Supreme Court Overturns Key Campaign Law

Well, the hits just keep on coming. They say when it rains it pours. Today in another major political defeat for the left, the Supreme Court in a classic five to four ruling, over-turned a century old tradition of limiting corporations from donating to political campaigns. The case centered on that anti Hillary Clinton campaign add people wanted to run in 2008. But the application is much more vast and sweeping. Courts in essence ruled that corporations were "persons" and thus had free speech. This is the ruling that Thom Hartman and others have been dreading. Perhaps it violates the sworn testimony of justices Allito and John Roberts that they would respect prior supreme court rulings. I'm not saying this is any grounds to impeach these two but it only goes to show that if you are on a confirmation committee, be prepared to be lied to. This ruling opens the floodgates even wider to candidates being bought and paid for by corporations. The adage is true and often repeated in my postings, "Money doesn't talk; it swears". The ruling went on to overturn certain provisions of the decade old Mc Cain - Feingold law vastly limiting campaign contributions. Many have in fact argued that congress is so in the iron grip of corporations that they dare not push any measures through now by "reconciliation" requiring only 51% because they would lose all their corporate contributions. Where is Franklin Roosevelt when you need him? This ruling will case an even longer shadow on the political landscape than did Tuesday's election. But the thing is - when President Obama has had a political decision to make he's never really (except for Eric Holder) appointed an out and out liberal with an anti corporatist record. We can't be assured that Obama's next choice for the Supreme Court will be to our liking, given the President's dismal track record with appointments. There is a crisis coming. And it will be noted in the history books. That's the day progressives finally get the cajones to run a liberal anti corporatist candidate from a third party, and that candidate actually wins. The last time that happened was with Abraham Lincoln's election to the Presidency in 1860. And it's time that it happened again.

John Edwards has admitted to fathering a nearly two year old daughter by his mistress, Real Hunter, a campaign aid, of some two and three years ago. Edwards lied when he said "I know I could not be the father because the timing is not right for that". Edwards also lied when he said "I did not get involved sexually until my wife Elizabeth was in remission". But again Edwards lied because the conception occurred shortly after the doctors notified them that Elizabeth's cancer had returned. Having said all this, John Edwards is still on a higher moral plain than Larry Crag who said "I am not gay - - I never have been gay - - " and all that. John Edwards was the liberal's choice for President in 2008. When I heard that he wasn't running I was disappointed because I would have voted for him over either Obama or Hillery. Even now I wonder whether John Edwards would not have been a better President than Berock Obama. But the American People will not accept any man as President who fathered a child out of wedlock and especially when he lied about it. Of course Christians are the world class liars of all time. I have been lied to by Christians more than any other group I associate with. They say it's worse when you are lied to by a close friend, in whom you trusted your confidance and secrets. As such I am not particularly emotionally affected by Edward's lies because it doesn't affect me personally. But lies told to me by trusted Christians work enormous damage to my emotional psyche.

Conan O Brian is now out at NBC. His late night show had been handed back over to Jay Leno. Leno and O Brian both have made endless jokes about that. NBC screwed up big time and then know it. O Brian gets a nice severance package but I disagree with it in one major way. I believe Conan O Brian should have total ownership of all the jokes and routines he used on the "Tonight Show" while he was at NBC. He doesn't owe NBC squat. Because N B C brieched the contract and as such they owe Conan virtually any deal he wants to make, if he even chooses to settle and not drag it out in a court case. O Brian owes them nothing in the way of creative property rights. Jay Leno joked that since the golden globe awards were so popular, they'd be showing endless reruns of that at ten o clock. It shouldn't be hard to fill the ten o clock slot. I'm sure there are a lot of writers and production people out there because of the recession. NBC should be able to pick them up for a song.

China may be pulling the plug on our own economic recovery because it has decided to tighten up its own money lending policy to cool off its own economy. What this means is that our economy will not be getting any more money from China, which means we'll have to come up with our own ways of stimulating our economy. This could be a good thing if we view it that way because the outcome may be to strengthen the US dollar against foreign currencies.

We had at least two tornadoes in Southern California in the last couple of days, one in Huntington Harbor and the other in Costa Mesa, and possibly others. Now those in the know are saying "Orange county has the highest incidence of tornatoes anywhere west of the Rockies". I've lived in this area a long time and I never knew that before. It seems obvious that our weather all over the country and the world is changing, but I'm not sure what it means. You know, Jesus on KFI said that Christians should be "prepared". I wonder if that means they should be supporters of Al Gore. Somehow I don't believe this is what he meant. People like Rush Limbaugh are telling us that if species are wiped out because of climate change- - they will somehow "evolve" into another species more able to survive. Rush believes in short that "God told me that nothing bad will ever happen to planet earth because of man's foolishness". I think Christians- - and everyone else too, should be prepared. They should be prepared to be lied to by their pastors who will tell them neither to worry about their own economic state, and also not to worry about the state of the world. Hence we should not prepare for, for instance, world peace, or take steps to achieve that. We should prepare for war but never for once consider the notion that God may want us to make peace with other nations. Being a liberal is all about "being prepared" because they are able to see a lot further out into the future than are conservatives. Rush Limbaugh says "actions have consequences" and I agree. And a sign of intelligence is to be able to predict the consequences of a certain act, before you do it. (Selah)

