Similar in nature to vaccines against disease, addiction vaccines stimulate the body to create antibodies that recognize a drug, and prevent or slow it from reaching the brain. A shot every few months, or once a year, has the potential to seriously ease a person’s path to recovery.
The first one that came to mind was one prevent Marxist beliefs. That was quickly followed by the concern that someone would probably develop, and the government would soon mandate, a vaccine to prevent individualism and/or suspicion of large government.
I soon returned to the present day and reality by reminding myself there has been a vaccine for the lethal variants of Marxism since before the mutations first started spreading over 100 years ago. Current prices vary from less than $0.10 to over $5.00 dollars a shot. And, if properly injected, they will cure as well as provide lifelong 100% immunity from infections. Even though the shots are widely available, inexpensive, and effective we still have rising Marxist infection rates. It seems to me there will have to be mandates to achieve herd immunity. This is because the voluntary inoculation rates are so very low..—Joe]
I’ve been keeping my finger on the pulse of people moving to Idaho for a couple years now. Last July this crossed my desktop:
Idaho is America’s fastest-growing state, according to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau. Its population increased by 2.1 percent to almost 1.8 million from July 2018 to June 2019.
Because of this I thought I would offer a few tips to those moving in. There can be some culture shock and the locals are going to insist you adapt to their culture rather than you imposing your culture and “the right way to do things” upon them. If they wanted the city culture they would have adapted it or moved to the city years ago.
Finding a home.
I talked to a builder in North central Idaho a few months ago and he had some interesting stories to tell.
There are no houses available for sale or rent in the area. One family, desperate to leave California, brought a camping trailer and lived in it while they looked for a place to buy or rent. After several months they gave up and went back to California.
Home builders, if you can get one to return your call, will tell you they are completely booked up a year or more into the future. If you decide you want to get on their schedule you will discover it involves an interview and if you aren’t local the odds are very low of them you giving you an interview. They won’t answer or return your calls if you fail your one and only interview. Although there may be a half dozen or a dozen builders in your area you will be lucky to get more than one to talk to you. After you fail the first interview he will tell his builder friends what a doofus your are and share your name and telephone number with them.
Here are some common interview questions and tips for answers:
Why are you moving here? Wrong answers include:
“I don’t have to work in the office anymore and we want to be in the country.”
”There is too much crime in the city.”
”Things are too hectic in the city and we want a simpler life.”
Answers that won’t eliminate you from consideration:
”The prosecutors are on the side of the criminals.”
”Saying, ‘All lives matter’ will cost you your job.”
”They are making all my guns illegal.”
Who do you know around here? Wrong answers are anything other than a half dozen people who have lived there all their lives and will vouch for your good character. You will be asked how you know them and you should be ready to tell stories about them that your interviewer, who probably also knows them, will recognize as being in character.
What are you going to do here? Wrong answers include:
“Farming a few acres.”
”Organic <anything>.”
”I have enough money I don’t have to do anything.”
Answers that won’t eliminate you from consideration:
”If I can get a good enough Internet connection I can work from home.”
”I’ll do almost anything to get out away from the politics of <state/city>.”
”Construction/drive truck/heavy equipment operator/etc.”
What sort of hunting do you do? Wrong answers include:
”I’m a vegan.”
”I’m not against others hunting but it isn’t something anyone in our family would ever consider doing.”
”I was thinking I might try hunting antelope (or other species that doesn’t exist in this area of Idaho) when I get here.”
Answers that won’t eliminate you from consideration:
”I’ve harvested a few mulies and some ducks, but nothing recently.”
”Hunting is something I have always wanted to try. Can you recommend someone to help me get my hunter education card?”
”My wife did some hunting when she was growing up and promised she would teach me after we get settled in.”
What type of guns do you have? Wrong answers include:
”We have a couple 9mm shotguns.”
”Part of the reason we are leaving the city is to get away from all the guns.”
”Nothing right now but I expect we will be getting an assault weapon or two after we get here.”
Answers that won’t eliminate you from consideration:
”We started to buy a couple handguns a year ago but it was just too much of a hassle and the sheriff wouldn’t give us a concealed carry license unless we ‘donated’ to his reelection campaign anyway.”
“I’d rather not discuss the details until we can get them out of the state.”
”I haven’t done an inventory recently but I checked with a moving company and we are going to need to rent a U-Haul trailer because they won’t move them for us.”
