Notes for Tuesday – May 17, 2016

On this day in 1769, George Washington launched a legislative salvo at Great Britain’s fiscal and judicial attempts to maintain its control over the American colonies. He brought a package of non-importation resolutions, drafted by George Mason, before the Virginia House of Burgesses. This initiated a chain of events that led to Britain’s House of Lords demanding that men involved in the extra-legal Massachusetts convention of towns be tried in England. Britain’s plan backfired and created an American identity where before there had been none.

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Today, we present another entry for Round 64 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The nearly $12,000 worth of prizes for this round include:

First Prize:

  1. A Tactical Self-Contained 2-Series Solar Power Generator system from Always Empowered. This compact starter power system is packaged in a wheeled O.D. green EMP-shielded Pelican hard case (a $1,700 value),
  2. A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate that is good for any one, two, or three day course (a $1,195 value),
  3. A course certificate from onPoint Tactical for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses, excluding those restricted for military or government teams. Three day onPoint courses normally cost $795,
  4. DRD Tactical is providing a 5.56 NATO QD Billet upper with a hammer forged, chrome-lined barrel and a hard case to go with your own AR lower. It will allow any standard AR-type rifle to have a quick change barrel, which can be assembled in less than one minute without the use of any tools and a compact carry capability in a hard case or 3-day pack (an $1,100 value),
  5. Gun Mag Warehouse is providing 20 Magpul PMAG 30-rd Magazines (a value of $300) and a Gun Mag Warehouse T-Shirt; (an equivalent prize will be awarded for residents in states with magazine restrictions),
  6. Two cases of Mountain House freeze-dried assorted entrees in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources (a $350 value),
  7. The Ark Institute is donating a non-GMO, non-hybrid vegetable seed package (enough for two families of four) plus seed storage materials, a CD-ROM of Geri Guidetti’s book “Build Your Ark! How to Prepare for Self Reliance in Uncertain Times”, and two bottles of Potassium Iodate (a $325 retail value),
  8. A $250 gift certificate good for any product from Sunflower Ammo,
  9. KellyKettleUSA.com is donating an AquaBrick water filtration kit with a retail value of $250, and
  10. Two cases of meals, Ready to Eat (MREs), courtesy of CampingSurvival.com (a $180 value).

Second Prize:

  1. A Glock form factor SIRT laser training pistol and a SIRT AR-15/M4 Laser Training Bolt, courtesy of Next Level Training, which have a combined retail value of $589,
  2. A transferable certificate for a two-day Ultimate Bug Out Course from Florida Firearms Training (a $400 value),
  3. A Model 175 Series Solar Generator provided by Quantum Harvest LLC (a $439 value),
  4. A Trekker IV™ Four-Person Emergency Kit from Emergency Essentials (a $250 value),
  5. A $200 gift certificate good towards any books published by PrepperPress.com,
  6. A pre-selected assortment of military surplus gear from CJL Enterprize (a $300 value),
  7. RepackBox is providing a $300 gift certificate to their site, and
  8. Safecastle is providing a package of 10 LifeStraws (a $200 value)
  9. American Gunsmithing Institute (AGI) is providing a $300 certificate good towards any of their DVD training courses.

Third Prize:

  1. A Royal Berkey water filter, courtesy of Directive 21 (a $275 value),
  2. A $245 gift certificate from custom knife-maker Jon Kelly Designs, of Eureka, Montana,
  3. A large handmade clothes drying rack, a washboard, and a Homesteading for Beginners DVD, all courtesy of The Homestead Store, with a combined value of $206,
  4. Expanded sets of both washable feminine pads and liners, donated by Naturally Cozy (a $185 retail value),
  5. Two Super Survival Pack seed collections, a $150 value, courtesy of Seed for Security, LLC,
  6. Mayflower Trading is donating a $200 gift certificate for homesteading appliances,
  7. Montie Gear is donating a Precision Rest (a $249 value), and
  8. Two 1,000-foot spools of full mil-spec U.S.-made 750 paracord (in-stock colors only) from www.TOUGHGRID.com (a $240 value).

Round 64 ends on May 31st, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.

