You'll Just "Flip" Your Lid Reading This!

I would like to meditate on the word “flip”.  You’ve no doubt heard of flipping elections, usually by a rig voting machine from blue to red.   People on the right wing claim they don’t believe all of these “issues polls” that come out on opinions on such things as immigration and gun control legislation and the minimum wage.  They are fond of saying “the only votes that count are the ones case on election day.  Yes- by 36% of Americans.  But what about the other nearly two thirds of Americans?  Aren’t they entitled to be represented too?   But this whole concept of “flipping” goes back to computers and these cosmic rays with “neutrinos”.  Because once they strike a magnetic surface they “flip” a bit from zero to one.  So it’s like those old DOS books where you use the COMP DISC command of “This is a sample test” and then compare it with disk B of “This is a simple test” and the thing comes back with error in one bit.  So the OJ defense team was not entirely wrong.  Sometimes bits can be flipped to actually spell out other intelligent messages like changing an A to an I.   Dr Phil would use “flipping” to change a parent’s relation with their child.  I remember one girl that got pregnant and had a baby at age fifteen.  Suddenly she was a slut who couldn’t be trusted as far as you could throw a bowling ball.  Or a son who was on drugs- - even when he gets OFF drugs he’s still just as mistrusted by parents who have been “flipped”.   But we use that term with whole states- such as governors and their legislative houses, which can be “flipped” and start voting out amazing laws- - usually giving tax breaks to giant corporations such as Wall Mart- - and at the same time breaking their word to people in pension funds such as firemen, police officers, teachers, and government workers.  Somehow the Biblical idea of “When you give you word you should live up to it” has been thrown out the window.  This whole concept for example of divorcing gay marriage as an issue of the right wing is a sign of “flipping”.  Suddenly being gay is hunky dory- - because after all if you had to weed out all the gay republicans it just wouldn’t be worth the embarrassment.   But long held concepts can be “flipped”.  Such as the idea that a judge - - magistrate - - justice - - - should be above reproach and detached from the ordinary political life and kind of do this ivory tower thing where they enter into this conclave away from distractions and then render their verdicts.  This is always how I pictured it working.  But clearly I’m behind the times.  Now they sent these judges off to these right wing indoctrination seminars.  It would be illegal for the Koch Brothers to directly “lobby” a justice to render a decision in his favor.  But it’s just fine if you get an all expence trip to some secluded spot in the hills of West Virginia or something and told of the joys of strip mining- - and other ways to ravage the environment- - or ways to screw employees who aren’t in a union any more because of last year’s Union busting.  So the whole Biblical concept of “Let justice roll down from the hills like rivers” we talked about last time- - is pretty much out the window.  The Bible said to neither favor a rich person in his judgement- - nor favor a poor person in his.  The Bible says to not take a Bribe.   And the Bible also says something like “Don’t council together to do Evil”.   (Selah)

Bill Carrol said the other day something - - picture a guy who just spent three weeks on a mountain top in Tibet and he comes back with this Truth.  “People don’t become different as they get older; they become MORE of who they really ARE”.  And you might say, “How profound!” and when asked what that means you say “Simply this - - - People Don’t Change”.   This is certainly the Neil Savedra mantra from day one, which kind of makes the whole existence of the Jesus Christ show rather pointless, doesn’t it?  I mean, why tune in if I know ahead of time I’m never going to be changed (presumably for the better) by the show.   Pastors have used that marriage and divorce statistic as a baseball bat to hit members of their congregation over the heads for decades.  And yet the mantra of how one out of every two marriage ends in divorce- - isn’t true, and it hasn’t been true for a long time.  And we’re just now finding out about it.  The divorce rate actually peaked in the mid eighties- - thirty years ago.  Now the overall divorce rate per marriage is that 42% of all marriages end in divorce.   But the facts are more dramatic because this is the overall rate over thirty years.  Marriages that are happening right now have only a one in three chance of ending in a divorce court.  The reasons may be less spiritual but more to do with the culture doesn’t expect people, particularly young women to get married.  People are visiting more computer dating web sites being more systematic about how they pick their mates.  It could also be that since people are older they are more realistic and not expecting such fantastic things from their mates in terms of their “fulfilling every happiness” but learn to generate happiness for themselves.

