Voting Booth

There were some wins and some losses after yesterday's voting. The Dems did not capture Senate and House of Representatives, just the Senate. Dems now have a majority in the Senate, but did not win the full majority as the Republicans did after 4 years of Obama.  Sorry, Dems. Sorry, Obama.

Trump remains in the White House and the Dems are still pissed about it. They hoped that Trump's ill advised tweeting and his lies would do him in. They are still hoping for impeachment.

Still?  Not happening.

I hoped for impeachment when Obama was in office and I hoped for it the entirety of his tenure as POTUS. I'm not ashamed. I am all for the truth -- and Obama had no truth in him. Trump is a businessman and he doesn't have a lot of truth in him, but we accept that. We call him on it when he's way off base, but that is the way with politicians. Like it or not, Trump is a businessman (a used car kind of businessman), but now he is a politician. In short, he lies. He lies a lot, but not to the extent that Obama lied from the get-go.

Obama lied about his experience as a black man in the past. He is not completely or wholly black. He is a bi-racial man. That is a fact. His reported father was a student from Kenya, an alcoholic, and a serial womanizer as evidenced by the number of progeny he seeded in the women he married who gave birth to his progeny.

He lied about where he was born, but it wasn't in Hawaii as he claims, nor do I think he was born in Kenya. He may claim Kenya because his alleged father was from Kenya and there is a lot of controversy and hearsay evidence that goes that way, but I don't believe it. Nor do I think it matters where he was born, but it certainly was not Hawaii as he claimed. He had a woman forge his Hawaiian birth certificate and he posted it in plain sight in public. It has been proven to be forged and it has been shown to be forged. One Hawaiian state official died because of it because she knew for a fact that there was no Hawaiian birth certificate (long or short form) registered in Hawaii.

Because he wasn't born there. It may be because he is a year older than he claims because he was born in Washington state and not the progeny of his mother and Barack Obama, Sr. That is in line with the lies that Obama and his family had told from day 1. It may be true that Stanley Ann Dunham, his biological mother, had in fact been impregnated by Malcolm X and she gave birth in Washington state a year earlier, but we will never know because Barack Obama, Jr. will not tell the truth about his birth, even if it proves he is a natural born American citizen because telling the truth is not Obama's hallmark. He lies. He lies a lot, but telling the truth now would open up a whole can of worms that he would have to chase to the end of his days.

Like where he came from. Like how deep do his ties go into Russia. Like how did he enter the United States without leaving a single trace of a footprint or evidence, evidence that even he could not account for and why he left no trace of his existence until now that he ever existed.

I'm not claiming that he did not make the Law Review or that he didn't attend college, but that he went to college/university as a foreign student and that his ties to Russia go very deep. He is a mole for Russia and trained in Russia because of his alleged father, Barack, Sr., following in HIS footsteps. He is also not Christian. He is a Muslim, but he cannot be a Muslim openly or by Muslim law because he is a homosexual. That is not allowed in Islam. If he admitted the truth he would have to be killed by Muslims -- if not by the whole Islamic nation in a fatwa, but I don't think Obama's fatwa would be as easy to live with as Salman Rushdie's was. I think the Muslims would kill Obama faster than you could blink.

Obama would also have to admit that his "daughters" are not his biological progeny because he probably doesn't sleep with Michelle. He is a homosexual. Homosexuals have slept with women for time out of mind (look at the UK history for proof), but not all homosexuals sleep with woman as easily as they do with men. It is OK to be openly gay in today's world. Look at Colorado. The voters elected an openly gay Republican governor in the voting booth. I never thought I would see that at all, and definitely not from the Republican party. Then again, if the voters can elect Trump president and a bi-racial president, anything is possible at last.

Electing an openly gay Republican governor is easier than Obama and Michelle admitting that they were never pregnant and aren't the biological parents of their often photographed daughters. I doubt their daughters even know or have been told that their Mom's obstetrician and her husband are the biological parents. Good luck getting the paternity test on Maury Povich or Steve Wilkos's programs.

Like I said earlier, Trumps lies are not more heinous than Obama's, and I'm not even going to include "You can keep your insurance" to the list.

Trump is a businessman and he was elected in the country-wide disaffection with the Obama presidency. We swung the other way and elected Trump.

It is a scientific fact -- not like the scientific fudged facts of climate change -- that a reaction will follow, especially a seriously huge reaction, an equal and opposite reaction. Democrats gave us Obama and Republicans responded with Trump instead of Hillary Clinton. Talk about a huge opposite reaction. It's like we got Clinton in the White House and the opposite reaction was George W. Bush. WE got a pig in a poke, but we had Bush for two terms, which gave us Obama for two terms. We didn't want Hillary for even one term, so we got Trump. Whether he will be a lame duck will be determined how bad he does and how badly out of step Democrats really are. We will see when we go to the voting booth in 2020.

That is all. Disperse.

Climate change is a phony boondoggle and Al Gore is a greedy liar

So is Barack Obama -- a greedy liar.

When will people crying "effects of climate change" without admitting that they are working from models that were (and are) created with an inherent flaw -- they are wrong? How about using an accurate model that has been in existence using data from as far back as 1920 and that remains accurate to the present date? That climate model accurately shows that there is not a runaway greenhouse gas effect and that man has impacted the world model with noticeable effect, but not the disastrous and calamitous effect proclaimed by US President Barack Obama and touted by the Democratic left. Instead, Obama and his Yes choir have been touting the effects of 31 (or thereabouts) incorrect, flawed, and fudged data that has appeared in US newspapers for the past decade. That is not science. That is the heart of the Al Gore Climate Change boondoggle that has been promoted, touted, and exhorted since his book about climate change (and the movie that accompanied his book and won him the Nobel Peace Prize - another debacle). Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, was shown to be as false as the models the US has been working from and spreading since Al Gore jumped on the band wagon and he and the kowtowing left began lying.

How about some truth for a change -- a real inconvenient truth?

The 31+/- computer models that have the planet in free fall from man-made climate change don't work, have never worked, and will never work until actual scientific data has been used instead of the fudged The only true scientific model is from Russia (now there's the Russia connection) and remains the only accurate computer model of man-made climate change ever documented. How about hearing the truth for a change? How about showing the Russian model and cluing mankind in to the real truth? Really inconvenient for the Al Gore/Barack Obama contingent, isn't it? Now that would be inconvenient if the rest of the populace on this planet had access to real scientific data, like the Russian computer climate models.

I vote for truth in the scientific community and among the media-saturated western world. Let the truth be shown at last and free us from the clutches of the phony Al Gore who used stock footage and nothing even approaching documentary style footage. His drowning and dying polar bears were stock footage added to make people feel sad and sorry.

Guess what? It worked.

A fool is born every minute -- and anyone who paid movie or spread the lies for Gore and Obama are the fools.

How does it feel being a fool? P. T. Barnum could tell you it made him rich and famous. Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize and knocked out a woman who helped save Jewish children from the concentration camps in Hitler's Europe. Al Gore is the second best con man in US history. Barack Obama is the first and best con man in US history.

That is all, Disperse,

Enough

Enough is a difficult concept for humans. What we see is what we want . . . for now.

Much of our desire for more starts with our parents and what they modeled for us. We as children do not take the time or have the experience to understand that they did not get what they had overnight or as children unless they were born into wealth and privilege. Parents have to grow up and obtain what they have by the time they have children . . . at least in families where children arrived once the parents had found jobs, each other, and then had children. That situation is different for each family when many children are born to unmarried mothers and raised by their grandparents, aunts, or the system. Children of poor parents are raised with the reality that their needs are provided by the government through welfare or the generosity of their grandparents who may also be on government subsidies, social security they earned and put into every paycheck or continued on welfare from their childhood until they were old enough to sign up for social security when they reached the appropriate age. If social security followed welfare, there may be only the minimum rate since they either did not work or did not earn enough because they did not work enough.

Whether children grow up in middle class or lower class families, what their caregivers (parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, or foster parents) have and what they teach the children is what the child carries into their adult life. Often the behavior is plenty at the beginning of the month petering out to little or nothing at the end of the month. Every month is feast and famine depending on the time of the month and the spending habits of the guardians.

In middle class families, children are brought up with their guardians' attitudes and behaviors about spending and that varies with their guardians' attitudes and behaviors and how they were brought up and what they achieved in their lifetimes.

