Archive → September, 2014
Some Westerners still adore Imperialism despite their protestations
If there is one hotbed of kooky political extremism in Western Civilization, it’s England.
As it was in the 1920s and 1930s, England is full of self-proclaimed “peace” activists and anti-imperialism yellers and screamers.
Their weak righteousness brought on World War II, and paved the way for massive treasonous infiltration of English government at all levels.
Many Soviet Russian spies were warmly welcomed by these activists to set up shop and undermine the individual rights and liberties that mark the strongest European democracy.
Anti-British sentiment ran and still runs quite deep in Wales, Ireland, Scotland, the Falklands, and many other far-flung places unassociated with England proper.
Yet where were those activists then, when those nations next to England yearned for their own self-determination? Sure, the activists accused everyone else (America, Israel, the actual anchors of Western freedom and tolerance) of vicious imperialism, but they themselves loved the unfair, artificial, imperialistic, forced notion of a UK. Scotland, Ireland, Wales were independent places with unique languages, cultures, and religions. They were hardly “united” with England by choice.
The Falklands? WTH?!
Why now that Scottish citizens are finally waking up to their own freedom are the British trade unions, left wing activists, and self-appointed bosses of equality silent on Scotland’s chance for true opportunity?
I’m not Scottish, Welsh, nor Irish, I am an American, but I do know that my country fought British imperialism many times, and that Americans greatly benefited from their Constitutional republic’s individual liberties.
It is time for Britons to act in a consistent, civilized way, and set aside their imperial self-interests.
As a former Scottish freedom fighter once said on film, FREEDOM!
Time for a Muslim Peace Movement, Now
Muslims are not victims*.
However, the victims of Islam are many, and continuing, and today yet another was unveiled.
British peace activist David Haines was beheaded by a Muslim activist on video, which I watched both in horror and in solidarity with him. David Haines knew what was happening, was absolutely composed, cocked his eyebrow and muttered some inaudible phrase to himself as his chin was lifted and the knife sliced into his neck.
David Haines died on his knees, his hands cuffed behind him, utterly vulnerable, not a threat to anyone. This is pure sadism.
Whether Muslims will admit it, or not, this sadistic evil violence has become the face of Islam to Westerners.
In the absence of massive Muslim marches supporting Western civilization and individual liberties, one can only conclude that Muslims everywhere agree with this Koranic behavior.
Oh sure, there are some bland Takiya (religiously permitted deception) statements by Muslim infiltrators, but there are zero public demonstrations by reformers who wish to indicate their break with the parts of the Koran that proscribe this exact form of murder and mayhem for non-Muslims.
It is time for a Muslim Peace Movement. A movement that supports Western civilization, that supports the rights of minorities such as Christians, Yazidis, and Jews, that will re-write the Koran to represent a Western mindset.
It is time.
* The Koran forbids any criticism of Islam or its founder, Muhammad, and yet the Koran is full of hate and vilification of every other religion around the Arabian Peninsula in the year 670 CE. Christians, Jews, and Hindus are specifically called cows, monkeys, pigs, and so on. If this is not “hate speech,” I don’t know what is. This double standard must end. You are not a victim if you are victimizing everyone else and they are calling you out on it.
Field Notes
Field Notes are the monthly notes written by PA Game Commission wildlife conservation officers, about notable experiences and interactions they’ve had on the job, out in the field. And you know that for those folks, men and women, out in the field is truly out there in the wild. Their descriptions of encounters with people and wildlife are unique and often funny.
Field Notes are published monthly in the PGC’s Game News magazine, and for all of my hunting life (1973 until now), one person really summed up Field Notes and gave them pizzazz, making them my first-read in the magazine.
That was artist Nick Rosato, whose funny illustrations in Field Notes came to epitomize and symbolize the life and lighter side of wildlife law enforcement. Rosato’s humorous, rustically themed sketches summed up a WCO’s life of enforcing the law against sometimes recalcitrant bad guys, while maintaining an empathy usually reserved for naughty school children, when first-time offenders were involved and a slap on the wrist was needed.
