Friday, July 10, 2009

St. Clements Island and Manor - Four Centuries of Uninterrupted History

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Do you think you know a lot about history? How about the history of this place, Colton's Point and St. Clements Island just off shore?

375 years ago colonists from England first landed on the island and named it St. Clements Island while the point was called Longworth Point before becoming St. Clements Manor in 1636. It was settled before New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore or Washington, DC even existed. In fact all but New York City were part of the original Mary Land grant to the Calvert family.



One March day in 1634 two ships sailed up the Potomac, the Ark and the Dove, bringing between 256 and 300 English to settle the lands called Mary Land. They were determined to find freedom and opportunity here in the "New World". Their story is the beginning of the recorded history of St. Clements Manor and Island and a colorful history it came to be.

So what should you know about St. Clements Island and Manor?

It was the 1st colony in America, even the world, to guarantee freedom of religion.

It was the 1st colony in America to establish and maintain peace with Native Americans.

It was the 1st arrival of Roman Catholics in English speaking America.

The 1st Catholic Mass and Eucharist in the original colonies took place on St. Clements Island.

The 1st Jesuits in the original colonies arrived on the Ark and Dove.

St. Clements Manor had one of the earliest Catholic and multi-denominational chapels in the original colonies.

St. Clements Manor House was one of the oldest continually lived in homes in the original colonies.

St. Clements Manor is most likely the oldest continually occupied chartered settlement in the original thirteen colonies.

It was the 1st site in the New World where America was dedicated to the Holy Mother Mary.

The Mary Land settlement was one of the most successful of the original thirteen colonies.

Mathias de Sousa, who arrived on the Ark with Father White at St. Clements Island became the 1st Black man in America in 1642 to serve in a legislature.



Yes, St. Clements Island, the landing site for the colonists of Mary Land, is a very special place. You can go to the island and stand in the light house and look across the water and see the birthplace of our beloved first president George Washington.

Move your eyes a little down river and you see the birthplace of the most famous military leader in American history, Robert E. Lee. Did you know he was offered a chance to lead either the Union or Confederate armies in our Civil War? Lincoln offered him the job and even when Lee returned to his home and led the Confederate Army Lincoln never lost his respect for this greatest of all fighting men.

Consider this, since the landing 375 years ago when the colonists first constructed a fort on the Island it has been involved in every major war in our history.

Now humor me and close your eyes and imagine a time before cars, cell phones, television and computers. It is late in the 19th century and you can see and hear the big steamboats pulling up to the wharf on the island with passengers from Washington, DC and Baltimore coming to one of the most famous resorts on the east coast. Four hotels, a beer garden, fresh oysters, crab and clams awaited the holiday goers with dancing in the moonlight on the pavilions of the St. Clements Manor house.



Did you know St. Clement Island was named by Father Andrew White after St. Clement, patron saint of mariners, who became Pope just 59 years after Jesus died in the first century, the year was 92. He was friends with the apostles and traveled with Peter and Paul. St. Clement was martyred by being chained to an anchor and dropped into the Dead Sea.



The day the colonists were to sail for America was November 22, 1643. They left Cowes, Isle of Wight, England but only made it ten miles before encountering high winds and storms and pulled into a harbor to wait out the storm. Early the next morning the Ark was knocked loose from anchor by another ship and set out to sea followed closely by the Dove. It was early November 23, St. Clements day. It was only appropriate that Father White named the island St. Clements when they ended their voyage.




More to follow on the incredible history of St. Clements and the reason it is the most sacred site in the USA.

Obama Gore & Goldman - Alchemists - Turning Green into Greenbacks

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Have we been Gored?

At what point does it become obvious that our political leaders have sold out the interests of public policy for personal profit? Politicians always seem to back certain causes which often appear to benefit the public but when does the motivation change from being "for the public good" to being for the personal pocketbook of the politician?

Ever since his run for the presidency after serving the Clinton Administration as vice president Al Gore has been an advocate of global warming and the seeming push for carbon reductions and the greening of America. On the surface it seems to be a rather safe platform.

While controversy remains concerning the fear of global warming, there is no doubt humans are contributing to the problem. However, as I pointed out in previous articles, global warming is a natural cycle that takes place whether there are humans or not. Our Earth goes through thousands of years of warming and cooling in a continuous cycle to purge and revitalize the earth, with or without humans.

At best we may have a minimal impact on the environment but little impact is probably better than none. However, it is a global power and if there is not global participation the efforts we make can seriously effect our ability to compete in the world marketplace.

As we learned once again, the USA and Europe have a sense of how they can contribute to reducing the carbon emissions through the Obama "cap and trade" legislation making its way through Congress with the strong support of Gore. What is cap and trade, just another method to allow unscrupulous financial manipulators to create a new commodity market outside government jurisdiction to raise the cost of carbon based production with penalties that will be passed on to the consumer.

Sound familiar? It is the same type of federal action that led to the sub-prime mortgage market and was followed by the oil futures derivatives that nearly bankrupted the world economy while making the Wall Street insiders billions of dollars profit. Previous articles in the CPT have detailed how Goldman Sachs was behind the regulatory loopholes adopted to enable that last two scams and used them to wipe out most of the competition in the process.

Listen to what other people are saying about Al Gore and his conversion from conservationist to big money capitalist.




The Great American Bubble Machine
Matt Taibbi on how Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression
MATT TAIBBIPOSTED JUL 02, 2009 8:38 AM

In Rolling Stone Issue 1082-83, Matt Taibbi takes on "the Wall Street Bubble Mafia" —investment bank Goldman Sachs. The piece has generated controversy, with Goldman Sachs firing back that Taibbi's piece is "an hysterical compilation of conspiracy theories" and a spokesman adding, "We reject the assertion that we are inflators of bubbles and profiteers in busts, and we are painfully conscious of the importance in being a force for good." Taibbi shot back: "Goldman has its alumni pushing its views from the pulpit of the U.S. Treasury, the NYSE, the World Bank, and numerous other important posts; it also has former players fronting major TV shows. They have the ear of the president if they want it." Here, now, are excerpts from Matt Taibbi's exploring the key issues.

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

Any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain — an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.

They achieve this using the same playbook over and over again. The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selling themselves as men above greed, just a bunch of really smart guys keeping the wheels greased. They've been pulling this same stunt over and over since the 1920s — and now they're preparing to do it again, creating what may be the biggest and most audacious bubble yet.

Fast-forward to today. It's early June in Washington, D.C. Barack Obama, a popular young politician whose leading private campaign donor was an investment bank called Goldman Sachs — its employees paid some $981,000 to his campaign — sits in the White House. Having seamlessly navigated the political minefield of the bailout era, Goldman is once again back to its old business, scouting out loopholes in a new government-created market with the aid of a new set of alumni occupying key government jobs.

Gone are Hank Paulson and Neel Kashkari; in their place are Treasury chief of staff Mark Patterson and CFTC chief Gary Gensler, both former Goldmanites. (Gensler was the firm's co-head of finance.) And instead of credit derivatives or oil futures or mortgage-backed CDOs, the new game in town, the next bubble, is in carbon credits — a booming trillion- dollar market that barely even exists yet, but will if the Democratic Party that it gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an "environmental plan," called cap-and-trade. The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that's been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won't even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.



The Money and Connections Behind Al Gore’s Carbon Crusade
by Deborah Corey Barnes
10/03/2007
Ms. Corey Barnes is a freelance writer and blogger for the Polireport in Washington, D.C.

Al Gore’s campaign against global warming is shifting into high gear. Reporters and commentators follow his every move and bombard the public with notice of his activities and opinions. But while the mainstream media promote his ideas about the state of planet Earth, they are mostly silent about the dramatic impact his economic proposals would have on America. And journalists routinely ignore evidence that he may personally benefit from his programs. Would the romance fizzle if Gore’s followers realized how much their man stands to gain?

