#law of conservation of mass baby - what goes in must come out

[leafpool-loves-ashfur]

gay gay homosexual gay

gosh ngl Feathercloud from @firealder2005 and I’s fic Burning Thistles is by far my favorite character to not only write but to just... his personality, his story, his hardships, his family, his lovelife... I love it all sm i swear, and he’s not even a main character even vsjfsdkfjs but my love for him makes him one <3

Featherkit is one of Runningwind and Dappletail’s canonical kits- the deaf tom-kit who ‘wandered away’, but in BT he is Runningwind and Redtail’s son with Dappletail being his surrogate mother, born alongside his sister Crickekit :)

the amount of angst and fluff i can shove into this boy is incomprehensible

[roezlf]

A Letter From Home About Sound and Consciousness

Dear "Blue" Gene,

As I sit here writing you this letter I'm listening to the sound of the midnight train as it moves and changes across the hills. It reminds me of you as it travels to the back of my mind. Now that's a pretty weird idea. I don't know why it should remind me of you. Sometimes I just listen and it doesn't remind me of anything. It seems to create the space in time in which it moves. It comes from nowhere. Anyway, I'm getting off the subject. I really wrote to tell you that the bar we used to play at has changed hands again. Do you remember how everyone got together and danced until dawn, just like a religion? It took an hour to get the tunes out of your head. Then we got stoned and in that presence we'd talk about our crazy ideas. I remember you said that a child growing up, the growth of the feeling of being inside yourself, and the sound changing over space and time were similar experiences. Their motions had the same shape. Oh boy.

Speaking of younger people, your cousin is growing up fast. When he was four months old he was sucking his thumb and waving his arms and after a year he was grabbing hold of blankets and rugs, pulling things toward himself and seeing how close he could get. We must have seemed like pictures on TV. Soon he started talking and opened his mouth wide to describe something big, breathing heavily in and out. To him each breath was like a thought. When he was one year old somebody would yawn in the room and he wouldn't. He would describe things that weren't anywhere near him. An idea he heard one day he would describe as his own on the next. When he was two or three-and-a-half years old he talked to his imaginary companion. Now he's twelve and imagines everything connected to everything else. The more defined a situation gets, the more he spaces out. I guess he wonders if his life is supposed to be a story. But of course he was five when out of the blue he started to speak Polish and recall his past lives. That certainly wasn't in the books. Sometimes you imagine you're in the music and sometimes you're apart from it. I remember the time the band gave your name, "Blue" Gene. There was a feeling that trouble was built into you. Like they say, "In your dreams". Both you and I know you're no victim of circumstance.

Of course you do get obsessed and at those times what you want to know gets drawn toward you. How close can you get? Ghosts appear mostly in February. How do you describe something which is invisible and unknowable? When the train goes by, what should I pay attention to? The sound, or what I see, or what goes on in my mind or maybe all three of them at once? Three guesses. A coincidence. A connection outside the connection inside. It's so beautiful to see someone thinking. Consider four-billion people walking around with slightly different things in their heads at any given moment. When you're in this country all the images that support living in the city disappear. The day before you left on that midnight train was the day we made up that weird theory about a history of consciousness. Of course it was just as arbitrary as any history and started twelve-thousand years in the past. The people are peaceful, there's no government, and nothing is an example of anything. There are no words for past, present, future or madness. It's always the first time. However, there is a voice that appears to each of them, barely the sting, softly in between the other sounds of living. One side of the brain in each person is slowly sending pulses through to the other side. It is inevitable, according to this ordered out theory, that an imaginary space somewhere in the back of your mind gets gets occupied by someone called "I" who floats around in the same space it has created. Then we skipped a few thousand years to watch that unidentified inner voice become embodied in the voice of the ruler. Statues were in the center of town just like today. Images of ancestors with large eyes. Eye-to-eye contact. Time ceases to exist. A younger and older man. A younger and older woman. Eye-to-eye contact. Mother and child. When you talk about love everyone's an authority.

Eight-thousand or maybe six-thousand years ago when young women were possessed oracles and older men were hot-blooded prophets for telling the future, their message was delivered in steady rhythmic verses. Always the same rhythm no matter what language. From one side of the brain to the other. From invisible heaven to foggy earth. This was sunlight inside and outside without yawning or blinking. You can send your consciousness anywhere and in the prophet's eyes the ideas on the periphery of his vision frame what he sees. The possibilities are beats of light constantly changing intensity. He imagines the experience as always the same and always entirely out of control somewhere out there. Every eleven-and-eleven-hundredths years there is a cycle of increased sun spot activity. Every eleven-and-tenths years there is a cycle of mass human excitability. If something went one way, and if the space were somehow closed off, the idea was that something had to go the other way. There are so many cycle you could just as well see the changes as random. Someone called it peaceful coexistence. They way the waves travel through the same medium, the water, and cross through each other transparently without destruction. The rest of the story, "Blue", was that the outside voices began to be heard inside forty-one-hundred or maybe thirty-seven-hundred years ago. People started to write laws down and make treaties. The world was pictured in sets of two and the ideas of history, motives, and strategies were dreamed up. This went along with war, life stories, and authorities from outer space. On the periphery of this country someone made up the notion that you could change yourself by changing your consciousness without connections beyond contradictions. His blood pressure was highest at three in the afternoon and lowest at three in the morning. When he started singing with his friends someone would remember just the words and someone would remember just the tunes. Two points in space but three types of connections. When they went out on a date each of them imagined his and her mom and dad would come along. A steady structure, a complete decision with only four moves. Yes and no on the first possibility, yes and no on the other one. Did he need that image outside to have that feeling inside?

I wonder if I have changed since I was young. Or has it always been this way? I guess I want a vision beyond consciousness. The way a culture takes twenty years to catch up to what can occur in a flash to one person. Someone who's done his thinking before he realizes it. I can accept the way I pay attention to things even if every ninety-six minutes I get an urge to talk, eat, or kiss somebody. Yes, just anybody, "Blue". And I start to pay attention to the miracles that I do know about. You know, I never set the alarm and I always wake up on time. Even in a thunderstorm my mother would wake up only when she hears a baby cry. When I play a piece on the piano once it goes on rehearsing by itself and its easier to play the next time and there are the coincidences and the invisible ideas that will reveal themselves any time you start to go through the motions. Are they really out there, "Blue"? Going to the center of town by calculating spirals which run down, going to the center of town randomly. All the energy is mysteriously conserved as the bird flies. From time to time I feel another world growing up among the one I experience every day and it seems no conclusions can be drawn about anyone's eventual fate. Sometimes I put my fingertips on the top of my eyes and apply pressure slightly. Then the pressure is released and flashes of light still remain floating among the forms that are shaped like networks. That pressure to move the lights is the same as taking on any idea to move my body. One side of my brain keeps rambling on to write you this letter while the other side is setting it to rhythmic music migrating from fundamental harmonics to the harmonics of those harmonics, building its own bridge. Part of light, to a molecule, to fluorescence, to warmth, to my body and its rhythms and back again. We're not attached or separate in space. Slipping in between the pulses of consciousness. UFO's appear mostly in April coinciding with the sudden appear and disappearance of the stars. But anyway, its always the first time.

