Let Freedom Ring!
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COVID: Are YOU Surprised?
May 10, 2020
By Anna Morris, Editor
I am NOT surprised except for the fact this new virus KILLS in high enough numbers to be noticed.
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He is Risen Indeed!
April 11, 2020
By Anna Morris, Editor
Christ arose from His tomb on Easter Sunday but tomorrow many Christians will be under 'stay-at-home' orders from government officials. Neither church services nor family gatherings will be allowed in some states. Saving our fellow human beings from deadly corona virus spread is the reason. Even so, people in the U.S. are growing more and more apprehensive as they watch constitutional rights curtailed with governors' signatures.
Today The Hill reports that Kentucky Gov. Andy Bashear has basically forbidden church services via a stay at home order with enforcement plans announced and in place. As The Hill article explains it, anyone caught out of their homes, attending church or other gatherings, will have their license plates photographed and will be notified "in person" that they must then quarantine themselves for 14 days! Easter services of course are not specifically singled out but cars in church parking lots make great photo-ops for government surveillance teams.
In other news the last couple weeks, some state governors, for instance Greg Abbot of Texas, have declared religious services to be "essential", therefore not forbidden.
Tragically, the underlying reality is the deadly, new corona virus sneaking around in droplets and aerosols, from surfaces to fingers, fingers to faces, noses to noses, person to person around the globe. As with rogue, man-eating beasts of times past, the virus prowls silent, unseen and unknown until it finds just the right prey which it can destroy utterly.
Some have tried to compare this virus to the regular, known, deadly influenza viruses but these comparisons lead to strife and do no good. A huge risk is that this 'novel', meaning new, corona virus will be added to the roster of yearly viral epidemics that annually kill tens of thousands without much notice taken by press or politicians. We already experience influenzas A, B, C and D. Meanwhile, retroviruses do some awful things, including Coxsackie virus as a likely cause of Type-1, juvenile diabetes. Additionally, have scientists yet pinpointed the cause of crippling, devastating flaccid paralysis, largely affecting children after viral infection? If we are not VERY CAREFUL RIGHT NOW, COVID-19 can be added to this list of maiming and life threatening nasties.
Balanced against all that is reasonable concern among Americans that government spawned emergency orders enacted to save lives during this sudden threat and confusion, may lead to permanent loss of rights. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution lays out the right for citizens to peacefully assemble, and what about religious freedom and separation of church and state? Easter church services fit nicely withing those definitions.
To what extent can constitutional rights be abridged during a deadly epidemic? For how long? If curtailing rights for 'Public Health' is acceptable now, isn't it possible government will find many 'Public Health' excuses to keep us locked down and disabled from here on? Those are reasonable questions though answers from politicians at this time seem to be threats of extended stay at home orders.
In this sudden flush of pandemic driven government control, Americans conveniently forget they have allowed many erosions of rights and freedoms for decades, many under the threadbare guise, 'for the public good'. Is the current pandemic a tipping point where citizens will learn to bow down before the strong arm of government and beg for more controls? Will we give away our rights and freedoms in the name of "Public Health" and "for the greater good"?
It is wise to be alert but not a very good or proper time to severely oppose government. Now is the time to know our strengths and plan how we will block future overreach when the viral reign of terror has subsided.
Jesus resurrection is celebrated on Easter Sunday and He taught us, "Do to others as you would have them do to you." An alternate wording is, "Don't do to others that which you would not want done to you." I know I don't want this new corona virus and I don't want responsibility for passing it to others, possibly killing a few along the line of infection. So this Easter Sunday, 2020, is not a good time to fight politicians and their executive orders.
Perhaps Americans in future will decide safety is more important than freedom. A majority with that mindset gather strength all the time and they might rule for awhile. Eventually the pendulum should swing the other way, though freedoms once taken, require decades of struggle to regain.
Whatever condition follows the pandemic restrictions, believers know the power of Christ is more powerful than any government. A priest once told the following story on Easter Sunday:
Back in the bad old days of the U.S.S.R., the Soviet Communist party controlled everything, including peoples' thoughts and beliefs. One Easter Sunday Communists decided to reinforce the government position that there is no God. A large group of Russians was gathered together in an old church, forced to listen to an extremely long tirade by a Communist official. For more than an hour the Comisar thundered and harangued the helpless comrades forced to listen. 'There is no God! The Party takes care of people, God does nothing because he does not exist! Depend on the government for everything because there is no God to help you, only the Party!' On and on, the Comisar blurted party propaganda to his captive audience.
After more than an hour, the red faced party leader finally sat down, certain everyone, after that length of time, must certainly agree that there is no God and only the Party.
In the following, stunned silence a very old man slowly rose to his feet and with difficulty began tottering toward the lectern just vacated by the Party official. The old man faced the audience and in an amazingly loud and strong voice declared these few words:
"CHRIST IS RISEN!"
Instantly the audience in one thundering voice shouted the ancient reply to the Paschal greeting:
"HE IS RISEN INDEED!"*
With those simple words of faith the otherwise helpless people demonstrated that no party would control their hearts or deepest beliefs.
We have no idea what days and weeks ahead will bring to our people and country or to all other countries and peoples in the world. Tomorrow on this restricted Easter Sunday, remember that CHRIST IS RISEN, RISEN INDEED, and that faith in His power will overcome and shine light into any darkness!
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Wishing all of you, our readers, a happy and Joyous Easter from us, Lynn and Anna, at FFOA!
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Traditional Russian Orthodox Paschal greeting:
Kristos voskrese! (Christ is risen!)
Voistina voskrese! (Truly He is risen!)
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Virus in Wonderland
March 28, 2020
By Anna Morris, Editor, Freedom Fighters of America
Some of us in this Idaho/Oregon border region wonder if we had COVID-19 illness in mid- to late December 2019? We had a supposed viral illness during which some people completely lost the senses of taste and smell. Last week anosmia and dysgeusia, medical terms for loss of smell and taste, were announced as possible early signs of, or in some cases the only signs of COVID-19 disease. It is now widely recommended that people with these symptoms immediately enter self quarantine for two weeks.
I live on my small ranch in Washington County, Idaho, which is located in a fairly isolated high desert region on the east bank of the Snake River. A large family with children was sharing my house until recently. In December 2019 a couple of those kids visited relatives in northeastern Oregon. One of these relatives drives school bus so has ample opportunity to absorb any infectious diseases going through school kids.
On returning to Idaho, a preteen boy fell ill with severe fatigue and fever of 101 F (38.33 C). After a few days he seemed to be getting better but his grandmother noticed he kept adding salt to a cup of chicken broth, a ridiculous amount of salt, like the whole shaker-full if he had not been stopped. The boy had no sense of taste which lasted a few days before it returned as he rapidly recovered. The total time of his illness was around seven days.
Two babies in the family, two years old and younger, were feverish and fussy for a few days but had no other specific signs or symptoms.
The boy's grandmother who had helped nurse him subsequently lost her appetite, had mild sore throat and respiratory symptoms then lost her sense of taste and smell. She describes the symptoms as, "It was pretty much coming down with pneumonia, for me." This was late December/early January and since that time this woman has had two diagnosed bouts of pneumonia treated with antibiotics and other medications. These last illnesses are of the "walking pneumonia" class as she has remained active though severely fatigued.
As soon as the boy became ill I moved into another house on the ranch. I have a peculiar, dangerous heart rate and viruses can be very serious for me. Nevertheless I had been in close quarters with the children who were ill. On Christmas Eve I awoke with a mild sore throat which eased with a cup of hot coffee. I was severely tired that day and kind of dragged through the holidays till the first of January. I then developed mild respiratory symptoms, so mild I was not sure I was ill. One night I woke up with the sensation that I was choking to death and coughed up a peculiar and large mass of stringy phlegm. After that I got an eight day migraine and was absolutely prostrate for a couple weeks. I experienced severe depression for the first time in my life and I told my doctor I felt like I had pneumonia. She said my lungs were "clear" and prescribed an Albuterol inhaler which helped. Even so, it is only in the last week that I have begun to feel somewhat normal. The depression began to lift a couple weeks ago, over eight weeks after the initial signs of illness.
Last week news articles from Europe began reporting the loss of taste and smell in connection with COVID-19.
Around this time a friend shared a Facebook post from a nurse in the northeastern corner of Oregon, describing a rash of respiratory illnesses in December 2019 during which schools closed for disinfection. (All I can find similar to this is schools in that area closed in December due to Norovirus.) She noted there had been deaths among older people, supposedly from this unusually severe, non-flu, respiratory illness. (This posting cannot be found at this time.)
Continuing anecdotally, one of the first confirmed COVID-19 cases in Oregon was in Weston, Oregon, Umatilla County in the same vicinity where the boy was possibly infected. This was February 2020. Various articles noted that that man worked at the local casino on tribal lands, though not directly with the public or with food. A couple days before he showed symptoms he had attended a middle school basketball tournament in Weston, it was reported. This male patient over 60 years old was soon hospitalized in Walla Walla, Washington, over the border from Oregon.
This is somewhat close to home for me so I have been watching the emerging cases in Oregon and Idaho counties. More than a week after the first Umatilla County case there was a second, said to have been in close contact with the first. There seem to be no other cases and no community spread in the area. (I must here caution the readers. Today the East Oregonian newspaper has an article claiming COVID-19 cases in eastern Oregon are not being reported to the public because the populations in the area are so small, those infected could be "outed". Then there was some mumbling about more "transparency" which I translate as Oregon Health Authority will tell fewer lies. All this is fodder for another article so I will let the subject LIE for now, so to speak. It looks like a third COVID case in Umatilla County is being counted today.)
On the surface one cannot help but wonder if the COVID-19 virus has not already visited the area and if there is a level of immunity present in the population?
There are various estimates about how the novel H1 N1 1918 influenza virus mutated. Some authors and researchers believe there was a first pass of the virus, say in 1916 or 1917, which was milder and may have not been particularly noticed. These researchers theorize a second pass of the virus, after a deadly mutation, killed 50 to 100 million people in the 1918 pandemic. Following that the virus became milder again and is still with us according to various sources. Is it possible COVID-19 has been around for awhile and has become more lethal in a second pass?
At this time Italy, so hard hit with COVID-19 in the past month, is reportedly looking back at some cases of severe pneumonia in that region going back perhaps as far as November/December 2019. A comment made on an international forum of which I am a member, said Italy may disinter the dead from that outbreak to try to obtain viral samples. This story is unfolding at this time.
I have been active on this forum and on Twitter. A number of people respond with their own tales of having peculiar viral illness and loss of taste and smell dating back before reports of the virus came out of Wuhan China. Some of us wonder if the virus has an origin other than China. We wonder if the original site might be in northern Italy or even the northern U.S.? Is it possible, I wonder, that this devastating killer virus could have arisen in the underpopulated, high desert, border region where I live?
Since COVID-19 testing abilities in the U.S. appear to be woefully inadequate and unavailable, no one has any idea how many currently infected individuals exist in the country. Some sources claim there is an antibody test that can show if someone has had the disease. I for one would love to see wide spread antibody testing done in this Idaho/Oregon border area. Until then we will have to wonder.
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Tune of the Unknown Virus
June 9, 2018
By Anna Morris, Editor, Freedom Fighters of America
Have you or your friends and family been diagnosed with, "an unknown virus" with peculiar, flu-like symptoms that hang on for weeks or even months? Do you know people who never completely recover? Perhaps they have lingering fatigue, recurrent fevers, irritable bowels, continuing respiratory problems and other symptoms of illness?
(DO YOU KNOW THE POLIO VIRUS HAS DOZENS OF ENTEROVIRUS COUSINS, JUST WAITING TO FLOAT INTO OUR EYES, NOSES & THROATS? FROM HENCE THEY TRAVEL TO OUR DIGESTIVE SYSTEMS, IRRITATING OUR BOWELS, PERHAPS FOREVER. MANY CAN MIGRATE TO SAFE HAVEN IN OUR NERVOUS SYSTEMS. THOUGH THE ENTERO- PART OF ENTEROVIRUS REFERS TO BOWELS WHERE THESE VIRUSES THRIVE. THEY CAN ALSO CAUSE RESPIRATORY INFECTIONS. KEEP THESE THOUGHTS IN MIND AS WE EXPLORE DAMAGING VIRAL INFECTIONS.)
I had a very serious unknown "virus" from April to November last year. "Virus" is in quotes because that is the medical providers' best guess. Nobody seems to be watching these outbreaks, there are no diagnostic techniques and so best guessing is as good as it gets. My favorite label is, "an unknown virus we have never seen before," spoken by ER personnel, accompanied by a grimace and shudder. Such was the opinion of the outbreak of 2017.
The unknown virus comment is usually followed with, "it is making a lot of people in the community really sick for a really long time." Welcome to Twenty-First Century medicine at its finest when a disease crops up that no one has ever seen before. Officially, it seems, nobody cares.
For a couple years I have been caring for a family member. Mostly we stay to ourselves but in April, 2017 we stupidly went to lunch with a friend. One of the few restaurants open on a Sunday was a gymnasium sized, big-box store thing with a format for children. No less than four birthday parties for grade schoolers were in progress when we arrived and kids were practically climbing the walls. "This would be a great place to catch the flu," I thought, but nonetheless we bravely chose a table for three and stumbled over the kids on our way to the taco buffet.
About 48 hours later my family member coughed rhythmically all night, dry and not deep, like a huff, huff, huff, hour after hour, uninterrupted throughout the night. Fever was noted the next day. Another 48 hours passed and I awoke with a fever of 102.3 degrees F, laid on the couch and scarcely got up for the next 32 days.
Keeping the story shorter, my relative and I both ended up in a care center though strings had to be pulled for me to enter because I am yet middle aged and not elderly. I had gotten to the point where, after almost six weeks of debilitating, unremitting illness, I could no longer care for myself. (The local hospital is only "acute access" or whatever it is called so sick people are seldom admitted unless they have had an emergency and six weeks of illness does not constitute an emergency!)
My elderly relative fared much better than me but I have a long history of difficulties--including partial paralysis and permanent nerve damage--from viral illnesses. Last year's unknown virus nobody had ever seen before, attacked both respiratory and digestive functions. I coughed up the last bloody scabs--from bronchial tubes?-- in November. I refuse to describe what happened to my digestive organs though keeping with the bloody scab description, there was an onset of irritable bowel issues which finally resolved last October.
An alternate catch-all medical term for previously unseen and unknown viruses is "flu". As in, "you have the flu and we can't do anything for it so go home." During the illness last year I went to doctors a number of times. ER doctors did a test for flu which I would liken to having a tampon with long strings shoved up your nose and into your throat so it can scrape something off your tonsils if you have any. They said the test was negative for flu but that the test was extremely inaccurate so it might not mean anything anyway.
Roughly, every 20 years of my life I have had "flu" which damaged my nervous system. For years I lived with a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis due to some of this lingering damage. So I assumed last year's disaster was just one of those episodes and I should be safe for another 20 years. WRONG!
Six weeks ago my patient urgently needed a new medication which the pharmacy finally filled around closing time. It appears that EVERYBODY decides to pick up their meds after work in the evening. I waited 30 minutes in a very long line, breathing stuffy, sweaty, germ laden air in a big box store packed cheek to jowl with late shoppers. Twenty-four hours later I experienced severe fatigue but no other signs of illness. I had not been around people or in a public place for more than five days prior to being at the pharmacy and I did not touch anything but my credit card and the sack with medicine, so I assume I inhaled the destructive virus while standing in line.
After I had several days of severe fatigue, my relative had urine the color of Coca Cola, profuse vomiting and a bright scarlet rash on all body parts but hands, feet and head. (I note that distinction because there is an enteroviral viral disease called Hand Foot and Mouth and those are the places where rash appears. Apparently whatever we have had was not HFM.) My relative's regular doctor ordered a trip to the ER for "observation" and since all tests came back OK, the diagnosis was "probably a virus" due to the rash and "probably a stomach bug" due to the vomiting.
We went home, went to bed, had fevers of 101.2 and barely got up for four days. When I had to get up I made sure to feed and hydrate my patient who was too weak to hold a spoon. After seven days my patient got better and I got worse. My patient then slept for the next 20 days, getting up in the morning, going back to sleep in a recliner, then getting up to go back to bed.
For me, this year is a repeat of the last but not quite as bad. Nerves on the right side of my face which were damaged during a viral infection in 1994 are affected again. In the first week there were stabbing, crushing, tearing pains in my chest, limbs and face. Over 30 days later my right eyelid still flutters at odd times. My lungs and digestive system from throat to stomach and beyond all feel like they are on fire. It is hard to eat because I feel like I have been slugged in the gut with a big fist and I am losing weight. Other symptoms I will not describe. I started guzzling Pepto Bismol to put out the fire, something that has helped in the past.
If this was merely a personal story, it would not matter. Both last year and this, medical staff have said there were "unknown" viral illnesses sickening "lots of people in the community" for "really long periods of time, weeks or even months in some cases." So what are these devastating illnesses? What is being done about them? Apparently nothing! Since most viruses cannot be effectively treated or identified, medical practice throws up its collective hands, gives palliative or emergency care as needed and if the patient remains ill too long, said patient is shipped off to a psychiatrist.
A defensive argument from the medical "community" would be that few if any people actually die from these unknown viruses. Well, maybe some really old people in nursing homes die from these virus outbreaks but anything could kill them and they were going to die anyway. (Back in 1994 when I was so ill, the hometown paper scarcely had room to print the obituaries of nursing home patients who died one after the other. A patient in one of these homes later told me how terrible the virus had been!)
Recent scholarly articles on any medical subject seem to have a requirement to describe whatever disease in terms of "global burden" and cost, direct and indirect such as lost wages and productivity. I wonder what is the "global burden" of these un-tracked, unknown virus caused diseases from which some people never fully recover? Last year it was said that workers in one of the few local industries were especially hard hit with the mystery virus, many allegedly off work for up to six weeks. God help minimum wage earners one paycheck away from homelessness.
My friends and I sometimes remember the diseases we encountered as kids back in the 60's and 70's. As we remember it there were colds, flu and "stomach flu". Mostly we remember that people used to get well after a week or so and what the heck is going on now when people get something that acts like the flu but never goes away? A few of my friends have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome following mystery infections. Some of them are applying for disability and living in poverty. All because of viral diseases? Nobody knows.
The fact that my relative had a massive, scarlet red petechial rash, urine the color of Coke and digestive symptoms which garnered a diagnosis of "probable virus", "probably stomach bug" at the ER, could demonstrate that the infection was an enterovirus. There are hundreds of these relatives of the poliovirus we have largely eradicated globally. They include echovirus, Coxsackie virus and the dreaded EV-D68 that has crippled perhaps 100 children in the U.S. in recent years.
Let's look at Coxsackie virus, named for a town in New York state of that name. Once upon a time outbreaks of debilitating illness were investigated.
"In the summer of 1947 there were several small outbreaks of poliomyelitis in upstate New York," says an article in virology blog, www.virology.ws/2009/08/10/coxsackie-ny-and-the-virus-named-after-it. Gilbert Dalldorf and his associate Grace M. Sickles of the Wadsworth Laboratory in Albany New York collected fecal samples, injected mice and found a new virus which was subsequently named for the town where the outbreak occurred. This particular, nasty little bug caused paralysis by damaging muscles rather than the nerves attacked by regular poliovirus, according to the blog.
Enteroviruses like Coxsackie are also suspected of causing Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) aka myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). At me-pedia.org there is a list of mysterious worldwide outbreaks of ME and CFS, starting in the 1930's.
Jane Colby a British former Head Teacher and author wrote ME - The New Plague. At www.methenewplague.net/About-Jane.html it says, " In the 1980s, Jane was severely disabled with MR due to a virus related to polio." On another page at this site "Read the Latest Episode", the heading asks, "Is ME New Variant Polio?" Describing the discovery of the Coxsackie virus Jane writes, "The disease was considered to be Atypical Polio, because its symptoms identified it as a kind of polio despite the virus being apparently different." Please check out Jane Colby's information at the site listed above, which I believe is a current online reissue of her book.
I started out describing my past two years' experience with "unknown virus" diagnoses. Since no testing has been available I cannot say that my relative or I actually have enterovirus though we have both been diagnosed with a probable viral stomach bug which coincidentally is said to be making a lot of local folks really sick for weeks or months. My relative and I have both had respiratory symptoms along with the digestive illness. I still have neurological complications, pain and twitching in my face. This is the third incidence in my life of an unidentified virus causing long term disability, with the first time in 1994 having done neurological damage that for years resembled MS. If I live the average lifespan of my family I will probably live another 30 years. Unknown viruses have taken at least one of those years and that is too much.
What could or should medical science be doing? It amazes me how our "transformed", Obamatized medical system, now called "health care", is intent on tracking our personal habits while it does not seem to give a flying flip about emerging viruses. The record keeping system is dependent upon smoking status, whether a patient has EVER smoked, or ever consumed more alcohol than government allows in pursuit of low costs and optimum health. The people are being watched but the viruses are not in my opinion. Get one of these weird viruses and you are on your own. If you get sick enough you will be sent to a psychiatrist. Or as Jane Colby writes, "...when the world was young and CFS wasn't even a gleam in a psychiatrist's eye."
In my opinion medical science should think back to the "Spanish Flu" pandemic of 1918-1920. People who have studied this believe the virus first passed through the population in 1917. When it recirculated in 1918 it was extremely deadly, eventually killing 50 to 100 million people around the globe. With the advent of DNA and all our other marvelous laboratory tools, modern investigators were hard put to obtain biological samples from the time. Great efforts were even made to dig up mass graves from areas of permafrost in order to collect needed samples. The driving questions were, what was it and could it happen again?
What about the unknown viral diseases of today which severely damage some patients? What if those viruses are all related to poliovirus? The stakes were raised quite a bit when EV-D68 started crippling children. What if the "unknown virus" of today, which causes weeks or months of suffering for many, comes back next year as an epidemic causing severe disability or mortality? It has been said that a really successful plague virus of the future would have to pass as easily as the flu. Enteroviruses, though they have an affinity for our bowels, at least some can be acquired by inhaling aerosolized droplets, a fancy term for a cough or sneeze. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov , Enterovirus D68 Infection, 2015 Nov)
Wouldn't it make sense right now for doctors to collect biological evidence and store it in case something like atypical polio fatally attacks the global population in the future? How much would it cost to collect and store throat or nasal swabs and selected body fluids during the peculiar outbreaks of these unknown viruses nobody has ever seen before? Toss the specimens in a vat of liquid nitrogen and they would be ready for future analysis.
