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Archive → October, 2019

Thank you Sunday Hunting activists!

Despite many last minute bold-faced betrayals and stabs-in-the-back by the PA Farm Bureau that delayed and delayed and delayed the passage of SB 147, which allowed for hunting on just three Sundays, the bill finally passed the PA House today.

It now goes to the PA Senate for a concurrence vote.  It has already passed the PA senate once before, thanks to the bold leadership of Senator Dan Laughlin from Erie, so this should be a perfunctory and symbolic vote, some time in the next few weeks. After that it goes to Governor Wolf, who has said he will sign it.

Unfortunately, because of the PA Farm Bureau’s vindictive approach, where they knew they were going to lose this issue so they tried to delay its implementation for as long as they could, to deny hunters the pleasure of more hunting time afield with our children, we will not get Sunday hunting this big game season. It will have to come into play in the spring of 2020.

As some of you know, my son and I do not hunt on Saturdays. This put us at a disadvantage with other hunters who do hunt on Saturdays. We would happily trade our Saturdays for the following Sundays, but that was never considered by the PA Farm Bureau, who simply demanded that everyone goose-step in unison and follow their marching orders.

So Isaac and I very much appreciate those Pennsylvanians who empathized with our plight these many years, and who felt our pain when official state law excluded us from participating equally with all other Pennsylvanians in something we love to do, and who stood with us and advocated for our equal rights all this time.

Rosa Parks did not NEED to sit at the front of the bus, but she wanted to, and she deserved to have that choice. For at least three days next year, my son and I will not have to sit at the back of the hunting bus.

Thank you to all who got this done.

Special appreciation goes to Robb Miller, the Governor’s Sportsmen’s Advisor and a long-long time professional politico who has championed Sunday hunting through thick and thin for at least twenty years; to Kathy Davis Gehman, who founded HUSH (Hunters United for Sunday Hunting) and led the legal charge and associated fundraising, in which I was one of the plaintiffs; to Harold Daub, who picked up the HUSH gauntlet when the rest of us were dispirited, donned his armor, and led the next political and social charge; to Kevin Askew and Jahred Klahre, two young guys who joined Harold at HUSH and really put the fine touches on the public outreach that became so effective. National Shooting Sports Foundation staff, the NRA, Unified Sportsmen of Pennsylvania, PFSC – the PA Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs (now Conservationists), United Bow Hunters of PA, and many other groups and individuals also helped in both big ways and small to get this passed.

In these politically divided days, it is important to note that this effort took hard work from professional political partisans in both the Democrat and Republicans parties, and also from generic registered Republicans and Democrats at the grass roots level. It is truly a bi-partisan issue, and it took members of both political parties working together to get it this far. In the sense that America and states like Pennsylvania are well served when diverse people find common political ground to solve big issues, this is a victory.

Above all else, this is a victory for individual liberty over Big Government.

And if you don’t like Sunday hunting, you do not have to hunt on Sunday. That is your choice, your freedom.

God bless America.

YouTube II: What I like

For those who might have misunderstand the last post, I do like YouTube, and below are just a few examples of what I like about that site to prove it.

Why do I visit YouTube? For one, I like to learn new things, gain technical information, find ways to do things that I regularly do and yet struggle with, like professional-level chainsaw maintenance. Then there’s the endless entertainment – humor, music, and especially the unintentionally funny videos where people representing themselves as experts instead prove the complete opposite.

First, we begin with down home redneck humor  and part 2

Next up: seems like every week there’s a new political analyst from South Succotash USA who is light years better than all the tarted up partisan political activists in mainstream media. Here is Matt Christensen analyzing  people casually calling for government-led civilian gun confiscation , and here is Laurel commenting along with liberal professors discussing a possible civil war , and finally the brave and actual for real news reporter Laura Loomer

Probably the best outdoor channel, Leatherwood Outdoors; here John is hunting edible mushrooms

Incredible instinctive bow hunter and spearer of grizzly bears Tim Wells

Funny black guy Terrence Williams talking about how he is not moving to Africa and how American blacks hurt American blacks

Serious black guy Malcolm X, speaking about how white liberals destroy American blacks

Somehow YouTube presented this guy to me as suggested viewing, and my first impression of his “intense face” was that he was a maniac. Which of course I had to see for myself. Turns out he is one of the people who makes a living off of his YouTube videos, and he is in fact interesting and knowledegable. We present “Wranglerstar

RCBS reloading because every patriot should know how to reload ammunition

Assorted music: la femme d’argent by Air Safari, and Itshak Perlman playing Mendelssohn 

For those who remember what it was like once (before people showed up literally everywhere all the time on planet Earth) to drive on a country road and actually find a quiet spot where you could…without being interrupted, a song about the joys of that by Jason Aldean

And of course Blake Shelton’s Kiss my Country Ass, just because if they are at all curious, big government control folks like those listed above ought to know how a lot of us really feel about their anti freedom policies

Rimsky Korsakov Schehezerade, which can only ever be the 1969 recording by the official USSR symphony orchestra, whose world-class members played out of both genuine love and understanding of great music and out of great fear of official punishment for perceived failure.

