Catchy little title, no? People love zombies and they dig survival topics. Via my sublime understanding of SEO as a web sewer magician I will attempt to lure the bored screen tapper into perusing over 1,000 nicely arranged collection of words.
I believe this country is in trouble economically, socially and politically. That is no secret. The question is what to do about it. I have been hoarding gold, silver, food, water, guns and bullets. Big deal. Prudent people have enough food and water on hand to get through any emergencies that come what may. Prudent people save their money and diversify. Prudent people protect their family and property.
There used to be a time, not too long ago actually, when people in this country were Pioneers. They lived off the land, grew their own food, built their own shelters, cut their own wood, hunted and fished. They were self sufficient. They hoarded food by necessity. My grandparents shopped sparingly at the grocery store once a month. They canned food. Had a couple of deep freezers full of frozen treats. The grew a lovely garden and had half ownership of a farm.
There are some people who are returning to that life of self-sufficiency. Some never left. These folks will be perfectly fine if a financial collapse cometh.
Then you have the zombies. The people that you will be shooting in the face off your front doorstep as they are scrounging for food. These folks buy just enough to get them through the next pay check. They eat out virtually every meal. They are screwed because they believe the system, the government, will take care of them.
Then, of course, you have those that are losing their minds. I enjoy reading “prepper” blogs. They are vastly entertaining for the fantasy life many engage in writing about. Understand that I believe in preparation. What I don’t care to involve myself in is Mad Max apocalyptic fantasies. Have you read “The Road”? Not pleasant. Denzel Washington is cool as hell in “The Book of Eli”. Your post-apocalyptic life won’t be nearly as awesome.
Preppers talk about “bugging out”. Sounds great until you think….where? OK, sure if I lived in an urban cesspool then I would be thinking about where to go and how to get there in the event of mob rule. Which I don’t discount is coming. Thing is, if you live in the city then you are most likely already a zombie and will be roving around until you get to my front doorstep upon which I’ll have to shoot you in the face.
Preppers talk about all the things they need to survive. The list of items they think they must have to survive when the SHTF. Well, from what I’ve read you’d need a house to store it all in. Are you going to put three rooms worth of survival gear on your back or stuffed in your car? Get real.
Some have a groovy cabin in the middle of nowhere. Great if you live out West. Maybe the roads won’t be too crowded on your pilgrimage to your hideout. If you’re East of the Mississippi then I wonder how you are going get to it with the over-crowded roads. If you stuff all your goods in the cabin, how do you protect it if that is not your primary dwelling?
I think this survival craze is a hobby for many. “Let’s buy a new knife this weekend.” “Check out that camp stove dear!” Look, I love survival gear. I like camping and hiking. But I don’t think for a minute it will be cool to leave my home with a knife, a solar panel, canteen, poncho, a few silver rounds and live in the woods eating grubs and dead cats. Even if there is a crisis, an apocalypse, mob rule, or similar, I will be barricaded in my home.
What I am most concerned about is the government overlords. The burgeoning police state. An event that sees government over-reaction which includes martial law. Gun confiscation. There is no surviving that. Ask German Jews how they enjoyed the Nazis. Ask Japanese-Americans about their time in the state gulags. The only survival is to leave.
The time to leave is any time before it is too late. Will it come to that? I don’t know. People are certainly making money on folks who believe that expatriating the U.S. is the only answer. The devil is in the details though. It costs money to live in another country. You need savings or a job. And where are you going to go? They say some countries in the Far East are groovy. I certainly loved Singapore. Maybe Latin America. I’m not certain it’s easy monetarily, emotionally, culturally to simply…leave. But then again I’ve been looking at my options.
Like many I have become content with the conveniences of life in the U.S. Maybe things will change as the country converts into a European Socialist utopia. Things may get worse as the collective overtakes the individual. I don’t know. What I do know is I care for my family, friends and church. Those are difficult to simply leave.
