My brief stint as a potential domestic terrorist

It all started innocently enough, though with a hint of controversy.  It was my turn to lead my children’s preschool coop session the day before Valentine’s Day.  I figured that was an easy one–have them make valentines for each other out of construction paper.

The only problem was one of the coop moms has a real issue with that holiday, which she refers to as V-Day.  It almost sounds like a dirty word now.  We’re a very tolerant, respectful group, so we nixed the red and pink hearts and did a brief little lesson on friendship and how friends show their love for each other.  You can’t remind preschoolers too often that this involves sharing toys, talking kindly to each other, and refraining from hitting and other forms of violence.

My children made valentines at home, and I delighted them by making a cheesecake sporting a large red heart made out of strawberries.

Less than a week later, unbeknownst to me, the state of Missouri issued a report indicating people with certain political views were likely to get involved in dangerous militia movements and should therefore be carefully watched by law enforcement.  Those involved in subverting Valentine’s Day (in this economy that could be downright harmful to someone’s bottom line) were not mentioned.  However, the report did specifically indicate people who supported Chuck Baldwin, Bob Barr or Ron Paul for president, as well as those opposed to abortion, illegal immigration, the New World Order, the North American Union, the Income Tax, and the United Nations as being potential domestic terrorists.

I voted for one of those three for President, and I do oppose more than one of the items on that list.  Unbeknownst to me I underwent this transformation from somewhat frazzled stay-at-home mom to potential domestic terrorist.  So what did I do with my new identity?

I learned of this report, along with everyone else, towards the middle of March when an anonymous Missouri law enforcement officer leaked the report to Alex Jones and from there it traveled around the Internet.  By this point I’ve spent more time with those sweet preschoolers at coop, and I’ve had my midwife over to my home to check things out for the upcoming birth of my third child.  She wants to make sure I have all my birth supplies together, and that she’s familiar with my home to be able to most effectively assist me when the time comes.

These days I don’t move around too quickly.  I’m less patient with my children than I’d like to be, and all my innards feel incredibly squished by this growing little person while the rest of me feels rather whale-like and sedentary.  I’m a perfect choice for some subversive activity because looking at me, who would suspect anything?  I can just see the neighbors (with the charred remains of some once stately building in the background) sadly nodding their heads and speaking in shocked, soft tones:  “She seemed like such a nice person…”

On my last day of preschool coop duty, one of the moms developed an appendicitis and got emergency surgery.  Coop lasted several hours longer than usual that day.  Fortunately it was a gorgeous spring day, and the kids played outside while we referreed their squabbles.  “Please use your words!” was an oft-repeated recitation.  Got to teach these little ones early that diplomacy is a better first choice for conflict resolution than all-out war.

My family picks up our shares of raw milk, along with butter, cream and eggs from our local dairy once a week.  Some of the milk gets turned into yogurt.  It’s a simple process, really.  If you check my eBay shopping records you will notice a Very Suspicious Purchase from around six months ago:  a laboratory-grade water bath, the kind used to incubate microorganisms.  Aha, you say.  Just because I’m not too limber doesn’t make me any less dangerous.  I could be one of those bioterrorists.

Once a week I culture Lactobacillus acidophilus and whatever else happens to be in the innoculant yogurt.  I put a generous tablespoon of yogurt into several quart jars of milk, mix them up, and place them in the water bath to incubate overnight.  The next morning I have a fresh batch of yogurt.  Once it’s cooled off in the fridge, it goes into smoothies and other delicious treats.  Today, yogurt, tomorrow… well never mind.  You just never can tell with those crazies who vote for third party candiates.

The most harmful thing I did this past week was to in my mommy-brain fog, feed my child some forbidden foods not once, but twice.  Like just about every parent these days, I have a child with certain dietary restrictions.  In addition to my infractions against her diet, she also got into a few other problem foods on her own.  This week her body was reeling from the extra challenges, and it reflected in among other things, cravings for raw liver and butter oil, which I happily gave her.  She appears to have made a full recovery, and we will all be more careful from now on.

