Wednesday, February 8, 2017

How I Finally Quit Smoking

I know what you're thinking: "Oh great, more advice on how to quit smoking."  You're correct it is, although probably not like many you will have come across before.  I am the last person to "lecture" others about their vices & bad habits as I live in the proverbial glass house on that one. 

Over the years I've managed to kick one or two bad habits; but smoking was the one that had me hooked.  I never smoked in my school years because it didn't appeal to me, and few of my friends smoked.  Didn't even pick up the habit in Navy boot camp, despite the fact that many around me did.  If fake peer pressure in school didn't get me I wasn't gonna let the stress of boot camp get me started smoking.  When I graduated boot camp & went home on leave the old man was both surprised and impressed that I was still a non-smoker.

A month later I was in the south china sea on an aging navy oil tanker.  Our job was to sail up & down the south Vietnam coastline, delivering food, fuel, and mail to the combat ships fighting the war.  Pretty good duty if you didn't mind living on a floating gas station in a war zone.  As I recall it was my second or maybe third week on board the ship, and I was on fantail watch.  For the nautically impaired, the fantail is the rounded ass end of the ship's main deck, and a natural gathering place for off-duty sailors to shoot the breeze and smoke.  Being on watch I had the very simple, easy and non-stressful job of watching the sea & sky behind us in case of emergency.

It was a little after 3:00 in the afternoon and we were steaming to our next assignment 20 miles distant.  A few minutes earlier we had passed Tiger island, a bare little scab of uninhabited real estate a few miles offshore.  I was engaged in conversation with a couple shipmates when we all heard a loud sound overhead we'd never heard before, which sounded like sound Velcro makes being pulled apart;  seconds later the ocean exploded in a huge eruption of water uncomfortably close to our little gas station.  Seconds later came a second artillery round, and I was calling the bridge as the third one landed even closer.

The officer on deck radioed asking what all the noise was, and guessing he'd never been shelled either, I said "Sir, I believe we're being shot at with artillery from Tiger island."  As the captain ordered flank speed, I told one of my buddies, "Hey give me a smoke..."  Handing me my first cigarette he said, "You don't smoke..."  to which I replied, "If I'm gonna die today I at least want to know what all the fuss is about."   That's what it took to get me started smoking, and I must say, I enjoyed it.  Bought my first pack that day.  Second worst decision I ever made.

So smoking cigarettes was a part of my life, and would continue to be over the course of the next forty four years.  At one point after my service days I was up to smoking two packs a day, menthol.  It was the one constant through all those years, the one thing that was always there for me; and for most of those years the thought of quitting simply never entered my mind until many years later.  I was around 32 years old when I decided to quit the first time.  My strongest motivation that time was my anger at the tobacco companies for selling addictive, unhealthy products; and I was determined to quit "cold turkey" without any external aids or support group.



When you quit "cold turkey" the hardest obstacle comes around day 9 or 10, and that is the nicotine withdrawal symptom that feels like spiders crawling around under your skin, primarily in the arms and legs.  This withdrawal symptom probably varies from person to person, and for me it got worse every day.  Made it two weeks on that attempt to quit; and the memory of "the spiders" remained strong in my mind.  Cold turkey wasn't gonna work for me.

A few years later I decided to give quitting another go.  This time I armed myself with copious amounts of information from the internet; which after a while became burdensome and often contradictory, so I used the Bruce Lee philosophy of absorbing what was useful.  Although I failed (again) to quit I did at least quit the menthol, and chemicals by switching to the all natural American Spirit brand, which is just natural tobacco.

If you surf the net for help in quitting smoking you will undoubtedly come across an article offering advice on when it's a bad time to quit smoking.  The article states very professionally that when you're under stress it's not a good time to quit.  Examples of such times include: loss of a job, or relationship, when you are depressed, starting a new job, or relationship, etc, etc.  While at first blush this may seem solid advice, in reality it isn't.  Having such a list of 'bad times to quit smoking' is actually enabling the smoker to not take quitting seriously by giving them an excuse; a way out of their contract with themselves to quit when their strength falters.  It's kind of like when folks say "I'll work on my spirituality once I get my life in order."  Life, as we discover, doesn't always work that way.


 Another thing you need to understand is that among the many hundreds of nasty chemicals in your cigarette, nicotine is the one that lies to you.  It tells you that your addiction is to great for you to break.  It say's you're not strong enough, and that is the lie.  Nicotine gets help from the ego and before you know it you're buying the bullshit.

Throughout my spiritual sojourn I've noticed that an awful lot of spiritual people smoke cigarettes; both the professionals and the seekers.  I've also noticed that a good many authors and writers smoke quite heavily, myself included.  It never occurred to me that I could write an entire blog post without smoking, or go without that after dinner smoke, even with my awareness of how deleterious it is to my health.  Despite a growing list of personal medical/health issues; I continued to smoke long after I educated myself to the dangers. 

