guaranteeing such punishments for himself. How can one head contain the mechanisms for doing both of those things simultaneously? How could he have failed to expect to be fed a near-lethal dose of his own medicine, very publicly? Strange.

I believe that when people behave irrationally, spirits are usually at work. I can’t think of a better explanation for the Avenatti story.

As for Trump, I was calling him “Cyrus” before anyone else said it in a prominent forum. Cyrus was a heathen whom God anointed to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. He was no man of God, but he was a friend of God’s people, and he defended them and provided for them.

When God chooses you for a job, and someone with mental problems makes a career of trying to bring you down by deceitful means, you are asking for a beating. It sure looks like Avenatti got a divine spanking. No one can say Trump was behind it. Avenatti opened himself up over and over. He begged to be disbarred and imprisoned, and it appears God sent people to oblige him.

To me, his tale underscores the importance of humility and forbearance. If you can’t accept your own vulnerabilities and faults, you’re asking for the universe to reveal them to you in very painful ways. If you’re ruthless in your treatment of people you believe to be guilty, especially when you’re wrong, you can expect severe treatment when your own misdeeds ripen and burst into view.

It’s a scary story. When I think about this man, I do my best not to gloat. I try to focus on forgiveness in my own life. I don’t want to find out what it feels like to be Michael Avenatti.

If California is like other states, Avenatti might be able to get his license back a few years after he leaves prison. Bar associations really do things like that. I know a felon who was disbarred twice. He can also work as a clerk for someone who has a license. He might be better off driving a truck, though. Getting a job unrelated to law would take less time, and he will have to eat while he’s rebuilding.

Avenatti’s fall gives me hope Trump will win again this year. If God was willing to put Avenatti in federal prison and take away everything he had, maybe he’ll be willing to give a comeuppance to the brats who are running amok in our country. I hope so. Four more years would be very helpful, assuming there are four years left before the rapture.

I’ve been watching more rapture-dream videos on Youtube. They’re popping up all the time. Even small children are dreaming of angels with swords or of being transported to new homes.

I used to think I had only had one rapture dream, but that may not be true. I had several dreams in which I died. I can’t recall how many. At least two. They were the same. I was driving a Ford Explorer on a major highway. I was on a section of road that rose far into the air. There was a break in the road, and for some reason, I kept driving. I drove into empty space. The car rotated so it was facing downward. I was hundreds of feet from the ground. I watched the ground approaching. I knew I was going to die.

I wasn’t worried. I was excited about the adventure of going to heaven. I wanted to meet Jesus. I was glad my life here was over. I was also very impressed with the serious and somber nature of the moment. I prayed and tried to make sure I was going to the right place. I woke up at some point in the fall.

It may be that these were rapture dreams. The end of the road could be the end of this age. The fall could be the time I’m going through now, sitting and waiting. Seemingly doing nothing.

I can’t recall who was in the car with me. Wish I could.

Last night I started asking God for more dreams about the future, as well as prophecies and visions. Can’t hurt.

It’s going to be pretty bad if I turn out to be wrong, Biden wins, Kamala Harris becomes our president, America declines into poverty and chaos, and I’m still here. Life will not be worth living in times like that.

I won’t worry. A heavy schedule of prayer in tongues, combined with self-examination, fasting, and repentance will put me on top no matter what happens around me. And as God keeps telling me, I’ve already won. If the rapture doesn’t come in my time, all I have to do is shelter in place until this body quits. The children of darkness hurt people while they’re alive, but they can’t prevent them from dying of old age.

Mike Tyson has Been Punched in the Face More Than Your Whole Family

Not much has happened today. For some reason, it didn’t rain. That was shocking. I was able to mow the yard.

While I was mowing, my tractor pulled one of its tricks on me. I drove through the web of a gigantic spider, and after I stopped the tractor to flail and scream and knock the webbing off of me, with great dignity, the tractor would not start. I put jumper cables on it and went in the house to Google a solution. While I was walking in, a very useful phrase came to me: “I’ve already won.”

I have been saying this a lot lately. Years ago, on a certain day, God told me I would have total victory from then on. At least I believe he did. Since then I have had a lot of very annoying challenges leap up and bite me in the rear end. Things don’t always go smoothly. I used to ask God how that could be considered victory. Then I realized victory is not the same thing as peace. Muhammad Ali defeated George Foreman, but he had to fight several rounds with a broken jaw in order to do it.

