Pushing the Limits

The thing about limits is how far and how much push is needed is arbitrary. Until you push them, you'll never know which is which.

Hoda Katebi, a fashion blogger, sets how much she pushes against the limits imposed on her by the Muslim leaders, demanding more freedom, fewer clothes, fewer constraints on fashion. It is a safe bet from inside the United States and one could say  rebellion with few -- or no -- consequences. Hoda is not forced to wear a burqa and be covered head-to-foot to protect and maintain her virtue. Hoda lives in middle America, a small Oklahoma town where she was born, to Iraqi parents and has never known life in a Muslim controlled country. You could say that Hoda has had it easy since she has not bucked the Muslim system that demands she be covered head to foot in a burqa or similar all concealing clothing, but is her rebellion against religious constraints any less courageous or bold than a girl born in Saudi Arabia or Iran? It is a matter of degree, Koda wears her hijab loosely and gets away with wearing a crop top that barely covers her midriff while a woman born in Iran and living in the midst of Muslims born and raised in a more restricted culture would be considered daring if she refused to wear the all concealing burqa and went completely unveiled. As with any rebellion, there is always a limit.

Koda is a westernized Muslim and is allowed more latitude than if she had been born and raised in the heart of Teheran. Even so, rebellion is still rebellion and one has to start somewhere.

I remember the more modest clothes I wore and was expected to wear as a child and a teenager before the more rebellious 1960s when Twiggy wore mini-skirts and shorter skirts and tighter bell bottom pants were all the rage. As the oldest of five children, I was not allowed short skirts and my pants still covered my belly button and my feet. I came from a family where modesty and taste were of paramount importance. As the oldest, my rebellion came once I was out of sight of home, or at least far enough away that I could hike up my skirts and bare my knees. I was still wearing dresses to school and those dresses were children's clothes that were tight across my budding breasts and the hems covered my knees. I longed for pants, but pants were not allowed by the school dress code, not until I reached high school. I tested the limits as much as I could, but the limits were very restrictive indeed.

Once the school relaxed the dress code and I could wear pants to school, the least of my worries was the length of my hemlines. I could wear pants, but I was not allowed to wear blue jeans. I wore dress pants with sweaters and blouses that were modest and covered everything, but still could not wear jeans. That changed my sophomore year and I was finally allowed to wear jeans -- in theory. My parents still insisted in dress pants and dress shirts, but no jeans. All around me girls wore bell bottom jeans that had seen better days and were well worn while I continued to wear dress pants and modest blouses and sweaters. The closest I got to fashionable clothes was when I wore hand crocheted pot holder vests that looked fashionable over my dress shirts and dress pants. I still hiked up my skirts as soon as I was out of visible range of our house, but not often because I preferred pants to dresses, especially the middle-aged skirts and clothing my mother bought for me. She was determined that I would be dressed properly and as modestly as she could manage no matter what I thought.

Meanwhile, my sister, a year behind me in school, was allowed to wear mini skirts, jeans, and stockings. It was okay for her because she was skinny and leggy and still considered a child while I was considered nearly an adult and must continue to dress my age -- as long as my age was considered to be somewhere between middle age (over 30) and decrepitude and was dependent on my mother to buy my clothes. It is no surprise I got a job so I could buy my own clothes and a big surprise to me that Mom reserved the right to set the rules about what I could and mostly could NOT wear. I chafed at the bit and planned to defy the rules and wear what I wanted to wear, especially since I was paying for the clothes.

Likely to further minimize how much money I would have left to spend on clothes, it was decided that since I had a job I would also have to pay for room and board. I didn't expect that move, but it was my parents' rule and I obeyed no matter how much I argued against the restrictions. I continued to test the limits, but not very far as I lived in fear of being sent away to the Juvenile Detention Center and labeled a problem child. And still I pushed the limits, believing wrongly that since I could drive and had bought my own car, I would be allowed more privileges. It didn't take long to find out how short those limits were. I was still hemmed in by the rules and denied true freedom to choose and wear what I wanted to wear. All the new expenses (room & board, car insurance, gas, oil, repairs) depleted my meager budget and I continued to wear modest and appropriate clothes. No matter how I pushed against the limits, I remained at square one, a rebel at heart with no rebellious credits to my name, my reputation unsullied and unbesmirched, the worst of the worst kind of girl alive -- a nice girl, a good girl, obedient and responsible and praying for my 18th birthday when I would go away to college or get a job or at least move out of my parents' home and into my own apartment where the only rules were the ones I set. How naive and innocent I was.

In my senior year at school, I bought and wore my first mini skirt and my first pair of jeans and I wore them to school. I was triumphant in my rebellion and had no idea the rebellion would be short lived since I would finish the year married, pregnant with our first child, and working for a living while saving for a life I had not yet envisioned. My rebellion was over before it was begun and I was drowning in married adulthood saving every penny for the coming child and longing for the days when all I had to rebel against were hem lengths and midriff-baring jeans, neither of which I could wear for long as my body filled out with the coming child. I had never been a child, giving up childhood to take care of my three siblings, and would never get the chance to go to college or get my own apartment because I was a married woman. My life was over. I was someone's wife and would soon be someone's mother and I'd never had a chance to be just me.

That is the thing about rebellion. It comes and goes before you have a chance to get used to being a rebel since responsibility and being an adult comes close on the heels of childhood and rebelling against the parents and the limits of childhood disappear in a shadow as responsibility and adulthood take over.

It might have been different if I had gone to college or chose not to marry and have a child, but the girl who chose that path wasn't the one who writes this post.

Koda pushes against the limits of her religion, her parents, and her culture by choosing to wear a cropped top and letting her hijab slip down and allow her hair to be seen uncovered. Her rebellion may seen silly and even not very rebellious, but we play the cards we are dealt. Rebellion is about pushing against the limits, however small those limits may be. Oftentimes we fail as the limits are redrawn and the lines between acceptable and forbidden redrawn. Koda's limits seem daring among her family and culture and should not be measured against the cultural limits of the average American girl nor should they be lionized and determined to be courageous and limitless. What is courageous for one person may not be courageous for another. The only one who can determine the true nature of the rebellion is the person pushing against the boundaries and stretching the limits. At any time, those limits will change and the rebellion forced in another direction. Life is all about change and nothing changes more than limits -- perceived and actual limits. One thing about limits is that they can be pushed and changed.

Someone had to design and wear the first burqini just as someone had to decide that wearing a hijab didn't mean you had to cover your whole head. If no one pushed the limits, there would be no burqini, no hair partially covered by a hijab, and no one choosing to buy and wear a mini skirt and midriff-baring bell-bottom jeans.

That is all. Disperse.

Is Your Number Up?

  I'm watching "Vaxxed" and I suggest you do the same, not just parents with small children but all parents.

