This video documents thousands of cases where ridding the diet of GMO food has reversed some chronic diseases induced by GMO in as little as 48 hours in both humans and animals. By splicing the gene from the germ Bacillus thuringiensis into corn, scientists made a plant that secretes BT toxin which kills any insect that bites it by destroying its stomach. The problem is that when humans and animals eat the plant, that same BT toxin does serious harm to their stomachs. Animal studies have shown massive tumors in the first generation with stunted and sterile offspring by the third generation. Fortunately, we are not lab rats so we can say No. Please share this video. It might awaken many friends and relatives who will not listen when you talk about 911, Benghazi and the USS Liberty.

Monsanto has also introduced Roundup Ready corn that has been genetically altered to resist glyphosate herbicides which at 85,000 metric tons per year is the most commonly used one in the US. It has been speculated that Monsanto is deliberately killing off the bees so we have to go to them for crops that don’t need bees.

Genetic Roulette: Good News. GMO Diseases Can Be Overcome. Video | Video Rebel’s Blog.

Fifth-grader suspended at overnight nature camp for bringing Swiss Army knife

A fifth-grader in Cupertino, California was suspended and threatened with expulsion for bringing a small Swiss Army knife on a school-sponsored, science-oriented camping trip.

In early April, Braden Bandermann’s class set off on Garden Gate Elementary School’s annual, week-long pilgrimage for fifth-graders to Marin Headlands, just north of San Francisco.

Before leaving, Braden did what any Silicon Valley 10-year-old faced with the perils of nature might do: He packed his trusty Swiss Army knife. As any camper knows, the multi-tool device is nothing if not versatile. Braden’s particular model contains a can opener, tweezers, a toothpick, a nail file, a tiny pair of scissors and a small blade.

The little blade landed the boy in big trouble.

“They called me,” explained Tony Bandermann, Braden’s father. “They said, ‘You have to come and get him. He has a weapon. He needs to be suspended or possibly expelled.’”

At the time, the elder Bandermann was on a business trip in Sacramento, roughly 100 miles away. His wife, Braden’s stepmother, was at the camp with Braden, but they had arrived by bus and had no private transportation. (Braden’s mother was also unable to go to the camp so that he could serve a suspension.)

The school principal, Brandi Hucko, allegedly wanted Bandermann to rush to the site of the science camp, pick Braden up for a one-day suspension and then deliver him back to camp.

Bandermann told The Daily Caller that he was frustrated over Hucko’s insistence “that I risk my job and go get him out of the program for a one-day suspension all over a Swiss Army knife.”

The multi-tool instrument did not present a threat, Bandermann believes.

“I went to the very same trip when I was a child at the same school, and I had a very similar Swiss Army knife,” he said. “In fact, most of the kids did.”

Principal Hucko disagreed. According to Bandermann, she was adamant that punishment must be swift and severe.

Consequently, Bandermann told TheDC, school officials forced Braden to serve a one-day suspension at camp. He was allegedly isolated in a teacher’s lounge area from all the other children. He was forced to eat meals by himself. He was forced to sleep in an area separate from all the other children. He missed an entire day of activities.

Bandermann believes school officials overreacted.

“This is not Sandy Hook,” he said. “Get real. He brought a stupid Swiss Army knife to camp.”

Bandermann said that he suggested to Hucko that perhaps someone could take away the knife and discipline his son once he was returned to the urban comfort of Silicon Valley. However, Hucko would not negotiate.

The Cupertino Union School District would not respond to questions from The Daily Caller. School district representative Jeremy Nishihara said answering questions would violate Braden’s privacy.

Garden Gate Elementary’s parent handbook, available on the school’s website, stipulates a stern “zero-tolerance” policy for “violence, weapons, and drugs on school campuses or at school activities off campus.”

“State Law, district policy, and regulations of [sic] California Education Code support Zero Tolerance by requiring the immediate suspension and recommendation for expulsion of any student who possesses or furnishes a firearm, knife, explosive, or similarly dangerous object on school grounds or at a school event off school grounds,” the policy reads.

“Our schools also have prevention and intervention programs to help students make decisions, solve problems, and deal with conflict,” the policy also adds.

This incident is the latest in a long line of extraordinarily strong reactions by school officials to things students have brought to school — or talked about bringing to school, or eaten at school, or taken to a nature camp — that vaguely resemble weapons but aren’t, actually, anything like real weapons.

