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TRUMP – An Even Newer Post

Saturday, December 17th, 2016

by: Marceline Donaldson, December, 2016

There are some things that people are afraid to say about Trump. Because of the way Trump is moving fast towards his goal of heading a racist, sexist, totally compliant society, we need to be aware of what is in his environment:

It is clear that some people believe Trump is a part of the mafia. If you look around, that is beginning to leak out. The tweets which talk about his purchases from the Genovese family for his businesses and more say to me – who buys from a crime family? Do they have to belong? Are the prices cheaper? The quality better? Or is this patronizing family? Trump tweets with regularity, but have you seen Kurt Eichenwald’s tweets?

“Kurt Eichenwald ✔@kurteichenwald
67. Trump opted out of using steel on many buildings, instead purchasing concrete from businesses controlled by Genovese crime family.
4:27 PM – 7 Nov 2016”

There have been conjectures about Trump being “the Don” Trump, but the media has totally ignored that. There have also been conjectures that Trump’s real mission is to organize a world-wide mafia into a loose organization with all groups represented – the Italian Mafia, the Russian Mafia, the Eastern European Mafia, etc. That could have been researched by some enterprising media person, but it was left totally alone. The question about the possible Mafia background of someone running for President of these United States is an important question which needs to be answered soonest.

Eichenwalds tweets are from his research into Trump’s businesses. He has been tweeting for quite some time, have we been listening? To see this story unfold is amazing. This is who we elected President?

In addiiton, only now is it coming to the fore in ways that America is beginning to see and take seriously, Trump’s involvement with Russia and Russian involvement with the American Presidential election trying to get Trump elected and Hillary pushed to the side. It is clear that was a very important and effective dynamic in this past election and will have repercussions into the future.

In addition, we have not only elected someone who appealed to Putin to hack his opponents emails and other requests, we have also elected someone commonly called a bully.

To see the bullying side of Trump – look at his “Thank You” rallies. I’ve seen threats before, but this is a huge threat to the Electoral College. If you don’t vote Trump in – he is ready to send his people on a rampage and his rallies are making sure he is in a position, at the time of the vote, to do just that. And let us not blame Trump. Standing next to him and participating as an equal in all of this is his Vice President-elect Pence.

In addition, we have elected a man who is sexually abusive and has several women accusing him of serious sexual abuse. Our response? Disbelief. Our sexism does not allow us to take that seriously as being any kind of character flaw which will negatively affect these United States for generations to come.

The people Donald Trump has called to Trump Tower – people who were against him and said horrible things about him and called on others to not support him – Trump is now parading in front of the press so the American people can see the two faces of their politicians and their leaders. He has humiliated Mitt Romney – Silicon Valley supporters of Hillary Clinton using Peter Thiel to organize that “show and eat-humble-pie meeting”. Thiel is and has been a Trump supporter almost from the beginning. What is also amazing about that is the rumor that Peter Thiel is gay – isn’t one of Trump’s planks one against such people and against the LGBT Community as being less than? So is this how Peter Thiel works out his own self-hatred? It is an American Tragedy.

We have an American President-elect who is skilled at bringing out the worst in people as he moves along with his divide and conquer way of life. Satan is strolling across America having one incredible party after another and look who is being invited.

One recent rally called on people in attendance to applaud for the African Americans who didn’t vote. That was a show and tell lesson on how he is going to turn America against its own and increase the level of racism without being upfront about it. He led that group of people into a not so subtle hate rally without their even realizing they were participants in such a time. After that rally he was able to call for that bowl of water and wash his hands claiming innocence – he wasn’t being racist, he was being supportive of Blacks. He didn’t do it, they did it to themselves.

Divide and Conquer is still serving Trump very well. When he finishes, the world and practically everyone in it will be at odds with each other and in the chaos, Trump will win and walk calmly into a huge increase of wealth and power.

His greatest achievement has been to have some 37% of the Republican Party preferring Putin to Obama. They see him as a benevolent ruler who they admire. They are blinded to the extreme racism of that preference. The one the world calls a “butcher” – and who shares the blame for what is happening in Aleppo, 37% of the Republican Party calls a great ruler.

Having recently left the Republican Party to stand with the Independents, it has been quite a time for me to see this. Some things do come together. When I left, projected out of the Party, finally, by Donald Trump’s nomination, there was no one left in the Republican Party who I knew as a young person just beginning to vote – to get involved – following a family tradition. A racial tradition also because years ago most Blacks were Republicans. Lincoln freed the slave and Blacks are nothing if not loyal. That has changed and all of those who were very much a part of that Grand Ole Party have run screaming out of the Republican Party as they witnessed more and more of its current members putting on their white sheets and looking in the mirror to make sure their tall white pointy hats were sitting at just the right angle.

I couldn’t believe the Party I knew – through the Rockefeller Republican years and more – was not going to move back to its roots. But it has moved so far. those roots have been killed off and can’t even be used to fertilize the ground around it anymore. How time changes all of us.

At the end, everyone I met in this new Republican Party had come, fairly recently, from the Democratic Party, which has been throwing out and alienating its more conservative members for at least a generation.

When I signed up as a Republican, the Democrats were the racists. If you were a Democrat and Black and tried to vote you were in serious trouble. When the Democratic Conventions were held it was – no Blacks allowed – especially none with a seat at the Conventions. Fannie Lou Hamer and others changed that and the Democratic Party has been changing ever since. It was the Party of Movements moved from recruiting its members from the KKK movement and the White Nationalist Movement to recruiting its members from the Black Civil Rights Movement and the Feminist Groups and now those convened about the environment and more.

What an amazing life I have lived. What spectacular events God has allowed me to witness. With that comes a wisdom I had no idea would accrue.

In all of this I feel most pain and sympathy for the many friends and acquaintances I have met, worked and played with over the years who lived a very circumspect life. They made decisions taking care that they carefully preserved themselves from getting out there – from taking stands for that which they believed, if that was not sanctioned by their peers and society – from supporting the less fortunate if they were not those currently on the “in” list – from ever being there for those oppressed, because that kept them and theirs in power. They would get involved if society showed how to do that in an ‘acceptable’ way. That ‘acceptable way’ was always one which would give one a chance to ‘show boat’, but preserve one from making basic change. I didn’t and still don’t understand why.

I used to wonder what was wrong with me that I didn’t do the same? Why did I jeopardize a career to take a stand for minorities and women who were being discriminated against at the Pillsbury Company when the only women in management were White and were either over the kitchen or secretarial pool? Why did I take on the role of organizing – as a member of NOW and with the National Urban League – a boycott against General Mills because of the way they advertised and sold all of their products to women and minorities but had none above a management level in their company – as a member of the NOW National Board, why did I run for President on a platform which was incredibly unpopular holding up a mirror and asking why the organization was so determined to be so White relegating Black Women to support roles and claim to be fighting for equality.

Even as a young child – 9 years old, why did I go from door to door in my New Orleans neighborhood asking my neighbors to call the telephone company and disconnect their telephones because young Black Women could not be hired as telephone operators. Why did I cause my grandfather grief when I demanded that he lead a charge opening membership in his beloved Prince Hall Masons to everyone and get rid of the women’s group, which was clearly an appendage to the main male group making that membership equal to all, especially when membership in that group gave a positive push to one’s vocational movements? I could go on, but it gets worse.

Today, as I look at Donald Trump and what he is about – I see someone who is the personification of a human being who has spent his life chasing the economic/ financial/power in a society. He seems to think achieving all of that is the ultimate and he has spent his life engaged in that kind of struggle. His ethics, character, – his life has been formed out of that struggle for all things temporal. All things that die horrible deaths.

He has reached the ultimate spot in this country. The honey-pot of power from which he can extract money, power, position beyond his wildest dreams. But he is such a pathetic figure. He has learned to manipulate, to twist, to humiliate his detractors, to squeeze everything he can squeeze from those struggling around and beneath him. He has used women and other minorities to puff himself up and get whatever good feelings he could get from creating an identity as the ultimate White Male Power Hungry Potentate. And he is the most humiliated, despised, friendless person I have ever seen. You look at him and it is painful to see the emotions he is experiencing in the middle of what could have been his finest hour.

His ancestors – those who have brought him to this place and this time – are all gathered around him to bask in his glory – hoping and praying to share a bit of warmth from his life. They, who helped to create him, are surrounded by storm clouds, and hurricanes, and freezing ice falling all around – and they have no warmth anyplace. They have no protection from the horribleness of their environment – from where they live for an eternity, yet they are doing their best to support Donald Trump because their need and hope is that his life will bring some warmth to their afterlives. Given the frigid cold in which Trump lives and has chosen, I don’t think I have ever seen anything so sorrowful.

You can manipulate, humiliate, destroy, and all the rest for a lifetime. But if you have not lived life to accumulate love, wisdom, friends, ancestors in warm wonderful places, what has your life been about? You pay for your sins and you receive for your goodness – there is no way for us to change that.

Given all that I have seen in life, for some of us the best is yet to come. For the Donald Trump’s of the world, the excruciating future and eternity is also yet to come and from the way it looks, I am content.

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Tags: Barack Obama, bed & breakfast, Bettina Homes, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, breakfast table talk, Donald Trump, Hedge Schools, politics, Racism, Sexism
Posted in Bed & Breakfast, Bettina Homes, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Breakfast Table Talk, Donald Trump, Hedge Schools, Hillary Clinton, Kitchen Table Talk, politics, President Obama, racism, sexism, U. S. Presidential Campaign | Comments Off on TRUMP – An Even Newer Post

TRUMP: An Analysis – Another One

Friday, November 18th, 2016

by: Marceline Donaldson 2016

No more calls, please. I will give you my final say. You probably won’t like it, but here goes:

What do I think about this election? It told me much about myself in relation to the United States of America’s citizens and structures.