Rosato died this summer, and his art will no longer grace the pages of Game News. I will miss Rosato’s humor and skill, because for most of my life he helped paint the human dimension of officers who are too often seen as gruff, grumpy, and unnecessarily strict law enforcers.
Speaking of WCOs, a couple years ago I was hunting during deer rifle season when I encountered a WCO I knew. He had a deer on the back of his vehicle and we stopped to chat and catch up with each other. Out of nowhere, I asked him to please check me, as in check my license, my gun, my ammunition.
Getting “checked” by WCOs and deputy WCOs is a pretty common experience for most Pennsylvania hunters, but the truth is, I have never been checked by anyone in my 42 years of hunting.
“Sorry, Josh, I just do not have the time. You will have to wait ’til later or until you meet another WCO out here,” he responded.
With that he smiled, waved, and drove off to follow through on his deer poaching investigation.
I think that encounter should be a Field Note, Terry. It is probably a first.
Maybe this year I will be “checked,” but perhaps having every single license and stamp available to the Pennsylvania hunter, and hunting only when and where I am supposed to hunt, somehow creates a karma field that makes WCOs avoid me.
Speaking of hunting experiences, yesterday morning Ed and I were goose hunting on the Susquehanna River. Out in the middle of the widest part, we were alone, sitting on some rocks, chatting about our families, professional work, politics and culture, religion. Our time together can best be summed up as “Duck Blind Poetry,” because it ain’t pretty, but it is soulful. Two dads together, sharing life’s experiences and challenges, makes hunting much more than killing.
While we were noting the Susquehanna River’s recent and incredible decline in animal diversity, we suddenly saw four white Great Egrets fly across our field of view, followed by three wood ducks. Intrigued, we began speculating on where they had all been hiding, when out of nowhere a mature bald eagle appeared on the horizon. It flapped its way over us and clearly was on the hunt. So that was why the other birds had quickly flown out of Dodge!
Seeing these wild animals interact with each other was another enjoyable example of how hunting is much, much more than killing.
Unfortunately, during that serene time afield, I introduced my cell phone to the Susquehanna River, and have found myself nearly shut off from communications ever since. While the phone dries off in a bath of rice, I am enjoying a sort of enforced relaxation. Please don’t think my lack of responses to calls and texts is rudeness. I am merely clumsy. Let’s not make that a Field Note.
9-11 happened 13 years ago; are we any wiser?
America’s toughest enemies attacked us September 11, 2001.
It appears that the subsequent 13 years have been spent trying to cover up who those enemies were, and pretend they are actually peaceful, despite that they remain to this very moment committed to the destruction of America and Western civilization.
No American policy, foreign or domestic, can change the mind of someone who has been raised, nurtured, and trained all his life to want to kill you. The problem is on his side, not on ours.
America’s president says that no religion condones the killing of innocents. Wrong again. This particular totalitarian ideology poses as a religion, and it is all about death and destruction. Submit (‘Islam’), or die. We see it over and over again.
Perhaps why our Apologist In Chief keeps saying “ISIS is not Islam” is that, as the world’s greatest promoter and defender of Islam, he realizes the images of Steve Sotloff and James Foley having their heads sawed off, helpless on their knees, have had a profound impact on the Western psyche. So Obama needs to challenge ISIS now, in a country he lost after America won it, before the cat is fully out of the bag and people see the truth we are facing.
Let’s wise up, recognize our own greatness, and stop beating up on ourselves for things we do not do and did not do. Otherwise, the victims of the 9-11 attacks died in vain, and the huge memorials in Shanksville, New York, and Virginia will not be signifying 9-11, but America’s willful blindness, instead.
See more with her amazing speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MwqVmoXPbc
And if you REALLY want to watch her kick ass, watch her respond powerfully to foolish propaganda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry3NzkAOo3s
People ask me why
For some people, politics and political activism are their bread and butter. Politics pays their bills. With the right clients, they can make millions of dollars out of politics as a business model.
