Nothing Gay about the Obama Administration

You know the Obama Administration isn’t so gay after all. The Administration is righting the overturning of “Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell” by the Court last week. It seems silly for the administration to work against themselves but legal experts tell me that’s the way it has to be. Otherwise any bill congress passes could be overturned by one friendly judge. You know the “lame duck” congress is just as potent in their abilities as any other congress and perhaps more so. That is because they don’t have to fear an election because they have already been voted out of office in some cases. They are in a unique position to do a maximum amount of damage before they leave, and might as well take advantage of that. I imagine they will renew all the Bush tax cuts before they leave. It was just arrogance that caused the President to get that Health Bill passed that mobody wants and everybody wants repealed. The President can hardly campaign on the truth when the truth is that the Republicans wanted to work with him. But the president said “I won, and that’s the end of the story”. If you are going to make a statement like that you better be prepared to face the consequences, and the President will. People will see the emptiness in his words. There is a good chance that the provisions of the health care bill that require people to purchase health coverage will be declared unconstitutional. People don’t like the idea of a gigantic nanny state. The sheer complexity of the health care bill invites charges of “socialized medicine” even if it isn’t true. Obama can’t be honest about his Wall Street connections. The people know that rather than useful jobs bills, the democrats were let loose and carried through with every pipe dream and pork barrel project they could come up with, no matter how silly or wasteful it was. The democrats acted as if they had a free pass but once again they were wrong, and in November they will pay the price. If by some miracle the democrats should survive November 2^nd it won’t be because of the President’s campaigning but in spite of it. But if the President loses big this month he’ll look all the worse because he campaigned for his ideas so hard.

We’ve heard so much on the radio about the Koch brothers, as if they run everything political in America. They fund all of the republican groups. They even fund callers who flood call in talk shows and message boards. Thom Hartman is endeavoring to seek out and ban these people who post several times a day on message boards. Clearly these people are filthy rich and could retire and not bother anybody and be fine. But they want more and more power till America is like some third world banana republic, run by a small military junta. Of course we learned yesterday that when these tea baggers do voter signing petitions to get things on the ballot it might be something like animal dissection they would get liberals to sign. But they will get them to register to vote and insist the petition won’t count unless the X for Republican is marked, “because of a technicality”. And after this these ex democrats are targeted with epecially designed Republican literature aimed at ex democrats. Also of course they won’t get the services that drive them to the polls as usual, for instance, if they’re old people. Not only this but now they are running commercials in Spanish that say that the best way that Democrats can “send Washington a message” is to not vote next month. Presumably this is in response to the lack of action on a comprehensive immigration bill where illegal aliens can earn their right to eventual citizenship. You know one thing you can say about the political scene now is at least “Christ” has been kept out of it. This is a Christ-less political movement. Religion, for the most part, hasn’t gotten involved. Of course there are some really BAD churches on the left, too and I’ll name two of them - Gene Scott and Jim Jones. But this season it’s the liberals that are self sacrificing and not Christians. They used to extol the virtues of giving in the Church, although as I have said, this is usually with an ulterior motive, at least historically. But liberals will give their own money to make it so they will be among the ones who pay higher tax rates. But liberals are not a “Me first, last and only” type the way that conservatives are. We know this is the first all out corporately funned election. Campaign coffers are setting new records. No matter what happens, the whole world is watching, as they say. The whole world sees what America’s polital system has degenerated into. I would suggest prayer but I’m keeping God out of all this. This is not his problem. This is an issue of the American voters exercising responsibility in November in stopping this whole nut job tea party crowd from taking over the halls of Congress in January. It’s going to be really trippy around here come January if they win. One wonders just how far their sheer gall and avarice will take them. What rights will be suspended next. What is the next thing to be privatized? The police department? The military? We’re already half way there with blackwater and all that. Obama is a tool of Wall Street. He is doing what they tell him to do and that is to reinflate the bubble and keep the party going. Nobody can see beyond the next six months these days anyhow. One might think there would come a time where they will conclude they have arrived at perfection and control everything they desire to be controlled. But you really have to wonder what new unseen horrors are around the corner. There is the law of unintended consequences, and the ramifications of their actions now will cast a long shadow into the future. A future beyond 2012. If Sarah Palin really can see 2012 from her window I’m sure even she must shudder at the sight.

Another Day in the Life

We are in lavender. I also just changed the wallpaper from “Autumn” to that thing that says “Fresh Flowers”, which is a clone of a single purple flower all over the screen. Milcago changed their icon from a gold letter to red and white “M”. This is an overcast October 18, 2010. There just isn’t a whole lot of news that I have any particular pearls of wisdom to comment on today. I’m going to let my blog readers “follow me around” today a little. They predicted rain today and the next two days but we haven’t gotten it except just a bit early this morning. Terry told me last night he would come late if he had to mow some lawns, but if it rained he would come early. He told me the grass was too wet to mow this morning. I kind of hinted that more rain was predicted and maybe he should try and get a few jobs in before the major rains come.

Last night I watched two reasonably long segments on ABC news. One was the Roundtable on the Tea Party and the other was the Roundtable on “Show us the money” or get people to reveal their sources. The Philly’s beat the Giants six to one and the game ran till about 8:25 as I recall. I would imagine their Sunday schedule was torpedoed. I watched Sixty Minutes. First there was the story of the homeless veterans who had served multiple tours in Afghanistan. These people have suffered a lot and they say that the homeless situation often occurs after a tour of duty but that in the case of Viet Nam it took a lot longer for the crisis to develop. We should keep these people in our prayers. And then there was the whole thing with Israel and Palistine. We are so intent on walking on their rights and digging under their homes and illegally selling their property and claiming it for Israel. Jimmy Carter is the only person who really has this whole Israel – Palistine crisis properly pegged. The third segment was that film journey down Market Street in San Francisco about two weeks before the great earthquake. They estimate the film was taken either the end of March or the beginning of April in 1906 after there had been a period of extended rain and the ground was wet. It’s a revealing slice of Americana. The filmers had no idea most of these buildings would soon be destroyed. Some said they actually wanted to create the impression that there were lots of motorized automobiles in San Francisco as opposed to the rest of the country.

Monday morning was dark and murky, of course. That’s par for the course this time of year. We had under filled bowls of corn flakes and a fried egg and toast with butter and jelly. I kind of ran a new guy off who wanted to sit down and then took Antwenette’s orange juice and had 3/5 myself and 2/5 or so to Andrew. Coffee was late in being served and there were no seconds for breakfast. I had Stephanie Miller on both before and after breakfast. Apparently there was talk that Blacks and the Young are two groups the Right Wing are afraid of. They are trying to keep Blacks from voting. And it seems the young have given up on religion preferring ‘None of the above”, because they see religion as too bigoted, narrow minded, and reactionary. There is hope for the young people yet. This new demographic is no surprise to me. I’m only wondering why we didn’t see the trend sooner. Otherwise it was the same old stuff in the news.

