Anti-truth

We live in a time during which myriad forces exist only to protect oligarchy. We see it every day. The recent flush of commercials telling the American people that Exxon is experimenting with using algae for biofuels is a perfect example. Oil companies have taken billions of dollars in subsidies to "research" solar energy, wind energy, wave energy and other non-"traditional" non-fossil energies. Each time the government funding for research is cut, corporate interest disappears. I saw a few auto races yesterday and the commitment to doing things a better way, or not was on full display for anyone watching with a critical eye.

Anti-truthers are the first ones to spend lavishly on whatever it takes to maintain their place in the power and control game. They usually have the most expensive suits, the most remote compounds in which to live and ironically live the most insulated lives, perhaps that is why they seem to believe their own lies. These are the bullies we all recognize from childhood. Those who sat behind you, lobbing spit balls at you until test day, when they would sit close enough to cheat. The cast of characters is always there, the names change, but dumb bullies have become a worn-out trope.

F-ed To The Highest Level

Yes, our interests are currently being ignored. Yes, the U.S. of A. is sponsoring terrorism, we are making a deal that will put one-hundred and ten billion dollars worth of military hardware to the Saudi Royal Family, their agents and assigns. To translate this to very real dollars and meaningful numbers we (the roughly 1/3 of a billion of us, U.S. of Americans) can all understand that for every three dollars each and every man, womyn and child contributes, a total of roughly one billion dollars could be raised. The equivalent of 110 billion would be the equivalent of just a little more than three hundred and thirty dollars for every man, womyn and child. 

The road to freedom is community, from microbial food webs in soil to top predators, like humans, all of our lives are based on the health of the lives of others! Just say no to corporate lies about how you can do the wrong thing and get away with it!

In essence, the military hardware, death and destruction potential as I like to call it, equals just over three hundred and thirty dollars per man, womyn and child (including all "illegals"). Instead of arming the world, especially when we know that some of the Saudi arsenal goes to fund terror in neighboring countries, why would we not invest, not in bombs and war around the world, but peaceful purposes here at home. If we put those same Three hundred and thirty three dollars times every man, womyn and child, to work here at home, instead fo making bombs and filling arsenals, we could pay twenty percent of the National Debt off in one year. If we wanted, we could pay for 10% of all social spending. Boy howdy, if we could find five or fifteen more countries willing to buy as much, we could earn enough to pay off our deficit spending and all Social Security payments just from the profits! Arming nations that refuse to honor international boundaries and who outlaw human rights need to be seen for what they truly are. these are not "kings", they fund terrorism. They are the weak, bullying their neighbors not just at home but htroughout the region. Why do we support and defend the principles of those forcing the vast majority of their population to do the royal families bidding. I don't care if Hillary would have done the same thing or not, it is wrong no matter who signs the treaties.
Current leadership is betting long odds and has no concern for what happens after the dice fall.

Stock Market "Correction"

The drop in U.S. stocks was inevitable. Those who drive the economy and buy the political "leaders" have been using the carrot and stick technique to rule our lives for generations. When things are going their way, and it looks like government will yield to their wishes, giving them carte blanche to despoil the planet and defile human rights, they get all big headed and run up the stock market. This is easy when you have virtually unlimited money to play with. when we all get on board, siphoning off more and more of our energy (that is what money really is) into the rising tide of exuberance (that's what the rallying stock market really is) It has been said by more accomplished economists than I that the markets are far more about psychology than the abilities of businesses to transform resources and human capital into profit. Here is how things look from the other side of the equation.

Millions of individuals "invest". Each and every purchase and sale pass through the internet. The most expensive computer network ever installed is owned by one of the biggest traders on Wall Street, an investment bank that we all know the name of, but who has no moral standing, because it is a corporation, not a person. This corporate money launderer jumps each and every Wall Street transaction that comes across the net, buying, before you can buy...increasing the "price" to you. On your sales, they jump you as well. Dropping your sale price, but edging you out subtly, without you even realizing it. Over a billion shares trade every day, and making just a few cents on each purchase and sale means millions to them!

