Category Archives: Uncategorized

This is a short fall container garden update. Pictures give a clearer picture of how it’s still going with the bug and pest problems living in the GA swamps. While most of my plants are doing okay, I’ve got some that have succumbed to pests.

I have more tomatoes and cucumbers growing, more lettuce and kale, some red beets, onions, and a few other things, so I’ll see how this goes. I’m still trying to use and preserve even small amounts. Every little bit counts. There’s something to feeling more connection to food you grow yourself, even imperfect ones, over buying blemish-free perfect produce at the grocery store.

While I am still using a lot of grow bags, I did buy more larger pots on amazon and have started using those too. The grow bags work, but in my climate, with such high heat from late spring all the way into early fall, the grow bags dry out quickly and require a lot more watering than plastic pots. I do hope to get some raised beds together in the next year, but I will still continue with some container gardening too. With the recent weeks of rain, it brought home again how long most of my backyard stays swampy after rain and also memories of years ago struggling to grow an in-ground garden in my backyard, where it would be either too much rain or drought conditions.

Even in my backyard, though, there are areas that aren’t as swampy, so I haven’t rejected in-ground planting completely. I’ll keep trying different things and see what works and what doesn’t. I’ve been tossing around ideas for some flower beds in my front yard that incorporate herbs and some vegetables. I also might plant some blueberry bushes along the side of my driveway.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned from more gardening failures than I can count over the years is keep trying and when plants die, rather than get discouraged, try to figure out what went wrong. Then try something new or replant more seeds.

Just getting busy, instead of making excuses or making things too complicated, has become more of a mental roadblock for me to overcome in the information age. I often look at Pinterest perfect photos and awe-inspiring YouTube videos, then start thinking perhaps I need all these doodads before starting projects.

Growing up without all that information or access to so much stuff, I just learned to make-do with what we had and figured something out. I had a make-do mind-set all the way through raising my kids too, but since the internet, I’ve had to catch myself with creating these mental roadblocks. It wasn’t only my spelling that suffered in the digital age, since becoming reliant on spell-check, it was my can-do attitude too.

It’s getting very expensive to buy plants already started at the store, plus you can find so many different varieties of vegetables by buying seeds. The first photo is a red cabbage called Red Express, from Park Seeds and it’s supposed to have a compact growing habit, so I thought I’d try it in containers. I’ve already bought a lot of seeds for spring and plan to order a few more. I saved some seeds too, and I did buy the seed-saving book, Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners, that I saw several online gardeners mention, and it’s very helpful.

The sun will come out tomorrow wasn’t only for overly-cheerful Annie, it can be for all of us. Have a nice day.

Here goes with why I decided to write about militias. Going back to the Tea Party movement among some of the GOP a decade ago, there was a resurgence of “let’s find our inner-George Washington” or “let’s become like the American patriots who founded our republic” type sentiments hyped. That’s all well and good, except many of the people who jumped on that bandwagon never cracked a book on early American history in their life and their fervor came from listening to right-wing pundits.

Alongside that Tea Party movement, a strain of wild conspiratorial thinking grew – all centered on President Obama – from right-wingers believing he was not an American citizen (the birther craziness), to some believing he was a Manchurian Candidate. Donald J. Trump embraced the Obama birther conspiracy theories and moved from NY liberal into hobnobbing with some people within right-wing, anti-Obama pundit circles. Btw, Obama’s mother was an American citizen, so wherever her son was born, he was entitled to American citizenship.

That same sort of pundit-driven hype that drove the Tea Party movement happened again with the populist Trump movement and while I do understand the concerns and some of the issues that galvanized the Trump movement, a lot of it smacked of the shallow celebrity worship, I expect on the left. I was supportive of the Tea Party movement and that “let’s find our inner-George Washington” was where I’d been since my teens in the 1970s. I was not on the Trump train.

Now, the hard part to try to put into words – how I feel about J-6. I found the events of that day appalling. I found Trump’s behavior as president disgraceful and I believe his conduct pushing that Stolen Election effort to try to stop Congress from carrying out its constitutional duty of certifying the electoral college vote, a dereliction of duty. However, I do not believe the Trump supporters (and whoever else was part of that crowd) were taking part in an insurrection.

Many things can be true at the same time, yes, there were likely FBI informants mixed into that crowd and yes, there were likely some left-wing troublemakers there too. That said, a large part of that crowd was just ordinary Americans, who believed Trump’s lies. He used those people. I believe it’s likely there were Democrats working to try to facilitate mayhem that day too and the glaring lack of adequate security at the Capitol raises all sorts of questions, in my mind.

The one death that day was a young woman, Ashli Babbitt, a 14-year Air Force vet, who had become a very devoted, very online Trump-supporter, who believed all of Trump’s “stolen election” hoopla. From statements her family made to the press in the immediate aftermath, before right-wing lawyers steered her family to legal action, the picture that emerged was of someone who truly believed she was going to Washington to do her patriotic duty and “stop the steal.” I’m not going to argue whether the officer who shot and killed her fired in haste, but I will say she was trying to crawl through a shattered window, after being ordered to stop.

To this day Trump still tries to reignite that same sort of rage about a stolen election and even yesterday he was posting on social media that Biden should be removed from office, because the election was stolen and that he should be president. Our constitutional system has no mechanism for that to happen. Period. If Biden is removed from office, resigns, or dies in office, then Kamala Harris, the vice-president, will be sworn in as president and I support sticking to the constitution, not making up crap to suit partisan political agendas. Trump’s entire effort to “stop the steal” was made-up crap. There was no constitutional process to stop Congress from certifying the electoral college vote, once the states certified their electoral votes.