My son Eddie contracted viral spinal meningitis as a small child and, it turns out, right after he received the MMR vaccine. David Scott, my oldest, became ill after he had the MMR. Is this significant? I'd say so since both my sons, born in 1973 and 1975, suffered serious problems following MMR. I think the problem with MMR vaccines goes back farther than originally thought. The date in the movie given for the increase in autism is the mid-1980s, but my sons suffered problems 10 years earlier. What the CDC knew and when they knew it is only the visible part of this issue and the reality may extend farther back, at least 10 years back.

I forgot to mention the head banging my son David Scott did following the MMR vaccine he received. As a military dependent, the program for getting vaccines is as regimented as drill. For me, the regimentation goes back to being born into a military family. My conditioned response is obedience, following orders because that is the way things are. Bacterial warfare's history predates the MMR, but I now question the party line that my children were born this way. Eddie wasn't born with meningitis, and certainly not VIRAL meningitis, and he did survive the disease after 10 days in the hospital. Eddie's condition was so serious my husband was flown back to the US by Red Cross when he was stationed in Thailand.

David Scott's head banging and other repetitive behaviors continue to this day, though he is now 43 years old and have affected his adult life. I'd have to say that David Scott and Eddie may have some autistic spectrum disorder behaviors, though much milder than the children born in the 1980s. My youngest son, AJ, shares some of those behaviors as well and my family said that it was likely he was mentally retarded because he didn't talk until he was older. I chalked it up to "that's just the way he is" and refused to believe my son was less than perfect. I see it now, but I'm older and less trusting than I was as a young parent, and I know a whole lot more than I did 40 years ago.

It is never too late to learn and I am never too old to learn -- and to see -- what is so clear to me now. The data sets need to be set back another 10 years, and maybe even earlier than that to be safe. What we do not know can definitely hurt us -- and probably has been hurting us far longer than we realize.

My three sons would be classified in the Isolated Autism group because previous to the MMR they were normal, healthy boys with no pre-existing conditions. I see now that they still suffer from the effects of the MMR vaccine, each in their own way, but that is to be expected from the data presented in the movie and on the website vaxxedthemovie.com. Check it out for yourself.

I knew none of this at the time when my children were little. I believed what the doctors told me about their behaviors being normal for their age, and in part the doctors were correct. I can even say that after being accused of child abuse when David Scott was hospitalized for something else after receiving the MMR vaccine and my husband and I being accused of having beaten our son. The head banging David Scott did when he was tired, and the rocking and other repetitive behaviors we were told were normal were not normal at all, but they were normal for victims classified with Isolated Autism. My husband and I were subsequently exonerated as the head banging he did when tired and in his crib at the hospital, where we were not allowed to visit him until we had been investigated and cleared, was witnessed by the nurses and doctors on staff. We had been allowed to bring David Scott's favorite bear to the hospital before we were banned from seeing him until after the investigation and the marks on his forehead were caused by banging his head on his teddy bear and the key that wound up the music box inside, matching our description exactly. We didn't know about autism then and it is only now that I am putting the pieces of this health puzzle together 40 years later I see the truth of what happened to our son and to us and the hell we went through. Our son was diagnosed with an inability to metabolize potassium which was why he was hospitalized in the first place. I opted to treat our son by increasing his potassium intake through the foods he ate (bananas, raisins, etc.) and not by taking pills. At least in that regard I did my son a favor.

It is not only autism we need to scrutinize closer. Lyme disease has been misdiagnosed and the treatment for the disease has been hidden. Fibromyalgia, Alzheimer's, chronic pain syndrome, and other recently noticeable health issues should also be investigated and not by anyone who has ties to Big Pharma. All of these health issues can be traced back to the health industry and are statistically noticeable, provided the true statistics are made available and not lost, hidden, or destroyed. It isn't that I do not trust doctors, but where money is concerned, and we are talking about a whole lot of money, we need to be more cautious and scrutinize the data and the sources more carefully because we are being lied to.

Case in point: there is no need for anyone to take lipid lowering medications because heart disease is not caused by eating fatty foods like bacon and pork and lipids are not now and have never been the culprit in heart disease. The cause is inflammation, and that has been available to reporters and news sources for quite some time, and still doctors prescribe medication to lower your cholesterol and hypercholesterolemia and hyperlipidemia are still be used in patients' medical records. Lipitor and watching your cholesterol will not cure heart disease and neither will eating fat-reduced processed foods because fat was never the issue to begin with.

We have been lied to and manipulated for decades and it is time we used common sense and asked a whole lot of questions -- even if it means being considered a nuisance. Doctors are not gods. They are people who have studied health issues and who are just as gullible and naive as are all average humans. Accept no one's word as truth until you have asked questions until you have no more questions to ask and then go back and ask your questions again. Take back control, not only with your children, but with your own health and the health of all of your loved ones. The only time it is too late to ask questions is when you are dead and either buried or cremated. Hopefully, your children and the rest of your family will ask the questions.

Eddie, my middle son, had a stroke in his early 20s. I'm not sure what caused it, but I wonder how far back I need to look for the reason. David Scott, is an alcoholic and has drug problems; how far back does it go? AJ has been talking since he was 3 or 4 and has issues with narcotics, but he also hurt his back and has a narcotic pain pump in his buttocks. AJ is in college studying health care and wants to help others. Eddie has 2 boys with autism. David Scott has 3 daughters; his son Connor died 5 years ago.

If you get your children vaccinated, wait until their are 3 or older and demand single vaccinations for mumps, measles, and Rubella. Do not accept the MMR vaccine, or any vaccine delivered in multilevel dosages, and do not get the vaccinations all on the same day. Get them one by one and space them out, watch for side effects, and do not accept the verdict that whatever symptoms occur are natural. You are injecting diseases, often lethal diseases, into your child's body that can affect their immune system, their health, their mental and physical functions, and their lives. Keep their health uppermost in mind and do not following the lemmings off the cliff just because someone in the world claims there is an epidemic of polio or measles or bird raging through the population. Ask specific questions, like how many people are affected, how many have died or been seriously afflicted, and out of how many. There is a big difference between 644 of over a million and half a dozen out of the entire population of a country of over a billion. Remember the claims of Zika virus resulting in microcephaly in newborn infants and how the cause was the insecticide being sprayed in villages to eradicate mosquitoes where the microcephalic babies were born and the fact that their mothers were pregnant when spraying for the mosquitoes occurred.

You're not paranoid believing that the are out to get you -- especially when they ARE out to get you.  You are aware of what is really happening. Accept no news reports as true until you have asked a lot of questions and demanded answers from more than one doctor with credentials that are not linked back to Big Pharma and the companies making and spraying the poisons.

That is all. Disperse.

The High Cost of Magic

The main theme these days is that magic comes with a price. Rumpelstiltskin and every show that deals with magic (The Magicians, Just Add Magic, etc.) repeat this mantra endlessly. You can change the world and people around you, but you will have to pay the price. The greater the change, the higher the price.

