Enemy of the People

I want you to read this article. It’s a description of how Democrats used the power of government during the Biden administration to build a registry of everyone who donated to the Trump campaign. Capitol Police, who you will remember have an office in the Tampa area, are conducting surveillance of Republican members of Congress, their contacts, and their donors.

There is a huge effort by Federal agencies to create and maintain a list of Americans who are enemies of the revolution. The post office is keeping a list. All they have to do is see who you get mail from. The NRA? Second Amendment Foundation? Conservative fundraising? Think about the mail you get, and ask if someone could determine your political leanings by looking at your correspondence. It’s basic traffic analysis.

After all, a sitting member of Congress is the one who suggested that the government keep an “enemies list” so they can be confronted. Even the media joined in, including the “conservative blogger” who works for the Washington Post:

1. Lists of people interacting with Trump’s Twitter account—2023.
Smith’s office obtained a warrant requiring Twitter to disclose account interactions from October 2020 through January 2021. It expressly sought lists of users who followed, unfollowed, muted, blocked, or otherwise took specified actions toward Trump’s account. Reporting on the released warrant also identifies demands for lists of people who liked or retweeted his posts. This is a close parallel: investigators sought identifiable groups connected to Trump’s online activity.

2. Bank searches using “Trump” and “MAGA”—January–February 2021.
FinCEN shared methods with banks for reviewing transactions, including payment-message searches containing those political terms. Treasury’s February 2024 response acknowledged the terms but said they were intended to be considered alongside other suspicious-activity indicators.

3. Bank of America’s customer list supplied to the FBI—2021.
According to testimony reproduced in the House report, Bank of America supplied names of customers who used its cards in the Washington region January 5–7, 2021, with firearm-purchase information used to prioritize names. The FBI circulated information to field offices.

Separately, the FEC maintains searchable political-donor records, including Trump donors, under disclosure requirements applying across parties. Those are public campaign-finance records, a different category from investigative collection.

Now combine that with the location data that is being compiled by a nationwide network of Flock cameras.

These lists are going to eventually be used- whether officially, unofficially, or simply abused by those who have access. We’ve already seen some so-called “rogue cops” who are using them to stalk former and current lovers as well as targeting enemies. Make sure that you have robust contact with others who may be on the list. Once prominent people on the list begin to disappear, you will know that the lists are being used.

It is a sure sign of a dictatorship when there are mass arrests and disappearances. The Soviets even had a word for it- “vzyali” meaning “they have taken,” and there was no pronoun or noun needed to indicate who “they” were- “they” were unspeakable. They were feared. It was never “arrestovani” or arrested, because there were no charges and no trial. They simply disappeared. Vzyali was a word that struck fear in the hearts of Soviet citizens.

The people who were vzyali were never put in jail. They weren’t executed, for the most part. No, they were put into camps where they were forced to work themselves to death. Read about the eight most evil gulags at this page, and remember that all communists wind up using their lists for this purpose.

We Have To Be In A Simulation

The person running the simulator is just running it on every dystopian novel on their shelf. They were doing George Orwell, now they are using Ayn Rand.

Cameras and Your Perimeter

This kind of thing is why I have security cameras.

One thing the Social Media and Reddit posts on this get wrong is this is not a road rage incident. This is a crazed man who was going door to door and threatening those who lived there. The source of the video is here. It apparently happened in Miami in November 2021.

This morning this man started banging on my front door and making threats with some kind of weapon which he broke on my front pillars. We called the cops and he has apparently done this to other people and they are looking for him. We have no idea who he is but he is clearly dangerous – please be careful and avoid this man at all costs. Call the cops if you see him.

You are sitting at home and some moron is ringing your doorbell, screaming that he is going to enter your home and kill you. He is holding something that appears to be a crowbar, but claims he is going to come kill you, then brandishes it as though it was a long gun. This would create a reasonable fear that the man is armed and capable of carrying through on his threat.

We have seen this situation before. For some reason, people think that it’s entertaining or funny to create fear in the minds of people within their homes.

  1. No matter what, do not open the door. There are a hundred things that can happen after the door opens, and most of them aren’t good for you. Maybe it IS a gun, maybe he has accomplices. Maybe those accomplices are using him as a distraction. In any case, you are in a secure perimeter and concealed or even behind cover. You have a clear view of this critter via camera. Advantage: you. Keep it that way.
  2. If you have a gun, hearing protection, and body armor, get them. Take cover where you can keep a gun trained on the door while simultaneously watching him on the cameras. Do this before calling the cops. You don’t want to get killed while on hold.
  3. Call 911. Tel the cops there is a man on your porch threatening to break in to kill you and has claimed to have a gun. Tell them you are armed, and locked in your home. The call containing the words “gun” and “armed” will not only place your call at the head of the queue, but will help establish a reasonable fear of death, bodily harm, and the imminent commission of a forcible felony. Those are important legal protections you can use later. Leave the phone on speaker so the 911 call taker can hear the unhinged maniac on the background, and more importantly, so can the recording of the call.
  4. My front porch is screened in, with a screen door. That puts my front porch within the curtilage of my home. Even entering the porch with the stated intent to break down the front door to harm those inside provides me with important legal protections under Florida’s Castle Doctrine.

