Rand Paul Gives Address on Civil Liberties

Rand Paul warned us on C-Span today about the impending vote on David Barron, whom the President wants to be Justice of the 2^nd Circuit Court or something.  The problem is that this justice has made very public his views on drone killings.  Rand Paul does not believe that this country should be killing its own citizens traveling in foreign lands even if their behavior is suspect, if they are not in overt combat with our forces in a war setting.  I agree with him.  Paul was rather long winded and repetitive but made some really good points.  He said that our Constitutional protections of the first, fifth, and sixth amendments were not particular for the people with “popular beliefs” like the prom queen of those on the Dean’s list.  Rather it’s for the minorities of a different color, so to speak.  It could be eccentric life styles, or it would be skin color, or out of the mainstream philosophy or an unpopular religion.  It could be Islam, but tomorrow it would be a Conservative Evangelist, should things take a turn for the worse.  But Rand Paul pointed out that “due process” does not mean the President conferencing with some hand picket attorneys telling him what he wants to hear.  You need that adversary system.  Rand Paul points out that even in Roman law the burden of proof was on the accuser.  We were upset with President Bush for “unlawful detention” and now we are just killing them.  Clearly if the President were of the other party, this nomination wouldn’t have a prayer of passage..  But Paul made another painful point I didn’t particularly want to hear.  He said that because the filibuster rule was done away with, it increases the likelihood of Justices with more extreme politics being approved for the federal bench, and this is not a healthy thing.   It should be noted that Ron Paul only trails Hillary Clinton for the nomination by seven percentage points, the same as Paul Ryan.  All of the others have an even larger gap to overcome.  It would seem that there is a libertarian streak here.  Thom Hartman interviewed this Arizona sheriff, who had some strange “constitutionally based arguments” about his right to only enforce state and county laws and has a perfect right to ignore federal laws.  I’d never heard that one before.  If President Obama were running for a third term he’d be really vulnerable on this issue, but of course he’s not.

The democrats weren’t sure whether or not they would just boycott this new select committee on Bengazi.   I think they should have boycotted and just allowed the Republicans to make boring asses of themselves playing to an audience of no one.   But today Nancy Pelosi on C-Span gathered her newly selected committee of three men and two women besides herself.  She said that the democrats wanted the right to subpoena witnesses also, in the true adversial trial scenario where the constitution itself has a clause that says “The defendant shall have compulsory means of obtaining witnesses in his favor”.  John Boehner said no.  Then they at least wanted to be apprised of the witnesses selected so that they could prepare appropriate questions in advance to grill him with.  Again, John Boehner said no.  Nobody said when all of this committee action would commence.  But clearly if the Republicans are somehow going to use the proceedings in some campaign ploy- - time for them is running out before summer, and then it will be campaign seasons, where these Congressmen and women will be on the road.

There was some lady under “Senate Session II” who talked about the need for a constitutional amendment to get dirty money out of campaigning.  If you want my opinion on this I have come around to thinking that this is an excellent idea.  I would never have advocated such a radical action ten years ago, but this issue of dirty campaign money has been clarified in my mind over the passage of these ten years.  She also wants to get Koch Brother dirty pollution out of Michigan, calling it a violation of our liberties to have these mounds of industrial toxins just piled up and getting into people’s homes.  Judging by what she and other people have said, whoever said that the Koch Brothers were NOT involved with the Canadian tar sands, were either mistaken or lying.  The trouble is that there is this “Wild West” attitude among libertarians, where anything goes, at least- - if it’s something the Koch Brothers are doing to us, where they would like to use the apperatus of government itself to guarantee that they can CONTINUE their “user” life-style.  There is this Marie Antwenette attitude that the rich have about the poor now. The trouble is that we aren’t the French of 1791 and have been conditioned and beaten down like animals, and have been conditioned by the media to “get used to the new normal”.  After her Dick Derbin spoke on the subject of college loans.  He reported that people show varying interests when he gives a speech somewhere but their ears always perk up when the subject of Student Loans comes up.  Then it was getting close to dinner time.

One black congressman on C-Span spoke on this whole VA scandal.  I didn’t want to hear another loser speech from our esteemed President, or any White House briefing.  This Black guy made the point that heads have to roll and that the buck stops with General Shensecki.  He needs to be the first to go.  We don’t need another committee or investigation.  For Christ’s sake don’t TALK about what you’re going to do, just DO IT, damn it!  There is a part of me that agrees with Rush Limbaugh.  It’s like Obama’s philosophy is just to use government to perpetuate itself and do things like screw up the whole Health Insurance industry and just stick its finger in everybody’s business, and micro-manage their lives.  If I wanted that I could have joined a religious cult.  I’ve had enough of people who’s chief talent is to make excuses for themselves and constantly talk pie in the sky, but in the end they accomplish nothing.  But they pulled up a few new cult “labels’ out of their ass.  That’s what my family did with me.  They just label something - - and then pronounce the problem “Solved”.     There was this guy who perported to know “the secret to what the government is planning for us in the economy” in a video.   I listened and listened, and after a half hour I threw in the towel and quit, completely exasperated.  The guy had managed to say absolutely NOTHING in a half hour.