In 2016, there were some Dem pundits and lawyers, who believed Russia helped Trump steal the election and online they were floating postponing Trump’s inauguration until the “Trump/Russia Collusion” was investigated, but that effort got nowhere. Instead, the Dem #Resist effort to delegitimize and try to destroy Trump’s presidency, by any means necessary, began. In 2020, Trump borrowed from the Dem playbook and attempted his “Stop the Steal” effort.

That brings me to the present and the Biden administration hype about “MAGA Republicans” and smearing just about anyone on the right as a threat to our democracy, coupled with all the extreme green-energy transformation and all the new ESG rules that are being pushed. Many Americans on the right feel like our constitutional system is under attack and I’ve heard warnings about “civil war” from both sides of the aisle. About a year ago, there was a spell, where a right-wing pundit was pushing the idea of a “civil divorce.”

Currently, I’ve seen a lot of online commentary from the right about “preparing to defend”… your home, community, your way of life, America writ large, etc. I’ve listened to these ideas being presented various ways from basic “be prepared to defend your home,” in case of civil unrest or civil breakdown, all the way to ideas being floated that, despite the euphemistic wording, sound like talk about planning a General Petraeus-worthy COINista effort (counter-insurgency type effort)… in America.

While I find it perfectly fine to prepare to defend your home, all of these efforts, outside the government system, to organize and plan for supplanting domestic policing or national defense or whatever these people think they’re planning, are not only problematic, it’s likely going to justifiably lead to FBI effort to infiltrate and monitor that group quickly. And again, I agree with the FBI monitoring groups that start planning military-type operations inside America or planning to create their own law enforcement. Heck, I’ve even had concerns over the years with some of the neighborhood watch efforts, that have sprung up in various places. I like a governmental system in place and clear rules, not some random groups making up their own rules.

Once again, the militias in early America operated within a legal system, under the auspices of the Royal crown. During the Revolutionary War, the militias who joined the Continental Army operated under that framework and General George Washington established rules quickly – and there were court martials aplenty. Here’s a link to more information on General Washington in the American Revolution: https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/the-revolutionary-war/timeline/

We should all be doing whatever we can to bolster civil order, the constitution and good citizenship, I believe, rather than spending so much time getting worked up every day by the latest online rumor to sweep through right-wing social media or be hyped on some right-wing news site or by some right-wing pundit. This is where the staying calm part matters.

Let’s suppose the economy starts going through even more dire major problems and all sorts of really bad things begin to happen. I expect Dem-run states and cities, who embraced all the green-energy crazy (not to mention the “defund the police” insanity) to fare much worse than red states, who don’t go along with that. Pulling together to try to work to keep as much of America functioning, keep the people calm and working together, keep emergency services functioning – within the system, makes more sense than a bunch of random groups of angry men, who have half-baked COINista ideas wanting to take charge.

There sure seem to be a lot of people who declare “America is over!” or “We’re doomed!” while life is still going along for most of America – granted the inflation is really hurting millions of people and it’s getting hard, but stores are still open and most of the country is still working. The place that’s looking like the biggest train wreck so far is CA, where the far-left crazy has led them to want to lead the country off the green-energy cliff.

Even the American founding fathers borrowed heavily from English law and traditions – they didn’t try to throw out the baby with the bath water. Preserving things is easier than trying to rebuild things after total devastation and that’s why violence should be the absolute last resort. Watching the J-6 violence and the violent BLM rioting has left me wondering why so many people could get caught up in a mob mentality so easily.

Communities all over America can use volunteers to help out, so if you want to save America, that’s a positive step in the right direction and it’s more productive than running around with guns in ghillie suits or camo.

I’ve spent a good bit of time trying to figure out the WordPress “autosaving” problem that I’ve been having, where I can’t edit or publish my posts lately, so I decided to retype the blog post into a new post and see if I could publish it – that worked, although there’s a shading in the background for part of the post that I didn’t put there and I have no idea how to remove.  I also decided to leave part of the post off and I’m going to add that here.

I know a lot of people aren’t familiar with the military and many women just automatically veer away from military topics, but a lot of ways of thinking that military planners and thinkers use can be applied to life in general – and they don’t involve violence or brute force.  Often military people use the term, force multiplier, and here’s a quick definition from Wiktionary:

“Noun[edit]

force multiplier (plural force multipliers)

1. (military) A factor, such as better positioning or equipment, which increases a unit’s combat potential, allowing it to fight on a par with a larger force.”

As odd as it may seem military strategy and concepts can be applied to your own life to help plan, prepare and organize.  Businesses often borrow those military concepts and retool them to improve how their businesses organize and operate.  I like using military strategic concepts in my thinking, because they have been tested under the most extreme and difficult human endeavor – war – and they work.

Being able to still find some quiet resolve and good cheer, no matter how chaotic and crazy the world gets, is a huge force multiplier when all sorts of powerful people and entities are trying to implement and sell dramatic changes in the world.  The noise from all that chaos, as experts and politicians flood the zone with fear-dripping hot takes, dire warnings, crazy policy decisions and most of all more “spin word games” can not only leave you scared, it can leave you immobilized.  The liberal media does these repetitive messaging spin games, where they repeat the same spin words and phrases constantly, to condition you into adopting and buying into their deliberate language manipulation. 

It’s terrible to feel powerless to change anything, so don’t let anyone make you feel powerless, because the minute you buy into that, you’ve surrendered.  Each of us can still carve out our own bits of self-autonomy and personal agency, by being committed in our beliefs, by sticking to our values and by not allowing all of the rapid changes bombarding us to scare us into panic or disarray.

