Astroworld

On to the Iowa Caucus and what has shaped up as a real “dog fight.” It looks like it’s going to be a pretty rough and tumble political year, starting early for the Democrats. While the Dems are working away and wasting their money fighting each other, the Republicans are laying back and raking in the dough. Right now it looks like the Democrats are eating their own at a time when the feast is outside their party. They don’t seem to understand that it’s the present day administration which is sucking them dry, not each other.

Letterman tonight in quoting Paul O’Neill said, “when in a meeting with GWB he is “disengaged, disinterested, uninformed, passive,” and Letterman was wondering why the Democrats thought they would have a hard time beating this guy.

As I predicted Howard Dean is beginning to run into some rough patches. Transiting Mars is in his 10th house giving him a public persona of ego driven and a just a little too pugnacious. His attitude isn’t playing well right now with the Iowa (12.28.1846, 10:03am, Iowa City) Democrats, however they want a winner and Dean, with all the money, seems like a winner to them. His natal Moon conjuncts the state’s Jupiter, and the Democrats there are looking for a winner. (All of us are looking for a winner)

On January 19th, in Iowa City at 7:00am, the Ascendant is Capricorn; they will be looking for someone they think is a solid hope, and money talks this year.

Dean’s Wynn Key transits have his Midheaven just 2 degrees beyond a square to his North Node (1 Taurus) indicating some problem in feeling a bit unsure of himself right now. The other candidates are attacking him and the “mean machine” in Washington is beginning to warm up.

Neptune has just finished squaring his Mercury giving him a bit of “foot and mouth” disease, and perhaps some confusing and erroneous advice from his handlers. Not to mention the personal confusion Neptune brings when squaring any of our planets.

To add insult to injury, by spring there will be a great deal made out of his wife not “standing by her man.” The Republicans will try to make a “family” issue out of her absence choosing to follow her own career. Thank heavens for “Abby Bartlet” of West Wing. The fact that Mrs. Dean is a doctor might help our TV addicted nation accept their family as another TV Political Reality Show. Although a strong career woman is a real threat to the Right-Wing concept of family values and they will, at the very least, plant nasty little stories about the elusive Mrs. Dean. Hopefully it will backfire on them with all the workingwomen out here. In fact, it might be a good idea for the Dean Campaign to use it as a positive thing and not try to hide or semi-apologize for her career choices.

Without Wesley Clark as an Iowa candidate, Dean’s competition will be Senator John Edwards. Iowa likes Mr. Edwards, with his plethora of Gemini, including a Jupiter AND Moon conjunct Iowa’s Jupiter. Transiting Uranus has just passed over Iowa’s Neptune/Saturn conjunction squaring their collective Mars; they are in a mood to deliver a surprise.

Over all, I pick Dean with Edwards coming in second, perhaps even a close second. I just hope someone can get through to the Democrats to stop fighting each other and stay on message, because their picking away at each other is becoming very unattractive. The issues need to be addressed and readdressed. This is the time to hammer away at GWB’s vulnerabilities, which are stacking up and thanks to Paul O’Neill the flames of this fire are being fanned, however this administration will work to make sure O’Neill pays the price.

Mr. O’Neill said “I am old and I am rich what can they do to me?” They can put you in prison Paul and are working to build a case for treason right now as they look into the marked “secret” document you held up on TV. I expect Mr. O’Neill has unleashed a fury beyond description, remember Dubya blew up frogs as a boy.

Paul O’Neill born Dec. 4, 1935 in St. Louis, MO has Mars oppose Pluto meaning he can be vindictive or vindictiveness is thrown back at him. GWB’s Saturn conjuncts O’Neill’s Pluto and opposes his Mars, vindictiveness is going to be hurled at him with all mighty force. I don’t know his birth time but if born a few hours before 12 noon, his Moon is in late degrees Pisces, in a respective sextile/trine to his Mars/Pluto and that would help his case with the people.

His Jupiter conjuncts Mercury and squares Saturn. Mr. O’Neill is likely to tell lies of omission with that Saturn square, but once he opens his mouth, Jupiter/Mercury at 5/8 degrees Sagittarius, he tells the truth as he sees it and his Jupiter has progressed to an opposition to GWB’s Uranus. Paul is dishing out the truth to his old buddy. Under the best of circumstances Mercury in Sagittarius isn’t known for being politically correct, these people are blunt, very blunt, and they serve it up with humor (A blind man in a roomful of deaf people.) Believe me, GWB isn’t laughing today. Uranus is going to keep squaring O’Neill’s Jupiter/Mercury through spring, and conjuncting his 4 degrees Saturn in Pisces, and whoops, Pluto is on Mr. Bush’s South Node, I would bet Paul has more to say so stay tuned.

