OK - We Get It

You know, I'm going to pull a Johnny Wendell and talk about myself today. Last night was the Obama commercial, and my worst fears were realized that it would just be "more of the same old song and dance". The trouble is if you really are a rich person who hates poor people you wern't going to watch the thing anyhow. In the local Calvary Chapel, the way to deal with people you don't like or who make you feel unconfortable is to lable them hetrodox or "outside the circle" or better yet a "tool of Satan" that you don't want to be contaminated with. With such people you not only cut off all contact but you never speak of them again, except perhaps to slip in a disparaging remark about them in a sermon sometime, that probably isn't true to begin with. We know these people despize higher tax rates for themselves, and speak of a "distontented rabble" verses an "thrifty working class" who knows the value of a dollar. We know rich people regard the poor as having the sin of "coveting what is not theirs", real Biblical. So we are treated now to the saga of Cory the oil driller and his "hard luck" story. Here are some remarks typed yesterday. This is when I read the life of Cory the oil driller and his struggles to better himself twenty years ago, and how his many monitary gambles finally paid off.

This is after dinner and I just read the saga of Cory the oil driller. My conclusion at the end of that was that Obama is not responsible for either the current financial crisis or George Bush bailing it out to the tune of 700 Billion. He's upset with Obama for his high tax rates now. Also I happened to think there must be some way to pro rate the current profit back to the lean years, since you can do the opposite. There must be some tax loophole by which all those lean years will be rewarded. I might add that all of the financial risks the man took were of his own choosing. Nobody told him to do it. He could have “settled for less sooner” but now he’s getting more later. I might also add that after I finished writing my book I had a proud feeling and this same indignent Judy told me “The only reason why you have any success is because God allows you to have it”. What she seemed to be saying was, “You didn’t write the book of your own choice; God allowed it to be written”. I had the distinct feeling she was trying to hex the project. Unlike Cory the oil driller, will will probably have money to burn even after he's paid his taxes, because of a government decision of California I am now $300.00 poorer than otherwise. As a percentnge of my monitary intake this is a much bigger chunk out of my monitary funds then Cory having to pay six percent more on his taxes. Also the man may be a gambling business man but he’s also a talented ponthicator to others.

The thing with Cory the oil driller is that by now he's earning a hell of a lot more than $250.00 per year "you betcha!" with the price of oil as it is now having quintuppled or something over the past few years. I'm supposed to feel sorry for this guy who regards Obama as the quintecence of all evil. After you pass a certain age and a certain point in your wealth, what are you going to do with your money besides Melvern Drysdale's remark about "I'm going to go into the vault and fondle every bill". What do "old men" like John Mc Cain or Ted Stevens have to look foreward to? Who are they going to leave their money to? Perhaps some shart sheister Preacher could come along and relieve them of their money by promicing them 72 Virgins when they die, along with a lifetime supply of viagara. You know Judy referred to above could take a lesson from my mother, who brags that she pays more in income tax now than the totality of her salary while she was working. She sure isn't "wasting" anything on me. A lot of us have "family" stories. Cory the oil driller had family members who loved and supported him. The blessings of friends and family are worth more than money can buy. Tom Leykis used to relate a story about how his dad would always give money to his sister who squandered money, but never give him a cent. There was a period where I borrowed a small ammount of money to cover the cost of printing up Prophecy book in 1980. It was repayed very quickly and I'm not even sure why I found myself a little short because I thought I had enough. That was about the last loan I ever got from a family member. But people speak of returning to the Clintonian tax rates as somehow a vast new "Socialist experiment" or some new "redistribution of the wealth" program. OK I get it. Rich people despize poor people. That's why rich people like my Christian friends, and Cory the oil driller are voting for Mc Cain and I'm voting for Obama, and never the twane shall meet. But you know something, in East of Eden, do you remember what Cal's father Adam said to his son after he got money in the comodities exchange by investing in grain during WW I? He said, "When are you going to give that money back from the people you stole it from?" Well, why doesn't Judy go to Cory the oil driller and point to all the speculation in oil, some of which used to be illegal, and say "When are you going to give that back from the people you stole it from?" That's not going to happen. You know what I'm tired of is this ponthication of people like Joe the Plumber and Cory the oil driller. They have learned how to ponthicate well. Like I say both have a great future as church pastors, whose job it is to fleece the flock. Meanwhile the rest of us are voting for Obama. Clinton campaigning for Obama must surely be of a help to him. There are a lot more poor people than there are rich people in this country. Obama is for hard work. He's not exactly the freeloader those on the left would like to portray him as preaching. Obama has a strong worth ethic. And I'm glad that people on the right have discovered the value of the worth ethic, because traditionally this has not been a Calvary Chappel value. In fact the other day, Joel Olsteen used a four letter word in his sermon- - P L A N. The idea of Planning ANYTHING is traditionally anathema to the Calvary Chappel crowd. I ought to know. I tried to play my life for the better and was resisted by these people at every turn. This is before they all turned into 'Mr. Potter". It's wonderful they have discovered the value of a dollar. Dollars can be wonderful things in helping out your less fortunate neighbor. But they'll never see it that way. They say "Obama is stingy with charities". If this is so I guess it's the old addage "Black people don't tip". Black people know the value of a dollar and probably scraped together every cent they could to get out in a nice resturant. Tell the waitress if she wants tips there are plenty of strip clubs around, and those people will be glad to throw money at her. These people that Obama speaks of are good, hard working people trying to better themselves while making ends meet. Now I will agree that this didn't used to be the job of President of the United States to ballance your check book. But we are in different times today. But after November 4th. these Christians on the right won't be referring to Obama as either a black or a Moslem, or a Terrorist, or a Socialist. They will be addressing him as Mr. President, and those people in our armed forces will give allegence to him as Commander and Chief.

