His Presence Will Linger

Echoes of Bill Cooper's fatal shootout with the cops apparently reverberated throughout Arizona earlier this month when one Drew Maras -- described as a UFO researcher -- was shot dead by a sheriff's deputy, but not before he allegedly killed another and may have murdered a New Hampshire couple in Arizona as well.

The 30-year-old had written a book entitled Open Your Eyes to 2012 and Beyond some time back, Frankly, I've never heard of Mr. Maras, but then I'm kinda on the sidelines anymore, and the "New Age" stuff never really appealed to me -- particularly the dross wielded by unstable people who seem, nonetheless, as normal as you and I. Whatever normal is. "The World Gone Crazy," as I recall, was a Glen Campbell song, never more appropriate than today (even as famed country singer Campbell has himself fallen prey to Alzheimer's).

William Cooper dead in a shootout. Drew Maras dead in a shootout. Paranormal writer D. Scott Rogo murdered. UFO researcher Morris K. Jessup dead years ago from suicide or murder or suicide or murder or. . .

I hate it when this kind of thing happens. People can point and say, see? I knew those UFO nuts were trouble, crazy, every one of 'em.

No wonder Washington congressional offices treat every letter and package received as if it contains mysterious white powder or something more immediate in the attention-getting department. Can you imagine the welcome afforded communication in any format from UFO "enthusiasts?"

Oh, oh, oh, Mr. Maras, if indeed you killed three people, the trouble didn't end with your homicides. Those of us who find it difficult even to get up the nerve to announce publicly that we gather UFO reports must now live like the undead in the shadow of your horrors. UFO skeptics will shake their heads with disapproval and debunkers will party on.

You, Mr. Maras, are dead, but definitely not gone. I curse your UFO research involvement, and extend my sympathies to the families you've destroyed.

AUTISM AIN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE? The greatest thing about being a non-professional is the freedom of not needing to lick the boots of higher-up authorities to justify my existence. Yes, I have a bachelor's degree, but I don't swing it around like Billy Jack with a bat. Who cares anyway? In fact, when asked where my degree is from, I tend to reply and then, gasping breathlessly, the inquirer's follow-up question is, "Oh my god, you attended Julliard?!" Heck no, I respond, I said I went to Julie-Odd, and that's a whole different place altogether! Yep.

However, I have, during my old USAF years, worked in hospitals, sometimes with profoundly retarded people -- and don't let 'em intimidate you, retarded is a perfectly good word and must remain in all dictionaries of the miserable future.

I mention this because it appears that the folks who look inside our heads for a living -- and for lucrative government research grants -- have apparently decided that diagnosing one in 100 children with autism might be a bit enthusiastic, and revisions will be made in the DSM (the numeric bible of health care) to reflect this. That is, standards for diagnosing autism will be tightened up and as a consequence those who no longer qualify as autistic will probably lose benefits and autism-specific care. Truth be told -- rather, suspected -- I believe that the professional autism peddlers dug a hole so deep that they don't know how to perform self-extrication, except by pulling up and out ever so gradually.

I do accept that autism exists, just as I accept that Down syndrome exists. These are serious medical matters and I applaud health care workers who deal with these diagnoses.

Nonetheless, a little teeny-tiny part of me always teeters on the sidelines and watches psychologists do their deeds. Sometimes I think there are so many psychology students that they must clamor for projects to keep their little minds busily engaged in finding things wrong or different about us so they can convert their brilliance into government grant money and the opportunity to create new numbers for the wretched, yet blessed, DSM. In the DSM, you see, every diagnosis you have is assigned a computerized number. Big government loves the DSM, insurance companies love the DSM, and attorneys love the DSM. The DSM numbers make us what we are, from head to toe, and diversity in diagnosing, despite what you've been told about the wonders of diversity, is a sin. If one lacks a DSM numbered diagnosis, by George, there's a medical professional out there to find one, and the individual will always learn that, in the health care system, one size fits all. Thanks to pharmaceutical companies, there's only so much individualizing, no time for that in today's world.

