Thursday, June 26, 2014

Countess Annie Leary of New York City Evicted From Her Fifth Avenue Mansion – 1904



Photo Source: Both Sides of Fifth Ave. J.F.L.Collins 1910


This is perhaps a bit silly but there is so little available on the life of Countess Annie Leary of NYC that a bit of gossip in a tattle mag of the time says a lot about interest in the rich and famous even back then.


Broadcast Weekly 14 April 1904


The way this is written I am not certain if Countess Annie was evicted from her long term home at 3 Fifth avenue, which I cannot find a picture of yet – or she first left that perhaps childhood home at 3 Fifth Avenue when a 99 year lease, made by her father James Leary the Merchant/Hatter, on the land it was built on expired in 1902. That the two year lease is perhaps another rental further up Fifth Avenue and that too became unavailable as developers were tearing down these old brick or brownstone mansions and building apartment buildings in the teens and 1920s.

In any case, Annie seems to have been "homeless" for a few short years while she finally moved into digs at 1032 Fifth Avenue between 84th Street and 85th Street and in sight of the Metropolitan Museum of Art across the road, located within the boundaries of Central Park.

The house at 1032 Fifth Avenue was a fixer upper, a renovation and re-clad in white stone of a bunch of spec townhouses built in the 1870s. In the image of 1032 above, the building next door at 1033 is still a brownstone as of 1910, and 1034 was being converted at the same time with Annie’s 1032 in 1905 with the “rebuilt front wall” and getting in Annie’s case a three story extension in back where the stables used to be. 


April 1905

The building progress report lists Countess Leary’s no doubt temporary address as 16 E 75th Street.

1033 btw is still standing with a white stone re-clad and squeezed between two tall apartment buildings.



                                              1033 Fifth Avenue NYC                                          
                                                                                                                                          Google Maps


The smart looking townhouse at 1032 Fifth Avenue is described in some accounts as a mansion and I guess it is, was, but maybe a little bit cramped – less space I would say in square footage than 3 Fifth Ave from Plot Maps I have seen – but the difference is of course made up by location, location, location. 


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Speaker Boehner to Sue President Obama - GOP Lynch Party? - Get Lawyer Atticus Finch to Defend the Prez




Speaker Boehner to Sue President Obama - GOP Lynch Party? 

- Get Lawyer Atticus Finch to Defend the Prez.


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Siebrecht and Wadley – Send Flowers By Telegraph – 1895

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Delmonico's Restaurant - 14th Street and Fifth Avenue - 1862/1876

Countess Annie Leary 1832 / 1919 - Forgotten Female Philanthropist of New York's Gilded Age - Bio Sketch


Papal Countess Annie Leary of NYC
Photo by Theodore C. Marceau 1859-1922
(original copyright expired)


http://www.smr.org/en/news.php?a=2&id=45


Annie Leary was born in 1832, the second of James and Catherine Leary’s six children. The Leary family was originally from Ireland but had been established in New York for at least two generations. By the time of Annie’s birth her father was a very successful business man who could send his two daughters and four sons to the best private schools.  James Leary was an associate of John Jacob Astor, one of the wealthiest men in the United States. Remarkably, Leary and Astor amassed a fortune buying and selling beaver pelts that were used to make the tall hats worn by gentlemen in Europe and America. 

The demand for beaver pelts was such that the beaver population in North America almost became extinct. In addition, James Leary had a hat factory in which he employed poor Irish immigrants; there he developed a process that revolutionized the industry by making more affordable hats using less expensive napped nutria pelts. When the European market began to favor silk in the manufacture of hats, he was the first to introduce it in the U.S. market. His shop was the most fashionable in New York’s Chatham Square and later in Hannover Square. He was known as the “arbiter of hat fashion” in the city. At his death he left his entire fortune to his unmarried daughter Annie and not one penny to any of his other five children.

A search through the social pages of the New York Times mentions Annie in every list of fashionable parties and in every charitable board. She loved to entertain in her palatial home in the city and during the summer in Paul Cottage, Newport, Rhode Island, which she shared with her brother Arthur. Annie loved music and was a regular at the opera.  Her musical soirées featured the best chamber music and the likes of Enrico Caruso.