I have subscribed to a couple of expat, investing type newsletters. They provide some good information, maybe some actionable items that are reasonable. The problem I find with their advice is they are single dudes or empty nest couples. Traveling the world in a briefcase and a stack of passports is no big deal. Risks can be had because they aren’t responsible to anyone.
I find myself not willing to take those risks because…this is home. Maybe because I AM responsible I should take a risk and leave while I can get everyone out. But it still seems…extreme. Many would argue that it is extreme to live here while the water boils. I don’t know.
My expat newsletter buddies would say I am being overly optimists and naive. That it already is over. Whatever.
I’m not quite ready to give up. I’m not quite ready to let go of Madison’s, Jefferson’s, Adams’, Washington’s republic. The U.S., and the idea of it, is certainly worth fighting for. Why should I be part of the history that lets the leftists, Marxists, Socialists, Occupiers, collectivists take over?
I guess the answer, for now, is to make sure that I can be as self-reliant as possible and not have to grovel for government handouts. To protect my family and property in the event of societal meltdown. To save money in diversified accounts and investments. To surround myself with people I love and trust. To keep informed. To keep the faith.
I hope you were paying attention the last couple of weeks as the powerful government lobbyists worked hard to have their representatives in D.C. pass SOPA and PIPA. You were lucky, dear friends, that entities like Wikipedia, Reddit, Google and some 7,000 other websites took a stand FOR freedom. Left, right, conservatives, Socialists, it didn’t matter. People may not care about a free reality but do not take away their virtual freedom.
The Internet stands against tyranny.
I laughed out loud as reports indicated that Anonymous took down DoJ, RIAA,MPAA and Universal Music. Anonymous reported on Twitter: ““Tango Down! JUSTICE.gov – U.S. Government Website DOWN!”.
Awesome stuff. The battle lines are drawn.
Don’t misunderstand me dear reader: piracy is not honorable. Stealing is immoral.
Isn’t it just a little coincidental that the FBI swooped down in helicopters, seizing millions in property and shuttering numerous websites soon after SOPA and PIPA were tabled? Like the government was saying, “you know, we have the authority, the POWER, to shut these sites down whether it is signed law or not.”
Don’t think for a minute that it was all about stopping a rogue outfit distributing Hollywood content with abandon. No, as The Daily Reckoning reported:
…the trendline with Megaupload was clearly toward using the space to launch new artists with new content: not piracy but creativity. As Wired.uk wrote, this crackdown came shortly after Megaupload announced music producer Swizz Beatz — married to Alicia Keys — as their CEO. They had rallied a whole host of musicians including Will.i.am, P Diddy, Kanye West and Jamie Foxx to endorse the cloud locker service. Megaupload was building a legitimate system for artists to make money and fans to get content.
What’s this all about? It is some powerful corporate lobbyists trying to prevent the emergence of an alternative system of art and music delivery, one powered by people rather than merely the well- connected.
The U.S. government is corrupt and sick with the lobbyist cancer. More from The Daily Reckoning:
This is the battle for whether the digital age is permitted to exist in an atmosphere of free speech, free association, free enterprise, and real property rights, or whether it will be controlled by government in conjunction with aging media moguls from monopolistic corporate oligarchies. The lines are clearly drawn, and it is taking place in real time.
I cannot imagine a life not being free. I refuse to believe that even the wanna-be Marxists running around this country really hope to achieve a collectivism that would infringe on their rights. But this is where we are. I can only imagine how many hypocritical Socialists who have supported ever expansive government the last 10 years were actually on the front lines of stopping SOPA and PIPA.
The government is at war against its citizens. Power and control. Piracy controls are just a tip of the their spear. You’ll eventually have to decide if you prefer to be among the collectivists collecting scraps from their government master’s table or if you want to be free and choose liberty.
I support the protests over SOPA and PIPA. Bravo to Reddit, Wikipedia, WordPress, Google among others protesting these ridiculuos bills. I thought about Lost Ball going black but figured it already is.
