Friday, February 15, 2013

Chuck Hagel Appointment Filiibustered by Republicans



THE BIG NEWS OF THE PAST 24 HOURS has to be the Republicans in the Senate successfully filibustering former Sen Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense.  The approval failed by one vote.  They decided to filibuster this routine cabinent secretary vote, which annoyed Majority Leader Harry Reid.  He aptly stated that such a refusal has never occurred in the entire history of the country.  It is unprecedented.  Of course being a precedent they thus prime the Democrats setting up a similar filibuster and refusal to confirm a routine cabinet appointment when it happens to be a Republican President and a democratic senate.  Of course the current Defense Secretary, Leon Peneta gave his “final news conference’ before stepping down this weekend.  He compared himself to Hillary as “someone who is deserving a long period of deserved time off”.  Penneta was with the CIA before he was with Defense.  In terms of the vote breakdown 55 democrats all voted for Chuck Hagal’s conformation, and they were joined by four Republicans.  John Mc Cain had stated that the senate should NOT filibuster this candidate but then changed his mind and voted thumbs down.  Of course the Republicans, even if they change their minds in a few days, could suffer adverse repercussions from this little stunt.  That is when money is doled out for military instelations in various states such as Texas or Arizona, for instance.  It could go real poorly for these Republican districts- - because if I were Hagal I would not forget what the republicans did today.  In terms of the dreaded Sequester, it seems that the Defence Department is and has already anticipated budget cuts and it making them already, and also was making them last quarter accounting for the dip in the GNP.  But the trouble is with an across the board in all departments budget cut of ten percent is that you “can’t build 90% of a battle ship” for example.  But clearly since the senate will be taking off their usual Long weekend- and won’t be back in session till the 26th or something- - it seems from here they will just plain run out of time before they can undo the sequester.  And from what Republicans are saying now- - they have no inclination to “want to make a deal” at all.  Period.

Moe Kelly was talking about that rogue cop who killed four people and wounded others.  What bothered me about that hysterical rant of Moe Kelly yesterday on KTLK was that it ran no less than two hours and consumed most of the morning.  But the thing is it wasn’t even factual.  Moe says that the police did NOT intentionally start that cabin fire with the tear gas canister.  Yet TV and radio coverage later in the day clearly showed that “They were going to initiate a burn” and there is another radio transmission where it was said “Burn that mother-fucker down!”  But the other thing is this whole “code of silence’ things the cops have and that Randy Rhodes point out on her own show giving an apt rebuttal to Moe.  Randi spoike of statistics that show that Black people are not larger illegal drug users than white kids are.  But the cops protect kids on “proper” white neighborhood for arrests, giving them second chances they won’t give a Black person.  Whites are never subject to the sort of routine shakedowns Blacks, including Moe Kelly himself, have suffered at the hands of law enforcement.  And we must keep in mind that certain classes of crime are almost the exclusive domain of Whites.  These would include child molestations and these psychotic multiple killings, and attempts on the lives of Presidents.  And besides these crimes- - Whites are also almost exclusively guilty of these “white collar crimes” such as embezzlement and the sort of financial stuff Romney was guilty of, but wasn’t even charged.   Police may “profile” a Black man with absolutely no criminal record and doesn’t even look like the guy they’re after, but no police profile nineteen and twenty year old white college students with business majors- - darkly suspecting they may grow up to be Gordon Geckos.