The bullish result of Corporate America buying in to the idea of ultra-low taxation, or the ability to skate rather than pay anything resembling their fair share...Obama had increased tax collection and prosecution of those violating tax law more than any previous President. Our Imbecile-in-Chief looks to be the opposite. Now, just days after the first rumblings that he will most likely be impeached, tried for treason, imprisoned, or beheaded for defaming Allah, the power and control high that has ruled the markets since the elections, can't obscure the facts. With everyone seemingly on board with the overall 10% rise in stocks since the first of the year, there may never be more people "invested", so, what better time to take your winnings and screw all the other investors?

If there were any logic, or proportion to stock Market investment, these fluctuations would never occur. For instance, Ford Motor Company stock is down around ten dollars, they make things, valuable things that sell for relatively high prices. They have done it for over a century and this week announced that they are going to be bringing affordable electric cars to the market in less than two years. It could be a lie, but their stock prices have collapsed over the past few moons. Tesla, who has been saying an affordable electric car may come to market if they get all the things they want as far as government subsidies and promises they "need". Perhaps more true than what Ford has said, but for now, no one can know. After all, we are betting on a future when we invest. Tesla stock is several hundred dollars. Elon Musk certainly has captured the imagination, his stock price certainly reflects it. On the other hand, corporations who only provide data, electrons essentially, trade at over $1000! Millions of shares a day change hands, each transaction is exacted a fee that goes to the big players and they get to drive markets by their long media arms that tell us what they want us to think about it all!

Anyone who could not win the day under conditions like these would be completely incompetent.

How Many Impeachable Offences?

The American public is being told that we are not doing anything to stop the current treacherous dictator who is running the U.S. of A. when in fact the opposite is true. More people have turned out to protest just since the Presidential election last November, than have protested since the pro-peace and pro-environment activists spilled out into the streets to stop the oligarchs last time. There are many of us who remember marching for an end to institutionalized racism, violations of human rights, womyn's rights, children and elders. Remember when throngs marched to stop the U.S. government from bombing Vietnam and Laos? I do! My heart is one with the millions who took to the streets to call for clean air and water. I was a child back then and we are, if possible, even more active in our call for justice than we were then, it just seems easier to spout of in online forums, our social media feed, or other e-communication. The difference today is you don't get to look one another in the eyes, or plan out what to do around a kitchen table.

Ancient wisdom, call to action, honor, honesty, integrity, principles. Learn to live by life's cycles.

We need real people making real efforts to stand together, in person to state unequivocally and clearly, "Your system no longer works for us!" The billionaire power brokers who steer even the terms within the dialogue to be stuffed with lies. Even the lexicon of political discussion has given a form of digital legitimacy to fiction. I will list a few, but I'm sure we are all aware of many. Think hard, there is a term for those who believe that a womyn has the right to determine what is to be done with her body, and those who don't. The people who want to deny rights of the woman in favor of certain tissues the womyn has within her own body, in essence trespassing there. Our oligarch owned media loves to call "pro-life". I'm not sure about everyone, but I have never met a single person who was anti-life. Even the many womyn whose lives have been saved from death by infection, which was the main killer during the time abortion was illegal. They certainly were never "pro-abortion". To a womyn, not one ever wanted an abortion, nor did they intend to become pregnant. Unlike the additional lie that, "Many womyn use abortion as birth-control", simply ignores the fact that not one womyn would fall into that characterization. In fact, the most vehemently anti-human rights advocates, the ones who want all abortion to stop, don't even support the morning after pill, even though it would stop pregnancy before the heart even began to beat.

We hear lies in the form of half-truths, about genital mutilation, although we still practice it on most males in the good old U.S. of A. How much trust can a man ever have of womyn when at birth, when he was struggling to get to the breast for colostrum, instead he was held down, had the adhesions between his glans and foreskin ripped apart, a cylinder inserted and the foreskin cut away? Birth has been described to me by many mothers as being orgasmic. The child, having come through the birth canal has been squeezed and hugged and Heimliched and shares the empotional release hormones that the mother does, because their blood system is shared, across the placenta, until it is cut.