Earlier this year Gore experienced a notable public relations debacle. The Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a state think tank, revealed that he was an energy hog. Public records show that Gore’s Nashville mansion used in one month more than twice the electricity the typical American household uses in a year: His average monthly electric bill was more than $1,359. Moreover, Gore’s household energy use increased after An Inconvenient Truth, his film about global warming, was released to ecstatic reviews.

Never mind that the scientific community is divided over what causes global warming, how bad it is and how to deal with it. Gore plays Chicken Little to the media’s applause, insisting that the world is warming dangerously and that he has the solution.

The ‘Cap-and-Trade’ System

To resolve the “climate crisis,” Gore wants to put a cap on the production of greenhouse gases. He calls for an immediate freeze on U.S. emissions, a ban on new coal-fired power plants, tough new fuel-economy and energy-efficiency standards, renewable energy mandates, carbon taxes and mandatory targets and timetables for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Those emissions consist mostly of carbon dioxide (CO2), the byproduct of fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas, which supply 85% of all U.S. energy. Gore’s blueprint to save the planet moves the United States towards a command economy in which government regulators hold sway over what kinds and amounts of energy will be made available to the private sector. His principal regulatory tool is what’s called carbon-credit trading.

Under a so-called “cap-and-trade” system, government places a ceiling or “cap” on private-sector emissions of CO2 and other “greenhouse gases.” Each sector, industry or business is allocated a fixed quantity of carbon credits that allow it to emit specific quantities of greenhouse gases. As an example, one tradable carbon credit might permit the emission of one ton of CO2. If a business emits more tons of CO2 than its supply of credits allows, it has the option to buy surplus credits from other firms -- or it will have to pay a fine in proportion to the amount of the excess emission. By contrast, businesses that emit less than their allocation can sell their excess credits.

This system, which may sound market-friendly, is something only a bureaucrat could dream up. The twist is that the carbon market exists only because the government’s imposition of a cap creates an artificial scarcity in the right to produce energy. In a cap-and-trade system, buyers will purchase their offsets from a broker or through an electronic trading platform. In Europe, carbon trading is already a reality. Since 2005, carbon offsets have been traded electronically on the European Climate Exchange (ECX).

Most carbon cap-and-trade programs also allow regulated entities to earn credits by taking actions that supposedly reduce emissions outside of the firm’s facilities or operations. In one popular version of the carbon-offset concept, firms earn credits by buying seedling trees for planting in less-developed countries. Supporters claim the CO2 intake of the trees will balance out the carbon emissions of the sponsoring firm’s industrial activity. Despite its public relations value, scientists scoff at the notion that it’s possible to plant enough trees to balance out man’s production of CO2. But carbon-offset projects are popular in the environmentalist community.



More Chances to Cheat

However, the most radical environmentalists reject cap-and-trade. They say it allows polluters to continue to pollute by purchasing carbon credits. That is true but irrelevant. A ton of CO2 emitted in Beijing has the same climatologic effect as a ton emitted in New York. The real problem is that every country’s government has an incentive to cheat on behalf of its domestic producers. This has been the European Union’s (EU) experience with the Emissions Trading System (ETS) that the EU established to implement the Kyoto Protocol. In just about every EU country except Britain, the credits allowed exceed the corresponding tons of emissions.

Carbon offsets provide even more opportunities to cheat. For example, some aluminum companies claim they deserve credits just because they recycle aluminum for a living -- recycling being less energy intensive and thus generally cheaper than making the stuff from scratch. The most popular activity for generating offsets is planting trees. But this method of storing carbon takes years and the long-term results are uncertain. If the trees die and decay, or are burned to clear land for agriculture, there is no net emission reduction. The net carbon reduction from tree planting may not materialize for decades, but the offsets are given out now.

To critics on both the free-market right and the environmentalist left, carbon offsets are no more than a marketing gimmick. Some describe the fanciful device as akin to medieval indulgences that were sold in a cleric-run market to regulate the remission of sin.

The truth is that almost every productive human action requires the use of natural resources, and nothing is pollution free. Even something like wind power requires windmills, which, according to environmentalists such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., may visually “pollute” the natural landscape. Kennedy, head of the green group Riverkeepers, says he supports wind power -- except when the windmills are in the waters off Cape Cod.

Whatever its impact on the environment, the cap-and-trade carbon scheme is sure to boost the economic and political prospects of people and groups that are behind it. Before the company collapsed under the weight of financial scandal, Enron under CEO Ken Lay was a key proponent of the cap-and-trade idea. So was BP’s Lord John Browne, before he resigned last May under a cloud of personal scandal. In August 1997, Lay and Browne met with President Bill Clinton and Vice President Gore in the Oval Office to develop administration positions for the Kyoto negotiations that resulted in an international treaty to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Gore’s Circle of Business

Al Gore is chairman and founder of a private equity firm called Generation Investment Management (GIM). According to Gore, the London-based firm invests money from institutions and wealthy investors in companies that are going green. “Generation Investment Management, purchases -- but isn’t a provider of -- carbon dioxide offsets,” said spokesman Richard Campbell in a March 7 report by CNSNews.

GIM appears to have considerable influence over the major carbon-credit trading firms that currently exist: the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) in the U.S. and the Carbon Neutral Company (CNC) in Great Britain. CCX is the only firm in the U.S. that claims to trade carbon credits.

CCX owes its existence in part to the Joyce Foundation, the Chicago-based liberal foundation that provided $347,000 in grant support in 2000 for a preliminary study to test the viability of a market in carbon credits. On the CCX board of directors is the ubiquitous Maurice Strong, a Canadian industrialist and diplomat who, since the 1970s, has helped create an international policy agenda for the environmentalist movement. Strong has described himself as “a socialist in ideology, a capitalist in methodology.” His former job titles include “senior advisor” to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, “senior advisor” to World Bank President James Wolfensohn and board member of the United Nations Foundation, a creation of Ted Turner. The 78-year-old Strong is very close to Gore.

CCX has about 80 members that are self-confessed emitters of greenhouse gases. They have voluntarily committed themselves to reduce their emissions by the year 2010 to a level 6% below their emissions in 2000. CCX members include Ford Motor Company, Amtrak, DuPont, Dow Corning, American Electric Power, International Paper, Motorola, Waste Management and a smattering of other companies, along with the states of Illinois and New Mexico, seven cities and a number of universities. Presumably the members “purchase” carbon offsets on the CCX trading exchange. This means they make contributions to or investments in groups or firms that provide forms of “alternative,” “renewable” and “clean” energy.

CCX also has “participant members” that develop the carbon-offset projects. They have names like Carbon Farmers and Eco-Nomics Incorporated. Still, other participant member groups facilitate, finance and market carbon-offset projects to “sequester, destroy or displace” greenhouse gases. CCX aspires to be the New York Stock Exchange of carbon-emissions trading.

Along with Gore, the co-founder of GIM is Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson. Last September, Goldman Sachs bought 10% of CCX shares for $23 million. CCX owns half the ECX, so Goldman Sachs has a stake there as well.

GIM’s “founding partners” are studded with officials from Goldman Sachs. They include David Blood, former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM); Mark Ferguson, former co-head of GSAM pan-European research; and Peter Harris, who headed GSAM international operations. Another founding partner is Peter Knight, who is the designated president of GIM. He was Sen. Al Gore’s chief of staff from 1977-1989 and the campaign manager of the 1996 Clinton-Gore re-election campaign.

Like CCX, the ECX has about 80 member companies, including Barclays, BP, Calyon, Endesa, Fortis, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Shell, and ECX has contracted with the European Union to further develop a futures market in carbon trading. What’s in it for the companies? They will benefit either by investing in carbon credits or by receiving subsidies for doing so.

Front and Center

Clearly, GIM is poised to cash in on carbon trading. The membership of CCX is currently voluntary. But if the day ever comes when federal government regulations require greenhouse-gas emitters -- and that’s almost everyone -- to participate in cap-and-trade, then those who have created a market for the exchange of carbon credits are in a position to control the outcomes. And that moves Al Gore front and center. As a politician, Gore is all for transparency. But as GIM chairman, Gore has not been forthcoming, according to Forbes magazine. Little is known about his firm’s finances, where it gets funding and what projects it supports.

