Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Pope Francis met with Kim Davis and encouraged her

http://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-kim-davis-recounts-secret-meeting-pope-francis/story?id=34143874

It seems strange that someone who was denying people their legal right to marry -- making her own decision to deny them a marriage license -- would not only be given a private meeting with the Pope but even be encouraged by him in her bigotry.  Her own history of 4 marriages, in which she was not denied her right to marry the persons of her choices, makes this all the more puzzling.  To be honest, it lowers my opinion of the Pope and his decisions.  Kim Davis has received his blessing for her refusal to do onto others as she would have them do unto her, so it looks like the Golden Rule does not always have to be followed, according to the Pope. With his praise of her actions, he seems to be setting up Kim Davis as a role model for others to follow.  Sorry, but to me, she is a role model to be avoided at all cost.

In addition, the Catholic Church and its hypocrisy re. the sexual predations of its priests on children has still not been adequately addressed by any Pope, including Francis.  With all the wealth in the Catholic Church, reparation to the victims and their families should have been made LONG AGO.  Even so, no amount of money can repay them for the innocence that was taken away from them by their abusers, who, as priests in the service of God, were given the sacred duty to guide and protect the children. And what about all the children who were mistreated, beaten, and used as slave labor by nuns like the Magdalenes in Ireland--and I'm sure in many other places as well?  I think everyone should watch the documentary "Deliver Us from Evil" and the movie "The Magdalene Sisters" to learn of the dehumanizing abuse that has been perpetrated on innocent children by so-called "servants of God."

Even with all the good will Francis is bringing back to the Church, these important issues should not be ignored or forgotten.


 
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Friday, September 25, 2015

Zipadee Doo Dah! Boehner clicks his heels with joy as he dances away


John Boehner's happy and relieved Zipadee doo dah! exit as House Speaker was sumthin' to see today.  It looks bad for the establishment candidates Bush and Kasich but good for the nutcase candidates.  Trump may actually be on his way to winning the "prize" (such as it will be with the right-wing fanatics in charge of the once fairly responsible Republican party).  Trump wants to put Sarah Palin in his cabinet if he becomes President.  Oh my, my...we are in for some crazy times ahead! Karl Rove, the Cheneys and the Bushes must be screaming and pulling out their hair (whatever they have left) by the bunches. 

Let's see....How would wise old Uncle Remus put it?  "And ol' Duhmbya, he just layin' low in the briar patch and tryin' to stay away from the finger pointin' goin' on against him and that sly ol' fox Cheney who put the first nails in the Republican party coffin."


http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/25/politics/john-boehner-resignation-jeb-bush-2016-presidential-campaign/index.html


EXCERPT:

And if GOP Rep. Peter King of New York is right, it may already be too late for the establishment to prevail.

King said Boehner's departure was essentially "throwing raw meat" to a "small but loud faction" of the GOP and was bad news for the party.

"It signals that crazies have taken over the party," King told CNN. "This has never happened before in our country. Where a person doing a job, the Speaker of the house, was removed from office, by a small faction because they want these unreasonable demands that if you don't agree with them you shut the government down. This is insanity."



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Thursday, September 24, 2015

Video: Geoengineering at least discussed on CBS news program in California


There is a principle which is proof against all information, which is proof against all arguments, which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance; that principle is contempt, prior to investigation.  ~Herbert Spencer

http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/cbs-news-covers-climate-engineering/?inf_contact_key=11b7c850589897f68ef0d5fb10b481888a905b90d09ee17544b5b3c9136f0166


Of course, in this journalistic report, the authentic claim by Dane Wigington about geoengineering is laughed at, mocked and ridiculed, etc.  But at least it finally made the news.  The news journalists who covered the story were extremely surprised at the huge turnout (over 1,000 people) in the Redding, CA auditorium for the presentation by Wigington and other professionals who know beyond doubt that chemtrails and other weather modification attempts like HAARP are absolutely taking place. 

Ridicule of the messenger is always the first thing to happen when someone starts to point out the obvious ("Look, everybody!  The emperor has no clothes!"), but eventually people with open minds begin to look and see the truth for themselves.  Unfortunately, in our society as it is set up now, the mainstream media is always the last to investigate and verify truths that might hurt big corporations or big government (remember Big Tobacco claims that cigarettes don't cause cancer? Remember the decades it took for the media to finally get on board with truth about that?). Sigh

Dane Wigington and all the people (numbers increasing daily, thank God) who are on board with him are in the vanguard of truth on the subject of climate manipulation by the governments of our country and other countries.  I am among the group calling out for full release of truth to the public.  I hope and pray it doesn't take several decades for skeptics and the media to catch up.  Our planet and its species (including us humans) don't have that long....

Read the article, watch the video with Dane being interviewed -- and note Dane's comments in red in the typed version of the interview.  He is SO right!  The scoffing and ridiculing professor/skeptic on the video is just the latest version of the "authorities" who kept claiming cigarettes were good for you.  On and on we go on this not-so-merry-go-round...

When will the people (and the media) wake up???  It seems too few of us are always years ahead of the general public on subjects like this.  Many of us who find ourselves consistently ahead of the pack feel like anachronisms -- out of sync with the culture and the time, seeing clearly while most appear to be blind. Many years' warnings about the dangers of nuclear energy comes to mind--scoffed at for decades, but proven to be true when the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters absolutely confirmed that the warnings were justified. 

And now we have the same kind of horror going on with manipulation of the weather.  Earthly spiritual understanding is not yet evolved enough for the kinds of scientific experiments being undertaken without concern for the dangers.  Like children playing with fire with no knowledge of how to control the conflagration, we are asking to be burned.  I am hoping that eventually everyone will catch up, which does happen occasionally when the mockery turns to "Oh--guess what!  It seems those people we ridiculed as "conspiracy nuts" were actually telling the truth!"  If only the truth could make itself known sooner -- but that would require people to open their minds.  The Donald Trump phenomenon verifies that intelligent, open minds are in too short supply in our times.  Sigh. 
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Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Rare astrological/astronomical event (supermoon and total eclipse) this weekend

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/supermoon-total-lunar-eclipse-rare-sky-show-sunday-night/

Something to watch this weekend, especially if you have a telescope!  This rare event is in perfect synchronization with the Pope's visit to the U.S. and his sermons/talks at Congress and at the U.N. re. climate change caused by humans that can no longer be ignored if we want to leave a viable planet to our descendants to live on.
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Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Great interview of Trump by Stephen Colbert


http://www.rawstory.com/2015/09/stephen-colbert-does-the-impossible-donald-trump-swears-off-birtherism-after-confrontation/

