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.
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