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PA lost a 2A warrior

Kim Stolfer died two days ago, and if you love freedom and liberty, you will miss him, even if you did not know him.

If you ever participated in an annual Second Amendment rights rally at the state Capitol in Harrisburg, then you responded to Kim’s call.

Kim was an effective fighter in every way, most especially for our individual Second Amendment rights. Among a bunch of effective organizations, he also founded Firearm Owners Against Crime, of which I am a life member. FOAC became the de facto PA-oriented 2A group in Pennsylvania, despite the presence of the NRA, PFSC, and other organizations purporting to represent gun owner’s interests, simply because Kim and his passionate FOAC members just would not ever back down. They lobbied and litigated for freedom at the municipal and state level, most notoriously to obtain, and then to maintain, state pre-emption for all firearm laws.

Thanks to Kim and FOAC, Pennsylvania does not have a crazy quilt patchwork of gun regulations and laws that change dramatically from one municipality to the other. Imagine (for example) driving the short distance from Wayne County to Northampton County with a normal gun permitted in one place, but which is outlawed in the other. Merely having such an outlawed gun in the latter location could result in your arrest, detainment, and life-changing prosecution, for the simple “crime” of casually changing your nearby venue. No society can exist this way with any regulations or laws, and thanks to Kim, you Pennsylvanians are not living this way, either.

I personally knew Kim from both 2A activism and wildlife management policy. As FOAC’s city-dwelling litigant against Harrisburg City’s illegal and lawless anti-gun ordinances, I was his devoted servant on the former; and as a conservationist, I was his opponent on the other. Kim advocated for leaving many more deer than I believe the farming and natural landscapes can sustain. We maintained a warm friendship nonetheless for a long time.

Below is a photo I took of Kim at the 2021 2A rights rally in Harrisburg. Kim is unfurling the incredibly long list of existing gun regulations Pennsylvanians (and citizens in most other states) are already subject to, making the point that even more plus additional plus extra gun control measures are not needed, because they don’t do anything to stop crime. If politicians want crime reduced, all they have to do is apply any number of existing gun control laws.

But as we already know, people advocating for more gun control are not interested in controlling crime. Many gun control advocates are actually against applying the law and reducing crime. Rather, they are fiendishly focused on controlling YOU.

Rest in peace, great warrior Kim. We appreciate everything you did for all of us.

It is important to note that throughout Kim’s many legal battles to protect your 2A rights, he had right at his side a devoted and exceptional lawyer, Josh Prince. Josh is a refreshingly competent candidate for Commonwealth Court.

Every Second Amendment 2A Gun Rights lover in Pennsylvania must cast their/ your vote for Josh Prince on May 16th.

Kim Stolfer unfurling a loooong list of existing gun control laws. At the podium next to him is attorney Josh Prince, now a candidate for Commonwealth Court. Photo by Josh First

 

 

 

 

Kim’s official obituary:

Kim Stolfer, age 68, of South Fayette, Pennsylvania, passed away on Saturday, April 15, 2023 at home surrounded by his family after a hard-fought battle with cancer.

Born November 7, 1954 in Pittsburgh, Kim was raised by his late mother, Charlotte (Moser) Stolfer.  Kim was a 1972 graduate of Carlynton High School in Carnegie.

At the young age of 19 Kim became a Marine sending money home to his then juvenile sister Rose to help care for their then ailing mother. The Marine Corps vocational test scores showed his aptitude in verbal skills, organizational skills, and problem-solving, so they put him through aircraft and powerplant mechanic school and he was assigned as a crew chief on a CH-47 Chinook helicopter. Like many veterans, war molded him from his late teen years into adulthood, and he saw and did more than he ever said.

Kim was crew chief of the last American helicopter to leave Vietnam.  Due to a communications error, military personnel and civilians were left behind at the American Embassy in Saigon after the “official” last helicopter departed with the Ambassador.  Kim’s CH-47 evacuated those left behind as Saigon fell in South Vietnam.

Following his military service Kim went on to work and serve his country as a body and fender repairman for the United States Postal Service. He retired in 2009 as shop keeper after 30 years of service.

Kim found a love for shooting sports through Greater Pittsburgh Trap & Skeet Club, where he participated in recreational and competition shooting including IPSC practical pistol, rifle and shotgun. He co-founded Shooters Active in Firearms Education (S.A.F.E.) and became active throughout the Pennsylvania region teaching NRA-certified firearms safety and concealed carry classes through various sportsman’s clubs and police departments.

Kim was a founding member of both the Greater Pittsburgh Trap & Skeet Club and the Allegheny County Sportsmen’s League (ACSL) club’s legislative affairs branch, which got him involved in leadership positions in the Allegheny County Sportsmen‘s League (ACSL) and the Pennsylvania Sportsmen’s Association (PSA). His efforts evolved into Firearms Owners Against Crime (FOAC-ILLEA).

