Posts Tagged → guns
Ruger is about to be eaten alive
While the American gun world is presently enthralled by the ATF’s latest effort to deep-six the NFA and emasculate the GCA, and make SBRs and sawed-offs and suppressors available for all, we have something much more prosaic to discuss here. And it sucks.
Bill Ruger, Sr., was a famously driven man, a true American, who from his earliest adult years made unique, high quality guns that he wanted to make. These were firearms not yet on the market by any other manufacturer, and with no indications that there ever would be a market for them. They were often modeled after guns that had at one time been centerpieces of the foreign sporting world, like elegant, accurate British and Scottish-made Farquarson action single shots. And yet the markets followed him. In fact, Bill Ruger created markets not just for his own guns, but for whole categories of guns that Americans had not shown interest in for a hundred years, if ever.
Like the Ruger #1, a single shot, based on the Henry/ Farquarson action. Simple, rugged, exceptionally accurate, capable of all kinds of Africa-scale rounds. He also made side-by-side shotguns, and over-under shotguns, when both were falling out of favor to blastemall semi-autos. In fact, many younger Americans had never actually seen a double barreled shotgun in person, when Ruger brought his Red Label onto the market. Like the Bearcat and subsequent revolvers, introduced at a time when cowboy-style guns were long out of style.
Bill Ruger adapted investment casting for many of his firearms, which saved a lot of money in laborious machining and turning raw stock. He revolutionized modern gun manufacturing so well that competing companies, like Colt, began chasing the new markets that Bill Ruger had opened, often adopting his manufacturing methods in part or in full.
One of my favorite rifles is a 1980s Ruger M77 RSI International .308, that is as light and as pointable as a stalk of goldenrod, as accurate as a laser, and easy to carry all day long. Because it is so exceptionally light, short, and handy, and has a thumb safety on the tang, it is exceptionally fast on snap shots while stalking deer and bear in the mountains. My M77 RSI has killed countless deer and one bear. But the challenge with the M77 RSI is that Ruger had the short, thin, finely tapered barrels milled with the scope mounts integral to the barrel. Like the Germans used to do (and occasionally still do) on their finest sporting rifles. While a fabulous little work of art, the manufacturing costs for this gun were too high, and it was discontinued in the early 1990s. Tang-safety M77s were made a few years more, and then the ridiculous wing safety was used on all subsequent M77s. No still hunting for you!
Recently, Ruger bought out the old Marlin machinery from the old Remington plant in Ilion, New York. I toured that factory about fifteen years ago, and what a loss that it is now gone, that the workers there are gone, that the Remington name is now gone from the town of its founding after more than two hundred years. Crappy or shady business practices caused the new-new-new Remington to fail, even though it produced many good products. Though the old Marlin 1895 was not well made in the Remington plant, with “Remlin” rifles pretty low on the totem pole.
Well, Ruger took the lever action world by storm when it resuscitated the Marlin 1895 a few years ago, in its state-of-the-art Mayodan, North Carolina plant. Flawless, incredibly accurate, reliable, rugged, this stainless lever gun in its original 45-70 became the go-to for Alaskan big game guides in grizzly country. It is the gun I take hunting in Alaska. I have killed several deer and a bear with mine. One shot kills, one at 160 yards with open sights (my eyes are aging and that kind of shooting just ain’t happening any more, sadly).
And Ruger has also continued to make all the oldies-but-goodies that are cornerstones of the gun owning world: The GP100 .357, .44 Mag Redhawk, .44 Mag Blackhawk, .45 Colt Vaquero, and Bearcat revolvers, the Ruger Number 1 single shot, and the M77 series of rifles, among others.
Ruger can continue to run a perfectly successful business making these “legacy” models, because while their markets are not on fire, like the 1895 is, they are steady. Their customers want them. Not by the truckload, but enough to keep several highly trained workers busy full-time, and money coming in steadily.
But Ruger is about to be eaten alive in a foreign corporate takeover, and the company has already notified its customers that it is dropping an awful lot of the oldies-but-goodies, including most of the revolvers. Whether this decision is a tactical retreat under the turtle shell by current ownership, in order to shed less-productive or under-performing, or expensive to make products, balance the books, and shield against the coming hostile takeover attempt, or is a giant flash increase in short-term profitability so that the takeover costs as much as it possibly can, who can say. The fact is, Beretta is gunning for Ruger, and it appears that they are likely to take over.
