Trump Explodes A Verbal Bombshell on Iran

Was the first salvo to WW III begun on this Friday the thirteenth?  We knew a bombshell was coming this morning but we didn't know just when except that ABC news was going to carry this executive announcement life.  We continued to have Good Morning America on.  It seems the other bombshell of this “announcement” of yesterday was this threatened yanking of the insurance company buffer fund, that backstops insurance companies in case they pay out too much money on claims.  This way the poor will have their rates jacked up.  This seems to be what the President wants- - war on the poor.  He lies like a rug talking about lower rates for all.  Lower rates for nobody.  For a while I had Thom Hartman on.  I turned ABC back on and Trump delivered his bombshell of a speech at maybe ten minutes to ten.  The speech literally made me sick.  I felt like I was coming down with a fever or something.  I’ve never seen such a display of either lack of diplomacy or dishonesty since the last time I talked to Rev Bill Halliday back in 1995.  He kept going on about how Iran has funded and supported Hez Ballah.  He talked about the death of US Marines in Lebanon in 1983, which was on Reagan’s watch.  Reagan did nothing about it and rewarded Iran by selling them offensive missiles two years later.  (That’s a whole other story)  He talked about an incident in 1996, which is still twenty years ago.  He said there was a “momentary delay” in Iran’s bomb building capacity.  He says “These people think in hundred year intervals”.  Very little of what the President said was at all lucid except he seemed almost desperate to start WW III if he could by his mere words.  As such I think the media under-reacted to the speech saying that it really wasn’t as bad as we think.  I disagree.  The speech itself is a clear and present threat to the peace of the world and it sets the tone, they say that “Mein Kamp” set the tone for the Nazi party.  This torpedoing of the Iranian nuclear agreement is part of the President’s overall blueprint for the future plus being a major campaign promise.  Remember that Shawn Hannity said that Trump made certain promises to him personally, which involve supporting and defending far right wing politics.  He’ll break promises made to the “rust belt” but not promises made to Shawn.

The misery index for poor people has never been higher.  People on Social Security have been losing money for a decade or more because their payments don't keep up with inflation.  They made a big thing out of the fact that they were getting a two percent raise in income and further stated "this is the biggest hike in payments in five years" as if that were something.  The numbers on inflation have never been higher and you can prove it.  In terms of dollar ammount actually spent every day or week or month, you spend a whole lot more on high inflation items such as medical expences.  mortgages or energy costs.  In terms of dollar ammount in the overall scheme of things you don't spend that much on telephones, computers or televisions or power tools, things of low inflation or declining price.  Most items on this list should last at least five years and maybe eight or ten if you take good care of them.  But people eat every day and pay mortgages every month.  They have 26,000 in debt for student loans.  You won't go 26,000 dollars into debt buying a big screen TV.  But "the misery index for poor people" is not who advertisers aim at.  You see these computer shows that say you have to replace your cell phone every year or two when a new model comes out.  Such pitches are aimed at people with a lot of money to throw around and not for the poor and "working class.

This is Friday October 13, 2017 after the break.  I went down for snacks forgetting to wait to click my name after I turned the computer on.  “Windows Professional” was playing as screensaver when I got back and I was momentarily puzzled.  One time I returned and a start menu was up on the screen I didn’t put there.  The last time I looked in the top drawer of my desk it looked as if things had been rearranged, like someone was rummaging through it.  I went down and got a lemonade and a graham cracker from Rico.  The big Steve is back, and Jeff (with Steve) says he didn’t have his surgery yet.  (?)  Bill has left for his eye exam where the doctor will run more tests, and I get the feeling they are involved, lengthly ones, before Bill gets his cateract surgery.  He asked Valerie to save two pieces of pizza for him. 

 In soap land now we have Brady acting treacherous and two-faced- - qualities he says he hated in Nicole.  Imotation is the best form of flattery.  First he makes this really big thing about how he can’t stand the sight of Nicole now and wants her out of the mansion and take her daughter with her.  But just as she’s ready to go out the door he drops the bomb shell on her.  He’s going to blackmail her for admitting she was the one who murdered Damos.  I think I just would have let that situation ride.  All you have is a phone call confession to Eric made illegally.  Once she gets up on the stand and tells her story no jury in Salem would convict her anyhow.  Hurricane Sammy is back in town.  Paul got John to agree to dig up Will’s coffin.  But as they were about to do so Samantha returns to the show after a two year absence or something.  She doesn’t want them touching the body.  She’d rather go around in the dark never knowing if her son is alive or not and letting Clyde and Doctor Rolf and whoever spin their tales.  Paul is the only rational one on the whole show.

Last night I made myself a cup of instant coffee about six thirty while ABC news was on.  The strange thing is that I dozed off while drinking that coffee and didn’t rouse till a ways into Jeopardy.  Then I went down and got my medication from Leah.  It gets chilly in the evenings still and Bill left the window open all night.  I thought I had closed it.  Then I returned to the football game on NBC which I had had on earlier.  It was the Philadelphia Eagles beating the Carolina Panthers apparently by a score of 21 to 16 or something.  It seemed as if most of the times I was watching Carolina was dominating play.  I turned on “Gotham”.   Later in the evening I noticed something sticky in my right, back pocket.  I had put some candy back there on Tuesday and forgotten about it.  I tried to wash it out as best I could.  After this it was that Star Trek show we referred to last week.  I went to bed soon after.  I had a dream that I visited some Junior College (?) campus in the morning.  I lived somewhere east on Ball Road but I don’t think it was the Palm Street house.  The school was east of Euclid.  In a previous dream and in this one I dreamed that Loera was between Orange and Ball and had ivy on the walls and there were steps going up and down everywhere as you crossed the campus.  Of course in real life I have never walked on Loera campus grounds.  In this dream I marveled how young all the students were and notably the girls.  I told Paul (later?) they seemed kind of immature to me.  And Paul said “But they have that big stock ticker right in the middle of campus” as if he’d been there himself. In the morning I got up at 5:07 and had a smoke and had instant coffee.  I’ve really been going through that stuff lately.  It was then at five thirty Bill first turned on the TV so I never had the computer on.  I got medication from April after six.  The line wasn’t excessively long today.

