Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Obama Least Agressive in Prosecuting Wall St

"Try to see it my way -

do I have to keep on talking till I can't go on?

Or to see it your way -

and run a risk of knowing Democracy will soon be gone"

There is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by…corporations. The power of all corporations ought to be limited in this respect. The growing wealth acquired by them never fails to be a source of abuses. - JAMES MADISON

"He who sacrifices civil liberties for security

will end up having neither"

-BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (?)

"When two tea party members go a walking

The dumber of the two does the talking"

---I before E except on Mc Donald's Farm--

"I'd rather see Hubert Humphrey dead than to be a Republican

'Cause he's so stoned on compromise that he won't know where I am."

President Obama is the least aggressive prosecutor of Wall Street and bank establishments of the past five presidents. That means Ronald Reagan, George Bush 41, Bill Clinton, and George W Bush. As to why this is so George Washington’s blog didn’t exactly explain. Clearly there has never been a greater need for Wall Street prosecution- and failure to do so indicates the President’s administration isn’t doing its job. But what it means that while the tea party whines like a scalded cat, they never had it so good. Their cherished wall street gang was bailed out with billions, their taxes were cut, and every manner of compromise was made with them, all the while keeping rhetoric from the President about the right very tame indeed. The President utterly refuses to take names and kick ass. So clearly the key to the tea party’s hostility twords this President must lie elsewhere. But who can say where? I really don’t want to play the race card but what else are we to think? And new statistics say that the tea party’s chances of massive losses in congress next year are quite likely and probable. Congress as a whole only has a nine percent approval rating. This is the same as Hugo Chavez of Venesuela, and actually two points below the idea of the entire United States government going Communist. Just think about it. The citizens would prefer a communist government running our country to the tea party’s continuing to run it. If the President had any sense he’d enlist many others to make speech for him on the economy with all of the Ross Perot charts and graphs reveling what pathological liars the tea party crowd is.

Senator Bernie Sanders whoosed out today in saying that he would not sign a petetion by an organization of doctors advocating for single payer health care. The petetion was to advocate the overturning of the mandentory purchase of "junk insurance" from the big Health Care insurance providers at their jacked up prices. The doctors are absolutely right, and Bernie Sanders wins the whoos award today for "pulling an Obama". Also Senator Sanders dropped the ball in saying that Bush administration prosecution for war crimes was not important. You know, Stephen King has a book out now on going back and preventing the Kennedy assasenation. But if we had prevented 9 - 11 from happening this would have had a far more profound effect on the last ten years of American history. Apparently (according to Phyllis Green) some radio station in town had uncovered new evidence that Dick Chaney personally planned the events of 9 - 11. Let's not wait fifty years to NOT find out the truth on this one. Perhaps Sanders never heard the adage that, "For Evil to prevail, all that needs to be necessary is for Good People to do nothing." We need pro-active people on our side and not just re-active, and believe me, we've had precious little of that over the past ten years, either. Like it or not we are moving into the future. Things that were acceptable in the past are and ought to be no longer acceptable. These include the massive giveaway of the resources of the people of this country to the rich internationalists. I'm not entirely sure, for instance what form "single payer" health care should take. Do we just want to extend Medicare for everybody? Perhaps not. That's what the internet is for - to exchange ideas. It surprises me that the bigger the internet gets the more zombiezed the American people get. It's counter intuitive to me that the more information available to Americans and the more readily it can be shared and discussed with others- - that people's mental processes seem stuck somehow in the reptilian stage of "just surviving".

“When it comes to Newt Gingrich – I’m a fundamentalist- - I believe in revelations”. The “New Revelation” with Newt involves the real reason why he took over a million dollars from Freddy Mac as a “consultant”. Newt’s job was to identify friends in congress. Randy Rhodes coined the phrase, “Newt Gingrich isn’t for sale; he’s only for rent. When the cash stops coming he’ll turn and stab you in the back”. We all pretty much knew you can tell when Newt is lying- - anytime you see his lips move. He is the quintessential wormy slime-ball. Of course the Wickepedia does state that Newt was brought up on “dozens of ethics violations” in congress, but that all disappeared, we are to believe. Newt has risen to number two in the polls. I think it would be the mother of all campaign battles were Newt to actually get the Republican nomination next year. You know every Democrat and his dog would come out of the woodwork to participate in the campaign. Newt has developed a lot of enemies over the years. It still bothers me why supposed Christians would pick him out of the bunch as somehow “God’s choice for the nomination”. This Republican field of candidates is not conservative. No conservative of decades past would want to know them. They are reactionaries, pure and simple. Basically they just want to blow government up altogether. Indeed it would be Obama’s side of the debt ceiling crisis that could quote Ronald Reagan in a speech where Reagan made all of the basic arguments that the democrats were making in August. Ronald Reagan granted amnesty to illegal alians. He never proposed building an electrified barbed wire fence. If you were doing a profile of various past Presidents as to which one best represented their platform, that would be William Mc Kinley, the way I see it. But they’d even have doubts about Mc Kinley because he wanted the US off a strict gold standard. Of course the whole “corporations are people” doctrine was just coming into flower back them. One reading the fourteenth amendment of the constitution could not possibly conclude corporations were people because it says that these people were “Born” here, and it also uses the word “Citizens”. Clearly this whole amendment is talking about the rights of citizens, and most notably freed Black citizens. When you interperate something you need to look for the antecedent as to when was the first use of a particular word, and in what context was that particular word, like “persons” introduced. Essentially these tea party appeal to an America that “never was” - - to begin with.

Today is Wednesday November 16, 2011. They say that it is a healthy organism that is able to expel hostile poisons within it. A healthy body does so readily, a sick body does so with difficulty, and if they aren’t expelled at all, death occurs. So what does that say about Rush Limbaugh who is not only reviling women who are sexually groped, but now Rush is defending Penn State coaches saying this whole sex thing is just a scam to ruin the names of good, fine people. Now they say everyone in college football knew about Coach Sandusky and all worked to cover it up. That sounds like one sick organism whose infection has spread far and wide. Randy Rhodes wonders aloud why we can't just have a political discourse but it seemingly is a prerequisie to being a tea bagger that you're just plain Mean. You are foul mouth and ill mannered and miserly in attitude. And in particular one wonders why Rush Limbaugh can't hold onto a woman. It sure isn't because he lacks the money to wine and dine a woman beyond their wildest fancy. I won't even want to speculate what "button" was pushed in Rush brain when he heard that child molesters were coming under attack. - - - Sandusky is now trying to mitigate the charges saying it was all “just horse play in the showers”. You have to keep in mind these were disadvantaged kids to begin with, so abuse may be all they’ve known. But now it gets worse because the whole group “The Second Mile” that was supposedly a haven for kids, may itself be in the business of pimping out young boys. It just gets sicker and sicker. Thom Hartman keeps telling us that some "revolution" is just around the corner. That depends on the basic health of the national faboric as to whether it's able to expell the poisonous organism of the tea party. Sure I heard that long list he read and how we qualify on every count for a revolution. But some living organisms just have a death wish or something and are unwilling to take the needed steps to effect a cure. And yes, you have to break an egg to make an omlet. And if that's a violent act take it up with that Cheese guy who told about the chef who was arrested by the police for beating an egg!

