Giving Thanks for Being an American
Thanksgiving Day may have originated three hundred years ago, when the first Pilgrims were starving to death in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and they were saved by local Indians who took pity on them, but it is still our big national holiday for the same sort of reasons today.
Native pumpkin squash, beans, wild turkey, and cranberry jelly that is native to the cranberry bogs of Massachusetts have ever since been the symbolic food at which we rejoice for our great good fortune for living in America, no matter where we live.
America is the freest country with the most opportunity available to the most people in the world. What an incredible place.
The symbolism of our unique national holiday food – turkey, cranberry sauce, pumpkin squash etc – is similar in meaning to the food of other nationalities and cultures. For example, the matza “bread of affliction” flatbread eaten every Passover by religiously observant Jews is a reminder of their own escape from hard slavery into newfound freedom. Many South American cultures form round breads from maize (corn, which is native to the Americas) and yams that are symbolic of how they eat together in a family circle. The French (and Italian) diet of bread, cheese, and wine may seem hedonistic on its face, but when one considers that even free French (and Italian) peasants had fertile land to farm and live on, their national food and drink make perfect sense. And so on for so many other cultures.
Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans. Enjoy this day together, unified as one people in union, heading on the same path of freedom together. We might be in tough times together right now, but we should take every opportunity to celebrate our shared identities. During the first (or second) American Civil War, soldiers on both the Union and Confederate lines would gather on Thanksgiving and Christmas nights to serenade each other with religious songs. In World War One, both German soldiers and Allied soldiers would sing Christmas songs back and forth to each other across the waste lands filled with destroyed men and war machines. My God, friends, if they could gather in peace one night a year, then how much more so can we Americans today gather together and wish each other
HAPPY THANKSGIVING, for we each have much to give thanks to God for!
Reflections on 2020 bear season
As if by magic or just the batting of an eyelid, the much anticipated 2020 bear season is now behind us, having concluded at dark yesterday. Sad to see our friends go; we had such a fun time! The last of our bear hunting guests have left, cleanup has commenced, preparations are under way for Thanksgiving, and there are some reflections to be had on bear season.
First, where the hell were the bears? Serious question here. We hunt in a mountainous Northcentral area that is Pennsylvania’s “Bear Central.” And despite us daily scouring a lot of remote, very rugged territory that is usually home to lots of bears, we saw neither bears nor bear poop. None. It could be the warm weather has bears hunkered down under cool overhangs in even more remote places. It could be the low acorn crop has bears going in to hibernation early, because there is no more food for them to eat to put on the extra fat they need to hibernate successfully. The truth is, no bear tracks or poops have been seen around here for months, which is remarkable. I cannot think of any year prior like this.
Second, where were all the hunters? We heard only a few shots between Saturday and Sunday, and either none or one on Monday, and for sure none on Tuesday; and very few hunting parties were on the radio on any day. This means that few large scale hunting drives were going on. Without hunters moving across the landscape, the bears don’t have to move out of their way. They can just sit still and not run the risk of exposing their rib cage to a hunter’s bullet. That means that the bears can loaf about in some remote corner, escaping the unseasonable warmth or just waiting for the wafting human scent to drift away before making their usual rounds again. Which means the few hunters who are out don’t see much action.
Third, where were all the other critters, like turkeys and deer? Like with bears, we saw very little deer or turkey poop in the woods. And although I myself saw two whopper bucks and a five-point up close, no one else saw any deer. Nor did any of us see any turkeys. Once again, the absence of these otherwise ubiquitous animals could be due to the relative absence of acorns. Which would push the wildlife far afield to find food sources.
Fourth, despite all of our hunting setbacks, did any of us care a bit? No! We missed all of our friends who could not be with us for various reasons, like fear of the CCP virus, or family emergencies requiring them to stay at home. But those of us who gathered had a lot of fun nonetheless. And with or without a bear on the game pole, we would not have missed this time together for any reason at all. We caught up on our families, our work, our homes, cars, friendships, wives, and politics (yeah, there was a lot of pro-Trump politics). Some people drank way too much alcohol, and we got some great pictures of it all, like the one guy asleep on the cold ground outside. No, we don’t post those here. We ate like kings, that is for sure, and no one lacked for food or drink.
Finally, it is possible that the new early bears seasons (archery, muzzleloader, and special junior+ senior rifle) are removing so many bears from the woods that come rifle season, very few huntable bears remain to be had. According to real-time hunting harvest data posted at the PA Game Commission website, more bears were killed in the early seasons than in the official rifle season this year. This means there are fewer bears available for the rifle hunters. It is possible that many hunters expected this, based on last year’s harvest patterns, and they stayed home or hunted alone, instead of joining the big crew at camp, like usual. As of late today, just 3,138 bears had been killed total this year. That is about a thousand fewer than expected.
