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Once again my apologies to our friends in other countries. This is a post about American politics, not synchros.

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The last presidential debate took place this evening, October 22. Throughout this debate, I sat in our family room with my jaw permanently dropped. Here’s why:

When we lived in Venezuela, we traveled back to the U.S. every summer, usually to Oklahoma, where my mother’s family lived. For my sister and I, these trips were fun – lots of cousins to play with, lots of mischief we could get into while our parents sat around playing bridge and gabbing and catching up.

During one trip, someone punched out a screen in an upstairs window in my aunt’s house. I’m not sure why this was such a big deal, but all the kids were called into the living room and asked if they were responsible for this event. When I told my dad that my sister and I didn’t have anything to do with this, his expression became quite stern. “Please don’t ever lie to me, Trish. If you and Mary were responsible for this, just say so. Nothing is worse than a liar.”

That phrase has stuck with me for all the decades since. Nothing is worse than a liar. And yet, we have a Republican candidate who lies continually. In tonight’s debate, he reversed some of his previously held positions on the Mideast and actually embraced many of Obama’s foreign policies. It’s as if Romney doesn’t have any idea that our technology records everything. Check our website, he said to Obama. The present’s comeback? That he and his administration check Romney’s website frequently and the math for his economical policies still don’t add up.

Romney mentioned the word peace quite frequently this evening – a peaceful world, a peaceful Mideast, a peaceful Afghanistan. Yet,  to achieve this elusive peace we must have the strongest military in the world, we must not be afraid to stand up to Iran – which is four years closer to nuclear weapons – or to China, where untold millions of Romney’s wealth is invested – or to these Syrian despots.

In other words, in Romney’s worldview, we must continue to be the world’s cop, we must continue to nation build – which in the past has meant installing dictators whom we control through massive foreign aid. In the past, this has meant war – more war, endless war. If Romney has his way, we would probably nuke Iran, China, Syria, and any other country that didn’t tow the U.S. line.  Not too surprising, considering that the majority of his foreign policy advisors are straight out of W’s administration. I mean, really, one of Romney’s heroes is Dick Cheney. W’s Secretary of State, Condoleza Rice, appears at political functions with him.

Don’t take my word for it. Read Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, one of the most brilliant books I’ve ever read on U.S. foreign policy and what drives it.

I was delighted every time Obama called out Romney on one of his lies – about his proposed budget (where are the details?), on his polices (two months ago, you held the opposite position), on his “business” credentials (let GM go bankrupt).  The choice seems utterly clear to me. Romney is an extended version of George W Bush – more tax cuts for the wealthy, more war, more world cop scenarios,  more disenfranchisement of the sick, the poor, the elderly (you guys are on your own!) and more attempts to control the health care choices for women. Romney and Obama are the faces of the existing paradigms.

Romney is the old paradigm that has dominated American politics for decades  (keep lying, they’ll eventually believe your lies) and Obama is the new paradigm – diplomacy, discussion, sanctions instead of nukes.

Romney’s flip-flops make him a caricature – Daffy Duck on steroids. Republican pundits who defend him talk about the way his policies and views are “expanding, evolving.”  That’s a fancy way of saying that he lies to look good. When he talks about peace – he means war. When he talks about choices in anything – Medicare, Social Security, women’s health – he means he and his administration will choose for you, that they will impose their high and mighty morals on you. Never mind that they only give a damn about you until you’re born. After that, you’re on your own.

Never mind that he’ll send your son and daughters off to war, even though he never served a day in any war. Never mind that he talks about the people he has met while campaigning – the unemployed teacher in this state, the dying mother in that state. His policies would  dismantle the teachers’ union  and overturn Obama Care,  (based on the health plan Romney created for Massachusetts when he was governor of that state). His policies would return us to the W years, which ended in the worst financial crisis we’ve experienced since the Great Depression. When he talks about the tax burden on “small businesses,” he includes (but doesn’t mention) corporations like General Electric that paid NO taxes last year.

My dad’s words echo in my head: Nothing is worse than a liar.

One of our friends at the gym said it best today. Bill, a 58-year-old musician, stopped by my treadmill to say hi. “So, you watching the prez debate tonight?” I asked him.

