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The Meeting – Trump and those who experienced a killing field!

Thursday, February 22nd, 2018

by Marceline Donaldson

Trump, yesterday and today, with his followers and close friends and supporters are laughing their asses off as they talk about and listened to the young people and others in the White House who were there to make suggestions for change and to talk about ways to stop the killing of children by children.

Why would Trump be laughing at the people he seemed to so seriously engage with on yesterday? – Why would he be laughing his ass off?  Probably because he, no doubt, shared with his buddies at the NRA the suggestions he was going to make, had made and would continue to make amongst other horrifying suggestions. Geared to stopping and solving the problem or geared to taking advantage of a disaster and turning it into a marketing opportunity for the gun lobby.

This particular suggestion made in a seemingly concerned way and in the midst of other people, both young and older,  pouring their hearts out about the loss they suffered from the shooting. was one that, we think made Trump and Associates have some hilarious moments when recalling the conversation and Trump’s part in it.

People came to seriously engage with Trump – president of these United States – with their experiences, thoughts, suggestions for change etc. and poured out their pain.

Trump’s addition to the conversation was to suggest change he wanted to see happen which would – in reality – increase the numbers and groups of people owning and using guns.  Trump’s suggestion was to arm some 20% of the teachers in the schools who would be the blockade to stop such shootings.  That is what Trump and friends were having such hilarious conversation about after everyone had left for the day.

To establish Trump’s suggestion means there would be shoot-outs in elementary schools and high schools; the teachers, trying to work with students to start them on a good life would also be the ones to shoot those self-same students if the circumstances seemed to warrant – and if the situation didn’t warranty and the teachers had made a mistake and jumped to the wrong conclusion, but people still died from their gun shots, that  would have ruined teachers’  lives; teachers lives as well as the lives of many   students who could never turn from the fact that friends might be dead because of a beloved teacher – how many would be added to the death toll – dead from a teacher/shooting mistake; and on and on goes the scenario.

That isn’t the way Trump phrased it.  But he did use that session to open an avenue to sell more guns.  He opened a way to increase the exposure of people to guns who would then probably have to join groups like the NRA looking for information, target practice etc. It was really a genius idea.  At least genius to the people around Trump who want to see this disaster turned into continuing and increasing the money flow into the Trump coffers  from the NRA and related organizations.

And so, as their concerns that such a session might be the beginning of the end to the power they exercise through organizations like the NRA, in fact, they were assured that Trump was still their boy – still looking out for their interests – and still able, with a straight face to promote their organization at times when the organization was in some of its deepest troubles.  Not only could he promote their interests at such times he could do it while seeming to commiserate with those who had been seriously wounded with friends and family mortally wounded.

Trump’s solution – increase the numbers of guns in circulation’ increase the groups of people who carry and use such weapons of war; increase the violence in this society exponentially and directed like a laser onto our children.

HAIL PUTIN!!!

Have you checked lately to see where the money support for the NRA is coming from?  Have you noticed how NRA assets have doubled and within one year?  Have you noticed the large amounts of money – well into the tens of millions of dollars to Congress people and some $30  million plus to Trump, that can be traced?  Is that coming from Russia into the United States to further push along their agenda for U.S.?

HAIL PUTIN!!

Do you remember the dinner, off on the side at an NRA meeting where the Russian Ambassador met with Donald Trump, Jr. and they had dinner together?  Off, away from the prying eyes of the public?  And of the media?  but somehow it got out!  Wonder what that was about?

HAIL PUTIN!!

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

 

Immeasurable Suffering!

Friday, February 16th, 2018

by: Marceline Donaldson

There is no pain like the pain of losing a child – even a temporary loss, let alone a permanent loss by death.  The parents and families of the young people killed in Parklands and the families of the teachers, coaches and staff are all constantly in our prayers.

Our children are precious to us no matter how great or handicapped we are at showing it.  They are the means by which we achieve eternity and whether we do it consciously or not we give to them all of who we are and what we have.

To know that your child’s last minutes on earth were spent being terrorized, we are never the same.  Where does the ‘peace that passes all understanding’ ever come from in our lives after that – even for a few blessed seconds.

To know that it was a child killing children makes the deed no less painful nor does it make it one we will ever forget or ever be able to remember without the pain surrounding the memory also coming back to terrorize us bringing the grief back fresh and new.

To know that the child killing our children was taken up in a time of his greatest need by a group of paramilitary white supremacist bigots and put into training so he could learn to use the guns he used to kill our children and his peers makes our shock and confusion even greater.

Instead of killing those he was being trained to hate and revile and look on as less than and needing such termination, he turned on his own and became a part of the many white on white crime sprees that have been happening around these United States.

Why did he turn to white supremacists in his time of greatest need and why, in the end, did he turn on them and against them by turning their theories – their politics – their religion against them!

We know very little about the details of this young man’s life – this 19 year old, not yet out of his teen years with his mind not quite developed into the adult mind he would have in years to come.  We do know he was without a father for many years and his mother died in November of 2017 and we know he was alone.  Others may have stepped in to temporarily bridge that gap, but there are few people who know the depths of that kind of aloneness in a society of plenty where being “better than” on so many levels is that to which most of us aspire.  One of the greatest in the one upsmanship that we practice is who are or were our parents.  We learn to hide our parents if we achieve beyond their class and so they become an embarrassment or their existence amongst our friends and peers “outs” us for being less than we pretend to be.  To have no parents and no family puts us on that slippery road to homelessness in the future if we are not really ‘exceptional’ and just ordinary like most of us.  When we slip there is no one there to catch us or prevent us from sliding into the muck.

Parklands, Florida is a place – or was a place – that felt “better than” as a community because it was what – all white with very few exceptions? mostly upper economic families? parents raising their own children without many one parent homes, especially the kind with women alone raising children struggling just to keep food on the table let alone keeping a table? without the stigma of having “bad children”; “those ghetto types of thugs roaming the neighborhoods”; – I could go on but you know the stereotype without even having it outlined for you.

In Parklands, as we read in the media, when children questioned their parents and were afraid to go to school – one report tells of a child who wanted to be home schooled because of her fear – the answer was “you don’t have to be afraid, we don’t live in that kind of neighborhood – we live in a good neighborhood.”  And the child questioning and everyone reading that account knows what that meant.  That is a part of what we have constructed as the reality of our lives.  That is what this shooting destroyed for Parklands.

As we go back over these school shootings and the school violence we have been experiencing, we see that it has happened in mostly white, mostly upper-class neighborhoods.  We have been experiencing white on white crime with great regularity.

Why!

Is it because when truth and the reality of who they really are hits,  young minds can’t contain or deal with that explosion of those truths and their anger leads them to using the weapons of war to let out their anger – against their own who deceived them!

This young man faced a life which looked hopeless!  With the death of his mother he was one of those society discards and blames for being in the position he sees himself facing over the years.  When the reality – the truth of who he actually was in this society hit and the lies told to keep people like him under control for the rest of society – when that reality hit him, was the only power he had over his life the one he had been taught by his white paramilitary friends?  Kill them all before they kill you?  Except his explosion was in the truth of who “they” were to him!  His peers!  The innocents who didn’t create his life as it was rolling out – the innocents who were as trapped in their existence as he was in his – those young innocent children living the same myth which upheaveled his life.

Hardest to hear throughout all of this, for me, has been the teachers, parents, bystanders who described the other children going to school in Parklands who were achieving such great things.  Those children who wanted to be doctors, lawyers, who had done projects so outstanding – and on and on many of them went – apparently trying to patch and heal their community by patching and healing the mythology under which they lived their lives and from which they took their identity.  Parklands is really a safe community and full of these really great people raising children who would live on to become leaders of society.  This is just an aberration caused by someone who didn’t ‘belong’.

Amazingly, that is the pattern of what happened in other communities.  Colorado comes to mind with the two young boys who were so outside of what was the norm in their community and so rejected by their peers and others that their explosion when the myth was exploded instead of them and their reality exposed to them – it was more than their young minds could contain and we had yet another school shooting and massacre.

I am sure this is not what those in such extreme pain want to hear.  Nor those who are trying to make sense of this want to put in their minds and hearts to help them through a really difficult time.  But, sometimes, the best place to start to heal is with truth.  Truth replaces grief and moves us to do great things.

For the truth of life in Parklands and the rest of America to take hold and spread is the best thing that could happen to all of us.

When one of our own human community loses father and mother they become our children and our responsibility.  The truth is that does not happen.  Except for a very few they become weights on the society for whom our Congress people and president forever try to speak in ways to convince the rest of us that those so orphaned are responsible for their own plight and probably the cause of the situation in which they find themselves.

For truth and love to break into a society what an incredible gift.

Would that begin to happen in Parklands, Florida what a gift to their parents the life and death of their children would be.  How meaningful would the lives of those young martyrs be if what happens out of their life and death is their opening a door wide to the truth and love that we so sorely need and so strongly fight to keep out and keep away from.  Grief can break down barriers because in it we begin to question our lives and how we have made the choices which brought us to this place of grief.

To see the people around us as fully human and truly divine is such a gift.  Can’t we accept it – live through it – give it to others.

There are not many times in life when such is possible.  This is one and it was given to us by our children.  Don’t throw it away.  Don’t reason it out of existence.  Use it to live less in the mythology that is our life and more into the reality of who we all really are.

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

Food – Vanilla – Chicken Stock – Horrors!

Friday, February 9th, 2018

I have had to turn off the cooking shows.  I keep looking for one that does something other than season its desserts and sweets with vanilla flavoring and its savories with chicken stock.

Ever wonder why describing how dishes taste you always have to add – they taste a little like chicken, don’t know why, but I enjoyed the dish.  Or, describing a sweet you can’t really define the vanilla taste, but it is present.  That is probably because every dish made today that is not sweet is full of chicken stock and every dessert has vanilla flavor.

What is that about?

Well, the desserts are easy to fathom.  We use white conventional flour, white over-processed sugar, low-fat milk which has been over processed and is roughly equivalent to sugar water.  Debased – with the taste stripped out as well as the nutrition.  So,  you have to put in desserts  something to restore the flavor.  Thus comes the addition of vanilla.  Try baking without vanilla.  Let the ingredients win the day.  Try a cake with real organic cherries in the batter for a flavor component.  There is always raisins, cinnamon, nutmeg, hazelnuts, and so many more.

Try baking, cooking, saucing your desserts with organic whole wheat or whole any grain or whole anything else.  Organic eggs add incredible taste;, whole organic milk, organic butter, organic turbinado sugar, organic maple syrup or something equivalent  and you will see an amazing difference.  I very seldom use vanilla and get lots of compliments for the flavor of desserts.  Don’t totally eliminate vanilla, but use it on purpose for the taste not to carry the entire dish. Why?  Because flavor comes from all the ingredients and does not have to be restored by adding vanilla.  That just dumbs down your taste buds.  Once you get them back to rally tasting what you are eating you will really see how bored you can get with vanilla.  That is a real shame because vanilla is an excellent and adds great flavor, but not to everything sweet.

That is difficult to do when using almonds since the FDA has decided there should not be organically grown raw almonds.  Before you get the almonds, those dubbed ‘organic’ have been toyed with and those that are not organic or have no such descriptive label have really been trashed.  Someone decided almonds must be, at the very least, pasteurized or they will deliver mold, etc. to your gut.  Sound like the processed food industry looking for graft or profit where it would otherwise receive none?