In 1994 I begged doctors to find out what had made me so sick and they sent me to a psychiatrist. For years after that I raged and read everything I could find about similar outbreaks of viral disease and then decided I could live with the damage to my body, while reasoning I was better off than several people in my area who were severely crippled during viral infections that year. I was willing to write off last year's debilitating agony as an aberration unlikely to repeat but what about this year and what about all the other people who are said to be very sick with this viral "stomach bug" of 2018? I for one am sick and chronically fatigued, so to speak, of these stealth viruses that cause illness without recovery. Many other viral victims share this view!
It is high time for "public health" to listen to suffering patients, to stop dumping damaged people on the psychiatric profession, and to start tracking viruses. Otherwise tomorrow's deadly plague will come and government health care will be caught with its head in the sand mumbling, "huh, what....we never saw it coming...."
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COMMENT ON SOURCE:
If you have had any of these mystery viruses, have CFS/ME or know someone who has, please DO check out Jane Colby's online book ME - The New Plague at www.methenewplague.net . (For some reason when I go there my server says the page cannot be found and then it miraculously appears.)
Let us educate ourselves, fight to be taken seriously and bring pressure on the medical powers that be, to get these unknown viruses identified and stopped.
Your comments below are very welcome!
Thank you.
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Jonbenet Ramsey Murder and The Organizer
February 5. 2018
By Anna Morris, Editor, Freedom Fighters of America
The family is innocent so let us first enrage the legions who have spent 21 years crucifying the family through official channels, the press, television and online. No one in the family had any part in the torture, bondage, strangulation and bludgeoning death of Jonbenet who was just 6 on that fatal Christmas night. New eyes looking at old evidence clearly see a plan hatched by an older man we will call The Organizer. Three were involved; there were two, young accomplices.
I firmly believe that because of something I have been following online for a couple years. Team JBI--Jonbenet Investigation-- is the story behind the 'Enquirer' story. Briefly mentioned toward the end of the article, the real story is found in years of detailed work by Michigan native Roscoe Clark, videographer and certified forensic technician. In various interviews and posts he details his private purchases of $75,000 worth of equipment for the purpose of solving this case. One of his high tech tools is called an M-Vac which can suck up evidence at the micron level and store it on a pad that can be mailed to a laboratory. Team JBI https://www.facebook.com/jonbenetinvestigation/
Posts on the Team JBI page note that police in Boulder, CO spent two million dollars zeroing in on family for 20 years and not solving the case, while Team JBI claims to have solved it on a shoestring. Has Team JBI solved it? I believe so though all of the details are not yet public and some specific questions I have asked are not answered. Let Roscoe Clark and his Team set their own time scale, officials spent decades trying to prove family did it. Between the efforts of these officials and media piranhas many innocent lives were destroyed.
Media piranhas instinctively smelled money in this crime story, similar to way the little shark-jawed fish smell blood in the water. The result of the endless feeding frenzy and subsequent hemorrhage of printer's ink is that people around the globe think they know the case. The crime fantasy usually goes something like this: There was a bed wetting incident, the mother 'snapped' and accidentally killed her child. Father and mother spent the rest of the night 'staging' a fake kidnapping and murder. Family had to have done it and how dare anyone question that wisdom gleefully and profitably endorsed by the tabloid press?
Roscoe Clark dared and his questions led to research which points to a man in Jonbenet's neighborhood who seems to have been barely a blip in the investigation. Respected investigative journalist Jeff Shapiro who immersed himself in the Ramsey case from the beginning said of this man, "he's harmless, just a nice guy." Continuing with this theme Shapiro supported the warm, fuzzy impression, "Harmless guy, as a suspect, he's laughable; Nice fella." [1]
The front cover of the Enquirer has a different opinion and the article inside gives him a name. "Creep LIVED IN neighbor's basement!", screams the headline. Those following Roscoe Clark's detailed work on the JBI page know him as "the organizer". I capitalize the term to create a handle, The Organizer. In 1996 he lived in the basement of folks who had a close neighborly relationship with the Ramsey's. These neighbors were even trusted with a key to the Ramsey home and Jonbenet's little dog lived with them most of the time.
The bestial crime has until now been the perfect murder because the evidence is insane. First there is that nearly three page letter left at the bottom of a spiral staircase, the 'War and Peace' of ransom notes due to length. The text, readily available online, first declares a "small foreign faction" is behind the kidnapping. Considering that John Ramsey's computer company, Access Graphics, had grossed $1 billion in 1996, a fact reported in a printed article, the ransom demand amounted to chump change at $118,000. It was an insultingly low amount considering it was the price for the life and safe return of a beloved child.
Beginning with, "Mr. Ramsey," the letter displays The Organizer's envy and hatred throughout, while denigrating and threatening the father of Jonbenet. "Any deviation of my instructions will result in the immediate execution of your daughter," he taunted. "She dies," the fiend promised four times, especially if, "Police, F.B.I., etc.," are notified, in which case the victim will be "beheaded". Who would believe such perverted, creative drivel? The letter ends by putting the burden on Mr. Ramsey, "It is up to you now John!" His instant decision was to get help, to call the police. Tragically, according to Team JBI's findings, that was a fatal mistake.
This was a "letter of instruction" writes Clark on the Team JBI page, it was meant to be taken seriously, every bit of it. The seemingly omniscient letter writer wrote that the Ramsey's were being "monitored" and that they were under "constant scrutiny." Now that's crazy...unless the Creep LIVED IN the neighbor's basement across the street.
Profiling has been part of Team JBI work. "He travels by foot, bike and bus," has been oft repeated on the JBI page. He traveled this way because he had money trouble and cannot afford a car. There is a connection to a church nearby in the neighborhood which helps the homeless and destitute. Did he meet his generous landlords there during bible study? Is that how he came to dwell in a basement where his own money troubles mounted and his envy festered until he became The Organizer of one of the most debauched crimes ever committed?
Across the street from his intended victims, The Organizer had the perfect nest in which to hatch the crime from hell.
The biggest problem in solving this case have always been that no matter how it is viewed, it always feels like the perpetrator practically lived in the Ramsey home. Police investigators and journalists cannot be totally blamed for looking at family though in my opinion, they should have backed off and taken a fresh look a long time ago. Facts known early in the investigation should have turned "constant scrutiny" back in the direction of The Organizer.
If family and neighbors can be blamed for anything it would be for being too trusting, too kind, too open, too welcoming. John and Patsy Ramsey and others have said many times that the neighborhood appeared to be safe and that Boulder was a big town with a small town atmosphere. Jonbenet and her brother Burke rode bicycles in the neighborhood and played with friends. "Stranger danger" does not seem to have been a preoccupation and even if it had, would it have applied to the stranger living in the basement of trusted friends?
Even with extremely busy lives, the Ramsey's knew a number of their neighbors. Patsy watched out for the elderly couple across the street, the ones with the basement apartment. This couple may have had a key to the Ramsey home. Too big to hide with gift wrap under the Christmas tree, Jonbenet's bicycle was stored in that house across the street and John brought it home from there on Christmas Eve.[2]
Jonbenet had a little white dog named Jacques and people wonder why the dog was not home to bark on the fatal night. The dog had sometimes boarded in that house across the street until it came to live there on a nearly permanent basis."The intruders knew the dog would not bark," says a post at Team JBI.
Some comments on the web claim a barking dog caused The Organizer to knock on the Ramsey's door the December 23, the night of the family Christmas party. A better sourced consensus is that he came looking for his landlords and was invited in. [3]
Several pictures taken during this party are posted on the JBI page with this comment about the planned crime, "It move to the next level." In a comment underneath the pictures Team JBI posted, "One of many note pads was located and collected so the three page ransom note could be printed, not printed in the Ramsey's house." [5] A huge stumbling block that has continually pointed to family involvement is that note pad was sourced to the Ramsey home. Worse yet, the pad and pen used to write the letter of instruction were returned to proper places within the home.
"Jonbenet told a little friend's mom that Santa had given her a 'secret message' at the family party--he intended to pay her a special visit," heads another collection of Ramsey family Christmas pictures in the 1/22/2018 post by Team JBI. Similar posts continue below concerning the party, "The note pad was collected and a message to Jonbenet about the special visit after Christmas happened." "He was at the party planning the kidnapping," explains another post. This was just about 48 hours before the crime actually unfolded.
The Christmas night alibi of the basement dweller named in the Enquirer was that he watched TV with his landlords and went to bet at 9 PM because he had a case of stomach flu. Beyond that he was reportedly $70,000 in debt and was asked for more than one handwriting sample because of similarities between his writing and the ransom note. He gave fingerprints, blood and hair and he passed a polygraph six days after the crime.[3] For some, passing the so-called lie detector is absolutely exculpatory but Homicide Hunter Lt. Joe Kenda is famously quoted saying, "I don't trust polygraphs."
The Enquirer states this person of interest, "had a history of abusive and deranged behavior." Perhaps Detective Steve Thomas saw Shapiro's harmless, nice fellow when said of the man, "He couldn't have been more cooperative." [4]
The Team JBI work and the story it tells is still unfolding though the site claims the crime is solved. There is indication there will be a follow up article in the Enquirer. The recent publication naming the organizer is a first step. "We understand the crime," is a repeated comment on the JBI page.
According to Roscoe Clark's work, three were directly involved. Today there is indication a fourth person had a peripheral part. The Organizer wanted quick cash to solve his personal problems. The ransom note in my opinion has always dripped with envy and hatred against those who have more than the letter's author. The three were homeless or nearly so. The best these losers could do was to take the child from her bedroom to the basement. Keep in mind the house was huge and the parents' bedroom was on the fourth level. In the basement, the six-year old who had known nothing but love in her short life, was repeatedly sadistically tortured with bondage, electric shock and strangulation. The Satanic monsters played with their prey until Mrs. Ramsey came down the spiral staircase and found the note.
Team JBI has always been adamant that this was a "letter of instruction" to be taken seriously. The Organizer meant is when he wrote, "she dies". Mr. Ramsey instantly had his wife call the police. Like the letter said, the family was being monitored. At least one perpetrator was still in the basement. A final disfigurement was inflicted on Jonbenet when she was strangled to death and the thin cord, tangled into her blonde curls and a delicate gold cross necklace around her neck, embedded itself deep in the flesh of her neck.
The letter had said, "Any deviation of my instructions will result in the immediate execution of your daughter." An obviously empty threat followed, "You will also be denied her remains for proper burial." Those remains were very much disfigured by hours of torture and the final, fatal choking. This crime was no attempt by family to cover up an accidental death!
According to Team JBI there was one final postmortem injury, a tremendous blow from the knob end of a child's baseball bat which split Jonbenet's skull. The murderer locked himself and his lifeless victim into a windowless basement room sometimes called the 'wine cellar.' When police initially searched the home around 6:00 AM, they assumed the door had been painted shut. Clark's work says the killer wired the doorknob from inside, braced the door with a fireplace tool and his feet and hung on. Sometime later when the police who were left were occupied with people on the main floor, the killer simply walked out a door. He quietly set the child's bat on a ledge outside the door. A neighbor saw him walk away.
The Organizer died in 2005. Team JBI indicates the others are alive and reachable. Where does it go from here? I believe the next chapter is cryptically mentioned in the 1/25/2018 Morning Gazette Radio Show interview with Roscoe Clark available with this link:
"Jonbenet, we now hear your SILENT call. Justice will be done." Team JBI 2/3/2018
SOURCES:
www.facebook.com/jonbenetinvestigation/ : The continuing work of Roscoe Clark and Team JBI is available here. Comments are welcome, "Someone may know something." Additionally, "Most crimes around the world are solved by the public," Roscoe Clark.
[1] http://thewebsafe.tripod.com/04052001shapiro-qa.htm a Q. & A. at an unnamed forum with reporter Jeff Shapiro. Posted to this site by jameson on Mar-28-01.
[4] Jonbenet, Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation, Steve Thomas and Don Davis, 4/11/2000, p. 217. Posted clip at http://www.acandyrose.com/s-glenn-meyer.htm .
[4] www.acandyrose.com/s-glenn-mey er.htm ; "Alibi: Watched TV... Went to bed 9 pm Nursing stomach flu."
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Big Brother to Aid Tobacco Companies
August 27, 2017
By Anna Morris, Co-Editor, FFOA News Network
In yet another hysterically draconian move to further the UN/WHO goal of controlling people through public-global health via tobacco restrictions, our FDA may have just given a big boost to the tobacco companies. Now you may not be interested in tobacco issues but the whole story presents a general picture of what happens when everything becomes a "public health" issue to be controlled by government.
On July 28, 2017 the FDA, using its Obama-given power over tobacco, decided that mandating low nicotine cigarettes will help "vulnerable populations". Please note this act is aimed at a least functioning level of society; millions will be affected in order to minister to special, downtrodden populations. Obama Care and its new healthtocracy works that way. Individual health no longer matters and has been replaced by "population health" which used to be called "public health." Public health used to be concerned with keeping roaches out of restaurants and sewage out of drinking water. Public health as population health allows government agencies to regulate...well...anything that MIGHT affect health and that means EVERYTHING.
There is some older research that shows smokers of lower nicotine, "light" cigarettes smoke more and inhale deeper to maintain desired nicotine levels. Nevertheless psychiatry professor Stephen Higgins of the Vermont Center of Behavior and Health (UCBH) at University of Vermont (UVM), is quoted thus in an article posted at Science Daily, "Evidence in relatively healthy and socially stable smokers indicates that reducing the nicotine content of cigarettes reduces their addictiveness." [1]
Note the word "evidence" at the beginning of Professor Higgins' statement. The FDA seems to have based its call to mandate low nicotine cigarettes on "evidence based" conclusions rather than proven fact. The Obama Care infestation of transformation uses that term a lot and near as I can tell it means circumstantial evidence is all that is needed to re-write medical books, form law and create public policies affecting millions. (Personally I would get laughed off a few true crime forums to which I belong if I presented conclusions based merely on evidence. Nevertheless, "evidence based" works fine for government when it holds all our lives in its wicked talons.)
Again, you may be thinking, who cares about the nasty cigarette habit and the tobacco companies the public has been taught to hate? The UN/WHO international War on Tobacco is just a starter. Sugar is next in their global cross-hairs. Have you noticed the itty-bitty soda can six packs at eye level in grocery stores? I call these miniscule cans the Michelle Obama size since her main project as First Lady seemed to be telling us what to eat. The two litre bottles are now usually found on top shelves, sometimes nearly out of a tall man's reach.
Have you listened to the sniveling, slurping, backside licking ads put out by major soda producers who practically apologize for ever using ANY sugar in their products, while pushing their bottled waters and tiny cans as the only reasonable choices? Maybe those whining soda companies expect government law suits such as happened to the tobacco industry. After all, evidence says sugar causes diabetes and more evidence says diabetes costs society at large. Other evidence shows that government has made medical care unaffordable for the average person, thus it becomes more true that most sick people are to some extent, burdens on society. Further evidence indicates government loves it when helpless people scream for more big government to fix the problems big government created in the first place. Sick people are cited as "burdens" whenever more restrictive public health laws are desired by big government.
Those same sick burdens, especially the "disadvantaged" ones, make wonderful human lab rats when big government needs the evidence based claptrap upon which to base those laws.
The FDA decision to lower nicotine in cigarettes is based on a study of, "169 daily smokers" from "three vulnerable populations of smokers--individuals with psychiatric disorders (i.e. affective disorders, opioid-use disorder), and socioeconomically disadvantaged women." [1] The study ran at various locations from March 2015 to April 2016. Of the 169 vulnerable participants, 120 were women, 49 male. 56 participants, "were diagnosed with affective disorders," 60 had opioid dependence and 53 were, "socioeconomically disadvantaged women." That's a short study with a very small sample of people but who's counting when government needs to restrict our freedoms? You can bet new drugs would never be approved with such limited research!
The study, described as, "multi-site, double blind," had three phases. In Phase 1 participants smoked their brand and/or low nicotine, "research cigarettes". While smoking the latter, "Participants were required to use a plastic cigarette holder...to measure smoking topography--number of puffs, length and speed of each puff," according to the Science Daily article. The research cigs had varying doses of nicotine. [1]
Each smoking session was followed by a Cigarette Purchase Task (CPR), "to measure the effects of cost on the participant's rate of smoking," states the article. [1]
Phase two had participants choosing what they wanted to smoke from six dose combinations. Data was fed into a computer and on to Phase 3 which was pretty much like Phase 2. (Gosh, don't we wonder who funded this thing and how many millions of dollars it cost?)
The findings were that smokers preferred the high nicotine cigs which are available commercially. BUT researcher also claim that low dose cigs might be chosen if they cost less! Or as is stated in the article low nicotine cigarettes, "could serve as economic substitutes for higher-dose commercial-level nicotine cigarettes when the cost of the latter was greater." [1] Well, duh! Poor people buy cheaper things. The authors of the research paper say field testing of this theory is underway to determine feasibility under "'naturalistic smoking conditions'".
What about that old research that said smokers smoked more and inhaled deeper when cigarettes contained less nicotine? Well, circumstantial evidence...uh...evidence based rewriting of past research now declares this to be untrue! Although that may depend on what source you check. Do we get the idea this evidence based stuff blows with the wind, or the political party, or in favor of furthering private goals? What if that old research is correct after all? Left-wing Progressives love the word "SAFE" and they plan to keep us safe through tyrannical legislation. Is it SAFE to throw out older research based on a new, one year study of 169 mental patients, addicts and poverty stricken women?
Lite and low-tar cigarettes of old had tiny vents in the filter that cut the amount of tar and thus nicotine, available per puff. There may be problems with the engineering of these smokes that make them more dangerous than regular but we need not explore that here.
What is of interest is the old research newly reported as late as July 6 of this year in a publication by Roswell Park Cancer Institute, "because vented cigarettes deliver less nicotine, smokers may take deeper or more frequent puffs to satisfy their nicotine cravings. [2] The same article goes on to say, "evidence strongly suggests" vented cigarettes which now include most cigarettes sold in the U.S., "may actually increase a smoker's risk," of developing a certain type of lung cancer. (Emphasis mine.)
A cancernetwork.com article from 2002 quotes David M. Burns, MD, professor of medicine, UC San Diego, citing "new" findings from the National Cancer Institute, "Smokers smoke for nicotine, and if a cigarette delivers less nicotine, smokers compensate by taking larger puffs, more puffs per cigarette and smoking more cigarettes per day to get the same nicotine." (Emphasis mine.) [3]
No less an expert than Harvard Medical School published a short article covering the same subject, from 2004 but updated January 23, 2017. Low-tar, vented, lite cigarettes did not reduce the risk of lung cancer because addicted smokers find ways to compensate to get the full nicotine fix. This article describes the original study as, "six years and involved 900,000 Americans over the age of 30." [4]
A scholarly paper from 2013, based on a number of small group, short term studies, claims that smokers do not smoke more if nicotine content of cigarettes is decreased! [5] Low nicotine from vented cigarettes is bad but big government mandates low nicotine tobacco is good? More recent news articles discussing the July 28 FDA proposal for requiring low nicotine cigarettes and other tobacco products, tout this idea and some refer to the small study first mentioned above. The basic idea is that if nicotine levels are low enough, cigarettes will no longer be addictive. Time will tell.
And so major government policy is based on newly manufactured "evidence" obtained from a small group of mentally ill or poverty wracked human lab rats who would agree to smoke low nicotine cigarettes if they cost less! Want to bet the low nicotine variety will cost less? It sounds like the FDA plans to lower nicotine content in all tobacco products to the point where they are not addictive, to save the children, other vulnerable populations as well as pander to the UN/WHO globalist hysteria on tobacco which, according to more evidence based claptrap, causes almost all illness and death in the world. (Never smoke and live forever, is that what they are saying?)
Heaven knows how those poor human lab rats were worked on psychologically! It is like the statistics that claim most smokers want to quit. Under pressure in a medical setting, of course smokers who are terrorized, shamed and belittled by their doctors and nurses, say they want to quit. Those doctors, nurses and researchers ought to listen to what dedicated smokers who have no desire to quit, say about the medical profession behind closed doors. The smart ones lie about tobacco use and avoid the intimidation!
Considering tossing the old evidence that was gathered from studying nearly a million smokers for many years, in favor of new evidence based on small samples of short duration, designed to further political goals, may not keep the population SAFE. Put into practice in the draconian ways of government, the unintended consequences may well be increased cigarette sales as smokers across the board and outside of the lab, double or triple their intake of smoke in search of the nicotine fix!
Should this crazy idea work for cigarettes, expect alcohol-less alcoholic drinks next, like near beer and mostly-water lite vodka. Alcoholics Anonymous has always claimed an alcoholic cannot have even one drink, watered down or otherwise. One drink is never enough for the alcoholic, so the saying goes. Apparently this principle does not apply to cigarette addiction? Perhaps with FDA regulation, one cigarette will never be enough, so smoke three or four!
Expect cigarette sales to go up as the public perceives the new, FDA approved cigarettes as safe and as smokers exponentially increase their intake to get the same effect. The anti-tobacco hysteria comes from the left and in their participation trophy world, they love to say WIN/WIN. It does appear that Big Brother plans to help out the tobacco companies but it is all a WIN/WIN thing. You can bet the low nicotine cigarettes would never be cheaper in the real world, as was suggested in the pitiful study cited above. In the tax hungry, government laden REAL WORLD, tobacco taxes will probably go up, low nicotine content will drive smokers to smoke more and buy more, and that's a WIN/WIN for tobacco companies AND government! Thank you, Big Brother!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCES:
[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170823184400.htm "Cite this page: Larner college of medicine at the University of Vermont. 'Could nicotine reduction
help curb addiction? Study examines impact on vulnerable smokers.' Science Daily, 23 August, 2017
[2] https://www.roswellpark.org/cancertalk/201707/marketed-healthier-choice-light-cigarettes-now-linked-rise-lung-cancer ; Marketed as a "Healthier" Choice, "Light"
Cigarettes Now Linked to Rise in Lung Cancer; Richard O'Connor, PhD, July 6, 2017
[3] www.cancernetwork.com ; Switching to Low-Tar Cigarettes Fails to Reduce Risk of Tobacco-Related Diseases, January 1, 2002
[4] https://www.health.harvard.edu/cancer/low-tar-cigarettes-are-not-a-safer-choice ; Lower Tar Cigarettes Are Not a Safer Choice, Published 8/2004, Updated 1/23/2017.
[5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov ; Reducing the nicotine content to make cigarettes less addictive, Neal L. Benowitz and Jack E. Henningfield, May, 2013.
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Voynich Manuscript in Croatian
August 13, 2017
By Anna Morris, Co-Editor, FFOA News Network
Everyone loves an old, unsolved mystery! This is especially true for lifelong insomniacs like me who have to while away hours before achieving unconsciousness, what normal people call sleep. I first heard about the Voynich Manuscript on Coast to Coast AM , a late night radio program. I lay awake imagining the drawings of "plumbing" and "naked bathing nymphs" described by the guest on the radio. When I finally got the internet I was finally able to see all the strange wonders of the 700 year text written by quill on vellum.