Kim took his oath to defend the Constitution seriously and was an effective adversary of elected officials and government employees who violate their oaths. He was a well-spoken advocate for personal freedoms as well as for holding criminals accountable. Kim wrote and or co-authored, dozens of pieces of statewide legislation over the years, many of which are now current law, including the Castle Doctrine law and Preemption Enhancement law.

He is survived by his loving and devoted wife of 36 years, Michelle (Pozzi) Stolfer; his son, Jason Stolfer; his step-son, Michael (Emily) Pozzi; his granddaughters, Paige and Gabriella Pozzi; his beloved sister, Rose (Mike) Johnson; his niece and nephew, Samantha (John) Rothka and Paul (Jennifer) Milavec; and many loved great nieces and nephews.

The family will receive friends and patriots at Thomas-Little Funeral Home, 305 Main St., Imperial, PA on Wednesday, April 19th from 2-4 p.m. and 6-8 p.m. and on Thursday, April 20th from 12-2 p.m. A service to honor and remember Kim’s life will be held at 2 p.m. on Thursday at the funeral home.

The family would like to express their thanks for the wonderful help and care given by Gallagher Hospice.  He will be sorely missed by his family, friends, allies, and patriots. We are all diminished by his passing.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to FOAC-ILLEA  https://foac-illea.org/ in memory of Kim’s life and legacy.

Response to PA Gov. Tom Ridge on Conservatives & the Environment

On April 22nd this year, Earth Day, The Atlantic published an opinion piece by former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, about conservatives and the environment (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/environment-gop-out-touch/610333/). The Atlantic solicited responses to Ridge’s essay, and so I submitted one to them, but received back no indication they would publish it. They did not publish it, because liberals like those at The Atlantic accept and publish only liberals, and reject conservatives.  So here it is, my response to Governor Ridge’s essay about conservatives and the environment.

I felt compelled to respond to Governor Ridge’s essay, in part because I worked in his administration, and in part because I have met few Republicans who can articulate a truly conservative view of environmental policy, which Governor Ridge failed to do. I was also afraid of being seen as attacking someone I hold in high esteem, and I need to say that while I may disagree with Governor Ridge’s essay and some of his recent public stances, like supporting PA governor Tom Wolf’s covid19 lockdown, I remain impressed by Governor Ridge’s high character. I am proud to have served in his distinctively excellent administration.

Governor Ridge’s  essay slightly opens a doorway that I am both pleased and also reluctant to push all the way open. But it needs to be opened, all the way, because for far too long establishment Republicans have claimed to be conservatives, while acting like liberals.

Governor Ridge writes his essay “as a conservative,” and despite boldly leading by example in placing highly competent gays, women, and minorities in senior government positions literally decades ago, long before most Democrats followed suit, Governor Ridge was, in fact, a true conservative. His achievements in conservative policy are legion, including Pennsylvania becoming a shall-issue concealed firearm carry state and his administration’s brownfield land recycling program.

Nonetheless, the emphasis today is on he “was.”

Governor Ridge was a conservative, and by today’s standard, he is not. This is not because Governor Ridge has changed, but because what now defines a conservative has changed so dramatically since the time he was governor. The same holds true for liberals, by the way, in their own way (we see the Democrat Party now a totally, openly, violent, racist, anti-America Marxist organization).

And like so many, if not all other political elites, especially Republicans, and most especially establishment Republicans from the hide-bound, bunker-mentality Pennsylvania GOP, Governor Ridge has not changed with the times. Governor Ridge was a conservative, and today he often speaks like a liberal, and sides with liberals on policy disputes. He is not alone in this, but each Republican who does so still causes pain to us conservatives in the political trenches. It is frustrating as hell to experience a former Republican appointee or elected official try to speak with authority as some sort of representative of conservativism, when in fact, they are simply liberals. Or RINOs for short (Republican In Name Only – not conservative).

Probably the biggest indication that Governor Ridge is out of synch with today’s conservatives is how he encourages us to adopt a laundry list of liberal environmental policies in his The Atlantic essay. This means that his solution for conservatives to succeed is for us to adopt liberalism. Even though most of the “environmental” groups are simply employment offices for Democrat Party operatives pushing Marxist, partisan policies. Very few environmental groups today are even seeking solutions, because they are busy dreaming up new problems.

Most of the policies pushed by environmental groups today are by definition Big Coercive Government, Small Defenseless Citizen, anti-Constitution, disregard for private property rights, mountains out of mole hills, and so on. These groups are not about the environment, they simply use the subject of the environment as another avenue to push Marxism and the Big Government necessary to force it down our throats. Governor Ridge should know this, of all people.