In the USA where the prevailing attitude comes from the idea that the USA is all about profit, often at any cost and no matter who it helps or harms as long as there is profit.  Once again, it is feast or famine. Movies do not help generally since movies are all about the rewards and benefits of the end result -- love, relationships, family, children, success.  Success is measured in profit. No matter how one gets to the reward, everything, outside of religious beliefs, and often due to religious beliefs rooted in the system of reward and punishment, the bottom line is much like a version of Santa Claus's naughty and nice list. Naughty and nice sounds a great deal like reward and punishment where the end result is presents under the tree or in the stockings or a lump of coal, possibly even nothing if the child's parents are poor, have no credit cards, and live on the dole (government handouts).

No matter the situation, when you're a child there is never enough. Parents either lavish their children with presents or favor one child over the others, creating sibling rivalry and unhappiness. Enough for one or two is very little or low quality for the child who does not enjoy the parents' favor.

When I was a child, my younger siblings were favored more than I was because I was adopted from a mother who was less successful and less class-wise than my adoptive parents. When I learned I was adopted at the age of 10 and my mother was revealed the difference in what I received versus what my brother and sisters got finally made sense. Until the age of 10, the differences were not as obvious as they became after I was told I was chosen and hadn't been foisted on my parents by the luck of the draw -- or so the newspaper clippings about children who discovered they were adopted (chosen) demonstrated when the news was dropped in my lap. Not only did I not look like my younger siblings, but I was actually their cousin. My mother was my adoptive father's younger sister who gave me up so my adoptive parents, who were better off financially, could give me so much more than my birth mother could afford. My birth mother thought she was making certain I would have a good life full of the things she could not give me. Nothing was farther from the truth.

The fact is that I was the second one of my adoptive father's sisters who was pregnant and in difficult circumstances. The relationship -- or lack of a relationship -- between his wife and his older sister was not good and the sister reneged on her promise to give up her young daughter and newborn son  to her sister-in-law even after the daughter and son had lived with my adoptive parents for a little while. Their mother demanded her children back and that was the end of children for her brother's wife who was unable to bear a living child after a couple of miscarriages during the first 5 years of their marriage.

Lo and behold, another sister turned up on their doorstep, newly divorced and riding the back of her oldest brother's motorcycle, having come all the way from Michigan to Columbus, Ohio pregnant and without sufficient education and resources to provide for the coming child. She, however, was willing to give up her unborn child when it was born in exchange for staying with her brother and sister-in-law who promised to pay for all of her medical bills when the child was born. She progressed from salad girl at a local restaurant to student at a secretarial school and eventually to an unwed divorcee with marketable skills and a future as a secretary. Her future prospects had changed, but she gave her word to her brother and was a woman of her word. After all, the couple had paid for her schooling, gave her room and board during her time in Columbus, and paid all of her medical bills while her pregnancy continued. Her word was her bond and, despite what her older sister said about her experiences and taking back her own children from her sister-in-law, she was going to follow through. What choice did she have?

Even though she met a man who wanted to marry her and was determined to be a good father to her child if she would keep the child and go back on her promise, she was going to keep her promise and give her child up to her brother and sister-in-law so that they could finally have a child of their own. After 5 years of disappointment and miscarriages, things did not look good for her sister-in-law to have a child of her own. Maybe adopting her child and giving that child all they could provide would give her sister-in-law a child she could lavish her love on and make her brother and his wife happy at last. They could be a family at last.

The oldest brother who brought her to Columbus to live was also married and wanted to adopt her child when it was born. He and his wife did not have any children yet and wanted to offer her child family and love, but her brother was unreliable in her eyes. He was less stable than the brother to whom she had promised her child and with whom she lived. The oldest brother, Don, rode motorcycles and did hill climbing races on his motorcycle. He was reckless even though he usually won, but reckless could also mean dead one day. Her other brother, Jim, was in the Army and reliable, the kind of man who would not end up dead falling down a muddy hill off his motorcycle or from a knife or gunshot wound if one of his fights ended badly. She was glad for all that Jim had done and felt good about giving her child to Jim and his snooty wife. They would provide her child with everything a child could want and they had so much love to give. Why else would they have turned to adoption if there was any other choice.

Ginny's doctor said that often adopting a child would help the mother get pregnant with her own child because all the pressure was off while frantically trying to get pregnant. Ginny would gain a mother's love and might end up with a child of her own after her child was born and Ginny satisfied her need to be a mother by mothering the child she carried. Her fiance tried to convince her to keep her child, thank Jim and Ginny for their help, and he would help pay them back for all they had done for her when she arrived pregnant, insufficiently educated, and alone without a job or skills to support them both.

She felt she owed Jim and Ginny and she had promised. She could have more children with her fiance after they were married while Ginny could not have children at all. They had done so much for her, helped her to secure a better future, and had paid for her schooling and her medical bills. She would keep her word and Jim and Ginny would finally have a child to love and care for.

She went through with the plan, denied Don her girl child, married her fiance shortly after she landed a good secretarial job. The die was cast and she would still be a part of her daughter's life. Ginny and Jim promised as much.

Life continued. She eventually got pregnant and gave her new husband a son, saw her new daughter whenever Jim and Ginny were in town, either to see her family or when they were stationed in Columbus, and watched her daughter grow up among Ginny's own children, two girls and a boy (at last).  Children followed her daughter's birth. Ginny got pregnant on her daughter's first birthday and delivered a daughter 9 months later. Five years later, Ginny delivered the son she always wanted and 10 years after her daughter's birth a second daughter was born a few days before her daughter's tenth birthday. That year, 1965, Ginny had to have a hysterectomy and could have no more children, throwing Ginny into menopause and ending the ability to get pregnant again. Ginny still wanted more children and fostered a few more children, mostly boys, but a brother and sister when her youngest daughter and son were teenagers. The brother and sister, two of a family of four siblings who went into the system and were fostered out, were nearly the same age as Ginny's two children. Everything seemed fine. Her daughter graduated high school, got pregnant, and married at 18, following her new husband from post to post as she had followed Jim and Ginny while growing up. Her daughter's husband was Air Force, but evidently the uniform was what caught her fancy and not the branch of military.

This narrative is about enough, but what leads up to what constitutes enough in my case is born of how I was raised.

I was born of a poor mother I didn't know until I was 10. By that time, my mother (who I was raised to believe was my aunt) had become a woman of means. Her husband was a butcher for Kroger's and a sheriff on the weekends while she was the secretary of the manger of an apartment complex. She handled all the administrative work in the rental office and managed the maintenance staff, a far cry from the Bliss Business College graduate who was engaged and recently gave birth to me.

My adoptive parents were successful. Dad was in Admin in the Army and had been an interpreter working in the JAG (judge advocate general's office) traveling all over Europe and had been stationed in Panama at Fort Gulick when I was in 2nd grade. Mom didn't work when we were stationed overseas, but did work when we lived in the USA. She was also the child of a very wealthy man who, through alcohol and infidelity, had lost all of his money. Grandpa went to work for the State of Ohio in mental health, working on the Hilltop in the men's ward on Broad Street. His wife went to work for the State and worked second shift at the women's facility in the secured ward at the same facility in the older building where the doors were always locked and the patients secured.

Mom had been brought up in a small northern Ohio town where Grandpa was the sheriff, the mayor, and the biggest property owner in town. He owned several businesses, one of which was a coal company where his brother, Homer, worked delivering coal for years until the business was sold to pay debts just as the residential use for coal dwindled. Mom had everything she wanted because her parents gave her everything, which was not surprising since her elder brother, Jack, died in 1950 from leukemia and her younger sister, Joan, was a ward of the State and lived in state institutions until the mid-1970s when state institutions dumped their residents into the population to either live in group homes or with their families. Aunt Joan ended up living with Grandpa and Grandma. Mom's other brother, Bob, had already married and made a life for himself as a machinist working for a big government contractor. Mom, however, continued to be spoiled by her parents as the "oldest" child and took full advantage of her parents' generosity, sometimes living with our family when we were stationed in the US and while Mom was pregnant with my brother, Jimmy, but not when we moved back to the US and were stationed in Virginia where Tracy, the boy who was born a girl before Mom's hysterectomy.

Until I was 10, the first of Mom's children, Carol Sue, and I got exactly the same gifts. Mom was convinced that she should make sure we each had the same no matter what our preferences were. Everything was duplicated, one for each of us. The dolls were either blonde like Carol or brunette like me, but otherwise were the same doll in every other detail.