Then suddenly four years ago, I lost the use of my legs to atherosclerosis.  I'd been dealing with some peripheral artery disease for a few years but it never took away my ability to walk or drive like normal folks do. That all changed over the course of one very long night.  My left leg seized up in terrible pain one night, not a muscle cramp or 'charley horse'- but the whole leg felt on fire, and resisted all attempts at lessening the agony for several hours.  For those who have never experienced acute pain over many hours, it is exhausting, and at some point when the pain subsided enough, I passed out asleep. 

When the VA finally got around to seeing me a week later the news wasn't good.  With their regimen of MRI machines and other scanners they determined the cause of my leg problems, and the rest is history.*  My point in bringing this up, I suppose, is that despite a very crucial medical condition, I continued to smoke.  Even knowing that smoking was making my health issues worse, I still smoked because I still believed the lies told by the nicotine, and some asshat on the internet said that quitting when under big stress was a bad idea.  That's a pretty powerful hold over us by the nicotine, but as we have all learned, there are several hundred toxic chemicals in cigarette smoke helping the nicotine keep us captive.

My previous attempts to quit failed in large measure by following internet advice on when not to try quitting, because that  is bullshit ...you'll always have an 'excuse' to smoke and never a 'reason' to quit.  Any technique that encourages you to fail, isn't helping you.  Quitting tobacco requires a certain motivation because we know only too well what a challenge it will be.  An old adage says that we only change when the pain of remaining the same is too great, and there may be some truth in that.  Something has to come along and motivate or inspire us to make the effort to quit, and succeed.

Besides, quitting smoking right now never made better sense for important reasons beyond health, (as if that alone isn't enough.)  The cost of cigarettes increases at least once a year and the odds are good that the giant tobacco corporations will never lower the price.  I did the math & in the last 12 months my own smoking habit has cost me over $3200 bucks.  Not an insignificant sum.  I can think of a good many other uses I can put that money to, and that's assuming that Trump doesn't start world war three with Russia or Iran, Australia or Meryl Streep.

I've given no small amount of thought to the kind of future the Trump regime is going to get us into, and none of it is very reassuring.  We are on the precipice of serious financial catastrophe as well as other calamities waiting in the wings.  My point is a simple one; aside from the saving of money, I'm no longer addicted to an expensive habit which might not always be available in the future. The future is going to be rough enough, now is a great time to beat this addiction!  Imagine if you don't decide on your own to quit; what if someone else makes the choice for you?

Quitting smoking boils down to one thing, and that is desire.  If in your heart of hearts you really don't want to quit, you will just find a reason not to.  If you are going to be successful at becoming a non-smoker you are going to need to desire that outcome more than any other factor.  You have to want it, simple as that, because when you want it you will find a way to accomplish your goal.

Your personal level of commitment will determine your success or failure.

As mentioned, I have tried five times before to quit smoking, and each time because I did not desire it enough, it didn't work.  What I ultimately did to quit smoking was simple only because of my desire finally being strong enough.

My point here is that if you pick a stop smoking technique/program, go cold turkey or whatever; I believe any of them will help you succeed but only if your desire is powerful.

 It isn't about one technique vs another, not about better than or hard strict maxims.  What it IS about; is designing a quit smoking plan that will work for you, and then doing every step every day, until you come out the other side a non-smoker.  I'm not saying that the method I used will work for you, just that it worked for me, once I committed to quitting.

When Trump was selected president I could tell right off that it activated some long dormant PTSD because my smoking went from half a pack a day up to a pack and a half in less than a month.  Simultaneously a few other stressors gained intensity in my life, and to help cope, I was practically chain smoking despite the effect it continued to have on my health.

Over my several attempts at quitting I have tried seemingly everything to gain a little edge over the addiction.  Tried gradually reducing the number of cigarettes, tried patches, with no cigarettes on hand; tried the gums, & nicotine candy and none of it worked until I hit upon the right combination of factors.  This time my desire was thru the roof because continuing to smoke even half a pack a day was having noticeably bad results on my already challenged health.  I'd finally had enough of the coughing, hacking up phlegm every morning; not to mention those horribly effective anti-smoking public service announcements.  I Finally got tired of having folks (and myself) think I wasn't strong enough to quit.  Finally the time to quit arrived, I could feel it in the air.

My master plan for finally giving up tobacco began with the Nicoderm transdermal patch system, which became a daily regimen.  These patches leach nicotine into the system, and some folks skin is a little sensitive, so it is best to switch sides from day to day, and also to use three or four locations (front/back) on each arm, making sure never to put a patch near your heart.  Now, you can smoke a real cigarette a few times a day if needed to help wean yourself, bit it is not recommended as it could cause heart palpitations.  If you must sneak a smoke here & there to augment the patches, just remember each one is reinforcing the habit you want to stop!

From previous attempts I already knew that when I was on the quit it was very difficult to have any cigarettes in the house without smoking.  Conversely having none at all when the cravings hit was far worse.  I had to have a different approach, so I set last December 31st as my absolute quit day after being on the patches nearly 10 weeks; and got rid of every cigarette in the house, except for one...which I told myself I could smoke any time I wanted to flush away my string of non-smoking days.  It worked!

