The yaw in America’s orbit
Politically speaking, for a very long time, at least since 1865, America has had a pretty stable orbit. We circle a very dense, heavy, socially generous capitalistic economic core encased in a semi-plastic Constitution, and sometimes we swing out into the darkness of one far end of the solar system or another. But America has always returned back to the middle after those elliptical soirees, very often pulled back in by the power of the US Supreme Court. Because the US Supreme Court has always always always been the guardians of order and individual rights vs. a power-hungry government.
For all of its flaws and mistakes and legislating from the bench over the years, the US Supreme Court has always been kind of the center of America’s political system. A sort of brake sometimes, or a set of loose then taut reins other times, but always gently steering and operating with the deep respect of the governed. If the US Supreme Court said so, then it must have been concluded with the greatest of careful pondering, most Americans have always thought. However, with two decisions out of the Court this week, the Court’s central stabilizing arrangement is now at an open and notorious end.
The Court is yet one more government organ to now force-feed Americans their new role as subjects being ruled from the top down, no longer free citizens being governed by people we trust and approve of with the citizenry’s consent.
Our US Supreme Court is exerting great yaw upon the nation’s orbit. Which is to say the Court is not spinning or moving in a smooth track, and is therefore exerting destabilizing forces upon the body politic. Its latest decisions indicate a great deal of turmoil inside the Court and out. And the Court’s two recent decisions demonstrate that turmoil emanates from the Court purposefully engaging in overtly political acts, not based on wisdom and due process, but on purely short-term political desires.
The one decision is to dismiss the two main lawsuits from the stolen election of 2020, one from Pennsylvania and one from Texas. Back in December, the Court said that the US President or his assigns\ representatives did not have standing to make these cases before the Court. In other words, the sitting US President was not important enough to argue his case before the Court, which is a ridiculous position on its face. And now the Court has said the two cases are moot because the question has passed with the January 20th swearing in of corrupt fraud Joe Biden. In other words, The People can’t win either way with this Court. In no way was the Court going to hear these critically important cases, because the evidence of wrongdoing to steal the 2020 election is overwhelming. The Court wants to keep a lid on all that, Constitutional procedure and government credibility be damned.
The second decision is to grant New York politicians access to President Trump’s tax returns. This is something that has never happened before to any president or ex-president, and it is part of an ongoing public effort by the political establishment to utterly destroy President Donald Trump, both in and out of office, and his supporters. Like all of the other political decisions made in recent months, the precedent this decision sets can and will swing both ways. As I write this, some enterprising DA in East Succotash America is looking at ways to get Barack Hussein Obama’s tax returns, and Joe Biden’s, too, and to use them to pursue these two criminals to the ends of the earth.
Oh, the precedents that are being set!
One can picture in the mind’s eye the formerly off-stage narrator suddenly forcefully step forth onto the stage and address the audience directly for dramatic effect:
“But the blade cuts both ways! But such is the single-minded hatred for anti-establishment Trump held by the political establishment that they are blinded by what self-destructive forces their decisions are setting in motion. America’s orbit yaws this way and that, piloted as it is by blind hatred and ambition…”
No nation run on the concept of self-rule like America can withstand such open and notorious purposefully arbitrary and capricious decision making as we are witnessing from the US Supreme Court. Their decisions are disconnected from every law, custom, norm, and Constitutional principle that anchors American government to the nation’s people. Arbitrary and capricious decision making do not jibe with democratic self-rule; one must prevail over the other. One was created to stop the other. They are mutually exclusive, and yet the Court demands that we accept arbitrary and capricious as the new norm.
The US Supreme Court is willfully throwing its integrity and credibility overboard, and becoming yet another failed American institution seeking to simply rule the masses with brute force.
Despite housing the supposed greatest American political historians, the Court seems to intentionally kick sand in the face of The People. Even as The People are gathering their pitchforks and torches, these blind political elites deliberately mis-steer a path of self-government that yaws this way and that, moving America off course by design, throwing it off of its Constitutional orbit, deviating from the straight and just trajectory America has been on for 244 years. As an object yaws in its orbit, it becomes destabilized and eventually thrown off course forever. In nautical and aeronautical terms, America is now beginning to spin out of control, going off its rocker, going off course.