About a year ago I greatly enlarged a few VM pages to see what the scribes actually meant to write. A first opinion was that the script is Latin--the same alphabet we write--with a little bit of Cyrillic. This first system I devised made a lot of words; when entered into a basic Google search these words were overwhelmingly Polish, frequently partial names of places and people.
I am not a mathematical genius who can say, if you have enough of something concerning a problem, then mathematically you have to have the solution. I just figured I was getting too many Polish words to be completely wrong. For those of us who prefer words to numbers, "Where there is smoke, there is fire."
Mathematic weakness aside, I entered the internet world in complete ignorance! It actually took a few months of Google-searching individual words and the real world purchase of a Polish dictionary before I found Google Translate. AHA! Polish to English at my fingertips! The next problem was that the translator kept suggesting the words I entered were Croatian! (Language groups have certain patterns. That it looked like Polish and turned out to be Croatian is acceptable.)
Well, what kind of scripts or alphabets were scholars using in the area of Croatia, circa 1420 CE? The answer to that led to a plunge into Croatian Galgolitic and the cursive version of this system. One of my previous articles on the VM said, "The alphabet is a luxury." Indeed, any alphabet available today is standardized and understood and those facts mean more than we ever stop to think about.
When the Voynich Manuscript was written there were many versions of the same alphabets and it is anyone's guess how individual writers decided how to use the available letters and characters. Almost all the letters, characters and ligatures in the VM can be found in other contemporaneous writings. I would absolutely disagree that the VM script is completely unknown as many claim.
My step by step work is chronicled at JTRForums.com on my thread "Voynich Mystery" so I will skip a bunch of the boring details here. Let the two graphics accompanying this article speak for themselves.
I suppose most people looking at the VM pages containing multiple plants/herbs and their structures, expect to find names of plants. So far, I have mostly found descriptions of attributes of the plants. The graphics here are clips from Quire 19, page f102v1. The VM artists did a lot of strange things and looking for direction in the pictures is fairly useless, so when a translation absolutely defines something in a drawing, it most certainly helps validate any other translation work.
The "bottom of the bird" translation was the first time I firmly believed I was accurately translating the VM. Anyone can see that the root structure on that Voynich plant is drawn like a bird's tail but since when did plant roots ever resemble the back end of a bird? When VM scribes made phrases they seem in some cases to have run together several words without spaces. Using my system, the exact transliteration of this inscription is, "odnotijeptje". The translator worked it out as, "o dno ti je pt(i)je". The words can be separated in slightly different ways such as, "odno tije pt(i)je" which translates as, "about the bottom of the bird." In the end we have a drawing of a bird's tail and a comment about the bottom or underneath part of a bird.
The other clip is less dramatic and I did not see the full impact until I found the two roots in "one twist", "jedno torsje."
For the record, I absolutely reject the idea the VM is a hoax or that it is gibberish with no meaning. The script and language were not always unknown. I believe the script was an attempt to simplify and standardize existing alphabets and systems of the time. In my opinion so-called Voynichese is a lot better than other systems available then. Why it never caught on and why there is no other exact example of the same script is still a mystery. As we translate the text hopefully there will be further clues to who wrote it and why. Due to the shapes of some of the letters I suggest connections to Split and Dubrovnik in Croatia.
Many researchers suggest the VM was written by one person. I reject this idea since the writing varies greatly from page to page. Some scribes were more proficient than others. Some lapsed occasionally to use letters from other alphabets with which they have been more familiar. Occasionally a scribe even dotted an \i\ or \j\. All the little screw-ups are helpful.
Earlier this year the Beinecke Library which houses the actual Voynich Manuscript, released a facsimile of the text in book form. In July of this year, The Guardian had an interesting article about Stephen Skinner's forward to this facsimile edition. [1]
Skinner, according to this article, "draws evidence for his theory of the author's identity from a range of illustrations in the manuscript." The scholar's theory, explained in The Guardian, is that the VM drawings of naked ladies in communal baths, accompanied by other drawings of plumbing, depict Jewish use of purification bathing in mikvahs and concern about clean water for those ritual pools.
The article says Skinner has identified a Jewish physician based in northern Italy as the writer of the VM. In my opinion this is one of the few new interesting findings on the subjects though I cringe just a bit when John Dee, "the Tudor mystic" gets drawn into the plot.[1]
The Guardian article also notes that though Catholic Europe was under the Inquisition, Jewish doctors were in demand for their superior knowledge. To this I would add that though officially Roman Catholic, Poland had a dispensation from the pope that spared its population. Many religions, including Judaism and Islam, continued to flourish in this area that was free of persecution. The area around Croatia also had both eastern and western versions of Christianity.
Also mentioned in the same article is the swallowtail battlements illustrated in the VM and found to this day in castles in Northern Italy. I have found these same architectural features in pictures of Croatian castles. I do not see any reason to reject a Croatian origin for the VM in favor of northern Italy though the text was ultimately found in a monastery in the latter.
There is a bit of enthusiasm online for the idea that the VM could be Jewish in origin. It is not overtly Christian in nature though on one page naked ladies shed mermaid tails and ascend through the plumbing until the topmost lady clutches a cross in what looks like clouds. (Mermaid is an old euphemism for prostitute.)
Considering the ritual mikhva, Jews distinguish between living water and non-living water. Jesus of Nazareth spoke of living water. Living water as I understand it is water that flows, that moves, as opposed to water left to stagnate. The VM portrays two kinds of water, green and blue. The green is found in the "baths" and the blue seems to flow from above. This was one of the few things in the illustrations that made possible sense to me from the beginning.
Coincidentally, concerning VM Jewishness, I recently viewed a video on religious history which used a picture of an ancient shekle for a cover page. The inscription on the shekle instantly looked like Voynichese to me so I searched for the alphabet that was used. I found Paleo-Hebrew and Aramaic, the first discontinued around the first century CE and the latter still in existence. One unusual Aramaic letter in particular is the shape of a VM letter. It is a two part system for writing the letter yudh (Y) in Aramaic which I have identified as Z in the VM.
Several Hebrew letters resemble the "big" letters in the VM. They are he, het, tet, tav, roughly H, I, th and T. Though VM letters resemble these Hebrew letters, the Hebrew values make absolutely nothing in the VM. Indeed one of the "big" letters I use as L is sometimes written in the VM using a Croatian Glagolitic version of L. Nevertheless the VM script was based on something, why not Hebrew?
There are many issues with the long portions of text in the VM. For one thing there is no punctuation. (Amazingly I have seen some modern Croatian with no punctuation.) Croatian then and now did not need to put every single letter in every word. One who is fluent would know where to add needed letters for true meaning. Since I am nowhere near fluent I must stick with literal transliterations and complex explanations of my work. (The two clips produced here are excellent since the only addition suggested by the translator is one \i\ in pt(i)je. ) The vocabulary is limited and the same small words are used over and over from page to page. Some of it works out as instructions. One passage spoke of grinding "green" (leaves?), mixing with vinegar and drinking. Maybe the whole thing is a cookbook of sorts.
What is the Voynich Manuscript? My general idea is that it may be a fertility text, the physical mixed with astrology. I think too that some of it is moralistic, about good and bad behavior, perhaps related to reproduction. I believe the two introductory pages, at the very beginning of the work, speak of learning.
A complete translation will eventually reveal 700 year old knowledge that, like fine wine, has been exquisitely mellowed by age.
~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCE:
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul05/author-of-mysterious-voynich-manuscript-was-an-italian-jew-says-scholar ; Danuta Kean, 5 July, 2017
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Charlie Gard: Court Ordered Dignity by Death
July 24, 2017
By Anna Morris, Co-Editor, FFOA News Network
Despite so many advances in medicine, inescapable tragedies still sear scars on souls, forever haunting the lives of those who loved and tried so hard. In some small way those tragedies can be softened and transformed if those left behind know that some good came from the personal devastation.
Lawyers, judges and medical experts in England and the continent seem determined that baby Charlie Gard's short life will leave nothing behind but bitter memories. Charlie's parents Connie Yates and Chris Gard demand that it not be so, that their baby shall receive an experimental treatment in the U.S. [1] Travel and other expenses are guaranteed by the donations of over 80,000 people which total in excess of $1.65 million USD yet courts continue to decide that baby Charlie must die by judicial order. [2] They cite "right to die" and it is full speed ahead and damn the parents who choose one last option that may help their child.
Charlie Gard has Mitochondrial Depletion Syndrome (MDS). It is a genetic condition and both of his parents carry a faulty gene. The treatment available in the U.S. consists of oral medications that replace molecular building blocks necessary for life, which Charlie's body cannot produce. [3] Mitochondrial DNA is responsible for the energy needs of our bodies. Failures in mitochondrial DNA can lead to weakness and organ failure which is seen in Charlie Gard at this time.
The treatment offered to Charlie but denied by the English and European courts is called, "deoxypyramidine monophosphate bypass therapy (NBT," according to www.frontlinegenomics.com. [3] That is probably more information than the casual reader desires yet the actual treatment is fairly simple, a pill which has to be taken daily and which, "requires continued treatment." It is not considered a cure but it, "has already been used on 18 MDS patients with some level of success, which it has been considered so carefully for Charlie's case," states Frontline Genomics. [3]
There you have it. Other medical experts, not the ones intensely fighting Charlie's parents in court, have carefully considered if the treatment could help the British baby and they think it may. We are talking about a pill a day consisting of bio-necessary building blocks Charlie's body cannot manufacture, not some agonizing, life prolonging torture forced upon a baby for the sake of medical experiment. Eighteen other patients have had the treatment.
There are plenty of medically approved treatments that prolong and produce agony, frequently court ordered in children's cases, such as multiple rounds of chemotherapy for children with cancer. The British courts seem to believe baby Charlie is just about brain dead anyway, so where is the prolongation of suffering which seems to be their concern?
Or is it just about the "right to die" and if so, Charlie Gard's tiny life may have much deeper meaning for all of us. Wesley J. Smith in a short article at National Review begins by saying, "Advocates for letting Charlie Gard's parents decide when and if to remove life support...are crying foul." Little Charlie's court appointed barrister, Victoria Butler Cole is, "The chairman of the Board of Trustees for Compassion in Dying," according to Mr. Smith. He goes on to say Compassion in Dying is a sister organization of another organization called Dignity in Dying which, "most certainly does", "promote assisted suicide." [4]
The Compassion in Dying website seems quite straight forward about assisting individuals to make end of life decisions. However the Dignity in Dying website which does promote assisted suicide clearly states, "Our sister charity, Compassion in Dying provides free Advance Decisions and information on end of life rights." (Emphasis mine.) [5]
In summary, Charlie Gard is a baby a couple weeks short of his first birthday, whose body cannot function much at all due to a genetic condition. There is a slight hope that a pill, taken by mouth, which replaces what his body cannot manufacture, may give him a chance of improving and living. Some sources suggest his chance for improvement is only 10% and no one suggests he could have a normal life. In a Guardian article earlier this month, Charlie's mum, Connie Yates was quoted, "I would not be able to sit there and watch my son suffer and be in pain," but she also claims her baby does get enjoyment from life and still, "enjoyed his tickles." [6] Amazingly that article is entitled, "Charlie Gard: Pope and Trump Biggest Help in Keeping Him Alive, Says Mother."
Who benefits and who loses from the court ordered dignified death of this baby? Is it really about the child Charlie or about court power over parents and healthcare decisions? It seems once the first court ruling goes against family in these cases the courts fight with everything they have to show the people they hold all the power, that yes indeed, life and death are held in their claws and woe to the people who fight back! If Charlie's parents are forced to relinquish their best judgement and heart felt desires and the courts win, how will those courts expand their powers to include other children the next time and the next time and on into the future?
Meanwhile over a million and a half dollars USD has been raised to take baby Charlie off the hands of England's National Health Service. How many scarce healthcare pounds sterling are being spent keeping little Charlie on life support until the courts can finally kill him? Who would be harmed if he was quietly loaded onto a plane and flown to the U.S.? Oh, the courts may say this denies the child the right of a dignified death. Apparently those courts cannot see the possibility that tiny Charlie could respond positively to the treatment and in so doing, add knowledge to the fight against these devastating mitochondrial diseases. We are not talking about painful surgery or drugs with horrific side effects, but about replacing via a pill, what Charlie's body cannot make on its own.
Courts should never have jurisdiction over hope. By insisting on death the doors close forever on what might have been. No one is claiming Charlie can completely recover or become absolutely normal but there are many children who have meaningful, even good lives though very much disabled. Charlie has parents who love him deeply and that is more than many healthy children ever have. If Charlie, "enjoys his tickles", he has somewhat more than do many severely neglected children.
Instead of leaving Charlie's parents with bitter lifelong scars over court ordered death for their baby, let him try the treatment that is already offered and paid for. If scientists fighting these diseases learn anything from treating Charlie he will have contributed to the sustaining of life, if not for him, perhaps for others who will be born like him.
If Charlie remains figuratively chained to his crib in England until the courts make sure he is dead, we are all losers. Charlie's parents lose the child they love and want to nurture no matter what. All parents lose when courts take parental rights. Science loses what might be learned. Any of us who are disabled, who are or may become old and infirm-- in short most of us-- will know the death's head shadows of lawyers, judges and courts may now find it easier to decide when our lives are dignified and when we deserve a court ordered death. Couple the cold blood of the judiciary with financial shortages in the healthcare industry and we easily come up with what Hitler called, "Life undeserving of life."
Emotion is running so high over Charlie Gard that news today reports death threats and semi-violent protests directed at the hospital and staff that holds Charlie. It is of course hypocrisy to champion life through death threats.
Martyrs throughout history have laid down their lives and in so doing, triumphed. Keep hope and knowledge alive, let little Charlie come to America for treatment. If cold blooded courts demand he die in England, he dies a martyr's death. Pope Benedict and President Trump have turned Charlie Gard into an international incident. Emotion is already high. If this baby is denied all hope and dies by court order, his short life will forever direct attention to the power of courts to walk over families to dispose of the disabled. Do not imagine people will think deeper than that. Martyrdom is about raw emotion.
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SOURCES:
[1] www.nationalreview.com/ article/44079/charlie-gard- united-kingdom-court-defies- parents-wishes-rare-disease- the ; Court Ordered Killing of Charlie Gard , National Review, Ian Tuttle, June 29, 2017
[2] www.cnn.com/2017/06/13/ health/charlie-gard-european- court-interim-measure/index. html ; Charlie's Chance of Life , Judith Vonberg, June 20, 2017
[3] www.frontlinegenomics.com/new s/13145/ch
[4] www.nationalreview.com/ corner/449534/charlie-gard- ideological-conflict-interest ; Charlie Gard Lawyer's Ideological Conflict of Interest , Wesley J. Smith, 7/15/2017
[6] https:/www./theguardian.com/ uk-news/2017/jul/10/charlie- gard-pope-and-trump-biggest- help-in-keeping-him-alive- says-mother ; The Guardian, Charlie Gard: Pope and Trump Biggest Help in Keeping Him Alive, Says Mother, Kevin Rawlinson, 10 July, 2017
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Obama Care Repeal=> DEFINITION BEFORE REPLACEMENT!
February 28, 2017
By Anna Morris, Co-Editor, FFOA News Network
Before we reform or "transform" health care we need to define what it is. Laws clearly define terms used within the law, so that if a disagreement goes to court, all parties and the judge know exactly what is being litigated. The Obama Care glossary does not seem to define "health care". The list of terms moves from "Hardship" (yes indeed), to "Health Insurance Marketplace". [ https://obamacare.net/ obamacare-glossary ]
This is not surprising since Obama Care combines public and community health with what used to be individual care based on patient/doctor relationships. Now we have patient/GOVERNMENT/doctor situations supported by mandated insurance with, in some cases, monthly premiums that are higher than mortgage payments and deductibles so high the patients may have NO care. What is this mess, anyway?
It is convenient for the far, hard left to say that without Obama Care the poor will die in the street. That's a simple concept to write on neon poster board and be packed around s by leftist women in their vagina costumes at some Social Justice Women's March. The truth is nobody has had to die in the streets since President Reagan signed off on legislation that forces hospitals to care for all regardless of ability to pay.
"Health care is a right," says our left and the UN. They do not mean the right not to die, untreated in the street, due to poverty. They mean complete "care" that includes sidewalk construction so people will want to exercise to "prevent" diabetes! EVERYTHING now fits into "public health" and doesn't that mean government can control every aspect of our lives? Back when Rush Limbaugh was still conservative he made a statement that Obama Care had nothing to do with health care and everything to do with enslaving a once free people--Americans.
Five years ago I started deeply researching Obama Care just to understand frightening and horrific lifestyle rationing I had seen practiced when I lived in Oregon. (For example an unrepentant tobacco smoker was denied pain medication upon leaving the hospital following a major surgery. When did it become OK for American doctors and nurses to practice sadism?) I had a hard time understanding Obama Care until I matched the lingo in Oregon state documents with UN/WHO writings. BINGO! It is all there.
Merriam-Webster fairly simply defines health care as, "efforts made to maintain or restore physical, mental or emotional well-being especially by trained and licensed professionals." [ https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/health%20care ] Surely this fairly simple definition could get our political efforts on health care onto a single page, followed by who pays and how?
If we dig into documents of a state like Oregon that is proudly wallowing in Obama Care and which helped devise parts of the massive legislation while using its citizens as lab rats in my opinion, we do not see a simple dictionary definition. We see the "Health Authority", which seems to be the new term for what used to be "Public Health", creating all kinds of plans, metrics and assessments that treat "the community" while claiming to provide "patient-centered care" to the individual. (One example of this in action has to do with people with chronic pain and narcotic pain killers. Many now consider there is too much "risk" and "burden" to the "community" if an INDIVIDUAL with chronic pain has these effective medications, because the prescriptions might be stolen or "misdirected" and end up in the hands of "children" willfully cultivating a drug habit. For the sake of "the community" the individual with very individualized pain should, as good citizens of the collective, rely on yoga, mindfulness training, meditation, psychotherapy or some other wellness gimmickery Obama Care is willing to finance. Public health meets individual care.)
I do not find a basic WHO definition of health care but its definition of "primary care" is so broad they probably do not need to define the first term. Here is their definition, all emphasis mine:
"The ultimate goal of primary health care is better health for all. WHO has identified five key elements to achieving that goal:
> reducing exclusion and social disparities in health (universal coverage reforms)
> organizing health services around people's needs and expectations (service delivery reforms)
> integrating health into all sectors (public policy reforms)
> pursuing collaborative models of policy dialogue (leadership reforms); and
> increasing stakeholder participation" [ www.who.int/topics/primary_health_care/en/ ]
Doesn't this sound exactly like what Obama Care is trying to do to us? "Public policy reforms" surely means medical care meets politics, with a call for "universal coverage"...er...single payer, thrown in?
Definitions which read like political wish lists do not solve problems. Many of us are demanding FULL REPEAL of Obama Care but politicians seem to be leaning toward "repeal and replace". Replace with God knows what? Trust them because they are politicians? Not on your--or my--LIFE!
FIRST, define "health care"! Politically speaking, does this mean illness and injury with a few time proven preventive measures included such as mammograms and colonoscopies? Or does it mean political action until the GOVERNMENT controls everything to do with our "health", cradle to grave?
Are we talking about who pays and how moneys are collected and allocated to treat the sick and injured poor? Or are we talking about expanding the Big Government jackboot on our necks until be have a single payer system funding hospital monopoly care without second opinions?
I suggest that funding the WHO political wish list is an expensive way to expand bureaucracy, something Obama Care has done exceedingly well. Forcing Americans to pay for it through mandated purchase of expensive, government-designed insurance called a tax by SCOTUS, is a travesty. THAT is the perfect example of what Communist Vladimir Lenin meant about making the people pay for the rope used to hang them!
Voters are sadly lulled, believing THE PEOPLE really spoke when President Trump and a GOP majority congress was elected. Because the people spoke loudly they presume the politicians heard them. Did those elected actually hear or do they count on the ignorance of the electorate to keep on the well trod path Obama created over eight years? Keep it simple, stupid, or, keep the simple stupid?
Feed slogans to the simple and keep them stupid! NEVER let the voters, the victims of the Obama Care scheme, know what are the issues! NEVER define anything, just play on emotions!
Do politicians ask us to bleed our wallets dry to treat illness and injury occurring to the poor? Or are they using emotion concerning the poor to get us to ignorantly agree to more Big Government "health care", perhaps even single payer so everyone can die on waiting lists like our veterans do at the VA?
Never again allow politicians to fill up a thousand or so pages with rambling thoughts, call it a "law" and demand we knuckle under and pay for it. HEALTH CARE by Webster's definition should be simple and government should not be allowed to obfuscate what is basic. Nor should government presume to invent a new, exceedingly complex definition designed to inflate bureaucracies and control people. In Obama Care, "health care" is defined by the political WHO definition and that is a basic reason why going to the doctor is now an ordeal that many times makes the patient's skin crawl.
Utterly reject complex political blather. They intend to force us to pay for whatever scheme they devise, in the name of Social Justice, your fair share or some other emotional nonsense only liberals fall for. The politicians' simple definition will be something like, the poor have unbearable "health burdens" so we have to unmercifully tax everyone and everything, to guarantee that none of the poor suffer in the name of fairness. This mantra is the petroleum jelly that eases the pain of unlimited taxation in the name of correcting "disparities" or something else only Social Justice Warriors understand. Exactly what the hell are we paying for that keeps the poor from suffering? Under Obama Care it is a whole lot more than Webster's "health care"!
WE THE PEOPLE ARE IN CHARGE AND POLITICIANS ARE OUR SERVANTS! DEMAND THAT THEY DEFINE "HEALTH CARE" UP FRONT SO WE ALL KNOW WHAT WE ARE TALKING ABOUT! THEN, AND ONLY THEN, CAN WE THE PEOPLE BE INFORMED ENOUGH TO MAKE RATIONAL DECISIONS ABOUT WHAT KIND OF "REPLACEMENT" IS ACCEPTABLE IN OUR LIVES. FAILING THAT WE ALL REMAIN IGNORANT AND OUR WALLETS WILL CONTINUALLY BE DRAINED BY THE POWERS OF GUILT INDUCING SLOGANS. ENOUGH ALREADY!
LEGALLY DEFINE "HEALTH CARE"!
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The Newsletter That Empowers Medical Consumers
January 31, 2017
By Anna Morris, Co-Editor, FFOA News Network
Democrat Care blithely put one sixth of our economy and all of our lives and deaths under government control. Politicians hope they can keep the voters in an uneducated state with one group demanding full repeal and another main group demanding more government control and more government benefits, single payer if possible.
