Into Madness and Out

a face in the wood

Lime Kiln Canyon, California

mind control

    Has your life begun to resemble some distant remembrance of an old sci-fi plot? 

     A pandemic, world wide worry, and a lunatic in the White House? 

      Dear ones, we are going deep into the forest and there are many questions about this journey.

    Four decades of reporting, producing and documentary making has toughened my skin and tested my soul, but when I saw a recent set of photos of empty streets, arenas, shelves, religious shrines and places on this globe where people were not, it gave me a jolt. 

    A virus is taking control of how we live. It is a terrorist, a war fighter invasion and it challenges our thin wall of civility. 

    We all have a stake in this, as all of us are vulnerable. Regardless of ethnicity, race, gender, identity, nation, age, or whatever, we are the same. Something new, unknown, and unseen has, in days, changed how we live and has rewritten our fears.

the mad king

   As we face an emergency on a potential level unseen in over a hundred years, the Trump administration has blown it. That is not surprising, but it is unforgivable! 

   No testing kits. No advance prep. No cohesive strategy. Trump is the president who fired the national security council expert on pandemics. He is the man who has downplayed the epidemic. He is the man who stood in front of doctors and raved about "how people were so surprised at how much he knew" about medicine.

    Donald Trump is delusional, inept and a clear and present danger to us all.

    His vanity, and his desire for re-election has made him even more dangerous. He's interested only in the stock market, reasoning that is his ticket to re-election. God help us! 

    He tells us it will just "go away," after first comparing it to just another attempt to get rid of him. He lies about statistics. If only some rational cabinet members would invoke the 25th Amendment, Section 4 and put the fool in a straight jacket and send him to Walter Reed and a padded cell. The man is ill. His brain is a congress of demons of greed, ego, deceit and fantasy. 

  

our common good

     If ever in our lifetime, this is something that  profoundly demonstrates we are all brothers and sisters, children under the same sky, residents of the same globe, and vulnerable to something that as yet we have little or no control of. 

     Blame and recrimination are unavoidable and necessary, but our purpose now should be to follow the advice of the medical experts and do what we can to lower and attempt to control the spread, to act with intelligence and civility. 

      We know not to buckle to terrorists because that gives them a victory, but this terrorist is a virus and we must employe intelligence and change things about our personal contact. There will be disruptions, but with time and proper procedures we will get through it. Already the number of cases in China are beginning to decline.

      In the meantime we are best advised to take our information from good sources, recognized medical sources, the World Health Organization, the CDC, state and county Health Departments. Be careful with the information that comes from social media and friends.

      While this medical emergency plays out we must remember the lowest humans among us will try to take advantage. There will be hustlers, cheats, price gougers, political manipulators, healers and the like. Don't be fooled. 

 the bright side

      My mother used to say, in all things, look on the bright side. She could say that and believe it, even after burying 3 of her four children. 

      So let's watch to see how all the children of this planet respond, and look for those movements, actions, events and developments which demonstrate once again, our unique human quality at over coming and surviving.

      Since we've traveled so deeply into the dark woods and  pondered such a heavy load, how about a celebration of life and vitality. Let's wander on and find an antidote.....

green renewal

    Take good care of yourself and loved ones.

      See you down the trail. 

THE TORTURE OF NORQUIST & A CHRISTMAS GIFT

WHO HAS THE NERVE?

     A few Republican lawmakers are doing what should have been done years ago, telling the self righteous and dangerous Grover Norquist to go pound sand.

      Dangerous?  How else would you describe an ego freak who collects "pledges" from federal lawmakers to abide by his view of government or else face a challenge by a Norquist lackey, funded with millions of dollars. Norquist really believes that a pledge to him is more sacred than any oath of office, or the unfettered performance of the duties of the office to which his "pledgees" were elected. He likes to strut, bantam rooster like, before a weekly gathering of political operatives, mostly conservative and mostly Republican, who are there to kiss his keister.

PRIDE BEFORE THE FALL

      Really, where does Grover Norquist get off thinking that he alone can control Republican tax policy and votes?

Who appointed him to this extraordinary power?  By the way, Norquist is a bit of a fraud.

      He's been an associate of Jack Abramoff, the convicted power broker who found plenty of ways to use and divert federal tax funds.  He's also an associate of the phony Ralph Reed, who has ripped off and manipulated Christian rightists with his own brand of sleaze.  Why Norquist has not been tossed over simply because his association with those scum probably goes back to those pledges that he collects and his threats to unseat anyone who challenges his view.

      Norquist calls himself a boring Methodist. He is of a particular ilk of Methodist though, one who is married to a Palestinian Muslim who worked for the Islamic Free Market Institute. The Islamic Free Market Institute was founded by Norquist.  That's cozy isn't it?  The Institute also took money from two organizations that were linked to SAAR-the organization with ties to international terrorism.  Norquist should feel right at home since he employs a kind of political terror on the Republican party.  And Norquist's wife worked with USAID.  USAID of course pumps US tax dollars into foreign venues and initiatives. Boring Methodist hardly seems an apt description for such a master of double talk, phoniness, duplicity, sleaze, self aggrandizement and zealousness.  

       If the late director Alan Pakula were doing the film, Norquist would be brought down by his own self importance and fraud.  If the Wachowski's were directing Norquist would be vaporized by a drone  as he preened before the Wednesday gathering of sycophants.  But since this is real life it is men like Senator John McCain, Speaker John Boehner, Senator Lindsey Graham, Senator Tom Coburn and Senator Bob Corker who may be the founding architects of the movement to depose the self exalted would be dictator.

       Senator Tom Coburn called Norquist's pledge "a tortured vision of tax purity."  The inclusion of torture and Norquist in the same sentence seems to bring this screed full circle. What goes around, comes around. 

      

SOMETHING NEW

     Proprietors of the historic Cambria Pines Lodge have 

added to their already well visited Christmas lights display.

This year they have added a Christmas Bazaar. 

     See you down the trail.