What did you think of that last presidential election? Wrong answers include:
”It was so scary that Trump got that many votes.”
”If Hillary had not given up in 2016 we wouldn’t have had to worry about Trump in 2020.”
”If there hadn’t been so much corruption Trump would have been in jail and we could have all breathed a little easier.”
Answers that won’t eliminate you from consideration:
”Let’s go Brandon!”
”Why hasn’t the FBI interviewed any of the people who reported election fraud?”
”They called that an insurrection? One day soon they are likely to see a real insurrection.”
The weather deserves mention. Given the state of the education system people may not know that living within a few tens of miles of the ocean has a moderating effect on the temperature. Currently my property in Idaho looks like this:
It’s been a common problem. The weather station was sold by an Arizona company and it just doesn’t seem to be able to handle the cold. And –5 isn’t all the cold as things go around here. I’ve seen it as low as –30F for a week at a time while never getting above –20F. It’s not all that bad as long as the electricity doesn’t go out. That winter with the lows of –30F for a week included no electricity. We heated snow on our wood stove for water. After the electricity came back on we thawed the frozen underground pipes using our electric welder. You do know how to do that, right?
The –30 F for a week was an outlier. But there have been several times when it never got above 0 F for more than a month so you should be prepared for that. Also, with it that cold and lots of snow the county may not plow the roads for several days. You and your neighbors will need to get your dozers started up and plow them yourselves. Be sure and put winterized diesel in your snow removal equipment before it turns cold. The summer diesel will be jelly when you need it the most. Starting a diesel engine in the extreme cold is not for the novice. Know how to use glow plugs, block heaters, and starting fluid.
Oh! You alerted on the “explosive production facility”? It’s no big deal. You don’t have to have your own facility. Most people buy their recreational explosives from the local sporting goods store or even the local builders supply. I have my own facility because I make over a ton of recreational explosives each year.
Back to the weather… The summers are hot. 100+ F is expected in the late summer. Some of the lower elevations get days with the temperature over 110F. You should see the wildfires we get around here: That was in 2020 and was just a warm up for 2021. After they lite the backfires for the 2021 fire less than a mile from my brother’s house the flames were estimated at over 1000 feet high. If you want to keep your buildings you will need your own generator to keep your pump running and hope your well has the capacity to supply enough water to keep everything saturated. Why your own generator and water you ask? The power frequently goes out because of the fires. There is no city/county water supply. Your own well is what you have. The local fire department is a volunteer organization and will probably be busy someplace else. This is especially true if you are the new guy in the neighborhood and has been a little snotty about the local “deplorables”. If properly equipped, your dozer for plowing the snow in the winter can be used for fighting fires in the summer.
Gardens are common. Most people in the country have gardens and maybe a few fruit and/or nut trees and/or berry bushes. But its not required unless driving 30 minutes to an hour into town to buy fresh food is annoying. You will need to have a fence which is at least six feet high. The deer will jump over anything less than that. Instacart and Amazon fresh don’t deliver in this area. You might want to consider canning and freezing your own food too. Have enough on hand to make it through those weeks where the roads haven’t been cleared of snow or are closed because of the fires.
Transportation. The thing about no Instacart or Amazon Fresh services reminded me of a story about someone who shall remain nameless. This person was coming out for a visit and I offered to pick them up at the airport. They declined saying they would just take public transportation from the airport to the motel in the closest town to me. I repeated my offer but they insisted. An hour or so later they called back, “There isn’t any public transportation from the airport to your town!” Yeah, I was pretty sure you would discover that. I’ll be glad to pick you up.
Septic systems. Another service people in the city take for granted is a sewer system. That’s right, in addition to your own well you have to have your own septic system. This is composed of a 1000+ gallon tank buried near your house where the turds decompose until they exit as a smelly liquid along with the other stuff you send down your drain. The effluent from the septic tank go into the drain field a little further from the house, and much further from your well, to be reintroduced to the ground. The septic tank will need to be pumped out every three to five years. Do not neglect this! Get it done during the summer. If your drain plugs up during one of those times when the roads are closed because of the snow and the subzero temperatures you will be using a latrine made out of a snow drift. Your pee won’t necessarily freeze before it gets blown into your shoes and that will probably result in more frequent changing of your socks than if you just had to brush the ice off.
