Fern had been gone for a while the other day, and asked me what had been in the news. I said something like, "You know, the usual. Hillary, oil is down, the stock market is up, more riots, just things like that." Then we started listing off the many things happening around the world these days. Here is the list we came up with, which is not inclusive at all. It's just what we came up with in a short conversation.
- Hillary's latest antics
- Who will be the next president?
- Oil companies laying off, closing down or declaring bankruptcy
- More and more people are being dropped from the unemployment rolls because they have given up looking for a job; there aren't any that pay a living wage
- Another housing bubble is in the works
- The economy in Greece is faltering. What else is new? It has been faltering for a long time.
- The scourge of ISIS
- Putin and the Ukraine
- Iran and a nuclear deal with Obama
- Obama's treatment of Netanyahu and Israel
- Persecution of Christians
- Increase in antisemitism around the world
- The stock markets fluctuations which no longer mean anything since it is being propped up and manipulated daily
- Immigration, amnesty and illegal alien criminals
- People shooting cops
- Robots, drones and the latest smart phone
- Riots and protests using the technique of busing in folks with nothing to lose so they can stir up more serious trouble than would otherwise occur. Now that's community organizing.
- Rising racial tensions, thanks in part to the leadership of our country
- The gutting of the military, with forced retirement of many top officers who won't follow the new playbook
- Militarization of law enforcement
- Executive order after executive order after executive order
- Controversy over same sex marriage
- Abortion murdering millions of children every year
- Food rationing in some countries
- Western U.S. drought
- What happened to Ebola?
- They let the air out of the football! Can you believe that?!?
- There is no inflation even though you can't buy near the food with your paycheck that you could only six months ago
- Terrorism worldwide on the rise
- Unconstitutional court decisions
- Taxes, taxes and more taxes
And the list could go on, and on, and on, and on. Back to the question the title of this article asks. What is really going on? I truly believe that so many of the daily and weekly trumped up crises, or fear mongering news stories, are only distractions to cover up or divert our thoughts away from what's
really happening. What is truly happening in our world? All the above mentioned news stories go around and around in a circle, like a carousel. One head pops up for a few days, then it goes back down. Then another one pops it's head up, just like horses on a carousel. They go around and around and around. The organ continues to play carnival music, everybody is laughing and having a good time. Up and down, up and down. Are we being desensitized to what's really happening in the world? Are the above mentioned issues serious? Sure they are, but they keep coming up and going away, and after a while people become desensitized to what is really happening in the world.
What is really happening in the world? There are westernized type countries in South America where the military has taken over the distribution of food. Argentina for one. The country of Venezuela is imploding. Brazil is having the worst drought in history and in major cities
millions of people are running short of water. Don't even think about central Africa. They have things going on there that we don't talk about, we, meaning society in general, at the dining room table. What happened to those couple of hundred of high school girls that were abducted? Do you really want to truly think about what is happening to them at this moment? Look across the table at your granddaughter or daughter, and truly imagine how those high school girls lives are going right now. And not just in central Africa, look all across the Middle East and the southern Mediterranean countries, where people just like me and you are having their heads chopped off, or being burned to death, and the wives and little girls, again, we're not going to talk about what's happening to them.
Our borders. Yes, OUR borders are wide open. There are olive skinned people coming across the border, some estimates are thousands a day. Remember these are estimates. The Texas Department of Public Safety recently estimated that between 10 and 100 radical terrorists from Middle Eastern extraction are crossing the Mexican border daily. So, let's give these people Social Security benefits, all medical benefits, unemployment, an accelerated program to get their drivers license, food stamps, welfare and a free and appropriate public education. Let's talk about those 10 to 100 extremists as estimated by the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Let's say their numbers are blown way out of proportion for sensationalism. It's a long border from Brownsville, Texas to San Diego, California. Let's say there's 10 a day. That's only 3650 per year. That's only about 20,000 in the last six years. So, what kind of damage can 20,000 individuals committed to destroying the Great Satan (the United States) and infidels (Christians) do? What kind of damage can these 20,000 people truly do? What about their local sympathizers that have been here for years? What about the ones that we are importing because of political strife in their countries? We bring them in by the plane load everyday, legally. What if the Department of Public Safety is correct and there are 100 crossing everyday? That's only 200,000 over six years. Throw in the forever silent sympathizers. Add in the ones we are flying in daily from Syria and Iraq.
Now let's add a couple of things together here. Let's say there are a few million people here in this country that have been trained, conditioned mentally to do atrocities, like we see in central Africa, the Middle East and the southern Mediterranean countries. Now while you're sitting there at your dining room table, think about your husband or son with his head chopped off. And then look over at your daughter or granddaughter and envision in your mind what's happening to those 200 high school girls, and try to convince yourself that this is okay. This about to be the norm.
So, go back over and hop on your little wooden pony with a pole going through it's body, and ride up and down and up and down, and laugh and play and listen to the organ music. Because this is what is coming.