People who do any activity most often are looking for either excitement or – they have some goal to do or accomplish something they haven’t done before.  Events that occur in a vacuum lose their relevance.  It’s like Dr Levy’s favorite kind of poetry he wishes we would all write.  It’s like Screwy Louie - - doesn’t really want people to find God, he wants them to “put on a show” in that old adage “are we having fun yet?”   In other words - - things assume real Value and Interest to a person if they are driven or prompted by something.  People like Dr Levy wants us to “go through the motions” and write down something when we have absolutely no inspiration or anything worth saying.  In fact when you think about it, Christianity is replete with this kind of thinking. There is one line from “In My Life” I just figured out.  “But these memories lose their meaning – when I think of love as something new”.   You always got the feeling – however subtle that you were somehow just “killing time” or your present activity was just a stopgap measure.  There is that line in a song of “He’s going back to a simpler life that he once knew” and I guess I hear that word “simpler” and my brain substitutes “bor-ing!”.   I don’t know.  Maybe I’m just getting old and synical.  It’s amazing how different things seem when you’re thirty years younger.

Today we have the power to cure many medical ailments that eludes us before.  The author of the book of Job, has Job come down with horrible skin leizhions or something all over his body, being in great pain.  But when he prays to God for a healing, God says to him "If I asked you to describe the things of heaven, you would say "I have never been to heaven" and if I asked you to tell of the mysteries of the leviathon, you would respond "I have not been down to the depths of the sea".  But as it was I asked you to describe the mystery of a leaf, or a flower, or a butterfly, and you were unable to do it".   I guess I'm wondering what God's point is here.  Because it seems to me to be a Complete non sequetor of unrelated issues.  After all people don't turn to others for Help because they KNOW everything, but because they DON'T.  Was God really looking for a lecture on stamens and anthers and pistols, or chloriplasts or the difference between the basic structure of plant and animal cells.  Maybe Job would have made a flippant George Burnes joke, "Oh, you want to give me a history exam".   But it's virtually clear to me that hat someone who had been to college started giving God a long lecture using academic terms - - God would have responded in a huff " I think you Know that is Not what I was looking for".   Then God goes into a lecture about the stars and constellations and say "Do you understand the mystery of how I control these?"   Parenthetically, it's worth noting that Constellations are man made abstractions, and there is no actual basis in nature and stars that appear to form certain patterns here on earth would appear entirely different viewed from another star.  Too bad God didn't know that.  Even the "inspired visions" of the Bible are very vague - - and often so laden with symbols it's almost as if even the visions themselves aren't meant to be "a report of what the person actually saw" if they "actually saw anything, and didn't just make it up".  It's like you hearing the story, unlike a novel you read, that you are not actually "there" but the speaker is shrouding everything in a fog of vagueness.  When a witness is questioned by the police, he is asked for details and specifics.  This for the most part is completely lacking in these apocraliptic visions referenced in the Bible.  The average dream a person tells his psychiatrist contains more actual details than you find here. 

A Different Kind Of Drug Scandal in the NFL

Now there is a new kind of drug usage scandal in the NFL.  It seems that team owners or managers are giving players massive amounts of pain drugs to disguise the fact that various players have sustained serious injuries that weren’t entirely diagnosed, as of they don’t want the players to know just how seriously they were injured in a particular play.  So they give them drugs they get addicted to and other unnecessary steroids and things.  The team owners are just that anxious to save a buck and increase their bottom line.   The funny thing is – with all the bad press professional football has gotten lately from the national media, Rush Limbaugh may be right.  They just might end up destroying football as we have known it, in fewer years than any of us think.

Now ABC news is concerned about E coli in ground beef and recommend that every hamburger you either grill or eat out, be “well done” so that it’s 160 degrees in the center.  Melinda Lee would have a fit over that one.  The high end of optimal meat temperature for her for beef is 140 degrees.  The nanny state seems in taking the fun out of all of our favorite foods.  Of course around here is one of the med guys accidently drops a pill, they just pick it up off the floor and hand it back to you.  And the thing is there doesn’t seem to be any real problem with this, with people (like me?) who have normal immune systems.  Now I hear that they are recommending hook worms as a cure for some modern ailment like Parkensin’s disease or something.  Larry Elder has Lupis, which is an auto immune disease.   It seems that some people have a natural immunity to Middle East Respritory Sidrone or MERS, and show no symptums.

SMALL BUSINESSES ARE THE KEY TO FULL EMPLOYMENT

It would seem that the reasons for major lack of full employment in this country are a whole lot more complex, and less instantaniously curable than Newt Gingrich and the Republicans would have you believe, as follows:

 An economy where most people work for the state or a global corporation is an economy that has lost its knowledge of the key entrepreneurial building blocks.

The decline of small business has numerous long-term consequences. One is the decline of the middle class, as entrepreneurial enterprise is a key pathway to generational wealth-building and prosperity.

Another is the loss of employment opportunities. As U.S. businesses are being destroyed faster than they’re being created, there are fewer sources of employment.

 Correspondent Kevin K. identified a third long-term consequence: the erosion of opportunities to learn basic skills with economic value. As low-skill work is increasingly replaced by software and robotics, work with a future requires not just higher-level skills but a spectrum of building-block skills and values–what I call the eight essential skills of professionalism in my book Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy.

Many of these skills are fundamental life-skills that are not taught in classrooms; they are learned on the job. If the kind of jobs that enable the learning of these basic building blocks of economic value go away, so do the opportunities to gain these skills.