What Governor Ridge failed to address is: How can we conservatives embrace the very same failed and inferior liberal policies that drove us to becoming conservatives in the first place? If we adopt liberalism, then we are abandoning conservativism, and failing as conservatives.

Every single environmental policy recommendation that Governor Ridge lists in his essay directly contradicts core conservative principles, like small government, less intrusive government, less spendy government, less activist government, less regulatory government, accountable government and accountable taxpayer-funded government employees. Literally every single policy he lists requires the government to intervene in a big, coercive way, often over trifling differences or demonstrably false premises.

Governor Ridge’s environmental ideas are not conservativism; they are quintessential big government liberalism.

Perhaps the centerpiece of his essay is that conservatives must concede at least a bit on “climate change.” Yet, for conservatives, this particular issue, more than any other, highlights the distinction between us and liberals. For conservatives to agree with the Marxist, disproven, and notoriously phony climate change religion would be to abandon basic, solid, conservative principles altogether….like Capitalism 101, solid math and science, and transparency. Again, we are unpersuaded the climate warming-cooling-change-whatever issue even exists, let alone that a government solution consistent with America’s Constitution could be found.

Governor Ridge writes “The Republican Party has largely abandoned environmental issues.” To which I and a host of other conservatives would respond, No, but many Republicans have abandoned the citizen voters and the forgotten taxpayers of America. Many careerist Republicans have embraced popular culture and its feel-good-now bubblegum policies. For Republicans to respect openly partisan “environmental” groups and embrace liberal nonsense like so-called ‘climate change’ and similar policies would only be one more betrayal in a long line of policy and political betrayals committed by the Republican establishment. Conservatives have perfectly sound environmental policies based on perfectly sound, all-American principles. If you but ask us, we will explain them. We conservatives didn’t abandon environmental issues, nor did we leave the Republican Party. The Republican establishment abandoned us.

Josh First is president of Appalachian Land & Conservation Services, LLC. He has worked at the US EPA in Washington, DC, The Conservation Fund, the Central Pennsylvania Conservancy, and was Director of Environmental Education and Information at the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation & Natural Resources in the Governor Tom Ridge administration.

Second Letter to Candidate Josh Feldman

Dear Josh,

Congratulations, you did maintain your position on the ballot after our challenge. But you have traded away your credibility and integrity in the process.

I read the courtroom transcript of your March 17, 2017 testimony, and on page five you stated under oath that you consciously falsely signed two affidavits. Even though you have only been an active attorney for a grand total of 78 days, surely you know that affidavits are the bedrock of our legal system. A falsified affidavit undermines everything our legal system stands on and stands for. The person who falsifies an affidavit is obviously unqualified to fill a judicial role. You are unqualified, Josh. Your own court testimony impeached your own credibility.

Additionally, you have run for this magisterial seat on the representation of being “the only attorney” among the candidates. But you only became an active licensed attorney on March 2, 2017, the day before you filed your first set of ballot petitions. On page three of your court testimony, you admit that you do not actually practice law and have no court room experience, having become “inactive” just one month after bar admission and having been “retired” from 2010 until this March 2nd.

Your attorney information page on the Disciplinary Board of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court says “I do not maintain professional liability insurance because I do not have private clients and have no possible exposure to possible malpractice actions.”

So your biggest selling point is actually flim-flam, a faint technicality. What is the point of electing an attorney who has no experience actually being an attorney, and who right out of the gate violates the most important election laws to try to get ahead?

Josh, how on earth could your lawyer have allowed you to take the stand in your own defense at the ballot petition hearing?  Do you not realize the self-damning testimony you gave in court?

Perhaps no one should be surprised, as your incompetent goofball lawyer Adam Klein now has yet one more loss to his credit.  You have learned an expensive but important lesson: Just because a lawyer is smug and arrogant does not mean he is seriously up to the task of effectively representing you.

Josh, I pledged $250 toward the outcome not as some sort of silly bet or wager, but as a principled statement about my belief in personal accountability.  My philosophy of government requires me to do this: I had put my name out there as a plaintiff in a formal complaint about your ballot petitions, and you stayed on the ballot. In that process we learned that you have poor character, your word means nothing, and you have greatly over-represented your qualifications.

So, Josh, you do get the enclosed $250 check, but you will get no apology from me, because when you took the stand in court you admitted to filing false affidavits on your ballot petitions. You impeached your own credibility.  If you cannot be trusted to file basic honest paperwork, then what do the voters expect of you if you become a magistrate and sit in judgment of us?  Your petitions were flawed, Josh, and remain so, even though they technically contained enough signatures to keep you cross-filed and on the ballot.

