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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

Celebrate Independence Day with A Month of Defiant Acts

Today is July 4th, America’s Independence Day, founded immediately upon the heels of the United States’ successful civil war with Great Britain, from 1775 to 1781. What we call the Revolutionary War was actually a civil war between American colonists loyal to the British monarch, King George III, and his Redcoat soldiers on the one hand, and American colonists loyal to a new idea of democracy and representative self-government, on the other hand.

As we celebrated today, individual freedom, individual liberty, and individual choice won out against and over King George’s tyranny. As a result, America has enjoyed roughly 245 years of unparalleled  prosperity and opportunity for even the poorest and least educated human beings from around the planet.

In 1818, then-past-President John Adams wrote that the actual revolution had already occurred among the American citizens and frontier colonists, years before the actual fighting began in 1775. The people’s then-revolutionary views on power sharing among humans, governmental legitimacy through consent of the governed, government transparency and accountability, and a kind of loose and very broadly defined Christian brotherhood united by loyalty to ideas and shared values had already taken hold on the frontier, united more than enough individuals to stand up against what was then the greatest military power in the world.

Today there is without question a formal tyranny afoot in North America. Both Canada (Trudeau) and America (Biden) are presently run by people who are openly and aggressively at odds with the fundamental rights and freedoms the peoples here have lived by for a very long time. It is an effort to consolidate official power over The People that knows no bounds, and official malfeasance and abuse of official positions against innocent but uppity citizens are now daily occurrences in both Canada and America.

Here in America the Department of Justice and the FBI have set land speed records for false accusations and the corrupt detonation of individual due process rights, whereby the criminal prosecutorial process is in and of itself the punishment. Even if an innocent individual is eventually cleared of wrongdoing, the government will have bankrupted them, destroyed their good name, and perhaps destroyed their family, their career, and taken their home, too.

These public employees and agents are pretty much double dog daring everyone to try to hold them accountable within the realm of America’s legal system. And they have access to just enough corrupt and politically partisan activist judges to get the Crackerjack Box search and seizure warrants they need to spread fear and political retaliation under color of official law. But we citizens have a duty to resist this tyranny.

In the spirit of Independence Day, let us all engage in a month of defiant acts against this political corruption and destruction of our rights. You know, live up to those 1970s bumper stickers that said “Question Authority,” which at that time were aimed at the many traditional institutions the Left had not yet captured, corrupted, or destroyed. Of course, if we begin to question the authority of our Usurper in Chief and his minions, they will immediately recoil in horror: “No, don’t question THAT authority! OUR authority you must unquestionably obey!”

If the Left did not have double standards, they would have no standards at all.

Some acts of defiance and questioning authority that you should do:

  • Write a letter to your county sheriff, and ask him or her to begin assembling a significant number of armed deputies, to be able to resist illegal invasions or lawless acts in the county by federal troops or agents.
  • Write a letter to your county sheriff, and ask him or her to formally communicate with the Department of Justice and the FBI that their partisan corruption is now so great, they are no longer welcome in the county, and their agents encountered in the county will be arrested and held without bail.
  • Write a letter to your state Attorney General, and ask him or her to formally communicate with the Department of Justice and the FBI that their partisan corruption is now so great, they are no longer welcome in the state, and their agents encountered in the state will be arrested and held without bail.
  • Write a letter to your governor, asking about the possibility of re-assembling the state’s Home Guard, or some similar armed civilian force, that is capable of quickly reacting to and resisting federal troops and agents.
  • Write a letter to your state Attorney General, and ask him or her to issue and execute arrest warrants against individual federal agents who have clearly broken state (and federal) laws against illegal searches and seizures, illegal search warrants obtained under false statements by said agents, etc. Most state constitutions have similar limits on government action and safeguards of individual liberties as the US Constitution, so this is not just a federal issue.
  • Buy a pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and then return it to the store for a refund, because it tasted “off.” Or you can remove the pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream from its freezer at the store, and then kindly leave it in the chips and pretzels aisle. Yes, it will melt and be lost there. But that’s not your problem. What is your problem is a Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream that is actively working overtime with its corporate influence to deprive you of your individual liberties and rights. Show them you don’t care for their anti-democracy meddling.
  • Write a letter to your local school board and demand they issue a clear statement that you and other concerned taxpaying parents of school children are not domestic terrorists.
  • Etc. Just stand up and be heard for the next thirty days, in the spirit of July 4th Independence Day. Be a naturally defiant American who is naturally suspicious about official authority, who sees himself or herself as part of a citizen brotherhood united against corrupt power, and resist Biden’s tyranny, even in small ways.

