Air Brushing Our Pasts

You just don't know what's real today and what is "reconstruction". You know how they reconstruct old buildings to look like they alledgedly did when they were new. Of course I'm not really sure whether the sattelite antenna on that California mission is authentic. I guess Williamsburg, Virginia was "restored" in such a manner in the 1920's to how the city looked in colonial days. Now they are restoring classics like the Apollo 11 first landing on the moon, and I must say it looks much better. They can do wonders with picture and sound. They got rid of all the pops in "Live At Leeds" I don't know how. Of course even Vince has shown how you can "erase objects" from a photograph and let electronic logic fill in the hole. This is how all that stuff works. It recreats what should have been there to begin with. Of course you know you can erase clothes off women's bodies in Paintbrush, using background and color matching. You can also do the whole cut-outs thing with photographs. I've done that a few times with photographs, but it clearly looks like a siscors and paste job.

Of course now they say that NASA has a major one inch reel to reel tape shortage in the 'seventies, and began erasing "classic" space walks and such, so that there remains very few of them. These would have been invaluable. Of course I have an in-law who every time she checked out one of my Dad's VHS tapes she would cover the tabs and erase the movie after watching it. A number of family members got on her case for this, and I don't think she does that any more. I myself have a lot of reel to reel audio tapes from the 'sixties and early 'seventies- - that are probably gone now. There are a lot of items besides my telescope, lamp, lamp table, kitchen utensils of all sorts, that are gone now. It's a particularly disturbing thing to contemplate that some of your writings may be lost. Today I have to back up my computer because tomorrow it's going to Staples to have an anti-virus installed.

But it seems that people's memories of things gets airbrushed. As you know I have a number of memory conflicts with "the official version" of things. I remember the death of John Bonnum, and the release of "Gaucho" by Steely Dan as being a whole year before the "official version". Just now there were two "memory divergencies" with a Beatles show. They are now saying the Beatles trip to Austrailia was a big success. As I remember it from a prior report, besides all of the rain, and having eggs thrown at them, there were numerous scheduling difficulties and other stuff that went down such as all four Beatles agreed that touring Austrailia was such an awful experiance they never went back. Also in terms of that little song they sang, I remember one of the verses as being different, the George one. It was "Keep playing those groovy chords, George" or something, they left out. In terms of Beatle releases, there is a week or so disparity in the release of "I'm The Walrus", I remember it being earlier. I remember Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields being released in late January, and I remember Sgt. Pepper coming out on May 29th. In fact I have recordings from the album on that date. That is- - I used to. The tape is probably gone now. The same thing is true for the Imagine album. My recordings date from late August of 1971 and not October, as it says right on the album. Also with Jumping Jack Flash, in May of 1968 I remember the song being an "endie". The song came to a difinitive end and didn't fade out. But just recently there are divergences, like when my Uncle was taken ill. I remember the last time I saw my Uncle was Thanksgiving and a few days later he was taken seriously ill. But everybody at the funeral talked of how they saw him on Christmas, including my brother. I remember Christmas and I remember my Uncle was already hospitalized and couldn't come.

One funny thing that struck me today is the fact that in the olden times often inventers would come up with identical inventions months or weeks from each other, yet one inventor knew nothing of the other. If that could happen then, why can't it happen now. You know, I think our patent laws are too generous in the protections they give one inventor or author, to monopolize the market and keep out other ideas. It would seem to me inventions should be coming at one hundred times the pace now. Maybe they've already found a cure for cancer and other ailments and they aren't telling us, because it would adversely affect some drug already on the market. (Selah)

Hillary Clinton is a much more seasoned woman than she used to be. She has finally found her nitch. She's proved a responsible and able spokeswoman for President Obama's foreign policy. She's now the sort of woman I could trust, and would not mind her as an attorney advocating my causes. In terms of Health Care- - I've looked at the "Flow Chart" of the leading Health Bill, and it's so complicated it would give a computer programmar a migrane. At times I'm inclined to say just forget the whole thing. But I know we need to ballance the market by getting a publicly supported health care plan out there to compete for business with the private insurers, and may the better man- - - or woman, win. If Hillary wants to try and take the President on again in the next election, personally, I have an open mind. The next blog posting will be in the blog "Karmic Suicide". See you there.

On Being the Master of Events

This is Friday July 24, 2009 and some famous movie was supposed to be released today. I have eight E mail messages! I can guess what they are. Last night I watched “Bones” till nine. This morning I went out to the bakery and bought coffee. We had Cheerios for breakfast and pancakes and sausage and I had a second orange juice.

