To Readers of My THOUGHTS Blog:

I started writing this column in 2002 and it became an online blog in 2008 (?), I guess. It is hard to believe that it has been almost 8 years. For many of those years, I wrote my column and emailed it out every Monday, but lately I have gotten lazy and I send it out whenever I have something to say. It has been a wonderful vehicle to express and share feelings, concerns and ideas...FOOD for THOUGHT, as my tag line states.

I have always welcomed your thoughtful comments and looked forward to your reaction to my blog, even when we did not always see eye to eye on things, especially then, because then I knew that you read it and it stirred something in you. It provided food for thought. But, I always learn something, too. I always get a different perspective, another view. By now, those of you who read my blog, know that I am certainly more left of center than many of my readers. I have been just as vitriolic and partisan as some of my more conservative friends on the right when it comes to politics. (I get that from my late mother, I suppose.) It has led to some interesting and at times...frustrating debates. But again, I always learn something from my readers. It has been most rewarding.

So after almost 8 years, I want to thank YOU, my readers. I want you to hang in there and please, please, please ...continue to COMMENT on my blog. You can either leave your comments on the blog or e-mail me at sortman808@aol.com. There is nothing worse for a writer than to receive no feedback from his readers. One of the nice things about Blogspot.com is that you can get reports on how many hits a column generates and from where. I am just amazed that my blog is read by people in Brazil, Russia, England, Australia, India and other places around the world. I also link my blog on my Facebook account for all my friends there as well. It's a big world out there. Let's hear from you!

Thank you, my friends! Keep reading and commenting!

Stephen Ortman
San Antonio, Texas

Help Me Understand This

Okay, so here is the deal. BP and their cohorts are drilling a mile deep in the Gulf of Mexico. Things are taking too long and corners are cut. Safety procedures are compromised, thanks to the cozy relationship between the oil industry and the government agency meant to regulate it. There is a problem. The drill rig explodes and lives are lost. Oil begins pouring into the Gulf of Mexico. BP lies about how much oil is pouring out and their ability to stop the leak. Over many weeks and months they try one failed idea after another to stop the leak. They spew toxic dispersants into the water to break up the oil, but all it does is create large toxic oil plumes under the water, which PB at first denies. As things get worse they promise to find a way to stop the leak and reimburse all legitimate claims for damage.


President Obama orders the Coast Guard and Federal resources to assist BP in containing the oil and stop the leak. He imposes a 6 month moratorium on deep water drilling in the Gulf and appoints a commission to investigate the safety of the existing rigs and the cause and prevention of the current spill. He makes several visits to the Gulf Coast and talks to local officials, residents and fishermen about the pending disaster. The President has the Secretary of the Interior reorganize the regulatory agency overseeing the oil industry.

Things continue to get worse. Fragile wetlands and wildlife get coated with gooey oil and tar balls wash up on the beaches. We find out that BP is still lying about the amount of oil flowing into the Gulf. They are only partially successful in stopping the oil and in fact may have made it worse by some accounts. BP is slow to process claims for damages and lost wages. People are out of work, suffering and getting upset. BP stock drops and there are rumors that the giant corporation might actually go bankrupt.

President Obama continues to hold BP’s feet to the fire. He calls the top BP executives to the White House and gets them to agree to put $20 billion into a separate fund and appoints a respected, experienced person to efficiently pay out claims to the people suffering the most. This is money in the bank, even if BP goes belly up. A third party is now paying out claims and not some PB employee. He even gets them to agree to put another $200 million into a fund for out-of-work oil workers due to his moratorium on deep water drilling. Even with all of this money given up by BP, the President makes it clear that this was in no way a cap on what BP may ultimately owe people and businesses because of BP’s negligence.

Now here is what I need help with. This is what I don’t get. President Obama is getting blasted for not doing enough, fast enough. The same politicians that were shouting from the roof tops with warnings about “Big Government” needing to stay out of our lives and our business are now screaming that our government was not involved, was not regulating the oil industry…enough. Our “Big Government” is not reacting fast enough and big enough to stop the oil spill and clean up the mess. Where is the government they shout. These were the same people and the same cry when our financial system was collapsing recently. Gosh, how come the banks and the oil industry did not police themselves? For years conservative politicians would have us believe that regulation is bad and the government should just butt out. So what is it, too much government or not enough?

At a recent congressional hearing, BP company officers assembled for a session of “slice and dice” when Texas Republican congressman , Joe Barton, opened his statements with an apology to BP for President Obama’s “shakedown” of the $20 billion fund. Yes, he was pressured into rescinding his apology to BP later, but I suspect he was giving voice to many politicians who owe their campaign funds in part to BP and the rest of the oil industry. The fund was seen as Obama’s “shakedown” of BP rather than a plan to insure that victims are compensated. Why is that?