The city of Santa Rosa is in flames now.  We've said whole tracts of homes have been destroyed.  The diablo winds continue to blow.  (They don't call them Santa Ana's up north)  The death toll is rising and meanwhile there seem to be no signs of containment.  The west coast editions of ABC news have been giving generous coverage to this fire.  They say it's the worst wildfire they've ever had in California both in terms of deaths and the amount of property damage.  Global Warming takes on many forms.  It seems that in the Pacific Northwest that they're getting early snows, as they have in the Rockies.  So there seems to be a big division line in climate between north and south.  Did we ever find out what happened to Hurricane Nate?  I'm experiancing a mental fog right now.  Did it hit between New Orleans and Mobile just as predicted?   We know the baseball line-up now.  The Dodgers will be playing the Chicago Cubs for the national league pennant.  The Houston Astros will be playing the NY Yankees.  Chargers fans are waiting with baited breath to see if the Los Angeles Chargers can get a winning streak going.  

Is The Road To Impeachment Any Closser Now?

President Trump is threatening to pull FEMA the emergency agency out of Puerto Rico because “Puerto Rico was a mess before the hurricane” as if that justifies pulling FEMA out now.  Is the president cold hearted enough to do something like that?  According to Norman Goldman this is just an empty threat to “distract” us.  I take things a little more seriously than that.  President Trump often follows through with his threats.  Once he “finds his pen” and starts issuing executive orders like Obama there is no telling what he might order.  The big order was the destruction of Obama Care.  Open enrolement has started for next year and they are keeping it quiet because as Norm says “They know the more people in the pool the better solvency of the plan, but if they can keep people out of the pool it will hasten the day when Obama-care fails.  What the President can’t do through congress he’ll do with his executive pen.  He’s “providing millions of Americans with Obama-care relief”.   The President claims that he wants to provide people with more health care options.  Like right to work laws are the “option” to lower the wage base of all industry.  The President claims he’s offering people “lower (medical) costs and saving them the nightmare” of Obama-care.  It seems that the state insurance commissioners don’t like orders from the Federal Government because their own powers to safeguard the citizens is over-ridden.  Norman says this is a place for “States Rights” and I would have to agree.  These “associations” are going to be allowed in any state and more or less take over.  This is what the Republican bill wanted to accomplish to begin with.  But apparently they have to go through the courts to accomplish all this and judges might not decide their way. 

 Dr Ralph or “Rolf” has returned as a character to “Days of our Lives”.  He’s the one who put a computer chip in Hope’s brain to make her think she was Gina and also turned Hatti into Marlena.  He also saved John Black from certain death, and I don’t remember that one.  Now he’s the one fingered by Clyde Weston for reviving Will Horton from his necktie murder.  The evidence mounts now to a credible threat that Will is still alive.  Of course we heard that story in the news about a month ago of some business putting computer chips in people’s right hand like pet ID chips to keep track of employees.  That’s pretty close to taking the mark of The Beast.  Also in today’s DL episode Adrian, who is really Bonnie Lockhart, approached Victor with what she learned in that eves-dropped phone call where she heard Victor admit to ordering the hit on Damos via Zander.  Of course Zander never got to pull off the murder.  He got sidetracked.  Now Bonnie says she wants Victor to divorce Maggie and marry her, which is an act of total insanity.  If I were Victor I’d have a long talk with Justin about Adrian’s mental stability because even not knowing her identity, she’s been acting really strange making erratic choices.  By the way, I like “Club Clowie” better as a title for a night club better than “Doug’s Place”.  Who wants to name a nightclub after an old man in his eighties who had a reputation as a singer forty years ago?  In terms of regular news there hasn’t been any today, at least yet.  I haven’t had the news on and maybe that’s a good thing.  We’ve had enough bad news from all directions to last us to the end of the year with no more.  Some good news would be that Muller has filed a lot of charges against Trump and his many cohorts and there will be jail terms awaiting them in the near future.  Getting rid of Trump would definitely be a good thing.  There is nobody to file impeachments against Donald Trump but we keep hearing these stories about how divided the Republican Party is now.  They’re holding out hope for us.  I think if the democrats were a little sneakier they would do all this personality profiling stuff we talked about in the last blog post.  They too would appeal to people’s fears and hopes in order to get them to vote democratic in all of the ballot choices in the 2018 election.  