The “Ring of Fire” series is always a cavalcade of horrors, and they usually put out a new episode on Thursday mornings.   In addition to the Koch Brothers buying judges- a lot of time was spent attacking the Clintons, Bill and Hillary.  Hillary is going around now claiming she’s a populist or “just one of you people”.   I’m still a little unsure how Hillary can say “We were flat broke when we left the White House’ and yet be multi millionaires today.   There was a lot of talk about the Clintons being friendly tword Wall Street and hiring people like Larry Summers and being cozy with Alan Greenspan, who once joked saying “Bill Clinton was the favorite republican President I worked with”.   Actually the show this week was a little long on rhetoric and short on specifics.   None of the major rollbacks of Wall Street regulations in the late nineties were ever talked about.  But a lot of the stuff we think originated with President Obama actually started under Clinton such as the CEO ratio to the grunt worker’s salary taking off into the stratosphere.  And contrary to what Thom Hartman says- - through a lot of the Clinton years the poor weren’t much better off.  Of course they ended AFDC as we know it.  (American Families with Dependent Children)  This is a program that had been around since the thirties, but it took on such a bad rap of welfare mothers hatching kids out of wedlock just to get more government payments- - that they had to end the thing, or at least Clinton did- to get reelected in 1996.  And now we hear that Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton were really two peas in a pod and when you came down to it, didn’t view things that differently.   But the most damning indictment against the Clintons on today’s show was the notion that were it not for the Monica Luinsky affair derailing the whole effort in congress - - that the Clintons were both all for privatizing Social Security.  This is something we usually associate as a failed effore around 2005 in congress with President Bush.  But if the Clintons were really secretly for this major “overhaul” than I am truly shocked!

But the other thing “Ring of Fire” talked about was the relation with the big drug companies to the Food and Drug administration.   The show says “The FDA is nearly useless now in terms of protecting the American people from bad drugs.  Often doctors are lobbied into performing skewed tests that make a drug look safe and effective when it is neither.  And they get kickbacks from the drug manufacturers.  And of course there is the equivalent of “The Peach Tree Street” legislation.  This is- - using a cheap guimic to screw someone over.  Here the cheap guimic is - - “Well you can get a generic drug if you want to, but you have no right to sue them if something awful befalls you or your loved ones”.   So- - they as much as tell you ‘Yeah I can proscribe a generic if you really insist but just remember every time you’re taking your life in your hands”.   But of course a lot of the time- - the big drug companies just buy out the generic drug companies- - after the fourteen year patten is expired.  If I were President I’d propose a Taft Hartley style “cooling off period” type of law.  But instead of ninety days- - I’d make the “cooling off” period as long as the original patten.  Let me explain.   If a patent ran for fourteen years, then I would make the “cooling off” period another fourteen years.  This is where- - the big drug companies would be BARRED BY LAW from making or accepting any offer for a buy out of a smaller drug company.  The theory in my imaginative brain is simple.  Because there is an “adjustment period” after the patent runs out.  Kind of like an “assimilation period” for immigration to the United States that Pat loves so to talk about.  In this case it would be “an opportunity to assimilate the new economic balance without making any rash decisions in the short term you may come to regret in the long run.

The news in Law Enforcement is that they let unsuitable cops apply to various police departments, such as in Cleveland, who are rejected by other departments either from an emotional melt down or some racial incident where they were deemed unsuitable for law enforcement.  They don’t state have any statewide equivalent of the California Medical Board for example where you lose your license.   This officer involved in the shooting of the twelve year old boy with the toy gun- - was fired from a police department in a smaller town.  But some cities like Tupulo, Miss do it right.  They have rigorous psychological profiling you have to pass if you’re going to work there.  Sometimes even someone like Scott Walker can do a good deed in signing this law recently which states that upon charges of officer misdeeds, an special prosecutor is called in and a whole fresh Grand Jury is convened expressly for the purpose of determining guilt or innocence in this case, which doesn’t have an ongoing, working relation with Law Enforcement.  This is something many say should be a general practice, to have an outside party handle legal disputes with the police all the time.

Some have suggested that the kitchen staff in restaurants need to get tips also from the patrons.  Others have suggested that the waitresses share their tips with those who prepare the food.  One chef deserved a tip.  He was concerned about GMO's in the food he serves to his customers, and says "I want to know what I'm serving my patrons", and put these sentaments in a letter to his congressman demanding that the FDA take action against genetically modified organisms, which they have refused to do.  It's almost a law that the FDA's strange decision here cannot be overrules or appealed to a higher authority.  Well, I'm appealing to a higher authority.  I'm doing the Hebrew National Hot dog thing, you know?  "God's gona get you for that" is my message to the FDA, to revive an old Bee Arthur expression.

