Ross McNutt or Doug Clark? Who is Nuttier?

I have been trying to gather my thoughts of the day, and they are disparate.  Necessarily that doesn't make for an uninteresting blog entry.  It may be of more interest considering the history of ADD in this country.  Attention Deficit Disorder, another malady quietly put to bed by American media.  (or was it Big Pharma?)  Perhaps their drugs for this affliction, Ritalin, Adderall, and Dexedrine weren't selling.  In any case although you can bet Attention Deficit Disorder still is at play, America had decided no longer to pay attention.  The solution for hyperactivity, a decided lack of attention span, and aggressive behavior is an iPhone.  Ouch.  When your government fails to regulate corporate pollution, provide health conscious guidelines for businesses, and overall protect your well being, the answer is addiction.  It's the "Razzle Dazzle."  Smoke and mirrors.  Abandon and exploit the Millennial Generation.  Turn them into a lot of naive, over confident, rose colored glasses wearing army of LGBT malcontents.  That isn't very flattering, and I'm sorry.  Partly this is true, because never before in mainstream American culture have citizens been confused about their gender.  LGBT has lobbied hard to make gender and choice, and what confusion it has caused.  A "Bathroom Bill" was penned, and lost North Carolina the NCAA tournament.  Boatloads of greenbacks went some other way, but not into the coffers of North Carolinians.  This was a mistake and not in the best interest of our state.  Consequently Pat McCrory lost the governorship to Roy Cooper.  Mr. McCrory was on the board of Duke Energy, and although they were prosecuted for their Dan River coal ash spill, Pat quietly reduced their monetary fine to nothing.  It was supposed to be millions, one of the largest settlements of its kind for an EPA infraction, and it was reduced to a few million.  Duke Energy proceeded to gas light North Carolinians we were responsible for the clean up.  Why would Duke Energy board members and higher ups chip in for their own irresponsibility?  This is the  Republican way.  The Patriot Act effectively eliminated personal privacy for Americans, and still it is in play.  How?  The idea of a "Pulsed Microwave Weapon" most likely is a byproduct of something else.  Yes, the United States military does have its Active Denial System, but it is cumbersome and expensive.  To generate enough electricity to create a deterring ray of microwaves which are possible accurately to aim requires a 95 GHz 100kW gyrotron.  "Oh boys and girls! We just happen to have one right here!  We'll be happy to sell it to the United States government for a 1000% profit."  Defense contractor companies invent these weapons and pitch them to the Pentagon and Department of Defense.  L3/Harris has become the sixth largest defense contractor, and their company history is frightening.  It has consumed everything.  Every kind of company you can imagine has been absorbed by this Borg.  Recently L3/Harris sent one of its Gulfstream jets to Syria to do the aerial mapping and topography of future targets for piracy.  The military, our military, is responsible for the actual assault, but L3 highly is involved.  As it turns out one of their expensive planes was destroyed, several employees were murdered along with an American serviceman.  I used to see their jet regularly flying over Fayetteville, because their office is on the corner of Morganton and Sycamore Dairy Roads.  Just recently I located yet another miscellaneous aircraft "Makin' lazy circles in the sky."  Most of this activity was over the drop zones at Fort Bragg, but eventually they got closer and closer to where we live.  Then I realized why.  The plane was an Indonesian manufactured cargo rust bucket, but who must have built the surveillance array inside?  The answer is L3/Harris.  It was not long ago that Sierra Nevada was making these sensors.  Before L3/Harris moved into this location, ironically they were nestled in the back closet of the local Harris Teeter store.  A small section of asphalt was cordoned off with a tall chain link fence in the back parking lot of the store, and suddenly appeared multiple satellite transmitting dishes.  A stones throw from this communications facility was the Fayetteville Arms Room, a gated brick facility tasked with keeping track of all of the weapons at Fort Bragg.  What does any of this have to do with anything?  LiDAR, Light Detection and Ranging, is a technology currently in use in these surveillance planes.  Whether they belong to the Department of Homeland Security and Border Patrol, which circled endlessly above our neighborhood when L3/Harris was at this location, or Special Operations at Fort Bragg in any of their ISR platform planes, LiDAR aerial topography uses pulsed microwave energy.  There are many types of lasers.  Some are continuous, and some used pulsed energy.  If the energy is in the microwave range, including T Waves, then the speed of the pulses could be their determinant.  If aids in Washington, DC felt symptoms of such an "attack," more likely it meant they were being surveilled by a government sanctioned military plane.  This has been going on for some time, and although now I am cognizant of the continual air traffic above our neighborhood, some of it is more invasive and upsetting than others.  Tonight I began to feel sick, so I rushed to my computer to open any of the flight tracking websites.  Military planes are disguised, so only is their a call sign listed.  With a bit of cross reference it is easy enough to pinpoint the aircraft.  Tonight's Girlfriend?  Lockheed Martin HC-130J strutting its stuff.  It took off from Valdosta, GA and flew to Pope Field for a touch and go.  Upon getting within a few miles of our house, it was flying at about 500 feet.  "Oh joy!"  Whatever surveillance equipment they have onboard including phased array radar  beats down on our living space.  I am becoming keener in recognizing these different disturbances from down under.  The Republican strategy is to say nothing is happening.  It is the most low ball, grass roots, corn fed approach to what has become an increasingly eletroncially sophisticated world.  So we all are crazy for our educations, intelligence, and common sense in understanding Congress has forsaken the American people for long enough.  Trump's cronies have gotten rich as hell, and there is no money left.  Common people don't have it.  There is no need to surveill us.  While the intelligence community has intercepted some domestic terrorist activity, Ross McNutt and his Persistent Surveillance Systems have discovered little.  They have made money in the charade.  

Those Lehman Brothers.

There is a lot going on.  Who could know withdrawing American military personnel from Afghanistan would trigger an all out war?  (In Israel)  I understand Israel is an important ally of the United States, but "A Knitting Yahoo" has had his ups and downs.  We haven't been following Israeli politics, because American news media have not been covering it.  (like many important issues)  What ever happened to Sinn Fein?  I imagine this political party is still in existence, but the Trumptista regime wanted no mention of a forceful, strong, independent political movement not intimidated by big money.  Hence quietly, like most other relevant things in the world, they were put to bed by our conglomerate-owned media.  We have been living in a vacuum for four years, and now Covid.  The biggest irony is the new Republican party has no ideas or identifying agenda for running America, the nation.  Their only inclination is to shore up their classist, elitist, racist, eventually fascist oligarchy.  We dodged this bullet by mere millimeters, and the new Republican party still is lying about the rebellion.  In effect the coup still is in play, and necessarily Washington is continuing to mitigate the scenario with the help of a new Justice Department under the fitting leadership of Merrick Garland.  Slowly subpoenas are being handed out as the intelligence community does what it should have been doing for the four years of the Trump regime.  Certainly the "Stooge Presidency" will go down in history once we extricate its still lasting ramifications.  The biggest clown is Louis DeJoy, and while the postal Board of Governors is tasked with this appointment, it is within Joe Biden's reach to "empty this swamp."  Mail, necessary and often life-giving surface mail, has been erratic since DeJoy's rise to power.  It is no surprise, since the "Stooge Presidency" intended to dismantle our entire democratic system.  More importantly the news has shifted to Israeli Palestinian Conflict.  Actually it is a breath of fresh air seeing other nations war.  America is not actively meddling in this Middle Eastern grift.  Of course we are, but it more sophisticated than "The War on Terror."  I'll have to do my reading to bone up on its intent.  In a nutshell I recall Jews verses Arabs to be blunt, and the Gaza strip is the center of the fight.  For Benjamin Netanyahu to bomb the media building, they must really want to fight incognito.  Netanyahu has been convicted of corruption.  He has ebbed and flowed as the leader of Israel for many years.  How the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan has triggered this skirmish is unknown.  It is not that important to me.  What is more important are the forces behind the Trump movement, namely defense contractors.  Recently I railed upon the idea of "Pulsed Microwave Weapons."  I suggested the only companies with access to these frequencies are telecommunications conglomerates who purchased the rights during the Clinton auction of the airwaves, which he claimed balanced the national budget.  Still we are paying for this action.  Not only has the entire American economy shifted (with the passing of NAFTA), but we are subject to unprecedented corporate pollution.  Effectively these corporations have lobbied the FCC so diligently, there now is little to no oversight concerning cell phone microwave transmission.  These ugly, heating, radiating, millimeter wave transmitters at next sight will be on trees in our neighborhoods, and no one seems to care.  I suggested telecommunications companies were the only people capable of using these frequencies, and I lied.  How did I lie.  I present my first evidence.  L3/Harris.  