Perhaps the nation’s way of dealing with the virus of the tea party is to break out in all of these occupation protests. It’s a messy and inefficient way of curing the problem – that’s for sure. Perhaps they should have watched the Tea Party protests more closely to observe how they did it. Michelle Bachman has 23 adopted kids. Randy Rhodes was wondering how she could possibly give any of those children the attention he or she deserved and still run for President at the same time, and serve as congresswoman. The answer is that it’s impossible. But people are so impressed by posers they don’t ask themselves questions like this. People stopped asking questions about Sarah Palin’s life long ago. She’s had her fifteen minutes of fame. Now Newt Gingrich is continuing to rise in the polls and now he’s number two. I don’t deny that Newt is a big number two, but the question is he qualified to be President. I went looking for dirt on Newt the other day but didn’t get past the Wickipedia article, which is probably a poor choice to get anything but a fawning resume. There was nothing I could sink my teeth into to attack. We all, of course think that Cain has even more skeletons in his closet. What we do know is that Herman Cain is one of the most bogus candidates to walk the face of the earth. We are sold the image of a guy who was just sitting at home unemployed or something and one day decided "I would like to make pizza". It turns out he bought Godfather Pizza from Pillsburry, which means he had to have big bucks to accomplish that. Even in 1993 he had enough status in Kansas City to be able to challenge President Clinton head on - on the subject of the Health Care bill. We know he worked for the Kansas City federal reserve. And we also know he is in tight with the Koch brothers. So he is just not "some guy off the street" who somehow won the political lottery. He isn't Joe the Plumber. Come to think of it he IS Joe the Plumber because HE was a fraud, too. He wasn't really a plumber and he wasn't earning over $250,000 a year, at least then. But as we said a couple days ago it seems every person elected to congress is virtually guarenteed of becoming at least a Millionaire really soon, because he has access to government perks that the rest of us can only dream about.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Before You Accuse Me - Take a Look at Yourself

PSYCHOLOGICAL TEST FOR JEWISH MESSIAH ASPIRANTS

Do you believe you should stab one boss in the back in order to cut a better deal with a new employer, as if he will be impressed by your treachery?

Do you ever have personal doubts about yourself - - on anything?

Do you believe others whom you have frictions with, would be be better Christians if they were all a little more humble. Do you believe "humility" is a cure-all for unsuccessful Christians?

If it more important to "Have a successful mission" or that every action by every person pass muster with your own personal moral check list to see that I's are dotted and T's are crossed?

Which to you is a more violent act? Pointing a sword at an enemy government official, or the burning of a young woman alive at the stake?

Are you disinclined to believe any Bible verse quoted by another if it contracts some theological writing by a cleric whose been dead for ten centuries?

Do you believe in drawing attention to yourself as the "Star" of a team, even at the expense of the overall efficient functioning of the team as a whole?

Do you believe there is any danger in debasing the value of the currency if one employer floods the market with a lot of extra money and jacks up prices for everyone, even ones that weren’t paid by the employer who flooded the market?

What good and noble act or acts have you done for your country in the past year. The last three years?

Are you given to throwing tantrums when your message isn’t understood?

When people bow down to you in adulation, do you encourage such conduct?

Do you believe it's a good thing for commanding officers to speak to the troops in confusing, ambiguous terms and "leave it to them to sort it all out later?"

Have you ever been known to harbor a convicted murderer as a secret follower?

If there were a dispute between a countryman and a citizen of the occupying country, would your first instinct be to side with the enemy?

Has any word come out of your mouth that skeptics say remains unproven?

Are you given to making dire prophecies of doom concerning your nation?

If your wife bought pepper spray because she says she’s afraid of being raped in a parking lot, would you chastise her for her “violence stance”?

If you saw one kid bullying another would you tell the kid being abused that if he’s passive then the whole problem will go away. If you saw a husband beating his wife would you give a likewise message to the wife concerning submission?

Do you believe in a god who is so secretive about “rewards” they remain secret even to the so called “recipient”? Do you believe that a basic theme of the Hebrew scripture is that most of what God does is so secret, nobody knows it?

If you saw a young boy being raped in the shower by a college coach, would your first impulse be to “Give the situation over to God and pray about it?”

Do you regularly pray for the well being of government & religious leaders?

If you saw your comrade in arms about to be fired upon by the enemy would your first impulse be to shoot that enemy or “think about it a while”?

Do you believe your own private moral views take precedence over doing what is best for your country?

Would you interrupt an ongoing religious service to make some private moral point even if it could have waited till later. If you were invited to a dinner by a religious leader, would you tell him off and embarrass him right in public?

Do you find that most of the interactions between you and others always end up revolving around how great of a person the other individual thinks you are?

Would you refuse to heal someone if you could do so on the grounds that this illness is there to “teach them a valuable lesson” and not to interfere?

If someone were drilling holes in a boat you were in and the boat began sinking would your first impulse be to rescue a sinking ship filled with convicts that happened by, or would you first look for the guy that’s drilling the holes.

Do you have the basic philosophy that “Nothing is anybody’s fault”, unless, of course - - one of the people happens to be a Jew?

Are there long periods of your own life you’ve said nothing about?

Do you believe quoting fragments of scripture out of context is OK?

If you know something evil is going to happen, do you try to prevent it?

Do you believe good results can come from imperfect means, or do you believe that good things only come from perfect means, but if you “Have a good reason for what you’re doing” then nothing can possibly go wrong?

Do you believe in unconditional Trust? I’ll repeat the question. Your teenage daughter is in a back seat with a sex hound. Do you believe in unconditional trust?

Thom Hartman ticked me off with his rapsidies of non violence. The line about “good ends can only come from good means” can’t be counted on. You’ve heard another adage that goes “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. I’m sure all the Penn State people are saying “I really didn’t mean for such and such to happen”. The ultimate example is Jesus Christ who spoke in such lofty terms. Unlike Martin Luther King and Ghandi, Jesus was only out for himself, and that’s all he was interested in promoting. He never advocated violence- - at his own hand. All the tens of millions who died at the hands of the Catholic Church or Conquistidors or the Nazis were just proxy killings or something- - in the name of God. So I guess the Dr. Phil line “How’s that worked out for you?” shouldn’t be asked of the nation of Israel when it came to “delivering” that nation from oppression of any sort. Isn’t it funny that the Jews had to learn the lesson the hard way that you need to fight back when picked on.

Sixty Minutes had congressmen and women who routinely trade on insider information. No congressman is obliged to set up a blind trust but is free to dabble in the stock market to his heart’s content. I never knew this. If they aren’t millionaires to begin with they soon become millionaires while there with all this inside information on bills that may or may not be passed. If you’re Nancy Palosi you can prevent a credit card bill from coming to the floor because it would adversely affect your stock holdings. Personally I don’t know if I’ll ever believe another word that comes out of Nancy Palosi’s mouth. I goess 9% trust isn’t a low enough poll number for Congress. But Republicans profited from knowing the stock crash of September 2008 was coming. The tea party used to pretend they cared about stuff like this. But now we know they ARE the corruption. And then it was the TASER story, which stands for Thomas A Swift Electric Revolver. (?) Cops may overuse it at least in the beginning from lack of training and experience but people agree that it makes cops a lot safer and prevents suspects from either dying or being hospitalized. They said it’s over a million volts but only a fraction of am amp. I know what that means in the abstract, but not really. Then it was some Black guy named Robosky, who is Polish and is a math and electronics wizard, and runs a school that turns out only the brightest graduates.

I would like to speak more on the subject of Atheism. If I were to turn Atheist altogether I would do it on scientific grounds, and not as some act of “committal to a religion”. Perhaps others view Atheism as a religion. Perhaps in our culture one cannot legally come to the logical conclusion that there is no god based on scientific research. It would seem one is free to come to any other intellectual conclusion he pleases, except that one. Certainly people have abused science. They have at times favored eugenics, and such bogus sciences as saying you can spot a “criminal type” by such features as a criminal brow, or narrow, beady eyes. We were just discussing these things in Dr. Levy’s class. Some say that men should be dealt with and judged based on various DNA traits predisposing them to certain undesirable traits from schizophrenia to homosexuality. But because science has been abused in the passed this is by no means any indication one should “jump to the other side”. This is what the tea party did. After three months they told us all “If you distrust Obama then trust us and we’ll get rid of Obama for you and all your trials and problems will be solved”. It’s too true the adage that goes “The best defense is a good offence”. Religion can’t control their own demons, (one would suspect at times, literally) and so they are in no position to pass moral judgement on us scientists. Just because their may have been a few bad apples on our side in the past such as Dr. Hyde or Victor Frankenstein, does not “make their God good” as some kind of a corollary. I tried today to pin Dr. Levy down the distinction between “trends” and traceable cause and effect, otherwise known as a Nexis in Law Enforcement. When people are shown directly the shortcomings of the Christian God, the Christians will say “Well- - our God is Bigger and Better than anything else in the Universe so this trumps all other arguments”. But if you take their claim away, which would not be admissible in court because there is no evidence to support it, then their god looks just like another man-demon crazing adulation and attention and undeserved devotion. Clearly there is example after example in scripture of- - if God were judged by the same common sense standards you would use to judge a stranger on the street, God would fail miserably. I think of that Star Trek episode (yes, another Star Trek example) of this demon alien with all these power he got from electronic gadgets, and he lured Captain Kirk into his palace where he was all decked out in eighteenth century French attire in some rococo fashioned setting. But clearly the guy had made a number of mistakes and these became increasingly frequent and apparent. Finally captain Kirk says to him “You know - - you need to learn a lot of things- - - about a lot of things”. We value the military highly now. How do you think Jesus Christ would fare on a psyche test on whether he is “mentally and emotionally suitable for the Israeli army”? How would Jesus score on a patriotism test between 1 and 100? I can’t resist closing with a Matthew 25 parody. “In the last day the Jews will arise and accuse this Messiah saying - - we only wanted to run a business but Germans through bricks through our window. When we sought justice in the courts we were told that we had no property rights. And when the trains to Daccau were rolling on their way, you did nothing to intervene and stop the inevitable from happening”. We will get on Coach Mc Queery’s case for not taking action when he was fully able to, but we will give God a pass on even bigger issues with even bigger things at stake.