The sick and injured = patients = medical consumers. Unlike the millions of other things we buy such as food, clothing, vehicles, homes and businesses, we the medical consumers have no control and almost no input into our care. That is why a monster like Obama Care / Democrat Care can come from nowhere and knock us flat. Our only recourse then is to finally kick the offending party out of power and hope the winning party will have better solutions.
Very real life and death has been reduced to politics because of a conspiracy to keep medical consumers ignorant. It began with the likes of the AMA which cut consumers out of the process. Now our lack of knowledge has turned to fear and the politicians revel in complete control of the people through health policy. They have grabbed us by our soft, private parts and they are squeezing with the intent to never let go. Perhaps that is why President Trump seems to have back-burnered Democrat Care with a weak executive action on day one. Does he too count on our continued helplessness through ignorance?
In our defense, unless we worked and kept working in the medical profession, we had no idea what was going on. Mostly we could read about political "solutions" in whatever "news" sources we absorbed. Most of us brushed shoulders with Medicare through elderly or disabled relatives or friends. Perhaps we have some idea of state Medicaid. For most of us our knowledge of "health care" is what happens when we get sick or injured; the experiences are good or bad and usually we recover. Toward the end of a long life, or if someone is terribly unlucky, a patient may have extended experiences with medical care in the case of a chronic condition.
What everyone does know is that the cost of medical care is capable of bankrupting most of us.
We will be at the mercy of this rotten system unless we educate ourselves! Several years ago when I began writing for FFOA I was trying to recover from a dehumanizing experience with the medical system that had left me in a dying condition with no doctor. Understandably angry and bitter I also wanted to know why doctors, specifically in Oregon, had suddenly decided some of my friends and associates were unworthy of care because, "There was not enough to go around." Whether I was writing or not I have always had the mind of a journalist so I asked questions that were seldom answered since most doctors shuffle their feet and say nothing when asked a question about their profession. "Not enough to go around," was offered by one doctor when asked why some patients, cigarette smokers specifically, were sometimes dangerously neglected, shamed and marginalized. In one case a patient was denied pain medication after surgery because she did not agree to enter "smoking cessation classes." When did doctors become sadists, why and why is this allowed?
So a lot of my articles have been from the abused patient perspective. We were drowning in Democrat Care with no end in sight; government and the system torturing patients, in my opinion, needed to be exposed for whatever good it would do.
Early on I subscribed to the KevinPhoMD e-newsletter which I read occasionally. It contains a lot of short articles from the doctors' and nurses' perspective. In the beginning I hoped to find answers to my specific questions in the newsletter and when I did not, I seldom read it. When President Trump was elected largely on the promise to scuttle Obama Care, the left started yowling about Republicans letting folks die in the streets. (They always say this though President Reagan signed legislation back in the 80s that requires emergency rooms to take everyone, regardless of ability to pay.)
The new administration at least gives us hope that Democrat Care will be eased though our ignorance is extended as we fear what is euphemistically called the replacement. Why is it exactly that we the medical consumers are kept out of the process? Why do we quiver in fear, hoping Trump Care will dump the individual mandate that forces us to buy insurance we don't want because the Supreme Court calls it a tax? How do we the consumers take back the profession that literally holds our lives in its talons? Why are we waiting for GOVERNMENT and politicians to dish up "solutions" that many of us will find unacceptable?
We remain helpless because most of us have no idea what happens in the medical profession from THEIR side and for the most part we have little access to the information that will set us free and make us part of the process. We all have the opportunity now to offer our solutions from the patient/consumer perspective.
KevinPhoMD.com is the best one spot, easy to understand source I have found in four years. I challenge everyone reading this to put that address into the search bar, sign up, read and get educated.
Some article titles are: "Americans think that most physicians have it made. They're wrong.", "Remember the mothers of sick children", "The ER demonstrates the inverted priorities of American society".
For a starter article, read that last one about the ER, written by Edwin Leap MD. He describes our compassionate law that makes the ER available to everyone regardless of ability to pay and the entitlement attitude of some patients. "We've created a monstrosity of entitlement," Dr. Leap writes. He continues, "I care for the poor, I love the poor and have always tried my best to help those in genuine need."
Why our medical care is so messed up is complex and hard to understand. Obama's Democrats used the mantra that the "system is broken" then they proceeded to completely destroy it in ways that further obscure ways to fix it. The articles in KevinPhoMD.com provide us with small packets of information covering everything from electronic records to Medicare under paying rural doctors to the need for physicians to show more compassion.
Living in the Oregon/Idaho border area I write primarily from the perspective and experience of rural medical care. (Severe abuse of someone close to me happened in a big city hospital and that is also a basis for my quest for information.) Until I really started reading articles in KevinPhoMD.com I had little idea about rural health care differing significantly from care in cities. It was not something easily found in Google searches. I learned in Dr. Pho's newsletter about Medicare paying less to doctors in rural areas. This certainly must have something to do with the difficulty of keeping doctors in rural areas. Once again GOVERNMENT is screwing up and it is time We The People reclaimed the government.
Once upon a time in America public schools were devised so that voting citizens were empowered with basic knowledge. (This is overly simplistic but let it stand for now.) When it comes to medical care the government intends for our eighth grade educations to limit our ability to understand the complex. We cannot take it back and gain control if we are ignorant.
Instead of waiting in fear for government to tell us how it will save us from ourselves, let us educate ourselves on what is really happening. We can start by subscribing to KevinPhoMD.com. What if all of us in rural areas contacted our elected representatives and demanded that our doctors receive the same pay from Medicare as do their big city counterparts? That would make us part of the process instead of residents on the plantation praying for a benevolent master.
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Season of Light and Joy, Pray Healing for One Small Boy
December 23. 2016
By Anna Morris, Co-Editor, FFOA NEWS NETWORK
Christmas is a time of wonder and miracles especially for children. It is a perfectly awful time for a first grader to suddenly face a cancer that will require many treatments over many long weeks or months before there is healing.
Ryan Moore, 6, experienced a twisted sort of miracle on December 2 when he was accidentally hit very hard with a basketball at his Apple Valley Christian School game, according to Ryan's Medical Fund at gofundme.com. Because of that accident doctors found a tumor on Ryan's kidney. "Even with early discovery, the tumor had grown to the same size as his kidney," his supporters have written on the site. "He had to have surgery to remove his entire kidney," they wrote.
We first became aware of this story through heartfelt Tweets by Roo's Beating Heart aka @charjorgensen13. I interviewed Charlotte recently and asked why this story had so deeply touched her. Charlotte works for Ryan's mom Shelly.
"Shelly puts everything into her children; every time she talks to me it is always about her kids," said Charlotte. Shelly is kind, has a hilarious sense of humor and is excellent to work with, according to Charlotte. Bad things do happen to good people but when they do it is a stab to the heart of our human sense of justice.
"Frank, Shelly, Ryan and Dereck are a wonderful family," states the medical fund site. "They are heavily involved in their community, school, and church," it continues. Dereck is Ryan's younger brother," according to Charlotte.
While the family has insurance through Shelly's employment, illness can still be devastatingly expensive. Ryan's Medical Fund at gofundme.com is raising the $15,000 deductible required by the insurance. In addition, "The Moores have and will have numerous expenses including but not limited to: prescriptions, insurance deductibles, commuting money (hospital is an hour from home," write their supporters. "They are a one income family and will be devastated by this diagnosis if not for our generous support; please pray for them and generously give," ends the plea on the site.
At this time, $7,213 of the $15k goal has been raised.
Ryan has returned home after his surgery. His mom posted a picture of him with his shiny black kitty. "Reunited with his cat Shadow hasn't stopped loving on him," Shelly wrote on December 10.
There is another post by Shelly showing Ryan tucked into his bed at home. She wrote: No one but GOD let my Ryan come home. It was an absolute miracle that he is getting through this journey as well as he is...I have no idea how many amazing people came to our home to work tirelessly for Ryan's recovery...I love every single one of you from the bottom of my heart. You will forever be OUR FAMILY...thank you [heart] thank you [heart] thank you [heart].
"No One but GOD," wrote Ryan's mom Shelly. The family also seeks prayer. Not so long ago the Christmas spirit infected nearly everyone this time of year. It was a season of light and hope, of uplifted hearts turned to God wishing peace and goodwill to all. For Christians celebrating the miracle birth of Jesus, miracles seemed especially close just now, especially for children.
Unexplained healings that confound science still happen, though many claim a renewed Age of Reason. Other times adversity, even tragedy, leads to strength that touches many hearts. St. Paul said: And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. [Romans 8:28, NIV]
On December 17 Shelly posted on her Facebook that someone had syphoned all the diesel out of their truck. Her comment was understandably sarcastic, thanking the "jerk". Added vicious aggravations can be crushing when life is already tough enough.
Despite the diesel stealing Grinch, Ryan's mom is still positive on December 20 when she writes, "Merry Christmas to everyone...looking forward to all the amazing things God has ready for our family in 2017."
Check out Ryan's Medical Fund by Shelly Moore at www.gofundme.com . Donate if you can and pray for his miraculous recovery. Though Shelly notes on her Facebook that Ryan will not need radiation, he will begin chemotherapy in January. We at Freedom Fighters of America are donating and we'll add a little extra to replace what the Grinch stole.
Think too of others close to home who are ill or in need. Christmastime is when we are reminded that we are all Magi capable of bringing gifts. Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." Matthew 25:40, NIV
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Best Laid Plans of Liberal Progressives
December 3. 2016
By Anna Morris, Co-Editor, FFOA NEWS NETWORK
About four years ago I had a medical disaster involving a hospital monopoly, meaning it happened in a place with medium population that no longer has private practice or any alternatives to the government sponsored maelstrom. My experience was so bad that I moved back to my birth state of Idaho and avoided as much medical care as possible, even at risk of my life.
The best laid plans of mice and men and medically abused patients often go astray. After four years in my own insulated vacuum, I was recalled to the site of my former shame to care for my business partner who had become seriously ill. This was a long standing agreement between us as I have medical training and much practical nursing experience. Since my partner is ill I have popped back into the same hospital monopoly milieu from which I ran. Though my most pressing personal needs are still met in Idaho, I have had a few occasions to access the system recently for personal needs. Due to the illness of my friend I also have many opportunities to observe care and quality of care within the monopoly.
The system pushed the "Primary Care Physician" (PCP) mantra. Though there are walk-in clinics with generous hours, the practitioners are reluctant to treat anything unless the patient has or agrees to have a PCP. I am private pay so in my opinion that is none of their business.
Last year my partner and I both had a severe cold that didn't go away. After six weeks of dragging I began to run a low grade fever and felt like I had pneumonia so I went to the walk-in clinic. The state is down on prescribing antibiotics and though the reasoning is good, sometimes antibiotics are needed. I will rate the practitioner as F minus. She told me I was desperately ill and needed to go back to Idaho to see a specialist. I asked what kind of specialist and what should I tell him or her? Just see a specialist. No antibiotics unless I had a PCP for "follow-up"! I guess this is an Obama Care rule or something. She asked me if I was nauseated and I told her no but she kept pushing anti-nausea drugs instead of antibiotics, why I do not know.
I politely but coldly told her I would take care of myself, walked out, went home and took some antibiotics I obtain legally for use in animals on my ranch. I soon coughed up chunks of yellow and green material and was fairly well two weeks later.
My partner continued to drag along and a month or so later he had a deadly case of pneumonia which occasioned my recall for heavy nursing duties.
I was able to observe excellent care in the actual hospital and ER. I have come to the conclusion that actual medical care is done in those two places, not that anyone should aim to be an in patient at the hospital. Obama Care as well as the state's health transformation, blah, blah, blah, was supposed to cut down on use of the ER but after experiencing and witnessing many interactions at the monopoly owned clinic I believe if I am sick enough to see a doctor the best real care is found in the ER and it is probably worth the $600 plus not to get jerked around by politically infused employees posing as doctors and practitioners.
Of course some of the latter are very good, very competent and doing the best they can in a system that works against them. One can sense the pressure for such doctors to fill in the Obama Care, government created blanks about diabetes, weight, hypertension, lifestyle, etc. These poor doctors seldom get their heads away from their laptops to look at or touch a patient.
Perhaps folks in big cities are used to regimented short visits with their doctors, maybe through a managed care scenario. I am writing about what most would call a small town where the doctors used to have independent offices with one or two nurses and one bookkeeper/receptionist for staff. Those old time doctors, practicing right through the 1980s were able to address each patient and his or her needs on an individual basis. When "health care transformation" such as the Oregon Health Plan, took place in the 1990s, those old time doctors suddenly took early retirement. Those transformations seem to have been created to deliver depersonalize care to the masses.
One of the few good things about the "transformation" is the availability of "health portals", email accounts directly to the doctor(s) and the monopoly system. I use one of these, sometimes daily, when my patient is really ill and I believe it has saved my patient's life. That is a dramatic statement however the new system seems to make sure there are shortages. If the PCP wants to see the patient "in a month", scheduling is likely to offer the "only available slots" in six to eight weeks. It amazes me how the Obamatized health care transformation has created instant shortages. The portal short circuits this garbage, especially if one had medical knowledge, wants results and does not need a lot of hand holding.
The care shortage has worked a bit of a miracle. In previous articles as well as on Twitter I have frequently blasted the Obamatized system as making a visit to the doctor a skin crawling experience. Best laid plans not only go astray for mice and others, but certainly for liberal bureaucrat types like Jonathan Gruber who think more flow charts and projections, backed by laws and mandates, will solve the medical crisis they have caused in the first place! Case in point, a bedrock belief of Obama Care is that everyone must stay healthy as a patriotic duty so there will be "enough to go around." To this aim Michelle Obama grew her White House veggie garden on toxic soil while preaching about My Plate and insisting mac and cheese should be made of skim milk and cauliflower. The Third Reich was more to the point in regulating lifestyle; do it for Fatherland and Fuhrer.
The UN/WHO has the gall to castigate American medicine for doing too much "sick care" when enlightened nations do only "well care."
Four years ago in the heavily Obamatized state of which I write, the PCP and his nurse were government factotums most interested in smoking and or other tobacco use. When some Gruber-type figured out the e-system could not run without an answer to the question, "Have you EVER smoked," patients could be blackened forever in the permanent record as drug using deviants. They also became low hanging fruit for when the REAL lifestyle rationing begins. Every encounter, every time, by doctor, nurse, receptionist, coder, X-ray tech, etc., etc., was supposed to begin with questions about smoking! If a patient was stupid enough to admit tobacco use, the questioning and haranguing to accept "cessation intervention" was to increase exponentially. Ditto for alcohol use. Obama Care only allows one drink per day for women, two for men; more than that is "alcohol misuse." Just ask the DSM-5!
At this time the doctors, nurses, et al are so overwhelmed with schedules, time limits and laptops that they have no time for government spy work. Just answer no and never to the tobacco questions and they will never ask again I suppose due to lack of time. Usually they never get around to questions about alcohol use. Best laid plans of liberals most always become a stinking morass of ineffectiveness.
Obama Care and certain state efforts were distribution and redistribution schemes. Health Care, not just medical care, as in treatment for the sick and injured, was to be available to all. It was to be especially available to "under served populations" like African Americans, Native Americans, LGBTQ, etc.
I have no idea how well these targeted populations are faring under the "transformation", but I do know there is a pernicious, legalistic rationing of sorts being practiced. It has been whispered that there is tort reform somewhere in Obama Care. It appears to me this equals doctors rejecting certain patients with certain conditions.
Though I receive excellent care in Idaho for chronic, severe pain, my back became suddenly excruciatingly painful while I am temporarily stuck in the land of the hospital monopoly. Thirty years ago in this same area I would have started with an orthopaedist who would probably have ordered X-rays at minimum. If something emergent was going on s/he could offer options. Otherwise I could tough it out until I could take the results to the pain clinic in Idaho.
Surprise, surprise, surprise, as Gomer Pyle used to say! The orthopaedists in the monopoly will NOT do ANYTHING for a sore back. PERIOD! I have an idea my problem is arthritic in nature and know I have not been injured. I assured them I was self-pay and not beholden to an insurance company to make decisions for me. In addition I said I was not necessarily seeking treatment, since as soon as possible I plan to access specialists in my home. Finally, I made it plain I was NOT seeking any drugs!
NOTHING concerning the spine is addressed through the hospital monopoly which "serves" an extremely poverty stricken area. I could however, they informed me, despite my out of town status, obtain a Primary Care Physician who might order some X-rays or scans. Roll the dice, fill out the government questionnaire, get weighed so they can report my BMI to Michelle Obama, answer the initial tobacco questions, (lie if necessary), pay the fee and get informed that the monopoly does nothing for sore backs? No thanks! If it gets bad enough I will avail myself of REAL medical care in the ER.
The sum total for the liberal plans of "health care transformation" as I see it equals few if any choices, no access to some care, and the poor which are supposedly "served" are certainly screwed! Imagine a poor person living under the shadow of the hospital monopoly. Whether or not Medicaid pays his bills, nobody in the monopoly will address his painful back, probably for fear of law suits. This particular state is on the federal sh*t list for drug abuse so doctors there pretty much will not prescribe pain medications that might work. There is no opportunity for the poverty stricken patient to get a second opinion or go outside the monopoly. The monopoly does not treat back pain, period. If the patient is too poor to travel, he is screwed. If he can travel he will need to drive about 200 miles to where treatment is available. He will probably end up in the ER even though the liberal progreessive goal is to cut down on ER use. If the poor patient is actually seriously injured he may become so disabled he will become an in patient in the hospital or possibly flown by helicopter to the big city where treatment is available. With basic big government luck, such a patient may lose his job flipping burgers at Burger King and his whole family can go on welfare. That would be a likely WIN/WIN for Democrat voter registration.
For me, I know my spine is deformed and full of arthritis. I spit on government-centered, alleged "health" "care". As soon as my patient can travel we will journey to Idaho. If I misjudge my situation I will go to the ER for some REAL care. That is only a couple hundred more dollars than jumping through hoops to get a PCP I do not want and possibly for no help with my main complaint. Gone are the days when a patient hired a doctor. Now the doctors decide IF they will accept the patient. This may or may not be a definition of "regardless of the ability to pay."
Beyond that I am pleased to see the system that was planned to ensure "healthy lifestyles" and to punish lifestyle crimes such as smoking, is collapsing under its own weight. Doctors and practitioners are obviously overworked and distracted with government mandates. There is a shortage of them. Perhaps those who want to stay in medicine are seeking careers somewhere in the third world where people are thankful for the most basic care and there are no lawyers to institute suits.
I see very little actual practice of medicine in the monopoly's clinic. It may appear my personal opinion is bitter and jaundiced which is correct, however others in the "community" say exactly what I am saying. "Primary Care Physician" is frequently followed with the word "useless", rolled eyes and a snort. The PCP is a government cipher put in place to deliver "well care".
Someday in a perfect, liberal progressive world, if Democrats can figure out a way to keep Obama Care, ungrateful patients who fail to stay well should be euthanized when their "sick care" takes too much time away from enforcing the government ordered fruit and veggie, no tobacco, no alcohol, no meat, and certainly no bacon, death to couch potatoes lifestyle. But as I gleefully report, the best laid plans of liberals often go astray, imploding from sheer stupidity and ignorance of real life.
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Heil Health Care!
Candidates and the Synonym for Rape
Slip Sliding to the Welfare State
November 12, 2016
By Anna Morris, Co-Editor, FFOA NEWS NETWORK
It sounds like President-elect Trump is trying to figure out ways to keep parts of Obama Care. I don't disagree that those with serious preexisting conditions should be protected. I wouldn't care if those people went on Medicare early. Mr. Trump also wants to keep the provision that 26 year old "kids" stay on their parents' insurance. To me, 26 years old is adult. I suppose it doesn't matter a great deal if Mr. Trump and Dr. Carson drop all mandates and make their "replacement" voluntary. At the moment this is just as hidden as the original fiasco that had to be passed so we could read it, as Pelosi said with an egg sucking grin.
Meanwhile Florida Governor Tim Scott sent me into a rage of discouragement as he spewed away on TV, something about the Trump plan, and we all have to stay healthy so we can all afford health care. Hillary pushed this as an Obama Care solution and Governor Mike Huckabee endorsed this idea in his book God, Guns, Grits and Gravy.
Probably in anticipation of running out of other peoples' money, as Margaret Thatcher said of socialism, the idea of enforced wellness is written into the dehumanizing parts of Obama Care. This scheme of enforced wellness has also been part of actual medical practice in Oregon for many years. The idea floated in along with President Clinton's dispensation for the Oregon Health Plan rationing scheme circa 1994, and it was actually used against some patients, mostly smokers, when that scheme ran out of money in the early 2000s.
Stay healthy so your brothers and sisters have enough! Doesn't that just sound touchy-feely, Progressive Liberal? Of course this requires living as government dictates. Right now government is down on sugar, fat, meat, alcohol, tobacco, salt and bacon. It is for whole grains and lots of fruits and veggies every day. How many of you remember when cholesterol was on government's hit list? There was an idea that if children consumed any cholesterol they were sure to get hardening of the arteries when they were 70 or so. Then it was found that children actually need cholesterol to grow properly and develop their nervous systems and brains. I don't know that any children were hurt by this government pronouncement but perhaps the mega data will tell us if there is an epidemic of a newly discovered neuro-degenerative disease in about 20 years.
Ah yes, Big Government demands we consume less than a teaspoon of sugar per day or something because some obscure study says sugar might cause diabetes. Or is that obesity from over consumption of food in general that "causes" diabetes? Meanwhile, why am I nursing an elderly athlete who had no bad habits, always ate healthy foods and now has diabetes?
While we are on that subject, why did my mom who called herself a "health nut before there were health nuts", get the only case of cancer in my family?
Government plans to dictate our personal choices to lower the health care costs government has driven into the stratosphere. Under Obama Care, a woman who drinks more than one alcoholic drink per day (two for men) is to be considered a mis-user of alcohol, certainly on the fast track to alcoholism and in desperate need of government oversight and counselling. At the same time marijuana is being legalized for recreation in many states and everyone snickers about the smoke till you're wasted philosophy.
Government tells us what to eat but it avoids its responsibility to enforce laws against shooting each other in places like Chicago. Lots of those casualties survive and end up using many "scarce health care dollars" to recover, not to mention disability payments if they do not.
Only government hell bent on totalitarianism dares try to mandate our legal personal habits. Progressive Liberals are big for saying crude stuff like, "If I wanted government in my bedroom I'd F*** my senator." Remember when little kids held up signs like that at some protest or another? They will tax our sugar and soda but never even give lip service to any sexual practices that could be good for us as a society. How many "scarce health care dollars"--not to mention otherwise scarce tax dollars for education and every other public expenditure "for the children"--do unplanned and unwanted births cost society? (I know, that's why Progressives push abortion. Go have a good time and kill the babies that are created by mistake.)