Bill and I became friends during the 2008 presidential election season, when I heard him arguing with a McCain supporter. I piped in with my two cents and we decimated every argument this Repub made. After that, he started going to Rob’s yoga classes and whenever we see each other at the gym, our conversations are usually about politics and the shifting landscapes of American and global life.

“Maybe. O’s got it sewn up, Trish. Don’t believe anything they’re saying about the polls.”

Me, ever hopeful: “Yeah? You’ve got insider info?”

Bill just laughed. Bill and I both agreed that these “undecided voters,” just two weeks out from the election, are basically a myth. At this point in the game, if you’re undecided about who you’re going to vote for, then you are basically clueless about what’s at stake in the 2012 election. It’s about a paradigm shift and the choices have never been clearer.

Are you voting for the past – Romney (W, Reagan, Bush senior) – or for the present and the future – Obama?

This story comes from Bob Preston, an old friend from my  college days with whom I shared many strange and inexplicable  experiences. We lost touch for years, then reconnected and were delighted to find that our bond was still there, stronger than ever. There seems to be an overlapping of realities in this story, parallel worlds, perhaps, I’m not sure. Anyway, here it is.

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March/1972:  A Chicago Story

For several months I had been experiencing increasing pain in the area of my left shoulder. After multiple appointments with gatekeeper doctors and specialists, no definite diagnosis had been determined.

My apartment was located on the 2000 block of Lincoln Ave. in Chitown, above the Wise Fools Tap in Chicago. It was triangular shaped, with the point of the triangle situated in the alcove. There were windows facing to the west in the alcove , and to the north in the adjacent living room.  By all accounts a wonderful place, at a wonderful time!

After returning from work one day,  I entered my apartment, walked to my desk that was located in the alcove, and sat down to catch up with paper work. I put on an LP … (London Sessions with Howlin’ Wolf), smoked  a bowl, leaned back to become ‘one with my world’, and shut my eyes.  After a while my shoulder pain subsided. I opened my eyes, shook off  the day, and stood up to flip the LP.

As I rose, I became aware of a shadow on the left side of my peripheral vision. I turned my head and focused on a shadow of a cat, midway up the west wall next to the west facing windows. I sat back down and watched ‘the cat’ as it appeared to be watching me. After a bit, the cat stood up, arched it’s back, walked across the windows to the end of the narrow wall. It then appeared to turn right and began to walk eastward, on the wall and over the windows!

Now my curiosity was peaked. I looked around to find the light source that was projecting the shadow. The interesting thing was that there wasn’t any apparent light source that I could attribute to the image. There was no cat sitting in a front of a window and I couldn’t help but realize that I didn’t own a cat!  I stood up, following the cat on it’s  easterly direction.

I began to watch my mystery kitty with greatly increased scrutiny. It stopped and sat down. It seemed as though the cat was waiting for me to pay attention to it. Kitty immediately  stood up and once again headed to the east. At the end of the wall it turned to the south and continued walking! Although it did not seem possible, it was happening.

At the end of that wall it made another right turn, this time heading west, back to the place where I had first noticed it. When it arrived at the point of origin , it simply vanished! I looked around the room, searching for the furry apparition. It was no longer visibly noticeable. Shadows simply do not act like that. As I contemplated the incongruity of what I had just witnessed, the throbbing pain returned to my shoulder, and continued unabated.

I returned to the desk, sat down and glanced around the room. I noticed the clock…what I thought had taken a few minutes, had actually taken well over an hour. I didn’t know what to think. I heard my roommates entering the apartment. I tried to relate the story to them, but it didn’t make sense. They didn’t have any idea what I was talking about. The pain in my shoulder was increasing to the point that I decided to take some medication and go to bed.

The floor in my bedroom was going to be sanded the following day, consequently  most of the furniture, including rugs, had been removed…only the bed remained. As I sat on the edge of my bed, I started to open a container that held pain pills I had picked it up at a pharmacy on my way home from work . The prescription  had been for 30 pills.