Her homes were furnished lavishly with Persian rugs, crystal chandeliers, antique Japanese vases, and huge gilt-framed mirrors, 68 of them. The N Y Times, August 20, 1905 describes her in formal attire: “Miss Leary is a conspicuous figure in her white satin gowns cut high, having elbow length sleeves draped with rare old lace, and wearing a small headdress of white ostrich plumes and white satin ribbon.”

When her brother Arthur, a bachelor, described as a “Beau Brummell,” one of the best know men in business and society, died in 1893, he left her a huge fortune. Her wealth was estimated to be between five and twenty million dollars.


Mentioned many times in the society pages for throwing lavish parties, Annie is many more times noted for her generosity towards the Catholic Church, and for her efforts to alleviate the plight of the poor and ill. Her love of the Eucharist led her to donate altars to poor churches both in the States and abroad. After the death of her brother Arthur she built a chapel in his name on the grounds of Bellevue Hospital in New York, the oldest and poorest in the city.  

She created the Arthur Leary Mission to care for destitute patients, to assure them access to the sacraments, and to provide them with books, toiletries, coffee and cigarettes. She was vice-president of Stony Wold, a beautiful sanatorium for destitute tuberculosis patients in the Adirondack Mountains and also vice-president of the Flower Guild, since she was especially interested in the establishment of small gardens for children in the poorer quarters of New York. Annie contributed a considerable sum of money to provide for the establishment of the community of the Fathers of the Blessed Sacrament in New York in 1900. Shortly after their arrival from Montreal, Archbishop Corrigan entrusted to them the church of Saint Jean Baptiste which served the French speaking Catholics. They continue their ministry there to this day. 

For all her good works, Pope Leo XXIII conferred on her the title of Countess on October 11, 1901; Pope Pius X later re-conferred the title.


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Sunday, June 22, 2014

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Humanitarian Crisis in Middle East as Bush/Cheney Propped Up Iraq Dictatorship Falls Apart – Last Battle of Baghdad About to Begin – But Don’t Worry America – Big Oil Corps Still Control the Oil Fields






It was also mulling air strikes against the militants, who are led by the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant but include loyalists of now-executed Sunni Arab dictator Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile, the United Nations warned Iraq is in danger of disintegrating.

A relative calm in Baghdad - ostensibly as militants have focused on their northern assault - was shattered by a string of bombings that left 17 people dead, while the bodies of 18 soldiers and police were found near the city of Samarra, all shot in the head and chest.

Since the insurgents launched their lightning assault on June 9, they have captured Mosul, a city of two million people, and a big chunk of mainly Sunni Arab territory stretching towards the capital.

The offensive has displaced hundreds of thousands of people and sent jitters through world oil markets as the militants have advanced ever nearer Baghdad leaving the Shiite-led government in disarray.

Officials said on Tuesday that militants briefly held parts of the city of Baquba, just 40 miles from the capital.

They also took control of most of Tal Afar, a strategic Shiite-majority town between Mosul and the border with Syria, where ISIL also has fighters engaged in that country's three-year-old civil war.







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Monday, June 16, 2014

Season Finale - Father's Day - Game of Thrones - Spoiler Alert





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Dave Brat’s “Christian Economics” Course at Randolph Macon Funded by Wall Street Bank BB&T Worshipping the Ayn Rand Selfish Money (Greed) Goddess /Idol




David Brat's work at Randolph-Macon College gives one more clue to who he is. 

Aside from chairing the economics department, he is director of the BB&T Moral Foundations of Capitalism program. In this program, underwritten by the bank BB&T's charitable foundation and inaugurated in 2008, colleges teach a curriculum that promotes free-market economics, and notably, the ideas of Ayn Rand.

The man behind the program, former BB&T chairman and CEO John Allison has described the curriculum as a way of helping save America from economic decline:

"Unless students (i.e., future leaders, teachers, professors, etc.) learn the principles that underlie a free society, the United States will continue to move toward statism and economic decline. The believers in "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" must retake the universities, or America will ultimately become a second-tier country with a dark future." 


That is the context in which BB&T began its program "The Moral Foundations of Capitalism."