These dramatic moments are the powerful stuff of dramatic plays, told to Western audiences for at least three thousand years to teach pointed lessons from past mistakes, for a reason. And so one must ask, Whose skull will Hamlet II hold in the eventually inevitable tragic play that will be done years hence to describe the obviously avoidable downfall of the first American republic?
[Yaw: To swerve off course momentarily or temporarily; to move unsteadily; weave; to deviate temporarily from a straight course. If a ship or plane yaws too much, its deviations will become permanent and fatal to its enterprise]
America’s Voice gone but not silenced
Sadly, America’s Anchorman Rush Limbaugh has died.
Anyone who regularly listens to his show is not surprised, as the stand-in radio show hosts have been daily for the past couple of weeks. Their daily presence was an indication that Rush was physically unavailable, due to his increasingly severe cancer. And it was only that kind of bar that would keep Rush from sitting at the EIB Golden Microphone himself. His love for what he did was clear.
Rush’s impact on American culture and world-wide politics was unprecedented. He represented the thinking of at least half of America’s citizens. He raised unique questions about the world’s best political system, America, and he posed piercing analysis of the players in it, including members of both major political parties.
Ironically, Rush was a product of a politically partisan mainstream corporate media that had fully merged with the Hollywood entertainment industry. Had the mainstream media actually produced real “news reporters” that simply reported the facts, instead of mounting nonstop daily attacks on Heartland America and the conservatives who represent it, Rush Limbaugh would not have had an audience. Because there would have been no demand for Rush’s service.
Rush’s greatest service to America has been to point out the obvious lies and partisan hypocrisy in the American media and establishment cultural centers, and to be a powerful force for limited government, individual freedom and liberty.
“Rush’s death is a huge loss. He was the best, period. He had a way of articulating the seriousness of politics in a way that didn’t depress the listener. He was a relief to listen to, and of course understood the real nature of politics and politicians better than anyone,” says Central Pennsylvania political activist Ron Boltz.
Right on, Ron. Perfectly said.
I myself was introduced to Rush Limbaugh in 1991 by my friend Kenny Gould in Potomac Maryland, when I was working at the US EPA. Listening to Rush changed my life for the better, and to be frank, I don’t think any radio hosts come close to his performance. Of all the radio hosts I have heard, I believe that Mark Steyn comes the closest to capturing Rush’s analytical way and also his positive, personal way interacting with radio listeners who called in to the show.
America is a poorer place with Rush Limbaugh removed from our national conversation. His quotes and voice will live on, as will the pro-freedom America-first movement he helped start. We will miss you, Rush. Godspeed to wherever you are headed now.
p.s. Rush’s “bumper music” in his radio show was usually the 1970s fun disco/funk stuff from a time when skin color boundaries were being broken by music and generally people felt good about being together. Here is one song that he especially liked: Every 1’s a winner by Hot Chocolate.
p.p.s. for those people who claim that Rush Limbaugh was “racist” etc, they obviously never listened to his radio show, and therefore had no justification for their ridiculous accusation. Rush was the canary in the coal mine for American conservatives, who are now being silenced for “wrongthink” by Big Tech, Big Media, and the Big Political Establishment Uniparty, all of whom try to badmouth and impugn anyone who disagrees with them.
How lovely. Our first ever un-President’s Day!
We Americans just had our first un-President’s Day. That is, the non-President’s Day President’s Day. Which is to say, the holiday about presidents Washington and Lincoln that is actually not really about them any more.
This is because some people have decided to destroy everything that makes America America, and to try to turn America into something else that bears no resemblance to the America founded by General George Washington, our first president and the one for whom President’s Day is really all about. The person these people have selected to represent them is corrupt political careerist Joe Biden, who represents absolutely zero of what George Washington stood for.
King George III remarked about George Washington that he was “the greatest man in history” for having refused the crown as America’s first monarch. George Washington was so devoted to democracy in general, and in particular to the republican form of democracy with all of its fractured power sources and inherent checks and balances, that he declined to assume the absolute power of a monarch.
Contrast our heavenly subject George Washington with the lying, thieving, senile, corrupt failure in the White House right now. Joe Biden and his corrupt family are pretty much owned by the China Communist Party, and both Biden and his Democrat Party enablers are on a mad dash to not only steal elections, but to consolidate power Power POWERRR! so that no one can ever again challenge them or stop them from coercing heretofore free Americans into doing things we would not normally choose to do.
