President Orders "Surge" of US Martials

President Obama today ordered a significant step up of US Martial presence on International flights as of February first. US Marshals's jobs are to observe passengers and if the underwear bandit Abdul Metalah had been scrutenized they would have seen how nervous his behavior was in his staring and constantly wiping his forehead. Abdul Matalsh will be tried in Civilian court, much to the disdain of Republicans. And yet shoe bomber Richard Reed and over two others have been successfully prosecuted under civilian courts. The observation is made that the government will lose valuable intelligence oppertunities if we don't water board this guy while we have the chance. And yet others like the Press Secretary point out that we've already gained a lot of intelligence from Abdul Matalah, if we can believe him. We haven't heard the last of new security measures; you can count on that. These nude scanners put out only a fraction of the X Rays that Medical X Rays put out, and most of the rays bounce off of the skin. No doubt this will be taken into consideration when their wide spread use is contemplated.

Four democratic senators have declared that they will not run again for Senate in 2010 today. These include Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, whom Randy Rhodes personally vouches for as a progressive. Dodd is the son of Thomas Dodd, who was considered for Vice Presidential pick by Lyndon Johnson in 1964. However it's pointed out that even more Republicans are expected not to run again. Many on the radio are not optimistic about democratic changes in 2010 however keep in mind that this batch of Senators last stood for election in 2004 when the Republicans were still winning. Hence there are more Republicans ripe to knock off. Some have suggested that Ed Schultz run for the empty North Dakota slot being opened up by Byron Dorgan's departure. He's a popular progressive talk show host so why not. I see absolutely no reason for the democrats to feel disspirited at this time.

Rush Limbaugh is carrying on about how great medical care is in this country yet Hawaii has the most government care of any of the fifty states, so he picked a bad example. Randy Rhodes points out that when the bill comes, most people can't pay it, but with Rush's 400 million, he's not in any position to compare what the rest of us have to deal with. Some have speculated that Rush's chest pains are from eating a too highly spiced hoagie.

Governor Swartzenegger gave an encouraging State of the State message today. For once he wasn't blaming poor people for the State's problems, but the Federal Government. He says that California only gets back $74.00 for every hundred dollars we sent to the Federal Government in tax revenue. The governor also said that Alaska, perhaps thanks to Sarah Palin gets 173% of the revenue that they send to the federal government. The governor in fact expressed sympathy for both poor people and school children. He said that it was a crime to spend fifty percent more on State Prisons than on Education. I would agree if that's true. The governor expressed optimism about the economic recovery in general, and that's a good thing to hear. Certainly in industrial production and in other ways, signs of growth are sprouting up all over. The governor said that tax revenue drop off in the state was eight times the slump in the state economy. I find that a little hard to swallow. People say that the governor is a termed out "Lame Duck" but I'm glad that at least he wants to go out on a positive note.

In the Sudoko puzzles the idea is to fill in the right numbers based on certain pre-set rules and precepts. A lot of it involves the process of elimination. Also like police action boards, once you think you have isolated one key clue to a meta-physical certain, that clue itself becomes a tip-off to other clues out there. If a police detective wants to find where the truth lays, he knows to talk to people who are known to tell the truth even when it would be in their interest to slant the truth and lie a little. Sometimes like the Sudoku puzzle, you get stuck and can't go on the direction you are going, and there are blanks still left to be filled in. If you have an Action Board for one crime scenario, you may need to construct other action boards for other entirely different scenarios as to how the crime took place. Sometimes it all depends on the defendant drawing a sympathetic judge. In today's soap opera Nicole appears to have drawn a sympathetic judge who had an axe to grind against at least two of her many accusers, Elvis Di Mira and Samantha Brady. Seldom has one lie hurt more lives than this lie about her baby. She lied to her husband and was caught in one lie, but then she was still lying even then. As a result many lives were traumatically affected. Were I the judge I would not just dismiss this reality. Even people with reputations as utter jerks can have a truly just legal cause.

