Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community - Bettina Network's Blog

Archive for the ‘Bettina Network’s Lifestyle Community’ Category

BILLIONAIRES UNITE!

Thursday, January 31st, 2019

The only thing Mr. Starbucks’ announcement about the possibility of a run for the presidency of these United States did for most people was to remind us that we have been screwed, raped, pillaged with practically everything taken away from us unless we spend our lives working from dawn to dusk for meager rewards – which will become even more lean as time goes on if they are allowed to continue.

Human beings and greed go together. It is one of the sins with which we are born and if we don’t work at constantly curbing our appetites we will all look like our current billionaire class – unmitigated greed, constantly searching for more, feeling poor unless that more comes into our coffers hourly; working to keep what we have, talking magnanimously about the charity we do and blaming the victim for not having what we have as billionaires. Those others could be in this group but for their laziness, lack of initiative, inability to lead, lack of vision, etc. etc. etc.

Some of us have helped to set up and enhance this system under which we operate; others work to make sure it continues; while still others see the evil, complain about it, speak eloquently about working to relieve the pain of the poor, but do nothing; others teach their children how to maintain within this system without sliding down another rung and others work hard just because that is how they were raised.

A few stories about this part of the societal structure and how it comes about:

Because we have a vested interest in ‘bed & breakfast’ I will start with #Airbnb as an example of how the billionaire class is created – why it thrives – what it is about.

Bettina Network, inc. and Bettina’s Bed & Breakfast, inc. were the genesis for Airbnb. It is a classic example of how bigotry remains, thrives and supports the billionaire class and how the billionaire class supports its own and decides who will be let in. There is a thuggishness to those within and those chosen to enter.

When #Airbnb was founded it was on the back of an African American woman who worked over 20 years developing the concept and growing it by inches because venture capital money was and is not available to minorities or women. That is the most solid block in the foundation of this billionaire class. If they have a creed its foundational stone would be on the refusal to admit minorities or women except as tokens to disprove the rule.

Venture Capitalists sent Brian Chesky and two of his friends to the home of this African American woman to find out what she was doing, how, all the details they could glean. Our feelings about what happened circulate around the fact that they did not have an idea, a vision and saw Bettina Network, inc. from afar. They went into a Black woman’s home and family – put their feet under her table, ate her food and stole her business plan and vision. And – they knew nothing about bed & breakfast before that – they didn’t ‘find’ her through their own machinations or investigations or search for places to stay, they were sent by Capital Network in Central Square in Massachusetts to look at what she was doing as something they might steal and copy.

They were not graduates of Ivy League schools nor had they attended Ivy League schools and they had practically no business experience. Their experience consisted of brief times spent as entry level admin people. What they showed was their lack of character and their willingness to steal from someone else with all of the character traits that go along with that – and they did that in spades. Once established they even lied about their beginnings and where the idea for Airbnb came from.

What they created was a structure which incorporated their racism, their greed and more. It is clearly visible in the business they brought about for all to see.

Their racism structured into their corporation? It is entrenched and has many forms within the structure of Airbnb. The most obvious spits on the work of the civil rights leaders of the 1950’s and beyond. The Thurgood Marshall’s, the Jack Greenberg’s, those who litigated for years to move society to a more integrated place and were successful in that endeavor for a brief period of time. Before their legal work, if you applied to college you submitted your resume, your grades, your references and YOUR PICTURE.

Because it was not always possible to tell the color of a persons skin by their application alone, the picture helped Universities at the time to distinguish between applications and to make sure their entering classes were composed of majority white males and very few others.

That practice was deemed illegal through several law suits filed during the 1960’s and beyond. Universities stopped the practice of requiring a picture to accompany your application for admittance because of those law suits and because that practice was declared racist. That practice is now being turned on its head by Airbnb because to make a reservation at an accommodation through Airbnb one must submit a picture and that picture is more often than not used to determine whether or not you will be accepted as a guest.

Many have been discriminated against and have not been able to get reservations. There have been instances of minorities arriving at a home and being turned away with the owner or person at the house claiming the person engaged in ‘subterfuge’ to get a room. What was the subterfuge that got them turned away? A mixed Asian couple in California was turned away at about 10pm in storm conditions because one was Asian and the other of Northern European extraction. The picture they submitted for their reservation was of the Northern European extraction half of the couple. When the Asian woman appeared she was not acceptable so they had to find accommodations elsewhere. The host family claimed they “cheated” to get the room. That was not an isolated incident. The stories of discrimination from Blacks who tried to get accommodations, had to submit pictures and were subsequently turned down are legion.

It is a corporation structured to bring back that kind of racism from the 1950’s and earlier.

It is a corporation structured to make affordable housing almost unavailable and to bring out the greed of those who come near to use the web site.

It is a corporation which has been used by sex traffickers because it has set itself up in such a way that whoever has a need can use their web site and hide a lot they could not get away with, but for.

It is a corporation which, because of the way it is structured, has been a part of at least one client being murdered.

It is a corporation whose structure has allowed the destruction of many houses and estates in some of the most vile ways, causing the upheaval of neighborhoods with the wild parties that have happened in homes which were supposed to be used as a room or an estate for the night.

Investors put 1.2 billion dollars of investment money into Airbnb in promoting some of this society’s worse traits. It will soon go public and if that is successful we will have a corporate structure carrying on what many of us have tried to eliminate from this society for generations – and so it goes.

Isn’t it striking that the three people who started Airbnb and wound up with substantial venture capital money are people who showed themselves to lacking in good character, ethics, and more. Isn’t it striking that those character traits are what has handicapped this country to the point of finally seeing us wind up with a Donald Trump as president? A man who epitomizes exactly what Airbnb is about?

2. Let us move on to another such company founded and structured around questionable morals and character. – Take a look at Facebook. The vision of twins who engaged Zuckerberg to code their business idea. That however wound up the property of Zuckerberg who carried the idea into a corporate structure which is today wrecking havoc on this society in very gross, immoral and unethical ways.

What we are now trying to do is right this wrong which will not be possible because the corporate structure of Facebook has become too strong. It is being credited with being majorly responsible for the election to the presidency of Donald Trump, with the destruction of the privacy guaranteed to the citizens of the United States by the Constitution, with using private conversations and back and forth between family and friends as a front when in reality it sells every scrap of information it can glean to the marketeers and advertisers and others for 20 pieces of silver.

Take a look and analyze most of the corporate structures which have come up and have brought their owners billionaire status and see how they have used the backs of tens of thousands of people to attain their goals and have left the society stripped almost bare with a path for those without character, without good morals, without honesty.

Take a look and analyze and you will find they are all either northern european descendants – some middle easterners – ……

These are two of the most graphic examples, but there are many others.

Most notably, what has been happening and continues to happen is the groups of people looking around the world for up and coming corporations or LLC’s or neighborhood gatherings whose structure and ideas they can steal; that they can get funding for because those doing the developing could not – mostly because of their color and sex.

Because of our experience with the theft of our idea and work by what became Airbnb we have come across many. The stories were all eerily similar and nothing was done about any of it. Look furiously – not within yourselves – but at what others are doing which looks successful – find venture capitalists to fund your stealth and move on into the billionaire’s club. Once you get there all will be forgotten and those who do remember the unethical road you took will soon be dead so just hang on and you will become one of the racist, sexist corporate structures in this society which maintains who we are without any of those others moving up to challenge our superiority. It may happen temporarily, but the business class has insured that this move to open up this society making it more diverse will not last. Remember Martin Luther King, Jr’s sacrifice? How much of what was achieved by so many has been reversed seriously by those now moving up?

And it is not limited to the United States. In other countries where people of brown and black complexions have begun to move up in these corporations – they are swiftly removed and replaced with a whiter skin person with a penis. We have heard many of those stories. Stories that parallel what has been happening in this country for generations. Remember Madame C. J. Walker? Think about all those others, people of color and women, who struggled so mightily with others, white, male, etc. reaping the rewards for their labor, their vision, their imagination.

And what happens now?

A note from Marceline Donaldson: My garden has been torn up – literally the garden in front of my house. My business has been upheaveled! I have been threatened! and so much more. but I am old and neither sickness nor death fazes me so none of that scares me nor does it make me drop the struggle.

What does move me to a furious state is to continue to see this and to know that my children will have to undertake this same struggle when I thought my work and life would make theirs easier. My grandfather worked his entire life to change this society so his children and grandchildren would have a better life and would not have to dedicate so much of their lives and times to this struggle; so did my grandmother; so did my mother; and so have I. My children deserve better and so do your children. I have not paid nearly the price others have paid trying to bring about basic change.

Watching the young people coming along behind the disaster that was Donald Trump thinking they are going to make basic change is heart breaking – the system looks stacked against them. All I can do from my perch is to wonder when and how they will be taken down and replaced with Northern European – very white males and our young people made to pay for their arrogance of thinking they can make such basic change. If they could, the color of our total billionaire group would not be white, male, with some middle easterners – Saudi Arabians – thrown in and one or two African American men and a woman or two. That billionaire group – those who will totally control tomorrow look like Donald Trump’s cabinet and all those other groups where color is absent and women are practically extinct.

_______________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

Project 1 – Estate Sales after the Sale

Project 2 – #WellsFargoBoycott

__________________________________________________________

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

TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.com

_________________________________________________________

Tags: Airbnb, American Corporate Businesses, American Oligarchs, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Bettina's Box of Shame, DonaldTrump, Facebook, Feminism, Racism, Saudi Arabia, Sex Trafficking, Venture Capitalism
Posted in Airbnb, American Corporate Businesses, American Oligarchs, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Bettina's Box of Shame, Donald Trump, Facebook, Feminism, politics, racism, Saudi Arabia, Sex Trafficking, sexism, venture capitalists | Comments Off on BILLIONAIRES UNITE!

Bettina Oracle Speaks

Tuesday, January 29th, 2019

The end of Donald Trump: Illegitimate President of the United States

You folks need to stop bothering me and take care of your business. If you don’t, the next generation will simply have to repeat this scenario which has been repeated for generations without resolving anything. Learn a bit of history, your own history and you will be appalled at what you see – if you have any goodness left in your genes.

You are riddled with liars, murderers covering for each other, persecutions of innocent children, and so much more. The Jews of Hitlers Germany have been replaced by the Children of the United States who are being slaughtered with guns in your streets and in their schools and the Children of Immigrants, who are being put in Concentration Camps and are now being murdered. Those children who have have come to your country – some with their parents, some without – seeking asylum and refuge from so much evil. Their skin is brown and black and your bigotry won’t allow for that. Too many such colors in these United States already.

You need to be full of integrity, good character, working to eliminate poverty, homelessness, BIGOTRY – which is the genesis of all of your society’s ills. You need to stop allowing the likes of Donald Trump who is taking from his evil twins in history and ripping children from their parents; making slaves of those in prison who have suffered under massive incarcerations to do the bidding of the evil institutions in this world of yours and so much more. And no, Trump did not start all of this, but he is the inheritor and chief propagator of the evil coming through today. And to end this, all it takes is moral courage and who amongst you has that? You are all called, but who amongst you answers the call? This is still happening today after thousands of years of such history because only a few answer the call. The rest of you raise up those few and feel that your work is done because of that raising up and acknowledging those heroes. Interestingly, your heroes are never raised up in their own generation. That happens only after they are safely dead.

OK! So you want to know what is happening?

Roger Stone was indicted – did you notice how swift that happened with all of the charges against him not in that court document of indictment? Have you noticed the rumblings of major change? Are you beginning to hear many voices raised to call out the evil? Evil doubles down when those rumblings start.