My government is the scourge of this earth. Too much power wielded by officials bent on controlling vast swaths of your life. Too much power bought by lobbyists with no interest in the good of the Republic. From the Patriot Act, Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd-Frank, Obamacare, to the proposed SOPA legislation, lobbyists are spending mountains of money to control how you live and how they enrich their lives.
Hollywood executives have reportedly spent upwards of $90 million to enact SOPA. Unfortunately they are focused only on piracy, which is bad of course. Unfortunately these things have, as they say, unintended consequences. The bill is so freaking broad that supposedly if I link, or a commenter links, to a web listing that is dubious as far as their copyrights, then my site could get shut down.
Imagine what that must be like for Reddit, Tumblr or WordPress.
A day doesn’t go by that I am not thoroughly disgusted with my government. The asshats that are in charge in D.C. are incredibly stupid. Very few are responsible citizens that believe in this Republic and wish to preserve it. For most it is a power trip. A means to enrich themselves at our expense.
What is it going to take to wake people up?
One day, and it may begin the day Obama is re-elected, there will be significantly more chatter about State secession. Our 2nd Amendment rights will be assaulted like no other time. The police state will be suffocating. But more and more people will want out of the federal system.
Many will leave the country. Many won’t have the means. And they will begin wondering what the point of being in the federal system is. A second civil war in this country would not surprise me at all.
Sorry, I wandered off tangent. How did I get from SOPA to civil war? Crazy right? Maybe not.
There will be something that the government does, maybe SOPA, that will piss enough people off in this country en masse, where they will demand real government change.
Taking away the only freedom people know, the Internet, the WWW, just maybe the catalyst to get people, young and old, rich and poor, all colors, finally paying attention to what this government is doing.
My 10 year old daughter has a word about the First Lady. Delivered via text message to her lovely mother. I will relay said message to this blog as a courtesy before things get out of hand. Pipe down.
crap Michelle Obama is on Icarly. She ruins Disney and nick this sucks
She’s upset and gets a pass with the salty verbage as she just discovered government intrusion and indoctrination.
Okay, okay, enough chatter. She further explains:
she especially ruins Disney I hate obamas she is stupid as farts on a Saturday night
“Stupid as farts on a Saturday night”. Indeed and WTF.
Her mother asks for clarification of the Saturday night farts. She continues:
Yes yes they are worse on Saturday night. you do not know how mad I am she is like “eat more veggie and fruits” on disney next thing you know she is going to be on TLC. stupid
Couple of things. Yes my 10 year old did in fact add the quotes to the text message. She’s homeschooled and knows such things. Yes my oldest and her watch garbage on TLC. They enjoy watching the fabric of our society being ripped in front of their eyes. They find it amusing and not a reality they care to participate in. Finally do not try to indoctrinate kids on Disney and Nick. The smart ones are perfectly happy letting their parents parent, the TV entertain and the Obamas stick to grownup crap.
After she sent the texts we had a chat about what’s going on. I then told her to let me know when she sees the female Obama and we’d share a Hershey bar.
“We can’t wait for Congress to act, and if Congress refuses to act and if Republicans choose the path of obstruction, rather than cooperation, then the president is not going to sit here. This gridlock in Washington is not an excuse for inaction.” –White House Press Secretary Jay Carney
So, in effect, cooperation means agreeing with the Democrat agenda. See, the beauty of our republic government, and make no mistake, the Founders did not establish a Democracy, is that there are (supposed) to be numerous checks and balances built into the system. The government is not supposed to get its way. Because there is a lack of agreement there is protection of the people’s freedoms and liberties.
I want the government to be inactive. I want them to go home. I want them to stop meddling with my freedoms and liberties.
As the 5 Min Forecast reported yesterday “It’s not that the 40,000 new laws — state and federal — that hit the books yesterday for the first time are outrageous… it’s the sheer quantity that’s alarming”
40,000 new laws. THAT is what you get when you have agreement in government.