And this is why the President’s Day of 2021 is actually the un-President’s Day. Because unlike past President’s Days, this year’s holiday is not about the finest human qualities as demonstrated by George Washington’s self-control and humility. Rather, it is now remarked by the exact opposite behavior: Deep personal financial corruption by the current occupant of the White House, deeply fraudulent elections nationally and in many states that enabled Biden and the Democrat Party to illegally seize power, and a lethargic inward-looking Republican Party that cannot move off its ass to save itself much less the America that it supposedly exists for and to serve.
And so rather than “celebrate” President’s Day yesterday, I toasted General George Washington, for simply being an incredible human being. May God grant America such brave, just, and good leadership again, and soon.
And for all the nitwits who complain that General George Washington owned slaves, where the hell is your outrage against the Democrat Party you vote for and cheer on as it wipes out 244 years of carefully crafted democracy in its bloodthirsty quest for absolute POWER? Today’s Democrat Party is the second largest slave owner in the world, the first being the Chinese Communist Party, in which the Democrat Party is enthralled and in awe.
Sorry. I forgot. If liberals did not have double standards, they would have no standards at all. “Rules for thee but not for me” is the new Democrat Party mantra.
“Make the US Military BLM”
When you are a small business guy like me, and you satisfy your political interests primarily by blogging about politics and culture, the past twelve years have provided endless opportunities for going from one “I can’t believe it” post to another.
Let’s face it, while most Americans were asleep and under the illusion that America is too big to fail, America is under increasingly direct assault from within. We have an entire political party devoted to destroying America, while calling everyone else standing in their way ‘traitors’ etc. This is evil, vile stuff.
So along the way lots and lots of people on both sides have been kind of squaring up across from each other, kind of sizing each other up and assessing the likelihood of the other guy’s chances in what seems a more and more inevitable violent clash between the Americans and the actual traitors worming holes through America from inside. Lots of times the Leftists would say they would have the military on their side, and the Patriots would laugh out loud. Because the US military has always been America’s bastion of patriotism and loyalty to the US Constitution. Those boys and gals would never take the side of people who were actually against America.
That was true, until now.
As of a week ago, the US Military is in a “stand down” order by the new and openly communist Secretary of Defense.
Claiming without any evidence that the US military is presently rife with “extremism” and “white supremacy,” Lloyd Austen has ordered an illegal, un-American, unconstitutional, and classically Marxist philosophical purge of the United States military. Despite the US military serving as the largest ethnic and racial melting pot on Planet Earth, all bound together by a common set of values and American identity, Lloyd Austen is trying to eliminate the very people we want protecting us, so that he can turn the US military into a Black Lives Matter militia that will forcefully dominate the American civilians.
So to those Qanon people who were dreamily fantasizing about the US military conducting a corrective action against the fraudulent and illegal Biden administration, keep dreaming. The reality is a nightmare, where all true patriots who are loyal to America as founded, will be illegally and systematically eliminated from military service. Austen’s true goal is to make the US military into an officially armed Black Lives Matter.
God only knows how this immoral ethnic cleansing will be accomplished, but if the way openly racist, violent, Marxist BLM has conducted itself on college campuses and in police forces across America, it will be swift, totalitarian, authoritarian, and designed to absolutely crush any opposition to it. Due process will be non-existent, and plenty of fake examples will be made of the innocents gathered up in this net. The Democrat Party media will help spread the lies.
If there were ever a time for the US military leadership to rise up and strip these pretenders to the throne of their illegal gains, now would be it. But we also know that the deep character rot inside the US military is like every other institution now overthrown and co-opted by the Democrat Party, and so no corrective action will occur. At best a few generals and admirals will officially voice their opposition to Lloyd Austen’s genocidal plan, and they will be summarily retired. In their places will be elevated those human scum who dream of nothing but dominating other human beings by force. And so we now witness the true end of America happening right before our eyes.
There is likely no political solution to this. The spineless Republican Party has turned out to be yet another adjunct to the extremist anti-USA Democrat Party, and so the GOP mounts zero opposition. Perhaps some strong governors can try to stem the tide for a while. Maybe some states will secede from the Union, understandably so. But this is it. Once the US military is purged of its patriots, the true end of America as we knew her until a couple months ago is nigh.
The Marxist revolution will be complete.