This whole experience is sad to me. You have hurt yourself through your own over-reach, and then you were further injured by poor legal counsel. I like the fact that you are a fellow small business owner, and I wish that you had earnestly run for office on that good qualification alone. People could respect you for that.

Sincerely,

Josh

Josh First

Harrisburg City, PA

May 12, 2017

Letter to Candidate Josh Feldman

Dear Josh Feldman,

It brought me no pleasure of any sort when I became the plaintiff in a court challenge against your Republican ballot petitions for the local Magistrate job here in Uptown Harrisburg several days ago.

The magistrate seat is currently held by Judge Barb Pianka, and she is seeking re-election. You are a declared candidate seeking to unseat Pianka, as you have a right to do as an American citizen. In fact, as an aside, I am glad you are running, in the sense that I think more people ought to run for all elected offices. Additionally, I am totally opposed to the current ballot petition process, because it artificially and unfairly favors incumbents and establishment political parties and their political machines, which works against individual citizens and against the collective interest of We The People, the citizenry.

America needs fewer career politicians, fewer elected officials who are simply owned by special interests who use government for their own personal/ private enrichment, and we need more solid citizens who view elected office as a temporary public service to their fellow citizens, not as a taxpayer-funded career.

So, in that broad, philosophical sense, I support your run for office.

And, I must accept and work with the specific ballot petition process as it is now, not as I wish it were (not).

Josh, you are challenging a judge whom I and many others in this area hold in good regard. Judge Pianka has not only done a good job, she has also not done the bad things that normally earn a sitting official a strong challenge. For example, no one has accused Judge Pianka of taking bribes, falling asleep in the court room, abusing people in her court room, malpractice, erratic behavior, or other typically disqualifying actions. Had she done any of that, you would probably have my emphatic support, or at least my tacit support, depending on other candidates in the race.

Uptown Harrisburg is an oasis, and Midtown Harrisburg is becoming an oasis through continued investment and re-development. By oasis I mean these places are locations with bona fide residential taxpayers, businesses, relatively low crime, and a good quality of life, as opposed to a greater proportion of the city proper. Judge Barb Pianka is to a fair degree responsible for this status, because of her measured judicial approach in this district. So losing Judge Pianka could lead to a loss of stability and quality of life in these areas. Too many of us have homes and investments here to justify risking a change with a new, unproven magistrate.

Thus, I support Judge Pianka and will continue to support her until she develops a fatal flaw or faces a superior candidate. Neither of those conditions are in play now.

I am a Republican plaintiff complaining about your Republican (cross-filed) ballot petitions because as I have come to understand, those petitions are deeply flawed. I signed as a plaintiff with that understanding. If, in the course of the unfolding legal proceeding, your petitions are determined to be not faulty and are acceptable, then I will do the two following things: First, I will issue you a public apology. Though I am acting as plaintiff in good faith, I believe in taking responsibility for my mistakes. Second, I will contribute $250.00 toward your legal fees incurred while defending your petitions.

After all of this is settled one way or another, Josh, I hope that you will become more active in the city’s political and cultural landscape. Hopefully this first foray of yours is not your last. State representative Patty Kim has become far too comfortable, too partisan, too passive, and remains unproductive; we would all do well to see a change in that seat. Or perhaps city council would be a place to try out your political interests.

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter, and good luck in all things but your pursuit of unseating Judge Pianka.

 

Josh First

Citizen

 

The Sad Situation in Standing Rock

A person must be cold blooded to not at least feel sad for the Standing Rock folks.

This is a group of ancient people who have watched their culture, lifestyle, property, and land heritage melt away under the weight of newer tribes. They really don’t have much left, and now a pipeline threatens to take away even more.

The Dakota Access pipeline is important, heck, all the new pipelines are important because energy independence is critical to American political independence. The more America can rely on domestic energy, the less we need foreign sources of energy. The less we depend on those foreign sources, the freer we are to make tough but necessary decisions about domestic and foreign policy.

What saddens me is the win-lose situation in Standing Rock. The pipeline is presented as a take-it-or-leave-it outcome. Surely there is some other way to resolve this, other than ramming it through. After all, that has been a hallmark of the failed Obama administration and their legislative allies on so many other policy fronts, ramming decisions down everyone’s throats. It is a negative way to run government. It unnecessarily creates winners and losers.

Creating winners and losers is a recipe for serious problems down the road. Resentment runs deep. Grudges are created. Losses are forever mourned.

I know from experience that the Standing Rock situation presents us with an opportunity to create winners and winners.

How well do I recall sitting in a conference room at my office in downtown Harrisburg in 2001. Gathered around the table were representatives from Audubon, Sierra Club, recreational ATV riders, hunters, trail hikers, and the timber industry.