This train is lit by the luminescence of the town and the faint warning light from the light it gives off. That light defines the area all around the train just as your love defines the way you see the life closest to you. Is that too corny, "Blue"? Well, you know, that's how we are here. Write soon.

[republicstandard]

Prophecies of Piss Earth

Interior Semiotics

In December we received the great revelation of PissEarth 2025 in detail, but this was not our first warning. A prophet appeared before us in the recent past – Interior Semiotics.

“And I will appoint my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth. They are 'the two olive trees' and the two lampstands, and 'they stand before the Lord of the earth.' If anyone tries to harm them, fire comes from their mouths and devours their enemies. This is how anyone who wants to harm them must die. They have the power to shut up the heavens so that it will not rain during the time they are prophesying; and they have the power to turn the waters into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague as often as they want.”

Back in 2010 under the guise of performance art a prophet of the end of days proclaimed to all the world the state of its soul. Peering behind the veil, forcing open the eyes and nostrils of man, exposing unforgettably the putrid stench and melting flesh of our age’s necrotic decay. Indeed, one is left in speechless awe, cowed by Theophany – and it is good that we fear lest we in our wretched state, born of the Kali Yuga, be consumed by the divine presence.

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The video begins with our prophet opening the Seals, but we – the unworthy and regenerate – are not privy to the unsealing. We partake only in the reflections and shadows of this act through the medium of the Brahmin / Kahana Rabba, the Purified Ones able to stand in the presence of Heaven without shame. We see only their intense focus, spiritual jubilation, and reverent astonishment with the Mystery. Only the priests may see the beginning, understand how things will unfold. We may only infer with guarded speculation, always careful not to fall into blasphemy or heresy with an unwarranted investigation.

The camera turns to reveal the last moments of the unsealing, the Mystery of the Veil having passed. We may partake in the last pieces of this ritual only, after the plan has been laid and executed, destiny written.

O ye of little faith. 

It is no coincidence that it should be Spaghetti-Os that forms the base of our elixir to come. Indeed, is there any other item that best encapsulates – no, is the archetype of – the spirit of modern capitalism? It Is repulsive to the senses. The radioactive refulgence of its broth alerts the eyes to the subsequent smell of demonic disgorge, and should one be daring and stupid enough to put a hand in it the mind can only be immediately taken to a back alley in Bangkok, submerged in a pool of rags saturated with the sexual discharges of southeast Asian catboys after a tryst with the Ovenmen.

This is the base. It is the foundation, the start but not the finished product, for we are no longer swimming in the sewage of modern capitalism or communism, its industrial drive to make us all little Os in a stew of homogeneity. However, this is not the now. To quote Jameson in Postmodernism: the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, “the advanced capitalist countries today are now a field of stylistic and discursive heterogeneity without norm.” We start with the mass production of homogeneity, dissolved in the stew-pot, but this goes further towards the ultimate commodification of identity in late capitalism – global financial / consumer capitalism.

The base stew from a can reflect the scenes of Pruit Igoe and Prophecies from Koyaanisqatsi, a movie fundamentally about the dead, the faceless masses on the streets of city and slum as empty as the bustle of Wall Street, all naught but an O in a radioactive blood soup.

At last the Word is revealed through heavy breathing.

“Dirt is all around us. Everything is shit. We apply meaning, value, and worth, to the shit surrounding us. We live by this meaning and by our words. We live by worth, and applied value, but everything is shit.”

Can you, dear reader, not help but feel the deep, penetrating movement in your bowels at these scriptural words summoning the ghosts of Solomon and Nietzsche? Truly, my friends, today is the first day of your awakened life.

“Dirt is all around us.”

This opening line takes on a double meaning. In a single sentence, the Prophet captures the so-called “progress” of western capitalism from start to finish. We begin in nature, at one with it and in harmony with it. We love and fear the dirt from which we build our nations, grow our food, and later return our bodies to when it comes time to die.

“I worship impersonal Nature, which is neither "good" or "bad", and who knows neither love nor hatred. I worship Life; the Sun, Sustainer of life. I believe in the Law of everlasting struggle, which is the law of life, and in the duty of the best specimens of our race — the natural élite of mankind — to rule the earth, and evolve out of themselves a caste of supermen, a people 'like unto the Gods'.” - Savitri Devi

Being with nature, our feet firmly planted in the dirt, we are also connected to that which is above the dirt – the sun and spirit. We struggle and through that struggle we find meaning. But as time progresses, our lives become more material and less spiritual. The nutrients of our living soup disappear and, though we find warmth and comfort in the slow boil, we lose our connection to the spiritual, and even the natural. Everything around isn’t soil – it’s dirt. Everything is shit.

Like a newly born baby, seeing the world for the first time, the prophet rubs the elixir on her breasts – one can only see how the Mother Goddess is elicited in this ritual – and stutters out sounds not like a crippled art student with Down's syndrome but as a mortal vessel for Divine logos uncontainable by flesh. We can only stand in pious silence as the prophet is overcome with rapture.

This continues for a time.

Now, my dear readers, lost sheep without a shepherd in the dark ages where the wolves roam and hunt, let he who hath wisdom pay close attention for you won’t believe what happens next.

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The reactionary and the conservative look to the past with dream-like brooding, praying – and only praying in their ineffectual devotionalisms – to turn the clock backward. But hearken these words my comrades lost in the dreamtide of history – this next scene denudes this fantasy. One may be a man in time, or above time, or God-willing against time, but the hands of the clock will not be turned backward.

Exposing herself not by merely removing her pants, but with scissors cutting a front hole in them, the illusions of the conservative are shattered away and drowned in a stream of piss. There is no going back now. Mixing the final ingredient into the alchemical potion to brew the amrita of the archons, she stimulates herself not with the divine presence, as before, but physical pleasure. Our longing for something more significant has been flattened into mere desire. “Pleasure limits the scope of human possibility,” says Jacques Lacan in Of the Subject of Certainty. “The pleasure principle is a principle of homeostasis. Desire, on the other hand, finds its boundary, its strict relation, its limit, and it is in relation to this limit that it is sustained as such, crossing the threshold imposed by the pleasure principle.” Everything - our pleasures, our meaning, our spirituality – is a consumption good. And it is consumed.

All is revealed and made manifest. We realized that we had not witnessed some mere performance art but participated – we participate - in a timeless Aesthetic Prophecy.