I guess Alicen Sweeney wins the Newt Gingrich hypocrite of the day award. Sometimes you wish people would just “come out and Say it” - - you know they are thinking it. If you put sodium pentathol in Evangelists’ water glass what sort of things would come out of their mouth when they got on stage? Remember when Sammy said she had “some doubts” about John’s innocence- - like maybe he was someone elses’ pawn or something or mentally incompassitated. Now she is coming flat out saying she resents Marlena and John’s decades long relationship and she never liked John and never will and wishes he’d just go away, and if Marlena hangs around with John then she’s no good either. We all remember how she kidnapped her own baby sister when she was a teenager and how she tried to alter the paternity tests because she was outraged as the “sexual infidelity” of John and Marlena- - who after all had only known each other eight years. All this from a teenage girl who was herself to become pregnant within a year & a half and didn’t even know for a long time who the father of her baby was. This is classic Gingrich. She thinks she is such a paragon of virtue but loves to thrown stones at others.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

The Love Of Money is a Major Root of Evil

This is Friday afternoon after three on Veteran’s Day 2011. KABC was coming in a little spotty so I adjusted the antenna watching Dr. Oz. Some new facts have come to light on this whole Penn State fiasco. Coach Joe Paterno knew about Sandusky’s activities in the shower with ten year old boys as far back as 1998 and he hired on Sandusky for another term. Randy Rhodes pointed out how helpless that boy must have felt with his hands up against the wall being sodomized by this pervert and this other guy, Mc Queery was just watching and didn’t intervene. I guess it’s true that the love of money is the root of a lot of evil. In the Herman Cain's case Cain's attorney has virtually threatened other women that if they have been wronged they better not come forward. Of course the depravity of the republicans is that they all circled the wagons to protect Cain from media fire. And of course you know that when that gay Serviceman was being booed that none of the candidates intervened to say that such displays were inappropriate tword any member of the Armed Forces. And you will remember that all of the candidates raised their hands, including Huntsman, when asked if they were offered a ten to one deficit reduction deal would they accept it and all of them agreed they wouldn’t. That would be ten dollars in cuts for every one dollar in revenue. Randy takes exception to the mob of students rioting in Pennsylvania in defense of their coach, and concluded that the love of money and prestiege can blind anybody to anything. Of course the church has exhibited a lot of moral blindness in defense of the conquistadors and others who abused and committed genocide against the aboriginal population of the Americas. We used to think the only thing we needed to worry about were aspiring young actresses who will get the part and all the perks that go with it if they will “be nice to the producer”. Gene Scott, whose third wife is the pornographic priestess, made such a thing out of the love of money he wanted to make sure nobody else in his congregation had any but him. And then he goes, “It isn’t me; it’s God who wants your money”. President Obama is still cowed by money interests. When is he going to get the stones to fire Larry Summers and Timothy Geitner and get some honest economists in those posts?

Tonight the Republicans held their foreign policy debate on CBS prime time. Let’s start where the candidates made good points. On Iran President Obama made a big mistake not giving more moral support and perhaps more, to the rebels against the Iranian government in June of 2009. The President should have instituted trade sanctions against Iran long before they were imposed. Also the US should covertly work with Israel to knock out Iran’s nuclear capability. After doing this we should attempt to overthrow the entire government and replace it with one friendly to the US. Then we can go after Assad of Syria. Even Gingrich sees the necessity of that. If you can break up the Assad - Akmadinajab axis you've weakened the whole area and the threat to the interests of freedom everywhere will be far lessened. After this with Iran as an ally together we can go after Pakistan and deal with their nukes. In terms of Afghanistan I would let the troop withdrawls proceed quietly. Clearly none of the hostilities there have worked in Afghanistan. The Soviets found out thirty years ago that the last place you want to wage a major was is in Afghanistan, and with the fact that as Cain and others say, we don’t know if Pakistan is friend or foe, we should not count on or expect anything from them. I would cut off all foreign aid to Pakistan and any other nation whom we perceived to be blackmailing us with a passive aggressive policy. Personally I think the whole relation between Pakistan and President Bush needs to be investigated. Iran wanted initially to help us find Bin Laden and Bush turned them down, all the while insuring that Pakistan would provide a safe refuge for the enemy to flee. I agree that in determining foreign aid for any nation we should start at a base point of zero. In terms of the China trade situation, Mitt Romney gets an A for his answer and John Huntsman gets an F. We should indeed take China before the W T O for currency manipulation and we need to crack down against all manner of cyber wars. This could be the dominant security concern for any future US President. We should not let them steal either or technology or software or scientific brain power. In terms of Guantanamo Bay we should keep it open and engage in any manner of “enhanced interrogation” short of physical torture. But where I draw the line is in the planned assasenation of US citizens. Newt Gingrich is flat out wrong. The Constitution plainly states that all US citizens are entitled to the Courts, even those accused of treason. It was pointed out that George Bush successfully prosecuted and convicted over 300 terrorists. Michelle Obama wants to eliminate the Great Society including food stamps. I think the federal government is trying to micro manage education in this country and personally I don’t know why the department of education was ever created. There are other areas of government we could turn back to the states, when they get back on their feet. Also if we repeal Obama care we will save nearly one trillion dollars per year and that will help out a lot. Since we live on the West Coast we got to see the entire ninety minutes of the debate on CBS.

Friday in this facility we celebrated Veteran's day over the noon hour. The soup we had for lunch was rich and brothy- it was cabbage soup and I found it to be of a lot of help. We had giant chicken legs with BBQ sauce on them, and flavored rice and cake for desert. Sarah got emotional while reading a Veteran’s day poem. Vince said some words. All the veterans came forward. Is Richard Powers a veteran or not? The weather cleared up remarkably after lunch being clear, blue skies. My health also improved. Of course I consider myself a veteran of the Jesus Freak era going through my own “Spiritual Viet Nam”. I guess I’m not as sure as Sarah whether all our freedoms are any better now than they were twelve years ago when Bill Clinton occupied the White House and we didn’t have these wars. Elvis Di Mira how openly admits he engineered John Black’s downfall. But someone came by and shot up the Brady pub with a semi-automatic breaking a lot of glass. Johnny was kidnapped, or else had just run away for fear. That hasn’t been established yet. Samantha still acts cool tword John, like she wouldn’t mind a bit if he dropped off the face of the earth. Randy Rhodes doesn’t like the way our veterans are treated after they return from the war- - shades of the “John Brown” song by Dylan. By the way somebody stuck in “Masters of War” into the bumper rotation. Mal Evans in a Federation publication issued a scathing indictment of United States militarism in a lengthly article today. There was particular notice of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who died at our hands in the Iraq war and also all the innocent people our drones have killed. Also it should be noted that all the men who fought in both wars, valliently, for sure, also did so volentarily. None of them were under any compulsary requirements to do so. There comes a point when a person needs to ask himself what the possible consequences of his actions might be. And that brings us to Senator De Mint, who refused to vote for a bill that would give tax advantages to corporations hiring veterans. The trouble with the extreme right wing is that they are so against People that they will vote against literally anything that doesn’t benefit their money interests. We love the serviceman as a symbol of our vicarious power more than we do that serviceman as a person. Unquestionably these are conservatives without a heart. There seems to be a wholesale lack of any morally redeeming sentaments among the tea party culture. For all of them it's just dollars an cents. To them Qadafi was more valuable in rather than out of power, if he gave the United States better oil contracts. Many worry about Sheria law being established in many nations in the wake of "Arab spring". Technically, I wonder if that's our call to make. If President Bush really meant it when he said the United States was not at war with Islam, now is the time to prove it by not minding if "The Lord is not glorified by the establishment of new Christian governments" as those on the right would fancy.

