Just Checking In

The only news story to come accross worth commenting on at any length is the news that Congress, as partizan as it is- - managed to find the funding to replemish the rockets used in the "Iron Domes" plural, of Israel.  That's a lot of rockets.  It's an expensive system we let them have.  Many point to the enormous ammount of foreign aid, most of it for war, that we have given Israel.  One wonders what would happen if they being the "people of Faith in God" as they claim to be, had to rely on Him for their sustenance, and not the United States.  Of course Washington's Blog had a posting yesterday of the recent remarks former President Jimmy Carter has made on the whole subject of Israel and Gaza, and I suggest you read it.  Israel is like some spoiled brat kid with rich parents.  He's a loud mouth and kind of nerdy and probably speaks with a lisp, but though he's a real putz head to everyone he meets no other kids dare to come against him because as douchy as this kid is, they know his parents are worse.  In fact it's the parents that the kid got his douchyness from   Other analogies lend themselves.  Picture a bunch of jack booted thugs in gray uniforms marching in lock step.  They're wearing yamicas and those priestly phillactories on their wrists, but they're also wearing Nazi arm bands.  They say they respect property rights- - and yet they say they want to conduct a protest against the government but don't do it on their own property because they have all of those expensive flower gardens in their front yard.  So they go to the front yard of their neighbor- - the one they personally "claimed to give the right to exist" and they use his yard.  But they're loud and obnoxious and play the radio and PA system really loud and shine bright lights at the house at night, and make it almost impossible for this neighbor to even go in and out of his own house in pursuit of his daily affairs.  Then one find day when the owner has had enough- - he points a shot gun out his window and fires off a few shots.  Or take the rapist who files suit against his rape victim because of scratches he suffered while raping her.  Never again will the Republicans again be able to say that President Obama is not "standing shoulder to shoulder" with Israel.   Because refunding of the Iron Done effectly puts an end to all legitimate arguments.

Of course as you know - or not- - that it's actually against the Law in cities to discuss internal police procedings and charges of misconduct.  So that even if you are privy to information- - just speaking the truth about it can get you arrested.  Meanwhile Google is turning Law Enforcement apperatus themselves by increasingly helping the government in gathering evidence without a warrent- - reading all their E Mails and informing the government on your most personal and private thoughts and observations.   It would seem that if you report torture in the CIA you go to jail, but the ones who actually DID the torturing are still running around as free as jay birds.  Dianne Feinstein says this major Senate committee report on CIA abuses can't be released now because 'Some documents were overly redacted and we have to get to the bottom of it".  And we learn that there are certain proper reasons for material to be withheld, but one of them, by law can expressly NOT be "Because these revelations may tend to show that crimes have been comitted".  What Nixon did was child's play compared to what goes on now.  Technically Nixon was NOT a crook.  He never stole money from Unions and Pension Funds or was up to his eyebrows in commitments to congressional lobbyists.  He wasn't guilty of the sort of crimes against the people that for instant Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Governor Christie of New Jersey, or Rick Scott of Florida are.  And nobody seems at all inclined to want to prosecute the three of them.   Now Dianne Feinstein and others are saying that these "renditions" that Bush did, where we do "torture for hire" by countries such as Egypt and Syria, of all places, and that the torture we engaged in was more systematic and widespread than people were led to believe.  It seems, getting back to the first amendment for a bit, that cops arrest people who gather at- - say the Republican Convention- - on the basis that they MIGHT commit an infraction of the law at some later point, and therefore have no right to protest at all.  But if you run a legal abortion facility- - all bets are off- and people can do everything short of throwing eggs at the windows or grafitting the walls.  (And I imagine some of that stuff goes on, too)  Meanwhile the whole notion of "Internet neutrality" is going out the window as people grow accustomed to "paying for serves you have a Right to for free" almost like a bully makes you pay "protection money" in order to go down a certain hallway without being beaten up.

