Bloody Hajj: When the world's largest pilgrimage turns deadly

     "What the freak is a Hajj?" you might be asking yourself at this point.  If you really want the definitive answer to that question, just click over to Amazon and buy my book on the subject.  http://www.amazon.com/Mecca-Hajj-Lessons-Islamic-School/dp/0978615700/ref=cm_rdp_product

     But in the meantime, here is a quick-and-dirty Cliff-Notes definition of Hajj.  It is a religious pilgrimage to Mecca that every Muslim is required to take at least once in his or her life.  The Hajj itself consists of performing a series of rituals that must be completed within a certain period of time each year -- not just whenever you can find a vacancy at the fabulous Mecca Hilton.

     The Hajj is sacred to Muslims -- or at least it used to be.  Now, like so much of the rest of the Middle East, Afghanistan, Libya, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc., the Hajj has turned into a deadly and chaotic free-for-all.

     Since the pretext of 9-11, American, European, Turkish, Saudi and Israeli neo-colonialists have been greedily salivating over their Dreams of Empire and, ludicrous as it may sound, these neo-colonialists' weapon-manufacturers, banksters and oil barons have thus declared war on the entire Muslim religion.  And this deadly attack on the world's largest religion, having already created over a decade of chaos in Islamic countries all over the world, appears to have finally generated a trickle-down effect by turning the world's largest pilgrimage deadly and chaotic as well.

     So.  What exactly went wrong during the Hajj this year that caused the deaths of approximately one thousand pilgrims?  Mismanagement, stress, the effect of over a decade of "war" on Muslims, dictatorships, instability and chaos.

     Am I making myself clear here?  No?  Let's try it again from a different perspective.

     The Hajj rituals take place in Saudi Arabia.  The House of Saud controls the Hajj.  The Saudis run one of the most ruthless and cruel dictatorships in the world today (just witness their current brutal assault on the democracy of Yemen, solely for its oil and its beaches) -- but Wall Street and War Street love the House of Saud anyway and totally have its back.

     Saudis are supposed to protect Hajjis and Hajjas -- but they don't.  Saudis don't spend the time and energy it takes to organize five million pilgrims.  They don't even allow Syrian and Yemeni Muslims to even go on Hajj, for instance.  That's dictatorial right there.  And another dictatorial feature is that Saudis allow their privileged-class princes to just cut in line to have first pick at the holiest places, violently pushing the hoi poloi aside -- until the little guys who have saved up all their lives in order to be able to go on Hajj get trampled to death.  Again.

     You needed to have been there, to see the bodies, the horror, the weeping survivors, the lost shoes -- while some jerk of a Saudi prince drives away in his limo after his bodyguards had heartlessly shoved pilgrims out of the way and caused a panic so that the prince could get to the shrine first.

     The whole Muslim world has fallen apart because of American, European, Turkish, Zionist and Saudi neo-colonialism.  And this "war on Islam" is now mirrored in how the sacred Hajj has turned deadly again this year.

     And this year's deadly Hajj in Arabia has also become a mirror of what is happening elsewhere all over the world, even in non-Muslim countries -- even including our own world right here at home as well, where a few haughty, disgustingly-wealthy and dictatorial "princes" are clearly running the show here while the rest of us are about to get trampled to death too.

PS:  On October 6, I myself plan to go on a pilgrimage -- my annual pilgrimage to BoucherCon, an annual convention for murder-mystery readers and writers.  http://bouchercon2015.org/

     This year BoucherCon is being held in Raleigh, North Carolina.  Anyone have any suggestions on what else to see in Raleigh?  Besides its historic ribs joints and its beautiful Moral Mondays of course?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnpeOTLgyKs

How to Make America Great: Stop killing kittens in the Middle East!

     The only real difference between King Herod in the Bible and Bibi Netanyahu in Tel Aviv today is that Bibi has a much better public-relations team.  Does Netanyahu now suffer from buyers' remorse after killing all those babies in Palestine during the past few years?  Hardly.   Not if he can fix it with propaganda!