We are being indoctrinated and manipulated. No matter how the mantra, magic always comes with a price, is repeated the point is to set us up for the high cost of magic, the high cost of change.

I don't know about you, but I am not particularly ready to give up what I value most for magic and that is what we are being manipulated to believe.

This planet, and all planets, suns, and cosmic bodies, is alive as alive as the people who inhabit this universe. Everything is alive. The plants that grow to be eaten and the animals that are found in ever decreasing numbers that are used for their skins, their bodies, and their constituent parts are alive. This Earth is alive, from its surface and atmosphere all the way to its beating heart at the center, whether that heart is magma or a massive crystal chiming and connected to every other cosmic body within this solar system and the galactic center of this Universe. Yes, Virginia, this planet is as alive as you or I and just as vulnerable and strong and susceptible. We are connected, this planet and you and I, in every way. This planet and the Universe are alive and the source of what we poor, ignorant mortals call magic. The only cost is the same price we pay for breathing: mindfulness.

Yes, there is a price to magic, but not the price the shows, movies, books, and propaganda would have us believe. The price is being aware of our existence and the existence of the life that abounds all around us.

The price we are being manipulated into paying is not the actual cost of our life or the ability to change the reality we see, but the price we have been manipulated to believe is necessary. All of this manipulation comes from fear. We are being manipulated into believing the cost is our existence, our lives. To some extent it is true that taking hold of magic will change the reality we see -- or it won't. The choice is ours. We can remain in this reality or we can accept change and emerge into a different reality that allows us access to the real magic, the magic of awareness that comes with a higher density, the 4th density.

We have been preparing for ascension during this cycle of existence. We have been told by that a new Age of Man is upon us that indeed has passed us and left us behind. That is at the heart of the propaganda we've been fed. The New Age, the Age of Aquarius, requires nothing of us but acceptance. Religions have characterized this realization in many ways. The realization has been called The Rapture by Christians, Nirvana, Ascension, and so many other names and we have been taught to believe that only by living a perfect life will we be allowed to accept this magic at the cost of everything we are and everything we believe.

What we do not know is that this CHANGE is happening whether we accept it or not. We are ready to ascend to the next level, to the 4th density from the leaden grip of the 3rd density, to be changed, to ascend, to be perfected. All we need do is accept what is coming.

These Ages of Man are accompanied by cosmic changes. Our sun will emit a Flash, a cosmic sneeze, a emission of cosmic radiation that heralds the Age of Aquarius, the next phase of the cosmic cycle. Each cosmic cycle is purportedly 2160 years -- or thereabouts.

According to the lyrics of the song:

When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius

Love will steers the stars. This is the second coming of the Christ consciousness, the time when Lucifer, Bringer of the Light, the opponent of God, will be imprisoned for 1000 years and the dead shall rise. I've always wondered how the dead can rise if their bodies were burned to ash.

Maybe we have it wrong, or rather the Christians have it wrong. We are not our bodies, the fleshly vessel we see in the mirror that gets fat and succumbs to the ravages of age. We are not even the images captured as memories in books and on videos. We are the eternal soul at the center of each living incarnation that is born, lives, and dies. Who knows? Maybe we do pay our karmic debts by living as insects or vermin or animals since they too contain the spark of the divine. All existence is life, from the smallest virus and bacteria to the most power -- and most vulnerable -- human. The sun, the planets, the moons, and everything we touch, see, and interact with all contain the divine spark. We are all connected to the Source of All -- the divine spark of the Universe, that which has many names (God, Allah, Buddha, and so on) and is light and dark. We are the Universe figuring itself out. We are extensions of the Eternal I AM bound to the cosmic wheel turning over and over until we become One with the Eternal I AM that is at the center of the Universe. The One Song that unites and binds all in existence.

Too esoteric and religious for you? Try something less difficult to grasp. Read Julian May's Intervention and the story of how humans achieved ascendance. The evil and the good, the sublime and the mundane, are all parts of the I AM. That is the magic. Julian May described the magic as powers of the mind and the guiding force in the Galactic Milieu series where the Remillard Family is the source of evil and transcendent good. Other species assist earthlings in ascending to the next phase of existence. That ascendance, or transcendence, is explained in many ways, just as it has become Magic in this time and this place on Earth during the Age of Aquarius. The Powers That Be, the forces that have controlled us for millennia, want us to fear Intervention and Ascendance, and They have spent ages convincing humanity that the price is too high.

The price is not too high and the solar flash will happen as it should have long ago. Whether we fear it or accept it, ascendance will happen. We will not cease to exist and we need not give up all we know and all we have to ascend. All we need do is accept the reality and leave this 3rd density and walk into the 4th density without fear. The only price we need to pay we have already paid by living life giving to others at least 50% of the time. The down side is that if we are not ready to accept our inheritance we will continue to live in the 3rd density, but without the Powers That Be that have held us down, stuck in the 3rd density but without the negative forces. The Powers That Be will be obliterated and the world we will inherit will be a clean slate. There is nowhere we can hide and nowhere that will protect us from the Solar Flash. With or without our consent, the Sun will flash and all will be changed. Love will steer the stars and guide our way as we are taught to wield 4th density powers. The scales will drop from our eyes and we will see truth without the propaganda and manipulation of the Powers that have distorted our view.

There is a cost to Magic. The price is seeing all with open eyes.

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.

Illegal immigration: Eater or Eaten

I'll bet you never watched Babylon 5 or realized you watched contestants playing the Game of Life. Forget that B5 hung in space over a dead world. Forget the gate technology that allowed ships to traverse the darkness from civilization to civilization. See the episodes as ripped from the headlines depicting current events. The two players in the Universe were the Shadows, the Great Evil, and the Vorlons, the Light. They were more than Evil and Good. They were warring siblings fighting their battles through the people of the Universe, the younger races that looked up to the Shadows and the Light as we look to our political parties. The Shadows and the Vorlons were the two sides of a coin, separated by perspective, the two sides of the Galactic Mirror. No different, except in our perception of them. Ultimately, Shadows and Vorlons enslaved the younger races. The Shadows and the Vorlons were the masters and the younger races their slaves, puppets playing out the end game, choosing which side of the mirror reflected what they saw, the image of their deepest desires.

Mr. Mordon was the human face of the Shadows whose only question was: What do you want? The answer bound the person to the Darkness or the Light, reflections of siblings, remnants of the Old Race, brothers or sisters depending on your point of view, destroying worlds and systems in their seemingly eternal tug-of-war. The Shadows preferred kicking over an ant hill to stir up the ants to battle other ants so the winner emerged as a stronger, smarter, and better ant while the Vorlons nurtured the races, tampering with their DNA to make them stronger, better, and smarter than the ants that preceded the ants the Vorlons reshaped to create better ants. It didn't matter which species died as long as the winning side was their side. The Vorlons cared that their nurturing would win and the Shadows preferred their aggression would be the winning side.