As you know a lot of the time early in the morning I have woken up with anxious thoughts.  Fortunately that wasn’t the case this morning.  If you’re wondering why that print talking about the Christian church was in such large font it’s because I tried it in normal and it came back really tiny.  I wasn’t trying to emphasize it above the rest of the blog post.  Of course I was motivated in writing that paragraph because I think if “the church” as I have experienced it treated me more fairly I wouldn’t have time for all these doubts.  It’s just a thought.  People accuse me of trying to pick a theological argument.  If the topic is theology I might have a question in my mind that needs resolving.  And once it was resolved I wouldn’t have to think about it anymore.  But a lot of the time it wasn’t theology but advice and guidance that I was seeking.  And I never got it.  If I had gotten sound council maybe I would have made some decisions in my life better than I did.  There seemed to be some “force” guiding the conversation where others would find council I would find only emptiness and frustration.  As you know my two very first blog posts back in April of 2006 centered around this Egyptian messiah connection.  For a while I thought Philo of Alexandria might be involved.  But the Barrabus figure in all four gospels was too valuable a clue to pass up.  Also the “clue” tossed out there that “Jesus” or whoever was alive in Rome up to the late ‘fifties AD was another valuable clue.  Because the stress involving Christians with Rome involved this Barrabus messiah and not “Yeshua the Nazarite”.  But people don’t talk about this Egyptian military leader referenced in Acts because “the church” wasn’t involved in his history.  What “The Church” can’t control they ignore.  But of course I’m reminded of what Ghandi said.  “First they ignore you and then they mock and belittle you, then they openly persecute you by trying to make life hard for you.  Finally they kill you.  And then you win”.  It’s an irony that may be true and maybe not.

Planet Nine is out there, and astronomers are determined to find it, according to a new statement from NASA. In fact, mounting evidence suggests it's hard to imagine our solar system without the unseen world.  The hypothetical planet is believed to be about 10 times more massive than Earth and located in the dark, outer reaches of the solar system, approximately 20 times farther from the sun than Neptune is. While themysterious world still has yet to be found, astronomers have discovered a number of strange features of our solar system that are best explained by the presence of a ninth planet, according to the NASA statement. "There are now five different lines of observational evidence pointing to the existence of Planet Nine," Konstantin Batygin, a planetary astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, said in the statement. "If you were to remove this explanation and imagine Planet Nine does not exist, then you generate more problems than you solve. All of a sudden, you have five different puzzles, and you must come up with five different theories to explain them." [The Evidence for 'Planet Nine' in Our Solar System (Gallery)]

Is Trump Out of Control? (Not a silly question)

Trump seems like he’s looking for a chance to start WW III.  If he can’t do it in North Korea then he’ll do it in Iran.  He de-certifies the treaty against advice of senators like Corker and Mc Cain.  And the next step is up to congress.  They have to reimpose sanctions.  And if the President signs the bill to reimpose those sanctions then at that time the United States will be in violation of the Nuclear treaty signed two years ago and worked out by Secretary of State John Kerry.  It’s almost as if his staff is there as kind of a wall of sanity keeping him from doing insane stuff.  We should thank God that he even appointed level headed people, for the most part.  Of course the President tweets constantly, like over the weekend.  He never gives it a rest.  Now President Trump says that if Tillerson called him a moron then if we compared IQ tests trump would win.  He loves to brag.  This Corker guy from Tennessee can say what he wants to about the President because he’s not running for the Senate again.  He described the President as some kind of a toddler who belongs in a day care center, if I heard right.   A toddler will ask for a whole chocolate cake to eat at once and his Mom will tell him “Next week” and the toddler will forget about it.  Or his staff will just ignore his requests and orders if they seem to bizarre.  And they will tell the President that he carried out those orders.  I think Hitler’s staff used to do the same thing, didn’t they?  The question is, “Is this really the calm before the storm?”

PREDATORS      Released October 10^th.

Born to Run  (Bruce Springsteen)

The Safety Dance (Men Without Hats)

Message To Love (Pretenders)

Johnny Can’t Read (Don Hendley)
She's So Cold (Rolling Stones)
When Doves Cry (Prince)

Who’s Gona Drive You Home?  (The Cars)

Low Riders (War)

Set Your Controls to the Heart of the Sun  (Pink Floyd)

Refugee (Tom Petty)

Tusc (Fleetwood Mac)

Sweet Madam Blue (Styx)

Voodu Child – Slow Version  (Jimi Hendrix Experience)

On the front cover are the Spanish conquistadors landing in the new world getting out of their three ships and stepping on dry land with their curly hair and beards and all.  Title listings are on the back along with commentary about what sexual and enslavement predators these men were.  I’ll have more to say about this in a little bit.  As you can see a lot of common tracks slipped through the cracks till now.  We didn’t want to release this on Lennon’s birthday.  Mal Evans didn’t want to include “Voodu Child” but perhaps something political off the news.  But he wasn’t the one making the final decision.  It’s still one of our shorter compilations even with a long last song.  We’ve had that trend this year of including a lot of really long songs.  And the final track runs about fifteen minutes.  I prefer the LIVE version of "Something for Nothing from Rush's 1976 live album because the performance is better and it doesn't fade out at the end.  We just added two more songs, Prince and Rolling Stones, because this album came out short.  

That Anaheim Hills fire grew from 75 acres to “500 to 800” acres to two thousand acres to 4500 acres.  It progressed from the Orange border through the whole city of Orange and then on into Tustin and a lot of that was flat lands where it’s easier to deal with.  I got coffee from Glen from his room paying Glen fifty cents for slightly weak coffee.  Having my own coffee will save me dealing with Glen.  I watched the ABC network news.  I was afraid that we were never going to leave local coverage.  But the ABC network news featured the California fires in the West Coast edition.  But the Santa Rosa fire got the lion’s share of the reporting and rightly so, too.  It’s burned 28 thousand acres and just gone through and leveled housing tracts to the ground.  It started Sunday night and it’s still going.  The local fire seems to be almost out because I haven’t seen any smoke today.  Then it was Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.  Then it was Super Girl.  But Super Girl is “out of the closet” (or telephone booth) because everyone knows she has super powers.  She wanted to leave her job as a news reporter to devote all of her time to crime fighting.  This only makes sense and the others are in no position to bargain.  