Everything changed when I was told I was adopted. In spite of the sheaf of newspaper clippings about adopted children (then adults) were from the perspective that the adopted felt they had the best kind of life available. Many of them said the same things, they were chosen by their parents not the result of whatever was given by the pregnancy lottery as the luck of the draw. Mom had told me the same thing, "We chose you out of all the children because we wanted you." It wasn't until many years later that I found out they had almost adopted two other children, cousins like me, who had lived with them until my birth mother showed up pregnant and promised to give me up when I was born. When I found out, it finally made sense that those children were the favorites because for a time they had lived with my parents before Aunt Edith took them back. All of my life, Mom had favored them over me just as she favored her own biological children over me.

My sense of self and views about life were drawn from the feast and famine situation where the feast began when I was born and was replaced by famine after discovering I was adopted. I was taught a reward versus punishment system where I was punished for not being hers and only rewarded when her own children were rewarded and I was allowed whatever was left. I was the first punished when her children were bad because I was the oldest and should watch over and take care of her children. I was praised whenever I won awards and accolades at school, but was not paid for my grades as the others were because paying for my grades would bankrupt my parents. I was told I should understand because I was the oldest and always made good grades. I couldn't understand how 10 cents for an A and a nickel for a B would bankrupt my parents since the list of subjects being graded was seldom more than a dollar. Of course, my siblings were rewarded with money because their grades were Cs, Ds, and Fs and Fs were never paid. Punishment and grounding followed Fs and I was ordered to help them with their schoolwork (do their work when essays and writing were part of the assignment). I refused to do their work since I argued, "They will learn nothing and won't be able to pass tests if I do the work for them." I couldn't -- and wouldn't -- take their tests for them anyway. Mom relented at last.

Mom's plan for keeping things equal failed long before I was told I was adopted because she couldn't control what friends would buy for me when it was my birthday. Instead, Mom decreed that Carol Sue would get duplicate gifts and I would keep one of the duplicates for my own since it was my birthday. As we got older and there were fewer birthday parties, Mom denied my birth mom the right to buy anything for me unless she also bought gifts for my siblings so everything would be equal. The only gift I got from my birth mom, Aunt Anne, was Heidi by Johanna Spyri and the electric rollers she bought me on my 16th birthday. Luckily, I only got one set of electric rollers. She bought Carol Sue her own set of electric rollers the following week. Everything was supposed to be equal even though Carol Sue's birthday was until November and mine was in February.

The only time I got a Christmas gift that wasn't the same as Carol Sue's, or cost more than Jimmy and Tracy's gifts, was when I received an easel and paints when I was about 14. I had learned to draw and painted (watercolor and oils) and Mom decided I had some talent. I learned I could draw when I was in the 4th grade and saved the comics from the Sunday paper every week to draw the comics that interested me. I took art in high school and earned a scholarship to the Art Academy when I was in junior high school. I copied paintings at museums and those few hanging in our home and gave away a ship I painted to my junior high school vice-principal when I drew his name to be his Christmas Angel.

I planned to study art in college, but was told that wasn't allowed because artists don't make enough to support a family and I should set my sights on getting married to someone who could afford to support a family because otherwise I would never make it. Good thing I already had a job in data processing when I was informed I wasn't going to college since Mom's first priority was making sure there was enough money so my brother, 6 years behind me in school, could go to college as he would have a family to support.

I had also planned to be writer until Mom searched my room and found my journal, punishing me for everything in the journal she didn't approve of and she didn't approve of much, especially the days I ranted about how she treated me and punished me for my siblings' mistakes which I had not caught and stopped before they were discovered and my parents had to pay for whatever they stole or damaged.

Maybe it was a good thing I got pregnant the first time I had sex and got married soon after being discovered because I had at least managed to find someone to support me even if Mom took my hard earned life savings to pay for the wedding even as she vetoed the white dress I picked out. Since I was not a virgin, I had no right to wear white, but white was all J.C. Penney had and I bought it. She rectified the white dress by sewing purple ribbon on the cuffs and around the neck so everyone in church who thought I was a virgin would know I was already a fallen woman. Mom swore up and down every time the subject came up that she did not sew purple ribbon on the dress until I dug out the dress and handed it to her. The purple ribbons were faded, but quite obviously still purple. "I don't remember doing that," she said. "You must have done it later."

I got Mom's plain gold class ring from when she graduated from high school as my big gift. Carol Sue, Jimmy, and Tracy all got cars and diamond rings for wedding presents. Carol Sue also got a bedroom set to help Carol Sue and her new husband furnish their brand new house. But at least I had Mom's prize possession, her class ring.

When my husband and I asked my parents to help us with the down payment for our first house, Mom said no. Carol Sue, Jimmy, and Tracy were all helped when they went to buy their first homes. Mom even gave Grandma's house to Jimmy and his wife even though Grandma had given it to me. When they sold the house, the money they earned they used as a down payment on their next house. Meanwhile, I never bought a house and we lived from paycheck to paycheck with our three children, except for the time we lived in base housing.

The point of all this is that I never believed I had enough. I always wanted more. I wanted what my parents had. I wanted my own home and we could never afford the down payment on a house. My husband's parents nearly lost their house when his mother failed to make the mortgage payments because she spent the money on herself. His dad had to work extra hard to pay the back payments and get back on track; they couldn't afford to help us when they had to protect what they already had with three young daughters still in school and living at home.

Growing up with a feast/famine attitude, I never had enough. With 2 divorces behind me, I kept the feast/famine attitude long after the kids were grown and gone. I never had enough when I could finally afford it, going into debt to get everything I wanted since all I had was what I could earn. Since my career went into the toilet with what I could earn because no one was paying much for trained and educated workers since much of the work could now be done with minimal human input, it's a good thing I don't need much.

I have finally reached the point where I do not need much, outside of unprocessed food and well water. I make enough to get by, but I have more than enough from my accumulation phase. Instead, my needs are simple, good, clean, organic food which I grow myself when the weather is good, and clean well water without fluoridation or additives. Since I have my own well, I also don't get the insufficiently processed city water full of anti-depressants, mood elevators, and narcotics that are part of the city water that is full of such Big Pharma drugs that have gone undigested through people's digestive systems and have been excreted in urine. The reclamation of gray water is not fine enough to eradicate these drugs from the water and is not part of every city's water system, continuing to treat those who do not drink bottled water that still contains water from such contaminated sources and marked as coming from springs and soft drink bottling companies that are not regulated or tested frequently and accurately enough. After all, the point is profit and not truthful marketing and advertising.

Good thing I have enough. Bad thing that the average consumer is still a slave to the easy credit and highly processed (or inadequately monitored and tested) food and drink where the bottom line is still profit at all costs. Forget about people who own stock in food and drink companies/corporations. It's not like it is in the movies, like Solid Gold Cadillac, where some nice person is involved in shareholder relations and cares about them and what the company does with its money and how much it pays the board. We long ago reached the point where shareholders and board members cared about consumers -- the average consumer -- and what their products do as long as they make a profit in a world where there is never enough. Ask Donald Trump, Obama, and Bill Gates who much of their wealth they put back into circulation and give to the poor, ill, and destitute. There is never enough.

That is all. Disperse.

Fake You All!

It's everywhere you look. You wanted to change your life so you decided to become vegan. No problem. You don't have to give up eggs, meat, or cheese because there are smart people out there willing to give you eggs, meat, and cheese that will not conflict with your becoming vegan. Add some chemicals, take some vegan food, tart it up a bit, and voila! eggs, meat, and cheese -- as much as you want without cheating or giving up being vegan. You've been faked. The world has been faked and lines up to play the vegan game with faked eggs, meat, and cheese.

The same goes for the gluten free crowd. A little almond meal, ground up flax seeds, and a touch of gluten-free flour made from grains that do not contain gluten stirred together and mashed up with chemicals and substitutions that do not contain gluten and you have bread. The bread is mealy and gritty and doesn't taste all that good since you left out all the spices and chemicals or other substitutes and dyes made of foods that also do not contain gluten to maintain your gluten free status, and you will get used to the off flavor or the hint of chemicals that comes through when all the ingredients are baked up together at sufficient heat. After all, you don't want to look like you've gone back on your pledge to go gluten free or pretend that changing your whole lifestyle isn't worth the struggle to appear to being going along. What does it matter that you look like you're still going along with the majority of the pack while giving up gluten for your health and to prolong your life?

It's popular to go along with the rest of the world who have decided it is best to fake it until you make it. Food is just one area where faking it is acceptable. Nothing is worth the struggle to give up whatever you grew up with and nothing is worth giving up the appearance of going with the crowd. You are strong. You are ingenious. You are adaptable. You can fake it until you make it.

There is no part of life that is immune to the philosophy that faking it is acceptable until what you look like you're doing will finally catch up with doing what you were faking all along. After all, the ends justify the means.

