They have itty bitty, tinny weenie, scrappy lives, some leaning female, some male. Born in captivity, they live for months dreaming of freedom. If released, they are discharged with 10s of millions, all wiggling and straining to find the one home given to the first that gets there.
How can you not have compassion for the littlest losers dying by the millions, lost, starving for love, or just drying up in the bed sheets?
They have itty bitty, tinny weenie, scrappy lives, some leaning female, some male. Born in captivity, they live for months dreaming of freedom. If released, they are discharged with 10s of millions, all wiggling and straining to find the one home given to the first that gets there.
How can you not have compassion for the littlest losers dying by the millions, lost, starving for love, or just drying up in the bed sheets?
The few males in a hive just wander around looking for some queen to stick it too, while the females do all the work.
If there is trouble, it is the females that have the stinging weapon and launch into battle often giving up their lives, while the bigger males just pretend to be girls to save themselves.
If our hive is to be saved, it will be women that do it!
I spent 33 years locked in a promise I made Presidents Ford and Carter. I would not involve myself in partisan politics while running the organization we had begun.
Once retired, I still would not involve in political discussions. That isn’t to say I had nothing to say, it is just after those 33 years of struggling to help people deal with the facts, I am no longer interested in what anyone else thinks.
From where I have stood, no one thinks. Like eating a Big Mack to satisfy their hunger, people have become accustomed to tunning into some political preacher who says what satisfies and then mimics them with “lock box” conviction.
When politics becomes the conversation, I have become a joke. “Mention politics,” they say, “if you want to watch Kimball walk out of the room.”
If I am stuck, as the other day, with a devoted Christian, Trump supporter and close friend, who thought him God’s tool to make things wrong, right again, I simply agree.
Yes, Jesus was selfless, thoughtful, kind, forgiving with endless compassion for the suffering, downtrodden and all those without hope. Trump, his doppelganger – very difficult to see much difference.
I was six when I first worried about death. An older brother mentioned we only live into our 60s. It was simple arithmetic – I had only 9 of my life spans left.
So it began, a lifelong, almost daily uneasiness about the time left.
When I was six, I sensed no pre-me, I had been my forever, and time was…well if it moved at all, was sap slow. A school year lasted forever, and the next Christmas was an eternity away.
This is not to say early life was boring, just the opposite. So, sodden I was after that first breath (whatever that freakish experience must have been) with new, never had or imagined intimacies with this thing or that, each one seeming eons from those had just a few moments ago.
The freshly pealed, raw experiences of life began on some supersonic conveyor belt of WOWs.
But as life progresses the belt offers fewer, fresh WOWs and increasing chains of “been there, done that,” repetitions.
As I age, the belt’s “been there, done that,” offerings increase, fatigue sets in and the belt of time speeds up as if to find anything new.
Days become weeks, then months and suddenly another year flashes by.
When as old as me, that first wonderous breath you took so very long ago has been repeated 650 million times and you are good to go.
Over two years ago or almost one year after Putin invaded Ukraine, I wrote these blogged words in solution to the war, words that I hate as much now as I did when I wrote them:
“The West recognizes roughly 7% of Ukraine as Russian, including Crimea and the Russian-speaking areas of Donetsk and Luhansk — roughly the territory Russia claimed in 2014.
Ukraine, whose economy has crashed, gets to retain all of the territory they had prior to the 2022 invasion, gets peace, and the funds to rebuild, substantially but not solely provided by Russia.“
That is exactly where we head now, only after another 30,000 innocent non-combatant deaths.
It is not a brag, but a cracking volcanic blast at cowering, wimpy Presidents who can’t get off their knees when challenged by a country whose economic power is half that of California’s.
It is important to remember that the aged are going to forget. That may be why decaying Presidents and Congressmen are endlessly flipping and then flopping on the opposite side of their former selves.
That will be my excuse for letting this all happen.
A mushroom lives and dies never knowing its own colossal source. Like us, some are nourishing, others poisonous and a few mind-blowing, but neither imagine the extraordinary apparatus that anchors their existence
For the mushroom it can be a fungus that weighs tons, a billion times larger than themselves, living on as the oldest organism on earth.
For us? Well, none know. Like the mushroom, we bloom and are driven to think we are it, our bodies carry all that we know, can know, and think there is. Only with consciousness, we are compelled to conjure hope in one simplistic cult driven God after another.
While the truth might find our bodies expendable, but our essence eternal, only defused upon death, mixed and redistributed to make bits of us present in an infinite number of new existences just as oblivious of their author as we are today.
I have no faith in what I write here. It just seems more real than all the poppycock fairy tales religions tempt me with.
An alien, never having experienced earth as you know it, walked into our world out of a Brazilian jungle wearing only a loin cloth and carrying some wood.
