Web Log and Editorial for 9.15.24

Only one link. Something, or rather someone, came up yesterday and ate up my online time. But I did see yesterday's big news story and especially the security expert's Big Bad Idea about candidates avoiding "dangerous" open-air exercise and big outdoor rallies...Candidates are politicians. Politicians whom our system allows to succeed are loud, grinning extroverts whose job requires them to make speeches that a majority of the audience will hear as slick if not as outright lies; some of those speeches may be outright lies. Therefore all candidates in national elections are and will probably always be easy to hate. But making campaigning and service in public office even more like "being a state prisoner" than they've always been is no solution--do we want all the candidates to die from COVID due to lack of sunshine? 

I think we have to look at the tone of campaign rhetoric. Yes, it's always had that "vote for me because my opponent is a jerk" tone. But we need to be more careful about that. In order to call out the dangers of bad policies we need to be careful about hating people. Few speeches or written articles are written with sociopaths as their intended audience. Most are addressed to friends. We need always to bear in mind that what we say or write in public is likely to be heard and read by some victim of Prozac Dementia whose inner demons are just looking for a target for the homicide as he plans his homicide-suicide.

One among many reasons why this web site does not support Harris is her Mean Girl attitude, her assumption that she can snub people who had wanted to support her and then still claim that people (other than the ones whose existence in cyberspace she wants to deny, until she can wipe it out) "see her as a friend and a neighbor." Well, maybe in a city neighborhood full of people whose unspoken agreement is "This is not home; we only stay till our jobs let us get away," so nobody speaks to anybody, she might be seen as that sort of neighbor. Of which who needs another one? But while this web site bashed Obamacare, this web site also expressed respect and good will for Obama. While this web site bashed the current administration's policies, it also called for respect for the seniority and compassion for the physical frailty of President Biden. While I personally remember Trump as the blight on a part of Alexandria I loved, back in the 1980s, and have never claimed to like him, I certainly wouldn't go so far as to blame the victim for the evildoers who hate and are trying to murder him. And while I have thought how convenient it would be if the whole Party of Censorship were stricken with Tower of Babel syndrome and all started babbling and braying like Kamala when she's not had a month to practice repeating someone else's speech, only more so, and frothing and falling down and grabbing at each other and maybe soaking their pants, so that they all had to go home and stay home...I DO NOT think that shooting at any of them is going to help anything. 

To those who want to murder their political enemies, I ask: Do you really think their ideas deserve the boost of having been endorsed by a martyr?

We need to keep political rhetoric levelheaded and focussed on ideas. The ideas may deserve to be hated. The people who spout the ideas need to be educated, if necessary by putting them out of work, but not made into martyrs.

That Trump miraculously survived two attempted murders is only making it more obvious to some of the electorate that God wants him back in the White House. And the Party of Censorship needs to know that payback time will come. Ds whose rhetoric can be seen as incitements to violence can easily be seen as eeeevildoers who belong in the same places Crooks and Routh and Hinckley belong.

I have always liked Robert Reich. I've never met him in real life. I know him only through a long-ago book called Locked in the Cabinet but I remember reporting to George Peters that that book was the best of the Clinton staff books, in the sense of being the most readable, seeming to have been written at least as much by the nominal writer as by the hack who made the others sound so much alike, and also in the sense of telling a lot of truth about the Federal Reserve Bank. (I was acquainted with several other Clinton employees, because I was one of the massage therapists to whom the official White House one referred people; I'd like to write about them as politely as George Stephanopoulos wrote about us the top hundred massage therapists, in All Too Human, so I'll stop here.) Because I liked Reich's book, and because I like to read both sides, I signed up to follow him on Substack. Where several of his posts were insightful, interesting, nostalgic, and/or funny. He posted a cartoon inviting readers to speculate about a conversation between two head lice on Trump's head. Well, anyone can pick up head lice and some of the suggested conversations were funny. I smiled. 

But his post this morning, about how Trump's bashing the immigrants made him a blameworthy victim, crossed a line. And I don't think Reich or many of his readers even realized how evil it sounded, how easily political rhetoric can be exploited by the Evil Principle. Reich is a talented writer and undoubtedly as likable, in real life, as his colleagues were. As his readers undoubtedly are. If they were your neighbors they'd be quiet, clean, probably spending most weekends on the road. They'd dress casually but tastefully, as they'd maintain their homes. They'd keep to themselves most of the time and be easy to talk with when there was something to talk about. If they made appointments they'd show up on time. If they hired someone they'd pay the full amount, promptly, in cash; very likely they'd tip. If they agreed to baby-sit your children you wouldn't even have to worry about stupid TV shows or junkfood. And yet there they all were, one political enthusiast feeding another, none of them pausing to think what they were saying, rejoicing that people hated their opponent enough to attempt murder.

I like Scott Adams, too. I follow him...on Rumble, these days, and that's going above and beyond the normal boundaries of being a loyal fan. We're all getting older, we've all looked at too many computer screens for too long, but "vlogging" is just sooo self-indulgent and sooo boring unless you blog about some special technique of your trade or about visiting some unusually beautiful place. But I turn on SA's videos in the background while doing things like putting away laundry. And his comments on the debate on ABC included  that Kamala looked "dark." Well, of course her complexion is dark, she's triracial, under the One Drop Rule she'd be legally Black and she identifies as Black. Problem? And she can fairly be described as pretty; many Mean Girls are. "Something evil," SA went on to say. I can see what he was describing as this mysterious "something evil" in her stage presence. It's the grin. I don't know whether she actually has more teeth than most people do or just stretches her mouth wide enough that the molars show. Bright white teeth, the kind that make middle-aged people ask "Where and how much?" My comments on the debate mentioned that that human-possum hybrid effect looks horrific, too. But is it an "evil" grin or, as a Republican with whom I watched the debate called it, a possum's dung-eating grin? I called it a smirk bordering on a sneer. It's bad, bad, bad body language but it's too typical of women who've been ordered for years to smiiii-yul, and they try, they really try to look as if they were pleased or amused when they're actually nervous or bored or annoyed. It's a look women need to call out when we see it on Harris. We need to notice how bad it looks. We need to ask ourselves whether we're doing it and, if so, why we started and how we can stop. If you think about what your face is doing, tell it to relax! And keep those lips touching each other when you're not speaking! But is it appropriate, in a world full of homicide-suicidal pill poppers, to suggest that Harris or her stage presence is evil? Is that like giving an Insane Admirer the target his Prozac Dementia wants?