Dr Levy's Class got started at twenty after five and it was warm in there.  Lisha is moving upstairs, but I’m not sure how close to me she’ll be.  Owen and Gary will be rooming together.   Strangely there seems to be an almost unwritten rule that you don’t dine at the table of someone who’s a roommate.   But Lisha and Loretta Hill clearly don’t get along, and I have no interest in taking sides because I’ve known Loretta a long time.  I mentioned the “Cosmos” episode and Dr Levy began talking about that colony of twenty that wants to go into space and live on Mars- - for the rest of their lives, and they even have worked out the layout of the pods they will be living in.  Ethical considerations would be raised about spawning kids in such an environment and not even giving the kids the choice.  But then kids have that problem with gay parents too and somehow they manage to adjust.   I played up the poor boy angle something fierce about my gloomy finances, but Dr Levy didn’t pick up on the hint.  Then Joe came in just as class was breaking up and got into a conversation and it really seemed gosh to interrupt the conversation.    But then Marsha lent me two dollars.  Most people seem not to have any air conditioning in their rooms at all and here I am cool as a cucumber in here.  We got a peanut butter sandwich from Donnie with our medication.  I went to Glen’s room and secured some instant coffee for three John Black grape cigarettes.  That’s another room without AC.

It was about five years ago that comentator Thom Hartman spoke of this economic cyclic theory called "The Fourth Turning" where are these four cycles in the economy over eighty years or so, and the fourth cycle involves a major economic Crash of stock markets, financial institutions, and everything.  I'm not buying this for a minute.  Not any more.  Five years have passed and the economy is getting stronger and will Continue to get stronger as subsequent years pass, as this Fourth Turning theory appears increasingly more preposterous.  But here is the comentary for George Washington's Blog, presented for your amusement as follows:  A string of scandals involving the federal government is further demonstrating the illegitimacy and hypocrisy of the power structure. Historical cycles point to massive upheaval. Ordinary Americans are being targeted while known terrorists are escorted through security. Kidnappers, rapists, and murderers are being released from prison; an action sanctioned by the President of the United States. The BATF allows guns to find their way to Mexican drug lords, while the federal government is fighting to disarm American citizens. Mega-banks launder billions of dollars worth of drug money. No, this isn’t a dystopic nightmare; This is our present day reality that we all must face.  The establishment is behaving like a crazed psychopath that knows he is about to be brought to justice. Nearly every agency of government has acquired some form of armaments in the past several years. Police departments across the country are getting mine resistant vehicles. Homeland Security is acquiring billions of rounds of ammunition. The Department of Agriculture recently requested body armor as well as sub machine guns. Many other instruments of war have been stored and deployed.  To an outside observer watching these trends, a grim picture is being painted. Each case in and of itself may not add up to much, but when all of the data points are pulled together we can begin to see a pattern of deliberate action.

Proof of Treason in Reagan's 1980 Campaign

Jimmy Carter was leading in the polls generally prior to September of 1980.  Thom Hartman just reported that he has documents from Boni Saddir, who was elected President of Iran by 73% of the vote in 1979.  And Sadir told the Ayatolh that "It's time for me to keep my promise and free the hostages from America".  And the Systolah told Sadir that "We can't now because we've been promised a lot of things by the Reagan campaign".   This is from some "Presidential library" and Boni Sadir commented on this after that movie came out.  And of course George Herbert Walker Bush pardoned everyone involved in this just before he left office.  As you know the pattern would be for North or Poindexter to be first tried and convicted and then pardoned, but prosecutions and indictments were still going on just before the Clinton election.  But Bush pardoned everybody, so that there were no prosecutions of Iran-contra during the Clinton administration.  You won't hear any of this on FOX television, or for that matter, anywhere in the mainstream Media, because they don't report the news any more, only medical and entertainment stories and police crime blotters, or endless commentary about the "climate change" we are undergoing.  Of course Ronald Reagan was a pawn of his right wing father in law.  We all know that.  We know who really ran the White House those eight years.

Jesus Christ once said something like "History will rise up and condemn this generation".   We are in a period of massive moral darkness these past six years.  This is the three o clock update and now here are a few other things to remember.  I think people like Rush Limbaugh and President Obama are historic under achievers.  How they got where they are is a complete mystery to me.  In the President’s case it involved an awful lot of bold faced lying to the people most supportive of his “cause” during the campaign.   It bears repeating that this President, as far as I can tell from his actions, not words or feelings or “if only” intensions, but deeds- - that this President ACHIEVED the goal he’d been dream of the day he entered the White House.  This whole administration has been one of hiding from key issues be it denial of the vote to blacks, or labor union struggles, or Wall Street crooks.  All this President ever seems to do is travel around the nation and the world on some extended eight year “vacation” all of us would love to have.  He’s never challenged himself, just like Dad never challenged himself.   He seems to be the most oblivious man on the planet in terms of how little he worries about how other people think of him.  He’ll be the first eight year president to finish so badly in the polls and go down in history as one of the nations “unproductive presidents” since Ulysses S Grant 140 years ago.