My roommate came to my bedroom door, and started telling me about his day. As I listened, I continued trying to open the pill container, but it slipped from my hands. Room mate at door, no furniture except the bed and no rugs – yet, the pill case never hit the floor. No sound was heard by either of us, and there wasn’t any  container was on the floor. We were amazed at this turn of events. We searched the room but nothing was found.

I said goodnight and settled in. A short time later, my girlfriend came by and slid in next to me. After a fitful night of pain and mental confusion, I finally fell to sleep as dawn approached. My girlfriend got up to go to work. I woke  sometime later and discovered I was paralyzed and blind. An ambulance was called and I was taken to Northwestern University Hospital.

Somehow, during the night, three discs in my neck had collided together, causing fragments – splinters –  to penetrate my spinal cord. The problem had affected L3,4 & 5. At last I knew what had caused the months of pain! Under the care of  a wonderful surgeon and medical staff the problem was corrected and, in time, I was fortunate enough to recover all movement and my eyesight.

After many weeks, I was able to return home to my apartment. With help, I climbed the steps to the second floor. While I had been gone, the floor had been sanded and the furniture and rugs had been returned to the room.

I entered my bedroom, crossed the floor and sat on my bed. With my roommate standing at the door, I heard a rattling clunk at my feet. I looked down and, to my surprise, there, on the floor was the missing pill bottle! I had been looking at my roommate the whole time…he had not tossed anything.

I opened the container and, for whatever reason, counted the pills. There were 27! What had happened to the other three pills?: Where had the container been  all this time?

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At the time Bob sent this story, I was reading Whitley Strieber’s Solving the Communion Enigma, where he talks about UFOs, aliens, and parallel worlds.

When it comes to near-death experiences, some of the most skeptical medical professionals are neurologists. Typically, they espouse a materialistic view emphasizing that the brain is the source of consciousness, and that NDEs are products of the dying brain–hallucinations and other imaginary mental constructions that will ultimately stop when the brain’s activity stops. If this hypothesis is true, then NDEs tell us nothing about life after death.

Now comes  Dr Eben Alexander, a Harvard-educated neurosurgeon, who drifted in a coma for seven days in 2008 after contracting meningitis. During his illness Alexander says that the part of his brain which controls human thought and emotion “shut down” and that he experienced “something so profound that it gave me a scientific reason to believe in consciousness after death.”

What was it? He saw angels.

Writing for Newsweek, Dr Alexander says he was met by a beautiful blue-eyed woman in a “place of clouds, big fluffy pink-white ones” and “shimmering beings.” He has written a book, Proof of Heaven, describing his experience.

“Birds? Angels? These words registered later, when I was writing down my recollections. But neither of these words do justice to the beings themselves, which were quite simply different from anything I have known on this planet. They were more advanced. Higher forms.”

Alexander added that a “huge and booming.. glorious chant, came down from above, and I wondered if the winged beings were producing it. The sound was palpable and almost material, like a rain that you can feel on your skin but doesn’t get you wet.”

The neurosurgeon says he had heard stories from patients who spoke of out-of-body experiences, but disregarded them as “wishful thinking.” Now he has reconsidered his opinion following his own experience.

“I know full well how extraordinary, how frankly unbelievable, all this sounds. Had someone even a doctor told me a story like this in the old days, I would have been quite certain that they were under the spell of some delusion.

“But what happened to me was, far from being delusional, as real or more real than any event in my life. That includes my wedding day and the birth of my two sons.” He added: “I’ve spent decades as a neurosurgeon at some of the most prestigous medical institutions in our country. I know that many of my peers hold as I myself did to the theory that the brain, and in particular the cortex, generates consciousness and that we live in a universe devoid of any kind of emotion, much less the unconditional love that I now know God and the universe have toward us.

“But that belief, that theory, now lies broken at our feet. What happened to me destroyed it.” To say his experience was as real as his wedding day and the birth of his children is a strong statement in support of NDEs. I doubt that he will change the views of skeptics in his field, but maybe they’ll think twice before dismissing their patients experiences.

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Dr. Alexander’s reflections are a welcome sign from a medical field which routinely rights off NDEs as wishful thinking, telling us that we can’t trust our own experiences. Apparently, when it happened to him, Alexander wasn’t so quick to dismiss his own experience.