What first sexual experience would you rather have? Coming to breast with the placenta still attached, knowing the two of you are one and whole and to be enfolded by this mother? Or, strapped down to a board and operated on without anesthesia to cut off, what is some of the most nerve dense tissue on the body, the size of the palm of your hand? I propose that when we eliminate genital mutilation of men, we will also eliminate rape.

Instead we have elevated a sexual predator to the White House while some crack pots invent fictional accounts of his opponent somehow being part of a child-smuggling ring. You can't make this stuff up! I stopped counting when the current "leader" of the free world made three unconstitutional executive orders. Many of us have been calling for impeachment since the first offense, but hey, now everyone should see a pattern of impeachable offenses, treason is still punishable by death. both he and the Vice President are implicated. The time to march is not passed. It is with us, virtually every day!

How would you plan a march? Who would you invite? How would you get your networks to reach out to theirs? Rolling flash mobs is perhaps the best way, that and a lot of planning around kitchen tables!

The time is now!

Treacle Trumps Treachery

Dictionarily speaking, treacle, which equates to saccharine speech has always trumped treachery. Interesting to me, is the fact that, it is also the molasses goo left over when processing sugar and was formerly known by the ancients as a cure for some poisons. Science has determined that for the most part, it is not, but that is another part of the story. The sickeningly sweet offal that is served up to us by our "news" outlets has become so vacuous as to even regurgitate such bizarre and delusional diatribes as "I just invented" the term "prime the pump." This sort of pap is exactly the sort of thing that some people still believe is a remedy to political poisoning. It is not.

If we didn't laugh, we would surely cry.

All the time we spend laughing at the current political situation, or crying about it, is necessarily time we are not spending getting involved in the revolution that will never be televised! I have redoubled my efforts to tune in, really get up close and personal with the stark reality of our situation. I have upped my game in the turning on department as well, trying to pursue only the issues and actions that align with my moral and spiritual awareness, the last part of the process is dropping out, which seems to be impossible for a landowner/mortgage holder.

 The reason we have turned a blind eye to the immorality, the deceit, the ignorant policies which our current President believes in for only one reason, because the owners of our media refuse to demand changes from the person who has hijacked the highest office in the land. Even before the election, it was obvious to many that the whole process was corrupted by money. That alone probably kept the majority of voters who stayed away from the polls from being able to participate in good conscience. The two major party candidates were both covered with the stench of big money and refused to commit to any discussion of real issues, choosing instead to let their spin hide the fact that both were deceitful cheaters.

Media reports continue to ignore the elephant in the room.

Better to just keep letting the general public think that there is no choice in the matter. It is lucrative for the oligarchs to let us think that our hands are tied than to teach us what needs to be done to remove the treasonous from office. Try as they might, the facts undermine their position. Science has proven the myths of capitalism to be lies repeatedly, but the story will not be told by the billionaires who now own (or rather lease) our air waves. The irony is that we have, on the books, laws to reign in the monopolies, we have the anti-trust laws enacted that helped get us out of The Great Depression, we just don't enforce them any more.

The siphoning  off of wealth that is taking place in our day is no different than what brought on the housing crash, what caused the dot com crash or what causes every species to boom and bust. I thought everyone had seen the movie "Office Space", wherein they find a way to skim off the half pennies that occasionally have to be rounded off. This is the approach that has been used to hollow out our cities, create black ghettos, gentrify, create food deserts, etc. Ask yourself a few important questions. Then get your answers from history, and you will find that the guys in suits, talking to one another have been living off generations of investment of blood, sweat tears and toil. The crumbling infrastructure is just one symptom of the great shifting of capital, from the bottom up.

When redlining became popular, (Redlining developed first right here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.) money was beginning to flow into the black communities of our nation as it never had before. Unions were gaining strength and black, mostly men were itching to buy into the American Dream. Home ownership was key to making that investment in society (so many blacks thought). The social contract is always about future security for sacrifice now. Realtors, banks and bigoted strategists actually drew lines on the map overtly saying black buyers only on one side of the line, whites only in suburban neighborhoods. This systematic ghetto system amounted to slavery of a different sort. Now, our leaders were are able to subject different neighborhoods to different management strategies. Any whites who remember these times, or are still experiencing them, do not want to admit; this was a design flaw of our forebears and we need to stop perpetrating it as institutional racism.