Organically grown raw almonds are very good and not at all a threat to your health.  That is very far from the truth. Whatever the economic benefit to those delivering such an edict to all of us won the day.  Those raw almonds, not organically grown, have been chemicalized to avoid the mold.  Whenever I see something like that I think “shelf life”.  Don’t know if that is the case, but it is my fall back reason and it has been right in the past so I have no reason to doubt it today.

With everything savory using organic ingredients, that also makes a huge difference. Put aside the chicken stock and try water for a change.  The dish you are cooking provides a unique flavor all its own without the use of a “cheater” ingredient.  The chicken stock industry must have paid a pretty penny to get not that position.  There are other stocks on the market, but chicken stock seems to be the one used in just about everything.  Whoever came up with that must have made quite a load of money.

When cooking, you can taste the difference between grass-fed and hormoned/chemicalized meat.  You can also taste huge differences between wild and farm raised fish.  Wild fish tastes the way one would expect fish to taste.  Farm raised fish has a strange texture and the taste leaves something to be desired so additions are necessary to make a decent dish, probably the addition of chicken stock – and on and on it goes.  And you can bet any salmon with Atlantic in front of the name is farm raised.

Who is behind all of these changes to our food supply?  They are coming fast and furious and a stop sign is needed for all our benefits.

Homes that are a part of Bettina Network Hedge Schools are either totally organic – like one in Harvard Square – or they are on their way to becoming organic in their toiletries, food, paper products, cleaning products used and more.  Any way we can move the Network in the direction of using products that don’t destroy the environment or your body that is the direction in which we are headed.

Any suggestions to help that movement are welcome!

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

 

From Hitler to Trump!

Wednesday, January 31st, 2018

Not much to say today because everything about this has already been said.  The question is, are we listening!

We are moving this society from Trump back to Hitler in a straight line and moving very quickly.

When a president of the United States can be blackmailed by a porn star, all United Sates defenses are down.  We are open to some of the most agregious acts possible because we have a president who will apparently do whatever his most base physical urgings are and who feels he can do anything and he will still be supported by many.  His actions take him into places where he is left open to this kind of thing and our support of him acknowledges he is like the “Teflon Don”.  What does that mean for the safety and security of United States citizens – it certainly does not look as though that enhances that safety and security but opens the door wide for those who would walk right in with the U. S. President who they have compromised, possibly for doing less than he did with Ms. Stormy Daniels.

He is now trying to “cleanse” the FBI.  That kind of  “cleansing” needs to start with our leader, who seriously and quickly needs to be “cleansed” out of the United States government.  An FBI agent with his history and actions and lifestyle would have been dismissed summarily months ago.  Does the “cleansing” language sound familiar to those who were around during and shortly after Hitler?  One of Hitler’s main goals was to “cleanse” Germany of Jews.  And there are a few other times during Hitlers reign when the term “cleanse” was used.  Interesting that Trump is using this word in his current comments and those of his workers and supporters.

So,  someone who could not qualify for the FBI because of his personal leanings and evil history is going to set himself up as someone who can be the person to do and orchestrate this FBI “cleanse”?  Or have it done for him by those supporting him and his lifestyle and morals and very low character? With the help of John Kelly and others?  Who have shown themselves to be as prurient as their leader?  And as racist? And as sexist?  Believability is stretched here.  Trump followed Cohn and McCarthy and learned from them.  You can see in the way Trump acts through his presidency that he is channeling Roy Cohn almost exactly.  Cohn was a Jew who was anti-semitic; he was also very  gay and homophobic.  That does something to your soul.  I wonder if that is why the Evangelical Christians have given Trump a “mulligan” – because they see similarities to their own tendencies and lifestyles.  It is clear Trump’s racism is right out there and huge – what is not so clear, except to those who were around at the time when Trump and Cohn were best buddies.  Where you saw one you saw the other and where there were parties they usually showed up together and there were rumors and speculation about Trump’s sexual orientation.  That would certainly compromise Trump – wonder if that is what Putin knows about, with video and pictures!

To outline a quick movement along that straight line we are traveling moving back in history from Trump to Hitler and the kind of society Nazism produced and Trump is apparently trying to duplicate today:

  1. from Roy Cohn – who was Trump’s mentor and who showed him the ropes moving him from Brooklyn to Manhattan and giving him the ethics and character he has shown readily acceptable to incorporating into his character.  With a caution – Roy Cohn died sick with AIDS and broke in spite of the fact that he wielded a lot of power and money before the end.

2. From the wall erected in Germany to separate East from West and the suffering it caused; the human deaths; the separation of families and       on and on we go.  That wall was taken down, but it is a tool preferred by Russia and others in its sphere and now brought into the United States by Donald Trump who is causing much pain and suffering among many people.  Deaths; separation of families and  human suffering will only increase.

3. from Roy Cohn to Joe McCarthy and McCarthyism – a time during which many Americans suffered extremely because of the life and actions of those two men and in the background was Donald J. Trump who has picked up the line from Cohn and McCarthy and is incorporating it in the present and taking it into the future.  The human suffering caused by those three is immeasurable.  Add that to the wall suffering and add that to what Trump has created on his own and you have immense human misery caused by this United States president, his Chief of Staff and all of those Congress people supporting him either because of blackmail or their own convictions which they were not able to bring into play and into the public eye until they had the support of Donald Trump and on and on and on.

4. From McCarthy to Hitler – a short time line, but one directly traceable.  Look at the number of Nazi’s surrounding Trump.  Look at his history with bigotry.  Look at what he has said he would do, not the least of which has to do with S### Hole Countries and so much more.

United States history, along such a suffering line,  goes back even further when you look at the suffering and death in the establishment of labor unions; the suffragette movement, the massacre of African Americans in the 20th Century and when you add in American Indians the pictures turns even more violent.

I won’t go back further.  You know or you should know that history.  Just remember ” Strange Fruit” – a song composed to memorialize Africans Americans who dared to vote and were hung for the attempt and think of voter nullification and all the other ways the vote is being controlled, reflecting another stage of evil; the American Carnage during Reconstruction; the forced relocation of American Indians because “White Americanized Northern Europeans” wanted the territory on which they had lived for generations with that forced relocation happening by forcing American Indians to walk for days, weeks, months through all kinds of weather with no food, water, clothes except what thy were able to garner in the course of the Trail of Tears March – many forcibly moved from the South East to the Oklahoma territory.

And today, the threat of an America that is becoming majority brown and black being the impetus behind those supporting Donald Trump in any lie he wants to tell; any act he wants to take; any woman he wants to sexually assault; any sexual deviancy he wants to practice – for which Evangelical Christians give him a “mulligan”.  Is this how low we have fallen? Have our morals and character as Americans become so irretrievably compromised that we can constantly give such an incredibly immoral, foul character as Donald Trump someone we have elected as President – our leader – that we will continue to support him and not see the evil he and his supporters have pulled out of all of us?  We not only see evil – we are complicit.

#evilTrump is clearly an accurate descriptor.  Hopefully, the rest of us have some modicum of self-respect that we want to act in such a way that our tomorrows are better than our yesterdays and we are still able to act out the rest of our lives with higher morals and higher character than we have displayed so far.

God forgive us!  We have truly sunk far into the morass of evil which is being served to us with the promise of money, power and supremacy over those not like us on whom we can dump our sins expecting ‘mulligans’ from those we look to for moral guidance, where we have caused human suffering and death.  Amen – and Amen!

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

 

 

 

 

 

Many Responses to Trump Article!

Sunday, January 21st, 2018

Since we had several responses to the same blog – we thought we would combine them as best we can to let you know what members of Bettina Network’s Lifestyle Community are thinking about and responding to.  These are not direct quotes as we have tried to condense some, which were very long, and write the essence of others.  We do think we have kept a faithful reporting of the comments we received.  The emotion against Trump is amazingly strong.  We think, at some point, something has to give before this society explodes.

  1.  Overtime as I read or hear about Donald Trump and his machinations, I think KARMA and how it acts in the universe.  I also think about and am appreciative of your making the strong statement that mental illness and evil are not the same.  How many people claim Hitler was mentally ill?  Stalin? and all the rest?  There is a difference.  And, since the world is moving away from religions of all kind, no one wants to admit that evil exists.  We have seen it in human nature and it comes out, no matter how hard we work to suppress it.  You have to name something before you can conquer and move it out.  I am going to be one of those joining the #evilTrump group and put that hashtag on my postings that I feel show Trump’s evil.

2. It is interesting to me that once upon a time I used to love reading about the social goings on in Washington, D. C., particularly those around the president and his cabinet.  None of that seems to exist today.  I have yet to read about Trump and his wife going to social events in Washington.  I also don’t see anything about the “Washington establishment” having social events and inviting the president and his family.  Have I missed something or does Washington society see in this family the same thing the rest of us sees and doesn’t want to spend an evening mired in Bull Crap.

3.  Closing down the United States’ financial arm of the government by refusing to fund it on the anniversary of Trump’s inauguration.  What a way to mark that day.  We have decided to wear black arm bands until Trump is removed from office.  We can’t walk around in pink hats, but we can keep our hats in our pocket books for times when we can put them on.  I think the import of those arm bands say clearly the kind of grief we are experiencing with this man as president.

4.  When I heard the president prevaricating on which the day the government would be shut down and. which day he would announce his “Fake News Awards” – I was not surprised that he threatened a lot, but didn’t deliver until 1/20/2018. That is the day of his big celebration planned at Mar a Lago.  I wondered when I first heard of the celebration who would attend.  At $250,000 per couple that is more money to join the disappeared and unaccounted for and unreported disposition of money from the Trump inauguration.  People must now have a clue as to where their money is going.  My thought when the shut down loomed imminent was whether Trump would attend, because of the possibly low numbers of people who subscribed and would be attending?  There has been almost no coverage of the event and the press has been very carefully kept away.  That event shrouded in silence given what is happening all around and given what attendance or lack of it means to what is happening elsewhere it is quite suspicious that it was almost totally not covered by the press.

Everyone seems mystified as to why Trump has acted so unbelievably wild given this huge event on the horizon.  One would think his normal way of being  would be to do what he could to attend and bask in the glow of people idolizing him.  If that was not to happen and it began to be clear as the day came nearer – how to get over what would be a very revealing lack of support by his big contributors and save face was an issue.  Doing what he could to not fund the government was one way to glossing over this possible lack of participation by his big supporters.

I can’t believe people who are careful about their money would have made reservations to pay that kind of money to attend this “celebration” given the history of money disappearing and not being accounted for by the Trump group.  That seems to me to be what is behind this government shut-down.  A cover-up for a possibly failed “event”?  It would certainly have been majorly covered by the press if Trump were in attendance, but given that he was not there it seems that press coverage was elsewhere so we have next to no information as to what happened.  Have to get on the telephone to friends to see who knows about this – I am sure someone will talk about Saturday at the Trumps’

5.  I have taken a flying leap into wishful thinking as to why I think Trump worked so hard to see that the Government was shut down on Saturday 1/20/2018.  Mueller was ready to indict and arrest – Trump, Pence, Kelly and all the rest, but shutting down the government meant those about to be indicted would not be arrested during this event?  maybe that will happen next week.  Just a thought.  I also thought the “Fake News” awards were meant to cover-up something.  Especially since the date of release of that “award” kept changing.  Wonder if those changes had to do with the Mueller investigation?  One can only hope.  Especially strange that Pence was not at the Mar a Lago party – they sent him out of the country during the party.  Hope another book is coming out to explain all of these things.  Can’t wait to read the reality so I can stop guessing.