Knowing what you believe and staying calm – no matter how crazy things get can also be a huge force multiplier, for not only you, but for your family and if you work on building a circle of like-minded friends and community, well, that increases your ability to not jut survive, but to thrive.  Don’t forget how to smile and laugh.  Life without some lightness and joy can feel crushing.

Even in the worst of times there are usually a few practical things people can do to better their chances of survival.  Throughout history people have had to deal with devastating natural disasters, political turmoil, economic devastation, famine, plagues, and they didn’t have even a fraction of the material goods most of us take for granted.

Yes, we are in unchartered times with very big events, that could upend our way of life, playing out, but each day we have, where we can still set out to prepare, organize, work on some new skills and projects, is a day we won.

Try to look for the good.  I’m trying to work on “something that I can do” and feel that each day of hope is a day I’ve used as a force multiplier in combatting the forces (these can be politicians, media, even people you know, who try to deflate your efforts or spread doom and gloom) trying to spread fear or pushing me to buy into things that I do not believe. 

Taking that Edward Everett Hale idea about Ten Times One Is Ten, is about being a force multiplier – one person’s generosity and kind heart changed the lives of ten people, who did not even know each other or that he had helped so many other people.  Everyone can work to be a force multiplier for spreading kindness, lending a helping hand and being a good citizen. 

Hale’s religious and patriotic writings were intended to spread not only Christian values, but also civic virtue.  Up until the 1960s in America, teaching good citizenship, based on instilling values (civic virtue) was considered an integral part of children’s education.  We can all work to fill in those gaps in our own education and in those of our children. 

For me, I know I believe in God, I know I believe in the oath I swore to defend the Constitution, against all enemies, both foreign and domestic.  I know I believe in the right to free speech and peaceful assembly.  I could go on and list the right to self-defense and the other rights guaranteed to me as a law-abiding American citizen. 

And beyond these, I believe love can defeat hate and most of all I believe truth is more powerful than even the most sophisticated spin information war apparatus in the world.  Even the tiniest spark of truth can defeat miles of the darkness of lies.  And if each of us works to spread a tiny spark of truth, well, the darkness of lies doesn’t stand a chance. 

Each of us has to decide what we believe and wear it as a sort of coat of armor against all the crazy spin word games and other craziness hitting us the minute we turn to news media or social media these days.  We can even choose not to give so much of our time to so much darkness.  Each of us has the power to limit a lot of the chaos and political noise in our lives and we have the power to focus on the “something that I can do” every single day.

Part of today’s post disappeared and WordPress editing isn’t allowing me to edit this post – another one of those “glitches” I mentioned recently. I guess my expecting this crap to continue, because of my Twitter activity, would make me just paranoid, but after all these years of fighting to expose the corrupt Dem spin information war and having these computer “gremlin” issues when there’s a major Dem spin effort, that I am trying to “defuse” on Twitter, well, so be it. I’m still online and that’s what counts, lol.

I am having a lot of problems with my blog posts lately – lots of WordPress “glitches,” as I’m trying to post them and edit them – I can’t get the Twitter posts to show up in this post right now, but the links are there. I don’t know how many “computer gremlin” problems I’m going to have throughout this scandal, but if past is prologue – probably a lot. I’ll do my best to keep sharing information.

This is a politics blog post. I’ve debated what to write about the information coming out about the raid on former President Trump’s home on Monday.

I detest so much about former President Trump’s behavior and relentless lying, but I also realize there were some important accomplishments in his administration, like America became energy independent for the first time in my life and the Abraham Accords, for which he gets no credit in the liberal media. I wrote scores of anti-Trump blog posts over the years, but as the Dem/liberal media efforts to destroy Trump intensified, I also became aware that a large portion of their attacks were lies, often thoroughly corrupt and always orchestrated spin efforts between Dems and liberal media.

For a long time I’ve believed the left’s anti-Trump efforts go way beyond they just hate Trump, although they obviously do hate him. Trump got in the way of the Democrat’s liberal agenda, but he posed an even larger threat, because he both exposed their corrupt spin information war and he’s quite good at defeating their spin attacks.

Although, many people on the left decry mentioning Hillary Clinton’s email scandal and how other presidents handled documents when they left the White House as just “whataboutism” to excuse Trump’s behavior, I disagree. Today, Attorney General, Merrick Garland, gave a short statement in the raid of Trump’s home on Monday. Garland stated”

“Faithful adherence to the rule of law is the bedrock principle of the Justice Department and of our democracy. Upholding the rule of law means applying the law evenly without fear or favor. Under my watch, that is precisely what the Justice Department is doing.” – https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/11/politics/garland-announcement-justice-department/index.html

That “applying the law evenly” matters for Americans to trust that we have one set of rules for everyone. However, I don’t believe we have one set of rules anymore and frankly, even when it comes to how we treat duly-elected presidents, all the norms that the media and Democrats applied when dealing with a sitting president were thrown out the window with Trump.

The effort to trash and destroy Trump extended to his family. First ladies often grace the cover of fashion magazines. Recently, Vogue ran a cover with Ukraine’s First Lady on it. Every fashion magazine shunned First Lady, Melania Trump, a beautiful former model, and did they not put her photo on a single cover in four years. Most disturbing were the constant hysterical “beginning of the end” Dem/liberal media spin attacks, revving up some new ‘breaking news” story, claiming this was the one that was going to destroy Trump. Since Monday, there’s been another round of this “beginning of the end” with the raid of Trump’s home and the claim he had documents that belong to the US government in his possession.

And that brings us squarely to the “applying the law evenly.” The Obama DOJ lowered the standard on former officials having sensitive documents in their home during the Clinton email scandal.