And finally, My Pretty Pony just to throw that monkey wrench into your digital profile, especially if you watch country music and reloading videos and you want to at least appear eccentric to the digital watchers.

And no, this is not a complete list by a long shot, so don’t think you are profiling me at all by looking at this. Heck, it could all be fake just to make people think I think a certain way, when I don’t actually…

Everything I know I learned from YouTube

YouTube is way beyond me, but what little I do know about it has shaped my life.

Every day people are vying for upvotes and clicks on YouTube, posting everything from my favorite “Idiots with Chainsaws and More Epic Tree Fails” to biting the heads off of chickens and the ubiquitous smart pet tricks. Guys (it is always guys) post all kinds of wildly incorrect videos about reloading and shooting old guns, and of course they are disinterested in helpful (knowledgeable) comments aimed at keeping all their fingers and eyeballs. They are, after all, posting on YouTube; therefore, goes their thinking, they are automatically experts at what they are posting about.

YouTube sensations might be a flash in the pan, a momentary glamor shot, or they might become an overnight millionaire. While I still do not understand how that works, my children assure me it actually happens. And then, my kids gleefully tell me, the overnight millionaires become dogfood as some perceived slight they are said to have committed is mob-magnified into the worst thing since Hitler, and then back down they go into the seething pit of unknowns…

Me, I am just a super unsophisticated user of YouTube. Listening to Mozart and Beethoven on endless play loops is probably my biggest utilization of the site, followed by leaving “My Pretty Pony” series on auto-play for hours while I am working or doing chores, just to throw monkey wrenches into the digital portfolio being built around my online habits and preferences.

But then there is the creeping recognition that just about every chore I do these days is prefaced with a visit to YouTube, just to find out the best way to screw in a light bulb, or to rake Fall leaves, paint our basement walls, or to do some other small thing that in the dinosaur days we just figured out ourselves through small trials and error, or we called Dad and asked how he did it.

Now, because I have come to rely on it so much, I walk around daily with a head full of YouTube, even if I am not necessarily spending much time on the site itself. Could I even live without it?

This reliance on YouTube has spawned all kinds of urban myth jokes, usually self-directed by surgeons, dentists, and car mechanics, who all begin their work on your open heart surgery by saying “Don’t worry, I learned to do this by watching a video on YouTube,” and then their big toothy smile is the last thing you see as your brain succumbs to the anesthetic.

And your last thought is “I’ll bet she did use YouTube!” for the simple reason that all of us have become YouTube junkies for even the mundane things we do. To the point where just about everything that is in the front of my brain, that is, the frontburner of my life, has YouTube images floating all about them. It seems that everything I know I learned from YouTube.

And it does not help balance things out, you know, leaven out the evolutionary YouTube gene, that when the tractor tire went flat, I reflexively turned to YouTube for help on how to re-inflate it. Yes, videos show you how you can use an overabundance of lighter fluid to inflate the tire back onto the rim. Lots of videos about this, with varying levels of success, that usually being inversely proportional to the level of entertainment. Because, while trying that lighter fluid thing, you might also accidentally and very explosively send the steel rim flying across the barn and out through the wall into the woods, too. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, because even if you fail to inflate the tire onto the rim and send it sailing into the next county, if you are smart and you filmed the resulting fiery disaster, you still have a cool YouTube video that will get you lots of clicks. That’s your fallback plan with the lighter fluid.

About the tractor tire: I opted for the sedate old guy’s video that showed how to use trailer ratchet straps to squish the tire onto the rim. After applying a lot of used motor oil to the tire bead, which helped slide the tire up, I did what the guy did on his video with ratchet straps. And I’ll be damned, when I turned on the compressor and injected air into the tire, it fully inflated then and has stayed inflated for months.

No, I did not film my own attempts to re-inflate the tire using the ratchet straps, and that is because the truth is I just don’t really know much about YouTube. I am there for the music, which come to think about it actually sounds like a never-ending cacophony symphony.