Truly, there is nothing left but one thing, the great serum of the powers and principalities revealed in the Pisstis Sophia – this soma of the current year, the great tang of the Third Impact, the ultimate climax of the consenting age!

from Republic Standard | Conservative Thought & Culture Magazine http://bit.ly/2SNXE7P via IFTTT

[axsomreport]

Headlines for September 12, 2018

Accuracy in Media

Politifact Labels Harris Tweet on Kavanaugh’s Abortion Position ‘False’ - 9/11/2018

Yahoo: Trump Doesn’t Even Know Which Land to Lease - 9/11/2018

Mainstream Media Finds No Sources in Favor of Trump PLO Announcement - 9/11/2018

CJR Writer Tries to Understand Tucker Carlson Without Introspection - 9/11/2018

MSNBC Gives Glowing Coverage to Obama for Criticizing Trump - 9/10/2018

Allen West The Old School Patriot

Leftists Overtaking My Hometown of Atlanta - 9/11/2018

Islamic Terrorists Want Dems to Win in November - 9/11/2018

The Traitorous Revision of History in the US - 9/10/2018

The Very Definition of Terrorism on Display - 9/8/2018

Alinsky, Trump, and an Anonymous Coup - 9/7/2018

Big League Politics

BREAKING: DOJ Set To Investigate Anti-Conservative Bias Among Social Media Giants - 9/11/2018

Twitter User Threatens Mass Murder of Trump Supporters, Account Still Active - 9/11/2018

Muslim Organization Tries To Bully Franklin Graham From Speaking In U.K. - 9/11/2018

Rabid Anti-Trump Leftist Attempts to Stab GOP Congressional Candidate - 9/11/2018

Leftist U.S. Senator Compares Russian Conspiracy Theory To 9/11 - 9/11/2018

Bizpac Review

GOP Rep. Scott Taylor explains how reenlisting after 9/11 changed his life forever - 9/11/2018

Crack pipe vending machines disguised as pen dispensers pop up in Long Island as school begins - 9/11/2018

Georgia school reignites debate over corporal punishment after reinstating paddling as punishment - 9/11/2018

President Trump honors 9/11 with a speech so powerful it leaves moved CNN hosts stunned - 9/11/2018

Carter Page: FBI probe not about me, it’s about tearing down Trump and all the good he’s doing - 9/11/2018

Breitbart News

Nancy Pelosi, Confident: 'I Will Be the Speaker of the House' - 9/12/2018

Pelosi: Dems Will Win House Because Some Republicans Aren’t ‘Going to Fight Us’ - 9/11/2018

Exclusive — ‘Possession of Drug Paraphernalia’ and Dozens of Other Charges: Ad Exposes Minnesota Democrat’s Brushes with Law - 9/12/2018

Support for Mayor Khan Crashes After Summer of Violence - 9/12/2018

UK Police Force Doubles Down on 'Non-Crime Hate Incidents' After Social Media Backlash - 9/12/2018

Chicks On The Right

Uh Oh. Salsa Dancing Cynthia Nixon Has Lost The All-Important Amy Schumer Vote. - 9/12/2018

Man Threatens Mass Shooting To Collect ‘Bloodstained MAGA Hats’ – Police On The Scene - 9/11/2018

Convenience Store Clerk Collapses In Medical Emergency – Teens Do The Unthinkable - 9/11/2018

Socialist Nutjob Caught In YET ANOTHER LIE - 9/11/2018

Don Jr. Says His Father Only Has A ‘Small’ Group Of People Within The White House He Can Trust - 9/11/2018

Consortiumnews

On the Brink with Russia in Syria Again, 5 Years Later - 9/12/2018

Beyond Bolton: The Path to a Progressive Foreign Policy - 9/11/2018

Letter from Britain: The Real Reason for the ‘Anti-Semite’ Campaign Against Jeremy Corbyn - 9/10/2018

Support Our Commitment to Independent Journalism - 9/10/2018

Moscow Has Upped the Ante in Syria - 9/9/2018

CNS

Trump Would Shut Down Government Over A Border Wall; Some Say He Should - 9/12/2018

Kenneth Starr Still Getting Hardballs - 9/12/2018

If Americans Can't Drive in Afghanistan, Can We Remake Syria? - 9/12/2018

UN Human Rights Council Gives Platform to Venezuelan Minister, Who Slams The US - 9/12/2018

The Purge - USA Network - 9/11/2018

Daily Caller News Foundation

Eddie Edwards Will Face Off Against Democrat Chris Pappas In New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District - 9/11/2018

REPORT: Manafort Is Talking To Mueller About Reaching Plea Deal In Second Trial - 9/11/2018

Cardinal Wuerl To Meet With The Pope About RESIGNATION - 9/11/2018

Police Investigating Anonymous Threat Made At Trump Hotel Before MAGA Event - 9/11/2018

Molly Kelly Wins New Hampshire Democratic Primary, Faces Incumbent Sununu In November - 9/11/2018

Daily Wire

NBC News White House Correspondent Mocks Trump Saying 'Radical Islamic Terrorism' On 9/11 - 9/12/2018

WATCH: Son Of Woman Killed On 9/11 Seemingly Slams Pelosi And Booker For Using Victims as 'Props' - 9/12/2018

Bernie Sanders' Son Doesn't Do So Great In His Congressional Primary - 9/11/2018

Democratic Socialist Threatens To Shoot Up MAGA Event At Trump Hotel, Report Says - 9/11/2018

Pastor Gets Standing Ovation For Blunt Message To Nike - 9/11/2018

Dan Bongino

September 11, 2018: Ep. 804 New Texts Expose More Corruption - 9/11/2018

Do Illegal Aliens Really Commit Fewer Crimes? - 9/10/2018

September 10, 2018: Ep. 803 Is This Major Player in the Scandal Still Alive? - 9/10/2018

SPYGATE: The Characters You Need to Know - 9/9/2018

September 7, 2018: Ep. 802 Is Justice Coming? - 9/7/2018

Drudge Report Feed

Fearing destructive quake, California considers list of buildings likely to collapse... - 9/12/2018

Priest charged with sexually assaulting young girl... - 9/12/2018

Calls prevention summit... - 9/12/2018

Rat in Broth Wipes $190 Million Off Restaurant Chain's Value... - 9/12/2018

Jimmy Carter: Don't scare off moderates... - 9/12/2018

Eagle Rising

President Trump Remembers The Flight 93 Heroes - 9/11/2018

Georgia School Brings Back Paddling To Punish Students - 9/11/2018

Bolton Announces The Trump Admin Will Stop US Cooperation With The ICC - 9/11/2018

Wisconsin College Frowns On 9/11 Memorial Project Over Fears It Could Offend Muslims - 9/11/2018

TRUMP BOOM: Most Summer Travel, Higher Small Business Optimism Since Reagan, Lowest Unemployment Ever, MORE - 9/11/2018

FOX Business

Extradition case of Indian tycoon Vijay Mallya in UK court - 9/12/2018

A Decade Later: 5 Lingering Effects of the Financial Crisis - 9/12/2018

4 Retirement Planning Mistakes You Probably Don't Even Realize You're Making - 9/12/2018

Farmer Brothers (FARM) Q4 2018 Earnings Conference Call Transcript - 9/12/2018

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished for Social-Media Giants - 9/12/2018

FOX News

Florida woman doused husband's eyes with hot sauce during argument, police say - 9/12/2018

Hurricane Florence could bring catastrophic storm surges: What are they, and how can you prepare? - 9/12/2018

Hurricane Florence apps to use during the storm - 9/12/2018

Hurricane Florence churns in the Atlantic: How do these powerful tropical storms take shape? - 9/12/2018