We are losing this country folks. Between the Fascist in charge, his Socialist agenda and his alphabet soup of tyrants, we are losing what makes this country great. And I have NO illusions that the GOP is any better. I seriously doubt any of the Republican muppets, save crazy Ron, would work to reduce the size of the government.
I wonder what you 2 or 3 readers are doing to prepare? Are you in denial that anything wicked this way comes? Everything cool? Or are you getting your money out of the dollar, out of the country, thinking about buying foreign real estate, expatriating your retirement accounts into safe havens and/or purchasing stacks of the precious? Your options as an American are few and far between unfortunately. The IRS has made it so that virtually no one wants to bank with an American.
Do you feel the boiling water? Are you comfy in your slow boil? You are the proverbial frog, you know.
One day you will wake up and find that the government has confiscated your retirement accounts. It’s happened before in other countries. They’ll make you “invest” in the government bonds. It will be the last desperate act of a government losing control and not being able to pay for its spending and borrowing excesses.
We have the most awful bunch of idiots running this government. 4 more years of Obama is likely. The transformation of this country from the land of liberty, hope and wealth will be complete as we descend into the morass of European Socialism or worse.
Perhaps our only hope lies with the hundreds of thousands of guns that people have bought since Obama was elected and the millions bought before him. Hopefully millions of bullets have been stockpiled as well. Obama’s second term will see war against the 2nd Amendment. The Founders were afraid it would be necessary to protect our freedoms from an overzealous government and gave us the means to do so. I fear we are fast approaching that moment.
Obama is finally going to admit to his incompetence saying “fuck it, I’d rather play golf anyway”, leaving the White House in his mom jeans, a pack of smokes and shouldering his bag of sticks and balls.
In a last ditch effort to save the U.S. dollar from total irrelevancy, the Fed is going to print rolls of Benjamins for sanitary use.
The rumored Apple TV will in fact become a wonderful doorstop.
The end of the world will not happen but you will wish it had following the economic collapse and social turmoil that will ensue.
You’ll be happy buying a gold coin or two at $1400, sad when your purchase falls to $1200 while grudgingly buying another couple, then ecstatic when the price of gold reaches past $1800 by the end of the year.
You’ll need big balls if you’ve bought silver. It will greet $17 in short order. Dumbasses the world over will be flinging themselves into the path of moving buses and whirling prop plane blades grieving their egregious losses. Survivors will be curling their mustaches with cognac fingertips as the price recovers into the mid 30′s.
God is going to make it official and give Adele wings to go with her heavenly voice.
Jennifer Aniston still won’t make a movie worth a crap.
People will finally discover what a kick-ass TV show Supernatural is while at the same time figuring out how over-rated The Walking Dead has become.
2012 will be the first year that every Hollywood movie released into general consumption will be a sequel, remake or creation of some comic book.
Microsoft’s Windows phone will surprise folks and become a viable alternative to the proprietary arrogance of Apple’s iPhone and something different from the ubiquitous Android.
Gun sales will increase every month in 2012. Interestingly, Apple’s iGun flops due to proprietary ammo and yearly magazine upgrades.
The Internet, and more specifically the World Wide Web, will become endangered by the American political class seeking to gain additional control over the herd. Internet taxes will be widely discussed as well as steps to censure content. The result is likely to unite leftists, independents and conservatives like nothing else could have. Lost Ball retreats to Usenet while a splork is rumored to be growing grapes on a Chilean plantation.
The herd loves the Kindle and Nook book readers. As an old fashioned fucker I have no use for the devices. I like books. I like used books. Not only do I walk amongst the dinosaurs but I am also very much a cheap bastard. Nonetheless, if you (as a burgeoning web sewer magician) are not contemplating how to create clever assemblies of words to be sold for these devices then you are losing a residual income opportunity. As I allow domain after domain to expire or be sold each month I will be spending my time as an esteemed author of the highest order.
