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In case you were in a coma last year or on safari, Anthony Weiner is the former New York Congressman, sans conscience, who “sexted” young women photos of his private parts. Further, he lied to the American people claiming he had not done so and that his Twitter account was hacked. Ultimately he admitted the error of his ways, including but not limited to his lying, and resigned. In his spare time, Weiner also partook of a lie-based smear campaign against talk-radio host Glenn Beck and one of Beck’s sponsors, Goldline. But I digress.

Fast forward and Weiner has thrown his hat into the ring once again as he tests the poll numbers in a bid for the Democratic nomination to run for….wait for it…Mayor of New York, To quote Hollywood, “Only in America.”

But this isn’t about Anthony Weiner. He’s just the reference point. It’s about you and me.

Whether you are religious and believe that we define ourselves by exercising our Free Will and making choices between good and evil, consider yourself part of the metaphysical movement and believe that we create our reality with our intentional thoughts, or are an atheist who thinks you’re bound by a personally defined moral code, choosing to put a despicable, lying, sex addict back into public office would be a pretty damning indication of just how unconscious and lacking in ethics the people of New York are.

Currently, Weiner is running a tight second in the polls. However, New York is merely the microcosm. The rest of the country can take no pleasure in casting the first stone. Step back just a tad and look at the last two Presidential elections. First, we elected a man with no experience. Then, when he did nothing in his entire term to either warrant praise or benefit the nation, we re-elected him rather than a man with proven successes and impeccable character…and look where we are.

Like it or not, we define ourselves by our choices and to a great extent, create the world we live in by those same choices. If you and I are unhappy with the present state of that world, then we better wake-up, take personal responsibility for our choices and stop kidding ourselves that it all happens by chance or outside of our control

If the Democrat Party runs Anthony Weiner as its Mayoral candidate, and New Yorkers elect Anthony Weiner as their Mayor, then they are either irreversibly ignorant or irretrievably unconscious. In either case, they will be damned by their choice.

Make no mistake. We always get to choose and by so doing, define ourselves.

A house of horrors abortion clinic in Philadelphia.  A fourth grade teacher in Florida having students print that they would “give up some of [their] constitutional rights in order to be safe or more secure.” A New York high school teacher who assigned his class to “argue Jews are evil” while blaming them for the problems of Nazi Germany.

I am less troubled by who we have become than by the question, “Why don’t we care who we’ve become?” Have these collective offenses to the Divine in each of us been reduced, at best, to passing stories on the nightly news? Why do we not care about education that is agenda based, deceitful and perverse? Why are we so apathetic or hardened to the systematic slaughter of the unborn that we allow it to continue in the name of a woman’s right to choose?

I am a woman and I chose. When my ex-husband and I could not have a child we chose to go to China and adopt our daughter. She is a beauty both inside and out.  In light of the gruesome story out of Philadelphia, I look at her and am pained by the thought that she, too, could have been brutally “terminated” but for the courage of her birth mother, the existence of an orphanage and her own sheer will to survive.  What right do we have, we who are the beneficiaries of the gift of life, to take it from the innocence of others?  Why do we think we can escape the inevitable slippery slope of turning a blind eye to the total disregard and devaluation of human life?  If you know your Purim story and Mordechai’s admonition to Queen Esther, then you know the wisdom teaching that if you try and deny your responsibility towards saving humanity, you too will perish.

As for the stories out of Florida and New York, they are “the canaries in the gold mine” of education.  We are, through “Common Core” and our indifference to the personal responsibility for educating our children, abandoning and enslaving this and future generations to the distortions and perversions of evil. So as the power players bombard us with news and arguments in favor of gun control, they are simultaneously and systematically seeking to selectively control the population and mold minds through abortion and curriculum, respectively.

What they seek to accomplish can only be attained by our accompanying indifference and cooperation. What we think will not happen here is based upon the false premise that it can never happen here because it has never happened here.

The premise is false on two counts.

First, at the end of the Civil War, the nation embarked upon Reconstruction and by way of Black Codes, prohibited  gun ownership from freedmen, slaves and African-Americans.  The result? A flourishing Ku Klux Klan.  We have, in our own history, sought to control birth, education and self-defense of an entire people. It was a shameful time, a blight upon the National saga, with repercussions still felt today.  Secondly, an enlightened and civilized society, Europe of the early twentieth century, was the breeding ground for Adolph Hitler.

