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2021 outlook is poor, IMO

Today, the electoral college will select Joe Biden to be the next President of the United States after an obviously tampered with election, signaling an end to democratic elections in this country. Half the nation either supports this or doesn’t care. 

Eight and a half years ago, I posted that the US was running out of money and would become eventually insolvent and ungovernable. In fact, I have been saying for over a decade that the USA cannot exist forever at our rate of spending. For the fiscal year ending October of 2020, the United States’ Federal government borrowed $4.2 trillion. FY 2019 saw the US borrowing $1.2 Trillion. FY2018 $1.3 trillion. FY2017 $700 billion. The sudden acceleration is a sign that hyperinflation is coming. 

More than half of the population of the US is currently locked in their homes, and has been for more than 8 months. 

All of this is being blamed on COVID. 

In either case, that which cannot last forever will not last forever. No matter what 2021 brings us, no one can deny that 2020 was an interesting year in the Chinese proverbial sense. 

I don’t think 2021 will be any better. In fact, I think that things will be much, much worse. 

By Divemedic, ago

Crisis phase

 Mao stated that there were three phases to a communist revolution. The third and final phase he called the “crisis phase.” Scholars have identified signals of this crisis state to include a decisive loss of legitimacy by the government, financial collapse, breakdown in authority, strong symbolic actions, and perception of dual sovereignty or provisional authority, among others. 

Once this last phase begins, totalitarian elites let loose their inclination to brutally eliminate their perceived enemies. Once this phase begins, things happen very quickly. The entire country will collapse in a matter of weeks.

Violence is considered a means to achieving the goal of centralized power. There is not even a pretense of due process or respect for free speech. Yes, there are pretexts given for eliminating perceived enemies, excuses that have the perpetrators projecting their own intentions upon their victims, but the accusations are merely for show.

We are seeing the beginnings of eliminating enemies now. They are already looking at eliminating Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Donald Trump will be arrested and jailed soon after the inauguration. They are talking about getting rid of conservative media pundits as well, like this call for Sean Hannity AND Trump to be jailed. 

Even sitting members of Congress are demanding that Speaker Pelosi remove Republicans from the house:

I call on you to exercise the power of your offices to evaluate steps you can take to address these constitutional violations this Congress and, if possible, refuse to seat in the 117th Congress any Members-elect seeking to make Donald Trump an unelected dictator

They also are demanding that any lawyer who represents Trump be disbarred.

Far fetched? Don’t you remember the IRS targeting conservatives during the Obama administration? Fast and Furious? They are playing for all the marbles. 

At any rate, people disappearing was always my tripwire for knowing that we were officially in a dictatorship. Once that begins, it will be time to shut down this blog. I am not egotistical enough to think that I am important enough to be disappeared along with the likes of Trump, Hannity, or Paxton. However, I plan on melting away before they work too far down the list.

By Divemedic, ago

Range Report

 I took my new (OK, rebuilt) AR10 to the range. My goals were to get the gas block adjusted and get the ACOG dialed in for 100 yards. I got to the range, and the very next lane over contained a guy who was shooting a 300 Mag. That rifle was so loud at the indoor range, I could feel it in my sinuses. Anyway, I got the spotting scope set up, and sent the target downrange to the 25 yard mark. 

I tightened screw on the gas port all the way clockwise, backed it out two full turns, loaded the rifle and squeezed the trigger. The shot was three inches left, and – no ejection. That wasn’t a problem, I didn’t expect the first round to eject. I pulled on the operating rod, and it wouldn’t budge. I tugged a few times, careful to keep the rifle pointed downrange, and I couldn’t get it to budge. I pulled both pins, and separated the lower from the upper. Then I tugged. Nothing. 

At this point, the RSOs both came over and were curious. I continued to pull, and even got their permission to handle the upper a bit less like a loaded rifle. After a few minutes of tugging, the bolt eventually came free and ejected the case, but I lost sight of it. After looking around, the RSOs and I finally found it. I inspected the case- looked good. No real bulges that I could see, the primer looked OK. The bolt looked normal. So the RSOs and I looked at each other, shrugged, and I reassembled the rifle. As I reloaded it, they stepped back, filling me with confidence. 