The short rehash is Hillary never set up a homebrew server in their home. I read through all of the FBI Notes on that investigation in 2016, as they were released. Bill Clinton had his aide, Justin Cooper set up that server for his foundation work. Just as Hillary was ready to become Secretary of State, the Clintons had their aides, Justin Cooper and Bryan Pagliano, upgrade that server. Hillary Clinton merged her State Department email onto Bill Clinton’s private foundation server in their home. That’s the truth. Oh and in 2016, the FBI was investigating the Clinton Foundation for pay-to-play, so perhaps the Clintons merging the US State Dept. with Bill Clinton’s Foundation server in their home could have been of interest in a pay-to-play investigation. Here’s a quick rundown on the FBI’s Clinton Foundation investigation in 2016, from a Real Clear Politics report:

“1. The Clinton Foundation investigation is far more expansive than anybody has reported so far and has been going on for more than a year.

2. The laptops of Clinton aides Cherryl Mills and Heather Samuelson have not been destroyed, and agents are currently combing through them. The investigation has interviewed several people twice, and plans to interview some for a third time.

3. Agents have found emails believed to have originated on Hillary Clinton’s secret server on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. They say the emails are not duplicates and could potentially be classified in nature.

4. Sources within the FBI have told Baier that an indictment is “likely” in the case of pay-for-play at the Clinton Foundation, “barring some obstruction in some way” from the Justice Department.

5. FBI sources say with 99% accuracy that Hillary Clinton’s server has been hacked by at least five foreign intelligence agencies, and that information have been taken from it”.

Here’s a CNN timeline of the email scandal: https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/28/politics/hillary-clinton-email-timeline

By the time that email scandal ended on July 5, 2016, James Comey gave his statement proclaiming Hillary’s handling of highly classified information wasn’t criminal or grossly negligent, it was only “extremely careless.”

I’ve written a lot of blog posts about that email scandal, but what I want to focus on here is what Garland said about “applying the law evenly.” Tonight Twitter is abuzz with information leaked to the Washington Post, claiming that Trump had “nuclear documents” and in light of all the Dem spin word games, I don’t trust anything the Biden DOJ is selling at this point.

The larger problem though is for our system of justice to survive requires trust and by continually applying one set of rules for Dems and another set for Trump and Republicans, the trust deficit keeps growing.

The FBI, per the Comey statement found:

“For example, seven e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.”

Those seven e-mail chains concerned some of the most highly sensitive information and it wasn’t just Hillary who emailed that highly classified information on an unsecure email system, it was also other Obama officials (the sent and received tells us that). Hillary kept that highly classified information on the unsecure Clinton family server. It gets worse though, because James Comey reopened that email investigation when the Weiner laptop the FBI had, revealed, Hillary’s aide, Huma Abedin, had thousands upon thousands of State Dept emails stashed too, but Comey quickly reclosed that investigation and told us “nothing to see here,” due to political pressure and Dem outrage that this damaging information would impact the 2016 election.

Comey never told us if the FBI checked into the other people involved in these chains and if they had that highly sensitive information stored on unsecure email systems too. This matters because the Hillary unsecure server came to light in 2013 when some emails, generated from Hillary’s server and sent to someone else, were retrieved by a Romanian hacker called “Guccifer.”, – from that CNN timeline again :

“March 20, 2013 – Gawker reports that based on emails retrieved by a Romanian hacker called “Guccifer,” Clinton used the “clintonemail.com” domain name in emails to advisers and friends. Because her original address is revealed in the article, Clinton changes her email address.”

Add in all the electronic devices the FBI subpoenaed from Hillary Clinton, that were never turned over, the bleach-bit server, and Comey brushing it aside as just “extremely careless,” while Dems and the liberal media spun it as Hillary was the victim of a right-wing conspiracy. It would have to be some pretty spectacularly damaging documents Trump had for me to buy into any of this after the unchecked Clinton/Obama corruption and I haven’t even gotten to the Hunter Biden laptop yet. The Democrats’ wholesale public corruption in Washington seems almost surreal these days and Dems and the liberal media want us to get worked up because someone in the Biden administration decided to spin up “nuclear documents” in a leak to the Washington Post tonight. This Dem/liberal media spin information war has completely corrupted so many people.

“Applying the law evenly,” yeah right. I have zero confidence in the Biden DOJ and FBI and it pains me to say that.

I’m not quite finished with reading COVID 19: The Great Reset, the Klaus Schwab book that’s caused a massive backlash reaction on the political right in America (and concern in many other countries too). This post is going to be about some news and some thoughts on the Schwab book. I wanted to move toward writing about happier topics and move away from politics, but I started this blog writing about politics – so, this post is about the much talked about “The Great Reset.”

The US Senate just passed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.(Correction below)Democrats claim it will reduce inflation, but it’s a massive spending bill pushing the global climate change agenda. The Dem/media spin word games reached new levels of absurdity, when on the very day Dems pushed this bill through the US Senate, numbers of a 2nd quarter of negative growth were released. That used to be called a recession, but now we’re into redefining America.

There was a whole lot of redefining going on, not just at the Biden White House, but with liberal media. Some online sites and social media platforms went all-in on that too. The interesting part was that the liberal media people, who pontificate about integrity and character constantly, rushed to bolster the Biden White House redefining bs.  Facebook and Instagram rushed to flag posts as false if they didn’t conform with the Biden spin word games.

