The Republican Debate- Blow by Blow

Today is November 29, 2007 and tomorrow is the fortieth anniversary of the release of the album, “Magical Mystery Tour”. Last night the Republicans held another debate, the one sponsored by You-Tube. I tried to get it on You-Tube but apparently you have to subscribe, so I switched to CNN. Huckibee was speaking when I joined, and they soon had their first break. Apparently they had started before six. They ran till about ten after seven. I think at that time CNN separated from the You-Tube portion of the coverage. Let’s cover some of the issues. Giuliani accused Romney of hiring illegal aliens to work on his yard and Romney countered by saying that the individual workers were hired by the company and the detales of their employment were not his immediate concern, and in this I agree with Romney. Romney pointed out Giuliani’s statement about “If you’re an illegal alien we want you to come to New York”. Another issue was the death penalty and Huckibee was asked “What would Jesus say about this?” Huckibee countered that Jesus would be too smart to run for a political office. This quip struck a chord in me because back thirty years ago everybody in my social circle was expecting the Rapture to come and this world was “All going to burn” anyhow. They say that when you extend the political spectrum fringe enough, the extremes meet on the far side of the circle. Back when I was young, in my twenties, there wasn’t a lot of talk about the Moral Majority. They couldn’t be all that spiritual if they were concerned about the Here and Now, and when my Prophecy book came out endourcing Reagan, it was just Way too Political. I was one of the first Christians to come out against Jimmy Carter, in fact I voted for Ford. All Carter had to say was “Born Again” and he had instant followers. Jesus may have thought he was “smart” not running for office or being involved in worldly affairs but as a Jew did he also approve of the avalanche of anti-Semitism unleashed upon the nation of Israel by the Church at Rome? The next issue to come up was torture, and in this case the debate was a key deciding point for me. John Mc Cain is the only one other than perhaps Ron Paul, to come out firmly and resolutely against torture and water-boarding. If none of the other candidates had the gonads to take this stance then they aren’t getting my vote. Abortion came up. Fred Thompson in his video took a shot at Mit Romney for saying abortions should be safe, legal, and rare. I can’t go for Romney. He’s too much of a poser. What he’s doing is bordering on pandering to the political right saying in essence, “Whatever position you take, I’m to the right of you”. Huckibee is gaining on Romney and I believe the reason why is that he appears more human. Finally there was a question on homosexuals in the military. The guy turned out to be a plant from the Hillary Clinton campaign. If nothing else this is a reminder never to vote for Hillary. What irritated me was that every candidate up there answered the question in careful, detailed fashion, and Duncan Hunter was grilled about his belief “The military will change when the culture changes and they adjust with it”. That’s what I’d call a sensible answer. It may not be relivant twenty years from now whether a trooper is gay or not. But The questioner got more agitated and said “I have not heard a satisfactory answer from anybody up there- do you look forward to the day when gays are freely in the military”. The thing is, the guy wasn’t asking questions so much as he was preaching to us. He was irritating, and at one point is microphone was cut off, then turned back on.

STATE SECRETS

Randy Rhodes has made this kind of a crusade of hers, and I hope she keeps it up. As you know Valerie Wilson had a lot of stuff from her new book "redacted" by the CIA because it was classified information. She wants to show how she was screwed over by giving a blow by blow description, but the government won't allow her to do that. It seems kind of an oxy-moronism that they say she was NOT a covert agent, but in order for Valerie to prove that she was, she has to violate "state secrets". Of course Larry Elder doesn't like stories of torture of prisoners or abductees getting into the public press. But the question comes up just who they are keeping the torture secret from. The victim certainly knows he was tortured. Randi says that in addition to all of these "renderings" to secret locations, even the people in Guantanamo Bay were tortured and that is a "state secret" too. This is deemed the case even though reports of it are comon knowledge and reports of cases have appeared in the New York Times. Randi also has noted that of all the people who are "suspects" according to the government, including people on the No Fly list- - almost none of the people who have been charged with a crime have actually had their day in court. I guess only two of the people in Guantanamo Bay of the seven hundred prisoners once there and the three hundred eventually released- - of the four hundred odd left, only two have had their day in court, so that fifteen year old Iraqi terrorist can count himself lucky his case is at least coming up. What certainly turned me against considering Mit Romney to get my vote is his statement that none of these prisoners are entitled to any civil rights. And of course I guess we have rules that if we are "at war" then the prisoners have the right to be held as prisoners, if not tortur-ees, till at least the end of that war. Of course American Citizens have been targeted as "enemy combatents" by the Bush Adminestration. Whoever is running for President should address and stress these issues as things for the next president to deal with. Fred Thompson and others still speak of the war as something which is going to go on forever because WHENEVER we withdraw will be "too soon" and we will be "admitting defeat" and of course the Taliban will "follow us over here". People like Larry Elder want us to be "At War" all the time, as a pretext for violating the rights of American Citizens.