In Florida, you can use deadly force in your home if you reasonably believe you or another are facing imminent death or serious bodily harm, or a forcible felony is about to happen, and you are lawfully present in your home. Because the statute provides a presumption of reasonableness when an intruder is unlawfully and forcibly entering your home (or attempting to), the law strongly favors the occupant in that scenario.

So the questions that must be answered are:

  1. Is it reasonable for you to believe the person is attempting to enter your home?
  2. Are you lawfully in your home? (that is, are you breaking any laws, say by dealing drugs?)
  3. Have they threatened to cause serious harm or death, and would a reasonable person believe them?
  4. Is deadly force reasonably necessary to stop them?
  5. Is the threat imminent?

I would say that the answers to 1, 2, and 3 are a definite yes. Question 4 is a yes. After all, he just told you what he is going to do: “I will break this shit down and blow your fucking head off.” That creates a reasonable fear that he is about to enter your home to harm you.
Question 5 May not be a yes. A case could be made that that the threat isn’t imminent, right up until they entered the curtilage of your home or attempted to force their way through the door. Another good reason for not breaking perimeter. Leave those on the outside on the outside. Force him to come to you.

Curtilage refers to the immediate area surrounding and associated with your home — the space that is considered part of the home for purposes of privacy and legal protection. Florida courts and the U.S. Supreme Court have described it as the area that harbors the “intimate activity associated with the sanctity of a person’s home and the privacies of life.”
That typically includes:

  • The front porch, back porch, and deck
  • Driveway and walkways immediately adjoining the home
  • Fenced yard areas directly around the home
  • Attached garage or carport

It does not usually include open fields, detached outbuildings far from the house, or unfenced areas that are visible and accessible to the public. Under both Florida criminal law and the Fourth Amendment, curtilage is defined as:

“The area immediately surrounding and associated with the home, which is considered part of the home itself for many legal purposes.”
— Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. 1 (2013); Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170 (1984)

Florida courts have consistently held that curtilage is an extension of the home for purposes of:

  • Fourth Amendment protections against unlawful search and seizure
  • Self-defense laws (e.g., the “Castle Doctrine” under § 776.013, Fla. Stat.)

Courts look at several factors to decide whether an area is part of the home’s curtilage:

  1. Proximity — how close the area is to the actual dwelling
  2. Enclosure — whether the area is within a fence, wall, or natural boundary that encloses the home
  3. Use — whether the area is used for domestic purposes (e.g., sitting area, grill, kids’ play space, parking)
  4. Visibility and steps taken to protect privacy — whether the resident has taken measures to shield the area from public view (such as fences or hedges)

(See: United States v. Dunn, 480 U.S. 294 (1987); State v. Hamilton, 660 So. 2d 1038 (Fla. 1995).)

Under Florida Statute § 776.013(1), the “dwelling” includes the building and its curtilage. Florida courts treat screened porches, lanais, or enclosed patios attached to the home as part of the dwelling. (See State v. Martinez, 700 So. 2d 142 (Fla. 2d DCA 1997)). This means:

  • The castle doctrine protections — the legal presumption that you are in reasonable fear of imminent harm — extend to the immediate area surrounding your home.
  • If someone unlawfully and forcibly enters your porch, attached garage, or fenced yard, you may be justified in using defensive force, including deadly force, under certain circumstances.

This means you can’t shoot someone for trying to open your door, standing on your porch, or walking up the driveway. Postal workers and Amazon delivery drivers are happy about this. However, if they kick in a fence or forcibly enter through a locked portal, such as slashing a screen, they have crossed over into breaking and entering.

At that moment, under § 776.013(2), Florida law presumes you have a reasonable fear of imminent death or great bodily harm, because:

  • The person has unlawfully and forcibly entered your dwelling’s curtilage.
  • You are lawfully present.
  • You are not engaged in criminal activity.

That presumption legally justifies deadly force, unless one of the exceptions in § 776.013(3) applies (for example, if the intruder is a lawful resident, or if you provoked the incident, etc.).