Doesn't it?

We lie on our resumes, padding the facts with half truths and outright lies to fake it until we make it. Who's going to know? You're new at the job, fresh out of training or school, and it takes time to get up to speed. You are willing to fake it until you make it, or at least until your manic study habits catch up with the person you're replacing has clued you in on what to watch out for and whom you need to avoid until you're up to speed. You pray every morning, noon, and night that you will be able to cram years of study into reading the stack of books that educate you on what you need to do. The universe owes you a favor -- or at least the person who hired you for the position owe you for that gift or favor you did for them to get hired in the first place. The same goes for promotions and newly created positions that you maneuvered yourself into because you need the money, need the prestige, or simply need to get away from the hole you dug for yourself with your attitudes and/or lip. You faked it until you made it this far, so why not fake it until you make it wherever you go or whatever you do?

It's not a crime (yet until you've been caught) and it's certainly not going to cost a person their life because you haven't faked it as a nurse until you felt confident you could fake it as a doctor. Okay, the diplomas on your new office wall were created in a computer, but you have at least a decade of working under some egotistic doctor and making the doctor look good while you did all the heavy lifting and closed his operations. No one could leave the patient with a fine scar that disappears with time the way you did. After all, you turned your sewing skills from cloth to people and the results have garnered the doctor kudos and awards for the fine stitchery. He never told anyone he couldn't sew a straight seam if it killed him and you saved him from criticism far too many times for him to fess up now. How would it look if his patients knew a nurse had finished his surgery and left a fine, nearly invisible scar? The doctor couldn't justify his high fee and there is no way the doctor is going to give up the awards and professional kudos you earned, so there is no way the doctor is going to refund the fees or give you a rise in salary. The doctor faked it and you made it happen. It's a win-win situation and no one willing gives that up, certainly not you.

There is no part of life where someone isn't faking it until they have made it. No position, office, restaurant, cafe, or arena is free of the fakes, especially when the faking ended with success. When faking didn't end with making it, there are plenty of other paths to take. Some end in death from too many drugs or tangling with the wrong person that ended with tears and death. After all, faking it until you make it is not without cost. To everything there is a cost -- not only with magic but with every single venture undertaken in the name of faking it until you've made it. With life -- and with faking it -- there is risk. It's a gamble and sometimes gambles pay off. Ever hear of junk bonds? Horse races? The first gender reassignment surgeries? Prospecting? Divorce? Life? Money market trades? Bad reviews? Blind dates? Arranged marriages?

When we get down to it, life is about risk. Life is a gamble. There are people who have power and are willing to exercise that power to fake it until they make it . . . no matter who or what it costs. In the end, when all else fails, fake the data, fudge the truth, cite an anonymous source, set someone else up for the frame so you can get away with whatever you want when the fake is discovered or when it fails. Humanity is wired to look for the brighter side of things, to be positive, to make the best of a bad situation -- or a bad fake -- and to keep going. Sure, there will be suicides and deaths, but who will miss a few people, except for the ones who knew them best. Nothing is guaranteed except for death and taxes; everyone knows that.

If nothing else, faking it until you make it can be chalked up to sacrifice in the name of a greater good or some god or famous person, and wars are good vehicles for sacrifice in the name of the greater good. It doesn't matter which side you chose as long as you died for a cause. Even if you didn't believe in the cause and were drafted, none of it matters because your death will be numbered among the other clueless and numberless dead where someone will be ready to fake a reason until the people believe it. When the people who know the truth are gone, history will remember. So what if history is made up by your enemies as long as there are gullible people who remain and will spew the slogans they read or were taught until the truth is no longer relevant.  It doesn't matter if history is written by the winners because the historian with the best story will be read and repeated drowning out the truth and those who wrote and knew about the truth. The weight of evidence is in the loudness and prevalence of the voices. The voices of truth that remain will either give up or they will be criticized, reviled, and buried when their positions are taken away and their truth called into question by the loudest voices and the strongest bullying or at least by whoever has enough money and power to destroy the evidence of the truth until only the false history remains and has passed into the realm of fairy tales and deluded scholars.

All that remains will be those faking it until they make it -- or at least convince those who have been paid and derailed with some bright new toy. Truth doesn't matter as long as faking it until you make it is the first long step into the abyss of ignorance and popularity. Everyone remembers the famous, especially those who die while faking it. In the end, they faked it until they made it -- posthumously -- and history will write it so.

That is all. Disperse.

A Day in the Life

Every day there is something new that drip, drip, drips through the mainstream media blinders that cover the eyes of most people turning to the newspapers and TV set to get their news. This drip, drip, drip is full of poisons, chemicals, and lies, the propaganda of the elite, like Oprah, intent on selling the last ditch attempt by the global elite to destroy at least 95% of the world's population. It should surprise no one that widely recognized icons, like Hillary, Oprah, and Obama, funded by George Soros are dazzling us all with free cars, houses, and gifts while surreptitiously lining us up for the death chamber, smiling and patting us on the shoulder while shuffling us off to the Grim Reaper.

Do you think I believe in their glad handing, smiling faces as they stun is with beautiful rhetoric or promises of the peace and wonder that is the Eternal Hereafter? Puhleeze. I was not born this morning.

The MSM have narcotized humanity with narcotics in our city water while stunning us with endless loops of circular logic and faux science guys like Bill Nye to cudgel our brains with what seems like truth and logic and has no resemblance to either.  The global elite strive to rewrite history by tearing down statues to heroes of our troubled past as though destroying the idols commemorating our mistakes and errors will erase it from our collective minds. While that may work for millennials, Generation X-ers, and children of the 21st century, it will not work against those who have spent their lives watching, studying, researching, and remembering the past so the rest of humanity won't make the same mistakes this time around.

We have failed.

Those few, like you it seems since you're reading this, are not enough to spread the word and speak out about what is being done in the name of progress and liberalism while continuing to dumb down the current population while inflaming the terrorist arm of the global elite as they have done since the armies of darkness descended on this planet in the 7th century beheading and taxing all nonbelievers in the name of the moon. At least the army of terror chose a god we could look up to every night as it spins in its monthly orbit as hollow and false as the civilization that created it to send the survivors of their galactic wars to this green and fertile world where their offspring could renew themselves and spread out across the globe building new cities and tending the crops that would sustain us, and ultimately poison us, as they sought domination over the races they created in their own image and taught to pray to a god they created -- also in their own image. The fallen angels have been destroyed and their culture and history erased to make room for the hatred and horror of war as the marauding mindless hordes sweep all before them and chosen Judas goats lead the tagged races to death while their hatred for civil dialogue, facts, and truth are lost in the rising clamor of gunfire and screams. No single voice of logic and reason will be allowed to remain and their only hope is ascension -- or at least death when they can become once again a part of the universal zeitgeist for their chance to reincarnate in a brighter, better, and more peaceful world where the din from murdering hordes can no longer be heard, seen, or felt. What then the hopeful people that remained?

They will be absorbed by the chaotic body until it's their turn in the death chamber when their turn comes to die for this cleansed world where memories of them will be lost and forgotten until some time in the future when an enterprising group of archaeologists will unearth what remains -- if anything remains to mark their passage -- and their surgeries, drugs, and physical enhancements are little more than social anomalies left to the Ages.

As for me, I will continue fighting, speaking, and praying for the global elite to be rooted out and saved from their masters' destructive plans to ascend with the rest or be buried in a world of their own creation when the solar winds come to free the faithful and sweep away the master that had us all bound in their deftly woven web of lies and deceit.

That is all. Disperse.

Balancing on a Razor's Edge

Whatever you think of FBI director James Comey, it seems he is still a political football. I'm sure he was not surprised when President Trump called him on the Oval Office carpet and fired him. I am surprised Trump didn't fire him sooner. Then again, I am surprised by much of what Trump does. Trump seems unfocused and far too often emotional, acting out rather than acting from a stable emotional base, but then he's Trump and his emotions seem set to a hair trigger attached to his mouth and his tweeting fingers. Neither a good or stable position from which to act. If Trump was a warrior with decades of scars and battle experience to his credit, I'd guess he was a berserker.

I've heard and read comments from Democrat and Republican views that Comey is a nefarious master mind, that he is a dirty cop, that he is an honest dupe, that he was colluding with Hillary, that he is now colluding with Trump or at least has been backed into a corner where he has been forced to dance to Trump's since last spring, and on and on and on. The Democrats and Republicans and yanking on Comey from both sides, blaming him, challenging him, lauding him, applauding and demonizing him. My views are far less quixotic and less changeable.