This gave me many laughs!  Colbert actually got Trump to say he isn't talking about the Obama birther thing anymore.  I love the way Colbert delivers his zingers; they go so fast right past Trump's head, before the Donald can even realize their import.  Colbert is the only person I've seen to date who can actually outtalk and overtalk the Donald.  This short clip from the interview is a real treat! (~.~)


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Monday, September 21, 2015

Heart-touching: 92-year-old man sings to his wife in hospice

http://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/elderly-man-sings-love-song-dying-wife-heartbreaking/story?id=33920957

Luckily (probably because of the immense love she feels from her husband), the wife Laura regained strength and is home now.  Since the video of him singing to her has gone viral and has been seen by 3 million plus viewers, the woman now tells her husband, "I told you, Howard, that I would make you famous."  (~.~)

I don't think anyone could watch this video without having tears fill their eyes.
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Where the Hell is Matt? Dancing to bring the world together

Put a big smile on your face today -- and watch this heart-lightening (and enlightening) video!   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pwe-pA6TaZk

We need many more Matt Hardings in this world!  (~.~)  He has been dancing his way around the world since June of 2003.  This is his 2012 dance-a-thon, showing how alike we all are.  He brings the world together through love and laughter.  May his tribe increase!!!!  Now, please give yourself a treat and watch Matt and all his global friends dancing in this 2012 video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pwe-pA6TaZk

See Matt's story at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXZPLJffF0k

You may find this hard to believe, but some people who viewed the dancing videos claimed it had to be a hoax.  So Matt gave a talk filled with sarcasm at a technology seminar "admitting" it was a hoax.  It was very funny (see it at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogcqFaNbah4).  He made the story fantastically absurd, so everyone would realize it was sarcasm at its finest, but...you guessed it:  Some people triumphantly exclaimed, "Aha!  I knew it was a hoax!"  (I think these are the same people who believe we didn't go to the moon, that our president is a closet Muslim who wasn't born in the U.S., and who think Donald Trump will make a wonderful president.) 

So Matt then appeared at an Apple MacWorld conference and explained that the "hoax" story was itself a real hoax.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVAg6YTgTn4

I'll bet, though, there are still some people who remain unconvinced, who still believe Matt's dancing around the world is a hoax, and who continue to watch Fox News for their "real" news. Unfortunately, they vote. (sigh)









































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Saturday, September 19, 2015

Americans over 65 shared their greatest regret in life — and the most common one may surprise you

I've now lived long enough to agree with these folks 100%!!!  Worrying is a huge waste of time and energy that could be put to much better use!

Americans over 65 shared their greatest regret in life — and the most common one may surprise you

.
"I found this lesson from the experts to be surprising."

"What do you regret when you look back on your life?"

That's what Karl Pillemer, professor of human development at Cornell University, founder and director of the Cornell Institute for Translational Research on Aging, and author of "30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans" and "30 Lessons for Loving: Advice from the Wisest Americans on Love, Relationships, and Marriage," asked hundreds of older people as part of Cornell University's Legacy Project.

As he writes on Quora, he was unprepared for the answer he so often received: "I wish I hadn't spent so much of my life worrying."

Several years ago, when Pillemer, a world-renowned gerontologist (someone who studies older people), met June Driscoll, a particularly spirited 90-year old woman in a nursing home, she told him, "It's my responsibility to be as happy as I can, right here, today."

That interaction inspired Pillemer to find out how a generation that's experienced the most loss, troubling historical events, and illness could possibly be the happiest and to pass this knowledge down to younger generations.

Pillemer launched the Legacy Project in 2004 and asked more than 1,500 Americans over 65 years of age about the most important lessons they learned over the course of their lives. In"30 Lessons for Living" he refers to his subjects as "the experts" because they hold more tried-and-true wisdom than any self-help book or pundit could possibly offer.

Pillemer writes on Quora that he had expected "big-ticket items" like affairs, bad business deals, or addiction as his experts' biggest regrets.

But over and over again he heard versions of "I would have spent less time worrying" and "I regret that I worried so much about everything."

"I found this lesson from the experts to be surprising," Pillemer writes in "30 Lessons for Living." "Given that they had lived through difficult historical periods and great personal tragedies, I thought they might endorse a certain level of worry."

Instead, Pillemer explains that the experts view time as one of our most precious resources, and worrying about events that may not occur or that we have no control over is an inexcusable waste of this resource.

"The key characteristic of worry, according to scientists who study it, is that it takes place in the absence of actual stressors; that is, we worry when there is actually nothing concrete to worry about," he writes on Quora. "This kind of worry — ruminating about possible bad things that may happen to us or our loved ones — is entirely different from concrete problem solving."

To reduce how much regret we have in a lifetime, the experts suggested increasing the time spent on concrete problem solving and drastically eliminating time spent worrying. They also provided Pillemer with some ways to shift how we think about worry so that we can more readily move past it:

Focus on the short-term rather than the long-term.

"Well, I think that if you worry, and you worry a lot, you have to stop and think to yourself, 'This too will pass.' You just can't go on worrying all the time because it destroys you and life, really. But there's all the times when you think of worrying and you can't help it — then just make yourself stop and think: It doesn't do you any good. You have to put it out of your mind as much as you can at the time. You just have to take one day at a time. It's a good idea to plan ahead if possible, but you can't always do that because things don't always happen the way you were hoping they would happen. So the most important thing is one day at a time." — Eleanor Madison, 102 years old, from "30 Lessons for Living."

Instead of worrying, prepare.

"If you're going to be afraid of something, you really ought to know what it is. At least understand why. Identify it. 'I'm afraid of X.' And sometimes you might have good reason. That's a legitimate concern. And you can plan for it instead of worrying about it." — Joshua Bateman, 74, from "30 Lessons for Living."

Actively work towards acceptance.

"So many things come to your mind. Now, for instance, somebody might hurt your feelings. You're going to get back at him or her — well, just let it be. Push it away. So I started doing that. I found it the most wonderful thing because everybody has uncharitable thoughts. You can't help it. Some people get on your nerves, and that will be there until you die. But when they start, and I find myself thinking, 'Well, now, she shouldn't do that. I should tell her that …' Let it be. Often, before I say anything, I think, "If I did that, then what?" And let it be. Oh, so many times I felt grateful that I did nothing. That lesson has helped me an awful lot." — Sister Clare, a 99-year-old nun, from "30 Lessons for Living."