I am a minority and the laws of these United States have that written into them. What is that? Me – and those like me – are less than.

Laws have been challenged, changed, made, amended, but there are always more because slavery was a part of the founding of these United States and that structural inconsistency is a part of what we have inherited. And before slavery, the laws that enslaved Africans were based on the marriage laws – so sexism also plays a part. That is why the Constitution must be a living, breathing, changing thing – and – that is why the bigots in this country want it to be set in stone. To tell the truth is powerful. To be able to hear the truth and respond is even stronger.

White Supremacy Ideology was developed during slavery to justify one group over another -better than another – which allowed that slave holding group to go to Church on Sundays and participate in life as though they were good people. Before that, WHITE did not exist and it was clearly not a race. These newly named WHITES demonized, demeaned, destroyed the lives of many to be able to be slaveholders and mistreaters of women and other minorities and still sit in the pew they paid for with what felt to them like a clear and clean conscience and to exercise their prerogative to be lazy. Lazy how? To import “immigrants,” who then were called “slaves” for the sole purpose of doing their work to achieve their goals of building this country.

That White Supremacist Ideology has maintained even into today and even though some slavery has been abolished. Slavery involving Africans – stealing African citizens from their country and “importing” them into the United States. That slavery is now illegal. We have moved on because as technology develops and all of what has come from the Industrial Revolution morphs and changes, this society does not need that kind of physical labor anymore. We now resort to “emotional slavery” – using women, dogs, other animals, etc. – but that is for another time.

Jews were “Blacks” and “N*****S until the Black Civil Rights Movement came along and then gradually they became “WHITE”.

East Indians – the same.

Today Latina’s are “Blacks”, but some are gradually taking on new racial identities as “WHITE”. And so it goes.

We won’t even begin to include American Indians – foreigners on their own land.

This election has said clearly that I may be an American citizen because my family has been here from the beginning and my family has been added to with “immigrants” who have been here for several generations, but that does not make me free and equal.

My vote, for example, is only worth a percentage of what other peoples votes are worth. If I lived in the “countryside” instead of in the city, my vote would count as one plus – the plus coming from what was taken from other United States Citizens to make sure that my unequalness would remain wrapped into the institutional structure of this country. Those not as equal cannot vote as equals and those ‘better than’ have their better-than-nes institutionalized in the structure of the country in which they live, contribute, and more.

The one vote lie that we tell United States citizens and others is just that – a lie. Since I live in the city, I do not have “one person one vote”. That lie has been told to me and mine for generations. And since most minorities – with very few exceptions – live in the cities – another way to discriminate, that has been around for generations, has now come full circle and created a tyranny to maintain the bigotry which is still in our structures. Its maintenance has shown up when Whites most needed it – when they are about to become the “Minority”, but the structure is doing its best to maintain them as a “Majority” which dictates how everyone else shall live and how they shall maintain their White Supremacy.

That is what brought Donald Trump into office. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by over one million votes – 1,000,000. If you are still saying 200,000 then check your figures, they are wrong.

Having won the popular vote, Hillary should be president of these United States. What happened! Why did she “lose”.

She is a woman.
She is a woman who identifies as a feminist.
She is a woman who is well known in the African American and other minority communities because she has been there for all of us. From the beginning of her career in law when she stood with Marian Wright Edelman working to bring about positive change for many children – who, but for, would have had a very different and much more difficult life.
Many in the media were bribed by Trump with weekends in MaraLargo and other amenities and they then talked Trump 24/7. Apparently there are no checks and balances to make sure that kind of bribery does not happen and it was given free range in this Presidential Campaign. It doesn’t matter what you say as long as you keep saying it about me 24/7 with hardly a comment about my competition and that comment, when made, is negative – and I will win any election in which I take part.
Donald Trump viciously called out those who said anything, even slightly negative about him or his and so people became more reticent and more careful with what they were saying.
Our own FBI through its head – Comey – interfered with the election of President of these United States to make the election come out in favor of their candidate Donald Trump. A vicious turn and a total sell-out of what that Director of the FBI took an oath as to what he would and would not do.
Wiki Leaks did all it could – went way above and beyond to elect Donald Trump over a woman. When this happened and I saw how viciously they were going after Hillary, I began to believe the charges of rape against Assange. This was certainly sexual abuse by an organization – Wiki Leaks. It was rumored that he did these deeds hoping Donald Trump would give him asylum. An immigrant from Sweden, after all, would be much more acceptable than those from Muslim countries, from Mexico and more. (It will be interesting to see if he is prosecuted for hacking into computers without the permission of the owners of those computers.)
Since Hillary Clinton supporters came mostly from the cities, clearly the percentage of one vote that each one had determined that this election would go against her. Handicapping her voters and lying to them in the lead up to this election. “Your vote counts.” One person one vote”. etc.
MAJORLY, Donald Trump “won” because he is the first candidate to come right out front to say he was a racist and sexist and made no bones about it. In fact, he emphasized that fact by having racists and sexists – well known – along with their organizations up front in his campaign for the presidency of the United States. We are a racist/sexist/homophobic/anti-semetic/anti-immigrant and more country. We are a country in which bigotry reigns and has reigned throughout our entire existence. We have covered over that fact with denial, blaming the victim, pointing the finger at other countries to deflect from our own misconduct, using code words to cover what we actually are saying and mean and more. To achieve the small gains we have achieved, over the generations, has taken many people giving their lives for this to happen. It has taken multi-millions more to have given up their futures to take less financially and otherwise to fight for the rights of everyone. It has taken enormous courage to stand in the face of bigotry and fight for its elimination.
When faced with the possibility of electing a woman who was anti-racism/anti-sexism/anti-all of the other isms, there is no way we would do anything other than elect the racist who was running against her. Why? Because this country was set up to make sure that would happen. The people in the country side who are, generally – with some exceptions, determined to live in a racist/sexist country cast votes worth more than those in the areas where minorities live. They had more than one person one vote and it is not the only time that has happened in this country. When it happened a few years ago – please notice we did not change the system. We did not have a movement of any depth and breath to attempt to change the system to give one person one vote. If that had happened Hillary Clinton would be president.
To maintain the Electoral College and all that it brings in its wake is a racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitc things to do and our Civil Rights laws need to come into play as we move to eliminate this Electoral College and bring into this country a truer democracy with an actual one person one vote ethic.
the way this is set up today, it violates the intention of my rights under the Constitution of these United States, which was and is that all people are created equal. To make some more equal by conferring upon them a larger vote just because of their geography – the place where they live – is not understandable under what the United States of America claims to be to itself and to the rest of the world.
Donald Trump did not appeal to the “working classes” he appealed to the bigots – the racists and the sexists. That was made clear through the button Donald Trump supporters proudly wear – the NO to Political Correctness button – which is simply another way of saying “Yes, I am a bigot and proud of it.”
Donald Trump spent a few years setting the stage for this Presidential Campaign so he would not be misunderstood. Years during which he called Barack Obama many ugly names, encouraging his followers to go even further. Donald Trump insisted Barack Obama was an illegitimate president because he was not born in the United States and more. Donald Trump was the “Mouth piece” for the birther movement and gave it breadth and depth. Given those years of campaigning before the campaign, it was not possible for anyone to misunderstand who he was and from where he was coming.

Many in the media are looking for the code words to use that will satisfy those of us who are angry – very angry. The interviews and panels and other forms of media forensic dissecting of this election has been about everything but the truth and the truth needs to be told. At best, it has only been hinted at, except for a very few of these propaganda shows.

Listen to what people are saying and how they are twisting themselves into all kinds of contorted figures to say they are relived that a racist white man who sees women as sex objects has won and they voted for him because the demographic in these United States is on that precipice of change where it is going to roll over in this country from the majority being “White” to majority being “Minority”. Their hope and their vote went to Trump because they think he will be able to stop and change that process or put something in place that mitigates and keeps “White” on top in spite of the fact that their numbers will be in the minority.

Need I go on? I think that says it all. The looking for ways to recast this so the United States of America can continue in its place where it is supported by hypocrisy – lies – and more needs to stop. Truth needs to be told or America will never be great again. Especially never great in God’s eyes.

The slogan – “Make America Great Again” is one everyone understands. It comes from Ronald Reagans campaign where it meant then what it means now “Make America White Again” and that needs to stop.

TELL THE TRUTH AMERICA AND STOP THE BS. IT IS TIME – UNLESS YOU WANT A COUNTRY RAVAGED THE WAY GERMANY WAS RAVAGED UNDER THE NAZI’s. THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN WHEN JEWS WERE IN THE GHETTOES. THAT HAPPENED WHEN JEWS STARTED TO BECOME SUCCESSFUL IN GERMANY AND STARTED MOVING OUT OF THE JEWISH GHETTOES INTO THE WIDER SOCIETY. THE SHOCK AND ANGER OF THAT SET GERMANY ABLAZE.

We either learn from history or we are condemned to repeat it. As it sets up today – the first government to come out to meet Donald Trump is Japan.

TODAY, You are looking at the first people being nominated by your new so called “President Elect” Chris Christie is out because it is rumored that he put Donald Trump’s son-in-laws father in jail and their disagreement finally erupted and ended in Christie’s ouster. True or not that could be symbolic for the rapists, thieves, thugs and assorted others now taking their place at the top of American Governmental circles.

You are looking at others who have compromised their values and ethics and are now running into Trump Tower because they are power hungry and are explaining away why they took the stands that they did when Donald Trump was running for President. They clearly took those stands, not out of their beliefs, values, great moral character, but they took those stands because they thought Donald Trump would lose and they wanted to clear the deck so they could be appointed to a big position by who they thought was the new incoming President, Hillary Clinton. That was all cast, by them, as decisions coming out of their “character”, ethics, etc. Was that really the case? Because they are now showing their real character, ethics, etc. as they seek power, money and position and are backtracking to get in line in front of Donald Trump to kiss the ring.

