North Cackalacky Visitor

My buddy from North Carolina came up to visit this past weekend. I lived in Raleigh during the dot com boom back around 1999 to 2001. I had my first tech job at that time and through a coworker I was introduced to a whole new crowd of folks. "E", as I'll call him, was one of those folks. He's the only one I still keep in touch with from those days.

In any event, once or twice a year either he'll come up to Virginia for a visit or I'll slide on down North Carolina-way. This time he paid us a visit.

Friday night we made the local brewery beer tasting rounds. We went to Blue Mountain Brewery and had many, many beers. We then swung on down to the South Street Brewery (affectionately known locally as the "Soussed Street Brewery"). After that it was off to Beer Run - not a brewery but a must on the beer Mecca rounds in the central Virginia area.

Saturday we mainly hung out around the house. E and I did some errands - got some lures at Dick's Sporting Goods, picked up a batch of California Common at the Fermentation Trap, dropped off recycling, and then went home. I whipped up the California Common and tossed it in the carboy to ferment.

We had a nice dinner - Apple Ginger glazed chicken on the grill, home made cornbread, and a salad along with multiple whiskey-n-coke drinks. Follow that up with some homebrew Oktoberfest, and then a sampler 12 pack of Victory Brewery beers and we were all lit up like three Christmas trees. Me, E, and the wife that is.

Sunday morning E and I went out to Barboursville to shoot some targets. I brought Hilda (SKS), Cletus (Remington D870 Express), and Harry (Ruger GP100 .357). Here are some pics:

Teh-hut!

Me and Hilda

Me and Harry

A nice action shot with E and Harry

We were firing Fiocchi 12ga. 00 law enforcement buckshot

Cletus putting the hurt down on E

E using Hilda's BSA Red Dot site to terminate the target

A Weekend with the Conway River, pt 2

Saturday, 04 April 2009

I woke that morning at around nine o'clock to a very chilly 40 degrees. I got up, got dressed, and got motivated in short order. First thing was first - the GigaStove kicked out some boiling water quickly and coffee was set to brewing in my french press.

Next up was my patented "camp slop" breakfast. Cook up some sausage links, remove them from the pan, add butter and some whipped eggs, salt, pepper, cheese. I then cut up the links into bite-sized pieces and tossed them back in with the eggs. Cook and scramble them all up together. Voila - camp slop. Breakfast of Champions.

Earl and I ate breakfast and set about getting ready for a day of hiking and trout fishing. Here are some pics:

Earl sets up some bait

Earl and the Conway

Me all ready to go

Back at camp before we left

We spent about six hours or so hiking up and down the Conway River and casting into the few calm pools we could find. It had been raining on and off all week, so the river was up quite a bit. After the trip I looked into the Virginia website for Inland Game and Fisheries and found that we needed to go further up the river to find the trout. As it was, we hiked downstream from our camp.

Oh, well. It was nice to be out in Nature doing some fishing. Very Zen, very calming. We lost a lure and a hook/bobber set to branches and rocks. That's kind of par for the course for a day of fishing, though.

As we hiked along the river, we ran across a campsite that looked abandoned. It had an awesome rock firepit and there was even some cut firewood piled up. We decided to see if the place was still abandoned on our way back and then come back with the car for the firewood. I could easily make kindling from this stuff with my hatchet.

On the way back there was a family setting up for what looked like a picnic. We decided to come back towards dusk and see if they were still there. They were. Oh, well. We returned to our camp and began gathering firewood from the wooded slope just up from our camp.
We found plenty of firewood and even rolled a six foot cedar log down the hill. It was actually pretty dry. We used more cattail to start the fire, but this time used a three phase ignition system - cattail to trioxane bar to camp fuel. Fwoosh! Fire!

Sometime after we got back from our hike-n-fish, I went to grab my camera to snap a photo of something. I looked in my breast pocket, which is where I remembered putting the durned thing last. No dice. I patted myself down and then looked in my rucksack and tackle box. Shit!

I actually got a bit "panicked," thinking of the last place I used it on the hike. I remembered fishing from a large rock and having to cut my line after getting hung up on some rocks in the river. As I redid my line I snapped a photo of the river and put the camera down on the rock. I was almost certain I had picked it back up and placed it in my breast pocket. Crap! Had it fallen out at some point, maybe when I bent over to pick something up?

I gave up looking and decided that, on the way out, we'd have to stop by a few of our fishing spots and try to find it. It was about dinner time.