You are aware that there are places in Europe where law enforcement does not go. There are places in France and Denmark that practice a different law than what the local government supports. There is a disease consuming our world, and we are doing nothing to stop it. There are parts of the world that have already been consumed. And there are countries in Europe where the population has a significant minority that has their own rules and laws. The United States also has a significant minority that is growing daily. And you might say, these are only the radical extremists. I say different. The silent group affiliated with these radical extremists, the silent groups that do nothing, are an accessory to rape and heinous murder.
It's too late to stop this movement. But you had better be aware of it. All these other news stories are just distractions, and there are lots of other distractions, too. Don't forget your
television, because when you sit down tonight to watch TV, you are being
conditioned to believe that everything is Okay. When you're watching
NASCAR, or the big football game, or whatever sporting event is the
season of preference, or when you watch that 30 minute sitcom that makes
humor about events that 50 years ago people went to prison for, you are
being conditioned for what is coming. Folks we've lost this battle. Our ship has sunk. You need to get prepared to swim.
Let's do a quick review here. Evil has been loosed on our society. You and I, and our government has allowed this to spread. Now it is here. Just take a minute and quit looking at the purple car going around in a circle
(NASCAR) and look around. Look at Africa, look at Europe, look at the United States, look at all those news worthy events mentioned above, and then look at the radical insurgents that have consumed our world. And now one last time, envision all the men in your family with their heads chopped off, and picture all the girls and women in your family having things done to them that are unimaginable. Okay. Now you can go back to watching the purple car go around in a circle, or maybe you can watch a bunch of athletes pat each other on the butt, or high five about how great they are. Reality is not always a pretty picture. We are under attack. WAKE UP!!
Remember the words of our current president, "We are not a Christian nation."
We'll talk more later, Frank
Since we were blessed with an abundance of pears.....it was time to can them up.
To start this project off, we cleaned up the kitchen and brought in a few more cases of jars from the storage shed. You can never have too many jars. We weren't really planning on getting this many pears to preserve, but are very thankful we did.
Since we were going to be working on the pears, I put the lima beans on to cook for lunch. They could do their thing without much attention from me.
Now all of the jars, lids and rings are washed and ready. It's time to get started on the pears.
I told a friend that I had 25 gallons of pears waiting at home to be processed and she told me her mother uses her apple peeler to peel their pears. We have had one since the days of Y2K, but it has never been out of the box - a new
antique. I was glad to hear it would work on pears since we had so
many, and I actually knew where it was. I got it out and had Frank
take a look at it to see how it worked and if he thought it might to the
job. It is a simple, but effective machine.
Since the pears had been sitting, ripening for a week, we
suspected they might be too soft to work with the peeler. They were.
But not for the reason we expected. The pear is 'speared' onto the shaft
of the peeler, then the peeling
blade is released to do it's work. It wasn't that the pear was too soft for the peeling
blade, the core of the pear was too soft to hold it in place, so the
pear started spinning around on the shaft instead of getting peeled. If
we have the chance to pick more pears, I will try this again when they are more firm. I think it would work great and save a lot of time.
But since it didn't work for this project, that meant some extra hours peeling by hand. That set us back several hours before we could fire up the water bath canner and we didn't think we would get them all finished in one day. But then the Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) system went down in many places around the country. That got us to thinking. Not knowing how long that system would be down and what the outcome might be, we decided to get all of the pears canned in case we may need to turn our attention to other things over the next few days.
After we got enough peeled and sliced for the first batch, we mixed up the syrup.
The ratio we ended up using was:
24 cups water
7 cups sugar
1/2 cup Fruit Fresh When the syrup was hot, we added the pears and let them heat for 5 minutes.
We heated the jars, rings and lids.....then we used a slotted spoon to dip out the pears, then ladled in the syrup. We used the water bath canner. When it came to boiling, we processed them for 25 minutes.
We found out that even though the slices may be pretty, they were kind of a pain to pack into the jars. For the next round of pear peeling, I cut the pears into chunks instead of slices. They packed much easier and I was able to get more pears in each jar.
I was very glad to see the bottom of the last bucket for the evening.
It was a pear-y, pear-y long day by the time the last of the jars came out of the canner. We ended up with 28 quarts of beautiful pears.
Now, going back to the shut down of the EBT system. Frank has a few thoughts he would like to share.
Being an avid news reader, I found multiple different excuses as to why the system went down. I also found official versions with different times that the system quit working and found this to be a little bit unnerving. Our state, Oklahoma, was one of the 17 states where the cards would not work. Hours past, and the cards still didn't work. Let me explain here. There are many people that need assistance and help from time to time. This is by no means finding fault with these people for their circumstances.
But I try to picture in my mind what it would be like in California, for example, which was one of the states that was effected by the outage, what would really happen if this system didn't come back up. What would all of these people do? Where are they going to get food and the other necessities that they need to live? Could this happen in our society? Now we know that the answer is yes, it can happen. There is an old saying, "If something can happen, It will." Food for thought. It's always a good idea to follow the Boy Scout motto, "Be Prepared." Some day, some where, some how, one of these major systems is going to shut down. Here's your wake up call folks. Pay attention. The wolf is at the door. May God help us all.
Frank and Fern