God acts in mysterious ways and this is one. We can now clearly see our so called “leaders” and we know exactly where they are coming from. This time does not come around often. More often than not our “leaders” are covered in their hypocrisy. Today, the cover has been stripped off everyone and they are standing before you naked. Take a good look and learn the lessons being taught.

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Tags: Barack Obama, bed & breakfast, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, politics, Racism, Sexism
Posted in Bed & Breakfast, Bettina Homes, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, politics, President Obama, racism, sexism, U. S. Presidential Campaign | Comments Off on TRUMP: An Analysis – Another One

TRUMP: An Analysis

Monday, November 14th, 2016

11/14/2016

We have all had quite a week. We put out two petitions asking you to sign them. The blog before this one has the URL which you can copy and put into your address line to get the petitions. We also put out a petition through Groundswell. These petitions ask that a Special Prosecutor be appointed to investigate this Presidential election. Something that is as big a shock to the entire country as the result of this presidential election, by definition, is flawed.

All of these folks can’t have been wrong in their expectations. We also received several communications with information which the sender asked we give to the Special Prosecutor. We would like to receive that information, but we also strongly suggest you send any information you have to President Obama and U. S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch. I doubt that either one is interested in naming a Special Prosecutor, but given the involvement of the FBI and its head Comey in moving this election in Trump’s direction with Comey or one of his underlings, apparently having given a heads-up to the Trump Campaign that information hurtful to Clinton and helpful to Trump was going to be released shortly before the election so the Clinton Campaign would not have time to react, this says such a Special Prosecutor needs to be named and soonest. It is going to take a lot of pressure put on both Obama and Lynch to name such a Special Prosecutor.

We were asked to give an analysis of what we think happened. We have our own resident seer who refuses, so after many conversations, this is a group effort as we try to fathom what happened.

What seems to be clear to us is that Donald Trump played the entire country. We are not a country accustomed to the kind of lying, cheating and stealing that happened during this campaign. How did he do it? By divide and conquer. A method of management which is as old as scripture. As old as the Scriptures held sacred by all religions. What Trump did is what Scripture from many religions seems to have been written to prevent and/or warn its adherents against falling into this particular trap of Satan. It is a way of control and conquer as old as humanity itself. Power, greed, jealousy are some of the fuel which powers this management method.

To carry out a divide and conquer strategy on the scale it was carried out by Donald Trump and his campaign, to us, is the essence of evil. It is one thing to engage in hypocrisy and to bend the truth for some small gains. It is quite another to carry out this kind of grand scheme which is always attributed to whoever the evil one is in different religious bodies.

The race haters were called up and given a kind of acknowledgment, exposure and acceptance that they have never experienced before. They reveled in all of the attention and the possibility that their way of life would become the American way of life. At last, they would have their moment in the sun.

The civil rights fighters and those who have spent their lives trying to work within the system to bring America closer to achieving the dream of equality as they tried for generations to make real the promise written in the statue of liberty – ‘bring me your tired,……… They were also played by Trump and his campaign.

Besides the divide and conquer, we believe Trump worked through – or rather Vladimir Putin worked through Trump and his forces to help bring about the downfall of America – or at least to mitigate its power. Both Trump and Putin were quite successful. Let’s not forget China as we bring together the foreign powers that helped the Trump victory become real. When Trump talked to the president of China as he called to congratulate Trump, the President of China was talking to a man who promised the American public he would bring back manufacturing jobs to the United States. True Trump made a few negative comments about China during his campaign, but what China saw was a Trump who bought his steel from them in great quantities and whose daughter, Ivanka, has her clothes line made in the sweat shops of China.

That was easy to discover. What is not so easy to discover is why the race haters and those who were wishful about bringing back a Colonial past were so easily manipulated by Trump and his group into thinking that a man, who gave his business to China and other countries, when that was his choice, would bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States. This defies all logic. A man who refused to give his tax returns to the American Public so they could see what was his involvements. Where did that trust come from which convinced them that this man could be trusted when he said he was going to bring back to America jobs that had been outsourced to China and other countries? What was it about this man that allowed the Evangelicals and other supposedly strong Christian to suspend their faith and belief to put it all in Trump. This was a man who totally fit the description of those Jesus threw out of the Temple, whose money tables were overturned, and in the end when the sheep and the goats were line up on their way to eternity – his eternity set-up was called hell for an eternity.

With the United States being on the cusp of those considered ‘Minority” now becoming the “Majority”, all of those middle to upper middle-class folks (male and female), whose identity is fixed in the way this country is and the way it uses racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamaphobia, anti-semitism, anti-everything else except Northern European, to maintain their unearned identity, the fear of that event seems to be what motivated John and Jane Q Public who don’t want to be equal. Why be equal when you have been “better than” for generations.

Maintaining their identity as “better than” is something they were born into, accepted, and were as skilled as Alcoholics in denial and finding excuses and pseudo reasons as to why things should not change. Or better still, why they are changing, but it has to be a very gradual to no movement change.

All of this was sitting out there and Trump wrapped it all up in his campaign.

Lots going on in this election.

Trump played all of those forces and did it beautifully. He weakened America while preaching the gospel of “Make America Great Again”. Weakened America to the point of moving into the future with America being a country which would trail Russia and China in strength. Many in these United States have been so wrapped up in fighting each other, no one was looking at this movement which was actually making the 1% stronger and everyone else weaker and poorer. That includes the race haters and those who have dreams of being on top again – the kind of on top countries were when Colonialism was the currency of the day. Seeing America as an empire and them moving into the upper-classes is a dream that moved many people into the Trump camp.

What will Trump’s movement produce? The serious reduction in regulation. The regulators will be lining up at the unemployment office by the dozens. The rich can’t get much richer without reducing the Regulation that has been set in place. Think of what will happen when they cancel Dodd.

Serious reduction in health care to the point of having many millions of people unable to get health care or needing to go back to losing everything they have acquired if they are hit with a serious illness is what lies behind the canceling of Obamacare. If folks have to struggle with serious illness without hospital or doctor care in their families, they won’t be much interested in what Trump and his colleagues are doing.

Racism, etc. is not an economically viable way to run a country. One reaches the point the United States is now reaching where super large businesses will take over and governments will be symbolic and do things which are adjuncts to what will be sanctioned by the state religion. Evangelism turns into State Churches.

White Churches, with a sprinkling of minorities will gradually change until they all have flags in the sanctuaries and they are clearly appendages of the state. The state officials will become awesomely like priests, ordained by god.

The mastermind behind all of this is Donald Trump. Only he doesn’t realize that already he is being moved aside. He isn’t even inaugurated yet and his time of being relevant and necessary has already passed. He can keep his golden palace for a little while, but eventually even that will be gone.

If he had been a younger man he would not have been entrusted with such a ‘revolution’. But an old man – with an extremely fragile ego – and something wrong with his sexual functioning that he needs to constantly build his sexual prowess up with his talk and womanizing and more was an ideal foil around which to bring about this major growth of the 1%.

What is most amazing is that those who worked for and voted for Trump to become President with the hope and belief that he would make their condition better are soon going to discover he is making the 1% better, which means – by definition – the rest of us are going down the slide to a much lower economic place, because the 1% needs automaton workers, not those moving on up.

Surrounding himself with men who are in the same place as he is and women who see themselves as only having worth as sex objects, Trump has gathered around him a group that cannot take over and do a great job with the ship of state. By the time they have paid attention to their fragile egos and to their images, there is nothing else left to do the work of the state.

Moving downscale and marrying women who are steps beneath the last wife – both younger, which means more child like with less experience and less ability to function as an equal with no other redeeming education, experience or anything else not dependent upon Trump and those like him you have the 40% plus who voted for Trump and are going to be worthless except as consumers. They will be shortly cast aside into the pit with the rest of us, working to maintain the very shallow and artificial lifestyle of the 1% and where is the redemption.

Is this the point at which we realize that we have all been working to set the stage for the Second Coming?

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Posted in Bed & Breakfast, Bettina Homes, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Breakfast Table Talk, Donald Trump, Guest comments and talents, Hedge Schools, Hillary Clinton, Historical Homes, Kitchen Table Talk, Loretta Lynch, politics, President Obama | Comments Off on TRUMP: An Analysis

Conspiracy Theories?

Wednesday, February 24th, 2016

Breakfast at a Bettina Network Hedge School can be awesome as you talk to so many different people who come from amazing places with experiences that span the globe and includes ideas, history, remembrances and thought processes that sharpen your own.

I would not trade being a part of Bettina Network Hedge Schools for anything. My intellect is stimulated on a daily basis, let alone my knowledge base.

We had an incredible conversation at breakfast about the Supreme Court nomination and all of the push back for and against Barack Obama making that appointment. Basically, I wanted to know what does all of this mess mean?????

What came back to me was awesome!!!!!

First was a question – why would Mitch McConnell and all of those pushing to keep Obama from making this appointment be fighting so hard against that possibility, especially if Hillary is going to be our next president? I thought, as did others, that Hillary would more than likely make a more liberal appointment than would Obama. He is and has been a great president, but he is, in many ways, tied to the establishment in ways that Hillary is not.

And, if Hillary is not elected president would Bernie be any more conservative? He has shown by his Civil Rights involvements early on and his backing away from that commitment as he became more involved in his life’s work that he knows the establishment and he would not have been able to get as far as he has if he had kept his Civil Rights work active and if he had been actively involved bringing about those kind of changes in his environment. Vermont can handle liberal, progressive, socialist changes, but it is still a very White state. So, while his appointment to the Supreme Court would be quite liberal, his establishment ties said to some of us that he would be willing to accommodate his friends – especially those he needed to help push his presidency in the direction he wanted it to go. But that accommodation would not be nearly close to what Mitch McConnell and those fighting with him would be fighting to achieve. So why would Mitch McConnel and friends, not known for their liberal leanings, be working so hard to stop Obama’s appointment to give Bernie the go ahead to make this appointment?