We got a surprise spring snow, and that gave us the opportunity to finally try out the sled my girls received for Christmas.  We bundled them up in their snowsuits, put them on the sled, and my husband pulled them all around this vacant lot across the street.  They wanted to build a snowman and have a snowball fight.  It’s rare that snow in Colorado is sticky enough to make snowballs, but this particular snow was perfect.  The girls built a snowman almost as tall as them and threw snowballs at each other and us.  I carefully documented the procedings with our digital camera.  We went home for a cup of hot chai and my husband got back to work.  I tried to clean up or organize some part of the house but didn’t get very far.  It’s much more fun plotting the next operation.

I do have one major failed operation to confess.  It’s now Lent and I very much wanted to do a meaningful daily devotion with my family.  I had both my girls stand on a piece of paper while I traced their feet.  Then I cut out their footprints out of their favorite color construction paper.  Each girl had 40 footprints, one for each day of Lent.  The plan was to each day read a Bible story about something that happened in a desert and the girls would each put up a footprint to symbolize them drawing closer and closer to Jesus as Easter approached.  The problem was the masking tape I was using absolutely would not stick to the wall for longer than a couple hours.  The footprints fell to the floor and spent most of their time there.  We also were rather sporadic about reading the Bible stories.  I tried several times to retape the footprints, to no avail.  Finally, my husband put us all out of our misery by throwing the maimed footprints away and that ended it.  I still think it’s a great idea, but I’ll have to think it through a bit more next year.

On the writing front, I’ve been writing a series of stories on how universities can conserve energy through various engineering changes and educational programs.  Although I do enjoy learning about how people are doing their part to take good care of the environment and use our resources more efficiently, there’s a part of me that can’t get over what’s now considered to be the biggest pollutant:  carbon.  Carbon?  As in, what all living things are mostly made up of, along with water.  Carbon?  As in the carbon cycle where in its simplest model animals take in Oxygen and give off carbon dioxide and plants take in carbon dioxide and give off oxygen, and everyone is happy.  Now, it’s all about reducing your carbon footprint.

I did manage to read one provocative book, called Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins.  He was an economist who would go to these third world countries and make these wildly optimistic projections about how their economies would just grow sky high once American corporations complete some very lucrative infrastructure projects, which the country had to borrow money to fund.  The whole point was to use the projections and projects to run the countries into so much debt that the US would always be able to hold the debt over their head and get what it wanted from the countries.  The other purpose was to provide a way for those corporations to make boatloads of profit.  I swear I don’t know this guy and never did.  Oh wait, his recruiter was the US Government, so I guess it wouldn’t matter much if I did.

Meanwhile, the report which would have profiled me already had its days numbered.  Baldwin, Barr, and Paul wrote a joint letter lambasting the ridiculousness of the report and demanding it get retracted.  Officials in Missouri quickly issued an apology for including their names in the report, but intended to keep the rest of the report as is.  It didn’t take long for the public outcry to become too much for the Missouri government, and they retracted the entire report on Friday, March 27.  They either learned their lesson or their next report will be classified (in which case let’s hope we can count on those whistleblowers).  A summary of the debacle can be found here, along with links to more pertinent information.

So now I’m back to being just a mom, writer, and whatever other hats I normally wear.  I might as well strike “potential domestic terrorist” from my resume.  After all, it was only for five weeks, and three of those weeks I had no idea.  Besides, it was only the state of Missouri that thought so, and I’ve been in Colorado all this time.

The threat of true terrorism is something we’ve all been conditioned to fear since 9/11.  Today, what I fear even more is the damage that can be done by ridiculous profiling and surveilance of ordinary people.  This particular report is just the latest in a rather long and disturbing series of incidents indicating that the so-called War on Terror has little to do with bringing actual terrorists to justice and much more to do with curtailing the freedoms of Americans, gaining our cooperation in this endeavor by holding the threat of another 9/11 over our heads.

Numerical national holiday

Not the kind where you get school or work off, but a fun one I’d have never considered celebrating…

This March 14 is National Pi Day.  I’m told the opening event starts at 1:59am

There are a number of web sites devoted to Pi and its great importance in our lives.  Many people memorize Pi up to several hundred decimal places.  Computers have calculated it out to a trillion decimal places.  You can see the first million digits here.