Penn State lost to Nebraska in their final home game on Saturday. Apparently there was no major violence or it would have made it on the news. There is a passage in the Bible that says "every secret thing will be revealed in the last day". I highly doubt Calvary Christians would take kindly to this scripture coming to fulfillment because they have so darned many secrets. If you are known by the friends you keep, as many claim is Biblical, then if Gingrich feels comfortable at Calvary Chapel and they feel comfortable hosting him, then one can infer that their birds of a feather and that one feels comfortable with the morals of the other. These Christians see worship of God differently from how I see it. I was always taught to worship God as "the other" and something that possesed a lot of attributes we could only aspire to and who wasn't for sale at any price. Chuck Smith teaches that "every man is in a process of becoming like his God". I'm less worried about that than that THEIR God is in a process of becoming like them. These people love to impute human emotions to God. So they talk about God flying into a rage and wanting to wipe everybody out, or else that God is so darned "fed up" with those peoples he did medicals for in the past he swore he would never do a miracle for anybody again. Of course these people justify personal selfishness by citing the Tenth Commandment. Clearly the sort of people Calvary Chapel attracted forty years ago would not touch that church with a ten foot pole today. The whole young people campaign was just that. It was a promotion to gain publicity for the church, and Chuck Smith is one of the most amazing marketers or "pitch men" of all time. But I wouldn't make Chuck President any more than I'd make Newt president, and most likely less inclined, if that's possible. All of the scripture on individual moral conviction, and compassion, and ministering peace to others, and forbearance have pretty much been stripped out of the Bible used by Neil Savedra and all of his neo-orthodox friends. Terms such as "good people" and "integrety" and "fairness and equity" and "basically a decent person" are used much more seldomly in Christian sermons than an outsider would think. Dennis Prager made the observations that words like Love and Hate are most relivent when one contemplates the objects of this Love and Hate. And I might also add "Trust" to that list. Think about it.

I've had marathon flue symptums for a long time. This is one of the worst bouts with the flue I've had in a long time. Dinner Friday evening was not satisfactory. We had to wait forever to be served and it wasn’t BLT as rumored but rather one thin slice of bologna, and potato chips. Loretta gave me her chips. We had an apple for desert, which was my last choice because my stomach felt touchy and apples would only make it worse. I don't think I'm getting enough salt. I should consciously use more. I don't think I'm getting enough calcium either, or for that matter sugar or protien or fats & oils. So much of our food has a "bleah" consistency and is not appitizing. I'm hoping to give Dr. Saran a piece of my mind if I see him on Tuesday.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

The Crowd from Hell Calls Tune In Rep Debate

Like I say last night’s debate was enough to make one ill if one weren’t already ill. Today the crowd from hell demonstrated their hostility by interrupting a CNBC reporter asking about integrity and honor being consistent with sexual pecadillos. Before the words were out of his mouth there was a loud chorus of boo’s. And just for the record they were booing the person and not the issue. Later Cain lashed out at his accusers and got a loud round of applause. Mitt Romney bent over backward to accommodate the tea party- - or in keeping with the Rush Limbaugh spirit- - Mit Romney bent over Forward to accommodate the tea baggers. Everything out of Romney’s mouth was hard right and unlike the clashes of previous debates, this one was a mutual ass kissing fest. Among the lucidris statements that were made was that the real estate crisis was caused by “too much meddling in the markets”. And there was more of the “get the pain all over with at once” talk. So if you have a patient in an oxygen tent with pneumonia just tell him to take a few walks around the block on a snowy day and don’t worry, “It’ll all be over soon”. Yeah, the patient will be dead. Again the take over of General Motors was criticized. If Randy Rhodes is right Romney started out pro intervention, then anti, then pro, and now he’s anti intervention again. There was talk about eliminating Dodd Frank. I couldn’t watch the thing after a while and dialed away a little after six. Rick Perry wants to eliminate three cabinet departments. These are education, and Commerce, and he couldn’t remember the third one but Romney suggested the E P A. It turns out the third department was energy. They say that Gingrich is rising in the polls. Of course the most laughable thing they want to do is to raise interest rates. They claim they are doing it for the retired people. There are more immediate concerns of retired people such as rigging the inflation index so it doesn’t count the things old people actually buy. Just to remind you- - inflation is a tax. I’m surprised how in love these people suddenly are with high interest rates. Of course if that old person earned seven percent and inflation was five percent, the person would net a two percent annual prophet but guess what? He’d be taxed on the entire seven percent. Also high interest rates make paying back the deficits a lot harder. Under Reagan interest rates had to be- what? – eleven or twelve percent? Or was it higher? The remarks about Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae were absurd, and courtesy Randy Rhodes, I explained this to you in one posting. Call her program. They will attack that Penn State head coach for looking the other way- - and yet everybody on stage has some major skeleton in their closet that everybody else on stage is agreeing not to look at. One hand washes the other.

Bear Lusconi or Bertrin Lusconi- - whoever that President of Italy was driven from office, not because of his many sexual scandals but because the Italian economy is tanking, as is the Greek economy. And the head of Greece has also been driven from office. The republicans have pledged not to give Europe one dime for its financial woes. Of course those bankers have mismanaged their money and the people are suffering, but in the case of Europe more obvious “austerity measures” have been taken. Nixon said that getting rid of the Viet Nam war won’t solve the “spiritual hunger” we all face. And ABC news did a thing on brain freeze. It’s caused by stress and anxiety shutting down the frontal cortex and so the information is even harder to access.

There is considerable good political news this Wednesday. In that all important referendum election in Ohio on that anti Union law, the Union people won and the law will not be enacted. The tea party over-reached. I was not at all confident on this one and am happy to see that I was wrong. In Mississippi the voters decided that a fetus or a zygote is not a person with rights. Randy Rhodes was wondering whether health officials would visit her while she was drunk having sex and question her as to the name of her newly conceived egg. And then you have the problem as to how to get the egg’s footprints on the birth certificate. Of course with British Royalty you aren’t a citizen until you are born, otherwise that newly conceived embryo in Kate would be under the jurisdiction of the old laws on gender and royalty. In Kentucky they elected a democratic governor as well as many other democrats state officials, apparently. And in Maine they decided to continue to allow same day voter registration like they’ve always had in Maine. The question remains why a state dominated by republicans would want to change their voter registration laws anyhow. Apparently there is also good news for democrats in Iowa. And in New Jersey it seems that the state legislature only stayed democratic, but is now even more democratic than it had been before.

The Republicans will be holding a debate tonight for the first time in a number of weeks and a lot has happened. One wonders how these woman republicans can possibly defend Herman Cain. Now in one breath Cain is saying that at no time in his life has he ever behaved inappropriately tword a woman. I can’t even say that. On the other hand he and the Christian right now have this new meme of “Well, no single woman should ever have dinner alone with a married man and be asking for a job”. Of course Rush Limbaugh made fun of woman number four’s name yesterday pronouncing it “Buy-a-lick”. Only he would think that way. And now there is a fifth woman who apparently Cain made inappropriate remarks to at a tea party convention. I guess some say that sexual harassment sightings are like cockroaches- - there are ten that you don’t see for every one you see. Randy says that Republicans know they can’t win next year anyhow so people like Jeb Bush and Chris Christie or Mario Rubio are not even running So what you are seeing this year is like the football teams you see on Wild Card weekend, where the four best teams are sitting it out. Now we are on page six. CNBC was the one debate outlet I’ve had a little problem locating before, because it is not the usual site address..

