Once upon a time, I had a great job...

The part I want to highlight was that after an operation or training exercise or a day of fun at the range, I would get to clean my weapon. It was that kind of job. Lots of uniforms and lots of weapons and ammunition. But when you got back to base, barracks, security - you started cleaning everything and accounting for all missing, in-operational and incomplete equipment. I could whip through a rifle and pistol, magazines, backpack, rucksack, radio, and stuff one hangs on all over. Oil, wipe it off, reassemble, do function check, and have someone inspect it and get it to bed. Tracks and trucks the same way, the tubes and tanks, and the helicopters and other aircraft had even longer recovery maintenance. No sleep until it was ready to go out again... what no sleep! Nope. Never know when the SHTF moment is going to strike.

I liked knowing that by the time my comrades in arms were ready for their own sleep or recovery time, they would be without a care. Then they would get off to home, rack, washing the laundry, writing or calling important people that they wanted to touch... but couldn't.

That clean up and preparing for the next operation or attack or recovery is never in those movies about what one has done during the day. It is boring, but needed for the next time. I am now out of that job, long out, and don't have to clean my rifle (don't call it a weapon, you might scare the neighbors) until I am ready. Of my position, I treat my tools better than I did when the government was providing the opportunities to use them, and I have only a shadow of the anti-gun goofs plotting to take all my weapons away. I am sure once they get the firearms they will be back for the knives and the bows, then the different chemical compounds. I just don't have enough years left to think it matters as much as they think. I will concern myself more over manners, values, smiles of folks and pleasing God Almighty. Still, I will clean my weapons, until the next time.

No I am not the President, but I am hiding my shooting...

kind of.

Normally, I am there with all the targets and talk and such. But today I just went, paid my money, waited for a spot, posted the target, and shot my forty rounds, only bringing back thirty-nine cases, and one was split.

I did enjoy the day, talking to the other shooters and admiring their stories, rifles and attitude. So maybe it was better than I can write about it, or I will just enjoy that day and hope yours was a great one, too. Even if it wasn't anything to write home (or on a blog about). The Blues should be playing now, my wife is out watering the garden and her flowers, I can go back to reading of lives lived in adventure - which is always a little bit more unsettling than talking about it later --- always trying to live in blest boredom. Amen.

No, I cannot blame the President, any of them...

A President presides, doesn't lead, doesn't rule, doesn't shoot, doesn't legislate, find work for me or better my condition. If you get the President back to what his job means, he doesn't have to be on television, on the internet, hiding his buddies from Congress. He just presides.

So I am responsible for the complete collapse of the housing market, fools betting on the economic numbers in many ways, electing representatives that don't understand high or low finance, supply and demand (too much BS and no one buys it), and the failure of the world beyond my computer cave.

Well, I guess I will go pay the bills, exercise, go to the range (forty rounds at 200 and 300 yards. Y'all have a great day!

Earl's Financial and Economic advice...

Take your gross income, put ten percent in the thankful for the bounty and the blessing, take ten percent and invest in your future (savings, land, stocks, tools, education), live on the remaining eighty percent - which will be attacked by the government for your own and their own good. Always, every payday.

Never borrow money: instead get another job, delay buying, grow up. Every dollar you spend on interest payments for the privilege of borrowing slow you down from success, if you are thinking you should be paying interest when you retire you have no business reading this post. If you think borrowing money for education will make you a faster success, eat lots of ice cream and potatoes and gravy -- when you are fat enough race a mile and see if you come in first.

So you want to buy a lottery ticket, some one has to win. I am lucky, the shredder is beside my desk, when I want to buy tickets I can just put the dollar into the shredder and save all that angst waiting for the winning number on my ticket. Seems my old tickets all got shredded. It does take a bit of time to get smarter.

Look at the average of the Congressmen and President and Judges - and they all spend money they don't have, for things they don't need, with that levy on your income that 'they' say is your fair share.... see? Hope the country has enough time to get smarter.

I have heard/read it again...

Have to stop the drug flow, have to stop the rape, have to stop the murders.... you all realize that you can't stop the rain, tornado, hurricane, earthquake, tiny little things yet unknown...

But I am very tired of the excuse that if we don't have a law and enforcement against it, everyone will become corrupted. NEVER HAS BEEN TRUE.

