Category Archives: General Interest

January 5, 2024 · 7:47 pm

Take time to step away from online viral drama

This post is going to jump around a bit from the political to the personal and hopefully end on a positive note. Many people believe they’re telling you the truth, even when they feel no responsibility to do the legwork to try to verify the information they present as facts. Instead they tell you to do your own homework. I’ve seen this on numerous sites that delve into politics and where they get into the hot take viral stuff a lot. 

Well, yes, we should all do our own homework, but if someone’s presenting “news” and advising people how to respond to that “news,” then they should feel some responsibility for making sure the information they presented was accurate. This trend of racing to repeat the hot take news permeates actual news organizations, with actual journalists and among social media content creators. Everyone likes to race to “amplify” is the word they use these days, the stuff that everyone’s talking about.

I try to present links to where I found information and also, try to take the time to do a bit of research. When I joined the Army, I attended the Defense Information School and went through the basic journalism course. That was back in 1979, but I still remember how many times my instructor made me rewrite articles and he challenged us on how we presented the facts and how we went about sourcing and verifying information, along with all sorts of ruthless critiquing our grammar and sentence-structure. I realized then that I wasn’t a very good writer, but I do love writing.

Yesterday I read a piece on a right-wing site about the Netflix movie, Leave the World Behind, which was scathing, but also included examples of messaging that I missed. I hadn’t been to that right-wing site in a long time, but just decided to take a glance at the headlines. The piece, Obama’s New Movie, Same Message: Blame White People, describes the first alarming event to unfold in the movie:

“To be sure, there was ample foreshadowing suggesting that Americans would ultimately be blamed for their own suffering.  The oil tanker that crashes into the beach is the “White Lion,” a reference to the early-seventeenth century privateer credited with delivering the first Africans to the colony of Virginia to be sold as indentured servants.  We get it: oil and slavery are both really bad.”

Even though I missed the “White Lion” messaging, the movie was filled with left-wing racial messaging and the only character in the movie, who had done anything to prepare for an emergency was negatively labeled a “survivalist” and portrayed as being greedy and a mean-spirited, bad neighbor, for not just handing over antibiotics to the liberal neighbors, who came knocking on his door.

I’ve watched plenty of prepper videos on You Tube since 2020, with advice on how to handle people who come to your door wanting your supplies in an emergency and how to protect your home in an emergency too. Protecting your home and family is of paramount importance in a crisis and chaotic situation. Before 2020, my emergency preparedness efforts were, what I’ll describe as inadequate, not well-organized, and looking at the world through rose-colored glasses, as far as to how people really behave in emergency situations and chaotic times. I was focused mainly on weather emergencies. 2020 was a huge wake-up call for me, because I hadn’t thought seriously about civil unrest or the breakdown of law and order. 

While I don’t want to abandon my religious convictions about helping people, I believe protecting my family and home is a higher duty than trying to take care of other people, so I’ve had to reevaluate how I go about my own preparedness efforts. And, while I’m not someone who has made being a “prepper” my entire life, since 2020, I invest a lot more time acquiring information and working on my own preparedness. 

I firmly believe working to become better prepared for emergencies, in these tumultuous times, is something everyone in America should do. 

It’s easy to use data to make whatever case you want and the vast majority of BLM protests in 2020 were peaceful, however those that weren’t peaceful caused more damage than any other riots in US history. The rioting and looting during the 2020 BLM protests really served as a wake-up call to me, because in some of those riots, the police were ordered to stand-down. The other thing that struck me was how quickly normal neighborhoods could become dangerous. One of my adult children lives in a city and there was some BLM protesting there and a bit of chaos. Here’s an even-handed 2021 review at Reason magazine, of those violent protests in 2020: Gaslighting Last Summer’s Riots and the Law Enforcement Response. For me, it was a wake-up call that I hadn’t really thought enough about what happens if the police don’t respond to protect my neighborhood or home or what happens if they become overwhelmed with too many emergency situations to handle. Just realizing how quickly things can go from normal to chaos hit home in 2020.

I still believe that principled and proactive leadership, at any level, even in your own family, can keep your family and group calm and working together. As a society we lack principled leadership at every level – in our federal and local government, in our communities and most of all within too many families. In fact, the idea of needing leadership in families would be dismissed by many people and arguments about every person’s opinions matter and everyone has equal say and all sorts of other debates would ensue. In American life over the past century, there’s been a complete abandonment of the idea of there even being a “head of household,” who is not just the primary breadwinner in the household, but someone who plays a key leadership role in nurturing, protecting and guiding his/her family. Parents used to be the leaders in their families.

If you choose to lead, hopefully you’ll think about how your advice and behavior “influences” (that’s the popular word these days) other people. If you choose to follow, well, hopefully you think long and hard about the character and competence of the person or people you choose to follow. 

Getting people fired up about Us vs. Them constantly isn’t a good leadership model for pulling America together, but its’ the kind of leadership millions of Americans (on both sides) gravitate to. It just adds to the divisiveness and rancor. People seem to want someone to blame and be angry at some evil person or group labeled “THEM,” who are out to destroy us, the good people.  I click on a few You Tube prepper/homesteading channels as sort of a barometer of how the Trump base is reacting to the conspiracy-addled right-wing social media echochamber and I click on X and read some liberal news opinion writers as sort of a barometer of how the liberal left is reacting to the conspiracy-addled left-wing social media echochamber. There’s a whole lot of anger at “THEM” on both sides.

In 2014 I wrote a blog post, Who will defend our castle?, in which I mentioned one of the last combat skirmishes, the Battle for Castle Itter, in WWII (thanks to JK for that link). Castle Itter was a German castle that the Nazis used for VIP prisoners. A small group of American soldiers were sent to secure Castle Itter. I wrote:

“The almost farcical nature of the characters and events in the battle for Castle Itter provides a quirky, yet almost emblematic view of  how in the unlikely circumstance of fighting for their lives, this castle’s curious mix of inhabitants, like people everywhere, can put aside national and personal loyalties, to unite in moments, because not much else mattered, except surviving.”