The hot topic of the day continues to be this Black Cambridge professor in his fifties and walks with a cane. The man was five – seven and obviously no physical threat. Rush Limbaugh raged at him and the President yesterday and is continuing to call President Obama a racist. This story is really developing legs. Now President Obama says he wants to meet with both parties over a beer at the White House. The arresting officer austensively is a “good man” and is praised by his fellow police officers. But it would seem that our society is so racist that even “good whites” can be given to racial bias. The man was in his house and showed the Cambridge PD his drivers license and another piece of identification. In any other case that would have ended it. But now the officer again asks him to step out to the front porch where other officers were gathering. He then says “Thank you for complying with my earlier request” and then was promptly arrested. Clearly he’d had arresting the man all along but for some reason he couldn’t arrest him for “disorderly conduct in public” while he was in his own house. The officer had first mentioned that there were “two others in the house”. There was introduced the notion that the man was in danger when they really didn’t believe their own faborication. It’s kind of like Mark Fermin seeing a spot on a car at 5:30 in the morning and believing it was blood thought there might be victims laying all over Simpson’s property with perhaps the murderer still at large on the premises. This created “exigent circumstances” where they could search the property. President Obama called the officer “a good man” and went on to say he could have “calibrated his remarks” better.. Yeah, I’m going to “calibrate” my gun sight right now. I’m sometimes worried about how racist this land of ours is. These days not even having the President of the United States as your friend can protect you. I continue to be troubled by the fact that Berock Obama has such a narrow victory on election day, despite an economy that was self destructing. One can only imagine what would have happened if the economy were at least passable.

I got a phone call from you know who to be sure and install my new phone battery so I can make all of those long calls to India for Tech support. (No, actually I’m a terrorist and I’m in constant contact with Teheran) I took out the white battery and installed the new black battery. (because I’m a racist) They say that life is something that happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. It’s always a goal, as I told Dr. Levy today, that “You should be the master of events rather than let events control you”. But you make plans and suddenly you’re “feeling tired” from the medication or something. I had all sorts of ideas how I’d spend that $250.00 and they didn’t include sinking almost the entire sum into the computer, that is, except for the sum I was paying to have some of my things stored. There is the modem, which I probably never needed. There is the new anti-virus, which I didn’t need. And there is this achromous thing, which backs up your files. How can I follow Dr. Levy’s advice and be my own man and make my own destiny, when that “Destiny” is constantly being dictated to me by others? You know I felt like mentioning the possibility of a personal Devil in today’s session, and Richard and Phyllis would have backed me. This “force” is not some fantasy like a little demon in red with a pitch fork on your left shoulder you can tell to go away and he meekly obeys. I don’t think there is any shame in admitting that circumstances have routinely out-smarted you and gotten the better of you in the past. And if you make a similar mistake in underestimating them, you will continue to lose. This is a “Force” that has to be dealt with by supernatural means, like the Apostle Paul says. This is why I like football and chess because you can go one on one with your opponent. Some may say “Why do you think that there is Singularity about this Force? Why not a whole variety of competing Forces out there?” The reason why I like football and chess if because you are the sole person (and your team) who decides whether or not you prevail against your opponent. In Star Trek there are not only the Klingons you have to worry about but also Romulans, Iconians, Cardassians, Borgs, and the Forengi, and all the rest. Whether these forces fight against each other or all unite against You is in the control of that “Force” you face every day, your own personal Devil. You can’t order him away or will him away or ignore him. Your only real hope is to use some sort of hocus pocus or incantation against him. You can try and fight him in your own power of the Flesh, but if you really want to win against him, there are more effective means, and this is by invoking Supernatural powers and precepts. You see, my guess is that when push comes to shove, I’m much more of a believer in the Supernatural than he is.