President Obama Brought Up Short

There are certain losses in life you can easily get over, and there are certain losses in life that seem to leave an ongoing hole or shortfall in your personal agenda of life. For instance I still miss my father. I haven't entirely gotten over his death because I told God - or at least expected that my Dad and I would be able to reconcile the differences and communication problems we were having. But the Lord had other ideas, and with my Dad's death, all those hopes will be forever unaccomplished. Two weeks ago I lost twenty dollars. I hoped that I would be able to save enough in the following two weeks before the phone bill was due that I could pay the whole thing. That didn't happen. This shortfall is still with me, and I find myself perpetually trying to dig myself out of a hole. And seeing as how I've had flu symptoms of fever and chills the past day - I'm not going to deny myself a big cup of coffee so that I at least feel decent. Now to the current news. Republican Scott Brown won an "upset" of the Republican senate race in Massachusetts. He won by five points but out in the working class suburbs in the rest of the state, Brown was leading his opponent by fifteen to twenty points. Brown is a virtually tea bagger and has moved significantly to the political right in the past few years, as did Sarah Palin and Mc Cain. He used to be for abortion before he was against it. He used to be for a health bill, before he was against it. I guess he's tapped into that redneck, anti government bias that exists, even in Massachusetts. He makes that all crucial 41st Republican senator spelling an end to Obama's dreams of a Health Bill, a basket in which he placed all his political eggs. People say that these D-bolt ballots (?) were used in this election, which have a reputation for being tainted. Also they say they don't do Exit polls any more after 2004 and Ohio because they know it will expose election fraud. But this is a real case of "Et tu Massachusetts? Then fall Obama!" Those other races that went Republican for governor despite the President's campaigning- - obviously wern't just flooks, but seem to be highlighting a real anti Obama trend out there. One must keep in mind that Republicans said in 2006 that the democrats were only able to win a majority because they elected a lot of middle to right centerists and "blue dog democrats". We need to wake up and smell the coffee. The Republicans last had sixty senators in 1923 but their short fall hasn't hurt them any. They've been able to accomplish a lot of things all these years despite never having a veto proof majority. But the democrats had it all and didn't know how to use it. And they don't have the cajones to try anything like "reconsiliation" where they only need 51% for a measure to pass. They would rather be known as losers than be known as "pushy". As I said in a later paragraph- - I observed early on in the Obama campaign a "failure to grow" the way others like Jack Kennedy did. Now this flaw is made evident for all to see.

I thought Governor Swartzenegger was in favor of legalized medical marijuana. If so perhaps he could intervene in this move by governmental authorities to close down the hundreds of medical marijuana dispensories that have sprung up in the LA area. But as I say I haven't seen any around here just walking down the street. This battle to legalize marijuana has been a long one, but we aren't giving up yet.

Men have suffered more in this recession than women, since it has been the male blue collar jobs that have been the most cut. Now they say that more men are marying women for their money rather than the other way around. There seem to be a lot of liberated men around now content to be house husbands and have their wives earn more. Though other words come to mind other than "liberated" such as- - emasculated. They have been "liberated" from their gonads. Clearly we need a leader with an America first economic policy. Do you know where we can get one. Is Ross Perot going to run again? Failing that, how about Ron Paul or Pat Buchanan running? Pat Buchanan at least shows moments of real lucidity.

The following material was typed yesterday

I’m going to say something this morning I thought I’d never say. The fact is I have been willing to give President Obama more personal latitude because he’s Black. Were he a white guy running against Hillary I doubt I’d have been near as patient with him. I was looking through my Word documents in March and April trying to find where I made the fleece to God that if President Obama got the nomination I would do various things for God, and among these are to quit smoking. I was pretty sure the remark was in a lavender colored document and that’s just where I found it, but in May as in Simpson’s. But the request of God is a little odd because prior to this time I was having a log of doubts about Obama- among them being I often agreed with Hillary more in a face to face debate, and more importantly there was the line “Obama is no Jack Kennedy because Kennedy grew as the campaign progressed. I have observed no such similar growth in Obama”. And that observation has come true in spades today, after his long laundry list of retreats in important issues, such as that one is hard pressed to come up with any areas where you are still in agreement with him. I’m almost hoping that Brown win today in Massachusetts. Perhaps that will be a “wake up” call to President Obama to again start listening to what the American people are saying and what they really want, instead of some obsessive insistence in passing a bill nobody wants, at the expense of virtually everything else. The American people say that the President is leading the country in the wrong direction. If the democrats no longer have their veto proof majority it will force them into thinking of alternative ways of getting that health bill passed, that is if they even want it passed at all. Maybe they should be more open to input of Republicans and find out what sort of bill Republicans would actually vote for.