Terry called me up and informed me that he was parked right outside in the parking lot. I gathered my wallet and the check with the account number on it, and went down. He said they had problems with the old Youth Director at C of A and now they have a new, less experienced one. As usual I asked about Terry’s mother. “She needs to see the dentist”. She and me both. I went into the bank alone with my forty. I was in a short line and this woman comes along and says she could help me even sooner. So I go with her and give her my money and then she says she has to leave. I got a little nervous wondering if I trusted in the wrong person. But she came back with the receipt, and a business card, and brought up my receiving direct payment for Social Security. How did she know I was even on that? I didn’t tell her. But I told her I didn’t think the place would look kindly on my getting the money and deciding how much I want to pay them, rather than them deciding how much they’ll pay me. Then I went back to the truck and I went to the wrong white truck. Terry showed me a video he’d made of himself and others at the Silverado carnival. He also had a corny riddle. I was kind of thinking this might be a good morning to go to IHOP for pancakes or something, but that didn’t happen. And Terry had more information about gay people he wanted me to investigate. I don’t know where he comes up with this information but I wrote stuff down.

We had cold cuts for lunch and I had most of Laurie’s soup in addition to my own. It was genetic red soup, but again the white soup they serve usually comes off as flavorless slop. I got seconds on coffee from the kitchen counter. Pour your own. I did the long reach. I was now officially out of cigarettes except for a quarter that I could buy one with, which is what I did. You know something, I still need to shave.

Dr. Levy convened his class. Today he showed a film he had made at Founders. He says it's only a fifteen minute drive, but I'd guess that it's twenty, and that's on a good day. It wasn’t exactly professional, except it did have some added interesting music. Of course he couldn’t use copyrighted material. The lighting was something to be desired and there were occasional traffic noises. It was interviewing mental patients and they all looked like mental patients. One guy had bug eyes. Gail was in it and even she had bug eyes and it looked like she’d gained twenty pounds for this film. She talked about first hearing the voices ten years ago. I guess I am a little short on the compassion gene. I told Dr. Levy I was amazed these people felt so at ease talking about their own condition because I would sure never do that. . There was some Van Gogh style artwork there too all over the walls. Paul Bell, that gifted musician did the closing title credits on his guitar in what I imagine is an original song. They kept showing all of these bottles and bottles of medication. There was actually a D J booth like a radio station. One segment – actually two - with Dr. Levy looked like it was filmed here because of the pattern in the stucco and the trim. But it was a tight shot with a bush in the way.

There was a guy who talked about how he got married at age thirty and he had a bright carrier in graphics design or something. But a few years later he had to get a divorce and he slid down hill from there. Maybe the wife wasn’t supportive. Maybe it was his own fault. The way my mind works I wonder whether there weren’t people who basically had it in for him all along and didn’t even want him to get married and live a normal life. Then when he began having problems they urged him to get a divorce without even trying to solve the problems, and then they would say “Look at the ravages of mental illness. It destroys marriages”. There was a lot of talk in class today about how you better stay on your medication or encounter real problems. That’s true with all sorts of things such as diabetes or (in my case) blood pressure medication. Back in 1998 I was afraid to even think of having sex for fear I might blow a gasket. I would make those trips to Longs drug store after eating a big meal at Busy Bee thinking that would lower my blood pressure, and I would get these readings like 174 over 95.

100,000 Homes Foreclosed on in October

This is a period of malaise in the nation and in my personal life. Today’s news is that 100,000 homes were foreclosed on in the month of October. I guess the dire foreclosure predictions of two years ago are coming to pass. Now the banks are getting dirty. They are going into people’s homes and changing the locks while they are still living in them. Or people will be off on a two day trip and they will smash a window and break in and ransack the place. Often they are illegally foreclosing on homes while other options are still in play. Often the owner believes that a renegotiated loan is under consideration. Some say that banks may be working against their own best interest in foreclosing on so many homes. Obviously this situation will depress real estate prices in a neighborhood so that the innocent suffer with the guilty. Of course the Republicans seem to have the voting public well trained, like dogs. They are taught to react to certain stimuli. For instance proposition 24 is a “jobs tax” rather than a redress of a bill that gave away billions to the very richest among us. We are all conditioned to believe that any tax cut is good and any tax hike is bad. We are all conditioned to see ourselves as the richest two percent of Americans. Now the hot item is these pensions that State employees enjoy along with early retirement at 55. This may just be the issue that hangs Jerry Brown next month. You can’t call Meg Whitman a whore even if she is one for buying out the police union by exempting them from pension cuts in exchange for campaign donations. We are told proposition 25 is bad because it ends budget gridlock, when these people live for the chaos we have each year in the California legislature. As I said above the goal of the right is to privatize everything including police and fire protection, as well as to privatize social security like they have in Chile, which led to major chaos. Again, our CIA’s job seems to be to overturn democratically elected governments and institute some right wing “paradise” by Milton Friedman and his economic friends. The goal is to turn back the clock to one hundred years ago, or longer. They want to go back prior to anti trust legislation and prior to the income tax. They much prefer the more regressive value added tax. And of course they want to privatize the profits and socialize the losses, so that banks and big investment houses never have to suffer the consequences of their risky actions. This has been a good season for Senate debates on C-Span. There is the California governor's race and the Delaware Senate race and the Nevada senate race between Reid and Angle just last night that I haven't seen yet. Even democrats like to throw out a national security "bone" to the viewers. We all know that Islam is the most evolutionarily backward of the world’s major religions. That case of cutting off the wife’s nose and ears is only one of the more extreme manifestations of a generally sick culture over there. But we shouldn’t play into their hands by being in a state of constant war with them. History will not be kind as it looks back on this year of 2010. At no prior time in my lifetime have the American people proven themselves utterly incapable of logical thinking. It will view this election cycle as the last gasp effort of the ultra right before the movement was completely crushed by the inevitable forward progress of history.

The Era of Obama is Over

It was Jerry Brown, ironically, who first touted the virtues of smaller government saying "Less is more". Rush Limbaugh has said "Roosevelt is dead! His policies live on but we're in the process of doing something about that, too". Not only couldn't Roosevelt, Truman or Johnson get elected today because they are such overt liberals, you would never see the Republican party nominating candidates like Eisenhaur or Nixon ever again. Clearly President Obama's reign, over the nation and over the polls is over. We're going to elect a republican House, at least, and just maybe a republican Senate, too. On the Mc Laughlin report all the people like Pat were talking about how all the chairmanships of committees would fall to Republicans and how they would set the agenda of which bills come up. The Republicans like John Boehner have complained that the democrats didn't allow them input on anything but hauled out these thousand page bills for an up or down vote with no amendments. That era is gone. John Mc Laughlin also predicted that Hillary would be President in 2013. What we do know is that there is a perception that President Obama is just not connecting with the American people, and with the massive gridlock that will surely happen with a Republican congress, this will only get worse. We have seen a preview of this Republican reign in the arguments last week before the Supreme Court which they had the audio of on C-Span. It was the case of gay bashing and demeaning this whole country at a protest outside a funeral of a military hero. You could tell by the questions they were asking that they just didn't "get it". They were dense as stone as to the implications of the case and the dangerous precedents it would set. It wasn't just Scelia and Allito but liberals such as Ginsburg too, that were asking these self-refuting questions of denial. It is hardly even necessary to wait for a verdict with a court expressing the most open bias since the days of King Henry VIII. They argued for seconds over one hour. I imagine they had all of them made up their minds almost before arguments were even ended.

