By Lee Williams SAF Investigative Journalism Project The Sarasota Herald-Tribune, the last newspaper where I worked, regularly provided outstanding journalism until Gannett bought it in 2019. Before the purchase, we had scores of reporters and dozens of editors. Our print edition could reach nearly 200,000 people on a Sunday. My editors were smart and community […]
The post Gannett’s USA TODAY Blasts Guns, Second Amendment Rights, Sanity appeared first on Liberty Park Press.
No, not a MAGA talking point. 6/4/26 New York Times:
But with every passing day, the world is learning to live without the Gulf’s seaborne exports.
1Just as the Covid-19 pandemic and President Trump’s tariffs forced a significant rewiring of global supply chains, the Strait’s closure has prompted a similar adjustment. You might be part of it. When gas prices rise rapidly, people start to limit their driving. Walmart just reported that customers are now buying less than 10 gallons of gas at a time on average at its filling stations.
The United States, Brazil, Canada, Kazakhstan and Venezuela are already increasing their oil production. Large releases of crude oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve are also helping to cover shortfalls. Like a stream that finds its way around a fallen log, markets locate new supplies when the old ones are suddenly cut off.
At some point, the Iranian crazies will get poor enough for their religious objections to evaporate. By then, Iran will be a less important source of oil. And on the bright side, reduced consumption of oil will make the world a better place for Greenies.
"The pilot of the F-15E Strike Eagle shot down April 3 over Iran was also the pilot of one of the three F-15Es shot down by a Kuwaiti F/A-18 in a friendly fire incident less than five weeks previously, making him “almost certainly” the first Air Force fixed-wing pilot to be shot down twice in the same conflict since the Vietnam war, according to current and former Air Force officials."This is how you get given a new callsign by your peers.
WASHINGTON — The Southern Poverty Law Center paid reluctant white nationalists and Ku Klux Klan members thousands of dollars in donor money to remain in the notorious hate groups — even making them whole for money spent on cross-burnings, the Justice Department alleged in a shocking superseding indictment filed Tuesday.
Of course progressive racism, against whites and Jews (who are after all white) and Asians remains in high demand as well.
The primary election for governor has British-born Trump-endoraed Republican Steve Hilton in the lead. 6/3/26 BBC:
The California governor's race remains up in the air a day after the primary vote, with British-American former TV host Steve Hilton and onetime Biden cabinet secretary Xavier Becerra at the top of a crowded field.
The contest could take several days to decide due to the volume of postal ballots cast on Tuesday to pick the top two candidates for November's general election.
Becerra, a Democrat, has vowed to oppose President Donald Trump. Hilton is a Republican endorsed by Trump.
6/3/26 CNN headline of course misleads:
Spencer Pratt has spent months waging a guerilla campaign against incumbent Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, riding the buzz generated by AI-generated videos, viral moments and some big-name supporters as he seeks to capitalize on dissatisfaction with the way the city is being run.
He may now have five more months to make his case.
Bass secured a spot on the November ballot and Pratt was running in second place as of early Wednesday morning, ahead of progressive city councilwoman Nithya Raman and 11 lesser-known candidates as more ballots were being counted. No candidate appears likely to exceed the 50% threshold to win outright, which means the top two will meet head-to-head in the November election.
Not just ahead but likely beyond margin of fraud ahead of DSA #3.
As they say - life "get lifey" sometimes and the plans to finish the book are on hold for now. Not to go in great detail (if you are friends with me on FB you know the story that started with a month in the hospital during COVID for Septic shock), but I'm dealing with a life threatening issue (NOT cognitive) that flared badly during Acute Type A flu in Feb. 4 months, 3 hospital stays, a bone marrow biopsy (just say "no"), one surgery and more tests than should be allowed by law, the news isn't great, but there's hope. But editing is not sometime I wish to spend prescious hours on.
My health and medical status is personal but I wanted to let ou know that blogging for the next months will be sporadic, at best. My friends know the story and I have a lot of people I know both in and away from the blogging community as well as my church family around me, praying, and offering their strength.