Let's look at that whole picture. HIV, a huge expense when treated, is still a threat and some STDs are very hard to treat. Multiple partners add to these possibilities. Some women do conceive children to get more welfare. Of course these kids grow up "disadvantaged", in "need" of government programs and hopefully from the purveyors of the welfare state, grow up to vote for government dependency by registering Democrat.
Now that I have ticked off half of the readers, why shouldn't the government that demands we eat multiple servings of fruits and veggies per day so our brothers and sisters can have health care, regulate births in general? Since I espouse Roman Catholicism I am on a slippery slope here, but this is just for the sake of argument. Natural births cost a few thousand dollars and complications cost a whole lot more. (As noted previously each child will be educated by tax payers and if Mr. Trump is a liberal as some of us fear, he may yet give free college to Bernie's supporters.) Should the government that taxes soda and rations and neglects unrepentant smokers to the point of death, restrict the number of children a woman may have? Oh no! That would be like China!
There is another religion that at least in the past has believed that giving birth liberated a soul that God had on a shelf in heaven or limbo or somewhere, just waiting to complete itself on earth. Huge families were encouraged. Once in a small town where I lived, a fertility specialist set up practice. He was a member of this faith and I have it from a good source that his specialty was repair work that allowed women of this faith to keep liberating souls even after other doctors said another pregnancy was a grave danger. An acquaintance of mine and a patient of his, nearly died having her sixth or seventh child!
Should children be limited to one or two? Is more than two a waste of "scarce health care dollars?" Does the birth of a fifth child to a family in Idaho someway deny treatment for a combat level gunshot injury sustained by a youth on the streets of Chicago?
Of course government also believes by regulating our personal consumption of whatever the UN/WHO decries for political purposes, chronic disease can be eliminated. As noted I am caring for an elderly athlete who has some serious chronic illnesses due to age and genetics according to his doctor. If there aren't enough health dollars to go around, how long before all people with chronic conditions will be on a Death Panel hit list for euthanasia? Oh no! That would be like Nazi Germany!
Like candidate Trump said, our country blows billions of dollars building up other countries. Then when government steps into health care it demands our last drops of blood to fund a redistribution scheme that aims to restrict our personal choices and delights. (Except of course, sex. Have as much of that as you want, with as many partners as you can. It would be a hate crime to complain about the cost of treating HIV or providing late term abortion on demand.)
We build hospitals in foreign countries at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars yet we have to tax sugar and soda here to enforce WELLNESS? Americans are tired of getting the smelly end of the stick!
We will live as we please. That is a BIG reason we want government OUT of health care, when we hear politicians like Governor Scott, a Trump supporter, telling us we have to live better, the way government demands of us. He is signalling to all of us that health "insurance", which has become privatized socialism rather than a pooling of risk, adding around 15% to medical costs for paper pushing alone, has run out of other peoples' money. What else is he saying? Admit smoking, drinking alcohol or soda, eating bacon or meat, eschewing fruits, veggies and whole grains, and be sanctioned as an enemy of the people? Communist China or Nazi Germany, indeed!
President-elect Trump: Government is out of our bedrooms and anything goes, no matter the cost to society. Now get government out of our kitchens and living rooms! Put the people back in charge of their medical care! The doctor/patient relationship must always be individualized, not community care. Government-centered care, which is Obama Care, IS the highway to totalitarianism at the most personal levels. Oh, and start calling it MEDICAL care again. Those "scarce health care dollars" need not be wasted on every bureaucratic, wealth redistributing, crackpot wellness plan that anyone can dream up! By the way, do you or Dr. Carson know how much Smoking Cessation Specialists earn in a year? Put those supposedly scarce dollars to work actually healing the sick!
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Candidates and the Synonym for Rape
October 16, 2016
By Anna Morris, Co-Editor, Freedom Fighters of America
They got rid of Herman Cain with just one female accusing him of sexual misconduct, blathered someone on an alleged news station which is now just part of the "reality" show that is Election 2016. She went on to exclaim over the numbers of women now accusing Donald Trump of the same. There was something I didn't quite catch about polls showing that a candidate can really be harmed by this tactic.
In this time when government is supposed to stay out of the bedroom and when our country is moving from a republic to a social media and MSM driven mob rule democracy, it is surprising that accusations of sexual misconduct can destroy candidates. Of course for that to happen, progressive fomented mass psychology, if not outright law, had to elevate sexual exploration between males and females to the status of "sexual assault." To the average mind the synonym for those two words is "rape".
A long time ago before the New Normal said ANYone experiencing ANYthing unpleasant is a welcome member of the Victim hood Club, men and women played a number of sexual games on the way to getting to know each other. Considering the coverage of Mr. Trump's alleged peccadilloes, ALL of these old activities are now crimes, which goes a long way to explain why some colleges have instituted or suggested contractual dating. Perhaps it goes something like this: We mutually agree to kiss: a) light peck, b) on the lips, c) open mouth, no tongue, d) tongue allowed. During the kiss we mutually agree: a) hug only, b) touching above waist allowed, c) toughing any body parts allowed. During each stage of the evening the couple are expected to stop and sign the dating contract. Failure at any step means the overloaded courts can sort it out and hopefully no bone found erring has to register for life as a sex offender.
I am not terribly old and since I lie about my age--I still look great, so why not--I will say my demographic went from Ozzie and Harriet to the sexual revolution fairly quick.
In Ozzie's time people were supposed to be chaste ladies and gentlemen. Of course men and women did not always live up to the ideals but society had a veneer that made it seem everyone did. Thus Jack and Jackie Kennedy raised beautiful children in the White House, modelling the perfect family. Meanwhile, we now know, President Kennedy was having sexual frolics downstairs in the White House pool with female assistants nicknamed Fiddle and Faddle. Appearance was everything and that kept the country socially stable.
With "The Pill" giving women a measure of freedom from unwanted pregnancy, the sexual revolution from the mid-sixties on, proclaimed more or less, if it feels good, do it. Though it was proclaimed as a time of WOMEN'S sexual freedom, guys who are natural horn dogs, used the women's new found freedom as an excuse to shed old time norms of restraint. (Soon thereafter the welfare state strengthened and single motherhood, now politically correctly called single parenthood, was raised to a level of sainthood. Single mother/parents also made a wonderful voting block for the Democrat Party which faithfully promises more and better welfare through Big Government.)
"Bad girls do and good girls don't," was still taught to young women of my generation. Our moms taught us that "guys" on dates would try to get away with ANYTHING to go as far as they could and it was up to us girls to hold the line. If a guy got too fresh we were to slap his face. My mom who was older than other mothers of my generation, chuckled about girls at the turn of the last century who used actual hat pins as defensive weapons to chill the ardor of aggressive dates.
A male friend and I watched the TV downfall of Herman Cain and we both wondered aloud at the same time, how come his female accuser wasn't ashamed to go on air and claim she was helpless when he supposedly worked his hand up her leg, under her skirt? We see somewhat the same coming from the accusers of Mr. Trump. We hear accusations about his sexual aggression but do we believe the women were helpless to put him in his place once and for all?
This may actually make sense in the crazy New Normal. Social media and "reality" show "news" outlets are quick to say Mr. Trump allegedly committed "sexual assault" on a number of women. Why, we may wonder, did not any of these women knee him in the groin or at least slap his face when he supposedly attacked? Actually in a number of states that would be assault. As it goes in domestic disturbances, chances are both parties could get a night in jail if complaints and counter complaints were made.
It seems like V. Lenin or some other big time Communist said something about making so many laws nobody could follow them and then the law would lose all respect. Perhaps the Supreme Court needs a case to decide if a woman slapping the face of a guy, who groped up her skirt, is self defense. Or if groping is sexual assault? (Once on a very crowded street in Honolulu two hands cupped and slid over my very skinny buttocks. I thought it was a pick-pocket feeling for a wallet and was very thankful my sister-in-law had insisted I use a fanny pack for valuables. By today's terms, it was an obvious sexual assault so it follows, I must be a victim. And/or: Where was Donald Trump in April, 1992?)
The problem with our people-driven social upheavals of the last fifty years is that Cultural Marxists moved in and took over, instituting Big Government "solutions" via laws, to control what individuals use to handle on their own. The ever increasing laws are there to focus our thoughts on the ever expanding and restrictive CENTRAL GOVERNMENT.
Best yet, this mob driven Big Government has no statutes of limitation. Big Government health care used to just ask if the patient smoked. Then they changed it to did the patient EVER smoke? If yes, that stain can follow the patient to the grave and it will be awful helpful when full rationing is introduced. (If the patient says he never smoked, practitioners expect an instant extemporaneous speech about how he avoided the pitfalls of evil tobacco!)
Applied to politics, any man who can be accused of EVER touching a woman or encouraging her to have sex with him, has committed "sexual assault" and who wants a rapist in the White House? According to some, Mr. Trump's eighth grade level boasting on the live mic. equals a confession of serial sexual assaults.
Personally, if a guy groped his hand up my skirt, I would firmly grab that hand and give it back to him. I would probably dig in my nails while I removed his hand. I would not whine and whimper and ask him to please stop. I would TELL him his behaviour is unacceptable and STOP NOW! Feminism was supposed to be about putting women in charge of their sexuality. I simply cannot imagine letting a guy grope any part of me, then hiring someone like Gloria Allred a decade or so later to explain to the world that I was a victim!
I will let Mr. Trump's words speak for him. Why would a billionaire, who has married three gorgeous women, think, talk and perhaps act like an eighth grade boy who just discovered wet dreams? Why would President Kennedy need time outs from his beautiful, Catholic family with Fiddle and Faddle and many more? Why did President Clinton risk everything, then lie to the point of impeachment, over an intern and a cigar in the oval office?
Back in my day our moms warned us about guys like this and we were not taught to be victims. Most guys tried to go as far as they could. In the sixties it was called "copping a feel"; brush, touch or grope a girl, then tell buddies about it in the junior high locker room. Before experimental touching became "sexual assault" and victim hood was not yet invented, you can bet those boys never boasted about getting slapped, kneed, scratched or punched by young ladies who stood up for themselves. An amazing result of progressive-driven women's "liberation" is that, fifty years later, we are all victims in need of legal and Big Government salvation. Was the point of women's liberation just to make us weak and dependent?
More amazing yet, Herman Cain and Donald Trump are labelled sexual assaulters while Bill Clinton is a senior statesman planning to become the First Dude in the White House.
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Slip Sliding to the Welfare State
By, Anna Morris, Co-Editor, Freedom Fighters News Network
August 29, 2016
Listening to candidates Donald Trump and Gary Johnson spout their pro-immigration blather reminds me that we didn't get our American welfare state by accident. Somewhere along the line, starting with huge agro-business and moving on up, businesses decided they needed cheap labor that would not make demands. With the help of the media many forms of work were declared to be, "jobs Americans just won't do."
When I was young, American teenagers and uneducated people were thankful for those jobs. For teens those jobs were entry level; get a little work experience over the summer, build up to something better next summer. Growing up I lived in a fairly poor rural area. Lots of the teens who picked fruit or hoed weeds all summer used their earnings for school clothes and supplies, and they felt and learned self sufficiency rather than the victim labels of today.
Around the end of July a number of our stores, especially Wal Mart, puts out big bins with signs encouraging shoppers to buy school supplies to be given to poor children. For a number of years these bins signal the change from the summer season to with school season. In smaller stored the collection boxes are right near the boxes for food collection for the hungry and Friday Backpack for children whose parents don't feed them on the weekends.
Just as our fall weather turns crisp and cold, there will be a number of do-gooder organizations, churches and ObamaCare satellites seeking warm coats, boots, shoes and sleep wear for underprivileged children!
I suggest many of these "children" are underprivileged because they are not allowed to have jobs during the summer or after school. All of the third world needs those entry level jobs and American kids should be thankful they live in a rich country that believes in and expands the welfare state! In addition, perhaps some of their under educated parents cannot afford to feed their kids on weekends, buy them coats, boots, clothes and school supplies, because immigrants now have the sacrosanct RIGHTS to jobs Americans have been trained to accept they cannot have!
What happened to me in the early 70s would not matter except my misfortune became a pattern I see among my friends to this day. Back in the 60s we were taught a work ethic. Get a job, any job is better than no job. Welfare is shameful. NEVER take welfare!
Unknown to me at the time of my agony, the government environmentalists~~they were just getting traction in the early 70s~~ had shut down a new factory for fear it would raise water temperature, over a short stretch of a large river, by one degree! Working class people who were employed there took every entry level job in the area. At the same time my married boss~~his wife was crippled, so he said~~ let me know if I did not agree to sexual intercourse I would be fired. This was a little before such things were federal cases. I righteously told him to shove his demands and the job.
I shortly understood there were no other entry level jobs available since they were all filled by the environmentally unemployed. A friend told me of an agricultural job for which I had experience. I was denied the work because it was promised to a Mexican "Crew". I begged. I suggested a Mexican should be dropped so I could have the job. The farmer said they were on contract and they had rights!
Obviously I, an American citizen, had NO RIGHTS to what was then a precious thing~~a job! Very soon after I starved, became homeless and hitchhiked to a new place, half hoping a serial killer would pick me up and end my misery. Why should an American citizen EVER be allowed to starve and be homeless when foreigners have guaranteed jobs? Had I been a different kind of woman perhaps I would have crawled back to the married boss, begging him for sex. I would have feared hell fire for the adultery in the act. I would have needed a lot of alcohol, perhaps drugs, to follow through. Prostitution may have seemed a viable alternative. Perhaps by today I could be a full blown, disease ridden addict on an Obama Care program.
Do American citizens EVER deserve to be third world citizens in their own country while those truly born in the third world have contractual rights to jobs? In the decades since, I have seen my friends and their kids ground down by the same stinking system. I have watched my friends and their kids ease into the welfare trap. First there are food stamps, then food banks. There is subsidized housing and all the freebies previously mentioned. There are programs for all sorts of needs. The welfare state keeps it all patched together, therefore the citizens are at least partially helpless and willing to vote for more welfare.
Meanwhile immigrants, mostly Hispanic, with their guaranteed jobs and contractual rights, aided by willing, greedy employers hiring on the cheap, have formed their own voting block. Those eligible to vote have hopefully earned citizenship. Unfortunately I believe they also vote for the rights of those illegally here, perhaps even extended family. Every candidate seems to need to make peace with this voting block.
Basically Libertarian candidate Gov. Gary Johnson says immigrants are wonderful people doing jobs Americans won't do, and we need more of them. Guess he would have the Hispanic voting block, except candidate Clinton will probably keep the sanctuary cities and open borders when she fulfills Obama's third term.
Mr. Trump, while he was destroying the GOP competition back in 2015, promised to deport 11 million or so illegals and build a wall. After a couple meetings with the all powerful Hispanic voting block, Mr. Trump now says he will deport the bad ones, the ones with multiple felonies and a murder or two on their records. Mr. Trump states his heart is softening toward the others and he does not want to break up families.What about American families and entry level American youth needing jobs?
A few years back the liberal left whined non stop about the "Dreamers", as I understand it, kids raised completely in the U.S. to non-citizen parents who had entered our country illegally. At that time their numbers were estimated to be about 6,000. Personally I thought the humane solution would be to allow citizenship to these few thousand young people, though I firmly believe their parents should get the boot ASAP. Of course this was a too simple solution, so the can got kicked until sympathy could be generated for the poor, deserving families living illegally in our country. Taking jobs from citizens born here seems to be an act worthy of reward and beatitude.
We don't hear about Dreamers anymore but Mr. Trump certainly feels sympathy for all who have lived here illegally for years, worked and not committed crimes. May we say SQUATTERS' RIGHTS? Perhaps jobless Americans should go squat on Trump owned real estate, and if they commit no crimes and clean up after themselves, he would allow them to stay?
All this immigration blather, along with the Hispanic voting block, over complicates a subject that could be simple. Despite Mr. Trump's blunt, even extreme talk, about deportations and the wall, he too is having to bow to the demands of all who can run across our border to establish squatters' rights. ENOUGH ALREADY!
Jobs are for American citizens FIRST. The patriotic duty of every American citizen is to have a JOB. Let's approach the "jobs Americans just won't do," head on. If an American citizen needs one of those jobs, the guest worker gets dumped on the spot. NO MORE contractual agreements with foreign labour to deny citizens paying jobs! This also means if an American citizen wants a WAIT STAFF job at Mar-a-Lago, one of Mr. Trump's H-visa Romanians gets dropped so the citizen can be hired!
Add to this e-verify. Enforce the laws already on the books about hiring citizens.
If, after all this, there are jobs unfilled, consider guest workers. I like the term guest worker. Guests, not citizens!
I assume there are too many big pay offs in the present complicated system to allow for a couple simple solutions. Primary candidate Trump said last year, he cared about blue collar workers and the lack of jobs in America. Today he feels sorry for illegal aliens, "the good ones", who have squatted here for decades.
All these politicians lack the SPINE or GUTS to say and demand: AMERICAN JOBS FOR AMERICAN CITIZENS FIRST! IF AN AMERICAN WANTS THE JOB, A GUEST WORKER IS FIRED ON THE SPOT! AMERICANS FIRST!
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ObamaCare Will Morph, Not Die
By Anna Morris, Co-Editor, Freedom Fighters of America
August 22, 2016
ObamaCare was designed to leave the American citizens holding the bag and enslaved. Amazingly--or not--it appears insurance companies and other businesses can opt out, get out and walk away. The American people will never be able to walk away. Pass it to see what's in it, smirked Pelosi with her lopsided Bo-toxed grin. Jonathan Gruber, a father of this medical disaster, counted on those "stupid American voters" to let them get away with it.
Sure enough, little by little, Americans flew and buzzed up against that toxin laden fly paper called ObamaCare. It was always meant to be incremental so all the restrictions, costs, fees, delayed care, bad care, government-centered care, etc. would not unduly alarm voters for a couple years.
In those early years, just the tips of our wings brushed against the sticky stuff and the alarmed buzz was low. Costs went up. Premiums went up and deductibles went so high the insurance could not be used, though people were required to keep paying for it. Obamunists maintained enough congressional control that American voters, stupid or not, could not extricate themselves.
While voters and consumers kept their eyes on the costs, the OTHER part of ObamaCare, the terrible, government-centered "care" was strangling the providers. Though we see insurance companies blithely walking away, even IF American citizens were ALLOWED to walk away, it would be almost impossible at this time to find relief. We are all firmly stuck in the toxic goo on that fly paper and now we buzz loudly. Angry buzzing is about all we have left for we are stuck until we die.
Several times I have written about Obamastan, our 57th state by Obama's count. It is a real place, farther left than any other state in America. This state has been proudly Progressive for decades and its progressivism helped formulate the "care" part of ObamaCare. While I would fear to write certain things about a better known state, Obamastan always shows us an extreme and sometimes humourous extreme left perspective. That state took ObamaCare to the farthest extremes as fast as possible. Patients suffered in that state, even before ObamaCare proper.
Instituted ObamaCare has in six years, by utterly destroying private practice, eliminated most choices for the medical consumers of Obamastan. I monitor the papers from a certain town there. Earlier in 2016 the last doctor in private practice had to join the hospital monopoly because, as I understand it, ObamaCare requirements are such that no one in private practice can comply. The word comply has been used in a number of articles about doctors leaving private practice.
I use the term HOSPITAL MONOPOLY. In a legal sense I am wrong since through some sort of political manoeuvring, ONE former clinic was allowed to remain in existence. Cynically I suppose this was so the word MONOPOLY would have no meaning and if it was used by a writer, that writer would look stupid if not libelous.
I lived for a time in a town in Obamastan and observe from personal experience, that supposedly independent clinic took its marching orders from the government-hospital combine, even a few years before ObamaCare was official. Liberals continually work behind the scenes, putting their socialist plans in place so that one significant political win, such as President Obama + a Democrat majority, can turn all their ideas into laws. Law pretty much means written in stone from that point on. Or FORWARD! like Obama uses.
I can also personally attest that this particular town used to have five or more clinics with doctors in general practice. There were a few specialists in one or two doctor practices and a couple nurse practitioners with store front operations. Six years into ObamaCare there is a giant hospital combine and something calling itself private. Doctors employed by the latter attend continuing education with hospital doctors. They too ignore individual patient needs while treating the community. Put plainly, smoking status, diabetes, hypertension, mental health and other governmental concerns are far more important that actual illnesses of the patients. "Well care" is put far ahead of "sick care" which is now out of fashion.
(ObamaCare always planned for patients to get so much preventive care that they would never need "sick care." Liberal socialists behind the ObamaCare disaster wrote a lot about U.S. medical care being behind the rest of the world because we do too much "sick care" when all we really need is a lot of "well care". Do we assume half starved people in third world countries line up for their vaccinations and colonoscopies and thus never need "sick care"? According to our liberals American medicine ranks about dead last against every other country in the world.)
Obamastan is a rural state with practically no big cities. It is a poor state. Rural health care is different in some ways from health care in populous areas and big cities. Government has done some good things to bring doctors and access to rural areas. The downside is that ObamaCare "care" hit like a sledge hammer and in my opinion, patients in rural areas are now just lab rats with numbers attached.
The specific area I mention is mountainous and there used to be nice scenery until Obama's green energy put windmills in every valley and on every hill top. (Whatever it takes to put coal miners out of business while saving the planet.) There is a lot of poverty as we understand poverty in rural areas. In this county the median income is below $45,000. The per capita income is about $20,000. It is not ghettoized, big city poverty. Rural poor tend to live in trailers, eat on food stamps and line up at the food bank a couple times a month. Income in the area is so low that the federal government has a free feeding program for kids in the summers and school lunch/breakfast is free in most schools.
All this serves as explanation of why, under the name Rural Health, the government, via the hospital monopoly, now owns all the medical clinics in small towns in the county. As I understand from local papers, these small clinics could not "COMPLY" with ObamaCare requirements unless they were under the hospital monopoly.
Therefore everyone in the area gets the same scary, sometimes prejudiced, government directed "care". Second opinions are not to be had since all records are in the giant ObamaCare cradle to grave register. As a medical consumer with odd needs I am used to driving to whatever big city to see specialists. I can afford it at this time in my life but I was once even poorer than the average Obamastan resident. They are trapped and they will have to exist with whatever "community health" mess the government ladles out.
With Aetna and other big insurers pulling out of the titanic disaster, it is hopefully suggested that ObamaCare is in its death throes, but CAN ObamaCare actually be killed?
Take that county in Obamastan for example. All the clinic buildings and equipment are owned by the hospital. All the doctors are employed by the hospital. (Except that one clinic that calls itself independent while giving government prescribed "care".) If ObamaCare died this minute, what happens? Do we see these doctors rushing out to build a private practice complete with the risks of malpractice suits? (One advantage of the hospital combine, as I understand it, it is almost impossible to sue a hospital.) Even if some of these doctors want to be independent, how will they ever afford basic equipment and buildings?