More brews, more grub, and some campfire hypnosis. We played Texas Hold 'Em since the wind had died down, but it was kinda silly since we didn't have any money or chips to bet with. Earl bet heavy and I always saw his "bet." Why the hell not? We followed that up with some War.

CONTINUED...

Two Great Articles

Poverty Of Imagination - /// - President's Day

Both of the above articles are by Jim Kunstler. Excellent reads... He is about as close as anyone has come to encapsulating my own personally held views concerning the impending "realignment" the world is in for.

Stockpile Progress, Part 3

I have started to develop my food stockpile. I already had a dozen MREs and a handful of backpacker's meals, and some electrolyte gel packs. This, I figured, was a good 48-72 hours worth of emergency food for the family.

In terms of an emergency lasting longer than 3 days, I was in really bad shape. To that end, I have started a program of purchasing freeze dried and dehydrated foods. I am spending $25-$40 a paycheck buying these foods from Emergency Essentials (http://beprepared.com/). If you're looking for a site to buy supplies for long term storage, I haven't found any place better online (or anywhere, for that matter). If you know of a place, I'd gladly check it out.

This isn't much, I know, but it's what I can afford right now. That $25-40 translates into one or two cans of dehydrated or freeze dried foods depending on what you're getting. So far I have placed two orders consisiting of:

• TVP Chicken Bits
• Quick Oats
• Carrots
• Spinach

My wife is a vegetarian, hence the TVP chicken bits. Sounds yummy, right? Haha. Hippy-chow like that actually isn't too bad. Now, what's a crime is any tofu or TVP product that masquerades as bacon. Some things are just holy and shouldn't be messed with, ya know?

I figure I have roughly $800 more to go before I have a good month's stockpile for me and my immediate family. At this rate it should only take me somewhere just shy of a year to finish!

Rabbit Hunting

My brother and I went rabbit hunting this Sunday morning. I was at my brother's place out in the Stony Point area by 6.35 AM and we were on my parents' farm by 6.55 AM. Sunrise was 7.18 AM.

This is only the second time in my brother and I's lives when we've hunted anything. I have read some tips and tricks online and this is the only body of knowledge we have to draw upon. We may end up going to Bedford to hunt with my brother's father-in-law. He is a skilled and very experienced rabbit hunter.

In any event, we parked the car on the side of the driveway, gathered up our Remington 10/22s, and headed out. We walked a couple of brush piles, some woodlines, and a fenceline with no luck. We then headed out to the back 40 of the property where there is a buried natural gas pipeline.

This pipeline translates into a straight strip of cleared land in the middle of what would otherwise be a continuous patch of woods thousands of acres in size. We were encouraged when we saw some rabbit scat in three different places. We also came across a beaver dam and other clear signs of beaver activity.

There were a number of small trees that were obviously chewed off by beavers and we also observed a number of animal trails centering around a creek and the small beaver pond.

We were walking on this buried pipeline and I just happened to stop. When I did, I heard something behind me. Just as I turned to my left, the rascally little rabbit bolted for the woodline right in front of me. I had practically stepped on the guy!

I snapped up my 22, aimed, shot, missed and determined that the next shot(s) would have to be unaimed. All of this in less than a second. My first shot barely missed. Basically I misgauged the arc the bunny's jump and the bullet went just over the back of the rabbit's neck. The critter was just coming down from a hop - had he been on the upstroke of the jump cycle I think I would have hit him.

After the first shot, the rabbit was into the woods (fast!!) and I realized I wouldn't get another aimed shot, so the good ole Remington 10/22 went into "lead hose" mode. Yes, I went all spray and pray on that bunny's ass, but to no avail! I fired six more shots as fast as I could pull the trigger. None of the rounds missed by much - I saw the leaves leaping up all around the bunny. But, alas, he got away.

Meanwhile, back in the warren, there's a bunny with a war story that he'll be able to tell his baby bunnies for the rest of his life. ("There were bullets everywhere! I dodged left and right and then turned around and flicked that jerk the bird!")

If anyone has any rabbit hunting tips, I'd love to hear them. Like I said, I'm a total hunting newbie. This was only my second time hunting anything and it was a vast improvement over my first outing where I didn't even see a rabbit much less shoot at one.

Trouble South of the Border

Mexico has popped up rather prominently on the Joint Operating Environment 2008 report. This is a report published by the United States Joint Forces Command, the military command in charge of almost all conventional forces in the continental U.S.