. Joe Paterno of Penn State has been summarily fired. Apparently resignation at the end of the season isn’t good enough for the school. It would have been good enough for me. But now they are saying point blank that Paterno knew that Sandusky had a problem with the little boys and he did nothing. Actually he was told by a third party of a show incident involving the rape of a ten year old boy. Paterno reported the incident but did not call the cops. Of course the students and team have been conducting noisy demonstrations in favor of coach Paterno, and I can’t blame them. Football is an important. Joe Paterno is only asking to be retained for the final four Football games and already had agreed to resign after that. But I would have you contrast how Penn State handled this incident as opposed to how the Catholic Church handels similar incidents where there is a quiet transfer and the offending Priest is free to molest elsewhere. I’m not happy about U S C’s football team suffering sanctions that seemingly are without end. I hope the sexual incident doesn’t reflect ill on Penn State.

Sunday, November 06, 2011

Dr Conrad Murray Found Guilty by Twelve

I think the Tea Party knows their Sol Allinsky a lot better than the Democrats do. Tom Hartman is making a fundamental flaw in his whole mindset on protestor psychology. He says the purpose of the protests are to “provoke the state into removing the velvet glove”. Maybe this is a bi-product. But for instance I don’t need to protest Christians to realize how ugly some of them can be. That accomplishes me absolutely nothing. The whole idea of protests are to put pressure pm the establishment and make them secretly afraid such that it will affect their subsequent decisions. Frankly, protests are to enable You being the one who is making all of the real choices for once. Some say violence is always wrong. I don’t know. If you were desperate enough you might want someone dead and not much care what the consequences were. The trouble with Ghandi is that his people "opporate outside their basic zone of comfort" and Rules for Radicals says, "no, you make the government go outside THEIR zone of comfort. And frankly - acts of violence by the government don't make anyone on the right uncomfortable these days. To them it's blood sport. The way I see it we shouldn't be "doing it to ourselves" The way I see it, we should make it so we hold the whip, we have the cattle prod. In other words, - - it isn’t their job to punish us but for us to punish them. (Selah)

Dr. Conrad Murray was found guilty of involuntary man-slaughter today in court around one. The proceedings were a little late in starting. They polled each of the individual jury members. This means Dr. Murray has been convicted, but not necessarily jail time. He could be sentenced to “house confinement”. They say the maximum for this crime is only four years to begin with and that will be cut down by California’s 50% Off policy to two years. So now that is the BEST that can be hoped for. Of course in the old days if you robbed a liquor store and were out of there in five minutes and nobody got hurt it would be five to ten years. But we don’t work that way any more. The Judge then said that the jurors were now free to speak about this case but added “and if someone from the defense wants to talk to you, you have the right to set up reasonable hours”. Of course you have the right not to say anything about this case. Also if you are a jury member you have to wait ninety deals before making any book deals, or in any other way profiting monetarily. We still have no idea whether Dr. Murray will lose his license, so the battle for the Jackson family has not been won yet. But at least after two years of anguish the Jackson family can now have some semblance of closure.

In late developing congressional news, there is now a mass boycott developing among republican congress of their written pledge to Grover Norquist. As one man put it, “I signed that thing way back in 1998 and didn’t think I was signing a marriage contract”. Randy Rhodes is tooting her horn over being right in this saying that President Obama isn’t as dumb as he looks. (my phrasing) The thing is that these republicans on the Gang of Twelve committee don’t want their precious defense spending cut. So now they have to engage in the disgusting alternative of raising revenue, one way or another. My guess they are going to try and come after the poor first, if possible. I guess congress still needs to officially act on legislation quickly now so that the government does not have another shut-down, which wouldn’t be the most unpleasant thing for these people.

Herman Cain is such a crock. He flips and flops all over the place on negotiations with terrorists. And he says “Did you know that Red China is working on an atomic bomb now?” Yeah, only since October 1964. Apparently this man comes within a point or two of beating President Obama in a head to head contest. Unbelievable! He says “I am the Koch Brother’s brother from another mother”. Do you know what Malcolm X would respond to that? He’d say, “So you are admitting you have bastard parentage”. He talks about “journalistic ethics” when reporters pursue their questioning. But now we have not only a third but a fourth woman coming forward. This fourth woman wants us to know that she wants to “give a face” to all those prior women who dare not, for whatever reasons, to come forward. Apparently Cain was driving woman number four home from a meeting. She was wearing a black dress and a blouse. But then Cain pulled over and said “I want to show you my office”. But instead of going into the lit office area he instead puts the sexual moves on the woman, opening his shirt and pushing her head tword his genitals. At the same time he reached up her thy and fondled her genitals.

Senator Jack Abramoff was being interviewed on Sixty Minutes last night. When I first heard of him Rush Limbaugh was excoriating him and I naturally assumed he was a democrat. Well it turns out he’s ready to reveal the “inside secrets” and in the spirit of Gordon Gecko, I think he’s just a little surprised that all the things that were shocking and illegal when he went to jail are standard opporating procedure now in the Republican party. Abramoff says that most regulations are pointless because of the legalistic and slippery way in which they are written. I don’t know but perhaps now Rush Limbaugh regards him as a “traitor” now for “joining the other side”. One is tempted to use the tag line “You don’t feel bad about what you did; you just feel bad because you got caught”. Unfortunately this saying had a double meaning for it could mean “You knew you were just being one of the good old boys before but now you’re getting spooked because you’ve seen the force of the law”. We then have the “Proper Exit” program where troops who were taken out of Iraq on a stretcher, badly wounded, now have the need to go back to the scene of the crime, and re-experience it so they can reconcile it in their minds and put all the pieces together. Some of them are concerned whether democracy has taken root or whether all of those roads and schools his comrades were working on were ever build. Don’t talk to Rush about the military doing good things like ministering to school children. He doesn’t want to hear it.

Andy Rooney died at his home last Saturday morning at age 92 just one month after doing his final Sixty Minutes commentary. Andy’s parents earned $18,000 during the depths of the great depression when the average family was earning two thousand a year or something. He served as a journalist during WW II and was “allowed to get as close to the combat as he dared” and Rooney pushed the line. He met Walter Cronkite and they remained good friends to the day of Cronkite’s death. He wrote jokes for Arthur Godfrey and didn’t mind other people doing his lines then. He also wrote for Harry Reasoner and they were friends for a long time. Harry liked to hit the bottle. He said that Reasoner was basically a lazy person and basically he could his own material that would be as good or better than anything Andy could do. Rooney still doesn’t sign autographs saying “anybody stupid enough to write me a letter, doesn’t deserve a response”. He also said that “people who write letters aren’t my kind of people”. I wonder if Jesus Christ has the same philosophy. One thing I’ve been puzzled by is that though Andy says he is a pack rat, he seems to regard it all as “junk”. So then why does he keep it? By the way as an aside I portray Mal Evans as a bit of a pack rat not based on anything he said but rather on a few deductive inferences. I was influenced partially by Andy to put that bit in the story, and it’s also that Pete Richards is a neat freak, and this just another of the many things that happened with Pete that kind of ticked him off.

Sunday morning on the Jesus Christ show "Jesus" said that certain things are valuable because they are rare. At times I question whether my definition of what's rare and precious as the same as Jesus's. I doubt I hold words in some ancient book as precious as other things that are more pervasive in their reality and presence. For instance giving someone an undying declaration of faith and trust in them is a rare thing, and it shouldn't be held cheaply by the one being offered it. And I went on to say that if God values our Faith so highly that God himself must have some sort of identity problem. Gene Scott says the highest thing he would want for his son if for his son to believe in him. I say that a son's belief in his father should be a given. The only tension there should be is how much does the father believe in the son. That's what the son wants to know. In the above example then, I am playing the "parent" and God is playing the "child". God KNOWS that I have good character. I can only pray that I would know as well of his character. The way I see it God's track record in matters lacks both moral equity and in general suffers from a void of any real "evidence" at all. I'd also like to make a point not made yesterday. The tea party preaches monetary selfishness. Among the Calvary Christians, selfishness on emotional levels and ego centrism is there for all to see. But I never had any complaints about how they dealt with money problem. Of course prior to mid 2006 I never ad any money problems. I found out. In keeping with Matthew 25 just because a person doesn't have a problem now, doesn't mean he won't ever have that problem. I had an option of eating ice cream last night. It was entirely my choice. Seid came to the door last night as I was making coffee asking me if I wanted to come down stairs. I told his I didn’t feel well but he could pray for me. Just now I had one of the worse coughing spasms of the entire week. I went to the store around ten to nine this morning for a final pack of John Blacks and to check out cough medicine prices with money I didn’t have, yet. It seemed like $6.99 for a small bottle. Maybe it’s too much to hope that Dr. Levy would give me money. A after some T H, I went down to the courtyard to see if they had coffee but I was way late. It was pushing 10:30.