The Proper Use of the Green Grid

Many users of Wolframalpha.com know about the 3 D graphs that occur when you say to plot an X and Y equation with no stated answer. In these topologies, the Z coordenate is the value of the answer. But as you know traditionally these green grid things you see in science movies has to do with General Relativity and gravity as the lone "macro force" of the Universe. You should note that these grids follow certain rules. For one, there are no polar axes in these grids, and there are no triaugular spaces enclosed. In fact every square or varient thereof is quadralatteral in nature. There is one possible exception to this quadralateral rule and that is when a circular line "breaks its escape volocity, you come up with a pentagonal shape. Another important thing to note is that the lines denote straight "apparent" distances and also that the space between the lines on the topological surface denote equal distances. Having said this you will note often that a bumpy surface not unlike a "golf course" is illustrated. This "golf course" has "holes" in it but they aren't Black Holes. That's because these are holes with no bottom to them. They are in other words "Bottomless pits" like are described in the book of Revelations. You will note that the lines when viewed from the top do look closser together. You will also note that lines around the "holes" the lines do go around in circles. But no line on the oposit sides of any square segment ever meets- no matter how deep into the hole you go. This is correct. But you can never reach the center of this apparent "black hole", not in this universe. Rather, you "keep on falling" forever. This sort of topological green grid easily lends itself to religious metaphysics, with the holes and inclined surfaces representing Sin. Gravity is analogus to sin in this illustration. Just there are "gravitational fields" there are also "fields" of sin. Just as gravity distorts our perception of spacial reality, so Sin distorts our perception of metaphysical reality. The other variable is mass. In some of my writings in the early 'eighties "Mass" is analogus to Big Governments. Some may say that the Cities represent Black Holes of Sin and that like Lot being drawn in by the sin of Sodom and Gamorah, so one is increasingly drawn into a gravitational field. Also a fact noted in my 1980 book is that there are limits to how GOOD a person can be. Goodness is represented by the flat areas. There is a limit to how GOOD you can be because once you have achieved total perfection, that is, achieving everything God created you to be, you can rise no higher. But on the other hand, there is no limit on the depths of depravity and degradation that a man or woman can sink to. (Selah) Some may say that in olden times Cities were behind or inside "The Wall", preferably one covered with ivey like at Wrigley Field. But it isn't really the geographic sweep of government that is inherently Evil in our model. In Startrek they have many far reaching governments. There is the Federation, the Klingons, the Romulans, Iconians, Cardassians, The Borg, the Forengi, ect. ect. These governments excersise great geographical domain. No. It is not the geographical domain but the restrictiveness of government regulations that is evil. You can be in a Cult of just 25 people, but they have all sorts of restrictive regulations. This restrictiveness of "heaviness" is reflected in our speech patterns by conservatives and libertarians speaking of getting "the burden of government off our backs". Governments restrict man's creativity and interfer with his personal affairs, and of course it hides behind a Wall. Some Einstinians have said that gravity isn't really a "force" like we view magnatism as a force, but they call it a "field". That is - it generates the "illusion" of pulling us in, but all gravity really is is "bent space". (Selah)

The Value of a Timely Decision

I would like to interview God. And my first question I would fire at God when he was in the hot seat would be "Have you ever read the book of Esther?" If you don't know Esther is one of the few books in the Bible that makes no direct reference to either the presence or the actions of God. In that sense I can identify with the book in my current psychological state. If God says, "Yes, why- - certaintly", then I would ask him "OK, what do you think of the ceneral premise of the book?" I would then expect that initially God would be eager to answer the question. Then realizing something, his expression would freeze and then grow increasingly unconfortable in manner, realizing he wasn't sure what I meant. Some would say that the central premise of the Book of Ester was one of those "timely decisions" where Queen Esther stepped foreward and made a request of the king knowing that if he didn't "give the sign" by raising the royal septer to her, she could well end up dead. It was her bravery, based only on a hunch, that ended up saving the Jewish people from genocide. But the central premise and "lesson" of the Book of Esther is really the notion that if you assume an air of infallability, as the leader of the Pursian nation did, you can become trapped by the wording of your own edicts you didn't full realize the consequences of. And one would wonder just how long God thought about it before he predestined the destiny of the entire Universe. "Oh, THAT universe- - well you know, that was one of my minor efforts. I'm not sure I want to be judged on that one". You know with this Universe, scientists tell us the creation process started off with eleven physical dimension, and these shrunk down to four. I wonder what God thinks about the seven or so that disappeared? Or are they still around and can we experiance them after we die? You know. People are always talking about being in Seventh Heaven.

Many have a misimpression of what making a "timely decision" ammounts to. It isn't always the decision that's reached most quickly. Anybody for instance deciding to sell their home right now, might strongly be urged to reconsider. I listened to President Obama's press conference today. We learned that the President does not want to add to the deficet and that he wants the whole insurance process to be more efficient and coordenated, with no redundant medical tests. Certainly this is a case where the world won't come to an end if a bill isn't passed by the August break. We all would rather the bill be "done right" than having to undo a bad bill. I have faith that the President will see his way clearly to sign the right bill.

I'm sure you've all heard that case where the Cambrige police came when alerted by the neighbors that a man was trying to break into his own house. Certainly the police did not demonstrate the proper discretion here, because they didn't believe this College Professor when he claimed it was his own house. And then they arrested the man for disorderly conduct. We are told that the police are no longer racist and they don't do racial profiling. But clearly old stereotypes die hard, both from the point of view of the police, and from the point of view of Black people.