We do know that Goldman Sachs has commissioned the World Resources Institute (affiliated with CCX), Resources for the Future, and the Woods Hole Research Center to research policy options for U.S. regulation of greenhouse gases. In 2006, Goldman Sachs provided research grants in this area totaling $2.3 million. The firm also has committed $1 billion to carbon-assets projects, a fancy term for projects that generate energy from sources other than oil and gas. In October 2006, Morgan Stanley committed to invest $3 billion in carbon-assets projects. Citigroup entered the emissions-trading market in May, and Bank of America got in on the action in June.

Some environmentalist groups disparage Gore and his investment banker friends. They say the Gore group caters to others who share their financial interest in the carbon-exchange concept. The bulletin of the World Rainforest Movement says that members of a United Nations-sponsored group called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stand to gain by approving Gore’s carbon-trading enterprise. The IPCC has devised what it says is a scientific measure of the impact of greenhouse gases on global warming. In fact, the critics charge, the IPCC sanctions a mechanism that mainly promotes the sham concept of carbon exchange.

The global non-profit organization Winrock International is an example of one IPCC panel member that seeks out groups and individuals with an interest in carbon trading. Arkansas-based Winrock provides worldwide “carbon-advisory services.” Winrock has received government grants from the EPA, USAID and the Departments of Labor, State and Commerce, as well as from the Nature Conservancy (whose chairman used to be Henry Paulson). Winrock argues that cap-and-trade carbon trading is the best way to prevent a climate change crisis. But consider this: When a non-profit group takes money from oil companies and advocates drilling for oil as a solution to energy shortages, it is certain to be attacked as a tool of Big Oil. So far, the groups linked to Al Gore have avoided similar scrutiny.

Then there’s the World Resources Institute (WRI). It was the first nongovernmental group to join CCX as an associate member (a designation for virtuous groups whose greenhouse-gas emissions are negligible). Many of its donors are CCX members or otherwise support carbon exchanges, including the Shell Foundation, Whole Foods Market, the Nature Conservancy, American Forest and Paper Association, and the Pew Center for Climate Change, as well as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Ford Foundation.

Connect the Dots

In June 2006, the World Bank announced that it, too, had joined CCX, saying that it intended to offset its greenhouse gas emissions by purchasing emission credits through CCX. The bank says its credits would contribute to restoring 4,600 hectares of degraded pastureland in Costa Rica. Somehow, CCX has figured out that this is an amount equivalent to 22,000 metric tons of emission that the bank calculates are created by its activities.

A World Bank blog called the Private Sector Development Blog regularly features items touting Al Gore and the concept of carbon credits. Its articles typically announce corporate “green” initiatives in which carbon credits are said to cancel out “bad” CO2 emissions released by a company’s activities.

In fact, the World Bank now operates a Carbon Finance Unit that conducts research on how to develop and trade carbon credits. The bank works with Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark and Spain to set up carbon-credit funds in each country to purchase emission credits from firms for use in developing countries. In addition, it runs the Carbon Fund for Europe helping countries meet their Kyoto Protocol requirements. These funds are traded on the ECX (half of which is owned by CCX, itself a creature of Al Gore’s firm, Generation Investment Management). Can we connect the dots?

A website affiliated with An Inconvenient Truth invites concerned citizens to personally fight global warming by offsetting their “carbon footprint.” The ways to do that include changing over to fluorescent light bulbs and turning down your thermostat at home. But the website also urges Americans to offset their personal CO2 emissions by “buying” carbon offsets from a native-American-owned company called Native Energy. Native Energy promotes “renewable” wind energy by buying and selling carbon-emission credits and futures for wind turbine projects on Indian reservations.

What the website doesn’t mention is that that the founder of Native Energy, energy industry veteran Tom Boucher, also founded a marketing company called Green Mountain Energy, a CCX associate partner that describes itself as “the nation’s leading retail provider of cleaner energy and carbon-offset solutions. Green Mountain offers residential, business, institutional and governmental customers an easy way to purchase cleaner, affordable electricity products, as well as the opportunity to offset their carbon footprint.” In other words, Green Mountain sells advisory services to energy users, alerting them to opportunities to contribute to or invest in groups like Native Energy.

So it seems banks and investment houses are going green, eager to enter an emerging emissions market. Meanwhile, environmentalists are discovering new ways to get rich while believing they are saving polar bears and rainforests.




Al Gore Rakes in the Green By: Joseph D'Hippolito
FrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, May 20, 2009

The Obama administration’s decision this week to introduce stringent new fuel efficiency standards for the U.S. car industry is a testament to the power of climate change hysteria. The lobby goes unchallenged in the corridors of power and will likely incur a disastrous economic and human toll. (For an overview of the probable cost in human lives, see Steven Milloy’s “The Sad CAFE” in this edition of FrontPage Magazine.) It is also a means to gaining political power and, for the former vice president, personal riches.

The potential to cash in on Green hysteria is nicely summarized by a cartoon in the daily Non Sequitur series drawn by Wiley. In the middle of a desert stands a shack, the office of “Global Warming Realty.” The two proprietors flank a sign planted along the road advertising “Ocean Front Lots Available.” “It doesn’t matter what we believe,” one realtor said to the other. “It only matters what they believe.”

The world’s most popular environmental alarmist appears to have taken that advice to heart.

Al Gore – the former vice president, Nobel Prize recipient and Academy Award winner for “An Inconvenient Truth” – has made tremendous money off the global warming hoax. Since leaving office in 2001, Gore’s personal net worth exploded from $2 million to $100 million in 2007, as reported by Investor’s Business Daily.

Moreover, Gore hopes to make further big profits by creating financial vehicles that ostensibly promote investment in renewable energy sources – not that he would want anyone to know that.

On April 24, Gore testified before the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee about pending cap-and-trade legislation. Cap-and-trade policies, which Gore supports, enable businesses to purchase credits for exceeding government-mandated limits on carbon-dioxide emissions, thereby avoiding fines.

During the hearings, Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn asked Gore about his involvement with Kleiner Perkins, an environmental venture-capital group that Gore joined as a partner in 2007. Kleiner Perkins, Blackburn said, “invested about a billion dollars in 40 companies that are going to benefit from cap-and-trade legislation that we are discussing here today.

“Is that something that you are personally going to benefit from?” Blackburn asked.

Gore replied: “The transition to a green economy is good for our economy and good for all of us, and I have invested in it but every penny that I have made I have put right into a nonprofit, the Alliance for Climate Protection, to spread awareness of why we have to take on this challenge.”

However, Investor’s Business Daily reported that in March 2008, during a convention in Monterey, Calif., Gore revealed to his audience that he had “a stake” in various environmental enterprises and encouraged investment in them instead of what he called “subprime carbon assets,” tar sands and oil shale.

Two months later, Kleiner Perkins announced that it would invest $500 million in the Green Growth Fund, which specializes in environmental technology – potentially increasing Gore’s stake.

Another congressman, Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, told Gore during the hearing, “and I know you’ve got interests with Goldman Sachs.” Steven Milloy, science correspondent for Fox News and author of Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan To Ruin Your Life and What You Can Do To Stop Them, described what followed:

“Gore made facial gestures that implied he had never even heard of Goldman Sachs. Gore then replied, ‘No.’

“Rep. Scalise continued, ‘… well, that’s been reported. If — is that not accurate?’

“Gore replied, ‘No. I wish I did, but I don’t.’

Yet the former vice president has extensive, complex and personal connections with Goldman Sachs.

In 2004, Gore helped found and became the chairman of Generation Investment Management, which participates in cap-and-trade by purchasing carbon credits. Among the founders are three Goldman Sachs officials. Mark Ferguson served as the joint head of European research for Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Peter Harris directed international research for Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

But the biggest name is Henry Paulson – the former Goldman Sachs chairman and Pres. George W. Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury who designed last fall’s massive government bailout of various financial firms.