It seems to me they know something we don’t and what they are working so hard for at the moment is for the appointment to be put on hold until someone more conservative becomes president and they can continue on with business as usual. And who would that be? Donald Trump or someone who will soon come out of hiding in the wings onto front stage?

There have been many conspiracy theories floating around this country connected to past presidents and presidential elections.

The one that sticks out in this discussion are the conspiracy theories around how Jack Kennedy was elected president. Rumor had it that his father made a deal with the mafia to produce the votes needed for his son’s election – especially around the Chicago area – and they did. Rumor continues that it was Marcello, the southern head of the Mafia in this country at the time, who put in the demand for Kennedy’s assassination because while the Mafia did its job for Jack Kennedy and his family, the Kennedy’s turned on the Mafia. The father – with his Mafia connections – made the deal, but Bobby and Jack went ahead when elected, to move against the Mafia and it does not tolerate those kinds of actions without a particular kind of payback.

Looking at the candidates, it seemed to us that Donald Trump’s business interests are casinos, construction, and gambling with heavy involvements in Las Vegas and New Jersey. That could be conspiratorialized to produce a Mafia connection linking Donald Trump’s success with the successful backing of his businesses by Mafia interests. He may even be one of those at the top himself, as this conspiracy theory unrolled itself.

Connect that to the conspiracy theories around Jack Kennedy and you have the new President of the United States elected the way the conspiracy theorists claim Jack Kennedy was elected. Although, according to those theories, someone intervened on Jack Kennedy’s behalf – he did not have the clout with the Mafia to do those negotiations on his own. All those trying to understand the Donald Trump phenomenon have apparently either not made this connection or are too young to know this ‘history’.

Is that something Mitch McConnel and his group of friends would know about? Would this be what they are structuring with this recalcitrance to allow Obama to even nominate a Supreme Court justice? Do they know something the rest of us don’t and are acting on that knowledge to keep a clear path open for what they know is in our future?

Since we are not a part of that inner circle we can only look on and attempt to interpret what is happening from their public actions and their current public actions say they are expecting a President of these United States to be elected who would push their political and other interests and one of the biggest is who is appointed to the United States Supreme Court. Who would be that swing vote that would bring the Court either one way or the other.

Given that Obama would probably appoint a more acceptable person to the Court in their eyes than would Hillary Clinton, we are seeing their hand tipped as to the fix that is in and the rest of us are supposed to sit back and be so involved in the fight, in the agenda they have set out for us to engage, that our minds are engaged in a way that we cannot see and do not realize what the McConnell boys’ actions are telling us as clearly as if they had taken an airplane and done sky writing about what they know is coming down the pike.

For all of those yelling ‘racism’ that is keeping you from seeing what is actually happening here. Clear your minds and think much more broadly.

All of the above is simply the result of a few people having breakfast together conjecturing, adding bits and pieces of history and bits and pieces of conspiracy theories which have been floating around for decades. Nothing serious and any similarities to the American Political scene at the moment are strictly coincidental.

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Tags: Barack Obama, bed & breakfast, Bettina Homes, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, breakfast table talk, Donald Trump, Guest Comments, Hillary Clinton, Making Connections, politics, Sexism
Posted in Bed & Breakfast, Bettina Homes, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Bettina's Box of Shame, Bettina's Hall of Shame, Breakfast Table Talk, Donald Trump, Guest comments, Hedge Schools, Hillary Clinton, Historical Support, Kitchen Table Talk, Making Connections, Media Control, politics, President Obama | No Comments »

President Obama’s Eulogy of Rev. Pinckney

Tuesday, June 30th, 2015

We have been asked by many of our readers for the URL address of where they could find President Obama’s eulogy. Apparently, you folks didn’t think it was going to be great so you were doing other things while this incredible statement was being made. At the end, President Obama was referred to as “the Rev. President” by all of those on the stage – mostly AME pastors.

Incredibly, almost all of those pastors were male – in spite of the racism and sexism this entire event was decrying and which caused the death of Rev. Pinckney and 8 others being remembered. Sometimes, we are our own worst enemies in this Civil Rights fight. I remember the all male public face of the Civil Rights Movement when Dr. King was its acknowledged head. Women were pushed aside when the press appeared. Those human failings, however, do not negate the hard work that has been done and needs to continue to be done, we just hope it will be done in a more “Civil Rights” way the next time. We would say – don’t bash others for their racism while your sexism is on display for all to see – change it all. God forgive us all!

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Tags: Barack Obama, bed & breakfast, Bettina Homes, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, breakfast table talk, Racism, Sexism, Spiritual Reflection
Posted in African American history, Bed & Breakfast, Bettina Homes, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Breakfast Table Talk, Clementa Pinckney, Historical Homes, President Obama, racism, sexism, Spiritual Reflection | No Comments »

UBUNTU – I Am Because You Are

Tuesday, December 10th, 2013

“I am not a saint – unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.” – Mandela.

…………………………………….If only that described all of us!

The world is pouring out its grief, celebration, joy, gratitude, love for the life of Nelson Mandela.

………………………………………………………..Which has to make you think and ask – why?

What makes a human being rise to such a level that we are all grateful for his life on earth and come out to celebrate such an exceptional human being. Is it because so few such people have lived on this earth, especially when put in the context of the totality of those who have lived?

While most are celebrating such a great man – in Bettina homes we are asking why so few have risen to this height? Why so many human beings have been so absorbed with the mundanities of life that keep us busy and distracted so we can keep ourselves unaware of our irrevocable march towards death? Is it the self-absorption which some of our huge egos demand for their self-gratification? Is it the inconsistencies in values which we carry that keep us from living out our beliefs because we might get hurt – might miss a meal – might not accumulate as much wealth as possible? Or is it our contradictory ways of thinking and acting which we develop in our striving to create the structures which we think protect us and keep us secure, but which really oppress us?

How long, O Lord, do we have to wait for the many to live life the way Mandela lived his? Why does he have to be special? Why in our own small parts of the world we insist on living anti-ubuntu lives? Haven’t we experienced enough of the misery, poverty, pain, horrors that this causes? How long will we surround ourselves with “our own kind”? How long will we live blinded by the fact that we are all included in “our own kind.”

Whatever hurts me hurts thee! Whatever joys I experience grow exponentially when I share them with thee! My freedom totally depends upon your freedom.

One can hear why Mandela was great by just listening to the speeches honoring him. Some were clear, unobstructed by play acting, playing to the audience, playing to their own egos, unable to give a great speech honestly honoring Mandela’s life because they have allowed their minds to be clouded by their refusal to accept and act on their own values and take responsibility for their lives. Some were almost unintelligible and said more negatives about the person giving the speech than positives about the man the speech was supposed to be honoring. True Freedom eliminates that and you could tell whose lives were on track and whose were confused and muddled from listening to those speeches!

Mandela’s memorial services today gave us a stark opportunity to see and hear the differences as men and women gave their speeches of remembrance and the crowd reacted. Some people don’t have images, reflections, pretenses, – they have a rock solid faith, clear and authentic lives they are living and it is reflected in their very being, the words they use, their demeanor around others – especially their ability to be themselves when greeting strangers. Some people first promote their image and then everything else – lets not even begin to be who we really are, that must not show until we know the person better.

Why do so many of us want, protect and pass on to our children, as great gifts, the bondage in which we live? Why do we give up a beautiful life well lived for an existence that others have told us we must sacrifice ourselves to maintain? Why are we enslaved to sexual stereotypes – racial stereotypes – national stereotypes – religious stereotypes? We live out of them. We live for them and to promote them hoping that in exchange we will be able to live physically comfortable although seriously compromised lives.

FREEDOM will come to this earth when we celebrate lives like Mandela’s many times each day instead of once in a lifetime.

We set up ‘sins’ that we must stay away from and/or avoid the perception of our being involved with because that might handicap our future. We don’t set up, teach, preach, live authentic lives. The sins we set up and announce from our own mountain seem meant to deflect us and allow a few to claim perfection in their life’s story. Those are very far from the real sins of our lives – the inability to live authentically, the refusal to feel empathy for those on the street with no shelter from the cold, hunger, dangers of the street. Our refusal to stand on our own professed faith and most especially to give no room to others to stand on theirs – this seems to be the biggest sin of our creation. These are the commandments by which we live and demand that others of “our kind” also live. Our need to act to keep from feeling threatened by those we don’t understand; those in whom we see what we don’t like in ourselves – those we scape goat, and see reflected in our own mirror – we act against and break our own mirror.

As we look around at others it hurts the soul to see in them the rejection, mean spirit, and refusal to live truly free lives. After all, what does it matter in the end? We all die – and what a horrible death to leave this earth with unrequited dreams, longing, loves because you were trying for things that die with you for which there is no resurrection or redemption and which did nothing to make your life great. Worse, to die without ever having had dreams, great loves and without having left behind a legacy which helped change this earth for the better.

Isn’t it sad that we choose the fleeting fame and what we call ‘security’ instead of choosing to be about the business of living fully and making sure we are there to help others do the same?

There is no such thing in life as ‘security’, but we are willing to sacrifice much to attain the mirage.

Ecclesiastes comes to mind often – ‘vanity of vanities………’

Oh for a world full of people like Nelson Mandel!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.

Not only was Nelson Mandela clear as to who he was and whose he was, but he was a man who never met a stranger. He could reduce you to your real self in front of him in seconds or make it extremely difficult for you to maintain the pretense and image built up over years of living someone else’s imaginary life projected onto your own.

