Student Body President is Not the President

Last night's debate was an exercise in "gas lighting" by former President and convicted felon Donald Trump.  It was watching a mob boss tell you how he was going to protect your turf if you paid him off.  "Everybody will be happy."  There is some truth to his approach.  The most startling realization inferred from his comments was that if and when he was President Hamas would not attack.  Clearly the connection was made that Hamas simply is a terrorist cell of the Trump Organization.  We know this.  We know he is smitten with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, communist dictators with shades of fascist behavior.  Openly and repeatedly Donald Trump said he wanted to eliminate burdens on America's government entitlements killing our seniors, immigrants, and poverty-stricken.  This was his plan.  Murder.  Covid 19.  Stolen confidential national security documents sat at Mar-a-lago about which also he bragged.  Not long later Hamas, a terror cell controlling Gaza, brutally breached the border of Israel and raped, pillaged, murdered and took hostage innocent citizens.  It was clear Donald Trump's connection to Hamas, and he told you.  The rest of what he said was untruth.  "Biden ruined Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.  The troops hate Biden and loved him.  (Suckers and losers)  He said he never had sex with Stormy Daniels.  What is necessary in this election is to think.  Electing the American President has superseded personality.  No longer is it important if the President looks presidential.  A figure head is not what we need.  What is important it to understand what these mean believe and stand for.  Donald Trump seemed more literate, but only because his verbal ability was more fluid than Joe Biden.  That is what he is and has been.  Donald Trump is a smooth-talking, persuasive, charismatic salesman with love of himself.  He does not care about you.  That everything he said on national television was a lie is an atrocity.  Joe Biden repeatedly said it.  "You don't know what you are talking about," and he was right.  To trust the leadership of the free world to a deranged, semi-homocidal, delusional narcissist will be fatal to American democracy.  President Biden did not present well.  His speech was forced and sometimes awkward, but he spoke truths.  Truth is what America needs, not coercion.  Perhaps Biden is rough, but the soft-bellied hand job is not enough to save America. 

The Tet

 Several disparate topics are floating around in my brain, and I may try to touch on all of them.  Firstly a musician is unlikely to develop  true authenticity unless he learns swing music first.  Why?  The reason is you can feign to be a musician in this day and age, because real American popular music is dead.  What suffices today, computer-generated tracks, posing, and attitude do not make a true musician.  The building blocks to becoming a musician have not changed, although America has.  The change in America has not been for the better.  We are living in the delusion of the smartphone, which does most things for us.  The entire process and experience of having to indulge in something to learn it is being lost.  You can shoot a movie on a smartphone.  You can control your health (so they say).  You can check your sugar level.  You can file an insurance claim.  You can do most anything including having sex in cyberspace.  The tech industry wants this, because they make money fulfilling your needs.  Once in America people and brick and mortar businesses had to satisfy your needs.  It took more leg work.  This applies to our educational system, which has been stunted.  The educational system used to be the place where we cut our teeth.  It could be hard knocks, but you learned from it because you had to work at it.  The ease, convenience, and portability of a smartphone has stunted the cognitive and physical ability of the human race.  There is no such shortcut training to be a musician.  A smartphone is a useful digital music player, and more so if you exploit its true audio capabilities by using WAV or aiff files.   Play the recorded music through a hi fidelity audio system and you could experience the true nature of the music.  Most don't do this.  To be a musician you must be able to actualize time.  Music requires an understanding of time, the articulation of time, and the feeling of time.  You must be able to count and keep time at a variety of differing tempos.  There is no substitute for this requirement.  If you can't keep and feel a steady time pulse, then you are not a true musician.  