Libyan officials say unknown missiles hit Tripoli airport - 9/12/2018

Gatestone Institute :: Articles

China's 'Digital' Totalitarian Experiment - 9/12/2018

Turkey's Latest Power Grab a Naval Base in Cyprus? - 9/12/2018

Pakistan: New Government Fails to Support Minorities - 9/11/2018

Are We Remembering 9/11 or Forgetting It? - 9/11/2018

Turkey: Torture, Sexual Abuse Rampant in Prisons - 9/10/2018

Geller Report

WATCH Moment ‘teenage’ migrants chase after UK-bound vans in broad daylight in sleepy French village - 9/11/2018

Terror-tied Muslims ‘proselytizing’ at U.S. school assemblies - 9/11/2018

‘Silent Donation’: Corporate Emails Reveal Google Executives Tried to Turn Out Latino Voters Who They Thought Would Vote For Clinton - 9/11/2018

WATCH: Ground Zero Mosque: Second Wave of the 9/11 Attacks - 9/11/2018

NYC: Racist, far-left principal trying to rid school of Jewish teachers: lawsuit - 9/11/2018

Hot Air

Report: Tennis umpires might boycott Serena Williams’s matches over “sexism” claim during U.S. Open fiasco - 9/11/2018

The Botham Jean killing: Should the cop be charged with manslaughter or murder? - 9/11/2018

Nikki Haley warns of ‘dire’ consequences if Russia and Iran continue attacks on Idlib, Syria - 9/11/2018

Pope Francis: The Great Accuser is hunting bishops these days; Update: Wuerl to discuss resigning with pope - 9/11/2018

“Unsung success”: Trump says handling of the Puerto Rico hurricane was some of the best disaster management ever - 9/11/2018

InfoWars

Emergency Report: Trump Must Take Action Now To Stop False Flags - 9/11/2018

Tech Gods Wipe Truth From Public View - 9/11/2018

Video: Amazon is Now Banning ‘Offensive’ Books - 9/11/2018

Spirit of America Captured: Bald Eagle Graces 9/11 Memorial - 9/11/2018

Report: Pyongyang Aims to Connect Railways of North, South Korea - 9/11/2018

Jihad Watch

9/11: Seventeen years have passed, and no end is in sight - 9/11/2018

Australia: Muslim preacher says its a “major sin” for wife to refuse husband’s demands for sex - 9/11/2018

Dartmouth prof: It’s good that 17 years after 9/11, people are finally forgetting about terrorism - 9/11/2018

France: Muslim who drove car onto airport runway said “I have been sent by Allah,” has “psychiatric fragility” - 9/11/2018

Muslim former Chicago resident indicted on charges he tried to join the Islamic State - 9/11/2018

Katrina Pierson

Peek: Above All, Obama Angry Trump has systematically chipped away at his legacy - 9/12/2018

Trump Reminds America “Radical Islamic Terrorists” Attacked Us on September 11th - 9/12/2018

Dershowitz: Strzok’s Claim About ‘Leak Strategy’ Doesn’t ‘Pass the Giggle Test’ - 9/12/2018

New Strzok-Page Texts Show Coordinated Media Leaks - 9/12/2018

The Drive-Bys Can’t Change Public Opinion on Trump and It’s Driving Them Crazy - 9/11/2018

LifeNews.com

Bioethicist Says Allowing Infanticide Does Not Violate a Baby’s Right to Life - 9/11/2018

Remember When California Spent $3 Billion for Embryonic Stem Cell Research. It Hasn’t Cured Any Patients - 9/11/2018

Thousands of Pro-Lifers March in Dominican Republic Against Legalizing Abortion - 9/11/2018

Actress Sally Field Reveals She Secretly Aborted Her Baby at 17 - 9/11/2018

Professors Argue Its OK to Euthanize Patients to Harvest Their Organs - 9/11/2018

LifeZette

Identity Politics ‘Invades Science’ on Campus: Here’s the Proof and the Pushback - 9/12/2018

Six Facts Say Papadopoulos Is Right to Think Downer, FBI Set Him Up - 9/12/2018

‘Careful What You Ask for’ Ahead of Midterms, Starr Warns Dems - 9/11/2018

Look Who Supported Roseanne Barr After She Was Fired - 9/11/2018

Happening Now: Mass Shooting Threat at Trump Hotel MAGA Event - 9/11/2018

Newsmax - America

GOP Sen. Collins Gets 'Vulgar' Calls Protesting Kavanaugh - 9/11/2018

Puerto Rico Gov. Rebukes Trump: 'Not a Successful Relationship' - 9/11/2018

Google Brings Back AI Expert With Military, Defense Ties - 9/11/2018

Florence Could Rival North Carolina's 1954 'Benchmark Storm' - 9/11/2018

WashPost: Archbishop Wuerl to Talk Resignation With Pope - 9/11/2018

Newsmax - Newsfront

Education Dept. Reopens Rutgers Case Alleging Anti-Semitism - 9/11/2018

Google Brings Back AI Expert With Military, Defense Ties - 9/11/2018

Hurricane Florence Has Ingredients That Make Experts Worry - 9/11/2018

Study: Obesity Makes You Stupid - 9/11/2018

Study: Obesity Makes You Stupid - 9/11/2018

Newsmax - Politics

GOP Sen. Collins Gets 'Vulgar' Calls Protesting Kavanaugh - 9/11/2018

Puerto Rico Gov. Rebukes Trump: 'Not a Successful Relationship' - 9/11/2018

Sessions Open to Probe of Social Media Giants - 9/11/2018

Report: Bush 43 to Help Fundraise for Select GOP Candidates - 9/11/2018

Chuck Schumer Slams Trump on 'Hurtful' Puerto Rico Comments - 9/11/2018

Newsmax - TheWire

Whale Sanctuary Blocked, Japan Pushes to End Commercial Hunting Ban - 9/11/2018

El Nino Event Is 70% Likely This Year, UN Says - 9/11/2018

Alex Trebek's Beard on 'Jeopardy!' Causes a Stir - 9/11/2018

Mac Miller Autopsy Performed, More Tests Needed in Rapper's Death - 9/11/2018

Lifelike Pediatric Robot Creeps Out Docs in Training - 9/11/2018

OAN Newsroom – One America News Network

Hurricane Florence prompts mass evacuations - 9/11/2018

WATCH: Potential False-Flag Attack in Syria Could Trigger U.S. Military Strike - 9/11/2018

FAA: Pilots advised to exercise great caution while in Iranian airspace - 9/11/2018

3 Chicago teens shot near high school - 9/11/2018

WATCH: Remembering 9/11 - 9/11/2018

Politichicks.com

Michelle Owens of the Center for Prosecutor Integrity Discusses DOJ and Corruption in DC - 9/12/2018

Anni Cyrus: Nike’s Kaepernick ‘Just Do It’ Jihad - 9/12/2018

Reminder: Benghazi “Whistleblowers” Confirm Lies, Deceit, Cover-ups - 9/11/2018

When is Enough? When All Firearms Are Taken Away! - 9/11/2018

Six Years of Benghazi: The Comfort of Friends - 9/11/2018

Populist.TV

How did the #CIA React to the Events of September 11, 2001? | Guest: @JohnKiriakou - 9/11/2018