So back to this situation: I don’t breach my perimeter for idiots. I sit safely inside and call the cops. I would be wearing electronic hearing protection and body armor. I would be armed with a long gun that has lots of ammo. Why? Because we carry a handgun if we think we might be in a gunfight. If we think we WILL be in a gunfight, bring a long gun, and bring friends with long guns. My wife would be safely in the closet that is our safe room, also with hearing protection, body armor, and armed.

Once the visibly armed critters have threatened to forcibly enter my home, then enter perimeter, this threat becomes imminent, making both my fear of harm and my use of deadly force reasonable. In a case like this, there would be at least one dead body and perhaps some blood trails for the police to follow when they eventually arrived ten minutes after I called for them.

Florida appellate courts have repeatedly found deadly force justified when:

  • An intruder broke through a fence or gate and approached the home aggressively. (State v. Giles, 579 So. 2d 792 (Fla. 4th DCA 1991))
  • A homeowner shot someone who forced entry onto a porch or patio. (Martinez, 700 So. 2d 142 (Fla. 2d DCA 1997))

In such cases, the courts held that fenced yards, porches, and patios are part of the dwelling — the “castle” — so the presumption of reasonable fear applies. If the intruder crossed into your yard and made explicit death threats, the standard of “reasonable fear” would almost certainly be satisfied — even if the intruder had not yet crossed the threshold.

It’s a great reason to have a screened in porch with a locked door, even if the lock is flimsy like the ones found on a screen door. Once he begins trying to force your main door, I believe you are on rather firm self defense territory.

Relevant Cases

State v. Martinez, 700 So. 2d 142 (Fla. 2d DCA 1997) Martinez shot an intruder who broke through a screened porch attached to his home late at night. The state argued the porch was not part of the “dwelling,” so deadly force was not justified. The court held that the attached, screened porch was part of the dwelling’s curtilage. The homeowner was protected under the castle doctrine. The court reasoned that a porch “integrated with the home’s living space” and enclosed by screens “serves the same privacy and security functions as the interior.”

State v. Hamilton, 660 So. 2d 1038 (Fla. 1995) A man was shot in a fenced backyard after threatening and attempting to enter the home. The issue was whether the fenced yard counted as the home’s “curtilage.” The Florida Supreme Court held that a fenced backyard was part of the dwelling’s curtilage for self-defense and burglary statutes. The fence “manifested an intent to exclude the public and protect the area as part of the home.”

State v. Giles, 579 So. 2d 792 (Fla. 4th DCA 1991) A homeowner shot a man trying to break into the house after entering the yard aggressively and ignoring commands to leave. The court found that deadly force was justified because the intruder’s actions created a reasonable fear of imminent death or great bodily harm. The “no duty to retreat” principle applied — the homeowner was lawfully in his dwelling.

Weiand v. State, 732 So. 2d 1044 (Fla. 1999) A woman shot her abusive husband inside their shared home and was prosecuted for murder. The case helped establish Florida’s “no duty to retreat” inside one’s home rule (before Stand Your Ground). The Florida Supreme Court recognized the castle doctrine as firmly established: you are not required to retreat in your home before using deadly force against an aggressor posing imminent danger.

State v. Hill, 95 So. 3d 434 (Fla. 4th DCA 2012) A man shot someone outside his home during a violent confrontation. The court examined whether the shooter could claim immunity under § 776.032 (the Stand Your Ground immunity statute). The court reaffirmed that § 776.012(2) justifies deadly force when a person reasonably believes it’s necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm — even outside the home, if the shooter has a right to be there and is not engaged in a crime.

The Cuts Have Begun

Amendment 3 hasn’t passed yet, but the cuts have already begun:

I am OK with those cuts. I don’t need fireworks and parades to be paid out of my taxes.

The odd part is, even if it DOES pass, it won’t affect this year’s taxes (those taxes are due now). The cuts won’t take place until next year and the year after.

It’s obvious- the government is scared of losing out on carte blanche access to your wallet. The cops will have to stop building $75 million health spas.

To put this Sheriff’s gym in perspective: The Florida Panthers’ NHL training facility only cost $65 million, and it includes 2 regulation ice rinks, locker room, gym, pickleball courts, live music venue, and a 7500 sf team store.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1626136098139715

Working Out On Your Dime

The Broward county sheriff built a $75 million gymnasium for his cops to use. The commissioners of the county want to investigate the expenditures, and voted 7-0 to open the facility up for inspection. The Sheriff is refusing, claiming it could endanger undercover officers who may be working out at the facility.

This is the ridiculous bullshit the cops always pull out-

“Oh, we are undercover, and there are criminals out there who are targeting us. That’s why we need money and nationwide weapons permits. You never know, some meter maid from Oregon might be on vacation at Disney with her family, and some criminal will attack them, which is why we need LEOSA.”