Likewise it helps to possess talent.  Some people work on this their entire lives.  Establishing the building blocks of good musicianship are a good place to start.  Talent can come later with knowledge, experience, and listening.  How does one learn time?  The easiest method is to understand that a feeling can be created, a feeling different than what is bouncing around in the world.  With steady time at a chosen tempo and a specific rhythmic feel articulated by specific metric patterns, feelings can be achieved.  This is a highly controversial statement, and many may disagree with it.  Stravinsky and many others have said that the ascribing of feelings to music is pointless.  Coming from such a intellectual mind, this is shocking and discounts almost in its entirety why much music exists.  It is to voice the soul of the human being, and usually that is laden with burdensome emotion.  Why else would we be inclined to indulge in music?  To learn time there is no better way than to learn to articulate quarter notes.  This could be Beethoven.  This could be in a march, or this could be in the swing style of music.  As I have been studying the Blues, it became apparent that many musician who feel the blues and play the blues are not successful expressing their blues.  It is because they are not playing in good time.  It is easy to fake it.  Only a steady pulse of quarter notes can actualize an authentic human feeling.  Many forms of American popular music don't do this.  The main vocal artist my possess this feeling of time, but often the accompanying recorded tracks are nothing but fodder laid down to a click track.  Some rock bands such as AC/DC feign angst, anger, and aggression while performing, but upon closer scrutiny their instrumental tracks lack rhythmic vitality and groove.  It takes training and skill to play in time, but you can learn.  Teaching your muscles and body to articulate time is a major component of musical training.  As veteran bassist musician Carol Kaye often states, playing in the big bands is crucial training for this express reason.  It readily is evident in Blues performances, when the performers can feel the pulse.  Unfortunately the recent Bob Dylan concert was not an example.  If there is no discernible pulse, then really there is no music.  It could be a pleasant experience, but it will fail to transcend anything.  Secondly the dire consequences of our democracy are are not being understood.  Like music democracy must be supported.  It will fail to actualize unless it is understood, practiced, and reinforced.  Four years of a Trump Presidency has unseated our democracy on many levels, but no one seems to understand.  Corporate malfeasance is the methodology.  Without a capable government to express and reinforce the ideals of our Constitution, our freedoms will be lost.  In so many ways the freedoms of Americans upon have been encroached.  The majority of America have become livestock grazing in the field.  There interest in their own freedom is the same as a cow's.  They don't care, as long as there is hay in the field.  After the Covid subsidies stopped and our spending bubble popped, reality should set in.  There has never been another time in American history (or at least in our lifetimes) that corporate America ruled the roost.  Whether it is telecom, television, streaming, or social media, we are not in control of our own lives.  Big Brother has emerged, and he is all of this.  Corporate America has grown so quickly in the vacuum of post Covid and after four years of Donald Trump's handouts, it will be a miracle if American democracy survives.  They are telling use we will be happy with the new system of communism.  Perhaps the man will own all of our housing and food supply, but we will be provided for.  Believe this!  It is a lie.  Covid is the evidence.  On the contrary they are trying to kill us and thin out the population.  The Big Lie isn't just that Trump won.  It is that anyone cares about the well being of the American people.  The medical establishment has been bought and sold out by Big Pharma, and a handful of elite rich own most everything else.  Certainly they don't need a bunch of refugees roaming the earth.  It is far easier to kill us with a heat dome, famine, plague, or war.  When we realize this we will have a better chance of surviving.  This assault on humanity feels inhuman.  Because the value of human life has changed to cyberspace, it is like an alien species has invaded Earth.  Our familiar former human values and habits are extinct and seem frivolous.  Music?  Art?  Romance?  It is like the Tet is in control. 

