Now Greta Thunberg makes sense
Not until I had sat under a hemlock tree overlooking a quiet ravine with a flintlock rifle across my knees for two hours in the morning cold did it occur to me: In the context of angry liberals, abrasive hypocrite Greta Thunberg does make sense.
Thunberg is the carefully manufactured Hollywood and mainstream media creation from Norway, or Sweden, whichever it doesn’t matter, whose mental health her wealthy and abusive parents sacrificed on the altar of gaining political advantage and notoriety. She is a 17-year-old high school drop-out, with apparent learning disabilities that normal, loving parents would try to heal, not enhance. Her message continues to be that everyone else in Western Civilization must cease using fossil fuels and abandon capitalism while she flies in jets and other capitalist-created transportation all over the planet making sure that we all feel her rage and judgment, and do as she says. Like some sort of malevolent angel.
And though for the longest time I kept wondering how trying to shame people into submission was really going to work in this day and age, it’s her angry judgmentalism part that turned on the light bulb in my head this morning.
“Yes, we can ride together, but you must not mention The Name That Cannot be Said,” said a long-time dear friend of mine about an east coast fishing trip we were planning. His sore feelings about the 2016 election result were still evident, and the other old friend whom we were planning to see on a certain leftwing island enclave felt the same. Even though we had not discussed the election, no, we avoided it, when we did talk, the anger and judgmentalism were tangible.
No, I would not wear a MAGA hat, I said. No, I would not get drunk on the beach late at night and begin dancing around the campfire “Trump! Trump Trump! USA USA USA!”
“I could not vouch for your safety if you did that,” said the tender islander.
“But I would not do it in any case, knowing that it would bother you. I love you guys, and I do not live to bother my friends,” said I, allowing images of hungry bluefish and striped bass and screaming fishing reels to cloud my thoughts and thereby unwittingly admitting to my support for The Name That Must Not be Said, and then feeling his judgmental words cut deep into a relationship decades old and already tested by many trials together.
So it seems that while Thunberg is probably not necessarily designed to cast a wide net and gain new adherents to the climate religion and big centralized government control thingy she is so angry about, her role is probably more to rally the faithful. To give them a fresh new figurehead. Someone through which today’s young people – totally devoid of life experience – can channel their inner despot and ignorant judgmentalism.
These ever-angrier young people haven’t a clue about life, making a living, paying rent, making an economy run, science, climate, etc., but if there is one thing they will be good for, it’s shock troops. The western equivalent of the cruel and merciless children of the Chinese cultural revolution. Young people to defiantly harm their own parents and elders in the name of some greater good.
And so now Greta Thunberg makes sense to me. She is a deliberately unhappy cheerleader, not searching for solutions, but for sacrificial scapegoats upon whom her anger must justifiably be poured in a cleansing action that will bring holistic stability to all humankind.
She is the climate messiah, beginning a jihad, bringing unholy fire.
As if Liberals couldn’t look worse…congrats
Liberals in recent years have staked out strange policy positions totally the opposite of where their political party (Democrat) held even ten or twenty years ago. Many of their policy positions seemed so odd as to be almost eccentric or naively cute, like the ever-evolving global cooling\ global warming\ climate change business, or opposing voter identification requirements, or elevating once-private sexual practices into cult status complete with public displays of religious fealty (like obviously cross dressing in order to be noticed).
Then the party embraced hatred of Jews, policy positions calling for the end of Israel, mass civilian disarmament, socialism and wealth redistribution, post-birth infanticide posing as “abortion,” and an almost giddy and unembarrassed claim on American blacks as de facto slaves forever to the Democrat Party.
As a result, a whole movement (#walkaway) has begun an exit out of the Democrat Party, not because it is no longer the party of JFK, who today would be one of the most outspoken and conservative Republicans in politics. Rather, many Americans are now becoming former Democrats because the party today is not even close to the party of Bill Clinton. Someone who has been a Democrat for thirty, forty, even fifty years cannot possibly recognize the current political party as the one she or he started with. The differences between now and then are night-and-day stark.
So if one wondered if the Democrat Party and its liberal political allies could achieve even greater outlier status, more bizarre policy positions against the basic interests of Americans, even greater distance from where the party was just a year or two ago, well, your curiosity has been answered by the very immediate events surrounding the demise of terrorist mastermind Qasem Soleimani and his sponsor, Iran.
As of this morning, every single Democrat politician is taking the side of Iran and the deceased Soleimani, and criticizing the side of American safety and security. It demonstrates that if President Donald J. Trump does something, anything, the entire Democrat Party immediately has a hysteric meltdown with false outrage and Looney Tunes accusations about it, even if it greatly damages America. They are so opposed to President Trump that they are now openly embracing America’s sworn enemy, Iran, and in their own defense Iranian officials are literally re-stating the exact words spoken by Democrats in America.
America’s enemies take heart from this, because they can use the Democrats to undermine America from the inside, and weaken us.
