A Cluster of 18s: Trump and Democracy

Posted on May 19, 2017 by Trish and Rob

Over a week ago, we posted about the similarities between Watergate and the events occurring now in the Trump administration. One facet involved the number 18.

In Watergate, an 18-minute gap in a recording resulted in Nixon’s impeachment and resignation. In the Russian investigation with this administration, it took Trump 18 days to fire National Security Advisor Michael Flynn after he was warned by acting Attorney General Sally Yates that Flynn might be easily blackmailed by the Russians.

Today, on May 18, we learned from Reuters and the New York Times that there were at least 18 undisclosed contacts between members of the Trump administration and the Russians. So now there are four instances of the number 18, which certainly qualifies as a synchronicity cluster.

Clusters – of names, numbers, of anything – frequently accompany global events that are covered extensively by the media. You would have to be living on another planet not to have some inkling about what’s going on. The first two instances of 18 solidified the tie to Nixon and Watergate. I felt it underscored what many of us already suspected – that a coverup was involved about Russia’s interference in our 2016 election. I also felt certain there would be other instances of 18, which brings us to today.

With this second set of 18s, I now suspect this cluster may be just getting started. I have several questions for the quantum synchro gods who orchestrate this stuff:

Will at least 18 people in the trump administration be indicted for their involvement collusion with the Russians? (In Watergate, the casualties were two resignations -prez and VP – and 48 others who were indicted and jailed.)

Does 18 refer, perhaps, to a day of a month when the full truth is known?

Will Trump continue as president for another 18 days, weeks, or months?

Does 18 signal the end of one chapter and the beginning of another? My knowledge of numerology is limited, but 1+8 =9, which in astrologer Sydney Omarr’s scheme of things means the beginning of one thing and the end of something else.

If that’s what it’s referring to – then what is beginning and what is ending? Is an authoritarian government beginning and is democracy ending? A terrorist attack would be all that trump needs to install martial law. Or, does that 9 signal the end of a trump presidency and the beginning of something else?

Who knows? If you pick up on any other references to 18 during the days ahead, please email us.

 

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Another Plane Goes Down in the Bermuda Triangle

Posted on May 18, 2017 by Trish and Rob

Thanks to Barbie Kohl who alerted us to this story. This plane went down just 15 miles from Eleuthera.

 

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Star Wars & the Coup in the U.S.A.

Posted on May 16, 2017 by Trish and Rob

A Coup d’état – Coup – is the sudden, violent overthrow of an existing government by a small group.

The main prerequisite for a coup is, according to the encyclopedia Britannica, is “control of all or part of the armed forces, the police, and other military elements. Unlike a revolution, which is usually achieved by large numbers of people working for basic social, economic, and political change, a coup is a change in power from the top that merely results in the abrupt replacement of leading government personnel. A coup rarely alters a nation’s fundamental social and economic policies, nor does it significantly redistribute power among competing political groups. Among the earliest modern coups were those in which Napoleon overthrew the Directory on Nov. 9, 1799 (18 Brumaire), and in which Louis Napoleon dissolved the assembly of France’s Second Republic in 1851. Coups were a regular occurrence in various Latin American nations in the 19th and 20th centuries and in Africa after the countries there gained independence in the 1960s.”

But wait! Can a coup occur when an existing government is overthrown through its collusion with a foreign power – like Russia? Can it occur when the members of one party (the Republicans) support the insane actions of a president who consistently violates the rules of law and ethics because he thinks he is above the law? Because he doesn’t think the constitution applies to him?

In 1973, the government of President Salvadore Allende, a socialist, was overthrown by the armed forces and the national police. This occurred after a prolonged period of social unrest and political tension in Chile and a period of economic warfare that was ordered by President Nixon, who was impeached and resigned a year later for Watergate. Within a year of Allende’s overthrow, Augusto Pinochet, who was Allende’s army chief, assumed power in late 1974. His junta government was recognized by the U.S. government, which had created the conditions for the coup.