Until later, a little story,
My Stepmom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in her seventies. Dad steadfastly refused to put her in a home, caring for her at home, even in his declining years with a part time nurse’s aide I arrange for them and my helping as I could.
Initially, she
had her little moments of forgetfulness, like any person her age, but she was
such a bundle of energy, still active in church and volunteering, taking dance
classes, working in the garden. Then one morning, out of the blue, she came
into the kitchen and sat down, looked at me and I realized she did not have a clue as to who
I was.
What struck me was not that but the look on her
face as she realized this, realized she should know. I obviously wasn’t a bugler
or a neighbor over for coffee, I was a girl with red hair like everyone else in
the family, wearing a fuzzy robe that she had washed and put in my closet the
night before. I will never forget the look of her at that moment. It was the
most starkly exposed face I’d ever seen, a face in which unknown terrors
haunted the edges; the face of a fledgling dove about to tumble from the nest.
It came into our lives quickly, one moment she
was laughing, engaging in board games and puns with us, her face bright, and
her wit, razor sharp. Then came those moments where everything just
went sort of dim. The doctor only confirmed what Dad had suspected and kept
from me for some months until he knew for sure. Alzheimer’s.
It’s a terrible disease for all involved. We read what we could about it, we planned as a family, and we prayed. There wasn’t more we could do.
As the next two years passed, there were a few moments she was quite lucid and happy. Those moments were the hardest for all of us. In those brief minutes, she was fully aware that her mind was going, what was happening to her and how helpless she was to do anything about it.
The disease’s progression was as predictable as its course was certain. Mood swings and aggression, words that made no sense, dropping to the floor like marbles, tears as she tried to mentally gather them up, anger at the very air around her. She always was gentle with my dad, though. Only with him would she remain calm, the reasoning that was blind and deaf somehow responding to something in him that her mind could still see.
Dad cared for her patiently, no matter how bad it got. Friends couldn’t visit, for they were strangers to her, and she’d go into a furious rage if anyone but us tried to enter the home. Dad was her calm and her constant. I was able to help with the housework and the cooking, but he refused to let anyone else care for “his girl” or to send her to skilled nursing care. When she passed, it was quite sudden, after she contracted pneumonia. From her sudden coughing to her collapse, it was just days.
Sometimes when you get to the far edge, the edge just breaks away.
We laid her to rest on a tree-covered hilltop in a little cemetery. My brother and my dad are on either side of her along with my Mom who died when I was quite young. I visit; I bring flowers. Sometimes a friend would go with me, and we would hug and shed some tears, neither of us immune to having our hearts broken. Then we smile through the tears, sharing our stories as we make the long trip home to photos and a small stuffed bear that Mom had sewn.
One of those photos is one of her and Dad on their first date, and you could see something in their smiles that would be lost on so many people. Not many people could have cared for her by themselves as my dad did, for so long, but I understand. Love is a story that tells itself.
Would she have lived her life differently had she known her fate ahead of time? Perhaps not. Perhaps, in essence, she did, her mother dying of the same disease, as she and my Dad courted.
She lived life to the hilt, a wheel in motion, racing downhill, a light against the darkness, the whir of a needle into the soft fabric.
I remember one of the last crashes I was assigned to, waking abrupty in a strange city, the glaring ringtone of the bat phone waking me with a message just after I'd fallen asleep. For a moment, I did not know where I was at. The small room was cold, with no sound of a dog checking on me as I came awake. I was in a hotel room, traveling in the previous day when duty called. My heart was pounding as that particular ring will do that to me, the surge of adrenalin. There would be no going back to sleep.
But I was aware, of every tick of the clock, of the feel of my skin, missing the soft panting of doggie breath waiting to see if I was going to get up and leave or go back to sleep. I was so blissfully aware, of these moments, these sounds. It was a new day, and even if tired and cranky, I'd leap right in, like a deer into the brush, feeling no thorns.