6.  Oh, the news leaking out about Russia infiltrating the Conservative movement.  Do you think “Karma”, which lots of people are beginning to talk about, had anything to do with it?  My dream is that those “Russian” and others infiltrating the Conservative movement would actually be converted in the process.  Anything is possible, right?  I wondered why there were these pictures around of so many of the loudest Conservatives and Evangelicals  turning up in Russia!  Whatever  being a Conservative used to mean, today it seems to mean you are cavorting with those who want to take down the United States Government and their way of contributing to that is by being an undercover part of the Conservative – especially Evangelical group.  How things change.  There was a day when Russia was the “evil empire” and we were taking down the wall – Ronald Reagan famously went to Germany to say “Mr. President, take down this wall.”  One would think that experience would make us very wary of building walls, especially for such evil reasons.

The Conservatives and Evangelicals are intransigent in their support of Trump, no matter what he does, and I can’t believe true Evangelicals would take that position.  When I hear people like Franklin Graham supporting a man who is an adultery, sexual pervert, pathological liar, sexual abuser, see no reason to ask for forgiveness because he has done nothing wrong etc. etc. and sees him as a role model for our children, I wonder how much money Russia and its allies have contributed to Franklin’s group.  Hearing about the infiltration of the NRA, a group I used to wonder how they became so powerful and with so much money so quickly, it certainly makes one think that others must have followed suit.

Editors Note:

That ends our trying to put out what we received from several people.  We combined two or three comments into one and did our best to accurately give to you what was given to us.  When someone like Donald Trump is doing his best to undermine and destroy all of us so we become too exhausted to fight back and he can just move along swiftly with his program with diminishing push back, one good way of fighting back is to openly and publicly vent to let all of that ugly out of our systems.

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

 

A Member of Bettina Network’s Lifestyle Community Writes…..

Friday, January 19th, 2018

So much and so awful.  Your last blog was brilliant.  I know how you prefer to just do and have those acts ignored so you maintain your privacy, but I can’t help but say – kudos.  That breaking down and paralleling as to why Trump is so anti-immigrant was a master stroke.

Moving on – some things need to be added.  Trump has moved casinos out of their past category into one which he has been trying to parallel.  Top hotels and luxury condominiums and co-ops with that mafia tinge – slightly legal, slightly illegal.  Imagine the Waldorf Astoria as a Trump casino.  There you have the image towards which, I think, Trump has been striving to attain for his Oligarch friends. Trump Towers seem to be the same kind of complex his grandfather, newly immigrated to these United States, developed.  A hotel – luxury condo – gambling casino – grandfather’s rumored brothel model  within its apartments and probably other variations included, like the kind of place being used for and known as safe for money laundering.  Why safe?  It belongs to the president of the United States of America.

It has taken time for the regular press to publicize the “Drumpf Model” but it is beginning to take over the reporting and the news.  With that so public and with Trump still in tight with his base, other Oligarch’s can now safely include the United States in their plans for expansion.

Rumors have circulated for some time now that Trump is mafia connected.  We have all wondered why the NRA was so powerful given its base in these United States was not such powerful, moneyed people – well now we know as the Russian mafia connection is being rolled out and the people we least like – i.e. the Sheriff in Arizona and others all running for election or re-election – are pictured as a part of the U.S.  NRA visiting Russia and the money connections.  We have been played and that is a continuing theme.  Trump is running a reality show and we are tuned in almost 24/7.

Problem with that reality show – most Americans are law abiding, know and can see character flaws and turn away from those who would break the laws of this country, even though we may have been taken in by them for a moment.  We just can’t believe that our country would have been taken over by Russian mafia, but there it is rolling out for all to see.

May God bless you always!  Keep writing and keep putting out in this blog the writings of other members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community.  You give us cover and for that I am much appreciative.  Hopefully, the day will come soon when our fear abates and we won’t need the cover – we will come out into the open to say and do what good people all over this world say and do!

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

 

Another Bettina Lifestyle Community members’ comments!

Thursday, December 28th, 2017

I just read the article about spending Christmas with a Christian family.  It was great!  My experience in a Bettina Home/Hedge School was different, but still great!

I wanted to spend Christmas with another culture – another group – I wanted to know what it was like spending Christmas in the “ghetto”.  Although today I use that word because the rest of you need that descriptor.

I spent Christmas in a neighborhood in D. C. I would have been afraid to wander into alone.  Not because there was any real trouble, but because my conditioning made me really scared to wander into a mostly black neighborhood.  My thoughts were I would have been taking my life into my hands and better to stay out than to be sorry.  That sounds bad, but I know those thoughts are shared by many of – at least my friends.

It was great.

I hope you forgive any racism you find in this article.  Attribute it to my upbringing and current friends.

When I arrived at the home it was with fear and I wondered as I rang the bell if I was sane or had lost my marbles trying this.

A woman opened the door.  She was expecting me, but maybe not someone so white.  My skin is very white – as is my hair.  I didn’t feel white until I walked into their living room, which was full of people.  As I looked around they were all colors.  None as white as my Scandinavian self, but they were not who I expected.  Somehow, I expected a black family to be black – dark of skin.  These folks varied from very dark to light tan.  There was a lovely Christmas tree and the house smelled of food cooking.  I was just in time for dinner.

The food for dinner was Italian.  Why? Because it was prepared by a couple of the light tan people in the room.  I realized in another context I would have seen them as white, but in this living room I saw them as not white, but light skinned blacks.  They were Italian.  One was an in-law, the other a cousin.  I was too shy at that point to ask more questions.

Dinner was great! There was much laughter, many jokes told at someone else’s expense and I was on the hot seat to talk about why I wanted this “voyeur” experience.  At that moment, all my reasons evaporated and I felt really weird.  After a very feeble attempt at an answer that didn’t sound either racist or ridiculous someone changed the topic and we went back to having a great time.

The table was blessed with an incredibly beautiful poem which I wanted to take home.  Instead I was given a book which contained the poem.

We opened presents, talked half the night and went to bed.

This was not the home of a wealthy person – or even someone who could be called “middle class”.  These folks were struggling financially just to survive from one day to the next.  I slept on the sofa in a small room off the living room.  It was not private, but I knew that before I arrived and privacy in the middle America sense seemed out of place here.  People crossed boundaries I was accustomed to – constantly.

Breakfast the next morning was more of the same.  We had a breakfast I loved, but would never have made.  Eggs, bacon, unbelievable biscuits, and grits! I didn’t want to leave the table.  My breakfast is normally fresh fruit, yogurt and an organic piece of bread.  Since I brought the coffee I got to make it and it was the center of attention and many jokes.  Organic, French roast coffee was great, but not the coffee and chicory the family normally had for breakfast and sometimes all during the day.

Christmas Day was unbelievable! People came and went all day long bringing gifts, food, talk and although I expected to be ‘odd man on the side’, I was just one of the family.  I was clearly expected to be a “host” taking care of people as they arrived, making sure everyone was comfortable, all the things one does when company arrives.  I loved every minute.

All colors of people came and went and families that showed up together were also all colors.  As the day wound down I realized maybe racism was a white thing because the whites and many shades of blacks who shared this Christmas were  just a normal part of life with this family. I remember hearing and making comments with friends that maybe blacks would be uncomfortable in one or another situation with whites.  What I saw was blacks having whites in their families and nobody being uncomfortable about any of it.  I was uncomfortable when I arrived being what I thought was the only white person in the room until I saw the whites in the family and those arriving with other so called “black” families of which they were a part.

We went for a walk in the afternoon, all around the neighborhood and I wondered as we walked and talked what it was that struck fear into my heart and kept me from walking alone through this neighborhood!  As we passed people coming and going from their homes there was always a few words exchanged, if not an entire conversation.  No one passed us during our walk who we didn’t acknowledge with a smile or even a bit of conversation.  To say we were a loud group taking this walk would be an understatement, but we didn’t even notice we were caught up in the back and forth with each other.

The day after Christmas they had a surprise for me.  Someone had gotten a keyboard for Christmas which was standing next to the tree.  A couple musicians arrived with their instruments and we had an incredible session of singing for about an hour, after which the musicians had to leave and I was exhausted.  They were accustomed to having lots of people around all the time.  I was accustomed to having people around who called, made an appointment or a date to get together and mostly other times I was alone.

What struck me with this family – blacks are known to be very religious so I expected to spend all day on Christmas in Church.  We had prayer before eating, but that was it.  We didn’t go to Church. Our Christmas was spent together with family, friends and those who came along with family and friends.  Some were complete strangers who came with a friend or family member and all were instantly incorporated into this family as though they had known each other for years.

At the end of my time in this home I realize I’ve made new friends and took home a new attitude.  And, I spent an unusual and really fantastic Christmas.

Back home, my friends who seemed close and a part of my extended family I realized were really not close to me at all and I didn’t have an extended family.  I have a few people I can call on occasion but who I really can’t just show up to visit with on holidays. or any other time.  If I am not invited I stay away.  It would be awkward for everyone if I just invited myself to a holiday or any time or celebration.  Mostly, I spend those alone because my family is in another state and I don’t make the effort to travel there for holidays.  This Christmas has changed all of that and I am looking at changing my life.  I thought it was great.  At this moment I think it is cold and isolated and I don’t know how that happened or why I made the choices that produced that kind of lifestyle.  I do now have friends in another part of the city which looks very warm and friendly to me and I will probably visit again – if not the family with whom I stayed  I will certainly walk around the neighborhood and shop there from time to time, maybe my shell and shelter will change.  My beautiful bedroom with king sized bed is not nearly as comfortable as that sofa on which I spent Christmas.

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

 

New to Bettina Network’s Lifestyle Community!

Wednesday, December 27th, 2017

Hello Everybody,

I am brand new to this Community and so far, I love it.

So far, I have not taken advantage of much, but I thought I would write a blog,  especially since I am just now beginning to understand what Bettina Network Hedge Schools and being a part of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community means.  I wasn’t sure when I first discovered all of you, but having stayed at a Hedge School, the concept and its execution are really fantastic.

First, I have to tell you that I am Jewish.

Why is that important for you to know?

Because I have always wanted to know what it was like being a part of a “Christian” Christmas and I think that is true of many of us.  I was not looking to convert or anything else, just to satisfy my curiosity.

From the time I was a very small child,  the trees, the toys in the decorated stores and all the rest made me wish to be a part of that – and so this year I took the plunge.  As a start, I called Bettina Network to see what they offered – fully expecting them to hang-up on my request, but instead we made reservations.  I’ve had three days of magic and I am leaving for home this morning with all of my questions answered and a new way of looking at life understanding others, but especially understanding how rich and full a word like “diversity” means and what it has to offer all of us.  I don’t know how this sounds to many of you, but it is where I am at the moment and the reason for my writing this blog.

When I arrived at my Bettina Network Hedge School, I slept in a room with my own Christmas tree;  celebrated around the tree in the family’s living room;  went to Church with them on Christmas morning and to dinner as a part of the family on Christmas afternoon and into the late evening.

One of their traditions was to open one present around the tree on Christmas Eve before going to “midnight mass”.  Not really midnight because it was more like 9:30pm.  There was indeed one present for everyone around that tree.  We had bubbly apple cider or champagne – your choice.  I thought I would be the observer on the sidelines for this celebration and I was prepared to play that role because this was after all, not about my conversion nor inclusion, but to satisfy my curiosity.  Imagine my surprise when my name was called and there was my present.  What I especially liked, nothing was expensive – everything was made by someone in the family and mine was a mixture of real food as a lotion for my hands.  I loved it.