The Last Hours of Ancient Religion

CHAPTER ELEVEN –

THE LAST HOURS OF ANCIENT RELIGION

Cold Turkey

Isolation

Well, Well, Well

Working Class Hero

Sometimes I Feel Like Going Down

Sunday Bloody Sunday

You Know I Love You, Baby (Live Elephant’s Memory)

The Luck of the Irish

Attica State

Freeda People (Bring on the Lucie)

Kiss, Kiss, Kiss (Yoco Ono)

I’m Losing You (unreleased rocky version)

What’s Coming Down

Watching the Wheels Go Round

Meat City

Oh My Love

New York City

This is an album some of you may have been looking for. The “going down” some is track four of the Imagine album. The title escapes me. The final two songs are a late, but long anticipated addition. As you know there are eleven dimensions. There are the four in the space-time continuum we observe in the here and now. The Fifth Dimension is the Dark dimension. This is the realm of the Moon in Dante’s writings and as you know “actually, it’s all dark”. But this is also known as the Twilight Zone dimension. This is where what is Real and what is Not is really not all that important. We have explained the physics behind this dimension several times. The last six realms respectively represent Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. They also reflect the “stable” electron shells of an atomic structure. We could regard these realms of heaven as the Helium, Neon, Argon, Krypton, Xenon, and Radon levels respectively. Because each inert no “Noble” gas, fills up another level of the electron shells. The last six dimensions exist in the hyper-space realm.

As you know in this year we will reach the magic 10-10-10 date in about nine months. I don’t know what, if anything will happen on this date, but I thought I’d throw it out there particularly for you fans of the tracks “Come Together” and “Bob Dylan’s 115^th Street Dream”. As thost Tetris pieces float down from heaven, it’s our business to try and assemble them into the scientific jigsaw puzzle for that they fit and make sense.

As you may know, man’s genetic predisposition twords Religion may well from an ability we discussed in a recent posting – and that is man’s unique ability above both the Ape and the Neanderthol, to think in symbol and in the abstract. He is able not only to track a ball covered by a moving box, but he is able to conceive of things that aren’t there or “might be”. As such, perhaps the old adage is true, “If you had a brain, you’d be dangerous”. We at the Orion Federation as you know have what I might call a “mythology” at this point, that man once lived on Venus, and that Adam and Eve were picked by a Higher Being, an extraterrestrial, if you will, to leave his home planet and colonize Earth with his Higher Intelligence. But in the process man became byfercated, or split off from his perfect self, experiencing a subconscious sense of “Loss” and that this sense of Loss turned into the concept of Sin. Man in truth “Is striving for something that has already found him”, to quote Jim Morrison. Man never lost God because God is not the sort of being that “gets lost”. God was always there. The problem is that some people (almost anybody) don’t like the Reality that God presents man with in his every day life. God often uses the “N” word on man and man doesn’t like that. When the first Ape said “No” to man in Planet of the Apes” he was exercising his first spark of the Divine. Formerly the forms of life on earth had adopted the classic Fight or Flight stance to deal with his fears. Modern man has adopted a few more strategies. One is that he can resort to Passive-Aggressive behavior. This is seldom a winner. Man came up with the notion of Sin, bringing with it endless introspection. And finally, mankind learned how to say “No”. This new frontier step in advanced verbiage was a real break-through for mankind. It finally enebeled him to verbalize the sense of his own sovereign worth.

God has the right to be the judge of his own thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. But with this right, is the burden of taking responsibility for His own actions.

God has the right to offer no justifying reason for his Behavior.

God has the right for determining whether mankind’s problems are problems he cares to take on. God has the right not to intervene in your life. Of course if you are a Calvinist like me, you know that like fish and water, in the end it’s ALL “intervention”.

God has the right, like a woman, to change His mind. Of course in reality if it weren’t for those who bullshit in His name, this attribute would not be necessary.

God has the right to “Be Wrong” and to make Mistakes. After all he’s God and by his very nature does what He wants. And who is going to stop Him?

God has the right to say “I don’t know”. Personally, I wish those speaking in His name would use this phrase more often. It would simplify a lot of things.

God has the right to make his decisions independent of the good will of those he would call friends. God doesn’t value “friendship” the way you and I do.

God has the right to be illogical in making decisions that affect all Mankind.

God has the right to say to you, “I don’t understand”. I’ve found that parents have made rather productive if this profession of Ignorance throughout the years.

God has the right to say, “I don’t care”. So exercise some divine behavior yourself today and go to the Atheist church or synagogue of your choice.