Inquiring minds still want to know how the Christian church got off the ground.  It can't be from decades old rumors that somebody or another was seen alive after death.  This sort of stuff goes on all the time.  People are constantly seeing ghosts and phantoms, yet they don't build a church on the idea.  Everything we know about the Christian church comes perspective of an established winner.  The church was said to "already cover the whole world".  This involves a grand vision of the authors and what inquiring minds want to know is the growth process of the Church.  I'm convinced that there must have been some government institution backing up the church from the very beginning for it to be successful.  I think the Gospels as we know them now are close to a century old even when they were written.  I also believe the contraversial idea that there were four Messiah figures emalgamated into one legondary figure.  When you think about it everything in the New Testament is aimed at believers- - not doubters.  Why is that?  Doubters would ask a lot of questions and demand information.  But we know all about "believers".  Trump's crowd are a bunch of "believers".  They just want to be stroked and have what they already feel and believe- - butressed and strengthened and all doubts banished.  (Selah) 

Today is Columbus Day October 9, 2017 and also John Lennon’s birthday.  It’s the day we celebrate the accomplishments of that rapist in chief, Christopher Columbus.  If ever there was a call for statues being pulled down it would be the ones of Columbus in Washington DC, the heart of our nation’s government.  There is a saying that godliness if how you act when you think there’s nobody watching.  Now we know how Christians act when they think there is nobody to whom they have to give account.  The Roman Catholic Church held a theological discussion as to whether these new indigenous people were human beings or not, and it was decided that they were.  But the trouble is they had to think about it.  This only goes to show the indigenous racism of the Catholic Church.  As such I’m all in favor of Los Angeles and Seattle declaring this second Monday in October to be indigenous people’s day. 

The Brave New World of Targeted Campaign Ads

Let’s talk about this story on Sixty Minutes last night.  It seems President Trump had a secret campaign coordinator that flew below the media radar but in reality was the most important person.  It’s this guy who coordenates with Facebook to give targeted campaign ads against a very narrow constituency of the public at large.  The ads seemed almost tailored to each individuals hopes, fears, and prejudices.  Apparently Facebook learns information about the prospective target of the ads.  They will do (?) a hundred thousand different ads and all of them are a little different.  They may differ by signs and posters you see in the background, or even the color of the button you press to donate.  Stephanie Miller believes the Russians are behind the whole thing.  This guy they interviewed did not deny that Russians could be behind a lot of the ads but he personally didn’t collude with Russia.  It makes you wonder whether we really are in a “Brave New World”.  Now it isn’t just sound and vision but feelings.  The ads have to be touchy-feely to stroke the person just right.  Hillary was offered the same chance to work with Facebook in this micro-targeted manner, but she turned down this key opportunity.  Just think though that it’s liberal democrats giving far right Republicans the means to sabotage them! 

Wayne La Pierre has reversed his position on bump stocks that enable rapid fire of assault weapons.  Now he says congress shouldn’t do anything about it.  He accuses Dianne Feinstein of that old “slippery slope”.  He accused her of wanting to ban all firearms and this bump stock thing is just a foot in the door so she can get all the rest of it passed.  His thinking is highly illogical.  If congress won’t respond to this ONE issue, how on earth is congress magically going to haul off and pass an ultra liberal democratic agenda of a firearms ban?  I think this would now make an excellent issue for democratic congressmen to run on next year because ordinary heartland Americans were killed in this Las Vegas rampage. 

Over the weekend Mike Pence was at a fun raising activity in Las Vegas.  Then he flew an executive jet to Indianapolis to watched the ‘49ers and Colts play a game.  But when several of the ‘49ers took a knee, VP Pence left in outrage.  He refused to watch any more of the game before it had even started.  That’s pretty stupid.  All of these people are stupid.  President Trump told him to walk out of the game if any player took a knee.  Shawn Hannity talked about this on his show today.  He says the NFL will go out of business all because a few players take a knee.  This is absurd hysterics.  Shawn will make an issue out of anything.  He said that a vastly greater number of cops get shot as opposed to the ones who shoot criminals.  This is an out and out lie.  It was now ten to three and I made my way over to the Norman Goldman program.  I had to allow plenty of time for the computer to warm up, and I had WCPT up before three.  Norman says that if the Trump administration is allowed to “tell the protestors what they are really protesting about” then he’s allowed to label these far right republicans as not Christian.  The two are utterly non related.  People aren’t protesting the flag or patriotism.  They’re protesting violence against Black people.  Perhaps it’s not the best venue to do this.