Apparently schools across the country plan activities to observe Pi Day.  I’m thinking maybe I should make a cheesecake.  For Valentine’s Day, I made a cheesecake, then made a heart with strawberries.  I think this Saturday I’ll make a Pi symbol with some kind of fruit on my cheesecake.  Any reason to make cheesecake is a good one.

Have a Happy Pi Day this Saturday.  Why not throw a party?

Fazed by Facebook

About six weeks ago I got a page on Facebook.  The impetus was that I successfully attempted to reconnect with an old friend so I could send his family a Christmas letter.  He responded to my initial email with a brief update on his family and an encouragement to keep in touch with him via Facebook, as that’s how he keeps in touch with friends these days.

That made perfect sense.  When you have a family of your own, you really don’t have the time or inclination to individually keep up with all your old friends.  Yet you do want to know how they’re doing and keep up with the big milestones and highlights in their lives.  Basically, you want the Christmas letter.

With that in mind, I registered with Facebook and promptly invited him to be my friend.  I noticed a mutual friend on his profile, so I invited her as well.  Within days, not only did those two confirm they knew me, but a number of other friends from college who I hadn’t spoken to in years found me and invited me to be their Facebook friend.

At first I was thrilled.  From one web site I’d get to reconnect and catch up with quite a few people I’d lost touch with.

But that’s not quite how it turned out, at least not so far.  I’ve actually found it rather difficult to navigate around Facebook, and it seems as if every time I check my page, the buttons are in different places.  Then it seems as if the template is deliberately designed to be uninformative.  You have this prominent comment box where you can type in what you’re doing right now in forty words or less.  You read a lot of “Had a rough day at work,” “about to spend some time alone with my wife,” “my kids have the sniffles,” “my headache is gone,” or “my husband is getting over his giardia.”  With the exception of the last one (that friend and her husband are missionaries somewhere in rural Asia), I didn’t feel as if I really learned anything new about anyone.

Facebook has this way of equalizing all your relationships, and it’s something I haven’t adapted to.  I have friends in town (not Facebook friends) who I see and talk to regularly, like once or twice a week.  When I call up one of those friends, we often do talk about very mundane, daily life matters.  Maybe I’m calling a friend to arrange some babysitting, or I’m wanting to get together for coffee, or I noticed she seemed a bit down when I saw her that morning.  Catching up is a matter of what happened in her life in the last few days, and usually about the most exciting thing is that her kids got the sniffles or have a fever.  Aah the dilema of do I take them to the doctor or let it run its course?

When I speak to a friend who lives far away, and who I don’t talk to as often, the conversation is very different.  I want to know what happened in her life since I talked to her last.  What were the big events, big insights, areas of personal or spiritual growth?  Is she dating anyone?  Is his wife expecting?  Did she graduate from college, or is that next year?  Did he make a major life decision or change jobs?  A few daily things get thrown into the conversation but that’s not the primary focus.  We’re not talking about what happened in the past few days, but rather the past few months or years.  Very different conversation.

On Facebook, no matter who the friend is or what your actual relationship is, the “conversation” and information gathered follows the path of a friend that you interract with on a daily basis.  What you learn by visiting a friend’s page is what they were doing in the last twenty-four hours, with very little detail.

It was the weirdest experience for me to check a few friends’ pages who I used to be close to but hadn’t spoken to in several years.  I learned a bit about their day at work but not anything about where they were working or what it entailed.  I saw pictures of their children but couldn’t find any mention of the children’s names.  I saw comments posted by their local friends about scheduling or rescheduling an appointment.  It actually felt like I was eavesdropping, only I’d been invited to eavesdrop.

One time I took my girls to the park and got into a conversation with a guy who was pushing his child on the swing.  We talked a bit about what our respective spouses did at work and balancing the whole parenting/work thing.  In the course of the conversation he mentioned that his wife would be finishing her workday in about an hour and that he’d be taking his kids home soon to fix some dinner.

Suddenly this woman walked right up to him.  He put his arm around her and very sweetly asked her how her day had gone.  Then he turned to me and introduced me to his friend.  I remember thinking:  “Yuck, he’s having an affair right in front of me at the park!”  OK, I don’t know that for sure, but there’s something really intimate about asking someone how their day went.  It implies that you know them well and that you have a sense of context because you knew how their yesterday had gone and you’ll be asking about their tomorrow as well.  It’s the sort of thing I ask my husband when he gets home from work.  It’s the sort of thing I don’t ask most other people.