Kansas City Chiefs declared Super Bowl Winner after 4AM Point Recount
The one hundred thousand or so people actually watching the fake Super Bowl LIV (54) last night may have thought that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers won the game over Kansas City handily after the conclusion of the four-quarter game time, but when they awakened this morning, they learned otherwise.
Kansas City was declared the actual winner of Super Bowl LIV this morning after a reportedly contentious point score recount that began after the game’s closing festivities. Apparently the point score recount ended some time around 4:00 AM EST, and Kansas City was declared the game’s winner. The actual process for engaging in the point recount remains murky, but a couple public statements from people involved in it provide some possible answers.
“Last night, KC’s Patrick Mahomes was set to be the youngest NFL quarterback to ever win a Super Bowl, and many back-room observers felt deeply that he deserved to have this win, even if he did not actually win the game,” said NFL Spokesman Mara Meriba.
“Besides, Tom Brady already had six Super Bowl wins before winning this game, and he really did not need another win. Therefore, a multiple-angle-approach recount of the points gained and likely lost to severely aggressive personal fouls by Kansas City players was implemented,” said Meriba.
“After all the recounting and analysis, it was deeply felt the correct thing was to punish the two best players of the game, Tom Brady and Ron Gronkowski, for their obvious “white” privilege that caused them to unfairly win the artificial points and touchdowns thingy,” Meriba said.
Another person close to the late-night recount, a Carl M. Arks of the NFL’s Oversight and Gulag Committee, said “White supremacy has no place in the NFL, and so despite the initial mistaken result giving the game win to Tampa Bay, our heretofore-unknown committee decided that redistributing the win to Mahomes and Kansas City was the morally superior step to take. Anyone within the NFL who questions this outcome will receive a one-way plane ticket to China,” he said.
Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes was reached at his home for comment early this morning, and when informed of his new win he responded “Say what? But I…we…didn’t…” and then his voice was suddenly replaced with one sounding a lot like Carl M. Arks that said “We are pleased with the outcome of this collective decision making process. Have a nice day.”
And so some time this week the Tampa Bay Buccaneers players will have to meet with the Kansas City Chiefs and turn over their Super Bowl LIV rings and other swag they thought they won fair and square by playing by the established rules set before the game started.
In related news, public polls this morning indicate that this year’s Super Bowl ads were the most confusing ever in the show’s history, the cardboard cutout fake fans in the stands gave 94% of the watching children nightmares, and that the halftime show sent so many mixed messages and symbols that over half of the TV watchers reported having bad headaches immediately after watching it.
Beijing Biden’s Blitzkrieg on America, Day 14
For a corrupt, pedophile, senile, failed political establishment guy who in 47 years of office holding achieved nothing and was remarked only for his plagiarism and lies, not-my-president “Beijing” Joe Biden sure has accomplished a lot AGAINST American citizens in just 14 days.
All kinds of ruling by fiat – executive orders – a hallmark of dictators everywhere. The contents of these orders are so overwhelmingly against the rights and interests of everyday American citizens that it takes your breath away. And if anyone wondered why this flurry of activity is just the beginning of the left’s total insider assault on America, they can look no farther than the father of Biden’s actions, German Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler.
Adolf Hitler conducted his takeover of Germany in almost exactly the same way Biden and his anti-America Left associates are doing it. Absolute Blitzkrieg, or “lightning attack” in German. It was designed then to shock and overwhelm the German political system, and later the military defenses of surrounding nations, so that Hitler’s Nazi Party could assume full and unchallenged control.
America’s political system has been a 245-year delicately woven arrangement of checks and balances that favor no one group or party holding all of the power. It has been set up as a shock absorber meant to take the bounces that democratic politics occasionally give to the body politic. What America’s system was not set up to do was to facilitate and insulate the complete and sudden illegal takeover of the entire political system by one group, and yet this is exactly what has happened.
Like Adolf Hitler and all of the Eastern European communists before and after him, Beijing Biden is moving ultra fast to solidify his iron grip over all aspects of American life. Bloggers and political activists are being hunted down across America right now by teams of rogue FBI agents, while the FBI HQ issues press releases attributing the resulting extrajudicial assassinations of these individuals to “child slave trafficking.” The mainstream media, which is now an official arm of Biden’s American Nazi Party, simply mouths the official narrative of these unconstitutional operations designed to shut down and silence free Americans. No one looks into the FBI’s low-credibility claims, because the enemies of Biden and the corrupt FBI are the enemies of the US media.