“The story centers on VIP French prisoners, whom the SS kept imprisoned in Castle Itter during WWII.  As the Americans advanced across Europe in the waning days of the war, a young American first lieutenant, John C. “Jack” Lee, Jr., made the mistake of volunteering to go secure the castle, after a surrendering German major arrived to tell the advancing Americans about the VIP prisoners held prisoner in nearby Castle Itter.  The young American officer sets off with 8 volunteers, plus 5 soldiers from the African-American Company, along with the surrendering German major and a truckload of his German soldiers.   The French VIPs, upon seeing their small rescue force, were unimpressed that such a paltry band of soldiers was sent to rescue their grand personages.  But quickly the scene changed as the castle fell under attack from SS troops.  The squabbling French VIPs (which included two French generals, who despised each other) and  the surrendering Germans all turned to the young American lieutenant to take charge of their castle defense.  To get the full impact of the absurdity of the events, read the full story of the battle for Castle Itter (here’s the link again).”

So, the German soldiers inside the castle and two French generals, who despised each other, all fell in line and worked with the small group of American soldiers, led by a young American Army officer, John C. “Jack” Lee, when the castle fell under attack by the SS. If this unlikely group could unite in a moment of crisis, I feel certain that Americans can too… if we choose to.

I’ve been challenging myself to stop jumping reflexively to the “Us vs. Them” way of thinking and instead trying to think about ways to present my views and beliefs, without dismissing people who hold views that are completely different. That doesn’t mean I want to appease people or go along to get along or not speak my mind, it’s just that if I am talking to someone who I hope I can reach and get them to listen to my viewpoint, that’s not going to happen if I beat them over the head constantly. I’m trying to find ways to find small slivers of common ground with people I care about, who hold completely different political views and it is truly a challenge, because I’m very quick to jump on my soapbox and spout my conservative viewpoints or point out what I consider the far-left crazy, that I believe is wrecking America. 

Many people who are on the left, hold equally strident views about Trump and right-wing Americans and believe we’re wrecking America. There are loads of liberals who are terrified of Americans who own and carry firearms. Deep down, even liberal elites know that the people who do prepare and do know how to defend themselves and others are who to turn to in a crisis. In this Leave the World Behind movie, no matter how negatively they tried to portray the “survivalist,” when the chips were down, he’s the one the liberals went to for help. The wealthy liberal elites rely on armed bodyguards, not ones wearing peace sign necklaces or blabbing about their pronouns. Bottom line is that if things get more chaotic we might not know what’s happening all over the country or world and what’s really going to matter is what’s happening in our own neighborhoods. Most of all, real change starts within each of us and no matter how much craziness is swirling about, we can all take steps to become better prepared – spiritually, mentally, physically, financially and within our own families and homes. 

I want to circle back to Ronald Reagan’s favorite dystopian novel, The Journal of David Q. Little, by Daniel R. McMichael, which I hadn’t even heard about until reading an article where this was mentioned. While many people, myself included, view the 2020 pandemic lockdowns and BLM rioting as wake-up calls to how quickly our rights can be infringed upon and civil order can slide into chaos, for many other people, they view the threat as the Americans who resisted lockdowns and spoke out against “defund the police” or Jan. 6th.

We live in a time filled with non-stop propaganda hitting us everywhere we turn – even in the name of an oil tanker in an Obama-produced apocalyptic movie. In that 1967 McMichael novel, the narrator, David Q. Little, sounds like many people today. While he’s aware that things are no longer normal, his wife and best friend, who is an ardent proponent of socialism, keep talking him around to why all the changes being made that curtail civil liberties and erode constitutional rights are only minor sacrifices they all need to make temporarily for the greater good – world peace. David Q. Little came to the realization that America had been surrendered to communists gradually, but his wife and best friend were much slower at coming to that realization. However, in the end they all had to face the truth, as their jobs were eliminated, their homes seized and even their children taken by the state. They were exiled from society. As the chaos and tyranny spread, it became nearly impossible to avoid the truth (or becoming an enemy of the state).

With our overload of information and everyone and their brother now taking to social media to add their two cents, it can take stepping away from the social media and news media noise to see more clearly. I like to find some quiet time to reflect lately, because it helps me sort through the information overload and escape the online “hot take” drama. I highly recommend taking some breaks from the media noise.

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January 3, 2024 · 7:32 pm

Getting on the road to achieving dreams

Many people start the new year with “resolutions” to start fresh, make big changes, and optimism about following their dreams. While this may sound like being a killjoy, figuring out where you’re really at in life is probably more important than the dreams of where you want to go. Knowing where you’re really at, not just physical location, but also age, physical health, financial health, responsibility load (time constraints) and actual skills you possess right now, will help center your plans for the future on reality – not the big dreams. This isn’t intended to burst your bubble or dissuade you on pursuing dreams, but more a statement of fact to help ground you in how you go about achieving your dreams. 

Wherever we’re at in life, as long as we’re alive we can all work toward tackling new challenges and pursuing dreams, but there’s always that “but” and often we might have to chink away at some of the more unrealistic and impractical dreams and focus on the doable for where we’re really at in life. Often once you start working on the doable, you’ll build a solid foundation of skills and knowledge, that will make achieving those loftier dreams possible. The idiom “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” means building something great takes time and dedication. 

Benjamin Franklin was probably America’s first self-help guru, as he set about developing personal virtue as the path to building civic virtue in our new republic. The centerpiece of building our American republic was a citizenry of people committed to civic virtue. Civic virtue is the willingness of citizens to put a high value on commitment to the community and be willing to make personal sacrifices for the good of the community over their own self-interests. America’s founding fathers believed in the importance of civic virtue for our American experiment in self-governance to thrive.

You can’t become a nuclear scientist or a doctor or even a good cook without practice and building a foundation of skills and knowledge. That learning to practice and develop skills is how to learn self-discipline, which is the key to building good character. Our culture has completely lost sight of the importance of developing virtue, which all comes from learning self-discipline. I wrote about this in a 2017 blog post: When everyone gets a gold star. Once you start developing more skills and knowledge through dedication to practice, the larger accomplishment is you’re learning self-discipline, which will carry you through on more challenging endeavors.

I’m going to use needlework as an example, because years ago I offended some cross-stitchers online for pointing out that a popular online challenge in May some of them promote, they call it Stitch Maynia, focuses on the wrong thing. The idea behind Stitch Maynia is to start a lot of new projects in May. Some participants start a new cross-stitch project every day in May and others pick a set number of projects to start in May, but the goal is about starting a lot of new projects. Upfront I don’t “participate” in online challenges of any sort, but this one bothered me a great deal.