Former president Barack Hussein Obama bragged that he was “pretty good at killing people,” after he began using American drones to target anti-America terrorists. Including the most revered austere religious leader Al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old born-in-Denver American citizen son, who were having lunch together when Obama’s Hellfire missile made a mess of their food and everything else. Nobody anywhere on the Left criticized this act, nor any others Obama did; certainly not Democrats, and very few Republicans, except a couple concerned about US citizens being deliberately bombed by American bombs.
Americans see this dichotomy. They know that Soleimani was an arch terrorist who had killed hundreds of American soldiers, as well as thousands of American allies, thousands of Iranian demonstrators, and plenty of non-combatants from the Middle East to Africa to South America. Soleimani was not a good human being, Iran’s government is the embodiment of evil, and yet the Democrat Party has openly taken their side.
The Democrat Party has thrown all Americans under the bus and tossed a few Iranian IED bombs in for good measure. It is as if our lives simply do not matter, and criticizing the president, at great cost to American safety and security, is all that does matter.
At some point, normal Americans have to say “This is not my political party any longer. The Democrats no longer represent me or my beliefs.”
And those people who do continue to embrace the Democrat Party, despite the party’s latest act of treason and anti-America lunacy, are making a bold statement that they just do not care what other Americans and the rest of the civilized world think, that they have a greater loyalty to a political party going over a cliff than to the good nation that employs them, protects them, feeds them. This is a big achievement, because Liberals have been slowly drifting away from an American identity for years, and in just one week Liberals have gone into warp speed and into a distant galaxy where no normal person can see or recognize them.
US President John F. Kennedy: 1962, Democrat Party leader…2020, Far-right-wing Republican and pro-America patriot. What happened?
Time to create Kurdistan out of Iraq
Now that a slim majority of the Iraqi parliament has voted to demand the full exit of American everything from Iraq, it is time for America, the liberator and vanquisher of Iraq, to decide what to do next.
Note that Iraq is roughly 60% Shia Muslim, who identify closely with Shia-majority Iran. That 60% of Iraq’s population lives in a relatively small region adjoining Iran, and despite holding such a small geographical area, about 15% of Iraq’s surface area, the population dominates the entire country.
One of the enormous mistakes made by the Bush administration when invading Iraq were these assumptions: 1) Iraqis will welcome Americans as liberators the same way Europeans welcomed American GIs in World War II; 2) Iraqis will be forever grateful for America’s liberation of Iraq, and they will therefore become a key ally in the region; 3) Iraq was, is, and will be fertile ground for planting western-style democracy, thereby creating some form of democratic government that will naturally cooperate with America and other Western nations.
These assumptions were rightly questioned at the time of the Iraq invasion, and they were further questioned during the occupation and subjugation of the native jihadis there. In recent years a kind of quiet war of careful positioning has followed, and so the newest assumption was that America had been successful in all ways, and had brought lasting peace to Iraq. And so, the thinking has gone, America can just pull up stakes and move everyone back home.
Not so fast.
Being anti-war is understandable if it applies to unjust wars, unwarranted wars, stupid wars, wasteful wars, and artificially inhibited wars, all of which applied up front to the American invasion of Iraq and then the occupation. Perhaps the most dispiriting aspect of the Iraq occupation was the ridiculous “rules of engagement,” created by Bush and further tightened by Obama, whereby our own troops pretty much had to bleed before they were allowed to return fire against aggressors. These insanely restrictive rules of engagement inhibited American forces from doing their job effectively, quickly, and safely. These rules led to years of IEDs and snipers killing and badly wounding American military personnel who were in Iraq to bring peace and prosperity to Iraqis, and to an anti-warrior culture at the Pentagon back home, whereby devoted fighters like Navy SEAL operations chief Edward “Eddie” Gallagher were often held to impossibly impractical standards for conduct on the field of battle against merciless enemies. And then made an example of by desk jockeys and armchair generals.
Almost all of those IED and sniper attacks on American forces could have been prevented by having either no rules of engagement, or rules of engagement that greatly and quite naturally favored the interests of our forces over vague concerns about perceptions and lingering “feelings” of Iraqis.
However, the rules of engagement stayed on and what was done was done; now twenty years later, America has spent trillions of taxpayer dollars and tanker trucks of American blood to bring peace and prosperity to yet another group of Middle East/Near East/ Muslim people who really don’t value peace and prosperity, nor democracy, either. None of these things that Americans and Europeans value are valued by Muslims, plain and simple. This is proven by the lack of peace, the lack of prosperity, and the lack of democracy or the rule of law in every..single…Muslim country.
So now that the vanquished are demanding that the conqueror leave Iraq, what should America do?
Our main options are to stay and fight all over again, or to appease the Iraqi government, which is now largely a Shia proxy of Iran’s theocracy, or to turn and leave.
Staying and fighting is unappealing, because we did that already, at great cost. The “no blood for oil” cries of the initial invasion were prophetic, as America stupidly declined to take any payment of any sort for our efforts. Not even in abundant Iraqi oil, which could have been easily and fairly shipped home to offset our huge investment in Iraq’s freedom and stability.
Appeasing the Shia-led Iraqi government is also unappealing and impractical, as appeasement never works, it just delays the inevitable conflict while our enemy prepares overtime for violent conflict. Thus prolonging the inevitable.