When Your Own Property Can Kill You

"Remembering Our Lost Friends" is a Facebook group.  It focuses on Fayetteville, North Carolina residents who die too early, specifically many who attended Fayetteville Terry Sanford High School and the Fayetteville Academy.  I have had friends on this list.  Abstractly we  have known the challenges of Cumberland County.  Because there is substance abuse, and I feel this abuse directly correlates with the challenges of happiness living here, people are reluctant to speak out on the these ills.  Not that long ago a notable family who lived in historic Hamount succumbed to these forces.  The father filled his family and then himself.  He was martyred at his funeral as a pinnacle of the community, and yet he killed his children and his wife in cold blood for no apparent reason.  There is no such thing.  Always there is a reason, and the powers at be choose to sweep it under the rug.  Drug distribution has escalated with the emergence of tobacco/vape shops, and many of these rogue stores are run by outsiders.  The indigenous population of Fayetteville has been infiltrated with foreigners, and there is reason for concern.  It was not until Donald Trump became President that a negative impact began to surface.  He sought to separate America and instigate warring among native tribes.  Foreign operatives have become the henchmen in Trump's scenario.  Always I have been open and fair minded about American immigration until now.  Always have sought to trust my friends and neighbors until now. When you realize these people have begun attacking you and are trying to push you out, it becomes a different story.  You must fight.  Neighbors are one thing, but the forces greater than the individual are more difficult to mitigate.  The most daunting would be the United States military, because they can use the ruse of normal training to do whatever they please including transporting illegal narcotics.  There is a defense mechanism connected to this activity, and hence there is paranoia.  Fentanyl is not a good drug, and it has killed hundreds of thousands of American.  We must understand that is its purpose.  It is not being distributed to make life easier for Americans.  It means to kill us.  Why else could or would anyone need a drug so much more powerful than tradition narcotics?  American industry must be transporting Fentanyl, and containers were found on CSX freight trains.  Deregulation has caused this problem.  If anyone would take the time to remember two decades ago,  commercial airlines were how lower Saudi royalty attacked the World Trade Center twin towers.  These were friends of the George Bush clan, and it concerned petroleum.  Osama Bin Laden offered his assistance to Saudi Arabia, and they refused him as an infidel.  He became angered, and began his campaign against the United States.  If the Bush's had made peace with this man, we would not have had this problem with Middle Eastern terrorism.  George W. Bush created ISIS by leaving American military equipment in Iraq.  There has not been a President with integrity in my lifetime.  Only John F. Kennedy, and they murdered him and his brother.  They murdered Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.  No matter how much we would try as a nation to forget, racism has been rampant.   It is best to remember it clearly.  I have spent much of my life as an adult abroad.  I have lived in Columbia, South Carolina (which was racist) and Columbus, Ohio (which was surprisingly liberal and fair minded).  I spent ten years in the cruise industry traveling all over the world being exposed to different cultures.  Most of them were more advanced then current America, but most would agree America has regressed in recent years.  Perhaps my sensitivity to historical world strife has been augmented by my own personal health struggles as a result of Covid 19.  It may not have happened without the Covid molecule, because it was engineered to do what it does.  It finds your smallest weaknesses and exaggerates them into full blown disease.  It has a nerve agent, and it stays in your body a long time.  My journey of ill health was a long and rocky one.  Before Covid I blew out my lowest disc lifting a heavy oak trunk.  I heard it pop, but I didn't know what it was.  I had a back ache for two years, and eventually my lowest vertebra fused to my pelvis.  I found this out a few years later reading the radiologist's report from a CT scan.  All of my discs had diminished by this time, and that was a result of another pathogen instigated by the emergence of Covid.  Pelvic infections are common, but a blown disc becomes a weak spot for future infection.  Unfortunately it is difficult to diagnose, and ultimately surgery to debride an abscess in the spine is when they harvest a deep culture and find the culprit.  Various antibiotics were tried and did keep me alive and active, but the referred arthritis never stopped.  It became painful to walk.  Secondly working in the yard in the same place, I developed a tooth ache.  I had a resorbtion cavity in a back molar caused by an impacted incoming horizontal wisdom tooth.  