We pray that we all can move away from and cast out the garbage that collects as we live our lives striving for security; putting forth an image of someone we would like to be and who we would like those meeting us to think we are; cast out the values we collect to cover our insecurities and fears; cast out the mean spirit we take on because we need to feel better than other human beings who we describe and see clearly as those less than us helping us to be better than they are.

We pray that we have no more such outpourings as are happening this week for Nelson Mandela. Not because we don’t appreciate and value his life and work, but because we will be living in a world where there are so many like him that his life and how he lived it becomes normal and is common all around us. What a world that would be and what a wonderful place to live, love, work, and just be!

UBUNTU! A future and a word taken into the world’s vocabulary as one of its own no matter what the language. A word that describes – how we live – who we are!

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Tags: African American history, Barack Obama, bed & breakfast, breakfast table talk, Making Connections, Nelson Mandela, politics, Ubuntu
Posted in African American history, Bettina's Hall of Fame, Breakfast Table Talk, Historical Support, Making Connections, Memorials, Nelson Mandela, politics, Ubuntu | Comments Off on UBUNTU – I Am Because You Are

Republicanism BC and AD – oops, AT*

Wednesday, October 16th, 2013

*BC = Boehner Cruz; AT = After Tea Party

The singing reported in the Tea Party’s caucus reminded me of the Titanic – remember? As they went down, those who could not or did not leave the ship went down singing Amazing Grace. Isn’t that what happened last night? It was a suicidal atmosphere with everyone being made to drink the Kool Aid with the pseudo religious environment to encourage those who were losing faith. I guess from the songs being sung there must have been only Conservative Evengelical Christians in the room. Somehow, we couldn’t see Jews, Muslims, Atheists or Episcopalians grooving and responding to what was described.

Many things about this have caused some really great breakfast conversations. If you can call anything in the immediate time before your own financial demise ‘great.’

So much is so hokey: (Kind of the theme of one of our breakfast conversations)

1) The Speaker of the House – Boehner – could have avoided all of this by putting the issue on the floor of the House and it would have passed – but it would have passed with bipartisan support and they refused to even consider that possibility. Is all of this really about keeping Republicans Republican and refusing to allow any kind of bipartisan action, discussion, votes, etc.?

They seem to be looking in the mirror and calling Obama out on what they see there. And someone accused them of racism. How can that be when the reflection they see in the mirror is that of a Black man?

Some sub-topics “My grandfather told me to look away when people start talking the way the Tea Party folks are talking” – such as the comments about their trying to ‘save’ the United States from fiscal ruin because we soon won’t be able to pay our debts. And what do they do about this? Put the United States in a position of a credit default which would raise interest rates on everything and make the cost of carrying the debt we have unbelievably heavy – and a burden shared by every citizen of these United States. How exactly does their stance help?

They bash Obama for not being “bipartisan’, but not being bipartisan is not allowing a vote to come to the floor of the House because it might be passed with a bipartisan vote and that can’t be allowed.

2) Cruz – the now leading contender from the Tea Party for President of these United States in the next election. Talk about disasters and a man either on an unusually high dose of testosterone or whose body produces way too much testosterone for him to be allowed to do anything except knit, crochet, sew, sit quietly listening to lovely soothing music, etc.. If he gets elected, the folks around the breakfast table – including one Republican – decided they would pack their bags, update their Visas and leave until the U. S. comes to its senses.

3) What was ominous was the comparison of what the U. S. is going through with parallels to what Germany went through with the rise of the Nazi Party. It sent chills down your spine to even know there was someone who saw this as a parallel.

4) What was really upsetting was the comment that one person made about his interpretation of what he was seeing being played out. He didn’t agree with the woman who saw the beginnings of Nazi American in all of this, he assumed that Boehner has a huge problem with alcohol and Cruz looks as though he was using that knowledge and pushing Boehner to the wall – go along with us or your alcoholism is exposed to the world. And the media was only talking about how Boehner was acting the way he was because he was concerned about losing his Speakership- have they missed something big or is this like JFK’s womanizing – lets not talk about the obvious it isn’t nice.

And here in our corner of the world was one small group wrestling with the fact that our Congress is acting like Alcoholics, their enablers or have we missed something important!

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Tags: Barack Obama, bed & breakfast, breakfast table talk, economic downturn, Economics, Financial Disaster, Government Shutdown, John Boehner, politics, Senator Cruz
Posted in Breakfast Table Talk, Guest comments, Historical Support, Making Connections, politics | Comments Off on Republicanism BC and AD – oops, AT*

WOW! What an article!

Wednesday, October 2nd, 2013

Thanks for your article on the Government shutdown.

I am a Democrat who is constantly mystified by the workings of this political campaign business.

As a regular traveller to Cambridge, I stay fairly often in your home. It is quite the place for good conversation. What I appreciate about this article is that I haven’t missed what is being discussed at your breakfast table about the shutdown.

It seems to me that the Republicans chose to shutdown the government on the day Obamacare went into affect to mute the peoples response and knowledge about Obamacare.

That isn’t possible because every person in this country who benefits from Obamacare will be at the polls voting for whoever Barack Obama designates as the person he wants to succeed him.

I hope that will be Hillary Clinton. I was very young when Hillary was trying to get a health care bill passed as the wife of the President. All I remember about that was my parents being upset because after her effort failed, our health care insurance bill went from $250/month to way up there – I don’t know exactly, but I remember the conversations about how we were paying two to three times what we used to pay before her efforts. What my parents didn’t realize was she had the cat bird seat and could see what was coming down the road and she tried to prevent it by getting health insurance passed which would keep middle-class America from having such a huge increase in their health insurance. If they had realized that, I am sure they would have been more active in supporting her efforts. Nothing was done about that until Obama was elected.

My wish is that politicians would be honest – clear – and not only believe in something, but run on their beliefs and attempt to implement those beliefs if they are elected. How many of us wish our politicians were of good character.

I also hope that those politicians who want to act find either Broadway Theatre, the Movies or Television in which to exercise their talents and stop using the American public as their audience when what they really want is to be a part of the fictional dramas we all watch in the evenings on television or weekends in the theatre. I am so tired of bad actors and actresses running for office and sometimes actually being elected. Worse than the bad actors and actresses are those with few ethics, morals and bad character – who seem to proliferate with too many such people concentrated in our group of politicians and political wannabes.

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Tags: Barack Obama, bed & breakfast, breakfast table talk, Government Shutdown, Hillary Clinton, Obamacare, Political, Politicians
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The Next Republican Presidential Campaign has started and it ain’t pretty!

Tuesday, October 1st, 2013

What is this government shut-down about?

Don’t even mention Obamacare because that has nothing to do with all of this hullabaloo. Obamacare is really only a distraction and something on which to hang the proverbial hat of those who have done this. They are really into red herring when they throw in Obamacare and how big business will be reduced and controlled by this shut down and how members of Congress should be treated like everyone else. That will never happen and that is clearly not their goal. They are not interested in any of the above, they are moving themselves into the public eye to be in a position – they hope – to be elected for higher office.

This is the new way to get your MAN into the presidential office if he is a Republican. After all, didn’t such a shutdown and impeachment of a president result in the election of a Republican – one George Bush?

The way to fight for power and control is to close down the government of the Democratic President and then impeach him. It was new with Clinton, but today it is clearly the way the Republicans are running their campaigns. Any issue around which they could drape emotional appeals connected to this new political campaign would do. And a secondary result – scare away all the good candidates, who are not Republican candidates. To become President of these United States you have to be ready and willing to give up a hard-earned reputation; be ready to accept crap thrown at you without cause; and have mud slung at you on a daily basis. Who would want to risk that?

Will an attempt to impeach Obama follow?

“Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me”

The government was shut down in the Clinton era by Republicans. It is now shut down in the Obama era by Republicans. You can quote Obamacare as the reason or any other reason you want to pull up. That is totally irrelevant. Obamacare has nothing to do with this government shut-down. It is just convenient. What is really going on is the Republican swarm of those who want to be president or important to who they think will be the next Republican president.

If you believed in conspiracies you could see the meetings during which this strategy was discussed and the decision taken for all to act in concert to bring down the government, the economy and middle-class America. Any discussion in those meetings about the possible harm this would do to the American people? Don’t be foolish – those vying for power never consider such. They consider only what they think they have to do to satisfy their hungering after power.

The guy who read from “Green Eggs and Ham” was showing the American public how competent he would be as president. He could read to them each evening so they could go to bed hearing his voice reading one of the childrens’ classics. A child reading to children while trying to manipulate the American Public into thinking he would be the next really great president. Look at what he has accomplished – hours in front of a microphone during which time he either had on a diaper or he paraded his bladder for all to see how long he could hold his need to go to the bathroom. Truly a requirement of a good potential presidential candidate. He clearly cares – not at all – about the people being hurt through this process. His care is about setting himself up to run for President and using this opportunity to do so. Sort of an application process during which he put forth his credentials.

The woman talking head in Congress is probably setting herself up for a ministerial position or the head of a major non-profit when she leaves Congress, if she can’t be a part of what she believes will be the new Republican Administration. I had to give her a really good look because the way she was dragging out her responses were right up there with the best African American preachers. She diverged from the ringing tones and singing quality of the Black preacher with her message.

Joe – from MSNBC is just being Joe – obnoxious, opinionated, totally biased and an anointed follower of Trump. He just wants to be who he is with the show he now has. I don’t think he realizes how horrible he comes across to thinking people- those trying to understand the news of the day and the market of the day in ways other than through such a bigoted and intransigent lens.

If all of you let this happen – shame on you!

In an elected government you get who you deserve as a leader. In this case, several areas of the country have gotten what they deserve in their representatives. The rest of the country – the majority – have shown they want something different. Is this going to continue to be a case where the minority destroys the majority for very mean spirited reasons and because their imagination and ability to run a winning political campaign is limited?

