The best explanation of the 14th amendment and birthright citizenship i have ever read

        It seems being born here making you an immediate citizen is a relatively new thing. New being the last 70 years or so. Read this very informative.

Birthright Citizenship: A Fundamental Misunderstanding of the 14th Amendment   

    

Louisiana must have a bullseye on it.

    It seems like  Mother Nature has it in for  Louisiana.

 It appears that FEMA is slow in responding AGAIN.  The only national figure to show concern has been Trump.
  Even my Alabama heart feels for there coon asses (LSU fans) so I offer a way to help next time.
   If Trump wins he should move the offices of  FEMA to Louisiana that way next time they will be in trouble to. I would bet if their kids and wives had to wade 4 foot of shit filled water they would respond faster.

A free kindle book on prepping . As seen by a syrian aid worker.

  This book is free  7/23/16     https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IW3JLJ2/ref=wl_it_dp_v_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=3M9E43J6VP06R&coliid=I15HK3RACVVYRA#nav-subnav

  It is a  quick read and gives some good points to think on. It will make you think about "bugging in " vs "bugging out" and the how and with what. It gives a different perspective.

Read this before you go to the grocery store.

    Ok we are a rich country and shortages of food haven't happened in the United States since WWII . Then it was only a few items that were short as the military had priority. We as a nation are spoiled and think it will never change.

    Venezuela Is an oil rich nation surpassing even Saudi Arabia in oil reserves . Due to low crude prices , bad policy decisions and corruption Its citizen's are suffering severe shortages of Basic food

 items. This has been going on for over a year now it is to the point the POOR are starving because they cannot find or afford what is available. this article is wrote from a upper middle class perspective.
http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-venezuela-diary/

   Now make a grocery list and go shopping don't worry about this our government would never let this happen, or would they? This isn't  an Apocalypse novel it is a former top 10 economic nation.

    This is US if the world loses faith in the dollar. This is US if terrorist take down the grid . This is US if ____________, any hundred different things were to happen.

 

   Prepping is no longer  just about your parents fear of Nuclear War.

Why we are told to fear Trump.

   Trump has stirred the pot of  national politics . I think  this sums up why he is doomed to fail.

http://gorges-smythe.blogspot.com/2016/03/been-tellin-my-wife-this-all-along.html  

 Just for the record I will vote for him . If all we can get is bread and circus lets have the biggest circus ever seen.

Why do crazy people star on Discovery History and Nat Geo.

     Ok every time a new show comes out on discovery, history, Nat Geo. about off grid or any "non traditional way of life" they find or turn into Crazy people. May be  normal people that live this way tell them HELL NO ain't interested in doing a show. The production companies want drama and extremes in trivial matters. They fail to understand that a lot of viewers want to see true situations and hear the why's without making a stubbed toe a life and death event (ok a stubbed toe FEELS like life or death).

   Last night was the Premier of the Boonies Billed as an Off The Grid way of life. All I saw was a cave dweller who may have cracked when his wife died, A man and wife that had a tree house in the Washington woods , A nomad who lived in a tee pee like in the 1880's. He left society due to lung problems but cooks on a wood fire. The last one is a family man that lives on an island in lake Michigan and bow fishes. This show may develop but what I saw last night was a bunch of crazy folks that had deserted society and technology to run around in the woods and be filmed.

    Now here is my problem with all these show's. They show modern people in primitive situations trying to live without even 1800 level tools and few skills. When trappers, explorers and Settlers left for the  Un known parts of this continent they carried the best known tools of the day. This held true of guns knives axes traps to plows. Even the horse packs and wagons were cutting edge designs for weight and load. In adittion to the tools they had skills learned over a lifetime in their field  of work. If you are going to do a show about Off Grid life style give them the tools that are available today. Yea I know any idiot with a million to spend could make it but there has to be some that have carved out a life in the wild. The only show that comes close in my opinion is Life Below Zero.

 If you had to move Off Grid due to whatever what 10 items of modern technology would you want.