I was watching videos online of people new to cross-stitching preparing for Stitch Maynia and I knew they would likely never complete those projects. While they were enthusiastic about all the amazing projects they’d be doing, I knew from things they said, that some of them were taxing their budget to buy the patterns and supplies for a month’s worth of projects at one time. It’s easy to spend a lot of money on needlework quickly (I speak from experience here). The larger aspect of this Stitch Maynia, is rather than being a wonderful way to inspire new stitchers, I still feel this is a recipe to waste a lot of money and acquire piles of projects that will never get finished. Even more importantly, I saw videos of experienced stitchers talk about their regret and disillusionment about starting so many projects at one time. I’d expect most of the new stitchers quit cross-stitching quickly after participating in this, but plenty of cross-stitchers participate in this challenge. Counted cross-stitch takes a lot of time, even small projects can take 8-12 hours (or longer) of stitching and large projects can take months, even with stitching a few hours a day. 

So, what happens when you start a dozen or more news projects and then the reality hits that you can’t possibly keep up with stitching that many projects? I saw some YT cross-stitchers who do elaborate spreadsheets of rotating through their numerous projects and stitching so many hours on each one a week. Most of us aren’t going to keep to that sort of commitment and the other big reality is for most people, something that started out as a dream we were excited about, becomes a chore, or worse a burden, and then there’s the guilt factor of spending a lot of money on all that stuff that’s just sitting there. All the excitement with “being inspired” in the beginning can wane as the reality that even hobbies can require a lot of hard work and time to achieve the beautiful end result you’re dreaming about.

Trust me, I’ve been there on starting too many projects, but the bigger problem is the focus shouldn’t be on starting lots of projects. To become a better stitcher takes time and developing the basic skills. You’ll make mistakes and have to learn to fix them. Where the focus is on developing basic skills and finishing that project, you’ll feel a sense of accomplishment. There’s nothing but looking at defeat if you start dozens of projects and realize you will likely never finish them. That’s all about instant gratification hits, as you pull out something new and exciting each day, then push it aside to start something new the next day.

Shortly after that gold star post in 2017, I wrote another post, Dutiful women and needlework, about how from one generation to the next, America went from the old way of rearing children to learn basic skills with daily chores as the norm, to a much more permissive parenting model by millions of American parents who lived through the Great Depression and WWII. I am a product of parents, who were part of that Greatest Generation and although my mother was big on assigning us chores and teaching us skills, she didn’t want us to struggle as hard as she had growing up. She learned from a very young age to put duty above her personal wants, because that’s how most children were raised back then. My mother had a lot more self-discipline than I do. We’re now a few more generations down the road and everything is about how children feel, not making sure they develop practical skills and knowledge, learn how to work through adversity, but most importantly – learn self-discipline.

Rather than starting all sorts of new projects at one time or chasing some big dream this new year, perhaps most of us would benefit at figuring out where we’re really at in life, then focus on small steps to take every day that lead to building more skills and knowledge. I need to start an exercise routine and make changes to my diet. I’m also working on dealing with my lifelong cluttering habits – especially with paperwork and craft/needlework supplies, however this really stems from my bad habits of hanging on to too much stuff, in general, and my totally delusional belief that someday I’m going to use all this stuff. Reading more is one of my goals too.

Everyone has areas where they could use some work – whether it’s more self-discipline with diet, exercise, getting things done on a timely manner, tackling tasks we don’t enjoy and put off, and the list goes on and on. We can all find things we can improve in our habits and new challenges to tackle that put us on the road to becoming more disciplined. And then we’ll be well on the road to achieving those big dreams.

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December 31, 2023 · 9:54 pm

Puzzles in my future

As 2023 winds down, rather than ramble on about the past year, try to forecast what 2024 holds in store for us, or make resolutions, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to visit my blog and wish you a happy and joyous new year.

Yesterday I ran to Hobby Lobby to buy some yarn, because they had all of their yarn on sale for 30% off, then I wandered into the jigsaw puzzle aisle and found this amazing cow puzzle. Their jigsaw puzzles were 40% off. And before I left I took a quick walk through the Christmas remnants and found this cute Christmas puzzle for 75% off:

No matter what else happens, I know I’ve got some needlework and jigsaw puzzles in my future.

Hope you have a wonderful year!

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December 30, 2023 · 10:37 am

Feeling out of touch with Hollywood

This past week I watched the Barbie movie on Max. Rather than get on my soapbox about the feminist ideology oozing out of perfectly pink Barbie, what’s more important are the millions of people (largely women and girls) who got excited about the hype with this movie. A bit of a craze started as girls and grown women began dressing in pink and heading to movie theaters this past summer to watch Barbie. I didn’t wear pink to watch the movie this past week, but I felt like I might be reaching for a bottle of pink Pepto Bismal, as I tried not to gag on so much stomach-churning feminist claptrap in that script. 

The movie presents the history of Barbie with little girls literally smashing their baby dolls heads in, as they were liberated from playing only the role of mothers. Along came Barbie to give them the world… A “girl power” movie wouldn’t be replete without an evil patriarchy challenge, which was led by Ken. The big winner though was Mattel: “Mattel on Wednesday said Barbie sales jumped 16% in the third quarter, riding the wave of the blockbuster movie. The “Barbie” film, released in July, is largely responsible for the bump, Mattel said. It is the highest-grossing film this year, clearing more than $1.4 billion worldwide.”

It’s always interesting to me how so many Americans will rush to don t-shirts, hats, etc. all to snap photos and videos to post on social media to become part of a craze. The left doesn’t have a monopoly on this, because there are loads of people on the right who rushed to wear red MAGA hats too and for many of them posting photos on social media was part of that craze too. Millions of people, I think, long to be part of something larger than themselves and many seek that sense of belonging on social media.

To compound my misery, I watched the Netflix apocalyptic movie, Leave the World Behind this past week too. I felt very out of touch with Hollywood. This movie was filled with all sorts of racial and political overtones, plus social commentary and no wonder since the Obamas were executive producers.  

I’m going to describe the characters by race, since the political racial overtones in this movie smack you in the face. The plot is about a white couple with two teenage children, who rent a gorgeous vacation home away from the city. Their electronic devices stop working and all sorts of strange events begin to happen. Without spoiling the entire plot, the black home-owner and his daughter return to their home, due to concerns about a reported blackout in the city.

