Sunday, March 21, 2010

I moved!

I've moved this blog to a new server: TEOTWAWKIAIFF.COM

Please update your RSS feeds and bookmarks!

-Natog

Friday, March 19, 2010

The White Death

This is an amazing article on a Finnish sniper who fought the Soviets in the Winter war. His weapon of choice? A Mosin-Nagant rifle with open sights. I need to bust out the Mosin this weekend and make sure it's sighted in.

The US will attack Iran

I was thinking of ways the US could revitalize interest in using the dollar as a shelter from uncertainty. The solution that I see as a near certainty is the US wants to start another war. Iran is the most likely target as the leader is batshit crazy, and no one wants Iran with WMD.

Just like the three wars in the gulf, when there is war, people turn to gold, oil (if they buy before it goes up), and US treasury bills. We are having such trouble with bond auctions that the administration might see this as the only solution to bolster confidence in the dollar. The obvious choice, cut spending and reduce taxes, wouldn't be considered for a nanosecond.

We have plenty of military assets in-theater, and Israel has a raging chubby to go after Iran right now. Let's face it, the apocalyptic death-cult that runs Iran right now would launch a nuke as soon as they had one built.

This week I have been cycling through my stored gas. I'm disappointed with the containers I bought, so if anyone knows of good metal ones cheap, please let me know. I fully expect gas to go up, and I want to stock up on the winter blend.

I'm still working on the new website. Work's been keeping me real busy, and let's be honest, it's hard as hell to sit in front of a computer when it's the first few days of spring. I did get out to the range yesterday, and practiced with my .22 pistol. I should have snapped a picture, all of the first 20 rounds were in the black at 25 yards :) needless to say, I was pleased as punch.

Get out there and practice. with a target pistol you should be able to put all your rounds into a soft-ball sized circle at 25 yards with carefully aimed shots at about 1 round per 2 seconds.

That reminds me, I never talked about cadence and shooting. It's one thing to blaze away, but another to have accurate aimed shots going downrange. Let's take pistol shooting for example. When the target is 25 yards away, you need to put the post on the target, line up the rear sight and squeeze the trigger. But the shooting cycle does not end there! You need to follow through on your shot, absorbing the recoil, and begin the process of putting the front post back onto the target.

This cadence of shooting is not a hard number. You don not need to fire exactly 1 shot every 2 seconds. In fact, your cadence needs to be adjustable depending on the accuracy you need. If I have a 18" silhouette at 21 feet, my rate of fire will be a heck of a lot faster than if I'm shooting at a 25 yard target keeping it in the black. Likewise the rate of fire would be different if I was shooting a silhouette at 25 yards, rather than the NRA pistol target at 25 yards.

Next time you go to the range take a sheet of regular paper with you and put it at 100 yards. practice pumping as many rounds into it as fast as you can, build up that knowledge of what rate of fire it takes you to hit that 90% of the time. Then take another and fold it into 1/4 the size and do it again. Your rate of fire will have to be different, if not speed up on the larger target.

For a scoped rifle, run this exercise at 200 or 300 yards. Another good exercise is to have targets at 50, 100, 200, and 300 yards and have a spotter randomly call out ranges for you to shoot at. Practice this from each firing position too.

Well I hope I gave you a few ideas on how to better train for the zombies. Please share any other ideas you have in the comments.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Great education Video

As you all know, I'm a big proponent of educational reform in this country. Please watch this short video from the CATO institute.


I make no bones about the fact I wish a complete overhaul of how our country educates its children. It's about time life skills are taught in our schools. It's time we teach more than how to read, we need to teach how to learn.

Johnny on the spot

Funny how I just posted about this subject yesterday, and lo and behold there is an article about how the mainstream media is not reporting the failing bond sales.

I wonder how fast the collapse of the dollar will happen once the news gets out to the stockbrokers that the game their playing is rigged. That the stock market is just legalized gambling.

Monday, March 15, 2010

A letter to a friend

I've been e-mailing "Al" from the story all morning. He's been pretty concerned about the healthcare bill, and how it affects him and the wife (IRL he's married). I've warned him in the past, but he didn't really listen, and kinda looked at me like I was crazy. I am crazy, but that's beside the point. Here is my latest response to him:

I warned you about a year ago... Canned food and a shotguns :) handy for the zombie apocalypse, too!

The dems will do anything to pass us further into socialism. Most democrats are openly socialist now, Obama has done one thing, he galvanized the collectivist - altruistic - statists into leveraging as much “reforms” as possible to make us into a European socialist state.