In rural West Virginia, an eighth-grader was suspended and, astonishingly, arrested after he refused to remove a t-shirt supporting the National Rifle Association. When he returned to school, he wore the same shirt, as did several other students in a show of support. (RELATED: Eighth-grader arrested over NRA shirt returns to school in same shirt)

Officials at an elementary school in small-town Michigan impounded a third-grader boy’s batch of 30 homemade birthday cupcakes because they were adorned with green plastic figurines representing World War Two soldiers. The school principal branded the military-themed cupcakes “insensitive” in light of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. (RELATED: School confiscates third-grader’s cupcakes topped with toy soldiers)

At Genoa-Kingston Middle School in northeast Illinois, a teacher threatened an eighth-grader with suspension if he did not remove his t-shirt emblazoned with the interlocking rifles, a symbol of the United States Marines. (RELATED: Junior high teacher tells kid to remove Marines t-shirt or get suspended)

At Park Elementary School in Baltimore, Maryland, a student was suspended for two days because his teacher thought he shaped a strawberry, pre-baked toaster pastry into something resembling a gun. (RELATED: Second-grader suspended for having breakfast pastry shaped like a gun)

At Poston Butte High School in Arizona, a high school freshman was suspended for setting a picture of a gun as the desktop background on his school-issued computer. (RELATED: Freshman suspended for picture of gun)

At D. Newlin Fell School in Philadelphia, school officials reportedly yelled at a student and then searched her in front of her class after she was found with a paper gun her grandfather had made for her. (RELATED: Paper gun causes panic)

In rural Pennsylvania, a kindergarten girl was suspended for making a “terroristic threat” after she told another girl that she planned to shoot her with a pink Hello Kitty toy gun that bombards targets with soapy bubbles. (RELATED: Kindergartener suspended for making ‘terroristic threat’ with Hello Kitty bubble gun)

At Roscoe R. Nix Elementary School in Maryland, a six-year-old boy was suspended for making the universal kid sign for a gun, pointing at another student and saying “pow.” That boy’s suspension was later lifted and his name cleared. (RELATED: Pow! You’re suspended, kid)

Fifth-grader suspended at overnight nature camp for bringing Swiss Army knife — Utah CCW Carry.

OECD: The widest gaps between rich and poor were registered in Chile, Mexico, Turkey and the United States

Refreshing News: OECD: The widest gaps between rich and poor were registered in Chile, Mexico, Turkey and the United States.

Journal of 9/11 Studies Letters, March 2013

Conspiracy Denial in the U.S. Media

By Lance deHaven-Smith

Many American journalists appear to be locked into a peculiar way of thinking that makes them

blind to signs of political criminality in high office. This mindset is characterized by an apparent

inability to differentiate groundless accusations of elite political intrigue from legitimate

concerns about the integrity of U.S. political leaders and institutions. For some reason, when it

comes to popular suspicions of schemes involving the nation’s political elites, many journalists

in the United State make no distinctions. They categorize all such suspicions as “conspiracy

theories,” which they assume are not only untrue, but wacky and paranoid.

This is one of a number of cognitive distortions associated with the term “conspiracy theory” that

I analyze in my new book, Conspiracy Theory in America. The book will be published on April

15 of this year by the University of Texas Press in a book series edited by Mark Crispin Miller.

Conspiracy Theory in America explains that the conspiracy-theory label was popularized as a

pejorative putdown by the CIA in a global propaganda program to attack critics of the Warren

Commission’s conclusion that President Kennedy was assassinated by a lone gunman with no

government foreknowledge or assistance. The CIA campaign called on foreign media

corporations and journalists to criticize “conspiracy theorists” and raise questions about their

motives and judgments. Any and all criticisms of the lone-gunman account of the assassination

were lumped together as “conspiracy theories,” declared groundless and pernicious, and

attributed to ulterior motives and the influence of communist propagandists.

