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Posts Tagged ‘Sexism’

An Anniversary Celebration of the Trump Access Tape

Saturday, October 6th, 2018

We have been drowned with comments from members of Bettina Network’s Lifestyle Community.  We could not publish all of them – most of what is coming in are comments from people about Trump and company and that has been true for several weeks.  To say this country is upheaveled by this man, his horrible character, his mistreatment of women, his ethics that are in the toilet and his superiority to everyone having been raised in a family which encouraged the development of his messiah complex is an understatement.

We have published as many as we could.  Some we combined when more then one person sent us similar comments.  The anger, pain, upset, and looking around for some way to make this right is what we are hearing.  Hope the anger, pain, upset and other negative feelings go away and give way to finding and combining to use this to bring this country into a more equal place.  As human beings, we are not “better than” we are “equal to”.  Some may never realize or accept that.  Most acting out and engaged in that “better than”  culture have submerged what that means to their character development and the moral laws by which they live.  Some – or rather many – are going to have to be dragged into this new world of equality kicking and screaming, but if that is necessary, so be it.

Comments from Bettina Network Lifestyle Community Members:

Member #1

What an incredible way to celebrate the one year anniversary of the publication of the Access Tape which exposed Donald Trump and his contribution to normalizing sexual assault against women.  For his efforts as one of the extraordinary oppressors in this society, trained by Joseph McCarthy and McCarthy’s lawyer Roy Cohn and having adopted McCarthyism as a young man – today he is keeping McCarthyism alive  with its fascination with Russia (then the Soviet Union) so it could be passed on in more intense form by the next generation.  Trump was rewarded, by the “ruling class” in this society by being elected President.

Member #2

Sexual assault is something very common in this society.  Women of all classes, colors, ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientation have been socialized into being ashamed when they have been sexually assaulted and have gone to great means to hide that fact and deny its existence and in the end, have wound up protecting their assaulter because they have been led to believe their reputation would be ruined if anyone found out that, somehow, the sexual assault against them was their fault.  They somehow “encouraged” their attacker.  They said “NO” when their attacker really knew they meant “YES”.

Member #3

Trump brags about the sexual assault in which he engages; clearly believes it is his right as a privileged white male famous person and even goes so far as to defend against women accusing him of sexual assault by claiming he wouldn’t give any woman as unattractive as the one making the claim the time of day.  Braggadocio doesn’t begin to describe Trump.

He articulates and apparently believes the women he talks about have no rights, especially no rights over their bodies.  White males of a certain class and financial standing have that right and how foolish are women to think and act otherwise.  As Trump has talked about the sexual assault aspect of those rights, it is clear he and others like him have removed a woman’s right to control who touches her body and/or anything else about her body coming from that sexual rights claim of the misogynous male.  That certainly gives an understanding as to why so many of these same men are the ones leading the charge against abortion.

Member #4

Trump has appointed to his administration many people who have or who could be accused of sexual assault against women .  His U. S. Supreme Court nomination is only one of many such nominations and appointments of men who are sexual assaulters, abusers, harassers to high and low positions in his administration and who are really the people outside of his administration who he turns to for advice and who he calls “friend”.  That clearly will be his legacy.  Take a look at his administration.  We need a chart to keep track of them.

With what has happened during the course of this horror story to get Kavanaugh confirmed shows  Kavanaugh is now beholden to Donald Trump as well as his beholdenness to people like the two Bush presidents who worked hard to introduce a “new world order” into this country so their friends would benefit even more than they benefitted in the past on the backs of others.  What will happen with that if Kavanaugh actually gets to serve as a U. S. Supreme Court justice? A Republican Political Operative as a justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Member #5

Kavanaugh’s comments during his hearing as he tried to justify himself against Christine Blasey Ford were amazing.  That is the first time I’ve heard a potential political appointee and/or nominee list and threaten those he considers his enemies.  The last time we had an “enemies list” was during Nixon’s days.  At least the last time we had one publicized.

To talk about a “political hit” and all of his other language – that screams mafia language and tactics.  What’s up with that?  Does that mean he is now connected to the mafia because of his connection to Trump?  Or is that a reflection of what he has picked up during the time William Shine, the man who protected Roger Ailes of the Fox channel from the sexual assault Ailes practiced against women for decades.  William Shine is now Trump’s Chief of Communication and preparer of people like Brett Kavanaugh to take his place amongst the officially protected sexual assaulters of this administration.  As Brett Kavanaugh moves along in his friendships with Trump administration sexual assaulters does that mean his wife will have to take her place amongst the Camille Cosby’s of the world?  Is there a trainer for her or will she be cast aside and left in the dust when convenient for “Bart”.

Member #6

As a Mormon I am totally taken back and quite depressed about Senator Jeff Flake.  He helped restore my faith the way he acted, trying to right what is clearly a wrong and a sin.  It seemed genuine when it was happening, but he only did what he did demanding an FBI Investigation to give Bishop Orrin Hatch and the other Republicans on the Judiciary Committee cover so they could confirm Brett Kavanaugh.  Did Senator Flake take advantage of his friendship with Senator Coons to get this done?  It certainly looks that way.  Don’t they see what they are doing?  I’ve had trouble as a woman and a Mormon because of the way I have been treated.  I hoped as I saw from Senator Flake that maybe some good would come out of this for the country and for Mormonism.  It certainly has not through Bishop Hatch.  Senator Flake seemed so genuine.  He is not genuine.  He was posturing, helping his “peers” to be able to vote a man accused of sexual assault onto the U. S. Supreme Court making it look better than the crude, awful way it was happening.  We now have two men very loudly accused of sexual assault and sexual abuse on the U. S. Supreme Court and a President whose example to this country and to the world is that of someone who shows it is alright to sexually assault women.  And there are more in the Trump Administration because he seems most comfortable around such people.  Why?  Who benefits?  It can’t be Russia because they are already white and misogynist and substantially so.  The United States does not benefit unless you want to look at a benefit being the subjugation of one group under another and that is the tradition out of which the Republicans are acting. Where will this lead?

Member #7

Donald Trump is and has made a grand mess of these United States.  However, he is doing it by taking advantage of what has already been done.  In 1954, the U. S. Supreme Court knocked down Plessy vs Ferguson.  A decision made at the turn of the century out of a Court like the one now being put together by Trump and his predecessors.

After the Plessy v Ferguson decision happened, when it was clear integration was real and would be pushed by the Courts the society reacted by destroying the school system.  Rather a destroyed school system than an integrated one.  The attempt was made to establish private schools and have tax payers money underwrite those schools and then keep those private schools white.  That didn’t work.

The Evangelical Christian movement was developing and all white academies – with tax payers money supplied by the Nixon Administration –  came as a result of the splitting off of a “white conservative evangelical christian” side of that movement.   That original Evangelical Christian movement” continues today and one of its leaders seems to be the Rev. William Barber. The split-off group of white conservative evangelical christians also continues today doing the same racist/sexist things which caused the split.  May God reach their hearts and move them away from the heart of Pharaoh from the Old Testament and move them into true communion with the Christ they claim to worship but clearly don’t know and would reject if he appeared to them as Jesus look on earth with his dark skin and kinky hair.

Many whites would not cooperate with Court ordered integration and looked for alternatives schools to send their children. They increasingly rejected the evangelical christian academies because the theology being taught was nothing even closely related to Christianity, which those schools claimed to be their foundational belief.  That attempt has left the white evangelical christian churches the bulwark of racism and sexism because the people who support them and whose children are educated in almost “pure” white schools are among this country’s most racist and sexist citizens.  These schools tried mightily to get federal money to underwrite their children’s education, but – with Hillary Clinton’s help – it was proven that they were “white only” schools so federal money for their support moved away from their grasp.  Wonder why the Clinton’s are so despised by people like Brett Kavanaugh, and all the other racist supporters of these schools?  Here is one reason that is not surfaced by anyone – except a Bettina Blog that recently appeared.

Trump came along and has put the death knell to the public school system by appointing Betsy DeVos to head that area and she is doing exactly what she was appointed to do.  End the school system because integration is not going to be a fact of life in these United States.   And in the meantime have a system in such bad shape that those who go through public education won’t be able to get into college and will spend their lives serving the privileged for very little money and then we will be able to bring all the jobs back into the United States which until now have been moved offshore.  We will soon have a populace which will encompass enough people in dire poverty that they will have to work for the wealthy for practically nothing because they have no alternative.  And if you want to fight that through the Court system – take a look at what will happen with the current makeup of the courts if Kavanaugh is confirmed.

Member #8

Brett Kavanaugh is a wealthy prep school kid from the Maryland/D.C. area who is infected with the immorality of the Catholic priesthood which is destroying its own youth.  That sounds harsh, however, take a good look at this situation and don’t think Kavanaugh no longer drinks, etc.  His acting out like a teenaged juvenile delinquent who couldn’t get his way and went to a hearing to blast everyone shows he is still a wealthy prep  school kid who even though he graduated from Prep School, he still has an overwhelming sense of entitlement from which the rest of us will suffer.

Member #9

I hope you all heard Senator Grassley when he said – about the women protesting the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh – we are not going to have mob rule.  When he went further in answer to a question as to why there were no Republican women on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Grassley said that women were either too incompetent or too lazy to serve.  He used other words, but that is what his words mean.

Grassley was talking about people who are legitimately protesting his and his fellow senators violation of this republic.  Grassley and his kind see this country as their own private back yard in which they play with their own kind and the rest of us are just so much extraneous garbage, useful when needed and if we toe their mark, insulted at other times and constrained when we do not see this country as a private preserve for the privileged few.

Member #10

I hope it goes down in history how Attorney Mitchell, a woman, was used to carry forth the agenda against women.  She was brought in from Arizona, Sheriff Arpaio’s country, to question a woman – Dr. Christine Blasey Ford – so the male Senators would not have to soil their reputations by so doing.  She was apparently told she was being brought in to question the woman for all of the Senators in five minute increments per Senator.

She was taken down when she started questioning the male senators, by Lindsey Graham, but she did not object.  She sat quietly for the rest of the session.

She did apologize to Dr. Ford for having to do that and expressed her opinion that it was not the way to do this, but still she did what the men who hired her wanted her to do.  Even after she saw how those same men treated her, showed her by their oppression of her so publicly, without apology and with disrespect, she continued on with the rest of the plan and wrote her opinion to add her voice to the negatives dumping onto Dr. Ford.  Her opinion was probably written before she arrived to do her dirty work to help Kavanaugh get confirmed.  She doesn’t seem to realize that giving legitimacy to a sexual assault against one woman is giving freedom to sexually assault all women – including Attorney Mitchel and the female children and elders in her family as well as in the families of the rest of us.

Member #11

When Senator Susan Collins was running for election the first time, was welcomed and won as the result of what happened with Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill – sexual abuse –  she answered the question of whether she was for or against term limits.  She said she was for term limits and would not stay in the Senate longer than 12 years.  Well now we see why we should stay strictly to term limits because we can see what has happened with a woman who ran for the Senate on another woman’s back (Anita Hill) and totally overstayed her ability to positively contribute.  Wonder what Lindsey Graham and those folks she had lunch with promised her if she would take the ball over the goal post.

When Murkowski said she was voting NO to the Kavanaugh nomination she was in her senate seat with no one around her – no women, no men just Murkowski giving her reasons.  When Susan Collins said how she would vote she was surrounded on two sides by women in two seats in back of her – not their seats because they were not members of the Republican Judiciary Committee – there are no women on that Committee, but they were put there to make it look as though women were supporting Kavanaugh.  When are we going to stop allowing ourselves to be so used, abused. insulted and assaulted?

That whole thing was a form of sexual assault in which Senator Susan Collins participated and was its star.  She was used, abused and assaulted in return for what?  Nothing should entice you to give up equality for you and those like you. This happens so much I assume she thought this was not only normal, but she was being given a great promotion.   No one will ever again look to look to Senator Collins as anyone interested in the equality of women or in the equality of any other minority.  It takes a certain kind of person to do what Senator Collins did.  In the 1930’s and 40’s during the great days of the KKK and others like them, there was always at least one black person hanging around.  Brought into the group when they needed him and pushed out when his blackness began to irritate.  That is the role Senator Collins played in this Supreme Court nomination farce.

Senator Collins, your true colors and who you really are showed out clearly today.

Member #12

Support Senator Susan Collins of Maine  -oops, no, no. don’t do that.  Support soon to be Senator Susan Rice, as she starts her campaign for election as the Senator from Maine replacing Susan Collins.

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Trump/Putin/Kim – Creating a World to rule!

Thursday, October 4th, 2018

Does what’s happening around Trump and the Ford sexual assault accusations have a ring of familiarity?

Is the way that is being handled by Trump have the ring of familiarity?

Take a look at Putin’s Russia and Kim Jong Un’s North Korea!

Mitch McConnell, Trump, the U. S. Senate’s investigation into the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh could have happened in Russia.  That certainly must have brought Trump lots of accolades from Putin and from the head of the Russian mafia.  He paid his dues today.

I try to tell myself that what is happening today in these United States is more indicative of how they handle dissent in Russia rather than the way it is handled in the U. S.  I say to myself – self, we have a more open, democratic system than exists in Russia or North Korea. We would never set up a sham investigation so we could gain evil ends by corrupting  U. S. democratic institutions.   I like to think allegations such as those made against Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U. S. Supreme Court would be handled the way our mythological and carefully culled history declares we handle such things in these United States.  But is that true?

Looking at past history, isn’t it more true that the way Trump is making sure this is handled looks exactly the way it would look being handled in a pseudo-democratic state?  A state giving way to form to quiet its citizenry while it goes along behind the screen destroying everything this democratic country claims it stands for?

However, in spite of that, goodness seems to be bursting out all over.  What was hidden will be revealed.  For all of you bible quoting folks – and all of a sudden we are surrounded by such people – read these chapters and verses – Mark 4:22 – “For everything hidden is meant to be revealed, and everything concealed is meant to be brought to light”.  If you don’t like Mark try Luke 8:17 – “For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and nothing concealed that will not be known and illuminated.”  Don’t like the New Testament – then turn to Proverbs 10:9 – One who walks in integrity walks securely but one who perverts Gods ways will be found out.”  And there can be no denying the fact that we are “finding out” about Trump and his history on a daily almost minute by minute basis.  It seems he can’t do anything anymore that is not immediately exposed.  His history is tumbling out like a television series with unending segments.

But  to all of you bible quoting people – let me also remind you that Satan quoted Scripture and to Jesus.

Trump has warned all of you young men that you better be careful because they’re coming after you. That is true.  What Trump left out is the qualifying clause that says, if you are one of those who engages or who has engaged in sexual abuse, harassment or assault – things for which you were once lauded in raucous groups and quiet groups where such exploits were bragged about – or those of you who did your deeds in private and only the women involved who you abused, harassed and assaulted knew about your tendencies – yes you should be afraid because the culture is changing and that is no loner acceptable.  That is no longer something you can get away with.  That is no longer something you can do and then have the culture back you up by making the women involved feel shame and hide your deeds.  The bright light of truth is shining and becoming even brighter and that spotlight may soon land in your front yard.

To the men – young or old – who have led a different kind of life; one of respect for others.  To those who have not violated women, children,  or even men, your life will change.  You won’t have to be bothered with the filth of those who have engaged in such deeds because their deeds will be exposed and they will be removed from the halls of government and all the other places they inhabit.

What a fantastic world that is about to break in on us.  We can endure this present because we see the future.

As the pressures from the “ruling class” increases and has increased all around, all over, all above and all beneath us as their greed and other such vile needs have grown and have taken tens of thousands of us to protest, to leave our jobs, to bring along our families to expose them to the deeds of these people so they will know the warning signs and protect themselves – as those pressures have increased we have seen the breaking in of God, the God Spirit, Jehovah, Lord, Krishna, Buddha and all of those entities and concepts we turn to as we worship and bring about a world our memories cannot recall.

Donald Trump is being exposed with his own deeds bringing thunder and lightning clouds to surround him and everything he does.

Those who want to see someone like Donald Trump on a high pedestal and want to look up to someone like Donald Trump these were among the shouters and laughters and those jumping for joy at the rally in Mississippi where Donald Trump thought he knew his audience – doesn’t Mississippi have a reputation for extreme racism and violence to back up the racism, sexism and horrible way they have treated human beings who did not fit their image of who is included and who is on the outs subject to being the repository of their society’s fear?  However, even in Mississippi there were dissenters.  Even in Mississippi there is a history of the sacrifices made by whites and blacks when the Black and Feminist Civil Rights Movements moved to bring about change even there.  What their sacrifices, all of which are not a part of history, show is that there is life after what we are experiencing.  There is life after you have made that sacrifice which you think will end the career you were seeking.  There is life after all the horribleness of today caused by those led by all the  negative forces in the world and that life is even more beautiful than you could imagine.

Those too are being exposed to their friends, to their family, their colleagues, those who are the periphery of their community watching.  Yes, we are being divided and when it is over will the lion be able to lie down with the lamb instead of touting his greater size, ability to instill fear in all of those who cross his path, wreck havoc in the world around him; will the lamb show itself to be the greater of the two because of its gentleness and willingness to be sacrificed; or will they lie down together and enjoy that beautiful warm sunlight together?

It is time for these United States to come together, declare the rotters of the community, the destroyers of truth, goodness, graciousness, and run the offenders of such values off the cliff.  And what a time of year this is to do just that – didn’t the Jewish people just celebrate Yom Kippur?  Weren’t there lessons in that celebration which related to this instance.

Every religion rails against people like Donald Trump.  His using  lies to ridicule Dr. Ford shows exactly who he is.  His life’s history is a listing of foul deeds not the least of which is to have been credibly accused of sexually assaulting some 19 plus women and he denied all 19 claims.  But then didn’t Bill Cosby do the same? Didn’t this society, to bring Bill Cosby to justice have to fight for years against the image created for him by the television media?  Isn’t this a society which many times has a problem separating the real from what they see in the stories invented to sell products?