What this really is, is more of the same old, same old: government wasting your tax money to set themselves up as some sort of potentates who are living large on your dime. I don’t care if it’s cops, firemen, or the town clerk. There is no evidence of any criminals hunting down and attacking police officers, other than a few cases of Mafia members targeting FBI agents. Some cop from Bugtussle, Arkansas has no greater risk of being stalked and attacked by criminals than does anyone else in the public.

Still, there is one lever left to the county commission- cut off all or some funding of the Sheriff’s office until he permits the requested investigation.

In the meantime, I will vote to do the same, by voting for Amendment 3.

More Network Upgrades

Getting ready for the Zombie Apocalypse is sexy to preppers. However, the complete collapse of all society is not the most likely disaster we will face. More likely, our own personal prepping scenario will be a more personal one. For that reason, it’s important that we keep our minds on what is most likely and not the most expansive.

Computer nerd information coming:

So I spent the morning cobbling together an interesting little project to increase security here. I setup my main server to put together a stream of the four cameras covering the most likely approaches to the house, and combine them into a 2×2 stream that it makes available at a certain IP address on the home’s internal network.

Then I attached an Odriod N2+ that I had lying around to one of the HDMI ports on the main TV. Now when anyone watching TV selects that HDMI input, they see a live stream of the main approaches to the house. Security has been increased, as I can do an instant live view of the home’s outside, thus allowing me to see my security perimeter without having to expose myself to the view of anyone outside.

It was a simple project that cost me nothing, as I already had the Odroid lying around. I bought this four years ago at a cost of $165 to do another project that never panned out, so it was lying in one of my tubs full of leftover stuff that I might use someday.

I installed Linux on an old 32gb Micro SD, then installed the appropriate software on it. On the server, I set up a Docker Container and had it pull the streams from the appropriate cameras and create a composite stream. Now I can sit here and watch the four cameras from my television.

Now I have to get back to the honey-do list item of installing a closet system in the bedroom we converted to a gym. I’m almost done with that, and I have procrastinated enough.

SpaceX

DD Harriman Elon Musk is at it again. This is a shot, taken through the screen on my birdcage as you can tell, of this morning’s launch.

That man is single handedly reviving America’s aspirations of a space program.

First Civil War

I’ve long said the Civil War of the 1860’s was not about slavery. At its core, that war was about the North pillaging the wealth of the Southern states. Profits were being secured by having the southern states nearly completely fund the federal government, and those same states were forced by tariffs into captive consumers of union manufactured goods. Protectionism at its most brutal.

The entire war was a way to steal the wealth of less populous states while cloaking the theft in the veneer of freeing the slaves.

The Tariff of 1828, which included very high duties on raw materials, raised the average tariff on imported goods to 45 percent. The Mid-Atlantic states were the biggest supporters of the new tariff. Southerners, who imported all of their industrial products, strongly opposed this tariff. 

The tariff was nominally created to repay the debts incurred after the War of 1812. This wasn’t actually the case. By 1832 the national debt was paid and there was no reason for this tariff. What actually happened was that the tariff created a favorable situation for the North, who benefited greatly from such high taxes at the expense of the South. Since the Southern states didn’t produce manufactured goods, they were forced to buy those goods from either Europe or the Northern states. Since the South also needed to sell their agricultural goods in Europe, this created a situation where the Southern states were paying roughly 75% of all American taxes.

The Southern states just didn’t want to pay the tariffs, and began refusing to do so. (This idea of “State nullification” of Federal laws that states didn’t feel were constitutional was first advanced by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.) The states, led by South Carolina, declared the tariff null and void, and simply refused to pay.

So in 1833, the “Force Bill” was passed, allowing the president to use whatever force he deemed necessary, including the military, to collect taxes owed by the Southern states. Along came Lincoln, who campaigned on a platform of putting the tariffs back in place so that his sponsors could again enjoy the profits that the protectionist scheme caused.

Then it came to pass that in 1861, a new tax was passed, the Morrill Tariff. This tariff was the highest tax in American history to that point, and taxed imports at over 45%, with imported iron products taxed at 50%. This forced the South to buy northern iron products from the North at whatever prices the North wanted to charge. Victorious Republicans cheered the heavy taxes that benefitted the Northern industrialists who had backed Lincoln’s campaign.

The South announced that it no longer wanted to be a part of a union where they would be robbed in order to make northern businessmen wealthy. They seceded. The north still enforced the tariffs using military force.

Draw your own parallels as you realize the Union states were nothing more than thieves who were using the power of the Federal government and an Army as a means of stealing the wealth of others. No different from the DSA party movement of today.