Prepper Supply list ? Gold rush 1898

    Ok the new season of Gold Rush is on cable I like to watch it. Last week a comment on another blog had this list of food. It is what the Canadian government required a miner to have to enter the Yukon for one year. This is a minimum for a year expecting hunting and fishing to be added by the miner.
  THIS IS PER PERSON!!!!
FOOD:
200 pounds of bacon  (for oil)
400 pounds of flour
85 pounds assorted dried fruit
50 pounds cornmeal
35 pounds rice
24 pounds coffee
5 pounds tea
100 pounds sugar
25 pounds fish
15 pounds soup vegetables
50 pounds oatmeal
50 pounds dried potatoes
50 pounds dried onions
25 cans butter
100 pounds beans
4 dozen tins condensed milk
15 pounds salt
1 pound pepper
8 pounds baking powder
2 pounds baking soda
1/2 pound mustard
3/4 pound ginger
36 pounds yeast cakes
(Yukon/Klondike gold rush stampeder’s supply list, 1898

  This list alone is over 1200 lb. So as you look over your own lists keep this one in mind. Me personally I know I don't have this many calories per person. The equipment list make interesting reading to. If your like me you will be in better shape on gear than these list .
  Jim Dankin  over at http://bisonprepper.blogspot.com/ always says most Prepper's are long on gear and guns but will starve when the MRE's run out. Here are a couple of links of complete lists.

http://www.questconnect.org/ak_chilkoot_supplies.htm

http://alaskaweb.org/mining/supplylist.html

I thought i knew my neighborhood .

     I have lived in my house almost 30 years . I have walked the woods and driven all the roads around here . This afternoon the weather got cold and rainy so I quit working on clearing the pond and some how got on google earth. Now I have been on google earth in the past but never played with it . Today I zoomed in on the area around the house out to 2 miles . I thought I knew my neighborhood  boy was I wrong . I knew the roads and the drives but I found 5 houses 3 pond/lakes and 2 streams hidden in the woods that I didn't know were there. Saw dirt bike trails going deeper than I thought they did, saw where the hardwood and pine thickets separated along ridgelines. If you haven't given a close look to your area using google earth I HIGHLY Recommend you make time to study where you live and if you plan on bugging out in case of trouble . Use google earth to get a GOOD idea of what is hidden around your safe location . 

    If you live in a city it will still give you a lot of insight into obstacle's and assets in your area . The ponds and streams that I found could be a good source of fish if needed . The hardwoods should have nut trees mixed in .Some areas had a block pattern that may have been old farm sections that have over grown. Today US steel and ABC coal own most of the vacant land near here. I used a large chunk of my download for the day on google earth but I will be studying it more in the future. Even from the free view I know my daughter was visiting ,I still had my yellow truck, had just built my lean-to and had left my tractor in the middle of the back yard that day .

  

Spring time is a lot of work!

      Is it just me or is geting caught up on the yard and house and other what not alot of work?Cutting the grass planting flowers tilling a garden(a friends not me this year)hauling garbage fixing the cars.When the weather is in the 70s it seems like work to be done is everywhere.Stop and think about what you have had to do.Ok now just be thanful you didnt have to milk cows or goats gather eggs plant 20 acres make sure the animals were bred.Sharpen tools cleaned a barn hauled manure(OK did that for the wifes flowers).Thinking about what i have to do verses what my greatgrand parents had to do in the spring.My life is a walk in the park. So take a few and compare your spring see how you rate :).

Price of pork a sign of whats comming!!!

       What does the price of pork have to do with the future.Huge and rapid price increases!! On March 19th I bought pork butts for 1.32 $ a pound by the case a week later it was 1.48 then it jumped in one week to 1.98 now its 2.08 a pound case price.
     Beef has climbed .60 $ to 1.00 a pound and a lot of other items have increased.Processed meats will be following.Gas has gone up 40 cents a gallon in a month .
     If you still have food storage shortages you better act soon.Some of the prices are because of low inventory cattle herd is at 1952 levels  Hogs remember China owns Smithfield the largest pork producer in the nation.Even chicken is up 15 cents a pound and we all can say Tyson.
     We have all read about hyper inflation remember it starts slow then becomes a water fall.This may or may not be the start but why chance it. Stop and think what do you use or eat that has gone up this year more than 10% ,Then try to think what has decreased or stayed the same that you use.