Finally, America can turn and leave, pulling up stakes and bidding farewell to Iraq with a “pox on your house” tossed over our shoulder as we send everyone home. This option has the greatest emotional appeal, and for good reason: Those who love and cherish American military personnel are loathe to see them sacrificed once again or any longer in the pursuit of vague, poorly defined, or improbable geopolitical goals. And the oil-less Iraq war and occupation was nothing if not poorly defined with vague, improbable goals at huge cost. But leaving cold turkey is a terrible option, because it will mean America invested trillions of dollars and thousands of wonderful young men for nothing. Not even for oil, and yet we will be in a worse position than we were when we first invaded.
A fourth option exists, and will take some creativity to implement. But it is doable, and is the best of all our options, because it allows America to meet all of its geopolitical and strategic goals at minimal cost to our servicemen and taxpayers.
This fourth option is to subdivide Iraq into new states, based on ethnicity and or religious makeup. Similar to how Pakistan was created out of India in 1948.
We will support those new states that share our interests, and we will harass and undermine those states that ally themselves with our sworn enemies, like Iran (and yes, theocratic Iran has been America’s sworn enemy long before Israel had a dog in that fight). Thus, breaking up Iraq into Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish states will allow us to more easily identify and help our friends, and more easily isolate and fight our enemies. It will take the vast majority of Iraq’s Shia Muslims and keep them in the smallest geographical area of Iraq where they already live. It will also enable America to finally begin to take payment from the vast oil fields that are mostly surrounded by pro-America Kurds. Most of Iraq’s geography is already divided up along ethnic and sectarian lines, so the new state lines on the map can be pretty easily drawn to match.
By creating the modern Kurdistan, America will implement several goals. First, we will be placing most of the existing oil fields in the hands of a people who have been and who still are naturally inclined to ally with America. America will benefit from the oil not going to Iran, and we can always set up a long-overdue financial debt repayment program with the Kurds, in oil or in oil receipts.
Second, we will be undermining two of the most dangerous states in the region, Iran and Turkey, both of whom have openly demonstrated clear goals of regional domination at any cost and with any method. Recall that Turkey has been quietly allied with ISIS, and also has been openly in pursuit of genocide against the Kurds while lusting after their oil fields. Iran’s ideological threat needs no explanation, as they openly wish to explode many nuclear bombs across America, and for years they have been quietly exploiting our open southern border in preparation to do just this.
In the spirit of the times, I propose the creation of Shiastan (capital city of Najaf), Sunnistan (capital city of Baghdad), and Kurdistan (capital city of Kirkuk) in response to Iraq’s declaration of war against America.
Source: Ohio State University Department of History, which in turns attributes the US government
Democrats Officially Side With Iran over America
In case you missed the excitement, the United States used a drone to rocket two Iranian terrorist leaders, who were in Iraq planning further attacks on the US embassy in Baghdad and against Americans living in America.
Both men had the blood of thousands of non-combatants on their hands, as well as being credited with the deaths of about 600 US servicemen.
In a normal world, the deaths of these two criminals would be the subject of rejoicing. But as we have increasingly witnessed over the past three years, one American political party has actually abandoned loyalty to America, to American citizens, to American taxpayers, to American children, to American military personnel. Instead, that political party has taken up the cause of every criminal border jumper, every pedophile illegal alien, every nation that opposes America existing as America.
We see Democrat Party members and presidential candidates all saying the same things: America is bad, America is immoral, America is wrong, America is unfair.
Let us ask: Compared to what is America all of these things?
After all, Iran slowly hangs to death young men who are merely accused of being gay. These aren’t quick executions, but a slow, agonizing choking to death as a crane slowly lifts the kicking, writhing young man into the air. America doesn’t do anything like this, nothing.
Iran’s regime is notorious for its use of severe torture methods on every person who falls into their clutches. Some for fun, some for supposed intelligence gathering purposes. But inhumane torture nonetheless. Especially for feminists who don’t understand their subservient place as women there. Again, America is the opposite.
We could go on with pages of examples of how America’s enemies like Iran, Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela etc use severe torture every day to maintain power and control of their citizens. These countries have no freedom, no individual choice, no citizen rights. On the other hand, America provides every possible choice to its citizens, maximum freedom.
So how again is America so bad compared to these other countries?
And yet we have a political party here in America that is devoted to shielding these cruel nations from American defense, devoted to criticizing everything America does. The Democrat Party has taken the side of Iran in opposing the killing of the two terrorists. That is, the Democrat Party is against America and for Iran.
Mister and Missus America, how can you vote for the Democrat Party now? Is this the Democrat Party of your youth? No? You don’t recognize this political party any more, you say? And you don’t want to see an American political party actively helping people who want to destroy your own kid’s Little League baseball team?
Then don’t give the Democrat Party any support! Not until it has demonstrated that it is on your side, the side of America, the side of safety and security for Americans. It is illogical to support a political party that is openly supporting the worst, most dangerous enemies of your own country.