Based on this raw data alone, the early bear seasons are actually backfiring. They are not removing the high surplus number of bears that are beyond Pennsylvania’s social carrying capacity. Rather, the early bear seasons are removing the easiest bears and leaving few to be hunted in the later rifle season.
And this new dynamic could be the real story in PA’s bear season: There are so many early season bear hunting opportunities for individuals that they collectively take the wind out of the sails for the regular season hunters, thereby having a boomerang effect on the entire thing and limiting it.
We won’t know what all this data really means for another few years, and by then either great or even fatal damage will have been done to Pennsylvania’s traditional bear camp culture, with its big gatherings and big drives and big camp camaraderie dying out, or we will simply all have to learn to adapt to new ways of hunting. I have to say, there is no substitute for men gathering at a camp to hunt together. The gathered hunting party is the most human of experiences; it is an institution as old as our species. Its purpose was not just making meat, but also social and sociological.
I sure hope these myriad new early bear seasons are not self-defeating, in that they do not kill that traditional bear camp culture by removing its whole purpose ahead of the game. Question for the PGC: What incentive is there to push your body hard through rugged and remote landscapes, destroying your boots, tearing your clothing, and often losing or breaking some of your gear, including damaging your gun, when the animal you are seeking has already been removed?
Below are some photos from one of our trail cameras two years ago. Just days after bear season ended, a bear was caught gloriously and most joyously rubbing its back against a young white pine tree. Almost like a pole dancer. Pretty hot hip shakes there. We haven’t seen a bear anywhere around here since May this year.
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When one of our guys is finally browbeaten into washing dishes after years, it is cause for “Notify the media” acts like taking his unhappy picture. This is back in 2015. He still has to be browbeaten into washing the damned dishes
Lycoming County is the boot-looking shape in the northcentral area. Its northwestern corner is where we hunt. The darkest township there demonstrates the importance of organized hunting drives. A bunch of large hunting clubs are located in this area, and their members put on highly coordinated, obviously successful drives.
Good luck, bear hunters!
Bear rifle season is here in Pennsylvania, starting tomorrow morning, and in many rural places bear hunting has displaced deer hunting as the primary outdoor recreational activity.
Pennsylvania’a bear population is at an all-time (modern times) high, as demonstrated at least in my own small world by the large black bear that showed up a block from my Harrisburg City home last year. Or the other bear that showed up on the same street, but ten blocks closer to the down-town area, a few months later. When bears are showing up in major cities, you know their regular rural habitat is filled up, and the younger generations are looking for new homes.
So good luck to Pennsylvania’s bear hunters tomorrow through next Wednesday. Our own crew is half of the usual number, due to some guys fearing the CCP virus, and some others having health emergencies at home that prevent them from traveling. Normally we field guys from five states across the East Coast, and at one time, all the way from California. Last year we had a guy from England. Usually the cabin is packed and noisy, and this year it will be more subdued. Nonetheless, despite the challenges this year, we will still field a hunting crew. Some will be out tomorrow, some out Sunday, and some out the rest of the week.
Here in the hills, we have not seen bear sign for a long time, which is surprising. Our township here usually produces one of the highest bear harvests in the entire state. We shall see what happens, however, as hunters enter the woods and begin to push animals around. In places where no bears have been seen all year, there could well be a bunch running through.
Good luck to those who are hunting alone, with family, or with their usual chums. For me, this time together just cannot be missed. It comes just once a year, and is gone so quickly that you almost can’t believe it was here to begin with.
Be safe and have fun!
Diana Archer saves my brain from Exploding
Across America brains are either exploding or are on the edge of it.
Mine is on the edge of exploding, because I was expecting an honest election result two weeks ago. You know, where my preferred candidate successfully barnstormed the swing states and generated big results. Instead, the election experienced tremendous voting irregularities, outright open fraud, political interference, and a clear effort to spam the whole process with such an overwhelming number of fake ballots and fraudulent counting that clearing the whole mess up will take a herculean effort. It did not matter that my preferred candidate had worked his ass off, had taken many risks and worked himself tirelessly to persuade an unusual mix of new and old voters to support him.
Instead, what awaited my preferred candidate after Election Day was a slew of fake voting machines that have been tampered with, fake ballots, fake ballot counting with no transparency etc etc across eight states, and a fake media that was pre-pared (like prepared to be prepared) to immediately anoint his opponent the winner, regardless of the actual outcome.