Evil can and will exist anywhere humanity allows it to germinate and grow through indifference and cooperation. The good news is that each of us has total control over how indifferent or cooperative we choose to be. Pick your cause. This is the time to be heard. This is the time to stand. Find the indignation within and, with focused intention, speak truth to power. This is your moment.

There is only One of Us. In no more concise a fashion can this be stated than it was by Rabbi Hillel, the 1^st century Jewish sage and scholar who said, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?”

Have the presence of mind to ask yourself “When?”  Then have the courage of heart to hear the response. “Now.”

Suicide crosses all economic and sociological boundaries. No one is immune by nature of their family ties nor is anyone to blame.  In fact, suicide knows no boundaries. This painful fact is most recently evidenced by the suicide death of Matthew Warren, the youngest son of Pastor Rick Warren, mega-church founder and author of the best-selling book “The Purpose Driven Life.”

It seems almost a cruel irony that a man who inspired so many to find purpose and meaning in their own lives must now tragically face an inability to gift that same purpose to his own child. This tragedy is not a failing on the part of Pastor Warren. It is the sad but very real outcome of an individual’s inability to find hope and meaning in the midst of suffering.

I know. I tried to commit suicide at age 24 and have spent decades since building a rich, full and meaningful life. However, since that fateful day, I have periodically been challenged with those same thoughts that caused me to choose attempted suicide all those years ago.

The difference in how I have since dealt with those thoughts is by learning to override them through an understanding that the only constant is change. Therefore, no matter how bleak the present moment may seem, I know that I can trust in the fact that it will pass and change will come.  I also developed an ever-growing sense of self-worth by facing, and overcoming,  life challenges…starting small and working my way up to ever-increasing accomplishments.

I have read that Matthew Warren was described as “an incredibly kind, gentle and compassionate young man whose sweet spirit was encouragement and comfort to many.” How I empathize.

We live in a fast-paced, often-times alienated-from-one-another world due to technological advancements and misplaced values. The more sensitive, caring and perceptive one is of the pain of others, the more challenging it can be to exist under such circumstances. It seems the most gifted, the most artistic, the most remarkable individuals in human history have suffered the greatest emotional turmoil. Perhaps this is the price of truly understanding and feeling our connectedness to one another. I do not yet have this answer.

What I do know is that hope and trust in the ability to survive and prosper are tied to experiences of competency. The more often an individual is able to experience autonomy combined with accomplishment the more likely they are to be able to emotionally and intellectually weather the storms of clouded thinking that see suffering as permanent and suicide as an option.

To schedule Carole Goldstein to speak to your group, organization or school on attempted suicide and effective ways to overcome negative thinking click here.

Words like credibility and gravitas get tossed around a lot and in the process land in places they don’t belong. Sometimes, however, they land dead on. Such is the case with Bob Woodward. I think for those of us who lived through Watergate, and were at least old enough to grasp the fact that something politically earth-shattering was occurring, “Woodward and Bernstein” are names tattooed on our brains.  Since their extraordinary investigative journalism led to the resignation of then President Richard Nixon, Bob Woodward has spent decades rightfully earning a certain amount of respect for the seriousness with which he continues to approach reporting, and critiquing, our politicians and our nation.

Which is why his comments during a Fox News interview today are so important and why the White House reaction and response are so deeply disturbing.

Woodward, based upon his decades-long access to and writing about every President since Nixon called President Obama’s approach to the sequestration issue “mad”…as in insane. Needless to say his comment landed with a thud at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Questioning the sanity of a sitting President is bold under the best of circumstances. But with a President as “thin-skinned” as this one (again Woodward’s language, not mine) and as intentionally insulated from criticism by a generally fawning press, it turns out to be dangerous.  The response to Woodward’s comment came from a high level White House staffer who chewed Woodward out for thirty minutes on the phone then followed up with an email warning him he would “regret” what he was saying publicly.