Stop it, Ds. Stop it, Rs. We need to bash more vigorously and more thoroughly at the bad ideas, but nor at the people. We need to remember that the candidates are frontmen and, if they are murdered, their party bosses can find other frontmen. In any case it's better form, even if you know a candidate personally as a neighborhood blighter like Trump or a Mean Girl like Harris, while bashing the ideas to express good will toward the people, if you can. I suspect that for most people who have any personal experience of either Trump or Harris that may be very difficult. Lots of jealous spouses don't like Kennedys, too. Nevertheless. We all need to try to avoid bashing the people. 

Because I like Reich, because I'd like to see conservatives conserving the Constitution rather than jumping on the censorship bandwagon, I commented on his Substack: "If I'd written this post, I'd pull it down." If anything is tackier than blaming the guns when a murder is attempted, or committed, it's blaming the victim. I posted that because I could all too easily imagine vindictive Trumpistas wanting to punish Reich for what I read as an ill-advised and tacky post, which they could easily blame for being part of the climate that generated those murder attempts. I remember another comment on the blog of a D e-friend that led to hatespews. When we I's warn D e-friends that they're going too far or not making sense, we expect to be called Rs, and when we warn R e-friends of the same thing, we expect to be called Ds. That's wrong, in the sense of counter-factual, but it's not unreasonable. I expect some of Reich's readers, and possibly Reich if he reads his comments pages, to react with an indignant squeal of "You reactionary Republican!" That's all right. If they go further into their little litany of hate, well, some of the flights of fantasy have been cute, actually. I will always cherish the one about Pris-Zilla the Deplorable who "has nice fingernails, lives in the ocean, and wants to destroy Japan." But really, Ds, that whole "You don't totally support our whole party line, therefore you're a racist, a sexist, elitist, probably homophobic though also probably a lesbian, probably antisemitic, probably educatedat Oxford though also probably illiterate, surely a rich capitalist who hates young people, though also unlovable, unemployable, not necessarily certified yet but certifiably insane, and what else can I think of that is bad?" routine is tired and tiresome and it really says more against you than it does against me, or whomever else you think it's bashing. Give it a flippin' rest already. Give your selves a flippin' rest. Just consider calmly, if you can, whether you really want to be known as victim-blamers, and take the victim-blaming posts down.

Or just be known as victim-blamers. I'm not your mother. I do not, personally, care. But I do care about our American society enough to think that we need a lively debate among clearly distinguished ideas, but we don't need hate toward people.

Politics (Election 2024) 

Dowdy pants or orange spray-on tans, premature aging or fried voice, endless back-and-forth about abortion, and similar stupid stuff aside...we need a President who can stand up to this kind of thing. We need a President who can tell the UN, "You don't get funding or the use of a building if you waste your time even babbling about this kind of thing. Tear it up and show some work on your original job of keeping peace among the savage tribes of Europe if you want, as an organization, to survive." 

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/united-nations-pact-future-digital-ids-vaccine-passports-censorship/ 

Letter to Governor Youngkin

Finally, Virginia considers a glyphosate ban on the State level. I'm surprised, because Virginia is usually frugal about these things and other State and local governments have been told that bans on various poison sprays were unenforceable until backed by federal law, but, enforceable or not, I think a glyphosate ban needs to be part of our law. USPIRG circulated a form letter--two paragraphs with ample room for comments. PIRG's paragraphs appear below in bold; the rest of the letter is mine. The PIRG petition was apparently sent and pulled down on Sunday; I'm sorry I didn't check that and post the letter on Sunday. The PIRG webform for State-level petitions includes fields for a street address; only people who live and vote in Virginia have any business writing to Governor Youngkin,

"

Yes, this is a form circulated on the Internet, but if regulation of toxic chemicals is being restored to the State level, I'd like to correspond further with the office of the Governor. I have a lot to add. 

Glyphosate has been known to be a potential carcinogen for almost a decade. But some formulations of Roundup being used to grow our food and to kill weeds in public spaces still contain this toxic chemical. 

Bayer is taking action to make sure it can't be held responsible for the harmful impacts of Roundup. To protect our communities from dangerous toxic chemicals, I urge you to ban the use of glyphosate-containing products.

Bayer promised to withdraw original Roundup (almost pure glyphosate plus preservatives and scent) from the market in 2020. It brought the product back to the market in 2021 and is currently selling at least two versions of "new" Roundup. The version advertised for suburban lawn care is a weaker concentration of glyphosate. The one sold for agricultural use is a real hell's brew of five "herbicides" plus that old familiar scet, which is also known to be toxic.

Once sensitized to the issue by observing the diversity of glyphosate reactions in an open-air market, I can hardly go anywhere without seeing and hearing evidence of the damage New Roundup for Agricultural Use is doing in my rural community. (Note that the name and address on this webform are for a business not an individual; if you want to know who I am and where I live, in real life, that can be arranged.) Friends and relatives react to it; people in Wal-Mart discuss their reactions to it; TV and Internet advertising reflects the shifting demand for OTC meds for reactions to it. 

Basically what people can expect from exposure to New Roundup feels like any combination of symptoms of measles, mononucleosis, and food poisoning. Some people are disabled by it; some work through it. I have one neighbor who admittedly wants to "run people off" the neighborhood in order to buy land cheap, who deliberately sprays Roundup when it is most likely to harm the rest of us. I'm a celiac with reactions that include internal bleeding. I am being deliberately tortured by this neighbor. I'm younger than he is and can ee his body deteriorating faster than mine. But we currently have a local law that if I say out loud on the street what most people say about this man's behavior on the Internet, I can be charged with disorderly conduct--but when he literally tears strips of bleeding body tissue out of me, the law does nothing.

So I think we need some tight restrictions on outdoor spraying of *any* chemicals. And I think Bayer needs to fund studies of samples taken from patients with all chronic bleeding disorders, and to compensate the patients whose samples show that their bleeding is aggravated by exposure to glyphosate. 

"

Book Review: Dawn Trouble

Title: Dawn Trouble

Author: Bowen Gillings

Date: 2022

ISBN: 979-8215429907

Quote: "It never bodes well to face death before breakfast."