It destroyed the molar from the inside out, and for months I was swallowing this bad bacteria.  The first time I had this happen on the ship, it caused H. pylori in my gut.  Two weeks of the appropriate antibiotics, Amoxicillin plus one other, treated that for the most part.  An oral surgeon extracted the molar and the impacted wisdom tooth with no problems, but shortly thereafter an abscess appeared on my shoulder.  I thought it was from an Orb Weaver's bite, because they spun huge webs in our back yard, and often I would walk right through them going to turn off the pump.  There was no pain, which was an indicator of actinomycosis.  Over time unbeknownst to me on my back below the abscess, a hive-like area appeared on my skin with black spots that began to itch.  I was gardening at the time, had fungus on my feet from the ship, poison sumac on my legs, and open wounds on my fingertips from chopping garlic.  Open wounds of any kind are easy access for more bacteria or fungus, and digging in the dirt, planting, and spreading cow manure were the wrong things for me to be doing.  Also I dug a new garden patch and acutely remember breathing in a huge waft of foul soil.  That was the beginning of a lung infection that lasted several years.  My skin became pallid, my contact lenses became infected, and I developed a fiery rash on my forearm that spread to my first two fingers and joint in my thumb.  Inadvertently this got spread to the penis, up the urethra, and to my right kidney.  This bacteria was Enterococcus faecalis, and it comes from your poo.  It also not surprisingly lives in the soil.  Thus began peripheral neuropathy on my right side, that began behind my right eye and ear and ran the length of my right side.  My feet became infected, and each night I had to peel the rotting skin off my my little toes caused by its exotoxins.  Psoriasis developed consequently, and these plaques began to crawl up my shins.  When I had been at the dentist, the hygienist commented on the condition of the roof of my mouth.  After several years of piecing together gratuitous health care with no insurance, and later receiving Medicaid with Obama's expansion money, I was able to take the disparate words of the test results and comments of the various providers and formulate a diagnosis with the help of GOOGLE.  The facts were very specific and fit my symptoms to a tee.  A bacteria that does not effect the bladder but only the kidney.  Recurring sinus infections.  Systemic skin infection.  Referred arthritis.  Raw wounds on the feet.  Difficult to culture.  Existing  as commensal and faculative.  Needing another bacteria as a trigger.  Recurring pelvic infection.  Actinomycosis was the culprit, a bacteria that masquerades as a fungus and lives in the oral cavity.  It needs another bacteria to activate it.  The operative lessons learned are, our world has become infinitely more dirty.  Spewing micro-dust (blacks soot) from low flying commercial jets allows bacteria and fungus  to create a biofilm  often that can become fatal.  This soot is the medium to which the pathogens attach.  This exact phenomenon happened at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC.  Its shiny stone dome became black and slimy covered with a dangerous biofilm created by low flying commercial jets.  They spent millions on laser treatments.  What is the homeowner supposed to do?  We retreat indoors.  

A Probable Armageddon?

Not only is the United States under the auspices of a "Heat Dome," also we are in a vacuum of accurate, factual, relevant information.  No one says it, and the media is almost in complete denial of reality because of corporate pressure, but the causes of most of America's problems (and the world) are simple.  They are being spun, hidden, ignored, and brandished for greed and global power.  The "outbreak" of Covid 19 was the same.  It was manufactured in the Wuhan Lab in China with United States government subsidized money hidden by the shell entities of the Center for Disease Control, National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Disease, and the Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command Chemical Biological Center.  Luckily Rand Paul's Royalty Transparancy Act of 2024 unanimously passed in the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committees.  The severity of the Covid outbreak was effective masking more dire and consequential problems in global health and life.  All indicator's seem to be pointing to a "Logan's Run" scenario, where humanity almost destroys the earth and chooses to live in a self-created biodome.  Elon Musk wants to desert Earth for Mars.  We have been growing food in artificial greenhouses for years.  Only pure evil could champion such a concept, destroying the Earth or rather attempting to eradicate the human population, so Greek God's will have full reign to frolic in God's paradise.  A Heat Dome is caused by an absence of oxygen, causing us to try to live in a vacuum.  It is an effective weapon of destruction, since life on Earth cannot subsist without oxygen.  