Fake it til ya make it and then election by media acclaim is what has been attempted against my candidate. It is infuriating, because it runs contrary to everything America is about.
Making the post-election period worse than the actual fake tallying process already was, is the mainstream media and Big Tech effort to censor and suppress information contrary to their narrative that Joe Biden won and is now the President Elect. It is one thing to go to bat for an ancient 47-year career politician who is corrupt and senile. It is another thing altogether to try to hide not only his corruption but also the fake election that he “won.”
Interesting that Biden did not win any down-ballot elections across America, almost all of which (98% I think) went for his opponents….no, no predicted “blue wave” happened…Biden just happened to win the “big one.” In real elections, this does not happen, because all of the real votes are correlated with various other candidates, and not just the presidential race. This is Exhibit A in the vote tampering argument.
So those of us addicted to the simple idea of a fair-and-square transparent election have had our heads exploding for two weeks. We cannot believe the unashamed, scandalous behavior that is happening in front of our eyes, what is really an illegal attempt to hijack an entire nation.
While I could sit at my computer and stare wild-eyed into my iPhone as the 1,440 minutes slowly tick by each day that this scandalous process unfolds, like so many friends are doing, I have decided to remove myself from this tense situation. Instead, a lady named ‘Diana Archer’ is taking me out into the woods and fields, where we are going to contemplate life, love, being a balanced human being, etc. I need this time to regain some inner balance that has been thrown askew, and I think about 75-million other voters probably feel the exact same way. Fortunate me that I have Diana to take my hand and lead me on.
To be explicit, Diana Archer is really Diana The Archer, the Goddess of the Hunt. As hunting season has now arrived full force, from deer to bear to ducks to doves, the whole east coast is alive with clandestine rural life, all led by Diana.
With Diana at my side, I intend to sleep snugly in my Seek Outside tent, using its titanium stove to keep warm at night, to boil tea in the mornings, and to dry out inevitably wet clothing. During daylight hours Diana will hopefully be by my side, helping me get into a kind of Thoreau-Wilderness-Zen mindset, where nothing can trouble me, and I become at one with the natural rhythm of Mother Nature and the rifle in my hand. And no, there is no scandal in this pure woman’s company, just the spirit of the hunt, which is often just the hunt for the spirit.
So, see you all in a bit. Forgive me if I am not glued to this computer screen, but am escaped, at least for a healthy while.
An Art Deco Diana
A Classical Diana the Huntress with a stag
An ancient Diana with hunting dog, photo by Rebecca Bugge
America just experienced an insurrection, not an election
With all of last week’s midnight ballot dumping, deliberate vote miscounts, and voting software “glitches” relentlessly coming to light, we are faced with the fact that America did not have an election last week. Rather, we experienced a massive nation-wide vote fraud scheme aimed at literally taking over the American government under the guise of having an election.
This is not an election, it is an illegal insurrection against the laws, people, and sitting government of America.
Last Tuesday’s election was not open, it was not fair, it was not legal. The more people dig, the more fraud is found. A fraudulent election is not a legal election, and an election that is not legal does not count.
One of the most incredible things ever in American electoral history happened this year. Both the national media (Big Media) and the Silicone Valley technological and social media firms like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube (Big Tech) have waged an open war against transparency and information flow. The blatant de-platforming of people, censorship, and blocking of certain information by Big Media and Big Tech is nothing other than partisan electioneering on behalf of one political party and one candidate, the Democrat Party and Joe Biden.
The media is entitled to First Amendment protections when they act as the media. But when the media becomes an active and aggressive participant in the effort to elect one person and to protect one political party, then the media is no longer the media. It has become a political antagonist, a partisan actor, whose actions are regulated just like every other political donor. The undeclared, unregulated in-kind donation value to the Democrat Party and the Biden Campaign of Big Media and Big Tech must be in the billions of dollars. This is hugely illegal and hugely criminal.
Big Media and Big Tech are right now waging what can only be called an all-out war against the flow of information that shows voting fraud and that casts material doubt on their collective claim that Joe Biden won last week’s campaign. In every way possible, Big Tech and Big Media are de-platforming, hiding, shadow-banning, and suppressing people and information that runs contrary to their attempt to coronate Joe Biden as the inevitable winner of last week’s election. Nothing about this effort is honest, or fair, or careful. When a US Postal Service worker files an affidavit about what he has seen with his own eyes and heard with his own ears, Big Media and Big Tech immediately attack his character and also spread the lie that he recanted his affidavit.