Described as a "quirky science fiction adventure," this is a short story about one ncident in the adventures of two warriors wanderng through a fantasy world. They meet a creature that they intuitively know is called a doomblob. They destroy it, with a little help from a friend.

If you want a short, goofy "book" to read, as it might be to meet a requirement for weekly or monthly book reports, this one's for you. If you just want to laugh at somebody's wild imagination, this e-book will fill your bill, too. 

Butterfly of the Week: Graphium Alebion

As I'm sure you've noticed, Gentle Readers, I have no special expertise to write these things. This is a blog. I'm documentng a learning process. I look at the list, start to set up a post, type "Graphium Alebion" for the title, and think "Have I ever seen the word alebion before? What am I going to learn this week?"

Photo by Byulong.

Oh, not always. We have featured a couple of butterflies with which I'm familiar. But this series is showing me what a tiny proportion of the world's butterflies I've ever seen, and how much bigger and more confusing other groups of lifeforms--flowers, moths, fishes--are than butterflies, and what a big, complicated, diverse world this is, and how insanely hubristic it is for anyone to think they can dictate policy to all of it. 

The surprising thing is how much of this information is not on Wikipedia. People are publishing books created by rewriting Wikipedia articles, and yet, although there's enough information about some of these butterfly species to generate a full-length, fully illustrated article, there's no such article on Wikipedia. (Graphium alebion is typical. Lots of photos of living alebion are available online; Wikipedia displays only an old plate of paintings that doesn't even clearly identify which painting was meant to be of alebion. A sketchy description of wing colors--of which subspecies, and what's the size?--is the only text on the page. Once again this web site is going to pull together more data than Wikipedia.)

And one day in an unrelated search I read the current Wikipedia article about a bird species. A lot of people know and love this bird, and had contributed to a thorough, informative, well documented article that was a joy to read...except for a nasty little note someone had pinned to it, saying it was a long read and birds were "of low importance."

They are? To whom? Not to me! How are we going to feel motivated to save the Earth if we don't even know what other lifeforms share our corners of it with us? I think natural history is of high importance. I think nobody should get into grade seven without knowing the names of all the frequently observed lifeforms found within, say, fifty miles of their school.

I think we need more True Greens writing and editing Wikipedia.

End of rant. On to the butterfly itself and what I'm learning about it.

First of all, since its name looks like a typo, who or what was Alebion? Unrelated to the old Roman name for Britain, Alebion was a minor local deity in Greek and Reoman mythology, said to be a son of Poseidon though also said to preside over a section of land in Italy. 

The butterfly is found in China, one of those countries that have lagged behind in documenting their unique lifeforms. For this reason the IUCN says cautiously that its conservation status, exact habitat, and the nature of any threats it may be facing, are unknown. A subspecies chungiyanus is found on Taiwan, and some sources mention other subspecies or "aberrant forms," but Google isn't showing information about their distinctive features. Even whether females look different from males seems to be unknown. 

Because the Swallowtails are so attractive, one Eastern European source says, many are reared commercially for sale to "collectors." Graphium alebion in particular, because of its association with fruit tree blossoms, is found fading and decomposing in frames sold as "Wedding White" butterflies. Digital photography should soon make this type of trade obsolete.

Photo by Xiaodoudou, documenting that it flies in early spring and pollinates fruit trees. The color is sometimes described as yellow, though most of the photographs I'm finding show it as white, with black stripes and pale orange spots on the hind wings.

Eggs are little white beads, laid by ones on the undersides of leaves.

Photo by Chong at gbif.org.. 

 The caterpillar looks like a miniature pickle with small, harmless black bristles scattered over a leaf-green surface. Being a Swallowtail, it has a humpbacked shaped containing an osmeterium.

Photo by Yzcitic_Zj. 

Morgan Griffith on Voter Registration

From U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA-9):

"

Early voting starts on September 20^th in Virginia, and because there is some discussion in the press about the SAVE Act, I want to detail my involvement with the bill.

The SAVE Act prohibits non-citizens from voting by requiring states to obtain proof-of-citizenship when registering individuals to vote in federal elections.

Earlier this year I was one of six Members of the House who voted to send the SAVE Act to the full House for consideration.

During the summer, I supported the SAVE Act when it came to the House floor. The legislation passed with bipartisan support, though most Democrats voted against it.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Senate has yet to consider the legislation.

Non-citizen voting is complicated by federal government efforts to have federal agencies register voters and become political get-out-the-vote organizations, done on the order of someone who, at the time, was a candidate for president.

The Biden-Harris Administration directed executive agencies via Executive Order 14019 to work with local partners to register voters and turn out votes.

While the administration will tell you they are just protecting the vote, the involvement of numerous federal agencies is unprecedented.

Further, if their efforts are innocent, why haven’t they responded to House Republicans’ requests for the details of their strategic get-out-the-vote plans?

West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner testified before a House Administration Committee hearing to discuss his efforts to protect West Virginia elections. His state has removed 400,000 names from their voter rolls and implemented voter ID requirements.

Because of the federal Motor Voter law, every person applying for a driver’s license with their state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) receives a voter registration application. The various states’ DMVs don’t check citizenship status before giving out the voter registration application.

Because they receive a registration form from a government agency, many non-citizens don’t know they are not supposed to vote and apparently some of them register to vote.

The same thing is likely to happen with federal agencies registering people with whom they come in contact.

I believe that is why the federal government has never done this before.

As far as I know, the agencies are not checking to see if a person they are dealing with is a citizen who is eligible to vote in federal elections before giving them voter registration forms.

From the non-citizen’s view, the government encouraged them to register. Therefore, it must be legal to vote!

That is why we need the SAVE Act.

The SAVE Act makes clear that non-citizens have no business voting in American elections.

Shouldn’t U.S. states be required to use their authority to obtain proof-of-citizenship when registering people to vote in federal elections?

When non-citizens have the opportunity to register to vote, some will vote, diluting the voting power of actual American citizens.

Last year, in order to address non-citizen voting, I introduced the NO VOTE for Non-Citizens Act. If a locality wants non-citizens to vote in their local election, the bill would require separate voter rolls for local and federal elections.

This push to address non-citizen voting comes as a result of looking at weaknesses in American election administration and recent state actions cleaning voter rolls.