AMERICAN EXPRESSIONS

Air tight

All his ducks in a row

Ante up

Are you packing?

Benedict Arnald

Bloom is off the rose

Carbon footprint

Chill out

Code blue

D O A

Do you copy?

Drink the Kool-Aid

Eleventh hour

Exit strategy

Feed the kitty

Flush (construction0

Gen-X’er

Hang-ups (business sense)

Irregularities

It all boils down to- -

John Hancock

M O

Nixed

Non compus mentus

On the hook, off the hook

On the rocks (another meaning)

On the rocks (one meaning)

One your game, off your game

Opus magnum

Paperatzi

Red flags, no red flags

Rubber checks

Squat diddley

Stalling out (flying)

Strings, no strings

That won’t fly

The balance of- -

Tween

Underwater (mortgage)

Victory lap

What’s the bottom line?

Saturday, November 05, 2011

Verbal Proficiency Text For Real Americans

Alright foreigners, you can become American citizens if you score eighty percent on this simple vocabulary test of common American expressions.

We'll grade this on the very latest HAL S-360 Computer

A day late and a dollar short

Ace in the hole

Adding-up (or "not adding up")

Alpha dog

Analog

Aping (something or someone)

Back door man

Balk

Breech

Brush (with - )

Catch you on the flip side

Chain reaction

Chomping at the bit

Close shave

Close the deal

Close to the vest

Comb through - -

Come-to-Jesus moment

Coming to a head

Cracking the glass ceiling

Creative accounting

Credulity

Critical mass

Curve Ball

Cut to the chase

Cut to the quick

Decipher

Desegregate

Detente

Disintermediate

Dire straits

Dive

Do I have to spell it out?

Don’t get radical

Ears perking up

Ecology

Every dog has his day

Expecting fall-out

Expedite

Explicit

Facilitate

Feather-bedding

Feeling blue

Filibuster

Finalize

Flag-waver

Flake-out

Flash points

Flying the coup

Folded (as in "He or they folded")

Four-flusher

Gaping

Generic

Give the green flag

Gratuity

Green as grass

greenback

Half-assed

Half-baked

Hand in the till

Hard-wired

He’s an open book

Hitting below the belt

Hyperbola, hyperbolic (non generic0

Ice queen

Incendiary

Incentivize

Incredulous

Infinitessable

Infra-structure

It doesn’t pass the smell test

Kosher, not kosher

Landing on your feet

Lay your cards on the table

Leg-up

Let the deal go down

Liberal (generic definition0

Like a dog without a bone

Lion’s share

Lip service

Log jam

Long in the tooth

Long shot

Love nest

Man up

Medical care rationing

Monkey wrench (colloquial)

Muddying the waters

Negatori

Nosed out

Not cool

Not fit for mixed company

O C D

Off the record

On the level

On the quiet

Oreo

Organ donor (colloquial)

Out of left field

Out of sight

Over-kill

Own the thing

Panning out, and not panning out

Paper trail

Pardon my French

Pay dirt

Percentage, no percentage

Peppery

Pie-hole

Pink noise

Playing the race card

Plugging leaks

Political correctness

Pony-up

Pro-rated

Pull in your claws

Pulling out (in a colloquial sense)

Pull up stakes

Putting in your two cents worth

Purring like a kitten

Putting a thing or person down

Ranked, ranked-out

Ratting-out

Recidivism

Reckoning

Reverberations

Right off the bat

Right on, right on the money

Rip-off

Room temperature IQ

Running the table

Road block

Saccrine (non generic)

Sand in your sugar

See the hand writing on the wall

Serpentine

Short circuit

Sifting information

Singing like a canary

Six feet under

Sketchy

Smokey bear

Smelling blood

Speaking out of turn

Stepping over the line

Stone-wall

Striking-out (most common)

Swimming with the fishes

Take with a grain of salt

Ten – four

That doesn’t fit

That’s a little too blue

The game is in the refrigerator

The thin blue line

That doesn't relate

Throwing strikes

Thumbs down

Thumbs up

Too many strikes against him

Transitioning

Trump

Two-bit

Ultravires

Under-dog

Watering hole

Wearing your heart on your sleeve

Wet behind the ears

Whistle-blower

Wrap this up

Yes-men

Friday, August 12, 2011

"- - Actually there Were a few Irregularities- - "

I would now like to do an extended narrative of my first few months as a born again Christian. The story also continues in Part Two in "Karmic Suicide" because it was just too long. Actually I have tried to keep the narrative at a fast pace. Some may wonder how I remember so many details after 35 years, but it’s because I’ve been jotting down notes as I remember things. Actually, I’ve taken on Clifford Irving as a co writer- - so what are you going to do? You remember on Anthology 3 where John was recording “Julia” and Paul was in the booth, and John stops playing and says “Can we take it up right there?” and Paul says, “Actually there were a number of irregularities before that” and a somewhat tipsy John says “What do you mean? It was perfect up to that point”. Well actually, it wasn’t.

On February 18th of 1976 I was listening to Walter Martin on the radio talking about how you get saved, and I decided right then “Yeah, I can believe that. I guess I am a Christian”. It was in late February that Pete Richards moved out of the apartment where he and his wife had lived. His wife had filed for divorce. Margie seemed like the considerate, caring person who would never do something like that. The previous time I had seen Margie is when they were showing us a house they were thinking of buying in southwest Anaheim around September 25th of 1975. That didn’t happen. Instead we are to believe “Guess what honey- - I just met someone and we’re going to get married as soon as the divorce is final”. Pete and I still didn’t talk. There had been a wall between us since about late May of 1973. Most all of Pete’s remarks were addressed to my parents when he would come over. In early March I began reading that EST book, that suggested that the way to get out of your personal rut was to do something off the wall and unpredictable. It was a few days later I went to the Wherehouse and bought what would be my last records as an “unsaved” person. None of the three albums were particularly adventuresome. They were three albums I’d been thinking of buying for a long time. They were “Highway 61”, “Muscle of Love” and “December’s Children”.

I was attending Golden West college on that sound engeneering program and I was getting fed up and bored with the class because the mixing board we were to use for the “studio” still hadn’t arrived yet and the year was two-thirds over with. I began skipping classes, and Mom would catch me doing this on one of her frequent days off from her work. I didn’t have a car at this time. I think I sold it to get more money in case I moved out- which I wasn’t particularly planning on doing anytime soon anyhow, and besides, money was absolutely no problem at this time. On St. Patrick’s Day starting this year of 1976 I would wear the same bright green long sleeved plaid shirt. About this time I recorded what would be my last reel to reel tape that concluded on March 19th and it would be the last recording of any sort I did till January first of 1986.

On March 20th after nearly a month of living with Dick and Robin, the family was finally invited over to see Pete and how nicely he fit into his new environments. So we met the dog, Toby, and he showed us the crops on the “back forty” he and Dick had planted a few weeks earlier. And everybody met the baby and commented on his blue eyes. Except for me- - who was in some other part of the room or something. It was that Wednesday at school, Golden West, that I heard a roomer that some foxy blonde girl whom I had met two days before, had just died in a car crash. It was that Wednesday Pete Richards was over and parents had gone for the evening and Pete offered to stay and help me do the dishes. It was this evening of March 24th that I “gave my heart to Jesus” and officially became Born Again. In my writings the next few days, from reading them years later the tone was negative. I wasn’t optimistic. I wrote “My life as I know it is over”. I thought by accepting Jesus that I had “stepped across some line” but I couldn’t tell you what. Dad was on a negative rant about me during this time- -and nothing he said to or about me was positive. Dad had begun seeing a therapist who put him on Prozac. The drug seem to heighten the apathy that was already there.

