Getting Used to the new "Normal"

You people noticed I decided to "punt" on that last posting. I figured you could look up David Brock and those other people. I thought Grover Norquist was a person you needed to know the background of and that was the best way to do it. I guess of us have just been sitting and deciding what to "make of all the developments in the past few days". Well, I would have thought that since it was only a trillion that needed to be cut immediately, that perhaps we could cut out MORE than that in unneeded areas such as defense, and reallocate that money into a much needed jobs program. We never hear about reallocating funds to where they are most needed because everybody in congress has their pet projects which can't be touched. Therefore, everyone else suffers. Clearly the latest unemployment figure is a little misleading. I have wondered that since they stopped counting all those people who dropped out of the job seeking market, have they remembered to refigure them BACK IN to the employment pool once they reenter? It's not just a "new normal" that we have to get used to as Americans but we also have to constantly keep adjusting to some new program that is being cut this coming year that was there last year. This is why I say the economy is still in a process of contraction because were it expanding, even a little, this constant governmental pruning back process would not still be ongoing. People can get used to a new normal in their personal lives but this government subsedized job drain overseas cannot go on indefinitely. People didn't like Ross Perot even though everything he said proved to be dead on accurate. I guess I would raise the rhetorical question: Since when was it not OK to be Right?

Pat Buchannon on the Mc Laughlin group was discussing the Syria situation and how many people Assad has killed. And now only 14% of the Syrian people now support Assad because both the protests and deaths have become wide spread. And Pat said "And Assad is going to look and find himself surrounded by his enemies and look at his neighbor Muberek, and realize that the United States will not be a faithful ally with him either". And I'm scratching my head in wondering when in history Assad became allied with the United States? I missed that chapter in the history book. Of course Saddam Hussein was another "loyal ally" of ours. But the Saudi Arabians, Bush's buddies, wanted Hussein gone, and so we did their dirty work. But if Buchannon is done with the crocodile tears for Assad he can look at our defense budget and realize that it won't be doomsday if it's cut. But apparently this gang of twelve, that is- three representatives from the four heads of congress- -will not dare deadlock because cutting defense at all is something they most dread. So like Assad in Syria- - we may find ourselves supporting wars that only fourteen percent of the people want. Even among Republicans in this tea party dominated congress, the figure is probably only 55% but that will be enough to prevent any defense cutback. Apparently the life expectancy in men is even now only 76. This means I only have just over fifteen years to live. My Dad should have died about the turn of the milenium, and my Mom is pushing four years past the deadline. But more importantly if these figures are right it means this idea of women catching up with men in "dying early" is a myth and that men still die a full five years earlier then women, which is 81.

In Wisconsin they will be putting this whole notion of tea party revolution (or whatever) up for a vote on Tuesday, and we'll know a lot. People forget of course that Ronald Reagan was far less extreme in his beliefs than they alledge. For instance Ronald Reagan talked about the "truely needy". Well, we sure have a lot of "truely needy" people in America today. They said that Ronald Reagan was anti labor. But Reagan was President of the screen actors guild. They say he wanted to bust all unions. No, all he did with the air traffic controlers was to state, accurately, that their strike was illegal. I really can't picture Ronald Reagan denying people pensions and benifits that they voted to and agreed on. Ronald Reagan raised taxes dramatically in California after he got elected. Ronald Reagan also spoke of America as a whole and not some special intrest of the elite. Ronald Reagan favored cutting loopholes, not creating them. Ronald Reagan didn't believe in unnecessary wars. Ronald Reagan actually delivered speeches that were positive and inspiring, and not carping and negative like Rush Limbaugh. Ronald Reagan believed that the way to air an issue was to present it to the people, and not make some back room deal to snuff out all dialog or voter scruteny. Of course with today's rules, which are nonexistent, it seems no ammount of concentrated political funding is off limits to any campaign, so that any rich person can flex his political muscle at any place and at any time regardless of whether its a local issue or not. Some say we ought to haul off and go for public campaign financing like they do in other countries. I'm not sure I'm quite "there" yet, but give it time.