From the beginning when Comey laid out the results of the investigation into Hillary's server, I believed he was honest and doing his best to stand up in a hurricane clinging to the nearest upright and stable anchor doing what he could. I was outraged that Comey gave Hillary a pass especially after stating that the Secretary of State had been extremely careless with classified documentation but that no prosecutor could prove she had the intent to commit an illegal act.

What?!

Hillary installed a server in her home and ran all of her emails through it. Hillary, when subpoenaed by Congress to answer questions and produce all devices had her server treated with Bleach Bit to erase all traces of her communication from the server, lost devices, and destroyed devices even with a hammer. I guess Hillary had been watching too many movies where junkies tossed their stash in the toilet and flushed it all way. No evidence, no crime.

There remained evidence on Anthony Weiner's laptop in his home for instance and in thousands of emails sent to people all around the world, including emails to Obama who was president at the time, and many of the emails still had evidence of classified markings on them. She was seen in photo and video tap, tap, tapping away at her Blackberry here and abroad and it was public knowledge that her communications were not secret even when sending and receiving secret information and that Hillary had been hacked by operatives from governments, allies and enemies. How does none of that provide enough proof of intent that a prosecutor wouldn't give his pension and eye teeth to prosecute? Such evidence is a game changer, a career maker, a lock. And it wasn't enough to prove intent? Was Comey high on crack? Was he insane or in the early stages of Alzheimer's who no longer recognized friend, foe, or family? How do you state publicly that the Secretary of the State of the United States of America under President Obama, a woman who has served in high office, and who was married to the president of the USA and was First Lady for 8 years, didn't know what a classified document looked like and lied about sending and receiving classified information was extremely careless when handling classified documents is not guilty of a crime? American citizens who were attached to the military services are still serving jail sentences for less and one general at least in recent memory was destroyed by being extremely careless with his pillow talk to his mistress when divulging classified information. How does Hillary get a pass?

Well, Hillary's husband, ex-president Bill Clinton, flew down to Phoenix and entered Loretta Lynch's plane where Mrs. Lynch dismissed her aides, companions, and guards and spent 30 minutes in the plane on the tarmac in Phoenix purportedly discussing grandkids and golf while Hillary was still under investigation. That had to have given Comey pause that the head of the Department of Justice (DOJ), his boss, was carrying on a private conversation with the husband of a woman under investigation by the FBI and the DOJ that none of her entourage were allowed to hear. Loretta Lynch, instead of recusing herself and allowing someone else to take the lead on the investigation, said in a press conference a few days later that she did indeed meet with her old friend, Bill Clinton, wife of Hillary who was under investigation, and that they talked about their grandkids and golf for 30 minutes and that she would accept whatever the FBI and the DOJ teams suggested. I knew then, if I hadn't figured it out before, that the fix was in. Hillary was going to get away with her extremely careless handling of confidential information.

Hillary was also going to get away with her extensive attempts to get rid of the evidence of her carelessness. Obama had covered for her and covered for Hillary still. Lynch was obviously in the bag and Lynch was the only person who could convene a grand jury to indict Hillary so she would stand trial before a jury. James Comey was obviously caught in a no-win situation no matter what he did, which is why he outlined Hillary's actions and summarized his findings by saying that no prosecutor would touch the case given the fact pattern he found because Hillary was not guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt. Huh?!  Isn't that something the prosecutor has to determine? Did Comey talk to a prosecutor, see a prosecutor, hear a prosecutor say there was insufficient evidence or cause to get a clear verdict on Hillary's guilt? Did Comey have a secret meeting with a grand jury and prosecutor to claim Hillary's case had insufficient evidence to prosecute and indict? What was going on? I was back to Comey must be high on crack again because nothing else made sense.

I watched Comey give evidence in congressional hearing after congressional hearing and he seemed lucid and honest, but I've been fooled by pathologic liars before. Was Comey another such sociopath?

No, Comey's background and family were involved and "...being paid millions of dollars that Comey accepted from a Clinton Foundation defense contractor, Comey’s former membership on a Clinton Foundation corporate partner’s board, and his surprising financial relationship with his brother Peter Comey, who works at the law firm that does the Clinton Foundation’s taxes."  Seems Comey isn't so honest after all. 

Stories that follow the money dog Comey and the people that read such stories question Comey's integrity and his honesty.  No one has mentioned whether or not Comey was a Hillary or Trump supporter that I've seen, but how Comey votes isn't supposed to matter; he's a cop, and agent and director of the FBI, he doesn't have a political voice in all of this -- or does he? 

Hillary claims that FBI director James Comey was the reason she lost the election. Hillary also claims the Russians were the reason she lost the election and then further claims that she lost because of . . . well, there's a long list of reasons, including Anthony Weiner’s cellphone, Fox News, WikiLeaks, and the fake news of the alt-right. I'm sure as the days go on and Hillary continues her many $250,000 speeches the reasons will accumulate as fast as the donations to the Clinton Foundation from foreign governments that only want to do good. 

Oh, wait, those foreign government payments ended before Hillary lost the election to Trump and have failed to begin again when the Electoral College certified Trump's win. That must be a big blow to the poor and needy the world over who were being helped by the Clinton Foundation. I'm certain the hurricane victims in Haiti will continue to send their regrets for the loss of their share of the charitable donations from the Clinton Foundation.

I prefer to think of James Comey as a good and honest cop who was caught between Obama and Hillary on one side and Loretta Lynch on the other side and doing the best he could to keep his head above water even though it no longer matters because Comey was fired as director of the FBI this week. Congress has found no evidence so far that Russia hacked the elections or were in any way involved in hacking documents and emails from John Podesta, the DNC, and Hillary and her team. Those documents and emails, none of which Podesta, the DNC, or Hillary and her team have been refuted, were leaked by people within the Hillary camp and/or working for the DNC and John Podesta who wanted the American people to see the real Hillary when the cameras are off and the reporters have gone home. The American people saw and chose Trump over Hillary and James Comey, with all of his double talk, will fade with time or end up covering the bird cages around the country for his trouble. I would imagine Comey will heave a sigh of relief once he is finally out of the crosshairs and off the public's mind.

I do believe Comey was an honest cop caught in an impossible situation and unable to do his job, relying on someone -- anyone -- to figure out what was going on and realize that Hillary would get away with her actions as she has so many times in the past, not because of her lame excuses or her paranoid scapegoating, but because the powers protecting her were more powerful than the truth. James Comey will have to rely on short term memory loss amidst the inundation of persistent data dumps and media howling that shift with the constantly changing mainstream currents. Maybe now Comey can relax since he is no longer balancing on a razor's edge.

That is all. Disperse.

Perspective Matters

Forced perspective is reality turned on its head, such is the case with the Trump presidency.

Trump has been called the biggest liar in presidential history and bold pundits muzzled for the 8 years of the Obama presidency point to Obama as the soul of reason, calm logic, and truth. Forced perspective. What else can people say with Trump firing off tweets in the middle of the night and throwing out comments and off the cuff remarks that seem more like paranoid fantasies than anything resembling the truth. I remember when Trump said he had witnessed Muslims cheering in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and was called out. No Muslims cheered the bombing of the World Trade Center. How dare he? I don't know if you noticed, but a few days later a sheepish Left retracted their bold calls of "Liar, liar, pants on fire" when digital and photographic proof surfaced. Oops.

All throughout Trump's bombastic displays the Left and Democrats and quite a few entrenched Republicans loudly proclaim Trump's lies only to have to retract -- or more often ignore -- opposition quietly or develop a sudden aversion to reminders of their liar, liar outrage as facts emerge that Trump was indeed right. Does that stop Trump's opposition? Less than a hundred days in and the Democrats, Left, and entrenched Republicans keep a microscope poised to parse every Trump utterance, misdemeanor, and divergence from the political holy canon. They obviously have difficulty learning new skills or avoiding the zap as they blunder endlessly into the old and worn routes. Insanity is defined as repeating the same behaviors and expecting a different result and the political crowd cannot figure out where they went wrong. The Democrats continue to shake their heads, play the Hillary game plan over and wonder what went wrong.