     After Netanyahu (and the rest of that sleazy neo-colonialist gang who have seized control of Israel) had so much fun blowing up, murdering and/or maiming approximately one thousand Palestinian children in the past two years, Bibi suddenly started to get a bit worried about his current international image as a baby-killer, right?  Just look at all the bad press that Herod received after doing the exact same thing!  http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/09/18/429769/Israeli-soldiers-Aqsa-mosque-Jerusalem

     So Netanyahu got to worrying that he too might go down in history as the 2.0 version of King Herod.

     And so he put all his vast propaganda weapons and skills to work in order to dispel all of this latest "anti-Semitic" talk from people who actually objected to babies being maimed, burned alive and killed.   "I've got an idea," said one of Bibi's propaganda guys.  "How about that we publish a children's book showing Israeli soldiers rescuing abandoned kittens in Gaza?"    http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4694647,00.html

       And that makes it okay to slaughter a few hundred Palestinian children and maiming over a thousand more?

      I guess so. 

      "By massacring hundreds of children, actual kittens were saved!"

      But why the freak were those kitten abandoned in the first place?  Because the children who owned them were melted alive by white phosphorus bombs of course.  Shame on those thoughtless, bad children! 

      "But what does all this kitty propaganda have to do with trying to make America great again?" you might ask at this point.  That's easy.

    So much of American taxpayers' money is being funneled to Israeli neo-colonialists and to the American "war" industry in the Middle East these days that there is hardly any money left to spend here at home on stuff like infrastructure and schools.  And all those trillions of dollars spent on bombing other countries, no matter how carefully the cluster-bombs and daisy-cutters and drone strikes are aimed, can only result in killing thousands more babies -- and even, God forbid, also killing more kittens!   http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/15/obamas-response-to-the-refugee-crisis-regime-change-in-syria/

     But there is really only one (1) way to make America great again:  Stop killing all those kittens in the Middle East.  And in Afghanistan.  And in Ukraine, Africa, Asia and Latin America...  There are possibly millions of kittens that are being killed by American taxpayers' dollars all over the world these days.  http://news.yahoo.com/assad-says-only-syrian-people-decide-quits-064717348.html

     YouTube viewers would be (rightly) appalled.

     Americans don't seem to even care that their tax dollars are being used to violently slaughter thousands of children in the Middle East and even all over the world right now, and that their tax dollars have been used to carry out this slaughter of the innocents routinely since the Eisenhower era.  

     But.  

     If Americans only knew that their money was being used to actually kill kittens, it might be a whole different story.  We might actually put an end to America's endless and costly "wars" that are currently sending America to a financial and moral graveyard instead of making it great.  https://avoicefrompalestine.wordpress.com/2009/10/03/lest-we-forget-sabra-and-shatila-massacre-16-17-september-1982/

    America's rapid return to greatness can only be achieved if America will only just stop killing kittens.  Stop killing kittens in Palestine, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen.  And stop killing kittens in Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia too.  Just stop it right now -- if for no other reason than we owe that much to the millions of kitten-followers on YouTube.

PS:  Also in heavy competition for the King Herod Award for slaughtering innocents is King Salman, titular head of the infamous House of Saud in Arabia.  He is currently fire-bombing, barrel-bombing and neutron-bombing Yemen like it was barbecue time for kittens!

     "But why is he doing that?" you might ask.  For the oil, of course. 

      "And also for Yemen's beautiful beaches," I was recently told by one Yemeni friend.  "King Salman now has a plan to start up a new Waikiki-style resort there, one that will rival Dubai."  And we all know what that means.  Time to start saying "Aloha" to all Yemen's kittens!  http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/09/priceless-antiquities-are-being-destroyed-by-saudis-and-americans-in-yemen-like-theyre-being-destroyed-by-isis-in-syria-and-iraq.html

PPS:  If you find this article particularly offensive, then please ask yourself why you don't find America's "war" on the world's babies offensive as well -- and then go out and do something to stop all these hideous wars on babies.  And kittens.

PPPS:  A large part of me wants to be a war correspondent and fight against injustice both at home and abroad -- but some small part of me still just wants to be normal.   And the normal part of me has just become addicted to the peanut-butter-creme-filled-sandwich cookies featured at the "Love at First Bite" cupcakery in north Berkeley.  http://www.loveatfirstbitebakery.com/index.html

      Oh if only the starving children of Syria, Palestine and Yemen now under deadly siege by the American/Saudi/Israeli/Turkish neo-colonial military-industrial complex could have some of these cookies too!