Let’s Be The “Good Guy With a Computer” Too, by Tupreco

We all get emails or other Internet postings sent to us about something sensational or horrifying or something that just motivated the sender to repost it or forward it on to you. Most of us just ignore them and shake our heads at the gullibility of the sender. You know the kind I’m talking about. Here are a few of the famous ones that are still making the rounds after years of circulation and recirculation:

The average Internet user’s willingness to pass on emails and other postings about fictitious events like these without verifying whether they are true has always perplexed me. It is one of the rarely identified but most common downsides of the Internet. There is a famous tongue-in-cheek barb– “I know it’s true because I saw it in the Internet”– that still rings true for far too many of us. Receiving something forwarded from a trusted friend immediately gives it an air of credibility. Many people will pass it on in the heat of the moment, often with barely a pause to consider its veracity. You know what I’m talking about, because you’ve undoubtedly received many such postings. If you are also an enthusiastic forwarder of such things, then please continue reading as I highlight several aspects regarding the consequences of such actions.

A troubling trend

I have grown increasingly alarmed over this tendency to share without checking, because I hold truth in very high regard and the problem shows no sign of letting up. The willingness to pass on things that are not true undermines the credibility of both the recipient and the sender like few other things can.  Please forgive me if this sounds like a rant, because it is not. My sole intent is to inspire us to pause and think about what we are doing before we act. I view the ideal of being a person whose wisdom drives their actions as one of the core tenets of SurvivalBlog’s mission.

I’m not talking about spam messages we get by the hundreds daily, but I’m rather referring to things like an email forward I just received from a dear and trusted friend. The email had a heading that read “Urgent prayer request” and included four consecutive “FW:’s” in the subject line of this email they sent me. In the body were “facts” like this– “over 20 churches in the Olisabang province in India were burned down overnight and 200 more have been targeted”.  I discovered it was a hoax in about 30 seconds by googling “Olisabang province”. One of the first things I learned is that there is no ‘Olisabang province’ in India or anywhere. It also led me to postings by these legitimate ministry organizations– all informing their readers about the danger of forwarding this particular message because it was clearly a hoax. This hoax posting first appeared in 2010 and has been making the rounds ever since, only to recently land in my email inbox.

The thing about this and other similar hoaxes is that they blend a mix of truth and lies and often sound very credible. The ironic thing about this one is that there is evidence to support that the creators may have written it in the hopes it would be spread and bring about the very thing it claims has already happened. One of these articles indicates how someone can become an unwitting part of the problem by forwarding it as they risk actually inspiring the very thing to happen they are trying to stop? Read the links for yourself:

So why are we so quick to believe these things as true and forward them so willingly? For one thing, it immediately captures the hearts of those who are concerned about injustice. In this case, it is Christian people facing religious persecution worldwide, and there have been recorded acts of churches being burned in India. But it also pushes our buttons of:

  • “See, I knew something like this would happen!”
  • “Why isn’t the media talking about this?”
  • “I better tell someone else so we can pray!”

…and as soon as we react out of emotion we’re off.

I will be the first one to admit that persecution of the church today is at unprecedented levels and is a real source of concern for me. The atrocities dealt to Christians at the hands of Islamic and Hindu extremists have been well-publicized and need to be stopped. So too, even the similar official acts of the governments of China, North Korea, and, sadly, the United States must be called into account. But we fight injustice of all kinds with prayer, steadfast action, and truth. This is why each and every article I pass on gets confirmed using the biblical standard of confirmation “except on the evidence of two or three witnesses”  (I Timothy 5:19). Checking the confirmation is where the truth of this “urgent prayer request” email was quickly revealed as a hoax.  

Well-researched news articles with their facts confirmed have long been a hallmark of credible journalism. There is something about human nature that easily accepts truth from trusted sources without believing it needs to be verified. However, it’s easy to see that the Internet has changed all of that. Hoax articles are posted right beside solid journalism, and they look almost identical. News of impending disasters of all sorts is one of the strongest draws to the human psyche. Discernment and wisdom become critically important to the mindset of responsible preppers. We already realize that the stakes of upcoming events are very high to us, our loved ones, and our nation. There is so much misinformation mixed in with the facts that the line between fact and factoid is rapidly blurring. Here is an interesting short article from the Washington Post that lends some insight into why people are taken in by such things and choose to pass them on instead of confirming for themselves.

Why people fall for dumb Internet hoaxes

If you decide not to read the article, at least consider this list of six reasons cited by the author. You could probably add one or two more reasons of your own.