This President and those who surround him govern by bullying, disregard and hubris. I’ve written about their approach long before this latest incident. What I find so disturbing, as should every American, is the now fully unmasked disregard this President has come to exhibit for the dignity, sanctity and scope of the office to which he was elected. Further, he seemingly couldn’t care less about the desires and preferences of the citizens who put him there.

Bob Woodward has verbalized what many of us have thought for some time now. Either Barack Obama does not care about the destruction of the United States or he intends it to happen. Either way, he is mad. And either way, Bob Woodward has had the courage to call it like it is.

Finally, credibility and gravitas in action.

To know Barney was to love him. He was a sweet-natured feline who didn’t have a mean bone in his body. Unfortunately, he also didn’t have any sense of, or respect for, boundaries. At his worst, Barney would think nothing of jumping into your lap even if another cat was already there. He simply was “wired” in such a way that wherever he wanted to be, and whenever he wanted to be there…well, his intention was always his priority regardless of who or what was in his way.

Michelle Obama’s appearance as a presenter at the Academy Awards last night instantly brought back memories of Barney and his total lack of appropriate boundaries.

There appears to be no aspect of our lives that this Administration, and other Progressives, consider beyond the scope of their involvement and/or regulation. Like Barney, and his dismissal of all laws natural, Progressives proceed full steam ahead with a “damn the Constitution and God-given rights” attitude should either be in their way.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to tell you how much soda you can drink with disregard for the Bill of Rights and First Amendment. President Obama and Vice President Biden want to prohibit, or restrict, how you can defend yourself and your family despite your rights under the Second Amendment. Michelle Obama wants to tell you what vegetables to eat and she wants to dress up as an Oscar to tell you how good movies are for you, even when they are not so subtly indoctrinating you with a particularly Progressive agenda.

Call me crazy, but just as I wanted Barney to understand there were places and times that his appearances were unwelcome, so too do I want my politicians to understand that they are not my nutritionists, my parents, or my movie critics.

When I was in law school I had a professor who called me into his office one day to impart some unsolicited “fatherly advice” as he phrased it. He told me he had seen lots of students pass through those hallowed halls over the years and it was his observation that I “just didn’t have what it takes” to be a lawyer. He recommended that I “drop out of school and find another career.” I listened respectfully and when he finished I replied, “I have a father. If I want fatherly advice I’ll ask him.” I went on to graduate and successfully practice law. He died a year later.

It’s important that we know our boundaries. Deliberately ignoring them indicates a level of hubris worth noting. Therefore, I want Mayor Bloomberg, President Obama, Vice President Biden, Michelle Obama and all the other Progressives who lack any sense of boundaries to “step back jack” and stay out of those areas of my life that God and the U.S. Constitution deem mine to live and regulate.

 

While most of the country is easily distracted (and manipulated) into following either the Grammy Awards or a firefight between a heinous ex-LAPD cop and various law enforcement agencies, some of us have been otherwise engaged. There are actually reasons to be concerned, but among them aren’t Taylor Swift’s latest stab at an ex-boyfriend or the political rant of an ex-cop gone bad.

In case you missed it, Russian President Vladimir Putin has bought enough gold over the last decade to equal three times the size of the Statue of Liberty hedging against collapse of the EURO and the U.S. dollar.  His secretary of State has deliberately snubbed our recently confirmed Secretary of State by not returning Kerry’s phone call relating to North Korea’s provocative nuclear test (a direct diplomatic smack in the face).  Further, two Russian nuclear-armed bombers circled the western Pacific island of Guam just prior to President Obama’s State of the Union speech apparently directly addressing and taunting President Obama’s unrelenting determination to dismantle our nuclear deterrent capabilities.

I don’t write a blog to instill or escalate fear. There’s enough of that in main stream media, Hollywood productions and video games. I do, however, write to awaken and inform.  Yesterday, on my talk radio show “The Gold Standard” I spent the hour looking at “apathy” and “victimization” and how they lead to enslavement and violence, respectively.

Unless enough of our citizens awaken to the immanent need to question his or her focus, values and energies… we are in for a boat load of trouble that will make what happened on the Carnival cruise ship “Triumph” look like a stroll in the park.