This report warns of the possible rapid collapse of our neighbors to the south. Currently, towns on the border between the U.S. and Mexico are riddled with violence. Battles between drug cartels and between these cartels and government forces have left these towns in a defacto "failed" cities with little actual authority being exercised from Mexico City. "Failed" being the more palatable word for "anarchy."

Daily security for Mexican citizens is a nightmare in these failed towns. Kidnapping, political corruption, and common crime are nearly unchecked. Given Mexico's 2000 mile border with America and the proximity of the epicenter of this crisis to that border, it is not inconceivable that a refugee crisis could emerge in the near future sending thousands and thousands of Mexican nationals to America seeking safety.

Add this strain to an already historically weak U.S. economy and you have the potential for a crisis to which the government may not be able to effectively respond. If Mexico as a whole fails, this will almost certainly require U.S. intervention. What form this intervention could or would take is uncertain.

What is certain is that any U.S. intervention that involved ground troops, even if only utilized as peacekeepers, would spark grassroots resistance. This resistance may even take on a criminal aspect as the drug cartels would probably prefer a weak Mexican government to any sort of peacekeeping operation with its checkpoints and US/UN soldiers milling about. The prospect of such a hostile environment towards drug running may cause various cartels and criminal gangs to unite.

This is all gross speculation on my part, of course. I don't, however, think that what I have speculated about is beyond the realm of possibility. These days entering failed states (or entering a functioning state and toppling it) is messy, messy business. Iraq and Afghanistan are all the examples you need. Afghanistan had failed before we entered and Iraq afterwards. In both cases our soldiers there are mired down in a political, religious, and sectarian bog from which there is no clear-cut path to victory.

America must learn its lesson from Iraq. We failed to learn the lesson of the defeat we inflicted on the Soviets in Afghanistan during their invasion. The lesson is this: A low intensity, low-cost war waged by guerrilla fighters can bog down the world's best militaries, causing massive financial strain on the invading nation's economy.

This is how the Soviets were laid low and may yet be a very central contributing factor to how America is laid low. This relates to Mexico in that if we manage to extract ourselves from Iraq and Afghanistan without destroying ourselves in the process, it would be pouring gas on the fire to then go and repeat the same mistake in Mexico.

Annexation of Mexico wouldn't work for a variety of reasons. One of the primary reasons would be that if Mexico were made into a state or a series of states within our union, then there would be no restriction on travel for millions of poor and dispossessed Mexicans to travel north looking for opportunity. The infrastructure disparities between the two nations alone would be daunting.
West Germany had a much easier proposition in absorbing East Germany. While German Unification certainly was not easy, they at least had the advantage of a common language and culture from which to start.

No, a failed Mexico is a giant shit sandwich that America would be virtually alone in having to eat.

Mindset

Let me be clear about the way I view our future and why I consider myself a survivalist... and for that matter, what I think of when I use a word like "survivalist."

The Future

Succinctly put, it's bleak. We've seen two million jobs evaporate this last year alone. Our manufacturing base is in serious trouble. Banks are clamming up with the credit and all our economy does is consume, consume, consume. We make nothing.

Politicians are more interested in scoring short term political victories than laying the foundation for long term sustainability and growth. The term "mortgaging our children's future" is such a cliche these days that the poignant image it is meant to convey is utterly lost. In short, politicians are long on gathering power und to themselves, and very short on actual, real leadership.

Our leaders, be they corporate or government, are no longer expected to produce results. They are bailed out or golden parachuted or pardoned when they fail or even commit criminal acts. There is no accountability. The meritocracy that once made this nation great is no longer. Our democratic ideals are dying out in favor of a nouveau nobility. Kennedys, Clintons, Bushes, and more.

Our executives in the governmental realm behave more like kings than officers of the public trust. Our corporate chiefs act like spoiled children of nobility who are given a small fiefdom to run... often into the ground. Corporate boards are comprised of executives from other, often competing, companies. One CEO may have a board whose members are CEOs at companies whose boards on which they themselves serve. Can anyone say mutual masturbation?

Our leaders are modern day robber barons; thieves, confidence men, and thugs. I mean that with no poetry and in all ways literally. We have yet to see the Obama Administration in action, of course. While I am allowing myself to hope a bit, I know history too well to get my hopes too high. Washington has a way of changing those who mean to come to town and root out the rotten core of our government.

The momentum of this financial crisis has not slowed one bit. No one talks about this, but the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are as much to blame for our financial problems as the mortgage crisis. The defecits we run (roughly $400 billion a year for the last few years) do not count the cost of the wars we are engaged in. They are funded with emergency supplemental spending bills - off books. The true defecits we have been running are north of half a trillion dollars a year.