This post is about American politics, and I realize it may not be of interest to people from other countries. Then again, perhaps it will be. Our planet is so interconnected these days that what affects one affects all.

The 2^nd presidential debate took place this evening at Hofstra University, Long Island, New York. It was a  town hall meeting moderated by CNN’s Candy Crowley,  that consisted of 82  individuals who claimed to be undecided voters. I have no idea how or why ANYONE would be undecided at this point, but hey, okay. Undecided. Fine. These undecided folks had some good questions.

Before we go into this, I noticed that Michelle O and Anne R wore the same color outfit – hot pink! Synchro? Or did their consultants coordinate??

The first question came from a 20-year-old college student who wanted to know what the candidates could do for his generation to obtain jobs once they graduated from college. Right off the bat, Romney started out with his lies. He sang the praises of Pell grants, a government program that enables low income students to attend college.

Truth? Romney’s plan would eliminate Pell grants.

And from this point onward, the Romney lies multiplied. I kept waiting for his nose to grow longer. I kept hoping that the story of Pinochio was a true story, that when you lie, your nose grows longer and everyone recognizes it and knows you’re a liar. Instead of the elongated nose, we saw Romney’s odd little puckered smile and lots of blinks.

On energy: Romney said that under the Obama administration, gas prices have risen. That’s true. But the bottom line here wasn’t addressed: the government does not  control gas prices. The free market does that. As Obama pointed out, “The economy was on the verge of collapse, we were entering the worse recession since the Great Depression.”

On Libya: Romney blew it. Here’s why.

On foreign policy, Obama destroyed Mitt Romney. This was the Libya question, This point illustrates the difference between a commander in chief and a presidential hopeful.

On immigration: Romney? Self-deport. Obama? The dream act.

On women’s health: Romney will defund Planned Parenthood, an organization upon which millions of women depend for mammogram, health care, contraceptive care. Abortion, per se, wasn’t addressed. Romney’s administration would overturn Roe V Wade. Yet he denies that he would do this. Denies it in spite of the fact that Paul Ryan, his running mate, co-sponsored a bill with Todd Akin (the body of a raped woman has ways to prevent pregnancy) that would confer personhood on a fertilized egg – i.e., a woman who obtains an abortion wold be guilty of murder, even if that abortion was the result of incest or rape.

On the one hand, Romney mentions his healthcare reform for Massachusetts, on which the Obamacare plan was built. Then he turns around and says he will repeal Obamacare on day one. It’s the sort of doublespeak BS he stands for.

One of the best lines? Romney’s five-point economical plan. Obama pointed out that Romney has a “very sketchy deal. Folks at the top play by a different set of rules…”

Romney then defended the points of his tax plan with: “of course the numbers will add up. I was someone who ran businesses for 25 years and balanced the budget. I ran the Olympics and the numbers added up.”

Really? Romney ran the Olympics on government bailout money.

But the crowning moment was the last statement by Obama, where he addressed Romney’s remarks to behind-the-doors donors about the 47 % of moochers in the U.S. who don’t pay taxes – people like, well, you know, the poor, the sick, the disenfranchised, seniors on Social Security.

Candy Crowley deserves a raise. She kept Romney the bully within his pen, despite his attempts to break out, and shut him up when he tried to bully his way into further discourse and more lies.

Let’s be clear about this. Tonight, Mitt Romney, a zillionaire who has been running for president for at least 20 years, can’t connect with ordinary people. Despite his pathetic attempts at anecdotes about people he has met throughout  his campaign, he just doesn’t make the connection on pay equity for women, on education, on the tax plan, on foreign policy, on health care, on anything to do with women, people, or even dogs.

In the past few days, before tonight’s debate, the polls have shown that Romney has shown a ten percent rise among women voters. I find this hard to believe. What woman in her right mind would vote for a man who doesn’t believe in equal pay for women? Who  believes the government should control your reproductive rights, your body? Or, as a friend said to me today, “What woman would support any guy who seeks to control your vagina?”

Forget Ohio, the state everyone says you have to win to win the presidency. This isn’t’ about Ohio.  The majority of voters are women. Alienate them, and you lose the election. Romney and the Republicans must be damning the day that women won the right to vote.