In August, Governor Youngkin made a critical step by issuing Executive Order 35. The order codified security procedures put into place during the Youngkin Administration, which included stringent ballot security, complete and thorough counting machine testing, and best-in-the-nation voter list maintenance.

Following the Executive Order, the Youngkin Administration removed over 6,300 non-citizens from Virginia’s voter rolls.

The integrity of our elections is also threatened by potential cheating via political entities.

The House Administration Committee, on which I serve, is investigating ActBlue, a website that raises campaign funds for Democratic candidates.

ActBlue collects campaign contributions from donors and then sends funds to various Democratic candidates and causes.

According to whistleblower allegations, ActBlue is potentially skirting campaign donation laws.

ActBlue allows donations through Paypal, Venmo, Google Pay, prepaid credit cards and gift cards. These contribution methods do not check or use card verification value, or CVV.

This failure makes manipulation and fraud by malicious actors easier.

In August, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares sent a letter to ActBlue requesting more information on the platform’s verification processes and procedures when assessing the legitimacy and accuracy of donor and contribution information.

As of the date of this writing, the AG’s investigation into ActBlue is ongoing.

Our elections must be secure in order to ensure fair outcomes and restore confidence in U.S. elections. That is why I continue to support the SAVE Act.

If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office.  You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov.

" 

Web Log for 9.13-14.24

Spending more time reading e-mail and less time reading blogs makes a heavy link log every time. At least I found some music links to lighten up the end of this log.

Boycott

Free speech advocates want to stay away from Dunkin Donuts:

https://rumble.com/v5ecanp-dunkin-donuts.html

Censorship

Trailer for a forthcoming book, no doubt. There'll be enough evidence for a book and we, the censored, want all of it to be printed.

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/twitter-files-state-department-colluded-social-media-censor-content/

Glyphosate Awareness 

"Using up existing suppies"? Commercial fertilizer was found to be so full of glyphosate it killed the crops it was supposed to have fertilized.

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/high-levels-glyphosate-fertilizers-ruined-tomato-crops/ 

Journalism 

Another public-spirited tip for the Kingsport Times-News. Chapter and verse from Dr. Malone explains why the Times-News s allowing certain columnists to froth all over their editorial pages. 

"

organizations like ProPublica, which are entirely funded by philanthropic dollars. As the news business has hemorrhaged subscribers and advertisers in recent years, many newspapers, magazines, and websites have looked to such organizations for financial support. Some of that support is helping struggling publications survive in areas where there might otherwise be a ‘news desert.’ But much of it is linked to a particular set of ideological goals.

Malone MD MS, Robert W . Lies My Gov't Told Me: And the Better Future Coming (p. 392). Skyhorse. Kindle Edition. 

"

But it's a vicious cycle, really. Very few if any people in your audience are interested in reading the incessant hostility, at times spiking into psychotic fugues, with which certain non-local columnists routinely slander and insult your readership. You can't rebuild circulation with column space for morons who think it's even a tenable game plan to carry on the "Republican equals racist" canard. Stop demeaning Black women by letting that wretched specimen who's been donated to you disgrace herself in public. When that "Cynthia" writes something, it's like when somebody's grandmother forgets who her children are. You want to cover up the disgrace, like Noah's good sons Shem and Japheth, and not let the person's shame be seen. 

Music

I don't care for the title, but, for those who are looking for new tunes that are (or can be) played on acoustic instruments and are not dominated by snare drum noise:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2_nXdnpKV0

This one is just pretty.

https://wufeimusic.substack.com/p/1032-riohacha-night-song?

Book Review: Shattered Identity

Title: Shattered Identity

Author: Betsy Love

Date: 2024

Publisher: Lovelight

Quote: "Obviously, he thought I was someone else."

How unlucky is it to see your double? Usually it all depends on how visible your double is to everyone else. Hallucinations of seeing your mirror image as a person on the street, often seeing the person vanish on being recognized, are part of a rare, fatal brain disorder. Simply meeting the person who looks like your long-lost twin, who may in fact be a distant cousin, is usually good for a little harmless confusion. Famous people often pay their doubles to stick around and provide useful confusion; the easiest way to dodge the paparazzi is to let them follow the double around for a few hours. But what happens if everyone else sees your double before you do? 

Two young women staying at a tourist hotel in Mexico notice people behaving strangely toward them. Amelia is rich, involved in lucrative but murky family business, and engaged to Brent, who somehow manages to care more about her than about her money, even though we see her acting like a spoiled rich brat. Savannah is well off, involved in a church where women outnumber men, and worried that at twenty-four she's not found a member of the church to marry; she's come to Mexico to have fun with her best friend and forget about men. 

And it's not only Brent who speaks to Savannah as if they'd ever properly met. Someone is stalking Amelia; someone wants her belongings, though they don't seem all that valuable on the surface. Brent's intolerable ex-wife and her more likable but not necessarily more ethical mother have followed him and Amelia to Mexico. Worse yet, so has Amelia's stepbrother, whom neither Brent nor Amelia trust. When Brent's ex grabs him, Brent pushes her away. She falls down, skins her knee, and complains bitterly. She's not a nice girl at all--she sneers at Amelia being a goody-goody, which is not how Amelia's presented to readers--and Brent can think of lots of people who might have murdered her, when she's found murdered. Because everyone knows he shoved her, however, Brent finds himself the prime suspect.

Both Amelia and Savannah find their vacation experience so creepy that they want to take the very next plane back to the States. When they find themselves boarding the same plane, a lot of the mysteries clear up. Amelia wishes she'd stayed with Brent; Savannah wishes she'd stayed with her friend Haley. But they're on the same plane with each other. Brent and Haley will follow on other planes.

The plane the twenty-something women are on crashes.

The woman who survives has a concussion  She doesn't know which one of the look-alikes she was. Nobody seems to remember which one was wearing what. Recognizing a ring he gave his daughter, Savannah's father takes the concussed woman home from the hospital as Savannah. 

But she has no memories of being Savannah. She doesn't remember being anyone else, either, but she doesn't seem to have grown up in a Christian family. 

The plot may not otherwise seem very "Christian," but both Brent and the woman with the concussion learn to pray as they work their way toward a meeting that will reveal, once the question has been broached, which of the doubles the concussed woman really is. 