This is Monday October 9, 2017.   I got cigarettes in the morning about a quarter to ten.  I had Thom Hartman on.  I went for morning snacks and got a red punch and a graham cracker.  Then I turned on “The Price is Right” of my own volition.  We had a hot ham sandwich on a crescent with potato chips and coleslaw.  I got another half sandwich and more coleslaw from Rene.  We had strawberry ice cream for dessert.   I noticed it looked a little yellow outside and I didn’t know if it was my eyes or not.  It turns out there is a fire in the Anaheim and Orange hills.  The smoke spread from just the southeast portion of the sky and then about half the sky and then most of the sky with just the northern horizon in blue.  Finally the entire sky was smokey.  Ten houses at least have been destroyed by the fire.  Some have tile roofs, which turn out not to be that safe because they’re heavy and collapse the house.  Windows break out from radiant heat and then the drapes and all the interior catches fire and so the fires burn from the inside out.  They have a lot of horses and green spaces in this area.  I had Gary and Shannon on for a while.  Then I turned on CBS and then NBC TV and had coverage from before one to about two o clock.   

Trump Rolls Back Obama Safeguards

There are two Trump roll-back mandates.  Trump lets businesses discriminate on the basis of religion in not paying for women’s birth control.  Also the trans sexual ruling of President Obama has been officially overturned.  There are a number of things that can be accomplished by executive order.  I think there are times when you need to know whether you are hiring a man or a woman.  So this Trump roll-back I agree with.  In terms of birth control it’s such a long established tradition for fifty years or something that women are entitled to birth control measures, I’m a little puzzled by this ruling but it’s just Trump being Trump. 

Now people are upset about Trump’s referring to “This is the calm before the storm”.  Maybe Trump is just into reality TV where they go for cliffhangers to get you to tune in next week.  Is he alluding to North Korea or Iran?  Trump wants to de-certify the Nuclear agreement with Iran and this has created tension in the administration.  Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called President Trump a f—king moron and now he denies it and Trump calls NBC news for reporting it.  The evidence is last summer Tillerson was close to being fired. 

Hurricane Nate is in Central America now and crossing into Mexico.  It will hit Cancoon and they gather speed in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico before hitting between New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama.  It should be a category one.  They say Hurricanes need ocean temperatures of eighty to gain strength and these waters are now 84 degrees. 

Unemployment is down for September but 33,000 jobs were lost last month.  In my opinion this signals the end of the economic recovery.  I don’t think the economic slump is caused by hurricanes Harvey and Irma.  If the unemployment rate is at an all time low of 4.2% then this has to be caused by a decline in those looking for jobs.  Norman Goldman agrees he that the job numbers this month signal trouble. If they admit jobs were lost you know it’s bad because they’ll say jobs were added even when net jobs were lost.

 

People may say that we need to get back to the nonviolent and compassionate teachings of Jesus.  Jesus sets the bar pretty high.  He said “He who lives by the sword will die by the sword”.  Jesus also said “Do not refuse him who would borrow from you”.  What do you think Jesus thinks about these vulture loans bankrupting the people of Puerto Rico?  The trouble is rather than interperet the rest of the New Testament, like all of the epistles and revelation and all- - in the light of the words and deeds of Jesus, who walked the earth for 33 years, instead we interperet the Gospels in the light of the Epistles.  Thus “Jesus” becomes a prisoner in a theological morass.  One person put it “Jesus I can really get behind, but it’s just his fan club that drives me up the walls”.  I think liberals need to find a way to take back “The gospel of Jesus” and gain strength and resolve for their own political convictions by looking to Jesus.  Of course I don’t like the phrase “My Jesus”.   He isn’t YOUR Jesus, he’s the messiah and we’re supposed to follow him, and not have Him follow our own mental bents. 

The big news is that the NRA agrees that these bump stock attachments to guns need to be regulated.  Apparently the NRA has run out of excuses to defend wonton destruction.  Because these attrachments don’t add to the sale of guns but are usually done illegally anyhow.  Congress as well as the President say they will consider this bump stock attachment that enables firearms to fire sequentially in rapid fire action that is not quite as fast as a regular machine gun.  Actually President Trump says “we’ll see” so he has to get permission from Sheldon Addelson on this one. This morning’s fill in for Hartman suggest we liberals set out sites on small victories- and not the big picture.  Remember, “If you’re pro life, you have to be pro life for the whole life”.   

Rhapsody in Black featured songs from September 1959.   They played a lot of hits today.  They played “Teen Beat”, “Personality”,  “Leave My Kitten Alone”, “I Want to Walk You Home”, “Poison Ivey”,  “Shout”, “Love Potion Number Nine” and “Sea of Love” and “Say Man”.   They also played “In the Mood”,  “Hey, Little Girl in the HS Sweater” and “What a Difference a Day Makes”.   They also played songs they played last year such as “Little Boy Blue”, “I Love You, Porky” and “Breaking Up is Hard to do”.   I’m sure I’ve missed some.   They played “Cute Little Ways”, which is a take-off of “Sexy Ways” also by Hank Ballard. 

Existance of Gravity Waves is Proven

Three scientists won the Nobel Prize for science on the subject of proving of gravity waves, which apparently till now had only been a well accepted theory.  Here is more on the subject.  The physics world awoke to news of new Nobel Prize recipients today (Oct. 3). The Nobel committee awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in physics to the three scientists who discovered gravitational waves. Half of the prize will go to physicist Rainer Weiss of MIT, with the other half split by physicists Barry Barish and Kip Thorne of Caltech. The three scientists founded the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, (LIGO), which first detected gravitational waves in 2015.

Gravitational waves are predicted by Einstein's Theory of Relativity. When supermassive objects come together, like merging black holes, they create ripples in the structure of space-time. LIGO's two observatories each have two arms 2.48 miles (4 kilometers) long and arranged in an "L" shape. They use lasers to measure the changes in an arm's length caused by gravitational waves flexing and squeezing space-time itself as they pass through the detector.