On Facebook, I feel as if I’m that woman walking up to every single Facebook friend indiscriminately and asking them how their day went.  There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with that; it just feels out of place to me.  And then I don’t really learn anything because I don’t have the relationship with them to have any context in which to understand what they are telling me about their day–not in the single sentences Facebook seems to prefer.

So I have mixed feelings about my first foray into the internet based social networking world.  I definitely like the idea of reconnecting with old friends.  But it seems I have different expectations about what it means to reconnect.  I don’t want to act as if I now know them intimately again, because I don’t.  I want to acknowledge the long gap in the relationship and reconnect in the way good old friends would outside of the internet.

I want the Christmas letter, and Facebook is more about sticky notes tacked to the fridge.

Demystifying the Obama phenomenon

So this is how he did it.

On writing

It’s high time I wrote a little bit about writing.  After all, I started this blog as a way to showcase myself as a writer.

In the beginning I was thinking children’s books.  It’s still in the back of my mind, but it’s no longer my main priority.  My main vision was to write, and to be able to do it for some amount of compensation.  My husband and I are now in the situation where we need to write to pay the bills.  That will give one a very different perspective on the conventional route to publication that involves sending multiple query letters or manuscripts on spec, waiting for months before getting any sort of reply, piling up the rejection notices, and trying again.  The problem with that scenario is that you can’t send a rejection letter to a utility company, especially when you’ve been using their services.

I learned very quickly that the way to make money at this business is to write not what I want to write, but what other people want me to write.  I don’t mean this is any sort of cynical way.  It’s just one of those life lessons that are best not ignored.  I can still write what I want to write; I just need to make sure I am doing a certain amount of writing for others first.

With that in mind, my freelance writing career is doing quite well considering the time and effort I’ve put into it.  I got regular writing gigs for two local newspapers thanks to the connections of a member of my writer’s group.  I also landed a gig writing for a friend of a friend who has several web sites on topics of interest to me.  I was pretty content with that for a while, but in the past month have strived to increase my client base.

I landed my first national client through Elance, and have completed my first project.  I’m hoping to turn it into repeat projects.  Through another freelance writer, I got introduced to a couple more editors and am looking to see where that goes.  It seems to me the way to get in is through connections.  I haven’t had the greatest success writing editors cold.  Though I haven’t sent out many, query letters and manuscript submissions have been an unmitigated failure.  I’ve gotten the farthest when a writer who already works for an editor recommends me.  Once I’ve gotten in, I’m in.  At this time, I don’t know too many people, so I don’t have too many connections.  But that is slowly increasing.  At some point it will start to snowball.  My attitude right now is to consistently knock on a few doors, then run through the ones that open.  So far it seems to be working.  I’d love it to work faster, but then doesn’t everybody?  At least it’s moving.  It’s better than waiting months and months to hear back on a query letter or manuscript.

Having said all that, my attitude about submitting a manuscript on spec is changing.  For a few months I was adament that I wouldn’t do that.  I’d only write what I’d already sold.  But at the moment I have two publications in mind that I think would like some material I feel I could write fairly quickly.  So, I’m going to go for it and see what happens.  These aren’t big publishers.  They are local magazines.  It’s worth a shot, as long as I’m keeping up with the writing I have sold.

So that’s the quick summary of my writing experience.  Now it’s time to get on with life and with the paid writing

Coming soon to a sky near you… a false messiah!

No, I’m not talking about Obama!

There’s this interesting You Tube video I came across last night that details one of those secret black ops projects (that so many people seem to know about) where giant holographic images of various deities will be projected in the sky across the world.  These images will be accompanied by mind suggestions as to what they mean.  Depending on where you live, what you’ll see will be an image based on the prevalent traditional religion of the area.  So, in a predominantly Christian area, you might see Jesus; in a Muslim area, you might see Mohamed, etc.

The claim is that all the mental suggestions going along with these images will lead people to believe that we’ve all been wrong up to now about God and what He wants, and that what we really are supposed to do is submit to the new One World Religion.