It’s too bad the Pinochio story isn’t real because the noses of right wingers would be growing awfully long now.  There was one Richard Nixon interview with Barbra Walters they were showing the other day and one thing I noticed was how large Nixon’s nose had become with advanced age, almost as if someone had been pulling on it.   Now we have this relentless propaganda campaign by the right wingers in Congress to portray the US Postal Service as a “money loser” and how they “reported a loss” last quarter.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The postal service has been registering a growing profit in the past several quarters since 2012 but I sure never knew that from the news and would not have known it except for the Ed Schultz show this morning.   Of course the Postal Service has to keep this retirement fund up- - for funding the pensions of employees that haven’t even been born yet, for the next 75 years.  That doesn’t stop people like Judy saying she trusts UPS and Fed-Ex far more than “The government”, which she constantly is saying “can’t do anything”.  And yet as Ed points out only the US Postal Service will go back into the backwoods areas of Pennsylvania and West Virginia where other carriers will not go because then can’t turn a profit doing that.  What I now fear is - just as President George W Bush looked at that fat Clinton surplus and said "We can't have all this money lying around, we've got to give it back to the tax payers", so the Republicans will NOW look at the big fat pension fund, which is now eighty percent accumulated to their goal, and these Republicans will say "You don't need all this money- - let us take it and give it away to the oil companies!"

The other major lie we are being inundated with is that everything is just fine, peachy keen in the Gulf of Mexico after the British Petroleum “accident” of 2010.  Of course we’ ve known that countless unsafe procedures we knew about at the time, were used on that oil rig that blew out, but BP was too driven by monitery profit.   Ed says that one major shrimper has a catch of which only fifteen percent is usable.  And in general about Half of the shrimp and fish and crabs - - are free from oil contamination even now, four years later.  The people still haven’t recovered.  Yet in all these BP adds they used to air relentlessly, they say “Come on down!  We’d be just pleased as punch to have you.  We’re open for business”.   But they also make the claim that “Business is better than ever” and they were airing these ads within a year after the disaster.  No way was that statement true, but the government isn’t taking action against BP for false statements.  One called from Kalamazoo pointed out the extensive oil spillage and damage that has occured in that area.  People don't read newspapers or care about the real world because they are too busy with twitter, I Phones, and video games.

You can take a blast back to the past in 2006 to uncover more lies and get interesting perspectives on things.  This morning I looked at two Larry King videos.  One had this panel with Stephanie Miller and Ed Schultz and two other Republicans on it, discussing the news that President George W Bush was thinking of retiring the term “Stay the course”.    Not once can I remember President Obama using the term “stay the course” to defend a poorly conceived foreign war.   The statement was made by the Republicans that “Those on the left WANT the war effort to fail”, when no democrat said this, and noboth THERE on that show just then- said this.  However the democrats pointed out that the theater of action in Iraq has morphed into a “Civil War”.  When Ed Schultz was aasked about this he said “I have talked to people who have visited Iraq whom I respect, and they say it is a Civil War, and so I’ll take their word for it”.  We now know that OF COURSE the Iraq conflict was a civil war.  But then this other guy says “Well in fact our own Civil War was not really a Civil War, but the South was fighting for it’s own sovereign government, which isn’t a civil war.  It was the “War Between the States”.   Then there was talk about the statement Rush Limbaugh made about Michael J Fox that he was “faking his Parkinsons disease”.    But others pointed out that on the show “Boston Legal” that these scenes with Fox in them were highly edited, selecting from many takes, and people on the set then report that certain scenes were problematical.  But Rush Limbaugh just loves his slash and burn commentary and doesn’t care one bit who he hurts.  And Rush does this sort of thing constantly.  There was another Larry King episode I saw with a panel discussion on creationism verses evolution.  He had Senator Brownback, who said “We should present this issue as an unresolved conflict, and not fear having an open discussion on it, and realize that some of it is theory and some of it is based on actual facts”.   I have no problem at all with this particular approach.  John Mac Arthur was there and says ‘Maybe there were cave men, but the history of the earth is No More than Ten Thousand Years Old.  And he states this with certitude.  There were also of course the usual antagonists to Faith Based teaching on creationism,  and there was that Deep Pac fellow there also.  But in general the Left is much fairer in any discussion and on being “fact based” than the tacticts used by the Right- - which most often are a never ending stream of lies.

The Obama Administration has finally brought industrial espionage charges against five “Chi Coms” for stealing American software programs.  Their philosophy is “Why invent it when you can steal it?”   To me this move is a day late and a dollar short, as the expression goes.  Clearly the Chinese have been doing this sort of thing on a massive scale for the past decade or something and we are just NOW noticing it?   Romney wanted to make this industrial espionage a major issue of the 2012 Presidential campaign.  Bill Press however at the end of his show, says “It’s really not that big of a thing and I would have rather Obama brought spying charges against the NSA instead”.  Of course the two issues are non related.   So let’s now do a non related issue.   Would it make sense for man to go around talking to a tiger saying “I’m more moral than you because I don’t hunt and kill people and physically eat them raw the way you do”.  Of course not.  Because men and tigers are different species.  And yet preachers never tire of saying “God is more moral than mankind”.   Even if we were to concede this statement were true – it would be completely irrelevant because man and God are two entirely different entities.    Well, I told you these issues were Completely non related.

Now there is a caller in the Ed Show that says “We have no problem with our beaches in the Gulf and our kids enjoy our pristine clear waters”.    Ed of course loves sea food but even he had reservations now about what he chooses to eat.   I went down for coffee two minutes after it was announced and they had already come and gone.  I saw furious.  I saw the tray in the hall and went outside for them to come out- -and a few seconds later I came back into the hall and they were completely done.  This morning I woke and had loose bowels and ended up getting up at twenty to five.  I was restless.  After a while I turned on the computer and Free Speech TV STILL is not working.  It seems Stephanie’s neighbor just died suddenly of a heart attack and Stephanie was in terrible emotional shape.   This was an older neighbor whom Stephanie either viewed as a friend or father figure or something.  This guy had baby-sitted her dogs, who loved him.  He was a fan of Stephen Stills.  I don’t want to offer anyone false hope - - but the buzz is that this guy met with Burt Lombard and Stu Sutcliffe last night, though Burt seemed closer to him.  I don’t go around making these post death claims willy nilly.  I still don’t know who killed Jimmy Hoffa, and I have never claimed to get so much as a message from Michael Jackson or Mailyn Monroe    Just remember that death can come at any time and we aren’t in charge of determining the date of our own deaths, which is fixed.