How is the illegal immigrant question different? You may think it's a matter of degree, but essentially it is the same. It is always the same. The only thing that has changed is the label we put on it to make what has become immature, irresponsible, and wrong acceptable and palatable. It is the same thing it always was and the new label changes nothing but our perception of the problem. Labeling garbage as art or social justice. It is still garbage. The Conservatives are the Shadows and Liberals are the Vorlons. The methods vary, but the end is the same. Slaves are slaves whether they are nurtured or forced to action. Illegal immigration is just another label for slavery. All the arguments for the rights of illegal immigrants and the liberal calls for social justice change nothing. White washing manure doesn't change manure. It may look better painted white, but it is still manure.

When we discuss illegal immigration we are still discussing slavery. Let's get that straight from the outset. Give us your poor, your starving, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. They are people willing to give up everything so their children have food, shelter, and clothing, a reason to get up in the morning to earn a few pesetas or pennies or dollars to buy food, shelter, and clothing to make the future less frightening and more comfortable. Centuries ago the system was called feudalism. A lord claimed title over the land and the serfs who inhabited the land and took what they wanted from the serfs: their daughters' virginity, the food from their mouths, and their freedom to choose their own lives. Though the resources were the Lord's due (determined by the Lord and taken from the people who had no say), those resources were stolen.

Feudalism became colonialism and serfs became slaves, conquered tribes, the losers in tribal warfare or stolen to be sold as slaves for money and goods that could be sold or traded for more food, shelter, and clothing. The serfs were slaves to their Masters as surely as the tribesmen, women, and children were slaves to be chained, bound, and packed like sardines in the holds of ships and given just enough to eat to keep them alive until they could be hosed down and sold at auction. Tribes preyed on their neighbors as predators prey on the old, the sick, the weak and vulnerable, and the young to be brought down and killed to feed themselves and their offspring. It has always been thus: the larger and more powerful prey on the weaker and their continuation was assured. Big fish prey on little fish and the bottom feeders get the scraps, but every species wins as they prey on weaker species, and sometimes on each other, in the never ending struggle to continue. Might makes right. Vegetarians point to the grass eaters as harmless because grass eaters consume only grass. What about the grass? Does grass not live? Does grass not grow, procreate, and live? So you choose not to eat animals, make a point of eating nothing with a face; you eat plants. You are harmless, as harmless as a cow, sheep, or buffalo. What if plants don't want to be eaten? What if plants have feelings? Are you not destroying another species for food, to quiet the rumbling in your belly? You kill to eat. Plant or animal, you end their life to continue your own. That is the cycle of life on this planet and in this time. That is also the reality of slavery. Illegal immigrants are the slaves who choose to walk through any danger, endure any hardship so they can feed, clothe, and house themselves by any means necessary. Those means in this time and in this country mean breaking this country's laws, the United States of America's laws to sell their labor, their time, and themselves for food so they can continue another day, another hour, another minute as long as they continue to exist. When this country was a colony belonging to Great Britain, an extension of the Great British Empire, people sold themselves and their children for a specified period so they too could come to this unexplored land to make their fortune, but really to ensure they would have a place to live, clothes to wear, and food to eat. These indentured slaves were guaranteed a certain quality of life and they were fed, usually with the scraps from their Master's table, but they were fed. Captured enemies were sold to enterprising men and sent across the vast oceans in the bellies of ships where they might die, but they might also live to be sold as slaves. Slaves were cheaper than indentured servants and there were no contracts. Masters paid more for indentured servants than slaves and that cut into profits. It is a simple equation. Cost must never equal or exceed profits. Smart Masters spent less in producing a crop in order to reap great rewards. Indentured servants cost more than slaves. Indentured servants worked only for the term of the contract. Slaves worked until they were traded, sold, or died. Pay one price and slaves will work, breed more slaves who will breed even more slaves. Slaves were an investment for the future that continued paying dividends for generations to come. Illegal immigrants are the latest label for slaves. These slaves provide the labor to pick the crops that will be sold at the market and cost less than hiring documented workers. That means more profit after the crops are sold. Call them resources, undocumented workers, illegal immigrants, whatever label you choose to salve your conscience and give slavery a makeover. In the end, these poor huddled masses are still slaves, resources that will make more money for their employers. These resources with faces and names are the latest on the list to be plundered, raped, and pillaged. Yes, there are good employers (masters) and bad employers, but ultimately they are Masters and the people are slaves. You are either the big fish that eats or the smaller fish that is eaten. No matter the perspective and no matter how you agonize over the rights of the fish that ends up as food, the fish is still eaten and nourishes another. Why else would the wealthy and powerful hire illegal immigrants? It is not to save them from poverty and ignorance. It is to cut the cost of the labor so that there is more money to buy bigger and better comfort. It's economics. The best economy is one where the cost never exceeds the profits and comfort at a cheaper price is much more comfortable. It all comes down to degree. Will you sell yourself for enough food to live another minute, another hour, another day or will you sell someone else for your comfort to someone who is buying so they will have more money to buy more comfort? It is always one species preying on a smaller, weaker, more vulnerable species. Have no doubts about that. Whether you eat meat or plants, you prey on life. What do you want? When you play the Game of Life, you eat or are eaten.

That is all. Disperse.

Review: Dark Eden

I wanted to like Dark Eden and I did initially. The repetition didn't put me off at first and then it became monotonous and then expected: good good, bad bad, and so on. Borrowing from George R. R. Martin and other authors who decide to tell their story through various characters by choosing to tell the story from a single point of view and picking up where the previous character left off is getting a bit dated, but did move the story forward, albeit from an often oppositional point of view.

What I found most interesting was the narrative that one man and one woman decided to populate a planet they had chosen to remain on by themselves and the only birth defects were hare lips (bat-faced) and clubfoot (clawfoot) deformities after generations over 163 years of breeding indiscriminately and frequently. The Family must stay together, which is the central theme challenged by one newhair (teenager 15 years old at the beginning of the story) who has deliberately killed a leopard instead of climbing a tree to get out of the leopard's way. John Redlantern is first lauded and awarded one day free of community chores and then hunted as his unorthodox behavior continues and is viewed as disruptive until he is finally hunted by a batfaced older Redlantern who has been denied slipping with any attractive female, especially the female he most desires, a Spiketree female who publicly and often spurns him for Juicy John Redlantern, a handsome newhair who is also the slipping (sexual) favorite of the Redlantern branch of the Family. For a group/branch leader such behavior is frowned upon because she was his surrogate mother, though not John's biological mother, and he was consider too young for slipping (sexual intercourse).

The evolution of Earth speak is charming, if confusing at times: veekle for vehicle, Secret Ree for secretary, and so forth. (I still cannot parse Strornry and any enlightenment is most welcome.)

