Ravi Shanker Passes On

Yesterday Ravi Shanker died, they tell us, in San Diego.  Shanker was born in 1920, which makes him older than my Dad.  Of course Shanker was one of the prime organizers of another benefit concert other than the one today and that was the concert for Bongle Desh.  They had the entire video on You Tube last time I checked.  I don't know if it's still there.  Of course Shanker was pivital in the evolution of the Beatle's sound.  The breakthrough came with the song Norwengen Wood.  John Lennon asked George Harrison whether a sitar could be tuned like a western guitar.  Apparently Harrison equivicated a bit saying such a thing has never been done.  But Lennon pressed insistently, "I don't care whether it's even been done before, is it possible to do it?"  And of course it was.  You more sitar on the Anthology of Norwegen Wood than you hear on the official album version.  Some say it's a sitar on "Paint It Black" that Brian Jones plays.  I don't believe that instrument IS a sitar, if you listen to the tonality carefully, it's just played in the style of one.  So if you want to call Ravi Shanker's death a cosmic event, then be my guest.  But as for my predictions of this date, I count them largely as having failed.

North Korea put a missile warhead into orbit.  They are calling it a "weather sattelite' but I wouldn't presume they were telling the truth.  They tried to fake us out this time, not wanting to be embarrassed again like they were twice before with the missile going down in the Yellow Sea.  So this time they salved our government by saying "We are experiancing technical difficultiesx" and then readied the rocket for a launch.  It's in a polar orbit, and one of the rocket stages went down in the Philipines.  US officials add "But they are having trouble controling the craft".  This isn't Star Trek.  Once it's in orbit they've made their point.  It means they have the capability to shoot a missile to America, with a nuclear warhead.  But US officials said "If the trajectory ever threatened America, our forces would have shot it down".  I'm glad they're so confident.  Of course we have that Dome thing in Israel protecting their people from oncoming missiles.  The odds of Dr. Levy being injured by a Gaza missile during the trip he later canceled are only slightly higher than being struck by lightning in my oppinion, since Dr. Levy's family is in the north.  However Democrats have been saying for four years that North Korea developed nuclear capability during George W's term, whereas under Clinton we had the situation under control.  At least that's what they are saying.

Syria has now begin launching scud missiles at their own people, and I guess at Turkey.  To me this is a situation where the US has been playing possum, and I'm not really sure why.  John Mc Cain is the only guy who's making sense right now.  They tell us that Iran is a lot further away from developing nuclear capability than people generally believe in the population at large.  Some are saying that Israel wants to go in and Nuke their facilities, but that they need US help to carry it off.  Apparently we'd have to Nuke Iran because conventional missiles would be incapable of penetrating the heavy shielding since the facilities in question are deep underground.  According to Joe Drisco, Putin has just announced a total modernization and expansion of Russia's defensive capabilities, and that Russia has made it a point in saying that the United States is still its number one enemy.  I guess the big question really is whom the Russians regard as THEE biggest enemy they have to face.  Apparently it is neither Iran nor China.  And I'm a little unsure myself of the resolve either Russia or China has in actually doing anything to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear country.

The only word we've heard as far as this five or six week tax bill stalemate since the elections of last month is that Obama's resolve is weakening and he's backing down over how much revenue he desires to raise from the bill.  Also others are saying that Obama wants to compromise over the tax rate.  Perhaps it won't go all the way back to 39 percent but he might have to settle on 37 percent.  And there is wide spread talk- - that seems like more than talk, that the age for Medicare will be raised to 67.  This will cause a lot of untold hardship for those retiring folks who find themselves in this "donut hole" of no coverage.  If you're a brick layer you might to even retire before age 65, for instance at 62.  They used to make Airline Pilots retire at sixty, and brick laying or mining is a more physically demanding job than piloting a plane.  Some have suggested that certain people who are rich "unofficially retire" but then stay on as "consultants" continue to pull down big salaries while they avail themselves of medicare benefits.  Perhaps "means testing" could cover this particular contingency.

This has been a pretty sucky 24 hours for me since I did that last entry.  I lost enough money to buy two and a half packs of cigarettes last night- - when I know exactly where it was supposed to be - in my front left jeans pocket.  How it could have possibly completely disappeared is something beyond me, besides some sort of supernatural hocus pocus.  Today my computer shut down and I could not reboot it.  But then I dug out the reboot disk Judy had given me for just such a contingency.  I got some warning messages and shut the thing down before lunch.  But after lunch the thing booted normally when I turned it on, as if none of that stuff had ever happened.  I'm wondering whether there might have been some sort of solar flair that occurred that didn't make the news.  They love to fill the news with a lot of crap - - like all this Cal State Fullerton shit- - showing a picture of a building or else law enforcement people milling around in the rain - and absolutely nothing going on  - for three whole hours, even preempting the National network news on NBC and ABC to do it.  But of course they had to break when something really important was scheduled to come on - - like Jeopardy.  Fortunately CBS still had their regular network news, and I should send them a letter of comendation.  Of course Nora took off the thick bedspread from my bed and put the thin one back on - - at the same time they turn off the heat in here - - and the temperature of the whole building begins dropping.  And don't even get me started about breakfast and how our table has been the last to be served at least ten of the past fourteen days.  At LEAST.  And I mean, they are already clearing off tables in the other side of the dining room and we haven't gotten our pancakes and bacon yet.  But on the positive side- - my brother- - the one who lives in Woodridge- - writes and tells me that I'm the only one besides himself that can "read" the photographs of his trip he's been sending out.  I've often been told by others that this computer both sends and receives photos that other computers can't handle, so I should count my blessings there.  Of course if the whole hard drive fails or something- - then we'll have a whole new tale of woe to tell.

Corporitists - The Party of the "Taking Away"

Randi Rhodes was talking about "the great taking away" that the Conservative Corporatists do.  They take away our civil rights.  They take away our rights to negotiate with management and to strike.  They take away our pension funds and medical coverage that we paid for out of our wages.  They support "Freedom to Freeload' laws, which goal is to bankrupt and undermine, and eventually destroy Labor Unions.  The reason why the wage climate is as favorable as it is - - IF it is - - is because of the influence of Labor Unions.  This is a message Larry Elder has not gotten yet.  The conservatives want to take away our clean environment and steps we can do to help out Planet Earth.  The conservatives want to take away our Information that we get from the Freedom of Information act.  And worst of all they want to take away our right to hear the Truth from our Media, which used to be Public- - Media, and I'll elaborate on that word Public later on.  Now days it seems that FOX and ABC news work out of the same studio in places like Burlington Vermont, and In Honolulu two TV networks have the same morning news.  Often corporations of different ownership share news people - - and often one writing team writes the news "script" for both TV news men (empty suits) to deliver over the air waves.  This situation is not healthy, and it's only getting worse all the time.  As you know the management of Hostess- - as they were going down for the third time- - decided to give their Chief Executive Officers fat bonuses, and got the money from robbing pension funds of the workers.  Yet people like Judy still cling to the sheer fiction that somehow it was the greed of the Unions and their demands, that brought Hostess down.  Of course one wonders if these international corporatists, who seem not to have a patriotic bone in their body, and care neither for healthy business productivity or integrety of the product or customer satisfaction- - nor for their workers- - one may ask, "Of what USE are such people to even have around at all.  Why not just get rid of them".  Indeed, if one were to truely speak of "Efficiency" and "being of productive Value" than corporate management should all be fired.  Apparently in some George Orwell book- - it is predicted "When the proletariet discovers that Corporate Management is of no useful value- - - the masses will rise up in a populist movement ans Sweep Them Away.  This is the exact sort of thing that people like Judy most fear.  Sometimes, though it's true.  What you Fear will indeed come upon you.  You will become victims of your own over-blown rhetoric, and you yourselves will be guilty of bringing about Self Fulfilling prophecy.  Perhaps previously I would have balked at a statement Rush Limbaugh made about "The poor people think the Rich are out to steal from them and take away their money- - and this is why they say that success is bad".  Well, when push comes to shove these days the Rich ARE out to do just this.  It's they and not the poor who are guilty of violating the Tenth Commandment in "Coveting the goods of your neighbor".  Think about it.