More Moral Depravity and Hypocracy of the Right-wing

Three hard lessons to learn

People who fail at most everything they attempt have little reason for "Self Doubt".  Think about it.  Most of "Those kind of issues" have already been Resolved for them

The thing people like Barock Obama, Rush Limbaugh, Neil Savedra, and George Zimmerman fear most happening to them- - are the very things by their actions and attitudes will more Insure WILL happen to them - in the next life.  These four people are perhaps the most highly "risk averse' people on the Planet.  (Selah)

Some might say that "If you aren't continually challenged you won't grow".  Maybe.  But I tell you this.  People who view humanity this way view then not as God views them, but as Man would view them.  (This is a riddle)  If the preachers who are so fond of this saying really believe it, they would apply it to Themselves.  And if they believe God, whom they profess to Worship- - they would know that NO DESTINY of any man can be altered.  (Selah)

I watched a number of Thom Hartman videos on You Tube.  Several of these revolved around what a dope Marco Rubio is in being from Miami and yet the whole town is sinking into the ocean and their tourist industry may be gone soon.  Salt water is making its way into the drinking supply and storm drains, and threatens to undermine the Everglades.  The other topic was the drug industry and particular Pfiser.   Mike points out they are happy to take our government money for research, which they don’t do any more.  They just buy out all of their competetors and even will PAY generic manufactures NOT to manufacture a particular drug after the patent runs out.  And of course Medicare is forbidden to negotiate prices with them.  The law is further on their side because to scare people away from generics, they say (I don’t believe this) if you get sick from a generic drug, the company is not liable, but you can only collect if the health incident was caused from the original manufacturer.   Free Speech TV was not on at all because both Firefox and Chrone said the site was no longer safe and “lost its security license”.   It used to be congress was known for passing laws that gave us new rights.  So we had the Civil Rights law, and the Voting Rights act, and food stamps, and the Environmental Protection Agency.    And they passed “title 9” for women to get equal access to Sports.  Then there was the Freedom of Information act and the American’s with Disabilities Act,  and we had various auto safety acts regarding ability to withstand impact.   But what has Congress done the past twenty years?   The thing is- - as bad as people like Me portray it in blogs, if everything Mike Papentonio says is true, things are actually WORSE than that.  If we knew all of the back room financial deals that Big money has made, I’m sure it’d curl our hair.

Thom has been talking a lot about restoring the public school system to what it used to be fifty years ago.  I’ve never totally understood what a “Charter school” was anyhow.  It’s something sponsored by the government that only a few, select, “privileged” kids get to go to.  They get all of the financial backing.  No wonder De Blazio is saying that it’s not entirely fair.  Thom says that economics and not race is the determining factor on whether a public school succeeds or not.  Marsha gave me a short at two thirty or so - - and reminded me that Dr Levy is coming after dinner today, and she urged me to borrow two dollars from him at that time.  I think Bill has not run short or completely dry of cigarettes.  I went to the coffee break at two and had two cups.  I had Shawn Hannity on briefly about five ways to revitalize America.  My guess is that one of those ways is to jetizen all pollution regulations and go nuts on oil and gas drilling, more than we have already done.  Another goal was “to get rid of Obama care”.  If you only had five long term goals, I fail to see why this should be twenty percent of them.  His guest talked about the near for “dialog”.  In this I agree.  But the next thing out of his mouth was “All these liberals who disagree with me fall back and begin spouting Marxist doctrine”.   At this point I knew the guy was full of it.   The only time you ever hear Karl Marx or Socialism referenced is on shows like Hannity.  Besides, I was wondering, if the guy is so bent on “Learning things from people who disagree with him” why is he on a conservative “echo chamber” station?