  1. People don’t actually read the content they’re sharing.
  2. People don’t consider the legitimacy of specific news sources.
  3. People are vulnerable to confirmation bias.
  4. People infer legitimacy from “related content”.
  5. People see a piece of content as more legitimate the more they see of it. This is how unsubstantiated factoids come to be widely spread.
  6. People confuse satire and hoax.

Credibility Movement- Steps

So today is a watershed day for me. I have officially decided to start repeatedly raising my voice for reason and truth. I am starting with this submission to SurvivalBlog in the hope that readers will send it to everyone who sends them this stuff. Hopefully, we can become an example to model for others how to boost their credibility by filtering their postings and emails through the lens of truth before they forward or repost.  This is how we upgrade our ability to be better critical thinkers and responsible conveyors of truth. 

Do these two things when you come across such an article or receive an email you are tempted to forward or repost:

  1. Verify that it is true. Do a Google or other search on key facts or phrases to confirm. Check with a few of the dozens of Internet hoax sites. Don’t just stick with a single source, like snopes.com. Even they have their well-known biases.
  2. If you find out it’s a fake or a hoax or just plain wrong, respectfully reply to the sender what you found, explain why you are not forwarding it, and ask them to confirm it themselves. Send them a copy of this message to help them understand why it’s important. If they agree, ask them to send an update to the dozens of people they sent it to with an apology and a request that they forward the same clarification to the friends they sent it to.

Save this information in one of your folders or files.  Even if we don’t start a movement, at least we can raise the standard and help people stop embarrassing themselves. I also hope some prominent journalists (especially Christian journalists) will also draw attention to this problem. As preppers, we are clearly people who often choose to do things that others sometimes consider extreme. Make sure your choices and actions are founded on solid intel. The stakes have never been higher. Thanks for reading. Let’s take a stand together for spreading truth.

Letter Re: 9mm and BF’s Comment

Hugh,

Yes, it is the caliber in hand, but the one in hand should be the caliber with which you can put multiple rounds on target rapidly according to a well written SB article that I am too lazy to find just now. [Editor’s note: Firearms Training/Exercise #1] AND, in case you need a note for your wife on the annual purchase rate, the congressional candidate who will get my vote next week says “If you know how many guns you own (off the top of your head), you don’t own enough.”

To avoid cheap mags I just go buy one magazine a month. “Mag of the month” is what I say to the guy at the counter. He smiles for a number of reasons. – RV

News From The American Redoubt:

Over at the excellent Paratus Familia blog comes a great how-to article for those who live in regions where Camas bulbs grow: Camas Fields of Blue.

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Montana court strikes down last piece of anti-immigrant law – Sent in by B.B.

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Tourists kidnap baby bison and put it in their car because it looked cold

JWR’s Comment: Note the pristine interior of the Toyota Sequoia. It was undoubtedly a rental.

Reader A.S. submitted a further update on the issue. Note that the baby bison was abandoned by its mother after the incident and had to be put down due to over familiarity with people. It’s another case of “killing by kindness” from people who have no clue about wildlife.

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Idahoans for Liberty has released its list of preferred candidates for the upcoming election. Submitted by C.T.

Economics and Investing:

Squatters in Las Vegas and all the problems that come with them. – P.S.

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OFFICIAL SOURCE: Global Silver Supply Deficit Surges On Revised Data

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Pew Research Study – The American Middle Class Declined in 90% of Metro Areas From 2000-2014 – H.L.

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Legend Warns Risk Of Total Global Collapse Is Greater Today Than Any Time In History – G.G.

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Cyberattacks on Swift financial network ‘worthy of freaking out’ about: ex-Treasury official

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SurvivalBlog and its editors are not paid investment counselors or advisers. Please see our Provisos page for details.

Odds ‘n Sods:

I don’t like it, but it’s hard to argue with him: ‘Preppers’ say Obama ‘has divided us on a course for civil war’ [Warning: The site has a totally unrelated video that autostarts.] – Submitted by DSV

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FBI Hid Surveillance Devices Around Alameda County Courthouse Nothing to see here…move along. – B.B.

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Reader P.S. sent in the link to an interesting interview with Jesse Hughes of Eagles of Death Metal (the band playing in Paris during the Bataclan islamic attack).

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Reader T.J. sent in this link showing the “technical failure” that Ankara (Turkey) claims was the cause of its helicopter crash. Excerpt: “If a heat-seeking missile breaking an aircraft in half is seen as technical failure, that would be accurate.”