And now for the big news of the day. Massachusetts may go republican. It would appear that the Republican senate candidate with his two-faced stances on the issues of our day, is winning the hearts of the citizenry of Massachusetts. Now the democrats are “doubling down” at the betting table, throwing everything they’ve got into the pot, and if they lose they will lose really Big. This may be the clearest referendum on President Obama we’ve had so far. Of course the election of that 41^st Republican senator will doom the health care bill. This is unthinkable, but there is a high probability of that happening. Were I President Obama, I’d be rethinking my whole first year in office, and has it all been a waste of time. Like President Clinton in 1994, the President may have to re-think just what sort of measures his administration will be known for. (Selah)

The photograph provided is a “loose architectural rendering” of the Bosc house where I lived at various times throughout the ‘eighties. As Pete Richards pointed out the title of “Bosc morning” should rather be “Bosc evening” based on direction. But then it isn’t really morning in America after all. We may soon be entering Twilight.

World Responds to Hatian Earthquake Disaster

This situation with Haiti is a real heart-breaker. As you know the tragedy was compounded because of two factors. For a seven point 0 earthquake it was a “shallow” one, increasing the ground force. Also the structures were not well built. Buildings from the government palace to a prison, to other government buildings were destroyed. If our own Capital were devastated like this, we would not like it one bit. ABC news was expanded to a full hour and I watched it all. I guess there is one Hatian radio station still broadcasting and at night, apparently, people from New York can pick it up. Bill Clinton made a pitch over the airwaves for help. I guess that Aristeed guy was a good guy brought in by Clinton, but he’s gone now. Of course our prayers go out to those people. But sometimes I wonder whether we are praying to the wrong God. Pat Robertson said that Haiti as much as got what they deserve because two hundred years ago they made a pact with the Devil to be able to drive out the French. One wonders as did Stephanie Miller, just how the Devil could be quoted word for word, unless Pat Robertson was actually there. Pat Robertson risks damaging his own standing with God not to mention his own credibility, if he continues to have the sort of statements like he has on Haiti. Stephanie Miller joked that P R is proving Atheists are proven right in that if there was a God, he would be striking Pat Robertson dead for making a statement like "these Haitians made their bed so let them lie in it". Some will say that the Dominican Republic, that shares the other half of the Hispanola island, has fared much better, but perhaps this is because that country has not tolerated the corporate exploitation- - the way Haiti has.

But I would like to generalize a bit now to indicate my overall disgust for those who come up with “creative” reasons for not giving. First of all if anything on the Stephanie Miller was true, then Rush Limbaugh and others on the right only see race, and see Haiti as “a black problem” and fellow Blacks like Obama will use the incident to boost their own popularity. You know I happened to wonder – if a church were raising money for relief, would it make sense to refuse to give because you heard a roomer that the pastor’s wife bought a Lotto ticket every night at the local Quicky Mart? You could go “Well, if you added up all the money she has spend on Lotto for a year it would amount to more than I was going to give anyhow, so I’m off the hook”. Of course then there is Chuck Smith’s statement of “You know really, some of the biggest money worshippers are the Poor, and I’ve found that rich people have actually Transcended their need for Money”. One thing I have found and that is the poorer I get, the more value I place on money – and probably the few moral scruples as to how you could get it. Many people such as Dr. Levy call Al Gore a hypocrite because his house in Nashville is not “green” or energy efficient. But this is bogus logic. Because a person is morally inconsistent – it does not invalidate the moral principle being taught. For instance if adultery is Wrong, it will be wrong even if the preacher like Jimmy Swaggart preaching against it, himself has “fallen into temptation”. It’s only when Christians teach notions that are completely bogus to begin with that raises my moral hackles. For instance preachers who teach “Just pray all the time and go to Wednesday night bible studies- and you’ll be amazed at how God will prosper you in ways you never imagined”. But have you thought about the fact that an Ape is smarter than a Christian, or at least more logical. You’ve heard the adage, “monkey see – monkey do”. Well, a chimp will learn the “right” way to perform a task and teach ot to other chimps, even seven cycles out- - and this is true even if that is not the ONLY way to perform the task, they will do it the way they are taught. But the last thing Christian preachers want is to have their own behavior “mirrored” in their congregation. As some will even admit, “one of me is enough”. Their job is not to teach to equip you, the saint; their job is to say things to beguile you and “tickle your ears” so the pastor will become the object of worship. What Jesus of KFI and others seem to want is sort of a “Stepford Saint” where your normal DNA is sucked out, and instead there is this zombie Christian with no feelings or impulses of his own. The ape is smarter in another way. Because apes, like small pre school children, have a natural urge not only to teach others, but also to help others. But as you have seen, this impulse to help seems to be absent from people on the right. My own family has some very “creative” reasons why they don’t give me money. They say “Well, you are on SSI and it’s against the law to give you money”. But this same person said to me when I was preparing to get on SSI the following, “Just take this step of getting on SSI and you’ll never again have another financial problem”. Last night it was Jeopardy and the Simpson’s and then the thing on Apes. Simians have a basic problem with abstract concepts such as light and heavy. Often three and four year old children learn at a hundred times the speed of an ape when it comes to sorting objects. The one thing apes are good at as “which cup has the ball under it”. They are good at abstractly following objects they can’t see. And they are keen on facial expressions and seem big on “reading faces”. They also make sure they aren’t being seen when they steal grapes from you. Yeah. Apes do nice things, like share watermelon, to impress females.

