A CENTURY OF - - - PROGRESS ???

I haven’t checked for sure but I think the next blog to lose its top dog status is the “Egypt” one, which was typed not all that long ago in February, I believe.  The rates at which we cycle through all eleven blogs is continuing to accelerate.  The whole “war on women” thing was happening even then.  Now people like Rush Limbaugh are trying to disffuse the issue with a lot of sputtering rhetoric, for which he is famous.  Women are smarter than that.  They know the score.  They know what Hillary Rosen was referring to on the subject of gainful employment.  The biggest problem Anne Romney has to worry about, as someone put it jokingly – is making sure the footman gets his Christmas bonus.  That would be a carriage driver, I believe.  People still rose in carriages a hundred years ago.  People are wondering whether Newt Gingrich is a viable candidate in the 2012 election.  The bigger question is whether Newt would even be a viable candidate in the election of 1912.  Back then big changes were already in the works.  We had the World Series as a national tradition already uniting us as Americans as “our national pastime”.  They were even doing Dr. Demento songs about Einstein’s theory of relativity back then that got a popular airing.  We had radio.  And we were coming to realize that there were still forces in nature that man could not conquer such as ice bergs out in the middle of the Atlantic on a calm cold sea.  I wonder if there are other similarities.  You had a whole mind set in Europe which was about to go under.  Pat Buchannon is worried about the lasting power of the world’s great Empires such as the Ottoman Empire and the Ast4ro-Hungarian empire and let us not forget Greater Prussia.  Tzar Nicholas was in big trouble.  Pat if he lived back then would be about to go through his “worst nightmare”.  You had Henry Ford “committing a crime against the capitalist economy” as other businessmen put it, for paying his workers enough hourly wages to actually be able to afford the cars they made.  Sounds like creeping Communism to me.  The US farmers were going well because they now didn’t have to hitch old Nelly up to the plow any more but could use gasoline tractors and get a lot more work done.  And there was a new move tword cleanliness and neatness and “being civilized”.  So women were subjected to the ‘white glove test” to see if they were a good matrin.  After all now you had paved streets without all that dust flying in the air.  You had street lights and traffic signals.  And since transportation was improved you could have amenities dlivivered right to your house like milk and other dairy products, as well as bread and pastries, and also daily ice deliveries for you ice box, where you could keep your food cold right in your own house.  Other amenities were becoming comon place.  There were picture shows and people could afford their own cameras and they possibly had a phonograph in their homes.  You had people like Kellog heralding the virtues of such things as physical fitness as well as circumcision and words like “sexual hygene” were making the rounds.  Men in particular were expected to be more civilized and “gentlemanly” making trips to the local Barber Shop popping up on every street corner to look “neat” with emaculately trimmed mustache and goatee, and betting a shine from the Black shoe shine boy.  Physical fitness was even a fad because people observed that life was becoming less “arduous” with amenities like telephones and running water and flush toilets.  Even the  symphonic music was taking on a different tone referred to as “contemporaty” with dissinent notes and impressionist nuances.  Biological Evolution was taking on general acceptance by the average Joe in society. And were Newt running back then he would STILL have to deal with things like the coming Federal Reserve and the national Income Tax.  Back then he would have been facing two progressives and a moderate.  William Howard Taft is known in retrospect as a conservative, but back then the word just meant “keeping the status quo” and not reactionary freak-out.  Taft was just as active at breaking up Corporate Trusts as Teddy Roosevelt was.  That’s what my history books say.  And by the way back then people actually had a high regard for Science in general and looked to science to come up with new inventions and discoveries every day - - like the Lukemia cure that Rush Limbaugh was talking about on his program so much of today.  And drugs were becomingly widely used that were actually effective cures for a whole host of ills.  People were more internationally conscious with the construction going on with the Panama Canal and luxury liners were plying the oceans providing "the good life" and travel in luxury.  People were at least aware of a thing called radio and the idea that the air waves had invisible transmissions in them unseen by by the human eye.  Stunt flying was all the rage.  And the whole sinking of the Titanic is highly symbolic to me of the Christian Church being kept afloat by the “sea of humanity”’ and an ocean of over-confidence, but then reality - - played by the Ice Berg, knocks on the door and announces “I’m here!’