I used to feel beaten when things went wrong, because it seemed to happen so often, when it seemed I had done everything right. Now I remind myself: I’ve already won.

If the tractor won’t start, or the new stove won’t fit in the hole in the granite counter, or the people at the ALF where I put my dad for several days are overcharging me and turning bill collectors loose on me, or GEICO is trying to blame me for being backed into in a parking lot, or I just slipped and committed a sin I thought I was done with, it doesn’t matter. I’ve already won. I’ll react. I’ll get God’s help. A solution will come. When it’s over, I will have won.

You can project this principle to life itself. I’m surrounded by sick people. A man who thinks he might be a prophet says we’re going to have 80% inflation next year. Trump is polling badly, and God-haters may put Kamala Harris in the White House next year to abuse people like me. Maybe the rapture won’t come this year, as I feel it will, and I’ll be stuck here to cope with a bad situation when I’m no longer young enough to start over. It does not matter. I’ve already won. The very worst thing that could happen is that I could have 35 bad years and then go to heaven. They can’t keep me alive when my body quits. Escape is guaranteed. Sooner or later, I will be with Jesus, and I will have won everything.

It’s a good thing to keep in mind. It will give you strength.

In other news, we had another day of pre-hurricane weather here. I’ve written about this before. In the days prior to a hurricane, the air is still. Everything is quiet and peaceful, but there is a feeling of impending misfortune in the air. Often, the sun isn’t as bright as it ordinarily would be. Today was like that. It was overcast much of the time, but there was no rain.

Is the storm really coming this year? I’ll admit it: I hope so. Not so much the storm, but the rapture that precedes it.

I know that’s selfish. I’m just tired of living among hostile, impudent, underdeveloped, ignorant boneheads who won’t be helped. I want people to be saved, but I want to live in my own world, with my own people. I want rest.

We have a tropical storm headed for Florida. Isaac. The son of promise. Not a big deal.

I no longer own a single property that can be damaged badly by a hurricane or tropical storm, so this year is completely different from years gone by. It’s a new feeling. I hope Miami doesn’t get pounded this season, but I have no personal stake in it, so I have new peace. I guess heaven will be like that. Right now, my flesh is down here in a world full of microbes, violence, accidents, economic threats, and natural disasters. Once I am removed, I will have no vulnerable parts left on the earth, and most of the people I care about will be safe with me. That will be a nice change.

I’ve already won, and you can win, too. Think it over. You’ll never get another offer this good.

There are Little Raptures Everywhere

As days go, this one has been pretty good. I helped my friends Alonzo and Teri move into their first non-rented house.

Alonzo and I were armorbearers at Miami’s Trinity Church, under the authority of the fine family of pastors that made public-nudity enthusiast Kim Kardashian one of America’s best-known Christians. The armorbearers used to meet for breakfast at a Denny’s on Hallandale Beach Boulevard, and I used to talk about the importance of speaking in tongues and getting free of iniquities and demons. Alonzo was always quiet. I thought he was just waiting for me to shut up. In reality, he was taking it all in.

He and his family lived in a pretty bad situation. They had part of a house in Liberty City, which is about like South Central L.A. He hated his job. Things weren’t going all that well.

Over time, he and Teri moved closer to God, and he blessed them. They moved to a place farther north, away from their relatives. Then they moved to Orlando. This was a step up from South Florida, which is a very dark and corrupt place, but it could have been better. After Orlando, they moved to Sanford, and now they’re between Sanford and Ocala in a very rural setting. They own the house they’re moving into. It has 5 bedrooms. It’s in a quiet, peaceful area packed with conservative Christians.

If you know this blog, you know I had a young friend named Travis Quinn. He was also an armorbearer. He was a lawless ghetto kid. He started listening to me. He tried the things I was doing. God changed him a great deal. He found himself living in Coral Gables, as my house sitter, going to the University of Miami on a music scholarship.

Unfortunately, he was shot accidentally in April. We were told his injuries weren’t a big deal. Then his condition worsened, and he died. During his last month, he wasn’t able to communicate with anyone except his family.

