December 2013

There are numerous stories floating around the blogosphere about anti-gun groups having a Sandy Hook Memorial at a Catholic Church that was actually a rally for more gun laws. A pro-gun blogger showed up, and was promptly asked to leave by anti-gun representatives.
 
Churches enjoy tax exempt status because of the religious work that they do. From the IRS:

To be tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, an organization must be organized and operated exclusively for exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3), and none of its earnings may inure to any private shareholder or individual. In addition, it may not be an action organization, i.e.,
it may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of
its activities and it may not participate in any campaign activity for
or against political candidates.

 A rally where the major focus is the passage of more gun control goes far beyond the scope of a memorial for victims. As soon as you begin a blanket exclusion people of one political opinion and not the other, in my opinion, this is no longer a memorial and is now a political rally, and your church has ceased being a non partisan religious organization and has crossed the line into being a lobbying organization. You want the government to stay out of your church? Then keep your church out of the government.

Any church that uses its self as a shill for any political cause that is not directly related to the church should have its tax exempt status revoked.

There is an Ayn Rand quote that, in my opinion, illustrates where we are today with regards to the state of our nation.

When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion –
when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission
from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to
those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get
richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect
you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption
being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know
that your society is doomed.

If CFL and LED light bulbs are so good, then why is buying them mandatory? The bulbs are nearly 20 times as expensive, and do not give the same light. The official line is that the cost savings are there when you take into account that the newer bulbs last longer. I recently did a 5 year test of my own, and discovered that the new bulbs do not last as long as advertised.

The fact that this was signed into law by a Republican simply illustrates what I have been saying for years: There is no functional difference between the two political parties. The only thing that they care about is maintaining political power,, and if that means that they have to take the nation down with them, so be it, as long as they are on top.

This will be used against me later if I ever have to shoot anyone, but what just happened at my house is pretty suspicious. Let me set the scene:
It is 8 o’clock at night, in a quiet suburban neighborhood of single family homes. The ungated neighborhood is posted as “No soliciting allowed.” It is raining, and has been off and on for the past few hours. The doorbell rings. When I answer it, I am armed as I usually am when there are unexpected doorbells after dark.
I open the door, and remain halfway behind it. On my porch is a black male, about 5’7″ tall, about 130 pounds, early 20’s. He is wearing a hoodie, pajama pants, and furry slippers. He is carrying an unopened umbrella, and I catch a whiff of alcohol.

He says: “Sir, I am involved in a communications project, and I have something here that I want to show you.”

He begins reaching in his pocket. Out of his line of sight behind the door, I draw my 9mm S&W Shield, and hold it next to my leg. I said in a low voice, “Keep your hands out of your pockets, please. You see that ‘No Trespassing’ sign? I’m not interested.”

He leaves, and just a few minutes later, my neighbor from across the street knocks on my door. He says that the guy was at his house just before mine, and that the guy told him that he knew me, and so my neighbor gave him $5. My neighbor is new here, and believed him. I told my neighbor that I have lived here for nearly 6 years, and I don’t know this guy. He also told my neighbor that there were two other people with him.

I called the police. Twenty minutes passed, and they now are questioning the guy two streets over. My opinion? It is a Saturday, and Christmas party season is in full swing. He was looking for homes where no one was home, for a possible burglary later.

So you are a approached by a person who claims that he wants you to help him plant a bomb, and even provides the bomb. Then it turns out that the person is, in fact, an FBI agent. How is that not entrapment? Yet, we see that play out time and time again: The FBI sets up a terror attack, and then stops it in the nick of time.
It happened this week in Wichita.
It happened last November in Oregon.
It happened last September in Chicago.
This doesn’t impress me. You cannot tell me that the FBI is so effective that they are catching every single person who wants to build a bomb. The sad truth is that these wanna be terrorists are losers who couldn’t make a bomb, and without FBI assistance, this is as far as things would go.
This is pure grandstanding on the part of the FBI.
This makes me wonder:
– Is it possible that the Oklahoma City bombing was, as rumored, a failed FBI sting, where a foolish agent provided a real bomb to McVeigh? I remember seeing a report about that on a news program at the time, but I cannot find it any longer.
– It also makes me wonder how come there are mass shootings galore whenever there are pushes for more gun control, but not when the issue seems dead.
Are we seeing manufactured crises that are designed to increase the authority and budgets of various agencies of the government? I would dismiss this as paranoia, except we know that the FBI is at least ginning up fake bombers.