Now we have a situation where it's actually major news when a two star general dies.  How shocking- the news media exclaims!  Flash- - Afghanistan is a WAR ZONE.  That's what generals do is to plan and fight wars.  But we are told "We have a tradition of taking care of our Generals".  I'm not even going to ask what that means.  It's news when a police officer dies in the line of duty, but if the truth be known I bet you run a far higher risk of injury or death as a window washer for a high rise, or even getting killed on the highway making the trip to Las Vegas this weekend- - then you ever do as a cup.   Of course now there is a new defence called the "I'm incompetent; I didn't know what I was doing" defense.  There was this case where a criminal broke into this guy's house and I believe he took hostages.  But the owner of the house himself was killed by an officer- - not because he was shot in some cross-fire gun exchange, no, no.  One officer just saw him walking down a hall and thought he was the bad guy so he just wasted him.  But getting back to this business of US troops all over the world.  It's pointed out that the US is the only real Empire left in the world today.  Because we're now leaving ten thousand troops in Afghanistan, to go with the ones left in Okenawa, and Korea, and Germany, and lots of other places throughout the globe.  So it's just absurdity for any Republican to say that "America is withdrawing alarmingly from the world".   Rather than "American excellence" I think- - more like it is American omnipresence- - everywhere.  According to Larry Elder things like government oppression and invasion and even genocide are not grounds for us to go to war over, but let someone threaten OUR oil supply in Iraq- - well sound the Alarm!  It's time to go to war, according to Larry Elder.   Rand Paul used to have no oppinion on Russia and the Ukraine issue.  That is untill it became political shiek to do so.  So naturally Paul at this point has to depart from his own personal inclination and conform to the standard Tea Party line if he wants to get elected.  It's like that Bergdoll situation.  They were all for rescuing him- - untill they were Against it.  (Selah)

It was “Law and Order” and a rerun of the saga of the two little girls, Patty and Anna.   Of course- - people have to obey the law.  They can’t go around with kidnapping thugs and their young assisgants with designs on child molesting.  And they can’t kidnap the kid themselves, or violate court restraining orders.  Of course this whole idea of “putting your seed out there” I have always thought of as a strange business for those who deal in that sort of thing.  You might have clones springing up all over and they might accidently fall in love and marry each other.  And I hope they genetically screen donors for the major genetic family diseases.  There was another episode at nine.  Nobody would sell me a cigarette when I went out back at nine so I went to the store and bought a pack, and they managed not to lock the front door upon my return.  Bill borrowed a cigarette.

 I had Norman Goldman on and he hyped this Ronald Reagan exposee thing he was going to do at four.  I was so interested in it I vowed to DVR it on Media Player.  There were about twenty straight minutes of commercials followed by five minutes of top of the hour news, followed by Norman almost word for word giving a recap of the previous hour.  There was a Bruce Rouner that sounds like an administrative train wreck waiting to happen if he gets elected.  But Norman finally got around to hinting about this blog he did, and then Windows cut out on me.  It was timed almost down to the second, almost as if some Higher Power did not want me to hear Goldman’s thoughts on Reagan.  He may have posted it in three places but I could not find it in any.   But I would just say it may because of John Wayne's death recently that we in America felt we needed some mythical hero figure, perhaps even a father figure.  Supporters of Ronald Reagan knew as far back of 1968 that if America were ever exposed to this 'Actor" he could "act" better than the real thing, that is a real stattesman with actually government experiance. (You don't count reagan's time as California governor when he did things like double taxes and sign the most liberal abortion bill in the country to that date) But we weren't as political back then and a lot of events I remember from back then weren't "Political" in nature.  There was the attempted assasenation by a nut job, John Hinkley, there was the economic downturn that began at the beginning of July which if anything, I was more inclined to blame on Carter,  you had the Flight 007 Plane being shot down.  The USSR underwent three changes in leadership during the Reagan years.  You had the Lebanon deboccle with our Marines. You had the Columbia inaugural launch, which I took to be a victory for NASA rather than Reagan, you had AIDS of course- which was new to all of us, you had the Challenger disaster, and the Cheyrnoble meltdown, and you had the major tax hike of 1986 on the average working people most people were just inclined to say "Well, that's government for you" and you had the Medfly crisis.  All of these were A-political in that you did not see one party wagging its finger at the other party, as you would for any of these events today.

There was some stuff involving Police Chief Charlie Beck’s daughter or something.  (?)  And they played this hokey music to some sappy and phoney speech by Patricia Krenwinkle, or “Country Kate’ as Manson called her.  When I first heard it I thought it was an ASPCA commercial.  The soap opera was less hellish today than yesterday, and the plot advanced forward in a constructive manner.  The list Samantha has now decided to make enemies of is impressive.  First of all there is EJ, of course.  But there is Abigail, Kayla, Jordan, Raphael, Will, Adrian, Jennifer, Jack Junior, and probably in time her own kids.  But all these names she sought out to hurt- - even uttering the lie that Justin slept with Kayla and admits she made up “Just to see what kind of a reaction it would generate”.  The only reaction was one of “This woman is a loose cannon and won’t stop at anything”.  She is paying Nick the highest compliment she could pay him by becoming just like him, only perhaps exceeding him in the number of acquired enemies.