How did the #CIA React to the Events of September 11, 2001? | Guest: @JohnKiriakou` - 9/11/2018

Remembering September 11, 2001 & What it Means to be a Patriot | Guest: @skepticalvet - 9/11/2018

Headlines + What’s Your Best Trick for Separating Truth from Fiction??? Call-In NOW @ 202-521-1320!! - 9/11/2018

What is the Current Situation in #Syria? - 9/11/2018

Sara A. Carter

McConnell Suggests ‘Ethics Inquiry’ over Cory’s ‘Unusual Behavior’ - 9/7/2018

Trump Calls on Sessions to Investigate Anonymous NYT Op-Ed Author - 9/7/2018

Corey Booker’s Grandstanding Stunt Backfires - 9/6/2018

Lawmakers Call on Trump to Declassify Carter Page FISA - 9/6/2018

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The American Conservative

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Nike’s Bad Publicity * VIDEO * - 9/5/2018

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The Daily Signal

The Daily Signal Podcast: ‘Gosnell’ Filmmaker Shares Why This Story Had to Be Told - Invalid Date

Brett Kavanaugh’s Opponents Aren’t Really Against Him. They’re Against the Constitution. - Invalid Date

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America Has Strayed From Founders’ Vision for Economic Freedom and Limited Government, Walter Williams Says - Invalid Date

Government for Hire? Emails Show ‘Climate Industry’ Funds Jobs in Offices of Governors, Attorneys General - Invalid Date

The Epoch Times

Hurricane Florence Approaches Carolinas as Wind Speeds Reach 150 MPH - 9/12/2018

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The Federalist

Podcast: Democrats Push Single Payer, Republicans Push Paid Family Leave - 9/11/2018

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The Western Journal

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[viralhottopics]

The cruel double standard that may have saved Obamacare

(CNN)If you want to know why support for Obamacare is at an all-time high, here’s one explanation:

That’s how some explain the surging popularity of the embattled health care law. A recent poll from the Pew Research Center showed that 54% of Americans now approve of it, the highest number ever recorded by Pew. Some attribute this change to the fact that millions of Americans are now receiving help from the law.

This is part of an ongoing series by CNN’s John Blake and Tawanda Scott Sambou on race, religion and politics

But others cite another factor: The face of Obamacare is now white.

More Americans now realize Obamacare helps millions of working class whites and that it’s not — as once portrayed by conservatives — a form of welfare pushed by the first black president to help people of color, historians and scholars say. The media landscape is filled with images of the furrowed brows of anxious white residents at congressional town halls who fear they will suffer if they lose Obamacare, says Judy Lubin, a sociologist and adjunct professor at Howard University in Washington.

“When you see white working-class Americans saying that I’m benefiting and my family is getting help from the Affordable Care Act, you start to hear ‘repair’ not ‘repeal,'” Lubin says. “Whites standing up in support of a policy changes the dynamics of the conversation.”

The latest wrinkle in the Obamacare debate is revealing the existence of what the late comedian George Carlin called the ”American double standard.” It’s a brutal calculus that works this way: A crisis hits a marginalized group of Americans and no one cares; it hits white people — particularly white men — and it becomes a national emergency, activists and historians say.

“The country is founded on the double standard,” Carlin said. “We were founded on a very basic double standard. This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free … in order to continue owning their black African people … so they can wipe out the rest of the red Indian people … and move West and steal the rest of the land from the brown Mexican people.”

The double standard goes beyond race, though. Here are five notorious examples:

No. 1: The epidemic that ‘had no name’

It was a bizarre epidemic: Millions of Americans suffered in silence, afraid to tell anyone. Some suffered emotional breakdowns, others chose suicide.

It turned legions of people into drug addicts.

It was a wave of depression that hit white suburban housewives after World War II.

We hear a lot today about the plight of white working-class men. Reporters have made pilgrimages to places like West Virginia to examine how they’ve been left behind by globalization. Two Princeton University economists — including a Nobel Prize winner — released a report in 2015 that went viral, explaining how the despair experienced by poorly educated white men was leading them to suicide, alcoholism and drug abuse — and driving up the death rate for all middle-aged white Americans.

The white men America left behind

But few cared about the despair many white women experienced after World War II. They weren’t treated with compassion, historians say. Instead, they were treated to heavy doses of sexism — and powerful drugs.

“Women were being drugged into submission,” says Jonathan Metzl, a professor of psychiatry and sociology at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee who wrote a paper on this crisis entitled, “‘Mother’s Little Helper’: The Crisis of Psychoanalysis and the Miltown Resolution.”

The mass depression was spawned by the flipping of gender roles. During World War II, thousands of women entered the workforce because of a manpower shortage. The experience changed many, says Barbara J. Berg, author of “Sexism in America: Alive, Well and Ruining Our Future.”

“They had felt a sense of importance about themselves that they hadn’t felt before,” Berg says. “They liked having their own money. They enjoyed the camaraderie of work.”

Yet many of these newly empowered women were confined to suburban coffins after the war ended, where virtually all hope of being something more than a mother or housewife died. It was an era in the 1940s and ’50s when Newsweek could unabashedly declare, “For the American girl, books and babies don’t mix.”

When women approached doctors for help, they were given a prescription, Berg says: Be a perkier housewife.

“No one took them seriously,” Berg says. “Doctors prescribed Valium. They were told to have another baby. They said they weren’t being true women because true women should be happy in the domestic realm.”

It was the start of a strange drug epidemic — doctors and psychiatrists telling women to “just say yes.” Doctors plied women with powerful tranquilizers with names such as Miltown, Equanil, reserpine. At one point, about 75% of all anti-anxiety and depression drugs were prescribed to women, Metzl says. Miltown was so popular that pharmacies hung out signs saying “Out of Miltown,” or “More Miltown tomorrow.”

The epidemic even became fashionable. Magazines like Cosmopolitan and Ladies Home Journal ran articles by men telling women to pop pills to make their depression evaporate. Women hosted dinner parties where they plopped Miltown in their martinis, and Cartier jewelers sold a bracelet that doubled as a holder for a Miltown pill, says Tessa Johnson, author of an essay on the 1950s epidemic entitled, “How to be a domestic goddess.”

Few at the time thought that millions of American women had become drug addicts, Johnson says.

“They were very different than the typical image of a drug abuser — these women were well groomed and educated and they didn’t pose a threat to society,” Johnson says.

The doped-out domesticity of the 1950s was occasionally referred to in popular culture through movies like “The Stepford Wives” and the Rolling Stones’ song, “Mother’s Little Helper.” But it was the feminist Betty Friedan who diagnosed the problem in 1963 when she released her now classic book, “The Feminine Mystique.” She called it “the problem that has no name.”

She described it this way:

“It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the 20th century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night — she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question — ‘Is this all?'”

Most Americans ignored the reasons behind the pervasive depression because of a sexist double standard, says Berg.