He took a look at some of our magic – lighters, cell phones and such, turned around and walked right back into the jungle to be seen no more.
The Founders, feared authoritarian government above all else, thus constructed a firewall against any possibility of an authoritarian government. Amongst those few who still know, it was the separation of powers splitting power between the three legs of a stool, that gave government balance and prohibited anyone leg from attaining absolute power over the people.
“If you got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will fallow,” a forecast that hung in the Nixon White House now cemented in a Congress where their leg of the stool has mortified into water fetching lackies.
Trump now goes for the second leg that bars absolute control.
Today, Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance condemned the judiciary, attacking their legitimacy, the final pillar of the separation of power’s protection against an authoritarian.
As the Vice-President said, “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” While Musk added, judges who oppose him should be impeached.
When the people finally get it, don’t expect Democrats to defend you. As Hakeem Jefferies, the House Minority Leader suggests, we need to wait for the pitches we can hit or Martin, the Democratic Parties new leader, who says we need to find more billionaires to keep up with the Republicans.
This is WAR, and opposition has yet to find a leader to enter the field of battle believing that The People can govern for themselves.
In a normal world someone standing at the apex of political power going to prison for 11 years would saturate the news. After all, Bob Menendez was charged with leading foreign-policy, and overseeing billions in foreign aid, the sale of arms to foreign powers, holding confirmation hearings, NOT the cash discovered stuffed in his boots and pockets or the gold bars anointing him with his nick name.
I have witnessed such sliminess at every level both as a Congressional staffer, State Senator, Corporation Commissioner, a non-profit leader, and as me.
Sometimes the payouts were enormous from those willing and able to dip the largest shovels into special interest public projects.
While others just getting started get their beaks wet with offers of free trips, premium seating or just some movie tickets. I loved movies, and although I refused all others, I went to see a few free films.
It is a cycle, little known, little written about, but contagious with those elected. You grow a big head; think you are somehow worthwhile and more deserving than those that voted for you.
As the word penis came out of her mouth, I would have willingly stretched out underneath an elephant turd and hoped its owner would take a step on it.
When a widowed mother asks a 13-year-old Catholic boy to take a seat “for the BIG TALK,” low organs will crinkle up into raisins frantically looking for somewhere they won’t exist.
It was some years earlier that my older brother Bobby, flatly stated, “Dad put his penis in Mom’s pussy and because of that I came out.”
The announcement was casually made in front of our living room mirror as Mom stroked my two-year-old hair, “We are going to get this cut.” The shock was instant. I was going to be “cut.” Cutting hurt and I had no reason to believe cutting my hair would be any less painful than cutting off fingers or toes.
My protests, apparently laughable, were ignored, and I was unjustly packed into the family’s Packard and off we went.
Entering the shop there he stood, as sinister a sight as any little boy had ever seen. He just stood motionless looking down at me. Recognizing my fear, that grim-faced, slick-haired, spectacled little man with the tiny mustache and stiff white shirt grimaced and looked up at my mom. I was doomed.
My terror was splayed open for all to see as I took in the various fluid-filled jars containing combs and cutting devices, along with assorted objects plugged into electrical sockets behind him. And the chair, OH GOD that chair, what was it? Huge with various handles and levers and a long leather strap swaying at its side. I lost it!
Dismissing a child’s fears as simple childishness is so convenient to an adult who has long forgotten the traumas of their own first-time childhood horrors: the time you first got the needle at the doctor’s office, wobbled and crashed that first two-wheeler attempt, the dark that came at night, when you first rode The Hammer at the State Fair, or just the creaking noises in the closet when all were asleep. . . and a hundred other childhood traumas.
Most adults could easily revisit those fears by trying a bungee jump or first sky dive, taking a quick dip into a frozen lake or maybe a bit of harmless water boarding – all would likely do the trick and give a taste of what we have forgotten about first-time events. And you will never have so many first-time events as you did as a child.
Anyway, I stood in front of the barber butcher, and he was going to cut me. For some incomprehensible reason the person I trusted most in life, picked up a box, placed it on the torture device and stuck me to it – then let the butcher have his way with his sharp pointy objects. My fear was intense and real. My mother, like all mothers, knew such fears absurd, but mine also had the presence of mind to see an opportunity for posterity and documented the event.
I was sitting in my highchair looking out the window at my dad’s Packard when she set a bowl of soup in front of me. It had to have been the Campbell’s kind. I could see the bits of drowned vegetables and occasionally flaking cubes of chicken, but what caught my eye was the teensy weensy, perfectly round, shiny bits of oil that floated on the top. I wanted to know what they were but was not yet far enough along in life to manage an inquiry. I was still having enough trouble managing a capture with my spoon.