Tuesday night it was Jeopardy and the Simpson’s and then Egyptian boat building and how their methods are fundamentally different from “modern” ship builders. Instead of using a basic frame and light planks to fill out the boat, they use heavy planks and fit them together like puzzle pieces using pegs for nails. Some have theorized that because of an absence of tar or grout, that they sink the ships so water will swell the planks to make them fit more tightly. The Egyptians traded with people across the Medeteranian thousands of years ago- - as far back as the Old Kingdom 3^rd millennium B C.

Yesterday morning I had Drive radio on, and they were doing 1985. I have regarded 1985 as you know, as the "last year" of the "Classic Rock era.

In the night I woke with nausea. I thought I was getting a full on case of the intestinal flue where that “uneasy feeling” gets worse and worse till you vomit. That didn’t happen. I thought “perhaps if I just lie here and get a little more sleep I’ll feel better”. And that’s just what happened. As a response to this I decided it might be unwise for me to get a big cup of coffee this morning. I tried to turn on the TV but it would not go on, even gray screen, till about seven o clock. By that time I just let it stay that way and “simmer” till I turned it on after breakfast. I have FOX on. We had oatmeal for breakfast, without sugar, and toast with butter and jelly, and a fried egg. I took my medication ahead of time, and I also had Andrew’s orange juice. In fact, I even had a second cup of coffee. I still have thirty dollars, in three tens.

Crashing Back Down to Earth

If your name is Sarah Palin or Harry Reed, today was not a good day. That's because the book "Game Changer" on the 2008 Presidential campaign came out today. In the book Reed is quoted as saying of Obama, "If you can get a lighter skinned black man who does not naturally speak in a Negro dialect, unless he wants to, you just might have a viable candidate". Michael Steel, the Black republican chairman is demanding that Harry Reid resign his leadership post. The Republicans would just love that, with health care hanging in the balance. There are times when I feel blacker than Obama. Personally, I'm not an Oreo' I'm the opposite. I'm that Nabisco cookie with the vanilla cookie part and the chocolate filling. Actually there are times I cringe at the label of African American, when I think of how our forebearers sold slaves of other tribal peoples to the Moslems, not to mention the genital mutilations of females. But really we're all African Americans. Because if you read a recent post, all the smart people evolved in Africa and did not emigrate to Europe to the Neanderthal Valley. Actually I'm an Abyssinian. If Lisa Simpson can be of the Hatachi Indian tribe, I can be an Abyssinian with a proud ancestral and cultural heritage. Randy Rhodes did not like the general National Enquirer tone of this book. Edward's estranged wife apparently threw a fit in a public place and began ripping her blouse and saying "This is what my husband did to me". There was lots of mud to go around. Hillary told the President that she could not consider being Secretary of State "Because of my husband Bill. You know what he is like and the time will come when there is an (adultery) incident." And Obama said of Byden "When is that idiot going to shut up?" in response to Joe Byden's remark about "Mark my words. Obama will be severely tested his first six months in office". Also Sarah Palin was raked over the coals. Mc Cain was all set to pick Joe Lieberman. But there were grave fears the Republican convention would not support him because he was too liberal. But Sarah had to be tutored from square one. She was ignorant about World Wars I and I and the Korean War and the Cold War. She also kept referring to her VP opponent as "O Byden". All of the facade and froth of her book was stripped away in brutal fashion. People who know say she'll never run for office again.

Now they want to bank the DNA of living wild animals in danger of becomming extinct, such as the Lion and the Elephant. They successfully "cloned" a rare cat species by first sucking the DNA out of the egg of an ordenary house cat, and them implanting the DNA of the exotic cat. The litter was germanated and born normally and the offspring are able to mate and reproduce. They want to attempt to clone animals that went extinct in the ice age twelve thousand years ago such as the woolly manouth. This whole line of experimentation was begun about twenty years ago. Then are close to reproducing the "genome" of the woolly mamouth, but what they need is a living cell to work with. That way little girls would have a real live pet to play with like in the song "I want a hippopotamus for Christmas". I think banking of DNA of living species is a good idea, given current rates of going extinct.

People may take heart from the news that this "virtual electronic border fence" idea isn't working. Boeing sold the government the high tech equipment but the Feds don't know how to properly implement it. However it is my feeling that the current problems they seem to be having are transitory, and that they will eventually work out the bugs and overcome the weather problems. What we need to fear is using electronic surveillance everywhere in society so that privacy becomes a thing of the past. Google has face recognition software where you have only to click on any face you may see in "street view" or elsewhere, and learn all about the person. I also believe a time is coming when a form of eugenics will come back in fashion. Insurance companies will use it to screen for such things as sexual proclivity, and people prone to psychological depression, or other diseases. Employers will have a field day when that day comes. I think these nude screen scanners will become comon place in airports because they will be sold as the most expediant way to get the job done. Also these brain scans where they can read what you Intend to do, will be used first by the CIA on terrorists, but then by law enforcement in the general population to know whether to cut a deal with the suspect or throw the book at him.