Do you hear that sound? It sounds like a giant toilet flushing... and we're on our way out with the crap.

"Survivalist"

This word is oft maligned as meaning "gun nut", "militia freak", "racial supremacist", "radical", or "wingnut." This is not what the word means to most of the community.

While I am not a prominent member of the survivalist community, I do consider myself a survivalist. To me the word "survivalism" means, in its most basic form, "preparedness." So to be a survivalist means to be someone who is prepared or who strives to be prepared for the day when the trucks stop delivering me my food and when the lights go out.

To be honest, no one can foresee exactly what shape the coming gridcrash will take. Will the markets melt down and banks fail causing currencies around the globe to go into a hyper-deflationary spiral? Will there be an attack on Washington which will cause a lapse in centralized authority leading to riots born of panic? Or will budget shortfalls in the fed, state, and local levels coupled with high unemployment cause government to essentially be ineffective and overwhelmed leading to defacto anarchy? We saw how well the fed responded to a disaster like Katrina. Or, on the radical end of the spectrum, will a bug escape some Army lab and wipe out 90% of the world a la Stephen King's The Stand (minus the supernatural stuff)?

The point of the last paragraph is to say that there's no telling how, or even if, the shit will truly hit the fan. How does that influence the survivalist's mindset? I can't speak for others, but for me it means having a flexible, generalized plan that can handle as many eventualities as possible. It means learning a whole metric ass ton of information on the basics:

• Prioritization - What must you have? What can you do without if you had to? What do you do first?
• Water - Treatment and sourcing
• First Aid - Not bleeding to death
• Growing and Storing Food - Gardening, composting, and food preservation
• Hunting - When the supermarket runs out of meat, you'll need to hunt, kill, and prepare game of some sort. This will be especially important years when your garden's yield is less than expected
• Sanitation - Getting rid of waste and possibly using it as compost
• Energy Engineering - When the lights go out, can you get them back on? Can you setup a wind turbine? Could you construct one? How about biodiesel? A tractor would make that farm way more productive...
• Outdoorsmanship - If you had to spend a night outdoors in the winter, could you? How about a week? A month?
• Gunsmithing and Marksmanship - Fixing, cleaning, and shooting guns
• Construction - If a tree falls on your roof and knocks a hole in it, could you repair it?
• Brewing - Making your own beer, because what the hell is life without beer?

Just think of all the stuff you call on others to do. Do you have even the slightest clue how to do that yourself? Some things will just go away. For most, electricity will simply be gone or could be unreliable, at best. How will you preserve your food without the handy-dandy refrigerator?

Not too long ago we knew how to take care of ourselves. My grandparents canned food from their garden and so did my father and mother. They didn't do it because they were poor and had to, either. To the contrary, my grandparents and parents were on the more afluent side of the middle class. Our great-grandparents didn't have refrigerators and it was a way of life for them to grow food and preserve it themselves.

In hard times, can you trust the cop who hasn't been paid in two months? They may be in as tough or tougher a bind than you are (more likely the latter). They are just like you except they have authority and a gun. I have to admit, if my family were hurting and I had the gun and authority, I'd be sorely tempted to use it to my family's advantage.

A survivalist, in short, does not take for granted the notion that the cushy comforts of modern life will always be there. In many ways, a survivalist is a rationalist. Look at our economy. Unsustainable and obviously broken on a fundamental level. Look at our energy consumption habits. Unsustainable and terrible for our environment. Look at our modern society. Stupid, lazy, and isolated with no signs of improvement. Look at our leadership. Incompetent and corrupt.

Who wouldn't be concerned? Who wouldn't look at all of that and wonder when we'll reach the tipping point which brings it all crashing down? A survivalist is someone who sees the big picture and resolves to not be a victim. A survivalist may be your savior one day...

Another Apoca-List

Sometimes my mind starts racing and I have to dump it all to a list if I hope to remember half of it the next day. Last night I was thinking about the pending gridcrash and I realized that I needed a clearer idea of a) what needed to be done ahead of time, and b) what my goals would be after the gridcrash.

I'm the only one in my entire family spending any time preparing. Most people have just learned that this is part of who I am and they humor me when I talk about how close to the edge our unsustainable society is. Well, that's fine. I'll do my best to prepare for my entire family.