And Ruger is showing the signs of a prey animal. Tossing stuff overboard in an attempt to pick up speed as it flees its pursuer.
Forgive my national pride and my national interest bit, but I am not happy about losing another indigenous firearm manufacturing company to a foreign country. Yeah yeah yeah, Beretta is 500 and some years old. Whateva. Great. I like that. Good for Italy. But that means nothing of consequence to any of us Americans, when what we need are Ruger replacement parts easily obtainable here in America, sold to us by Americans on the phone.
Remington 3.0 went to the Great Gun Maker in the sky a few years ago. Winchester bounced back and forth between the Japanese and the Belgians, and now exists in some purgatorial form that occasionally shows up like a ghost, and then disappears back into the shadows, again. Colt has barely hung on, same for Smith & Wesson. America’s native gun makers are Henry, Taylor’s (which also imports quality Italian firearms), Barrett, a few other small shops specializing in hyper accurate sporting rifles. America needs all the gun makers it can get, making not just sporting weapons but military weapons, too. We cannot survive if we outsource our weapons acquisitions to foreign makers.
America needs Ruger. But it appears we are getting Beretta, and there is no way that firm is going to run the company the Bill Ruger way. Here comes the corporate slashing and bleeding, the loss of fabulous guns, and the loss of American jobs, in the name of maximum profit. Maybe Beretta wants a lever action shotgun, and is acquiring Ruger just for that. I guess that might be in the spirit of ol’ Bill.
Ruger’s M77 RSI International in .308, that has killed over a hundred deer in my hands, a bear, some other critters. Just recently topped with a now discontinued Leupold 1×5, perfect for the slow mountain still hunting I enjoy
Ruger Marlin 1895 in 45-70 with shed buck I shot in Dauphin County a few years ago. Laser accurate gun
Abandoned mine site in remote Alaska, five mile walk in from dead-end dirt road. Over a week of hunting this area, I saw moose and griz aplenty, heard a wolf pack howling, passed up on a smaller black bear I literally walked right up to and looked over. Having my own handloaded brass solids in the Ruger Marlin 1895 was the most reassuring feeling
Hunting in Alaska requires all kinds of layers, and waterproofs, rubber boots, and stainless rifles. The Ruger Marlin 1895 is my go-to gun for these trips
Soccer…nope
With the FiFi or FAFO or FIFA or whatever the hell soccer thing it is that is happening right now in America, Americans are being offered a front seat view of a sport that never caught on here. Soccer is big everywhere else around the world, because you just need an inflated ball, and bingo, you have a game.
Well, please allow me to set straight the wondrously gawking European guests here right now about our sports choices here in America: We like blood and guts and body armor.
Football (which soccer is not and never will be) is America’s official sport even more than baseball. Because our football involves military level strategy, tactics, gear, and military level hand to hand combat, it best captures the imagination of high testosterone men. Had the NFL not politically and culturally abandoned high T men, and patriotic men, and self respecting straight men, it would still be broadly popular.
But even in its deliberately weakened state, American football remains far more manly and exciting to watch than a bunch of too-skinny guys, who wear skinny jeans when not running in circles for pay, run up and down up and down up and down and around the damned field over and over. In soccer, whenever there is any manly contact, the referee starts effeminately tossing rainbow colored flags all over, the guys all stand around bitching and whining and gesticulating, and then it’s over. People start running in circles again.
Soccer is incredibly boring. I feel bad for those cultures that believe soccer is exciting. Watching paint dry must be one of their other national sports. In American football, men settle disputes in manly ways: People get dragged, carted, or helped off the field, such is the damage. That is true manly combat and contest, it is cool, it is exciting, and it is far superior to soccer.
Yeah, Europe has its rugby, which is manly, and bloody, grant you that. But it is also an ill-disciplined anarchic gang fight blur, which American cities have daily, for no charge. It impresses us Americans a little bit more than soccer, which will never catch on here.
Welcome to America, European cousins! Don’t forget to branch out your interests while you are here, beyond accepting that our American football is THE football. Shoot some guns, eat some red meat, enjoy your freedom, then take some manly toughness and defiance back home with you. God knows, ever-more autocratic Europe needs a huge dose of manliness, testosterone, and American style football-and-six shooter-style frontier justice from its people right now.