I adjusted the screw on the gas block another turn to the left, shouldered the rifle and pulled the trigger. No ejection. Cycled the bolt, and it worked fine. Another turn and another shot. Ejection, but the BCG didn’t lock open on the empty mag. Put another round in the mag, back the screw out another half turn, reload, shoot. I see the case eject, look at the ejection port, and the bolt is open. Eureka!

I adjust the scope, get a good zero, and then finally get to put a magazine through it without interruption. This is what I got at 100 yards, seated:

The rifle shoots great. I know the groups are loose, but those 25 rounds fell in a circle that is 5.3 inches across. 23 of those 25 rounds were within 2.5 inches of the center of that target. I am happy. 

By Divemedic, ago

Commies in the open. Fire for effect

 In Portland, protesters have taken over a house and refused to allow a family to be forced out. They are claiming that greedy investors have cheated the family out of their house. Protesters have barricaded themselves in the home, and turned it into a fortress. 

They have fortified the house, armed themselves, and are defending it in battalion strength. The police are too afraid to do a fucking thing about it. So how did this happen?

The family who has lived there for over 60 years saw their 17 year old son get in a fatal hit and run auto accident that caused them to be sued for big money, so the family needed to raise money for their legal defense. They turned to the only asset they had: the house. Since they had shitty credit, they had to sign a subprime loan. The legal case was settled, and for much less than the family had borrowed. Now they could have put the unused proceeds of the expensive loan back into the loan as an early payment and saved themselves a lot of interest, but instead went on a spending spree. Hey, they had bad credit, so it’s obvious that they aren’t so good with money. 

The son got busted for drugs. That cost even more money.

They made the payments for 13 years. Then they decided that their woes were being caused because of racism, and became followers of the sovereign citizen movement. (When has THAT particular idea been a good one?) They stopped paying, and missed the next year and a half of their payments. Why? Because sovereign citizens are apparently allowed to borrow money and not pay it, because reasons. 

The bank foreclosed on the property in 2018, and it was sold to an investor for $260,000. In September, the new owner got an eviction order. 

They were able to secure $300,000 on GoFundMe in order to buy the house back. The investor who purchased it at the foreclosure auction agreed to sell it back to them for what he paid for it. That is a wise thing on his part, because that house is trashed, and he will never make a dime on that property. The family, however, is refusing to take the deal until their list of demands are met. 

Watching the armed sentries, one is tempted to see if you can hit one from several hundred yards away. I am wondering if someone hasn’t already thought of this view:

By Divemedic, ago

One year ago, would all of this seemed possible?

 Now that the legal challenges to the election have been brushed aside by SCOTUS and the various state courts, Biden’s victory is in the bag. The left is now tightening their grip by enacting new lockdowns and restrictions. 

In New York, the Governor has again shut down restaurants, even while schools stay open, and violent protests continue. Note that in the last link, protesters were pounding on the windows of a car, and the motorist tried to flee from the violent mob. It was the motorist that was arrested, not the mob. 

In Baltimore, the new mayor’s first official act was to lockdown the entire city. 

The Biden transition team is already telling Americans to cancel Christmas. 

Other shutdowns:

The Virginia governor has instituted a midnight to 5 am curfew, effective from December 14 to January 31. Because the virus can only be caught at night, or something- hey, look SCIENCE! 

Ohio’s governor has also ordered a 10pm to 5am curfew. 

California is shut down. North Carolina has a curfew,, even though curfews have had no effect in Massachusetts and Ohio, both of which have had curfews in effect for over a month. 

I recently commented on another blog about this being a communist takeover of the nation, and Tam derided that opinion as laughable. If I had told you in December of 2019 that the incoming President Biden would advise cancelling Christmas and locking people in their homes, and 10 governors would cooperate by ordering businesses shutdown and overnight curfews, you would have called me insane. 

Look at the evidence, stop falling to normalcy bias. The only reason for discounting the theory that our government is being overthrown is that it has never happened before. If 2020 should have taught you anything, it should have taught you that normal no longer has a home here. 