No doubt Obama and Michelle are still shaking their calmly logical heads even as Michelle discovers that she will not be allowed under the tenets of the U. S. Constitution to run for President in 2020 because she has not lived long enough in the United States. Michelle Obama will not be eligible to run for President until 2021. She is old enough (over 35) and was born in the United States to US citizens, but her parents decided to make use of the foreign student qualification by using her legal residence in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where her tax returns originated from until Obama became president. Oops. Well, at least Michelle Robinson got to go to university as a foreign student with money paid for by funds reserved for actual foreign students. That's the thing about truth; it is often inconvenient. Michelle will have to wait to run for office in the 2024 cycle with no more experience in the political trenches than Barack had, except she can claim she was First Lady for 8 years just like Hillary and no experience as the wife of a state's governor. Maybe she can find a way to trade her position as the part time hospital liaison shuffling indigent and uninsured poor to other facilities to meet their health care needs. The University of Chicago Medical Center paid Michelle $317,000 a year for her assistance in "...creat[ing] the program, which aims to find neighborhood doctors for low-income people who were flooding the emergency room for basic treatment. Hospital officials say such patients hinder [UCMC's] ability to focus on more critically ill patients in need of specialized care, such as cancer treatment and organ transplants."  It is too bad schools benefitting from Michelle's lunch program dumped her expertise and hard work planning healthy meals for students. Kids weren't eating the meals and the waste cost schools millions. 

Forced perspective once again. Michelle would have gotten farther with her lunch program if she had partnered with groups like the Edible Schoolyard or one of the local programs criss-crossing the country where teachers and students plan, plant, and harvest produce from community gardens, going back to the old saying of teaching someone to fish rather than handing out a fish being a more intelligent application of skills.  The school funds would be better used and everyone involved learns more about food from the roots up without the need to waste taxpayer dollars. That's the issue when the real reason for getting involved is personal PR and not helping the community, something Obama perfected during his White House tenure. No one could make sure the spotlight fell at precisely the best angle for Obama. No event, no tragedy, no national or international situation was wasted as long as Obama was center stage in the heart of the spotlight.

You can hold the moon in your hands with the optimum perspective just as the photo above demonstrates how to hold the Eiffel Tower between thumb and index finger. It's not magic, it's perspective, forced perspective. The politicians of the world stand aghast at Trump's pronouncements, conflations, and lies. Trump should allow himself to be guided by those practiced in the political arts and not go off on his own as though he is the Commander-in-Chief. How dare he conduct his life in the manner he has always conducted his life -- to suit himself? He is the President now and must act presidential. After nearly 50 years in construction in New York City, why should he act like a political hack instead of the powerful oligarch that he is or trade his distinct bluff and blustery style for the polished Washington Side-step perfected over decades. Is it better to sculpture a memorable sound byte or shoot from the unguarded lip as Obama did when suggesting to Dmitri Medvedev over a live microphone that when he was re-elected he'd "have more flexibility" with regard to missiles. Medvedev promised to relay Obama's comments to Vladimir Putin.

Politicians lie all the time. What doesn't play well in Washington is getting caught lying -- on camera or mic -- because that is more difficult to down play. The truth is a commodity and has little value in the political arena. Ask Bill Clinton or George W. Bush or Barack Obama or even LBJ or Nixon. They all lied, some far more grandly than the others, but lie they did because political expediency outweighs truth. Trump hasn't learned the political expediency of parsing the outside voice because it all comes from Trump's inside voice. Trump says whatever comes into his mind without parsing. Such parsing is necessary as Prime Minister John Key of New Zealand did when he told the people the government did not spy on them. There are NSA data collection centers all over the world, including a major center in New Zealand that shares information with Key and the British where every person in New Zealand and in countries around the world are spied on and their communications collected and stored. Key lied because he wanted the voters to pass a law that would legally allow the government to continue spying on everyone and collecting the data. If Key hadn't crafted his words carefully the voters would have refused to pass the measure to give the government the legal right to continuing to spy on the people and use the data the same way that the USA uses the data on every man, woman, and child in the nation.

If you want a nanny state you have to agree to give Big Brother the tools to violate your privacy and freedoms. This is 1984 in the 21st century digital age. Orwell saw the future, but not how deep Big Brother's control goes.

Trump is the fly in the political ointment and has no interest in falling into the political line. Obama subverted and bypassed the U.S. Constitution with political expedience. Trump violates the U. S. Constitution with the skills he honed navigating the New York construction industry, usually one or two steps beyond the long arm of the law, just within legal bounds. The political Powers That Be do the same thing, except the PTB rig the system by appointing judges ready to run offense and subvert the letter of the law to fulfill the unholy spirit of the law, treading the left-hand path. The ends justify the means in the political arena in the same way a bully rules the schoolyard. It is, to quote Scarlett O'Hara's mammy, "mules in horse harness."

Mutton dressed as lamb some would say, but in reality setting the weasel to guard the hen house. These days it is often impossible to discern the guard from the guarded. Weasels tend to blend in when wearing the guard's uniform until the chickens are all dead and the uniform spattered with blood and feathers.

There are those who prefer to see the weasel coming before he strikes. Trump is not a subtle man and we hear him even before we see him. Politicians are harder to discern even when you watch their lips moving.

Trump has been likened to Adolf Hitler. Hitler was a subtle politician. Trump is not a subtle man and no politician. Obama is a subtle politician.

That is all. Disperse.

What Do You Think of Snowden Now?

I wonder what President Trump thinks of Edward Snowden now that he has been sitting on the hot seat for every day of his presidency and can look forward to more of the same for the rest of it?

Trump is an oligarch who enjoyed unlimited power as a private citizen with his own TV show and no one - he thought - monitoring his every action. Trump could tweet what he wanted and where he wanted without daily vilification. Trump could spout off whenever he wanted about whatever he thought without regard for inside voice/outside voice controls. Trump would be just another day or three of water cooler gossip that would fade until he spouted off like Old Faithful because he had not been raised to the highest seat in the land where his every word and off hand remark and tweet were not endlessly and arduously dissected.  After 8 years of silence while Obama was given a free pass with the press, Trump must be longing for his decades of Monday morning quarterbacking while favoring his children with businesses, support, and indulgences as he rounds the mid-race lap before heading for the home stretch with his youngest so. Is Trump longing for the days when all he had to fend off was Arnold Schwarzenegger angling for his spot on TV or some other hot dog wannabe panting to Urkel the old dog from the airwaves?

Every time Trump orders Russian dressing for his salad or opines out loud about the tea cakes at the Russian Tea Room Big Brother is watching and listening, going through the metadata on cell phone, laptop, and servers looking for a smoking gun. The smoking gun is no longer necessary now that the NSA and the #notmypresident members have their eyes on the prize: #impeachTrump. Not even Obama's digitally faked long form birth certificate from Hawaii posted on the WhiteHouse.gov website is powerful enough to deflect the nation's interest in Russian meddling in the election (already proven to be false) and how much Russian interests have been involved in the Trump team's transition to the White House. General Flynn has already fallen on his sword for the team. Who will be next?

The blood in the water is not Trump's or anyone on his team and no hungry shark will follow the trail because it lacks the perfume of actual blood. Trump is just now discovering there need not be blood in the water as long as the public thinks the Red trail is blood and leads directly to impeaching and embarrassing the President. In that way at least, Trump is once again at the head of the biggest theatrical undertaking since October 31, 1938 when Orson Welles announced the Martians had landed during the production of H. G. Wells's War of the Worlds broadcast. The only difference between 1938 and now is that Trump has landed and he can't take it back. Trump is president for better or worse and the worst is still to come.

Trump was adamant about Edward Snowden ending up in prison for life, if not shot for treason, for leaking the truth about the NSA and that Big Brother has indeed been watching us -- and President Obama knew about it. It is easy to see why Obama wants Snowden's bloody scalp, but Obama has more to lose than Trump. Obama's term in office is over and George Soros and the Democratic machine will only protect Obama so long, especially with Trump busily wielding the Executive Pen to wipe out that legacy with every flourish. Having alienated the intelligence community from the beginning will protect Obama a little bit longer, but not long enough for someone to finally crack and over shadow the Russian boogeyman that has dogged Trump's presidency since long before Putin publicly stated that Trump was worth watching. I will bet Putin wishes he could rewind time to before his open admiration for Trump gumming up the democratic works with his middle of the night tweets while sitting on the porcelain throne.

While James Come does his public impressions of Loretta Lynch and Lois Lerner for the House of Representative committee on Russian meddling in the 2016 US elections, Trump must be soiling his expensive tailored and longing for the decades of Monday morning quarterbacking from his plush office as he gears up to fire another corporate flunky wannabe for the cameras and the rabid fans of The Apprentice instead of figuring out who will next follow Gen. Flynn out the door on his or her sword. Life was so much simpler before Snowden outed the NSA and proved for the Orwellians that indeed Big Brother was always watching and had moved beyond the usual suspects checking out restricted books from the public library.