Today, the conspiracy-theory label is widely used as a verbal defense mechanism by U.S.

political elites to suppress mass suspicions that inevitably arise whenever shocking political

crimes benefit top leaders or play into their agendas, especially when those same officials are in

control of agencies responsible for preventing the events in question or for investigating them

after they have occurred. It is only natural to be suspicious when a president and vice president

bent on war in the Middle East are warned of impending terrorist attacks and yet fail to alert the

American public or increase the readiness of the nation’s armed forces. Why would Americans

not expect answers when they are told that Arabs with poor piloting skills managed to hijack four

planes, fly them across the eastern United States, somehow evade America’s multilayered system

of air defense, and then crash two of the planes into the Twin Towers in New York City and one

into the Pentagon in Washington, DC? By the same token, it is only natural to question the

motives of the president and vice president when they drag their feet on investigating this

seemingly inexplicable defense failure and then, when the investigation is finally conducted, they

insist on testifying together, in secret, and not under oath.

Indiscriminate condemnation of conspiracy beliefs is obviously misguided, because political

conspiracies in high circles do, in fact, happen. Everyone knows that officials in the Nixon
%%[Page: 1]%%

administration conspired to steal the 1972 presidential election, that the Reagan White House

engaged in a criminal scheme to sell arms to Iran and channel profits to the Contras (a rebel army

in Nicaragua), and that the Bush-Cheney administration colluded to mislead Congress and the

public about the strength of its evidence for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. If some

conspiracy theories are true, then it is nonsensical to dismiss all unsubstantiated suspicions of

elite intrigue as false by definition.

And yet this is precisely how many American journalists proceed. Consider the public statements

last year by Chuck Todd about the improbability of voting machines ever being rigged in U.S.

elections. Todd is an NBC News reporter and analyst. According to Andrew Kreig at

OpEdNews.com, Todd told a national meeting of state election officials that suspicions about

voting machines being manipulated in the United States “stretched the bounds of reality.” Todd

delivered a similar message in a tweet shortly before the 2012 presidential election, when he

wrote, “The voting machine conspiracies belong in same category as the Trump birther garbage.”

In his tweet, Todd displays the hallmark symptom of conspiracy denial: he sees no difference

between two very different suspicions. One involves schemes to steal elections by tampering

with voting equipment, while the other is about President Obama’s status as a natural born

citizen. These suspicions differ greatly in terms of their plausibility and evidentiary support.

Doubts about President Obama’s eligibility for the presidency have been refuted by documents

showing he was born in Hawaii. In contrast, there are a number of reasons to think that

weaknesses in electronic voting machines and tabulators might be exploited to alter election

outcomes, especially in presidential elections where the powers of the office and the money and

energy invested in campaigns make the stakes so enormously high.

As an elections analyst for a national TV network, Todd surely knows that electronic voting and

tabulation systems are quite vulnerable to being hacked. This was demonstrated in 2006 on

electronic touch-screen voting machines by researchers at Princeton University. The researchers

found that programs could be planted in the machines to flip votes from one candidate to another

so that vote totals match the number of voters who sign in to cast ballots. The programs can be

set to run only on Election Day and not earlier, when the machines are tested. The programs can

also be configured to erase themselves at the end of the day so no trace is left of the electronic

tampering. Also in 2006, the HBO Documentary Hacking Democracy showed that optical scan

systems, which read and tabulate votes on paper ballots, are vulnerable to similar manipulation

by programs that can be inserted on the machines’ portable memory cards.

Scholars began investigating the security of electronic voting systems in the first place because

election returns in the 2004 presidential contest differed systematically from the exit polls in the

most hotly contested states. Shortly after the election, Steven Freeman, a statistician at the

University of Pennsylvania, posted a paper on the Internet analyzing the disparities. Freeman

pointed out that the proportion of votes credited to Bush and Kerry differed from the split

reported in the exit polls in ten out of eleven battleground states, and in every case Bush received

Journal of 9/11 Studies Letters, March 2013

more votes than the exit polls indicated. It would not be surprising for election results to depart

slightly from exit-poll findings in a single state, but it was astounding that they did so in ten

states and that in each instance Bush’s support was greater in the vote tabulations than in the exit

interviews. Freeman calculated the odds of this happening by chance given the size of the

samples for the exit polls and the magnitude of the differences between the vote tallies and the

survey findings. He concluded that the odds were one in 250 million.

Chuck Todd’s smug dismissal of legitimate concerns about voting system vulnerabilities was

met with spontaneous applause from the assembly of state election officials. The audience

responded appreciatively because Todd was endorsing powerful norms in the nation’s political

class against voicing suspicions of elite political criminality. These norms serve the interests of

politicians and government officials by protecting them from public interrogation about troubling

events, such as statistically improbable election returns, from which they or their political party

may have benefitted. It is far easier to ridicule popular suspicions than to answer them with

rigorous inquiries and prudent safeguards.