Eden is dark except for the plant and animal adaptations of producing their own light and heat on this dark and nearly completely undisturbed and unexplored planet and all long for the Earth they have been told about but never seen with its brilliant light from above as bright as a Whitelantern tree's interior. The Family members, the generations of Angela and Tommy's progeny, a black woman and a white man, have stayed where the Landing vehicle (veekle) arrived and took off from with the three men, two fugitives and one policeman sent from Earth to bring them back after they stole the galactic cruiser, Defiant, to go joy riding because one of the thieves was listening to Jesus instructing him to take the Defiant and fly off into the vastness of space to explore and find new worlds, according to the story handed down by the Oldest (blind and infirm oldest of the Family) every Any Virsiry (anniversary) 365 wakings (days) from the previous annual recitation and re-enactment of Tommy and Angela's story.

That generations of Tommy and Angela's offspring have remained in the same vicinity for nearly 200 years is as surprising as it taking that long for some curious youth to ask questions and demand answers as to why they have to stay in that exact spot while the resources dwindle and the Family go hungry when there must be more places to explore and settle down. It is not mentioned, but their continued inbreeding from the same shallow genetic pool would continue breeding the same defects, clubbed feet and hair lips, often with continued and increasing defects until they breed themselves out of existence.

It is unfortunate that it took Chris Beckett 2/3 of the narrative to get to the point and then raced through the last 1/3 of the book to wrap it all up with the ending I suspected at the beginning. That was a bit of a let down in the end, though there is room enough for more, vastly more. An interesting book with too many repetitions and far too little development after seemingly endless insight into John Redlantern's motives and actions. Beckett raced through what should have been the focus of the story instead of the rushed ending. 3/5 stars is the best I can give. Moderate execution of a treasure trove of possibilities. Better luck next time, Chris.

Reimagining the Future

I've some thoughts on a replacement for the Affordable Care Act. I originally thought when ACA was first proposed that Medicare should be expanded and was roundly criticized. I still think that expanding Medicare would be a good place to start for universal health care as the bureaucracy is already in place. Get rid of Worker's Compensation and use their budget and employees to fill the gaps that the current Medicare bureaucracy doesn't have or will need since there will be no need for WC since everything would fall under the healthcare umbrella. Result: smaller government, no need for further funding, and less red tape for workers injured on the job. No need for networks or the red tape that go with all that because they are all American citizens in need of healthcare. No need to hire more government workers since the workers from Workers' Comp are already trained and can be shifted to the expanded Medicare division. Streamlining shouldn't be an issue as long as bureaucracy antics are stopped. For instance, padding a budget to make sure you have the funds for overtime in case you need overtime by requiring mandatory overtime to spend the budget you already have in order to justify a budget hike the next fiscal year.

At any rate, Medicaid would no longer be necessary either since a universal health care plan based on Medicare with the resources, skills, and knowledge of the already existing Medicare bureau would cover welfare recipients since they are citizens and thus entitled to universal health care under the expanded Medicare umbrella. Deal with Medicaid in the same manner as WC by using trained employees to fill slots in the expanded Medicare division and divert funds from Medicaid to cover the UHC (universal health care) plan. Smaller government, same budget, and utilizing the existing personnel and expertise. Result: consolidation of health care services to the people.

People could purchase insurance based on far more competitive rates since health insurance will no longer be mandated by law. Insurance companies will have to restructure their current plans and costs in line with the UHC as will hospitals and providers to reflect the changed landscape of UHC for all citizens. Welfare will be reduced since Medicaid will no longer be part of the bureaucracy or the welfare system. By reducing costs across the board in the health care industry and resetting the insurance business by taking them out of the overall health care costs, we can begin working on lowering the cost of drugs and streamlining medical care.

The biggest complaint about universal health care is what would happen to the health care industry and insurance. Take insurance out of the equation and re-allocate budgets and costs in line with expanded Medicare, get rid of Medicaid and Workers' Comp and use their resources and funding to cover expanded Medicare, and we will see a better regulated health care industry overall.

Granted, I'm not a bureaucrat, but I have worked in the health care industry for over 30 years in insurance, claims, workers' comp, medicaid, medicare, and in hospitals and doctors' offices so I have gained some insight into the problems and some solutions. It doesn't take a bureaucrat to fix the problems of bureaucracy but talking with the people who have worked in and with the red tape that gums up the works. I have solutions for the homeless issue as well and it doesn't include banning them from the streets with an 'out of sight, out of mind' mentality, but a plan that will rehab high crime areas, repurpose resources, retrain the homeless, and give them education and skills to get back into the mainstream based on my own experience being homeless for a short period of time in the 1980s and looking at the problems first hand. We do not need more government, we need common sense solutions to the issues on the ground. Less political rhetoric and more elbow grease and common sense solutions.

I am offering something other than empty wishes and anger. As an American citizen, this is my ante for the common pot.

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.

A Different Kind of Green

 Sometimes too much information is TOO MUCH information and not helpful when making life changing choices.

I've read numerous articles, listened to far too many experts, and spent a load of cash trying different products supposed to make me healthier. The problem is information overload beneath an avalanche of data without the time necessary to thoroughly sort through it all, check out credentials, and verify scientific papers and statistics, most of which are contradictory and decidedly not helpful.

I no longer believe that a pill can solve all health problems and I know for certain that drug companies are more interested in problems than in health. That much has been easy to sort out.

Blame my focus on health on the early (very early) lessons learned that one can only be healthy when one is the size and shape of an anorexic bean pole that shows off the clothes because making the clothes look good is all that ever matters.

I was a gawky child with oddly shaped parts, mostly notably thick ankles, thick calves, and blocky looking legs. The rest of me was pretty average in some areas and too mature for my age in others, as I was regularly reminded every time I was forced to drink reconstituted Carnation dry low fat milk and given diet pills at the age of 8 or 9, until the doctor said I was far too young to be on drugs. The result was that every mouthful I ate was constantly scrutinized and taking too much meat, too many pieces of broccoli, sliced fresh tomato, or salad followed by the public shaming, most effective and most often used during family dinners. The tablespoon-sized piece of meat, no matter how I nibbled at it, went too quickly and I was always hungry for more salad and more vegetables, especially the kind kids usually do not eat. I couldn't get enough, but then most of a person's growth happens in those years up to the middle teens (and for another 10 years) laying down the skeletal and muscle growth that supports an adult throughout their life. In short, kids are always hungry because they are still growing.

At any rate, through the diets, forced austerity, and deprivations, not to mention the pregnancy years (one right after another), I had an unhealthy relationship with food. To me, food meant deprivation and denial -- a whole lot of denial -- of the foods I loved the most, vegetables, fruits, salads, and the occasional (when we could afford it) steak.