Before this, Chile was a light of democracy and political stability in South America.

Pinochet ruled for the next 14 years, and his regime was one of the most brutal.

Are there parallels here with what is happening in the U.S. now? With what has happened repeatedly in South American countries that we call Banana Republics? Is Russia assuming what was previously the role of our government? Let’s take a closer look.

Did trump and his administration collude with Russia to hack the U.S. elections? Why did trump fire Comey, the FBI director who was investigating his possible collusion with Russia? Why did trump fire Sally Yates, the acting Attorney General, who warned the White House shortly after trump’s inauguration that Michael Flynn, then the national security advisor, might be ripe for blackmail by Russia?

The day after trump fired Comey, he met with several Russian dignitaries in the White House. The U.S. press was barred from this visit; the Russian press was invited inside. According to the Washington Post, trump shared secret information with the Russians.

And, oh, Putin asked for that meeting.

There are so many footprints leading to the violation of the constitution, to ethical standards and the rule of law, to collusion with Russia, that any ordinary person who keeps track of the news can see the obvious. Trump, a figure created by the media, is a master of media manipulation and his  intent is to establish an authoritarian government in which he is king. In which his word is law. In which anyone who disagrees with him is fired, threatened, arrested, disgraced and perhaps, eventually, sent elsewhere. He is aided and abetted by a complicit congress of republicans who control the house and the senate and are interested only in enriching themselves.

In a larger picture, the republican party is Darth Vader, their true nature so exposed and obvious now that their supporters have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to believe the repubs give a shit about their well-being. They care only about their own pocketbooks and power. In this larger picture, the dems are like Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia, a minority who understands what’s at stake but are powerless to do anything about it. And the rest of us, the voting block of ordinary citizens in this country who, regardless of cultural, religious, or ethnic differences, understand what’s at stake, are Hans Solo and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Do we cower in fear or do we speak up and fight for our freedoms? The choice is ours. We can’t afford to wait until the 2018 elections. It may be too late by then.

 

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Unwind

Posted on May 14, 2017 by Trish and Rob

unwind

 

I often cruise the teen fiction bookshelves at our local Barnes & Noble. This genre of books has exploded in recent years and it seemed to start with The Hunger Games trilogy of books and movies. Suddenly, Dystopian novels were hot. And many of these novels have edgy themes that appeal to me.

Recently, I picked up Unwind by Neal Shusterman. The premise is simple – although bizarre . In a future time, the Second Civil War was fought over reproductive rights. The resolution: life is inviolate from the moment of conception until age 13. Between the ages of 13 and 18, however, parents can have their child “unwound.” This means that all the child’s organs are transplanted into different recipients, so life technically doesn’t end- or that’s the story the government has instilled in the populace.

The novel is about three teenagers on the run because they are due to be unwound. From the back cover: “Connor is too difficult for his parents to control. Risa, a ward of the state, is not talented enough to be kept alive. And Lev is a tithe, a child conceived and raised to be unwound.”

I’d never heard of Shusterman. But the cover caught my attention, then I read the back cover, opened the book and read the first page and bought it. He has written over two dozen novels and this one was voted book of the year by the American Library Association and had five star reviews from Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal. I’m halfway through it and am enjoying it and looking forward to reading the second in the series. Schusterman is a terrific storyteller and has created characters that really make you feel what it would be like to be a teenager living in this kind of world.

Young adult novels have certain rules and among them are no sex scenes and no swearing. I’ve read a couple of YA novels that violate the rules – like The 5th Wave by Rick Yancy, which became a movie. In The Hunger Games, these rules struck me as absurd. After all, kids are pitted against other kids in survival games that end in death until just one kid remains. So violence is okay, but sex and saying shit are forbidden. The silly rules aside, I think it’s great that the YA fiction market is burgeoning and that teens have so many more options for reading than they once did.

So the next time you’re in a bookstore, walk through the teen fiction aisles. See what catches your attention.