The Nobel Peace Price has been awarded to a dissident jailed protestor in China, who may not have even been informed that he won. He was a protestor at Tienimin square but unlike his fellow protesters didn't have the sense to get into some economic venture and forget that he ever held such beliefs. The Chinese government "warned" the committee not to make this choice. Of course the US government has no sway over China now because they own our soul because they hold all of our economic debt. You would think this would be a good topic for tea party candidates to latch on to, but I haven't heard a peep out of them on this issue.

In a small college town in Washington State a bunch of college co-eds were given roofies or exticy in their drinks and were passed out. The police are investigating. You know a simple way to avoid problems like these is tough alcohol prohibitions against people under 21 drinking alcohol. It seems almost a prerequisite that a college student can't drink any alcohol unless they intend to get roaring drink and hopefully to pass out and not remember a thing. That seems to be their goal. The idea of having one or two beers after work or a glass of wine with their dinner seems unthinkable to these people. If colleges cracked down, you'd cut down on these type of mishaps directed against women, and their grades would probably rise dramatically.

There was a roomered 10-10-10 computer virus that was to strike today. I had problems with a virus of my own yesterday. My Adobe Media Player.exe program had to be quarentined by Norton because it rated a High danger alert. So I have lost Adobe Media Player. I had heard that various Adobe files were targeted by certain viruses. Now on the Mc Laughlin report they were talking about a Sux-net virus or however it's spelled. Supposedly Iran's nuclear plant had to close down because of this Suxnet virus. There was disagreement as to whether this virus alreadh HAD struck, or that it WILL strike iminently. There is also disagreement as to whether it will be our government that unleashes this virus, or whether China will unleash it on Iran and somehow blame it on Israel. We only know that it's a very dangerous virus and if it were in general circulation it might be replicated and spread throughout the world.

Hate Speech Takes High Court Center Stage

Everybody is talking about this funeral where a gay guy was in the military and died honorably in battle. The question is whether he can get a decent respectful, reverant funeral free of epithets and harassments. These whacko preachers talk about how gay soldiers deserve to die because dying in the Afghan war is punishment for this country allowing gays to walk free. Their attacks are in truth an attack on America. This one church has pulling these same stunts since the 'eighties. You can't keep putting out negative karma into the Universe without it eventually coming back to bite you in the ass, catching you unawares. If not in this life, most likely it will be in the life to come. Now the Supreme Court is hearing this case. I thought the thing was a slam dunk. But now I am hearing other details such as the fact that the protest was one thousand feet away. That’s nearly a quarter of a mile. One might say that seems reasonable. Still if I were a loved one of the deceast I wouldn’t even want to see the reports on TV. But now some liberals are saying that the Roberts court might take the opportunity to swing the other complete opposite way and say that bloggers who express an opinion can be sued for no reason at all. Also liberals are worried about “free speech zones”. These are like containment cages that separate protestors from the ability to even be heard or be relivent. I have this vague feeling that whatever the High Court decides will be the wrong decision.

This whole "Let it Burn" psychology has come front and center again. They have talked about a "let burn" policy with our forests. Maybe they know more than I do. But in this case in Tennessee they let a guy's house burn down because he didn't pay his $75.00 dues. This is despite the fact that he offered to pay them five hundred or even five thousand, if they would just put the fire out. It isn't a question of money with these fire fighters; they are just being wilful. They are being pure assholes about the whole thing. Claiming that it's like insurance is an incorrect analogy. This is a flat fee and not an "insurance wager that the man lost". They say the Chicago fire in 1873 got going so swiftly because a bunch of homes in a row didn't have their little sticker on the window and by the time they came to the fourth house the fire was really raging out of control. I know that in the case of that SLA raid by the LAPD on May 17th 1974 where Donald De Freeze and a bunch of other agitators died, the powers that be decided to let that house burn to the ground. The county authorities of Tennessee were presented with five options and this was the worse of the five, but the five republican Supervisors all voted to go with this fee payment system. It raises the Biblical question, "Am I my brother's keeper". We are told in the Torah to welcome strangers as guests, for we were once sougerners and strangers. We are told that if thy neighbor's ox or his ass goes astray to lead it back to our neighbor and if he falls into the ditch to pull it out. There is such a thing as being a menace to public safety and some fire fighters swear an oath to assist wherever they are needed. In California they have the good sameritan law where if you are a doctor and see someone in an accident you are bound by law to render any assistance you can. But in Tennessee they don't know this and people like Glen Beck defend the actions of the tea party fringe far right.

I would like to contrast two people now on Days of our Lives. Adrian and Melanie. Both of them ratted someone out but they both have completely different moral standing in my book. In Adrian’s case she had a relation with her niece, Stephanie where she could come and tell her anything. It was a relationship of trust. But what does Adrian do but drag Stephanie’s mother, Kayla, home all the way from Africa I might add all to drag her in the middle of something really complicated where it’s better the fewer people know. I’ve been in a situation three times where professional people I confided in violated my confidence. As of how the number of people who know Clowie cheated on Daniel are Carley, Nathan, Stephanie, that computer geek, Melanie, Kayla and Adrian. That’s in addition to the two principals, Philip and Clowie. That’s half the population of Salem. Contrast this with Melanie’s goal in confronting Clowie. In the first place she confronted the first party; she didn’t go around sneaking behind someone’s back. And her motive was to protect her father, Daniel. She knew her father and surmised correctly that this is the sort of thing you shouldn’t keep from a prospective groom. She’s furious with Nathan for keeping it a secret so long but somehow I think she’ll get over it.

This second weekend in October I don’t imagine will be different from any other weekend. One is inclined to see a glimmer of hope that both Jerry Brown and Barbra Boxer are staying ahead of their republican counterparts in several of the recent polls. This is a good thing. It would seem that the hysteria of the tea party set may be fading and now the population is getting down to the sober business of picking the next governor or senator, or whatever. Nobody wants a senate candidate who ships off jobs to China instead of keeping them here. Certainly the issue of that bill that offered the carrot and the stick to keep industries from locating offshore- - this should be in issue in every congressional race. It’s one of the most important ones we’ll face. But people on the far right didn’t even include this in their “Pledge to America” and in fact believe any business should be absolutely free to locate off shore with not the slightest legal restrictions. They’ll complain “we don’t make anything here any more” but they are against taking constructive steps to prevent relocating to the Camen Islands or China or India or what have you. Then of course in China they complain the people there are paid too much so they hire out work to places like Bangle Desh. And on and on it goes. What these tea party people forget is that protectionism is as American as Alexander Hamilton, our first secretary of the treasury. But they don’t want terrifs either and they say, “a terrif is just another tax”. These people are so tight with their wallet they won’t even give ascent to needed law enforcement expenditures in California. These people need to be exposed and shown for what they are. If the President fought the way Roosevelt did in 1934 or the way Truman did in 1948 attacking the Republicans as a “Do nothing congress” you know, we could cut our losses to near nothing. A year ago I honestly even thought we democrats would gain this year. Like I say- - at least you better plan on winning, because if you plan on losing, that’s most likely just what you’ll get. (Selah) And now a few ancient Cecil B Di Mille proverbs.

