My Pagan Reason? It is a Root Religion.

 Esoteric Sunday

Then there's, the Pagan thing...

This was the last-thing I was told by my ex-girlfriend as she completed her bucket list of the reasons she was ending it.   Out of them all, too emotional, too poor, too proventual, etc., the Pagan one really bothered me for she wasn't religious at all, at least, not sober.  And so I'm am alone again and pretty much content, destined to date a witch I guess.  Which Witch -- I had to throw that in there -- I don't know.

So, I am here this Sunday morning to talk about my Pagan beliefs and why, Paganism is really not a thing.

Like most Americans, I was a Christian, accepted Jesus as my savior at seven and dunked in the glass pool at nine.  The baptism was splendid, for, also being dunked that day was Laura Luciana, a neighborhood girl I had a crush on, beautiful Italian eyes, and a well developed body for her age.  When she came out of the water and walked past me her wet robe showed her nipples, and so I went into my rebirth somewhat excited.

I really tried to follow the law, but, was led for fun and became someone a rebel playing in a rock band.   After a few years of that, I found the lord again and for a year I went to church three times a week, listened to Christian rock, and met the youth group for coffee and eggs at the local Denny's.   Eventually, that would get old though because of the judgement of others.   You see, "judging" is the one thing all Christian faiths have in common, shit, they even have a chapter in their good book called Judges.  Oh, they will tell you they don't judge, but they do.  Along with this judging it was the snobbish statements about other faiths, like, Mohammad was a phony who raped woman and children; meditation is opening the doors to Satan, and a woman should serve her man, it's God's will.  

Around that time, I was working in a music store teaching guitar while I went to a local Christian college.   I shared a teaching room with an old southern piano teacher who's name was, wait for it, Mrs. Southland.  No shit.  She was a victim of her time but tried to be forward thinking by telling me she really like Charley Pride -- one of the few black country music singers, ever -- and she thought he was handsome.   It was code-speak for: why can't all black people be like him, then there wouldn't be a problem.  She also told me about her preacher grandfather who once told her:  Nancy -- her name was Nancy -- one of these days the world will be so churchy and the church so worldly you won't be able to tell the difference.

That phrase stuck with me as I watched the Christian faith try to weasel its way into pop culture and all of a sudden, Christians were drinking Coors Light beer because if Jesus were here it was the beer he most likely would drink; laughing at environmentalist because they were trying to save a world headed for Armageddon which didn't included them; and wearing thong bikinis on the beach to show-off their Jesus sun-tattoo on their butt cheek.  Yes, the Christian faith I thought was above all that, had become that.  And so I prayed, I prayed to Jesus as a matter of fact, and long story short, was led to Buddhist meditation, which, alternatively led to my seeing that true spirituality was bigger than Buddha, Jesus, or Mohammad, and I asked myself: What was it we had before they came along?  And the answer was: The human being and the divine are intimately related to the extent of sharing a mutually kindred nature.  And so I contrasted what I knew about the Big Three faiths with what was before my eyes and realized that they came in large part in contrast to the indigenous paganism they encountered.  And to me, this was a crime.  I needed to get back to what had happened before the cults.  Back to the truth.  Back to the root religion in us all.

Amen

Join us next Sunday when we discuss Who Was Amen?

Similarities of the Missouri duck boat sinking and Donald Trump's presidency.

Cardinal and Bluejay Meet in Election

 You are not going to like this, and if you are a lover of Trump's lies and egocentric look-at-me madness, you definitively won't.  For, here at EstoericDaily.com (yes, one word), we know there are reasons to everything.  Like that Cardinal that landed on my window seal this morning during my Zen meditation; it was a sign.  Birds always are.  Dead birds mean change, love birds mean, well, love, and black birds that flies into one's home, mean's death.  These signs make no distinction about the circumstances of the event or the individual experiencing it, and should be noted: a sign is wholly unique to each individual and subject to personal examination and interpretation to gain a deeper understanding of its meaning.