And like dictators all around the world, Biden’s ruling elites have suddenly surrounded themselves with armed guards and walls and fences in Washington DC, while simultaneously telling Americans that WE cannot have a wall around our nation, nor guns with which to defend ourselves. And Democrat Party officials like PA Lt Gov John Fetterman are telling us that challenging the 2020 election results is “not protected speech,” after four years of Democrat Party and establishment media lying every single day about Donald Trump being a Russian spy, and Ukraine hoax, and and and… This hypocrisy is the new standard for behavior from the Nazi Democrat Party.
Problem is, America voted for Donald Trump, not Beijing Biden, and while Biden has his foot on the gas pedal to accelerate his hostile takeover before real opposition can develop, tens of millions of patriotic, loyal Americans are waking up to the stark new very evil reality they face.
I have no crystal ball, and I can’t predict anything. There are a lot of ways Americans can resist the Democrat Party’s all-out assault on America, including retrenching at the state and local level. Most of this has yet to be explored, although some of it is beginning to take shape, like the creation of Second Amendment sanctuary cities, counties, and states. In effect, these places will become no-go zones for corrupt enforcers of the Biden Regime, like rogue FBI and ATF agents. One thing I can surely predict with 100% accuracy is that this gamble by the Democrat Party to establish itself as the full and complete rulers of America will eventually fail, badly.
You can vote yourself into socialism, but you have to shoot your way out, goes one quip. And so one way or another, the Democrat Party’s insider assault on America will eventually fail, but only after a great many innocent people suffer as a consequence. Just like in Germany, and Poland, and Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, and…and…and… the list goes on in human history, where dictatorial over-reach results in the citizenry eventually rising up and taking back their own authority. But it is the very nature of tyrants and dictators to ignore history, and to think that THIS time, they will rule absolutely and without challenge.
Eventually lightning plays itself out, the storm passes, and the sunshine penetrates the darkness. It is as inevitable as the sun rising every morning.
When law-abiding Americans fear their own government
Roughly half of Americans are living in deep fear of their own government right now. These are law-abiding, tax-paying, job-holding Americans, and there is no reason why they should fear their own government. The American government belongs to them, and its sole purpose is to protect them and serve them.
And yet, the new Biden regime is openly at war with its political opponents, to the point where the Dept. of Justice and the FBI are forming a sort of SWAT team to attack individuals these two deeply corrupted agencies believe must be locked up. One guy was just arrested by a rogue FBI agent, and he is facing ten years in prison for making anti-Clinton memes in the 2016 election. The same exact meme was used by a Democrat activist against Trump in the 2016 election, and yet she is not under arrest.
Plenty of other examples of a Washington DC elite gone hog wild against the People it is supposed to serve. Building a wall around the US Capitol, which is The People’s House, to keep the public out, while tearing down America’s southern border wall meant to keep disease-ridden illegal aliens from illegally invading our country to the detriment of the people who actually live here.
This situation is ludicrous, except that if you speak out about it, you can be “disappeared” by the FBI just like political opponents in South American dictatorships. Some radical, rogue FBI agent will invent false charges against you and that’s that, you are caught up in the Washington DC net of official rogues and villains, determined to punish anyone who dares stand in their way of taking full control of America.
Perhaps the best symbol of just how evil and illegitimate the Beijing Biden regime is, are the extra National Guard troops now pouring into Washington DC. Does America now have more troops guarding its fascist dictator in the White House than North Korea has protecting its Dictator Kim? What a great achievement, Biden gang!
If the Biden gang needs all these troops to protect them from the American people, then it’s probable that the American people did not vote for or select Biden to be their president. Only an illegitimate and unpopular pretender does what Biden is doing. But it is why the Biden regime needs all this official fear and oppression against their political opponents.
And to all the regular Democrat Party folks watching this un-American farce unfold, and just loving it, now you know what happened in 1930s Germany, and how the good German people turned into stark raving mad butchers. Germany’s Nazi Party spent ten years scapegoating and delegitimizing Germany’s Jews, and in 1933 the Nazis launched a very public shaming and humiliation attack on Jews across Germany, called “Kristallnacht.” After that night, it was easy for the Nazi government to persuade enough Germans that no matter how patriotic or morally good their tax-paying Jewish neighbors were, the fact that they were simply Jews was good enough to throw them into concentration camps and steal everything they owned.