Blood Makes Poor Mortar

Love Can't Drown Truth

The strong make many bricks; the weak make few; the Dead make none.

Death will bring Death

I Owe my choice for successor to my Fathers, not to my Sons

US Supreme Court Begins New Session

Since this is the first Monday in October the Supreme Court met for the first time. They decided not to hear a case on the idea of should the steel from the wreckage be buried in a venerable place because it contains the ashes of loved ones. I thought all of that “evidence” was shipped off to China nearly a decade ago so that it could never be investigated. Of course you know they only decide to hear about half the court cases per year that they used to hear 25 years ago. They’ve getting lazy. They don’t want to give people their constitutional rights. Of course justice Elena Kagen is really weak on granting people civil liberties. I have a feeling this is the coming trend in the US justice system. Victoria Jones was remarking that England has also seen the loss of civil liberties in matters of arrest just as we have here with the advent of the Patriot Act. Apparently England and those in Europe aren’t as upset by “security alerts” like we are here because they’ve gone through so much worse like the Blitz and everything. They take it as a matter of course. They also point out that you are more likely to be murdered on US streets with our higher murder rates than you are of becoming a casualty on a European tour. But it’s just the way things are now that even the Obama administration feels the urge to ramp up the fear. Maybe people will forget that they hate the president and see him at last as our national leader and perhaps a man to be listened to.

Randy Rhodes spoke of a ninety year old woman calling a show with a Black host and asking the colored host why the coloreds complain so much. She said “Rather than ask what we have done TO them they should be thanking us for what we have done FOR them, with welfare and all. There was one caller today who claimed to be a mix race Jewish progressive, but he asked how come there were so many socialist and communist signs at the Washington rally. I guess it was Nicole who fielded that call. I would have said “I would prefer there not be those kinds of signs there, but people have free speech”. Nicole turned it into an us verses them type situation. As you know I was not real pleased with the Washington rally. They said that attendance was down from what they had hoped. And they apparently used a photograph taken at seven in the morning before the people had arrived that had a lot of empty reserved seats. Of course they talked about education and they talked about jobs and getting out of prostitution and pimping and drugs and all. But for instance what about police violence. There was a hold up at a convienience store by two thugs working together and one of them had a gun. Meanwhile the brother of the store owner called the cops and they showed up very quickly. The brother went outside to point in the direction that the bad guys fled. But instead of saying “thanks” he was fired on eight different times by the officer”. I would not be in a forgiving mood after that experience. It would be one thing to be told to put my hands in the air, but to be shot at repeatedly- - -this shows the cops had their heads up their asses. I’m not sure of the store owners were a minority race or not. I find it difficult to believe cops would shoot repeatedly at an unarmed White guy like that.

In one call in show on KTLK this morning it was mentioned that Meg Whitman should have known her housekeeper wasn’t documented. I guess Jerry Brown really took her to task on this during a debate. Oddly the atmosphere in the media air waves are so contentious my first impulse was to disbelieve the accusations and Gloria Alred must be lying. But I should have known better than that. Gloria Alred is a smart woman and she doesn’t take a case where she knows she doesn’t have really solid grounds. Of course now there is that letter that Meg Whitman’s husband wrote a hand written notation on saying “Nicky, you should really look into getting documentation”. But many would believe that an other wise conscientious woman would somehow sluff off in a moment of carelessness and hire en employee in her personal service whose background she hadn’t investigated. This development won’t affect my vote but my feeling now is that anything that tilts the table in favor of Jerry Brown is fine with me.

They said that the temperature will have dropped 45 degrees in one week. Last Monday it was a record 113 °. This week it’s probably 68 or cooler out. I started off in a short sleeved shirt but then put on a Pendelton about ten as the weather seemed to be getting colder. This was just before snack break. I really want blog readers to know that I haven’t done a disappearing act. If I don’t do a blog today it might be till late Wednesday I get back to it. But as I told you know who, I have been in an uninspired blue funk lately. It seems that everything that can be possibly said about “stuff” had already been said.

Burried Under a Mound of Rhetoric

The economic recovery is hereby canceled. Also the Rapture is canceled. You know the one I was saying would occur sometime late next week. Well, it ain't gona happen. Instead we all have to live through the nightmare rhetoric that is the political right. When President Obama affirms "Yes we can", these people retaliate "No you can't". Our side wants to build up America and dig our way out of this recession. The political right think it's a contest of tearing American down, and seeing which one of them can screw up the economy the quickest. These people make the most dire of predictions, and when they get in office, try to make them come to pass. But there is no giant hand going to swoop down and take them off to la la land just when things are at their worst. They say you are entitled to your own oppinion but not your own facts. The Right speaks of taxes being "raised" next year, as though the liberals just did it, and it wasn't part and parcel of the bill George Bush signed in 2001. Even he knew you could sustain the stimulus for only a short while before you'd have to pay for it. Republicans don't want the recovery to occur and practicly say this. If you ask them "Well, how long do you think it will take for the recovery to happen if we cut taxes on the rich?" and they will say that basically it's too late already because there is no way we'll get out from under the mountain of debt. Of course Mc Cain blamed "Washington" for the economic problems of 2008. By the way, the recession was already under way in the summer of 2007 according to my own writings of the period. But "Washington" is dog whistle speak for "democrats". They methodically re-arrange facts as they speak, like a Christian historian. Dr. Levy says in simplistic fashion "Well you know it seems every time there is a Republican in the white house we have economic prosperity but every time we have a democrat, the size of government grows and commerce is strangled under a sea of regulations. Of course he forgets that Ronald Reagan's recession didn't BEGIN till several months AFTER he took office. And also by this time in Reagan's first term we had not yet reached the Bottom of the recession, let along talk of any recovery. But somehow the media wasn't all obsessive about Reagan ruining the country. And as far as today's deficets are concernet- - of course they're higher now because Bush did a lot of off the book accounting. The whole Iraq and Afghan wars wern't even put on the books till Obama arrived. The tea party people wern't calling the prescription drug subsedies as "socialized medicine". All we hear from people like Dr. Levy and the right is "The Obama administration has taken over the whole health care system" and others say "The President has rammed through his socialist health care agenda through a reluctant congress. If you tried to correct all their misstatements you'd be all day. My solution is just what congress is doing. They are ignoring the whole tax cut issue. That's fine with me. They can't get their precious tax cut for the richest among us unless the democrats help. It's funny how - for instance one individual who says "My business is only one third of what it used to be- - and it's all Obama's fault", basically. Yet she continues to identify with the top two percent of income earners as though an assault on them is an assault on her. One thing people forget is that most rich people don't pay 39% they pay fifteen percent because their income comes from dividends. The Secretary of the rich person pays more in taxes. Of course they quote the Bible saying that "redistribution of wealth is just wrong- - and immoral, because it says not to covet your neighbor's property." With all due respect if I speak out against my neighbor's slave plantation doesn't neccarily mean I want to be a slave owner myself. With the rich, they'll soon own everything and everybody, including all the land and the entire legal system, and all of the politicians. It doesn't take magic glasses to see the immorality in this. These people are avidly tree traders and anti economic patriot, and pro NAFTA. They may reference people taking their business to other countries. But if you suggest there be some sort of a tax law regulating this they will scream that Freedom of the rich would be violated if you took this important option away from them. According to Thom Hartman, this is one plank Americans wish were in that "Pledge to America" the Republicans put out last week. They aren't going to support keeping industries in America. Nobody is willing to do that. You point out the problem and the politicians stalwartly refuse to fix it. Of course whoever is governor will be blamed eventually for the job loss in California due to our "high taxes" and we don't have a friendly economic environment like Texas. Dr. Levy regards Governor Swartzenegger as a liberal traitor to the Republican cause and maintains his wife, Marie Shriver, turned him into a liberal. Who is to say Dr. Levy, like others already have, begin attacking Meg Whitman as a phony conservative and not really "one of us" once she has to face the same problems the current governor has to.