Mitt Romney would be spinning in his grave (if he were dead) to know all the good economic news we've been having lately from so many sources.  We have Apple returning to producing computers in this country.  We see a stock market rally, and new domestic energy sources coming on line, and the percents of foreign petroleum imports is steadily declining.  The price of gasoline is down, and is slated to fall even further by the new year.  We told you last time about now the enactment of new laws has and will continue to help out people with under water mortgages, to keep their homes.  We have isolated hikes in home sale prices in excess of 20 percent in the past year.  Actually one of the reasons why small businesses might be a bit timid is because of the revised bankruptsy laws, that put fear of failure back into the mix, as factors advising caution and not risk capital in expansion, less they suffer financial reverses.  Of course unlike people like Mitt Romney - - small businesses cant "roll over" a good income year and defer incom taxes till the second Tuesday of next week.  In fact even my Mom is so rich she has to pay "quarterly estamates" of income.  Were it me I'd just say "Like you people delay your refunds to the end of the year and get to use my withheld income for free, so I'll give you an Estamate, all right.  But I'm not PAYING anything untill I bloody well have to, next April 15th."  I'll see you then.  Have a nice day!

In terms of the whole gay thing - - Judge Antonon Scelia says that certain "acts" should be criminal as abhorrent to societal norms - even is done between concenting adult.  After all you can't get an out with a "consenting child' or "consenting animal" or even a consenting half sister you met for the first time in your life last week.  - - and people like Scelia suggest that it's the whole idea of two members of the same sex "doing it" that bars any sort of recognizable legal status be it marriage or whatever, as something that "just isn't done in society".  Of course a lot of it goes back to the Griswald decision and here I have to agree with scelia.  That is - - this grim pre curser to Roe vs Wade- - I believe was wrongly decided.  This is because the "right to privacy" does not Exist in the constitution.  Does that mean I'm suddenly all FOR acts like the Patriot Act that involve massive government snooping into our personal affairs?  Hell no!  The distinction is the Wording in the US Constitution.  They don't use the word "Privacy" but they do say that we have the right to be - - Secure - - Secure is the word - - in our persons, papers and personal effects, from government search.  Secure means just that.  We have our proprietary rights to these things "nailed down" or "secured" like a boat in a mooring, so that they don't just "drift away" in government entanglement.  There is nothing in the word "Private" which cloaks illegal activities.  No act per see is "legal" merely just because it is a "private act".  It's just as easy from a legal stand point to comit an "illeagel act" in private - as it is in Public.  Where I do make a distinction, as does the Law- - is that there IS a whole dynamic of "Public" verses "Private".  We have "Public standards of decency" so you can't expose yourself in public.  But also there are numerous other areas where we hold PUBLIC to a higher standard.  We have Public schools vs private.  We have Publicly held corporations vs private.  We have Public Organizations verses private clubs.  We hold public places as conforming to higher archetectural standards being outfitted with such things as wheel chair access ramps that we would not demand of a private dwelling.  I hope I clarified that.  As I said previously this whole Gay Marriage thing is a generational issue- - kind of like what pot smoking was to my generation.  If you're over fifty you just won't relate.  (50 is the new 35)

Well tomorrow is 12 - 12 - 12.  That auspicious date will be upon us at last.  As you know I am looking for some "cosmic sign" to appear, and perhaps more.  We'll see.  Of course there is that big blow out bash Benefit Concert for the victims of Hurricane Sandy.  All the big luminaries will be there such as Paul Mc Cartney and the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen.  Of course the wedding industry is gearing up for the big day.  I wonder how many of those will be gay marriages.  The flowers industry doesn't care, as long as they get the business.  Anyhow if your anniversary of 12 - 12 - 12 you husbands will have no excuse to forget anniversories.  My anniversory was on a less auspicious date of August 14th 1981, an anniversary of the death of Elvis' mother.  Things have come together well in my life including today- - and I think I am closer to "having my stuff together" than I have been in a long time.  Cosmically like I say - - I had that dream connected with the star Sirius going super nova starting on a certain date, and continuing to go super nova on this date every year thereafter and a certain elite celebrate it.  We'll see.

I'm starting off my typing by talking about that Portland Mall shooting.  When the story promo first appeared on the air the Portland Reigelians chimed in saying "That isn't on our watch.  Things like that don't happen in our territory.  It must have happened to the south of here, probably".  As it turned out once they had the story it turned out the Mall was to the south of Portland.  The Portland Reigelians are more northern Portland, and primarily in the down town area.  They also are fans of KPOJ, and they say they are going to take steps to get progressive talk back on the air on that station, and a lot of people in the Portland area are working and petitioning on accomplishing just that.  Of course the Portland Reigelians are half of the "Northern Romulans" also known as Tularians.  This is the group we said that from Sirius A was "a planet not far from here" but they wouldn't specifically identify it".  (I think the term actually means "star")  Of course these Northern Romulans take pride in their part in contributing to the Beatles really early sound, pre Neir Reigellian, and pre Syracruse Romulan.  (and pre Federation, for that matter)  These Northern Romulans claim Tommy Roe as their own, when I was unsure of his origen, and Tommy Roe was a great early advocate of the Beatles' sound.  They said that Epstein and Sheridon - - are Northern Romulanized - - which is to say it's Sirius O DNA basically that has "environmentally evolved' from spending time on that "Northern Romulan" star.  Needless to say they are fans of the term "Northern Music".  They rather like it.  Of course the Romulans I grew up with are often disparagingly called Pure Bred Romulans - - or "nativists" by residents of Sirius A to distinguish them from the Hamburg slash Torranto Romulans - - who again have undergone some "environmental evolution" over the past few centuries from being away from their homeland.  One trait is that they adopted the Meter as the unit of measurement instead of the just larger Romulan Meter, often translated Romulan Yard.  Then the Romulans I know moved South  (from Vancouver) - - they adopted the original Romulan Yard but they re-coined the term "California Meter".  The standard Meter is 39.37 inches whereas the Romulan Meter is 39.6 meter.  Their football field is thus 99 or our yards, of ninety yards in their own measurement- - and in geometric fashion regard the 45 yard line as the "middle' of the field.  I have a little more to paste over - but I'll just do it Live.  Bones visited me last Saturday night after the Christmas party.  And I appreciated his remarks.  Again he was full of "sympathy strokes" which makes a person feel better.  But he also mentioned that on Sirius B, they have come down on two groups "Van Halen" and "The Eagles' as rock groups with "Really bad management" and I think the actual term translates "shitty".  They don't like the "Management" of these groups, for a whole lot of personal reasons.   Of course "Van Halen" was initually endorsed by KISS, which is a Sirius B group in good standing. "But- - - they didn't continue in KISS's footsteps".  They regard the Van Halen brothers as the founders of the group.  David Lee Roth has Reigel sixer connections - - and "the lead vocalists aren't material" in their view.  And they think the Eagles are nothing but "A Federation pre-fab group - - like the Monkees or something".  I've never heard the Eagles ever described that way before.

