As Backwoods Home Magazine continues to mail out copies of our new Special Preparedness Issue, high school golf continues to dominate the local scene in our hometown of Gold Beach, Oregon. Friday we had our home tournament at Cedar Bend Golf Course north of town and won by a staggering 66 strokes. Hugo Treinen, our No. 1 varsity seed, shot a one-under par 71 to lead the tournament.

On Saturday we had our annual golf fund raiser at the Riverview Restaurant just north of town on Jerry’s Flat Road. For $10, local residents could eat all the pizza they wanted, which was significant because the Riverview has the best pizza in town. Locals lined up out the door, and many had to wait twenty or more minutes to be seated because the dining room was so crowded. If you ever visit Gold Beach, I highly recommend this pizza. The restaurant itself is in a beautiful setting overlooking the Rogue River. It is typically closed this time of year, but will open for the season in May.

The fund raiser took in $4685, which will go a long way to helping the golf team. We are totally self supporting with donations and volunteers for all golf activities.

Meanwhile, back at the office, the ladies continue to mail out copies of our Special Preparedness Issue. We’ve been very busy. Saturday my sons and I reorganized our book storage areas for the office ladies to make it easier for them to ship anthologies and back issues out. Then we went to the fund raiser.

Afterwards, it snowed in the mountains. I measured nearly four inches at my house. Of course, that didn’t stop my son, Robby, from hitting golf balls off the deck this morning while the snow was still coming down.

My predictions are normally 100% accurate, as you can see from my commentary in the current print issue , not to mention my predictions way back when about Y2K . Here are some more predictions:

First round of NFL playoffs:

The Redskins by 3 over Seattle and the Jaguars by 10 over Pittsburgh in Saturday’s NFL games. (Pittsburgh is too injured.)

On Sunday, I pick the Charges by 7 over the Titans, and the Giants by 6 over Tampa Bay.

Presidential race:

My man, Ron Paul, will get a grudging last minute invite to the NH Republican debate on Fox.

But in the end, it will be Obama all the way to the White House in November, no matter who the Republicans nominate. The Dems will also capture Congress and we’ll have National Health Care during his first term, plus the beginning of the collapse of the Social Security system during his second term.

America will be in recession by next year, and the value of the dollar will sink out of sight. Dems and Repubs will blame each other and pass all sorts of laws that restrict individual freedoms and increase the power of government.

Backwoods Home Magazine:

In 2008 our paid print issue subscription numbers will rise from 27,000 to 35,000, but the money we get for the subscriptions will be worth 20% less than it’s worth today. Our monthly online visitor numbers will rise from 225,000  to 350,000.

My Issue no. 109 commentary  giving my predictions for 2008 has prompted some mail from supporters of Ron Paul, the longshot Republican candidate for President. Some Libertarians are concerned that I have slighted Ron Paul because I vowed not to vote for either Republicans or Democrats in the 2008 elections. Ron Paul, they correctly point out, shares my Libertarian beliefs, even though he is a Republican.

So I thought I’d point readers of this blog to a couple of brief newsletter commentaries –  click here and  click here  — I’ve written supporting Ron Paul for President, and explain why I won’t vote for Democrats or Republicans, even though Paul is a Republican. (If you’d like to get a copy of the free newsletter, click here .)

I intend to vote for Ron Paul any time the opportunity arises. But I won’t have that opportunity when the real elections are held in November because Ron Paul won’t be the Republican Presidential candidate. The Republican Party will see to that. Ron Paul is death to the Republican OR Democratic Party. He represents total reform of a corrupt system that keeps a lock on a two-party system to the exclusion of non-Demopublican parties.

Ron Paul is a Republican in name only. He is, in fact, a former Libertarian who switched to the Republican Party with the hope of effecting change from the “inside.” As a Libertarian candidate he routinely got trounced at the polls, as Libertarians always do at the national level. I applaud Paul’s efforts, and I will support him until the inevitable happens, namely, until he fades once more into the background of the Republican Party as an embarrassment to most Republican politicians.

I hope I am totally wrong about Ron Paul’s chances to become the Republican Presidential nominee. I will gladly eat my words and vote for him if he is nominated. I think my chances of being wrong, however, are so low they could only be figured by Quantum Mechanical calculations. Nevertheless I will support him through these primaries and by voting for him in the various online polls and by contributing money to his candidacy.

In the end, however, I believe that the only way the Demopublican lock on political power in America can be broken is by abstaining from the Republican and Democratic Parties and voting for third party candidates. The Libertarians need to form alliances with other third parties, possibly even bringing a coalition of far right and far left parties together. Sounds absurd on the surface, but these disparate groups have one thing in common: a desire to break the Demopublican lock on power. We can argue about our differences after we have achieved that goal.