The first 2 weeks was the hardest for me.  I have my one cigarette in a clear plastic tube displayed on my computer desk, right in plain view.  I must have looked at it a hundred times the first 14 days.  Every time I wanted to smoke that last ever cigarette, I'd breathe deep, loving the ease with which I could now fill my lungs; and remembering all the reasons I quit.  It soon became a test of strength, and the cigarettes lost.  As long as that one last cigarette remains imprisoned on my desk, I win. 

Testing has shown that just 12 hours without smoking returns your carbon monoxide levels to normal.  After 2 weeks with no tobacco both your circulation and lungs will improve.  From 2 to 9 weeks after quitting tobacco, coughing has reduced because the "cilia" lining the lungs are working normally again.  After 1 year of being smoke free your risk of heart disease drops by half.  Start today!

So tomorrow will be 40 days of freedom for me.  By using the patches to gradually decrease my nicotine intake I never had to deal with the dreaded crawling spiders withdrawal symptom, and once that was de-fused the rest as they say was a walk in the park.  Already I am noticing very nicely improved breathing, that raspy sound all but gone now, lung capacity is returning.  At the same time I was quitting I installed  a Pur water filter on my kitchen sink with the attitude that if I'm dumping all the chemicals I used to put in my body; I may as well get serious with it!  So now my lungs are breathing free again, and coffee tastes awesome without all the chemicals in the water.

I can easily say that quitting tobacco has improved both memory and other cognitive functions for me, it's kinda like when the fog burns off over the golden gate bridge every morning...everything's clearer now.  Most of all I have proven false the notion that it's a bad idea to quit smoking during stressful times.  I think it works just the opposite; I think the stress is a great motivator to quit for good.


Now, I'd be lying if I implied in any way that I haven't had to deal with a few urges to smoke over the last 39 days.  Certainly the urge does arise; sometimes at predictable moments, and other times not so much.  I think not smoking while writing has been the hardest, as if the plume of cigarette smoke was necessary somehow.  The key is in winning the fight one urge at a time, you just keep saying "No" to the urges, every one of them.  Before long those urges become memories, as in  I remember when I used to smoke, the key here is reinforcing the notion that I don't do that anymore.

Smoking didn't put me in a wheelchair but it was sure keeping me in one by robbing my legs of precious air in the bloodstream.  The longer I put off quitting smoking, the less stamina I had for walking.  At its worst, before I quit smoking, I could be on my feet no more than 3 or 4 minutes before the legs began screaming in pain for air; forcing me back in the wheelchair.  39 days smoke free and the stamina is back up to around 10 minutes on my feet before I must sit down again.  It will never give me back my legs, but quitting tobacco has given me back my lungs, and that ain't small potatoes. 

 If there is any downside it's that I gained 15 pounds during my quit process.  No problem, I can shed 15 lbs, done so before; can do so again.  That's another positive side effect to quitting, it shows you that you can do something you thought you'd never be able to do.  To walk away from the one master that can influence your life so much is a powerful thing; and after the doing of it, you are filled with a renewed sense of self confidence; on the hunt for the next nasty habit in need of breakage.  To break free from tobacco you must break it's hold on your psyche, and that is done by no longer accepting as truth, the lie that the nicotine tells every day.  The lie that you cannot break free.  Think about it, if that was true, why the need for daily reinforcement?  Quit believing the lie. That is the first step in quitting tobacco.

What I am telling you is that if I can walk away from cigarettes after 44 years a smoker; so the hell can you.  If your desire to stop is great enough and your motivation powerful enough nothing can prevent you from just walking away from smoking.  But first you are going to have to want to quit.  Until you want that outcome, it will never happen, because energy follows thought.  Simple as that!

90 Day Update:
After three full months without a smoke 
(and 5 weeks with no patches;)
there are still times
I really want one, but I resist because
I'm breathing better & easier, and
I'm sleeping better.
Food tastes good again,
Clothes no longer smell of smoke!
and I only think about smoking
maybe once or twice a day, 
then it fades away.
~~
12 Month Update:
One year Smoke Free!!

© 2017 full re-post with permission only 


~Related Augureye Posts~
My San Francisco VAcation *
Sovereign Souls~part-2



~Other Voices~


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Wednesday, February 1, 2017

American Coup D'etat

First they said he could never win the republican nomination.  Next they said that he could never actually win the election.  Then they said he wouldn't really steal health care from 20 million Americans, that he would back down from the wall and the Muslim ban.  After just 12 days in office Trump has proven all of "them" wrong as he continues to wreck havoc with every decree and proclamation.

We have already seen that Trump creates his own desired reality, with him firmly at the center of his own world.  When we see what he has done, & promises to do next the old analogy of a bull in a china shop comes to mind.  Of course he has ordered his people to muddy the waters as much as possible as he continues to ignore protocols that have been in place for many decades.  So far I have only heard 2 people call this travesty what it really is; Bill Maher and Michael Moore who agree it is an American Coup D'etat.  At this point less than two weeks since his inauguration I am wondering to myself when we are going to start taking Trump at his word, and impeach him before he launches the nukes he said he'd use?
This of course is not the first American Coup D'etat, the last one was 54 years ago when they assassinated JFK because he wanted to smash the CIA.  They smashed first, and the rest is just revisionist history, like what Trump & his gang of thieves are currently doing, trying to push back then re-write history.  This time it's a slow moving  Corporate coup d'etat because they learned a little from the last one. This time they put America on the slow boil; just like you cook a lobster, hoping nobody would notice until it was too late.