This seems so painfully evident to most Americans, but people are having trouble accepting just how badly the Democrat Party has abandoned them, abandoned us.
I am so post-socialism now
Socialism and its sisters communism, collectivism, authoritarianism, mass murder, and tyranny have never proven fun or beneficial for anyone but a chosen tiny handful, who lord it over the unfortunates below. Venezuela is the latest example of what socialism really is, no matter how many college professors tell you how wonderful it is: Violent poverty and no human rights. Socialist Russia and communist China have the worst environmental records and situations, because under socialism, there is no incentive to clean up the environment.
For the occasional Millennial who may accidentally be reading this essay, the words written above mean that under socialism, you don’t get to pick your healthcare system (like Obama promised when selling his not-free-for-all centralized healthcare system snake oil), you don’t get to keep your doctor (also like Obama promised), you don’t get to choose your friends (most will be carted off to jail and then disappeared), and you certainly don’t get an iPhone and a five dollar latte, ever. In other words, everything you take for granted right now is stuff you will never ever see in a socialist country.
And so, dear Millennial, you should know that after eight years of Obama’s effort to implement socialism at every level of America, which required him to lie a lot, and after three years of Trump’s fantastic economic revival, I find myself feeling so, so post-socialism.
I say this, even though it puts me at odds with a fad that has recently emerged on the left, where people loudly proclaim they are “post-capitalism.” While they simultaneously and shamelessly use capitalist medicine, drive capitalist cars, wear capitalist clothing, live in capitalist buildings, drink capitalist five dollar lattes, endlessly text on capitalist smart phones, and eat capitalist food.
So OK, aside from the clean abundant food, the best medicine, the nicest buildings, the clean water, the clean air, the clean environment, the fuel efficient vehicles, and the best clothing, yeah, I guess capitalism sucks…like that old Winston Churchill line that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others…or like that scene from The Life of Brian, where Monty Python’s cast members recite a litany of popular improvements the Romans brought to Judea…”but what have the Romans ever done for us?”
The fact is, capitalism creates the best situation for the most people out of all the alternative forms of government (free choice). Capitalism has its weaknesses, but compared to all the alternatives, it is the best arrangement. We have seen this proven over and over. And it is proven by the fact that none zero nada of the “post capitalism” advocates are actually living socialist lives.
And that is why this bizarre “post-capitalism” posturing and virtue signaling has always mystified me; you know, the Che Guevara tee shirt wearers using their parents’ credit cards to pay for everyday things that no socialist or communist country ever had or ever will have. Or the socialist child climate activist barking at adults about the choices they make, while herself jet-setting around the world using capitalist planes trains automobiles and boats, and leaving a one-week carbon footprint bigger than my entire lifetime will be.
So I am over it, that socialism thing. Too much hypocrisy, too many lies.
Socialism sucked during the Obama administration, and watching newly socialist Venezuela crash and burn now is painful. As we learned during the Obama years, it is not cool or hip to say you are socialist, it is actually very stupid. And if you have a college professor or three who tells you socialism is great, then ask them to prove themselves correct by immediately living the socialist lifestyle. You know, give it all up, practice what you preach. Push come to shove, when those beret-wearing fake educators are put on the spot, you will find that deep down, those Che-lovin’ professors are actually so, so post-socialism, too.
It’s natural to be post socialism, because socialism is naturally bad for you.
Photo of Chinese military summarily executing an unarmed civilian who has not had a fair trial, for some imagined crime that only threatened the power of the state. This is socialism, and you should be post-socialism
In a socialist country, you can earn the death penalty by simply speaking your mind, by disagreeing with the official government positions
Strangely, China makes pretty young women about to die get dressed up before they get on their knees and are shot in the back of the head. Who knows what this unhappy young woman did to earn such a violent death, but we know she had zero due process. Socialism
socialism
same lady who is kneeling in front of the soldier above. Socialism is cool, right? No?
Nice ladies in a socialist country about to be executed on their knees. Is this what young Americans think is just fine? Do you drink $5 lattes and watch your friends get executed for fun?
this is the lady kneeling above and then with her head blown in half, as she is being taken off the truck to her execution. In socialist countries, you can easily earn the death penalty for simply disagreeing with a leader’s opinions. Not in America! So why is America supposed to be turned socialist?
Peace
Peace Peace Peace Peace Peace Peace Peace
Peace
On Earth
This day a year ago while trapping: Cat up a tree!
Cat Up a Tree!
Text and Photos by Josh First (copyrighted)
I dislike trapping in rainy conditions, because it is uncomfortable, messy, and technically difficult, due to trap sets needing constant fixing up; and I really dislike processing muddy critters. Mud-covered fur is time consuming, and usually it is not worth it in my tight schedule. So from 2018’s trapping season opening day in late October, I waited six weeks, until a brief rain lull in mid-December, to put out some carefully planned traps.
Though I was aiming mostly for canids like fox and coyote, both bobcat and fisher were a reasonable hope. I have caught bobcats in and out of season in the past, but never a fisher. These are two neat animals worth working hard for, and each of which will quite willingly enter baited cubbies where foot hold traps can get some shelter from rain and snow.