Ping Pong Expediancy

Now we are learning a new phrase, among so many new idiums we are learning these days thanks to the media such as "proactive" and "prostate health". We've learned about something that's going to be done that apparently the Republicans have been doing for a long time, but it doesn't make the news until the democrats do it. They are bypassing the usual conference committee in the legeslative process for the Health Bill. All that's missing is the green light on your dashboard. What people have feared all along is becoming a reality. The Senate version of the Health bill is going to be accepted whole, without any changes lest they lose some of their precious sixty votes needed for passage. To do this house members will have to be talked out of otherwise constructive measures such as the millionaire's tax and the dreaded Public Option. The bill is pinged and ponged and amendments are added in mass to the House bill untill it can be manipulated to look just like the senate bill. Then President Obama can have his little victory. The insurance and drug companies can rest easy knowing all their campaign donations to Obama will be paying off. But as I said the Republicans already made use of this ping - pong procedure for such infamous bills as the Patriot Act, where nobody seemed to object. The republicans did a lot of things and threatened to do a whole lot more if they didn't get their way, that they now have suddenly developed a conscience and don't want the Democrats doing.

Well today a defensive President Obama crouched and bared his teeth and groweled in his toughest possible macho stance. But you know such behavior still won't impress Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck. I'm just waiting for these two to name all the things our President did wrong. They no doubt will cite the civil court trial of the 9 - 11 master-mind or the closing of Guantanamo Bay. What the President did, besides the interrupting of my soap opera at a key plot moment, was to take all the blame for things that went wrong. The President promaces quick and decisive action to remedy all the security problems we have with our airports. One could scarcely envision President Bush making a more resolute speech, and had a President Mc Cain given that same speech word for word, Praises would be heaped on him by the Right. But that won't happen. The President cited a "failure to connect up the dots". He characterized it as not an information gathering failure but an information processing and coalating failure. It all comes down to agencies of the government sharing collaborating with the information they have. Now where have we heard of such a failure before? Oh yes, President Bush and his failure to dissern that 9 - 11 was about to take place. Like I say, with each passing day the distinction between Presidents Bush and Obama becomes more slight. Personally I agree with Ron Reagan, who said today that "You can't prevent all accidents; Things happen". It's a cliche expression, 'shit happens". Rush Limbaugh would be quick were it a private vendor of a product to say "There is no way you can prevent mishaps from happening". Rush reminds us, rightly, that life sometimes throws you a curve ball. But somehow when it comes to Al Qaeda, our government owes it to us to insure that nothing EVER will happen to an American citizen, and that ANY price is worth paying. But certain security procedures, be it wide spread drug testing for who knows what, or else "total security" on an airline, isn't a reality. These airliners are in business to make money after all, and they can't go frightening off customers through excessive security procedures. Personally I'd prefer the sniffing dogs to either the "super thorough pat down" involving the genitals, or these nude X ray scanners. Why are people no longer concerned about radiation to the genitals. What happened to that heavy shield the dentist puts over you to protect your vital organs. Frequent business flyers would have to find these procedures a pain in the ass- - perhaps literally (!) after a while, and in time all this security would slow commerce and reduce corporate profits. Let's appeal to Obama's business side.

3 D TV is coming. Well, I don't know what entertainment will be like in the future but my eyes don't work well for 3 D and people like myself and Leo Le Port think the whole business is largely a waste of time. But I suppose some people thought when they began making movies in color, so perhaps I'm dating myself. If you want monsters leaping off your TV screen into your living room, then have at it. Of course Google and the Android Opperating system- - among so many "new systems" are coming out now, promacing to revolutionize the computer experience. They have been saying that E mails are becoming a thing of the past. CD's may be becoming a thing a thing of the past and not only the desk top but the notebook computer will become a thing of the past as we move to tablet computers with their touch screen capabilities, as well as the Smart Phones taking over the Phone market, which they have yet to do.

In a Bob Dylan song about New York, Bob Dylan says, "They said it was the coldest winter in seventeen years. I didn't feel so cold then". Well for about two thirds of the country this is the coldest winter in 25 years. I remember the winter of 1977 as being cold in one of my astro projection lives. I don't remember 1985 as being especially cold but I'll take their word for it. People are saying that "The Gulf Stream conveyer belt is shutting down" and so England is seeing cold like they've never had before. But people are saying that the watch word now is not global warming but "Climate Change". I guess that could cover just about anything. My heart goes out to all those people shivering in the rest of the country and hope fuel oil and natural gas prices aren't so high that they are unable to properly heat their homes.