Conspiracy nut stuff?  Maybe, but bear with me for a minute.  Some insiders say we have the technology to pull this sort of thing off.  There certainly are those who would use religion or any means to control the masses.  It may not be in the works as the video claims, but it’s not totally out of the realm of possibility either.  Besides, something like that has been predicted in the Bible (Matthew 24).

I mentioned this to my husband this morning and his comment was:  this is so typical of what arrogant people seeking to control others would come up with.  He went on to say that these power brokers actually believe that religious people would be fooled by that sort of thing.  Many undoubtedly will be.  I’m sure everyone will be initially impressed by the special effects.  But at some point, people who have faithfully practiced their religion for years are going to notice that the implanted voices inside their heads aren’t jiving with the sacred writings they have so long studied, or what they have come to recognize as the voice of God in their hearts.  I can speak to what a Christian might be thinking for that is my religion.  A basic doctrine we have been taught since infancy is that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation and by extension, to get to heaven.  It’s simplified, but essentially what we believe.  So, is a faithful Christian going to suddenly do an about-face because he or she saw an image of Jesus in the sky and “heard” him say that He wasn’t the only way after all, in fact, He wasn’t any sort of way?

Perhaps with the right amount of coercion, even the most faithful of Christians may turn.  But I do believe it will be pretty clear to those who want to hold onto their faith that the whole thing will be nothing but a super high-tech hoax.

The people most likely to be deceived, in my opinon, are those who really don’t have a solid faith in anything.  As far as they are concerned, Jesus could say the most outrageous things because they have no idea what Jesus actually did say.  It would take far less than giant holographic images to deceive them.  If you are in that group, you should consider that you may be vulnerable to being controlled in a way you hadn’t anticipated.  You might want to dust off a copy of the Bible, crack it open, and take a look at what it actually says–especially the four Gospels.  You’ll find it’s different than what you might think.  I’m not saying convert to Christianity, or even believe a word of what you read.  Just get a working knowledge of what’s written.  That way, if you happen to bump into some false messiah making this or that claim, you’ll at least be able to know whether or not “he” is contradicting what the real Jesus said in the Gospels.  When you perceive the contradiction, just be wary.

The real danger in getting lead by some special effects into a One World Religion isn’t so much that the new religion would be so bad, although I personally believe it will be horrible.  It’s more that you will have been lead down that path through deception and that the religion itself will be used to control you.  Legitimate religions have for years been used to control and harm people.  An invented religion will be used to the same ends.  Do you really want to risk becoming a part of that?  This is one situation where knowledge may not exactly be power, but it can at least be protection–for a while.  So, educate yourself on what is in the Sacred Scriptures.  And maintain a healthy skepticism no matter what you see.

Wholesome food

Here is a very interesting interview with Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilema and In Defense of Food:  An Eater’s Manifesto that talks about the food production issue.

A couple things stood out to me.  One is the observation that for an increasing number of people, access to high quality food is becoming a real health concern.  Pollan mentions the high rate of diabetes in New York, with one in six people affected.  These people need good food as the readily available processed food will only make them sicker.  I am in that group of people who consider quality food to be paramount to good health, as one of my daughters has a special need and requires certain types of whole foods to keep her healthy.  I currently have access to superb food, but there are times when I feel incredibly vulnerable because if that access were cut off, it would be horribly detrimental to my precious daughter.  I am glad someone like Michael Pollan is publicly talking about this issue because I’m not sure the need for whole foods is always legally or medically recognized as legitimate.

The second thing that stood out is Pollan’s comments about how the organic and whole foods movement has grown incredibly in the last ten years or so with no government support.  His view is “think of how much more it would grow with support.”  My view is that the government’s lack of support is probably the biggest benefit to the movement, and that the government should leave well enough alone and instead focus on ending subsidies to agribusiness.  More and more people are clearly finding alternatives to agribusiness poison despite the government’s massive subsidies.

Anyway, production of high quality food and access to it are important and I’m glad to see more of such food becoming available at reasonable prices.  I have great admiration for growers who offer CSAs, sell at farmers’ markets, and in other ways deal directly with the consumers.  I don’t expect Mr. Obama to add anything positive to this issue and I wish people would quit looking to him as if he might.  But I do believe more people will embrace wholesome food no matter what the government does or doesn’t do to either promote or thwart the effort.