Serving as GIM’s managing director is David Blood, who once worked as the CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

GIM – and, by extension, Goldman Sachs – are major players in cap-and-trade. Deborah Corey Barnes wrote in Human Events that GIM exercises “considerable influence” over the Chicago Carbon Exchange (CCX) and its British equivalent, the Carbon Neutral Company. Both exchanges transform the carbon credits their members purchase into investments or donations to agencies that produce or promote non-petroleum energy sources.

CCX’s members include Ford, DuPont, Dow Corning and the states of Illinois and New Mexico. CCX also owns 50 percent of the European Climate Exchange, which features such members as Shell, British Petroleum, Barclays – and Goldman Sachs.

In 2006, Goldman Sachs paid $23 million for 10 percent of CCX’s shares. Also that year, Goldman Sachs supplied $2.3 billion in grants to study ways to regulate or reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, and $1 billion to projects designed to generate energy without petroleum.

Gore’s relationship with Goldman Sachs extends even to investing in oil exploration! Kleiner Perkins, where Gore works as a partner, combined with Goldman Sachs last year to invest $65 million in Terralliance, which develops software to make drilling more efficient.

“As a Kleiner Perkins partner, Al Gore must have known, if not approved of the Terralliance deal, and that it involved Goldman Sachs,” Milloy wrote. “At the very least, under partnership law, such knowledge is legally imputed to him as a partner.”

What about the Alliance for Climate Protection, Gore’s non-profit organization? Basically, it’s nothing but a front. As Barnes wrote:

“The group favors more stringent environmental policy regulations on the private sector and especially wants cap-and-trade legislation so that companies will be forced to lower their greenhouse gas emissions and buy carbon credits.”

Naturally, companies would have to join CCX (if they had not already done so) and purchase credits from the organization that Gore and Goldman Sachs helped establish. Those credits, in turn, would help finance projects that could make even more money for Gore and Goldman Sachs.

“Whatever its impact on the environment, the cap-and-trade carbon scheme is sure to boost the economic and political prospects of people and groups that are behind it,” Barnes wrote. “Before the company collapsed under the weight of financial scandal, Enron under CEO Ken Lay was a key proponent of the cap-and-trade idea. So was BP’s Lord John Browne, before he resigned last May under a cloud of personal scandal.”

The global warming hoax not only offers its promoters the opportunity for massive profits. It also provide another rationale for self-benighted elitists to promote their utopian visions of the future – and, like all utopian visions, they are fundamentally totalitarian.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Take Me Now God! Excerpt #5

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The Myths

ILLUMINATI

My Ex was one of the Illuminati, the chosen ones given spiritual enlightenment. At least some of what they were given seemed to be enlightenment. Many people claim to be part of the group. Don’t believe them. They don’t know.

I’ve been hanging around them since long before she was born. Psychics. Channelers. Crystal Gazers. Bible Belters. (Yes, them too). Wiccans. Druids. Witches and warlocks. If but a fraction of them were truly connected to the Almighty as they claimed I’d of been saved long ago. But here I am, sinking in the cesspool of life. Doesn’t say much for what they told me.

Some seem more legit than others. She was. But the legit ones only attract the evil charlatans. They prey on each other, always looking for something to give people to believe. Control freaks. Think they control minds too. She was surrounded by the sharks from the minute she came out of the closet with her enlightenment.

Like a virgin at an orgy. Coveted. Lusted after. Innocent. That’s how I found her up in Canada. Made the mistake of coming between her and a misguided shaman interested in more than her visions. I always was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Didn’t think much of him at first. So I didn’t pay any attention. Just ignored everything he tried to say and do. Had no idea he was getting so upset with me. Then she showed up, with her husband in tow. That’s when I noticed the twisted shaman start to focus on her.

He was shrouding her in delusion. Like a sorcerer’s evil spell. She was vulnerable, and helpless against his power. I could sense her sinking into his control. And I still hadn’t even met her. I don’t like games like that, when people don’t know they are pawns. So I changed the game table.

Threw a few psychic moves of my own to block the twisted shaman. Two years later I’m still feeling the aftermath of enraging him and interrupting his seduction. The path from then till now is littered with shattered lives and broken dreams. That is the vindictive power of these creatures from hell. Of course, she says I’m one of them, I should know.

Rule number one. Never piss off a practioner of black magic. Vengeance consumes them. They destroy everything around you in order to break you. Take away everything you have. Plant seeds of suspicion and doubt. Undermine trust. Strip you of faith. That’s what happens when you cross a supposedly enlightened one.

Later I discovered he’d been stalking her from Mexico to Canada. Maybe through multiple lifetimes, depending on your awareness of truth. Innocence attracts evil. Light attracts dark. She was the main course for dinner and I switched the meal on him.

The Illuminati are a strange bunch. Hard to tell the difference between the brilliance of the Rapture and the brilliance of a nuclear explosion. Both bathe the world in blinding light. Either way you’re out of here. And either way the earth is better off without you.

We were at a traditional Indian gathering of Illuminati in Canada. I wasn’t one. Just there to record and film it. At the Algonquin Indian reservation. Indigenous people of peace. Of course, with most of the Algonquin tribe up there being Christian, I always wondered about that. Nothing traditional about Christian beliefs, not that I have anything against the Christians. They could judge and condemn as good as anyone.

Few weeks later saw her in Washington, DC, at an Indian prayer gathering. More traditional this time, if there is such a thing in the nation’s capitol. At least it was the place to go where prayer was most needed. Then the shaman appeared again. When he saw me there, quite unexpectedly I might add, he was furious.

Obviously I stood in the way of him and his golden prize, yet again. It was quite innocent on my part. I was there to meet with a former Russian spy. Doesn’t everyone do that? Stopped by the teepees in the shadow of the Washington Monument to hear a Hopi Indian speak. Wasn’t even sure she’d be there.

Years before I stood in the same place and looked out over the tents filling the shadows of the Washington Monument. It was Resurrection City, put up by the followers of Martin Luther King. Was there when he made the “I had a dream” speech. Friend of mine worked for him. Back when I had dreams too.

Shamans are strange creatures. They have power, but their intent guides it’s use. If they are pure hearts, the power is white magic. If they are two hearts, the power is black magic. Many can be both, using and misusing their power depending on their mood. Others remain always trapped in the blackness. That was her friend. But he shielded her from seeing the truth.

I would pay many times over for interfering with his evil work. In the end, he would win. His illusions were that strong, his will was that powerful, and his allies were that dark. Me, I was on my own. He was able to use the Illuminati against me. I never tried to use them. Guess I learned the hard way.

Yes, there is good and evil in all. Even the enlightened ones. Knew a Lakota Medicine Man once, several in fact. Did a few ceremonies with them. Then one went to jail for murdering his wife. After spending years healing people, he turned and killed.

The old man told me it was a lesson for me. Listen, very carefully, to all you hear. Observe, very carefully, all you see. But never be told what to believe. Take what rings true and discard the rest. Never believe it all. For we are all flawed in ways we don’t understand ourselves. Even the holiest among us is still human.

So I listen. I observe. I read. And I study. But I don’t necessarily believe. That comes later, after I’ve assembled and sorted enough information. And I never forgot the old man’s advice. Even the holiest among us is human. And all humans have egos.

The New Age of enlightened beings. The Illuminati. Often caught up in their own delusional hysteria. Demanding to be heard. Demanding to be followed. Judging others as they don’t want themselves judged. Know how to tell the difference between a fraudulent Illuminati and enlightened one? You can’t.