Our Debt to GDP ratio has skyrocketed, it’s only a short time before no one buys bonds (the Fed Reserve is buying most now) and the Fed cannot buy all the bonds, the existing holders of the 5year+ T-bills would dump them as worthless paper. That collapses the dollar, and Zimbabwe hyper-inflation sets in.

Great for paying off loans, bad for everything else.

I’ve been reading about all this for a couple years now, and I cannot see any way out other than human stupidity. If the idiots on wall street still think the dollar is strong, and the dumbass investors don’t see the warning signs that are out there, then we might be able to do it. All it takes is one big bond investor to dump their bonds and that will trigger the rest, and the collapse comes in a matter of days, maybe even hours.

China is no longer the biggest holder of US debt. They haven’t been selling bonds, but the ones they hold they have not re-invested as they matured. China not buying bonds was the biggest warning I’ve seen. China doesn’t want to upset the apple cart, they want to divest our debt without triggering the collapse, and so far they have been doing a brilliant job. All it takes is another country to unload too fast and the shockwave panics investors and then we collapse.

The news is not covering this at all, after all these people have all their money tied up in the stock market as well. So these guys have a vested interest in “forgetting” to report the failed bond auctions, and other critical warnings.

Scary-ass shit, man.

Hopefully he will wake up.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Teachers or Riot Police?

So this is pretty damn funny. The department of education is buying 27 riot shotguns... need I comment more?

What in sam hill is the department of education is doing with any shotguns is beyond me. It's official this country is too screwy for words. Common sense is quite uncommon these days. What gets me is these shotguns are sawed-off, it's illegal for a civilian to have them because the barrel is so short.

Ok everyone, sing along! (stupid embedding disabled dammit)

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

rebranding?

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately (which is a bad thing for collectivist-altruistic-statists) and I have begun to write a bunch about it. One thing that I have been mulling over is a complete re-branding of this blog.

There are a lot of things I would like to share, but the blogger format isn't conductive for file repositories, etc. I have also given some thought to doing a podcast. Mayberry beat me to it, but not by much. if you haven't listened to them yet, you really should. iTunes is a free download and there are thousands of free podcasts to listen from, and you don't even need an account, or a iTouch or iPhone to listen to them. Just download them as an MP3 and stuff them on your MP3 player or rip them to CD and listen to them in the car.

I have found podcasts make the long commute go a bit faster, especially on the days I'm suffering from writer's block. I listen to all kinds of podcasts including technology-related ones through freedom-oriented ones, and of course a couple prepper-related ones. I have the computer and related equipment, including a good microphone, so I just need the time to do it.

Then my wicked accent can torment you guys :)

Anyway I've been looking around my 'hood, and most of the for sale signs are down, but I know no one new has moved in because the same cars are parked in the driveway. So much for "green shoots." We are in a tailspin, our economy has no where to go but straight into the hopper. For all the hubbub about lower job losses than expected, we are still losing too many jobs. I just saw an article about forcing lenders to take it in the hoop in short sales. Evidently there are no limits to what this administration will do to look good, because none of these programs will save this sinking ship.

Now it the time to be vigilant, now is the time to ready yourself for what is to come. Although I am going to Vegas on vacation, I'm doing it as frugally as possible. All spare cash is being devoted to preps. I'm buying even more food and medical supplies for the coming storm. I even bought more ammo.

Which reminds me, I forgot to mention I went to my first gun show. Now, let em preface this by saying it was in MA, so it's not a "real" one. I went for the express intention of buying a hunting rifle, bolt-action, in .308 Winchester. Preferably with a stainless steel barrel. For short money. That didn't happen because all the firearms were stupidly expensive. Like a shitty bolt-action was listed for $1000 with a scope... I can buy NEW for that, and get a decent nikon monarch scope on it, in stainless steel to boot.

For the most part ammo was damn expensive too. There were a few vendors selling reloading supplies, but they didn't have anything I needed, so I passed. I did buy 1000 rounds of .22 LR for plinking, at $30 per 500. All the other ammo was on par for what I get from my local gun store. It was worth going, and I may go to another, but this time try to be be of the first guys in the door, I spoke with a few guys from the gun range and they did see some good deals, but they didn't last long.

Well with that addition of .22 ammo I should be all set so long as I replace what I use. I have 2000 rounds set aside, and it will go quick if the poop hits the fan as I will want to keep practicing. Practice makes perfect, and the Zombies won't kill themselves, ya know.