As you may or may now know - for both determinism and Calvinism you needn't be alive to participate.  Bet you didn't know that.   However in philosophy for the rest of us there is this quality called "sensience"  (a Captain Piccard word) in which we- - the subjects, have this quality of awareness.  I imagine the reason why they call it subjectivism is because - just as rats in a maze are "subjected" to the machinations of the lab owner,  so also if one truely wants to see "the point of view of the other" one would take the point of view of the rat.   I expect it didn't escape your notice that my ten dimensional thing was "Objectivist" oriented.  It was done from the standpoint that almost nothing I talked about needed to be alive to verify that it was true.   But you'll excuse me if the Living and the Dead have different views on things.  For the Dead - - Time is something that goes on forever in Both directions.  Time's existance in the Future is JUST as certain as it is in the past.   For the living this is not so.  As we quoted Captain Piccard in one of our earliest postings "Your future is something I don't give a Damn about, because for me, it doesn't exist, because I haven't lived it yet.   We also may have said then "Predestination may be a Fact, but it's also Mentally Unhealthy for us humans to live our lives as though it were".   We told you about my 'Marcion solution" about the seeming paradox between Calvinistic Predestination and "Personal Responsability" that Shawn is so in love with.  One theory is based in physics, and the other is based in human psychology and ethics.  Ethically man owes it to himself to improve his life - - and I believe it's just plain Utilitarian to live in fellowship with his brother, his fellow man, and work to Improve the Society he lives in.  Hence I have come up with the 'Marcion Wall".   Therefore when one is "tallying up the number of dimensions" one can't include those involving karma or "deeds".   Some people say "intent" is everything.  But one way to look at it as "intent' is how well you THINK your performed your job in the past two weeks, whereas DEEDS is what you actually got Paid.  (It's an imperfect analogy but I think you get the point)  You cant Spend "good intensions".   Many would see our thing with the orbiting ball bearings as somehow the Speed of the bearings as "a desire to break out and rise higher" and the center of the funnel as "the weight of sin and evil in our lives pulling us down".  But here again- - some EVIL people are perfectly happy with the way they are.  Rather than "Evil" the more proper term is "self doubt" or "working against yourself".   It's your OWN subjective sense of "not measuring up to what you believe you should be" that the funnel tends to represent.  You have heard of "psychic down-shifting".   Drivers know this is exchanging Speed for Torque.   Torque is your "psychic dynamic" to borrow from the last posting.  One might almost view it as "shrinking your environment to make your psychic EM waves appear larger and containing more energy".   So why would you do it?  One could turn it around and say "Why would you NOT do it if you had the option".  This is really a form of psychic "datent", which is a relaxation of the bow string, or in this case, the string of the instrument itself.  After all, who wants to be "high strung' all the time.  But a Purist would liken it to dropping down to a LOWER LEVEL of a video game once you have mastered it.  The question is "What is the penalty for psychic Down Shifting?"  To me this is unclear- - if it's done moderately.   Christians would say "Challenge is good".   Maybe.  But continual frustration or "feeling like you're always catching up" or "barely keeping your head above water" is Not.  I guess I want to know is "Who passes out the Brownie points for constantly being a little fish in a big pond instead of a larger fish in a smaller pond?   Sure, if we were all Michael in "Burn Notice" living on the edge would be a big barrel of laughs.  Most people if given the choice, would not care to live that way.  In my humble oppinion.

On the soap opera- - the hit man EJ hired didn’t kill Nick.  Benjamin did.  Here is a guy who barely knew Nick, but we know from seeing Ben he’s a really impulsive person, and also has no guilt about tormenting Abigail and “getting her through this crisis” as though he wasn’t directly responsible for it.   Hope thinks Lucas did it.  I wonder if Will Horton is going to make his father pay for yet ANOTHER crime he didn’t commit, because he can’t stand up like a man.   Brady Black told off his father, John Black, and frankly I’m in sympathy with him.  John waltzes back into the story pretending to be the big hero and all- - when in reality he’s part of the problem as far as Christine is concerned.

 It seems the image of Michael Jackson was NOT a holograph.  It was older, cheaper technology resembling the Haunted Mansion version of the spirits flying.   Of course they had one of Elvis in a duet a while back.   The only rapper we’ve referenced in performing after he died was Notorius B I G, who sang that song that Rush Limbaugh did a parody of - - well, it’s basically a song trashing Al Gore - - and I’m informed FH organized that one, and maybe tweaked a lyric or two.  But Notorius B I G had the status of a “guest” and wouldn’t be hanging around on a permanent basis.  Jeopardy is coming on now.   California Chrome will get to wear that needed “breathe right nasal strip” and the horse is a “he” and not a Philly as Marsha and I both believed.   The horse indeed was acquired for just ten thousand dollars, which is amazing.  Dr Levy made his presence known at ten after five when I went to the office to get my “The Week” magazine.  It’s unusual for Mary Jane to be showing cleavage.  Google is doing the "hands on" rubic's cube all day today.  It doesn't take much twirling around the thingies much at all for one to realize that you're never going to get it.

I had Norman Goldman on today, and the topic at large was A T & T desiring to acquire Direct TV, just as Time-Warner wants to merge with Comcast.  It's silly for A T & T to say "We need to merge so we can compete with Time-Warner and Comcast".  The solution here is more than obvious.  Don't allow EITHER merger to take place.   Norman wishes that we be "educated" about certain deceptive phrases conservatives uses such as "Core American Values" or "Values Based Philosophy" or "Free Trade" or "Competetion of the Market" or words like "Liberty" and "Freedom".   Norman points out these phrases are very vague and used as a "fogging' measure to cover up what the person is really advocating.  Norman Goldman points out that "Free Trade" in fact has a LEGAL definition of so many companies competing with each other, all of roughly the same size.  Norman further points out tat all of the Anti Trust Legislation passed a Century ago is- - Still On The Books.  All it needs to be is Enforced.  It was pointed out one reason why CEO's were NOT allowed to be paid in Stocks- - is because they were worried that CEO's might use this ability to manipulate the price of the stock.  Just as the reason why we had terrifs is because - - even back in George Washington's day they had cheap labor from British colonies like Jamaica or some place.  If you have to pay MONEY to sell your goods here- - maybe you'll, think twice about saying "I don't care to be an American Corporation any more".   What if we slapped on a foreign labor surtax on ANY corporation that had "substantially used foreign labor" in a particular product?

From Twelve Back Down to Ten ("Huh?")