I had successfully negotiated the purchase of a privately owned 12,500-acre inholding in the huge Sproul State Forest from the Litke family. Donna Litke was a neat Pennsylvanian who loved her family’s rugged wilderness land in the northcentral country, but who also had a fiduciary commitment to her family to get the best financial results possible from any purchase. Her private land would become public land after we acquired it.

But Everyone wanted the whole property for their own interests. Or they wanted to block their political opponents from getting something out of it.

After hearing all the crabbing from all sides, left and right, environmental groups and industry, I decided that we would not acquire the property unless everyone got something out of the deal. Everyone needed to share in the success, or else we were not going to see the deal close.

So the day we sat down with a map of the Litke land, and began to discuss where certain activities could or would best take place, was the day we began to get to a win-win outcome. In the end every interest group got something out of the acquisition. Audubon and Sierra Club saw certain sensitive lands there set aside as natural and wild areas, where logging, road building, and gas drilling would not occur. We created a 1,400-acre ATV riding area on reclaimed and unreclaimed coal mining land there, too, the first one on public land in Pennsylvania, which today has generated substantial economic activity in ultra-rural Beech Creek.

Much of the Litke forest was set aside as “plain vanilla” State Forest, where people can walk, hike, camp, hunt, trap, fish, and cut timber. The streamside railway that came with it became an important rail-trail, drawing tourists (and their dollars) from far and wide.

And I did not learn how to do this cold. Rather, in 1995 to 1996, I had successfully used the same approach in the Middle East Peace Process agricultural projects in Jordan, Israel, and the West Bank when I was at US EPA, representing our agency in the diplomatic process.

Boy, you talk about competing interests! There was no shortage there, but in the end I was dubbed “Little Kissinger” for the sidebar negotiations I created, which got the overall projects back on track. Winners and winners.

My hope is Standing Rock will provoke the best in us. Barack Hussein Obama did nothing to help the folks there, until two weeks ago he made a purely political and symbolic decision against the pipeline. Obama has always been about winners and losers, heck he enjoys creating losers, so who can be surprised by his action here. Like everywhere else over his eight-year tenure, Obama squandered an opportunity to facilitate competing interests find common ground.

And that is what needs to happen at Standing Rock: Common ground.

Aren’t there potential solutions to this standoff that are win-win? I can think of three or four potential solutions that would probably be acceptable to the main parties.

We have a new president who understands the concept and importance of win-win outcomes. Hopefully President Trump appoints a solid and good-faith negotiator to resolve the head-on collision at Standing Rock, for everyone’s benefit.

Winners and winners.

 

A Million Pretty Butterflies, a Million Angry Hornets

Though many people see me as a tough guy, I am not immune to emotional pain and frustration, and the past two weeks have been filled with plenty of both, and so I have danced around the issues that keep popping up in order to avoid publicly dealing with these hurtful events.

Most events are Islam-inspired, Islam-directed, Islam-implemented murders in America and France.

The mass media and social media is run by hardened political partisans who will not discuss Hillary Clinton’s illegal actions or her illegal political whitewashing by the Obama administration, who will not accurately inform the public about who is committing violence against French citizens and American police officers, and who instead direct their efforts at undermining everything that Western Civilization has stood for, lo, these past thousand years, if not past three hundred.

For example, The Mirror, a major newspaper of record in Britain, continues to describe how a white truck drove through a Bastille Day crowd in Nice, France. No real disclosure of the fact that the young Arab man was a radical Muslim. Nope; the truck drove itself. Can’t admit those motives!

For example, a young African American radical, former member of the Nation of Islam, active Black Panther member, who murders three police officers and seriously injures another four in Baton Rouge is described as a Marine. Not a former Marine, but a Marine, as if he is an active duty Marine. As if Marines routinely murder police officers. Nope, they cannot correctly ascribe his insane motives, unless the media can smear the military.

For example, Black Lives Matter – inspired murderers are described as indirect-indirect-indirect victims of police brutality, not the radical, violent, anarchist traitors they are.

For example, racist Black Lives Matter violence is routinely described as non-violent protests, despite the fact that Black Lives Matter is most accurately described as “The Klan With a Tan,” because their members are the most racist, most bigoted, most violent activists presently on American streets, in public libraries, and in university buildings across America. And what does that say about their supporters and defenders? Bigots all, each and every one.

Last week I was in New York City, surrounded by a million pretty little butterflies, young people with multiplicities of tattoos, hair colors, piercings, uncommon clothes, impractical shoes, and other accoutrements they believe really set them apart as individuals.

They were walking, sitting, talking, protesting, many striking up dramatic poses with cigarettes, and arms akimbo, men striking angular body arrangements, usually with wrists dramatically flapping.