The value of this article is that it shows just how complicated things have gotten in the region. The PKK is one of the strongest anti-ISIS fighters in the area. The U.S. supports the Kurdish YPG fighters with close ties to the PKK. The U.S. and Turkey are in the same anti-ISIS coalition, but Turkey actively targets the PKK. Russia also targets the ISIS forces, yet constantly tangles with Turkey. The military and political wars in Syria and Iraq further complicate the issues. Is your head spinning yet? It’s hard to believe that the world has not entered WWIII yet, because of this region.

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From the Desk of Mike Williamson, SurvivalBlog’s Editor at Large: Good news from behind the 2A lines – Court Rules That Right To Buy, Sell Guns Protected By 2A In SAF Case

Hugh’s Quote of the Day:

“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” – Frederick Douglass

Notes for Monday – May 16, 2016

On this day in 1868, the U.S. Senate votes against impeaching President Andrew Johnson and acquits him of committing “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

In February 1868, the House of Representatives charged Johnson with 11 articles of impeachment for vague “high crimes and misdemeanors”. (For comparison, in 1998, President Bill Clinton was charged with two articles of impeachment for obstruction of justice during an investigation into his inappropriate sexual behavior in the White House Oval Office. In 1974, Nixon faced three charges for his involvement in the Watergate scandal.) The main issue in Johnson’s trial was his staunch resistance to implementing Congress’ Civil War Reconstruction policies. The War Department was the federal agency responsible for carrying out Reconstruction programs in the war-ravaged southern states, and when Johnson fired the agency’s head, Edwin Stanton, Congress retaliated with calls for his impeachment.

Hawkins Pressure Cooker, by Pat and Mary Cascio

We’ve owned several travel trailers over the years but hardly ever went out camping. We live in the boonies, and I sincerely love where I live. There is no need for me to go any place else to enjoy myself. Basically, we used travel trailers as mobile bug out retreats, if the time ever came, or as a spare “bedroom” for guests. Approximately a year ago, we acquired a newer 21-foot travel trailer that has everything I wanted, except a/c, which would have been nice. (I still might have it installed and spend hot summer nights sleeping in it in our front yard!)

One thing becomes readily apparent when you have a small travel trailer, and that is the size. You simply can’t put everything inside of it that you’d like to, period! You learn about all the cool products that are specifically designed for travel trailer living. These products are down-sized from their full-sized counterparts as a necessity. You only have a very limited amount of room for storage. Even though most travel trailers and their bigger cousins, 5th wheel trailers, are designed to have a lot of storage space, there still isn’t enough space for everything you would like to have in them.

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We keep our travel trailer pretty well stocked at all times. In a matter of a few minutes, I can hook it up to my pickup and drive away, knowing that we have at the very least a couple month’s worth of food and other supplies. Give us a half hour and we can load up a lot more food, guns, ammo, and other gear to see us through a year or longer, seriously! We have learned to economize, when loading up a travel trailer. You can’t have all the frozen and refrigerated foods you’d like, because it has a very small refrigerator with a tiny freezer, but that’s not all that important in the long run.

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No matter what your plans might be– simple weekend camping, a week on a hunting trip, or long-term survival– you have to have cookware, but you can’t fit everything you’d like in a small travel trailer. I personally could live in our 21-foot travel trailer. It is big enough to carry all my needs and necessities; it really is. Still, space is at a premium, so we plan carefully what we keep stored in the trailer. My good friend and long-time SurvivalBlog.com reader, Big Jack in Arkansas, recently ran across an ad for a small pressure cooker. That is something we didn’t have in our travel trailer. Yeah, we have one. However, like many pressure cookers, it is big and takes up a lot of room. So, we never kept one in the trailer. Big Jack, bless his heart, bought one for us and had it sent directly to our home.

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What we received is a 1.5 liter aluminum pressure cooker from an outfit called Hawkins Pressure Cookers. This is the smallest one they produce and their latest model, too. They make a complete line of pressure cookers in various sizes. Check out the above link on Amazon.com for some of their products. I’ll readily admit that a 1.5-liter sized pressure cooker isn’t ideal for cooking some meals, because it simply isn’t big enough. However, it is big enough for many cooking needs. I do a lot of the cooking in our house, simply because I’m a good cook. (Ask my family, and they’ll tell you.) But I have never used our full-sized pressure cooker. I leave that job to my wife. So, I called upon her to aid me in my testing of the Hawkins Pressure Cooker.