What do we see: We see Whitaker having stopped the Mueller investigation by declaring to them they will not be allowed any more indictments. Stone is the last and he slipped through by a fluke. No indictments allowed against Donald Trump, against Jr., against Jared Kushner, against Steve Bannon, against Ivanka Trump, against Eric Trump.

Mueller can’t step up to the microphone to tell you this. There are enough bread crumbs along the way, however, for you to see this yourselves.

All of this must be settled and ended before or shortly after Barr takes on the post of Attorney General. He will clear Trump using the foundation set by Whitaker, a man who has been promised much, but who will be dumped on and pushed aside after his work is done – without his promised rewards. If he is lucky, he will leave with a loaf of bread, but no butter. Maybe as he sees his expectations so dashed he will step up to the moral plate and attempt to bring about something else – but he does not look like a soul who is destined to be a great hero.

All bets, in your society, are on the Democrats coming through in 2020 and taking over the government so the United States does not have to step up to the plate and deal with its sins. That is the way taken by lazy souls who want, but don’t want to give or risk. Cover-up is whats going on. Isn’t that what went on with Nixon? And his sins don’t begin to compare to the Trump Family Criminal Enterprise. Didn’t the Trump followers just blatantly take the sanctions from one of the wealthy, prominent Russians in their last days? And who will go against that and set it right? No one, so far.

What always amazes me is the ability of human beings to see themselves as ‘different from’, better than, – Trump may have treated those others badly, but I am going to be treated differently. All of my dreams will be realized because Trump promised me that…………..

And Khashoggi? Does Trump walk away having done a major work in covering up and taking the Saudi prince out of the spotlight? Did that give you a peep under the rug to see who is really working the gears and producing the results? It is definitely not Putin, although all media has anointed him as the one to whom Trump is beholden.

Trump and Putin are beholden to a mafioso who is so big in this world he makes the Italians look like thugs on the street and the Irish not far behind and lets not even begin to talk about the African American and other mafia.

You are going to be witnesses to how the clean-up ends. You can watch it with clear eyes or you can let the mythology replace reality. What mythology? That which was put into place to insure the rich get richer; the evil don’t pay; the thugs realign and move off into the sunset with new partners to get richer in tomorrows world. And the rest of you? Passing your lack of moral courage on to your next generation to preserve them in that struggling middle to upper middle class so they can pass the lack of moral courage you inherited on for many more generations.

So you asked – so I’ve said!

_______________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

Project 1 – Estate Sales after the Sale

Project 2 – #WellsFargoBoycott

__________________________________________________________

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

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

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

TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.com

_________________________________________________________

Tags: Bigotry, Donald Trump, Hitler, Immigration, Khashoggi, Mueller Investigation, Roger Stone, Whitaker, William Barr
Posted in #Wells Fargo Boycott, #WELLSFARGOBOYCOTT, Adolph Hitler, African American history, Bettina Homes, Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Donald Trump, Feminism, Homelessness, Immigration, Khashoggi, politics, Press Release, racism, sexism | Comments Off on Bettina Oracle Speaks

To Celebrate MLK, Jr?

Sunday, January 20th, 2019

As I look back over my life I am amazed constantly at how, as human beings, we have created such a complicated mess when to live a good life should be a simple accomplishment.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a martyr because he could not live his life ignoring the ills in the society which surrounded him. Most of us live our lives contributing to those ills and making them worse. Our needs are not simple. They grow more complicated as we age in a society which markets hourly with goals to enlarge already out of control egos which we are willing to pay very high prices to satisfy.

I remember Martin Luther King, Jr. from my days as a teen ager. He was not a big hero, he was a young man, studying at Divinity School and doing what he could, with others, to mitigate and change the apartheid which existed in these United States.

A particularly strong memory of Martin King was the time when the Jr. High Choir at my Church went on a trip, driving across the back roads of Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama. Rev. Nicholas Hood was the inspiration behind those trips and we met up at different places with Andrew Young and Martin King. We were about integration and attempting to break down barriers. Amazingly, as I look at my life, that is what I have been doing all of my years on this earth and I don’t see many results from the effort. To try to mitigate evil when it is so strongly entrenched takes more than my life has been able to deliver.

We spent many weekends visiting white churches and always stayed the night in the home of whites where there were young people our ages and on Sunday mornings we sang with them as a part of the Church Service where Martin King preached the sermon.

Our reception in the homes of these white families where we stayed was always warm and welcoming. We ate together, got to know one another and Sunday morning services gave meaning to what we were doing and why. It was truly God’s work. Doing that work, however, you come to know that good is always combined with evil and I saw for the first time what racism was all about.

Having been raised in a middle-class African American community, we were involved in a fairly closed community so our sense of self-worth and who we were was intact. I won’t try to explain that – if you don’t have any idea my sympathy goes out to you.

While I had white friends and white family and the city in which I was raised didn’t make a big deal out of that, but accepted much of that back and forth, it was not what the world in general accepted. Those weekends visiting white churches were about to open my eyes to the evils that existed in this world in ways I could not have imagined.

As we arrived, on a Saturday, in one town where we were to spend the weekend and sing in Church that Sunday morning, we were introduced to the young ‘white’ Jr. choir – our counterparts. At the end of dinner we were split up and sent to spend the night with families who volunteered to be our hosts for the weekend.

While we were getting ready for bed, frantic calls went out from one house to another and the next thing we knew, the ‘white’ families with whom we stayed had swiftly rounded us up and had practically thrown us into the station wagons which brought us and we were speeding down country lanes where we saw Martin King, Andrew Young and Nicholas Hood hanging in effigy from the trees as we passed. We began to realize what was happening when we saw a group of whites coming down the road trying to catch up to us. They were led by an older man with a shot gun. He was not the only one in that crowd with guns. What amazed me was the anger, bitterness, horribleness of their emotions against a group of 14 to 16 year olds – a church group visiting their neighborhood, come to sing in their church on a Sunday morning where Martin King was to preach.

That was the first time I saw racism in its raw form and saw the threat that my very existence posed to all of those people so furious that we dared to think we could sing in their church with their children. Since, as African Americans we didn’t self-segregate, their out of control emotions would force us to with guns and sticks and bricks and bats. Who was their god? It was clearly not God we worshipped on Sundays and met to talk about and study Scripture supporting the structures built to worship God – to learn about Jesus – to worship Christ. Their Churches had the same trappings as the one in which we worshipped – the same kind of cross, the stained glass windows, similar architecture with bibles in the pews, but clearly it was not about the worship of God. They had created a god with whom they could relate with values, a character, and all the trappings we build around religion which worked for them in their need to exist as ‘white supremacists’. The viciousness and ability and need to even murder if that is what it took to maintain themselves as “better than” – supreme over all others – oppressors of peoples not like them was so strong nothing else seemed to matter to them. If they could have caught up to Nicholas Hood, Martin King, Andrew Young they clearly would have hung them instead of the effigies they placed on the road we were driving down.

We were accused of being part of a sex ring. We were supposedly in town and staying with the boys and girls our ages to have sex with them, to morally corrupt them and on and on it went.

As I experienced all of that I experienced a group of ‘whites’ who were so corrupt themselves that they were projecting onto others their sins. I also experienced a group of ‘whites’ who were truly in their church to worship God. In the lives of this last group, they acted out of their belief system which is probably why they were the people who invited us to be a part of their communion. Seeing the evil amidst the good in which they lived and raised their children they were moved to act. At that same moment Nicholas Hood, Andrew Young and Martin Luther King, Jr. were there to help facilitate what they needed to do to bring love, goodness, justice, into the lives of their community.

Since that time I have seen ‘whites’ who live in many radically different ways. Some follow the call of God in their lives and understand they are one with us all. Some follow the call of the god they created and re-create as the need exists to help them live as unauthentic a life as possible, projecting an image onto the world which is very different from who they really are – always hiding the shame they feel -not trying to be perfect, but trying to project a perfect image of themselves – actually living out of their sin instead of living into the authenticity of their beautiful and flawed selves.

The next Sunday Nicholas Hood gathered us together and we studied Scripture while talking about that experience. He was determined to put what happened to us in the context of the Gospels.

Since that time, Martin King walked a long ways on that road and had many encounters with people who came after him the way that group came after all of us because they were so threatened by a Jr. High Choir singing in their Church on a Sunday and staying in the homes of their friends and parishioners some of whom they had known all of their lives, but were still able to accuse of exposing their children to ‘those sex fiends’.

I still see that group of people running down that back country road trying to stop, shoot and kill young teenagers who were such a threat to them and their way of life.

Martin King gave his life to save such people. Donald Trump gave his to make sure such people would live eternally on this earth and be able to wreck as many lives as they can reach and to destroy as much of life as he can reach – including his own.

____________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

Project 1 – Estate Sales after the Sale

Project 2 – #WellsFargoBoycott

__________________________________________________________

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

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

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

TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.com

Tags: Donald Trump, Martin Luther King, Rev. Andrew Young, Rev. Nicholas Hood
Posted in Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Donald Trump, Martin Luther King, racism | Comments Off on To Celebrate MLK, Jr?

More from Bettina Members

Friday, January 11th, 2019

I must admit when I first read “Thoughts on Color”, I thought it was frivolous and reaching to make a point. How foolish to put racism into the color one chooses to wear or the color of the car one chooses to drive. Then I saw Donald Trump on his trip yesterday to #TheWall. I was struck dumb for a few seconds. If ever I have seen a “dog whistle” there it was. If ever I thought the wall was about other than racism, Trump’s appearance at the wall in his MAGA Cap brought those thoughts crashing down.

The red MAGA cap was gone. In its place was a white MAGA cap. As I researched, that is not the first time the MAGA Cap’s color has changed. I owe an apology to the person who wrote the “Thoughts on Color” article. It is a powerful way to look at many of the things happening in this society. They range from dog whistles on bigotry to bull horns, all camouflaged with the color one uses.

Given the fact that #TheWall goes back to the KKK, White Nationalists, White Supremacists as one of their projects – made of steel – that they did not complete and have tried through others to bring life back to again – a white MAGA hat conveys the message symbolically, the way Trump’s call to Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails was made. That didn’t take a genius to understand, neither does Trump’s white MAGA hat. His arrogance knows no bounds.

It has been clear from day one with Trump that the presidency for him is all about re-aligning the races and bringing us back as close as he can get to slavery. Trump, in the middle of treason with Russia, has to be concerned about the color of people in the U. S.

Russia is a white country – as are the others with which he is trying to align himself. Kim Jung Un may be basking in glory today, but he needs to realize he heads a nation of people of color and his involvement with Russia et al will be as a minority nation.

Trump changed the color of the U. S. cabinet and every place else in his administration he has eliminated, almost entirely, people of color and replaced them with people today we call “white”. Where he has reach and influence, we have moved from the beautiful flower garden of the Obama’s with its many colors and kinds of flowers to the Trump manufactured and very artificial white flower which looks as though it was produced in a factory producing the same product on its assembly lines day after day. A flower that was designed by a robot.

2. This Wall thing is not a dog whistle it is a bull horn. Go back into your history and look at the parallels. There was the Emancipation of slaves under Abraham Lincoln. That was followed by Reconstruction. After Reconstruction came the reaction which saw the KKK grow into an organization which could march down Pennsylvania Avenue in the 1920’s with tens of thousands of people in white sheets and pointed hats declaring white supremacy, making the country miserable and scared. Donald Trump’s father was one of the people in the white sheet with pointed hat walking with that group of klansmen. He was one the police arrested during the “march” which is one reason why we know Trump’s father was involved with the KKK.