Deaths In the News

Everybody is talking about Latino superstar Jenny Rivera, who died in a plane crash that took off from Monterey, Mexico on Saturday or whatever and crashed, and all the parties were presumed dead, and i guess that has now been confirmed.  Along with Rivera, her attorney, her publicist, and her make-up assistent also died in the crash of a private Lear jet.  She was a super star for twenty years and I must confess I never followed her carrier, but she was still reaching for the peak of her carrier, and had a lot of upcoming things planned in the immediate future.  I guess she specialized in Banda music, which some say is related to Tex-Mex music.  I'm vaguely familiar with that.  She was genuinely charismatic and beloved by all her fans, and I guess she sang about many of her actual personal problems.  She was born in Long Beach.

We have that strange saga of the Austrailian disk jockey duo that hoaxed Buckingham Palace, and got through to the hospital where Kate Middleton was suffering from that horrible complication from the morning sickness condition.  The lady had the Queen's accent down to a tee, when she asked "about her little tummy virus".  I'd give them an A for impersonation.  But then we got the grim follow-up to the story that the nurse who had field the call to the hospital and accepted it as genuine, a couple of days later she was found dead, presumably of suicide, but you never know- - perhaps it was some kind of vengeance murder.  Of course those two dick jockeys have been thrown off the air.

Saturday was the 22nd anniversary of the shooting of John Lennon by Mark David Chapman.  KLOS on Sunday played a full blown version of "Grow Old with Me" that I had never heard before- - with the strings and the multi-track layering and all of that.  Before it had just been Lennon at the piano, on the vinyl Milk and Honey record.  I'd like to go back to 1990 when I that Saturday night was recording a lot of John Lennon songs, back in the era when they still had cassette tapes and you could do that.  I was belting down the Black Velvet- - and the next morning woke with a spltting headache that lingered till noon of that day.  But that did not stop me from going to church with my parents.  This is because we were having a congragational meeting after the service to approve a new pastor named William Halliday, whom I was told was a relatively new convert to the denomination, and used to play tough guys in Hollywood.  The sermon Halliday gave that day was on Religious Doubts.  This is the first and last time he ever gave a sermon like that.  He was approved with only one dissenting vote in the entire congragation, and I voted for him.  After this we went to some sandwich place for lunch, where my Dad complained about smoke coming over the partician from the smoking section of the resturant, back when they still had those.  I had just gotten into GWBASIC computer programming, and was all excited about that, but I have a feeling I talked a blue streak and bored my parents stiff.  This was back when I was attending ROP classes.

Today is the anniversary of the death of my grandmother - my mother's mother.  This was in 1973 and next year will be the 40th anniversary.  And she was the last of my four biological grandparents to die.  She died in the doctor's office where she had gone because she'd had chest pains.  So she drove herself, and had a fatal heart attack right there in the doctor's office, I believed they called a myro-cartio-infarction.  Coincidentally at the time (meanwhile) I had just gotten back from Morning classes at Cypress and had just poured myself a glass of Thunderbird and was relaxing.  It was soon after this I got the call my grandmother had died.  Later my Mom was annoyed with me because I had not called her at work to tell her.  I figured it was such downer news perhaps she'd prefer to be told in person.  There was a full moon this night.  Grandma was 75.

John Darling from around here died.  He used to eat at the table with is before Irvin Burger came on board.  I only noticed he'd sometimes get confused and forget where the table was- and start looking around at all other parts of the room.  There are also roomers that David Shaner has died, but this has not been officially confirmed.  David used to relate the lunch and the dinner menus at breakfast time before they were posted.  He was a Christian and my brother knew and liked him, and he was known for his patriotic speeches on 4th of July gathering.  However his was record in Viet Nam is a little dubious, but I won't comment on this without having all the facts.

Stephanie Miller has newfound hope about this whole Proposition Eight ruling by the Supreme Court.  Her reasoning is that there is a "major historical trend" in the country now like the Civil Rights movement and no supreme court judge "wants to be on the wrong side of the movement".  It is argued that whoever has the pivelege of writing the majority decision will go down in history and be famous twenty years from now, as societal tastes change to a more gay friendly environment.  When I heard that the High Court has accepted this case- - I naturally assumed myself it's because they wanted to overturn all those bad lower court rulings.  But Stephanie and Chris don't see it that way.  Thergred Marshall is famous for Brown vs the Board of Education in 1954.  I guess alas that for people of the over fifty set like me, who are set in our ways, that it's another case of "Your old road is rapidly fading, get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand, for the Times they are a Changing".

In terms of real estate mortgages that are in negative equity, the laws are on the owner's side, favoring your being able to keep your house with new laws pushing banks into letting you refinance.  It seems according to these ads they are running that loan officers will lie to you and say "the most effective way to protest your loan is not to pay it".  These sheisters know that laws can be used so that banks actually profit more if you default on your loans.  And these ads suggest that with the right legal team on your side, these loan officials won't even want to face seeing the judge because they know that they will lose.  Let's hope they are right.  Personally, what you should have done is paid a down payment.  That's kind of why they invented down payments - to get the initial principal right down, so that the interest rates don't accrew monthly as rapidly- and you're able to knock down the principal significantly with each payment- instead of the loan company getting virtual free money for the first several years.  Believe me - I've written these programs.  I know how they work.

In personal news we had our anual Christmas Party here last Saturday night.  I wasn't feeling all that well on Saturday and arrived late and left as soon as possible.  We had ham, and roast beef, but it had an odd reddish cast and an odd taste, and for all I know it could be horse meat.  There was also a dinner roll and mashed potatoes and gravy.  The coffee they served tasted like radiator water.  I managed to get three pieces of apple pie.  And I did get seconds on salad and whatever that strange reddish beef was.  They showed a long boring video made by the owners of this place of our activities during the year, quite professionally done.  The husband is a regular computer whiz.  However we had to watch it BEFORE we ate, and- - we hadn't had that much for lunch and my stomach was getting tied up into knots.  But otherwise there hasn't been that much hard news over the weekend, which is why I did not post on either Saturday or Sunday.  All we know is that the President and John Boehner were meeting privately over the weekend to try and hammer out an agreement.

146,000 Jobs Added Last Month

The unemployment picture is rosier than economists had been projecting.  They figured that due to Hurricane Sandy and all this anxiety about the fiscal cliff that unemployment would rise to 8.0% and I heard that figure mentioned yesterday.  Today's figure was announced at 7.7% although no matter what it is, those on the tea party right are going to call it disappointing.  All the tea party has left is their own lost illusions.  Apple will be bringing jobs back to America.  They shouldn't be overly praised for this.  They are just being normal patriotic Americans.  But ABC news says that aside from patriotism, the bottom line of corporations now makes it more lucritive to bring jobs back to America from China since wages have hiked dramatically in China.  Also there has always been the matter of the shipping costs, and the fact that wages have dipped so low in America, they don't have to pay labor here that much more.  Of course you keep hearing about how rich people want to flee the United States because income taxes are too high here.  Well there is the door.  Nobody's stopping you.  But these tea baggers are far too big of control freaks to want to leave the Union because it is here they have leached out all their wealth from stealing from the poor.  They are after power and they can't have that in a place like Switzerland.  Nobody will listen to them over there.  Jim De Mint left the US Senate today after only two years into his latest term.  He's said he's done everything he can and has brought a lot of right wingers into the US Senate.  I say good riddance.  Of course Tim Pawlente and Rick Santorum are no longer in government but have become lobbyists, where the real money is.  I only wish some of these people had made their big Exit move ten years ago before they did so much damage.  It was Jim De Mint who spoke of how trying to get the Health Care bill pass would be the President's Waterloo, and "
We will break this President'.  With a challenge like that anybody, including me- - might pass even a bill I wasn't completely happy with, just to spite them.  May I suggest these people use the exact wrong psychology, and that includes Mitt Romney.  Rush Limbaugh explained his line the other day about "Even if the President had 800 Billion in new tax revenues he'd still want to punish the rich".  In actuality the thing is - as the Press Secretary and his guest carefully explained- - that there is no way you could raise anything close to 800 Billion with deductions along, and have it be at all fair or reasonable.  But then I imagine Rush Limbaugh contributes so little to charities he would not be affected one bit anyhow.  Apparently it was Jim De Mint who compared children in Chicago protesting during the school teacher's strike, as the same thing as what is going was going on in the streets in Iran during June of 2009.  I don't know.