Because the bacterial requirements for turd decomposition differs from that required for food scrap decomposition you will not have a garage disposal in your kitchen sink. You will learn to compost for your garden or pay extra for garbage removal—if it exists in your area. You may have to take it to the transfer station yourself. They are usually within 30 minutes to an hour away from your house.(when the roads are passable). You might want a pickup to haul it because carrying garbage in your car can cause it to smell bad for a long time.
Vehicles. Speaking of transportation and cars… You should have at least one four wheel or all wheel drive vehicle for winter travel. And don’t count on all season tires to be “good enough”. Get dedicated winter tires. If you have a decent relationship with your neighbors they will pull you out of the ditches the first few times you slide off the road near their place. But if you are a slow learner they will grow tired of it and let you stay in the ditch for a day or two. They might give you a ride home or bring you some food, water, and a blanket. After all, we are friendly folks and care about our neighbors.
If you slide off the edge of the hill instead of a ditch… well, you will be lucky if your car stops tumbling after a couple hundred feet. It’s over 1,000 feet all the way down to the river. And the only people I have ever known to call a tow truck were city people. If you call a tow truck and manage to get one to come out the neighbors will be telling that story for decades.
Your Prius, Tesla, BMW, and Mercedes will be viewed in a very negative light with you thought of as virtue signaling and/or a snob. The Ferrari, Jaguar, or Porsche that was the status symbol of your city neighborhood will be be considered conclusive evidence you are an arrogant narcissist.
Privacy. You might think that because your nearest neighbor is hundreds of yards away that you have more privacy than in the city with neighbors a few dozen feet from you. Don’t count on it. When the deer are more common than people your neighbors know what vehicles you drive and when and probably where you are at any given time. When your spouse invites a friend over while you are in town or out of the area for a while within a few hours the neighbors will have shared that information with everyone else in a five mile radius.
Internet access. Do you require “good Internet”? If you do, then don’t even think about moving here. I recently had a repairman come out to my place to fix something and while waiting for someone to bring him some parts from town I told him he could use my open Wi-Fi. This is at a rather remote location where I have a dish antenna pointed at a mountain top four miles away to get my Internet. This connects to my router and retransmits to another location almost a half mile away where it is broadcast again at my gun range. Both the router location and the gun range Internet equipment is powered by solar cells and batteries. When he was leaving he thanked me for the Internet connection and commented, “That is a better Internet connection than I have at home.”
My service is 6 Mbs down and 3 Mbs up. For comparison, “good Internet” in the city is going to be something on the order of at least 70+ Mbs down.
Social factors. Having good neighbors is incredibly important. Defending against fires in the summer and travel in the winter are life threating even with good relationships with your neighbors. You will need to fit in to be welcomed or even tolerated. If you are a slow learner or think the way the things are done in the city is better then you are likely to become a social outcast and you will spend, at most, a few years before you retreat to the city where you belong.
Summary. Country life in Idaho is much different from what city people are used to. I’ve just touched the surface to give you some clues. People who live here do not appreciate people who move from the city and expect people and the environment to adapt to them or accept your insistence that they are your inferiors. If you are arrogant, difficult to get along with, or a slow learner they can and will make life difficult or deadly for you simply by minor neglect. You will adapt or you will leave—one way or another.
Update 1/8/2022: I forgot to mention the Indian reservation. The reservation encompasses a lot of square miles and several small towns:
The Nez Perce tribe has their own court system.
Business dealings with the tribe can be “interesting”. Once, my brothers and I came to a verbal agreement on a land swap with them. It was a great deal for both them and us. They were getting land which was well connected with their land (and not much of ours) and we were getting land which well connected with ours (and not much of theirs). After the verbal agreement it took (IIRC) six years to get a signed contract which only formalized the verbal agreement and said the deal will be closed within six months. It took seven, rather painful, months to close the deal.
I could tell stories for hours but that might spoil relationships that took decades to build.
The snow kept falling. Here are updated pictures of the same location a few days later:
Here is a picture of my brother’s front deck:
They lost electricity at the same time for a day or too also.
Chance Coleman @ChanceTyColeman Tweeted on December 23, 2021 [I don’t think I see any croissants or AK-47s being offered. I prefer maple bars and AR-15s anyway. But I don’t fault Coleman for his choice. To each his own.—Joe]
From the IRS website here in the section about “Other Income”:
Publication 17 (2021), Your Federal Income Tax For Individuals
For use in preparing 2021 Returns
…
Illegal activities.