With his bright red color and powerful call, the cardinal tends to stand out from the crowd. There are times when it may be possible for a little red cardinal to get our attention when nothing else can, especially in times of depression and grief.  So, I meditated on this past week, then looked at today's news, and it came to me.  There is something very significant to the Missouri Boat Sinking this week and Donald Trump.

First, in Branson, Missouri, a tourist "duck" boat capsized killing nine people.  It is devastating.   Eyewitnesses watch the passengers, including children, get completely submerged by the waves.  My heart goes out to these people and they are in my thoughts and meditations.  

A duck boat.

This past week also was the week President Donald Trump met privately with Vladimir Putin and finally some of the Trump's faithful followers are seeing the evil-intentions of this man who has divided the world with Hitler type hate -- note, I didn't compare him to Hitler, just his rhetoric: calm down. 

I really have tried to like Donald Trump, but now, there is no doubt in my mind this man whose birthday happens to fall on the same day that Benedict Arnold was hanged for treason, is unfit to be president of the United States of anything!  And so I analyzed this Duck Boat tragedy and see how it is a universal warning to those of us with eyes to see -- as Jesus would say.  The following is my reasoning:

Before the duck boat went under, the passengers were told by the captain not to put on their life-preservers because everything was fine.   And so the passengers did as their captain said, and nine died.   Now, the number properties of "nine" tell us there is something spiritually  happening here.  Something I liken to a "watcher" or "angel" saying, "hey, look, there is something wrong here with the captain!  And that captain is Donald (D as in Duck), Trump (T as in boaT)."  

Just as the captain of that boat told everyone the boat wasn't sinking, and they knew better, I mean, look at the pictures, there is water in their laps!:  the Republicans are telling us, not to reach for our life-vest because the country isn't sinking under the chaos of Trump with his lies and false claims of success are flowing over the minds of reasoning Americans like that water rushing over the shoulders of those poor passengers on a Missouri duck boat. 

Now, I know you are asking: what does a boat accident in Branson Missouri have to do with the current leader of the free world -- come on, now I know you see the irony in Trump and Free World in the same sentence, you have to give me that! --  If there is one place in the USA where you can be comfortable being a liberal Democrat, it is on a sailboat in the San Francisco Bay, no doubt, on the other hand, if there is one place you can be comfortable in a Make-America-Great-Again hat... you guessed it: Branson Missouri.  It'a as Republican as a tin building hosting an X rated video store with two trucks in the parking lot at 7 o'clock in the morning seen from you car driving down highway 357.

Oh, and the Cardinal thing, yeah, well, is there any other bird so Not Like Donald Trump?  The Cardinal is honest, like a church Cardinal, strong, it holds itself with true pride, not ego pride, a bird that Whats-Your-Sign.com reminds us: ...makes a fantastic animal totem. It reminds us to hold ourselves with pride – not ego pride. Rather, the cardinal asks us to stand a little taller, be a bit more regal, step into our natural confidence as if we were born to lead with grace and nobility.

Cardinal bumps Trump? Trump bobs head like a bird?

  

A Brief History of the Cardinal 

(From Cardinal Signs and Symbols)

While we usually think of a symbol as a visual form, much of the meaning can be found in the origins of the word that identifies that form. The history of the word cardinal sheds a lot of light on it’s symbolic meanings today. So, where did the roots of the word cardinal come from? And, how did the word cardinal come to define the bird?

  

Interestingly, the base root of the word cardinal is actually connected to the word cross.  It comes from the Old Norse word, kross and the Latin word, crux. For the ancient Romans, the Latin word crux, had come to mean “a guidepost that gives directions at a place where one road becomes two”. Today the root word cross is contained in many words we commonly use: across, crucial, crucify, cruise (to cross the sea, or go backwards and forwards), cruiser, crusade, crux, and excruciate.