There was more stuff about the Koch Brothers and the Tea Party on Bill Press this morning that is covered in Bill’s book, “The Obama Hate Machine” that I really need to borrow a copy of and read thoroughly.  Like Bill, I never bought into the tea party myth for s second when they got their start in the spring of 2009 that “they were just a bunch of concerned Americans getting together to talk about how to reform government”.  Give me a break!  Thom Hartman has coined the term “astro turf” to describe these people.  Actually of course the Koch Brothers got their fame in the pulp paper business- - cutting down trees.  But they are also classically in bed with big oil and control a lot of the refineries and pipelines in this country.  They made their first attempt at a “grass roots” organization in 2002 when they formed the group “Citizens for a Sound Economy”, but that organization soon fell under endless suspiciou and disrepute.  They formed two more organizations later in the decade that are still around today and these are “Freedom Works” and “Americans for Prosperity”.  This morning while still lying in bed I was just musing over - - what a despicable person Mitt Romney was.  He was absolutely the LAST person you’d pick for any presidential candidate.  We kind of want our Politicians and Statesmen to be at least a little humble, and yet be inwardly brave and have an inner “True Grit” of character.  We like to believe they learned the “right lessons” from life’s experience.  When you think about someone you’d sit down at a bar and have a beer with - - I’d sooner have a beer with Gordon Gecko.  Gecko was a hell of a lot more articulate- - and he also was versed in the literary classics such as Sun Soon’s “The Art of War” and a pretty good racket ball player, and I bet he doesn’t cheat the way Romney does at even routine athletic contests.  Gecko at least fancied himself as an art conosour, but then again if you’re a rich person you’ll pay hundreds of thousand dollars for Crap – and it’s obvious to everybody but you.  What is really galling is Judy’s first real praise of Mitt Romney occurred at the beginning of 2012, when she rather passionately spoke in Romney’s defense when it came to the antics of Bain Capital.  Rick Perry was calling it “Vulture Capitalism” and Newt Gingrich took out lavish campaign adds funded by Sheldon Addelson, who later jumped sides, in pointing out for every would be voter for Romney what a rat their candidate was.  I don’t know about you but I just couldn’t get warm and fuzzy feelings at, say, a Christian dating site- - about a woman who passionately defends a man like Mitt Romney.  I was thinking again this morning of that Joe South song, “These are not my People”.  That would make an excellent title for a book I’d write on my experiences over the past 42 years with Born Again Christianity.  Because These indeed Are Not My People.  I don’t know them any more, and in reality never did.  You know my last gasp as a Born Again Christian was maybe ten years ago when in the late summer and much of the fall I attended a weekly Bible study with my brother at this couple’s nice house.  But you know- - even though this couple had five cats, I didn’t get along with any of them.  Up till that moment I considered myself a “cat person” but I seemed to have “lost my touch”.  I’m wondering if drug medication changes your body chemistry so that you just “smell differently” to an animal, and the suddenly get aloof and testy.  Can you know a person by how well you get along with their cats?

We've got one major paragraph after this one.  Unfortunately or whatever, the Cosmic stuff I've been planning on doing is pushed off into another day.  This is Friday February 15, 2013 and it’s Luprical in Romulan country today.  They don’t celebrate that holiday on this planet any more.  Yesterday was Valentine’s Day and I did not type in Word yesterday.  We’ll get to our opening paragraph topic in just a bit.  I have Stephanie Miller on right now and I had her on before breakfast.  It’s already warming up enough on this sunny morning that you really don’t need a jacket outside.  I woke early and got up at twenty to five intent on taking a long shower since it was so cold in here – then.  But like Tuesday the hot water wasn’t that hot this morning and I spent less time in the shower than planned.  Yesterday however the water did get up to full heat.  In the news that Carnival Cruise line finally pulled into Mobile, Alabama, being towed by tug boats at “walking speed” and at least one point the cable broke, and Captain Queeg wasn’t even around to blame for it.  Of course the people could not stay in their state rooms since sewage was dripping in through the ceiling from overflowing toilets above them.  They have done any number of TV movies about “Luxury Cruises gone bad”.  This is a real life case.  And that asteroid is scheduled to fly by earth today, or has flown by in the pre dawn hours or something.  Though now they are saying the object is still too small to be seen without a telescope.  I heard reports about generating a sonic boom, but perhaps they are referring to that giant asteroid that hit in Syberia in 1921 or something.  And they say that suicide rate skyrocket in states with lax gun laws such as Texas, Montana, and Wyoming.  Of course it’s a lot easier to kill yourself with a gun than by any other method, which at least gives the victim an opportunity to “think about it” first.  The trouble with guns is that their motto is “Your irrational impulse is my command”.  Clearly there would be a lot fewer “preventable deaths” were guns more restricted.  Wayne Lopier is said to be a racist now, and I’m not sure what they are referring to.  At any rate I had the Bill Press show on from the five o clock news on this morning, and the show was informative.  For breakfast we had Rice Krispies and later on we had scrambled eggs and hashed browns with catsup on them.  It was just past a quarter to eight when I left the table- and that’s the earliest I’ve gotten out of there in some time.