Yes, of course, beyond the ridiculousness, there’s a disturbing aspect to this level of media corruption and yes, it is corruption to go to these lengths to bolster blatant propaganda. I’ve been writing about the spin information war and the threat it poses to American liberty since 1998 and I know how far people with power can go to silence anyone, from a sitting President of the United States being banned from social media platforms and liberal-owned news media corporations working to silence him for years, to doctors and academics, who have different views on “the science” during a pandemic, to a nobody homemaker, who got in the way of a massive scorched earth Dem spin effort. It happened to me in 1998, when I was very new to the internet and wandered onto the Excite politics message boards in 1998, at the height of the Clinton impeachment scandal. The Messages of mhere story, on my home page, is my story, written with pseudonyms.

I’ve written about this many times. In 1998, my husband was still an active-duty career soldier and I was an Army wife. I started posting messages on the Excite politics message boards, countering Clinton spin word-soup arguments, explaining how I believe the Dem/media spin information war works and arguments to expose and deflate their latest spin. Some of my “counter-spin” arguments began showing up, being used by actual right-wing pundits in the cable news nightly battles – my exact phrases and that disturbed me a bit. I thought I was just engaged in some trivial politics debate online.

That story is true. I believe I was investigated and they located a retired general, who hated me and recruited him to silence me. I believe he was fed totally false information. I believe whoever orchestrated that attack on me had to be high-level or that retired general never would have gotten involved. That’s why I will continue to write this blog as long as I can. Trust me, I’m tired of fighting against the Dem/media spin information war, but what I saw in 1998, with the Dem spin information war, a whole lot of Americans have begun seeing since the pandemic and the crackdown on “disinformation.”

Many people express concern about the data-tracking going on online and the WEF green zealots talking about giving everyone a personal score on their individual “carbon footprint,” by monitoring their consumption of food and resources (yes, that idea’s in the Schwab book), but the truth is corrupt people with unchecked power have been able to track you down, investigate you, violate all your rights long before these globalist green zealots came up with these latest brainstorms.

The wholesale public corruption is the real threat, not getting hysterical about a particular new global agenda. The fight against wholesale public corruption should be something every American gets behind, but with our extreme partisan politics, most people make up excuses for the corrupt leaders on their own side, while wanting the head of the other side’s corrupt leader on a pike.

This post isn’t about Clinton corruption or Trump corruption (both are very corrupt – Trump was a crony of Bill Clinton and his golfing buddy). It’s also not about what happened to me, because assuredly after all these years the statute of limitations has long passed. The people who orchestrated that are above the law, as evidenced by the many investigations into Clinton corruption and how many times the “victim of a vast, right-wing conspiracy” spin effort has worked like a charm for the Clinton machine, with the liberal media happily selling that spin too. I wanted my husband to know the truth about what happened, but he’s gone now and truthfully it probably would have crushed him to know that a commander he respected and trusted attacked our home and me. My husband loved the Army. I do too.

This post is about the spin information war, writ large, not about Dems vs. Republicans, and I wish more Americans would quit thinking in terms of one leader to get behind, who is going to save America. That ain’t happening. To save America will require enough people to agree that preserving our constitutional order and upholding the rule of law, not selective rules for different groups, based on their political party affiliation or views, is the keystone worth bolstering above all others. Without our constitution and the rule of law, we will descend into anarchy and total mayhem or end up being ruled by despots.

The Great Reset presents a lot of ideas about how to transform the post-pandemic world, but it also delves into numerous studies, history, economics, climate change, social engineering ideas, and an array of other topics. It’s broken down into an introduction, then chapters on macro reset, micro reset, individual reset and conclusions. Rather than get worked up about disturbing short videos circulating of WEF globalists talking about the Great Reset, I wanted to understand what the book is and isn’t. Schwab and his co-author present historical information from other pandemics and post-pandemic periods, along with observations from the COVID pandemic.

Regardless whether you’re 100% against the green agenda or 100% support it, the reality is the post-pandemic world was going to be dramatically changed and that’s where the conservative mind-set often leads people on the right to get stuck in rapidly changing times Too often conservative thinkers harken back to some halcyon time in the past and want to revert back to that, rather than adapt to the current, rapidly changing world. I struggle with this too, because I miss a lot of things about the pre-internet world. There was no way that level of world-wide economic upheaval could be, to use the popular pandemic term, mitigated, quickly or without dramatic changes.

Schwab wrote about social changes. People around the globe haven’t been able to just turn off the pandemic mind-set and revert back to pre-pandemic life, with the deep social fissures caused by new pandemic rules, inequities many people feel, large numbers of deaths, widespread fear, and a whole host of other social divides that festered during the pandemic. I think the thought leaders among the elite progressives in the green movement, in America, like the Bill Gates and John Kerry types, totally misunderstand how fed-up millions of middle class and below Americans are at being treated like drone worker bees, who should just do what they’re told by their betters.

Where Schwab and his co-author were right was in understanding the massive economic damage the lockdowns and COVID-related problems would cause. Where they’re very wrong, I think, is in believing that their global-planning for a “Great Reset,” centered on the UN 2030 Agenda’s green energy goals can be harnessed and managed. They believe their group of self-selected policy experts at the WEF, world leaders, who are gung-ho about the green transformation (or coerced to play along), and big corporations can control this post-pandemic economic transformation, without there being widespread global chaos, to include widespread shortages, famine and violent, populist uprisings. It seemed to me they accept a whole lot of collateral damage in their plan, as being worth it to achieve their world transformation, while expecting their own elite lifestyles to continue unchanged. They know some countries will collapse and there will likely be more shortages and famine, but it seems the green advocate prevailing belief is that without their actions things will be much worse.