Many journalists appear to have been conditioned by public officials to conform to conspiracy denying norms even though these norms contradict journalistic ethics, historical experience, and

common sense. Journalists who offend political elites by investigating or merely repeating

popular conspiracy beliefs risk losing access to the sources on which they depend for their

reporting. Of course, the appropriate journalistic response to this governmental coercion is to

expose it and find other sources. That was what Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward did with

Watergate, and it is still what Russ Baker, Seymour Hersh, Jane Mayer, James Risen, and other

great journalists do.

But most run-of-the-mill reporters have embraced conspiracy denial, and for them it has become

an emotionally charged, self-reinforcing belief system. The mindset is self-reinforcing in the

sense that it engenders feelings of superiority and is dismissive of evidence. Ironically,

conspiracy deniers think they are protecting civility and reason in public discourse, when in fact,

by ridiculing reasonable concerns and appealing to elite prejudices, they are doing just the

opposite.

Dr. Lance deHaven-Smith is a Professor in the Reubin O’D. Askew School of Public

Administration and Policy at Florida State University. In a 2006 peer-reviewed journal article,

he coined the term “state crimes against democracy” (SCAD) to delineate a crime category for

Watergate, Iran-Contra, Plame-gate, and other conspiracies in high office. SCAD research has

been highlighted in special issues of American Behavioral Scientist (February 2010) and Public

Integrity (June 2011).

Microsoft Word - 2013 March de-Haven Smith.docx - 2013LettersAprilde-HavenSmith.pdf.

Conspiracy Theory in America
By Lance deHaven-Smith

Asking tough questions and connecting the dots across decades of suspicious events, from the Kennedy assassinations to 9/11 and the anthrax attacks, this book raises crucial questions about the consequences of Americans’ unwillingness to suspect high government officials of criminal wrongdoing.
Discovering America Series, Mark Crispin Miller, series editor
April 2013

- See more at: http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books/dehcon#sthash.E8tVdzrQ.dpuf

Conspiracy Theory in America - University of Texas Press.

9/11 victim’s family member and others insulted by Maddow’s 9/11 Truth attack

9/11 Free Fall
5/3/13
By Andrew Steele

After hearing Rachel Maddow’s recent attack on 9/11 Truth and her assertion that those who don’t believe the U.S. government’s official story get a satisfied feeling from their “conspiracy theories”, 9/11 victim’s family member Bob McIlvaine’s immediate response was, “I wish she would say that to my face”.

Bob has been investigating and speaking out about the murder of his son, Bobby, since 9/11 happened.

Bobby McIlvaine was 26 years old on the day he was killed at the World Trade Center. According to his father, Bobby suffered explosive injuries to his face and chest– unlikely caused by falling debris. The burns on his body were postmortem, ruling out the possibility that he was killed by one of the airplane impacts.
Appearing as a guest on my show, “9/11 Free Fall” Bob, along with Richard Gage AIA– founder and CEO of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth– and veteran journalist Deborah Voorhees reacted to Maddow’s attack, which didn’t cite any specific scientific facts to refute the 9/11 controlled demolition evidence, but rather appealed to the host’s own perceived authority of the 9/11 Commission Report and the recently revised Popular Mechanics book edited by James Meigs, which Richard’s group has taken on in its series, “Debunking the Real 9/11 Myths: Why Popular Mechanics Can’t Face up to Reality”.

When I asked Bob what he would say to Maddow if he were invited onto her show, he said in part of his reply, “…my son died from explosion. He didn’t have burns on him…he had postmortem slight burns, meaning that a detonation killed him, then the heat coming afterwards put some burns on him. And I say– you call that a conspiracy theory? Have you talked to any doctors about how these people were blown into hundreds of pieces? How can that happen with fall down fire and a building falling straight down? These buildings came down from explosions….I would just keep harping on her– ‘you haven’t done any research on this’…then harp back to the point now– ‘do you call this a conspiracy theory? I’m trying to find out how my son died…that’s a conspiracy theory?…I would call her a coward. ”

Both Richard Gage and Deborah Vorhees stated that knowing that the Twin Towers and World Trade Center Building 7 were brought down with explosives in a controlled demolition on 9/11 didn’t inspire a satisfied feeling in them at all.