The State of Justice in America

Well, here we go again.  It’s another grand jury indictment and Al Sharpton is saying the same things.  The new protests are starting and this time it’s that guy who suffered from a cop’s choke hold on Staten Island. Eric Gardner said “I can’t breathe” ten times before he died.  This choke hold is a clear violation of police procedure and for this reason alone, if for no other, the police officer Daniel Panteleo (?) should have been indicted.  They had a whole array of charges they could have lodge, but Pentelo was cleared of everything, and this is the worse part of the outrage.  So far they say “There is anger over this- but no violence - - yet”.   I suspect this will change.   NY Mayor De Blasio states that the Federal Justice Dept will now investigate the case.   I hope the AG doesn’t drop the ball.   But another disturbing similarity, and Hal Sparks pointed this out, it’s another Grand Jury acquittal with corrupt procedure, in that it is the head of the grand jury acting like defense council.  Hal Sparks says that no police officer would volunteer to testify before any grand jury “If the outcome weren’t pre determined”.  That makes sense when you think about.  But these days not only do these grand juries put the victim of the crime on trial - - that happened with Trayvon Martin - - but now they put the witnesses on trial.  And get this: Hal Sparks said “But they won’t allow mitigating factors against these accused witnesses.  In other words-  despite what they would so proudly claim-  there has BEEN no trial because there is not free and open questioning by all the interested parties.  Apparently there is an old southern cop trick where a white cop puts his gun in someone’s face and says “You spit on my gun – wipe it off” and the minute, of course, the suspect touches the gun, he gets shot.  In short the state of justice in America these days is pretty sick, and who can tell what the state of things will be a year or two from now.  We’ve come a long way from July of just 2012 when the Aurora shootings took place in Colorado.  It’s been one unending chain of violence and corruption of the legal system- - punishing the innocent- - and letting the guilty go Scott free.  If you want to quote scripture it says in one of the OT prophets that “Do do the will of the Lord is to do justice and to love mercy”.  We are a hell of a long way from that state of affairs.  I said months and months ago that “The rapture of the faithful has to come soon because this country can’t TAKE two more years of the sort of mass corruption we’ve been seeing at all levels of government.   What used to be shocking headlines are now common place to the extent that pretty soon such news will come to be ignored altogether- - at least that which can’t be politicized by the Hannity right wing.

Gloria Alred had a press conference late in getting started that Bill Carol carried on his show, reluctantly it seems- since Bill Carol hinted is little ways he regards the whole sex scandal thing with Bill Cosby as some kind of joke and that Gloria is not to be taken too seriously.  I would have carried the entire press conference myself and also the statements of the three victims she said she’d have, as well as any questions that Alred would field from the audience.  She wants bill to waive the right to claim the statute of limitation on his crimes.  Cosby has the power to do that.  If Cosby had nothing to hide, that’s just what he’d do.  He’d let the women sue him and fall flat on their face, if indeed he really believes they would.  Does Bill Cosby really want to be remembered as this one time star who turned bitter and circled the wagons at the end of his carrier under a giant cloud?   You may answer “Yes, if the alternative is worse than that”.   The second thing Cosby could do is put a “hundred million” in a pot, and then hold a mock trial with retired judges almost like a game show- - and the winners get some of that money.  That’s a sporting way to go and still remain clear of overt criminal charges. 

• Apparently Bobby Keys -famous saxophone player, died recently.  If so I haven't heard any confirmation at all from the "other side".   But here is a listing of all the other groups Bobby Keys has performed with, and apparently he and Jagger and Richards have gotten closer since the eighties after a period of slight estrangement starting in the mid seventies.  I was told a long time ago that Bobby Keys was Federation - - probably "Yellow Planet" federation, and not Dardanian, though.  The dots are for free, and if I should start a new paragraph it would produce a dot.
• The Rolling Stones: Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main St., Goats Head Soup, Emotional Rescue, Stripped,Shine a Light Live Licks, Sweet Summer Sun
• Joe Cocker: Mad Dogs & Englishmen
• George Harrison: All Things Must Pass
• John Lennon: Some Time in New York City, Walls and Bridges, Rock 'n' Roll
• Keith Richards: Talk Is Cheap, Live at the Hollywood Palladium
• Ringo Starr: Ringo, Goodnight Vienna
• Ronnie Wood: 1234, Gimme Some Neck, Mahoney's Last Stand

An earlier entry:  There was a decision not to indict that guy who died from allegedly a choke hold by New York cops.  They claim that shooting rates for suspects by cops is 21 times higher for Black subjects than whites.  This seems odd because there are eight times as many white people as Blacks.  Eric Holder is still investigating Ferguson, which is a surprise to me because I’d previously heard that the Justice Dept endorsed the jury’s finding.  Now we have President Obama’s remarks on that subject of the Staten Island choking case where that guy died – not from a choke hold but a head-lock according to Sean Hannity.  Everybody knows the difference, but nobody has made it clear which it was.  At any rate the President has not been served well by his other remarks on police issues, and perhaps he should just step aside on this one. 