Wastfull old farts !!

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the much older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.
The woman apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this ‘green thing’ back in my earlier days.”
The young clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.”
She was right — our generation didn’t have the ‘green thing’ in its day. Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled.
But we didn’t have the “green thing” back in our day.
Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags that we reused for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown Paper bags as book covers for our school books. This was to ensure that public property, (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribbling. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags.
But too bad we didn’t do the “green thing” back then. We walked upstairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.
But she was right. We didn’t have the “green thing” in our day.
Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.
But that young lady is right; we didn’t have the “green thing” back in our day.
Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.
But she’s right; we didn’t have the “green thing” back then.
We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.
But we didn’t have the “green thing” back then.
Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service in the family’s $45,000 SUV or van, which cost what a whole house did before the “green thing.” We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.
But isn’t it sad that the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the “green thing” back then?

     I did not write this it was in a comment section and i had  post it.

A good read.About what may come

     http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2014/01/seven-sustainable-technologies.html

         If you have never read his blog i strongly recommend it.He is a little different in that he is a practicing druid and believes we are in for a long slow decent as a civilisation back to sustainable population and level of technology.Now if you are a believer that we will have a TEOTWAWKI event he my piss you off.The druid says we are going to repeat declines of the past.He thinks most preppers want to survive and not have to change from today's lifestyle.
        I have read his blog for over a year and he makes a strong argument for his beliefs but even he admits that there will be periods of steep decline followed by periods of recovery.Now i don't know about you but a steep decline in my life time would qualify as the SHTF but to him its history repeating itself.

     I do not know about most people but to me long term thinking is in decades.To some it is only a year others it may be generational.It is hard to think in terms of hundreds of years.At 50 years of age i only have to think about the next 30 or so years.To think beyond my life time is scary.

To all vetrans and active duty.

      Today is veteran's day and to all military past and present i wish to say THANK YOU.If at anytime you read on this blog something that is negative about our country's present or resent past military actions it in no way is meant as a slur against our soldiers.I have a great respect our service men and women.All have made sacrifices for the American people and our freedom.At this point in this post it is hard to put down how much we the people owe to our service men but 1 day a year is not even close.

      One thing that grips me is when politions wrap themselves in the flag and talk about our servicemen for political gains.Our military has served without question when deployed.Most of our elected leaders are gutless worms that despise and even fear the men that have sworn an oath to this nation.Personally i think it should be a requirement that a president and congress members have served.If a man isn't willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country by what right should he lead it ? I don't mean to imply that we need a military government but we do need men that believe in founding principles and our Constitution to pledge there life to defending it.This is something veterans pledged to do in the service, and almost all would uphold as  civilians till death.

      We have 1 day to honor our living Veterans and 1 day to honor the fallen.I don't seem right.

Made progress on the roof

    Got the lean to roof on and the garage roof stripped.Not a bad days work for a lazy fat man.

This is the old leaky roof and the lean to that was made out of 20 scrap pieces of tin.

    Here is the lean to made with 6 sheets 18 ft long.If you look at the wood on the garage it is over 80 years old and only had 1 board  rotted.It holds my 260 pound butt!Next is to put felt down then the Tin.

    The whole garage is sheathed walls and roof with 1 and 1/2 inch ruff cut pine can still see the blade marks on the planks.

P.S. Smoking is still at only 2 cigs most days its getting easier.

Why bib overall matter.