Fastest concession in the west

I wasn’t planning to stay up super late following the election results, and it turns out I didn’t have to.  I started checking various web sites as soon as the polls closed in my state, and within a couple hours, Obama racked up over 300 projected electoral votes and McCain congratulated him on his victory.  The fastest concession in the West.

Here’s what we have to look forward to under an Obama presidency, especially one in which the same party also has a majority in the House and Senate.  It ain’t a pretty sight.  Obama’s pick for Chief of Staff isn’t too encouraging either.  This is true for all those Obama worshipers as well.  Don’t think you’ll get off easy just because you voted for him, adored him and called him your messiah.

On the other hand, there is an awakening in America that will turn out to be stronger than the darkness that is poised to envelop us all.  It is called Freedom, and when freedom takes hold in people’s hearts, what can stand against it?  Take a look at the video and you will see that there truly is hope for America, and no, I’m not talking about Obama.

If you voted for Obama, if you supported him during his campaign, don’t be shy about joining the peaceful movement for Freedom.  It won’t be long before you find out that the “change you can believe in” is something you could never support, the “hope for America” has turned to despair, and your so-called messiah has turned out to be an antichrist.  These things happen; people make mistakes, and in any case, the election was rigged.  The important thing is to work to preserve our country’s freedom, our country’s sovereignty, and to return our country to true Constitutional government and sound money.  Obama will be a huge obstacle to these goals, but McCain would have been as well, Bush definitely was (if it hadn’t been for actions taken by Bush, Obama wouldn’t be such a frightening prospect), and leaders before Bush have been obstacles as well. 

The other thing to remember is that Obama is not president until the electors cast their votes on December 15 and those votes are counted on January 6.  There is a lot brewing and there could be some surprises between now and then.  Obama too has obstacles in his path.  He may skate by; those set on destroying our nation have already paved the way.  On the other hand, miracles still happen.  What I do know is that there will be no time for a huge sigh of relief and going back to your regular life with your head in the sand.  The price of freedom is constant vigilance, and we all need to be vigilant.  This would be true even if the absolute best, highest quality candidate became president.  It’s especially true now that it’s looking like what we’ll get instead is the bottom of the heap in terms of quality and principle.  I researched each third party candidate on the Colorado ballot and believe me, they are all head and shoulders–no, a full body length–above Obama.  We couldn’t have gotten a worse candidate to be president if we’d tried.  And, as the long list of election fraud shows, we’ll never know who our real choice was.

But if we get working on the cause of freedom starting now, we can and will get back to the point where our vote will count, where we will have real choices in the candidates running, and where once again our government will be limited to the powers specifically granted it by the Constitution.  Evil is strong, but good is even stronger.  We the People under God can be the greatest obstacle in the path of evil if we so choose.

What if it’s Obama?

While it’s been a couple days since I’ve listened to the talk shows, I am positive the fear of Obama winning this election is still palpable among those opposed to him.  Some of the stuff he says sure sounds scary to me too, and I’m not particularly looking forward to waking up Wednesday morning to the prospects of an Obama presidency. 

I’ve learned that the best way to face up to fear is to imagine the worst possible situation and come up with an initial plan for dealing with it.  If an Obama presidency is that worst case scenario–and it is for many–than that’s what we need to be talking about.

I recently got a rather lengthy “prophecy” through email about how the American people are on the verge of electing the most ungodly president in history and how that was an awful thing.  I definitely would prefer a God-fearing man or woman in the White House.  But after reading the email, I couldn’t help but be hit over the head with the fact that there is one reason why an ungodly president is such a frightening prospect.  The reason is because now the president has way more power than he’s ever had and way more power than the Constitution gave him.  The Founding Fathers understood that people are fallible, even at times downright evil, and they wanted to protect the nation from being taken down by such a person.  So they instituted the system of limited government with checks and balances.  Were the Constitution being followed today, it would still be problematic that someone as extreme as Obama was a serious contender, but the damage he could do would be limited.  Now, I think a huge part of the fear of an Obama presidency is that we really don’t know just how far he’ll be able to go.  There’s a sense that once he’s elected, we’re going to be turning him loose with all this power and few limits.  A Godly president might handle that situation just fine, at least for a time, but someone like Obama?  Who knows what he’s going to do?  His statements and his record aren’t all that encouraging–he comes across as the type who’ll stop at nothing to get his way.

