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.