Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Winter Solstice ~ the Light begins to return

Solstice begins at 5:44am EST


16 comments:

  1. Thank you, Listener, for beautiful photos and hope.

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    1. Thank YOU for keeping us going so much!!

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  2. Bill, as I see it, the effort was not to get the electoral College to refuse to ratify Trump's election because they could, but rather because their purpose is expressly to safeguard against the election of unqualified candidates and ones who pose a threat to the nation as, for instance, having ties with (potentially) hostile foreign governments. All we wanted was for them to do their job. They didn't.

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    1. I fully concur, Cat! James Madison and Alexander Hamilton were aghast that the states co-opted the Founders' intent seeking more power if their group of electors votes as a block. But the intent was as a safeguard against exactly what we are faced with. They did not do their job.

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    2. No, they certainly did not do their job. It was plain to everyone who could hear that trump is not normal, not intelligent and concerned only with growing his wealth. What kind of "President" has no time for intelligence briefings, bu spends night after night on Twitter complaining about how "unfair" everyone is to him? He is a true danger to our country and our people and the fact that the Electoral College decided to ignore the evidence and install a dictator to take our country down is a clear sign of their - not only irrelevance - but clear and present danger to our people. It can't be repeated often enough, TRUMP IS NOT NORMAL!

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  3. Vodka's essentially having no flavor is probably why I can drink it, though I do not do so often...till now. I really am serious about taking up drinking, or some other senses-dulling activity. I do not for once share your optimism, at least not at the moment. Perhaps I'll bounce back.But this seems a particularly dark time all over the world. Aleppo is the most glaring example, but there is desperate trouble everywhere, much worse than usual, both man made and natural disasters.My usual buoyancy of spirits is seriously depressed.

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    1. Well, if you are going to drink, you might want to choose something that isn't...Russian. ;-)

      Of course, what would be the point of choosing something that is ultimately destructive? Wouldn't that just be helping DT along? If you want a sense-numbing activity that would screw up his chances, pick meditation.

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    2. What we call "vodka" isn't Russian. Russian vodka is distilled from fermented potatoes. Our "vodka" is made from grain.

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    3. That's right. And Absolute is made in New York.

      In my experience, meditation is the opposite of mind numbing; it is mind expanding. No doubt I'll feel differently in time, but at the moment I do not want my mind expanded.

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  4. I think, since they *won't* do their job, we should get rid of them, so we CAN do ours.

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    1. Look what direct democracy did for Britain in Brexit!

      BTW I've seen an assertion that Russia monkeyed with that election too.

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    2. There is a reasonable argument for abolishing the Electoral College. The Founders' fundamental assumption -- that ordinary voters didn't and couldn't know enough about anyone beyond their own Congressional districts (which were smaller in those days) -- hasn't bee valid for going on two centuries. But that Constitutional amendment seems rather less likely than the one that will overturn Citizens United, which I haven't noticed moving forward.

      And tell me: Would Vermont ratify an amendment that would diminish its influence in the presidential election?

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  5. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/opinion/donald-trump-this-is-not-normal.html

    ****************************** exerpt from the article*****************

    To have a president who apparently does not have time for daily intelligence briefings, but who can make time for the most trite anti-intellectual stunts, like staging a photo-op with a troubled rapper and twilight-tweeting insults like a manic insomniac, is not normal.

    I fully understand that elevated outrage is hard to maintain. It’s exhausting.

    But the alternative is surrender to national nihilism and the welcoming of woe.

    The next four years could be epochal years in the history of this country. They could test the limits of presidential power and the public’s passivity.

    I happen to believe that history will judge kindly those who continued to shout, from the rooftops, through their own weariness and against the corrosive drift of conformity: This is not normal!

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    1. Well said. Susan, I greatly appreciate your deep down goodness of heart, intellectual clarity, and ability to articulate and speak up. We are in this together, and I'm grateful for this blog space to come to and say how it really is with me, bad days as well as good, bounce ideas around and find worthy links, so to go forward again.

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  6. Wouldn't you think *unchecking* the check box for "Active Log ins" before clearing your cache would, in fact, not clear your active log ins? *sigh*

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  7. Having a great deal of trouble. I'm trying to log out of Blogger and log in again with a different Google account, but the system won't let me. I'm **very** frustrated!

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