Once segregated, it was easy to send in, often white merchants, looking for deals in the real estate market. Liquor stores and pawn shops, bodegas with more sugar than vitamins, because where could you find better customers for that crap, them those looking to cover their pain and desperation than the very same people many whites want to "prove" bring poverty on themselves. You know the lie, "Their bad moral choices lead to their situation", not the fact that there is no real food for miles, the car broke down after hitting a giant pothole, you're too late for work to go buy a sandwich, so you drink the Kool-aid, literally. I would say several, but truly there have been many echoes and reverberations of this throughout our development as a "civilization". The reason poor exist today is not because they are lazy, shiftless or without morality, it is because there is a line of suits with their hands in our pockets!

The more things change, the more they remain the same!

Fortunately, the men in suits are now arranged the same way, each pointing to the other. They have found new ways to segregate all of us, exploit our urge to survive, and steal the wealth of generations for the sake of next quarter profits.
The way we take back our power is to get out of debt, stop buying their charade, re-green food deserts, fully implement the spirit of the laws that led to the end of many monopolies and graft, redouble our efforts to achieve what the Clean Air and Water Acts intended, and to stop passing the buck. The circle of fools is delusional with their own wealth, even though it is all stolen from us, they think it is made by their toil or intelligence, or in the cast of the current American President to be the Divine Right of Kings!

I Make Dirt

Actually, soil.

The way I describe it to people is helped by imagining a petri dish in three dimensions. The material I specialize in, char, has fourteen acres of surface area per handful, so that's a lot of petri dishes! My goal, as soil builder is to get the right mix of "ingredients" that will provide soil microbes everything they need to be healthy.  Imagine, coating fourteen acres of petri dish with agar. This is nearly, but not quite my goal. Let me explain why.

First, let me back up and explain a relationship that mirrors the soil interactions, once you "get it", the relationship in the soil microbial food web becomes much more clear. This will give better insight into the biological reality that soil builders confront that wannabes never do. I have friends who raise bees. Several remain tied to a specific location and some palletize their bees and drive them on flatbeds, thousands of miles throughout the year, traveling during overnight hours while the bees are hived up, charging farmers for their pollination services. These two ways of raising the critters differ greatly. There is also a difference between other cultural aspects of bee-keeping. Some harvest honey in Fall or Early Winter, when the hive closes down for the year and these beekeepers feed sugar water through the winter moons to keep their bees alive until Spring. This approach, to me, seems like living on high-fructose corn syrup. I can tell you that the two people who have had hives swarm twice in a single summer were the resident kind, and also, they don't "harvest" honey until they see the bees carrying back pollen to the hive in Spring.

I'm not saying so to be some sort of heretic, but ask yourself, if you had to live on a winter ration (imagine, if you could make it on just that) of either sugar water or honey...which would you rather?

So, back to soil. When you grow in agar, you are just trying to get a single generation, that you can positively id, not necessarily build a three dimensional colony, as you would be doing in composting/soil building. You can get soil microbes to reproduce more, by keeping them warm, keeping them moderately moist, and aerated, feeding more of what they want into the area you want them to colonize and by stirring the reproducing microbes through the char, frequently making sure the growing colonies have territory to colonize. Typically, I will add a natural high nitrogen fertilizer (chicken manure, manure of any type really, worm castings, urine, green grass clippings, etc.) into the char initially, with moisture, this process of adding this vital macronutrient with water is like the agar, but with minerals, biofilms, and a variety of organic "food" for the great colony of soil microbes I intend to "culture". Water, essential to all life is best when pure and live, compost tea, aerated or stirred (like biodynamic preparations) work best. Also, rock dusts added during the initial moisturization of the char will be partially drawn into the preserved cellular structure of the organic material from which the char was made. This becomes food for organisms as the material matures.