It was March 30th 1976, a date established in my actual writings, that Pete Richards announced that Dick and Robin were thinking of moving out of their house sometime, because “when the baby gets older, running out into traffic will be a problem”. Of course the dog is several months older than the baby and Toby never had a problem with running out into traffic. But then again, maybe humans are not as developed as animals. It was that weekend on a rainy day that Pete was over talking to my parents on one of his increasingly frequent visits over. Oddly Pete still had never, not once, invited me to a Bible study at his house, which had been held most every Monday night since last August. Pete was saying that parents weren’t properly disciplining the baby and he would keep saying “Whack his but- - - just whack his butt”. It was the very next Monday, April 5th that Pete announced that Dick and Robin had just moved out and moved into an apartment. I was bewildered by this news. Apparently they couldn’t take Toby with them, and they had left a number of garden tools and some furniture in the garage. Were they planning on coming back? It was three days later on Thursday evening of April 8th that the subject was first broached of my moving in with him into the Palm St. house. I expressed numerous reservations about making the move. But I was facing a wall of three on one, if not four on one if you count brother Al, on this subject. They acted as if I were idiotic for even thinking of not doing it. The question arose of just when I might move- and suddenly the crystal ball becomes very fuzzy. There was also a female house guest who was still living there- - with Pete alone. That night I had a nightmare I won’t go into here. The next early morning dawned bright and very sunny.

On April 13th 1976 it was some election day so I voted at Savanna HS, which was not our usual location. After this I went to the Palm St house to help move Pete’s furniture into the livingroom. Dick and Robin were over and they had the baby with them. This is the first time I actually made eye contact with the baby there in the female “house guest’s” room. I got the funny feeling the baby seemed to know me. More time passed and there was no news on moving. Still Pete had not one time invited me to a Bible study, or any other activity for that matter. It was Saturday night the day before Easter and we were coming home from my Aunt and Uncle’s in Upland. And brother Al launched into an obscenety laced tyrade against Margie, Pete’s wife. I still could not understand why we never saw Margie. Only hearing one side of a story smacks a little too much of Gene Scott and when he would talk about his wife, but never by name. It was a week later Saturday the 24th of April I guess, which was the very last time I attended a Movie with my parents. We went to see “All the President’s Men”.

Sunday the first day of DLST then, we made another visit to the Palm Street house. I was beginning to become bored by these visits and I hadn’t even moved in yet. Still there was no definite move-in date. Also Pete still had yet to invite me to any Bible Study. Since I didn’t have a car, crashing the party wasn’t in the picture. I found that I actually preferred taking the bus to Golden West. I was taking that sound engeneering class on Monday and Wednesday and an Electronics class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Mom would drop me off at the Beach BLVD stop on her way to work and the bus would go right there. Coming back I would take two busses, that were efficient. Finally the word came down I’d be moving Friday when Dad had a day off. That Wednesday was the last day I’d ride that bus and the last time I went to the sound engeneering class. By now they did have their 24 track mixing board or whatever. But I still didn’t get to use it. Even if had been allowed to, I would want a lot of time to myself to experiment on the thing. Thursday April 29th was the last time I would visit the Hasket branch library in a long time. I remember that the Jacaranda trees were in full bloom.

Well Contrary to what Charles Laughlin famously said in a movie "You're going to have to hear this one in installments" because the posting was just too long, and the two first posts of the month cut cut off and I can't count on you people to read the side bar links. So go to "Karmic Suicide" there this whole story line continues for several more months.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

What Once Were Vices Are Now Habbits

We have a new toxic intellectual environment now. And sometimes people's nerves get a little frayed when trying to explain the truth. Al Gore got a little rattled when he lamented that it is no longer proper in mixed social situations, to discuss "Global warming". He laments that these people on the right dish out the same bullshit and shout it back at people when they try to explain the truth. Al Gore says "we no longer have a shared reality is to what science is any more, or what the truth actually is, even when it's provable". Not that Mitt Romney is faring any better than Iowa. Some old folks were getting on Romney's case in a rally in Iowa today saying that they want to know what Romney is going to do to strengthen social security and medicare. Romney had to wait a while for the crowd to settle down and then said, "Do you want the answer to that? Here it is. I will not under any circumstances raise taxes. If you disagree with that then go vote for Obama". And I'm sure they will. Rush Limbaugh says Obama is “Debt Man Walking” and he also calls him “Beroca-lips” and “Obama-geddon”. I'm not really sure but "Baroca-lips" sounds a little racist to me. It was Monday’s absurd rant that I heard live. Judy sent me several letters I need to look at. And of course it was the usual irrational rant of an opening monolog. Rush said that "If insanity is doing the same thing over and over again- - President Obama has doubled down on the debt spending and doubled down again- - and none of it has worked". I felt like shouting at Rush "Name one case of where Obama has doubled down on something that didn't work". Of course the only thing the President has really doubled down on is cutting taxes. Yet the right keeps saying "Obama keeps raising taxes". This is a complete lie. In fact the corporations know that taxes won't have a chance of going up till the start of 2013. Obama had a stimulus plan, which consisted in large part cutting taxes. And those measures expired and now the economy is languishing as a direct cause of the stimulus programs ending. As to Rush giving this Charlton Heston speech about "We did it to ourselves" seeing the Statue of Liberty burried in the sand at the end of the Planet of the Apes movie- - well, this was to somehow "show his outrage" at the US credit downgrade. But guess what? During the recent stock market drop, people actually moved their cash INTO treasuries securities, so that yields are dropping further and their value is going UP. That's a little detail that escaped Rush Limbaugh's notice. Rush also seems MORE outrages after the President agreed to cut 2.4 trillion from the budget than he was before the deal existed. Explain that one? Rush falsely states that there will be NO debt reduction. As to this committee of twelve, we know enough already that there are so many whackos on this committee that any verdict will be useless, and is best ignored. A president Marcus would just let the triggers take effect on schedule, and then the defense budget would be cut, which of course people like Rush would hate. And a President Marcus would also allow the Bush tax cuts to expire when they are scheduled to at the beginning of 2013, and at long last the US government will at least be getting SOME revenue. These people are anti terriff because as Judy puts it, "A terriff is still a TAX and tax is a dirty word. From Washington to Lincoln terriffs supplied almost the whole US government expenditures. From Lincoln to Wilson they supplied two thirds of our cash revenues. And from Wilson to World War II they supplied one third of US revenues. So I say, "Wouldn't it be nice to have an additional 33% cash inflow of revenues?" I say yes. Of course the people are uninformed about the historical place of terriffs. This is because of the communacations bill President Clinton signed in 1996 that in essence moved the News divisions of all the major Networks into the Sponge Bob Square Pants Entertainment division of their companies. When Thom Hartman was working for a media outlet it was a violation for news and entertainment people to even talk to each other. You see how far we've come. There was a liberal on a powerful Denver power-house station that was on at night. In the movie "Talk Radio" he was known as Barry Champlain, and he was gunned down by a long nut. And people said "He put so many negative vibes into the air it was only a matter of time before they would come back on him". This bit was put in the movie as a way of placating the conservative right I imagine. But I think it does a disservace to tell progressives "Just watch it, or you'll get gunned down in the parking lot after work".

There was one political candidate on the internet on the right, who had a bunch of things that should never take place in America and one of them was "If I were President - - no new mosques would ever be built in America". You know, sometimes people get their knickers in a twist over religion. I'm guilty of perhaps "going negative" at times. But I had a dream last night that gave me pause about what sort of things I would bring up in this blog. It was Christmas Eve and I had a chip on my shoulder for some reason, and it had to do with religion somehow. And it was eating at me. And then all the relatives showed up and we were getting ready to all go to Christmas Eve services. (This isn't what our family does but this is just a dream) There were relatives in this dream that didn't even exist. And I was saying all these surly things under my breath. And finally one of them says "I don't think [Marcus] wants to go to Church". And I said, "Yes, I'm going". I didn't like myself in this dream. The last thing I personally want to sound like is a carping old crank who says the same thing over and over, with nobody listening. Other people have their reactions. I have mentioned people that reacted negatively to the lyrics of "Imagine". But I haven't told you my reaction. I think it would be nice to not have to worry about religion, and if we could dial back the religious fanatical hysteria a bit, it would be a good thing. It's just a song, for Christ's sake. It was meant to convey a sentament; not as a metaphysical treaties like Dante or something. But soon after the 9 - 11 attacks, Dr. Laura had "Imagine' playing as bumper music and Laura got upset with that and she said that "I want you to erase this card as soon as possible". I mean, we have to keep those hate feelings going just like Victor and Stephano on Days of our Lives. There was a caller on the Thom Hartman show who got hysterical about the idea of raising taxes. Thom Hartman said to the caller, "Name one case where a country ever cut their way to prosperity. Go ahead. I'm waiting. Name one". The man couldn't think of one, but finally he blurted out "1921". He thought of President Harding cutting taxes from 75% to 25% after World War I. Well, that's just it. We were moving from a war to a peace time existance so naturally you don't need the revenues you formerly did. And with that big "peace dividend" naturally the economy is going to be stimulated. But as Hartman points out, "Wars are often a good way to get government subsedized research and development that would have taken years longer any other way". So there were a lot of appliances and radio to the general audience that was made available after 1920. And these people also forget that among the specific tasks of government cited in the Constitution is the power to levy taxes. This is a power they didn't have under the Articles of the Confederation. Also there is the power to regulate interstate commerce. These people on the right say they are in love with the US Constitution but at times showing signs of never having read it.