WE REALLY DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO

Who is this person I see
talking about things so precious to me
what makes them think that one moment in time
they’d know everything, find perfect rhyme

When it’s taken us centuries to lose what we knew
teaching and healing, and wisdom too
heartaches and pain they just don’t understand
like the God they destroyed who once ruled our land

Our children and grandchildren don’t speak our tongue
why don’t we see the harm that we’ve done
yet we dress in our beads, feathers, dream catchers too
and really don’t know what to do
Where are the elders the spiritual core
shamans and medicine people and more
eagles and hawks bringing wisdom to bear
words we’ve forgotten to hear, words we’ve forgotten to hear
What is it we think we know
if the spiritual leaders don’t know which way to go
what makes us think we know the way
when we don’t know how the Indians pray

We’ve taken their God and we’ve taken their land
taken their children, made them disband
stolen their hopes, given them fear
lost ancient wisdom for all of those years

So we think if we act and we dress like them too
it will heal all the centuries of heartache they knew
and we dress in our beads, feathers dream catchers too
and really don’t know what to do

Where are the elders the spiritual core
shamans and medicine people and more
eagles and hawks bringing wisdom to bear
words we’ve forgotten to hear, words we’ve forgotten to hear


LOVE

Now here is an area where I have demonstrated under achievement. Love, the worst of all four letter words. But love got me to the end, so I might as well take a stab at it. If for no other reason than one last time I want to desecrate the meaning of it, as she says I have all my life.

This is what a shrink might say about me and love. You felt rejected as a child. Never got enough attention. Then, becoming enchanted by Shakespeare’s definition of love in his plays, had such an unrealistic standard of love, that it could never be achieved in your life. Love, to you, was an unending series of betrayals. Hell, even your hero King Arthur was betrayed in love by his beloved Guinevere and Lancelot.

Thus, I was incapable of understanding the meaning of love, incapable of feeling loved, and incapable of loving. And the shrink may be partly right. For years my definition of love shifted. From fairy tale idealism to brutal reality. I never really expected to find love. And I wasn’t disappointed.

There was grade school love. Only time I remember being in love in grade school was when I heard this cute, but diminutive 6th grader singing the song “Bells of St. Marys” in the school play. Didn’t matter what she looked like. I was in 8th grade anyway and would be gone the next year. But her voice was magical and that I fell in love with. Along with the guts it took her to perform in front of all those people. Funny how a lifelong interest in the performing arts starts with a 6th grader singing.

By high school I was falling in love at the drop of a hat, at least my version. Any reason was good enough for falling in love. Cute. Charming. Good legs. Better body. Nice tan. Fun loving. Older and mature. Smart. Well, maybe not smart. Even crazy. I was in love at least until the next day and I sobered up.

Love was a series of misfortunes and misadventures. Didn’t seem to be a lot of depth or substance. Didn’t seem necessary. It was always so shallow. But I was observing. The country club crowd and their rampant wife swapping. That was love? Rich kids seducing poor kids from the other side of the tracks. Greasers seducing nice girls with their macho act. Wannabe cheerleaders seducing players in a senseless game to win popularity votes. Everybody wanted something and were willing to give whatever they had to get it.

You might say I had a quite tainted idea of love by then. I looked for it everywhere and found it nowhere. Then came college, where I vowed to not be in love and wasn’t. Then marriage. Where I vowed to be in love and still wasn’t. No, love was not a key player in my life.

And then, after about 50 years, I began to question my own concept of love. Was it really about two people? Was it about sharing with each other, intimately, as in emotionally and physically? Was it about making love? I’d always had this notion that making love was a sacred act.

All those years reading the Bible and it never occurred to me when Jesus talked about love, it might mean something besides physical contact. So I studied the issue relentlessly, as I always did. Slowly a new picture of love began to emerge far removed from anything I ever thought about or studied before.

To this day it remains a mystery, but I think I made progress in understanding. It was never really about physical contact, or even the bond between two people. Yes, there can be a bond of love between two people. And yes, there is the sacred act of making love. There is even the love between parent and child, family and friends. But that is not the secret.

Love is not a state of mind. Love is a state of being. Love can not be allocated, it is. If you really love, you love everything and everyone. You recognize the life force in everything and love it for being here and available to you. You love the Mother Earth and sun as much as your mate. When you can love another’s child as much as your own child, you begin to live love. Until you live love completely, you don’t live at all.

When I first began to understand, I figured I was nuts. In the first place, I recognized my limitations in both knowledge and experience when it came to knowing about love. I’d only found it in books. Maybe a few movies. But not in reality. Still, I pondered the question as all good ponderers do. If you knew all the answers there wouldn’t be any questions. What fun is that?

SOMETHING WAS WRONG

Beautiful dreamer am I
though in my life I’m lonely and blue
when I look back on the road that I’ve traveled
I couldn’t find my way back to you

I guess I took the wrong crossroads one day
had so many choices to make
now I want to find my way home
I’m so tired of being alone

Was a fool I just couldn’t see
what you had in store what waited for me
didn’t know as I made my way
I walked down that path I drifted each day

Yet I walked in emptiness something was wrong
now I know that something was gone
and I longed to find it some day
I just didn’t know was the day I’d find you

Beautiful dreamer am I
though in my life I’m lonely and blue
when I look back on the road that I’ve traveled
I couldn’t find my way back to you

I guess I took the wrong crossroads one day
had so many choices to make
now I want to find my way home
I’m so tired of being alone

Now I pray please show me the way
help me to find my way on this day
cause I know I’m wasting my time
no joy can I find when I haven’t found you

And I’ll never be happy until I find you
cause there’s so many lessons to learn
and I’ll never walk by your side
until I can hear your words that are true
those words that I’m hearing from you

Beautiful dreamer am I
though in my life I’m lonely and blue
when I look back on the road that I’ve traveled
I couldn’t find my way back to you

I guess I took the wrong crossroads one day
had so many choices to make
now I want to find my way home
I’m so tired of being alone


THE RAPTURE

There are a lot of interesting things in the spiritual world, but of all of them, the Rapture wins hands down. Think about it, the optimum lift off. The ultimate high. No more bills. No more taxes. The final transformation out of the 3rd dimension to something higher, we think. Though anything could be higher after seeing what I’ve seen.

Still, the Rapture is the stuff of legends. Has to be since no one has really been through it and come back to report. Read about a lot of people claiming to have been there, in near death experiences, or visions. Hell, even the Ex was there. She did the right thing though. Said 3rd dimension words couldn’t describe the feeling, the sight or the sound. Kind of gets one off the hook.

I know something about the Rapture most people don’t. Came to me like most of the ancient knowledge I get. Brain implants. No other way to explain them. One minute I know nothing about something, the next minute I understand everything about it. And I didn’t read a book, see a video, or learn from someone. Zap, it’s just there.

For the longest time I thought some kind of UFO implant was doing it. Long before it was popular I thought I’d been abducted. Was driving across southern Colorado one night on my way to Arizona. Thought I saw something unusual in the sky off toward the mountains. Took a harder look at the glowing object.

Next thing I knew an hour was gone and I was no more than a few miles down the road. First I thought it was LSD flashbacks from the ‘60’s. Then remembered I never took drugs. So whenever I got some new insight I’d blame it on the UFO abduction. Drove my dentists crazy over it. Every time I went in for a root canal or crown I told them to search for an alien implant. I needed the evidence. Figured it would get me on Fox TV.

But getting the Rapture information was different. I was studying the stuff, just recently, when it came to me. When I study I bury myself in information. Between bookstores, my library, and the internet, there isn’t much you can’t find out. So I got on a Rapture kick and wanted to know what it was all about.

I read an article about the Shroud of Turin, the one Christ was supposedly wrapped in when they took him down from the cross. Some scientists studying it said the image was as if his body had been on the cloth and it was bombarded by massive radiation, as in a nuclear explosion.

Now that got my attention. I studied nuclear stuff a lot. Part of my disaster training. I even got a license from the Atomic Energy Commission, that’s what they called it before the Department of Energy, a license to handle radioactive materials. I wanted to know what to expect if a nuclear reactor had a melt down or blew up. Also part of my disaster training.

Anyway, that report got me thinking. Maybe we were looking at the whole rising from the dead episode wrong. Maybe there was a higher meaning waiting to be found. Something completely different than what we thought. I explored option after option and came up empty handed. But I absorbed a ton of information and information has a way of rearranging itself once it gets into my head.