The Governor's race debate was held last night between Brown and Whitman. Whitman got the better of Jerry Brown in that debate because Brown was nervous and jumpy. Whitman was as cool as a cucumber on qualudes. She very methodically went through her check list agenda, often ignoring the question that was asked. A lot of good questions were asked but for instance Jerry Brown seemed to get sand bagged with charges and then have no time to refute them. Now we have Whitman's housekeeper hiring Gloria Alred as her attorney and putting on a tearful display saying she was fired in 2009. Of course she was fired. Meg Whitman found out she was an illegal. She didn't know she wasn't legal before because the housekeeper had sound documentation. Gloria Alred now says she'll have new evidence tomorrow.

The Feast of Booths

Tonight is apparently Sukkoth or the Feast of Booths in the Jewish religion. This has nothing to do with the show “Bones” but rather camping out under a full moon in a lean-to booth you construct in the back yard. That raises the question that in ancient cities they didn’t have “yards” and much less lawns. If we believe Johnny Wendell, lawns were virtually unknown 200 years ago except among Royalty. But the Jew is to build a booth in his yard during these eight days and seven nights that ends tomorrow. Later I had Randy Rhodes on and she made reference to the holiday being yesterday and she pronounced it “Sookus” whereas Dr. Levy pronounced it “Sooka - - the first with a long sound and the second with a short sound. Anyhow the holiday commemorates the final in gathering of the people and the end of their sougern in the Wilderness. One might extend this to being the end of our sougern on earth when the rapture comes. I’m not expecting any rapture, at least tomorrow but I think “something” out of the ordinary just might occur tomorrow. I just hope it isn’t a cult of thirteen people committing suicide. We talked of how if something strange happens and evil comes from it- - then you can use words like deranged and crazy, and God was not in it. Dr. Levy said they were building one of these “tabernacle” structures in the church yard and having a potluck there tonight. But he didn’t have the time to construct his own.

Proposition 25 apparently has a dual whammy purpose, and both of them are good. It penalizes politicians in the state legislature for not coming up with a state budget by July first. One was just signed here in California yesterday or something. I think that is about a record. Meg Whitman says the politicians should not be paid, and she should be stripped of their per deum and perks, and should not be allowed to raise any money. I’d like to see her try and enforce that one. Yes, I really would. But also to facilitate the passage of a budget is the long overdue overthrowing of the two thirds requirement of both houses. No wonder we are in a log jam so much. With the carrot in front and the stick behind them, I wouldn’t think we will be having any more problems with late budgets. Of course some say that if we raise taxes that politicians will only use these to feather their own nests and we the taxpayer will be on the hook once more. Certainly they can pass rules against any such abuses that might occur. And I imagine they already have.

Wall Wall Street – Money Never Sleeps is out today. It features the starring return of Gordon Gecko, but Buddy Fox is conspicuously missing. You know that’s the kind of a part I would get if I were in the movies. If they did a sequel they’d forget I exist. Anyhow now Gordon has a grown daughter and I’m sure they get into a lot of adventures and a lot of politically ironic remarks will be made. You know they should make a movie as a sequel to the Bible. Call it The Bible = Temptation Never Sleeps. Of course like the original, it will strangely omit the burning of Rome, and also none of the apostles would be mentioned, even referenced. And Jesus would never be referred to by his first name. I have an idea for a scene with the Apostle Paul having his attorney press Rome to pass a bill of pardon, but his attorney, with a pronounced Ted Kennedy accent, is a really arrogant fellow and he takes an unnecessare all or nothing crap shoot risk- - and Paul ends up being beheaded. Of course all the star players will have ancient names like Clement, Justin, Lynus, and Ignatius. And you could name some characters after diseases like Paratenitus and Syphliticus. But every so often they will go back to the guilded text and read from that in King James English, to introduce the next event. I guess it would kind of be done in the movies, “The History of the World”.

I was lying down listening to the close of Thom Hartman when Dr. Levy announced that class was conveining. The room was pleasantly cool. I took the lone seat in the back row. Dr. Levy remarked favorably about my Lennon resport. He said we would see the film on angels as soon as Vince got here. But he started the check in. Marcia said something about inheriting a million dollars. Then she said something about trillions of dollars. I didn’t have the code to translate her words. Vince came with the monitor interrupting us. I changed seats and grabbed a big chair that someone had vacated. The film started off with this story about a fifteen year old teenage girl named Terra Moore, who on August 18^th 1992 was fatally killed in a car crash where the other two people lived. She had developed an interest in angels in June. Her remarks to loved ones became increasingly pointed making reference to “crossing over to a higher plane once my work here is done”. Then she gave her little sister her favorite book on angels. And then there was an oatmeal cookie in the kitchen the morning after she died and some “angel song lyrics” in her bedroom that weren’t there before. Nobody wants to shake the certitude of those who “believe” the way her family does. Trying to argue “these things didn’t happen because miracles don’t happen” would be rather pointless. There was another story where a teenage girl with a band had been given foreknowledge that the speeding truck approaching would run the red light and she called out “Look out” as the driver started to step on the gas. The truck barreled into the front of the vehicle but the passengers were unharmed. Otherwise they would have been killed. The next story involves a woman walking through the streets of a big city. Then a hand grabs her on the shoulder. She turns around and nobody was there. Then she prepares to walk up the steps of a building where she had an appointment. She feels the hand on her shoulder more strongly, and then she hears a voice saying “It would be unwise to go in there at this time”. She walks to a nearby church to think things over and then hears police sirens and they were outside the building she was to go into. As it turns out a woman was just reported murdered in an elevator. The next story takes place in 1991 where a trooper in the Iraq war is doing a mine sweeping operation with a partner. Then the guy sees an angel without wings who says “Everything is going to work out allright”. He turns to his friend and says “Did you see that?” But the partner saw nothing. A few days later the Iraq war was over and he was safe. The final story that we saw involved a guy who was hooked on cocaine. But one day he had an experience while in the shower of a wherling sensation beginning with his toes and working up his legs and eventually he felt his whole body was healed. He had just prayed to God that if he were allowed to live that he would give up drugs cold turkey. As it turns out he was successful. At this point Dr. Levy stopped the DVD. He seemed like a man who had something to say or else was just pressed for time. As you know we usually meet later in the day on Fridays. He said that he was neither an avid believer or an avid disbeliever but liked to balance the experiancial with the scientific evidence. The class, good Mormons that they are, seemed heavily biased in belief in Angels. Of course some (like me) would like to mix in a little UFO encounter but they don’t seem to count. I couldn’t remember the name “Unsolved Mysteries” or the other one “That’s Incredible” or whatever is it show that had six events in an hour and some were fake and some were real. I chimed in that for instance that last story we saw was from 1989 and that the film was nearly twenty years old, when lots of that psychic stuff was a whole lot more popular, not to mention that I had a whole lot more faith in that sort of thing back then. We never saw the end.