This same exact dynamic is playing out now in America, against conservatives and American patriots, with the second totally sham illegal fake “impeachment” of President Donald Trump intended not for legal purposes, but to delegitimize Trump and his political supporters. So that they can be officially oppressed and disappeared. And so many “good Democrats” are happily, even giddily going along with this.
Should we make these Democrats wear black and red arm bands, so we know who they are? They want to pin a yellow star on all of Trump’s supporters, so let’s clearly demarcate both sides. Let’s make it absolutely clear where everyone stands as this official fear and oppression campaign keeps rolling along, steamrolling freedom in its path.
Rusty ducks and ammo
My friend called me and asked if I wanted to hunt ducks on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Same general location that my son killed his first deer; a vicinity I have fished for many years. Several other guys would be along, all but one I already knew and liked. Sounded like a fine plan, and I signed up to share a hotel room with my friend and his son.
As the days went by my pile of preparatory hunting gear got bigger. Neoprene waders and boots, check. Huge and super warm waterfowling jacket with super old school camo pattern I bought at LL Bean decades ago, check. Shotgun in waterproof case, check. Wool long johns, wool shirts, scarves, bison wool hat, gloves and glove liners, warm boots, check check check.
Ammo. Right…hmmm…shotgun shells for the shotgun. What about the steel shot we have had to use since the 1990s ban on lead shot for waterfowling? Although I knew I had some already, I needed to get a good supply of that shot in twelve gauge, because ducks in general and sea ducks in particular are fast as hell and easy to miss. For every duck a hunter brings to hand, he might fire four or five shells. She might fire three or two, by the way.
So on an unrelated trip to that area several weeks ago, I checked Cabela’s in Hamburg, PA. I found a guy on his knees studying eight boxes of shotshells, and describing his find to someone on the other end of his cell phone. And I mean eight boxes total out of what had been a shelving system five feet high and forty feet long once filled with thousands of shotshells, and now containing a grand total of eight boxes of 25 shells each. And four were in 20 gauge, useless to sea duck hunters, who need the maximum power and shot load of a 12-gauge magnum.
So that left four boxes of 12-gauge #3 steel shot, which is OK for regular fresh water ducks but of limited use on sea ducks, which are bigger and tougher. And the guy kneeling down studying them was running his hand over the boxes, and describing them to some unseen prospective buyer chum.
“Tell your friend on the phone that if you don’t buy that 12-gauge right now, I am buying it,” said I to the guy studying the ammo.
“Buy it! Buy it!” came the cry on the other side of the cell phone.
And so I departed Cabela’s with only a flashlight and no steel shot. What the hell people are doing hoarding steel shot is beyond my ability to guess or even imagine. No civil wars will be won with steel shot. No home invaders repelled with steel shot. I don’t believe there are so many waterfowlers that every daggone shell produced is being used as we sit and read this.
And so it went at the other outdoor stores I visited, including mass retailer Bass Pro, where ammunition is usually sold by the truck load. Nothing, nicht, zero. Which then drove me past the retail approach and back into my ancient stashes of hunting ammunition. And indeed, I discovered a wide assortment of waterfowling ammunition accidentally stored in all kinds of odd and dubious places, like wader pockets, inside boots, PFDs, and in crumbling boxes moldering away in musty corners. But at the end of my search, I discovered in total about two boxes worth of steel shot, ranging from 2-3/4″ to 3-inch magnums to half a box of 3.5″ super magnums. Some of the shells needed help, though, before they could be fired in a gun.
And so a Dremel with heavy grit sandpaper was employed to remove heavy rust, and then a small wire brush at high RPMs to give a decent polish. Yeah, I was that desperate, but the work paid off. I was happy to have what I had.
I am pleased to report that the rusty old ammo garnered a healthy haul of ducks, which could be dubbed the rusty ducks.