To that end, I have divided my Post Apocalypse Task List into two main goals. The first is to improve our farm to make it a useful part of a cooperative. Goal two is to setup and initially lead the aforementioned cooperative.

Really the big idea with our farm is to grow enough veggies to feed ourselves and enough hops and barley to make enough beer to trade and for a little personal consumption, of course. With the law being gone (or utterly unenforceable) we may even branch into some other types of cultivation...

• Pre Apocalypse Tasks
• Top off ammo supplies
• Obtain Barley Seeds (en route) [edit: 01-09-2009]
• Obtain Hop Sprout/Seeds
• Build Hopvine Trellis
• Get Planted
• Increase long shelf life food stocks
• Post Apocalypse Tasks
• Start a Cooperative on Our Road, resources including:
• 2 Vinyards
• Brewing
• Corn Farm
• Horses (Plows? Hauling?)
• Metal Working
• Close to railroad tracks
• Multiple ponds (fish?)
• Our Farm
• Build a Root Cellar
• Rain Collection System
• Build Composting Outhouse [edit: 01-09-2009]
• Gather Firewood (tree down by road)(uses last of chainsaw fuel?)
• Compost Pile
• Start Crops, depending on season
• (Peas, Radish, Onion, Spinach, Cabbage, Swiss Chard, Beet, Carrot, Lettuce, Kentucky Wonder Beans, Corn, Cucumber, Squash Zucchini, Green Pepper, Winter Squash, Tomato, Barley, Hops)
• Water Distiller
• Setup Butcher Shop (for hunting: deer, rabbit, & squirrel are abundant)
• Get Some Dogs
• Beer Brewing Equipment Setup
• Gather Rocks
• Spring Improvements
• Firepits
• Landscaping
• Sources
• "New Driveway" & Back by Alamo (a part of the farm on which we used to play "Alamo")
• Scavenge Electrical Resources From Town
• Solar Panels (be on the lookout for those now)
• Electrical Wiring
• Generators (for use in hydro or wind applications) [edit: 01-09-2009]
• Turbines (for use in hydro or wind applications) [edit: 01-09-2009]

Shootin' Sunday

My brother and I went shooting again Sunday morning. He brought his AR-15 and Glock .45, I brought my SKS and shotgun.

After the buck of the .45, SKS, and shotgun the AR-15 was a bit like shooting a pop gun. I love it, don't get me wrong, but it felt almost like a .22 or something. The kick is just nothing on that gun.

We murdered the standard assortment of cans and plastic bottles. It was good to brush up on the ole marksmanship skills. I also needed to sight in my red dot scope again since I had to tear down my SKS recently in order to clean it.

Stockpile Progress, Part 2

As of now, my Apocalypse Stockpile consists of:

• Guns
• SKS, mounted on a Tapco Fusion Kit with BSA Red Dot sight (350 rnds)
• Remington 870 Express 12 ga. shotgun (100 buckshot, 50 slug)
• Ruger GP100 .357 Magnum Revolver (250 .38 rnds, 100 .357 rnds)
• Ruger 10/22 with 30 shot clip (1000 rnds)
• Outdoor Gear
• 3 tents (6 person, 4 person, 2 person)
• collapsible trench shovel
• Solio solar battery charger
• mini propane camp stove (3 fuel cells)
• deluxe first aid kit
• 6 rain ponchos
• hatchet/hammer
• machete
• buck knife
• 4 sleeping bags
• freshwater fishing gear (pole & decently appointed tackle box)
• 4 camp cook kits
• 6 lightweight plastic plates
• complete set of 6 utensils (fork knife, spoon)
• hand crank flashlight
• hand crank AM/FM/ShortWave radio
• various other cooking gear
• flint and steel kit
• waterproof matches
• stakes
• 100' rope (500 lb test)
• compass
• small binoculars (Bushnell)
• Army ALICE pack
• more... (can't recall at this point)
• Food
• 12 MREs
• 2 Other MRE-type meals (backpacking dinners)
• 5 lbs dried lentel beans, stored in an airtight container
• hermetically sealed can of various non-hybrid vegetable seeds
• 36 energy gels (little packets used by runners to speed electrolytes to your system)
• Miscellaneous
• playing cards
• silver coin (for water treatment)
• 100 M80's

There's more. This is what I can recall off the top of my head.

Camping, Shooting, and the Decline of America

A bit of a scattershot entry here, but what the hell?

• The Vice President of the United States admits to the world to authorizing torture
• Chrysler shuts down all plants for a month

Oh, God. We've really and objectively gone to hell in a handbasket.