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Friday, September 18, 2015

Near-Death Experiences and The Place We Call Home



I have been reading Robert Grant's informative book, The Place We Call Home and have copied out the following excerpts that give guidance in how to live one's life in order to find peace and contentment, here and now. Further helpful guidance is given by people who have had near-death experiences, telling us what to expect when we pass from this realm into the next. Dr. Raymond Moody, the renowned author of Life After Life has recently moved to Santa Cruz and will be teaching a course about life after so-called "death" at UCSC.  He will also be giving talks/symposiums at a church on High Street several times a year, with guest speakers who have had near-death experiences. In January, Dr. Eben Alexander will be speaking with him. Dr. Alexander, a neurosurgeon, had an extraordinary near-death experience of his own that changed his entire life, giving it new meaning that could not be ignored.  He wrote a book about his experience called, Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife

As Robert Grant says in his book, "t
he illuminating stories of near-death survivors and the reassuring accounts of loved ones who have visited the living have helped move us a step closer to the light of understanding and away from the shadows of fear about death and dying."   I hope you will find the short excerpts below from Grant's book to be interesting and informative.

EXCERPTS from The Place We Call Home -- Exploring the Soul's Existence after Death by Robert J. Grant:

One man who has helped pave the way for millions to learn there is no death, only a change of worlds, is Edgar Cayce (pronounced "Casey").  Through his psychic gift that opened a door between the material and spiritual worlds, Cayce, who died in 1945, became the most documented psychic in the world. He was telepathic, clairvoyant, clairaudient, had the ability to be a medium, and was precognitive in the waking as well as the trance state.  To Cayce, there was no difference between the material and spiritual worlds; all of his life he was able to see through the veil and communicate with those who have passed beyond the earthly world.

To many people who sought out Cayce, trying to understand the continuity of the soul's existence, he gave this essential answer: You are not a physical being with a spiritual being inside.  You are a spiritual being who--for a short time--resides in a body.  You do not "have" a soul. You are a soul. You are NOT the body.

The Cayce readings frequently stated that in the spiritual dimensions, time does not exist; it is only valid in third-dimensional reality--the material realm.  All is truly One Essence. Time is a dimension that the soul passes through in order to awaken to know the true relationship it has with the Creator.  The soul enters at birth into a limited space-time continuum to learn lessons in the finite, material world.  The most important lessons--our ability to love, to forgive, to grow in patience and grace--all acted out in the framework of daily life, working and personal relationships,etc.--go with the soul after physical death.  These lessons are not physical. They are spiritual lessons enacted in the physical world.

In this light, we can see how our ability to love or not to love creates the very fabric of our after-death environment.  In short, we create heaven or hell for ourselves, based upon our application of spiritual laws during earthly life.  If the earthly life has been lived as a quest solely for power, then regardless of other soul growth and development, universal law requires that after death, the soul will be held in an earthbound state of consciousness focused upon the earth but not in it, surrounded by the thoughts, desires and feelings for power that the soul loved in the earth.  This is a transitional experience, to be sure --but time there is not the same as here in the three-dimensional world.

By the same token, if we choose to hold in mind a spiritual ideal that helps us grow in awareness, one that helps us forgive others and love more deeply at the end of the physical life, the great light of unconditional love will guide us to the realms of peace, serenity and higher heavenly states of consciousness.  Where we go after death is dependent upon the choices we make during our physical life.

One of the most reassuring truths found in Cayce's readings is the statement that we do not pass through the death transition alone.  We don't leave this world alone any more that we enter it alone, and leaving this world, according to the readings, is much easier than entering it.  What we term "death" is actually a return to a broader, more expansive consciousness where the soul is free from the limitations of physical form.  Perhaps this is the reason the thousands of people who have had near-death experiences report feeling more alive and more awake than during their physical lives.  The unseen realm is the true home of the soul; the earth is a necessary school for learning and growth.  It is a brief interim in the scheme of eternity--an important interim, nonetheless--but physical death is, in many ways, a return "home" with new lessons learned.  In the return to the realm, not of darkness and death, but of true light and living, we gather together with loved ones and those souls of like mind, just as we gather with friends and family during our physical lives.

When the American mass media began reporting accounts of near-death experiences, communications between the living and the dead, and extrasensory perception, the Western world made its first tentative steps toward a more enlightened world view about the nature of the soul and spirit.  The magazine articles, television documentaries and numerous books written on these subjects have helped usher humanity into an era of spiritual renaissance.  The illuminating stories of near-death survivors and the reassuring accounts of loved ones who have visited the living have helped move us a step closer to the light of understanding and away from the shadows of fear about death and dying.

For eons we have been taught to fear.  Sects of fundamentalist Christian religions have taught people to fear God. Political systems use fear to control the masses. We have been taught to be afraid of the life after death because many of us believed we were going straight to hell in a handbasket, without any hope of redemption.  In light of the thousands of accounts of near-death experiences documented by Dr. Raymond Moody, these teachings appear to be nothing more than misconceptions.  The majority of NDE survivors Dr. Moody interviewed knew without any doubt that they were loved without condition by a force greater than themselves--God.  They knew they were an integral part of this universal source of love.  This powerful sense of love, they said, was not dependent upon anything they did or said--it simply was a fact of consciousness.  The most important lesson they learned from dying was that their purpose in life was to go about the business of loving others unconditionally just as they themselves ere loved.  Dr. Moody said if every human being on earth acted on that simple principle of unconditional love, then we could truly have a heaven on earth.

This message of love is perhaps the most important facet of knowledge that has come out of NDE research.  The extent of our spiritual growth, development and evolution--in this world as well as in the next--is measured and is dependent upon our willingness to manifest unconditional love towards our fellow human beings.

The time-honored saying that when someone has died they have "passed on to their reward" is very much a valid truth.  Each person inherits or is "rewarded" with the sum total of what they have built during their physical lives.  According to Edgar Cayce, we are constructing the state of consciousness we will move into after death by our thoughts, desires, intentions and deeds in the material world.  If we consciously seek to act from an intention of love and to manifest compassion, love, forgiveness, patience, etc., these spiritual virtues literally create for us the "reward" of a light-filled existence after death.  It isn't on the merit of accomplishment that we move to the higher realms after death; it is from loving and acting from the heart, from a place of spiritual understanding in all facets of our lives.  What we have cherished in our hearts and minds will have a great deal to do with where we find ourselves after death.  Our intentions are most important.  If we have acted out of love, even if our actions have been perceived or judged negatively by others, it is our motives, our intentions that matter.  They will be considered most essential in our life review after passing into the next realm.