All this self-expression is based on an utter materialism at odds with the preponderance of their social behavior and leftist political views that demonize everything required to clothe and feed them.

Who cares, they think, they are living in a pampered un-reality of Twitter hashtags and imaginary grievances.

Such a slavish shallowness exists completely at odds with the hard realities surrounding these young people. But America’s material success has put these kids to sleep. Heck, material success has even allowed them to turn against America and blame her for a whole litany of imaginary and ridiculous crimes.

These kids are America’s future.

Meanwhile, it’s serious people in suits, in offices, and driving trucks and trains and planes that keep everything moving forward for the pretty little butterflies, content as they are to flit from one flowery cafe to another, dependent as they are on everything being made for and delivered to them by someone else.

What worries me is that buzzing around the edges of our comfy little world, and getting closer all the time, is a horde of a million angry hornets.

Hornets are incredibly carnivorous and aggressive, though some hornet species lay their eggs on the host body and fly away. A month or a year later, their eggs hatch and their little babies burrow inside, and then eat their way out from inside of the now-dying host.

See a metaphor here, dear reader?

Western civilization is filled to the brim with soft, gentle, kind, clueless little pretty butterflies. They gently fly and float from one soft spot to another, incorrectly believing the whole world is like this. New York City just has a concentration of them.

Meanwhile, misdirected leaders in Western Civilization have allowed the horde of angry hornets to come inside our cozy little home, and they refuse to spray the cloud of angry hornets buzzing furiously around us with deadly bug spray, before we all get stung. Most of our leaders are themselves sweet little butterflies, living in a cocoon of armed guards and high fences, while themselves denouncing private gun ownership and strong walls keeping our tax-paying citizens safe.

Human civilizations come and go. History demonstrates they always do. Today’s powerhouse nation becomes tomorrow’s lunch for a more powerful opponent. Refugees stream from one place to another, fleeing bloody murder and rapine and slavery. That is history, but it is also happening right now in the Middle East and North Africa, places run by Muslims.

That stuff is coming to Western Civilization.

The million angry hornets will eat the million gentle, pretty little butterflies.

The empowered, independent feeling of eating less and doing much more

After ten days hiking through the Adirondacks’ most remote wilderness areas with our 18 year-old daughter, I had plenty of take-aways and contemplative thoughts that came home with me.

One of which was the empowered feeling of eating far less than I usually do, while performing at a far increased level than normally challenged. More on this in a moment.

Another take-away was that I am never too old to make mistakes, and one of the mistakes I made was taking an incredibly heavy pack on a rugged through-hike, where every extra ounce can make or break the trip.

My damned pack weighed 70 pounds and had everything but a Democrat in it. Some of that extra weight was due to Nina’s unusually specialized diet, due to a disease she has had all her life.  We had to plan for every food contingency, within the constraints of great dehydrated trail food I make at home. Dehydrated means it weighs a lot less, keeps longer, and is limited to certain meats, fruits and vegetables. Nonetheless, the extreme weight really beat on my feet on the rugged downhills, and it slowed us down.

About that food: As I have typically experienced in all of my past days afield, hunger feels a lot different at the end of a tough day. A handful of salty nuts and a handful of sweet dried fruit is usually sufficient to make me feel full and put me soundly to sleep in the tent. Breakfast is usually a large cup of dark sweetened tea and either oatmeal with dried fruit and brown sugar, or the same cold dried fruits and nuts. Then I am off with my kit, about to burn another 10,000 calories.

The meals I eat on these trips are at most a couple hundred calories, so there is a tremendous imbalance between output and input. That results in an extreme burn of body fat, among other positive effects.

So I wonder why I feel the need to eat so much more, so much that is physically unnecessary, when I am at home, or at work, and I am not churning through huge caloric burns?

As I stink at pop psychology, not venturing into the guesswork of why any person, particularly Americans, enjoy over-eating / binging will prove a relief to us all.

But I will say this: What an empowered feeling it is, what a sense of independence I had, from hardly eating a thing, while literally moving a small mountain on my back many miles each day. Each day I was able to successfully plow through the East Coast’s most remote wilderness on just a handful of home-made jerky, some salty nuts (salt is a necessity for our bodies), and some home-made dried fruit.

In the spirit of Independence from want, or mere feelings of want, I am committing to eating a hell of a lot less every day than I used to, not because it makes me look better, but because it makes me feel a hell of a lot better, more empowered, more in control, like I have achieved more with less than expected. That is a very good feeling.

 

 

The spy on my trusty old laptop

Microsoft Windows may be the industry standard for personal computers, but with the advent of the much-hated Windows 10 operating system, the company has sought to join the data spying craze afflicting nearly every digital user.

This forced spyware is driving users batty.

Who wants to click the “YES – SPY ON ME” Windows 10 install button? Not many people. At least not people who value their privacy.