CNN’s Jake Tapper has gone so far as to begin to threaten the livelihood and career of every single person who has served in the Trump Administration, by personally identifying them and broadcasting their home address and other personal information, for the express purpose of having other people attack them physically.
Do you, dear reader, believe that this is the legal function of the media? To serve as an information hub to direct a physical and legal and personal war against American citizens who are otherwise lawfully engaged in their jobs and careers?
Folks, we are witnessing an illegal attempted takeover of the United States government through a fraudulent election by one political party and its allies in media and technology firms. They are trying to physically intimidate everyone who stands in their way. We are right now way far away from any kind of election at this point, and we are now seeing a substantive effort to take over the government and to eliminate all opposition, all people, who disagree with it. This is a war effort, not a debate about policy or even legalities.
When people stop using words, they reach for their swords, and at this point Big Media, Big Tech, and the Democrat Party are aggressively eliminating the opportunity for using words to resolve this conflict. Words they oppose are censored out of the public square. They are trying to crush all resistance to their control of everything in America. This is an insurrection, which is illegal under existing American law.
The existing Insurrection Act allows the sitting, lawfully elected president of the United States, to quell this warfare before it becomes bloody battles in the streets of America. Mister President, I encourage you to invoke the Insurrection Act and bring stability to America, end this illegal mutiny against the sitting government, and bring calm and honesty to the effort to count all LEGAL votes that were cast in last week’s election.
America is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and just because some other people decide they will commit a crime and then crush all dissent and transparency with an iron fist does not make them legitimate. Their behavior makes them mutineers, insurrectionists, traitors.
Save our Republic, Mister President, or say goodbye forever to the free America that existed as of just a few days ago.
Note*: For readers who think I am either totally nuts, or partisan (ha ha that would be funny), or mislead, or confused, or emotional, or any other number of possible causes for this post, you are encouraged to step outside the mainstream media box in which you are probably getting your information. Go to the Epoch Times and see what they have to say about the election fraud and questions we are living with right now.
Fake News Media Fakes Out Its Own Self; NY Recount Needed
By trying to fake out the world about the American election result last week, the politically partisan, politically activist, factually fake news media faked its own self out.
So eager and quick were the various “news” outlets to declare Biden the winner of last Tuesday’s election, different channels were actually calling certain state races for him even before a single vote was reported in those states. Minnesota and Michigan come to mind. There were others.
Even as voting was still ongoing, the fake news media were declaring clearly contested states like Arizona for Biden. Even FOX did it, with their empty talking heads most seriously announcing that Biden had won the election long before all the counts were done, long before all the voting was even done. On YouTube the AP (Associated Press) is now cited on every discussion and post about the election as the putative authoritative source for Biden winning the 2020 election. As if the AP counted all the votes.
So there we have it, I guess. Right? We just have to accept what the AP says along with all the other Democrat News sources. After all, this fake news media told us the election outcome before there even was an outcome, so we have to just accept it, I suppose.
Nope, we don’t have to accept it. Who the hell is the AP, and who put them in charge of the election! In fact, we need to really consider what the AP’s inaccurate declaration actually meant.
It was all a bluff, if not an attempted coup d’etat, meant to create the illusion that Biden had won the election early on, when in fact all kinds of states and key localities were and still are in play, in every way, with neither candidate having enough Electoral College votes to authoritatively declare the win.
And now that the massive multi-state voter fraud is beginning to become evident, known, and analyzed, the many Trump Campaign objections, lawsuits, challenges, demands, and specific accusations of fraud are beginning to get traction. Which is now indicating that at the very very least Biden MAY have won by an extremely narrow margin, like just a few Electoral College votes, or in the alternative, Trump may have won this election with 300 Electoral College votes.
Despite the news media’s ongoing attempt to keep the “Biden won” narrative alive, we will have to wait and see the actual results, won’t we? At the very least, it appears that Justice Alito’s order to Pennsylvania to segregate the ballots received after 8:00PM last Tuesday night away from the others received during Election Day hours is not going to be fulfilled by either Philadelphia or PA Governor Wolf. This means that those suspect late ballots will (correctly) be disqualified and will not be counted, which results in Trump winning Pennsylvania.
Who knows how the other contested states will go, now that we are all becoming familiar with the several savage ways the Democrat Party aggressively cheated in this election? We will just have to all wait and see. There is no quick and easy answer, despite the partisan media’s ongoing best efforts at the ever-popular immediate gratification. And frankly, democracy is almost always messy and cluttered up with stuff, because it’s the nature of its system of checks and balances. It is the tyrannies who have super smooth and so easily predictable elections. Isn’t it disconcerting that America’s media tried to emulate how a tyranny runs an election!