I did manage to sight in my target .308 with it's new scope, and I have to say I am very impressed with the scope I bought from BSA. I have had poor luck in the past, so I was hesitant to buy another, but so far, so good. (knocks on wood). I'll shoot it some more this weekend, and sight it in for 200 yards. then I'll run it through it's paces and give a full report.

That's enough rambling for now, I need to finish up here so I can catch the train home. Please remember to spend a little less on frivolity and a little more on preps the next few weeks. I expect gas to keep going up until it stabilizes in the summer, so it might be good to put up another few gallons now, while they still are selling the winter blend.

Also take the time to look through your supplies and make sure nothing is amiss. It would really suck to find the yeast you need to make bread is bad after all the stores are looted...

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Waffled (potty mouth)

Well that's as close an adjective I could come up with to describe what the cold, er flu has done to me the last week. The black elderberry might be a good preventative measue, but it did jack shit for me against this flu bug. I was bedridden Saturday and Sunday, only setting foot out of the house to search for Muscinex-D.

Now, I have a class A license to carry, which allows me to walk in and buy a handgun and ammo and walk out of the shop with it loaded on my person. But in this Nanny state I had to resort to fucking begging to buy cold medicine, because none of my ID's were good enough. I had a temp license from the RMV (while they printed my new one and mailed it to me), I had my expired license, I had my class A LTC, and I had my fucking PASSPORT. Yet none of these ID's were sufficient proof of my identity to buy cold medicine. Are you freaking kidding me?!?

It took 4 tries to buy cold medicine. With me hacking up technicolor phlegm in front of one pharmacist to allow me to buy the damn stuff with my plethora of ID's by scanning his own license into the damn register. I think it was on visit #3 to the pharmacy I snapped and was screaming how I could buy and carry a fucking assault rifle easier than cold medicine when they realized I was a tad out of it. I managed to leave before the cops showed up.

Anyway I'm feeling much better. I still have a bit of a cough but I no longer have that "microwaved dog vomit" feel of the flu. I'll be right as rain in time for Las Vegas. That's right! I'm going to Vegas, baby! Games, stogies, broads, and booze. Might be the last time to enjoy the city of sin before it all goes to hell. I do love that city, but my liver needs a big time-out for at least a month afterwords. Yeah I could be a "better man" and not drink and smoke obnoxious foot long cigars, and enjoy the company of morally ambiguous cougars or coeds with "daddy issues", but I'm a single guy so I'm guessing you are all just jealous.

I've been watching the financial news with the dawning understanding of what it's like to be a vulture watching some poor zebra wander around dying from thirst. The anticipation of the collapse is like the salty taste of blood on the lips. It's like we are cresting the middle hump of this 'w' shaped recovery and I want to yell "WHHHEEEEEEEEEEE" like we are on some kind of roller-coaster and not the collapse of our economy. This is what Tyler Durden felt as the bombs went off.

I finished Thomas Paine's Common Sense and Rights of Man on the ride home last night. Although both give excellent insight into the time when we were writing the Constitution and the issues our forebears were dealing with, I find that it wasn't as applicable to today as I hoped. Granted there are some great ideas in there, but reading through page after page of his assault onto the idea of a monarchy was a bit dull, to put it kindly. I found that Common Sense was a more applicable, and I encourage everyone to give it a read. It's only 52 pages in the edition I have, so it's not too bad. Here is a quote:
[...] and that the elected might never form unto themselves an interest separate from the electors, prudence will point out that propriety of having elections often: because the elected might by that means return and mix again with the general body of the electors in a few months, their fidelity to the public will be secured by the prudent reflection of not making a rod for themselves.
I wonder how many of the nitwits in Congress ever read this? Our representatives represent nothing but the special interests. They represent those who can keep them in power. They represent those whose image they can use to manipulate the polls, and buy votes with guilt. I am not a violent man, I wish to do no harm to anyone, but the idea of these robber barons drunk with their own power makes me wish to drive to DC with nothing on but a banana hammock and galoshes, and beat the piss out of every one of those shitheads (save one) with a baseball bat.

I managed to get further along in the novel while sick, but after proofreading it on the train ride in it has to be all scrapped because NyQuil does some fucked up things to your brain. None of it made a lick of sense, especially the Balrog manning a checkpoint at Rt. 90... (Note: don't watch the Lord Of The Rings trilogy while bedridden and try to write anything while on cold meds.)

PS - after re-reading this post I realize I'm still pretty out of it. I wonder if this is what mescaline is like. Maybe Musinex-D is recreational, and not used to make meth, and that is why it's restricted. Anyway I'm going to watch my screen saver for the next hour check it out at: electricsheep.org