So I would go, and so I watched, finding sense in the senseless, finding my purpose even as sparrows fall to earth. People watching from a distance would think me too quiet, too still, shouldn't this activity be a frenzy of lights and motion, like on TV? I was there for closure for someone, retribution or reconcilliation often bearing the same weight. I didn't cry, but the tears were there, feeding those promises I made to the dead, not for the world and the news crew to see.
But there is a great activity in being the quiet observer, standing in a stillness that smells of silence, breathing in so many scents in damp cold air. Sweat, blood, and a flower that only blooms in the dark, the wind so scant it's like breath on a mirror. Each smell blended yet distinct, always overlayed with the copper tang of life spilled. The air hums along to the night's quiet as all I see, smell, and feel, forms into a substance I can almost feel on my flesh, capturing it, recording it there in the stillness. The truth is often still, inarticulate, not knowing it is the truth.
On the shelf is a picture of my last black Lab rescue. I do not know why Abby was a stray. She responded with great plaintive urgency to the sound of small children laughing, looking around for them as to say “my kids, my kids,” only to get this look of pure sadness when he saw they are strangers. The first time I witnessed it, I cried.
I was so happy to get her, and two special needs rescue dogs since that day, a saving grace in a house that had a gaping hole in it after the sudden loss of Barkley. What we hold close to us and what we let go is as telling as the words we say. It took me years to understand it, but the words of Henry David Thoreau make perfect sense to me now.
“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”
I realized that there were certain things, and in the past even certain people, that simply violated my sense of thrift, exacting things out of me well beyond their worth. That concept was lost to me when I was a teen, but as I got older with truth stripped of its cloak of immortality, it was clear.
As I take out some things to be picked up by a charitable group, I look around me. Shadows move like ghosts over the sun, deepening the grass to the color of jewels. The snow is long gone, the dark earth trembling to release spring’s flowers. At the side of the house is an old trellis that needs repair work before new life grabs onto it yet again. I gather it close to my chest to take it inside to be mended, rather than tossed away. This is my home; I think as I bend my face down to it, breathing in the scent of old wood, holding the weight securely as I move inside. I could bury my face in it, this small thing to be salvaged from this place that I had always been seeking.
As I type these final words this morning, all I can think is that hope and love, love and desire, can be what propels us silently onward. Hope and love, love and desire, can also be merely sound that people who have never hoped or loved or desired have for what they never possessed and will not until they forget the words. - Brigid
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Tennessee Capitol
Governor Bill Lee has signed Tennessee Bill SB1847 into law on May 22, 2026. The bill reforms the law on restrictions of the use of deadly force, allowing some uses of deadly force to protect property in certain circumstances.
Tennessee Bill SB1847 started out as a significant expansion of the legal use of deadly force in Tennessee. The bill would have made the use of deadly force in defense of property legal for a broad swath of issues, including trespass. In the Legislative process the bill was amended to specify the use of deadly force would be legally acceptable in fewer situations. From a previous AmmoLand article:
The new language allows residents to use deadly force to prevent “the other’s imminent commission of arson, burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, or aggravated cruelty to animals; “if the resident reasonably believes the property cannot otherwise be protected and the use of lesser force would expose the resident or a third party to “a risk of death, serious bodily injury, or grave sexual abuse.”
The bill passed both houses on April 23, 2026. The bill took a month to be signed by Governor Bill Lee. Legislatures have a sequence of events which are required before a governor signs a bill into law, vetoes the bill, or in Tennessee as in some other states, allows the bill to become law without the governor's signature. Those sequences allow the leadership of a legislature to speed up or delay the sending of the bill to the governor. The governor can choose when to sign a bill after it is received, within limits.
Tennessee's process is fairly straightforward. The bill is made ready for the signatures of the Senate Speaker and the House Speaker, to certify the bill is what the legislature passed. This can happen very quickly, if the leadership insists on it. For SB1847 it took a week until April 30. The Senate Speaker signed on the same day, April 30. The House speaker did not sign for a week, on May 7th. Sending the bill to the Governor for signature is said to be automatic. May 7th was a Thursday. SB1847 was sent to Governor Bill Lee on the 11th, the next Monday. The Governor has ten days, not counting Sundays, in Tennessee to sign, veto, or allow the bill to become law without the governor's signature. Governor Lee waited the full 10 days, not counting the intervening Sunday, and signed the bill on the May 22.