The BB&T Corporation (Branch Banking & Trust) is one of the largest financial services holding companies in the U.S. with $184.7 billion in assets and market capitalization of $28.9 billion, as of March 31, 2014. Based in Winston-Salem, N.C., the company operates 1,824 financial centers in 12 states…


Since 2009, BB&T has outsourced it's back-end operations to Proview Global Administration Inc., a small BPO company located in Manila, Philippines. With around 150 employees, Proview Global Administration Inc. provides premium billing and reconciliation; benefits enrollment; COBRA administration and other financial-related services to BB&T. The officers of Proview Global Administration Inc. are former BB&T employees.



Saturday, June 14, 2014

Pope Francis Announces the End of Wall Street’s Global Style Power and Greed With Its Imminent Collapse – A “House Built on Sand” – Not Humanity



The Royal Houses of Europe of a century ago in 1914 were willing to sacrifice a whole generation of its young to keep their corruption in power. These days, a band-aid fix up of a Trillion Dollar Student Loan Debt situation shot down in the Senate only illustrates how the people in power are willing to sacrifice a whole generation of young America just to keep their corruption and villainy in power. Only something like education would be could be turned into a commodity for profit in a place like America, whose soul lately is so heavily mortgaged to the "Big Banks".



Pope Francis said the global economic system is at risk of breaking down because of inequality and rising youth unemployment, in an interview with Barcelona-based newspaper La Vanguardia.
“We’re excluding an entire generation to sustain a system that is not good,” La Vanguardia cited the Pope as saying. “Our global economic system can’t take any more.”
The pope said the difficulty with the global economy is that it puts “the god of money” at the center, rather than men and women, the newspaper reported. He said that globalization works when it brings together different ways of thinking, rather than eliminating them, La Vanguardia added.

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Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Dominionist “Dave” Brat Beats Eric Cantor in GOP Primary - Eric BTW Who Was Not White Enough or “Christian” Enough for the Ruling Elites of States’ Rights Virginia




With a half-assed Masters in Theology from Princeton – a real Theology degree is a Ph.D. btw imho – and preaching the obscure political agenda Orwellian like “economics”of Libertarian politics, the Tea Party is far from dead and its candidates are far less “Kook” like in a push for “States’ Rights” and the coming theocracy, the media is scrambling for dumbed down explanations of why Eric Cantor lost to "Dave" Brat.

Myths of David brings down Goliath with a minimal budget to beat mainstream GOP soldier Eric Cantor are being pumped out by the lamestream media with ignoring all the free network of Christian foot soldiers stuffing and mailing political propaganda, like with Dave Brat’s local chapter of the Knights of Columbus located and sponsored in his rich burb Richmond Virginia Roman Catholic church of St. Mary’s.

A convert to Catholicism (?) and after a Ph.D. at American University, a traditionally linked Methodist institution. Go where the power and money is. And the RCs always have the big global bucks?

Apparently mixing religion with economics is the new politics of the new Right and or Orwellian Big Brother visionaries that put Ronald Reagan in power via the vision of the Liberty Fund.

A quote in Liberty Fund Publishing Economics, of obscure voodoo economist Paul Heyne’s manifesto like quotes in a letter to “David Brat”, the same as in the Cantor Brat Primary Race? [1. ] Paul Heyne, letter to David Brat, 31 July 1998. http://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/the-economic-and-ethical-thought-of-paul-heyne




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Thursday, June 5, 2014

Bram Stoker Meets Walt Whitman – West Philadelphia 1884


(Images - Public Domain)









(Bing Maps)



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George Henry Story – Bohemian Resident of Greenwich Village 1860s – Artist Regular at Pfaff’s


Walt Whitman at Pfaff's Beer Cellar - 1856
(Public Domain)


Per my earlier piece of Mrs. G. H. Story (Eunice Emerson Kimball Story) being a childhood friend of the American Humorist “Artemis Ward”, I have since found a connection of George H. Story to a documented regular at the famous artist hangout of the 1860’s Beer Cellar – Pfaff’s.