The last question was interesting: How do you and your policies differ from those of George W Bush?  Well, vouchers for health care, for starters. This is where the government sends you a voucher to cover some of your health care costs and then sends you off into the insurance free market to buy your own insurance. Right. Like a 75-year-old man or woman on Medicare will be able to find affordable insurance.

So, you get the idea here. What’s at stake in this election is both simple and complex.  Simple in the sense that the choices are clear between the Republicans and the Democrats. Complex in the sense that we are three weeks away from the election and less than eight weeks away from the Mayan end date of December 21. The closer we get to the election, the more convinced I am that the Mayan end times – or whatever it proves to be – is about a paradigm shift, not the end of the world, not disclosure, not about anything radical. It’s about a radical shift in beliefs. We’re in the midst of it now.

This point was driven home today when I was on my way out of our local grocery store and a well-dressed elderly woman sitting by the door said, “Excuse me, can you give me a ride home? I live just three blocks from here.”

“Sure.”

“Oh my God, thank you so much.”

I loaded her groceries into my cart and then into my car. Phyllis, who will be 90 in November,  always walks the three blocks to Publix, then waits for someone “kind, who will give her a ride home.” She has a teacher daughter who lives locally, a son in New York. “I used to work for Dior in New York,” she says.  “I loved it. Then I taught fashion. I loved it. Now I’m here and I love that, too.”

I carried Phyllis’s groceries into her townhouse, a pristine environment where everything had its place. She invited me to stay for coffee, but I had an appointment with a deadline and demurred. But as I backed out her driveway, I knew I had just seen myself in thirty years.

If we can’t help each other, if we can’t solidify humane policies, if we can’t lend a hand to those in need, then as a country, a nation, a people, we have failed. But I’m an optimist, and I think people like Phyllis lead the way.

“My daughter is appalled that I ask strangers for rides,” Phyllis says. “She tells me, Suppose they try to rob you, mom?” Phyllis laughs at her own statement. “But what do I have to rob?”

I failed in that I should have gotten Phyllis’s number so I could drop by when she needed a ride to and from the grocery store. But I suspect our paths will cross again. Maybe that’s part of life after 12/21/12.

Synchronicity. Hey, remember me?

This is called the Dolphin Fountain. Since daughter Megan paints dolphins, I was curious to take a look at it when a correspondent sent this pic and the accompanying synchro tale. At first, I couldn’t see any dolphin. In fact, that’s why I named the post the way I did.

Was the dolphin swimming below the fountain? No, you have to look closely. It’s right at the top.  That’s a kid riding a dolphin. See his/her head?  In the image, it blends with the dolphin and at first glance, the top looks like a horse’s head. At least, that’s what I saw. Maybe if I could walk around the fountain, I would get a better sense of the dolphin.

Here’s the story from KLM, artist residing in Phoenix.

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I was curious about a house in my area that I have driven by a few times recently. It has those arts and crafts style tents outside in their backyard. Big white tents with clear plastic windows. So I started to look up “art lessons” and “sculpture lessons in Desert Hills” thinking maybe somebody is using them for an art class. I see cars parked outside all the time, 5 or 6 at least.

I haven’t found that house yet, but I found an artist by the name of Walter Rezcek who happens to live in my area. I went into his online gallery and found this fountain. My dad had one exactly like it. I never knew where he got it, and had never seen one like it before. This must be where dad got the fountain though, or at least Walter designed it and sold it a nursery or something and dad bought it.

I have never seen this design anywhere else, right down to the wave style bowls and the kid riding the dolphin at the top. I had this fountain in my front yard for a long time after my folks moved to Oregon. I took it up to them after they got settled. It stayed with the house after dad passed a few years ago, but I’ve always regretted not packing it up and bringing it back. I brought everything else back, including his tractor, but just didn’t have the space for the fountain.

So, now I’m hunting for another job, I was laid off in late September. I have been considering making a go at art. So maybe this is telling me it’s time. I’m going to paint now.

