Starvin Larry

That was the question Woody had to ask himself in January, 2010, when a massive earthquake trashed the hotel where he and his USCG Mobile Training Team were staying in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

He quickly discovered that when you haven’t planned and rehearsed, you’re down to improvising, at best; and pulling it out of your fourth point of contact, at worst.

Read the rest @ Weapons Man here

New quote of the year-hell of the century.

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…If you want to “reform” this government from within, get extra ammo, extra fuel for the wood-chipper, and pack a lunch…
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From Jacob,who attended Saturday’s class…

( I just copied and pasted his e-mail,as I’m not going to give out Student’s contact info)

Class I – The Basics, review

We ended up having six people attend the class, as two had an emergency and had to cancel last minute.  I drove 3 hours to attend – others came from much further away.  One couple gave up a day of their vacation to attend the class. With such a small class, we had the opportunity to see more than just what was on the class schedule.  We had a wide range of cooking experience amongst the class – some had little experience cooking, while others were accomplished home cooks or had catering jobs in the past.  The purpose of the first class was to cover the basics – proper food safety and how to make soups/stews and simple recipes for large groups, using typical kitchen equipment.  Next class is more about food prep in an austere environment.

I have a background in the food industry, so I expected most of this class to be a dry review for me before class 2 and 3.  Larry provided us with study materials over email in the days leading up to the class, so we didn’t have to spend much time talking through the hand-washing/cleaning and sanitizing/cross-contamination topics of food safety and were able to spend more time cooking.  We ate A LOT!  Larry and his team already had the lunch meal started when we arrived, and he walked us through the prep work that had already been done and the finishing process for the meal.  The class was on the hook for making dinner.  Several points kept coming up throughout the class:  you need good food and enough of it during a crisis (2 thousand calories doesn’t cut it – try 4 to 5 thousand for stressful situations), fat is good – it makes you feel full longer and is high-calorie, luke-warm food is NOT safe (even less so after several hours), don’t waste food and time making fancy/extravagant dishes – reuse the scraps/peelings/bones to flavor soups, plan meals ahead so leftover parts from today will be part of tomorrow’s meal, and all the cookbooks and videos in the world won’t do any good if you don’t get in the kitchen/in the woods and PRACTICE!  If you don’t have simple dishes that all work together and make large portions, you’re wasting time and energy that you won’t have when things go bad.

I felt the class was worth the cost and the drive, and plan to attend the next two classes.  I heard likewise from others in the class.  While we all shared meals together and talked about different things, one phrase kept coming to mind:  “Meatspace, baby!”.

Thanks to Larry for a great class and to all that attended with me.  It was great to meet other like-minded folks who are making it a priority to get out and learn skills. See you at the next class!

          Worth reading the whole thing-it’ll help you understand the marxists/leftists and their “plan”.

The Environmental Protection Agency has overstepped its legal authority by imposing a regulatory agenda on the states, environmental officials at the state level testified Wednesday to a Senate committee.

Randy Huffman, cabinet secretary at the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, testified that the EPA’s flood of environmental regulations since President Barack Obama took office in 2009 chipped away at the Founding Fathers’ intent of “cooperative federalism” between the national and state governments.

Instead of consulting state regulators when establishing new policies, Huffman said, EPA bureaucrats increasingly are imposing regulations through what is called federal guidance.

“There’s two problems with this: EPA guidance further eliminates state discretion, and it allows them to avoid the accountability and transparency of rulemaking,” Huffman testified before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

When Congress passed the Clean Air Act more than 40 years ago, Huffman said, lawmakers put states in charge of establishing procedures to meet federal standards. In fact, over 95 percent of the environmental regulatory duties in the U.S. are carried out by the states, he said, citing the Environmental Council of the States.

The West Virginia official said Congress placed the primary responsibility with the states because lawmakers knew that state authorities would be more knowledgeable of local environments than D.C. bureaucrats. Rather than following congressional intent, he said, EPA regulators seized authority from the states.

“In the past seven years, states have been forced to digest more of these federal takeovers … than were ever served in the prior three federal administrations combined 10 times over,” Becky Keogh, director at the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, testified.

Keogh said the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, regulations on the coal industry designed to cut carbon emissions, is illustrative of the diminishment of state sovereignty.

“The reality is that states are more pawn than partner,” she said.

Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., who chairs the Committee on Environment and Public Works, noted that the amicus brief he and 33 other senators along with 171 House members filed against the plan last month at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In the court papers, the lawmakers argued that the plan violates the Clean Air Act by coercing states to implement the EPA’s policies.

In early February, the Supreme Court halted the EPA’s implementation of the Clean Power Plan until legal challenges from more than two dozen states, four state agencies, and dozens of industry groups made their way through federal appeals court.

Read more here