You psychics try and guess what the main content of the material omitted was where I indicate in brackets. I might or might tell you in the next posting. This paragraph should be in red if things are functioning properly. Well that's a hoot. This is in black and the rest came out in green from the original file. Now I'm going to try it again. OK now I'm going to try and deliberately turn the last paragraph blue by going back to the other file and altering that.

Rahm Emanuel and Larry Summers to Exit

Well I guess I was ahead of my time. In a posting on the previous blog I suggested it would be a good idea for President Obama to shake up his economic team a little. Rahm Emanuel will be running for mayor of Chicago and Larry Summers, another Clintonista, will be leaving. I don't know if this is pressure from the voters or what, but I think change of almost any kind has to be a good thing at this point to let the public know you are actually doing something. In the past few days key provisions of the Health Care plan have gone into effect. Among these are a maximum cap on medical payments and also the provision about having a pre existing condition. Many cases involve children with horrible conditions and the parents are so troubled because they can't get insurance for these children. My one fear is that putting a "safety net" in the system this way will jack up the insurance rates for everybody else. This is what the conservatives say will happen. Still others believe that is the President gets out front with a message of bold change, then perhaps it will sell to the voters and perhaps he can shake a few votes loose that would otherwise go to republican candidates. We'll keep our fingers crossed.

Well, "Don't Ask; Don't Tell" is still the law of the land. People have suggested that since there was a decision of a judge that "Don't Ask; Don't 'Tell" was wrong that perhaps all the President needed to do now was to issue an executive decision. John Mc Cain I thought used to be for reform in the gay rights area, but now now or any time since he has re-made his image. This issue is such a hot potato now for the democrats and the republicans are trying to get as much mileage from it as they can. So they defeated a major defense appropiations bill and blamed the democrats. Actually the specific vote "failed" by a vote of 53 for and 46 against or whatever, which means the gay rights measure got a majority vote, but we know that doesn't count for anything in today's political reality. Personally I don't think they should abolish "Don't Ask; Don't Tell" until they have done an internal study that showed such a move would not cause disruption in military efficiency and unity. My understand was that the military was willing to go along with such a measure. Today's reality is that gays are perfectly capable for performing their duty just like any other officer. They are able to keep wrap on their sexual impulses. I know that Bill Press turned against Ross Perot because in late spring of 1992 Ross Perot came out against gays in the Defense Department. I felt this move on Bill Press' part was really odd because who would consider a gay free military a "deal breaker". But about June first of 1992 it seems "everybody" turned against Ross Perot at once, almost as if someone had cast an evil spell. But that was then and this is now, when gay people as a whole have become a whole more lot accepted in society.

Jimmy Carter was on Sixty Minutes last Sunday. You know, I did not vote for Jimmy Carter - either time he ran. I may have voted for him in the June 1980 primary when I was still a democrat. But my admiration for Jimmy Carter has grown over the years. Truely this is one of the most moral, principled men we have ever had as President. He didn't want to make any sneaky deals with Congress to pass a certain bill. Ted Kennedy was the guy who wasn't being a team player by openly opposing Carter. He would rather that Jimmy Carter accomplish nothing if he couldn't put all of his pet health care programs through. You'll have to remember that none of those hostages in Iran died but all 52 were safely returned. Thom Hartman goes further to say that the anniversary being election day was no coincidence. I don't know to what extent that Ronald Reagan rigged the whole release timing. I know there have been a lot of roomers, but according to Hartman the only one who knows for sure is William Casey, and he'd dead now.

We are going to do a color test right now, one two three four. Except for last Wednesday, the color on blogger hasn't worked this entire week or the other six days of last week. If it works today I will try and go back and colorize stuff in the previous blog. I have a cold this morning. So I kind of hand to cancel plans for a teeth cleaning. Judy says it's because I haven't been taking my silver. I've been hacking out my brains out. Coughing has been uncontrolable. I still haven't worked any more on that paper on John Lennon I was going to do for Dr. Levy. I would like to welcome new readers. The numbers look more favorible now. Maybe Google's counter just got "un-stuck" because we know that occurrs. We will be posting in this blog for the next couple of weeks or so and then we'll move on to "Marcus in Exile". By the time I get to a dark blog, I am very much hoping that the colorization control will be fixed.

President Obama Signs Health Bill

This is Tuesday mid day of March 23, 2010. This is a historic day because it’s the day that President Obama expanded the rights of millions of Americans in signing that Health Care bill just about at the stroke of nine AM our time. The ceremony was slated to begin at 8:15 and was about fifteen minutes late. Joe Byden spoke first. Like LBJ before him with the Civil Rights bill he used not a small number of pens to do it, so more people can say they have one. Rush Limbaugh today talked about “Love” on his show. He says all the people against the Health Bill have more “Love” than people who are for it. Last Saturday, perhaps I was gone much of the day, I failed to mention all the racial epithets thrown at congressmen by tea baggers on the Capitol grounds. Bart Stupic was called a “baby killer” because it was a deal he made with the President that enabled the bill to pass to begin with. Randy Rhodes believes the phrase of “breaking” a President stems back in South Carolina when they used to “break” slaves. Of course there have been death threats on people who are for the bill and people hit with pellet and bee-bee guns as well as the unauthorized publication of home addresses. There was definitely an element of ugly racism in last Saturday’s gathering. I guess I thought we were past that, but all that stuff from fifty years ago appears to be headed for a revival. Randy Rhodes had the apparently Black majority whip on her show. (It wasn’t TV) Rush Limbaugh said that all liberals wanted to do is go “Nya – nya!” to the Republican opposition. Well, some of that may well be in order. Of course now Mc Cain and other Republicans are ready to introduce a bill in the Senate to repeal this legislation two days after it’s passed. As you know on Sunday evening close to midnight local time the bill passed in the House on a vote of 119 to 111. So they actually had three votes to spare. I guess it was Gingrich that said that this bill would be a death blow to the Democrats just as LBJ signing the Civil Rights and Medicare bills were a death blow to the Democratic Party for forty years. Rush Limbaugh did point out something very apt and that is 25 years ago the republicans could never have gotten away with such a hate campaign because back then the democrats, by in large, ruled the media. Republicans, by his own admission, were restricted to a few elitist and “think tank” magazines for intellectuals. (Before talk radio his crowd was so illiterate they couldn’t express themselves in writing, anyhow) I may remind you and I’ve heard the allegation elsewhere that this bill is designed to “wreck the insurance companies” and drive them eventually out of business in favor of single payer. Many liberals like Thom Hartman hold this as a hope, while others regard it as a threat or the “camel’s head under the tent”. All I can say is for people like Dr. Levy who claim they are optimists, they don’t approach the outcome of this bill with a cheerful, hopeful attitude, like they should. I wasn’t for this particular bill, but like a good American I’m hoping for the best.