It is little wonder Story’s connection to that Bohemian art scene of writers, actors, artists and poets, the most famous of them being Walt Whitman is lost. Not a lot of historical references to check out. Just a lot of collateral evidence of who used to frequent this once popular scene in antebellum and postbellum NYC.

And having an art studio a few doors away is not proof but I can say with certainty Story was no teetotaler. 

A who’s who of young and artsy New Yorkers or “Bohemians” as some of them were called happened around that happening place of Broadway and Bleecker Street in Manhattan.

From that period of “Bohemia” around Pfaff’s beer cellar, artist G.H. Story has his studio located at "643 Broadway" near two addresses identified with Pfaff’s as 647 and 653 Broadway.

1865 NYC Directory

George H Story’s home address is listed as “18 Cottage Place” which is no longer there. It was located between W. Houston and Bleecker and west of MacDougal and absorbed into the Sixth Avenue extension linking uptown with downtown in the 1920s. Part of it exists as part of a small triangle of a park in front of the “Little Red School House” complex – the original older building on the corner still exists and part of the east side of Cottage Place now part of Sixth and or “Avenue of the Americas”. The west side of Cottage Place where the Storys resided in now in the middle of busy Sixth Avenue. I don’t know if those apartment buildings in the picture below go back to the 1860s btw.

Google Maps


One poet who has some documented connections to the Storys is the poet William Winter, quite famous in his day and a key player in his youth at the Pfaff’s art scene.

William Winter - 1876
(Public Domain)


The first connection is some name cards of George and Eunice Story being mailed to the Winter family in acknowledgement of the death of Winter's son William, aged 14 in early 1886.

1886 - Jan - William Winter age 14

A visiting card of George H. Story with a manuscript note: "With heartfelt sympathy my dear Mr. Winter." With accompanying envelope addressed to Winter at No. 17 Third Avenue, Tompkinsville, Staten Island. Also with a visiting card of Mrs. George H. Story and a small clipping on Arthur Winter's death. Date from postmark on envelope.


The other is a later in life testimonial to William Winter with a regret posted on not being able to attend the ceremony by an aged, reclusive and infirmed G.H. Story of 1909, the year after the death of his wife following a long and lingering illness.





(typo – George Henry Story lived at 230 W. 59th Street and or Central Park South at The Hubert Co-op Apartments. Even the NYT obit on Story misspelled his residence as the “Huber”, the French pronunciation, without the correct English spelling.)



Google Maps


The address of 17 Third Ave in Tomkinsville in Staten Island NY of William Winter in 1886 has changed to Alden Place and number 17 is acknowledged by Google Maps but I cannot attach that number to any property at the moment with any certainty. The address is the end of a street entering a park on the top of a hill overlooking New York Harbor.  Winter in later life also had a Staten Island home on the top of a hill further east on the north shore overlooking the Verrazano Narrows toward Brooklyn, half a century before they built the Verrazano Narrows Bridge there.


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Monday, June 2, 2014

Delmonico’s Restaurant Chambers Street (1856-1876)


Irving House – Broadway and Chambers Street 
 Engraved by Henry Bricher (b.circa 1817) - From the Collections of the Museum of the City of New York


  
Men famous in their time frequented the upstairs rooms at Chambers Street; their names would constitute a “Who's Who” of New York in the Sixties and Seventies. Some who are still remembered were Horace Greeley; Henry J Raymond of the Times; A.T. Stewart; James T Brady the courtroom spellbinder; William M Evarts, witty and learned leader of the bar and future Secretary of State John Van Buren; Fernando Wood the city's copperhead mayor who recommended that New York secede from the Union; Astors and Vanderbilts in assorted lots; crusading clergymen like Henry Ward Beecher and T. De Witt Talmadge, from conscience bound Brooklyn; Daniel Sickles, a rake of marital and martial notoriety; Samuel J. Tilden near-President of the United States; Chester A. Arthur, an actual though accidental President; Roscoe Conkling the posturing “Adonis” senator and mastermind of New York republican politics; and of course the potentates of the Tweed Ring, their aides and abettors without number.