Surely Trump, as president would be expected to nominate and then pull out all the stops to back one of his own?  Isn’t that where his comfort level lies? And hasn’t he done that?  But be careful, he speaks out loud what many men have in their hearts after having assaulted women.  He showed clearly how huge is his disrespect, dislike and arrogance against women.   He constantly shows that in his press conferences in the way he speaks to and tries to insult women reporters.  But what I heard as a child – “he isn’t worthy enough to clean my toilet.  When the universe extracts its punishment he will be lifted high so his crash will be felt. to the measure of his deeds.”  And isn’t that what we are seeing.  And as he crashes he goes down warning men like himself to be careful – they will get you the way they are getting me.  Those men would be well advised to pay attention and take heed.

What a triumph for Trump to install someone like him to the U. S. Supreme Court.  He has appointed many men to serve in his administration who could be called out on such charges and some who have already been so called out before they were called by Trump to serve him – and yet they tried.

Sorry folks – my rant will probably be edited by the gods at Bettina’s – but it reflects the horror and anger I feel at what is happening.  It reflects the disbelief that I live in a country which elected such a man to be its president and gave him powers he is using to subvert and change the hearts of thousands.  When I see what he does and has done and when I see those who are supporting him, my heart bleeds.  The only visions that keep me alive come from people like Senator Flake – a Mormon who redeems Mormonism for all of us from the grip of an Orrin Hatch.  And Susan Collins, who sometimes does the right thing and sometimes gets lost into the horrible ethics of her political party, but still she tries.  And Lisa Murkowski who seems to be clear as to where she is going – sometimes .  I hope she does not disappoint that would be too much trauma for my weak heart.

Let me finish with that Bettina saying which I mean to the bottom of my heart – sometimes – may God forgive!

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Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

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

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Why is Trump Pushing Kavanaugh so Insistently?

Wednesday, October 3rd, 2018

From a Bettina Network Lifestyle Member:

Why is Donald Trump so consistently and insistently pushing the U. S. Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh?

Normally, if anything – no matter how small – surfaces about a Supreme Court nominee, that person immediately and usually quietly withdraws their nomination.  Generally in conversation with the president of the United States they have been quietly told they are still good people, but with the U. S. Supreme Court…….. and they withdraw.  Donald Trump has actively encouraged Brett Kavanaugh to keep going and Kavanaugh, thinking he has the support of the President of the United Sates, keeps going.  He becomes the victim being seriously victimized by that President for his own reasons.  How come?

When all of this business with Brett Kavanaugh surfaced, we knew something was coming down the road, but didn’t know what.  We did know that with what is going on with this nomination, whatever was coming down that road was big – ugly – and meant to provide Donald Trump cover from some very ugly part of his life which was being uncovered and reported to the American people.  Which makes you ask – was any of what was ‘leaked’ put out into the public by that same president? To take advantage of what he probably saw as “made for cover”.  The New York Times was already in contact with the “Don” about the article they were writing on his family’s tax situation and the NYT had already received a threatening letter back from the “Don’s” lawyer about what they would do to the paper if they went ahead with the story – with that exchange predating the Kavanaugh hearing.

The New York Times article, which just came out about how Donald Trump and his family committed tax fraud against the American people seems to be what the Kavanaugh nomination and its ugly mess is really being used for – to provide cover for Trump by deflecting the American public away from the real story of the day.  Is it only accidental that the day the story breaks about this huge and incredible story on the Trump family’s tax evasion, Donald Trump is in Mississippi stirring up the crowds at his rally through viciously attempting to humiliate and destroy Dr. Christine Blasey Ford complete with chants of “lock her up.”  Trump is shrewd enough to know such a rally would emotionally explode within a lot of people – very few can understand anyone so vicious.

New York Times reports Trump received millions through tax evasion ..https://www.dw.com/en/new-york-times-reports-trump…tax-evasion/a-45734477      3 hours ago – By helping his father engage in dubious tax schemes, Donald Trump inherited hundreds of millions of dollars, The New York Times said.

It seems clear to me that this is what is driving the Kavanaugh debacle and why Donald Trump is making such a big deal about it and portraying Kavanaugh as the victim along with Donald Trump himself.  This will go on until the fallout from this New York Times’ article dies down.  The media can only report so much at one time and the headlines about the Trump family’s tax problems will have to share its spotlight with the Kavanaugh nomination to the U. S. Supreme Court – thus minimizing what the public will hear about this incredible bit of tax evasion engaged in by Donald Trump and his family, one of whom is Donald Trump’s sister and a Sr. federal judge.  Maybe this distraction with Kavanaugh will help Donald Trump’s sister keep her job because the public will be too blown away by all the things being exposed by the Kavanaugh nomination to be able to deal with both.  Hopefully, that is a wrong assessment.  Certainly the possible tax fraud by the Trump family and in particular Donald Trump over a period of decades with multi-millions involved is a larger story than the apparent lies being told by Donald Trump’s nominee to be a judge on the United States Supreme Court. That is not to minimize what is happening with Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination, it is just to put it in its proper context.  Real or a created distraction!

The nomination to the U. S. Supreme Court is important and will reverberate throughout this country over decades if Kavanaugh gains that seat; we should not minimize that.  However, for a few years now we have been forced to see how Trump manipulates the press and his base so that his past spent in an ugly, foul, filthy swamp will be minimized as the filth of a life led with gutter ethics and a foul character mired in a messiah complex is uncovered for all to see.

A postscript to all of this are the comments Trump made about veterans with PTSD – basically, it was that only the weak suffer from such an ailment.  This message delivered by a man who spent quite a bit of time and energy making sure he would never be exposed to the possibility of experiencing life in such a way that PTSD was possible.  He did this by getting one deferment after another never having spent time in the armed services – although he did want to spend multi-millions on a super-military-parade in which he would be center of attention as the Chief of State.

Thanks for the space you make available so those of us who are just people can put out our thoughts for others to read and react to.  While this contribution is political, I am writing another which is the result of my academic research.  I will send that to you for publication as soon as it is in good enough shape to be published.  I noticed a couple such articles on this blog and realize this is a great forum for a lot of different bits of information, wisdom and whatever else needs to be said.  I also tried your “Marshmaples” recipe in the Bettina Cookbook section of this blog and it was outstanding.  We will never buy commercially made marshmallows again.  The difference is astounding and they didn’t take that long to make.  Somehow it has never dawned on me that I could make marshmallows. Your insistence on “organic” ingredients fell on deaf ears, but then I made another batch and tried the organic route – just for fun – and wow, the difference in taste was just outstanding.  I am not a total organic person, but this did make me move on from organic Marshmaples to organic bread.  Who knows what will come next.

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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.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

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

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The Big Day – Corruption and Sin – or Walk into the Light!

Thursday, September 27th, 2018

by: Marceline Donaldson

It is amazing to turn on the television and hear what we are doing to ourselves in the name of politics. – Actually, in the name of maintaining the ability to exercise continued power, control, to satisfy our greed and fear.

Lives are being upheaval and in actual fact, we are in the process of making fools of ourselves for our children to read in history class, shaking their heads in disbelief,  at just how high a price their parents and people they once looked up to  were willing to pay as they moved ahead on this day fueled by fear – and that need for power and control – and the greed being so publicly displayed.   It is overwhelming.

Todays’ hearing, which should be about truth, but is really about moving the boulders out of the way to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the U. S. Supreme Court is being set up as a travesty and distortion of justice.  Those setting up this hearing have been doing everything possible to ignore justice and create the stage on which the result is pre-determined and which the sexual assaulters of the world, watching with keen interest, will be well pleased.  The preparations for this hearing  are displaying how to maintain extreme sexism at any cost  and those preparations are showing the world the misogyny entrenched in this United States system of government and how it works to maintain the position of white upper class men as “better than”.

Not only is this hearing showing that, but it is also showing how all of this is set up to get those who always lose everything, are manipulated into supporting and carrying forth the needs of this small group of WASPs to their own detriment and how they are pushed into doing that with no recompense and with the idea that this is all in their interest too.

It was heartbreaking to hear a Republican woman, who looked like a very middle to lower middle class white woman with a family of two female teens talking to the press and telling the world that all men grope women and girls, that is just a part of who they are and  her daughters couldn’t object to that male inappropriate groping because everybody does it and everybody experiences it so you just have to go with the flow and ignore the groping and its consequences. Two young teen aged girls being taught by their mother to accept male groping and experience it as just a normal part of life.

Todays’ hearing is all about the care and maintenance of a “better than” society.  How to protect it and take down those who would throw open the windows and doors and let fresh air circulate for the health and well being and equality of everyone.

We have the Mormon Church in the dock – represented by one of its past presidents.  We know enough about the Mormon Church and how it works, especially as regards to its leaders, to know Orrin Hatch could not be out there spreading his vileness without the support and protection of his church.

We have the once grand Republican Party – to which I once belonged, having been conditioned in my Republicanism by several generations before me.  It was the party which welcomed African Americans, allowed you to vote and protected you from being lynched.  It was the only Political Party way back then which allowed Negroes to be elected to office and to be a part of and have a seat at its Conventions. It was the only breath of fresh air in the south when violence against Negroes rode the streets in white sheets and pointy hats.

Who would have thought that in 2018 we would have a president of these United States – a Republican, backed by the Republican Party – who has brought all of the fear, violence and bigotry moved out by Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement along with Betty Friedan, Pauli Murray and all the feminist leaders who worked so hard and sacrificed so much to move  out of these United States what this illegitimate president,  Donald Trump, is working so hard to bring back into this society, into these United States of America and who is bringing it back leaning on the shoulders of his ancestors who walked the streets of Washington, D. C. in their white sheets and pointy hats, some of whom made their living on the backs of and at the expense of the lives of women.  Who would have thought that this Republican president would be bringing back into these United States the Nazi Party and beliefs of Adolf Hitler along with all of the White Supremacy groups who are growing stronger by the day.  How the mighty have fallen!

All of this orchestrated by the President of the United States – Donald Trump – in the employ of a foreign country and the mafia to sow as much discord, division, and whatever other negatives he can throw into the pile so that their taking over these United States and getting rid of its democracy will be so much easier as our foreign intruders show up foaming at the mouth to clean up the spoils.  Trump is doing a magnificent job in spite of our best efforts to stop him.  He creates one garbage pile after another and the stench from the work he is doing is becoming unbearable.

It looks as though these Republican Senators today will publicly and flagrantly violate everyone’s rights because their backers are demanding that Brett Kavanaugh be confirmed?  They see him working for their best interest and they want him confirmed NOW?  His grooming and time spent as a Republican Political Operative has shown him to be very good at what he does and that is the kind of person they want on the Supreme Court.

What do we have:

The WASP members of the Judiciary Committee of the Republican Party have decided they cannot and will not do their job representing their constituencies in questioning the candidate for the United States Supreme Court – Brett Kavanaugh and the woman accusing him of sexual assault – Christine Blasey Ford.  The other women so accusing him and the witnesses to all of this have been discarded as though they don’t exist.

WHY?  Because they are still stinging from the feedback from the incredibly mean, vicious, misogynous job they did when Clarence Thomas was sitting in Brett Kavanaugh’s seat.  Today the structure of sexism and racism in this society, firmly entrenched in all that happens in these United States, is on display for all to see.  Also on display is how we act when that structure is threatened with collapse, extinction and more.  Clarence Thomas is an African American male and not one of the upper class men who rule this country – whether they are in or out of office.  Brett Kavanaugh – although Catholic – has been groomed to serve the very upper classes in this society and so far, he has done an incredible job of serving his masters.  They see how useful he will be on the United States Supreme Court.

What is most amazing – the president of these United States – a pathological liar and a self-admitted sexual assaulter of women is accusing the women who have come forward at great expense to their lives, their families and their future to tell the truth – this liar and sexual assaulter has called the women who have been sexually assaulted, liars and he has tried to justify the sexual assault and abuse charges against himself by using what is happening in this Brett Kavanaugh affair.  The rest of us need to call them heroes for the way they have conducted themselves and the determination with which they are moving forward to make their experiences with Brett Kavanaugh public so we have something on which to decide if this man should get the job of a justice of the U. S. Supreme Court or not. And while we are doing that we need to call Donald Trump out for what he is – a sexual assaulter; a racist; a misogynist and a pathological liar.

Standing behind all of this we see the men of the Bush family and their class circle backed by the American Oligarchs – although the Oligarch’s a bit lower in class.  Totally free of the stain of what is happening, but responsible for seeing Kavanaugh as someone who could carry out the wishes and demands of their WASP class in this society. We also have the Bush family to thank for Clarence Thomas.  George Bush, the son, was one of the first people to rush out to endorse Brett Kavanaugh – someone he knew as a Republican Political Operative and someone whose work he knew, which means he knew what that would mean to the rest of society if Kavanaugh became a member of the U. S. Supreme Court.  Whether he knew of the sexual assault is only his to say and his conscience to reckon with

I didn’t see that component as clearly as I do today.  This fiasco has had its silver lining.  Many of us now understand and can see this structure without all of the pretty trappings in which it has been enclosed.  The shiny objects meant to distract us have been shelved and we see – with nothing hiding or shading or obscuring just who we are and the farce that has been playing for generations.

So – back at the ranch, the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee went out and hired an “assistant” to work with them to get the job done of making sure that all of the trash was swept out of the way which was cluttering up the road to Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

I don’t know of one corporation in this world which would hire someone to work for them at any job with the kind of sexual assault allegations hanging over that person as are hanging over Brett Kavanaugh, but the United States Senate is moving and doing everything it can to make sure he is hired by the United States Government to be a justice on the Supreme Court.

What kind of trash has this “assistant” been hired to remove?  The women who were assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh and have had the moral fortitude and civic sense of responsibility to come out and tell their stories.  Tell their stories so the rest of us would have a better life without another sexual assaulter getting a seat of power in this United States Government.

What has this group of Republicans on the Judiciary Committee done to promote their cause – to gain power, control over and to exacerbate their greed and fear?  What have they done to make sure women are never able to stand as equal and independent members of this society?

They went to Maricopa in Arizona to hire an “assistant”  – a woman – to do their dirty work so they could sit back and watch the arena in which they have put one woman against another. A man would have been called an attorney, etc.

       Why did they go to Maricopa?  Well, think carefully now –

isn’t that where Sheriff Arpaio comes from?  

the man Donald Trump pardoned, who is beholden to Donald Trump and has said so publicly?

Isn’t the woman they hired a five year colleague of Sheriff Arpaio?  

And isn’t she a registered Republican?

 And hasn’t she been put on their ‘team’ to get the job done of getting Brett Kavanaugh confirmed? And isn’t she working with her (their) team to prepare everyone to get the best result so they will be successful at the end of the day?

Listen carefully and you will be able to hear the laughter from the back room as they all get together and gloat over what they have put together for this hearing for this confirmation to go through leaving the Democrats destroyed in their wake.  The loudest laugh you hear is coming from Donald Trump.

This is what happens when a self-admitted sexual assaulter and sexual predator, who brags about his deeds and how great and powerful he is at sexually assaulting any woman he so chooses to assault,  is elected as president of these United States.  He appoints sexual predators to important posts.

What does the life of the Republican Congressmen look like if we were to play a movie on a big screen showing their every moment of life?  Would we see interludes where they showed themselves to be just like their president?  Is that why they are so furiously backing him?  Why they cannot and will not see the horror of what Brett Kavanaugh has done – what Clarence Thomas has done?  What all of the sexual assaulters have done to destroy the lives of countless women?  Do they have a tin ear and refuse to look at all of this as wrong because these are activities in which they have engaged and have refused to negatively judge themselves?

Having been referred to as an “assistant” gives you the mind set of this Judiciary Committee.  It also gives you the mind set of Attorney Mitchell who agreed to come across the country to do this job for who she considers her peers – her Republican operatives – Congressmen – and others.  Does she not realize she is considered as no better than the women Brett Kavanaugh is accused of sexually assaulting?  That she is looked upon as an object to be used to abuse other women who expected some other kind of treatment?

There is something called Karma.  Other cultures would say “what goes around comes around”.

That is certainly true of Brett Kavanaugh who spent a good deal of his professional life using claims of sexual assault to destroy the lives of others?

Your day is coming Donald Trump.  You have brought into the current life of these United States the spirit of Joseph McCarthy – the man who upheaveled this country for several years and who destroyed many lives before he was taken down.  He did his deeds in a drunken stupor.  Amazingly, his attacks also circled around Russia.  What is your drug of choice?  He did it with the help and advice of Roy Cohn – and these are two of your most cherished mentors and idols.  You have patterned your life after Joseph McCarthy’s and you are causing as much pain in this country as he and his antics caused in their day.  You learned at his feet and you learned on your knees from Roy Cohn.  You learned your lessons well.  The question is – how well have we learned to recognize the likes of you and to move to put an end to your destruction of all we hold dear and which for several hundred years our ancestors paid with their lives to create for us a country – as best they could – which would open its doors to all people and which would respect and hold all people as equals.

Why is equality such a difficult concept and such an impossible way for many to live their lives?  Are we that lacking in love?

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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.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

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

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…AND THEY LAUGHED AT HIM! – MY PRESIDENT

Wednesday, September 26th, 2018

I watched as my president took the stage and looked so confident.  He looked as though he was ready, able and knew he would successfully take on and make an overwhelming speech for this crowd which was not his own, but he was the United States President.  He’d done this multiple times to thunderous applause and this would be no exception.  The smug look on his face; the arrogance of his stance; the assuredness of his expression said it all.

He started with how great he was as president of the United States.  He didn’t list his accomplishments he just said they were better than the accomplishments of any other administration in U. S. history.  …..And they laughed.

I didn’t laugh.  My mind went back to all I had witnessed of his accomplishments and how he has affected my life.