Think my brain is like a giant computer. I just absorb information. Don’t necessarily try to figure out what it means. That comes later. First I try to absorb anything and everything. Figure if I collect enough shit some sense will come of it. I dump all the stuff into a vat, stir it up, and out it comes with entirely different meanings.

That’s what happened with the Rapture. All that stuff just re-sorted and out came the answer. When I got it I knew I was on to something. Tried to explain it a couple of times and the people looked at me like I was nuts. Then I knew I was right. No one wants to hear the truth.

It goes like this. Second thought, I can’t explain it all yet. The explanation is another story and I don’t want to steal the plot prematurely. So let me just summarize it for now. The Rapture is what will happen to all souls. Every soul exists in all seven dimensions at once, at least the seven I have discovered. Three physical, one dream state, and three spiritual. One being Earth and the 3rd dimension.

To achieve Christ consciousness, the elusive goal of all new agers and Bible belters, you must merge all seven dimensions to create a new one, the magical eighth and final step in your spiritual evolution. Even Jesus said the end game would not be found in your heaven or the heaven beyond it. To merge, you must take your physical body with you. That’s why we have it made over the angels. That’s what Jesus did when he pulled off his version of the Rapture.

Of course when you’re done you may look like you’ve been through a nuclear reaction, kind of like I feel some mornings. Anyway, think about it. I’ll try to explain more later. At least now I know that the ancient wisdom that pops into my head every so often is not just from the UFO implant. That’s a relief.

TEMPTED BY THE GOLD

Lord I hear you coming
you’re coming down that track
hear that locomotive pounding
come to take me back

You know I just ain’t ready yet
to take that final ride
I’ve been a sinner
and my sins I just can’t hide

Lord - amen - amen
please listen to my pleas
for I am just a lost soul
like a wandering sheep

Lord - amen - amen
I couldn’t see the light
wandered in the darkness
prowled the streets at night

Lord - amen - amen
once I was so bold
blinded by the glitter
tempted by the gold


CREATION

Ever wonder about creation? I do all the time. Seems the Bible can account for about 12,000 years, back to the time of the big surf, or flood. The Hopi and Mayan Indian can account for another 250,000 years, including the mystical kingdom of Atlantis.

Dinosaurs are 60-200 million years old. The Grand Canyon is 2 billion years old. Earth 4 billion, while the universe as we know it is 26 billion years old. I figure that is more than enough time to accommodate just about every version of creation there can be.

Lots of things could have evolved and disappeared in 26 billion years. I like the Hopi idea that this is the fourth cycle of man, and we are at the end. Makes my departure a little less significant. Of course they say there will be a fifth cycle. Hope the Hopi don’t expect me back.

I have offered a lot of theories about creation over the years to anyone that will listen. There have been some constants in them. I do believe we are in the fourth cycle of civilization. I believe the first two cycles involved beings on this planet that were much more spiritual and connected to the Creator. Kind of like glimmering George Lucas creations out of Star Wars. Third was the Atlantians, whose technology was so advanced the whole damn thing self-destructed. This is the fourth, at least the end of it. Yet another round lost by the stupid humans.

Each time a new cycle began on Earth I believe higher spirits, angels, or whatever you want to call them, were sent here to help. So I guess we can blame them for the failures as well. Now I think they are back again to help with the Purification before the fifth cycle that is about to begin.

Only a fool would harbor the notion that we are alone in creation. Since I also buy the existence of parallel universes, or dimensions, then at a minimum we exist in numerous places simultaneously. Imagine that, each of us spread out all over the place. A dash in this dimension, a dash in that. There are some people I sure wish weren’t spread out. But who am I to question the wisdom of the All Omnipotent One.

One day I expect to find proof positive of prior civilizations, maybe from the time of Atlantis or Lemuria. Of course that depends on how soon God honors my request to be taken. I think the pyramid and sphinx are about 25,000 years old, at least the first time they were build. But other civilizations may be millions of years old.

And I’m not talking about civilizations that were inhabited by ape men or any such nonsense, but evolved humans. That is, if you accept the highly suspect theory that we are indeed advanced creatures. Judging from our history that might be a stretch. And watching some of the Neanderthals I’ve known, we may well be in evolutionary reverse speed.

I think the only reason we were given a brain and free will is because God knew better than to give it to any other creatures. He figured they’d watch us for a while and see how bad we screwed things up. So most of the attention of the angels has been on saving everything else from us.

Man is a strange creature. There is only one animal species that is a natural killer for the sake of killing, besides man, and that is the domestic cat. Not even the wild lions and tigers kill for the sake of killing. Only the cat raised under the direct influence of man.

I read a story about how a single cat outdoors can kill 1600 songbirds every 18 months. No wonder there is so little song left in the world. Doesn’t matter if you feed the cat, they aren’t killing the birds for food but pleasure. Why is that? We can train some dogs to do that but it doesn’t come natural to them.

I suspect there are a lot of species of animals, birds and fish that would just as soon see the human race die out again. Who can blame them? We take, we possess, we destroy, all in the name of God and country. Some evolved civilization.

And then there is poor Mother Earth. No wonder she is throwing earthquakes, floods, hurricanes and typhoons at us at a record pace. We have ripped everything we can from the Earth. Then we poison the air and water. We genetically manipulate the food, not to mention the animals and soon humans. Is nothing sacred anymore?

I’m with the Hopi. We have gone too far again. It is high time for the Purification because if the Almighty doesn’t stop us we will destroy everything. At least leave something of the Earth behind for someone else to try and get it right.


I DON’T KNOW WHY

When the daylight has begun
darkness has been lost to the morning sun
that rises in the sky to the east
I don’t know why

Stars that fade from night
stars that remind me of the ones
who gave their life a life that didn’t count
still I don’t know why

And if I ever find the answer
to the mysteries that I see
perhaps the truth will help me face
what waits out there for me

For I know there’s a reason
for the things we do and say
and if I keep on searching
I will find it ‘long the way

So I will keep on living
‘till I reach the day

When the night returns again
I lie awake and wonder
when it’s going to end this life I live
what is it I am supposed to give

Lonely people walk the night
I guess I wonder if they know
the end’s in sight an end that haunts them
they don’t know the end will lead them to the light

And if I ever find the answer
to the mysteries that I see
perhaps the truth will help me face
what waits out there for me

For I know there’s a reason
for the things we do and say
and if I keep on searching
I will find it ‘long the way

So I will keep on living
‘till I reach the day


ELEMENTALS

Within Mother Earth, according to folk legend, there are magical little people called the Elementals, those soulless creatures assigned to protect the water, forests, lands, and fire of the earth. That’s where stories about the fairies, elves, and all the other strange little critters come from. Folk tales they tell us.

No phony folk stuff to them. I believe in them. You should too if you don’t. If you can escape the ravages of modern society and get yourself out in the virgin country you can even sense them. They wait, and observe. Quietly they go about their business of cleaning up our messes.

Someone must be responsible for protecting the Earth in the third dimension. Look at us, we have all kinds of protectors, overseers, angels, aliens and demons. Seems only right the trees, rocks, air, water and land would have them too.

People have been seeing them and writing about them for centuries, important people too. Yet we still try not to believe. How arrogant of us. I see a life force in everything in this planet. There is an energy that makes it, an energy that preserves it. Whether it is the Earth or the wind, there is a life force that guides everything. When will we wake up?