This seems like a recipe for global disorder & mayhem. China, Russia, and countries that ally with them will likely band together to weather the “Great Reset” chaos, while western countries will be engulfed in populist uprisings and political instability. That’s what I don’t think the Great Reset crowd understand (or underestimate until the chaos reaches the gates of their elite communities).

Russia and China pay lip service to the green agenda, but they aren’t going to abide by or implement any of these western big green ideas. And these powerful green deal true-believers will do exactly what the Biden administration has done with cracking down on the fossil fuel industry in America – gone begging for oil deals from America’s adversaries. Germany is doing the same thing now. They will cut deals with Russia, China and other countries, who will use energy and other resources to bribe, blackmail and coerce the West to bow to their wishes. That’s my prediction on the big picture.

With the little picture I expect the social media purges and “fighting disinformation” efforts to intensify, as anyone who gets in the way of the great reset (Build Back Better, as it’s been repackaged by the Biden administration and Dems) moves into high-gear. The “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 is a massive spending bill to accelerate the great reset push in America.

I also expect social media platforms to intensify their efforts to punish/purge users who refuse to bow to the latest spin word indoctrination effort or express a differing view, especially the monetized content creators. I expect content creators, who have monetized their social media, to be pressured to comply, as more and more words and topics become hotbeds of controversy. With Trump, the Dem spin word effort was all about “Russian disinformation.” With the pandemic, Dems, liberal news media and tech companies were ostensibly working to fight “Covid disinformation.” Now we’re on to the Redefining America project.

Words matter. Clear, commonly understood definitions allow for people to communicate openly and freely. Muddling the language leads to a people who can’t think or communicate clearly. It leads to people being fearful of speaking out too. Public-shaming and punishing people for dissenting views works – just look at all the totalitarian regimes who do that. People certainly can’t organize effectively, if there’s no way to use clear terms and that’s the big goal of mass indoctrination efforts like this – to instill fear, create mass confusion and immobilize people from free thinking.

The gender activism has led to muddled terms and thinking on that front of the culture war in America. With the climate change agenda now moving to the forefront, I expect the culture war to shift in the direction of redefining American capitalism and our economy. The effort to transform our constitutional republic will likely move into high-gear too, under the guise of “we’re in a crisis” and actually if populist backlash grows, well, we just might be at a very bad point.

Sorry this post is so gloomy, but in my own daily life, I’m still stocking up basics, working on my fall garden plans, planning some craft and needlework projects and committing to decluttering and reorganizing in my home, which is desperately needed. Focus on controlling the things you can really change. The better you can manage your everyday life, the better situated you’ll be for whatever crises head your way. Being able to preserve calm and order in your home, no matter what chaos is going on in the world, can help you weather many financial storms. I’ve worked to simplify my finances and lifestyle over the past few years and will continue to stock up food and basic supplies, as long as that’s possible. I’m also working to improve my organization and rotation of food in my pantry.

07/31/2022 – Note: I’ve made a bunch of edits of typos, edited out and added a few words here and there for better clarity, I hope.

08-01-2022 – Correction – the US Senate did not pass the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 yet. What happened last week was Senator Joe Manchin reached an agreement with Senate Majority Leader, Senator, Chuck Schumer and will support this bill.

This is a sort of garden update post.

I started working in my little container garden before 6:30 am. Even small gardens take some time each day and with the horrible summer heat and high humidity here in southeast GA every summer, I try to do outside chores early in the morning or in the evening.

I’ve been enjoying this gardening effort and although it certainly hasn’t produced massive amounts, I did get a whole lot of cherry tomatoes – I had enough to freeze 4 quart size bags, make a pint of sun-dried tomatoes and I filled up a gallon glass container and fermented those, plus I had plenty to eat. I pulled out the last of those determinate cherry tomato plants this morning.

I haven’t had to buy any bell peppers or green onions so far this summer. I dehydrated kale four times and have a gallon container full of kale flakes. I dehydrated lemon basil, sweet basil and oregano. Cucumbers have done okay. I planted two pots of straight eight cucumbers and 6 pots of small pickling cucumbers. I made 6 pints of bread and butter pickles and I have enough small cucumbers picked to make several pints of dill pickles. I froze 4 quarts of green beans, plus cooked some several times. I’ve had plenty of lettuce, squash and green onions.

I have two dragon pepper plants (some sort of cayenne pepper) that are loaded with peppers, which are starting to ripen. I have a jalapeno with a lot of peppers on it too. I picked two very small heads of cabbage (have three left) and once I cleaned them, it came to about the amount of cabbage on a small head of cabbage from the store. It was plenty for a meal of kielbasa and cabbage.

My radishes, carrots, okra haven’t done well. My first strawberries bit the dust, as did my zucchini. I replanted and have four zucchinis growing. I replanted okra three times and I’ve got one okra plant that survived. I replanted radishes. I left the carrots in the container and they’re slowly growing and haven’t flowered yet, so I’m leaving them alone. My last yellow squash bit the dust, but I’m still getting a lot of pattypan squash and today I’m making squash casserole with some of the pattypan, because I have 7 of them sitting on my kitchen counter at the moment.

I planted plenty of flower seeds. I’ve always been more enthusiastic about growing flowers than vegetables.

Mostly, I’ve had fun planting seeds, watching things grow and tending to this little garden every day. I went into this container gardening effort, expecting to plant only a few containers for my patio, but I’m glad I expanded that. I’ve been buying a lot of seeds. I’ve saved two types of bell pepper seeds so far. And now I’m getting ready to start some seeds in July for a fall vegetable garden.