But. . .yes, autism, and there's that other little disturbing social aspect -- the "facilitators" who assist the autistic in typing out their wishes, desires and responses on keyboards. At first, years ago, facilitators were felt to be almost magical in their ability to draw thoughts out of those seemingly unable to communicate.

Yeah, but then dark clouds began to gather and some peculiar things started to be noted in courtrooms and other institutions. Questions were raised, legitimate questions, over whether the facilitators were, with genius, guiding autistic fingers to type out what the facilitators wanted them to type out. As things stand today, the facilitator's role in some circles is beginning to look like something out of Houdini's book of wonders, to say the least, may we suggest.

So DSM standards are being revised and maybe one out of every 100 kids is indeed not autistic. I predict that ratios and numerical figures will change drastically in the years ahead. They must. How can we have one out of 100 autistic, with exponential expectations that in years just around the turnpike there would be 10, then 25, then 85 out of 100? What society would survive? We suspect the numbers are fudged and the piles of government money tempting. No more.

If these were burn-you-at-the-stake times in human history, I am just about to be smokin' hot, because I'm going to say something so simple, yet so inflammatory, that I already feel like an ash. An ash, not an ass.

Remember high school? Remember elementary school? Remember people you encountered since the day you were born? In my day, there were people merely classified by their communities as one thing: Stupid. Born stupid, and stayed that way. It wasn't anything to be ashamed of, it just was. Stupid.

But, ah, we're in the age of enlightenment now, and everybody has some flaw that must be acknowledged, written up, diagnosed and treated or cured with The Drug Of The Day, with the help of The Gods Of Medical Professionalism. The fact that so many are bent toward psychology and need to get their hands out of their pockets To Help Every Human Or Lose Government Grants Trying is a great thing, isn't it?

They have medications for attention deficit disorder, don't they? You do have attention deficit disorder, don't you, little Justin? You're not just bored or overly creative, are you, little Tom ? They shoot horses, don't they? Come on, kids, it's so much easier just to take your medication and make your teachers' lives in the classroom less headache-prone. Drugs are good for you, just ask the drug dealer on the street or Big Pharma representatives.

Legitimate, serious, death-defying human illnesses and conditions proliferate out there, no doubt about it, and I'm not addressing those here, as I, nevertheless, slowly tighten the noose around my own politically incorrect neck.

Consider the era in which we live. In youth sports, every child often gets a team trophy, no matter their ranking. In fact, on many kids' teams there can be no losers, and sometimes not even winners. Yes, every child gets a trophy and they learn that nobody loses, and nobody wins. Diversity. Equalization. Lies, distortions and rumors have become truth, perhaps as
never before in this country.

But what about the kid who plays no sports? What of children or adults who possess no athletic ranking on some chart or in the trophy room, yet -- yet, they suffer from some condition, some malady, something different from healthier people? Not to despair, there is something they can get, something to verify their existence and status in society. It's called a medical diagnosis. Everybody get something, and currently one can proudly display a medical diagnosis as confidently as a trophy to tell the world, I'm somebody special, darn it, and I have my own DSM number to prove it.

That's why I gaze upon the 1-in-100 autism figure with some skepticism. The more, the better, as far as researchers are concerned. The more the merrier. Autism researchers, like their fellows of other health science disciplines, live and die based upon the acquisition of hefty grants, generally government grants. But, you ask, isn't the research peer-reviewed? Oh yes, it's all "peer-reviewed," usually by peers who themselves depend upon grants to conduct their own particular studies.

Peer-review can be a good thing. You know how your doctor has insisted that you drink a little red wine or grape juice daily or eat red grapes because a substance called Resveratrol is good for you? Hmm, according to news reports, seems that a new review of one researcher's data on that subject has discovered falsification of the findings. Seems that if the main thing red wine is gonna getcha is alcoholism, should you really embrace yet another apparently fallen medical miracle from people with fat money grants? Where was peer-review the first time around? I realize that so far there is only one "minor player" involved, but even one is one too many, and I don't care how vigorously the industry for Resveratrol is hollering at the moment. Now do I sound like such a monster, beating up on the alleged autistic who may be not autistic at all, but perhaps just slower in space and time traditionally, yet encouraged by their caretakers to meet the standards of autism? One jar of ointment and one fly is all it takes.