You all know that today there was a total ecclipse in India and China and in the Pacific. The day began with a black dawn in India. We hear both that in India and China, eclipses of the sun are considered bad omens, and this one lasted a record long six & a half minutes, the longest eclipse in this century. But there is one "Unsolved Mystery" in astronomy that has puzzled me since I was a teenager when I first read about it, that was brought up on the Thom Hartman program today. We all knew that astronomers were observing irregularities in the orbit of Uranus, and from these clues they were able to find Neptune, whose gravitation was affecting Uranus. But now they sere seeing irregularities in Neptune's orbit, too. The discovery of Pluto wouldn't solve this mystery because Pluto is so tiny and besides it had a highly inclined orbit. So now from the ranks of the "tin foil hat" set, there is a spokesman who claims that there is a Dark Planet out there beyond Neptune, which he claims is the planet Wormwood, spoken of in Revelations where a star falls to earth and ushers the apocralipse. What struck me was that when we sent a sattalite that reached Neptune in August of 1989, we did not also have this sattelite probing for this Dark Planet we see gravitational evidence of. It could be postulated that perhaps this is just one more thing the government did NOT tell us but is conceiling. As you know it was August of 1989 that George Harrison put out the last album while he was still alive. Of course since this planet Wormwood has been out there for centuries, one might just assume that it will continue to be out there for years to come. As you know in April of 2007 I got a Revelation involving the number "42" which is 101010 in binary code or "one and one and one makes three" to quote "Come Together. But I wondered whether I had a means of getting "early warning" of some Cosmic event that occurs around Columbus Day weekend of 2010. I also had a dream about a star. This was a star that every December 12th could drastically increase in brightness in the sky, and they made a holiday out of it. This following of this star was practiced by a minority of the people on earth, but among those who were observant, this was a major event on their religious callendar. Could it be that this planet "Wormwood" is a cloaked planet and that it has plans to uncloak itself in the near future? Of course we know that caticlismic cosmic events have taken place on earth before. Many people are interested in one event that killed off many of the large mammels of the Ice Age such as the wooly mamoths, around 11,000 BC when the Sun was in the sign of Leo the Lion on the Vernal Equinox. There was a high civilization on earth at the time and there are various remnents of that and the Spinx is the most notible with the man with the Lion body, and also the Great Pyramid. I am bringing up things you readers are already aware of but I want to remind you because if there are to be any "Cosmic Events" soon, they may involve a gread deal of unpleasentness. I would not as a course believe there is some "gatwary" to some supernatural realm.

An Denegration of the Sacred

Bob Dylan said it a long time ago in a song, that "Not much these days is really sacred". To the extent that that article in red is about the loss of the sacred I agree with it. Some times people sound like they are disagreeing with you when deep down they are trying to say the same thing. What I mean by loss of the sacred is what Tom Hartman was talking about on his radio program today. He said that basically everything is up for sale and everything today is valued as if it were a comodity, and the sacred is sold as if it were just another comodity, perhaps to sell something else. But the movie Network was prophetic in this sense when he said, "We on the TV are the illusion, you are the people who are real" and "everything the media says is Bullshit". Howard himself became a comodity who in the end was more valuable dead than alive, because his death was a hell of a ratings booster of his news show. We regard everything as entertainment. We violate perople's personal feelings invading their lives at vulnerable moments all for the sake of ratings. I don't know how we "get back the sense of the sacred". It's a process that's been going on the past fifty years. Even back in 1961 there were people who said that television was a vast waste land. Since everything is done for ratings, intellectual content goes out the window. This is why people like Thom Hartman and Randi Rhodes are so unique. Because there is none of the yelling and screaming that occurs on most shows with high ratings. People want to be told how to think. Indeed the search engine Bing brags that it's an engine that "Makes the decisions for you". I haven't really weighed on with the whole subject of "mega-churches". But let me quote a favorite saying of mine that came from Dr. Phil McGraw. He said "You don't miss the church; you miss what you with it were. People have these fantasies of "The little country church" or "The little house on the prarie" but even these are comodity images bought and sold to the highest bidder. Are chickens clucking in a barn yard a romantic notion, but somehow a giggantic slaughter house is not? I guess if you look at it that way then the mega-church is the slaughter house, "getting the same thing done more efficiently". We have less and less an idea all the time what reality ever is now with topics like witchcraft and psychic visions and ghosts no longer considered as taboo. These are just more "media conventions" along with the fist fight where one guy beats up six or seven guys bigger than he is- - or the dramatic witness in court who in the last scene spills his guts and confesses everything. Thom Hartman has stated that we are a Fasciest state, much as "communist" China is a fasciest state. The destinctions between the two states is becomming less and less but now the sensorship is not because of sex or violence, but more often "Whether or not one TV program reveals more of the Truth than the government considers healthy- - - to itself. Hartman has cited numerous examples where people with acute analytical minds are routinely not allowed on news shows. Even Jello Biafra has talked about the "dumbing down" of America. In the old Fascism the state was supreme over all. But today, as Howard Beale said thirty years ago- - it's ratings that are King. Whatever is marketable and sells is good, no matter how bad for society it might be. And who today has the "ear of the President?" The big corporations dictated to the Bush - Obama administration (note the use of the singular) to tell it just how to deal with this recession. We are all so brainwashed we think that raising taxes on millionaires will somehow affect us, somehow. We are sold the illusion that we too can win the Lottery and "Have it all". In California they let a minority, the Republicans, dictate the terms of the budget legeslation that will prove acceptable that "all taxes are bad" and "all taxes steal jobs" and in general that personal greed is a good thing.