We've got one more paragraph .  It's a long one.  So just what did I spend perhaps too much of yesterday doing when I wasn’t listening to Moe Kelly and Randy Rhodes?  Well, I’d like to tell you about it.  We’ll discuss the Valentine party here later on, off camera.  In our last “Chapter” of the Base E saga we told you that I had arrived on the number of 2.665 as THEE number where recripicals of bases and exponents could be swapped out for the same value.  However this ONLY works with the logs of 2 and 4 or that would be “two” and “four’ for those of you in Rio Linda, who don’t know math.  But the Federation has another official established value I learned, which is 2.646 - - and I derived that one, too.  I noticed the discrepancy Wednesday evening and noted that it couldn’t be explained by either rounding off or some calculation anomally.  It was a slight but significantly different value.  This is the figure for 3/2 or 2/3 or 1.5 and .6667 or whatever.  Are you with me?  The one thing I DID learn definitively first thing yesterday morning was HOW TO CALCULATE the value of Base E everybody could agree on.  If you know the N! key in Windows Calculator, you know that one prime function is the key is the calculating of probabilities- - and choices and chances.  But what is done here with Base E is the “incrementalization” of this N! number into its component steps.  So for whatever reason Base E as used by the scientists starts with a ONE and to this you add the inverses (or recripicals) of 2! Plus 3! Plus 4! Plus 5! And so forth.  These numbers would break down to one, six, twenty-four, and 120.  I added each of these proper fractions together and came up with 2.766666 - - which is close enough.  120 for 5! Is the hightst figure I know, but it’s enough to get the idea.  This figure then with a very small exponent or log - - that is Close to value to One on Each Side - - would be Base E.  There was an article which discussed very small exponents and very large exponents and shortcuts you could employ, that we will NOT employ for our discussion here.  So what you have is a “shift factor”.  It became apparent that the farther the exponents and bases were apart- - that is - - their greater logarithmic distance from the value of ONE - - then the mean recripical Base - - would start to get lower- - from the Base E starting point.  Hence you have your 2.665 and 2.646 figures.  This mean base figure continues to drop, ever so slightly at first and then picks up speed radically as it approaches the value of ONE.  When the figure is at ONE - - the required LOG to get back to Base E is of course Infinite, as we previously discussed.  But just to show you I’m not blowing smoke out my ass- - the value of ONE would be a suitable mean figure for a base of base One and Infinity exponent, for example, because the Log of one would be Infinitely high, and the log of Infinity for itself would be One.  But what you’d have in terms of a line would kind of be a curve like the back of a sports car or something- - where ONE represents the rear bumper.  So then my only problem that I wrestled with all day was how to generate such a graph curve, and I hit upon an answer late in the day, and did a whole elaborate Excel program in the evening where I put all the pieces together for you.  First of all you look at a figure for 1.5 and what you want to know is “What value generates a LOG or LN more properly, of 1.5.  The answer would be around a 1.95.  In this model the higher the base number the lower the LOG because, if I didn’t tell you you hit the 1/X key on calculator to make it greater than one.  This may have been troubling you.  You take the LOG value to be the Exponet and Base figure you want to calculate the differential shift of.  OK?  The Value that generates this LOG would be - - like if it’s almost Two in the case of the 1.5 value- - you take that two and take the hyperbolic tangent reading of it, and it comes to a .96 or something.  Now you look at just the four percent shortfall.  Now you apply the final factor you multiply by.  This factor goes up at a straight line value from zero at Base E to what ends up being about 101% at ONE.  The value of Base E alone shrinks down to a 37% at the ONE value from the percent deduction along being 2.7 times 24 as in percent soing with the 76% TANH figure at value One.  But because the sliding straight line scale goes from 0 to .27 times - - but your base can’t be allowed to go below ONE- - you’ve already used up your 1.7 Base E value getting Base E down to One and not Zero, where you don’t’ want to go anyhow.  It so happens that two and a half times 24 is about 63 from a hundred making 37 and also 37 percent of Base E’s value is below one.  Now of course the beginning of the scale starts at a 99.9% TANH reading- - but remember this end of multiplied by Zero, so you’re all set.

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