You'd think this whole thing with Assad and Syria and seran gas would be more in the news today but the story seems to have died away overnight.  Yesterday they were talking about seran gas, where if one drop gets on the skin it will instantly kill a man.  And now they are loading whole missile war heads with the stuff, and the Obama administration is doing nothing.  Hillary just says "Well, if they actually use these weapons on their own people as they are threatening to do, then we'll take action".  This stand-offish attitude is puzzling to me.  For some reason the Obama administration is scarcely troubled by anything this murderous thug like Assad is doing at all.  They don't seemed to be bothered by his massive oppression and despotism.  Other Arab nations say maybe they'll do something about Assad, but then they don't.  I don't get it.

George Zimmerman is suing NBC because they left out three seconds of questioning on a 9 - 11 call last February.  Zimmerman was talking about this guy "hanging out in the rain and he doesn't look right.  He looks like he's up to no good and he's black and wearing a hoodie.  But the three seconds left out has the dispatcher asking him, "Is he Black or Latino" and Zimmerman answers, "He's black".  And so NBC is being sued for promoting racial hysteria or something.  NBC issued an apology, and fired three of their employees involved with the editing process, but that isn't enough for Zimmerman.  It makes you wonder how important Zimmerman is to the far right tea party cause that they would fund the massive legal team that's conducting these law suits for Zimmerman.  Of course these tea party folk can get really testy and inconsistent.  It's disrespectful for example "for Joe Byden to interrupt Paul Ryan while he's telling nothing but wall to wall lies devoid of substance", but it's not disrespectful to call the President these racist names or make some of the scandelous statements they have made about how the president conducts foreign policy.  You've heard them.  But as a clue of how groundless these charges about the ambassador death at Bengazi are- - surely if there were ANY support for the many charges made by the political right, Mitt Romney would have jumped at the chance to bring all these up in his foreign policy debate with the President.  It's a case of put up or shut up.  And Romney knew how bad he'd look if the President humiliated him, along with the entire tea party on national TV.

The Supreme Court has decided to take up the case of both the defense of marriage act, and also Proposition 8 here in California, which bans gay marriages.  I think the tenth amendment has the definitive word on the matter myself.  It says those things not prohibited by the Constitution for the states to do, are the domain of the State governments.  And marital rules are just such a domain of the state government.  It's that straightforward.  As such I think we can feel pretty confident that the Supreme Court will uphold the California proposition.  But we all have to wait for June to find out.  In that time however, perhaps rapidly changing cultural morays will somehow put political pressure in the High Court to strike down proposition 8.  Obviously if the rules on marriage are "federalized" in this manner, it will unleash the floodgates of massive protests from the Christian right.

 Apparently Santorum and Pawlente are no longer in government at all but lobbyists.  And now Jim De Mint is also finding it more lucrative to be a lobbyists.  I wish they would ALL just get out of government and find some other lucrative line of work and leave the rest of us alone.  Jim De Mint is the chief of the political nuts and brags that he has reshaped the image of the US Senate.  But he says his work there is done.  I guess a few statements in here get repeated.  On the other hand, maybe you have your own favorite infamous Jim De Mint quote.  De Mint has made a lot of strange statements over the years for instance comparing school children in Chicago protesting during a teacher's strike there- - as somehow similar to the violence in mideast countries like Iran.  Randy says that now Insurance companies are unhappy with the Republicans for wanting to raise the Medicare age, because it means these insurance companies can no longer “dump” their clients into the system at age sixty five but are stuck with them for two more years.  Of course the Affordable Care act will prove very lucritive for insurance companies.  You know, sometimes I caugh when I’m under emotional stress. Rush Limbaugh explained the whole 800 billion thing.  Rush and all those people are obsessed with the idea that the President wants to "Punish the rich for having money and being productive".  The tea party also leans heavily in terms like "Socialism", "left wing social engineering" and my personal favorite, "Islamo-fascism".   Rush thinks that the idea of eliminating deductions will work.  But that Obama press secretary carefully explained that it wouldn’t and that the only thing that makes any sense is to raise the tax rates back to what they were under President Clinton when the economy did so well.  Also economists lines up to tell George Bush in 2001 this his idea to cut tax rates on the rich was a bad idea precisely for what happened.  It would balloon the deficit and not help the economy but government programs would have to be sacrificed.

More Tea Party Extremism

Yesterday the US senate failed to ratify a UN treaty on disability rights for people of all nations.  Even China and Russia, as well as the rest of the civilized world voted for it.   But the home school lobby whom Randi Rhodes regards as “cultish” got to people like Santorum and prevented the treaty’s ratification, even though John Mc Cain even voted for it.  Bob Dole was wheeled out on to the congress chamber to plead for the bill’s passage, but these 38 republican senators still turned it down.  Dole is now 89.  Apparently it is believed it will set up some sort of “death panel” in this country to decide whether or not to euthanize disabeled people, and it will interfere with home schooling and deny families the right to determine the future of their own disabeled child.   Randi says these fears are groundless in that the bill does not affect domestic law and that the American Disabilities Act passed under Bush 41 already makes the US measure up to the terms of this treaty.  But that doesn’t matter to people like Santorum or the tea party because- - this home school lobby has this xenophobia that they are imparting to their kids, and they don’t want anyone to interfere with that.  As you know there was a nuclear missile treaty with Russia that the Republicans refused to ratify a year and a half ago or so.  It doesn’t matter that a treaty was worked out by Bush 43 because now they don’t trust him either, after the statement he made on immigration a couple days ago.  They are starting now not to even trust John Boehner, either.  But the tea party holds out this threat of “primarying” you, if you don’t play ball with them.  Randi thinks this whole set up is sick, of course, and is wondering whether there isn’t some kind of way we could take away their power.  Fox News is of course, the mouth piece of the far right.  Their whole structure is so “incestuous” with people with a clear political bias posing as “objective news analysts” that it’s a bad joke, and a rather sickening one.