The souls that find themselves in the shadowlands or the earthbound realms after death are not being punished or condemned by any force or power except of their own making.  The inner life creates the outer world of our existence after death.  If we have spent a lifetime holding grudges, harboring resentments, being prejudicial or racist in our thinking, acting out of jealousy or hate or malice, those thoughts collectively form the building blocks that create a home in the shadowlands, the hellish realms.  In accordance with universal law, that which we think, we become; that which we build, we move into. 

How can we best prepare and build for ourselves a light-filled existence after we leave this world?  How can we build a consciousness that far transcends the trappings of the earthbound realms after death?  If we want to find our way to the Light after death, we need to be able to find and recognize the Light here, during our time on earth.  We can begin to expand our beliefs and increase our knowledge and understanding about the eternal nature of life through study and through reading.  We can also learn through our dreams, which are a way of viewing the thought forms that we have created.  As we begin to grow in spiritual awareness, applying principles that magnify the Spirit in our daily lives, we move to a higher state of consciousness in the waking state as well as in our dream state.

Curiosity about our true being and about the world is an important quality to develop.  There are many good books and much wonderful online material telling more about the unseen realms that exist all around us, even as we live in this world.  Opening our minds and hearts to these hitherto unexplored realms, through interest and study, will lead us to understanding and peace.







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Thursday, September 17, 2015

HAARP in action -- from ABC News



Check Out This Large Mysterious Cloud
Even more odd is that the cloud appeared on a special day.

This just appeared on ABC News -- but look at how many of these "rare" kinds of clouds are occurring almost daily in our world.  So "rare".... yeah.  Just check on youtube for more of these "rare" cloud formations....

AND for more info about HAARP, go into: 

HAARP.net - The Military's Pandora's Box by Dr. Nick Begich ...

www.haarp.net/
The individuals who are demanding answers about HAARP are scattered around the planet. As well as bush dwellers in Alaska, they include: a physician in ...


HAARP: Secret Weapon Used For Weather Modification ...

www.globalresearch.ca/haarp-secret-weapon-used-for.../20407
Jan 18, 2015 - "It isn't just conspiracy theorists who are concerned about HAARP. The European Union called the project a global concern and passed a ...


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Tuesday, September 15, 2015

The Pope is coming to the US and right wingers are not looking forward to his visit

OMG! What will we do? The Pope is saying all kinds of outrageous things that sound too much like love and compassion.  We can't have THAT in our religions! 

FIVE WAYS POPE FRANCIS HAS MADE RIGHT-WING CHRISTIANS EXPLODE WITH RAGE
By Janet Allon

Congressional Republicans invited Pope Benedict XVI to address Congress awhile ago. Boy, do they wish they could rescind that invitation now that the much more progressive Pope Francis is gearing up to come to Washington on September 24.

The people's pope has been on a tear lately, one week suggesting that women who have had abortions might be forgiven, the next week saying there might be room in the church for divorced people, and fast-tracking the annulment process.

All this forgiveness seems downright un-Christian to the conservative right, both here, and Vatican observers say, within the church hierarchy where a culture war and conservative backlash is brewing. What has conservatives in such a tizzy? The pope had already implied that atheists who live a moral life might find a way into heaven, and declined to pass judgment on gay people (literally, he said, "Who am I to judge?"). This forgiving, inclusive and compassionate church is not the one conservatives signed up for.

Let's review some of the more "radical" things the progressive pontiff has said and done just in the last few months that have set the right-wing's blood boiling anew.

1. Pope Francis said it is our moral duty to address climate change.

The pope's encyclical on climate change in June was a groundbreaking document and the call to arms the environmental movement has been longing for. It told the world's 1.2 billion Catholics — and everyone else for that matter — that it is our moral duty to save the earth from this ongoing manmade destruction. The encyclical helped close the gap between science and religion, and pointed out that the world's most vulnerable citizens suffer the brunt of climate instability. It also called out capitalism, consumerism and greed as primary culprits for the earth's destruction.

Sure enough, the encyclical was taken as sacrilege among prominent Republican Catholics here at home, including Jeb Bush and Rick Santorum, who suggested the pope leave science to the scientists, which of course, is precisely what he did. Conservatives like Jeb Bush did not appreciate the swipe at his one true religion, capitalism. "I don't get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinal or my pope," he told his supporters at the time.

Climate change has amazingly and depressingly become the most contentious issue in America, more so than abortion, according to recent polling from the Carsey Institute. At least the pope is on the correct side of this inexplicably polarizing issue.

2. Pope Francis said women who have had abortions can be absolved of their "sin."

The pope did not go quite so far as to suggest that abortion is not a mortal sin, but he did go where no pope has gone before when he recently announced a year of mercy (starting this December) during which women who have had abortions can seek and be granted absolution. Repentance is, however, a prerequisite. It's not a full-on feminist victory or anything, but it is a tiny step.

That did not go over well among our rabid anti-abortion (and it seems, anti-forgiveness) wing like Huckabee, Cruz, Santorum and Walker, for starters. And once again, Jeb Bush found himself disagreeing with and even lecturing the leader of his faith, suggesting that if anyone deserves mercy, it isn't those sinful women, it's the "unborn." Bush did like the sound of repentant women, though, and gave lip service to being pro-mercy.

3. Pope Francis called unfettered capitalism the "dung of the devil."

You have to love Pope Francis' way with words. On a July visit to Bolivia and its left-leaning leader, the pope denounced the "new colonialism" in which richer countries and international banks impose austerity programs on developing nations. In a sweeping speech that sounded quasi-socialist, the pope said the poor have the "sacred rights" to labor, lodging and land. He again called for a halt to the destruction of the earth before it is too late, destruction that disproportionately affects the world's poor.

Needless to say, conservatives did not care for the pope's description of capitalism as Lucifer's fecal material.

The integration of environmental, economic and moral issues puts the pope on a par with some of the deeper and more radical thinkers of our time, like Naomi Klein, who recently gave a shout-out to Francis as a role model of the kind of transformational leader the world needs now.

4. Pope Francis rejected creationism.

For a man of the cloth, Pope Francis has a refreshing admiration for science. The world witnessed that with his encyclical on the environment, where he threw his lot in with science. We saw it again when he said one can be a good Catholic and believe in evolution and the Big Bang, and that neither are incompatible with the existence of a creator.

Speaking at the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences recently, the pope said, "When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so."

It's a tough communion wafer to swallow for Bobby Jindal and other right-wing creationism advocates.