We went to midnight mass and that was beautiful.  I have heard and sung Christmas Carols over past years, but this was the first time I sang them in the context for which they were composed.

By the time we reached breakfast on the day after Christmas I faced the shock of separation I was so fully incorporated into this family and its Christmas celebration.

On Christmas morning – all the presents were opened.  I didn’t get one because none of the adults exchanged gifts, the presents and opening of the presents was for those under 20 years old.  I guess the older teenagers were included to help them gradually move from child to adult.

Christmas dinner was fantastic.  Nothing really different, just lots of food with a beautifully decorated table.  The big attraction was the community the dinner produced.  It included a couple people who were homeless and had been picked up for the celebration.  I don’t know how the family knew them or where they came from, but here we were and you couldn’t tell the difference between us.  That huge economic gap didn’t show. That for me was the most amazing part of this Christmas celebration.  Once in bed for the night, for reasons I don’t quite understand my thoughts went back to the homeless and I cried myself to sleep.

Having to go home has put me into grief.  Not because I wanted to stay.  Nor because I thought their life and religion  and holiday celebration were better than mine, but because I realized how much we have all lost in the way we separate ourselves from one another on all levels.  We have taken away from this world what is best about it and we only seem to be able to move further and further away from one another defining ourselves in such a way that we have to move away to maintain ourselves as ‘different from’, ‘better than’ and all those other descriptors that mean so much to this world and those of us who live in it.

I hope you’ve all had a wonderful Christmas.  I certainly did and I am very grateful to Bettina Network Hedge Schools for being there so I could have the experience of a lifetime.  I am delighted to be a member of your lifestyle community and look forward to my next foray into what you offer.  No resorts – No running around to all the events I could afford – No pressing my nose against the glass wondering what its like on the other side – just a real experience with real people and I will never forget it.

Thanks folks!  And may you all have a wonderful holiday, whatever it is you celebrate!

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

 

 

Rummagings About Morality

Tuesday, December 5th, 2017

Isn’t it amazing what it takes for the experiences of your life to come together.

What is it you have wanted more than anything else in life?

For me – since I was little – it was wisdom and understanding.

Funny thing about that – it is exactly what I have received from life.  Not money – success – fame – all of that started to break in at different points along the way, but just as quickly as that breaking in started, all of those things – money, success, fame – were killed.  How and by who I will probably never know.  But wherever there were lessons to be learned I was there and the world seemed to open up to give me its ultimate secrets.  The biggest and most guarded secret is the one which showed me if the world defined money, success, fame had broken in, the wisdom and understanding would have stopped and that which had already broken in would be gone in a very short period of time.

Things that seemed obvious to me were a blank to many of my friends.  If that is not true, they were magnificent in hiding what they saw and understood. And what I understood was what one fears and that which keeps one from stepping out on faith is really who you are.  The fear is of losing those things the world has provided and putting you in a position of want – that seems to be our greatest fear.

So many things come to us for learning and almost all of them we ignore as we look and walk in the opposite direction.  We live on assumptions.  The assumptions we have put into our minds and hearts because that is what we want to believe about life and that is what we want to believe about those around us and that is what we want to believe about the world in which we live.

One grand truth, being presented on a world-wide stage these days is the moral structure needed for the world to maintain its racism, sexism and all the rest.  That moral structure is deep within our souls today and we live by that structure without ever thinking about what that has done to us spiritually.  The sacrifices we have made as human beings over the generations to satisfy our most base needs are horrifying when looked at on a world-wide scale.

How many lies do you have to tell yourself to believe and act and create your world around the incredible belief that you and those like you are “better than” everyone else.  What lies have Alabamians had to tell themselves to support and vote for Roy Moore.  We are living out a morality play each day and it is stark.  There is nothing romanticizing what is being played out on the U. S. Government’s stage.  It is and has drowned out and is quickly removing every good thing we have ever been about – and that is no exaggeration.  How did the ovens in Germany come about?  They were created by those who were born, raised, lived and died in a society which was full of normal human beings trying to survive but gradually taking that need to survive and that fear of failure to incredible heights.  They were not evil people, they were just like us.  They became evil as they became more and more entrenched in the opportunities to achieve untold wealth, great fame, etc. etc.

As human beings we seem to have been born with the need to group together with like minded, like looking, like acting human beings.  We have had our tribes which insured our continued existence.  There is nothing wrong with tribalism,  until the day comes when that tribalism slides into “my tribe is better than your tribe and your tribe must serve my tribe so my tribe can have more of what it wants in this life at the expense of your life and times.”

What do these rummaging have to do with today?  It brings to mind and heart all of the huge sacrifices we have made to create a country in which some are better than others; to have created that country on the backs of slaves who were demeaned and considered less than human; to have used the marriage laws to enslave others; and to have used women in various states to satisfy the most prurient needs of humans – which once satisfied become progressively more enslaving and violent and demeaning.

What price have we paid for that to have happened?  We live in and have created a society in which we have split the human race into sub-races, all described with some inhuman traits and all claimed as less than. The price for that has been our honor – our integrity – our beauty – our grace – our loveliness – our ability to love one another “as I have loved you.”

These times with Donald Trump have been times which have surfaced and brought front and center the sacrifices these United States have made to maintain as “better than”.  We have built what we call a “great country.”  We have built a country we consider better than all others and have never seen the sins we have put into that country’s structure.  We have built a country on a huge flaw and that flaw is today creating a huge earthquake.  What remains when the shaking and spewing up of stuff from the center of the earth stops is anybody’s guess.  We have built a country by condemning Jesus to death and then calling for a bowl of soap and water and a towel with which to wash our hands of the carnage that followed.  We have build a country and then divorced ourselves from its history.  We have built a country and taken no responsibility for the price we demanded others pay for its creation, its wealth,  and its continuation in the same vein which caused many generations to take on a system of moral values which they practice and deny at the same time thinking that others can’t see the lie!

Slavery – the Trail of Tears – the opening our doors to immigrants from all countries and then labelling them as “less than” by those deemed on top of the heap –  all have prices to pay and today we are paying those prices.

Our value system was shown as bereft when we killed African slaves who ran away, when we lynched Africans who dared to vote.  It didn’t matter whether they were 100% or 5% African, they were not on the same high level as others who were redesigned as – not human and a part of the human race – but “White” and better than those who were not white.  The north ignored the lynchings and claimed the moral high ground.  They had psychic ways to deal with such people.  It was a slow painful death they put out.  The south engaged in incredible violence and so Billie Holiday sang “Strange Fruit” and everyone knew what that meant the lynchings were so wide spread.

For years the “flowers of the South”, the “Southern Ladies”, had a stereotype and pictures which showed them as “beautifully” adorned and having their place on top of the pedestal, that very high mythical column.  They were blinded by the compliments, the supposed lifting them up above ordinary humans, the opening the doors for them by others so their gloved hands didn’t have to touch that which many mortals touched before them.  And so much more.  We bought our own horribleness because it flattered our egos and built up our vanity.  The truth of the degradation, demeaning, violence against were all denied by even – or should I say especially by – the women against whom it was thrown.

Today that has been exposed and is continuing to be exposed on all of its levels.  It has been like peeling the onion.  We are almost down to the core so the fighting and brutalizing has become blinding in its attempt to maintain what has been and move it even further by making it function in spite of the fact that the cover has been removed and we can see all of this in its stark truth.  We have become that corrupt?

Alabama is symbolic of these United States and its historic degradation of those in power.  Drunk with its own strength against others “not like them” it is almost as if retribution is at its door step.

We thought the bottom was reached with the carnage on the Petus Bridge, but that was just a way station on the way to greater evil.

To have seen yourself involved in that kind of sin and to move on to ever greater sin and to then claim god on your side, behind what you do, pushing you to ever larger acts of evil – it is mind-blowing how anyone can see you and not recoil from the evil coming from your very pores.

Today, it is not about African Americans on the Petus bridge – it is about the right of males to brutalize, sexually abuse, tear down, misuse and lots of other adjectives – women.  What will it be about tomorrow.  The same souls are calling the future.

Women in corporations were brought in to serve the men and that happened because the women had been trained to acquiesce and to demean themselves.   It becomes understandable how that could have happened when you own a small corporation where you do a lot of the work and see how you can get behind because you become overwhelmed with only 24 hours of the day.  And you then see how easy it would be to bring in people who have been labeled “less than”, “not as bright as”, not meant for the higher things in life – especially the exercise of power,”  to have them do all of the grunt work and most of the real work while you prance around like a terminally ill peacock taking credit, money, power, success.

The campaign of Roy Moore is a Calling.  It is Roy Moore set up as the bait to call folks to maintain a society which allows women to be used as sex objects and then discarded.  He is bait to call folks to lie, cheat, steal, and yes – murder – because women have been murdered in the name of preserving and passing down to our children a society which has institutionalized and wants to continue in the way it has been going for hundreds of years.  He is bait to have some folks turn away and try to set up the same structure, but less transparent.  For these United States to be racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic and all the rest means these United States has transgressed in gross ways against its citizens and against others around the world needed to maintain a “better than” society where the hard and dirty work is done by those scraping and scratching 24/7 just to put food on the table and a roof over their heads.  It is a society with trap doors for those who go too far and are not among the group designated as “better than”.  Why else would a man become Secretary of the Treasury who has had tens of thousands of people thrown out of their homes onto the street and who lives in a mansion which could house many more than just himself and his wife?  Why else would we have laws to prevent any other than those selected by that society to succeed with enormous road blocks to trip, fell and kill those who are able to get around those road blocks?  but we have standards which are necessary to continue the denial – we have those few to disprove the rule and maintain them vigorously.  Even the KKK had to have a few blacks to maintain their superiority and proclaim their high morality because they accepted those few – the others were not worthy, not human, not equal to.

Amazingly, my life has escaped the anger that should come from living in such a place, but it has.  Why?  Because that anger is generated in those who share the moral values of those doing the bigotry.  To see how far we have gone off the road is to understand the story of Adam and Eve on a level most ignore and just quote the Bible as a very literal book.  To demand the you read and understand the Christian and Jewish Scriptures literally is to totally miss what it is saying.  The story of Adam and Eve is the story of what could have been.  Where we started from and how far into sin, degradation and evil we have fallen.  Adam and Eve turned their naked bodies into horrible sinfulness and ugliness they had to hide.  Evil crept into their lives, which they cultivated and still today cultivate.

Many of us hoped and thought the horribleness in Alabama would give way to something more beautiful.    After witnessing that period of American history in Alabama and in other places around these United States – that example should have brought many to their knees asking forgiveness.  Instead it seems to have generated a hard hearted response – a determination to continue on the path of violence towards women as not only justified but able to give one entry into the hallowed halls of government.

So much more could be said – however – the one relevant thing is “How long, O Lord, how long!”

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

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Trump – Peter Thiel – Russia – anymore?

Wednesday, November 22nd, 2017

I read all of your articles.

My response to your latest and all of the others follows:

The largest and I think earliest  investor in Facebook was Peter Thiel. – the Facebook which is in the news for being very much involved with the Russian interference in this last presidential election.  The same Facebook which had those FAKE NEWS articles all over and you know the story.

One of a very small number of people who made large contributions to the Trump campaign – and early on – was Peter Thiel.

