Wandering Wonderings & Nonsensical Imaginings

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When the shepherd stops feeding his dogs because he thinks that it cost too much the flock will soon be visited by wolves and the shepherd will grow hungry.

When a farmer burns his crops for fuel in the fall because it is easier than chopping wood
He will both freeze and starve when the winter comes.

If one allows rats to feed and multiply unhindered in the barn his home will soon be infested as well.

If a person allows weeps and grass to grow tall and wild in the yard and against his house then any grass fire will also burn his home

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The choices in the comming election

Obama has written several very interesting and reveling books about himself and his thoughts. There isn't must to know about him politically though because his public life has been almost exclusively been spent running for office. First for a state legislative office then in short order for the US Senate and after one year there he started running for the Presidency. He has never had time to actually do ANYTHING because he is always working toward his next position. Since there is nothing higher than the White House, we will only get to find out who and what he really is and stands for after it will be too late if we don't like him. Right now all there is to know is that he is a great campaigner and delivers a great speech. He is highly intelligent, seems to be charismatic and a generally nice guy...

McCain seems to be a nut, fixated on winning a war we are not fighting (all we are really doing is refereeing the fight and getting hurt trying to get between the real combatants) and unable to face the reality that it is a lost cause. Eventually we will "win" the war like we did in Vietnam. Negotiate a cease fire, collect a Nobel Peace Prize (Like Kissinger did.), declare the war over and RUN...then the real winners will kill their opposition and take power.

The REAL issues facing the next President though will not be foreign policy. We have problems at home that need to be addressed or they are going to crush us. We MUST have fuel or we will die. If we decide not to address this with REAL answers we will be through as international leaders of any kind. When you can't feed and house your own people you tend to stop paying much attention to the troubles of others. Check out Russia if you want to see one of our possible futures. The Democrats don't want us to use coal, oil, natural gas or nuclear power and put up road blocks at every turn. Solar and wind power might work but not in the near future (Maybe in twenty years if we work hard on them). If we don't do something NOW there won't be a far future for our culture.

We need to drill HERE and NOW for more domestic fuels. We need more Nuclear power plants to displace coal, fired generating plants. We need to downsize what the average person believes is necessary for a satisfactory lifestyle. We need to fix and expand our old and dilapidated rail system and then BAN long haul trucking. The pace of American life needs to slow down and streamline. Most of these things will happen whether we want them too or not. the only question is going to be how destructive and painful the process will be. Europe did it through two wars and the total destruction of the existing economic systems. When they rebuilt they changed things. I hope that we don't have to go there in order to make the changes that lie ahead.

By the way, The National average price for gas in the US has dropped below $4.00 a gallon and there is expected to be another 25cent drop before labor day. It seems that things are moving slightly faster than I expected. Oh Well nobody is perfect...

Prognostication via memory

A few predictions…

Gasoline prices will drop after August. By the middle of September they should be down 25 to 50 cents and by the middle of February of next year it will have dropped another 25 to 35 cents per gallon. Here in East Texas I am looking for it to be in the $3.75 range then falling back to about $3.50 or maybe a little less next year.

A lot of what we are seeing right now I have been predicting for 3 years. ANYTIME you have an incumbent Republican President, you can expect a recession in the year of the election. The Democrats and the liberal media will see to it. If you will just keep telling everyone over and over that we are having a recession, they will get nervous and stop spending money. If all you see or hear on the TV and Radio is doom and gloom you will eventually be overcome by it.

The price of gas right now is an artificial situation and has nothing to do with the supply or really totally with the demand. When a government tells the world that we are too good to soil our hands with nasty ole oil wells, you can bet that the nations that produce the oil in our place will stick it to us. This isn’t the first time we have done this and we are so stupid that it will most likely not be the last. Jimmy Carter ran his campaign on a “The sky is falling and there won’t be a drop of oil left by 2000!!!” platform in 1977. The price of gas soared and we even had rationing. I worked in the oil industry at the time and by 1982 you couldn’t give oil away. Oil prices dropped to almost nothing and nearly every place that I had ever worked went out of business because of the oil GLUT that followed. The year 2000 came and there is still plenty of oil…IF we will get off our butts and drill for it! Once the elections are past things will go back to a more normal business as usual sort of status.