Let's talk about the President's health care plan. The Republicans are calling it "social experimentation" and that it will legalize euthanasia, and that old people won't get needed medical care, and that everybody will be forced to yield to a system of "government imposed medical rationing". Now the cry is that if somehow the Republicans can defeat this bill that they will break the hold the Obama administration has over the people. There are trying to run the same old "script" that they used once in 1993 and 1994. Because back then Hillary's medical health care package was defeated and the Republicans took over congress. But the shoe is really on the other foot. Because if any sort of Health Care package gets passed, this will insure the primacy of the democratic party for a generation to come, and the Republicans will be reduced to a bigger bunch of nothings than they are already. This is the primal fear that keeps Republicans up at night. They are trying to "talk this recovery away" with negativity up the wazoo- - ignoring the signs of positive economic growth and accentuating the negative news and praying that they're be a whole lot more of that. Were I in congress, therefore, I would be voting for just about any bill that is up for approval, because the stakes are whether or not we can finally drive a stake into the heart of the Republican Party.

One Randi Rhodes program caller pointed out that these days Cops are too proactive in trying to prevent crime that hasn't occurred yet and yet when crime actually does occur, the cops are nowhere. On the "Cops" show you never hear calls from a woman with a stalker out her bedroom window, or a woman whose been raped, or someone about to be robbed or murdered or blackmailed. To the "Cops" show these crimes are apparently unimportant. Instead you get these "drive by arrests". Cops are just cruising around in an apparently crime free city, and happen on a driver with his rear tail light bulb out and what do you know, he has a stash of cocaine and a knife on him. Isn't it interesting that never do these cops just make a garden variety traffic stop or something for speeding. I am reminded of one holideck program that Warf from Startrek was in, where he was on level one and Warf said "This is too easy. There is no challenge". Most of the police activities on "Cops" is strictly "Level One" with highly compliant suspects and you're never in any real danger. But in real high crime areas too often you hear complaints like "Where are the police?" Of course Randi Rhodes pointed out that Police Chief Parker is hailed as one of the LAPD's best police chiefs ever, yet the guy was a racist through and through- - and living under his reign was a nightmare for Blacks.

On a personal note, certain dates are especially bad ones on my callendar. One was September 1st. 2008. Another was June 16th. 2009. Another was July 4th. 2009. My personal property has been and continues to be in jeopardy. Relationships with all three remaining members of my family are shakey at best right now. I am really a person whose friendships are tenuous and dares not test them. I'm really guy who could use a shot of the sort of life changing elixer that Religion perports to offer. I am a guy who in the words of a Doors song, "The future's uncertain and the end is always near". I was thinking of calling this whole posting "This present distress". It is my fondest hope that I look back on my life one year from now and perceive things completely differently from now. At this point in my life, like Captain Pike on StarTrek, if I can't have the real thing, I'll settle for the illusion at this point. If taking a certain medication can change my perception of certain things from black to white, then who am I to argue with any psychotropic drug. It's a hell of a lot easier than getting other people to change. That's for sure. In a letter to someone in the past few days I labeled myself as The Howard Beale of Christianity. What I mean by that is that at one time I thought there was hope that with teamwork and effort and cooperation and a lot of drive, initiative, and persistance, one could achieve success. But then I got the Word from On High, and became a Calvinist Deist. I learned that all of the "deciding" was done before the Universe was Created. God uses the Dr. Phil Mc Graw methodology. Dr. Phil says "Kids have the mistaken idea that first you discuss something and then a decision is made. That isn't how it works. First all of the really important decisions are made among the adults, then you tell the kids." (Selah)

Harry and Louise - Revisited

I am not entirely happy about President Obama saying that we have to pass some sort of health care bill during this session of congress before the August break, seemingly "At Any Price". I am one of those people who believes that it's often better to have no action on a particular problem rather than the Wrong action, which will have to be entirely undone at a later date. I as you know am now in favor of public health care funding, and if we can have open competetion between that and private medical insurance, I'd be happy to see who wins. But apparently what Obama wants passed is a bill that mandates employers fork out money going to the HMO's for private coverage. All of this new cost is going to boost government expence. Now "Harry and Louise" are back at it again and this time they are in favor of Obama's medical plan. We now learn that Harry and Louise are really democrats and that in real life they favored some sort of medical insurance all along. How apparently these new adds are being sponsored by the Drug Companies, and you know all about them. What any congressman should do if he votes for the current bill, which won't solve a thing or get to the true nature of the problem, they should be forced to give up their government funded medical coverage. My point is that the conservatives have enough things to attack us on, short of placing a new weapon in their hands.