What I learned with using grow bags is the plants dry out quickly in the heat here and I’ll be using mostly plastic containers and larger plastic tote containers for my fall garden. I’ll still use grow bags for herbs and flowers, but I’ll be transitioning toward getting more large plastic containers. I learned that I could manage to take care of more plants, even in the heat, than I thought I could. I plan to put some raised beds together when the weather cools down in the fall and get them ready for next spring.

The violas are still blooming despite the temps being over 100 degrees several days. The five pieces of succulents Me-Su gave me are growing too.

There are three tiny watermelons forming on two plants I started in May, I think. I don’t expect them to amount to anything, but they’re cute.

This is one lantana that I planted years ago in front of my house. It comes back every year and grows out of control. I have vincas in front of my house that reseed on their own too. Not having plants that reseed themselves is a real downside to container gardening.

Beyond providing some food, this gardening effort has brought me a lot of pleasant hours working in the backyard and some coming to terms with major loss in my life.

While I think it’s unrealistic to begin vegetable gardening expecting to grow all your own vegetables or to plant an enormous garden without first having some experience gardening, jumping in does matter. It’s easy to get discouraged or to talk yourself out of attempting to learn new things. Every new kitchen and gardening skill can give you more self-confidence to tackle more.

The lines I’ve hated since I was a kid are when people say they don’t have a “green thumb” or that they’re such a bad cook they can burn water. I had my mother and great-grandmother telling me that I have a green thumb and my mother believed everyone can learn to cook, so she had us measuring, stirring and cooking things from a very early age. I remember plenty of plant failures and the first time I made pancakes by myself, they were burnt on the outside and runny on the inside. I got alarmed and my mother casually told me that I might want to turn the heat down for the next batch.

If growing vegetables or cooking aren’t your jumping off point to being more self-reliant, perhaps learn a new skill like something mechanical or some basic carpentry skills. Knife skills are useful in many dozens of ways, as is learning how to care for knives. Learning more knife skills is on my to-do list. A self-defense course or even starting an exercise program can help with being more self-reliant. There are thousands upon thousands of useful skills to acquire, so it doesn’t have to be gardening or raising animals for food.

My parents gave my youngest brother my mother’s old car that needed the engine rebuilt for his first car. He rebuilt that engine on his own with a little assistance from my Dad and some technical advice from an uncle who was a master mechanic. He was the kid who was always taking everything apart and often he couldn’t get them back together properly, but he did master putting together a V-8 engine kit that he got as a gift for Christmas one year. Everyone can learn new things – at any age.

Many people have been talking about the Great Depression, especially Great Depression cooking, since our economy is headed down the tank. An interesting fact about popular culture during that era was romance novels became very popular, board games were popular, and many people turned to listening to radio programs. Soap operas, comedies and music were popular, not politics. Popular movies weren’t about politics or serious topics – they were escapism with lots of musicals, comedies and romances, with characters living posh lifestyles.

I remain hopeful for America and for the future. Each day can be the start of something good. We don’t have to live in crisis mode everyday to be prepared for emergencies or bad times. I’m following the news, not burying my head in the sand, but finding some balance and looking for some good news matter too.

Today I saw a tweet about another food facility fire, at a Perdue Farms facility in VA: Chesapeake Fire responds to industrial fire at Perdue Farms facility. The last line in this report is important, but it’s doubtful that part will play any part in how this story feeds alarm among the people invested in the belief there’s some grand conspiracy behind these fires. Here’s the last line in that news report:

“According to a plant manager, the damage from the fire will have minimum impact on their operations.”

This post is going to elaborate on something I wrote in a blog post last week and it’s about latching onto conclusions about events that fit what we already believe, without any real facts to support the conclusions. Here’s what I wrote:

“With all the economic bad news and worries, a lot of people rush into believing any conspiracy theory that gets passed around online, with no real evidence that events are even connected. For instance, last week the headquarters of Azure Standard, a popular distributor of organic and health food, used and promoted by many YouTube homesteading and prepper channels, burned down. Within hours there were people on YouTube and other social media running wild with a conspiracy theory linking the Azure Standard fire to other food company fires. It was all innuendo about “a lot of fires with food places happening” and rumors run amok.

It seems there are lots of people who want to buy into grand conspiracy theories without any evidence or waiting for an investigation.”

Yes, it’s possible that Azure Standard fire was connected to other fires at food supply facilities and yes it could be part of some nefarious effort to harm the American food supply, but there are some things it’s worth considering before leaping to those two conclusions and in the second case assigning blame to either hostile foreign actors or domestic entities you distrust.

First, it’s worth waiting to allow some time for an investigation into the cause of the fire and then determine whether it was an accidental cause, a result of some mechanical problem, a human error mistake that created the conditions for the fire or a criminal act. And if it was a criminal act, well, then that requires more investigation.

Just a news report of a fire does not give anyone enough information to determine the cause and it’s certainly not enough information to state it’s part of a larger conspiracy.

I refer to this way of leaping to conclusions as the Glenn Beck circles of conspiracy theory-building. I was fascinated by Beck’s FOX show chalkboard diagrams, adding more and more pieces to an ever growing conspiracy theory that was built on making specious and often absurd connections between his “pieces” on his conspiracy puzzle. In the center of most Beck conspiracy theories was Barack Obama, who was the face of American subversion to many on the American right for 8 years.

Before continuing, I absolutely disapproved of most Obama policies and I do believe many of the people, including Obama hold views and support policies that are antithetical to American constitutional principles and disastrous for American personal liberty and prosperity. I also believe plenty of people in the Obama circle do embrace a far-left ideology that pushed using crisis (real or manufactured crises) to propel their policies forward. However, the Beck diagrams drew endless tenuous connections between people and events that were often absurd and ridiculous, while pushing a conclusion that none of these connections actually supported or proved.