The first gravitational wave detected in 2015 was the result of a collision 1.3 billion years ago, between two black holes that were 29 and 36 times more massive than the sun. However, the effects are nearly imperceptible. LIGO's detectors are sensitive to differences 10,000 times smaller than an atomic nucleus, according to a description on the facility's website.

Here’s my take on light waves.  In an Isaac Newton biography I watched on TV Newton said that gravity intensity varies with the square of the distance.  This is the same formula for propagation of light waves.  Light and gravity follow the same rules of ether travel, which we have discussed at length starting in the fall of 2009.  There is the “What you see is what you get” principle meaning that if you can't see a black hole you won’t be bothered by it.  There was a picture of two black holes next to each other but it turned out it was an "artist rendering" and not an actual photograph.  Black holes don’t gravitationally sneak up on you in the dark of night.  Of course black holes don’t have gradual “event horizons”.  You are either IN one or not in one.  But if two black holes collide with each other this would understandably cause wave phenomina because light waves can be observed with two light source as well as electronics media being either in or out of phase.  The big question is what frequency are gravity waves modulated it.  A “wave” normally needs some medium of propagation to propagate the energy.  Of course event horizons are interesting because when you look out in space you are looking back in time.  And if an object is traveling either toward or away from you faster than the speed of light you won’t see (observe) it, but it will still be there.  Dig Einstein’s grave up and he’ll agree with me on this topic. It’s called the theory of relativity – not the theory of the absolute.  Just remember that Einstein agrees with Newton before him that there is no place that can be said to be perfectly “stationary”.  There is no "stationary point in the center of the universe" or anywhere else any more than any other point can be called stationary or central.  

 I finally got the Norman Goldman show.   I don’t think “Refugee” is in any of my rock compilations.  I only found four Tom Petty songs.  I hope those looking found the two compilation references that I listed in the last posting.  I decided not to list all of the rock groups associated with those two planets I referred to because people reading this weren't listening to music in the sixties and would only be confused.  On Denelus IV it's the Troggs, Standels, the original Tommy James & the Shandels, Count 5, The Velvet Underground, and the Syndicate of Sound, very early Turtles, early Donavin and very early Grass Roots. .  On Aries G it's "Them", "Love", "The Music Machine" and "The Leaves" very early "Young Rascals" and early and mid "Paul Revere and the Raiders" and Buffy St Marie, of all people,   

MORE ON GUN CONTROL.  Norman said something about the second amendment that I never realized before.   There is nothing in the second amendment about whether the right to own a gun or to buy a gun.  Think about it.  Nowhere in the second amendment are there the words "Every citizen has the right to OWN a gun."  No they don't.  They have the right to "keep and bear arms".  Meaning they were issued a firearm as a consequence of their service to a "well regulated militia".  Thom Hartman once read the requirements for the issue of firearms.  Of course we'll all have to live like refugees now.  In the ninth amendment may I suggest one of the not enumerated rights is the "right not to be shot".  Think about it.  Mitch Mc Connell says now is not the time to discuss legislation "if any".  There's his answer right there.  How long should be wait.  It wasn't "time for those people's lives to end" if you were to take a poll of the people who were killed.  There isn't a better time to talk about gun control.  How long should be have to wait to express our free speech.  If you break up with your fiancee two days before the wedding and she breaks down and cries would you say "I don't think we need to emotionalize this event".  No.  Emotional expression takes many forms and we have the right to express the oppinion that "something needs to be done about all of these mass shootings."   Just remember 2018 is just a year away and vote your conscience next year when it comes to picking congressmen.  

It was the Gary and Shannon show including “draining the swamp”.  Days of our Lives started off.  But most of the hour was taken up with a police officer statement about Sunday night’s LV attack.  But he didn’t take that many questions but did a lot of extraneous talking not related to the actual crime.  I went out for a smoke break.  The weather not got above 75 degrees or so.  Gabby was here today and she was out with Phyllis in the morning and sitting by Jennifer’s door in the afternoon, where it was coolest.  I got a lemonade and a graham cracker from Rico.  Then I went out for a cigarette and came back up here and lay down briefly before getting in the money draw line.  It wasn’t too bad because people were spaced out.  Muffin sat in a chair and didn’t attempt to get in line.  I hadn’t shaved.  I gave Jennifer my check for $1050.00 and didn’t ask for any money.  Then I came back here and booted the computer but it took forever to get Google up.   

The Worst Mass Shooting In American History

Last night America experienced its worst mass shootings of all time, out of so many mass shootings the past few years.   Stephan Paddock is the 64 year old shooter whose father was a psychopath who was on the Ten Most Wanted FBI list and robbed a bank in 1960.   He then tried to mow down FBI agents with his car.  He got out of prison in 1968 and was recaptured in 1971.  The son hasn’t had any major encounters with the police.  He has no record, which makes this mass shooting all the more mysterious.  From the 32^nd floor of the Montego Bay hotel in Las Vegas out of a broken out window he mowed down hundreds of people attending a country music concert.  He used a machine gun and he had either ten or nineteen firearms in his hotel room.  22,000 sitting ducks were attending the concert.  58 people have died and 515 people were injured.  The band kept playing a few seconds when the gunfire started before they realized what was happening.  People are lined up around the block to donate blood, and they’ll need plenty for this one.  Of course all Gary and Shannon can say is that stock conservative like is ‘Now is not the time to be talking about gun control”.  Now is exactly the time to talk about gun control while the incident is still fresh on people’s minds.  If Aurora or Newtown or Miami isn’t bad enough for you people, this one is worse than all of them.  This is the worst mass shooting of all time in America.  This Stephen Paddock has no ties to Al Qaeda or ISIS to people can’t use religion or race as an excuse or somehow “fall guy” for the fact that Nevada has almost no gun restrictions.  The year 2012 was ample proof that the time has long passed to say “This is not the time” or “the time is not yet.  Let’s wait and see is the situation gets any worse”.  All this