Their Lies Are Their Bread and Butter

The biggest news about the Rams beating the Raiders in last Sunday’s game was not the game’s lopsided score in favor of the Rams, but rather the Rams players coming out on the field in the ‘hands up don’t shoot’ position.  Now a PR group for the St Louis police department is making threatening noises saying that the Rams and the NFL better penalize these players- or else.   Sean Hannity laces his commentary on Ferguson with so many lies you don’t realize in one glance how many falsehoods are piled on top of one another.  We go back to the first lie saying “In the beginning I thought officer Wilson was guilty”.  I’ve watched the show from the git go and Hannidy was never in favor of charging the officer.  Stephanie Miller pointed out that when experts go over the grand jury transcripts- - the vast majority of witnesses state that Michael Brown indeed had his hands up.  But Hannity prefers to believe ONE witness who talks about not a single “football style charge” but rather a charge in three stages and at each stage Officer Wilson reassessed as to whether he should keep shooting.  The audio tape of the gun shots shows that this statement is a major whopper on Sean’s part.  Now he’s trying to introduce a new lie that Michael Brown had a juvenile record as long as your arm.  But Sean’s own guest on the show states that Brown had no juvenile record.  Officer Wilson lied about whether the car door was open or shut, and he changed his testimony later.  There is a bullet hole in the car door and this kind of answers the question on that.  Then there is the phrase “strongarmed robbery” or what I choose to refer to as “felonious shoving”.  Officer Wilson lied about knowing about the crime ahead of time.  He told his superior officer repeatedly that he did NOT know about the robbery of the convenience store.  Yet in Wilson’s own testimony he states that he knew about the robbery.   We know that Wilson was a lousy shot.  He was such a poor shot that others in the neighborhood were endangered needlessly.  Sean lied about “taking four hours to interview witnesses at the scene” when no witnesses were interviewed and no report was filed.  Sean also ignores the blinding fact that the general consensus of the crowd of bystanders was that Officer Wilson had killed an unarmed man with his hands up.  No amount of “deference and politeness to an officer” would have prevented this killing.  But the strangest part of this all is that Sean wants all parties - - witnesses, who gave a story of what happened other than officer Wilson’s own testimony - - to be put on trial for purgery!   From day one Sean has latched on to this case like a dog to a bone.  Now that Officer Wilson has so much free time now I guess he’s going to go the rout of Sarah Palin and others and make the FOX news circuit - - “do you think?”  Right now Norman Goldman is reminding us of the racial component, and the inequity of representation by Blacks in the government.  Officer Wilson said in some justification of the shooting of “You know, don’t you that I was in a hostile neighborhood with a lot of gang activity”.    Yesterday Norman probed the question is should a written on line threat to someone you know- - detailed and explicit- - should culpability for the crime be what was in the mind of the sender of the threat, or what was in the mind of the reader of the threat?  My response then as is now would be “What is in the content of the threat itself- as a reasonable person would assess it?”   I don’t think it’s “reasonable” for a police officer to be able to say “It was a hostile environment so I was in fear for my life and therefore justified in anything I did”.

This Norm Chowmers guy was doing a lecture on the abuses of Israel against the Palistinians going through a detailed history and was almost sleep producing.  He certainly wasn’t attempting to guild the lily.   I’ve about come to the solution that the United States “needs to play the Dr Phil card”.  What is that, you ask?  The United States should stop being an enabeler to Israel’s antics.  What do you suppose would happen without the United States operating as said enabeler?  Do you think that just maybe- - more peace deals might be signed and- worse than that- - actually lived up to?  The more detailed the report or history of events from one leading to the next- - the worse Israel looks.  The United States should stop Vetoing every single United Nations regulation where the United States all these decades has stood alone against the rest of the civilized world.  According to Dr Levy “Israel pulled completely out of Gaza in 2005” yet the must cursory of reading the history in this period shows the past ten years to be a period of unparrelled oppression of the Palistinians.   Among the “crimes” Gaza is guilty of is having the wrong side win in a free election.  The next crime is “stopping an overthrow of that elected government”.   Another “crime against Israel” is Palestine in the West Bank coming to unity with the people in the Gaza strip.  By treaty the Palestinians are guaranteed free commerce between the two areas, and also a usable port.  They don’t have this.  People overlook all these West Bank settlements- - but they not only encroach but cut the west bank up like a piece of Swiss Cheese- - and what you have is virtual island prisons and an overall state of military occupation.  This Chomlers guy related incident after incident where it was Israel who broke cease fires.  This whole genocide thing of last August in Gaza began with the deaths of three Israeli teenagers where the government’s own experts now admit that Hammas had nothing to do with these three deaths.  Israel was founded a lot more by terrorism rather than prayer.  Some would say “Israel would never tell a lie- - they’re God’s chosen and all of that”.  And yet the West Wall of the Temple is the West Wall of Herod’s temple and not Solomon’s.  Archiologists all admit that.  Herod was a mass murderer.  But my point is that if you repeat a “misconception” (lie) regularly enough, everybody excepts it as established fact.  We have this idea that Israel is sacrosanct because of their common “Judeo-Christian heritage”.  Most of the Israeli tourist guides know more about certain details of Christianity than your typical Baptist fundamentalist- - because of the lore that has surrounded places in Israel.   I have wondered about Dr Levy “You know so much about Christianity, why don’t you become one?”