And now back to the real world.  The 21^st Century, the political climate of which has not been so forward looking.  I continue to be amazed at how they “double down’ on the most controversial issues.  For instance the “Buffet doctrine” has been repeatedly put to scorn.  Judy’s take on it is “Of course you should not have to pay as much tax, if any tax on corporate dividends.  After all that earnings has already been taxed, so it would be double taxation”, as if the same dollar bill in circulation were taxed only once.  And by the way- - just because some Corporation has already paid the tax on “that money” YOU have not paid taxes on it.  Chuck Smith once said “You know (not to contradict Jesus or anything) I have personally found it’s the poor people that are money grubbing and obsessed with getting more of it.  But when you become Rich you reach a pertain point where you have “transcended placing value on the importance of money”.  Obviously Chuck Smith doesn’t read today’s newspapers about the machinations of today’s rich.  And now Rush Limbaugh - - far from admitting defeat on the whole Trevon Martin shooting says “You know this arrest warrant is so badly written- - no judge would ever accept it.  I would not be a bit surprised if some Judge threw out this whole case against Zimmerman.  After all, my Dad used to be an attorney and he knows about these things”.  In terms of other stuff- - Mel Gibson is doubling down on his asshole statements.  Now he’s saying that John Lennon deserved to be shot because he had a Messiah complex.  Just put him in a pharacee robe and you’re all set here.  Let me tell you - - accuse ME of having a Messiah complex if you want to - - accuse Dr. Martin Luther King of having one.  But to NOT accuse John Lennon of having one, because John was the farthest thing from that.  And also- - my take on the song “Imagine” is not that the song was written either as a treaties on metaphysics or theology.  The song is just what it says.  It’s a eutopian song.  Just imagine all of the problems we wouldn’t have in the world if we didn’t have to bother about Religion or these other Midevil bugaboos such as Heaven and Hell.  That’s all he was saying.  Of course Mel Gibson was going to do a movie about Judas Macabees but I guess he decided the whole thing was a little “Jewish” for his taste.  By the way in a recent posting I should have said the four Sons - - of Judas Macabees - - who took part in the northern rebellion in 46 AD or something in Israael, particularly a guy named Thaddius.  And there are all those other disciple names such as Judas and Simon and John.  I think we are all suspecting that Mel Gibson may have a screw loose himself.  His Passion movie is kind of considered a historic anachronism now - - and the farthese thing from a movie classic.  It’s so dark and depressing with all of the dialog in Aramiac.  About the Aramiac thing- - not to ruin George Burne’s day or anything but Jesus himself read from the Greek Septuigent, and this has been proven.  I do not for one minute believe this new FOX news poll showing Mitt Romney beating the President 46% to 44%.  My hope is that the tea party will wake up to the worst nightmare of their lives the morning after the November election realizing everything they had fought for is now Lost.

At noon I got back on KPOJ AM 620 in Portland and listened to the Thom Hartman show with the old familiar music.  Thom had a very insightful hour and was well worth it.  In the course of that hour I also listened to two audio recordings of Bill Press being interviewed and one home shot video off a TV of Bill Press.  These three nine minute excerpts each ran the hour till just past one.  Then I watched the soap opera.  Nicole told Elvis that it was Stephano who had sabotaged E J’s “evidence planting” against John Black.  Apparently that sabotage is what made it so easy to crack the case.  E J now admits openly that he alone stole the money of not his father’s initiative - - but now that money is “Gone”.  Elvis had been planning to find a stealth way to get the money back to the innocent investors and that John Black would be the only one hurt, but it appears now Stephano has stolen that money from his son. Actually Nicole may make a less than ideal wife, but she is an excellent friend to both Elvis  and his "exestential crisis" with his father, and also with Raphael. Meanwhile Raphael has the opportunity to let go of a lit firecracker but he’s failing to do it.  Carrie does NOT need to know word one about Raphael’s relation between himself and Nicole.  That relation is personal and none of Carrie’s business, who should be more concerned about putting her marriage with Austin back together.  She’ll find the truth about soon enough - - but there is not a reason in God’s green earth why she has to hear it from Raphael.


Romney spent a portion of Friday reaching out directly to gun owners gathered for the National Rifle Association's annual meeting in St. Louis, Mo. He delivered a speech broadly attacking President Obama for failing to protect Americans' economic, religious and personal freedoms-- highlighting gun owners in that final attack. "We need a President who will stand up for the rights of hunters, sportsmen, and those who seek to protect their home and family," Romney said. "President Obama has not; I will." Absent the pretense of being a hunter, Romney argued Friday that he, unlike the president, will not support new gun laws and will protect Second Amendment rights in America. But Romney used the bulk of his speech Friday to broadly focus on all freedoms. Romney criticized the president for viewing the Constitution as a "living and evolving" document and for attempting to "browbeat" the Supreme Court, a reference to the president's recent stern language regarding the Court's future decision on Obamacare."He thinks our nation's highest court is to be revered and respected-- as long as it remains faithful to the original intent of Barack Obama," Romney said.

Apparently this 8.6 earthquake is the larges tembler ever of a strike-slip or horisontal fault as opposed to a vertical thrust fault.  And the 8.2 aftershock was the largest ever for a strike-slip fault.  They say that long waves traveled through the earth and were measured at 2.6 or something here in California.  Meanwhile some of these other earthquakes like in Mexico and in Oregon may be somehow related to the big Indonesia quake.  Scientists say that there is definitely something ususual going on.  Today here we are having a pretty substantial rain form for this late in the year.  Now in the news is tjatthe LA basin has the highest concentration of tornadoes - - of all things anywhere west of the Rockeys.

Finally at two I turned on Randy Rhodes and listened to that hour.  Nora came in briefly to empty the trash.  There was a line from the three o clock hour that “got to me” but perhaps not the one he expected.  Perhaps it was the timing.  He spoke of a mother having to identify the anguished, tortured screams of her own son for Police.  His last seconds on earth.  He then talked about a drunk who ran his car into a river and his wife and daughters were drowned and only he and his son escaped alive through a “cracked open” window.  What he said next was eery.  And now when Zimmerman pursued Martin like a dog and shot him- - he was not filled with the least bit of remorse.  This is just another attorney lie.  Most people after they commit a violent act feel a sense of revulsion and guilt tword the weapon and drop it or hide it or something so as not to be in sight of it.  After Zimmerman shot Martin he cooly put the gun back into his holster and just stood over the body calmly waiting for the police to arrive.  It was less a murder than it was a systematic execution - - like shooting a rabid dog that had been terrorizing the neighborhood.  Zimmerman is the rabid dog.  I guess it’s closer to the dinner hour than I thought.