A whole lot of people on the right bought into the Beck chalkboard antics and here’s the thing, some of Beck’s conclusions fit my political views and beliefs, so I didn’t say, “Whoa, that’s stupid or that doesn’t make any sense,” until long after Beck left Fox and started his online show, which I subscribed to for a while. It took until 2013, when Beck had a total con artist, with a criminal record for fraud, on his show, selling setting up a community of like-minded people in Idaho called The Citadel, that did not even exist yet – the con artist was recruiting people via a Skype interview process, where prospective residents were interviewed to see if they were a good fit and then these people would be required to start sending monthly payments to raise money to purchase the land for this oasis of “freedom.” That Beck gave this con artist a platform on his show and legitimacy was the end of my Beck subscription or listening to anything Beck says.

With the Azure Standard fire and other recent food production-related fires, I’ve seen a US map presented by some people online, with locations of recent fires of food facilities dotted out and their conclusion is a mass conspiracy attacking our food supply. The problem with a map like this is I don’t know how many fires at food facilities usually happen in that timeframe. I don’t know what the fire investigation reports of each of those fires concludes. I don’t know if there’s any evidence of connections between the fires, let alone blaming some bad group – hostile foreign entities or domestic entities.

I saw this report on the Azure Standard fire this morning:

“The Oregon Office of the State Fire Marshal has determined the cause of the Azure Standard headquarters building fire to be an accident, rather than an act of arson. According to a press release from Azure Standard, the fire was related to a tote of rolled corn being temporarily stored in a cooler due to oversupply at the company’s warehouse.

According to the fire marshal, the fire could’ve started one of two ways: The corn could’ve started smoldering on its own due to moisture content, causing it to combust, or the tote or dust from the corn could’ve come into contact with an electrical outlet, causing it to short and igniting the corn.”

https://www.columbiagorgenews.com/news/azure-headquarters-fire-ruled-an-accident-caused-by-tote-of-corn/article_0943e3de-c5ab-11ec-83c5-4f58cbbaafa6.html

I seriously doubt many of the people online selling the “lots of fires” conspiracy theory have done some searching into the aftermath of investigations into the causes of these fires, because they’re already sure it’s a big conspiracy attacking our food supply. I just prefer to gather more information, before deciding, because that’s my contrarian nature. I’m like this about a lot things, especially when “experts” conclude things, I tend to go digging around and reading reports and stuff, to see if the evidence really backs their certainties. And yes, the possibility of a big conspiracy to attack our food supply is possible, especially in light of the economic warfare playing out around the world. The massive sanctions against Russia by the West and Russian and China stockpiling grain and trying to wage economic war against the West could lead to attacks on our food supply, but I still prefer evidence that’s behind this spate of food facility fires

Conspiracy theories flourish with people believing in some omnipotent evil powers that be. And sure, there are plenty of powerful people and groups, who do things or promote things or push public policy that I think are bad, but that doesn’t automatically make a case that these fires are the work of any of these people or groups.

If you leap to sweeping conclusions devoid of any real evidence or even much in the way of specific information and then run around in fear and panic, even making rash personal decisions based on these conclusions, you lose your most precious freedom too. You’ve allowed fear to rob you of control over your mind.

It’s easy to get swept up in emotion with so many serious political and economic problems swirling about. It’s hard to calmly sift through the information overload and constant chorus of people shouting, “Fire!” in an already overcrowded theater filled with flame-throwing partisans on social media and on the news. I’m still working on not overreacting to the constant inferno of bad news, innuendo or buying into conspiratorial-thinking scorching the media landscape daily (phew, a flaming pile of bad puns in this paragraph, sorry, I got carried away).

Asking more questions helps me sort things out. I also stopped relying on “so and so” said to sway me, because “so and so” lives in the same information wasteland I do and I know I’ve bought into news stories that turned out to be bs and it can happen to anyone.

After the 4 years of non-stop media hysteria about President Trump/Russia Collusion insanity and the almost daily breaking news that turned out to be false stories by the mainstream media, I try now to wait at least 24 hours to see what other information shakes out. It wasn’t only Trump news though. ABC ran a video of a firing range in KY with a story they were reporting on about fighting in Syria. How that mistake happened, they never said. The most upsetting false reporting to me was Dem and liberal media hacks on Twitter blaming the US military for Iran shooting down a civilian Ukrainian airliner in January of 2020. I was on Twitter that night and wrote a blog post about what happened. Iran had lobbed missiles into Iraq that night, targeting US soldiers and then Dem mouthpieces started blaming the US military (and Trump) for creating a “fog of war” and some were tweeting about the “crossfire” caused the Iranians to mistakenly target that civilian airliner. The thing was US soldiers were attacked in Iraq and the US fired no missile at Iran that night, ZERO. There was no “crossfire” or “fog of war.” Those Dem spin hacks chose to spread spin blaming the US and making excuses for Iran – that disturbs me to this day.

The deterioration of our news reliability and the constant deluge of online information can distort reality more than clarify anything. I’ve found taking some screen breaks helps. It’s hard to break free of that, especially with so many serious events unfolding around the world right now, but it’s worth the effort to keep working to free our minds of the daily information overload.

My parents used to admonish me for rushing around in the house, “Slow down, are you on the way to a fire?” They were right about slowing down. With the always online world we live in, it’s our minds that do all that racing around now, not our legs. I had a bad habit of trying to rush up and down the stairs and tripping myself up. I either banged my shins rushing up or tripped and fell down some steps. I never gained a single thing for all that rushing.

Slow down a bit.

Note: Had some glitches using the editing program, so I’ve been making changes, sorry about that.