It hasn’t been the best two weeks for the Bushes, what with O’Neill’s pearls, The Army War College saying this war wasn’t a good idea, the Bank of England being sued for the first time in their over 300 year history, because they are up to their necks in the corruption of the BCCI (and so were the Bushes, this will come out) his laughing stock idea of a space station on the moon as a stopping point to send people on to a space station on Mars (Letterman says that idea is a good indication Bush has started drinking again), his entire administration being sued over 9/11, jobs are pouring out of the US, and the Carnegie think tank report (a bi-partisan effort) slams the White House. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17522

All in all a bad period of time for Bush, pressure is mounting on this Presidency and all this will follow his administration through to the fall.

I want to tell you a story about the summer of 1945 and the end of WWII. I was almost three years old and was visiting my grandmother in a small town in Kansas. One of my earliest memories was that summer. One day my not quite 8-year-old big sister was given the responsibility of taking me for an ice cream cone. In one hand she clutched 50 cents and my hand in the other and we set off for old Mr. Davis’s drug store about a mile away.

My parents projected no fear that we would be hurt, no thought that we wouldn’t be safe. It was an idyllic time. Milk and ice were still delivered by horse and wagon, cars watched for pedestrians, people smiled at the two little girls walking down the street, the granddaughters of Olivia Cheyne. The only thing for me to be afraid of was my sister yanking my hand to walk a little faster as I stumbled along trying to keep up.

Saturn was in Cancer that summer already having been conjunct the US Sun and Uranus was having a Uranus return in the US Chart transiting close to the US Mars. Prescott Bush was being questioned for his involvement in and the money he made off of Hitler’s war, George Bush was still a twinkle in his parent’s eyes, FDR had died in April of that year and a new President was on board.

Years later I discovered how much hatred and true evil was lurking beneath all that idealism my sister and I shared that summer. That was the summer the Atom Bomb was dropped on a crippled and broken Japan, tearing the skin off tens of thousands of unsuspecting innocent victims. I’ve discovered that the military, McArthur, Eisenhower were against dropping that bomb; felt it wasn’t necessary, that indeed it would be cruel. Japan was on the eve of surrender, they couldn’t fight anymore, why did we have to drop the bomb, it wasn’t consistent with our image of a benevolent country.

The people who had the ear of the new and unsure President Truman didn’t feel America had its pound of flesh for Pearl Harbor and they wanted to see if the bomb would do to people what the physicists said it would do and they picked the people of Japan to try it out.

My point is the hardest thing we ever have to do is face our own illusions, the lies we tell ourselves. Evil was afoot everywhere in the 40’s. In Germany, Japan, Russia, Europe and the United States, right now is just another version of that time, maybe even a continuation. There are people in this country and elsewhere who are willing to kill others for what? We aren’t any less safe than we were in 1945, we just believe we aren’t safe and like the idealism of security, the idealism of peril is just as false.

Men came back from the war not knowing if they would have jobs because America and the world had changed. They had to fight for the government to give them benefits, the unions had to hold firm to make sure the workers would be compensated. Blacks and Native American who had fought and died for their country came back to the same disenfranchisement and discrimination they had left.

Here we are with Saturn once again in Cancer, Uranus is squaring his natal US spot in Gemini, Neptune is opposing the position of the 1945 Pluto from Aquarius to Leo, and Pluto is in another fire sign opposing the position of the 1945 Uranus. Once again we must face our values, ethics, morals.

As angry and frustrated as this country is right now (at least 50 percent) all that has happened since November 2000 is making us think about who we are and what we want our country to look like, just as WWII and the Atom Bomb made us think. It’s making us think about what is really important, about our materialism, our “might makes right” attitude, our fellow man.

The ultimate message of Astrology is “what gives us meaning.” What do we define as meaningful, is it our cars, houses, money, job, things? Or is it something deeper, greater than ourselves? We have to find that deeper meaning, that inner strength, that spark of creative divinity and the Universe continues to give us that opportunity.

Do just one unexpected thing this week for someone else. Smile at a clerk when you are in a bad mood, give a buck to one person who is worse off (without judging them) meet a neighbor, something just do something. Even if it is your habit to do these things, extend yourself one more step beyond and let’s work on our faith that all will be well in the end.

P.S. A nice omen for me in the summer of 1945 was I dropped my ice cream cone on the ground because a bigger boy (at least 5) knocked me down and old Mr. Davis at the drugstore gave me another cone for free to stop my crying. Maybe we need to employ a little more crying so the present day neo-cons, greedy corporations, politicians and over all bullies will need to consider balancing out that which is unfair.