The bill is now signed and will become effective as of July 1, 2026.
Analysis: This correspondent expected SB1847 to be signed a week or two sooner than it was. The votes for passage were supermajorities. In the House, 62-24; in the Senate 23-5. In Tennessee, only simple majorities in both houses are necessary to override a veto. The amended bill is not a radical change. It gives people who are protecting themselves, others, and their property a little more legal protection than they had before. SB1847 moves Tennessee law a little closer to Texas law about the use of deadly force in protecting property.
The reasons for the delay in signing the bill have become insignificant. The bill has been signed. It will take effect on July 1, 2026.
©2026 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.
Gun Watch
The caller said her husband, 49-year-old Aubrey Nears, attacked their 16-year-old son and then assaulted her.
The son grabbed a gun kept in the apartment and shot Nears.
Police said officers arrived and found Nears dead with a gunshot wound to the head.
Local politics should be local. A mayor's race is interesting to the locals, but past a certain mileage, it doesn't really matter.
I, for one, am damned tired hearing of the Los Angeles mayors race. If those people don't have enough sense to elect a compete mayor, that is on them. It doesn't affect me one whit.
Fox News needs to realize that they are a national news organization and quit covering local news outside of that local news market.

Here’s a look at just some of the fun that was had at CANCON Carolinas 2026. If you missed it, we hope to see you there next year!
spell check: John Moses Browning gave us the 50 BMG, Colt 1911, and many others. His greatest shotgun? Debateable between the Auto-5 and this, the Winchester Model 97!Women for Gun Rights has announced its 2026 National Summit, taking place Sept. 12–14 in Washington, D.C., and registration is now open, according to The Outdoor Wire. For more information, sponsorship opportunities, or registration details, visit: https://womenforgunrights.org The Summit will bring together advocates, educators, grassroots leaders, and supporters from across the nation for a weekend […]
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Investigators said an adult male and an adult female had met at the park when they were approached by a male they did not know.
A disagreement ensued, during which the unknown individual allegedly brandished a firearm, DBPD said.
That's when police said the male victim obtained his own firearm and demanded the individual leave the area.
The unknown male began walking away but then turned and fired multiple rounds, striking the male victim. The male victim returned fire, striking the individual, DBPD said.
A Park City resident says a tense Saturday outside the Canyon Creek apartments ended with him holding a man at gunpoint, after the man ran from deputies and threatened neighbors with a pair of scissors. The resident, John Santy, identified himself as a former EMT from a family of police officers and firefighters and said he stepped in because he believed people were in danger.
By Lee Williams SAF Investigative Journalism Project I haven’t been to a Publix grocery store since I learned that the massive southeastern grocery store chain doesn’t want its customers to carry firearms openly on its property or in its stores. It doesn’t matter that I never carry openly. We have that specific right in Florida. […]
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SurvivaBlog Now Comes Fresh Every Tuesday Today we are commencing our weekly posting schedule, with posts on Tuesdays. After more than 20 years of daily posts I was feeling exhausted. But with this new editorial pace, I’m feeling re-energized and confident that I have another 20 years ahead of me. To recap the changes: Starting today SurvivalBlog will be posted on Tuesdays, and perhaps the occasional Thursday, if the Tuesday posts get too crowded. So you can expect to see SurvivalBlog “Fresh Every Tuesday.” (An homage the late, great Ol’ Remus.) We discontinued the SurvivalBlog Writing Contest. Round 124 was the …
The post Preparedness Notes — June 2, 2026 appeared first on SurvivalBlog.com.