Happy Independence From Government Tyranny Day!

Independence Day, because Citizens with Guns

Today is Independence Day, the day that America declared independence from Great Britain in 1776, and formed a new kind of government. Most governments in human history have been dictatorial, tyrannical, unilateral, top-down etc., and America is one of the few exceptions, maybe the only exception, to that rule. Today Britain is barely an afterthought, but we still view the federal government in Washington, DC, with the same skeptical eye we had for British Redcoats in 1776.

Since our founding, America has been and still is a nation of free citizens, with maximum individual liberties and with minimal government interference in our personal lives. The Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution as amended both make this power distribution arrangement clear. However, this unusual balance of power was achieved only through the application of military-grade force by the citizenry upon the oppressive government and its troops and civilian supporters that sought to crush the free citizens. That bloody fight for independence set the tone we live by today.

Mistrust of government is hard-wired into the American citizen.

Today, despite a wide array of evil forces (teacher’s unions, federal bureaucrats, a national media that is an activist arm of one political party, ‘woke’ corporations, and careerist politicians) attempting to once again crush the citizenry and deprive us of our freedoms and liberty, we are confident of our future.

Why? Because there is no way that a relative handful of rogue, despotic, lawless federal agents and their power-mad political bosses can survive while surrounded by hostile citizens.

Regardless of who you are, once a person has a house and a family, they have just as much to lose as anyone else. Just as these lawless federal agents are warping and breaking American law to illegally punish Americans who they consider their political opponents, these same agents themselves can also be held in detention without bail, without family visits, without access to legal representation, without medication. And just as rogue federal agents have showed up armed and physically aggressive on the doorsteps of harmless grannies and Roger Stone and hundreds of other innocent Americans, so too can hordes of had-enough-angry local citizens show up on the doorsteps and living room floors of these lawless federal agents. Two can play this game.

America was founded on an armed citizenry standing up to tyranny and abuse of power, and while the younger generations might be so badly educated and indoctrinated about this core aspect of American culture that they cannot do anything without first sucking their thumbs in some safe space, there are tens of millions of older Americans who recall our free days, and what sacrifices were needed to get those freedoms and keep them.

America’s Independence Day is not about relaxing on the river on your boat and drinking beer, oblivious to everything real happening around you. This day is mostly about reflecting on how We, The People are going to hold on to what is ours.

America and its government belongs to Us, not to any political party, not to people who figure out how to cheat and game the political system so they have endless ‘official’ power to do whatever they want, not to taxpayer-funded bureaucrats who have been unaccountable for fifty years despite their repeat failures in almost every field of administration. That is not what America ever was or is now about, despite the lawless outrages and assaults on America of the impostor Biden Administration, and too many patriots alive right now are willing to make every sacrifice needed to keep America free. Their passionate spirit will challenge and confront every rogue government and every rogue agent of that illegitimate government to preserve the freedoms we had up until January 21st this year.

Happy Independence Day, my fellow Americans! Enjoy your day of freedom now and be ready pass the ammunition (a line roughly borrowed from the battle of Bunker Hill).

Happy Independence from Tyranny Day

America was conceived in liberty, unlike any nation before or since, and tomorrow we mark our declaration of independence from Britain’s tyranny in 1776. As a result, America is the greatest nation, with the greatest amount of opportunity, for the greatest number and variety of humans, ever.

This weekend I will be reflecting on what personal liberty means today, in 2020, and the new forms of tyranny we face.

In some ways it is the same as 1776, in that we still today enjoy a list of personal rights that our government may not infringe upon. But in other ways, we are back to 1775, fighting for recognition of our basic God-given human rights. Like the right to be free of government intervention and oversight and meddling in our personal lives. Like the right to walk down the street free of fear, whether it is fear of being attacked for our political or religious beliefs, or fear of rogue mayors and police forces that purposefully block us from living out our civil liberties, because they disagree with our pro-freedom political views. These are all forms of tyranny over us.

Just about every major American city is lawless, failed, corrupt, and violent (and run by the Democrat Party). Government failure is written into law – no police protection for law-abiding citizens, and no, citizens may not own the means of protecting themselves. People living and visiting these places might as well be taking a trip to a far off distant land torn by war and pestilence. Tyranny.

I will also be reflecting on the absolute horseshit that is “Black Lives Matter.” Nothing is racist about America, except for BLM. BLM is the Ku Klux Klan With a Tan. BLM alone is the sole force for racism and racial hatred in America. Tyranny.