By Divemedic, ago

The shining city on the hill has gone dark

The Supreme court punted, just as I predicted on November 13:

– The recount in Georgia will find nothing. Done

– SCOTUS will take no official notice of the shenanigans, because they are afraid of being packed into irrelevancy. Done

– Biden will be inaugurated on January 20. 

– Trump, who has said he will  run again in 2024, is a threat to the status quo. He will be arrested and jailed within weeks of leaving office. 

– Harris will take Biden’s place before St Patrick’s day. 

The protesters in Hong Kong sang the US national anthem. They did that because this nation represents the hope of freedoms that so many all over the world have been denied. That hope, that beacon of freedom is in real danger. The fact that our elections can now be stolen means that we likely have seen the last free election in this nation. 

There were large amounts of evidence that our latest election was tampered with. No one was interested in investigating. Each of the lawsuits that was brought was dismissed, not because there was no evidence of fraud. No, they were all dismissed for process reasons, without the plaintiffs ever being given a chance to present that evidence. 

The courts at every level were against it. Do you want to know why that happened? It is because Donald Trump was an outsider. He doesn’t play ball with all of the entrenched Washington establishment, and they HATE him for it. That is why the “Republican voters against Trump” try to post videos claiming to be the next incarnation of Ronald Reagan. There are no Ronald Reagans left in the republican party. 

Now that the Supreme Court has refused to even hear the Texas lawsuit, the Democrats will take power. They will likely rig the system so no conservative Republican is ever again a President. Instead, the current crop of republicans will go on doing what they do best- feathering their nests while sucking democrat dick for table scraps. I just don’t see how the Republicans can ever accomplish anything other than seek power. 

Remember that Trump is a threat to the Democrats, the establishment Republicans, AND the government bureaucrats. 

By Divemedic, ago

Skirmish Rifle Project

 During the Florida Blogshoot, I had the opportunity to shoot Dave of Ammoman‘s Scout Rifle. I was amazed at how much lighter his rifle was, and how little felt recoil there was. I knew right then and there that I would have to build one of my own. In keeping with his ScoutRifle 2.0 theory, I began thinking about what I wanted to do with a new rifle. 

I want something that is going to be more suited to a militia kind of battlespace: 

I need my rifle to be relatively lightweight, right around 8 pounds carried weight. My Oracle is too heavy at 9.3 pounds unloaded with an ACOG on top. 

I want a rifle that had more power, more range, and fires a larger bullet than the 62 grain 5.56mm that my AR15 uses. 

I also want to stay with the AR platform.  

I thought that .308 would be a great caliber. Now since parts are kind of hard to come by these days and it would be difficult to get a lower right now, I decided that instead of building a new rifle from the ground up, I would simply rework my DPMS Oracle:

I reworked it by replacing the 16 inch heavy barrel that came with the rifle with an 18 inch Faxon pencil barrel. Then I added an EDGE 15 inch Carbon Fiber handguard from Brigand Arms, an adjustable gas block, a Nitromet gas tube, and a Gemtech compensator. I also replaced the bolt carrier with a low mass bolt carrier  from JP rifles. 


I used the bolt that originally came with the Oracle, because JP rifles didn’t have any bolts in stock. I checked the headspace on the bolt, and it locks up fine with the go/no go checker.

I just finished assembling the rifle. The rifle weighs 7 pounds without the ACOG and 8.1 pounds with it. The balance is right in the center of the mag well. It is 36 inches long and looks great:

Here it is, pictured above my AR15 for comparison. The AR-10 only weighs 3/4 of a pound more than its 5.56mm cousin. I am now (no so) patiently waiting to take it out to the range on Saturday. I need to tune the gas block and get the scope dialed in. 


I know that the pencil barrel won’t do as well with a large amount of fire as the heavy barrel, but this is not a battle rifle. It’s also too heavy to call a scout rifle. I am going to call this a skirmish rifle. 

In all, the modifications cost me right at $1,150. Counting the cost of the original rifle and the ACOG, the total cost for this rifle is right around $3,200. I already know that the rifle is just as easy to carry as my AR-15, and packs a bigger punch. I am hoping it is a tack driver.





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By Divemedic, ago