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.