Facing the New Year

I made a number of minor resolutions this year. One that I can keep is finding a cheaper place to buy cigarettes, and cigarettes that come in exotic flavors such as strawberry and grape. So, I hope that doesn't make me "fruity". The new photo processing software I have works great and there are a lot of things you can do with it. I'm reading through a book of quotations of famous people that my Mom gave me. She also gave me the book lying around the house "When I say No, I Feel Guilty". That's an old one. I think I'm actually going to read the Gospel of Mark through at the start of this year. As to that number puzzle where you fill in the numbers for each callendar day, there seem to be too many possabilities to insure getting it right. If you're wondering about the photograph, assuming I remember to put it in, that's my roommate Bill in the background. He has more hair than I do but he's actually ten years older. I guess I want to be more thoughtful and conscientious this new year, to heed the advice of "Deliberate often, but decide but once". There is also a quote from my name sake that says something "Whatever you enjoy doing, do it not having expectation of a reward and in this way you will follow the [proper] course of nature". But I like the one from Soren Kierkegaard better - that goes "This world has enough reflection - what we need is more Passion". Hello, Rod Stewart! Here's one I thought was from Gandhi, that goes "When two elephants fight each other - it's the grass that suffers". Some have said the biggest consumers and wasters of petroleum energy is the armlements industry. Others say our biggest carbon footprint problem is that we are all meat eaters and factory farms are world class polluters. People wonder who the smartest President we've ever had was. Let me tell you, George W Bush was not as dumb as people made him out to be, and President Obama is not as smart as people make him out to be. Not only that, but with each passing day of lost opportunity, George Bush, in retrospect appears less "dumb" every day! But I think unquestionably our smartest president was Franklin Roosevelt. People say that he was really more perceptive than Churchill even. On the subject of action, I would like to quote the proverb I've quoted before, "When all is said and done, more is said than done". Here is one more for you I'm going to doctor up a little. Jesus Christ talking: "When I am dead I would rather that mankind ask why there were no monuments to me, rather than have people continually ask why there Were monuments to a person like me". Continuing, "of course I lack the true humility to have actually uttered a statement like this". A proverb goes "When three different people call you an Ass, you better put on a bridal!"

The other night on KCET 28.4 then had a fascenating program on the human genome. Human beings only contain something like 23,000 genes, or as many as a chicken, and fewer than many plants do. Of course they are now trying to synthisize dinasaurs from the DNA of a chicken. What this tells me is that it's easier for man to have "evolved" than Creationists think because one gene can make a big impact. And it doesn't take changes in that many genes to denote an ape from a human. But there are genes, and "master genes" and switches. Yes dinasaurs resemble birds, but often many species have inactivated genes controled by "switches". I've heard that in autisum, certain mental development "switches" have not been thrown. There are birds on an island with long, skinny, pointed beaks for getting nectar from flowers, and other birds with short, stout beaks for cracking of various nuts and fruits, but otherwise the birds look the same. They both have the same controling gene but in one case the switch isn't thrown. Also there are fruit flies with spotted wings and other fruit flies without them, all because of a switch that wasn't thrown. But they say man may have been allowed to develop the size of his brain because in a gorilla, his jaw muscles take up so much space that it interfears with his skull size. It seems a key muscle gene got damaged through mutation in human beings ironically enabling his brain cavity to expand in size. Some people say you need both science and religion. Well, science is like arranging the Tetrus blocks so that they fit. Religion is the descent of more Tetrus blocks to work with. While you may need both in society, they don't have to be the same person.

This and the last two photographs are being typed on Saturday January 2, 2010. And I guess we’ll try and do that Ringo thing to complete the set. Perhaps in marketing we could combine Beatles Early Nuggets with this album rather than the Harrison one. A disk with nineteen songs like this one could have songs averaging up to four minutes.

ACT NATURALLY

The One And Only Billy Shears

Act Naturally (single B side)

Boys (from Please, Please Me)

I Want to Be Your Man (“Meet the Beatles”)

Honey Don’t (from Beatles for Sale)

If You’ve Got Troubles (from Anthology)

What Goes On? (from Rubber Soul)

Flying (from MMT)

Good Night (Anthology version)

Octopuses Garden (Abbey Road)

Back Off, Boogaloo (single)

I Don’t Treat You Like I should (from “Ringo”)

I’m the Greatest (from “Ringo”)

Choose Love (title song)

Instant Amnesia (from Ringo-rama)

Photograph (from “Ringo”)

Goodnight Vienna(GNV)

Ooh-wee! (The New Jean Harlow) (GNV)

The No No Song (GNV)

Snoockeroo (GNV)