Conrad Murry, Michael Jackson's doctor, is in more hot water now because he was ordering a member of Jackson's enterage to gather up all the syringes and stuff while he was supposed to be performing C P R on Mr. Jackson, such that he delayed in calling 911 for at least twenty minutes. Clearly he cared more about his own skin than the health of his patient. I assure you this little scene won't play out at all well in front of a jury. If I were were the good doctor I've be working out my plea bargain right now. People who change their testimony after two months shouldn't out of hand be dismissed as liars. People do have a conscience and a conscience is a powerful thing and it can work on you. You may not have wanted to implicate yourself to the cops that you were instrumental in a cover-up rounding up medical syringes and "cleaning up the murder site" so to speak. But scripture does say, "The truth will make you free".

Here is a moral problem for you Christians. We so often hear that old grudges and transgressions are best forgotten about. President Obama wants to not prosecute anybody in the Bush Administration or examine any kind of civil liberty or civil right abuses by the Bush Administration. Such a stand sounds almost lofty. Till you look at the details. Here is one. Suppose you are a person of interest in an FBI investigation and you are just about to finger a criminal in such a way that will get him (or her) in a lot of trouble. But while the agent is questioning you you're at a religious tent revival and that very minute you "find Jesus" and jump up and down and are so excited and say "I'm so happy!" and the agent looks at you and says, "Before we were distracted you were about to give me a name" and the subject says to the agent, "Oh, I'm so happy I don't want to wallow in the past. Things like that don't matter now, I'm a new person - I'm born again". You soap freaks know where I'm headed with this. Agent Hernandez was questioning Nicole Walker on the disappearence of baby Sydney, and Nicole said she at least remembers who took her. But then she gets a phone call. It's from the warden. He hands the call off to the Governor? "Who, me?" The governor informs her personally she's received a full pardon for her crimes. Nicole and the black guard hi five each other in celebration. Now suddenly Nicole gives a name, the wrong name, to throw the FBI agent off the scene. Agent Hernandez can't help but think there is "something really funny about the timing of that phone call". He has more questions now. But those who hate "investigating the past" would say he's an old grouch and not "in the spirit of this wonderful moment". Some of us are just that way. Sometimes when you fill in the remaining details of the "artist rendering of the crime scene" things get revealed that were they known to everybody the Truth would be obvious and those who are LOOKING for the truth, and those trying to cover it up, would also be made obvious. Capish?

Chief psychiatrist: Allright, Mr. Mc Murphy, you're a good Irish Catholic, aren't you?

Mac Murphy: "Yess siritos!

Chief psychiatrist: Then could you give me your interperation of the parable Jesus gave in the gospels of The Two Debtors? Certainly you know it.

Mac Murphy: Well, I guess the moral there is- - - You cover up my crimes and I'll cover up yours".

Chief psychiatrist: Allright- - (sighs) I'll write that one right next your answer about "Don't wash your dirty laundry in public".

The Nanny State is something I don't like and a lot of people don't like. Suppose they can do brain scans that can reveal not only what a suspect is withholding, but what he intends to do when he leaves your presence. Should the State adopt this technology. Would THIS be a "Nanny State" or just good government. Is "the right to withhold information" a civil right guaranteed by the constitution? The notion of having a national compulsory requirement of every American purchasing health insurance is a far reaching incursion into our lives. Corporations do psychological profiling to either qualify you or rule you out from contention for a coveted job position. Should the government make broader use of such information gathering? Personally I say no. Just how FAR do you go with "promoting the general welfare"? Could this notion of "promoting the general welfare" be an easy concept to abuse? Now Kraft or one of the big food manufacturers is going to cut salt and sodium in their products by ten percent. But this is no small thing. Radio cooking host Melinda Lee says that being a baker, rather than just a "cook" is an exacting science. For instance the ammount of sugar you put in ice cream with fruit in it is dictated by the freezing point of the fruit. Sodium in food products is used as a "binding" and preservative agent, in addition to taste. Corporations run numerous taste test to come up with ever improving recipes for every product. The federal government dictating such a move is no small inconvienience, as also it would be for this anti trans fat craze. People tie everything together and conversations about smoking invariably turn into conversations about fat and sugar in diets and a whole host of other things. The State of California just banned smoking in almost all areas in State Parks and state beaches. Just smoking in the completely open air is a crime. Whatever happened to "protecting the rights of the minority". One computer link said that homosexuality was only in two percent of the population. We spare no expense in protecting that minority, and yet legislators feel they can raises taxes on cigarettes to the moon and don't think anybody's rights are being trampled on. In the area of texting and cell phones while driving, only here do I feel you do have a legitimate public safety issue. Because people who talk on cell phones are four times more likely to be involved in an accident and people who text while driving are eight times more likely. This is twice the rate of a person legally drunk. We need to as legeslators- - dissern which issues are true public safety issues and which is just fad legeslation. For instance, counties and whole states "going dry" was a fad for a while. Drinking is much more dangerous to public safety than smoking but it gets a pass. Nobody has the notion that habitual alcohol consumption is at all injurious to health. How much better to blame the jelly donut. People say this health bill is "for our own good" and people like Thom Hartman say we owe it to society to "share the risk of getting sick" among everyone in society. It could be that the tea baggers, while nuts on so many issues, may be prophets here- - pointing to a gigantic Nanny State no independent thinking American wants to live in.

House Vote Is Too Close To Call

"People say business expenses are all about waste and the three martini lunch.But the fact is that doing business costs money and you have to jump throughany hoop the client wants you do to get his business. Maintaining businesscontacts is hard work. Developing a business take's time"
Spoken today by one entrepreneur.

President Obama may be confident of the passage of this Health Care bill but nobody else is. Today FOX announces that Democrats may be giving up on the "deem and pass" rule calling it too contraversial. This bill may do a lot of good for many people but I believe it just throws too much money around all over the place, and raises taxes "accross all income tax brackets" according to one source. If you're the President you do have certain perogatives at your disposal. The same thing could be said of Don Corlione. He can do all of the deal making and arm twisting he wants. All he needs is for that one moment when his cause is ahead in the nose count, and he can have Nancy Pelosi call a vote. It's too bad the rest of the world doesn't work like that. There is a saying that "once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it's impossible to get it back in". And once this bill is passed it will be historic precident. It may make the history books as a good thing, but others say it will be the cammel's nose in the tent to get government that much more intrusively into our lives. It has been suggested that if the government wern't in bed with the drug companies to begin with, insurance rates would not be so high. People should be encouraged to avoid drugs whenever possible in favor of proper nutrition and exercise, and even meditation and yoga. Also I think that mal practice laws could be tweaked so that some of the more bizzare cases never go before a jury. Don't you "sign away your rights" in many cases before surgery is even performed? I know in one dentist I was at it contained in the language of the forms the possability of failure of treatment (that I decided not to have anyway) We know for instance you give up the right to self incrimidation before you get behind the wheel. Could it not be committed to statute that in certain cases you agree to defer to a doctor's judgement? Also having a national exchange of providers would increase competetion and "bend the cost curve". There seem to even be in question whether anti trust provisions are in or out of this final bill. May I suggest getting rid of anti trust exemption is of the highest priority? Others, and I am one of them, have concerns about abortions now being allowed and funded with federal money. Why not remove this "non starter" and win back those anti abortion congressmen? Many house members did not want to go on record as having voted FOR the senate bill so that's why "deem and pass" was come up with. But they won't be fooling the people in their home district. They will know what he or she did. And now here is a little something from the buffer from yesterday.