For me, politics is about personal liberty, freedom, opportunity and many other inspiring principles behind the founding of America. It is also about the little freedoms we have that emanate from the bigger ideas: The freedom to drive or walk somewhere without having to prove that you belong there, the freedom to choose where to live, the ability to select from a wide assembly of fresh food, to name a few popular ones.
Call it an innate sense of justice and right and wrong, which family and friends have said I’ve had since I was a little kid, or call it a lack of patience, an inability to watch, participate in, listen to, or tolerate BS/fluff/empty slogans/lies/self-interest, whatever it is that motivates me, I am passionate about good government.
Good government has been a passion of mine since I was a teenager, when I first got involved in political campaigns. Back then, I was horrified at the way abortion-on-demand was changing our culture, I was against gun control, and nuclear missiles scared me. Later on, watching police beat non-violent pro-democracy marchers in South Africa motivated me to put my voice behind change there (note that now the monumentally corrupt and un-just African National Congress government there is hardly better than the overtly racist apartheid government it replaced). Age, paying taxes, and work experience have a way of shaping political views for normal people, and I was no exception.
So here I am, living a life that has meaning for me, trying to shape Pennsylvania and American politics in ways I believe are healthy, necessary, and just. The citizens and taxpayers who are supposed to be served well by their government (of the people, by the people, for the people) are not being well served today. This is why I am involved in politics. That is why I will not go away, at least not until things are fixed to my satisfaction.
Holding news “reporters” accountable
Liberal news propaganda outlet Politico attacked a guy who is a part-time actor and full-time lawyer. He appeared in a political ad. That was his sole exposure to politics. Politico’s Jonathan Martin called him a pornographer, but the movie is an intentionally Z-rated horror film.
Since when do private citizens get treated like politicians?
How do we hold accountable reporters like those as Politico?
It’s doubtful that reporters want to be held to the same standard they apply to their victims.
Today I got into a back-and-forth with yet another liberal reporter. He wrote a story about carrying concealed guns, and I was quoted. I objected to his obvious bias. He would not accept the truth that he is a political activist, and not a news reporter. Nice enough guy, but like so many in the news business, he’s dedicated to his version of the truth, not to accuracy, not to giving all sides equal opportunity.
At some point, we need to start digging around on the private behavior of activists who represent themselves as objective reporters. Let’s hold them to the standard they hold everyone else to. Or they can begin to provide truth in advertising, and be honest about their personal views that shape their writing about other people they usually disagree with.
Big win for Perry County, and all Pennsylvanians
Attorney Joshua Prince represented Sheriff Carl Nace extremely well, and this afternoon he achieved a dismissal of the frivolous lawsuit brought by the Perry County auditors.
Recall that their suit sought personal information of concealed carry permit holders in Perry County, contrary to two different state laws.
Judge Zanic called the lawsuit “a fishing expedition.”
Here is the URL to Prince’s statement: http://blog.princelaw.com/2014/09/08/perry-county-auditors-complaint-dismissed/
Let’s look forward to the rally for Sheriff Nace, who stood strong for the people’s liberty. And let’s look forward to making the auditors pay for the unnecessary financial costs they foisted upon the Perry County taxpayers.
Chautauqua’s shame
Chautauqua Institution was once an intellectual’s dream destination: Opera company, symphony orchestra, book stores, authors and noted speakers every day for the summer. Gated and safe. Nice people. Beautiful homes next to quaint Victorian gingerbread boxes, all adhering to a commonly held design ideal. Chautauqua Lake, at 32,000 acres a real big body of water to fish, swim, boat, and otherwise enjoy.
Chautauqua was also a unique symbol of community building, and education. The institution spawned The Chautauqua Movement, which was big from the 1890s through the 1930s, with places like Mount Gretna in Central Pennsylvania dedicated to comfy living, higher entertainment, tolerance, and learning.