Remember the point I made at the start. The autism industry -- oops, pardon me -- the autism research people and the government are cutting back on the symptoms of the disorder and firming up the standards. I merely ask, if things weren't quite what the knowledgeables among us touted so loudly, then somewhere there's a very disturbing fly in the healing/curative ointment. May we expect more re-defining of autism and exclusions of more members of this very exclusive club? Anybody consider that too much TV performing babysitting duties for infants and young minds might figure into an early lack of personal communication and socialization? Would it not be best to make sure that funds directed toward autism research not be shuffled to people who are not autistic? Hmm.

Want to get finger-pointy? Think about all the poor nutrition and chemical substances unleashed in the environment over generations. Those factors are probably the chief culprits where genetic alterations are involved -- or it could just be that human DNA is in the process of getting old, cranky, unpredictable and doomed as timed extinction approaches.

I wonder if there's a DSM number for that?

Watering the Taliban

My relationship with the documentation of UFO events ended a long time ago, and I've done my best to scan interesting documents still in my possession (so many other things went to now-defunct organizations), as you'll discover by reading from the very initiation of this blog in 2007. For the moment, there's nothing to add about UFOs, except I've always wondered what would happen if some official government agency admitted to visitations by something extraordinarily intelligent and beyond our understanding. No, I don't think widespread panic would ensue -- but I do expect that the primary "victims" of such revelations would be those of higher (highest) education, suddenly faced with the harsh realization that their efforts have been instantly eclipsed by the much higher knowledge, and consequently cherished professions and credentials are relegated to the evolutionary trash bin. Simply put, the garbage man would be far more valuable to society and content in his work than the theoretical physicist. In fact, theoretical physicists would probably clamor for garbage removal jobs just to survive. Whether they could properly pick up refuse remains to be seen, as they would doubtless spend hours in contemplation over the potential of garbage atoms or something.

So, on to other things today, such as. . .

An observation: Whenever I'm incredibly bored and tune in to watch the Golden Globes or Oscar presentations or some such televised glitter, I'm always dumbfounded at virtually no mention by celebrities of our military personnel serving around the world. I know this sounds trite, but are most Hollywood folk so self-centered or enamored with their own publicity that they can't simply say thanks to our brave young people? I don't know if it involves fear of irritating their peers ("You'll never work in this town again!") or if they just, strangely, hate all the enlisted opportunities America has bestowed upon them. I'm sure there are numerous celebrities who support military charities lavishly, but I just wonder about all the rest who, it would seem, don't care.

Thousands of young men, taken from their families forever, sacrificed their lives and dreams to protect and make it possible for the Hollywood bunch to express themselves safely whilst gaining extraordinary wealth and influence. I hope I'm just missing something here. I can't imagine that a community's politics would silence things that really deserve to be said and deny expressions of appreciation crying out to be stated by those wielding the enormous power of camera and microphone. I'm talking about producers and directors, too, not just the obvious actors. I don't know, maybe some just become too busy and cozy attending White House Halloween parties and dressing like fantasy characters and the like to be bothered.

Now, speaking of Hollywood. . .

In the motion picture, "Oklahoma Crude," there was a tense scene where the character portrayed by George C. Scott walks up to Jack Palance's evil character and, without saying a word, urinates on him. I don't remember the exact words that actor Scott mutters as he finishes, but it's something to the effect that businessmen do this to one another all the time.

I guess, in a way, four U.S. Marines urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban in Afghanistan did nothing more than conduct and extend the business of war.

Frankly, considering what the Taliban have done to our young military people, I couldn't care less if those Marines were joined by all members of the Armed Services in this pissing contest. Urinating on deceased head and limb choppers who possess the morals of insects hardly seems worth a yawn. Besides, urine is generally a sterile fluid, perhaps suitable for cleansing radical Islamic souls before they meet up with obligatory afterlife virgins.