I watched the Kyle guy from Arizona talk about bogus accounting, and counting dollars twice. Assumptions were made doctors would take a 23% cut in salaries, when doctors are leaving Medicare and Medic-aid even as we sprak right now. It seems just about everything will be taxed. We know a lot of money is going to be thrown around all over the place. The thing is that a lot of taxes will kick in immediately and yet many of the benefits won’t kick in till 2014. Obviously this would affect the deficit in the short term. Kyle says “Nobody trusts the figures in the congressional accounting office. My stance on the bill is “thy will be done”. But as for me, I would not be the vote to push the bill over the top. If the bill were to pass it would have to be done without my vote.

Tomorrow is the day of the LA marathon from Dodger Stadium to the sea. It will be a bogus race because it won't be ending where you begin it. Also the race is all down hill and so times will of course be faster, despite the forecast heat, for this time of year. It will be the first time in the Marathon's history that the race course went outside LA city limits. This course goes through West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and Santa Monica. Supposedly they picked this course because it goes past a lot of sites that tourists like to see. But if I were a tourist come to watch the race I might want to be able to camp out on the same site for both the beginning and end of the race.

Google, at least on my machine, has dropped a lot of their links on "even more" including "blogger". I have no idea what their game is. One of the links dropped was web search tools, which informs you of all sorts of shortcuts and tools. When I reentered this blog just now I went via Chrome and Chrome still retains the page with the whole grab bag of goodies on it. Interestingly, Chrome did not remember my password from when I just used it in Firefox. I didn't expect that it would. I think it's important that Google retain the long list as reference.

I guess you heard that story about the guy who got on the Wal-Mart PA and said "All black people are requested to leave the store now". That would certainly make a good Candid Camera gag just to photograph people's reactions. It's hard to imagine that people would not know that it was a gag. As to those people on the French game show who were giving what they thought were lethal electric shocks to contestants, It's hard to imagine that they did not suspect in the back of their minds that something wasn't kosher about the whole set-up.

Pope Benedict has apologised for the fact that he helped cover up a child molestation case, and allow a priest to be returned to the ministry. Of course the Catholic church is quick to offend and slow to apologise. It took decades to apologise for not speaking out against the Nazi Holocaust, and it took centuries to reinstate Galileo. Personally, if I were Pope Benedict I would resign for the sake of my church and urge them to pick a younger, more progressive figure sensitive to today's issues, to lead the Church into the 21st Century. As long as the Catholic Church only has in mind "saving face" it is doomed to being a follower, and never a leader, as it should be.

Pushing A Point Too Far

There is a “Deem and Pass” rule that will be used by Democrats to pass the Health Care vote in the House, because they can’t get the votes even with all of their arm twisting and so they are going to just “declare” that the Senate bill in its original form is passed. They will refer to this bill as “self executing”. The Democrats are working on the "Meme" that SOME health care bill must be passed by this congress "no matter what it takes". They are declaring that the ends justify the means. But basically what this health care bill does is to make the many suffer for the benefit of the few. There are a few people who see their insurance rates skyrocketing so fast that they can no longer make the payments. Certainly these are cases warranting our sympathy. But I don't know if you should try to circumvent any vote on the Senate bill just to get around the fact that they dont have the votes despite all the arm twisting and deal making that's been done. It just seems a little sneaky to me, even if the Republicans have used this maneuver, too. I’m worried about the popular backlash from this procedure, and I don’t like the idea of a bill becoming law whose validity is in question. It just means when the Republicans are in power they will do it to us back, only they will do it dirtier. And so the process goes on and on. This idea of staking everything on one bill is a false "meme". We can hope everyone will regard the bill as so wonderful that "we wonder how we ever lived without it". I've thought about this and just don't see that scenario happening. There are underlying forces driving up medication costs and hospital costs that are beyond the control of even the health care providers.

This Toyota Preas case is looking a little bogus at this point. The man driving on interstate 8 in San Diego county claims he was standing on the break while the car sped up to 94 mph. And yet tests done on the car show that the man alternated between the accelerator and the brake 250 times, which was all the equipment could record. Apparently the man never thought of either turning off the engine, and he never tried to put the car into neutral. He said he was afraid the car would do something even stranger. Now they are investigating the man's economic problems to see if they are providing some motivation for his actions.

The weather is in the news in much of the United States. It seems you know when spring is arriving because the weather turns more violent. You had that "no name hurricane" on the east coast they've been talking about in the news for days. Fargo, North Dekoda is a strange place because the land is almost completely flat and the river, when it does flow, flows north. This may turn out to be a record year as far as rivers overflowing their banks is concerned.

Tiger Woods seems to have re-thought his statement given only a few weeks ago that he has no idea when he will return to playing golf. He had said something about "Hopefully it will be within the year. I'm not ruling it out". Now we hear he's playing at Augusta in just a few, where they say the media is more controlled than at any other golf tournament. Someone on TV said "basically he's not missing a single key tournament this season". Meanwhile John Edward's one time lover, Real Hunter, is back in the news. Now she is saying that Edwards fell in love with her the first time they met, and that he is still in love with her, and his marriage to Elizabeth was already a shambles when they met. We're all wondering why Edwards had the affair, when if Edwards hadn't had the affair he could be President today. It seems that Bill Clinton is the only person who got pass after pass when it came to having questionable affairs. The more women he was tagged with it just seemed to increase his popularity. Even good "religious" people like Gene Scott and Dennis Prager seemed only to increase their admiration for Clinton, the more obvious it became that Clinton was a sex addict. There is no accounting for what "religious" people think.

Jerry Brown's lead over Meg Whitman is "evaporating" in the California governor's race. That's interesting because I never knew that Jerry Brown was ahead. He only got into the race a couple of weeks ago. Also Meg Whitman's lead over primary rival Steve Poizener is increasing. Neither of these results are surprising. I have never seen such a saturation commercial campaign this early by one candidate pointing out where the other candidate's "conservative" credentials were in question. Of course "money talks" and Meg Whitman has an enormous amount of money to spend in this governor's race this year. The people will believe whatever the media tells them to. I'm still a registered Republican and I'm voting for poizoner just because I don't think you should be able to "buy" a governor's race. But I'll be voting for Jerry Brown in November.