If we reduce our usage, as we are doing… If we let it be known that we are going back into production and start tapping the near limitless resources that are in our offshore reserves and in Alaska… If we start seriously looking into alternative fuels…The Arabs will panic and cut their prices to keep this from happening. You have to understand, oil is ALL they have. If the demand falls they will go back to starving to death. What we need to do is NOT do as we did in 1982. We NEED desperately to find alternatives for burning oil and we need to become more self sufficient in fuels. I hope, but don't expect, that this time we will continue to pursue alternatives even after OPEC drops the prices.

Another thing that is going to bring down the prices in the short term is that right now China is buying oil at an unprecedented rate. First the earthquake disaster has increased their demand for diesel by almost 20%. Trucks and bulldozers are guzzlers and they are rebuilding and cleaning up as fast as they can. They are doing this in part so everything will be perfect for the Olympics. They have also increased their reserves by 25% to insure that there will be no shortages during the Olympics. Once the Olympics are going and then done their demand will fall drastically.

I was raised in an oil patch. We had oil wells on the school grounds and in the subdivisions and my Deer Lease was an oil field. Everybody’s Dad worked in the oil industry when I was growing up and nearly every job that I had until 1982 was oil related. A refinery has only one speed…on or off!!! When you needed to work on a unit you went into “shutdown” and everyone worked 12/7 until it was up and running again. While it was down every valve and every heat exchanger, every pipe and tube was checked and rebuilt if it wasn’t in near perfect shape because you can’t just shut a unit down for a “quick” fix. You can’t run a cracking unit at half speed. You can’t leave a unit down for long. Oil comes in one end and the various products come out the other and go into storage tanks until it is sold. When the storage tanks get full you either sell it or burn it!!! This summer people didn’t travel like they normally do and the tanks are still pretty full. Winter is coming…Where do they put the home heating fuel that they are going to need to make if the tanks are full of gasoline?? In 1977 the problem where I live wasn't that there wasn't any oil, it was WHERE TO STORE IT ALL. They parked tankers in port, FULL OF OIL, just because there wasn't any place to put if if it came ashore!!!! The domes were bulging in the tank farms and I know of one place where they were actually pumping oil back into the ground.

All this adds up to almost EXACTLY the same situation that we were lied to about in 1977. Ford was the incumbent Republican President then. Once again the Democratic cry is the same…THE SKY IS FALLING!!!!!!!

Free at Last, Free at last!!!

Well I went to my Ortho/surgeon Doc yesterday. They did x-rays and he cut me loose!! Halleluiah!! I am feeling good but couldn’t progress much further for fear of doing harm to myself. It is hard to strengthen the quads and never flex your hip past 90 degrees. I also couldn’t cross my legs or twist too much for fear of pulling something out of place. No more!! I may hurt but he says that I am past the point of doing actual harm to myself. GREAT!! I am going to finish off the week taking it light then go back to work next week.

Survival food stocks and phylosophy

I was looking through my mail today and found that I had received, along with my new Backwoodsman magazine, a catalog from a survival food supply house. As I scanned it I found that according to them, a year’s supply of food for four would run over $14,000.00. This along with some other things that I have run into in the last few weeks has prompted me to make a few observances and offer, maybe, a somewhat different perspective and a little free advice.(Worth every cent you paid for it too!)

In these uncertain times it would behoove a lot of people to have supplies laid in “just in case.” I find that a lot of people are worried and concerned about the possibility of hard times in our future. The FEMA fiascos in recent years have brought into focus the foolishness of depending of the government for your basic needs. Many fret but most feel that they can’t afford to do much. Soooo…

First off the best way to survive in any situation is to do as little as possible while avoiding confrontations. I remember years ago when my testosterone levels were a lot higher that I walked down that, “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil…because I’m the baddest dude in the valley.” path. High powered assault and battle rifles and high capacity automatic handguns seemed the way to go along with dehydrated food supplies, MREs and ammo by the truck load.

30 years and a lot of common sense have come and gone since then. K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid) works lot better and great magazines like The Backwoodsman help us see this. I feel now that for fewer than 500 bucks I can easily set someone up to do well under most any situation.