One thing the KKK wanted was a wall on the southern border to keep out people of color – only they were called much nastier names by the klan. They wanted #TheWall to be made of steel. When Trump changed from cement to steel, I think you were right in your blog saying that was a clear message to the extreme bigots of this country. Isn’t that why racism has lasted so long? Because it is overtly and coverly supported by people like Trump with a long line of predecessors, many in Congress, who saw an opportunity and a way to gain power with as much cheating and illegalities as they could muster. All they had to do was to rise up on the backs of all of us – white, black, brown, tan, purple, pink. orange.

Today you can’t call someone the N word without getting into trouble, but you can push to build #theWall and you will be doing the same thing with an excuse and defense against people who will call you racist.

You can let the world know sexism is back and stronger than ever by making sure an alleged sexual assaulter winds up on the Supreme Court. You can have pictures go around the world of the U. S. Cabinet being made up of White Males and the Republicans in Congress being the same with only a 1% difference. That sends out a huge, direct message.

That is what #thewall is all about. Trump even changed the color of his MAGA hat, in case his followers didn’t catch on. That was a more specific signal.

The atmosphere in this country has been changing and it has become very tense with white males feeling their “superiority” threatened, as more people of color move into positions where once an unqualified white male would be hired rather than a more qualified person of color.

We had Mexico – where years ago its borders changed so parts of Mexico would become Texas – remember that piece of history?. The Mexicans who had lived for generations in the areas where the borders were redrawn didn’t leave. Their property and goods were taken and they were thrown out on the streets, but they stayed – what choice did they have – and the work then began by the “ruling class” in this country to make sure the ex-Mexicans were pushed as close to the bottom of the ladder as possible and kept there for generations. Got to keep people around to do the “dirty work”. With those “Texas” brown and black people threatening white supremacy, just by their numbers”, something had to be done.

To be sure some things were done even into the time of Hitler’s Germany. The Nazi prisoners of war were brought to Texas for their incarceration while the war was still going on. African American soldiers, on leave or visiting Texas, or working in Texas, were denied entrance into restaurants and other places because of their color supported by the separate and unequal laws. The Nazi prisoners were picked up on Sundays by the locals who took them to dinner at those same restaurants where the German prisoners of war were welcomed in their native language.

Much upheaval happened and the klan, among other groups, grew exponentially. They could never quite keep those ex-Mexicans down – although they made their lives a living hell most of the time. When you are next in Texas, think of this history as you look around at the substantial Mexican culture you see all around. That culture didn’t pop up as Mexicans came into the United States over the past couple generations, that has been there for quite a few years.

And now along comes Trump. In this time after our modern day equivalent of Reconstruction as Trump and his minions do their job of deconstructing and trying to turn as negative as possible the accomplishments of the Obama Administration, they have reached back into the history of one of our most racist times and come up with #theWall. That unfinished piece of White Nationalism, which they were not able to achieve before they were diminished.

Trump has brought back as much bigotry as he could possibly muster and when folks talk about his “base” they never quite talk about what that means. That means, for those of us who are a little obtuse and did not live that history, Trump’s base means the most bigoted people in this society gravitate to him and his administration because it means a little more time hanging onto their claimed white supremacy and a letting loose of their evil to make life as miserable as possible for the people of color amongst us. Let me note here that this also includes some few lost souls who are not white, but are overwhelmingly lazy, jealous, believers in their own inferiority and more. Even the KKK had those people of color, especially of African descent, who attached to their organization.

Amongst the other things he has done, Trump has certainly done an amazing job of bringing back the modern day equivalent to the Supreme Court which kept Plessy v Ferguson around for generations and guarded against anything that looked like it might facilitate a break in the extreme bigotry in which this country has been gripped almost from its beginnings. The Plessy v Ferguson racial apartheid ruling stayed in this country kept there by the U. S. Supreme Court because of the political beliefs of those on the Court for over 50 years. Isn’t that why Conservatives are so adamant about accepting anything Trump does if he appoints the” right people” to the Court? Look at the straight jacket in which the U. S. Supreme Court kept this country because of its own racism and look at how many years and how many attempts were made unsuccessfully to bring about a change. Thurgood Marshall and those who served with him are justifiably celebrated as “heroes”.

To get the Democrats to contribute to #TheWall would be a huge step forward for Trump’s connection to his followers. It would fulfill one of their great needs. That is why his advisers are saying if he caves on this he is finished politically.

Hopefully, something decent gets into his brain which moves him into joining the forces of good instead of the evil to which he has apparently irrevocably attached himself. It has brought him a future, not of hundreds of millions of dollars, but of total disgrace. How much better to stop lying and start living a decent, respectable, God filled life. He certainly isn’t even close to that today. He is moving in the other direction sending his Secretary of State to the Middle East to attempt to dismantle Obama’s foreign policy and turn it into something ugly. What that has actually managed to do is to remind people of Khashoggi and just how low the Trump administration has sunk. His activities in trying to pull down Obama has reminded everyone that Trump’s foreign policy includes condoning and giving cover to murderers who do gruesome things in addition to all of the rest – the adultery, the lying, the cheating, the stealing, the setting up a criminal enterprise in the White House and so much more.

How long is this going on? Will we find relief soon or will this carry on for years to come? Will we be free of bigotry when Trump moves off stage? Or will something or someone else replace him to keep the U S. bigotry within its borders simmering and waiting for another chance to explode? Will the narrative of the United States contain long chapters of the goodness we have wrought and the road we have taken to walk with others to a better life? Or will we forever replicate a government which leads us down the ugly path finally to perdition.

3. Bar (r) the fixer. It is time – actually past the time – for Congress to put on its “big boy pants” and refuse to clear Barr for Attorney General.

As Trump brings ever more disgrace to these United States and moves us back into a morass from which it will take generations to extricate ourselves, we are also seeing and learning about the sins of those who went before and how they are coming home to be repeated.

Barr was a part of the Reagan/Bush disgrace. Some say he was one of the architects who made sure all of the sins of the Reagan and Bush administrations were not revealed to the voting public.

He was a “cover up” artist and he is now being pushed for Attorney General to do the same thing under Trump. Do we see the invisible hand of Bush, Jr. in this? There can be no equivocating as to why Bar (r) the Fixer was nominated. He volunteered for the job of “cover-up artist” and the only thing he will actually do is denigrate the name and reputation of George H. W. Bush. A lot of what happened in the Bush administration as he became president after Reagan has flown under the radar. Bush the Sr. got away with his reputation intact because of the machinations of Barr. With the ascendancy of Barr to Attorney General in this atmosphere and environment, that will no longer be true. Already the stories have started to uncover and dig up what would have been exposed to the Americana voting public and then to the world, but for Barr.

Are we going to allow that to happen again? Thanks to the Bush family we now have a Supreme Court with TWO sexual deviants. One an abuser and one an alleged assaulter. What Bush started Trump is finishing. The alleged sexual assaulter was started on his career which brought him to the Supreme Court by the Bush family. George Sr. and Jr. The alleged sexual abuser was moved into his career as a Supreme Court Justice totally by Bush, Sr. who in the pictures of them together with members of their respective families, Bush Sr. seems very proud to have moved up into society an African American man who could fit into the negative stereotype of African American men and carry that negative stereotype several degrees uglier and further into this society.

Barr brings the Bush family several steps down and negate their reputations. He is the latest star in the – from Bush to Trump saga. It is time for all of this to be acknowledged and stopped. This society has carried a heavy weight for most of its life. It is time for that burden to be lifted, not for more stones to be put on the backs of those carrying this society forward.

It is time for us to move out of the muck, the filth, the dirt we have walked through and take a hot shower to wash off the muck so we can keep on moving forward with respect for ourselves and to gain some of the world’s respect. It is time for us to treat all parts of the world as equals, not as people to whom we respond with noblesse oblige as we have in the past. Trump has been so outrageous and full of evil that he has presented us with an imperative – “shake off the dirt from your feet” and walk into the beautiful sunlight over lush grassy grounds.

____________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

Project 1 – Estate Sales after the Sale

Project 2 – #WellsFargoBoycott

__________________________________________________________

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

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

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

TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.com

Tags: Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Blog, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Clarence Thomas, Colors of Bigotry, Donald Trump, Khashoggi, MAGA Cap, Saudi Arabia
Posted in Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Clarence Thomas, Donald Trump, Khashoggi, Maga Cap, racism, Saudi Arabia | Comments Off on More from Bettina Members

THE WALL

Wednesday, January 9th, 2019

I know you want other than Trump writings, but this can’t be let pass.

Where does this WALL thing come from and why is it so important the government was shut down because of it?

The thrust of Trump’s life and his administration has had bigotry as its center. He and his are “better than”. His campaign came naturally out of who he is and what he has been about.

So where did this wall thing come from?

In the 1920’s a huge push of the KuKluxKlan was a wall which the extreme bigots of the country wanted because they thought it would keep the brown and black peoples of the world out of the United States. They considered it their territory and a white territory. Anyone different was not welcome because they would be taking the privileges, etc. from them and their family and their friends.

Trump’s wall was initially proposed as a cement wall. The buildings Trump’s companies constructed were built using cement and he bought his cement from an Italian Crime family. That is common knowledge. So, this wall thing could be business as usual.

Now, all of a sudden, he changes his wall from cement to steel. Where does that come from?

During that same time frame – in the 1920’s – when the KKK was making its big push for a wall on the southern border, that big push from the KKK and other such organizations was for a “steel wall”. The goal was to keep out undesirables. They were not trying to keep out “terrorists” they were trying to keep these United States white with everyone else not able to come in and a very high steel wall was what they pushed to get built on that southern border – where the black and brown peoples mostly came from.

Isn’t it interesting that first Trump is turned away from agreeing to sign the bill passed through the Senate which did not include the $5 billion dollar down payment for a WALL that would end up costing at least $25 billion. Then, as he backtracks on that and moves on he is declaring, in that process, that the wall would be a “steel wall” instead of a cement one. etc. etc.

Sorry guys. Guess the Italian mafia didn’t do their marketing and advertising to keep Trump as a customer for their cement. Better luck with the next project. If you align those projects with the history of extreme bigotry in this country and bring your sales pitch into line with that you might not lose business.

___________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

Project 1 – Estate Sales after the Sale

Project 2 – #WellsFargoBoycott

__________________________________________________________

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

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

TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.com

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

Tags: Bettina Network Educational Institute, Donald Trump, Racism, Sexism
Posted in Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Donald Trump, racism, sexism | Comments Off on THE WALL

Thoughts on color!

Saturday, January 5th, 2019

by: Lani Stacks

I just read your blog and the racism and bigotry attempting to rejuvenate in this nation and become dominate and controlling again. Being an older woman that still takes an interest and dresses fashionably I notice another corner of society that is a signal to other racists by which to identify each other. It is not very obvious to many, yet I notice: white clothing has come back into fashion for women. It is fashionable to sport a white dress or suit for a little while now.

I have never had either. White is a color I associate with the medical profession, which comes from the white cotton pants and represents a sterilized environment free of germs, usually black in color. I wear black much, much more than white. I notice also that other than the court system of black robes for the judges and justices, black seems to be more frowned upon, except for black cars, which was the only color at the turn of the 1900s. A large portion of black cars and SUVs in San Diego County are driven by affluent and wealthy white racists. They live predominately in the wealthy areas of the county, as in the northern section of this large county. When I see the drivers/owners in their white clothes and black mechanical horses, it is a sign to me that these are people that are nostalgic for the “good ol’ days of segregation and privilege for whites with money. It is a way for them to identify one another by the use of color by clothing and the color of their cars. White cars are the highest percentage in Southern California.