Is the 7x57mm Mauser M1893/95 rifle obsolete? The original 7mm Mauser cartridge is in no way an obsolete cartridge, yet it can be improved when modern powders are used. As of this date, few handloaders are exploring what can be done with the old warhorse when modern propellants are used to make it competitive with modern cartridges such as 7mm-08, 7.62 NATO, and even .308 Winchester. There is no discussion on this topic that I’ve yet found on the Internet. Perhaps we are breaking new ground, as we speak. The Rifle My goal is to develop an optimum load for …
The post Modern Handloads for Antique 7mm Mauser Rifles – Part 1, by Tunnel Rabbit appeared first on SurvivalBlog.com.
In Economics & Investing Media of the Week we feature photos, charts, graphs, maps, video links, and news items of interest to preppers. Today, a map showing the States of the Union with more cows than people. Update: Blog reader Tim in Connecticut wrote to mention that Oklahoma was mistakenly left off the list. But it actually qualifies, with a human population of 3,959,353 versus 4,600,000 cattle. The thumbnail below is click-expandable. (Graphic courtesy of Reddit.) Economics & Investing Links of Interest The leftist/globalist CBS News reports: Why have tomato prices surged nearly 40% in a year? ‘We’re not billionaires’: …
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SurvivalBlog presents another edition of The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods. This column is a collection of news bits and pieces that are relevant to the modern survivalist and prepper from JWR. Our goal is to educate our readers, to help them to recognize emerging threats, and to be better prepared for both disasters and negative societal trends. You can’t mitigate a risk if you haven’t first identified a risk. In today’s column: a war on mosquitos, using mosquitos. Google to Release 32 Million Diseased Mosquitoes in FL and CA Reader H.L. sent this, from Zero Hedge: Google to Dump 32 …
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Our weekly Snippets column is a collection of short items: responses to posted articles, practical self-sufficiency items, how-tos, lessons learned, tips and tricks, and news items — both from readers and from SurvivalBlog’s editors. Note that we may select some long e-mails for posting as separate letters. — New Federal Plan Aims to Replace Synthetic Fabrics With American Cotton. (A hat tip to D.S.V. for the link.) The article begins: “The United States Department of Agriculture has launched the Great American Cotton Plan to support cotton farmers and protect Americans from “forever chemicals” in our daily lives. Over the past …
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This weekly column features media from around the American Redoubt region. (Idaho, Montana, eastern Oregon, eastern Washington, and Wyoming.) Much of the region is also more commonly known as The Inland Northwest. The public domain photo above from Wyoming is courtesy of the USFWS.) Redoubt News Links Wyoming Ranchers Selling Off Cattle As Drought Tightens Grip Across State. Dry winter could be blessing, or curse, for Wyoming’s big game. ‘We heard a scream’: Another hiker reportedly attacked by bear in Glacier National Park. Warning period is over: Bend red light cameras will now send out tickets. Big Montana Bear — …
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To be prepared for a crisis, every Prepper must establish goals and make both long-term and short-term plans. In this column, the SurvivalBlog editors review their week’s prep activities and planned prep activities for the coming week. These range from healthcare and gear purchases to gardening, ranch improvements, bug-out bag fine-tuning, and food storage. This is something akin to our Retreat Owner Profiles, but written incrementally and in detail, throughout the year. We always welcome you to share your own successes and wisdom in your e-mailed letters. We post many of those — or excerpts thereof — in the Odds …
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The latest meme created by JWR, based on an idea suggested by Bruce Rawles (JWR’s elder brother): Meme Text: It Is Silly To Call This Tool A Post-Hole Digger If You Already Have a Hole, Then You Don’t Need A Digger. So This Is Really A Pre-Hole Digger Notes From JWR: Do you have a meme idea? Just e-mail me the concept, and I’ll try to assemble it. And if it is posted then I’ll give you credit. Thanks! Permission to repost memes that I’ve created is granted, provided that credit to SurvivalBlog.com is included.
The post JWR’s Meme Of The Week: appeared first on SurvivalBlog.com.
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” – Henry David Thoreau
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Running errands today I went to a sign shop and had a sign printed. The guy wasn't busy and had a humongous priner, and in a few minutes, he had taken care of me.
Now, I need to decide where in the shop I am going to hang it. If you know, you know.