…Henry J. Raymond, a politically active editor gave many dinners at Delmonico's Chambers Street restaurant and mapped journalistic campaigns there. Room number 1 upstairs was the preserve of lawyers of whom the jovial Brady was a bellwether. Whenever he chalked up another courtroom victory, it was his pleasure to celebrate in room 1 with congenial spirits. human and liquid both fully uncorked. 

Rooms number 9 and 11 were consecrated to the politicians, Republican and Democratic, for there was no factionalism at Delmonico's. The unwritten rule was that the first party arriving could establish itself in number 11. and those coming later would convene in number 9. In this way next door to each other, the leaders of the opposite parties mapped their election strategies.


  
“…in 1855 when Lorenzo rented and fitted up the corner at Chambers Street and Broadway which had formed part of the old Irving House; …Lorenzo Delmonico signed a twenty one year lease of the property mentioned at an annual rental of $25,000 later raised to $30,000… Not everybody believed that Lorenzo was taking a rash step. Hardly had he signed the lease when he was offered $75,000 for it; but the renovations were under way, and he clung to the bargain. 

The Irving House, on the northwest corner of the intersection, had indeed earned a fortune for its original proprietor. Built in 1848, it was the first in New York to boast of “bridal suites,” and its furniture was reputed to have cost $150,000. 

Lounging around its entrance any day might be seen a cross section of the floating population of the city - merchants in town on buying expeditions, Southerners smoking Havanas, slouching Western men straight from the gold fields. Across Broadway rose the six story marble “dry goods emporium” of A.T. Stewart, where the richness of the stock startled visitors… ”


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James T. Brady – New York Lawyer – 1815/1869 - Bio Sketch



( Photo above: Library of Congress Call Number: LC-BH82- 5225 C




James Topham Brady was the son of Irish immigrants who first settled in Newark, NJ and then in New York City. Brady received a privileged education and, in 1831 while still a student, he aided his father, a lawyer, in various trials. Brady gained admittance to the New York bar in 1836. His first case dealt with the controversial topic of slavery, and "though he was unsuccessful his handling of the matter was masterly . . . He was endowed by nature with a facility of speech, which, assiduously cultivated and molded by long study, and embellished with felicitous classical quotations, became well-nigh irresistible with a jury, whilst his arguments, clear, logical, never verbose, were put with a force and sincerity which always impressed the court" (Knott).

Over the next two decades Brady came to be known as a leader of the New York bar. He was connected to almost every important case of the time, either as the defense attorney or the prosecutor (Knott). He became New York District Attorney in 1843, and he was later asked to be the United States Attorney-General, an honor that he chose not to accept. Brady was fascinated by issues of insanity, but he was beyond proficient in all areas of the law. In one memorable civil case, he won an unbelievable $300,000 in damages for his client. He also represented Mrs. Edwin Forrest in her divorce from her husband (Wilson & Fiske 355).

As a criminal defense attorney he won fifty-one out of fifty-two murder trials; four of those acquittals were won during the same week. Brady's prowess in the courtroom was unmatched: "It has been said that he never lost a case in which he was before a jury for more than a week; in that time they saw everything through his eyes" (355)… 


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Breaking News - Bilderberg Coffee Klatch Did Not Meet in Copenhagen This Past Weekend




It is with predictable disappointment to announce all four networks failed to inform the public of a secretive and extremely exclusive meeting of central bankers, CEOs, public officials and world dignitaries taking place this weekend.

From May 29 through today, June 1, esteemed academicians, hand picked journalists, intelligence officials, world banking oligarchs and the CEOs and bosses of Royal Dutch Shell, Google and Microsoft, to name just a few, slinked behind closed doors at the Marriott hotel in Copenhagen, Denmark, to do God knows what.

But watching the major news networks and monitoring the domestic news wires, you’d never guess this meeting happened.
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Sunday, June 1, 2014

Six years on – this cultural” Christian” is still wandering around in the dark (but with a better sense of direction perhaps than six years ago)




Just because man invented the concept of god, (it) does mean that god does not exist.

After six years of this blog I have many times, in describing my perceptions of things, that in terms of people trying to find some spiritual satisfaction in the old religions, I am content to report that they, along with myself included, have many times come away empty from this search.

That many times these old religions are obsolete because the god and or gods on which these old religions are based – the god-base is obsolete as well. Obscure gods giving obscure directions to even obscurer and or dim-witted souls (“humans”).