For any who may think the idea of Trump launching nukes is reactionary, you may not think so after hearing that Trump just put Iran "on notice" after they conducted a missile test last Sunday.  Then there is Putin's renewed military ops in Eastern Ukraine which may test Trump's Russia connection.  These are worrisome events on any day, perhaps even more so if you consider how eager Trump is to distract from his setting up a fascist regime in the peoples house.  A little war hawk action might be just the thing to rally folks around their leader; it worked for W!

Trump is a cancerous growth on the soul of America.  If we take action NOW by impeachment & imprisonment (treason) we may just give democracy the second chance it so desperately needs.  Leaving Trump in office heralds the absolute death of democracy and the installation of fascist Nazi tyranny.  Never forget that his first action as president was to attempt to silence all federal agencies, prohibiting them from speaking with either congress or the media; and then introducing the Orwellian concept of "alternative facts."  Those are not the acts of a president, they are the opening acts of a Trump dictatorship; and that simply cannot be allowed to fester further than it already has.

With virtually zero notice Trump ordered the immediate implementation of his Muslim ban & "extreme vetting" immigration policy.  The result was almost instantaneous pandemonium at airports around the country and overseas, as families were split apart and even those having green cards were detained as enemies of the state.  Meanwhile we are left to wonder why the ban did not include the countries which the 911 terrorists supposedly came from.  That simply makes no sense at all.


 The Muslim ban has generated massive protests in many countries around the world, and in American airports the very surreal sight of Muslims kneeling in prayer and Americans reassuring them with support!  Trump was crying for a full week about how he wanted bigger crowds shouting his name; well now he has it.

It's not just we the people who are upset over the Muslim ban; Trump's state department is in dissent, which resulted in Trump telling acting Attorney General Sally Yates, "You're Fired."  More than 1000 state department employees are in open rebellion against the Trump administration, all of them signing a letter of dissent.

While airports around the country were clogged with the chaos Trump caused, and protesters were filling the streets of cities all over the world: he was holding a family screening of "Finding Dory" in the white house.  That kind of speaks for itself, and what it says is chilling indeed.  We are all currently experiencing reality at the rate of several WTF's a minute!

Veterans groups have publicly denounced Trump's Muslim ban, calling it "Flat out shameful and un-American."  Being a veteran myself I can tell you from first hand experience that Trump in the white house has seriously jump-started my own struggle with PTSD.  An awful lot of progress I thought I'd made has just been wiped away by this Nazi loving tyrant becoming president.  Hyper-vigilance has resurfaced after many years of being dormant.  My sleep cycle has been destroyed, and when I do manage to sleep, some of the old nightmares have returned; along with a whole rash of new ones with Trump's face on them.  If Trump isn't removed from office it's gonna be PTSD and not health care for everyone, and we'll all be living life one nightmare at a time.  I sure picked one hell of a time to quit smoking!

Trump has issued no fewer than 20 executive orders in his first 10 days on the job.  At this rate it should only take a few weeks to fully install the fourth Reich.  He also just gave white supremacist chief advisor Steve Bannon a permanent seat on the security council; which is just an insult to democracy.  The democrats in congress have drafted a strongly worded letter of disapproval over installing a unqualified hack like Bannon, insisting that Trump reverse his decision immediately. The problem is that Bannon owns Breitbart news which is the website of the alt-right cadre.  
For crying out loud Bannon is just another internet troll like Trump.  Bannon has exactly zero government experience.  Bannon is not an attorney.  He has no experience whatsoever with international foreign policy, and therefore does not deserve any level of security clearance and could most easily pass state secrets and info to our enemies, and the same goes for Trump.  Neither of these men have a shred of decency or integrity between them, and they both have to go, by any means necessary, and as soon a possible.  In exactly the same way that Dick the prick Cheney was Bush's brain; so too Bannon is Trumps brain; and mad max showed us why they must be separated.

An equally huge insult is Trump's running the government like a reality TV show with the  supreme court appointment of Neil Gorsuch to replace late ultra conservative Antonin Scalia; advertised like a prime time special instead of a daytime press release.  Trump desperately needs the distraction from the Muslim ban mess he started but the Gorsuch confirmation hearings threaten to drag on towards historic lengths due to all the routine petty in-fighting in the capitol.  Democrats are considering this a stolen seat because of the republican ten month long filibuster which denied Merrick Garland, Obama's choice for the supreme court.  Business as usual, but with a newborn dictator in the oval office.
Another of those 20 decrees is the un-American and un-ethical, denying of funding to Sanctuary cities. San Francisco and several other cities are taking legal action and suing the Trump administration in court to keep the much needed funding in place.  What this man and his gang of plunder monkeys are doing is an abomination to all that this country was founded on.  What about the idea that America is the great melting pot, a crucible which makes us stronger by adding our skills to a common cause, a goal, yes, a dream.  Better yet what about those words displayed so proudly on the statue of liberty:

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"

Both Microsoft and Amazon have joined a lawsuit to stop this illegal Muslim ban.  The Trump administration continues to fall back upon "alternative facts" with Trump & Spicer calling it a ban; at the same time others are saying it isn't a ban.  Their insistence that both "facts" are true would be hilarious if it wasn't playing out right in front of our eyes.  This level of malfeasance is nothing but intentional incompetence! We will very soon be at the point where civil suits against this administration will equal the number of official state proclamations.