Justice Sotomayor wasn't asked some key questions and people like Randi Rhodes and myself are disappointed at that. One topic is this idea of declaring George Bush to be president in 2000. This decision as you know was said to be a decision "that can't be used as any case precedent in the future". If that's the case the whole thing is bogus and the results should be thrown out. Sotomayor is a corporatist. We have too many of these on the Court already. Of course Republicans never tired of grilling her on this whole race thing and empathy tword the poor. They point out that empathy tword the poor can only result in bias and prejudice against the rich. As you know one of my complaints about the Calvary Chappels is that they seemed all to be posessed of "empathy- - tword everyone except me". Their biases were hanging out. I know how bias feels and a justice shouldn't have any, either tword the rich or tword the poor, and I think Justice Sotomayor made herself clear on this particular issue.

In terms of the previous posting certain things merit noting. I am not crazy about the fact that 61% of General Motors is owned by the government now. But it's more complicated than that and these are extrodenary times. I would prefer that government mess around in corporate affairs as little as possible, either by helping or by hinderance. As to "Godless" Churches now- - Christianity at large is pretty much circling the drain. It's in its last throws because like the leaves of autumn, it's time has come and gone, and now we need to give Christianity a respectful buriel. The author said that liberalism has pervaided even the Orthodox Church. In terms of the homosexual invasion we are now facing. Well, it's a reality and the rest of us are just going to have to deal with it. Homosexual marriage is the coming tide of the future as more and more states legalize it. St. Paul may have been gay. I've wondered about his relationship to Timothy. Clearly St. Paul is a very sexually tormented and gui9lt ridden person. The reason why I republished the entire article is so that I could not be accused of quoting things out of context. Sometimes a person's own words and serve as the best rope with which to hang the culpret. When I first read that article I said to myself, "This is so BAD- - I have to share this because nobody will believe it".

One thing that's going to happen is a revamping of our whole data sharing system in this country, centralizing control over information on every human being. This is another of those ideas whose time has come, whether you like it or not. In some cases better Law Enforcement sharing of information is a good thing, to help catch the bad guys. In sharing medical information, obviously this can be used to save lives. But in some cases you have true moral gray areas such as development of those computers that actually "read your minds". This is a powerful and dangerous weapon. Personally I don't like centralization and would love it if we suddenly went back to forty years ago. But that's not going to happen. I have a bias against various psychological tests because I believe they are flawed. I believe massive generalizations about people are immoral and wrong. In some cases they are out and out racist. But even where race does not play a direct part, such generalizations or red lining or black listing or whatever- - is wrong. There are people unquestionably on the "No Fly" list that should not be on the list. Conservatives may rail at this or that trend in society, but events move more quickly than any of us can imagine, and there will be hot issues ten years from now, that currently have never entered our minds. I believe our transportation system has to be modernized with new, high speed rail between cities that don't have it now. I think what we need in a lot of cases are completely new trains and completely new tracks. I am predicting that the Democrats will once again pick up house and senate seats in the 2010 off year national election.

Should the US Allow the Enemy to Define Us?

The following "bilge" was sent to me as some sort of perverse "warning" about just how low America was sinking. Apparently some would have us believe we in the US are sinking so low that even the citizens of the USSR are looking on us with wonder and amazement. I deliberately used the "politically incorrect" name, because this reactionary article deserves a reactionary response. CS Lewis would claim to have a conduit to Satan and apparently Satan has perfect Christian theology that he practices. One would imagine from this article that Russians would vote for John Mc Cain and Sarah Palin if they had the chance. I'm not going to tell you evernthing wrong with this article. You can do that for yourself as you read it. Of course I'm doing it in Red.

Pravda is the largest and oldest Russian newspaper:

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their “right” to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our “democracy”. Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different “branches and denominations” were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the “winning” side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the “winning” side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America’s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.

Then came Barack Obama’s command that GM’s (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of “pure” free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.

So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a “bold” move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK’s Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our “wise” Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.

Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper…but a “freeman” whimper.

So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set “fair” maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.

The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.

The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.

Stanislav Mishin

Tricky Dick and Accompanying Diseases

You know, the trouble with making one wrong decision is that every other decision you make after that is tainted, because you have to support a bad decision you've already made, and then another to support that, and so forth. Bill Clinton decided not to prosecute Casper Weinburger and those other Iran-Contra people from the Reagan administration, and this was a precident supported by a previous bad precident of Ford pardoning Richard Nixon in 1974. But sometimes despite your best efforts you can't keep the Truth from surfacing. Now we learn that Dick Chaney ordered that certain clandestine activities of the CIA be kept secret from congress. The only thing wrong with this is that congress made that an offence thirty years ago. It seems the new CIA chief, Leon Penetta decided to tell congress what the CIA had been doing despite Chaney's wishes. Had Dick Chaney been impeached, like he should have been back in 2007 when congress first went democratic, this would have come out before. My latent fear now is that somehow President Obama is on the wrong side of this issue. Here's a test you can do. Listen to Obama talking on the radio and close your eyes. At times Obama now reminds me of a young Richard Nixon of fifty years ago. There is something about the bobbing and weaving of his voice and the way he answers questions. His own Attorney General, Eric Holder, wants to investigate all these human rights violations by the CIA. New grizzly details of new tortures are coming out all the time. Of course even conservatives point out that the Obama administration never put a stop to "renditions" and they are going on to this very day. Also this "Super Max" hell-hole in which they want to place the prisoners from Guantanamo, may be worse for them then the environs they left. It can't be repeated too often that sunshine is the best disinfectant. We as Americans need desperately to define who we are as a people, and who we are not. There is nothing to be gained by putting off these investigations any longer. But you know that the Republican spin machine opperates best in the dark, where the American people don't know the truth. I guess what I am questioning right now is what sort of man President Obama is. Does he believe the axiom of Clement of Alexandria, who once said "Not all truth is expediant, but only those truths that bring glory to God".