Meanwhile, a handsome young man accepts the concussed young woman as Savannah and wants to be her boyfriend. He seems so understanding about the concussion she indisputably has had, and the Christian values she may remember having as she recovers, keeping the relationship wholesome. It's almost like a brother-sister relationship. He wants to be part of her family and help her redecorate her room in her childhood home. Readers know he's interested in doing this because he wants to investigate her room. The concussed woman feels something for this man, and agrees to marry him just because he seems so nice, but she's not sure whether what she feels is attraction or, perhaps, some new symptom of her oncussion.

Sweet romance quickly turns into action-adventure toward the end of this full-length novel. If you like suspense in a sweet romance, you will enjoy Shattered Identity. 

Book Review: The Hidden Magic of Blue Manor

Title: The Hidden Magic of Blue Manor

Author: Alice Stone

Date: 2023

Publisher: MM Innovative Creations

Quote: "Nestled against the striking Blue Mountains, my hometown never got bigger than 1000 people."

Amelia Westfield has to be the luckiest woman in Australia. She's inherited Blue Manor from a family connection, the place is haunted by the friendly ghost of a relative who speaks to her from an old portrait on a wall, the first person to visit her when she moves into the manor is a friendly police officer who agrees that their mutual attraction will be best spread out over a series of sweet detective romances, and by the end of this story she'll be an honorary member of the town police force. 

If you're not troubled by envy or worried that reading about ghosts is a sin (no chance of anyone's being afraid of this ghost), this short novel will be a feel-good read. 

Can Dowdy Pants Refresh a Withered Orange?

So I said to myself, "Self, this e-mail mess has to be dealt with; it is getting ridiculous," and I held my nose and dived into the e-mail. When half of it was filed or deleted I said to a friend, "Friend, I could use a reward," so we went into town and watched the presidential debate.

Well, someone had really been working with Dowdypants. 

I started to type "old" Dowdypants, because her perpetual procession of fashion blunders is so old. The britches are probably new but they look old. I can't call her that, though. I am too close to her age to describe Dowdypants as either old or young. That's not a bad thing to have to face up to. She looked good on television, probably the best she ever has looked or ever will. Black jacket, white shirt, keep the dreaded sweat-trap trousers behind that lectern: that's the fashion rule that will probably always work for her. We knew it was probably some combination of badly fitted trousers and sex-toy shoes, but at least we didn't have to look at it. Or, since there was no audience, smell it.

What is harder to deal with is the fact that her vice-presidential candidate and support dog, who looks as if he might be her father, was born in the same year she was. Now I would have more than a dozen white hairs, if they didn't keep falling out during glyphosate reactions, and so would Dowdypants, if she didn't dye her hair to add blondish highlights...but men our age have no excuse for looking like that geezer.

I still think that, if there were no other reason to vote against Dowdypants, the dowdy pants would be an important one. If elected she'd probably start a fad for wearing sweat-trap trousers with hooker-heel shoes, and then where would we be? No thinking woman would vote for such a thing. Serious women candidates will wear shoes that are shaped like a human foot, and skirts that make it hard to tell which of the women in a group is wearing a pistol in a garter holster. Skirts also show consideration for other people on the commuter train who may be trying to breathe. But Dowdypants can probably afford a fresh new pair of sweat traps every hour, anyway, and the top of her outfit did suit her.

Then she opened her mouth. 

The questions she'd agreed to answer in public were not softballs; they were cotton balls. Did I ever have questions for her. A blog seems like the best place for these questions even if they have to be scheduled a few days after the debate.

Q. "Vice-President Harris, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?"

H (grinning and waffling frantically): "I grew up in a middle-class family...I intend on extending a tax cut for young families..."

Question that should have followed, but didn't: "And in view of all the damage that's been done to formerly established mid-sized businesses, where exactly do you plan to make up the money for this tax break to reward lack of sexual self-control?"

H. "...and for start-up small businesses. "

QTSHFBD: ""What about the established businesses? What about the Family Dollar stores, the neighborhood convenience stores, the family-owned restaurants, family-owned hardware stores, bookstores, crafts stores....? What about the people who are being asked to start up small businesses at our age when they've already spent forty years building the businesses your administration detroyed?"

H. "...and my opponent wants to raise the sales tax!"

The Orange Thing looked more withered than he did eight years ago. Less orange, more grey. We all know what happens when an orange turns grey. But even Trump should not be blamed for looking old while standing beside a bright young thing of sixty. For a White man who's closer to eighty than seventy, he did not look bad. Much better preserved than barely-sixty-year-old Walz.

T. "First of all I have no sales tax. That's an incorrect statement. She knows that. What we're doing is tariffs..."

QTSHFBD: "Is either of you candidates in the habit of buying American? Not that it's possible at any of these big-chain stores any more, but have you ever tried? Obviously Harris hasn't; that would explain her confusion about the difference between a tariff and a tax. But how do you plan to explain this to some thirty-year-old working father who doesn't even go into stores that still have anything that's not made in China? Won't the tariff hit him like a tax, too?"

T. "...and immigrants, those awful horrible terrible immigrants..."

QTSHFBD: "Will you kindly hire a psychologist to talk about this business of expecting all immigrants to be like your grandfather?! Immigration is obviously contributing to the congestion in our cities, which was already unsustainable. Immigration needs to be curbed. There's no need to make a noise like a hater about it. Just say, right, we have a limited number of spaces for people whose homes have been destroyed by natural disasters, but even war--we can't afford to bring in very many more immigrants who have lost their homes to war. Youall are going to have to start settling your disagreements like adults."

Q. "Let Vice-President Harris respond on the economy."

QTSHFBD: "President Trump having totally wasted his chance to talk about the economy, which is his strongest point. He knows that. Why?"

H. "Trump left us the economy...Trump let us the pandemic..."

QTSHFBD: "Did it occur to you that limiting quarantines and lockdowns to Trump's schedule would have done a lot less damage to the economy? Are you in biological fact a weasel?"

H. "...What we have done is clean up Trump's mess."

QTSHFBD: "Hello? I was awake during these past four years, and I can hardly wait to see how long it takes Trump or just about anyone else to clean up YOURall's mess."

H. "...In this debate tonight, you're going to hear from the same old, tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances and name-calling."