We must never normalize this fascist, racist, misogynist  Trump.  NO!~ not ever.  We the people need to throw it right back in his face, impeach him, imprison him, and make him pay for it.  In his first 12 days he acts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, invokes an immigration freeze and illegal ban on Muslims, and orders the wall begun; then slaps a gag order on federal agencies barring them from speaking to the press.  Can a decree giving Trump control over the internet be far behind?  Not only does this delusional despot dream up his own reality on the fly, he seems very intent upon silencing all voices but his.  That ain't a democracy folks, it's a dictatorship.  Simple as that.

Trump also wants to evict the press corps from the white house, which is yet another trashing of a long standing tradition.  His stated plan is to construct or designate a separate building with four times the floor space.  This is a clever idea which allows Trump to claim he's accommodating the press better than ever before; when in reality it is a ruse which allows him to fill the room with people from Breitbart & Enquirer so he can ignore reporters from the legitimate press. This clever idea isn't Trump's, but rather borrowed from a historical figure you may have heard of, Adolph Hitler.

The democrats meanwhile, are doing a fine job of foot dragging thru the confirmation process of Trump's cabinet appointees.  They simply don't have the votes to block or deny any of the appointees (without help from renegade republicans) but they can obfuscate, delay and in general dick around exactly how the republicans did to Obama for 8 years and in so doing prove that the system is indeed NOT broken, but rather designed & upgraded to operate exactly how it does.  Insiders in Trump's white house have let it be known that the new fuhrer is furious over this delaying tactic.  Good, now he knows how people feel about the on-going  delay in releasing his taxes.

"This president is going down such a far wrong-headed path.  
These executive orders they are really off the chart,  
and this most recent one, the Muslim ban...
It is just astonishing that we would have a president of the United States
 enact an order within a week of becoming president; 
that is so fundamentally at the core un-American, immoral, un-constitutional." 
                                                               ~ Anthony Romero~ Executive Director ACLU

The very speed at which Trump is attempting to move, wiping out things he dislikes with a broad sweeping blitzkrieg campaign worries me more than just a little, and it should damn well worry you as well.  He is piling up so much negative feedback so quickly that instead of pulling some trite diversion he may just need a convenient false flag event on American soil with which to consolidate his authority and control.  Again taking a page from the Hitler playbook; think Reichstag fire.
Here's the thing about letting a dictator into your government: it's a lot like that old Arab story about the camel in the tent.  Before long there is only room for the dictator.  If nobody stops the newly installed dictator, he becomes emboldened & he makes a few more even more draconian decrees and before too long you have to be careful what you say about Trump; but oh wait...Kellyanne Conway has already warned us about that exact thing, imagine that!!

Donald Trump is not going about the business of making America great again, he is destroying the foundation of what America is supposed to be one executive order at a time.  He attempts to silence free speech within his own administration, and his own people want us to accept their Orwellian "alternative facts" yet when Spicer or Ryan get a question they don't like, they just run away like cowards.  Motivated by petty revenge and a malignant, narcissistic ego; Trump is seeking to erase any good Obama might have managed to do...all because of being proven "wrong" on the whole "birther" distraction.  Trump has repeatedly shown himself to be a weak, vindictive bully who's real war isn't with the media, its with reality.

In an article last week a former top Trump aide confessed that in the beginning Trumps bid for the white house was created as a protest candidacy; and that they were only going for around 12% of the total vote.  Now this week there is another article saying that Trump is already trying to weasel out of being president, because obviously he's not just not qualified for the job, he seems somehow lost in the enormity of it all.  Just one more reason to be very concerned with what this unstable despot might try to do next.

It is my sincere hope that there are still some real Americans left in the system who will stand for decency and what is moral; & stand up to Trump and his plunder monkeys.  To be sure, they pretty much all have to go; all of Trump's advisors, enablers and handlers are gonna have to get the heave-ho along with the orange one and his children.  We may get stuck with a President Pence, but just maybe we can deal with that far easier than 4 years of Caligula.