Really green lawns: My trip to Silicon Valley

      I just got back from attending a trace-dancing convention held in Silicon Valley.  As far as I can tell, the whole purpose of going into a trance and dancing around a lot is to try to receive messages from the Universe (aka God, Allah, the Great Spirit, Yahweh, Shiva, the Holy Ghost or whatever other Higher Power is currently topping the charts) -- about what would be the best course of action we could take next in order to "benefit the most sentient beings," as the Buddha would put it.

     Benefiting a whole lot of sentient beings is the most evolved thing that a human being can do.   Everything else is just greed, psychosis, materialism and/or trash-talking.  http://www.workers.org/articles/2015/09/08/u-s-wars-caused-refugee-crisis/

     So I'm down there in Silicon Valley and am supposed to be trance-dancing my little heart out -- only I'm not dancing.  I'm just sitting there like a bump on a log like I usually do (only mostly I just do it in front of my computer), when the Universe sends me an urgent and very clear message anyway (and in song, no less).  

     "You got to Move it, Move it!"  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecSCaZ_XPlo

     But guess what, Universe?  I hate to move it, Move it.  But I force myself.  I get up off my chair, I dance around a little bit, I go outside the convention center, I walk around the pool area.  I go back to my hotel room and watch "Wild" on HBO, I watch Reese Witherspoon walk the Pacific Crest Trail in living color.  "Move it or lose it."  Okay.  Message received.

     So then I go out and walk all around the major industrial park where my hotel is located -- and for miles and miles and miles in all directions, all I can see all around me are shiny new building complexes and really green lawns.  Doesn't anybody in Silicon Valley realize that California is in the middle of a history-making, record-breaking, seriously disabling drought?  Apparently not.

PS:  Shortly after I walked around the grassy verges and knolls of Silicon Valley, the 14th anniversary of 9-11 happened.  So I put on my tin-foil hat and thought about that for a while -- with a little help from the Corbett Report.  https://www.corbettreport.com/mp4/911cons.mp4  And from Rebekah Roth's amazing two-hour audio tape, all of it filled with horrifying facts that most of us didn't know before.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecSCaZ_XPlo

     But Americans are really lucky in one way -- a horrible tragedy like this has happened only one single time in America in the last 73 years.  But horrors like 9-11 are happening in countries like Yemen and Syria and Palestine and Ukraine EVERY SINGLE DAY.  And American taxpayers are the ones who are paying for all these horrors. 

     Approximately 60% of every tax dollar we pay out to the IRS goes toward killing people in foreign countries.  "No wonder they hate us."

    The current blitz on Yemen by the notorious American-backed House of Saud (the same group of fun-loving guys who brought us all those elves with box-cutters in September 2001) reminds me strongly of Adolph Hitler's blitz on London during World War II.  And, like the brave people of London, the brave people of Yemen somehow keep hanging on -- even despite over 165 horror-filled days and nights of continual 9-11s brought to them by American weapons manufacturers and the House of Saud, including the bombing of 35 hospitals there.  Watch this video and try not to cry:  https://www.facebook.com/100005010390706/videos/504322856411390/?fref=nf

     However, what goes around eventually comes around too.  King Salman al Saud, please remember what happened to Dresden.

     And in 1936, Haile Selassie passionately appealed to the League of Nations for help against the brutal invasion of poorly-armed Ethiopia by Benito Mussolini's high-tech weapons -- and the League of Nations did nothing.  In 2015, Yemen passionately appealed to the UN for help against the brutal invasion of poorly-armed Yemen by King Salman's high-tech weapons -- and the UN did nothing too.  And we all know what happened to Mussolini -- and to the League of Nations.

     You don't have to dance around in a trance to realize that Americans (and Saudis) really really do need to start moving in a far more compassionate and merciful direction if they don't want to end up like Hitler and Mussolini.

PPS:  Once back from Silicon Valley, I happily returned to sitting in front of my computer again -- and started listening to Rebekah Roth talk about 9-11.  At one point she mentioned that on September 10, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld announced that over two trillion dollars had gone missing from the Pentagon under the watchful eye of some rabbi/accountant with dual citizenship with Israel. 