     Yesterday i made a comment on farmer in bib overalls.Well this is how i learned about the men that wear them.
     When i was about 12 my grandfather loaded up about 6 cows for the auction.We has 6 cows in a 68 model Chevy and i mean aload so off to the sale we went.For a 12 year old at his first cattle auction i was mesmerized by the cows and bulls the ring men and the cadence of the auctioneer.The place was full of old cattlemen with muddy boots and overalls telling lies and caring on and grand paw was right in the middle with them with me tagging along.Now you could spot the meat company men because they wore suits and sat on the front row.I still remember when a Brahma bull cleared the ring and the handlers jumped the rail and landed in the lap of the men in suits.All the ranchers and farmer roared laffing.When it was all said and done we went up to the office to settle up.As the bills were tallied my grandfather and a group was betting on coke bottles.The game went like this old coke bottles had a city and state listed on the bottom showing where it was made who ever pulled the bottle from the farther est point won the pool.There was about 10 overall wearing farmer playing at 5.00 a pull so it was a 50.00 pot and grand paw was right in with em.Well one of the girl hollered at one of the men his bill was toted he said who owes who she told him he owed almost 6000 for what he bought.Well he pulls a wad of hundreds out of that bibb pocket and tosses it to the ladie  tells her to peel it off of that he is busy playing.When she counts it out marks the bill paid she hands it back to him he shoves it back in the pocket.She asks him count it to make sure he just turns around and says it feels about right then he tells all the men  he has to go been fun.When we were in the truck i told my grand paw that roll of cash was more than i had ever seen and how could a man dressed in overalls carry it around like that.Old gran paw told me that that man could buy and sell most 10 times and had earned it the hard way.He told me tha if i ever dealt with a man in bibb overall and mud to his knees.He may be broke but his word was his bond and if he was buying he would have cash in his bibb pocket.Well in my life i have never been done wrong by a man in overalls and i have seen handshake and cash deals done in a minute that most men would need legal papers drawn.On more than one thing some of those old timers have used the phrase "just you wait and see if I'm right"I don't drought what life has taught the few that were old bibb overalls .Ever since that cattle sale i know never to make lite of those men.

Packed up and ready to go

    Well every thing is loaded except the ice chest. We have let the kids use our teardrop camping so i stripped it down and repacked it for our trip.For some reason the wife is acting like we are going to be in the middle of nowhere she basically wants to take the house with us.This is only going to be a 10 day trip  I do not need  a suitcase of my own we are going to the beach so what if i wear my cloths more than once.Men and women do not think alike if i have a change of cloths I'm good for a week.
   Back when i first got divorced i kept a change of cloths and a shave kit in my truck box because i never knew when id take off somewhere or a cutie would let me sleep over a weekend.
   It seems i have won we have one duffel of cloths and just normal camping gear loaded.{I think i really lost i just don't know how yet}This trip should be fun next weekend we have her sister and our son and his wife coming down for 4 days.I payed for the camp sites and all i asked was Saturday morning we go to the navel air museum. None of them have ever been,The Pensacola navel air museums is a must if your anywhere near it.Oh and its FREE!!!will be back on the first

Sweating is a good thing.

   How many people like to sweat? Not many that I know most people are ready to find a cool spot as soon as a bead forms.Now i havent been a big fan of sweating in years past.But the last 2 summers i have sweated a lot more than any time since i was a kid.You cant run a BBQ pit on the side of the road without sweating the sun and the smoke and grease are part of it.Now when i end my day I stink of grease and smoke my shirt has a white salt ring around my chest.First thing is a shower and a lot of water as i spend a hour cooling down.
    One day when searching the web i ran across a doctors statment that i had never thought about before.Sweating is one of the ways your body removes toxins.He stated it was the 3rd way your body discards toxins from the blood{guess what #1 and#2 was 1st and 2nd}expecialy heavy metals.I once worked with a lot of zinc and galvinized steel.So i read what was there and it got me thinking the nordic countrys had saunas indians had sweat lodges a lot of other anceint societies had baths and steam saunas as a regular part of life.This summer i have sweated and worked paying it little attention.Now i will say a few times i failed to stay hydrated big mistake but otherwise it has felt good to sweat it out and i think it has made me feel better.We seem to be a sickly society could it be that because we no longer have tosweat we are allowing toxins to build up in our bodys? Perhaps a little more heat and sweat a lot less air conditioning could make healtheir? I dont know about you but I am willing to sweat a little to avoid "Modern medicine".

Have a safe and fun memorial day weekend!

 As we get ready to kick off the summer with this holiday weekend let not forget it is to Honor all the brave soldiers and military for their service.For me i constantly have the thought our soldiers are there to defend us.Even tho i disagree with a lot of whats going on right now its not the militarys fault and definantly not a soldiers.
     We have to remember they go where our ELECTED goverment orders them.I do not fear terrorist as much as i do our elected officials.As Mark Twain said the public is safest when congress is not in session.This weekend if you see a sodier past or present shake his hand and thank him for what he has done.If you see an elected official    HIDE YOUR WALLET COVER YOUR ASS AND DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING THEY SAY.