In this instance, official Washington can go to hell. Oh yeah, sure, Hillary Clinton and Leon Panetta are shocked, the Marine higher-ups are outraged, and all the biggies want to tar and feather these boys. But, hey, YOU folks in D.C. are conducting a war, w-a-r, and war is never pretty. Maybe these Marines had a real anger problem with those particular Taliban members. Maybe they were tired of their friends getting blown up by IED devices and lost it, who knows? Maybe multiple deployments and inferior equipment set them on this course. Maybe they were tipped off that upon return to the U.S. they'll have no jobs, no money, few opportunities and damned little respect.

Official Washington, the urine belongs on you. I'm outraged when officials make examples of exhausted, abused military personnel, when they should make examples of themselves. Swine. Bastards. Just who exactly deserves criminal charges, punishment and prison time? Hmm? Who profits from our wars as young people are sent to do battle, yet burdened by so many political constraints and whims that their lives are put in jeopardy?

Taliban scum, born killers, their remains watered down, marinating in the hot sun like the predatory criminal weeds they were, nothing more or less.

Maybe these externally hydrated dead are the true "corpse men" referenced by President Obama?

I wonder if a few desks in Congress and White House offices would benefit from a little military urination deployment? Perhaps D.C. brains, safely secured in Pentagon offices, who plot and plan the lives and dangers for military members every day without ever having been in a combat situation themselves should come out of their crevices and support these men.

The video was "deplorable." Inconsistent with American values, says secretary H. Clinton. Wrong! I consistently value American military urine if it can serve a useful purpose on the battlefield. But then, I'm no secretary of state, required to gush over United Nations thugs and the Afghanistan criminal ruling class.

The mainstream media? Don't get me started. Why aren't they showing photos of maimed U.S. military bodies, instead of evoking tears and sympathy for dead killer-torturer roaches?

Republican phonies. Democrat phonies. Phony media. Same old excreted political hairballs, distinguishable only by varying close-ups on TV.

Want to create jobs in America? Let's have a crash program to build water, beer and bottling plants, and load up military transport planes with tons of beverages for our troops in the Middle East so they can pee on dead radicalized vermin 24/7.

The major chill wind that blows these days is the one whispering through the trees, suggesting that our current president will probably be re-elected this year. Okay, great, well, how about if every time he travels the globe and continues to apologize to some world leader for something he thinks the United States needs to be sorry for -- how about if each time he does that the military actively orders large numbers of American military personnel to bestow showers of gold on other dead enemies? Yes, every time. Gonna get pretty darned wet out there with all those apologies and submissive gestures to worldly thugs. Each time the Prez apologizes, we Americans get a urine bath anyway.

What a joke, holding service personnel responsible for the consequences of wars they didn't start. Beginning with Iraq maneuvers and continuing in Afghanistan today, thousands and thousands of U.S. military members have been killed and injured, and the concern that contact with depleted uranium may spiral into military illnesses so widespread that even the VA system will deny debilitating conditions and fatalities far surpasses this little incident.

We already have too many military people homeless or rotting in federal and state prisons, no thanks to a grateful nation infected with factions within who are no better than the enemy without.

The urination issue is "sensitive." What will the world think? Get over it. Much of the world already hates us or harbors intense jealousies toward our way of life. World War II, Korea and other good deeds have been forgotten, with history poised to be rewritten with lies and deletions.

And now we have Homeland Security monitoring journalists' Web sites and maybe even Little Nothing Bloggy People like me. Perfect. China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela and the usual suspects prepare to destroy the U.S. someday, and my idiot offend-nobody government worries incessantly about public political perceptions and four Marines taking a leak on well-deserved targets.

The day I believe the current Administration truly honors and respects all branches of the military over concerns for anybody BUT the military will be a rare day indeed. Urination. Obama nation. Damnation. We are all effectively urine-drenched and politically soaked to the skin, but four weary Marines, experiencing a moment that perhaps only young warriors pushed beyond the limit can comprehend, had nothing to do with it.