In that spirit, I am going shooting with my brother and kids this weekend. A .45 or two, maybe a .357, and my .22 Ruger will be in the mix.

I'm trying to setup a camping trip with a couple of my brothers and maybe some friends for some time this winter. We'll probably camp on the back portion of my parents' property in Barboursville.

I really want to try out some of my camping gear which I just haven't gotten a chance to use yet.

WTF Have I Been Saying?

Notice what year 2008 ranks in there with? 1931. The worst year for the S&P ever... worse than 1929, for Christ's sake.

You'll have to click the image to get a full sized version to read it well.

Gut Punch

516,000 jobless claims last month.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE4AC40B20081113

Dow Jones Industrial Average down 411 points yesterday. The Dow has lost over 40% of it's value from its high.

No sign of it stopping, either.

Batton down the hatches people.

The Grim Reaper of Greed

alternate title - Power Word Kill Rich Whitey

Recession Finally Admitted by the Fed

Finally there are rumblings from Washington that seem to admit to a recession. I think the American people have been tuned into the reality of an economic downturn for quite some time.

As of now, the Dow is down another 502 points. The other day it was up by around 900, but I knew that was mere volatility. This downturn won't stop until the actual fundamentals of the world economy are repaired.

The U.S. especially needs to put its economic house in order. We need to start making things again. That is what is fundamentally at the core of our floundering economy - we don't make anything any more. We make money off of money. We flip houses. We use credit.

There are many things that have gone awry, don't get me wrong. However, increasing manufacturing jobs in America would have the effect of decreasing unemployment, putting more money in the pocket of Americans. Two thirds of our economy is based upon consumer spending.

I think retail stores are going to take a major hit this Christmas. Americans are losing their jobs, their homes, and their confidence. Watch the stock market in late December and early January. Look for a big drop when the retail numbers prove to be abysmal.

I think the turnaround here will take a good long time. I think Americans have been shocked into waking up from a credit card coma. Spending will slow. Savings will increase. Less cheap crap will be bought in stores. Bad news for China, really.

If Americans are smart and we have good leadership we can come through this better and stronger. If the focus is on technology and research into alternative energy we have a chance. If America leads the way with a whole new fleet of battery driven and alternatively fueled cars we can again be the auto manufacturer of the world. If we invest in infrastructure like schools, roads, a new solar and wind electrical grid, and college we can again become competitive.

If our leaders have the political will to raise taxes we might be okay. If we are honest with ourselves then we see that raising taxes is unavoidable if we are to address our national debt and other needs simultaneously. If Americans can change their ways and refrain from spending what they don't have then each of us may yet find economic salvation.

If we hold our leaders accountable on the issues that matter to all of us we can save ourselves from ourselves. Issues like education, roads, jobs, a stagnating economy, and the environment are all interrelated and can all be solved on a single line of attack.

The simplest answer is usually the best answer. I usually denounce Occum's Razor as a means for oversimplification of complicated issues and ideas. In this case, however it is right on.

Problems like crumbling roads, vaporizing jobs and a worsening environment can all be solved by investing in green technology and providing government subsidies for green infrastructure projects. This would lay the foundation for jobs and a revitalized economy. It would allow us to export this technology and put America back on the economic map as a producer and exporter rather than an importer and borrower.

More Americans with good jobs boosts consumer confidence and provides the fuel for two thirds of our economy (consumer spending). More good jobs means a larger tax base. Government subsidies for technology research means many many small businesses getting startup money from either the government or venture capitalists.

And to cement the continued growth of this new economy you invest in education. A smart workforce is an efficient and innovative workforce. You also ensure this new boom is sustainable with massive infrastructure investment in both existing and new techologies (as they come online). Improve roads and build a new sustainable electrical grid. This will create jobs in and of itself as well - this will feed back into the positive cycle by putting more money in the pockets of Americans and growing the middle class.

That is a lot of "ifs." Believe me, I am aware of that fact. Every pay period I am putting a little bit towards survival gear and supplies. I am trying to hope for the best, but I am planning for the worst without a doubt.

EDIT: At close of trading today the Dow was down 733 pts.

Chaos Reigns

• Wells Fargo slipped 3.7 percent
• The S&P financial services companies' index fell 5.6 percent
• Bank of America fell 4.6 percent
• The Dow fell below 10,000 for the first time since October 2004
• JPMorgan Chase slid 5.7 percent
• Shares of energy companies were a top drag, with the S&P energy index down more than 7 percent
• Shares of Exxon Mobil Corp fell 1.2 percent
• Chevron Corp lost 4.7 percent
• Shares of economic bellwethers ... General Electric ... shares dropped 5.2 percent
  

And now the wolves are fighting over the carcasses strewn everywhere. This from Reuters...