I'm sure Rush Limbaugh takes comfort from the five hundred stock market loss on Thursday. After all if it's bad news for the economy it's bad news for the President and therefore Limbaugh loves it. Actually one has to question just how "recessed" this economy is with all these people buying all these new electronic guismos that I can't afford and in many cases wouldn't want. Of course a prudent person would have sold stocks two or three weeks ago just as a prudent move, not even knowing the outcome. Now they say Standard and Poor's made an accounting error of two trillion in figuring US finances for that downgraded AA rating. Of course errors of a couple trillion are nothing to Rush, the way he throws around figures. I told you months ago that we were headed into a deflationary cycle and this would be ongoing as prices of everything, including stocks and gold and energy such as oil fell. Someone said that George W Bush was the ultimate Keynsian economist because he cut taxes. But Hartman states that John Maynard Kaynes never advocated "cutting taxes". What he DID advocate were government jobs programs. He got so extreme he suggested if you hired one man to dig a row of twenty holes and another man behind him to fill them back up, that both men would have money to spend stimulating the economy and in the end REAL jobs would be created because of this. They say a vast majority of Americans prefers government job creation bu these cuts in the budgets. The President keeps saying we're going to do something but he hasn't. Chris Matthews pointed out that government jobs lead to auxiliary jobs where small business can get involved. Those on the far right say that government expenditures "crowd out" private investment and risk taking, though they show NO statistics to support their claims. It would not surprise me one bit if the unemployment rate turned around again and began heading upward. More stimulation will be needed when unemployment coverage for a lot of Americans runs out at the end of the year, and it will soon show up in reduced demand. So I say if you haven't already sold precious metals, then do so now. If you're in Dallas, Texas you may like it that the cost of electricity isn't higher than it already is. Your heart has to go out to those people putting up with temperatures in excess of a hundred degrees for 32 straight days and counting.

Of course according to Bernie Sanders it seems that the poor will be first on the priority list of things to cut as somehow being the "least vital" expenditures. So you can expect almost the entire one trillion to come out of the hides of poor people. Of course we could shave a trillion from the defense budget and we'd still survive. At the very least we could cut five hundred billion there and never miss it, particularly because defense expenditures have TRIPLED since the days of Clinton according to someone, and also because we are supposed to be pulling OUT of new wars, rather than getting into more. They are cutting tours of duty to nine months. Our troops will like that. Bernie Sanders did not vote for the debt deal. I think that vote should be exercised if the outcome FOR settlement is assured without your vote, and pray more people don't reason like you. "My vote won't matter" Clearly if the President would have announced that he wasn't running WHEN I told him to announce it- - this whole problem would be no sweat off his brow. It is said that in the elections of 2010 at least in Florida where the survay was conducted, that the tea party percentage who showed up at the polls to Vote was in the high sixties, whereas with democrats and liberals it was in the low forties. Even Rush Limbaugh has warned of a politician repeatedly snubbing his political case. Of course we have this phenominon now of the "low information voter" that has to be catered to. I think "misinformation" voter is more accurate, and "brainwashed voter" is more accurate still. Political times being what they are- - you can't count EVER on "common sense" taking over, because as the saying goes "A lie has traveled half way around by the time the Truth gets its boots on".

They made a big thing out of it being Lucille Ball's one hundredth birthday today. But two neglected stars are Joan Davis and Gail Storm. Gail Storm did "My Little Margie" and also sang the songs "I Hear You Knocking' and "I'm a lonely little petunia in an onion patch". Actually she was considerably older than "21" in that series being born in 1922. I would have never guessed in my youth that she was actually several years older than my mother. Lucille Ball was already rather long in the tooth being in her forties when "I Love Lucy" was on the air and in her fifties when "The Lucy Show" aired. As for Joan Davis she starred in "I' Married Joan" with Jim Baccus back before he became a cranky old man. There is a song on that Demento album called "Delicious" that is Jim Baccus and Carol Channing, I think. But neither that nor the next song is labeled, "The Scotsman" by Brian Bowers. At least on my copy. One other case where I got an album with two things not identified are on the Original "A Piece of History" 1977 Hamburg album by the Beatles. Since them they have "cleaned up" and enhanced the sound on CD. Also my copy is missing four tracks, "Twist and Shout", "I Saw her Standing There" (with the Peter Gunn guitar riff) and "Ask Me Why" and a song I've never heard called "Remonicing" by Buddy Holly. However two tracks are not identified on my album - "Mr Moonlight" and a song unique to this album called "Where Have You Been All My Life". It sounds like the Cherrels or one of those Reigel VII groups, but I don't know. But "I Married Joan" and "My Little Margie" are two under-rated sitcoms. I was under the impression that "My Little Margie" had new shows on ABC till mid 1957 but apparently I have neither the year nor the network right.

They say they’re found strong evidence of liquid water on mars because some streams appear to form on slant areas when the weather gets warm, and then disappears. When they were announcing an upcoming launch to Jupiter and that would involve a "crew" I thought I was hearing news from the future. It turns out there are several advanced robots involved. They say the moon used to be two moons, because a smaller moon that followed it around a billion years ago finally crashed into the back side of the moon we don’t see and that’s why that side is rockier than the side we see. Interesting theory. I've never heard the Federation say anything about this, but obviously this was way even before their time.

Some of the mathematical permutations of the Craps odds we discuss may have been neglected. Still I don't think I'm far from the right figure. Of course, like a time at bat, you'd never expect a round to go on this long, but this is just in case it did. People on shows like Deal or No Deal think they can somehow escape cumulitive odds, but they can't in the long run.