Up There, Down There

"Space. . .The final frontier."
-- Risky words introducing old Star Trek TV episodes


I guess the best part about the arrival of each new year is having a pulse. And forget all the romanticism about observing the first robins of spring, you're still better off just having a pulse. Can't write blogs without a pulse, either (and robins don't blog).

Okay, 2012. First of all, I've been thinking about Star Trek because science is discovering so much about the nature of matter and the possibility of other dimensions that I'm not even sure the word "space" has relevance anymore, and space is probably nobody's final exploratory destination. Captain Kirk's "out there" may be no more unreachable than "in here," except for the furniture and plumbing arrangements.

UFOs. I remember sitting in that grassy field in April of 1964, accompanied by a trusty, yet necessarily large and clumsily-sized transistor radio (they weren't pocket-sized then, at least mine wasn't). To a teenager, transistor radios seemed nearly magical, allowing one the freedom of venturing far beyond the restraints of plug-in electricity when listening to a favorite station.

During that April afternoon, radio signals near and far crackled with news reports of the Socorro, New Mexico UFO, most stations dependent upon news wire services and long-distance phone calls for updates. Erupting media chaos over UFOs excited the public from coast to coast before spreading internationally -- even to countries where "saucers" were old and almost routine news.

Almost as many years have passed since Socorro as there are states in the USA, and still UFOs come and go. What do I know about the phenomenon's true identity? Nothing. What do I THINK I know? I think that for all the impressive UFO maneuvers, encounters and near-collisions with conventional aircraft in the skies, there's much more taking place on the ground, and it likely has disturbing and maybe pronounced effects upon human and animal activity for reasons mostly unknown. Nor is it new. We may hold magnifying glasses over ant colonies, but that doesn't make us the sole observers.

I've had the opportunity to hear significant portions of the Betty and Barney Hill hypnosis sessions, truly fascinating as an early multiple witness case, but it was the bizarre Hickson-Parker UFO encounter case from Pascagoula MS in the seventies that makes my hair stand on end -- and no less so when Navy men possibly witnessing a landing UFO at the same time in the same area came to public attention years later.

"Sleep paralysis" may explain some instances of UFO abductions that never happened, but when we're referencing multiple witnesses to an abduction event, the sleep paralysis nonsense embraced by well-credentialed folk who, nonetheless, can't see beyond their own noses goes nowhere. I swear, all too often I fear that either the experts or the "digital revolution" will kill us off quicker than a nuke, I'm just not sure which will finish us off first.

What shall we look forward to in 2012? In the U.S. the population will continue to dumb down, engrossed more in sporting events than in education or the political process, and as a result we'll continue to get exactly the kind of government we deserve, currently pointing us in dangerous directions. Moderately disturbing is a little -- isolated, ha ha -- instance where the EEOC wishes to classify one's lack of a high school education and diploma as a disability, thus forcing employers to hire the superbly unqualified or be sued out of existence. Of course, these little outrages tend to catch fire and become federal legislation before one can react, and if anything will help to encourage the ignorance, lack of common sense and plain stupidity on the part of a growing legion of American idiots, imbeciles and moronic children sired by even more moronic parentage, this is it.

Nor must we fail to give proper credit to religious "relief" agencies which flood this country with untalented and religiously radical detritus, almost acting in unison with the illegal immigration industry for the same result. Sanctuary cities? Please, hand out prison terms for mayors and other public officials who allow this travesty, even though sworn to serve under the Constitution. Word is that, in California alone last year, illegal aliens sent 15 billion dollars back to relatives in Mexico. One hospital in the state -- just one -- complains that illegal immigrants cost them 100 million dollars last year. Guess who pays the difference?

You are aware, aren't you, that pregnant women from China and other countries who can afford to do so fly here to deliver their babies and, with dual citizenship, those grown children can someday bring all their relatives over to the United States? There is a bill in Congress to stop this practice, but the current crop of do-nothings will probably ignore it and the consequences of doing nothing.