Of course the old question rises of “How could a loving god allow something like this to keep happening?  I’ll give you two explanations.  Dr Levy’s explanation is that we serve a “Hide and Seek” god.  God could make it will plain to all and even enforce that will if necessary.  Or else God could choose to not reveal himself to mankind at all, kind of shades of the “Non intervention policy”.  To me either of these explanations would be more satisfactory than a god who plays games such as hide and seek with us.  There is a simpler explanation for evil.  This is where there are warring angels and demons all the time going on ”in the heavenly” as St Paul puts it.  You ask “How can heaven be a place of strife and dissent?”  Well this is a residual doctrine from Marcionism where heaven itself is questionable because not even angels can be trusted entirely, as St Paul himself says when he speaks of “Desguising yourself as an angel of light”.  You can’t trust “angels of light”.  This goes back to the law of “limited Good”.  It would seem that even though God Himself is infinite, Perfection itself is finite and precious.  It’s so precious that not even God can reproduce himself without being in sin.  And it goes without saying that we who are in this evil “reproduction” called Planet Earth are thus “outside of God’s perfection.   Others of a less religious bent till tell you that it all must be collective karma or man gets what he deserves and “The world isn’t supposed to make sense”.  (Selah)  Of course if you're a little disposed to be anti religious like that Norman Goldman caller was you'll come up with the obvious observation "Prayer by itself hasn't worked with any of the previous shootings.  It's time to stop praying about and actually DO something about the problem".

It appears as if Tom Petty has died at age 66.  The latest news is that they just pulled him off life support.  I’m surprised.  UPDATE: Citing a source, Variety reported at 1:30 p.m. PT that Petty had died. However, the LAPD has clarified that a statement ‘inadvertently provided’ incorrect information to media sources. Variety will continue to monitor the situation and provide the most accurate information possible amid conflicting reports. TMZ reported that Petty is “clinging to life support.”   Tom Petty, whose Florida-bred quintet the Heartbreakers was one of the defining arena-rock acts of the 1970s with hits like “Breakdown,” suffered a heart attack Sunday at his home in Malibu, Calif.   Police responded to his home at 10:50 p.m. Sunday night and he was transferred to UCLA-Santa Monica Medical Center, where he was on life support.  Petty toured all summer across the U.S., with the last date at the Hollywood Bowl on Sept. 25. He had been scheduled to play two dates in New York in November. However, he had cancelled a few shows during the tour for laryngitis.

First I'd like to do a plug for two of our more obscure rock compilations, not in terms of content but in terms of trying to find them.  'LOVE OR CONFUSION' is in "Escape from Egypt" in the month of March of 2007 and three months later we have "LLEPS ETH ESREVER Vol Two' in June of 2007 in the Rocca Rolla blog.  I'd paste them but now you know where to find them.   It has been suggested that Tom Petti returned to Denelus II, which other Romulans regard as "the secret planet" though they say there is nothing secret about the planet but they just like their privacy with a stringent admissions policy.  Friends of Black Bart from Denelus IV are rather fond of Denelus II and also planet Aries G, [decades later the Federation would mention it] often referred to as "Sector 7G" after the Simpson's.  They are known as the Corsellians.  Denelus II has regular sunlight but Denelus IV is a rather dark planet.  It's darker than Sirius A but not as dark as Andromeda E.   As you know there is a lyric in "When the Music's Over" that goes "Cancel my subscription to the Resurrection", which I was told there was actually a Magazine called the Resurrection.  "Send my credentials to the house of detention".  People make reference to looking forward to going to Hell because all their friends are there.  "I've got some friends inside".  If I'm in the mood I might paste those two single CD compilations over to this file, but don't count on it.  

Jeff Sessions Recruses himself for Investigation

Today Attorney General officially recused himself in light of the coming investigation of his two visits with the Soviet ambassador last fall.  He had two of his aids with them.  Jeff Sessions was the first sitting US Senator to endorse Donald Trump when nobody else would touch him.  So they go way back.  There is news that President Obama learned of all the evidence linking the Trump campaign with Russia and sought to copy and hide as much evidence as they could so the Trump administration wouldn't come in and destroy it.  Attorney General Sessions lied to the Senate at his confirmation hearing when Al Franken asked him about it.  He said neither him nor anyone from the campaign has had contact with anybody from Russia.  Clinton got impeached for lying about a blow job.  This should be at least as serious if we’re going to be objective.  At Session’s news conference today just after one, Sessions denied talking with the Russian ambassador about anything in the campaign.  I find that really hard to believe.  Of course democrats such as Nancy Pelosi want him to resign.  Of course the other news about congress is that today congress voted not to even look at, examine Trump’s tax returns even in committee.  As Hartman said they must be so certain that they’ll find something incrimidating that they won’t be able to keep quiet that they didn’t want to take the chance.  After it went to committee it would go to the full house and then it would be almost certain someone would leak all of the sordid details to the press.  There’s no telling what kind of embarrassing things we may learn.  We may learn about business contacts with Russia we knew nothing about.  We will learn how much Trump either did make or didn’t make.  Maybe he declared bankruptsy again.  And we may learn how little Trump has given to charities, which is the big rumor.  The media is not Trump’s friend these days.  There is another item in the news today which involves the rights of protestors.  States want to make it legal to run protestors down who block the street indemnifying the drivers of the vehicles.  There will be a whole bunch of rules protestors have to abide by and the new laws will make it a whole lot easier for them to get arrested.  Of course in general now you could say that democrats must target these state governments.  State governments want to ucerp the right of local councilmen and mayors and such by overriding their ability to make certain laws.  We need the protestors out in mass come hell or high water out there and in the halls of congress and state legislatures.  But more than this we need rich democrats to let loose of their purse strings and donate big bucks to campaigns that will get these bozo legislators and governors out of office.  This is the missing ingredient from 2010.  And they should probably do things I haven’t thought of.  I’m not above being as sneaky and under-handed as possible at this point- - as long as it’s legal, or you can make fall guys out of people who do break the law.