5. Pope Francis made it easier and cheaper to get marriages annulled.

It was a small bureaucratic change in some ways, but it spoke volumes about forgiveness, the recognition that families have changed, and making more people feel welcome in the Catholic hurch. On September 8, the Vatican unveiled new rules to make it easier, faster and less costly to obtain an annulment. Both of Francis' predecessor's, John Paul II and Benedict XVI had gone in exactly the opposite direction, consigning the miserable in marriage to eternal togetherness, or living in sin.

"This is a 180-degree change in direction," James Bretzke, a professor of theology at Boston College, told the Guardian. "Francis has shown us over and over again his [different approach], which is, let's look at the people in the pews, in the barrios, in the field, and let's respond to them in their existential needs."

An easier, less intimidating annulment process is one thing, but the even larger and more contentious issue is whether the Church will ease its stance on divorced Catholics, and whether they can take communion. That and other issues affecting the modern family will be discussed at a meeting of the Synod of Bishops next month. But the annulment move makes it seem a lot more possible that communion for the divorced may be on its way.

American conservatives were pretty quiet about this change, probably because many of them have been divorced and remarried multiple times (Kim Davis), so that would be pretty hypocritical.

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Saturday, September 12, 2015

VIDEO: A blindfolded woman shows her bikini body in public to promote love and self-acceptance

Amy Pence-Brown stood blind-folded in a bikini in Boise, to promote self-acceptance.  The crowd's reactions are incredibly powerful -- VIDEO
http://www.bustle.com/articles/109699-amy-pence-brown-stood-blindfolded-in-a-bikini-in-boise-to-promote-self-acceptance-and-the-crowds-reactions

When you watch this, you may just begin to cry at the beauty of the woman and the people -- both externally and internally.  (My tears are still flowing...)

EXCERPT:  Body acceptance performance pieces are commonplace in relatively progressive cities like London and New York City, but what if someone conducted an experiment in a less cosmopolitan city? When Boise, ID-based activist Amy Pence-Brown stood blindfolded in a bikini in public, wearing nothing else but a sign instructing passers-by to draw on her body, she entrusted herself to a marketplace full of complete strangers. Her experiment had the potential to go terribly wrong — but instead, the results showed just how accepting humanity can be.

The premise was simple: Pence-Brown, a mother of three who founded the Boise Rad Fat Collective, stripped down in a downtown Boise market, donned a blindfold, and stood alone with a marker in either hand. A sign leaning against her knees read, "I'm standing for anyone who has struggled with a self-esteem issue like me, because all bodies are valuable. To support self-acceptance, draw a heart on my body." With that, all she had to do was wait.  See video link at:  http://www.bustle.com/articles/109699-amy-pence-brown-stood-blindfolded-in-a-bikini-in-boise-to-promote-self-acceptance-and-the-crowds-reactions

Amy's message contrasts with that of Donald Trump regarding women's bodies and their looks.  Amy speaks to the heart.  Donald speaks to the darker nature of the ego. 
(Quo vadis? 
Which way are we going?)


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An insightful essay about Elmira, Mark Twain and Donald Trump

Am sure Mark Twain would have had Much to say about Donald Trump.  As a young girl living in Elmira, I remember my Twain-admiring Dad reading Huck Finn to me -- and laughing hilariously when he read the parts about Pap's ranting, especially about his ragtag clothes and hat ("Look at my hat, if you call it a hat...") -- and the "govment" he blamed for keeping him down. Here's the part of Pap's rant that made Dad laugh so much: 

"Call this a govment! why, just look at it and see what it's like. Here's the law a-standing ready to take a man's son away from him—a man's own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety and all the expense of raising. Yes, just as that man has got that son raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin to do suthin' for HIM and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him. And they call THAT govment! That ain't all, nuther.   Here's what the law does: The law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and up'ards, and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets him go round in clothes that ain't fitten for a hog. They call that govment! A man can't get his rights in a govment like this. Sometimes I've a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. Yes, and I TOLD 'em so; I told old Thatcher so to his face. Lots of 'em heard me, and can tell what I said. Says I, for two cents I'd leave the blamed country and never come a-near it agin. Them's the very words. I says look at my hat—if you call it a hat—but the lid raises up and the rest of it goes down till it's below my chin, and then it ain't rightly a hat at all, but more like my head was shoved up through a jint o' stove-pipe. Look at it, says I—such a hat for me to wear—one of the wealthiest men in this town if I could git my rights." 

There are many voters in today's world who sound like the govment-hating Pap and who are cheering Donald Trump. But I don't think my Republican Dad would be laughing about Trump's ascendancy in the polls.  Trump's ego-driven ravings have no actual substance (he speaks, yet he says nothing!) -- and his derogatory insults against women are too disgusting. Like the Republican party itself, Trump appeals to the worst in people--to their selfishness, their racism, and their fears.  Mark Twain would have despised him and made literary mincemeat out of him.


The August Day Mark Twain Met Donald Trump

By Michael Winship
About author:  Michael Winship, senior writing fellow at Demos and president of the Writers Guild, East, is senior writer on the new public television series Moyers & Company, premiering this month. Go to www.BillMoyers.com.

— from Moyers & Company

How I spent my summer vacation — part of it, at least. One weekend in August, my girlfriend Pat and I went upstate to visit my sister, also named Patricia, and while there took a field trip to Elmira, New York.

We were on bit of a pilgrimage. Mark Twain, real name Samuel L. Clemens, is buried in Elmira and the three of us decided to visit his grave. For many years, Twain spent his summers at the Elmira home of his in-laws, Quarry Farm, overlooking the Chemung River Valley. His sister-in-law even built him a small gazebo retreat in which he did much of his finest writing. It is, he wrote, "the quietest of all quiet places" in "an elevation that commands leagues of valley and city and retreating ranges of distant blue hills."

Twain stopped visiting Elmira after his daughter Suzy's death in 1896, only to return in 1910, following his death in Redding, Connecticut. His remains were brought to Elmira's Woodlawn Cemetery for burial. It's a short drive from the center of town. Twain, his wife, children, son-in-law and only grandchild are all there. Each has a stone marker and in front of Twain's, fellow writers and devotees have planted their pens in his memory.

There's a larger monument, too, placed by his daughter Clara. It honors Twain and Clara's husband, the Russian musician Ossip Gabrilowitsch, with large bronze medallions, each a bas-relief profile. But at the beginning of the year, the tomb was vandalized. Twain's medallion was pried from the stone. Luckily, the thief was caught. Repairs and restoration of the plaque will take a few more weeks.