A TINY SEED

A seed so tiny that is planted
in the ground where we can’t see
somehow survives the cold of winter
that can break a man like me

The pounding rains of spring can’t wash away
the seed as it does grow
and in the autumn as it sheds it’s leaves
to sleep again it goes

That tiny seed becomes a giant oak
and spreads it’s mighty wings
as it forever reaches upward
to the clouds and higher things

I find it funny as we contemplate
we sit and wonder why
we never noticed as that seed
became a tree and reached the sky

A grain of sand is blowing cross the highway
right in front of me
I never stopped to think about it
and from where it just might be

Is it a fragment of the ages
with the wisdom of all time
was it once part of a mountain
that performed in perfect rhyme

That tiny grain of sand was once part
of a mighty mountain peak
reaching high above the clouds
up where the eagles dared to seek

Ain’t it funny as we go our way
we never wondered why
that tiny grain of sand is
much stronger than I

A gentle wind whispers so softly
as it rustles through the trees
yet it can change into a hurricane
from a gentle breeze

The winds don’t ever get to rest
they keep on blowing through the years
sometimes I just don’t understand it
how the winds can cause such fears

That breeze that pushes back your hair
with such a warm and gentle touch
can turn into an angry storm
that drives the pounding rains too much

I guess I never stopped to wonder
if the winds are right or wrong
just can’t imagine what we’d have
if they were gone


DIVINE INSIGHTS

As a reporter, I thought I knew research techniques. Spent years developing the discipline and resources to be able to find out anything. Made me invaluable in Congress or the White House. No matter what came up, they knew within hours I could find out and craft an appropriate response to any issue.

And my investigative techniques and corresponding results generated minor folk tales. Like the time I found out all the bridges were being raised on the interstate highway system so the military could move these giant missile launchers around the country to avoid detection by the Russians.

But I confess, my techniques paled in comparison to those of my older brother. After all, he was a gatekeeper to the next dimension. Told me so himself. If you needed a ticket to the ascension, he was the ticketmaster. Took him years to find the right master to sell tickets for, then the ancient knowledge flowed like the Mississippi River in spring run-off.

There were two sources for his accelerated spiritual evolution. One was the channeled entity, Sammy, the Mecca of all things and speech writer for God. Sometimes it was hard to tell whether God or Sammy was in charge. Nixon felt the same way I guess about his speech writers, and look what happened.

Source number two was the secret depository of all spiritual insights. The movies, as in Hollywood and motion pictures. In the world according to Michael, sometimes it seemed the value of information was in direct proportion to the box office draw at the movie theater. Ratings equaled truth. Dollars made sense.

Powder, Where Dreams Are Made, Michael, Sixth Sense, and Dogma were among the most significant insights ever shared with humans, according to the latest revelations from my brother. It was obvious from their ticket sales. Why didn’t I think of that? Such movies were made to condition humans for what was to come.

Same was true with movies like the Star Wars Trilogy, ET, Close Encounters, and the rest. And who could question that conclusion? Made sense to me. What better way to gain acceptance for a new idea than to slap it on the big screen and show it to the billions of spiritually evolved people one finds in movie theaters. Always wondered why they were there.

Those movies that mastered the game of merchandising made an even greater impact on humanity with all the additional revenue they generated. Still, I am not certain about his movie methods. Imagine some point far into the future when archaeologists are exploring the ancient remains of our civilization. If they believe the mystical movie theory they will have concluded the human race of the 20th century was destroyed by genetic mutants in the form of Purple Barney Monsters and Talking Kermit Frogs.

WHY SHOULD I CARE?

Why are we here what should we know
up on the stage on with the show
so many questions still on my mind
where are the answers so little time
when will my journey end
what waits beyond the next bend

Why do I feel so lonely
why do I feel so alone
and why do I wonder
why should I care

Once upon a time I was foolish
now I can’t find my way home

First came act one, childhood was fun
seemed I just started then it was done
I was awakened sent on my way
left on my own to face the day

Couldn’t tell if I was strong
was too young to know right from wrong

Then came act two out on my own
a tree with no roots a kid with no home
I knew it all I was so cool
I was so blind, I was life’s fool

The lessons came oh so fast
I’m reminded with scars from the past

Why do I feel so lonely
why do I feel so alone
and why do I wonder
why should I care

Once upon a time I was foolish
now I can’t find my way home

Monday, June 29, 2009

Joe Orlando - Fenwick Street Used Books & Music - Leonardtown

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Joe's Place - Where Time Stands Still

Another of our great finds in the Leonardtown area is the Fenwick Street Used Books & Music Emporium and proprietor Joe Orlando, who just might be Tony Orlando's brother but he isn't. You see the funky, eclectic, jam packed store with books, records, movies and who knows what else might be under the stacks piled all over the place, is a mere reflection of the eccentric owner.




To get there you find your way to the old Leonardtown town square, turn left at the Cafe des Artistes, a wonderful French Cafe, and turn right where the carts of books are out front blocking the sidewalk with the super specials of the day. At this point you have no idea if you have entered the bohemian Left Bank of Paris or just followed the white rabbit down the hole to Alice's Wonderland.




Joe the Used Book Proprietor

Searching through the stacks of books and things is a great way to spend the day in Leonardtown because there isn't a whole lot else to do most days. Somewhere in there you can find all the classics, even first editions, if you are patient or ask Joe for help. He knows where everything is in that most unusual store. If he doesn't have it this computer savvy bohemian can find it on the Internet as he scours the private libraries and collections from around the world.



Joe the Reverend

Then again he should be able to help you because he is also an ordained or certified Reverend who can even design custom weddings for you. Now that is a class act. You can get a great deal on some old book and get married while you are there although most of his weddings are performed in much more intriguing locations like in boats, on islands, in the water or whatever you want.




Joe the Choreographer

Still that is not all in terms of service diversity that Joe has to offer for he is also a world class dance choreographer who has staged shows throughout the nation and taught at the most prestigious dance schools in the country. So now you can buy an old book, get married and have a dance choreographed for your bridesmaids and grooms men, maybe even the entire wedding party and family.




Joe the Jazz Guitarist

You think that is all? This throwback to Shakespearean days does it all for he can also provide the music with his jazz guitar playing and he can bring along the gang he jams with whenever he isn't selling books, choreographing the wedding and doing the marrying.

Joe the Community Organizer

Now if Obama knew what he was doing he would have been using Joe as an example of someone who unselfishly devotes many hours to helping his community of Leonardtown get out of the dark ages with promotional events nearly every week that bring live entertainment to stores and the town square. I get so many notices of events I am convinced his restless mind has designed an event for every conceivable possibility from the 4th of July to his mother-in-law's birthday and she isn't even from Maryland.




Joe the Husband

If you think he is cool you should meet his wife Joanna, the Spanish teacher in our local college. Put them together and you have an exhibit for the Smithsonian of the more sophisticated bohemian couple of the "70's, hippy couple from the '60's, or beatnik of the "50's, but computer literate, educated, artistic, savvy and deboner. Not what you might expect to find in the shadows of our nation's capitol where time stopped long ago and most residents are probably in the witness protection program. Down in Southern Maryland, St. Mary's County we measure history in four centuries.

Joe and Joanna got here the long way making the circuit from the Big Apple to the rain forest of South America, from dancing in the likes of Carnegie Hall to the wide open prairies of Texas. I could go on and on but I think you have enough talking points to strike up a conversation with Joe next time you are in Leonardtown.




Fenwick Used Books is the top St. Mary's County archeological site and you can really dig it so bring a shovel and time to converse because behind the stacks is Joe who can quote Plato, dance like Fred Astaire, preach like Billy Graham and still have time to help his community. A Proprietor, Preacher, Philosopher, Poet, Picker, and Prophet, Joe's book store is a must see stop on your journey back through time.

The Glastonbury, England Music Festival

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With America being the site of the original monster concert at Woodstock way back in 1969 it seems ironic that two of the most successful festivals in the world are in the UK, not America. Fact is this August is the 50th anniversary of Woodstock and there are no super festivals in America.

In Glastonbury, west of London there is the recently concluded Glastonbury Festival featuring the top national and international music acts in the world where up to 250,000 converge for a weekend with music and dancing the dominant programs. This is the Glastonbury close to Stonehenge and the center of the King Arthur stories of ancient England. Twice I have traveled to Glastonbury doing research on ancient sites and Druids and King Arthur and it was a most enjoyable journey.

The other festival is the concurrent undertaking of 12 different festivals in Edinburgh, Scotland during August in which up to 2.5 million people attend the month long celebration of the arts. Many are performing arts festivals but music is not a major focus.