"Citigroup said it is suing Wachovia and Wells Fargo, and it is seeking more than $60 billion in damages over Wells Fargo's competing bid for Wachovia."

FUCKING CHAOS REIGNS!!!!!

The Butt-Rape of Main Street

Mao Tse-Tung and Lenin might have been on to something. How many times do we have to be screwed by the titans of industry before we wake up? When does enough become enough? When do we pick up the gun?

I'm not advocating it - not yet. I'm just wondering when it is that people get so fed up with the bullshit being shoved down their throat by Washington and Wall Street that they go armed into the streets. Bullshit like:

1. "We can't have national healthcare because it's too expensive. But you sure as hell better cough up a $700 billion bailout in just a few days!"
2. "Bankrupt due to medical bills? Well, see we just made it easier for the hospitals to take your house. Oh, you're welcome!"
3. "We have to cut education spending because we just can't afford it. We have this $10 billion a month war of choice we have to fund."
4. "Sorry about college being unattainably expensive, but we just can't afford to help you with that. See, we have these regulations we need to loosen and then we'll be cutting the taxes on those who benefit from that deregulation."
5. "Hey, remember how I outsourced your jobs and stagnated your wages? Yeah, haha! Good times. Hey, I got real fucking stoned and was doing some plain retarded stuff with that mortgage I sold you... yeah, yeah. I repackaged it and sold it for like 20 times what it's worth. Hey... I need to jack your payment by like 120% to try to cover my losses."

These same guys that have had Main Street bent over the barrel, slapping us in the face with the cock of outsourcing and donkey-punching us with stagnant wages now want us to pay the bill for this date rape.

Wall Street to a crying Main Street, skirt torn and dirty: "Hey, sorry I punched you in the fucking mouth, called you a 'whiner', and then ass-raped you in the alley behind the restaraunt I told you we'd eat at. Who am I kidding? I'm not sorry for that. I actually ended up taking Congress out to dinner, Main Street. Yeah - I know you're bleeding, but I need you to pay for my date with Congress. Yeah, and you better pay right now or things will get fucking awful."

Fuck them. No matter what there's going to be pain - bailout or no. There was a bailout during the Great Depression and the Depression still happened. Fuck these assholes. Let them all lie in the bed they've made. Let the chips fall where they may and we'll just have to deal with the fallout.

We don't even know if the bailout will help. This is the actual consensus of the economic intelligensia. They admit it. How did they come up with $700 billion as the pricetag for this bailout? Just a guess...

Grrrarrrr! I could just scream. Nah - I'll go shooting instead.

Hilda's First Run

I took Hilda out to the range for the first time post-makeover. I have to say that it's like shooting a completely different gun. The pistol grip, adjustable stock, and lighter weight give the gun a very different feel.

With the telescoping stock I can adjust the length of the weapon to fit me perfectly. The pistol grip gives the weapon a much more natural and stable carriage when sighting in and the lighter weight further enhances stability when aiming the weapon.

After a brief series of jams (two, to be exact) the weapon put another 50 rounds downrange without a single jam. I am confident that, had I brought more bullets, there would have been no more jams. So the composite magazine seems to perform well. I'm probably going to go ahead and order two more.

So many things about this makeover excite me, but the prospect of having a source of reliable magazines for Hilda has to be near the top of the list. I have a total of four metal, thirty round magazines for Hilda, only one of which actually works.

That's been my experinece, at least. Maybe if anyone actually reads this blog (doubt it) they could share any SKS magazine issues they may have experienced. I have had the worst luck with them. No more, though. I think this Tapco Fusion kit may have been the best gun investment under $300 that I've ever made.

Gunshow Review

This weekend I went to the C&E Gunshow in Richmond, Virginia. All in all it was a mixed experience, I have to say. Let me break it down into these 5 categories:

1. Website
2. Selection
3. Vendors
4. Facilities
5. Atmosphere

Website - 2 stars out of 5

Pretty bad, although they did just overhaul it over the weekend. Before it had a black and white repeating gif background, was rife with misspellings, and had scrolling banners. It still has the scrolling banners, but at least they're not blinking now.

http://www.cegunshows.com/

Selection - 5 stars out of 5

Anything you could ever want is what you could find. They had everything from AK-47s to AR-15s to Glocks to Siggs to G22s to MG-34s to Tommy Guns to Mosin Nagants (for $89!) to M1 Garands to Ruger Revolvers to S&Ws of all varieties. There was more, believe me. Much, much more.