So on the Wednesday afternoon before that Saturday bobcat and fisher opener, a half-dozen footholds (cubbies and flat sets) and a few large cage traps were set in strategic places near where I had seen fisher tracks or bobcats across a 100-acre area of mixed farmland and woods in Dauphin County. Bait is used in the cage traps to pull in the inevitable and limitless possums, skunks, and raccoons, so that, hopefully, only the cool critters find the footholds. And both bobcats and fishers will enter cage traps, so they do serve double duty.
One pass-through pee post set was put in a location where I have previously caught coyotes, foxes, and raccoons. It is at a corner of a dirt farm road, a woods road, a hay field, and brushy-hedged crop field where heavy woods meets an active agricultural area. Just about every local furbearer walks the brushy area, this road, and the field edges leading to it.
Coyote pee and coyote gland lure were put on top of a two-inch-thick dry pine limb sticking up 14 inches, placed at the seam where the goldenrod meets the farm road. A few pieces of goldenrod stem on the other side created the pass-through effect, so the animal’s body would line up with the hidden trap just exactly so. About eight inches away from the post an offset MB 550 attached to an eight-foot heavy chain linked to a heavy two-prong coyote drag was bedded level atop soft goldenrod tops to protect the trap from freezing to the wet dirt underneath, then covered judiciously in waxed dirt, then finished with more soft goldenrod tops and weed tips blended on top. The trap was perfectly “blended in” and hidden from sight.
The chain was stretched out away, into the reverting goldenrod field, and well covered and camouflaged with weeds, and the rusty-brown colored steel drag itself unobtrusively hooked into the dirt. With four heavy swivels well spaced between the trap and the drag, I felt confident that whatever would step on the trap pan while passing between the weeds to smell the pee post would commit its full weight, and be safely held fast, no matter where it went afterwards. I expected the animal to head directly to the nearby brushy hedges, where the grapple and chain would immediately become entangled, thereby holding the animal for the next 24-hour trap check.
Usually predators take a couple days to fully investigate my traps, and when setting this on a late Wednesday, I anticipated catching something in one of the sets on Friday night/ early Saturday morning. Though aiming for a bobcat, fox, coyote, or fisher, the truth is I had put off trapping so long that season that I would have been happy to catch just about anything.
The next day, Thursday, I did a cursory trap circuit check in my truck, looking out the window while driving past set after set. “No…No…No…footprints all around but no step on the pan…no…no…nothing” as I went by each trap location.
Pulling up to the pee post set, my eye was immediately drawn to the pee post itself lying on the ground, though the trap bed itself did not appear disturbed. Usually the post is knocked over by the chain after an animal has stepped on the trap and fled. So I got out to check, and was not surprised to see the drag gone. Following an obvious path of bent weeds and scuffed dirt leading away towards the closest brushy forest edge, my eyes naturally looked along that edge for a hung-up drag and critter.
With my hands on my hips, I stood and kept scanning the brushy woods-field edge. I was unable to locate anything, and felt mystified about how the critter could have escaped beyond such a thick, natural entanglement area. Mystery remained until a hiss to my right reached my ear, steering my eyes in that direction.
“Why is that long-legged grey fox up in that honey locust like that?” was my first thought.
Then another thought followed the first: “Why does that grey fox look like a big cat?”
And then the bobcat came into focus. It was a nice sized young male, probably 25 pounds, about six feet up in a young honey locust, a tree that has plenty of sharp thorns and very hard wood. The drag was just touching the ground, and the chain was wound about the lowest branches.
OK, I thought, I’ll have this resolved in a few minutes. Seemed like no big deal to pull down the cat, use the catch pole to hold it steady while I released the trap from its foot and let it go unharmed.
Fast forward an hour, and each time I had tried different ways to bring it down out of the tree unharmed, the cat had moved farther up. With bobcat season two days away, by law the cat had to be released, but I was unsuccessful with each solution I tried.
Fretting and scratched by the locust thorns, I left, did some work, and returned a few hours later, hoping the cat had climbed down and was entangled in the ground brush nearby. On the ground it would be easy to release using a catch pole. Easier than up that tree!
But when I got back, the bobcat was still up the tree, and climbed yet higher as I approached it.
Time for Plan B, which is where I admit that I need help. Usually takes me a long, long time to implement Plan B, and so I called the Pennsylvania Game Commission southeastern regional office. At first the dispatcher congratulated me on catching the bobcat, but then moments later expressed his sympathy for me having to release such a fine trophy, as the season was yet to begin. He forwarded my message to a local Game Warden, who then fairly quickly met me right at the honey locust. In fact, he arrived so quickly that I could not help but wonder if he had been watching me the whole time, either chuckling at my clumsy efforts, or waiting to see what else I might do, or both.
“Thank you for coming. When my kids were little, their favorite book was Cat Up a Tree! And here it is in real life. Should we call the fire department?” I said to Game Warden Scott Frederick, half-jokingly. In that colorful book, the fire department saves the day by saving the cat stuck up in the tree, and we (and how I so liked the ‘we’ part) did indeed have a daggone cat way up in a tree. But unlike the book, we had no long ladders, or hero firemen, by the honey locust tree that day.