The Machinations of the Few

We are seeing signs of the final dissilution of the Mc Cain campaign. Experts say you know it's "close to the end" when president and vice presidential candidate turn on one another and one of the other of them gets "off message". Now Sarah Palin wants candidate Mc Cain to become more personal in his attacks on Obama bringing up people like Reverand Wright. And the Mc Cain people are calling Sarah Palin a "diva" and saying she shouldn't have gotten the gift of the clothes. Some are still waiting for that etherial "tightening of the race", which the media has told us all was coming. I can remember how Ford's loss was a foregone conclusion and as I remember it Carter's loss was a foregone conclusion. People are speaking of the race as though it were really close and one candidate or the other will only win by five or ten electoral votes. But experiance shows the truth is quite otherwise. Normally (before this decade) it's tended to be an electoral vote landslide one way or the other. If there is any "tide' or "turning point" it's in Obama's direction because people, particularly married women, are losing faith in Sarah Palin. There are of course all the newspaper endorsements and the endorsement of Collin Powell last week coming out for Obama. There is the "think about it" factor, and after people weigh it and think about it, they come out for Obama. But if Obama wants to drive the nail into the coffin he might bring up the possible prosecution of criminals in the Bush Adminestration. He can enphasize more than he has the fraudulant and dishonist reasons we had for going into the Iraq War. He can "beat the big oil issue like a drum". Not only Mc Cain but also Sarah Palin and Dick Chaney and Condeleza Rice are tools of "big oil". He can remind the people that it's not a matter of "winning the war" because you can't Win an occupation, and as George Bush himself about terrorism you can't "Win It". There will never come a day when "It" has been won. You can remind them that one more bad Supreme Court appointment and we don't have a democracy any more but a "banana republic with Nukes" because American government as we know it will cease to exist when that four to five ruling gets reversed. You can inform them voting for Mc Cain won't reduce the number of abortions that are performed, or reduce the number of children who turn out gay. People should contemplate anew what it would be like with Mc Cain's finger on the button should we have to go toe to toe with the present or any future leader of Iran.

People should also remember that this idea of "creating jobs" is a deception because the need to employ people is a market driven force and not a beneficent act by "a rich person". We are all tired of hearing "You never got a job from a poor person". We are tired of having the worth of labor develued. I remember that song played on KTLK radio about "I'm the man who built the bridges, I'm the man who laid the track, with my shoulders and my back". Teddy Roosevelt once said in a speech (and he gives credit to Abraham Lincoln) that when push comes to shove, labor is to be more valued than capitol and is ontologically what comes first because without labor the lord and slave master or economic despot or whoever- - ain't got jack! People hire others because they believe they can make more money in the long run and pay the workers less- - then the profits they'll end up accrewing to their business. The economy is a market driven force. I'm tired of hearing the notion "If we just throw in a few more tax cuts the economy will be stimulated". This is like saying to a man in failing health "You know you'd be healthier if you just jogged less". If you have a strong economy- - no taxes in the world can hold it down. If you have a weak enough market, even giving it away for free won't avail you. People forget that it's the job of government to raise money from wherever they can get it. It's kind of what governments do. The reason why rich people balk at taxes is not because they feel taxes are unfair but rather they are against the whole idea of any government in the first place, but would rather delude themselves they are self made men and that the government and the laws and the courts have nothing to do with insuring stability. We have all heard Ronald Reagan's words "I'm from the government and I'm hear to help". For some reason when I hear that I think of a green acres episode where the whole town are a bunch of loonies except for Eddie Albert. OK, on to other issues- - - .