One of the reasons cell phone users are going back to flip phones is because they are tired of being spied on by the various software companies that run the “smart phones” like iPhone.

Likewise, I am joining the growing number of non-Internet-connected PC users.

A personal computer is a valuable tool, an effective tool, and between the spreadsheet and writing software on it, it does a lot for my life and business. However, once connected to the Internet, that same PC becomes a spy turned back on the connected user.  Some of the hacking involves using the PC’s camera to surreptitiously watch the user. For that reason a small piece of sticky note pad paper covers the never-used camera on my PC.

Now I have a cheap PC for Internet use, a PC with nothing on it but basic software. And then another PC with my data and files.

I found a way to stop Windows 10 from installing, and it’s actually easy to do. I highly recommend it. Reports over the past year about Windows 10 are not flattering. It is designed simply to turn your PC into a spy, to pick apart and report on not only your online habits, but your personal software uses and writing content.

And Microsoft is allowed to spy on you because you hit the YES – SPY ON ME install button.

Every action leads to opposite reaction

As anti-freedom gun-grabbers continue on in their march for government supremacy over the citizenry, they seem surprised when that same citizenry reacts.

Take Barack Hussein Obama, for example. Like Rapist-In-Chief Bill Clinton before him, Obama’s anti gun crusading has driven millions of Americans to either buy guns for the first time, or to buy even more guns and ammunition than they had before.

As the federal government and its Big Government allies in the mainstream media, academia, and activist groups amplify their assaults on citizen liberties, the citizens begin to coalesce into like-minded groups. In the beginning of America these were known as militia. Today they are simply loosely knit groups of advocates for the First Amendment, Second Amendment, and Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution. They are reacting to the illegal and unconstitutional pressures being brought to bear on them collectively and individually, pressures under the color of “law.”

Today I watched as Shira Goodman and a bearded man with her walked around the crowd in the Pennsylvania State Capitol rotunda, where the annual Second Amendment rally was held. Shira and I have debated on live TV before. She represents CeaseFirePA, an anti-freedom and Big Government group. I imagine she was counting the number of people at the rally. It is true that the number of people at any given rally are an indication of the political strength they represent.

The place was packed. From top to bottom, side to side, you could barely move. Between 1,000 and 2,000 people today. Contrast that with the 25 people who showed up for CeaseFirePA’s rally two weeks ago.

Shira looked sallow and grim faced. The bearded man with her looked frightened, and he tightly clutched some case he was carrying.

We rally participants were fired up, and when one of the speakers (Rep. Daryl Metcalf, I think) pointed out that today we had shown up unarmed, and rue the day when we do show up armed, we loudly roared our support.

The political Left has been on an anti-America warpath for so long that it appears they do not realize how far they are pushing so many citizens. For decades normal Americans have conceded little and big victories to the Left, often with a sense of resignation that “things are changing.”

What is different about the gun issue, now, and different about now versus twenty years ago, is that an entire two generations of Americans have watched the Big Government Left practically swamp the average citizen.

The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen. The less our liberties and freedoms, the fewer our rights.

In a nation like America, based on laws and citizenship, the Left’s policy wins are increasingly perpendicular to the trajectory of America the nation and most of its citizens.

That is “the silent majority.”

Yes, it is true that millions of invaders have been ushered in by treasonous Federal servants, in an effort to tilt the vote balance forever in the favor of one Santa Claus after another, dispensing free things paid for by hard working taxpayers.

But the real result is a deep and building undercurrent of resentment. Call it the “Tea Party,” conservative movement, whatever, it is a groundswell of formerly free citizens fearful of losing the America they love and worked hard to create.

Statists like Shira Goodman and her friends at CeaseFirePA are so completely devoted to Big Government that they cannot comprehend a citizen rebellion. Like a horse, their blinders are so big that they cannot see what is happening around them. Sure, Marxists like Mark Potok at the Southern Poverty Law Center, another anti-freedom, anti-Christian outpost, are constantly cited by their Left friends in the Washington Post and other mainstream media outlets. But that cat is out of the bag, and putting it back in is not going to happen without a hell of a fight and lots of scratches.

One wishes that all these crusading pushers would leave the citizens alone, so that we can go back to our lives, liberty, and pursuit of our happiness. But it ain’t gonna happen. These guys will just keep on pushing until the citizens have nowhere to turn.

And then look out.

Our dear friend, Don Heckman

Don Heckman needs little introduction in the sporting circles of Pennsylvania and the East Coast.

A founding member and long time leader of the Pennsylvania chapter of the National Wild Turkey Federation, Don’s cheerful, generous and kind personality and locomotive work ethic helped re-establish wild turkeys to Pennsylvania in the 1970s, when the conventional wisdom said it was impossible.