So, the black home-owner is the guy with all the geopolitical/military/technical knowledge, who begins to piece together the big picture of what’s happening. As for the vacationing couple, the white woman is obnoxious, self-absorbed and patronizing, while her husband – the white guy – is the most useless person imaginable. He doesn’t know how to do anything, figure out anything and he awaits other people (usually his wife) to tell him what to do. There’s also a stereotypical “bad” white guy – one of those President Obama labeled bitter clingers years ago when he was president – the clinging to their guns and religion type white guy- he’s labeled a “survivalist” in this movie. Actually, that character was the only person in the movie whose actions and behavior seemed logical to survive a catastrophe, but he was portrayed negatively. And to top it all off – the movie shows that survivalist with an American flag flying in front of his house. 

I kid you not, there’s an actual line by the spineless husband, played by Ethan Hawke: HAWKE: (As Clay Sandford) I have no idea what I am supposed to do right now. I can barely do anything without my cell phone and my GPS. I am a useless man.”

Sometimes characters grow on me in movies, but I went from being indifferent to the characters in the beginning of the movie to actively disliking the main adult characters by the end. Even the teenage children were unappealing, with the white couple’s kids being a young teen girl, who I thought was weird and the teen boy who was just a stereotype of a sex-obsessed teen male. The black home-owner’s daughter was worried about her mother who was supposed to be flying home to the city, but she kept making racial political statements about white people and considering the Obamas were executive producers, fanning the flames of racial grievance wasn’t surprising. The characters, even the kids, seemed more like caricatures than fully developed characters, but all of them, except for the “survivalist” were displaying an alarming amount of normalcy bias:

 ”Normalcy bias is the tendency to underestimate the likelihood or impact of a negative event. Normalcy bias prevents us from understanding the possibility or the seriousness of a crisis or a natural disaster.”

A September Vanity Fair piece, Leave the World Behind: Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, and Ethan Hawke Face the End-Times: Barack and Michelle Obama executive produced this unsettling apocalypse thriller. offers this take on the plot:

“If society actually did begin to completely break down, you probably would never know exactly how or why. You’d be aware that something was wrong, but the specifics would get cloudy once phones stopped working, the internet was severed, and media networks turned to dead air. Ominous late-night electronic shrieks from the sky; explosions in the distance; planes and boats plowing into the ground, and animals flocking in eerie patterns would only hint at the chaos. A whisper network of survivors might convey contradictory rumors, but how would you know if any of it was true? That’s the unsettling premise of Leave the World Behind, the new Netflix thriller that compounds its terror through uncertainty.”

One thing I’ve noticed as I’ve tried to learn more about emergency preparedness is many of the online prepper content creators who delve into the geopolitics and big picture stuff rush to give blanket advice based on totally unverified information and they parrot alarmist hot takes that stoke fear and encourage rash decisions. This type of content generates a lot of clicks. You’ll see the same predictions of the same life-altering catastrophes, with recommended drastic measures you need to take now, year after year after year. 

While you can overreact, this movie did cast into stark relief a glaring reality – how these characters were struggling to make sense of their world as a life-altering catastrophe is unfolding around them and all the security of normalcy is being ripped out from under them is probably how most of us would react too. So, no matter how much I disliked the way the characters were scripted in this movie, I think most of us would be struggling if we were cut off from technology and information that are part of our everyday life and even people who do invest time, energy and resources into prepping would not be immune from all the emotions and reactions that make us human. We would all be struggling to make sense of the world if things started to fall apart in a massive catastrophe and chaos replaced our normal everyday routines. 

None of us can escape being mere mortals – that’s the big takeaway.

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December 19, 2023 · 10:34 am

On the hunt for our American spirit

This is going to be a politics blog post of sorts, but here are three pots of cherry tomatoes I stuck on my back porch a few weeks ago. I had neglected the plants in my fall garden, so these have stunted growth and the tomatoes are tiny, but amazingly the plants are still producing. Out of the eight containers of cherry tomatoes, I picked three that looked like they might survive. These are from Burpee Veranda Red Hybrid tomato seeds and I’ve had more success in my backyard with this type of tomato than any other ones I’ve tried. Hopefully, some plant food and regular watering will help them along.

Now to the politics… Looking at where America is at and somehow believing a highly contentious presidential election year and an election, are going to do a single thing to pull Americans together seems delusional to me. I expect the divides to further deepen in the next year, but that doesn’t mean everything is hopeless..

After giving a lot of thought to our American political divides, first I’d like to give my short take on the 2024 presidential election. The 2024 presidential election can’t fix what’s broken in America.

The divides in our country can’t be healed with a presidential election, that half the country won’t accept as legitimate, and that’s where we’re at. However, I still hold out hope for America and after my quick presidential election take, I’ll explain why I’m still hopeful.

If Biden were to win – Trump supporters would be screaming the election was rigged or stolen. Mayhem would ensue.

If Biden dropped out and some other Dem. candidate won – same thing Trump supporters would be screaming the election was rigged or stolen.

If Trump won – Democrats and liberals would take to the streets with a march that would make the 2016 Women’s March and #Resist look like small fries. They would not accept the election as legitimate.

If DeSantis or Haley were to win the GOP nomination – Trump would not accept that gracefully and he’d set about to attack the GOP primary as rigged or stolen and discourage his supporters from showing up to vote. If either of them won, well, the Trump supporters and Democrats and liberals wouldn’t accept that as legitimate, especially DeSantis, since he’s determined to push back against the left’s “woke” agenda. Even though some leftie mouthpieces aren’t as harsh about Haley now, if she were to win, I just harken back to how Dems and the liberal media ranted about GWB and compared him to Hitler. This delegitimizing elections kicked into high gear in America in 2000, not 2016. The Clinton impeachment scandal and that scorched earth spin war effort (Carville called it going scorched earth) set this delegitimizing and stolen election politics into motion.

Add in all the other corruption into the mix – Trump corruption, Biden corruption, media corruption and seeing how the partisan political corruption has seeped into some of our most important institutions, like those tasked with safeguarding our national security and safety, well, I just don’t see much hope of Washington or politicians changing course and trying to work on unifying America.