I had assumed Travis would be my big success story, but it looks like Alonzo and Teri got what I thought he would get. They have 5 wonderful kids. Their marriage keeps getting better. Now Alonzo says God is talking to him. He says God told him that if he fasted, God would do things for him, with no effort from Alonzo, that would amaze him. Alonzo fasted, and suddenly Alonzo found himself able to move into his house ahead of schedule. He didn’t have to pay his last month’s rent. He didn’t have to pay a power bill he thought was coming due.

The place where he used to live was better than the places where he lived before, but it wasn’t perfect. People smoked dope where his kids could smell it. The neighbors weren’t great. Now he’s in a thinly populated area where life is very, very easy.

His kids will be two miles from school. There is a big grocery store so close he can walk to it. There is a great pizza place a mile and a half away. Three of the kids now have their own bedrooms. It’s wonderful.

He and Teri have had the same coronavirus experience I’ve had: peace and plenty. They both have jobs. No one they know has gotten sick. It’s as though God has wrapped them in a blanket.

Moving was a breeze. It’s July in Florida, and it should be about 95 degrees outside. It was very comfortable today. I joked because I felt a drop of sweat at one point and had to run for shade. Ordinarily, my clothes would have been sticking to me after 20 minutes. I don’t even need a shower.

He took me to lunch today, and the pizza place we found was excellent. It was surgically clean, the staff was great, and the food was wonderful.

We talked about the time we live in. As former Miami residents, we agreed that it feels like the day before a hurricane. If you haven’t experienced a hurricane, you won’t understand, but things are extremely quiet the day before one arrives. The sensation is peaceful, but ominous. Many people are saying the rapture is nearly here. As Christians know, the rapture will be followed by the storm of God’s wrath.

I keep feeling the rapture will take place in December. For a while, it seemed like the 24th was the day. Then it seemed like the 11th was correct. I don’t know the answer, but I have a strong sense that I will not be on earth in 2021. I hope the rapture is coming, because the coronavirus, #MeToo, Antifa, and BLM curses we’re enduring seem to be part of a larger pattern of destruction which is going to get worse, not better. I have no desire to be here to see fools and brothers to apes rule us without God’s opposition.

I have been invited to Thanksgiving dinner. Alonzo says he wants to have a real Thanksgiving dinner at his own house. That will be great. It’s less than an hour away, so it will be very convenient to drive down and then transport myself back so I can lie on my back and recover.

They live fairly close to a 900-yard gun range, so that will give me more reason to visit their area.

I still know people who are mired in South Florida. Alonzo and I think God moves people to better places as they get closer to him. There are areas where nice Christian people are concentrated. It seems that God wants to preserve these places as though he were weeding gardens. I don’t think he wants to move too many backward people there. The same principle can be seen in the Bible. When the Jews behaved badly, their land spat them out. They only lived there and did well when they were obedient. The modern era is exceptional, because God moved them back while most of them were still atheists and leftists, but many have come around.

I think God let me fester in Miami because I belonged there. I would hate to go back. Today I saw “Miami” on road signs, and it made my insides tense up.

I think I’m as happy about Alonzo’s move as he is. It’s wonderful to see someone get in gear and catch God’s blessings.

We Think he Will Make his Move Soon

I made an important decision today. I decided to buy hundreds of rounds of Sellier & Bellot 6.5 Creedmoor FMJ ammo for rifle practice.

The ammo problem is pretty bad right now. You can still get nearly anything you want, if you’re willing to pay maybe 1.75 times what it’s worth. Personally, I am not willing to do that, and I do not understand people who are.

I don’t buy ammunition in person, because you have to be a chump to do that. You drive around to the few stores in your area, and then you find out they don’t have what you want or they do have it and the price is insane. A lot of people still do this, and it must be a good thing from where I sit, because I use the Internet, and if they were using it, too, there would be no good deals left for me.

Some people buy in person, and others go to ripoff websites and pay their insane prices. I know this, because the sites run out. It amazes me that people would rather be milked than spend a few minutes searching the web.

I just spent about an hour looking for what I wanted at a good price. I could have spent well over a dollar per round and given up after 10 minutes. I knew someone out there had to be selling for between 60 and 70 cents, so I persevered, and I got what I needed.