Income from illegal activities, such as money from dealing illegal drugs, must be included in your income on Schedule 1 (Form 1040), line 8z, or on Schedule C (Form 1040) if from your self-employment activity.
…
Stolen property.
If you steal property, you must report its fair market value in your income in the year you steal it unless you return it to its rightful owner in the same year.
Gee, and all this time I was under the impression that stealing $100K/year was worth a lot more than earning $100K/year because of the tax benefits. Hence, in essence, the IRS was giving tax breaks to thieves, robbers, and drug dealers. Now I find out they have to pay taxes just like all the rest of us*.
If only belief in the universal utility of government were as rare as the belief in UFOs the world would be a much better place. Sadly, that is not the case.
And getting more serious for a bit… Correlation does not mean causation. The working for the government correlation is almost for certain a sample bias. The scans from government workers were available for study rather than the scans of people’s brains who had UFO encounters turned out to mostly work for the government.—Joe]
There is more than a little truth to this. And this is part of the reason the courts are so important to regaining some sanity in our political environment.
To all those who thought that @joebiden was better than Trump because the latter was going to end civilization. Is Biden doing better or worse than Trump regarding the economy and the border? Please use simple words so that I can follow.
Gad Saad @GadSaad Tweeted on October 24, 2021 [I have nothing to add.—Joe]
I believe in a multi-racial, progressive society where whites, blacks, and Koreans can all work together to stand on rooftops and shoot communists.
Dogs don’t have thumbs @MorlockP Tweeted on August 23, 2021 Deleted by Twitter sometime between August 24, 10:22 AM PDT and August 25 7:01 PM PDT. [That was an unexpected plot twist in the last couple of words.—Joe]
As we’ve noted many times before, anti-gunners believe that firearms are actually just men’s way of “overcompensating” for our genitalia. When Governor Cuomo shut the gun stores down at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, the guns struck back with a bullying campaign, teasing poor Andy that all the women around him could tell that he had a small penis. He had two choices: Either re-open the gun stores and allow the guns to go back to gunning around killing innocent people all by gunselves, or correct everyone’s false belief about his mighty member.
Tamara K. @TamSlick Tweeted on June 25, 2021 [I’m a little surprised that she didn’t manage to get in a reference to the grassy knoll. Certainly she has the talent to do so. But, perhaps that’s getting a little obscure for the youngsters out there.—Joe]
From a private Facebook discussion about defense of personal property, Bill said:
Heads on pikes should be suitable for display until a proper weatherproof likeness can be provided for permanent view.
I can see a case being made for this in certain circumstances. Not that it should be applicable in all situations (the two-year old getting into the cookie jar for example).
That I love sick humor probably contributes to the appeal of this.
Are ghost guns guns useable by ghosts or guns that allow you to shoot ghosts? Because that makes a big difference in whether I want them banned or not.
Frank J. Fleming @IMAO_ Tweeted on April 8, 2021 [As pointed out by Shawn Slipknotyk @slipknotyk06, there is another possibility which should be considered. Perhaps a ghost gun is a gun that shoot ghosts out the barrel.
I think we need to move very slowly on this whole ghost gun banning thing. There are constitutional questions as well. Surely if the guns are for ghosts of U.S. citizens then such a law would be unconstitutional. And if the ghosts were “undocumented immigrants”, once they are in this country don’t they have the same rights to gun ownership as citizen ghosts?—Joe]
For comparison a fairly typical .300 Winchester Magnum load would be a 190 grain bullet with a muzzle velocity of 2900 fps for a Power Factor of 551. Or compare it to a .308 Winchester with a 168 grain bullet at 2650 fps with a PF of 445.
The semi-auto action of the Garand would help a little but I couldn’t see myself shooting that except under duress.
I’ve deleted this meme. It was overstating things more than what I think is acceptable.
Yes, it is an acknowledged fact that Kamala Harris was dating Willy Brown in 1994 and 1995 and that he gave her political appointments at or about that time. This probably should have been investigated as nepotism.
But the meme strongly implies her selection as a U.S. V.P. candidate was because of her sleeping with “powerfully connected men”. This is a big stretch with the currently available evidence. Where there relationships with other men which also contributed to her success? I’ve not heard of any. And I’m nearly certain there have been a lot of people looking for that sort of dirt and would have reported it if they had found it.
Certainly the case can be made that her appointments 25 years put her on a path to her current position. But the path is far too long to reasonably say the Willy Brown relationship was a dominate factor in her successful traversal of that path.