 

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At the Moment of Death

Posted on May 12, 2017 by Trish and Rob

We recently posted a story called Time Traveling in the Florida Keys about an experience that Priscilla D’Agostina had. This story is also from Priscilla, and is one of the most unusual near death incidents we’ve heard.

Priscilla’s mom was in a nursing home in Sunrise, Florida, in a coma and dying. “She had been ill for awhile so this was almost a blessing. Prior to her passing, I came into her room and she was sleeping so I went over to the other side near the windows to sit in a chair. I saw a weird glowing ball in the corner near the ceiling that I thought was light reflection. No matter where I moved, I could see the roundness of it. I realized the window faced east and the sun was setting at the time which would be in the west.

“Then the hospice nurse came in to the room and distracted me and when I looked back it was gone. I laughingly told her what I thought I saw. She was an elderly lady that had done hospice for a long time and she laughed and said ‘Oh Honey, we see them all the time. They are the couriers that come to get the souls.’ Then she proceeded to tell my sister and I many great stories of encounters with these couriers.

“When I realized that my mother’s last breath had come…it was hard because she was having long bouts of apnea, so she would stop breathing for long periods of time… I went to her head and held it in my arms and she coughed.  At the same time something hit me in the chest hard and suddenly I had this glob of ‘something’ all attached to me. It was like a million little shimmering lights and definitely had substance. It urged me to go outside. I told my sister that I needed to go outside immediately. She looked at me and said she saw this glow around my head and shoulders.

“We went outside and I told her what had happened and she said she could see it. It was amazing, so peaceful. I could hear my mother laughing at what she had found on the other side. She was surprised and tickled by whatever it was. As we sat there. the ‘something’ on my chest started to rise up from me, slowly going up into the air. It took all fear of dying out of my life because now I know we go somewhere. I don’t know where, but I’m sure there is more and there is humor, so that’s good.”

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Trump, Nixon, and Global Synchros

Posted on May 10, 2017 by Trish and Rob

Announcement that Nixon is resigning

+++

A global synchro occurs when an event of a huge magnitude occurs, one that receives a tremendous amount of media attention, and a pattern of meaningful coincidences unfold related to the event.

That’s the case with the surprising and unexpected firing of FBI director James Comey by Trump, whose administration just happened to be under investigation for dealings with Russia that could have served to assist Putin in undermining our democracy. The synchros deal with some interesting parallels between the Watergate investigation that led to Nixon’s resignation and the possible collusion between the Trump administration and Russia. It involves two numbers – 18 and 23.

During Watergate, it was the 18-minute gap in the Watergate tapes that proved to be crucial in Nixon’s impeachment/resignation.

In the Trump administration, 18 days passed between when Sally Yates went to the White House and told Trump’s chief counselor that Michael Flynn should not be National Security Advisor because he could be compromised (blackmailed) by Russia and when Flynn was fired by the administration. And then he was fired only after the media got hold of the story and revealed that Flynn met with the Russians several times during the campaign.

These two have been mentioned in media reports.  Rob and I were talking about the 18 minutes/18 days synchro and I remarked that I felt there would be more synchros like this. Sure enough, the big news today (May 9) was that Trump fired FBI director James Comey – just as Nixon fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox in order to stop the FBI investigation into the tapes.

Then, this evening, we were watching the Rachel Maddow show, I think it was, where a presidential historian she was talking with mentioned June 23, 1972. That was the day that a recording made in the Oval Office,  now known as the Smoking Gun Tape, between President Nixon and his Chief of Staff, H.R. Haldeman  ultimately resulted in Nixon’s resignation.

That date, June 23, is key. The day after Trump was inaugurated, Rob made a prediction that Trump would be gone – resignation, impeachment, whatever – by June 23. He said it off the top of his head, while we were at the Women’s March in West Palm Beach. So that’s three synchros – Cox/Comey firings, 18 minutes and 18 days, and June 23, ’73 and June 23, ‘17. The last one is more of a potential synchro and may be a trickster – i.e., ha-ha, folks,  good try but sorry – where nothing happens.  But one thing is fairly certain – there will be more synchros related to all this.