Also a lot of us are wondering whether President Obama isn't some sort of closet corporatist. In Justice Sotomayor's first actual day os testifying before congress - what I have already is enough to change my vote from a "Yes" to a "No". I am not bothered by the race issue or particular statements the Justice has made "off camera" to to speak. The issue of the white firemen doesn't bother me all that much because so I hear, Justice Sotomayer ruled on a technicality. People were also saying that the justice may be pro life. But what she said today put an abrupt end to that sort of speculation. She said that Roe vs Wade was "settled law" in the same way that Griswald was "settled law". Here is a case where one wrong ruline led to another one. Once you've ruled and allowed that certain clearly illegal acts can be committed in private and there is a blanket "right to privacy", then this cracked open the door to ruling that abortion was a "private act", the same way that people are claiming today that medical suicide is a "private act between a patient and his or her doctor". One error leads to other errors. Clearly roe vs wade is not "settled law" because it's still a contraversial "hot button" issue. And popularity of abortion is declining in this country. Buit the justice made other statements. She said that vertical price fixing being OK was "settled law". Her oppinion of what constitutes "settled law" is vastly different from mine. If the court has ruled one way for a hundred years and her way for a couple of years, I think we need to ballance it off. But the biggest "deal breaker" for me was her ruling on private property. She says that nobody is secure in their "private property". Indeed the fourth amendment which some would hold inviolate, is being violated here in a big way. The government can come and take your house or apartment or center of worship, and sell it to a Wal-Mart or it may become anything from a bowling alley to a trancendental medetation center. Clearly this ruling would be used as a vehical to violate religious rights. Clearly there have been cases where areas were ruled "blighted" when the jingle of dollar signs was the real factor and the corporation lobbyests lining congressmen's pockets. The idea that any justice would condone this sort of graft is unjustifiable, in my oppinion. If this ruling is allowed to stand, this won't be America any more. We won't have private property and people secure in their dwellings. For all you know "public use" could be a gambling casino!

We've seen a little of this sort of thing here in LA where public funds were appropiated for use in a purely "private" funeral extravaganza advertizement for the life and carreer of Michael Jackson. How much were his record sales boosted by that big bashy at Staples Center one week ago? LA is going broke and yet LA has sponsored two big celebrations lately as though money flowed like confetti. How many kids were denied a school lunch so that Michael Jackson's memory could be agrandized? If these were not such hard times maybe this would not be an issue. But today we hand out money to banks by the truck load only to have them sit on the money. I've heard a lot of conservatives talk about how the poor shouldn't get anything, and the more they talk, the better Ebonezer Scrooge is starting to look, in comparrison.

You know, some say that Thom Hartman is a liberal. But more than a liberal, I think you could call him a radical. The word radical means "root" and Hartman seeks to get to the root of our economic problems. In order to do this some "radical surgery" is advised. We need to look at how the Courts viewed Corporations two hundred years ago. Hartman has spoken often of the granting of "personhood" to a corporation in a ruling in 1886. After this pivital ruling, all the states turned their laws on corporations upside down. If you have a beef with a person you can come over and kick his ass. Who can you vent your anger on if a corporation messes you over? There are no giant financial "Foundations" based on the founders of our country because none of them were that rich. Some were wiped out in business by the revolutionary war. Most of the signers of the Declaration of Independance paid a price and often a heavy price for their actions being either imprisoned, or losing their wives and children. They said that government was derived from the concent of the governed, and "When a government is destructive of these ends, then it ought to be altered or abolished". These are words to linger over and meditate upon.

What I've Been Doing

Today is July 14th. Bastille Day in France. Today's trivia question is this: Which two Beatle songs could you not buy for a period of approximately 15.151515- - - years back in the late sixties and seventies? One of them is a Stephen King book title and the other title is related to the title of a Petula Clark song. OK, I know you all have the answer.

It was Tuesday June 16th. that I lost my internet connection. I replaced the modem and redid all the wires and connections with new equipment and the thing still didn't work. It would seem to have been A T & T's fault. I was unable to answer their securety question of "What is your favorite resturant"? That question makes about as much sense as asking Elvis Presley to name a girl he's had sex with. You could probably narrow it down to about thirty, but they only give you two guesses. Once I sent them three pieces of mail with my name on it, I was easily able to get back on. That occurred a little after three o clock yesterday afternoon.