Glad you guys came here for the soccer, and left with your own must-have list of guns. Don’t forget to buy a Stetson cowboy hat on your way out, too. You want the EU bureaucrat people back home to know you mean business.
Memes for your enjoyment
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Joe Biden is a criminal liar and a thief
Joe Biden’s bribery schemes with China and Ukraine are epic. The biggest criminal endeavor in a public office in American history. A huge scandal.
That Joe Biden used his corrupt pedophile son Hunter Biden to do a lot of his dirty work is well documented. That Hunter Biden had already done enough criminal activity on his own with drugs, guns, tax evasion, underage sex trafficking, and other felonies is a testament to just how bad these guys are. Really, really bad people.
For two years Joe Biden lied to the American people, telling us emphatically that he would let the justice system play out with his son Hunter Biden’s many legal entanglements. And then suddenly, today, Joe Biden issued a broad pardon for his son going from 2014 to 2024 and including any crimes he might have done and has not yet been charged with. In other words, Hunter Biden has a thirty-day Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card.
One of the reasons I despise partisan politics is how being loyal to a broken brand makes people say ridiculous things. And so today we got a parade of Democrat Party loyalists pooh-poohing the pardon, trying to explain that all the lies that Joe Biden told us were not really lies, etc. Some people, notably Hollywood actor types, actually celebrated this historic pardon, as if it looks good for a corrupt father president to pardon his corrupt son for so many crimes over such a long period of time.
This pardon is in effect a confession of criminality. I just wish that all of the politically devoted partisans would try to hold onto a shred of integrity and at least be honest about this: It smells bad.
Abortion is now the issue?
Suddenly abortion is the political issue on Election Day?
Strange how it took yet another fake issue like this to galvanize a certain voter base. I myself was more bothered by Biden calling all Trump supporters “garbage” last week, than fake hype about “Trump will take away your abortion.” On the one hand, we are talking about at least 150 million Americans who, according to various personalities on the far Left, are “deplorables,” or “garbage,” or “extremists” because a bunch of moms and dads went to school board meetings. On the other hand, how many women (we know how to identify women now, don’t we!) get abortions every year? Not that many.
Abortion is not mentioned in the US Constitution because it was considered a horror in the 1780s. No one clamored for a personal freedom to kill babies back then, except savages. So when the US Supreme Court recently returned abortion policy back to the states where it had always been and always belonged up until Roe v. Wade, a lot of Americans cheered. Because it made sense: On the one hand we have Kamala Harris saying she is going to take away our guns, which are explicitly protected by the Second Amendment, and on the other hand Kamala Harris is also talking about free abortions for everyone, men, women, children, babies, including up to old age…and abortion/ murder of born people is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution.
Because to kill a breathing person is murder.
Kamala has a huge disconnect on the Constitution, she is at war with the Constitution, and Americans need to be protected from her. The Constitution is what protects We, The People from a government gone rogue.
President Trump made it clear he supported moving abortion policy back to the states, and that is where it will remain. What is the point of pursuing it further? Trump knows that it is a lose-lose political issue, and he also knows that it is an issue of changing hearts and minds, not forceful legislation.
Abortion as a political issue is a question about how the hell Americans ever became enamored of it. How it morphed into being called “health care,” the little human a “piece of protoplasm,” and the actually born alive baby…just left to die on a stainless steel table somewhere, which is infanticide/murder. How coarse!
I am married, and I have daughters, and I have a mother, and I understand women wanting control of their body. But the definition of abortion has moved way way beyond anything a civilized culture ever contemplated. This is no longer about control of one’s body, it has become control over the cold blooded execution of someone else.
This subject is not going to be solved with laws. Just like it is already against the law to murder and rape people, and yet lots of murders and rapes happen, especially with Kamala’s wide open borders. It all comes down to frame of mind, state of mind, culture, values, family, and yes, church/temple. These have to be addressed and changed at the street level, inside homes. Laws are not going to change people.
Trump has repeatedly said he has no desire or ability to deal with the abortion issue any longer. And while I agree with him on fact, I think that is a shame, because the one thing we need on this subject are people in leadership roles appealing to our better natures, to our hearts and minds. Freedom is the ability to protect yourself, not to murder someone.