Sometimes you get a royal screwing by the government. This is one area where you'd think the libertarian argument would kick in about private enterptize being superior because at least THEY are accountable to their customers, and they don't want to lose a valued customer due to some unfortunate coincidence of event or misunderstanding. I've had problems with my ex internet provider in the past few days. We'll just call them the Neeto-Keno internet company. They conned me into paying a thirty dollar fee for duplicate E mail address. When I called a few days later on November 19th. saying I wanted to cancle the service that was to have started on November 24th. they agreed. They had reminded me, "Of course you know you are already paid up for full service till the 24th." So when I went to the A T M machine on the nineteenth to withdraw money and saw about $29.00 missing from my account, I naturally figured it was the phone bill I had sent off a few days earlier. It's a case of hearing hoof beats and assuming it's horses and not Zebras. In this case it turned out to be Zebras. The Neeto-Keno internet company had made an illegal withdrawal from my account, and they did not put it back. As a consequence I bounced a check and am not out sixty dollars, for a service I didn't want or need anyhow. In the case of the government this screwing-over took the form of people who had enlisted in the Armed Forces betting a reinlistment bonus check. But when they got in for another tour of duty in Iraq they were wounded and had to exit the Military sooner than they had planned, before their tour of duty was up. So they were billed for their enlistment bonus. This messing over of vetterans in hospital beds fighting for their lives in some cases, is heartless and inexcusable beyond belief. Of course you've heard of enlistees being billed for their own equipment. I think Randi Rhodes is right. The backbone of the Army is being broken and we're turning over the defense of our country to corporate stooges, at taxpayer's expense.

GUY OWENS VERSES MARK CAMPBELL

I don't know if you've ever had the feeling that someone was trying to assume your identity and take over your life. As you may know, Chuck Smith made the prediction a while back that the Rapture of the Church would absolutely come on or before May 10th. 1981. As this date approached Mark Campbell decided to write a song for the occasion, "How Late Thou Art" based upon the church hymn. This song talks about graves and some of the Abbey Road mythology. Oddly the song came out just a few days before the attempted assasenation of Pope John Paul II in May of 1981. The song is kind of image filled and was inspired in part by that "Death of John the Baptist" photo in some book about a TV movie, where the camera is looking up from a grave as four desciples are throwing handfulls of dirt into the grave. The shot has a vague resemblance to the Rubber Soul cover. There were also bits in the song intended as a jab at me because of my belief in astrology and "signs of the end that were coming", and the whole religious spell I was under. There was even a jab at Zachery and the ZAC in this song. By early 1984 things had changed completely. I was now no longer living in the Bosc house but was over on Pinewood. I was letting Mark Campbell take over the media mailings and he did it almost exclusively in 1982 and early 1983. He did a better job of it then I ever could. He had moved into my old bedroom at the Bosc house and I felt he was "becomming me". Whenever Dick and Robin and Zachery came over to the Bosc house they were always times when I wasn't there. So Bobby and Pike and Jim saw Zachery but I didn't after October of 1981. I was feeling Jealous of Mark and I kind of re-did the lyrics to "No Imagination" by Blondie. Two changes come right to mind. I wrote 'I don't want to stay with you, I don't want to play with you" and another change is "Eyes that Mimic innocence". I was kind of saying in early 1984, "screw you and screw the ZAC". Meanwhile in 1982 there were things in the letters like I had committed suicide in late November of 1981 by being run over by a railroad on the tracks at Lincoln Avenue by the Freeway. Those of you who've read my Word files from summer 2004 know that Martin Owens was my adoptive grandfather, my father's father, after his biological father flaked out in 1925 at the age of two. My grandmother was originally from- - somewhere around northern Mississippi, we'll leave it at that. She moved to Oklahoma (this was before the days of the dust bowl) along with the older half-sibblings and older brother. There she met Martin Owens who worked on an oil rig. Oddly enough the two boys did not take the last name of the new husband because my grandmother had this fixation that the biological father was really a rich man and had lots of money stashed away, and if the kids kept his last name one day they could claim it. That never happened. Martin Owens died of a heart attack while at work on an oil rig during World War II while pop (or should I say "sunny") was off in the Pacific.