Two or three other items have dominated my personal life lately. In Dr. Levy's class he was talking about writing poetry. Apparently a man told Dr. Levy that his poetry was too wordy and they make it "too easy" for the reader to figure out what you are saying. I wouldn't call that a bad thing. For myself I tend to be excessively brief in both my writing and my song lyrics- - perhaps due to all those years hanging around Mark Campbell. One time my Dad was reading some papers he thought were mine but talked about "Mental free association sentenses". This is the practice of stringing together a lot of tripped out individual sentenses or thoughts together to meditate on. But the other "model" for myself is Bob Dylan and many of his songs are quite explicit and leave nothing to the imagination. (Am I allowed to say "explicit" over national television?) Rubin Hurricane Carter is one of these very detailed songs.

It was Saturday July 4th. that our family had a "Marge Simpson" moment, if you saw last night's Simpsons. It's a posh retirement community for my mother, where they give you three gourmet meals a day and have a lot of other services. You eat your meals in a chandeleered resturant setting with white table cloths. We had drippy barbecued ribs the day I was there, which you had to pick up by hand, which would exclude certain segments of the population. As with Marge Simpson, I worry whether my Mom fill "fit in" and somehow won't be snobbed by the others. She'll have to give up some things she enjoys doing like baking bread or puttering around in the garden. It's called the Regency, and it's at the top of a hill with a nice view in El Toro, even if they don't call it that any more. Because of this she had to hold a furniture sale for some items that wouldn't fit in her new place. Last Saturday I and Pete Richards moved my things, mostly records and books and a couple of musical instruments, and an electric typewriter, over to a mutual friend of both of us. His father saw a lot of active service at sea during world war II. Here's another quiz for you all. His father and mother while dating before marriage had a favorite song they played at his funeral. It's a song they later made a du-op version of in the early 'fifties, that occasionally got played on Bryan Berne's Saturday night show on KRTH. Name It. Here's a blogger exclusive factoid. As you know this friend of me and Pete's has a brother and a sister both of which were married and had children. But one of the two of them (I forget which) converted to Hassidic Judaisum and the kids too.

Last Saturday I went to a six month belated Funeral. It was also approximately the 12th. anniversary of when my long term neighbor Ken, had a sudden violent heart attack one Saturday morning in 1997 and died en rout to the hospital. This funeral (last Saturday) was for an Uncle of mine who was a colonel in the Air Force, and I was in the minority of those attending that were actually blood related to the deceast. There were besides the immediate family, one first cousin, two second cousins, and one baby third cousin. My cousin has been married three times. The third husband had two daughters and one of these had a baby eighteen months old, who was there, a blond haired boy. But it was the other baby who was blood related to me who was part Black. The last name of the third husband is Funkhauser. The patriarch of the gathering who had the most blood relations was Gary Johnson. He had a son and daughter who were step second cousins to me. Each of these married and had kids many of which were teenage boys, and these are step third cousins to me. Also there was the son of her first husband, who brought a girlfriend. We first met in that gezebo type thing where they had their military ceremony. Then Pete Richards stepped forward as the groups spiritual leader to do the religious part at the grave site. He was wearing a pale yellow long sleved shirt. I was wearing a black long sleved shirt and light kakis. For all the bragging about how religious the decedant was and a good Episcipalian, it would surprise you that they hadn't been to church in thirty years such that there was no minister available to perform the ceremony.

The grave was way out accross a field of unmowed grass and lumpy ground that was hard to walk accross because parts of the ground were soaked and parts were so dry the grass was dying. At my brother's recomendation we often viered off of Van Buren onto the "scenic rout" back road en rout. It was about a ten mile trek from the cemetary to the place we ate lunch at, the Cheesecake Factory, where we ate at a humungus long table out in the ninety degree heat, and there were over twenty of us. I didn't have desert because since I wasn't paying the bill I didn't want to be piggish. Here is another blogger exclusive. As we were coming over the Santa Ana pass, my Mom raised the charge that I had "Aspburger's Sidrone". This is a desease where kids get into a lot of fights at school because "they don't know how to relate to the feelings of other people". Judy defended me and said I didn't have it. Of course you know what R. P. Mac Murphy said was his problem in Coocoo's Nest, he said "Too much fighting and fucking". There is a guy who used to live here named Gary, whom I suspect would have gotten the shit beat out of him a hundred times over were he not here. But they don't allow fighting in this place. They kick you out.

Finally I'd like to suggest that like Marge Simpson, my mother learn how to play Bridge. Both of her parents are accompolished Bridge players. It makes about as much sense for her to play Bridge as for me to learn Spanish in this place. Not knowing Spanish in this place and this neighborhood is like not having a car in Southern California. It's a thing that would certainly come in handy.