Here's a little something for the egg heads in the population because "inquiring minds want to know" about the uses and applications of hyperbolic trig functions.  Hyperbolic functions occur in the solutions of many linear differential equations, for example the equation defining acatenary, of some cubic equations, in calculations of angles and distances in hyperbolic geometry and of Laplace's equation in Cartesian coordinates. Laplace's equations are important in many areas of physics, includingelectromagnetic theory, heat transfer, fluid dynamics, and special relativity.  In complex analysis, the hyperbolic functions arise as the imaginary parts of sine and cosine. When considered defined by a complex variable, the hyperbolic functions are rational functions of exponentials, and are hence holomorphic.  Hyperbolic functions were introduced in the 1760s independently by Vincenzo Riccati and Johann Heinrich Lambert.^[9]Riccati used Sc. and Cc. ([co]sinus circulare) to refer to circular functions and Sh. and Ch. ([co]sinus hyperbolico) to refer to hyperbolic functions. Lambert adopted the names but altered the abbreviations to what they are today.^[10] The abbreviations sh and ch are still used in some other languages, like French and Russian.

 Now it’s ten after two and I just got a snack from Rico of a grape drink and a pack of graham crackers.  Nicole kidnapped her own daughter when she should have let a professional like Damos do it.  He’d have given her more chloroform to keep her knocked out longer so she wouldn’t call the cops.  Now they have an Amber alert out for her and the hotel clerk is already suspicious of her because she was wearing sun glasses at night.  Also Nicole was spotted on security footage at Clowie’s apartment.  There was of course the Jeff Sessions news conference.  Jeff Sessions was featured on the Gary and Shannon show concerning today’s revelations.  We had beef soup for lunch.  This was followed by a chef’s salad with only crutons on it and short on dressing and made with dark lettuce.  We had peaches for dessert.  Victoria Jones called in at her usual time on the Thom Hartman program.

This is Thursday March 2, 2017 and it’s clear and sunny with a Santa Ana wind promising a warmer middle of the day.  Yesterday was Ash Wednesday and one of these days I’ll attend the Catholic service.  I wasn’t here.  I had a dream this morning about three o clock where there was this foreign (?) soap opera featuring the “leading men” as unattractive sixty and seventy year old men out to get younger women.  It was a soap opera from the point of view of the man and not the women.  The other part was when there was this 75 year old Jamaican man who claimed John Lennon’s spirit occupied his body and he was channeling Lennon before a bunch of enthralled reporters.  I was thinking to myself “That isn’t Lennon.  I can’t believe anyone is buying this”.  Then I went to the bathroom and these spooks- - faces kept popping up from dark corners in the bathroom before the light was on.  Then I fell out of bed and landed on the oranges and knocked the laundry basket over.  Later on in the morning I noticed that the lamp table had been pulled out a little and when I looked behind the lamp plug had been pulled out a little- - and it looked like the lamp was flickering.  I got up at twenty to six.  Paul asked me how I slept.  It was starting to get light but we won’t have these light mornings much longer with Daylight Savings Time just around the corner.  I turned on the computer.   There are two songs “missing” from the “Missing Links” compilation (1970 – 1974)  and one of the alien people told me that these two songs had been added to “Missing Links” already- - “Do You Know what I Mean?” by Lee Michaels and “Saturday in the Park” by Chicago.  Also “Mercedes Benz” by Janis Joplin was officially listed as a track and not as an “unannounced track”.  The individual sides (disks) on this compilation were shorter than our average compilation.  The medication line with April was long and I waited for it to die down after six thirty.  Bill had the TV on but I eventually turned that off and turned on Stephanie.  I am missing a dime from my change.  I found 12¢ on the floor.  I went to the liquor store about ten after for a dollar coffee.  By now the dining room was open.  We had corn flakes.  Augustine dumped a whole bag of Mc Donald’s sugars and creamers on the table and I took six sugars and used two creamers for the weak coffee, which eventually came after we were done with breakfast.  Augustine delivered our omelet and toast, butter and jelly.  Judy gave me most of her omelet too. 

I have decided not to make any changes in the “Radio Ready” album.  “Soft Hearted Hanna” may be on my own Best of compilation however it’s a B side and harder to buy in the real world than “What do you do for Money? By AC DC.   I had Thom Hartman on.  I kind of dozed off a little.  Paul called at twenty to ten.