There’s also the issue of his citizenship.  We’ve beaten the birth certificate issue to death here, and it’s clear that no one in government who might have any remote responsibility with verifying this has any interest in doing the right thing.  But beyond that, there’s the whole Indonesia side and the very real question of whether Obama attending school in Indonesia meant that his American citizenship was renounced as it would have had to have been for anyone else attending school at the time.  We are facing the prospect of having a president who is not even an American citizen, and for some strange reason, the people who should care don’t want to be bothered.  Court after court throws the case out, basically saying regular citizens have no right to question a candidate’s right to be on the ballot.  It turns out it’s not really the states’ jobs to verify the eligibility of the candidate, and the party running a candidate is apparently under no obligation to properly vet that candidate either.  And the voters have nothing to say on the matter.  More suits are being planned, and this no doubt will continue well after tomorrow.

But it’s looking more and more likely that Obama will skate right through all the court mess and get innaugurated as our president, citizen or not, and if we don’t like it, well that’s just too darn bad.

What we have going on right now is a major Constitutional crisis.  The Constitution has been steadily eroded for years and this election could deal it another serious blow–this one could even be fatal.  It is important to realize that the reasons for this crisis are true regardless of who wins the election tomorrow.  McCain as president will have lots of unconstitutional powers just like Obama will.  McCain does seem to be a more decent person than Obama, so if he wins, the people who voted for him will figure they have reprieve from any serious problems for the next four years again.  Then when the next presidential election rolls around, there will be the same kind of fear there is now because what if the really evil guy (who will certainly be even worse than Obama) wins?  This is a very insecure position to be in.  I would much rather we went back to a governmental system where it would be embarrassing if a bad president got in, but not damaging.  We could all survive four years of bad Obama jokes, but can we survive four years of bad Obama policy?  With all the extra powers he’ll get as president, we really don’t know.

Given that we have good reason to worry, here is a reason that we should relax about the election outcome, at least for a few days.  My own study has convinced me that there is a shadow government and a secret agenda at work in this country.  The shadow government consists of the powerful financiers who use their great wealth to manipulate political events to benefit them.  The agenda is to bring the whole world into a one world government where they get to be kings and the rest of us get to be serfs or prisoners.  These people use their power to manipulate nations (including ours) into getting involved in wars.  They use their power to engineer financial crises such as the one we are currently in.  They use their power to make sure they stay in power and that only their own handpicked people get to be leaders.  They rig and manipulate our elections.  For those who want to verify what I just said, ample information can be found at such web sites as Freedom Force, InfoWars, Prison Planet, and News with Views, to name but a few.

With that in mind, it is my belief that this current election has been rigged and the winner has been decided months ago by the shadow government.  I very much believe in voting and I did vote, but I’m under no illusion that my vote actually means anything to anyone but me.  Here is a partial list of the numerous vote fraud incidents covering everything from registration fraud to outright hacking of the voting machines.  Without actually reading a single article listed, you should get a good sense of the magnitude of the problem just by the miniscule size of the scroll bar.  Even if it’s all just random fraud, there is enough of it to distort the actual poll results to the point where we have no way of knowing what the will of the people truly is.  I happen to believe underneath all that fraud is a plan to rig the elections to yield a certain outcome.

I can think of three possible scenarios for a rigged election.  1.  McCain is the pick and Obama is the useful idiot running against him, meaning that no matter how people vote and no matter what the newspaper polls say, McCain is going to win this election.  2.  Obama is the pick and McCain is the useful idiot running against him, and Obama will win no matter how people vote.  3.  Both Obama and McCain are good Globalist team players and it honestly doesn’t matter to the power brokers which one it is as long as it’s one of the two, meaning that the voters will have some say in the outcome by how they vote but that say is going to be diluted by the evident fraud that is still present and it wasn’t a real choice anyway.  Since the election has already been decided, it’s going to play out according to plan and while you should definitely vote on the principle of the matter, there’s no use in worrying about the outcome.