Working from her notes and my own observations, there are a few things that I wanted to bring to light. First of all, do not fill this little 1.5-liter pressure cooker more than 2/3rd of the way full or just halfway full for foods that expand, like rice and dried veggies.

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The basic operation of the little Hawkins is to put your pressure cooker on the stove on high heat with the lid closed. When the vent starts steaming, you then place the vent weight/pressure regulator on it. It goes through three steps when cooking– no steam, steam escapes, and steam is full force when the regulator is lifting and whistling from the blast of the steam. Now, once it is whistling with the weight/pressure regulator on it, you reduce the heat to medium and start to time your cooking, as your recipe requires. BTW, a nice cookbook comes with the Hawkins, which is made in India. So many of the recipes are for Indian-style foods.

There are some great benefits to using a pressure cooker. First of all, it usually cuts your cooking time by 50%, and this is important when you only have limited fuel. In a travel trailer, you only have a certain amount of propane on hand for cooking. So, a pressure cooker saves time, money, and fuel, which is excellent!

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My wife says it gives more nourishing foods, keeping in many of the vitamins and proteins. The food is also better tasting as well. A pressure cooker also makes your food more hygienic, because the temperature gets much higher than when using a regular pan to cook, it helps destroy harmful bacteria. It can also sterilize instruments for medical use, although this little 1.5 liter unit is too small for this use.

The Hawkins pressure cookers are unique in that its gasket fits from the inside. That is, there is a little rubber gasket on the top of the lid, and you have to fit the lid inside of the pan. It takes a little practice to get it down pat, but it’s really easy to do. Once pressure builds up in the pressure cooker, the lid is held on firmly from the pressure as well as the latching handle lid. You’ll want to really pay attention to the directions for attaching the lid to the pot; as I stated, it takes practice, but it is very easy to do once you do it a few times.

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The Hawkins pressure cooker can be used on all types of stoves, or even wood fires. Just avoid direct contact with hot coals or hot wood. Our travel trailer has a propane stove and oven, so the pressure cooker worked great on the stovetop. This smallest Hawkins pressure cooker could even be carried in a backpack, if you want to use it while out camping, too. It cooks with about 15 lbs of pressure, and excess pressure is periodically released, so there are no worries about it exploding. However, it is recommended that you purchase a few extra pressure regulators just to have on hand. These can be ordered directly from Hawkins.

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Honestly, I never gave much thought to keeping a pressure cooker in our travel trailer, until Big Jack told me about this product and had one sent to me. Travel trailer living does have it limits and, as already mentioned, one is the very limited space in all of them. We have one clothes closet that we have some clothes stored in. Other clothes and footwear is stored in one of the many other hidden storage spaces in the trailer. You learn, in short order, that you must pick and choose what you can store in your travel trailer. So you make your choices based on what is most important to you. A travel trailer sure beats living in a tent, if a SHTF scenario should arise. Yes, you can run out of propane, but we have a couple of solar ovens as well as rocket stoves, so we can use them for cooking, too. We would also load up our 3,500 watt generator, if we had to bug out, with a limited amount of fuel, of course! No matter how well you plan, you only have finite fuel sources for everything. You hope for the best, that you can somehow find a source of resupply of propane and gas to operate these things.]

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Our goal for when my wife retires, if a major SHTF scenario doesn’t happen before then, is to sell our small homestead and purchase a nice-sized 5th wheel trailer and place it on a small plot of land in a rural area and live the rest of our days in it. We simply won’t be able to afford to continue living where we presently live on our retirement funds. However, a nice 5th wheel would make living very nice indeed. As a matter of fact, most 5th wheel trailers we’ve looked at over the years are much nicer than our current home. No plan is perfect, but we looked down the road, and this is what we’ll probably end up doing. We’ll need to sell off a lot of stuff, because even in a big 5th wheel trailer, you can’t fit everything in it that you now own.

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So, if you have a travel trailer, a 5th wheel trailer, or are in the market for a pressure cooker, check out the many different models that Hawkins has to sell. I’m guessing you’ll find one that is just perfect for your needs. I believe the model that was sent to us by Big Jack in Arkansas was about $26, give or take a few cents. It’s a great investment and a great gift for our long-term survival needs in our travel trailer.

