On the Beach

For the last week we've been on the gulf coast to enjoy the beautiful beaches and to do a bit of birding. Last week was a bird banding to inventory the migration, and this weekend is a birding festival. I hope I'll return home with some great photos which I will share. In the meantime, I've reposted a visit to the to the Gulf from a few years ago in March.

We are attracted to the shore. Some say it hearkens back to the womb...our mother's heartbeat and sounds of amniotic fluid. One thing is for sure. We are loving our beaches to death...at least here on the Gulf Coast. Last week we made it to the river delta. Join me as we continue our journey along Alabama's small strip of beaches and into the wilds of the Mississippi coast.

Afternoon folks!

This week we have beaucoup de blues! Starting out we've got an old Junior Wells album followed by a compilation of Chicago blues from Lonnie Brooks, Pinetop Perkins and the Sons of the Blues (S.O.B. Band). After that we have some soul-blues from Johnnie Taylor in his Stax period followed by New Orleans artist Johnny Adams, backed by some fabulous horn arrangements and Wayne Bennett on guitar on most tracks. Following that it's on to some blues-rock with ZZ Top. Moving on to our diversity albums for the week, there's a compilation of british singles from the Immediate label, then get ready to yodel your blues away with country icon Jimmie Rodgers. We finish up with a radio program that features Mance Lipscomb, sponsored by the Social Security Administration, recorded during the great folk music scare of the 60's.

Enjoy the tunes and have a great weekend!

Hey, friends! I hope this OT finds you in fine fettle, although I am feeling a bit anxious about world events.

Friday night is a news dump night. By the time I put this together, and have it published Saturday morning, I never know what crazy shit might hit the fan.

My concern is Israel and Iran at the moment. What news will I be reading with my morning coffee? What type of escalation happened while I slept?

So, Saturday is shopping day. In anticipation of increased gas prices, higher costs of hauling in goods to stock the store shelves, possible shortages of basic necessities, I will do my typical "thing", and make sure I stock up accordingly. I admit that the goal of buying the healthiest food I can find transitions to buying the best food I can find. The port workers' strike was magically called off until after the high retail holiday season and, of course, the election. Odd. Biden is provably not interested in labor's demands.

I'm going to republish a piece from 12-30-22 titled Normalizing the New Normal. The point of the original essay was my theory on how whistleblowers are used to introduce governmental overreaches so as to normalize whatever it is that they want us to accept. Case in point: Where we are with regards to government censorship and the Twitter revelations from a few years ago.

My point about Snowden wasn't meant that he was in on the revelations, but his disclosures were used to normalize governmental spying.

When a new whistleblower comes on the scene it raises my eyebrows, what are they trying to normalize now. Whistleblowers are not what they used to be, in my humble opinion anyway.

This is an opinion piece. I have no proof other than my lying eyes. And my intuitive gut. I'll throw this out there as speculative fodder for the un-indoctrinated and open mind.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

I've been thinking for a while now that both sides of any given narrative are controlled.

Full Spectrum Dominance - Are we there yet?

Sure does seem like it to me. Please consider this:

Suppose you are a propagandist. Would it not be optimum to control both sides of a narrative? Both sides of an issue, pro and con. That would be total control, full spectrum dominance if you will. Could it be possible that our realities are so controlled that the idea of oppositional perception is but a facade? In today's world who knows what is real, right? With all the gaslighting and lying is it any wonder that folks are confused? Is that not the tenet of Full Spectrum Dominance?

I think that if you look you can see it in many issues nowadays, it may be subtle as is all good propaganda. The yin and yang may be manipulated into a soup of disinformation and obfuscation. Think about how you form your opinions, what you read, what you see, what you think about. If one could control that input then one could formulate your reality.

Source

Examples:

Elon Musk: Something just hasn't sit well with me about this Elon Musk and Twitter deal. It all seems contrived. I certainly don't consider him a hero as some have made him out to be. Could there be more to his Twitter acquisition than just his self proclaimed altruistic motivation. I'll put a theory out there and let you be the judge.

Bringing Mulligan Home:

I gotta admit, I haven't had it in me to watch the recent debate and all the other crude, although, as always, I am enjoying reading Caucus99% blogs. So, here's a bit about a good book...

A few weeks ago I read a book that really hit me. It's called Bringing Mulligan Home: The Other Side of the Good War> by Dale Maharidge. It's about a man, a marine, who served in the Pacific during WWII. Like many who served, he spoke little at all about the war, and like many who served he was messed up by his experiences in the war. After his death (his name was Steve Maharidge) his son, Dale, decided to try to find out what his father's experiences had been, and why his father was like he was (angry, loving, mean, quiet, screaming, soft...) and who was in the picture his father had hung on the wall in his basement work area. Mulligan, it turns out, was in that picture.

Herman Mulligan and Dale Maharidge. Mulligan is a bit taller than Maharidge, with his hand on Maharidge's shoulder. From these two articles (and audio interviews) on www.wbur.org 'A Son Faces his Father's WWII Ghosts' and 'A Son Uncovers his Father's WWII History'.