So what do I mean when I say "What were once vices are now habits?" I could have said "what once was just a lark has now turned into an addiction" just as easily. Here is how patterns get formed. You decide to take a different rout to work or something one day. And you like it so well you decide to do it again the next day. But it could just as easily be buying a new brand of soda pop that you like. Certain behaviors, even vices, start off as a lark, a diversion. But when a diversion is done often enough it becomes a habbit. And if a habbit is repeated often enough, so the experts tell me, it becomes a character trait. It has virtually become an intrinsic part of your nature. I'm not sure whether Rush Limbaugh started off as the man he's become today. Apparently he never voted at all till the late 1980's. One might infer that he was not political before then. Thom Hartman today tells us that it all stems back to brain chemistry. I guess certain glutimines you eat are turned into milen by the brain. And the brain uses milen to protect important brain cells from memory erasure after you learn something really significant, that you'll need later in life. But for some people alcohol or drugs washes away a lot of these brain cells in the de-milenization process by which the milen gets destroyed and the cells are subject to loss. And so the person forgets the things he learned before that time. John Lennon often spoke of having memory gaps of what happened prior to 1970. That's because he was on Heroin. But this whole "mystery" can be extended to a macro basis in the creation of the Universe itself. As I said back in that famous treaties in September of 2004, one cannot properly of "When" the Universe was created or even "Where" the Universe was created because words like When and Where didn't exist back then. There was no time and there was no space. I have, however, caught myself in perhaps a small error in logic. I have often spoken of "back then the dimensions were not established so nobody knew what they even were. They had to be created. They had to be "defined" in a computer programming sense. There was no prior frame of reference. This is often how it is with a human being who takes a challenging new course in school of which he has no background. Some people get prejudices imputed to them by other people that they couldn't possibly have- - because they are so disoriented and "ignorant" that they have no basis even on which to formulate a prejudice. This is how it is with small children. The logic error I made (if I even made it) is in assuming that all of the potential universes HAD to have some comon point in the past from which all of them originated. This is the great common central creation point when everything and everyone were closser together. But clearly there is no law that says there has to be ANY comon point in time or in space when various Universes come to Be. Some may well be coming into existance right now, for all we know. What I and perhaps you are suffering from is this "God creation" engram, or some might call it the "Back Then" engram. In other words some mystical time when what God did really Mattered. Here is another observation to chew on, from a theological definition of the word "Everything is an Accident". When a clergyman tells you he doesn't believe in an "Accidental Universe" he is lying. Because the word "accident' means simply, "anything that has happened". (Selah) We can apply this in our other topic now. So to say that the "past" point in one Universe HAS TO be the same as the "past" point in another Universe is kind of silly when you think about it. I guess there'd be no way of even testing such a proposition.

There is one more thing that "dawned on me" just this morning. I'm a little surprised none of you readers ever called me out on it before. I said that Einsteins view of a universally expanding Universe could not be correct because expanding involves vector lines and the laws of geometry dictate that the lines HAVE to be eminating from some comon point Somewhere. I was mistaken. Have you ever seen a loaf of bread rise? Well, it rises Everywhere it's allowed to, right? There is a universal expansion of all the air pockets. There are not more air pockets in some of the bread than other places. What I not so convieniently forgot was that I was assuming a universal Stationary point- - in the volume. But if you picked a moving point, as Einstein says, than ANY point could be THEE "stationary point" and all the geometry would accordingly adjust to fit that new perameter. Think about it. Understand this idea MAY explain what was going on in Einstein's mind when he came up with the idea that everybody else was MOVING and "You" wherever "You" were at the moment, were stationery. And as such there was nowhere else that was as far removed from the speed of light that you were- - because they at least they were "moving". But here is one time when the addage "trust motion" won't work. Because THEY all see themselves as stationary, too. But what is strange in this is hypothetically it is possible for someone to be ONE mile per hour SHORT of the speed of light, and still it's impossible to reach, and EVERY other measurement even of mass and Energy gets skewed to adjust to the fact that- - - you don't know it but you're starting from scratch, just like everybody else is. In Einstein's mind- - it's Impossible for anybody to move Slower than you do, and everybody else views reality the same way. There are still gaping flaws in this logic but at least I understand it a little better. Optically you would still see the "Christmas tree ornament" view with the back of the star map virtually flat, optically speaking. It's only what you might call "unnaturally rapid" movement that throws this theory all off and distorts the geometry, as I have illustrated with elipses, hyperbolas, and such. But someone may say of this whole business "Show us Time and then we will believe". Well- - I could point to the obvious doppler effect they've known about since the 1800's for receeding stars. This is due to "red shift retardation of the wave forms". So does THAT qualify as Time for you. You seem to indicate Not. OK think about this one. Here's something you can't prove or even allow with Euclidian geometry. Start traveling in a straight line in any direction anywhere in the Universe and eventually wind up back at your starting point. If they could prove this one, whoever did would be the "Magellon" of Time. For they would show that there is some Other dimension that rules space- - that science hasn't accounted for yet. That dimension is Time.

Just one more thought here. How many of you have ever heard an Evangelist say, "Of course we Christians are all brainwashed, but at least I''m picking the person I want to Wash my brain". I would assume that would be to wash all the milen out of it so you can excersise "the ultimate forgiveness" and that is the forgiveness of yourself. This is something my Dad seems to have mastered well. We have a lot of "Back formation" of words these days. We have things like "Analog signals" and "Desk top computer" and "Land line phones". And one day we may have the Romulan-esque term of "Unclocked Space", as some specialized subset of space to people "know what you're talking about. Here is another back-formation word. Natural Man. There is that line in Jane Eyre that goes "We are not here to conform to nature". Which raises the question of "And what is the real reason Joseph Haydn's voice didn't change till he was eighteen?" OK, I won't go there. They have chemical castration. They also have chemical lobotomies. Dr. Zeus and the other apes are well versed in the uses of certain forms of specialized cutlary. There is a line in an Elvis Costello song that goes - - She says "You'll never know Him", 'cause I'm a natural man". So what is a "natural" man. There's an Adam and Eve zinger that's so good I'm going to save it for a later time. God should really pay me not to use it. But it all comes down to Marcion and his declaration that "Nature" was part of the Jewish Creation god. The Gnostics have the same notion, though not to as paranoid a degree. Many Protestents have the notion that "Nature is evil". You know Rush Limbaugh has it, if not in exactly the same sense. St. Paul has practically come out and said "Angels are evil". And he also said that "The realm of the spirit" was evil. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. So is it any wonder that so many Christians are both anti "Nature' and anti sex? I'll repeat the quote again from Clement of Alexandria, "Not all Truths are True, but only those Truths that bring Glory to God". And of course Rick Perry fancies himself as the embodyment of all truth. You know Jesus Christ once said "He who has seen me has seen the Father". Oh really? Then Adam and Eve rode around on dinasaurs, and Cain got his wife in the land of Nod out of thin air or something. And the angels go "from one end of the earth to the other". So now the world is flat. So, if I can't believe him to know that the earth isn't flat, I guess I won't sweat the heaven and hell thing. And if "What goes into a man does not defile him" than I guess there is nothing in the Torah about eating pork. But Jesus, you also said that "You came to fulfull the last jot and tiddle of the law". How are you going to do that when you just threw out a part of it? But if you believe "He who has seen me has seen the Father" I guess that is going to be your view of God. That is - one of highly limited knowledge.