      So that's how the Israeli neo-colonialists can afford to buy all those weapons they use to bomb kittens in Gaza -- two trillion bucks from the Pentagon would really help their shopping list a lot.

     "But, Jane," you might ask, "would Rumsfeld and Bush and Cheney lie to us like that?"  Yeah, duh.  They lied to us about winning the 2000 election, about Iraq WMDs and about Katrina.  Why would they hesitate to lie to us about 9-11?  http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2011/12/leadup-iraq-war-timeline  And now Obama is lying to us about Syria and Yemen. 

      Americans are so easily fooled. I really should try to sell them that bridge in Brooklyn again.  Or sell them another grassy knoll.

   

MSM Lies & Damn Lies: A report on refugees from an actual Syrian

      You cannot BELIEVE all the outright lies and damn lies being shoveling our way by the western mainstream media regarding the current Middle East crisis and the refugee problem.  Let me just hit a few highlights:

     1.  The House of Saud owns over a trillion dollars worth of all kinds of horrible weapons and has been carpet-bombing Yemen continuously for the last 165 days.  Thousands of Yemeni civilians have been brutally murdered so that the Saudis can go in and steal Yemen's oil.  Yet the western MSM constantly keeps bitching and moaning about how just ten (10) Saudi mercenaries have been killed while invading Yemen and, get this, Obama himself actually sent condolences to King What's His Name.

     It's like when Benito Mussolini went in and bombed the Hell out of stone-age Ethiopia in the 1930s -- and we all know how badly that eventually turned out for Mussolini.  https://www.facebook.com/100009776529939/videos/163629063972977/?pnref=story

     And of course the poor victimized Yemenis are called "terrorists" and "rebels" by the MSM.  The proper term here would be "patriots," guys.

     2.  Not all refugees from the Middle East are Syrians.  MSM, get a grip.  Some of them are even from Ukraine.  Fancy that.  NONE of them are fleeing President Assad.  They are ALL fleeing bad guys who have been trained and weaponized by America, NATO, Israeli, Turkish and Saudi neo-colonialists out prospecting for Lebenstraum and (of course) oil. 

     Syria's President Assad has nothing to do with ISIS.  He and the Kurds are the only ones actually fighting ISIS.  Everyone else is supplying ISIS.  MSM, get it right.

     All these lies and propaganda remind me of what Hitler told the Good Germans back in the days of World War II.  Can you actually believe that our very own MSM is telling us outright lies, ones that they themselves actually know are lies?  Hard to believe.  But true.

     And here is an eye-witness report sent to me by a friend in Syria -- totally different from the crap we are now being fed:

     1.  The hysteric focus on the immigrants to Europe is only designed to create a public opinion, to support the European governments and armies to interfere in Syria, under humanitarian grounds.  It's like scaring their people "if we didn't go to war, Europe will be invaded by Muslims, Arabs, Africans, and Asians".
 
     2.  Refugees to Europe (and North America and Australia in lesser numbers and portions) have never stopped since the end of WWII.  Sinking boats filled with illegal refugees never stopped in the last decades, and they used to be either totally ignored or partially shown at the end of the news, just to feel a little pity about that tragedy.  The whales who committed suicide at the shores would have more cameras focused on them though.  So what had changed today to suddenly focus on the Syrian refugees?
 
     3.  A new Syrian refugee who recently made it to Germany told my friend over there, that the Syrian refugees with him were about 20% of the total refugees on the boats and trains!  The rest were from North Africa, Afghanistan, and even from Balkan states (southeastern Europe), yet the mainstream media focuses only on Syrian refugees, or worse, call them all as Syrian refugees!

     Although I admit that I'm not following the news because I'm pretty busy over here with family needs and obtaining clean water or cooking gas cylinders, I do remember watching some news by coincidence showing refugees reaching different areas in Europe, and I thought that they look like Afghans or Asians. Then I guessed that they might be Kurds?

     I didn't give it more attention, till I received that notice from my friend over there.  So what does it mean?  Does it mean that refugees from many other nations are taking advantage of the Syrian crisis and immigrating to Europe as Syrians?  From another source, I heard that some Lebanese are doing so right now, going to Europe as Syrian refugees.  Some Syrians families did the same in the 80s, immigrated to Sweden and pretended that they are Lebanese fleeing their civil war.
 