I didn't expect this to come in formatted.

Typed a few minutes ago.

Sometimes you make the easy decision and decide you’re just going to “kick the can down the road”. That’s what I think I’m going to do with the phone company. I am running out of options as to “finding that twenty dollar bill”. I’ll short change them the way I believe I was short changed by [name withheld]. I talked to [name withheld] today. I was coming in from afternoon coffee break and met [name withheld[ in the lobby and spoke to her. She says “You know I always count the money out for you people”. That was that. Since I had just run out of cigarettes I found it hard to borrow cigarettes and decided it wasn’t worth it, not to mention a little pointless to borrow and then pay back. So I went to the store and baught a pack of Strawberry Santa Fe’s. I asked about grape but they didn’t have that. I then listened to the Ron Reagan program. We had pepper steak for dinner with rice and carrots, and I had seconds on the first two. I then went out to the bakery for coffee, which was not as hot as yesterday. Eye Witness news was on when I returned.

Today’s session with Dr. Levy brought back a lot of bad memories with group therapy and Al Kaders back in ’69 and ’70. Dr. Levy was in the dining room at lunch greeting people. When he came to me he smiled and gave a thumbs up signal. But one shouldn’t always read too much into things. By the way we had hot dogs and potato chips and Will gave me his chips, too. I went out for what I thought might be my last cigarette and then headed to the room. Dr. Levy broached the subject of anticipation and excitement about each New Year. I made the remark, “Yeah – this year I felt good about the first few days, but after that money disappearance and also the family’s generally apathetic about any topic I would raise on the phone about my interests- - that kind of killed it for me”. Right now my “excitement” over the new year has crashed to zero on the NYSE. Dr. Levy mentioned that in our hopes and such for the year we should pretend that money doesn’t matter, because a lot of the people in the class were buzzing about “Yeah if I only had money I’d be excited”. There’s one thing I don’t like and that’s a group leader who strives to deny the obvious. Instead we were treated to a litany of stories about volunteer work. He said maybe I could do office work. You know- - sharpening pencils, running the Xerox and getting the boss coffee. I was thinking “At least he didn’t suggest cleaning out toilets”. There was a guy Mike there from Founders. I found in him a vessel for articulating things I had been only thinking but hadn’t put into words yet. When Dr. Levy said we could go to a senior center for dating women, Mike said, “Well they are going to know where you came from at some point”. In response to the line about offering to go Dutch treat Mike said “Well – some of us can’t even afford that. No woman will want to date you if you don’t have money”. He also said “I don’t need a woman to make me feel complete”. He also said “You know they call it SSI because it’s money you get because the State regards you as unemployable”. Amen. Dr. Levy mentioned at one point they have some “make work” work experience opportunities at founders where you can work for three dollars an hour. So after working for three hours you can go out to Carl’s and buy a hamburger, fries, and a Coke, and blow most of the money you just earned. Whopee! Back in the late summer and fall of 1980 when I was checking out jobs at CETA the usual going price for a new person was five dollars an hour. So working at founders would be a 40% cut in that, or a wage that would have been illegal even by standards of thirty years ago. I don’t even know if an illegal alien would settle for work like that. Dr. Levy carried on about work for work’s sake and because it gives you self esteem. There was talk about classes in water color painting. I’m not really sure that is my artistic medium. Oils would be too dangerous. I had been told [name withheld] would not be in at all this week, and when I heard she was in her office I excused myself and went down there, fearing that if I waited I’d feel stupid if she had already left. But she was with another client. As to the three things lately I’ve sent to Dr. Levy I’m proud of all three of them. For all of Dr. Levy’s ravings about my intelligent insight to family members, he was surprisingly lacking in praise for any of these three submissions. People like Arlene deserve a real break. They need someone to help market their wares. If you put Arlene’s paintings all over the internet for free, who is going to pay money for them? As Dylan said “The guy who ran the club said he loved my sound- - - a dollar a day’s worth”. I’m reminded of that thing on TV about these “fruit pie” things that are advertised as healthful, but when you look at the ingredients, actually fruit is in fifth or sixth place, preceded by such items as sugar and corn starch. There were complaints about how the cooking class is not really “hands on” and the time could be spend just as well watching Martha Stewart on television. Dr. Levy said “When you get that twenty what are you going to do with it, smoke cigarettes?” I felt insulted by that remark. That was my Mom talking. I left the class feeling rather wrung out. I went and watched the rest of Days of our Lives, and Maggie crying on Melanie’s shoulder.