Cascio’s Note: If you are entertaining the notion about living in a travel trailer or even a 5th wheel trailer, pick up a copy of Brian Kelling’s book Travel-Trailer Homesteading Under $5,000. It’s a great starting point, with some good information in it.

Obama’s Wide Open Throttle

Eight years ago, Barrack Hussein Obama (BHO) and his cronies were swept into office by a naive electorate that fell for their vague promises of “Hope and Change”. But today many of us have lost hope, and we have all suffered from the change. It was as if a locomotive had a change of engineers, and the drunken replacement accelerated the train with a wide open throttle. Obama’s statist-collectivist policies have been instituted at a breakneck pace.

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Let’s take a few minutes to ponder Obama’s legacy and just what all of BHO’s “change” has wrought:

  • Massive government debt. With the help of a Republican-controlled congress, our 44th president, has amassed more Federal debt than his 43 predecessors, combined. Our children and grandchildren will bear the burden of those debts.
  • Emasculated military forces. Not only have our soldiers, sailors, and airmen been subjected to the disgrace of having to serve with open homosexuals, but now the size of our military is shrinking. The intentional draw-down of the U.S. Army now has its manpower smaller than in 1939.
  • Socialized medicine. Once just a scheme of then-First Lady Hillary Clinton, America’s formerly first-rate private healthcare system has been socialized. Failure to enroll in this “not a tax” tax program subjects Americans to a graduated system of fines. Thankfully, Christian cost-sharing programs like Samaritan Ministries, Christian Healthcare Ministries, and Medi-Share are still available as legal alternatives to Obamacare, but that window of opportunity may close in the near future.
  • Leftist courts. BHO’s appointments to the Federal courts and to the Supreme Court have been almost universally been hardline socialist democrats. Typified by Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, BHO has consistently nominated judges who are both statist-collectivists and “activists” who ignore both precedent and the intent of our Constitution’s framers. The effects of Obama’s many court appointments will still be felt for decades after Obama leaves office.
  • Inverted foreign policy. Rather than standing up to the onslaught of radical Islamic extremism, the BHO administration has quite unevenly both turned its back on our long-time allies, like Israel, and cozied up to dictators. By embracing the Arab Spring movement, the BHO Administration has thoroughly fouled up our foreign policy, alienating our allies and making our nation a mockery in most nations.
  • A shrinking middle class. Obamanomics, so-called “free trade”, oppressive taxation, and crony tax credits have all worked together to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, gradually destroying our nation’s once vibrant middle class.
  • Federal officials used as bully boys. The FBI, BATFE, EPA, and IRS have been used as apparatchiks against perceived enemies of the state. The notorious Lerner “Special Projects” scandal selectively delaying or denying the tax exemption of nonprofit conservative groups was just one example. Most recently, FBI HRT teams were deployed to Oregon, in response to the occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge headquarters. The FBI’s message in Oregon was clear: Step out of line, and you end up lying face down in red snow.
  • Federal gun-running. With the intent of discrediting American gun-owners, Operation Fast and Furious was put in operation, intentionally allowing American guns to be illegally exported to Mexican drug lords. The end result of the gun-running scandal was that Eric Holder was found in contempt of Congress, but no official ever answered for this state-sanctioned perfidy.
  • Institutionalized corruption: Obama presidential campaign contributor Bruce Heyman was named the U.S. ambassador to Canada. (It is amazing what rounding up $1 million in campaign contributions can do for a man.) During BHO’s first term, the creditors of General Motors were left twisting in the wind, while the socialist UAW benefited. Following campaign contributions, Solyndra received $535 million is taxpayer funds, but the company went bankrupt. The promised “4,000 new jobs” never materialized. Current campaign finance laws allow tremendous influence to be exerted by corporate donors. In the past few years, Hillary Clinton has amassed an astounding $200 million dollars in “speaker’s fees”, in presenting speeches at one million dollars per speech. And we are told that there was no quid pro quo for these enormous fees. Meanwhile, the Clinton Foundation has taken in millions in donations from foreign governments and corporations, and again we are told that “it is perfectly legal” and again that there was no quid pro quo. But let me be frank: I know corruption when I see it, and I see it plainly, both in BHO’s White House and with the Clintons.
  • Homosexual “marriage” and gender-bending. Spurred on by the mass media’s relentless brainwashing, the institution of marriage has effectively been destroyed. The latest affront is the legalization of cross-gender use of restrooms and locker rooms. The BHO Administration recently announced that it would withhold Federal funding from any school that does not allow cross-gender uses of restrooms.
  • Common Core curriculum. With the full backing of Obama, the Department of Education has instituted collectivist Common Core standards for America’s schools. This pervasive system is undermining the independence of both the states and local school districts.
  • Open borders and un-vetted immigrants. The way that the BHO Administration has handled our borders and immigration policy has been horrendous. These policies have left us much more vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Only time will tell the full implications of BHO’s blunders.
  • The rise of the surveillance state. Continuing a trend that started with the second Bush Administration, Obama has condoned the pervasive surveillance of the American people. There are now countless cameras and license plate scanners in operation, permanent archiving of all Internet activity, and monitoring of nearly all telephone calls, with deep, persistent archives. It is like a Stasi agent’s dream come true. Our Fourth Amendment rights are under attack, and the courts are doing little to stop it.