I'm not impressed by anybody currently in the running on the conservative ticket -- and though often libertarian in my thoughts, in no way could I imagine Ron Paul as president if he thinks Iran's leadership and other global crazies will play nice with us if we just go away. The world is a vicious place and we humans, whether it's the 80-year-old grandma baking a pie down the street or the eight-year-old playing soccer. . .well, I know what we are, and it's not a pretty sight.

President Obama. Yikes. Nice guy, I suppose, but. . .go, please, just go away after the elections, assuming that voters do more than merely vote for familiar incumbent names. I don't know what this man is about once the teleprompters are turned off, but the professorial/intellectual dream-speak drives me nuts. His desire to regulate everything is a horror story. We the people, our power as individuals is spirited away, little by little. Why did he not issue orders to blow up the drone in Iran? Unless its contents self-destructed in some way we know nothing about, NOT destroying it -- no matter the risk to people around it -- may have put millions more in jeopardy -- and if China, Russia or another of our "good friends" get their hands on it, I guess our wonderful globalization and international partnerships aren't working very well, are they? No, better that the President bail out GM so they can build electric cars whose best consumer feature is their ability to be recalled.

The President who assured us long ago that energy prices must rise substantially. It's working.

The First Lady who admitted pride in her country for the first time in her life only when her husband was elected.

A White House functioning like a king's court, bowing to foreign leaders and apologizing for the U.S.

Will the nightmare end on Election Day, or will another emerge to build upon the basics of alleged corruption, incompetence and arrogance?

You sure you want to continue petitioning the White House for UFO information? This White House? Spinning your wheels uselessly in the sands of time, folks.

There's already war in the streets and the cops are out-gunned, overworked, under-appreciated and stressed out. The war on drugs is a joke. A federal agent is dead because of the "Fast and Furious" ploy and somebody needs to take responsibility. The borders aren't protected sufficiently and now the military itself may be gutted to a degree beyond rational. These are dangerous times, administered by a gathering of pretentious fools in D.C.

So it's 2012. A great time to strengthen not only the First Amendment, but the Second as well.

I am nobody's freaking world diplomat.

Oh, a big 2012 congratulations to the Muslim Brotherhood and particularly Iranian crazies who now have the ability to enslave the entire Middle East with radical Islam. They couldn't have done it without the encouragement of President Obama, Hillary Clinton, Anderson Cooper and all the other political/media types who simply gushed over the emergence of some nebulous crap called the "Arab Spring." A third-grader could have predicted where all of this would go. The much worse is yet to come. Remember who cheered it on.

But look on the bright side, the Administration had its hooks and our money into that wonderful energy magnate corporation, Solyndra. . .which failed miserably and ate up tons of our money. So sorry 'bout that.

Meanwhile, the FCC chief wants cross-ownership of newspapers and TV to become easier so that, apparently, fewer companies can gobble up more media in order to restrict our desires to get all the news and all the views. This has been done before, and the implications are troubling.

Extremist Muslim terrorists are infiltrating our military, gang activity among enlisted personnel is said to be increasing, and if that isn't enough to worry about, "fake" parts from countries such as China are installed in our military equipment, endangering U.S. service personnel.

The global warming faction wants more support from President Obama and your bank accounts so they can pursue science's nonsensical evil research brother, and in the meantime climate will change as it has throughout the history of this planet, despite our activities.

For laughs, don't forget the 2011 revelations that "Sybil" and the multiple personality industry were discovered to involve lies and hoaxes. How many lives ruined? How many members of the professional psycho industry were enriched by treating wisps of nothing? I can hardly wait until sleep paralysis meets a similar fate among pro-fessionals who swear all UFO abductions can be explained away via half-awake minds, illusions and delusions under the bed sheets. Three important words to remember here: Multiple witness events.

Also in 2011, scientists reported that water seems far more abundant throughout the universe than once thought. Heck, I darned well promised the same thing in newspaper letters-to-the-editor decades ago when I said, look, if there's water here there's water there. I think I became convinced after watching all those westerns on TV where somebody always said, "Drink 'em up, boys," though at the time I didn't realize that water had nothing to do with it.

As we were saying, it's a new year. Lunatics everywhere will rejoice.