I USED to be a Democrat
I used to be a registered Democrat, until 1992, the last time I voted for a Democrat for president, when Bill Clinton became president and immediately went to war against private gun ownership. Guns in civilian hands is a sign of a healthy nation, and when politicians want to disarm the civilians, it is a bad sign, that tyranny is awake and active. The Democrat Party hates private gun ownership and is constantly trying to end it. Kamala Harris is on record that she will come and take our guns, if she is elected. No way.
So I am not a big believer in political parties, because as the Pennsylvania GOP has shown over and over, it is really just about a small handful of wealthy elite people here making most of the decisions. This is not democratic, open, transparent, or good for representative government. Both political parties suck, it is just that one is much worse than the other.
That said, one thing that is really acutely toxic to democracy is a group like today’s Democrat Party. This is the political party of tyranny, of big government, of market intervention, of no gas stoves for you, indoctrinating little girls to cut their breasts off in school, and so on. Today’s Democrat Party is anti freedom, anti choice, anti child, anti education, anti family, anti religion, anti science, and anti America. It is so bad that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. of all people had to leave it. So as bad as the PAGOP is, the Democrat Party is worse, and it must be resisted at all turns.
I have yet to have a meaningful conversation with ardent Democrats. They to a person turn off, tune out, walk away, get really angry and defiant. Not one has been able to have a calm conversation about politics, or to calmly explain what they stand for and why they stand for it. Way too many are waving around signs that have some nonsense about Trump and Project 2025. Trump had nothing to do with the Heritage Foundation’s ultra nerdy conservative wishlist Project 2025.
The #WalkAway movement is really valuable, and anyone feeling like they are uncomfortable with the Democrat Party can simply Walk Away from it like so many others are doing. I am not saying you have to become a registered Republican, although the more independent minded voters that register as Republicans, the greater the likelihood that The People can finally defeat the bad GOPe. If you become an Independent or No Political Party, you will suddenly find yourself…unburdened by what was.
Could Today’s Young Americans do a June 6th D-Day?
Today is the 80th anniversary of the June 6th D-Day assault by a combined military force of Americans, British, Canadians, free French, Australians, Greeks, Czechs, Belgians, and others, on the beaches of Normandy, which officially began the Western democracies’ response to the great evils being perpetrated by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, and their allies.
A tremendous amount of heroism took place by the attackers on and around the beaches of D-Day Normandy, and by the paratroopers dropped behind enemy lines, some of it memorialized by movies like Saving Private Ryan. But most of D-Day was just simple military work – logistics with food, fuel, ammunition, spare parts, temporary shelters, etc., driving boats or loading boats, or cleaning boats or preparing or repairing boats, etc.
The men who made D-Day happen, whether way far away from the battle lines or way up close in front of it and right in it, were up to the task, whatever their own personal task was, because they came from a generation of westerners, generally, and Americans, specifically, who valued and knew hard work, who were comfortable taking reasonable risks, and who understood the importance of freedom. They did what was expected of them, and eventually won the war for freedom.
And so as I wandered around this past week “behind enemy lines”, so to speak, in a college town rife with young college age men and older men alike mincing and swishing, all, gay and straight, mind you, I wondered if today’s young Americans would be up to the task of a June 6th D-Day assault on entrenched defenders at Omaha Beach or Utah Beach in Normandy. Or even in an elementary school playground sandbox.
Looking at the ubiquitous un-athletic, unnaturally skinny, occasionally obese men, whose universal gait contains little to no masculine movement, no blocky limbs brought abruptly to the end of their motion forward or backward by tight muscles, but rather includes a most unnatural widely and fluidly swinging arms, with the wrist bending and the hands and fingers swinging upward, and dainty steps, I am thinking No.
Judging by what I have been seeing this past week, I would be betting on the bad guys with this generation of American men. Our guys just are not up to any sort of warrior spirit, much less warrior behavior or warrior actions. Frankly, from what I see, a majority of both the straight and the gay men today are girly. They all adopt lilting and nasally girly voices, baby talk like girls, and almost seem to aspire to be perceived as feminine. These guys are never going to carry a rifle into battle, much less shoot the rifle at their enemy, much less work hard with their bodies and develop manly muscles.