I went back to Charlottesville, VA and the neo-Nazi’s, the White Nationalists, the KKK and others coming down that mountain with tiki torches re-enacting Crystalnacht.  The people in that United Nations building knew all that.  Their countries had been negatively affected by the actual Crystalnacht and what happened after.  The United States came to the rescue of more than one of those countries when Hitler reduced them to violence, viciousness, and years of a horrible existence.

This U. S. President and my family are forever intertwined in my mind.  I remembered my grandmother while listening to the laughter. I never met her.  She was taken, before I was born, to one of Hitler’s Concentration Camps where she worked under extreme conditions and finally was killed in the most barbarous way with her body thrown into a ditch so we have no grave nor gravestone for her.  I can only keep her alive in my mind with imaginary conversations I wish we had been able to have over the years.  And today I am standing, listening to  this U. S. President, who called the people, really good people, who re-enacted Crystalnacht, all of those neo-Nazi’s, White Nationalists and others, who acted violently against those who protested against that for which they stood.   This president in front of all of these world wide diplomats talked and they laughed at him.

This U. S. President went on talking and expounded the Nazi doctrine adapted for the United States called “America First”.  A movement initiated by the neo-Nazi’s and fairly successful in America.  A movement started in small ‘cell’ groups to get this doctrine accepted across the United States as one stage in their plan to bring back Hitler’s Germany, reincarnated in the United States.  This president talked positively about that America First campaign and they laughed.

I thought of all the pain and suffering of the little children in these United States, who had experienced some awful things in their own countries which made them and their parents flee.  After months of experiencing everything new and negative as they traveled to reach the safety of the United States arrived to what they had never been able to conceive nor thought possible – being taken away from their parents – their safe harbor – and put into American Concentration Camps so their parents, legitimately or not, could be prosecuted and ejected from the country to which they came seeking refuge.

I heard again, in my mind, people talking about these Concentration Camps for children as though they were summer camp – as though they were private school equivalents – and I watched in my mind all of those children suffering the pain of separation from parents who promised them safety and couldn’t produce it for them because of this U. S. President and his administration. And the background for my memories was the laughter.

Listening to that laughter, I thought and saw again the image of this president selling out the security forces of  the United States while speaking on a platform in Helsinki making clear statements that he trusted Vladimir Putin and Russia, but not the FBI – the CIA – the National Security forces of the government which he was standing there representing as its president.

Having been a victim of sexual assault I stood there remembering how awful that was and remembering the  19 plus women who made even worse charges against this president and in spite of that he was still elected – by who?  Who could be so callous, so cold, so unbelievably vicious as to push forth such a person as leader of America?  And here we were as I listened to the laughter and thought of my pain and the pain of so many other women.

I see an America where a president who has bragged about sexually assaulting women as though he had reached some great level of achievement appointing others to top positions who have done the same thing and turning over to them different parts of the governing of the United States.  I thought of William Shine – a man this president appointed after he knew of the substantial way Mr. Shine supported Roger Ailes, president of Fox, throughout Mr. Ailes sexual assault against many women trying to make a living inside and outside of Fox television.  By this time I was standing there shaking because the realization hit that Mr. Shine was only one of many such sexual predators and enablers of sexual predators with whom this president associated, had as his close friends and who he appointed to serve in this United States Government.  And through those thoughts came the laughter.

So many sexual assaulters in high places and now possibly another being elevated to become the second such person on the United States Supreme Court.  This time, a man accused of sexual assault who claimed, as his defense, that he really did not engage in sex with anyone throughout high school and many years thereafter, didn’t drink and worked very hard at his studies.  It is too much to comprehend.  My mind is totally blown that this is how low we have been brought and still they were laughing.

So much more of this ugliness has happened during this President and his family’s ‘reign’ over these United States, but my mind can’t comprehend anymore.  My reaction to the U. S. President and the comments he made as an introduction to and throughout his talk at the United Nations was to walk out.  Why are they still sitting and laughing and not walking out with me, beside me, for me, around me?

And as I reached the door I could hear the laughter still ringing in my ears.

Will we ever………………

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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.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

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

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A CALL TO LOVE

Saturday, September 22nd, 2018

by: Marceline Donaldson

My name is on this writing because it is time for all of us to come out of the shadows of shame and into the light with our truth. We have been attacked and are being attacked, apparently to shut us up.  Trying to destroy Bettina Network, inc. and me is keeping some few people busy.   However, we shall go on as long as we can.

Nothing you do –   nothing that others do to you – nothing in your life as you have lived it should be in even a small bit of shade.  Nothing should be pushed into that corner of your memories where you shove those things of which you are ashamed.  Clean them out!  Bring them out into the open.

Shame is what has allowed sin to fester and grow into the slime and horribleness that is showing all around us.  The most effective part of sexual abuse and sexual harassment and sexual assault is the shame which has been dumped on the victim by the victimizer and the society.  Isn’t that one large reason why it is so hard to recover from abuse, harassment and assault?

Society’s message is – SHUT UP – we don’t want to know what happened to you because it does not enhance the mythology we have created around this society for generations.

It is time for that message to be – OPEN UP, PLEASE.  We want all of this awfulness to come out into the light of day.  We want to know what happened to you.  We want you to know we love you, we understand, we are here for you as you work towards healing.  WE SUPPORT YOU.

To all victims of sexual abuse, harassment, assault, please share what happened to you we want to take a part of what you have gone through into ourselves to share that part of your life which we should have been there to help you with.  We are so sorry we were busy doing other things with other priorities that we could not be your support.

WE ARE HERE NOW!

HOW?

This “COMING OUT” – this “OUTCOMING” of Christine Balsey Ford needs to be a coming out for all women.

Her hearing needs to be the second stage of Congressional Hearings on the sufferings of women inflicted by men all over these United States.  In her case it is a coming out by telling the truth about someone who is a Republican Political Operative and was trained to be such to attain to and acquire glory and money and reputation in his field.  He needs to be saved and CHRISTine can offer him the opportunity to look at, hear and address his values before it is too late for all of us.

The Congressional Hearings need to be the beginnings of hearings by many groups around this country holding open hearings to which women are invited and supported in telling their stories and shining light into those dark corners we have kept musty, damp, full of all kind of germs which infect the soul.

Those hearings need to be held in an environment free of bullying, threats, and all the other uglinesses that were characteristic of Congress as exhibited during the hearings held to hear what happened to Anita Hill.  The conditions under which she had to suffer to be able to do the job she enjoyed, was qualified to do and which she did very well were replicated in those hearings.  That was not our finest hour.  Everything said about her carefully excluded her qualifications for the job she was doing and the incredibly efficient and substantial way she did her job.  The shame of those hearings even went to the Republican Congress people hiding and not allowing corroborating witnesses to appear.

The focus in all of these cases is on sex.  While sex is used as the weapon against women, it is really about power, control, greed and a sex drive completely distorted in ugly ways to serve bullying, over-aggressive, insecure males.

It is no accident that these happenings in Congress very much parallel and reflect what is happening in the Catholic Church.  The priests who have been sexual predators and those higher up in the Catholic Church trying to cover the sins committed very much reflect the Congressional people now trying to stifle, submerge, crucify and destroy CHRISTine.  Those same needs and urges are behind the way sexual predators in high places are handled by Congress and all the other “big dogs” in this society.

The thousands of children in the Catholic Church who were the victims of such sexual predatory priests are replaced in this society by women – their mothers, sisters, aunts, cousins.  And very soon, if we do not act to stop all of this, those women – as they have been in the Catholic Church –  will be replaced by our children.  That has already happened in the immigration area – Donald Trump and his administration are replicating the Nazi Concentration Camps with Immigration camps being designed to house children.  And those children will soon and are currently becoming the object of sexual predators.  Rape of the children is not uncommon in the structures Donald Trump has designed and which are coming to pass.  We have heard only the beginnings of such as the stories leak out.

Either we act now or this society is consigned to total corruption. Evangelical christians claim Donald Trump is being used as their gods instrument to bring about his view of the world.  It looks more like their god is named Satan and for him Donald Trump is doing an excellent job.

Regular weekly Congressional Hearings need to be set up to follow the hearing in which CHRISTine tells what happened to her and the planning for that needs to start NOW.

State Legislatures need to organize to take up from the U. S. Congress hearings in their areas where women are invited – supported – and where their stories are given wide national coverage as are the hearings being held in the U. S. Congress on a weekly basis and laws need to be drawn up from those hearings which allow and support us as we put sex out of the picture and acknowledge the humanity, the love, the work we can do together as a society without all of the power, control, greed tactics which are now structured into all of our institutions.

Universities need to take up the banner and hold such hearings for what happens on their campuses.  Sexual attacks, rapes, sexual abuse, sexual harassment needs to be outed in their hearings as well so our college campuses can be about the business of sharing knowledge and maybe even a bit of wisdom instead of shoring up their sexist and racist structures as their administration tries to figure out how to suppress women from coming forward to talk about what happened and is happening to them on these campuses, because that currently is looked upon as a failure of the school and a blot on its reputation so those in charge suppress and thereby provide fuel for the continuation of such attacks and uglinesses against women and against the souls of the men who are guilty of such attacks.

And lets not ignore churches, synagogues, temples and all religious groups because there is a very fine line between religious fervor and sexual passion, which very few know about and study, but which can ravage and destroy or change a religion in short order – from where it started to what it becomes after giving way to such emotions incorporating the way to hide and camouflage them in its structures and destroy those who come forward to speak their truth.

At the same time, there needs to be structured into each institution a way for the men to be treated for what they were raised to believe was their god-given right – superiority over the entire universe.  Treatment to relieve their male ego, which today needs to parade itself around in such a way as the current Republican Congress is giving us a premier example hoping we will follow.

The GOP Congress is out its bullying and its need to exercise control – to destroy to prove its manhood even if that means destroying democracy in the process.  Total destruction is what this white male ego has wrought on this society.

Who wants this democracy anyway.  It only stifles their ability to move back to what they consider the greatness of America, to the time when “White” men in this society were slave owners – “Make America Great Again” came from that wish trying to become a fact of life today in these United States.  Sex trafficking and all the other forms of human slavery still alive and well and protected by our structures are all thriving. These followers of Donald Trump want to go back to being those who could pass laws such as the Chinese Exclusions Act of 1882 to protect their superiority – the first act passed by Congress restricting immigration into the United States.  And that was passed after we horribly abused the Chinese living in these United States as no better than slaves who were conscripted to build our railroad under inhumane conditions and more.

That is the act Donald Trump wants replicated to keep brown and black people out of this country.  He even wants to go into other countries to do the same for their governments.  That is who we will become if we don’t act now.  We have inched up to this place and now the forces of evil are breaking out all over since we elected that champion of evil as president.  Who has he hired as his White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications and who will probably replace General John Kelly as White House Chief of Staff?  William Shine –  Roger Ailes’ former head of Fox right hand man and co-president of Fox News and before that Senior Producer of Hannity & Comes.  He was the man who spent his career covering up Roger Ailes’ sexual abuse, harassment and assault of women. He is the man now preparing Brett Kavanaugh for the testimony he will give at this hearing being planned and they have spent hours each day in that endeavor. He is the man who is programming Donald Trump when he goes out to give speeches and who programs and controls the White House’s face to the press and more.  How low are we going America!

Maybe these hearings need to continue first by hearing from all of the women who have brought charges against the current president of these United States – Donald Trump.  Certainly that is an “oversight” area legitimately dealt with by Congress. A legitimate continuation of Congressional Hearings after the one set up for CHRISTine would naturally flow from that and then on to welcoming the women who have such stories to tell about others in Congress.  If these hearings are blocked by the Republicans in Congress I am sure others can find a way for such hearings to happen.

We need to recognize that the conservative evangelical christians lobbying Congress and providing money to individual congressmen are the Protestant equivalent to the Catholic bishops, archbishops, and above who have worked mightily to hide and therefore allow the continuance of the sex crimes which happened on their watch and on the watch of those who went before.

It has been clear to me for some time that to reach out to befriend a male creates a problem for both you and he.  He doesn’t know what to do if he is not attracted to you sexually – because friendship is not something he knows about nor is a friend without special privileges someone he can be.   He assumes that offer of friendship has a sexual component.  That does not describe all men, but it certainly describes the majority.  That is a very sad – no, very tragic comment to make because that is what maintains and continues this system of misogyny defined as “dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women”.  A human being turned into an object which can be used, abused, shamed and then cast away or better yet kept around as an example and symbol to keep other women walking the trail of tears instead of being able to walk in her truth.

Once a date has been set for the hearing of what happened to CHRISTine, another date needs to be immediately for the next hearing, inviting women who have been sexually abused, harassed, assaulted by the president of the United States.  A group needs to be constituted for the next hearings to pick up after those are finished to go on until the problem is solved, stopped and redirected.

AMEN?

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.
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.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

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Bettina Network Members Respond to Kavanaugh and more!

Thursday, September 20th, 2018

Wow! We had no idea emotions were running so high.  Nor did we realize how sophisticated Americans are in their understanding of politics.  We expected outrage from this claim of attempted rape – we did not expect what follows.  Here are some of the responses:

  1. “Is it possible there will be no FBI investigation of this situation with Brett Kavanaugh because the Senators and the president know the risks.  What do I mean?  There is a lot of drunkenness, heavy intoxication to the point of passing out and not knowing what one was doing, and the hint of drugs which has been kept quiet because the boys know the risks to their careers which would not be there if it is only about alcohol – but that is just as bad as drugs if not worse.  There are many and very detailed forms to fill out for the FBI vetting process and I wonder if Kavanaugh was complete when he filled out those forms.  Did he include the kind of drunkenness he and his friends engaged in – if he did why did that not eliminate him from consideration from the time of his first vetting from his first promotion to the bench.  Apparently, the president has no line he will not cross because his ethics and morals are in the tanker – and – it looks as though the Senators on the Judiciary Committee are following him right down that black hole to hell.  Would an FBI investigation reveal all of that and that it was not in his original papers?  Since this heavy intoxication started in high school did the FBI not go that far back and now there are people who will lead them to that truth?  Is that why some possible witnesses are not being allowed to testify in this proposed new hearing?  There was an FBI investigation after the charges against Clarence Thomas surfaced, but there was no heavy intoxication, especially with his friends in wild uncontrollable times and parties so those who vetted him didn’t have to worry about that.  Why did that not stop Brett Kavanaugh when he was first vetted many years ago?  That was certainly an issue that would have stopped other nominations.  The Bush Administrations are guilty of having brought us Clarence Thomas.  They are now equally guilty of having thrust upon this country Brett Kavanaugh.  When will this stop and we pick ourselves up out of this morass – certainly it is going much further under Donald Trump.

2.  We have seen how far the Evangelical Christians will go, embracing a man their Jesus would have condemned.  is that because they understand what these guys are about because they are guilty of the same sexual assault; public drunkenness and more?  I am certainly seeing many at the head of the Evangelical Church doing stuff I found embarrassing and in violation of what they are supposed to believe.  When is this parade of sexual assaulters going to stop?  The end does not justify the means.  Just look at how far we are going to embrace these guys who collectively make the “swamp” look “saved.”

3.  It is clear this Judiciary Committee is afraid of something the FBI could find if they went into another investigation of Kavanaugh.  They will not even let his friend, Judge, be questioned at their rally of the klan brothers.   It is bad enough that in 2018 we have an entire, complete racist/sexist panel on the Republican side that will hear these charges – white males all – are they also WASP males?

4.  It is clear Orrin Hatch comes from a background where inebriation through too much alcohol consumption or even any alcohol consumption is looked at as a sin.  His Church needs to call him home and have him respond to many charges.  He has done nothing but embarrass us for decades.  Are the things we teach only meant to be subscribed to when convenient or are they supposed to be a constant and enduring lifestyle?  To be a part of a political system which embraces the Kavanaugh’s of the world is something we have to do.  To defend the people who have done what this guy has done and to defend him and promote him to sit on the Supreme Court – I don’t understand why Bishop Hatch is one of those and has been one of those out front making sure he has Kavanaugh’s back?  Do you talk one thing and practice another? In the LDS Church you practice what is preached and clearly Orrin Hatch has not and is not doing that.  He has been a missionary, a bishop  and has been past president of the LDS Church.  The height of hypocrisy is his book “An American, a Mormon and a Christian.”  I remember what an incredible affect his books had on me. Bishop Hatch is clearly none of those.  He is a politician willing to do whatever is necessary to maintain power and if that means violating his faith – he has done that seemingly with no regrets and no pull backs.  His role in the Clarence Thomas embarrassment to this country was bad enough.  I thought it was something for which he would atone as he looked back on his role.  Clearly, that is not true.  Just to let us know that was not an accident nor a one time thing he has now regretted he is now an incredible leader in this immorality on the wrong side.  CALL HIM HOME!

5. Did Kavanaugh lie on his FBI forms from the beginning and that is why he and his supporters are trying to make sure the FBI does not re-investigate his background?  And lying also includes not telling negatives which might hurt his chances at being passed through.  One man was passed over because he smoked marijuana or some such thing.  Kavanaugh, from his early days clearly has a background of intoxication over the top.  How did he get through from his very first appointment?  Those were years such indulgences would have made a strong difference.

6.  Public drunkennes is not something we should have approved in an appointee for any bench let along the bench where you are appointed for a lifetime.  How did his early history get passed over?  His attempted rape seems to be the result of his not being able to contain or control himself when drunk.  If he exhibited that from high school is he now in a position to be blackmailed from some of his history when on the bench?  Is that who we are now passing through and defending?  Nothing justifies that kind of enabling by our politicians of our judges who they could very well hold up or blackmail as they needed decisions from his bench.  And, others could do the same.  Not being able to control yourself when drunk should be a primary disqualification and Kavanaugh has clearly shown from his high school days that he is not able to exercise any kind of control when so inebriated.  A lifetime is a long time to go if you started off life with a group of friends where “community” was gained as the result of group drunks.  Is this how low we have come – drunks and sexual assaulters beginning to make up the Supreme Court and liars, cheaters, mafioso and more making up our Executive suite?  No wonder the president calls the FBI a cancer on our society.  A mafia connected person as president would first go after the press so he could act for his mafia group without public attention being called to their raping the public and the U. S. treasury.  The second group to go after would be law enforcement so he could do whatever without being called to the bench for his actions.  Isn’t that what Donald Trump is doing?  Isn’t that what Brett Kavanaugh would help him do?