Progress continues to raze much needed forestry, rain forest, and local foliage.  The illness of the Earth is what promulgated Covid, and this illness is being disguised on a massive scale.  Media, in sickening displays of sycophantic obedience (to Trump in his puppeteers), report the weather directly from the sources of its industrial disruption.  A "Heat Dome" has a tangible cause, and often it is the United States military.  America's military is nothing more than another shell entity being instructed by the same evil that is controlling the rest of the world.  Its' members simply are indoctrinated to conform, be silent, and take their pay.  If they are lucky they get a "shelter at home" order, before hell breaks loose in their local environment.  So many things are contributing to this assault on the Earth's health, it is difficult to discern their roots.  Private and publicly traded companies are to blame, and share holders are pacified with dividend checks.  This assault on the world is as complex as Hamas' attack on Israel in October.  The Washington Post printed an excellent and telling front page article explaining the depth of this attack.  It was several years in the making and relied upon confidential and secretive national security information that sat in Donald Trump's bathroom at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.  Openly to guests he bragged about their value (stolen documents), and his dire financial recession necessitated their sale to the highest bidder.  The attack on Israel by Hamas was a convenient diversion from Trump's legal matters, and the case charging him with possession of these stolen documents has been stalled by his newly appointed minions in the courts.  That Environmentalism would be the salvation of the world seems silly.  "Save the whales!  Save the rain forests!  We need clean water!  We need clean air."  The proponents of these issues, often people with earthy, Hippie, native cultural perspectives easily of are made sport.  They have been an easy dupe for the Evil.  A simple campaign of misinformation and gas lighting has sufficed, but it began with the deconstruction of religion, public education, and and the polluting of media with propaganda.  This VACUUM is the world's most dire, threatening, and extreme antagonist.  Eradicate oxygen and fill the atmosphere with toxins including electromagnetic radiation, biofilms of algae, bacterial, and fungus, then try to breathe a breath of life.  Add a deadly man-made pathogen to the mix, and you have a formula for mass annihilation.  Anthony's Fauci's response was counter-intuitive to the majority of the established medical community.  Someone, probably Big Pharma, created their crisis and would offer a partial solution for their own gain.  The DuPont and Sackler families have been killing Americans for years, and no living human being on this earth does not have forever chemicals in their blood.  That American government never has been able to eradicate this threat shows the power of these family units that control the world.  DuPont chooses to litigate murder and disease on a case by case basis, and PFAS still is in the American watershed.  They change the name of the chemical, and stunted and underfunded Washington agencies struggle to keep up.  Only recently has North Carolinian Michael S Regan, as Administrator of the EPA, been able to change the status of C8 to a carcinogen.  I would rather not have had to fight these battles in my last chapters of life, but other generations of Americans have had it worse.  Slavery it would seem, no matter how much you ignore Critical Race Theory, is the soul of America.  With its far reaching negative connotations for all  Americans, the effects and results of the human struggle to survive this heinous ill bred spirituality, invention, innovation, culture, and art.  These are the will of the human being to survive and be human, and grievous odds were overcome.  If Facebook has a groups page called "Remembering Our Lost Friends" specifically devoted to residents of Fayetteville, North Carolina, then there are tangible reasons why people die more often here.  These reasons escalated with the Covid outbreak, and now the underlying assault on our and the Earth's health is being disguised for corporate and military greed.  To build a new historically black high school beside a rail yard at Fort Liberty, so the base can get federal dollars from the Pentagon is the most callow, selfish, irresponsible misstep a local government could make.  It would be the metaphor for the Evil that has attempted to overtake the world.  About who are we thinking?  Our children?  The future leaders of the world?  We are thinking of none of this, because the Earth and the human race now is seen as expendable.  It is prophesied in the Bible that Jesus will return to the Earth a second time, and those who are saved with be transported to a new planet of His making.  Those who refuse the salvation of God and His Son will be left in Armageddon to perish in hell flames as fire rains down from the sky and up from the oceans.  Is this to what we have to look forward in our lifetimes? 