The person who organized and used his influence, friendship and business connections to put on that meeting of top IT people in this country right after Trump was inaugurated which showcased Trump – all of the Google, Facebook, etc. top executives together around Trump’s table and also showcased Trump’s children as professionals involved with his governance – was Peter Thiel.

What are Peter Thiel’s Russian connections?

Isn’t Peter Thiel the person most responsible for keeping Blacks and Women, who were working hard to bring about their new ideas, out of the business community as they were scooped – and not accidentally scooped, but had their ideas brazenly stolen –  by other white males with Northern European ancestry who turn up with the ideas, business plans and much more of those same Blacks and Women with the money to bring them to fruition and with a great deal of that money put in place by Peter Thiel and lets not ignore or leave out his friends?

Is there a common thread here?

Especially since the racist and sexist structures of these newly stolen businesses would put this last generation of business entrepreneurs to shame in the way they have totally excluded minorities and women – as customers of these new businesses as well as owners, etc.  except, well, the one or two included to disprove the rule are always included.  This next generation of business entrepreneurs makes the hearts of the KKK, the white supremacists, the Neo-Nazi’s and others palpitate with excitement as they see this helping to make real their hateful world view.

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

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Response to “Edmund Petus Bridge”

Sunday, November 19th, 2017

You’ve done it again.  I did not make the connection between what is happening today in Alabama with what happened all those years ago in Alabama against African Americans.  This is sick!

I saw the people at the press conference of evangelicals raving and screaming in favor of Roy Moore.  What struck me during that time was how low Roy Moore brought his wife by having her out front defending him against his sexual abuse against other women.  It was incredible psychic sexual abuse against his own wife.  She must know the truth of his penchant for teenage girls – too many others know it for her to be in ignorance.  How that must hurt to be the one on that stage.

It also struck me as to how scared the men were who were talking – raving actually – about god and Roy Moore.  I wondered if they were so fearful because they have to put the women down as brutally as possible who are telling their stories about Roy Moore’s sexual abuse because women will be out there telling their stories about the men raving on that stage.

I also noticed color doesn’t make a bit of difference – the men were white, black, brown.  All united trying to keep their claimed ‘superiority’, which would be taken away from them if they don’t destroy the women speaking out.  But the curtains have been raised and we can all see what this is about and guess what is still hidden.

Thanks for this article.  It was quite eye opening.  Keep telling these truths – we are listening.  How about more comments from “Bettina Network’s Oracle”?  The last one was right on and you folks were the first to make the connection between Trump – the mafia and what is looking like treason by the president of these United States.  That is all just now being unveiled for the rest of us to see.  Would like to know where we are going next.

Thanks,

“A very proud member of Bettina Network’s Lifestyle Community”

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

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Back to the Edmund Petus Bridge

Saturday, November 18th, 2017

by Marceline Donaldson

Something is oddly familiar in this “stand-off: now going on amongst our government officials, politicians, hopefuls and a very oppressed group which Alabama and others are trying desperately to contain and keep in their oppressed state.  Even the current Governor of Alabama has come public and done a modernized version of Governor George Wallace’s stand to keep African Americans from voting and therefore from their civil rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution.

When I heard Governor Kay Ivey on television taking her incredibly historical stance, I could not see her face for the imposition of George Wallace’s face over her face and figure on television.

Nothing hurts more than one of your own, standing up in the most self-righteous and arrogant way, selling you into slavery and she did that beautifully.  She did not lose her very southern lady-like composure in the process of spouting and spewing evil.  Clearly, the Republican Party has maintained its position as “Keepers of the Bigotry” which has long characterized Alabama.  Have you thought about or read the story of what happened on the Edmund Petus Bridge?  Do you see the parallels?  We’ve had the slaughter of the women.  It should now be time for the healing oil and who will do the pouring of that oil to heal our sins?

True – other states and areas do the same, but somehow the theatrics in Alabama and its connecting its maintenance of bigotry to a religion with its own theology is unique.  We know well this heretical religion.  The one which has been developing since slavery and which was used to justify and maintain slavery.  We have lived with it in many places across these United States and still are living with its remnants. You know the religion.  The one where you went into one of its churches and found you could only sit in the back pews, if you were African American – or you could only sit in the balcony – or you were taken out of the church by the ushers if you were African American because you were not allowed into those particular churches.

They still exist today and you can tell them almost upon entering into their ‘holy’ places.  You look on their altar and you see those officiating are almost uniformly white.  Maybe a child of color or two, but the adults of color are missing.  You hear their sermons and they lack that something you hear in other churches.  Their ‘leaders’ are ‘leading’ to gain a foot up in their jobs or chosen vocations.  They are doing everything they can to help those like them maintain their facade of being ‘better than’.  Those more enlightened heretical churches are doing some of the most foolish things you can imagine, but as you watch, they call those things their ‘holy rituals.’  And it becomes clear after a short time that they are keeping the bigotry and maintaining the image of superiority of the white males of Northern European ancestry – those in their midst and the others spread around the globe. You have to leave that space because what you also see and experience is their meanness when pushed to see and remove the bigotry and heresy they practice.  It is time, however, for them and us to do just that!

The blanket has been ripped off.  The psychic violence and physical and emotional destructive confrontation on the Edmund Petus Bridge has happened as the current Governor has let the rest of us see and hear her ‘religious’ beliefs, which are indicative of the many in Alabama who she represents – male, female of all stripes and colors.  She has made a very clear statement that she prefers her political party with all of its shame and sin to anything else because she knows they will continue in the ways of the vile past and they will continue holding her and others like her up in their belief that they are ‘better than’ everyone in the world not like them.  Her very words, however, show clearly that she is not free and equal, she is the governor, but she clearly neither respects her gender nor others around her who are neither white nor of Northern European ancestry.

Governor Ivey today – as did Governor Wallace in yesteryear – has given the green light to the worst kind of evil.  She has called her state to shame themselves.  She has declared her bigotry and the fact that she is conscious of her bigotry and will continue to practice it because that is what she sees her position as governor calling her to do.   She has called her state to let the world know that the citizens of Alabama prefer their bigotry and will maintain it defending themselves against positive change even while exposing their children to the sin of pedophilia, psychic and physical sexual abuse, lying, cheating,  which she has depicted as just fine and good and righteous choices if made defending their ‘white is better than’ status and their declared right to dishonor – disrespect – and so much more – those with whom they share this earth if those people are neither ‘white’ nor ‘male with Northern European ancestry’.  What lessons those children are learning from their parents.

We are back on the Edmund Petus Bridge.   Because of the lessons this current generation learned, while children watching their parents as they cheered for George Wallace and his friends  on the bridge using it as their bully pulpit.   They watched as some of their adult neighbors brutalized, beat and tried to slaughter African Americans and those supporting them on that Edmund Petus Bridge.

The children were present and silently watching that entire drama and so today we have that generation, all grown up, doing their best to follow in the footsteps of their parents, their friends, their government figures, their politicians.  They are going where this evil is leading and, in the end, they will pay the price.

Many of those children have adopted the religion of their parents – who themselves adopted and adapted the religion of the slaveholders and slave owners before them.  They have seen their parents and grandparents erect memorials to those who did their best to keep human beings enslaved because they wanted ‘free’ labor and wanted that ‘better than’, ‘white is superior’, white supremacy identity.  They saw the KKK in their white sheets and pointy caps circling those lit crosses.  They saw African Americans turned away at their city halls in brutal ways when they tried to vote; these children knew the U. S. Constitution was being violated in the process; and they were present in the home where their mothers and aunts and female cousins were treated as second class citizens; they were present in the rest of society to see those same relatives, all dressed up and play acting to avoid their reality as they were treated as the household servants.  They understood who they were and the positions they would take before they reached voting age and they are now taking those positions.

When you sow the wind – you reap the whirlwind.

Alabama is and has been reaping the beginnings of that whirlwind when you look closely and you see it is one of the poorest states in the Union; when you see jobs scarce; when you see children going without; when you see the low level of education throughout the state; when you see the priorities of the politicians and government officials who are absorbed in maintaining their ‘better than’ status at a very high cost to everyone in the state; when you see the corruption overlooked because the ‘official’ is guarding your ‘better than’ identity; when you see all that has been wrought against Alabamians through their keeping their slaveowners religion above all else and crafting a political party which does the actual work the theology of that religion leads them to do.

It is one of the great tragedies of these United States.  AND – not to be overlooked is the fact that our current president – Donald J. Trump – is very popular in this state which condones and gives him positive feedback on all of his evil deeds.  When you see this state raising up politicians who follow his footsteps as he has followed in the footsteps of Roy Cohn, Joseph McCarthy, Adolph Hitler, Stalin and today Vladimir Putin, as well as the leaders of the mafia organizations around the world.

Sieg Heil Kay Ivey!  There were also Jews who sold out other Jews in Nazi Germany and even today there are African Americans selling out other African Americans for what they think will raise them up to the status of ‘almost, but not quite equal to’ – ‘at least not like them’ – ‘different from those others’ – etc.

“Man’s inhumanity to man” – needs a political correctness overlay “We all die and move on out of this earthly sphere – yet we act as though some are better than and their human bodies will not rot.  The color of their skin and the kind of genitals they have will preserve them”.  Folly of follies are these humans, especially when they try to be ‘better than’. – At that point, the evil starts pouring out of them and their actions conform and are uniformly sinful no matter their money, status, history, education…….

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

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Another Response to Trump

Thursday, November 2nd, 2017

Wow!  I was glad to see the article by “A Paranoid Reader”.  You can call the reader paranoid, but when I heard about the truck killing all of those people in New York, my first thought is that it was Trump behind that tragedy.

Call it what you may, but I believe that truck incident was done by Trump – his followers – or others in the Trump camp and that thought had popped into my head before I read you article by “A Paranoid Reader” and I am not prone to conspiracy theories.  It certainly distracted from some serious stuff.

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

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From a Paranoid Reader

Thursday, November 2nd, 2017

Thank you for the article on “The Personification of Evil”.  It was powerful and awesome – especially because of the references you included both on Melania Trump and Joseph McCarthy.  I hadn’t thought about McCarthyism as the genesis of this Trump era, but it makes a lot of sense and clears up much for me.  I knew about Roy Cohn, but this is like weaving – gradually you come up with a beautiful product.

Maybe because I was reading that article when I also noticed news about the truck killing all of those people in New York City that my paranoia started coming out of its closet, but what a distraction away from the Mueller convictions.  It gave Trump a bit of a distraction that he may have hoped would continue and wipe the Mueller headlines out of the media reporting.

My first thought  was – Trump’s direct attempts at distractions didn’t do the job so he got help and his ‘help’ was far more successful.  The New York tragedy certainly wiped Trump off the front pages for a brief time.  Instead of wiping out an immigration program that has had one problem in over 1 million immigrants coming into this country through that program, maybe we need to start a program which sends Trump followers to another country where they can be retrained with exams to pass before they are allowed back into these United States.  Move the prisoners someplace else and take over Rikers Island for that purpose?

Trump set the pattern as he has constantly provided distractions from things happening around his problems so reporters and your average citizen would be distracted – and he has been very good at doing that – which is probably what started my thinking that maybe he was behind this tragedy.  You can’t feel empathy for people if you caused the problem with intent to destroy.

There had to be something very strong to take attention away from the indictments and the Papadopoulos pleading guilty – the truck killings certainly provided that distraction.