Remember prohibition? No alcohol, and some folks winked and made lots of money.

But mostly I am certain tired of being thought as big a fool as that drunk down the road, or as  misunderstood as the fool that thinks clouding his mind and body with stuff he doesn't understand now is going to make him something better than he was when he started to get 'wasted'.

I am going to mow my lawn.

It is Independence Day, not the 4th of July...

In Great Britain they honor the 4th of July, by not declaring it a holiday. Although that seems to be the day the colonies in North America put their foot down and their dukes up. Or just proclaimed in written form, in English, that they were listing the reasons for leaving the links to the Crown behind. Links could have been chains of slavery, but they weren't. But they did know that Great Britain did not love them any longer. Those that held fast to the certain glory of the Crown would be driven out of town and home, and enlarge the Empire elsewhere.

  Even the military might that was defeated by the Continental Army and the many Militia units that sprang up like weeds, did much better in India and Africa and stomping on the best little general from Corsica. I have three heroes from the Revolutionary War, Daniel Morgan, Benedict Arnold, and George Washington. Only one was trying to build a nation and an army that could defeat the one from King George. Daniel Morgan was just trying to be very effective on the battlefield of the entire wild wilderness called America (and he brought rough men that shot far and weren't afraid of anything except lace and white linen and smooth talk), Benedict Arnold was always trying to better himself and would risk everything for that and did in the end get caught beyond the position of honor... They each had a story, a part in making of America and none of them would sign the Declaration of Independence, perhaps only General Washington would read a copy somewhere along the line.

 In them days, as now, the grunt work of revolution was done in swamps, fields, mountains and meadows - in every kind of weather, in face of terrible injury and illness, lacking food and shelter and not many kind words. The people paid a heavy price for that idea of Liberty. An idea that today no one would give me a dollar for, since the dollar could buy me a lotto ticket with a chance at millions but Liberty just gets me a spot under a bridge when it rains, and chased by Law Enforcement because I could be a problem (might have a gun, be evading taxes or community service or after the children) best to move that illegal person along.

Today is for picnics, food and feasting, fireworks and friends --- it is also a day to re-read the Declaration of Independence and see what we have lost as we got soft and dependent on the bounty of benevolent government. A day for fairy tales that don't always end happily ever after. Do re-read the document, the Constitution is longer but it too is shorter and lighter than the paper chains around your life.

Full days don't include much Facebook, do they?

So after breakfast and exercising, off to shoot the M1 with the freshly reloaded 30-06 rounds. I get firing point 17 on the right, place target and begin at 25 yards, move to fifty, then out to a hundred, fifty-one well regulated rounds, none got away to parts unknown. I will want to tighten the groups up, work on my sight picture, and get off the bench that doesn't fit me, but I have good rounds to engage the targets with. Happy times with other shooters and our Liberty from those that just don't understand.

I went home, ate left overs and headed with my wife for the Korean War Veterans honoring at the Tacoma First Baptist Church. Do you know they are getting really old, like 78 to 86 or so? They are leaving, say thank you, folks. The Republic of Korea does often, for they know how much good America did by committing to the defense of the innocent and not ready to join the modern communist world. Unlike Vietnam where we cut and ran, or Cuba where we didn't care to invest more than their original independence as we fought Spain for colonial possessions -- the blood, bullets, and bluster paid off (although by President Carter's term American forces could have really departed, but then I wouldn't have been able to take my family back for three and a half years and the Olympic Games). Dr George Drake and Professor Han, Jung-woo both presented their efforts to make sure the newest generations don't miss the whole story about what happened, there are so many that don't KNOW about the efforts of Truman, Stalin, Mao in creating the modern world. I must be getting old, they kept trying to add me to the number of veterans they were honoring, but I was only two to five years old during that conflict. My wife remembers fleeing with her family, her father was on the list of folks to be executed by those that would make Korea all better under Kim and Communist Party foolishness.

After the presentations and prayers for the future of the audience, and the two nations, my wife and I left to pickup our portion of the potluck and go to the Men's Bible study. The men were fine, and I met the married daughter of one of them, interesting she sat to eat with the older men and not their wives. Her husband is in Afghanistan. We were lively in our discussions and enriched by the various views of life, the Bible and the promise and our responsibility to the current culture.