She stood behind me that morning, all round and dressed in white, but black. Her name was Essie, our maid and cook. My mother did not have her help often and I do not remember much about her other than the chicken she fried, great chicken my older brothers later assured me. Chicken that our mother, the German antithesis to fine dining, could never duplicate.
A year or so later, I visited Essie’s house. She lived in a home very unlike our own. My mother was bringing her some Christmas gifts, and I happened to be in the back seat.
We lived in a big house. I didn’t know it. We lived in the nicest neighborhood. I did not know it. As we turned onto Essie’s street the houses became tightly jammed, any half-dozen of which could have easily fit into our front yard. As best I can recall, there were no driveways, and the yards were all barren dirt with a few broken toys, flat balls and scraps of various objects scattered about. Inside, where doors would be, there were hanging sheets and there was one stuffed tattered chair. The walls were unpainted with one wall having a large chunk of missing plaster which commanded my attention because I could not imagine the purpose of the wooden slats that were now exposed underneath.
Above all, I remember that Essie had a family; this was a very big surprise. It never occurred to me that she would be a wife, have children, a home, a life. Essie was just our maid.
I did not feel sorry, have any sense of pity, I was not old enough to know such things. I only recall being confused, wanting to leave and being happy that my parents chose not to live that way.
I would not see those kinds of living conditions again for 15 years, not until I stood in the dump three of my college buddies and I could afford and used to eat, sleep, drink, and smoke dope.
It was a grand Thanksgiving feast. I had rented two enormous side by side beach houses able to bed a party of 20 along with my two dogs. My wife and I prepared a fabulous meal with all the standard sides of Potatoe, asparagus, muffins, cranberry’s, some of those God afoul jarred pearl onions and topped by the most scrumdiddleumpcious pumpkin and pecan pies. All centered of course by a turkey.
The turkey was my one and only responsabilty…..well along with the stuffing and giblet gravy I would make from its various entrails.
The bird I found was just magnificent. A 24-pound Butterball, 28 pounds if you count the crumbs, mushrooms, sausages, onions, garlic and seasonings I stuffed up its private quarters.
My meticulous care had me basting it with butter every half hour or so. Five hours later I had achieved golden perfection.
But I was not done. The succulent, dripping deliciousness of my bird needed to sit for a bit before the devouring commenced. So, I had a plan: Everyone on the beach for a few spectacular celebratory firework rockets I had planted in the sand.
Everything was perfect, planned for maximum effect and joy.
Then we went to eat.
I am not sure who first noticed it, but I do recall the looks on Madison’s face (my golden retriever) and that on Jefferson’s (my border collie). They were expressions of the utmost joy and appreciation.
The slimy slick had crossed the kitchen floor a dozen times as they had competed in obvious efforts to both play with and devour my golden perfection.
Since that wonderful Thanksgiving pizza day, I have always given some turkey thanks to my dogs first.
Well, the day has come! Are you nervous? Are you looking forward to it finally being over, or like me, feeling anxious about what cometh?
For me, likely on some “enemies list”, well, I’ll be catching a plane into the Mexican Sierra Madres early in the morning and as I joke with my Trump supporting friends and family, I’ll be taking with me my old rusty Red Rider and a can of shot.
Could be that I’m just going on a vacation but I’m a bit relieved that I am. To parody the Woody Alan joke, “I’m not afraid democracy will die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens!”
Declining support for Horace Mann. It is possible you are not aware who that is, but almost a century ago he was the cutting edge that sliced open and exposed the need for public education if self-government was to survive. He argued that it must be non-sectarian, embrace children of various backgrounds, taught using the tenets of a free society, that stability depends on a basic level of literacy and the inculcation of common public ideals.
Public education has been under successful attack for decades, with civics education rendered almost non-existent resulting in the first measurable declines in civic knowledge and history, even as it must be clear to the most challenged amongst us that after thousands of years of bumbling, our country brought a democracy anchored in public awareness that exploded human freedom, knowledge and advancements throughout the globe making us and much of the world the brain blowing success that we are.
Discussion of public education, where we once led the world and now lead the decline has been non-existent for decades.
Entertainment: It has come to mind recently that politics may be the last forum to be overtaken by our culture’s desire for instant gratification, some other new worldly enchantment that gives a quick intoxicant of satisfaction.
So very many politicians, over the years have been manipulative, twisted truth, hollow promised this and that never to bees, that it bores the now cynical masses.
Along comes the jester, who magnifies the manipulations, lies and promises to such an entertaining, dreamy, cartoonist level that it imprisons the attention of every media news outlet and in turn each citizen, “What the Hell” many think, “He’s different!”
Anyway, I can be found crouching amongst the boulders high in the Siera Madras with my trusty Red Rider thinking of the Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression and a couple of World Wars when America survived much worse.