The money end of ObamaCare is only a part of the scheme, perhaps less than fifty percent. I have trouble finding substance in the many things said by Donald Trump. He has said two things about health care from his perspective as a businessman. Though I have had fun with these statements on Twitter, neither is Mr. Trump's policy according to his website. For my purposes here I neither speak for nor against him as a candidate.
In early February, 2016, Mr. Trump told Anderson Cooper, "I like the [ObamaCare] mandate." Expanding, Mr. Trump said the mandate was needed if insurance companies were forced to accept people with preexisting conditions. Recently he made a comment indicating that a single payer system may be needed to overcome the ObamaCare disaster.
It has been suggested that ObamaCare was designed to so damage our health care system that the people would demand single payer or some other form of universal medical care. I think we may be at that point now. Surely the rural poverty of Obamastan makes it unlikely that those people will ever have anything different from what government allows. Donald Trump is running for office largely on his business background. In his two off the cuff comments noted above, I think he too is saying the ObamaCare disaster has gone so far we have no way back. Mr. Trump's official policy is otherwise but he may also see that eight years of Obama leaves us no way out.
I see the Hillary/Bernie side ramping up for single payer health care. Liberal/socialist Progressives keep metastasizing like an untreatable, deadly cancer. At least in places like Obamastan, liberals had worked hard for a number of years prior to 2010, to make sure the right law could destroy private practice. ObamaCare greased the skids and now there is only government care available in that economically poor area. If your area is not yet as medically helpless as this, be assured there are liberal, "grassroots", community organizers working behind the scenes to make sure you lose your choices. There is absolutely NOTHING patients can do about it when their doctors close up shop & join monopolies.
We can kill the monetary side of ObamaCare but if we do not also ABSOLUTELY destroy the "care" side of it, we WILL be forced into single payer/universal health care at some time, in my opinion.
The liberal Progressives will never rest until we are all forced to have government-centered, government-planned, "well care". Remember, the American citizens are the only ones in this scheme who are not allowed to get out. ObamaCare is so all encompassing I think it will never die, but continue to morph and grow like a cancer.
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From Polish Garlic to Gothic Girls? Understanding the Voynich Manuscript
July 1, 2016
By Anna Morris, Co-Editor, Freedom Fighters of America
The Voynich Manuscript (VM) is said to be written in an unknown alphabet, and in an unknown language that computer algorithms cannot identify or break.[1] Recently, while looking at greatly enlarged portions of the calligraphy I sought the exact meanings the medieval scribes meant to communicate. Were the letters Latin or Cyrillic, a combination, or something entirely unknown?
By defining less than twelve Voynich characters I seem to have stumbled on a system that yields a primarily Polish/Slovenian language with a few Hungarian words. This makes a lot of sense since the VM was discovered in 1912 by Wilfrid Voynich, in a trunk in a monastery in northern Italy. Modern Slovenia, formerly Yugoslavia, shares a northern border with Italy. The VM carbon dates to about 1420 CE, at which time the area was made up of a number of different duchies that were parts of larger empires. The modern Slovenian language is said to have the characteristics I believe I find in my transliteration of Voynichese. [2]
It appeared to me that what looked like one peculiar character was actually two letters which were \cz\. If so, what if another cz-looking character, with a gentle swirl over the top, could be an \sz\? By searching throughout the text to find, then transliterate primarily words heavy with \cz\ and \sz\, then entering the results in a search engine, I began to get actual words or parts of words in the Polish language. Many of my experimental words were five to six letters long, thus diminishing the possibility of mistaking short words in multiple languages that use common one or two letter combinations.
Some researchers have thought the Voynich script could be based on Arabic or another Semitic writing system. [3] In passing I note that someone claims to have translated the whole work into Latin. A VM expert, in a brief email exchange, gently cautioned me that the Voynich seems very readable to many people, yet the solution remains elusive. I very much respect this researcher so I was severely depressed for a couple days and nights. Then the irresistible impulse took over, to keep entering Voynich words into the search engine, just to see what would happen. Real words appeared, letter for letter with no guessing or tweaking. Polish, Polish, Slovenian, Hungarian, Polish, Polish.
I am not a mathematical genius who can instantly deduce, that if a certain number of results are correct, it is something like a one in quadrillion chance that the whole thing is reasonably right. All I know is my system, according to online translators, makes recognizable words which turn out to be appropriate for areas near northern Italy. Sometimes, the words even seem to form phrases. I do not claim to have discovered a complete alphabet, nor to have translated any large portion of the text. I believe it will require many experts in many fields to completely translate the VM. First and foremost experts on medieval calligraphy, documents and Slavic languages are needed.
The unknown Voynichese script, I believe, is not exactly an alphabet. Part of the script seems to be alphabet and part seems to be symbols that combine letters, at least in one case for the purpose of forming a suffix. Some believe the VM is a code or a hoax but, based on what I have found, I do not agree. It appears to me that the writing system is largely a mixture of the Latin alphabet such as we use to write English, with a little bit of Cyrillic which is based on the Greek alphabet and is used primarily by speakers of eastern Slavic languages.
The written characters in the VM are primarily Latin but there appears to be a Gothic artistic style in some cases. In addition, some of it resembles Italic calligraphy style used in Renaissance Italy. The Gothic and Italic writing systems are very similar to what we use today and are fairly easy to understand by the modern reader. Though there can be a few differences from what we are used to in the Latin alphabet, Gothic is, to me, primarily artistic. If one looks closely at the Voynich calligraphy, certain letters at times, seem to be in the Gothic style. On page one of the manuscript, which is actually a 209 page, leather bound book, what appear to be the second and third paragraphs begin with crudely artistic renderings in brownish ink, of what I would describe as the Gothic |V|. (In some Gothic alphabet styles it is also possible this could be |Y| or maybe |U|, but let us not complicate things.)
What I call the Voynich Polish/Slovenian Alphabet is provided below. It is not in the ABC format we are used to, nor the ABVG beginning of Cyrillic. Organization is not one of my skills, but beyond that personal failing, I have no idea if the Voynich writing system is as clear as ABC because of the way VM letters are combined into single characters that include several letters. Therefore it makes sense to me, in presenting my Voynich alphabet, that we start with characters and letters that yield the most, and hopefully the most accurate, results. The characters descend from very useful and probably right, all the way to maybe and I really do not know. Others before me have formulated alphabets for the VM and those researchers have used (?) frequently for what they did not know. Again, I believe the Voynich scribes and the learned people who recorded the information in ink on vellum, deliberately created a writing system that combined alphabets and styles. If the language in the VM should turn out to be a mixture of languages, perhaps we have a Renaissance, scientific Esperanto?
At first I was just playing at making words. When this seemed to be successful I quickly got very serious with an overwhelming desire to know if the VM consists of actual sentences with rational ideas and meanings. There is no apparent punctuation in the Voynich text, so whether or not there may be full sentences is unknown. At this time I believe there are actual sentences containing nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, conjunctions and so forth.
Z szor Postav is a short sequence from an herbal page in the VM. Using a translator on Bing, I find that Z= from, in Polish, szor= times, in Hungarian, Postav= characters in Czech. From times characters... Even the capital P in that position fits with the modern Polish alphabet. The next word in the phrase transliterates to jelsz. That is all there is when following my system to the letter. If there was an \o\ at the end of jelsz we would have jelszo, a Hungarian word for motto or password. Could the phrase be expanded to mean:... from times characters motto...? Could a person fluent in these languages grasp a better meaning?
There is a space after jelsz, which makes or appear to be the next word, or should or be considered part of jelsz? Or does not seem to be anything in any Slavic language, but since I believe the Voynich script is an amalgamation of alphabets, I also believe I have found or equal to \o\ in some instances. For example olje = oil in Slovenian, as in garlic oil. On a Voynich herbal page with pictures of plants and their roots, I believe the scribes meant to write olje but wrote orlje. This actually makes sense in that a Cyrillic \L\ works great most of the time in the VM, but the symbol that works as \r\ looks like a Latin cursive \l\, just like we would write it today. Was the medieval scribe more familiar with the Latin cursive, while unfamiliar with the VM mixture, thus he played it safe and wrote ollje?
Medieval manuscripts are notorious for optional spelling and creative letters. Leonardo da Vinci who lived and wrote in Italy near the time of the supposed date for the VM, used a half cursive, half printed hand, and the lower case cursive \L\ he made is the same as out modern version. When we contemplate medieval handwriting, probably the meticulous quill and ink work of monks comes to mind, such as the illuminated bibles, psalters and prayer books, yet Leonardo and others in his time and area wrote in a cursive Italic that looks very modern.
The VM radio carbon dates to circa 1420 CE, thirty two years before Leonardo was born. Languages change drastically in 600 plus years so whatever is the Voynich language, it is likely to be vastly different from modern versions of the language or languages. Think about the difficulties in reading Chaucer which is written in the English of the fourteenth century. Better yet, find a You Tube video of Chaucer's works being read aloud. Modern English speakers are hard put to recognize any words! Therefore the chance of using Google Translate to completely decipher Voynich Polish/Slovene from about Chaucer's time, is nil.
I also have an idea that a lot of the words in the VM are roots of words, sometimes in need of suffixes. The whole thing has the feel of something written tersely and simply to impart information. Though I have attempted an online self education crash course in Polish and Slovenian I am stymied when it comes to optional and complex vowels or the many different applications of \S\ and \Z\ in Polish. I more or less understand the stroke found in the Polish alphabet, the \L\ with the slanted cross halfway up the stem that turns the \L\ to a \W\, but I do not know why it is so, nor can I find the origins of this mark. I nearly gave up when I read of issues in Slovenian with \r\, \L\ and \n\, which seem to be compounded when \rj\, \lj\ and \nj\ are needed in a word. For now my level of incompetence has been reached and surpassed!
For all that, and perhaps because of my art background, I believe the Voynich script is readable and maybe even easily readable by someone familiar with the language(s). In addition to the likely mix of Cyrillic, Latin and Gothic alphabets, there seem to be creative digraphs, trigraphs and perhaps more. With the trigraphs, seeming three letter combinations in one character, I am still struggling, though one in particular yielded miraculous results from the beginning and pointed the way to think about the others.
Eastern Slavonic speakers adopted the Cyrillic alphabet which has 36 characters compared to the 26 letters in our Latin alphabet. [4] Western Slavonic speakers adopted the Latin alphabet and apparently found it lacking to reproduce everything the Cyrillic alphabet covers. Wikipedia has this technical explanation, "...(alphabet letters) are augmented by ligatures and letters/sounds not represented in Greek...which are derived from the early/ier Glagolitic alphabet, a script similar to Hebrew, other Semitic scripts, Linear B and Sarmatian runes." That sounds complicated but I think it goes a long way in explaining, and giving us keys to, the unreadable VM.
Further complications in reading the VM script have to do with tiny differences in the quill strokes of letters that seem to make completely different letters. An apparent \a\ for example, if left slightly open at the top, like a sloppy rendering of \a\, actually seems to make \u\. To my horror, however, I believe I have found a lot of creativity in both spelling and writing, such as my earlier example of olje/orlje. The VM is notorious for repetitive words which seem to be spelled the same over and over, so I had a false sense of confidence that the Voynich scribes maintained a higher degree of accuracy than that found in other medieval documents. In those days spelling was optional and the term creative writing might refer to the actual handwriting. The reader will note in my alphabet for example, that I am unclear about the \m\ in the VM and I am quite certain I have found it in the Gothic version as well as Latin and a concocted Cyrillic style. The latter observation is based upon one scribe correcting what looked like a straightforward Cyrillic \M\, to make a Voynich character that looks like an oM and which seems to function as a simple \M\ at the beginning of a word.
If we could view the actual VM slight variations in letters may be very noticeable. Read online, it is necessary to zoom in about 150% to catch all the tiny variations in the calligraphy. One VM researcher is reputed to have counted what he believed were angles in every \o\ in the text, thinking the tiny angles formed a code. In the end it seems these angles and corners were artifacts from the simple use of quill and ink on calf skin vellum. The kinds of variations I am seeing are how ordinarily closed letters like \o\, may be left open, or how parts of letters join to form letter combinations like the apparent trigraph -nek, meaning little in Polish.
Concerning the VM vowels, fortunately the basic \a\ and \o\ are recognizable and they work fine most of the time in my system. Other Voynich vowels might look like \a\, \o\ or \c\ and their actual sounds or values, it appears, depend upon whether or not a loop is closed or open or even how the letter is slanted. The vowels in Slavic languages seem extremely complex and the meanings are frequently dependent upon diacritics like accent marks and little hooks pointing left or right at the bottom of some of them. The VM script has very few diacritics and perhaps the origins and uses of these marks from the middle ages until today is a separate specialty. At any rate it is discouraging to note that in both Gothic and Italic calligraphy, the \e\ can look like a \c\. I have a good idea the \e\s in Voynichese are found somewhere in the many \c\s. Those knowledgeable in the languages will know where an \e\ is needed rather than a \c\.
Possibly the \c\ that may be an \e\ explains one of the variant spellings beside a VM colored drawing that clearly appears to be a carrot. The Polish word for carrot is marchew and one of the presumed carrot drawings in the VM comes very close to this spelling. Yet another carrot drawing has this extremely creative label: oMcccSaw, with the \S\ turned around backward, as are all Voynich \S\s. If oM = M imitating Cyrillic M, and the third \c\ = e, it is not a stretch to find marchew. If there is Italian influence in the VM, \ce\ in Italian = che, like the first part of cherry in English. If, however, oMcccSaw is the intended spelling, perhaps the VM is still unreadable! There also seems to be a character that resembles a Voynich backward \S\ except it is more like our question mark without a dot underneath. I believe this is a separate character and may be \ch\. These are good example of some of the difficulties.
There are a few alphabet letters I have yet to identify, for example \b\, \f\, \d\. I have a good idea that some letters have multiple duties. Perhaps if they reasonably sound alike, they are interchangeable, such as \v\, \b\, \w\.
APPLICATION OF MY ALPHABET:
In the beginning I copied and processed random, fairly simple words with \cz\ and \sz\ characters from throughout the text. The VM is thought to have several main sections, the largest part being an herbal with drawings of plants, their strictures, flowers and roots. In addition there are segments on astrology/astronomy, geography perhaps, nude women perhaps expressing folklore of some kind, and a supposed recipe section. It is thought the recipe section it is thought, may detail medicinal treatments. I selected my first words at random from all sections.
Many of the Polish words and partial words that turned up were either forenames, surnames or place names in modern usage, usually with suffixes added. For example, writing the Voynich word first, followed by the modern ending or suffix, we have the following surnames: GORCZ|ok, GORJE|anu, CZO|vek KACZ(e)N|ski. CZARJE is a word I found in the VM as well as a modern name in its entirety. An interesting place name is CZORSZ|tyn, a Polish town noted for a nearby castle. [5]
Names, especially names based on Slavic languages, can go back perhaps as far as prehistoric times. Just as we have Native American place names in North America, surely Poland has place names that go back to the Wendis and other early European tribes. Occasionally I was able to tease out meanings for some of the names. Many times I could not. For many fore- and surnames, the meanings are lost or unknown in modern times. While it is hard to find definitions of the names of small towns and hamlets, I suspect people living there have a good idea what the name of their home towns mean. In the above mentioned Czorszryn, the source named above says the German name for this place is Schorstin.
Several of the random words, if my transliteration is correct, are regular words like gostje meaning guests in Slovenian and czesta meaning frequent in Polish. The small connecting words also seemed to mix Slovenian and Polish. What looks like 8a in my system transliterates to sta, which means "they're" in Slovenian, according to the Bing translator. There is Z which means with in Polish, according to the same translator. Stan means "the state of", according to both the online translator and my new Polish dictionary. [6] (I caught an online translator messing up by giving different answers for the same word so I ordered two new dictionaries for accuracy.)
It is said Slovenian contains some Italian words so I note in passing that sta can mean "it is" in Italian. Whatever the exact meaning in the VM, these little words are most encouraging because they give the appearance of sentences or more complex thoughts than I would expect in a hoax or cipher.
When these successes looked like more than accidental good luck, I got serious. When deciphering an otherwise unreadable medieval manuscript, it is wise to look at words that connect with artwork, if any is available. Fortunately the VM is as decorative as any modern, picture filled coffee table book. Having done wildlife and botanical art, the drawings of the various Voynich plants impress me as coming from a Hogwarts textbook used by Professor Sprout's herbology class. If sections of these plant drawings are enlarged 150% and seen on a high definition computer screen, they take on an otherworldly, 3D aspect which has ethereal beauty. Paints and inks were made by hand in the middle ages, therefore I can forgive the colors, knowing the artists had to grind semiprecious stones to powder, then add gum Arabic to make paint which may have been applied by using a quill or reed. Even so,viewed without enlargement, I find the pictures nightmarish.
CZOSNEK ~
A number of people online are trying to decipher the VM. One such attempt involved an enlarged cut from a page in the VM herbal section, of a root structure with chopped off stems ascending. The cut and paste internet artist identified the drawing of the root as "garlic" and attempted to translate three words beneath the drawing into Latin. (Unfortunately the section of the VM where this is found is one of the few pages that are too faded in color for me to read in the online copy of the VM. Also unfortunately, the cut and paste I found online had disappeared two days after I found it. Thankfully I believe I have progressed past the one word for garlic.)
The longest word under the root structure drawing appeared to read: CZOS_. CZO was plain, the \s\ was a backward \s\. The ending character was quite pretty, resembling a fancy cursive, capital G in the Latin alphabet. CZOSNEK is the Polish word for garlic and it is a very old word that came from proto Slavic. [7] If the capital G like character meant -nek then the completed word would be czosnek. Applying that character to other words as -nek led to sosanek under a Voynich drawing that strongly resembles a pine tree. The Polish word for pine is sosna, again from proto Slavic. The only definition I can find for -nek in Google Translate, autodetect is that it means "-ing" in Hungarian. I have no idea if the Voynich character means -nek, if it sounds like that or if it has a specific meaning. Somewhere in the proto Slavic I got the idea -nek meant "little" but I cannot find that st the moment.
Voynich words are fairly short compared to modern Polish. Finding a list of proto Slavic words found in Polish was extremely helpful. These words felt like the Voynich language, if that makes sense. It is not for me to speculate further but I hope there is someone reading this who understands proto Slavic and its history. I want to believe the VM goes way back before 1420 CE, yet some things within it cause me to believe that date is probably correct. How close were Polish and Slovenian to proto Slavic at that time?
After czosnek for garlic and what looks like sosanek, possibly for pine, most of the other plant labels did not work out to anything recognisable. Google autodetect suggested various Slavic languages but came up with no translations.
There is one exception which is the carrot, marchew in Polish. One drawing very much looks like a cartoonish carrot just like Bugs Bunny chomps. The other drawing could easily be a carrot sprout. If both drawings depict the carrot plant, and are labelled marchew, they may illustrate some difficulties in deciphering Voynichese. On the likely carrot sprout, the \m\ beginning marchew is very Gothic in nature and resembles two \c\s facing each other. The \ch\ may or may not be represented by an \S\. I suspect it is a special character for \ch\, like our question mark without the dot beneath.
The mature carrot drawing has what looks like a very creative spelling of oMccochawv. The first \c\ may be a vowel of some sort. It is connected to the \M\ with a short stroke which seems to denote a vowel in Voynichese. I suppose it could be an \r\, Mrcochawv. I leave it to the reader to speculate. Remember, spelling and handwriting rules were optional in the middle ages.
Indeed, the VM writing style reminds me of a social media joke from several years ago. Spllng dunt mattr cos pple cn stll unerstd t. Spelling doesn't matter because people can still understand it. Or consider how people text each other with extreme abbreviations. Personal ignorance of the languages that I believe underlie the VM script defines my achieved level of incompetence in the matter. I sincerely hope someone who knows Polish, Slovenian or Hungarian, will some day, be able to fairly easily read the Voynich text.
OBSERVATIONS ON VOYNICH ALPHABET:
Voynichese seemed to yield to me in the beginning because I write Cyrillic. The VM script is more Latin than Cyrillic but I feel certain some of it is Cyrillyc. The character that seems to work for \L\ is primarily Cyrillic in the way it is written. [8]There is another interesting character that seems to work as \go\. It looks like 4o with a bar connecting the two parts. On the other hand It reminds me of the Cyrillic character for \ju\ which, when printed, resembles I-O. When written in cursive, the upper case version slightly resembles the Voynich 4o. If there was a Gothic-style version of the \ju\ it might resemble the VM 4o. I have used the VM 4o as both \go\ and \ju\. Though words are made I do not feel certain that either is exactly correct.
The Gothic alphabet is almost exactly like our modern Latin alphabet. For the most part it seems to be "Gothic" because of the shaping of the letters, however there is one major exception. The Gothic \n\ does not resemble our \n\, but it does look like the forerunner of what works as \n\ in Voynich.
Polish has a special mark which looks like a lower case \L\ with a diagonal slash about halfway up the stem. [9] (There is also a \t\ that looks similar.) Today this is called a stroke and roughly it changes \L\ to \w\. There is a Voynich character that may work like the stroke but I am unable, at this time, to prove it one way or another.
I have found two very important characters that unlock a significant amount of the VM. A character that looks like 8 seems to be \st\. (Beware any 8 with a tail on the bottom, more or less like \&\. I am not sure what that is. Tiny calligraphy strokes and changes can make that much difference, even though a Voynich scribe may have creatively spelled marchew as oMccochawv. Heaven help us if \c\ = \r\ ! ) Another often used character looks like a simple lower case \g\. This works good as the Slovenian \je\ though I think it can be used in other ways that approximate the \je\. (See my alphabet accompanying this article.)
It seems to me that Voynichese is more about how letters and characters are used than it is about alphabets with definite values per letter. At the very end of my "alphabet" are two elaborate characters I suspect are trigraphs, three letters interlocked. The first literally appears to be cKz with a bar running through the lower legs of the K, connecting the tops of the \c\ and \z\. Even considering the possibility of optional vowels, the only sense I can make of it is Kacz, with an \a\ implied. These trigraphs are found throughout the VM and I do not think I have correctly interpreted them. The point for anyone interested is, these seemingly single characters likely contain c(K, L, P, T...)z. Sometimes something like a vowel is inserted awkwardly so perhaps the conglomeration looks like ciKz or caKz. What if we use the Latin alphabet, write cKz and draw a bar from the \c\ to the \z\, through the K? We would have something very similar to the Voynich trigraph. I have a sneaking suspicion someone knowledgeable of the language(s) will know where to stick in a vowel or other needed letter.
Look carefully at the c-big letter-z arrangements in the VM. I am quite certain it is not always \c\ and \z\ at either end of the bar crossing the large letter. Sometimes it surely looks like a vowel or t or e, perhaps. What is the significance of the connecting bar? I am really stumped on that one.