“My life was just fine before I became aware in 2006 of the science behind the destruction of these three towers,” said Richard. “I was shocked, and my life was turned upside down.”

“I only became aware of the forensic evidence for the towers being brought down by explosives over the last year,” said Voorhees, “and I have to say, I was much more comfortable in my world and in my life prior to understanding that something far more nefarious may be going on.”

Maddow has come under fire from members of her audience for her one-sided attack on those who question the government’s official story about what happened on 9/11, and for her exploitation of Alice Hoagland, who not only lost her son on 9/11, but has been told in the eleven and a half years that followed the tragedy that he died a hero with the other passengers on his flight.

“A balanced and fair piece needs to show two sides of it,” said Deborah Voorhees. “What we saw with Rachel Maddow was a diatribe, really. Just this angry outburst disclaiming everything and anything that she puts the word ‘conspiracy’ in front of. There was no use of fact at all. Even in a commentary there should be some factual examples. I am not sure why she has chosen this particular route.”

Deborah went on.

“What is it that keeps the media from looking at this? The media in general is very skeptical, yes, but we really have to go back about fifteen, twenty years to see what’s happened to media organizations. There was a time when major cities had at least two newspapers…two daily newspapers…to compete with. So when we went to our editors with stories to do, and if the publisher would step into the newsroom or somebody in advertising stepped into the newsroom– these are people that had to do with the money side of running the business–it was considered completely unethical…that they should not come anywhere near a newsroom…that it was strictly for editors and reporters and no one else. Well we could stand toe to toe with the publisher at that time and say ‘we need to run this story or our competitor will run it’. Now what we have is just…I think it’s just five or six corporations that own basically all of the news, radio, and newspaper organizations throughout the country. Well you cannot have fair and balanced news when it is so narrowly owned and operated. Any rogue reporter who might try and go off in that direction, or frankly an editor that might, would be quickly squelched.”

Richard Gage and Bob McIlvaine are willing to appear on Rachel Maddow’s show. Richard is asking the MSNBC host for equal time to present the 9/11 controlled demolition evidence to her audience. The question is– does journalistic integrity mean anything anymore in the so-called “mainstream media”, and does Rachel Maddow have any?

That is something only Rachel Maddow herself can now answer.

9/11 Free Fall: Richard Gage, Bob McIlvaine, and Deborah Voorhees respond to Rachel Maddow | 911Blogger.com.

“Conspiracy Theory in America” by Lance deHaven-Smith (University of Texas Press) | 911Blogger.com.

The American “Nuclear Renaissance” Is Over: “The Change in Nuclear’s Fortunes is Staggering” … a Horrible “Cauldron of Events” Has [Brought] the Nuclear Push to a Standstill”

American Nuclear Power Suffers Series of Setbacks

CNBC reports:

Once touted as a successor, or at least a competitor, to carbon-based power, the nuclear sector has taken a beating as the momentum behind new projects stalls and enthusiasm for domestic fossil fuel production grows.

Across the country, plans to build nuclear plants have hit roadblocks recently—a sharp turn for a sector that just a few years ago was looking forward to a renaissance.

***

In recent weeks, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ruled against a proposed partnership between NRC Energy and Toshiba, citing a law that prohibits control of a U.S. plant by a foreign corporation.

Elsewhere, Duke Energy scuttled plans to construct two nuclear reactors in North Carolina, while California officials warned that two damaged reactors could be shut down permanently if the NRC doesn’t take action to get the plants back online.

The change in nuclear’s fortunes is staggering, given that the U.S. is the world’s largest producer of nuclear power ….

“Starting about four years ago, the industry felt it was in the middle of a renaissance” with applications for many new plants pending with the NRC, said Peter Bradford, a law professor and a former member of the commission. “They’ve gone from that high-water mark to a point at which … we’re actually seeing the closing of a few operating plants,which was unthinkable even a few years ago.”

***

Bradford, who also served as a utility commissioner in New York and Maine, cited a “cauldron of events” for bringing the nuclear push to a standstill, including … soaring investment costs.

Ene News notes that California’s San Onofre nuclear plant hit a major speed bump:

Reuters: An independent nuclear regulatory panel on Monday called for a full public hearing on the proposed restart of one of the two damaged San Onofre nuclear reactors, a move that will delay Southern California Edison’s plan to run the plant this summer. [...] Damon Moglen of Friends of the Earth called the ruling “a complete rejection of Edison’s plan to restart its damaged nuclear reactors without public review or input.”