The Continuing Siege

As I sit here and listen to Dr. John's "City Lights," a seemingly relevant but anachronistic original album penned mostly by Dr. John himself, it begs the question of how music in 1980 should effect us today.  The lineage of music history covers centuries, not decades.  It would be wise for America to realize one of our most substantial and influential contributions to the world is American popular music.  I use this term extremely broadly to describe all American music not in the realm of the European orchestral tradition.  Both could be considered concert music, and as aptly we have forgotten in 2020 American popular music was a decisive force in American economics for decades, popular music began to describe America's unique, original, and artistic contribution to the entire field of music.  Often it is suggested the term "jazz" is a slang misrepresentation of the music it is meant to represent.  "Jass" possessed overt sexual connotations, and a meager attempt was made to change it to jazz.  Lee Morgan and others staunchly would suggest the better term is African American Classical Music.  He is right.  To suggest America no longer is a racist nation would beg the question why jazz music still is not recognized as the true soul of America.  Most would agree it is, or rather black artist music more accurately portrays the experiences and resulting feelings of the majority of struggling Americans.  It depends how and where you look.  Consider this.  A force in America choose to murder what could be considered the two most prolific, Christian, and honest leaders of civil rights.  When this movement was in motion effecting change in racism and classism, attempting to reverse the brutal, savage, and often murderous Jim Crow laws of the Old South, a force in our nation sanctioned the killing of Dr. Martin Luther King and President John F. Kennedy.  Depending upon which political lens of today through which you decide to look, both of these men were considered good.  They were doing the right thing.  America, and it is fair to say that these actions didn't represent the majority view, killed these men.  They were assassinated in a very high profile, seditious, and traitorous assault upon the democracy and resulting freedom in America.  To say we are not a racist nation is ludicrous.  It is burying your head in the sand and ignoring the fabric of American history.  The more appropriate political tactic in decreeing America is not a racist nation, is attempting to gaslight millennials into believing these atrocities never happened.  Consequently when I hear about reparations for slavery in the form of monetary payments to descendants of slaves, consider the slain lives of hundreds of thousands of mostly white American men in our Civil War.  These lives are payment enough.  Racism is alive and well in America, and it has been resurrected by Donald Trump and his new Republican Party.  An open letter signed by retired members of the United States Military, continuing to make false claims about a stolen election is nothing more than a Trump-penned lie.  Rest assured it can and will be traced back to his desk at Mar-o-Lago.  What else does he have to do?  If America were to stop this fascist rebellion in its tracks by imprisoning its leader, then we could get back to the heart of American ingenuity, popular music.  There 20th Century represents ten differing decades of musical evolution, creativity, and expression.  Each embodies the soul of America at that particular time in history, and yet we do not care.  We can not wait for our musical artists to die, so there is less competition for evil.  Exactly this is what has happened in America.  Instead of embracing and continuing to teach about American artists' contributions to life, quickly we seal their casket and put them in the ground.  Two hundred million dollars paid to Bob Dylan was not to preserve his legacy of protest poetry and music.  It was meant to suppress it.  Cancel Culture has been in full swing since Republicans came into power.  Ask yourself if the image and voice of Miss Lindsey represents the America in which you want to live.  Contrarily is it a "Rebel Without a Cause?"  If the American military had been swayed to the desires of Mr. Trump, Communism would have been born in America overnight.  It would have been a stealth, covert, and painless overthrow, until reality began to reveal itself.  Many populations in previous revolutions were smitten by charismatic personalities disguising fascist intent.  If all you need in a leader is someone to stroke your ego and make you feel good, you have more history to read. 

The Devil Hath Horns of Orange

The propagandist guilt being administered on the evening news is "The Women of Afghanistan."  Wouldn't we want to keep American troops there for another twenty years, because of these women?  If we cared for our own women as much.  It is a shame the political nature of these Middle Eastern nations, but we cannot change it.  We shouldn't change it.  It is not our responsibility to change it.  Would we care so much about the women in Iraq?  The women elsewhere?  No, so they need to stop squeezing this lemon.  If Gen. Mark Milley wants Joe Biden to keep our troops in Afghanistan, then we should be honest enough to say why.  It isn't their women.  It is their other natural resources.  Obviously the men of Afghanistan have a low opinion of their own women, but misogyny isn't uncommon in the world.  Our regard of this country is for other reasons.  These reasons are precious natural resources in the form of minerals and other elements buried in those vast mountains.  We are experiencing a lithium shortage.  Let us be bold enough to say that the poppies grown in the country may be of more value on the open market.  Poppies and minerals.  Not women.  Stop pitching us, "The Women of Afghanistan" show.  They are as worthy as women in other nations, maybe more?  If the Joints Chief of Staff decide to keep American troops in this country, it is not because of their women.  For twenty years our troops have been allowed to play army on this battlefield, so what will they do now?  Who are we to fight?  If the American military wants to fight so badly (and it is their chosen vocation) then perhaps we can send them to Mars to fight themselves.  Then America can begin the slow recovery to a peace time economy.  We are not sure if it is possible, because defense companies are so aggressive pandering their wares.  Without conflict how could we use all of these high tech war tool?  Ross McNutt pitched his invention of 360 degree aerial surveillance from a low flying Cessna 24/7.  The trouble was someone has to view and analyze all of that video footage.  After annoying countless citizens for several years, and with the American police force under scrutiny for malfeasance, they discovered this methodology helped no one.  No more criminals were being caught than before, but our civil rights upon were being infringed.  It was not until recently that Covid necessarily stymied most outdoor activity, so how could such an expense be justified?  America's first billionaire, a Texas gas trader and his wife, paid for such surveillance over American cities.  This is not Constitutional.  Luckily Joe Biden knows better, and while the conspiracy theories, falsehoods, and misdirection continue from the new Republican party, we will not have it.  Witch Hunt chasing demons and Chupacabra no longer will suffice when half a million Americans have perished from a new virus.  We need to get out of the Middle East and repair America, but I am not sure it is possible.  We have forsaken our own country, our own people, and our own economy for the rich.  We have been thrown to the dogs, and unless this contingency of goat suckers is identified, taxed, and prosecuted when necessary the demise of America will continue.  Joe Biden is the right leader, and he knows the deal.  Agent Orange is pacing in circles isolated in his Florida mansion.  The devil.  

"Drive Slow" and Improve Your Life Quality

 The current media blitzkrieg is "Women in Afghanistan."  Why do I find myself thinking more Republican after the election?  I am a democrat, whatever that means today.  The parties significantly have changed over the last decade, so former ideologies of either party no longer are accurate.  I am sympathetic to the "Black Lives Matter" movement, because black men are being murdered by the police.  Each incident should be evaluated separately.  If two deputies were shot dead serving papers on a subject, then isn't it logical paranoia would circulate within police departments?  It would be best to be on your guard serving papers, but also you must be calm and evaluate your individual situation.  It seems there is premeditation in many of these cases involving police serving warrants.  They are familiar with the situations of their subjects, and apparently there is bias against them.  This does not sanction murder.  The problem in America largely is with the police, and it began with the LAPD decades ago.  They take a proactive offensive stance toward organized crime, but due process also is required.  Body cams are proving to be a mediator as well as cell phone cameras.  Most people wouldn't be carrying digital cameras with them during their daily routines, so perhaps there is a small degree of merit to an iPhone.  What it does not provide in the least is a responsible, educated, comprehensive guide to driving.  I would be bold enough to say that the personal device, palm pilot, or cellular phone directly are responsible for many deaths across the glove.  Why?  It is simple, but today's Republicans would argue it is your inalienable right to text while driving, or not take the vaccine, or not wear a mask.  This callous and short-sighted behavior can kill other people.  We have begun a civil war all ready, when my neighbor continues to endanger my life with his narcissistic demands of personal freedoms.  If you are willing to sacrifice the life of your neighbor, because you are not willing to wear a mask, then that behavior demands to be accommodated.  Know your enemy, and they are all around you.  It is exhausting battling your enemy, corporate America, your neighbors.  I would rather spend my time doing fruitful things, rather than waste it.  One thing is for sure, and this is a perfect metaphor for a decline in the understanding of value in America, is that spending anytime on a personal device while driving is a disservice to your fellow man.  In my day to become a Driver's Education instructor, you had to pass the State Highway Patrol Trooper's exam.  This meant you understand the intricacies of driving a motor vehicle and its inherent dangers.  America no longer is concerned with such a thing.  We hand out Driver's Licenses like passports.  (More money for insurance companies, the state, and local lawmaker's budgets.)  States' need for local funds has usurped many necessary procedures in everyday life.  I got my driver's license renewed on the internet!  No eye test.  No written test.  No nothing.  They sent it in the mail.  When you are at the wheel of a five thousand pound moving projectile, there is no place for a personal device, except maybe a cigarette lighter.  Values in America drastically have changed, because of the iPhone.  When one looks back thieves once were interested in car stereos.  This was the only way you could hear "tunes" in your vehicle.  When they broke into your car, they would steal your car stereo.  They units had value.  They also used to steal bicycles.  No one is interested in either today, because we are spoiled.  When you drive the fun of driving is thinking about all of the things you learned in Driver's Ed.  "How many car lengths should I provide for each ten miles per hour of speed?  How do I execute this three point turn?  When should I signal?  How do I relate to my fellow drivers?"  These things seem archaic, but they still should be fresh on the minds of every driver on the road.  Never have they ceased to be important.  It is just we don't abide by them anymore, and therefore Fayetteville, North Carolina tops the nation's list of worst accident scenarios.  Tops in the nation for vehicle accidents, because the Police fail to enforce traffic laws.  It is like a Nascar race driving in Fayetteville, and nobody cares.  Accident?  More money for the hospital.  More money for the insurance company.  More money for the body shop.  This now is how we have come to think about life.  People are expendable.  When I drive, I pay attention.  I am alert.  I crack my windows and listen to the sounds of traffic.  I am proactive about my own survival, and no one else is.  Instead it is like Romper Room, marbles rolling around self-absorbed, manic, and insensitive.  If there were a few words which would improve our quality of life immediately in America, they would be "Drive slow."  Take it easy.  Pay attention.  Look around.  Is it really that important that you get there right now?  What have you got to lose, a few minutes of your life? 

Let Jimi Take Over!