     4.  Or else European governments do know where these refugees are coming from, but they are turning a blind eye, to make the numbers of the alleged Syrian refugees 10 times more?  The game of exaggerated numbers of the dead, the wounded, and refugees has been played a lot in the last five years.

     When NATO interfered in Libya, they said that "Qaddhafi's army" had already murdered dozens of thousands of Libyans around Benghazi, and they had to interfere to avoid a massacre of hundreds of thousands more.  After the toppling of the Libyan state, the real numbers came out, that the casualties were around 200-250, half of them were Libyan policemen and pro-government officials.  And similar lies in numbers today about the real number of Syrian refugees to Europe is very possible.  Maybe a few years from now, the real numbers will be shown as one tenth or less than what they are shown now on the media.
 
     5.  There is some gossip here that each European state is taking a certain type, sect, or ethnic group of Syrians, to divide them forever.  I remember that Cyprus was accepting Syrian Orthodox Christian refugees, while other states were accepting Protestants, Catholics, etc.  Syrian Circassians were asking to take refuge in Russia but Russia offered to support them to stay in their lands.  Syrian Armenians were immigrating to Armenia.

     But that wasn't the same for Muslim sects.  Iran and Hezbollah for example, are supporting the Shi'a community to stay in their land and to defend it.  It was so obvious to me when ISIS attacked the Assyrians and ancient Christians in northern Iraq, and kicked them out of their homes and towns, France offered for them to come right away to its land, as if ISIS and the French government were working together to cleanse the Levant and the Middle East from its original authentic nations and to replace them with all the international trash militias they brought from overseas.

     Each time a Christian village or town is attacked in Syria, France or other European states offers them safe haven outside of Syria.  That way of scattering the Syrian people around the globe is a very evil plan.
 
     6.  There is an argument about what European states should be doing:  If they helped the poor Syrian (or other) refugees of seniors, women and children, we say over here that they are cleansing our communities and nation in a systematic pattern.

      However if Europeans didn't do anything for the Syrians, we will say over here that "No one is helping or giving a hand or offering us a visa as refugees in their states".   

     Part of that type of problematic thinking is because of the dominating ideas of "conspiracy theories" over here.  The long history of fooling the Arabs have made them so suspicious about everything, and sometimes not a healthy suspicion either.  I think that supporting people to stay in their lands and to defend themselves against invaders instead of simply helping them to leave, might be one of the answers of that ongoing argument.  What do you think?

     Me?  What do I think?  I think that if Turkish, American, NATO, Israeli and Saudi neo-colonialists would just stop trying to steal the Middle East's land and oil and stop arming ISIS and Al Qaeda, then the refugee crisis would stop on a dime.

     But what do I know?

     Obviously the MSM knows better than me.  Either that, or the MSM is really really really good at telling lies to us Good Germans.

Silent but deadly: The CIA's fart machine

    Having trouble understanding international politics?  Here's the basic rule of thumb for trying to wrap your mind around what's going on in the world today:  "The one that smelt it, dealt it."

     Yep, that old teenage adage is still spot-on.

     If you smell something rotten and then the CIA starts wildly pointing its finger at Ukraine, Chile, Russia, Congo, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Syria, Iraq, Serbia, Iran and/or Edward Snowden, then you know immediately where to look for the source of the stink.  http://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/comment/2015/9/2/american-bombs-other-peoples-wars

     Take Saudi Arabia for instance.  Who cut the cheese on 9-11?  And who got the blame?  Most of the hijackers were Saudis but the CIA shouted "Afghanistan! Afghanistan!" until everyone else looked at Osama bin Ladin and then bombed the crap out of, wait for it, Osama's home town on the Arabian peninsula?  Hell no.

    And guess who farted all over Syria and then pointed the finger at Syria's president, Bashar Assad?  http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2014/06/eye-witness-syria-americas-barbarians.html

     And guess who passed gas in...you name it.  Wherever there is a gas line needed throughout the world.  I'm just surprised that the CIA isn't yelling "FART" up in Alaska by now!  Or perhaps the right word should be "frack".

