My mind is working overtime to look into the possible future of this financial mess our Government has gotten us into. If it’s as serious as Bush, Pelosi, and their CNN media allies claim, I think they may do anything to “help” the country. (Substitute your own word for my word “help.”)

If Bush declared some sort of State of Emergency, in effect declaring martial law, then injected all sorts of our money into the stock market to bail out his financially strapped friends, and the public revolted against his actions starting with riots in some of our major cities, and Bush sent in Americans troops to quell the riots, would American troops fire on American citizens?

American troops are certainly trained for urban warfare. Urban warfare military schools of various types are the last place American troops go before being deployed to Iraq. Why does this all seem so sinister to me now that we have a President who will probably do anything to save his friends’ money?

Am I paranoid? Yes, but that’s not a bad thing in these days when our Government has grown totally out of control. The current financial crisis is a manifestation of what can happen when we, the American people, allow our Government to assume greater and greater control over our lives. We are standing up to our Government now. Will we continue if Bush assumes emergency powers his advisors (friends who are now being hurt in the financial crisis) convince him he has the power to assume? We may find out soon.

By the way, here’s another article shedding some light on this financial crisis: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1845209,00.html?cnn=yes

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Well, the American people have defeated the politicians — at least for now — on this bailout heist. I hope we keep fighting and stop any more attempts at bailouts. I feel proud of my country today. We’re not so stupid afterall. But Pelosi and Bush and their comrades will try again. The fight is not over.

But don’t forget that the economy must go through a correction stage. We’re in a recession and it will get much worse before it gets better. Stock up on food and other items that could go up in price in an inflationary recession, which is what we’ll likely get. The dollar is weaker than hell, and it will get a lot weaker. Read all our articles on the website about stocking up. This isn’t Y2K this time; this is for real!

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This bailout plan is bull crap. It’s the robbery of us all by Big Government and its buddies.

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If you’ve been reading Backwoods Home Magazine for more than a few issues, and if you have been following the advice offered in the many self-reliant articles we’ve had, you are probably fairly well prepared for this looming economic collapse in America.

The collapse will likely force millions of less prepared folks to focus on what is really important in life, namely, our personal space in the world over which we have maximum control. Self-reliant people like us have always made sure that their families were prepared for hard times when it comes to sufficient food, warmth, and shelter. This is what we plan for as a matter of lifestyle.

For us, there is far less to worry about. We self-reliant types have already taken the steps to get out of debt, pay off our mortgage, lay in a two year’s supply of food and other supplies, and have plenty of firewood and propane on hand. We also have a garden, probably some chickens, and maybe a few other animals for food. Most of us have also invested in an emergency generator.

We also live in the country just in case the cities erupt in violence due to food shortages. We know our neighbors and know they can count on us in a crisis and we can count on them. Many folks in the cities will be taken by surprise by the severity of the downturn. As they lose their jobs and as supermarket prices go up, they may very well panic and do things they ordinarily would not do. That’s one reason why we self-reliant types also own firearms — to protect our families.

Many of you reading this already own all Backwoods Home Magazine’s anthologies, our EPSG book, and have been a subscriber for years so you are very well prepared. It wouldn’t hurt to take out all those self-reliant books and issues now and review some of the material, just in case you’ve forgotten to do something. There is still time, at least, to stock up on more food that has an extended shelf life. Better to buy it now than wait until the prices go up too high. For those of you who don’t subscribe or have not read the anthologies or EPSG book, I invite you to read the many free preparedness articles at the website. Click here for the article index.

BHM’s readers have been making preparations “just in case,” and now the “just in case” scenario is upon us — in the form of an economic collapse, rather than a weather-related catastrophe or a terrorist attack for which we had also prepared. We are far better off in this looming crisis than most Americans.

So, good for us! We will be rewarded for our diligence with a safety net we have created for ourselves. But let’s not forget our neighbors. I have also prepared my stocks of food and supplies to help out neighbors and relatives should they need it. Better to have enough supplies to share than turn away a hungry neighbor. Safer too!

So good luck to us all as we face this looming hammer that is poised over our heads. America will make its economic comeback. Our Ace in the Hole is our work ethic on the individual level. We’ll claw our way back to prosperity one individual at a time. I just hope we won’t have lost too much of our freedom in the process.

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Our Issue No. 111 is getting to look more prescient each passing day. Average Americans are in for a rough economic ride, with or without the $700 billion bailout Congress is considering. The bailout, I think, will merely postpone the inevitable. I think it should be stopped. Let the pain begin, and let some of these speculators and swindlers lose some of their money too. It will be hard on the rest of us, but the bailout will merely reward the speculators and swindlers, then save the crisis for us to face at a future date.

Here’s a column by Ron Paul that says it better than I can.

Backwoods Home Magazine is not a financial advice magazine, but it didn’t take a genius to see this economic collapse coming as we did with our Issue No. 111. Our job is to help people prepare themselves to get through tough times like we’re about to experience. I hope you’ve all been reading our advice, and I hope you all have acted on the suggestions in our Issue No. 111 and our Emergency Preparedness and Survival Guide.

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Here’s part 3 of our Issue No. 114 cover series:

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Here’s part 2 of our 3-part series about making the cover of Issue No. 114:

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Lenie baked seven loaves of whole wheat bread to help us make the cover for Issue No. 114. Following is the first of a three-part video series detailing how we arrived at the cover. Jay Stoler shot and edited the video.

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Here’s another video of our continuing deadline for the next issue. Forgive the poor quality, as it was shot with my old (three years old) Canon. YouTube supports a higher resolution, and we will retire the old Canon and use a new Casio (mine) and a Flip Video (Jay Stoler’s) in the future.

We continue to run tests of video on the blog to iron out a few technical problems. Google is so quick with its indexing that, before we could delete the test blog posts, it sent blog subscribers an alert notice that we uploaded a post. Sorry about that.

Here’s the latest video:

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We’re doing a lot of experimenting with this blog, so be patient as we tinker with the videos we’re trying to upload to it. We’ve experienced a few problems but we’ll work out the bugs soon. As we struggle through the final days of deadline for the next issue, Jay Stoler has been shooting video of the staff working. Here’s a brief video he made depicting the goings-on at the office. We’ll upload others in the coming days and weeks.

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