The world seems a very scary place, and I'm not sure why.  In North Carolina the vaccination rate is thirty-one pecent.  (That means not many residents of North Carolina are getting the Covid vaccine.)  Whatever the reason, a disbelief of the authenticity of the vaccine, a distrust of Big Pharma, or a perceived infringement of personal freedoms, it is frightening.  It is frightening when your fellow man can kill you.  We have enough violence all ready.  Murders abound.  You would think we would want to be on the rebound, but things seem more foreboding than usual.  The Marines have have left Fort Bragg, but there was a flurry of activity today.  I have come not to mind the howitzers.  At least you know what they are, when they fire, and who is doing it.  What is more disruptive is the AC4400CW in the Milan Yard assembling a freight train consisting mostly of DAK America's product.  They make plastic bottles.  PET Resin.  Pellets.  I drove by today and that hulking, wheezing, whale of a machine was determined to get 'er done.  It is no surprise I don't like these things.  I have proven my case over and over in words.  Why has this particular several weeks been so oppressive?  It flipped on like a light switch, that low frequency wave which is comprised of air pressure, electricity, vibration, and possibly magnetism.  It has stayed in the low frequency range for two week, and all the while I have speculated they are putting together trains.  It was not until I drove by the Milan Yard today I saw it in person.  There was 434, Mr. Lightening Bolt, doing his thing.  I came home and Googled the number, and the result was no surprise.  It wasn't an ES44AC, the GEVO engine that replaced the previous 7FDL to comply with EPA Tier standards of emissions.  It was a Circa 1990 AC4400CW, the most invasive of all of the locomotives.  It simply is a DASH 9 on steroids, that being a C40-9W, a DC locomotive but with the 7FDL prime mover.  This wonder of the world is four thousand four hundred horses with a power inverter for each axle.  That makes six inverters each controlling an AC brushless traction motor.  Imagine the amount of tractive control when the computer can control each axle of two bogeys, three axles per bogey.  I guess this is why Mr. Gung Ho chose to use this highly tuned and powerful machine to assemble his DAK pellets.  Maybe it was something else.  DAK has their own yard, and it is large.  Many DAK Americas plants have their own engines.  'Round these here parts, they have their own custom sorting yard.  It  is amazing how one machine can leave such an environmental footprint.  Maybe they have lessened its carbon emissions, but the greater emissions now are electronic.  We are living in the ensuing "Electronic Age."  It has been predicted many times.  Microwaves all over the place jumping around, intermodulating without anyone really knowing it.  This stuff.  This low frequency alternating current.  This is a different matter all together.  When Mr. AC4400CW is out on the road hauling coal, it is not of such consequence.  Even at a whopping four miles an hour, those traction motors pull themselves out of the infrasonic range.  Putting trains together in a switching yard, back and forth, over and over, "Please let Jimi take over!"  

What Will We Do Now?

 Live and Learn.  The FlightAware website is an indispensable information gathering location on the World Wide Web.  There are a handful of active real-time flight tracking websites.  Who knew such a thing existed?  Understanding that "Them Internets" were created by the Department of Defense linking scholarly mostly academic data bases together when developing the nuclear bomb should clarify our cyber experience.  Today we shop on eBay and Amazon, gets our jollies on Facebook, post digital photographs on Instagram, and in the case of past president Donald Trump post inciting often fallacious rhetoric on Twitter sparking an impotent but still dangerous coup attempt in our nation's Capital.  I am not making light of the siege on Washington, but defined by sheer nature it was not a successful coup.  We don't believe it was meant to be.  Instead it was more akin to a rock gone wild.  Too many drugs and too much liquor and that was needed was a spark provided by Trump.  We should not underestimate the former President.  He is a savvy but ruthless businessman with no moral scruples.  President Obama in his recently published book described former Speaker of the House Mitch McConnell as having no moral conscience.  Having no moral conscience means you are not capable of feeling remorse, compassion, empathy, or love for your fellow man.  Instead you are a complete narcissist as is Donald Trump.  I can't imagine such an existence, seeing as love is the only thing that makes life worthwhile.  It is a spiritual fulfillment that far usurps any physical pleasure gained without it.  It is the emotional spark that fuels the heart and eventually the spirit and mind.  What we do on the internet today has become trite.  Social media has all but ruined our sense of reality, our ability to relate to others on a human level, and our ability to survive our environment.  When real tangible problems present themselves such as Covid 19, it has taken the world a year to even begin to mitigate its harm.  Our country, the greatest and most powerful nation in the world, couldn't succeed at the simple task of getting its citizens simply to wear masks.  Instead, like everything today, it has become an extended media debacle.  Ratings.  It would seem America needs these real life scenarios, meager attempts at experiencing and learning from what once was taught in school.  Whether it be Aesop's Fables, the Bible, or simple history literature like science has been demeaned to a level never before.  This is why television and film are so devoid of content.  Life must come from somewhere, and in America once it came from the population.  We had established a working model for life, and it was fruitful, fulfilling, and interesting.  Our folk culture was a large part of this life, and very few of these now seeming trite habits have endured the test of the 21st century.  It would seem the dire predictions of 2012 didn't unfold until 2020.  We are living it now, and like war seems not to be able to correct itself.  Will we ever return to normal American life?  We have been living in the trenches for a year, and like Korea and Viet Nam these experiences will remain in our souls.  You don't get rid of them.  You learn to live with them.  I never knew how many aircraft were flying in the air at any given time, until I began to peruse the Flight Aware website.  With great interest I have begun keeping track of air traffic above Cumberland County.  It is amazing how many private pilots there are and how diverse the ownership is of these small commuter planes is.  Whether is is Sanderson Farms, Eye in the Sky, or other miscellaneous unregistered planes hard at work doing whatever it is they do, air traffic is intense in Fayetteville.  There are flight schools.  There is aircraft maintenance.  There are defense contractors, and there are planes belonging to the United States Army.  These planes seem of most interest, because we as civilians have no idea what role they fulfill.  It doesn't take much time to find these aircraft online, but as are most things in the DoD they are classified.  Rest assured one thing for which we are in store is the massive return of our military from Afghanistan.  No one pays much attention, but the majority of munitions from America leave from the deep water port Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point at the mouth of the Cape Fear River.  This is in North Carolina.  Heavy equipment is hauled here on freight trains from all over the country to Leland, where it is sorted and picked up by military locomotives and pulled into this expansive port facility.  There are three huge docks capable of hosting large freighters which are commercially contracted.  Trains pull the munitions and equipment onto the docks and cranes load them into the ship.  I am sure this process has begun, and let's hope that we don't abandon this process mid stream and decide to leave our gear in Afghanistan.  All ready we have made this mistake single handedly creating an infrastructure for ISIL or ISIS.  They commandeered our left over military equipment, re-purposed it, and used it against the rest of the world.  We should make no mistake in Afghanistan.  Whether or not the consequences of our departure will rival the ascension of the regime of Pol Pot in Viet Nam cannot be considered.  As President Biden asserts, we need to get out.  Hauling your gear back from the Middle East cannot seems as glamorous as deploying to kick some towel head ass, but a kinder gentler time is needed for America.  I am positive Lindsey Graham all ready has another skirmish in the works to tweak our sense of domestic security.  If we do stop fighting, then the challenge becomes, "What do we do?" 