San Diego Union-Tribune: Murray Jennex, a former systems engineer at San Onofre for nearly 20 years who now teaches at San Diego State University’s College of Business Administration, said the order likely pushes back a final decision on restarting the Unit 2 reactor until after summer. “I won’t say this is a death blow to Unit 2, but it does make restart less likely,” Jennex said. “If approved, the additional downtime makes the Unit 2 restart more complex and costly due to corrosion issues from sitting.”

AP: San Onofre nuke plant restart halted [...] A federal panel sided Monday with environmentalists who have called for lengthy hearings on a plan to restart the ailing San Onofre nuclear power plant — a decision that further clouds the future of the twin reactors.

An inside sources from within the San Onofre nuclear plant told ABC News:

I was there the day it shut down. I wouldn’t trust them to turn it back on.

The Palisades nuclear reactor is also in trouble. EneNews rounds up the latest:

WWMT: Congressman Fred Upton has just finished a tour of the troubled Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in Covert. Rep. Upton says he’s very concerned about the safety at Palisades, especially after the latest incident. [...] Because it wasn’t a planned release, Palisades is under serious scrutiny at this time.

ABC57: Palisades Nuclear Plant shut down until further notice [...] Congressman Fred Upton is not sold on the safety at Palisades. [...] Congressman Upton did not say the plant will be shutting down. But he did say that all options are on the table.  Palisades says they may look at replacing the tank that is cracked.

WOOD TV8: Authorities say they’ve found the crack that led to “slightly radioactive water” spilling from the Palisades nuclear power plant into Lake Michigan. [...] The leak was in a 300,000-gallon tank used to hold water that floods and cools the nuclear reactor during refueling and in the event of a problem. The problem was a half-inch crack in the welding around one of nine nozzles in the tank, authorities said Monday. Three of those have been replaced and every weld and every nozzle is now being checked. The entire bottom of the tank is also being checked. That leaky tank sits right above the plant’s main control room. [...]

Watch the broadcast here

The problem is that America’s nuclear reactors are old … and are falling apart piece by piece.

But – even after the Fukushima meltdown – regulators have reduced safety standards.

The Nuclear Regulator Commission say that the risk of a major meltdown at U.S. nuclear reactors is much higher than it was at Fukushima. And an accident in the U.S. could be a lot larger than in Japan … partly because our nuclear plants hold a lot more radioactive material. nuclear energy can be cheap, or it can be safe … but it can’t be both.

Indeed, nuclear is expensive and bad for the environment.  Nuclear is wholly subsidized by the government … and would never survive in a free market…. and it doesn’t really reduce global warming.

And it’s not helping inspire confidence in the our ability to safely handle radioactive materials that the former governor of Washington said that the Hanford Nuclear site is an “underground Chernobyl waiting to happen”, that Washington state legislators said that the failure to address the leaks at Hanford – “a very serious problem”, where 60 of the 177 underground tanks have already leaked and all of the tanks are at risk, and which threatens the Columbia River – “smells like a very deliberate cover up”.

And it’s not helping that a “mass release of floating radioactive particles in metro St. Louis” may be released by the inferno at a landfill containing 8,700 tons of nuclear waste.

The American “Nuclear Renaissance” Is Over: “The Change in Nuclear’s Fortunes is Staggering” … a Horrible “Cauldron of Events” Has [Brought] the Nuclear Push to a Standstill” | Washington’s Blog.

How then to tell a daughter this truth when in fact she will in time know that he is the one who decides who will live and who will die, which children will be scattered over the landscape…

by William A. Cook

Daddy, what is a Drone?

The question jolted him out of his lethargy as he suddenly sat upright in the soft chair he had slumped into when she came for “her time with Daddy.” It had the ring of a catechism question; “What is God, Daddy?” How does one answer that without a torrent of other questions cascading from this innocent mouth one after another?  His first impulse was to ignore it; his second, to discombobulate the response with obfuscation, to deflect the question with words she could not understand; his third, to respond directly to her question, to speak the truth knowing that she would not comprehend the intricacies of the policies that legalize the use of drones.