As I've aged, I have learned more about food and about what little I know of my genetic and familial history, and have decided that maybe becoming a vegetarian is a good choice. I still cannot decide whether corn, whole grains, legumes, and peas (I do enjoy them all) are healthy or harmful. I worry about diabetes (corn, green peas, whole grains, and legumes are no-nos and lead to diabetes) because so many of my relatives have had and continue to have diabetes. I don't want to be one of them. I am concerned about which is healthier, grass fed or grass finished, meat. I already search for the best place to get fish and how much mercury and toxic effluvia are contained, avoiding shellfish of all kinds, and won't eat farm-raised fish because of the antibiotics used in massive doses because of the conditions in the fish farms which beggar imagination and are horrifying enough for me, even more so for the fish confined in over crowded pens for the sake of maximizing profits and ignoring the needs of fish and the people intended to eat them. Not even with a really good sauce.

From that perspective, going vegetarian is probably the best route for me. But then there are the conflicting studies, conflicting views, and conflict, conflict, conflict with not a clear truth anywhere to be found. Even choosing to be vegetarian, there is the issue of whether that would be just as restrictive as the rest of my life because of what I should, probably, must give up to be healthy. It's all so confusing.

I watched a documentary last night about the plant-based lifestyle showcasing athletes who have grown big and strong with loads of stamina and look healthy and fit. I've seen athletes touting carb-loading before strenuous events, low carb and high protein/paleo/Atkin's plan adherents and the many rebranded but still Atkin's based plans, the fruit-only plans, the vegan and vegetarian plans, and everything in between. I've heard that soy-based foods are healthiest -- and unhealthiest -- choices and then there is the prevalence of GMOs in soy and the nearly universal use of soy to make all kinds of meat substitutes and replacements for estrogen to ease menopause (which is behind me now), lost weight, grow hair, battle diabetes, etc. until I am tired of listening, reading, and making sense of out what has become mindless nonsense touted by whichever corporation has figured out a way to sell their snake oil for the most money by bilking the most people.

I can live without meat and fish as I have lived without shellfish and fish without scales like bottom-feeding catfish, but I'm not willing to do without vegetables and fruits. That far I will not go.

As long as I can be sure my plant-based foods are non-GMO, not treated with glyphosates at any point from preparing the soil to harvesting the food, and are from organic sources grown with organic practices, I'm good. There is no one to tell me I cannot have more salad, another ear of corn, or more Brussels sprouts to go with my baked sweet potato. I choose plants and will explore the adventure of plant-based foods until I find no more plants to discover. I might even resurrect a few plants from the past, anything is possible.

One final thought. Roman soldiers, and gladiators, were called barley eaters. From my historic research, only the wealthy could afford to eat meat regularly or had access to the finest fish. The bulk of the common Roman soldier ate barley bread, vegetables, olives, dates, and legumes and they conquered the known world. I'll take a page from their history and choose barley, corn, vegetables, herbs, fruits -- plant-based foods. Imagine fields of growing fruits, vegetables, legumes, and tubers instead of cattle, sheep, and hogs. Better yet, think of all the oxygen all those plants will add to the atmosphere. Fresh country air will have a very different aroma then.

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.

Hard to Kill a Sacred Cow

Disentangling the Hyksos from the Hebrews and trying to figure out the pharaonic time line, which is way off. The Hyksos, Shepherd Kings, may be the Mongols in which case they are definitely not the Hebrews who had resided in Canaan for many years before the Hyksos invasion that split Egypt into two pharaonic lines of rule. There were the traditional rulers of Kemet (Egypt) forced to the south and the Hyksos rulers at the Nile delta in the north (according to the compass).

The difficulties lie with the Apis bull mummies, a tradition the Hyksos continued as they adopted Egyptian ways. Since archaeologists and historians see the Apis bull mummies as a single time line instead of parallel time lines they have muddied the actual time line and the line of ruling pharaohs. Kamose was pharaoh and expelled the Hyksos from Egypt, much of which has been chronicled in the Taita books by Wilbur Smith.

As a result of the erroneous ordering of the Egyptian royal families and the insertion of Ramesses as the pharaoh of the Exodus, much of history has been perverted, pinning the Exodus of the Hebrews much later than it actually happened as shown by archaeological digs at Avaris. The evidence of Joseph and the Hebrews in Egypt and their 400 years of slavery are readily seen at the earlier level which dates to the Middle Kingdom but have been deemed an anomaly because that level is long before the rise of Ramesses of the Late Kingdom era.

All the evidence is clear, just as the evidence from Canaan where Jericho once stood but again, it dates to the Middle Kingdom. All the evidence mirrors what is written in the Torah and so all of the Hebrew history is deemed an exercise in mythology and faith not to be confused with actual history because the proof is too early in the supposed time line and before Ramesses.

Aah, Sacred Cows.

In writing authors call them their darlings and resist killing them off to make the narrative better. In history and archaeology these sacred cows pervert the time line and the accepted history and thus what is right in front of the eyes is relegated to anomalies, mistakes, or in many cases tossed aside because the evidence does not fit the accepted version of history. How often such sacred cows get in the way and force historians and archaeologists and scientists to risk destruction of their career or giving in to the accepted version because they refuse to kill the sacred cows and rewrite history again because it makes everything they have written invalid.

How would scientists react when physics' sacred cows are impeding knowledge and the scientific method, such as Einstein's seminal E=mc2 equation when it is shown as invalid? Do scientists reorder the universe or do they ridicule, criticize, and dismiss the new findings that prove Einstein's equations were wrong to protect their sacred cows? Should scientists have sacred cows? Doesn't the scientific method prevent sacred cows by following the data?

When I was a child, I spoke as a child and saw as a child, but when I became an adult, I spoke as an adult and saw as an adult.

That is all. Disperse.

God Doesn't Need a Gun

Frank vs. God is a movie that we all should watch, especially if we avoid talking about god or watching or reading anything about god. There is a lot more to the story than a man whose house and dog were destroyed when a tornado took out his house, the only house on the block, and the insurance company wouldn't pay to rebuild the house because the house and dog were destroyed as an act of god. In plain business, insurance business, terms, David Frank was not covered because the insurance company had hedged their bets and cut their losses.

Do you realize that an act of god clause is so that insurance companies can limit their losses? Oh, you didn't realize that insurance companies are in the business of making money, that they are legalized corporate gamblers instituted for the sole purpose of making money? Too bad. David Frank didn't know that either and that is why he got screwed.

David Frank, determined to get restitution for his losses, decides to sue God since it was, according to the legal and binding contract he signed with the insurance company, God's fault his house was utterly destroyed and his dog, Brutus, killed. What the insurance company (and God) didn't count on is that David Frank is a corporate lawyer, a really good and successful corporate lawyer and he is serious about suing God.

And he does.

The judge, because of the advice his campaign manager gave him, decides against the usual way of dealing with what are termed frivolous lawsuits and throwing David Frank's lawsuit out the first day decides it would be good for his political career to hear the case. After all, the judge is certain David Frank will crash and burn and he will look good with the voters in the media. What does he have to lose?