"The presidency is supposed to age the president, not the population"
                                   ~Jon Stewart~

There are already several groups attempting to organize impeachment proceedings on their websites.  Rather than single any one of them out as worthy of support I simply add my own voice to the growing chant of "Impeach Trump Now."  Certainly this is history in the making as no former president has ever so richly deserved impeachment this soon after taking office.  Trump is guilty of several impeachable offenses in addition to conspiring with the Russians to hack the election results; for which he deserves no less than a quick trial followed by immediate incarceration at Gitmo as an enemy of the state.  Can't help the attitude folks, as I said, I am a veteran and I take treason very seriously.  You should too.
Today Trump's approval slipped below 43% which is historically significant because he exceeded 50% disapproval rating faster and biglier than anyone before him in recent memory.  It took Trump just 7 days to hit 50% disapproval.  It took Obama 580 days to reach this mark, Bill Clinton took 152 days; whereas GW Bush took 1200 days to be so widely despised  because he rode the sympathy wave of 911 until that wore off because people began seeing him for what he was.

With so much dissent building so quickly against the Trump regime; I am wondering how long before we see North Korean style proclamations that Trump's approval rating is 100% because everybody in the country loves their perfect leader.  I imagine it will come very quickly if he is permitted to evict the press corps from the white house, because there will be a need to silence all opposition, and the day we allow him to do that is the day we will have lost our country.  

We the People need to shake off our habitual shackles of perception and see the crystal clear truth; which is our nations government has been compromised by an unholy alliance of racist, fascist zealots who will not stop until their Nazi agenda is fulfilled by America becoming the fourth Reich.  That is why  We the People must either stop them in their tracks right now, or loose this country forever.  It may already be too late.

© 2017 full re-post with permission only

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Saturday, January 28, 2017

The Emperor's Ego

This week NASA announced that soon after the inauguration, Donald Trump's ego could now be seen from space.  They went on to allude that if it keeps growing, it may soon envelop the earth like an aura.  Not normally known for their sense of humor, perhaps NASA is pushing back against Trump's executive mandate placing a gag order on all federal agencies; forbidding them to speak with either congress or the press. 

This came as Trump also ordered white house computers scrubbed clean of climate change data, LGBT issues, and several others which somehow offend his sense of reality.  At this point I have to wonder if he thinks deleting all that data makes it disappear from everywhere.  A preview of coming distractions.

Trump made a very big deal about photo ops of him signing various new executive orders, as if that alone made them into laws.  Has he so soon forgotten Obama's famous photo op of him signing the executive order to close Gitmo?  Eight long and disappointing years later: Obama is gone and Gitmo is still there.  Those staged photos are typical of Trump the showman who is so very fond of fake props; like all those blank folders on the press conference table allegedly "proving" that he had divested himself of his business empire when in fact he has not done that.  Smoke & mirrors.


He did it again yesterday when he signed an executive order pulling America out of the TTP [trans pacific partnership] which is all well and fine, except America never signed onto or into the TTP, but that doesn't matter because now Trump can claim credit for it.  It's all about ego gratification with this one.  Every single thing comes down to glorifying him, as he recently put it "I am glad you all have the privilege of being privileged to support me."

One by one as they occurred during the campaign we scoffed at and then forgot all the red flags warning of a runaway ego we were seeing; despite how many of them there were, we ignored them, perhaps feeling he'd never get elected.  Guess what?  He not only got elected but a full week after the inauguration he is still whining and obsessing about how many people attended his swearing in; insisting there were a million and a half people in that crowd under sunny skies.  (it was raining, and @ 400,000 showed up).  Oddly, he never mentioned seeing the billowing black smoke of burning limousines six blocks away in the free speech zone.


Maybe he can see the future and was actually looking at the women's March on Washington which occurred 24 hours after his swearing in, as well as in 30 other countries around the globe.  That was one impressive day of protest; and aides close to Trump the thin-skinned say he was furious after seeing videos of all the protests around the country, and planet. 

Not only that, but despite 'yuge' evidence to the contrary, Trump continues to insist he only lost the popular vote because of 3 to 5 million zombie voters using their power to cast illegal votes for Clinton.  Hope it soothes her pain to know she had the zombie vote locked down.  Again and again we see his flashes of anger when challenged or contradicted on any issue.  Evidently being raised as the spoiled brat son of a tycoon taught Donald Trump very little about Breaking Free From Ego. 


In the past Trump has said that a man without an ego is a loser, but he has to say that because his malignant ego won't allow him to acknowledge otherwise.  A healthy balanced ego is necessary to a wholesome healthy life, yet there is very little that is balanced about Trump's ego.  The out of control ego is a fear based creature who then totally operates from that core of fear.  It is indeed that very fear which motivates and drives Donald Trump to be the blustering egocentric self-absorbed narcissist that he is.

He boasts that his IQ is something like 155 or whatever, and we are forced to wonder if he is aware that if that was correct; it would put him in the top 1% of the worlds intellects.  Now I am sure he would just accept that as a natural fact, but it isn't even an alternative fact.  It's just plain absurd.  The word around the campfire is that Trump's famously fragile ego is an extension of his malignant narcissism.

Nearly everything he says comes back to shine light on Donald Trump.  His brittle and child-like ego is so oversized it must be fed constantly, and adoringly.  These personality traits we saw glimpses of during the campaign are living in the peoples house now; and that means that like it or not, we are all in his reality now, and had better get used to the new way of things or we might get blinked out into the cornfield by a powerful child, like in an old episode of the Twilight Zone.  Twilight Zone, pretty much sums up where we are now.
Have you noticed that Trump never answers questions with direct, specific or accurate replies?  That is so he can never be nailed down to anything concrete.  The other night when asked about who would pay for the wall; Trump said that Mexico would pay for it, "in a long complicated form."  What exactly does that mean?  He won't say.  He's slippery this one, but then we already knew that. 