Stay tuned!

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Finding the Lost City of Z

Posted on May 9, 2017 by Trish and Rob

The fabled lost city of Zed was supposedly hidden deep in the Amazon, but when discovered  it would reveal that the Indian population had created an advanced society well before European civilization developed. That was what Colonel Percy Fawcett hoped to prove in 1925 when he ventured deep into the Amazon.

Today, the movie about Fawcett’s adventure is also a bit difficult to find. In fact, it has been out in various ‘semi-secret’ venues since last October. But we just stumbled upon  it locally, and probably only because a new theater opened in town that expanded offerings to some limited distribution films such as this one.

I (Rob) wanted to see this movie, which was based on a non-fiction book with the same title by David Grann, because I’d also written a book about Colonel Fawcett’s adventure more than 25 years ago. It was my fourth Indiana Jones novel, Indiana Jones & the Seven Veils. Gran actually mentioned it as part of the enduring fascination over Fawcett, who never returned from his journey.

That fascination was stimulated by the American press of the day, which reported Fawcett’s adventure every step of the way and continued reporting speculation after he vanished. It turned out that the American press moguls and John D. Rockefeller paid for Fawcett’s exploration. Millions followed Fawcett,  today’s equivalent of a social media icon.

Maybe it’s more ironic than synchronistic, but the fact that Amazon Studios produced this movie was an interesting twist. Did they do it intentionally because of the Amazon link, or did they just like the script? Also of interest to Trish and I was the fact that the jungle scenes were filmed near Santa Marta, Colombia. We didn’t know that until we looked it up afterwards.

In fact, early in the movie, we see Indians dressed in white tunics, which reminded me of the Kogi Indians who live high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains near Santa Marta. In the mid to late ’80s, we led adventure tours to South America and Santa Marta and the ‘Lost City’ of the Sierra Nevada Mountains were one of our destinations. You either had to walk 5 days to get to the Lost City or take a one-hour helicopter flight. We took the helicopter, and on one trip I got left behind and spent the night with the Kogis and a couple of archaeologists at the ruins. Of course, that was good Indy material, later used in Indiana Jones & the Interior World.

As for the movie, it was kind of long, two hours and twenty minutes, and a bit slow in the early going (1905), especially since I knew that Fawcett’s infamous journey took place 20 years later. But I liked the realistic, biographical feel to it. Parts of the movie feature English society a hundred years ago and you get a very strong sense that it was a man’s world and women were extremely limited in their choices and were second-class citizens.

From my point of view, the only thing missing was Indy, and his iconic sense of humor as he searched for Fawcett. But that’s another book. The movie does give a nod to Raiders of the Lost Ark, though, in a scene late in the movie when Percy and his son Jack are fleeing across an open field with tribesmen in close pursuit. But there is no nifty escape on an airplane with pontoons. In this movie, they are captured. An ayahuasca scene follows.  (I’m assuming that was what their captors made them drink.) That scene could’ve been much more bizarre and hallucinogenic. However, that would’ve made the movie even longer.

We are left in the end with the uncertainty of whether father and son survived and went on to discover the lost city where they remained as honored guests or slaves, or if they died in the jungle. My guess is that Percy and Jack Fawcett were murdered and eaten for dinner by a cannibalistic tribe. Percy’s wife, played by Sienna Miller, never gave up hope that he and Jack would return one day. She lived until 1954.

Charlie Hunnam did a good job as Colonel Fawcett, but looked more like Brad Pitt, who was originally going to play the role, than Fawcett. There were no exotic special effects, no super heroes…and ultimately no big box office take, even though the movie received impressive positive reviews. No doubt many more will see it  when it comes out in video. And it is worth watching.

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Time Traveler in the Florida Keys

Posted on May 7, 2017 by Trish and Rob

I have a love/hate relationship with email. The love part is that its wonderful to be able to communicate almost instantaneously with people. The hate part is when my email decides what’s junk and what isn’t and sends legitimate communications to junk or trash. So when I’m clearing these folders, I’m careful about what I delete.