He remembered the story of Hawthorne’s good Dr. Grim who had to address a similar question when Little Ned asked him, “Whence came I here and why?” Indeed, the good doctor answered honestly, truthfully, bluntly, and, dare we say it, wisely.

“Whence did you come? Whence did any of us come? Out of the darkness and mystery, out of nothingness; out of a kingdom of shadows; out of dust, mud, clay, I think, and to return to it again. Out of a former state of being, whence we have brought a good many shadowy revelations, purporting that it was not a very pleasant one. Out of a former life, of which the present one is hell.

And why are you come? Faith, Ned, he must be a wiser man than Doctor Grim who can tell you why you or any other mortal came hither; only one thing I am well aware of, —it was not to be happy. To toil and moil and hope and fear; and to love in a shadowy, doubtful sort of way, and to hate in bitter earnest, —that is what you came for.”

“Daddy, what is a Drone?” she asked again, noticing his sudden reaction and his hesitancy.

“Darling, I think your mother called; yes, I’m certain. Please go to her and we’ll talk about this later.”

He sagged back into the chair as she left the room conscious that he was no Doctor Grim though the power of Doctor. Grim’s cynical answer to Ned held an unexplainable fascination for him as it sprung to mind when his daughter asked her question. Perhaps Hawthorne had responded for his character because he had grappled with the consequences of the world that surrounded him as he tried desperately to bring closure to this last novel that eluded a meaningful ending.

He sat there musing, recalling that Hawthorne had gone ‘to see the war,” to attempt to understand what it was and why, so he travelled by buggy to Washington “to see the war.” And he saw it, upfront and personal: brother slaughtering brother, the ideals of this new, innocent nation built on such mighty principles of equality for all, of laws that protect all, where the corruption of Europe and thousands of years of wars and devastation, of barbarism and savagery could not taint this new Eden where each could achieve as he or she desired, as he, Hawthorne had determined was the meaningful end of his last novel, The Marble Faun. Hawthorne realized that the world around him had gone mad: the Confederates fought to protect a medieval system of privilege and slavery while the north had capitulated to survival of the fittest and cut throat Capitalism. The evils of Europe had come home to roost.

Daddy sat there ruminating on Dr. Grimshawe’s “kingdom of shadows” and the “dust, mud, clay” and the hell that is the life we live, “to toil and moil and hope and fear” and, above all, and, oh, how pitiful and absolute the truth of it, “to hate in bitter earnest.” Strange how the world has not changed since the Civil War; we simply move the war elsewhere, manufacture schisms, fracture governments, supplant elected officials with western puppets, support dictators with weapons of mass destruction to carry out our will, buy off the representatives of the people, and create laws that erase individual rights while proclaiming we do God’s will.

How then to tell a daughter this truth when in fact she will in time know that he is the one who decides who will live and who will die, which children will be scattered over the landscape as they scramble for the detritus of human waste in the dumps that litter the hills and valleys in Pakistan or Afghanistan or Palestine, which mothers and daughters and sons may be the accidents of the Tuesday night gathering of enlightened men when they decide to do what drones do in the silence and darkness and mystery of the kingdom of shadows that hovers above all the living and the dead. How explain the unexplainable when she asks the next question:” Daddy, who tells the computer when to fire a missile?” “Daddy, why don’t these people get arrested and charged with their crimes?” “Daddy, why don’t you use the courts and the laws of the country?” “Daddy, who is God? Are you God, Daddy? Who made you God, Daddy?”

As he listened in silence to the unuttered words of his daughter, he gave utterance to Dr. Grimshawe’s response to Little Ned:

“And why are we come? Faith, my Darling, I am not a wiser man than Doctor Grim and  I can’t tell  you why you or any other mortal came hither; like Dr. Grim, only one thing I am well aware of, —it was not to be happy. To toil and moil and hope and fear; and to love in a shadowy, doubtful sort of way, and to hate in bitter earnest, —that is what you came for and as long as I am the determiner, that is the way it will be.”

“Daddy, what is a Drone?” A Bedtime Story | Veterans News Now.

5/16/13 - Jay Leno ripped Barack Obama again last night on his show. He compared him to Richard Nixon. “It’s been a rough week for Obama. A lot of critics are comparing President Obama to President Richard Nixon. Which is unfair. Nixon’s unemployment rate was only 5%.”

Jay Leno Compares Obama to Nixon | XRepublic.