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts."

As a nation we should be very concerned when within the same week Trump's PR team trotted out alternative facts, then he issues a gag order on the EPA, NASA, and other federal agencies, prohibiting them from talking either to congress or the press in any manner.  This isn't just illegal, it's absolutely, positively, totally wrong on every level.  This is Trump and his Nazi-loving ego turning America into a fascist state.  Simple as that!
        
In the same interview with David Muir we saw Trump do his slithering when asked about the conversation in the limousine with Obama on inauguration day.  Trump qualifies his answer by saying "Obama might disagree with my answer" as a subliminal way of telling us he is lying.  Sometimes I watch him, and listen to the things he says, and am convinced he is borderline delusional.  Behold his daily twitter rants about imaginary slights that he should be way too busy to deal with, but he puts feeding his giant ego before the affairs of state.

As already mentioned Trump sat thru several photo op sessions signing various sheets of paper, (this time with actual words on them) to show his supporters he was keeping his campaign promises.  Perhaps the most nebulous of these 'orders' and decrees is the one he signed authorizing construction of the wall, which he now says American taxpayers will pay for, with Mexico reimbursing us in some form some day.  How about we take a closer look at this proposed wall and what it will really cost to build it.  Trump has promised us a one thousand mile long southern border wall between 30 to 50 feet tall.
First off I would be remiss if I failed to mention here that for quite some time now the Mexicans Trump is so worried about have been using tunnels to cross the border at will 24/7 so I have serious doubts how effective a wall will be.

Some engineering professionals addressed the cost of the wall, and this is what they came up with. A wall 1000 miles long, 50 feet tall & 15 feet deep will cost 3.9 Billion dollars; per mile for a total of about 40 billion dollars!  For comparison, the annual budget for NASA is around 20 million.  Even if we suspended all aid to Mexico it still wouldn't be enough to pay for Trump's wall.  Currently the border patrol agency has about 200 million dollars in its coffers and Trump has ordered it to be spent on beginning the wall and adding thousands of new border patrol agents which will conflict with his new federal hiring freeze.  Which is it?  A federal hiring freeze or thousands of new border cops??  You cannot do both!  Americans will be forced to pay for the wall via a new 20% tax on goods and services which Trump favors.  Bet you haven't heard him brag about that, have you? 


The proposed 15 foot depth of the wall is for structural integrity only and not intended to defeat tunneling efforts.  When El Chapo escaped from a Mexican maximum security prison, his people dug a one mile tunnel 50 feet deep right past all the prison defenses; so tell me more about how this wall will stop those determined to come here illegally.  Then we might want to visit with a fact before moving on; like the fact that over the last three years more Mexicans are leaving the United States than entering every year!  So, once again we must deduct the 'Trump embellishment factor' from the equation before getting anywhere near the truth.

Back to the subject of Trump's enormous ego, did you hear that he has issued a new decree that his inauguration day become "A day of patriotic devotion."  Devotion to what, Him?? The State? and oh yes he also wants to have missile parades as well.

 He also recently said that he may have to send federal troops into Detroit to quell all the shootings.  He has even hinted that we may be going back into Iraq, and when asked why, he just said, "We should have taken the oil when we were there" which just happens to be a violation of international law.  As we have so frequently seen, Trump thinks he is above the law, worse yet he believes now that he IS the law.  Do these things remind you of how dictators operate?

Donald Trump habitually denies doing things despite video evidence that he has.  He is a serial liar who, when challenged doubles down & gets loud.  He never admits to being wrong or mistaken even in the face of contrary evidence.  He doesn't see a problem with lying and cheating to get his way.  Trump simply creates his own version of reality the way he desires it to be, and anything challenging that gets attacked with vehemence.
His ego is in fact so brittle and fragile that during the campaign he took the bait about small hands mean something else was also small, and embarrassed himself and the country by insisting he has a 'yuge' penis. 

Here's the thing; his hands seem normal enough to me, period.  They probably are normal enough; but ever since a reporter called him "a short-fingered vulgarian" he's had this irrational insecurity over the size of his hands & fingers.  If he had never reacted to the taunt in the debate it might have never come up again but he did react, out of insecurity and now it's here to stay.  All he had to do was ignore it like a man, but he just couldn't leave it alone.  Maybe it's true after all that a man who can be baited by a tweet should never have the nuclear codes.  Oops, too late!