I'll give you the answer to two of those questions on the last posting.  Infinity CANNOT be proven to be equal- - even to itself, because the very term of "Infinity" denotes that the value cannot be defined, digitally.  In the question about "Can I buy a Vowel" the correct syntax there is indeed the word "Can" rather than "May".  The question is not "permission" by someone.  The issue is Can you litterally Buy a Vowel.  Not if the Vowel you request is not in the puzzle.  In that case you literally CAN'T - - buy a vowel.  Let me cover the one about whether we "earn" our Salvation or "God does it aside from human works".  I used the term in the example - - that I was sent to hell because I "Fell short" in failing to "exercise the proper humility thinking I could do it myself".  But turn this question around.  Suppose I screwed around with the moral issues in my life without a Care because I knew in advance I had a divine insurance policy.  Would they have gotten on my case for THIS?  You bet your sweet petuti they would.  Christians have no problem talking about the exercise of Faith- - till one of the members of their congragation has the audacity to actually take them up on the offer.  Think about it.  Many of the ideas perishoners get about God to begin with- - - the "error" is tracable straight back to LIES that they were told when they were witnessed to.  (Selah)  There are times in my life where I have been presented with a Choice.  I can follow the Golden Rule, or I can violate it and claim my pastor told me to.  For instance I hate the phrase "Jesus loves you and wants wonderful things for your life".  I don't like hearing this from others- - and I won't subject others to hearing it from me.  How many of you out there think that if you are Sinless this gives you a ticket to Heaven when you die.  I said - completely Sinless.  You'd be wrong.  You are "Saved" NOT by being free of sin.  You are SAVED exclusively by being CHOSEN to be saved.  This is the principle laid down in Calvin's Institutes.  You see, if Christ died for the sins of the Whole World- - then we are all saved.  I don't see how you can parse that sentense any other way.  I'll give you one more answer from that roster of questions.  IF you STATE something - - involving a Noun Clause- - - usually it's a case of "I believed that - - " or else "I didn't know that- - - "  or "He said you were - - "  In this case you and I know the rules of grammer.  The tenses must normally match in such cases.  That is- - everything pointed to in the Noun clause- - is contingent on that moment- - In the Past- - and need not necessarily be true NOW.  The only time we change tenses- - or switch horses in mid stream so to speak- - - it's like endorsing a check.  If you sign a check- - you're "owning it" and insuring its payment.  In like manner if you switch to the Present tense mid stream like "Joe told me that you are going to the store today" I am saying "I believe that.  I'm accepting that statement as the way things are".  Interestingly heresay is not admissable in court.  Or stated another way - - - as long as the statement hangs exclusively upon an appendage of that other statement- - - it's like YES they MADE a statement like this.  I HEARD them MAKE the statement.  But the content of the statement itself is not admissable as Evidence.  Capish?

Some people seem to enjoy function as "spoilers".  That is - - there is no positive outcome from the actions they undertake but they seem to get their jollies screwing other people's lives up.  There is that episode of House last night where they want to cut off this young woman's arm, who has cancer or something.  But she wants to delay the opperation till after she wins a championship sailing contest she's worked for for years.  But the hospital insists the opperation is so important that they want to contrive to do it somehow even if no permission slip is signed.  Other people meddle in disputes where they have no stake in the outcome - - but they want to throw in their two cents anyhow.  These people could be called - - - people who get a lot of other people to dislike them, and then they see themselves as a martyr or something.  People around here steal sugar and cream in massive ammounts, so that all of us are deprived of even having these condements on the table but have to ask for them, and at times we don't get them.  I've wondered what the different between me and a mass murder on death row is.  The answer is they probably get better medical care than I do, and they most likely eat better, as well as having a fan club of sychophants that I lack.  On the soap opera Will agreed to not spill the beans about his paternity of Gabriel’s baby, but I don’t know if that including in Uncle Eric.  Priest or no priest, I would not tell such a close family member something I’ve pledged to friends who are depending on me not to divulge.  It seems as this point that Will just wants to make trouble.  He doesn’t really love Gabriel, but he’s possessive enough to take time out from his gay life style, to be jealous over the happiness of two other people.  Marlena said nothing about seeing Brady and Christine in bed together.  

David Cruise talked about this whole subway pushing incident in New York City.  They want to blame the guy with the camera for not coming to the rescue even though other people were closer.  So I don’t get it.  I guess perhaps he got money for the forty photographs he snapped with his digital camera that got people’s ire up.  Of course- - - if there is one thing that ticks me off more than anything else it's what I call a "lack of emotional engagement".  Those Talosians on that pilot startrek episode were unnearving because they saw Captain Pike and Spock and the crew as just "specimines" like some sort of lab experiment.  I suppose Masters and Johnson are the ultimate sick perverts because apparently there is data in their books about sexuality and orgasmic potential in small children.  How in the name of God do you justify research experiments like that?  My Dad used to love these "mind game" movies where someone was being driven insane.  I suppose experiments have been done to see how quickly a child will have a nervous breakdown is he's exposed to adverse enough conditioning.  It would be a similar sort of personality who would, for instance do a documentary on a horrible accident- or even a battlefield scene of blood and death- - and not lift one finger to help because of that famous "non intervention doctrine" the Star Trek people adhere to.  Grover Norquest was alive and well in Star Trek episodes before he ever manifested in real life.  Of course Pastor Halliday got his rocks off in getting a rise out of me by cunningly timed biting and cutting insults- - but then continues in this almost monotone trance like voice like HAL the computer in 2001 thinking how "above it all" he is.  I have to wonder what kind of a man prefers getting his rocks off that way.  I'll tell you "a soft answer does NOT turn away wrath".  It surpresses it.  Because if the individual causing the taunting is in a position of more power and authority than you, and being from Texas, may be packing a gun anyhow- - - you have no Choice- - at least in This lifetime.  There is a scene in Key Largo where Humphrey Bogart was taunted into using his gun, and Bogart refused.  But he found out later the bullets had been removed from the gun anyhow by the criminals.  So in the criminal's mind if he fired back, killing Bogart, he'd be justified anyhow.

The Art of the Possible

President Obama changed his oppinion on whether you could raise 800 Billion dollars just by closing tax loopholes.  He now believes that is impossible.  Consider this fact.  Our economy did just fine under the Clinton taxation rates we are all dreading reverting to now.  And consider this one.  When was the last time a filthy rich tea party person ever "decided to do something for his country" with his new windfalls of cash, as he's received these past four years?  Something like - giving a poor person a job?  And another thing - - is there any guarentee that no matter how Rich a politician is he won't "go cheap" and hire illegal aliens to clean his house and do his gardening>  From the Republican point of view let me give this simple illustration to show their assenine attitude.  As you know I am worried about getting an inheritence.  But suppose I was told that "right now" I could have seventy-five percent of my "wish list" of what I'd consider optimal.  Would I go for it?  I'd be a fool not to.  Anybody would.  But not these Republicans.  They say they fear the new recession "cliff" and yet when given a chance to get seventy or eighty percent of what they want- - they turn up their nose at the offer, and apparently would rather have none of it.  Somehow sabotaging the economy is a plan of action they will employ now, as they tried to employ this past year to try and defeat the President, which they were unable to do.  I had Randy Rhodes on at the usual times.  Her show was not especially eventful but she’s always informative.  I’d hire her for treasurer or somewhere in economics in government, because I trust her a hell of a lot more than I do most of these politicians. She says that the gross national product used to break down about fifty – fifty in terms of corporate profits verses wages to workers.  But now worker’s wages comprise only 43%, so I assume that means that profits account for 57%.  I assume these numbers are compared just to each other and not other intangibles such as law enforcement and other government functions.  It seems that as a percentage of the gross national product, Corporate profits have never been higher, as of the third quarter of this year.  But worker’s wages are at an all time percentage low, when measured against the GNP.  That’s very telling and something Judy and Dr. Levy will never admit.  Never underestimate a tea bagger’s capacity to ignore hard numbers when staring them in the face.  Now they are telling us Real Estate prices are up 21 percent nation wide.  You'd think this would put a definitive end point to tea party worries, but knowing them they won't believe it.  Now we have more evidence of global warming.  It's seventy degrees in Chicago some thirty degrees above normal.  Dandelions in December, anyone?  It's balmy in Central Park, too, as well as in the nation's capital.