Why did I buy Sellier & Bellot? I’ve already mentioned it. This stuff is phenomenal. If you look around, you can find a site showing 2″ groups fired from 300 yards. This is about 2/3 MOA. The guy who tested it got a velocity spread of 7 fps.

Is it the best 6.5 Creedmoor ammo available? I’m sure it’s not, but I will be very surprised if, during the next year, I get so good I can shoot 2/3-MOA/300-yard groups with anything. This ammunition will shoot better than I can, and I don’t see that changing any time soon, so it seems to me it’s a tremendous bargain.

Any ammo that will hit a rat reliably 900 feet away is good ammo.

I should try their soft-point ammo. Maybe it’s just as good, and it would work if I needed to shoot for food.

Some people look down on Sellier & Bellot. It tends to be cheap. Thing is, they have an impressive modern factory. You can see a video tour on Youtube. In comparison, CCI’s .22 factory looks like a converted garage. That is not much of an exaggeration. Sellier & Bellot is a serious company. If their ammo is cheap, so much the better. Cost and quality are not always closely related.

I could not shoot today. Of course, it rained. It rains every day. I have no idea when it will stop. I’m going to have to start shooting before noon. It’s nearly always dry then.

I am cornering the .17 HMR market, and if I can ever get outside to shoot, I’ll be using my Savage 93R to work on my prone shooting. It’s cheaper to shoot than most pistols, and if the wind is still, it will shoot into an inch at 100 yards. Hard to imagine a better cheap training round. If the wind isn’t still, that will be fine, because I’ve had some training in dealing with wind, and I need to put it to use.

I’m going to try an Athlon scope on the 93R. I already have a Burris scope, but having trained to use mil-dot optics, I see no point in continuing to fool with different technology. I like the idea of learning to use the Burris correctly, but after that, there seems to be no reason to continue.

With the Burris, you shoot at various ranges and take note of where your shots land, and then you use the information later to help you make use of the holdover marks on the reticle. With my training and equipment, I’m supposed to test the ammo with a chronograph, enter data into my ballistic calculator, determine the range to targets, and aim where the calculator tells me to. It’s supposed to enable me to hit things on the first shot at any distance. I didn’t pay a load of money to take a class to learn all this so I could forget about it and go back to Elmer Fudd technology.

In order to get an Athlon, I had to go for crazy magnification. I had to choose between 8 and 25, and 8 was not going to fly. I think 25 is a lot for .17 HMR, but on the other hand, if I hunt with it, I might be hunting tiny critters with kill zones the size of ping pong balls. It seems like the best choice for the money.

The Vortex company made a name for itself using Asian-made scopes to compete with expensive Caucasian optics. Primary Arms came along and did the same thing to Vortex, undercutting their prices. Now Athlon is undercutting both of them, and the scope I’m getting is supposed to be as good as, or better than, the thousand-dollar Vortex I own. It costs $400. How can I not try that?

What if it turns out to be better than the Vortex? I’ll feel pretty stupid. I paid over $800 for it.

I still need to make a few ammo purchases to get me into the security zone. Once I feel like I have a few years’ supply, I’ll put my ammo away and start buying fresh ammo to shoot. That’s the plan.

Thank God I’m not doing this with food. Today someone sent me an ad for dried disaster rations. On sale, they wanted about $120 for 25,000 calories. So 12 dollars per day for 10 days, and then you starve. I think I can beat that at the grocery store. I fail to see the bargain. Ordinary stores carry a lot of things that will last a decade or more in a pantry.

If starvation becomes a widespread problem, I would rather just die and leave. How much should I be willing to fight to stay in this world, when I’m a heartbeat away from a place where no one is hungry and they never need air conditioning? Eating rehydrated desperation food from a 5-gallon pail is not my idea of living.

Now that the RPR is working, I should go visit the long distance range. Wednesday would be a good day for that. My farm is fine for a hundred yards, but the range offers 900, and there are no cattle walking between shooters and targets.

I’m not far from completing my basic armory and ammo dump. Once I’m done, the credit card companies may send people to see if I’m okay. When I stop spending money, they may assume I’m dead.