Why is this unnatural feminization of men and artificial dumbing down of 100% natural and 100% healthy maleness happening? Well, we can’t discount the overt assault on masculinity (so called “toxic masculinity”) by government schools, college professor indoctrinators, and pop culture. Recall the disastrous Gillette advertisement. Jiminy crickets.
We also have to consider the overt assault on little boys and boyhood by the educational and medical establishments. Fist fights are a huge no-no now. Fist fights among school boys were common when I grew up, and many of those boys on the other end of my fists ended up close friends until right now today. This was common practice for oh, about eighty thousand years of human development, but suddenly the feminine and incapable men convinced the masculine and highly physically capable men that being masculine and highly physical is bad, unworthy, etc. And so, boys can’t play cops and robbers anywhere any more, can’t pretend to shoot each other even with finger guns (gun shape made by pointing a finger like a gun barrel), and certainly cannot engage in any rough-and-tumble outside of a carefully circumscribed place of athletic activity. And of course, football, being the most aggressive and most testosterone-fueled sport, has been under attack by the media and medical establishments for a long time.
Speaking of testosterone, we know that testosterone levels are way down across America, and across all other Western countries, too. Probably a direct result of the lack of physical activity by boys and young men, and the emphasis on looking and acting feminine, and the wars on boyhood, manhood, and masculinity. As a result, lots of young women are complaining about being unable to find a manly man for a mate, and the older women are complaining that “there are no real men left.”
Plenty has been written and surmised about the effects of ubiquitous hormone-blocking herbicides (causing alligators in Lake Okeechobee to become hermaphroditic, an issue when I first started working at the USEPA in 1991) on both boys and girls and their sexual development.
Plenty has been written and surmised about the effects of over-drugging American children for supposedly “hyperactive” and “attention deficit” problems, which are really just evolutionary adaptive solutions in traditional hunter-gatherer societies (and now liabilities in our modern sedentary society).
Plenty has been written and surmised about the effects of over-drugging American children and adults alike for supposed “anxiety” disorders, which are really just normal human responses to the sensory and stimulation expectation overload addiction that is modern America.
And of course, the elites’ establishment narrative is that guns are bad.
And so here we are, mid-2024, celebrating and marking the 80th anniversary of D-Day, where manly men, masculine men, strong men, brave men, charged right into hellfire so that the world could live free. That’s you and me, son. And I don’t think most of today’s young men would or even could do any of what happened on June 6th, 1944, even if they decided they want to. What a huge failure.
Not only is this failure a shame, it is a huge signal to the world that America is very weak. And weakness invites takeover attempts by those who are not weak. And what amazes me is that the effeminate, mincing, swishing young men, straight and gay alike, do not realize that their effete and artificially soft lives will end abruptly, if they cannot man up and begin to become real men. That takes both a strong mind and a strong body.
A big Thank You to the men of D-Day, whose valor gave us Americans and Europeans freedom unlike the world had ever seen before, and which is now under great attack and pressure by enemies who are not afraid of us.
Tyrant wannabe David Hogg inspires 2A resilience
I photographed this in a visitor guide to Ithaca, New York. Scientific fact that only females can menstruate, but the mentally disabled want to not only pretend that biological men can menstruate, but that everyone must bow down and acknowledge it and support this craziness. This picture is a big part of what is killing America, and one cannot help but wonder who is really behind this
Midsummer report
My apologies for the long absence here. Summer is in full swing and our family has been operating at full tilt speed. Time only for doing things, and none for writing about it all, until now.
First off, our oldest kid was married on Independence Day. Held at a pretty and historic farm, it was a fantastic wedding, and we feel like we acquired a wonderful addition to our family. However, the preparation necessary for that event took up a lot of time and energy, for many months. And then there was the recovery week. And then there was the vacation week. Hence no blog posts. Full credit to my wife for all of the wedding planning.
At least I myself am back in the saddle, while other people around me are still recovering from their vacation. Not everyone does well with the surf fishing bum lifestyle, including sleeping on the beach, eating questionable food from a warm cooler that has been pawed over and drooled on by feral raccoons, and drinking fetid water. I myself thrive in this kind of environment, and so I am back to report back to our three readers.
What can I say about the wedding other than I fired our small black powder cannon seven times, for good luck. It was Independence Day, and while the venue does not allow fireworks, they did allow the cannon (it’s a cast iron, steel sleeved replica swivel gun with a 1.75″ bore). And in my speech as the bride’s father, how could I miss an opportunity to point out that Independence Day was brought to us by citizens with guns? That is a fact, is it not?
