Going Main Stream

The big news today is that President Elect Obama has picked the Rev. Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at next month's inoguration. When I heard this my first thought was they must be referring to someone else. President Obama wouldn't do this. But it's true. While it's possible some would say "Well there is a chance for bridge building" or else "It took courage for the Pastor to even accept Obama's invitation, knowing how conservative his congragation is" still the move is an attempt on Obama's part to try and "go main stream". Randi Rhodes, for one, doesn't see any percentage in it for progressives. The reason is that we on the left have made concession after concession to the "main stream" from the FISA bill to Iraq troops staying longer. Hillary Clinton will be a handful as secretary of state. You have Barney Frank at his post as the so-called guardian of our banking, and we've seen how that turned out. And you have Gates as secretary of defense. This is just another blow to the left that "they'll just have to get used to". Obviously given Warren's stand on proposition eight in California, the man is a polarizing figure. Clearly Obama wants to "send a message" to both pro gay and anty gay groups alike. Obama risks "losing touch with his base" if he goes too far in his accomadations to the center. That's what I think.

Caroline Kennedy is up for consideration for Hillary's old senate post in New York. And now her supporters are saying that Caroline Kennedy hasn't "paid her dues" and all of that other stuff about being "seasoned". Of course Hillary herself dares not directly go against Caroline because she risks alienating her future boss. But as Randi Rhodes puts it "elected posts wern't meant to be a carrerr but merely were supposed to be citizens serving their government for a while". As such Hillary can hardly say Caroline is unqualified because Hillery herself had no experiance other than being an ex first lady, when she ran for the first time herself for the Senate.

People have spoken at length about the Iraqi reporter who threw one shoe and then the other at President Bush on his last trip to Iraq. About the only reference to shoes in the Bible is a line in the Old Testiment of "he from whom the shoe was loosed". This refers to a man who refuses to empregnate his dead brother's widdow so that the family line will have post humous "seed" to carry on the family name. I don't know how you could apply this to our Iraqi policy. There are also various places where it says to "shake off the dust from your sandals as a witness against the city that would not hear your message". We can all chew on that one a while.

Days of our Lives has suffered from some bad writing lately. Marlena Evans is still on the show despite news of her departure. But she seems perpetually confused these days and doesn't seem to know what she is saying. Meanwhile the idea that Melanie would face down Victor Kiriacus to "change his mind" is absurd. That's like sending Barney Frank to change Jerry Folwell's mind on the topic of gay marriage. I would have expected that Victor would have thrown Melanie out of his office - preferably out the window for daring to propose a project where she personally gets all the profits of the unproven scheme based on the word of a murdering psychopath. Victor's son, Philip was right to turn down the plan. Particularly in the light of how Victor distrusts scheming young women such as Nicole and Clowie. Melanie is the mother of all manipulaters with a downright larcenous personality. Can't Victor give his son just a little credit for knowing Something - - having actually worked with her and seeing her in action? Apparently not.

Here's some fishy analytic geometry. You know that basic or "circular" trigonometry has to do with right triangles. But what geometric form does "hyperbolic geometry" allude to? Well, I've come up with the form. It would be a long, skinny fish, with the head bitten off and a really wide, but short tail fin. The two lines of the fish would cross. One line is the sine and the other is the cosine. Now imagine a bunch of slides through the fish like a master chef disecting a blow-fish. These are potential tangent lines. Whatever line you pick, look at the rest of the fish from that point. When it comes to the tail fin the lines cross. The line that goes down below zero has now become a negative number. The end of the tail fin is also a negative number because its vector runs the oposit direction. Now you know.