The Probable Last Chapter of Reinvention

 Reinventing myself musically is new to me.  Openly I have grown bored with my traditional musical pursuits, especially the piano.  I am not tired of the piano, but having been a professional pianist on ships for a decade, having to approach music from the note specifics of the piano is not rewarding.  It is a job.  Learn and play the exact notes.  I decided to let that go when I left the ship industry in 2014.  I began a partnership with a local musician, and only did it make sense to try new things.  Easily we could have adhered to my historical repertoire of gig material.  It was much more fun and rewarding to just chuck all of that protocol and start from scratch.  No arrangements.  No set list.  No nothing.  We just let the creativity flow, and flow it did.  In the throes of trying to rediscover my musical soul again, I am remembering how successful this partnership became.  We have produced at least six, full length, all original CD's of music.  The music we have created and produced is more sonorous and satisfying than most American commercial music being made today.  The reason is because both of us are seasoned professional musicians with years of listening and playing experience.  We play a variety of instruments, and we have open minds.  Making music is facile to us, and with a bit of logistical guidance from my audio recording days at The Ohio State University, we were able to create an intimate recording environment that produced good sound.  This is key.  We had a small space, and we filled this space with live music, which we recorded.  We did not produce tracks.  We did not exchange projects.  We created live music like a band and recorded it for posterity's sake.  Quality live sound was our goal, and it was accomplished with a vintage drum kit and live amplifiers.  The keyboards were mixed through Ross Typhoon 18" three way PA cabinets, which also were recorded live through microphones.  Overdubs were recorded direct into the computer, but only after we have a live rhythm section sound that breathed like a real band.  This concept of recording was the same as most successful studios in American popular music history.  They were Motown (three live tracks in a dirt-floored garage), Muscle Shoals, and STAX Records.  The Wrecking Crew in LA cranked out most of America's commercial hits, but there was a lot or production in that studio.  When you band can play, sounds good, and has a nice little room, a competent engineer can make hits.  My own personal music projects, about a dozen CD's worth of material (mostly original), we accomplished with a MIDI studio.  Live sound was not the goal or the apparatus.  I used keyboard bass from a variety of sources and drum sounds from a variety of drum machines and tone modules.  My goal was to make them listenable and to groove.  As such I find myself at a juncture.  After five years of this live collaboration with Edmond Truman in his Man Cave recording studio, and after my mother's move to assisted living, I am trying to find my musical center again.  What I have realized is that live sound really is a product of a band, not an individual.  Bass and drums is the foundation of American popular music, and if and when you have that you have the foundation for musical creativity.  Playing with a drum machine is something unto itself, and I am wrestling with this limitation.  I know how to program drums and create a good groove and feel, but it is not fun like playing in a live rhythm section.  Also it does not sound the same.  I get close playing Fender bass with a good drum pattern, and I know how to record electric bass into Digital Performer.  My set up for this though has been in constant flux.  Recently after refurbishing our garage, I began reassembling a multi-keyboard set up to play live.  I don't know if I ever will use or play it commercially again in my lifetime, but I wanted to design it for my own satisfaction and intellectual prowess.  This set up has expanded into three planes, and for the first time I have keyboards on three sides of a square.  Finally I have developed a sound concept, and most of them are in a respectable place to offer their own unique sonic pallet.  (It took a while to decided whether the Rhodes or the acoustic piano would go on the right or left)  As it turns out my stumbling block was a transition of drum sounds.  My EMU Procussion module became noisy because of a leaky  power supply, so I decided to move own.  Into the trash bin it went.  I kept my Yamaha RX-17 drum machines, and they still suffice for Latin Percussion in the studio.  I even bought a dedicated Latin Percussion sound card for the Yamaha S90 digital piano.  It's sounds are realistic, but you have to set up a multi performance for every sound you will use it with.  I chose rather to use the great quality keyboard sounds of the piano itself, rather than sacrificing it for drums.  The choice of transitioning to a Roland Boss DR-880 drum machine was the right choice, but it meant learning a new machine.  I wanted a stand alone drum machine that you can program individual patterns and change their tempo on the fly for a live gig.  No studio set up.  No MIDI merge.  No outboard mixer for the drums.  The DR-880 hands down is the right choice, and only now am I finally inching toward a new musical goal.  I have been programming it slowly in my lap with headphones late at night.  It has been decades since I have had to program patterns into a machine.  Usually I just play the drum parts with my fingers on a MIDI keyboard into the sequencer.  Tonight I was able to figure out how to take an existing pattern in the DR-880, augment it, overdub additional parts, mix the kit, and create an interesting playing experience with which to play live on the new rig in the garage.  I know how to do this, but it has been a long time.  I created a four bar pattern, copied it five times, and overdubbed different percussion instruments for each pattern changing the flavor sightly for each sequence.  You then can switch them on the fly as you play live.  The result was a Jerry Goldsmith cue for his film, "The Russian House."  A percussion groove is the key, but it took sheer willpower to push it out. 