They had ammo of every variety, knives (from the practical to the purely ridiculous), and accessories that ran the gamut from helmets (modern and antique) to holsters to ammo cannisters to gunsmithing tools and the list goes on.

Vendors - 4 stars out of 5

The vendors were all very knowledgeable and courteous. They didn't really pressure you, either. Every vendor selling guns that I saw had at least one laptop station set up with Sprint or Verizon Cards for High Speed Internet access in order to process background checks. The longest wait I heard of that day for a background check to process was 30 minutes. Not bad at all.

So why the 4 out of 5 rating, you ask? Certain vendors seemed like they were catering to the hard right wing elements out there. I mean the really hard right wing element. Like swastika hard. Certain vendors seemed to have just a little too much Nazi paraphenalia for my comfort. It wasn't like they were carrying WWII collectibles in general. Nope - just the Nazi stuff. I avoided these vendors completely in terms of my purchases.

I did speak with a couple of these purveyors of Nazi ... ummm - "goods." Only one would engage me on the topic of the Nazi paraphenalia when it became clear that I was probing for non-purchase related reasons. He simply stated that there's a market for the stuff at these shows and he's just turning a buck.

His argument, if you stop thinking right there is a good one. Legally that is where it stops. But these guys weren't simply turning a buck. There were plenty of vendors out there turning plenty of bucks there that day and without Nazi BS cluttering their stalls.

But legally that's fair enough and he has every right to sell this legal merchandise. But for a crowd which claims to be the reddest and the whitest of the red, white, and blue I have to take issue with those vendors who sport the Nazi goods. I mean - really? Naziism and fascism are about as anti-American in spirit and cause as you can get.

Chances are your granddad fought alongside mine in WWII. Or at least they served somewhere in that conflict. Would they approve? It's doubtful that they would do anything short of roll over in their graves (my grandad, at least) if they knew that Americans were glorifying the monstrous empire they fought and died to protect the world from.

Anyone who embraces fascism is a short-sighted political pervert who should be ashamed to hide behind the liberties that the Constitution offers them, seeing that under fascism those freedoms wouldn't exist. Ironic, ain't it?

Facilities - 2 stars out of 5

Meh. That's about all I have to say on that. Meh. There weren't enough bathrooms - there were long lines all day. The place got very hot as the day wore on. There was absolutely no shade outside, either. The only thing the facility itself had going for it was its size. It was a large venue that could fit many vendors.

Atmosphere - 3 stars out of 5

A very mixed bag. Everyone was very polite, but there was a bit of an edge to the crowd. For instance, there were Brown Shirts there. About three of them. There was also a bit of a skinhead presence. They didn't cause any problems, though. Maybe four or five guys?

The minorities that attended tended to travel in groups. I don't know why this would be, but it might have had to do with the Nazi paraphenalia and Brown Shirts walking around.

The one bright spot is that there was a booth for Sportsmen for Warner. Not that a Democratic candidate's booth makes it a bright spot for the simple fact that he's a Democrat. No, I mean more that you definately had a right-wing presence there and it was good to see at least a little bit of a center-left presence as well. The fact that a bit of balance was tolerated was a good thing, is all I'm saying.

Stockpile Progress

I had to scale down on some of my stockpile goals. It's just too much money. I may get there over the long term, but in the short term I have accepted the following goals:

COMPLETED:

Remington 870 Express Pump Shotgun
SKS Assault Rifle
GP-100 Ruger .357 Magnum Revolver

300 rounds .38 special
50 rounds .357 magnum
360 rounds 7.62mm x 39 FMJ
500 rounds .22 cal rimfire (fer critter & bird hunting)

INCOMPLETE:

Shotgun Loader Kit
Gunpowder (qty?)
Shot (qty?)
Other Loading Supplies (qty?)

100 rounds 12 gague 3 in 00 buckshot (have 30)
50 rounds 12 gague 3 in slugs (have 5)

3 Heirloom Apple Trees to plant in Barboursville (have 0)
high quality non-folding blade knife

Financially this puts me nearly 3/4 of the way there. I'm probably going to a gun show in Richmond soon, so maybe I can find some deals on ammo, a knife, and maybe even a loader kit and loading supplies.