What the term TEOTWAWKI realy mean to you vs your kids

    We have all read this term and in our mind an image appears.Its different to everyone.Some think of no electricity no gas for cars nothing that we use without thinking everyday.Now i got to thinking for my kids it would take just returning to the 70s for them to think the world had ended.Lets just look at the changes to everyday life in 40 years.
   
    1. A 19 in B&W TV  vs 55 in 1080dpi  plasma
    2  3 channels on a good day   vs  280 channels on cable
    3  2 dials to change channels    vs a remote control {do we miss the butt crack of the channel changer]
    4  pong video game was the bomb  vs Xbox PlayStation's
    5 the commode 64 and tandy1000  vs the laptop or net book
     6 5in floppies  vs  flash drives
      7 rotary phone vs cellphone
      8 notes on the fridge  vs texts
      9 110 cameras vs 10 mpix camera function
     10 going to the library vs the Internet.
     11 writing a paper letter   vs an e mail
     12 cash  vs a card
     13 a paper map  vs map quest or GPS
     14  a record or 8 track vs i tune or mp3
     15 using the stove oven  vs a microwave
  OK writers block is setting in but the list is verrry long between anyone 45 and up and our kids under 30.Give it some thought to us going back to the 70s would be easy sure we would miss what was gone but it wouldn't be mind altering.Think of our kids it would seem like they were in a totally  different  world.To anyone a change back to 40 years before they were born is TEOTWAWKI. It may be that the only ones that can adjust are  those that feel they were born in the wrong century.Me personally i love history and reading how they did things in the 1800s and i also read what people in 3rd world countries find benefit's them the most as far as modern tecknowledge.To survive after a TEOTWAWKI event the bottom rung in the world may be the ones that do best.The best we can hope for is that MAD MAX is short lived.
     Stop and think where in time your TEOTWAWKI is.Mine is around 1930 .

My grand parents told me about TEOTWAWKI and the good old days!

      A lot of my posts have been about camping and my teardrop trailer.I have a prepper mind set so camping is part of that mindset but lets face the facts.Camping is nothing like a TEOTWAWKI. A weekend at a park or in the woods is a nice break from everyday life but we know it will end and we can return to our home and all our modern convienaces.Now there is nothing wrong with this but most people cant seem to comprehend a permenent loss of modern convienaces.
          

Camping with power and water.

                                                  

living without power water and little else

       My grand mother was born in1910 and she told me many times if i heard someone wish for the "good old days" they had never lived them!!!She did, her dad was a coal miner and had a small company house and 2 acres for a garden.There was 8 of them and she told me the girls gatherd eggs and milked the cow before school the boys had to hoe and pick squash to feed the animals.She told me they raise about 3 pigs and had a calf for a family of 8 it didnt go far.What she said was the worst was the out house on winter mornings and a coal oven to cook on{the mine gave every worker a ton of coal every fall}and for heat.She was 12 before her first car ride and their house didnt get electricity till she was 19 and her brothers had to pay the bill. Grandpaw said his dad threatend to have the power shut off when the first bill was 1.85 but great granny asked him how he liked his own cooking if he did.
      Now my grand parents did Not have a modern house by anyones standards. My grand father was born and died in the same house. The place was a 4 room with a dogtrot hall down the middle it had 12 ft ceilings a kitchen was cut out of one room and a closet between the bed rooms became the bathroom.The house only had one space heater in the living room and quilts piled 4 thick was a winter normal. As bare bones as it was to me it was a modern home to them. To me looking back i dont know how they lived in it but my grand parents said it beat the "good old days".They had no washer dryer no running hot water and only a 30 amp fuse box for power.
       This was life as they knew it.To them it was a blessing what they had when i was a child.If TEOTWAWKI happened it could look like "the good old days" again for those that survive.Every time i see the phase "THE GOOD OLD DAYS" or TEOTWAWKI i think of my grand parents.They survived it but would not want to relive it!!!!!!!