Vandals and Mark Twain. The two ideas tangoed in my head and naturally danced me over to Donald Trump. We were having a quiet weekend's interlude in upstate New York but even there it was impossible to ignore the cacophony of Trump's verbal vandalism and braying pitch to nativism and bigotry. Such jingoism was just the kind of ideological humbuggery Mark Twain loved to puncture. Yet he would agree with Trump's – and our — disgust for the current, disheveled and inert state of our governance.

In fact, years ago, historian and author Garry Wills wrote, "To understand America, read Mark Twain…. No matter what new craziness pops up in America, I find it described beforehand by him…

"What made Twain so prescient?" Wills continued. "Our own persistence in folly, no doubt. But more than that he understood the peculiarly American brand of folly as no one before or after."

So while it may be too easy to piggyback onto Twain's prescience, in these disturbed and disturbing times, it's irresistible, with the understanding that there's a lot of spurious Twain material out there that never came from him and the knowledge that in some cases what he said and wrote can be as variously interpreted as the Bible or Koran.

Twain was a contributor to the 19th century magazine The Galaxy, and in it, he claimed, "I shall not often meddle with politics, because we have a political editor who is already excellent and only needs to serve a term or two in the penitentiary to be perfect." He lied about the meddling part. Lucky for us.

Twain would have sympathized with all who heap scorn on Congress and Washington. As he famously wrote, "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." And, "It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress." And, "… I never can think of Judas Iscariot without losing my temper. To my mind, Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature, Congressman."

He believed "public office is private graft," and nowhere did Twain sink his teeth more deeply into the hypocrisy and greed of Washington and its politicians than in his first novel, The Gilded Age, written with Charles Dudley Warner. The very title gave its name to an era of wretched, wealthy excess by plutocrats who embraced economic inequality, an era we revisit today in our own Second Gilded Age.

So devastating is the book's portrayal of Washington skullduggery, replete with lobbyists and the superrich on a spending spree — buying up government officials — Twain and Warner originally hoped that Thomas Nast, the political cartoonist who savaged New York City's Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall, would provide the illustrations. Garry Wills called it "our best political novel," greater than Henry James' Democracy or John Dos Passos' USA.

Says Colonel Sellers, the get-rich-quick schemer who's one of the novel's central characters, "There is no country in the world, Sir, that pursues corruption as inveterately as we do. There is no country in the world whose representatives try each other as much as ours do, or stick to it as long on a stretch. I think there is something great in being a model for the whole civilized world, Washington."

But beyond the peccadilloes of the capital and its affluent gatekeepers, Mark Twain feared our baser instincts. Yes, "the political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet," he wrote, but he also feared our reasoning powers "are not above the monkey's." On the one hand, "We are called the nation of inventors. And we are. We could still claim that title and wear its loftiest honors if we had stopped with the first thing we ever invented, which was human liberty." On the other, "To create man was a quaint and original idea, but to add the sheep was tautology," a built-in redundancy thrown in by a distracted Creator.

So I thought about which of Twain's characters would come closest to Donald Trump's bumptious personality but ultimately rejected the well-to-do wheelers and dealers that populate The Gilded Age. Instead, I decided that in many respects, the character most like The Donald was that of Huckleberry Finn's dissolute father, Pap.

Even though Pap lusts mostly for liquor and Huck's loot, a treasure trove back then of $6,000 that today wouldn't cover Trump's barber bills, he shares the billionaire's braggadocio, the propensity for noise, surly resentments and irrational lashings out, especially at minorities.

A good substance-free rant is just Pap and Trump's style: "Then the old man got to cussing," Huck recounts, "and cussed everything and everybody he could think of, and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn't skipped any, and after that he polished off with a kind of a general cuss all round, including a considerable parcel of people which he didn't know the names of, and so called them what's-his-name when he got to them, and went right along with his cussing."

Derisively, Pap says, "Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment [sic], wonderful," and then explodes at the notion of an educated, free black man. "They said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain't the wust. They said he could vote when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? …I says I'll never vote agin. Them's the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all me — I'll never vote agin as long as I live."

Many Republicans fear Trump's possible nomination, "increasingly concerned that [his] inflammatory language is damaging the party," Jonathan Martin wrote in The New York Times, "…that his remarks are hardening the tone of other candidates on racial issues in ways that could repel the voters they need to take back the White House." Yet if another GOP candidate wins their nod instead, those same Republicans fear that Trump's voters will stay at home, just like Pap. It is a wretched bed they have made for themselves this last 50 years, a legacy of mongering and misinformation, and with the unlikely Trump of New York, instead of someone from the Deep Red South, the Republicans have managed to achieve a destructive apotheosis of dog whistles and hatred.

"Such is the human race," Twain wrote back in 1907. "Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat." Prescient indeed.
_______

About author Michael Winship, senior writing fellow at Demos and president of the Writers Guild, East, is senior writer on the new public television series Moyers & Company, premiering this month. Go to www.BillMoyers.com.

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Thursday, September 10, 2015

Say goodbye to National Geographic, just bought by Rupert Murdoch

Sad but true:  With Rupert Murdoch now at the helm of Natl. Geo., we will not be seeing truth about climate change (or anything else, for that matter) from that source anymore, either in its magazine or in its TV shows.  Once again, money wins over conscience and environmental conservation. What a shame!  National Geo. will now be joining hands with Fox News, et al. UGH.  Time to cancel our subscriptions!   Please pass the word along...

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/09/viewers-vow-boycott-after-rupert-murdoch-buys-natgeo-cash-triumphs-over-conservation-conscience/
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Tuesday, September 08, 2015

This essay says it best about Hillary: She Can't Go Rogue

The machine has taken her over and we will never know the real Hillary.  She's part and parcel with establishment politics and will do the bidding of the corporate masters. 
GO Bernie!!!


HILLARY CLINTON CAN'T GO ROGUE

By P.M. Carpenter

What's the best thing that presidential candidate Bernie Sanders had going for him?

Nothing.

He had no money, no machine, no consultants, no media advisers, no real fame, no exalted history, no sense of destiny — no nothing but himself, which freed him to be himself.

What's the worst thing that Hillary Clinton had going for her?

Everything.

She had and has it all, money, organization and a regal status — all of which has enslaved her. She's at the center of the nation's most powerful political machine, and the latter's immensity has made her — the "her-herself" Clinton, to pilfer Walt Whitman — more than a little elusive.

She is the smallest cog in a massive apparatus of overpreparedness, which has reduced her further, to headlines such as this: "Hillary Clinton to Show More Humor and Heart, Aides Say." Aides say. They "want to show her humor." They "want to show her heart." They want "to bring spontaneity to a candidacy that sometimes seems wooden and overly cautious."