A ring necked duck, an uncommon visitor to the Chesapeake Bay’s southern waters
Rusty old ammo, and happy to have it
Turning rusty old ammo into dubious but functional ammo that worked and got ducks
Sunrise off of Tilghman Island. What life is all about
Pence-Biden first week looking so awesome
Without US VP Mike Pence, President Joe Biden would not have been possible. Recall that at the hour of our nation’s greatest need in modern times, Mike Pence refused to follow the Constitutional process and return the competing electors back to their states for re-certification. In an openly lawless election process flawed from Day Two and Three and Four and so on, that moment was the best opportunity for actually following the US Constitution and law in the 2020 election, and so VP Pence said
“I feel constrained by the Constitution” from returning the contested electors to their home states for another state-by-state electoral vote certification process. In which President Donald Trump would have won the Electoral College vote. And so Pence simply counted the electors the way he wanted to count them, and declared criminal fraud Joe Biden the President of the United States.
Mind you, Mike Pence is a verrrry high minded, religious man. Very serious. Oh yes sir, he is quite pure and even keeled. He was so concerned about the US Constitution that he stamped as kosher a clearly fraudulent and unlawful election process that resulted in the most anti-Constitution people possible running America.
That’s right; Martyr Mike Pence turned the safekeeping of America’s Constitution over to a bunch of lawless savages who have been doing everything they could for decades to eradicate the Constitution. That showed everyone just how genuinely serious and somber he was on January 6th.
And so this is why we get to acknowledge this incoming criminal administration as the Pence/Biden Administration. And so Pence now gets all the credit for forced transgender bathrooms in taxpayer-funded government schools, where little girls and little boys get to watch one another go potty. Just so some strange adults get their odd sexual gratification in public. And this is just the beginning of the fun! By next week the FBI/KGB witch hunt will begin in earnest and lots of innocent taxpaying citizens will be attacked, assaulted, jailed, and falsely accused, while hundreds of thousands of people who have never set foot in America are bused in and given taxpayer money to get their new lives started here.
Yep, Mike Pence is a real serious American. Congrats on your first week in office, Pence. Looks like it’s gonna be a real doozy. Guess you are making up for having been a big quiet zero the past four years. You are sure showing us. You sure are getting your revenge on America.
PA’s must-do 21st century deer management policy
When Gern texted me on November 12th “planning to plant the entire farm with grass next Fall… 100% hay… can’t afford to feed wildlife. Going broke trying to make money,” I knew that my best deer management efforts had finally failed over the past 13 years.
Every year I work hard to make sure our deer season is as productive as possible. Because our tenant farmer pays us a per-acre rent every year, which covers the real estate taxes and some building maintenance, and for 13 years he has grown soybeans, corn and hay in various rotations across the many fields we have. Our arrangement has generally worked out well both ways, but that text message ended my sense of satisfaction.
While I do wear dirty bib overalls when I run the sawmill and also when I try to impress people who don’t know me, Gern is the actual farmer who tills (broad sense), fertilizes, plants, and harvests a very large farm property in Dauphin County, some of which I own and all of which I manage. Our property is one of many that comprise about 30,000 acres of farm land that Gern and his family cultivate in Central Pennsylvania. To say that his family works hard is the understatement of all understatements. Gern embodies AMERICA! in flesh and spirit, and to see him so utterly beaten down by mere deer is heartbreaking.
Over the years I knew that both overabundant deer and bears were taking a significant toll on our grain crops (Gern’s primary source of family income), and so I worked hard to recruit the kinds of good hunters who would help us annually whittle down the herds, so that the pressure was taken off of our crops. About five years ago I proudly photographed one of our late-summer soybean fields, at about four super healthy feet high, indicating a minimal amount of deer damage. When I passed the soybean field pictures around to other farmers and land managers, nothing but high praise returned. And so I patted myself on the back for our successful deer management, and congratulated our guest hunters, who were killing about 25-35 deer a year on our property. Our hunters were filling an impressive 50% to 65% of the roughly 54 DMAP deer management tags we hand out every year, as well as some of their buck tags and WMU 4C tags.
But, change is life’s biggest constant, and while I rested on my hunting laurels, deer hunting changed under my feet. The past few years have seen a lot of change in the hunting world. First and biggest change is that hunters in Pennsylvania and other states are aging out en masse, with fewer replacements following them. This means that a lot less pressure is being brought to bear on the deer herd. Which means a lot more deer are everywhere, which is not difficult to see if you drive anywhere in Pennsylvania in a vehicle. There are literally tons of dead deer along the side of every road and highway, everywhere in Pennsylvania. We should be measuring this at tons-of-deer-per-mile, not just the number of dead deer and damaged vehicles. Frankly this overabundant deer herd situation is out of control not just for the farmers who feed Americans, but for the people who want to safely drive their vehicles to the grocery store. Hunters are sorely needed to get this dangerous situation under control, and yet Pennsylvania’s deer management policies favor overabundant deer herds to keep older hunters less crabby.