The cross is of course universally recognized as a Christian symbol, but the symbol of the cross was not used by Christian’s alone.  The same symbol was also used by early Mexicans. It was one of the emblems of Quetzalcoatl, as lord of the four cardinal points, and the four winds that blow therefrom. In the cardinal sense, the cross represents fourfold systems: the four directions: north, south, east, and west; the four seasons; the four elements; the four winds; etc.

In the thirteenth century, Dante attributed Cardinal Virtues of Justice, Prudence, Temperance and Fortitude, to the four brightest stars in the Southern Cross. This was done before the discovery and naming of the constellation (in 1679). As history reveals, the early explorers used the four cardinal directions in the form of a cross to discover the new world.  Our world itself is constructed in the shape of a cross, whose four points correspond to the four cardinal points or intersections of the horizon with the meridian. 

So, how did the word cardinal come to define the bird? The word cardinal originates from the Latin word cardinali, meaning principal or chief. The chief Catholic priests from the Vatican in Rome are Cardinals, who wear ‘cardinal’ red  cassocks. Cardinal is also a vivid red color. The family of birds, known as the Cardinalis, takes its name from the color of the cassocks worn by the cardinal priests.

Now that we have seen where the symbols of the cross and the color come from, we can continue to the heart of the matter. Cardinal is also rooted in the heart, originating from the root word cardo, meaning heart. Cardo, also stems into the word cardinis, used for the hinge of a door, or a pivot; that on which something turns. In Latin, cardo means hinge or axis, something on which all else depends, as does the general meaning of the word crucial. What does a hinge have to do with a heart?

A hinge (cardo) is literally the place on which a door swings and is always moved. It is so called after the term Greek kardia (heart), because as the heart (cor) governs and moves the whole person, just as this pivot governs and moves a door. The cross has four points, and the human heart has four chambers or closed spaces, two atria and two ventricles. In Latin cardium means heart. In Greek word for heart is kardia, which comes from the Indo-European root kerd meaning heart and that is as far back into the history of the word cardinal we were able to reach.

Old fashion love and the Trump strife.

So what is really happening in the world?  I think one can answer this by remembering the philosopher Empedocles.   I know,  he is a joke to most professors of philosopher because of his beliefs that we came from body parts that roamed the earth until they all evolved together into the human species we now call "man"; this theory stated that a lung and foot hopped around until it was eaten by a more developed lung, foot, and leg.   Okay, so the guy did mushrooms.

 
The other thing that makes philosophy snobs laugh is the fact that Empedocles thought he was a god, and so ended his life by jumping into the Etna crater to prove it.  If he only would have showed up three days later with a woman at hid knees... but I digress.  

He wasn't a god, what he was was a philosopher who is credited with giving us the fact that "air" is "matter."  His reasoning for this was that when water is spun around in a bucket on a string, it doesn't come out because of the air holding it.   Out of this, he opined that there were four elements -- although he didn't call them elements -- of fire, water, earth, and air.  

Not a small feat for a man who lived in a time when losers of an election were killed by the winning politician.    A thing the Trump MAGA followers undoubtly wound like to see us return to.   This brings us to the thing I most appreciate from Empedocles: his love cycle.  

Empedocles believed that the world had begun in "love" or "Philotes" until the "strife" force,m or "Neikos" took over.   

According to Empedocles, the Goddess Love and the God Strife, offspring of Night (Nux), were ancient deities, predating the Olympians. The original golden age was the Reign of Aphrodite, when all things were united and Love permeated the length and breadth of the well-rounded cosmic sphere. But Strife, as the River Styx surrounding the Sphere, broke its Unity, and cleaved the One into Many. It divided the four elements, which ever since combine and separate under the opposing actions of Love and Strife to produce the changing world with its manifold objects and qualities. As Heraclitus said, "Through Strife all things come into being." Empedocles said that Strife also divided the one immortal soul of Love into many individual souls, each comprising both Love and Strife in some proportion; these immortal souls are reborn time and again into mortal bodies, which are animated by mortal souls compounded from the four elements.

And so you have it boys-and-girls: the best explanation I know of to explain the Donald Trump "strife" the world is suffering now.  And as Empedocles knew, "love" will come back around and totally devoid the guy.  Soon I hope.

Hang in there.

Thank you Empedocles. 
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Speaking of love:

Four days before his assassination on January 30th, 1948, Gandhi explained that his escape from an assassin’s bomb the week before “was God’s mercy,” adding, “I am quite prepared to obey His order when it does come.  I talk of leaving Delhi on February 2, but I do not myself feel that I shall be able to go away from here.  After all, who knows what is going to happen tomorrow?”

On the night before he was killed, he said, “If I die of disease or even a pimple, it will be your duty to shout to the world from the rooftops that I was a false mahatma.  Then my soul, wherever it may be, will rest in peace.  But, if an explosion took place as it did last week, or somebody shot at me and I received his bullet on my bare chest without a sigh with Rama’s name on my lips, only then should you say I was a true mahatma.”  The following day he received three bullets in his bare chest and dies with Rama’s name on his lips.

John Lennon, another pacifist who was assassinated, once commented, “Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King are great examples of fantastic nonviolent who died violently….I’m not sure what it means when you’re such a pacifist that you get shot.”

Imagine there's no country...nothing to kill or die for....

 

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 In Lithuania, on this day, the ancient goddesses of love are invoked during an annual lovers' festival called the Binding of the Wreaths.  At sunset, all the participants go into the forest and gather summer flowers.  The flowers are then made into wreaths, crown circlets, and streamers to be exchanged between the lovers on the days that follow. 

More proof this is the year of the woman.

CAPE CANAVERAL - Launch towers that have graced Florida's Cape Canaveral since the early days of the space program came down Thursday morning like a Good-Bye Phallic Symbol.  Yes, launch stations are more uterus now, slender, flat, straight forward.

#metoo

The demolition was triggered around 7 a.m. by the Commander of the Air Force 45th Space Wing.
A simultaneous detonation brought down some structures at launch complex 17, a few miles away from Port Canaveral.

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In Seneca Falls, New York, on this day in 1848 the first women's rights convention ever held i the United States convenes, with almost 200 women in attendance.  It was organized by Lucretia Mort and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who met at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, England.  As women, they were barred from the convention floor, and this was the impetus for their founding of the movement.

Did you get that year?  1848.  It sure has been a long battle. 

Stanton and Mort

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Aphrodite

In ancient Greece, people celebrated the Adonia on this date, the midpoint of Adonis' traditional six months' presence on Earth and the anniversary of his wedding to Aphrodite.  The ancient Egyptian New Year falls on this day, which is the birthday of the mother goddess Isis and the anniversary of her marriage to Osiris, the god of vegetation.

Nero's Lie and Hate Released

According to the Roman senator and historian Tacitus, writing some fifty years after the event, a fire began on the hot summer's night of July 18, 64 AD in the southeastern end of Rome's largest hippodrome, the Circus Maximus.  Because the majority of Romans lived in wooden houses, the fire spread rapidly through the city, where it continued to burn for five days.  By the time it had been extinguished, it had razed four of Rome's fourteen districts and severely damaged seven others.  Many important buildings were destroyed, including Nero's palace, the Temple of Jupiter Stator, and the hearth where the sacred fire was kept burning in the Temple of Vesta.  The people of Rome were devastated and looked to their emperor for help.

When the fire started, Nero was taking his ease at Antium, a resort town on the coast some 31 miles south of the capital.  Concerned with his city, Nero hurried back to the capital in order to coordinate efforts to extinguish the fire and provide disaster relief for the population, with funds paid out of his own treasury.  When the fire was doused, Nero opened his palaces to survivors whose houses had been destroyed and ensured that food and other essentials were distributed. 

Once the fear and shock had worn off, people started looking around for someone to blame.  It was widely known that Nero had grand plans for the reconstruction of Rome, so rumors began to circulate around the city that it was the emperor himself who had ordered Rome to be burned to the ground.  Alarmed by the growing hostility of the people and desperate to retain their loyalty, he looked for a scapegoat, at which point his gaze fell upon a new sect called the Christians. 

Tacitus goes on to say that Nero created a diversion and subjected to the most extraordinary tortures those hated for their abominations by the common people called Christians.  So an arrest was made of all who confessed to be Christian and all were convicted, mocked, and throne to dogs, or nailed to crosses, or doomed to the flames. 

That's the story being told 64 years after the Christ thing, which, probable helped convert more Pagan's than the actual Christ Story.  But was it true?  In his book "The Greatest Lies in History," Alexander Canduci points out a few facts to the contrary.

Rome was not the marble, wide streets of the movies.  It was actually a jumble of wooden terraced homes, and fires were very common.  So when Tacitus claims that the only way a fire could have spread was from arson, doubtful.

 Romans knew of the Jesus story, a minor Jewish prophet who had been executed in the distant province of Jude’s some thirty years earlier, but the Christian sect of followers had barely been in existence for a generation, with most of its small membership drawn from the lower classes.
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On this day in 1925, seven months after being released from Landsberg jail, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler publishes the first volume of his personal manifesto, Mein Kampf.  Dictated by Hitler during his nine-month stay in prison -- and edited and contributed to by all-the-great-hate-minds-of-the-day -- Mein Kampf, or My Struggle, was a bitter narrative filled with anti-Semitic outpourings, disdain for morality, worship of power, and the blueprints for his plan of Nazi world domination.  The autobiographical work soon became the bible of Germany's Nazi Party.  In the early 1920's, the ranks of Hitler's Nazi Party swelled with resentful Germans who sympathized with the party's bitter hatred.

Trump and Hitler proceed from the same apocalyptic starting point.  In Trump’s narrative, America is on the brink of ruin.  At least a portion of his listeners, as did Hitler’s, passionately believes the downfall scenario. Each man is (or was) skilled at setting up bogeymen:  For Hitler, it was Jews, Marxists, the hated French and the “lying press.”  For Trump, it is Muslims, Mexican illegals, the Islamic State terrorist group and the Chinese who are supposedly cleaning our clocks, and the “dishonest” news media.  Yet, like Hitler, Trump understands the importance of the news media to his political enterprise.  In 1987, Trump wrote in the book he now holds up as a kind of Trump bible, The Art of The Deal: “If you are a little different, or a little outrageous, or if you do things that are bold or controversial, the press is going to write about you.  Hitler couldn’t have agreed more.  After a particularly violent beer hall rally in Munich, he said:  “It makes no difference whatever whether they laugh at us or revile us.... The main thing is that they mention us.”

     “Progress and civilization could be achieved only through the genius and energy of a great personality.”
                                                                                                             Adolf Hitler

     “I alone can save America, save the world, save you!”
                                                                       
                                                          Donald Trump at the 2016 National Republican Convention.

TWA Flight 800 101

It was on this day (July 17, 1996) twenty-two years ago that a sleepy, seven-hour flight from New York’s JFK airport to Paris burst into a fireball and plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean.  No one survived.


Two years after the flight, with no clear cause, conspiracies flew:  Syrian-backed terrorist shot it down and President Clinton suppressed info to win re-election.

Clinton had it shot down because two of the passengers were Arkansas troopers on their way to Paris to spill-the-beans on Clinton’s corruption to Le Monde newspaper.

Then the most popular:  a friendly-fire missile strike.

Pierre Salinger 1970

The missile strike rumor was mainly being splattered about by Pierre Salinger: a World War II veteran turned spokesman for President John F Kennedy, and finally, the character “Lucky Pierre” on the 60’s television version of Batman.  Salinger wrote a book and went on the media-circuit tour stating he had proof the aircraft was shot down by “friendly fire” from the USA.  His proof from a video-still of a blip of light headed for the aircraft just seconds before the crash.  This claim became more valued when 150 eyewitnesses came out and stated that they had seen a light hit the plane before its crash.

Salinger as a crooked lawyer on Batman.

Following Salinger’s claims, James Sanders published his book on the subject titled “The Downing of TWA Flight 800,” where he wrote about having uncovered a few pieces of foam from the crash with reddish stains on it.  These stains, he wrote, were the stains from missile fire.

In the end, CIA investigators answered the call by stating that the “strike of light” the witnesses saw, was just leaky fuel, which fuels exploded from a bad wire, and that the aircraft had faulted wiring.

So that should have ended it, but then, why did the CIA get involved in commercial airline flight?

It’s a conspiracy.

Good bye Capitalism, hello Putin-ism (soon to be one word).

Part One: Death of Capitalism

So President Trump is meeting with Vladimir Putin today and the world is giddy.   I for one am glad he is, I mean, birds-of-a-feather flock together.  And, in case you haven't heard, or didn't know, Putin was elected by running on an Anti-Amnerican/Anti-Jewish, Make Russia Great Again platform.   Yes, the ex-KGB (as if there really ever is such a thing) communist, ran stating things like "America is why Russia has Failed."   And so the same Fake Communism that gave Communism a bad name, is now a Fake Capitalism which seems to be repeating in the Putin clone:  Donald Trump.   Okay, so Trump may not be a Putin clone, but he is playing right into his Putin's hands by insulting the democratic leaders in the world who have always been our allies, and favoring corrupt, murderous dictators like Kim Jong Un in North Korea, along with his man-crush on Vladimir Putin in Russia.   Also, with Trump's trade wars and statements like, "The European Union is a Foe," Trump himself is stating that capitalism as we know it, is dead.   Trump states that every US president before him is an idiot, and that for the USA to be great again, it needs to change to... into what?  We don't know, but judging from Trump's actions and words, it sure sounds and looks a lot like the type of power that has kept Putin in power for eighteen years.  Is this really happening?  Shit has hit the fan in the USA, and the current Republican Party is allowing it because they are a victims of their own hate-media which their base listen's too, and so if Fox News and Hannity like it, it is what is best for the country, even if it means never having a free election again, well, at least not until it benefits Democrats.  It really isn't far-fetched reasoning here to wonder what they will do when Trump completes his Putin-nization and announces that there won't be an election because no one else is as smart as him and capable of saving the country from more idiots like former presidents Obama and Bush.

 

Part Two:  The USA stands no chance against Putin with Trump as President.

When dealing with Putin, Trump is either a trader and willing to sell out our country for his own personal gain, i.e., Benedict Arnold -- who's death day happens to be Trump's birthday -- or, Trump is just an idiot; either way we lose.

Say what you will about Vladimir Putin, but he has been running Russia for eighteen years, where Trump has only been ruining the USA for eighteen months.  Also, note, Trump has made a lot of money in Russia, a fact why we will not ever see his tax-returns.  And, with this combination of Trump thinking he is the smartest man ever (you have to give me this based on his every word), and his fond memories of previous dealing with Putin, Putin will win.  How this will probably play out: capitalism will go the way of communism and we will be left with fake news, fake elections, and a fake president: Russian capitalism.   

Good bye Capitalism, hello Putin-ism (soon to be one word).

Trump Mocking Capitalism

The Gnostics saw Eve as the "awakener."

Esoteric Sunday

The Gnostics interpreted the story of Genesis differently than did ancient Jews and Christians.  To the Gnostics, Adam and Eve were not historical people, the predecessors of humankind, or the original couple who brought sin upon humanity, but rather the personification of two principles indwelling in humans.  While Adam personified the soul, Eve represented the spirit.  Adam represented the "lower self" and Eve the "higher self."  Right away you can see the problem that orthodox Christianity might have with this idea because it places Eve in a superior position to that of Adam.

The Gnostics viewed Eve as Adam's numinous "awakener."  The second century Gnostic text titled Apocryphon of John reveals that Adam was covered in the "drunkenness of darkness" and he awakened when Luminous Epinoia (or Eve) appeared and "lifted the veil which lay over his mind."

Before orthodox Christianity established the belief in the Trinity--that is, belief in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit--and the belief subsequently became part of the orthodox Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed, some early Christian communities venerated a deity named Luminous Epinola as the Divine Eve.  The word "luminous" suggests light, so Gnostics undoubtedly saw her as a "light bearer," empowered to illuminate the sacred in their lives.  The Apocryphon of John states that she is humanity's capacity to know God.  The narrator of the Apocryphon of John asked Jesus if every human receives her, to which Jesus replied, "Yes."

The Gnostic Eve stands in dramatic contrast to the Orthodox Christian view of Eve as a weak, impressionable woman, powerless to resist the Serpent's temptation to eat from the tree in the center of the Garden of Eden.  Eve "saw that the tree was good for food...pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise" (Genesis 3:6).  She wanted those things.  Consider this in the cultural context of the times of Jesus, when women were considered the property of men.  Because of the times in which they lived, women were not educated and likely not well versed in the ancient scriptures, although they would have had some knowledge in order to train their children and practice the faith themselves.  Until Jesus came along with his egalitarian beliefs and practices, women were not thought capable of understanding the deep wisdom of the scriptures.  Many Jews and Christians saw Eve's act of defiance at disobeying God, of eating the apple, and of involving Adam by offering him a taste as a sin against the Father God.  The second chapter of 1 Timothy describes the blame assigned to Eve for desiring knowledge and partaking of the forbidding fruit.

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Of the 435 members of the House of Representatives in 1971, only twelve were woman; in the Senate there was only one woman.  With woman the population majority at the time, something wasn't right, and so on July 13 of that year, three hundred women gather in Washington, D.C. to found the National Women's Political Caucus.

As of May 2018 there are 84 woman in congress making the percentage 19.3%.  This is way better than 1971, but not as good as it will be next year at this time, for there are 472 woman running for congress this year, and even better, it includes more woman of color than ever before.  The Cut online magazine calls it The Other Women's March on Washington and the fastest way to fix a broken system. 

While the vision of women storming the ramparts of government is radical from one vantage point, from others it’s as American as the idea of representative democracy laid out by our forefathers (like Great-great-great-great-grandpa Frelinghuysen!). “Representative citizens coming from all parts of the nation, cobblers and farmers — that was what was intended by the founders,” says Marie Newman, a former small-business owner and anti-bullying advocate who is challenging Illinois Democrat Dan Lipinski in a primary. “You come to the House for a while and bring your ideas and then you probably go back to your life.” Not only has her opponent been in office for 13 years, Newman notes, but his father held the same seat for 20 years before that. “It’s a family that has reigned supreme, like a monarchy, for over 30 years,” she says.

And why is there an uptick in woman running for congress?

You guessed: The Tic-Tac Man Himself.

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On this day in 1985, Live Aid concerts were concurrently held in Philadelphia and London to raise money for African famine relief.  Forty bands played for a total of sixteen hours before an audience of 1.6 billion people, viewing to 156 countries.  It was such a huge event, the the band Led Zeppelin played again for the first time since losing their drumming John Bonham in 1980 and swearing to play again.

In true spirit of what really was important, after a few minutes of Led Zeppelin taking the live stage for the first time in six years, ABC broke to a six-minute commercial.   Yes, Led Zeppelin came back together which definitely was the height of the show and all the other countries played the concert without commercial interruptions because the television stations decided to skip on one-day profits for the cause, not in the USA, profits baby, profits hold no quarters.

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Finally, looks like there is another Un-American activity.

Here's how it went down:

This guy in a blue shirt was asking the person if she was a citizen (note the cop in the background).

Here is the shirt the woman was wearing (note, Puerto Rico is a US territory ass whole).  

 Here is the cop finally asking the guy to leave.

The officer who didn't intervene has resigned.

And what made this uneducated idiot feel emboldened to confront a woman of Latin decent about her shirt?

You guessed:

 

Before Trump this guy wouldn't have been so emboldened, even with a belly full of beer. 

End of story, for now.


Or is it?