That is the real point of this movie and this post. What does anyone have to lose when they sign a social contract and take on the evil opposition?

To the sign-carrying individuals outside the courtroom every day calling David Frank a heretic and a sinner blaspheming against God and begging God to strike David Frank down, they are righteous because they are defending God and anything they do to David Frank because he mocks God is justified. Everything is justified when standing up for God -- even killing David Frank and taking his life. Nothing is against the law and everything is justified under God to protect the sanctity of God.

That same righteous argument is used in defense of violence every time someone calls someone else a name, slanders and libels someone else, threatens to bomb someone's house or their car, sets someone's property on fire, pillages someone's store, steals or destroys someone's property, or guns someone down, or rapes and murders someone. Everything is justified when the other person is in the wrong and you are in the right -- even when what you believe is based on a lie.

Here in the United States of America were are at war. The right side is the side that protects women's rights, children, and the sanctity of human civil rights. The wrong side is the other side that has committed crimes from "...questionable business dealings to allegations of sexual assault."  At least that is what The Atlantic Monthly claimed.

Trump will also leave people without health care as he destroys the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Well, he did say so when he was on the campaign trail and, unlike every other politician that promised Hope and Change and delivered nothing once they were sworn into office, the opposition believes Trump because he's not a politician and he doesn't understand how politics works or how to run a country like the USA.

How many people screaming for Trump's impeachment before he even took office bothered to look at what Trump actually said and did? Did they read Trump's position on the Affordable Care Act or health care?

First and foremost, did any of Trump's opposition stop to think about what happens when a bill passed by Congress is repealed? Trump cannot just say the Affordable Care Act is dead. He must first ask Congress to set in motion the actions necessary by law and spelled out in the U.S. Constitution to repeal the law. Trump may ask, but Congress must act. The President of the United States cannot repeal Obamacare -- or indeed any law. He must follow the process laid out in the U.S. Constitution.

The same process must be followed if the President of the United States decides to repeal Roe v. Wade. Though the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that Roe v. Wade is constitutional, Trump must ask Congress to initiate the action to repeal the law before Roe v. Wade can be repealed or erased from the books. The same is true of any laws on the books that have been legally enacted by Congress and ratified by the sitting President.

The same is not true of Executive Orders signed by the President. Executive Orders can be erased by the sitting President signing an Executive Order of his own that strikes down his predecessors' executive orders. In fact, a single Executive Order signed by the sitting President can invalidate all the executive orders signed into existence by any and all predecessors, such as the provisions to the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) that Obama signed into existence
with his own Executive Pen, including turning over control of the Internet to the United Nations that became effective October 1, 2016 and every other questionable part of the TPP Obama flourished his Executive Pen over, including handing over sovereignty of the United States to the U.N. because that will enhance US security. The point of all this is that what you think is right is not the only measure of what is actually right -- or righteous.

Trump has been vilified, ridiculed, denounced, and blamed for the direction the United States is pursuing. He has been denounced as a violator of women's rights and called on to answer for his assault on women because of a video where he claimed to be a stud in front of other men who could have any woman he wanted. How many men and boys have claimed the same from the time they hit puberty? How many men claimed to be a chick magnet, a stud, a real player in front of women they intended to seduce?

Men claim to be sensitive to women's rights and women's needs, but that is a more recent phenomenon especially in a culture where women are chattel to be bartered and sold like cattle. Women have feminists now who will knock a man down when he asserts his rights in modern times in the Western world, but there are plenty of cultures where women are still objects to be bought and sold in alleys and in broad daylight where they must hide their hair, their faces, and their bodies to keep men from being overcome by a woman's power and it has nothing to do with protecting women's chastity since in those same cultures, if a woman is raped she is judged to have incited the rape and is put to death or stoned or both. Where are the women's marches in those countries?

What we see in the mainstream media is little more than propaganda meant to inflame the people and enrage them by spouting half truths and outright lies in order to incite violence that will hopefully burst into civil war and then world war. Mob mentality rules.

Being moved to violence is the goal and the tactics strike at our emotions, often through graphic video and photos, most of which are Photoshopped, faked, and staged, in order to shut down common sense and rational thought. Why else would a protest for women's rights, the same rights that women have enjoyed in the United States and other civilized western nations, when no woman's right have been violated. Women are free to vote, free to choose abortion or adoption or having a child, free to protest, free to run for office, free to own and operate a business, a home, and a career, free to be police officers, soldier, and pilots, and free to serve as officers or enlisted soldiers. No one can take that away without the majority consent and votes of Congress and the president does not have the authority to take those rights away.

How many tens of thousands of women marched safely in protest? How many knew they were marching for the Democratic National Convention or the Democratic Party trying to de-legitimize Donald Trump's presidency? How many of those women knew they were marching for Hillary and Democrats and the loss of the November 2016 political races where the voters chose Republicans over Democrats at the polls? How many of those tens of thousands of women listening to incendiary speeches by female celebrities threatening to bomb the White House knew they had marched for threats of bombings the White House and harming President Trump, his wife, and his family? How many of those tens of thousands of women helped to set fires, impede emergency vehicles, or assaulted police officers? Is that what those women signed up for when they planned to march for women's rights? What about the rights of the people they harmed?

In the movie Frank vs. God, Corporate Attorney David Frank stated that God was omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient -- all powerful, present everywhere, and all knowing. The protesters outside the courthouse, and especially the man who shot David Frank in the name of God, evidently did not know that God had that much power. After all, why would an all power, all knowing God who is always everywhere need with a gun or a man filled with hate to do his dirty work? Maybe his believers don't believe in God's power any more than David Frank does. That is why they took it into their own hands.

The protesters don't believe in freedom or the U.S. Constitution, Congress, or the rule of law any more than God's messengers did. Beware your message of gets lost the moment you hammer your point across when you assault another person, take his life, his property, his voice, and his constitutional and legal rights in the name of peace. Your message of peace and love has been trumped by hate born of ego.

That is all. Disperse.

Does Love Trump Hate?

Throughout the latter part of the campaign season just past as Hillary and Trump stumped for votes, Hillary's Stronger Together message took on another slogan: Love Trumps Hate.

Hillary lost and the message that Love Trumps Hate continues as tens of thousands of people, many who never voted for Hillary or Trump, continue to carry signs and chant the slogan: Love trumps Hate.

These activists protested up to December 19, 2016, begged electors to change their votes to Hillary and declare her the new President of the United States (POTUS), abandoning their sworn oaths as electors to do their duty to their country by declaring Hillary the winner. There were claims that electors were offered money to offset the fines in those states that impose fines for faithless electors. I watched video of two electors already pledged to Donald Trump state they would not cast their electoral votes for Trump because of the claims that Trump was a hateful person who disrespected women, threatened them with grabbing their pussies, and in general was a reprehensible demagogue who was unfit for the office of President and unable to steer a straight course for the American ship of state.