I am a Republican. I have been a Republican since I registered to vote. I have cousins – long dead – and other relatives who lived in Louisiana and who were head of the Louisiana Republican party and/or were pretty high up in the firmament – African Americans all. If you were African American and you wanted to vote back then you had to be Republican because the Democrats were off chasing and trying to keep the Ku Klux Klan in their fold, doing whatever they had to do to let them know the Democrats were just one of the KKK guys.

Times have changed and the Democrats, seeing the handwriting on the wall, started chasing after the NAACP, NOW, etc. The Republicans – who have shown their new constituents don’t get it – have been chasing the KKK guys and their successors. It was clear in the 1970’s when Reagan was nominated and the four years prior to his nomination when he lost the Republican nomination that a movement had started which was very well funded to do exactly what is happening today. Make a home for the Neo-cons in the Republican Party and change its image and what it is about. It is amazing what lots of money and very few people can accomplish in these United Sates.

Well today, things have changed mightily. I understand why so many have left the Republican party. If you are active, just about any place in the country, and you are not one of those Germany would classify as one of the Neo-cons, but who we call the Tea Partry, you are treated pretty shoddily by all of these recent converts from the Democratic Party claiming to be Republicans. Is the racism in this country so great that you will allow such to happen to bring down the country because you want Honorary Oppressors to deal with and maintain the racism that has been so traditionally practiced in the United States? Are you, White America, so hard up to be ‘better than’ by virtue of your Whiteness that you will let such a small group shut down the entire government and threaten the economic recovery which the Obama administration has worked so hard to bring about? Why aren’t you in the streets in protest? Why are you so quiet? Quiet acknowledges acquiescence and that is the message I am receiving. This closing down of the government is not just a Tea Party action – it is being led by the Tea Party and tacitly agreed to by the majority. What is there to lead me to believe otherwise?

If you folks don’t take hold of your party and bring it back from this incredible precipice we will read about Republicans in the history books and no one will be able to say we know or knew one. And me? Everytime I venture out to any Republican event I am so beat up and wounded it takes a while of staying away and licking my wounds before I have the courage to venture out again. Maybe if I were not so aware of history it might be different. After all, even the Klan had its favorite Blacks – included in their activities. If I could just smile and acquiesce in what I don’t believe maybe I too could be financially substantial with a brighter economic future because I allowed myself to be used.

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Tags: Barack Obama, bed & breakfast, bed & breakfast table talk, Democrats, Government Shut Down, Making Connections, Political Campaigns, politics, Racism, Republican Presidential Campaign, Republicans, Sexism
Posted in Bettina's Hall of Shame, Breakfast Table Talk, Historical Support, Making Connections, politics | Comments Off on The Next Republican Presidential Campaign has started and it ain’t pretty!

2013 The Jubilee Year

Friday, February 8th, 2013

We declare the year 2013 to be the Year of the Jubilee and a holy, joyous, history making, sin forgiving year!

By whose authority? – by our own. Isn’t that how such things happen!!!!

Generations from now, the historical cry will be reported and everyone will forget it was declared by one little person in a tiny corner of Massachusetts in danger of being crushed by Harvard University.

Why 2013? —————– Why not 2013!

The year Barack Hussein Obama was re-elected president of these United States. A man of African and Colonial American origins. He not only models what African Americans can accomplish, he also models that ‘half-breeds’ can be brilliant, successful, achieve beyond everyone’s expectations and really – how can you tell his racial background from just meeting him? Doesn’t his smile wipe all of your doubts away?

His election – his person – does not go through years of ancestors stolen from Africa and forcibly put into slavery. He comes from the combination of the Africans who escaped being brought over as slaves and the very middle-class White Americans who brought some of his family/tribe/countrymen over to do their work for them – for free. And, in spite of that ancestry he is just as nice and kind and smart and thoughtful and….as he can be. The progeny of the original enemies in these United States – the original American oppressed and oppressors – those who stole the freedom of generations of human beings so they wouldn’t have to do their own menial work and those who were stolen and lived for generations outside their own country, culture, language, until they no longer could recognize from whence they had come.

This Jubilee Year, which we are declaring, also comes 50 year after Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement which broke out in this country and partially freed some of us from sitting behind signs on buses; drinking from water fountains which were never clean; going to the back door of restaurants and paying the same price for contaminated food handed to us out the back door which we then had to find a place to eat; travelling and wondering just where we were going to sleep the night because hotels, motels, inns, were not welcoming and did not allow Blacks to register; going to inferior segregated schools; not being allowed into institutions of higher learning except for those established ‘for colored patrons only’ and on and on and on.

We are a step beyond slavery, but still not free! A more qualified African American woman was passed over for Secretary of State in favor of a qualified, but less qualified White Male from a very Patrician American family – complete with trust fund, hundreds of millions of dollars and a phalanx of supporters in his chosen profession protecting him and making sure anyone threatening his path to his chosen goal was dutifully destroyed – or at the least – with reputation mangled.

With BHO’s election to the presidency we should proclaim this a great year of celebration. No, he is not perfect. No, I don’t agree with all of his stands on things. No, I suspect he has more than a little bit of sexism in his soul and it has popped out and will probably continue to do so. No to a lot about BHO, but YES, I will shout and loudly proclaim this celebration and the debt we owe him for stepping out and moving all of us out of a less equal time. If I knew about ram’s horns I would probably continuously bother all of my neighbors by playing several, all year.

This Jubilee Year, which we are proclaiming, is a year of unmitigated joy, but also a year of universal pardon for all of the sins of the past. It is time to put slavery, its manifestations in today’s society, its ruination of the lives of some of my and your ancestors (be they White, Black, Green, Pink, Brown or Purple) in the past and look to the future which this year proclaims possible. A future that is about all of us – that sees us working together to bring about a world free of the horribleness of the past.

In this Jubilee Year:

We need to call on our brothers and sisters to stop manufacturing foods and other processed goods which are harmful to us!

We need to call on our brothers and sisters to take global warming seriously and stop polluting the planet and to stop doing all the other things which are turning our living rooms into our toilets and our bodies into garbage disposals and composters at the expense of our health!

We need to call on our brothers and sisters to learn to settle their grievances without resorting to killing another human being – raping women and children – blowing up buildings out of their self-righteous hatred – playing games which hurt others, but relieves their own anxieties and covers from them the fact that they are mortal and one day will die.

We need to call on our brothers and sisters to take responsibility for each other. No one should sleep on the street or in other than a bed, have warm clothing, enough food to eat and be able to live without the fear of another human being. We are, afterall, more alike than different. We are our brothers and sisters keepers. We have heard those messages from childhood as have our parents, grandparents, great grandparents and much further back into history, heard them also, but we still have not put them into practice in our lives.

We need to call on our brothers and sisters to do at least one good deed each day for someone in need.

We need to dismantle our class structure which raises us up to believe some of us are better – as a part of a group – than others of us.

We need to dismantle what is left of racism.

We need to dismantle what is left of sexism.

We need to totally dismantle ageism.

And we need to do all of that and more before December 2013 so we can all end the year feeling great about ourselves and each other. So that no matter where we are in the world it is a safe place and if we need anything the people in that place will move to supply whatever ‘it’ is.

According to Leviticus 25:10 “Thou shalt sanctify the fiftieth year and shalt proclaim remission to all the inhabitants of thy land; for it is the year of the Jubilee.”

This needs to be a year of great goodness – great deeds – great acknowledgement of our common and shared humanity each one equal to the next, no one greater than another. We should work hard to keep this Jubilee Year and at the end, maybe we will have created habits which carry over into 2014.

50 years ago – at the beginning of this cycle of this Jubilee year –

John F. Kennedy and Medgar Evers were assassinated and W. E. B. DuBois dies!
Martin Luther King, Jr. writes his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail’ and later in the year gives his famous “I have a Dream Speech”, during the March on Washington.
Hoses and Police dogs turned on protestors and are nationally televised for the first time
Children’s crusade brings about a form of settlement – Birmingham juvenile court inundated with African-American children and teenagers arrested while protesting
16th Street Baptist Church bombed killing four young girls – out of which came Condoleeza Rice

and out of all of this and much more in the celebration year, the sabbatical year, has come Barack Husein Obama.

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Tags: 16th Street Baptist Church, African American history, Barack Obama, bed & breakfast, breakfast table talk, Children's crusade, Condoleeza Rice, I Have a Dream, John F. Kennedy, John Kerry, Jr., Jubilee Year, Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Making Connections, Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, Racism, Secretary of State, Sexism, Susan Rice, W. E. B. duBois
Posted in Bettina's Hall of Fame, Breakfast Table Talk, Historical Support, Making Connections, Preserving Family History and Stories, Press Release from Bettina Network | Comments Off on 2013 The Jubilee Year

Was Susan Rice Used?

Friday, December 14th, 2012

RICE = ROGERS = GUINIER. What do they have in common besides all being African Americans!

Was yet another woman used? – misused? – abused? in this political process?

Looks to us as though Ms. Rice’s name was thrown out and then reeled in to get the deal President Obama wanted from Congress – and it looks as though not only was it a successful ploy, but he knows the political process very well and is not above playing the game. After all, he is now one of the big boys. I just hope he has not become one of the ‘good ole boys.’

Looks like something Bill Clinton did years ago when he was president and the woman used – abused – misused – was Lani Guinier . In 1993 Ms. Guinier was nominated by President Bill Clinton to be Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. Just like Ms. Rice, Ms. Guinier was eminently qualified – Radcliffe College, Yale Law School, Assistant to the then Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights – a really brilliant and accomplished Black Woman. One of the Clintons’ Yale Law School classmates.