QTSHFBD: "Why don't you just stop now?"

H. "...And I pledge to you to be a president for all Americans."

QTSHFBD: "This is where we see your lying skills. You'd be a puppet for the would-be world rulers at the UN. Let's test your lying stamina. Tell us what the sovereignty of these United States means to you!"

T. "Everybody knows what I'm going to do. Cut taxes very substantially. And create a great economy like I did before."

QTSHFBD: "You didn't get us out of debt. You didn't restore an economic situation where anyone who wants money can go out an earn some. You did much less badly than Biden, but then again every presidential administration we've had since 1940 has done that, so watch the hyperbole."

H. "Goldman Sachs said Trump's plan would make the economy worse. Mine would strengthen the economy."

QTSHFBD: "I thought you were talking about the American people. What's good for Goldman Sachs is not necessarily what's good for the American people."

H. "Trump actually has no plan."

T. "She doesn't have a plan!"

QTSHFBD: "Can we put the inner toddlers in time-out, please? Vice-President Harris, are you aware of what your face is doing? You are smirking. In another minute you'll be sneering. You could be in a movie--a horror movie. Can you keep your lips together over your teeth when you're not actually saying words with E sounds in them? You look so much less bad when every single tooth in your head is not sticking out."

Q. "Do you believe Americans can afford higher prices because of tariffs?"

QTSHFBD: "Does your plan include licensing individual Americans who can't afford the tariffs to start building tariff-free domestic goods? Are we talking about, Joe Sixpack can't afford to wear shoes with little foreign flags on them, so he starts making his own shoes? His kids can't afford to buy all the junk associated with idiotic Japanese video games, so they build their own game boards and play chess?"

T. "They aren't going to have higher prices. Who's going to have higher prices is China."

QTSHFBD: "Specifically how do you see that happening and how does it keep the Chinese Communist Party, with their incredibly retrograde thought process, from starting another Cold War or maybe even a hot one?"

H. "The Trump administration resulted in a deficit...but let's talk about COVID!"

QTSHFBD: "Would you like to stop and thank Trump for actually having COVID so that there could be a Biden administration? Would you like to talk about how you and Biden basically bought votes by claiming the credit for what had actually been Trump's idea?!"

T. "She has no policy. Everything that she believed three years ago and four years ago is out the window. She's going to my philosophy now. In fact, I was going to send her a MAGA hat...But if she ever got elected, she'd change it. And it will be the end of our country. She's a Marxist. Everybody knows she's a Marxist. Her father's a Marxist professor in economics. And he taught her well. But when you look at what she's done to our country and when you look at these millions and millions of people that are pouring into our country..."

QTSHFBD: "Will you leave your grandfather out of this? And by the way, what about a shout to Richard Nixon, whose plan for curbing inflation she's trying to borrow? It made sense to me and my whole Girl Scout troop, too, at the time. But it did not exactly work."

T. "...Immigration is the worst thing that can happen..."

QTSHFBD: "Do you even notice that verbalizing all these issues around your grandfather is making you sound like a racist when you're not even acting like one? Can you give it a flippin' rest?"

Q. "President Trump, Vice-President Harris says that women shouldn't trust you because you've changed your position [on abortion]...why should they trust you?"

QTSHFBD: "Can we start with the fact that a majority of women think that having abortions is not liberated, that not starting unwanted babies is liberated?"

T. "They [Democrats] have abortion in the ninth month...even after the baby is born. \...But what I did is...get Roe v. Wade back into the States."

QTSHFBD: "With how much collusion from Ds who were willing to sacrifice their 'right' to do their women wrong if it'd get that idea of a right to privacy out of the language? What are you planning to do to get privacy enumerated as a constitutional right?"

H. "Now in over twenty states there are bans which make it illegal for a doctor or nurse to provide health care!////[Presumably she meant abortion.]  I think the American people believe that certain freedoms, in particular the freedom to make decisions about one's own body, should not be made by the government."

QTSHFBD: "What price those vaccine mandates, weasel?!"

T. "I'm not in favor of an abortion ban, but now it doesn't matter because this issue has now been taken over by the States."

Q. "J.D. Vance said you would veto [restoring Roe v. Wade] if it ever came to your desk."

T. "We don't have to discuss it because she'd never be able to get it just like she was unable to get student loans!" 

Presumably meaning student loan payment cancellation. At this point both candidates' blood pressure was up and their remarks sounded unscripted. In this case "unscripted" is a polite way of saying "incoherent."

QTSHFBD: "Sir, you cannot help having a round face or a ruddy complexion, but having those two things, you cannot afford to let your face pucker up like a baby's when it's about to howl. Can you try to get control of this?"

Q. "Would you support any restrictions on a woman's right to abortion?"

QTSHFBD: "Have you drawn a clear line between making love and making babies for yourself? Have you taught it to your children?"

H. "I would reinstate Roe v. Wade. Under Trump';s abortion ban, couples...are being denied IVF [in vitro fertilization] treatments."

T. "Another lie. I have been a leader on IVF."

QTSHFBD: "In this crowded world? Shame! Why not adoption?"

Q. "Why did the Biden administration wait until six months before the election to act [on restrictions on immigration]? Would you have done anything differently?"

H. "I supported...[a bill] which would have put 1500 more border agents on the border."

QTSHFBD: "That's your answer--spend more tax money? From whom is all this tax money to come?"

H. "And people leave Trump rallies early because of exhaustion and boredom."

QTSHFBD: "People leave all kinds of events early because they get up early in the morning. This has what to do with the question of whether, apart from findng the money to pay 1500 more border agents, you would have tried things like simply telling these people that there's no more room for them?"

Q. "President Trump, why didn't you support the bill?"

T. "I want to talk about her rallies. People don't leave my rallies. People don't go to her rallies!"

QTSHFBD: "Can we have another time-out for the inner toddlers?"

T. "And in Springfield, they're eating the dogs...they're eating the cats..."

QTSHFBD: "Haven't you heard that that rumor was supposedly disproved? Not that you can prove a negative. Not that it's not possible that somebody, somewhere, has eaten someone's straying pet. It's happened before. But it's not being reported as a large-scale occurrence."