My car is a 1997 Ford Taurus and is a deep dark green. Previous cars were blue, green and yellow.
~ Lani

Ed. Note: Lani is a long term member of Bettina Network’s Lifestyle Community.

__________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

Project 1 – Estate Sales after the Sale

Project 2 – Wells Fargo Boycott

__________________________________________________________

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

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

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

TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.com

Tags: Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Racism, Sexism
Posted in Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Blog Response, racism, sexism | Comments Off on Thoughts on color!

Donald Trump and Gay Folks!

Monday, December 31st, 2018

A series of articles to look at, give a partial analysis and outline of Trump’s base and what it cam expect of him. We are starting with that portion of Trump’s base which are those who are very anti-gay, homophobic, are sure gay folks are trying to convert their children, destroy Christianity and the values they claim to hold close to their hearts and so much more. You know the rhetoric and you know that portions of Trump’s base overlap. It is very true that those who are homophobic have other bigotries against other groups which overlap, but this article addresses itself to the anti-gay community portion of Trump’s agenda.

Trump has tried to satisfy them by attempting to ban transgender people from serving in the armed forces, throwing out of the armed forces those transgender people already serving and more.

We will not say much about Donald Trump in his teens because those are tender years and can be the background for the direction in which a person travels, but could also be just experimental and a passing phase.

When we get to Donald Trump in his 20’s, however, we see a person beginning to show his values and to set his life’s path.

One of the people Donald Trump met, who became his mentor, was Roy Cohn. Roy Cohn was a prominent New York attorney with an awesome reputation for bullying. He was, at the time, a very famous attorney in these United States and not always for the best of reasons. At the end of his life he was disbarred for many reasons like – particularly reprehensible conduct, and his ethics were called into question and so much more. Cohn’s clients included several of New York City’s mafia, who he defended along with a large and impressive roster of clients.

Roy Cohn connects – Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, the Rosenbergs, Roger Stone, Joseph McCarthy, and many more. A surprising confluence of people.

For the purpose of this article, that which is right out there about Roy Cohn is that he was gay and he died of AIDS. He is the person most responsible for helping Donald Trump move from his father’s businesses in Queens, New York to Manhattan. In the process Donald Trump and Roy Cohn were extremely close. If you could not find one you called the other and that person could tell you where to go or call to find the other – they were that close.

They spent evenings together over candlelight dinners at Club 54; once Trump married, Roy Cohn spent many evenings having dinner with the Trumps at their condo in Trump Tower and that in spite of the fact that Roy Cohn did not think Ivana was the person Donald should have married.

Donald Trump was in the middle of the male gay community which surrounded Roy Cohn. He was accepted as one of the boys and his relationship with Roy Cohn was common knowledge and also accepted.

Donald Trump was one of Roy Cohn’s most important clients. If you did anything with Trump that would or could have resulted in a legal battle you had to deal with Roy Cohn, but Trump rarely, if ever, paid Cohn. And if you went to Trump’s office during that time there would be a large picture of Roy Cohn on his desk.

We could go on for pages about Donald Trump’s relationship with Roy Cohn, but the point of this article is that during that time and for many years after Roy Cohn’s death, Donald Trump was in the middle of a very sophisticated gay group in Manhattan in which he was totally accepted. According to some he provided an apartment, at Roy Cohn’s request, to one of Cohn’s friends who was dying of AIDS so he could live out his shortened life in relative comfort and Trump did just that – giving up a condo in Trump Tower – for free.

With that background, where does this hatred of people who are gay come from? Where does this doing whatever he can to limit access to the gay community of the many things previously granted them as equality – like gay marriage? The question becomes – why does Trump’s background and relationships show that he would do the exact opposite? Why did he have a mentor who was very gay and in the middle of a gay community bringing Trump into the middle of that community in a very public way?

At no time has Trump acknowledged that lifestyle, nor has he said anything about that personal history. He did not come out, for example, to say that “at one time I was very supportive of the gay community, but in xxxx year I discovered my fault and reformed – turned my back on that history and all of the people with whom I had a close association and friendship and now have decided that homophobic is what I really am and have cut off associations and friendships with any and all gay people except those who have recanted, turned their lives around and are now straight.”

From where in his soul does this close association and friendship with many gay males come from – people with whom he had an extremely close relationship – to make him today able to move his campaign to take an active homophobic stance on many issues; to talk about people who are gay in very negative and subhuman terms; to go after those who are transgender to keep them away from serving in the armed forces and in many other ways.

More to the point would be – how and why do the people who really are homophobic and whose agenda is to rid society of everyone who is gay, transgendered, etc. have simply taken Trump at his word. Even knowing this background and history, they have never questioned any of this background. What is going on here that they believe that he, without political campaigns to win, would continue to act to make sure this gay group of people are clearly oppressed and not equal to the rest of society?

Surely they have had at least a passing thought that when Trump has no more campaigns to win he would then govern in such a way as to bring the gay community into equity with the rest of society and the goals of the homophobic community destroyed and turned against them.

Anything else makes no human sense. To say God is using Trump makes even less sense because in my many decades of reading scripture God does not involve me and mine in any evil that God moves to eliminate. God takes the evil hitting me and turns it into good. God does the work and humanity benefits. God upheavals and me and mine are playing God as we see fit. But this part of Trump’s base has many excuses as to why they are supporting Trump because they believe, in the long run he will act in the interest of and promotion into society of their anti-gay, homophobic, anti transgender beliefs and life actions.

We believe that is nonsense and we believe something else is operating here and we believe we know what that is about.

Take a look at Bill Cosby and the evil he inflicted on dozens of women with his corrupt actions. Look at how many years and how much pain and suffering and hard work it took to expose Bill Cosby and bring him to justice. Why was that? Why did so many people for so long support Bill Cosby in spite of what was showing right in their faces up close and personal?

For many, many decades television, books, and much more of media coverage portrayed Bill Cosby as this loving father and great man. He received all kind of awards – not based on who he was, but based on his media persona – which many believed and would not let go of even in the face of facts which proved otherwise. It took decades before it began to seep into the world’s conscience that the Bill Cosby on television and all of those Cosby family books and other kinds of media that circulated was created fiction and not the real Bill Cosby. The real Bill Cosby was the person going to Court who was finally proven to be the sexual predator that he actually was and not the great, kind, with it father he portrayed in many media settings. The kind of father we all want and many of us don’t have. It is extremely difficult to give up on that kind of dream. And the kind of dream Turmp portrayed – great business executive, incredibly successful giving others and maybe one day us the opportunity to follow in his footsteps. That is like giving up on the lottery for those so addicted.

For many years, Donald Trump has been portrayed on television as this great business mogul with all of the trappings to create a romantic figure to get us to tune in year after year. We have in mind the man created by good writers, camera people, directors, producers, in books ghost written for him by others. We have not been able to believe and to take down the man so constructed for us by the media to see the real person who is the real Donald Trump. The media is now doing its best to show us that person, but many are resisting because Donald Trump is putting himself in front of the public as the created, romanticized person who actually exists only on television and not in real life.

Don’t you think it is time to look carefully and scrutinize this man the way many had to scrutinize Bill Cosby to see who he actually was and to look away from and put in the fairy tale books the Bill Cosby and Donald Trump created as marketing tools to sell all kinds of products to the average American citizen?

And don’t you think, given those two examples of human beings turned into almost monsters by their media persona and how far we have had to go to expose them as other than that romantic image – that we should give lots of thought to what we create and watch and give credence to in the media because clearly that is now roiling our society by the way it has seeped into our consciousness and affected decisions in real life and in how we make choices for ourselves and others?

__________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

Project 1 – Estate Sales after the Sale

Project 2 – Wells Fargo Boycott

__________________________________________________________

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

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

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

TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.com

Start writing or type / to choose a block

Tags: Bigotry, Bill Cosby, Donald Trump, homophobic, Richard Nixon, Roger Stone, Ronald Reagan, Roy Cohn, The Rosenbergs, Transgender
Posted in Bettina Homes, Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Bill Cosby, Breakfast Table Talk, Donald Trump, homophobic, politics, Richard Nixon, Roger Stone, Ronald Reagan, Roy Cohn, The Rosenbergs, Transgender | Comments Off on Donald Trump and Gay Folks!

Bettina Network Lifestyle Community Members Speak!

Wednesday, December 26th, 2018

We are having a wonderful holiday. Hope your holiday is full of love, family, friends and so much more.

Many members of Bettina Network Lifestyle Community sent us bits and pieces for Bettina Network Blog. They also sent financial contributions to keep us going so we feel well fed both materially and in the soul with what looks like the success of Bettina Network, inc.

What follows are some of what we received to go in the blog. It would be even better if all of you sent full blown articles on whatever topic you want information published – political, historical, scientific, literature-your short stories-poems- expositions. Whatever you want to share.

Before we start sharing we would like to remind you that Bettina Network Oracle said some months ago that children would start dying – murdered by Donald J. Trump and his Administration.

Into this happy season comes the tragic and vicious news that Donald Trump – the illegitimate president of these United States has started killing children and the pace will accelerate. Where do you stand and what are you going to do about this? Trump wants to scare the brown and black people of the world away from the borders of the United States. What better way than to put those who arrive, after experiencing horrible trauma and an extremely difficult trip looking for asylum, into American Concentration Camps. Moving them through a “cold box” to jeopardize any resistance they may still have left to illness, while exposing their children to sexual traffickers and so much more.

We get the news of their children’s death at the hands of a liar, thief, sexual assaulter, murderer, mafia don etc and there is no uprising in this country? We were quiet through the first death we knew about – although you will soon hear of many more – from the past – not those dying today. That is also a part of this holiday season.

Are you going to take the road of Germans – the middle class Germans – who kept silent, went about their daily lives as though Jews were not being slaughtered and turned into slaves by Hitler or are you going to make sure the same thing does not happen in these United States? It was the ordinary citizen who allowed Hitler to rise and wreck his evil. Not willing to jeopardize their middle class economic position to take a stand against the evil which stared them in the face. As long as it wasn’t one of their family?

From the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community:

” Is one of the reasons Trump is so enamored of Russia and Putin the fact that Russia is a white country? And one of the few such places left in the world? Is that what makes him drawn to the particular fascist dictators he shows a complete attraction to?”
“Donald J. Trump sent out an order to withdraw United States troops from Syria. He did that while on the telephone with Erdogan or shortly thereafter. Erdogan’s first choice was that Trump send Methullah Gulen to the Turkish prison island. – so he could be imprisoned and possibly killed there? Trump did everything he could to comply, but his power as president did not extend to his being able to do that – although he did try. We heard the figure of $15 million tossed around as payment for the deed. Trump could and did comply with Erdogan’s second choice – to withdraw U. S. troops from Syria. Why would he allow himself to be complicit in this cover-up? Trump was clearly looking for some way to distract the world from Mohammed bin Salam’s involvement in the brutal and vicious killing of Khashoggi and to begin the process of putting Saudi Arabia on a positive footing with the world as he managed to wipe the story out of the media. To do that he needed Erdogan to stop telling the media about the details of the killing and to not provide the proof the rest of us needed to bring some kind of justice for the killing. This pulling the U. S. troops out of Syria solved that, we have not heard one word from Erdogan about the tapes, the killing nor anymore details about what he and his knows about what happened. That has not been brought into the world’s view for action. Trump’s indebtedness to Saudi Arabia and his beholdeness to MbS was partially satisfied.”
“Trump is a man who does not think! He is not dumb, stupid nor all of those negative adjectives. He is a man who, instead of thinking and feeling has substituted manipulation, shrewdness, insults to and intimidation of others in his path – particularly those he has to address as President of the United States. The worst I have seen of anyone was the performance Donald Trump made in front of the rally after the hearing on the Brett Kavanaugh/Christine Blasey Ford sexual assault allegations which moved his people to vote for Kavanaugh. Was that because they did not believe Blasey Ford? Or was that because of the fear such a performance raised in them of Trump doing the same thing to them and their political and public destruction imminently following. What was tragic was the fact that Trump’s performance did not destroy Trump, it scared his people into falling into line and doing his bidding. That speaks volumes for the ethics, morals, character of those in politics and those supporting them in these United States. Truthfulness, integrity, honor, – none of those things apply anymore. Manipulation to gain power and control over to do the kind of scumbag actions which have been carried out by this president are what holds the day. The United States Government has become a criminal mafia headed by the mafia “Don” – Donald J. Trump. In fact, I am beginning to think the mafia, as we have known mafias, is several steps above Trump in the way it operates.”
“The elegance, thoughtfulness, grace, compassion of the Obama Administration has been replaced by the cruelty, viciousness, untruthfulness, cheating and sexual abuse by almost all those in this current administration. Every time someone is appointed, one of the first scandals that comes out is of that persons past scandalous involvement in the sexual assault, abuse, denigration of women – white, black, pink, green, purple women.”
“I am constantly stunned at the similarities between Trump and Hitler. Trump folds his arms in front of himself when seriously speaking around the table – so did Hitler. Hitlers messiah complex was strong and evil – so is Trump’s. It has pushed Trump to come out with his need for absolute control – he showed that in his call to take troops out of Syria without consulting anyone. His Messiah Complex is right at the peak of being the destruction of Western Civilization. Hitler blamed the Communists for everything – Trump blames the Democrats whether it is true or not and he pushes that song with his Republican Congress following his lead.”
“I know many of us make parallels to Donald Trump and Adolph Hitler. I would like to remind all of us, including Donald and Melanie Trump that Hitler ended in a fulthy bunker alone except for the woman who lived through him, got her identity from him as well as her self-worth and called it love. This was the face of evil. The United States is becoming the country which has supplanted that history by attempting to recreate it. Hitler ended his reign by committing suicide. Before he did, however, he was manic about his need to kill as many Jews as quickly as possible. The United States’ killing spree has just begun. Are there those who are going to stop this madness or are we going to let our passive bigotry lead us into a pretense to be helpless in the face of it and let it go on until we have reached the point where White Supremacy is no longer threatened by the Black and Brown peoples of the world.”

_________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

Project 1 – Estate Sales after the Sale

Project 2 – Wells Fargo Boycott

__________________________________________________________

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

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

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

TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.com

Tags: #meToo, Adolph Hitler, Bettina Network Lifestyle Community, Brett Kavanaugh, Christine Blasey Ford, Democrats, Donald Trump, Erdogan, Illegitimate President, Khashoggi, Melania Trump, Mohammed bin Salam, Obama Admnistration, Republicans, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Vladimir Putin
Posted in #meToo, Adolph Hitler, Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Bettina oracle, Breakfast Table Talk, Christine Blasey Ford, Congress, Donald Trump, Khashoggi, Melania Trump, politics, racism, Russia, sexism | Comments Off on Bettina Network Lifestyle Community Members Speak!

Come to Jesus! But which one?

Friday, December 7th, 2018

Several times a year I face this conversation. It comes from living in a diverse community with friends, colleagues, family and acquaintances who question Christianity – especially today with Donald Trump being the hero and the one “evangelical christians” glorify – all in the name of Jesus – or are they talking about ‘jesus’.

It came up when Roy Moore from Alabama was running for office and pushing out for all to see, hear and hopefully believe – his evangelical christianity. He used his form of this ‘christianity’ to claim he could not have done all the things folks claimed he did because he was a Christian. He believed in Christ. He loved Jesus – and on and on it goes. Problem with that was, I was raised a Christian all of my life and I didn’t recognize anything he said or did as being Christian – let lets put him in the ‘christian’ and ‘jesus’ religion. And so, I dispensed with that problem – yet again.

In the last undecided Congressional race, watching the people involved comment – the Republican chair talking to Chris Hayes on MSNBC claimed he did not believe Republican Mark Harris would be involved in the voter fraud scandal in North Carolina because he loved Jesus and wouldn’t do anything against that. Once again – he loved which one – Jesus or ‘jesus’?

It looks very much as though his choice was ‘jesus’. Jesus got pushed out the door so he couldn’t witness the scandal. He will be brought back in when all of that voter fraud stuff is over.

In these United States we have two religions which call themselves “Christian” – because they claim to be followers and believers in “Christ.” That has been true for generations – way back to slavery. How many slave owners went to Church on Sunday and professed Christ and promised to follow Christs’ teachings only to return home and beat their slaves for one reason or another feeling perfectly justified in the doing and seeing no conflict?

I’ve tried to make peace with this by putting the bad guy “evangelical christians” in small letters along with the “jesus” and “christ” they claim. But that is not quite satisfying. That still lets me get upset with all of those ‘christians’ professing their ‘jesus’ because it is too close to mine and I have to answer to others who don’t understand the differences. I have to justify my Christianity too many times because of them.

Having been raised in the A.M.E, the Congregational and Episcopal Churches all at the same time, with a heavy dose of Catholicism having lived in New Orleans and Downtown at that, I guess some conflict seems normal to me. (The Intellectuals and the Protestants lived Uptown – the Catholics, the artists, a conglomeration of everyone else lived Downtown).

The conflict between these two totally separate religions, which go by the same name, is way beyond normal and they certainly espouse totally opposite beliefs and theologies.

So maybe its time for a name change!

I remember Jimmy Carter’s dilemma when he started his campaign for President of the United States. It was noted and reported world wide, but after a time left in the dust.

James Carter was a very strong, believing ‘christian’. It defined his life, his work, his relationships and everything about his life.

Problem with that was the Church he attended and where he taught Sunday School and (I think) served as an usher was very segregated. That accorded with his then ‘christian’ religion, but not with the public’s thoughts about Christianity when they heard his religious beliefs discussed. If Blacks came at all to his Church they had to sit in the back row and mostly they clearly understood they were not welcome.

It was quite something in this country when James Carter realized and rejected that ‘christianity’ and left the Church in which he was raised because of its overt racism – common across the country in such ‘christian’ churches. He left one religion – or religious denomination – for another. He left ‘christianity’ and became a Christian.

Todays’ “evangelical christians’ are big supporters of Donald Trump – a sexual assaulter by his own admission. Interesting thing about that – so are many of the leaders of the ‘evangelical christians’. Some have been called out and their ‘sins’ exposed, but they are back in the fold doing the same things they did to get expelled and they are supported by the people and their money to whom they preach every Sunday. I could call them out by name, but there is not enough room on this computer to contain all of them.

All through United States history the claims that this is a ‘christian’ country have been made loud and clear and that declaration used to move aside, push out, treat abusively those who are among the “non-believers”, the atheists, those others who ‘jesus’ supposedly called ‘christians’ to convert. Many if not most of the abusive, hatred, pain, agony and more inflicted on the world has been done in the name of some religion. Today and yesterday it was done in the name of this ‘christianity’. White Privilege – White Nationalists – the KKK and all the others live by and proselytize their ‘christianity’ and use it to justify the evil they do and have done. That ‘christianity’ has maintained such beliefs and actions because it makes the doers feel as though they are on their gods side – on the side which makes them better than everyone else. And they define their god as one who supports and has defined and brought into being the beliefs they live by – a theology that only satan could love.

And most especially – have you noticed the class distinctions between these two religions? “Jesus and the Disinherited” runs through from the beginning until now of the Christian religion. Foul up everything with even the ability and justification to kill and not see that as a moral flaw of your religion runs through the other – with its striving of its members to be better than; more important than; wealthier than. Isn’t that the theology which allowed Trump to proclaim to the nation that they should support MbS because after all Saudi Arabia brought us wealth in our interactions with them and isn’t that what is most important? Dismembering a human being is nothing when compared to the acquisition of the kind of wealth the Kingdom could bring to the United States. A basic belief of this ‘christian’ religion after the one which claims they are ‘better than”.

Don’t you think it is time for a renaming ceremony? Time to clearly distinguish between these two religions? My Christianity certainly does not begin to be anything like that of Roy Moore’s. Et tu?

__________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

Project 1 – Estate Sales after the Sale

Project 2 – Wells Fargo Boycott

__________________________________________________________

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

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

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

TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.com

Tags: Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Foundation, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Spiritual Reflection
Posted in Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Foundation, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Breakfast Table Talk, Class in America and the World, Religion | Comments Off on Come to Jesus! But which one?

Marceline’s Story – continued!

Thursday, December 6th, 2018

Ed. Note: We invite you to send us your story. You can send and request that we not put your name as the person in the story. Having discovered how rich are the lives of those in Bettina Network’s Lifestyle Community, it would be great for you to share with the rest of us.

This story was not written by Marceline Donaldson. It was sent to us by someone who knows her – more having observed her life than someone who was a close friend. She was not too happy to publish it, but we prevailed so your feedback by sending your stories would be much appreciated.

The “Marceline’s story” she refers to, in case you are confused – because we were – can be found in this blog https://www.bettina-network.com/blog/archives/4804

A “Friend’s” Observation of a life full of lessons on oppression and how it affects those who are forced to experience it.

A difficult and awkward title, but its is the best I could do and I am not sure you are going to publish it. Hope you do. In this era of Donald Trump and the rise of the racist/sexist groups we need to know what others experience.

I was born and raised in Minneapolis. Most would consider me fairly wealthy. Until Marceline came along I really didn’t think much about that. I suppose I took it for granted that I was supposed to live as I did.

My first conscious experience of race and sex discrimination was when I saw what happened to Marceline when she moved into a house not far from me in Wayzata. I would see her in Church on Sundays, but didn’t pay much attention. We didn’t travel in the same circles, but the affect what happened to her had on my life was profound.

I always lived in White communities. My neighbors and everyone around me were White. Somehow that didn’t strike me as being racist or racism and certainly not sexism. I just lived the way I was raised without question. It was a comfortable life. My friends were great and people I had known for a lifetime. And then along comes this woman with small children and the neighborhood went ballistic.

From a very safe distance I watched what happened. A friend of mine was involved and all were very angry like – ‘who does she think she is; doesn’t she know her place; why did she have to move into our community wasn’t her own good enough for her?” And then I saw the damage done to her house before she could move in and felt the shock that I knew people who could do such a thing. It was profound.

That wasn’t the first time this same woman caused a stir. I heard the stories of what happened before Marceline moved into my neighborhood. Apparently, she lived in another neighborhood in Wayzata and the man who owned the house was appalled at a black family living in his house. I don’t know how she moved in without his knowing she was African American, but watching Marceline over the years, today, that doesn’t surprise me one bit.

He bragged about waiting until Marceline left the house with her children and he then went in and ripped the faucets apart all over the house so there would be no water. I couldn’t imagine coming home with my children and finding the faucets all over my house ripped off and lying around. It was when I heard that story that I began to realize I lived in a White neighborhood without any of “the others” living around me because people like that horrible man existed. He and others were people in the society in which I lived who made sure my neighborhood would always be White. That was an eye opener and I have never been the same.

There was a small buzz at Church that Sunday and when I joined the “buzz” group I discovered what happened after the faucets were removed. Apparently, Marceline called an attorney and was going to have the home owner arrested for what he did. He backed down because she was in the process of also calling the media and I don’t think he wanted the publicity.

After that, everyone expected her to leave the neighborhood and move into a black neighborhood where – as the talk went – she would be more ‘comfortable’, but she didn’t do that. She moved into a more exclusive part of the neighborhood – which means an area where the kind of separatism with which I grew up reigned and the people would do everything they could to fend her off – and they had the power to do it ‘under the table’.

“Her story” picks it up from there, but her life was not easy and with several small children I still don’t know how she survived all of that to still be here and still fighting the battles that we set her up to fight so she and others like her would not move into “our” neighborhoods.

That changed my life. I was no longer unconscious about the dynamics in my neighborhood. I haven’t become a civil rights fighter. In fact I don’t get involved, but I do send money to others who are fighting and keep up with many of the battles going on.

You are probably calling me a coward about now, but that is all I could and can handle and unless lightning strikes I will continue in that vein. It isn’t much, but it did determine how I raised my children and they are far more active than I am and very much aware of the diversity or lack of it in whatever they do and wherever they live. I don’t think they realize they owe that to their mother’s experience many decades ago.

If you don’t print this, its alright. I just wanted you to know a part of how my story and Marceline’s intersected. I wish I could have been more involved, but that is just not who I am. Mostly, I feel guilty from having watched all of that and did not reach out to help. That is probably why I decided to write this. I often think if I had called her to tell her what was going on in the background even that little bit could have helped, but I couldn’t bring myself to do even that. What I did do was to raise my children in a very different way from how I was raised. I am amazed I’ve written this and fully intend to send it to you. Please don’t put my name to anything.

P. S. I am sending a donation and will continue to send donations because I very much want to see this publication and this business succeed.

_________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

Project 1 – Estate Sales after the Sale

Project 2 – Wells Fargo Boycott

__________________________________________________________

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

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

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

TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.com

Tags: Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Racism, Sexism
Posted in African American history, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Feminism, racism, sexism | Comments Off on Marceline’s Story – continued!

MISSISSIPPI BURNING – EVIL STALKS AND WINS!

Wednesday, November 28th, 2018

by: Marceline Donaldson

It gets harder to write these articles. Once upon a time we wrote about so many wonderful things which helped improve life; made everything brighter, easier, more elegant. Today, we are so enmeshed in the evil that has become part of the everyday life in these United States that nothing else comes up. The evil that is loose in the United States of America has wiped out everything else – unless you are a part of bringing the evil empire about.

You can go ahead with other things. They did so in Hitler’s Germany. While Jews and those who stood up for goodness, mercy, equality, love, caring, kindness were murdered in the most vicious ways and others were put into a horrendous form of slavery, there were those others out celebrating – living life as though everything was fine; paying attention to those everyday things that make for a life amidst denial. My question – how can you continue to move ahead taking advantage of what is available to you while ignoring what is happening in your own country, which seems to be steadily on the road to making Hitler’s Germany look like a walk in the park on a sunny day.

In other articles – a few years ago – we predicted Donald Trump’s march taking the United States into Hitler’s Germany and you all let it happen. Look around at the morass in which you are now living and sinking and doing normal everyday things. Maybe you need to read or re-read Hannah Arendt’s book – on the banality of evil, the middle classless that supported Hitler and his cohort’s evil which was spewn around the world. It is certainly proving true today in the United States.

After tear gassing immigrants, the “president” of the United States went to a rally in Mississippi where many were paid to attend and make like they were just loving Trump and others were there because they actually were loving and cheering on this evil and in that environment Mississippians went on to elect Hyde-Smith as its senator. This was not simply about a political loss or win – this was about evil winning or losing. In Mississippi, one more time, evil won. Evil brought into being the memories of public hangings – of people being dragged behind trucks until dead because they dared to vote. What is horrendous in all of this for me – the country was Democratic when that happened and the good guys trying to stop all of it were Republicans. Well, today – look at who is driving the evil. I left a long life of Republicanism as I experienced that Political Party turning into something that would destroy every good value we hold. That used to be what we thought of the Democrats when they were in league with the KKK, White Supremacist and every other “movement” where the votes could be had cheap and in bulk.

A man who is a murderer, who backs heads of government who murder their own in gruesome ways for getting out of line, a thief, adultery, sexual assaulter by his own admission and braggadocio, and so much more on that evil side of the ledger, this man arrived and called Mississippians to vote for one of his strong unequivocal followers – one who didn’t deviate one inch from his gospel. Watching Trump and Hyde-Smith walk down the steps of the airplane which delivered Trump to Mississippi to do his bit to get her into elected government was like watching satan and one of his anointed.

You think that is extreme? Unbalanced? Mentally off?

What was mentally off was our thinking that the United States was on its way to “becoming” – this “city on a hill” which has been shown to be nothing but Mississippi burning with the smell of sulphur all around.

History says there has been no change. I registered to vote as a Republican. I was precinct chair of my area in Wayzata, Minnesota. I was elected to that position by my friends and neighbors. Wow! That was special. Well, one day Ronald Regan declared he was running for president of the United States. Horror began to strike in me because while he articulated the United States as that city on a hill, he clearly had an extreme racist view and following and program to be elected president using racism, sexism, and as much bigotry as he could summon – albeit in a very elegant way. How did you know that was about to happen? How did you know he pre-saged the coming of Donald Trump, who is anything but elegant? Regan announced his candidacy for president of these United States in Mississippi. That was more than what we call a “dog whistle” – and the “dogs” came running.

What did I see in Minnesota? Into the precinct caucus meeting came a slew of Texans. Being from the south, I recognized that Texas accent all around. Who were they? How did they all turn up in my caucus at the same time? Where did they work? What brought them to Minnesota? And what did I experience? Talk in the caucus meeting was about how shocked they were to see this n—-r woman as precinct chair. And that was followed by all kinds of racist remarks. Who was in that caucus meeting listening – the very proper, top of society Minnesota citizens. They didn’t object; defend; become insulted by; insisted the people doing the name calling and ugly very racist rhetoric to stop – they quietly proposed that we elect someone else, “more appropriate”, as chair. For the rest of that meeting I was treated as a non-entity. I was neither seen nor heard. My personhood was totally denied. If I had anything to say someone else would start a conversation on another topic and direct it to another person who would respond. It was beyond dehumanizing. I should have been amazed to hear the very normal, mundane, quiet way they did that, but by that time I had been a part of so much of that – it seemed normal and it was normal. It is still normal today. Many people experience the same thing on a day by day basis without any intervention and it continues until they either leave or accept their non-human status in whichever group they are trying to function. Their “friends” in the group go along with that kind of treatment, but once outside the group they are “friends” again and acknowledged as fully human and fully a part of that friendship group. Sick! All of us!

That bothered me, but not as much as you would expect. I knew I had friends in the area – didn’t we eat together; talk together; enjoy life and shared our children back and forth? Not really! My even living in the area was a problem, but not one that came out so that I could see and hear it until the Texans showed up. I have a history of being that sort of African American woman who is always in the wrong place at the right time. Look at where I live today and the stories I have to tell about that!

When I bought a home in Wayzata and arrived to take ownership and live in the neighborhood, I found the pond with sculptures outside the house, which was one of its charms, all marked up with graffiti put there by the children of the neighborhood – the seven, eight, ten year old children – those who were the same age as my children and who would be their classmates in school. They heard horrible things about this incoming neighbor and felt free and angry enough to resent our appearance in “their” neighborhood and so set about doing whatever they could to destroy the house before we could take it over and live next door. One of the many deliberate handicaps you must overcome when out of your oppressed group. These were not “ghetto”, wild, untrained, no manners children. These were children of the upper classes in that neighborhood and in this country.

Their parents were all sweetness and light and very apologetic. They had many excuses for what their children had done – none accurate, the story was substantially cleaned up – but they had the children come and clean up their “mess.” That didn’t do the job – it cost me quite a bit to have professionals come in because the damage was deep – no one offered to pay the bill, they just pretended everything was fine and their children had cleaned up what they destroyed. I didn’t ever go out that door again nor look at that pond. I just let it go wild. I wanted to create great graffiti art all over the house and destroy as much of it as possible and then live quietly in the neighborhood, but that fantasy was always in my head, never intentionally acted out.

Life didn’t get better! I lived in two worlds, but it wasn’t anything any different from my life before moving into that house in Wayzata. I was born living in two worlds so I knew how to traverse the terrain – painful, horrendous, confusing terrain, but just by being born that was my lot.

What my neighbors didn’t realize was that all of their talk was brought right back to me, by their friends, so when I saw them in Church, had dinner in their homes, had many discussions on many levels with them, I also heard what was said when I was not around because being a part of those two worlds meant I was not “walled off” in a black community where what they were saying and doing was as though it happened in a foreign country where me and mine didn’t speak the language.

Why am I going into all of this? Because I think it is time to tell my story. It is time to get out of me and into you all of the horror through which I have lived because you wanted to maintain your claimed white supremacy and white privilege. I want you to know what that has cost me and mine. We have paid an especially high price because we didn’t stay in our “black neighborhood”, didn’t marry our black brothers and sisters, have lived in a very “diverse” community for a lifetime so I know the ins and outs that have been kept away from that black community – I know why they were kept 20 years into the past so economic parity would not be an issue, which is probably the major reason as to why it has been kept separate. You can’t take advantage of, oppress, and live such a life if the people you are destroying are aware on an intimate basis of who you are and what you are about. It has been roughly like going through a very painful operation without anesthesia with no recovery, just more operations.

And no, I don’t hate you, I have too many English, Irish, Scottish, and every other kind of ancestor lumped under the category of “white” to have hatred for you and my Christian upbringing has put this knowledge of sin and forgiveness into my life – but my journalist family background added to that the need to tell the truth, so that is what you will read in these pages of my journey through this very bigoted society. The kind of society that elected a racist woman to Congress because she is supported strongly by a man who is not only proven to be racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, thinks immigrants are to be reduced to the exploitation of near slavery and so much more. This election should be the celebration of a woman elected to Congress where no woman had been elected in the past, but this woman had to pass the extreme racist test to be so elected and the test that she was indeed not an independent woman, but beholden to and under the influence of men and she did. Mississippi’s victory over the #meToo movement. #meToo – we elected one woman to Congress – our picture of our incoming class will not be entirely white and male – breaking up the WASP image. She did her job and recalled that time of life when we had public hangings of African Americans who voted and so much more of that racism in her education, her choices for her family, her everyday life.

Want to know more – stay tuned, if you can take it. I’ve lost too much to care if you decide to continue retaliating against me and mine. My losses because of your white privilege have just gone over the top for the millionth time and clearly that will continue into the next generation. You have no idea how painful it is to know your children will experience some of the pain you did because of this group of white supremacist and their followers and supporters. To know that all you sacrificed so your children could live in a freer society will not happen because the white supremacist, the neo-Nazi’s and their friends have moved this society back to where those sacrifices have to be made again and by the next generation. That has been going on too long and you have excused and made room for such people for too long – the fact that you benefitted also makes this evil unforgivable and that was also taught to me in my Christian upbringing. You see, I paid attention in Sunday School and I know that forgiveness does not extend to everything and everyone!

_____________________________________________________________

Tags: Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, politics, Racism, Sexism
Posted in #meToo, African American history, American Oligarchs, Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Donald Trump, politics, Press Release, racism, sexism | Comments Off on MISSISSIPPI BURNING – EVIL STALKS AND WINS!

Trump – Hitler – Idi Amin -Nationalists

Wednesday, October 24th, 2018

Ed. Note: Comments from Bettina Network Lifestyle Members

“It was amazing to hear Donald Trump come out with his endorsement of and commitment to Nationalism and then try to make it sound like something it is not. That happened after listening to Trump lie at every rally. He is so careless with the truth you could see through his talk how he was saying whatever he thought people wanted to hear and making whatever kind of promises he needed to make to win.

Most amazing was the blatantness of his claim of a 10% tax cut for the middle-class which would be introduced “next week”. I wondered introduced to who? Congress is not in session and won’t be until mid November – after the mid-terms. Trump already passed a tax cut that was to trickle down to the middle-class and which clearly helped almost 100% the wealthy in this country. He has never done anything for the poor, oppressed or middle-class except take them for whatever he could get. He certainly insured my movement from Republican to Democrat. Changed my voter registration along with most of my Republican friends. We celebrated after.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

“Incredible to hear the people at Trump’s rally lie. When interviewed by a reporter as to their thoughts on only 3% blacks supporting Trump they took turns lying and so cavalierly. One said she heard it was more like 18%; another 35%; and even more lies as to the percentages followed. Clearly none knew what they were talking about, but they were talking/lying to support their President. Trump’s supporters are like Trump. They think the rest of the world is stupid and will believe something just because they say it.

I hate to say that about those with whom I share a United Sates citizenship, but truth will out. We now know the percentage of the United States citizens who are mafia; extreme racists; pathological liars; extreme sexists; extreme bigots. We guessed before. We knew it was high because we are still having to vigorously fight bigots in court and other places just to gain some traction against those who want to oppress others and the fight isn’t getting easier. But now in front of us we have the proof of the numbers – who they are as we see them in television and other places backing Trump – and they will also tell us on ‘air’ and on tape what they believe and seem proud of it. That is a possible recruit, if not already a member of the KKK, White Nationalists, neo-Nazi’s and more.

So discouraging. I was encouraged a bit at the beginning until I heard the hearings via the Senate Judiciary Committee and I remembered things were not any different from the time when that committee was chaired by Strom Thurmond. It hasn’t gotten any better. In fact, this group seems to have taken things much lower.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

“What on earth are we doing? We now have a president and Secretary of State who support and cover for brutal murderers! Lying and all the rest was bad enough, but backing murder? My question – were the Trumps and their assorted backers involved in the planning before the murder? Or did they agree to back the murderers with public statements of support after the fact? Were they complicit in this murder or simply with the cover-up?

I can’t believe I am asking that question about the President of these United States and his family and his administration.”

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

“We have a president who has finally come out and announced what we have always known – he believes in Nationalism and is a Nationalist. So did Hitler and so did Idi Amin, among many, many others, but I never expected to see my President come out with such a declaration. It must be Mueller time and he is signaling all of the “Nationalists” to get ready to rumble.

I should have expected this because I remember Trump when he was sued by the United States Government for racism. I remember when he campaigned and spent a fairly large sum of money trying to get young blacks executed for a crime they didn’t commit. He was that committed to his virulent racism. I remember all of his deals and companies which were mafia tinged. I remember him making a fool of himself wrestling someone on the floor outside the ring during a wrestling match. I remember him blatantly cheating on all of his wives – the worse was taking his girl friend on vacation and installing her in a condo around the corner from where he, his wife and children were vacationing and the unavoidable confrontation between wife and mistress. I remember at the time wondering what kind of man could do that and then step back to watch what happened.

I remember him cheating so many people out of their hard earned dollars and putting small business people out of business because they had the misfortune to deal with him and lost their shirts when he took every thing from them and cavalierly walked away giving them nothing, but in control of their assets. I remember pictures of him strutting through his casinos with people gambling all around and loving the attention he gathered.

I remember so much more that is ugly. To now have to remember this man as President of the United States is way too much for me to handle. Who are you people who helped elect him? You must be the lowest of the low because I don’t see how else you could stomach this.”

____________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

______________________________________________________________

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

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

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

TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.com

Tags: Donald Trump
Posted in Adolph Hitler, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Donald Trump, Guest comments, Nazism | Comments Off on Trump – Hitler – Idi Amin -Nationalists

NOT Hillary Clinton – Heart Breaking!

Thursday, October 18th, 2018

by: Marceline Donaldson

Not long ago, I wrote a blog which held up Hillary and talked about her many contributions to the equality of everyone, especially women.

What I said in that blog was true and laudable, however, when I saw the interview Hillary just gave which absolved Bill Clinton from any responsibility in the Monica Lewinsky history, my Hillary Clinton statue sitting way up high in my interior house came crashing down with loud noises and bits and pieces flying all over the place until it all crashed to the ground.

You can’t have it all Hillary. There are times when hard stances have to be taken and to admit the failings of your husband is one of those hard stances.

Either you are a feminist or you are a politician who can lie to absolve someone you love. When you and Bill met and became involved in a relationship which led to marriage, it was apparently a relationship between equals. Bill Clinton, however, showed you who he was when he went on to other relationships, while keeping you as his “main fling”. Those were not equal relationships, they were liaisons which were formed out of unequal positions and totally reflected the unequal power of women in this society in which he used women for his own male superiority needs. Clearly he is conflicted and while he has tried hard to work for the equality of all of us he still has vestiges of male superiority which he has either not worked to eliminate or can’t.

When you absolve him and you tell the world there was nothing he did wrong in that relationship with Monical Lewinsky – that he did not take advantage of the power differences to move on Lewinsky taking advantage of her needs, known or unknown to her, he was the adult in the room and he showed himself ready, willing, able and moving to use his power to compromise women for his own needs with no consideration for the women.

Not only did he show that tendency with Lewinsky, but he used his growing power to subjugate other women – clearly shown by the affairs he had while still married to you.

I don’t want to abrogate everything Bill Clinton has done in this society. He has made substantial contributions, but while making those contributions he was not able to control or subdue his male superiority needs – his misogyny.

You also had a choice. Follow and act out of your beliefs or stop espousing them and keep quiet. You can’t have it both ways. You have claimed a feminist stand, but when it really counted you were among those on the other side. Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton were not equals. Bill Clinton, as president of the United States took advantage of a 22 year old intern working in and around his offices and society condemned the young woman because of its misogyny. If you can’t admit that – your feminism is a game you play when convenient.

I had no idea that is where you stood on the Lewinsky affair until I heard and saw you in that interview. Clearly, you knew better. Your demeanor, your face, your expressions and your answer showed that. I am so sorry that one of my idols has fallen. I guess that is why my religion does not allow idols made of clay – they fall and break. Does that make a lie of your life? No! You have achieved much and you have done much for the equality of women. But it does make a lie of much that you have espoused. When put to the test you came up among the missing. That is what’s wrong with our political system. We need to be able to distinguish the Hillary Clinton’s from the Heidi Heitcamp’s. And, even while I make that comparison, I am sure one day Heidi will come up missing. I will pray she is strong enough to continue to stand for what she believes, but I will know our humanity always overcomes.

We sacrifice, as you have done, our own moral and ethical standards to support someone who claims to believe what we believe. That is what is happening around this country with people supporting Donald Trump. They claim his ethics and character don’t matter as long as he supports their issues. The immorality of that is blatant and we are all now paying the price for electing someone with that excuse. That is an extreme example of what you did supporting Bill Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky affair, but in the end isn’t that the fatal flaw in our republic?

Looking at your life and actions, so sure and so strong, I thought you were one of those people who lived her beliefs and I was wrong.

____________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

______________________________________________________________

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

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

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

TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.com

Tags: #meToo, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Bill Clinton, Feminism, Hillary Clinton, politics, Sexism
Posted in #meToo, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Bill Clinton, Feminism, Hillary Clinton, politics, sexism | Comments Off on NOT Hillary Clinton – Heart Breaking!

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.

_____________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

______________________________________________________________

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

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

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

TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.com

Tags: Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, breakfast table talk, Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump, Lisa Murkowski, politics, Racism, Rev. William Barber, Senator Coons, Senator Jeff Flake, Sexism, Susan Collins, Susan Rice
Posted in #meToo, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Breakfast Table Talk, Brett Kavanaugh, Catholic Church, Christine Blasey Ford, Clarence Thomas, Congress, Donald Trump, Jeff Flake, Lisa Murkowski, politics, Protests, racism, Rev. William Barber, Senator Coons, sexism, Susan Collins | Comments Off on An Anniversary Celebration of the Trump Access Tape

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!

_____________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

______________________________________________________________

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

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

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

TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.com

Tags: #meToo, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, breakfast table talk, Brett Kavanaugh, Guest Comments, Lisa Murkowski, Mormonism, Orrin Hatch, politics, Racism, Russia, Sexism, Susan Collins
Posted in #meToo, American Oligarchs, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Breakfast Table Talk, Brett Kavanaugh, Christine Blasey Ford, Donald Trump, Guest comments, Jeff Flake, Kim Jong Un, Lisa Murkowski, North Korea, racism, Russia, sexism, Sexual Assault, Susan Collins, Vladimir Putin | Comments Off on Trump/Putin/Kim – Creating a World to rule!

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.

___________________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

______________________________________________________________

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

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

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

TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.com

Tags: Bettina Cookbook, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump, politics, Sexism
Posted in Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Bettina's Cookbook, Brett Kavanaugh, Christine Balsey Ford, Donald Trump, Guest comments, sexism | Comments Off on Why is Trump Pushing Kavanaugh so Insistently?

Look at what we are doing! Join us!

Tuesday, September 25th, 2018

We have had many valued guests over the past 35 years we have been in business.They are always very discerning people and we are looking to add more like them so we are letting you know about our new movements in the hopes you will call to either add your home and talent to Bettina Network and Bettina Hedge Schools and/or you will call us when you travel to use our services.

We hope you will become one of those who cares about where you stay when traveling and are always searching for knowledge, wisdom and a greater understanding of the world. We combine both! A concept we originated and for which we have high hopes.

To Bettina Network, inc. we have added:

BETTINA NETWORK HEDGE SCHOOLS

which are elegant accommodations, with an emphasis on diversity, and includes serendipitous learning for those who travel with Bettina’s!

Bettina Network Hedge Schools took a very old concept, dusted it off and updated it in such a way that we are deep into lifelong learning.

Hedge School Families share their histories, experiences, learning and wisdom when you choose to stay with them when you travel.

Hedge School Facilitators travel Bettina Network and turn up in the most unexpected places. They bring an added layer of learning as the HSF specialize in many different areas of learning and doing.

Instead of depending upon serendipity, some guests ask to stay in a home with a particular emphasis – with a concert pianist; sculptor; academics in different fields —which means, for example, you can improve your knitting by staying with a family of expert knitters; a chef with whom you can cook; a priest and more.

Some facts on Bettina procedures

Someone from Bettina Network, inc.spends the night in every home before it is taken into Bettina’s and offered to you.

We get to know the family with whom you will be staying and we keep up with our homes on a daily basis.

We send out a “Guest Questionnaire” to everyone who stays in a Bettina Home and our return rate is 90%. That tells us – usually in great detail – the experience of a guest and keeps us aware in another way of what is happening in Bettina Network homes.

We accept cash, checks, credit cards – OR – we invoice your company.

We invite you to look to Bettina Network, inc., when looking for a place to stay for those special guests who are traveling to give a lecture; to collaborate on a research project; to be a tourist; those giving a performance in an extraordinary music event, or etc.

And don’t forget Bettina Network’s blog

www.bettinanetwork.com/blog

The blog is thought provoking with contributions from members of Bettina’s Lifestyle Community. Once you become a member of this incredibly diverse community, we invite you to write articles, send pictures, float ideas, try out your latest research on a great audience – which, as of today, includes some 2,000 to 3,000 people per day coming to read the blog.

Given our resources, we have information, news, and ideas you won’t find anyplace else.Join our little group, add your voice and use our services.

Bettina Network, inc – P. O. Box 380585 – Cambridge, MA. 02238

phone: 617 497 9166or toll free: 800-347-9166 within the U.S.

bettina-network@comcast.net https://www.bettina-network.com

Sincerely,

All of us at Bettina’s

Bettina’s Menu of Events – a benefit for members of Bettina’s Lifestyle Community!

Bettina Network, inc.
P. O. Box 380585
Cambridge, MA. 02238
phone: 617 497 9166 inside and outside the U. S.
toll free phone: 800 347 9166 inside the U. S.
web-site: bettina-network.com
email: bettina-network@comcast.net

_________________________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

______________________________________________________________

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

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

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

TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.com

Tags: Bettina Homes, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network Information, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, marketing
Posted in Bettina Homes, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network Info, Bettina Network NEWS, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Facebook, marketing, Press Release, Press Release from Bettina Network | Comments Off on Look at what we are doing! Join us!

Love and Sex – A reader adds comments

Saturday, September 8th, 2018

Thank you for that blog. It struck me for some time that we are being led by a group of white men who seem to have sex on their minds and we suffer the consequences because love is required of leaders.

What does it mean that our president – Donald J. Trump – has been accused multiple times of sexually abusing and assaulting more than a dozen women and his reputation goes far beyond that if you go back many years. That kind of appetite generally will also turn to greed, jealousy, and many other emotions that destroy and will not build up and Trump is showing that he is into destruction of this society as quickly and completely as possible. This is not new for him because he showed us that in the way he ran and built his Trump Organization. Why? Because it will give him worldly goods beyond his imaginings and will give him power over many who want the same thing.

Is he about building up an American Oligarchy the way Russia has an Oligarchy?

As far back as the 1980’s it was clear that Trump was beholden to the Russia and Eastern European mafia. Take a look and it certainly looks as though his billions were created by those relationships. And, just think of what he can now acquire as he opens the doors to this country’s treasury and assets to those with whom he was financially related from the ’80’s until today.

Everyone is saying he is beholden to Putin and Russia? He is actually beholden to the Russian Mafia and is an asset of the Russian and Eastern European mafia’s. Apparently he didn’t meet Putin until all of this running for the presidency occurred and the Russian mafia did what? Loaned him to Putin to achieve Putin’s goals?

What a difference it makes to have someone as president who is into love instead of sex. I don’t like to make comparisons, but when I saw John McCain’s family during his funeral remembrances I don’t think I have seen, in one family, such a coming together of the world’s people. It was beautiful. I wish we had more of that. It was family trying to live a life of love rather than controlled by sex and all such an emphasis entails.

Apparently, McCain tried to bring along those with whom he worked. His relationship with Lindsey Graham shows that. He brought along Lindsey Graham and now Graham has resorted to who he was before his close friendship with McCain. The need for power, recognition, importance can lead to such ugliness. That is so very sad. I remember Graham before McCain and he was a flake – racist – sexist – and I could throw in a few more negatives, but if you are that old you should also remember the news coverage of where Lindsey Graham was coming from during those days. And then he changed and became someone we all began to respect. That has stopped now that McCain is dead. He has reversed course and has once again become the man he was back then. He looks as though he has been working hard to become Attorney General and it also looks as though Trump has promised him the spot to get Graham to be one of his supporters who Trump can bounce around for whatever he needs. That is so sad!

As I read your article on Love and Sex – how different this world would be if we had that movement towards love. If we could see each other in that light instead of in the light of sex – which is where we move immediately. Try to be friends with someone because you have much in common, it could be a great friendship, but the outside world would see it in terms of sex. We have not been able to rise above how we describe the animals. Tell someone you love them and it immediately takes on a component of sexual attraction. What is wrong with us that we have not developed beyond such a place?

The world of love is so superior to the world of sex that it is unimaginable how we are able to maintain ourselves on the lower level of sex and not be able to rise above it when there is this incredible place we could be. All of our religions tout love. However, most also have these warnings and judgments against sex except how they define it and how we have tried over the generations to legislate sex – such a waste. I had not thought before reading your article that this need to reduce love to sex and then control sex had to do with inheritance and who owns and inherits what. Power – greed – corruption all come into play as we have ruined many lives with our nonsense.

If we could somehow get out of the muck and mess to which we consign ourselves and see another way of living what a great world this would be. People like Donald Trump would have to re-work their ethics and themselves because they would be odd person out and never in a position to become dog-catcher let alone anything else.

Games like this op-ed thing would not be played – there would be no need. Who wrote that op-ed piece? Either Donald Trump or Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, who saw it as a way to raise himself up above his peers and position himself to be able to rise when he got out of the Trump Administration. He has given himself an excuse and a cover for his being there in the first place. After Gary Cohn left, he had to do something – and so we have this op-ed. He won’t admit to it, but he will quietly circulate it when he is ready to be employed elsewhere to shore himself up to a higher place and overcome the negativity he has acquired as a part of Donald Trump’s cabinet. I could be wrong – but in this guessing game that is my choice.

__________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

__________________________________________________________

Tags: Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, breakfast table talk, Donald Trump, Lindsey Graham, Steve Mnuchin
Posted in American Corporate Businesses, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Donald Trump, Guest comments, Kitchen Table Talk, Steven Mnuchin | Comments Off on Love and Sex – A reader adds comments

In Memory of Francis Albert Dynan

Sunday, September 2nd, 2018

by: Frances Maloney

It is written of Mary of Magdala, that, after the disciples had returned to their homes, Mary lingered like a humming bird before the silent face of the tomb, weeping. “And as she wept, she bent over into the tomb and saw two angels in white sitting there, one at the head and one at the feet where the body of Jesus had been. And they said to her, “woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they have laid him.”

I am that woman. And so, I am deeply grateful to Mary Flynn, Katherine, and Suzanne, and to all of you who grieve Frank’s passing, for allowing me to join you in this company of mourners. Frank and I did not attend Frank’s parents’ funerals, because Frank chose not to go without me, and I wasn’t sober.

Frank was merciful and kind, honest and true, first with himself and with God, then with all of us, indeed with all creatures, great and small.

Rabbi Rami M. Shapiro has provided this prayer for bride and groom that I think was fulfilled in our marriage:

“Dear God,

You have brought this couple together

that they might risk the joys and sorrows of love.

They have said “yes” to You and to each other.

We now ask that you bless them

with love and compassion

righteousness and truth.

Guide them in ways of deep and loving

friendship that they may forever

cherish, honor, uphold and sustain

each other and the divine image

that is our deepest self.”

Ma, that is, Frank’s mother (of blessed memory), taught me to pray, “Thank you, God, for all you have given me, for all you have taken away, and, for all you have left me.

Left me, are vital memories, full of Frank’s spirit and likeness. For example, one day, when we lived in Ann Arbor, a bee appeared in our apartment. I was terrorized and called on Frank to save us. Well, Frank took what seemed like an hour to tackle that bee, amused at my distress. Anxiety turned to wonder as I watched him carefully collect the bee into the palm of his hand and lovingly escort the bee outside, a sweet man doing a sweet thing.

Like Frank himself, the honey bee

The humble, the lowly honey bee

Needed to feed the earth

Needed to feed the earth.

By his spirit and example, his farmer’s faith and heart of a fisherman, Frank drew me to something better than I had ever known, becoming my personal rock, my personal redeemer.

Remembering the concluding line of a poem by Langston Hughes, as reads, “Yet you never know, when a woman like me is free.” I testify that I never want to be free from the Love of God, as expressed by my only husband to his only wife.

Frank was patient, Frank was kind

Frank was glad for the well-being

and success of others, such as

his brother Joe, who was a

blessed father and grandfather

Frank envied no one

Frank was generous, unassuming,

faithful, devoted

Not egotistical, not ‘in your face’

Not rude, never selfish

Frank’s heart was a vessel of gratitude

Frank was slow to take offense,

harbored no resentments

Frank was merciful and forgave in truth

Frank was moral

Frank was ethical

Frank did Matthew 25:34-36

Frank was courageous and brave

Frank bore all things, believed all things,

Hoped all things

Endured all things.

Francis Albert Dynan nearly died in infancy. In Vietnam, he was flown around in helicopters packed with explosives. Surviving these, Frank never missed, for an instant, his work as an instrument of peace, in thought and deed.

Frank and I never parted without desire and hope to behold each other again.

Francis Albert Dynan, how do I love thee? I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight for the ends of Being and ideal Grace -, and, if God choose, precious, gracious, loving, compassionate man, my Rabbouni – I shall love thee better after death.

Ed.Note: Francis Jean Maloney served in the United States Army as did Frances Albert Dynan. They met while serving together in Germany and married. After several years, they divorced, but in spite of their legal status they remained friends and remained married and true to one another for the rest of their lives.

Francis Maloney came from an amazing family. Her mother was the first African American to perform with a major symphony orchestra in the United States and her father was Surgeon General of Liberia. Frances was homeless for a time. What she experienced and suffered should make all of us think about how we treat those who served these United States. She is currently on the board of Bettina Network Foundation, inc. and is a tremendous asset to the Foundation and everything it does.

________________________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

________________________________________________________________________

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.

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

____________________________________________________________________

Tags: African American history, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Frances Maloney, Francis Albert Dynan, Memorial
Posted in African American history, Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network Foundation, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Frances Maloney, Francis Albert Dynan, Memorials, Spiritual Reflection, Who are the Bettina Families | Comments Off on In Memory of Francis Albert Dynan

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.
____________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

_____________________________________________

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

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

Tags: African American history, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, breakfast table talk, Donald Trump, Racism, Sexism
Posted in African American history, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Breakfast Table Talk, Donald Trump, Guest comments, John Kelly, Omarosa, racism, sexism | Comments Off on Omarosa – you go girl!

Archive for the ‘Bettina Network’s Lifestyle Community’ Category

BILLIONAIRES UNITE!

Bettina Oracle Speaks

To Celebrate MLK, Jr?

More from Bettina Members

THE WALL

Thoughts on color!

Donald Trump and Gay Folks!

Bettina Network Lifestyle Community Members Speak!

Come to Jesus! But which one?

Marceline’s Story – continued!

A “Friend’s” Observation of a life full of lessons on oppression and how it affects those who are forced to experience it.

MISSISSIPPI BURNING – EVIL STALKS AND WINS!

Trump – Hitler – Idi Amin -Nationalists

NOT Hillary Clinton – Heart Breaking!

An Anniversary Celebration of the Trump Access Tape

Comments from Bettina Network Lifestyle Community Members:

Member #2

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

Why is Trump Pushing Kavanaugh so Insistently?

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.

Look at what we are doing! Join us!

Love and Sex – A reader adds comments

In Memory of Francis Albert Dynan

Omarosa – you go girl!

Blog Search

We are the Bettina Network

Categories

Archives

Bettina’s Lifestyle Community