Like I said – I am probably very paranoid from all of this Trump business.  I never would have begun to have such thoughts before Trump’s appearance as a presidential candidate and then president.  His ‘reign’ has caused me to think differently about what I read and how I put things together.

Before Trump became president and before his campaign showed itself to be so ugly this is not something I would have thought about nor connections I would have made.

You probably won’t publish this, but I needed to get it said and out of me because it really seems like a serious possibility.

It might not come up to the level of Trump’s “birtherism”, but it is a start.  Maybe I can become a celebrity through such conjectures.

Have we all been made a bit “off” by this president?

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

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The Personification of Evil

Tuesday, October 31st, 2017

BY: Marceline Donaldson

I heard a sermon a few weeks ago preached by a person who could be called a politician.   He tried to recast these current political events as purely political and not evil.  I should have been amazed, but I simply wondered why I had chosen that church on that particular day to hear such a message. It was christianity being preached with a small “c”.  The kind most of us practice, which allows us to keep silent when we need to speak the truth. to no longer even know what is truth and to obfuscate when we need to speak and act out of the clarity of our convictions.   To go along to get along because our sense of moral outrage and correctness has been numbed by our need for that which will not satisfy who we really are……

My biggest disappointments in life have been those times when a clear lack of a clear and sure moral compass, when it was most needed, has been displayed by the society in which I live; those times when I have been taken back to a parallel time – like now – to the times of McCarthyism – which shows we have learned negative lessons from history.   We interpret what we see “through a glass darkly”and think we are seeing the new heaven.  We seem to need to be “important”; to be “accepted”; to not be pushed out of our position in life that we have achieved by our “striving” and for which we have paid a heavy price.  We will sacrifice the very ground on which we stand for those goals.

Remember Joseph McCarthy – remember the Rosenberg’s – remember all of the people whose lives were sacrificed at the same altar that those historical times are now bringing back to us via those who inherited the tools of evil that existed then and are using them today.

I have not been surrounded, most of my life by those society calls  murderers, thieves, rapists, liars.  I have been surrounded by “strivers”.  And now, with Donald Trump as president, it is clear this country is full of  such “strivers”.  How few have come out to speak truth.  How even fewer have called out the evil being constantly pumped into this society.  How many could withstand the onslaught that comes from being cut loose from your moorings because you took that one brave moment and spoke truth, -yet some still do.  Why would speaking truth cut you off and cause a huge upheaval in your life? Why would it not bring you the status of hero?  What it does bring to those with that strong moral compass is very indicative of the moral health of the society in which we live.

When and if you do take a stand in this current society, those who connect to you, who take some of their identity from being your friend, who see you as a part of their group and therefore as a part of them become threatened by you and can only recoup by trying to sink you to show how unlike you they are and how unchanged they are and how they are still willing to lie, cheat, steal, oppress in the name of whoever is in power – and that can even includes members of your family.

Now – today – you have the chance to reform.  It is time to come out and condemn bullying – lying – cheating – stealing – oppressing others for your own advantage – in other words, you have a chance today to speak the truth about these United States and about the world in which we live.  If you don’t, that world will be changed and not for the better.

We elected a man as president of these United States who is a bully.  A man who lies, cheats, steals, and who will use whatever he can to be the most powerful person in the world.  And when I say “we” – Russia may have manipulated for him to gain more votes and put their strength behind helping him become president of these United States, but millions of plain, ordinary Americans voted for him.  And why?  Because he promised he would single you out and make you and your kind “better than”?  That he would maintain and increase the racism, sexism, homophobia, and all the rest that has existed in these United States for generations? And in return you would turn a blind eye to his robbing you blind because you need that “better than” status more than you need a fair and equitable country in which to live?  Because you need to know that the brown-skinned person across the street is less than you?  Because you can brag about living in a country which excludes and diminishes those whose religion is different from yours? And on and on and on because that is the only thing Trump has promised you and the only thing he has delivered to you and will continue to deliver to you as long as he is president.  He has promised to deliver evil!  He has promised to accept you and your contribution to his administration if you engage in evil for his sake!  He has made all kinds of promises which all come down to increasing the wealth of the wealthy; increasing the power of the powerful; …………………..(.add your own comments to finish this sentence.)

I was totally appalled at the progress of a part of his entourage.  There was the ‘First Lady’, Melania, at a school talking to young impressionable children about “bullying”.  And what were they doing?  Looking in their laps at pictures of this First Lady – nude and half nude – https://www.bettina-network.com/blog/archives/2572  – prancing around airplanes in practically nothing – lounging on beds in pictures that some sex magazines would not print without blurred spots?  I am sure you know the scenario.  If you don’t, take a look at the pictures in the above link which were out in public view long before Trump ran for president and which circulated the country during his campaign.  And still you voted to bring this family into the White House as role models for your children and mine.

She went into the schools talking about bullying.  With what credibility?  Was she bringing the issue up before our children so they would understand and avoid such tactics or was she teaching them hypocrisy and how to do one thing – live one kind of life – and come out in the light of day talking another.  A woman who lives daily with a bully and has supported him with her words and actions.  This is who you wanted talking to your children about the evils of “bullying”?  One who used a bully to move herself up to billionaire status and has arrived as First Lady of these United States by marrying and tolerating and promoting a bully while doing whatever she needs to do to keep herself sane?  This is your role model who you parade through your schools for your children to see and listen to while they ogle her half-nude pictures?

How the mighty have fallen.

Who was Donald Trump’s mentor – besides his father who clearly was a bigot and was arrested at a KKK demonstration – try reading this New York Times article – https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/us/politics/donald-trump-roy-cohn.html

Mentored by Roy Cohn – a notorious and feared New York attorney who was Joseph McCarthy’s right hand man.  Who helped to bring much pain and suffering to many in these United States who the McCarthy hearings accused of being “Communist”.- Mr. Trump has now taken one of his mentors tactics and has shown he has no loyalties nor anything approaching a substantial set of foundational ethics by now moving completely to the other side with those same “Communists” apparently having been used to get him elected president of these United States.

It is not accidental that Gorka brought up the Rosenberg’s in his attempt to destroy Hillary Clinton.  Destroying the Rosenberg’s and sending them to the electric chair was a part of the tactic that promoted Cohn and his crowd and is the inheritance of Trump and his crowd.  If at once you succeed you don’t have to try again you only have to push ahead and move the world into the image that most lets you live like Vladimir Putin, only without the downside Putin now faces.  And now comes a reliving of that time, only this time with Trump as saint paul, Cohn in the jesus seat and Gorka and his crowd working to bring in a 2017 form of McCarthyism to project and increase their money and power and the American people allowing all of it to happen as long as their jobs, assets, status as “better than” are safe.

It is time to wake up America and live out your claimed beliefs.  Live out your Constitution.  Put the quality of life – the equality of all – ability to provide for everyone without having a billionaire crowd growing at the expense of the homeless and others on the margins about to become homeless.

All of the moneys being spent on the foolishness we are now seeing acted out in front of us by White Male Northern European ancestry Americans needs to stop.  Oops, not quite.  We do have some hangers-on from other groups to disprove that rule – let’s not forget the African American Ben Carson, and others like him. Strivers all!

It is time for the windows and doors of this country to be thrown open and the fresh air of humanity, compassion, equality, love, grace, and all the rest be let in and not be closed off and only allowed to a small and smaller group.  The thugs and criminals who keep this country in chains are not who you want in charge.

We need an America whose soil does not grow and support and strengthen such people.  I don’t know what happened to them that they pursue such  a way of life, but that really does not matter.  What matters is their choices in life were evil. The lifestyle that they chose is evil.  Their ability to corrupt others is evil.  They need to be called out on all of it and removed.  The hate they are spewing – the choices they are making ——

It is the personification of evil and different from the sermon I heard a few Sundays ago about labeling this “politics” and not “evil”.  It was certainly not a Christian sermon – it was a sermon from the soul of a religion spreading very quickly and calling itself “christianity”.  It is the call to follow this god they are promoting as “christ” and ignoring the evil intrinsic to this kind of “politics.”  The small letters are not typos – they are intentional.

Stand up and be counted here America.  This is your country and you need to take it back and put it in the light.  Take it out of the darkness settling on all things American and with that darkness spreading fast.  The same group which promoted and supported Jos McCarthy and his brand of anti-communism is around Trump.  Their heirs are alive and well and trying to take this country down the same road.

You don’t have much time because one defense Trump has is to start World War III and I have no doubt he is capable and would rather see that happen than to traverse the road he set for himself, which will be hard, painful, a total embarrassment and payment for his past sins in the public and corporate arenas.

We will be in the middle of nuclear warfare without even knowing what happened.  You will be standing in the street with your skin turning to mush and your eyes destroyed and your entire body in excruciating pain because when you had the chance to stand in the street for justice – for equality – to be passionate about a political experiment called the American Way you were among the missing.  You went about your day as normal, you did not want to be involved.   You wanted others to stand up and take the pain of working hard and sacrificing their lives so you could live in peace, harmony and without extreme environmental changes and so your children could grow up and replace the Trumpians and McCarthyism.

How is that not spreading and being a part of the same evil you are seeing played out in the news everyday?  Everyone has a part.  Choose yours wisely because your day of reckoning is coming also.  Remember the story in scripture about the sheep and the goats?  Each day you choose which one you are becoming and each day you take on more of the characteristics of your choice. – and at some point it is too late to change and make another choice – you and yours simply will have to live with the choice you make today, no matter how small.

This is not political – this is evil!!!!

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

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Trump and Kelly – Resign!

Friday, October 20th, 2017

The Manchurian candidate has become the Manchurian president.

Trump has spent his presidency causing chaos, confusion and more.  Isn’t that what Russia would have wanted in exchange for helping Trump gain the presidency?  Donald Trump, now President Trump has not missed a time of sowing the wind so we could reap the whirlwind.  Does he do this in the expectation that when his tenure as president is over Russia and its friends will reward him with a Trump Tower in Moscow, to be the largest such complex in the world?  Isn’ that the kind of goal Trump would relish and fight to achieve?  With an ethical standard that has no traditional right or wrong, his sense and practice of ethics is relative to what is happening immediately in front of him with right replaced with what benefits Donald Trump and wrong replaced with that from which Donald Trump does not stand to gain,   Spending time as President of these United States – doing Putin’s bidding – or the bidding of whoever is his ‘handler’ is the place where Trump will spend his time and energy.  He is doing an incredible job fulfilling his role as ruiner of America – the Manchurian President.  A side job he has probably decided on for himself is the job of lining his pockets with as much as he can before he is out as president.

General John Kelly, or rather Mr. John Kelly (since he is today a civilian and not a General)  – the  Chief of Staff – whose unvarnished bigotry was on full display during his appearance in the briefing room – you need to resign before your very soul is destroyed.  Your hypocrisy and bigotry is flying all over the world for all to see.

It was clear during Mr. John Kelly’s appearance yesterday, in the briefing room, to defend his boss, that he and his boss have a lot in common.  Kelly clearly supported his boss – voted for him? – is very much like him when he isn’t hiding behind the veneer that the training he received during his tenure in the armed forces allowed him to learn about and use.  John Kelly is definitely not the adult in the day care center, but a bigot working amongst other bigots.  In such a circumstance it is very easy to lose your ethical center and, if he ever had one, it is now clearly missing.