”We have a certain image in our heads that the white male is in a position of power and that he needs to be strong, he needs to be the wage earner and he needs to be healthy, and when he can’t hit those markers, we’re upset,” Berg says. “But women have always been seen as weaker, submissive — they can always move in with a father or an uncle. We don’t put the same value on women’s achievement or health.”

No. 2: Race and the Second Amendment

The double standards of gun ownership

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No. 3: ‘God’s scourge’ comes to America

On June 5, 1981, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a report on a baffling new disease. It noted that five young gay men had been afflicted by a rare lung disease. Their immune systems had collapsed, and two had already died. The ominous story was one of the first official reports on the AIDS epidemic.

Unlike women’s postwar depression, this epidemic never became fashionable. It was always terrifying. But that terror was confined at first to the gay community. AIDS was initially seen as a gay problem. Some saw it as God’s punishment for a sinful lifestyle.

President Ronald Reagan, dubbed “The Great Communicator,” wouldn’t even acknowledge its existence.

“Ronald Reagan didn’t actually say the word ‘AIDS’ until the fifth year of his presidency,” says Timothy Patrick McCarthy, a Harvard University lecturer and co-editor of “Protest Nation: Words That Inspired a Century of American Radicalism.”

Reagan assumed office in 1981, and soon after thousands of people with AIDS began to die. Many died alone like modern-day lepers. Family members wouldn’t touch them because they were afraid of being infected. No one knew how the disease was transmitted.

The federal government’s response was slow in the beginning.

CDC established its first AIDS hotline and Congress passed its first AIDS treatment and research bill in 1983. But it was still ignored by much of the American public and the Reagan administration. Reagan’s spokesman even joked with reporters about the escalating crisis when he was asked about the President’s response to it during a series of news conferences in the early 1980s.

Listen to Reagan administration officials and reporters laugh at the AIDS crisis

In 1985, though, AIDS stopped being a gay problem; it became an American crisis. Something had changed. Even Reagan noticed.

A straight, blond-haired, blue-eyed boy was stricken by the virus.

His name was Ryan White. The Indiana teenager was a hemophiliac infected during a blood transfusion. He and his mother fought for his right to still attend public school despite his diagnosis. Their story was splashed across magazine covers and featured on television.

That same year, Reagan publicly mentioned the AIDS epidemic for the first time while responding to a question at a news conference. Five months later, he announced that finding a cure for AIDS was now one of the nation’s “highest public health priorities” and asked the nation’s surgeon general to assemble a major report on the disease.

“When AIDS hit a young white boy, all of a sudden there was this sense of how devastating the disease was. He humanized it,” says Carol Anderson, a historian and author of “White Rage,” a book that looks at white racial backlash through American history.

“As long as it [AIDS] was in the gay community or ravaging black women, you had politicians treating it as God’s scourge.”

The nation mobilized after gay men stopped being the symbol of AIDS. The US Department of Health and Human Services hosted the first International AIDS Conference in 1985. Reagan gave his first public speech on the disease two years later and established a Presidential Commission on HIV.

In August 1990, Congress passed the nation’s largest federal grant program targeting HIV. It was called the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act. It has been reauthorized four times since its passage.

White, though, never lived to see his honor. He died on April 8, 1990, just five months before the bill bearing his name became law. He was 18.

No. 4: ‘They were considered barely human’

He was the coddled only child of a wealthy New York family. He loved sailing and stamp collecting. Some of his friends dubbed him “King Franklin.”

There was little in Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s background to suggest that he would become a champion of the “forgotten man” during the Great Depression, the nation’s gravest economic crisis. Yet he became one of America’s greatest presidents by offering struggling American workers a New Deal, an array of government programs that — along with mobilizing for World War II — helped the nation recover from the Great Depression.

But that help — including the New Deal’s crown jewel, Social Security — was largely denied to one group, historians say: African-Americans.

Southern politicians inserted a provision into the federal pension plan that said no domestic or agricultural workers would be eligible for its benefits.

“About 80% of the black workforce was in those professions,” says Anderson, a professor of African-American Studies at Emory University in Atlanta.

“The way the law was written meant only certain jobs were eligible. They defined those jobs that were eligible by the kind of jobs blacks didn’t have.”

This economic exclusion didn’t just apply to Social Security but to various relief programs during the Great Depression. The Works Progress Administration, for example, paid lower wages to black workers than whites in the South. Some federal programs didn’t provide any relief to blacks, historians say.

“It was based on the assumption that blacks needed less money to live on because they were considered barely human,” Anderson says. “People said that black people were used to scraping by, but it’s really hard for a strong white man not being able to provide for his family.”

Federal help for blacks continued to lag behind whites when it came to another popular program that followed the Great Depression: the G.I. Bill.

It’s one of the towering achievements in American government. It laid the foundation for the economic boom that spread across post-war America. The federal government helped World War II veterans pay for college, get job training and buy their first homes.

That bill, though, was deliberately designed to give less help — and sometimes even no help — to black veterans, historians say.

And it was done in a way that removed all traces of overt racism, by invoking states’ rights. Southern congressional leaders made sure the G.I. Bill was administered by white state officials, bankers and college administrators. That gave them the power to deny help to black veterans, according to Ira Katznelson, a historian and author of “When Affirmative Action Was White.”

Black veterans who were eligible for the G.I. Bill were denied home and business loans, job training and admission to good colleges. In New York and northern New Jersey, for example, fewer than 100 of 67,000 mortgages insured by the G.I. Bill went to nonwhites, Katznelson said in his book.

Many white families today are still enjoying the economic head start the bill gave them, says McCarthy, the Harvard lecturer.

His is one of them, he says.

His grandfather was a World War II veteran who used the bill to get a housing loan and pay for college. His father was a first-generation college student, benefiting in part from the government assistance his grandfather received. McCarthy’s ability to attend college came from the multigenerational impact of the G.I. Bill, he says.

“My own family background, my own privilege, has been produced by a racial double standard that my father benefited from, but my black friends’ fathers did not benefit from,” he says.

No. 5: Crack babies and superpredators

A thought experiment: It’s the 1980s and crack cocaine is ravaging black communities across America. Families are being destroyed. Neighborhoods look like war zones. “Crack heads” and “crack babies” make their way into colloquial speech.

What would have happened if a young black or brown man carrying crack cocaine had stumbled into a police station during that era and asked police to help him overcome his addiction? Would he have been referred to a treatment center, given a “you’re better than this” lecture by a compassionate police officer? Maybe a hug?

Probably not, some say. That was a time when drug abuse in the black and brown communities was treated as a problem to be solved with war: the infamous “war on drugs.” But that Robocop approach to drug use has changed now that drug and opioid abuse is destroying white communities, legal scholars and historians say.

A truce has been called in the war on drugs now that many of its victims are white. Politicians and police chiefs across America are now saying drug abuse should be treated as a disease, not a crime. One Massachusetts police department even refuses to arrest people who walk into the station carrying drugs or needles if they ask for help.

Some would call it another example of the American double standard: White drug addicts are treated as victims; black and brown addicts are treated like a scourge on society.