Obama's Credibility Gap

I guess my blogs would be related to bad hand writing. They slant every which way - - - politically. Liberals will not find that comfort. Personally I believe if the President believes there were real screw-ups in dealing with the Christmas bomber, or it took too long to come out with an opinion, I think that Obama should fire whoever it is he believes screwed up, after looking at that rushed report on the matter. And I don't think it was a good idea to read him his meranda rights so quickly. When you have a foreign national like this from Nigeria, you should treat him, at least initially, as an enemy combatent. And that means grilling him for hours on end trying to extract from him as much information. I don't even think it would be out of place to threaten him with water-boarding. Whether or not I'd actually do it, I haven't decided yet. I don't think the President has to cause the conservatives any unnecessary alarm. It would seem that the Presidential press secretary is a world class stonewaller, more so than with Bush or any previous republican. Nobody wants to say even whether or not there will be another stimulus package. I'm getting the feeling that the President has decided against any further stimulation of the economy despite the fact that last month's unemployment claims have risen once more. People need to know that their President has a sense of direction and dare I say, "vision". I haven't sensed this in Obama as I have for instance in Governor Swartzenegger of California. He has a clear idea of what ought to and what ought not to be in terms of government. He even brought out his check list with him and ran down a list of issues where he has achieved his goals, and a few areas where he plainly admitted he hasn't. You don't hear President Obama "plainly admit" anything, in terms of accomplished goals.

I'd like to talk a little bit about the Let It Be recording sessions of the Beatles in January of 1969. I've had my own ideas as to how the songs ought to sound. I think with "Dig a Pony" they need some more voices singing, such as Janis Joplin, or bring in some singers from Fleetwood Mac. I like that version of "I Got a Feeling" the station played today, with the abrupt ending. That's a track from the original KMET tape released about the first of October of 1969. I think "Two Of Us" should be done at a slightly slower tempo and it needs a lot of rebirb on all of the instruments, including the vocals. I'd like it to sound more like "Third Stone from the Sun" and it wouldn't hurt if they would "Hendrix up" the lead guitar a little. The version of Let It Be with the Leslie organ is bad, the "Album" version is worse. I much prefer one of the early drafts of this track. I'm inclined to sympathize with George Martin, who believed that the whole project sucked and that they should just shelve it.

The consumer electronics show in Las Vegas was bigger than ever. Of course they let only the press and dealers in to even see it, and the merchandise won't even be out for sale to the public till the fall, if then. Often things are seen at CES that never again see the light of day. 3 D is big this year for TV's and also Blue Ray in 3 D. But others say this is a fad that will be an anachronism in five years. Now they have something called four K for giant fifty plus TV screens as detailed as four 1080 P TV Screens. This might be an avenue people pursue to give people a "new experience". Things for your car are really big this year, and also these tablet computers are really big now, that don't use a keyboard or a mouse but you manipulate the images by gesturing with your fingers in various manners.

On the world scene people say that Ochmedinajab (sp?) of Iran will be gone soon. They also say that the current riots of the citizens are getting "out of control" and can't be contained by the government and that the current repressive leadership will be gone soon. I said last June that would not happen with the protests they were having back then. And I'm saying it now. Iran will continue to be an ongoing problem. Others say that both Russia and China will be "getting on board" to join US sponsored sanction movements. Look for this situation to fall apart and for Russia and China to again get cold feet and not support the US in any UN resolution. In short look to the Iranian situation or "problem" as one that is not going away.

Change - Nothing Stays the same

In Loyalty to their kind

They can not tolerate our Minds

In Loyalty to our kind

We can not tolerate their Obstruction

Change is such a key reality in human affairs that all the more the things which never seem to change stand out like a sore thumb. One of these is the way family members think of me. Another is the Christian religion itself. Also when confronted with something new, many people rerun old scenarios in their minds as their way of dealing with them. I often feel people who should be listening to me are “rerunning old tapes” in their minds while the conversation is taking place. I’m being judge not on what is occurring at the moment but rather by a series of “reactive” notions that are just re-treaded thoughts they’ve had about “things” for a long time. I get this feeling a lot when I talk to Dr. Messina. Often being the most advanced civilization won’t buy you the sort of immortality that you think it will. The Minoans were a highly advanced civilization on the Isle of Crete, but sometime between 1600 and 1100 BC this civilization was destroyed by an earthquake and today wave that occurred on a neighboring island. I myself choose to average out the dates at around 1300 BC. If I’m reading my tea leaves correctly these Minoans became in turn the Sea Peoples that invaded both Egypt and also Palestine, and in fact became the Philistines of the Bible. Rather than being barbaric, they were in fact more advanced than the Canaanites and had Iron and “Smiths” to work it, such that their weapons of battle were feared above all others. But they didn’t “grow” and so disappeared from the scene, except for the name they gave to the region. How can we modern people learn from these failures to adapt? Let’s take the airlines. We know that the mode of air transportation has become “unacceptable” now, as to the number of congestions and “circling the airport” from arriving several hours early for security checks, to what happens if a terrorist is found on a plane. There have been so many cases in the news of “events” like a flight from Portland to Hawaii where a mental patient went brazerk and the pilot had to turn the plane around. There is the enormous cost of jet fuel, if nothing else. You have weather to contend with. To me the solution is simple in that we need high speed bullet ground transport such as a bullet train that travels over two hundred miles per hour. What you would lose in initial speed you would more than make up in reduced time driving to and from airports and impossible security procedures. You wouldn’t have icing of wings or other weather related mishaps to contend with such as fog or the icing up of runways. And pilots wouldn’t overshoot their destinations.