And (of course, I guess) I heard back afterwards that some of our wedding guests were offended by the cannon and also offended by my mention of the origins of American freedom – citizens with guns. You can’t make this stuff up if you tried, like it’s a Hollywood movie script caricature of spoiled rotten children who get everything that Planet Earth can provide and yet nonetheless complain about it. Something like “The food here is terrible and the portions are so small.”
Are Americans now really offended by Independence Day fireworks? Are they offended by displays of patriotism and mentioning of historical facts that unfortunately run contrary to some evil political narratives that privately owned guns are bad and our freedom was brought to Americans by a immaculately conceived federal government that descended from Heaven? Are some wedding guests now so crass that they actually complain about the bride’s father setting off his celebratory toy cannon for the enjoyment of all the normal fun-loving people in attendance?
I have a hard time believing these things, but I did get to witness this stuff. America is in big trouble when its own citizens, young and old, hate its founding and can’t give a proud father his one moment and some space to celebrate it. Jiminy crickets.
Just returned from a subsequent beach trip to a a long spit of federally managed property on the east coast. The National Park Service rangers were 99% normal, nice, intelligent Americans, thank you very much, Gage, Donald, and Stephen.
In this national park there is a problem with artificially high numbers of deer, foxes, and racoons. They have no natural predators and they are multiplying at breakneck rates and having huge negative impacts on the environment and local ecology. Vegetation shows a distinct deer browse line about four feet above the ground, and the racoons are everywhere, aggressive, and aiming to ruin your trip. I watched a red fox steal a camper’s breakfast sausage meal right off of his plate on the guy’s picnic table. We had raccoons patrolling our campsite and under our table as soon as we broke out our food. They will grab your food right out of your hand. It is a fact that raccoons are host to some nasty parasites they excrete in their poop, which was abundantly displayed all around the campsites. Raccoons are also the number one vector for rabies among wildlife.
Aside from posing health threats and incessantly badgering the humans who are trying to enjoy the park, the foxes and raccoons also eat the eggs of rare nesting shore birds. These rare birds enjoy huge swaths of cordoned off human-free dunes and beaches in the park (and also on federal and state lands out on Long Island, like Orient Point and Montauk). And yet the same exact NPS staff enforcing the human no-go dune zones policy are absolutely fine with the overabundant nest-raiding foxes and raccoons that render all the no-go zones meaningless. The staff do not support hunting or trapping these destructive pests, either to improve the park visitor experience or to protect the natural environment.
How can the rare birds successfully nest on the ground and hatch their chicks there when the artificially super overabundant egg-eating raccoons and foxes are allowed to roam at will?
Talking with various National Park Service staff about this problem resulted in exposure to various levels of education and serious/unserious mindset. Most of the NPS staff acknowledged there is a wildlife problem on site that must be addressed. Hunting the deer and trapping the foxes and raccoons is the normal and responsible way to deal with this artificial human-caused environmental problem. These are the responsible and serious ways of addressing a visitor problem on land that is owned by the US taxpayer and whose management is entrusted to taxpayer-paid bureaucrats.
However, when I mentioned the above normal solutions to a young, handsome, tall NPS Park Policeman patrolling our campground, he responded “The same can be said about humans — there are just too many humans. And your solution to the overabundant raccoon problem is not humane.” He would get rid of the humans and allow the artificially high numbers of nuisance wildlife to proliferate. With taxpayer-paid federal employees of this guy’s low caliber and high wokeness quotient, the park visitor experience is going to degrade. C’mon, NPS, you can screen your employee applicants better than this. This foolish people-hating young guy should never have a gun and a badge, much less wear an NPS uniform.
Overall the surf fishing was fun if mostly unproductive. Probably due to the high heat and ferocious sunshine. I can report that catching cownose/ bullnose rays on strong surf tackle is a hoot, but then safely decoupling that animal from the tackle is a whole other thing. They whip their barbed tails around trying to nail the fisherman, who is trying to release them back into the ocean (I learned to place something heavy on the tail while using heavy pliers to remove or break off the hook). We did witness a large shark violently feeding close to shore, and it would be a fair guess to say it was probably eating these rays, which we caught and saw in abundance on both the bay side and the ocean surf side.