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.
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.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

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Nutty and Slutty/Crazy and Confused

Wednesday, September 19th, 2018

by:  Marceline Donaldson

With the Congressional hearing in the 1990’s,  held to smear and destroy the reputation of Anita Hill so they could have someone accused of sexual harassment on the Supreme Court, the nominee was approved by the slimmest of margins.

That “show” provided by Congress, was an incredible education.

In spite of what is practiced in the general society, sexism and racism are so intertwined into our structures of government, it is difficult to know, understand and to educate children about these twin evils and their siblings.  The drama of that ‘hearing’ was an incredible education in sexism and racism.  Those of us who watched, unable to do anything until the hearings stopped for the day or were ended – it was an amazing message.  It told us what our government thought of women.  It put black women front and center, but it made sure the understanding and message was spread that if white women didn’t toe the mark this would also be their fate.

I was such a quiet child.  Spent hours practicing the piano because I was going to be a concert pianist just like one of my piano teachers.  They were all incredible women – and very independent women – but independent in  ways that were acceptable in those days, but for one.  They dressed the way society expected cultured, successful women should dress; they talked, walked, trained those coming up in the way society expected they be trained.  But their very lives gave a different message and I got the message.  My childhood days were my ‘quiet time’.  My adulthood has been one long, loud, excruciatingly painful scream against this life to which I have been consigned.

Jean Coston Maloney, one of my piano teachers, was an incredible woman.  She graduated from Oberlin’s Conservatory of Music and in 1937 from the Julliard School of Music – no mean feat for a black woman,   She was the first African American to perform with a nationally recognized symphony orchestra; she was very elegant; tall, willowy and beautifully dressed.   It was an exciting time for the New Orleans community to have the New Orleans Symphony leave Symphony Hall bringing all of their gear to Booker T. Washington’s High School Auditorium for this concert featuring Jean Maloney playing the Tchaikovsky Concerto. I will never forget the evening nor how I felt as someone who I knew and with whom I had studied be the featured artist.

(why did this symphony orchestra disembark from their home just a mile or so away you ask?  With all the upheaval, money and other inconveniences that caused?  Because blacks were not allowed to perform on the Symphony Hall stages anyplace in the United States in that day and blacks could not attend symphony concerts unless they sat in the very few seats reserved for them in what was called the “crow’s nest”- and paid the same price paid by those who sat in much kinder seats.  So for Ms. Maloney to play with the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra they had to move all of their gear to the local black high school auditorium).

Lucille Hutton was another graduate of Oberlin;s Conservatory and my piano teacher.  She was the one under whom I started by music career and who would not let me touch the piano when I was a small child until my practice showed her clearly that I had the proper hand positions on her coffee table.   I went to these piano lessons all alone on the street car from ‘downtown’ to ‘uptown’  in New Orleans, something no parent would let their children do today.  I was about 7 years old at the time.  Most people knew me or my family and I was never one to meet a stranger.  Ms. Hutton was a well known figure in New Orleans society circles – quiet, unassuming and always dressed the way a regular church going lady should be dressed.

Jesse Dent – the wife of the president of Dillard University was yet another very early graduate of Oberlin Conservatory of Music with a promising career in front of her as a concert artist.  She served on the board of Oberlin for many years and was responsible for people from the Conservatory coming to New Orleans to hear me play.  She was a great pianist, but as the wife of the president, her concert work was limited to her husband’s sphere.  She was a wife and mother and promoter of Dillard and then whatever little time was left her music carried on, but normally only on the campus of the University.  She was a beautiful and well respected personage in her society.

Of the three women, the one whose life was tragic was Jean Maloney’s.  What I didn’t understand until years later, she was the only one who stepped out and away from her expected stereotype and place in society.  She knew who she could become based on her talent and its drive.   The career her talent and presence entitled her to were awesome.   She was determined to follow where her talent led.

Jean Maloney was driven by her talent and drove herself with hours of practice.  Her husband was a well known doctor and the Surgeon General of Liberia – and then they divorced.  She was given an ultimatum by her husband – give up this dream of being a concert pianist, give up your music except when playing for husband and children or within a closed community or I will leave you and the children and neither you nor they will have contact with me again.  Jean Maloney rejected that ultimatum and was going to move wherever her talent allowed her to go and it would have allowed her to go far, but for racism and sexism.  Instead of becoming a great and well known artist, her life ended in tragedy.  The price women and minorities pay for following a dream outside of their stereotype – the oppressive structure in which they must live or be crushed.

The way women – especially black women were taken down by this society when they showed the kind of independence shown by Jean Maloney is one of the cruelest things I have seen and I have seen a lot in this life.  The horror of those take downs – they were not explicit, but camouflaged, unbelievably cruel and a part of the institutional structure of these United States.  You – women and minorities –  and those around are led by this society to turn the blame of the society’s racism and sexism on oneself, turning the victimizer into the victim, instead of where it should really be placed – on those who benefit.  That was clear from Donald Trump’s apparently heartfelt sympathy towards Brett Kavanaugh with no mention at all for the pain and suffering over many years he apparently caused Christine Blasey Ford.  In Charlottesville it was -“both sides”.  In Washington, D. C. it was all feelings go towards Kavanaugh.

Our leaders could call for a bowl of water, soap and a towel and make a show of washing their hands and not being the culprits involved doing the dirty work.   In this case, that was and is done by Congress in the way they acted when they felt the need to step up and take down Anita Hill.  Not for being a black woman nor for being a woman, but for not knowing her place as a black woman and for stepping out of her stereotype after the society found a place for her where she could be sort of successful, but still within the bounds of who she was allowed to be as a black woman.  Anita Hill thought and acted as though she was on the same level as others around her and that she had the same duty to keep this society, government, and its court system on the right track.

If you think this is not structural, look at how quickly Congress plucked its pattern for action for such an event, as now surrounds Brett Kavanaugh, to take down another woman.  White, this time.  The pattern they plucked from their recent history is what they have set in place to use against Christine Blasey Ford – without the FBI investigation.

Brings back that old saying – if you are quiet when they come for me in the morning and when they come for your other friends in the afternoon, they will come for you in the evening when there is no one around to help, protect or save you.

Anita Hill was concerned about the appointment of a man unworthy of being a Supreme Court justice being nominated and on the verge of being confirmed.  A man who the “big dogs” wanted because he was a replacement for Thurgood Marshall and the kind of replacement who would bring back into the society the image, stereotype, personhood of the kind of black man who they thought should have been appointed and who should rightly serve on the Supreme Court, if indeed there was a need for a black man to be in that spot.

The way society was moving that had to be, so they made sure the character, image, background, morals, values of a Thurgood Marshall was replaced by someone who would keep blacks in bondage and in ‘their place.’

Clarence Thomas is who they could see as the person for ‘successful blacks’ to imitate.  Clarence Thomas would be the person young black children would idolize.  Clarence Thomas is who teachers would hold up as an example of greatness in African Americans and therefore Clarence Thomas would uphold the negative black stereotype; make sure blacks moved not an inch, but inched backwards away from equality in this society and back into the foot shuffling, head scratching, over-sexed image this society carefully constructed for blacks to fit into for generations.

Anita Hill’s ‘crime’ was the fact that she wanted that horribleness to be corrected and reality to show through and this society move in the direction of a whole, equal, educated, respectful society it seemed to be walking towards.

For that she was put in the dock, so she could be characterized as ‘nutty and slutty’, but with far more words and images than I can describe in this short piece and Clarence Thomas was held up, patted on the back, encircled by whites who patrolled the borders of racism and sexism to make sure it would continue into the next generation and Anita Hill was cast aside and totally discredited.  She was allowed to survive, but with a reputation and characterizations which others in the following generations could pull out, learn from and not imitate.

and then, along comes Christine Blasey Ford – white woman.  Doing in this society and to this society what Anita Hill tried to do. Simply to tell the truth about her experience with Brett Kavanaugh which questioned his fitness to serve as a Supreme Court justice.  Not the first one to question his fitness, but one whose story and experience could not be ignored.

Instead of being characterized as ‘nutty and slutty’ – which was taken by Republican Congressmen at the time as the best line of attack against Anita Hill because it rolled out and re-enforced the negative stereotype of black women, Christine Blasey Ford is beginning to be and will continue to be characterized as ‘crazy and confused’.  And in the mix are the same men who led the charge against Anita Hill.  They are still present in Congress and now taking the role of ‘elder statesmen’ passing along to their younger comrades the way the system works and the tools it provides to them to destroy this woman, smear her reputation, give a lesson to other white women as to their place in this society and as to what will happen to them if they overstep and cross the line challenging the greatness of sexism and its place in the world.  Their message is crucial to their comrades – destroy this woman or all hell will break loose. The next thing you know all women will be ‘outing’ all of us who have sexually abused, attacked, harassed them and will demand that we stop or be removed and not allowed to enter the hallowed halls of economic and financial success in this society.  These women  will want pieces of that success and will want us to clean up our act and not have a group to run off the side of the cliff to atone for our sins.

What we need to stop and take a good look at is the numbers of white men who have and are engaging in sexual harassment, abuse, assault all over the society and demanding their right to so engage against women of all colors, shapes and sizes.  Most horrible is the fact that they have now been strong enough to elect as their leader in these United States a chief of sexual assaulters – a man so arrogant and sure of himself and his way of acting with women that he brags about his success and his methods.

It is time for this to stop.  My grandparents and great grandparents and many generations before them spent their lives fighting racism and sexism because they didn’t want me and my children to go through and experience the kind of pain and agony that was their lot.  I picked up the fight and have done and am doing the same thing for the same reasons, but my children and my grandchildren will experience sexism and racism as the main theme that negatively affects their lives.  But look at us.  We are still in the muck.  Still oppressed.  The oppression has changed and become much more sophisticated, but this so called ‘hearing’ is exactly the same theatre Anita Hill was put through and the Orrin Hatch’s of the world are planning to produce and direct as the kind of theatre that they think will take down Christine Blasey Ford and at the same time stop tens of thousands of women in their tracks who are seeking equality and trying to move this society into a place of equal acceptance.

And Orrin Hatch?  Bringing down his Mormon faith or opening it up for people to see what it is really about?

Fat chance that basic change will happen here!  This is the society which elected a self-proclaimed sexual abuser, sexual assaulter, sexual harasser as its president and is clearly having its Congress people and their supporters come out with guns blazing to  attack women, to oppress them even further and maintain their control spreading as much pain, depression, and more on all so they can claim superiority in their small corner of the world.  This does not bode well for the future.  Now what!

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.
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.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

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Brett Kavanaugh for Supreme Court?

Monday, September 17th, 2018

If you ever wondered why there is a #me too movement and if there is a need for a #me too movement – here is your answer.

The United States has a president who is the sexual abuser and sexual assaulter in chief.  Why?  He has some nineteen plus women accusing him of sexual abuse and sexual assault and in spite of that and in spite of having admitted to and having bragged about such behavior for all to hear he was elected president.

He has now appointed someone who has a sexual assault charge against him and what will be Donald Trump’s response?  His history and his mentors say he will go after the woman making the allegation – and so will many Congressmen and women as they think it is to their advantage to do so.  I have already puked every time I see Orrin Hatch comment on Clarence Thomas and on the current scenes where he excoriates those who seem to think women are something above being an object who is there as a man’s convenient depository for his sexual needs – whether she consents or not.

The United States Supreme Court is becoming a group of people with growing numbers of sexual assaulters on the bench.  If Trump has the ability to appoint more who knows how many we will wind up with.  So much for the trustworthiness of their decisions.  If you ever wondered why and how the Supreme Court of the United States could have ruled in favor of separate and unequal in the 1880’s and why the rulings against the American Japanese stood until recently – here is the beginnings of your answer.

And – let’s not start or stop with Donald Trump.

There is Clarence Thomas – appointed by a Republican – George Bush Senior.

That was an interesting appointment.  The Bush family comes across as trying to be on the right side – for the elimination of racism and sometimes even sexism.  However, the appointment of Clarence Thomas belies all of that and in the process ‘outed’ people like Orrin Hatch and even Joe Biden.

To decide to appoint an African American to the United States Supreme Court was a great and glorious thing for George Bush, Sr. to do.  To have that appointment go to Clarence Thomas screamed out loud to everyone and showed just how racist a move Bush Sr. was making and the message he was sending with that appointment.  And that message was heard loud and clear.

There were and are many African American men and women who could have been appointed.  When one appoints one like Clarence Thomas that says to the world you are doing the form thing, but making sure the content is flawed because you really don’t want to bring about change in the society to the point where racism will begin to abate.  In fact, the appointment of Clarence Thomas simply increased the racism and sexism in this society and reinforced stereotypes.  That was not a ‘dog whisper’ that was a megaphoned message.

And now we have the choice of Brett Kavanaugh who is flawed on so many levels and who is quite clearly someone who can continue the corruption of the United States society and government which we have seen  ongoing before Donald Trump, but which has intensified dramatically since Donald Trump was elected.

The Republican Congress has shown just how low they have gone with this appointment by their reaction and their planning and support of those who refused to produce records which normally would have been produced for such an appointment so the man’s history could have been clear.  Little bits and pieces have been pried loose to show – if you hadn’t already guessed – that this was a case of hiding the negatives so the appointment would go through.  And now come the charges of sexual assault.

And so the story continues.  The morality of the United States is once again on display without anything in the middle to hide from the world who we are and what we are about.  And where are you John and Jane Q. Public?  Going along with the program because your white privilege is being preserved and protected and you John Q. Public going along because your male superiority will not be breeched but will be pushed forward as one of the things these United States supports and makes sure is neither breeched nor lessened?

With this, I can no longer say – God forgive!

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.
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.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

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Omarosa – you go girl!

Tuesday, August 14th, 2018

“Don’t diss me until you have walked in my shoes.”

It should be amazing to hear, see and read all of the press coverage about Omarosa and her firing by the White House, but it isn’t. What should be amazing about it? The fact that she lasted as long as she did even though she was over the area set aside for minorities. To remain for any length of time in such a position in the Trump White House must have taken a lot of will, political skill and knowledge of self-preservation.

We are seeing the racism of those doing the anti-Omarosa reporting come through like spotlights. It is historical.

For example:

– Omarosa was held in the “Situation Room” for some two hours and was taken into that room, one black female, by four white men. I’ve seen that before and it is meant to scare the same way white sheets and pointy hats and burning crosses are meant to scare. However, the only thing we hear the media addressing is the fact that Omarosa recorded the ordeal and what an awful person she is for having done so. Some have even gone to the lengths of claiming that she should be prosecuted for having jeopardized the security of the United States through this act. Does that sound similar to “lock her up”? Is that a clear blame the victim?

It seems to us the only way the national security of the U. S. was jeopardized was by General Kelly using a secure room which should be used for national security meetings, etc. and used it as a setting to intimidate and restrain a black woman in a room against her will. There is no other way to describe what happened to Omarosa during her time in the Situation Room except as a time of instilling fear and intimidation. How come holding an employee of the White House against her will is not worthy of coverage? Unless, of course, this is seen as normal because it is a black woman and because we want to make sure the victim is blamed where race is concerned. No or very little blame has been incurred by General Kelly and his three co-intimidators. Holding someone against their will is generally called kidnapping – “lock him up.”

– And – One needs to go back into the history of the relationship between Trump and Omarosa before reporting how they are the same! That is the most ridiculous claim of all. Let’s paint both with the same brush! Even making the claim that Omarosa, while like Trump, is much worse. Those are flabbergasting charges.

When you look back at the history of their friendship the extent of Trump’s racism didn’t become clear until he was into his run for president. Whenever a black – especially a black woman, works with whites you have to and are raised to turn a deaf eye and ear to a lot of the racism of your friends, co-workers, acquaintances. That is just survival in these United States. Some people handle that better than others. That appears to be what happened to Omarosa, especially looking at the blacks who surrounded her and seeing the blacks who knew the way to attempt to make claims on Trump’s pocket book and power – ie Kanya West.

Looking at the Apprentice TV show, it had a fairly large number of blacks on the show and it was not easy to pick up racism. Not many of the blacks on the Apprentice picked that up – if they did they certainly kept that discovery to themselves. One assumes also that as the star of the show the people picked were chosen by Donald Trump. However, in this ‘dust-up’ we learn and we learn it from Omarosa that Donald Trump did not choose the people who appeared, there was a production company which did that which accounts for the diversity.

– We have yet to hear anyone talk about Omarosa’s composure, her ability to handle the press when they try to demean her in the middle of an interview, how put together she looks always and the way she carries herself.

Maybe we just don’t remember that during the transition period Omarosa was a part of what was happening in Trump Tower and seemed to be the one sitting in the back of the room closely observing the comings and goings. So – when she makes the comment that as president, people will bow down to Trump and be obsequious as they try to share his power (not her exact words, but the sentiment of the famous taping that is playing over and over on news reports) it is more a statement of truth then one of Omarosa bowing down to Trump. She is in the middle and sees people coming and going who once criticized Trump now bowing down to be included somehow – let us remind you of Mitt Romney, Al Gore, etc. etc. people who would not be expected to show up at Trump Tower because of their strong and accurate criticism of Trump. Omarosa’s character and ethics are criticized using that film clip to do the criticizing, but she is simply telling the truth. We don’t want to be faced with the hypocrisy of our leaders – we want that to slide as they become a part of this Trump Administration. That is how the game is played until along comes this black women who stands in front of the camera and articulates exactly what is happening and points out our hypocrisy in that process. She wasn’t puffing up Trump’s ego – she was truth telling.

– What is also clear is the way the press refused to interview Omarosa during her tenure on the White House staff and the fact that no one said she formerly worked at the White House so was the only staff member with any experience on such a staff. That part of her background was enclosed in silence while other parts – which reflect the stereotype of black women – is pulled out and paraded around.

– To look at the entire picture of Omarosa’s life it was clear that we were headed for such a moment as this. A doubly oppressed minority with Omarosa’s family history and her beginnings in fairly poor surroundings, it is no surprise that having been taken up by Trump as she was moving upward on her own steam, aggressiveness, life-history she would praise Trump. Who gave her such an incredible opportunity? To have moved from Omarosa’s beginnings to Senior aid in the White House is an awesome achievement. She was grateful as many are who experience a life beginning of serious and severe oppression.

To her credit, however, Omarosa was not tone deaf. How she conducted herself in what had to be horrendous surroundings in the middle of people who showed themselves to be totally racist and sexist is nothing short of brilliant. That she woke up from those surroundings to take such a clear, strong, stance and came out of it with what she needed to prove what her life was like during her time in the Trump bubble shows who she really is and the strength of her character.

When you compare that to others who came out and felt they had to sign the NDA AND ACCEPT the $15,000 or other figure per month to keep silent speaks volumes about Omarosa, who was offered the same deal and refused it instead, opened the door to the White House for the rest of us to see what her life had been like and what life in the White House is like. Omarosa gave us another pathway to understand what is happening in these United States.

Do you know what it is like to be in a situation and treated in the horrendously negative way she was treated? What do you do? Some would move out, resign and be grateful for the $15,000/month offer.

“Until you walk a mile in my shoes don’t let your self-righteousness cloud your eyes and ears and keep you from learning from my experience. Is your life so pure you can so negatively judge me?”

When you come from Omarosa’s background to double down and try to make a success of where you are because you know those opportunities are not overwhelming determines your daily life and decisions. She was alone in a White House that was very hostile to her yet she stayed and still worked to attempt to open doors for blacks and that in spite of the fact that neither blacks nor whites reached out to her, but instead negatively characterized her, judged her and treated her like a piece of disposable dirt. It is pretty bad and it is a trap from which it is hard to extricate yourself.

Omarosa had to have a sense of justice to tape, write and go out in the front of a storm to confront and expose. She also has to have a strong sense of who she is to go up against all the negative comments about her “lack of credibility.” What lack of credibility. She was rarely covered by the press for anyone to know who she was – lots of assumptions because she was a friend of Donald Trump and backed him even when his extreme racism began to show. That is not lack of credibility.

At one time I would have said that is lack of good judgment. However, seeing what she was doing with her time in the Trump White House and how she documented what they were doing for a future release time I have changed my mind about that. It seems to me Omarosa was taping people and situations during her time with Trump because her way out was going to be to document everything she saw and experienced. To let all of that out in a book which she probably saw as an alternative to the abyss which awaited her whenever she did decide to leave or would be removed from the White House. She certainly has eliminated the prospect of being called a “go for coffee girl.”

Omarosa is a touch stone for a whole lot of blacks. Those still in the Republican Party and feel they are contributing to moving blacks ahead – staying to be able to document history correctly; feeling that they are keeping really horrendous things from happening to blacks inside and outside the Republican Party; being present to document their experience which could be skewered by others if she didn’t. That is just a few – there are many more.

Omarosa is no better nor worse than the black attorney who is called on to represent clients accused of racism – that happens so much it is automatic and to be expected, We see the black attorneys complimented for their work not dissed for allowing themselves to be so negatively abused; women called to diss other women because coming from a woman it is a stronger dissing; blacks called on to make negative claims against other minorities and so much more.

Omarosa is and has been a black woman whites don’t understand; don’t like; don’t want around because she violates everything about blacks and the black experience that they think they know and understand – she can’t be trusted therefore her character and ethics are in question; but mostly she is the foil against whom we see sharply the failings of other blacks, male and female, those who parrot and are promoted by whites to do their bidding in exchange for 20 pieces of silver and a brief time appearing to be considered equal. She uncovers those blacks as they try to put her down and uncovers those whites who desperately want to protect and continue to cultivate “their” black who helps them hold the line against the onslaught of equality.

Put all of the above against what you will hear over the next few days about Omarosa. You can agree or disagree, but this is what we see.
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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.
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.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

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

Facebook? Our Experience!

Thursday, August 2nd, 2018

We have had a long experience with Facebook, particularly with harrassment.

Bettina Network suspended managing estate sales because of the harrassment we received which became quite threatening and will keep that suspension until we can figure out how to deal with the kind of things that happened.

Our harrassment came in the form of Alan Davidson with Chestnut Hill Estate Sales in the Greater Boston area. They claim to be related to Chestnut Hill Realty – which manages many buildings around the Greater Boston area so Mr. Davidson and Chestnut Hill Estate Sales have a kind of protective cloud around them allowing him – as a member of their family (which is his claim) – to engage in foul business practices making it difficult for others to survive. Or at best to survive in the midst of his incredibly foul business practices, especially against those he considers his competition.

We knew Mr. Davidson, having been to several of his estate sales and had conversations with him as a friend of a friend.

When we had an estate sale we would find people arriving to attempt to destroy what we were doing and just cause a general mess. We began to recognize the people, who actually identified themselves as being connected with Mr. Davidson.

At one point we went to a sale managed by a very new (at the time) estate sale company – Consignworks. That same weekend we went to another sale managed by an estate sale company – which seemed new since we had not heard the name before – which called itself “Consign….” and discovered it was Mr. Davidson trying to muddy the waters and cause problems for Consignworks. Consignworks survived and has grown into a substantial part of the estate sale community.

We thought Mr. Davidson was a friend – more acquaintance – but he was related to people in the business we had known for a couple decades – the Shermans. Mr. Davidson identified himself as the son of Mr. Sherman’s then girl friend and subsequently his wife – so we considered him a friend.

On our Facebook page we embraced Mr. Davidson as a “friend”. Whereupon Mr. Davidson started putting some of the foulest posts on our Facebook Wall which were extremely racist – the language was foul – and the things he said were unbelievable.

Upon talking about this with others, we discovered he was doing the same thing, even to some of those who worked closely with him. It was shocking.

We contacted Facebook, referred them to the posts which were so foul they should not have been published anyplace, and asked them to please eliminate Mr. Davidson’s account. We also gave Facebook the names of others who were experiencing the same thing.

Facebook’s response was they could do nothing. The only recourse we had was to block Mr. Davidson from our account. We asked about the others who were at their wits end about the same thing. Facebook acknowledged there had been other complaints, but their policy was such the only thing they could do was to advise whoever complained to block Mr. Davidson’s from their accounts. When I pointed out to them that when someone threatens you their right to free speech stops, which gave Facebook the right to act – they were clearly more interested in keeping eveeryone than keeping everyone safe and the harrassment eliminated.

The posts in question were complete with some of the foulest language I had ever seen published by any kind of substantial public publication.

That happened several years ago.

Having tried to fend off Mr. Davidson’s attacks, we could not so instead of jeopardizing those who came to us to manage their estate sales, we decided to suspend that part of our business until we could find a way to address it.

It was clearly a very successful way for Mr. Davidson to eliminate an African American business. His friends must have been proud. What happened is something that used to happen in Mississippi or Alabama or any of the other states which specialize in bigotry at its worse and need to keep blacks out of the corporate business world.

It is way past the time for Facebook to take on its responsibility to make sure those who use its services are not open to being trashed and their lives being drastically changed while Facebook continues on down the road to incredible amounts of money earned at other people’s expense because they do not conduct their business with good business ethics, a good character and accepting the responsibility of making sure they are not invaded by such people. Russia may be what caused this discussion to become so public, but there are also homegrown people who make the lives of many on Facebook miserable. They can either not use the service or suffer from Facebook’s abdication of its basic responsibility.

Our experiences as a minority owned business have been legion and unbelievable. When one talks about the very limited number of minority-owned businesses in existence one needs to talk about and realize the forces that constantly do everything they can to limit and destroy such businesses. They are usually quite successful.
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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.
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.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

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

Unfair and Ugly Marketing!

Saturday, July 28th, 2018

by: Marceline Donaldson

We hope you will take notice and respond to a crucial request!!!!!!!!

As a business partially owned by minorities and women, Bettina Network, inc. constantly has to protect itself and put up barriers to those who seem to need to undermine and attack us in any way possible. We are asking all of you to take notice. Not only for Bettina Network, inc. but to be responsible consumers and require companies to be ethical, moral and treat others with respect.

That is how we have tried to live and work. We know there are many of you out there who do the same. I think these past few years with what is happening in the United States should bring all of us to the realization that we have been given a choice. We can live and work in a world in which we undercut others; insult others; demean others or we can succeed through hard work, being of good character and morals.

We have had a very ugly experience when a member of Bettina Network’s Lifestyle Community called to tell us we were being undercut by a web site called IloveInns.com

How were they doing this?

By telling the world on their web site that Bettina Network, inc. was closed and no longer in business.

I was amazed and could not understand why anyone would do such a thing.

When I checked, sure enough there was the message in more than one place on their web site with Bettina Network, inc. listed – with other companies – but the line under the name Bettina Network, inc. has a little message for the readers telling them this company is no longer in business.

Bettina Network, inc. was the only company on their site with such a listing.

If they thought that was the case, they could have called to verify – they did not. If they didn’t want to call they could have looked up the web site for Bettina Network, inc. – they did not. Nor did they do anything else before taking such a step which could drastically and negatively affect someone else’s business.

They deliberately chose to put out this bit of negative advertising in an attempt to hurt our business.

Why do I say it was done to hurt us?

Most people would have simply eliminated a company which they determined was out of business. And before taking that step, most people would have made sure their information was accurate. To have kept Bettina Network, inc. listed with the additional tag of being out of business is negatively advertising another company and quite clearly, intentional.

I hope all of you respond.
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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.
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.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

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

TREASONOUS TRUMP!

Thursday, July 5th, 2018

Quite some time ago I read a blog on these pages about “The Manchurian Candidate” and that was before Trump was elected president and today he is the president of these United States and clearly into treason against the United States.

Patterns?

Trump went to Canada and alienated U. S. Allies demanding that Russia be included in the “7” making it “8” and then he went on to North Korea and was smiley and extremely complimentary of Kim Jong Un, a dictator with a terrible record which included, apparently, killing members of his own family and other atrocities and Donald Trump found that laudatory. His flattery of Kim Jong Un was extravagant.

And now, on to the NATO meeting followed by an extremely private meeting with Vladimir Putin and another “I love Russia and Putin” and those NATO folks are $#%&%#S….

Those meetings are not accidental timings, they are arrogant.

The extreme privacy of his meeting with Putin violates his role as President of these United States. He is the U. S. President not a private citizen and as such he is responsible to the citizens of these United States in everything he does. Meeting privately with Vladimir Putin is against the interest of the United States.

Donald Trump is breaking laws in this country and turning it into a dictatorship which rivals that of Kim Jong Un. Given enough time he will make the atrocities in North Korea look small by comparison. That is what he clearly prefers and what he wants of his presidency – by his own admission.

He has probably done enough to be tried by an International Court and to call in the United Nations and any other international body that has jurisdiction over such acts.

Trump has, in the United States, created a crisis which has allowed him to establish Concentration Camps, Internment Camps and Death Camps. The post in this blog which made those statements early on was clearly correct. What he has created parallels Nazi Germany and takes it many steps beyond.

Trump has turned the “Brown and Black people” arriving in the U. S. seeking asylum from horrendous situations into criminals. He takes away their children and according to the news reports has “lost over 1,000 of them”. Lost them to what? The young girls lost to sex slavery? The young children lost to adoption by others? Any of them sold? It is certainly a slavery situation and closely parallels preparations for slavery auctions with people particularly children in wire cages.

Muslims, Hispanics are currently targeted. Trump has indicated the other non-whites will be next.

Are Naturalized Citizens from those “Brown and Black people” next? Will their citizenship be turned around and they thrown out of the United States after the DACA people are put in the wire cages and deported? Or will they be put into wire cages and moved to the Death Camps when no semi-lawful way is found to deport them? Are African Americans next? And then Native Americans – don’t know where they will be deported, but Trump will think of something. Or will they be jailed on”trumped” up charges and turned into caged slaves. Allowed out during the day to do the free work of the establishment and returned to jail in the evening. Maybe they will simply be killed. And then comes Asians and Asian Americans? He has already cancelled the passports for Asian Americans in Silicon Valley.

And in the process Trump has ignored the Constitution as though it does not exist.

He is isolating the United States and undercutting its economy.

It is clear what is needed to create a fascist dictatorship from a democracy or a republic is isolationism – trade wars – leading to a heavy depression and those are the circumstances under which we are living. That has already been done we just have to wait a couple months for the depression to take hold.

Those three things helped create the ground on which Nazism flourished.

To those who think that is a conjecture too far? It is not conjecture: –

We have death camps – only there is no gas to turn on. Trump has found something more excruciatingly lethal and they are called “cold boxes”. If you are ill when you arrive in this country looking for asylum, having walked over hundreds of miles to get here you are probably over tired, may have the flu and other problems. Are you given health care to help you along – no, you are put in a “cold box”. A place kept at 50 degrees to somethimes as “warm” as 55 or 60 degrees and there you stay until you are ‘decontaminated” of the germs you carry – which in several cases has been weeks. Everything you have is taken away from you and you are left in those “cold boxes” with a thin sweat shirt, thin pants and inconsequential to no shoes and those cold boxes include children and toddlers.

There can’t be doctors around because I don’t know of any doctor or other health person who would recommend such a treatment. All you need is a lowered immune system and a body underfed and exhausted to cause gradual death. If you get to leave the “cold box” you need a very heavy constitution to overcome its effects and over time you will succumb because that stay in that “cold box” compromises your entire system.

Trump supporters are a group of people who are on a level with, if not worse than, the MS-13 gangs Trump loves to threaten people with when the real enemy is Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions. The killing of the five news media recently and the serious injuring of more sits directly in Trump’s lap and comes from the kind of rhetoric he has encouraged and is spreading.

Sessions, the AG who Trump claimed to be against and wanted to fire when all along -while he was talking that rhetoric – dumping on Sessions to get people who neither liked nor respected him, but didn’t think Trump was treating Sessions “fairly” substantially supporting Sessions. And all the time, behind the curtain, Sessions with Trump were planning and working on a model of this current immigrant plan, put it into operation as a model to see what happened and when it worked to their satisfaction rolled it out as a full blown operation. Children taken from their parents, asylum seekers criminalized, “cold boxes” to increase the chances of immigrants dying – but not until they left the “cold boxes” so Trump would not be held responsible, and all that we see happening in front of our eyes. – AND, at the same time we are hearing Trump supporters bragging about what is to come next – even “better than” what we are currently experiencing with the immigrant question.

Nothing you see is what is real in this Trump presidency. The obfuscation, the hiding, the lying, the destruction of human life is extensive.

And then we have Donald Trump meeting with Vladimir Putin behind the curtain just before the mid-term vote in the United States. Another coincidence? I don’t think so. Trump has had a dream of a Trump Tower in Moscow since the 1980’s and it certainly looks as though he has made a deal to get his Trump Tower in Moscow. The timing is unbelievably arrogant – but then so was the call by Trump on television, during the Presidential Campaign, for Putin to hack the DNC computers which happened with Russian help. Trump’s denial of Russian interference with the United States presidential election is simply to make sure they are able to do it again when the next election comes up and he does nothing to negate the process. So he goes to meet Putin conveniently just before that mid-term election and at the beginning of that election season with whatever information Putin needs to be more effective this time with Trump having access to all of the United States intelligence so Putin and his boys can do a better job.

And this time there is an added flourish. – United States Congresspeople meet in Russia, just before Trump’s arrival, to insure that Putin knows and sees Trump’s ‘power’. The Congress people met to exclaim and proclaim their support of Russia and wish for great ties binding Russia and the United States peoples – the “White” ones who are the only ones who will survive Trump and his administration.

Make America White Again – coming from Trump means alliances with “White Nations” like Russia – which is all White and the power structure 99% male. It also means alliances with other such countries while dumping on those which are not “White” and/or which have given in to the women and have women in the power structure.

Some Americans wanted a business person as president. That meant all kind of positive things to them. Well take a look and then take a look at our corporate structures and some of the leaders of that corporate structure and their ethics and character match Trump’s – they are also clearly not building republics nor anything close to democracies and probably never will. Only a handful really profit, the rest of us work all of our lives for those few to immensely benefit. I believe the blog in this series which says -the growth of U. S. Billionaires parallels and causes the growth of the homeless.

So in summary:

Parallels to Nazi Germany

Death Camps which gassed people = Trump Death Camps which destroy peoples already compromised immune systems in “cold boxes”. Cold boxes take longer and are more painful than gassing and people die after being released from the cold boxes so Trump and his people can deny, lie, obfuscate and abdicate responsibility.

The SS for enforcement = ICE for enforcement, burying the facts and lying to U. S. Citizens and the world to cover what is actually happening.

no rule of law = Trump has made a mockery of the U. S. Rule of Law by, among other things, having 3 and 4 year olds, who sit in Court on chairs, where their feet can’t touch the floor, alone, defending themselves

Trump – a pathological liar which means the institutions over which he has power have become pathological liars and so have those who are the administrators and others in those institutions. It is the only way they can survive.
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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.
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.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

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

What a Day! All is forgiven America!

Monday, July 2nd, 2018

by:  Marceline Donaldson

What an incredible day!

I have spent a lot of time and energy being angry over my lifetime because of the fights I have had to engage in just to survive. And at other times I have had to engage in even more fights because others were being treated with great injustice and I seem to be constitutionally unable to stand by and watch or turn away.

It has been extreme pain at many points in my life as I saw and experienced racism, sexism, xenophobia, ethnic cleansing and so much more.

My thoughts about my country wavered during those times because I saw a side to these United States that left me wondering – why? So many talked about how great we were and the mythology connected to these United States was awesome. However, my experience didn’t live up to, nor see, nor experience that greatness, because I was not one of those deemed to be equal to and my talents were not even recognized because my color and my sex got in the way.

I have had things stolen in the tradition of what has happened to minorities over the hundreds of years. Recently, I have had people try to push me around the way they haven’t for a decade or more.

Especially recently. the bigotry I thought was mitigating with the presidency of our first African American president clearly was growing stronger under Donald Trump, with the strongest bigotry I have ever seen in this country produced and cultivated by its president and his administration.

I recently experienced a lot of the kind of racism and sexism I thought left decades ago and while bigotry itself was not gone, I tried to believe it was in the process of being run out of town.

What I didn’t experience in this life, I experienced as I studied history. – Reading and learning about the horribleness of the lives of so many others because of the bigotry that existed and exists in these United States. The worst of it was the denial. It is more than enough to experience bigotry and have your economic, social, cultural life limited and changed by that bigotry that I experienced and that jumps out at you as you wander into the history of what went before. The worst of it is to have people get in your face and deny what you and they both know happened – it is the ultimate sell-out of humanity.

Today was an amazing and very cathartic time. The issue was bigotry – against those brown people who were so threatening. The mothers and children and babies who so riled up this country that its president established Internment Camps, Concentration Camps and Death Camps to turn around people coming to the United States hoping for asylum from what in many cases was horrendous and life threatening. To seek asylum and have that effort get you thrown in jail where you thought you would find freedom has to be excruciatingly painful and the end of life.

To experience the response of Donald Trump, the illegitimate president of these United States and his cabinet and administration as they all acquiesced either through their silence or actions, to what Trump was doing to the least of these. It has been an unbelievable time.

Today turned around my history. To see the outpouring, the numbers of people all across the country who responded and said by their presence this is not who we are nor is this who I am going to allow my United States to be nor how I am going to allow it to act.

Over 700 demonstrations against what Donald Trump has wrought was awesome. To talk to many of the people so demonstrating and to find out why they were out in the street on a 90 to 100 degree day to make their voices heard is the most encouraging and beautiful thing I have seen in a long time.

I hope all of those who struggled so long and so hard to bring these United States into a place of true democracy where we are all equal and we look out for one another were present today. It is not the easiest thing to do, especially when there are some 15 percent of the citizens in this country moving in the opposite direction and demanding that the United States follow the pattern set by the Nazi movement and the Hitlers of the world.

I didn’t intend to be a part of the demonstrations because I fell down the stairs and could hardly walk – but walk I did. As I sat nursing my foot which is swollen and ugly from the fall, I realized everything I have been about, everything I believe, everything I have worked so hard to see happen was breaking open across this country and I needed to be a part of all of that.

My foot probably won’t heal for a month after what I did to it today, but I don’t even feel the pain, the joy has overcome it all.

May we always be this country which turns out for what we believe and will not let what Donald Trump brought on and made so many children and their parents suffer because of his power, greed, control, fascistic dreams of his future and more win the day. He must be stopped and what he is using to maintain and expand his power must be destroyed.

He has brought about 1) trade wars 2) Isolationism and 3) set in place the structure of a severe depression which we will probably experience in just a few months. These are what is needed to turn a democracy into a despotic state. Trump has set those things in place and is moving these United States into the camp of other leaders like him who are also out to satisfy their greed, control, vicious tempers and more. Let us turn that around and continue to show we are determined to live free and equal not in chains to the likes of the despots who intend to feed on all of us.

God is good! And I can see God’s kingdom breaking in all over the world, in spite of the clouds of ferocious institutionalized hate, bigotry, greed, and those using religion trying to stop that beauty from coming through. It is far too late for that to succeed. History can’t be changed, but the present and the future certainly can and it takes all of us to bring about those changes. May I see you always just across the road working as hard as I am for the good of us all, especially the children, that precious generation which needs to see the light that we send to them and which they send along to others not yet born.

And on to Martin Luther King’s Beloved Community!
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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.
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.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

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

Trump and the U. S. Supreme Court

Wednesday, June 27th, 2018

Members of the Supreme Court, appointed by Republicans and being Republicans, came together to make a decision on the latest version of Trump’s Muslim Band and decided to support the personal bigotry of the Republican President  – Donald J. Trump – instead of the Constitution of the United States.

When the second African American man was appointed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, those who made that decision appointed Clarence Thomas, a man accused of sexual abuse, sexual harrassment and  more.  Nevertheless, Clarence Thomas’ nomination was validated by Congress because the White Males in this country, especially those in Congress even after hearing the incontrovertible evidence as to Clarence Thomas’ character knew their own culpability in such sexist activities and cherished their sexist playground peopled by females more than they did the honesty, reputation and accurate interpretation of the Constitution.  Their decision in passing Clarence Thomas through to the Supreme Court showed one role females play in this society, which the Congress representing the society would not give up.  A woman’s abuse as sex object and her availability as object of sexual abuse , sexual harassment and sexual assault without penalties of any kind insured for the future.

That is still true as evidenced by the fact that we elected Donald J. Trump as president of these United States.  An illegitimate president, but one still in office almost two years on.  A man accused of sexual abuse, sexual harassment and sexual assault who admitted to such over national television and bragged about his illegal sexual activities.

We are now in the process of making sure that the institutions of these United States, including its Constitution all bow to his wishes – his autocratic wishes – his clearly evil wishes and actions which he is undertaking to remake this country from a Republic into an evil dictatorship with him as the dictator.

If this sounds angry, it is.  My life has been fighting against such evil and it just reoccurs.  We then start the process all over again.  Those who want to live in a society where they and ‘their kind’ are better than get better at it each time because we have had experience of knowing how to be more sophisticated and hidden in what we are doing and how we are changing the structures in which we live while, at the same time, keeping them the same.

This latest Supreme Court ruling putting the stamp of acceptability on Donald J. Trump’s wishes to make sure these United States discriminate against its citizens and those who would like to become citizens\based on their religion.  In the past the United States Supreme Court has ruled in such a way as to discriminate against African Americans slaves, making that legal and later against supposedly “freed slaves” by ruling that separate and unequal was legitimate and the law of the land – a ruling which stayed in affect from the late 1880’s until 1954.  A law which destroyed many lives and caused millions to live lives of quiet and sometimes not so quiet desperation.  The Trail of Tears under which Native Americans suffered and attempted ethnic cleansing and its ruling in 1944 that it was legal to incarcerate Japanese Americans in Concentration and Internment Camps because they were Japanese Americans and as such could not be trusted the way German Americans and Italian Americans could be trusted.

There were rulings by this same United States Supreme Court which is claimed to be color blind and sees all Americans as equal no matter their race, sex, sexual orientation, religions ethnic origins, etc.  So much for that mythology.

This ruling came about to facilitate the ethnic cleansing that we are in the middle of, led by Donald J. Trump who ran on such a platform – who set in place an Administration full of neo-Nazi’s; racists, sexists, anti-every religion except his kind of ET.Evangelical Christianity espoused by the likes of Franklin Graham and others who give this president a “mulligan’ whenever he transgresses God’s laws.

We held up to you what was happening – the United States was on its way to becoming another country following in the footsteps in Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany only worse.  You heard those warnings and said – that is an extreme comment. We pointed out to you that Concentration Camps would soon be established in these United States and you said – that is ridiculous and an exaggeration.   And you now have Concentration Camps, Internment Camps and you are on your way to Death Camps.  Those steps were taken in swift succession.

Today, they are peopled by children who have been weaponized to bring about Trump’s dream of an America over which he and his family rule like the worst despots,  the fascist leaders he has clearly articulated admiring like Kim Jong Un; Vladimir Putin and several others.

One thing Adolf Hitler did not do, but Donald J. Trump has done, is the weaponizing of children – “suffer the little children to come unto me for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven” – these are the ones he has weaponized and will continue and worsen his use of them.  Donald Trump is the man who bragged about deliberately walking into a room full of 16 year olds unexpectedly and unannounced. – The 16 year olds in various stages of undress as they prepared to be a part of his beautiy pageant and as such were in a position under him with his fairly substantial power over them.  Sounds like today?  Only this is not a beauty pageant; the children are much younger and much more vulnerable under his complete control as he can decide whether they live or die.  Try that when you think of all the children who are now unaccounted for, who cannot be found.  The United States military is preparing to house the world’s children in what is the equivalent of “black sites”.  Today, they are Hispanics.  Tomorrow they will be Muslims.  And after that?  After he has expanded his internment camps to accommodate the 100,000 and more he is currently demanding – will he then ‘intern’ the DACA people and be able to do so other quietly as he ushers them out of the country keeping them in the interim in these camps?  Camps that he could not establish for DACA because the uproar would be deafening.  But he can take this move very sneakily and by the time we know what he is doing it will be well along the way with many DACA people having been ‘evicted’ from the United States irrevocably.  He is moving fast to achieve #MAWA.

What has he needed to take this country all the way to an evil dictatorship which destroys its own people?  Trade Wars – we have that.  A recession that will make the “Great Depression” look like a wonderful time in the life of this country by comparison.  We are moving fast into that place.

We now have the largest federal deficit in history and we are moving extremely fast to make it as large as possible as Trump rips off everyone.  Here is a man who talks about saving money to his electorate and outlines how his latest evil scheme is going to save the United States tons of money.  How is that working for you?

Trump spends almost $1,000,000 per weekend as he travels to his golf courses and to his private club Mar a Lago to take on his management oversight of his property.  To make sure the marketing and oversight – by Trump – is still in place and producing results?  He manages and checks on all of his places at the expense of the United States tax payer making sure the marketing is such that the world thinks they have access to him on weekends and can get their projects funded and more if they patronize his privately owned businesses.

Trump has set up Concentration Camps and Internment Camps with children currently in residence.  The cost of keeping children in those camps is about $2,000 per day.  Before the camps were set up the cost was something like $360/day.

And the Trump administration is turning out to be the most corrupt administration in the history of this country.  His appointees are being exposed one at a time and he ignores the corruption of those who do his bidding and show him their loyalty – not to the country they are supposed to be serving, but to Donald Trump persoanlly.  They can be as corrupt as they want to be and rip off everyone and everything as long as they are loyal to Donald Trump –  A current example of a mafia “don” – only this time angling to be a mafia “don” on a world wide scale.

All of this gives new meaning to Melania Trump’s jacket and its meaning – “I really don’t care.”  Is this Donald Trump’s attitude and thoughts about the United States Constitution and the United States of America as it relates to and affects everyone except him?

Turning back to the United States Supreme Court.  What role has it played in this democracy?

We could go all the way back to slavery and when that was made legal and the law of the land.  But this would become a very long article. How did slavery become legalized?  See any coincidences and similar ways to achieve the evil a small group wants to install within the structures of these United States to maintain themselves as “better than”?

Let’s skip to the 1880’s when Plessy vs. Ferguson was before the Court.  How did it rule?  It made separate and (un)equal legitimate and that stayed in affect until 1954.  the U. S. Supreme Court turned back every attempt to turn back Plessy vs. Ferguson.

To insure that there was no equivocation and no misunderstanding that the Plessy decision was the intent of the Court, it ruled in the Korumatsu case that Japanese Americans – American citizens – many of more than one generation Americans – could be held in what are now called “black sites” because they were a threat to the National Security of the United States – and stripped of everything they owned.

Isn’t that what is being claimed by the United States Supreme Court today?  Trump’s travel ban must stay in place because it addresses the national  security of these United States.  Just in case you missed the confluence of these cases – at the same time the Chief Justice Roberts complained about the dissent statement of Justice Sotarmeyer he also declared the Koramatsu case to have been reversed and closed.  What he didn’t say – there was no longer any need for the Koramatsu case as any kind of exmaple as the Court moves along in other deliberations because the Trump Travel Ban does much the same thing – insures that now Religion is added as one reason which can be used to discriminate against American Citizens and others.

Those Concentration Camps and Internment Camps and Death Camps now hold Hispanic children.  They will probably soon hold Hispanic families.  They will, no doubt, move from there to holding DACA and from there to Muslims in general. And then what?  Are those plans being laid within the White House for the rejection and cancellation of the citizenship of Naturalized United States citizens because of “National Security”?

Those being held in the 1940’s in Internment were not German Americans nor Italian Americans.  Both groups would have posed a threat to the United States if the reasoning behind the Koramatu case was real and not a bunch of lies put together by the United States Government with the intent to incarcerate in Concentration and Internment Camps United States Citizens.

That goal was clear recently when “reparations” for the Japanese still alive who were interred in those camps.  Reparations for that group was passed by Congress and the people charged with investigating, for the purpose of handing out those reparations to the Japanese American families negatively affected by their incarceration without cause  – those people were pushed to “slow down” their investigations and to “slow down” their handing out of the reparations because the Japanese Americans to whom the reparations would be going were getting old and if the process moved slowly many would be dead before they received their reparations and the United States would not have to fully reimburse “saving money” in the process.

And what is behind all of this?  All because many of you need to maintain your identity as “better than” and you are going to do that no matter the cost to others or to yourselves.  So evil is taking over this country and swiftly.

If you dig a grave for me – make sure you dig a second grave and line it with a lovely and comfortable mattress because you will, without a doubt, be your own undoing and wind up in the same place.  I heard that someplace – and the more I think about it the more I realize what a true statement.

GREED – POWER and CONTROL over others – STEALING from others because of your own laziness – and on and on and on! – that is what is ruling these United States today under Donald Trump.

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.
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.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

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Trump – raised in a KKK family?

Saturday, June 23rd, 2018

Clearly, Donald Trump is now showing his upbringing and beliefs.  Those were sort of hidden for years, but clearly were the underlying ethic upon which Trump built his life and belief system.

We elected a man who, when he ran for President of these United States, had two media endorsements – the National Enquirer and the Ku Klux Klan Newsletter.  We can now see clearly why those two endorsements.  He apparently either owns, has made investments in, has blackmailed the editory/publisher, or has some other inside connection to the National Enquirer.  His father’s involvement with the KKK certainly has made Trump a second generation klansman and very knowledgeable about their tactics, strategies, belief system, etc. because he shows his connection on a daily basis and he shows clearly that he automatically produces much out of that background experience and beliefs.

Given all of that, I prefer to think Trump was elected by foreign governments whose interest was in weakening these United States instead of thinking that we really went out to vote and elected this man president.  Given that, I am super concerned that the same thing may happen during the mid-terms.  Is that why Trump has been so anti-the investigation which is looking into exactly what happened during that election?  He certainly does not want Mueller, the special counsel, to destroy or expose the goose that laid the golden egg for him and his minions.

When he was pushed and had to retract what he set out for the “Zero Tolerance” policy, he showed that in creating the policy he did it out of the Klan beliefs which were a part of his upbringing and early family training.  And interestingly, who was his right hand person putting this together – none other than Attorney General Sessions.

This was not, incredibly, the first time Trump showed his extreme racism.  When he was a young man he and his father were sued by the United States Government for their racism in the way they handled their business.  Sessions has shown his extreme racism throughout his life in everything he has done and accomplished.

Trump has not changed, he has only become more intransigent in the ways of his youth – which was followed in his early adulthood by the training, experience and education he received with his involvement with Roy Cohn and Senator Joe McCarthy.  One of those beliefs he learned at Roy Cohn’s feet “If you tell a lie long enough and loud enough people will believe you”.

Those long candlelit dinners with Roy Cohn produced much of the belief system Trump put on top of that with which he was raised, which today has produced a monster doing everything he can to bring about an extremely bigoted and divided society.  Those who support him, however, should take note of how that friendship and ‘mentoring’ relationship he had with Roy Cohn ended.  In the end, when Roy Cohn no longer had money nor much influence and he was terminally ill, Donald Trump disappeared as a friend and was not there to comfort or support his friend, Cohn,  on whom he relied to introduce him into the New York real estate world and coach him on how to act, think, be.  When Roy Cohn had no more to give Trump and needed his friendship and support in return Trump was long gone making sure he was cleaning himself of any involvement with or attachment to Roy Cohn.  And that has been a pattern Trump has followed throughout his life.

When Trump had to back away from splitting families and producing Concentration Camps, Internment Camps and Death Camps, the way he handled a press exposure to that backing away made the KKK proud.  It was the way the KKK would have done the same thing.  Put people out front to continue the destruction of South American people immigrating to the United States by doing everything he could to bring fear and loathing into the picture showcasing people whose grief at the loss of loved ones Trump weaponized and used to attempt to continue creating a negative stereotype for South Americans which would make most people cringe.

I’ve seen crude, vicious, arrogant, racist rants before but Trump put out a lesson to help embellish the negative stereotype of people from South America – to make people fear them by just seeing one on the street –  the way the stereotype of African Americans has been embellished over the years which has now led to African American adults and children being shot and killed by law enforcement when they were not armed and not committing any kind of criminal act that would lead to their having threatened the lives of law enforcement and under circumstances where the law enforcement officers could have, and if the people were White, would have handled the situation in a non-life threatening way.  This has been going on for generations and clearly, South Americans are now being included with this group and Donald Trump, in the way he is handling this is making sure that these minorities are going to be put in harms way because that is his belief system and he is passing it on to Americans weaponizing grief to inject a lot of racist rhetoric and beliefs at a time when the people he brought on stage were most susceptible and deep into their grief rather than into how they and their grief were being abused by Donald Trump.

What is the difference between Donald Trump and David Duke in the American scheme of things?  Why did we reject the one and elect the other?  It seems to me there were two things which made the difference:  1) Trump was apparently backed by a foreign government which was served by weakening the United States and found Trump a very likely person who would do that effectively if he was promised something to his benefit – like a Trump Tower Moscow or other such promise.  2) Trump has the image of a billionaire, whether true or not, and David Duke was just a plain middle class American.  We do have a different ethical standard for those who have reached that billionaire status than we do for others in this society.

So the president of these United States has a KKK upbringing and background and apparently very strong KKK commitment and support which he is parading in front of the American people using it to help change this society into one which is bigoted in the way the KKK has tried to change this society for generations.

He, apparently, also has neo-Nazi ties and commitments.  When you look at who he has appointed to his administration and who he keeps close to him, if he were not into the neo-Nazi movement he would not be able to tolerate the people he has brough in and put close to the top of this United States Government.  Charlottesville showed that with no equivocation and we chose to be in shock for a few moments and then paved over that as though it had not happened.

And let us not forget Trump’s mafia connections.  Wasn’t John Gotti’s son one of his high school friends?  And isn’t there a trail left of his connections to, transactions with and approval of several mafias – in those connections he does not seem to discriminate. Or is it possible that his core dump on Mexico comes from trying to diminish the American and other mafia competition with that country?

This Trump presidency has produced a Muslim Travel Ban when it was just days old – caused many people to have horrid upsets in their lives as this went into affect disallowing any Muslims into the United States until the United States Supreme Court ruled otherwise.  Clearly, Trump is in the process of corrupting such areas which close down his bringing the vilest bigotry into this country that one could imagine.

Trump declared that LGBT people would not be allowed to serve in the Armed Forces – until that was blocked by others.

Trump took on the sports groups claiming their “taking the knee” was disrespectful to the flag and made quite a campaign out of that.  Trump, someone who does not know the words and never has taken the time to learn the words to the National Anthem that he claims was disrespected.  Trump, who found ways to disrespect this country by several times taking fringy excuses not to serve this country he claims these others disrespected.  What could be more disrespectful and foul than that?  Trump, who apparently was really protecting the millions of dollars his friends receive  from the DOD if the players on the teams they own take to the field and look extremely robotic in ‘respecting’ the flag and the National Anthem.  Before money into the pockets of the team owners started, the players stayed in the locker room until the patriotic happenings finished.  So was this really about patriotism to Trump or money to people he probably saw he would need in the future?

Trump has destroyed relationships with democracies and republics which took generations to build in favor of bringing about the United States closeness to dictatorships of the worst kind. With their support Trump expects to win and remain president for the rest of his life with a citizenship scared silly of him and his entourage, friends and foreign government supporters.  He clearly not only intends to do this but he is about the business of wiping the faces of Americans in his choices of friends he expects to install as the United States ‘allies’.  And to them I would say look at the pattern established by Trump with Roy Cohn and don’t expect loyalty, especially if you have given all you have to Trump and you need something in return when that giving has stopped and he doesn’t see it continuing at some point in the near future.

And on and on we go with much more of the same kind which has constantly happened one after another in close succession doing its best to weaken this country and finally bring in the rule and reign of the KKK, the Neo-Nazis and all the others with whom Trump has combined to succeed in his attempt to become and remain president with total control of these United States.

Trump has now reached the point of having established and is growing at a dramatic rate Concentration Camps, Internment Camps and Death Camps.  When we first mentioned Death Camps there was disbelief.  Aren’t you carrying this a bit far came one response.  Well, now we are seeing children of those asking for asylum coming into our hospitals with some of those children suicidal.  A fact which pediatricians and psychiatrist to the young have predicted would happen.  We are also hearing reports of young boys being beaten where they are in these camps and being treated in other vile ways.   AND no one even knows where the girls are.  Given Trump’s record of sexual abuse and sexual assault about which he bragged and going to his beauty contest events finding flimsy reasons to walk into the dressing rooms of young 16 year olds who were getting ready for their next event with some nude, we should be very concerned about where the girls are in these Internment, Concentration and Death Camps.  Next, we will begin to hear about rapes and other atrocities. Or will those so attacked ‘disappear’?

We have heard reports of parents getting their children who haven’t had a bath or shower in the entire time of their stay in one of the Trump Concentration Camps and the food and other care they received at a level no one in this country would allow for anyone in their families.

We heard one day that Trump was setting up Concentration Camps for some 20,000 children.  Within the same day, what leaked out were the memos and other proofs that Trump was actually setting up Concentration Camps for some 100,000 children and was keeping that away from the public until it was unveiled.  Trump and his people have been super concerned about “leaks.”  We should be concerned to make sure the “leakers” are well protected when they leak because without them we will never know what is actually happening in these Camps where even Congressional people and other government officials have not been allowed to know where they are and especially not allowed to see these Concentration Camps even when they show up in their official capacity.  Have you ever heard of not allowing such government officials in to see what is happening where tax payer money is being used to set up all of this?

You can keep your head in the sand and engage in denial, but remember this – today it is Immigrants in those camps – tomorrow it will be you and your children in those camps for other reasons, especially if you are black or brown.  And taking a clue from what happened in Germany under the Nazi regime, remember the non-Jews who were put in Concentration Camps because they could not live with what they knew was happening in those camps?  They were also killed in those camps along with the Jews.  Someone whose books I’ve read and cherish was Dietrich Bonhoeffer – remember him – killed by the Nazis right before the Concentration Camp where he was kept was freed by the Western Allies?  Do you think you will be excluded from this Nazi re-enactment happening in a much more concentrated and quick way than it happened in Germany during Hitlers day?  Hitler was not, after all, a billionaire having cultivated many billionaire friends he could call on for help.

Is this a time for extreme civil disobedience against this Trump regime?  Don’t you think that is a serious conversation that needs to happen and that needs to be done in this country before we learn about the horrors of these camps from those in other countries who came across what is happening in these United States the way we came across what was happening in Germany?  Your life and freedom are at stake here and you need to move out of your need that Trump fills of being “better than” and get quickly into the “equal to” before it is too late.

Who is Trump’s base?  The racist KKK, the neo-Nazi’s, the bigots of every stripe, the mafia who see the opportunity to make a fortune in what is happening because, after all, isn’t this all being carried out by private profit making organizations and corporations who have – from what we are seeing – some really shady stuff happening in their past?  That is your tax payer dollar at work – your hard earned dollars going to support and help erect this scaffold on which Trump expects to put quite a few people.

May God continue to love and protect us all.

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.
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.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

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

 

Children Weaponized while Satan Quotes Scripture!

Wednesday, June 20th, 2018

by Marceline Donaldson

It is unbelievable what is happening in these United States.  Trump’s bigotry and actions to “Make America White Again” is totally out of control.

We have many questions:

In the Internment/Concentration/Death Camps for children why are reporters being kept out?  What is going on in those camps which has to be kept secret from the American Citizenry and from the rest of the world?  The same thing was true in Hitlers’ Germany.  The citizens of Germany stood by while Hitler set up his Death Camps, his Concentration Camps, his Internment Camps and the rest of the world knew about this before German citizens did.  Is the same thing now true in the United States?

You question my use of the term “Death Camps”?  Are children dying in those camps?  And if they were do you think you would know about it?  Do you remember how profusely Donald Trump praised Kim Jong Un – how quickly he returned the salute of the North Korean general?  One thing Kim Jong Un is reported to have done is to have killed many of North Korean citizens in the equivalent of death camps.  Isn’t that what Donald Trump was praising?  How does he then come along and change to a human being who is anything other than a sociopathic president or worse?

People coming to the United States for asylum with their children are having their children separated from them and put into places where children are weaponized for Trump’s political purposes.  Some of those people are being deported – sent home without their children.  Where are the children of those being deported?  Why are they being sent home without their children?  Why are there no questions being asked or answered about the whereabouts of those children?  Do we care a little, but not enough to walk out on that ledge to demand answers – because if you are going to oppose this administration you better be ready for horrendous dictatorship responses.  There is Trump, but the evil comes from the fact that Trump has supporters and they are willing to do whatever is necessary to keep Trump in office.  They do appreciate the kind of things he is doing to maintain them as “better than” as “superior” to as “White Supremacy reigning supreme and he has been obliging all along.

Puerto Rico – where he threw paper towels into a crowd of people who had just gone through horrendous suffering and are still going through it with the resources they need being parceled out in such a way to maintain that suffering.  So far, the deaths of over 4,000 people are attributed to what happened in Puerto Rico.  Our government claims some 64 deaths so attributed.  Now take another look at those Children’s Internment Camps and try to not call them death camps.

Take a look at Charlottesville, VA. where a re-enactment of Crystal Nacht took place!  Trump was forgiven by the American citizenry for that display of bigotry.  Why?  Do you not understand what Charlottesville was about? “There are good people on both sides”!  What a beautiful sight was the procession with tiki torches down the mountain by the KKK, the Neo-Nazis, the White Supremacist quoting and chanting anti-Jewish slogans and changing to chants about the rest of the ‘minority’ peoples of the world.  Have you justified that?

Also take a look at how our justice system is being ridiculed and used against all of us.  When have you ever heard of children 3 and 4 years old being put on trial and made to defend themselves with no lawyers or other people representing them but the children themselves being forced to represent themselves and to be bound by the decision of the judges, which from what we can determine is always against the children?  Trump has appointed a large number of judges who can change this country into a place which makes Nazi Germany look like a walk in the park quickly.  Aren’t they now showing a film to these 3 and 4 year olds about the justice system and defending their rights and then declaring them able and responsible and knowledgeable enough to be able to appear in court on their own behalf.  What is that?  Where are all of you sleepwalkers?  Waiting for your children to be put in the same position – because that is coming as Trump’s grasp for power moves further out of control.  Look at his actions with only one trip to North Korean.  And – North Korea needs to take note – Trump has no boundaries.  When his ego and power needs reaches the current limits you are not in the clear and you will not be the glorified country you expect to be after Trump’s visit.  You will be somehow weaponized in the future.

What a field day for the petophile?  A field day created by the United States government under Donald Trump, an illegitimate president turning this country into a copy of all the horrendous dictatorships around the world and quickly moving beyond them.  Do you now understand why Trump was so profuse in his praise of Kim Jong Un?

And then there is “Satan”.  Attorney General Sessions – an ET.Evangelical Christian quoting scripture to back up and legitimize what Trump is doing. If Sessions knows enough about the Bible to quote from it, he also knows and someplace in his distant past learned that satan quoted scripture to Jesus to legitimize Jesus breaking with God in the 40 day fast to go along with what satan wanted Jesus to do – and wasn’t that basically to rule the world in satan’s name doing satan’s bidding?  Is that how Sessions justifies what he is doing for Trump?   Is that who you listen to and follow as your Attorney General?  If Trump is an illegitimate president does that make his appointment of Sessions illegitimate?  Is Sessions an illegitimate Attorney General and do all of these people get arrested for their impersonation of who was duly elected as president of these United States?  Do they get arrested for using their positions in the United States Government to abuse, kidnap and kill children?

Don’t you think it is time for you to get involved in other than being shocked, grieved and more by what your government is doing?  Or are you one of the Trump supporters who quietly or otherwise want to see him succeed in removing the brown and black people from this country so they make up only a small percentage and these United States goes back to being white again?

How much are you going to take before you take action.  How long are you going to stand in the shadows and allow this to happen?  Do you think you are immune?  Do you think Trump is going to stop at weaponized the children of those coming into this country for asylum?  Don’t you know the appetite of power?  Once unleashed as Trump’s has been – the limits of power knows no bounds – it may be the children of asylum seekers today but it is going to be your children tomorrow.  Especially since he sees how easy it is to weaponize children to get the populace to do what he demands.

Watch Congress – are they going to acquiesce to his demands and give him your tax payer money – your hard earned dollars to build a wall which will be expensive, ineffective and simply serve the purpose of making Trump a larger more dangerous dictator than he was before.

Congress could have acted on the little things along the way.  They kept silent.  Now they have much more dangerous things to try to push against.

I ask again – ARE THE CHILDREN OF ASYLUM SEEKERS DYING?  You think not?  How would your children fare in a desolate dessert in a ten which experiences 105 degrees outside and who knows how many degrees inside?  When your children do not know what is happening to them or why and are trying to make sense out of being ripped away from their family without their parents or other family even been able to say good-bye to them?  How are those young people making sense out of their present condition?  Add their grief to the heat and the conditions under which they are living – about which you know nothing and are being kept from knowing anything – how would your children survive?

ARE THE CHILDREN DYING AND ARE THERE CHILDREN WHO HAVE ALREADY DIED?  Otherwise – why are asylum seekers being deported without their children?

The media has given the benefit of the doubt to Trump and his supporters – confusion, bad organization, etc.  REALLY?  Is that it?  Or is the look of confusion really covering up children having died while in United States custody!  Why is there no one in court yet asking for proof of those children’s continued existence on this earth?

If you know history you know how long German Death Camps were operating before German citizens even knew they existed.  Nielsen, the current head of Homeland Security didn’t know the answer to where are all the children?  She has no idea what is going on in those camps and admitted to such in a press conference in the White House.

And you think Trump is any better than Hitler?  He looks a lot worse to me!  He is certainly moving much faster than Hitler did after his election in Germany and instead of setting up Death, Concentration, Internment Camps for adults Trump has weaponized your children – yes, your children, this is not about them and theirs this is about us and ours.  You are no different to Trump than those asylum seekers.  You are simply the means to more power like Kim Jong Un and others around the world exercise and Trump is fast earning his stripes.

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Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.

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Trump – the Evil that needs to be removed from these United States!

Tuesday, June 19th, 2018

by Marceline Donaldson

I can’t believe what I am seeing and hearing about.  It is heartbreaking – it is beyond anger – it is evil personified – it is believably unbelievable.  Donald Trump needs to be incarcerated immediately and kept in jail for decades.  He seriously needs to be jailed for the rest of his life.  That is being generous because I started with other much harsher things that I thought should happen to him.

I sit here with tears streaming down my face as I hear the tape of the children being incarcerated alone without family; as I hear about children being taken from their mother’s breast while nursing because Donald Trump decided that should be done; as I read about all the other things being done, lies being told, others blamed for Trump’s deliberate actions.

Clearly, the Summit and Trump’s talks and friendship with Kim Jong Un has produced much only we were looking for what it produced from the North Korean side.  I suspect as long as Trump is president we will see much worse than we are seeing now.  Coming back from North Korea with such high praise for a dictator who has killed his own family; who has done so much more and Trump has come back to these United States much more influenced by Kim Jong Un than Un was by Trump.

Trump has come back to continue to lie, cheat and now to steal the lives of children with no thought except that this is how he can use these children to gain a political advantage and impress his “base”.  A mind set he brought back from North Korea – I am sure we will see more of this filth done by Trump because he is seeing himself as a replica of all the dictators with whom he is enthralled.  There is a place in hell for people like Trump.  There is no excuse for what he is doing and there is no forgiveness.  You must repent to be forgiven and Trump is bragging about what he is doing and knowingly blaming those, who had nothing to do with his evil, for its results.

There was SENATOR Joe McCarthy with Roy Cohn sitting next to him whispering into his ear.  We have moved on from that and we now have PRESIDENT Donald Trump who was tutored by the same Roy Cohn and is showing us that he is much greater in his evil than SENATOR Joe McCarthy was in his.  What were those lessons?  Failed in something?  Take that to the highest mountain and claim to everyone that you have just experienced a great success.  Blame others for any and everything you have done which didn’t work out the way you expected.  Do evil and name others as the ones who really perpetrated the evil and you walk away free.  Adults suffered under McCarthism as their jobs were taken away from them for no reason and their lives were upheaveled to satisfy the needs of a man who was seriously alcoholic among other evils.  But Donald Trump has taken McCarthyism many steps further down the road and he is destroying the lives of children who already suffered much before they arrived in this country with parents who brought them here to escape the suffering they all were experiencing.

Let me not leave out Sessions – the scripture quoting Attorney General who has spent his life being “better than” and doing everything he could to destroy the lives of African Americans and others he considered less than and who he didn’t feel deserved anything except the dregs of life.  He is now getting his chance to show who he really is and what he really believes.  On the world stage he is showing everyone just how evil he really is and how far he will go to bring about a society in which White Supremacy succeeds beyond his wildest imaginings with himself as one of the architects of that success.

A man does not surround himself with Neo-Nazi’s, White Supremacists; and other such believers unless he shares their belief system.  It is difficult to stay in such a person’s presence who has such beliefs.  That is who Trump fraternizes with daily.  Remember Charlottesville?  We are now bringing in Stephen Miller and others on whom to drop blame, but Trump not only was the architect of that but was very clear that these were his beliefs.  He saw that backfire in his face.  He is not going to again call on those same people unless he is one of them and wants to see their and his beliefs succeed and be installed in this society as its way of operating.  These are the people Trump calls his “base” and those are the ideas and beliefs that Donald Trump cultivates, preserves and stays close to as the seat of his power.  This is the belief system in which he was raised when he was the age of the young children he is now incarcerating in tents and “camps” which degrade and tear down the human spirit at ages as young as 4 months.

We knew before we elected Donald J. Trump as president that he was an abuser and assaulter of women.  He bragged about it on television – a segment we all heard and many of us apparently didn’t find it horrible enough to take seriously.  Either that or we were right in the Trump camp and approved of his abuse and assault of women.  There were some 19 woman who charged Trump with assault during his campaign.  It was clear that he also had others pay off women so they could not bring charges against him and yet many voted for this monster.  We wanted a racist, sexist, sexual assaulter, Neo-Nazi, son of a Ku Klux Klansman who raised his son in his values and on and on it goes.  A man whose values are those of some of the worse dictators in this country?  We have tried many times to excuse him – it is time to call out the truth and stand by it.

During the presidential campaign there were many reports from those who accessed the divorce proceedings of Trump from his first wife Ivana which talked about his rape of her – she later retracted that claim – why? was it because her alimony was being held until she did just that?; the fact that he had a copy of “Mein Kampf” next to his bed on his bedside table and he read it every night and on and on were also included.  I think we now see the results of such goings on.  They were ignored by many of those who wanted these United States to remain and go back to the racism and sexism of the past when being “White” meant something about how great you were without doing anything except having been born the ‘right color’ – everyone knew what “Make America Great Again” meant.  It was simply a more polite way of saying “Make American White Again” and Donald Trump and his minions have been about the process of doing just that.  The children being taken away from their parents are the children of ‘Brown’ people.  He is not keeping out nor breaking up the families of illegal immigrants from Norway for example – the country he invited to send more ‘immigrants’ to America – those are the people he has asked to come here.  Those are the people Trump has said would be ‘acceptable’ immigrants.

We have quite a history in these United States of taking children away from parents and other family members and Donald Trump is adding to that history.  We need to be moving in a direction which moves away from such, but that is clearly not happening.  The Japanese Incarcerations – the time of taking thousands of Native American children away from their parents and families – the taking of people from African Countries and bringing them to America to keep them chained and bound and in slavery for some 250 years all during which children were stripped away from their parents and sold into slavery because the slave “owners” wanted the money and the inhumanity of what they were doing was beyond their ability to grasp because they were “better than” and they had characterized and classified these Africans as sub-human.  Some of the children sold into slavery were the children of the white man who was doing the selling – his own children he sold on the slavery auction block.  That takes a lot of evil inside to be able to do that and still walk the streets in this world.

Today, children are being murdered in record numbers in their school rooms and we do very little to stop that slaughter.  African Americans, including children,  are being killed – many times by law enforcement when they have been unarmed and have committed no crime and we do not stop that slaughter.  Whole communities of Africans and African Americans have been massacred over hundreds of years by the ancestors of those who have Donald Trump’s ear and whose agendas he is carrying out.  when a community of African Americans reached a substantial level after they had been thrown out elsewhere – people, who today would be called Trump’s base arrived in those communities and slaughtered the African Americans who had achieved a family life, jobs, homes, children in a very settled and on a very middle class level.

We talk in these United States about how “divided” we are today.  Some claim there has never been a time when we as a people have been so pulled apart; so stressed out from the extreme divisions we see in our political lives.  We need to learn a bit of United States history and remember that time called the Civil War.  We were far more divided then than we are today.   As we look at our divisions they are the same as they were then.  It is no accident that the memorials of that Civil War came into contention just months ago when we looked around at the foul history they represented.  The groups of people working with Trump today are simply the progeny of those who divided into groups which resulted in such a bloody war.  they are also the people to whom it was important to keep those symbols of slavery and its affects on this country.  This is what we are seeing today as Trump incarcerates children – “brown” children.  The issues were defined only slightly differently than they are today, but the dynamics are the same.  The difference is we had an Abraham Lincoln and many people who were in positions of power who had nothing in common with someone like Donald Trump and his administration.

It is time to call a halt to this.  We have the power to do so and to claim otherwise is to acquiesce and go along with Trump’s program.  If we can’t do it any other way then we need to storm those Concentration Camps, release those children and get them back to their families.  Drastic for law abiding citizens, but whose laws do you abide?  Do you sit and wring your hands wondering what to do?  Do you allow Donald Trump’s policies which he claims as laws?  It is unlawful for him to do what he is doing – if that is not unlawful then we need to close down this country.  Is he going to be arrested for this extreme abuse of power?

We wondered why he pardoned Arpaio?  Can you see that a bit clearer now as Trump has given his go ahead for tent cities to be built in the most desolate, hottest places he could find in this country so he could do to children what Arpaio did to adults?  Is Arpaio one of his consultants in these tent city dreams he is bringing into reality?  His goal seems to be to torture children to get adults to do his bidding.  I can’t think of another word to use because evil is what this is all about.  Evil walks this earth whispering in Donald Trumps’ ear and he is constantly doing its bidding.

What happens when the children start dying?  What happens when children and parents do not come back together again because they can’t find one another.  Do the children then get turned out to roam the streets and live homeless on the street because their parents have been deported – they can’t find their parents and their parents can’t find them and the horrendous trauma of these events incapacitates many of these children for decades?  The United States Government under Donald Trump is not going to find family and parents of the children so separated.  They will get back together again somehow in spite of Trump and if they don’t – he certainly won’t care – and what about the rest of us!!!!!!!!!!

As this man moves closer to Kim Jong Un and all the other dictators he glorifies he is also moving the United States closer to being the kind of country they lead doing the kind of things they do.  One step at a time, but that is definitely the path he is on and to see otherwise is for us to lie, put our heads in the sand, put our hope in an evil, corrupt human being.   Are we ready to kill, maim, lie, expand the patterns from the past in these United States? Let’s not con ourselves into thinking this will soon pass.  It took years for the horrors we have perpetrated on others to pass and we still have not made amends nor have we changed our system in ways to make sure those things don’t come back again.

Who are the people helping to bring about this policy of Donald Trump’s?  Who are the people working in these Concentration Camps.  Are they not as guilty of this evil as is Trump?  Shouldn’t they pick up their pocketbooks and other things they own and go home?  If Trump wants this separation of families to happen it needs to be done by Trump himself – any self-respecting citizen needs to be gone.  But we are too concerned about our “jobs” – about our middle-class lives, about how others will look down on us for what we are doing.

You are only helping this evil as others helped Hitler achieve his goals in Germany.  Leave those Concentration Camps immediately before you get caught up in the evil.  You are not helping anyone.  You are not doing good.  You will not make a difference you are simply aiding evil and destroying innocent lives.  It may be hard for you to walk away from the children, but that is exactly what you need to do.

And then there are the “good” people who do nothing.  To them, I have nothing to say.

Some things need to be done immediately:

  1. John Kelly needs to be stripped of his stripes – his “four star general” title and everything that goes along with it immediately.
  2. Nielsen, the Homeland Security Secretary, needs to be removed with a letter discouraging anyone from ever hiring her again for anything.
  3. Donald Trump needs to be removed from office and sent to jail soonest.
  4. Donald Trump’s son needs to be taken away from the family and sent to one of the places where Trump has incarcerated children after having stripped them of their parents and other family.
  5. The United States needs a Truth and Reconciliation process to help citizens through a horrendous time because the aftermath of Donald Trump is going to be something which will take years, incredible resources, and something extraordinary to get this country on a track to a better way of being governed and governing__________________________________________________________________

You who are reading this needs to fill in

6. Donald Trump needs to be charged with using his position and power as president of these United States to kidnap children.

7. International Organizations need to intervene to stop this child abuse by the United States Government and being to trial all those complicit.

8.

9.

10.

etc.

It is going to take at least that – and working together to try to bring goodness out of this incredible evil.

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.
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.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.

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Porn Star? – Brother Adulterers?

Friday, June 8th, 2018

We could not stay silent about Rudi Giuliani’s comments which he made from Israel about the “classy women” Trump married as opposed to the horrible porn star claiming “falsely” according to Giuliani, that she had an affair with Donald Trump.

Lets take a look at history.  Here is the “Classy Woman” Trump married.  His Wife – Melanie!

The traditional photo of a nude woman on a bear rug is acted out here.  A porn star? Methinks this was done for free and to catch ‘the Donald”.  Lessons acted out in public to show young women how to reach the kind of success women should strive for to spend their lives ‘under’ a man – catering to his every wish and doing his commands so you also can wear designer original clothes, fly on private jets around the world and more.  Your own business giving you some kind of independence which porn stars have?  Not likely!  Independence is not a part of this – note the handcuffs as she is handcuffed to the bed – how about that for symbolism Mr. Giuliani. . These are the lessons Melania Trump brings to young women and young men. This was certainly her way to success and even today, dressed in more clothes which cost a small fortune, her message is – you are an appendage to “your man” and you live your life through him and his life, never on your own standing on your own two feet. Independence is not in the cards.

 

Still lying on that bear rug!  These are the values to pass on to your children? Use your body in this way to get your man who will take care of you so you won’t have to go out into the world and take care of yourself. Melania talked about her interest in fashion. We know several models, none of whom earned their money using their bodies in this way! It did help her get a rich husband, however, a husband who puts no value on women except to satisfy his ego and prurient needs.

Supporting her husbands’ support for the NRA? Showing how women can give their support to the NRA for their husbands benefit?

Half naked with a box full of jewels on a plane represents what kind of moral value? Selling one’s body?  This must be what Rudi Giuliani calls “classy woman” – but is she selling her body or her jewelry?

Why does Giuliani have the gravitas to represent Donald Trump?  Because they are brother adulterers and they treat women in the same very degrading way.  Wasn’t it Rudi Giuliani who was out on the steps of Gracie Mansion calling a press conference with his “mistress” – who apparently then was his press person – telling the press he was divorcing his wife.  Where was his wife?  In the kitchen of the same Gracie Mansion with his son making breakfast for her family.  Did she know about his press conference or the coming divorce?  No!  When did she find out – when a press person called her to get a comment from her on the then mayor’s press conference.  Until that point she knew nothing about her husband divorcing her.  How kind!  How considerate!  How like Donald Trump!

With some 19 plus women accusing Donald Trump of sexual abuse and worse, including rape, it is time for this country to deal with the truth of who their leaders really are and act accordingly.  Also take a look at our “leaders” and “aspiring leaders” and see where their moral compass is pointing – it seems to us they are willing to do anything to achieve what this Trump administration calls success.  Take a look at EPA Pruitt – complimented by Trump on the fine job he is doing.  On his way to becoming an American Oligarch by raping the United States of America.

Donald Trump’s base includes so called Evangelical Christians!  Where is your Christianity when these are the people you are supporting to lead your country?  Where is your Christ?  Certainly not among the likes of these – or are your sins so close to theirs you must support their deviances from Christian values to be able to live with yourselves?  Trash those who do good – Hold up those who lie, cheat, steal, commit adultery, abuse women and worse.

Support those leading this country straight to hell!

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.
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.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.

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MARRIAGE – Particularly Gay Marriage!

Tuesday, June 5th, 2018

by:  Marceline Donaldson

It is time for us to get some things straight and stop obfuscating because our need to keep a society, which is bigoted beyond belief even into 2018,  functioning with its traditional who is better than – who deserves what – who gets oppressed, etc.

The Supreme Court’s decision on the wedding cake bit needs to be revisited and either the attorneys who presented the arguments need to understand the basis of their arguments – which they clearly don’t as of now – or the Supreme Court justices need to understand what is religious belief and practice and what is not.

The laws of the United States say, in effect, thou shalt not discriminate.  That has not stopped us from discriminating against many for hundreds of years and we continue to do so as we defend the laws which reach to the core of our discrimination and our bigotry.  The marriage laws are the most lethal.  And to the gay community – one does not lessen bigotry by joining and making sure you are covered under those laws even if that coverage is tenuous. One lessens bigotry by changing those laws.

All of this business about marriage – gay marriage particularly –  is ridiculous because it ignores a fundamental fact:  MARRIAGE IS OF THE STATE AND NOT OF THE RELIGIOUS.  Therefore, a court cannot say a baker does not have to bake a wedding cake because of his deeply held religious belief.  What religious beliefs!  Those that are of God or those that are of the theologians who want to continue and increase the control of their religion over the state and of those who want to use religion to continue to control and spread the bigotry they need to feel whole.

If this baker holds, as he has claimed, that his Christian religious beliefs do not allow him to bake a cake for a same sex couple he is dead wrong and practicing heresy not Christianity.

In Christianity, as in every other religion,  the rector, the priest, the minister, the ordained person is not the one who marries anyone.  In every religion in these United States, the ordained person, the believer, the committed, their religion has nothing to do with the “marriage” between two people whatever their sex.

Marriage is a contract between the people presenting themselves to be married and the state.  It is a state relationship not a religious relationship no matter the religion.  Marriage is a very commercial venture which is becoming more so by the hour.  We are going to the United States Supreme Court over a wedding cake.  I can’t think of anything more ridiculous.

If an ordained person – ordained according to the rules and requirements of Christianity or of any other religion in these United States (and in other countries, as well) – performs a marriage ceremony between whoever – and that ordained person is not licensed by the state to perform a marriage ceremony those people are not married.  According to Christian belief – if one is not “married” one is living in sin.  And that Christianity is talking about marriage by the state, there is no such thing as “Christian” marriage.

Those people supposedly “married” by an ordained person who does not have a state license allowing that person to perform marriages has caused the people that ordained person supposedly “married” to be living in what Christianity has defined as sin.  Sin taken to be a violation of state law – a ridiculous concept on its own. Christianity says – render unto Ceasar what is Caesars and unto God what is God’s.  A violation of state law is not sin and every Gospel has fought against that concept for eons and here we have brought that concept into Christianity for reasons we barely understand, but passionately defend.

The role of the ordained person is the role of one who blesses the marriage – he or she does not actually marry the people involved because marriage is not and never has been a ceremony of any religion.  Religions bless what the state has done, defined, dictated the terms for getting into marriage and the laws for its dissolution.

Given that – how can this baker claim his deeply held Christian religious beliefs do not allow him to bake a wedding cake – made of sugar, which one should not eat because it is not healthy, according to the health people of the day, along with other ingredients which should not be eaten anyway either.  The baker should be more concerned about what he puts into his wedding cake than he is about the people for whom he makes it.  When he set up as a commercial adventure he opened his doors to whoever decided to use his services, if they paid his asking price.  His is a commercial business following the laws of the state.  The same entity which defines the laws of marriage.

One could not have a more ridiculous case taken all the way to the United States Supreme Court – taking the court’s time; taking the money and other resources of the two sides fighting each other; the time and resources of the press covering such ridiculousness and on and on it goes.

Why does this happen and we feel righteous about using this societies resources in such a way?  Because we are a society bound and determined to keep bigotry alive and well and functioning on all levels otherwise we might have to recognize and acknowledge that we are all human which means we will all die the same death – in different ways, but the same biological conclusion.

We have never been able, in these United States, to believe that beneath the skin we are all alike.  We are committed to the German model of “blood” which infected the United States when large numbers of Germans immigrated to the United States about 1880 or so and brought words and concepts which were foreign.  In Germany they had a meaning to the country.  In Germany one could only be Germany by “blood.” – In the United States, one had “black blood” or “white blood” or etc.  And one had to have “white blood” to be right.  Those concepts brought over the ocean promoted Jim Crowism because they were national concepts brought from one country into another and used to promote and support the bigotry in the United States.

I have never understood why the gay community spent so much time and resources fighting to be able to be “married” under the traditional laws of these United States which were outdated and horrific before their movement started and which have and had seriously and painfully oppressed so many people – Africans and women in particular.  Would that time and resources have been better spent working through a redefinition of the laws which govern marriage to make them more equal and beneficial to all.  Somehow that way of thinking doesn’t happen often.  We think instead of how we can elevate ourselves – no matter which oppressed group we belong to or identity with – to the level of those oppressing us instead of seeing how beautiful is the equality concept.

I remember conversations because I sat in on meetings when this movement was beginning.  Conversations which talked about the pros and cons of a movement to bring gay people into line with everybody else as far as this marriage business goes. It would foster “equality” and “acceptance”.  That would never happen, but the movement took that turn – and got derailed for years.

Marriage has oppressed human beings for hundreds of years and not just in the United States.  In the United States, however, the marriage laws were used as the basis for the laws which established African slavery.  We don’t like to acknowledge nor admit such things, but truth will out – hopefully, one day soon.

Instead of using their time and resources to fight for – along with those who were not gay – to establish a permanent relationship between two people which is fair and equal and not oppressive to anyone – the gay community went along with some of its leaders who were power and control absorbed – and launched this incredible fight for gays to be oppressed under the marriage laws the same way the rest of society is oppressed under such a concept.

The United States Supreme Court needs to take its biases out of the room and reconsider the decision they just made about this wedding cake.  The ridiculousness of it should bring about peals of laughter in the court before they are able to settle down to have any kind of semi-serious discussion and then the justices need to take a look at exactly what constitutes marriage.  Given the fact that marriage is of the state and not the religion – any religion – they then need to make a decision which is accurate and not covered with their own biases which are showing all over this decision.

Even in England – the recent Royal Wedding that we all enthralled over – was a blessing of an event which happened some place else as a state contract.  At one point the participants – bride, groom, mother of the bride, father of the groom all left the main chapel and went into an outer chapel to “sign the papers”.  What papers did they sign?  The state papers where the real marriage took place.

The same thing happens in the United States.  There is a big show with beautiful gowns, marches down the aisle, attendants in wonderful clothes having spent a small fortune on cosmetics, hair, accessories to be a part of this “wedding” only to have the main participants leave what is made to look like the main event to go off into a side room for the marriage to actually take place and to be made “legal”.

What the wedding cake maker is wrapped up in and so fervently and passionately committed to  Is his own bigotry. He has made his own bigotry the focus of his religion.  Many people and groups have done the same thing – the KKK, White Supremacists, Nazis, terrorists and all the other hate groups who probably have come to his defense because they recognize one walking their path.

The bakers payment for his heresy will come when he dies – in the meantime the rest of us don’t need to be dragged into such religious mumbo jumbo used to maintain extreme discrimination using religion as its base.  I am better than you are because I am not gay.  I will create my society to define you as less than and use you to do the work of keeping my society going while I do little or nothing and enjoy the fruits of your labor.  When I need a push and a pumping up I will turn to you and your community to produce just that. – and that has been enormously successful for a very long time.

And to all of you homosexual people walking around feeling more equal because you are “married” and have a “spouse” – take another look.  The only thing that has happened is that you have publicly agreed to be a part of bigotry which has been around for hundreds of years and your “marriage” has simply strengthened the discrimination against women and justified the slavery laws that were promulgated against Africans which took hundreds of years to crawl out from under with so much damage done to a group of people because of the color of their skin that we are still wrapped up in its evil.  We have written words, taken twisted and evil concepts. done lots of things to lead others to believe all of this is ordained by God.  White Supremacists spread the “gospel” of whiteness as better than any other “color” of people as something which was ordained by God.  That does not make it so.

The baker should have to produce the wedding cake of this couples choice without delay – however, the couple needs to take its money to support a baker who is not into such bigotry and advise his friends, colleagues, family and even strangers to stay away from this business and patronize others who are not so totally wrapped up in a vicious life killing belief system which takes down these United States every day and every hour of every day.

Let the groans and screams and obscenities and all the other ugly stuff begin!

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