"The difference between Trump & Scientology is that Scientology has better celebrities"
                                                                             ~Bill Maher~

Trump's ego came right to the fore front when Time magazine announced him "Person of the Year."  He was not happy with that honor alone, told them to change it to "Man" of the year, which they ignored.  When it came to shooting the cover shot for the person of the year issue a very amusing thing happened.  Understanding his love of using props, a producer came up with the brilliant idea of having Trump pose at the presidents desk with a live (& tethered) bald eagle.
Everything went just fine until Trump reached over to pick something up.  The eagle took exception to the move and expressed its displeasure by jumping & flapping its wings a little; which sent Trump into a hilarious reaction.  Better by far than his fear response was the look on his face...simply priceless.  You can tell a lot about a man by how he responds to unexpected surprises.
Donald Trump frequently displays the more classic symptoms of narcissism in his public behavior.  It's as if all flattering adjectives are his personal possession.  It's always the biggest, the best, the most fabulous.  His personal love of himself is hardly concealed, and he actually believes himself to be a handsome, attractive specimen of masculine humanity. 

Trump openly speaks about the love and devotion of his followers as if he is some cult guru, when all they did was to vote for him over his opponent.  He just assumes their love and undying devotion.  Between his ego and his narcissism there isn't much room left for criticism; which was recently addressed by his top advisor Kellyanne Conway when she openly warned pundits and reporters to "Be very careful about how you criticize Trump."  Evidently the Wall Street Journal took the intimidation seriously, and announced that in the future they will not be calling Trumps lies, lies.  Instead they intend to use softer language like 'non validated' and 'challengeable' statements on Trump's part.

For half a century it has been the tradition that candidates for the presidency make public their personal tax returns as a means of proving they have no conflicts of interest which might be illegal or treasonous.   Trump knows this is the tradition, yet seems to feel it does not apply to his magnificence for whatever reason.  Every time he was asked to declare his taxes he said he couldn't because he was being audited.  That was just another lie, as the IRS pointed out in a press release indicating there is no law prohibiting someone under audit from declaring their tax returns if they wish to do so.

So, it isn't a legal matter but rather one of personal desire and wishes, and as he has repeatedly shown; Trump does not wish to release his tax returns.  In a recent 'press conference' the question arose once again, and this time the answer was that Trump "would not be making his taxes public now or in the future".  Just more smoke & mirrors.  More lies.  More narcissistic arrogance.  And this is just the first week!

Perhaps the more important issue here is why doesn't Donald want to release his taxes; unless maybe they would reveal just exactly how much money he has borrowed from Russia!  Because he filed bankruptcy five times, American lenders won't loan him a dime.  Trump had to go overseas for fresh money, and being masters at spotting weakness & vulnerability the Russians were quick to help him out.  The whole Russian election hacking and peeing prostitutes stories take on deeper verities when we understand the Russians always considered Trump as the weakest of the two presidential  candidates. Of course they're going to do whatever they can to help him "win."

Another thing to consider here is that this man who cannot get an American business loan because of serial bankruptcies has promised to run the nation just like he has his businesses.  I want all of you to remember down the road a piece; that he told you right up front he was going to bankrupt America!


As many are now aware, "Trump" is not Donald's original family name.  As a great many did when immigrating from 'the old country' his family changed their name upon arriving here...changed it from Drumpf, which when translated means "trump card."

Can't say as how I can blame them, I'd probably change it too: the point here however is that Donald J. Trump has spent his career turning the adopted family name into his personal business brand.  The brand is supposed to stand for the very best and highest quality products & services; yet time after time we see that everything Trump does is just so much smoke & mirrors, All show-No go.  From Trump university to his casinos and developing business, everything is just a fraud. 

Much like a fancy but empty piñata, only after paying for the ride do customers find no candy, and no Trump because he made off with the cash without paying contractors and other bills.  Trump dodges paying his fair share of taxes, saying it makes him smart, and whenever his business is floundering as they always seem to, he ducks out by filing chapter 11 bankruptcy.  Dodges the lash and takes the cash.  We've been Drumpfed folks. Simple as that.


 With all the furor over "alternative facts," the alt-right, & considering all the fakery we get from Trump you might think that mainstream news sources might be extra vigilant about such things; but you'd be wrong.  ABC News was recently caught using a cardboard cutout of Trump during a photo shoot to promote David Muir's interview with him.

Seems like just about everything connected with this fellow is downright fake; including the cake at the inaugural ball.  First off the "cake" was an exact duplicate of the "cake" used at Obama's inauguration ball.  Stranger still is the fact that both cakes were constructed from Styrofoam instead of flour; all except for one open spot to put in a real piece of cake for the photo op!!  You just can't get more symbolic than that folks.
Given the fast paced insanity which passed for a presidential campaign I can see how all those momentary flashes of insecurity, ego, narcissism, vanity and anger were not perhaps taken as seriously as they should have been.  In our busy daily lives we don't usually have the time needed for really looking into things beyond their surface appearances.  To be sure, Trump made it quite clear how he feels on a wide range of subjects; having at least two stances on each one.  He did not even attempt to hide the kind of person he has become. 

All that bravado is what he hides his true self behind.  From the fake hair to the spray-on tan, he is exactly as all his enterprises have been: empty, hollow facades behind which can be found no true substance, save the ego that can be seen from space.  It is more apparent than ever that the "free world" is now being led by an insecure  megalomaniac, narcissistic child-man with delusions of grandeur and a fragile ego; who saw a million and a half people who weren't there.  What could possibly go wrong?

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