Obsolete because they, she, he, it, do not presently fully integrate with the new definitions needed to co-exist with the new virtual global reality. Clear vision for the faithful - reading the myth once more to remain in perfect harmony with the “sacred” message born out of the ancient oral sounds and or written text? Yeah right.

I have stated many times that the old definition of god ( in the context of my cultural corner of the universe) in this modern global culture needs a new definition to be relevant in the repeating of the myth - for the ten trillionth and one time.

Today – I believe that not only the definition of god is obsolete but for sake of a better thing to say – god too is obsolete as well in our growing robot dependent culture.  Obsolete - and irrelevant as well? (God, or its new definition, is a thing evolving that we now at present do not recognize and I fear - is right in front of us as well.)

Man as a monkey evolved with hands to make tools and make daily bread / food and or shelter. God at some points of the timeline got defined by the monkeys. GOD of the future is presently being designed (redesigned?) and is I think, by true definition, literally a logarithm?

Today, technology and toys are the tools not to create anything real, but dependency, so much a virtual stop gap measure, but something shiny to occupy the monkey masses while the robots, ATMs, credit cards, I-pods, I-phones, goog-L-glasses, games etc. take hold invading the ancient body politic, home, culture. The old hand of power slipping silently, gently into a newer glove of power?

Does that make me an atheist – at least for one day? No. Not really. It all depends on what your definition of atheist is – is.

And quite frankly what I see of all these I.V. league dis-educated trust fund elite types on both sides of the English speaking pond - all shouting at each other in alpha male posturing to be the head of the heap of this new atheist religion thing masquerading as an anti-religion/anti-god thing – I don’t see much. A corner street fight, not a major world religion contender.

Nothing in a major way from that side of the court except for a few small voices drowned out in that local street fight thing for power on a small turf thing but one with the ability to grow and franchise, cashing in on the new “None” of the above religious beliefs – Nones – and their growing footprint of - by default “religious” and or “non-religious” POVs.

Replacing god and or religion with your new non-definitions or more accurately, these non-definitions of god and religion are many times mixed with secular politics. In a way, and for some time, the ruling elites like the atheist Koch Brothers / George Soros types have been maneuvering within their greedy anti-human capitalism religion to downgrade the old Christ religion in favor of the new Capitalist religion – where the magic hands of high priests of capitalism make the magic bread of a “perfect” (man-made) economic model.  “Perfect” is god. Therefore capitalism must be “god”. Etc.

Whatever.

That dependence on electricity, clean water, calories, fossil fuel based heat and energy, communication electronics, games, entertainment, time killing drugs, drone office cubicle “work” etc. The old religions are dead. The old gods are dead. The new religion, the new god, is injected into the dependent veins of the present race addicted to convenience and the ignorance tagged along with it.

The old economics are dead as well but let’s not go there. The forensics of dissecting that dead old economic dinosaur of ages past is beyond my mere blogging spot. LMAO

I can well imagine myself being a Roman in the last days of Rome and not believing in the old gods and here comes along the mean desert god male army penis religion of Constantine to tell me what to believe and when to march and when to worship the emperor etc. = Constantine’s “Christ”-inanity.

The story of Constantine’s Roman “Christ” myth as the basis of his new Roman Empire State Religion have been told a couple of trillion of times by now on the timeline of human history and a couple hundred thousand times in my personal timeline at least as well.

A lie told once is still a lie. A lie and or myth told a trillion times is still a lie and or a myth - and or the basic cultural myth (shit mixed with dirt at our feet) of all - like it or not...

That there are those minor conflicts of the myth of original Jewish rabbi “Jesus” (“Jesus Christ minus the Constantine Christ) – conflicts many times within the dumbed down media exercise to kill intelligence (old time) and more importantly kill time as the clock runs out toward the designed future of the minority elites living in space (bubble) pods here and on other planets and the voids of space off-planet.

More and more the extremes in politics and its many masks (in and of religion and or economics) - reminds me of religious and or satanic cults of the past = brainwashing by any other name = not reality by my personal definition of it.


And so it goes. 


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