 

Support the organizations who support you: FOAC

One of the few curses of serving boards of various non-profit organizations is watching financial support and personal affiliation drop over time, primarily among the younger generations. No matter how much good works these nonprofit groups do, it is a fact that public (private) support and participation is decreasing across America, especially among young people. Groups as diverse as churches, shooting clubs, non profit land trusts and related conservation groups, the Elks, the Shriners, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, etc. are all hurting for income that they used to take for granted from appreciative citizens.

So why does support for outstanding organizations who do so much for us and our own interests continue to drop?

Right now there are two primary reasons that are the same across America, regardless of the type of non profit organization. Everyone volunteering for or staffing non-profits are seeing the same thing. First, older people are are getting older, and with age comes restricted income. With restricted income comes less margin and fewer Dollars for donations, a pretty straight forward reason. Related to this is that as older people age, they eventually die off, and America is seeing the very end of The Greatest Generation that created the America we enjoy today, as well as their children, the heirs to their solid values and sense of community and patriotism.

Second, and the biggest reason, is the younger generations take everything for granted. Literally everything they enjoy – roads, schools, bridges, libraries, churches, shooting clubs, etc. seems to have dropped from the clear blue sky for their sole enjoyment. What they do not understand is how much hard work and sacrifice was done by generations before them, to get us to this rich present. If they have a cool beanie hat, an iPhone, and a ten dollar coffee, these younger Americans are perfectly happy to let the world keep turning and to let someone else make it turn for them.

Hard work does not run in their veins.

Apparently social media is the answer to everything with the younger crowd; despite their ethereal quality, those binary digital photons are just getting everything done right and left, like life is a big MineCraft game. Grown ups know this is not a fact.

Younger Americans are not donating to or volunteering for non-profit groups, no matter how important those groups and facilities are to their happiness. Simple and very sad fact. And at some point, after the various organizations go belly up and go out of business, the younger people will ask “Hey, do you remember that friends of Apple Pie Park group? You know, the people who put in the gravel walkway into the park? Where are they, because that park walkway is all mud now and someone needs to fix it.”

One group that means a lot to me as a gun owner, that gets a lot done for all gun owners, including YOU, is Firearm Owners Against Crime, FOAC, a perfectly named group out of western Pennsylvania run by tireless activist Kim Stolfer, in partnership with tireless attorney Josh Prince out of eastern Pennsylvania. Under Josh’s hard work, FOAC recently won a big precedent before the Commonwealth Court, where years of bizarre precedent had required citizens to go out and break the law before gaining legal standing to challenge that law. Until Josh Prince persuaded them otherwise, the court had actually been requiring people to become criminals to challenge unfair laws!

No longer.

This court decision is especially important to younger gun owners who seem to incorrectly believe that firearms ownership is out of reach of anti-gun prohibitionist crusaders. Like the local park friends group that paves the walkway so elderly visitors and parents pushing strollers can access that park, FOAC is out there battling for you, me, US, so that we can enjoy our Constitutional rights without infringement.

Like so many other non-profit organizations, FOAC deserves our support. They cannot work for us without our support of their work.

(and yes, I am the Harrisburg City plaintiff in FOAC’s lawsuit)

 

PA senate floor scrap is microcosm of GOP vs Dems nationwide

If you pay attention to politics, and why else would you be one of the three readers here on this blog than you are a political junkie, then you know that one hoax after another has been trotted out against the president since he took office, in an effort to blunt his presidency.

If one hoax doesn’t work, like the “Russia collusion” thing that the chief “investigator” himself (Mueller) torpedoed in public, then another one is tried. Latest and greatest hoax is this Ukraine thing where one political party tries to cover up their corruption in the Ukraine by accusing the president of doing something wrong when he literally calls for an investigation into the corruption.

As ridiculous as this is, there is an arrangement that has taken shape in Washington, DC, and across America. Basically one political party is at war and uses anything available to them to advance that war, at any cost, and the other political party is kind of dumbfounded like a deer in the headlights.

One political party is throwing dust up in the air and running around screaming, or allowing ANTIFA Brownshirts to attack peaceful protesters while the city police are illegally told to not protect the peaceful protesters, while the other political party stands there slack-jawed, incredulous that anyone would abuse our governmental system so badly. That the DOJ is AWOL on ANTIFA and anti-civil rights mayors who enable their violence does not help.

If you want to watch all of what is happening in Washington, DC, and Seattle and Portland and Minneapolis and Charlotte, in a nutshell, then watch a fascinating fight on the Pennsylvania senate floor (below) where the Democrats throw the law and senate rules right out the window, and in response the Republicans mill around like a bunch of confused and rattled little school girls while one of them barks repetitively for a very long time about how the Democrats WILL follow the rules and hand over that microphone right now.