Congress jumped all over Bill Clinton demanding her nomination be withdrawn and who was one of those who counseled him to withdraw the nomination? – none other than Ted Kennedy (genuflecting – of sainted memory), among others, including the Black Female who we will only identify with the nom de plume “turn coat” – “sell out without knowing how much you were selling out for”. So, of course, Ms. Guinier’s nomination was withdrawn. The Wall Street Journal called her one of “Clinton’s Quota Queens” (remember the title of Welfare Queen)?. The racism and sexism of that was overlooked and instead of articulating what this was about and going ahead to back-up and support his nominee, Clinton succumbed to the pressure, even though it looked as though Ms. Guinier would be confirmed. The loud, racist and sexist voices won the day.

The claim made to derail Ms. Guinier’s nomination – at the end of the day – turned out to be false, but the media proclaimed it loudly and kept the drum beat going so Ms. Guinier would be taken down – doesn’t that sound familiar? In small print after the fact, it was acknowledged that the loud drums beat out the wrong message. Now, isn’t that what they are doing to Ms. Rice? Even louder, because they have had more experience beating drums to drum out Black women!

And then there was Desiré Rogers. Another tremendous African American woman from New Orleans. I knew her parents and her grandparents. They were very substantial people and Ms. Rogers had a very solid and ethical upbringing.

Partially because of that New Orleans upbringing, -after what she went through in Washington, D. C. – Ms. Rogers was able to continue her life almost without missing a beat and moved right on up! And Condoleeza Rice – the horrible Republican who many can’t stand to even see or speak about – gets a standing ovation from any Republican group she appears in front of. Is that some kind of contrast? Takes me back to the days of Walter L. Cohen, African American who was head of the Louisiana Republican Party!

All three Black women were charged with things which were blown out of all proportion and all those charges and innuendos were kept going by the media who turned crap, half-truths and more into something which sounded real, substantial and reason for them to be not considered, re-considered, removed. Two were exonerated in the end when things quieted down and the racist sexist goals had been achieved. Ms. Rice will also be so exonerated. That will take awhile since we saw the news people this morning showing signs of relief that Ms. Rice would not be considered for Secretary of State. One news reporter woman let out an audible sound of relief. Although in Ms. Rice’s case it looks more like racism and sexism were used to reach a political goal and not a very big one, considering the price being paid by Susan Rice.

With Susan Rice,

Should be next Secretary of State

the forces of Congress came out once again to attempt to destroy an African American woman.- the Republican forces came out against her because the Democratic forces could not. They would have been accused of pushing for the appointment of a friend – which was, in fact what the Republicans were doing. What we have just witnessed on the political stage could be called “A Time of Surrogacy” with John McCain being the star of the play.

The good ole boys coming out to make sure one of their own got what he wanted. The price someone else paid for that is really irrelevant and not to be considered. That will just go down in the books as a debt to be repaid and they will look to John Kerry, at some point down the road, to repay the debt – and he will.

This time, it looks as though President Obama threw Ms. Rice to the Congressional Wolves so he could negotiate and get what he wanted from them if he withdrew her name from the short list and went back to John Kerry instead. The games boys will play.

Don’t you think it is time we elect men – or – a woman?

Was this the same John Kerry who was President Obama’s coach for that first memorable debate – which came close to blowing Obama’s chances for re-election and at the very least promoted Mitt Romney’s campaign to a higher level?

It seems to me Mitt Romney should be the one promoting John Kerry to higher responsibilities not President Obama – but then, we don’t know what goes on behind those closed political doors. And then I could be wrong – but have you read the Bettina Network’s Blog on “Rice and Kerry”?

And – in an aside, which probably had nothing to do with deals being made – Scot Brown, solely because of his ESP – and having nothing to do with games being played, started his campaign as early as December 4th. What did he know that the rest of us didn’t? He is getting ready to run for John Kerry’s seat. We think that seat should go to Martha Coakley – or – preferably to an African American woman as an appointment. If games are going to be played – set better ground rules fellows, this is a society full of diversity with a diversity mind set. To replace a White Man whose hands are unclean with another White Male whose … tsk tsk tsk!

Our breakfast table guests are seldom wrong. They seem to have that inside track which comes out over those really scrumptious breakfasts served in the bed & breakfast homes in the Bettina Network. Maybe its the coffee which brings out such great conversations. Check them out, especially if you have conversation to share!

If John Kerry has any sense of decency he will withdraw his name from consideration. It is the only decent and ethical thing he can do and it is the only way such games will begin to cease. But then, he has moved far away from the days in which his actions and youthful ideology first got him elected to Congress. How the mighty have fallen! Or – is it that power corrupts?

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Tags: African American history, Barack Obama, bed & breakfast, breakfast table talk, Desiré Rogers, John Kerry, Making Connections, Mitt Romney, New Orleans Creole, politics, Racism, Secretary of State, Sexism, Susan Rice
Posted in Bettina's Hall of Shame, Breakfast Table Talk, Guest comments, Historical Support, Making Connections | Comments Off on Was Susan Rice Used?

Petraeus over Breakfast

Tuesday, November 13th, 2012

Just when you think things are calmer, up comes a topic of conversation over breakfast which could have fried the organic, free of the cage eggs.

The conversation was basically – don’t you think this was a last stand to unseat Obama and turn the election victory over to Romney?

Not having listened to the news, we were floored to learn that the woman who started this Petraeus mess – a Ms. Kelly – has a good friend at the top in the CIA, or was it the FBI, or was it both? We love gossip, but don’t always get it straight, especially when sitting with mouth open listening to the latest. Apparently, that friendship is what started this investigation, not any concern from either the FBI or the CIA about ‘security leaks’ or other possibilities which fit within their commission to do such an investigation, but they carried on anyway and we will now be regaled more with the infractions of those who tried to manipulate than with the core event which started it all. Sound familiar – AGAIN!

Watch closely which Congressional people and other talking heads come forth quickly to turn this into an anti-Obama thing instead of bringing out the truth. When, O Lord, will truth prevail in our society instead of the push for power?

The push for power is an ugly thing and we have experienced it big time throughout this election cycle – and – if we don’t all, as a large United States of America community, push for something better, this is what we will continue to get. Folks are getting rich on these schemes. Don’t we have many ‘nouveau’ multi-millionaires running around stuffing their bank accounts with much dirty money from coming up with such schemes?

Kelly got an FBI investigation into Petraeus and his ‘friend’ Broadwell through her friendship connections with the CIA and FBI and according to our breakfast conversations, this whole thing was to break open just before the election to help end any hopes the Obama Campaign may have had of winning. Amazing! Wish we had such connections – we could put them to much better use. The only FBI connections we have are the spam emails we get supposedly from the FBI and CIA – oh well, such is life.

According to our breakfast conversations, thanks to the bungling and messiness of bureaucracies, that attempted influence into the presidential election didn’t happen, but it came close. Did folks really use the FBI and CIA to attempt to influence a United States Presidential Election? Don’t you think its time for us to demand that our elections be better than what they’ve been? We’ve had Florida, Arizona and now Petraeus?

Now – do we – as a Bettina Network community have such connections? Okay folks, cough them up!!! We can then bring them all together and use them for good! Well, for good maybe after we all become billionaires and are happily roaming the world in our own planes. We can then justify what we did to get there with talk amongst ourselves about our good ‘intentions’ to save the world and make this a better place for ‘our kind.’

But for the Grace of a forgiving God…………

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Vote Today – My Opinion, et tu?

Tuesday, November 6th, 2012

By: Marceline Donaldson, 2012

Hope everyone gets out to vote. I still can’t believe the race is so close. When you think of people supporting and giving money to elect an Archbishop of the Mormon Church for president of these United States is unbelievable in a country which believes in and has a constitutional amendment against bringing together Church and State and there is no question Mitt Romney will not and has not separated Church and State. He is one of the two to three top people in his Church – the equivalent of an Archbishop in the Catholic Church – he has not resigned nor has he said he would resign if elected president and we have never asked the question.

The theology of the Mormon Church, to which he has pledged to be totally committed and to believe everything it teaches clearly does not believe and does not allow its members to see women and African Americans as equal. What’s wrong with all of you folks!Romney is not a member of the Church – in the pew – maybe taking in everything the Church teaches and maybe not – do all of you understand he is and has been a pastor in the Church – a Stake President (which means he is over several Mormon Churches) and to be in the position he is and has been in for over 10 years is one in which he must pledge that he believes everything the Church teaches and will work to bring in and proselytize the world bringing them around to becoming members of the Mormon Church because if he doesn’t these folks out there – these non-Mormons will be damned for an eternity. Romney believes that! That is what he thinks of you and me. And you are putting up your money, time and effort to help elect him President?

I can’t see Americans voting for the equivalent of an Archbishop of any religion – Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, etc. Take a look at what happened in Massachusetts. The large number of people converting after Romney became Governor and the huge growth in Mormon Community Centers in Massachusetts coming directly from Romneys time as Governor. He wasn’t standing back and keeping his religion to himself before during and after his time as governor, he was proselytizing and Americans are now backing him for president. I heard Ray Flynn – a big time Democrat go on television in an ad to back Romney. That was scary.

Does the Catholic Church really think they can partner with the Mormons to bring about their beliefs and then what? Watch their members convert? Or will they hear themselves be talked about as among the damned and the lost? Get real folks.

A man who goes to Church – and when he enters his Mormon Church takes off his street clothes and puts on the white robes that Mormons put on in their churches to set themselves apart from the rest of the dirty bedraggled sinful world is running for President of these United States.

I’ve talked to too many Mormons who were told what to do and who knew they had to do it and there was no room for ‘back talk’. Do you really think with that way of dealing that Mormons have not been told to vote for Romney? I’ve talked to several people who were told how to vote. If I found them – without looking for any such person – why hasn’t the media done an investigation into that kind of vote tampering?

Other kind of voter tampering? Where else would you find one person running for office and his son owning and controlling the voting machines used to count the votes for his father and his fathers’ adveersary in the race?