And the last thing I need help with is this anger at President Obama over the moratorium on deep water drilling. As oil is still gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, despite BP’s many “experiments” to stop it, politicians, fishermen and oil men are pushing to resume the drilling. With fear in their angry, warning voices, they make it Obama’s fault for men being out of work which will eventually cause the oil rigs to pack up and sail away to other oil fields thus causing even more damage to the already injured economy. But, wouldn’t these same voices be decrying President Obama if another deep water well began leaking because we never took the time to check the safety equipment and procedures, if we never completed the current investigation into WHY this disaster happened? Damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. Why is that?

Are oil profits more sacred than people’s lives and the environment that sustains us?

Food for THOUGHT…

A Healing Prayer Request

The first Spiritual Truth that that stuck with me, even before I realized I was on a Path of Enlightenment, was the idea that we create our own reality. It came from a book titled, Illusions, by Richard Bach, the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. The concept that we create our own reality by what we THINK was intriguing.

If we think negatively, by this concept, we tend to create a negative reality, a negative world. If we further accept that there is a collective reality being created by others who are also thinking negatively, then it would explain our current reality or what we perceive as REAL.

Every day I wake up to gloom and doom over this oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This tragedy, unlike 9/11, has been tearing our country apart rather than uniting us. I listen to the latest updates on the oil spread, its damage and potential for damage. Then I listen to the endless debates on whose fault it is. I hear the interviews with fishermen and resort owners along the coast. You hear their fear and anger. I get caught up in all this fear and anger and become part of it. I help to keep it going and yet I feel so helpless to do anything about it.

Today, I received a prayer request from a friend. I was asked to put it out there. I’m not one to do that, especially from the internet, but the request was from Dr. Masaru Emoto, a Japanese scientist. Some may recognize him from research and publications he has done on the characteristics of water. His research reveals that water physically responds to emotions. Our THOUGHTS can actually change the structure of water molecules. When anger and fear are directed at water samples they appear significantly different from samples subjected to prayer and loving thoughts.

Dr. Emoto is asking the following prayer be copied down and repeated by as many people as possible to create a healing in the Gulf of Mexico and our nation as a whole. This makes sense to me. THIS is something I can do help our healing of what we have all done collectively to this Earth. Please consider this request:

Dr. Masaru Emoto's Healing Prayer for the Gulf

"I send the energy of love and gratitude

to the water and all the living creatures in the Gulf of Mexico and its surroundings.

To the whales, dolphins, pelicans, fish,

shellfish, plankton, coral, algae,

and all living creatures . . .

I am sorry.

Please forgive me.

Thank you.

I love you. "

It is a very simple, straight forward prayer. It is a prayer of forgiveness, thanksgiving and love. Our country has fallen so deeply into a negative reality that keeps us prisoners to our dark thoughts of anger and fear. There has to be another way. If our thoughts can make things worse… they can also make things better. Our thoughts can actually heal our fractured Earth and our fractured country.

God Bless America!

Food for THOUGHT…

Breaking News!

President Palin and Vice President Cheney just announced that the Gulf of Mexico is now full of oil. BP has also announced that their barrier from the tip of Florida to Venezuela is finished much to the pleasure of Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez. Vice President Cheney was seen loading extra battery packs to his pacemaker in all the excitement.


“What a wonderful day for America,” said President Palin. “Dick’s dream has come true. The secret energy policy he put together with the heads of all the oil companies and his own firm, Haliburton, during the Bush administration, has now come to pass. I want to thank all of you who kept the faith to ‘drill, baby, drill.’ I also want to thank all the state and federal regulators, congressmen and senators that resisted the calls of the environmentalists, liberals and even you progressives out there (you know who you are) and used that money you were given to make this day happen. God Bless you!”

Vice President Cheney was wheeled to the podium in the White House Rose Garden for a few remarks. With tears in his eyes, he said, “This is the happiest day of my life. Without the massive incompetence and corruption of the folks at BP, we could never have accomplished such a natural wonder as this sea of petroleum off our shores. Yes, there are those whiners and complainers that we have yet to round up under my new American Patriots Act, and they will tell you that we have traded our secure energy future for a bunch of dead birds and fish that nobody gives a damn about. There are people that have hotels, resorts and homes along the coast that are crying in their beers over the black, sticky goo covering once pristine beaches, but I say to them, tough nuggies. Get over it. We got oil, baby!”

There was a bit of a stir as Vice President Cheney was being wheeled from the podium. Some reports indicated a small amount of smoke was coming from his pacemaker. President Palin returned to the podium and continued with her remarks and a stunning announcement. After putting on a fresh coat of lipstick, she said, “To our former friends in the Middle East, go pound sand! We’ve got more oil than all of you combined now. To the rest of the world, bring your tankers to the Florida Keys and get in line. The new Dick Cheney / Haliburton Oil Port is open for bid’ness.”

As the President was concluding her remarks at the White House, other reports were coming from New Orleans indicating that a massive oil fire was burning up the evacuated Gulf Coast and spreading out to sea. The public was told not to worry, however. The BP Fire Suppression Team was on it and they would have the fire out soon.

Food for THOUGHT…