Back 40 years ago, when I was a State Senator and had something meaningful to say about abortions, I was a knee jerk. That is to say, I believed it was none of my business, even on the Senate issue I am currently recalling (should a teenager seeking an abortion be required to tell her parents) I was a NO as long as the rules set by Row vs. Wade, (the wisdom of its day) were applied.
Now a half century later, knowledge (wisdom) has adjusted somewhat. And now, as then, I turn to those in the business of knowing for a knowing of what to believe and a what to do.
Most involved in prenatal medicine believe there’s clear evidence that a fetus – a developing baby in the womb – can’t feel physical pain until after the 24th week (6th month) of pregnancy. But many others say it’s possible for a fetus to feel pain as early as 12 weeks (3 months) into its development.
Today 93% of abortions were done at or before 13 weeks. While 5.5% were done between 14 and 20 weeks and less than 1% were performed after 21 weeks.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM), and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (RCOG), say that a fetus isn’t capable of feeling pain until at least 24-25 weeks.
The conclusions say these lifelong experienced, in what I know nothing about is:
The cortex, the outer layer of the brain thought to be largely responsible for consciousness, and the thalamus, which relays sensory information (like pain) to the cortex, develop only after 24 weeks.
Just because a fetus has other brain structures that process pain doesn’t mean the connections that can cause it to feel pain are working yet.
The nerve connections that allow a fetus to tell the difference between a harmless touch and a painful one don’t develop until late in the third trimester.
When a fetus under 28 weeks seems to respond to “noxious stimuli” (actions an adult would perceive as unpleasant), it’s a reflex or hormonal reaction.
While doctors may use pain-relieving drugs during fetal surgery, it’s mostly to keep the fetus from moving or prevent long-term damage from stress.
Today 93% of abortions are done at or before 13 weeks. While 5.5% are done between 14 and 20 weeks and less than 1% are performed after 21 weeks.
The lack of consensus is as confounding for me, as it is for the “experts.”
Bottom line: Where do you draw that line between life’s urge to fornicate and the growing life that results?
It has become harder for a thoughtful someone, anyone, even me who is careful not to step on an ant not to sympathize WHEN two bodies share the resources of one. WHENEVER that is!
Air Force Veteran Speaks Out; Why Republicans Must Vote For Democracy
For some of you receiving this email, we may not always agree on politics, but I always respect your opinion and reasoning and your right to disagree with me and think differently about things. Many people don’t know, but I have deep Republican roots on my Mom’s side. My Grandmother Peggy Hurley was good friends with Barry Goldwater and served as an alternate delegate for him at the 1964 Convention. Nana’s house was covered in GOP inspired memorabilia. There was an elephant piggy bank, elephant coasters, elephant coffee mugs, GOP ashtrays, lighters, plaques, hand towels, coins, you name it, the house was a GOP museum. I’m sure some of you can relate… My grandmother was the kindest, smartest, most loving person you would ever meet, and she was also a proud, right wing Goldwater Republican. So, I understand and respect traditional, Old Republican Party values like: hard work, free markets, individual responsibility, self-determination, lower taxes, less regulation, less bureaucracy, strong defense, fiscal responsibility, etc.
If you are a Republican reading this, I’m not trying to convert you into a Democrat and I think that having a strong, principled Republican party is a necessary component of a stable democracy here in the U.S. In other words, we (all of us) need the Old Republican Party back. The problem is that the Fake Republican Party under Trump is trying to undermine democracy as we know it and if Trump succeeds, we won’t have any policy issues to argue about.
So, I have made a few videos in hopes that I can help shift the paradigm back to what it used to be and persuade maybe just a few undecided voters to reject Trump and vote for Vice President Harris. And if you are a Republican, then maybe it’s just this once because the times call for it.
If you agree with what I’m saying about Trump and you think that someone else would benefit from seeing the videos, please feel free to forward or post them. Also, if you are interested, the long version on my Youtube channel is more persuasive, but fairly long at 20 minutes.
but Tom Matthews was the Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wilkes Booth wannabe clipping Trump’s ear. Had he been an inch closer to center, what would have happened?
Would MAGAS go supernova and attempt to dismember all the fantastical goblins Trump has fingered in the “Dark State?”
Would one of the Trump wannabes grab his banner and carry forth or would they just feed on one another?
Would the Republican Party be regained by lifelong conservatives riveted on reducing spending but for military protection?
Would the ebbs and waves of politics return to that world of responsible give and take that has so continuously inched America and the world forward toward fairness?
I don’t know, but it is my guess that Trump is the one Gorilla Glue that holds MAGAS from each other’s throats.
Air Force Veteran Speaks Out; Why Republicans Must Vote For Democracy