Though Trump was wrong about Obama wiretapping Trump Tower, he was right about being watched
and his metadata collected and leaked. I wonder if Trump, Trey Gowdy, or the House committee will ever discover who leaked to the press which American citizens were unmasked to provide the most embarrassment to Trump and his team? The citizens of the United States of America and the world wait with hungry eyes to discover how long Putin and Trump have been colluding to bring America to its knees.

Stop wondering. Obama did that 8 years ago when he was elected on the mantra of Hope and Change only to leave Americans wondering how the change they hoped for became change that led to Trump. Democrats and Hillary supporters are emerging from their safe spaces demanding to know what changed with their hope for a better world and how they ended up with Donald J. Trump for president turning every Executive Order into a public display instead of slipping the TransPacific Partnership treaty past Congress and the people bit by bit as America's sovereignty and power are parceled over to the United Nations and the One World Order bit by bit.

Has Trump figured out that Snowden did the country and the world a favor by outing the NSA and its worldwide spying activities and Snowden deserves a medal not a noose? As long as Trump cannot figure out that his sophomoric twitter rants in the middle of the night while sitting on the porcelain throne evacuating his bowels and venting his spleen are not actually a good idea. Snowden is a hero and anyone who has figured that out knows that heroes deserve ticker tape parades down Fifth Avenue and not waiting for his turn to be drawn and quartered or for someone to pay for a French executioner wielding a sword to make short work of his life. Trump the master of all he surveyed from his New York offices is not yet the President American voters believed in and chose as long as Trump still operates as though he is master of the empire he constructed with his daddy's money and it cannot be long before Mike Pence pardons Trump and settles in to the Oval Office to do the heavy lifting at last.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. 

That is all. Disperse.

Democracy For Sale

Watching "Medici: Masters of Florence" again. Episode 4: Judgment day. Rinaldo degli' Albizzi has accused Cosimo de Medici of usury (which is tolerated in this day and used extensively by banks issuing credit cards), corruption (Donatello's statue of David was considered the portrayal of a catamite - buggered), and tyranny because the Medici were wealthy and good at their business. All that wealth must be a mask to seize power. In order to protect the democratic republic of Florence, Albizzi, a noble with little money and less influence and power than his family held by virtue of their untouchable, god-given nobility, strikes back at the Medici because his father, a bankrupt, was refused entry to the Signoria, the governing body of Florence, and Rinaldo blamed Cosimo, a young man like himself, of destroying his family's position in the Signoria and perverting the cause of democracy. Cosimo told his father that Rinaldo wasn't arrogant; he was afraid because his father's grain shipment was lost at sea and they were bankrupt. Giovanni de Medici, the head of the Medici family, informed the Signoria the Albizzi were bankrupt and used his son's confidence and new found understanding of Rinaldo to do so. Giovanni was correct. Had Albizzi been a smart businessman he would've insured his grain before selling it elsewhere so that if the shipment was lost the Albizzi would've been able to collect the price of the shipment. Short-sighted and fearful of losing his position in Florence led to the Albizzi's downfall. In order to get revenge on Cosimo, Rinaldo must lie and paint the Medici as usurers, thieves, and power mad. There is no doubt that there is more to the history of the Medici that what is shown in the series, but at the heart of the story is the truth that those who seek to control the people have no care for democracy unless the tyrants/power brokers can control the direction of the votes. These power brokers will lie, cheat, steal, and murder or harm anyone who gets in the way of their plot to maintain control. The one thing you can count on is that life is about change. The successful change with the times and profit while the tyrants and power brokers force the world to see and do whatever it takes to keep themselves in power even if it means distorting the truth and removing people by fair means and foul who get in their way. Instead of Rinaldo succeeding in killing Cosimo, Contessina, Cosimo's wife, pleads with the Signoria to change Cosimo's sentence to exile. With Cosimo out of the way, Rinaldo, flush with the success of getting rid of the Medici, over reaches as tyrants always do, and ends up being exiled a year later when Cosimo returns to Florence at the request of the Signoria and the people. Florence is dying from the iron grip Rinaldo holds on the city and fear for their lives and their business as mercenaries, Albizzi's paid mercenaries, roam the streets at will. Even Rinaldo degli' Albizzi's best friend, Pazzi, another banker, turns on him when Rinaldo decides to take full control of Florence and get rid of the Signoria along with any pretense of democracy. Pazzi sets Rinaldo up and Rinaldo ends up in the same prison cell where he kept Cosimo as he slandered the Medici because the Medici were tyrants. The same thing is happening now in this country as Obama and the Leftists set up their mercenary force to riot and disrupt democratic proceedings where Republicans speak. These Organizing for America (OFA) members are taught how to make it looks as though the whole country is in revolt against the Republicans and President Trump. Make no mistake about it, they are mercenaries just like Albizzi's paid thugs. These thugs are stealing and fouling democracy to make it look like the whole country is outraged at Trump's win in the 2016 presidential election and are agitating for Trump's impeachment because he is mentally unfit for the office of President of the United States, and this just a month into the 4-year term of Trump's tenure. If you can't rig an election, as Obama tried to do with Hillary Clinton, the next best thing is to steal the election. Organizing for America is Michelle and Barack Obama's private army with 35,000 operatives. Reports show that the operatives are given directions on how best to send the message that getting rid of Obama's legacy of climate change and a one world government is not going to be easy or without pushback. This so-called grass roots movement is the latest incarnation of Organizing for Action, which was Obama's grass roots movement to change the face of America purportedly to realize Obama's Hope and Change message during his campaign and then morphed into Obama's private army to enforce Obama's hope that the change he wanted to see was the change that would happen. It didn't happen with any lasting success. All that died when Hillary lost the election and Trump became the 45th President of the United States. Now Organizing for America's army of members are lining up to disrupt Trump's presidency and agitate for a new version of Hope and Change that will end with Trump's impeachment. Forget the contrast between what it costs to pay for Trump's family protection as they continue their lives and business and what it cost to send the Obamas on Barack's world wide apology tour that lasted for the 8 years of his tenure in the Oval Office, the golfing trips, fund raisers for the Democratic Party, and vacations, and even the White House cleaning staff's audible and public sighs of relief now that the messy Obamas have moved out. Pay attention to what is really going on and see how it measures up with Rinaldo degli' Albizzi and Cosimo de Medici and Albizzi's unsuccessful destruction of Florence's democratic state. We can learn from the past even when the past is resurrected and framed as entertainment. Albizzi was believed to be a godly man who paid the man guarding Cosimo to poison him in order to make it look like Cosimo was struck down by the Hand of God. When it became clear that the Rinaldo was losing the vote for Cosimo's death, he urged his son to start a fight in the Signoria's chambers and barred most of the Signoria, those that were still considered friendly to Cosimo and the Medici, from the chamber the next day. If you can't beat them with lies and slander, the next best thing is to make sure the opposition cannot get in to the Signoria to vote. That's one way to guarantee the votes go your way. When all else fails, hire mercenaries and control the city (or the country) with fear. Mercenaries who kill for money will also kill when they are no longer paid -- even if they end up having to murder their former employer because he owed them money. It didn't matter that Cosimo paid the mercenaries what Albizzi owed them and more besides to leave Florence. The fact remained that Albizzi didn't pay them and the one thing that mercenaries love more than murder and theft is money. The modern mercenaries of Obama's OFA aren't all there for the money. They are idealists who are willing to overthrow the government as long as it means Trump is impeached or thrown out. Like little children who have learned that there is a fair way and an unfair way to deal with the world, Obama's OFA mercenaries will keep screaming, "Not fair!" until democracy is ended or until democracy can be forced to vote the way the Left demands. That failed to work for Hillary. Only time will tell if this time democracy can be forced to kowtow to Obama and the Left's demands and replace Trump with Hillary. That is all. Disperse.

You Didn't Build That

I didn't catch the whole speech, but I knew what Obama meant when he said, "You didn't build that." I heard different parts of his speech at other times, mostly not in a favorable way. It was Obama after all. But I knew what he meant from the first minute I heard the words. I wasn't going to comment on it, negatively or positively. There was no need. The Left and the Right were already commenting, oftentimes in a nasty manner. The Obama Choir was in full voice shouting down the Tea Party clamor. They didn't need my two cents. After all, what did it matter anyway? I'm one person and very little I say matters even when I want what I say to matter. I am forgettable and indistinguishable from the background noise. My one voice will make no difference. Since I avoid pointless battles, I felt secure in my decision to keep my words and my thoughts to myself.

I was wrong. I was ignorant.