Humor and heart on the campaign trail seem as foreign to Hillary Clinton as they do to Jeb Bush. When her humor does materialize in public, it comes across as "sarcastic," which her aides acknowledge. It's a sort of royal, We-are-not-amused levity — a humor that packs a punch, but lacks fun (as though, and this was most unfortunate, it's been wiped "with a cloth").

As for heart, Hillary's, like Al Gore's, doesn't translate well before large gatherings, which are the mother lode of human connections on the presidential-campaign level. By definition, displaying heart is an impalpable art; Harry Truman could do it, Adlai Stevenson (in impossible circumstances) could do it, and so on, on through Barack Obama. Hillary cannot. Not at this stage. That's no criticism, for criticism is rightly reserved for the changeable.

And just how in hell does one "bring" spontaneity to another human being? (Late last week, as her spontaneity was being mapped out by others, Hillary was at a presser. After a few queries, a voice boomed from her right: We'll take one more question. Hillary, startled, looked around, and then obeyed the command. Bill would have spontaneously boomed back: "I'll take all the questions you've got.")

Hillary's curse is that she's the smallest wheel in a massive engine — which means she performs best when she's well greased, programmed and scripted, which loops back with a fierce inexorability to the original problem. She lost herself in enormity years ago, and there's no way to bring her back. She's engulfed by conflicting advisers, swamped by demanding money, torn by coalitions, smothered in queenship and consumed by a sprawling, tentacled Leviathan known as the Clinton Machine.

And in an inherited machine, one can't go rogue.
______
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Monday, September 07, 2015

Baby looks EXACTLY like his great-great grandfather's baby photo

You'd swear it was the exact same child.  (Maybe it is -- reincarnationally). 

Read entire article:   https://gma.yahoo.com/babys-photo-bears-uncanny-resemblance-great-great-grandfather-183827107--abc-news-parenting.html

The apple certainly didn't fall far from the tree in this family.

When Dallas English came across his cousin's Facebook post of a 109-year-old photo of their relative, he couldn't help but notice the uncanny resemblance to his 11-month-old son, Ace.

"As soon as I saw the picture my jaw dropped because it looks like it IS my son sitting there in a baptism dress," English, 30, wrote to ABC News. "It still amazes me."

.
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Saturday, September 05, 2015

HYPOCRISY, CHRISTIAN "RIGHTS" and KIM DAVIS

Unfortunately, we more often see self-righteous, judgmental fundamentalists than those who are really following the teachings of Christ.

Humility, Hypocritical Christians and Kim Davis
By Jaime O'Neill

I have great respect for people who have the courage to stand by their principles, who are willing to go against the prevailing currents, who are willing to make sacrifices for what they believe. That respect does not extend to Kim Davis, the elected county clerk in Kentucky, the one who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples seeking them. She's in jail now, put there by a judge who found her to be in contempt of court. I think she belongs in jail.

In the eyes of some right wingers, withholding my respect from this woman is just another example of liberal hypocrisy, of a double standard they see people like me applying in cases where we disapprove of civil disobedience when it's engaged in by people whose views we don't share, but applaud when practiced by people with whom we agree.

If Kim Davis wanted to forfeit her job because she could no longer perform it in accordance with her religious views, I could respect that stance, though I don't agree with the religious views that led to her resignation.

But for this exceedingly self-righteous woman to expect that she can accept the salary for a job she is only willing to do selectively is not only unlawful in this case, but unreasonable.

Being unreasonable is not uncommon among fundamentalist religious types. These are people who believe in things unseen, who operate on "faith," not reason. And since they are, by their lights, sanctified by God in all they think and do, they can proceed accordingly, defying all other authority, and showing contempt for all other beliefs but their own. Despite the hubris implicit in such a view, guys like Mike Huckabee can conclude that the four-times-married Ms. Davis is defying the law in an act of "humility."

If, however, that government functionary wants to live her faith in ways that are inconsistent with her job, then she must forfeit the job her beliefs preclude her from doing.

That's not complicated, unless you're a zealot. Kim Davis, who found her way to her current faith just a few years ago is in the throes of zealotry often seen in new converts to faith-based fundamentalism. Her utter lack of self-doubt is plain on her face, along with her fundamentally un-Christian enthusiasm for judging others and finding them less worthy than she thinks herself to be. I have seen dozens of pictures of this woman, and what I don't see reflected in her countenance in any of those images is anything that looks like love, or agape, or any of the stuff that might seem consistent with the message Christ brought.

I do see, however, a hunger for martyrdom, the lust so many Christians (not to mention Muslims) have to feel persecuted. And it's clear that the fundamentalists of Kentucky and other places with large populations of people whose views are benighted by bad religion will rally in support of Kim Davis, will attempt to turn her into a Joan of Arkansas and Tennessee and Alabama, the Holy Mama of mega-church hustlers and politicians who think they can make hay by proclaiming the godliness of her stand.

No one is standing in the way of the views this woman holds, however. All she has to do is go home, or keep that hate in her heart, and not out on the counter that separates her from the citizens she is paid to serve without prejudice.

And, were she to do that, I could admire her willingness to live her beliefs, and to pay the price that comes with them. As it stands, however, she'll soon be awash in money from similarly bigoted "Christians" and "conservatives" who don't, apparently, believe in the rule of law, and who are rather unclear on the concepts that were once considered to be the bedrock of their faith. Love thy neighbor as thyself, judge not lest ye be judged, do unto others. Etc., etc., etc.
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Friday, September 04, 2015

IMPORTANT: Learning about the government HAARP program (Giant ELF Wave Transmitters)

In order to be informed voters, it's very important that we educate ourselves as to what is going on in our world.   Weather changes are happening through manipulation of the ionosphere.  Through military HAARP technology, man is now causing dramatic unusual weather changes, with a possible intent to use hurricanes and earthquakes as weapons (info. leaked by whistleblowers), but the government is not going to tell you about this.

Indisputable scientific fact:  Our earth is more unstable now than ever before -- wobbling more. Dangerous experiments (with potentially catastrophic consequences), "combining ignorance and power," as predicted by Carl Sagan, are now in operation on our planet.  Nikola Tesla's discoveries are being used without understanding of the effects they can cause. We are like toddlers playing with fire.  Learn about the HAARP High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program instituted by the U.S. in 1990.