America's Former Age of the Suck Up

I have been thinking about the "Pulsed Microwave Weapon" conspiracy theory that appeared on the CBS Evening News this weekend.  Why does it have to be pulsed?  After reflecting on this question for a few days, it dawn on me that the term "pulsed" most likely is a blanket term to describe all electromagnetic energy.  I didn't learn until later in life, that sound waves actually are pulsed.  When I first saw a diagram of sound waves it was a great surprise.  Sound waves reciprocate or repeat themselves along their path of dispersion.  That is why they are called waves, and the properties of waves is upon what the science of physics is based.  In physics the waves are electromagnetic, and it is interesting to look at the electromagnetic spectrum and see what falls where.  After this verbose introduction the conclusion is most energy is pulsed or occurs in cycles.  Saying "Pulsed Microwave" is redundant.  Deciding that a weapon of this sort would fall into the microwave range of the electromagnetic spectrum is speculation, but because microwaves now are available to companies who bid on them in Bill Clinton's auction during his presidency, it is more plausible.  Microwaves abound, and we can see their evidence with each and every cell phone tower that arises from dust.  As I mentioned in my previous post, we put them on water towers.  We put them on rooftops.  We put them on sculptures.  We put them on flagpoles.  Telecommunication companies are as liberal with where they place their transmitter as Bill Cosby was with where he placed his finger and penis.  Telecommunications companies don't slip you a roofie in your merlot.  Instead with the great aid of a Trump presidency, which decries science as a whole, they tell you what they want you to believe and do exactly what will make them money.  Human health is of no consequence.  I am convinced if The Donald would have remained president, and his harem of right wing, queer, dough boy extremists successfully would have duped the American public into submission, we would be dead in a few decades.  If it wasn't the Coronavirus, it would be bacteria, fungus, or any other bleak prediction from the very real consequences of a warming planet.  Maybe the air would run it.  It has in India.  Because science is moot, they would just shoot from the hip, drink whiskey, molest under-aged girls, and spout lies like depraved bandits.  In thinking about "Pulsed Microwave Weapons" we must understand something about the electromagnetic spectrum.  Gamma rays are at the top of this spectrum, and their frequency is so rapid they produce radiation burn.  Either you become ill from expose with long term consequences or death, or you just get burnt up.  Those would be extreme for weaponry, and because makers of nuclear energy all ready are under intense scrutiny from NATO, it would not be a prudent choice for a covert attack.  The human race unequivocally have proven we are not capable of handling radioactive material.  If were were, our energy needs would be met.  Instead we cut corners, skim money, and allow cracks to develop in our reactor's cooling systems.  Then the local concrete company makes a fortune paving the complex over.  This isn't the example of an advanced civilization, and it has happened both in the United States and Russia.  Nuclear energy is not the answer.  Because microwaves now commercially are available, and which company owns what would be a great read, it is a more logical choice.  Maybe you could feed steroids to those ugly millimeter wave transmitters, and they at the proper request could blast you with dangerous levels of radiation.  Oh, aren't we all ready being blasted with dangerous levels of radiation?  We wouldn't know, because science was deemed not reliable during the Trump presidency.  Hundreds of years of study and harvesting of knowledge, and anything goes.  At least Cole Porter got a song title out of it.  What is more plausible and is concurrent with the pulsed theory, is the use of low frequency electromagnetic waves.  If we focus upon the lower frequencies then as perceivable waves we could actually sense the pulses.  When sound rises above 20 Hertz we cannot hear the individual pulsations or frequency of a this wave.  Instead we hear a resultant composite single pitch.  This is the nature of sound in music and the overtone series.  Only when certain pitches intermodulate can you hear "beats" with discernible frequencies.  It has been explained that this "beating" was part of the phenomenon described as the "Taos Hum."  It is not one pitch changing frequency, it is a pitch being modulated by another.  When sound or electromagnetic energy decrease below 20 hertz, no longer can you hear the pitch, but because they are so strong you begin to "feel" the waves themselves as moving air.  This is what they produce.  Sound needs a medium such as air or water.  What is disturbing is it, like electromagnetic waves, also can use solids such as our earth.  For the resident of Taos this was an issue, because the source of their sound, hum, or vibration originated from beneath the surface of the earth.  It was in a tunnel built by man for the express purpose of moving ore to the refinery.  Low frequency drives drove  a miles long conveyor similar to one in Colorado that crosses the continental divide through an old railroad tunnel.  They carry molybdenum.  My contention always has been if your were a troubled kid, were high or strung out on drugs, and had a mental break down, a continuous, invasive, vibrating hum coming through the earth and was inescapable could drive you to murderous rage.  Simple put the United States Navy all ready has dibs on one of these low frequencies.  Without being an expert it was around 14 Hz, and tree huggers were overt in their proclamation that high powered sonar in the oceans was grounding whales.  These low frequencies have been proven conclusively are dangerous to most living organism.  The GWEN project, or Ground Wave Emergency Network which wanted to transmit low frequency radio waves through the earth was scrapped when enough resistance emerged.  With all of the scattered information and plenty of diversion and down right lies from the Trump presidency, the rail industry continues to manufacture and utilize machinery capable of producing all of these artifacts.  Locomotives by design produce infrasound because of the firing rate of their prime mover or mammoth diesel engine.  All diesel engines produce this low frequency energy, and while you may not be able to discern pitch from it, you will feel its presence as intense pressure on your ears and body.  This is why people are put off my diesel machinery.  Let me reiterate that the engine used in most rebuilt SD-40's and GP-38's is a 649 (or maybe its 648...), and that my friends is a TWO STROKE turbo-charged engine.  This is in a train we are talking!  No race car.  No motocross bike.  Two stroke engines on motorcycles were outlawed because of their emissions, and yet these fifty year old machines once again are on the rise as a viable option for a multi-million dollar GEVO locomotive.  Let's reflect, shall we?  The knock of a diesel engine turning at 900 rpm, turbo-charged, and two stroke.  Can we imagine the sound of that?  Add a low frequency sound wave to pressurize and carry this vibration, but then add a new high voltage cabinet and AC tractive control which produces alternating current at whatever frequency you desire.  Whatever you desire!  Fleur-de-lis!  When that alternating current pulses, alternating, at a whopping 3 Hert to turn the traction motors 3 revolutions, do you think that massive amount of power will be contained in the locomotive's bogey?  My guess is it will radiate outward becoming a virtual symphony of electricity, heat, vibration, and pressure unbeknownst to all and most certainly denied by the quorum of Washington lobbyists as anything at all.  It is much more likely that real technology in the marine, aviation, or rail industries has encroached upon our private lives, and it is the mission of these companies to keep our attention on more urgent matters, say a deadly pandemic.  It would be prudent for the news bureaus to begin to do their age old jobs again and peruse and canvass the world for themselves.  The Age of the Suck Up or Trump Presidency is over. 

American Regeneration

I want to be more specific about my previous thread.  Every force known and available in the corporate world is sanctioned to divert our attention from truth.  When something in the national news gets really dicey, and specific corporate entities may be to blame, what happens?  Our attention gets diverted.  The three major network news organizations report mostly the same stories, and while I won't take the time to research their owners specifically, it would be no surprise if they all are controlled by a corporate conglomerate.  Deregulation has caused this problem.  Gatehouse media comes to mind, the company which owns scores of local newspapers in different states.  The Sinclair Group also is a major controlling faction in the reporting of the news in America.  If America is racist, then these white boy companies certainly are culprits in influencing American thought and sentiment.  Once there was a law that required media to report both sides of a story equally taking no partisan side.  When that law expired and was not renewed by Congress, Roger Ailes created Fox News.  The rest is history.  Newspeak was born in America.  The soap box chronicles have entertained and influenced Americans ever since.  It was no so much of a problem until the Trump Presidency.  A real viable threat to democracy was born, and communist sentiments still are proliferating among American citizens.  Easily and simply understood, a Republican lawmaker simplifies the federal government by saying they expect us to send them all of our money.  This is far from the truth, a heinous exaggeration, and a dangerous propagandist sound bite meant to resonate in simplistic minds.  Affluent Americans have been paying little in taxes for a long time.  The same is true in corporate America.  The idea that the rich deserve special treatment or an exemption from taxes is ludicrous.  It is oligarchical, totalitarian, and fascist to some degree to believe the rich can do whatever they want, because they "work hard."  A fair system of government means everyone pays taxes, and those making so much more than average Americans should pay more tax.  You can't squeeze water out of a stone, and the lower classes are the stones.  It is infuriating to see the balance of wealth continually going to the top one percent, especially when they do not reinvest this capital back into the American economy.  Instead it sits in overseas banks growing mold.  When the huge pulsed microwave weapon does fire, money won't be worth anything anyway.  What will be worth something is clean drinking water, fresh food, and warm shelter.  American values have become so skewed from money that no one recognizes true things of value.  Even if we do recognize them, Wall Street paints them as worthless to augment their own wealth and power.  The problem with America is not only policing but a failure to ascribe the appropriate value to real commodities.  We have been able to skew the graph by importing cheap goods from China, our arch enemy.  Unless America can wean herself off foreign teats and reestablish manufacturing independence, the dollar will remain low in value.  The economy America once knew now solely is under the control of Jeff Bezos, because internet shopping has usurped brick and mortar experiences with the aid of a global pandemic.  Who has benefited from Covid 19?  It is shocking.  Corporate America's primary goal is to keep attention away from their business and deny culpability for any harmful effects of their processes.  This list is topped by rail, and its thoughtful and intended ascension to power has no moral conscience.  The effects of an army of freight circulating the globe 24/7 has been dire and destructive.  They will not concede that the idea of a "Green Locomotive" is complete lunacy.  One demonstration of a Dash 9 in run 4 multiplied my thousands running continuously in our backyards would prove how undesirable this industry is.  "I'm sorry I can't hear you.  I can't hear the music, because there is jet engine around the corner."  Sheer noise and vibration no longer is the problem.  Now alternating current in massive quantities escapes from these  machines with which I must contend in the privacy of my own home.  A simple study of physics will demonstrate the properties of electromagnetism and how infrasound at great pressures and electricity escaping into our environment is wreaking havoc with human life.  Still priority number one is that this is not known.  Diversion.  Divert the attention of the public with claims of pulsed microwave weapons.  The realities of American life today are much more frightful than science fiction, seeing that we cannot stop ourselves from killing each other.  When the gavel of SCOTUS drops and eventually rules on the Constitutionality of rail domination, Americans will learn what grievous ills have been beset upon us.  AC traction is an aberration.  Like nuclear power we are not prudent enough as conscientious human beings to be able to harness and control its power.  Rogue energy will continue to infect our streets and allies until it becomes clear what is causing this disruption.  Poor radio reception?  Low amperage in your home?  Batteries running down?  Depression?  Physical illness?  Violent thoughts? Suicidal tendencies?  If there were such as thing as an honest Earth Day, it would be a day the United States President signifies as pastoral.  This would be a day (or a week) that every locomotive and every plane would sit silent on the tarmac or in the rail yard.  The heat would dissipate, the infrasound would cease, and the human race would regenerate.  