However, we’re not hopeless. When people talk about other things, besides politics, usually they can still find some common ground. Although, just about anything can become a contentious political issue these days, we all have the power to try to start changing that. I need to work on moving away from the politics stuff too and especially the politics news. I’ve been trying to wean myself off politics news for a while. Then I’ll get caught up in some hot button political topic and do a bunch of googling, trying to figure it out – like the Twitter Files reporting after a House hearing a week or so ago. I wrote some blog posts and now I’m done with that (for now), because nothing I write about that is going to make a bit of difference. Plus, in the bigger scheme of things, what really matters is our families, our friends, our communities.

The partisan spin information war will continue to blow hot – because a lot of media and politicians get rich and powerful by fueling it. The rest of us just get played for suckers. That’s where the hope comes in. I think that since all the pandemic drama, the protesting dramas and all the never-ending political drama, many Americans long for a return to some sort of normalcy, where people aren’t consumed by political drama constantly. Most Americans also don’t want civil disorder or lawlessness. I still believe most of America wants a return to living where there’s a bit more tolerance and definitely stronger communities. These are things that are within the reach of every community to build, if we start making the effort. 

We have the choice to buy into the media-driven and social-media driven drama or we can work at weaning ourselves away from all the hot takes, the endless fearmongering and drama and the steady stream of “Us vs. Them” conspiracy theories that try to drag us down rabbit holes of distrust and division.

My father was a kind and good-natured man. He worked hard, was dedicated to his family, and he was one of those people who never met a stranger. He did watch the news and read the local newspaper every day, but he had no interest whatsoever in politics. He was more interested in local news and what was going on around him, oh, and his garden and yard. He had a gift for getting things to grow. That’s probably a healthier perspective. 

Most of these tempest in a teapot “national conversation” stories aren’t accurate or honest reporting, are skewed to advance a political agenda and have no relevance on anything really. There’s an entire class of political/culture punditry that makes locating videos on social media of the most extreme weirdos and then hyping them as representative of “the other side.” There are a lot of people who get rich off of this – on the left and the right. 

The demise of local newspapers has also pulled us away from paying close attention to our own communities. Cell phones leave many people living almost every waking minute transfixed on the little screen, and completely oblivious to what’s going on around them. Years ago, I quipped that America could be invaded and taken over and a sizable percentage of the country likely wouldn’t notice, unless it interfered in their cell phone service.

What’s happening right around us is way more important than some “national conversation” topic drummed up for clicks or to feed a political agenda. In any type of emergency situation – what’s going on locally is what we’re all going to need to be paying attention to. If we start working on building even a tiny bit of community around us, before there’s a crisis, well, we’ll be way ahead of the game in trying to weather those storms. We also might get better at bridging divides, one smile and small goodwill gesture at a time.

America is blessed with many natural resources, but one of our most under-utilized is our American spirit. Yes, that American spirit is still alive, if we just dig it out from under the pile of fear and hate-driven news/social media “information” overload. Americans are a people with a do-gooder gene in our national DNA. We pitch in to help other people and even countries, we rush to donate money, resources, and offer a helping hand. We can rekindle the American spirit without any government studies, new laws or government spending. We don’t need politicians for this at all – we can all begin to work on it and pass it on with a smile and lending a helping hand, as we can.

Changing our attitude and rekindling our American spirit doesn’t require some big national movement or setting up some organization or group. Any of us can work on this on our own or within our families or with a few friends or in our communities. Important things in life don’t really start with just a change of heart – it requires taking those first steps to really start. You can think about something for the rest of your life, but until you get up off your butt and start doing, nothing’s going to change.

Rather than looking at everything as Us vs. Them, I’m going to work on looking for tiny bits of common ground with people I disagree with on politics and hot button issues. With Christmas days away, this might be a good thing for many people in America to try.

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December 16, 2023 · 1:18 pm

Getting back to needlework in 2024

Do people still want to read articles and stories and books or do they prefer short bits like 60 second TikTok videos or short Twitter/X posts? I think, by and large, the popularity of short content points to shorter content is preferred. As someone who rambles on a lot, social media is a bad fit for me.

I’m very much an amateur writer and not a very good one, but when I started this blog I was terrified to write, even though I longed to write. Once I started this blog, it became a place of my own, to express my opinion and ideas. It has helped me get writing, instead of talking myself out of writing. 

However, I felt weary and tired recently writing about the new “cognitive security” (what I consider thought police) efforts forming in America and I am sick to death of blustering, lying Trump (yes, he does lie a lot too, just like the Dems trying to destroy him) and all the insane, corrupt Dem/liberal media Trump hysteria. I don’t want to race into rehashing all the details of the #Resist cabal vs. Trump battles since 2016, even though assuredly heading into the 2024 presidential election year, these issues will resurface and impact us, whether we’re burned out about it or not. 

I know people who are struggling and I shop at Walmart, Dollar General and Dollar Tree frequently. Dollar Tree went from everything $1 to everything $1.25 in 2022. One of the Dollar Tree stores in my area now carries some merchandise that’s at even higher price points. I bought a thin fleece throw for $5 there last week. I wanted a thinner throw, because I have several heavier fleece throws already and wanted something lighter for those days where I’m just a little bit chilly. 

There were so many empty shelves in that Dollar Tree store and I kept noticing that. In the Walmart Neighborhood Market store I frequent, the pasta section was pretty sparse again the other day. And that’s how it’s been going since 2020, empty sections here and there throughout the stores. Nothing ever really returned to pre-COVID days that I can see. Sure, I can find plenty of food, but it seems obvious to me that the efficient systems of our complex food supply networks, that many retailers rely on, aren’t working as well as before 2020.

Then there are winners of the 2020 social mitigation efforts. Amazon, which now fields it’s own fleet of Prime delivery vans, I pass all the time in my neighborhood, seems like one of the biggest winners. We all adjust and I do use Amazon frequently. Amazon also has Amazon Fresh grocery deliveries in some areas, but not where I live. Like many Americans, I live where there’s not a big selection of grocery stores to choose from, although Publix is building a store here. I can’t see myself paying Publix prices, even if they do make shopping a pleasure. We’ve had Food Lion, Kroger, and Walmart in my town for a long time. Many rural areas have even less selection and people have to drive longer distances to get to those stores.

2024 is another presidential election year and the odds of it being calm, orderly and no big commotion seem very remote, while the chances of it being more craziness high. 

Anytime you even suggest stocking up food, water and supplies in case of an emergency, many people react like you’re an insane Doomsday lunatic and the reactions to “prepping” are often very negative and dismissive. I’ve always stocked up extra food and supplies, but I realized in 2020, once I started reading more and watching online pantry organization/prepping/homesteading content that I really needed to rethink my preparedness efforts. 