Nature Versus Nurture

 It could be easy to succumb to your immediate environment.  If we were reduced to survival mode living moment to moment fraught with ADD, neurosis, and anxiety, finding the concentration to overcome these odds could be difficult.  Over stimulation is a core component of American life.  It was conceived and implemented just like false healthcare.  When the human body needs solace, sleep, and proper health care, Americans now are antagonized.  Never would I have believed it, but it is ethnic cleansing and genocide on a grand scale.  My instincts told me when Donald Trump became President, we would be subject to some grievous heinous ill not unlike the Holocaust.  I was correct.  Perhaps it was Covid 19, or perhaps it was 2012 ten years later.  If many disparate cultures all predicted an apocalyptic event in one particular year, then there is credence in that intuition.  We have lived it, and one only has to pay attention.  Follow the money.  In the first few weeks of newly legalized sports betting in North Carolina, naive citizens lost half a billion dollars.  Five hundred million dollars was stolen from average North Carolinians, because we are not smart enough not to fall for their ploy.  We are being entertained by losing our money.  We deserve a better entertainment product than Kevin Hart making TV commercials.  We should get more from our gamble.  Instead of gambling we could be investing in tools, infrastructure, or personnel.  It is a visceral, underhanded, despicable addiction offering fake solace rather than support.  America has become an evil empire, and they all are after the tax payers money.  Now it is easier to scoop it out of Washington, DC than to earn it honestly with a product or service.  It's kind of like a dividend check.  Whether it is kick backs from foreign aid, lucrative government contracts, or embezzlement, American tax payers are being raped and pillaged.  Taxes, fees, and utilities, things controlled by the government are escalating.  This is a problem.  Washington is a swamp, and it is bogged down with evil.  The most stark and disturbing reminder of this modern American Holocaust is the new "Covid Wealth."  Americans won't notice when the all-ready billionaires' wealth pushes toward a trillion dollars.  What we will notice is the new wealth that is emerging post-Covid.  Huge hedge funds have begun to buy up housing, because they have the deep pockets and thus the new housing monopoly.  They are the only ones who have this capability, because the rest of America has gotten poorer in the midst of Covid.  The disparity between the extremely rich and the poor continues to grow, and the poor now have been targeted for extermination.  Not only do they want to take your money, they want to kill you first.  The sacrifice of America's health care system is evidence of this overt attempt to kill Americans.  I have experienced this personally in the last few years, and it is a difficult pill to swallow.  When you discover your doctor is a fascist, who has no interested in helping you, it is a shock.  When you discover his real goal is to kill you and take your money, then I understand that my instincts were right.  We have endured a covert war in America, and that war was meant to kill us.  It is not the first time.  Why would America send its young soldiers around the world to fight Communism in Viet Nam for the French?  A virus that appears out of nowhere and targets intravenous drug users and homosexuals was no accident.  It was created by the same evil that created Covid 19 in a lab.  It becomes more understandable why survivalists insist on owning AR-15 assault rifles.  A well-armed militia is the last line of defense against an advancing turned-fascist nation.  What is difficult is discerning the enemy, because they are embedded in our everyday ordinary lives.  They are in the government and in our military.  There are traitors, spies, and assassins, and they are no joke.  It would be wise to hold those accountable for the emergence of Covid 19, and to isolate its presence.  If it still is around, it is not magically appearing in the mist.  It is much more likely in historical context to be being expelled from rail tank cars or airborne strato tankers.  I never will see a C-130 Super Hercules the same way.  There is just too much leeway in the vast red tape of the military to rule out foul play.  When your Secretary of Defense is suffering from prostate cancer, he is not providing enough oversight to a vast network of probable illicit drug trafficking, weapons distribution, and imperialism. The attack on Israel by Hamas was made possible by Trump's stolen documents.  Openly he bragged about them.  The Washington Post published a front page article detailing the complex planning and intelligence needed to launch this attack on Israel.  It came at a convenient time to divert America's attention from Trump's woes, and Trump's son candidly said how his family wanted the Gaza beach front property.  All you have to do is listen.  Thus far the court system has hedged keeping this information from coming to light.  The lawsuit purposely has been stalled protecting traitor Number One, and insultingly he continues to run for the Presidency of the United States.  It is easier to stomach when you know the depth of the stench.