Let’s talk about this whole idea about psychotherapy to convert a teenager of either gender from homosexuality to normal heterosexuality.  The operative word in my mind is - - it’s “therapy”, which means it should be “therapeutic” to the patient, along the same lines that going to a sulphur hot spring is invigorating and rejouvenative to one’s physical health.  However fresh information leads me to believe that I have weighed in incorrectly on this issue, when I said I was all in favor of it.  Because apparently all the parties who engage in this particular practice addressed by the bill Governor Brown signed- - are right wing religious in nature.  And religion has little place in psychotherapy.  It has a place only to the extent that the patient himself brings up the topic as one of the troubling psychological issues in his life.  Certainly a therapist’s job is to make the patient feel comfortable and in a “safe” environment where he may talk freely and in confidence.  I must confess I can’t say this of myself as having a “safety net” environment, and I would not plan on such an environment being there in any future therapy sessions I might have for my own psychological problems.  But I too, like the guy on the radio, would ask the patient things that may be troubling him and conflicts he might have and attempt to draw out the solution to the patient’s own problems from the patient himself.  I would certainly lay out the idea that “actions have consequences” and that certain courses of action have happier, more fulfilling endings, than other actions.  But I most certainly would not try to convert him by reading from the book of Leviticus.  Nor would I “shame the patient into going straight”.  I would most certainly ask the patient about his day to day life with classmates, and relations with his parents, and do any particular things his father said to him - - bother him. 

Consider this reality?  Infinity is a geometric and an analog concept, but not a digital concept.  Bearing this thought in mind - is it possible to prove that Infinity equals itself by using a digital computer?

Suppose the saying 'You can't get There from here" is true.  Does it then make sense for the person making the statement to add, "You need to totally revamp your methodology and follow my instructions carefully believing that I know more than you about getting you where you want to go".

Consider this notion.  We regard Speed as a comodity, but we don't regard Time as a comodity but in infinite supply.  Suppose you lived in a world where Speed as an abstract concept was as endless as we regard the endless passage of Time - - but getting Time to pass at all, was regarded as just an unusual concept as we regard great ammounts of Speed.  This is a concept in the last paragraph.

Which sentense do I regard as gramatically correct, and why?

On "Wheel of Fortune" is it correct, gramatically to say "Can I buy a vowel?" or rather, should one say, "May I buy a vowel" and explain why.

Is it correct to say as an emphatic affirmation, "I should say so!" or is it more correct to say using Marcus Grammar rules to say "I would say so"

Which under Marcus rules is the gramatically proper sentens?"  "Steve Carone told me that Marcus is an expert marksman?" or should he say "Steve Carone told me that Marcus was an expert marksman?"

Which is gramitically correct.  You've just found out your factory is twenty thousand widgets short of short of the 110,000, where you expected to be.  What is the best way to express that?  "Out factory turns out fewer widgets than we did a year ago" or rather "Our factory turns out less widgets than it did a year ago".

Which is correct?  "Neither of the top two theories on the existance of God is the correct one", or rather should one say "Neither of the top two theories on the existance of God are correct".

Suppose Neil Savedra told me in the afterlife "God rejected you from the Kingdom of heaven because you didn't have the Faith to believe you were saved, but believed you had no choice but to attempt as best you could to try and make it on your own.  In other words, the only thing that kept you Out of heaven is because you fell short in that you failed to exercise the proper humility".  What is Logically Wrong with this assertion?

Last night they talked about “micro sleeping” with your eyes open, while doing things like driving.  They ran an experiment on this one guy who fell into micro sleep fourteen times, in a relatively brief road test, but he was only aware of it happening to him twice.  It’s a wonder there aren’t more major car crashes than there are.  Occasionally when I would be walking- - I’d laps into thought about something I read, and then be surprised I was almost a half mile down the road farther than I thought I was.  I guess that’s another form of “sleep walking”.  Now they have lowered the magic number of hours of sleep from eight to Seven.  OK.  It just occurred to me that a pretty good test of intelligence is to run that series of small tasks test like in that “Charlie” movie about the mentally retarded guy who recovered and became a genious, before slipping back again.  The therapist would issue four commands in a row like- sharpen a pencil, bring me a glass of water, open the window- - - move a chair to the other side of the room, for instance.  Since tea party members have seemingly no capacity at all to Listen to anything but the sound of their own voice, it’s an open question how they would perform in such a simple test.  You can tell when people are losing their "moral foundation" or having a basis for what they say.  There is one Bible teacher who would do "Bible Studies" at his home.  He would Lead these Bible "discussions" or studies, involving the group.  But then he came to a point where he would insist on not being interrupted but would "get in the flow" and he didn't want to be destracted, but said "But you can ask me questions afterwards".  Well guess what?  If ever there was a period afterwards when you could ask questions, this too vanished.  So you would try writing a letter.  At first this man would respond to letters.  But it soon came to pass it was clear this man didn't want to be bothered by me in any shape, say or form.  So it is with tea party members.  They don't want to be "distracted" by anything like fact checkers, or government statistics, or proven theories by real bonified economists out there.  They just want to remain in their own political echo chamber.

I’d like to talk about Objectivism a little more and why I think it is the “only way to go” in terms of what should be “believed in”.  Sometimes people who are wrong can mis constrew and mis use facts to prove a point that is based on that distorted perception of the facts.  For instance, Wayne Dyre believes in the mind generating a “positive field” and that “Positive confession” is a good thing - - not so much because being positive is better than being negative, but rather that “positive confession” can be used as a Tool to alter your own future destiny for the better.  For instance Wayne Dyre might point to the case of Fredrick K Price.  For a long time Fred never doubted the doctrine of Christian healing no matter what the medical condition.  But there came a time when Fred began saying that “The things I have done with myself as experiments in positive confession - - I do not recommend that you follow in my footsteps”.  He then began chiding his congregation for “not believing in healing so much, but you people are just stared stiff of visiting a doctor”.  He would then expand this do doing what he’d never done before and praising doctors and praising Hospitals for places you can have surgery in.  At some point after this- - he learned that Fred’s wife had serious bone cancer in the hip.  Clearly Wayne Dyre could argue - - given his bent- - that “allowing negative thought to creep into his awareness – introduced a “briech in his protective hedge” allowing Satan to come in and produce adverse circumstances in his life.  The solution is much simpler in my opinion.  I believe a lot of people intuitively Know the future.  That is they have this “mental radar” thing.  If the Future were NOT there to be Known- - then they wouldn’t know it.  Sometimes this premonition comes in the form that “I have the feeling I’m going to lose big if I make one more bet” and they make one more bet and sure enough they lose.  Their anxieties did not CAUSE a bad roll of the dice.  They just chose to ignore their own mental radar.   We have spoken of the “super self” theory.  This notion is based on what you’d have to call a metaphysical theory of mine we’ll call “symatrism” for lack of a better term.  This comes from the scientist’s notion that “tachyons can only travel faster than the speed of light” and for every particle of sub light speed there is a corresponding super speed light particle.  If you resort to what I call the “optical model” or “optical calibration” the thing would have a One at the center of a line - - (factor one) and the left of the line would go from zero to one- - but the right would go from factor one to infinity.  Actually this would work as a trigonometric tangent model, too.  But I don’t want to get too complicated here.  My point is just – in terms of some practical illustration you can kind of use to gauge what I am talking about  - - just as you look at an image in a magnifying glass- - and see an image at a less than one focal length, but at the focal length you see a blur- and then you see an upside down image that slowly shrinks the farther you recede the lens away.  I am not stating that this is MY theory – and science has not weighed in officially on this - but it’s a theory.  So that of course - - if you had some super-light “twin” out there - - He would already Know the future, and since he is symmetrically related to You, then that means You know it, too.  