This whole issue of Hillary’s health concerns to me has always been a “non starter” as a political issue, but the tea party is having the media keep the flames of controversy well fanned.  It was the opening topic on the Mc Laughlin group last night.  The thing is, if my math is right- - when Hillary had her head injury, she was only about a year and a half older than I am right now, and by no means do I consider myself Senile.  She has handled questions on this very well.  Bill Clinton has literally “thrown himself in front of the bus” shielding her on this issue, and makes very good points.  “She works out, and she’s mentally sharper than me”.  Mort Zuckerman played the good guy in last night’s Mc Laughlin group.  Me personally met Mrs. Clinton and completely vouches for her saying “She knows a lot more now than I’ve ever known”.   The Republicans are just scared shitless that the democrats have a real winner in her.  As to concerns Hillary isn’t concerned enough about this election of 2014 she should keep in mind that the Senate will be instrumental in picking succeeding Supreme Court justices, and the old cronies on the bench now retire one by one, which they will.  A bad Supreme Court choice now can cast a long shadow into the future.   In fact when Hillary runs in 2016 she will just be turning 69 and in fact will be several months younger than Ronald Reagan, and certainly younger than the “going on 74” when Reagan faced Mondale in the 1984 debates and spoke about “Not holding my opponents youth and inexperience against him”, a remark I never thought was funny.   First they attack her because she’s a woman and now they’re trying to attack her because of her age.  These Republicans are desperate!   We continue to live in a sexist society as witness the head of the New York Times, Jill Abramson,  being summarily fired last week, apparently because she complained her salary wasn’t as high as the men who preceded her.  The local “Hatriot” radio station claims she was fired because she complained too much and wasn’t doing her job.  I don’t believe that.  The New York Time’s position on this is puzzling.  When she was fired they attacked her and would not say one positive thing about her many productive years of service.  And this idea of calling a woman “pushy” in areas where they’d never call a man that, to me is a non starter.   People call Lucy “pushy” in the Peanuts cartoons because she’s the only one of the whole bunch of them that has any brains at all.  Then we have the Veteran’s administration which once again is the war against the aged in its own way.  It’s a case of the throw away soldier.  We love them when they go off to war in their clean starched uniforms, but don’t want to know them when they come back and are deformed and weak, and only a shadow of what they were.   We did not say “Wait” when the call came to go to war.  These men inlisted right away.  But now we are saying “Wait”.  We flat out lied to these men, and put them on separate “secret lists” so the “official list” would look good.  There is a major cover-up in Phoenix and several other major cities, and in my mind General Shinsecki has got to go.  President Obama’s apathy on this issue is starteling.  But even the General himself seems rather detached, himself.  To me this is just a moral issue that- -everything we stand for as a country is on the line here.

I continue to read disturbing stuff about the Ukraine nation in George Washington’s blog.  The writer is convinced that President Obama has sided with a rich corrupt crook and wants a cronie of the Obama administration to win the May 25^th election just one week from now in Ukraine.  The guy who was kicked out, who was pro Russian, is hailed as a victim of US scheming by Washington’s blog, and he was a crook and the Democratically elected “honest Russian” guy was the one we ousted back in February.   Kolomoyskyi, who lives in Geneva Switzerland, is generally regarded as the second-richest man in Ukraine, with a fortune estimated at about six billion.   Most of Ukraine’s oligarchs live in Geneva (like Kolomoyskyi), London (like the Tymoshenkos’ daughter, Yevhenia), NYC, Rome, and other Western cities, and they tend to stash their money in secret bank accounts in tax-haven countries, not only in order to avoid paying taxes, but also in order to make more difficult their being successfully sued by each other, for violating handshake business deals that had helped them to become so rich. After all, illegal contracts cannot be enforced by any legal government (since they’re illegal, and have secret illegal terms). Thus, other means than written contracts — handshake deals — are resorted to between these aristocrats.   So I don’t know what to think.  The media certainly is not talking about any of this- - and it’s almost as though the author of this blog lives in his own alternate reality.  I don’t know.

The third topic of the Mc Laughlin group was the question, “Should the national drinking age be lowered to eighteen?”   Ronald Reagan’s congress passed a bill in 1984 mandating that the legal drinking age be raised to 21 in all states.  This may be in large part to MADD or Mothers Against Drunk Driving.  One Black lady thought raising the legal drinking age to 25 wouldn’t be a bad idea because the human brain doesn’t mature till then and insurance rates on young men under 25 are higher because of the risk.  This would be suggestive a higher drinking age would have positive ramifications.  As far as I’m concerned – alcohol is more dangerous than either cigarettes, or valium, or pot, or even barbiturates.   Because only alcohol among these substances has this whole long “coming down off the high” quality that’s a bummer literally every time you imbibe.  Also nobody smokes a bunch of cigarettes and then goes out and crashes the car.   I did not start drinking regularly or much at all till the 2^nd half of August of 1973 which was a while after I turned 21.  I was in no rush.   We could do a whole psychological study on why I started drinking at this particular time.  But of particular concern to me is drunken fraternity parties, and worse yet - - initiations involving the consumption of large amounts of alcohol.  And if a college guy can’t get a girl in bed without getting her wasted drunk first, he isn’t the stud he fancies himself to be.  If I were a college administrator I would de-certify any Fraternity that had such initiations.  Being stoned drunk is not cool.  Really I think they could raise the legal drinking age to 23 and then enforce it rigorously.   That say there would be little question at Frat parties about “is this or that person old enough to drink”.   Just declare alcohol off bounds, period.