First off, I have always been a catastrophizer type person, worrying a bit too much about all the “what ifs.” Watching online prepping stuff was a mixed blessing, where some of the information was very helpful, but some came with non-stop doom and gloom, predicting collapse, calamity or SHTF was about to befall us in days, next week, in a few months. What I needed to focus on was getting my pantry and supplies better organized and then figuring out what type of stocking up works better for me. I’m still a work in progress. I’m better-prepared in several areas, but have a lot of work to do in others. 

However, I don’t want my life to be consumed by the news or preparedness efforts. I need some light and hope and laughter in my life too. Adopting the glass half-full attitude might be challenging, if you’re a worrier, suffer from anxiety, or are a catastrophizer type person, but just the awareness that you are that type of a person might help you start catching yourself and then refocus to looking at all the positive things rather than fixating on the worst-case scenarios.

Becoming better prepared is beneficial for all of us. Our ancestors couldn’t turn to government or private charity programs for assistance – they had to rely on themselves to figure out solutions. If you look around your home and you don’t keep any extra food, water and some basic supplies on hand, then perhaps, you might consider stocking up a little bit more or taking a basic first aid class or learning a new practical skill. 

Learning useful skills doesn’t have to be approached as if you’re preparing for the Apocalypse. You could hone some basic sewing skills with making a few gifts or something practical for everyday use. Or you could approach some projects from a repurposing/recycling/upcycling viewpoint. I love those sorts of taking something old and turning it into something new projects. In recent years, making junk journals (just check YouTube, there’s an entire Junk Journal community) has been a way to use some of the piles of ephemera and scrapbooking and rubber stamping supplies I accumulated long ago. I think I made this Christmas junk journal, pictured above, out of old Christmas cards, stickers, and ribbon, around 2018-2019.

Learning to make Amish knot rugs/toothbrush rugs out of old sheets and fabric has been a very enjoyable craft/sewing/repurposing project. I learned to make Amish knot rugs watching YouTube videos. Before I purchased actual Amish knot rug needles, a YTer showed how to bend a large paperclip into a usable needle. So, my first bending up paperclips for another use was not for recreational substance use… it was for a needlework project.

That’s my dog, Lucy, laying on an Amish knot rug I made several years ago. Below is a better picture of her, minus the redeye. She died a couple years ago and she was a very sweet dog. I picked her up in a Dollar General parking lot and went inside the store to ask if they had any idea who she belonged to. The cashier told me she’d been running around the parking lot for days. I decided to take her home, because I was afraid she’d get hit by a car with the highway right there. I handed her to my husband and he said, “What’s this?” and I told him that’s a Sweetie Pie. I had to run out to do more shopping. While I was gone, our youngest daughter had stopped by and talked to my husband about Sweetie Pie. She messaged me, while I was shopping, and told me this dog was not going to be called Sweetie Pie and that her name was Lucy. So, Lucy it was. She had severe anxiety attacks going to the vet and started having seizures whenever we got to the door of the vet. It happened several times and the vet decided it would be better to keep vet appointments for Lucy to the bare necessity and she prescribed medication for me to give Lucy before vet appointments. Even dogs can have anxiety problems triggered by stressful situations.

High on my list of things I want to do in 2024 is get back to working on counted cross-stitch projects again. 

The photo at the beginning of this post is a small cross-stitch kit I stitched in 2019. I remember in 2018 my late husband was in the hospital for weeks. One day, I decided to run to a Joann’s Fabric and Crafts store to take a break from the hospital and found that discount “Bee Friends” kit. What could be better… I love cute pictures and I love sayings and quotes, so that Bee Friends cross-stitch was so much fun to stitch. 

I’ve got enough cross-stitch stuff to last me two lifetimes and I’ve tried to give kits and supplies to my daughters and granddaughters over the years. I’ve tried to encourage friends to take up cross-stitching too. One granddaughter attempted a stamped cross stitch project, but her embroidery floss getting tangled got her frustrated very quickly. One of my daughters learned how to do counted cross-stitch and plastic canvas needlework, but she doesn’t have much spare time and needlework does take time.

With rummaging through Christmas decorations, I came across these two small counted cross-stitch projects I did decades ago. I have piles of completed cross-stitch projects, awaiting framing or deciding how to finish them into something – an ornament, wall-hanging, etc. 

No matter what else 2024 brings, I’d like to make 2024 a year of getting back to my needleworking passion, because I sure miss the joy it brings me.

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December 15, 2023 · 5:21 pm

Trump-Russia 3.0 begins

Patterns:

David Corn was instrumental in spreading the Trump-Russia Collusion story. Here’s a March 20, 2017 Howard Blum piece, How Ex-Spy Christopher Steele Compiled His Explosive Trump-Russia Dossier, in Vanity Fair:

“In early October, on a trip to New York, Steele sat down with David Corn, the 58-year-old Washington-bureau chief of Mother Jones. It was a prudent choice. Corn, who had measured out a career breaking big stories and who had won a George Polk Award in the process, could be imperious, a ruthless man in a ruthless profession, but he was also a man of his word. If he agreed to protect a source, his commitment was unshakable. Steele’s identity would be safe with him.”

I know everyone is weary of all of this stuff, but yesterday there was news of an ex-FBI counterintelligence official being sentenced for colluding with a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska. Here’s the ABC story, Ex-FBI counterintelligence chief Charles McGonigal sentenced to 50 months in prison for working with Russian oligarch

In regards to the Steele dossier, Christopher Steele was also working for Oleg Deripaska. Here’s a November 22, 2021 Washington Examiner piece: The many Russian links to the operatives behind the Steele dossier. This article states:

“Steele was working for Vladimir Putin-linked oligarch Oleg Deripaska before, during, and after his time targeting then-candidate Donald Trump, and the former MI6 agent was hired to put the dossier together by an opposition research firm, Fusion GPS, which was simultaneously working for Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya of the now-infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting. The Clinton campaign hired Fusion.”

Here’s another bit from that Washington Examiner piece:

“Deripaska paid Steele to investigate Manafort after accusing the Republican operative of stealing millions from him, and Steele sought help from Fusion in early 2016. The firm soon hired Steele to conduct anti-Trump research.”