Which the Democrats do not do, of course. Instead, they do exactly what they want to do, which is to take control of the senate through lawless chaos and anarchy. They have zero respect or use for the law, or the rules, because at the moment neither suits their purpose. Wait until the rules and the law finally DO suit their purpose, and then watch out! They will bring a hammer and a sickle down on anyone standing up to them.

So, like what happens in DC, the Pennsylvania senate Republicans here are basically standing there flat-footed, dazed, confused, addled, with Jake Corman barking “Point of order! Point of order!”  like a worn out old dog whose angry bark is all it has. He has no bite.

Sad thing to me is that Jake is not a small guy, physically. He should have some confidence to stand up to his political opponents. I wanted to fist fight him a few years ago, but he wouldn’t stoop to it, and now here he is facing off with a real live Democrat insurrection, and he can’t even muster the courage to storm the podium and wrestle back the microphone and control of the senate floor. What a loser!

Jake, you are a weak kneed little girl, because all your career you have had everything handed to you. When you are needed most, you don’t have the strength of character to stand up and fight.

Lawless Democrats, confused, spineless Republicans, just like across America and in DC.

By the way, this lawlessness is exactly how the Communists took control of eastern Europe, because the good guys/better guys were too proper, followed ‘the rules’ even when there were no rules, and thereby failed to assert themselves when their leadership was most needed. The good guys lost.

Here is the amazing video.

[Screen grab] Pathetic and weak career politician Jake Corman barking like an annoying little lap dog at the mean Democrats who have stolen control of his precious senate floor process. Corman is surrounded by a bunch of little school girls dressed like men, who mill about confusedly. This is a snapshot of what is happening Across America as lawless Democrats take control while mystified Republicans stand around and ineffectively say “Hey, you can’t do that, you’re not allowed to do that.”

Stephen Miller on the DC “Deep State”

On a site like this where we pride ourselves on writing original content, it is rare to repeat writings by others. However, White House adviser Stephen Miller has given a radio interview, written up by journalist Matthew Boyle, that is so important, so accurate and incisive, it is being posted here because it must be. The URL for attribution is posted at the end of this post:

Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to President Donald Trump:

“Miller’s comments came at the end of the interview, after he discussed immigration and exposed the deep state’s “saboteurs” throughout government, who are attempting to undermine Trump because he is actually delivering for American workers and families.

“It gets to the heart of all these issues, which is you have a president who is fighting for you and fighting for your family against this execrable Washington swamp like no one has ever done before,” Miller said. “Every day, hour by hour, I am blessed and fortunate enough to see it up close and firsthand. No one has ever fought harder for you or more valiantly for you from the Oval Office than this president. We need to support him right now more than ever in the face of radical leftist Democrats and socialists and their allies in the media and in the permanent bureaucracy.”

Miller said the reason why the deep state and Democrats are coming after Trump is because their livelihoods as part of the permanent swamp in D.C. are at risk because Trump is changing the order of things in Washington.

“He keeps his solemn promises to the American people,” Miller said. “These saboteurs within and without the government, as I said earlier, are like parasites feeding off the nation, feeding off its wealth, feeding off its vitality, feeding off its freedom for their own personal enrichment at all of our expense.”

Miller warned Americans, too, that now is the time to fight back.

“So do not be a bystander to history,” Miller said. “This is happening now. The chance for extraordinary victory is here and now, but we have to win this battle, and we have to be successful in implementing these policies and beating back the Adam Schiffs of the world and the deep state and the fake news media and the corrupt news media.”

He also gave Americans advice about how to fight back, including making their support of Trump clear to their elected representatives and senators and posting Breitbart News articles on social media. If the public rallies to Trump’s side, Miller said, the American people can yet again defeat the globalist forces who want to perpetrate more destructive policies upon them—and the “fate” of the country itself lies in the hands of the people.

“Everyone has it in their power to make a difference, whether it’s writing to lawmakers, whether it’s posting important Breitbart articles on social media, whether it’s showing up and attending events with people who are supportive of the president and showing your own encouragement, or whether it’s talking to your friends and neighbors and just making sure they’re all engaged and informed,” Miller said. “But all of these things cumulatively multiplied by thousands and thousands and thousands of people is going to make an extraordinary difference. So it’s in your hands, to each and every one of your listeners, the fate of the future of the country.”

Originally published at https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/10/07/stephen-miller-warns-america-do-not-be-bystander-history-fate-future-country-hands/

It’s that time of year again

Plenty of things have gone to hell in a hand basket over the course of the last four or five decades, and I would only be living up my highest and bestest reputation as a grouchy curmudgeon if I ticked them all off here as a laundry list of petty grievances. But other writers and commenters have already done all that, much better than I can, so I am going to mention just one frustration. And it must be credited to that mild mannered conservationist Aldo Leopold, who first put his finger on this, on the very beginning of what ails us Americans today.