Death Sound

Albeit to say that where we live, our neighborhood, has changed in scope and dynamic, it is home.  We have lived in our neighborhood since 1978, and that is a long time.  Most people alive today didn't experience the 70's, and most everyone will agree that today things are different.  The world is a different place.  Is there a different criteria for buying a home?  As a musician and someone who does produce music at home from time to time, the desires for a home may be different.  We have made vast improvements to the house structure including insulation, HVAC upgrades, and paint.  These improvements were necessary.   Although they are effective at insulating your living space from the outside, nothing can completely ensure you happiness in a dwelling.  It is a life long pursuit.  Decor, feng shwi, and sentiment all cooperate in providing a comfortable or inspiring living space.  It would be optimum if our dwelling provided physical serenity on its own, but that is asking a lot.  The reason why people buy a second home often at a beach, is because that environment is more conducive to relaxation.  The wafting of warm ocean wind, the sound of undulating waves, and picturesque sunsets are effective at providing a peaceful experience for the mind and body.  Everyday life is not so storybook.  We must work for happiness, and for me music has been a large part of that happiness.  It is a vessel for personal intellectual and emotional expression.  Through music production you can express your feelings, seek salvation, and find respite from the anxiety of the modern world.  There are many kinds and styles of music, and each style carries a different role.  Rock music can be inciting and aggressive.  The Blues can be consoling.  Certain kinds of jazz music can be very sentimental and romantic.  The beauty of music is that it can provide emotional fulfillment not available in our immediate environment.  Our environment or our surroundings in large part are not determined by us.  We can fine tune our houses and yards, but the dynamic of our neighborhoods and towns are at the mercy of the consensus.  A consensus is achieved by considering most of the proximal things and also things further out.  These are factors home buyers would want to understand before buying a house.  If you find yourself in a home with a dynamic largely dictated by the outside world, it may diverge from you own desires.  Music can help, but music also can become an antagonist for a bullying and dominating force.  The world today has become very divided, and it is likely your neighbors and your co-workers may not have the same tastes as you.  If you project a certain vibration through music, it would be easy to receive push back from your efforts.  It is unfortunate that music can be so polarizing, but it seems to be the case.  I enjoy different styles of music, because none of them seems to be effective at soothing my tattered soul a majority of the time.  Continually I must change it up.  Lately I have shelved my desires entirely, because the military has been raising their own hell.  When you are being trained to kill the enemy with 155mm howitzers, jazz music has nothing to do with it.  Likewise it does not have the sonic strength to overcome that dynamic of field warfare.  When acoustic jazz waned in the 1960's, it was because it no longer could compete with the sheer volume and force of modern American life.  Largely this was because of the change from steam to diesel in the rail industry, and amplification became necessary to produce the power needed to produce music which could have a physiological impact on listeners.  You might be able to hear the music, but history shows the power of music is through feeling.  Its communal strength is in uniting common souls through its message.  This power of music has been lost in America, and the music industry has shrunk and complied.  Nowhere can we find the raw angst, aggression, and power of stadium Rock, Funk, and Heavy Metal.  It may have been NWA was the last musical group capable of connecting with and moving the masses.  Hip Hop was castrated, and its sheer sonic power and authority have disappeared.  Instead tepid, weak, and complicit pop music has taken its place.  It exists in a bubble refusing to confront the dynamic of daily American life.  To accomplish such a goal, to try and change the American dynamic through music, is a monumental task.  It requires vision, artistry, technique, and money, four things which rarely come together today.  Instead we live in a tube, a tube which used to be called television.  Now the tube is the internet, and its experience is not the same as real life.  In some ways it seems better than real life, but when the generator fails and the signal stops we are shit out of luck.  Better to prepare and produce on the grand scale employing many and effecting more.  This once was the way of America until the divisive presidency of Donald Trump.  His rallies used this methodology, but the message was wrong.  It is time for the people to reclaim this cultural need.  When I attempt to produce music, even in the home which has been upgraded and improved, certain ills of society continue to interrupt.  I have been able to truncate ambient noise to a large degree, but what remains are two things which, because they are invisible and inaudible, are doubted and discounted as refuse.  Indeed they are sly, covert, and scheming entities which continue to exert control over our lives.  Modern government and industry refuse to accept responsibility, only because you can't see them.  Diplomats at the Havana embassy could hear their protagonist.  It hummed, and buzzed, and clicked like crickets.  Most of these sounds could be considered to be otoacoustic or sounds made by the body itself in response to aural stimuli.  Tinnitus is an example in that its sound is produced by a dead range of the hearing spectrum.  An area where you no longer are able to hear produced the sound of tinnitus when subjected to low frequency sound waves.  It is perplexing.  In a certain way people with hearing loss actually can hear infrasonic stimuli.  It is how I know, because my left ear rings from tinnitus when planes or locomotives are nearby.  Needless to say when my ear is ringing from tinnitus, I don't hear as well.  My ability to hear and appreciate proximal music is lessened.  My ability to produce music live also is hampered, because lower frequency sounds are omni directional and not easily directed in a particular direction.  Bass tones become muddy and indistinct.  Phase distortion is introduced, and intermodulation produces unpleasant overtones.  It is difficult but not pointless to try and produce music under these circumstances.  The norm is what has happened across the globe.  The favorable and often pristine audio acoustics of a quiet world have been lost to the military industrial complex.  Nothing sounds the same and nothing sounds nearly as good as audio from the 50's and 60's.  As a musician you are dealing with a loaded deck, a slanted field, or an antagonist who is trying to defeat you before he even understands your message.  It is sheer domination.  Consequently democracy has suffered at the hands of this massive acoustic sickle.  It is due time for this nemesis to become recognized, be held accountable, and to allow greater cultural forces to inject life into a dying society.  

An Effective Tool Box for Life

I won't to get some things off my chest.  I was a solid employee when working on ships.  I was an exceptional pianist, although at that time I didn't understand that politics was more important than musical ability.  They didn't care if you could play.  They cared if you would make waves in the band and on the ship.  I learned this lesson over time, but several events stand out in my mind.  Until the drunken captain of the Costa Concordia ran his vessel aground entertaining a woman on the bridge, safety was not the biggest concern of a cruise company.  It was in place, and although most ships may have not been ready for a real emergency, it is unlikely a guest would perish while sailing on a ship.  I was trained in lifeboat safety, but after the incident in Italy all companies tightened their grip on safety responsibility.  Suddenly musicians were required to become sailors, and the accompanying training ensued.  I went down in the lifeboat every week, manned the oars, manipulated the hooks, and stowed the boat when the drill was over.  Before the Costa Concordia boat drill was more an inconvenience than a priority for members of the Crew Staff.  The Crew Staff were different than the regular crew, did more intellectual tasks, and made more money.  During drill there were a handful of things you needed to remember.  I made the mistake once of trying to be proactive during a crew drill when the United States Coast Guard was observing.  In the case of a real emergency or drill, you are unaware when this will occur.  You hear the horn, and its alert tells you to do a certain set of tasks to prepare for mustering of the guests.  The drills each week easily become commonplace, and when you are hundreds of miles from shore often they are relaxed.  On this particular occasion I wanted to be ready for the drill, since the Coast Guard was on board.  Mistakenly I donned my uniform and took my life jacket to a close location to my safety position, an assistant muster station leader on the starboard side of the ship.  I hid in a stairwell with my life jacket on to await the sound of the horn.  Subsequently I learned this action is frowned upon, but expressly the Safety Officer wants you to be limber and mobile in your response to an emergency.  It should not take you long to leave your place of work, fetch your life jacket from you cabin or a nearby locker, and man your station.  They want you to practice this particular action.  I found it inconvenient most of the time, because boat drill often was directly before an afternoon rehearsal.  If you wanted to be prepared for your rehearsal, you needed to focus on this task, not mustering the guests.  In this case I overprepared and was waiting in a stairwell for the horn to sound.  Minutes went by and there was no drill.  I waited thirty minutes and still no drill.  My back began to tire from sitting on a hard steel step, so like a moron I laid down on the floor to rest.  Little did I know that safety personnel were observing the crew through the ship's closed circuit video system.  Over five hundred cameras had been installed to watch the crew.  Evidently they had delayed the drill for me, because my lackadaisical behavior of laying down on the job waiting for the real drill suggested I was drunk.  This is what they believed, and suddenly an announcement was made over the P.A. that asked me to arise from my reclining position.  I did so, as two crew members above me on the upper landing of the same stairwell laughed at me.  They did not try to explain what I was doing was a mistake.  Instead they watched the Captain make an example of me.  A security officer was dispatched to apprehend me, and when he arrived grabbed my arm like an intimidating police officer.  Where was I to go, and why would I run?  I was not intoxicated, merely tired from waiting for this drill.  I was taken to the Safety Officer's office, and quietly and simply I told them I was Assistant Muster Station leader and was waiting for the drill to begin.  My back got tired, so I laid down on the floor of the stairwell.  At first they planned to demonize my behavior thinking I was stinking drunk, because later I learned this exact thing had happened previously on this same ship.  When they realized I was sober and prepared to do my job, quickly the wind went out of their sails and the drill proceeded as normal.  I was required to receive a written warning for this snafu, and the Musical Director took literary liberty in saying I was laying "face down" or prostrate on the floor.  It turns out the varied nationalities of officers on these vessels require a certain kind of allegiance, and sometimes American doesn't satisfy the formula.  I became an asshole of course, but only because my behavior was misconstrued and taken out of context.  This happened more than once, because Americans were in the minority on most ships accounting for only four percent of total crew.  As you can imagine democracy was not a priority for Italian led ships.  It became apparent quickly that the tenants of Communism were rife within the walls of these foreign run vessels, and you learned quickly how to mold to their pattern.  It meant keeping your mouth shut, doing what was necessary, and getting your kicks privately and within your own sphere of existence.  For me this became skating and music composition.  The latter became a fruitful aesthetic for me, and I produced over four hours of contemporary classical piano music, some eighty plus works which at some point in time I will publish.  Skating became a necessary outlet for physical assertion and mental therapy, and yet as they observed this phenomenon over time quickly and ironically skateboards became prohibited items.  This was infuriating to me, and changed my opinion of the cruise industry for good.  On several ships upon which I worked, we had developed a routine where I had to wait several weeks then write the Safety Officer a letter asking if I could keep a skateboard in my own cabin.  Often after they understood I was a responsible adult, it no longer was a problem.  Eventually a decree came down through the ranks that all skateboards would be prohibited for good.  I went on a ship, they confiscated my stick, and told me it would be discard in two weeks if I didn't dispose of it.  This was a hand made custom designed cruiser of which I was extremely proud.  While the safety of guests is paramount, and irresponsible drunken crew member can be fools, this was over the line for me.  Skating and sailing became a team for me disembarking the ship and riding my skateboard to a local park for an afternoon of physical activity and enjoyment.  It would seem their desire was to quell my enthusiasm and recreational outlet much like the Nazi party demonized jazz music.  Freedom is aloof but invaluable for human happiness, and yet it still has become an endangered species.  Being sober is a tool against the man, possibly one of the most effective in your box.  