The first thing that you need to toss out of your head is any idea that what we consider hunting today is of any use at all. It is actually just a dangerous waste of time and energy where you burn more calories than you usually gain. Sport hunting is to survival food gathering as boxing is to surviving a street fight. They are two totally different things! If I want to feed my family in a survival situation, going out, hiking all over the country and shooting a gun is the last thing I want to do. It attracts too much attention AND is hard work. Cable snares, while far from sporting, work on animals from mice to elk. The only difference between snaring mice and deer is the size of the cable. These simple traps work 24 hours a day for you. With a little practice they will provide you with more meat than you need real quick. You can perfect your technique on mice, tree rats and rabbits and then with little effort convert your knowledge to bigger game if you need to. Without refrigeration, meat is hard to keep in big quantities. It takes a lot of work to properly cure and store. Unless you are trying to feed a tribe or well situated in a simi-permanent redoubt, the bigger mammals are worth more for their hides than their meat during the warm months. During the cool months they are better for several reasons, the ease of keeping the meat is just one.

If you set cable snares with cam locks and deer stops across active game trails you WILL snag animals. You don’t shoot it, you cut it’s throat with a knife tied on a loooong pole. No noise and no one knows that you have meat. Deer and such are good to jerk but for day to day eating smaller prey are better.

The next thing that you need to come to terms with is that food is fuel and not supposed to be “Fun” or entertaining. Your diet needs to be simple and a bunch of number 10 cans is not simple. Cooking a big number of different foods for each meal is hard work when you are cooking on a fire. Most frontier meals were one pot wonders. I have on my wall, my civil war ancestors “mess kit.” It is small 1 ½ quart 3 legged pot. That and a spoon were all he needed to feed himself for as long as necessary. He didn’t need or expect a 5 course meal every time he sat down to eat.

My survival larder is real simple…Red Beans, Rice, Corn, salt and Lard. Deer corn runs under 4 bucks for 50 lbs. You can parch it whole or with a grain mill, grind it coarse for mush, grind it fine for tortillas. You can boil the corn in a lye solution then rinse it 3 or 4 times and you have hominy. Dry and grind the hominy and you have grits. Red Beans and Rice provide a complete protein and between that, the corn which is a great carbohydrate and the lard you are set. Lard is available anyplace that has a Hispanic community. 5 gallons runs about 25 dollars and will season a ton of beans and make a huge pile of tortillas along with providing the fat that you must have to survive. A bunny or squirrel in the pot makes it all the better and local wild greens will fill out a healthy diet. People ate like this for centuries! The salt can be rock salt, it doesn’t have to be table salt. I buy it in 25 lb sacks from water softener companies. I buy pool shock at wally world, it is a chlorinator that is stable and a few pounds of it will make water safe to drink for years. Bleach is NOT stable and will become ineffective over time and boiling water when you are on the move isn’t a viable choice. The powdered pool shock is cheaper anyway. This sort of food is easy to store and cheap to accumulate.

I also keep on hand some of those “just add water” box meals…soups, red beans and rice, gumbo, mashed potatoes in different flavors etc… These provide on the run “poor boy MREs.” They are cheap, low weight and nutritious. I generally avoid canned goods in this area because you are mostly hauling water around. The only exception to this is canned meats.

For food after that first year, you need to plant the above mentioned grains and beans along with potatoes, yams and legumes. You might go ahead and plant some of them now in whatever location you plan to pull back to if your current situation isn’t as rural as you would like.

Most people don’t have a clue what a potato or yam plant look like or even beans until the pods are filling out. They can be put in all over the place and will be there if you need them. Beans and peas are much the same and will grow back year after year if you don’t harvest them. In the time between then and now, I rotate the corn into my deer feeders and that will make harvesting a deer even simpler if I need one. Right now I really prefer just looking at them and eating porterhouse steaks and hamburgers. A good non-hybred seed supply is a must. A lot of the corn and stuff you get these days is hybrid and sterile or poor quality as far as using it for seed. For long term you want the old stuff that is meant to provide its own seed.

I live in East Texas in the woods near but not in the flood plain of a major river. Surviving here is pretty easy. We don’t have snow or harsh winters. There are all sort of eatable critters all around me. I could live on fish alone with little effort. Food fishing is a lot like the hunting thing. I have nets, traps and other knowledge that make it a sure thing and not a sport. For me, food just isn’t an issue.