In one of these purging sessions, I came across an email that had been sent through the contact form on our blog two days earlier from Priscilla Dagostino, a 70-year-old grandmother who lives in Pembroke Pines, a town in Broward County, Florida. It’s the kind of email we love receiving, especially when it involves weird fog and apparent time travel. In her email, she’s referring to Beyond the Bermuda Triangle, the book Rob and Bruce Gernon (The Fog) have coming out this summer from Career Press.

From Priscilla:

Hi. When searching for interesting books on my Audible book account, something took me to your website. There, to my happy surprise, was a book about true encounters with electronic fog and time warps.

 I am a 70 year old grandmother living in Pembroke Pines Florida and several years ago I experienced this exact thing while traveling to the Keys to pick up donated baby quilts. I have my son and husband as witnesses, but most everyone looks at me as just a little touched when I tell the story.

 I traveled through time in my car while going from Big Pine Key to Islamorada. Taking less than 15 minutes to travel the 58 mile trip, I can still feel the terror as I came over the bridge to see our hotel, knowing it wasn’t possible to be there yet. I had traveled through a very dense fog for just about 1 mile. I will be so happy to read your book and see if others have had the same or similar experiences. Sincerely , Priscilla DAgostino.

 I immediately wrote her back and we exchanged a number of emails.

My husband and son were at first terrified because as I entered the hotel room where they were waiting,  back way too soon, I started to cry hard. I’m not a crier but more of a tough cookie. My first words were “ I just traveled through time “ and started to cry harder.

 I was shaking so hard my legs had almost not let me get out of the car and climb the stairs to our room. We live in Pembroke Pines Fl and my husband and son had gone to Islamorada with me and had planned to go fishing the next day. I was going to Big Pine Key for the ABC Quilt project that I was running in South Florida. I was making a special trip to Big Pine Key to pick up quilts some ladies had made to donate to the babies.

 My husband and son were staying  in the hotel room while I drove to Big Pine Key, spoke at the ladies meeting, picked of the quilts and drove back. After we both calmed down and I stopped shaking my husband said to me “ Please tell me we are not going to have to go on Oprah.” LOL.

You are almost the first time I have talked outside of the family about what happened. The following day I had a very large dark bruise on the inside of my arm, about 2 1/2 inches across, shaped like a perfect donut with a perfectly untouched center but painless. This experience was something that has stayed with me for all these years. My son and family still tease me about it but it wasn’t so funny at the time. I still wonder where I went.

Your time traveling friend, Priscilla

When she mentioned the bruise, my creepy spider sense snapped into full alert mode. I asked Priscilla if she thought she might have been abducted.

 I have always thought that abduction might be an explanation for what happened that night. I even contacted a hypnotist, but chickened out.

 That was my one and only trip through time but I still get a little uneasy when my husband I drive to the Keys for some down time and I relive that experience. It certainly made me much more open to the possibility that there is way more going on here then any of us know.

I did have a very weird experience when my mother passed away that happened with my twin sister that changed my life also.

That last line, naturally, left me really curious, so I asked Priscilla about that experience. But that’s a blog post for another day – and it’s a good one!

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Trump: the Ultimate Dystopian Novel

Posted on May 5, 2017 by Trish and Rob

Forget The Hunger Games, 1984, and It Can’t Happen Here. Trump is the ultimate Dystopian novel.

In this Dystopian world,  if you’re a fetus, they love you and protect you until you’re born. Then, hey, you’re on your own. If you, like Jimmy Kimmel’s son, are born with heart disease and your parents don’t have the money to pay for multiple heart surgeries, then sorry, too bad. You die.

And as of May 4, when the repubs passed their alternative to the Affordable Care Act  by a narrow margin, you are screwed if you have a pre-existing condition, are on Medicaid, are old or on disability. The people who benefit from this bill are the rich, who are getting  billions in tax cuts while Medicaid is being gutted. The old, the sick, and the poor are the ones targeted in this bill. This is, as one health policy expert said, one of the largest redistributions of wealth ever.