Essential films to watch:  

HAARP, History Channel documentary:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UD3yUEl5EM 

HOLES IN HEAVEN video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWVU6DKcjyA


Scientific explanation of earth's magnetic field lines and effect of HAARP on them: HAARP and Mind Control - Dr. Nick Begich:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l7gk3PCm7o

Short videos of anomalies in our sky (not for wimps who would rather deny than face facts):
HAARP:  guaranteed to blow your mind!  most unusual cloud formations and portals now being seen in our skies:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsCRzSKP-p8  
HAARP cutting sharply through clouds:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNahvVa_fSI
HAARP more evidence caught on tape:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sOnQlIxUWw

HAARP Boils the Upper Atmosphere

HAARP zaps the upper atmosphere with a focused and steerable electromagnetic beam. It is an advanced model of an "ionospheric heater." (The ionosphere is the electrically-charged sphere surrounding Earth's upper atmosphere. It ranges between 40 to 60 miles above the surface of the Earth.)

Put simply, the apparatus for HAARP is a reversal of a radio telescope; antenna send out signals instead of receiving. HAARP is a super-powerful radiowave-beaming technology that lifts areas of the ionosphere by focusing a beam and heating those areas. Electromagnetic waves then bounce back onto earth and penetrate everything -- living and dead.

HAARP publicity gives the impression that the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program is mainly an academic project with the goal of changing the ionosphere to improve communications for our own good. However, other U.S. military documents put it more clearly -- HAARP aims to learn how to "exploit the ionosphere for Department of Defense purposes."

But the possible uses which the HAARP records do not explain, and which can only be found in Air Force, Army, Navy and other federal agency records, are alarming. Moreover, effects from the reckless use of these power levels in our natural shield -- the ionosphere -- could be cataclysmic according to some scientists.

Two Alaskans put it bluntly. A founder of the NO HAARP movement, Clare Zickuhr, says "The military is giving the ionosphere a big kick to see what happens."
The military failed to tell the public that they do not know what exactly will happen, but a Penn State science article brags about that uncertainty. This is Macho science. The HAARP project uses the largest energy levels yet played with by what Dr. Nick Begich calls "the big boys with their new toys." HAARP is an experiment in the sky, and experiments are done to find out something not already known. Independent scientists have told Begich that a HAARP-type "skybuster" with its unforeseen effects could be an act of global vandalism.

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Watch Anderson Cooper: Mindfulness video, with accompanying print words

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mindfulness-anderson-cooper-60-minutes/

Could change the world, as each person changes within.... something to think about.
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60 Minutes: Anderson Cooper reports on "Mindfulness" -- good video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDxIBQT7F54

A good start towards harmony and peace within oneself.  Perhaps if enough learn to be "mindful," external events on the planet will also begin to change for the better.
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Tuesday, September 01, 2015

Nazi right wingers coming back in small-town Germany

Here is a chilling story of the rise of the German right wing once again.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sebastian-matthes/germany-refugee-crisis_b_8071114.html
The same thing is happening in our country with the rise of Donald Trump and his adoration by our own right wing.

Germany has its own Donald Trump types, rising up to the surface once again -- reminiscent of Hitler's rise to power.  Right wingers of any country, blinded by their nationalistic thinking, do not recognize themselves as Nazi types. They think of themselves as "patriots," trying to preserve a way of life that is changing -- and they are goaded on by Fear propaganda delivered by the Donald Trumps or Adolph Hitlers of this world.  Remember the rise of Hitler in the '30s and '40s?  American conservatives would deny in horror that anyone would even
think they were like Hitler's Nazis.  In their zeal to adopt the hatred and prejudice being shouted from the mouth of Donald Trump, they are oblivious to the similarities of themselves to the German population in the '30s and '40s.  Germans who thought themselves to be good Christians went along with Hitler's hate-driven pronouncements ... and soon .... well, read any history book to get the end of this story.  We are still living with its terrible ramifications in today's world.  

Take a good look at Donald Trump and his rhetoric that is rousing the U.S. right wing today.  Listen to them cheering him as he ramps up their fear.  This is how wars start.  This is how "final solutions" like Hitler's begin.  Even if you try to get a far right winger to look in the mirror at themselves (can you imagine Donald Trump doing this and seeing himself as he really is--a hate-filled demagogue in the making?), they will see a "patriot" standing up for their "rights."  The bizarre upside-down, backwards world of the Bubble dwellers is surrounded by a wall of impenetrable Fear.  That Fear is daily being revved up and spurred on by Trump and Fox.  But the right wingers don't even realize they are being provoked and roused to hatred through fear...they would never think of themselves as fear-driven.  Fox's incessant daily doses of racism and prejudice has made their viewers immune to recognition of fear propaganda. Under Fox's spell, they think of it as  "patriotism" of the highest order.  Too sad, because they can't be reached by clear seeing.  They will defend themselves to the death against all the "enemies" they have been carefully taught to fear. 

Welcome to the madhouse.  It's called planet Earth where the natives are doomed to keep repeating the same mistakes over and over.  Mind-controlled by power-and-greed-obsessed leaders, a large portion of the inhabitants are unable to learn from their own history and make the changes in consciousness that could truly lead us to a better future.

As Pogo in the comic strip sagely states: "We have met the enemy and he is us."  
 

EXCERPT: 

For years, media and politics have overlooked and underestimated how powerful the right-wing movement has become in some parts of Germany. They have ignored the fact that small towns in the East German states are "culturally controlled almost entirely by right-wing extremists": with murals in the style of the Nazi period, references to Hitler's birthplace, and an atmosphere of fear exaggerated by the far right extremists. In these towns, the right-wing culture dominates everything from high school to the carpenter's shop.

But there are also attacks on asylum-seekers' quarters in the South and West of Germany. Therefore, the radicalization of parts of German society is not a purely East German phenomenon. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution understands this as a threat, a new form of right-wing terrorism.

Forty percent of refugees coming to Europe, come to Germany. According to recent estimates of the government, it will be 800,000 people this year. That equals the number of people living in Frankfurt, Main. Many Germans are scared of that.  "Concerned citizens," as they like to call themselves, are not concerned about the refugees. They worry about themselves. They are scared of economic decline, scared of old age poverty. Scared that something will be taken away from them.

And now they have found the reason for their fear: Refugees that come to Germany to take the last couple of Euros and benefits away from them.

The preachers of hatred and extreme right parties, which have mostly flown under the radar until now, use this fear. They have found their audience. They use the Internet to goad on the scared masses. They spread fake articles about refugees, who allegedly come at German school girls, only to later exploit our social system. According to these hatemongers, politicians and the press lie, so they construct their own reality. Following their sick logic, there is a "will of the people" that justifies violence against foreign fellow citizens. Therefore, we are not only experiencing one of the worst waves of right-wing terror since World War II, but also a gruesome peak of xenophobic propaganda.

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