Political News of the Day

The clown car is getting mighty full of candidates now.  Jeb Bush is in first place, having risen dramatically since he said he would have invaded Iraq just like his brother.  Tied for second place were Scott Walker and Marco Rubio.  In the tier below them were Rand Paul at nine percent and Ted Cruz.  Then at seven percent was Dr Ben Carson.  Chris Christie came in at five and a half percent.  Donald Trump didn’t even place on this poll but several were at one and two percent.  According to Hal Sparks, President Obama was always for gay marriage.  He was for gay marriage in 2008 but hid that fact from the voters because he feared he’d be unelectable.  President Obama is willing to sacrifice a lot of his principles out of fear.  We know that now.  Mitt Romney makes a lot of statements that sound “normal” but then he walks them back on orders from the Koch Brothers to get elected in the primaries.  Voters answer polls saying they are for the decriminalization of marijuana.  Unfortunately they don’t vote that way when the time comes.  Hal Sparks thus believes that privately people are significantly more progressive than they show at the polls.

This Tony Robins guy was shot seven times by a police officer Madison, Wisconsin, home of Scott Walker and all things prejudiced - -  gunned down in his own house, and they have that on video.  This was on March 6^th and I’m just watching it on “Democracy Now” this morning.  People had called the authorities because Robins had displayed some odd behavior, perhaps due to ingestion of drugs.  There seems to be an agreement that Robins did not have a firearm.  This hefty Black woman has this sweatshirt saying “Free the 350” because though only five percent of the population is Black- - over half the inmates in the local jail are Black, and so to even up the score- - they should free 350 innocent Black people, or Blacks who were apprehended strictly on racist grounds, not applied to white people.

The FBI is going after protestors of the XL trans-Canadian pipeline.  And the FBI is violating their own regulations to do this.  But President Obama controls the Justice Dept which controls the FBI and yet the President will go after Elizabeth Warren on TPP.  The President won’t go after pharmisuticals or Wall Street big wigs, but they will go after protestors in east Houston - - and Burlington, Vermont, of all things.  If you happen to be an investor in energy commodity futures, and you believe the XL pipeline will reduce oil prices, then you should be opposed to the XL pipeline.  The ruling by the FBI is that “The XL pipeline is vital to the security of the United States”.   So we have a “Security threat” posed by a pipeline that hasn’t been constructed yet.  One could make the argument that the way to reduce this “security threat” as well as environmental threat- is not to build the Pipeline in the first place.

Pope Francis’ latest remarks about Palestinian statehood has rattled the cages of a lot of Republicans.  The Pope has come out in favor of Palestinian political rights.  Some think the Papicy has become too political lately speaking out on issues such as world income equality or global warming.  It’s nice to have a powerful force for good on Out Side for once, especially when that Force has a world wide audience.  Bobby Jindell has stated that “Ministers ought to engage in political dialog of the town square” and all of that.  And I would tend to agree with that.  I have for decades been saying that pastors should get out of their shells and engage the world and not be so wrapped up in just their own little cloister.  But now when Pope Francis follows the advice Jindell has been giving- - the Republicans howl in protest.

 It’s resumed raining this morning and they are predicting yesterday was just an orderve to what we’ll be getting today and tomorrow.  It thus looks as if "El Nino" is returning as a climatic pattern in the state, getting two days of major rain this late in May.  They were showing all of these northern California lakes that have shrunk down to a fraction of their former size.  They are now showing these Medi-Cal commercials with little kids telling the government authorities to "restore Medi-Cal funding because our health depends on it".  Jerry Brown sees more income coming in now and says "Good, then lets boost the allotment of the Reserve Fund".  But in truth certain benificaries of "social services" have not yet gotten OUT of the prior recession, before we start thinking about the next one.  At times Jerry Brown can be really dense.  Luan was just looking tword the store outside and I went back in and sat in the front room for a while.  Then I got a dollar coffee and smokes from the liquor store.  Janet and Phyllis Green were ahead of me in line and Janet took two cups.  They were just opening up the dining room and initially I sat down then but later went to my room with my cup and drank it there.  I just wanted to check on things.  We had oatmeal for breakfast followed by two waffles and I had two pieces of bacon, one from Owen.  I didn’t get any extras from Paul. 

Last night on the news they said that the attention span of the Average American now is down to eight seconds, which is the same as a gold fish.  There was one TV show where one character was criticizing another and said “That guy doesn’t have the attention span of a hamster”.  It would be that hamsters are more mentally focused than we are now.  Obviously nobody could sustain employment with an eight second attention span.  What if a plumber you hired left after eight minutes of work after everything was all dismantled and said “Well, that’s the limit of my attention span”.   We rely on 140 character tweets and read only the most immediate of blogs, which often are kept short.  Thus my blogs are problematic, requiring actual time to read.  And just as a suggestion- - speed reading and my blogs don’t go well together because if you slow down you find out how much you missed in your first scan.  For some reason the blog of “Before the director announces Cut!” has gotten a lot of hits in the past week.  I read that thing this morning- - and basically it’s just a pasting over of a Word document, where a lot of current topics are referenced.  Strangely- - I talk about Governor Scott Walker’s recall, without ever referring to the governor by name.  This whole immediacy thing translates to lack of long term planning.  For instance, we don’t make a fifty year investment in our infrastructure and “build for our future” like we used to hear so much about when we were kids.  After 2008 spending in transportation has completely fallen out of fashion.  The thing now is to “get the better of the other party” in the present tense.  Too many corporations are obsessed with the quarterly report due out in a few weeks- - and no matter what you have to do to jimmy the results to look good at that moment, you’ll do it, regardless of the long time effects.  I find it a healthy thing to go back and read old postings to “see where I’ve been” and decide “where I want to go now”.  John Fugelsang was on for a few minutes before seven, but not a full hour.