Infrasonic Infrastructure

I was tired today, but I guess it was because I drank a lot of Scotch last night.  (I haven't been drinking at night for a while, and I feel 100% worse)  I decided to push the envelope and see what would happen.  The result was I was tired today, but I got done what was needed.  On the evening news on CBS there was a story about two attacks on Washington, DC political aids.  One attack was from last November, and it was not clear when the other one was.  These attacks they asserted were from pulsed microwave weapons.  Should I repeat?  On the national news two different women, both political aids, reported symptoms while involved in their daily routines that resembled vertigo.  They connected these attacks to events which unfolded at the American Embassy in Havana, Cuba in 2016.  Diplomats working at this location began to feel ill from a variety of different conditions including tinnitus, nausea, blurred vision, confusion, and fatigue.  A year later several academic institutions including experts from China probed the incident, reserve engineered the audio recording of the noise, and stated that in most likelihood low flying fighter jet ultrasound had combined with other classified security audio and intermodulated creating an upsetting aural sensation.  No where was it ever mentioned that it could have been a planned and instigate assault on American personnel.  Pulsed microwave energy has been a common conspiracy theory for years.  Many pundits believe a large weapon of this type will annihilate our power grid and computer systems rendering a nation vulnerable to foreign domination.  Pulsed microwave energy.  I am no physicist, but I know something about microwaves.  The first introduction America had to them was with an oven that cooked things.  Therefore microwaves must produce heat.  Second I know that NASA and other aeronautical companies use microwaves for communication through space.  They are received with a dish of which we all are familiar.  The microwaves are directional and can be focused into a tight trajectory.  Satellites transmit these microwaves regularly for various military, governmental, and commercial purposes.  It is common.  The military also has its own brand of microwave non-lethal weapon called the Active Denial System.  It requires a large diesel powered generator and a gyrotron to produce the massive amount of electricity needed to fire a tight beam of microwaves at an assailant.  The energy creates a burning sensation on the human skin but does not penetrate deeply enough to cause permanent harm.  Its effect on its target is one of burning, not symptoms of exposure to infrasound.  What the diplomats experienced at the American Embassy in Havana were the symptoms described by Vladimir Gavreau, a French scientist who has studied the adverse effects of low frequency sound.  Often they are intense, invasive, and can create the kinds of illness described by the victims.  The Conspiracy Theory is a smoke screen.  While distracting, entertaining, and novel, its nature is to subvert truth.  Often the truth is much more severe than the conspiracy itself.  For example Chemours continues to dump C8 into the Cape Fear River.  Lengthy studies have proven this chemical causes serious physical illness and death, and yet this company continues to commit genocide shielded from prosecution.  At Camp Lejune, North Carolina they dumped dangerous solvents into the ground which contaminated ground water and maimed and killed hundreds of local residents of Jacksonville.  Genocide is prevalent in America, but the heinous truth is often it is protected by the smoke screen of the lobby industry.  That is their purpose, to mass in Washington and pressure the members of Congress to do their bidding.  It has been proven that American lives continue to be sacrificed for corporate and personal gain.  The power of social class never has changed in America.  Pulsed microwave weapons are a smoke screen for the ill effects of the prime mover with its production of intense, continuous, infrasonic pressure.  These prime movers can be in the hulls of ships, in the chassis of a locomotive, or other places where electrical power is needed in bulk.  Now that AC traction has become the norm (since 1990), low frequency alternating current has joined the list of antagonist environmental concerns.  Rest assured any ill effects of the rail industry have not been studied, and yet this ever burgeoning Fortune 500 monolith now dominate American life.  If diplomats become ill, then it only is logical to look at the new cruise ship port in Havana.  Because the country has been closed to travel for so long, ships of this size have not frequented this location.  With President Obama's watershed treaty with Cuba, tourism has become open again, and the cruise industry is a heavy hitter in world economics.  How does one balance such an issue?   Regulation in government evolved to confront and mediate such situations.  If Republicans were to have their way, the American people would be shit out of luck and most likely dead.  

Aren't We Tired of Being Sick and Ignorant?

"Insane in the membrane..."  Broken record.  Broken record.  A broken record, or rather a damaged vinyl disc which has a scratch, does not allow the stylus to continue on its prescribed path.  Instead it stays on one particular groove of the album unable to proceed, because a nick in the vinyl has upset the continuity of the one, main, continual groove.  Sometimes a nick is necessary.  The Coronavirus is such a nick albeit a deadly one.  This virus has accomplished  many things both good and bad.  The most valuable thing it has accomplished was removing Donald Trump from the United States Presidency.  It is entirely likely he would have been re-elected without it.  While absentee and newly sanctioned mail-in voting ironically won the election for Joe Biden, it is not known if a democratic majority would have materialized otherwise.  Coronavirus effected the presidential election.  At first I thought it would benefit Trump, but people began to die.  Half a million Americans have perished from this virus, and consequently as President Biden said in his speech last night, a handful of affluent businessmen increased their wealth dramatically because of this pandemic.  I would speculate few people really believe a virus of this deadly nature spontaneously and naturally transpired.  Like HIV it was manufactured in a laboratory, and those same affluent businessmen became gods and cast judgement on a certain contingency of the population.  It could be God, but I don't think so.  Covid 19 has been a mediator paring down the right wing machine and exposing its evil intent.  A society cannot exist on smoke and mirrors, spin, and hyperbole.  The pretense of the "app" finally has been reduced to its true value, a entertainment device mostly for amusement.  Anyone believing an iPhone OS somehow will intertwine with the human genome and produce hybrid cyborgs...  That is a notion of science fiction.  We need to get back on track, leave the distractions behind, and develop our minds.  Our minds are the only thing that will ensure our longevity on planet earth.  Apple is not going to do it for us.  The more critical issue which still has not been addressed is "Chains and Drains."  What exactly is my recurring and continual fixation with this topic?  It is because it is polluting on so many different levels.  It almost is uncanny how encompassing this phenomenon is.  Acoustic.  Electromagnetic.  Psychological.  Physiologic.  Each of these things negatively is being influenced by "C&D."  How is it possible that something so American, so indispensable, and so sentimental becomes something so destructive?  While the sound of the steam locomotive did become sentimental in American folk culture, covertly this watershed invention was transformed into a super villain.  The steam engine was abandoned in favor of a more polluting and invasive diesel "prime mover."  In 1990 the diesel/electric locomotive was infused with the bionic strength of a power inverter and accompanying tractive control via microprocessor.  a cyborg in this case was born, but it has no human soul or inclination.  Its only role is to move as much freight as possible at all costs.  A proper analogy would be Thomas the Train "transforming" itself from a humble toy engine to a behemoth, fire-breathing, destructive antagonist of the human race.  What is it that is so destructive to the human organism?   The data readily is available, but as many are quick to point out (and a cartoon on Facebook sums it up nicely) facts didn't matter during the Trump presidency.  "Gaslighting" was the operative political stratagem.  Tell people what you want them to believe, over and over.  (Over and over ad nauseam)  Eventually they will begin to believe it.  This is Big Brother.  "1984," the novel by George Orwell, predicts this now reality.  We have endured four years of "Newspeak," the term from the novel for this process, and we have survived.  We have survived an all out assault on our population by our own people.  Ethnic and class cleansing were implemented with the advent of the  Coronavirus.  It is not over yet, but the trials and tribulations of 2020 have been great, and history will reflect this.  The data has been available for decades, and it is well known in honest medical and scientific circles that electromagnetic radiation causes cells to mutate, often into cancer.  Heat, vibration, magnetism, and electricity are not  nutrients for the human cell.  They are the antagonist, murderers of human tissue, and yet the cell phone industry continues to erect monuments to their own superiority, only because we have become addicted.  Addiction.  Addiction.  Affliction.  You can control your populace, when they are ill and addicted.  It is alarming the sprouting cell towers that now have become accepted in the vapor of this gaslight.  They are on water towers.  They are on a sculptures.  They are on rooftops.  They are like warts from the human papillomavirus virus festering on poles for all to see.  Warts on society, not multivitamins.  Nothing about these millimeter wave transmitters is healthy for the human race.  Instead they create an addiction.  Such far reaching consequences from an unknown and unsuspected industry, "Chains and Drains."  Acoustic.  Magnetic.  Electric.  Psychological.  Physiological.  "Chains and Drains" effects all of these things.  The enjoyment of recorded music, live music, music production, and their effect on the human soul are hindered by this invasive industry.  There could be no other concentrated, vicious, and toxic foe for humanity, and that is why we are sick and ignorant.  