We may be taking a step backward with this health bill in that more and more people will be receiving inadequate health care. This is because for a really “good plan” you get taxed more by your employer and many Unions may be unable to negotiate for anything but the cheapest health care, that is covered. This is not a good thing. How much better it would be if ALL health care for everybody were covered in a single tax that you could pay when you made out your 1040 and then forget about money the rest of the year. The House bill contains a millionaire’s tax, which is a vastly superior way of paying any necessary costs. The President is one of those people who not only is NOT changing with the times, he is in fact in political retrogression. Personally I grew up in a time when there was a lot of change, particular in cars and music. So to me the greatest “hurdle” in being a young person today is getting over the reality that nothing changes and people will make reference to either a ‘sixties or ‘seventies “Classic” song, or else make reference to, for instance a late sixties “muscle car” as being a “Classic”. To me this would give me an amazing inferiority complex. I would feel as though my whole generation were just some useless appendix on the fabric of society, with nothing to contribute. The two party system in this country is an anachronism that has outlived its usefulness, and it’s time some political organizers shook things up a bit.

People are psychotically wired- or at least I am psychologically wired, to think in terms of “what rights do I have”. Therefore I like the Bill of Particulars at the beginning of “When I Say No I Feel Guilty”. You have the right to be wrong. You have the right to change your mind, and so forth. I’m glad to hear Thom Hartman say that the rights enumerated in the Constitution are negative rights in that they are all geared to limiting the power of the Federal Government. He had Ron Paul on his show this morning who mentioned that the CIA appears to be growing in its power and influence, and may in fact be dictating foreign policy to the President. Yesterday it was pointed out that Jimmy Carter wanted a bunch of CIA documents released on the Kennedy assassination, and that the CIA came out and told him that this would never happen. I don’t like the idea that Chris Dodd and Byron Dorgan may have somehow been forced from office by the Obama administration because they ran afowl of the “powers that be”.

You’ve heard the charge that Pete Best was kicked out of the Beatles because “Pete just didn’t grow with the rest of us”. Last night I watched Jeopardy and then the Simpson’s (who says War isn’t good for something?) and then a thing on Neanderthals. The stereotype is correct in this respect. We regard Neanderthals as narrow minded and inflexible and rather limited in intelligence and this is precisely what they are. You Afro-centric people out there will be happy to learn that all the real human evolution was going on in Africa a hundred thousand and more years ago. But a smaller group left the herd behind so to speak, and migrated way north to Europe and eastern France in the valley of the Neanderthal. These people had very set ways of doing everything from how to make tools and how to hunt, and they never varied from this. They would not fish the rivers and they would not grow crops. This was too much work and just required too much thinking. The people back in Africa evolved into cro-magnum man, which is where we are descended from. There or only very slight genetic variance between ourselves and Neanderthal man. Part of their problem was that they never “multiplied” but their population seemed perpetually limited, and though they survived for two hundred thousand years (“wow!”) they eventually died out. They say that modern man would not even mate with them. Modern man had traits Neanderthals never achieved. One was the ability to think in abstractions such as the making of symbolic jewelry. Another was the ability to come to a new problem with a “fresh” mind set. I happened to think that we need this today. We are trapped in using 20^th Century logic to settle 21^st century problems. I can not help but think of Christianity. People will tell you that you can’t be a real scientist without a belief in God because modern invention is based on the notion that the laws of physics and chemistry are constant and do not vary. Francis Bacon is pointed to as such a Christian. However others such as Newton and Einstein are more deists than theists, in the proper sense. When I was six years old I remember having a conversation with my Dad about the names of musical notes being constant for all the instruments in the orchestra. I had assumed they would all be pitched differently. In reality when I joined the Band, I realized that I had been right after all in that various instruments were pitched differently and had different music. Also when I was young I believed that everybody had a different “normal” body temperature. This is another reality I had to unlearn- - that my mother had told me. It seems now that not everybody has a “normal” temperature of 98.6 degrees. But Christians today don’t grow. The Church has a legasy of fighting scientific progress wherever they see it. The big thing now is stem cell research. Every time a Christian faces a new problem he trudges out the old Nicine creed, and measures all of his “new thoughts” by this ancient standard. Since I was young I’ve been plagued by the question of “Why doesn’t God send a Messiah for our time who will authoritatively “update” Christianity to today’s realities?”