Today Dems kicked off another Trump-Russia narrative citing a CNN story, The mystery of the missing binder: How a collection of raw Russian intelligence disappeared under Trump. They had started some big Trump the Authoritarian spin attack in the past few days and even Paul Ryan, former Republican Speaker of the House, pitched in on this Dem spin attack:

Dem, liberals and liberal media on X are trying to amplify this missing binder story, which is based on “sources familiar with the matter told CNN.”

Here’s Jen Psaki pondering the damage Trump might do:

Yesterday it was more “Trump the Authoritarian spin” – the same Trump, who as president, had his personal account shut down on Twitter, … is supposedly going to shut down the internet, when that would take agencies in the US government, who, it sure looks like to me, are actively leaking to destroy Trump. I think they’d assuredly be more likely to pull the plug on a Trump-run White House and silence him than shut down the internet in America. Geesh, this Dem-incited hysteria is ridiculous.

This CNN big story is another unauthorized leak to the liberal media to trash Trump by intelligence officials, lending assistance to another Dem spin attack.

Here’s what I put in my Twitter profile when I started on Twitter years ago :

Speech is power, speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. – Emerson

#DefendTheConstitutionAlways

#StopTheSpinInformationWar

#SayNoToPublicCorruption

I still believe in all these. 

At this point, if Trump has some binder of Trump-Russia related intel, I think we’d all be better off having it released to the American people, so we can move on from all this Dem Trump-Russia spin garbage.

I won’t vote for Trump or Biden and I dislike Trump a great deal, but this Dem spin war has corrupted America’s intelligence agencies and the FBI – agencies vital to America’s security and it needs to be exposed and end. All this intelligence leaking to the media – always one-sided leaking to aid Democrats and attack Trump is a serious threat to America’s national security and likely way more serious than some “binder on Russia.”

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Filed under General Interest, Information War, Politics

December 12, 2023 · 6:31 am

A pennywise tale

Just wanted to share this story:

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December 11, 2023 · 8:27 pm

Sorting butterflies from moths

This post is about the CTI League, again.  In my Dec. 9th blog post, I referenced a September 15, 2020 Wired article, One Data Scientist’s Quest to Quash Misinformation, which explained Sarah-Jayne Terp’s odyssey in her quest to quash misinformation.  I understand that quests require a certain determination that what you’re doing is right and that it matters.  For me, defending free speech in America matters and so does protecting The Constitution.

One of the bits of human interest in that Wired piece was that Terp likes buying half-completed cross-stitch pieces at second-hand shops and finishing them.  I used to be addicted to counted cross-stitch, watching the stitched design appear on the blank cloth, by following a gridded chart on paper.  As I stitched more years, I began to make changes to patterns sometimes, changed recommended colors, even occasionally combined different patterns together or designed my own pattern on graph paper. 

However, I would never want to finish other stitchers half-completed needlework, because so many don’t keep the back of their needlework neat and tidy.  I want the back of my needlework to look as neat as the front, so I’d end up having to pull out all the mess and redo that too.  Much more enjoyable, for me, to start with a clean slate, so to speak, rather than cleaning up someone else’s mess.

I also love doing jigsaw puzzles for the same reason, watching the picture appear as I connect more and more pieces together. When my kids were young and doing puzzles that fit into frames, to make it more challenging, I encouraged them to dump the pieces from several puzzles together on a pile in the middle, as they sat on the floor with the frames.  The older ones often had two or three frames, while the younger two had one frame.  They had to work together to put all those puzzles together and that’s the thing as problems become more complicated – it takes a lot of teamwork to solve them.  America is facing some very complicated problems and there’s no teamwork among our political leaders, that’s for sure.

I came across another Wired article, this one from September 29, 2020, The Cyber-Avengers Protecting Hospitals From Ransomware: As medical facilities strain amid the pandemic, they’re especially vulnerable to cyberattacks. A global coalition of volunteer experts has stepped into the breach.  This article explains the formation of the “all-volunteer” Cyber Threat Intelligence League, or at least this is the public narrative.  Ohad Zaidenberg, an Israeli intelligence researcher, Marc Roger, a British information security expert and Nate Warfield, an American Microsoft security manager contacted each other and decided to band together during the pandemic and on March 14, 2020, the Cyber Threat Intelligence League was founded to fight ransomware attacks against hospitals.

According to this Wired article, after the trio formed, Rogers was seeing “any number of tall tales circulating on the internet” and of course, in a time of global crisis, who ya gonna call?  “So Rogers pinged a data scientist he’d been working with over the past couple years. “Hey,” he wrote. “How busy are you?”

He called Sarah-Jayne Terp.

The Wired article continues, explaining that Terp was very busy, running two groups working to adapt tools of cybersecurity to dealing with misinformation (cognitive security is this new field).  And she’d been on the road sorting butterflies from moths “spending the previous nine months criss-crossing the US on a one-woman quest to better understand how misinformation affects middle America.”

The British data collector spent nine months trudging across America studying those MAGA moths.  What a task to try to understand ordinary Americans’ viewpoints, as opposed to the elite butterflies among the left.

Again, this Wired article was September 29, 2020 and the mission had expanded from protecting hospitals from ransomware attacks in March 2020 to by September 2020:

“”Rogers tells me the league’s misinformation team had recently started tracking campaigns targeting the George Floyd protestors. They’d seen posts saying that antifa was causing riots and that were trying to bait Black Lives Matter supporters to attend protests intentionally scheduled to conflict with second amendment rallies. It was a bit far afield from the league’s original mission, but the volume of misinformation was so great and the potential for harm—both viral and violent—so high. “You have sophisticated groups who are doing this, who have great attention to detail,” he says. “Protests can create life-threatening situations.”

Clearly, their mission had shifted from protecting hospitals into partisan politics.

Imagine if those MAGA moths thought George Floyd was a fentanyl addict, resisting arrest and didn’t buy the entire liberal media narrative – how unacceptable is that…  Or what if they noticed the glaring double standard that the people who protested lockdowns were spun up by liberal media as evildoers threatening public safety, who should be stopped, while the George Floyd protestors taking to the streets were cheered as heroic champions for justice by that same liberal media.  Now, that would be totally unacceptable…  

Again the Twitter File journalists claim: “The whistleblower alleges that a leader of CTI League, a “former” British intelligence analyst, was “in the room” at the Obama White House in 2017 when she received the instructions to create a counter-disinformation project to stop a “repeat of 2016.”