If, by chance, you feel overwhelmed and tend to take the stance that you are just one person so what can you do anyway, well… try writing U.S. Senator Ted Cruz from Texas a “Thank You.”   He may be the “new kid on the [Congressional] block” but he’s doing the heavy lifting in Congress you say you always want from your elected officials.  He’s taken on the status quo and refusing to play by the “accepted” rules. You can thank him for the delay in the Chuck Hagel nomination for Secretary of Defense, a delay that is warranted if, for no other reason, than dubious and misleading statements Hagel made under oath that necessitate further scrutiny.

Email the thank you to Senator Cruz and write your own Senators praising Cruz’s courage as exemplary. Then rethink whether you ought to be a passive follower of movie star romances and real-time gun fights or an informed and engaged citizen.

Is there anyone out there who is still unconscious enough to believe anything our politicians say or do?  I suppose the incredulous answer is “Yes” because they’re still “saying  and doing” and, as in the President’s staged statement made just moments ago concerning the pending fiscal cliff… they’re still allowing themselves to be used as useful idiots positioned for the camera behind the President with smiles on their faces. Amazing. Truly!

These corrupt, disingenuous and self-serving public servants have just been given a pay raise by our President to be paid for with your tax dollars while they vacationed for Christmas at their respective homes (in the President’s case Hawaii) while we were left twisting in the wind over the potential price of milk and our tax burdens for 2013 and beyond. Then, they did us a favor and returned from holiday to perhaps cut a totally inadequate and piecemeal deal at the 11^th hour when they should have, and could have, worked this out months ago.

This is but the latest example of why you have to disengage from “The Game.”

The purpose of The Game is to keep you twisting in the wind and therefore, frightened. Frightened people are infinitely more manageable and easily manipulated (read: “enslaved”) than are independent, internally directed, personally responsible people. Hence, why they perpetuate all the uncertainty and fear.

I love board games but I don’t play chess. The reason I don’t play is because no matter how many times it’s been explained to me, I don’t get it. Besides, there are a multitude of other games to play with rules I do understand. Now, maybe it’s not the best analogy. After all, the rules of chess don’t change mid-game as do the rules of elite power brokers. Power brokers, and those sycophants who hang by their sides, play by rules and change them at will while the rest of us are forever playing catch up.

But where the analogy is GREAT is that we don’t have to play this game. We can get off this board and choose another game.

The one I like is “The Game of Oneness.”

It has many dimensions but the rules are constant no matter which one you’re in:

1. Be personally responsible. 2. Have unfaltering integrity. 3. Think for yourself. 4. Buy only what you like regardless of what is marketed. 5. Back off technology. 6. Exhibit compassion for yourself and others. 7. Spend time in Nature and realign with its rhythms. 8. Cultivate joy in your heart and spread it outward. 9. Do no harm.

When you get to the end of that board, having played by the rules, the win is so much more than dying with the most toys.

The win is Eternal Life.

I understand why Jesus smashed the tables in the Temple courtyard. I could smash a few myself. There simply comes a time when enough is enough. When every rational and civil attempt to right the wrongs has failed.

The fiscal cliff is looming, Obamacare is about to change our lives (not for the better), and 20 children who had no means of defense are dead. Meanwhile…

– Members of Congress have gone home for Christmas. Really?

– The President and his family are vacationing in Hawaii. Really?

– We’re told we’re in an economic recovery and should believe the numbers… not our personal experience. Really?

– Congress has a better healthcare plan that the rest of us. Really?

– Sasha and Malia have guards with guns to protect them at school. Really?

– The children of many Congressman and Senators go to private schools with enhanced security. Really?

– In 2000, then President Bill Clinton requested $60 million in federal funding for a program called “COPS in Schools” that does exactly what the NRA has now proposed and which the media is currently mocking. Really?

There is such a thing as righteous anger. Righteousness, as I define it, is the “rightful use of energy.” When energy is properly utilized and directed so that both the intent and the outcome are in alignment with eliminating that which is diseased and corrupted, then such use is necessary.  As our “leaders” vacation and provide themselves with exceptions, exemptions, protections and perks unavailable to the rest of society, I am reminded of Nero fiddling while Rome burned.

At the moment I have but one prayer:  “Please, God, show me the way to the tables.”

I don’t know why he did it. No one does. It was a tragic and senseless act by a troubled soul.  I wept as did the Nation and as we each try to find some fact, some new information that could perhaps bring something resembling meaning to the chaos I am certain of one thing.