Peter over at Bayou Renaissance Man did a post about Prepping and Earthquakes. It just so happens that I did a report on this subject when I was in college. It was a short writing assignment that was given to us each week, and that week’s report just happened to be on the New Madrid Fault. Much of that report applies to preppers as much as is it applies to emergnecy response areas. Here is a copy of that report, with the most boring and technical portions removed:

In 1811 and 1812, the
New Madrid area in the boot heel of Missouri was struck by a series of six to
nine earthquakes that ranged from an estimated 7.0 to 8.8 on the Richter scale,
and there were also numerous smaller aftershocks, and no fewer than 18 of these
quakes were felt along the Atlantic seaboard. The seismic waves were felt as
far as 2000 km away (Quebec) and caused damage over an area greater than
500,000 square km. Damage caused by the quakes
was limited, as the area was populated by less than 4,000 people at the time. This area is known as the New Madrid Seismic
Zone (NMSZ) and is the location of the rift where the North American Continent
nearly split apart 3 million years ago.

 A similar scenario playing out today would be devastating
for a number of reasons. Population densities are much higher than they were
during the 1811-1812 events, and a large earthquake in the area today would
affect as many as 3 million people. 
Infrastructure in the area was not constructed with earthquake
protection in mind, and many structures in the area are built upon fault lines,
as evidenced by the numerous sand boils in the area.

There are areas in the NMSZ where crops cannot grow, and
this makes that land relatively cheap to buy, and for this reason many
governments buy this land for infrastructure like roads, radio repeater sites,
power generation, and placing pipelines. The reason that this land is so cheap is that
the soil is contaminated with salty sand that has boiled up from deeper regions
of the earth where faults are located, as earthquakes disturb the land.
There are five major gas pipelines and two crude oil pipelines that pass
directly over the fault zones, and at one point, they pass over a fault line at
nearly the same point, with less than 10 miles separating four of the pipelines. NASA
has estimated that gas line ruptures and the ensuing explosions at that point
would be so large that their reflections would be visible as they bounced off
the moon.

 In the short term, responders would have to deal with all
of the standard problems associated with large disasters: fire, loss of
personnel, casualties to the population, etc.. Other problems would complicate
this, including the loss of electrical and natural gas supplies, and the
difficulty in getting aid into the area due to the loss of Mississippi river
bridges. The loss of communications would also complicate response to the area,
and make coordination of resources nearly impossible.

The long term effects of losses of this infrastructure
would be devastating to the population and problematic for emergency
responders, not only within the earthquake zone, but in areas served by this
infrastructure. The loss of five of the nine gas pipelines from the Texas/Louisiana
gas fields to the industrial areas of Chicago and the Ohio valley would likely
cause widespread disruption of energy and heating service in those areas. Loss
of the I-40 bridge in Memphis could potentially cause transportation delays, as
the loss of this bridge would cause land traffic detours of more than 300 miles
and make the Mississippi River impassible to water transport. Transformers lost as a
result of failures to the electrical grid could take eight to twelve months for
replacement.

To combat this, the following steps need to be taken:
* Bridges and other existing structures,
including emergency operations centers, need to be hardened against earthquakes
* Radio repeater sites need to be located
away from sand boils, and mobile repeaters mounted on trailers need to be
accessible.
* Responders need to ensure that they have
a disaster plan in place, and local authorities need to ensure that they are
prepared to use the National Incident Management system to coordinate amongst
themselves and the local utility providers.
* National guard planners from the
potentially most affected states of Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas, Tennessee and
Mississippi need to be ready to coordinate supply deliveries.

Some of these steps have already been taken. Bridges and
vital facilities are being retrofitted, and should be able to withstand a
magnitude 7 earthquake in the future. Of
course, it remains to be seen how they will withstand multiple events of this
magnitude, or how a magnitude 8 earthquake will affect them.

Even though SunTrust Mortgage has paid me money for damages 4 times over the past four years (once in 2010, once in 2012, and two times this year already) for
trying to collect on a mortgage when they don’t even have a mortgage on
my home, they have
continued to send people to my door, call me, send bills, and threaten
foreclosure. To date, they have directly or indirectly paid me nearly $40,000, in addition to the fact that I have lived in this house for over 4 years without making a house payment.
Why? Because they got greedy, and were a part of the nationwide banking scam that committed fraud on an unprecedented scale and was responsible for the largest transfer of wealth in human history.

 SunTrust Mortgage has sent me a dozen letters and sent 7 collectors to my house since the last lawsuit concluded in July.

As a result, I filed my third lawsuit in the past year against them
this morning. I can’t help but wonder how many times we have go through
this before they realize that they should leave me alone. I am sure that
the judge is tired of them as well.

I saw this website, and it made me think about prepping. I am sure that some of the ideas from this could be useful for preppers. Imagine the security of growing your own food inside of your home.