Until the final and actual legal voting (not balloting) results in Michigan, Minnesota, Arizona, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, and possibly other states, are known to us citizens, we have other things to discuss. Like how this attempted media coup d’etat raises questions about the role of the media and the supposed First Amendment protections it enjoys. An openly partisan and politically activist media is no longer a news outlet, it is a mouthpiece for certain political and economic interests, including America’s arch enemy, China. That makes the people who own them and run them official traitors.
Which makes you wonder why we have to accept New York State’s close election outcomes as official and accurate. New York is run by one of the most partisan and corrupt governors in America, Andrew Cuomo, beloved of the fake news media. He would do anything to prevent a Republican from winning New York.
So let the New York election result challenge and digging begin. If we dig deep enough, we might end up in China…
November 8th screenshot of WHP580’s home page, a FOX News affiliate, doing its best Dewey Defeats Truman attempt.
Here is today’s November 9th screen shot of WHP580’s home page. Backtracking happening as the Dewey Defeats Truman effect takes hold of a corrupt and partisan media
Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act and stabilize America
The Democrat Party decided that trying to steal an entire country in broad daylight was better than having corrupt Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton go to jail and the Party remaining in political purgatory for a generation. In for a penny, in for a Pound, they thought, and so they committed enormous voter fraud across America, figuring the risks were worth it. If you doubt me, go look. Project Veritas alone has scads of actual videos of people committing felonious fraud.
Despite not one state’s Election Day results being certified, the Democrat Party’s communication arm, known as the Mainstream Media/ Big Media, and Big Tech (Google, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube etc), is also in on this theft. These partisan political activists are aggressively pushing a false narrative that Biden won, and everyone should just get over it and move on. Given that the same partisan activists have pushed a nonstop negative narrative about Trump for the past four years, and also censored information contrary to their narrative, no one is surprised, even though their speech now is not protected by the First Amendment.
What both the Democrat Party and Big Media and Big Tech are doing is declaring war on the American electoral system and on the people who own it, you and me, We, The People. They are in open rebellion, and what the Fake Media people are doing is fomenting that rebellion. That is illegal. It is treason.
The question in this situation comes down to who has a stronger willpower. The Biden/ Harris pretenders to the throne, or the current and future president, Donald Trump.
Donald Trump has played by the rules for five years, and at every turn all of his enemies, who are also the enemies of a free and democratic America, have not played by the rules. They have used every illegal trick and theft and lie to try to undermine him or eject him from office. The spying by Obama, Russia collusion hoax, Ukraine hoax, fake impeachment, tax hoax, constant lies by the Big Media and information suppression by Big Tech etc etc etc, all of these fake narratives and lies were thrown at Trump to knock him out, either politically or literally out of office. And despite it all, he prevailed and won a second term in office, fair and square. Trump’s Electoral College number appears to be 300.
So will Donald Trump stay in office and use the presidency to restore order to America? Or will he allow himself to be bullied out of office by a bunch of thieves? If he stays, he should invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to use federal troops to quell rebellion inside America. This is also playing by the rules.
The Insurrection Act has been used several times in our nation’s history, including fairly recently by President Eisenhower, because in the 1950s and 1960s the Democrat Party refused to racially de-segregate schools in the South. Armed troops were needed to bring the rebellious Democrat Party to heel once again (that seditious political party should have been officially disbanded in 1865 after the Civil War they started).
There is no easy way to say this, but everything I see and hear over the past few days is that a sizable portion of the electorate is going to fight about this attempted theft. And we already know that the Democrat Party’s Brownshirt street thugs – BLM and Antifa – are prepared to fight. So it seems that fighting in the streets is inevitable, one way or another, no matter who moves into the White House or who stays there.
The question is, does President Trump have the strength of character and the nerve of Abraham Lincoln to stare down and quell an open rebellion by the Democrat Party? I hope so. Because if he buckles and gives in, not only will all of the unbelievable crimes committed by so many Democrat Party bigwigs go unpunished, there will be an enormous crime wave under color of law against the “enemies” of the Democrat Party. For example, they will declare the NRA a domestic terror organization, raid its offices, and hunt down its members. Once in office, Biden’s continuing criminal activity will have some semblance of legitimacy, and we can’t let that happen.
Dear Mister President, please invoke the Insurrection Act and bring stability to America. Get the LEGAL votes counted.