Many things were uncovered during Kelly’s appearance in the White House Briefing Room and many things have been confirmed. When Donald Trump took office as president, ‘GENERAL’ John Kelly was named head of Homeland Security.  That department rolled out the first Muslim Travel Ban in record time.  It was brutal and caused incredible grief, suffering and casually vicious evil for tens of thousands of people.  That was the work of Mr. John Kelly.  The armed forces gave him the tools he needed and he used them  to act out and attempt to put into the United States system of government a travel ban which was bigoted and a part of Donald Trump’s plan – which Kelly agreed with – to “Make America White and Christian Again”.  What Kelly does not realize is that once his ability to contribute is over, and he has done what he could to help Trump and others re-establish bigotry in these United States,  he will clearly be shown that the group discriminated against includes Catholics.

It was an incredible experience to watch this former United States General stand in the briefing room and make a fool of himself because his bigotry led him to that place and time.  Kelly outlined his bigotry for all of us without even being conscious of how he was exposing himself.  He outlined for all of us his bigotry and the incredibly flawed and romanticized view he holds of the United States.  His description is a romanticized version of the bigotry which existed in these United States as he was growing up and in many places still does.

This view is palatable if one takes John Kelly’s description and ignores the reality of a country that was racist, sexist, violent against minorities – especially in the Brighton/Greater Boston area during that time, gave great privilege to white males with Northern European ancestry and – especially during the time John Kelly describes – was particularly bigoted against the Irish.  Irish from Brighton, MA. would have experienced that bigotry and apparently John Kelly escaped the reality of his life growing up and taking on the identify society tried to give him by putting in place this “better than” picture and now describes to us, with all the rhetoric of the White Supremacist with whom he clearly identifies. a world that did not exist except in the corner of his mind which he uses to justify himself and identify himself as better than and more equal than….

John Kelly took his place on the platform with his tikki torch just as others did in Charlottesville, VA. when they were out marching around and doing damage to others  imitating Hitler and Nazi Germany’s Krystallnacht.

Kelly talked about how wonderful this country used to be.  Woman were honored; churches were filled; etc. etc.  Kelly had no consciousness that he was spouting the worst kind of racism and sexism.  From Trump, women are sluts and objects for sexual abuse and misuse.  For Kelly they are honored on pedestals way away from the real world and there they should stay.  In that vein, as we turn the armed forces into a “sacred space”,  we need to remember that sexual abuse, rape, and all the rest which Trump brags about doing, was very prevalent in the armed forces.  The fight to reduce what was wide spread and so accepted that a woman’s career in the armed forces was just about over if she brought formal charges against anyone after she was sexually abused or raped or… is something that happened during Kelly’s active tenure in the armed forces. I don’t see John Kelly’s name amongst any of those who fought against those practices.

While Kelly tried to be the “General” during his time in the White House Briefing Room, misusing his title in the service of someone whose bigotry got him into the non-sacred space he was now occupying, Kelly’s common ground with Donald Trump kept slipping out.  Calling Congresswoman Wilson an “Empty Barrel”, among other epithets, was clearly in the mould of his boss.  Kelly was arrogant enough to attempt to reduce a Black Woman, whose life shows her care and work for others and the struggle that she has been through because of how Kelly’s racism and sexism contributed to making her life significantly harder, he tried to reduce her the exact same way his boss would have, with the epithet of “Empty Barrel” and a string of lies.  Kelly’s mental illness was on full display.  The kind where he can do and say and the person he is doing and saying about has no ability to respond.  His is the word that will stand – OR – does Trump have something on Kelly that forced him into that position?  It seems to me that is the case with several people – in Congress, on his staff, etc.

Kelly showed his inability to see or participate in any kind of equality when he claimed to be “stunned” that Congresswoman Wilson was listening in on such a sacred conversation.  The fact that the conversation was taking place in an automobile and the conversation was clearly on speaker phone to which anyone in the car would hear and could listen, didn’t come into his calculations.  Neither did the fact that he and others were listening in on such a “sacred conversation” as well.  They were doing the right thing that they were qualified and should be doing.  With the exact same actions Congresswoman Wilson was somehow violating some code of privacy – the White’s listening were the privileged deified to do so by White Supremacy and the Black Congresswoman and others in the car not allowed to violate that “sacred space.”

Most Blacks can understand that assumption since a part of racism is cornering a Black into a space where no one else exists and oppressing them in such a way that their psychic responds to the hurt so inflicted and ‘puts them in their place’, but they cannot object nor bring that oppression public with any credibility.  A strange satisfaction racists have gotten for generations. A racist act Donald Trump performs on a daily basis in almost all of his acts and conversations and now we have seen that his Chief of Staff does also.

President Trump is accustomed to demeaning minorities.  He arrogates that right to himself and has apparently done so throughout his life.  It was his birthright given to him by his father, who was involved enough with the Ku Klux Klan to have been arrested as one of them at one of their rallies.  His birthright from the way his father trained him to insure that the buildings they built were not to be lived in by Black families.  We know that from the civil rights law suits filed against them by the federal government probably because they accomplished this discrimination and bigotry using federal funds and violating United States laws.  Habits instilled from childhood, which Donald Trump to this day apparently still follows as normal and the way things should be if America is to be great again.  If America’s greatness is to be defined as the racism, sexism, violence against women and others, etc. etc. that are a part of America’s history, we are sadly going into the dustbin of history not into greatness.  We will be there in good company with Putin in the adjoining dustbin.

Clearly, from General Kelly’s presentation, not only the Bannonites carry tikki torches for this president, but so do his ‘generals’  The way this administration is mirroring Nazi Germany is incredible and moving very fast down the road as they take into the Trump administration the equivalent kind of who helped Germany become the country of extreme bigotry under Hitler’s leadership.

In the United States, we have never had so many “General’s” in an administration before.  We have gone against what we have outlined as not permissible in a democracy to bring in Trump’s generals.  To have supported the election of Trump for president the first requirement these generals would have needed was for Trump and his people to see the familiar bigotry in their lives and belief systems.  Kelly has clearly outlined and shown the rest of us why he qualified to be Chief of Staff.

After that display in the White House Briefing Room and his rolling out a program (the Muslim Travel Ban) which violated the Constitution of the United States and many other such slights and crossing the road from democracy to the Russianization of the United States that Trump seems dedicated to bringing in, Kelly has shown himself qualified to work for Trump.

It is time for’ General’ John Kelly to resign as Chief of Staff and remove himself to a retirement community of all White, all Catholic Christians where he will be most comfortable.

Having lived a long life and having seen what it was like to have your ancestral roots in Ireland, it is amazing that General John Kelly could say the things he said in that WH Briefing Room.  I grew up where Irish, Africans and Native Americans lived, worked, married, raised children together.  They did that because they were this country’s outcast.  “No Irish Need Apply.”  That is also John Kelly’s world before he replaced his past history with this clearly unreal and very racist storyline.

Where General John Kelly was raised, Irish were the servants because no other jobs were available.  They scrubbed floors, cleaned toilets, demeaned themselves for the WASPS for whom they worked to be able to put food on the table.

Mt great-great grandfather was Irish and his family came to this country settling on  a farm in Ohio and then moving to Illinois before he moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana.   My great-great grandfather Adams married my great-great grandmother – a Choctaw Indian who was on the Trail of Tears, forced to walk from Alabama to the middle of the country with no food, no clothes to protect from the weather, no place to sleep except wherever the group being pushed along by the U. S. Federal army – ordered by their generals to keep these people moving along so White Christian ‘Americans’ could have the land on which they lived and worked for generations.  John Kelly’s ancestors were not a straight line down from those Generals, they were a straight line down from the Irish, Africans and Native Americans who tried to support one another during that time frame because the bigotry was so strong and their lives were considered less than nothing, except when needed to do someone else’s dirty work.

General Kelly needs to remember his history and the history of those who went before.  Having been raised in Brighton, MA. – now owned by Harvard University – was not the best of upbringings.  One ‘out’ he had in this country was to join the armed forces, which he apparently took.  But he also developed a “better than” attitude adding that to his identity.  “General” wasn’t enough.  The ability to oppress via “White Supremacy” had to be added to his belief system as the ground under John Kelly to make him feel adequate to his life.

Donald Trump needs to resign along with John Kelly, especially when it will be discovered that the two of them caused the death of the four special forces men who gave their lives for what the men thought was a good cause – defending their country.  Trump and Kelly caused their death by doing their best to demean their country and turn it into a bigoted space in this world – sending the likes of those four who died into harms’ way to justify and bring about Kelly and Trump’s need to be better than – their need to be a part of a system of government for which your skin color, hair and religion determine your place in that system of government.  They are working hard to make sure democracy is stopped and along with Vladimir Putin is replaced with a system of government which oppresses its people and forces them to work while the governmental people at the top reap the benefits of their toil.

The movement today is to keep America White and Christian.  But “white” is relative.  Only in America are people classified as “white”.  In Europe they are French, English, Scandinavian, etc. “Race” is an ungodly invention, which happened in America to justify slavery so Christians could go to Church on Sundays.  Color goes only skin deep and probably doesn’t go all the way through the skin.  Instead of classifying people by their hair, color, etc.  try classifying them by their character, achievements on behalf of others, etc.  Our entire U. S. government would have to change if that were to happen.  Our current governmental leaders  lie, cheat, steal, sexually abuse, etc. etc.

Weinstein is being excoriated for his alleged sexual abuse.  Trump was elected president in spite of all that was alleged against him and in spite of his admitting to and bragging about sexual abuse, but he was rewarded by being elected president.

Trump whipped up the crowds at his rallies into a bloodlust group of people screaming for Hillary Clinton to be jailed – about having her killed – about doing violence to others for which he, Trump, would pay the legal fees for those taking such actions.  A large group against one woman who Trump felt was becoming too powerful and certainly not reflecting her female stereotype.  Trump and his campaign brought  violence against women out from behind the private places where it usually happens into the bright sunlight with people owning and bragging about their bigotry.  He brought the KKK out from behind their white robes and pointy hats.  He made being and admitting to Nazism an OK thing to do.  He is responsible for bringing all of the symbols and institutions of Nazism into public view in this country.  He has made it acceptable.

Donald Trump and the way he is ‘governing’ looks as though his strongest goal is to fill his coffers with the United States gold and to add to it as much of the world’s gold as he can manage to pilfer.

John Kelly looks like the assistant who is going to destroy the last bits of his character and end his life as the person who most ably assisted Donald Trump in that mission.  How he is characterized today by those having to live and work around him is not how he will be characterized when the history of his life is written by others once he has passed out of power and can no longer negatively affect those who speak truth.

Some stray questions!

Congresswoman Wilson was threatened after she spoke out about Trump’s telephone call to the point where her office felt its security threatened and reported the threats.  At the same time, Trump says he refused to answer reporters questions about the incident until Congresswoman Wilson repeated what she said about him and the telephone call.  From watching him and hearing his comments, it was clear to me that he expected her to recant what she said.  That sounds to me like a definite threat someone would make who knew about and could make happen the violence threatened against the Congresswoman.

Trump and Kelly – RESIGN!

Trump has established temporary Concentration Camps – using disasters which create extreme pain and suffering to create these CCamps through his and his staff’s refusal to act in any kind of a timely fashion.  Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are two examples.  He has to finally come around to acting somewhat positively, but he does not do so until much damage has been done and the “brown people” involved have been pushed decades behind everyone else.  Inviting the Governor of Puerto Rico to Washington, D. C. and trash talking about the corruption happening in Puerto Rico around the help they are receiving from the United States, while at the same time praising the hard work and honesty of the people in Texas is beyond one’s ability to imagine that a President of these United States would so engage in that kind of talk and actions.