But Not All Bad News…

All of the preceding is just a sampling, and it might seem quite depressing and disturbing. However, there has been some good news in the past eight years. One notable failure of the BHO Administration has been their intended disarmament of the civilian populace. Aside for some executive orders that still stand, nearly all of their attempts at “gun control” have been blocked by Congress and the courts. Meanwhile, nondiscretionary concealed carry permits are now available in nearly every state, and permitless (Vermont style) concealed carry laws are expanding to many states. I expect this trend to continue. Having a well-armed citizenry provides a crucial check on the Federal government. In effect, the Second Amendment is the insurance policy for the rest of the Bill of Rights.

A More Sober Engineer?

The upcoming quadrennial presidential election presents both an opportunity and a substantial danger. Please be prayerful that America gets better leadership. We cannot afford to have another four or eight years of leftist lunacy. Pray for God’s mercy on our nation. And always be ready and willing to stand up and fight if full-blown tyranny descends on America. – JWR

Note: Permission is granted for re-posting of this entire article, but only if done so in full, with proper attribution to James Wesley, Rawles and SurvivalBlog, and only if the included links are preserved.)

Recipe of the Week: Shortcut Chili Con Carne

Ingredients

  • 1 lb lean ground beef
  • 1 small onion, chopped
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 to 2 tsp chili powder
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
  • 2 (8-oz) cans tomato sauce
  • 2 (16-oz) cans kidney beans, drained

Directions:

  1. In a skillet or slow-cooking pot with a browning unit, break up beef with a fork and cook until lightly browned.
  2. Pour off the excess fat.
  3. In a slow-cooking pot, combine the meat with onion, salt, chili powder, bay leaf, Worcestershire sauce, tomato sauce, and kidney beans.
  4. Cover and cook on high for 2 to 3 hours.
  5. Remove the bay leaf and serve.

Makes 6 to 7 servings.

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Do you have a favorite recipe that would be of interest to SurvivalBlog readers? Please send it via e-mail. Thanks!

Letter Re: Comms Using Photos – Would This Work?

Hi Hugh and James,

I just finished reading The Religion War by Scott Adams. It’s a short, very good book about Christianity vs. Islam in the future as both sides prepare for war. In it, he wrote something that made me curious if it would work. In order to defeat the use of computers scanning emails to find key words or phrases, his characters do something I’ve never thought of. “Cruz’s intelligence forces electronically searched every message that crossed the Internet, but their sniffing programs were looking for text, keywords, key phrases, and encrypted files. (His people) thwarted the filters by simply handwriting their messages on photographs of landscapes, scanning in the entire pictures, and sending them as email attachments. A human could easily read the handwritten message on the photo, but a computer wouldn’t find enough regularity or structure to identify where a tree ended and a letter began.” What do you think? Would this work?

HJL Comments: The technology of facial recognition and handwriting analysis is fairly mature, and the technology can easily be used to recognize “other” things in pictures. It wouldn’t get 100% recognition, but the system would be good enough to flag the data for further investigation by a human on those that it couldn’t read outright. To implement this on a broad scale would require significant resources, and while the alphabet agencies’ giant data vacuum certainly records the raw data, the data is only archived if you are targeted in some fashion.

It’s all a matter of resources. If you are low on the list, not many resources will be expended on you. If your communications get a higher priority, more resources will be allocated. When the full force of the resources of the government get pointed at you, there is very little that will remain secret. Even with encryption, they can bring a serious brute force attack against it, and the only way you can remain secret is to have some sort of self-destruction of the data when too many failures happen. (And of course, we all know how the FBI vs. Apple turned out. A 10 million dollar bounty is a serious motivation.)