Voynichese has a lot of interconnected letters with \cz\ being the simplest and most notable. If one approaches the script with the idea of finding connected letters rather than alphabetic letters, it all begins to make sense. Taking one of the simplest, if I am correct that what looks like 8 = st, it is easy to see the Voynich backward \S\ and a feature of the capital \T\ combined to make the character. There is plenty of room for others to improve on my system.
It has been said there is NO punctuation in the VM. This certainly seems to be so, yet the way some letters are finished at the ends of words, MAY designate the end of a sentence or phrase. For example, what I take to be \w\ sometimes looks like a regular, lower case, cursive \w\. Sometimes words end with what looks like \w\ but the last mark on \w\ becomes a tail looping up and over the word, kind of like how a cat arches her tail when she is rubbing against something. I suspect the tail that arches back over the word may signify the end of a sentence or phrase.
At other times letters like \w\ end with a large, open character resembling an \O\ which I think is a Gothic \V\, \U\ or \Y\. This large, open character has a short, arched tail at the top, which does not swirl over the top of the word and I do not think it is any form of punctuation.
Some letters are very large like capital letters as we know them. They appear in anywhere in the words. Note in passing that the \P\ in the Polish alphabet of today is always written in the capital form. [9] I have some other thoughts on the overly large letters but more research is needed. Also at the very beginning of pages there are very large, ornamental letters called gallows letters. I refer the reader to Professor Bax' information on gallows letters at stephenbax.net .
In my alphabet accompanying this article, letters and characters are listed in order from those of which I am most sure to those that are still being learned. Without extensive knowledge of Slavic languages and alphabets I doubt I could work out a complete alphabet anytime soon. I do believe I have found enough to launch others with the knowledge to progress to a complete translation of the VM.
SAMPLE PARAGRAPH:
This is my transliteration on the top half of the writing on VM page 5, folio 2r, the knapweed (Centauria diffusa) page. In do believe various characters have multiple but similar sounding values. What looks like a lower case \g\, I think can be \je\, \ja\, \j\ and possibly \a\. This makes sense in that over the various Slavic languages those differences can be found. I will represent the \g\ character as \je\ and leave it to knowledgeable readers to determine corrections. Ditto for the other characters. This transliteration is as literal as I can make it. If I do not yet know the character I will use (?). The \cz\s have some odd diacritics. If they appear other than what I have determined to be \cz\ or \sz\ I will note (cz+?). Any reader with enough interest can look at the page online to find his or her own answer.
Ljestaw je jePczor staw cKcza(?) jePcza(?)v (Lacz?)orzje ston czonje czlan Z (cz+?)on (Kacz?)je (Kco?) jukawv (Kacz?)ije je
czon czje jestje czawv (ce+?) austje czkost stje (P+?)je stars cz ola(?)v st oko czon a(?) szost a(?)v czor stav
jekczauv st(?)v Za(?)v (&=?) a(?)v st stlor son jeKorstje stczor stczje (K+?)je szon (Lacz?)je stauvje stauv
If this is reasonably correct, what do we have? I am certain we have something useful, but what? Is it proto Slavic or a shorthand way to share scientific ideas of the time? This is only a small part from the herbal section. More curious yet are the pages of astronomy, astrology, geography and, oh yes, ladies without any clothing!
THE NAKED WOMEN:
Knowing this article has a mixed audience, readers familiar with the VM and those hearing about it for the first time, I had thought to use a salacious lead reminding the reader that the VM has multiple pages of drawings of naked women. Why I did not I will explain in closing. (Any reader unfamiliar with the subject can simply enter Voynich Manuscript in any search engine and the whole glorious text will appear on pages of images.)
That said, a whole section of the Voynich has completely nude women, sometimes called nymphs, goddesses or pregnant ladies. They appear to descend from the clouds, riding torrents of blue water, to end up soaking, frolicking or perhaps dancing, in algae green water found in structures presumed to be arched baths of some sort. On some pages women ascend from the green baths, up a blue torrent and back to the clouds. There is little if any Christian symbolism in the VM, yet one page shows a woman who has ascended the blue sprite into the clouds, then reaches upward to grasp what appears to be a cross. Intermixed with the women, up and down and across whole pages, is what looks like interesting but disjointed plumbing pipes and joints.
Some of the bathing beauties seem to lose or acquire mermaid tails in the lower, earthly realms. If the VM has a strongly Polish origin, it is of interest that the Mermaid of Warsaw is a national emblem yet no one is sure of its origin. [10] Kievan Rus mythology also has some interesting ideas about women who live under water.[11] The mermaid as a symbol for a prostitute has Slavic or Germanic origins. [12]
Many believe the women are pregnant because of their large bellies and wide bums and thighs. I think they merely depict well fed women at a time when the so-called Rubenesque figure denoted health and plenty, and specifically that women with that figure were free from wasting scourges like TB. I reject the idea that these women are pregnant because not all pregnant women develop large thighs and bums. Small, skinny, pregnant women may have large abdomens while the rest of their bodies remain thin. At any rate the Voynich artists made sure to pencil on female breasts. The breasts are all small compared to the large bellies, but there is no doubt they are breasts and that the nudity in most cases is full and frontal.
In the astrology/astronomy section of the VM more of these nymphs are depicted, in decorative barrels that hide all below their wastes. Some seem to grasp stars, or hold onto stars via ribbons and streamers.
Some want the VM to be an ancient Egyptian or Aztec text but the women appear to be plump and Caucasian, possibly with long, blonde hair braided and fastened to the tops of their heads. At least that is what I see. Some of the women may wear hats or headdresses, but certainly nothing like the veils and gabled head coverings many women are depicted as wearing in the middle ages.
Tantalizingly, some of the groups of women seem to have labels made up of short words. Frankly, I am sure I am not alone in most wanting to decipher this part of the VM since NO OTHER medieval manuscript in existence is known to have ANYTHING like the Voynich ladies.
CONCLUSION:
In the beginning so many words transliterated to Polish that I believed the VM must surely represent a lost Polish dialect. When I found the proto Slavic page on Wiki I wondered if the VM was a lot older than 1420 CE. Radio carbon dating is frequently questioned and criticized. Then the overall structure seemed to indicate Slovenian with a strong Polish basis and a little bit of Hungarian. The Slovenian language is said to have these characteristics.
The general nature of the VM impresses me as pagan. Poland under the golden age of the Jagiellonian dynasty which began in 1385, though Christian, was not under the thumbs of the popes in Rome. [13] Many faiths including Jewish and Muslim were tolerated within Poland and intellectual freedom was not restricted. [14] This in itself is a fascinating study. Could the VM contain pre-Christian Slavic folklore from the pagan perspective? One is hard put to find any Christian symbolism in the VM. I have found two crosses butam not sure if these depict anything Christian.
If, on the other hand, the VM was created in or near northern Italy or Slovenia, was free thinking allowed in those areas? If thought was controlled by church or state, does that account for the unreadable script thought by many to be a code?
I do not see why the Voynich writing or language should be in a code when there are pages of clearly nude women. Surely those women cavorting in baths would have brought persecution against the artists in a number of other western, Christian countries of the time?
I think the VM is a text that combined writing styles well known in that time and area. Since I have no understanding of the languages beyond various online translators and whatever else I can learn about the structures of Polish/Slovene and proto Slavic, I have no idea if the language underlying the script is also mixed. I have an idea it is. In a subsequent article I will further explore the calligraphy and some labels on drawings that seem to be in a language other than Polish/Slovenian.
Was there a group of learned people who knew and spoke different languages and wrote different alphabets, who devised a new way to share knowledge between east and west? Were these knowledgeable people located in the courts of the Medici or some center of learning in the western Slavic empires? Since there is no other example of Voynichese in existence, those who devised, wrote and understood it, must have been a reasonably small group. Who were they? Where were they headquartered?
I fully agree with those who identify more than one scribe writing the VM. [3] Perhaps one of the scribes wrote in a simpler, more straightforward manner than the others. Maybe he was the one who invented Voynichese. I particularly enjoy the work of the scribe who wrote on page 5, the Centaurea plant, an unwelcome and invasive species in the U.S. that we call knapweed, a plant with which I am personally familiar. The Voynich scribe who wrote that page used the writing system in a simple, straightforward way, like he was fluent and comfortable with what he was doing.
Other scribes on other pages threw in letters or characters uncommon for even the VM. Some of those other scribes made mistakes which they corrected and their corrections are instructive. One fellow clearly wrote a Greek or Cyrillic lower case \f\ but corrected it to complete the Voynich 4o character that I suspect is similar to the Cyrillic ju. Another scribe seemed to begin a Cyrillic cursive \M\ but corrected the beginning of the letter to look like oM. In one odd place in the VM a scribe incorporated an elaborate character that is identical with the Cyrillic ksi or ks. Perhaps he forgot that cz, linked with a bar over the top, could cover a multitude of uses in Voynichese?
Perhaps I am a fool in thinking I have some answers to help decipher the until now unreadable VM. Mathematically I believe I cannot be completely wrong and am probably reasonably correct. Lack of knowledge of the language(s) underlying the unusual writing system is certainly an impediment. I have no desire to guess for the sake of a "complete" translation. I have provided a sample of how my writing system works. Hopefully others will help me improve it.
It has taken days to correct erroneous information from online translators. Sometimes I think, if one asks too many questions, they just spew. On a bad day, ANY letter combination has a meaning. I am not alone with these difficulties. Hopefully I caught all the mistakes.
Some believe the deciphered VM will reveal lost ancient secrets of life changing importance. I believe it will reveal Slavic folklore from the time of the Jagiellonian dynasty, from a time when Lithuania was the last pagan empire in Europe. I have an idea the pages of naked ladies in baths may have something to do with sexuality in a moral and reproductive sense, which is to say scientific for the time and not pornographic in nature. Some of the labels on one of these pages seem to start with Zar which could be Polish for daughter of. Possibly also these ladies have to do with crop fertility if I have correctly transliterated owies, oats in Polish.
The ladies cannot help but stimulate basic humorous impulses. A ribald observation seemed perfect to begin this article, yet so much of my online translations have yielded the Polish language that I suspect the VM could add an important part of Polish history.
Beyond Poland's golden times there have been times of extreme darkness and tragedy when more powerful nations overran and partitioned the land. We remember the too recent times when Poland was locked behind the Iron Curtain due to the political divisions that followed the Nazi defeat in WWII.
Perhaps the Nazis made the worst assault on Poland when, "The Polish language was forbidden. Only the German language was allowed." [15]
"Heinrich Himmler echoed Hitler's decree:
"All Poles will disappear from the world... It is essential that the great
German people should consider it as its major task to destroy all Poles" [15]
The Polish language is part of Polish nationalism. The possibility that the VM could be a repository of 600 year old Polish language, thought and knowledge suddenly seemed very serious. So I will save the lighthearted approach for the subsequent article exploring VM art and calligraphy.
Next time we can explore what appears comical in the VM. For now I sincerely hope and pray the VM is historically important to the history of Poland and the Polish language.
SOURCES:
[1] archive.org/details/TheVoynichManuscript ; Complete manuscript available here, courtesy of the Beinecke Library, Yale.
[2] en,wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovene_language , for a general overview
[3] stephenbax.net ~~This is my favourite VM site. Stephen Bax, Professor of Applied Linguistics, University of Bedfordshire, UK has done extraordinary work on the VM.
[4] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_script , for a general overview
Also extremely valuable in understanding Voynichese, the GOTHIC language and writing system=> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_language
[6] Oxford Essential Polish Dictionary, 2010 edition
[7] en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Polish_terms_inherited_from_Proto-Slavic&pagefrom=DESKA
SITES OF OTHER VOYNICH RESEARCHERS I MOST ADMIRE:
REPEAL EVERY WORD OF OBAMACARE
By Anna Morris, Co-Editor, Freedom Fighters of America
Only Ted Cruz promises to "REPEAL EVERY WORD OF OBAMA CARE!" Those six words overcome thousands of pages of regulations, entitlements and plans that feed Big Government bureaucracy at the expense of the sick Obama Care claims to be helping. Unless EVERY WORD is repealed, Obama Care will leave its diseased cells embedded in our government, health care and our lives, just like an under treated deadly cancer leaves cells that eventually burst out in fatal disease long after basic treatment.
I recently wrote "10 Million Dollar Pig Trough", about how the state of Oregon cheated the sick ~while surreptitiously lifestyle rationing~of $10 million which went to bureaucracy while not healing anyone, poor or otherwise. Obama Care, Oregon style, coming to all of USA soon unless we REPEAL EVERY WORD. (JohnKasich.com/HealthCare shows he firmly believes in keeping people so well they will never get sick, thus it appears he WILL NOT repeal Obama Care.)
Obama Care was never about "giving" "free" care to the poor. It was always about social engineering through the crazy idea that people can be kept so well they never get sick and thus will never deplete the system. Thus "wellness" and "well care" will be provided while "sick care" is an archaic activity that drags U.S. medical care far below that the socialized countries in Europe. Going back to the Oregon "Pig Trough", it appears the millions of dollars saved are needed for bureaucracy, but heck, what is redistribution for if it doesn't line various pockets along the way?
Let us look at a 2013-2015 "Community Health Improvement Plan" from Umatilla County, Oregon so we can see ObamaCare bureaucracy in action. [1] I choose this area because I know it intimately, and because it is a small, rural area in eastern Oregon, far away from the big city problems of Oregon's big cities like Portland or Eugene. In the 2010 census according to Wikipedia, the population of the whole county was 75,889. That seems high to me since the wheat fields there are endless and a large part of the county is a Native American reservation.
Umatilla is the name of a Native tribe in the area. It is pronounced YUMA-tilla, not Uhm-a-tilla!
The county seat of Umatilla County is Pendleton. Until recently Pendleton woolens were at least partially made there, mostly blankets. Nevertheless Pendleton Wool had its start there and the big sheep companies used to range their sheep all through the nearby mountains. Pendleton still has the world famous Pendleton Round-Up early every September. The round-up motto is "Let 'er buck" and the icon is a cowboy on a rearing bronc. The total image is tough, western, independent, the attitude that made America great.
Enter Obama Care which, while eschewing sick care, is mandated to keep communities healthy by promoting wellness and avoiding sick care. Thus a large community bureaucracy, including local officials and other prominent people, decide how to treat the whole community before anyone gets sick. Their efforts lead to multi-page publications such as the Community Health Improvement Plan. As I understand it these findings may be reported to the federal government also. (The Umatilla Co. plan is a lengthy pdf document easily found online, though once this article is published it may disappear. It is worth your time to read every word of it to fully understand Obama Care: www.co.umatilla.or.us/health/main/Health_Improvement_Plan.pdf)
Somewhere in the middle of the bureaucratic blather about groups, assessments, strategies and the like, is a concise box titled "Strategies". No surprise here, "Priority Health Issues for Umatilla County," are, "1) Decrease obesity rates; 2) Decrease tobacco use; 3) Decrease chronic disease rates: diabetes and asthma."
Under, "Areas of Health Priority: To decrease obesity rates, ...the county will focus on the following impact areas: 1) Decrease the consumption of sugar sweetened beverages, 2) Decrease the total hours of screen time each day, 3) Implement walking school buses, 4) Utilize Employer Wellness Tool Kits, 5) Utilize message boards for wellness education, 6) Implement a Community Wellness Calendar, 7) Collaborate with the Independent Physician Association to provide wellness education to their parents."
Whew! Look at that creeping bureaucracy! Don't we especially love number 7 wherein the community collective tells doctors what Obama Care demands in the way of community health!
I usually track the rabid anti-tobacco crusade ~from the same government that now says marijuana is fine~because anti-tobacco activities are easier to follow and explain. (Not to mention that about 20 years ago Oregon doctors let tobacco users know they were undeserving of care under the new regime that would fully arrive with Obama Care.) Nevertheless the nearly equally rabid anti-obesity terror campaign takes us into some interesting territory that further explains why EVERY WORD OF OBAMA CARE must be repealed.
There are more charts. In 2008 Umatilla County had about 31% obesity, compared to about 29% in Oregon as a whole. A list of factors, again comparing youth in Umatilla Co. to youth statewide, follows. "Drank 100% fruit juice 1-6 times during the past 7 days," is an example. Separate titles cover, "Did not eat any fruit during the past 7 days...green salad...vegetables (excluding carrots)." Did the local youth eat breakfast every day? Drink soda pop 1-3 times in 7 days? Not get at least 60 minutes of physical activity any day of the last week? Did they get PE 5 days a week in school? Watch TV 3 or more hours per day on a school day? Play video or computer games more than 2 hours on a school day?
Thus the collective wisdom of Obama Care prepares to socially engineer a county of 75,000 people, The Community, liberals are so fond of mentioning. It is all akin to Hillary's, "It takes a village to raise a child," comment. It takes a bureaucracy of nannies and policy makers to enforce wellness to a level where nobody ever gets sick again. Let us move on to solutions and more charts.
The next big chart seems to cover community involvement. It covers health fairs, breast feeding and getting families signed up for Obama Care. It also includes "personal trainers" at a couple named athletic clubs, providing' "fresh veggies/fruits locally grown", and space for community gardens.
Another solutions box follows with solutions ranging from public education to, "Free summer meal sites", the food bank and senior meals. The cure for obesity is more feeding, perhaps? The final listing is, "Bicycle events."
Following all this are plans to teach people how to cook, exercise, raise children, and how to think properly about "health and wellness", as I read it. By all means, Obama Care should teach people how to think themselves well! When the system runs out of other peoples' money, when all the money has been redistributed, it will collapse and nobody will get the dreaded "sick care". (Possibly, just possibly, registering
We are getting near the good stuff. It is another article or two, or ten, about who pays for what. Desperate needs identified are community programs for, "free or low cost exercise" for the poor. Forget "care" for the poor! They need free exercise!
The poor need to get health insurance, it continues. They need awareness of the local farmer's market for fruits and veggies. There must be PE in schools as well as nutritional education!
Finally there is: SIDEWALK IMPROVEMENTS! The explanation of how follows, "Present sidewalk needs to city council / Work with critics to find grants to improve sidewalks." Yes, Obama Care funds sidewalks while squeezing out the undeserving sick!
You see, safe, smooth, pleasant sidewalks encourage people to walk more and this reduces obesity and diabetes. Without nice sidewalks, so the argument goes, people are too terrified of traffic or tripping and falling, to get out and walk. The biggest town in Umatilla County is Pendleton, with a 2010 population of 16,612 according to Wikipedia. A brisk walk in any direction can take a walker across town and into the countryside in a matter of minutes. There is also a beautiful improved trail along the Umatilla River. Any other community in Umatilla County is much smaller, with agricultural or forest lands right against town limits.
But why not enforce equality by paying for the poor to have personal trainers in an athletic club? Obama Care, and Oregon, in ignoring the undeserving sick, have plenty of money to blow in the elusive quest for wellness. While the sick are undeserving, bureaucracies are always deserving!
I know other medium sized Oregon towns who are forever getting federal sidewalk improvement grants. At first glance one might think these things at least provide jobs for locals, but all too frequently it appears the construction crews are straight from Mexico. It is rare to see a local person hired by the sidewalk contractors, some of whom seem to come from bigger areas.
We can go on and on with this blather but you have the picture, so let's cut to the Obama Care SUGAR TAX! On page 38 of our community health improvement document we see bureaucracy demanding a sugar tax in little Umatilla County! Sugar tax IS an Obama Care plan. Hey! Governments always need more money and they will find something to do with it, says the UN/WHO while encouraging higher tobacco taxes.
Under, "Strategy #3: Decrease Diabetes Best Practices," point 2 defines the sugar tax. "Tax on sugar sweetened beverages," Continuing, " Sugar-sweetened beverages are a major contributor to the US obesity and diabetes epidemics," it intones. A "nationwide" sugar tax of, "penny-per-ounce exise tax," would reduce consumption by 15%, "among adults 25-64." "It is estimated," according to this pitch for the sugar tax, that such a tax over the years 2010-20 would, "prevent 2.4 million diabetes person-years, 95,000 coronary heart events, 8,000 strokes, and 26,000 premature deaths, while avoiding more than $17 billion in medical costs." It is also apparently estimated that such a tax could generate, "$13 billion in annual tax revenue," presumably nationwide. There follows an Obama Care link for more information: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22232111 .
A nationwide sugar tax could generate $13 BILLION annually? That's about what the federal audit caught the state of Oregon wasting on bureaucracy that never healed anyone. It's a drop in the bucket...or the pig trough, as you will. (See my recent FFOA article "10 Million Dollar Pig Trough".)
I have been researching the Umatilla County health improvement plans for quite awhile. Some local government officials have been contacted about implementing the sugar tax as recommended by Obama Care in the link provided above. To the best of my knowledge the sugar tax has never been seriously debated in Umatilla County. (Also to the best of my knowledge, the Native American owned reservation casino, has rejected demands of the health police to go "smoke-free".)
Yeah, we want to get rid of Obama Care. Repeal and replace, say the GOP candidates. If we do not REPEAL EVERY WORD OF OBAMA CARE, forget about the replacement, whatever it may be. If even a tiny protion of Obama Care survives, it is likely to morph into a chain of athletic clubs for the poor, enriching a fitness bureaucracy and some crony capitalist who runs the thing. While our bridges and highways crumble, that "infrastructure" they all promise to fix, Obama Care is building sidewalks in tiny eastern Oregon towns, for people who are apparently too lazy to walk out of city limits to enjoy the natural world at the edge of city limits!
ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING can now be funded as "health care", for "wellness" and "community health". It may need to be "evidence based", which I translate to mean somebody's best guess. If a bureaucrat or crony capitalist can be convinced it is a "best practice", any crackpot idea can become a fully funded government program, heck, maybe even an entitlement! Obama Care, while diminishing and ignoring the sick, enables unlimited wealth redistribution through the pig trough of wellness.
We must REPEAL EVERY WORD, or have it forever.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCE:
[1] www.co.umatilla.or.us/health/main/Health_Improvement_Plan.pdf ; Umatilla County Community Health Improvement Plan 2013-2015 .
PLEASE READ THIS. IT IS A PLAN FROM A SMALL COMMUNITY IN THE WEST, SHOWING OBAMA CARE IN ACTION. THIS IS HOW THE HEALTH BUREAUCRACY IS DOING IT TO US AND WHY WE MUST 'REPEAL EVERY WORD OF OBAMA CARE'! THANK YOU!