Tea Party Mental Illness Remains Rampent

Nuts on the political far right fringe will lie to your face any time you let them.  Unlike them, I take seriously what the "fact checkers" say.  So I decided I better study up on the whole matter of US spending and what the money is spent on.  Randy Rhodes says we could cover most of the deficit if we did three things.  If we said that drug companies had to compete for the price of medication, and if we raised the income bracket on the top two percent back to Clinton levels,  and if we put some sort of maximum dollar cap on certain types of tax deductions.  What I noted about the figures was how MUCH of the budget is devoted to pension funds.  No longer the Republicans are going after these.  We spend a lot, apparently, on our congressmen and Civil Service employees.  A major lie is that the deficit is 40% of the gross national product or something.  That’s what I’ve heard.  I’ve heard figures higher than that.  Not even close.  It’s just over eight percent, and ALL projections are that the federal deficit will be reduced in the coming few years ahead.  Also MOST of the Obama deficit can be attributed to a drop in revenue due to this recession and not “wild spending”.  But also the FICA rate drop contributes to an SS deficit.  Neither is payment on Intrest what the tea party claims it to be.  It isn’t thirty percent or more.  Not even close.  It’s six percent.  Neither is this a “record” deficit in terms of the GNP.  Not even close.  BOTH world war II and World War II had way higher deficets than our current crisis, and in both cases the deficets came down right after the War was concluded, and there is no indication this deficit won’t drop just as sharply as well.  To sum it up then, the vast majority of what you hear from Judy and the tea party is scare tacticts, pure and simple.

Sometimes I value substance over Politics, or in this case, Bill Handel over the alternative on the other station.  Stephanie Miller lost me when she attacked that called who asked why she hadn’t reported a key provision of the President’s Budget had already failed 99 to nothing in a US Senate vote a few months ago.  Stephanie whigged out and made no sense.  So I turned it to Bill Handel before eight thirty and had that on till nine.  Rush Limbaugh raved about this NBC commentator, Bob Costis, I guess, who briefly mentioned the proliferation of guns in this country and that if guns were harder to get, both Gavon Belcher and Kasandra Perkins would be alive and a three month old baby would not be orphaned.  Rush Limbaugh wanted to blame it on anything but guns.  He raved on about black crime and how it isn’t caused by poverty or bad police relation or lack of education – or even the proliferation of firearms- - but he said “If I told you the real reason – I can’t do that because I would be accused of being a racist”.  I can only infer from that remark that Rush attributes high crime in ghettos to the fact that the perpetraters are Black.  In that case what are you going to do about Trayvon and George Zimmerman, where the perpetrator was white?  And yet the tea party sees the White man as the victum in this case.  But Rush didn’t stop there.  He talked about added salt in foods and trans fats, and compact flourecent light bulbs, as somehow being ills greater than that of proliferation of firearms in US Society.  But then I switched to “Live and Local” and they were talking about the same thing.  This Kansas City Chief killed his wife, and then he goes to the team club house the next day and “thanks his team” before blowing his brains out in front of them.  Another cause Rush didn’t want to tackle was brain damage caused by concussions sustained in football.  Tword the end, Mohamed Ali was babbeling and incoherent and could hardly speak.  Of course besides altered personality you can also have Parkinsins disease, and other perceptual difficulties.    Randy Rhodes opened her show by tackeling the same topic.  But it’s kind of too late for me to weigh in on the matter myself in a blog because unfortunately the story will have run its course given the short shelf life of news stories these days, and If I’d been smart I would have gotten out my own posting about five thirty AM this morning before I was even awake.   You need a license to become a barber, or a plumber, or to drive a car, or to open up a restaurant, but to engage in a pastime where a human life could be taken, the government doesn’t consider that particular pastime worth regulating.  Rush Limbaugh also complained before the fact that massive rules changes in football making the game unrecognizable.  Randy Rhodes says she wouldn’t mind added rules to make the game safer.  In my “A manly sport for manly men” blog a year or more ago, I proposed that we already had too many whoos rules, and we should just let players “play the game”.  After all the game is relatively safe, compared to doing time in the Roman Coloseum.

Certain news is "No News".  The Supreme Court still has not decided whether or not they want to hear the Proposition 8 case in California.  That case is neither on the Accept list nor the Reject list.  In the time they take on whether to decide the case, they could actually be trying the issue.  (Selah)  But they are going to "decide if to decide" again this coming Friday.  The Mars sattelite dug up and analyzed a bunch of Martian earth, and they did not find the vaguest hint of even any potential for life there.  That isn't good news.  It's beginning to look as though not only is there no life on Mars now, but perhaps that there has never been life on the planet.  In Syria there are reports they are planning to use chemical weapons on their own citizens.  Kate Middleton has some violent form of Morning Sickness.  The sex of the baby apparently remains undetermined, ans I guess no matter the gender, new Royal had decreed that the heir will bump Prince Harry one notch down the line of royal sucession.  This morning sickness illness is something Marie Shriver had, and it cam be so violent that you actually vomit blood.  Also starvation of the fetus can insue.

We had cheeseburgers for lunch, at long last.  We also had French fries with catsup, and I had seconds on the soup as well as another half burger.  She had started on the other side of the room but came over to our side.  They were late in opening up the doors and I sat in the front room with a host of other people for a while.  I am not aware that Lynne ever had her Monday class in there today.  I heard no announcement and darkly suspect she has stopped coming.  I had Randy Rhodes on till one.  Brady and Christine have decided to have sex, with very little “courting behavior” first.  Brady seems to think all he has to do is slap a woman around and she will find him irrestable, and the sick thing about it, she was right.  Will may not want to marry Gabriel and may prefer the gay life style, though I suggest he see a therapist about that.  But if he can’t have her he’s going to prevent Nick Fallon from having her.  Even though Nick has offered to marry Gabriel and raise the baby as his own and keep the paternity of the baby a secret.  Will isn’t so hot on the idea saying “secrets always come out”.  In this case- - it’s not a secret that outsiders particularly need to know - - yet.  Meanwhile Samantha, Elvis, and Johnny were having a nice “family moment” bouncing around names for a new brand of lipstick, and they decided on “Proof”.  That is in intriguing name with definite promotional possibilities.  

Leo Le Port was informative today.  Yesterday he said that what he calls 2 K HD, is really two thousand bytes by four thousand bytes, which would make it an eight megapixel picture, what a good camera would produce.  But he says they measure it by the number of horizontal lines or rows.  He therefore claims that 2 K would be four times the resolution of your not so “standard” 1080 HD, which is better than TV stations broadcast in.  He says that one screen away you cannot see the individual pixels with 2 K, but in Japan they have 4 K.  But is 4 K really sixteen times the resolution of 1080?  Scott Wilkinson claims with 4 K you cannot see the pixels no matter how close to the picture you get.  I did a posting early this afternoon, which came out OK.  I had to filter out a lot of preliminary ideas that were floating around in my mind.  I mentally noted that I have tended to sit at tables where the dominant conversational person was to my left.  This was true with Ivon Steel, and Gail Mac Nally, and with Bill Gladstone, and then Loretta Hill, and now it’s true with Irvin Burger.  You have to go back eight years for this axiom not to be so where Dianne Harman (who departed in early 2009) was more dominant than Ceecee, to my left.  Of course in those days Manfred was to my right.  I am easing off on the garlic and the vitamin C and am down to two garlic and one vitamin C per day.  I’m really not sure whether it’s necessary to take the garlic or the vitamin C for health.  I have hopes that the garlic will kill the fungus in the nails in my right hand and also deal with the welts on my right wrist.  Today is 12-02 day or the Palm Street address.  Starting in 1991 I began regarding it as a lucky day.  I will have cigarettes just right about up to pay day this week, and I will have done so without going to the ATM twice like I foolishly did last month.  Breakfast with the Beatles was on from 9:20 onward.  It was an all George Harrison day to commemorate his death on November 29^th of 2001.  At the time I was dining with table mates Pat Weatherbee, Glen, and Jim Hicks.  Glen and Pat were both saddened and surplrised, as was I that George Harrison turned out to be so sick.  They played an in studio recording of “Here Comes the Sun” with other lyrics including “Tambourine Man”.  They played “Deep Blue and “Run of the Mill” and “Tears of the World” which is a bonus track from Thirty Three & a Third, and “This is Love” a throw away track from Cloud Nine they sometimes play, as well as “I Dig Love”, which features Ringo on drums. 