Hatred and further polarization are inappropriate and destructive responses. Whether media personalities or politicians… family members, friends or co-workers…“coming at each other” over gun control is to wildly miss the point. Only a world that has lost its moral and value-based compass could have strayed as far from Truth and harmony as we have strayed.

It’s about so much more than guns. That is precisely what we will try to avoid. We will try and tie it all up in a political package aimed at curbing assault weapons rather than accepting personal responsibility for how we have abdicated doing what is right when confronted with the opportunity to do what is expedient.

We have shunned putting forth the time to be parents to instead turn the children over to be influenced by technology. We have avoided living lives that establish standards that would then give us the right to demand the same of our elected leaders. We have failed to provide decent facilities and care for the mentally ill. We have determined the success of our personal lives by our incomes rather than our degree of inner peace, and that of the Nation by its Moody’s credit rating rather than its citizens proliferation of compassion. We have neglected to revere life in all its forms thus destroying at will that which is inconvenient or burdensome. We have lost the patience to allow our lives to unfold in harmony with natural rhythms and, by so doing, misplaced conscience as we took what we wanted when we wanted it without regard for consequence. We belittle and mock our own inner connection to the Divine while falling prostrate at the feet of material false idols.

There is no President, no legislation, and no committee to see about all the ways in which we have erred and rebelliously refused to self-correct. For in the end, this is what it has come down to. Self-correction. For if we do not use this moment, this tragedy, this waste of human life to stop the hatred, name calling and polarization… to awaken to our Oneness… then it will be too late to Self-correct.

We will have moved beyond any remedy conceivable by our limited capacities and inflated egos to turn the tide of self-destruction. If that should happen, the correction will come from a place outside of our understanding and may God have mercy on us.

Awaken now. Stop the separation now. Take responsibility now. Feel your humanity now. There is only One of Us.

What I do to you I do to myself. What I think of you I think of myself. What I wish for you I bring upon myself.

This is law and it is incontrovertible.

It now seems the Obama Administration has decided upon a new, definitive and focused approach to Israel regarding the latest contention in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It goes something like this (and I paraphrase): “Remain silent and let the other guys do the dirty work.” This is, in essence, the approach the Administration will take towards Israel’s announcement to commence new settlement construction in Judea and Samaria (a/k/a/ the West Bank).

According to American Jewry liberal spokesman Peter Beinart, also considered one of Obama’s associates, the President and Secretary of State Clinton have decided that they will sit back and say nothing while allowing the EU members to put the pressure on Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli’s to forego construction plans.  The Administration also hopes this strategy will put additional pressure on what they perceive to be a recalcitrant Netanyahu to make more concessions to “the peace process” as no Special Envoy will be sent to kick start peace talks.

Further, Daniel Levy, Middle East director at the European Council on Foreign Relations think-tank, has noted that in recent days the Administration has not been “investing diplomatic capital” in seeking to call off the escalating EU criticism of Israel.

This approach by the Administration is resulting in a progressive (no pun intended) isolation and alienation of Israel in relation to other world governments. Such a turn does not bode well for Israelis, Jews around the world, or free societies wherever they may exist.

To think that we in the United States can remain silent in the face of Israel’s escalating vulnerability and its condemnation by surrogates doing our bidding is foolhardy. It also flies in the face of history. The world, and the United States in particular, once before remained silent while Hitler sought to deliberately, methodically and without opposition marginalize and isolate Jews with the intention to destroy them. The inevitable outcome was disaster not only for the Jews but for the entire free world.

The Obama Administration may think it is being clever by its silence, providing itself a veneer of impartiality and distance from the unfolding Middle East scenario as it relates to Israel’s security and Islamic extremism. However, as German pastor and dissident anti-Nazi Deitrich Bonhoffer so succinctly stated in the face of this same emerging pattern of behavior 72 years ago, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

I would add that silence will neither insulate the silent from the taint of evil nor will it exonerate them from being judged culpable co-conspirators. However, culpability is not limited to political leaders. It is incumbent upon each of us awake enough to comprehend the magnitude of this error to speak and act. One voice can change history. It has and will again.

Yours may be that voice.