My wife took a chance and upgraded her POS HTC Android and got herself a Windows phone. My first reaction was along the lines of what the fuck? Microsoft has a phone? Why did you not at least participate in the proprietary arrogance of an iPhone or get yourself a beefier ‘droid. She being a consumer of prominent acumen did her research and determined the HTC Titan to be of value. After assisting the marital unit with downloading pertinent apps, syncing her contacts and shit, I determined that the phone is one badass motherfucker. In fact that is what I refer to it in conversation with the unit. Hey Mrs. Splork, how is the “badass motherfucker”? Microsoft may take its sweet time in creating worthwhile products but let me tell you, this phone is outstanding. Google and Apple may be well ahead but don’t discount Microsoft next year.
Obama is set to ask Congress to increase the debt limit again. This time the asshole wants $1.2 trillion. It will put our overall debt up to $16 trillion or so. Congress is ever so happy to give it to him. It is rather interesting that Obama called Bush “unpatriotic” for increasing the debt limit 4 trillion in 8 years. It only took Obama 3 years to be that “unpatriotic”. Funny how in 2006 every single Democrat voted against raising the debt limit but today they are more than happy to give their Dear Leader all the money he needs to expand the government. Assholes one and all. Fuck it, just raise the debt ceiling to $100 trillion and be done with it. $16T. $100T. Neither will be repaid.
We obtained a Blu-Ray player as a family gift of sorts. It wasn’t a priority as I am rather sick of material clutter (except food storage, water, guns and bullets) but the price was ridiculous and it gave us a chance to watch Amazon Prime movies through the device. I must say I was amazed at the quality of the picture of the movies. How it can be better than a regular DVD player is astonishing as I thought those were pretty damn good. But Blu-ray movies look great. The first movie we rented was Thor. Excellent movie. Couple of days later we rented Horrible Bosses. Jennifer Aniston’s boobs notwithstanding, that was a shitty movie. Thought that crap was supposed to be good!? Anyway, I think maybe I might have a movie review column on this esteemed blog just for shits and giggles. It’s already pretty worthless. Adding a few well placed words on movies or whatnot won’t really matter.
My youngest and I received a mini helicopter from Santa. After an hour or so of crashing the thing into every head, wall, table and chair in the splork abode, we finally got it under control. The morning after Christmas the oldest was awakened by a helicopter hovering a few inches above her head. She was not amused, but I damn sure was.
If in the near future you folks living in the United States of Socialist Amerika find yourself in a bind over oil prices, or supplies being less than what you hope them to be, find oil-based products exceedingly high or gasoline ripping more pennies from your pocket, by all means make sure you place the blame squarely at the fucking idiot the vast majority of you assholes voted into the land’s highest office.
You see, our neighbors to the north practically begged this country to add another pipeline so they could easily disperse their huge resources into our economy. Canada wanted the U.S. to build the Keystone XL pipeline. Obama decided that would not do as too much is owed the fucking wealth destroying, socialist, leftist environmentalist fucktards. You see the elections are upon us. No political decisions will happen in this country for the next year, unless the ability to pander to the constituency herd is accomplished. Fucking pathetic.
So Obama basically told Canada that we wouldn’t be building the pipeline and certainly not until he is re-elected.
This is problematic for at least one giant reason, energy security. See, Canada wants to move the product. They wanted to provide us with the oil. But now they are planning on shipping it to Asia. All the while the good people in Amerika are getting supplied by the oh so friendly Middle Eastern sheiks.
This week Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper said,
“I am very serious about selling our oil off this continent, selling our energy products off to Asia. I think we have to do that.”
“When I was down in the United States recently, it was interesting. I ran into several senior Americans who all said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get Keystone [pipeline] done. You can sell all of your oil to us.’ I said, ‘Yeah we’d love to,’ but I think the problem is now that we’re on a different track.”
The implications are Canada is tired of being jerked around by American politicians. They will run that pipeline West and ship that shit to Asia.
This country is led by complete morons and we will all suffer for it. Obama alone could have made a single call and said “build this fucker.” Thousands of hands would have begun work and millions of barrels of oil would be flowing into the U.S. resulting in decreased need for Middle East oil.
Un-fucking-believable.
I hope Harper is bluffing. But why would he be? That oil will be enriching another region while we blow on our windmills and burn solar panels for warmth.
One day I’ll get around to writing a real post. Things are quite busy right now so I haven’t really had time to sit down and formulate some thoughts on anything worthwhile. I do feel compelled to re-share this video by…Glenn Beck. OK, settle down. Quiet down. I realize that many people feel the man is a an idiot or baboon or lesser human substance but these are the same people that has never bothered listening to him.
He had an interesting segment on his web TV show yesterday on Obama. Seems our favorite liberal socialist hit the campaign trail demonizing Capitalism. Apparently the fascist is not a fan. Said capitalism never worked.
Glenn Beck sets about detailing Obama’s lies about capitalism. It’s a great segment.
Privacy is for shit anymore. Just found out that my Android phone probably has been spying on me and sending the results back to some nefarious outfit called CarrierIQ. From Yahoo via the Atlantic Wire:
An Android developer recently discovered a clandestine application called Carrier IQ built into most smartphones that doesn’t just track your location; it secretly records your keystrokes, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Now, most companies want desperately to spy on you but they give you a choice to opt out. Remember those Firefox boxes that would pop up when the damn thing crashed and asked if they could collect the info about the event? You could opt in or opt out.
These CarrierIQ assholes don’t give you the option. They run some little program in the background, so secretive the program, it took an Android developer to discover it. And when this dude, Trevor Eckhart, tried to go public, CarrierIQ “aggressively” tried to keep him from doing so, to the point the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) took up his case.
Now what the fuck is this company collecting that is so important that the purchaser of these phones are not to know that the keystrokes are being logged?
I use TextSecure on my Android. You know, because governments have decided that it is fine for law enforcement to look at your phone records pretty much whenever they want without warrant. Well unless you have the passcode you won’t be reading texts on my phone. But of course even encrypted, if the fucking program is logging keystrokes, the conversations are collected in a database somewhere.
You know, as long as the federal government is wiping its collective ass with your privacy rights, then why would we expect them to protect our privacy from private companies?
My online experience has drastically changed. I use Cocoon to hide my IP address as I surf. I use additional add-ons like Better Privacy, No Script and Ghostery to protect my surfing habits. For web searches I use Startpage. From their homepage:
When you search with Startpage, we remove all identifying information from your query and submit it anonymously to Google ourselves.
I keep my email secure with Hushmail as well. It works best when you email others with a Hushmail account which I insist on with family and close friends.
BTW, No Script will fuck up your browser experience if you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s excellent at killing scripts but since most webpages are full of them the page will look like a third grader built it or shit won’t work. You’ll spend some browsing time enabling those scripts back in your pages. It’s cool, for instance I haven’t seen a Google ad on webpages I visit since I installed it.
Anyway, I happily participate in any means possible to fuck up the machine and protect my privacy. Of course now I have to deal with this CarrierIQ shit. I suppose some propeller head will provide a means to block this egregious invasion of privacy.
Look, I realize that this sounds like I am turning into a tin-foil hat, bearded, conspiracy man having a psychotic breakdown slapping strangers in the face with pizza slices. Of course we know this to be untrue as it’s obvious I enjoy a distinguished mustache with a slight curl at the tips and prefer Molotov meatballs to the nuts.
I recommend you protect what’s left of your privacy. Be as anonymous as possible. Try to achieve invisibility in regards to the machine, both corporations and government. They do not have your best interest at heart. They only want to profit from you and control your life. Fuck that, people. Fuck that indeed.
Recent Comments