I’ve talked to too many African Americans who were disinvited from some Mormon Community Centers and asked to go to others. They were told they were not being asked out of the Church, but they would be more ‘comfortable’ in a Church with others like them rather than the White Church they were attending.

I look at Romney and hear the lies he has been telling. Even the media and others have had to call him out on lying – and we are looking at a close vote? It is unbelievable! However, we get who we deserve.

Looking at Massachusetts, Romney was governor of Massachusetts and he is further behind in Massachusetts than in any other state. What does that say about his governorship? He got out of it what he wanted – lots of converts in Massachusetts to Mormonism.

Who has he run against while in politics? A woman and an African American. That says a lot about a man who clearly shows he thinks very little of women and minorities. These are the people he sees as not having a chance against a White Male, so he has taken them on. Would he have run for Governor of Massachusetts or President of the United States if his opponents were other than a woman or African American?

He is in a religions – to which he is devoted – which has been very clear that they think women are inferior and it is against their theology for women to come close to equality and African Americans were not allowed into the Mormon Church until the civil rights movement showed its strength. The Mormon Church claimed African Americans carried the mark of Cain and therefore were unredeemable and not proper people to join their Mormon Church.

I remember Mormon women coming forward in the 1970’s when the women’s movement was very strong and very vocal and when they did join the Women’s Movement they were excommunicated from their Mormon Church. And we are today looking at the possibility of a Mormon Bishop for President of the United States? Absurdities abound here. Is this who you Tea Party folks are going to make a deal with to keep your race pure? And White? Now that’s funny!

I could go on for pages, but that wouldn’t produce anything. I just can’t understand why this campaign is so close given the facts of who Romney is – given the horrible state of the United States at the end of the Bush administration – listening to Romney talk about and drop the blame for the slowed economy on Obama and expecting people to believe him. Is our memory so short? Do we not remember when this country almost tanked? Do we not remember when Obama was inaugurated President of these United States the economy and the country was in far worse shape than any of us thought possible and he had to bring us all back from the edge of that cliff?

Romney talks about his ‘experience’ and how he can turn this country around quickly because he is so good at doing such. But I also remember Romney saying he didn’t do any of that – he was simply an investor in the businesses to which he attached his name. What is it – the one or the other? It is the one most expedient to argue at the moment.

I understand how Germany could have been taken in by Hitler in his early days. Human beings are very gullible. We somehow don’t see the monster standing in front of us until he has ripped us to pieces. And then we don’t understand what happened.

This was written by a lifelong, but today disaffected, disappointed, disbelieving Republican. I was a Republican when Strom Thurmond was a Democrat. Wow how life changes! Do you think Abraham Lincoln would be able to vote for Mitt Romney? I don’t think so.

Marceline Donaldson

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Tags: Barack Obama, bed & breakfast, breakfast table talk, Making Connections, Mitt Romney, politics
Posted in An editorial just because, Making Connections | Comments Off on Vote Today – My Opinion, et tu?

Thanks for your Presidential Post!

Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012

I would like to add just a couple things, which I think need to be highlighted:

We read lots about minorities playing the “race card.” No one has said one word about the races taking place today – presidential and otherwise where one person running is blatantly using the ‘race card’ against their opponent. For example, in Massachusetts Scott Brown is heavily using race in all of his campaign ads and rallies. So much so that his staff has taken to making tomaawk chops and the supposed Indian war cry at his rallies. They have picked up what is really being said and they are letting the rest of us know what’s really going on by their actions.

Romney’s campaign is doing the same thing. It was much discussed after Obama won the presidency that racism would intensify in this country because of his win. But, no one said why or how and this election cycle we are seeing why and how. When your opponent is minority or part minority, use the race card to highlight their minority status or do other things to incite the racism which is either active or latent in these United States. It is how many politicians in the deep south in the 1940’s stayed in office and won office. They kept their voting populace stirred up over race.

Your breakfasts sound fantastic. Keep up the good work. When I retire I am going to put my house in the Bettina Network. I have to keep active and ageism has made me much aware of racism and sexism. I must confess I ignored it before I started to realize my age would keep me from credit, jobs and more. Amazing when things come home to where you live how sensitive you become to others suffering that you hadn’t even noticed before. Forgive me my transgressions! I am sure I was one of those letting my racism out against others without realizing it and without taking responsibility for it to make the effort to change. Well, now I get to fight ageism because I didn’t help lessen the ‘isms in this society.

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Tags: ageism, Barack Obama, bed & breakfast, Elizabeth Warren, growing old, Making Connections, Mitt Romney, politics, Racism, Scot Brown, Sexism
Posted in Breakfast Table Talk, Growing Old, Guest comments, Making Connections, Reader Feedback | Comments Off on Thanks for your Presidential Post!

Politics at Breakfast? I’m Shocked

Sunday, September 23rd, 2012

You know there would be talk about the coming election over a Bettina Network breakfast table with the media talking Romney and Obama 24/7.

You have something to say? Come to breakfast after a stay in one of the homes in the Bettina Network, inc. We don’t put your name in the blog when we take the ideas you discussed over breakfast so you can feel free to say whatever. Not every conversation winds up in a Bettina Network Blog, only those we feel are ‘hot’ or ‘interesting’ or ‘unusual’ or bring another fact to life which we feel you should know about.

The question asked over this breakfast table was WHY the media is missing the real story in this election and not printing what the public should know! And what did they think the public should know?

In the interest of full disclosure, only one person at the table was a Romney supporter and he came to pick up his friend to show him around the area. He was invited to stay for breakfast and he stayed until almost noon! It was quite a conversation.

First discussed was the major reason for voting for Obama – what was that? RYAN! What happens, if God forbid, something happens to a President Romney. RYAN BECOMES PRESIDENT RYAN! Isn’t that the major role the Vice President plays? – President in waiting? He or she does other things in the process of waiting, — in case, — but that is the Vice President’s major role – and several have played that role over their tenure in the White House!

Second thing discussed was religion! It was not an anti-Mormon discussion, but one the discussers felt was rooted in fact and their considerable concern about electing Romney president. He is, apparently, a high official in the Mormon Church, at least equivalent to the Bishops in the Catholic Church.

No one around the table would have had a problem in the 1960’s voting for John F. Kennedy – a Catholic – for president. They would not have voted for and would have actively worked against the election of Cardinal Cushing for President. Kennedy, according to the person speaking, was an ordinary citizen who happened to be a Catholic and was not beholden to the Pope. His views were his views and he had not taken any kind of oath to defer to the wishes of the Pope on any issue. Before making any decision Kennedy was not beholden nor would anyone expect him to call to consult the Pope, if the issue were one which collided with the beliefs of the Catholic Church. Cardinal Cushing, on the other hand, had taken such an oath and his first fealty was to his Pope because of his position as Cardinal. He would not have been confirmed or ordained a Cardinal if he had refused to take such an oath.

Romney is a Mormon. He is not a Mormon the way John F. Kennedy was a Catholic. He is a Mormon the way Cardinal Cushing was a Catholic – his first fealty is to his Mormon religion, which means the people at the top of the Mormon Church are the ones he listens to and the ones whose decisions and beliefs he could not violate or go against. The United States comes second. He is not free to make decisions contrary to his Church’s religious beliefs and tenets because he is the equivalent to a Bishop or above in the Mormon Church and he has taken such an oath to abide by all the beliefs and issues of faith which his religion dictates.

We have all danced around this issue. We have all been trying to exercise this country’s promise of religious freedom. It is not practicing religious freedom to elect someone as President or to any other office in this country who does not practice the religious freedom this country preaches. He cannot claim religious freedom when he is in a Church which does not carry that belief as one of its tenets, but believes that Mormonism is the true religion and everyone else is going to hell 0r is amongst the damned.

If Romney is in the pew, maybe he believes that and maybe he doesn’t, maybe he follows his church’s teachings and maybe he doesn’t. Romney is not in the pew as an ordinary member of his Church. He is an official of the Church at the level of Bishop – he has pledged an oath to his Church and its leaders that he does indeed believe that Mormonism is the true religion and it is his duty to proselytize and do whatever he can to bring others out of ‘darkness’ into the ‘light’. It is his calling to move to help save John and Jane Q Public from eternal damnation. Who are John and Jane Q. Public? Those who are not current practicing members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints.

Third discussion was about Romney’s claimed business experience and how he will use it to bring all of us into a fantastic, beautifully functioning economy. The discussion was basically along the lines of – if he can’t do that for his own campaign, which is small compared to the United States of America, how can he do that for this country? According to one person around the table, Romney’s campaign was a mess and has been for weeks with Romney not able to pull off or manage a well functioning campaign.

Others commented that his money is not what he is earning through his management skills, but what his money is earning on investments. One person claimed Romney earned the money and that gives him credibility as a manager. Others claimed Romney has not been engaged in management for at least six years – and probably longer. And – to our shock – what came out was that his family money – on which he is now earning money – did not come from Romney’s earnings nor his father’s earnings, but from the Mexican Government. Without that start the Romney’s would not have made it as high as they did financially. Apparently, the Romney family sued the Mexican Government and received a substantial settlement before moving back to the United States with their multiple wives.

What an amazing bit of learning! I would like to know more about that because I thought the Romney fortune came from the Father’s work in Detroit with the automobile industry and I assumed his father had worked hard to pull himself up by his bootstraps, as had most immigrants coming to this country. Apparently, Romney – the father, had a head start, which some claimed was how he rose to the top. – He was not a destitute person coming from Mexico with no money and turning that into another Horatio Alger story. He and his family came well heeled from their encounter with the Mexican Government.

Wow! I must refill my organic coffee cup and ponder these things!

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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

Tags: 2012 Presidential Election, Barack Obama, bed & breakfast, breakfast table talk, Mitt Romney, Politics at Breakfast
Posted in Breakfast Table Talk, Historical Support, Making Connections | Comments Off on Politics at Breakfast? I’m Shocked

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