I've also made a couple of trips to Scotland and was able to help a friend, Max McClain, get his one man show on the Bible approved by the Scottish review groups and performed by him at the festival. This was shortly before we also got his show on Broadway, the real NYC Broadway, where it was the first performance of a Book of the Bible by one person in Broadway history.

I must say the marquee on Broadway showing Max performing the Books of Mark, Revelations and Psalms turned a few heads in the Big Apple and when he did it all from memory they were stunned. My production company also recorded a 16 CD digital recording of the New Testament with Max, another first. But then Max graduated from the Royal Shakespeare Company in England so he was a top talent.

The following is a report prepared by the Britain Express Travel and Tourism Office about the ancient sites in Glastonbury.

Legends of Glastonbury

There may be no other location in the British Isles with quite so many mystical legends and spiritual speculation attached to it as this ancient market town. Part of the mystique is a result of geography; the striking shape of Glastonbury Tor which rises above the nearby Somerset Levels like a beacon, topped with its solitary medieval tower, is a striking landmark, visible for miles in all directions. To see the Tor rising above the mists that cover the Levels in the early morning is a visual treat.

It is hard to imagine it today, but hundreds of years ago Glastonbury was an island; the sea covered the Somerset Levels, creating a world of marshes and small hillocks that rose above the water level. The largest of the hills was that upon which Glastonbury was founded. According to which myth you believe, Glastonbury was founded by St Patrick, or, even earlier, by Joseph of Arimathea, who was granted land here by a local king. The tale goes that Joseph brought with him the Holy Grail, which was buried with him in a secret place when he died, and there it waits to be discovered.

Also waiting is King Arthur who, if the legends are to be believed, is buried with his queen, Guinivere, in the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey. The Abbey is located off Magdalene Street, and offers lovely grounds with excellent views of the Tor. In the Abbey grounds is the Abbot's Kitchen, a strking medieval building that survived the Dissolution of the Monasteries largely unscathed.




On the High Street are two buildings of note; the Tribunal, which now houses the local Tourist Information Centre, and the George Hotel. The latter was built to act as accommodation for pilgrims during the Middle Ages. From the High Street a town walking trail is laid out, with plaques at points of interest along the way. A short walk leads to the Somerset Rural Life Museum, which is housed in a huge stone building that was once a barn for Glastonbury Abbey. The size of the barn gives some clue to the prosperity of the Abbey during the medieval period.

If you continue on past the Rural Life Museum you will soon reach Chalice Well, at the base of the Tor. This peaceful oasis of gardens and winding paths is owned by a private trust. There is, naturally, a legend associated with the Chalice Well. The waters of the well have a distinct reddish tinge, and the story goes that this red colour is the blood of Christ. The scientific explanation is that the water has a high iron content, and it is this that accounts for the colouring. Many people bring containers to fill from the waters of the Well.

A few yards from the Chalice Well a public footpath leads up Glastonbury Tor, which has long been identified as the mystical Isle of Avalon, where King Arthur was said to have been taken to rest until his country needed him. As you ascend you can clearly see the signs of medieval terracing; ledges cut into the slopes of the Tor. One legend says that the terracing forms a spiral to the summit, or a maze, which, if you follow it consciously to the top, will act as a source of spiritual inspiration. At the top of the Tor is St. Michael's Tower, all that remains of a medieval chapel on this spot. The views are truly wonderful; if the weather is clear the Mendips are easily visible, as are the towers of Wells Cathedral a few miles away, and further to the west the expanse of Exmoor National Park.

If you have the time, walk out onto the Somerset Levels to get a really good view of the Tor. For an equally striking view, visit Wearyall Hill (see photo below) on the southwest outskirts of Glastonbury. Here you will see a thorn tree, said to mark the spot where Joseph of Arimathea came ashore on his arrival in Glastonbury. The current thorn often has offerings hanging from its branches, the contribution of modern pilgrims.





Joseph of Arimathea

Joseph was the Biblical figure who took Jesus' body after the crucifixion. According to some legends he was actually Jesus' uncle, and had visited Britain years before with Jesus in the pursuit of his interests in the tin trade. It appears that there actually was a strong Jewish presence in the west of England at that time, and many of the tin miners may have been Jewish settlers.

At any rate, when Jesus died, Joseph thought it prudent to flee Palestine, and after many travails he came to Britain with a company of followers. He brought with him the Holy Grail, the cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper. Some versions of the legend have it that the Grail contained two drops of blood captured from Jesus' side when he was wounded on the cross.

When Joseph came to Britain he was granted land at Glastonbury by the local king. When he arrived at Glastonbury, Joseph stuck his thorn staff in the earth, whereupon it rooted and burst into bloom. A cutting from that first tree was planted in the grounds of the later Glastonbury Abbey, where it continued to bloom every year thereafter at Christmas time. There is still a thorn tree in the Abbey grounds, of a variety native to the Holy Lands, and it does indeed bloom around Christmas time.

Joseph was said to have established the first church in England at Glastonbury, and archaeological records show that there may well have been an extremely early Christian church here. What happened to the Holy Grail is another matter. Some legends have it that Joseph buried the Grail at the foot of Glastonbury Tor, whereupon a spring of blood gushed forth from the ground.

There is a well at the base of the Tor, Chalice Well, and the water that issues from it does indeed have a reddish tinge to it, from the iron content of the water.

Other legends have it that the Holy Grail was interred with Joseph when he died, in a secret grave. The search for the mysterious Grail emerges again and again in the tales of Glastonbury.

Further legends tell that the church founded by Joseph continued for many years. Eventually it became a monastery, and one of the first abbots was the future St Patrick, who was born in the west country.


King Arthur and Glastonbury

Legends of King Arthur swirl about Glastonbury like a tantalizing fog from the nearby Somerset marshes. The nearby hill fort at South Cadbury has long been suggested as the location for Camelot. Indeed, excavations of South Cadbury suggest that it was in use during the early 6th century, which is the likeliest era for the real Arthur to have lived.

The association of Arthur and Glastonbury goes back at least to the early Middle Ages. In the late 12th century the monks of Glastonbury Abbey announced that they had found the grave of Arthur and Guinivere, his queen. According to the monks, an excavation found a stone inscribed "Here lies Arthur, king." Below the stone they found the bones of a large man, and the smaller skeleton of a woman. The monks reburied the bones in the grounds of the abbey, where they were a very handy draw for pilgrims. The site of the grave can be seen today in the abbey grounds.

Glastonbury Tor, the enigmatic conical hill that rises above Glastonbury, has been linked with the Isle of Avalon, where King Arthur was buried after his death. This isn't so farfetched as it may sound, for a millennium ago the water level was much higher, and the tor would indeed have been an island. Avalon was also called "the isle of glass" which does suggest similarities to the name "Glastonbury".

The Holy Grail, the object of Arthur's questing, is said to be buried beneath Glastonbury Tor, and has also been linked to Chalice Well at the base of the Tor.

One final myth of Arthur at Glastonbury: the landscape around Glastonbury is said to have been moulded and shaped so that the features (such as roads, churches, and burial mounds) create a zodiac calendar replete with Arthurian symbology. Like so many of the Arthurian myths, so much is open to interpretation and your own predisposition to believe or disbelieve.


Madoff "Extraordinarily Evil" Says Judge - 150 Years In Jail



Bernie Madoff, the former darling of Wall Street, Palm Beach and the Hamptons got the book thrown at him today when the Judge ordered a 150 year sentence for fraud as nearly $15 billion was stolen from thousands of unsuspecting investors and their pension funds.

In passing sentence the Judge called Madoff "Extraordinarily Evil" when sentencing him with each year being equal to about $100 million he stole. His failure to help authorities investigating the crime and silence about the action of his wife and kids who were employed by his corrupt firm did not help him.

In fact his wife just agreed to turn over about $88 million to the prosecuting team, a sample of what might still be out there. For more information contact any of the media as they have nothing better to do than to cover old Bernie.