They did the entire “Let It Be” album on Breakfast with the Beatles, which they say was released today.   “Dig It” was a version I’d never heard before, longer.   There is also yet another version of “Dig It” where John Lennon begins listing song titles of stuff they’d been working on.  They did a number of songs from the rooftop concert.  I think the ONLY version of “One After 909” is from that rooftop concert.  The version of “Don’t Let Me Down” they played was a bit more robust in tempo than the version on the “KMET tape”.  I went out for ten o clock coffee in the courtyard wondering if I might miss a rarity or something they’ve never aired before, and had two cups.   “For No One” is another Beatle track that John Lennon did not participate on.  Part of me is thinking that I’ve bored my audience enough with my blogs, and anything I could say about anything would only be redundant and boring.  I just need to find new ways of spicing my remarks up or saying them in another way to make them sound new and interesting.   You remember Ian Anderson’s remark “Living in the Past was a song we positively loathed for fifteen years.  But now we’ve resurrected it in a new, tricky form, to make it fun to plan”.   Just now I went to just check George Washington’s blog to see if there any other major issues I should know about.

If anyone finds my blogs mentally taxing to read, just keep in mind that at Green Harbor they used to tell us that mental exercises kept the Mind alert and function in old age and staved off senility.   So people do crossword puzzles or these “find the word in a sea of letters” puzzles, or any of these mental taxing puzzled in “Math Playground”.    But I would like to simplify something for you good people.  Do you know that twelve dot “Gemstone’ dimensional symbol we had on a recent posting.  Let’s get rid of it;  it’s too complicated.  Instead lets reduce the number back down to Ten Dimensions.  (The “Gemstone thing IS an official Federation symbol)   Let’s go back to the whole inverted bowling pin diagram with the lead pin on top.    Obviously it’s a perfect triangle- - and also I like the number Ten better because Twelve is too far removed from being a prime number for my taste.  There are a lot of numbers that have secret meanings that can be informative if you have the mental perception to “see” it.  Like the Six Degrees of separation.   They say everybody is connected to everybody by just six degrees.  I’ll tell you why the number FIVE is powerful.  Because with just Five Points - - - you can isolate the exact time and place of any event, not just in This Universe but ANY of the parallel universes out there!    FOUR is a number you should remember because there are dimensions OF - - four qualities or attributes.  Two of these you know well.  You know of Space as being an attribute and Time as being an attribute.   In “My View” of “How it all began” GOD - - “The Creator” did the BIG BANG - - and all of the Universes if you will were “mass produced on the same assembly line”.  That means (in my view) ALL of the Universes are three-dimensional and all have to abide by the same laws of physics we do in this universe.   String theory of course admits to poly dimensional space or perhaps four, five, or even six dimensions.  For a reason I won’t go into I don’t believe you can go higher than six.  But we’re sticking with Three.   So you see those Bowling Pins?   Just take out the two middle rows.  They’ve been accounted for.  The two row and the three row.  We are left with the four on the bottom.   These are dimensions or aspects of THINGS.   The first one is materiality or - - Mass - - Gravity.   Obviously scientists consider gravity one of the fundamental forces of the Universe.   We can have existential discussions on “Whether or not the Reality in a substance lies exclusively in its gravitational field”.    The second one is - - FORM.   Just as gravity can be strong or weak - - so form or Organization - - can be high level or low.  Most of these dimensions - - maybe all of them have this bi-polar linear aspect to them.  You can travel one way down a line – or you can travel the other.   Chuck Smith used to talk about how “Entropy” is the ruling force in a Universe without God.  He speaks of “aeromocasus” or oxidation or “a slow fire that is destroying all matter”.  Chuck was a gloomy fellow.  Clearly there are OTHER forces that are constructive- - and conducive to HIGHER FORMS, that’s going on at the same time.   Then the third one over is Function.   We’re scrapping the three Karmic “dimensions” because I have concluded “They really aren’t a part of the physical, measurable world”.   Of course you people concerned about all of those orbiting ball bearings- - - there is ONE problem with ball bearings- - they are inanimate objects, without awareness or control over their own actions.  They can neither will to increase or decrease their energy.  That’s why I had to scrap it.  Function could also be referred to as Destiny or Purpose.   Of ALL of the ten dimensions- - this is the one that it’s hard to find some bi-polar aspect to.   And you can’t say that the Purpose of one thing is BETTER than another.  EVERYTHING has a purpose or a function.  You just might not like what yours is.  That’s all.    In the past I have called this one Karma for inanimate objects.   Everything has its nitch and is related to something else, one way or another.    Finally we have the one subjective one- - of “Essence” or “What is the common perception of this object or person.  To many this may be the important trait of the four because it’s what we all know and experience.  This is where we put the –NESS after a word, such as “blueberry-ness” for example.   Now we come to the one lone top pin we haven’t tackled yet, and this is a New one, which prompted to do this to begin with.  There are NO psychic elements on this chart.  Psychic phenomina are an unproven commodity.  If you can quantify it- - then get back to me and I’ll listen.  But the top Dynamic- - is the whole idea of what people mean by Dynamic to begin with.  That is- - Volume for one- - decibles - - and these need not be sound but amplifiers and antenna cord are measured in decibles.  It’s like the S/N of our lives.  Is something powerful.  Does it elbow its way.  Is it “Dynamic”.  Is it bright?    Bright lights and loud sound and high amp sound signals are just by nature more Dynamic-  .  We could call this Dynamic as - - energy, if we want.  It’s obviously such a transcendant aspect of our lives that nobody has begged as a dimension before just now, at least as far as I’m aware of.