T. "If she becomes Presidetnt...we'll end up being Venezuela on steroids."

QTSHFBD: "That's entirely possible. If we don't head the warning of what happened when Venezuela elected a Socialist, we could easily allow someone like Harris to add to our existing pile of toxic socialist schemes the last one that will bring the whole economy down. But what's it have to do with the question? Can you try to remember that everyone on Earth has not formed the mental habit of leaping from the thought of immigration to the thought of the apocalypse?"

H. "This is, I think, why I have the endorsement of 200 Republicans."

QTSHFBD: "We all know a lot of people don't like Trump. Isn't it more germane to the issue that the masses of moderate Ds who would have backed Kennedy, not to mention the I's and Rs who do back Kennedy, are not described as "Never-Harrisers"? We don't hate you, personally, Vice-President. We just think your policies are unworkable, the ideas you do talk about are unsustainable, the ideas you've been trying to avoid even letting other people talk about are more important than the things you waste our time talking about (such as abortion), even the fashion trend you'd set is an abomination, and generally you're unfit for the White House and should go home and learn to play shuffleboard. What do you say to the more than 200, I wouldn't be surprised if it were 200,000, Democrats who think that way about you?"

T. "When somebody does a bad job, I fire them. With me they can write books. With nobody else can they...But I got more votes than any Republican President in history."

QTSHFBD: "Do you remember the three-foot shelf of books the Clinton staff wrote? Anyway there are more voters than at any previous time in history. There are too many humans on Earth. That's the source of many of our problems. Can you consider not taking credit for it?"

Q. "How would you deport eleven million immigrants?"

T. "We have a new form of crime! It's called migrant crime! It's happening at levels that nobody thought possible!"

QTSHFBD: "Funnily enough, all the crime the newspapers have reported lately--when they send anyone out to report anything, when they don't just sit around blethering about COVID--fits the pattern of 'Prozac Dementia'. If reelected, President Trump, will you redirect the national conversation away from unconstitutional gun bans that actually serve to sell more firearms to people who probably shouldn't use them, toward a consideration of which drugs all these violent criminals and especially the homicide-suicides are on? What will you do about guaranteeing closer supervision for people who choose to use prescription drugs that are well known to cause homicide-suicide thinking? Do you think survivors of these incidents should own Lilly?"

H. "Well, I think this is so rich, coming from someone who had been prosecuted for..." [nonviolent, white-collar crimes, all charges except the past adultery being purely political in nature]. So what are you going to do about the housing crisis?"

QTSHFBD: "What indeed? What about helping the people who lost their homes due to the COVID panic to recover their homes? What kind of pay cut is either of you candidates taking by way of an apology to the people who've lost their jobs and homes because of a deliberately whipped-up panic over a rather mild chest cold?!" 

T. "But I'm winning most of those cases" (those white-collar crimes) "and I'll win the others on appeal. It's called weaponization..."

QTSHFBD: "It's called trumped-up charges. It was tacky when all those white-collar 'criminal' charges against President Nixon were trumped up, too. Do you find it ironic, Trump, that a strategy that was probably suggested by your name is distracting so much attention from things you've done that actually cause people whose relatives you have not fired to dislike you, that these so-called criminal charges are actually generating sympathy for you? Is it possible that this junior-grade prosecuting attorney's attitude is making you look good? Can dowdy pants refresh a withered orange?"

H. "The Supreme Court recently ruled that the former president would essentially be immune from any misconduct [charges[ if he were to enter the White House again...he's said he would 'weaponize' the Department of Justice..."

QTSHFBD: "Yes. It'll be payback time. Does that idea scare you?"

T. "I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things they say about me.

QTSHFBD: "Yes, Vice-President? Your administration wants to censor all kinds of legitimate discourse that you fear may promote ill will between subgroups of people, or, more realistically, hurt sales of profitable products such as the clot-shots. You understand, I'm not opposed to people taking vaccines if they think that's the best choice for them, but once you start censoring accurate reportage of the not at all surprising fact that experimental vaccines have not worked for everyone, you're spitting on the Constitution and, as far as I'm concerned, you should move to China now. But since youall think censorship is such a great idea, what about censoring the kind of offensive talk that led to the hatecrime against President Trump? Let's see fines on any newspaper that repeats the tired old lie about the currently living generation of Republicans being racists. Let's see shadowbans for anyone who suggests that Trump's or W Bush's policies were 'extreme.' 'Extreme' applies to Lyndon LaRouche and various other self-nominated candidates whose campaigns the news media have never taken seriously. Riiight?"

Q. "Vice President Harris, in your last run for president you said you wanted to ban fracking. Now you don't. You wanted mandatory government buyback programs for assault weapons. Now your campaign says you don't. You supported decriminalizing border crossings. Now you're taking a harder line. I know you say that your values have not changed. So then why have so many of your policy positions changed?"

H. "My values have not changed!...I will not ban fracking."

QTSHFBD: "So you're comfortable with the idea of Washington washing out to sea? The Appalachian Mountains have been more stable than the West Coast recently, but they were formed by seismic upheavals too. We have fault lines too. You tamper with our bedrock and our artesian springs, you don't know what you're doing to the East Coast. I don't want to do it. We have a housing crisis on the East Coast already. It'll be worse if the coastal cities are under water."

H. "We are going to work with the private sector and home builders to increase three million homes."

QTSHFBD: "And where are all those houses going to be? Don't insult people by calling apartment blocks homes! What about simply helping people reclaim the homes from which they were evicted because they lost their jobs in the COVID panic?"

T. "She was big on 'defund the police'..."

H. "That's not true!" (her microphone was turned off, but the camera picked it up)

T. "I'm talking now. If you don't mind. Please. Does that sound familiar?"

H. "Don't lie!"

QTSHFBD: "The statement that it was his turn to talk was not a lie. We could all see that you were angry that Trump found a chance to use some phrases you had intended to use, first. You were angry that you were the one who'd been goaded into talking out of turn. Were you thinking in terms of 'lies' because it's a lie to say that you weren't angry?

T. "Criminals that killed people, that burned down Minneapolis, she went out and raised money to get them out of jail."

QTSHFBD: "Did you see BLM as only a group of political allies, or did you understand that most Americans see them as rioters and violent criminals?"

T. "I got the oil business going like nobody has ever done before."

QTSHFBD: "Does the name 'Eisenhower' ring a bell?"