  

The View From Here - - - Now

Well if one were to do a tea party update these it would be “Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies”.  Every day it seems Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan sink deeper and deeper into deluding others, and possibly themselves, too.  Take this whole Islamic Rage crisis they are featuring on the Newsweek cover this week.  It all began when Mitt Romney promised he would issue no political statements to spoil 9 – 11.  But at nine o clock he made the statement that our embassy was “weak” because they said they understood the frustrations of the Islamic protestors.  This was BEFORE the Libyan ambassador and three others were killed.  But he said to delay the release of the statement till one minute after midnight on 9 – 12.  Why did he do this?  He was afraid of just what ended up happening, that the White House would disown or otherwise not back up the original embassy statement.  The whole Libyan murder thing, ironically, was just icing on the cake because it had not EVEN HAPPEMED yet.  So Romney repeated what he knew to be a false statement.   Many other lies have been told.  I think it was on Rush Limbaugh I heard that “Rather than the Libyans escort the body to the hospital, what they really did was tell the terrorists where he was so that they could “finish him off”.  I kid you not.  We were then informed that the Obama administration had forbidden US Marines not to use live ammunition on their weapons, and there was the oft repeated line that “Well the embassy wasn’t properly protected”.  This is another Lie told by the right.  We were then told that the anti Islamic movie could NOT be the source of all the protests because “Nobody in the Islamic world even knows how to use the Internet”.  We have David Gregory’s desperate to breathe life into the Romney campaign by trying to get the Israeli President Netenyahoo to come out and condemn Obama and say “Obama wants to throw Israel under the bus”.  No matter how hard Gregory pressed, Netenyahoo would not say it.  And it would been a bad briech of protocol if he did.  Of course that there is that absurd mock “Press Conference” that Rush Limbaugh had on his show with a really bad actor playing the part of the President, saying things that are TOTALLY not what President Obama would ever say.  Yet Rush Limbaugh thinks it’s great.  Is it any wonder with all these lies that the American people are seeing through it all.  President Obama continues his “bounce” and is up six percentage points in the National Polls, and is up seven points in Ohio, and the President is up five percentage points in the states of Florida and Virginia.  Nobody even asks about Pennsylvania any more since that state is so solidly in the Obama camp.  Some on our side say they even sense an Obama land-slide coming, when November arrives.  It may be a case of “picking the winning horse” and wanting to go with a winner.  Many are seeing a desperate note of desperation in the Romney and Ryan campaign, that’s for sure.  The funny thing is with each new week brings a new Romney gaff or major mistake.  How many more of them will there be?

We come to the movie itself which has been called “soft porn” or “pornography with all of the worse sex scenes edited out”.  And it’s no wonder.  Sam Biselli hared this pornography producer named Alan Roberts to make the movie  His credits include such hits as “The Sexperts” and “The Happy Hooker” trilogy.  So because of that one movie produced in this internet age- - there are protests in twenty Moslem countries, and I assure you all twenty are NOT at war with America.  Rush Limbaugh used to have the saying of “Actions have consequences”.  Rush had another saying.  “Don’t poke the Bear”.  The question is if you pre plan an action leading to tumult and violence- - can you be prosecuted?  I am reminded of a television show where this one criminal was taunting these cops he’d had encounters with and was trying to goad them thinking there would be no repercussions.  So he’d make snorting pig like noises, and say things like ‘Why let these pigs in here?” and “I think I detect the scent of pig”.  Well the police got even with him by throwing in the paddy wagon with a bunch of smelly drunks, and throwing him in the drunk tank at the station where he had to wait the standard twelve hours to have time to “sober up”.  The book of James in the Bible admonishes many times to “Guard your speech”.  Now four American troopers have been killed by “friendly government” when our own Afghan government has fired on our men, becoming commonplace now. One might just wonder whether the release of this whole movie was timed to coincide with the national elections so that it would help Mitt Romney in his campaign by the people seeing in the media every night all these protestors.  And therefore they could say “Look at President Obama.  He has “Lost control” over events in the Mideast”.

Over the weekend was held a conference called the “Value Voters Summet” of all the usual Icons of the right.  Mitt Romney didn’t come himself but sent a promotional film.  Someone joked, “I guess it’s their way of humanizing him”.   This General Boigen guy who spoke there was considered so beyond the pale that he was refused to be allowed to speak at West Point because our own troops didn’t want him to.  He blaimed the refusal on all these atheists.  Of course he repeated the accusation that that Hillary aid was a Moslem infiltrater.  This general Boigen guy urged Israel to attack Iran.  Other speakers said “You don’t want to be a progressive.  Hitler was a progressive”.  Santorum spoke at this gathering and I think he’s the one who said that higher education will never represent our views.  What we need to do is to turn to the two institutions in America that have proved the most reliable- - the Family and the Church.  Paul Ryan spoke at this gathering.  He said “If we show weakness before the Moslems - - they will attack”.  He seems to think that somehow the way to solve every problem in the world is sheer force 

If you've played the game of Risk you know that things are not strictly a "head to head" contest.  So you don't entirely have control over your own destiny.  I am reminded of one event lately where "The Ionian factor" has been mentioned.  Sometimes "higher powers" can intervene in "events that are really none of their business".  Raphael would not file charges against E J Di Mira after that little fist fight that E J started, because he probably felt he was enough of a man and didn't need protection from the legal system to resolve his own personal problems.  Suppose a powerful group - - and I'm picking the Ionians - - - decides they want Mitt Romney to be President for reasons that have nothing logically at all to do with our own issues here in the United States.  There is a Star Trek episode where Bones meets this "community activist"  (the Obama similarity shouldn't escape you) and later she gets involved in politics and is hired as some envoy by President Roosevelt or something and because of her - - peace negotiations are into between President Roosevelt and Adolph Hitler.  You see where this is going.  Because of all these diplomatic overatures our country became "weak abroad" and were ripe pickings for the Nazis to march on in to this country so that by the 22nd century we're all speaking German.  As such when a car ran this lovely woman over in a flook accident Spock pulled Bones back from trying to rescue the woman insuring her death.  Bones turns to Spock and says "Do you know what you just did" and Spock says "Yes, I do".  The trouble is God doesn't read his Nancy Sinatra enough when it comes to me and everybody else.  "Now - What's right is right - - but you ain't been right yet". Fundamentalist Christians are always carrying on about "seeking God's will" or merely "It must have been God's will" assuming that whatever calamity happens is "all for the best".  The trouble is that 99.4% of the time they are wrong.  But these are people who LIVE by the Exceptions in life.  Were it not for the Exceptions- - they would have been out of business long ago.  (Selah)