Drains and Chains

Not to sound like a broken record.  Not to sound like a broken record.  Not to sound.  A broken record repeats itself ad nauseam, until someone gets annoyed enough to turn it off.  My broken record, my broken record never will stop repeating ad nauseam that the majority of the ills of the human race are being created by one industry, and vehemently, viciously, and vindictively this industry wants and continues to deny reality.  DuPont has chosen this course.  Monsanto has chosen the course.  Chemours has chosen this course.  Chosen this course.  Chosen this course.  They will not admit their wrong doing, but instead deny their malfeasance and sell the company to a foreign interest shielded from immediate public scrutiny.  These companies are the enemy.  Fully we understand any entity who harms or kills their patrons by negligence in the manufacturing process or with their product is the enemy.  It does not matter how much we like Teflon.  No human being ever should be sacrificed for a commercial product, but they are.  The data states every living being on the planet earth has the chemical C8 in their bloodstream.  Chemours, formerly DuPont has been dumping it into our waterways since its inception.  The simple solution is you must clean up your own mess, and yet Duke power continues to charge its customers to clean up its own coal ash from negligent spills.  The wealthy CEO's, board members, and stock holders still get their money, and the TARP money went to huge bonuses for Wall Street crooks.  These people have no moral scruples.  They care not about Americans who consume their products.  They have been trying to kill us for several decades.  With all of these daily obstacles, polluted water, polluted air, and tainted consumer goods, the industry most responsible for our mental health goes unnoticed.  I  have enjoyed recently websites which allow you to track air traffic across the globe.  In particular you can hone in on your own area and peruse the local aviation activity on a second by second basis.  This has provided some enlightenment for me.  Yesterday there was an early morning military blitz.  I was not up early enough to do the research to see what it was.  My speculation is fighter jet play above the treeline.  The entire sky is crisscrossed with chemtrails, water vapor and carbon monoxide from jet aircraft.  There was no smog in our town until now.  Thanks BRAC!  S-M-O-G.  They are not pretty clouds.  They are jet exhaust.  I always feel sicker on days like this, and ask myself the question why they would be flying right above the tree line above neighborhoods?  It is not out of the realm of possibility to believe that something is amiss, and we as citizens are in the dark.  There is a simple answer to what causes the majority of mental anguish to human beings, and yet the industry has become so powerful they remain incognito, anonymous to the public at large.  Their pockets are deep and their influence in Washington great.  It is a caucus of fat cats all having contributed to something that slowly is eroding away the human mind.  Mass shooting after mass shooting, and no one seems to know why.  It rhymes with "drains." 

Put Down your iPhone and Live a Little

 Years ago when I was working on ships as a pianist, I debated whether to buy a laptop computer.  At home in my small, personal, music studio the heart of the system was an antiquated (by today's standards0 PowerMac with a G3 accelerator card.  I had been enrolled in the Doctor of Musical Arts degree program at what then was just "Ohio State University."  (Now it has been rebranded "The Ohio State University.")  Choosing to matriculate at this university was a culmination of several situations which presented themselves to me over the course of a tumultuous year.  (This year was the year I moved back to Fayetteville after spending approximately five years in Columbia, South Carolina.)  When I first moved there, it was because I was offered a Graduate Teaching Associate (GTA) position in the jazz program and the University of South Carolina.  It was a good fit, and moving to this historical city was a step up in my quality of life.  It remained a positive experience, until President George H. Bush decided to invade Panama with a huge conglomerate force of American military.  For months these troops mobilized at all their locations across the continental United States entailing massive efforts of transportation.  Mobilization.  This is for what the 82nd Airborne is known, deployment to any hot spot in the world in under 48 hours.  Is this now an anachronism?  No one can deny the world has changed, and with this change also has come changes in military strategy.  It began with Donald Rumsfeld, a complicit dupe of then Vice President Dick Cheney to harvest oil in the Middle East.  Mr. Rumsfeld's ingenious plan, instead of sending a massive invasive force (boots on the ground) to Iraq, was to destroy this country's infrastructure from above with highly accurate bombs dropped by the United States Air Force.  With satellite imagery, a technique now well shored up over time, the Pentagon surveilled Iraq's landscape and specifically targeted the nation's integral infrastructure.  Power plants, sewage treatment plants, and television stations all were targets in America's mass annihilation of Iraq.  The irony remains.  It was the wrong country.  Iraq was not responsible for the attacks on the twin towers on Wall Street in lower Manhattan.  George W. Bush attacked this country as a vendetta and for revenge for his father's humiliation by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.  That's was a large price for a family vendetta, and consequently still America remains in the longest war in history.  ISIS or ISIL was created by this misguided and erroneous attack on the wrong country after our troop pulled out and left their equipment rife for the taking.  In retrospect the gravity of this action by head strong, ambitious, but misguided men is on the level of a war crime.  Perhaps it is a war crime, but with an unprovoked attack on the World Trade Center.....?  "Ah, President Bush.  Osama Bin Laden here.  We are friends, no?  Would you like me to mastermind a reason for the United States to attack Iraq and plunder their oil fields?  No?  Sounds like a good idea.  Let me set it up, because that despicable Saudi Prince refuses my offer and the use of my covert fighting force."  It sounds like a conspiracy.  All of that aside Rumsfeld's strategem to destroy a country from within was barbaric, unChristian, and violates the Geneva Convention.  Because these men duly were elected to power by the citizens of the United States, this attack was sanctioned and deemed appropriate.  Twenty years later our country not yet has recovered.  In 1990 when I left Columbia I was depressed.  My mind and my senses had shut down, and I did not know why.  It is not unlike the way I feel during Operation Rolling Thunder.  When the American military mobilizes with all of its brute strength, one will be intimidated.  The question remains who?  Perhaps the dozens of shooters who have purchased assault rifles and seemingly inadvertently killed innocent Americans subconsciously are being influenced by such warfare.  You cannot ignore the United States military.  When I became depressed in Columbia, South Carolina George H.W. Bush was invading Panama.  Troops from all over the continental United States mobilized by air and sea and descended upon this third world nation.  They came from Alaska, Texas, Alabama, and the East Coast.  With all of this aggressive energy enveloping the nation, it would be difficult to ignore, even if it was subliminal.  When I finally moved to Columbus, Ohio to attend OSU, Bill Clinton was elected president.  It was a good thing.  The country was ready for a seeming docile, soft-tongued, dough boy of a leader.  As it turns out Clinton is responsible for several grievous ills which have beset themselves upon the nation.  I don't agree with his auction of the airwaves single handedly creating the mobile telecommunications industry.  I do not own a cell phone, and I do not need one.  I do not need to talk on the phone when I am driving.  I do not need to talk on the phone when I am walking my dog.  I will not become addicted the that iPhone interface as enticing as it is.  My decision as to whether to buy a laptop computer was relevant.  A laptop computer is not a mobile phone.  It is not a glorified social amenity.  Although I had a rock solid Apple PowerMac G3 sitting at home, I decided a laptop would be a tool I could use to improve my job skills.  My decision proved itself multifold.  Over the years I began to use this laptop computer to store music files, most importantly music files of shows I was required to perform.  There were many.  When the cruise industry realized I could play classical music on the piano off to Europe I went, and the job description for the orchestra pianist changed.  Now instead of repeating the same Motown Guest Entertainer show, I was required to read and play multiple classical oriented shows.  In Sydney the performers kept coming.  Classical pianists, violinists, and singers became the norm for our evening musical shows.  I enjoyed the change of content, and while the music was more demanding never was it impossible.  In any situation you must learn the music.  That means having it in your head.  If recording these shows and archiving them on a laptop aids in the process, it is a positive.  The laptop computer became the major tool in my job vocation, and until only a few years ago it remains as such.  I couldn't pack the G3 in a carry on bag and fly it on the plane, so the portability of the laptop computer is its major asset.  The ironic downside of the iBook was that eventually I killed it.  It became such an extension of my body's kinesthetic process, unknowingly I began tossing it on my bunk.  (not literally of course)  Perhaps I tossed it on my bunk a few times...  Without realizing the danger of my action I came to think of this iBook as a hard cover text book.  As such you could treat it as such.  My experiment failed drastically, and after a few weeks the bottom of the computer flexed, the motherboard bent, and a conspicuous, now known, solder joint separated.  That was the end of my iBook G3.  I spent over five hundred dollars trying to diagnose this now known flaw.  For a short time this failure was covered by Apple, and they would repair it.  I unfortunately was out of this window.  Another laptop must be had, and it was a year old unit that upon arrival was slow and clunky in operation.  A few years later I upgraded the OS and magically its performance improved dramatically.  Today this computer still works, and the manufacturing date is 2005.  It stays turned all the time in SLEEP mode.  When I record cassette tapes this is what I use to record from my Nakamichi cassette machine.  The laptop computer has proven itself indispensable in my musical life.  I do not own an iPhone, and I do not want one.  The iPhone conversely has proven to be a great detriment to mankind.  We are less human of a race because of it.  Police would perform more humanely, if we didn't spend so much time researching humans on a network.  If we put the phones (and computers down) and relied on the tried and true but challenging process of listening and observing human beings in real time and people, there is hope for the future. 

Biden is Better, Much Better (But You Wouldn't Know it)