So that is the mid-summer report. Fast action, lots of family, some big family celebration and lots of family movement across the beautiful American landscape for work and vacation. I hope that you the reader are also enjoying your summertime. Summer is such a glorious time to be with family and friends, to visit new places, to camp out under the stars and cook over an open fire, to think through life’s normal challenges and to spend time with people we love…and then it is over just when we are all starting to really get into it.
So make the most of your summer.
Campsite neighbor Steve, a PhD engineer ex-patriot Brit and defiant leftist, helped MAGA Maniac Josh fix my malfunctioning headlamp, demonstrating that it’s easy to be enemies when separated by keyboards and easy to be friends when living side by side
Nice level NPS campsites with fire ring and grill
Each campsite has a pavilion and a picnic table. Is this really camping?
Asbury Park Brewery is a local flavor that I was happy to support. No sign anywhere of Bud Lite or Budweiser anything, thankfully
Symbol of foolish National Park Service policies seeking to protect rare shore birds by excluding people from their habitat, but allowing artificially overabundant populations of nest-raiding raccoons and foxes to roam at will.
Beach goers nonetheless entered this area because there were zero nesting birds in it and there were literally tons of foxes running around in it. Come on National Park Service, you can do much smarter than this
Ahhhhh… summer vacation on the Atlantic Coast
Twitter staff are attacking conservatives again
We all thought that Elon Musk had brought great change to Twitter. More openness, more transparency, more fairness, more balance, less hostility to inconvenient facts that some people in power don’t like, less censorship.
Well, that honeymoon has ended as conservative Twitter accounts are being shut down this week in a brazenly partisan and double standard bloodbath. My own Twitter account, which I don’t use much, was locked without warning (see screenshot below) for supposedly violating the Twitter rules against “abusive behavior.”
What abusive behavior? When, against whom, under what circumstances?
And why lock an account without any warning?
Turns out my succinct, well-earned, and fair response on Twitter to an abusive leftist was misconstrued as “abusive behavior.” And bang, just like that, my account was locked. Oh, I was given the option of eventually re-opening it, if I delete the tweet I wrote back to someone who was abusing me. But I am not going to go through Twitter’s version of Mao’s re-education camp, and so my tweet will remain. I have nothing to be ashamed of, and the tweet is mild in comparison to the things the person it was aimed at was writing at the same time.
Commentator Dan Bongino is constantly harping on the liberal hypocrisy thing. He is constantly pointing out that liberals don’t care about being caught as brazen hypocrites. Rather, Bongino says, liberals like the raw, unadulterated, unlimited power they feel when they get to act unfairly and treat other people unfairly. He points out that when liberals hold themselves to zero standard, and then hold people like Josh First to an impossibly high standard, liberals don’t see a fairness problem. They see and really enjoy the raw exercise of power and hierarchy, the ability to simply crush someone’s free speech rights because of a made-up fake violation of some subjective rule that is never applied to one side of a debate and that is always mis-applied to the other side of the debate.
Liberals/ Leftists are at the top of the hierarchy, and people like Josh First are at the bottom of the hierarchy.
Hierarchy and power, that is what the Josh First Twitter account lock is about. Talk about abusive behavior! Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and I am now the powerless victim of a power-crazed corrupt absolutist tyrant, some person who works at Twitter named Ella Irwin. Apparently she has been going after the accounts of other conservatives, too, including activist Michael Knowles and congresswoman Marjorie T. Green.
Here’s the thing about this latest censorship of conservative voices at Twitter: The people doing it are unfair, mean, abusive, bullies, censorious, against free speech, against ideas that scare them, and tyrannical. Any and all of these characteristics are negative. You would not normally choose to be around or subject to individual people who have these sorts of negative traits and broken personalities. And yet here we are again, pushed back into sharing digital space with people from Silicon Valley, California, where the overwhelming majority of people in control of the digital town square are just pure bad crap like Ella Irwin.
And take note: Not one Democrat Party person or official objects to this. Which means that the Democrat Party people have the same intention for governing America as their allies govern Twitter, FaceBook, etc. They all believe in using massive coercive force against people who disagree with them.
Twitter gives us a view into the souls of the people who oppose us. No wonder they want to take away our guns! Then we would be completely helpless against them. Give these people a huge swastika to wear proudly, because that is what they are.
