The Mind of Tefft

I am still waiting for Fall weather to arrive. Aside from a few seasonal days the weather has mostly been in the 70’s during the day. The leaves have started to turn a little but it will be a while before Fall arrives in her full glory. I bought some pumpkins and gourds to decorate the front porch and am waiting for Halloween. One good think about Halloween is that there are a lot of horror movies on TV.

I have been back to the range to shoot my M4 carbine and my red dot sight is acting weird. I am unable to zero it properly and I think it may be broken. I took it off and using only the iron sights I shot the best groupings I have ever shot. I guess there must have been a reason I was an expert marksman in the Army. Anyway, I had ordered a NcStar 3×9 40 tactical scope with built-in laser and it arrived yesterday. I have mounted it on my M4 and cannot wait to try it out.

In other news, our new pastor seems to be doing very well. We were very fortunate to have found him. I hope he will be the foundation upon which our church will start to grow. I managed to hurt my back by doing absolutely nothing and it has taken the better part of a week for it to get better. Everything seems to take longer to heal when you are older.

I got my flu shot a week or so ago but I do not plan on getting an H1N1 shot. The swine flu seems to hit younger people harder and the nurse who gave my my normal flu shot said people who lived in the 70’s may have a partial immunity. Since there is also a shortage of the vaccine I will let others who are more needy receive theirs first.

That is all.

I got to shoot my new Saiga rifle and I am in love with it. My son Jason and I went to the range in Pungo and shot both the Saiga and my M4 carbine. Jason really enjoyed firing the Saiga. It has quite a kick and a big muzzle flash and ejects the spent cartridges a country mile. Very impressive. And on top of all that it is pretty accurate with just the iron sights. I went by myself later that week and fired the Saiga myself. I still love my M4 but it now has a rival.

The one big gripe I have with all the ranges around here is that they won’t let you rapid fire. You are supposed to only fire a round every 4 seconds. That is not much fun. They will also not let you draw and fire from your holster, which is important to practice for self-defense purposes. Well I found a range that will let you do both things. The range is is in Wakefield and is run by the 4H. It is a private range and I have submitted the paperwork to become a member. You are your own range safety officer and can do whatever you want as long as it is safe. I am looking forward to being able to shoot there.

Our church had our annual bazaar and semi-annual Brunswick stew event recently. As usual I spent 7 hours preparing 380 quarts of stew for sale. It is a lot of hard work but the event and sale raises a lot of money for our church. Speaking of cooking, I am going to prepare a cheeseburger pie for supper tonight. The recipe is from our church cookbook and it sounds delicious. I will find out tonight. That’s it for now.

I have always been interested in politics and since retirement I have become involved in state politics. Now that Bush is out of office and Obama is in, politics has taken on a new meaning. During the last few years of Bush’s administration he started to act like a liberal Democrat and now we have a far-left Democrat in office. Between the two of them our country has started down the road to fiscal irresponsibility, bigger government, erosion of the Constitution and a disturbing trend towards socialism and a welfare state.
In order to be better informed and make wise choices about who I vote for and what policies and practices I will support, I have started to read more about economics, history, and politics. For a few years now I have watched lectures from the Teaching Company about philosophy, history, economics, science, mathematics and political history. Right now I am watching a lecture series on the history of conservatism.
As for reading, I have been reading quite a few books lately. Some of the titles are:

• The Five Thousand Year Leap by W. Cleon Skousen
• Common Sense by Thomas Paine
• Liberty & Tyranny by Mark Levin
• Arguing with Idiots by Glenn Beck
• Rights of Man by Thomas Paine
• The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

I get into a lot of debates on Twitter, Facebook, and FriendFeed and I need to be better educated and informed in order to present a persuasive argument in support of my beliefs. I am truly concerned about the future of our country and I intend to do everything I can to prevent our country from heading in the wrong direction.

I am off the soap box for now. There are a lot of other things going on but I will save them for another day.