 Although Joe Biden is the salvation for this troubled country, you wouldn't know it.  The tenants of communism all ready have taken root in American governance and corporate dominance.  Who could have guessed that chapter two of a trust oligarchy would rise to prominence in 2020?  Quickly reflecting on the erroneous and troublesome Trump failed presidency, it would be easy to surmise how this happened.  There was a coup, but it was covert.  The siege on the capital was the first, real, visual evidence of the depth and ferocity of this civil coup attempt.  The foundations of this overthrow were put into place by a traitor elected American president.  Luckily the nation was able to defeat his presidency mostly honestly.  I feel some shenanigans took place, but with democracy in the cross hairs those slight manipulations were incredibly necessary.  We got him out, and now the nation as a whole is fighting his ramifications.  The Trumptista regime will be defeated, but it still is in power.  That power has infected the United States military through the defense industry.  The simple metaphor is failed patriot ex-senator Lindsey Graham decrying President Biden's troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.  What could this man possibly know about foreign policy?  He is a hypocrite and a liar and feels no remorse for his actions.  His words are selfish as are the words of all Trumptistas.  If American troops are withdrawn from Afghanistan, Lindsey will be tasked with creating a new military insurrection to empower the defense industry now ensconced in his state of South Carolina.  With no Negros working on plantations in Charleston, Columbia, and Greenville, what is their economy?  In a horrible nightmare the looming answer is the same as it is in Florida.  The answer is CSX, a bullying, dictating, bully of an industry who cares not one iota for the citizens ultimately who consume their product.  They are the King of the Trumptistas, and shoring up their greed is the Federal Aviation Administration, the Pentagon, and the Joint Chiefs.  That is a bold statement, and it is abstract.  How could these three things be connected?  CSX is a shareholder in in STRACNET, and a large percentage of their wealth is sourced from the Deparment of Defense.  The Federal Aviation Administration cares naught for civilian air travel or the needs of civilian passengers.  This has been proven by their NexGen plan implemented in 2010 which threw American citizens under the bus or more accurately under the polluting wings of their low-flying commercial aircraft.  Traditional flight paths which considered the private lives of American citizens and their well being callously were discarded in favor of airlines' needs to have free reign of the sky.  Consequently eleven years later two particular subsidiary airlines' planes fly directly over our neighborhood will arriving or departing the Fayetteville Regional Airport owned by the city.  This never happened before, because Ed Grannis was an influential businessman in the region.  As the Baby Boomer generation dies off, and its wealth lessens, the cultural influence in the region has succumbed to the same ills as the rest of America.  There no longer is a Main Street.  There no longer is a Main Stream.  There is no apparent social ladder with mobility.  Instead the money with the aid of a traitorous ex-President has flowed into the pockets of a new breed of American communists.  The Cold War never ended.  It became disguised.  The mode of attack of its representing Republican Party was blaming democrats for their own evil concoctions.  How could Trump conceptualize such far-fetched conspiracy theories, unless he himself devised them?  That is the answer and the truth.  Watching his chronology of legal attempts to undermine a mostly honest and legal election was a treatise of corrupt insurrection.  Although President Biden seems to feel Trump is not worthy of the effort, sorely he needs and deserves to be indicted, prosecuted, and imprisoned to ensure the future of democracy.  Louis Dejoy has become a constant and continual mockery of returning democracy and honest governance.  Until he is removed as Post Master General, America never fully will recover from the Trump onslaught.  He is like Chucky, an evil fictional nemesis  who refuses to die.  It only is at this time in my life I am plagued with the realization that a Sinn Fein presence is needed in America.  While in American history the Black Panthers served this role, America has evolved to a new level of corporate and governmental corruption.  We no longer merely are racist white-supremacist Confederates.  We are communists deeply embedded in American society.  This presence necessitates are more prudent, intellectual, and politically savvy contingency willing to address the pressing issues of prolonged democratic freedom.  Instead ot witnessing deranged, misguided, and mentally incoherent genocide inflicted upon the innocent as a diversion from our true enemy, the time has come for a new court, a court willing to pinpoint and prosecute America's real traitors.  Lindsey Graham comes to mind, and apparently his need to own an AR-15 confirms his own heightened consciousness about his seditious acts.  Only the Trumptistas feel the need to be armed to the teeth, because truth and honesty and faith in God instill a sense of security in the meek.  God is our protector. 

The Open Frontier of America

President Biden is putting on his big boy pants and vowing to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by the anniversary of 9/11.  The skinny is we are coming up on the twenty year anniversary of a war of which we know not who we are fighting.  The answer is the Taliban but has been a mostly covert affair dealing with the country's desirable natural resources.  We all can guess what one of these is, and it is no deterrent to the temptation of smuggling them back to the states in military planes.  We need to get out of Afghanistan, and President Biden is making the right decision.  It has been a formidable distraction and an unnecessary side road to American foreign policy.  Let's pray the years of war mongering, defense spending, and empire building through the military are coming to an end.  With the second coming of Jesus Christ, there will be little need for technology.  All of the trinkets and gadgets, the "technology" peddled by the defense industry will do no good when the grid is destroyed.  Eventually it all will come back to hand to hand combat, survival, and conservation.  The more clearly we see we should be going backwards in time, the more of a chance we have to save the human race.  Goggles, antenna arrays, and iPhones will not find you a meal outside.  I never realized until accidentally I watched a punk music related movie last night how much I sympathize with that point of view.  Today we are so full of shit and have no idea what is important, but I could spend countless hours trying to redefine the essence of humanity, Christianity, humility, and love.  No one cares.  Only do they care about what they can get, a nice home, two cars, and a brood of children to call their own.  Once they get that reality presents itself.  I do pine for the good old days.  It truly has become a Stepford America.  What would happen if you grabbed an ass today?  They are trying to bring down the governor of New York, because he is a lonely man.  Back in the day there were ramifications of the caveman methodology.  You had to hit her on the head and drag her back to the cave.  Never did I learn to do this in my youth, and interestingly in the late 1980's the establishment saw fit to pass a "date rape" law.  If you made the wrong move on a date, a subpoena could show up on your door inviting you to court.  That permanently sequestered any aggressive romantic or sexual proclivities I was harboring.  Instead I used the "nice guy" technique.  It worked for the most part later in life, but you were at the mercy of your woman's libido.  You didn't get to do it when you wanted.  Instead you were content to get it when she saw fit.  This became stereotypical.  Only late at night on the way to sleep was sex appropriate.  This was fine with me, but in retrospect it was a far departure from my youthful prowess.  When I was young, the appeal of sexuality was unconventional daring.  Anyone can get undressed and crawl in the bed.  How romantic is that?  If you have biological chemistry it is fine.  If you don't, and you haven't established the bond of physical intimacy, then you need things to augment your game.  Traditional trappings of romance are staid and impotent.  This is why some women truly do desire "bad boys," men who say to hell with manors and take what they want.  There is room for both.  America for certain has lost track of physical romance and the resultant sexual expression.  All one has to do is flip to a Showtime channel late at night and try to watch a B grade, soft core, heavily edited porno flick.  It is disgusting for several reasons.  First evidently no longer does it matter if a body is physically and visually appealing.  The women have implants, no breasts, and are acting rather  than indulging in the pure physical act.  Their acting wreaks!  May I make a suggestion?  Stop talking.  Stop moaning.  Stop making baby noises.  No one does this, and it is idiotic.  Second, the idea of kissing is not one of licking like a dog.  Please stop licking your partners mouth.  Even Markie Mark did this the other night in one of his movies.  It is not sexy.  It is a real disappointment to watch the tepid foreplay but then have to watch a couple dry hump with no genitalia in view.  These are real pornographic actors, and it appears they are doing the real thing, but because it is cable TV no bare penis or vagina.  It is so boring to watch this, and I feel my mind begin to deteriorate immediately if I even try to engage at the most basic level.  There is a whole frontier available in America.  Television, video, and music are at their lowest levels in my lifetime.  Pick up your notebook and begin to write down your thoughts, your dreams, and your fantasies.  Evidently no one else is. 

What Does $200.00 a Month Get you?

There is a handful of B.S. which needs to be addressed.  Evidently the manufacturers of the AR-15 have Joe Biden's balls in their clutch.  I am a fan of the new president.  I support his policies, his knowledge and experience, and his perspective for America.  I feel he is on point, but I don't understand the hesitation about an assault weapons ban.  If were to listen to Lindsey Graham all of us would need such a weapon when the violent gangs rushed his home seeking wonderful man love.  These kinds of weapons were not available to civilians previously in America, and only are they making the unexplained mass shootings more frequent.  If we as a nation had to make a prudent decision in governance of our own security, well-being, and happiness, it would be to draw a conclusion about the AR-15.  It has been used in the majority of the shootings, which means easily it is obtainable, easily it is operated, and its manufacturer prefers to promulgate violence in America.  It is what they all want, but the traditional American economy no longer adequately provides for our monetary needs as citizens.  There are no good jobs left.  It has not taken long for America to slide down the path of violence and anarchy, only because we cannot provide for our own people.  It is because half of Americans have chosen not to provide.  Instead they choose to spend their time lynching Negroes for no good reason.  Habits are difficult to break, and the stoic-faced, indignant, ignorant cops who have chosen to victimize people of color never will change.  Only will they be prosecuted for their crimes setting an example that a nation required conformity, compliance, and respect.  America is not the Old West.  If President Biden, our elected leader, says everyone one must be vaccinated, then everyone must be vaccinated.  All ready we have proven ourselves incapable of making sane, rational, decisions regarding our own lives.  We need leaders, and we should not make the same mistake twice.  The police killing African-American men are the same as half of Americans who voted for the Donald.   Things never have changed, but state cannot secede from the union.  Two points will be presented here.  First African-Americans did not immigrate to America on their own.  They were forced here in captivity, sold as merchandise, made to labor for nothing, liberated with a bloody civil war, and expected to disappear.  Their struggle is epic, and it is the soul of America.  Further to disparage these people from their equal rights as Americans is callous, ignorant, and insane.  The reparations they deserve and have received are the 360.222 deaths of Union soldiers fighting for their freedom.  These men gave their lives for the lives of freed slaves, and it is not mentioned much.  It is reparation enough.  Let's move on.  No citizen at any time in America needs an assault weapon, unless they plan on becoming urban or guerilla terrorists.  Traditional firearms have been enough for Americans to protect their families and gather food.  A shotgun, hunting rifle, or pistol suffice in satisfying the needs of the Constitution.  Assault weapons should not be available to average citizens, and this was agreed upon and mandated by Bill Clinton.  It was W. who let this appropriate law expire.  It is the manufacturer of the AR-15 who have blood on their hands, and that is exactly what they want.  They are in an industry which thrives on violence.  America is not the same nation.  We do not know our roots, our artists, or our milestones.  We have become a weak, sniveling, confused lot of power mongers who could not win a chess game.  With the disappearance of the Donald, news headlines have become base and superficial.  There are no editors left to pick the topics, assign reporters, and publish an enlightened newspaper.  It is all, "He said, she said."  I am embarrassed to be an American. By the way, $200.00 a month gets you drug commercials, ugly actors, and the worst speaking voices in history.  If ever we are to recover, we might want to archive our national history, because creating in this Covid vacuum is fruitless.