  Darren Wilson resigned and won’t be getting any payment in retirement, which is a victory for our side.  I think it’s time now to end the protests because in a sense justice was served.  According to Rachael Maddau, the scope of these protests is impressive from Chicago to New York to Washington to Seattle, where the people are holding “die ins”.   Officer Wilson now has an “opportunity” to do pennence and to think over his crime, even if it isn’t in a jail cell.  Protests continue all over the nation.  But poll numbers indicate that White people still side with officer Wilson agreeing with the Grand Jury’s decision not to indict. So - - how could this be? Well, I would like to step back and say that when you're "looking for a story to be true" you try and reconsile what you hear - be it Bible quoters or UFO sightings or reports on police brutality- - you try and reconsile what you are told with some Real situation that Could Happen.  That means if there are a series of fantastic statements that make no sense in terms of psychological probabilities or physically figuring out dimensions or positions people are in - - or number of witnesses- or when the witnesses come forth or whether said witnesses have any incentive to "tell the particular story they told",  you bring intelligence to the discourse.  I would contrast this to hearing- - some hyped up rumor in an emotionally charged situation or a Fairy Tale like you'd tell your children that is not SUPPOSED to be "figured out" logically.  Sean Hannity was talking about how Michael Brown not only “charged the officer” not once, but three times, if you can believe that.  Hannity said ONE of the eye witnesses came up with this testimony.  So how does this report synchronize with the known physical evidence?  Well, if you listen to the sequence of shots there was only one brief pause in the volley of ten bullets (when Brown was turning around after running and put his hands up) and this notion that Brown traversed back most of the 153 feet that he fled in the ten seconds or so of running- - just is not correct.  He took eight steps according to Norman Goldman, or 25 feet – eight paces for a tall man.  At one point Officer Wilson indeed stated that “I was looking for some legal way I could shoot Brown”.   Now Sean is saying that the reason why Michael Brown’s body was in the street for four hours is “because they were interviewing all the witnesses” when of course people were made about NO witnesses being asked anything about what they saw- - and indeed no officer shooting incident was ever filed by Wilson.  This fact can’t be stressed too much.

Well we have heat in this building officially now,  I noticed a blast of hot air walking down the hall and it’s warming up in this room.  The thing is with a trend, when one gets going it’s unmistakable.  People knew we were in a bull market in the mid fall of 1982 when the market made new all time highs.  We know with this rain that this is the most rain we’ve gotten all year.  I can’t remember when we’ve had the last uninterrupted day of rain, and I mean substantial rain- not just drizzle.  Not the kind of rain you’d take a walk in for very long.  But some would see trends when there are none.  How many times have liberals such as Thom Hartman said “The tide is turning- the pendulum is swinging back to the liberals, and the Republican party is all but dead”.  We’ve been waiting for that but it hasn’t happened.  Not when the vast majority of those calling the Rams football team- - spoke to criticize the “hands up gesture”.  The Republicans are coming up with constant “proofs” and examples that President Obama is a hard core doctrinaire liberal.  Supposedly the President meets regularly with the Rev Al Sharpton, according to Sean Hannity.  I have the greatest difficulty believing that.  A President would leave his own church after one line taken probably out of context in one sermon- - I do not believe- would meet regularly with a flaming radical preacher constantly lobbing incendiary remarks.  Many would have the Book of Acts in the Bible to say that “Well with the Holy Spirit in the picture now it’s a whole new ball game and with forgiveness of sins and sanctification of lives and all that- - whatever took place before would be easily supplanted by this new Christian Era of Peace and Brotherhood and all that.  But somehow that never happened.   Chuck Smith spoke often of the line “Vengence is mine, said the Lord, I will repay”.  Well how many people have (according to Chuck” a “major faith problem” because they don’t trust God to sort out a situation Himself- but have to step in and take measures on their own.