The idea that you’re protecting people by controlling what information they’re allowed to see or what they can say is vastly different than protecting people, businesses, organizations, government computer systems from malicious cyberattacks.  In America people have the right to believe whatever the heck they want, even disinformation and misinformation.  They also have the constitutionally-protected right to free speech – especially political speech. The alleged Obama tasking – to create a counter-disinformation project to stop a “repeat of 2016,” seems bolstered by these two Wired articles.  It’s one thing to have eyes outward to hostile foreign information operations and try to counter that disinformation/misinformation than targeting Americans’ free speech.  It would take finding a lot of go-arounds to get around our 1st Amendment free speech protections.

So, if the quest began being tasked in 2017 by Team Obama to stop a “repeat of 2016” to 2018 brainstorming in Tampa with Pablo Breuer, the military director of the Special Operations Command Donovan Group (2018 link : “Pablo Breuer is currently the director of US Special Operations Command Donovan Group and senior military advisor and innovation officer to SOFWERX”), while Trump was president and the objective is to stop a “repeat of 2016,” I wonder if anyone in Trump’s national security team was aware of their work and I wonder how much government money was funding it.  Did anyone in Congress know about their work or have any oversight?

Then by March 2020, it’s COVID “Cyber-Avengers” to the rescue and by September 2020, they were tracking misinformation targeting those “mostly peaceful” George Floyd protestors, who were victims of being baited… as they burned the police precinct down in Minneapolis, ripped down statues, looted stores, etc.   What the hell…

Nothing to see here, at all.  Sure, I completely believe these Wired narratives of the genesis of “cognitive security” and the  CTI League as just noble volunteers… on a quest to protect our beliefs from being hacked… (my eyes have already rolled back into my head).

Here’s a Washington Examiner article worth a read: Top Republicans throw support behind major Biden ‘censorship’ lawsuit by conservative media.  It appears the Republicans weren’t in the loop on any of these new censorship regimes that the Obama crowd in the Biden White House set-up and I think it’s a safe-bet, no one in the Trump administration had been involved in that information loop.  

The Twitter Files piece, CTIL Files #1: US And UK Military Contractors Created Sweeping Plan For Global Censorship In 2018, New Documents Show, mentioned CTI League “volunteers” who were actively serving in the FBI and other agencies being involved in this effort:

“According to the whistleblower, roughly 12-20 active people involved in CTIL worked at the FBI or CISA. “For a while, they had their agency seals — FBI, CISA, whatever — next to your name,” on the Slack messaging service, said the whistleblower. Terp “had a CISA badge that went away at some point,” the whistleblower said.”

I hate that ranting about a “deep state” that Trump did, but geesh, he might have been completely right.

All I know for sure is Democrats and the liberal media will become an impenetrable wall of “nothing to see here” and it will be the same Dem spin playbook as usual – their time-tested admit nothing, deny everything, make counter accusations… rinse, repeat.

12/14/2023: Adding a note here, because with using my snarky tone, I minimized what the Wired article said about Rogers concern about two groups with opposing views being manipulated online into showing up at the same location to protest could lead to violence. I  let my disgust with FBI director, Wray, testifying under oath to Congress about Antifa not being an organization and being dismissive of Antifa being any sort of threat, despite Antifa’s history of violence in Portland and Seattle. There were numerous reports of Antifa being present at some of the BLM rioting in 2020, but I wanted to clarify that what Rogers appeared to be mentioning could be a cause for concern 

There was a report of an event like this happening in TX several years ago. In that event no groups had actually scheduled protests and someone or some group was just posting messages trying to incite supporters of two competing causes to show up at the same location. The 2017 article cites federal lawmakers blaming Russian facebook pages, but considering how dubious claims of Russian disinformation have turned out to be, who knows… the Clinton campaign paid and had the bogus Steele dossier created, alleging Trump-Russian collusion, Dem operatives and Silicon bigwigs created fake Russian bots in a 2017 Senate race to smear a Republican Senate candidate as being supported by Russia, the dubious track record of the Hamilton 68 dashboard set up to identify Russian disinformation online, and the US Senate report on Russian social media operations being written by a company where the CEO was one of the participants in that Dem false flag operation creating fake Russian bots in 2017.

In general someone or some group online trying to create confrontations between competing groups in the real world could be dangerous. However, that doesn’t mean I want a “cognitive security” force policing speech in America.

I interpreted The Wired article as being sympathetic to BLM. BLM was a radical group started by self-avowed Marxists and they were pushing “defund the police” in 2020, which created mayhem in many urban police departments. There was a great deal of violence associated with the BLM organized George Floyd protests in 2020 and I believe the mainstream media tried to spin that away – “mostly peaceful protestors” one CNN reporter reported, as buildings were burning in the background.

“A report from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project estimated that between May 26 and August 22, 93% of individual protests were “peaceful and nondestructive”[40][41] and research from the Nonviolent Action Lab and Crowd Counting Consortium estimated that by the end of June, 96.3% of 7,305 demonstrations involved no injuries and no property damage.[42] However, arson, vandalism, and looting that occurred between May 26 and June 8 caused approximately $1–2 billion in insured damages nationally, the highest recorded damage from civil disorder in U.S. history, and surpassing the record set during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.[6][43]“

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests#:~:text=However%2C%20arson%2C%20vandalism%2C%20and,the%201992%20Los%20Angeles%20riots.

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December 10, 2023 · 12:04 pm

Another link to peruse and ponder

Not a post here, just a link to a Matt Taibbi thread, CTI Files #4: The Hamilton 68 Connection, linking Terp, Jonathon Morgan, and the Hamilton 68 dashboard. Terp and Morgan worked on another NGO effort in 2014, joining Ushahidi, a Kenyan software company, open-source intelligence group (crowdsourcing). Wonder how much American taxpayers have sunk into these Dem/liberal cyber (NGO) efforts?

Morgan was the CEO of New Knowledge (now called Yonder), that specializes in information integrity. He also participated in a 2017 Dem false flag operation (creating fake Russian bots) against a Republican Senate candidate in AL. He’s linked to the Hamilton 68 dashboard, which ostensibly tracked down real Russian bots and fake Twitter accounts, yet were mostly just lists of ordinary people. Plus, his New Knowledge company was hired to pen the US Senate report on Russia’s social media operations.

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