Whether I said the words out loud or not, the very thought and my reluctance to join the clamor did matter. They still matter and not just because I'm writing them down to send out into the cyber void. They always mattered because my thoughts, like my unspoken words, are real. They have weight. They make a difference.

They make ripples.

And here come the shouts and name-calling from the opposition. There is always opposition, except in story books where good triumphs over bad. Those stories where good triumphs also cause ripples when the author thinks about the story, puts the words together, types them onto paper or creates them on a screen and sends them into the virtual world, and every single time someone reads the story and laughs or cries or stops to wonder what it all means. Those first ripples create more ripples and each ripple creates ripples and the ripples keep spreading out and out -- and in and in -- forever.

Nothing goes on forever you say. You probably believe in forever after and eternity and the vastness of God or Allah or whatever name you give to the Infinite All the created everything. That created you and even me. Everything goes on forever.

That is what Obama was saying . . . badly . . . but he did say it. Nothing you create is yours alone. It is the result of everyone who helped you make your vision a reality, from your parents to your teachers to your friends and community to your banker, the workers, and the men and women who helped make your creation a reality. It doesn't stop there. The ripples keep going to the people who advertise your work by talking about it, by putting together a marketing campaign, and by continuing to raise awareness of your work by keeping the words flowing. Every person who buys or appreciates your work, long after you are dead and gone, create ripples that create ripples that keep creating ripples. Then, long after you are gone someone will find your work dusty and covered with cobwebs or see an newspaper write-up or read about it in a book, hear about it from someone who knew you when you were putting it all together, and so on and so on and so on forever. Whether in memory or in use, that initial thought you believed was yours was a single ripple in an infinite pond, something you built in your dreams others helped you make tangible reality, helped you build that.

Okay, so I used a whole lot more words than Obama, but the message is the same. You had help to build whatever. You did not build that alone.

Nothing we do, even when we think we do nothing, is ever done alone. No, I'm not talking about the people that believe that God (or Allah or Mohamet or Baal or Lucifer or whoever/whatever) is the author of all. He/She/It is not the all. Nor are you or me or some nameless someone down the road out of sight.

A little too religious, holy . . . forgettable for you? You don't go for all that self-righteous, mumbo-jumbo, airy-fairy, New Age crap. Does it make you nervous? Anxious? Frightened? What if . . . ?

What if.

Obama wasn't the first to create "You didn't build that." Millions of people did that long before Obama's time came up with the same idea. Obama built on someone else's words, someone else's thoughts, someone else's ideas. He did not build that. He had help -- a lot of help standing on the shoulders of others. The words might have been a political slogan, a lesson to a child, an explanation of so much more than just the words, the teachings of a priest, a leader, a father, a mother, or a friend. All that is happening has happened before, many times before. I'll bet you've heard or read that as well. It's true and here is where it gets uncomfortable for some of you.

We are all connected. We are ripples in the stream of time and consciousness forming, colliding, ricocheting off each other to create more ripples creating more ripples -- forever. Everything we do affects everything else. Describe it in scientific terms, refine it until it can be expressed in an equation as simple as E=mc2. No matter which way it come out every thought, every word, every action, every inaction, everything affects everything else.

From the beautiful and sublime to the frightening and ugly, it's all connected. It's not just you and it's not just me or her or him or them. We are all connected.

In simplest and graphic terms, what ripples you make affect everything and everyone around you. You pick up a dropped spoon or pencil and put it on the table or give it back to the person who dropped it. Ripples. Someone finds the spoon on the table or the pencil dropper smiles and thanks you. Ripples. The spoon dropper in a moment of irritation throws the spoon against the wall or the floor or through an open door and hits the boss when she walks past while the pencil dropper notices the pencil is broken and screams at you for breaking their pencil that they can no longer use because they don't have a sharpener. "It's your fault!" they scream at you, spit spraying your face. Ripples. What you do next will either make things worse or make them better. Ripples.

The ripple effect is the same as the butterfly effect. The only difference is the way the effect is illustrated.

Whether or not I added my voice to the clamor when Obama spoke those words, "You didn't build that!" I created ripples. I affected someone or something even though I kept my words to myself. The thoughts I kept to myself had as much effect as those unspoken words and how much of a ripple I caused is determined by my emotions. I dismissed Obama's words out of hand. It didn't matter. He didn't matter because people would still see and feel the same way because Obama said the words. I didn't care. No matter. I still created ripples. I still had an effect whether I knew it or not. Ignorance is no excuse.

And here is where it gets scary.

All those unspoken thoughts, all those hidden dreams and fantasies, all those secrets you swore to keep to yourself, every random angry thought, all those times you wished someone harm or worse, all those thoughts floating out there in the void you were sure were locked in some hidden corner of your mind are ripples.

Every fish, insect, and species living under the water, no matter how deep, create ripples. You may not see them on the surface, but the ripples are there all the same. So are all those thoughts, secrets, fantasies, and emotions hidden beneath your surface. Think of the ripples created by all that life below the surface of the pond. It doesn't matter how big the pond is, even if the pond is as vast as the seven seas or the world's oceans, there are ripples from all the sea life from the deepest depths to the sea life close to the surface where their movements are not visible to the eye, your eye. Ripples.

Yes, that butterfly in Brazil can create a tornado in Texas -- and here's the kicker -- as long as the butterfly in Kathmandu doesn't get in the way.

No matter what Obama intended when he spoke those words, "You didn't build it!" that is not sound byte remains. What remains is Obama taking away the pride someone feels when their dream becomes a reality. Obama trampled on their dreams, turned an accomplishment to nothing more than trash that will end up in a landfill. My silence, my unwillingness to speak, my ignorance changed the effect those words could have had. My choice to refuse to add my words and my voice to the clamor made a difference. My ignorance is no excuse. I knew what Obama meant and said nothing.

This butterfly in Colorado contributed to the forced that made something meant to be positive, to be inclusive, into a weapon and a joke.

Ripples.

That is all. Disperse.

Cult of Personality

People think the cult of personality is something new, a relic of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The only difference between the 1780s and 2017 is the speed with which information -- and scandal -- are disseminated.

Victoria Claflin Woodhull was not yet 35 in 1872 when she decided to run for President of the United States. She was not allowed to vote, but she was determined to vote, citing an eloquent argument based on the U. S. Constitution and building on what had already been written by like-minded men and women. Woodhull was the first woman to petition Congress on this matter and present her well reasoned arguments before that august body.

An entrepreneur, the first woman stockbroker in history, and a vocal advocate for women's rights and free love, Woodhull was determined to push women's suffrage forward and gain the vote for women. She also pushed her feminist agenda for free love and an end to government deciding marriage, divorce, and every other aspect of a woman's life, especially with regard to what was permissible in modern society. If men could marry and carry on illicit affairs, then women should be allowed to determine their own fate as well. It was Woodhull's version of quid pro quo and met with mixed acceptance.

One might say that Woodhull's publication of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher's adulterous affair with Elizabeth Tilton and subsequent arrest was over the top in regards to punishment and using the U. S. mail to circulate the issue in Woodhull & Claflin Weekly's edition containing the details of the affair an obscenity as petty as it was political. The fact that Woodhull was a presidential candidate and unable to cast her unsanctioned vote because of her incarceration on charges that were specious at best is still notable, as is her choice of Frederick Douglass, a presidential elector from New York in the Electoral College, as her running mate for Vice-President. Douglass never acknowledged his candidacy nor did he attend the nominating convention. Woodhull ran under the Equal Rights Party banner.

Woodhull did garner votes, as one man from Texas claimed, stating he voted for Woodhull as a vote against Ulysses S. Grant, who eventually won the presidency in 1872. She received no electoral votes and all votes for her were not counted. She ran again unsuccessfully in 1884 and 1892. In the meantime, Woodhull was bankrupted by her opposition in the Women's Suffrage Movement by women like Susan B. Anthony who did not like her position or her politics.

As Otto von Bismarck stated, "Politics is the art of the possible," a sentiment echoed famously by Eva Peron in the opera penned by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Looking at George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as well as John F. Kennedy, can we really not see how the cult of the personality is the bedrock of politics? The Cult of the Personality did not begin with Barack Obama or Donald Trump and its roots are strong and deep throughout the history of politics in the United States of America as it has been throughout the history of the world, from Julius Caesar all the way back to Agamemnon and beyond. Victoria Claflin Woodhull is in memorable company and not only for her presidential candidacy but for her beliefs in communism, free love, and business and for her business acumen and refusal to bow to pressure, even when she was jailed.

That is all. Disperse.