I asked my wife to film our escapade, but under questioning I revealed that pretty much anything could happen to anybody around this, so she said something like “No, I’m not recording two idiot men playing with matches.” I think her imagination had the warden and I emerging from the dense, high brush scratched head to toe, our clothes in ragged tatters, like some cartoon involving the Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil. She wanted no part of it. This is why women live longer than men.
Warden Frederick tried to the untangle the chain and reach the animal, but with each new inch of loose chain, the bobcat sensed freedom and used the slack to climb ever higher. Upon reaching a tight chain again, he would stop his ascent, alternating between hissing at us and letting fly with whatever he could rustle up in his bowels. I came to learn that bobcats have an impressive amount and array of bad smells stored inside them. Neither Warden Frederick nor I smelled peachy at that point, but I gave in and laughed at him when he really got it good from the cat.
Eventually we had tried and tried every which way to get the cat down unharmed, the day waxed late, and so we decided that if the cat would not come down, then the tree had to come down.
A honey locust is a hard, tough tree, a pioneer species with twisting grain and sharp hooked thorns. Oftimes while being sawed, they don’t fall the way you think they will. In addition to its loud scary noise, a chain saw would remove too much wood too quickly to allow us to fully control which way the tree would fall, and a hand saw was too slow. So we used an axe to drop the tree, one carefully placed chop at a time. This gave us the best control over the tree’s slow descent, but it was sweaty work, and directly beneath the bobcat. So I let Warden Frederick do it.
Meanwhile, the bobcat climbed to the very top of the tree, clinging like a lookout in a ship’s crow’s nest, and swayed to the rhythm of the chop-chop-chop below.
As the tree gave way to the axe and slowly sank to the ground, the bobcat sensed its getaway approaching. But Warden Frederick was waiting with a catch pole. While I wish I had some humorous Game News Field Note material here to describe what happened next, the truth is Warden Frederick properly and quickly looped the bobcat’s shoulder and neck, under the armpit, thereby safely pinning the animal to the ground without risk to its esophagus (cats have really weak throat areas and they must be handled carefully). I got some last quick photos, threw a blanket over the bobcat to calm him down (the bobcat, not Warden Frederick), and then easily pulled the trap off of its foot.
Both of us inspected its foot and leg for damage, and seeing none, I stepped back, pulled the blanket, and the catch pole loop came off the bobcat. As many other trappers have experienced when releasing a trapped bobcat, this one sat on its haunches and hissed at us. He thought he was still stuck. Eventually he turned and fast- walked into the brush.
“Well, that’s it, I’m now officially jinxed, or ‘lynxed’,” I said to Warden Frederick. “From here on out I will catch only possums and skunks for the rest of the season.”
And in fact, for the rest of that epic rainy trapping season, such as it was, I caught a grand total of just five possums, one skunk, and one raccoon. It was my worst trapping season, numbers-wise, in many years. But in hindsight, it was also pretty rewarding to watch the Game Warden work like that. Both hard and smart, I mean. Citizens don’t get to see our public servants perform these kinds of feats very often, and with a good nature to boot. So in that sense, I had a uniquely good season. Thank you, Warden Frederick. Now I can’t wait for mountain lions to move into Pennsylvania!
[Why do I trap? I trap to save ducklings, goslings, baby songbirds, nesting grouse, woodcock, and turkeys from an endless number of ground predators like skunks, possums, raccoons, foxes and coyotes, all of which continue to pulse out from suburban sprawl habitats in artificially high numbers. These artificially high numbers of predators do tremendous damage to ground nesting birds, and basically cars and trappers are their sole adversaries. So if you are against trapping, you must hate cute little ducklings. Foothold traps do not crush bones or kill animals, they simply hold them, and as we can and did here, animals can be released from footholds totally unhurt]
using the catch pole in the tree did not work
Look at that perfect high catch, his foot still on the pan. This is the correct way to use a foothold trap, as it results in no physical damage to the animal
If you ever want to feel like you are getting your tax money’s worth, look closely at this photo of PA Game Warden Frederick chopping at that honey locust. Except that the PA Game Commission operates on hunting license fees, timber sales, and natural gas leases! No tax money goes to the PGC, and yet they provide so many taxpayer services.
The four swivels and the long chain are visible here. The swivels prevent the chain from binding as the animal moves around, which gives the animal complete 360 degree movement. This is important so the animal does not torque its leg or hurt itself trying to get free. The long chain is needed to get hung up quickly in brush
The unharmed bobcat can be seen hissing at Scott, who has the catch pole loop around its upper body, pinning it to the ground. After taking this picture, I threw a blanket (Scott’s, not mine) over it to calm it down, inspected its leg for any damage, and when we each determined the animal was not hurt, Scott then released it. Using a catch pole on a bobcat requires getting the loop under its armpit and around the neck, so the esophagus is not damaged.