If the Marxist BLM hoodlums are really angry about slavery, and they really want to travel back in time, then they should pay a visit to their native western Africa, from which their ancestors were taken by OTHER Africans. Yes, the African slaves who came to America were enslaved and sold by other Africans, the descendants of whom are even today still involved in slavery. Tyranny.

So to attack America over history, while ignoring the history of the history, is a double standard purposefully driven towards the heart, the actual existence of America. And so it is nonsense, made-up, fake, part of this false grievance factory that constantly produces new types of fake victims daily and buckets of false outrage to go with each one. Tyranny.

I will be reflecting upon the results of all this false hysteria – the false outrage, the false finger-pointing, the undeserved demands, confrontational behavior, the violent destruction and murder. The result is the ruination of sixty years of inter-racial work and progress. So many normal every-day tax-paying Americans are shocked by what they are seeing and hearing that they are retreating. These are the same “white” people who voted joyously for Marxist Barack Hussein Soetoro Obama, twice. Now they are having major second thoughts about what is going wrong with our great nation. And no, they do not blame themselves for the illegal behavior of others, because that would be accepting tyranny.

A few weeks ago one conservative rural “white” guy said to me about the violent BLM riots “they sure aren’t helping their cause with this behavior.” His kids are half-black, half “white.” Not a racist molecule in his body, and not a pro-BLM molecule, either.

I will also be reflecting on how our fake two-party system has brought us to this point, because voters must make a choice between two evils. No other democratic nation has only two political parties forever and ever. Well, for whatever reasons America has two gigantic bureaucratic political parties that are like two gangs fighting each other behind the scenes. Where that leaves We, The People is a big question, isn’t it? Tyranny, for sure!

And speaking of tyranny, how about these stupid Wuhan Flu lockdowns in Pennsylvania, Michigan, California, New York, New Jersey, etc? There is no good reason for them, or the fake, unnecessary face masks that go with them. Instead of standing on the plain meaning of our federal and state constitutions and standing up for We, The People, judges are standing up for their fellow liberal bureaucrats, and upholding the various lockdowns and government efforts to stamp out religious practice. Tyranny!

Folks, as we drink cold beer and grill our food and spend happy time with people we love this weekend, take time to reflect on what Independence Day means for you, and what you want it to mean for you. Because if we simply wait for someone else to serve it up, we will be sorely disappointed, and bereft of options to rectify the situation.

Do not accept any tyranny in your life, except that which is brought by your spouse or parents. That is one form of tyranny we signed up for.

Independence & Liberty through Secure Borders

Would you willingly leave your house doors open and unlocked, day after day, night after night, and trust that the people looking to walk in would treat you right?

No, you would not leave your own home open and vulnerable to unauthorized entry, and neither will any country worthy of being a place you want to live. Too many bad people can exploit the open border that otherwise protects you. God knows what they can do once they gain entry.

Just 242 years ago today, America established its new borders, and eventually secured them through a young military filled with brave and patriotic volunteers.

Independence and liberty were established for all Americans through secure borders that kept enemies at bay from that time on, through many wars at home and then abroad, to keep our enemies from fighting us at home.

And lest you think the American Indians had no borders amongst themselves, you are wrong, and you know nothing about their history.

From their own beginning here, American Indians from coast to coast waged brutal war and axe murdered one another over their borders and boundaries, over control of those borders, and they cruelly punished people who crossed them unbidden.

Today America has one political party that has decided our borders should be open to anyone who can walk across them. These Americans and their illegal invader allies they’ve already let in believe the American house should be left unlocked so that more can come in. Anyone. Once they have a critical mass of illegal voters, that political party will convert them into an unbeatable voting force, and force their un-American, anti-Constitution views on all Americans.

This one political party is using democracy to achieve non-democratic ends, to establish complete political control and to end democracy in favor of a laundry list of politically correct policies. Their open borders end result is pure sedition and treason. Their goal is the complete overthrow of America as we were founded and as we have known it.

On this Independence Day, commit yourself to defending America as she was founded, with liberty for all. That means defending our borders, keeping them secure, and deciding who can enter and who cannot, for the good of all the nation, like all other nations do.

For those readers who read this blog because they are intrigued by what other people think, join the #walkaway movement. The Democrat Party of today is not the Democrat Party of your youth. It has become a force for evil, run by people who would destroy the best nation on earth. Everything good you take for granted now as the American lifestyle will be gone if today’s Democrat Party is successful.

On this July 4th, commit yourself to liberty and justice for all, and to secure American borders.

Happy Independence Day, America!