So what should we do if that outcome is Obama?  Well, I would say the same things you should do if the outcome happens to be McCain.  The issues that got our country to this critical point are true no matter which of the two it is.  We need to work hard to take back the power we have through our vote.  We need to do our part to end the massive fraud going on.  My suggestion is to persuade all counties and states to go back to paper ballots where real people count each and every ballot under the watchful eyes of whoever wants to be there for the count.  I don’t have a problem with scanning ballots to get initial results, but the results aren’t official until the ballots are handcounted, preferably more than once.  The other thing we need to focus our efforts on is restoring the rule of the Constitution.  We need to hold our elected officials accountable to evaluating legislation based on its constitutionality.  If it’s not permitted by the Constitution, they need to vote no on it no matter how good the intentions behind the legislation are.  We need to educate ourselves on the Constitution, what it says, what it means, and what the Founding Fathers intended.  Apparently, James Madison took notes of the various meetings where people were discussing the wording of the Constitution.  Any doubts as to the intent of a particular passage can be found in those notes.  We need to work hard to educate our fellow citizens about the Constitution and what a government that operates within its Constitutional limits would look like.  These are some foundational issues which need to be addressed quickly if our country is to survive as a sovereign nation and if we will continue as a free people.  The beauty of these issues is that because they are so basic, they are hardly partisan, and people can accept that they are important no matter who they voted for.  So, anyone who is aware that our country needs to go back to basics can help the cause.

Once we have our vote back and everything unconstitutional is eliminated, we will be well on our way to resolving the myriad other issues that plague us and which the politicians harp on but can’t seem to find solutions for.  The solutions are actually in our hands and we need to implement them.  The things that are broken about our nation are broken no matter who wins the sham election tomorrow.  For this reason, it’s time to quit worrying about who will win and get to work with what we can do.  Although wresting control of our nation and our destiny from the Globalists is not going to be easy, especially since they are so close to achieving their goals, it is still possible.  After this election, I am going to take a bit of a breather from politics while I contemplate where I can best use my talents to help in the cause of freedom.  Then I will get started on my part.  I would encourage you to do the same.  When you’re ready, check out both Freedom Force and Campaign for Liberty to get ideas and contacts to help you get started.

We can take this country back if we all do our part… even if it is Obama.

Fall backwards

I hate when this happens:  I stay up too late on the eve of the fall clock change, and wake up in the dark to attend an early Mass, only to realize that I could have slept an extra hour as the Mass starts an hour later.  Luckily I’ll just feel the effects of sleeping in tomorrow instead.

I’m not sure how effective the changes made to daylight savings time by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 have been in actually saving energy.  I don’t see how changing the clocks makes much difference in the end, and it probably cost lots of money to study and implement the proposed changes.  But there are two things I’m grateful for concerning the change.

On Friday evening, my husband and I took our daughters trick-or-treating around the neighborhood.  Not only was it a pleasant, balmy evening, but it was light!  Ever since I’ve had a child–and my oldest daughter’s first trick-or-treating adventure occurred when she was still newborn–I’ve noticed that the fall backwards time occurred the Sunday before Halloween and that never made sense to me.  It assured that all the fairies, princesses, animals, ghosts, Harry Potter characters, and sometimes presidential candidates would all be walking the streets in pictch dark and in most places, freezing.  Finally, someone got smart and postponed the time change by a week, and the streets of our small town were filled with happy and warm trick-or-treaters making their rounds.  We ventured a little farther than usual, so it was dark by the time we returned home, but it certainly didn’t start off that way.

The other thing I’m thankful for is that the fall time period is shorter.  If I could have it my way I’d just leave the clocks on daylight savings time all year because I’d much rather wake up in the dark than be driving home from work at 5pm in the dark.  I would prefer to preserve my daylight hours in the evening.  However, no one ever consults with  me on these decisions.  Still, at least they shortened the evening dark time by several weeks.

In this tense time before the election you have to count your blessings, right?  This year, if you vote after work, you’ll still be voting in the dark, but at least you got to take your kids out trick-or-treating while it was still light.