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I told KLM that just after I read his story with the Oregon link, I talked to the service guy at the local car shop who told me my new engine for our Mazda–which was blown out from the flood related to Tropical Storm Isaac–was en route from Oregon. KLM then related a long list of synchros with Oregon that he has recently experienced himself. He hopes to move there.

This one is fun and is sure to make you smile!

Forewarned: no synchro here.

There is something compelling about Joe Biden. I have always liked this man, liked his voting record, his personal biography, and his ability to discuss issues in a powerful yet grounded way. Joe is….well, Joe. Middle class. His name pretty much says it all.

He has lived through tragedy that would kill lesser mortals – the death of his wife and daughter in a car accident in 1972, shortly after Biden, 29, was elected to the U.S. Senate, one of the youngest people ever elected to that position. As a sudden single father of two young boys, he did what any parent would do, devoted himself to them unconditionally.

Joe understands that any country is only as strong as its middle class and this point came through strongly during the VP debate this evening. Ryan was clearly in over his head when it came to foreign policy, Medicare, Social Security, taxes, the right of a woman to choose, and just about every other issue covered in the debate. When the moderator, Martha Raddatz, a correspondent for ABC News, asked him a pointed question, asked for specifics, Ryan sought refuge in talking points.

Martha was fantastic, a terrific moderator in that she didn’t allow these two guys to take over. Better than Jim Laher, for sure .

MSNBC’s Laurence O’Donald felt it was inappropriate for Raddatz to ask the candidates, both of them Catholics, how their religious beliefs influenced their policies – particularly on abortion. O’Donald feels that religion shouldn’t enter the debate because of the separation between church and state. But the fact is that the separation between church and state has been eroding for years, Religion has been a factor in politics since the Nixon/JFK debate in 1960, when JFK’s Catholicism became an issue. And in the first twelve years of the new millennium, religion has gained a foothold in politics that is unprecedented.

For instance, Paul Ryan co-signed a bill with U.S. Congressman Todd Akin that would declare personhood upon a fertilized egg. Akin, by the way, sits on the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, and wants all of you women out there to know that pregnancy from rape is really rare. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Really? And this guy is sitting on a science committee?

That’s a whole other post. The point here is that Ryan co-wrote this bill with Akin – and is now struggling to distance himself from it. When Joe Biden answered this question, he pointed out that his religious beliefs tell him that its right for the government to take care of those who can no longer take care of themselves – the poor, disenfranchised, elderly, sick – the very people, in fact, whom Ryan’s budget would dismiss completely. In terms of abortion, Biden said it isn’t up to government to intervene in such personal decisions, that he wouldn’t interfere in Roe v Wade.

Ryan would appoint supreme court justices who would overturn that ruling and basically render any woman and/or doctor involved in an abortion a murderer. Nice, huh?

An abortion is not an easy choice for any woman. And it’s shocking that decades after the supremos ruled on Roe v Wade it’s still an issue, that we have candidates who actually believe the government should have the right to dictate the choices a woman makes about her own body. But there is no corresponding proposed ruling about what men do with their bodies.

Years ago in college, I remember having this discussion with Dr. Millet, a professor of English Lit whom I absolutely adored. He was trying to convince me to stick with English Lit as a major (rather than Spanish). “You women, Trish, always hold the upper hand because you are the ones who birth life.”

“Uh, we don’t do this alone, Dr. Millet.”

“Well, no, but because you’re the ones who actually give birth, you’re the ones who come under under scrutiny by those in government  who seek to control your bodies.”

This conversation happened around 1967, before Roe v Wade. I was a 20-year-old hippie who was against everything the government stood for. And here I was, having this surreal conversation with a professor at least 20 years older than me who nonetheless understood the stakes. “Go write your novels and books, Trish,” he said. “You will always follow the path of your heart.”

It sounded nice but it took me many years to understand what he actually meant by that statement, the greatest compliment I ever got from any professor. And right now, my heart tells me we are still a country where racism is prevalent, where many people who are going to vote for Romney/Ryan will do so simply because Obama is black. Reactionary voting is often a vote against your own self- interest.

Here’s what I’m sure of: Any woman who votes the Repub ticket needs extensive and profound psychiatric intervention.

Biden won.