10 Million Dollar Pig Trough
April 21, 2016
By Anna Morris, Co-Editor, Freedom Fighters of America
GOP presidential candidate Gov. John Kasich says he will repeal Obama Care because it is not working, and perhaps because that is expected of a Republican candidate. At the same time he is openly working for Oregon-style Obama Care expansion in Ohio, thus curing Obama Care with more Obama Care. [JohnKasich.com/HealthCare]
Oregon style Obama Care as I see it is the dangerous and degrading system of public health for all. As of yesterday, redstate.com reports there has been waste in this scam, in excess of $10 million. As in more than 10 million dollars that supported bureaucracy and never healed anyone, poor or otherwise. [1]
That is chicken scratch compared to the more than $300 million blown when now disgraced Governor Kitzhaber parcelled out to political cronies, to set up a computer sign up for Oregon Obama Care, that failed. [1] None of those hundreds of millions healed anyone either.
Both the Oregon "fundamental transformation" and what Governor Kasich proposes for Ohio, using similar terminology, are based on people staying well so the system is not used so much. Obama Care calls for Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) to coordinate care, and attempt to enforce wellness for patients. [cms.gov/Medicare] Oregon thought it would improve on that idea by creating Coordinated Care Organizations (CCOs), a different name for the same thing. CCOs are responsible for how the latest $10 million, plus, got blown on bureaucracy.
As I understand it from the ACA itself, a federal health care goal will be to have every single patient in the U.S. under an ACO. The redstate.com article quotes from the "Portland Tribune", "While the federal reforms tacked Medicaid as well as private insurance, Oregon's reforms looked only at Medicaid."
This is perhaps correct on paper though in reality Oregon's doctors, beginning in the early '90s, hounded and terrorized admitted tobacco users, even those who were self paying and beholden to no one. One doctor, willing to admit something like this was going on, mumbled something about smokers "using too many scarce resources." On that occasion I had accompanied a friend to her doctor so she could get some simple antibiotics. I wondered for a long time why common antibiotics, the same type that are fed routinely to livestock, were in such short supply. What I missed was the social engineering aspect in Oregon medicine and which would soon be in federalized medicine under Obama Care.
About ten years later, after Obama Care was in effect, Oregon developed an elaborate CCO network to handle the social engineering and anything else they could think of for those "scarce health care dollars." Governor and Doctor, now disgraced and removed from office, John Kitzhaber made up a tale to illustrate his concept of CCOs. He said, for instance, if an elderly lady with heart failure lived in a stuffy apartment without air conditioning, and during the heat of the summer she repeatedly went to the ER for aggravated heart failure, a way to save on ER visits would be to buy her an air conditioner!
A conservative approach might have been to enlist churches or service groups to help in such cases, but Kitzhaber, a liberal Democrat, envisioned a bureaucracy that could furnish air conditioners and anything else that could be written off to "health care." CCOs were born.
CCO functions have to do with that ever elusive attempt to keep people so well they will never need sick care. (Beyond that CCOs mesh with other layers of "health care" bureaucracy to keep whole communities and districts so well they never need sick care.) CCO workers are kind of like social workers for each patient, making sure patients eat right, have rides to the doctor, even babysitters so they can get out to exercise. What could possibly go wrong?
I previously wrote an article for FFOA about one Oregon CCO that paid pregnant women to stop smoking. (Smoking is ever on the minds of these liberal medocrats, perhaps because wiping out smoking worldwide is a UN/WHO goal for "global health", speaking of the New World Order.)
The pregnant women were "paid" with gift certificates from local stores and similar things. That sounds pretty harmless and the program was voluntary. Digging deeper it appeared this CCO backed the effort with about $600,000 worth of bureaucracy. There were coordinators, trainers and others who made the program function. What's money to liberals?
"As a result of the rules created by Kitzhaber and his political cronies," reports redstate.com, "the CCOs were not required to limit their administrative costs to 15 percent as were the private insurance companies providing health care coverage in Oregon."
You guessed it! A recent federal audit found, "11 of the 16 CCOs in Oregon exceeded the 15% limit on administration costs," according to the redstate.com article. The result was overspending by about $10 million.[1] So much for "scarce resources" and "scarce health care dollars" which necessitate eliminating patients deemed to commit lifestyle crimes.
We started out with presidential candidate John Kasich's proposed expansion of Obama Care in Ohio, which is based on the Oregon model according to one of the many links at JohnKasich.com/HealthCare . On his main page he wallows through the idea of keeping people well so they won't ever get sick and need to use the system. That was the dream of the other John...Kitzhaber. If elected, Kasich may or may not technically "repeal" Obama Care, but beyond that he appears to be in love with a scheme that breeds costly bureaucracy.
Providing a social worker nanny for each patient costs less than treating sick people? Exactly how much sick care can be covered by the $10 million bureaucratic loss uncovered by federal audit in Oregon? When those "scarce health care dollars" are spent on anything other than actual care, everyone should be disgusted!
We could write it off as yet another example of bureaucratic pigs swilling at the public trough except that Oregon also pioneered lifestyle rationing from the very beginning of their experiment. Friends in Oregon tell me it is still the same, though now the pressure is to accept "smoking cessation" classes, which are another bureaucratic money drain. If the Oregon system is saving any money perhaps it is because some Oregonians have found it too uncomfortable to go to doctors for social engineering. I know several personally who avoid doctors like the plague.
The media wants to run the present and upcoming elections. Personalities and conflict, as with any "reality" show, generate ratings. Somewhere along the line people forgot to focus on Obama Care. Yeah, all the GOP candidates say repeal...and replace. Replace with what? It looks like Kasich will replace with more of the same. This is not a "reality" show, it is life and death for all of us who will likely need a doctor's care at some time in our lives. Margaret Thatcher famously said, the problem with socialism, is pretty soon it runs out of other peoples' money. Obama Care is not socialized medicine but it is heavily funded with taxes, fines and mandated insurance which SCOTUS called a tax.
Oregon started out telling patients who committed health crimes, including having more than two alcoholic drinks per day, that they could not continue to use what was scarce and needed by others. Ah yes, about $10 million of scarce resources was needed for a bloated bureaucracy. Remember that when you vote!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~`
[1] redstate.com/diary/qstarweb/2016/04/19/millions-mis-spending-found-federal-audit-oregon-health-care
"Millions of Mis-Spending Found by Federal Audit of Oregon Health Care, Dean Chambers (diary), April 19, 2016
#NeverTrump and Other ISSUES
February 29, 2016
by Anna Morris, Co-Editor, Freedom Fighters of America
#NeverTrump is trending on Twitter, trending enough that it is said the media around the world are paying attention. One thing about Donald Trump, his non-stop mouth that bullies and insults, keeps voters from discussing actual issues. "Trust me, it'll be great," is the only issue Trump seems willing to tackle as long as there are other candidates he can trash into submission.
Before Trump became the ONLY ISSUE, it was said the 2016 election would be about Obama Care, aka Democrat Care. Just as 30 Democrats lost seats in 2014, 2016 would be a repeat. There is no way the liberal left will let Democrat Care which puts 1/6 of the economy and ALL of our lives under Big Government control. Perhaps that is why Trump's multi-rung circus drowns out substantial discussion of Obama Care.
Democrat Care is about two things. One is perhaps an area for government involvement and that is how to provide medical care to the poor who cannot afford it. Tax and spend is a government function. The other part is about the so-called "care" which at its most basic under Democrat Care, is about who is deserving and who is undeserving. In this part government will eventually be able to tell us how to live, where to live, what to eat, not to own firearms, and anything else the phone and pen wielding potentate decides we need to do. Failure to go along will eventually get patients labelled undeserving. That is why smoking status is the basis for Democrat Care electronic records.
Let's call the place Obamastan, the most progressive of all of Obama's 57 states. What I have to say is REALLY happening somewhere in the U.S. but since that particular area is counting on big profits from Democrat Care I feel more comfortable writing about the possibly mythical Obamastan.
About twenty years ago and before Obama and his pass-it-so-you-can-read-it behemoth of a wellness bill, Obamastan revamped Medicare for its poor people. Being a Progressive state it has a lot of poor people because business is not favored there and environmental regulations plus unlimited immigration also interfere with jobs. All these poor people make ideal lab rats for the future Obama Care system forced upon all of us in 2010.
Obamastan openly calls its system a "fundamental transformation". I suppose established doctors saw it coming since in the late '80s and early '90s the majority of them suddenly decided to retire or join Doctors Without Borders, or anything else that would take them far from Obamastan and medical politics.
The main hospital in Obamastan bought one clinic and began expanding it. Fast forward to 2016 and there is no private practice in this area. Oh, a token clinic is allowed to operate but those doctors give the same government-centered, government sanctioned care as the hospital monopoly. Very recently the independent nurse practitioners left and the last doctor in private practice joined the monopoly because he could not handle Obama Care requirements on his own. The hospital has major paper pushing capabilities it seems.
(I see this system as a hospital monopoly but because of the one, token, allegedly independent clinic, I am incorrect. That is why this needs to be a story about Obamastan.)
A friend of mine moved back to Obamastan and she is utterly creeped out by the care. She says she feels like she is serving the system and not the other way around.
I had the pleasure of accompanying a disabled friend to a couple doctor appointments in Obamastan. The doctor who has treated this same patient for many years, spent the whole time with his head over the laptop, filling in answers to questions that did not even pertain to the patient or the patient's reason for being there. Though the nurse took a blood pressure reading--something the government is interested in--the doctor NEVER touched the patient or listened to heart or lungs. This was especially interesting since the patient is mildly asthmatic and has a renewable prescription for a rescue inhaler.
The questions asked were about things in which the government has a special interest. Dietary habits, social interactions, drug and alcohol use, and of course SMOKING STATUS were of supreme importance. The patient, on Medicare, was surprised he was billed for anything. So little was done it was assumed this was one of those "scarce health dollar" wasting "Wellness Visits" where patients and doctors are not allowed to discuss illnesses. Actually it wasn't and the monopoly's billing department said the questions were VERY IMPORTANT. The patient said he did not like the system and would vote accordingly.
My female friend in Obamastan just says she does not think the doctors there care about her or her needs.
With a veritable monopoly it is easy to see, those stuck in Obamastan, for example the poor the system is supposed to serve, have no access to second opinions. Somewhere in the Obama Care formularies is the slogan, "One health, One record", or perhaps it is the other way around. THIS is another goal of Democrat Care: NO CHOICES!
I mentioned at the beginning that the Progressive left would never give up their Big Government control over 1/6 of the economy and ALL our lives. Few realize the rabid anti-smoking campaign--which comes out of UN/WHO Global Health Initiative by the way--has to do with CONTROL of private lives. Smoking status today, everything else, including guns tomorrow. So it is a good time to look at this smoking thing and how it works.
Obamastan's fundamental transformation about twenty years ago was also based on deserving and undeserving people. The poor couldn't help being poor and deserving, as well as minorities, LGBT and certain other classes. But by-golly, smokers used too many resources and they had to knuckle under or go without! As with many totalitarian programs there wasn't much of a plan in place. Half instructed doctors just knew they had to eliminate smokers any way they could and to that end they bullied, threatened, even neglected almost to death, patients who admitted smoking tobacco.
The flip side of this purge was patients were asked if they wanted help with "smoking cessation". If patients did not agree they should quit, they were severely abused. Reeducation or else. Democrat Care devised a more humane system in that it recognizes there is a lot of money in smoking cessation and smoking is an addiction. The leftist WIN/WIN thing is to get smokers enrolled into smoking cessation bureaucracies, collect federal dollars, and not require the smoker to quit. However the smoker MUST admit smoking is wrong and Big Nanny Government says so!
Which brings us to mandated medical insurance. (Yes, medical! I hate the term "health" insurance. One insures against sickness and disability, not health, however they want to define it.) Most insurance companies charge more for smokers. They have to take pre-existing conditions but smokers have been classed by government as undeserving scum. Despite paying high taxes on tobacco, forcing smokers to buy insurance forces them to pay more high taxes on something they find pleasurable and which is legal, but government says it bad and must not be done. Some states treat marijuana as a misdemeanor and the FINES for less than an ounce are far lower than the mandated insurance company fine on Americans doing something legal.
If people can be punished under Democrat Care for pursuing something legal that government says is not moral, imagine what could eventually happen to people who don't eat their broccoli, or own firearms!
There is no way to write about Obama Care without rambling because it really does plan to cover EVERY aspect of our lives and behavior. When you are sick or injured is not the time to find out that you have not lived as government says you should and thus you are undeserving!
Obama Care aka Democrat Care is our biggest ISSUE because it attacks us from inside. As long as the candidates we hope will rescue us are mired in a personality war the pesky ISSUES are ignored.
One reason Donald Trump's supporters rabidly defend him is because he is a billionaire businessman. He made one very interesting statement about health care earlier this month and it is certainly an issue to discuss. Trump blurted to Anderson Cooper in an interview, "I like the mandate." (In fairness, he weakly walked that back and said his plan would not mandate people to buy insurance.) Woven into the interview was Trump's business perspective that insurance companies need the mandate, need everyone to buy insurance, so they can cover pre-existing conditions. I think this is a profound explanation of Obama Care.
Are we so deep in the government-centered care cesspool that we cannot get out? All of the GOP candidates promise to repeal Obama Care but all also use the word REPLACE. Do we have no choice but to trade one government system for another? Will the managed care system of ultra-Progressive Obamastan be the norm in all the other states? Will repeal end the terrible care that is practiced there? Is private practice dying or dead? Are second opinions impossible with Obama Care's "One health, One record"? Will we increasingly have NO CHOICES? Will hospitals eventually own all our doctors? How do we take it back? How can we know what our favorite candidates REALLY plan to do about the WHOLE Obama Care package? Do they understand it is more than who pays how much to provide medical care for the poor?
Until things quiet down enough for ISSUES to emerge and be discussed, We The People have no idea. Hold the candidates accountable to kill Obama Care and restore our choices, privacy and freedom!
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Democrats own Democrat Care
by Anna Morris, Co-Editor, Freedom Fighters of America
January 7, 2016
#ObamaCare trended on Twitter tonight because the GOP has sent a repeal bill to Obama who will veto it undoubtedly. I got in a number of vicious arguments with a few liberal types on Twitter. The arguments became vicious because Obama Care is hurting me personally, yet a number of probably well meaning people view it as the only way for the poor and working poor to have medical care.
This Democrat Care is so far reaching, controlling about one sixth of the economy, that for the creatures stuck in it, it is like the La Brea tar pits--they can't get out and they sink deeper and deeper. That's the way ponzi schemes work. Just before Democrat Care really hit, there were a series of articles of which I was fond, entitled, Obama Care is a Cluster F***. It certainly is and that is why we cannot live with it and may not be able to get rid of it.
First, having insurance is not having care. Insurance is a go-between. It is between the doctor and the patient. It is also a bureaucracy that syphons off some of those "scarce health care dollars" everyone talks about. Democrat Care has limited their profits, but why should they have ANY profits off the sick and suffering? Talk about vultures!
Second, insurance as we understand it, is a pool people buy into to protect against catastrophe. Auto insurance is to cover horrendous damage or injury if we have an ACCIDENT. It does not cover gasoline, new tires, oil changes, etc. Before Democrat Care there were some catastrophic medical insurances that worked something like this. Now Democrat Care requires so-called insurance to pay for everything including things people can afford for themselves such as vaccines, birth control, and annual doctor visits.
Since all these extras are mandated, forced by the government, into insurance many of us do not want to purchase, we end up with high deductibles and high premiums. People are paying so much to keep the redistribution scheme afloat, they cannot afford their deductibles and thus go without care. Care is perhaps more unaffordable than it was before everyone was forced to buy insurance.
How is there any difference between paying for your own medical needs without the bureaucracy of middle men, or paying for your care--the high deductible amount--which works out the same as self pay in the end. Once the deductible is met then catastrophic needs are covered. Why not just insure for catastrophes in the first place.
Well meaning people say, but Democrat Care doesn't allow insurance companies to discriminate against pre-existing conditions. All well and good, but shy is an insurance company standing between patients and the care they need anyway?
Going back to the general idea of insurance, another point against medical insurance is that sooner or later pretty much everyone will use it. One can pay into auto insurance or home owners insurance for decades and never use it. It will only be used if there is an ACCIDENT. Sooner or later everyone, even those eating the 9 servings of fruit and veggies every day that our National Lunch Lady insists upon, WILL DIE. Probably most of those people will be sick before they die. No amount of good living can prevent that actuality. How can one INSURE for something almost everyone will use at some time? Therefore medical insurance is a payment scheme or a redistribution.
Note I use the term MEDICAL insurance, not HEALTH insurance. Democrat Care has a crazy idea that clean living, no smoking, drinking no more than the federal government allows, exercising 2.5 hours per week and eating those nine servings of fruits and veggies each and every day, will prevent chronic illness. To that end Democrat Care, via insurance as well as grants that add to our multi-trillion dollar debt, go into the new bureaucracy of WELLNESS. One is to keep well because "sick care" is an old concept and nobody can afford that anyway.
(By the way, this same government that proposes to tell us what to eat, how much alcohol we are allowed to drink, and which will send us to reeducation camps (cessation programs) if we dare to keep using tobacco, says nothing about indiscriminate sex or the use of marijuana, newly legalized in several states. Children born to "Single Moms", created by "Baby Daddies" are children in need of the ever expanding "Social Programs" which are, apparently, solid vote getters for liberal Democrats and their plantation politics. Alcohol is to be limited to one drink per day for women, two for men, anything over that is "alcohol misuse" in need of treatment, yet marijuana is consumed in cigar sized doobies. What a strange new world. It is indeed a Cluster F***.)
The idea that chronic illness sucks the system dry and requires the huge wellness bureaucracies that never heal anyone in need, makes us all our brother's keepers. Overweight? YOU are depriving a child of an annual check up. Diabetic? YOU were a glutton and your gluttony could deny pre-natal exams for a welfare mom having her eighth child. YOU SMOKE CIGARETTES?????? YOU degenerate scum! Your diseased carcass will deny kindergarteners a government program that provides personal trainers for each and every little crumb cruncher!
Since government no longer plans to give "sick care", if you get sick or injured it's YOUR fault for not living like the government tells you, and you should be punished or reeducated!
It is said Medicare is running out of money. So Democrat Care instituted the free Wellness Exam once a year. I accompanied a patient to one of these last year. It's about wellness so any medical issues will be ignored. The doctor never listened to the patient's heart or lungs or asked about the asthmatic condition for which the patient has a renewable prescription. The questions were all centered around making sure the patient was living as the government demands. Fortunately this patient lies well and so was not forced into any "treatment" programs. WHAT A WASTE OF SCARCE HEALTHCARE DOLLARS!
Can't blame the doctors. Increasingly doctors cannot maintain a private practice. I know specifically of one place where ALL the doctors had to go to work for the hospital monopoly because they could not institute the record keeping, etc. that Democrat Care demands. Imagine one size fits all doctors with the nearest second opinion over fifty miles away! The poor that Democrat Care supposedly cares so much about, get NO second opinions if they cannot afford to travel. If you have a conflict with a doctor, you get another doctor in the monopoly who will have all your records from the guy you didn't get along with. Maybe there is attitudinal garbage in the permanent electronic health record? Oh well, live with it!
The beauty of the Cluster F*** that is Democrat Care is it has created more dependency. Eight years of Obama is just about the right amount of time to totally cripple the medical industry. Repeal it and people go without or insurance companies deny pre-existing conditions. Believe it or not people used to be able to afford to see doctors before there was Medicare and all the government interventions in medicine. After government messed around few can afford any part of the bloated mess. Therefore more government is needed, and by the gods, to DESERVE any so-called care, the patient better live by the government set wellness dictum. Heil Obama!
So the liberals demand answers from us who bitterly oppose Democrat Care. A simplified answer is that government has the ability to tax unmercifully and also has put itself in charge of the poor. I personally am not opposed to providing care for the poor. This would simply be paying INDEPENDENT providers for care. Government would NEVER tell doctors how to practice nor force them into costly schemes like electronic records, which in the end destroy private practice. Government WILL NEVER coerce free Americans to live any certain lifestyle. Any government care of the poor would be for sick care and limited preventive care. Those who are not sick do not need a physician. (Jesus said that in a parable but we all know the liberal left detests Jesus. Nonetheless, a parable only works if there is a deep truth in it.) Under preventive care I would include things like mammograms and other diagnostic tests.
Wherever there is government money there follows corruption and mismanagement. Yet government might have a place in capital improvements for hospitals and clinics. Perhaps government could pay for the expensive machines we always heard were driving up the cost of medical care. Democrat Care is somehow involved in sidewalk grants so people will feel "safe" walking and thus they will exercise and not get diabetes. What a bunch of codswallop! (Safe is the new term that has replaced "for the children" among the Social Justice crowd that used to be called Communist / Marxists.) Government has long paid for research and still does. The research must be to find cures for disease, not some far flung private pet project like studying how much new sidewalks reduce diabetes!
Liberal Democrats are always talking about disparities, which can only be solved by more government of course. Disparities come from lack of jobs and opportunities. Government kills jobs and opportunities. We have to take care of each and every one of our citizens here now, first. We cannot take in the whole world while we let our present citizens beg for jobs and go without. If a citizen wants a job, a guest worker gets bumped. Americans first. We all know there are thousands of ways the present government is poisoning business with regulations and high taxes. Let us move along.
We have to move away from entitlements. FDR got the country hooked on entitlements. Everybody is forced to pay in so they are entitled. May have almost worked in FDR's day because people didn't live very long after retirement. Now all those entitlements are showing themselves for the ponzi schemes they always were and at least one result is bloated medical costs few can afford. I would be in favor of paying off people who have been successful and freeing funds for those who yet struggle. Not means testing exactly because people who paid in are entitled. I personally would be content to receive from the government what I have paid in, plus interest and then the government can leave me alone. It would not be a lot of money and certainly cheaper for the government than paying a bunch more costs for me over many years if I live that long. For some of us the American economy has been like the gold rush. Hard work and good luck have paid off. I paid into those entitlements when I earned little, was very poor and frequently did not have enough to eat. But then I got very lucky. I want something back but do not need the whole entitled load for the rest of my life.
This is an article, not a book. These are thoughts off the top of my head. I know there are some very decent people who believe we need Democrat Care or they won't survive. Others like myself believe Democrat Care will kill our nation and take the last of our freedoms. I have my own personal issues with this enforced system and they are serious. I will write about those specifically some other time. I have barely scratched the surface of what is wrong with Democrat Care.
Government got us into this mess and government will dig us in deeper. Government is not the solution. Government is the problem when it destroys private initiative as it has done with the doctors who monopolize under hospitals for one size fits all care. Back in 2010 there was a lot of talk about concierge care, people pre-paying a doctor for care. I have no idea if this can even be done in a fully Democrat Care state. It is my understanding that the cost of administering government mandates under Democrat Care makes private practice almost impossible.
It is up to We the People to take it back some way. If we do not, we will be increasingly under government control to the smallest portions of our private lives. Like Dr. Ben Carson has said, "Who controls health controls you. It was never about health, it was about CONTROL." Together we must take it back.
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