Even black and brown children who’d been victims of the crack epidemic were dehumanized, says Anderson, the Emory professor.

“We even had disdain for ‘crack babies,’ ” Anderson says. “Think about how they were defined. They were depicted coming out of the womb drug addled, and people said they were going to be a drain on society. No empathy, no concern for their health.”

White drug abusers aren’t depicted as products of a pathological white culture. But black crack users were. It was seen as a “collective moral failure” in the black community, with demands that people lift themselves up by their bootstraps, wrote Ekow N. Yankah in a 2016 New York Times op-ed, “When Addiction Has a White Face.”

“White heroin addicts get overdose treatment, rehabilitation and reincorporation, a system that will be there for them again and again and again,” says Yankah, a law professor at Cardozo School of Law in New York. “Black drug users got jail cells and ‘Just Say No.’ ”

This cruel calculus — white lives matter; people of color don’t — has resurfaced in the current debate over Obamacare, some say.

Progressive politicians have been talking about creating universal health care ever since President Theodore Roosevelt proposed national health insurance in 1912. It was a central plank in the Democratic platform for decades. Yet when the nation’s first black president introduced health care legislation, it was transformed into a “racial slur,” says Matthew Lynch, a blogger for the Huffington Post and Education Week who wrote a column entitled, “Opposition to the Affordable Care Act is Rooted in Bigotry.”

He says Obama’s attempts to provide health care were portrayed by his opponents as a racial redistribution of wealth. The conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh called Obamacare a “civil rights bill” and said Obama’s “entire economic program is reparations.” Fox News host Bill O’Reilly said Obama allowed “historical grievances” to shape his economic thinking, leading to “his desire to redistribute wealth.”

“People didn’t think it was going to help poor white Southern people. They almost saw it as a form of welfare for blacks, and they said they don’t want any part of it,” Lynch says.

Opposition to Obamacare wasn’t always framed in blunt racial terms. People used coded language like “big government takeover” or tied it to a black man by calling it “Obamacare” to stir up racial resentment, says Lubin, the Howard University sociologist.

But it amounted to the same argument to white people: Here’s a black man who is going to give your hard-earned money to people who sit around all day having babies and collecting welfare, she says.

“You don’t even have to say you’re referring to brown or black people,” Lubin says. “Just say it’s the federal government getting bigger and helping people who don’t want to work.”

Now the optics of Obamacare have changed, Lubin says. The media is filled with images of working-class white people in farmer’s caps and jeans saying Obamacare saved their lives. Some of them include Trump supporters who say they didn’t think he was talking about them when he campaigned on getting rid of Obamacare.

“It made [Obamacare] real for people; they see people who look like them and whose lives have been saved,” Lynch says. “They’re able to connect to that.”

If the double standard is so embedded in American history, how do marginalized groups make their suffering real to others? Lubin says people have to realize that what hurts one community eventually hurts all Americans.

“We have to start appreciating each other’s humanity,” Lubin says. “We have to think of ourselves as a caring nation that cares for our fellow citizens regardless of race, ethnicity or class.”

Until that day comes, though, it may be wise to remember the cruel calculus of American history. If you want aid or justice, it helps to be white — and it’s even better if you’re straight and male.

Forget this and you may run into George Carlin’s old American double standard. To paraphrase another social critic, George Orwell:

All Americans are equal, but some are more equal than others.

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from The cruel double standard that may have saved Obamacare

[project1461-blog]

We are becoming what we hate

Trump’s agenda erodes the very foundation our nation was built on: Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…

Immigration is a contentious debate. It has divided our nation. But the human story here is one we can’t turn away from, not when so many lives are being ruined. Living in our country elevates people’s hopes. Many who came here illegally have children who have served or are serving in our armed forces, in Iraq, Afghanistan and were under the assumption that one day they too could become American citizens. Their children risk their lives for our country, and some paid the ultimate price.

We are now in an era of zero tolerance. ICE is rounding up those who are the most vulnerable. We were all forewarned. Many who snuck in here made mistakes. In their defense, fleeing oppressive regimes and gang violence in El Salvador, Guatemala, and areas of Mexico forces people to do desperate things. And for those who simply wanted to provide a better life for their family, they sadly were fooling themselves that this day would never come. Now facing the painful drive across the border, with no idea when they will ever see their wives, husbands or children again.

 Lives are being destroyed and we must not be silent.

We have all heard what happened to Guadalupe Garcia de Royas last week. Guadalupe is no threat to our society.  She lived in Phoenix for over a decade. She made a mistake when she first came here and made up a social security number. She now finds herself on the wrong side of history. She showed up at her local immigration office, every year for the past ten years and followed orders. Once again this year, she came with all her documentation. But instead of her green card being stamped she was taken into custody, a mother of two American teenagers, and deported to a small city deep in the heart of Mexico, where she hasn’t been for twenty-one years. 

Per Trump’s orders ICE is storming people’s homes, workplaces, schools, bus stops, outside of markets, laundromats… On this past Sunday, thousands protested in Milwaukee to stop Sheriff Clarke from appointing his deputies to act as immigration agents.

Something very wrong is happening in our country today.

It is up to us now to create a firestorm of opposition.  We may not have been able to impede Trump’s cabinet appointments, but the public is showing up on the streets, in town hall meetings across the U.S., and we are defiant. 

Eric Garcetti, mayor of Los Angeles, cites a new study that finds foreign-born residents contributed $233 billion to Los Angeles County alone in 2014. The mayor is implementing a program to help veterans, who come back from their tour of duty and find their parents deported, and they have nowhere to live. I spoke to Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office and they released this statement:

"Mayor Garcetti spoke to the Deputy Director of ICE’s Los Angeles Field Office and made it very clear that he wants greater transparency about ongoing operations and the status of all Los Angeles residents who may have been arrested or detained. He told the Deputy Director that he will do everything in his power — working alongside our City Attorney, the LAPD, immigrants’ rights advocates, congressional delegation and outside lawyers — to make sure that the legal rights of all Angelenos are respected and upheld at every stage of the enforcement process. Angelenos should not have to fear raids that are disruptive to their peace of mind and bring unnecessary anxiety to our homes, schools, and workplaces. The Administration should take a just, humane, and sensible approach that does not cause pain for people who only want to live their lives and raise their families in the communities they call home."

Zero forgiveness is what the alt right wants in place. What goes on in the minds of Americans who have become so headstrong they can’t find forgiveness?

I wanted to try and understand this far right white mentality, and their obsession with discrimination. I decided to interview Jim Gilchrist, the founder of the Minute Men. I was apprehensive about meeting Jim Gilchrist. My aim was to learn more about Operation Normandy, a movement he had hoped to launch in 2015, right before Donald Trump stormed through the 2016 primaries.

I met with Jim about a year or so ago, before the election of 2016 got underway. Jim believes the critical problem of immigration in the US today is the malfunction of our government to protect our border. He was quick to blame Obama and his failure to stop illegals from taking our jobs, being treated at our hospitals and securing free education for their children. Odd when Obama was often called the Deporter in Chief and under his administration over 2.5 million were sent home. Jim and his Minutemen believe in zero forgiveness that includes prohibiting citizenship to children born here, if their parents are not in the U.S. legally. I learn about Project Normandy and their mission to bring together a citizen watchdog patrol, from California through Texas, to take the law into their own hands.