Two possibilities exist, and there are good reasons for both. When adding rock dusts, there is benefit to utilizing parent material from your geologically distinct bedrock. This way, you assure that at least some of what microbes find will be familiar.  However, imported rock dusts can be used to ameliorate extremes when soils are either too acidic or too alkaline. If soils are generally too acid, use rock dusts from calciferous stone, limestone, dolomite, etc. these buffer the acidity somewhat. Soils that are overly alkaline benefit from a variety of granitic powders, many of which lead to increased acidity in soil. In either case, I like to include a small amount of parent material from the local soils as well.I try to include both and really focus a lot of my own energy on balancing the food web of organisms in the char to be healthiest just as they are released into garden beds.

Every square foot of soil that I have treated with char has doubled production from that soil. Most of my test beds have continued to improve production even after years of the soil being treated! When building soil as I do, you definitely don't want to till too deeply. Soil, because it is filled with living organisms, needs to stay arable. I recently heard someone describe the concept of living soil very well. They said it breathes. When there is Low pressure, the soils exhale, when there is high pressure, the soil inhales. Simple but effective way to understand the billions of organisms per tablespoon found in healthy soil. Unhealthy soil has far less life and often has links missing in the endemic soil food web. Soil talks to those of us who hear it. Understanding the language of soil requires sensitivity to what goes on there. The realms of life residing in the top few inches of soil, those you can only see with a microscope could weight more than a cow and her calf in each acre of soil. Hundreds of billions of organisms could live in a handful of char, how we make and use biochar can allow us to  create soil at unprecedented rates. Such a tiny fraction of the planet produces food, it is definitely withing our power to enrich all of it!

Mayday 2017

So many things to say this year. I saw that our current POSOTUS (Piece Of Shit Of The United States) wants to change the holiday to a version of Get In Line Behind Furor Day...ignoring so many facts about history. This day is a pagan holiday first and foremost. The workers of the Soviet Union and throughout the world have used May Day as a rallying moment for labor. Stealing ritual days from the pagans is one thing, but if it is for a good cause like honoring workers, I have less problem with it than if an oligarch wants to make it into a cheer leading for oligarchs party! The lies that this administration burns through are just the sicker punches of their dog and pony show. The things that make you laugh if you don't pay too much attention to who is hurt by them.

The real and more sinister dismantling of our nation is taking place at breakneck speed and it gets virtually no coverage. It is far easier to laugh at a buffoon who knows nothing than to understand how "streamlining" Wall Street oversight makes even more money for the top forty corporate welfare whores, while sacrificing the rest. when the complexities of the markets are seen with the clarity of fifty years watching, twenty years of study and ten of actual investing...Every transaction is jumped by the biggest players so you lose on every buy and you lose on every sell...if you want to play, you always pay!

Instead of reigning in the swamp monsters who own most of Washington D.C. The Representatives who swore an oath to work for us, for the most part, have been installed by (on average 10 million dollar campaign war chests) oligarchs and their minions who can afford to donate huge sums to campaigns. The amazing thing about Bernie sanders, is that he raised millions of small donations, instead of hundreds of massive ones. I have written on this topic before, but today it seems much more important, because as more and more lies are foisted upon us, we need to find ways of getting and sharing real messages, based on science, fact and truth.

In my District, (WI-08), there are half of the voters staying home. We have nearly 3/4 of a million souls inhabiting the district, but just over 350,000 even showed up at the polls. The thousands of people I spoke to one-on-one lead me to believe that if there were a way to let that other half know that there was a real person, who cannot be bought, those facts would inspire them to come out to vote. I am continuing to run for the office and am willing to serve in Congress, not for the money, or to make sure I never have to work again, but to actually represent the thousands of people I have had the pleasure of speaking to! virtually everyone I met understood Bernie Sanders, that he is right and that the money in politics has got to go for our nation to survive. When people know what I represent and how I would solve problems based on science, not the caprice of religious leaders or financial/oil barons, they are quick to want to vote for me. I don't have money to run a viable campaign, so what I lack in dollars, I overcome by offering my time.

I am continuing to campaign for the office of Congressional Representative to WI-08 over the next two years. You may have to hear me spout policy positions, or elucidate how I feel about topical issues from time to time, but I offer these things with honor and respect for all of my readers. If someone only hears the truth once in their lives, but they hear it from me, I would be appropriately honored and humbled.

In the mean time, I'm grabbing my dibber and planting seeds!