If that fetus the republicans love and protect until it’s born grows up poor, oh well, too bad. No Medicaid or food stamps for you. If you manage to work your way through life so that you finally get to college, well, too bad. You’re going to incur a staggering debt that in many instances amounts to the cost of a home.

If you’re born black or Latino or into some other minority, the deck in the land of the free is already stacked against you. The repubs only see white male faces.

If you are gay or transgender, the republicans want you to disappear, vanish, to have zero rights ever.

If you’re a woman, they want to control your body by stacking their administration with anti-abortion white men who despise Roe v Wade. They want to deny you contraception and just to prove how serious they are about this, the current administration has nominated a woman to lead family services who believes that contraception doesn’t work and that abortion leads to breast cancer. Meet Teresa Manning, a former lobbyist for the National Right to Life Committee who is expected to be appointed to oversee the nation’s family planning program at HHS.

They would love to overturn public education and privatize Medicare and Social Security. They want corporations to rule the world, as though government is a business. Sounds a bit like Blade Runner, doesn’t it?

The head of this disaster, trumpie himself, thinks putin is a strong leader and that the little madman running North Korea is a guy he might like to sit down with for a friendly chat. Some in the media see trumpie’s bombing of a Syrian airstrip as a sign that he’s presidential. Really?

And oh, about that wall. Sorry, folks. Mexico isn’t going to pay for it. You taxpayers are – not you rich folks, not the corporations, but you poor and middle class folks. And yeah, he’s been trying to bar immigrants since his first 10 days in office and has been blocked by the federal courts.

The truth is ugly. The dude in charge of the U.S. has come through his first 100 days, is working on the second 100 days, and has already proven himself to be a clueless narcissist and egomaniac, who is constantly crying out, Notice me, see how great I am, just watch how I will make America great again. Uh-huh. By wrecking the country, destroying democracy, enriching his family, and installing extremists.

Welcome to Trump World, the ultimate Dystopian novel.

But in the sequel, my hope is that the people fight back and reclaim their country.

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Mercury Turns Direct!

Posted on May 3, 2017 by Trish and Rob

On April 9, I posted something about the Mercury retrograde that began that day and lasts until today, May 3, at 12:33 p.m. EDT.  One of the comments was from Lauren Raine, an artist who lives in Tucson. It really characterizes the nature of these retrogrades, whose effects can be felt several days before the retro begins, when Mercury slows down to turn. I told Lauren that it sounded as if she had gotten Merc retro all in one day!

“ I don’t normally notice these things, but yesterday:

I found out I have to pay 3 times what I thought in taxes and had to redo my taxes

I found out I have to spend lots of money on an air conditioner

The modem went out

My monthly arts list was discontinued because the creator is ill

And then a loud buzzing brought me to my newly renovated guest cottage, with its lovely new wooden floor. It seems a hive of bees have made a home for themselves under that floor, and the only way to get them out, according to beekeepers, is to cut a hole in the floor.

Oh, and in Arizona most of our bees are Africanized bees. Mean bees.”

Here are some other Mercury retrograde incidents:

Our daughter, Megan, teaches art for Paint Nite several night a week. During the retro, one of her classes was relocated outside the restaurant where she was supposed to teach because the manager had mistakenly booked a party in the room where she teaches the class. The class was good-natured about it – even after it started to rain!

Snafus for us included things like important emails going straight to trash and not being discovered for days; missed appointments; a clock in the car that hadn’t been changed to reflect daylight savings time, which resulted in being late for several events. We also had to re-schedule several radio interviews for Sensing the Future, our book on precognition – and no, we didn’t sense the future on those changes!

These Mercury retro periods happen three times a year. The next one won’t be until August 13, when Mercury turns retrograde in the early degrees of Virgo, slides back into Leo, and turns direct in that sign on September 5.

 

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