Staying off the radar is the best method. Constantly changing methods runs a distant second. The only method that has never been broken is a true one-time pad encryption. While it’s simple to implement, even the smallest slip up in OTP methodology will compromise it, considering the amount of resources that can be focused on it.

Initially the method you describe might give some obscurity (but not security); however, the moment “they” know it is happening the obscurity is lost. Additionally, SurvivalBlog ran a link to an article a while back that showed how the contents of messages were not necessary to grasp the importance of an individual: Using Metadata to find Paul Revere. While seemingly complicated, this is really a simple analysis. Yet it identifies Paul Revere as critical to the American Revolution. What if the British had done this sort of analysis? As we have seen in the Burns, Oregon fiasco, TPTB are not above identifying the critical personnel and removing them from the overall picture. Using nothing but metadata obtained in the typical three or four degrees of separation that the alphabet agencies use on communications, it shouldn’t be too hard to identify Kevin Bacon, considering the resources they can bring to the table.

Economics and Investing:

Items from Professor Preponomics:

US News

Restructuring the National Debt (Mises) Excerpt: “US presidential candidate Donald Trump made more waves yesterday by suggesting he might attempt to reduce the US national debt by renegotiating with creditors.” …and of course there is follow up! From Zero Hedge… Trump on Debt Renegotiation: “You Never Have to Default Because You Print the Money” Warning: Commentary following article may contain bad language and/or inappropriate avatars.

Puerto Rican Debt Crisis is Coming to a Head (Barrons) Excerpt: “Puerto Rico’s Government Development Bank, which plays a key role in the island’s finances, defaulted on $3.9 billion of debt last week, while working out a deal with about 25% of creditors that would pay them around 47 cents on the dollar.”

International News

Saudi Arabia’s Powerful Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi is Fired (Fox News Business) Excerpt: “Mr. Naimi, who had been the kingdom’s oil minister since 1995, has been a loud voice against lowering Saudi Arabia’s production when prices fall, a departure from its past tactics.”

Saudi Arabia Names Khalid al-Falih Energy Minister to Replace Naimi (Reuters) Excerpt: “Riyadh believes that cheap crude alone can balance the market by stimulating demand and shutting down high-cost producers.”

Greek Parliament Approves Pension Cuts and Tax Rises as Protesters Clash with Police (The Telegraph) Excerpt: “…the latest reforms demanded by the European Union and International Monetary Fund in exchange for fresh funds from Greece’s 86 billion euro (£68 billion) bailout agreed in July, the third for the debt-laden country since 2010.”

According to Deutsche Bank, the “Worst Kind of Recession” May Already Have Started (Zero Hedge) Excerpt: “Sarcasm aside, let’s summarize: according to Deutsche Bank the worst kind of a recession, an ‘endogenous one’ in which labor demand plunges as ‘corporations are not just tired of negative profit growth, but also because they are drawing a line in the sand from the perspective of defending margins’ may be imminent….” Warning: Commentary following article may contain bad language and/or inappropriate avatars.

Personal Economics and Household Finance

Survival Buzz: How to Move from the Mid-Way Point of Prepping (Backdoor Survival) Excerpt: “Are you at the point where you are comfortable with your prepping progress? By that I mean you have done enough to know you can get by if you have to, and, for better or for worse, wonder if you have done enough.”

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SurvivalBlog and its editors are not paid investment counselors or advisers. Please see our Provisos page for details.

Odds ‘n Sods:

Reader J.N. sent in some interesting recipes for preppers. Note: These are for informational purposes only.

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L.G. sent in this link on learning how to shoot a target outside from an inside position – A very useful skill to have: Defending a Bug In position takes practice and skill.

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It could just be that some manager has a particular fear, but…Why Were Texas Game Wardens Just Issued Nuclear Radiation Detectors? – Sent in by B.B.

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A new listing at our SurvivalRealty.com spinoff site (owned and operated by my #1 son) just caught my eye: a 46.9 acre sustainable permaculture farm in Hawaii. Take a quick scan of the more than 225 listings now at the site. There are some amazing properties! – JWR

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Mike Williamson, SurvivalBlog’s Editor at Large, sent in the link to this blog with first hand reports from Venezuela.