Trump not legally impeached, but wear it with pride anyhow
Trump was not legally impeached, but he should wear it with pride anyhow…
Because the US House has failed to deliver the phony “Articles of Impeachment” to the US Senate, as required by the US Constitution, there is no actual impeachment. President Trump has NOT been impeached by the US House. Not yet, anyhow. So all those wahoo-for-political-chaos partiers and “Merry Impeachmas” fake news reporters/ partisan political activists will just have to put off their foolish celebration until the process moves to the US Senate. If it ever goes there.
The reason the Founders of America structured the impeachment process this way was to give everyone a bite at the apple, both accuser and defendant. This simple structure is the heart of America’s due process found at every level of our legal system. If either half of the process is procedurally deficient or missing, then it does not exist. The impeachment process is a whole, not two separate halves existing by themselves.
This is because America’s Founders did not want an accused president guilty by accusation only, without the ability to defend himself. Just like you and I would not want that situation to exist. Would any of us want such a deficient process to exist in America, at any level? For example, would you yourself want to walk into a local magistrate’s court to defend yourself against a speeding ticket, and have the cop simply tell the judge that you are guilty because he says so, and have the process end there, with no opportunity for you to defend yourself?
That would not be a fair or balanced process, would it? Well, without the impeachment articles being delivered to the US Senate, it is not a fair or legal process.
But this deficient process does fit in with the entire previous false accusations against President Trump, starting with the Russia collusion hoax, and when that failed, jumping seamlessly over to yet another hoax, this time Ukraine. Ukraine is where the entire Democrat Party is running interference on behalf of corrupt criminal Joe Biden. Biden used his position as Vice President of the USA to illegally enrich himself and his son, Hunter Biden. President Trump tried to get to the bottom of it, and was falsely accused of exactly that which Biden had done.
And this un-American process also fits in with the Democrat Party’s novel and un-American approach to criminal charges: To them, you are guilty until proven innocent, contrary to the US Constitution’s guarantee that all defendants are innocent until proven guilty. That is, the burden of proof is on the accuser, not on the accused. If the accuser cannot make their case, then the accused goes free. No matter how empty the accusations against President Trump have been, the Democrat Party and their mainstream media propaganda arm have said “We don’t have the evidence yet, but we know it is there, and the evidence we have we can’t share with you, and you are guilty.”
Dear Democrat Party members: Are you truly proud of this un-American farce? Are you really OK with an entire American political party devoting itself to the destruction of the core rights and procedures that make America so much better than every other country? Would you ever tolerate this happening in your own life? If you are OK with this, then shame on you! Shame Shame Shame on you!
To be a true American, your love of America must be greater than your willingness to sacrifice America and all things American for your own personal goals or feelings. This feeling has always defined Americans, and yet the Democrat Party has one-two-three thrown it overboard.
What has actually (legally) happened in all of this is the US House has in effect censured President Trump, though once again without following correct procedures. In any event, the Democrat members of the US House are now on record as not liking the president. Are any of us surprised? The Democrat Party has not gotten over their 2016 loss to Donald John Trump, and they have allowed raw hatred, disdain for the US Constitution, and rejection of basic American civil rights to define them ever since. We know this already, but what the heck, make it official.
So, Mister president Trump, I encourage you to wear this fake “impeachment” with pride. Wear it as a badge of honor. The people who have put you and the rest of America through this destructive process are not true Americans, and if they say they don’t like you, that is to your credit. Keep doing what you are doing, Mister President.
Fake impeachment makes Americans love President Trump even more
Last week President Donald Trump held a rousing rally in Hershey, PA. Many friends of mine participated, either inside or outside the venue, despite the cold rain. They were demonstrating their devotion to a man who has demonstrated his devotion to them, to us, to America. Call it a quid-pro-quo, without the corrupt Joe (Biden) thrown in to make it something corrupt.
President Donald John Trump arriving in Hershey to standing room only uproarious cheering by patriotic Americans. Photo by Ron Boltz
Last night’s shampeachment only cemented the thoughts and feelings of tens of millions of Americans already devoted to Trump or inclined to reward him for working so hard for the benefit of all of US (USA). Not only was the partisan fake impeachment over nothing fake, devoid of due process, devoid of actual charges, devoid of facts, but today, the so-called articles of impeachment are not being delivered to the US Senate, as the US Constitution requires. Instead, it is being held in reserve by the US House leader, Nancy Pelosi, as some sort of symbolic statement. It is not going to go through the process, not if it results in the president being vindicated.
So obviously the sham-impeachment is nothing more than a propaganda tool meant to try to hurt President Trump’s re-election campaign. If this is what Democrat Party voters really want, then shame on them, because this sort of behavior severely damages America and people’s faith in our political institutions.
It does demonstrate how corrupt the Democrat Party has become, because it clearly illustrates that the party will use democratic processes and procedures to advance and achieve non-democratic results that damage the foundation of America’s representative government. That is, democracy is great if the Democrat Party wins, and it is terrible if they lose. The Constitution is great if the Democrat Party wins, and it is to be discarded if they are going to lose.
This kind of opportunism and abuse of the system is as un-American as anything could ever be. America’s government has been run according to rules everyone agreed on for 241 years, and suddenly now that these same rules are in the way of one political party having more power than the voters are willing to give them, the party tosses aside those rules. They are an impediment to getting more power, or blunting someone else from having the power given to them by the voters.