So, because I am about to break out the spotlights and AK47 to finally manage our farm deer the way they need to be managed (and yes, PA farmers are allowed to wholesale slaughter deer in the crops) (and yes, I feel the same way about our favorite forested places in the Northern Tier), here below is the kind of deer management/ hunting policy Pennsylvania needs via the PGC, if we are going to get the out-of-control deer herd genie back into its bottle and stop hemorrhaging farmland on the altar of too many deer:
- Archery season is too long. At seven weeks long, the current archery season lets a lot of head-hunters stink up the woods, cull the very best trophy bucks, and pressure the deer enough to make them extra skittish and nocturnal before rifle season begins. Even though rifle season is our greatest deer management tool. The same can be said of bear season, which is the week before rifle season. So shorten archery season and lengthen rifle season, or make the opening week of deer season concurrent with bear season, like New York does.
- Rifle season must be longer, and why not a longer flintlock season, too? Is there something “extra special” about deer come the middle of January, that they are prematurely off limits to hunting? Most bucks begin to drop their antlers in early February. Have three weeks of rifle season and then five weeks of flintlock season until January 30th, every year. Or consider flintlock hunting year ’round, or a spring doe season in May.
- More doe tags are needed. There are too few doe tags to begin with, and most doe tags sell out and are never used. This is especially true in WMUs 5C and 5D, where despite enormous tag allocations, tags quickly become unavailable. That is because individual hunters can presently buy unlimited numbers of doe tags, for some reason having to do with the way deer were managed in the 1980s…c’mon, PGC, limit of two or three doe tags for each hunter in these high-density WMUs, and at least two doe tags in Big Woods WMUs like 2G and 4C.
- Despite good advancements in reducing the regulatory burden on deer hunters this past season, there are still too many rules and restrictions. For example, why can’t our muzzleloading guns have two barrels? Pedersoli makes the Kodiak, a fearsome double percussion rifle that would be just the ticket for reducing deer herds in high deer density WMUs where the PGC says they want more deer harvests. But presently it is not legal. Another example is the ridiculous interruptions in small game seasons as they overlap with bear and deer seasons. This bizarre on-again-off-again discontinuity of NOT hunting rabbits while others ARE hunting deer is an unnecessary holdover from the long-gone, rough-n-ready bad old poaching days of Pennsylvania wildlife management. PA is one of the very few states, if the only one at all, with these staggered small game and big game seasons. Bottom line is hunting is supposed to be fun, and burdening hunters with all kinds of minutiae is not only not fun, it is unnecessary. Other states with far more liberal political cultures have far fewer regulations than Pennsylvania, so come on PA, give fun a try.
- Artificial deer feeding with corn, alfalfa, oats etc on private land during all deer and bear seasons must end. Not only does this “I’m saving the poor starving deer” nonsense lead to spreading deadly diseases like CWD, it artificially draws deer onto sanctuary properties and away from nearby hunters. Or it is baiting, plain and simple. Feeding causes overabundant deer to avoid being hunted during hunting season, but then quickly spread out on the landscape where they eat everything out of house and home when hunting season ends. This year up north (Lycoming and Clinton counties) is a prime example. We had no acorns to speak of this Fall, and whatever fell was quickly eaten up by early November. As the weeks rolled on through hunting season, the deer began leaving their regular haunts and unnaturally herding up where artificial feed was being doled out. This removed them from being hunted, and creates a wildlife feeding arms race, where those who don’t feed wildlife run the risk of seeing none at all. So either completely outlaw artificial feeding or let everyone do it, including hunters, so they can compete with the non-hunters. And yes, people who buck hunt only, and who do not shoot does, and who put out corn and alfalfa etc. for deer during hunting season, are not really hunters. They are purposefully meddling in the hunts of other people by trying to keep them from shooting “my deer.”
- PGC must better communicate to its constituency that too many deer result in unproductive farms that then become housing developments. Because the landowner and farmer must make some money from the land, if farm land can’t grow corn, it will end up growing houses, which no real hunter wants. So real hunters want fewer deer, at numbers the land and farms can sustain.