Q. "Mr. President, on January 6th you told your supporters to march to the Capitol. You said you would be right there with them. The country and the world saw what played out at the Capitol that day. The officers coming under attack. Aides in the West Wing say you watched it unfold on television off the Oval Office. You did send out tweets, but it was more than two hours before you sent out that video message telling your supporters to go home. Is there anything you regret about what you did on that day?"

QTSHFBD: "Like having failed to bring Twitter's unethical use of censorship to the nation's attention sooner? Well, fear it not, we've all seen how censorship promotes violence. Why, Candidate Trump, have you not made the fact that censorship directly caused that violence, on that day, a major issue in this election? Why are you failing to call out the Party of Censorship as the un-American, crime-promoting, moral evil that it is?"

T. (Paraphrased) "Blame the immigrants, blame the immigrants, it's all about those awful immigrants!"

QTSHFBD: "When it comes to a real threat to our democratic republic like censorship, does anyone really give a daam about the wretched immigrants?"

T. "Ask her that question. They took over a big percentage of the city of Seattle. When are they going to be prosecuted?"

QTSHFBD: "Are you waffling because you intend to be soft on censorship as long as it's being done by your party?"

Q. "Is there anything you regret about that day?"

T. "I said, you know, this is going to be a very big rally...I wasn't responsible for security. Nancy Pelosi was responsible. She didn't do her job."

QTSHFBD: "Considering what the rioters were threatening to do to the Senator, I'd say she's been punished for what was really a totally white-collar crime on both sides apart, of course, from the woman the policeman mistakenly shot. But I think the question has to do with whether you feel any remorse for the way people who were not violent are being used as scapegoats and substitutes for those who were violent, actually. Do you? And don't try blaming the Senator--we can rake her over the coals some other time."

H. "I was there! And on that day the President of the United States incited a violent mob to..." (I can't pinpoint the source but I know I've heard every word of her rant from someone else, before.)

QTSHFBD: "Has anyone ever called you out on plagiarism?"

T (referring to an old news story referenced in H's rant) "That story has been debunked...but..." (paraphrased) "let's make it about immigrants, those awful immigrants. Why doesn't Harris seal the border now?"

QTSHFBD: "Badly as the nation needs to stop the immigration, President Trump, are you aware of any other things we need to stop?"

Q. "You repeatedly falsely claimed that you won the election (i n 2020) by a landslide. In the past couple of weeks...you have said, quote, that you lost by a whisker...Are you now acknowledging that you lost in 2020?"

T. "I said that sarcastically...I got almost 75 million votes."

QTSHFBD: "But you do understand that, even if your 75 million votes were all 100% legitimate and most of Biden's 80 million were fraudulent, which is possible with the electronic voting machines, you still lost the electoral college?"

T. "The problem that we have right now is...they have put (the nation) into decline."

Q. "Trump has said, 'When I win, the people who cheated will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the last, which includes long prison sentences.' One of your campaign's top lawyers responded saying, 'We won't let Trump intimidate us'...Is that what you believe he's trying to do?"

QTSHFBD: "It's called payback time. How badly does that thought scare you? How much do you have to hide?"

H. "World leaders are laughing at Donald Trump."

QTSHFBD. "The people you call world leaders are very duplicitous. Why do you think they're not laughing at you, for being so easy for them to lead into such foolish acts, and saying they're laughing at Trump?"

T. "Vktor Orban said...you need Trump back as president...but this weak pathetic man that you saw at a debate a few weeks ago...got fourteen million votes. She got no votes...and he can't stand her."

Q. "How would you..." (resolve the current war in the Middle East)?

H. (Recites a speech that I happen to recognize, thanks to Michael Moore having shared it recently, as a word-for-word quote from one of Jon Stewart's so-called comedy speeches. No, it wasn't funny when Stewart said it, either.) "We must have a two-state solution where the Palestinians can have...the dignity they so rightly deserve."

QTSHFBD: "The Palestinians are rapists and terrorists and baby killers. The Palestinians are also Semites, and in the ancient lore of their culture we read that what they think deserves to happen to rapists is for all the men in the rapist's tribe to be killed. Who are you to think you can improve on their own traditional solution? What gives you the idea that any Palestinian now deserves anything that might be described as 'dignity'? They deserve shame. They deserve to be lined up, the widows and orphans, the disabled, the ones who did not participate and could not have participated in the terrorist act the whole world saw, and be allowed to choose to defile their men's bodies and beg for the privilege of living in tents and caves and going out to beg for day labor. They deserve to beg to eat scraps out of Israel's garbage. If any arrangement that seems more humane than that is acceptable to the Israelis it would have to be called grace, the spirit of Jesus moving among them, rather than anything the Palestinians deserve! What is wrong with a woman who suggests that any rapist deserves to live, or even to be killed humanely?"

QTSHFBD: "By the way, Vice-President Harris, there's nothing really wrong with paying professional writers to write your speeches, but how much did you pay Jon Stewartn for that one? What about the other speeches you've recited tonight? Who wrote them, and how much did you pay?"

Q. "President Trump, how would you..."

T. "She hates Israel. At the same time, she hates Arabs."

QTSHFBD: "Yes, President Trump, are you aware that that's what being an anti-Semite really means? 

T. (Summarized: The trouble with the Israelis and Palestinians, and likewise with the Russians and Ukrainians, is that they have money to spend on a war.) "...and I'll get that settled. If I'm President-Elect I'll get that settled before I'm President."

Q. "He says that you hate Israel?"

H. "That's not true! Trump is weak and wrong!" (Summarized: The only people who like him are the dictators Americans hate.)

T. "She's weak! And ineffectual!...And Biden..."

Q. "It's time for a commercial break."

QTSHFBD: "Cutting off money to nations that are wasting it on war is a good solution, especially if we have the strength, as a nation, to wean ourselves off dependence on petroleum-fuelled motor vehicles. Does either of you seriously think you're a strong enough or beloved enough leader to do that?""

Mercy. That's just the first half hour of the lies, verbal abuse, and failure even to mention any real issue that the commercial media aren't beating to death. I find myself feeling that I've spent enough time and typed enough words for one day. Youall, if still reading, are probably feeling that you've read enough words on a screen too. I think I'll stop now and let the numbers tell me whether youall want me to reopen the tab with the video of the debate and share my questions for the other two half hours.