Talk about short-sighted! Remember that whatever goes around comes around. Break the rules today, and you will be on the receiving end of the same process later on yourself. We have already seen this play out in the US Senate, where rules put in place hundreds of years ago to protect the minority party’s voice were thrown out by Democrat senate leaders in their rush to get more and more power over the process. And when the Republicans then took the US Senate, they used the same exact new rules that their predecessors had established. And of course, the Democrat senators howled and whined and complained about how unfair it all was, even though they were perfectly happy with it when they were in control.
Voters know what is good for America, and they know that this kind of instability and over-reach is not good. I can’t see most normal Americans supporting this kind of irresponsible and destructive behavior, regardless of their party affiliation. It doesn’t matter if you personally dislike President Donald Trump (which is usually due to the constant negativity and lies told about him in the mainstream media), the man has done great things for America, for you, for us.
So last night’s fake impeachment is only proven to be even more fake today, and all of this fakery only cements my devotion to President Donald Trump even more.
Tweet by Washington Post “reporter” Rachel Bade bottom left, celebrating the impeachment with other Washington Post and CNN “reporters.” Example of how US media are not impartial fact-finders, professional journalists; they are in fact partisan political activists. And they wonder why bazillions of Americans see them as our enemy…
National Democrats: “Burn down America”
Yesterday I got my teeth cleaned at a local dentistry office. Same place I have gone for about twenty years.
The dentist-in-charge is a gay woman and liberal, but as human chemistry proves once again, opposites attract and despite our differences, we enjoy each other’s company. We are due to have a dinner date to hash out our political views (her idea). I think she is terribly naive and uninformed. She thinks I am a childish Neanderthal upset over someone bumping my tricycle (her words).
After all the cleaning was done by the hygienist, and the cursory inspection for cancer etc was done by the dentist, we immediately got into our usual political discussion.
“Have you not seen the video of corrupt Joe Biden bragging about interfering in Ukraine’s politics to protect his son from being investigated with Burisma?” I asked her.
“No, I have not seen that,” she admitted.
“But then again, I don’t watch Fox News,” she tossed in, as if the sole and only source of non-leftist political narrative is somehow bad and unworthy.
And also, it seems that to her, something factual and important is unworthy if it is available from an outlet she simply dislikes. Does this make sense to you? It can’t make sense, because things are either factual or they are not factual.
I don’t watch any cable news/ TV, so I don’t watch Fox News, either. But I do avidly seek all kinds of information across the Internet every day, from all kinds of sources. Sometimes Fox News pops up as a source, and usually other outlets are the source, including political activism outlets like BBC and NPR.
But let’s face it, whatever big array of news/political outlets the dentist lady is watching or listening to, they form a huge echo chamber into which nothing different or contrary can enter. Against that huge array stands Fox News, Breitbart, TheGatewayPundit, and a few other places that Google tries to prevent people from locating.
What strikes me about this discussion between me and the dentist is how it is a microcosm of greater America’s current politics and debate. America is as polarized now as it has ever been before, some saying like before the Civil War, and while I enjoy blaming the Republican Party for anything they have done wrong, the truth is that the national Democrat Party is simply waging an all-out war for political control. Or to blunt someone else’s control.
The national Democrat Party is going to tear our national fabric and basically burn down America.
With their sham-peachment (a fake show-impeachment with no due process and that is based on political differences, not illegal behavior) of the deservedly very popular president, the congressional Democrats are willing to damage America’s robust economy, America’s overall happy sense that our nation is on a good trajectory, and our political fabric. America’s political fabric is strong, but it can be torn, as we have seen in the past.
And America’s political fabric is what makes America so special. It is the unique glue that binds us all together, both the liberal lesbian dentist and the conservative NRA Life small business owner who gets his dentistry done by the liberal lesbian dentist. Together. Americans both. But in this current political abuse and over-reach, America runs the risk of being badly damaged, to the point where people begin to ask openly if we can all live with one another. It sure seems like one side is demanding all kinds of harsh societal controls and limits on individual freedom, which by definition is going to push other Americans up against a wall.
The national Democrat Party bears all of the blame and responsibility for the negative environment we are in, as does the national establishment media, which is openly an arm of the national Democrat Party. With the one exception of Fox News, America’s media are overwhelmingly partisan political activists, cheerfully mis-reporting lies and burying inconvenient facts, in order to sustain a political narrative that helps the Democrats and hurts the Republicans.
And so long as Americans like my lesbian dentist are unwilling to listen to new information, and allow themselves to be used like puppets, this divide will only deepen and the national Democrat Party will be encouraged to burn down America in order to prevent someone else from controlling it.
In the spirit of much-needed spirit-lightening political humor, here is a meme I did from my discussion with Pennsylvania’s Governor Tom Wolf (D) yesterday. People who have seen it cannot believe it. We actually did share some laughs (and yes, I am desperately in need of a haircut, or rather, a shearing like sheep get). Enjoy:
