The Peaceful Gnome

How an Insular Beltway Elite Makes Wars of Choice More Likely - Conor Friedersdorf - The Atlantic Do you wonder where all of this "pressure to act" that the Emperor is supposedly under comes from?  This story from the Atlantic explains it pretty well.

  Parliament Revolts, Brits to Stay Out of Syria -- News from Antiwar.com Seems to me that if Emperor Obama refuses to consult with congress before attacking Syria the military should REFUSE to launch what will CLEARLY be an unconstitutional, illegal and immoral attack.  Of course they won't do that because they are just as useless when it comes to honoring their OATHS to uphold and defend the constitution as are the spineless and gutless cowards in congress.  It's humiliating when even the British Parliament has more backbone than the American Congress. 

Even Jimmy Carter recognizes that the old Republic is dead! I stumbled upon this story today, somehow it barely got mentioned in the Imperial Press Service coverage of "News" last month. I give you this so those who think I exaggerate the death of the Republic can have a more moderate voice to consult, Jimmy Carter: Soe Zeya Tun | Reuters  Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter gestures before delivering a speech at a hotel in Yangon on April 5, 2013. By Peter Taber, Special to the BDN Posted  July 31, 2013,  at  1:16 p.m. Anyone is naive who thinks the commonly available sources for news in the U.S. are effectively superior to the Soviet news organization Pravda, whose Orwellian name is a hybrid noun meaning both “truth” and “justice.” There seems to be little difference between the dominant news organ of the old U.S.S.R. and U.S. corporate media, which might just as well have a single outlet perhaps titled “Fairalanced” (an English hybrid noun I...

Turns out I cannot NOT talk about the obscenity that is the American Empire.  The fact that there is a constant stream of talk about Emperor Obama ordering an attack on yet another Middle Eastern state makes me want to vomit and go buy one of those nasty red white and blue bits of cloth with stripes and stars to clean it up... maybe burn it on the trash pile after it dries. First of all I am old enough to recall the days when this Empire still at least pretended to be a Republic, and when the press questioned Imperial Pronouncements and sought independent verification of what they said and called them on it when it turned out to be lies.  This is no longer the the way things are in the American Empire.  Today we have an all powerful Emperor who does not even pretend to consult the impotent cowards of the Senate and the House before unleashing the Imperial Legions on the women and children of far away lands, raining down death and destruction to enforce the will of the Emp...

Oh my, looking at current events in the Middle East I really do regret my irrevocable vow not to pollute this blog with politics.  Please Pray for peace and justice in the Middle East.  It will not come from the United States shoving it's big nose in places it doesn't belong, that is for sure.   So, see, this post was really about PRAYER :-)  I won't go in to a long rant about... the US and it's myriad little wars... no... I won't do it!  Arrrrgh!  :-p~

What Mary may have been thinking at the end her life, awesome. http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/issuesetc.org/podcast/sbotwweedon08-23-13.mp3

It has now been 15 days since I deactivated my Facebook and Twitter accounts  as an experiment to see if I could reduce the amount of time and energy I wasted online.  After a fortnight of no Facebook I find that I have returned to my older habits of reading books and writing.  It turns out that Facebook had been stealing so much of my time that I read little else.  Before Facebook I used to read a couple of books per week.  During the now-ended Facebook phase of my life my book reading ground to a near stop, I was lucky to get through one book a month!  I must say that I do not miss anything about Facebook.  Not the announcements of glorious victory in various games, not the incessant "cute" cat pictures, not the bombastic political posts from left and right wings both, and yes, I'm guilty of those myself, I vow not to pollute this blog with them in the future. I don't miss the lame jokes, the myriad "blessings from God" posts nor the "new age"...

I'm posting this morning from my RV parked on a city street in San Leandro. I believe this is my penultimate visit to this place. In September we'll be moving to a new house in Tracy.  This will be close enough to BART to make staying in the RV unnecessary.  Well, that's what I think now, I'll have to try it for a while to be certain.  This small space living experiment has met with mixed results.  On the one hand minimizing clutter and excess belongings makes it easier to clean and just feels better over all.  On the other hand being in a small space doesn't work on a crowded city street.  If you can be outside, like in the country, it might be OK.  But being in an RV on the street is pretty claustrophobic to me.  So, farewell street living, one more time and I'm done.  :-) 

A sequel or perhaps a remake of the classic "Cosmos" series.  Very cool.  Of course Neil deGrasse Tyson is an atheist/materialist so it's going to be tilted that way, but still, I'll bet it will be interesting, Tyson is anything but boring :-) Dang, I may be forced to actually hook up basic cable...

I've been holding off on posting about this subject for quite a while.  It is a subject that is very important to me, in that I've always been fascinated by origins.  Where did we come from?  Where did the earth come from?  Where did the galaxy and the entire cosmos come from?  Why is there anything at all?  I've read extensively on cosmology, astronomy, geology and biology and it's a never ending source of wonder to me the way things have developed over time from the simplest beginnings to the human mind, the most complex thing we know of. The reason I was waiting to write was because, as you may recall, I allowed this subject to dominate my thinking to the point that I abandoned faith in God and changed my religious affiliation in an attempt to locate a church that was both theologically conservative and liturgical and at the same time fully accepting of the picture painted by science.  Turns out there ain't no such place. :-(  It also turn...

This is a great, short and to the point explanation of the real end of the American Republic  back in 1913.  It was already badly damaged by the Civil War but this actually finished it off. http://www.freemansperspective.com/1913-america/

Caesar is not amused by being forced speak to the peasants.  "Shut up and trust me" he said.  Visibly Annoyed Obama Unveils Non-Reforms on NSA Surveillance -- News from Antiwar.com

The City of Ripon has probably the easiest to remember bus schedule I've ever seen:  Thursday.  :-) The Ripon bus service is a fifteen mile radius from the city limits The City of Ripon offers a transit bus service to the general public, persons with disabilities, and our senior citizens. The city bus runs every Thursday unless special trips are arranged. At least one week notice is needed to secure a driver for special trips. For more information, please contact the Senior Center at  599-7441 , or Sarah Hollander at  599-2108 . Bus Fare  Thursday Shopping Trip $1.00 Concert $1.50 Special Trip $15.00 http://www.cityofripon.org/Community/community-resources.html#bus

I've noticed already, after having stopped using the two major "social media" sites of Facebook and Twitter for only a couple of days, that I'm going through the day at a much more relaxed pace.   OK, maybe not quite that relaxed but you get the picture ;-)

I'm reducing my social media participation by deactivating my Facebook and Twitter accounts.  I anticipate that this will be a good thing.  I didn't make any announcements on those accounts, just shut them off.  This is nothing against my "friends" on those services, it's just a huge time sucker that I don't want to bother with anymore.   I will probably post more here though, which means almost no one will be reading what I write, which is fine with me :-)  I mostly write for my own entertainment and as a way to vent when I'm frustrated.  Speaking of being frustrated, BART was supposed to be on strike today so I didn't take the RV into the Bay Area on Saturday night the way I normally do.   I had planned to drive all the way into the city and park in a garage across the street ($15) but found out when I got up that the governor intervened so the strike is delayed yet again.  So I ended up losing sleep for nothing, but Idid save that 15 bucks at l...