June 12, 2022 · 3:43 pm

We can all offer helping hands across America

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

The whole point with my 2015 blog post and this blog post is that there are a lot of alarmingly bad things happening now, even more than in 2015. I expect it to get much worse, as rabid partisans move into high-gear to create more havoc, coupled with the worldwide economic and food shortage crises roiling along. We can add in the self-inflicted disasters due to the fossil fuel situation that President Biden has decided the pain inflicted on Americans to push the green dreams is more important than millions of American jobs and the American economy taking a faceplant.

I remember how disturbed I was in 2020 with the civil unrest and how shamelessly political power grabs and efforts to infringe upon Americans’ individual liberties swept through, by conning us during the pandemic, with slogans – it’s only X-amount of days… just until this, that or the other happens with the “spread.” For the first couple weeks, I was Miss Compliant Citizen, because I wanted everyone safe and feared millions of people dying, but quickly I began watching which groups of people’s movements were targeted and which politicians rushed in with power grabs and pushing mindless rules and restrictions, all in the name of “public health.” Everything was political and my little issues with face masks the other day, with having to go to the doctor and get my medicine, frankly, piss me off a whole lot. I am reliant on the medical system, so I am forced to obey mindless rules and that makes me a little angry at myself every time I go along to get along with something I think is pointless and more about politics than science.

With the economic crises headed our way, a serious global food crisis projected, and promised political theater mayhem, with radical Dem activists promising a Summer of Rage, it’s going to be easy to get sidetracked or let fear and panic take hold. For years, I’ve thought if only there were more people on the right, who would not take the bait and react in fear and hysteria, but instead took the reins of all the things they can control in their own lives and working with others. I’ve hoped they would learn to basically give a middle finger to the political spin information war blazing across American media, that’s used to whip up fear, panic, rage on both sides of the political aisle, all to control us. What if there were millions of Americans who decided to work together with their friends, families, other like-minded people across America and said, “We aren’t going to let you destroy our great country and we are going to work together to keep ourselves, our families and communities safe and fed, and we’re going to work together peacefully – no matter what the partisan lunatics (and crooks) on either side do.”

Too many people believe that some man on a white horse is going to “save America” and that’s never been true. Trump isn’t going to save America anymore than some Democrat is going to save America. There isn’t some federal government master plan that’s going to save America, although, yes, some federal policies could mitigate some of the impact of these crises headed our way. Only we, the American people, can save our country and that means getting as many Americans as we can putting in their oars and rowing to help ourselves, our families and each other. It sounds daunting and impossible, but I believe all things are possible with faith, a whole lot of elbow grease, and teamwork.

Wearing a red hat or wrapping yourself in rainbow banners won’t help feed a single hungry child or help an elderly person in need. Stupid political slogans, getting angry, marches, protests and rallies won’t save America. Working together and doing things that really matter will. Yesterday on Twitter a Dem strategist tweeted that Dems need to keep repeating “they’re trying to destroy our democracy,” no matter what Republicans and conservatives say – this is the level of mindlessness to the spin information war. And if you think it’s only on the left, Trump mastered this same spin game with his stupid spin too, running his rally sideshow, where he went through his schtick repeating lame slogans that incite people.

Years ago when I worked at Walmart, I was the department manager of Fabrics and Crafts and loved that, but management asked me to move to the OTC Pharmacy, where they needed a department manager, then after that they asked me to move to lawn and garden and run lawn and garden. Lawn and garden was much larger and that was my first experience supervising men, because it was only women in fabrics and crafts and the OTC pharmacy. There were some personality clashes between associates in that department and also it was more associates than I had supervised before.

My husband was very good at leading soldiers in the Army. He had strong leadership skills and he knew how to get things done. I asked him what to do, because I felt like things weren’t getting done in lawn and garden and I was struggling to get associates to complete tasks and to work together. I asked him for advice. He told me to get to know my people – their strengths and weaknesses, but also to know about their lives. You have to care about the people you’re entrusted to lead. He also told me to work on being fair and consistent. And he told me the only way to fix some of the problems I told him about was demanding accountability from everyone on the team and that includes yourself. If you’re a principled leader, you have to hold yourself accountable every single day. He told me I needed to decide if I was going to lead or not.

There are plenty of good and decent people in America who still have principles, who still believe in working hard, who still believe in trying to be self-reliant and most of all who still believe in America. We can work together as One American Team, if we make up our minds and just start doing it. Start with your own family and friends, then draw your circle a little bigger and before you know it we can be reaching helping hands across America and networking.

Each person trying hard to prepare, help others, and sharing useful preparedness information can be a leader too. We all can step forward and try to help and guide those who have no idea how to go about working on emergency preparedness.

It doesn’t require some massive written plan or infrastructure or formal organizational structure – it can be just people talking, sharing ideas, information, inspiration and a little bit of help here and a helping hand there. We can all offer a helping hand to someone, whether it’s in our own family, in our group of friends, at our church, in our community, helping an elderly neighbor or a young mother struggling, and the list goes on.

Seeds of hope are like dandelions. All it takes is a small gust of wind and they can spread far and wide.

We don’t need to wait on Washington or any politician to save us. We have the power to work on saving ourselves.

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Filed under American Character, Food for Thought, General Interest

June 12, 2022 · 1:57 am

A repost of a 2015 blog post

If we build it; we can fix it

I want to write this post, which assuredly most people will dismiss out of hand.  This is my explanation of why I think Peace is possible and the fall of civilizations remedied.  I’ve been an adherent of a “God does not give us impossible missions belief” my entire life.  I believe God gave us FREE WILL.  We can choose to do or not to do, to soar or to sit on our butts whining that life isn’t fair and wait for others to do for us.  We can choose to live in FEAR or we can dare to stand up and say, “I don’t care if that’s the way it’s always been, I am going to think for myself and see if I can think, invent, build something better.”

As far as I can tell, the only human unit that is vital is the husband/wife combo, because without them reproducing , the human race will perish.  For a child to survive, requires both the mother and father.  Of course, living in groups – the “it takes a village” idea, definitely makes it much easier for humans to flourish. So, most people live in groups.

I like to analyze systems, even though I have had no formal training to do this.  One of my sons works for a large aircraft manufacturer as a software engineer.  He tells me about his travels to go diagnose and fix problems for customers, whose planes have something not working right.

Now, imagine if their planes had some fatal flaw where, say, inexplicably their most popular deluxe model of planes started suffering engine failure after hitting around the 20,000 mile mark.  The company would not accept the 20,000 mile failure of their planes nor would they want to have to rebuild engines, over and over or replace the ones that died.  They would send someone to do a systems analysis and try to detect what design flaws or equipment failure are leading to this problem.

I never accepted either the “belief” that civilizations are doomed to this endless “rise and fall” cycle, nor do I wander off into utopian pipe dreams.  My observation is that civilizations are built and deconstructed by man, just like planes – they are a man-made invention.  We find on earth some societies that remained content to settle for living in small groups and fighting to survive at bare subsistence level.  Others seek to live in a fancier deluxe model grouping, thus the most advanced civilizations are built to please those customers.  These deluxe model civilizations rely on several complex sub-systems to operate.

My mother used to get frustrated with my unwillingness to accept answers that began with, “that’s the way it’s always been”.   Accepting that premise dooms us to wasting a lot of, not only material wealth, but more importantly human lives and potential (often large portions of an entire generation), because lots of people perish when we have multiple sub-set systems failures.

So, far we’ve got most of the best geopolitical systems analysts (world leaders, scholars, statesmen, soldiers) not working on finding ways to fix the multiple, simultaneous, sub-system failures that lead to a collapse of a civilization.  They study the various sub-set systems and do some disparate diagnostics, then shrug and say, that’s just how civilizations are – “they rise and they fall”. Some try to design quick-fix patches.  Some recoil in fear and are content to be passive spectators to the collapse and murmur, “It’s always been that way”.  Brilliant geopolitics experts, almost to a man, say “that’s the way it’s always been  and I have seen nothing in history to indicate  it can ever change.” Of course, if you accept it can’t change, very few people will even bother trying to change it.

In fact, they invariably insist that when one of those sub-set systems, one intended to safeguard the entire system,  runs amok and helps destroy most of the frame and body of the entire civilization, we’re just supposed  to accept that these most complex advanced civilizations have some fatal flaw – it’s either that’s how God made the world, accept it, quit being a daydreamer and shut up about “utopias”.

I refuse to accept that belief.   I believe that if we build it, we can always improve on the design and come up with better sub-systems to build a newer, better performing model.   If your best systems analysts don’t ever even really try to find the design flaws and fix them, but instead wander off, halfheartedly fixing, only bits and pieces of some of the sub-system design flaws, of course the system will continue to reach the point where these sub-systems start falling apart and down the chute into the dustbin of history goes all that work that went into it. In the process usually many, many people perish, because most of these sub-set failures happen in midair, resulting in spectacular crashes, although some do implode and burn slowly on the runway too, so to speak.  Cleaning up the wreckage from civilizational collapses can take centuries, sometimes those people that survive don’t even bother, they wander off into the wilderness.

The known history of man provides us a great deal of information to study the various sub-sets, how they work together, which models work better and the flaws in the various systems.   For instance, we know that in governmental systems there are good kings and bad kings, dependent on one thing – the king.   For that system to work long term, relies on the accident of birth and hoping the genetic lottery of life works favorably for your kingdom, because all it takes to wreck a good kingdom is one bad king.

Others, say, in America, sat down and studied history and analyzed government systems throughout history and tried to select components that would provide a safeguard against the one bad king, as they had just got done ditching one of those bad draws in the genetic pool kind of kings.  In America, some men gathered together and said, even though no one in the known history of man has tried this first, we are FREE to come up with a better system.  We started with the premise that ALL MEN ARE FREE and constructed a governmental system that we thought would best safeguard individual freedom.  Many people in the world get sick of hearing Americans blabber on about our Constitution.  Lots of countries have constitutions, but none of them starts with the bedrock BELIEFS that ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL and ALL MEN ARE FREE.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, we tried to transplant democracy, but democracy isn’t what leads to a better life for people;  FREEDOM does.  A Constitution is just a piece of paper.  Napoleon was one of the world’s premiere constitution writers in history.   As soon as Napoleon conquered a place, he wrote another constitution for those conquered people to obey.   Selecting a good governmental system, in my opinion, is the most important sub-system in a group’s organizational structure, because that sub-system determines how well any other component sub-systems you design will work.  We shouldn’t be telling the world that democracy makes us different, we should teach the world that the BELIEF IN INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM  does.

Many other governmental systems work, and all governments are subject to engine failure (where America is at now) and a host of other sub-system failures, because any government relies on many other complex sub-systems to work too, just as civilizations do.  Being willing to do the diagnostics and taking the corrective actions to prevent a total breakdown determines the fate of more complex groups, who rely on a more advanced organizational structure than a simple group, like a tribe or religious commune.

My son recently lamented to me that he doesn’t understand why some, way more experienced, software engineers he knows settle for creating sort of patches to fix problems, instead of trying to figure out what’s causing the problem to occur in the first place and fix that.  He asked why people are like that and I told him, that in my opinion, lots of people prefer to take the easiest road – believe me, growing up in PA, our pothole-patched roads attest to that.  Because throwing a patch on is easier than repairing the entire road.  And I should know, because my father built roads for a living.

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Filed under Food for Thought, General Interest, Politics

June 12, 2022 · 1:51 am

Collapse of the system, you say

I haven’t felt well today, so I’ve sat on the computer too much, instead of getting work done around my house. I’ve been thinking a lot as I read more news than I’ve done in a while and checked in on Twitter and YouTube, browsing around. What I’ve been thinking about is something I’ve been thinking about for over 20 years and it’s also something I’ve written about a whole lot on this blog. If you cringed and thought, “Oh, no, she’s going to ramble on about about the spin information war again,” you guessed wrong. What I’ve been thinking about is bigger than that and it’s more about how can we (meaning the American people) prevent a total collapse of the system, which is comprised of several major systems, when our leaders are making epically bad decisions that will lead to mayhem and disaster?

For decades I’ve read and listened to a whole lot of right-wing thinkers, pundits and read a lot about political issues in America (along with a lot of other topics – I just have always read a lot). I have also read a lot of stuff and listened to a lot of progressives, Democrats and other thought leaders on the left.

Being a right-winger myself, I used to buy into many of the “buzzword” fearmongering that fuels the right-wing political sphere and this “collapsing the system” idea is one of those phrases that Glenn Beck and other right-wing pundits have harped on (and hyped for ratings) for years Since it sure looks to me we likely are heading full-speed ahead toward a collapse of several vital systems, I was thinking about a blog post I wrote back in 2015: If we build it; we can fix it

The left-wing ideologies (and their strategies) invariably have serious glaring gaps in them – their ways and means in their strategic thinking and planning never result in their pie-in-the-sky ends. For some reason people on the right have this fear of leftist ideology, as if it’s omnipotent and that there are mastermind strategists plotting all of this stuff, when in reality, I believe the thought leaders and rich and powerful among the left are glaringly lacking in sound strategic thinking and planning – your ways and means should work to achieve your ends. Unfortunately, the leftist pipedreams aren’t attainable, because they defy human nature and more importantly their ways and means lead only to misery and suffering for millions of people – and mayhem (“defund the police,” anyone.)

The most important thing is for people not to give up on America or believe that we’re doomed, because truly that will seal our fate. I believe we have enough smart, honorable, decent, hard-working people still left in America, that we don’t have to accept defeat or cower in fear. Things could get very bad, but what I wrote in 2015 is true – we shouldn’t quit before trying to do every last thing we can to save our republic. As long as we are free, we can work together in small groups to help each other, we can network with others across America and share information, advice and lend a helping hand, where we can.

We don’t have to be sitting ducks while our corrupt and clueless leaders fail to act. It’s going to take millions of Americans working hard to pull our country together, while the elites (not only on the left, there are plenty on the right too) flounder about, try to spin away the growing chaos, point fingers at each other and lie, lie, lie.

It’s going to take a whole lot of grassroots effort – not wasting time on political rallies or marches or bs like that, but actually working to find real help for people – trying to help source vital goods, trying to keep Americans fed, trying to keep Americans finding positive solutions, to keep America up and running.

The last thing we need is a lot of flame-throwing and raging fools – there are enough of those in Washington and the media. We are going to have to work together and pull as many like-minded people together toward, not just pointing out all of the problems and shortages, but on finding ways to locally help each other, then expanding it to working on networking with other Americans across the country. We need to stay focused on solutions – not fear, panic, worrying and worst of all we can’t let defeatism take hold of one iota of our spirit. Letting defeatism into your mind is fatal.

Politicians only dream up expensive government programs that don’t work. To get through what’s headed our way, I think it’s going to take all of us to start working on self-empowerment. Work to take care of yourself and your own family, then, if you can, try to start helping others, rather than sitting around bitching about Biden and our feckless leaders in Washington.

These are my thoughts.

I’m going to repost that 2015 blog post.

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Filed under General Interest, Politics

June 11, 2022 · 11:51 am

The new normal is a blast…

Okay, this is political, but this lady’s tweet is spot on for where we’re at. First it was a baby formula shortage that Biden used the Defense Authorization Act to fly in baby formula from Europe… now there’s a tampon shortage. One can only wonder how the Biden administration will handle this shortage…

Here’s a true story from this week. I got sick a few days ago. When I arrived at my doctor’s office, I realized I didn’t have any face masks in my car or purse. So, I called my doctor’s office and was put on hold, as I drove to a nearby CVS to buy a face mask. When the receptionist finally answered my call, I explained what happened and told her I would be a few minutes late. My primary care doctor prescribed antibiotics. I get my prescriptions filled on a nearby military post, where the Refill Pharmacy is located on one side of the snack bar and not at the military hospital pharmacy. Prescriptions from off-post doctors go through the Refill Pharmacy – that’s been a shuffling around over the years too with military retirees and their families – using on-post military doctors, then they wanted us to use civilian primary care providers, then it was some care went back to military providers.

That refill pharmacy went through several procedures since 2020, even going to setting up some makeshift drive-through pharmacy operation in the parking lot, which was chaotic. I felt sorry for the soldiers having to run in and out the building in the summertime heat, to handle each prescription. When they went back to allowing people to go inside to get their prescriptions, it’s been a face mask required location, even though it’s located in the snack bar, where soldiers and their families sit mask-free and eat. The refill pharmacy has also had socially-distanced seating in their corner of the snack bar until recently, but the mandatory face mask rule is still in place.

The pharmacists pull down their masks frequently and all along I’ve wondered why they’re doing all of this face mask drama in an open snack bar, where other people aren’t wearing masks. It’s all bureaucratic bs. at this point.

Unfortunately, so many people, especially medical people and military top brass, will cling to this ridiculous Covid theater for the foreseeable future. I remember how long they kept in place all sorts of pointless post 9/11 security measures, that made no sense whatsoever, especially at airports and on military installations. Anyone expecting the federal government to solve anything is delusional, I think.

The elastic ear loop of my disposable mask tore as I was walking toward the refill pharmacy and I was standing there tying the elastic around a corner of the flimsy mask, hoping it would hold long enough for me to get my prescription filled.

As I waited the lady in the Panda Express kept apologizing to customers, telling them she was sorry, but they were closing at 2:30 pm, because there were only two of them working and she said they would be closing at 2:30 for the next few days. That’s what life is like – endless, stupid, mindless rules and nothing operates like it used to.

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Filed under General Interest, Politics

June 11, 2022 · 9:14 am

A thoughtful video from a homesteader

No rants or politics today. Here’s a very thoughtful and upbeat video on self-sufficiency by Heidi at Rain Country:

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Filed under General Interest

June 10, 2022 · 9:53 pm

Some after-rant thoughts

As usual after a rant, I think I should have clarified a bit more. I am not trying to diss the preppers who are giving constant shortage updates or videos of empty shelves, it’s just that for this type of effort to be effective at providing useful information requires a more organized local networking effort with it, I think. The one guy, who is doing “boots on the ground” reports is getting bombarded with emails, videos and information, that will be unsustainable on a larger volume level or a long-term effort. This is exactly what happens whenever the federal government tries to start some national hotline response. It’s the problem of few people at the national level trying to respond to thousands of people and provide them localized and personalized information. There are almost always noble intentions, but it becomes unsustainable at a national level or if it’s one person trying to sift through a massive amount of information that he or she is receiving.

I get it that many people on the right are defensive and still trying to prove there are really shortages and that inflation is a serious problem, when the White House is still lying about the economic disaster. Here’s a Fox News report with Bret Baier citing that Americans are paying $460 more a month than a year ago for goods and services:

This type of “boots on the ground” shortage information is something that can change within hours as stores receive and unload trucks or stock shelves and while the major grocery chain in-stock computer systems with their online shopping are riddled with problems, it’s still more reliable than random people reporting shortage problems at stores or video of empty shelves that someone sent in. That information becomes dated quickly.

Even the facebook local efforts and community bulletin board stuff I’ve seen often gets to be too much unverified information and comments to sift through. I can usually find the information I need faster just doing some searching on my own or making a few phone calls rather than reading through hundreds of comments.

This overload happens in all sorts of information-gathering and information-distribution efforts, in all sorts of organizations and situations and it often requires some filtering and verification processes to get to verifiable, useable and actionable information.

I didn’t intend to bash the guy trying to help share information. Oddly enough, I’ve put a lot of thought into this information “void” situation pondering when the spin information war finally reaches critical mass for at least the past 15 years and I’ve read a lot of stuff about information warfare, information operations and all sorts of topics pertaining to national emergencies.

Unfortunately, I think we’re close to that critical mass point with the information “void.” One of my main concerns was wondering how will it be possible to unite enough Americans and keep them working together in a crisis where all the information systems people rely on – the news, social media, elected leaders, our institutions are thoroughly corrupted and people don’t know who or what information they can trust and millions of Americans are conditioned to “reacting” instantly to things they see or hear on social media and flying into hysterical reactions. We are very close to this crisis point, as we’re facing an epic economic and food shortage crisis barreling toward us.

Along with a catastrophic economic crisis headed our way, this information “void” problem could leave us unable to unite and work together on anything. That’s been something I’ve thought about for years, long before Trump, red hats, Biden’s America, the pandemic or this economic crisis.

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Filed under Emergency Preparedness, General Interest, Information War

June 10, 2022 · 3:59 pm

Without comment

WaPo economic columnist:

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Filed under General Interest

June 10, 2022 · 2:22 pm

A sensible food shortage prepper list

Here’s a short video by Sensible Prepper with 15 things you can do to prepare for food shortages:

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Filed under Emergency Preparedness, General Interest

June 10, 2022 · 1:10 pm

Those who live in ivory towers

Sorry, this turned into a long rant, but here it is. I watched this video this morning, after working in my container garden a couple hours. I’ve watched Doug and Stacy videos for quite a while, even though I have no desire to live off-grid and I live in a residential area with a backyard space to garden. I learn a lot from many of the online homesteaders, just like I learn a lot from online gardeners, preppers, frugal-living people, and needleworkers. Doug was trying to avoid the politics in this video and urging people to get up and start doing now, before the economic crisis worsens. He’s absolutely right. Here’s the video and then I’m going to make some comments about the politics:

In regards to the politics, while certainly I believe the Biden administration policies have been disastrous for the American economy and I also have believed since the Obama years, that there’s a multi-faceted culture war raging that encompasses not only hot button issues like race and gender politics, but also the climate change activism and world-wide economic changes. Among the far-left there’s been a belief in “collapsing the system” to force cultural, political, and economic transformation in America since probably as far back as the late 1960s-early 1970s.

None of the things President Obama talked about were new ideas among the radical left, even though American right-wing media became obsessed with generating hysteria, fear and plenty of idiotic Obama conspiracy theories (that birther crap was nuts – Obama’s mother was an American citizen, so that gave her child a right to American citizenship, wherever he was born). Many of these right-wing talkers’ millions of loyal groupies along with the right-wing pundit celebrity culture is as destructive as the Oprah/TV talk show culture was to American culture, where Americans were conditioned to airing all of their most private dirty laundry in public and betraying their closest family members on stage, all under the guise of sharing pain and family problems.

So right now, right-wing media and social media content creators gravitate toward hyping a lot of “news” that is little more than unsubstantiated innuendo and conspiracy theories, while other like-minded people in right-wing media and social media repeat all of this stuff without any independent verification whatsoever. It’s a vicious information cycle, where people add their own bits and takes to it, just like the game of telephone with kids sitting in a circle and whispering something to each other, around the circle. What the last kid hears is nothing like what the first kid whispered.

Absolutely, President Obama had a long history of supporting radical leftist ideologies and within his administration were many people I considered far-left kooks and a few were even hardline communists, but even more of them were mainly corrupt politicians. President Biden has many of the same people in his inner-circle and I don’t expect any changes in policy direction from this White House. They’re committed to the same fundamental transformation as I’ve heard blabbed about since the 1970s, although the latest iteration is the “great reset.” It’s the same radical leftist ideology repackaged with new lingo.

Trump and his administration also contained many corrupt charlatans, corrupt politicians and kooks too. Ditto that for the GOP. That’s why I don’t expect a Republican win this fall or in 2024 to create some miraculous change, unless enough Americans start facing the out-of-control corruption (and spending) in our politics and in our culture. That starts with ourselves – we’ve got to stop blaming other people for everything that’s going wrong and start becoming more committed to changing ourselves and working on improving our own lives.

What I want to talk about is thinking about how much of your energy and time you’re choosing to invest in things you can change and have the power to control in your own life vs. how much time and energy you’re choosing to invest in fear, panic, anger or rage at daily political hot air and online-fueled hysteria?

I see several prepper channels pop up in my YouTube feed, where they cover the political happenings several times a day, claiming they have inside sources, and I keep wondering how much time they have to work at their own preparedness efforts with their almost constant social media presence?

I don’t have time to read as much news, reports and follow the spin war garbage as I did when I spent many hours sitting beside my husband’s hospice bed every day and where my daily chores involved being inside the house almost all of the time, carrying a baby monitor with me, so I could hear him if he needed anything and to make sure he was okay. His 13-month hospice ordeal was horrific for him (it wasn’t a picnic for me either) – he was completely bed-bound. I had to help him sit up on days where he wasn’t strong enough to do that and other days it was turning him and using pillows to rotate his position every couple hours to avoid pressure sores. He was a very independent person and hated every minute being trapped in that bed, but he kept fighting to pull himself up to a sitting position by himself and he kept trying to eat to get stronger. I would have given up the fight within days, but he fought to the last moments.

I write a lot about the truth and here’s a home-truth for myself – I am not in good health and in many serious crisis situations the odds are stacked against me surviving. I have no delusions about being the last person standing in a crisis, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to sit around and do nothing to prepare or to try to better my odds. I have children and grandchildren. I want to make sure they survive.

I’ve been working on losing weight, working on trying to become more physically fit, but as I’ve mentioned before I’m an insulin-dependent diabetic with heart problems, which makes me very dependent on our medical supply chain and even my insulin has to be refrigerated. My doctor has lowered my insulin dosage twice since I started losing some weight and I am hoping I can continue on this path of losing weight, controlling my blood sugar, and lowering my reliance on insulin. Everyone can work a little bit at a time toward becoming more self-sustainable and self-reliant.

There are millions of people in America who have various medical needs and disabilities, which require a heavy dependence on our medical supply chain and modern technology. If you are reliant on medications or medical supplies, it’s prudent to try to increase the amount of medication and supplies you have on hand to create a buffer in case of shortages. Often, doctors, medical insurance and costs can limit how much medication you can have on hand.

There are probably even more Americans who live in delusion-land about the economic crisis that’s already beginning to impact America and who believe there’s not a serious economic “hurricane” headed our way. They’re like the people at the beach the day before a hurricane touches land, where the surf is getting choppy and rough, but hey the sun’s shining, so everything’s fine…

America likely won’t face the same levels of devastation as some countries like Sri Lanka or Turkey, where Sri Lanka has food riots and the Turkish economy is collapsing, but we’re not immune from having our self-indulgent consumer culture upended. America is a land with immense resources, even though we’ve outsourced so much of manufacturing and become reliant on cheap foreign imports. We might be able to avoid some of the horrific devastation many countries will be facing as this global economic crisis and food shortage crisis hit. However, the rainbows and sunshine, head-in-the-clouds folks will probably be in total panic mode when they realize they should have prepared and that the political leaders they trusted, were blowing smoke up their you know what

If you wonder how on earth anyone can still believe everything is going great and that we’re not headed toward a serious economic crisis, well, this came from the White House press secretary a few days ago:

Massive lay-offs, banking crises, more serious shortages, and in-your-face reality checks haven’t hit hard enough yet, where bold-faced, self-serving political lies like this coming from the White House, would be rejected by just about every American with a functioning brain-cell.

It’s not until more and more Americans take off the partisan political blinders and realize Washington and our political class (across the aisle) are the problem and not the solutions, that any meaningful political change will happen in America. It’s not a matter of “red” America or “blue” America winning, it’s about when the American people start talking to their neighbors, friends and each other and working together to survive the coming crises, that perhaps our country can start moving in another direction.

I hope more people can put aside anger, rage, reacting to media-generated hysteria and move toward trusting in ourselves, each other and in working hard every day to be stronger, better-prepared, more resilient. and most of all I hope we can all work hard on being more grateful for the many blessings living in America has afforded us. I hope we can be more gracious to each other, even the people who hold differing views.

How about each day find a few things in your own life and home that you can do to improve you and your family’s quality of life and to become more self-sustainable. Instead of spending hours enraged about the latest hysterical topic social media is buzzing about or about shortage situations all over America or trying to follow every empty store shelf report, perhaps put that energy toward something positive in your own life.

The reality is the shortage situation is likely to get worse and that means everyone will need to have a personal strategy – whether it’s adequate food storage to buffer the impact, growing more of their own food, or a localized information and food supply chain to deal with that. It doesn’t do me any good to get worked up about empty shelf videos of grocery stores in CA or all around America, when I live in GA. It also is wasted energy. I want to shop less often and make less trips to the store, not run around every day in a panic looking for this item or that item. My first thought when I realize I am out of an item is to think, “Do I have something else in my house that will work?”

My little container garden isn’t going to provide enough produce for me to live on, but this morning I picked more kale to dehydrate (third kale harvest from this kale) and I can probably get one more harvest from that before it bolts. I have more kale growing. I’ve picked enough cherry tomatoes for salads in the past couple weeks and frozen two quart-size bags. I’ve picked green beans twice from five grow bags with green beans – enough for meals, cucumbers, squash, onions and I’ve been dehydrating sweet basil and lemon basil this week. I intend to work on gardening year-round again (zone 8b that is possible) and planting more vegetables in my backyard space. I bought blueberry and blackberry bushes and I’ve got one raspberry. I bought a grape vine and strawberries. It’s a small start at gardening, but I’ll probably have enough cucumbers, bell peppers and cherry tomatoes to give some to neighbors. My squash looked great until the squash vine borers arrived and now it’s a battle. I replanted zucchini. I’ve been planning what I’m going to plant in late-July and August for fall vegetables.

I’d rather be working on things I can change, not spending days on end worrying or fuming about politics and things that I can’t change. More people are waking up to the reality of the economic hurricane heading our way, but assuredly there will be some fools (like liberal pundits on Twitter) still floundering about wondering why there aren’t minimum wage delivery people to cart their groceries to their front door in this crisis, like back in 2020, when their cushy jobs allowed them to work from home. In fact, many of the liberal elites might be waking up to realizing that they no longer have that cushy job at all. The reality of a serious economic and food shortage crisis is inescapable, even for those who live in ivory towers.

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Filed under Culture Wars, Emergency Preparedness, General Interest, Politics

June 8, 2022 · 6:36 pm

Everything beyond the basics is gravy

This post is going to be about decision-making and personal responsibility, especially in difficult or “crisis” situations – without any sugar-coating.

The reality in America is people who live buried in personal debt is the norm and a whole lot of businesses have made a fortune perpetuating the belief that “building your credit score,” which is code for accumulating personal debt is sensible personal financial management and the ticket to prosperity. I have believed for a long, long time that is a total lie. It’s a road to being indebted to other people your entire life and it eats away at your hard-earned money, leaving millions of people worrying about how to make ends meet and struggling to figure out how to juggle debt payments.

I am not a financial adviser or an expert on personal finance, so this is strictly my opinion. It feels weird to even be writing about financial stuff and emergency preparedness, because when I started blogging I wrote about politics, foreign affairs, culture war stuff, and the constant spin information war, that’s creating non-stop chaos in our politics and fueling the culture war.

Of course, I’ve heard actual financial advisers talk about how to manage credit and debt responsibly, but a whole lot of people believe that if a credit card company tells them they “qualify” for a certain credit limit or even more deceptive is they offer you a higher credit limit, that is a sign you are great at managing money. You’re really just great at building up personal debt.

My late husband and I had completely different views on personal finance – he didn’t mind racking up consumer debt and he believed your credit score is some magical number to the good life. We had many disagreements about money-management over the years. There are lots of couples where there are differing financial management views. Here’s how I see it – personal debt means you owe someone else money for items you purchased. You don’t own anything you bought on credit- you owe money (and interest) on all those things you purchased on credit. You end up with a lot of stuff you don’t need, don’t use, you end up owing a lot of money, and you end up living beyond your means.

When my husband was placed on home hospice care in 2020, he was too ill to even discuss personal finance stuff, so I decided to pay off the credit cards and I paid off the mortgage early. I wanted to be debt-free. I’m glad I did that.

I expect that as more people become alarmed at the rapidly deteriorating economic situation, especially the cost of gas and the chaos in the retail supply chain, that more people will begin hurriedly stocking up (panic buying), spending money they don’t have (buying on credit) or can’t afford (pulling money from savings).

According to some surveys, many Americans don’t have enough to cover a $400 expense. Others will charge up more to try to maintain their same lifestyle or to try to make ends meet with the soaring inflation. The interest rates will go up and credit will tighten, which is going to leave millions of people financially decimated, especially people carrying high amounts of consumer debt.

The idea about preparedness that seems to take hold among many of the prepper people online (especially men) often sounds like they have role-playing visions of gun-wielding to survive in a post-apocalyptic world or they think they’re going to be the hero facing down the hordes of desperate people trying to steal their stuff. There seems to be a focus on pricey items from lots of guns, ammo, and a whole lot of expensive technology. None of those things is a bad thing to have stocked up, but prioritizing necessities is crucial and food, water, shelter, basic security are critical needs.

As more and more people, who never gave a single thought to “emergency preparedness” become alarmed at the economic crisis (and likely summer of civil unrest – as promised by far-left activists, while the DHS is warning mostly about far-right violence), the panic-buying will likely move into high gear.

The thing is when people who make impulsive (or careless) spending decisions ordinarily become panicked, they’re likely to rush around and make really bad spending decisions stocking up in a crisis. I worked in my local Walmart Supercenter for a number of years and it always amazed me to watch people rush around to buy emergency supplies as the hurricane warnings progressed from a week out to landfall. Most people flooded the store as the hurricane moved closer to land and often shoppers had no clue what items they really needed, but were just grabbing items, because other people were grabbing them.

I have always stocked up extra food and supplies, because I feel more peace of mind that way. As a teenager I babysat a lot and one experience stuck with me. I babysat for a couple with two small children, who then got divorced. After their split, the lady called and asked me to babysit for New Year’s Eve. She was going out with friends. Shortly after she left the two kids started saying how hungry they were. I was alarmed that there was only a bottle of Cold Duck in the refrigerator and a few packs of venison in the freezer. There was no milk or eggs, no canned goods, no flour, no bread or crackers, not even a jar of peanut butter.

I called my mother and told her the kids were hungry and there was no food in the house. My mother told me there had to be something and I told her I checked the fridge, freezer and all the cupboards. My mother brought food for the kids to eat and she was fuming about that lady going out when she didn’t have food in the house to feed her kids. That house operated differently when the couple was together – there was always food there. I never babysat for that lady again.

When I had kids I wanted to make sure I was never in the situation where my kids were looking at me and saying they were hungry and I had no food to feed them. It’s a terrible feeling to have a hungry child asking for something to eat and you have nothing to feed them. I felt alarm when I looked through that lady’s kitchen, because I was thinking, surely I could make some pancakes or something easy for them to eat, but there was nothing, except a bottle of Cold Duck and a few packs of frozen venison, which I had no idea how old that was.

Along with urging people to stock up on food and basic supplies, it’s important to urge people to pay off debt and to not charge up more. Charging up supplies to prepare for an economic crisis is insane, but I expect that’s exactly how a lot of people are stocking up. And there will be the many preppers online blaring warnings about this shortage or that dire event and they’ll be telling you that you need all these expensive items to be prepared.

I’ll keep repeating, staying calm and thinking through situations should be at the top of your survival skill-training – especially living in a world filled with so much news media and social media noise bombarding us daily. Even though it’s important to stock-up basics, that doesn’t mean you should rush out and stock up every time there’s some warning about another item that will be in short supply or the price is skyrocketing.

Now more than ever, it’s important to focus, by thinking about the “big picture” of your financial footing and budget vs. the “little picture” of the latest breathless “crisis warning.” I fell for this when I first started watching online prepper videos and began doubting how I had been preparing for emergencies my entire life. I bought a lot of “must-have” prepper things in 2020, but then I started thinking that many of the online preppers are basically just prepper gear salespeople and I stopped reacting and started taking more time to think about purchases.

The worst thing to do is to get in the habit of jumping in the car and running to the store, every time you hear a new warning about specific shortages items or empty shelf warnings. That is a panic reaction and it will leave you mentally-exhausted, plus you’ll be wasting a lot of gas and money. I am trying to limit my grocery store spending, because I have stocked up a lot and I make a list. Some people online act like they’re on a mission to give shortage updates and video of empty store shelves constantly, but that’s not really useful information unless you shop at those stores and know more details about the shortage situation at that particular store.

You still have time to do some price comparisons and also many of the bigger chain stores have online purchasing and either pick-up or delivery options, so you can check the out-of-stock situation at your particular store online before going on mad dashes based on the latest social media rumor mill or some person on social media claiming to have “inside sources.”

I don’t have any “inside sources” and rely on news media, where I don’t really have a lot of trust in their reporting either. I’ve been trying to look through my home, especially my food storage and shopping there first.

I actually expect a lot of overstock situations of non-food items and even the more expensive food items, as inflation climbs and hits people’s pocketbooks harder. Non-essential spending will decrease, as more and more of our budgets will have to go toward essential items. A lot of people will be selling all sorts of stuff as the economy worsens, so waiting to purchase non-essentials might lead to some real bargains. Yes, that sounds opportunistic, but that’s the reality – I was alive in the late 1970s.

We’re heading into a serious economic crisis, so everyone should be looking carefully at their own finances and trying to batten down the hatches for the coming economic “hurricane” as the JP Chase CEO referred to it the other day. I think it makes more sense to pay off as much debt as you can, as quickly as you can. Focus on the basics first – food and water, keeping a roof over your head, making sure you can heat/cool your home. Everything beyond the basics is gravy. That’s the truth.

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Filed under Emergency Preparedness, General Interest