Now, Chautauqua Institution is the antithesis of its founding ideals and original mission. Overthrown, captured, and jealously guarded by political extremists, its summer programming is now carefully groomed to exclude dissent and include well known jihadists. It’s pretty much extreme political indoctrination 24/7 there.
And yes, you read that above correctly. Chautauqua Instituion is now so tolerant of intolerance, the place regularly hosts pro-Jihad, pro-Sharia Law advocates (think of the people behind Jim Foley and Steve Sotloff having their heads sawn off while on their knees), who lie lie lie to adoring audiences, who in turn shout down questioners asking the right questions for the liars during the appointed Q&A periods.
I myself have been nastily hissed at and yelled at there, for clapping in support of a speaker or statement I like, while the endless sea of extremists in the audience uproariously cheered on their favored speaker.
The place is now ruthlessly run by intolerant, close-minded control freaks, serving up anti-Americanism by the bucketful, pro-Jihad by the boatload, and dissent-crushing manipulation by the truckload.
How sad. How utterly shameful.
Farewell, fair maiden of Chautauqua Lake’s shores. We once knew ye.
Forget sexy issues like “climate change,” let’s solve real environmental threats
By Josh First
Pennsylvania’s forests are suffering from a one-two punch-out by both invasive bugs and pathogens that kill our native and very valuable trees, and then by a following host of invasive vines, shrubs, trees, and other plants that are filling the void left after the big natives are gone.
Today yet another bulletin arrived from PSU plant pathology / forestry researchers, noting that ‘sudden-oak-death disease’ was detected on a shipment of rhododendron from Oregon.
Oregon got it from Asia.
Pennsylvania’s forests are becoming full of non-native, invasive plants, bugs, and pathogens. Each of our valuable tree species now has its own specific attackers. God knows what our native forests will look like in ten years.
The Asian emerald ash borer is literally making ash trees go extinct as a species. I see whole stands of forest, hundreds of acres, where not one ash tree is healthy. Dutch Elm disease killed off most of our elms in the 1980s. An Asian fungus killed off the once incredible and mighty American chestnut tree. Forget pathogens and bugs, because lots of aggressive, fast-growing invasive plants are taking up room on the forest floor, pushing out and overwhelming needed native plants. Few if any animals eat the invasives, which are often toxic and low value.
Human-caused climate change? It is a sexy political issue, and it is highly debatable. But forest destruction from non-native invasives is a real, tangible, non-debatable, non-politicized issue we need to address immediately. So many people and wild animals depend upon our native forests, that without them, our rural economies could dramatically fall and our wildlife could disappear.
Forester Scott Cary had this to say, tongue somewhat in cheek: “With the 1000 cankers disease in Walnut now in southeast Pennsylvania, that area is quarantined…maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on black birch and red maple [low-value native species long observed to be acting like aggressive, non-native invasives, and therefore harvested aggressively by responsible forest managers], that may be all we have left to choose from. Of course, Asian long-horned beetle may get the maple, so that leaves us black birch, the tree of the future.”
That is a sad place to be, folks. And to think that so much money is wasted selling the phony issue of human-caused climate change, while real environmental disasters are actually happening…it shows you just how dedicated the environmental Left is to political dominance, not useful solutions to environmental problems.
Natural abundance right now
Natural abundance surrounds us now. Apples, chestnuts, corn, osage orange “brainfruit,” and much much more. We scramble every day to snag wild apples along road sides, pick up chestnuts up the street before the squirrels eat them, and toss a few funky looking “brains” from a Lancaster farm road into the truck bed.
All with the intention of planting them on rural properties we manage.
By introducing new seeds to a given piece of land, we increase the species diversity and DNA stock on that piece of land. Like Johnny Appleseed of old, we kick open holes in the dirt and pat a seed or apple core into place.
True, turkeys, bears, deer, chipmunks, and squirrels will eat much of what we plant. But if we do enough, some will survive.
And from there they will grow into trees and shrubs, feeding wildlife and people in the future, thereby perpetuating nature’s abundance.