Three million people were stricken from the voter records in Ohio in 2004 and provisional ballots were never even looked at. And you know it’s going to be the same way this time. If I copy this to a blog it’s going to end up being white on white. I just went out for coffee in the courtyard, and people are still doing for the soft chairs that are in the sun. I had seconds of those tiny cups. Thom Hartman was talking one time how with a cut in capital gains tax rates he decided to sell out of the business he was in and go on an extended vacation. Cutting capital gains won’t stimulate the economy but rather leech capital from the economy in the same way that minerals displace each other in the human body. Mom says she’s taking strontium for her bones, which seems odd in light of those strontium 90 commercials about Barry Goldwater in 1964. But as strontium goes up calcium goes down. Also I’ve heard that magnesium displaces calcium and is good for a calcium OD. In like manner the body prefers sodium to potassium, and one BP book likens it back to the days of evolution and we were all chimps eating nothing but bananas and green leafy vegetables, which were rich in potassium. At any rate anybody who sees a good money “pay off” and a way of “getting out” is going to sell, and whoever he sells his stock to is going to inheret a stock with that much less capital support. There is a saying that “if it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate. And if it stops moving- subsidize it.” The government has always “managed” resources in this say. Conservatives are all upset because of Obama’s commentary on the Plecy verses Ferguson supreme court decision of 1896. Because Obama said “The supreme court didn’t go that far (as I wanted them to) in re-allocating wealth in this country. So we have the new cry that Obama is a socialist. But others will brag that in France they have vastly superior medical care to this country for “only” two hundred a month, or almost twice my “discretionary spending” money I get now. But they say that in America you have to pay a ten dollar co pay to see the doctor and that this is somehow a bad thing. Someone should explain this to me. Tom Hartman also said that in 1971 he was advised by a friend when starting up his own business to “higher women rather than men. They’ll work for less”. Now there are women who are so deluded as to think women have ALWAYS had it as good as they have it at this moment. If you’re happy with your life now you should thank a liberal for it, because as Thom Hartman also points out, most of the economic things we take for granted come to you from liberalisum such as health plans at work and clean drinking water.

Last night I watched sixty minutes. They had some “bucket brigade” scandal of 1907 where gamblers used to inhabit Wall Street betting on whether a security would succeed or fail without actually buying into that stock. In 2000 the Clinton congress re-instituted all of these gambling allowances which were illegal during most of the twentieth century. State laws were enjoined from enforcing their OWN gambling laws against these Wall Streeters preempted by Federal regulation. Now you can buy and sell these default insurance policies. Once upon a time there was a court trial in England where they established that buying “insurance” was not gambling. But in this case you needn’t own one bit of these “reprocessed” mortgage securities in order to partake of the insurance policy. You can buy and sell these policies and make tens of millions, and many people have gotten rich in the past eight years buying and selling these “swaps”. But then they all defalted. Every writer of these “swaps” just decided they weren’t going to pony up when the people came to collect, and this is the chief thing that drove banks like Lehman Brothers over the edge. T Boone Pickens was also on talking about natural gas to run cars on. This is a very good idea and it would cut smog. And we can get electricity from wind power, and I hope this idea has caught on by now, because the wind blows a lot in some of these western plains states. In like matter we told you to cover your oil shorts because the price was bottoming out. And lo and behold we hear that OPEC is going to cut production next month. Now we can all embrace T Boone Pickens’ wind idea and tell OPEC to stick their oil where the sun doesn’t shine because we have moved beyond needing their oil.

There was one of those interactive US state maps but this one was different. Rather than being able to find out how many votes Dole got in 1996 with this map you could change the color of the state to either red or blue or inbetween and the electoral vote tally would change.

You saw in the news this morning passing billions of freshly minted money out to banks. I’d like to have some of that. But with this money the banks aren’t necessarily lending with that new money but are “sitting on this money” and using it for acquisitions, or buying out other institutions, or else paying their share holders. There are apparently no strings on how the banks are to spend their newly donated wealth from Uncle Sam. But somehow the Mc Cain people never will go and call this welfare for the rich.

There is a principle that conservatives embrace that liberals classicly didn’t about how your tax dollars you pay should actually be related to the services you get. But the Neo Cons believe in the axiom “From many a lot of money to pay to the few”. So you have pork projects for the few or else some financial scheme to benefit the few or the few screw up badly in an irresponsible act so the many have to pay. Thom Hartman believes the many should have to pay for the seeming perpetual poor health of the few. I still am not sold on this theory yet. I keep thinking in utilitarian terms of how much more bang the “many” could get for their tax dollars in things they really want- - were it not for the machinations of the few. (Selah)

I’ve decided perhaps I will vote for the animal rights proposition after wards and just “see how it works out”. It sure looks like it’s going to pass anyhow. I’m voting NO in propositions six and nine, which have to do with expanding law enforcement, because they will cost too much money. But I am voting for proposition five, which “reduces prison overcrowding” and provides drug rehabilitation and counseling for those not yet hooked on it, and in this way the crime rates are cut and expenditures are down.