Batter Up

The Montana Green Party is back in federal district court trying one more time to regain access to the November, 2018 general election ballot.  While it is often hard to see the sense of what one does, I remind myself that some 10,000 Montana voters signed the petition to grant us a chance to compete with the corporate-owned parties in this election cycle.  http://www.krtv.com/story/38882281/montana-green-party-files-suit-in-federal-court-to-gain-ballot-access

For me, this will be the third time challenging Montana’s election laws in federal court.  We’re batting 1000, so why stop now?  Both previous victories, however, did not result in placing the name(s) of candidates on the ballot.  This time is a little different.  Green candidates were certified for the election by the Sec. of State and county clerks before being removed in July by a state judge and Democratic Party — the complainant.

My question:  If elections mean nothing, why all the tight sphincters across state and federal agencies and the MSM when a no-name, third-party candidate gains ballot access in a tiny western state like Montana?

I hope to find out the answer in November.

A reunion

Too much time on the highway and in motels results in stuff like this. We are back now – I didn’t want to say anything, but might as well spit it out – I attended my fiftieth high school class reunion. I graduated from Billings Central Catholic High School in 1968. Good lord am I old!

A few reflections:

  • I look pretty good. Most of my classmates have put on pounds and have not stayed in shape. I guess we just reach a point where we give up, but I have not yet gotten there. I still have dark hair, have controlled my weight, and work out often.
  • We were a class of 115. Thirteen have died.
  • My class rank was 87, and I like to joke that for that reason I thought our class size must have been … 87. I was not a good student, and did not light up until later, in college. I was told by teachers that I lacked direction, and that my standardized tests were in the high percentiles, so that I was underachieving.

Continue reading “A reunion” →

Me and Mrs. Jones

In Jim Jones: The Fake Early Years, Mark devoted some of the article to Jim Jones’ genealogy. Of course, this piqued my interest, so I decided to see if I could dig a little deeper. What I discovered has me somewhat baffled since it was so easily unearthed. If the information was purposely planted, I can’t imagine what the motive could have been. On the other hand, if the connection is authentic, I don’t understand why it was not covered up. But before I divulge that “strange relation,” I’d like to share some other discoveries I stumbled upon relating to Jim Jones’ mother, Lynetta Putnam.  (This article will be my small contribution to the impressive amount of information already accumulated by Gaia.)

Jim’s mother is only mentioned six times on his Wiki page, and four of those instances are in the “Explanatory Notes”:

  1. While Jim Jones claimed to be partially of Cherokee descent through his mother Lynetta, this story was apparently not true.
  2. Lynetta’s cousin Barbara Shaffer said, “there wasn’t an ounce of Indian in our family.”
  3. Shaffer said that Lynetta was Welsh.
  4. The birth records for Lynetta have since been lost.

Continue reading “Me and Mrs. Jones” →

Jonestown: More questions than answers

We are off on another trip, and so any work I am doing on Jonestown is on hold. However, I did take time this morning to look into Gaia’s work on this subject, which is still visible at Fakeopedia, here. After reading that I realized that I don’t have to reinvent the wheel, but merely pick up on, highlight, and perhaps expand on work already done.

In reading that work I realized as well that this is a massive undertaking. I have more questions than answers, but am settling on one aspect that makes everything else more poignant:

No one died.

Stop and think about it – the people who supposedly died there were from the lower casts of society, at least that is the story. They were mostly black, and that adds to the unspoken and indelicate attitude that these were not important people, sorry to say. So there are several angles from which we might approach the event:

Continue reading “Jonestown: More questions than answers” →

Jim Jones: The fake early years

Jonestown

Note: My only source at this point is the primary source of all lies and false history,  Wikipedia. My thinking is jaded by presupposition – after reading Wiki about Jones and Jonestown, all I could think was “fake, fake, fake.” Therefore be advised that my writing will be riddled with confirmation bias.

The gruesome image above is an aerial photo of Jonestown in the aftermath of mass suicide by cyanide, the origin of the phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid,” and what was in “fact” we are told Flavor-Aid. We are told that Jim Jones and 918 of his followers died that day. I printed the above photo and used a Sharpie to black out each body as I counted. I came up with about 200, tops.

Continue reading “Jim Jones: The fake early years” →

Standing in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist …

I am prepared now to go forward with the Jim Jones series, starting with his early life. That will come tomorrow or the day after. What has happened so far is good, lots of input which I have not and will not read until my own work, such as it is, is done.

This is, however, a diversion. While in Europe I ran out of reading material, and when we got home found nothing of interest. But while in college I was introduced to two volumes, The American Intellectual Tradition, edited by David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper. They have sat on my bookshelf for years.

My intent was to go back and reread a selection from Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class wherein he introduces for the first time the concept of “conspicuous consumption.” When in college (and I told the professor this) the man’s words simply did not penetrate my thick cranium*. I kept losing focus. The professor, a wise man, simply smiled and said don’t worry. My intent yesterday was to read it again to see if the cranium had lost some of its bone mass.

But I stumbled and never got there, instead reading a portion of William James’ The Will to Believe. I am a great admirer of this man and his pristine and probing intellect, first having read about him in Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club, and then reading his (very accessible) series of lectures that came to be known as The Varieties of Religious Experience (available as a free download at Gutenberg).

Continue reading “Standing in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist …” →

Pharmaceutical Nightmare- My personal journey: Anti-depressants

About 15 years ago I was going through a very difficult and agonizing family upheaval. I was angry, not depressed, and felt the need to talk to a psychologist. Unfortunately, my insurance didn’t cover the services of a psychologist (who can’t prescribe medications), but it did include visits to psychiatrists.

I am no expert, nor am I a medical professional, but I have learned how to research and discover much-needed information about harmful pharmaceuticals. In this article, I will be sharing my personal experience with NSRI Anti-depressants (Nor-Epinephrine, Serotonin, Re-uptake Inhibitors.) Since two brain chemicals are involved, NSRI’s are much more difficult to taper (reduce dosage) than the older SSRI anti-depressants like Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil. Continue reading “Pharmaceutical Nightmare- My personal journey: Anti-depressants” →