Don was also a powerful advocate for the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsman’s Clubs, the National Rifle Association, and many other similar groups to which he was a devoted life member.

He was a persuasive advocate for the continued success of the Pennsylvania Game Commission on the whole, and its land acquisition and science-based habitat management programs in particular.

Don was both an incredibly good hunter, and at times also exasperating to hunt with. This is because of his own unique standards: He refused to shoot a gobbler (male turkey), unless it was both strutting and gobbling at the same time. Sneaking toms, peeping toms, cautious toms, running or flying toms he would not shoot, no matter how close or in range of his gun. None of those were sporting birds, in his estimation. Only a completely unaware longbeard was worthy.

Don and I turkey hunted together a number of times over the years, mostly in the central Pennsylvania farmland we both love. While it would be easy to regale Don’s skill as a caller and hunter, two instances come to mind that sum up the attraction of having Don as your hunting partner.

First was his wry humor. He meant it with love, of course.

“Mmmmmm, uh huh. That sounds like a turkey,” was a frequent back handed compliment from Don as I was scratching away on a friction call, mostly slates.

He wouldn’t care that my calling had actually lured in a nice longbeard to within range. That was no inoculation against the compliment. For Don, it was important to remind me that my calling could always improve, whenever he had the chance. And he was right, of course, as much as I do not like to admit it.  That’s what good teachers are about. He was, after all, a many time champion caller whose skill I could only marvel at and never hope to replicate.

And just to prove his point by spiking the ball, Don might decide to stand up and switch locations even as the gobbler was determinedly marching across a cut corn field directly to us.

Watching the alarmed bird take wing and sail to the other side of the valley, the now standing Don said to my sitting figure, “Yeah, he must’ve seen you move.”

Movement is the biggest no-no of all in turkey hunting, and rookies move a lot. Even veterans get caught moving their eyeballs by wary gobblers fifty yards out. To attribute the alarmed and rushed exit of a wild turkey to a hunter’s movement is a gentle way of saying “Your hunting skill needs some work.” Even if it didn’t at that very moment.

And then there was that truly exasperating standard of his, the one where he would only shoot a gobbler in full strut AND gobbling. That performance is like looking up in the sky and seeing the sun and moon align, because a longbeard gobbler that is both strutting and gobbling is completely in the moment. He feels no fear or wariness that usually accompanies most alluring hen calls by hunters.

As I am not ever going to approach Don’s skill as a turkey hunter (he has racked up more annual grand slam turkey hunts species-wise and across multiple states than anyone else I know), I feel fortunate to shoot any gobbler, strutting or not.

And it is a fact that my poor skill as a turkey caller usually results in birds sneaking in, peering in, or darting in for a quick look before running like hell to get out of Dodge, or “putting” (turkeys make a putt-putt alarm call when they are suspicious enough to flee) from 40 yards out, so that most of the gobblers I have killed were shot mid-stride to the next county.

Not in full strut AND gobbling, like Don would have.

One morning in Dauphin County about four or five years ago, Don and I were lying in a field while I called to turkeys below us. They came well within range, but the lead gobbler, a huge bruiser boss bird, stopped gobbling and was “only” fanned out and puffed up, strutting. Such an impressive performance was insufficient to move Don’s trigger finger backwards, despite my harsh whispers of expletive-laced encouragement.

Nope. Instead, Don stood up in plain view of the flock, maybe thirty yards away, with his shotgun trained on the head of the strutting gobbler, and he began simultaneously calling with his mouth diaphragm call.

Wild turkey hunters know that at the sight of a man standing up within two hundred yards, let alone thirty, wild turkeys scatter like dust in a hurricane. They are gone in the blink of an eye.

Not these birds. Don’s calling was so good, so realistic, so enticing that the entire flock turned to look at us with concern for the grossly misshapen hen addressing them, and then they calmly walked away.

Don never shot, though he would have easily bagged any of the gobblers there. He just said “Oh, well, let’s go try another spot.”

Don is now in another spot, a turkey chaser’s dream spot, I am sure. He was diagnosed with an incurable brain tumor in late January this year, and he rode it out with the help of his devoted wife, Sandy, for the next few months, until he died on the night of May 17th, in the central Pennsylvania region he loved so much.

Like all of his friends and acquaintances, I will miss Don Heckman enormously. Sitting in a turkey blind I cried yesterday, thinking about his loss. Don died way too young, barely into his retirement, and not in time for me to prove to him that really, I can get a gobbler to strut AND gobble in range. But that is what I will continue to do, to aspire to, in Don’s memory, as representative as it was of one of the last great generational wildlife conservation leaders in Pennsylvania and in America.

Bye, old friend, boy do I miss you.