We decide a field trip to the Southern California border seems the best way to get a real sense of the extreme conditions, and to view the new Israeli designed fencing system.

En route, our conversation in the car is broken up between three radio interviews, with Gilchrist as the featured guest. At one point I had to take the wheel so Jim could speak to Rush Limbaugh and his audience without the distraction of driving. Jim tells his listeners that 31 million illegal aliens are in the US today, posing a real threat to our homeland security. Buzzwords are used ISIS, ebola, and terrorist attacks on the home front. He arouses them with conspiracy rhetoric and mentions that he’s on his way down to the border to check that border patrol is doing their job.

We finally arrive at a dead end dirt road, a mile and a half from the border.

Jim is confused because the gate is closed and there is no one around to grant entry. Jim is hesitant about how we will get to the border. I suggest we walk the distance, even though it’s isolated terrain. I carry my backpack of camera equip, water, hats, sunblock, passport. Jim is holding a 4 oz. bottle of water. A woman passes us on horseback and shouts back to watch where we walk. She just saw a rattlesnake. Jim and I begin the trek making small talk at first. The brutal surroundings encourage me to search for a more compassionate side to Jim. He admits he loathes all cruelty to animals, listens to Bob Dylan and is entertained by Jon Stewart. When he isn’t pushing his extremist rhetoric Jim is a good conversationalist. There isn’t a soul around and we both get a real sense of what it must be like to be stuck out in this arid, lifeless plain, open to all the elements. The brush is the only protection yet it is craggy with razor sharp thorns. The sun beats down on us and I ask Jim does he think about the conditions that force human beings to risk their lives crawling through this unforgiving landscape? He does express empathy for those who make this journey, but that doesn’t change his stand on zero entry.

To understand Jim Gilchrist is to go back to 1969 with his tour of duty in Vietnam and his purple heart. He was not prepared for the hate he felt upon his return. He did not see himself as a baby killer but as a hero. He says would never risk his life today fighting for an America he no longer believes in. I learn he was a Democrat and then a Republican and then an Independent before signing on to the Republicans again in 2009. He was against Bush’s war in Iraq and against all war, knowing personally the toll it takes on a human being. His views are conflicted. He says he’s not a push over for the usual spin on Fox News, although he watches Fox as well as Aljazeera and BBC. His views are

Independent of the Republican platform but he admits he leans towards a tea party doctrine. I ask him if Obama were not black would there be such obstruction from the over sixty white male conservatives in the US today?

 “Could be a factor, “ he replies.

We get to the border and I see the wide expanse of steel fencing that’s constructed outside the older primary fence. The Trojan like barrier presents a foreboding message, even though its not completed. Flashing red lights, and a patrol car pulls up out of nowhere and stops. The border patrol agent asks what we are doing there? I look to Jim to explain, thinking he’s been here multiple times before. Jim doesn't respond. I thought he was well known at the border? Before the agent can tell us to leave I explain I am photographing Jim on the job. That’s when Jim identifies himself as ‘ the head of the right wing group, The Minute Men’. The agent nods with a smirk, “Oh yes, I know who you are.” I add that Jim has come down today to check up on how things are going down here.

There is an awkward moment and the agent tells us that he cannot be in any photos. This is his first day back from a five-month field case where he made a key drug bust. He explains he must be very careful since the arrest. Jim asks a few questions about the bust but the agent will not discuss it. The agent is of Latino descent. Jim asks what country he was born in?

 “Guatemala,” the ranger answers. Jim then continues, “When did you become an American citizen?” The agent proudly answers, ”Seven years ago. I have taken an oath to protect our country’s border everyday, and risk my life doing so.”

Just then Jim’s phone buzzes and he treks up the hill for another radio interview. I am left with a dumbfounded look on my face. I am embarrassed being here with this man who rallies extremists to take the law into their own hands.

The ranger reveals to me he left Guatemala during the civil war in the 90’s. We have an open conversation about some of what he sees are the biggest problems at the border. I think to myself if he were to catch me in the dark of night, I bet he’d show me compassion. I can see how complex his job must be because of his background.

Jim is finished his fourth radio show of the day. We head back down the dirt path, with little conversation. I stop and take a photo of what looks like rags in the field, tangled in tumbleweed. Jim goes over to inspect them. He picks up a mask and black material stitched together which resembles a boot. Jim explains that when “they” sneak across they wear masks to hide the reflection of their skin from the searchlight. A look comes over Jim’s face, like he’s holding up a dead rat. I try not to react. He is clearly disturbed finding evidence so close to the mother-lode fence. I walk behind him, snapping pics of the parched scenery. I am no longer able to curb my disgust.

I remind myself Jim Gilchrist is entitled to his harsh opinions. I don’t know what I expected from him, but he has been honest with me. He makes no excuses for being a zealot. He’ s convinced himself that today’s multi cultural America resembles a nation he no longer can respect. But I wonder if he realizes that he’s able to lash out at the government he’s so critical of because, like all Americans, he can exercise his First Amendment Rights.

Enrique Marones, President/Founder of Border Angels, gave me his comments. His words reflect a powerful message, in context to today’s assault on immigrants and their human rights:

“Human rights has no borders. Its time the US practices what it preaches. Mr. Gorbachov tore down his wall. Ten years later the US builds our wall - Operation Gatekeeper. It has led to the death of more than 12,000 human beings. Ni una muerte mas, reforma ya!"

Towns across the U.S. will be holding meetings with their elected officials, during the winter recess. In Los Angeles Rep Karen Bass will be holding a town hall, specifically to advise residents regarding the wave of immigration arrests and how best to protect and help our fellow citizens. In Los Angeles, In the three days since these raids began, over 200 people have been detained and are expected to be deported.

Originally from New York City, Tish Lampert began her work as a photojournalist in London where she freelanced for numerous publications and newspapers, including The London Times, The Evening Standard, and Time Out Magazine. She distinguished herself as one of the only women who photographed inside the mines at Abergavenny, Wales. Lampert created a series titled “Exiting the Metropolitan” tracing the closure of rural farms as the British M1 highway was extended.

Tish Lampert’s sixteen years of chronicling U.S. citizens exercising their First Amendment Rights has evolved into two books, America Speaks and I Protest. Ms. Lampert is a 2013 recipient of a Nathan Cummings Foundation Grant for America Speaks. A copy of the book was presented to Michelle Obama. Both America Speaks and I Protest are endorsed by Martin Sheen, Harry Belafonte, Dennis Macdougal, and Greg Palast. In June 2013, Ms. Lampert exhibited at the United Nations. In the fall of 2013, Lampert’s photos from her book America Speaks were on view at the Dan Eldon Gallery in Malibu. Spring 2016, Lampert’s I Protest is featured in an exhibition in Los Angeles with A&I and Harmon Press.

More information about Tish and her work can be found at tishlampert.com.