If I read one more time the overused phrase “In a Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold writes…” I am going to scream. You are there and I am here on the other side of the screen, and we cannot actually hear one another, so it will sound like a silent scream, but rest assured, it drives me nuts and right now I am doing my best silent scream imitation about this. Sure, it is a testament to how inspiring Leopold was and still is that so (so) many people begin all kinds of talks and writings and poems with this opener, citing some comment or observation Leopold made back in the crusty 1940s Dark Ages that yet, surprisingly, has so much application and salience today, eighty years later. But it is so very much overused to the point where it is almost maudlin to hear it used yet one more time.

And then, when I think of those intervening eighty years, well, they have been both a blessing and a curse, haven’t they, and so I find myself in that recognizably similar frame of mind…

So what the hell.

In Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, he talks about cutting down a large oak tree with a crosscut saw, and how much history is gliding by as the saw blade traverses across the tree stem. For every few growth rings that are sawn, Leopold lists various wars and human milestones, scientific achievements as well as natural science moments, as the blade cuts deeper. Just that description alone is a pretty cool writing achievement by Leopold. It is a symbol and image that so many people have trouble forgetting.

But then at the end of the essay, just when the reader thinks “Yeah, I suppose cutting fire wood is more symbolic and meaningful than I thought it was, guess there’s a lotta history in those old oaks at Grandpa’s farm,” Leopold suddenly gets to the whole raison d’être of his history lesson (and I am closely paraphrasing here):

I knew Americans were eventually doomed to cultural rot and failure when we discovered that heat came from a small switch on the wall, and not from cutting our own firewood every year.”

Here in the middle of his gentle outdoor lullaby, Leopold lamented the ease of life that had arrived with then-modern conveniences and services. He saw them as a two-edged sword, cutting both ways, for and against, because working hard for something, especially for your own ambient heat in the dead of winter, is an important lesson about how all humans are in truth part of the natural cycles around us all the time. Participating in these cycles humbles us, brings us into the actual healthy swing of things around us, helps integrate us with the earth’s natural vibe, tune, and wavelength, each of which we ride every moment of every day, even if we are unaware of it. And thus, it helps us thereby appreciate the natural world that sustains us every day. Even if we are unaware of it.

Leopold was advocating for Americans living newly cushy lives devoid of physical challenges to get the hell off their asses and live in the real world, to take responsibility for their own needs and not outsource everything (like the Romans did at their end). Cut their own firewood, grow a garden, shoot a grouse for dinner or a catch a fish for lunch. The ability to be self-reliant is not only an American trait from our frontier days, it is innately tied to all successful human cultures at all times.

Mind if we switch here to someone on the other side of the spectrum from our mild naturalist and wildlife biologist Aldo Leopold, who nonetheless expresses much the same sentiment?

I hate luxury. I exercise moderation…it will be easy to forget your vision and purpose once you have fine clothes, fast horses, and beautiful women. [All of which will result in] you being no better than a slave, and you will surely lose everything.” — Genghis Khan (brutal conqueror of the entire known world in his time).

As that completely successful “mad butcher” said it, luxuries make humans soft and weak. Hard work makes us strong and successful. If there is a hallmark of modern America, it is that we are awash in luxuries and conveniences, to the point where the younger generations have no idea how we arrived here at this point, how much sacrifice was required to give them these fancy phones and coffees. Our younger people think that luxuries and easy comforts just fall like manna from Heaven.

So, to be the truest, best American you can be, why not cut some firewood?

Here in central Pennsylvania it is that time of year again, the time of year where if you have not yet stacked the last of your firewood in the woodshed, you damned well better get on with it. Ain’t no time to lose. Any week now Mother Nature can show up with a big old cold surprise, a major dose of early Winter, knock out the electricity to your town, and leave you at the mercy of serious cold temperatures. It’ll be nice if we have all of October to enjoy mild Fall weather, with no need to light the wood stove, but you never know what the future brings. Better to be prepared, right?

Funny how something so insignificant as cutting one’s own firewood can be synonymous with an entire culture’s success or failure.

Wildlife biologist Aldo Leopold smoked tobacco, owned guns, ate what he hunted, planted a garden every year, and cut his own firewood. If you have not read A Sand County Almanac, then get it, because a world of special delight awaits you there, and it will change your life.

This season’s supply of split firewood stashed in the old woodshed, which is due to be replaced in 2020