The big thing is keeping a low profile and stay out of the way of trouble. The easiest way to win a fight is to not get in a fight. If however I have to fight, it will be like my hunting and fishing and not sporting at all.

When it comes to weapons, K.I.S.S. The last thing you want is the attention that cutting loose with a couple of assault rifles will draw. I sold mine for monster profits a few years ago and went simple. I have enough ammo left over from Y2K that if I have too I can live on birds that I shoot with 22s for about a hundred years. 22lr cartridges are good trade stock. Actually that is what my air pistol and rifle are for. A .357mag will kill anything in East Texas when fired from a rifle. A shotgun is better than anything that shoots in the dark and up close. By limiting the number of different type of ammo that you will use it is easier to gather a nice supply. For me it is 22, 38/357 and 12 ga. I have others but those other guns are more specialized. A 38/357 with different loads is good for almost anything. Ranging from shot shells through 38 special wadcutter light target loads to the new ballistic tip 357 mags designed for rifle use you can carry an arsenal of different “guns” in your pocket. A 38cal. Lee Loader allows easy reloading with very little equipment but in the long run you need to shoot as little as possible.

I love the little single shot guns that you can get different barrels for. A single shot encourages marksmanship, stealth and conserves ammo. A gun is a tool and a simple tool will over time provide little worry about failure and is hard to damage. If you are armed with a bunch of complex offensive stuff you have less flexibility, will use more ammo and have more parts to break down. Even more important with all that firepower you will tend to be brave and less likely to just slip away from trouble. My first love in weapons are things that have sharp points and edges anyway.

You don’t have to spend a lot of money to insure your family’s safety. I suspect most people don’t prepare because they are intimidated by the perceived cost and complexity. They think keeping a little backup store involves lots of money and planning. Don’t go for it!! If nothing else, a couple garbage cans for the corn and a few 5 gallon plastic buckets full beans rice and one with lard will get you through any short term problem. Throw in a pot, a grain grinding mill, a 22 Rifle with ammo, some wire cable and a box of matches and you are about set as far as food is concerned.

DanL

No more PT

Well they tossed me out of physical Therapy yesterday. Christine says that I am about as far along as she can get me until my bone has grown more to better support my implant. That takes 4 month not 6 weeks ;-(. The good news is that I am way ahead of the curve as far as my muscular recovery. The bad news is that, with my size, I am at greater risk of doing damage if I over do. People over 6 foot tall place a lot more stress on the hip when they bend over than a shorter person.

Death Penalty misuse

The GRRRRR of the day IS…The death penalty. A man on death row today since 1984 got a stay of his date with the executioner. It seems that there is DNA evidence that the DA wouldn’t run until yesterday a Judge ordered a stay until this is done. WHY did it take a court order to get our judicial system to do what it is supposed to do? Why is it that all death row inmates DNA is not gathered upon their entry. It not only is not gathered but it takes a court order to get it. One “killer” was cleared by DNA evidence that was snuck out in the form of a bloodied “sample” from a dental procedure.

Don’t get me wrong here. I don’t have a problem with the prompt execution of a KNOWN killer. Known means absolute proof and or a confession. It does not mean a nebulous circumstantial case that is made up of nothing more substantial than the wind from a DA’s mouth. The death penalty is not vengeance, it is not punishment. It is society protecting itself from a person that is believed to be an ongoing and continual threat to almost anyone that comes in contact with them. It is NEVER a game that a DA is playing to win irregardless of the guilt or innocence of the accused.

If a DA is caught failing to do their very best to insure the actual guilt of people that they convict then the DA should take that persons place on Death Row. Too often they not only are not searching for the true facts they are covering these facts up. The same DA that will gladly send a man of to be executed on evidence based on DNA will fight tooth and toenail the release of on man cleared by DNA evidence.

If we can’t do it right then we shouldn’t do it. I think that it is long past time to face the fact that innocent people are being murdered by the state. When the DNA thing first came out there were hoards of people freed from death rows all over the country. This MEANS that before this those people would have died. Even ONE innocent man is too many!

I hear people all the time head running that we need to cut off the appeals and execute these people. The man that got this stay has been on Death Row since 1984! If he is cleared by the DNA then we as a people have been saved from another innocents mans blood being on our hands.

Believe me, LIFE in prison without hope of parole is a much better punishment anyway.