Out of the 306 electoral votes Trump won during the election he ended up with 304 after the electors in all states had cast their votes, clearly well over the 270 votes Trump needed to win the election fair and square. When the Electoral College votes were tabulated, 7 electors voted against their pledge candidate: 2 against Trump and 5 against Hillary. According to Wikipedia,"A further three electors attempted to vote against Clinton but were replaced or forced to vote again. Ultimately, Trump received 304 electoral votes and Clinton garnered 227, while Colin Powell won three, and John Kasich, Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders, and Faith Spotted Eagle each received one."  Though Trump did not win the popular vote, it was the Electoral College votes that handily resulted in declaring Trump President, which is the way the United State Constitution set up the voting process because, as Thomas Jefferson stated, pure democracies are doomed to failure. 

The Founding Fathers chose a democratic republic for the their brand new country and set up the Electoral College to ensure the USA would not end up at the mercy of the mob -- the popular vote. As Hillary ably showed, Trump won most of the country's votes while Hillary cleaned up in New York, California, and Wisconsin, states with the largest population centers in the country. Had Hillary won, the future of this country would have been determined by the majority, the mob. The Electoral College votes, even with 7 faithless electors, was determined by 538 electoral votes that spread the deciding vote across all the states and not just the states with the highest population. The 227 electoral votes Hillary won wasn't even close to the 270 electoral votes needed to win. 

The anguished cries of "Hillary won the popular vote" crashed against the solid bulwark of the Founding Fathers' foresight in instituting the Electoral College. It is the same mistake when Hillary campaigned against Obama in 2008, failing to garner sufficient numbers of delegate votes to win the nomination at the Democratic National Convention. She won the popular vote, but in the end lost the delegates to Obama in the same fashion that Bernie Sanders won the popular vote and failed to get enough of the delegate votes to capture the Democratic Party nomination.  

Disgruntled Hillary supporters, as well as disenfranchised Bernie Sanders's supporters still smarting after being summarily handed over to Hillary in a demonstration of Democratic Party solidarity, howled and screamed their rage when it became clear Trump had won by a narrow margin. Trump was not their president they declared, shouting "Love trumps Hate" as they marched, demonstrated, rioted, looted, burned, and impeded even emergency vehicle traffic. Holding their placards and banners high, "Love trumps Hate," these supporters assaulted everyone they believed had betrayed the country by voting for Trump, often without listening when their victims declared they had voted for Johnson or Stein or abstained from voting. The "Love trumps Hates" gangs took their rage out on everyone and anyone they believed had allowed Trump to triumph over the people's choice, Hillary Clinton. 

The violent mob mentality continued until Thursday, January 19, 2017 when Donald J. Trump took the oath of office and was sworn in as President of the United States in spite of boycotts, marches, demonstrations, burnings, looting, violence, and assaults on civilians and police still chanting "Love trumps Hate"! Many members of the mob admittedly never voted for Hillary or Trump during the election. They didn't vote for Gov. Gary Johnson or Dr. Jill Stein either. They chose not to make their choices known at the ballot box, but they were determined to make their voices heard loudly and clearly right up to and beyond Inauguration Day. "Love trumps Hate"!

The "Love trumps Hate" crowd have made it plain that President Donald J. Trump is not their representative and have vowed to make sure the next 4 years they will obstruct, impede, and refuse to obey whatever President Trump does and says during his tenure in the White House the same way that those voters who declared President Barack Obama was not their representative when he entered the White House after he was inaugurated in January 2009. The difference is President Obama's opposition created the Tea Party Movement to voice their opposition to Obama's tenure and held Obama's feet to the fire on every issue. The fact that the Republican Party candidates took control of both houses of Congress (House of Representatives and the Senate) in the autumn of 2009 is proof of their opposition to Obama. Even though Trump failed to win the popular vote during the 2016 campaign, the Republican Party candidates won at every level of government: local, state, and federal, a resounding defeat for the Democratic Party across the board. Both houses of Congress picked up more Republicans during 2016 delivering a stunning defeat to Democrats throughout the country, not only to Hillary but to outgoing President Obama.  

Amid unsubstantiated claims that the Russians and President Vladimir Putin tampered with the presidential race, disaffected voters (and nonvoters protesting Trump's election) cling to that hope that some shred of evidence will prove that Trump cheated to win in the same what opposition to Obama claimed that Obama was not born in the United States and was not an eligible candidate for President of the United States. The fact that Obama's much publicized State of Hawaii birth certificate posted on the WhiteHouse.gov website was proven to be a fake has been lost in the claims that Trump has never held public office and is therefore unsuited to hold the highest office in the land. It does not matter that Obama's experience in public office is in a term as an Illinois state senator and an uncompleted sophomore term in the U.S. Senate are not much more experience than the 40 years Trump spent as a businessman and real estate mogul. 

We, the people, tend to forget the men who first took office in the United States of America's fledgling government were not politicians but printers, publishers, ministers, soldiers, silversmiths, farmers, and business owners, men who had no experience in politics other than what they learned as they broke away from England and set up their own government, sending farmers and lawyers and publishers as ambassadors to European countries to make treaties, make loans, and make peace or ready for war, the same farmers, ministers, and businessmen who took their muskets and fought the trained soldiers, the Red Coats, sent by King George (mad King George) to put down the colonists' rebellion and restore British order. 

We all start from somewhere, often choosing a path different than the one we originally set out on, learning as we go. The future is a not set in stone and often seems to be set in water beginning down the mountains as snow melts into rivulets, creeks, and streams, joining the rushing rivers and cascading in torrents, picking up stones, pecking away at mountains, eating the sand and soil along its path until it ends in the sea, frequently widening river banks, cutting new streams, and changing the course of rivers along the way. Nothing stands in the way for long and few things remain unchanged by the relentless headlong dash to the sea. 

We have seen frontiersmen like Daniel Boone, and soldiers like Andrew Jackson and Ulysses Grant, slaves like Fredrick Douglass, and men and women of different backgrounds take their place in the U.S. government to contribute their time and talents in service to the people. Not until more recent times have we seen men and women graduate from school to take their seats in government, not for a term or two, but for 30, 40, and 50 years, no longer serving the people, but serving themselves at the expense of the people. Maybe it is time for a change, a chance to go back to the roots out of which this country, the United States of America, grew and give the people the chance to speak through their elected representatives, men and women who have worked in the world and are not merely the latest generation of a long line of lawyers and politicians who work for themselves. 

We may see disaster over the next 4 years or we may see a brighter future. The only thing we will know is by keeping our eyes, the peoples' eyes, on what proceeds from President Trump's policies. Only that way will we, the people, know for sure whether this President, like so many others before him, are speaking for the country or are merely a mouthpiece for the Powers That Be. Only then will we be able to decide whether to love or hate Trump. 

That is all. Disperse.