Trump and Kelly are using disasters and travel bans as one way to attempt to get rid of the fact that most of the people in these United States, today,  are minorities and their numbers are growing.  Another way is the various Muslim ban’s Trump and Kelly have brought into being.  Be particularly aggressive in throwing non-white, non-Christians out of these United States to attempt to continue the supremacy of White Christians so this country can remain bigoted against minorities and women. It was effective during Katrina.

New Orleans was reduced from over 70% Black to some 50% Black and from overwhelmingly Democratic to Republicans taking over.  What an example for Trump to follow! And, in the process, Trump is becoming more outwardly and publicly bigoted in everything he does and says.  When the story of what happened in Niger is finally revealed – even if that means we have to wait for another regime to tell the truth – will it show that Trump and Kelly caused the deaths of those four young people through their bigotry having added Chad to the list of countries whose people are not allowed into these United States – among other things they have done, some even more direct to the cause of those deaths?

Trump and Kelly – RESIGN!  You are a disgrace to this country.

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

 

 

Puerto Rico – CCamp 2017 style

Friday, September 29th, 2017

The story of the Trump Administration and Donald Trump continues to unfold and as it does, the fascism and the many ways black, brown, yellow, red, purple people are negatively affected by this administration continues non-stop.  Trump has not missed one way of doing everything he could do to diminish, degrade, take away the rights of U. S. Citizens under the Constitution, respond only to those who are white – northern european – and hiding that fact only loosely under specious rhetoric.

The NFL debacle – was that to distract and take people’s attention away from what the administration was going to do and was in the process of doing to American citizens in Puerto Rico – the Brown people?

We have a president who actively pushes and demands that American citizens, especially those ‘in charge’ – violate the U. S. Constitution in the way they live, conduct business and interact with those “under” them.  He did it with the Muslim ban –  with the NFL – and now with Puerto Rico in the way he has handled the response to the tragedy under which they are living.  As much as he could use his office to make the lives of minorities horrifically worse he has not missed.

With the NFL the president has done much tweeting and in other ways making demands that the ‘owners’ of the team – the owners of the franchises – refuse their people their constitutional rights and if they demand and move ahead as though they are full citizens of this country living under the U. S. Constitution with their rights under that Constitution fully respected then the U. S. President wants them fired and their personhood diminished in the process.

The president of the United States has done almost no tweeting – especially when compared to what he does regarding other issues – about the situation in Puerto Rico.  The tweeting he has done about Puerto Rico has clearly uncovered his goal – which is to do as little as possible and to lead the American people into a space of doing very little for those others.

There are many ways to get the results you need from Concentration Camps and in this case the storms have produced an incredible time and way for the Trump administration to horribly oppress a group of brown people who the Nazi’s w0uld have sent to Concentration Camps.  Only Trump’s CCamps are 2017 style.  You can’t, in 2017, get rid of minorities the way Hitler did – one has to be imaginative about it and Donald Trump has been unbelievably visionary about how to recreate CCamps doing as much damage to minorities as possible while living to do the same for another day.  Do the deed and don’t just deny, but talk about what a fantastic job you are doing for the brown people.  Talk about how much aid you are giving them.  And then throw in quietly, you can’t do much because they don’t have the money to pay for their aid – and even more quietly engage in foot dragging to make sure the lives of the brown people in and around Puerto Rico takes the largest toll possible so the diminishment and elimination of the minorities of this world takes place in Trump time with Trump’s denial, but continuation of his actions as he moves on to the next event which will allow him to so eliminate minorities.

With General Kelly at his right hand it is not possible for Donald Trump to give any credible reason for waiting over 8 days to waive the Jones Act and on and on and on it goes.  Either General Kelly is complicit in this 2017 time of using what’s at hand to attempt to destroy – or at the very least – substantially handicap, oppress, keep in as bad conditions as possible so as many die as possible or if he is not complicit, he is continuing as Trump’s Chief of Staff and not giving Trump the benefit of his knowledge and experience from his military training and wisdom; his time spent as head of Homeland Security when he very efficiently brought in the Muslim ban or ?

What more is there to be said?  Keep foreign governments from coming to the aid of Puerto Rico by keeping the Jones Act in place.  Keep the Puerto Ricans in painful, disease inducing, death inducing, and in a place where they are starving with very little to no health helping possibilities and on and on goes the list.

Playing to his base again?  Fading into the woodwork are the Fascists, the KKK, the White Supremacist, the Mafia – all who are now clear believers in the fact that Donald Trump is on their side, doing what they would do and making sure he puts a good face on what he is doing so he can continue onto the next tragedy, catastrophe, demonstration and more that he can use to push the goals of his base – their racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-semitic and more goals to change this country and move on to work with his friends around the globe to indeed change the world.

Change this world how?  Make the the rulers of this world and those who benefit from the life of others white again.

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

 

 

Health Care and more!

Monday, September 25th, 2017

Thanks for your blog on health care.

I noticed something else.  And, I might add, I agree with you and have seen many examples of people losing everything trying to maintain good health in their family.

I also noticed that homelessness seemed to begin and increase with the correspondent increase in our crop of billionaires.  We didn’t have more than one or two billionaires in these United States.  Today we have many and we didn’t have many homeless people either.  Today we have many.  And – I do truly understand economics.  Many say we owe homelessness to the increase in the industrialization which has moved along to the tech era.  And isn’t it the tech era that has increased, almost exponentially the number of billionaires?

Please add more articles on estate sales?  Shopping the sales – tips on how to do that – anything from your experience managing estate sales and antique auctions.

Thank you!

 

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

 

Walls – like the one around the Polish Ghetto!

Friday, September 22nd, 2017

A reader responds:

“As I read the blog on “Trump – an aspiring American Oligarch”, my mind went back in history to the time of Hitler when a wall was built around the Jewish Ghetto in Poland.  Before that, Jews were welcomed in Poland and things like Jewish cuisine and culture and Polish cuisine and culture melded.  And then along came Nazism and broke that up – it was too much and might lead to some kind of equality across Europe.  That could not be allowed to happen.

What is there about walls and despots?  They love to “wall” people in and then destroy them – either wholesale as Hitler did or a few at a time the way it happened between East and West Germany.

Walls must equal power, control and total oppression – or a distraction to what else the totalitarians are doing.  And how does this fit with America and democracy?”

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

 

Trump – an aspiring American Oligarch

Friday, September 15th, 2017

WE EITHER LEARN FROM HISTORY OR WE ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT –

One example in progress –

Ronald Reagan – American President – Republican

Went to Germany and gave a speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate, West Berlin, Germany in 1987 in which he said “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”  The wall was built by the Communists in August, 1961. It was a twelve foot concrete wall which surrounded West Berlin symbolizing Russia and the United States’ fight for dominance.  The pain, injustice and agony that thousands of people suffered because this wall was built and all that happened subsequent to its construction ruined human lives and resulted in many human deaths  – some unbelievably vicious – all this was gathered up into that speech by President Reagan.

Two years later East Germans issued a decree for the gate to be opened, allowing people to travel freely.  By the end of 1990, when Communism in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union collapsed, the wall was torn down altogether.

Donald J. Trump – American President – Republican

Friend of Putin, who was a KGB person during that period of time, Mr. Trump has declared “We shall build a wall separating Mexico from the United States and Mexico is going to pay for the wall.”  In other words he was going to force Mexico to pay for something which would be a reflection and re-enactment of what happened historically in Germany from 1961 on. The cost the Soviet Union exacted from those in Germany, on both sides of the wall, will parallel and is the pattern for the cost to Mexico and the United States if and when Donald Trump is able to build his much beloved wall.

What would Donald J. Trump get out of such an act?  It seems to us it would move him along in his apparent quest to become like the Russian Oligarchs.  His natural character – which is to abuse, insult, malign and generally take advantage of those under him, especially those oppressed – gives him the ability to see how he could benefit from such a construction project.  We only see that dimly, Trump sees such clearer and has goals set in that direction.

The building of the wall would be Trump’s gift to his followers, – the KKK, the White Nationalists, the Neo-Nazi’s and all of the other White Supremacist groups, many of whom voted for him because they saw in this offering the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for them.  They would be on their way to replicating in the United States what the Nazi’s created in Germany – the ovens, the concentration camps, etc. – the dream possibility that has periodically popped up in these United States over the decades and the generations.    Trump’s followers, those who voted for him in public or in secret,  would be relieved of their nightmare that these United States would/could soon become a country with a majority of ‘brown people’ and then where would they be.  And, let’s make no mistake about the fact that bigotry characterizes each and every one of Trump’s voters and supporters.

It also seems to us that Donald J. Trump was born in the wrong country.  He has been a public figure who  has called out many is this country who are really American Nazi’s, but who have been living under a different flag and putting forth publicly a different image, a different persona.  With Trump as president they are now able to drop the pretense and show who they really are and the life they would prefer to lead and that certainly is not one under a democratic form of government.

We see Donald Trump moving to form the American Nazi Party.  It may be established under a different name, but that is what it will be. In all the demonstrations they originated and in which they participated the KKK has dropped the white uniform and they have stopped covering their faces.  That alone says they see a changed world – one in which they no longer have to hide – and they owe that to this new American President.

Trump would like to lead us into a totalitarian world where he is in complete control.  To quote Ronald Reagan – “The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship.”

To further quote Reagan “In this age of redoubled economic growth, of information and innovation, the Soviet Union faces a choice:  It must make fundamental changes, or it will become obsolete.”

Clearly, to all of us, the Soviet Union has made the choice to become obsolete and in making and carrying out that choice it moved from being the Soviet Union to becoming just Russia.  It has brought Donald Trump into its sphere of largesse and influence to make sure the United States goes along with its choice and also becomes obsolete.  The Soviet Union/Russia, even though it is the smaller country with the dramatically smaller economy – has impressed this new United States president with its power and influence and has brought him into a place where he seems to be more interested in learning from Putin instead of from United States mentors and therefore he seems more interested in seeing that the United States becomes a society ruled by Russian-type Oligarchs, a few individuals who have endless amounts of money and power.

The United States has its American Oligarchs, who have enormous amounts of money and wield substantial power, until now have been in the shadows.  With the arrival of Trump on the political stage, they can come out and move along unbridling their quest for and accumulation of wealth and power.

The Soviet Union, which tasted a bit of freedom with the tearing down of the wall; with the ascendancy of Gorbachev; with the opening of the country to a freer way to live; was recaptured by Putin and brought smaller, lower and with much less power as it moved into a more controlled and less democratic place.  Its Oligarch’s, however, have thrived and become wealthy beyond the comprehension of most of us and with enough power to bring about changes in their country and economy which continues to benefit them at the expense of their citizenry.

To keep it under such control, it seems to us that Putin has set himself the task of eliminating democracy world-wide so it does not threaten his control and putting in its place world-wide the kind of controlled country he has set about creating in Russia.  As the Soviet Union moved to become Russia – and not to its liking – so the United States, following the path of that country will move to become less democratic, more abusive and totally undermining of its own citizens.  That small group – called Oligarch’s, American Oligarchs, will continue to grow in wealth, prosperity and control.

As American Oligarchs  gain even more assets, more money, more power, we will notice in these United States that the homeless population will continue to grow at a much more rapid pace than it has in the recent past.

That is how the system works

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

 

 


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