    But the CIA isn't the only one to use that old fart-machine trick.  It works all too well when used by other international and national politicians too.  Just listen to Tayyip Erdogan, the guy who runs Turkey with an iron hand, go on and on about dead babies washing up on his shores.  "It wasn't me!  Honest!" he cries while everyone else in the Middle East is forced to hold their noses, knowing full well that Turkey, the US, Israel and the Saudis are the ones truly cutting the ISIS cheese -- as they inflict the smell of their rotten neo-colonialist intestines on the rest of us.  Yuck!  http://sayed7asan.blogspot.fr/2015/07/war-without-mercy-in-yemen.html

     Want a "spare the air" day in the Middle East?  Just tell the Saudi, US, Israeli and Turkish neo-colonialist to stop farting around and give up their neo-colonialist ways.  "Who dealt it?"  Take a guess.  If you guessed Erdogan with his dreams of the New Ottoman Empire, the US with its dreams of the New Roman Empire, Saudi Arabia with its dreams of the New House of Saud Caliphate and Israel with its dreams of the New Greater Israel, then you would be right.

    Fine for them.  They get relief from the pressure of all that gas building up.  But for the rest of us?  To the rest of us, their farts only smell like rotting dead babies.

PS:  I'm off to spend my Labor Day weekend taking Madame Jane to a national trance-dancing convention in Redwood City.  Will let you know how that goes.  Madame Jane always finds out something interesting when she gets stuck in a trance -- for instance, she always discovers who really did cut the cheese.

Playing strip-poker with the next POTUS

     Why isn't one of the Koch brothers running for president in 2016?  They both have the time and the money to do it.  My guess is that Charlie and Dave saw what happened to George W. Bush and don't want that happening to them too.

         Running for president these days is a lot like playing in a game of strip poker.  Sooner or later, too much of everyone playing gets exposed -- and in the end GWB came out of the game as morally naked as a jay-bird.  Even though he was able to steal the whole pot (twice). http://billmoyers.com/2014/06/27/the-first-iraq-war-was-also-sold-to-the-public-based-on-a-pack-of-lies/

    Far better for the Kochs to throw in a poker chip named Scott Walker than risk walking home in the nude.

     But running for prez in America is like strip poker in a whole other way as well.  In the next presidential election, here's how the game is going to basically work -- just as it has in every other election since Jimmy Carter.  In the winter of 2016, Lockheed-Martin, Monsanto, AIPAC, Goldman-Sachs and Citibank will once again be holding their secret high-stakes strip-poker game in the back room of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, this time hosted by Obama, Lockheed-Martin's BFF since back in 2008. http://sayed7asan.blogspot.fr/2015/08/from-palestine-to-yemen-honour-and.html.

     Drinks will be served.

     And Donald Trump will throw his shorts into the pot, trying to impress Goldman-Sachs.  Hillary Clinton will then throw in her shirt, making a bid for Lockheed-Martin's support.  JEB Bush will throw in the towel, knowing that even AIPAC won't be interested in raising his stakes, even after all that Bush I and Bush II have already done to promote neo-colonialism in the Middle East for AIPAC.  And Scott Walker is already down to his G-string, having already left all his clothes in Wisconsin with the Kochs.

     Bernie Sanders will still have most of his clothes on his back -- but will be shedding them as fast as he can over foreign policy, also hoping to please Lockheed-Martin and AIPAC too.

     Dr. Jill Stern, the Green party's choice (and mine too) won't even be invited to the game.

     Soon all the candidates will be standing before these powerful kingmakers stark naked.

     Which one will be sitting in the White House after the 2016 election is over?  That depends.  Which one will sell the most weapons, start the most "humanitarian interventions," pollute the most air, rob the most $$$ out of our bank accounts?  Who will sweeten the pot most?  Which one will screw his or her fellow Americans best?  A deal will be dealt.  A winner will be declared.  The other candidates will fold.

    Ah, but that will be just the beginning.  The kingmakers will now have to let all the rest of us know how to vote.  Suddenly the media will be singing the praises of the strip-poker game winner during all of the primaries.  The voting machines will get rigged in The Candidate's favor. http://www.kansas.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/article32685087.html

      And of course drinks will be served -- again.  But this time it will be the Kool-Aid.